Tulsa 2000 - Part 3

Bless us together, close us in with yourself, and grant us the privilege again of hearing your heart. We thank you, Lord. It's privilege unspeakable, and we're so grateful. Grant again that precious unction and anointing, my God, a phenomenon that we have never been able to understand and want to allow to remain in the realm of mystery, that we can't invoke it at will. Something that you grant as you will, and so we're at your mercy, my God, that you will bestow or withhold according to your good pleasure. We pray that you'll be pleased to give, for without that anointing, without that unction, my God, we cannot proceed. We can't speak, we can't hear, we can't do. We're bound, we're limited, we're helpless, Lord, without the impartation of your life. So may you be pleased to freely express it, and receive now our gratitude in Yeshua's holy name. Amen. Well, an arrow in my quiver is Psalm 102. I'm a great lover of the Psalms, having thought for the longest time that it was just a kind of poetry. Nice sounding words, but realizing more and more one of the most incisive books in the Holy Writ, particularly the Psalms that are eschatological, that speak of things pertaining to the end. I never expected to find that in Psalms. I always thought the Psalms would be a kind of a reminiscence, a looking back upon God's faithfulness, some hopeful beseeching of the Lord for a present help, but Psalms that speak of the future, of the eschatological conclusion, eschaton, things that pertain to the end. This is a remarkable thing, all the more because they're written as if they're presently being enacted, or as if they already have been. But these are the Psalms that Israel will employ when these events have come to pass, when the nations bow before the acknowledgement of Israel's God as being the God of all the earth, all the nations with Israel will be singing these praises, these Psalms. So Psalm 102 is one of the most all-inclusive diagrammatic statements of how this age concludes the mystery of God and Israel's final restoration, all encompassed in one statement. So it takes a very particular attention to the Word of God. Often when I speak of the Psalms, I quiz the hearers, what's the difference between poetry and prose? Because Psalms are a form of poetry that's a more intensive form of communication, making a greater demand upon the reader. Prose, it's spelled out. But if the content of Psalm 102 were in prose, it would have taken several pages to express the same content. So it's an intensified statement that we need to unpack. And from my own experience, no two unpackings are ever the same. So let's see how the Lord will unpack this now. The Psalm is in two parts. The first part almost sounds like the description of a man lamenting and crying out to God. It's a psalm of lament for the pathetic, pitiful condition which he is experiencing as God's judgment, having fallen and coming under the merciless, cruel mistreatment of an oppressor. And when we read it, we need to suspect that it's though the psalmist is speaking of himself, he's standing in place of the entire nation. He's speaking for the nation. It's not an individual lament, but it's a statement of what has befallen all Israel itself. You'll never read anything in the scriptures, perhaps aside from Deuteronomy 32 and other places that is more descriptive of Jewish suffering in the Nazi time than this. Talk about something written thousands of years before that is descriptive of a present or near or historical, near historical reality. And makes me to suspect that Israel is yet once again to experience a concentration type camp reality. Have you ever been to Auschwitz? You need to go. I've been to very, I think almost every concentration camp and factory of extermination in Europe, wherever I'm traveling in Poland or Germany, Australia, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Czechoslovakia, wherever I learn of the existence of a camp. Treblinka was one of my last experiences in Poland and also Auschwitz itself. Auschwitz, of course, is the, the summation, a symbol, if they want one name that invokes the whole memory of this experience of annihilation, Auschwitz is it. Actually, Auschwitz was originally a Polish military camp in World War I, adopted by the Germans in World War II to begin to put into effect a process of extermination, but it was too limited, too archaic. And so three kilometers away in Birkenau, B-I-R-K-E-N-A-U is the actual factory of extermination. That's where you come in, where you'll see the railroad lines going right to the platform where the Jews right from their arrival were singled out for destruction or for a barracks for labor or for immediate death. It's almost all in ruins now, but the foundation of these barracks remain. And you can scan, I don't know how many acres Birkenau contains, as far as you can pan that field, nothing but the ruins or the foundations of barrack after barrack after barrack after barrack. It had to be that because of the remarkable problem of the elimination of bodies, there's a word for this in military, somebody help me with a word. Logistics, the logistics of elimination. Of course, Germans, who else would be better fitted to rationally, mathematically and scientifically dispose of millions of bodies that they were required to perform in this massive process of annihilation. But as we were leaving this place, and it was a cold windswept gray day, just the appropriate setting to see this place of horror. My brother turned to me and he said, Art, if you expect, according even to the words of Jesus, that the coming Holocaust will exceed this one, because Jesus said that there was never a time in history, nor will ever again be, such a time of trouble. And if this time were not cut short, no flesh would survive. But for the elect's sake, this time will be cut short. So he's speaking of something yet future, greater than the Nazi Holocaust. And if the Nazi Holocaust took 6 million lives, and the one that is future will be greater in its magnitude, though not different in its character, it will not be confined to Poland or Germany or Europe, but will be a global phenomenon. This brother said that we need to anticipate that camps of this kind of elimination will be in many parts of the world. I hadn't thought that, but we're talking about a three and a half year time of Jacob's trouble. The Nazi process of elimination was roughly from 1940, 41 to 45, almost four or five years. So again, what is being described to you may well be the future experience of numbers of Jews. Would to God that they would be crying out like the psalmist. And in fact, it's not too much to suspect that God will allow affliction of this magnitude to evoke a psalmist cry from a people who are not even the readers of the Psalms, let alone disposed to proclaim them. You can always measure your relationship with God by your relationship with his word. If there's an indifference to his word, understand that that's an indifference to God. My mother, my mother's whole introduction to the Psalms in her 95th year is through my provocation. It's not that it was not available to her. It was not of interest to her. So how far will God go to bring the chosen people, the elect and the appointed, the witness nation to the place of relationship with himself so long neglected at so great price, except by the tribulation of the last days. Hear my prayer. Oh Lord, let my cry come to you. Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress, incline your ear to me, answer me speedily in the day when I call for my days pass away like smoke and my bones burn like a furnace. My heart is stricken and withered like grass. I am too wasted even to eat my bread because of my loud groaning, my bones cling to my skin. I'm like an owl of the wilderness, like a little owl of the waste places. I lie awake. I am like a lonely bird on the housetop. If that, if that is not a death camp description, I don't know what is. All day long, my enemies taunt me. Those who deride me use my name for a curse for I eat ashes like bread and mingle tears with my drink. So what shall we say just pausing over this that evidently this describes a people who have suffered some devastating defeat, imprisonment, confinement, and are subject all the day long to the taunts of their enemy. So we have to read into this content. This is not just a defeated people, but a people under continual oppression by those who have defeated them so that they are able daily to taunt them. Then we come to verse 10 and this is of remarkable significance. Because of your indignation and anger for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside. My days are like an evening shadow. I wither away like grass, but you oh Lord are enthroned forever. Your name endures to all generations. You will rise up and have compassion on Zion for it is time to favor it. The appointed time has come. So first the description of the terrible affliction suffered by the psalmist speaking for an entire people who have been reduced to this place where their skin clings to their bones and their tears are mixed with their drink and they eat ashes like bread. But the remarkable thing and something that did not come out of the Nazi holocaust is this acknowledgement that God is the cause of this dilemma, this affliction because of your indignation and anger for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside. Oh pause for proper acknowledgement of what this is expressing. God is waiting for this acknowledgement and when a people, a Jewish people or any people and the church and the nations will acknowledge that their tribulations are directly related to God and not to caprice or to circumstance, it is already a redemptive turning of great significance. If this was not, if this acknowledgement did not come out of the Nazi holocaust, how far then will God go again to obtain it for the acknowledgement of God and his anger as being a just anger and his indignation and his wrath as being as being appropriate to God. He's entitled to indignation. It's not unbecoming to him because we, our sin has offended him. We have rubbed him raw. His patience has been long extended. We have snubbed his grace. When he reaches a place of anger and indignation and expresses it in this kind of suffering that he allows to befall the people in order that they might acknowledge that he is the author of their distress, then we can understand that his judgments are not punitive but redemptive and when we can see God like that and acknowledge God like that and for that, we have come to a place at last where we are acknowledging God as God. How, how, how long is the Lord waiting for this kind of acknowledgement? This is truth. This is reality. This is bedrock and my God what must have been the condition of a people elect and called who have not responded to you nor acknowledge you that this was required as necessarily coming from your hand to bring them to this place of awareness. How great are the stakes? Why is it that important? Are you some kind of vain deity, the supreme egoist that you go to any length to obtain the acknowledgement of your people even suffering of this kind? Or is there something at stake here that through this nation's acknowledgement of you as you in fact are is akin not only to their own redemption but to the redemption of all the world? Now I'm getting the Holy Ghost chill at that point for that is the issue of Israel. If you do not understand Israel in the context of the nations you do not understand, you're then sentimentalizing the nation seeing it in some kind of narrow personal subjective kind of way that misses the entire depth of significance by which Israel needs to be perceived and understood. Israel came out of the loins of Abraham to whom a promise was made that from you will come a people who will bless all the families of the earth. God has got to be extravagant in his dealings with Israel for all of the nations and the knowledge of God and their own redemption is keyed in to the role that Israel plays toward them. Did you know that? The law must go forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem so that nations will study war no more or it will not take place at all. And now you know in one breath why it is that God's dealings with Israel must be as intense as they are. And now you know why it is that unregenerate men moved by the spirit and powers of darkness can so maliciously pursue this people unto extermination. What is the law of return today in Israel? If you are 164th Jewish, if you have one great great grandparent who is a Jew you're entitled to a place in Israel under the law of return. How do they come up to this determination of who would be admissible on this basis? On this ground Hitler exterminated everyone who is Jewish if they had even so much as one great great grandparent. If they were 164th Jewish they were candidates for annihilation. This is more than the rational mind can understand and the military historians cannot understand how in the last stages of World War II when Germany's back was against the wall they nevertheless never ceased to expend every vital thing of manpower and materiel and resources to the extermination of Jews till the final moment. This is beyond rational explanation. There's a drivenness, there's a demonic necessity for annihilation of a people. Why? Because this people is the key to the coming king. This people's return to Zion as the redeemed of the Lord releases the king from heaven who is bound up in Acts 3:21 waiting confined limited self-imposed restriction waiting for the restoration of all things spoken by the prophets since the world began. Acts 3:21 mark that. There's no coming of the king except as he comes in the deliverer of his own people when his feet shall be set upon the Mount of Olives and he shall destroy those nations that come to destroy Jerusalem. The coming of the Lord is related to the final deliverance of that nation and his enthronement is waiting for the restoration of a Zion suitable as habitation for a king. That's why I don't like to go to Israel now. It's an anguish. I'm chafed. I don't want to the sleaze or learn about the places of prostitution that we're reading in the Jerusalem Post and the Satan clubs in high schools and all the kinds of things that