Tulsa, Oklahoma - Session 2

Precious God, disabuse these children of any notion that men like myself have it all together and that they're Johnny on the spot and that they can produce when called upon. Thank you, Lord, because I suspect that when we shall be called upon in crisis moments in the last days, we're going to feel just as dull, just as apathetic, just as uninspired, just as weak, just as inept as the speaker that is standing before us tonight. But we can't abrogate responsibility because of that. We still have to stand and trust the same God who is faithful this Wow, is he faithful this morning? Surprising the unction and the rush of God. So Lord, what's on your heart? How do you want to conclude these days with this people? Let us not miss it, Lord, because I'm lazy or callous or indifferent and would just rather slink into a corner. If there's yet something more to dot the I and cross the T, set the exclamation point, do it. God forbid we should forfeit any occasion that is in your heart to perform. So we bless you for your infiniteness, that your instant in season and out that you neither slumber nor sleep. You're not subject to our moods. You're the most constant, precious, faithful God, full of love, ever living to make intercession for the saints. So Lord, I just appeal to your great love, to your great wisdom, to your great knowledge, to impart a final word for these days that will make you the alpha and the omega of these days. And we thank and give you praise for that in Jesus name. Amen. Well, we began in the Psalms. We have remained in the Psalms. We shall conclude in the Psalms. This time, Psalm 91. Is it ever yum yum? You know, it's remarkable that other Psalms have designated the author, David, almost invariably Asaph, the sons of Korah, Moses. Here's one of the few Psalms that is not identified as having an author. And I suspect that it is so sublime, so ethereal, so holy that it did not need even to pass through men. That somehow is a direct transmission of the mind and heart of the Lord. It is ethereal. So I don't have an adjective enough, but listen to this language. He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers and under his wing shalt thou trust his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flyeth by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eye shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked, because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation. There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling, for he shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against the stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder, the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample on the feet. Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him. I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation. What do you think? On a scale from zero to ten? It's off the scale. It's off the scale. This is sublime language. I mean, you have to gasp. Of course, God does not intend us to take it seriously. It's not a practical admonition. It's not something within the province of our experience. It's just a high watermark. It's just an ethereal, distant, lofty, eloquent poetic statement that gives us a few good fives, and then we can settle down to something more practical, something more substantial, something more realistic. Right? Wrong. This is the faith. This is the definitive faith. But to God, this were normative for every believer. Even the Greeks said, let your reach exceed your grasp. Well, let's not allow the faith to become a commonplace, and so practical, and that we can do it and perform it. It's reasonable, and it's lost its luster. It's lost its glory. Let it always be beyond what we can attain. In fact, I always say, if you can perform it, you're outside the faith. If you can perform apostolic Christianity, you're outside the faith. You're in the place of apostasy. God has called us patently to that which is beyond our attainment. This is beyond religion. This is beyond human expertise. I love language. I don't have a word. Ethereal. Is there a better word? Can someone give me another synonym? Transcendent. That's a good one. Hallelujah. Do you notice that there are two or three voices? When you give careful attention to the Psalms, often there's a shift, and someone who has been speaking as narrator, and describing something, moves away, and then the voice of someone else comes in, and then, not invariably, God himself speaks. Can you pick up in this Psalm with the Lord himself? He's standing at the sidelines. He's listening to this euphoric tribute to the relationship possible between the saint and his God. And finally, he so celebrates this one who has declared and set forth this kind of faith, that he himself breaks in in the last verses. In verse 14, because he has set his love upon me, now it's the Lord himself speaking directly. Therefore will I deliver him. He's done this. I'll do that. He has chosen to declare my name, to know me. I'm going to do this. It's not the cold and crass commercial transaction. It's the acknowledgment of God of a fervent heart that moves his heart. Because you're like that, I'm going to be like this. If we had all kinds of time, and the Lord was directing I might have spoken another message from Mark chapter 9, this kind cometh not out but by fasting and by prayer. That, I think, is one of the most important end-time words, as I believe the book of Psalms is an end-time provision. Because have you noticed pestilence, arrows, men falling at your one side ten thousand? Why, it sounds so calamitous. Here's this ethereal saint that you think is walking on eggshells, in some kind of delicate spiritual posture, but the context of the psalm is happenstance, and violence, and anger, and every kind of thing breaking loose everywhere. The fact that he's saintly does not exempt him from difficulty. In fact, you could almost say it assures that he's going to be in it. He's a marked man, and everything out of hell will be bent upon his destruction, and getting him to say uncle, and to forfeit a faith and a relationship with God of this kind. There's nothing that anguishes the powers of darkness more than this kind of relationship between a believer and his God. You want to avoid trouble? Just be ordinary. Just be an ordinary Christian, which Oswald Chambers says there's no such thing. That a Christian is by definition a sacramental personality. We had a sacrament, we had the... that we ourselves are a sacrament, is a remarkable statement. To say that you're an ordinary Christian is a contradiction in terms. To say that you're bored with the faith is a contradiction. This is sublime, this is transcendent, this is glorious. Especially if you can do it in Brooklyn, New York, or Cairo, Egypt, or Tulsa, Oklahoma. Take the most mundane and