In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of being prepared to preach the word of God. He reflects on the example of Moses and the depth of God's dealing with him during his time in the wilderness and leading the people. The speaker also mentions a personal experience where he was drained but was able to speak after a worshipful man sang. He highlights the need for patience and waiting for the full disclosure of God's message before passing judgment. The sermon also touches on the destructive nature of worldly ambitions and the consequences of playing games with people's lives.

Well, you see what I have here from two o'clock in the morning and come and just put it together on the spot as only you can and will and demonstrate to this people what prophetic obedience is and the tension in which the prophetic person lives and serves always a dependency and a casting himself upon God in the moment, never a complete sense or confidence that we have it all nailed down and know where to go and what to say, always something tremulous, uncertain in which you are our dependency, our high tower, our trust, our confidence. So we bless you Lord that not only will you verbally set forth your thoughts but demonstrate them. In fact, that is the very function of the prophet. He is the thing in himself. He is the demonstration as well as the propagator of the word. What he is in himself is what you're calling the church to be. That's why he's the foundation. So it's no small thing my God. In fact, it's a Holy Ghost masterpiece and you take your sweet old time about it too. It's not an overnight quickie. It's a process over time and through experience and all of the things through which such men are sifted and formed, shaped, meeting in the context of the church as the church even for their own formation and even ultimately for the ascending. So we bless you Lord and we love to call upon you as the Alpha and the Omega. You're the one who knows how to begin. To begin is excruciatingly painful. You don't know how to begin. What first thing would you know Lord? You know why you know the first thing? Because you know the last thing. There needs to be a congruence between what begins and what ends and only you know the end from the beginning. So give us the beginning Lord appropriate to the end. Not only these immediate days but to the end of the end of all of our days. We thank you and give you praise for the privilege. In Jesus name and God's people said Amen. Well a brother has suggested that the article from which we read last night ought to be in our website. Good idea, I hadn't thought of it. Of course it's not our article. We can ask the author if you wouldn't mind but I think it would be a blessing for many. And then he said the books that you were quoting and citing need to be listed also. So we hope to do that as we go along and acquaint you with some of the sources that we employ and enjoy. Here's something that has recently come into my hand from an Indian woman from Canada. A little daily devotional reading using the prophets. Do you know the name Eugene Peterson? Yes. Who has paraphrased the Bible in idiomatic current American English. It's a very fresh work. Also has a little devotional book called Praying with the Prophets and this is very much like it. Here's today's selection from Amos from a verse in chapter 8. Hear this you who trampled the needy and do away with the poor of the land. Because invariably the prophets are always citing Israel's moral failure in the areas of social neglect and injustice for which reason they're often misunderstood as if they are social reformers. They're not pointing to failures in society as being the thing in itself but the symptom of the much greater failure which is the failure of right relationship with God which will always manifest itself as injustice to men. Are you taking notes? You got that one? Wow, nice statement. So he writes in these piercing words and the prophetic word is always a piercing word. Amos exposes the thoughts of the people as they gather in the temple on the Sabbath which is today by the way. They are singing the hymns and saying the prayers but in their hearts they can't wait to get back to the business of making money. Though they are entering into the ritualism of the worship they are anxious to return to the marketplace where they can get a buzz by exploiting others. That's an interesting statement that exploitation is not just an issue of economic greed but of psychic satisfaction. Only a prophet would see that because if you only deal with it at the level of economics you're not really yet dealing with the root of it. The root of greed is more than just accumulating wealth but getting a buzz. A kind of satisfaction which is the alternative to the gratification that should be obtained only and exclusively through God. The prophet sees right through the appearance of things to the truth of the condition in its deeps. That's why his word has got to be piercing. It's not just an issue of social justice. Now why don't you guys shape up and clean up your act? Why don't you act better toward your underprivileged kinsmen and not exploit them? That would not be propheticness. That would be a parody. That would be a popularization of the prophet. The prophet pierces through to the deeps and the truth of the situation of which the social condition is only the manifestation. But it's interesting how Jews like to talk of the prophets of that way and even then throw in Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud as being Jewish prophets. They don't understand the genius of propheticness itself and it would be a caricature to say that the prophets are only campaigners for social justice. The green dealers used false weights so they could overcharge their customers and the result was that the poor were having to sell themselves as slaves in order to live or to pay their debts. What would Amos make of Christians in the West whose goal is to maintain their standard of living and have a good life, which I think is the unspoken premise in our world, in our society and even commended as being the highest statement of faith is one's prosperity. What would the prophet have to say about believers who go to church on Sunday, apparently enter into everything that is going on, but deep down are longing to get back to the office on Monday to do another deal. And