In this sermon, the speaker discusses the importance of going up to be with God and experiencing His presence. He uses the example of Moses spending six days in the cloud of smoke on Mount Sinai, where he was completely disoriented and lost all human understanding. The speaker emphasizes that being with God is not just about following rules and regulations, but about encountering His essence and reality. He urges believers to be witnesses for God by bringing their whole selves into His presence and authentically representing Him to others.

Well, thank you, Lord, for part two, the completion, Lord, of this morning. Thank you for the first part, precious from every reckoning, more valuable than we know, more than we are able presently to understand and to take in. But let the Spirit of the Word, my God, have gone into our spirits and bring it to the level of our consciousness and our understanding for it's not easy, my God, to take you in in one fell swoop and reduce you to an outline or two notes. So we thank you for the Spirit of understanding, which we ask would be liberally granted us, put into our inner man, Lord, and we will find ourselves having these thoughts brought to our recall. For we know that your Word will not return to a void, but will accomplish every purpose whereunto it was sent, and we know that it's a Word that is going to us and yet through us and beyond us to a larger audience out there to receive the benefit. For it's a rare note that you're sounding. It's an unusual note, and it's a corrective, healthy note that the church needs at this time from what I can see and understand. So, Lord, you're full of mercy, and may you continue with us and help us, everyone, to come to the place of your desire. Bless now this continuation and give us a fresh ability, my God, to hear it without sagging and getting dulled. We thank and give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, my thought for this portion is to show you a companion text in the Old Testament that will touch many of the essential principles that we saw in the formation of Paul as an apostle to show you how timeless and eternal God's way with man is, and especially those who are called to his purposes. So if you turn to Exodus 24, we'll look at God's... not God's call to Moses, but the distinctive turning point on the Mount. Because Moses' ability to lead the nation through this demanding wilderness time rests so much on his ability to communicate God, not to act in some officious way, in some high-handed way, but to reflect and to express God. In fact, his failure to do that at the very end, when Moses was provoked by the people to smack the rock and he spoke out with vexation, God penalized him by not allowing him to come into the land. After all that prodigious labor and painstaking faithfulness through many trials to bring the people to the very threshold of the land, he himself was not allowed the privilege because God said, you did not sanctify me before the people. What that means is that when you displayed that fit of impatience and temper, though you were provoked, you set forth a picture of me that is not me because you are my representative. You are my apostolic projection. And in that moment, you betrayed the image of me, which, by the way, it's interesting to note, that Jesus, whose provocation was greater than Moses at the cross, when he was jeered and taunted by his own people, did not act in vexation and being provoked to revile again, being reviled upon, but quite the contrary. At that very critical juncture, he showed forth God when he said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. His patience and his compassion in that moment was the supreme revelation of God because crisis reveals, an absolute crisis reveals absolutely. On the crisis of the cross came the greatest revelation of God as God. And that means for us we are all moving toward a final crisis of last day's persecution where we are going to be provoked, harassed, be oppressed, be beset upon. And what we exhibit in that provocation will be the ultimate statement of what we are in God and how much we know him and can reveal him when we are provoked in an ultimate way. So this is a, what we are is not what we enjoy in a pleasant moment when we're well fed and housed and warm and in the company of the saints. What we show in crisis, what we show in extremity, is what we in fact are in God. And that's the summation of an entire lifetime of relationship with him and to what degree he has been formed in us. So with the episode in Exodus 24 is a critical point in the history of God's formation of Moses as a deliverer of Israel when God appeared at the mount and invited Moses to come up unto the Lord in verse 1 and other of the elders of Israel to a distance but only Moses alone was to go to the top of the mount. And only, and Moses alone it says in verse 2 shall come near the Lord but they shall not come near neither shall the people go up with him. So this is a critical going up and Moses made all the preparation for it and then went up in verse 9 and they saw the God of Israel in verse 10 and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone and as it were the body of heaven in his or its clearness or clarity. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand. What does that mean? God did not penalize them for seeing him for no man shall see God and live. He gave them a very special glimpse because they're going through a remarkable arduous trial a demand, a transition from slavery into nationhood through a wilderness and when God calls us to a pilgrimage of an ultimate kind we need an ultimate revelation of God that will sustain us through all of the dark and heavy days of trial that are ahead and he afforded the leaders of Israel this glimpse. But for Moses there's yet something more. He's not to see God at a distance but he's to see God face to face. So in verse 12 the Lord said unto Moses Come up to me into the mount and be there and I will give thee tables of stone and a law and commandments which I have written that thou mayest teach them. So Moses rose up and his minister Joshua and went up into the mount of God and he told the elders, Terry, hear for us until we come