Art Katz emphasizes the significance of nations in God's divine plan, urging the church to shift its focus from individual salvation to the collective responsibility of nations to recognize their Creator. He highlights the centrality of Israel in God's purposes and the church's role in demonstrating God's wisdom to the world. Katz warns against the dangers of nationalism and the rebellion of nations against God, calling for a prophetic church that understands its mission in the context of God's eternal purposes. He stresses the need for humility and reliance on God, as well as the importance of the church's prophetic function in the face of rising anti-Semitism and global turmoil.

Introduction I want to pray in just a moment. Jim Mathis is my travelling colleague and the pastor of Ben Israel and my own. He watches over me and you can ask him all the questions that I will raise for you in a bewildering way today. He provides the answers, I provoked the questions. So, look him up. If I look wilted and lousy I am and I don't know what to attribute that to. I think my greatest reason is the proximity to your nation's capital. Last night was hell, I was roasted and I still have a pounding headache and debating whether to take something to alleviate it or just speak through it. So that's auspicious, that suggests resistance and the enemy is probably more aware and concerned than we ourselves are. So, I just want to pray. I have no, how shall I say it, I was going to say have no ground plan no agenda. I do have burdens and be interesting to see how the Lord will express them. It's been essentially themes addressed in the advertising Israel and the church in the last days, but how that is expressed has been uniquely and variably different in every place and occasion and expecting the same for today. So, are you really honest that you can hear me back there? Yeah, you see, okay, now you may have to come down from the bleachers with the more ordinary saints and take a place closer here or somebody who's at the controls turn up the volume a bit. I'm still the high school teacher who wants to make sure that the room is amply ventilated and everybody hears and that the light is good, all those necessary conditions. Well do you have the faith to believe for an historic occasion? Do you sense that we need historic occasions? And that the word should constitute an event. So, I boast on the Lord in that way and I leave him holding the bag to deliver the goods. Prayer Lord, we do it again now, we boast on you. Nothing is too difficult for you and you know better than we my God, that except that every speaking be an event how shall we be fitted and prepared for the things for which we alone are called that conclude the age. And so, we're asking my God that you would pull out the stops and let the enemy have it right in the kisser who dared molest your servant through the night hours without mercy and now let him reap the consequence of that harassment in a way that he will eternally regret. So set forth my God your mind and heart not only to us who are assembled here, but those who will hear these messages through tape or the video and let it have a wide circulation and profound telling effect not only for the church but the secular world and the nation itself. Let the reverberation be felt and set in motion things that will be consequential both in time and eternity and for that we give you the praise the glory and the honor in Jesus name and God's people said Amen. Beginning of the Message And God's people are now expecting me to say now turn to so-and-so. Well, I ain't ready yet to tell you. I don't know yet myself. Are you sure you're not sitting too far back over there? Now I don't mean the bleachers, I mean the father most rows here. We don't realize how much that affects the Lord when we give him vast spaces between the saints. He likes it when we cluster near the speaker as if we're sitting at the feet of the Lord Himself and then you get something like that. So as your faith is be it unto you. You want a distant place you receive the distant echo and if you come close, you'll get the spittle and everything that goes with the word. I wish we could enjoy the format that we employed at Ben Israel and our prophetical school where we sit at a table and can look at each other eyeball to eyeball and dig in and probe and examine the word in a wonderful interactive way. This is one of my least favorite forms of communication that I should be standing you should be sitting but so be it. God is the Creator of the Nations Well, it's either we begin with Deuteronomy 32:8 or Isaiah 2. So, turn to both. Let's do Deuteronomy 32:8 first. I was just reminding myself this morning in my numb and strange condition that I often say I've not heard anyone preach on this verse, but I have read someone's statement and I believe it was from some commentator here in New Zealand and it was brilliant. I wish I had it with me to quote, but I think I have imbibed the sense of it and by the grace of God it communicates something of the importance of this remarkable cryptic verse that kind of sticks out at you. And deserves pages of commentary and it's all there alone by itself, but we can sense when we read it how remarkably pivotal and central this statement is. Deuteronomy 32:8,9: “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance when He separated the sons of Adam He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel for the Lord's portion is His people Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.” Well, I'm becoming increasingly preoccupied with the nations. I don't know that you'll be hearing it in these days, but the Lord has given me a message on the nations and that the emphasis I think will be increasingly shifted from attention to individual salvation to attention to the nations and their own obligation toward the God who has made them. So, I just want to put that in your thinker, the word “nation” and “nations” needs to come into the consideration of the church. Our view has been too myopic, too small, too narrow, too individualistic, and we have not rightly regarded the scope of God's cosmic concern and interests. That's what makes these speakings prophetic or apostolic, because it's the large