Well, bless the Lord.
It's great to come unprepared, and I hope
you'll not misunderstand me.
Unprepared without a canned message, but utterly prepared
in the Lord.
We ought always to be abiding in Him,
and to be instant, in season, and out.
And I feel especially abiding this morning, really
percolating in the Spirit of God, which is
probably more for your sake than for mine,
considering the weight of the somber word that
I have, which is at the same time
both somber and joyous.
Only the treat that the saint can enjoy
is a paradox of the faith.
That something can be weighty, demanding, furious, solemn,
and joyous at the same time.
And the subject that's in my heart this
morning by the Holy Spirit is just that.
It's the subject of martyrdom, and that's not
just an academic subject.
That's not something that ought to stir our
curiosity as an historical phenomenon that has occasionally
been the experience of a few saints here
and there over the centuries, but as the
normative and definitive experience of the Church in
every generation, and especially ours at the end.
And one not to be contemplated with a
shudder like, why me?
But one that needs to be embraced with
joy for the great privilege which is ours
to obtain a crown, and not to come
before the Lord on that day bareheaded.
So, I want to just click in the
text that I very rarely look at, but
I think he wants us to consider together,
Acts 6 and 7, which is the description
of the first martyrdom of a New Testament
saint.
Because the things that are at the first
are also the things that are at the
last.
I guess you're familiar with that, aren't you?
That if you want an insight into the
definitive and enduring things of God, Church, faith,
we look at them as they were given
at the first, where we have the pristine,
first, clear, authentic statement of that thing.
And we'll have a better apprehension of what
will be also at the end.
When all of the muddy things in between
are taken away, and we come back again
at the end of the things that were
at the first.
So what was at the first was not
only original, but true.
So this is an hour of restoration, and
I have this sense, that we are on
a collision course for such a climactic and
glorious conclusion of the things that were signaled
and indicated at the first.
And that the issue of martyrdom is the
very definition of the Church in its truest
constituency and makeup.
And it's not how we perhaps will end
our lives.
It's not the issue of our final moment.
It's the issue of all our moments.
That the Church that has made its peace
with this kind of a conclusion, and anticipates
it, and lives in the view of it
as a forthcoming reality, is not the Church
that knows how to die.
It's the Church that knows how to live.
It's how we live as martyrs that settles
the issue, not how we, in one final
heroic moment, give up the ghost.
You understand, Saints?
The final moment is the statement of all
our moments.
And all our moments are to be called,
to be lived, in a certain kind of
apostolic and prophetic sense.
And that, indeed, is true living, indeed, and
true witness.
And the Lord said, He didn't mean distributing
tracts.
He didn't mean button-holding someone on a
bus.
He meant, You shall be martyria, you shall
be martyrs unto me.
Because to be a martyr is the final
and the true witness.
Anything less than that is an incomplete and
inadequate witness of him, who himself is the
firstborn, and the first and the true martyr
of God.
And everything that witnesses to him, witnesses to
that.
And the great Saints who have not loved
their lives unto death, were in that tradition.
And I'm of such a mind this morning
to believe, that they're even around us invisibly,
in this very service, who are not yet
complete without us.
If we believe that and knew that and
sensed that, how different would our services be?
To know that we're moving toward something.
And every teaching, every study, every proclamation of
the Word, is a preparation for that end.
Which is both glorious and eternal in its
consequence.
So who's the first martyr in the New
Testament?
A Jewish fellow by the name of Stephen,
who was a busboy.
And that should not be lost to our
considerations.
Because we might romanticize and think that the
great apostles and the great martyrs of the
faith, were men of gigantic and heroic proportions,
and that we somehow are eclipsed.
And that it does not mean us.
We need to really understand and know, that
they were flesh and blood, like as us
in every way.
Ordinary and yet extraordinary, in the great genius
of what the faith is.
Stephen was a later on table.
Let's read that in chapter 6.
Can we turn off the fan or the
air conditioning?
I just suffer a little discomfort for this
message.
There's something contradictory about pondering martyrdom under the
comfort of an air-conditioned room.
It would be far more appropriate to sweat
a bit, not out of fear, but just
somehow that's it.
Hallelujah.
Why does my spirit always breathe a sigh
of relief when man's technology is silent?
There's more in that sense than meets the
eye.
We have paid such a price already for
convenience that does not befit the noble theme
of martyrdom and does not prepare us for
it.
We need to declare war.
We need to willingly embrace the things that
are inconvenient, so all the world subscribes to
them and will give us every reason why
we should not deny ourselves.
What does it say that for a want
of a nail, the shoe was lost on
the horse, and for the want of the
horse being hobbled, the battle was lost, and
for the want of the battle, the war
was lost, and it all went back to
a nail.
The very issue of how we will act
in a final and ultimate moment of trial
is not going to be decided then, it's
going to be decided now.
Over the issue of air conditioners, an extra
hamburger or sundae, and a sensual indulgence that
all the world sanctions as legitimate may well
determine whether we will stand or fall before
pressure and tension and demand.
All of our hours need to be seen
in this context.
All of our present living needs to be
seen as pertaining to the end, or we
are not properly living.
