Well, you see what I have here from
two o'clock in the morning and come
and just put it together on the spot
as only you can and will and demonstrate
to this people what prophetic obedience is and
the tension in which the prophetic person lives
and serves always a dependency and a casting
himself upon God in the moment, never a
complete sense or confidence that we have it
all nailed down and know where to go
and what to say, always something tremulous, uncertain
in which you are our dependency, our high
tower, our trust, our confidence.
So we bless you Lord that not only
will you verbally set forth your thoughts but
demonstrate them.
In fact, that is the very function of
the prophet.
He is the thing in himself.
He is the demonstration as well as the
propagator of the word.
What he is in himself is what you're
calling the church to be.
That's why he's the foundation.
So it's no small thing my God.
In fact, it's a Holy Ghost masterpiece and
you take your sweet old time about it
too.
It's not an overnight quickie.
It's a process over time and through experience
and all of the things through which such
men are sifted and formed, shaped, meeting in
the context of the church as the church
even for their own formation and even ultimately
for the ascending.
So we bless you Lord and we love
to call upon you as the Alpha and
the Omega.
You're the one who knows how to begin.
To begin is excruciatingly painful.
You don't know how to begin.
What first thing would you know Lord?
You know why you know the first thing?
Because you know the last thing.
There needs to be a congruence between what
begins and what ends and only you know
the end from the beginning.
So give us the beginning Lord appropriate to
the end.
Not only these immediate days but to the
end of the end of all of our
days.
We thank you and give you praise for
the privilege.
In Jesus name and God's people said Amen.
Well a brother has suggested that the article
from which we read last night ought to
be in our website.
Good idea, I hadn't thought of it.
Of course it's not our article.
We can ask the author if you wouldn't
mind but I think it would be a
blessing for many.
And then he said the books that you
were quoting and citing need to be listed
also.
So we hope to do that as we
go along and acquaint you with some of
the sources that we employ and enjoy.
Here's something that has recently come into my
hand from an Indian woman from Canada.
A little daily devotional reading using the prophets.
Do you know the name Eugene Peterson?
Yes.
Who has paraphrased the Bible in idiomatic current
American English.
It's a very fresh work.
Also has a little devotional book called Praying
with the Prophets and this is very much
like it.
Here's today's selection from Amos from a verse
in chapter 8.
Hear this you who trampled the needy and
do away with the poor of the land.
Because invariably the prophets are always citing Israel's
moral failure in the areas of social neglect
and injustice for which reason they're often misunderstood
as if they are social reformers.
They're not pointing to failures in society as
being the thing in itself but the symptom
of the much greater failure which is the
failure of right relationship with God which will
always manifest itself as injustice to men.
Are you taking notes?
You got that one?
Wow, nice statement.
So he writes in these piercing words and
the prophetic word is always a piercing word.
Amos exposes the thoughts of the people as
they gather in the temple on the Sabbath
which is today by the way.
They are singing the hymns and saying the
prayers but in their hearts they can't wait
to get back to the business of making
money.
Though they are entering into the ritualism of
the worship they are anxious to return to
the marketplace where they can get a buzz
by exploiting others.
That's an interesting statement that exploitation is not
just an issue of economic greed but of
psychic satisfaction.
Only a prophet would see that because if
you only deal with it at the level
of economics you're not really yet dealing with
the root of it.
The root of greed is more than just
accumulating wealth but getting a buzz.
A kind of satisfaction which is the alternative
to the gratification that should be obtained only
and exclusively through God.
The prophet sees right through the appearance of
things to the truth of the condition in
its deeps.
That's why his word has got to be
piercing.
It's not just an issue of social justice.
Now why don't you guys shape up and
clean up your act?
Why don't you act better toward your underprivileged
kinsmen and not exploit them?
That would not be propheticness.
That would be a parody.
That would be a popularization of the prophet.
The prophet pierces through to the deeps and
the truth of the situation of which the
social condition is only the manifestation.
But it's interesting how Jews like to talk
of the prophets of that way and even
then throw in Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud
as being Jewish prophets.
They don't understand the genius of propheticness itself
and it would be a caricature to say
that the prophets are only campaigners for social
justice.
The green dealers used false weights so they
could overcharge their customers and the result was
that the poor were having to sell themselves
as slaves in order to live or to
pay their debts.
What would Amos make of Christians in the
West whose goal is to maintain their standard
of living and have a good life, which
I think is the unspoken premise in our
world, in our society and even commended as
being the highest statement of faith is one's
prosperity.
What would the prophet have to say about
believers who go to church on Sunday, apparently
enter into everything that is going on, but
deep down are longing to get back to
the office on Monday to do another deal.
And what would he say about those believers
who celebrate feast days but bemoan the bank
holidays because they can't occupy their minds with
what they enjoy most, checking on the price
of their shares.
This guy's insightful himself.
And if you'll forgive one more speculation, but
I don't want to leave that, what they
enjoy most, checking on the price of their
shares.
Do you ever get a sense that the
world is a kind of gamesmanship, there's a
play acting that is just older men playing
with more expensive toys and the whole thing
of stock market or even military expenditures and
military build up and politics running for office
is a remarkable gamesmanship and it's unbecoming to
those that are made in God's image and
that the whole thing is false and has
to do with the kind of childish thing
that kids enjoy, but what is played out
at an adult level, it becomes tragic and
has consequence.
Would there have been World War I, of
which World War II was a continuation and
World War III is likely to be a
consummation, if there were not Caesar's chancellors, what
do they call them, Kaisers playing with tin
soldiers on big tables like this and planning
out strategies and building up navies and competition
with Great Britain and France as to national
supremacy as if it were some kind of
a game.
But when the game starts to get played,
it goes from tin soldiers to flesh and
blood men.
How many potential Beethoven's and Karl Barth's and
philosophers and geniuses of kinds that God has
birthed to enrich mankind had their lives wiped
out on a three or four kilometer piece
of ground called no man's land in World
War I for which today you can visit
in Verdun the Ossiery, that is to say
the place where the bones are kept.
It's larger than a football stadium.
The bones of an entire generation wiped out
on a little piece of turf called no
man's land for a war that had its
origin in the ambition of men playing with
tin soldiers and loving the grandeur of the
battlefield and having Napoleonic revelry and a games
playing mentality.
That's the world, that's the lie, that's what
Satan loves.
He loves destruction, chaos and devastation and he
will egg men on to play their games
knowing what the consequence will be.
What about those men that blow up in
tanks and their flesh is impaled on the
steel bulkhead of that coffin on treads?
I'm not trying to be grotesque or bizarre,
but we need to know that what starts
us off is not the end of the
world.
The end of the world as a game
ends in terrible devastation.
Not only the death of men who might
have enriched mankind, but their progeny.
They shall never have children and their children
that would have come will not themselves have
children.
There's a bloodletting and it's an attack against
God, against what is creative, what is life
-giving in war that has to do with
economics, that has to do with politics, that
has to do with power.
That has to do with ambition, that has
to do with men play-acting.
Their game needs to be revealed.
A whistle needs to be blown to bring
it to a halt and the function of
the prophet is to do that.