view. Don't bother me with the details, but I like the large sweeping view of God's cosmic and eternal purposes for which reason He has created the nations. We need to think in the perspective of God Himself and of course the enemy will do everything to keep you from such consideration, he wants to keep you narrow, small, and preoccupied with trivialities. But we have cosmic purposes to fulfill and there's only one agency appointed for that fulfillment and it is the church. Just the recognition of that perspective breathes the spirit of maturity into the church. So, the nations are on God's heart. They need to recognize their Creator and the purposes for which they have been created and I don't know of a single nation that has begun to give God that consideration. Even the thought that there is a God who has created is in itself an offense. The nations would like to believe that they are an accident a kind of ecological geophysical evolutionary accident, because to accident you cannot ascribe purpose. But if there's a God who created the heavens and the earth and all that in them is. If the earth is the Lord's and the nations and those that dwell therein, then the nations have an obligation to consider the God who created them His purpose. Maybe it's not an exaggeration to say the whole of the tragedy of human history, of the history of nations their warfare and their violence. The ecological disasters the raping of the earth the whole melancholy and painful thing is the consequence of the failure to consider the God who has created for His purposes. Now why hasn't the church made that known? Because it hasn't adequately considered why it has been created! How then shall we tell the nations. Got the point. God’s Eternal Purpose for the Church We are created for His purposes and in fact if anyone wants an A for the day already. What text would you cite as the most profound single reference in the New Testament that identifies the purpose of the church for which reason God has created all things? Answer from the audience: Ephesians 3:10. Ephesians 3:10: “To the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known (demonstrated) by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places” You've been listening to my tapes? Ha ha ha you know it! Good for you, A for the day. God has created you all things in order. Then they shouldn't we kind of pause there, in order, here it comes, what will follow? What's the reason for creation? In order that and our hearts begin to pound and we palpitate if not sweat. Now we're going to hear it in order that through the church. Wow is it that important? We thought it was a Sunday addendum and an institution to provide services. What the whole of creation established that in through the church? Through the church what? That the manifold wisdom of God might be demonstrated. Oh, praise God for that word! Not just articulated, but demonstrated to the principalities and powers of the air, the world rulers of this present darkness. I'm paraphrasing and adding. If you have never contemplated that text dear saints. Count it worth your trip here this morning, you have been challenged so to do. That is the pivot of what we are about in the earth and the next verse says “and this is the eternal purpose of God in Christ Jesus.” If we but knew this and took this to heart, we would be already emancipated. What I call! What an ultimate call! So, we've left saints hanging on the ropes in Christ Church and gasping. And whosever child that is will have to be taken for a walk, and for the first time Christians are saying who is sufficient for these things? When have you last said? You'll begin to say it when you glimpse and take to heart the eternal purpose of God, for which reason He has created all things that the church might make this demonstration. I'll probably come back to that, if I don't, will you remind me? Because who sitting here knows what the manifold wisdom of God is? It's not wisdom as we conventionally use the word. Maybe we would say more the value system of God, the mind of God, the way of God. Two value systems in conflict: God’s and the powers of darkness. God is waiting for a triumphant demonstration of His, as it can only be made manifest through the church. Not individual virtuoso saints, but the totality of the church in all of its constituency, all of its diversity. When that's made the age is finished. Centrality of Israel for the Nations Now that mystery is related to what we've already read in Deuteronomy, the centrality of Israel for the nations. So, I want to go on record as saying, that I uphold God's choice of Israel, not because I'm Jewish. I would be just as enthusiastic if God had chosen pygmies, but I uphold God's choice, because He's God. He has chosen Israel to be central to all nations and according to this text, even the number of nations is related to the number of the sons of Israel. Is this chock-full of mystery? How many sons of Israel are there? However, many there are that's how many nations God has intended, because the nations must be in tandem relationship with Israel itself. God never intended independent fluctuating entities doing their own thing. Let alone presuming to take the role that God intended uniquely for Israel itself. Great Britain: The Usurper And if there's any nation in the world that has arrogantly attempted that perhaps not even consciously, what nation would you say has desired to be central to all nations and bring all nations into a Commonwealth relationship with itself whereby it is the central pivot for all, namely the nation whose language you speak? Great Britain. This is a fresh observation for me, and the British Commonwealth is the employment of the same word found in Ephesians 2, where it says “you who were far off”, Paul speaking about Gentiles, “without God without hope in the world have been brought nigh by the blood of the Messiah Jesus into the covenants, promises, and hopes of Israel even into the Common Wealth of Israel.” So isn't it remarkable that Great Britain should usurp that word and in fact usurped that intention and do a pretty smart job of it. Is it any wonder that in my own experience the people with whom I find the greatest resistance to the acknowledgement of Israel and her