are horrifically taking place in Israel. I don't even like to see grass and cracks in the street. I don't like to see jerry-built buildings. It's clear that present Israel and present Jerusalem is not appropriate for the king but out of the rubble and ruin of present Jerusalem a city will be built that will be a fit habitation for his presence and for his glory. And this psalm speaks of that ruin. So let me just review. Israel is not another nation. It's not another ethnic people who deserve the gospel as much as Puerto Ricans or Aborigines from Australia. There is a particular drama significance and centrality to the Jew and to Israel that is unique and appropriate to them different from other nations because they are God's appointed nation to the nations. If the law does not go out from Zion it does not go out at all. It's the one people elected to be a witness of himself to the nations. And if you go back to Genesis and read right up to the advent of Abraham in Genesis chapter 12 what precedes it is the rebellion of nations doing their own thing building their own ziggurats and their high towers that they might be as more than the most high. He had to confound their languages. He had to disperse them. It's another rebellion of mankind and fling them out into the world in their differences. And then the next chapter we read the selection of Abraham, Abram at that time, a Semite out from Ur of the Chaldees. And from this one man is to come one nation that is to be God's salvific and redemptive agent for all nations. The earth is the Lord's saints. The nations and those that dwell therein. And we have to become conscious of the parameters of the great drama to which we are called at the end of the age. Not to see Israel in the context of the nations. Not to see Israel in the theocratic intention of God as the nation out of which his rule goes forth to all nations is not to see Israel. And it's not to understand their historic persecutions and their near annihilations because the powers of darkness know better than the church that the way to avert the catastrophe for which the powers the principalities and powers of the air will lose their usurping influence over the nations is to allow this nation to come back again to Zion as the redeemed of the Lord and for its king to come and to dwell with them and make their Zion his sanctuary and dwelling. And that's the end of the false rule of the usurping powers that to this hour and right now are manipulating all nations. If we're watching two men vying for political rule in America at the cost of millions if not billions and vexation and energy and stretching themselves out with every device that human cunning can obtain so that they might find office what shall we say of the principalities and powers of the air and their political dominance over the nations that has been unchecked untried unrecognized since time immemorial. The principalities and powers of the air have been having a field day over the nations and at any moment can pull a Rwanda a genocidal devastation in Africa or take possession of the most sophisticated culture in the world and make it a nation calculated for the annihilation of Jews even Germany. Not content merely to influence nations they cannot will possess them. How can you understand the land of Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, Kant and the greatest geniuses of music, poetry, art, philosophy wearing skull and bones attachments on their uniforms and on their buckles. I forgot what that says in German. Not in God we trust but something in God's will. I mean going from the death chambers to playing Mendelssohn and Mozart or going to a Lutheran Sunday service after they hang up their clothing. You see what the proper understanding of the issue of Israel brings. Can you see that if you miss it in the proportions I'm trying to set before you now and have only a sentimental affinity of Israel and think that it's only the issue of the establishment of a nation that Jews might have again a homeland that we're missing it by a mile. That we're missing the real significance and because we will miss it how offended will we be to see this state of Israel fail. What will we say when we think that this is God's provision and it suffers terrible collapse and the military defeat ends this political Israel and that Jews are again cast out again into the nations. It will be a disappointment for those that are shallow and naive and sentimental from which they may not recover. Unless they understand the greater drama and the greater issues of what is represented in Israel they will be offended by the lengths to which God will go to obtain from that people a remnant as the redeemed of the Lord who returned to Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads though mourning and sighing will flee away. Just as you cannot understand the human drama except it be set in the context of eternity unless heaven and hell is brought into your consideration so also you cannot understand Israel except in the context that I'm setting before you now. The theocratic rule of God over the nations through the one nation elected to be central to all nations Israel. Not the present state but the nation that God said will never expire from my sight. You can read it I think it's in Jeremiah 26 so long as the sun and the moon give its light and the stars he says this nation will abide before me forever. Not the political entity called Israel. God's not under obligation necessarily to preserve that. That can set in motion the last day's tribulations that will result in the restoration of the nation that will abide before him forever but it's not necessarily that nation it's it's a state we have to distinguish the present state from the nationhood of Israel which includes Jews that are now presently dispersed in many places in the world will be part of that surviving and elect Israel of God that will be the fulfillment of scripture and be the millennial blessing to all the nations of the earth. See how ponderous this is and why it can't be expressed at one time and why we have to speak of it from one perspective and another and if it's true and it is this central and it goes all the way back to Genesis and the rebellion of nations and the raising up of Abraham that through his loins shall come this nation central to all nations and that this has been the underlying drama of the whole of redemptive history what kind of a church is it that remains to this hour in complete ignorance of that mystery and that drama. It's what's the word defunct church it's a cultural social religious institution that panders to its own ends it's a self-perpetrating entity that is concerned about its own continuation and has no relationship with the fulfillment of this great drama that requires everything from the church to obtain. When this nation shall be so reduced that it itself will acknowledge as in Ezekiel 37 we are cut off we are without hope we are as dry bones then the stage is set for the employment of the church in an ultimate way that if the church fails that moment it's tragedy beyond all speaking. We are moving toward a place of annihilation of