I've known a lot about God in my
seven years following Him.
And the two years before that, when I
was praying to Jesus and God to reveal,
to reveal Himself to me, the things that
I've learned most about God that have impressed
me the most is His patience and kindness.
The things that, in the beginning of my
walk with God, that I got hung up
on were the things about Him that were
most like my own personality.
It's almost like I created God in my
own image and likeness.
Being Jewish, and that's not an excuse, but
it's...
Being Jewish and being kind of a hyperactive
kid and an outgoing person and a very
vocal, speaking, opinionated, brash, outgoing person, I found
myself many times looking at the parts of
Scripture that showed men of God to be
the same way and said, There you have
it.
I'm just like them.
The problem is that I found a lot
about myself that wasn't like them at all
and a lot about them that wasn't like
me.
And I used to just, well, you know,
I'll grow up.
At least I've got boldness and zealousness.
And all kinds of other things.
But the boldness was not the boldness of
the Lord.
And the zealousness was the zeal of youth,
emotional youth.
And it wasn't godly.
And although God used it, just like He
used Balaam's donkey, that's one of my favorite
expressions.
God can use Balaam's donkey, He can use
you and me.
He redeems just about everything.
He takes the fat and the skinny and
the black and the white and the ugly
and the pretty and the squeaky voice and
the deep baritone and He uses it.
And the hee-haw of the donkey.
And uses it.
And that's an ongoing theme through the Bible.
God used young prophets and old prophets and
old ladies and widows and little girls and
everybody.
He never used the same type of person
or else you'd start thinking that type of
person is the kind of person God wants
to use and then there'd be first class
Christians and the second class or the first
class Jews and the second class.
Pharisees tried to do that.
The priesthoods of modern Christianity, different sects, have
had priesthoods, they try to do that first
class.
They all wear a certain thing and they
act a certain way and do all kinds
of traditional things.
And they try to separate this heavy duty
Christians and the laity they call the people
that aren't part of the priesthood.
Well, this article that we're going to go
over, this will be printed most likely in
the next newsletter and it will be refined
probably a little bit between now and then.
This is one of a series of articles
that we're going to be teaching through the
school and offering through the newsletter as part
of a teaching tape series.
The format of the way it's being taught
is to read through the article and stop
and enlarge it and fill in some of
the hole.
And you might think, well, why is he
reading to me?
I can read myself.
Well, it's because I want to deal with
each point, each scripture and then stop and
talk about it and we'll have a chance
for questions at the end.
The main reason I wrote this article was
because I knew that there are a lot
of people out there looking at me and
saying, you know, just like I looked at
Jeremiah or Ezekiel and said, wow, they were
heavy, they were intense, they sometimes were harsh,
so I can be harsh too.
And there are a lot of people out
there looking at me and saying, well, you
know, he's written some pretty black and white
things and said some things in pretty blunt
ways, so I can be blunt and black
and white too.
And the main reason I wanted to write
this article was not to say, hey, look,
you know, what we've done in the past
is wrong, so don't read anything we wrote
before, but was to say there's a lot
more to this and I've learned a lot
more about it in the past year and
I want to give a balancing message to
say that yes, there are times when God
would have you yell, but he would have
you yell from a gentle, loving spirit.
And that's what this whole article is about.
The reason I call it For Prophets Only,
it's kind of a trick title, on the
cover of the newsletter we're going to have
some flaming cartoon character with a sword in
one hand and a lightning bolt in the
other, you know, and smoke coming out of
his mouth, and it's going to say, if
you think you're a prophet, see page 22,
or whatever page it'll be, and then you'll
turn there and it'll say For Prophets Only.
Now that'll make all the prophets want to
read it, and all the people that aren't
will want to read it out of rebellion.
One of those reverse psychology things.
That doesn't mean you're all in rebellion, that
you don't think you're a prophet.
It just means simply that this is for
anybody who wants to be a godly prophet,
or a prophetic person, or somebody that wants
to speak forth the word of God with
unction and power and effect.
Because that's what a prophet is.
It's somebody who speaks forth the word of
God with anointing, power, and effect.
And as George Whitefield used to pray, God,
let the word of God go forth like
a red-hot pitchfork into a tub of
butter.
You get that vision?
Something right out of the kiln, right out
of the oven, and it's red-hot, and
you throw it into a tub of butter.
Instant melted butter.
House of pancakes time.
Okay, let's pray.
Lord God, it is not with human wisdom
that we want to come to your word
tonight.
It is not with homilies and cute little
stories and funny things.
We want to come with reverence and awe
before your throne.
We want to find out more about your
heart, your spirit, your ways, and your desires
for us as Christians.
It's not with cleverness of speech that we
want the word to go forth, but with
the power of the Holy Ghost.
And God, I know there's a lot tonight
that's going to be from personal experience, and
these are dangerous.
This can be dangerous because when we personalize
the word too much, God, we can sometimes
read our own views into your word, and
I don't want to do that tonight.
I want to use your work in my
life as an example of discipline and correction
and softening.
And God, that is the most beautiful thing
about you in my book is that you
take hard things and make them soft.
You take old things and make them new.
You take worthless things and make them precious.
You take hateful things and make them loving.
You take sinful things and clean them off,
and though our sins be as scarlet, they
become as white as snow.
And God, it's our heart tonight to know
you better because of how you've worked in
a little life like mine, God.
And I want to just say now, God,
that it's you who is the center of
this study, not Keith Green or anybody else.
And so, Jesus, as you said, whenever two
or more gather, you'd be here in the
midst of us.
Please come, sit with us, let us sit
at your feet, and teach us the principles
of the kingdom of God.
I am but a child in your kingdom,
God, and you are the king of the
kingdom.
And so it's you who we want to
teach tonight.
It's you who we want to touch us.
So we ask this in Jesus' name, according
to your word and according to your pleasure.
Amen.
Turn in your Bibles to Luke 9, 54.
And we'll go a little bit before this.
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem from
Galilee, starting in verse 51.
And it came about when the days were
approaching for his ascension, taking up literally, his
taking up into heaven, that he resolutely set
his face to go to Jerusalem.
I think in the King James it says,
he set his face like a flint, you
know, straight ahead, not to the left, not
to the right.
He resolutely set his face to go to
Jerusalem.
He said, it's time to go to the
grave, and then it's time to rise to
the Father, the time for his ascension.
And he sent messengers on ahead of him,
and they went and entered a village of
the Samaritans to make arrangements for him.
And they did not receive him because he
was journeying with his face toward Jerusalem.
This needs just a little bit of explanation.
The Samaritans had a breaking off with the
Jews.
The Jews said that the place to worship
God was in Israel, was in Jerusalem, excuse
me, at the temple.
The Samaritans had broken off with the Judeans
right after Solomon's time.
Ten tribes went away after one guy.
I think it was Jeroboam.
One of them was Jeroboam, one was Rehoboam.
They rhymed so they could both read at
the same time.
And the other guy was the son of
Solomon, and he took over.
And there's a big long story about that.
But the ten tribes broke away, and Benjamin
and Judah stayed down there around Jerusalem.
Well, the Samaritans were very bitter about it.
It's just like we've talked about that.
They had the first church of worshipping in
Jerusalem, and they had a breaking off, and
it was the first church of worshipping in
Samaria.
And they had a breaking off, and they
wouldn't have anything to do with each other.
Well, the Samaritans, as you will find in
John, I think it's the fourth or fifth
chapter, he talks to the woman at the
well, and a lot of people get saved,
you know.
And it says here that they wouldn't receive
him.
And why?
Because he was going to Jerusalem.
In other words, he said to the people,
give us a place to stay and some
food to eat because we're on our way
to Jerusalem.
And they must have said, well, last time
he came and preached here, but he's going
to hold his meetings now in Jerusalem, and
we're anti-Jerusalem, so he can't even stay
here.
Okay?
They did not receive him because he was
journeying with his face toward Jerusalem.
And when his disciples, James and John, saw
this, they said, Lord, do you want us
to command fire to come down from heaven
and consume them?
That seems like a funny statement, but they
weren't laughing.
Neither was Jesus.
But he turned and rebuked them, and said,
in your side notes, if you have a
new American Standard, and said, You do not
know what kind of spirit you are of,
for the Son of Man did not come
to destroy men's lives, but to save them.
And they went on to another village.
Okay.
