Supernatural Christianity

So what did you learn? 1, 2, 2, 3? What's the three? Prophet, priest, and king. I've had an image this whole conference of Christ with His sword drawn. I've just kind of taken it in.

I've just been back in the states for three months. And it seems like, what? We didn't have a conference in 2020. That was COVID.

And then I was in England and I came back for one of them. Are you ready for this? When I returned, as I've been thinking over the last three months what to preach, what to preach, I've had one thing on my mind, and it has been supernatural Christianity. And I'm going to use some quotes, maybe a little more than normal, just probably because I'm looking for credibility.

So if you guys think I'm crazy, at least you're going to see that some notable people are crazy with me. I want to preach from Mark 16. So open your Bibles, please.

Mark 16. What do you think? I'm going to preach on verses 12-20. Is that safe? After these things, He appeared in another form to two of them as they were walking into the country.

And they went back and told the rest and they did not believe them. Afterward, He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and He rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw Him after He had risen. And He said to them, Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel to the whole creation.

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe. In My name they will cast out demons, they will speak in new tongues, they will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them.

They will lay their hands on the sick and they will recover. So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

Father, I pray for Your help in this place at this hour. Please come. In Christ's name I ask.

Amen. So let me ask you this. How do you read this? Unless you've been pretty much confined to your King James Bible, and that's all you've read, and you haven't been exposed to other things.

If you've got your ESD, you get to this portion of Scripture, and you suddenly start seeing brackets and footnotes. How do you read this? With caution? With reservation? With unbelief? With disregard? You know, Jesus in these very verses was rebuking His disciples for their unbelief and hardness of heart. Do we have a hardness towards this? Or an unbelief? Do you view this with expectation? Perhaps you don't know what to do.

You don't know how to process these verses. I mean, what I ask, is this for me? And that's what I'm wondering when I read Scripture. Does this have anything to do with my Christianity the church I am involved with, what my life looks like, does this have anything to do with it? Does it connect anywhere? Is this for today? Is this for this hour? Is this at this time and this place? That's what I'm asking.

Now look, some of you have looked at this. You know this. And what I'm about to say right now is not all there is to be said about this.

But listen, the evidence for including this in our Bibles is staggering. Do you realize that in the handwritten Greek manuscripts that have been recovered of Mark, there are over 1,600. 99.3% of them include these verses.

Most translations, now I was just talking about the Greek, but most translations, they may be into Latin, into other languages, most of them, they have these verses. Irenaeus in approximately 180 A.D. quoted verse 19 as being Scripture. There's really only two major manuscripts that are lacking this.

And so that's the first thing that I want to say about it. Oh, by the way, those two manuscripts that lack this, they also lack fasting in Mark 9. But we have found the oldest manuscript on Mark 9, it actually has fasting. This kind goes out by prayer and fasting.

But I just ask you this, are you uncomfortable with these verses? And I would just ask you this, is it the textual issues? Or is it the supernatural? In fact, I think sometimes people are glad that there's even any question about these passages because it gives them warrant to somewhat disregard them and not have to deal with these. The title of my sermon is Supernatural Christianity. Now, let me just tell you a story.

Last November, eight of us flew from the shores of England and we went to Nepal. And John was there. And John met us in Kathmandu.

And we were there. One of the guys was an American pastor. And one of the guys was Polish, but we all came from England.

And we went over to the rescue. These guys were British. And John took us about a day's drive west of Kathmandu.

And we were having a medical clinic. Dental and medical. With the purpose of gathering people in, we wanted to preach the Gospel.

And so the day before we did this clinic, we went out in small bands. And we went through the villages. And we're in the shadow of Annapurna, the 10th tallest mountain.

We're in the Himalayas. This is a rough country. Beautiful country.

Hindu country. Hinduism is everywhere. And we went up through these Hindu villages taking the Gospel and preaching and inviting them to come tomorrow to this place where we're going to hold the clinic because we were going to have more preaching.

And we're there. And you had to see this. One of the guys on our team over there, he's never gone to school, but he's got EMT skills.

