We need to be especially tempered by the
Lord for the delicate thing that's before us.
Because what is God's provision for the nations?
The nations left to themselves, left to their
Gentile propensities, to their pagan propensities, is a
formula for murder, mayhem, violence, destruction, and death.
God's stratagem is to Hebraicize the nations, to
temper them, and to bring them into the
tent of Shem, whatever that means.
And oftentimes, as we know from the prophets,
they speak beyond their own comprehension.
Something comes up in their spirit.
They don't wait for it to be fully
formed, or even to understand what they're saying,
if it's a word that must go forth
on time.
And I believe that this tent of Shem
theme is of that kind.
I myself don't have a full cognizance of
what it means, but I know it's very
alive in my spirit, and it has been
coming in and out like a symphony theme
over this past year or so, being sounded
here, being sounded there, and now more explicitly
at the conference from which I've just returned
in Canada.
But the remarkable thing was that there was
such a backlash against it, or it could
have been against me.
I don't know.
We need to examine that.
But you can believe that if it's God's
ultimate stratagem for the nations, as was given
at the first in Genesis chapter 9, to
which I ask you to turn now, that
every power of death and hell will be
opposed to its fulfillment.
It's remarkable that just one little fragmentary statement
can so set in motion from the beginning
something that finds consummation at the end.
That what we would think would be so
remarkably important should have a greater enlargement in
the scripture, but the Lord gives us only
a terse fragmentary statement.
For example, the scripture in the prophet Habakkuk,
the just shall live by their faith.
Oh, really?
Where's the enlargement on that statement?
It just stands.
If it's that critical, and it is, shouldn't
there be further expressions of it?
No?
I think it's the only one place in
Old Testament, the just shall live by their
faith.
And so the statements of Paul and Romans,
and so much is left to us to
borrow into the Lord and to extract those
meanings he will give to those who will
seek him for them.
What shall we say of Deuteronomy 32, 8?
I've never heard anyone make that a message.
That when God established the number of the
nations, he did so in terms of, or
in proportion to the number of the sons
of Israel.
What a cryptic and mystical statement without elaboration,
sandwiched somewhere in Deuteronomy 32 that has oodles
of things to say of another kind about
Israel, about judgment and covenant failure.
This one verse is inserted.
And here in Genesis, the book of beginnings,
is this inserted in the statement of the
prophet Noah after the disgrace that had come
in his drunkenness, chapter 9, verse 18, the
sons of Noah who went out of the
ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Ham was the father of Canaan.
These three were the sons of Noah, and
from these the whole earth was peopled.
Noah, a man of the soil, was the
first to plant a vineyard.
He drank some of the wine and became
drunk, and he lay uncovered in his tent.
And Ham, the father of Canaan, I don't
know why we're always told that.
It's the Canaanites, the descendants of Canaan, that
seem to be Israel's principal adversary today and
have historically been.
Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness
of his father and told his two brothers
outside.
Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid
it on both their shoulders, and walked backward
and covered the nakedness of their father.
Their faces were turned away.
They did not see their father's nakedness.
When Noah awoke from his wine and knew
what his youngest son had done to him,
he said, Cursed be Canaan, lowest of slaves
shall he be to his brothers.
He also said, Blessed by the Lord my
God be Shem, and let Canaan be his
slave.
May God make space for Japheth, and let
him live or dwell in the tents of
Shem, and let Canaan be his slave.
And after the flood, Noah lived 350 years
over the days of Noah, 950 years and
he died.
So on that fragmentary text is writing a
great weight of meaning that I think is
on time.
Through whom else would the Lord bring to
the consciousness of the church those things that
are on time that have been placed historically
in the Word and need now to come
alive in the consciousness of the church as
we stand close to the fulfillment of that
mystery hinted at in this one expression, but
a prophet or prophets.
I'm not saying I'm the exclusive messenger of
this theme and may well be.
Other men, unknown and unheralded, are equally being
started to bring their consciousness to the church
of that which is on time.
That's the dimension that God himself has employed
and intends.
That's the function.
The apostle has his function, the teachers, the
evangelists, pastors, but the prophetic calling is to
be quick and to bring out of the
Word that which is on time for the
consideration of God's people.
And that's what I think is happening.
So let's look into this text, burrow into
this text.
Verse 26, the heart of it.
Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem,
who is the father of the Shemites.
Abraham was a Semite that came out of
four of the Chaldees, a Semitic people.
Hebrews are Semites, Jews are Semites, Palestinians are
Semites.
Egyptians are sons of Ham.
So maybe one of the things that will
establish the full tent of Shem are all
the sons of Shem coming together into great
unity that only the faith itself can obtain.
So long as sons of Shem are themselves
divided between Jews and Arabs, then we will
not have the place or the significant provision
of God for Japheth.
Japheth is the father of all the European
nations and his name means enlarged.
May God make space for Japheth because he's
going to be enlarged.
And I'm implying and sensing and intuiting, which
is a prophetic disposition, that the enlargement is
technology, economics, culture, trade, commerce, civilization itself, which
can redound to the good of mankind, but
could also be the harbinger of dread things
like war and death.