Now, it's pretty important that you understand something
here.
They seemed to believe that they could do
this.
They didn't say, Lord, will you command fire
to come down from heaven?
They said, Lord, would you like us?
Do you want us to do this?
Now, they were in his presence, and remember
before, he had given them power, given them
special anointing to go forth and heal the
sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, and
cleanse lepers.
Those were the four things he gave them
to do.
Heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out
demons, and cleanse lepers.
And he says, Lord, do you want us?
They were in his presence.
They figured, well, we could do that.
He could have us command fire to come
down from heaven.
That must have been a popular Jewish story.
Imagine that.
Your hero, Elijah, the guys come up, captains
of 50.
Remember that?
They came up and said, they said, Elijah,
are you there?
He says, who wants me?
Ahab wants you.
Oh, yeah?
If I'm a man of God.
If I'm a man of God, let fire
come down from heaven and consume you and
your men of 50.
You know, it's barbecued Samaritans.
So it happens three times, and finally the
last guy gets down on his knees and
says, please, don't barbecue me and the other
Samaritans that are with me.
You know, please.
And so God then speaks to Elijah and
says, don't be afraid.
Go with him.
Don't be afraid.
You know, you can just, you know, what
are you afraid of?
You know who he was afraid of?
A woman named Jezebel.
He was afraid of Jezebel.
And it's pretty incredible that the guys with
the swords, the chariots, didn't scare him one
bit.
But this lady scared him.
He didn't know how to deal with her.
That's another whole Bible study.
We won't go into that tonight.
Women have, well, I will say one thing.
Women have a deep, deep capacity for love
and a deep, deep capacity for evil because
they are emotionally based.
Many times they make their decisions which aren't
always rational from emotional feelings and reactions.
Therefore, when they love, they love deeply.
And when they hate, they hate deeply.
And they're scary.
What's more scary?
A papa lion or a mama lion guarding
her cubs?
In nature.
Papa lion, you know, he won't fight with
the vengeance that a mama lion will even
though he's bigger and stronger.
Do you ever, who was it?
There was one, oh yeah, Bill Maxwell, a
friend of mine.
He had a brother that was five years
older than him.
He said, and his brother used to come
in and hit him in the arm and
smack him across the face.
And he said, it was really hard to
grow up with this guy.
But his brother knew when he got really
mad, when Bill got really mad, that he
had to run for it.
Because Bill said, I just become crazy.
I just pick up the sink and throw
it at him.
I'd do anything, you know.
He says, I was small, but when I
got mad, I was much bigger than he
was.
Because he lost his mind, you know.
He lost his, suddenly he didn't see how
much bigger his brother was than him.
Suddenly he saw how much madder he was
than his brother.
And he lost all reason.
Well, that's the way it is with these
women like Jezebel.
They're more dangerous than 50 soldiers coming at
the door with machine guns.
At least Elijah was more scared of them.
But anyway, back to this.
They didn't, they weren't laughing.
They weren't joking.
They were serious.
And they believed that Jesus could give them
the power to do it or maybe even
that they already have the power to do
it.
And he rebukes him and says, you don't
know what kind of spirit you're of.
Now this is a great message because these
guys had been walking with, this is his
last walk.
This is Jesus' last walk.
It's the last year of his three year
walk with his disciples.
These guys had been through Jesus' ICT training
school for three years walking and talking and
living and giving and suffering and crying and,
you know, hiding and traveling around and walking
on water and telling storms to shut up
and all kinds of things.
For three years.
And apparently they thought they could get away
with this.
Not only get away with it but maybe,
because they'd heard Jesus really let the Pharisees
have it.
They'd say, how can you escape the sentence
of hell?
But Jesus never lifted up his sword or
never, you know, started punching people out or
anything.
He did make a whip once but it
doesn't say he whipped them.
It says he made a whip and drove
them out.
Well, maybe he did whip them.
Maybe he just started swinging it around.
I don't know.
But who was he whipping?
Pharisees.
Religious hypocrites.
That's the ones that really got his goat.
Let's go ahead and start reading through this
and then we'll stop and talk about it.
James and John got a sharp rebuke from
the Lord because they were of a different
spirit than the one Jesus was of.
Now that's important for you to know.
You don't know what spirit.
Jesus didn't say you don't know what kind
of a concept you're thinking about.
Or he didn't say you don't know what
deed you're suggesting.
He says you don't know what spirit you're
of.
The spirit of the flesh, maybe?
The spirit of...
Now remember what Jesus said?
God said, Vengeance is mine.
I will repay.
And Jesus said, when your enemy wrongs you,
turn the other cheek.
Somebody rips off your coat, go find him
and give him your shirt.
Somebody holds a gun to your head and
says walk with me a mile and go
two miles.
By this you'll keep burning coals upon their
head.
Jesus says, you don't know what spirit.
The Holy Spirit isn't leading you to do
that.
Okay?
He came to love and forgive, but they
were all ready to destroy those who opposed
them.
They forgot Jesus' injunction to love their enemies.
They were ready to kill theirs.
Oh, what a lesson there is here for
those of us who are prone to spiritualize
our own bitterness and anger.
How many of you have ever thought when
somebody wrongs you, God will get them?
You know, I've done that.
I mean, I have many times, and I've
been wronged, and I've been wronged.
These guys shouldn't have turned Jesus.
They were wrong for turning Jesus out.
Everybody agrees.
Jesus would have agreed.
And in another place, when Capernaum wouldn't have
him, they said, I woe unto you, Capernaum,
for Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah,
but somebody greater than Jonah is here.
How will you escape the sentence of hell?
He says, it's going to be worse for
you in the judgment than for Jonah.
He says it will be worse for you
than the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.
They got roasted royally.
But Capernaum...
But here, Jesus didn't call down fire.
He just opened his mouth, which is worse.
I'd rather have physical fire fall on me
than God speak to me like that.
I'd rather be burned over 90% of
my body and have a chance to heal
up or die and go to heaven than
have God turn to me and say, it's
going to be worse for you in Sodom.
Take your pick.
Spiritualize our own bitterness and anger.
There was another guy who did that.
Jonah was another guy.
He didn't mind the prophecy part.
He wanted to see the roasting part.
He wanted to see people shake and bake
in Nineveh.
He wanted to see the fire.
Man, let's see the fireworks.
So God makes a plant grow up by
him.
And Jonah goes, I like this plant.
It's great.
It's a nice shade overnight.
And he doesn't think, what plant grows up
overnight, right?
He doesn't think, maybe it's the Lord.
Jonah has a kind of thick skull.
He says, I'll escape God.
I'll buy a ticket to the Mediterranean.
So the plant grows up overnight.
And the next day, God, I love that,
God appointed a worm.
All right, worm reporting for duty.
Imagine when God appointed the worm.
All right worms, come up.
And they all stand up in line.
You, go and eat the plant.
So he goes and eats the plant.
And the plant dies.
And Jonah's all bummed out.
And he says, he wishes he could die.
And then he says, oh God, let me
die.
You know, I mean this guy, when God
chose prophets, I don't know with this one.
So, Jonah's all bummed out because the plant
isn't there and his air conditioner doesn't work.
And then, he's waiting around.
He says, 40 days.
And you know, Jonah's preaching was pretty heavy.
It wasn't, 40 days, and then it will
be destroyed unless you repent.
He didn't say unless you repent.
He didn't even offer a way out.
That was Old Testament preaching.
He didn't even offer a way out.
40 days, and then it will be destroyed.
And the king says, everybody's got to wear
sackcloth, even the donkeys, the doggies, the kitties,
even your canary.
Put sackcloth and ashes on everything.
Nobody touches food.
Perhaps, perhaps, God will see and turn from
what he's planned to do to us.
There's the right reaction.
Perhaps he'll turn.
Jonah's waiting.
40 days, 41 days.
Oh, God, I just want to die.
And God says to him, there's, I don't
know what the number is, 100,000 people
or something, plus many cattle.
I mean, God's saying, why should I roast
the cattle too?
I mean, listen, remember that plant?
You're bummed out.
You're really sad that plant died, aren't you?
You're good, I am.
And, well, I care about them.
They're repenting.
I'm not going to do what you said,
you know.
And this is when Jonah says to him,
that's why I didn't want to go and
preach to them, because I knew you'd relent.
I knew you'd turn around and forgive them.
That's what kind of a God you are.
