Comparative safety and security, all of these factors
impinge upon the prophetic man.
The Lord uses the hour, the circumstance, the
condition of the world, his recent experience, things
that have been quickened in the Word, all
come together at a certain moment as a
constellation of thoughts that he has to somehow
bring forth, trusting the Lord in the moment,
as we're doing even now with various materials,
to, in the moment, be present to create
and to send it forth.
What I'm describing of true prophetic obedience is
absolutely precarious, and no assurance that God is
going to be there in that moment to
assemble and put that together in a credible
way.
What if he's not there, where you can
say, my God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?
Don't you know, Lord, that this conference is
critical?
Why am I left with my face sticking
out and I'm staggering and choking and spluttering
and making a mess of it?
You have to run that risk also.
God is not at your convenience to be
invoked to guarantee the success of your message.
You have to run the risk of failure,
and of abysmal failure, and of humiliating failure,
or you cannot be the bearer of the
now Word.
For the prophet himself, the anomaly is that
he has to be reticent and diffident, that's
a precious word you need to look up
in the dictionary, where he knows that he's
always, the prospect of error is always with
him.
No man is that, what's the word?
Confident.
What's the word?
Infallible.
Infallible, that's the word.
No man is infallible.
He knows that because of any, who is
more human than a prophet?
Who is more conscious of his humanity than
a prophet?
And who is the God that is continually
reminding the prophet of his humanity?
Son of man, can these bones live?
Showing that even your prophetic faith is not
sufficient for you to believe the thing I'm
going to ask you to command.
So, the anomaly is you're conscious of your
humanity, and yet you're required to speak with
authority, as of thus saith the Lord.
What a remarkable coming together of the most
disparate contradictions that could ever be required of
a flesh and blood man.
It's painful, it's excruciating, it's a death.
I will raise up unto you, not just
once, but every time of prophetic obedience, is
another raising up out of a death that
bears this remarkable anomaly of contradiction.
Of being required to speak with authority, as
of thus saith the Lord, and to tell
him, I'm not giving you an opinion.
I'm speaking out of a prophetic authority, or
else it's not worth hearing.
And yet at the same time knowing that
you're not infallible.
As a matter of fact, on that final
message, listen to all of the things that
took place.
A young girl had an epileptic seizure sitting
in the front row, who had been brought
to every meeting in a wheelchair.
And such panic struck the audience, and the
parents were running out to get this and
that, and a circle of people praying around
her, and that delayed the whole final service,
which had to be concluded by 12.30,
because that day was a Canadian national holiday.
And the workers would be paid overtime or
double time if they stayed beyond 12.30.
So the clock is running out, I have
not yet begun to speak.
The brother who has preceded me has taken
almost two hours to rehearse all of his
favorite statements, which are true in themselves.
And then this girl is having a fit,
and everybody's coming around her, and she finally
recovers.
And then a man is invited up, who
is the son-in-law of one of
the leaders, to confess his sin.
He had fallen into sin and had hurt
his family, but now he's a repentant sinner
and wants opportunity to speak from the platform
to convey that to the congregation.
Okay, he does so.
Then the family is invited up to embrace
him and receive the sinner back.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking away, and they're
bidding me to come up on a platform.
Well, that family is still on there.
I finally come up, the family leaves, the
girl has had the fit, and then there's
a woman beginning to wail, sitting alongside that
woman, wailing supposedly in the spirit for the
condition of that girl.
Well, you're not going to interfere with that
Holy Ghost travail, which in fact it is
Holy Ghost travail, and not just the flesh
having a heyday.
And right behind the girl, there's a man
saying very loudly, we can't go on with
anything until this is taken care of.
The girl has been in that condition for
20 years.
We can't go on, and I'm standing by
the microphone.
What would you do in a moment like
that?
Where the concluding message, which is the key
to the whole thing that has preceded it,
is waiting its expression, and everything militates against
that speaking.
I've never seen so many things raised up
in that moment to contend against the Word
as took place in that moment.
Well, what did you do, Katz?