Of course that's not going to make him
popular.
Men don't want their games interrupted or even
brought into criticism.
If you'll forgive one more speculation, what
would he say about those church leaders who
make their feelings known when it comes to
sexual morals but stay silent on the rampant
consumerism and materialism which is blithely assumed to
be a sign of God's blessing?
What was I reading?
At least a third of this nation is
obese and that it afflicts children.
Teenagers are already grossly overweight in fast foods,
in snack foods, in stuffing their mouths with
all the kinds of things that will inflate
their bodies.
If you knew the figures of sales for
Fritos and the makers of those snack foods,
your head would spin.
We're not talking about millions, we are talking
about billions.
We have a whole economy predicated on profit
that does not give any regard to the
consequence that comes to its victims in their
bodies, in their minds and in their souls.
So how we need in the contemporary Christian
church more straight-talking prophets and fewer smooth
-tongued preachers.
For when there is a fog in the
pulpit, there will inevitably be a mist in
the pews.
Praise the Lord for this man who sees
so acutely and writes so well.
As the priest, so also the people.
Yes, we need more straight-talking prophets, but
where are the congregations or the pastors who
will admit straight-talking prophets onto their platforms
and into their pulpits?
That is probably one of the critical problems
of our time, is that nothing is held
with greater suspicion and reserve than the admission
of prophetic men onto the platforms of successful
churches.
So here's how we're going to end, or
what we're going to consider in these days,
after we have a little preliminary assessment of
what is prophetic, is to take my most
recent speaking engagement before these days have commenced
and critique it.
Because it ended with being beaten on my
chest by the founder of the conference, who
is an internationally recognized author and has been
a blessing to me and to our own
fellowship, meeting me outside the building and striking
me on the chest with his Bibles and
books in like a fit of rage and
anger that is totally out of keeping with
the quiet, demure, makeup of that man, he
was totally out of character, he was pushed
to a place of great provocation by me
and hitting me with his Bibles, cried out,
you and your Jewish flesh and your Jewish
pride, I'm giving you the end and later
on I'll give you the beginning.
I might just review the three messages that
I gave, their culmination and the invitation to
the congregation, to which this same brother came
up on the platform and took the microphone
and nullified or negated my invitation.
And because I'm hard of hearing and was
several steps back from him, I knew that
he was taking issue with what was being
said, I did not know he was nullifying
the invitation and as the Lord would have
it, the first words that I spoke when
I got the microphone back was, the invitation
is still valid.
So he, not knowing that I was speaking
out of an ignorance of what he said,
thought it was an act of defiance but
that he would think that it's an act
of Jewish defiance is a remarkable revelation in
itself because the whole tenure of what I
had to say to the church was the
issue of the Jew and of Israel and
our failure to be rightly related to them.
So it would be a remarkable exercise for
us to review the entire experience as being
an episode of a prophetic kind containing all
the constituent elements of prophetic discernment, prophetic obedience,
prophetic proclamation, prophetic consequence, prophetic rejection.
It's all there and it would be a
very rich thing.
The thought has come to me that we
would profit greatly to examine that with a
right spirit.
So let's see if the Lord will give
us that liberty, but just to let you
know what I think the Lord may want
included in these days.
And while it's yet fresh, and while I'm
at a place to speak of it, because
my memory will soon fail me, but I
think the Lord will give me the opportunity
to speak of it in a way that
is not only prophetic, but also prophetic in
the sense that it's a prophetic discernment, prophetic
proclamation, prophetic obedience, prophetic proclamation, prophetic
consequence, prophetic rejection.
And while that may fade and other newer
things will crowd it out, it might be
very profitable for us to examine.
On top of that, I'm already receiving emails
and a few letters of people who were
there.
And so you can hear the comment of
those who felt disposed to write me who
observed this thing and factor in their comments
on what was taking place.
I wrote some notes and here it is.
Prophecy in Israel, a series of articles on
the prophetic phenomenon.
And I made a note to myself for
our present class school to dissect, critique, and
evaluate this propheticness.
Use the recent experience as a model of
prophetic reality and requirement.
Review the text.
Get the sense of the messages that were
actually spoken.
What does it reveal about the genius of
propheticness?
When I say genius, and it's a word
I use often, I'm not talking about high
IQ.
Genius means the essential nature and makeup of
a given thing.
What does obedience mean?
What constitutes obedience?
Inspiration, authority, consequence, character, intercession, and prayer.
Responsibility before God for what takes place.
Where do you get that word?
And where do you have the audacity to
speak it?
Are remarkable questions.
Knowing that you're accountable to God for what
issues from you and yet obliged to speak.
And never with a complete confidence that you
have the mind of the Lord and that
even if you have it in substance, can
it be contradicted by something that issues from
you?
That is a lapse and goes back into
your own humanity or your own flesh.
So there's a remarkable tension of prophetic obedience
knowing that even when you think yourself obedient
and you have prayed and there's always the
tension of the prospect of failure, of missing
the mind of the Lord entirely.
Because that's the accusation and the indictment that
you're likely to hear.
In fact, after the first message, I was
brought aside for the leaders of that conference
and critiqued or interrogated by them and accused
after only one message of lacking anointing, of
needing a deeper circumcision of the heart, and
a deeper brokenness.
That was just from the first message.
How do you go on after that?
And if you're not in a place of
brokenness and the speaking of the first message,
will you be in it with the speaking
of the second or the third?
So it's not what you speak in that
moment that's the issue, but all the moments
that have preceded that moment.
If you've not been under the hand of
the Lord in dealings and the breakings of
God prior to the meetings, will you obtain
it at the meeting?
But that you could be accused of that
or charged with that is not only a
statement of your own deficiency, but of the
mentality of the men who are charging you.
And when you'll hear the first message, you'll
have opportunity to discern whether the word itself
was wanting or the word itself was of
a kind so offensive to men that they
received it as lacking anointing.
And then it raises the question of what
is anointing?
And does it always take the same form?
Is it necessarily riveting or electric?
Could it be that God's anointing is yet
present even in a quiet and calm presentation,
which in fact the first message was?
What I'm suggesting or willing to submit is
that because of their objection to the content,
that they expressed it as the wanting of
anointing.
But the content itself was the point of
offense.
I had just come from Spokane, Washington on
my way up to Canada with an overnight
stay, and as my disposition is, I asked,
is there a synagogue locally?
I'm always looking for the Jew.
And yes there is.
So the lady at whose home we stayed
drove us up there and she drives into
the parking lot and around the building and
she's ready to leave.
She wants to show us the architecture.
I said, why don't we go in?
That hadn't occurred to her to actually go
in.
So we went in and we came out
two hours later.
And what an experience it was.
The rabbi was absent, but the secretary was
there, Janice, you can pray for her, who
is now reading Ben Israel.
I left a copy of the Holocaust book
for the rabbi.
You can pray for him also.
Rabbi Isaacson.
Because my last word to her before departing
was, I'd like to leave you a copy
of my book of my encounter with God
as a Jewish atheist.
Oh, she said, I'd love to read that.
