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Text Sermons : Art Katz : The Context of the Coming Kingdom

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Introduction: Jerusalem Conference

Demonstrate Him and the demonstration was such kind I had to leave the platform and the auditorium, because everything in me was going haywire. Now I don't like the way my voice is sounding, it’s too empty, I guess that we can't help it? Huh. But you can hear? Okay. I'm hard-of-hearing, so I am sensitive about how a voice is heard. Well, that was a remarkable message, when I came back on that platform and I felt like, “what did I do wrong?” My poor wife was on the platform with me and went virtually hysterical, because I was offending many people, including my publisher and my co-author Jamie Buckingham, who has since gone on to be with the Lord. All of the charismatic big shots were on the platform, but a voice rang out from the platform, “This is the word that I have called you to hear, not the sugar candy that has been so far been proffered, but this is the word.” I'll tell you that the anointing was so great they made a film of that conference and they submitted it to a board of rabbis, because they had hoped to circulate it through the Jewish community as well as the Christian community, and the rabbi's loved it, except for that one man at the end. Me. And so, they scissored me off. I went down on the cutting floor. That's how great the anointing was. And I found out later that the prophetic word that came from the platform was repeated in several parts of the auditorium at the same time the identical word, because there were 4000 people in the auditorium. And of course I didn't hear that, I found out later. People who stood to the invitation, I've met them over the years since 1974, it's about a quarter of a century they said their life was changed by that standing. That message is in this book. Hundred dollars today's special. [Laughter].

Introduction: Art’s Book on the Holocaust & Testimony

This is even more devastating, but it's not for the young, it'll mature you fast. It's an attempt to explain the Holocaust. You know my astonishment was? I was a history teacher, am a depression baby, born in 1920, and when I came to high school teaching, I was going to be a savior for my students. I was going to be for them what no teacher had been for me in the struggle of my adolescence to find meaningful life. You know I found out? I was standing before a generation that didn't give a rap about meaning and I had come to them from another planet. [Laughter]. And that I spoke strangely and I was completely out of tune with that generation. I had to go back to the drawing board to square one to find out how to find a basis for communication and I labored for four years in a great struggle. At the same time being married to a German lady schizophrenic and a former member of the Hitler Youth who in her depot auxins of her schizophrenic agony she was a victim of the war surviving it physically, but carrying the moral and the emotional strains into a marriage with the Jewish men. That's how God prepares a Jew for conversion. [Laughter]. I'm speaking like the fool this morning. You don't mind do you? You don’t have much choice in the matter. But all of that combined to break down my humanistic categories, the deep idealism that many of us Jews carry in the hope for mankind predicated on human intelligence and human goodwill independent of God. So, I found in the struggle as a teacher that I could raise great and ultimate questions, but I could not answer them. I found in my marriage with a German woman who was really the great love of my life, that however well-meaning my intention I could not respond to her schizophrenic torment. Finding the one place where I was vulnerable, my Jewishness and react to that with kindness. See what I mean? It broke me down in all of my categories and the things in which I trusted as a humanist. And so, my crisis became so serious that in my 34th year I took a year’s leave of absence. And I should have recorded all of this and a year’s leave of absence from the teaching profession. Maybe this is on? Is this on? It is on. (Someone in the Congregation) It was on all the while? Hmm. Oh, praise the Lord! Thank you, Lord!

