Well, we need to look at a classic
text, I would say a definitive text, in
Matthew 25, that has always positionally been there,
but until it came into the context of
our understanding of the calamity that awaits Jews
worldwide, the time of Jacob's trouble, the dispersal
of Jews throughout all nations, I will sift
you through all nations, which, by the way,
has everything to do with our location right
here in Minnesota.
Maybe we'll take a little walking tour before
you leave, and I'll show you the spot
where God called me, where I was a
speaker 40 miles away, and they said, oh,
there's a camp, a bankrupt camp for sale,
would you care to see it?
I was living in New Jersey, in a
17-room house, you can ask Inga, it
was her darling place, nine bedrooms, five baths,
she loved it, it was a Gothic masterpiece,
no intention of leaving it, I was a
charismatic Jewish darling, not anymore, I said, sure,
let's go for a ride, you know, why
not?
So they drove up to the entrance of
the camp, the top of the road, there
was a chain across it, I stepped over
the chain, my foot came down on the
ground of this property, and the Lord said
these exact words, dominion, end-time teaching center,
that's what you're enjoying, community, that's what we
are, refuge, that's what we will be.
This building that you are now occupying is
only serving its external and outward purpose, its
true inward and yet-to-be-fulfilled purpose
is that it will be housing Jewish refugees
in flight from persecution in North America.
I'm just getting a little Holy Ghost chill
as I say that, and that's what has
chosen this place, perhaps geographically, our proximity to
Canada, where we will leave Jews, we'll be
coming out of New York and other eastern
seaboard places and up into Canada and down
through Canada to us and from us en
route to Mexico.
We have our Mexican brother here, Homero, and
I've been with him in Chihuahua, where he's
from, and another brother has joined us there,
an American brother, who called me years ago,
and I resisted his visit, he sounded so
off the wall before the Lord opened these
things, to say that God had given him
a call to establish a flight of route
for Jews through Mexico, through the Sierra Madre
mountains, coming out of North America, and that
I was one of the five men to
be employed in this whole last day's process,
and so I met with him and have
continued to meet with him and was with
him in Chihuahua, I've been with him in
other places in the Sierra Madre mountains, in
such wilderness locations, because God says, I will
meet with you in the wilderness of the
nations.
There's a necessity for wilderness, wilderness is the
place of stripping.
All of your categories go in a moment
when there's nothing between you and life and
death, but the barren piece of earth where
you've been brought, independent of your own will.
So there's a great drama, and I've not
become popular in seeking to communicate this to
the church, and encourage them to anticipate the
flight of Jews everywhere, because God says, I
will sift you through all nations.
In Amos chapter 9, if we have leisure,
we can take a look at that chapter
together, you might want to read that at
your own leisure now, because it gives the
whole panoramic sweep of that last day's sifting
of Israel, that concludes with their return, where
I will plant you, and you'll not again
be plucked up and brought out.
So, and then, where the reaper cannot keep
up with the sower of seed, there's such
millennial blessedness, that Israel will profusely fill the
earth with its fruit.
So the last dealings of God in the
sifting of that nation, will be an enormous
saga.
I believe it will take, from what we
learn in scripture, three and a half years,
and Jews, I believe, who have been brought
up out of one place, will probably pass
through maybe a number of nations, en route
to Zion.
It's not the most expedient, going from point
one to point two, the shortest possible route,
but maybe the lengthiest possible route, that would
give the Jew in flight, ample opportunity to
see the consistency of mercy that he will
be receiving, whether it comes to him through
the North American Indian, through black believers in
the ghettos of New York City, through the
Indians of Mexico in the Sierra Madre Mountains,
or ordinary white believers in Timbuktu in Kansas,
and where so ever they are.
They will see the same consistent grace and
mercy of God, until they'll have to be
disabused of any notion, that well, this one
is a nice guy, that one, they're all
nice.
This was my mother's experience in this community.
Years ago, we used to send her to
this one for lunch, and to that one
for dinner.
She would make the circuit of the families
of the community, and every time she would
come home, just gasping, and the children are
so beautiful, they're so well behaved, the atmosphere.
She thought that she could attribute that to
the nicety, the nice guy-ism of that
family.
But when it happened again and again and
again, consistently in every place, I had to
say to her, do you realize that it's
not the issue of nice guys?
That what you're observing is not some virtuosity
to be found in this one or that,
it's the statement of one kingdom, to which
they all subscribe, and which they all express.
That's exactly what the Jews have to experience.
The consistency of God in every place.
And it will be every place, because not
only will they be sifted, but the places
themselves will be sifted.
The nations will be sifted, over their response
to Jews, and their helplessness, and in their
extremity, at that time.
And the one most compelling text in the
New Testament, that confirms the scenario, is the
text to which we will now turn, in
Matthew chapter 25.