I said, okay.
She'll need to be prayed for.
But while we were there, the architecture and
the decoration inside was resplendent.
It was aesthetically powerful.
I mean, stained glass windows of a kind
you don't find in churches.
Real precious art and the sanctuary and the
Torah where the Torah is kept was all
engraved.
There were actually copper panels on the doors
and entry into this sanctuary.
It was remarkably impressive.
That makes churches as we understand them to
be eclipsed in aesthetic beauty with a real
spiritual sense.
Of course, they've got everything going for them.
Hebrew language, liturgy, the Torah, handwritten on parchment.
Some of them have come from Europe and
they'll have three or four behind that panel.
And then we walked through the hallways and
the hallways were full of photographs of the
history of the congregation going back to the
late 19th century and the Hadassah women's group
meeting for a luncheon in 1906 or whatever
it was of 21 or the class with
the rabbi of the candidates for Bar Mitzvah.
And the Purim party, the Feast of Esther,
they wear costumes.
You just walk through the halls and you
get such a sense of their history, of
their life, of their community that moves you
to jealousy as a Christian.
That would to God we would have an
equivalent reality in our own life.
And so I came to Canada still resonating
that visit.
And that visit was timed of God because
the experience of the prophetic man is totally
orchestrated by God.
It has nothing to do with happenstance.
We weren't even scheduled to be overnight in
Spokane.
I had learned that this lady who had
once been with us in a tour to
Israel so many years ago, I had hardly
forgotten what she looked like, but we were
reminded about her as we passed through the
state of Washington and people knowing that we
would have to go through Spokane to get
to our destination mentioned her name and we
called and she was willing to have us.
So even the events of the day and
of the life are orchestrated of God in
view of what he knows will affect the
disposition of the man and the word that
will be proclaimed.
Do you see life like that?
Or do you just think your days are
days?
Mirror things that take place without prophetic significance.
We need to esteem our days and to
see in them the hand of the Lord
orchestrating, shaping, molding, affecting, giving a certain disposition
of heart and spirit because it's not only
a word that needs to be proclaimed, but
a word spoken with a certain disposition of
heart and spirit very much affected by what
touched me in that synagogue.
In fact, my part of the message as
you'll hear it was that all of us
as Christians need so to be touched and
if we're not touched there, how shall we
be touched anywhere?
If we have not a disposition for pathos
and we have yet to define that word,
to what will we then be sympathetic and
empathetic and be disposed in a way that
saves us from being tin horns?
Because the prophet whose word is piercing is
not piercing because he's loud, it's piercing because
it's true, but it's spoken out of a
compassion and empathy for those whom he is
addressing or else it'll be a dull, blunt
word.
It'll be a machete rather than the sword
of the Lord.
So the disposition of our souls, our emotion
and frame of mind is as critical perhaps
as the word itself that we bear and
the Lord himself is continually molding and forming
and affecting that mood and often you'll find
the mood that the Lord has affected is
different from what that which your congregation is
enjoying.
In fact, you're the only one in the
one mood and all the others are in
quite another and you have to insist that
your mood is God's.
That's why we are often jarred and in
conflict with worship teams who seem to be
totally out of it, totally unaware of what
the mood of the Lord is and the
kind of word that is to issue from
it because they're off at another thing with
a series of choruses that are full of
razzles.
And getting the atmosphere livened up and not
at all in keeping with what is to
come.
In fact, often if this has not been
your experience, the worship will rob you of
life.
The so-called worship is so innovating and
so contrary to both the mood and the
word that is welling up to be spoken
that when it's time to speak, you're depleted.
And that, in fact, was my experience in
those days when it came to the third
and final message, which was the payoff, the
clincher of make it or break it in
this controversial atmosphere that had already been established
from the first speaking.
I prayed that the worship leader would not
come up on the platform, that I would
not have to bear hearing another medley of
his selections in which there was nothing musically
to be criticized, but something about the man,
something about the way in which it issues
from him that was painful for me to
hear.
And I was depleted by the brother who
preceded me in the speaking, who was the
host of the entire conference and took almost
two hours to speak a kind of summary
of all of the things that were dear
to him over the years and are dear.
Precious points of truth about the Lord, about
the scripture, about the church, and with every
word of truth, there's an appropriate anointing, a
kind of a high, and yet, strangely, I
myself was depleted by that speaking.
I was drained.
But praise God that a brother who had
come from California, from Arizona, who was a
worshipful man with his guitar, I invited up
to the platform, and he sang two selections,
and after that I was able to speak.
So, all of this needs to be factored
in, because these elements are profoundly present in
all of the encounters that we will be
experiencing.
So, what preparation to bear the word in
situations of that kind, which I think as
the age goes on, will become yet more
controversial, yet more critical, yet more opposed.
There'll be yet more clashes, there'll be yet
more, what's the word, confrontations and accusations.
Wouldn't it be a remarkable paradox that the
moments of greatest prophetic obedience are the moments
of greatest offense to those who hear them,
and give rise to the greatest indictment about
your anointing, about your faithfulness, about your obedience,
about your person, and that we need to
expect that and bear that?
And that's what makes the word an event.
It's not just a message, it's an event.
It's an event for those who receive it,
and it's an event for those who reject
it.
In fact, the rejection itself is likely to
be costly, because what did we say in
the prayer time in the last remarks?
The last expression of God's grace for apostasy
before judgment falls is the sending of the
prophetic word.
And it's not only the word that is
rejected, it's the man who bears the word.
The way in which the word is rejected
is by rejecting the man.
Finding fault with the man, with the messenger,
so that you are justified in rejecting of
him and rejecting the word.
So your own person comes up for grabs.
You're not some antiseptic conveyor of a word.
What you are in yourself is totally one
with the word itself.
And if the word suffers rejection, you will
suffer rejection.
Can you bear that?
If you can't bear that, you're not likely
to be obedient to bring a word that
will occasion that rejection.
So all of us want to be approved,
especially with those whom we love and whom
we have known over a length of years,
as was true in this case with this
brother.
So there's a remarkable tension when there's a
tear between personal affection and obedience to God.
To whom and to what will you defer
in the critical moment is the issue of
your prophetic character out of a school of
obedience, knowing that it will not be understood
and that it will be looked upon scandalously
as being, I'm trying to find the
word, arrogance, that's the word.
Cats, your Jewish pride, your Jewish flesh, well
that's the way it will appear.
And maybe it will take the day of
eternity to reveal the truth of that situation.
And I'm not saying that my perspective is
that truth, but it's worth putting out for
us to examine and I'm willing to be
corrected where in fact I may well have
missed it.
Because the possibility of having missed it is
always with us in every situation.
And that's the tension that we have to
bear on every occasion.
You're called to speak, the moment has come,
you're on the spot, so there's no question.
And you know it of course in your
own prayer, in your own preparation, I mean
where did that word come from?
You've been looking to the Lord because you
have a prophetic fancy that this is a
once and for all time that will not
be given again.
That the stakes are enormous, not only for
the immediate congregation before you, but the word
that will go out through the taping of
that or the publication of that word will
have a circulation to the church at large.