[Laughter]. We didn't miss anything, the Lord outwitted me again. And I spent 14 months traveling through Europe and the Middle East looking for philosophical answers. I had been a high school dropout at the age of 16, merchant seaman at the age of 17, a seeker after truth, finally the US Army the GI Bill. What do you think they sent me during the Korean War? Not to Korea. Germany. [Laughter]. So, we Jews have a long-standing love-hate relationship with Germany. There's so much I could tell you. It's so much beyond your present understanding, so much that you need to understand, because the Jews are so predominant the factor at the conclusion of the age and the church's own call: the identity, the recognition of itself. And I may not even speak that this morning, but sometime between now and my departure I've got to say something, maybe tonight, that you need to understand something about that, because you're going to be faced by them. Do you know what Yiddish is? Like German (Congregation) Yeah, it's a Germanic language that the Central European Jews adopted from the German language became a kind of lingua franca, a language of commerce that the Jews would speak, because Hebrew at that time was not a language for street purposes. It is today in Israel it's their national language. Yiddish was for street purposes. Hebrew wishful liturgical purposes. So, the German language, German culture, German civilization. Did you know that Karl Marx was a Jew? Did you know that Sigmund Freud was a Jew? Did you know that Albert Einstein was a Jew? Do you know that Steven Spielberg is a Jew? Do you know that Reuben who was the head of the Department of the Treasury and who's the head of the Greenspan. And Jews. Jews. Jews. Jews everywhere, but especially of German origin have been a remarkable influence at Western civilization. So when the Holocaust came, you know my astonishment was a history teacher? These kids didn't know what the Holocaust was. That they were born after World War II. Why didn't I realize that? They were non compos mentis; it had no comprehension for them. Here I'm bursting at the seams over these great ethical events of modern times and these kids are totally impervious. A lot of them black and out of Oakland California, the place of the Black Panthers. They had other things to pre-occupy them than the issue of Jewish tragedy. You see like two ships passing in the night, but all of that conspired to bring me to a final predicament, where I had to take this leave of absence from the teaching profession. I can't couldn't go on asking questions I could not answer. I couldn't go on with a failed marriage and a failed philosophical principal life. I had to find answers and there was a God looking for me, because one of my students have been praying for me. I probably ridiculed her faith as a strenuous atheist not the village kind, but the professional kind who not only looked upon religion as the opiate of the masses and an obstruction to the progress of mankind, but of all the religions none more nefarious than Christianity itself. Why? Because we Jews were persecuted by Christians. Did you know that? Christians of a kind that you which you would not identify. You would say they were unregenerate. Indeed, they were Crusaders with white crosses on their tunics or the Spanish Inquisition or the Catholic Church, but the fact of the matter is that Jews who have suffered that persecution and have learned that had taken it in with their mother's milk cannot distinguish between born-again Christians and those that are institutionally Christians. To them that's Christianity. My mother thinks, God bless her, pray for her 94 years old, Hitler was a Christian. Why? Because she's not a Muslim, he's not a Jew, what else. So, we suffered at the hands of Christians and we're going to suffer again. This book not only seeks to explain biblically and I don't know of anyone else who has attempted it, the reasons for the Holocaust and view of God and His Word. That this was not an aberration in history, some mystical event that cannot be explained, but rather the fulfillment of God's predictive Word.


Introduction: The Church’s Mandate for the Next Coming Holocaust

That such an event would take place in latter days. That we have not received it as an event coming from God's hand to precipitate a national repentance means that we're going to experience it again in your lifetime and probably within this decade. There's a second Holocaust coming greater than the first, it will eclipse the first. And not a Jew presently alive in the world today will survive it. The majority will perish in it, only a remnant will survive and they'll survive only, because of you. That's the church's mandate, the church's call to extend mercy that they might receive mercy at the hour of their final extremity. When if you have only the doctrine of mercy or of grace or you know it only as an article of faith and not a palpable thing that can be extended, they will perish. Boy, that's a statement. You know what I'm saying? If you're only a doctrinal Christian, Jews will perish. He'll only survive if you're really a saint and know the mercy of God. And I'll tell you what will bring you to that knowledge having to be to them what God will call you to be. You'll cry out for mercy and you'll receive it.

Introduction: Art’s Book: “Spirit of Truth”

This is a remarkable book. I think this month it’s coming out in German and in French and we'll probably find itself in other languages. Most of these books are in other languages. “Spirit of truth” is in French. Lithuanian. I just came back from Lithuania, it's published there and the pastor, the largest evangelical work in that nation that meets in a great tent thought I was going to speak on the subject, instead I spoke on the issue of the church and the Jew and he was disappointed. You know why I did that? Because Lithuania together with Poland are the two most anti-Semitic nations of Eastern Europe. The fact that he was displeased that I made this a subject rather than this may actually be an indication that that anti-Semitism is more latent than more real than even the church itself recognizes. How are we doing for communication?