You can find Matt if you just look somewhere. Where's Matt? You'll find him maybe over there with some needle nose pliers pulling somebody's tooth. I actually saw him doing that in San Antonio.

I looked through the window. Carlos was pulling somebody's tooth in there. Well, that's what he was doing over there.

He's got one person, you can imagine, third world country, all these people have dental problems, one after another they're coming. And they got their mouth wide open and Matt's preaching the Gospel. He's got a little interpreter girl there.

And they can't say anything. And he's preaching the Gospel to these Hindus. I saw him pull teeth.

I mean, there was a young kid and he put that needle nose on there. Whee! It's out of there. And the kid looked shocked and I felt shocked.

But, so this is happening. We've got some medical guys, paramedic skills, and that day comes and these Hindus are coming one after another. And a witch doctor comes.

This guy was working in the field. And suddenly he felt that the demons that were inside of him caused him to go into some kind of semi-paralysis. And he did not attribute it to a stroke or anything.

And he shows up with his wife. Now this guy was a former witch doctor. He's trying to escape it.

We asked him, do you call on the Lord? He said, I can't call on the Lord the moment I even try to think about the Lord. Those demons are in his head. And he says he has to obey.

He cannot resist them. And he's there looking for help. And we sat this man down.

And we began to pray over him. Some of the men from our team. Some of the men that came over from England.

And we're praying. And I felt it was glorious. We were crying out to the Lord.

This man began to growl and tremors. And he was shaking. And I felt like we were making some progress there.

Do you know what I have an image in my mind of? Is the Hindus. They were seated around there out towards this dirt road. Kind of mountainous country.

And down the road, you've got these Hindu. The image I have is primarily Hindu women standing in a line and they're watching. And we're praying.

And the demons in this guy are getting lathered up and stirred up. And suddenly some guy comes out of the crowd, lays his hand on his head. Now, I don't know Nepali.

So I didn't know if he was speaking in Nepali. It sounded to me like he was speaking in tongues. And suddenly where the guy was so agitated before this really devilish smile comes across his face, I just felt defeated.

But the picture I have in my mind is all those Hindus. They're all watching. Well then, that was November.

You fast forward a little bit, I come back to the United States. And no more in the church in San Antonio for a week. And here comes a girl we pray over.

She's got a skin condition. To the best of my knowledge, she has the skin condition to this day. Maybe a week or two later, we bring in a brother with a heart condition.

And we pray for him. And to the best of my knowledge, that heart condition still prevails to this day. Now hear this again.

Mark 16 and 17. These signs will accompany those who believe. In My name they will cast out demons.

They will lay their hands on the sick. And they will recover. Brethren, yes, I believe that God has built His church on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.

Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone. I believe that. I believe the signs of an apostle followed those original guys.

I believe that. I'm not trying to do gymnastics with the Scriptures. This is not about the signs of an apostle.

Verse 17. Brethren, look at it. There are three words there.

Those who believe. That's how my Bible reads. Those who believe.

Now look, yes, you might conclude these verses ought not to be in your Bible. I recognize that. You might conclude they should be in your Bible, but they're for a bygone era.

Perhaps it's inspired. It should be in your Bible. It is for today.

Which then raises my questioning voice right there along with the disciples. Lord, why couldn't we cast it out? You know what it makes me feel like? It makes me feel like all the other things that I'm doing, maybe that event exposed something that was true all along. What might my life actually look like if I had faith the size of a grain of mustard seed? What impossible things might be able to be accomplished? You know why I'm not ready to ignore Mark 16? I read things in my Bible like heaven and earth will pass away.

My words will not pass away. Have you ever read that? And I'm thinking, okay, here we have the Almighty, the Sovereign God. Did He just idly sit by and allow 99.3% of our Bibles to contain this when it wasn't His Word at all? I don't believe that.

I'm not ready to sign up for that. But then there's this also. I just ask the question, is there anything in these verses that's really in conflict with what we find in other places in Scripture? You say, oh, what about snakes? Well, I find that Paul had an ordeal with a snake.