From verse 31, When the Son of Man
shall come in his glory, and all the
holy angels with him, then shall he sit
upon the throne of his glory.
So this is the first sitting, the Lord
has ascended his throne, the climax of the
age has been concluded, he has been released
from heaven to take his throne, at the
seat of the throne of David, in Jerusalem
and at Zion, the whole dynamic, the whole
remarkable saga of redemption, has come to its
conclusion, and the statement of Acts 3.21,
that the king has been contained in the
heavens, waiting for the restoration of all things
spoken by the prophets, since the world has
begun, has now taken place.
That restoration is not the restoration of the
church, that an exultant, triumphalist church has employed,
to think that it means themselves.
That's the scandal, that the church has taken
to itself, those things that are expressly and
literally intended for Israel.
But because they are so contemptuous of Israel,
and so disdainful of the Jew, and so
lacking in the understanding of God's unfailing mercy,
that they feel that they have replaced them.
So, they don't realize that the issue of
Israel is the issue of the kingdom.
That the law must go forth out of
Zion, and the word of the Lord out
of Jerusalem, is not a piece of poetry.
It's the most literal statement of God's theocratic
intention.
That Israel was indeed chosen for the purpose
of being central to all nations.
As we learn in Deuteronomy 32.8, when
God established the number of nations, he did
so in terms of the number of the
sons of Israel.
From the very first and the divine intention,
there's an explicit conjunction between Israel and the
nations.
So, that's why out of Shem comes that
Semitic line, that becomes, out of which we
receive Abraham, who becomes the father of all
nations.
And that this is the whole answer to
the rebellion of nations in chapter 10 of
Genesis, who build the tower to be higher
even than the Most High God.
You have got to understand the subject of
Israel, and the context of the nations, or
you cannot understand Israel.
Merely to desire the success of the state,
and not understand the destiny of the nation,
will lead you to miss God's purpose, and
to be offended by how far he will
go in obtaining it.
And that will cause a lot of disappointment
among Christians who are at a fixed sentimental
level, want humanly to see the success of
the present state, who should not desire that?
If the Jews have been knocked about in
the world through all of these ages, that
they should at long last have a safe
homeland.
That's humanly to be desired.
But it falls short of God's greater intention,
that Israel is not for itself, but for
him.
And that there's a suffering that precedes the
glory, and a death that precedes the resurrection.
No state that man can form, or that
Jews can form, which is the, what shall
I say, the epitome of man, can succeed
to be the agency by which God will
bless all nations.
So this is a remarkable drama, a remarkable
mystery, of which Paul said, I would not
have you to be ignorant.
To be ignorant of this mystery, what shall
I say?
It condemns you to be a church.
It condemns you to an institution.
It condemns you to something without its heart.
To something just in its form as an
institution that mediates blessings.
The glory of the church is the issue
of Israel.
And Israel will not come into that fulfillment,
except through and by the church.
That in the wisdom of God we are
locked into an irrevocable destiny.
Huh?
Reciprocity.
Where neither we nor Israel can come into
the fullness of God's intention, independent of the
other.
And Israel is already fulfilling that function for
us, without its understanding that it constitutes for
us a challenge that compels us to come
upon resurrection ground.
That we cannot be the salvific agency of
God to Israel on the basis of mere
charismatica, but only on the basis of resurrection
itself.
We have got to become larger than life.
We have got to become transcendent.
We have got to become sham-like.
And that's not by discipline, but by infusion.
By union with the life of God himself.
In death unto resurrection, which we would not
ourselves have sought or been willing to bear,
except we see the greater glory which is
at stake.
May we see what Paul saw, that he
could not contain himself at the end of
chapter 11 of Romans, the man goes virtually
berserk.
Language is stretched to the breaking.
It's a paean of praise.
It ought to be put to music, and
it has been.
All the depths of the riches, both of
the wisdom and the knowledge of God, who
has been his counselor?
What makes Paul stagger?
Why does he say that?
Because he's glimpsed something of the enormity of
God's conceiving that no man could have led
God to entertain.
It comes out of the very deity of
God himself.
It's majestic in its proportions.
It will take eons of time.
It will take eternity of eternities to celebrate
to the very ends of the earth of
the remarkable, redemptive glory of God that have
taken a people who have blasphemed his name
in every nation in which he has driven
them, whose track record is a stench.
We have failed in everything to which we
were called.
We have sunk to the lowest levels of
idolatry.
And even now we are the leaders in
the world of everything that is antichrist.
And yet for all that, his hand and
his mercy is not turned away.
He has not cast us away.
Because he's spoken, because he's made promises, because
he's given us a chosenness, not because of
any virtue in ourself, but because of what
he is in himself.
He's the God who chooses.
And he chooses those things that are least.
And he chooses those things that have no
virtue that can commend them, that all of
the glory and honor will redound to him.
So, here's Jesus on the throne.
Oh, are you guys waiting?