So the heightened moment is enormous.
This is not an exaggeration where you're pumping
yourself up to think that you are so
significant that this word is just the nature
of the thing.
It doesn't exalt you, it humbles you.
If this is more than just the immediate
congregation and it's an issue of the word
on time for the church, is it that
word?
Where did you find it?
How did you obtain it?
How did the invitation come?
How was the occasion itself given?
There's a remarkable heightened sense of significance which
is common to both prophets and apostles who
look upon every act as being an act
of ultimate consequence.
And that's the way in which the church
itself should perceive its own life.
That every act, every obedience, every coming together
like these very days, a Sunday service, a
Bible study, there's no such thing as ordinary
or routine, but everything is heightened because of
the enormous significance in perceiving that reality as
once and for all not to be given
again and the effect of it.
And that's why Paul says frequently, who is
sufficient for these things?
The fact that we don't say it indicates
that we have not prophetic seeing.
We have not an apostolic and prophetic consciousness
and mindset that sees the enormous significance of
all of our days and of our acts.
So that needs to be restored to the
church because to see life like that is
really to see.
That's what makes life significant and it's for
the want of significance that men are dying
and finding spurious alternatives that will crunch them
and kill them.
God has made us for significance and our
failure in the church is to see it
for ourselves.
How shall we communicate it to the world?
So true prophetic and apostolic men and a
church of that kind sees everything in that
heightened way.
It's not an exaggeration because that's the way
that God sees it.
And those who have heard this before from
me, it's worth repeating.
Reading on an airplane one day, time loose,
we've got to figure out what magazine, an
article on economics where the economist, the secular
worldly man says, we have come to a
point in the world where anything that happens
anywhere affects everything everywhere.
He was speaking about economics.
I thought, wow.
I don't know if I had my seatbelt
on, I would have gone right through the
feet.
If a secular worldly man sees that about
the world and economics, how ought we to
see the reality of the spiritual world?
If anything that happens anywhere in Timbuktu or
La Porte, Minnesota affects everything everywhere.
Even if that were not so, it would
do us well to believe that it's so.
Because that means then the deepest kind of
prayer, intercession, preparation, attention to our character and
our life, the willingness to be exhorted, rebuked,
corrected, because we know that what issues from
us is so critical.
Are you following me?
Okay.
Let's look at Deuteronomy 13.
That Israel not be sucked into that vortex
and be corrupted by it, and that God's
alternative to diviners and men who traffic in
dark spirits is prophetic truth, the prophetic word.
So from verse 29 of Deuteronomy 12, And
the Lord thy God shall cut off the
nations from before thee, whither thou goest to
possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest
in the land, take heed to thyself, that
thou be not snared, and follow them, after
that they be destroyed from before thee, and
that thou inquire not after their gods, saying,
How did these nations serve their gods?
Even so will I do likewise.
Because the serving of their gods was the
issue of fertility, fruitfulness, productivity from the soil,
the increase of their livestock.
They bowed to the gods of fertility.
And one of the great idols was the
Asher blot, which is the symbol or the
picture of a penis, the object of fertility,
and the goddesses, the whole sexual knit of
pagan practice is the appeal to the gods
of fertility to bless their fields of blood
and bless their livestock, that they might prosper.
By condescending to these gods with fear, and
to placate them, and listening very much to
their fortune tellers and diviners, so as not
to offend these gods, so as to enjoy
the blessing of fruitfulness.
That's the context into which Israel is brought,
and it's a powerful temptation.
God is saying, even though you have physically
judged them, you've been the rod of my
judgment, don't take up their practice, you'll be
very much tempted to do so, and worship
false gods.
Later on we read, a false prophet is
one who induces you to turn from the
God of Israel to other gods, to false
gods.
And by the way, that can be done
even with the name of Jesus.
In fact, that may be the most subtle
form of idolatry and false gods, when we
are induced to some deity that is coined
out of the imagination of a man, or
out of his soul, and out of his
ambition, and is labeled with the name Jesus.
The unwary and the undiscerning can be sucked
into another god, though it bears that name.
So thou shalt not do so unto the
Lord thy God, for every abomination to the
Lord which he hates have they done unto
their gods, for even their sons and their
daughters they have burned in the fire to
their gods.
One of the great later judgments of Israel
is going into temple prostitutes and activating again
Canaanite pagan practice and worship that employs temple
prostitutes, both male and female.
That Israelites were doing so was a great
offense to God and brought down judgments of
an ultimate kind, after they had been warned
by the prophets against it.
So what thing soever I command you, in
verse 32, observe to do, thou shalt not
add to, thereto, nor diminish from it.
And then chapter 13, of course, is a
continuation.
We know that other gods which thou hast
not known, and let us serve them, thou
shalt not hearken unto the words of that
prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, for the
Lord your God proves you to know whether
you love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul.
Let's just pause there and ponder this timeless
admonition.
It's remarkable that God will even allow false
prophets to promote false gods so as to
test the people of God as to whether
or not they love the Lord their God
with all their heart and all their soul.
And if that was true then, is it
true now?
It doesn't mean that they are apparently false.
It means that they seem to have all
the marvels, all the cards.
They're making accurate prediction in many cases, and
it's accompanied by signs and wonders.
So if you want to be easily impressed,
there it is.
But the object of their conduct is to
move Israel from the worship of its own
God to that of false deities.
And it may well be that the false
prophet does not even know that he's false
and does not even know that that is
the consequence of his influence.
And that makes the issue yet more complicated.
It's not good guys and bad guys.
It's guys who don't even know what they
are affecting.
And if that was true then, it raises
the question, is it equally true now?
And are there men who purport to be
prophets, think themselves so, are applauded as such,
are speaking in compelling ways, even making predictions
that give every impression of fulfillment and indeed
perhaps may be fulfilled, because there are certain
things that you can predict without being a
prophet.
As for example, the collapse of the American
economy, or a Middle East war, or the
rise of Islam.
You don't have to be a prophet.
Commentators in the world have more acute observation
and understanding of those things often than the
church.
So the fact that one can recite that
is not an authorization of his prophetic credential.
But that God will allow the entire phenomenon
to test his people, to see whether they
will be attracted and run after such, is
a remarkable provision from God.
How does loving the Lord with all your
heart and all your soul constitute a provision
against being influenced or seduced by false prophets?
That's what the text implies.
I'm giving you this test to see whether
you love the Lord your God with all
your heart and all your soul.
Because if you don't, you'll be drawn off
and be attracted to follow after those that
are false, who are saying ostensibly the right
thing, but the ultimate end of it is
to be drawn away from the God who
is God to a God who is not.
Answer me that.
I've never before considered this text.
I've never before gone so far back in
the origin of the prophetic call as God's
provision against Canaanite-ish false influences as I'm
doing now.
This is what I got from getting up
at midnight to shut the windows from the
rain coming in and then finding myself awake
and alert and looking at certain things which
we are now sharing.
So I'm asking the question not to tease
you, but because I myself don't know.
Look at that here.