centrality and the purposes of God are those of English descent. That the most vicious and vehement forms of anti-Semitism emanate from Anglo-Saxons. That the first expulsion of Jews from Europe came in York, England in 1200 and something. I'm just speaking like the fool, don't take me all that seriously. I'm feeling for something, but it's something significant and probably to whatever degree you come out of an Anglo-Saxon, British root and orientation something of it lingers that needs to be consciously examined and dismissed in the same way that I myself as a Jewish believer was required with other Jewish believers to go through a deliverance from a vestigial anti-gentile, anti-church spirit that the Lord identified or I would not be free to speak to you today. I'm a cutting man, but you imagine if I had a little spite in that too get even with you, a little Psilakis, as we say in Yiddish, a little hmm not only to put the knife in but to turn it. It is the kind of thing that I used to surreptitiously enjoy, before the Lord showed me that's a no-no and that I had to be delivered from that together with other Jewish brothers in ministry to the church. So, to what degree are you harboring something from which you need to be delivered. Hallelujah. Now look saints you see how I'm already roaming the landscape. Don't get frightened, whatever you do don't panic. Everything is being recorded and I can't help myself. If you wanted to hear a systematic teacher don't come to me. This is a prophetic sweep, this is spontaneity, this is a man who has not slept last night and still has a booming headache and was turned up and done in and done over and is just opening his mouth and hearing what God has to say. And I think that this is part of a necessary thing for you, because not the least of your Britishisms is “order” and understanding something intelligently before you can approve. Well, that's limiting the Holy One of Israel. You need to be more Hebraic than that. You know this line upon line and precept upon precept is actually a judgment. You read it in the context in Isaiah, that hearing they will fall backward. It's not God's prescription for his saints at least for me. So, we just throw it out on the table like a piece of wet oozy soft clay and turned the wheel and stick our wet fingers in and see what form God will give, but don't panic. In the first message in Australia given under circumstances, much like this morning, where we came a day late and stopped at the Manila Airport, because we didn't have a visa for Australia and didn't know that we needed one. Had to be delayed in the Philippines and break our heads and go through all kinds of torment to get that visa and to learn that every flight was full up and there was no possibility to get to this conference already a day late, but nevertheless the Lord got us there panting an out of breath and to open my mouth and to be as foolish. Then as I am now and some woman came up at the end of those days and made a brilliant statement. She said “I realized that I had to dismiss my conventional way of hearing and approving something by submitting it to my intelligent examination. I just had to yield my spirit to affirm in my spirit what God was saying and trust later for the understanding that would follow.” If that woman does not make the Lord's hall-of-fame I'll be surprised. Can you understand a statement like that? The Church called to be Prophetic Okay, you see it's not only I who is required to be prophetic you also. That's not to say you have the same calling individually, but the church per se as church has a prophetic function. So, we need to proclaim something as the church in a prophetic way, but we need to apprehend the truth and understanding of God in prophetic ways also. As for example Deuteronomy requires, who can make sense of this? Why doesn't God explicate? Why isn't there an asterisk directing us to the bottom of the page where we see it spelled out in full clarity? No, it's just a cryptic statement that's left to hang there, but it's resonant with all kinds of remarkable meaning. Some biblical scholars have suggested that when Jesus sent them out by twos or they should not take script and staffs and kick the dust off their feet if they were not received. He sent out 70, because 70 was the number of the appointed nations that God Himself had created. How many are there today? I think well over 200 and the way things are going in former Yugoslavia there'll be another three of four added, because of the atomistic and individualistic propensity of men to do their own thing and to be independent and have their own identity as a part of the struggle of your own nation and many nations today in its growing ethnic consciousness. But in the beginning God created 70 as some suggest or at least a much smaller number then what now prevails and when the smoke clears and God has finished dealing with the rebellion of nations. When he will bring judgment on the nations in the day of the Lord. Of course, New Zealand will be exempt, then I think we will find ourselves going back to that number. Rebellion of the Nations In this message on the nations that the Lord gave me, of all places in Germany in Nurnberg very significantly. He's had me to look into Genesis 11 to see the origin of the rebellion of nations. When it says that a certain people were moving or came out of the East were moving eastward and the plains of Shinar where Babylon was subsequently established and chose their own location and built their own city out of mud. Not even willing to have that baked in the sun, but they should be burned in the fire. Showing the impatience of men to do their thing and to establish their autonomy independent of God and build the tower into the heavens. See this is not just a single historic episode this is the quintessential antagonism of nations against God in their desire for autonomy and independence from Him. Psalm 2:6: “But He holds them in disdain, for He has set his King on the holy hill of Zion and said ask of Me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance.” So, we are moving towards something saints, if it is to be accomplished it will require the centrality of this Israel with regard to all nations. And if you don't send