Jonah, I don't know if Jonah went to
heaven, you know.
I don't know.
I mean, I hope you, I hope, you
know, God threw that lesson.
It doesn't say, it just stops.
It's like somebody tore a page out of
the Bible.
It's really frustrating me.
When I read Jonah, I get to there,
alright, now what happened?
You know.
But, there's enough about Jonah for Jesus to
use him as one of the examples.
God, Jesus says, and the sign of Jonah
shall be given, for just as Jonah was
in the belly of the whale three days
and three nights, so shall the Son of
Man be in the earth three days, and
then rise again.
Okay.
Oh, what a lesson there is here for
those of us who are prone to spiritualize
our own bitterness and anger.
James and John justified their desires by saying
they wanted to do just as Elijah did.
I want to be just like, I want
to be like John the Baptist, you know.
I want to just tell people, you serpents,
you brood of vipers, you know.
That's my kind of preaching, you know.
He was a prophet of God who called
down fire from heaven on his enemies.
They, too, wanted to be fiery prophets.
This article is sort of a confession.
I'll read this, and then I'll talk.
You see, I've been accused in the past
of being a prophet.
I must admit, it has kind of a
nice ring to it, the word prophet, but
I think it causes a lot more trouble
than it's worth.
I've struggled with this problem for around six
years, and it's quite a long time considering
that I've been only, that I've only been
a Christian for about seven.
Well, maybe I ought to tell, read the
story of how I became a prophet, okay?
Let's just, let's just go on, and then
we'll stop and I'll talk some more.
It all started in a small Bible school
that my wife, Melody, and I went to
during our first year as believers.
One of the teachers had recently been to
a seminar where the speaker had gone through
all the aspects of each of the gifts
and callings on men and women of God.
He had talked about teachers, administrators, and so
on.
The teacher in our little class that day
was very excited about sharing the aspects and
characteristics of a prophet to the class.
He started reading from his notes from the
seminar he'd been to, and he read things
like, prophets are very moody.
They are often very hard to get along
with.
They see things in black and white.
That's supposed to be black and white.
Somebody make a note of that there.
Black and white and might seem to lack
compassion.
They are often considered rude and brash, but
inside they mean very well and only want
to share the truth, but they don't seem
to mind if they step on people's toes
when they do it.
While our teacher was reading from these notes,
I'm sure he didn't notice the smile spreading
across my face from ear to ear.
Why, everything he was reading just fit me
to a T.
I just couldn't believe my ears.
At last, I had found my calling.
Moody and brash for Jesus.
To top all this off, when our teacher
was through reading, he turned to the class,
pointed his finger at me, and said, my
friends, we have a prophet in our midst.
He sure did.
Well, that was it.
I was hooked.
That's all I needed to hear.
It took the Lord about another five years
to completely deflate my head from the delusions
that that innocent and well-meaning Bible teacher
helped promote in my life.
A lot of what he shared was true,
but it certainly needed a good deal of
warning balance to go with it.
That is what I hope to share in
this article.
Okay.
Now, let me, let me, I really got
to tell you, by, let me tell you
what led up to this class.
Uh, I'd been in the church oh, about
six to eight months.
I'd been a Christian maybe six to eight
months.
And Melody and I went to about six
Bible studies a week.
We went to a Bible study on Monday
night, on Tuesday night, Thursday, Friday, and a
concert on Saturday, and church on Sunday.
So we usually missed one night.
And then that night we had people over
for dinner and witnessed to them.
We were so zealous.
We were so blindly on fire.
And we were on fire.
When we got saved, God saved us.
And I don't have any doubt about that.
And, uh, there were other things going on
in the church that were wrong.
There were people in the church that were
sleeping together that said they were Christians.
Famous.
I'm talking about gospel singers that if I
told you their name you'd know who they
were.
They were engaged to be married and they
were sleeping together.
And I knew they were sleeping together.
And Melody and I one night, we called
them up, you know.
We, her and I, we flipped the coin
and she lost.
And she called them up and trembling on
the phone.
And they caught them in bed together and
says, you know, the Lord wants you guys
to do this, you know.
And, uh, it's not pleasing to Him.
And they go, well, yeah, you know, we
know that.
So they went to the pastor.
No, they didn't go to the pastor.
I went to the pastor.
And I said, you know, this is what
we did.
You know, we called them up and rebuked
them, you know.
And I'll never forget his reaction.
His reaction was, well, you probably shouldn't have
done that.
You know, you probably should have done something
else.
You know, like it was kind of hard.
And so I was getting this reputation, you
know.
And then we went over, uh, we started
leading people to the Lord and we went
to this Bible study up in Laurel Canyon.
And, uh, at one of the Bible studies,
uh, we found out that some of the
guys that were new Christians were still smoking
dope.
And they were smoking dope and worshiping the
Lord.
And they were, uh, you know, they were,
they'd smoke marijuana and then they'd go to
Bible studies and wow, they really feel the
presence, you know.
And they're all stoned out of their gourds.
you know, we just, we just, I'd take
them aside and say, you guys can't be
dopers and Christians at the same time.
It's ridiculous, you know.
And so they started, like, shying away from
me.
Then when I came in the room, they
went out the other side.
And, uh, then one time we led this
girl to the Lord.
I mean, she really got saved.
And we went over to the house next
door where this Bible study was.
And they're all, all Christians.
I mean, they really, all these little, you
know, young guys had given their hearts to
God, but nobody had instructed them that they
couldn't do certain things and be Christians.
You know, there wasn't anybody wise enough around
in this circle of people to lay, to
lay the, the, the rules down.
The rules that, you know, there's no fornication
and you gotta get away from pharmacy and
all.
So, this girl's sitting, it's summertime, and this
girl, we lead her to the Lord.
She's about five hours old in the Lord.
She's sitting in a beach chair next to
the pool.
And, and the sliding glass door opens up
in the house and out comes this guy
stark naked going, Praise the Lord!
And jumps into the pool.
Skinny dipping for Jesus.
Yeah.
In our birth, in our born again suits.
And I just, I went over to him
and I said, you get out of that
pool right now.
I mean, like his father or something, you
know.
And, he just, he went inside and told
the guy that owned the house, you know,
this, this Keith Green guy, man, he's really
a bummer, man.
He's just really, he's really quenching the spirit
here, you know.
Now, I hadn't sung in the church or
nothing.
I mean, nobody knew I was a musician
or a singer.
I was, I laid low, I laid low
on that for about six months.
I didn't want to be known as a
singer.
I just wanted to be a good Christian.
And I laid my music down and what
happened was, you know, I didn't have any
respect for being a musician and I, all
I got was this reputation of being this
really hard nose.
You can't skinny dip and you can't smoke
dope and you can't sleep at the theater
before you get married.
And, I kept going to the pastor, these
guys are smoking dope and these guys are
doing this and, you know, they're skinny dipping
and, and, you know, this has got to
stop, you know, and I, this is ridiculous
and the pastor, you know, he'd been a
Christian about 15 years and he, he was
a little more gentle about it.
He'd go, well, you know, they're young and
they need to, I don't think what he
did was right.
You know, I don't think, I think he
was too soft with sin at the time
and he probably would agree at this point.
But, I didn't have any discernment or balance.
I didn't know, I was ready to strangle
him for Jesus, you know.
I was ready to start, I was ready
to start chewing on grasshoppers and run around
condemning them.
So, I hadn't, I hadn't been told I
was a prophet yet.
I was just jumping up and down all
over sinners.
And I was, you know, I was doing
things like at the end of church I'd
say, we're having an all night prayer meeting
at our house tonight.
Midnight fellowship, come on over.
And, you know, 10 people would come over
and we'd just sing and pray all night
until the sun came up.
We'd watch the sun come up.
Thank you Jesus for the sun.
Go to bed.
I mean, we didn't have any, anything.
So we, they, our church, they had this
little Bible school and we decided we'd go
to Bible school.
Well, you know, the problem with Bible school
is it started at 8 in the morning
and the first class was Greek.
You ever learn Greek at 8 in the
morning?
About 6 weeks later the Lord told us
to get out of Bible school.
Quote, unquote, told us.
I mean, we didn't, we didn't stay in
there too long.
But during the 6 months the damage that
I've told you about was done.