again. And Moses went up into the mount in verse 15 and a cloud covered the mount and the glory of the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai and the cloud covered it six days and unto the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud and the sight of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel and Moses went into the midst of the cloud and got him up into the mount and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights. Well we have to appreciate this remarkable episode that is so sparingly described. It's remarkable how terse the Bible is in these great events and even in the crucifixion of Jesus we read something like, and they crucified him. Instead of God belaboring and getting every last ounce out of something as if this was a cast of thousands and an emotional orgy is very sparing, very select. It makes a demand upon our spirit to come up and to catch the sense of it. So try and picture this forty day sojourn going up into the mount how critical this is for Moses because he cannot come down with the tablets of the law the instruction for the nation how to live before God in covenant except that he first meets with God and receives the law from God's own hand not second hand. He has to have a direct event with God himself. So we want to just study the language very carefully because here again is a paradigm or a pattern of significance for all generations. So in verse twelve come up to me into the mount and be there and I will give thee tables of stone and law of commandments which I have written that thou mayest teach them. Remember the language in Galatians that I might preach Christ because but then God has revealed himself Paul had to wait for the but when of God in order that he might and so also Moses there's no bringing the law to the people at his initiative but at God's when I will give you the law on the tablets which I have written but what's the condition for receiving it come up unto me and be there not get there but be there and I will give you. God's not going to give the law the sacred holy requirement for the walk of the nation that would be a witness to all nations in some cheap way as if it's just a matter of receiving a transfer taking a course, getting a diploma. No, come up unto me and be there and then I will give you. I'm not going to give you I'm not an expediency that is just a station on the way that if you get to this location then you get it and what you want for your ministry you can then come down and perform. This is before any ministry and all ministry is coming up unto me and being there and that's worth going up and it is a going up because everything in the world the flesh and the devil will prohibit or inhibit that going up. It's an exertion. The tendency of the flesh is to go down or to go back but to go up implies that this is no snap. It's going to require something an exertion, sacrifice. Moses neither ate nor drank for those 40 days and the glory of God covered the top of the mountain. Israel was trembling at the sight of the majesty of God in fire on top of the holy mount and Moses alone was called to go up into it and be there. So for 6 days he waited in the smoke and on the 7th day God called unto him to come unto me and be there. See more important to just bringing the tablets of the law is bringing God and bringing the sense of God. That's what an apostle is. That's what the foundation of the church is. Not just the rules, the regulations and the how to but the very essence and the reality of what God is in himself. That is the foundation. If we lose that we lose everything. And so often do I pray when I'm going to some place to speak Lord I beseech you communicate the sense of yourself in these days. Apart from any benefit that will be gained from the message may there be the communication of yourself as yourself for your people do not know you as they ought. They have a shallow sentimental projection of their own fancy but it is not you in the awesomeness of your own fear and holiness that the church lacks which is evident from the lightness that is in the church and the absence of the fear of the Lord. We do not know God as we ought because we're unwilling to go up. We're unwilling for the exertion. We're unwilling to be separated from the mass of things below. This is a radical call and a radical separation and a radical exertion but God will reward it. And it's not just going up to get your diploma or to get your enablement for the ministry. Come up unto me not unto the law not unto the... come up unto me and be there. I'm going to be there in what I am as God and you be there in what you are as Moses and the absoluteness of what you are in the reality of what you are will meet with me in the reality that I am and from that moment on you'll be transfused. Something will come into you from this reality of soul to soul, face to face spirit to spirit that will change you and that you'll be more than one who conveys the law. You'll convey the God of the law with the law. Wouldn't you like ministers like that to lead us through the wilderness? To be there is something that we have proved ourselves patently incapable to do with each other let alone with God. Are we really being there? We're living in the same house? We're meeting every morning at the breakfast table and in prayer and in the classroom but are we being there? What we are in truth in ourselves are we coming before each other in that being? Because the world is dying for the want of reality. The want of how to be. You shall be witnesses for me not do it for me. You shall be it. There's a being. There's a reality. There's a truth. There's an authenticity that comes when we bring the whole of what we are face to face with God's people but how shall we do with one another if we have not come up to be there with him? So come up unto me. Be there. And before he could come into that presence on the seventh day which is the number of completion and perfection he was six days in the cloud. The cloud is the smoke that wreathed the top of the mount of God from the God who is the consuming fire and was the terrifying presence on top of that mount. Moses had to stay six days in the smoke before he could be called on the