what would he say about those believers who celebrate feast days but bemoan the bank holidays because they can't occupy their minds with what they enjoy most, checking on the price of their shares. This guy's insightful himself. And if you'll forgive one more speculation, but I don't want to leave that, what they enjoy most, checking on the price of their shares. Do you ever get a sense that the world is a kind of gamesmanship, there's a play acting that is just older men playing with more expensive toys and the whole thing of stock market or even military expenditures and military build up and politics running for office is a remarkable gamesmanship and it's unbecoming to those that are made in God's image and that the whole thing is false and has to do with the kind of childish thing that kids enjoy, but what is played out at an adult level, it becomes tragic and has consequence. Would there have been World War I, of which World War II was a continuation and World War III is likely to be a consummation, if there were not Caesar's chancellors, what do they call them, Kaisers playing with tin soldiers on big tables like this and planning out strategies and building up navies and competition with Great Britain and France as to national supremacy as if it were some kind of a game. But when the game starts to get played, it goes from tin soldiers to flesh and blood men. How many potential Beethoven's and Karl Barth's and philosophers and geniuses of kinds that God has birthed to enrich mankind had their lives wiped out on a three or four kilometer piece of ground called no man's land in World War I for which today you can visit in Verdun the Ossiery, that is to say the place where the bones are kept. It's larger than a football stadium. The bones of an entire generation wiped out on a little piece of turf called no man's land for a war that had its origin in the ambition of men playing with tin soldiers and loving the grandeur of the battlefield and having Napoleonic revelry and a games playing mentality. That's the world, that's the lie, that's what Satan loves. He loves destruction, chaos and devastation and he will egg men on to play their games knowing what the consequence will be. What about those men that blow up in tanks and their flesh is impaled on the steel bulkhead of that coffin on treads? I'm not trying to be grotesque or bizarre, but we need to know that what starts us off is not the end of the world. The end of the world as a game ends in terrible devastation. Not only the death of men who might have enriched mankind, but their progeny. They shall never have children and their children that would have come will not themselves have children. There's a bloodletting and it's an attack against God, against what is creative, what is life-giving in war that has to do with economics, that has to do with politics, that has to do with power. That has to do with ambition, that has to do with men play-acting. Their game needs to be revealed. A whistle needs to be blown to bring it to a halt and the function of the prophet is to do that. Of course that's not going to make him popular. Men don't want their games interrupted or even brought into criticism. If you'll forgive one more speculation, what would he say about those church leaders who make their feelings known when it comes to sexual morals but stay silent on the rampant consumerism and materialism which is blithely assumed to be a sign of God's blessing? What was I reading? At least a third of this nation is obese and that it afflicts children. Teenagers are already grossly overweight in fast foods, in snack foods, in stuffing their mouths with all the kinds of things that will inflate their bodies. If you knew the figures of sales for Fritos and the makers of those snack foods, your head would spin. We're not talking about millions, we are talking about billions. We have a whole economy predicated on profit that does not give any regard to the consequence that comes to its victims in their bodies, in their minds and in their souls. So how we need in the contemporary Christian church more straight-talking prophets and fewer smooth-tongued preachers. For when there is a fog in the pulpit, there will inevitably be a mist in the pews. Praise the Lord for this man who sees so acutely and writes so well. As the priest, so also the people. Yes, we need more straight-talking prophets, but where are the congregations or the pastors who will admit straight-talking prophets onto their platforms and into their pulpits? That is probably one of the critical problems of our time, is that nothing is held with greater suspicion and reserve than the admission of prophetic men onto the platforms of successful churches. So here's how we're going to end, or what we're going to consider in these days, after we have a little preliminary assessment of what is prophetic, is to take my most recent speaking engagement before these days have commenced and critique it. Because it ended with being beaten on my chest by the founder of the conference, who is an internationally recognized author and has been a blessing to me and to our own fellowship, meeting me outside the building and striking me on the chest with his Bibles and books in like a fit of rage and anger that is totally out of keeping with the quiet, demure, makeup of that man, he was totally out of character, he was pushed to a place of great provocation by me and hitting me with his Bibles, cried out, you and your Jewish flesh and your Jewish pride, I'm giving you the end and later on I'll give you the beginning. I might just review the three messages that I gave, their culmination and the invitation to the congregation, to which this same brother came up on the platform and took the microphone and nullified or negated my invitation. And because I'm hard of hearing and was several steps back from him, I knew that he was taking issue with what was being said, I did not know he was nullifying the invitation and as the Lord would have it, the first words that I spoke when I got the microphone back was, the invitation is still valid. So he, not knowing that I was speaking out of an ignorance of what he said, thought it was an act of defiance but that he would think that it's an act of Jewish defiance is a remarkable revelation in itself because the whole tenure of what I had to say to the church was the issue of the Jew