The enlargement can be for the good, could
also be for evil.
And so what is God's provision that Japheth
not be, live alone in his Japheth spirit,
temper, and enlargement?
That all the more because he's enlarged, he
needs something that God provides to temper a
man who is expansive in his own ability,
in his own technology, in his own power.
And that provision is that which is antithetical
to enlargement, that is not technological, but spiritual.
It is a tent.
And we read in the psalm today, David
asking that he be allowed to dwell in
the tent of God.
Something about a tent, of what a tent
suggests is altogether opposite to what we would
expect a Japheth to dwell in.
He would have buildings in keeping consonant with
his technology, with his ability, with the emphasis
on power, prestige, wealth, and left to himself.
Though it may, as I've said, constitute a
blessing, it also constitutes a threat.
It necessarily encourages arrogance.
Success in technology, armaments, economics, trade, commerce, even
culture, education, produces necessarily a disposition toward arrogance
and pride.
And unleashed on the world, in that ability,
with that pride, that arrogance is disaster.
God's provision is that Japheth must dwell in
the tent of Shem.
There's a function for Canaan as a servant
people, but there's a function for Japheth to
be enlarged as it will bless the earth,
but also threaten the earth.
And God's provision is the uniqueness of Shem
called to be dwellers in tents.
Isaac was a dweller in tents.
Abraham was a dweller in tents.
It implies mobility.
You don't get founded in one place and
then increase in your establishment, your organization, and
the visible signs of your success.
A man who's in the tent can move
and follow the lamb whithersoever he goes.
That's the reason that he's mobile.
So he's not a dweller in the tent,
looking for the place in which he can
settle and obtain prosperity, but because he's following
after the Lord who called him and said,
follow me in the land that I will
show you.
The dweller in the tent is by nature
a pilgrim.
He's a journeyer and his journeying is not
for himself, but the God who called him.
What a grace for the world that there
are such a people in the earth, or
else we would all be stuck in our
Japheth mentality and think to have the blessing
of God when God's provision is for us
to enter.
So let me, this is the thing from
which I spoke in that final message.
You heard what preceded it.
The first message was a kind of an
outline of the issue of the Jew and
why it is that the church has maintained
a distance between ourselves and them, why there
is a native and inherent implicit anti-Semitism
in Gentiles.
Remember the first statement with which I opened
my mouth was, I have come to believe
after 38 years in the faith, traveling the
world largely, that every Gentile by nature is
a candidate for anti-Semitism, that there's a
latent anti-Jewish disposition in every Gentile heart.
It's the very nature of the thing, because
of the difference that the Jew represents as
an ingrown company, a community of their own,
at a distance from the Gentiles, implying a
kind even of superiority that would move those
who want to have them mix in and
be like us to be held in suspicion.
So the first message was reviewing some of
the elements that give evidence of this disposition
in the Gentile heart.
The only salvation from it is not to
be Gentile, is to become yourself Hebraicized, and
not to carry with you the distinctives that
mark the Gentile, which is enlargement, power, prestige,
wealth, which we see unhappily becoming prevalent in
many modern day ministries, prestige, power, influence, wealth.
So how do we obtain this saving characteristic?
It's to the degree to which we have
come into the place where alone it is
to be found, the Tent of Shem.
The great irony is that present day Jews
are not themselves in their own tent, and
do not themselves represent that tent, because a
lack in the last, talk about the ironies
of history, who is more technological, more involved
in business, trade, commerce, culture, power, wealth, and
prestige than Jews themselves?
They don't even know that this is their
calling, to be for the nations this distinctive
thing.
How can they be it when they themselves
not only resemble the nations, but desire to
be like the nations?
And if you take a poll of present
day Israelis, and maybe modern Jews everywhere, and
ask what their preferences are, you know what
they say?
Leave us alone.
Don't bother, don't tell us about being chosen.
We want to just to be like all
other nations.
In fact, we really want to be the
most superior expression of nations.
What we want in Israel is not to
be a place where the Gentiles will come
to the house of prayer for all nations,
because we ourselves are not in that house.
We ourselves are not even praying.
What we want is for present Israel to
be the Hong Kong of the Middle East.
And our appeal to our Palestinian neighbors, who
are our threat to our success, is give
it up already.
Why don't you guys cool it?
Listen, if only you cooperate, you will participate
in the prosperity that we will share with
you.
So give up this bloodletting, this vendetta, this
vengeance, and you fool and receive the benefit.
You never had it so good when you
were under Arab and Islamic authority.
You were in a far worse condition economically
and socially than you have been with us.
However much you'll complain, you've never enjoyed the
universities that now exist in the West Bank,
and education, other kinds of amenities that have
come by being under Israeli authority.
How much more if you'll cooperate with us?
Appealing to the self-interest of men as
if that is the means by which men
live their lives.
That men being like Jews predicate their conduct
on what serves their self-interest.