seventh into God's presence. Well have you ever been in smoke for six hours? Six minutes? Six seconds? I praise God for my one experience that was absolutely terrifying and I hope I'll never be required again to experience it. But having experienced it gave me an insight into what was required from Moses before he could come into God's presence. And namely that smoke is the most humanly disorienting phenomenon that there is. Here's how it happened. We had left the community for a short season away in Kansas City to help the marriage along because of the struggles that I was describing before and we came back for a visit in the winter time and something went wrong with the building in which we were staying and about three or four in the morning we heard the crackling of fire. That building went up I can't tell you how quick. On the counter in the kitchen I had put a whole box of tapes of my messages. The master tapes that I had brought from Kansas City they were priceless in value and my wife had put her pocketbook up on that counter. We had been brought out of the house because of the fire and my wife said to me Can you go in and get my pocketbook? I said sure. The fire is yet in the living room had not yet touched the kitchen. So I said no sweat. So I bowed low pushed the door open and went in on my hands and feet on this tile floor because I knew that house like the palm of my hand. But the moment that I got in through the door and into the smoke I did not know where I was. I was completely and totally disoriented. Not only could I not find the kitchen counter I could not find the door through which I had just entered. I did not know where I was. Every human thing that pertained to my knowledge and understanding was completely lost in the cloud of the smoke. Moses was six days in such a cloud. I was less than six minutes and I'll never forget it. Why? Because Moses in order to come into God's presence could not bring his categories with him. He could not bring his charismatic understanding and his principles and what he had learned from men and all of the kinds of things that are correct but are not correct enough that we need to receive not from man but from God in coming up unto him. And if we're coming up unto him in order to receive it we're disqualified because already that's a utilitarian purpose. That's a motivation that is not for God's sake but for our own. God didn't say come up to me so that you can get something. He said come up to me and be there without any strings attached without looking for something or what would benefit your ministry because I deserve your full presence before me without any strings attached or any qualification or any demand. And if you come up with any demand you're not coming up. You're just a cheap commercial transactor seeking for some personal benefit but you're not going to have me. If you want me if you want to come into my presence I'm God. You cannot come with any even religious or spiritual motive that will benefit you or even benefit men. You've got to come up unto me because I alone am God. And if you don't come up and don't know me and don't receive something an impartation in that communion how do I dare entrust to you the tablets of the law? What do you think they are? Some plastic cheapie? The law is what I am as God in my righteousness and you'll not be able to carry those tablets and communicate its content unless you have first been in my presence. Now that's the presence of God is highly touted today in charismatic circles but I'm very dubious about it because it's a felt presence and it's aided and abetted by amplifiers and musicality and so we think that an emotion or a mood that is induced through music is somehow the presence. Dear saints, if it needs any kind of human aid to cultivate or nurture it it's already not that. We've got to go through the smoke and the smoke disarms every human thing because you cannot even bring the best of human things before him. He's God and there's always a taint always a corruption in what is of man. Jesus would not trust him and trust himself to them because he knew what was in man. They had seen his miracles and they were ready to believe but he would not accept that kind of believing. It was a believing that was induced by something visible. The believing that he was waiting for is only that which the Father can give for no man can come to me except the Father draw him and I'm not going to have your faith in me on what you have observed with your human eyes and understanding. He knew what was in man and would not trust himself to man. The world is dying saints for the knowledge of God as God and when that knowledge is trivialized when it's cheapened when it is affected by music by emotion by moods I can't stand it when I give an invitation and some guy goes up to the platform starts playing the organ or the piano I didn't ask for that. What, does God need your help? That people can't respond to the word of God without a musical backdrop? What is this generation? We can't be moved except that there's a mood created by instruments? Is God's word not enough in itself? What kind of response then is it if people have been psychologized or affected in their souls in order to respond? What God are we taking away from that altar that we will subsequently communicate where we ourselves will then need a musical backdrop? We do not know God as we ought. And if this was required by Moses and for Paul the revelation that I might preach him as he in fact is and not as people think him to be this sense of God is critical and you'll not get it without a willingness to go up and a willingness to stay in the cloud long enough to strip you from even the best of your human knowledge about God, about his way that we might come to him stripped as we are before him as he is and then I will give. Then I will entrust. You'll always bear with you after that moment something of the sense of God's dread God's awe, God's majesty God's sovereignty God as God. This is what we need to communicate to men not a formula but what God is in himself. Be there and then I will give. What a contrast for us down here wanting to obtain something much more cheaply by putting our time in taking courses