What about poison? Not so much in the New, but in the Old. Wasn't there death in the pot one time and God took care of that? Is there anything that really ought to cause us to get all bent out of shape? But then there's those words in v. 17. These signs will accompany those who believe.

In My name they will. And I just have dot, dot, dot. They'll do these things.

Listen, those who believe. Do we have any believers here? Who's a believer? Do you know what? This is one of those verses. You ever come across these? To those who believe.

The works I do, you will do in greater works. Because I'm going to the Father. Or you find another one.

Those who believe, out of their bellies will flow rivers of living water. Not yet, because He wasn't glorified yet. But you know what you find in this verse? He is glorified.

He is at the right hand of the Father. And those who believe, it's one of those crazy texts. And brethren, I just say this.

Is it possible that a cold church or a powerless church sometimes is kind of forced into the more comfortable position of interpreting these things in such a way as to avoid any negative reflection on myself? And you see, the first thing, I walked away from that situation over there is I'm looking at myself. I feel like something was wrong there. And I'll tell you, just in the time we prayed over that witch doctor there, it was exhausting.

We probably shouldn't have given up so easy. But brethren, sometimes we can't enter into these things so it's so much more easy to explain it away and make statements for which there is absolutely no biblical authority. And the question often arises, well, if this is for today, where is it? Why aren't we seeing it? Yeah, but folks, that's just some kind of horrible defensive exegesis of Scripture.

To look at ourselves in the mirror and not see something, but look in the Scriptures and see it and then just kind of say what's real by what we see in ourselves rather than what we see in Scriptures. Brethren, that can just be just a refuge for unbelieving orthodoxy. Oh, we can be good with our Calvinistic doctrines and everything, but what about what we heard last night? Is that just doctrine? And then we move, yes, there's an ethic there, but doesn't somebody, didn't that resonate with you last night? You want your heart to burn? You want there to be some kind of reality.

You want this high and lifted up Christ that's at the right hand of the Father. You want some reality to that. We don't want some kind of convenient hiding place.

And perhaps just the safest thing that we can do in these kind of situations is look at the passage. Brethren, verse 20. They went out and preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

They went out and preached everywhere. You know what that is? That, verse 20, is the disciples' response to verse 15. Look at verse 15.

Where Jesus said to them, Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel to the whole creation. Jesus says go, all creation. And where'd they go? They went everywhere.

Brethren, it's for us to do what we're commanded. When we're commanded. Why? Because we've been commanded.

Go is always the cry of the obedient church. Obedient. We know what God did.

He sent His Son into the world. He sent His Spirit into the world. He sends the church into the world clothed with the power of that Spirit.

That's what we find. Brethren, look, coming to hear sermons at a conference like this, that can be profitable. But brethren, I would just encourage you, don't try to convince yourself this is the end of the Christian life to be sitting in this place, in a pew, hearing a sermon.

And brethren, we need more than good intentions. Too often we're going to do something. Listen to that word.

Everywhere. Everywhere. They went out and they proclaimed that message everywhere.

Isn't that a wide word? That's a big word. Everywhere. Brethren, you know what I'm asking? I'm not advocating for coming up here with rattlesnakes.

Brethren, what I want is as much as God is willing to do today. And before we decide what God will and will not do at this hour, wouldn't it make sense for us to first do what they did and go everywhere preaching the Gospel before we kind of sign up to the fact that God doesn't do anything today? Or at least anything that resonates with these verses here? Only then should we perhaps test the limits of what He'll do. Listen, Tozer, I'm going to quote A.W. Tozer.

I love Tozer. He stood back and he looked at the early church where we see these guys going everywhere. Here's what he said.

Here's how he described it. They exchanged the safety of inaction. Oh, brethren, catch those words.

You know what one of our problems, my problem, especially as you get older, safety. You know what happens when the church digs in for safety? Listen, Jesus worked through them as they went and preached the Gospel everywhere. It doesn't say Jesus worked with them and confirmed their message when they dug in for safety.

They stayed in bed and they stayed within their walls and they stayed in a safe place and they stayed in their nice little havens of their home churches. That's not what we read here. They exchanged the safety of inaction for the hazards of God-inspired progress.