That is a humanistic assumption that is going
to be disappointed, where we'll find men not
acting in their self-interest, willing to be
blown up, and for their parents to delight
and boast in their children who have been
blasted to smithereens in taking some Jewish lives
with them.
Jews have never encountered a mentality like that
ever in their history, and what shall they
say about it?
How can these people be appealed to in
their self-interest when they're only too willing
to be made modest, and to see their
children made modest, and count it highest honor?
How do you meet with the people like
that, and how do you find the basis
of cooperation with people like that?
This is an intractable, insoluble predicament that we've
never before faced, and in the end it
will do us in.
And that's exactly God's intention.
So, because God is jealous that this Semitic
people, these Jews, have got to be the
Tent of Shem, or the Japheth nations will
continue to have their World War I, World
War II, World War III, and as many
world wars as their ambition, their rivalry, and
their power will make necessary.
World War I is the first of these
great conflicts, as we suggested the other day.
It came over tables like this, where kaisers,
and statesmen, and naval commanders, and generals played
with their tin soldiers, and wanted opportunity to
show that their military might was greater than
that of Great Britain, than the Queen of
the Seas, or France.
And so, out of ambition, out of rivalry,
out of power, out of the buildup of
armaments, that great conflict was birthed.
The assassination of, who was it, the Serbian
Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo was only the spark
that ignited that great conflict.
Any spark will have done, because the condition
for international war was already established.
That's Japheth, left to himself.
Terrible devastation.
How many millions of lives?
I told you about the Ossieri in Verdun.
You can visit it today in France.
Ossieri is a building in which the bones
are contained.
It's as large as a football field.
And how many of those bones represent potential
Beethovens, and philosophers, and fathers of the church,
and great commentators of the scripture, and blessings
to mankind went up in that generation.
And left the conditions by which World War
II was an inevitability.
Because the victors in World War I were
so merciless in the demands made upon the
defeated, that they left the ground for resentment
that Hitler later played upon in giving Germans
a sense of self-esteem that had been
ravaged and taken from them as being implied
as the sole cause of World War I,
and that they would have to pay reparations
that would strip that nation and make it
a second-class or third-class nation.
Hitler had fertile ground to whip the nation
up to become a master race and to
take its place in the sun and defeat
those that had defeated them.
And what are our present conditions?
Issues that have come out of World War
II that give rise now yet again to
great threat.
The Russian Revolution, the rise of communism, Bolshevism,
even the issues of the Balkan nations that
sparked World War I are still alive with
us now.
And so we're on a ground for explosion
yet again.
And it will not be solved by the
United Nations or any other human agency.
It will only be peace and accord when
nations fit themselves to the plan of God
for all nations with Israel, redeemed Israel at
its center, and the law going forth out
of Zion and the word of the Lord
out of Jerusalem, so that nations will not
study war anymore and beat their swords into
plowshares and their spears into hooks.
This is not poetry in Isaiah chapter 2.
This is God's prescriptive answer to the world.
And no other solution will bring the accord
of nations than God's way.
It requires the recognition of one nation in
particular against whom the Japheth nations are inflamed
and irritated and resentful.
They will not bow to that nation.
They'll not come into that tent.
Nothing more reveals Japheth pride than its unwillingness
to agree to the condition of God in
the offense and the scandal of particularity that
Israel represents as the tent of Shem.
The first object is to get Israel to
be that tent.
And the second is the willingness of nations
to bow and, as someone has said this
morning, kneel to enter.
For it's in the very bowing and the
kneeling that Japheth pride is broken and in
no other place.
Because the larger thinks itself the greater.
And because it's a humiliation to come into
something smaller or less than itself.
But it does not know that God who
chooses to take upon himself the form of
man and that of a slave, chooses to
be born in a stable, chooses to die
outside the city in the garbage dump, chooses
to come down in the triumphal entry into
Jerusalem as king on the back of an
which never man sat.
That's why the law of the Lord, which
is the way of the Lord, not legal
prescription, the Torah, the teaching of God has
got to come out of Zion and the
word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, the
place that is despised, small and offensive in
the sight of Japheth nations.
What is Zion?
Have you guys ever been to Jerusalem and
seen the hill of David, Zion?
It's a hill.
I call it a pimple next to the
great mountains that God would more rightly have
chosen or nations that he might rightly have
chosen.
Who's a greater candidate to be the nexus
and pivot of God's rule over the world
than Germany?
And if you go to Berlin today, you'll
see what I have seen when they brought
their government from where it had been previously,
when the nation was split between East and
West, where was it located?
On the Rhine River, Bonn, B-O-N
-N, which is an idyllic pastoral place.
Bonn is dreamy.
There's no configuration of power.
It's a sweet kind of residence for government
that must temper those who make law.
Just the geography of it.
But Berlin, Mamma Mia.
When the nation became one, by the way,
I was not celebrating that union.
I preferred a divided Germany.
And East Germany in those days was a
privilege to minister.
They hung on to every word that issued
from the mouth of God's servants and counted
it privilege.