such a kind that did not even obtain in the Nazi time this confession we are cut off we are without hope we are as dry bones those that came out with the tattooed numbers from concentration camps did not come out with this kind of cry there was not a national cry of this acknowledgement because there's something in us as Jews this inveterate deep self assurance our ability to raise ourselves up by our bootstraps and indeed we have and a half century since the end of the Nazi debacle a state has been formed and founded an ancient liturgical language has become the modern language of Hebrew a place of malarial swamps has become one of the high-tech societies of the world and the defenseless ghetto people who stroke their beards and were taken like sheep to the slaughter is now one of the formidable military presences in the world in a half century by the prowess that we Jews have in ourselves humanly and you can be assured that God is not going to allow that to succeed that that success is not calculated to glorify God that is not the means by which he shall be made known because the nation itself does not know him and at the nation itself in the obtainment of this entity of Israel has been required to abuse and to chafe its neighbors and it's not unusual for the sentiment now to rise up that a good Arab is a dead one and the fear of their Arab and Palestinian neighbors and the hatred from the 50 years of animosity and struggle is not calculated for us to bless all the families of the earth let alone Arab families can you follow me something much more profound has got to take place for there to be the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham and what kind of a church is it that is not concerned with the fulfillment of God's promise for God's failure to fulfill his promise is God's failure as God if this people will not be made a holy people a nation of priests and a light unto the world and to bless the families of the earth according to the word of God that Paul refers to in Romans 11 that the gift and callings of God are without repentance they are irrevocable then God is not God he has got to succeed even against the unwillingness of Israel to be what God intends because the current mentality of Israel is to be like every other nation if God fails in his fulfillment he's ipso facto a non-god he cannot be commended to the nations to the church to anyone the issue of Israel in the intention of God is the issue of God and everything is stacked against it and not the least of which is the church itself in its present condition for when Israel is reduced to dry bones and is helpless and cannot save itself and something must come to it from beyond and outside itself it's not God who is the agent that directly raises Israel but a son of man whom God commands to prophesy to the bones that they might live who that son of man is is one of the great mysteries of prophetic scripture but I have my own hunch that it's more than a single individual it's a statement of the church brought to sonship and to ultimate prophetic maturity that can be commanded by God at will to prophesy to those bones that they might live even when it does not feel like it it is yet an obedient people that can be commanded and it's speaking is not a wishful hunch hope against hope that this will work their speaking is itself a statement of resurrection power and authority that's the picture of the church of the last days and except the church comes to it as one whole man in courtness speaking one thing at one time at the commandment of God in authority and power Israel remains in its grave and if Israel remains in its grave the nations go on in their own rebellion in their own Sodom and Gomorrah character in their own violence and destruction and and the whole atrocious degeneration of nations and of mankind of injustice of bondage of in the same two issues of New Yorker is an article on the Congo I want Doug to read it what a pathetic statement of Central Africa what absolute helplessness what a malarial swamp what an AIDS driven people what the nothing there's no hope no expectancy everyone who comes to power as a usurping self-aggrandizing character who will who murder at will Africa is a mess and will continue to be a mess they might multiply the united nation missions 1000 times over until the Lord comes they'll be they'll not be righteousness in the earth for he will judge between the nations with equity and with justice their AIDS and the malaria and their swamps and their poverty and their violence are all the consequence of godlessness and will not be till the Lord himself is ruling out of Zion come Lord Jesus is not a quiet to take us out it's for him to come with a people who await his coming and can rule and reign with him that the righteousness of God can pervade the earth the earth is the Lord saints he's not going to abandon it he's going to transform it but it begins with one people first the most rebellious and obstinate and unwilling recalcitrant Israel because if he cannot succeed with it how then shall he rule the nations that's why it says in Ezekiel chapter 20 I will rule over you with a fury poured out I will rule over you though your last national statement was we will not have this man to rule over us and did that statement ever cost us at the end of the age the Lord says with a fury poured out I will rule over you it's going to take a fury to break our obstinacy our will our independence and to submit to the God as Lord so when when Israel will come to the place where it can say because of your indignation and anger for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside you have not Hitler not the not Arafat not Antichrist you have these are only your instrumentalities this is the rod of your chastisement you are God in absolute sovereignty and what we are suffering as a people is altogether to be understood as coming from your hand and coming rightly and justly for your indignation and your anger is fully justified in a people who have not ever changed their disposition and have been a continual offense and have made your name to be blasphemed in all the places where we have been driven I'm not speaking that to encourage your anti-semitism I'm speaking that merely to describe the fact that it that explains and justifies God in the severity of his judgments for his judgments are his mercy if it will result in a people acknowledging God as God then severity becomes a kindness I can think back on my occasions when I've collided with rabbis and members of the Jewish community as a missionary to the Jews and the way the Lord has used me in university campuses and places how offended I remember the attitude that you talk about the Lord as if he's a person don't you understand that God is far removed he's a presence a distant uh entity an abstract power you're personalizing you're bringing down you're destroying the dignity of God who's too distant to come down let alone that he should have anger you're anthropomorphizing God you're giving God the anthropomorphic character of a man man can get angry man can be indignant but God is an abstract entity in the far distant place and that's