And it was the great damage of being,
and he read from this thing and he
came down to, you know, well, Keith, here's,
you know, he went to this seminar and
this guy went over what a teacher was
and what an administrator was and what a,
what a mercy shower was and what a
giver was and they said, well, Jesus had
all these qualities but you have a certain
personality that lines up with this that God
has given you and this is what a
prophet looks like, the prophet personality.
And, um, it's a gift, it's a personality
gift that God gives each person.
And, now, I don't necessarily believe any of
that teaching at this point.
It's kind of like, you know, I look
at it sort of like Christian astrology, you
know, I'm a prophet on the cusp of
exhorter or something with, you know, server rising
and all this stuff.
I, I, I just want to be a
Christian and we're going to get to that.
I, I really just want to be like
Jesus and I don't care what my personality
is, in spite of my personality I want
to be like Jesus.
So, um, people, I got this really heavy,
you know, run down, tarn feather sinners reputation
and, um, and so they told me I
was a prophet and I was, you know,
a baby Christian.
Okay, I'm a prophet.
Okay, what does that mean?
So I started studying the prophets and I'm
going to be, I'm going to be like
a prophet, you know, and that means that
I don't have to be gentle.
Boy, people always accuse me of being harsh
and I just say, well, you know, I'm
a prophet, so that's, that's, that's all there
is to it, you know, you know.
So, the main need for this article, next
section, because we at Last Days Ministries have
a nationally known ministry, many people show up
at our door from all over the country
and want to see first hand what's going
on.
By the way, those who are listening to
this tape, don't, please don't ever just show
up.
Always write or call and give us about
two years notice, no, give us as much
notice as possible because we're, we're crowded and
busy and all kinds of other things.
Okay, from time to time though, somebody shows
up with a quote, word from the Lord,
unquote.
I'm not trying to be sarcastic, we've had
some pretty interesting characters show up at the
door.
We had one guy show up and when
we invited him to eat a meal with
us, he said that God had told him
not to eat.
We asked him how long.
He said that he didn't know, but that
he wasn't supposed to eat.
He told a sad story about how everybody
had rejected him, his parents, his church, and
every other church he had gone to had
rejected him.
When we asked him what God had told
him to share, he opened up the Bible
and started reading from Revelation.
After a while, one of our elders counseled
him to go back home and get his
relationships right with his parents and his pastor.
This he refused to do and he went
on his way refusing to eat and refusing
to listen because God had told him.
Another time, we had a guy with a
long robe show up at the door who
said that God had told him to come
and tell all the ministries around here that
the Garden of Eden was in the state
of Georgia.
This guy was, he shared with such urgency,
with such sincerity, but no matter what we
said to him, we could not sway him
from his, quote, divine commission, unquote, because, quote,
God had told him.
He had no one to counsel him, no
one to listen to, no one to confirm
that yes, God had truly spoken to him.
He was on his own and he was
right, the only one right.
These are some extreme examples of something that
I think is a very common problem in
the church today.
Young people, usually young men, who believe that
God has raised them up to tell people
what is wrong with their ministry or their
lives or both.
These people are usually hurt, independent, talkative, stubborn,
unteachable, and unyielding.
I know, because I have been one of
them.
Okay, I remember when we went and did
the series of meetings at Oral Roberts University
back in 79, one of the guys showing
us around the campus there said that a
guy shows up just about every day with
a word from the Lord for Oral Roberts.
I can understand that, that people show up
and they think, well, they watch him on
TV and they go, well, he's not right
on in this area, he's not right on
in that area, so I'm going to go
tell him a word from the Lord.
Maybe some of the people do have a
word from the Lord.
We always, when somebody shows up and says,
I got a word from the Lord, we
always take them out front, sit down with
them and say, okay, what you got?
You know, God could send somebody with a
word from the Lord, but usually the hurt
and the bitterness and the rebellion is written
all over their face, they usually, one guy,
the guy that wouldn't eat, he said he'd
walked from Pennsylvania.
And I looked him in the eye and
I said, you walked from Pennsylvania?
He goes, well, mostly, I hitchhiked a little
bit too, but I walked, you know.
I said, okay, you walk down the freeway
and then hitchhike.
And so anyway, we've had you know, all
these kind of disturbed people show up and
we've also had a lot of nice people
show up.
I'm not saying that everybody that comes here
is weird.
So, this last sentence here, they are usually
hurt, independent, talkative.
They talk a lot.
They're real, can't stop talking.
Stubborn, unteachable, unyielding.
And I kind of, I call this the
Lone Ranger syndrome.
Nobody understands me.
The church I go to is part of
either, they usually, they're part of either the
Whore of Babylon or the church they go
to is the church of Laodicea.
It's one of the two.
That's what the guy read from, from Revelation.
He was reading from Laodicea.
And they see everybody as an enemy of
God but they're God's spokesmen.
And they see that all the things, they
only see the things that are wrong.
It's really, and I've never gone to the
extreme as some of these guys have gone,
but I have gotten into that trap of
seeing so much what the truth is and
so much what an ideal church would be
like that all of a sudden nothing can
live up to it and even if there's
some good things in a church, a fellowship,
a denomination, a group of people, well, they're
so far from the mark that I just
found myself writing everything off.
And I knew there were things wrong with
me but I also knew that well, at
least I've got the ideal up there and
I'm striving for it.
It's really a trap.
It's really a trap and I know there
are pastors out there and I've heard from
them.
And Joe Fawcett, Calvary Commission, said, I got
this guy, he's been here for two months
and he's just telling everybody what's wrong with
him and God told me he's a prophet.
You know, it's the same rap.
And I know there are pastors out there
who've got this one or two guys in
their fellowship who God has given the ability
to see right from wrong.
That's about, if they've got any gift at
all, these people can really tell when something's
wrong.
You can use them as an alarm, you
know.
When they go off, well, something must be
wrong.
Then they need to be turned off like
an alarm.
I have to go, okay, back to your
pew.
And they need, these people need to be
watched more than anybody else because they're the
ones that can cause the most problems and
they also need a lot of teaching about,
well, they even need one of two things.
They need a lot of teaching about the
love and the grace of God which usually
they'll hate because they'll think it's out of
balance.
And the other thing that'll really help them
a lot is pray for them and leave
them alone and let God bash them all
over the place.
Let them run into walls and run into
problems and give them enough rope and they'll
hang their prophet syndrome right out the window.
And I have seen so many of these
guys, they get this fellowship.
They get thrown out of this church.
And by the time they show up and
talk to me and they look at me
or they look at Leonard Ravenhill or other
people that have a biting message with a
cutting edge on it, and we're their heroes.
I want to be like Leonard Ravenhill.
I want to be like Charles Finney.
I want to be like John the Baptist.
And I would just keep telling them, you
want to be like Jesus.
And that's what Charles Finney wanted to be
like.
And that's what Leonard Ravenhill wants to be
like.
And that's what I want to be like.
I want to be like Jesus.
And sure, Charles Finney might have had an
incredible gift of speaking and calling down sin.
And God used that gift.
And I'm sure that John the Baptist had
a personality cut out for his calling from
God.
But he spent 30 years in obscurity in
the backside of the desert first.
Think about that.
30 years in the backside of the desert
for what?
For a six-month ministry.
How would you like to go through 30
years training for a six-month ministry?
Baking.
Eating grasshoppers.
Not getting married.
Not going to parties because no one would
want you there.
Being strange, weird, and outcast.
Six months and the rest of his life
he spent in jail until they separated the
head from the body.
And when I said I know because I've
been one of them, I have all these
qualities.
My childhood.
I've got still a lot of hurt and
things I'm working out from my childhood and
things that I'm getting right with my own
parents who are not yet Christians.
But I'm really have a good relationship starting
with them after 28 years.
Independent.
Thinking that so many are wrong and at
least I'm in the camp that's right.
Talkative.
Well, everybody knows about me talking a lot.
Stubborn.
Boy, if I think something's wrong I won't
yield a point.
And therefore, because I'm stubborn and I also
have this view of right and wrong and
I also have been unteachable and unyielding and
not open to correction much part of my
Christian walk.
It has made for when I make a
mistake.
I mean, when I was right, I was
right.
But when I was wrong, I was right.
And that's a problem.
When you're wrong and you think you're right
and nobody can tell you you're wrong and
you're going to stick to it and you
know, boy, you're going to go down in
flames.
You're going to be in trouble.
Part of my Christian walk.
Okay, what the Lord has recently shown me.