We need to have an apostolic view that
sees our present moment in the context of
the whole, excuse the language, panoply of the
face, the whole tremendous extension of the things
that were from the beginning and are to
the end, or we don't see a right.
If we don't see like that, we will
have a very narrow and culturally and nationally
determined view of the present.
We will be locked in time, locked in
culture, and we will lack a witness because
we will be speaking to people from the
very same vantage point of perspective by which
they themselves see.
In a word, we will not be coming
to them from eternity.
We will not be speaking to them from
their heavenly place.
We'll be very much at their level, sharing
their values, and the only difference is we
have a peculiar vocabulary, that's religion.
And you shall be witnesses unto me is
more than doing witness for me.
It's a being thing.
It's a quality of life.
It's a condition.
And out of that flows everything.
But we Americans, God bless us, are so
doing oriented.
The doing is the easy part.
The being is what is costly.
And if our doing does not come out
of our being, it's not apostolic, neither is
it witness.
So this is an invitation to being a
witness, to being a martyr.
And it's a thing to which we need
to give ourselves now.
So in chapter 6, we read in the
first verse that the number of disciples were
multiplied, and there arose a murmuring of the
Greeks against the Hebrews because their widows were
neglected in the daily ministration.
Then the twelve called the multitude of the
disciples unto them and said, It's not reasonable
that we should leave the word of God
and serve Cain.
Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven
men of honest report, full of the Holy
Ghost, of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom
we may appoint over this business.
For we will give ourselves continually to prayer
and to the ministry of the word.
And when they came, pleased the whole multitude,
and they chose Stephen, a man full of
faith and of the Holy Ghost.
That's our introduction.
I tell you, it gives us such a
stabbing insight into the character of the early
church, the apostolic church and the glorious church.
That even something as ordinary and as mundane
as the waiting on tables required men full
of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom.
I tell you, if we had such men
in our midst today, we would exalt them
to such a high place in the purposes
of God and of the church rather than
the waiting on tables.
And I believe that nothing is small in
the kingdom of God.
Nothing is ordinary.
Nothing mundane.
Do you see that?
The word mundane actually means earthly, ordinary, dirt,
grit.
But it's in the ordinary places that apostolic
character is formed.
How would you have liked to minister to
the Greek and Hebrew widows who are murmuring
with a sense of rivalry and competition that
was already beginning to affect in the early
church and had it continued, may well have
enervated and destroyed that glorious body.
That's all it takes is a little leaven
to leaven them to lumps.
And for the Gentile widows to feel that
they were getting shortchanged and that the Jewish
widows were being much more handsomely treated by
the Jewish church.
And that's all we need in a situation
explosive with racial and ethnic differences to have
done in the church from its very inception.
And you don't have to imagine that the
enemy was right there at the elbow seeking
at every opportunity to sow dissension and to
bring down the church even at that level.
And that's why the apostles themselves who were
the wisdom of the Lord said, Seek ye
out among you men of good report and
full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom.
Because this is more than just serving.
Because the small things are the great things.
And because in the kingdom of God there's
no thing small.
Everything is fraught with consequence.
Everything has an eternal weight if we but
think.
The only reason that we are lax and
hemic and, what's the word, complacent, that's it.
Is because we don't see ourselves at that
level.
We don't see ourselves involved in the things
that are eternal.
We need to see things.
And if Stephen was anything, he's a man
who saw.
Because when we come to the end of
the chapter 7 we're going to see that
he saw a heaven and Jesus standing at
the right hand of the Father.
He really saw.
And I believe it was not a seeing
of the final moment but a seeing of
all his moments.
I'm such a privileged man.
You can come up after the service and
think to me, you know how privileged I
am?
I have been in East Germany many times.
And I'll never forget the experience of meeting
a saint there.
Maybe just an ordinary wife of a pastor.
One of the areas of Eastern Germany most
known for its occultic and witchcraft history and
tradition.
And this woman, in my every conversation with
her, always had her hand upon her heart.
Her conversation was continually studded with references to
God, to the Lord.
And as she would say these things, I
don't know if you ever looked at me.
She was always looking up, always looking up.
I wondered what she was seeing.
When I looked up, all I could see
was a cracked ceiling with peeling plaster.
But evidently, she saw something above and beyond
and true.
And she saw it continually and she saw
it whole.
I'll tell you, if you let this come
into your spirit and seep your eyeballs from
apostolic texts like this, you'll be ruined, charismatically
speaking.
You have made such a cheap merchandise of
the Holy Spirit.
To improve the atmosphere at our meetings or
our defunct denominations, the glory of the Holy
Spirit, saints, is given for much more.
And I'm wondering whether indeed we have received
that spirit in fullness.
It's the very spirit of martyrdom.
It is the eternal spirit by which Jesus
himself gave his life about Christ before God.
What we have is something else and something
other.
I'm dubious about it, whether in many times
indeed it's even the spirit too glibly, too
cheaply obtained and the evidence of the projection
of it does not seem to transform people
and bring them to the proportion of the
kinds of men that the Church insisted upon
for the mere serving of Christ.
They chose Stephen, a man full of faith
and of the Holy Ghost.
And in verse 8, Stephen, full of faith
and power, did great wonders and miracles among
the people.