where we want to keep him distant well this God that you're theorizing about is only your Judaism is only an ethical humanism you're you're the kind of God you're describing is an is a non-entity and I suspect that's where you like him to remain you don't want a God who's personal intimate near who intervenes in history who requires who speaks who judges who can be angry who can express love indignation because we're made in his image we should have that capacity and very God whose creator should not you should you should reduce him to some abstract kind of deity and you should enjoy the prerogatives of speech and feeling and consciousness and morality and this God should not be capable talk about idolatry talk about making God in your image you don't know him as you ought and if you don't know him as Israel called to know him how shall you make him known to the nations that all nations shall celebrate the God of Isaac and Jacob and Abraham and the patriarchs and the prophets and the apostles and the holy people of old we have an obligation to make him known to the degree that we ourselves know him so don't pass this by lightly because of your indignation and anger for you have listed me up and thrown me aside my dear 95 year old mother has bowel disturbances that come without forewarning she has no feeling in that part of her body and she looks down and her bowels are running right down her legs it's humiliating and it's a mess and it's a stink and and she cries out how long do I have to suffer this indignity why don't I die already Arthur do you think that I could just take extra sleeping pills I said that's murder mom why do I have to suffer this am I wicked or something I said if I could only tell you if you could only hear me for the wicked have no rest what my mother's never robbed anyone she's thought to pay her bills on time there's a certain kind of aura of ethical responsibility about her as it is with most Jews her wickedness is in refusing the testimony of Jesus her wickedness is insisting upon her definition of God within the context of Jewish culture and understanding and within the framework of her comfort zone and her culture that's wicked it's commanding demanding God to subscribe to her definition rather than her bowing to his that's wicked it's the essence of wickedness and when it's given full power it can put people into gas ovens so I can't say enough of this that what has preceded verse 10 is the necessary affliction of a people who have not just been brought down but they are mocked and taunted by their enemy daily something is being rubbed right into their deepest consciousness that they finally have to acknowledge that you have tossed us aside your indignation and your anger that's what explains our predicament and that's the very purpose of the judgments of God because if we will not respond to these preliminary judgments as we spoke of them this morning what happens when the final and ultimate judgment comes from which there is no recovery called hell there's a fire that shall not be quenched and how far will God go then as a penultimate judgment even by fire to warn us and save us from a fire that is unquenchable that is called hell and what is more offensive to modern understanding than eternal judgment of hell and what subject is least attractive to us as the church to set before men and embarrasses us to proclaim and what was the first question that came to me in the first university outreach at the university of illinois at champaign all those years ago when i i began in the student union building after there'd been a week of preparation my name was plastered all over the campus cats is coming in one word without space and cats came weak pitiful inexperienced young in the faith himself and has a little huddle there at the student union with the inviting christians and then the huddle breaks and i'm all alone facing an angry mischievous audience waiting to do in the jewish freak as is likely to be my experience in still water a few days hence and then i i spoke what the lord gave me and i opened for questions and answers and i'm looking right down through the room and there's one guy i knew he was going to be trouble and sure enough his hand was up the first one wildly with mr catsey said do you believe in hell that's it it's over before it begins the first question and and it's all over how can you answer that before intellectuals university students and faculty members the greatest offense to the modern mind is eternal judgment in hell and i didn't have a little book with questions alphabetically listed hhl let's but i remember saying something like well i said of all the figures in scripture no one has spoken more prolifically about it than jesus himself who says that we'll be held accountable for every idle word we speak how then shall he speak idly when he speaks of an eternal burning a lake of fire and anguish a shriek and a cry i forgot how i went on like that and this guy just withered away the lord with one breath of his mouth and one word out of his wisdom removed the obstruction we went on to seven days of the most remarkable penetration that's been my privilege to observe four to six meetings a day and the only thing that could sustain me in strength was to to in my under my breath being taken from the student union building to the philosophy class to the auditorium to this to that to be praying in the spirit that when i opened my mouth the next time no matter the physical exhaustion out came the word of god that a man walked into the room when i finished speaking a veteran of vietnam knocked up with drugs and fell to the floor under the presence of god and when these angry students began to bait me he got up and he said what are you guys doing he said don't you understand god is in this room that man is now the head of the entire french work of the youth with a mission and uh one of the leading figures of that entire organization and their international university and if you're enjoying the book apostolic foundations out in the next room it's because of the invitation that he arranged for me to come to lausanne switzerland and to speak on that subject 12 years ago because he walked into a room as a man knocked up with drugs and lost and not knowing god and recognized the presence of god and was saved how do they get onto that so may israel come soon into the place of god's intention deuteronomy 32 8 when god established the number of the nations he did so in accordance with the number of the sons of israel that right from the beginning in the divine intention there's a symmetry there's a logic there is a centrality of israel as chosen to the nations and israel itself has got to surrender to this chosenness it is not a nation unto itself nor for itself but for others and so long as it makes itself the object of its own center and attention it will be a deformed warped entity egoistic indifferent to the opinions of the world and and be on its way again to another judgment from god and if the church resembles israel in seeing itself as its own center as if its services and its functions and its programs offer its own enjoyment as if it's an institution