Thou shalt not hearken unto the words in
verse 3 of chapter 13 of that prophet
or that dreamer of dreams.
For the Lord your God proves you to
know whether you love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your
soul.
You shall walk after the Lord your God
and fear him and keep his commandments and
obey his voice.
You shall serve him and cleave unto him.
That raises the whole question of why a
false God would even be desirable when there's
access and availability to the God who is
true.
What is it about false gods that could
be a seductive draw even to the people
of Israel?
A false God serves the interest of man
and a true God requires the service of
himself.
A false God is for man's own bidding.
To make a name for oneself and to
gratify oneself is to create a deity that
placates and serves your ends.
Make a name for yourself and serve yourself,
but the true God requires the service to
him.
Remember the cry of Moses to the Pharaoh,
let my people go that they might serve
me.
Worship is service.
It's not a mere acknowledgement of a deity
in a respectful way.
It's the totality of one's life for another
who is God and deserves the full total
recognition and submission of what he has created
unto himself.
False gods are for the purposes of man.
The true God is for his own purpose.
So men will create deities that serve their
purpose.
Can you do that with Jesus or that
word and make of him an errand boy
serving your purpose and bringing your security and
seeing to your marriage, your girlfriend, your boyfriend,
your health?
So much of our present day, even best
charismatic Christianity is the inventing or the creating
of a false God to whom we have
given the name Jesus and think that we're
doing God's service.
So the root of this needs to be
identified.
That's why we're going back to the Sargent.
Thinking of the indictment against Israel, you thought
I was such a one as yourself.
You put me in your box.
You made me in your image so that
I would be negotiable and handlable to your
ends, but I'm completely upset.
And yet, ironically, the people whose history that
is, take the greatest offense of what they
call the Christian doctrine of human depravity.
They refuse to see it, though their own
history explicates and demonstrates just how ubiquitous the
human heart is.
Having the advantage that they have had at
Sinai, the opening of the Red Sea, the
various other extensions of God on their behalf,
and then quickly to fall into an idolatry
of this kind is such a statement of
that depravity.
And are we required now, all these thousands
of years later, to recognize that as being
our sin?
Though we were born so much after that
time, is the anatomy of that sin still
working?
And is that corruption still present?
And will it ever continue to be until
we acknowledge the truth of it as being
our condition and repent of it?
That the sins of the fathers are our
sins.
And though we're not building a golden calf,
per se, we're doing the work of our
hands and worshiping it.
And so that's the whole issue that needs
to be set before the people of Israel.
But where is the prophet that will come
to them to bring that charge and that
indictment?
Not with a heavy-handed blunt machete, but
with a piercing word that is made sharp
and penetrating out of the pathos of identification
and heartfelt sorrow and anguish for that people.
See what I mean?
There's not a church that has come of
age yet to be to Israel when it
must.
Can I even raise the question of whether
we have made an idolatry of our Christianity
to the point that has alienated us from
Torah and from Israel and from our origins
and from our roots, so that we cannot
be to them.
We ourselves are caught up with our own
idolatrous worship and practice.
So, to show how severe God takes this
to be, we need just to add now
the consequence for the prophet of the dreamer
in verse 5, who is leading God's people
away from himself, shall be put to death,
because they have spoken, to turn you away
from the Lord your God, which brought you
out of the land of Egypt and redeemed
you out of the house of bondage.
Always a reminder of God's remarkable mercy and
grace to this people, who thrust thee out
of the way which the Lord thy God
commanded thee to walk in, so shalt thou
put the evil away from the midst of
thee.
So, the answer of God is death to
the false prophet, because the threat that comes
to the entire believing community by his allurement
and by his amusement.
So, I'm not saying that this is a
present day prescription of God, but to say
how God sees the significance of what is
false, that it's appropriate penalty is death, because
if it's allowed to go on, it will
bring death to the whole of Israel, and
therefore God's judgment is incisive.
Are we at a break time?
In a conversation with a brother who came
up about those that are propagating a false
Christ, and they themselves don't even know it,
I said it underlines the issue of the
true prophetic thing all the more, that people
who have been deceived and taken in, when
the prophetic thing comes that is true, both
in word and in person, is a cry.
So that in those days in Canada, in
that very first message for which I was
later condemned as needing anointing and deeper circumcision
of the heart, while I was yet speaking,
or at the very end, a woman cries
out, I have been ripped off.
I have been ripped off.
She just cried.
So, like, wow, where has this been all
my life?
I have been kept from this kind of
reality.
I've been ripped off.
And her husband turned across, then in my
seat, having come off the platform, you can't
leave us like this.
You can't open that up and give us
this beginning and not fill it out.
I'm paraphrasing.
That was the gist of what he was
saying.
But that's the kind of spontaneous cry that
comes when a moment of truth has come,
by the bringer of truth, not only in
his word, but what he is in his
own person.
If he's not that in his own person,
neither can it be the word.
That's what the prophetic thing is.
So, may the Lord raise that up.
So, I want to turn to God's answer
to diviners and false prophets and those that
dabble in occultic and mystical things and have
signs and wonders and the things that seem
to authenticate them and lead people away from
the true God.
And that's continuing in Deuteronomy, but now chapter
18, in verse 9, I like
the word abomination.
Not that it's an attractive word, but it
shows the depth of God's heart, of his
antipathy.
It's not that he dislikes it, or it's
a questionable thing.
It's an abomination.
When I was in the Lutheran seminary in
a discussion on homosexuality, some years ago, and
I said, God considers that practice an abomination,
and going all the way back to Deuteronomy
or Leviticus or where God states that, the
president of the seminary shouted out, who is
that man who said that, who has not
kept up with the most modern psychological findings,
that even if Paul knew them, he would
have altered his condemnation.
My statement was, the God who counted that
abomination then, counts it an abomination now, yesterday,
today and forever.
But what was the abomination?
Abomination was the homosexuality.
So, it's not a word that we find
often in our conversation, but I'm encouraging us
that it ought to have a place.
To hate what God hates, and to understand
the depth of his hatred as abomination, and
that it justifies the severity of death to
the false prophet.
Our divorce from the Old Testament has robbed
us of a dimension of God in his
severity and in his righteousness and in his
holiness that actually makes way to receive the
shallow substitutes that have been conveyed to us
in our generation.
We are paying a terrible price for the
separation from Old Testament texts that convey a
sense of God that is only to be
found there in the use of the word
abomination, hatred, death.
That's even an embarrassment for modern day Christians
and we are the victims of a generation
that have come to their church services with
their New Testament as if the Old Testament
is passe and there's nothing to be learned
from it.
I'm saying, not only is there something, but
something absolutely critical to be learned from it.
A sense of God as he has conveyed
himself from the beginning to his ancient people
that if we lose our connection with that
people and we lose our connection with their
book and the God of that book, we
have lost an irretrievable treasure.
That part of our prophetic function is to
recover that loss.
I think it's one of God's greatest provisions
to keep us from creating a God in
our own image is to be corrected by
what God has said of himself and how
he has said it.
And that kind of statement is to be
found most profoundly in Old Testament scripture.
So I'm just repeating myself and I'm instructing
myself by my own words.