You know, I just want to say this
for the first time after being a believer
for over a quarter of a century.
The word full, are you underlining that in
the text this morning?
You'll see the frequency of the word full
with references to Stephen.
It's as if that is the thing to
which we must come.
But not to be full and just to
have the Spirit of God in part is
to be somehow disqualified.
It's full or nothing.
It's all or nothing.
That is, when we are full, that somehow
the resonance of God and the power of
God and the reality of God issues.
Something about full.
What does that mean?
Take that word like a wine onto your
lips and into your tongue and don't be
too quick to swallow it down.
Let it lay there and feel the prickly
part of it and then let it slip
into bring a quickening warmth.
Full.
How come we're not full?
Because there's always a competition between spirits.
There's the spirit of the world and the
spirit of...
How many times have I enjoined young Christians
to cut their hair and let go of
the little thing at the nape of the
neck or to take that cruddy thing off
and around their lips that they call friendship
bracelets or whatever they call it and the
various other kinds of cultural adornments that somehow
we have become so accustomed to that we
don't even wince at the feeling.
I even heard reports from a sister who
took off a starved baby and I'm Jewish
and felt an enormous exhilarating relief and a
rush of the Holy Spirit in the being.
I'm very careful what goes on my neck
and my body.
Touch not the unclean thing.
Be you separate, sayeth the Lord and touch
not the unclean thing and I will receive
you and be a father unto you and
you shall be my sons and my daughters
sayeth the Lord God Almighty.
Dear children, if we're not full of the
Holy Spirit it's because it's to one degree
or another that we have exceeded and yielded
ourselves to the spirit of the world and
it's displacing the space that should be occupied
wholly and entirely by the spirit of God.
We need to periodically examine ourselves and see
whether indeed we are in.
These things are written for our admonition.
God forbid that we should think that a
man like Stephen was some extraordinary giant of
a heroic mold whom we could never think
to be.
He was a flesh and blood man like
you and me.
But he was a sanctified man.
He was a set aside man.
He was a separated man.
He was full of the spirit of God
and of wisdom.
And if he needed to be that merely
to serve table at the commencement of the
church's history what do we need at the
end of that history?
When the powers of darkness will clash with
the powers of light in a final apocalyptic
fury in which it says that the blood
of the martyrs will swell the harlot of
Babylon and that the beheaded of God will
cry out and ask Lord how long before
we are vindicated?
This is the picture that the Scriptures give
both in Revelation and in the apocalyptic Old
Testament book of Daniel of what the end
will be where the saints will be worn
out and overcome.
And God gives the powers of darkness the
right to overcome the saints.
That's what it says.
I'm not making that up.
What does that mean and why would God
allow it?
It's something that we ought to ask because
the time is not far off when those
realities will be taken.
You know what I've been saying to the
church for decades in the Western world?
Shame on us.
The scandal of the absence of persecution.
Shame on us that the quality of our
Christian life is so timid, so predictable and
so inoffensive that many of us can go
through an entire Christian lifetime and never ever
experience opposition, scandal, reproach, persecution.
The very nature of the true apostolic faith
guarantees a recoil against us from the world.
And the fact that that has not been
our experience is an indictment to our shame.
We are living beneath the apostolic standard.
But we would have elicited and provoked that
against us long before.
So I'm privileged to see East German women
who are continually looking up to heaven.
And I was privileged last year this time
to be in Zimbabwe, Africa and to be
a speaker at the memorial service of 16
saints who had been hacked to death two
years before in that place.
They would put you in the shade, every
one of you, in terms of their beauty,
their linguistic ability, their multiple skills and professions
and qualifications of whom the world was not
worthy.
We're not talking about some ranchy ex-drug
addict Jesus freak off the wall who has
just come into the kingdom.
We're talking about people who could have made
their mark in the world professionally and chose
to forfeit all of that to live in
a remote section of the former nation of
southern Rhodesia where it was troubled and where
after an eight-year civil war a black
government has been formed and most of the
whites fled for fear of what would come.
But those whites that remained were essentially Christians
and they remained because they were moved by
the Holy Spirit to remain and to work
out the destiny of this nation being willing
to submit to a black government to take
all the risks of loss of land and
loss of life while the tribe that was
out of power was yet infiltrating the countryside
trying to bring down that administration regime and
particularly attacking white farmers and they moved into
that area to establish a community of reconciliation
and to live unarmed and to trust God
for their safety and for their security.
And we're doing a remarkable job after several
years in that area fish farms and chicken
coops and lifting up the whole economic standard
of an area that had been depressed economically
for years.
