We are looking with great respect at this
invitation.
You know how large our intention and aspiration
is, not just to bless the local saints,
however we desire that, but to go in
beyond and through them to the larger community,
to the region, to the state, to the
nation, to the nations.
Lord, if there's such a thing as an
apostolic sending yet, if there's such a thing
as a prophetic word yet, may the words
of these days from this first speaking to
the last be that.
We ask it, my God, momentous, significant, historic
penetration.
We're asking largely because we know that the
time is short and the issues are great.
Bless us, my God, from the very first.
Be the alpha and the omega of these
days.
You know how to begin and you know
how to conclude.
So I give you a fresh blood, this
dust that I am, that you've shaped for
yourself, even from my 94-year-old mother's
Jewish womb.
For your purposes in these last days, come
now and be the incarnate God in me
to speak and do of your good pleasure.
We thank and give you the praise for
our privileged time together in Jesus' name.
Amen.
You want to turn to Mark, chapter 9?
We're all familiar with what this chapter contains.
It begins on a mountaintop and it ends
in a valley.
It begins with spiritual elevation and it ends
with morbid confrontation with the powers of darkness.
It's as if in this one chapter is
encompassed the ultimate degrees of the range of
prospect and possibility in the believing life.
And I'll tell you how I'm beginning to
read the scriptures these days and especially these
episodes in the life of Jesus, which are
altogether historical.
These are perfect transcriptions of everything that was
said and done at that time.
It was a moment in history, but it's
a moment beyond that moment.
That in some remarkable ability of God, as
he affected the course of the walk of
Jesus and the things that he spoke and
did, many of those things coming upon him
with the same degree of surprise and astonishment
as things come upon us.
Yet they were divinely determined by his father
in heaven that they should convey something for
us in the last days of an enormous
import and kind.
So it's an event in itself.
It's historically accurate, which would be interesting to
read for that reason alone.
But at the same time, it constitutes a
parable for the last days, for our instruction.
So, no accident that it begins with a
mountain and ends with a valley.
Isn't it just like God?
And what a mount that is, the mount
of transfiguration, where six days later we read,
Jesus took with him Peter and James and
John and led them up to a high
mountain apart by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them, and his
clothes became dazzling white, such as no one
on earth could bleach them.
And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses,
who were talking with Jesus.
What a scene.
You know what's astonishing about the scripture?
It is terse, T-E-R-S-E.
That means very compact, very spare.
There's no schmaltz here.
God doesn't have to work it up.
There's no hype.
He just gives the simple, straight account, like,
and they crucified him.
But what is implied and concealed in these
simple statements would take an eternity to unfold.
Like six days later.
Why wasn't it five days later?
Or seven days later?
Because six is the number of man.
And something had to happen to those men
who were at the heart of the twelve
of Jesus.
These were the three who were the nucleus.
And he brought them up to a high
mountain apart.
And he was transfigured before them.
Someone has wisely said that the unusual thing
is not that Jesus should become transfigured, but
that he should be seen transfigured.
That the remarkable thing is that God the
Father concealed his glory.
And only on this occasion was that veil
lifted that they might see the intrinsic beauty
and radiance of Jesus that was always and
ever with him.
And it's something like that for us.
The Lord needs to bring us up to
a high mountain apart to glimpse what is
always there, but that we have not sufficiently
and adequately seen.
And if the Lord gives me the grace
to bring us all the way through this
work tonight, you're going to learn that that
seeing is not some minor matter of our
own satisfaction or delight, but the critical point
of Israel's own deliverance in the last days.
It begins on the mount, but it ends
in the valley.
And the thing that we glimpse on the
mount is not something that we should continually
enjoy as if we could remain there, but
somehow bring down into the place of confrontation
where it makes all the difference.
And we're going to see how these disciples
failed to bring the buoyant image of Jesus
and the vision of God, the hearing of
the Father speaking out of a cloud.
This is my beloved son, hear ye him.
What an unparalleled experience, but they had hardly
gotten down below when the whole of it
almost dissipated away.
All the more when what confronted them was
the most ugly, brutal picture of demonic activity
in taking a young man and throwing him
down in convulsion.
They didn't have enough retention to bring the
glory of that vision to the place where
it was most needed, where it is most
absent.
And that's our situation also.
And he was talking with Elijah and Moses.
My, what a vision.
How did they know that these two men
were Moses and Elijah?
Because they know, because there's a revelation.
When we shall see the great saints of
God in their glorified form, we'll know.
You'll know me in heaven.
And I think I'm going to look younger.
And the wrinkles will be out and the
gray.
What you're going to see is not a
man at a certain day and moment in
time of his death, but the essence of
the man where his body is the statement
of what he is at the grace of
God in the summation of all of that
dealings through a life of faith.
We'll recognize each other instantly.
That is quintessential art.
And that's how they recognize Moses and Elijah
conferring with Jesus.
But what does Peter say?
Always with his foot in his mouth.
Always has to say something.
Always has to do something.
He's such a picture of the church with
its itch that needs to say him do.
