In this video, the speaker emphasizes the importance of not missing the mind of God in every occasion, especially when it comes to hearing the word of God. The speaker mentions that there have been extraordinary statements made recently that reveal how far God is going and the urgency of the times. The theme of the mystery of Israel and the church is central in these discussions, and the speaker encourages people to consult the inspirational tape library for more information. The speaker concludes by praying for the impact of God's word on the listeners, both those present and those who will hear the tape.

Blessing in our days in your nation, which are rapidly coming to a conclusion. Saturday we depart, and this is the last public meeting. In case I don't speak for the theme that has been central in these days about the mystery of Israel and the church, of course everything touches that theme. You consult with Inspirational Tape Library. The last thing I did in driving up Tepuke here was to stop by and leave them about 12 choice, juicy, dynamite tapes. The whole nation, the church in the nation needs to hear them, and we even have some videotapes that were made in Palmerston North. If someone is interested in that, they can see me afterwards and I have the name of the chap who did that work. But there have been some extraordinary statements made in these days of a kind that even take me by surprise, how far God is going and what he's saying and the utterness of these statements, thunderclap statements that need to be heard and weighed and contemplated and meditated upon and a real deposit, I think, for the church right to its foundation. I can speak lavishly like that because anyone who has ears to hear knows that I'm boasting upon the Alpha and the Omega of the faith and that without him everything is totally and patently impossible. Are there people in the hallway? Why don't you come in? There's some floor space here and lean against, there's some space here. Last time that we had something like this, the night before at ORU, Oral Roberts University, an underground meeting, I wasn't invited by the powers that be but by a little student group. I bent over to pick up a box of books and the next thing I heard was whoosh. My pants were ripped from seam to seam and there was no time for any alteration, but I praise God that the audience was modest enough that night that I stood before them because the next night they were all around the back. Everybody knows how weighted every occasion is. How do we dare miss the mind of God on once and for all occasions like this, not only for those who are here at the hearing of the word but those who are here through the tape, that the time is short, everything is so imperative that it's not enough really to bring a good thing or the last thing that so blessed people before coming here but only the thing that God has appointed for this night. So I just ask you to join your hearts with me. I have a faint pre-sentiment, if you'll excuse the language and other language like that you'll be hearing tonight, a sense of what God is wanting but willing to be corrected and adjusted right to the final moment even to sit down and to shut up if God has some other way and means to fulfill the desire of his heart tonight. So just join with me in looking to him, sensing the brevity of the time and how important our days are for the night will come shortly, soon enough when no man can work. And we need to be so impacted by the Lord and to hear from the throne, to be fitted and prepared for all the eventualities that are coming upon the earth and upon the church, that remnant people of God who are really appointed to take him seriously. Precious God, Lord Jesus, you're surprising us, my God, by stirring all these saints to come tonight. And we're jealous for this night, Lord, and for those who are not physically here will be hearing this tape and receiving the benefit of your speaking. And Lord, we even ask in this final moment, if I'm entertaining contemplating something that is not your deepest heart of desire, please adjust me. So possess this vessel, Lord, that these children might hear your voice. Yes, we're asking largely. And if there's anyone here who has some romantic notion that thinks that true ministry has to do with a man, his ability or anything like that, my God, and does not understand the Alpha and the Omega, the true author of every good and perfect work that comes down from above, let tonight be not just a speaking about but a demonstration of that remarkable phenomenon to which we are all called as witnesses, my God, in these last days. Bring us, Lord, to a transcendent place tonight, both by speaking and by demonstration. We invite you even to ruin us, to break through our categories and to break every kind of brittle notion, messianic, charismatic, Pentecostal, whatever brittle thing that somehow your grace has allowed us to suffer till now. We're willing that you should sweep all that debris and clutter out and bring in, my God, the pure prophetic and apostolic character of our calling in such a way as to inflame our hearts and to devastate us for anything less. Come, my God, pull out the stops, get reckless, abandon that we might be a people like that for you. Thank you and give you the praise for the precious work of your spirit and your word which we ask liberally, my God, to be given from the throne tonight, a tremendous unction both for speaking and for hearing and for sitting. Thank you and give you the praise for the night that you have appointed. Come, my God, and fulfill and delight your own soul in it. We already give you praise, acknowledgement, every gratitude, my God, for being the God you are living in through, the God who speaks, the God who calls, the God who performs. In Jesus' name we pray. God's people say. Well, I have to confess that I am really enamored of the subject of Israel or the Jew, but I don't think it has anything really to do with the fact that I'm Jewish. It may be just entirely coincidental. All the more when I know that this present preoccupation of that subject has not been true of all my believing life. In fact, it's only the last three, four, or five years that God has stirred me to this central point of his whole apostolic concern. And I'm so grateful for it because I'll tell you what it's done for me. It's been a catalyst that has brought together all of the disparate and separate elements of the faith that I have loved and luxuriated in for my quarter of a century as a believer. The issues of discipleship, of faith itself, of worship, of the principalities and powers of the things of the spirit, all of the things that constitute the faith, I have jealously guarded and cherished every aspect of it that the Lord has given and that has blessed you from tapes on those subjects that have come forth in times past. But in the last few years, after a certain season of death and preparation, which I'll not take the time to describe, the Lord was pleased to lift the veil from my own understanding about the subject of Israel, but not as it is presently held even by those who are occupied with it. Not from the evangelical or the messianic view, but a perspective that I like to call apostolic because it does not treat the Jew in a sentimental way and does not appeal to the church to take up the burden for them because we're under obligation and I guess we've got to because look what we owe them. I think that those are soulish perspectives and only that which is born of the spirit can avail. So I don't know to what degree