Now, the same people that delighted in your
coming, yawn, because many have come now and
there's no difference now between themselves and West
Germany.
They are just like the other side and
exalting the same materialism, standard of living and
values for which they were denied under communist
rule that made them more susceptible and open
to things of the spirit.
I was not happy when that wall came
down.
And why did that wall come down?
Because the German nation itself wanted the full
power that it desires to be central to
all nations.
So the whole European union is essentially a
German plan.
And its greatest figures are German.
And it gives German an opportunity for the
kind of prevalence for which it thinks it
is designed.
When you visit Berlin today, when I was
there last, not only have they created a
brand new dome over the Reichstag that cost
in itself millions, but they say there are
over 500 of those things that go up
in the air that move heavyweights.
What do they call those?
Cranes.
Those cranes.
500 cranes establishing the new capital of Germany.
I said to the German brother with me
in the car, as we drove around those
grounds and I saw this remarkable display, I
said, this is not the capital of the
nation.
This is a world capital.
This is a global capital.
It is too ambitious in its extent and
its architecture merely to serve the purpose of
being the capital of a nation.
These Germans yet have global aspirations and global
designs.
Fancy then bowing to enter the tent of
Shem?
But unless they will, they'll remain all too
German, all too Japheth, all too powerful, all
too arrogant, and all together capable again of
a yet another world conflagration.
Well, it sounds like a dangerous formula to
exalt Jewish pride at their chosenness to be
central to all nations, which is not the
least of the reasons why they have to
be submitted to the most painful and devastating
judgments of God in the last days, that
they will retain a broken character and a
priestly disposition alone by which this mystery can
be fulfilled.
The fact that it's confined to them is
the statement of God's chosenness.
If it was not ethnically identified, what does
God's chosenness mean except it can be seen
in a particular people called for that particular
purpose?
But it's not their Jewishness that is going
to be celebrated because that is not the
essence of what Semitic is.
The essence of what Semitic is, is what
we considered this morning out of the Psalms,
that is Davidic, that is Abrahamic.
The question that I would raise is, is
there actually a bowing to the God of
Shem without, in fact, some acknowledgement of Shem
himself?
Is the issue of Shem the issue of
God?
Otherwise, we can think that we're bowing to
God, we can have all of the suitable
vocabulary making the acknowledgement, but there's a stubborn
specificity that is very humiliating that is in
the actuality of Shem himself.
And Shem is not going to take the
light in this as if you're saying, I
always wanted to get you Gentiles under my
thumb, but he himself is broken and recognizes
the mystery.
So we're feeling our way through something.
I'm liking the way that John phrased the
question.
If Shem is not Shem, if there's any
Jewish pride or a desire to make up
for the injustices of the past at the
hands of Gentiles, and now we have them
under us because of God's requirement, the whole
thing is defeated.
It becomes a caricature, a grotesque caricature.
Shem must be Shem in an ultimate character,
which is God's, or else Japheth does not
receive the benefit.
So I'm responding to John by asking, is
there really a bowing to God that is
not, in fact, also a bowing to that
specific and stubborn entity whose acknowledgement God requires
as being the statement of your bowing to
him?
And if you're unwilling to bow, is it
because there is yet a latent and still
existent pride of arrogance that finds spiritual and
religious terminology that seems to be God-exalting,
but in fact is God-resisting, and that
nothing will have revealed it more profoundly than
this narrow, very narrow and stubborn insistence on
the specificity of a particular people?
I would say exactly what I've said if
I had been born John Jones, I'm not
speaking out of my Jewishness, I'm speaking out
of a prophetic heart trying to sense what
is the mystery here, grateful for the question
being raised, because as we used to say
in Brooklyn, a miss is as good as
a mile.
If we miss this by just so much
as a hair and let it become distorted
to be an issue of ethnicity and ethnic
Jewish pride and getting those Gentiles to recognize
that we're chosen, the whole thing is defeated.
And so I say again, God's provision is
exquisite and extravagant that Israel is going to
be moved, the survivors, the remnant, the Israel
that is Israel will be moved through such
a last days sifting and dealing that will
even eclipse the Nazi Holocaust, that the redeemed
of the Lord might return to Zion, not
just a place of geographic existence, but in
fulfillment of what their calling was given from
the first in the book of Genesis appropriately.
They need a breaking, they need a humbling
in order not to be exalted.
Paul himself needed a thorn in his side
that he would not be exalted out of
measure because of the revelation given him.
There's something in the very nature of man
that even the call of God and the
use of God will exalt unless there is
a countermeasure of a kind that is breaking
and humbling and keeps us continually in that
frame of mind.
When you read the scriptures like Psalm 102,
after Israel's redemption, they are forever rejoicing in
the Lord who had brought them back in
last days mercy out of the nations to
which they had been thrust and brought out
of bondage and out of prisons and chains
by his own hand.
They celebrate that deliverance forever throughout all generations,
they speak one to another, they tell their
children of the so great salvation that came
to us the last days by the mercy
of God whom whom we had spurned and
rejected.
