======================================================================== THE GATE OF HEAVEN by B.H. Clendennen ======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We're coming to what I believe a very, very important series, all of them are, you know, the thing that amazes me, you know, when we were in Russia, my wife and I went to Russia in 1991, we were there the last of October, part of November, and it was there when I saw this total lack of leadership that God spoke to me about going back and starting this school of Christ. Well, I went home, I never ran the school, never went to a school, never ran the school, and so I've got to get it together. Well, for the next, from that we got back in November and I resigned that church. I knew I wasn't going to let the enemy talk me out, you know, here this is madness for me at 70 years old, no retirement, no income, no nothing, quit that church and moved to Russia. So I'm not going to let the devil argue that with me and try to present any kind of a human excuse for not doing. So the first Sunday home, I made that the job of resigning that church. Then I began to gather together the material. Well, all of that time, 40 years of preaching, my wife couldn't clean that, I've got it scattered from one end of that house to the other. But you know, when it come together, what amazes me is how chronologically it works. You know, it just, I don't know how, but it does flow one into the other. It's impossible, you know, I never, I don't have that kind of a mind, but I'm always amazed. See, coming out of that church into this, into this rebuilding the gate. You know, this, you won't hear this a whole lot, you may never heard it, but you'll know that it's God when we come. We're going to the book of Nehemiah, going to begin, we're going to read in chapter 1, we're going to read verse 11, then we're going to go to chapter 2 and read that chapter. We're going to read right down through the 18th verse. So Nehemiah chapter 1 verse 11, Oh Lord, this is Nehemiah's prayer, I beseech you, let now thine ear be attended to the prayer of thy servant and to the prayer of thy servants who desire to fear thy name and prosper. I pray thee, thy servant this day and grant him mercy in thy sight for this man, for I was the king's cupbearer. Now we go into chapter 2, beginning with verse 1. And it came to pass in the month Nisan in the 20th year of our taxer exes, the king, that wine was before him and I took up the wine and gave it unto the king. Now I had not been before time sad in his presence. Wherefore the king said unto me, Why is thou countenance sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing else but sorrow of the heart. Then I was sore afraid, because it was almost sure death to come into the presence that king said. And said unto the king, Let the king live forever. Why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my father's sepulchre lies waste, and the gates thereof are consumed with fire? Then the king said unto me, For what does I make request? So I prayed to the God of heaven, and I said unto the king, If it please the king, and if thy servant have found favor in thy sight, that thou wouldst send me unto Judah, unto the city of my father's sepulchre, that I may rebuild it. And the king said unto me, The queen sitting by him, for how long shall thy journey be? When wilt thou return? So it pleased the king to send me, and I set him a time. Moreover, I said unto the king, If it please the king, let letters be given me to the governors beyond the river, that they may convey me over till I come into Judah. And a letter unto Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the palace which appertain to the house, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall enter into. And the king granted me according to the good hand of my God upon me. Then I came to the governors beyond the river, and gave them the king's letter. Now the king had sent captains of the army and horsemen with me. When Sanballat the Hornite, to buy the servant of the Ammonite, heard of it, it grieved them exceedingly, that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. So I came to Jerusalem, and was there three days. And I rose in the night, and I and some few men with me, neither told any man what my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem, neither was there any beast with me, save the beast I rode upon. And I went out by night, by gate of the valley, even before the dragon gate, and to the dungboard, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem which were broken down, and the gates thereof consumed with fire. Then I went on to the gate of the fountain, to the king's pool, and there was no place for the beast that was under me to pass. Then I went up in the night by the brook, and viewed the wall, and turned back, and entered by the gate of the valley, and so returned. And the rulers knew not whether I went, nor what I did, neither had I as yet told it to the Jews, nor to the priests, nor to the nobles, nor to the rulers, nor to the rest that did the work. Now I'm not saying that I know you know, but we're in a great transition time. We are. Things are different. Things are changing so rapidly that something could happen while we're in this class that will change every one of our lives forever. That's the kind of a times we live in. The greatest move of God though is on its way. I know that. Thank God for the forerunners of the mighty fourth wave that God is about to send upon this earth. The first wave was Jesus and those disciples. The second was a great reformation. The third was a great Pentecostal outpouring that brought us here today. I believe that we're