The Sudden, Unexpected Raising of the Dead

Thank you, may be seated. And welcome to all of those that are joining with us online tonight. After the short sharing of God's word, we're going to have communion together.

So if you have some bread or some juice in your home of any sort, we invite you to get that and then be prepared to celebrate the victory of Jesus Christ on the cross for your sins and for mine 2000 plus years ago. Praise God, glory to his name. I don't know how you feel online tonight, but there's been a sense of his glory in this sanctuary tonight.

We just started shouting long before we went on the air tonight, just the presence of God is here. Now I don't know any greater way to give glory to the name of God through his son, Jesus Christ, than allowing him, as the scripture says through the apostle Paul to change me from image to image and glory to glory by the spirit of the Lord. In other words, I yield to God's presence in my life.

I yield to the word of God. And as I do yield and let his thoughts become mine, let his promises get into my heart, my life begins to change. As our elder said this evening, it's no longer others that are the source of my problem.

I'm the source of my own problem. And I begin to look within my own heart and trust God for the change that he wants to bring into my life. And that's how we give glory to his name by allowing him to transform us from image to image and glory to glory.

Thank God. I do hope that's your heart tonight. I do hope everybody that's here this evening, you're on that journey now to say, I'm gonna be everything that God has called me to be.

I'm not gonna fall short of it. I'm not going to be left at the end of this journey wishing I had gone farther with God when I had the opportunity to do so today. I wanna talk to you tonight for just a few moments about the sudden unexpected raising of the dead.

The sudden unexpected raising of the dead. Father, I just thank you God with all my heart for the anointing of your Holy Spirit. God, for we recognize that you are the only one Lord that can quicken your word.

You're the only one that can make it come alive in each of our hearts. You're the only one that can vanquish the powers of darkness that tried to extinguish the word of God. Father God, in Jesus name, I ask for mercy on this poor soul one more time.

God, that your Holy Spirit would rest upon me, that your spirit would rest upon the hearers in the sanctuary and those that are willing to hear online. And Lord God, that you would begin to do the work that only you can do. We're not satisfied to just read about what you've done in somebody else's life and times past.

We are your church. We are your people. We are the testimony of who you are on the earth in our generation.

And you told us that you took our captivity captive when you were raised from the dead and you gave gifts unto men. So Lord, we're not willing to be natural people because we're called to be supernatural people. We're not willing to lie down in our struggles and trials when you promise us victory.

You are the one who raises us out of darkness. You raise us out of, Lord, we're not just gonna sing about it. We're gonna believe it tonight with all of our hearts.

God, we're gonna take the step of faith. We're gonna do what Lazarus did and just come out of the tomb and believe that you will give us life and give us a testimony. Father, thank you.

Thank you God for the sudden and unexpected raising of the dead in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm gonna start with Ezekiel chapter 37.

Ezekiel chapter 37. The prophet Ezekiel says, the hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of the valley and it was full of bones. Now, this is where it always starts.

It starts by the hand of God coming upon somebody that he has chosen to speak on his behalf in the church world or in the world at large and that's where it all begins. Somebody begins to think what God is thinking. You know, we're so prone to thinking our own thoughts.

We're so prone to getting our information source from the news as it is. We're so prone to believing other people's opinions about things in the world and about ourselves, et cetera, et cetera. But you see, the difference is in this scenario, all began with the hand of the Lord coming upon a man and beginning to speak to him about something that nobody else is hearing at that time.

Well, maybe somebody is, but very, very few. The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the spirit. You see, when God begins to lead your life, that's exactly what happens.

The hand of God comes upon you and he begins to speak about your future, things that he's going to do in your life, things that, in many instances, you don't have the ability to do. You don't have the power to do it. You don't have the wherewithal.

You don't have the certificate on the wall. You don't have the faithful past. You don't have the history.

As a matter of fact, the people that God was about to deal with, their testimony was, we are cut off, our bones are dry. In verse 11, it says, these people said, our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off. In other words, we are cut off from blessing, we're cut off from life, we have no future, we have no hope, we have offended God, we have lost our testimony, our lives are not worth living.