I'm not deprecating that there's a value I'm only concerned that you should not think that it's the all in all that yet there's something beyond and above for which this is a help but not the thing in itself. There's still a necessity to go up a necessity to be separated from even the eldest that could not come up to the mount but Moses himself alone with God himself alone and to be willing to be smoked out. Why? Because so much of the knowledge that we hold that's correct is correct technically but it has not been made for us truth. It's got to come from God out of communion with him to be the kind of knowledge that should be conveyed to men or else we're just passing off second hand what we have obtained second hand and then becomes third hand until finally what is it? The world is dying for the want of the knowledge of God as God. It is steeped in deception. It has no fear. Therefore it's capable of violence ugliness behavior of such an ungodly kind that even would embarrass animals. God is absent from the consideration of men because we have not made him known because we don't know him well enough to do it. Come up unto me into the mount be there and I will give tables of stone a law, commandments which I have written that thou mayest teach them. This is the condition. This is what proceeds the teaching is the coming up and the being there. So we know what happened when Moses came down with the tablets of the law. What will happen when we come down? We're likely to find the people of God in the same posture of idolatry and naked carnality and sensuality dancing around the idol of their own making. The pattern here is remarkable. The holiest moment in the life of God's man and the first thing that he finds in coming down with the commission of God having been with God and received the law is the people of God given over completely to idolatry sensuality, carnality and Moses and his great indignation smashed the law. It was too holy to put before such a people. But the anger and the indignation that Moses expressed was not his own it was God's. This is not a man acting out of pique out of personal disappointment out of his own emotion and personality. It's a man who has been in such communion with God that what his response is now is God's and God therefore never censured him for breaking the tablets of the law though you would think it's a desecration because it was God's own act through a man who was so in union with God that he expressed God in that crisis moment. And the next thing we read if we had the time is Moses berating and chastising the people and grinding that golden calf to powder and making them drink it. They had to drink their sin. They had to be conscious of what they were doing. And you don't hear a whimper of anybody taking issue with Moses in that requirement of the same people who had murmured against him in the wilderness time and time again. Who are you to think that you're the only one who knows God that we also know God blah blah blah blah not a whimper because when he made that requirement it was in the authority of God and to have contended against Moses would to have contended against God. And the question is where did he have the authority to command an erring nation to drink its sin? That's what you obtain when you come up before him. Not that you're coming up to obtain authority or obtain anything that will aid you in your ministry, but something is necessarily imputed and conveyed by that one who will be willing for the struggle and the effort and the sacrifice to come up and to be there. He will express the authority of God. He will express the indignation of God. He will be in union with God and acting for God as God. And that's what our generation needs. And yet, the Bible says of Moses, he was the meekest man upon the face of the earth. What? Smashing the tables of the law, commanding the people to drink their sin? The meekest man on the face of the earth. And you know who wrote that? Moses himself. Well, how can he be meek if he speaks of himself? He must be the worst egotist to describe himself as the meekest. No, he's so meek that he's not even aware that he's in any way celebrating himself. He's only stating what the grace of God has formed in him. That coming into God's presence has dissolved any self-consciousness of himself as apart from God. And therefore, it is Moses in the fullness of Moses, the man, really freed from the thing that had imprisoned and lessened the reality of Moses. So he who loses his life in God's presence finds it. The man who came down the mount was a much greater and fuller Moses than the one that went up. And that man could lead Israel to the threshold of the promised land. So we need to covet something of this design. We see it in Paul in Galatians who waited for the when of God that Christ would be revealed in me. Not only to me, but in me. Something imparted the reality, the sense of God for how can a man be an apostle who has not this to communicate? And that's what Moses, who is also an apostle, communicated because it was obtained in the same way when God beckoned him to come up and be there. This is not a man who chose for himself to go up the mount at his choosing but waited for the commandment and the invitation that came from God and the when of God's timing. These things are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the age have come. And if ever God has given you and what you represent in the realm from which you come and are acting as an antidote and a corrective to what shall I call it, the charismatic casual the nature of our charismatic generation which has in many ways slighting God without even being aware of it, thinking that they're celebrating God you're receiving it this morning. Pulling God, citing from the New Testament in Galatians with Paul and the Old Testament in Exodus for Moses to show us that dimension and reality of God that would temper us and keep us from being the victim of our age and reflecting the casual charismatic spirit that pervades the body of Christ today and is considered the best of what the church is. The best of what the church is, in my opinion is not good enough and has not moved Israel to jealousy. See what the final testing is? Are