And now you'll understand why I believe that
the Lord is calling me to New York
but in New York to the Orthodox Church
that have this kind of heart and this
kind of tradition to learn from them what
they have so jealously guarded over the ages
and still cherish and treasure.
That's a dimension lost to us.
I think the Lord wants it to be
communicated to me that I might in turn
communicate it to the church as a midway
man between the Jewish people and the church
that had been too long in separation one
from the other.
In fact, if you'll remind me I thought
to bring it this morning but seeing that
I overslept I was going to bring you
the letter that I'm writing to the Orthodox
Jewish community to ask if they would consider
having a man like me under their oversight
and in their tutelage that I might receive
from them instruction.
And though I'm telling them I'm an unabashed
man of conviction and the Lord, Jesus I'm
not forsaking that in any way but I'm
not going to in any way employ that
if you'll take me in to use it
in a way to turn people to my
conviction.
I'll give you that promise but don't disparage
my Lord either.
Can we do this?
This is totally unprecedented and little thing that
I am could this be a first step
in God's new thought toward the Christian and
Jewish communities and that will you have the
grace to put that before God in prayer
and since if you witness it and have
me it's an unprecedented thing.
So it's really a day of new beginnings
of finding my own roots in those who
have jealously guarded it and whom we disparage
as not having the spirit and of course
they're outside of Christ and therefore the spirit
of God but their knowledge, tradition jealousy have
safeguarded something that is a treasure that needs
now to come into the church itself and
to break up the separation between these communities.
As you'll hear my letter I say to
them the growing antisemitism in the world that
has exploded all over the world needs to
encourage the believing communities who still believe in
God as God to find a common ground
and it's in hope of that that I
want to be instructed by you.
There's no question about the Jesus that Paul
brought but where are the Pauls who are
bringing that Jesus now?
The entire Jewish community I think I can
safely say have never heard such a proclamation
coming from a sent one and maybe that's
the issue of our hour for the church
for how shall they believe in him of
whom they have not ever rightly heard and
how shall they hear how shall they believe
except they hear how shall they hear except
one preach how shall one preach except one
be sent they have never heard a word
proclaimed by a sent one into their midst
under apostolic anointing and authority to convey the
Jesus who is Jesus so I don't think
that we can make an application from the
past of the rejection of Jesus in his
time and say that that still stands now
for those who have never been in any
way had that Jesus set before them so
it heightens the whole issue of apostolic and
prophetic men and the use of them in
this generation and I think that the constituent
elements of the prophet are set forth through
Moses in the text that's before us now
in chapter 18 where Israel is exhorted not
to learn after the abomination of the nations
verse 10 there shall not be found among
you anyone that makes his son or his
daughter to pass through the fire that uses
divination or an observer of times or an
enchanter or a witch or a charmer a
consulter with familiar spirits a wizard or a
necromancer for all that do these things are
an abomination unto the Lord and because of
these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive
them out from before thee thou shalt be
perfect with the Lord thy God for these
nations which thou shalt possess hearken unto observers
of times and unto diviners but as for
thee the Lord thy God hath not so
for thee so to do it looks like
the final indictment of the Canaanite peoples was
their giving themselves to these practices and it's
the last statement of man's rebellion against God
in the invoking of false gods through such
practices Israel's coming is God's judgment on that
and yet the caution is don't in any
way learn from them or adopt any of
those practices what's the safeguard?
The Lord thy God will raise up from
among thee like as unto myself a prophet
God's answer for Israel to be kept from
false allurement is the prophet who is not
a diviner but a revealer and the revelation
comes by the spirit of God so there's
a whole radical shift in how to find
the consolation, direction and leadership of very God
in the land where you have not been
heretofore by the advent of a prophet out
from the midst of thee as unto me
your brethren it's not a new statement of
what will come but will finally be the
consolation of the coming of Jesus himself, wouldn't
it be a remarkable thing to speak to
Jews and say you know what Moses said
that was fulfilled in the one whose name
you have learned to despise of course the
Lord's indictment is against those who dream dreams
and those who have words that are not
given by God but are their own I
never sent them and I never gave them
my words because the prophet that God will
raise up will not speak his own words
but the words that I will give him
and put in his mouth so the presumption
of a false prophet is to speak words
and attribute them to God but the source
is himself does not originate from God so
however even if it's a well meaning this
will be something odd for this year if
that has not been occasioned by God by
the spirit it's just a lucky guess or
someone acting out of their humanity and well
meaning intention that's why we need always to
be fearful or jealous about the propensity of
our own flesh and our own humanity not
when it's carnal but when it's good when
it's well meaning could as much be the
auspices of error as carnal intent in fact
I would say probably that's the greatest danger
is to think of a seeming spirituality that
arises not out of the spirit of God
through death resurrection because there's always the cross
prophetic obedience is always a death you actually
feel it and know it and experience it
even last night to begin was for me
a death you may not have observed it
in fact it's not externally visible but for
the man who's on the spot who's got
to open his mouth and to begin and
who knows that the consequences are beyond all
estimation that is like a dying afresh and
the same thing stepping up on that platform
in Canada to begin by speaking of things
that bridge the distance between the church and
the Jews and as you'll hear when I
recite the heart of that first message was
as I went into the synagogue in Spokane
why don't you go into your own synagogue
what about the synagogue of your locality what
actual contact do you have with Jews of
your own locality who are in a sense
your brethren and by the way one of
the indictments against me in that first interrogation
when I was brought into a room and
had to face these leaders with their charges
is how dare you say that Jews are
our brethren if they're not yet saved I
said well Jesus speaks of them as his
brethren in Matthew 25 the least of these
my brethren before they're saved and if he
considers them his brethren in their unsafe condition
how ought we to consider them will God
be offended if we looked upon our Jewish
brethren as kinsmen though not yet in the
place of faith and in fact until we
look upon them in that way and treat
them in that way can they even hear
our word so the issue is the church
and God is sounding a new thing and
when it came forth the remarkable thing was
how greatly it was resisted and how it
unmasked and revealed the depths of anti Jewish
transigence in the Gentile believing heart not of
just ordinary believers but men of the most
celebrated stature in the body of Christ who
think themselves to be on the very cutting
edge of God and yet when this thing
was touched something came up that was horrific
to observe I had the audacity to say
in those days that the issue of the
recognition of the Jew and his centrality in
the purposes of God and our identification with
him in the mystery of God is the
very nub and key and matter of apostolicity
itself to miss that is to miss the
prospect of being apostolic it's at the heart
of it it was at the heart of
it for Paul it needs to be at
the heart of it for the church so
we'll come back to that again let's look
at the pattern of the prophet whom God
will raise up not just as a fore
view of the Jesus to come but as
the paradigm and the model of all propheticness
that unless he be a resurrected man who
has been raised up out of a death
to his own humanity how can he be
one in whom God's word will be placed
so this language is so suggestive I don't
think that I'm taking liberties here this is
not being mystical or romantic the very language
that the way in which the statement begins
the Lord thy God will raise up unto
thee Paul said I am beside myself for
their sake and for your sake it's a
prophet raised up unto thee not unto him
it's not unto Joe Blow Ministries International Limited
it's unto thee he's raised up out of
death not for his own self aggrandizement or
the his reputation name or fortune but unto
thee I will raise up unto thee a
prophet the prophet has no purpose in himself
no nothing to seek in himself no reputation
to maintain in himself other than the purpose
for which he was raised up is unto
thee and that's what's so beautiful about Paul
and all of the true prophets they were
beside themselves for their sake and for your
sake never for their own sake and their
life shows it will raise up unto thee
a prophet from the midst of thee thy
brethren like unto me so what a standard
is already given as Moses is considered by
Israel the greatest prophet ever given Israel and
that he himself is the paradigm of the
prophet to be raised up he'll be like
unto me he'll have my same singleness of
mind heart and will he will be a
fool for Christ's sake he will be totally
taken up with the purpose of God he'll
bear the enormity the pressure the weight the
calamity the scandal the disappointment the frustration the
vexation that comes in being unto thee a
prophet that's what Moses bore and that's what
the prophetic man like unto Moses will also
bear and unto him shall you hearken so
not just hearken to his words but hearken
unto him because he is not just a
vessel for the sounding of a word but
he is the embodiment of the word he
is the thing in himself you need to
hearken unto him and that's the very thing
that makes men to draw back and as
you'll hear from the message in Canada the
final invitation was to bow to enter the
tent of Shem that the Japheth nations need
to bow and break in their Gentile pride
and enter into that provision God has made
to temper them in the tent of Shem
and our arrogance and our pride will not
allow us you can't enter without bowing and
my invitation was to bow to enter and
I explained as you'll hear and I'll tell
you now how the thought was birthed in
me out of the existential reality of my
walk and situation in Russia where this remarkable
young pastor 31 years old had one of
the greatest evangelical congregations in all Russia over
a thousand in his congregation and it began
in his living room as a 19 year
old newly converted believer but he has wonderful
verve and ability and the Lord has promoted
him and the unhappy thing is that he
has an arrogance to match his success.