and of Israel and our failure to be rightly related to them. So it would be a remarkable exercise for us to review the entire experience as being an episode of a prophetic kind containing all the constituent elements of prophetic discernment, prophetic obedience, prophetic proclamation, prophetic consequence, prophetic rejection. It's all there and it would be a very rich thing. The thought has come to me that we would profit greatly to examine that with a right spirit. So let's see if the Lord will give us that liberty, but just to let you know what I think the Lord may want included in these days. And while it's yet fresh, and while I'm at a place to speak of it, because my memory will soon fail me, but I think the Lord will give me the opportunity to speak of it in a way that is not only prophetic, but also prophetic in the sense that it's a prophetic discernment, prophetic proclamation, prophetic obedience, prophetic proclamation, prophetic consequence, prophetic rejection. And while that may fade and other newer things will crowd it out, it might be very profitable for us to examine. On top of that, I'm already receiving emails and a few letters of people who were there. And so you can hear the comment of those who felt disposed to write me who observed this thing and factor in their comments on what was taking place. I wrote some notes and here it is. Prophecy in Israel, a series of articles on the prophetic phenomenon. And I made a note to myself for our present class school to dissect, critique, and evaluate this propheticness. Use the recent experience as a model of prophetic reality and requirement. Review the text. Get the sense of the messages that were actually spoken. What does it reveal about the genius of propheticness? When I say genius, and it's a word I use often, I'm not talking about high IQ. Genius means the essential nature and makeup of a given thing. What does obedience mean? What constitutes obedience? Inspiration, authority, consequence, character, intercession, and prayer. Responsibility before God for what takes place. Where do you get that word? And where do you have the audacity to speak it? Are remarkable questions. Knowing that you're accountable to God for what issues from you and yet obliged to speak. And never with a complete confidence that you have the mind of the Lord and that even if you have it in substance, can it be contradicted by something that issues from you? That is a lapse and goes back into your own humanity or your own flesh. So there's a remarkable tension of prophetic obedience knowing that even when you think yourself obedient and you have prayed and there's always the tension of the prospect of failure, of missing the mind of the Lord entirely. Because that's the accusation and the indictment that you're likely to hear. In fact, after the first message, I was brought aside for the leaders of that conference and critiqued or interrogated by them and accused after only one message of lacking anointing, of needing a deeper circumcision of the heart, and a deeper brokenness. That was just from the first message. How do you go on after that? And if you're not in a place of brokenness and the speaking of the first message, will you be in it with the speaking of the second or the third? So it's not what you speak in that moment that's the issue, but all the moments that have preceded that moment. If you've not been under the hand of the Lord in dealings and the breakings of God prior to the meetings, will you obtain it at the meeting? But that you could be accused of that or charged with that is not only a statement of your own deficiency, but of the mentality of the men who are charging you. And when you'll hear the first message, you'll have opportunity to discern whether the word itself was wanting or the word itself was of a kind so offensive to men that they received it as lacking anointing. And then it raises the question of what is anointing? And does it always take the same form? Is it necessarily riveting or electric? Could it be that God's anointing is yet present even in a quiet and calm presentation, which in fact the first message was? What I'm suggesting or willing to submit is that because of their objection to the content, that they expressed it as the wanting of anointing. But the content itself was the point of offense. I had just come from Spokane, Washington on my way up to Canada with an overnight stay, and as my disposition is, I asked, is there a synagogue locally? I'm always looking for the Jew. And yes there is. So the lady at whose home we stayed drove us up there and she drives into the parking lot and around the building and she's ready to leave. She wants to show us the architecture. I said, why don't we go in? That hadn't occurred to her to actually go in. So we went in and we came out two hours later. And what an experience it was. The rabbi was absent, but the secretary was there, Janice, you can pray for her, who is now reading Ben Israel. I left a copy of the Holocaust book for the rabbi. You can pray for him also. Rabbi Isaacson. Because my last word to her before departing was, I'd like to leave you a copy of my book of my encounter with God as a Jewish atheist. Oh, she said, I'd love to read that. I said, okay. She'll need to be prayed for. But while we were there, the architecture and the decoration inside was resplendent. It was aesthetically powerful. I mean, stained glass windows of a kind you don't find in churches. Real precious art and the sanctuary and the Torah where the Torah is kept was all engraved. There were actually copper panels on the doors and entry into this sanctuary. It was remarkably impressive. That makes churches as we understand them to be eclipsed in aesthetic beauty with a real spiritual sense. Of course, they've got everything going for them. Hebrew language, liturgy, the Torah, handwritten on parchment. Some of them have come from Europe and they'll have three or four behind that panel. And then we walked through the hallways and the hallways were full of photographs of the history of the congregation going back to the late 19th century and the Hadassah women's group meeting for a luncheon in 1906 or whatever it was of 21 or the class with the rabbi of the candidates for Bar Mitzvah. And the Purim party, the Feast of Esther, they wear costumes. You just walk through the halls and you get such a sense of