Invariably, the power of God followed such action. The miracle of God went when and where His people went. It stayed when His people stopped.

The static periods were those times when the people of God tired of the struggle and sought a life of peace and security. Brethren, we're Americans. We're 21st century Americans.

It's almost like our style, our type of Christianity has safe and comfortable and protected stamped all over it. Do you agree? Listen, I'm not up here to accuse. I'm wanting to stand and look at myself in the mirror.

But when you think about what they did, when you think about what our brethren who have gone before us, what I find in these verses if I'm brought face-to-face with some kind of reality of not just this dead formal intellectualism, but there's life. Christ is working here. Brethren, what are the limits to which God will work with His church today? What are the limits of that if we go proclaim the Gospel? And I challenge all of us.

Are you able to show me from your Bible any place stating precisely what God will and will not do in this year 2024? If we do what the early church did and go everywhere preaching. And I don't think you can. But I can show you what happened in the past.

Paul and Barnabas, I know they're called apostles. I recognize that. But you know what? In Acts 14, God confirmed their message.

You go to Hebrews 2 and it says God confirmed that message. You go to Mark 16. It says that God confirmed that.

Things happened that made the world sit up and take notice. I see in my sight, as much as I see that Christ with the drawn sword at this conference, I have that image in my mind also of a line of Hindus. And they're watching us.

They're watching the Christians. The Christians have come from somewhere else. They've come from other countries.

And here they are. They're in our country. Well, they have problems with demons there.

And they've got their witch doctors and their shamans and they've got their little trinkets that they put on and their curses that they do. And they poke the finger. They do all sorts of things to try to ward off these spirits.

Well, here, maybe these Christians, maybe they're here. Maybe they come with some different power. Maybe something's going to happen.

And I see those Hindus there. And they're watching all of this. And we're proclaiming this Christ who is dead, but He didn't stay dead.

And He rose from the grave. And we're proclaiming this to these people. And then we're powerless before them.

But I'm not seeing that here. Brethren, I'm not talking about poison and rattlesnakes and that kind of thing. Yes, casting out demons.

Yes, I'm talking about that. Healing the sick. Yes, laying hands on.

And people would be healed. But brethren, we need God to work with us. We need God to bring joy unspeakable.

We need God to bring boldness. Didn't they need boldness? The Spirit of God came upon that earth. There's all sorts of things we need.

We need conviction. We need God to open hearts. We need God to open ears.

We need things to happen. We need God to put Himself on display. That's what I'm after here.

Listen, Welsh missionary, Timothy Richard, he was a primary figure in the English Baptist mission of Shantung. This book is written by the Reverend John Livingstone Nevious. Now listen to this.

That team that was there in Shantung, these English Baptists, one of the workers just made this comment in our preaching, to be able to tell people that in our holy religion there is the power to cast out demons and heal diseases, thus manifesting the love and mercy of God is certainly a great help to spread of the Gospel. And you know what I'm finding in the spiritual battles? This is Hudson Taylor days, late 1800's. That God was manifesting as they went out and they sought to take the Gospel.

God was manifesting His power. And it was, brethren, you can read account after account that when the Christians came in and God worked through them, oftentimes there were such manifestations and it caused the Chinese to fall down and become Christians. Time and again, there was this demonstration.

Brethren, this is a safe hermeneutic comparing Scripture with Scripture. Here's what I find. When I look at Matthew 28 and I compare it to Mark 16, you know what I find? All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Christ.

I come over to Mark 16. I see Him high and lifted up on a throne at the right hand of God. I go over to Matthew and I find baptism.

We're to go and make disciples and we're to baptize. You come over to Mark and you find He that believes and is baptized. You find that little word, go.

You find it in both passages. Go. But you know what? When I compare them, what's interesting is I find that Jesus is low and with you to the end of the age.

Doing what? When I compare that to Mark, that He'll be with us confirming the message. He'll be working with us. That's what I find when I compare those two things.

Is it a faulty hermeneutic to say that low and with you to the end of the age? That's how it's going to manifest itself? Comparing Scripture with Scripture? That He's going to confirm this message? Listen to this. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The Christian church today is failing.