Are you expecting?
Are you desiring?
I appreciate Bush.
Praise God.
That his competitor is not in the place
of Bush today.
Oy vey.
I would not want to consider having to
pass through the tumultuous time that we have
with Gore in the place of that occupancy.
God, in his great mercy, by our fluke
in the election process in the state of
Florida, by elderly Jews who couldn't figure out
their ballots and would ordinarily have voted Democratic,
voted Republican, or their ballots were disqualified, and
so Bush won by Jewish...
What's the word?
Default.
If ever our Jewishness came in handy, it
did then.
Because we're so affected now by his administration
and the things that shall follow.
You know, I find very little kingdom expectancy
in the church as I travel.
The word kingdom has become kind of a
euphemistic catchword that is so vague in its
ambiguity it can be used in any way.
Where the kingdom of God is within, yes,
how nice.
But there's no expectancy of the vivid reality
of a kingdom, of a political reality that
shall govern God's creation, that has its nexus
and source and center in Zion.
Not because it's the greatest of mountains, because
it's the least, but it's a holy hill
that he has chosen.
And except his law goes forth out of
that place, then the word of the Lord
out of Jerusalem, it will not go forth
at all.
So men will continue to make their weapons,
which is today's great principal industry in many
nations of which Israel is one of the
leaders, and United States not far behind.
Weapons of death.
They'll not beat their swords into plowshares until
the word of the Lord comes to them
out of Zion.
And men will study war no more.
See what's at stake here?
Can you understand why the powers of darkness
want to do everything to keep the redeemed
of the Lord from returning to Zion?
Because I never finish that verse from Acts
3.21 that the king is contained in
the heavens.
He's confined in the heavens.
It's a self-imposed restriction waiting the restoration
of all things spoken by the prophets since
the world began.
He cannot come as king until what the
prophets have spoken is fulfilled.
And what have they spoken?
The restoration of Israel after a long tenure
of degradation and apostasy in the last days,
not by their own virtue, but by the
mercy of God that is extended to them
to the farthermost corners of the earth as
he brings them back to Zion from the
place where he himself has expelled them in
judgment.
If you read the rest of Psalm 102
as we started before the break, you'll see
that.
He looks down upon the prisoner in his
dungeon.
He hears his cries out of a desolate
place from which no man could free him.
And he rises up to be the deliverer
of Israel.
It will be miraculous.
It will be a supernatural deliverance that we
secular Jews who are so adamantly opposed to
anything that is mystical, except it be demonic,
then we're partial.
But to believe in the supernaturalness of God
has been difficult for us until by that
supernaturalness we ourselves shall be saved out of
situations in which we could not be retrieved
humanly.
That's coming.
So here's the king now come in his
throne.
That has taken place.
And now he renders his first judgment.
For a king is judge.
He who has suffered judgment now performs judgment
because he's impartial, because he can judge with
equity and with justice.
So when the Son of Man shall come
in verse 31 in his glory and all
the holy angels with him, then shall he
sit upon the throne of his glory.
What a reason for us to make every
sacrifice that he should attain to that throne.
He'll not have his glory until he is
so enthroned.
And where will it come?
In the place where he was most disgraced.
Where over the cross in three languages was
the defaming, virulent statement, Jesus of Nazareth, king
of the Jews, mocking upon whom they put
the robe and the crown of thorns.
It was all a mock.
It was all a degradation.
In that very place where he suffered that
humiliation, in that place, he will sit on
his throne in glory.
And that ought to be a prime motive
for the church in every activity to which
we're called in our evangelization, in our missions,
in suffering what we need to suffer with
each other as the church.
We're willing to be a community and suffer
the loss of privacy and open our lives
to humiliation being found out and all the
kinds of things that only take place in
community because we know that except there be
community, how shall there be refuge?
How shall there be any saving of this
remnant people that cannot be the activity of
single individuals?
It has got to be the work of
a corporate expression of his body who have
really been tempered before the suddenness of that
need comes.
And we're willing to suffer.
That's the worst kind of suffering is what
we experience in the church.
But Lord will bear it if it has
anything to do with your being enthroned in
the place of glory.
And in verse 32, And before him shall
be gathered all nations, and he shall separate
them one from another as a shepherd divides
his sheep from the goats, and he shall
set the sheep in his right hand, the
goats on the left.
Then shall the king say unto them in
his right hand, Come, you blessed of my
father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from
the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry, and you gave me
food.
I was thirsty, you gave me drink.
I was a stranger, you took me in.
Naked and you clothed me.
I was sick, and you visited me.
I was in prison, you came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him saying, Lord,
when saw we the hungry and fed thee
or thirsty and gave thee drink?
When did we see you a stranger and
took you in or naked and clothed you?
When did we see you sick or in
prison and came to you?
And the king shall answer and say unto
them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as
you have done it unto one of the
least of these, my brethren, you have done
it unto me.