That has not the capacity to receive something
without having to set in motion something religious
and ministerial.
The rabbi, see there's his mistake already.
Rabbi, he's seen Jesus glorified and transfigured speaking
with Moses and Elijah and the title is
rabbi?
You would think that that revelation would have
occasioned a much deeper appreciation of who this
Jesus is with whom Peter now has been
walking virtually for three years.
But he still lacks something.
It's good for us to be here.
Let us make three booths, three dwellings, one
for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.
And he did not know what he was
saying for he was terrified.
Let us make.
You know, if we had all kinds of
time stamps, and I wish we had it,
to really go over a text word for
word, syllable for syllable.
We rush through, we're much too hurried.
We want to follow the storyline.
But every word here is enormously significant.
You know what I would underline in this
last statement?
It is good for us to be here.
Let us make.
I would underline the word us.
You know what Peter's mistake is?
He's us oriented.
It's good for us to be here.
Let us make.
So long as us is at the center
of your spiritual frame of understanding, you'll end
up by making, doing, and erring.
He still is centered in himself and his
gratification.
And that's unfortunately the statement of too many
of us.
We've got to graduate from us to him.
It may be good for us to be
here, but that's not the reason we're there.
It serves some purpose in God beyond what
value we can receive from it.
And this whole magnificent faith is not established
at great cost for our satisfaction or our
enjoyment, but for the eternal purposes of God.
If we gain some benefit and some delight,
all well and good, but it's not the
purpose for which God has given us so
precious a call.
How we will ever break this powerful egocentrism
that held us in its grip in the
world.
My car, my savings, my job, my I.
And then we come into the kingdom?
Well, we've changed the object of our attention
from carnal things and possessions, but now it's
my church, my denomination, my ministry.
There's still a power of self-centeredness that
continues to be a canker, if not a
cancer for the church.
What's it going to take?
But a seeing of Jesus afresh and anew.
Well, that's the moment that the father picked
to boom out his voice from heaven.
This is my beloved son.
Shut up, Peter.
Hear ye him.
Not your own clatter, not your own necessity
to get a word in.
Hear ye him.
And they went down.
They must have been like dead.
And when they looked around, they saw no
man with them anymore, but only Jesus.
I think the King James says, only Jesus
himself alone.
I don't think I can take the credit
for this, but somewhere along the line, I've
picked up the thought that they saw not
only no man only, but they did not
even see their own seeing.
They came to a place in the power
of that vision and the voice of the
father where they were beside themselves.
They saw no man.
They didn't even see themselves.
They were not even conscious of their own
seeing.
They were not even conscious of their own
spirituality.
They saw no man but Jesus himself alone.
That's blessing saints.
Not even to be conscious of our own
seeing, which is the last cruel deception, is
spiritual self-consciousness.
My face.
I'll just loosen it.
Huh?
My microphone, huh?
Hang on.
I wanted to start, but I knew I
wouldn't stay that way.
What's in passing?
I'm not even getting yet to the principal
theme of this word, but I couldn't speak
these things.
We couldn't get into this text and not
acknowledge them in passing.
Well, then they came down from the mount.
They asked about Elijah.
We'll pass that up, that Elijah must first
come and be mistreated.
And when they came in verse 14 down
to the valley, they came to the disciples.
They saw a great crowd around them and
some scribes arguing with them.
When the whole crowd saw him, Jesus, they
were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran
forward to greet him.
He asked them, what are you arguing about
with them?
Someone from the crowd answered him, teacher, I
brought you my son.
He has a spirit that makes him unable
to speak.
And whenever it seizes him, it dashes him
down.
And he foams and grinds his teeth and
becomes rigid.
And I asked your disciples to cast it
out, but they could not do so.
He answered them, you wonder now who the
them is.
Is he speaking to the one who is
describing what is taking place?
Or is he speaking to his disciples?
Maybe both.
But this is the most severe reprimand that
I believe is recorded anywhere in Jesus.
You faithless generation, how much longer must I
be among you?
How much longer must I suffer you?
How much longer must I put up with
you?
How do we fathom this irritation, this deep
vexation that Jesus expresses because his disciples were
unable to cast out a demon spirit that
had made this child mute?
Bring him to me.
And they brought the boy to him.
When the spirit saw him, the spirit that
was in the boy saw the Jesus to
whom he had been brought.
Immediately it convulsed the boy and he fell
on the ground and rolled about foaming at
the mouth.
If there's anything calculated to rob us of
our faith, it's a sight like that.
Now we can pray for someone who has
a sniffle or some other need where the
answer of our faith and prayer doesn't need
necessarily now to be seen.
But when someone is convulsing and foaming at
the mouth and rolling up in a ball
at your feet, it's put up or shut
up.
It's a faith that has got to be
a faith and cannot be deferred for a
later time.
And maybe that's why these disciples couldn't cut
it.
This was an ugly, painful demonstration of a
supreme reality, the powers of darkness.
And it's calculated to intimidate, to bring fear,
and to make us feel as if our
faith is just ebbing out of us.
But every man according to his own faith.