their history, of their life, of their community that moves you to jealousy as a Christian. That would to God we would have an equivalent reality in our own life. And so I came to Canada still resonating that visit. And that visit was timed of God because the experience of the prophetic man is totally orchestrated by God. It has nothing to do with happenstance. We weren't even scheduled to be overnight in Spokane. I had learned that this lady who had once been with us in a tour to Israel so many years ago, I had hardly forgotten what she looked like, but we were reminded about her as we passed through the state of Washington and people knowing that we would have to go through Spokane to get to our destination mentioned her name and we called and she was willing to have us. So even the events of the day and of the life are orchestrated of God in view of what he knows will affect the disposition of the man and the word that will be proclaimed. Do you see life like that? Or do you just think your days are days? Mirror things that take place without prophetic significance. We need to esteem our days and to see in them the hand of the Lord orchestrating, shaping, molding, affecting, giving a certain disposition of heart and spirit because it's not only a word that needs to be proclaimed, but a word spoken with a certain disposition of heart and spirit very much affected by what touched me in that synagogue. In fact, my part of the message as you'll hear it was that all of us as Christians need so to be touched and if we're not touched there, how shall we be touched anywhere? If we have not a disposition for pathos and we have yet to define that word, to what will we then be sympathetic and empathetic and be disposed in a way that saves us from being tin horns? Because the prophet whose word is piercing is not piercing because he's loud, it's piercing because it's true, but it's spoken out of a compassion and empathy for those whom he is addressing or else it'll be a dull, blunt word. It'll be a machete rather than the sword of the Lord. So the disposition of our souls, our emotion and frame of mind is as critical perhaps as the word itself that we bear and the Lord himself is continually molding and forming and affecting that mood and often you'll find the mood that the Lord has affected is different from what that which your congregation is enjoying. In fact, you're the only one in the one mood and all the others are in quite another and you have to insist that your mood is God's. That's why we are often jarred and in conflict with worship teams who seem to be totally out of it, totally unaware of what the mood of the Lord is and the kind of word that is to issue from it because they're off at another thing with a series of choruses that are full of razzles. And getting the atmosphere livened up and not at all in keeping with what is to come. In fact, often if this has not been your experience, the worship will rob you of life. The so-called worship is so innovating and so contrary to both the mood and the word that is welling up to be spoken that when it's time to speak, you're depleted. And that, in fact, was my experience in those days when it came to the third and final message, which was the payoff, the clincher of make it or break it in this controversial atmosphere that had already been established from the first speaking. I prayed that the worship leader would not come up on the platform, that I would not have to bear hearing another medley of his selections in which there was nothing musically to be criticized, but something about the man, something about the way in which it issues from him that was painful for me to hear. And I was depleted by the brother who preceded me in the speaking, who was the host of the entire conference and took almost two hours to speak a kind of summary of all of the things that were dear to him over the years and are dear. Precious points of truth about the Lord, about the scripture, about the church, and with every word of truth, there's an appropriate anointing, a kind of a high, and yet, strangely, I myself was depleted by that speaking. I was drained. But praise God that a brother who had come from California, from Arizona, who was a worshipful man with his guitar, I invited up to the platform, and he sang two selections, and after that I was able to speak. So, all of this needs to be factored in, because these elements are profoundly present in all of the encounters that we will be experiencing. So, what preparation to bear the word in situations of that kind, which I think as the age goes on, will become yet more controversial, yet more critical, yet more opposed. There'll be yet more clashes, there'll be yet more, what's the word, confrontations and accusations. Wouldn't it be a remarkable paradox that the moments of greatest prophetic obedience are the moments of greatest offense to those who hear them, and give rise to the greatest indictment about your anointing, about your faithfulness, about your obedience, about your person, and that we need to expect that and bear that? And that's what makes the word an event. It's not just a message, it's an event. It's an event for those who receive it, and it's an event for those who reject it. In fact, the rejection itself is likely to be costly, because what did we say in the prayer time in the last remarks? The last expression of God's grace for apostasy before judgment falls is the sending of the prophetic word. And it's not only the word that is rejected, it's the man who bears the word. The way in which the word is rejected is by rejecting the man. Finding fault with the man, with the messenger, so that you are justified in rejecting of him and rejecting the word. So your own person comes up for grabs. You're not some antiseptic conveyor of a word. What you are in yourself is totally one with the word itself. And if the word suffers rejection, you will suffer rejection. Can you bear that? If you can't bear that, you're not likely to be obedient to bring a word that will occasion that rejection. So all of us want to be approved, especially with those whom we love and whom we have known over a length of years, as was true in this case with this brother. So there's a remarkable tension when there's a tear between personal affection and obedience to God. To whom and to what will you defer in the critical moment is the issue of