These are the people that God is suddenly going to raise from the dead. He's going to do something that they don't expect he's going to do. Don't you love that about God? I love the fact that quite often he moves, and you look throughout history, scriptural history, he moves in the lives of people who least expect he's going to.

We have every reason to believe he shouldn't. We have every reason to believe that we're not the candidate. We're the modern day Gideons.

We're from the smallest house, and in the smallest tribe, in the smallest place, with the smallest income, the smallest educational level, the smallest level of faithfulness, if any at all, and suddenly God appears and says, oh mighty man of valor, mighty man of resources, mighty man or mighty woman of courage, I've come to you to do something that only I can do through your life. So Ezekiel is now walking in unison with God. I want to tell you something tonight.

I'm personally beginning to hear something that I believe God wants to do in this generation. Now hear me on this. You're free to reject it, but this is what I feel God speaking to my heart.

We're going to see a last day awakening before Jesus Christ comes. And we're going to see one more time where the weak, and the nobodies, and the nothings, and the addicted, and the afflicted, and the marginalized, and the confused, and the people that don't think God will ever use them, and everyone else agrees that God shouldn't use us, but suddenly God comes and starts speaking, we start hearing, and miracles start happening. You see, it's a kingdom of the miraculous, the kingdom of God.

It's not a kingdom of natural strength. It's not a kingdom just of human reasoning, and as wonderful as that may be, it is a kingdom where God makes promises we believe, and he fulfills his promises. And he turns us into a new creation, and makes us what we could never be, gives us what we could never naturally possess, and takes us where we could never go.

I know this in my life. I make my boast in God by saying I've never been qualified to do anything I do, yet he has qualified me. A friend of mine once said he doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called.

There's a difference between the two. The spirit of the Lord, the hand of the Lord comes upon this man, and he brought me into the midst of a valley, and it was full of bones. Brought me into a place of death.

You know, I'm tonight speaking to probably, within the next few days or so, there's probably 10, 15, 20,000 people are going to hear this message tonight, and I'm looking through a camera, and I know it's a valley of bones. I know I'm speaking tonight to people whose hope is lost, who feel cut off, who feel that they're never going to be used of God, living every day just trying to get out of addiction and confusion and despair and depression and every other thing, desperately in need of healing. And so I know that I stand tonight speaking in God's stead or on his behalf to you from his word.

It says, he caused me to pass by them all around, and behold, there were very many in the open valley, and indeed, they were very dry. You know, I know that there's people tonight that are listening online that are saying, oh God, that's me, I'm dry. I can hardly pray.

I can hardly sing. I can hardly muster even a seed of faith. You said if I had a mustered seed of faith, I don't even have that much faith.

I can hardly muster that. And then the Lord asked this man Ezekiel a question. He said, son of man, can these bones live? Can I do something here, God is saying? Can I change the situation? Can I take this hopeless situation, this hopeless pile of bones in this dry valley, can I take these people who say we're lost, we're cut off, our hope is gone, we failed in our mission, can I take these people and can I do something supernatural with them? And Ezekiel says to God, oh God, you know.

In other words, he's saying you know what you intend to do. You know what you're capable of doing. You know what you have desired to do.

I'm willing to operate in unison with you, but God, you know what it is that you're intending to do. Hallelujah. I don't know about you, but I feel like I'm just gonna jump out of my skin tonight.

I honestly feel something in my spirit. God is about to do something in this generation. God is about to raise up a testimony one more time.

And he said to me, prophesy to these bones. Now the word, it really has the connotation, speak to these bones in agreement with God about something that God is going to do. Prophesy to these bones.

And say to them, oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord to these bones, surely I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live. I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and then you shall know that I am the Lord.

In other words, God says, I'm going to revive you. I'm going to raise you up. I'm gonna give you a reason to live again.