I got up to the microphone, and I
prayed something like, Lord, if you are Lord,
and you have something to convey that must
not be in any way thwarted or threatened
or dismissed, I ask you to prevail now
over every disconcerting and distracting thing that has
taken place at this moment.
Still, every strident voice that yours might be
heard, I ask it in Jesus' name.
Well, it's one thing to try and reconstruct
the prayer, but that was the sense of
it, and everything was brought into an immediate
hush.
The woman stopped wailing, the man stopped crying
that we need to deal with this right
now, and I was able to open my
mouth and to speak.
So it required even an expression of authority
to take charge over every discordant element threatening
the Word of God, which only a prophet
would have jealousy to insist upon.
If he's phony, he may have deferred and
said, well, this has come up, and let's
now join this sister in her prevail for
this girl, and let's end these days by
seeing a restoration.
I don't know how or what.
But the jealousy for the Word has got
to prevail over every other consideration.
And that is a component in the prophet
that God would raise up like unto Moses.
For I will put my words in his
mouth.
How did he do that?
I can't tell you.
I woke up with it.
I went to bed with it.
I was musing and reflecting on it.
I was turning to something here and there,
and Genesis 9, Noah's blessing upon the two
sons, and the curse of Ham, Canaan, as
a matter of fact.
And something was just, what's the word?
Gestating?
Gestating.
There was a process of birth, which you
don't know until it comes out.
And then the moment comes when you have
to open your mouth and believe for that
birthing.
It's awkward.
Who would ever want to be a prophet?
Who would ever want to bear this?
Not just once, but every time and always.
It's the most ungainly.
It's so contrary to everything that the flesh
desires in security and knowledge, that this is
what to say, this is how to say
it, this is when.
Everything is completely the opposite.
And yet if such men are not formed
and come into the church, how shall the
church cry out, I've been ripped off?
How shall the church come to a moment
of awareness?
Because the moment of truth has come by
one whom God has sent and bears the
words that he has put in his mouth.
We're not talking about a light thing.
We're talking about people who would otherwise go
through a whole life of missed Christian living,
playing the game, and thinking that it represents
the authentic thing, until authenticity itself has come
in the point of time when it has
been sent of God.
I'll put my words in his mouth, and
he shall speak unto them all that I
shall command him.
Don't modify it.
Don't soften it.
Don't make it more acceptable by altering it.
The words that I have given, he shall
speak them as I have commanded him.
And you have to look into the faces
of those that are either furious with you
or refuse to look up at you.
Maybe it's not a coincidental thing that the
same man who struck me with his Bible
and cried out against my Jewish flesh and
pride never once looked at me while I
was speaking for three speaking occasions.
What is there about me that is that
despicable?
I know I'm not Cary Grant, but there's
a statement.
In the inability to look up at the
man.
The same man that could not look up
at me was the same man who was
able to strike me.
I'm not saying any of this for self
-pity nor in any way to demean the
man.
He's absolutely precious.
I prayed afterwards, Lord, I'm not worthy to
untie his shoelaces.
He's a senior in the faith.
I wasn't even known to you while he
was yet laboring in your service.
I'm not worthy to untie his shoelaces.
But what the drama that has unfolded is
pregnant with remarkable significance and meaning that we
who are jealous over these great foundational ministries
need to be able to critique and understand,
not so as to condemn, but as to
learn what we will face in the last
days when our greatest collision is likely not
to be in the world, but in the
church.
So can you be commanded?
Put his words in your mouth, words that
you yourself would not have chosen and words
that embarrass you, that you would rather not
speak.
Left to yourself, you would have found something
else much more agreeable to proclaim.
But will you speak his words, all of
his words that he has commanded you, knowing
that it's a formula for disaster?
It has got to precipitate such a reaction
against you.
So we can pray as we come to
the close of our session that the Lord
will continue to raise up from the midst
of the brethren, not from some place where
they've had no association with brethren at all,
but from the midst of the brethren, out
of the church, out of the body, one
like unto myself, Moses, the man of God,
and put his words in his mouth, and
he shall speak all that God shall command
him.