your prophetic character out of a school of obedience, knowing that it will not be understood and that it will be looked upon scandalously as being, I'm trying to find the word, arrogance, that's the word. Cats, your Jewish pride, your Jewish flesh, well that's the way it will appear. And maybe it will take the day of eternity to reveal the truth of that situation. And I'm not saying that my perspective is that truth, but it's worth putting out for us to examine and I'm willing to be corrected where in fact I may well have missed it. Because the possibility of having missed it is always with us in every situation. And that's the tension that we have to bear on every occasion. You're called to speak, the moment has come, you're on the spot, so there's no question. And you know it of course in your own prayer, in your own preparation, I mean where did that word come from? You've been looking to the Lord because you have a prophetic fancy that this is a once and for all time that will not be given again. That the stakes are enormous, not only for the immediate congregation before you, but the word that will go out through the taping of that or the publication of that word will have a circulation to the church at large. So the heightened moment is enormous. This is not an exaggeration where you're pumping yourself up to think that you are so significant that this word is just the nature of the thing. It doesn't exalt you, it humbles you. If this is more than just the immediate congregation and it's an issue of the word on time for the church, is it that word? Where did you find it? How did you obtain it? How did the invitation come? How was the occasion itself given? There's a remarkable heightened sense of significance which is common to both prophets and apostles who look upon every act as being an act of ultimate consequence. And that's the way in which the church itself should perceive its own life. That every act, every obedience, every coming together like these very days, a Sunday service, a Bible study, there's no such thing as ordinary or routine, but everything is heightened because of the enormous significance in perceiving that reality as once and for all not to be given again and the effect of it. And that's why Paul says frequently, who is sufficient for these things? The fact that we don't say it indicates that we have not prophetic seeing. We have not an apostolic and prophetic consciousness and mindset that sees the enormous significance of all of our days and of our acts. So that needs to be restored to the church because to see life like that is really to see. That's what makes life significant and it's for the want of significance that men are dying and finding spurious alternatives that will crunch them and kill them. God has made us for significance and our failure in the church is to see it for ourselves. How shall we communicate it to the world? So true prophetic and apostolic men and a church of that kind sees everything in that heightened way. It's not an exaggeration because that's the way that God sees it. And those who have heard this before from me, it's worth repeating. Reading on an airplane one day, time loose, we've got to figure out what magazine, an article on economics where the economist, the secular worldly man says, we have come to a point in the world where anything that happens anywhere affects everything everywhere. He was speaking about economics. I thought, wow. I don't know if I had my seatbelt on, I would have gone right through the feet. If a secular worldly man sees that about the world and economics, how ought we to see the reality of the spiritual world? If anything that happens anywhere in Timbuktu or La Porte, Minnesota affects everything everywhere. Even if that were not so, it would do us well to believe that it's so. Because that means then the deepest kind of prayer, intercession, preparation, attention to our character and our life, the willingness to be exhorted, rebuked, corrected, because we know that what issues from us is so critical. Are you following me? Okay. Let's look at Deuteronomy 13. That Israel not be sucked into that vortex and be corrupted by it, and that God's alternative to diviners and men who traffic in dark spirits is prophetic truth, the prophetic word. So from verse 29 of Deuteronomy 12, And the Lord thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in the land, take heed to thyself, that thou be not snared, and follow them, after that they be destroyed from before thee, and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? Even so will I do likewise. Because the serving of their gods was the issue of fertility, fruitfulness, productivity from the soil, the increase of their livestock. They bowed to the gods of fertility. And one of the great idols was the Asher blot, which is the symbol or the picture of a penis, the object of fertility, and the goddesses, the whole sexual knit of pagan practice is the appeal to the gods of fertility to bless their fields of blood and bless their livestock, that they might prosper. By condescending to these gods with fear, and to placate them, and listening very much to their fortune tellers and diviners, so as not to offend these gods, so as to enjoy the blessing of fruitfulness. That's the context into which Israel is brought, and it's a powerful temptation. God is saying, even though you have physically judged them, you've been the rod of my judgment, don't take up their practice, you'll be very much tempted to do so, and worship false gods. Later on we read, a false prophet is one who induces you to turn from the God of Israel to other gods, to false gods. And by the way, that can be done even with the name of Jesus. In fact, that may be the most subtle form of idolatry and false gods, when we are induced to some deity that is coined out of the imagination of a man, or out of his soul, and out of his ambition, and is labeled with the name Jesus. The unwary and the undiscerning can be sucked into another god, though it bears that name. So thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God, for every abomination to the Lord which he hates have they done unto their gods, for even their sons and their daughters they have burned in the fire to their gods. One of the great later judgments of Israel is going into temple prostitutes and activating again Canaanite pagan practice and worship