the Lord will allow me to share this tonight because I seem to have a different direction, although it's all related, but if I don't speak to it in the way that you would like to hear, please consult Inspirational Tape Library for the most recent page that I have left with them, but for now let's turn to the book of Acts. If there's any way to get a glass of water, I would really appreciate it. I've already used the word apostolic somewhere tonight in my introduction or my prayer and I can't say enough of what that word means to me. It is at the heart of everything. Pity that somehow in certain places it's the name of a denomination or a religious movement, but I think that that word needs to be restored to the heart of God's people as something to be jealously guarded where the church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. If we let go of this and our jealousy for that word and for its meaning, which by the way cannot be glibly defined or given, it needs to be apprehended, intuited. We need not only to apprehend the word, the word needs to apprehend us. All is lost. If we let go of that, if we're not jealous for it, we don't seek for it, we're not willing for the sacrifice of what that word means to actually obtain it and the quality and the character of our own faith together, all is lost. We will have fallen short of the glory of God. And the issue of God's glory is the whole nexus, the whole center point of what apostolic is about. The primary distinctive of the thing that has to do with that which is apostolic and prophetic is the abiding jealousy for the glory of God. Which word to us is almost an abstraction. We nod our head at it and we understand the rightness about it, but we hardly have sensed its meaning and have not really the faith to believe for the phenomena itself. But in significant places in the apostolic scriptures, in the writings of Paul, that word percolates and punctuates the whole tenor of the wisdom and the statements of God's apostolic men. For example, the conclusion of Ephesians chapter 3, unto him be glory in the church, not church growth, not power evangelism, glory in the church, world without end, throughout all ages, by Christ Jesus, amen. That's the whole point of it, saints. We are a remarkable phenomenon in God, not only for this age, but for the ages to come, world without end, an eternal masterpiece of God. And God forbid we should be something shabbier or less. And the greatest danger to the apostolic glory of the church is ourselves and our preoccupation with lesser things than the issue of God's glory, including Israel and the Jew. Did you hear that? This man is a maze of contradictions and paradoxes, begins by telling us that the issue of Israel and the Jew is the centerpiece of God's apostolic consciousness, and then tells us to beware lest the preoccupation with the Jew and with Israel keep us from the apostolic glory. It'll take more than one night to straighten out that, but it's true. So maybe as we go along tonight, in this text in Acts 13, the Lord will give us an understanding of what seems now to be a contradiction. How many people up till now have noticed that the faith is often studded with contradictions, even paradoxes, of a perplexing kind? But have you noticed that if you wait long enough and bear the agony of that contradiction long enough, that when the Lord resolves it, usually through revelation of the Spirit, something transcendent issues? Have you got the patience of the faith to bear seeming contradiction? Or are you some manby-pandy that's got to have everything explained right now because you can't live with tension of things that are unfulfilled and unexplained? You have no disposition for mystery. You're human, all too human, or New Zealandish, all too New Zealandish, too practical. Oh, I told you if I could wave a wand over the church of this nation, what I would inculcate, a love for the mysteries of God, and a respect for the revelation alone by which the understanding of them come, and that when the understanding is given, it's not that we should be a coffee table billetons who are able to expound it, but a people who are the agents to fulfill it. And I can tell you there's no mystery more requiring and demanding of us than the mystery of Israel and the church. With all due respect to the four spiritual laws, and the five spiritual laws, they've added one more for us, I don't believe that my Jewish people, whom Paul accurately describes in Romans 11 as the enemies of the gospel, are going to be by and large affected by evangelical well-meaning intention. Maybe some peripheral Jew, like myself, who didn't even need five spiritual laws or four, but just the supernatural work of God brought me out of the darkest atheism and vicious anti-Christ opposition to the church, to be not only a believer, but a mouthpiece of God to the church. What I'm trying to say, and I've been saying it throughout your nation in the weeks that we've been here, the issue of the Jew to the church is the issue. It's the ultimate issue, it's the issue that requires all, and we have wisely avoided it. That is to say, we have intuited that this is so ultimately demanding a requirement that we're not equal to the task, and you're right in that. Only a church that has come to a full apostolic and prophetic constituency, the makeup of God, the character, the weight, the heft, the integrity, the quality, the truth, the ground and pillar of truth, beyond all culture, beyond all nationality, beyond all selfishness, beyond all peevishness, beyond all pettiness, to be the integral people of God, a community, a remnant people of God, can be the fulfillment of that mystery and nothing less. And what I'm also saying is, we'll never be that, so long as we're satisfied to continue from a lesser place, and think that if we put on a yarmulke, or a Star of David, or tzitzit, or some other kind of synagogue accoutrement, that somehow that will make us the more relevant witness. You who don't know what those words mean, you know, the Jewish, Jewishly recognized artifacts that identify with synagogue and rabbinical Judaism. That may have some effect, God, praise God, to whatever degree, but my heart yearns for the real thing, if I can put it that way. Something of such a power, such a quality, that the word that issues from such a people cannot be gainsaid. And maybe we ought to look at that first, leave your finger in Acts 13, and look at Romans 10, in the very familiar verses, around verse 12, there's no difference between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. And those of you who have ever heard my testimony, or read it in the book of Israel, know that when that point came for me, can you hear in the back? My wife was saying she can't hear. Can you hear? How many people are having difficulty hearing? Oh, good, dear saints. What shall we do? Can I move closer? Get louder? There's no, this, these microphones are only for the recording and not for amplification. I don't know what to say. Huh? Okay, I'll try. We just read the verse in Romans 10, verse 12, that the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. I think that a lot of hotshots, and bikers, and other kinds of characters who are to constitute a subculture in our civilization, who are arrogant and hoarding toward God, and who think that in some last moment, they will be able to make this call, will be eternally sobered to find that it's not anything that any man can do at his own volition at the moment of his choosing. The call on the name of the Lord is a divine