The above subtitle might even sound pretentious.
But God does speak to his people not
just special ones like in the Old Testament
but to all of his people.
He speaks to them in many ways through
the Holy Spirit who lives in them through
men and women of God in their church
and around them.
But mainly through the word of God, the
Bible.
Whenever the Holy Spirit gives us peace or
lack of peace about a certain thing we
are doing or want to do or whenever
our pastor or Christian friend gives us advice
or counsel about a particular problem, it will
always line up with the word of God
or isn't from him.
For, quote, all scripture is inspired by God
and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for training in righteousness that the man
of God may be adequate, equipped for every
good work.
2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17.
As I was studying his precious word over
the past year it suddenly dawned on me
that my whole view of myself and my
calling was all backwards.
So many people had told me that I
was a prophet over the years that I
believed they must be right.
I saw myself as a spokesman to my
generation in the church.
Not the spokesman but one of a number
chosen by God to be used to correct
and exhort believers to obey God and win
this world for Jesus.
It's not that I no longer believe that
I'm called to do that.
It's just that now I see that every
believer is called to do that.
To call all Christians everywhere to obey God
and win the world for Christ.
Not just this special club, you know.
I saw myself as being a...
I really never in any of this time
saw myself as a better, like a higher
Christian than others.
Just a different, you know, I'm called to
do this job and they're called to do
this job.
Now it's true that parts of the body
do different things but they're all called to
minister for one purpose.
Every part of my body is there to
help the head do what it wants to
do.
Every part of the body of Christ is
there to help Jesus, the head, do what
he wants to do.
And it's all...
If my arm was in a sling, for
instance, and this arm would take up a
lot more of the work and more of
the things that need to be done.
If a part of the body is hurt
or wounded, have you ever sprained an ankle?
Boy, you then put all your weight on
the other foot and you hop along on
crutches or something.
The other parts of the body take over
and make up for those things.
And if you have an itch on this
arm, you can't scratch this arm with this
hand.
It doesn't work.
You have to use this arm and this
arm comes over and helps.
And when you wash behind your neck and
behind your ears, you know, you can't wash
this...
You've got to do the things that are
most appropriate and that's what the whole body
is for.
But, the whole body has something in common.
It's all part of one body.
It all feeds off the same blood and
the same oxygen and pumps through the same
heart.
And it's all there to help the head,
the brain, Jesus, the head of the church,
do what he's calling us to do.
And it's every person, every Christian's job to
call Christians everywhere to obey God.
That means to be prophetic, to be exhortive,
to be corrective, to be loving and encouraging
to one another and to win the world
for Christ.
You know, I have a saying and I
didn't make this up either, that a lot
of people think that the pastor is supposed
to win people to Jesus.
But it's not true that shepherds...
Shepherds don't make sheep.
Sheep make sheep.
Have you ever heard of a shepherd that
made a sheep?
Sheep do it naturally.
They just start coming.
You put sheep together and you get more
sheep.
Shepherds can't make sheep but they can make
an atmosphere with well-fed sheep and well
-sheltered sheep and well-cleaned sheep and healed
sheep and so on.
They can make an atmosphere that's more conducive
for multiplication and reproduction.
And that's their job is after the babies
come to help them along and if they
get in trouble to get in there and
work with them.
Without a shepherd, sheep will probably decrease in
number instead of increase because they're so dumb,
first of all, and they get into trouble
so easy.
Okay.
The main thing that God has shown me
through it all is this.
I'm not called to be a prophet.
I'm called to be a Christian, a servant
of the living God.
That is the highest calling that anyone can
realize.
And the most beautiful thing has happened in
my heart.
My whole goal in life has completely changed.
The only thing that I want to achieve
to is to have the Lord tell me
when I stand before Him, well done, thou
good and faithful servant.
Not well done, thou good and faithful prophet.
Or pastor, or writer, or singer, or anything
else.
To be a Christian, to live up to
that wonderful world, that is my only goal.
After all, Paul starts out that meaty book
of Romans with these words.
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to
be an apostle.
Not an apostle of Jesus Christ called to
be a servant.
No, Paul had his priorities straight.
He knew what came first.
Now that little, you know, you never read,
you never look at the beginning of a
book.
You know, you skip over the Apollos.
But that says it all.
What is a Christian?
He's a servant.
Tracy and I were talking about that earlier.
A Christian is a servant.
He serves first God, then he serves everyone
around him, and finally, he serves the interests
of himself as a Christian.
That's the last thing he serves.
And, you know, somebody once said, Joy, J
-O-Y, stands for Jesus, others, and you,
in that order.
And that's the only way you can really
have any true joy, is to serve Jesus
first, others second, and you last.
And so, Paul didn't look at himself as
an apostle.
He looked at that as his calling.
He was, in fact, the actual meaning of
the word apostle means one who is sent
out, or one who builds things, one who
starts works, and, you know, he's a birther,
one who gives birth to new works and
goes on.
They're not like a pope.
They're not like a church leader in as
much as many people look at the apostles
as church leaders.
They are really church founders, and then they
go on and found something else.
Remember, he says, Paul plants a pile of
waters.
I do the planting.
The next guy, the evangelist, might come in
and grow the church.
The teacher might come in and make the
church deeper, you know.
Okay, the prophet syndrome.
I'm sure you know someone in your fellowship
who has all the earmarks of being a
potential prophet.
They don't beat around the bush, but they
say exactly what's on their mind.
They aren't very popular, but they don't care
because they believe that they're being persecuted for
righteousness' sake, quote-unquote.
They're always finding fault with almost everything and
rarely have a kind word to say.
They say to be kind would be phony
for them.
They know that the fruits of the Holy
Spirit include such things as kindness, gentleness, self
-control, and long-suffering, but they say that
most people misinterpret those scriptures, quote, and besides,
there's a lot more in the Bible about
zeal and judgment and the wrath of God,
et cetera.
Now, it seemed for a period of two
or three years in my Christian walk that
no matter where I turned in the Bible,
all I saw was the wrath of God.
I saw, and I love the Old Testament.
I like it a lot better than the
New Testament.
It seemed like, even in the words of
Jesus.
Now, let me backtrack a little bit and
balance this out and say that there is
a whole lot more in the Bible about
the severity of God and the strictness of
the Gospel than is being taught today.
It is true that the Church is majoring
on one side of the Gospel and one
side of God.
That is a fact.
That information that we've given you before in
newsletters or in teachings is not false information.
But, there is the part that the Church
is teaching and majoring on about the love,
kindness and patience of God that I, through
over-balance and through wanting to promote one
side and feeling myself called to do that,
would neglect the other to a fault.
That's what the whole Egypt album is about.
That's what the whole She Wanted to Go
Back to Egypt album.
That was a statement of, well, I've been
overlooking grace and God put me through the
punching bag for about a year when I
did that.
He says, I'll show you grace.
You're going to really need grace when I
get through it.
And He did, boy.
In one hand, He had the ointment to
soothe and in the other hand He had
the scalpel to cut.
And it was hell for about a year
there.
I was just going through trial and trial
and trial one after the other until finally
I begged for the grace of God.
Until finally God says, I'm going to make
you need grace so much that you're going
to so appreciate it that you might get
overbalanced the other way.
It could be possible.
I don't know.
Well, we'll get to that in a minute.
And the thing that usually happens to these
misguided souls with all the rough edges is
that somebody tells them, hey, I know what
you are.
You're a prophet.
Then they say to themselves, wow, that's why
people are so down on me all the
time.
Why, that's just the way they treated Elijah
and Jeremiah and even Jesus.
Hey, I'm just like Jesus.
Then they start getting words from the Lord
and all the rest that comes along with
being a prophet.
The saddest thing about all this is whenever
someone is brash, obnoxious, or loud, we label
him a prophet.
That's the saddest thing to me is that
whenever somebody is a jerk, well, that guy's
a prophet.
But you know, deep down inside, most of
these really do want to please God, but
now they're so insulated from criticism and protected
from rebuke because they think they're a rejected
prophet that no one can help or reach
them.
And unless God intervenes in their lives, they
cannot truly be used in any long-term
way because of their unteachable, uncorrectable spirit.
Now, the best thing that God ever did
for me when he moved me to Lyndale,
Texas, surrounded me with a bunch of gray
-headed Christians that were full of love and
balance, including old Leonard Ravenhill down the street
who is as fiery as any of the
prophets in the Old Testament, but as loving
as any Christian I'd ever want to meet
or be like.