that needs only to be perpetrated it shares in israel's sin israel is for the nations and the church is for israel then yes the church in oklahoma is for israel to move them to jealousy and to extend mercy that they might obtain mercy for have they stumbled that they should fall god forbid but through their fall salvation has come to the gentiles so as to move them to jealousy this is the divine stratagem your salvation is not for your enjoyment it's a provision for another whom you would never have chosen them to jealousy what an extraordinary stroke of divine genius to take two people who have been in historic enmity since time immemorial and make the one the condition and the key for the salvation of the other that by your mercy they will obtain mercy if they'll not obtain mercy from you they'll not obtain mercy and i tell you they're saints they're going to need it this phone call that wakened me at 5 p.m today out of the deepest sleep was a brother who heard something of my tapes that there's a role for the north american indian and black people and minorities in the world to be key agents in god's provision for israel in her last day's tribulation as she is forced marched through the nations in flight from persecution that indians who are drunken slobs and living on welfare checks and pot-bellied and completely out of it and bear no correspondence to the heroic form that was there centuries ago will again rise to a tremendous call of purpose to lead a jewish people stumbling in places of flight through the north american wilderness to safety and refuge that the redeemed of the lord might return to zion what what a scenario what and that's why we're in minnesota what's a nice broken boy like you doing in the boondocks well a nice broken boy who had his name called in jerusalem 36 years ago for salvation was addressed when i stepped over a chain to a camp property in northern minnesota where i was taken as a lock just for a ride and when my foot came down on the property the lord said end time teaching center community refuge we're 25 years in america's arctic north to prepare a place of refuge from jews coming down to us from canada only 100 miles away who have come to canada through the bering strait through siberia and god knows where as well as up out of new york city and down again that we might feed them to you and you onto mexico to texas and texas onto arizona and into mexico and out through a seaport that the redeemed of the lord might return to zion i will meet with you in the wilderness of the nations with a few report out i will rule over you i will meet you in the wilderness oh there's a drama saints it's brewing it's being formed and we are the principal agents who do you think god is referring to in revelation 12 where the woman flees into the wilderness to escape the dragon and there's a place prepared for her where she is fed for three and a half years i don't know what that does to your pre-tribulation rapture perspective of the church absent i see the church present profoundly present well there is no no jewish survival so there'll be little ben israels little conclaves of saints think of what the lord said end time teaching center community refuge no refuge without community because it's going to take more than any of us are capable of individually however supreme supremely spiritual we might be in ourselves it's going to take a tested congregation of people that compare the impact of jews in their untoward condition rattled upset overnight upturned stripped of their treasure the blast has come out of the east and has with it all that they have possessed and they find themselves out of their condominiums and and palatial homes and out in in in muddy backwater places or dry country roads somehow being led and moved by by a god whom they do not know and to find that there's a place prepared for them in the wilderness of the nations because this says in amos chapter 9 i will sift you through all nations that not so much as one colonel will fall to the ground so i can go to new zealand and to oshkosh and timbuktu in africa doug was with me i don't know if you had left yet my last message in south africa what a beautiful evangelical and charismatic audience of pro-zionist believers who want so much to see present israel succeed and to confront them with a scenario of another kind no that's going to fail it can't succeed there's got to be a collapse there's got to be another violent casting out another movement through the nations a final exile a final sifting pray for me i'm leaving tomorrow for zimbabwe and zambia to speak to the black churches for where shall the jews of um johannesburg and pretoria and and cape town go when they have their back to the sea but north and through the african nations until they reach cairo where god will again call his son out of egypt what a drama saints for the church of all nations and the church that will not recognize it and will be unwilling to participate and to be fitted how then is it the church can this be the one factor that separates the church from the what do you call it the um the fallen away the apostate still sitting in pew still saying amen hallelujah still going through the motions still taking their full page ads and charisma magazine and totally impervious and unwilling and untouched and unrelated to the central drama that concludes the age how is that the church so let's see that right in this text my days are like an evening shadow verse 11 i wither away like grass but you oh lord i was this i suffered that but you oh lord oh i i ache for god to hear this but you oh lord but you we've been so preoccupied with ourselves but you i'm i'm a vapor i'm nothing i'll be but you oh lord are enthroned forever what does that mean you were enthroned during the nazi time you were enthroned at 70 a.d in 586 bc through every calamity of israel you were you were enthroned for your enthroned forever you are sovereign forever and everything that has taken place issues from you and i'm acknowledging it now because if i don't understand that and celebrate that and understand you as god who's enthroned forever who then shall i relate to the nations as god what shall i communicate if i do not know you as enthroned forever oh lord is he enthroned forever in your own circumstance through that divorce proceeding through the the domestic struggle through physical sickness through loss of employment i don't know what you've passed through is he enthroned forever do you understand and receive god in his sovereignty in the totality of his oversight as god and if we will not say uncle and surrender to his sovereignty how far will he go to shake our little petty understanding and kingdoms until we will bow before him and until he's on and acknowledged as enthroned in our adversity in our trial and our tribulations how is he enthroned to just see him enthroned in our prosperity is not yet to see him but to see him enthroned in our tribulation is to see him we will acknowledge the sovereignty of god in the totality of all our circumstances we have acknowledged god as god you are enthroned forever what a statement lord what did it take to obtain