Lord, we make that a prayer.
We don't have your jealousy for the church,
but we ask it, because if the church
will not be that, my God, what shall
be hoped for in the world?
If the church is flaky, if the church
is flirting, my God, with false gods, that
are more deadly and dangerous because they bear
your name, what shall be hoped for in
a world that is full of deceit and
gamesmanship?
So we ask, my God, that this paradigm,
this note that you have struck from the
beginning, that's your answer to the necromancers and
the diviners and the occult, the false prophets
will be raised up in our day, and
that in fact in this very room are
those called to that very calling, and that
what you are speaking, my God, is not
only a word of instruction, but a word
of event for them.
Something is going into their spirits beyond even
their mind and their thought that will be
a factor in their being raised up unto
them.
So we bless you, Lord.
And those who have not that calling personally
have it collectively, as the church called to
be a prophetic presence in the earth.
And the same constituent elements that make for
the man make for the church.
So we have all a call.
And the precious women and others in here
who are intercessors need to groan and travail
for the bringing forth of this authenticity, or
else there will be people who will never
cry out, I've been ripped off.
There will be no awareness that they have
been ripped off.
They will continue to languish and to feel
something is amiss, but I can't identify it.
Everybody else seems to applaud it.
Everybody else is saying amen and hallelujah and
having a ball.
Why is it that I myself am so
wretched inside?
I'm crying out for something I can't even
define.
Lord, bless those even now in your church
who are in that condition, to whom the
word of the Lord, a sent word through
a sent one has never come, and bring
the two together, that the despairing souls, the
languishing, those that are dying in their daily
dying in the church, will receive and hear
a word that calls them to life.
Come, my God, and turn what this is
about today and in these days to the
everlasting good.
We thank you, Lord.
Have mercy on those that have suffered for
the want of the prophetic spokesman, have suffered
for the false glitz of men who have
come proclaiming to be what they in fact
are not, and that the poor soul is
not able to read her own heart, but
she's dismayed and distressed, and she can't rise
to the occasion and celebrate the false thing
as everyone else.
Bless that one, Lord, and comfort her.
She's suffering for the church's sake.
She's filling up what remains in the body
of the sufferings of Christ, and that you'll
honor, my God, that anguish of soul and
bring answer by sending the word of all
that you shall command the sent one to
speak.
We bless you, my God, for your great
provision.
We welcome the calling ourselves.
Fit us for it, my God, we pray.
Separate us from ourselves, our need to be
acknowledged, our need to be admired, our need
to be respected, our need to be applauded.
That is all the same to us, whether
we receive a hug and a statement of
great gratitude for our obedience or we are
accused and rejected for the very same word.
Thank you, my God.
It's the issue of the cross, and we
welcome its working, for only one who is
raised up from those deaths can be obedient
in the moment, my God, of that call.
Thank you, Lord.
Precious God, may we hear you this day
and grant our willingness to be formed at
your hand.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Just continue to add your prayer.
Even take up any aspect of what I
prayed and express it yourself.
For the church, for the calling, for the
hour, for Jews who are still waiting for
the apostolic word, because how shall they call
upon him of whom they have never ever
rightly heard except one be sent and one
preach?
Faith comes by the hearing of that word.
The capacity to believe is not an intellectual
process, it's a supernatural process.
When a word of apostolic splendor and weight
comes, it creates the faith to believe what
was heretofore rejected or not rightly considered.
The word is true, Lord.
If we had known Moses and the prophets,
we would know you.
And our default and our inadequacy in knowing
you goes back to that failure.
And so I'm praying for the church to
do its homework and to make up for
the omission and the neglect of so great
a source as the Hebrew scriptures are, that
we might know Moses and the prophets, that
we might know you, for you are the
embodiment, the personification, the ultimate expression of what
they themselves represented.
Thank you, Lord, that that was quickened to
us this morning.
We take it to heart.
In Jesus' name.