Now whether you agree with that or not, just hear him out. You know, he got around. He saw the churches.

I know this. The doctor was not just simply looking for correct doctrine. But he said, the Christian church today is failing and failing lamentably.

It is not enough even to be orthodox. You must, of course, be orthodox. Otherwise, you have not got a message.

But we need authority. We need authentication. Is it not clear that we're living in an age when we need some special authentication? Tozer comes along and he says, we're so hopelessly outclassed by the world's superior strength that for us it means either God's help or sure defeat.

The Christian who goes out without faith and wonders will return without fruit. No one dares be so rash as to seek to do impossible things unless he has first been empowered by the God of the impossible. The power of the Lord was there.

That is our guarantee of victory. Everything else being equal, we shall have as much success in Christian work as we have power. No more and no less.

Lack of fruit over a period argues lack of power as certainly as the sparks fly upward. Outward circumstances may hinder for a time, but nothing can long stand before the naked power of God. Brethren, I just ask you this.

If the book of Acts is not where we go to find how the early church carried out the Great Commission, then brethren, I would have to say we're left to ourselves. J. Grisham Machen said this, the most important practical question for the modern church is still the question how Christianity came into being. If we want to know what the church is supposed to be, where should we look? In the mirror? Or do we go back to the beginning and look there? And the problem is that when you go back, if it's a problem, but you go back and you look at how it is and you see how it is, brethren, facts are pretty stubborn things somebody has said.

And that's what we find in Scripture. Lo, I'm with you always until the end of the age. And I ask this, have we become so enamored with the 16th century? I recognize there's connotations behind these words.

But would you not rather be Pentecostal than Reformed? Pentecostal is Scriptural. Reformed. 16th century.

We can come to a place where we'd rather be that. The 16th century Protestant Reformation. Brethren, I just ask you this, is it really the greatest event in Christian history? Isn't it rather, go stay in Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high? Isn't that the most notable and the greatest event for the church today? And I just would ask this, has that power waned? Has that power waxed? Has that power diminished? Is it weakened? Has it been voided? Has it varied? Has it been mutated? I mean, if so, then either Jesus didn't know what He was talking about or He lied to us.

Lo, I am with you to the end of the age. He tells us about a church that is going to stand up against the gates of hell and even be aggressive and offensive and knock those gates in. He's going to be with us to the end of the age.

And brethren, what I want you to notice is the position of Christ in all this. Look at v. 19. So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.

Brethren, I just want you to see Him there. Imagine Him. We heard about it the other day.

Imagine those mighty gates, those ancient doors, and they lift it up. And here comes Christ. He comes to the ancient of days.

And He's been given this authority and He's been given dominion and He's been given a kingdom. And He sits down. And that's where He is.

And He's in the perfect place, is He not? And we're in the perfect place. We're right where He wants us. Right here where we can go everywhere.

And He is there in the perfect place in the seat of authority. And He is the one who tells us go. And He bids us from that place.

And I ask you this, didn't He say to those apostles in that day, it is to your advantage that I go away. Did He say that? So was it for theirs and not ours? That's the question. Should they have expected to have some kind of advantage that we should expect is not going to be an advantage in our day? Brethren, I think that's a good question.

And when there are demonstrations of the power of God, He comes in convicting power. He opens the heart. He opens minds.

He opens ears. He comes and He gives His church boldness. Or He comes and He fills us with joy.

He comes and He gives us a sense of His presence. However that's manifest, that gives credibility to the fact that He is high and lifted up on that throne. What were those Hindus thinking? They were lined up over there.

Did that give them the impression, oh, they have a great Savior who's seated on this throne. He's high and lifted up. Brethren, if we have to be honest, the fruit of that day probably did not leave that impression with them.

Now I know God can do things beyond what we can imagine in all of that. But our Lord has gone to the best place possible for helping them and for helping us in our day. He is in that best place high above all rule and authority and power and dominion.

He is there and He is in control. And we're His church. And He said we are to go out into all the world.

Every creature. And they went everywhere. And brethren, you know what? It can be very easy to point at the charismatics and point at their excesses.