And in that success one night abruptly and
that's the way it comes in it comes
abruptly it comes when we expect it to
leave and how we respond and react in
that moment that comes to us suddenly and
without anticipation is what the whole faith it's
not our amens and hallelujahs today that is
the statement of our condition it's what we
are in a final moment of extremity that
will tell us and that moment is called
how will we act when we're taken unaware
and suddenly great threat of our very life
is upon us was that situation and not
even the dignity of being shot to death
but being bludgeoned and cut to death by
an axe one at a time taken with
their wrists handcuffed and barbed wire and brought
into a building and all through the night
all you could hear was the thump of
an axe with not one howl or screech
or scream in pleading for their earthly existence
I'll tell you that the black militant Marxist
oriented racist radicals who did them in were
witness to ultimately and not one of them
will stand before God with excuse that they
had never seen the glory of God in
the faces of the it was my privilege
to be again at that place for the
memorial service to see the burned out buildings
where I had been years before when I
first met these people with whom I was
in correspondence and to know that the subject
of my opinion was not academic that it
had come this close to home that I
was in actual correspondence with those who had
died and in fact the report came to
me when I was in New York City
casing the joint for God feeling that I
have a call in my life to my
own Jewish kinsman in the city of my
own birth the great Babylon and I said
to a brother who was with me when
he heard the report of their death I
said the next report will not be so
distant it will not always be coming from
behind the Iron Curtain or in Africa or
in the so-called dark places you're going
to have it right in the streets of
Honolulu and Manhattan and San Francisco and all
the places where the filthy, fierce powers of
hell cannot abide the presence of the glorious
and radiant sanctified I stayed in Johannesburg at
the home of a wealthy Jewish pastor whose
Christian wife was related to the family one
family had seven members wiped out in one
fell swoop and this man was unsaved and
a leader of the Jewish community in fact
the very personification of all that the Jewish
community exalts as being religious and ethical and
moral and accomplished but unsaved and he said
that you know these people used to bug
me one of my best friends was among
them who before he was converted was just
a great fellow and great fun and we
used to go to the bar and knock
back a few drinks and he was a
womanizer one of the boys but after he
got saved he became intolerable he was always
witnessing to me and poking a string in
my chest and you need to be saved
and I couldn't stand it and it irritated
me and I was sorry for the loss
of the friendship but he said toward the
end these people were progressively changed and he
said toward the end their faces had become
radiant and they were no longer working on
me the way they used to but even
in their silence they were much more convicting
than in the earlier days when they used
to needle me and when he said that
their faces were radiant I thought of this
text because it says in verse 15 and
all that sat in the council looking steadfastly
on him saw his face as it had
been the face of an angel you want
to avoid monitor them just keep on looking
the way you're looking which is nice but
it ain't radiant you allow God to move
you toward the place of having an angelic
face and you won't wait long to experience
persecution there's a world that is still at
enmity with God and the darkness hates the
light and still wants to extinguish we really
have a choice this morning about how far
we want to go with God and how
full of his spirit we really want to
be and I'll tell you where the radiance
of God is compounded and established in the
faces of the saints it's in the church
but not a church of the casual sitting
in pews not the church made up of
individualists who come to send on Sunday to
sit alongside one another it's the church of
a people who are together a church of
a people who go from house to house
daily baking bread a church of a people
who receive the word of God the truth
spoken in love who will exhort one another
daily while it is yesterday who will reprimand
and reproach and evict the word and exhort
and rebuke if they have to because none
of us in this filthy world where the
daily appeal is coming forth from Potiphar's wife
come lie with me you've got it coming
none of us can resist that and stand
before God single-eyed and pure and clean
except by the strength the encouragement the exhortation
the prayer the example that comes to us
in the body by a like-minded people
who are moving in the same way what
kind of church do we want to be?
and I want to tell you something to
move from New Sunday services and mid-week
Bible study to the kind of apostolic thing
that I'm describing cannot be obtained without a
suffering it itself is a suffering it's a
humiliation it's a being found out and though
God does not explain how he even came
to have a face like an angel and
I want to tell you a victory Acts
6 and 7 is not the very next
day after Pentecost though it's only three or
four chapters after the falling of the Holy
Ghost on the day of Pentecost we might
be reading now of events that took place
five, six or seven years after the falling
of the Spirit of God and so the
sanctifying work of God had been going on
in the church and in the body to
bring forth men like this to such a
degree so full of the Spirit of God
and so full of heaven that they looked
like angels not sitting in the Sunday field
but when they were being faced by their
detractors and their antagonists who were ready to
kill the very life out of them there
his face shone like an angel when this
Reverend Johannesburg said their faces were radiant I
said oh that's it now I know why
they were murdered we want to keep ourselves
from the martyrs course all we need to
do is continue to be ordinary and to
be satisfied with a Christianity that is a
mere succession of children and enjoy a biblical
word and some praise and worship and go
home and live lackluster lives but if we
want to glorify God and be a witness
unto him who is going to allow the
antichrist forces at the end of the age
to overcome the sin then we need to
live quite differently now because it is in
being overcome that we overcome it's what we
exhibit in that final moment of extremity that
is the whole issue of our faith and
that all of the years and days that
preceded are moving toward this one end remember
Jesus on the cross and that dumb centurion
who was a professional murderer and had executed
numbers of people on the cross standing by