Introduction: Obtaining a “Weltanschauung”

Yeah, I speak English well. I love words, so you have to listen in for exacting meaning. We've already been praying for you for that. That God would give you a grace to hear as if I know what I'm going to be speaking. [Laughter]. You know why I don't have a message? Because a message will not suffice for today. What you need is a “Weltanschauung.” Anybody here who's German that “welt” is “world” and “anschauung” is a “view. What you need is a worldview, you need a cosmic perception of the faith and the destiny in the call of the church that is more than any message. I don't know how the Lord is going to bring that, but I'm willing to be squeezed out before you that's something of it will be communicated. And wherever it I miss or the Lord will choose not to express orally you'll find it in these books.

Introduction: Art’s other Books

Gary was very insistent that this be made available. This is a gem, a single message, but what a blockbuster message. What does it mean to be converted? Do you think you are? Is conversion and salvation synonymous? I opened the question by opening the booklet by asking the question or making the statement “many saved few converted.” Conversion is a profound state of being that actually might follow on the heels of your salvation, but is not automatically part and parcel with it. This is a single message that brought an entire congregation down on its face, I've seen people go down, but when they went down and went into the woodwork, I knew that this was a very special word and they would change thereafter. It's in Dutch. it's in Danish. It's in Russian. All of my books are in Russian. In fact, I have more books in Russian than I have in English. There's a book on our website called “Apostolic Foundations”, it's coming in English not yet, but you'll find it on the web. We have a book on the website called “The Prophetic Call”, 12 juicy chapters you need to know the Jewish word for juicy “Zaftig”, which is the same as the German word, because such “Saft” is the word for juice in German. When we say it would you say something as “Zaftig” it means it's resonant and if you squeeze it, it's going to burst it seems. That's what this book is. So, they're all up, there they're expensive as all get-out. I don't know, Adam says eight, I say seven dollars, three dollars for Ben-Israel. We don't charge, but be generous and then there's a newsletter that comes out about three or four times a year. If you after hearing me want to be in touch, put your name somewhere on a piece of paper nicely printed with a zip code and we'll put you on our mailing list. The letters also on the website if you prefer to receive it that way. Okay, also a tape catalog and the description of our books.

Opening Prayer

Let me pray. Okay. So, Lord, this is it, the moment that You have ordained. Were here. We're waiting and we have a sense of the gravity of the hour, the time is short. Great ponderous things, the clouds are already forming, there's a darkness beginning to billow my God over the land and over the nations. There are great things that yet need my God to be affected before Your coming and before Your kingdom. What shall we say? And what shall we speak my God in it in view of that to these precious people My God, this nuclei body and that will go even beyond them through this tape. So, remember Lord, the prayers that went up from the earliest morning hours till this moment and now give Your answer we thank and give you praise that you are the High Priest and the Apostle of our confession. How we need you my God in that category, in that definition. Who's more jealous over Your church than Yourself? Who knows better what it needs? Whose wisdom is more precious and deeper, whose ability is greater to address us than Yours and we pray that You will give us open ears, Lord. And require of us, we know this is not going to be a cheapy that when You speak My God it's not just the titillate, but to require and we want to be required of, it's a privilege and it leaves us change we can't go back to where we were before You have spoken. And so, take your full liberty my God and redeemed this time in full and receive already our gratitude and our praise as a God who speaks. We thank You, give You the praise, the honor, the glory in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Background of the Message – Two Lutheran Pastors