We begin with a measure of faith, but
we're not all in the same place of
faith.
As your faith is, so be it unto
you.
And the issue for us is, are we
going from faith to faith?
Or are we stalemated, treading water, fixed at
a certain plateau, sufficient for our need, sufficient
for our church relationship, sufficient for the general
configuration of our life.
But is it sufficient for a young man
who is convulsed and foaming at the mouth
and is desperately the victim of the powers
of darkness?
Like, for example, the black people today, the
Native American, the Indian, the despised minorities of
the world who have been chewed up, spit
out, victimized, demonized, and left for dead.
Who is there that can come in a
faith that is not intimidated by the evident
power of this darkness and confront it?
Bring him to me, Jesus said.
The disciples failed.
They had succeeded elsewhere.
They had succeeded previously.
Remember they came back with the Galilee report?
The demons are subject to us.
Maybe it was a honeymoon experience, a first
flush of excitement.
Maybe it was not a demonic phenomenon in
the depth of this kind of depravity and
seizure as is being expressed here.
This is ultimate sense.
And I'm going to give you my prophetic
rendering of what is represented here is more
than just a boy convulsing at the mouth
who happens to be the object of demonic
oppression, but representative of something much deeper, much
more significant that affects us in the last
days.
Jesus asked the Father, how long has this
been happening to him?
And he said, from childhood.
It has often cast him into the fire
and into the water to destroy him.
But if you're able to do anything, talk
about not recognizing who it is whom he's
addressing.
If you're able to do anything, have pity
on us and help us.
Well, dear saints, this is what triggered my
understanding of this text.
This has been happening from childhood, from the
commencement virtually of this life, to this present
day, not just to harass, not just to
annoy, but to destroy him.
Who is this young man and what does
he represent?
If this event in the life of Jesus
is more than an historic moment, but a
parable of symbolic meaning for us to be
edified in the last days.
You know who I would suggest this young
man represents?
Israel itself, the nation itself.
Since its inception virtually, it has been pursued,
harassed by powers of darkness, not content merely
to provoke or to harass, but to destroy.
And we are coming to the end of
the age where this vehement and bitter hatred
of that boy, of that nation, of that
people, is going to be brought to an
ultimate boil.
You're going to see it in your generation.
It may take stock tomorrow.
It's already happening.
Anti-Semitism, anti-Jewish hatred already billowing up
in places that the Jewish authorities would never
have thought to expect it.
University campuses, not just the rednecks, not just
the uneducated, not just the poor, not just
those who have a social grievance, but at
every level, this deepening hatred of the Jew.
Why?
Well, if you'll stay through every message in
these days, you're going to learn why.
Because the Jewish people are chosen and appointed
to be at the heart of God's theocratic
kingdom.
It has everything to do with the rule
that must go forth out of their Zion,
their Jerusalem, their holy hill.
And the strategy of the enemy, the false
rulers of this world, remember what it says
in Psalm 2?
Why do the nations rage and the heathen
take thought against the Lord?
The rulers, the kings and the rulers take
thought against the Lord and against his anointed.
Who are these kings we know, the visible
magistrates, who are these rulers?
The rulers, the kings and the rulers take
thought against God.
The kings are the visible magistrates who are
presidents and rulers of nations.
But who are these rulers?
They are the invisible spirit entities, the fallen
angels that comprise the principalities and powers of
the air, that have been the actual jerkers
and manipulators of nations throughout history and right
till this day.
Do you know that?
Do you really know that?
What lies behind the things that are visible?
What is really operating in the backwash of
the movement of nations and peoples?
Genocide, hatred, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Croatia, Rwanda, genocidal murderous
things where people were hacked to death in
their churches.
You can't understand this phenomenon without taking into
consideration the powers of the air.
They're very real and they're moving toward a
last day and they know that their time
is short and they're going to be acting
with unprecedented fury.
And the greatest fury will be upon the
church and the Jewish people themselves.
The people of God whose faith is so
nil, so nothing that the father has to
say, if you can do anything, if you're
able to do anything, have pity on us
and help us and save us.
The fact of the matter is that's exactly
what God is going to do.
He's going to have pity on us, pity
on world Jewry, pity on Israel that's going
to be knocked from pillar to post, convulsed
and torn like a dog with a rag
doll.
He'll have pity and it's his pity and
his mercy that will save us.
This is so symbolic, this is so rich
and multi-meaning and so I'm bringing you
an interpretation from the breadth of understanding that
this pleased the Lord to invest in me.
It has often cast him into the fire
and the water in order to destroy him.
Fire is always a symbol of judgment, water
is a symbol of persecution.
It's not out to harass, it's out to
destroy.
And it's so powerful that the disciples were
rendered non-involved, they could not cast this
out.
And so Jesus said, all things can be
done for him who believes and immediately the
father of the child cried out, I believe,
help my unbelief.
When Jesus saw that a crowd came running
together, he rebuked the unclean spirit saying to
it, you spirit that keeps this son, this
child from speaking and hearing.
How long has that been our Jewish condition?