deafening, inauspicious and spiritually opposing factors, and have a relationship like this in that place and under those circumstances, and you are a delight of the Lord and despised of the enemy. I love to see society transfigured. I'm a former Marxist, socially minded Jew, like so many of us. That's our actual religion, is to change society and we remedy it by making it worse, rivers of blood. But to see society transformed by the presence of saints of this kind in its midst, that is God's program. Not a program, but the presence of heavenly entities in secular, mundane, ordinary places who have this kind of relationship. And it's possible. So in one of the great end-time parables out of the life of Jesus, here's what's happening to me. As I'm reading now about the episodes in the life of Jesus, I see every single one of them as eschatological. Yes, they took place in time. Yes, there was a young man being thrown into the fire. He was foaming at the mouth. His father said, it's been like this since his childhood. He's always been harassed. Okay, it took place, but it's a statement for the end. There's something there that was in the experience of Jesus in that moment, but it's being enacted for our sake. Because this final devastation that came upon this young man is not just an instance of another harassment of a human being by the powers of darkness, because the disciples could not cast it out. Although they had marvelous success elsewhere, this was an ultimate kind. And Jesus said, this kind, why could we not cast this out? Because this kind cometh not out, but by fasting and by prayer. You may have been successful with the lesser kind, but this kind who is calculated not just to harass and trouble this young man who is representative of Israel, because Jesus said to the father, how long has this been happening? Since childhood, from the inception of this nation's history, every power in hell has been bent upon its destruction. And now this is the last opportunity when the time is short and the powers of darkness know it, and they will ventilate everything upon that child. Everything. That kid is crunched. He's foaming at the mouth. He's rolling into the fire and into the water. And finally, when the demon spirit came out at Jesus's command, he ravaged, he shook him until they said, he's dead. It's not important whether he was literally dead or he was as good as dead. For all effectual purposes, he was dead, as dead as Israel itself will be when the powers of darkness in the time of Jacob's trouble have finished ravaging that nation. So who will it be then who will be able to extend the hand and to raise that nation up out of the ashes of that fire, as waxen, as gray, and as prostrate, and as dead, and as hopeless in its appearance? The disciples couldn't do it, and they were a lot more spiritual than you. Because this kind, this ultimate kind cometh not out, but by fasting and prayer. I would to God that the Lord would explain what he meant by that, but I have a suspicion. He doesn't mean prayer of petition. He doesn't mean the increase in the quantity of your prayer. He means prayer in another kind of dimension altogether. He means prayer that is beyond petition. Prayer in which you have spent and said everything that can be said to God for your need, but you don't then raise yourself from your knees or from your face. It's at that point where prayer continues beyond petition that this kind cometh out. It's the prayer of communion. It's the prayer you remain in the presence of the Lord even when it is not felt. Because you're beyond the place of spiritual, what's the word, sensualism, where you have to experience or feel something to remain in the place of God, but you remain there beyond petition because he's God. Something came into Jesus in those early morning times. If any man needed a sleep, the exhaustion of his days, the drain, the continual demand upon him, you would think that he would sleep in. While his disciples did so, he was up before dawn in some distant place in some mountain calling on the Father and not battering the Father with petitions, but somehow prayer was a relational thing with the Father. It was in the Father's presence. He wasn't just receiving, well this is what's going to happen at nine o'clock and then at ten and then it'll... There was a communion. Something came into his being that fitted him for the day. He was being nurtured and nourished by waiting upon the presence of the Father that he could meet the exigencies of the day. And that's why he could cast it out while the disciples could not. Because in the ultimate analysis, it's a conflict between realities. Which is the supreme reality? The powers of darkness that have all the marbles that can shake their victims and make them as good as dead? That even when they're commanded to come out, they don't come out instantly, but take their malicious delight in rattling that victim like a dog with a rag in its teeth and leaving it prostrate as dead? Where is the action? Who really has the cards? Who really calls the shots? That visible, demonstrable evil being ventilated on a hapless victim? Or someone coming in the name of the Lord? We're representing a God who's not visibly present and yet knowing that God in such an intimacy and authenticity that it brings the knowledge of the invisible God as the greater reality against that which is visible and demonic. That's the collision of the last days. Which is the supreme and the ultimate reality? Who calls the shots? Who is going to be intimidated and threatened by the fearful demonstration of the powers of darkness? And who is going to come in calm assurance of the knowledge of the God who is greater and who is the head of all principality and power and assert that knowledge in the faith that is not, I hope, I hope, I hope it works. Faith is relationship. It's not rubbing the genie lamp. It's not invoking a little formula. It's bringing a supreme reality, the ultimate reality of the God who was created and made the stars also and bringing it to bear at the point of conflict where the powers of darkness seem to have the show. This kind doesn't come out except with that relationship. And where is that relationship? It's in the secret place of the Most High. And you can have it in Tulsa in a one-bedroom apartment. I'm not suspecting that you have cockroaches. Whatever, however ordinary, however mundane, there's a secret place that's obtainable. Have you sought it? Do you have the faith to believe for it? Are you willing to make the sacrifice of time for it? Are you willing to get up before the day commences? My most precious times are when the world is sleeping, when the family is sleeping, when the community is sleeping. I'm up. He that dwelleth in the secret place. Dwelling is more than a fitful in and out when you feel like it. It's a consistent