Okay. So, we had dinner last night with Gary and Cindy and the dear brother was expressing his heart and his qualms and concerns and about the kingdom of God and feeling and groping his way. And I thought well that's a great subject and in fact it's of only of late that the Lord has begun again to stir my heart over the subject of the kingdom of God. There was an earlier time when was a predominant message in my repertoire and then it kind of faded. Now here's what happened, I was in East Germany again on my last trip to Europe and visited two pastors whom I had known 20 years ago. And very precious men they were Lutheran's, which is what you almost have to be in Germany. Lutheran or Catholic, anything else is considered a secular cult. Hitler did not recognize even the Baptist Church let alone the Pentecostals only the Catholic and Lutheran were the official state churches. These were Lutheran clergymen, but they were Spirit-filled men, precious, and living under certain duress, certain pressure under a communist system. And it was exciting to visit them and to speak in those days when I would come there was an excitement. Now when I come well, you're just one of many Western speakers, because the wall is down and the East Germany has now been taken back into the whole of Germany and the economy is being revived and so the special conditions that prevailed 20 years ago no longer prevail. Then they were an island of sanity and faith in a sea of atheism and unbelief and communist propaganda and every kind of strain. The one pastor was actually threatened with a prison sentence if he continued to speak about Israel and he wasn't speaking dangerously radical things, but even the mention of the word was considered so offensive to the Communist authorities that he was serving continually under the risk of prison sentence. All of the men of God of that nation lived in that tension and there was an excitement there was a dynamic when you came to their churches and they waited for the Word of God, because they needed to hear from God they were on a sharp edge of faith as an island of belief in a sea of atheism and hostility. Now the wall has come down and so I'm seeing them after 20 years under Western conditions and everything has changed. The dynamic is no longer there and they've become like Western churches in any place. There's a kind of, what's the word or Torpor. A kind of a benign calm, where one services are like another. The radical requirement has gone with the end of the communist system.

Background of the Message – “What’s replaced the radical requirement?”

And so, I raised one question with both pastors. “What have you seen or found to replace the dynamic of challenge that existed when you had to survive and serve under a communist regime?” And they looked at me like, “what are you talking about?” They didn't know. For one of those families 20 years ago I prayed for the pregnant wife of the pastor, who had been told by the medical authorities that she needed an abortion. That child could not survive their own life and health was at risk. What do you think God? Well, I thought that she should have that baby and prayed for her and she believed for that and had the baby. And now I'm seeing the baby as we drive up to the house now 20 years old with spiked hair, tinted blonde, and I know if he had a nose ring, at least he wasn't wearing it, but he's certainly a candidate. He was, what is the word, a “punk rock”. You know I'm out of this, I don't know the terminology I only know the recoil. This is what I prayed for? This is what this woman risked her life for, a punk-rocker and the home of the pastoral family. It was a statement, a symbol of a departure from the radicalness of the faith that evidently even within the ministerial home let alone in the congregation there was not enough that was compelling to engage this young boy of twenty years of age to be part of that faith, but instead he was going to the discos and into the whole rock thing and the family was just of course agonizing over his condition, but living with it.

Background of the Message – “What About the Kingdom of God?”

And so, I said to these two pastors, “what has replaced the dynamic of the challenge of living as a Christian and serving as a minister under communist authoritarian rule?” They had no answer. I said “what about the “kingdom of God.” There they looked blank. And I said, “what does the kingdom of God mean to you?” And they gave me the conventional and traditional answers. “Well, it's the kingdom of God that's within or we're living by the principles of the kingdom of God.” What they were expressing was the way in which most Christians view the kingdom, subjectively and personally as some kind of an interior a fact that comes with believing, but they did not understand the kingdom of God in the sense that I'm being instructed to understand it. That the church has historically lost and must recover if it's going to have the dynamic that the church had at the first in the expectation of that kingdom come. Not as some interior or subjective or personal thing, although it is that, but as a theocratic thing. Dom dom hmm. That is the question. The kingdom of God is the issue of rule.