that employs temple prostitutes, both male and female. That Israelites were doing so was a great offense to God and brought down judgments of an ultimate kind, after they had been warned by the prophets against it. So what thing soever I command you, in verse 32, observe to do, thou shalt not add to, thereto, nor diminish from it. And then chapter 13, of course, is a continuation. We know that other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them, thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God proves you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Let's just pause there and ponder this timeless admonition. It's remarkable that God will even allow false prophets to promote false gods so as to test the people of God as to whether or not they love the Lord their God with all their heart and all their soul. And if that was true then, is it true now? It doesn't mean that they are apparently false. It means that they seem to have all the marvels, all the cards. They're making accurate prediction in many cases, and it's accompanied by signs and wonders. So if you want to be easily impressed, there it is. But the object of their conduct is to move Israel from the worship of its own God to that of false deities. And it may well be that the false prophet does not even know that he's false and does not even know that that is the consequence of his influence. And that makes the issue yet more complicated. It's not good guys and bad guys. It's guys who don't even know what they are affecting. And if that was true then, it raises the question, is it equally true now? And are there men who purport to be prophets, think themselves so, are applauded as such, are speaking in compelling ways, even making predictions that give every impression of fulfillment and indeed perhaps may be fulfilled, because there are certain things that you can predict without being a prophet. As for example, the collapse of the American economy, or a Middle East war, or the rise of Islam. You don't have to be a prophet. Commentators in the world have more acute observation and understanding of those things often than the church. So the fact that one can recite that is not an authorization of his prophetic credential. But that God will allow the entire phenomenon to test his people, to see whether they will be attracted and run after such, is a remarkable provision from God. How does loving the Lord with all your heart and all your soul constitute a provision against being influenced or seduced by false prophets? That's what the text implies. I'm giving you this test to see whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul. Because if you don't, you'll be drawn off and be attracted to follow after those that are false, who are saying ostensibly the right thing, but the ultimate end of it is to be drawn away from the God who is God to a God who is not. Answer me that. I've never before considered this text. I've never before gone so far back in the origin of the prophetic call as God's provision against Canaanite-ish false influences as I'm doing now. This is what I got from getting up at midnight to shut the windows from the rain coming in and then finding myself awake and alert and looking at certain things which we are now sharing. So I'm asking the question not to tease you, but because I myself don't know. Look at that here. Thou shalt not hearken unto the words in verse 3 of chapter 13 of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God proves you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice. You shall serve him and cleave unto him. That raises the whole question of why a false God would even be desirable when there's access and availability to the God who is true. What is it about false gods that could be a seductive draw even to the people of Israel? A false God serves the interest of man and a true God requires the service of himself. A false God is for man's own bidding. To make a name for oneself and to gratify oneself is to create a deity that placates and serves your ends. Make a name for yourself and serve yourself, but the true God requires the service to him. Remember the cry of Moses to the Pharaoh, let my people go that they might serve me. Worship is service. It's not a mere acknowledgement of a deity in a respectful way. It's the totality of one's life for another who is God and deserves the full total recognition and submission of what he has created unto himself. False gods are for the purposes of man. The true God is for his own purpose. So men will create deities that serve their purpose. Can you do that with Jesus or that word and make of him an errand boy serving your purpose and bringing your security and seeing to your marriage, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your health? So much of our present day, even best charismatic Christianity is the inventing or the creating of a false God to whom we have given the name Jesus and think that we're doing God's service. So the root of this needs to be identified. That's why we're going back to the Sargent. Thinking of the indictment against Israel, you thought I was such a one as yourself. You put me in your box. You made me in your image so that I would be negotiable and handlable to your ends, but I'm completely upset. And yet, ironically, the people whose history that is, take the greatest offense of what they call the Christian doctrine of human depravity. They refuse to see it, though their own history explicates and demonstrates just how ubiquitous the human heart is. Having the advantage that they have had at Sinai, the opening of the Red Sea, the various other extensions of God on their behalf, and then quickly to fall into an idolatry of this kind is such a statement of that depravity. And are we required now, all these thousands of years later, to recognize that as being our sin? Though we were born so much after that time, is the anatomy of that sin still working? And is that corruption still present? And will it ever continue to be until we acknowledge the truth of it as being our condition and repent of it? That the sins of the fathers are our sins. And though we're not building a golden calf, per se, we're doing the work of our hands and worshiping it. And so that's the whole issue that needs to be set before the people of Israel. But where is the prophet that will come to them to bring that charge and