dwelling. It's a consistent being in the presence of God that does not require the confirmation of a felt presence. Lo, I'm with you always, whether you feel me or not. Did I ever tell you about the time we had a 10-day fast at Ben Israel? Because I had made some outrageous statement that I was preaching about. The church was born in waiting in 10 days in the upper room. That somehow until the church will again come to that place of waiting, the age will not end as gloriously as it began. And when the message was over, some young believer came up and said, Artie said, in all your travels around the world, have you ever found a fellowship today that has waited on the Lord 10 days? I thought of the best this, the best that. I had to say no. And then the Lord said, how about your fellowship, Achad? No. I came home with the message. Shouldn't we be waiting on the Lord 10 days? And yes, we really should when it's convenient, when it's not a busy time of ministry, when the phone is not ringing off the hook, when this is what we found out, there's never a convenient time. The kingdom of God suffered violence and the violent take it by force. So we elders appointed, we're beginning Monday, 10-day fast prayer. And we elders will begin. And we began and fell asleep and dozed off within the first hour or two. That's what stops the mouth of the enemy, that out of flesh and blood, men and women, whom the Lord has taken off the dung heap. He makes to sit with princes, foibles, men with contradiction defect. He makes to sit with princes. We are the world's rejects, but the elect of God. And so we realized that let's have prayer around the clock, but in three hour shifts. And that's what we did for 10 days. Many fasted the entire 10 days. And somewhere in the course of those 10 days, you were with this believer or that believer, these or those, three o'clock in the morning, seven in the morning, 10 at night. It was the whole, we stopped everything. Everything was given to seeking the Lord for 10 days with no strings attached. Didn't we need a baptism in the Holy Spirit? You better believe we needed. Didn't we need fire fall from heaven? You better believe we needed, but we never made it a condition. See how utilitarian we are? This is the ethos of our society and our civilization, an investment for something to be obtained, but to come before the Lord with no strings attached, no requirement, no demand because he's God. We don't know that. And that's, that's the fellowship. That's the intimacy. That's the communion for which he waits. We made no requirement and we never did have fire from heaven. But I'll tell you what happened to me. Was it the eighth day? I think my breath was something like a camel by that time. I had long before lost all spiritual inspiration. My early prayers, the first day or two, they should have been recorded. But the third or fourth day, they were not quite that impressive. By the third, by the sixth or the seventh day, they were a beep. And by the eighth or ninth day, it was hardly anything more but a vapor. And in that condition, I was stressed out on the floor, too weak, too limp to be spiritual. I don't know what time it was, four in the morning, five, they were between, I was with two or three other of the saints. And all of a sudden I became aware, I was conscious of myself as the creature before the creator. I can't describe it. I don't have a word to describe it. A sense came over me of what I am in my pathetic humanity before the Most High. For the first time, a proper sense of reality of who he is and what I am was brought into my consciousness for which I shall be eternally grateful. We don't know saints as we ought to know. We don't dwell in the secret place. We're agitated, where there's the phone rings, there's so much demand that is legitimate. The greatest enemy to this kind of reality is not that which is illicit, it's that which is legitimate. The things that are perfectly legitimate, you're children, you're this, you're that. You need to be ruthless against that which is good. That's the enemy. The evil is a pushover. It's the thing that is good, that is the terrible distraction. You almost see, he that dwelleth, you think, who is this he? He is so rare a one. He's not even identified by name, but you know that God is not talking about the many. He that dwelleth, the elect from the elect, this rare one who is so insistent that he pushes everything aside with such an utter ruthlessness that we could accuse him of being heartless and lacking consideration for his family. He's the kind of guy that locks himself in the room, throws the key away until the Lord meets with him. He that dwelleth. Beautiful language. Dwelling. I mean, you talk about archaic words. I forgot what I, on our way here this morning, Doug was reminding me of a word that I use that you never hear in ordinary conversation. Why? Because our life has become so emasculated, so reduced to such ordinary function that you don't need a word of that kind. The word abide is outside the context of our contemporary civilization. How many times do we move? How fitful our whole life is. We're continually in a process of flux and movement. We don't know what it means, and we don't have occasion to dwell. You have to fight for this. This requires a powerful insistence in the secret place of the Most High. That one shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. You may not see him in his entity, but the shadow that he casts is itself a protection. I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge. I shall not be moved. I shall not be moved. I am saying, I am making a proclamation, I am declaring to the principalities and powers of the air, to the witnesses of the church, I'm making a statement, and that statement that comes out of my deeps is me. This act of self-assertion, this declaration is the crystallizing of what I am and my uniqueness as an individual. Praise God that I have the opportunity for that self-assertion, for it establishes me distinctly before God and before men and in my own understanding. I'm not a non-entity. I'm not a blur. I will say, I declare, I make the Lord my refuge. Saying is powerful. I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge. And now that you've said it, brother, he better be it. Don't vacillate and hedge yourself around with other assurances and securities. If you said that God is your refuge, let him be that. Despite every opportunity to have insurance and to have something for the rainy day and all the other kinds of things that will shore you up, let this be your exclusive provision is God. And if he be not God and there be no resurrection, you of all men are most to be pitied. Put up or shut up. It's all stops, all pulled out. It's the insistent, singular, absolute confidence in God only. That's epistolic. I will say, this is my declaration. My