Definitions of Governments

We know what democratic is and it stinks, it's a lot better than autocratic like the self-rule of dictators. Democratic gives some possibility of grassroots participation, I appreciate that, but Clinton and who is the guy in Serbia, Milosevic shows how arbitrary, mindless, spineless, characterless, democratic rule can be. That is as much a gateway to hell and death and devastation as an autocracy. “Demo” is the Greek root for the word “people”. Demos. “Cracy” is the Greek suffix for “rule”. Democracy is the rule of the people. Autocracy is the rule of self. There’s other forms of it, I can't think. So, what is theocracy”? Theocracy. “Theo” is “God”. Theophilus. was the one to whom Luke wrote was it the book of Acts, because he is a lover of God. Theophilus What's theology? What would that be? The study of God. Theo is God. So what is theocracy? What does it mean that the kingdom of God to think of it theocratic? To think of it as the rule of God and we don't think of that enough. And because we don't, we're missing I think not a profound, but perhaps the most profound point of perception of understanding the faith that God intended as normative. When you start to consider the theocracy, you must necessarily then consider the coming of the Lord as King. That it's no more the coming of the Lord as an escape that is going to take us out of something, but the word “parousia” the Greek word that that many have interpreted as being taken out from a troubled world actually means in Greek to meet a coming dignitary and to escort him to his place of prominence and rule.

God’s Chosen Place of His Rule: Jerusalem

We will meet Him in the air and we shall always be with Him. But where He be? He is going to be not only in the earth, but get this place in the earth that He has designated. And of which many so called hotshot Christians are contemptuous, because they say He's not interested in real estate. God doesn't have any specific intention for any place in the earth. Oh yeah, the scriptures are full of a particular place that God has designated from which His rule shall emanate. And if it doesn't take place there, it will not take place anywhere. Where is that place? Is it Geneva? New York City? The head of the United, the place of the United Nations? You'll never guess what God would have chosen not because it's impressive, but because it's weak, foolish, contemptuous, has a lousy track record. God has chosen Jerusalem, the city of peace. Jerusalem Salem “Shalom alechem” “peace be unto you.” Is going to be the locus of the rule of God, which will be the peace of God, because it's the righteousness of God for all nations. Now how do we know that? Because there are several texts to tell us that. Can you think of any? Like for example Isaiah chapter 2. That the law shall go forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem. Let's take a look at that. It's one of those rare texts that's repeated identically word for word in another prophet altogether Micah chapter 4 verse 1 says exactly the same thing and they didn't whisper to each other. You know how Micah got it? The same way Isaiah got it by the transmission of God by the Spirit, but that God would repeat it twice through different prophets indicates how enormously significant that text is. So, it's the word in chapter 2 which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem even the prophet saw this, it was made visual for him about Judah, which is that the southern kingdom and Jerusalem.

The Scandal of Specificity

So right away from the very beginning God is designating a very literal place. You know we call this? This is the scandal of specificity. People don't like it when God chooses, they like a God who is more amorphous, more general, more undefined, they don't like the specificity of God. What Paul says of Him or than what He says of Himself I will elect what I will like. I will choose what I will choose. I will have mercy upon Whom I will have mercy. So, in the ways that I would love to take the whole rest of this time to celebrate and then they clear to you the God who chooses is the God who is God. And in fact, that He chooses is the very distinctive of God and who does He choose Israel. Who does He choose? What city? Jerusalem. What in Jerusalem? The holy hill of Zion. What King? David What the Messiah? Jesus. What Church. Us. He will choose what He will choose. The question for the churches in the last days, “will we agree with His choices?” Will we celebrate His choice? It may not have been our choosing. In fact, a Norwegian theologian MO Winkle, whose book I found in a secondhand bookstore in no place a little village in England: says “that God's choice of Israel, God's choice of the Jew, God's choice of Zion is the very stumbling stone for the church, it's the stumbling stone set in the path of the church that is essentially Gentile and would not have chosen what God would have chosen.” It would have chosen not a hill. It would have chosen a mountain. Olympus or New York City or Geneva or another nation. The issue of God's choosing is the issue of God and the issue of our submission and surrender to the wisdom of God and to His choice. You can't believe how important that is. It tests and reveals our secret heart, because in most Gentiles if they are not deeply established in God and in the Spirit of God being Gentile being non-Jewish would recoil against and be irritated by God's choice of the Jew. It really tests us to see to what degree our own heart is aligned with His. So, this is what the prophet saw concerning Jerusalem.