prerogative given by grace to those whom he will, for he will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy. And perhaps I know this better than you, for when that moment came in Jerusalem in 1964, for me to pray my first prayer, to call upon the name of the Lord who had been revealing himself through months of the most intensive and revelational experiences that can be given a Jewish atheist, of being encountered at the side of the road, of being picked up by born-again believers of a radiant kind, of a revelation that came in the first reading of the New Testament, of staggering into a bookstore in Jerusalem to find that it was operated by a congregation of Pentecostal Jews, and to hear the voice of God calling me by name and commanding me to remain, and staying four days and nights receiving the illumination of the saints about the gospel, and still not being able to understand by the power of my intellect, and in the final night, the Lord, by his Spirit, putting an understanding directly in my heart and bypassing my mind altogether, waking up believing, waking up in peace, and being invited by this precious Jewish woman who had never led anyone to the Lord before, nor since, to call upon the name of the Lord, and to find what an agonizing request that was for a Jew who had been steeped in the historic prejudices of my people against the name Jesus Christ, fanned by Satan through the activity of unregenerate men in the Crusades, in the Inquisition, in the pogroms of Eastern Europe, and every other kind of so-called Christian activity, including the Holocaust, that has powerfully poisoned us against that one name, and the only name given, under heaven and in the earth, whereby a man may be saved. Do you know what I found out in that last moment? That these prejudices were so deep, that the name of Jesus was so long a blasphemy in my mouth, I was incapable of calling upon that name with any respect. I could not get the name of Jesus out of my mouth. It took a grace from God, finally, in the last moment of such a struggle in the soul, and in the inner man, to call upon the name. And however chokin', broken, and spluttered, and gasping that cry was, I wouldn't even dignify it by calling it prayer, God answered in that moment, I was born again of the Spirit of God, and saved, because the Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's the long and the short of it, and it works. Every time where the call is authentically given by the grace of God, but how then shall they call on him whom they have not believed, and how shall they believe in him of whom they've not heard, and how shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall they preach except they be sent. I want to submit tonight and suggest that there's a Jewish people in the world who are completely ignorant of these scriptures, and are unwittingly waiting for their fulfillment. That there's a certain quality and kind of preaching that has yet been rare in their experience that waits upon us, and not an organization. I have great respects for the organizations like Jews for Jesus, and mission organizations as an interim provision for God while he waits for the real thing. It's a stopgap thing. It's not God's ultimate intention. You are, but not as you are presently constituted in your islands of individualism and separation in your privatistic lifestyles from which you emerge on Sunday morning and soon enough return when the service concludes. God is waiting for an apostolic body in Auckland, New Zealand, and throughout the nation, and the nations of the earth, out of which he can call forth men who are sent. For those who are sent bring a word of another quality and kind that is more than inspiration or information. Their word actually creates the faith to believe in those whose minds and souls and spirits have been profoundly done in by the satanic activity of the enemy through history, through prejudice, the name of Jesus for Jewish consideration. It's apostolic preaching. By men who are sent, for the root word apostolic from the Greek apostolos means sent one, but they don't grow on trees. They don't get generated out of the air. They are sent from apostolic bodies because we read of the early church that great grace was upon them all and with power gave the apostles testimony of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Not just in the speaking about the resurrection, but in everything that they said and did was in the glory of that power. Not because it was contained in themselves as virtuoso gifted men, but because there was a linkage, an organic connection between those who were sent and those who sent them. Great grace was upon them all and with power gave the apostles testimony. That power would not have been there if there was not great grace upon all. And it's a grace that we have not experienced in our generation. We have lived so long beneath the level of God's glory. We have been so conditioned by denominational mentalities or now the more recent innovations of things messianic or charismatic that we don't know to what degree. We have lost and need to find again what was the key for the power and the glory of that first church. These are they that turned the world upside down and I'd love to see that Jewish world today turn upside down. Because the Jewish world is in fact the world itself. Its wisdom, its values, its way of seeing. You can't understand to what degree we Jews have so affected modern civilization and given it its contour and its content. That's the world I would like to see turned upside down and will again when the Holy Ghost can call and separate Himself out of an apostolic body meant to be sent. In whose preaching a word comes that those that hear it might believe and in believing called upon that name above every name and be saved. And it's for that reason I'm directing us tonight to the first record in scripture of an apostolic assembly in Acts 13. It does not take place in the church of Jerusalem. It does not take place in a church that is entirely Jewish which you would have panted to join because you love to pick the cheek of these Jews and you love that mystique that is associated with them and hope that something is going to rub off Jewishly speaking. But I want to tell you dear saints as a Jewish believer there's something greater and that the church of Antioch in its diversity, in the differences of the men that made it up in the ethnic, racial, composition of that church that that was a greater glory than the church that was birthed out of Pentecost that was exclusively Jewish in Jerusalem. And out of it comes the first sending and out of it will come the final sendings at the conclusion of this age. And I don't know another nation perhaps Australia or my own that has more the potential for being the final Antiochs of the end times than yourself. And those who have been chafing about the problems that come because of the Maori this and that and don't realize that what seems to men to be problem and difficulty, tension, irritation and potential conflict is the very same formula for glory. If we can but transcend and rise above the very same elements that will soon bring to a boil the things that will have men at one another's throats and the blood flowing in the streets even in your peaceful cities of today. We're on a collision course to see who gets there first. The church in some transcendent glory with the same elements of diversity or society lacking the grace of God and exercised by the differences and the fears and the suspicions and the history of