I'm going to give you strength that you don't have. I'm gonna cause you to stand. And when I do, you will know that I am the Lord.

You will know that only God could have done this. You will know it is not your strength. It's not your desire to pull up your own bootstraps as the saying goes.

You will know that this has been sovereignly done by God. And so Ezekiel does what men and women of God should do. He speaks in unison with God.

Now, can you imagine you're standing and it's just a valley full of bones and you're just saying, God, you know what you intend to do. But God always speaks through human vessels. That's always been his choice.

He raises up voices. He raises up leaders and pastors and teachers and evangelists and prophets. He raises up people in the body of Christ.

And so Ezekiel said, so I prophesied as I was commanded. I started to speak to the people or to the bones in this case, as God told me to speak. So I'm speaking to you tonight as I feel God has told me to speak to you.

God is raising an army one more time. God is raising a testimony one more time in our generation. And I prophesied and there was a noise and a sudden rattling and the bones came together, bone to bone.

And indeed, as I looked, the sinews and flesh came upon them and the skin covered them over, but there was no breath in them. In other words, I can feel tonight that there's people who hear words like this and say, God, if you can do this for Israel, if you can do this for the nation of Israel, if you can bring the nation of Israel out of a place where they lost out with you, God, and it came to the point that they felt cut off and they had literally died and dried up around their false altars. If you can do that for these people, then God, surely you can do it for me.

And you're feeling at this moment, hope is starting to enter into your heart. Hope is, I remember when I was only in my 20s, I was sitting in a church and I was listening to a pastor say words similar to this. With God, all things are possible.

And I remember starting to lean forward on my seat and say, is that true? Could I have a new life? Is it possible that God can transform me from who I am into who he wants me to be? Is it possible that he can take my life and do something with it that is so far beyond my deepest understanding or expectation of my own future? Oh God, is it possible? That's true. And at some point in my heart, I said, God, if it's true, I want it. If it's true, I'm gonna take this journey.

If it's true, I want the whole package. I want everything that comes with this. I'll take the journey, I'll take the arrows, I'll take whatever comes with it.

But God, if that's your plan for my life, if that's what you can do in a human life, then Lord, count me in. That's what I want to be and that's where I want to go. So they stood up, but yet still at this point, they didn't have that divine enablement.

They had courage maybe in their hearts at this point, but they didn't have the divine enablement that we need to become what God's called us to be. And then he said to me, prophesy to the breath, the ruach of God. In the Hebrew, prophesy, we would call that the Holy Spirit.

Today, prophesy to the breath of God and say to the breath, thus saith the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me and breath came into them and they lived and they stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army. Ezekiel said, I began to speak as you told me to speak and then I cried out for the breath of God and the breath of God came.

I remember years ago, standing in a killing field in inner city, Kingston, Jamaica, where there had been hundreds of recorded murders on this field in the previous 30 years, a whole area plowed down by the government trying to stop the violence between six drug gangs that controlled the whole area of 100,000 people, 100,000 unemployed people dedicated in a sense to violence, given over to complete evil. And I remember preaching on that field and the people were so afraid to come on that field, they were lining the perimeters of it, of the field. And they were hearing the words that God had given us to speak and they were hearing the songs that God had given us to sing, but they had no courage to come onto that field because up to that point for the last 30 years, if you stepped on that field, you got killed by somebody on the other side.

And I remember in that pulpit, I was preaching from this chapter, Ezekiel 37, and I realized the futility of what I was doing. I realized this argument could not be won by just convincing the people that this was a good idea or a God idea or trying to get them to do something they had no strength to do. And I stood back from the pulpit and I simply began to cry out to God, oh, Holy Spirit, come.

Oh, Holy Spirit, come and do the work that only you can do. God, have mercy on these people. Have mercy on the addicted.

Have mercy on the violent. Have mercy on the afflicted. Have mercy on the unemployed.

Have mercy on the sorrowful. Have mercy on the children. Have mercy on their families.