Isaiah 2 – The Mountain of the Lord
Isaiah 2:2 (NASB) “Now it will come about that in the last days The mountain of the house of the Lord Will be established as the chief of the mountains, and will be raised above the hills; And all the nations will stream to it.”

This is typical poetic and metaphorical language that a prophet employs. I'm sounding like a lecturer. You know why prophets have to use language in that way? Why they are poetic? Anybody who took English 1A here? Why is poetry the most coveted precious expression of language? Why is poetry to be desired even over prose? What's the difference between the two forms of the use of language? What is special about poetry as against chapters of prose? Speak your heart more distinctively every word means something (Someone in Congregation). Right. Fewer words, more pointedly addressed requiring a greater skill to say in fewer words. What prose would have given you, what prose would have required chapters to express. Poetry condenses and states in the most intense and penetrating form in this in the space of a few verses. To be a poet is an ultimate form of expression and most if not all of the prophets were poets. This is poetry. And when this Isaiah uses the word “Mountain”, he is using a symbolic language. What Mountain refers to biblically is form of government. Mountain is something elevated, it has to do with rule itself, but this mountain of the Lord is going to be the house of the Lord and be established as the chief of the mountains and will be raised above the hills. All that presumes to be in competition with or have an authority equal to we'll have to be less than this mountain. For all the nations will stream to it.

Deuteronomy 32:8 – God’s Rule is the Issue of the Nations

Now listen you guys, the issue of God's rule is the issue of the nations. The Lord gave Israel a king and gave Israel a kingdom, but the kingdom of Israel is unique in that it's not intended for itself alone, but for all nations. God is jealous over His creation and over the nations and that in your own leisure take a look at one brief mystical referenced I have never yet heard anyone ever speak on Deuteronomy 32:8. We're just a paraphrase it now. It says something like “that when God appointed the nation's He did so in terms of the numbers of the sons of Israel.”

Deuteronomy 32:8 “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of mankind, He set the boundaries of the peoples, according to the number of the sons of Israel.”
There's some kind of a conjunction in the mind and wisdom of God between Israel and the nations. You need to know that, because Israel itself does not know it. You know what they say now in the present state, “we want to be like all nations.” And God says “you're the tail, but I will make you the head of the nations.” And in fact, in this very text as well as in Zechariah 14, it says nations will come up to Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles to honor the God of Jacob. Israel will be central to the nations in the conception of God for His rule over His Own creation. That's why the nation's rail against Israel and that when the Lord comes again, He will come as Israel's deliverer. At a time in Zechariah 12 when all the nations of the world will come against Jerusalem to destroy it. Why? Because they do not want the establishment of His rule in that Jerusalem over their nations.

Nation’s Opposition to God’s Intention – Annihilation of Israel

Can you think of another place where this is cogently expressed in one of the greatest Kingdom statements and the whole of Old Testament scripture? Psalm 2. So put a little marker there and would hopefully come back to Isaiah 2. But it's a convenient way to remember Psalm 2 and Isaiah 2 over the issue of the kingdom and the nations. I'm giving you a “Weltanschauung”, remember that word, a world cosmic view of the faith. I want to give you a context in which you can understand your call, the place of the church, the meaning of your salvation, the thing to which we're heading is the consummation and the conclusion of all this at the end of the age. One final opposition by the nations to defeat God's intention. By doing what? By destroying Israel, by destroying the Jewish people, by genocidal. What do they call that word? When you eliminate an entire race? That's genocide. Annihilation (Congregation). The spirit of Antichrist and of the powers of darkness will be calculated for one last thing for which they had opportunity through Hitler 50 years ago and almost succeeded in annihilating the whole of European Jewry. Had they won the war. Kid Katz’s would not be speaking to you today, because they would have caught up with me in Brooklyn or in California with every other Jew, because they were literally hell-bent on the annihilation of world Jewry. There's no way to explain that sociologically. Yes, we Jews are troublesome. Yes, we're irritating. Yes, we've had great influence in culture there's a reason why we could be resented, but a program of annihilation, even to the point where the military historians cannot even to this day understand why Germany diverted material manpower wealth to the systematic annihilation of Jews that they should have used for their own preservation to the very last days of the war. That's how the fury of a spirit of darkness had seized the whole apparatus of state and nation bent on one thing the annihilation of the Jews. There's no way to explain that if you've never read Psalm 2. Having read Psalm 2 the light will come on and you know why I'm taking pains about this saints. It's not over yet.