that from israel who thinks that its enemy is arafat or the plo or it was hitler this man or that man i have not seen you as enthroned for hitler is not an accident he's a judgment raised up in proportion to the calamity that we need to experience that will acknowledge you as enthroned oh i can say so much thank you lord for the two years in the lutheran seminary what an ordeal what a what a multitudinous death for the for those witches and and the feminists that hated my guts and were knocking me about and bloodied and seeking for my expulsion because i learned taking the course in christianity and judaism how far the church has lost its power its authority and turned from evangelizing jews which is central to its own call to now fraternizing and having around the table seminars and what do they call it ecumenical conferences acknowledging what jews require if they're to sit at the same table with christians that our judaism is just as valid as your christianity you have nothing to say to us and you need to be as willing to hear us as we to hear you don't give us this apostolic absoluteness that there's only one name given under heaven and earth whereby man may be saved you have got to recognize the equality of judaism as a valid faith posture and the church has done it it has lost its apostolic temper and the absoluteness of its persuasion and message because it has had to condescend to a jewish community why because the church is guilt-stricken and we have failed the jews and the holocaust was our fault the jews are right the holocaust is the statement of the bankruptcy of christianity well what else shall you understand if you don't see the holocaust as the statement of god's judgment upon a sinful nation so christian theologians talking about the necessity to reformulate the doctrine of christ maybe the jews are right that the messiah is yet awaited maybe they're right when they say how could have jesus have been it because where is the uh the end of social evil and and violence in the world when the messiah comes there's righteousness and peace and justice evidently he's not come well maybe you guys are right we need to rethink our christology we need to rethink our doctrine of god this condescension to the jewish community is robbing the church of its virility its character and making it the most supine s-u-p-i-n-e shallow man-serving thing that has made not only a way for a validity for judaism and if there's a way for judaism then what about hindu-ism and what about mao-ism and what about every kind of ism that is a faith and ideological posture that is as valid as another how dare you say there's only one way the issue of the way in which history is understood and particularly with the issue of israel is affecting the church worldwide and robbing it of its apostolic distinction and if it's robbed of that what is its message either to the jew or to the world i'm saying a lot tonight saints i know what i'm talking about but if you can know it it's a grace but you oh lord are enthroned forever your name endures to all generations oh praise god israel to recognize that the issue of everything is the name of god which we have blasphemed in every nation where we have been driven the issue is not our success our comfort our security to have a homeland the issue is the name of god that endures forever and it's not a nickname it's not a little patsy intonation it's not a piece of nomenclature the name of god is the character of god the name of god is what he is in himself and that name but must be made known must be set forth must be declared by those who know it that's why the psalmist can speak of those who run into his name and find safety you can believe that the name is not just a little five syllable five letter word a name is the statement the symbol the the the compendium of what the name represents in reality in itself you know the name of the lord those who know his name shall run into it and be saved your name endures to all generations when we when we set his name before our interests the remarkable thing is we don't suffer loss but we obtain gain because we have been our own enemy our own centrality our own egocentrism our own preeminence our own concern for ourselves over his name has been the most disfiguring thing that could ever have happened to the church or to the jew it's when his name is elevated when his interests are foremost that we come into a right perspective both with god with man and with ourselves and enjoy the shalom of god his name endures forever if this is what it's going to take for israel to come to this understanding that their skin has got again to cling to their bones and ashes and tears mixed then we have to say it's worth it pity that it required that severity but the nations are at stake for if they don't know the name of the lord how shall they be saved you will rise up and have compassion on zion for it is time to favor it the appointed time has come this is not only a sense of god's sovereignty but a sense of god's timing something that needs to be waited for something in the wisdom of god that we cannot compel or command because we want to be alleviated of the distress something that will serve his purpose and therefore there's a there's a waiting upon the lord they that wait upon the lord for the time of the lord to sit to understand god and his sovereignty is to understand him in his time the set time has come he's waited for something and when that condition is fulfilled you can be assured he's going to come in like gangbusters and set things right he's going to be a deliverer that comes out of zion but what is it that has indicated that the set time has come you will arise and have compassion on zion for his time to favor the appointed time has come for your servants hold its stones dear and have pity on its dust whew the only thing we can say about that is mamma mia what what what is this what in this little cryptic one line what is being said that releases the lord to come out of obscurity and hiddenness and be israel's deliverer out of this ultimate concentration camp distress your servants have compassion on her stones and pity on her dust now that's the indication that the time has come what god is waiting for is not something from israel but something from the people called servants if israel was servants they would not be in this distress they're not in a servant place who then is god referring to some people that are mysterious that are not named the psalmist can't use the word church it's yet a phenomenon that would not be appropriate in his knowledge but he uses the word servant your servants they're different from and other than israel itself they're not under judgment but they stand in a very particular relationship to israel in a compassionate way they're having pity on her stones and compassion on her dust they're not indifferent they're not at the sidelines looking down and waiting for something to pass they are vitally involved in israel's predicament sympathetically and compassionately when all the world is opposed to israel and hating her when she shall be despised of all nations when when the world will be rubbing its