on the brink of the fourth, the greatest moment of history that's going to end with the rapture of that church. God is getting us ready. God's getting that church ready, getting this preacher ready. All of it God is working. He's raising up men of God and putting around them the whole of the ministry, raising them up. He's letting the oil come down on the head, teaching us that it only works that way. Oil never comes up. It comes down. Never comes. Everything comes out. Oil does not come up from the feet. It comes down on the head, onto the skirts of the garment. Now we know oil is life. It's a type of the Holy Ghost. Moses was a seer. The Hebrew word is zakan. That means mouthpiece. It also means your beard, but it means mouthpiece. That's the whole of it. Now with that in mind, see oil came on Moses, God's old man. But since Moses now cannot speak well, Aaron became Moses' mouthpiece. He was the second half of God's old man. Now oil on the beard, that's oil on the head. That's Moses. Oil on the beard, that's a mouthpiece. That's Aaron. To the skirts, that's to the body of believers. That's how it comes. All on the man of God, the mouthpiece, onto the skirts, that's the body of believers, out through them to a world. Don't work any other way. It fell on 120 people, not Jerusalem, but through them. It went out to a world. No oil got on the flesh. Everything that Aaron wore was saturated with that oil. Every stitch of them clothes, the word skirts is the collar skirt and the hem skirt. There are two of them on every garment. Two of them on every garment. They all kept flowing till the whole ministry was saturated with the anointing. Think of that. That's what we have here in this. Now the church has to be renewed before that world can see revival. You see, it has to be renewed before the world can be revived. That's what brings us now to our text. Nehemiah was a cupbearer. That's what we found here for the king of Persia, Artaxerxes. Now he, this king, had conquered Judea and totally had destroyed Jerusalem. Now Nehemiah was very, very close to the heart because of his character. Amen. It brought him very close to that king. Now his land had been destroyed. His people humiliated. So one day Nehemiah came into the presence of the king, knowing all this from his brother that had come from there and told him the condition of the people in that land. He had come and told him. And now Nehemiah goes before the king. Now he went there knowing all this from a brother. The king asked Nehemiah about the residue of the people he'd left in Jerusalem. Nehemiah said, they're desolate. The walls are destroyed and the gates are burned with fire. Now if you study this closely, here's what you discover. The walls are the kingdom. The walls are the kingdom, but the gates are ministry. The gates are ministry. You can break the wall down, but you've got to burn out that ministry. You've got to burn out that ministry. Now Nehemiah went into that king with a sad heart. This is unpardonable because they believed that all sadness was demonic. And they were afraid that demons may jump on that king and the kingdom be lost. That's the reason they had jesters always in there. That's clowns in there. Keep everything light. Nothing sad. Everything had to be up and light, all of this. Now Nehemiah took his life in his hands when he allowed that king to see him and that sad countenance. He took his whole life. But he had rather die, and this is where it's got to be. He had rather die at the hands of the king to allow that city to continue to be overrun by half-breed, demon-possessed Samaritans. He had rather die than to see that continues that way. Now there's never going to be any movement toward God until God can find such men as that, that would rather die than to see this church. So Nehemiah found favor with the king because of the character of his life. That king watched him. He knew he was what he said he was. He wasn't talking something that he wasn't. So he asked the king for a favor. He said, send me with the authority to rebuild that city. That was his thing. So the Bible said the king did three things. First he appointed him, he equipped him, and he sent him. That's what he did with you if he really called you. He appointed, he sent, he equipped. That's where we find Nehemiah in chapter 2 verse 11. That's where we find him. So I came to Jerusalem, he said, and I was there three days. Day one, we become aware of, we become aware or we recognize the problem. See, you get nowhere until you recognize the problem. If you're always blaming the world, you're in trouble. But he recognized the problem as being the sin of the people. That's what brought the destruction of that city. God allowed that king to destroy that because it no longer represented him. I said it no longer represented God, so God allowed. So day two he said, we repented over the cause. We knew where the problem was, so day two they repented. Day one, we viewed it, we saw what the problem. Day two, we repented over the cause. Day three, we were resurrected to the cure. Hallelujah. Oh yes, that's the key. That's the word. Look at Jonah, look at Jesus, look at the reference of Jonah in the Bible. The third day, resurrected to the cure. Now look at Nehemiah, represent the man of God. Now those verses we read all the way through to verse 18, but now we read right on through verses 19, we read to verses 18, but now verses, we come now to verses through verse 20. Now my heart today, and I believe yours, is full with a mandate to rebuild the gates of ministry in the city, wherever God has put us or wherever he sent us, to rebuild that gate of ministry. Let God through us rebuild that. Now in chapter