And as I began to cry, I began to weep and the cry got so deep, I became unaware that there was anybody even around me and I bowed my head and simply started weeping over the pulpit. I didn't realize it, but when I started crying out, a weeping started hitting that audience. A weeping started hitting the people on the sides.

Even a man with a gun in his belt who was standing way at the back said to a lady who was there, he started to cry. And he said, that man's praying for me. That man is crying for me.

And he started crying. People came from everywhere. Every, a fearful crowd, the spirit of fear was broken.

The spirit of unbelief, the spirit of death was broken and people came from all sides. They came to that altar and by the third night, there was 8,000 people on that field. By the fourth night, there was 14,000 people on that field.

Over 2,000 gave their lives to Jesus Christ. The spirit of violence was broken. The spirit of poverty was broken.

High tech came in and opened an industry for employment. The Queen of England found out about this and dedicated money to build a pottery making plant. And where that field was a killing field, there's now a church and a playground there.

We sent a news team in to verify all these facts. It's all recorded. It's all in the archives of Times Square Church.

I know what God can do. I've seen what God can do. I've seen the power of the Holy Spirit.

I've seen dead bones come back to life again. And I have a feeling in my heart that won't go away, that I'm going to live to see one more outpouring of the spirit of God. In the last day, says God, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams. I will pour out my spirit on my servants and on my handmaidens.

Oh, praise God. And the scripture says, and everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. What a day this is going to be.

I'm not getting the words in my heart from the news. I'm not getting it from Fox or CNN or MSNBC or CBC or BBC. I'm getting it from God's word.

God's speaking to my heart about the day that you and I are now living in. So I prophesied as he commanded me and breath came into them and they lived and they stood on their feet, an exceeding great army. And then a lament came into their hearts.

And they said, oh God, we're so dry. Our hope is lost. We feel cut off even though we're raised, even though your breath has gotten ahold of us again.

We feel so lost. We feel so cut off. And God gives one final word to Ezekiel.

And he says, therefore, say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, my people, I will open your graves and I will cause you to come up from your graves and bring you into the land of Israel. I'll open up every place of death and I'll bring you out of death and I'll bring you into life. You will know then that I'm the Lord when I've opened your graves, oh my people and brought you up from your graves.

I will put my spirit in you and you shall live and I will place you in your own land and then you shall know that I the Lord have spoken and performed it, says the Lord. Now God has and is doing this. He's already brought the people of Israel home to their home nation.

And there is a promise that he's going to draw the nation of Israel to himself again in the last days. But I want to remind you that we too are grafted into the promise through Jesus Christ. We're grafted into these promises that God made to the nation of Israel.

You and I are going to live to see an end time ingathering, an end time re-strengthening of the body of Christ. I want to close with the words of the apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter five, in verse 11. He says to the people of this time, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.

For it's shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. Paul is saying to the people of his time, come out of darkness and don't be a partaker with it. Don't be a partaker of anything that brings shame to the name of Christ or leads to less than I've destined you to be.

But all things are exposed, but all that are things that are exposed are made manifest by the light for whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore he says, awake you who sleep and arise from the dead and Christ will give you light. You see, this is a call to the New Testament church.

Awake from slumber, arise from the dead and Christ will give you light. Christ will do something in your life that will expose darkness all around you. Expose the power of darkness, the powerlessness of darkness.

It will all be exposed. God says, because I will do something in you, you will be like a light coming into a darkened room and my presence in your life will expose the futility of human effort, human reasoning, of all the things that humanity has gathered to itself that have brought our nation into reproach in this time. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil.

Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is and do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation, but be filled with the spirit. Don't be unwise. He says, redeem the time.

I'm calling you now. I'm calling you out of darkness now. I'm calling you into light now.

I'm calling you into life now. And don't spend your time filling your mind and your bodies with the intoxicating substances of this world. All of those things, whether it's something mental, whether it's something physical, do not waste your time with the intoxications of this world, Paul says.