And so they're continually in reminder and therefore
tempered not to be exalted by everything which
would otherwise exalt the nation being made central
to all other nations.
When God chose the number of nations he
did so in terms of the sons of
Israel, maybe we ought to say the sons
of Shem, for not all Israel is Israel.
It's interesting that there were two kinds of
hearing.
It's almost as if a sword had gone
through the congregation.
There are those who heard it as a
celebration of ethnic Jewishness to which they should
not bow and others heard it in the
way that was spiritually intended and came forward.
So hearing the same word but not hearing
the same way is something also that we
need to consider.
And who is that skillful to present a
theme that is coming in the Lord's time
to be sounded that can sound it with
such expertise and surgical exactitude as to eliminate
any prospect of misconstruction.
How much is dependent upon the hearer to
hear what the Spirit of God is saying
to the church is also something that needs
to be considered.
When we make men like Elijah or the
prophets, somehow they transcend national ethnic identity.
Jesus himself does not come through as a
Jew as we understand that.
There's something transcendent.
We would hope that the bearers of words
like this that are so charged with the
prospect of misconstruction would be above their own
national and ethnic identity.
How is that obtained?
By the realities of God and the dealings
of God and what comes to such ones
in the church.
That's why the Lord had to wait for
the call to Antioch.
Separate unto me Paul and Bonibus for the
work were unto I have called them.
They're safe now to be employed because they
are separated men from their own Jewish origins.
That's why they hung on Paul's neck when
he called for the elders at Ephesus to
tell them that they will see his face
no more.
He reminded them, you know what manner of
man I was with you from the beginning.
Weeping and going from house to house daily
in public places proclaiming the whole counsel of
God, never taking anything from you, working with
my own hands, my own sustenance.
They hung on his neck and wept when
they heard they would see his face no
more.
This man was so transcendently above being the
Pharisee and Hebrew of the Hebrews by which
he himself identified his origin through the work
of the cross that God does not amplify
for our understanding but had evidently taken place
or the call at Antioch would not have
come.
Separate unto me are men who are already
separated.
Separated from their Jewishness, separated from their national
ethnic origin, separated even from their own religious
ambition.
So let's just trust that this is God's
intention and that that has been performed but
that men will identify you as Jewish and
discredit the message for that reason is more
the statement that they are not separated than
that you are separated.
Amen.
Let's remember this principle.
Whenever God's people want to reject a requiring
word they will always find a point of
objection not only in the word but more
so in the man.
The way to reject the word is to
reject the man.
If you can reject him on the basis
that he's a Jew, the basis that he's
black, the basis whatever, it's still constant.
So we need to know that this has
got to be factored into the equation as
well.
If you're willing to hear the word of
God that requires of you an ultimate humbling
and breaking but that could not be obtained
by any other means than by but by
this suspicious charged and loaded invitation, are you
willing so to be broken?
Are you willing so to be humbled?
Or is there something tenacious in your own
person that you're wanting to maintain which God
calls pride and for that reason find a
basis to reject both the word and the
man.
The fact that I was assaulted outside the
building as being a proud Jew and Jewish
flesh is itself I think suggestive of the
depth of things that God was wanting to
touch on the most profoundly spiritual men of
our knowledge still have a propensity to speak
that word as being the Jewish thing.
Why wasn't I just condemned as arrogant in
myself or arrogant as a man or proud
as a man?
Why is it my Jewish flesh and my
Jewish pride?
Is that a statement of what I was
in fact expressing or is it more the
revelation the expression of the depth of intransigence
called the Jew as I said to be
found in every Gentile except that the deepest
sanctifying work of God be performed?
And maybe both things are true at the
same time.
I've got to go back to the drawing
board.
I've got to submit to this depth of
sanctifying work amongst my own brethren but the
one who made the accusation himself also needs
to see what his statement reflects.
I believe that was expressed by the woman
that Reggie described when she said is it
inappropriate for a dog to eat from the
crumbs of the table of God's children?
That was the grace that she humbled herself
to recognize salvations of the Jews.
This is bread for the for God's children
but can I have a crumb of it?
That kind of humility will provide more than
the crumb but the whole substance.
So there an arrogance was broken and in
effect by that statement she entered and received
the benefit God intended in that place.
The one time that Jesus overturned the money
changers tables was in the court of the
Gentiles where those tables were set up.
He flew into a rage and turned them
over because you have said he said you've
turned my father's house into a house of
merchandise that he intends as a house of
prayer for all nations.
Jesus was jealous for the purpose of Israel
to the nations and when you saw this
violation that had mutilated that purpose and made
it merchandise we see the one act of
Jesus that seems to be contrary to the
whole tenor of his public ministry in a
violent physical action against that defamation.
So he has a jealousy for God's intention
for Israel for the nations.
Israel was chosen for the nations.
Is it time now to establish the kingdom
of Israel?
No it's not yet time.
There are other things first but you mustn't
think that that kingdom is for Israel.
It's for the nations through a redeemed Israel
but it must have the character of the
kingdom and the character of the king who
is lowly and meek.