that indictment? Not with a heavy-handed blunt machete, but with a piercing word that is made sharp and penetrating out of the pathos of identification and heartfelt sorrow and anguish for that people. See what I mean? There's not a church that has come of age yet to be to Israel when it must. Can I even raise the question of whether we have made an idolatry of our Christianity to the point that has alienated us from Torah and from Israel and from our origins and from our roots, so that we cannot be to them. We ourselves are caught up with our own idolatrous worship and practice. So, to show how severe God takes this to be, we need just to add now the consequence for the prophet of the dreamer in verse 5, who is leading God's people away from himself, shall be put to death, because they have spoken, to turn you away from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of bondage. Always a reminder of God's remarkable mercy and grace to this people, who thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in, so shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee. So, the answer of God is death to the false prophet, because the threat that comes to the entire believing community by his allurement and by his amusement. So, I'm not saying that this is a present day prescription of God, but to say how God sees the significance of what is false, that it's appropriate penalty is death, because if it's allowed to go on, it will bring death to the whole of Israel, and therefore God's judgment is incisive. Are we at a break time? In a conversation with a brother who came up about those that are propagating a false Christ, and they themselves don't even know it, I said it underlines the issue of the true prophetic thing all the more, that people who have been deceived and taken in, when the prophetic thing comes that is true, both in word and in person, is a cry. So that in those days in Canada, in that very first message for which I was later condemned as needing anointing and deeper circumcision of the heart, while I was yet speaking, or at the very end, a woman cries out, I have been ripped off. I have been ripped off. She just cried. So, like, wow, where has this been all my life? I have been kept from this kind of reality. I've been ripped off. And her husband turned across, then in my seat, having come off the platform, you can't leave us like this. You can't open that up and give us this beginning and not fill it out. I'm paraphrasing. That was the gist of what he was saying. But that's the kind of spontaneous cry that comes when a moment of truth has come, by the bringer of truth, not only in his word, but what he is in his own person. If he's not that in his own person, neither can it be the word. That's what the prophetic thing is. So, may the Lord raise that up. So, I want to turn to God's answer to diviners and false prophets and those that dabble in occultic and mystical things and have signs and wonders and the things that seem to authenticate them and lead people away from the true God. And that's continuing in Deuteronomy, but now chapter 18, in verse 9, I like the word abomination. Not that it's an attractive word, but it shows the depth of God's heart, of his antipathy. It's not that he dislikes it, or it's a questionable thing. It's an abomination. When I was in the Lutheran seminary in a discussion on homosexuality, some years ago, and I said, God considers that practice an abomination, and going all the way back to Deuteronomy or Leviticus or where God states that, the president of the seminary shouted out, who is that man who said that, who has not kept up with the most modern psychological findings, that even if Paul knew them, he would have altered his condemnation. My statement was, the God who counted that abomination then, counts it an abomination now, yesterday, today and forever. But what was the abomination? Abomination was the homosexuality. So, it's not a word that we find often in our conversation, but I'm encouraging us that it ought to have a place. To hate what God hates, and to understand the depth of his hatred as abomination, and that it justifies the severity of death to the false prophet. Our divorce from the Old Testament has robbed us of a dimension of God in his severity and in his righteousness and in his holiness that actually makes way to receive the shallow substitutes that have been conveyed to us in our generation. We are paying a terrible price for the separation from Old Testament texts that convey a sense of God that is only to be found there in the use of the word abomination, hatred, death. That's even an embarrassment for modern day Christians and we are the victims of a generation that have come to their church services with their New Testament as if the Old Testament is passe and there's nothing to be learned from it. I'm saying, not only is there something, but something absolutely critical to be learned from it. A sense of God as he has conveyed himself from the beginning to his ancient people that if we lose our connection with that people and we lose our connection with their book and the God of that book, we have lost an irretrievable treasure. That part of our prophetic function is to recover that loss. I think it's one of God's greatest provisions to keep us from creating a God in our own image is to be corrected by what God has said of himself and how he has said it. And that kind of statement is to be found most profoundly in Old Testament scripture. So I'm just repeating myself and I'm instructing myself by my own words. And now you'll understand why I believe that the Lord is calling me to New York but in New York to the Orthodox Church that have this kind of heart and this kind of tradition to learn from them what they have so jealously guarded over the ages and still cherish and treasure. That's a dimension lost to us. I think the Lord wants it to be communicated to me that I might in turn communicate it to the church as a midway man between the Jewish people and the church that had been too long in separation one from the other. In fact, if you'll remind me I thought to bring it this morning but seeing that I overslept I was going to bring you the letter that I'm writing to the Orthodox Jewish community to ask if they would consider having a man like me under their oversight and in their tutelage that I might receive from them instruction. And