Then shall he say unto them on the
left hand, Depart from me, you cursed, unto
everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his
angels.
For I was hungry, you gave me no
meat, I was thirsty, you gave me no
drink, I was a stranger, you didn't take
me in naked, you didn't clothe me sick
and in prison, you didn't visit me.
Then shall they also answer him saying, Lord,
is it interesting that they say Lord?
Anyone can invoke that word.
But to invoke it in truth is to
be righteous.
And to be righteous is to be sacrificial
to his brethren in the hour of their
final extremity even if it should require your
life.
Righteousness is not a little complimentary term.
It's a designation of an ultimate kind.
Because righteousness is God.
And here are people who have come to
such union with him that inadvertently that they
could not do otherwise whether they recognized these
broken and despairing and naked stripped people as
being the brethren of the Lord they could
not withhold giving them food, clothing, drink.
Because righteousness compels it no matter the consequence.
And what a reward.
A place in his eternal kingdom.
But the others who fail to see, fail
to acknowledge, they look the other way.
Something like the precious German man in Berlin
that I met years ago when I was
a full gospel speaker and who lived through
the Nazi time and he said, I looked
out of my apartment window and there below
in the Jewish neighborhood where I lived the
truckload of brown-shirted Nazis had come with
their armbands and began to kick in the
store windows and pull the Jews out of
their stores by their beards and force them
to clean the sidewalk with a toothbrush and
kick and punch and humiliate and terrify the
children.
I said, you looked down there and you
saw that?
I said, what did you do?
He said, what could I do?
I pulled the curtain down I pulled the
shade down and I walked away.
The whole church worldwide is going to have
an opportunity to pull the shade down and
walk away or come out of its safety
and its own comfort zone and come down
into the place where Jews are so being
treated and identify with them and put their
bodies even in the way of those who
are their oppressors.
That's beyond sentiment.
That's identification.
That's Shem not able to do other than
what he did with his father and now
cannot do other than what he's doing to
the sons of Shem to the line of
Shem that has come to its final degradation
and humiliation before it shall ascend itself to
its own glory as being central to all
nations.
Then shall he answer them in verse 45
saying verily I say unto you inasmuch as
you did it not to one of the
least of these you did it not to
me and these shall go away into everlasting
punishment but the righteous into life eternal.
Well, the scholars have disputed who are the
brethren to whom Jesus alludes.
I think the text itself answers the question.
It's obviously not the church because the church
is represented both by the goats and the
sheep who both say Lord to be found
among all nations.
The brethren then are some other entity who
are experiencing such tribulation that it has left
them hungry and naked, thirsty and cold.
And all nations are judged gives evidence that
this is not local.
This is not confined to Germany and Poland
and Central Europe.
This is global for God is sifting Jews
throughout the nations.
We are in all the nations and we'll
find ourselves in nations where we were not.
That the nations themselves will be judged by
their response to us in the calamity of
our last days desperation.
I was a stranger you took me not
in naked and you clothed me not.
And for some reason maybe in context with
Noah naked and exposed lying in his tent
in shame exposed before God before his own
kin even before the mocking powers of the
air that he had to be clothed.
That the issue of nakedness is more than
just an apparel.
It's more than just keeping the chill off
your body.
It's a spiritual provision that has to do
with the essential dignity of the one who
is naked who has been made naked and
left destitute and helpless in his weakness.
So the righteous are those who will not
only feed the Jew and feed them more
than food feed them prophetically with an explanation
of why it is that they are passing
through such a final time as this.
The church will prophetically be able to communicate
an explanation for the Jew who will be
taken in sadness without any understanding of why
this has befallen him.
So we will feed them in more than
one way.
But we will clothe them also in more
than one way.
They will be naked.
They will be stripped.
They will be barren.
And we will be putting clothing on their
backs.
And I know a place in Denmark right
now where their whole attic and barn is
full of clothing.
And someone has said to them why don't
you distribute it already to the needy and
what are you storing it for?
No, we'll not touch it.
It's being reserved for Jews in flight in
some future time through our wilderness location in
the out of the way place that we
occupy in Denmark.
So physical and actual clothing is not a
thing to be despised and will be a
significant provision.
But somehow in the context of what we're
discussing in these days it takes one thing
to put a shirt on a man's back.
It takes another thing to put a garment
upon him that clothes him in his nakedness.
And that's not something that can be done
except by sons and daughters of Shem.
And I don't know what I'm talking about.
I've never before said this.
Mark knows it.
Any who has ever heard me I've never
before ever spoken and used that text with
this kind of observation.
I'm on a new ground and that's a
prophetic ground and I'm willing to speak it
out without having but a partial understanding of
what I'm talking about trusting that if God
is in this wanting to communicate something of
an utterly symbolic kind he'll do so even
now with us.
What does it mean?