There's a bristling pride that treated me with
suspicion and was caustic and wise-alecky in
putting questions to me not in order to
obtain answers but to reveal me and find
me out there are questions in questions and
so I said to him at one point
you know what you need brother you need
to bow and enter the tent of Shem
that I represent for you as an older
man and as a Jew you need in
your arrogant pride to bow and enter and
come unto me in a submissive way not
only did he not bow he took all
of the tapes of my messages out of
circulation and my great fears we were talking
in a break I did not come back
from Canada with the tapes.
The remarkable thing was though the man who
was making the tapes had his earphones on
and saw the needles dancing with every syllable
when they checked the tapes they were all
blank from the first to the last not
a single message was recorded not a remarkable
coincidence not the first time it has happened
in my experience and so they have CDs
as a backup so our hope now is
that the tapes will be made out from
the CDs but I would not be altogether
shocked to find out that the tapes or
the messages will be taken out of circulation
because after all if it is only the
exclamation of an arrogant Jew and his Jewish
flesh inducing the church to bow before some
false God other than Jesus which is the
way in which my invitation was interpreted why
would you allow those messages to be circulated
so this thing about unto him shall you
hearken and who is the prophet who will
allow men to hearken unto him and not
be exalted in his own ego but be
humbled that men will hearken unto him recognizing
that he not only bears the word of
the Lord but he is so much the
statement of the Lord being the thing in
himself what we are seeing today by those
who purport to be prophets is exactly the
opposite arrogance, conceit commanders in chief, leading the
army of God, having personal visitations in heaven
with Jesus himself as the tour guide and
meeting with Paul who acknowledges that he had
missed it on some occasions but you won't
as God returns you to the earth as
the commander in chief of the armies of
God you know, it's either you are or
you aren't and what kind of preparation a
man like unto me from the midst of
the other brethren, like unto me how much
of an investment of God was in Moses
in the 40 years in his wilderness in
the 40 years of leading the people through
the wilderness what was the depth of God's
dealing what was the value of the revelation
that came out of the burning bush that
is an indescribable confrontation with God in the
midst of the fires of judgment take off
your shoes for the ground upon which you
stand is holy ground so the whole history
of Moses is a paradigm of the exquisite
attention of God to the character of a
man who is to be a prophet for
the nation and save it from the Canaanite
temptations that are everywhere about it and will
seduce it and bring it ultimately to apostasy
to judgment and to exile to blaspheming God
and all the nations where unto it has
been driven because they should rightly be in
the land in the covenant relationship to which
they were bidden but they've allowed themselves to
fall into practices and the adoration and worship
of false gods from which God had warned
them and for which reason he raised up
his prophets to go from divination to revelation
so now we can examine that the first
thing that comes to mind and I've never
thought about this before I'm just talking off
the top of my head divination is immediate
you can order it right now kill that
animal, spill its guts out on the floor
and the way in which the kishkas lie
will be the thing that the false prophet
interprets and tells you about your future.
You pay for it, you get it right
now.
What about revelation?
You don't pay for it and you don't
get it right now.
You get it when God gives it in
the time that he gives it and until
that time you wait.
Israel's inability to wait for Moses to come
down with the revelation of the tablets of
the law is a very stark and dramatic
depiction of the failure of men to wait
for the revelation, for the revealed will of
God in the holy law which Moses had
to smash at the base of that mountain
when he saw them dancing around the golden
calf which their own hands had made because
they wanted something instant.
Where is this man?
Hey, it's 40 days already, how long do
we have to wait?
So the whole temper that's appropriate to the
church, that is to be prophetic its ability
to wait to hold back its own impatience
and I said to these men after they
interrogated me over the first message, I said
can't you wait to hear the whole statement
of God?
How is it you're jumping me already?
I've just barely introduced the subject, not that
I myself know what the second or third
messages are, I myself am waiting for that
disclosure but how do you already prematurely bring
a judgment instead of waiting for the whole?
Let's get the whole thing out because when
we'll have the whole thing we'll understand better
what was meant at the first.
They were too impatient they want it now.
So we need to understand the anatomy, the
elements that make for false worship is impatience,
self-gratification, the inability to wait for the
cherished thing that can only come from God
as of when he will give it and
who is to instruct the church in that
patient waiting and rest if not men who
not only speak the word about it but
are it.
They are the very demonstration of those who
wait, of those who are in the rest
of God who are not prompted by any
impatience for their own success.
See what I mean?
Like a man unto Moses took 40 years
which is number of judgment to prepare such
a vessel and we would expect to be
a comparable investment of God in those that
are like Moses in our generation because this
prescription is paradigmatic.
This is a paradigm.
It's not just a once a once and
for all thing.
It's a statement of the constituent elements that
will always distinguish what a prophet is whom
God sends unto you unto thee whom I
will raise up.
We need to fix on not only what
this woman cried out I've been ripped off
but what her husband cried out pointing to
me across the auditorium saying don't leave us
like this right now fill in all that
we have missed over the years and I
yelled back hey there are two more messages
to come.