That we have been kept from speaking and
hearing to the detriment and to the loss
of all mankind.
Our silence, our inability to hear from God
and speak for God has had a terrible
consequence for the nations and for mankind.
You know why?
We're called to be a nation of priests
and a light unto the world.
We have a destiny, something that it's pleased
God to choose, not because we're the greatest,
but because we're the least.
But not to function in the calling of
God is to leave mankind without priests.
And if there are no priests, how do
we know the difference between the profane and
the sacred?
Because it's the priests who are commissioned to
teach the nations, the Gentiles, the difference between
the holy and the secular, between the profane
and the holy.
Our not speaking and our not hearing has
been at an enormous cost for all mankind.
And that's why Paul says in Romans, what
shall their return be but life from the
dead?
What shall it mean for this son who
from the conception of his life, from his
infancy, was a victim of demonic powers and
stifled in his call?
What will it be when he shall be
delivered and raised up and sent out?
Something like Lazarus coming out of the tomb.
Loose him and let him go.
This is not just the deliverance of a
single life.
This is the deliverance of a people, a
nation in the last days by a people
who can do what the disciples fail to
do, who are able to deliver the son
by having the same quality of faith and
authority as Jesus himself.
Time out.
That's awesome.
And because we don't know it and don't
know what our own destiny is with regard
to them and how supreme and ultimate our
call is, we are therefore living beneath it.
I hope I gave a message in Nashville,
Tennessee.
What a blockbuster.
The Lord gave it to me, 3.30
that morning.
I had three pages.
You know, I was going to shut the
light and then one more thought came to
me.
In fact, I had shut the light.
I needed my sleep desperately.
And the thought came, well, I'll remember that
when I get up.
No, you better turn the light on and
write this down while you're...
And I turned the light on and that
light remained on for an hour or more
as the Lord gave me three pages that
you might be hearing in these very days
of the significance of the issue of the
Jew for the church, for the church's own
sake, what is represented for us in the
mandate to which we are called with regard
to them.
Not because we have chosen them, but because
God has.
And he has appointed us as a church
to minister to them in the last days
that they might receive the pity and the
mercy and the deliverance of God.
In the same way that Jesus expressed it
here, the body of Christ must express it
then and not be intimidated by the powers
of darkness where the faith you have goes
out of you and you are unable to
set the captive free.
If you can set this captive free, saints,
there's no captive after that that will in
any way hinder you.
That's why it's to the Jew first and
also to the Greek.
Well, all things are possible to them that
believe, but this is a believing beyond credo.
This is a believing beyond doctrinal affirmation.
Our faith is more than the sum of
our correct doctrine.
This is a believing of an ultimate kind
in the reality of God and the power
of God despite every appearance to the contrary.
It's one thing to believe when we're safe,
sound, healthy, well-fed, comfortable in the congregation
of the saints.
But to believe when everything is opposed to
faith, when the enemy seems to be riding
high and having all the cards and calling
all the shots and you have never felt
more feeble, more weak and more inept, to
believe then is real believing.
And except that that faith is obtained on
the mount, you're not going to have it
in the valley.
Because when the disciples said later, how come
we couldn't cast him out?
He said, because this kind, this ultimate kind
is not your everyday demon.
This is the ultimate expression of the powers
of darkness in their severest and mightiest form
calculated to destroy from the face of the
earth this son and this people whom he
represents.
This kind is not going to come out
with, I believe in the name of Jesus,
like rubbing a genie lamp, I hope, I
hope it works.
Charismatic faith will not suffice at that time.
This kind cometh not out but by prayer
and fasting.
I have never heard anyone but myself seek
to understand what that means.
And I hope to communicate that tonight in
a way that will change your life and
make you to be a disciple who will
not fail and not disappoint in that ultimate
last day when we shall be ultimately confronted.
So Jesus commanded the spirit that keeps this
boy, this son, this nation from speaking and
hearing.
Israel's long spiritual blindness, a judgment that gave
the enemy a certain right and authority to
perform this.
But it's not going to be Israel's final
condition if their return shall be life from
the dead.
I command you come out of him and
never enter him again.
I've taken my yellow marking pen and I
mark never again.
The Jewish community is very fond of using
that expression when it talks about the Holocaust,
the concentration camps, the death camps, never again.
Well, you hotshots, you better tighten your safety
belt, there will be an again.
Because it's not in your power to say
never again, only in his power.
But I want to draw your attention that
this deliverance is an ultimate deliverance of an
ultimate kind and an ultimate authority and an
ultimate power.
So ultimate a deliverance it shall never be
required again.
Our deliverances, well, six months later, two months
later, a year later, we're praying the same
thing, asking for the same thing, working through
the same problems again and again and again.
This deliverance of Jesus, he saves to the
uttermost all who come unto God through him.
This is total, it's permanent and it's enduring.
This son representing this nation shall never again
after this last day's deliverance affected by you
come again under the bondage and constraints and
demonic power of darkness.
This is a final deliverance.
And finality always requires something ultimate.
Am I getting too fancy?
This is basic training for Sunday.
Hallelujah.