And that makes us feel kind of comfortable to just draw back and have good orthodox, you know, there's a solid church. What do you mean by a solid church? Maybe more of a charismatic sense. Lloyd-Jones said, do we have an openness to the supernatural demonstration of power that the world needs so badly? Of those who sit back and point their finger at the charismatic excesses of good people, God have mercy upon them.

God have mercy upon them. It is better to be too credulous than to be carnal, smug, and dead. Does anybody agree with that? Brethren, don't you want more than your Reformed theology? Don't you want a presence of God and the power of God? Wouldn't you like to see a witch doctor that was freed and all those Hindus saw it? Now word's going through all those mountains.

Wow! Those Christians came. Let me tell you about their Christ. Our gods haven't been able to do that.

Our shamans haven't been able to do that. Our witch doctors haven't been able to do that. And they came.

And those Christians were saying they were deferring. It wasn't them. They were pointing to somebody we couldn't see.

Somebody they claim is at the right hand of God in heaven. There He is. Why should the nations say where is their God? Brethren, where is our God? Our God is in the heavens.

And He does whatever He pleases. And I've got Scripture that tells me some of the things that He does that pleases Him. I mean, brethren, wasn't it the cry long ago from our brother Moses who said, Lord, what will the Egyptians say? And I just say, what will the Hindus say? Brethren, you know what you want them to say.

You want the Egyptians and the Hindus to say, their God is great. Their God is big. Bigger than ours.

Oh, the Lord worked with them. You see that. And this is the very root of the matter.

There was an inward secret. There was a mysteriousness that went with their utterances. And friends, if we work and the Lord works with us, what will be impossible for us? These two workings, His working and our working, they're in harmony.

They blend together. And we recognize we can do nothing without Him. And we recognize that in our working with Him and His working with us, we're to take the place where we want to have that cooperative working in a way that doesn't grieve the Spirit.

Not in our pride. Not in our self-confidence. In a way that the Holy Spirit is likely to bless for Christ's glory.

Everything must be done prayerfully. You know what Tozer said? The greatest proof of our weakness these days is that there is no longer anything terrible or mysterious about us. The church has been explained.

The surest evidence of her fall. The world needs us. Do you believe that? We're called to be salt and light.

The world needs us. But everything it needs from you, you don't have. Brethren, what I find is the Spirit of God fell on those people.

Jesus was working with the people. But what were they doing? They were doing something that demanded that Christ help them. It wasn't just forever and always sitting in conferences and hearing messages.

They took the truth. They took the doctrine. And yes, there's an ethic.

The ethic is obedience. Go has always been the call, the charge of the obedient church, folks. Obedience.

Are you surprised I use that word? Obey? When it comes to this? I mean, there's an obedience in all of this. And they went everywhere. There's a source of power.

Brethren, if we lack the power, how's it to be God? I mean, that early church, they went to their knees. The place shook. Sacrificial prayer.

Brethren, I am reminded again and again in my own life. Brethren, if once there begins to ebb a weakness in wanting to seek the safe place and the safe haven and go to the protection, brethren, so often there's a lack of that sacrificial prayer. Just walking with the Lord and talking with the Lord.

We need that. Yes, brethren, we undoubtedly, we've got a resurgence. You saw all the books there.

We've got all this Reformed literature and books and the Puritan stuff, Reformed churches. But brethren, with all of our intellectual stuff and all of our high learning and all of our three-point sermons, brethren, you know we can get to the place where we seek to replace that ancient power that filled that early church with other stuff. We can become very impressed with high learning and lots of degrees.

We need the power of that exalted Jesus to just have it come down on us like rain. In two weeks, I'm going to be 59, close to 60. I don't want to coast.

You don't want to coast. You want your lives to matter. And Jesus is there and we are here.

And you see from this passage why He left us here. He left us here to go everywhere. He left us to be the mouthpieces.

He left us here to be the ambassadors of this reconciliation that we heard about. Brethren, we need that unmistakable, supernatural element in the life of the church, that which empowers us, that which causes an influence. And I'm not here to tell God what He must look like or what God must do.