What did it mean for Shem to clothe
his father's nakedness?
Why couldn't he have waited for the man
to sober up himself and to take a
garment of his own and get himself fixed
up and come out?
Why did he have to go in in
the extravagant way that he did walking backwards
holding this cloak this garment upon his shoulders
and draping his body?
It had to do with something more than
my father might catch a chill.
It had to do with something essential that
there's something chronic there's something foundationally wrong with
a man being exposed and naked not to
the elements but to the powers of the
air to the powers of darkness who want
to celebrate that nakedness and want to gloat.
I don't have a word for it I
just sense it I intuit it that the
Lord himself seeing Adam and Eve recognizing their
nakedness Why did you hide from me?
Because we knew we were naked and we
were afraid that something comes with nakedness of
fear something uncalmly something unnatural that's deeper than
words that the Lord had recognized and well
understood and did not think it extravagant to
make them a covering of skins.
What are you showing me?
They walk naked and they see a shame
it's the issue of shame Reggie is directing
us to Revelation, chapter 16, verse 15 Behold,
I come as a thief blessed is he
that watcheth and keepeth his garments lest he
walk naked and they see his shame Revelation,
chapter 16, verse 15 You know, Saints, we
have to admit this is novel this is
a line of thought that is totally unfamiliar
to us I mentioned this, I think, yesterday
Nakedness and shame are contemplations and modes of
thought that are completely incompatible with the modern
mind In fact, in the modern mind shame
is to be exalted in and nakedness is
to be exhibited The gay parades of San
Francisco and New York City and all of
the major cities this is what they are
They display their flesh they exhibit their nudity
with as much as they can to be
uncovered and those pagan festivals are sanctified and
established by the government of those localities because
they dare not oppose the political power represented
in that gay liberation movement This comes into
the common culture So our miniskirts become more
mini and now not only are we exposed
to them but now our navels and our
teenage kids going to school are dressed in
such a way that their midriff is totally
exposed and it's a commonplace That's quite appropriate
today in the classroom What will be the
next stop?
Nakedness, nudity because there is no shame Thank
you, Lord Inger herself is bringing the punctuation
The same one who will cover their shame
are the same ones who have identified with
the stones and the rubble of a fallen
Israel and have compassion upon her dust The
same one who is capable and responsive in
that way for that will be the same
ones who will be jealous to cover the
nakedness of Israel in her humiliation Because they
are servants My servants who have take favor
upon her stones and have mercy upon her
dust My Shem-like ones if I can
put it that way And so with what
garment shall we clothe them when we see
in them the Lord as you have done
it unto the least of them even so
much as one of them you have done
it unto me Which one of us would
not lay down our life to see the
Lord covered?
Which one of us would go to the
farthest lengths to save him from an unnecessary
shame of exposure if we in any way
could How many had that impulse as they
watched him on the cross naked to cover
him that he would have even in his
last agonizing moments at least this much respite
that he doesn't have to be nailed there
in a way where he can't even cover
himself with his own hands and has to
be boldly displayed as naked before his own
orthodox people Could there be a more sinful
thing than to suffer that and he suffered
that that our nakedness might be covered that
he became our great kapora and our great
covering and you know what I want to
suggest and I hardly know what I'm saying
that the only garment that can cover his
brethren the least of his brethren in those
days is that garment which is our garment
the garment with which we ourselves are clothed
our willingness to take off our garment to
lay aside our privilege to share their shame
lay aside the dignity of our own Christian
profession is the garment alone that will cover
their essential nakedness because your garment is so
much the statement of yourself that's why the
department stores and the fashion houses have so
much to do with what people wear what
will the teenagers wear you cannot know what
goes on behind closed doors in in firms
that produce clothing or sell it Gap and
Old Navy and you name them it's big
business it's multi-billion dollar business to design
something that this generation of youth will wear
and how long will they wear it?
until the next fashion comes and then they
dispose of what was former you know that
black kids, what will they do to get
a pair of the newest Nike sports shoes
not that they're without a pair now, but
it's not the most recent Jordan pair or
a certain signature of a certain athlete or
a certain shirt or a certain, when you
go to New York my heart goes out
of breaks when I look at the black
youth there they're all in uniform you know
they're living on welfare or they have low
incomes but what they're paying for their clothing
is extravagant and what is their clothing?
it's a billowing sweatshirt or some kind of
thing outside their pants with not jeans, but
like what do the workers wear where you
put your hammer?