Never again enter him.
You're finished.
This is the once and for all.
You'll never again be able to wreak your
filthy design of devastation and death on this
son.
And there's no question about that.
When Jesus said, come out of him and
never enter him again, that was it.
That was the supreme authority of very God.
And the power, therefore, after crying out and
convulsing him terribly, it came out and the
boy was like a corpse so that most
of them said, he's dead.
This is beginning to take on the appearance
of not so much the authority in God
to affect a deliverance, but to raise someone
from the dead.
Because Israel is moving not just into a
final paroxysm of demonic possession of foaming at
the mouth, so to speak, but they're moving
toward a course in which that nation is
going to be for all effects and purposes
as good as dead.
You see, Jesus said, come out of him,
but these powers of darkness are so reluctant,
they're so full of spite and mischief and
malevolence, that though they're under the command to
come out, they're going to come out and
take everything that they can take with them
on the way out.
And the Lord allowed that.
He could have said, come out instantly and
don't touch him one centimeter more.
No, he allowed, he knew the mind of
the filthy powers of darkness that they're malicious
and when they get that rag doll in
their teeth like a dog, a mad dog,
they'll just wave that thing until the stuffings
come out.
It left that boy as good as dead.
And in doing so, served the ultimate purposes
of God.
Because now what was required is not just
a deliverance, but of being raised up unto
resurrection.
Talk about the sovereignty of God, the wisdom
of God, the purposes of God, that can
even employ the devilish malevolence of hell to
serve his ultimate purposes.
When you hear this tape, mark how many
times I've used the word ultimate.
You know what's wrong with us as Christians?
We're not living in an ultimate way.
We don't understand God ultimately.
We're not serving with ultimacy.
We're kind of, you know, get by, makeshift,
okay, but we've missed the genius of the
faith that is ultimate, transcendent, transfiguring, glorious.
And you know what?
It's the crisis of this boy that's going
to compel us to come on that ground.
It's going to compel us to understand what
Jesus meant by this kind cometh not up,
but by fasting and prayer.
Because it's to this kind that we, as
the Church of Jesus Christ, are called to
deliver and to raise victims from the dead,
this kind.
So what is this kind of prayer and
fasting?
Well, we know what fasting is.
It's self-denial.
Like, we're not boasting in this.
My brother and I have not tasted a
crumb of anything today.
We wanted to begin these days of meeting
with a fast.
No big deal.
You're not going to die from it, although
you may feel that you're going to die.
Headache and, oh, I'm constitutionally not able, and
I have a serious physical problem.
There's very little fasting, but I tell you,
saints, what little I know about it.
The thing that makes it so powerful is
that it contradicts and confounds the wisdom by
which the world lives its life, namely self
-gratification.
Have an extra hamburger.
We pass the White Tower, White Castle hamburgers,
a whole sack of 10 for how much?
$3.30?
Man, let's eat it up.
I've been around 70 years, saints, and I've
never seen anything like what is prevailing today
in consumerism, in inducements to have, to eat,
to enjoy, to wallow, to indulge.
It's a self-gratifying age, and it has
been sanctified and sanctioned and endorsed even by
the church.
Obesity is a principal problem in the United
States of America.
By teenagers, let alone adults, one out of
every three is grossly overweight.
One goes, that's got nothing to do with
my spirituality.
I said, oh, yeah, it has everything to
do.
I'm concerned myself how easy it is for
my gut to hang out, and I'm a
preacher.
How can I allow my physical profile to
contradict what I'm about in God?
We should be statements of self-discipline, not
statements of self-gratification.
This kind comes not out if you're going
to give yourself to indulgence and to enjoy
not the things that are sinful or even
necessarily carnal.
They might be legitimate, but you deny yourself
the legitimate thing because you know that something
is going up into the air, the principalities
and powers of the air who despise this
act of self-sacrifice because it is so
contrary to their own ethos, E-T-H
-O-S, to their own value system, which
is have, rape, loot, enjoy, violence, death, lust.
Self-denial is the antithesis of the wisdom
of the powers of this present world.
And prayer, this kind comes not out but
by fasting a prayer.
Well, Lord, I pray, but I don't have
the authority to confront these.
Well, that's because your prayer, however respectful and
nice and well-meaning, is fixed at the
level of petition only.
What do you mean by that, Art?
I don't know of any other kind of
prayer.
Isn't that when we ask the Lord that
we need this, we need that, and, Lord,
how about this and that?
I'm not knocking that.
There's a place for that, but it's not
the ultimate place of prayer.
You say if petition is not the ultimate
place of prayer, what is?
If it's not prayer of petition, then what
kind of prayer?
It's the prayer of communion that is beyond
petition where you stop asking and just simply
be in the presence of him into whose
communion you have come on the mount.
What was for them the mount of transfiguration
and a going up, because have you ever
known of a mountain that has an elevator
or a conveyor belt?
A going up is always against the flesh.
It's always in opposition to that which is
easy and convenient.
But there's something there that is only obtained
by the willingness to go up.
But the mountain for us is not the
mountain of a physical kind.