And God showed me that you could be
fiery and radical and be loving and gentle.
Many people have said that Leonard is a
lion in the pulpit and a lamb in
the pew.
Outside the pulpit.
And he is.
I've very rarely ever ever seen him to
somebody's face be harsh.
And I've very rarely seen him in the
pulpit be gentle.
And that's one of those dichotomies.
But he lives what he preaches.
And it's very inspiring to have a friend
like that.
To have an example, an older brother, and
a Lord like that.
And so the Lord brought me into that
place.
And there's other guys in the area that
are just full of gentleness and love and
still have a radical faith and love and
zeal and gospel that they preach and believe
and live.
And this was something new to me.
Because when I was living in the city
of L.A., a lot of people had
love and a lot of people were gentle.
But very few of them had a radical
gospel.
And very few of them had a radical
faith and desire to just change the world
and shake it.
So I just wrote off all their gentleness
and love as being part of a misguided,
misbalanced theology.
So when the Lord brought me to this
area, He started showing me by example, which
is the best way to learn, by the
way, that men and women of God could
be fierce, fiercely hateful towards sin and just
as fiercely loving towards sinners.
And with the same intensity of the bitterness
and hatred towards sin, they would have love
and gentleness and passionate patience with sinners.
I mean, it's just an incredible thing.
And I started seeing that and it just
started breaking me down.
I just all of a sudden would go
to these people and say, well, gee, you
believe like I believe, but you act a
lot differently.
You know, wow, I really need to act
like you.
That doesn't mean I've got to change my
beliefs.
It means I've got to change how I
put my beliefs into action.
That was wonderful.
And it's taken, I've lived here now two
and a half years and I've arrived.
No.
Now, now I'm here.
No, I've had a long, long, long way
to go.
I'm in, I think I'm in junior high
with the Lord now.
You know, I used to think I was
in college and then I found out I
was in second grade.
Maybe now I'm in the sixth grade now.
Maybe next year I'll find out I was
only in the third.
It doesn't matter.
The older I get in the Lord, and
I've heard this a lot and it's become
a cliche, but the older I get in
the Lord, the less I realize I know
and the more I realize I've got to
learn.
And that's a fact.
And I've heard that from people who have
been 40-year-old Christians serving God.
You know, all the pat answers start melting
down and just disintegrating before your eyes.
There are no such things as pat answers.
There are no such things as little sayings
that always ring true.
Jesus always rings true.
The Word of God always does, but even
Scripture when taken with evil motives in the
hands of a cult, for instance, becomes a
weapon of wickedness.
And, I want to say here and now
that I'm grateful to God in this, that
this didn't happen to me and it's not
going to, where it says, you know, they
cannot be used in any long-term way.
I, we as a ministry all about a
year and a half ago reached a fork
in the road where we could have become
one of those little out there tangent dealing
with, you know, unimportant theological things and, you
know, shooting from behind the bushes at the
church and everything.
And, and, and the Lord showed us that,
showed me specifically that I was called, it
was about a year ago, that I was
called to do evangelism.
That was an incredible revelation because I, you
know, it was like freedom from prison for
me.
You know, I had to go and give
the word of the Lord to the church,
you know.
And, and God says, no, you don't have
to do that.
My, my calling on your life is to
go to the unsaved people and tell them
that, you know, Jesus is Lord.
Give them the gospel.
You've taught them, you're taunted by what's wrong
with the gospel.
Tell them what's right.
Tell them the gospel, you know.
Tell them the right gospel.
And, it was, you know, it was like
freedom from prison and I had to go
back.
Now, I hadn't been an evangelist now for
six years.
I hadn't been somebody who's been leading people
to the Lord.
I was so busy trying to shake up
the church and raise up Christians that were
going to be radical for Jesus, which, you
know, I'm not being facetious.
I mean, we, there was a lot of
good done, but still, I was not realizing
my calling in the Lord.
And he, and, I had to go back
and study the gospel.
And then I went back to simple books,
you know, what is the gospel, you know.
I mean, it's easy to say, what isn't
the gospel?
Just, you know, look at everything around you.
It's going on.
What isn't the gospel?
But what is the gospel?
And I had to get so simple and,
and I just did fourteen crusades and I
think on the fourteenth crusade, I, I got
my message down to a simple gospel, you
know.
Bam!
Put it in a bullet and shoot it.
And it exploded all over the place and
it worked through the Holy Ghost.
And I'm still learning how to be an
evangelist because I was misguided all those years
that that's, no, that's not my calling.
And again, I'm called to be, I'm, I'm
a Christian.
That's my, what I want to be, that's
what I am, a Christian, a servant of
God, called to be an evangelist or a
singer or whatever, you know.
Um, okay.
Okay, here's, here's something that's really the last
paragraph here, the prophet syndrome.
One of the main problems for them is
that most of what they see as wrong
really is wrong.
But they have little love or grace to
share the truth with.
They just aim their big cannons and boom,
they blow their ears to bits.
Uh, I did that a lot in concert.
Uh, but, the, the thing that is so
incredible is I look back, I've been going
back through our tracks and rewriting them a
little bit, you know, taking out some of
the rough edges and the barbs and, you
know, keeping what's from Jesus and taking out
a lot of what's from Keith.
and, there's even a couple I'm just going
to take out of print because God's not
calling us, not that they were wrong, but
God's not calling us that that's our message
right now.
Our message, as you will see as, as
the newsletter has been for the past seven
or eight issues, and will be, is to
strengthen and encourage and build up believers.
Not so much to shoot at things that
are wrong, but to build up the areas
that are right.
The lesson comes home.
Like I said before, this is sort of
a confession, and I'm sincerely sorry if I
ever blew you to bits with my lack
of love.
I really meant well, but I was hindered
by the prophet syndrome.
Here it is, the idea that my rough
edges were a part of my calling from
God.
I'm not trying to say that what I
wrote and preached in the past was wrong,
it's just that some of it could have
been said a little differently, and with a
lot more grace.
Even so, if the Lord says to speak
out on an issue, I'll be glad and
ready to do it, but I must do
it as a servant, not as a prophet.
I must, Ephesians 4.15, speak the words
are, quote, seasoned with grace, Colossians 4.6.
That is the Christian way, that is Jesus'
way.
Hallelujah for the freedom that comes with repentance,
oh how he makes us new, forgiving us
and changing us into his glorious image.
That's the end of the article.
This next part is going to go in
a box in the article.
And, you know, this thing that you're reading,
was something that happened to me back in
March or April of last year.
It was over a year ago.
And, I wanted to write the article right
away, and the Lord would not let me
do it, mainly because he wanted me to
have a period of time to adjust and
live it and walk in it and put
out some articles and newsletters that, you know,
we get letters from people going, gee, your
newsletter is not as heavy as it used
to be.
And, I have got no apologies for that,
it's just that I don't want to become
like every Christian publication that's ever been.
I don't want to just have a kind
of potpourri, smorgasbord of this Bible study and
this teaching and this issue, and I really
do want to keep it as a little
bullet that cuts through to the heart, and
has an edge on it, and changes lives.
Because if truth doesn't change lives, then it's
not worth reading.
If what we read, what we say, what
we teach, what we live, doesn't affect those
around us to live more like Jesus, to
become more like God, then we're wasting our
breath, and we're wasting God's time.
So everything we do, we want to be
radical, and the word radical has a terrible
negative connotation in these days.
It means, you know, some communist burning down
buildings or something, you know.
But the word radical in the Bible means
unswayable.
It means you cannot be torn from your
conviction.
When you're a radical Christian, you cannot be
torn from your conviction that Jesus is Lord,
and that he must be obeyed, and he
must be followed with every ounce that's in
us.
In this next part, what is a prophet,
is a just a picture of what a
real prophet would be.
And it's also a balancing part of the
article that says, you know, I'm not ridiculing
the office of prophet.
There is an office of prophet in the
Bible.
Now with all this talk about misguided young
zealots going around blasting people with truth minus
love, I don't want to make the impression
that God has not called certain people to
fulfill the ministry of a prophet.
There are many references in the book of
Acts concerning people anointed by God to preach
with prophetic urgency.
And we're going to include the scriptures where
those occurrences occur.