carpenter pants carpenter pants overalls overalls coveralls, except
it doesn't go up to your chest but
they're big and very baggy and then it
has to be accompanied with a hat turned
backwards but over the head first is a
bandana and then jewelry of the most ostentatious
kind so that those who have never ever
named the name of Christ have huge crosses
bulging from their commodious chests they wear a
uniform and if you're not in uniform you're
a dead man you're an object of despising
because you're not appropriately dressed the power of
fashion and garments and clothing is a remarkable
statement in our contemporary culture but there must
be a spiritual corollary they're playing upon something
that is instinctive and making it perverse in
a physical sense that is material and has
to do with the billion dollar prosperity of
these companies that peddle that merchandise but there's
still something that we need to recognize about
covering we will clothe them with the garment
of righteousness and I think somewhere in Revelation
it says the righteous garment of the saints
the garment of the saints is their righteous
acts will we have a garment to lay
and I can tell you this much just
feeling my way through this prophetically whatever that
garment is it will not be a garment
of convenience it will be a garment of
cost and will we have it to give
if that garment is the garment of our
righteous acts will we have had such a
history at that time that we have something
to lay upon them or will we ourselves
be threadbare and maybe the unrighteous who are
condemned to the fire reserved for the devil
and for his angels have avoided seeing the
least of his brethren because they know intuitively
that they have not to give what is
required brother in the back are you in
here Revelation 19 somebody read that verse for
us and to her was granted that she
should be arrayed in white linen clean and
white for the fine linen is the righteousness
of the saints precious and in Revelation 3
.17 it says because thou sayeth I am
rich and increased with goods and have need
of nothing and knowest not that thou are
wretched and miserable and poor and blind and
naked I counsel thee to buy of me
gold tried in the fire that thou mayest
be rich in white raiment and thou mayest
be clean that the shame of thy nakedness
do not appear and that thine eyes and
anoint thine eyes with eyesalve that thou mayest
see ok Chris and with Ruth and Boaz
Ruth came in with Boaz sleeping and was
to uncover his feet and to cover herself
with the wing of his arm Amen ok
that last word in an indictment of the
church is where we presently are and if
we're to be what we need to be
in that last days it needs not to
be taken to heart we're naked and we
don't see it and as you say that
allow me my indulgence of a recent episode
in Brooklyn where I was invited to speak
and brought such a word such a climactic
such a pivotal word that I would say
had it been received it would have been
the turning point for that entire congregation that
entire work in Brooklyn with the largest Jewish
residential population in New York City but the
word was refused the word was ignored I
even subsequently have written a letter to the
black the Hispanic pastor who is called an
apostle as well as a pastor to say
the whole issue of your apostleship rests in
the receiving of that word which I know
in my heart was never received you gave
it only scant attention and dismissed it in
fact you are occupied with your building program
and the stately figure that you are from
the platform well dressed and what I have
to believe is not just off the rack
suit but tailor made to fill the whole
silhouette with great attention and in fact as
I remember looking upon his cuffs which are
not just buttoned cuffs but the kind that
Clinton likes French cuffs they are monogrammed his
monogram is on his cuff and I want
to say point blank I find that Lord
forgive me totally incompatible with all that the
word apostolic can be understood to mean you
cannot have your monograms on your French cuffs
and yet be an apostle there is something
there that is totally contradictory but he has
come into a kind of conventional wisdom of
a religious kind that says religious success is
predicated very much upon appearance on what kind
of visage, what kind of demeanor, what kind
of thing you project in the way you
carry yourself and how you are dressed and
I know myself on many occasions over the
years where I am brought into some contact
with a pastor either I am going to
be speaking at his church or he is
considering having me and the first thing he
does is look me up and down I
watch his head move up and down how
is this man dressed and unfailingly I am
not dressed as I ought but he is
making an assessment on that externality and he
himself lives in that pseudo reality I want
to say if he continues and guides the
church as a model that church will have
no garment to lay upon Israel's nakedness in
that day when they become the least of
these my brethren so we've got to spurn
the other the one in order to obtain
the other I don't think there will be
a garment of righteousness that's finely woven in
righteousness except we spurn what the world wants
to put upon us that is so seductive
and filled from page to page in catalogs
and you can't go into a store and
I marvel at the faith of the commercial
community and their sales of this material that
they believe people are actually going to come
and this stuff is going to be sold
evidently and they're succeeding this last day's episode
that is the conclusion of the age that
brings the king out of his self-imposed
confinement in the heavens that he might take
his throne and perform his judgments will depend
upon a return to Zion of the redeemed
of the Lord who come to a revelation
of him in their final extremity of exposure
nakedness and shame by what comes to them
from outside themselves, they will be inert, they
will be helpless, they must be because they're
Jews and they cannot be for themselves out
of their own self sufficiency or the whole
purpose of God is lost, it must come
to them outside themselves and from another and
from another from whom they would least expect
it Gentiles and poor Gentiles because when I
spoke in South Africa to the Christian Zionist