The Lord could have saved us all this
difficulty by just calling it my tent.
Will you not bow and enter?
Of course no sweat but when you call
it the tent of Shem and raise the
resonance of that which is particular and having
to do with Jews that's where I balk.
All the Lord says otherwise you would have
not in fact entered my tent because my
tent will not permit your arrogance your conceit
and your pride your self-exaltation but you're
found out now because I have labeled this
the tent of Shem and that's therefore are
you balking.
I'm just surmising that that might be the
wisdom of God but if we are seeing
in not only saved men but men who
are the exemplars of the profoundest expressions of
the body of Christ today still having a
resident anti-Jewish antagonism have they been saved
yet to the uttermost.
Yes it was it was a provision for
Gentiles to enter the kingdom and the faith
and the salvation of God but evidently we're
seeing expressions of things that are possible even
for saved men that require a deep and
ultimate consecration at the end of the age
which if it doesn't come how shall we
depict and set forth before Israel its own
destiny and calling if they have not seen
it first expressed by us.
I haven't even gotten into the heart of
the message I'm saying to this Gentile audience
Jews don't even know their own identity and
their own call and therefore how shall they
fulfill it.
Paul said you see in me a man
out of time and out of joint what
you see in me as an apostle to
the Gentiles is a picture of Israel's future
apostolate to the nations but if we don't
see that picture represented to us by the
church how shall we come into our own
identity for we are not in our own
tent we are more in the frame of
the Japheth nations that's the model that's been
set before us so how then shall that
model come but by the church itself that
has come into its final and ultimate union
with the Lord that waits for it in
one place that he has designated in his
wisdom that sifts and identifies that one last
thing that has kept the believing saved church
from its ultimate identification union with God namely
a pride that will not acknowledge his whom
he has chosen that still has objection to
election and would never have found it out
until this invitation comes they could even agree
with it theoretically and conceptually and doctrinally and
yet in their deepest heart have a realm
of reservation against the God who chooses and
the God who elects because it will not
be found out until the actual call comes
to that specific thing now in retrospect seeing
that some were blessed and some were offended
we can go back to the drawing board
and repair and learn that's why we're doing
this to learn prophetically what obedience means and
what we can anticipate in the charged last
days and the issues that will be raised
not only in the world but within the
church itself and so to be instructed and
to avail ourselves of a wisdom from this
experience i'm wanting to raise the question of
whether by necessity by necessity and definition that
the prophet is called to often to speak
mysteries that he himself is speaking beyond his
own comprehension of his own word let alone
what his word will occasion in others and
yet he's under obligation to speak it something
was set in motion something was struck that
is reverberating and resonating i don't know what's
going on in canada since but something has
come in point of time through a prophetic
obedience that resulted in offense and i'm i'm
speaking at a prophetical school to those who
either have this calling or a call to
be intercessors for it that this is the
name of the game this is intrinsic to
the calling not that we delight in the
offense or that we would not seek to
be prepared so as to avoid what offenses
are avoidable but in the last analysis be
assured offense will come an offense must come
in bringing forth even the mysteries that we
ourselves understand only in part and yet are
required to speak in point of time i
wouldn't take back a single word of anything
i said in those days so convinced that
it was utterly in god's time and had
to come forth at that time astonished by
by what it brought but nevertheless not retracting
now because of it and how many times
have i been called to retract maybe this
is just if i can throw this in
at the moment the first radical message i
ever gave as a young believer eunuch for
christ's sake where the lord exceeded the testimony
that was being asked of me in the
regional full gospel businessmen's counts conference in washington
dc before 5 000 people and when i
spoke that message in utter guilelessness because the
lord gave it there were two lines waiting
to meet me at the end of the
meeting one to do me in because their
children had stood to the invitation and now
would become eunuchs and how would they become
grandparents and others to thank me on this
conference has been stale pop the fizz had
gone out of it until you opened your
mouth and spoke it was like we said
yes we changed when something has happened isn't
remarkable just like in canada two reactions to
the same word and then when the smoke
cleared a man came up to me he
said i'm a prophet sent of god a
jewish prophet to tell you that you have
done incalculable damage to the body of christ
and you need now to go immediately to
the microphone and retract your message i had
fasted five days for that one word and
when he said that it was like a
knife in my heart why because it might
well be true and that's the prophetic tension
that in whatever obedience it might be true
and i'm just standing there gasping under with
the knife and the knife was twisted i
heard exactly the same word when i gave
the message on the holocaust at the kansas
city conference in 1974 whatever it was a
man came up to the platform brought by
ern baxter's young man whom i knew to
say ah this is a jewish prophet who
has a word for you from god oh
yeah what because there's a deathly silence after
i spoke and it sounded like the worst
failure and he said god has sent me
a prophet to tell you you have misdemeaned
the lord you've done incalculable damage exactly the
same words to the body of christ you
need to go immediately to the microphone and
retract your message second time again after five
day fast i'm not saying that a fast
guarantees anything i am saying that all that
was in my ability to do in fasting
and seeking the lord and praying i had
done and had come forth with that message
which was spoken in a terrible monotone and