These men were called prophets by the writer
of Acts, and Paul in his teaching about
the body of Christ talks about the different
offices and callings in the body to help
build up, strengthen, and establish the church.
But what would one of these God-ordained
prophets be like?
First of all, he would be a Christian.
He would be like Jesus.
Yes, he would hate sin like Jesus, but
more importantly, he would love sinners like Jesus.
He would be loving, kind, and gentle, always
seeking to get the truth of the cross
in the most direct way, and yet never
offending anyone if he could help it.
This is kind of a different picture than
what you've probably thought a prophet would be
like.
But I know that Daniel and Joseph and
Jeremiah and Isaiah and Ezekiel and Elijah were
men of great tears and great prayer, were
broken men that lived alone in seclusion, were
considered strange because they were so close with
God.
Moses, man, he came down from the mountain
with his face glowing like a GE light
bulb, and people thought he was nuts.
People thought he was out there, and he
was.
He was way out there with God.
He'd gotten close to God in some of
the places, and the glow of his spirit
had rubbed off on him.
But Moses loved the people.
He loved the people, and they knew it,
or they wouldn't have followed him.
He could have threatened to kill them and
send plagues and everything.
I mean, that was scary.
But they knew he loved them, and God
sure knew he loved them.
Remember the times when Moses said, kill me,
blot my name out of the book of
life?
It's in there.
You read it.
But don't.
Don't.
Destroy that.
Paul says, in Romans, oh, you don't turn
there.
Let me see if I can find it
real quick.
I think it's in Romans 10.
Good, I found it.
No, I didn't.
I can't find it.
It's somewhere in Romans.
He says, I wish myself accursed if all
of Israel could be saved.
He says, I would rather I go to
hell if all of my brethren and countrymen
in Israel could know Jesus.
Moses says to God, now, Moses isn't just
one of these kind of guys that's praying,
you know, like we pray.
He's not, you know, praying, well, maybe some
of it got to heaven and the rest
of it kind of stuck on the ceiling,
you know.
Moses talked to God face to face.
He says to God, not as a joke,
not as a ploy, not as a manipulation,
blot my name out of the book of
life.
Now, what if you had God's ear and
you knew he was in the room and
you were talking to him and he was
talking to you face to face?
You would have to be willing for that
to be an occurrence or you wouldn't say
it to God because that's not somebody to
mess with.
You're not playing games.
Blot my name out of the book of
life.
But he loved the people so much that
he was willing to burn forever.
It's not so much that he loved God
that much, he also loved the people that
much.
And he was heavy.
I mean, he came down and broke the
tablets and made the children of Israel eat
the ground up powder from the, you know,
I mean, caused all kinds of problems.
But the love that these people have is
missing in our view of prophets.
Let's go on to the next one.
The prophet above all would be a man
of God.
He would seek to display all the qualities
of love found in 1 Corinthians 13.
You want to find out what prophetic love
is like, read 1 Corinthians 13.
It used to be my unfavorite chapter in
the Bible.
It was, not because I didn't like it,
it's because everybody else always used to quote
it to me.
He would not be easily provoked, or moody,
or unduly harsh, but patient, merciful, and slow
to anger.
He would not seek to be a prophet,
nor glory in that position.
But just like Jeremiah, or Moses, or Gideon,
he would ask God to make sure he
was choosing the right man before he would
speak out against sin and hypocrisy.
All these people speak out against sin and
hypocrisy.
But God, you know, are you sure?
Gideon made God do all kinds of little
things.
Remember?
Make the rug wet and the ground dry.
Okay, now make the ground wet and the
rug dry.
Jeremiah says, but Lord, I'm too young.
And Moses says, but Lord, I can't speak.
But Lord, but Lord, but Lord.
Finally, God, sometimes, he got mad.
Moses.
Moses kept going, but Lord.
And God said, but nothing.
All right, Aaron will speak for you.
You ever had the hiccups when you're teaching
a Bible study?
Lastly, he would be a broken man, well
acquainted with grief and tears.
He would have a broken heart over the
sin in the world and the worldliness in
the church.
Before Jesus made a scourge of cords to
whip the money changers with, when he turned
over the merchandise tables in the temple.
He first wept and prayed over the strange
city of Jerusalem before he entered her gates.
The prophet, like his master, Jesus, would weep
before he whipped, pray before he spoke out,
and walk in dread of being in the
wrong spirit.
For unlike James and John, he would know
what spirit he was of.
Okay?
All right.
Any questions?
Can I have that on pause, please?
Is, uh, is that paused?
Is the pause button on?
Okay.
Is it on now?
Okay.
I didn't want it faded.
On the sentence that says, uh, people are
prone to spiritualize their bitterness and sin, how
do you draw the line between, um, getting
angry at sin, which, uh, it says that
Lot, in Peter, in the book of Peter,
he talks about Lot, and it says his
righteous soul was vexed.
The word vexed means his righteous soul was
angered and upset by what he saw around
him.
Okay?
It doesn't say that in the book of
Genesis, but Peter, I don't know where he
got it from, maybe it was some, some
Bible study by Paul or something, and God
told him or something, but, uh, it says
Lot's righteous soul was vexed.
Um, Moses came down with the law in
his hand and he watched him break in
the law and got angry.
Now, some people say he got in the
flesh, some people say he was righteously angry.
There's a thing called righteous indignation.
I do believe that if we are filled
with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit
is inside of us, the things that grieve
the Holy Spirit will grieve us, the things
that please the Holy Spirit will please us,
the things that anger the Holy Spirit will
anger us.
Now, there is such a thing as holy
anger.
Remember, it says be angry and do not
sin, sin not.
That is when you're angry at the devil
or you're angry at, uh, you hear about
somebody being raped or somebody being ripped off
or somebody dying because nobody would take their
check in a town.
I mean, there was this one guy during
the winter, that big bad winter we had
two, three years ago, and, uh, he, uh,
his car was stuck in the snow drifts
and he walked about two, three miles to
a town and he started knocking on the
doors.
He didn't have a credit card, he didn't
have cash, all he had was a personal
check.
No hotel would take him in, nobody would
take him in, and they finally found him
the next morning and they had to cut
his feet off because they were frostbitten.
Nobody takes his check.
That made me angry and I don't think
I was in the flesh either.
I think that when you hear about an
injustice and greed and wickedness like that, that
it will make you angry and you have
two, now, you have two reactions to that.
You can get in the flesh.
Here's the difference.
Uh, the difference between fleshly anger and godly
anger is that fleshly anger is you are
wronged.
You are hurt.
You are the center of your anger.
You are the reason you're angry.
Godly anger is God is wronged, God is
hurt, God is the center of your indignation.
Okay.
Somebody just asked, that in the concerts that
I did in the past, when I said
something, when I preached hard, did I really
love those people?
I loved them as much as I felt
was my obligation or, no, that's not the
good word.
I loved them as much as my view
of my calling and my view of God
at that time, uh, um, provoked me to
love them or, or, or instilled or inspired
me to love them.
Now, I love them a whole bunch more
now because my view of my calling and
God and my theology, meaning the study of
God, um, commands a lot more love for
when I go up and represent God.
My other calling, my whole view of a
prophet and my calling was, was lopsided.
It wasn't that I was walking around as
a maniac, it was that I was walking
around lopsided.
My view of theology, my view of God,
my calling made me, well, you know, yeah,
sure, I love them, but I really need
to tell them this.
And yeah, I love them enough to say
I'm speaking the truth in love.
I mean, yes, I love them, but not
half as much as I do now.
Somebody just asked that, I mentioned before that
when I was young in the Lord, I
went to my pastor a lot and was
upset about the sin in the church and
I reported that my pastor was too soft
on sin and I was too hard on
sin.
And he asked, what is the balance, what
is the correct response when you see sin?
Here is the correct response.
One, God shows you sin or God allows
you, by the way, you have a little
meter, a little buzzer, a little alarm that
God gave you, it's called a conscience.
When you sin, your buzzer goes off.
When somebody else sins, that conscience, you should
identify with them because you're part of the
body of Christ and your conscience should give
you the correct view of black and white
and right and wrong and your buzzer will
go off, too.
Now, God shows you sin in somebody's life
first to pray about it.
Now, you've got to pray about it.
If you just go and go running for
them, you're not going to be in the
right spirit, the right attitude, you're going to
be walking in yourself and not in the
Holy Ghost in this particular problem.