we exhibiting something that will so powerfully impress Jews because it is so authentically the statement of the God of Israel and coming from Gentiles will blow their minds. It's the last thing they expect from you. They expect persecution they expect discrimination but when they see from you something of the undeniable character of the God of Jacob and of Israel that was communicated to Moses and to Paul, what shall they say? We've been too lazy, too indifferent too impatient, too quick, too shallow too man-centered too man-receiving, too man-pleasing to exhibit this reality to the Jew first and also to the Greek. The gospel is not a formula. The gospel is the communication of him as he in fact is by those who know him and keep that relationship alive and true jealously because they have gone up because even when they come down they're still up. They've never forgotten they always live in the sense and the memory of the awesomeness of God as God. So I can't tell you how often I'm crying out to God for this very thing. Lord whatever it is that you convey through me whatever instruction, whatever inspiration and you've given me, my God precious and prized things to communicate, please with it communicate the sense of yourself. The church does not know, my God it's shallow it's light your fear and the awe of you is absent from our experience. We're reflecting the spirit of the world and what we think is promoting your purpose. We do not know you Lord as we thought. So I thank you, my God in the paradigm and the pattern of what you required of your great men of old the Moses of old the great prophet apostle the liver of his nation and the great apostle Paul and Arabia a desert time a going up, a waiting in the smoke an obtaining, my God of that sense of yourself that comes before every other consideration that we so desperately lack. Save us, Lord from shallowness. Save us from being facile, glib, having the right answers, knowing how to do it how to conduct meetings, how to use the overhead projector, how to, how to, how to method. Give us a sense of God, Lord a sense of yourself, Lord reveal Christ to us and in us and through us to a world dying for that reality, for God is reality and we thank you, Lord Precious God on high, may we hear your voice bidding us, come up and be there before you start off in your ministry before you promote this and do that be there, come up and gain the sense of me with no holds, no strings attached, no qualification then I'll give you may we hear that invitation, Lord, and may in fact this morning and the entire sum and substance of it be exactly that that's what this is, this is not a teaching a how to, this is the Lord saying, come up unto me, be there be there that you might be a witness unto me that you might be the reality of God, that you might be the thing in yourself thank you, Lord, for our ministers, our matinee idols the men of faith and power who mysteriously disappear after they have given us their impressive ministries and we lose sight of them, we don't see them in their long johns we don't see them in their bathrobes we don't see them in the reality of the everyday, they are the men of faith and power, some kind of magical thing that we can't hope to obtain until they fall in sin because they did not have the counsel and the oversight and the correction that they could have received through a body had they related to the body and been there, there's a whole false mystique in professionalism and being the man of faith that is wrong because they're afraid of relationship and they hide so to be there, Lord to show the world reality sanity by a people who are there for each other and with each other as they are by the grace of God without phony appearances thank you, my God is a life-saving thing may the church exhibit it because it is there for each other, because it has been there for you thank you, my God and maybe in fact the going up is the struggle in the church to become a community of such a depth of personal relationship that we will not see you as God, except that we will find you in the body, in that relationship being there, that that will be the mount, and that will be the revelation that we can communicate to men save us from being cowards and hiding ourselves putting on airs and appearances thank you for what the church is, a place of sanity and reality, that we can be to each other what we are by the grace of God, and dare to be brought from grace to grace, grace to grace faith to faith, glory to glory thank you, Lord precious God tell the Lord you are willing to go up whatever that means, you are willing tell Him you are willing to come into the cloud in which all that you have counted so important that you have worked hard to obtain, you are willing to allow to dissipate that you might receive it afresh directly from Him, as reality as real knowledge and not something gleaned from a cassette repent for the church that hides itself and is fearful timid, afraid of relationship doesn't know how to be there phony, pumping itself up creating its own aura, through its own music, through its own misuse of worship, to create a mood that actually robs us of the possibility of the reality of God pray for the church, pray for yourself, pray for Scotland pray for this location this nothing place why is God speaking like this here, because this morning we prayed that not only would it be a geographical center of Scotland but a spiritual epicenter, and out of that center will go forth the reality that is alone life-saving to a nation in desperate need and to the world pray for it pray for your church in this nation acknowledge that we're a part of its sins and failings as well as all that you've been doing, God forgive us God take us up take us up and give us the real thing as has happened before in this nation do it again let heaven come down and let the real thing be experienced let us be ministers to bring the reality of the real thing Lord we thank you for places such as this we thank you for places to study but we thank you for men who bring the reality that you send in for our instruction we give you thanks Lord the provision of God that apostles and prophets ordained and sent of you are to the body to