But come out of slumber, arise from every place of death. And the promise is that Christ will give you an eye light in this generation. Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the spirit of God.

Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. I challenge you who are online tonight, who are listening, and some may be in the sanctuary this evening. I challenge you to open your heart to what Jesus Christ wants to do in your life.

Let him give you power. Let him raise you up. I don't know about you, but I don't wanna live in mediocrity for the rest of my life.

I just don't wanna live in a mediocre place. I don't wanna be an argument about the reality of Jesus Christ. I want Jesus Christ to demonstrate his reality through my life in my generation.

I want what's in my life, the light in my life to expose darkness so that people can know they're living in darkness and come out of it and come to life in Jesus Christ. When the early church came out of that upper room, they were literally figuratively raised from the dead. The death of sin, the death of this world, the death of the powerlessness of human effort.

And they were brought into the life and the light of Jesus Christ. We started tonight about talking about how can I give glory to God? I give glory to God by going all the way with Jesus Christ. I give glory to God by letting him bring my bones together and letting him give me strength where I've been weak and letting him breathe into my life and give me vision, give me strength, give me power where I haven't had any of these things in my life.

I give glory to God by letting him be God in my life because that's his plan. It always has been. Take us in our weakness, not in our strength, in our nothingness, not when we feel like everything.

In our hopelessness, not when we feel like we have all of the clever arguments to win this generation. And suddenly and unexpectedly, he raises us out of death and he raises us into newness of life in Jesus Christ. I don't know about you, my friend, but I want that life with all my heart.

I want everything that God's got for me. It starts, my friend, tonight by opening your heart to Jesus Christ. It starts by stopping, resisting what God is speaking to your heart.

The bones could have said, no, not us, we're dry, we're dead. There's too many of us, it's been too long. We blew our chance.

We were called to be a testimony and a blessing in the earth. And we forfeited our calling and we've been around these altars for so long and we've lost heart and we're cut off. And they could have, they could have resisted God.

What a sad thing that would have been. You know, I love the way Pastor Teresa says it. She said, it was the first time in the Bible that God gave bones ears.

They could hear God speaking through Ezekiel the prophet and they rose up and Israel is home. And Israel will know a spiritual awakening in the last days. And we, the Gentile church have been grafted in by the grace of God, will not be left behind in what God is about to do.

Praise be to God. It starts tonight by opening your heart online tonight and admitting you can't save yourself, admitting you need a savior, believing that God loved you and sent his son to a cross to die a violent death, to pay the price for every wrong thing that you have done that has separated you from God or offended in a sense the holiness of God and the goodness of God. God poured out his wrath on his own son so that you could be free.

And then if you'll confess him as Lord, which means he's got the right to go into every area of your life and do what he wants to do. And he's not coming to just pile a bunch of rules on you. That's religion does that.

He's coming to give you life and to give it to you more abundantly, Jesus said. He's coming to make you into a new creation. The old things in your life will pass away and all things will become new.

He's coming to make you a testimony of who he is. He's coming to give you things that you could never get in your own strength. You could never learn it with your own mind.

You could never achieve it with any amount of human effort. He's coming to do what only God can do. It is a supernatural life.

My friend, it's a supernatural life, which means it's sudden, sometimes unexpected and all God. It's all God, all God. Oh God, thank you.

If you want that life, would you just pray this simple prayer with me tonight? Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for loving me. Thank you for dying for me, for paying the price for my sins and wanting me as your child. What an awesome thing.

Thank you for loving me just to think that God wants me with all of my faults and all my failures. Yet he wants me because you love me. So tonight I open my heart to you, Jesus, and I invite you into my life to be my Lord, my savior, and my God.

Lead me now. Take me where you want me to go. Give me what I need to go there.

Give me a message when I get there. I want to live a life that glorifies you. I believe tonight that right now I am being forgiven by God because of Jesus Christ.

I believe that heaven is my home from this day forward. I believe that God will raise me up from every place of death and despair. I give my life to you, Jesus, all of it forever.

Amen.