The Perservsion of the “Rapture”

What does it say that he shall be cast out to the Satan from Heavens that he comes into the earth and know that he has but a short time left and his fury shall be unimaginable and the church shall experience much of that opposition and persecution in the last days. To think that we're going to be raptured out is one of the most mischievous perverse. I don't have a word for it. Has left the church totally emasculated, totally unprepared, not to brace ourselves and to hear the cry of God that we be the people of God in a corporate way, really bonded, really joined, really integral. Not just the conglomerate of individualities that are willing to come together for the purpose of a service, but a people who are the family of God, the people of God. The body of Christ is more than just a piece of nomenclature, it's not just a little title, it's a phenomenon and it doesn't come easily, it comes with blood, sweat, and tears. The cross is at the issue of the of people coming from a privateistic lifestyle of Sunday services to an integral people go from house to house daily, breaking bread, whose intercessions and prayers are calculated that pierce the heavens for they're real and they reveal in themselves the whole mystery of the Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who themselves together were sweet company. Nothing will drive us to the reality that to which we're intended unless we understand what's at stake here. The whole coming of His kingdom is at stake and the issue of His kingdom is the issue of His rule. Because it says that when He comes and the law shall go forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem and nations shall study war no more. Oh, I can't wait for the day. And they'll turn their swords in this into spears and pruning hooks and spears into the implements of peace not war.

The Greed of the World

And what about the whole NASA, what is it? Was that the space program? Is it because I'm Jewish that I can't bear it? How many billions did they expand them and they're not even getting a beep back from Mars. [Laughter]. You know what undergirded, you know what their real search for, you know what why all those billions are being expended? They wanted to find moisture, because if they could find moisture in space and another planet, they would have the possibility of a theory of creation that does not require God. And we're paying the bill for men playing boys games with expensive toys at the time when there's a mankind bleeding. When the streets of Buenos Aires and the Latin American cities peopled with kids that live in the streets and in India people are living on cardboard mats and have never seen an indoors, they're people dying from poverty and want and we're expending billions for space programs, for armament development. The United States is the single greatest producer of armaments. I don't know was it forty billion dollars a year of sales. And Israel is second or third. My people are in the arms business. It's hot money, its profit. And I went to the factory. Boy, I don’t how many hours I'm going to keep you today. Where they make the F16, only because there's a Christian brother whose an engineer and I got a tour, I'll never forget it. Do you know the word the Lord gave me when I looked at these employees? It was Saturday, they were getting time and a half and they were sleepwalkers. They went from one place to another like that and they screwed it in ever so slowly and they turn, because the clock was running at time and a half or double time at our expense. The Lord gave me the word “gnomes”. GNOMES. They were not human. They were pot-bellied, beer-guzzling, pornographic looking characters, who are in the armaments business making big bucks to produce F16’s. And they were all going out to Thailand and to Indonesia, countries that have the sparse budget must have an F16 or a fleet of them, because it's prestige, because it's status, because of the other neighbor country has it you have to have it. It's the world saints, it’s the world wisdom its corrupt, its filthy, its vile, its destructive, its death. Its death for those men working there morally and humanely let alone spiritually. Its death.