show us where we are to mirror our condition and let us see what is our condition that we might repent and be redirected oh God I give you thanks Lord help us to take this word to ourselves give us the faith thank you Lord may we hear your voice this morning surely what you are about is more than instruction surely that what you are about is a call to come up and to be there help us to understand my God that your righteous indignation that smashed those tablets is very much the same as the Jesus who upturned the money changers table who is the lamb of God as Moses was the meekest of men and we can't reconcile that we think that to be meek is to walk on eggshells because we have a phony human understanding of self effacing humility that's a play acting as a brother said it's a salesman's humility to make the sale but the true humility of God will overturn money changers tables and smash the tablets of the law when the spirit of God requires it for humility in the last analysis is total submission to the desire of God whatever it is even when it is violent against men because it does not consider men but God only oh bring us to that meekness bring us to that unfeigned humility save us from play acting in the phony thing that so impresses men that you see right through it and not only do you see through it the powers of darkness see through it and they know that we're not a people that they need to fear for the only thing that they will fear is the authenticity of God himself in man and any play acting religious and pseudo spiritual is completely in their sight and nothing to be reckoned on thank you lord bring us to the reality of God which is the humility of God and the indignation of God when you shall call for it for you alone are all in all thank you we want to be like you my God and formed by you and out from your presence thank you my God John chapter 3 to Nicodemus no man can ascend who is not first descended even the son of man he said who is in heaven what? he's in Jerusalem talking to Nicodemus and he's saying who is in heaven in the same moment he's on earth in Jerusalem speaking to a man, yes he's on the top of the mount he's in the presence of God always while he's yet in the place of ministry and requirement and that is the mystery of the faith and the communication of God that one even Nicodemus may we be in heaven even while we're in Scotland because that is the nexus and the place of our reality continually even while we're in the earth and in the place of ministry and service that is the faith thank you my God oh precious God heaven more heaven thank you Lord by those who can communicate it for they have their essential being in that place before you what a different faith that is than what has been purveyed to us thank you my God oh bless these children Lord give them an enlargement of faith and a courage to believe for this thank you my God and to exhibit it to the salvation of many hold on to the constancy of faith and I pray for that constancy of faith hold on to these words until they become reality in our hearts yes Lord for that alone is sanity thank you Lord life saving reality thank you Lord give us the heart to wait for the but when of God even though we seem foolish and empty and are unimpressive before Christians thank you my God that we might say with Paul that what we received is not of man or by man but from God thank you Lord willing for our Arabias, willing for our desert experience thank you my God oh form sons and daughters my God who show you forth and are not glib, facile manipulators and purveyors of some cheapy charismatic substitute that serves the purposes of men and leaves you without glory have a generation a final generation that are in keeping my God with the verity of old thank you Lord save us from this evil generation this present age grant the birth my God of apostolic desire on the part of children in this room and those who will be hearing this tape who are already being groomed for a kind of success of a lesser kind make them divinely discontent with that lesser ambition willing to reject it as something loathsome and to wait upon God in the time that is required according to his own wisdom for the real thing that they might be in their generation what Paul was in his own and Moses in his thank you my God willing for the painstaking work of God in the formation of their life their character their ministry, their knowledge of view that they might stand for something my God of this ultimate apostolic kind that makes all the difference that when they go forth they turn the world upside down they controvert the values of this world they make it clear and apparent that it's this present evil age soon to be succeeded by an age to come that is millennial and glorious and can excite the hope of men who will wait for it and reject this filthy world Lord let there be a birthing of authenticity in the church thank you my God and a recognition of how we're being processed and fitted and formed glibly and easily for something impressive but less than this ultimate that the end of the age so desperately calls for and I thank you for the invisible cloud of witnesses overhead this morning who are pulling for us knowing that something was being transacted today that is of ultimate worth and that even my own Jewish mother is in that cloud pulling with the saints my God of old who have sacrificed and suffered in this very land for the reality for which they're yet waiting not being complete without us so we thank you Lord because there will be a day when Jews will be sifted through this Scotland moved from place to place and having to see in each place the reality that you have been setting before us today not something religious that men can perform and compose their faces and look beatific and pious for they will be unmasked by Jews in their unkempt condition that the only thing that can stand and endure in that test is God, the love of God the truth of God, the mercy of God the patience of God that is unfamed and that will save them that will bring them into the bond of your covenant and the rod of your authority that they might return as the redeemed of the Lord who have met God face to face in the wilderness of Scotland in