and watching Jesus in the final agony and
paroxysm and suffering of his death but he
saw something in the ultimate extremity of that
suffering that he had never seen in another
that when Jesus yielded up his ghost when
he prayed for those who had brought him
to the place of death when he did
not retaliate in kind to those of his
own people to whom he had come who
were taunting him and saying come down from
the cross and we'll believe you you've saved
others, yourself you cannot save that was more
true than they knew to himself he would
not that when he died in this remarkable
way something was revealed that this dumb Gentile
centurion who had never been to Hebrew school
never knew anything about the scriptures or the
Messiah or God's plan of God or his
salvation or his redemption cried out even in
his ignorance at that glorious demonstration truly this
was the son of God now listen saints
we're very close to coming full circle there's
going to be one end of the age
of demonstration of exactly this same phenomenon but
this time it's the church on the cross
this time it's the body of Christ following
its master with us or he goeth that
leads us to the same place of final
confrontation and suffering and death as well what
we shall demonstrate in that extremity of the
final moment is the whole issue if we
screep, if we howl, if we say why
me and how come and if we wring
our fingers it's lost what did Stephen exhibit
in his final moment let's turn the page
to chapter 7 when he had reviewed the
entire history of the Jewish people with the
doctors of the law and his detractors he
was giving them a summary of the whole
meaning of the faith and finally came in
1st Luke 47 and 48 about the house
of God and that God does not dwell
in temples made with hands of prophets men
whose whole religious life is staked in a
temple made with hands they are religious functionaries
thinking they're serving God and actually upbraiding him
because they think he speaks against the holy
temple he was challenging and threatening their whole
religious life their place of preference their prestige
their gratification so will it be again at
the end of the age when the religious
and political forces symbolized by Jezebel and Ahab
come together in one final powerful configuration and
will be challenged by us, not only by
our speaking but by our very presence because
we represent another kind of temple in which
the Holy Ghost dwells heaven is my throne
and earth is my footstool what house will
you build me sayeth the Lord verse 49
what is the place of my rest hath
not my hand made all these things and
then something breaks out of him terribly impolite
confrontational, not at all politic he should have
been wiser and not agitated these people to
such a place that he almost guarantees that
they're going to rise up against him in
a bitterness and fury would you want to
know a thing?
he did not deliberate one word of what
he said, very much in the same way
that I'm not deliberating any words that I'm
saying I'm trusting the Holy Ghost to bring
forth his own burden without my deliberation and
I've already been warned, you know where I'm
going from here?
what is the warning?
there's only but a six day interval in
Minnesota Israel, fearfully beset upon nations for ten
days he can pray November 15th to 25th
I don't know that I'm going to come
out alive and I'm not just speaking about
the possibility of a gas and nuclear war
I may not come out alive from just
confronting the saints I've already been warned prophetically
in Australia on this trip it's going to
be an exceeding and I'll be standing before
rulers and leaders but not to take sources
that God will be with me as he
was with Stephen listen to these words saints
and understand it's not a man speaking but
very God use stiff necks and uncircumcised and
hardened ears the proudest loftiest men of the
religious establishment who think that they have it
all together coming to a moment of truth
and confrontation to hear something about their condition
as God himself sees it use stiff necks
and uncircumcised and hardened ears you do always
resist the Holy Ghost as your fathers did
so do you which of the prophets have
not your fathers persecuted may have slain them
which so before the coming of the just
one of whom you have been now the
betrayers and murderers this guy's pulling out all
the stops were they actually there in the
hour of the crucifixion of Jesus were they
actually there in the hour of the crucifixion
of Jesus whether they were or whether they
weren't physically he's indicting them that there's an
unbroken continuum of sins with their fathers which
they shield and for which they have never
repented that implicates them both to the death
of the prophets and Jesus and you know
how come his statement is true because now
they're going to be responsible also for his
we need to see as God sees and
men need to see as God sees that
they're going to repent before his appearance we
need to persuade men knowing the terror of
God but I'll tell you what, unless our
mouths are yielded to the Holy Ghost to
speak the things that he once spoken they're
not going to be confronted looking forward to
it for a while is a lot easier
than this are you saved brother?
do you know God has a plan for
your life?
the benefits that you'll receive by by accepting
Jesus is a lot easier to hear than
you stiff necked and uncircumcised of ears and
of hearts how long do you continue to
oppose and to grieve the Holy Spirit I'm
not saying that this is for us it's
a necessary word, here's what I'm saying whatever
the word is the one before whom we
stand or the people before whom we stand
it needs to be God does he have
the full perception of our vessels that he
can speak without compromise whatever is in his
heart no matter what the consequence is for
ourselves and I'll tell you what, that as
pastors and ministers if now we are afraid
of the people of God, if we're cowardly
in the church if we're afraid to say
something lest it offends and we lose the
favor of people in the congregation who might
walk out and leave us and go to
another congregation and take their tithes and offerings
with them, how shall we stand before the
enemies of God?
To stand before God and not before men
is the posture of a martyr not in
a final moment but in all of our
moments I like to tell you stories of
what God has had to say through his
mouth over the course of these years of
which I'm not invited back and often if
men could they would stone me for it
I'm not celebrating myself I'm as ordinary as
season I'm a high school dropout but I'm
saying that the church of the end of
the age must have this character or else
it will find itself another kind of church
in opposition to this one and it will
be called apostate you don't remember a single
thing else that I'm saying this morning, do
you remember this?