violence that cannot be overcome will erupt again in a final cataclysmic violence of nation against nation which the Lord himself predicted would be that one of the factors of the last days. So in chapter 13 of the book of Acts, now there were in the church that was an Antioch certain prophets and teachers as Barnabas and Simeon that was called Nigel, Lucius and Cyrene, Manaen which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted the Holy Ghost said separate up to me Barnabas and Saul for the work unto I have called them and when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them they sent them away so they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost departed unto Seleucia from thence they sailed to Cyprus and when they were at Salamis they preached the word of God in the synagogue of the Jews and they had also John as their minister. I suppose that, are you hearing okay back there? That you're as impressed as I am with how sparse the word of God is in description. This is a phenomenal first and historic first and something of more than historical curiosity. It's a prototype, it's a pattern, it's something as it was given at the first because almost invariably the things that are given at the first are given for us as a pattern of things to the end that the church is going to end I believe with the same burst of apostolic glory and character as was true at the first. So we need to read this not just as historians with a curiosity for what is antique but to see that this is a pattern that God wants us to behold and to find our way to again. The first thing that we need to say is now that we're in the church of Antioch, not at the church. The church of Antioch if it was anything was not a congregation of the casual, it was a congregation of the profoundly committed. More than those who are regular in their attendance but people who believe that the first purpose for their life, their being, and their salvation was not the betterment that comes to them that they might live more comfortably but to fulfill purposes of God that can only be fulfilled through the church and the church of a certain kind and the first and necessary condition which if it is not met we can forget all the rest is that they were in the church and not at it. The church was more than a place of something that ministered to their need. It was a community of God's people. It was their life and purpose for being. It's an attitude so removed from us that only God by the work of his spirit can even birth in us an understanding and desire to find our way back to that quality and character of relationship. Those who believe were together. I said somewhere today in a private conversation if I had the authority I would remove that word together out of the contemporary English usage lest we think that that together means together as we presently use it. How many people think we're together tonight? Well we're alongside each other. There's a physical proximity but the together that characterized the first church was an existential qualitative condition of a kind that has yet that yet remains unknown to our experience but I can tell you what it's inconvenient to obtain. It's costly and sacrificial to seek. Our present church situation and the way that it's constituted in terms of its services the arrangements of its pews the conduct of its ministers is altogether in my opinion not conducive to finding our way back to the apostolic reality that the church knew at the first. Our church today by whatever name is predicated upon convenience and the true church of Jesus Christ is profoundly inconvenient even unto death. It's a church of martyrs not just in their final disposition but in all of their days. It's sacrificial from the word go. It's a suffering before it's a glory. It's a being found out. It's a humiliation and I can't fill this and take my word for it who has lived for almost 15 years in community with precious dedicated and consecrated saints at sacrifice and the giving up of homes and jobs and security and careers to live in remote region of North America on a daily basis together and then to find out how deep the carnality the rebellion the self-will not only on their part but on my part which would never have been uncovered and revealed except that we had come to the intensity of life together which true fellowship and church is. We're not together long enough intensely enough and honestly enough to come to the ground alone by which the Holy Ghost can call us because what is he sending? What is he going to send? Some knockabouts who are charred shot through with defect who if they're looked at crosswise they pout whose feelings are so easily offended who need a fix and if they don't get it they go haywire whether it's chocolate or Chinese food or a McDonald's hamburger. They don't know what self-denial is. They've never been disciplined, never been confronted. People in that condition need not think they'll ever hear the call of the Holy Ghost. True church at its inception is an experience in disillusionment and one that we profoundly need because an illusion is a lie and we need to see the truth of our own condition before we're able to minister to anyone else's and the text that God has been using virtually everywhere in this nation and that I'm not speaking from tonight is Ezekiel 37 in the Valley of Dry Bones. It's a tremendous word sense. You've got to get the tape and I received no commission at all for that but here's the here's the nub of it. What is going to raise Israel from its grave and God is presently moving Israel to that condition? Don't you understand that? The calamity of the in the occupied territories, the uprising of the Palestinians, the drawing away of former allies, the predicament that comes even by the tens of thousands of Russian Jews that are now coming is a factor for the escalation of war by Arab nations that don't want to see the demographic balance affected and at the same time cause problems of employment and housing and water shortage and there's never been a people more perplexed and stretched to breaking and it's only the beginning. You can pray your little hearts out it's not going to get better because God does not intend that it should. You manby pamby softies who want to make nice and don't understand that of necessity this people who live by chutzpah and prowess and ability cannot be the Israel of God that is going to bless all the families of the earth in that condition but there's got to be a brokenness of a devastating kind and a mercy that comes to them that is totally undeserved when they have seen the patent and total failure even of their own ability and they themselves will say we are cut off, we are without hope, we are as dry bones. I've been around 61 year saints and I know my Jewish people intimately I've yet to hear them acknowledge that we are such inveterate optimists. We can come out of Auschwitz with a tattooed number and a torn tattered shirt and a decade and a generation we're doing terrifically, prosperously, never again we say and believe that it'll never be again so long as we have such an effective fighting force and the number one air force and nuclear capability blah blah blah blah blah and you were so quick to congratulate them for that and celebrate them for that what a statement it is of you and your condition because you were doing the same thing for yourself you loved your charismatic fellowship and now you knew about church growth and power evangelism and so what else do you need you got it all together you're as quick to