the out of the way places where you have prepared for them a people who know you and make you known as you are indisputably so I thank you Lord oh watch over this investment this morning my God you have sown this piece of earth with your word watch over it let it not fall to the ground stir the hearts of these children my God to a new jealousy for the real thing, the ultimate thing the authentic thing that terrifies the powers of darkness and blesses the sons and daughters of men unto salvation thank you Lord even the lost sheep of the house of Israel thank you for the great mystery and the great fulfillment thank you Lord thank you my God that we have satisfied ourselves with a lesser intention because we have lost this vision and this sense of our relatedness to that people Israel thank you thank you my God oh restore my God revive, establish we thank you the ancient ways make them known again the byways Lord, the paths of God thank you Lord restore to this generation thank you my God the unbroken continuum of the faith from Sinai to Paul and to this final generation an unbroken continuum of the authentic thank you Lord precious God on high thank you Lord whose hearts cry is your glory and who can wait for the but when of God and are willing to be fools and look foolish until it comes thank you my God thank you oh glory to your great name thank you Lord Lord it's one thing to pray it's another thing to be but Lord if we don't pray we won't get to being the being that you intend for us Lord help us Lord to give utterance to our hearts before you and just expose our hearts Lord that we might come into the place of being Lord that we can hear this and realize that how far we may ourselves fall short but Lord you're the only one that can make up the difference if you like that can give us the eternal life flowing from God that enables us to be Lord we can't be it of ourselves Lord and we can't be it by pulling up our socks or pulling up our own bootstraps Lord it can only happen as it's given from heaven but Lord it's given in response to our response to you Lord help us to make our responses to you that we can't be holy one thank you Lord for choosing the foolish thing the weak thing this bunch of nondescript souls in this forsaken place where is it a little dot somewhere and there my God you have made this kind of deposit how like you to choose the foolish the weak thank you Lord that you might be glorified confound your adversary thank you my God so that we bless you for the privilege and choose to be weak choose to be foolish that your strength your honor and your glory might be perfected and exhibited all the more out of the frailty and foolishness of what we are in ourselves thank you Lord for your choosing thank you Lord oh Lord that picture in one of the prophets about the wine sitting on its leaves and that the wine has to actually be poured from vessel to vessel there's something of an outpouring of ourselves before the Lord we won't be perfect and we're going to pour out all of what we are but somehow in that pouring and pouring out to God we're exposed to God and God isn't able to change it the dregs are removed and it's refined Lord I pray that that is poured out that pouring you can give to other people you can be open to other people that this is that the body of Christ will be up built that this will help the people we know the people we love the people we're in fellowship with that they somehow will catch this that we will catch it so strongly that Lord something new will start an openness a loving a caring in the body of Christ Jesus said as you love one another so people will know you're my disciple Lord let us get that reality and being there with people Lord it's not only those people we know and love in fellowship in our churches Lord that need that reality that need the love and passion that you are help us Jesus to have you so strongly in us as we are that the wine overflows the wine is poured into other cups that will then be passed around Lord it's a sacrificial Eucharistic Lord help us Jesus thank you my God thank you Lord speak this word live this way come to be with you be with you holy one holy one thank you holy one say he says what he said now you know why I asked you to pray as you did something like 16 or 17 years ago first of all you say this I know this was wonderful King Eusebius the head of the blind and the area it's in is the flooded land I don't know why but he did and I give that to you but I propose a prayer 16, 17 years ago God showed us we were there more at the time he showed us this used to be the center of the drove roads where the people from the north and the west brought their cattle there were no proper roads and they brought their cattle and their stock to take themselves to the markets between King Eusebius and was a farm that was the what did they call it the Trieste where the drovers set up camp and all this that is now flooded was lush pastures and the cattle were all fed and resuscitated from their hard journeys from the north and the west and fattened up for 2 or 3 weeks and then driven south to the port and still into the markets and God said to us the drove roads have been closed for many years I want you to pray that these drove roads will be open but pray for the opening of the spiritual drove roads and for about a year helped by various other people we prayed those prayers we went to the place of the Trieste and we prayed, we proclaimed in tongues and we broke bread and brought Jesus into the whole concept of the spiritual drove roads to authority over the demons that were keeping them closed and then God said that's it you've opened the drove and you were saying why did you come here I believe that is the reason because this is now the area from which spiritual knowledge can be the fattening process sorry? the fattening process it may well be that what had been once a passage for cows will now be a passage for Jews who will be brought out of the north and that this will be a place to be fattened, to be spiritually fed, to be established before they can be sent on to conclude their pilgrimage as returning to Zion as the redeemed of the Lord with everlasting joy upon their heads mourning and sighing, fleeing