that cats predicted that at the end of
the age there's only going to be two
kinds of Christian entities the apostates which is
the greater number of those calling themselves Christians
who are content with mere predictable Christian services
and a much smaller remnant people called the
people of God and the one will hurt,
hate, oppose and persecute the other and kill
us and claim they are doing God a
service dear children, hear me I don't give
a rat what it's like outside today and
how beautiful Hawaii is and how idyllic and
how romantic and does not lend itself to
these apostolic verities this is the truth of
the matter, no matter what we see with
our natural eyes and we will be wise
to live in accordance with this rather than
with the things that are I'm predicting that
if we will not give ourselves to the
radical prep of God to bring us daily,
every bit more to becoming the students of
our generation we'll find ourselves with those who
will stone them and there'll be no place
in between no middle or neutral ground except
the one radical place that our every day
is determining which toward which of these polarities
are we moving every day and in every
way and in every decision we're moving toward
the one or toward the other there'll be
two classes of people at the end one
with the name of the Lord of God
in their forehead and others with the mark
and I don't think it's something embossed in
the last moment but day by day and
action by action we're submitting to one or
the other and the day of the Lord
will reveal which final identification don't think that
we're incapable of perception of moving from the
faith even while we continue to pronounce the
truth of the faith we meet each other
desperately if we are to be the people
of truth, full of the Holy Spirit and
of wisdom and of power and knowing that
if we elect that it puts us on
a collision course with opposition persecution, suffering and
when he said those things and when they
heard those things in verse 54 they were
cut to the heart what an eternal moment
came to those men they were pierced through
and they had one of two choices to
fall at the feet of Stephen and say,
men and brethren what must we do to
be saved or to pick up stones to
kill them how'd you like to be that
kind of preacher that your preaching is of
such a kind that it leaves men with
only one of two alternatives is it a
cry out, what must I do to be
saved because they are pierced to the heart
or because they cannot abide what you're saying
to put their fingers in the ears and
to run on you with one accord and
to crush the very life out of you
how'd you like to be a preacher we
all like to see men fall before God
repentantly we all like to see the powerful
work of the Spirit to bring people to
a place of truth but I want to
tell you something if we're not prepared for
the other response God will never give us
for the one or the other if we're
not prepared for those who will rush upon
us with one accord will not be used
for those who will fall at our feet
and cry out what must we do, it's
the nature of the faith they were cut
to the heart but they didn't repent but
they gnashed on him with their teeth vexed
unbearably by all this man represented if only
he were not there if only we did
not have to contend with him if only
we were not indicted by his angelic face,
by the conviction of his speaking, by the
anointing of what he speaks, the penetration if
only we could go on with the sham
of the kind of Judaism that we want
to perform, which we enjoy and people are
willing to pay for everything would be okay
but his very existence blows the whistle on
us and makes the thing that we celebrate
to be a lie that's the way it
shall be at the end the very presence
of God's people will condemn and reveal what
is false and I'm sharing in these days
how as a young believer after being saved
in Jerusalem on a year's leave of absence
from the teaching profession to come back to
California where I was one of the leading
faculty radicals with a Bible under my arm
and say Jesus is the answer have you
ever had the experience of losing all your
friends in one night as I have had
when they had a homecoming party for me
and I shared my testimony and I never
saw such anger and bitterness and vexation as
erupted that night by a man whom everybody
loved when I was a filthy adulterer like
themselves the next day in the car with
a Jewish woman at whose home I was
staying, a colleague at the school that she
broke out into such a vile and filthy
bitter vocabulary that I opened the door and
got out of a moving car how come
people love me as a Marxist as a
communist as a humanist as a pragmatist, as
an existentialist and hated me as a believer
I'll tell you that the evidence of their
bitter violent hate was the greatest and first
evidence I have had that I had entered
another kingdom in fact and so I was
one day in the cafeteria with one of
these Jewish colleagues, a woman and she was
so bugged by me I'm always witnessing, you
know how clumsy we are when we're young
in the Lord and always wanting to say
something for God and by the way, the
entire church that I attended was filled with
converts out of my classes, the whole youth
section many adults, I had an adult night
class student evening stay like that, because I
was too dumb to know that there's a
difference between the sacred and the secular to
me, life and death was always at stake,
even in the history classroom and that the
Holy Ghost is not to be reserved for
Sunday services, but right into the secular place,
the power and the penetration of God, where
I asked students in a discussion about life
after death, what is the remedy and none
knew, and someone remembered that when we studied
the history of Israel there's something about sacrifice
and blood and I took my Bible right
above the desk and read Isaiah 53 under
the anointing of the Holy Spirit in a
high school classroom in Oakland, California and said
to the students by the same anointing if
you will not come to church, God has
brought his church to you and gave an
invitation, and guess what happened, 17 trembling hands
went up to receive the anointing but I
didn't last too long I was a teacher
in that system I got promoted by God
Oh dear saints the world needs again to
see the apostolic faith the apostolic passion the
apostolic integrity that will not be satisfied with
the world's definitions and categories of sacred and
secular and break right through because eternity is
at stake and men are perishing and the
Lord is at the door and we need
to persuade men knowing the terror of God,
it will cost us everything, when they heard
these things they were cut to the heart,
they gnashed on him with their teeth but
he completely opposite, what a contrast the religious
and the ultimately spiritual, but he being full