They wanted right now explanation which is so
much the tenor of our American mentality because
it lacks the influence of a church that
should have affected the world and the civilization
which it set.
Instead the world and the civilization has affected
the church and therefore our modern day prophets
are so much like the CEOs that we
spoke about last night commanders in chief of
corporations, executive whiz kids with ability to perform
and set up and administer but lack the
character of a Moses who says of himself
I am the meekest man in all the
face of the earth.
Well so much for Moses you're finished buddy.
That's the most colossal conceit of which I
have ever heard when even the book of
Proverbs says don't speak for yourself let others
acknowledge you.
How dare you as the author of the
five books of Moses write in them that
Moses was the meekest man on the face
of the earth.
It's either a statement of uttermost arrogance or
the statement of uttermost humility that recognizes a
truth that needs to be communicated because Moses
is the paradigm for all prophets and that
it will be expressed even though it gives
every appearance of a man who will be
construed as arrogant and the issue of the
complaint of arrogance is the one with which
I am most continuously confronted and it's the
arrogance that comes from an obedience which is
a humility and a submission to God and
yet is construed by men whose ox is
gored by that piercing word as being an
arrogance so I'm saying that not to occasion
your sympathy but to say are you willing
to bear that?
Are you willing to be misconstrued that your
acts of greatest obedience born out of your
greatest meekness and submission to God for that
very reason ironically will be construed by men
who don't want to hear that word because
it challenges and threatens them as being uttermost
arrogance and there's no way to use it
you have it all wrong buddy let me
explain.
There is no explanation you simply have to
bear being hit on the chest with their
Bibles and their books which a propriety would
allow it would not be your chest, it
would be your head and the day will
not be far when it will be our
heads and we will bleed for this word
and they will kill us and claim they're
doing that as service because we're bringing threatening
heresies contrary to what we have understood the
faith to mean and you're trying to Judaize
the church and bring it under the law,
etc, etc, etc we have to take the
risk of obedience probably the most unfortunate terminology
that the church has adopted in the want
of better terms is Old Testament, New Testament
implying that the old is past and wasted
away although of course Paul does indeed speak
that in Hebrews so I like the terms
Hebrew Scriptures the New Testament so we need
to break that separation of the unbroken continuum
of the one faith, the one God and
the one way and to see it in
it's entirety and it's totality and not fragment
it and shove off it's origins as being
passe or the people who have borne and
still keep it's traditions it's truth and it's
respect for that law but find a joining
and a reconciliation in the prophet of whom
Moses spoke that God would send out from
the midst of their brethren like as unto
me verse 18 continues I will raise them
up a prophet from among their brethren like
unto thee I will put my words in
his mouth, there is the prophetic distinction Art
was that you who brought that word in
Canada was that your Jewish propensity or was
it the word of God well I believe
that it was the word of God but
I'm believing it with a reservation that I
might well be wrong and that if I'm
not wrong it may have been even a
mixture and that I'm willing to consider that
possibility and be responsible for it and therefore
welcome all the more not what I speak
in the moment but all of the preparation
that proceeds that speaking, namely my life in
a community with brethren who will admonish and
rebuke and correct me in those character deficits
and flaws that might give rise to a
mixture later on on the platform the correction
does not come on the platform, the correction
comes in the community before the platform that's
why I'm suspicious of anyone who purports to
be a prophet and is not in a
body of Christ context or perhaps had never
been and all of a sudden they appear
full blown and are taken on the stage
and quickly obtain national international reputations where is
the body context in which the correction and
the sanctifying work of God takes place so
that when the man is on the platform
his work can be trusted so I would
say to those men who are questioning me
if you are not confident that I have
such a history and that God has and
is performing such work don't invite me, but
if you invite me, receive what issues from
me as being the word of God unless
there is so apparent a contradiction where it
can be shown as false but if it's
a fresh word something that the Lord present
truth as it now is in Christ Jesus,
be open to hear it, for if it
will not come from a man like that,
from whom will it come?
and I was assuring in the break there
was a man there from Scotland, the pastor
who got up and he gave a little
statement on truth, I think he was preparing
the audience to hold steady and not be
rattled by this Jewish man, and he said,
even the truth, if we remain fixed in
that level, becomes a rut, and if we
remain in that and are disdainful of the
fresh or present truth to which we are
being brought even that rut becomes a grave
and that in fact is what I was
glimpsing it's a rare privilege to receive so
explicit a statement from God this is what
you ought to say, I have had that
experience for example in Chicago during the whole
ferment of the Vietnam anti-war furor I
was at a big Pentecostal church of freshly
scrubbed kids, nicely dressed, in a rah-rah
environment and the Lord said, preach the cross
just as clearly as I'm saying it now,
and I thought to myself I can't think
of a message more in opposition to the
atmosphere that is before me visibly, ought preach
the cross don't look at their faces, don't
look at the environment don't look at the
rah-rah atmosphere that has been generated, preach
the cross, I preached the cross and everyone
went down on their faces their bodies strewn
around the room as if an explosion had
taken place, the Lord honored and vindicated, but
that is a rare experience, where did I
get that message then for Canada entering the
tent of Shem bowing to enter the issue
of intransigence in the Gentile European mind, especially
prominent among Anglo-Saxons where I've had the
greatest difficulty those of descent from Great Britain,
I don't know why that is, maybe you
can explain it and even saying in the
course of those days, some of God's greatest
spokesmen whom I've had the privilege to know
over the years, have been able to say
to me with a straight face I've never
understood Romans 9 through 11, Romans 11 to
me is a mystery but they say it
with such an aplomb a-p-l-o
-m-b with such a nonchalance, such a
matter of factness, as if it's no big
deal that I don't understand the mystery and
my question is, how can they be men
of such international prominence and not be chafed
in their hearts that they don't understand the
mystery, how can they announce it in a
matter of fact way, as if it's of
no consequence, when Paul said I would not
have you to be ignorant of this mystery
lest you become wise in your own conceit
there's a penalty for the omission of the
mystery how then can they be so matter
of fact in dismissing it and all of
these men come out of that same Pentecostal
Latter Day Reign movement, or the men that
I was referring to at least, and have
a British Anglo-Saxon origin it's interesting that
next to Great Britain the greatest source of
anti-Semitic literature in the world is Japan
and where have they seen so much as
a Jew but I think that Great Britain
and Japan are examples of the nations that
have had the greatest empires the sun rises
or the sun sets, that there's no place
where the sun does not set that is
not part of the British Commonwealth there's a
pride of empire both in Great Britain and
in Japan though they no longer have those
colonial vested interests the pride of it and
the identification with it remains and is antithetical
to the placement of Israel as being central
to all nations that all Japheth nations must
bow to enter the Tent of Shem and
that that is God's very provision to save
the nations from their own arrogance something happens
when you bow and break to enter and
dwell in that tent as I said to
this Russian brother, it would do you well
it's the only provision of God against your
arrogance but he would not avail himself so
there's a mystery in this so where did
you get that art?
I don't know the visit to the Spokane
synagogue things germinating in my heart the issue
of anti-Semitism rising in the world in
nations where Jews have had comparative