congregation and they looked at me with steely
eyes shooting daggers at me when I said
the day is not too distant when your
Jewish community will be in flight for its
life from Johannesburg and and one of the
other places, they begin with the sea, Cape
Town all the places of affluence and significance
that Jews enjoy, they will be suddenly uprooted
and be compelled to flee, their backs are
to the sea and I said pray for
me, I'm leaving tomorrow for Zimbabwe and Zambia,
black Africa where I will be preaching this
message to the black church in Africa for
your Jewish people will be finding their way
through that remote African wilderness that is so
so depleted so poverty stricken, so bare the
death rate, the malnutrition in Africa is atrocious
and yet that people will take these Jews
in and give and share with them some
measure of what little substance they have where
the pock, the holes in the road, dirt
roads are so deep that a car can
fall in and never be seen again and
a definition of drunkenness is someone who drives
straight you know a man's drunk if he
drives straight because any man who's got his
senses will be avoiding these remarkable pitfalls but
it's through that kind of wilderness that these
Jews will be passing and what they receive
from black hands this touches me what they
will receive from the people who are looked
upon as socially inferior and looked upon with
disdain and contempt even by Jews in their
superiority will be the very instrument of God
for their deliverance and their salvation and succor
that they might go from Cape Town to
Cairo and from Cairo to Zion through such
extravagant sacrifice and love as a black saint
will minister to a Jew only because they
are sons and daughters of Shem themselves they
have transcended their own hermetic origin and have
come into an identity that is only to
be obtained in the realm of spirit and
will be tested and expressed as it yields
to the least of these his brethren what
only it can you'll have to hear this
tape again I hear what's coming out of
my mouth, it's too marvelous it's too well
spoken I'm beside myself because we're touching mystery
of mysteries of the last days where the
church is called to be the church and
that one final demonstration of what we perform
in that one moment is the statement of
all of our moments that have preceded it
that one thing will test us, it will
sift us, what will we do because in
doing it we're not going to obtain the
applause of those outside of us who desire
to see Jewish humiliation continue unto death and
they'll reward us with imprisonment and we will
be the ones who find ourselves hungry and
in jail and naked because we have extended
ourselves to the least of these his brethren
because that's what righteousness is righteousness is not
something that is extended out of convenience but
out of sacrifice and when God has a
people like that he has a people like
himself and when he has a people like
that the whole destiny of the church has
come of age it has come and now
the deliverer can come out of Zion and
take transgression from Jacob for he has achieved
in his church what was intended as it
has been demonstrated in their conduct for the
least of these his brethren because the least
of these his brethren are our brethren also
not only when they're cute and when we
admire their unpebbly accomplishments and the establishment of
a state in a half century and all
of the other kinds of things that are
objects of admiration but in their lowest degradation
in their shame, in their judgment in their
scandal we identify with them Romans chapter 11
beautifully touches that verse
31 even so have these also now not
believed that through your mercy they also may
obtain mercy for God hath concluded them all
in unbelief that he might have mercy upon
all that's right chapter 11 verses 31 and
32 we also as the failing church will
be the object of God's mercy that he
might conclude us all in mercy we'll never
have a vantage point of superiority over the
Jew for we are just as defunct, just
as failing just as collapsed in our requirement,
in our call as they have been in
theirs right to the end and in fact
if we can be to them what we
ought as the sons and daughters of Shem
what can it be but other than the
mercy of God you had something else in
connection with this text that you showed me
at the outset of the break from the
scripture that was in Micah chapter 5 and
I'm not sure how much time we have
but Micah 5 is the well known passage
about the ruler that comes out of Bethlehem
but there's more to it because in that
passage in that cluster of verses it spans
both advents of the Lord but particularly I
believe it was in verse 3 if I
can find it there's that wonderful little preposition
that eschatological preposition until the time when she
which travails and yeah there it is if
you're familiar of course I don't need to
review with you the passage is about Bethlehem
and the ruler that comes out but going
back catching quickly verse 5 it talks about
the sin of Israel in the rejection of
the testimony that ends in their own being
scattered coming under siege when they have smitten
the judge of Israel then in Bethlehem of
Ephrathah though you be little among the thousands
yet out of you will he come so
that establishes the the identity of the one
spoken of in the balance of the verses
but verse 3 particularly is the one I
want to call your attention to therefore will
he that is this ruler of God give
them up until and there's that word until
the time that she who travails has brought
forth then the remnant of his brethren shall
return unto the children of Israel and going
on and he that is of course the
ruler from Bethlehem shall stand and feed in
the strength of the Lord in the majesty
of the name of the Lord his God
for now shall they children of Israel abide
now Israel is in the land in covenant
obedience to continue forever for now shall he
the ruler from Bethlehem be great unto the
ends of the earth so who is the
remnant of his brethren if it's not in
fact that people who are in the wilderness
the scripture says who well when the woman
is driven out from the face of the
serpent this is Revelation 12 but there's a
people who is distinguished as the remnant of
her brethren who keep the commandments of Jesus