of the Holy Ghost again looked up steadfastly
into heaven and saw the glory of God
and of Jesus standing at the right hand
of God that was more than just a
little ceremonial picture Jesus at the right hand
of God is a statement of the government
of God from heaven that determines all things
that on earth, including our death you know
why those saints in Zimbabwe could be hacked
to death without one shriek and one howl
and one plea for their lives, they came
in the middle of the night and they
were taken by astonishment without preparation and never
thought to arm themselves because they believed that
God was their defense because if this was
happening then God himself had a part for
purposes for which they did not need explanation
that some mystery was being worked by the
sacrifice of their death that did not have
to be explained to them, though they were
doing good, it was abruptly terminated in the
most vicious and cruel way, how would you
like to be the elder of that fellowship
and come into that building and see the
dismembered remains of your congregation how would you
like to be a husband and see your
wife in pieces and come in there and
receive from the hands of men something that
God has ordained, or do you believe that
what comes from the hands of men is
ordained as well come on, confess up you
saints even now are you victims of circumstance
or is God sovereign king in heaven and
at the right hand of the father even
now if you could look steadfastly being full
of the spirit and see an open heaven
and know it, because you will not believe
it now, if we don't get the right
income tax return, or the promotion at work,
or getting snubbed by a boyfriend or girlfriend
or this goes on to that, and we
think it's men and we think it's circumstance
and not God, how should we be prepared
for the final and ultimate expression of the
sovereignty in the world Pontius Pilate had Jesus
in the palm of his hand and the
Lord was silent aren't you going to defend
yourself don't you know I have the power
to release you or to execute you and
Jesus said in that wonderful piece you could
do nothing against me, except it was given
you from above come on saints, we need
to walk through this world that is going
to become increasingly vile and vicious and violent
particularly against the saints of God whose faces
are angelic, with a complete equanimity and peace
and security you could do nothing, except it
was given you from above, and if it's
given you from above I can bear it,
because the one who allows you gives me
also the grace to bear it.
Well if you know the history of the
martyrs, and when they talked with one another
in their cells and said when you're brought
to the stake and they ignite that fire
if there's a grace of God that enables
you to endure the suffering and the pain
raise your hand to us you know what
happened when those saints were put were bound
at the stake and they licked that vile
thing beneath them and the flames crackled and
the smoke went up and the enormous heat
and their flesh began to sink while they
were yet alive and the fire lent their
cords from their arms, they raised their hands
and they praised God in the midst of
their suffering, and when the powers of the
air, the principalities and the powers of darkness
and the world rulers of this darkness see
that they're finished what more can they do
to intimidate and to threaten when people in
the midst of the suffering that is the
consequence of the faith praise God in the
heart they're not at all intimidated or threatened
today because to praise God in comfort and
security and being well fed and the beauty
of this environment is one thing but to
praise God in the midst of our sufferings
and our afflictions that's the final testimony, that's
the final witness not only to men but
to the powers of the air that they
cannot abide nor entertain it destroys them.
Will we perform it on that day?
It will depend on how we're living on
this day.
He being full of the Holy Ghost looked
up dead sadly not just in that moment,
all of his moments he looked up all
of his moments he saw the sovereignty of
God.
He was never a victim it didn't have
to be explained to him why that he
being full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom
and doing so much good for the church
and performing signs and wonders should be abruptly
taken while he was yet a youth isn't
that wasteful?
Couldn't God have used him?
Why did he have to be taken like
that?
He never asked.
But there was one man before whose feet
the garments were laid of those who stoned
Stephen to death.
A bitter, vexed Jew a Hebrew of the
Hebrews a prized student of the Rabbi Gamaliel
a persecutor who was breathing out murderings and
threatenings to the church himself who saw something
that day beyond religion that was such a
prick and such a goad he could not
swallow it down it haunted him, he couldn't
sleep at night seeing the angelic face of
Stephen saying, lay not this into their charge.
What would we have liked to say in
the last moment when the stones are thumping
into our face and breaking our noses and
the blood rolling into our eyes and we
can taste our own blood?
Are we going to be that magnanimous to
say, lay not this into their charge or
let those filthy brack-a-bracks have it
you dirty so-and-so isn't everything in
us, rising up in a flesh that is
normal and human and soulless want to get
back to retaliate, let them have it but
the last thing he said was, Lord lay
not this into their charge and having said
that that's the way God describes his death
he wasn't killed, St. Scott took him he
had fulfilled the purpose for which God had
given him in the earth and then when
I was living in New York and I
was a missionary to the Jews some Jewish
brothers came and said we've encountered the JBL
on the streets today in New York City
Jewish Defense League terrorists doing God good by
killing us and they said that you're under
Hitler's thought, that you and Moshe Rosen are
ticketed for assassination and I don't know when
I said to my wife you know that
I'm ticketed for assassination and she said don't
worry about it God's not finished with you
yet I'm not worrying about it they can
do nothing against me except it be given
from above and it will not be given
until I have finished the purpose until I'm
sent which includes speaking to you this morning
these words how much more precious will these
words be when you will one day and
perhaps in the not too distant future hear
the report of my death at the hands
of men vexed by the same spirits of
darkness as did in Stephen and every saint
of God in every generation merely to punctuate
the importance of this word for you when
my earthly course is finished when I have
run the course that it set before me
then I'll fall asleep and not before you
know what my privilege is?