compliment yourself while falling far short of the glory of God as you were to compliment them because they were a projection of your own inadequate view of yourself how do I get on that oh we need to hear so here's how I got in that sense only the son of man is the key to that Israel's restoration from the dead but Paul said if the falling away of them be the blessing of the Gentiles what shall the return be but life from the dead and he really means life from the dead but life of another kind Jesus was not just made alive again when he was brought forth up out of the grave he was brought to a newness of life life of another quality and character and kind that is glorious and so also shall they from the very same place of death and so also shall we if indeed we will follow on and follow the Lord through death and resurrection because this son of man is commanded by the Lord speak to these bones now that they've said that they're cut off and they're without hope you speak to these bones I command you prophesy and when he prophesied and the word of the Lord came out his mouth the bones came together then another command and flesh and another command and breath and they rose to be an exceedingly great army everything rested on the ability of the son of man to respond to the commandment of the Lord to speak a prophetic word of such an awesome and ultimate kind that it was beyond information and beyond inspiration it was an event the word itself created life and what if all of that is a symbolic suggestion of something toward which we are tending and that God is wanting in the last days a prophetic people a son of man company of one mind one heart one soul who will speak the same thing at the same time at the commandment of God and who is speaking in that kind of unity I'm not talking about this cheapy ecumenical stuff where you give somebody a bear hug who's wearing a clerical collar and we think that we have the what do you call it the unity of the body of Christ only if you live in community do you realize what it takes to obtain agreement true agreement where two or three agree together but the whole thing is this that that prophet that son of man would have been invalidated if he did not yield to the holy spirit in the first verse of that 37th chapter and be brought down by the spirit into the midst of a valley and be brought round about and to see the valley full of dry bones and have his prophetic face rubbed into the grist the pain the ugliness of the utterness of the death of Israel as a fact for a prophet who will not start from the place of truth of things as they in fact are and as God sees them and would have us to see them cannot be one out of whose mouth the word will come that will bring life from that death and before we can get true about Israel which we've not been till now we need to get true about ourselves where the church is the ground and the pillar of truth and it's a going down saints before it's a coming up it's a valley of depressing acknowledgement of things as they are i'll tell you what kind of God we have he is the God who is truth and in that place in that place only he will meet us with his grace and bring us from that depressing place to the place of glory we're doing all that we can not to see our condition trying to bring certain innovations and cutesy novelties and and maybe some Jewish thing or some charismatic thing or something they're doing in the states now that is hot some panacea something that will do it magically when we've got to come to a valley of where we in fact are in our present condition as in the light of the purposes and calling of God we are as good as dead we don't see it because we have not been serious about the light of the purpose and the calling of God because it takes apostolic seeing as for example Ephesians 3 10 that God has created all things in order that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be demonstrated to the principalities and the powers of the air and this is the eternal purpose of God in Christ Jesus I would be amazed if there's more than one out of ten or a hundred here tonight who has any true sense of what that means and yet it is the ultimate purpose of God for the church the eternal purpose of God that can only be fulfilled through the church and that God did not think it too extravagant to create all things in order that the church might demonstrate to the powers of the air the manifold wisdom of God what wisdom what demonstration why they who are they how is it to be performed I'll tell you another time I'm only saying that now to show you that we have callings of such an ultimate kind in the mysteries of God to the powers of the air which if we leave that unattended our present evangelism and all our activity is so much beating at the air and the mandate to the jews of Israel which is as patently as difficult to fulfill except on a transcendent place beyond what we presently know and to which the church and Antioch came or the Holy Ghost would not have said separate unto me he could say that because he knew that they were not going to run to establish a committee to determine who's going to go here and do that because shouldn't we be doing something and anything that's born out of a sense of guilt a sense of obligation cannot it's it's oh I could share so much with you so much of this bleeding hot concern for Israel especially on the part of gentiles is more symbiotic than you know and I'm saying that for the tape's sake so you have time to look in the dictionary and to know that sin that which is symbiotic is when you enter into something ostensibly for another while secretly at the same time receiving a benefit for yourself and I want to say that any Christian work or ministry that is symbiotic is null and void in terms of the things that are ultimate and eternal the only thing that would suffice is that which is priestly and altogether detached from the gratification or benefit that the minister himself obtains in the fulfillment of the obedience to which he's called the son of man in ezekiel 37 got no kicks at all in speaking to dry bones the fact of the matter is he hated it and we have chosen to have run the other way when the lord says separate unto me he's calling for men who have already been separated from self from ambition from the need to be gratified uh to to receive the plaudits of god's people to be seen to be heard to do how many of us are free from that how many of us are separated from that and separated unto god and not unto a work and not unto a calling and not unto a people but unto him that's the profoundest and deepest kind of separation it's beyond culture it's beyond nationality can you come to that as a jew the depth of jewish identification the soulish and inadvertent pride that rises with that ethnic thing how many gentile christians have to oh i only wish i could be a jew can i touch you i'll tell you that i've been chewed up and stood out and raked over and dealt with and broken and left for dead by the dealings of god to get that whole stuff out of me while all the time you're wanting to cultivate and to nurture god is looking for separated people jesus was the wonderful case in point who knew his calling knew his messianic task knew his identity and didn't know there was such a remarkable selflessness a detachment an unawareness so to speak that for no one not to know a kind of innocence about itself that that is the deepest statement of the separating sanctifying work of god i can go on with that but i think you hear i've got the idea the question is how is