It's the mountain of the prayer chamber, the
quiet place, the early morning time in God's
presence.
It's a going down on your knees in
your BVDs with cold drafts coming up the
floor and everything in your body crying out,
you fool, what are you doing there?
You ought to be back in bed with
your cozy wife and enjoying those legitimate things
that are rightly yours.
To deny yourself to go down, to seek
the Lord in the early morning time, don't
you need your sleep?
How many of us seek him?
And you know what, saints?
When you go beyond your petition, I'm seeking
the Lord every day like this.
Would to God I had known about this
35 years ago when I became a believer.
It's only the last 10, 12 years that
the Lord has opened my understanding and made
this not just a delight but the commencement
of my day in God.
Something happens when you're finished with your petitions
and you still yet linger and remain in
the presence of the Most High.
Something is communicated if you are in the
holiest place of all and not in a
closet in Savannah, Georgia or downstairs or behind
a staircase or in the living room.
That's where you are physically.
But where are you actually and in fact?
Because that's what spiritual means.
Spiritual is not the icing on the cake.
It's the cake.
It's not a subterfuge.
It's not an appearance.
It's not a little gilding thing.
It's the reality.
The reality is that you're not in fact
in a room.
That's only the physical nexus.
The real truth and the reality is you're
in the holiest place of all before the
Shekinah glory of God who waits above the
mercy seat and between the wings of the
cherubim.
And there he said, I will meet with
you.
But how many of us are meeting with
him?
Just let me read you from one of
my devotional books.
I read Oswald Chambers, My Utmost Worst Highest.
How many people know that one?
How many people are reading that one every
day?
You don't want to miss a day.
This man was a gift to the church.
His insights, I've never seen such a depth
of understanding as Oswald Chambers.
And there's a selection every day.
And it's remarkable how often that selection of
the day corresponds to the psalm that I'm
reading for the day.
So I read the psalms like what is
today's the 2nd of December?
Well, for me, it's the 132nd psalm.
Because I'm like 4 months into the psalms.
Tomorrow will be the 133rd psalm on the
3rd day of December.
And in 5 months, I've gone through all
the psalms.
But if I say gone through, that is
a caricature.
It's not like religious obligation to read so
many chapters.
You've gone through.
It's investing yourself.
It's dwelling upon every word and turn of
phrase.
What does the psalmist mean when he describes
God as his refuge and his high tower?
And he runs into the name of the
Lord.
Is that hocus-pocus?
Is that just a play on words?
Is that a kind of a biblical rhetoric?
Or is it meaning something of an actual
kind that I myself have not yet discovered
and need to?
The psalms is God's end-time provision for
the saints.
Because the psalmists had an exquisite knowledge of
God, they had a relationship with God in
intimacy, they had been brought through the grid,
they had suffered, they were unjustly persecuted.
How long, Lord, is the frequent cry of
the psalmist?
How long am I going to suffer this?
How come that the wicked are prospering and
your servant who seeks to follow you unfaithfully,
I'm suffering this, that, and the other.
How come?
Why?
The deep, vexing cries that go out of
the heart of the psalmist.
And when you come to the end of
the psalm, it's not like the happy answer
has come.
The Lord has not answered, but the psalmist,
in reviewing his cry and remembering the past
mercies of God, ends on the note, I'm
confident that he who has been faithful in
the past will be faithful soon.
Oh, dear saints, drink it up.
Immerse yourself in the psalms, in the chapter
of the Book of Proverbs, which would be
the second chapter for today.
Well, let me read you from another one
of my devotional sources that showed God transfigured,
showed God in his immensity, showed God in
his eternality.
Be patient with me.
The eternal God is your refuge.
And you're not going to know about eternity
and the sense of eternity and the things
that are eternal until you're in that place
of refuge in the sanctuary of God, waiting
upon him and his presence.
And the sense of what eternal means begins
to seep into your soul.
You don't know what you're missing to have
the sense of eternity communicated to your inmost
being.
It's a deliverance itself.
It saves you from the things that are
temporal, present, everyday, mundane, wearying in the flesh
and in the soul, the things that are
everyday with us, that grind us down.
What does it say?
In the last days, the powers of darkness
will seek to wear out the saints.
It's going to be a fatigue just to
go through a day in the world.
We need to find the refuge of God,
the eternal God, because to find him there
is to find eternity and the sense of
eternity and the things that lie beyond this
life.
Not that you can contemplate what they will
mean to enjoy when you die, but to
bring that eternal sense of reality in to
your present understanding.
It will change everything.
Jesus was not intimidated by the powers of
darkness.
He was not threatened.
He came from God.
He was with God.
He is God.
He sees through and above.
The demon spirit can shake that boy.
He can convulse at the mouth.
Jesus knows the passing transient phenomenon.
The thing that is enduring is when he
is raised up from the dead.
He brought a greater reality than was there
in that demonic activity.
Now, listen to me, saints.
I don't know how to express this.
It's not an exaggeration to say that our
whole Christian life is a conflict between competing
realities.
Where is the action?