God in him will I trust. That my is a possessive pronoun, my God. It's not the way we do is say, my God, my God. It's like Paul speaking about my gospel. What did he invent it? No, but he has personally, personally appropriated it for him. It's more than just a formula for salvation, more than a nomenclature, step one, step two. It's my gospel. I have personally appropriated it and it has become my own and it's dear. My God. You think God's offended by that? Not a bit. He's waiting for this intensity of appropriation and possession. My God. And because he's your God, you will be his possession. His eye will be upon you. You're dear in his sight. People have said to me, Art, if you only knew how much God loves you. If you only knew. Art, when I pray for you, I have such an abiding sense of God's love for you. Do you know it? I think it's true. That's why I'm alive at 71 and still going strong. And I got another 70 years ahead of me. The Lord doesn't come. There's something about the Lord that looks down and he knows the heart. When he sees the insistence and the jealousy, when he sees this quotient of wanting the personal appropriation of faith that is not content with a catalog of correct doctrine, that wants the existential embrace that wants to know and serve and count for God. Even though Moishe Rosen predicted that you'd be the Jewish Billy Graham by the age of 50 and you're 71 and it has not yet happened, it never will. It doesn't matter. You didn't want to become a Jewish Billy Graham. In fact, you said to the Lord, whatever it takes, reserve me for your best and truest last days work. You can't believe how privileged I am. You can't understand how I'm traveling all over the world and I'm standing before the best of God's people. That's why I'm here. I tell them, you have an election and a call in God. How do you know that? Because I'm here. That's how I know. Because if you were just an ordinary rough tumble, people who don't give a rap and just going from Sunday to Sunday, I would not be expended for you. I'm here because God has seen your heart and knows your intention and how far you're willing to go. And he's put his best before you. That's how I know. Hallelujah. Yes. Oh, he knows the Lord knows those that are his who have made him their refuge. My God, in whom I will trust and will go right into the teeth of the enemy at Oklahoma State University with outraged Jews. If they're not outraged, I'll be personally disappointed. Someone is putting in right before their face an announcement of a Jewish prophet and they suspect that he's a real Christian and a missionary and that will be confirmed. They will be bristling. But God is my refuge and my defense. So I'm okay. The Lord has said, don't look at their faces. Their faces are fearful and foreboding. There's a powerful unction upon unbelieving Jews, particularly of the orthodox kind. There's something like a religious mafia. Have you ever encountered the Jewish, the ultra orthodox, the Hasidim with their black beards? Just picture this. I was at Vassar college, no longer just a girl's school. And I was speaking a message on Abraham and circumcision before an audience of Christians. Earlier that day, as I was walking through the student union building, a Jewish student looked up at me and said, you'll get yours. I thought, whatever does he mean? And in the middle or the whatever point I was in my message, the doors burst open and into the room came about a dozen black suited, black fedora, black beard, black eyed orthodox Jews that had come up from the Lubavitcher Hasidim in Brooklyn, New York. I tell you, people stopped breathing. They never sat down. They positioned themselves around the room strategically. And one was about four or five feet in front of my Jewish face with eyes that could kill the looks to try and continue your message then, even though there's been a prayer walk around there. And so I foolishly opened for questions and answers and I was a dead duck. Who do you think you are coming with your Goyish or Gentile King James Bible? You can't even read Hebrew and trying to persuade us to be converted in the name of him, but by which, before which multitudes of Jews have been slain over the ages and forced convert, and it went on and on and on. Powerful. Talk about who had the anointing. The Christians freaked out and they began to shriek and cry out and complain and, and they got bitter against these Jews who are disrupting our meeting. People who would have said before that, yes, I really have a heart for the Jew. I really love Israel until they came in like gangbusters. All of a sudden the lid was off the garbage can and another attitude was being expressed that was not complimentary to the believing community. But I'll never forget this, this guy that was right in front of my face. He said, we know that you love us cats, but I never heard the rest. I said, what? You know, I never told you that. Where did you get that? We know that you love us cats, but I don't know how many weeks or months it was later. I was wearing a black suit and a white shirt without a tie. And I was in the Brooklyn headquarters of the Lubavitcher Chassidim on Eastern Parkway in New York. And I'm walking there with a thousand of these men with their talaism, their prayer shawls over their heads. It's talk about occultic power, this davening and shaking with this prayer shawl. And I bump into the same man. What are you doing here? I still have a relationship with him. So whether the arrows fly by day or pestilence or noise or whatever distraction, whatever is felling people to your right and to your left, God says, it'll not come upon you. If it does, it's ordained. Because you can say, as Jesus did to Pontius Pilate, when Pilate said, don't you know I have the power to release you or execute you? You could do nothing except it's given you from above. How would you like to walk through life with that kind of assurance and calm? What is faith if it is not calm in the midst of ostensible upset? When you can maintain your calm in the face of the arrows that fly by day because God is your refuge and nothing can touch you? You can have malaria as I did on my first day in Tanzania after hearing the report of the German Lutheran missionary who was caught insane because of the new strand of malaria that now infects the brain. And that next day I was swept and impotent and stretched out of my bed like a dead man my first day in Tanzania. But I had a brother with me who knew how to pray. And he was going back and forth in front of me crying out, Lord he said, we're not in Egypt. We're in the will of God. And you said, none of their diseases shall come upon us. I was up the next morning, Johnny on the spot, totally delivered. None of these things shall come upon you. Look at the absoluteness of this language. Verse 10, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. You know what I love about God? Absolute. No ifs, ands, maybes, perhaps, no, any, not any, no, nothing. Because you have made the Lord who is my refuge. Here's someone speaking, not God, but speaking to someone who has made the Lord his refuge, complimenting and commiserating with someone like that who's done the same. Because you have made the Lord who is also my refuge, even the most high, your habitation. You don't live in Tulsa, Brooklyn, Minnesota, or circumstances. God is your habitation. You are in him. You move and live and have your being. You dear saints, do you realize what you're getting right now is a Holy Ghost miracle? When I said, you think I was kidding when I got up and said, I'm tired, unambitious, uninspired, have no message, want to crawl into a hole, and don't bother me. That was the truth. That was the actual truth of my, and look what's happening here. Something is coming forth because God is my habitation. Because his love for you is greater than my laziness and indifference. Because he's a God who redeems every moment for the good. Because he wants to dot the I's and cross the T's. Because he set you free this morning and wants to encourage your heart in a kind of faith that is predicated upon a relationship in the secret place available to us all. Find it. It's there. He's waiting. Make it a priority in your agenda. Set the clock early. I have never set a clock, and I'm up 4 a.m. I don't say 3.59 or 4.01. I mean 4 a.m. The precision of God is astonishing. And I finish my devotional time, it's exactly 7. It's exactly 8. There's a whole dimension saints waiting for us. If we'll shock this slipshod matter of factness, this callow one day like another, one service like another mentality, and see what a precious heritage is ours, who waits for us in such an intimacy that is not walking on eggshells or pseudo-spirituality. It's authentic and it's real, and it can be tested in tough circumstances. It's not for ideal fair weather faith. He's your habitation. Your fortress. Look at this, with arrows flying, pestilence, noise and things in the midst of that. Not any, no, nothing. No plague shall befall you, because you have made. What an act for you. What a supreme act. Art, I don't have your advantage. I've never been to university, that, that, that, that, that, that. I haven't traveled the world as you. Doesn't matter what your qualifications are. You are still able to make the Lord your habitation, because you have made, because you have asserted yourself and established this priority over any and every other consideration. God's answer then is, no evil shall befall you, because you have done this. You have really done it. You're not a lackluster saint. You're not a pew sitter. You're not going from one Sunday to another. You're living for God and by God and unto God. The issue of his glory, his honor and his name is the foremost purpose for your being. And if you're a professional or whatever you are, it's only a coincidental thing. It's your place of ministry. It's your field of endeavor for God. It's not the place of self-aggrandizement. And I'm a man who has both a Mercedes Benz and a Lincoln Town Car. Yes. But if you put the mileage of the both of them together, one has 318,000 and the other 182,000. I got the last one for $1,500, but I got it and I wasn't seeking it, nor did I seek the Mercedes. But before I left for that trip to the south, I couldn't shake it. Mercedes diesel, Mercedes diesel. I said, well, I've got a Honda. I'm happy. Don't hawk me with Mercedes diesels. And yet I couldn't shake it. I thought, oh boy, am I getting carnal, but I'm preoccupied with a car. And I arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, started looking around and they're expensive and out of the site. And the final thing, I'm coming to a prayer meeting and there in the parking lot is this maroon Mercedes diesel with a for sale sign. That's my color, the priestly royal purple. I'm driving that car today. The lady wanted to give it to me. I said, no, pray about it. Don't be moved because I'm a, I'm a minister. I want the Lord to be in this. I found out the car was worth about 12,000. I couldn't even begin. And I called her husband. He had been praying also. And he said, the Lord has told us that you're not to take out a loan or in any way to become indebted for this car. I said, I fully agree. I said, the Lord has impressed me that it would be disrespectful to offer you anything less than $5,000 because five is the number of grapes and 1000 is the number of ultimate measure. We'll take it. And what a car, how I love that car. So what do I need a Lincoln town car for? But he gave it to me. It's not the object of my search or my interest. The Lord, the Lord, the Lord. If you knew the history of every book out there, how many have a life of their own that we have not sought a Chinese edition of Ben Israel is coming out because six years ago in, in, in Davis, California, the Chinese congregation, I had a copy of the original book. I said, you know, this would be an appropriate book for disillusioned Chinese ideologues who like me were at one time Marxist and, and have watched this collapse and are without a root and foundation. And the woman took the book and six years later, I get the Chinese translation with a rose in the cover. It's now being published in Singapore, apostolic foundations published in Singapore by a Chinese lawyer who sold love the book. He made it his gift to us. The Holocaust book. I came back from a trip and someone said, art, the books in print. What do you mean the books in print? I never authorized that. Well, Simon sent the, the, the, the, the, the disc to this publisher in Pensacola. And he assumed that you endorsed it. I had to be pursued by a publisher to get that first book out. Everyone has had a life of its own. I have eight publications in Russian alone. The spirit of truth is in French as Lithuanian. I don't know how it happens. Russian, Hebrew, Hebrew. Set the Lord before you don't seek for yourself. He knows your need. Make him your foremost object of concern, your jealousy for his name and for his honor. And he'll cover you with his feathers and under his wings. You shall trust his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. It's a protection, his truth, his faithfulness, the same word in Hebrew, Emmet. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, verse five, or for the hour that flies by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth of new day. Thou shalt not be afraid, period. Do you ever do that with the scriptures and cut a statement off right in the middle? Thou shalt not be afraid. I bracket it right there. Yes, the rest is true, but thou shalt not be afraid, period, of anything. My wife says, I have never seen you afraid. Of what shall I be afraid? I've been brought back from the dead. What a privileged life to live without fear, anxiety, apprehension. What will they think? What will they say? How do I appear? Will I be approved? There's more fear in the church from the church than in the world. To be without fear, the great naturalness of just expressing your heart that makes the fellowship the fellowship of unconstrained and unfearful living personalities that can express their heart. And it doesn't matter if they stumble over their words or their expression is jumbled or inadequate. What they're saying is true and it's not tinged nor repressed by fear. Thou shalt not be afraid. If you make the Lord your refuge, if you set your affection upon him, if you seek him and have a secret place in which you abide, you'll not be afraid. Thank you, Lord. Because men's hearts will fail them for fear when they see the things that are coming upon the earth. But there's going to be a people alongside them that are utterly impervious. Things can be collapsing at the left and the right and they're standing there with a total equanimity. I walk through this world. I'm in every nation in the world. I feel like I own it. I'm like a giant striding among pygmies. It doesn't matter where I am. I'm not intimidated. I don't care whether they're wealthy, whether they've got cuff links that sparkle. It doesn't matter. You're in God. You're an exalted son and daughter and you're in the place of his service. It's precious. This isn't arrogant boasting. This isn't carnal chutzpah. This is just an acknowledgment of the privileged walk with God. You shall not be afraid. Fearless. The righteous are like a lion because he covers you with his feathers and under his wing shalt thou trust. His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thank you, Lord. I know that that's going to be true next Saturday night. I don't know what I'm going to say. I didn't know what I was going to say tonight. I won't know until I open my mouth then probably. But your truth will be my shield and my buckler. I don't know what they're going to say. And they're sharp. They're rehearsed. They know how to penetrate and they have an unction of a peculiar kind. It doesn't matter. Boom. It'll bounce off. Truth. Not only what I know as truth, but what I am in truth. Because I'm not just a purveyor of something. I'm the thing in itself. And I spoke at the Pensacola Revival School and there were 500 students and I'd just come from a Chinese buffet lunch. Talk about having to eat, having to speak after a meal. I was bursting and burping and totally unspiritual and thinking, well, at least it'll be a mature audience. And I stood up on a platform. They were all universally young. And I spoke about Israel in such a way as to controvert every naive thought and expectation they had about the success of the state. And in the audience was the daughter of one of the leading messianic families in Israel, whom I've known for over a quarter of a century. And I opened my mouth full of Chinese food and boom, the door came off the furnace and a blast came out from God that was withering. And here's what I'll never forget. When that was over, well, the head of the school tried to take the sting out of it and to make nice. And we're going to be discussing the prophets in a few weeks and we'll consider this matter further. I said to him in his office, you're a teacher and you'll never bring the consideration that God gives to a prophet. This was a definitive statement. And those kids came up on the platform, blinking and touching me. Wow, this guy's for real. We heard about prophets, but here's the thing in itself. This is truth, not about it, but it itself through and through the cookie. That's God's intention for us all. And when you're in the truth like that and are the truth, it's your buckler and your shield. Everything bounces off. My God, you're in such a place because you have made the Lord who is my refuge, even the most high, your habitation. There shall no evil, absolutely no evil before me. Neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. He shall give his angels charge over thee. They shall keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against the stone. Well, how come Lord, I went shooting down my own staircase two days before the trip to Africa with Doug and bunged up my ankle so bad that it tore open that bone and was infected. And all through five weeks I was limping. And if I had not been treated twice by doctors, I don't know what it would have been. Where was your word then? I don't even ask the question. Somehow it serves the purposes of God to allow that injury to befall me because I shot down that staircase with a velocity of something like a bowling ball going, hitting 10 pins. Boom. And I don't have accidents. I didn't have an accident in that swimming pool in Northern Minnesota after I baptized about 12 Lutherans. And I was on my way to the locker with my Bible in my hand. And there was a little pool of water on the tile. And the next thing I know, I'm doing a somersault. And there's like a frozen moment of time. I'm in the air with the Bible in my hand. And I'm saying, Lord, I don't have accidents. And boom, I came down on my knee. And they wanted to take me to the hospital. I said, no, I'm the man of faith and power. I spoke that night. My foot was swollen like a football. My knee. The next day I couldn't move. They took me. And the orthopedic surgeon was Jewish. And he's showing me the x-rays. He says, my dear man, he said, you have not just fractured your knee. You have shattered it. It needs to be wired and set in place. I said, okay, when can you do it? Well, Wednesday, I said, no. Tuesday, I'm going to Northern Minnesota. The Lord is giving us a property. The who? And while he has his hand on my knee, his eyes began to widen. And he says, something is happening. I could feel the pieces were going like click, click, click, click. He said, something is happening. If I can set this right now in a cast, you'll not need an operation. And that's what happened. And the next day, I'm making my appointment. I'm leaving the hospital on crutches. And the man comes running to me in the lobby of the hospital with a white garment on. He said, aren't you Art Katz? I said, yeah. He said, what are you doing here? I said, well, I bunged up my knee. Who's your doctor? Well, Dr. Walter Indyk. Wally? I've been praying for him for years. Thanks a lot. I sent Wally a copy of Ben Israel. And I got back the most precious letter you could ever hope to receive from a Jew, how touched he was. So nothing shall befall you, no nothing. No accident, no unanticipated thing, because you're under the wings of the most high. And if there's anything that has suffered, it's calculated, given for an ultimate purpose in God that is well worth whatever inconvenience it has caused. Hey, now listen to this. I