up a delegation from New Zealand to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles (I'm not talking about the one conducted now by the Christian embassy, that's a little preview), I'm talking about the one that shall be required by God in the Millennium and that nation that will not be represented in Jerusalem on the Feast of Tabernacles to honor the God who has made His sanctuary and dwelling in that nation and with that people and whose government goes forth from their capital city of Jerusalem and the holy hill of Zion upon that nation, God will bring a curse. If you want a glimpse of what is God's intention see what the fulfillment is in the Millennium. The Millennium is what God has all along desired and will then have after the crisis that concludes the last day's struggle between the deceiver of the nations, Satan as Antichrist, and the final showdown and conclusion. We're moving toward that and it will be fierce and resisted. For it says in Psalm 2 “see how the heathen rage” can we can we turn to that. “Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing?” Who wants another A for the day? What's the Hebrew word for “people”? Answer from the audience: “goyim”. And that word can also be translated as “nation” and “nations”. Any Hebrew word that ends with the “im” suffix, I am like kibbutzim is plural, “goyim” plural heathen or the nations. Psalm 2:1,2: “Why do the nation's rage and the people the imagine a vain thing the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his Anointed saying let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us.” What are they foaming at the mouth? They do not want to have Him to rule over them. Nations are a more visible expression of the rebellious heart of man in his desire for autonomy and self-will, self-aggrandizement, and self-gratification in doing his own thing. But somehow when nations do it, it has a kind of air about it, a greater legitimacy that gives their conduct and their actions a certain kind of validity that if individuals acted that way it would be shameful (Really good observation!). As for example, the American national debt running to what five trillion dollars, if we as individuals had even a scintilla of debt like that it would be scandalous, but for a nation to indulge itself in that kind of madness of the economy is somehow okay. For nations to fight and to war over boundaries or their imperial ambitions and even to sanctify that by employing God as justification somehow is okay. You should have been with me in Scotland, I forgot which city, I think Edinboro, and we went into some memorial for the two great world wars as a great mosaic and shows the crosses of the soldiers who died on the battlefield and their blood was spilled and the central figure is Jesus on the cross. That somehow there was a parallel or a connection between the crucifixion of Christ and the blood of men spilled on battlefields for imperial and national ambition and destiny as being one and the same thing, God and country. That's a bunch of hokum and you saps have eaten it up and subscribed to it and encouraged and endorsed it. When the veil is removed from our understanding, we will see how much God has been in the sacrifice of entire generations. The cream of nations for the rivalry between Great Britain, France and Germany. Back and forth over a no-man's land, over a few kilometers of ground that you can't find a single tree that has not been splintered by the profusion of shells and bullets that have prevailed. You need to make a trip to Verdun as I have and visit the aussire. What is that? That's where the bones have been kept. It's a building that makes this look like a doghouse. it's larger than several football fields and it is crammed full with the bones of the French and German youth who bled to death in those trenches and over that no-man's land back and forth back and forth back and forth for years that availed nothing, but the opportunity of imperially minded men to play not with tin soldiers, but with human life and we have never recovered from that. World War II is only its continuation and the further out working of the issues raised in World War I. We will never return to our pre-World War innocence. We have been inducted into new experiences called genocide, the systematic annihilation of race. That having begun with Jews we can go on to Cambodians and Rwandan and anybody else without even so much as a flicker, because we have lost our capacity not only to blush, but to be horrified. Is there anyone hearing me who were saying come Lord Jesus? The Government of God I'm waiting for another king saints. I'm sick to the teeth of human government, however well intending, it's becoming increasingly pathetic especially in my own country, but we're getting exactly what we deserve as the Germans did with Hitler. Every country gets what it deserves as the priests go so goes the people. So, we need to see the whole drama of what we are about as the struggle between God the Creator and a whole fallen and angelic residue led by its prince Satan seeking for dominion over the creation of God. The whole issue of the faith is government. You don't believe that. Okay stay right there don't move and don't even bother to turn as I read to you. Isaiah 9:6: “For unto us a child is born unto us a Son is given and the government shall be upon His shoulder” The word Messiah means “anointed king” and we have lost our credential to assert that and to make it known to the nations to the degree that our government is not on His shoulder. Like when are you taking your next vacation and where are you going and your retirement and your present occupation and who said that you were to go to college and obtain a career. Was that the Lord or you just assumed that of course He intends for you to have a significant livelihood and that He would come behind you and endorse your choice who has never consulted Him. Can you see why we're so feeble before the nations? Why we're so wanting in authority the government shall be upon His shoulder. God forbid that I in my ability experience and memory and knowledge should determine myself what you should hear today. It's a moment-by-moment thing and you need to go back to the moment where your government was (?) and repent for that and yield to what He was wanting, however much now it will make a radical requirement of you, maybe even the forsaking of the of the vocation and profession you have chosen that was never His intention at all. Now I'm not boiling you out. I'm speaking to you and through you to much greater numbers who are being pricked right now and convicted as they ought. Better now than in the day of eternity when the King comes, who would want to face Him then. When in the moment of that revealing the whole of our mindless self-assertion and acts of will independent of Him will come before us in a moment like a flood too late to be altered and remedied. Isaiah 9:7 “The government shall be on His shoulder and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace of the increase of His government.” Gets a little repetitious doesn't it? As if we missed the first reference, we'll get it the second time. The issue of the Lord's coming is government and He's going to rule in the very place where He was humiliated and what did they put over His head in three languages on the cross? Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews, because if He can be king over them who else is going to give Him a hard time. Once He got us, He’s got everyone. From the place where He suffered His greatest humiliation and knock and taunt there will emanate the greatest glory. Are you anticipating then? When you say Lord come. Are you saying it in the sense, come with your kingdom your rule and your glory and your beneficent wisdom that the law might go forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem that nations will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and study war no more or are you saying Lord come and get me out of this mess? Come on you rapture escapists. God’s choice of the Holy and Humble Hill of Zion Just as a little side note, what's the Greek word for meeting the Lord in the air? It begins with a “P”, I think “Parousia”, right, “Parousia”, excuse my pronunciation, understand I'm not a Greek scholar at all. It means meeting a coming dignitary and accompanying him to his place of rule and you know where that place is? You know you would never have guessed, you yourself would never have chosen it, you would have said Geneva, New York, London, Wellington. It's the holy hill of Zion. You say why would God choose a hill? Your very question is an embarrassing revelation of your ignorance of God, His character and His way. He must choose a hill, because He's the God who chooses a stable, He's the God who chooses caves, He's the God who chooses us, He's the God who chooses Israel. Not because they were the greatest, but because they were the least, not because you're the most promising, but because you were the most dum-dum. He takes us off the dung heap to make us to sit with princess and you know this verse in Psalm 8 don't turn to it chapter verse 2 “out the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength.” Why? “Because of mine adversaries that you might avenge you might still the enemy stop the mouth of the accuser of the Brethren”, stop the mouth of that one who wants his perverse and false wisdom to be established with mankind. That says you need prestige, learning, title, distinction, the kinds of things that the world admires and pants after and that even preachers seek to be called “doctor”. They don't know that in seeking that they've lost the whole thing! They're already out of the manifold wisdom of God and into the wisdom of this present world the power of darkness that celebrates prestige, knowledge. That's why it was so important that this woman forsook, she's English by the way, living in Australia, forsook her conventional means of hearing a speaker waiting for her intelligence to accept or to reject his statements her approval through the exercise of her mind and submitted to another mode of apprehending the truth of God in her spirit believing that later it will rise to her understanding. She's on another ground, she's chosen another wisdom. When Abraham went out, he went out not knowing. The Humility of God “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies.” See God is in a moral showdown the whole thing that we are about is a moral contest and He's got to win it by means that are consonant and in keeping with His character. That's why He's born in a stable, that's why He's born at all, “a child shall be born unto you and a son shall be given.” How humiliating. Jews can't believe this 200 years later. It's totally incomprehensible and incompatible with their view of the dignity of God. That He should allow Himself to come as an infant, doing doodoo in His diapers and totally dependent on someone else to clean Him up. That's God. The God of Israel and the Creator? No way! Of course where do they get their idea that God is the God of dignity? By the projection of themselves. You thought I was such a one as you are. Well, you got it all wrong. You're a piece of arrogant flesh and I'm a God who is humility through and through, it's My nature. I have not yet recovered, my head hurts, are you praying for me? Oh, thank you. I have not yet recovered from that day that I stumbled on an article entitled the humility of God. I went down like a sack of potatoes. The humility of God, I knew that we were called to humility but I never knew that God was. I stand at the door and knock If any man hear my voice and will open I'll come in, but if you don't hear and you don't open I'll just stand there with my hat in my hands waiting. That's why God had to wait 35 years for me, because I was so full of my own hotshot bravado and arrogant ideology and philosophical nonsense and noise that I couldn't hear a still small voice if my life depended on it. It took crisis and devastating failure unto death to hear the still small voice of God, who can shout if He wanted to and He can knock down our doors if He wanted to, but it would not be in keeping with His character. Unlike us, He's insistent that His means be in keeping with His ends and that's why He's ordained strength through children, through the mouths of babes and sucklings. Art’s Testimony of Humility of the Cross Well Art, you don't look like a babe and a suckling? You've got a couple of university