The Lord’s Choosing: The Throne of David

When the law goes forth out of Zion. When the Lord is seated in His sanctuary on the holy hill of Zion, which only He can occupy as a descendant of David, because it's the throne of David from the holy hill of David or else the law shall not go forth at all. How come the powers of darkness know this better than you? What kind of a church is it that doesn't know this? That has not reckoned. [blank in the tape] Forever. Luke chapter one, the very first angelic pronouncement to Mary who taken by astonishment. “You mean me?” “I am a nothing.” Yes, you. This one who's going to be born out of you is Holy, He's the coming king of Israel and the Father shall give up to Him the throne of David, the Davidic throne, the tabernacle of David, and He shall rule over the house of Israel forever. The first angelic pronouncement. You know what the word Christ means? Jesus the Christ. “King.” “Anointed King.” Kings were anointed. The Christ is an Anointed One to rule. This is the rule of the Anointed, the Lord's Anointed. And where will you be then? In the day that the Lord comes as King to take His rightful place of authority over the place designated by God, in the city of Jerusalem and over a restored Israel from the holy hill of Zion and from the throne of David. When He'll be ruling, what will you be doing? If you're an overcomer, you'll be ruling and reigning with Him from the heavenly places formerly occupied by a whole fallen angelology, who are today's principalities and powers of the air. Am I saying too much too soon? Oh, bless you. My great cry to God, “was Lord how can I communicate this in one day?”

Present Destructive Human Rule

Who’s ruling today? Yes, the Lord is on the throne, but who is effectually jerking and manipulating nations? How do we explain that the annihilation of the Bosnians in a program of ethnic cleansing conducted 50 years after the Nazi regime? Right before the face of the whole world with impunity that it took a massive air attack day after day to finally bring a partial ending of that conflict with the Albanians having perpetrated a genocidal program on the Bosnians that was Milosevic, that was Serbia, Yugoslavia. In the very cities in which I myself had ministered only some months before those bombs came. What about Rwanda? What about the genocide between black tribes in Africa? You can multiply the instances of perverse rule in the nations that is violent, that is racial, that is contemptuous of men, that is destructive of humanity. That's present human rule. And you know what? They want to continue to remain in office. Have you ever seen anyone who has found office and obtained the prerogatives and the privileges of office who had been willing and voluntary to give it up, even in American politics? How do we explain Bosnia panel and the Albanians things? And now what's happened? They push this Milosevic back into Belgrade and they have a United Nations arm to maintain peace in Kosovo. Now the Albanians are persecuting the Serbian minority in the same bloodthirsty and violent and destructive way in the use of torture and death that had been previously inflicted upon them. You know we ought to be saying? “Come Lord Jesus, thy kingdom come in earth as it is in heaven. Let there be righteousness on earth and equity and justice as only You can perform it. Because men are corrupt, their self-seeking, they want their own ways, they don't give a rap what it takes and whose mankind is going to be destroyed, even rape has become a systematic form of the intimidation of your enemy no matter at what age.” We're not talking about a light question here saints, but one that is grieving the heart of God. And when we say “Come Lord Jesus”, we need to think “come and rule”, not “come and take us out of this.”

Psalm 2 – Devising a Vain Thing

Psalm 2:1 “Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing?”
Why are the nations in an uproar and the people's devising a vain thing? What's the vain thing? That they're seeking to perpetrate and to continue their usurping false rule. Trying to keep it arm's length the coming of the God Who alone is the just and righteous Ruler over His Own creation. What gives Jesus the right to rule from the throne of David beside being a descendant of David or that God Himself should rule over the nations? Because He's the Creator of the nations. Remember Paul in Athens in Mars Hill speaking to those philosophers, who every day looking for some new thing. He said “don't you guys know that God has made of one blood all manner of men and established the bounds of their habitations and their nations that they might seek after God if they might happily be found of Him?” Don't think that your nation is your little playground. Don't think it's yours to do with what you will. God has created it. God has created races and nations and established the bounds of the habitation that they might seek after God. And He's winked in times past, He's allowed you to make it your playground, but the day is coming when He will judge all men by that One whom He's raised from the dead. He's going to judge the nations for what? Their misuse of their own nationhood.








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