this would appear to be the persecuted remnant
who because of their costly identification with the
woman is coming under the rage of the
dragon the Satan and so the whole scenario
shows a time of travail we know Jacob's
trouble is a time of travail but Isaiah
66 talks about two Zion's two Zion's that
will travail and we know from Revelation 12
there is a heavenly Zion that has a
first travail that burst the man child and
this we know is in the middle of
the last seven years before Jacob's trouble so
the church must come to travail and it's
evident then that Jacob's travail that is to
say the natural branches will travail only subsequently
to the accomplishment of the heavenly Zion's travail
and what is that travail inspired by the
imminent and evident commencement of the days of
great tribulation individual stands for the whole of
that people and in their history what we're
doing is expressing an overdue honor to which
they have been denied back through their history
the history of the church we're not just
clothing that one who is before us but
symbolically he represents an entire people who have
suffered our neglect and our indignity so it's
a remarkable act of great significance to clothe
the nakedness of that one that comes before
us in the last days we have to
conclude and I want to read onto the
tape just some final note that I scribbled
to myself that it's on the tape I
don't know that I understand it myself but
so you'll have the opportunity here to consider
it about the issue of the garment that
covers nakedness in which I wrote here shall
we clothe the nakedness of our Jewish brethren
any less expensively than by that which the
Lord clothed Adam and Eve with skins required
blood it will not, cannot, must not issue
out of our convenience but our very lives
our own garments not just the external thing
but what really constitutes our truest identity is
what we will lay upon them, our very
salvation that which we are ourselves that with
which we are ourselves covered as Shem used
probably his own covering for his father our
redemptive faith communicated not in or as doctrinal
superiority but as saving grace being willing to
lay aside our garments that distinctive act that
Jesus performed when he washed the feet of
his disciples and so minister the grace of
God unto salvation and in that the Jews
will know and hear and receive the statement
of the Lord, I have blotted out thy
sins like a cloud and like thick clouds
thy transgressions so the redeemed of the Lord
shall return to Zion with everlasting joy on
their heads, mourning and sighing shall flee away
thank you Lord so hasten the day Lord
again we ask that however modest this morning's
time was and what has been expressed experimentally
putting something out feeling our way in it
that it's an on time exploration a beginning
statement and something that you'll attend and you'll
clothe it and make it my God a
significant contribution in bringing the church to the
place for which we are destined so we
thank you Lord, bless us you have blessed
us with your precious thoughts let them continue
to dwell and to percolate in our souls
bring them again to our thought, our memory
our consideration, let it affect our conversation one
with another that even as we're speaking and
touching on certain of the points that were
only hinted at and only suggested something breaks
an illumination an understanding, a further insight over
which we gasp and receive and go on
in that greater light thank you Lord seal
this first statement, this first exploration of the
significance of the Tent of Shem and its
great climax my God, at the end of
the age with the lost sheep of the
House of Israel who are covered in their
nakedness, the least of your brethren by the
daughters and sons of Shem, whom you have
fitted, even by this beginning word we bless
you, we give you praise, honor, privilege what
shall we say Lord, for so great high
calling in Christ Jesus and the grace my
God to work in it, the mercy thank
you Lord, bless us together that we shall
rejoice for the King enthroned in Yeshua's name
we pray Amen Amen OK open our ears
give us expansive hearts enlarge us to be
able to hear and to receive difficult things,
new ways of perceiving and we thank you
and give you praise Lord that we shall
be enlarged because of these days so to
whom much is given much is required and
as our brother reminded us, the time is
short and the dogs are already straining at
their leashes and barking and hounding and waiting
to pour out their vitriolic hatred upon the
Jew and tear so mercy Lord spare those
that are your own the remnant of Israel
cut those days short as you said that
you would and fit this place my God
to be a place in which they can
find refuge and succor, explanation that we can
feed them my God not only in their
physical hunger but their spiritual, give them explanation
of a kind that makes all their suffering
understandable and more than that even worthwhile and
that we can clothe them with the same
precious garment wherewith we have been clothed and
that their nakedness should be covered and their
shame my God not seen so thank you
for the destiny of this very place and
others that you're raising up like it in
this nation and among the nations and will
set in motion even because of these days
and what was spoken here as the word
of it shall fall upon those who thought
themselves strange that they had this kind of
thought about refuge for Jews and it seems
so out of question how could they think
that as that woman told me in San
Antonio, Texas the Lord told me to make
a big dining table I was ashamed to
tell my husband we had no practical need
but I knew she said it would be
for Jews in the last days so now
I'm encouraged after hearing you Art to go
ahead with what I thought was a little
flim flam of a notion out of my
own subjectivity may believers be encouraged to do
the righteous works of God and form that
garment by the words that come forth in
these days that will show them that they're
not queer, they're not strange, that that was
the Lord already putting in their spirits thoughts
that pertain to a soon coming future we
bless them where they are Lord and let
your word become a work in this earth
that will be to the eternal praise of
your glory in Jesus name Amen