seemed a dismal failure and while i'm considering
that this might yet be true and suffering
the anguish of the possibility that it might
be true before 2 000 people something broke
in the and people began to cry out
for repentantly uh reggie was there there was
it was a historic time that took hours
of foot washing with 200 jewish believers stood
before the congregation asked forgiveness for their fathers
in any disparaging of the faith that jews
had expressed in their history in europe and
people who are polish and german extraction getting
up for what their father said i mean
it was an event in god that for
a moment seemed to be not only a
colossal failure but a colossal betrayal of god
himself and an injury against the body of
christ so what shall we say prophetic obedience
always run this runs this risk and that
the one who's accusing you might well be
right but but for that reason should we
retract and withdraw or not speak what is
what is before us by the lord if
the real correction for the prophet is not
going to come in the moment of speaking
but all the moments that have preceded that
speaking in the issue of the earnestness of
the fellowship the body of christ with which
he is placed and to which he submits
that's where the issue of submission and character
are formed not on the platform here's the
two things i'm seeing because of this discussion
agreeing with reggie about what needs to come
to the prophetic man from the community in
which he's placed and we need this critiquing
examination to identify unnecessary causes of offense and
to sound a clear note at the same
time what in my heart i'm wanting to
identify those elements that need to be recognized
as have been the root of full submission
and consecration to god as for example in
such statements as jacob have i loved and
esau i have hated that before they were
even born and had any distinction god had
already made a choice and it's not predicated
on the character the performance of either one
it's just an opportunity for the lord to
say that i am who i am and
i will be whom i will be i
will choose who i will choose i will
have mercy upon whom i will have mercy
the question is are you in agreement with
me as that god or do you have
areas of reservation that are personal ethnic racial
national human that keeps you from that total
submission to me that is that has to
be the character of my church in this
final day so there's two things yes practically
we need this critiquing for the future but
at the same time remember that the lord
is wanting to use the occasion to identify
these deep-seated and intractable things that i
think were flushed out in the same course
of time and are more prevalent in the
church than we know yes and for which
reason has hampered us in being attentive shem
to those called to be that tent they've
not seen in us that thing to which
they themselves are called for we are more
jayforth than we are shem so long as
we contain and hold these subjective and personal
oppositions to god that are ultimate and will
and are never revealed to us until we
face the stubborn point of specificity jacob as
jacob the god of jacob the crumbs from
their table grafted into their tree as i
suggested the other day will not receive the
benefit of the root that flows the sap
that flows to that root until that identification
is not remade but humbly and gratefully acknowledged
and received that we're still branches not bearing
fruit we might just all be back into
our wild tree for as much good as
being grafted in has done us unless we're
receiving the sap what hinders it the flow
that comes to those who acknowledge and are
grateful for the privilege of being grafted in
to another tree and i'm not so prideful
as to say i don't want that identification
now where does it say that i can't
show you where it says it i sense
i intuit i'm suggesting and i don't know
that i'm going far afield but that's the
that's the very character of prophetic proclamation is
to make suggestions of that kind okay just
to show you how stubborn this is god
has got the threatened nations in ezekiel i
mean in zachariah who refuse yet to come
up to jerusalem to uh celebrate the feast
of tabernacles why why is there a threat
of rain and of judgment for those that
yet refuse to come up seeing the sovereign
work of god and the redemption of that
nation because there is that stubborn intractable resistance
to god as is located with that nation
with that jerusalem why is it that after
a thousand years of the millennial rule of
christ through that nation and a glorified church
in which there's a righteousness in the earth
there's satan coming unbound after a thousand years
confined to chains and is able to precipitate
quickly a rebellion in the nations against god
where is it expressed in israel on the
mountains of israel against the people of israel
so deep and so intractable is this this
thing that is at the heart of japheth
that only the bowing and breaking will ever
meet so when that subject was celebrated at
the conference by one of the other speakers
i came up to him afterwards and said
what you've said is correct but you have
missed both the mystery and the glory the
one new man is not god's last final
ultimate statement it itself is is preparation for
the fulfillment of the greater mystery through that
church to the restoration of israel of which
you're still non-compassionate this because you're fixed
on the church as being the end of
the b-wall in itself and therefore you're
guarding it and are threatened even by any
suggestion that there's something even beyond that for
which the church itself is preparation and i
want to say this nations coming up to
jerusalem for the feast of tabernacles is not
some little innocuous celebration you can't come up
to the tent that is itself coming up
to the tent of shem you cannot come
up and enter on those occasions and return
to your place as you were before there's
transfiguration something happens of a profound kind by
which you take on something of the coloration
and the spirit and the character of that
to which you have come in that feast
you no longer go back again as you
were as a nation you're losing your japheth
character even by your coming up and so
ultimately the lord will have transfigured all nations
whose very nature from the beginning was autonomy
and rebellion in the building of the tower
of babel and were dispersed into different parts
of the world the end will be the
praise of god going to the ends of