degrees, so explain that, huh? Okay I will. If you thought last night was bad that's only one night. What about the months of my first experiences as a young believer 32 years ago returning to the teaching profession much greater incentive and purpose than ever I had as an atheist before and failing more significantly than I did as an atheist. The paradox of having been an impressive teacher as an atheist where students would follow me over a cliff in the kind of human eloquence and ability that I had to mesmerize my students and what happened to me as a Christian coming back to the same school district? A flop, a miserable wretched flop, where the students would laugh up their sleeves at the pathetic debacle taking place before them of a man who couldn't put two words together, couldn't even compose his face, lost his charm, pathetic! Day after day after day after day, beyond counting. That to go to school in the morning was nothing less than the ascent to the cross. It was the road to Calvary and humiliation and sure a failure. You haven't experienced that? How come me? Why me Lord? Such agony dear saints and without a God to explain. Until the day came when a mature saint came into my focus and I said “brother I don't know what's happening to me, I was so impressive as an atheist and now I'm a believer and I have such intentions for my students and I have more access to them than their own families and parents and pastors and I'm a pathetic flop. I've lost everything, I have no charm, I have no ability, I have no eloquence, I can't articulate, I can't even arrange my face. Oh he said oh hum, don't you know what God is doing? No. He said ‘God is emptying you out that you might have no confidence in the flesh.’” I'll tell you if we're not babes and sucklings, he will make us one, because only there has ordained strength for the enemy's sake. for the adversary who says “No if you're going to succeed you need prestige, power, education, knowledge, titles.” That's why God chose the hill of Zion. Have you chosen it? Have you chosen what God says? Okay and it ain't gonna be easy, if you have a German background. Okay and you know why God has chosen Israel, because He saw the depth of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon deep gentilic opposition through that little Semitic people called Jews. He put a stumbling stone right smack dab in Zion. Calculated to reveal the depth of our Gentile intransigence that certainly would not have chosen them over ourselves. Hmm. Interesting isn't it. God is full of sublime purpose and I can tell you dear saints that in my experience and bearing the kind of message I do all over the world to the many nations, it's been my experience that nothing more reveals the secret heart of the church than the issue of the Jew and of Israel. You know what I think anti-semitism is, you know what the word means don't you? Anti-Jewish hatred. Increase Hatred to the Israel in the days to come Put on your seat belt, you ain't seen nothing yet, it's warming up in the scenes, it's taking place in the walls, there's a short already, the wires are already freaking out and spluttering they're sparks and the things are beginning, the combustion has already begun, you can't see it. But there comes a moment, do it whoosh, the fury of that hatred will billow out in all nations including yours. Only the most exemplary saints will be exempt from the power of that hatred. That probably will come in conjunction with toppling economies, financial world crisis or some war in the Middle East in which Israel uses her atomic arsenal and everyone will be clucking their tongues against them for their lack of conscience. And I don't know what it is, maybe all these things together, but those who want simplistic answers to crisis and who are unregenerate Gentiles or only shallow nominal Christians will be swept up into that fury of hatred that will astonish them. I was interviewed by one of your magazines and the brother said “surely you don't believe that this could happen in New Zealand, do you?” I said well if it happened in Germany I can believe in New Zealand also. Where is your Gerda fifty Schiller? Where is your Beethoven? Where are your great philosophers and composers and ethicists and you're just a shallow johnny-come-lately. Your culture is skin deep like ours in the USA and we'll go down like the proverbial deck of fallen cards when the gush of this power of demonic fury comes. Who'll be able to resist it? If Germany could not resist it in the depth of its culture, what shall we do? Where I'm running all over the place. Bring me back to this. God’s choice of Israel The issue of God's choice of Israel is the issue of God. For He will choose what He will choose. He will elect whom He will elect and He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. And the first thing that rises up out of your Britishly tinted Germanic heart is, “but they don't deserve it!” and you're right they don't, but do you? You see how this unmasks the secret heart of the church we sing about the grace of God amazing grace we subscribe to the doctrine, but where we effectually live, we are still prompted by human performance doing a human merit as the basis for divine acceptance. They don't deserve it is not the statement of them it's the statement of us and it would never have been revealed except that God's mercy would come to Israel. Israel is for our sake it serves more purposes for the church in their apostasy and unbelief and alienation from God than you can know and this is not the least of them. How many of us will rejoice when the prodigal son returns and the Lord brings him a garment of a handsome kind and a ring and kills the fatted calf and has a party. And you come and say you never did that for me and I've been faithful all along why for them? They've been apostate and they blaspheme your name and every nation where you've driven them and even now their track record stinks and Israel is a daily and increasing embarrassment and it'll become more scandalous and worse before it will ever get better. Why for them? But don't you know that all that I have has always been yours, you didn't know it. You were not as accepted in the beloved as you needed to understand. You were