was in the hospital that night and the nurse came with a big hypo. And she was going to shoot me up. I said, what's that for? She said, that's for pain. I said, I'm not in it. I'm only mildly inconvenienced. Oh, but you have to have this, she said. I said, no, I don't want to be drugged up. I want to keep my mind clear. Oh, but you have, no. The woman just stormed out with such impatience and irritation. I thought, what's she getting so vexed about? And came back with tablets. I said, you don't understand, sister. I'm not afraid of a needle. I've been in the U.S. Army and I have walked through corridors of men with needles poised that are bent and watched men with medals fall over in a dead faint. I've been pricked like a pin cushion. I'm not afraid of a needle. It's not the issue of a needle. I don't want to be drugged. The last thing I remember, two nurses and two doctors in my doorway. I had touched something of the principality and powers of the air that resides in the institution of medicine predicated on an unquestioned assumption that the whole world has subscribed to and that to which we say no. The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain as being the unspoken premise by which men live their life in the world. And I'm saying no, pain is not that much an issue. It's only a mild inconvenience. I'm not suffering that I need to be drugged up. But you must, you must subscribe to the system. You must receive these drugs. You must have your sense of pain diminished. No, there's a great issue here that was touched inadvertently. And from that day on, the Lord began to open to me the mystery and the issue of the principalities and the powers of the air and the conflicting wisdom systems between God and these powers, which exist in all institutions and aspects of society, and especially in the realm of religion. It was worth busting a kneecap to receive that on the spot revelation. Nothing shall be for you. Thank you, Lord. Because you have made the Lord your habitation, there shall no evil before you, neither shall any plague abide thy dwelling. He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against the stone. Thou shall tread upon the lion and the adder. The young lion and the dragon shall thou trample under thy foot. If there's ever a statement of a symbolic kind that refers to the powers of darkness and Satan, it's adders and poisonous snakes. You'll trample them. You don't have to analyze them. This kind does not come out because you have spent countless hours researching the intricacies and complexities of the neither world. You're defeating them, not because you have an intricate knowledge of the mechanism of the things that are diabolical, but because you have sought the Lord in the secret place and made him your habitation. This kind cometh not out by knowledge of the subterfuge of the powers of darkness. It comes out by the greater knowledge of the most high that is found in the place of intimacy and your preoccupation with devils, conspiracies, and all those things is robbing you of the place of intimacy. You're losing the game while you think you're winning it. That's why Paul said, I'm determined not to know anything but Christ and him crucified. There are some things that are interesting and perhaps some value, but they're not expedient. They're distractive. It's not by the knowledge of these things that we defeat. It's by the knowledge of him. We bring the greater reality of the invisible God to the place of the visible demonstration of the powers of darkness and prevail. Where did you get that knowledge? 5am on my knees in a dark drafty floor in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Morning by morning, I abide. And even when I lift myself up and go to my place of work and business, I'm still in that place. I'm still abiding. I'm still in the presence of the Lord. He has set his love upon me. Therefore, will I deliver him? I will set him on high because he hath known my name. It's not rubbing the genie lamp, Jesus, that we can vocalize, he has known my name. He knows what my name stands for. He knows the reality, what it signifies. He has a sense of God that he cannot articulate. It's too deep for words. It's something that has come from the daily and frequent times of abiding. Something comes when you're in the Lord's presence of the Lord. There's a sense of him. And how often do I cry out at the commencement of a series of meetings or a single one night, Lord, may we be privileged that you'll give us something of the sense of yourself. We love messages, but the sense of yourself as holy, the sense of yourself, my God, that will inculcate the kind of reverential fear and respect that is lost and is absent from the church. We don't know you as we ought. We've made you a commonplace. You're a buddy who does our bidding and gets us a boyfriend, girlfriend and heals us. And we don't know you as we ought. Give us a sense of yourself. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation. You ought to read Spurgeon's commentary on this psalm. If you don't have sermons three volume, treasury of David and his commentary on the psalms tomorrow morning, call Craig who Hendricks, I don't know which publisher who sell your shirt. Sell your shirt. What a commentary on the psalms. But I don't go to the commentary first. I go to the commentary last first. I before the Lord ponder and reflect, meditate. What does this mean? And then when I've exhausted, then I'll begin to, what has Matthew Henry said? What does Spurgeon say? How about H.J. Krauss, the great German Old Testament scholar, three volumes on the psalms. It's remarkable what they say, their scholarship. But Spurgeon, the treasury of David, get it so precious and talk about long life. Spurgeon died when he was 56. Where's the long life there? I'll tell you how long it is long enough for him to fill libraries with volumes of books and certain sermons. His every sermon was printed before the word was hardly out of his mouth and circulated throughout the English speaking world. And in many languages, he was the head of societies and orphanages. He was this work and that work. The man's life was voluminous and creative and abundant and full. He lived more life in 56 years than any 10 people live in 70. It was a long life because every intent of God was fulfilled. He finished the course fully that was set before him. It was long enough. Mere longevity is no thing in itself. If it's vacuous and a mere succession of one year, like another one day, like another. Let me, let me quote you something from Spurgeon on this. It is impossible that any ill should befall the man beloved of God. The most crushing calamity only shortens his journey. He gets to the Lord sooner and hastens his reward. Ill is no ill, but only good in another form. Loss enriches him and reproaches are his honor. Death is