the earth in hebraic semitic davidic praise that
has been wrought in the nations by their
coming to the place where god will mediate
that character in the point in which it
has been established jerusalem the tent of shem
the nation the people the specific geography the
specific nationhood so that's the mystery and that's
why i said to these guys yes what
you're celebrating is correct but you're falling short
of the mystery which is to fall short
of the glory and paul said i would
not have you to be ignorant of this
mystery brother unless you become wise in your
own conceit which can be expressed as a
celebration of the one new man as if
it's the end all and be all glorious
thing though it is in itself and presages
and even is a foretaste of a universal
one new man now exhibited by the church
so how to break into that how to
sift how to open up how to for
the lord to reveal where we are in
our hearts and comes by all this firmament
for which there's no shortcut but unless the
church is itself a tent of shem for
jews to come and to enter and by
by which to obtain their own salvation and
call how shall they fulfill it but if
we ourselves don't it's in our bowering and
ending as the church that we constitute the
reality to which the jew can be invited
and that's not unrelated to the going to
new york the contact with the jewish community
the kinds of things that the lord wants
to communicate through that relationship may may we
be to jews what they themselves are called
to be not because i'm going as a
jew but going as an expression of the
church and even of its of its semitic
character that they might be moved to jealousy
what is the jealousy to which they ought
to be moved has got everything to do
with what we are discussing i'm going to
take the liberty to call this to a
halt i think we've gone as far as
is reasonable seeing how charged all of this
is pleases the lord will come back to
it again if not tonight tomorrow or when
he will so i want to end with
a prayer and let you continue to ruminate
and contemplate dwell on these things talk it
out among yourselves you've got a free afternoon
not interrupted by meals you can find three
or four five other saints and find a
place of quiet outsider in the building and
talk it over among yourselves look into the
description wheresoever you'll be led none of us
have been this way heretofore we're on new
ground and it's tremulous full of portent full
of significance full of craps that's always got
to be where it the greatest prospect of
glory the greatest prospect of failing so uh
i want to just end with a almost
arbitrarily i could pick in many places in
the scriptures in isaiah 60 the descendants of
those who oppressed you shall come bending low
to you and all who despised you shall
bow down at your feet they shall call
you the city of the lord the zion
of the holy one of israel and whereas
you have been forsaken and hated with no
one passing through i will make you majestic
forever there's no establishing of the glory of
god independent of the people for whom that
glory has been revealed and the acknowledgement of
that by those who are acknowledging god and
acknowledging the specificity of that people and what
the lord has made of them your son
shall no more go down your moon withdraw
or your moon withdraw itself for the lord
will be your everlasting light your days of
mourning shall be ended your people shall all
be righteous they shall possess the land forever
they are the shoot that i planted the
work of my hands so that i might
be glorified i think that's an answer again
to john's question why can't we just go
directly to god why do we need this
troublesome issue over shem the specificity of the
bowing because the issue of god being glorified
forever being glorified forever through them and the
apparent work and the everlasting work that is
visible through them that the gentiles who had
oppressed them acknowledging that work in them at
the same time constitute an acknowledgement of the
lord and his glory forever this is inseparable
he's not to be acknowledged independent of this
remarkable and final everlasting work with a specific
and identifiable people in the geographic place of
his own choosing the stubborn specificity of god
he'll not be receive our acknowledgement and tribute
and glory independently of that his deepest glory
is that acknowledgement and it's an acknowledgement to
the people whom he has restored and given
a new name and called the diadem in
his hand of people who will all be
righteous this is the mystery god forbid that
we should fall short of it because of
of our being enamored by an equally great
work of god and making up to one
new man that's not the end though that
is the provision for this consummation and so
there's a tension as the brother said anyone
who remains at the fixed point of truth
that rut becomes a grave if they're unwilling
to be brought from that truth into the
truth that is now being communicated and so
there's something in man and in the church
that is conservative wants to retain that which
it enjoys and which is true and seems
to be a fact against the consideration of
the oppressive truth or a thing to which
god will now lead us so we need
to pray for the church where we're the
bearers of that mystery not only for its
contemplation for its fulfillment so lord we bless
your name thank you for the significance of
the church for unless the church my god
come of age be able to critique it
to examine to understand itself to be stretched
how shall it be my god what it
ought what will move juice to jealousy but
a but an entity of this ultimate kind
so grant us grace lord thank you for
today and what has been churned up what
is being examined we recognize lord our frailty
our inadequacy but you're the god of all
truth we look to you my god to
continue with us and to bring us through
something that will affect the church in this
last days and all my god that will
issue from it we know that this is
more than a discussion group and however wearying
the details of it may be what issues
from it is worth it all so grant
us the forbearance the patience the stamina even
to wrestle with these things and bring it
through my god to your own everlasting satisfaction
and delight bless these children bless us together
this afternoon and our leisure bless us my
god as we come together tonight and the
times that remain to us order them in
your perfect authority and sovereignty we give you
praise the glory and honor in jesus name
amen