hands in glee that israel is suffering this terrible mortifying judgment there will be one strange people in the earth who stand with her in complete identification and union it's his servants and when god sees that when god has obtained that he's released the set time has come to deliver israel from her judgment the issue is not anything that israel can do it's something that he waits in us so i just appealed to you to rightly understand and interpret this short cryptic statement this poetic intensity of all the ways in which god could have expressed himself by his spirit he uses these strange words for your servants have compassion on her stones and pity on her dust what is he saying that the church has taken a new interest in israeli archaeology is this ancient ruins that are being described the stones and the dust or is it haifa tel aviv present-day jerusalem tiberius aylat the great and present modern cities of israel reduced to stubble and ruin in the judgment of god that will befall israel and jews in the time of jacob's trouble and the world will love it they're getting what they deserve they've got it coming it's their stubborn obstinacy that has given us the crippling oil shortage that has adversely affected the world's economy that has denied us our pleasure that made the prices this i don't know what the scenario will be the world will take a delight in finding jews at the root of their problem who is it that will be impervious and immune to this kind of global hatred of the jew and will be in such identification with them that we will not be gloating over israel's disaster we will be identified with them in it it's not for the sentimental christian who loves israel and thinks that it's cute because they're not going to be cute in that day they're going to be demoralized and devastated so the identification has got to be something beyond sentimentality it's got to be in a word god's own identification with that people that you cannot imitate you cannot fame you cannot put that on you'll only be able to express god's heart and attitude to that people to the degree that you yourself are in union with him in his heart and in his attitude it calls for something in the church that is not yet our present possession a relationship with god in such a way that his heart is our heart his attitude is our attitude his compassion and his mercy is our compassion and mercy because everything is calculated to rub you raw humanly and religiously and yet to be identified with israel in her judgment is so remarkable a statement that it can only be the expression of god and put in the possession of believers who are in union with him to express his heart it's not enough to be to know of him or to be related to him or to be separate from him and god will help us and then we will do for him it's to be so one with god that you cannot tell where you leave off and he begins for you to live is christ your attitude is not human sentimentality that will go up like a puff your attitude is the unconditional love of god that cannot be offended your attitude toward jews is what his attitude was toward us when he loved us while we were yet sinners and died for us that's god that's his name and when he will have his name in his people and his attitude in his people as expressed toward jews when they are universally hated god will be all in all he will have finally obtained in the church what he has desired and the set time to favor zion has come israel has fulfilled its function in compelling the church into a place of identification and union with god that it would never have sought nor obtained how do we come out from where we presently are as sympathetic toward god and wanting god's help and appreciating what comes to us from the lord but seeing ourselves as distinct individuals unto ourselves as separate from him how do we come to a place where we can say for me to live is christ in him i move and live and have my being his thoughts are my thoughts his heart is my heart this people is abhorrent they're unattractive they're repellent the whole world is hostile against them and yet i find myself strangely taken up with a love for them that is not my own and is not based on their winsomeness or their deservedness it's the unconditional love of god for a hated people how do i go from where i am to that kind of union through the cross there's got to be a death not only for israel but for us and the death has got to be to anything that is less than the supremacy of god in us and the thing that forbids that total possession is not our hang-ups or evil or the negative things that we would gladly be brought into death but our virtue the things that we want to retain the things that distinguish us as persons the kind of sentimental attitude toward israel that we want to continue uh to preserve until the good things are brought into the death he cannot be all in all it's wanting to succeed on the basis of our humanity our best humanity that is the greatest obstruction to the possession of god's people by of himself and when he has that the set time to favor sign has come he has a bride adorned for the bridegroom because what his people are is appropriate to what he is for he is his people it's not a people aspiring to be right it's the people for whom to live is christ this is the drama of the ages israel's crisis is to compel us to a place that we would not have sought nor other nor have obtained it's too costly we would rather be sentimental we would rather make a trip to israel we would rather buy israel bonds we'd rather plant the tree we would rather go to a conference anything to avoid death to ourselves our vested interest our virtue our humanity the best of what we are can't we keep that and be to israel also what we are until you shall have compassion on her dust on her stones and pity on her dust until i shall have such possession of you that my heart is your is your heart and the way in which it shall be the most dramatically and clearly revealed is the attitude toward this people at the time not when they are at their best but at their worst in their time of judgment when they shall be a stink in the world will you identify with them this is more than sentiment this is union and if you're so identified with them in their judgment what is likely to fall on your own head if they're being carted off to concentration camps where will you be taken when you'll be found to be a jew lover and an admirer and a sympathizer with israel at a time when she is globally hated you're opening yourself up for painful consequence and suffering and you're willing the set time to favor zion has come forgive me lord and forgive me people too much to lay on any congregation in one speaking calculated to perplex you and to confound you except that the god who's allowed me to rattle on like this gives you an understanding this was so i'm not even halfway through it you read on what follows this radical shift in the church is the effect upon the nations in verse 15 who will fear the name of the lord and all the kings of the earth your glory for the lord will build that sign he will appear in his glory he will not despise their prayer