three of Nehemiah, now when I saw this, it was a real eye opener. You know the 10 gates in that city of Jerusalem, 10 gates, but the Bible never says one word in that third chapter about rebuilding that wall, but the rebuilding process of chapter three is the rebuilding of those gates. God showed me then, and that's where I took this from, is that if we put the ministry in place, amen, put the gates in place, put that ministry in place, the wall will come up around it by the power of God. That's all God has ever needed anywhere was a man of God. Oh, that's the most marvelous to realize. We send people out and help them to start church, get a few people in Sunday school and this, that, these things and another. Well, you may get somebody saved, but that's not going to build the kingdom. There has to be that ministry. That's what we function with this church all over the world. We tell those leaders, give us leaders that are going to do something. Let us have them, make them pregnant with this life of God. That's the key to everything. Put that ministry in place and the walls of that kingdom will come up around that gate. Amen. The ministries of the church are the key to building strong walls. That's the key, the ministry of that church. Amen. All of those things, the ministries are the gates. Ministries can't be torn down. They have to be burned out by misuse. Now we must rebuild, burn out ministries and the walls again will be raised around our city. It'll again become God's territory because the ministry of God is in that place. Now there are three essentials. We're going to deal with them definitely as we go through the lessons, but three essentials for rebuilding the gate and reclaiming the city where God has put us. Now these essentials are all in the verses that we read. Now the first essential is preparation. Preparation. The second essential is cooperation. I must know as a man of God that I cannot do it by myself. See, if I ever get caught in that trap, then there's not going to be those walls raised up. But third, there must be determination because the devil is not going to play dead when you come to town. We saw yesterday that in the one of the vocation of that church is to minister life and deliverance to saints. And we said the moment that that spiritual house is brought into existence, it invites all the powers of hell to come against that. So there has to be a determination. If you're there in the will of God and you know that, there has to be a determination because every single thing in hell, out of hell, that's of any use to hell is going to come against you. It's our responsibility then to rebuild the gates of ministry in that city where we are. Now when Adam fell in the fall, he lost the territory that God had given him. He lost it all. But now God has taken that dominion back, the dominion of the world through the one who lost it. That's why Jesus came. He lost it through a man and he's going to take it back through a man called Jesus. Amen. It's going to take it back. This is what God made possible through Christ for us to accomplish. All of this, God made that possibility through Christ to accomplish. Now the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. When God sees this world under Satan's dominion, the God of this world, then God says, I'm going to take it back. God said, I'm going to take it back. In taking it back, he doesn't just slap the devil in the face and take the control. That isn't the way he does it. See, he calls a man. This is never any other way. This is how God choose to work. He calls a man, puts the dominion for that city in that man of God. He puts the dominion inside of him and recovers everything by what's on the inside of that man of God. That's how that works. That's always been. God never needed anything but that man of God. Then him being the voice of God, then sheep begin to hear that voice and come unto God, him being that voice. Now he calls a man, plants him where he wants him, just like he planted the man Christ Jesus on Golgotha. Plants him where he wants him. He will defeat the devil then on his own territory. That's how he does it. In order to build a gate, you have to know what that gate is. Have to know. Most preachers don't know. I know in preaching this. I've had them come tell me. They don't know what a gate. They think they're there to build a church. They believe they're there to get a few people together for Sunday school. But God doesn't want just another church. He wants us to become a gateway to the presence of God. That's what he wants. That's what he wants you to be in that city. Brother Kirby here, my dear brother back here, he wants us, our pastors over that, to what we build to be a gateway to God's presence. It must be that gate that God can flow through to the world and the world can come back through to God. We must be the womb of God. That's what. A ministry, to plant that ministry. Nothing works until that's there. Everything rests upon that man of God because God put that dominion on the side of every man. If you're where you are in the will of God, then the vision of what you're to do there was in you before it ever was expressed from that pulpit. The dominion to do it was there. How? We'll come. Just do as you're told. Amen. Hallelujah. Lift your hands. Let's love God here this morning. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. ======================================================================== Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/-sMTN6-YxSM.mp4 Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/bh-clendennen/the-gate-of-heaven/ ========================================================================