that to be obtained in the church that is an antioch and in no other place that's where the church is the place of suffering confrontation being found out exhorted rebuke the word spoken in truth and we allow our pastors to become phony and their voices to become shrill and affected and ministerial and we don't even blow the whistle what we need is a people who will exhort us while it is yet today next sunday is in the lump the affectation is already starting the vanity rising the heart being lifted up and we need people who speak to us the truth and love as i myself have received such a word today from the brother with whom i'm traveling and i have a privileged man that he did not withhold himself to speak to me a necessary word that i did not see in full or want to see painful to consider about something yet lingering in my own life indeed might even have a jewish origin and i praise god for the word spoken that i can give and receive and repent and pray that we might confess our faults one to another and be healed i'll tell you it's going to take turning the pews around and facing one another face to face especially when the one face is a bit more darkly complected than the other and there's a whole history of bitterness of violence of bloodshed that neither of us have ever fully acknowledged nor repented for in our identification with the sins of our fathers as our as even as our own the church is the ground and pillar of truth and that's some kind of patsy how you're doing brother and a little bear hug and that's the the whole of it we need to see each other daily when we're not at our best and not with our sunday faces either but do you want that and you want to interfere with the rugby game come on confess up you don't want that enjoyment interrupted by your saint coming into your house you got your feet up on the coffee table and enjoying your sport false idols of new zealand with a drab and an unspectacular visit of a saint who has nothing really much to say just wanted to drop by daily while it's yet today how inconsequential to those of us who have been spoiled and sensual need an excitement need a diverse diversion need an attractive something or other and cannot enjoy the saints as they are for themselves without anything spectacular i'll tell you they're saints mark my words the hour is coming and not far off where we if we have not learned to enjoy the people of god and the beauty and the truth of fellowship we're going to be forlorn at a time when that is soon coming when persecution and opposition will make us jealous for the fellowship of the saints when to be in the presence of a brother just to be able to pray together or sit quietly before the lord together will be rare and cherished separate unto me not unto the work any group fellowship an organization that has the basis for its being a cause or a work or an object other than the lord himself is already doomed to failure and when they were separated and were sent forth and they were at salamis they preached the word of god in the synagogue of the jews because god knows his own principles to the jew first and also to the greek but god forbid that we should fulfill that by principle by the numbers by methodology because we ought to and this is the way it should be done let there only be an apostolic sending in truth and the rest follows and i'll tell you what if an antioch there'd be no sending at all because how then shall we be separated from the subtlety of our own ambitions and interests that corrupt and and stain the work that would be performed my jewish people are the ultimate index they are the ultimate measure of the truth of the church whatever our condition we know a phony we're not impressed by anything what are you going to do to move us to jealousy and paul says that's why you're saved had they stumbled they should fall god forbid but through their false salvation has come to gentiles so as to move them the jew to jealousy we are tough critics saints brother you've got to give us a little bit more than than hallelujahs and amens we've got to see something so patently heavenly so unquestionably divine in the diversity of people as one that we would know that for very truth god is with you the thing is you'll not be able to demonstrate that without cost isn't remarkable however outstanding a church antioch was in all of its ethnic and racial diversity not a word is said about what it took to bring these men whom god names barnabas simeon that was called niger what does that mean he was a black man an african and lucius of cyrene a mediterranean and manan which had been brought up with herod the tetrarch maybe even a roman and saw a jew and when they ministered to the lord and fasted the holy ghost city when they had come to a certain quality of relationship reflected in their worship to god when they reached that high water mark in a selflessness that didn't have to go and was just as happy as to remain as to be sent and recognize whether you're worshiping uh in the congregation or in the act of service it's the same worship and it can only be performed together when the things that would be contrary to that quality of worship jealousy envy bitterness resentment dislike hatred fear have been worked through in the spirit of truth to a place where we can look each other in the face eye to eye and complete trust and love and worship god beyond race beyond nationality beyond history beyond culture beyond anything we're without father we're without mother we're without beginning or ending of days and have been found in the fashion of the son of man we are a melchizedek priesthood together let's throw away those yarmulkes and our maori elements that we yet want to clutch and are encouraged to retain and even to bring to a new appreciation and seek for an identity beyond time beyond culture beyond nationality beyond english beyond anglo-saxon beyond any of the kinds of things that limit the holy one of israel and bring us to that place to be found worshiping the lord together this is ultimate separation saints and it can only take place in the church not at it in a church that is more than assembly phenomenon and what it will cost to go from how we are presently constituted to that god knows i'll tell you what you're not going to get off easy tonight you thought to to enjoy the the curiosity of the of the jewish fellow passing by it's going to cost you i'm going to give an invitation solemn serious and demanding fearful that if you rise to that or kneel to that or go prostrate to that which is more appropriate you're going to seek change you're going to give god leave to begin to work in those areas of your life and sanctifying work that you didn't want exposed or touched because it's painful that you didn't want to recognize because you like your privatistic lifestyle because you want to linger at the tv set and watch the rugby game undisturbed would you giving the lord leave to pull the plug out of all the things that keep you from that qualitative relationship with the saints and with him that will be again a basis in this nation and in this city for men and women to be sent even to the jews who are in your midst and are till now completely unimpressed by a word and in the hearing of it will cause the faith to believe unto salvation and move them to jealousy so after they had fastened and prayed and laid their hands on they sent them away so they being sent forth by the holy ghost when did you hear that that this is going to be a typographical error they fastened and prayed and laid hands on them so they being