insecure, jealous, envious, resentful, and fearful that maybe if they come back on the scene they will get all of God's glory and where will the church be then, who has been faithful all along. Don't think I didn't raise that question myself, because my destiny is not with a restored Israel, my destiny is with you as the church. I said “Lord is there enough glory to go around?” Israel is going to be a restored nation and you'll give her a new name and called her by a new name and she'll be a royal diadem in Your hand, and nations will come up and honor her and they will bring their substance and their riches and their wealth and bow at the feet of this nation. That is how so increasingly hated and despised. What's left for us? Well, we're getting glorified bodies and they only get the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Did you know that? They will be filled with the Spirit of God. What we have now as Charismatics and Pentecostals is only their down-payment, only the foretaste. What's the word that Paul uses? “A pledge”. Only a faint installment and we've built whole denominations on it. I've accused the full gospel businessman of robbing the Church of futurity. That's the way I talk, because you have taken something, given only as a down-payment and an earnest and made it the thing in itself. Forgetting that it points to the fulfillment and for whom it was intended, through the Prophet Joel, none other than Israel itself in that day. They will be filled with the Spirit gloriously; their sons and their daughters shall prophesy, their old men shall dream dreams. So what do we get? We get a glorified body, so that we can ascend and descend upon the Son of Man as we function in His theocratic rule establishing His kingdom from the heavenly place, while they function from the earthly place and the two in tandem and in agreements, “Thy kingdom come”. Is it not glorious? Wrapping it up Well class dismissed. Are you getting indigestion? Are you getting it? Ya so you understand about why Israel, why the holy hill of Zion it reveals God? Why the mercy of God reveals God? Israel's function is not to be celebrated in herself, but to reveal the glory of God as a God who will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy and they will desperately need it and listen to this they'll not get it except through you. That they'll only obtain mercy as you extend mercy. Paul says in Romans 11 and are you ever going to have opportunity before the age ends and sooner than you think. As Jews will come pouring through New Zealand in flight from persecution unto death in the relentless pursuit of them by the powers of darkness who want to annihilate them so as to remove the threat of the loss of their usurping false power over the nations. Well, my heart goes out to you, how can you contain all this? Don't panic go study. What did we read in Psalm 2, oh how the heathen rage, the nations and the kings and the rulers take thought against God against His Anointed and want to break their fetters apart but God has set Him on the holy hill of Zion. The kings and the rulers, what is the Lord being redundant? Is it like saying the kings and the kings or is there a difference between rulers and kings? It wasn't the kings that kept me up all last night, it was the rulers, the prevailing principalities and powers of the air that dwell over Wellington and its environs as the capital of the nation that they manipulate and jerk in an uncontested way. Knowing that this little Jewish rat is more a threat to them than a thousand Benny Hinn's or other names that I could name who have taken seven million dollars out of Australia in their recent quote times of ministry. We're hoping to take out $700. Keep Ben Israel in toilet paper. Do you think that this is not an insignificant and unrelated thing also. Personalities, their celebration, their prestige, the kind of finances that have to do with their ministries so-called and the numbers that run after them now. Where was I? The rulers kept me up last night kept me up. It's a wonder that I'm alive today. Crunched! Physically, mentally, harassed, unbelievable horrid erotic contemplations that should have waken a man in horror that is capable of them if we were if he were not already awake. Why such treatment? Why such opposition? My first thought I this morning was because we're near Wellington. The kings and the rulers take thought against the Lord and against His anointed, the kings are the visible earthly magistrates, but the rulers are the invisible spectral angelic fallen realm over the earth that occupy the heavenlies, not heaven the heavenlies. I remember coming to Singapore for the first time and speaking in a big church there were hundreds of Chinese believers and all around the church were the plaques commemorating the deaths of the missionaries who had come to them from England and America. Alice Jones arrived 1903 died 1905 malaria. Jack so-and-so arrived 1904 died 1907 malaria. I got back home and the Lord waked me in the middle of the night to go to the dictionary and look up malaria and I shouldn't have needed it. Now means “bad air”, “bad air”. A man who travels like me from nation-to-nation senses something in the air when you go from one nation to another. As we went from checker East Germany to Czechoslovakia in the old days just to go from West German to East Germany instantly brought another air another atmosphere because they were different prevailing rulers over them. Don't think that they're absent from New Zealand. Don't think that this Maori uprising that is such a vexation for the nation is being motivated through men and in men. It has its origin from below. So, we're in a great contest saints and the church's Gods calculated agency to both identify and defeat this false rulership. And why will Jews be fleeing through New Zealand? Thank you, Lord, for reminding me that I don't get off the track. Because they will be mercilessly pursued by the powers of darkness through unregenerate men who will not be satisfied with anything less than their annihilation. If you think Jew hatred can only be understood sociologically you've got another thing coming. The hatred of the Jew in the last analysis is the hatred of God and the Jew however alienated