The first thing you must do is pray
for that person.
Now, if it's the kind of sin where
they're chewing their gum too loud or they're
talking too much when they should be working,
they eat too much, or it's one of
these ongoing things that you're worried about them.
They've got a problem with bitterness or something
that's ongoing.
Those kind of sins, well, then you pray
about it and wait and ask God to
change it supernaturally.
That would be a good thing to do
first, maybe for a day or two.
If you still see the problem, then God
calls you to go to him.
It says in Matthew 18, there's your prescription
for what to do when you see sin
in somebody's life.
When your brother sins, go to him in
private.
If your brother listens to you, you have
won your brother.
If your brother does not listen to you,
you take somebody else.
That somebody else should be somebody that's not
his enemy.
It should be somebody that this person does
not regard as a threat to him.
You know what I'm talking about.
It shouldn't be a vicious triangle.
A vicious triangle is when there's three friends,
and there's either these two friends ganging up
on them, and that's whatever happens when there's
three people in a friendship.
The two usually end up ganging up.
We have a three person leadership in our
ministry, and it very rarely happens.
It very rarely happens when it's two against
one or two against one, and it's really
a blessing from God.
It's always been a fear of mine that
that would happen, that one of the elders
and I would be against the other, or
the two elders would be against me, and
it just very, very rarely happens.
So you should not go, these two people
against one, with somebody the person feels threatened
by.
Go with the godliest person you know.
If it's the pastor or an elder, fine.
And it shouldn't be the person's mother, or
the, you know, it shouldn't be the person,
you know, somebody's going to embarrass the person,
but you should go with the person, another
person that you respect, and hopefully somebody they
respect, too.
Go to them.
Then if they don't listen to you, your
job, according to the Bible, is to expose
the sin in front of the church.
That's the heavy one.
Expose the sin in front of the church
for two reasons.
One, that the embarrassment of being exposed openly
will force the person to repent.
And, two, as an example to the whole
body of what you should not do.
When Ananias and Sapphira were cut to the
quick and dropped dead by the Holy Ghost,
it's because God always deals with sin, new
sin, first sin, in a very strong way.
Make a strong example.
It was the first time they had somebody
giving only half of what they promised to
give, and God dealt with it swiftly, and
severely.
And that's as an example to the church.
Now, the other kind of sin, where there's
somebody fornicating, or there's somebody doing real harm
to themselves, to somebody else, or to the
body, then you need to pray, not to
pray whether you should go.
You should pray how you should go, get
in the right spirit, get armed with your
scriptures, and go as quickly as you have
the right spirit, and go.
But then there's sometimes when God will lead
you to just shut up and pray for
somebody in an ongoing non-dangerous, where it's
not really, you know, doing great damage to
them, or somebody else.
Sin always does damage, but there are some
sins that God can deal with Himself, and
the person, if they love God, they either
need to hold a mirror in front of
them, or so.
And when I said that my pastor was
a little soft on sin, that also helped
me to get on the other side, and
get harder, and get almost better, and get
not dealing with sin, I will, you know.
Okay.
The question was asked, what do you do
when you go to somebody, and you tell
them something's wrong or sinful, and they go,
well, that's your conviction.
It doesn't say it in the Bible, or
God never told me that's wrong.
And I thought immediately of like cigarette smoking,
as an example.
Then you need what's called wisdom.
It says, if any man lacks wisdom, ask
from above, and you will get wisdom from
God above, who gives it to all men
liberally, without reproach.
There are times, remember when the woman came
to Solomon, and said, my baby died yesterday,
and this woman said, how did it go
again?
Oh yeah, this woman, no, her baby died,
and I was asleep, and she took my
baby, and now she says that the baby's
hers.
And Solomon thought, you know, how am I
going to deal with this?
I mean, well, it's just your opinion.
I mean, really, it was one of those,
well, it's her opinion that it's mine, and
it's my opinion that it's mine too, you
know.
Well, boy, Solomon really needed some wisdom.
And he says, bring a sword.
He says, I'll tell you what, now, Solomon's
thinking, well, I'll bring a sword, and I'll
threaten to cut the baby in half.
Of course, he never would have done it,
because he didn't want to kill the baby,
but he's thinking, I'll threaten to cut the
baby in half, and the one who's really
the mother would rather see the baby live
in another home than to see her baby
die, so she's right.
The other one doesn't care because it's not
her baby.
She's all bitter and hurt because her baby
died.
She'll go, all right, if I can't have
it, nobody can have it.
But the other one says, if I can't
have it, I'd rather have somebody have it,
so it'll grow up and be a person.
I brought it into the world.
Well, he had wisdom, and when he says,
all right, bring a sword, let's cut it
in half, and you give the feet to
her and the head to her, you know,
the real mother says, oh, no, no, no,
no, let her have it.
The false mother says, no.
With, like, cigarette smoking, you need to have
wisdom, and the things that, like, God has
shown me to say to people was, you
know, all your money is supposed to be
the Lord's, your body's the temple of the
Holy Spirit, and your time is the Lord's.
You're wasting your money, you're hurting your body,
and you're wasting God's time.
You're being, you're, and not all the things
you do, you're polluting the atmosphere, you know,
you're, I mean, that's not, that's, but you
go back to the Bible and say, God,
give me the Bible, give me wisdom, how
do I deal with that?
Or somebody says, there's nothing in the Bible
that says, thou shalt not wear halter tops,
or thou shalt wear a bra, you know,
or something like that.
Then you need to, you need to appeal
to a person's conscience to, to have discretion,
and to want to be modest, and not
to want to be lascivious, which means to
try to attract, or be, to be attractive
in a, in a physical way, so that
you can attract the attention of the people
attention.
Then you need wisdom to say, like, like
Finney taught, he says, if you're trying to
attract attention to yourself instead of Jesus, then
you're sinning.
And if you point to their conscience and
say, look, think about this, you're trying to
draw attention to you, and we're supposed to
be like the Holy Spirit drawing attention to
Jesus.
Let your good, let, let, let your good
works, what does it say?
Shine in such a way that they may
see your good works.
Let your light shine in such a way
that they may see your good works, and
glorify, who?
Your Father in Heaven.
Let your light shine in such a way
that they may You know, there's two ways
to do something.
You know, there's two ways to do something.
You can, you can pray like this, and
they see you praying, and they glorify God,
or they can see you praying, you know.
God.
See, pride comes before a fall.
But you have to ask God for wisdom
on the things that are the black and
white, you know, that aren't black and white.
Boy, there's going to come a time in
the church when the U.S. is going
to legalize marijuana, and boy, are we going
to have free marijuana.
Because they're going to say, it doesn't sound
like you can have marijuana.
It says, don't be drunk with wine.
Well, it's wine.
I'm not drinking wine.
And I left trouble.
Okay.
Okay, we're going to close in prayer.
Holy God, it's only you that can change
the hearts of men.
We can't change anything, God.
We can't do a thing that lasts for
eternity, but you can change the hearts of
men.
Everything you do lasts for eternity.
Everything you touch that is change is changed
forever.
And God, I ask with all my heart
that your word would burn in our hearts,
that the fire of zeal and boldness and
hatred of sin would ever be so strong,
but that the other side of the sword,
the love, the grace, the kindness, the gentleness,
would be worked in us so that when
we turn the sword over to cut, everyone
will know that it's being cut, that you're
being cut with love.
Amen.
We want to be like Jesus.
We want to hear the words, well done,
now good and faithful servant.
That is our only goal, our only desire.
We ask, like Jesus, that you would not
only lead us through sufferings, but you'll lead
us through the cross to the resurrection, God,
of every one of these problems that we
have.
And I know that there's some in this
audience tonight, God, that their problem isn't being
too bold.
It's being too meek, being too timid, that
their problem isn't being obnoxious.
It's just not saying anything, God.
And they know that they need to hear
the other side of the message.
They need to hear about going forth and
opening their mouths and shouting from the housetops.
But, God, I ask that your word, which
is proper in every season, would go forth
from this study, from this tape, from the
video, from this study, from the track, from
the newsletter, and would minister to those who
need this word.
And, God, I thank you for living in
my heart.
I thank you for forgiving me, and I
thank you that you're there patiently with waiting
for us to come to our senses.
We love you, God.
We know that you're the only one that
can change us.
And we rest in that now in Jesus'
name.
Amen.