with them who have fallen asleep in the
faith where Paul says in 1st 1st Timothy
where he said I'm not happy to be
ignorant brethren concerning them which are asleep that
means to have died in Christ and not
of old age or from ulcers or cancer
or tumors or the various other consequences of
sinful living those that have fallen asleep in
obedience to God in suffering and in death
concerning them which are asleep that you shall
not even as others which have no hope
for we believe that Jesus died and rose
again even so them also which sleep in
Jesus will God bring with him for this
we say unto you by the word of
the Lord that we which are alive and
remain just barely survive is what those words
actually mean those of us that are barely
alive who survive the intense persecution of the
church at the end times unto the coming
of the Lord shall not come before or
precede them which are asleep for the Lord
himself shall descend from heaven with a shout
with the voice of the archangel with the
trump of God and the dead in Christ
shall rise first we have such a privilege,
such a crown such a reward so heavenly
a thing and we'll be the first to
rise and greet the Lord in the air
and forever to be with him and to
rule and to reign with him while others
sleep for a thousand years who are content
with mere Sunday Christians oh bless the Lord's
name what's your choice this morning and how
far do you want to go you want
to be full of the Holy Ghost and
the wisdom and of power you want to
have a face that shines like an angel
and will guarantee a reaction against darkness you
want to be sent by God to such
places of confrontation to speak such fearful things
that men will either fall before you in
repentance or gnash upon you with their teeth
and there will be no in between you
want to be among the persecuted or the
persecutors such decisions are needing to be made
now how far do we want to go
to be full of the Holy Spirit and
be separated from the spirit of this world
and touch not the unclean things and he
will receive us hallelujah let's bow before Stephen
Scott let's decide something today and transact something
today I didn't make up this message was
it my choice I thought to speak something
else entirely about Israel but I want to
tell you dear saints that the issue of
martyrdom is the issue of Israel for only
a martyr witness will move my people to
jealousy nothing less and indeed to expend mercy
to them at the end of the age
will require your life precious Jesus thank you
Lord great martyr witness that you yourself are
to call us with the high calling of
Christ Jesus and Lord I think it's in
your heart this morning to do something with
certain individuals in this room once and for
all not with regard to their final moments
but all their moments that they can stand
before men without fear because they fear you
only will speak the words that your spirit
puts in their mouth without regard to how
it is heard how is it understood, how
is it received whether it's appreciated, liked or
not liked settle something today my God with
sons and daughters who choose this course who
welcome your disciplines who need their air conditioning
need their fix need their sensual provision which
is legitimate to have that is compromising and
want today to pull out the plug willing
for inconvenience and will not hold their lives
as dealing to themselves will love it unto
the death thanks transact something now settle it
what this faith is and what it's called
is because we're only hours removed from the
taking away of a veil that has disguised
the naked enmity and hatred of the powers
that crucified Jesus who have but a short
time and will ventilate their full fury on
the church and upon the Jew in the
last days where will you be?
Settle it welcome the discipline and the dealings
and the trials of God to shape his
character in you live by the spirit be
full of the spirit the eternal spirit by
the power of which Jesus gave himself without
stop hallelujah call on him let him know
what your decision is whatever it takes whatever
it takes my God may I look steadfastly
up to heaven may I be full of
the spirit may I always see that heaven
is open may I always see Jesus at
the right hand of the father may I
always recognize that everything is from the government
of God from the throne of God in
heaven that nothing is circumstantial, nothing is haphazard,
nothing is accidental every suffering, every trial is
from you for your eternal good, for your
glory for the praise of your name fill
me with that spirit in full abandonment I
remove from my body from my mind, from
my apartment from my dwelling anything that is
of the world that makes your spirit to
be quenched I don't want to be a
groovy believer who is all this and heaven
too I want to be radically separate hallelujah
give up that death gask even now and
whatever comes comes by the sovereignty of God
who loves us with an everlasting love and
whose grace is sufficient for all oh that
he might have such witnesses on Halloween in
Honolulu a people without fear whose life has
already been given up and it hardly matters
by what form and at what time the
body shall be required hallelujah thank you Jesus
hallelujah hallelujah let the cloud of witnesses about
us my God rejoice for this morning rejoice
for the work of your spirit in your
world rejoice that a transaction was made this
morning that brings us closer to the fulfillment
of the end for which they wait may
the powers of darkness that brood over Honolulu
shudder who have had an undisputed sway over
this city and over this land to distort,
to pervert to tempt to intimidate, to threaten
to have a cruel day because there has
not been in the midst a church of
an apostolic kind whom they are required to
fear who do not hold their lives as
dear unto death Lord settle something today for
this congregation put something into their foundation that
shall never dissipate away let people who have
been coming not come again because it has
gotten just a little too radical for their
taste but let those people remain and abide
and add to them such as shall please
you to have my God in this city
and in this midst a people for your
men a witness people let's
pray out from your seats make a statement
before the witness of men, the witness of
angels, the witness of God the witness of
the invisible witnesses and the witness of the
principalities and powers who have threatened you, intimidated
you jerked and manipulated you, tempted you break
their filthy power by a word out of
your mouth that says I will yes Lord
this call is for me