Where does the rubber hit the road?
Where does it really count?
In the thing that is visible and seen
with its power, prestige, demonic force, violence, lust,
payoff, treasure, the kinds of things that the
world pants for.
Is that the reality?
Or is that a passing thing that will
come to naught?
And the real reality is the thing that
is invisible and unseen, that you can glimpse
in one place only, upon the mount, apart
from all men and not seeing anyone but
Jesus himself alone.
To bring that reality down to the valley
is the whole object of our spiritual life.
It's a put-up or shut-up contest
between where is the action and where is
the reality that is really reality?
Is it the things that are seen, by
which the world is motivated and jerked and
manipulated and men run here and there and
everywhere for the things that are visible and
temporal?
Or is it in the things that are
invisible and eternal, where God himself is, who
will one day soon reign and prevail over
his own creation when that son is raised
up out of the fire and out of
the water and out of convulsions and foaming
mouth and raised up and delivered.
For Jesus extended his hand and he lifted
him up.
If we are not that Jesus in the
last days, that boy, that son is going
to die in the fire and the water.
Faith is more than giving assent to correct
doctrine.
Faith is the knowledge of God, not as
we thought him to be, but as he
in fact is transfigured, radiant, glorious.
His garments are whiter than any fuller could
make them.
We have never seen him that way, but
that's the way he always is.
And because we have not seen him that
way on the mount, we have a view
of Jesus and of God that has reduced
God, that has made him more minimal, more
commonplace.
We have profaned him without even being aware
of it.
He's become our busboy, he's become our guy
who's going to do a good deed for
us, a helper, you know, I need a
wife, I need, need, need.
We've missed God and therefore when we're confronted
with the opposite of God, we have not
an equal and greater reality by which to
confront that darkness in the light that was
ours only on the mountaintop or in the
place of morning devotion by your couch, by
your bed or wherever you have found a
place to seek the Lord.
Till in his immensity, his reality, you forget
how small you are, how weak, how inept
you are, you forget your limitations because you're
taken up with the God who is without
limit and you're communicating that God in the
place where the rubber needs to hit the
road.
Until the relief of safety merges into joy
of appreciation and you absorb the divine and
absorbing gain strength to conquer.
I'll go over this.
When you are in the holiest place of
all, it may be on 13th Street and
Jackson Avenue in Savannah if there's such an
address, but you at 5 a.m. are
in the holiest place of all.
It's beyond petition, it is now communion with
the God who is God as he in
fact is and not as we thought him
to be.
Something is transmitted.
No, I'm so foolish.
I say, Lord, if I'm before your Shekinah
presence, the effulgent glory of God, can you
radiate a little of that into me?
Because when I come and stand before your
people to speak, I want not only to
bring a word of however great and important
that is, I want to bring some communication
of yourself.
I want to bring something of the luster
of your glory.
Listen, saints, we see too few shining, radiant
faces in the kingdom of God.
We see respectable, well-meaning and industrious Christians,
but where is the radiance that is obtained
in one place only, in the presence of
the Most High on top of that mount
when we see him as he in fact
is and save from debasing him and making
him smaller and less than he is in
the common practice and the way in which
we use the name of Jesus.
We need to be on that mount daily
or our faith will correspondingly suffer and become
diminished.
And when it comes to a sniffle, yeah,
we can pray.
But when it comes to an ultimate deliverance,
we cannot perform it.
We have not the authority.
We have not absorbed not only the radiance
of God's glory, but the authority of the
life that shines out of that presence.
And absorbing that we gain strength to conquer,
to triumph, to overcome even our own limitation.
Let me read you my notes here.
The whole of the redemptive saga is to
accomplish the defeat of his enemies through this
absorption of God by the church whose faith
has appropriated that glory.
And only on that basis can we replace
these demonic false ruling entities when we shall
receive glorified bodies to rule and reign with
him from heavenly places in the places that
they themselves have vacated when they were brought
down by the raising up of a body
like this.
Forget what I just said.
Get it on the tape.
Because in this life we recognize these conflicting
realities.
This is the predicate.
This is the foundation of the understanding of
our faith.
There is a moral contest going on between
darkness and light, between two princes, two kings,
two rulers, two seeking to prevail over creation.
That is the underlay of the entire saga
of redemption from its commencement to its conclusion.
And only a true believer knows that.
He knows that the issue of demons is
not just the issue of a personal deliverance.
The issue of demonism, of the powers of
darkness is the great stratum that overlies the
earth.
It's the place in the heavenlies by which
nations and men and races are affected.
You can't understand rock and roll and punk
rock and rap and this whole filthy, vile
culture and the way it is having its
degenerating effect on those who subscribe to it
if you don't understand the influence that comes
down from above.
There's a war on, a powerful conflict between
two kinds of moral order and God has
put his eggs in one basket and believes
that the church is going to perform in
the last days what he performed in that
day by the same radiance, the same power,
the same reality because it meets him up
on the mountain in the place of devotion
beyond petition, in communion and in waiting and
can bring that reality down into the valley
where it counts.