his gain. Everything is overruled by good. He's secure where others are in peril. He lives where others die. What a way of seeing reality. Everything is transposed. Everything is turned inside out. What is ill for the unbelieving is blessing for, for a believer of this kind. What is lost for another is gain for him. What is, what is the feared and despised death is for him of the glorious and earlier communion in the everlasting with the Most High. There's nothing that's ill. There's nothing that is not God's faithful answer that no evil shall befall you nor any plague. It's another life because it's established and it abides and dwells in the secret place of the Most High under the shadow of the Almighty. Don't, don't let the good distract you from that place. Don't let your preoccupation with demonic conspiracy and the plans of the evil one and the last days and, and societies and all these kinds of things, which I'm sure are valid and true. But is it, is it a knowledge that is expedient? Is it a knowledge that builds up? Paul himself resisted such knowledge and you can believe that in his generation there was plenty of it. All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, but I'll not be brought under the power of any. I'll not be brought under the influence of any. I'll certainly not be obsessed with any, however valid it is, because my first and abiding concern is to abide and dwell in the shadow of the Most High and in the secret place. And however good something is, if it steals from me, this centrality, in this foremost place, it's no longer good. I'm not going to raise that Israel up out of the fire and out of its foaming mouth and, and final destitution because I have a superior knowledge of the intricacies of the powers of darkness, but because I have a superior knowledge of the Most High. So I want to pray for you. You know, it's wonderful to come to a place and not have a single thought in your head, no strategy, no plan, no game plan, no intention, simply to come. And you look back over these tapes and over these messages and you'll realize whose game plan this was. And I didn't need to know it in advance. I just had to be up four in the morning in communion with the Most High and it issues. Oh Lord, thank you that this is not for only certain supreme, especially spiritual saints, but this is your invitation for every believer, every believer, housewife, salesman, engineer, doctor, pastor, minister, a secret place where we can dwell. Lord, I ask you to encourage the hearts of these children and to encourage their devotional life and to teach them that there are dimensions in prayer beyond petition and that our prayers are not finished when we have finished making our petitions known. It's only beginning. And then we have to break the power of this utilitarian ethos that that is infested, that it's at the heart of this society, so much given for so much returned. And we're there long enough to give so that we'll get answer, but we don't know how to remain and to abide and dwell without strings attached, without the utilitarian necessity to get paid back for our investment. Because you're God and you deserve this kind of attention. You deserve this waiting. You deserve this early rising. You don't even have to reward us with a sense that you're present. We don't even have to feel you. You, in fact, have to break us. When can we take a child off? Wean them away from a sensate spiritual life that has to feel in order to know. Thank you, my God. Oh, precious God. Lord, Lord, Lord, show us that somehow if we get up early, it's not going to ruin the day. Somehow we'll have the energy that we need. We'll have clarity when we need it. You'll allow us to take a nap if it's possible. And if it's not, it doesn't matter. But to make it a priority that we get so spoiled if we do not begin the day with you and have a time before you and talk to you and invoke your precious blood upon our head and upon our houses and families and fellowship and share our hearts in need and then continue after that to remain, even take a personal communion as I do every morning, a mini communion with a little piece of matcha and a little thimble full of wine. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Give us a heart. Draw our hearts out after you. And if we had been barking up the wrong tree, even though it's a correct tree, even though it's an interesting tree, even though it's very exciting to be knowledgeable about the intricacies of last day's intrigue of the powers of darkness, if that has pulled the distraction that in fact doesn't dispose us to seek you in the secret place. May we put it aside as not being edifying. It's it's legal, but it's not edifying. It does not build up. It will not deliver the sun who is writhing in the fire and ready to be extinguished. Only the superior knowledge of you, the greater reality found in the early morning time. So thank you, Lord. Put a seal on this word. You have given this people your heart and your thought, your dearest expression of concern and love. It's not what we thought or expected, perhaps, but I have no complaint. Thank you, Lord. For the recording of it, may we have occasion to consider it again and again. Teach us how to structure our life and our priorities. To seek you, my God. Thank you, Lord, to come to a supernatural naturalness that is not afraid. The transparent, precious flow of the life of the saints that enriches one another in true fellowship, because it's not tinged by fear of retaliation or misunderstanding or any such thing, because we don't have fear. You said that. We bless you, Lord, for the promise of such a relationship, that this is not some standard beyond our attainment. You're not teasing us. You're not pulling the wings off of flies. This is not malicious. This is truth. And because you say it in your word, we know that it's available. If we have not attained to it, it's not your fault, but ours. So forgive us, my God, for lackluster Christianity, for allowing ourselves to be engaged and taken up with other things that have excluded this as priority. And bring us, my God, to first things, the knowledge of you that lies too deep for words, the sense of yourself as you, in fact, are and must be made known. Thank you for that privilege. Thank you for that fellowship. I bless these children. Seal this word to their hearts. Draw them out after you. Thank you for this as a concluding word. We give you praise for such love as has come to us in these days. Thank you, Lord. Jesus good, don't you know? Ain't Jesus good? Ain't it so? Ain't Jesus good? Sing it, hallelujah. I just want to praise him forever again. He filled me up when I was empty. He set me free when I was a slave. I love him so and I always will. I just want to praise him forever again. I just want to praise him forever again. Give him some praise.