away this is a place where they'll be fed they'll be given a spiritual understanding be encouraged and rested before going on it'll be a place of assemblage and I'm getting an unction on my head as I say that so Lord we just pray blessing that you have appointed this piece of earth and established a pattern of it out of its history now in the last days not for cattle but for your people Israel to be gathered up from the north the south, the east and the west and to be brought through to assemble, to be fed to be encouraged, to be strengthened to complete their pilgrimage to Zion by a people here who can feed them who know you and can make you known so we ask your blessing Lord oh let this morning be more significant my God than we can imagine historic and what it configures for the future and we thank you Lord that you have appointed this, bless these children who are living and will be employed in this area for those purposes thank you my God thank you Lord who is sufficient for these things how like you to take a class and to go beyond and exceed anything for which we could have thought or hoped that we ourselves did not know so do we, bless you ... ... ... ... ... ... praise the Lord ... ... ... 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I've always thought regarding the sentence to Israel, maybe he's going to bring them here. And today that's what I've thought to this day in my heart. That in my heart there's always a desire to bless the Jewish nation with Jesus Christ. Jesus the Christ. And I've always thought, well how am I going to get there, Lord? I don't just want to go to those holy people, does it? But it's not going to, it may not necessarily be that I ever thought, maybe that he's just going to bring them here. They will be expelled to all nations. And that the communication of this has come to you through a Jew. The Lord hasn't missed a leg. Oh, yeah, tremendous. Unfortunately we don't have copies of my Holocaust book. You can ask for it, we can send it to you from the States or through John. But there's a chapter in that book called Israel's Final Chastisement and Future Glory in which I describe the Holocaust yet to come that will have its inception in Israel of an explosive kind and drive out its present inhabitants. The residue may be left behind, but there'll be a vast expulsion again into the nations in flight from terror or in captivity and that will trigger an anti-Semitic reaction to Jews worldwide. Because God says in Amos chapter nine, I will sift you through all nations and not so much as one kernel will fall to the ground. There is a mass exodus of Jews through all nations in the last days. And in that movement is for the remnant of them a confrontation with the Lord as he has seen in those who have prepared a place of refuge for them. For it says in Revelation that the woman will flee into the wilderness where a place has been prepared for her and where she is fed for three and a half years. That's why we are where we are for the last 25 years in one of the remotest sections of North America in the wilderness of our nation. And as we travel and the Lord brings us into connection with others who have that call, there's a network already being established of places of refuge for Jews in flight worldwide. So they will be coming through. How do you know that, Art? Well, not the least of the reasons that I know it is that I'm here. My time and use is so rare, so exquisitely determined by the Lord that I know that I know that where I am is the place designated or I would not be there. So you can count on it with confidence. The Lord has fingered this place and we will see this drama enacted here. So the actual dispensal hasn't yet happened, although there have been previous dispensals who are prepared to go to the wilderness. Future, future. It's very difficult to know which of these prophecies are, have happened and which are still going on. It's a past pattern, but there's one last future and a massive fulfillment globally in all nations. And that's the message that I'm proclaiming that even Messianic believers don't want to hear, that there's a devastation future for the present state of Israel and that that state will come into judgment and devastation. You'll find that on our website, articles. Time of Jacob's trouble and Jacob is worldwide. Yeah. It's a future project to put out a book on this subject, which we've never had. You can pray for that. Something is in formation for a book on Israel in the last days beyond this little pamphlet size, but we want to be very careful and the whole formation of that, it needs to be birthed more than written. He takes the same perspective, but he doesn't see the worldwide aspect of it, but he sees the expulsion from Israel. Yeah. You can pray for us in the almost seven weeks of our time of ministry that yet remains. We're going from here to Edinburgh, then London, and then Berlin, and a few cities in Germany, one on the Baltic coast, where I've not been in about 20 years because I think these seaports are very significant, including the places from which John comes in the fishing village of Macduff and Banff, and then we're going to Czechoslovakia, and then we're flying from Prague to Moscow, and we'll be in three other cities, Central Asia, with preparation for those going into ministry, and then into the Baltic nations of Latvia and Lithuania, and then into Poland with a concluding conference in Warsaw for Polish and German ministers who have just been brought to Auschwitz. We're speaking to them for three days because the woman who's arranging this, the German woman, feels that there's a corridor coming through Poland and Germany through which Jews will be fleeing, and then a final week of activity in Germany before going home March 6th in a trip that is eight weeks long, and for which we appreciate your prayer. We've already been in Holland, and we've had times, church times like this. It was really impressive. There was, a few years ago, there was prophecies or talk about houses being prepared, but at that time, I thought it was just people coming, Jews coming out of Russia, you know, that they were going to need, those countries, they were going to need houses of refuge.