I'm not wanting to do gymnastics with the Scriptures. I just simply come to this and I'm recognizing the two of the very things that I have sought to do and some others have sought to do since last November and coming back here to San Antonio. If I'm honest, there's a powerlessness.

Why is that? It's more prayer and fasting I suspect. And my faith... I need more faith. I mean, if we don't know this power, shouldn't it prompt us back to the place of prayer and back to the other thing those early Christians did, which is they went everywhere proclaiming the message.

Brethren, we need to pray for that divine fire. We need to pray. I don't want to tell God what He's supposed to do in 2024, but I know this, that whatever the fullness is of what God is willing to do today, I suspect from this passage that it is unleashed when the church puts its feet on the ground and goes out these doors and goes everywhere and proclaims the message.

The world around us is perishing. Look, we're foolish to think that our Calvinism by itself is all there is to experience and that that's what's going to win the world. We need more than reformation, folks.

Our inability. Does anybody feel desperate? I feel desperate. Those early Christians, you think about them.

You think about them. They came down. Imagine.

Imagine Jerusalem. It's at the time of Passover. You've got crowds of people.

And those people, those disciples, they came down from that upper room to tell the folks out there in the crowd about a Jewish carpenter that was known to have died. He died on a Roman cross. And they're going to come out there and tell the people this is the Son of God.

This is the Savior of the world. I mean, how are they going to be successful? The fact the church didn't perish on the spot, what do you even attribute that to? You can attribute it to one thing, the miraculous element that was in here. Tozer describes the early church as a walking incarnation of spiritual energy.

And we know this. That church began in power. It went on in power.

It continued as long as it had a power. And the moment the church historically digs in for safety, then what happens? The power is gone. Brethren, I'm longing for the church to have that kind of effective energy that that early church found and dwelt in.

That God releases into the church that made that early church invincible against her foes. Those fishermen, Galilean fishermen, they came down from the upper room. You can imagine all the hordes of hell standing against it.

The demons ready to pluck up all that seed. How in the world could that thing have even been prosperous at all? We need something to make us invincible before our foes. Brethren, you may be uncomfortable by this message.

I don't know. But prove me wrong from Scripture and let's pray. Brethren, we want to be doing the types of things that the early church did that warrants Jesus coming along and confirming the message by accompanying signs.

Let Him declare what signs we need those to be. But oh, Lord Jesus, work with us. Work through us.

May this be a tandem working. Lord, You're high and You're lifted up. What do the Hindus say? What do the Egyptians say? What do our neighbors say? What do your co-workers say? What do your fellow students say? What do your lost family members say? Brethren, we want them to see something.

We don't want our Christianity to be explained like Tozer said. We want that miraculous, that mysterious element to it. That there is supernatural realities.

Oh, brethren, don't we want that? People well saved. Lives radically changed. God moving in His church.

Our meetings. Places of unusual sense of presence. Don't you want your heart to burn like we heard last night? Father, I just ask You, please, I believe You've left Mark 16 in our Bibles not to taunt us, not to make us ashamed.

I believe You've left it there because it's Your Word. Lord, I feel weak and we are weak. Lord Jesus, from Your exalted position, please, we know our time is short.

We know our days are numbered. They're like a vapor. They're a mist.

Very few days, our seats are going to be empty. We're going to have passed out of this life. We've heard of various brethren already this year that have gone to be with the Lord.

They ran the race. The race is done. Lord, we've been created in Christ Jesus for good works and we know that You have ordained those works for us and I pray that they would be an abundance of fruit.

By this we know our Father is glorified. Help us to be fruitful. Lord, we don't want to be powerless.

Lord, we want the touch of God upon us. We want the embrace of God upon us. We want the breath of God upon us.

Lord, don't leave us alone. Restore those that need to be restored. He restoreth my soul.

Lord, restore us to the place we need to be. Lord, may the church be as fruitful in this day. May we be like Philadelphia.

May we be like Smyrna of old. Help us to be all we should be. Help us to run well.

I ask all of it in Christ's name, Amen.