sent forth by the holy ghost what a confusion we just have to you know commiserate with god make a little allowance he gets carried away that he equates the sending forth of the saints by the laying of hands as being the same as being sent by the holy ghost either he's too extravagant or we're too dumb and we don't see as he sees and cherish and understand what that means that god equates the laying on of the hands of saints as being the very same as being sent by the holy ghost i'll tell you what i'm very careful about who's going to lay hands on this head i've already had enough experience with with the uh those who itch to get in on the act and want to lay hands on it go get a mark but after they have laid hands on me the fact of the matter is that i don't get them something has happened to dull and to quench the spirit and to bring a certain weariness and emptying and exhaustion i can't i don't have a word for it but it's not the full panoply and power of god because something has been communicated by those hands that maybe were an hour ago masturbating or twiddling with the dials of the tv set or shooting dice or or god knows what else i want to know the hands that are laid on my head saints and i want to know the life of the hands and i will not know them except i know them daily for not to know them daily is not to know them at all that's the kind of convenient of christianity that's inconvenient but it's the kind for which god waits that the holy ghost might call you have faith to believe that we who have rushed off to committees and sat down and plotted and planned and how we're going to do this and sponsor that at this activity event can we wait in the priestly way ministering unto the lord who knows better than we the stakes the internal stakes the shortness of the time the immensity of the task and be utterly confident that he who is the high priest and the apostle of our confession who sends will send when we have met his condition verse six and when they had gone through the isle of pathos they found a certain sorcerer a false prophet a jew whose name was bar jesus who was a deputy of the count of the country sergius paul a secluded man who was with this deputy who called for barnabas and saul and desired to hear the word of god but elemas the sorcerer for so it is his name by interpretation withstood them seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith then saul who is also called paul filled with the holy ghost set his eyes on him and said oh full of all subtlety and all mischief thou child of the devil thou enemy of all righteousness will thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the lord now behold the hand over upon thee thou shall be blind as not seeing the sun for a season and immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand then the deputy when he saw what was done believed being astonished at the doctrine of god i don't know if i've ever preached this before this is the first you have to be a scholar to see what is so evident in the pattern of things set forth in this chapter to the jew first but not long after a collision with the deep dark forces of hell in the person of a sorcerer who sought to dissuade and to deflect the word of god from a critical man in place of rulership over the nation what is that saying that we're not sent forth for patsy things and for cutesy activity that there are foes of an ultimate kind the powers of occultism and darkness sorcery witchcraft hellish things palpitating and loose in society that that can look upon us tonight and say jesus i know and paul i know but the congregation who is at the such and such place hearing our cats who they're not at all intimidated by us as we presently are they've had an uncontested sway over the city of auckland and over this nation the influence to jerk to bring their diabolical and fiendish works to bear on races and nationalities and on the nation because the one only thing that could have contended against them and removed them from their orbit and nullified them and released the captives to the hearing of the word of god into salvation is the church of a certain kind a church from the powers of the air fear because the only thing that they're required to fear is that which is authentic as against that which is only cute and the moment they see apostolic authenticity they tremble they saw it in jesus and they saw it in paul but they do not yet see it in us and when we'll come to that constituency we'll find we're engaged in a new kind of battle where we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers of darkness the world rulers of this darkness which have waited for a people who can wrestle gut to gut it's a sweaty grisly impolite kind of activity beyond polite prayer it's not for those who concern how they will appear or look if they get strung out or stretched out as it's an activity that can only be conducted by a week we wrestle not an individual virtual so we or we wrestle not at all not an accident that the first expression of this apostolic team sent out was to the jew and not an accident that right on the heels of that the very first thing that they encounter is a satanic opposition of a kind that would make many of us chill and turn about and run the opposite way but paul being filled with the spirit of god said and he spoke a word of judgment which god fulfilled before the sight of an unbelieving and dubious ruler that when he saw the power recognized the doctrine he believed this i think is the picture of the last days as it was the picture of the first apostolic assembly and god is waiting again the spirit of god is brooding even in this room tonight a room if you have an apostolic eye to see is circled about by a cloud of invisible witnesses not yet made perfect without us such collisions ahead such cataclysmic clashes of the forces of darkness and light at the end of the age how many of us have that apocalyptic expectancy of this conclusion of the age that will be saturated with blood of the saints who cry out for whom to the altar who have been slain for the for the word of their testimony for keeping the commandments of god and know that we are called for such a collision course and it's just another corner the anti-christ forces already brewing the apostasy already working by which those who go on to this kind of faith will not just be an irritant but the object of opposition and persecution by those who are satisfied with a much lesser kind of christianity and would have gotten away with it if you only had not been around with your radiant faces and by your presence to blow the witness on the fraud that that kind of christianity is your saints we've got a calling that will not be met except we stand together in apostolic and prophetic fullness that has ever and always required sacrifice for god's house is a house of sacrifice i'm going to invite you to it tonight now for my jewish people's sake in your nation whom god has deposited in his great wisdom as your test they are the enemy of the gospel for your sake for the nation itself and unless the transcendent answer of god to the issue of race and nationality and hatred is demonstrated by the church the nation will almost certainly with other nations be plunged into the bloodbath of nation against nation within the nation for the mysteries of god that wait to be fulfilled by a god who's created all things in order that through the church church of an ultimate kind the manifold wisdom of god might be demonstrated to the principalities and powers of the earth for this is the eternal