For you have absorbed reality, God as he
in fact is and with that things as
he himself sees them.
Which eclipses and overturns what is false and
purports to be true.
The whole world lies in the wicked one.
Who's the father of lies?
Do you know that?
It's a flinky, flunky escapade.
It's a charade, it's a grotesque caricature and
people call it life and they die in
that and don't know that there's an eternity
waiting in which the truth that they have
evaded in this life will hit them in
that day in which there's no change, no
remedy, no alteration but they will be fixed
in the lie in which they died.
Where is the church that's going to blow
the whistle and save the victims from the
unreality that the world is because they can
communicate the greater reality and the enduring reality
and the eternal reality because they have absorbed
it in the presence of the God who
is God on the mount and in the
place of prayer and devotion in the early
morning hours when everything will tell you don't
be a fool, get back to bed, you
need your rest, it's cold.
This kind cometh not out but by fasting,
self-denial and prayer which goes beyond petition
and is communion with the radiant God.
So, and that's where these ultimate realities are
to be found where final deliverance is to
be found in the hidden prayer closet.
So, my final question, where do you dwell?
Where do you live and move and have
your being?
Don't give me your street address in Savannah.
Where is the effectual place where your reality
is obtained?
Where your sense of God is found and
maintained?
Where do you have your effectual dwelling?
Where are you formed?
What are your influences that are eternal and
sublime and godly?
That's where you live.
That's where your reality is obtained and maintained
and God is going to call for it.
There's a son dying before our eyes.
Since infancy, since childhood, he's been chewed up
and spit out and thrown into fires and
into waters because the devil was out to
destroy him.
And here in this last and final convulsion,
he left him as good as dead.
And the disciples could not cast him out.
It was beyond them.
They were limited.
And Jesus said, how long must I suffer
you?
My God, haven't I been with you enough?
Three years took you up on the mount,
you've caught glimpse of my glory and you
come down from the mount and you see
this little demonstration of demonic power and you're
intimidated and you're made inert and helpless.
How long must I suffer you?
I'm the God who is the creator of
the heavens and the earth and all that
in them lies.
And you're allowing this pipsqueak passing demonic thing
that is going to an eternal fire to
threaten and intimidate you where you can't even
take authority against it and deliver this helpless
Jewish son.
How long must I suffer you?
To get us out of the spirit.
Have you noticed that?
Just when you think you had it all
together, you're feeling very spiritual, your wife will
say something, your kids will do something, some
little adverse thing and boom, we're out of
the spirit.
Because our resource is so thin, we're so
shallow in the ultimate reality, it doesn't take
all that much to discombobulate us and get
us off the track.
We're not steeped in the reality of God
on the mount.
We need to come to a high mountain
apart by ourselves, not to remain there but
to bring it down to the valley below.
I want to pray for such a church
because the son of Israel depends on it.
There will be no deliverance, no resurrection, except
that there are disciples who are not intimidated
by the visible powers of darkness because they
know that they know the greater reality which
they have absorbed by their daily and frequent
waiting in his presence beyond petition.
So Lord I pray, oh my God, who
would ever have thought that the final mystery
of Israel's salvation, deliverance and restoration to its
calling has to do ultimately with the prayer
life, the secret devotional life of Christians.
Where so ever they are, the mount awaits
them.
That the great issue is not some heroism
that we have to muster but the sacrifice
of daily frequent morning devotion in the presence
of the most high God.
To absorb you for you are reality and
everything else is a hoax, a phony wounding
and a shame and a lie and a
scandal that needs to be brought to an
end by those who know you as you
in fact are.
So Lord I bless this church that's before
me tonight.
I bless the church that will be hearing
this tape.
Prick our hearts Lord, show us our callow
laziness, our indifference, our shallowness, our failure to
seek you, our satisfaction with the mere measure
that we have which is okay for us
and enables us to get by.
It is okay for us, it's good for
us, us, us, us.
But what about them?
What about the dying?
What about the despairing?
What about those that are being chewed up
and spit out without mercy by the powers
of darkness and are being tossed into fire
and water and convulsing and foaming at the
mouth and no one can set them free?
Raise up a church my God that has
your authority, the radiance of your glory and
deliver them.
Even from saints tonight willing for the sacrifice
of the early morning seeking, fighting against the
discouragement that nothing seems to be happening and
I don't feel anything.
So caught up in measuring things by the
externalities of feeling and not by faith believing
that they are in the holiest place of
all and that something holy therefore must be
communicated to them and in them that they
can bring down into the most dark and
desperate valleys where men are dying, both black
men and Jew and all of the castoffs
of the world who need to have a
hand extended to raise them up out of
death.
Seal this word Lord Precious God and perform
it for Jesus' sake, for Israel's sake, for
the sake of lost men everywhere.
We thank you and give you praise for
the provision that you wait for us to
meet you in that place.
Come my God, beckon us and call us
afresh and give us the courage, the desire
to ascend that mount and to effectually dwell
there and bring its reality into the valley
places.
We thank you and give you the praise
in Yeshua's holy name.
God's people sent.
Amen.