an apostate is still the physical symbolic representative of the God of Israel and the God of Jacob. As I had to tell the German audience just weeks ago in Germany. Whose God are you celebrating? I just came from a Jewish cemetery nearby with fourteenth century tombstones where the Hebrew has been effaced by the elements over that length of time but reminding me of the long tenure of Jews in Germany and I said “how come they lived that long in your midst and never understood that the God whom you are ostensibly celebrated as Christians is their God.” Do you yourself understand and have consciously and willfully embraced God not abstractly but as the God of Jacob the God of Israel the God of Abraham the God of the Jewish patriarchs it's not an appellation it's not a little tack on its God's intended designation that believers understand and know Him as their God or you don't know Him and don't communicate Him as Israel's God. These powers of darkness want to continue their uncontested sway over nations. Look at the field day they had in Germany. If they could take captive an entire nation and do with it what they did and make it an engine of systematic destruction for Jews and Gypsies and still reside over Germany waiting the next opportunity what chance have we. We've got to see the invisible realm where the issues are really joined and we need to defeat them in a spiritual warfare we wrestle not against flesh and blood but for God's sake do we wrestle. I was very alone last night although my brother was only 12 feet away and my light was on and off all through the night and I getting up to soak a washcloth with cold water to put on my forehead and eyes but he didn't wake. I was alone in my wretchedness. It's a “we” that needs to wrestle and if you're getting anything good out of me this morning is because we did wrestle this morning before coming. We wrestle. Wrestling as ultimate combat. How many guys have I beaten at the ping-pong table who more skillful than I? But not as tenacious wrestling. It is more than the issue of skill and strength it's the issue of will and grit. It's the ultimate issue of what we really are in our gut and God says we wrestle not play ping-pong well that can be warfare also. As the brother greeted us in Wellington that I defeated him at the table, he still remembers. We wrestle saints is ultimate combat more than just than the issues of our spiritual strength and our skill is the issue of our determination of our recognition of the seriousness of the thing to which we are called and there's only a we who can perform it. So long as we insist on being the conglomerate of the casual and islands of individuality living privateistic lifestyles and coming out of it for Sunday services in midweek Bible study there'll be no wrestling at all. Only a we can wrestle and we're not yet that way. I'm amazed at their faith of God he's put all his eggs in one basket the church, but the church in an apostolic sense and not an institutional one that pervades services for men. only a real church can identify the invisible spirit realm and the issues represented and meet it. only a real church can demonstrate the manifold wisdom of God and defeat them. Only a real church can take to its heart and bosom Jews fleeing in their midst for their life and succor them and provide for them refuge and reveal to them their God in their distress which is God's final strategy. Employing the fury of the evil one that seeks to annihilate them to uproot them from their places of security and affluence and put them in wilderness flight and He might reveal himself to them in the extremity of their condition through those who will befriend and sucker them in their identification with them no matter the peril to their own lives. That's the drama of the last days. Well that's as much as I can speak right now and as much as you can hear. We'll probably come back and develop some of these things. So, let's just pray that the God who has given us this beginning. He's thrown in everything including the kitchen sink, we'll also spell it out and illumine our understanding and transact with us and call us to a place that we have not sought in order that there might be a fulfillment of these things to his eternal praise and glory. If you're feeling faint hearted and your heart is beating a bit and there's a sense of peril about hearing more you probably should not come back for the other installments for God will require of you and it's about time we've been required of. You'll be eternally grateful that He did. Closing Prayer So, Lord thank you for this morning. Quite an introduction, quite a beginning, full of portents, sober, deep, raising great questions even as to what the church itself is and I'll call our eternal purposes so beyond any capacity in ourselves to perform. We're a bunch of sissies Lord and we're shy and private and we like to have it so, but we're asking grace to fill this man's mouth with your words that we can hear your heart, your understanding, your perspective that you'll speak to us as sons and daughters who can bear such words and are willing for them and will surrender totally to the God who speaks them that our government might be upon His shoulder before that of Israel and the nations. Lord bless these children whom you've assembled today give him a second wind give me my God an ability to continue and bring us back for the further unfolding of the thing that was historically intended for this day in a once-and-for-all way that shall not be given again and we will not be ashamed to say it was historic Art wasn't just talking out of his hat. Change us by it. Grant us the grace to rise up to it. May we experience a maturity even in the hearing of it and we bless you and thank you for the privilege of that high calling in Christ Jesus. Put your seal on this day, keep us from harm, keep the enemy at bay, let your blood be upon every and upon this building upon these grounds to preserve us my god from any malevolent intent of powers of darkness who would desire to obstruct into thro or worse let this day be blessed for New Zealand's sake let it be blessed for Israel's sake let it be blessed for your sake we thank you and give you the praise in Jesus name and God's people said amen.