purpose of going to christianity come on let's confess up are we occupied with the eternal purposes of god tonight how can you do that and get up early to watch the of the rugby match with france no way and we can give ourselves to the one and still in any way have a jealousy for the eternal purposes of god dear saints we've got to pull out the plug from the tv set as it were we've got to steep our eyeballs into the apostolic scriptures and make this the very predicate of our reality contrary to every appearance that new zealand wants to offer that seems idyllic pleasant the best of all possible worlds this is our reality and will soon come to be in fact clash of kingdoms opposition persecution suffering monogamy we need to see as god sees and live out of that city you precious gray heads and older ones the glory of your latter and last years will be greater than the former if you can take hold of god is wanting and groan and travail before god convulsive gasps and sobs of groanings that cannot be honored for a church of this kind in this city of this nation every power and hell in the post i want to pray for that church now and i want to invite to that quality of life and being as many as will freely give themselves and say to the lord whatever it takes lord whatever it takes i'm soft i'm pampered i'm indulgent i'm undisciplined i'm overweight i'm saturated with sports my i'm excited by the things that are carnal and completely dead or dull for the things that are eternal and that pertain to your glory help me and undertake from tonight will fit me in with others of right mind and heart whatever the cost that you might have a people in the earth whose word is of such a kind and it creates faith and more than that when spoken at your command will bring a people out of their grave whose return will be nothing less than life from the dead for all the nations let's bow before the lord thank you precious may we sense my god your hovering presence just now in the stillness of these final moments before we break because some of us even imagine that this is an eternal once and for all moment that will not be given again and we're coming to a final hour when to hear the word of god at a time when there's a famine for the word of the lord is becoming an expensive experience as well it should for your word requires and lord i ask you to require now and those of us who have coasted drifted have been casual and get by because we have measured ourselves by ourselves and have been satisfied not at all considering the issue of your glory and lord i ask you to draw up the hearts of those whom you to give the grace to respond to a call to monitor to a call to absolute consecration to an utterness toward god by which our life will not be upon and not just a final hour of dying but a continual binding of embarrassment of humiliation of disillusionment of all the things that must necessarily be our experience if we go from the normative timid institutional christianity which now pervades to find our way back to the anti-occult glory and at once was that you might again speak by your spirit to call at the same time if there's someone in this room who will freely give themselves to this whatever the cost will you stand or kneel or go down do something faith is an act a statement don't do it lightly this is not a gimmick it's not an american conclusion to a service it's god calling calling us first to repentance for having been so long satisfied with that which does not satisfy and thinking that if we added a little wrinkle a little innovation a little cultural novelty that somehow it would be the better the richer and still fall short of the glory precious god come lord call men and women of all ages of all races of all national and ethnic origins my god you've got the raw material here we're loaded with the potential to be an anti-occult people in this nation come my god and bring us into that quality relationship that's true and loving purifying our souls in obedience by the spirit to love one another with a pure heart fervently not some mock and feign how you do it come my god have a people a true people and my people your kinsmen can hear a word preached by those sent in the hearing of which they might believe on him and have life seal by name my god every soul is going down before you that stands before you let not the enemy steal one from you to say that they're just a housewife or a widow or elderly or or ungifted or uneducated or any such thing there's a calling for the body the richness of the spirit that when we come together each one has a tongue and interpretation of prophecy and revelation for him take us off our seats my god in the passivity in which we have been inculcated to be an audience to look up as some sweaty minister and bring us into the vital faith as participants whatever the cost amen may more be done tonight to affect the jewish community of this nation and the mystery and the restoration of israel itself than all of the things that have preceded it in the name of israel and the jews may the powers of hell tonight tremble for the authenticity of this response to the word that has been sent by the holy ghost as events that threatens their unchecked and uncontested sway and influence till this hour even over this very city may they tremble for what is potentially being expressed here tonight yes lord and we thank you lord my god these people heard the terms of what that standing means come now you're free to do what you will yes lord bring us to unemployment to flat tires to new aches and pains to sickness to difficulties in marriage to uh flarings up with the boss to whatever the factors and things that you will use my god may we recognize them as coming exclusively from your hand for our good to discipline to chastise to shape and to form men and women and the apostolic and the prophetic we give you less my god we would so much as regret the loss of any day lived in our life that was not lived to your glory and we should learn on the day of eternity to our eternal sorrow and chagrin that we had lived beneath the high calling of god in christ jesus come my god settle something tonight have a sign up on the dotted line and remind us of what we are saying yes young and old every nationality jew and gentile work or work lord right to the foundations that shall not be moving raise up intercessors groaning women who groan my god for me working out of this yes thank you my god that your word has gone forth and it shall not go forth send us home my god with a new solemnity a new seriousness a new soberness something different than our face our eyes our voice our stature that was not there before that people who have known us will sense something has happened there's been a transaction with god we're not the same and unfold our high calling together bless the ministers that are in this room show them my god how to walk this out to lead their people from the present sunday arrangement if we have to move to get closer to each other my god move us if it takes the loss of job and security to bring us to be dependent upon one another and for one another do it have for yourself a community of god's people living by faith for the just shall live by their faith god forbid we should be dependent on society's provision bless this people as the true people of god in this nation this great city may we align ourselves with it henceforth and evermore the glory of god and no other consideration we thank you and give you the praise the honor for such love that will not let us go jealous love you thank you