though I'm telling them I'm an unabashed man of conviction and the Lord, Jesus I'm not forsaking that in any way but I'm not going to in any way employ that if you'll take me in to use it in a way to turn people to my conviction. I'll give you that promise but don't disparage my Lord either. Can we do this? This is totally unprecedented and little thing that I am could this be a first step in God's new thought toward the Christian and Jewish communities and that will you have the grace to put that before God in prayer and since if you witness it and have me it's an unprecedented thing. So it's really a day of new beginnings of finding my own roots in those who have jealously guarded it and whom we disparage as not having the spirit and of course they're outside of Christ and therefore the spirit of God but their knowledge, tradition jealousy have safeguarded something that is a treasure that needs now to come into the church itself and to break up the separation between these communities. As you'll hear my letter I say to them the growing antisemitism in the world that has exploded all over the world needs to encourage the believing communities who still believe in God as God to find a common ground and it's in hope of that that I want to be instructed by you. There's no question about the Jesus that Paul brought but where are the Pauls who are bringing that Jesus now? The entire Jewish community I think I can safely say have never heard such a proclamation coming from a sent one and maybe that's the issue of our hour for the church for how shall they believe in him of whom they have not ever rightly heard and how shall they hear how shall they believe except they hear how shall they hear except one preach how shall one preach except one be sent they have never heard a word proclaimed by a sent one into their midst under apostolic anointing and authority to convey the Jesus who is Jesus so I don't think that we can make an application from the past of the rejection of Jesus in his time and say that that still stands now for those who have never been in any way had that Jesus set before them so it heightens the whole issue of apostolic and prophetic men and the use of them in this generation and I think that the constituent elements of the prophet are set forth through Moses in the text that's before us now in chapter 18 where Israel is exhorted not to learn after the abomination of the nations verse 10 there shall not be found among you anyone that makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire that uses divination or an observer of times or an enchanter or a witch or a charmer a consulter with familiar spirits a wizard or a necromancer for all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God for these nations which thou shalt possess hearken unto observers of times and unto diviners but as for thee the Lord thy God hath not so for thee so to do it looks like the final indictment of the Canaanite peoples was their giving themselves to these practices and it's the last statement of man's rebellion against God in the invoking of false gods through such practices Israel's coming is God's judgment on that and yet the caution is don't in any way learn from them or adopt any of those practices what's the safeguard? The Lord thy God will raise up from among thee like as unto myself a prophet God's answer for Israel to be kept from false allurement is the prophet who is not a diviner but a revealer and the revelation comes by the spirit of God so there's a whole radical shift in how to find the consolation, direction and leadership of very God in the land where you have not been heretofore by the advent of a prophet out from the midst of thee as unto me your brethren it's not a new statement of what will come but will finally be the consolation of the coming of Jesus himself, wouldn't it be a remarkable thing to speak to Jews and say you know what Moses said that was fulfilled in the one whose name you have learned to despise of course the Lord's indictment is against those who dream dreams and those who have words that are not given by God but are their own I never sent them and I never gave them my words because the prophet that God will raise up will not speak his own words but the words that I will give him and put in his mouth so the presumption of a false prophet is to speak words and attribute them to God but the source is himself does not originate from God so however even if it's a well meaning this will be something odd for this year if that has not been occasioned by God by the spirit it's just a lucky guess or someone acting out of their humanity and well meaning intention that's why we need always to be fearful or jealous about the propensity of our own flesh and our own humanity not when it's carnal but when it's good when it's well meaning could as much be the auspices of error as carnal intent in fact I would say probably that's the greatest danger is to think of a seeming spirituality that arises not out of the spirit of God through death resurrection because there's always the cross prophetic obedience is always a death you actually feel it and know it and experience it even last night to begin was for me a death you may not have observed it in fact it's not externally visible but for the man who's on the spot who's got to open his mouth and to begin and who knows that the consequences are beyond all estimation that is like a dying afresh and the same thing stepping up on that platform in Canada to begin by speaking of things that bridge the distance between the church and the Jews and as you'll hear when I recite the heart of that first message was as I went into the synagogue in Spokane why don't you go into your own synagogue what about the synagogue of your locality what actual contact do you have with Jews of your own locality who are in a sense your brethren and by the way one of the indictments against me in that first interrogation when I was brought into a room and had to face these leaders with their charges is how dare you say that Jews are our brethren if they're not yet saved I said well Jesus speaks of them as his brethren in Matthew 25 the least of these my brethren before they're saved and if he considers them his brethren in their unsafe condition how ought we to consider them will God be offended if we looked upon our Jewish brethren as kinsmen though not yet in the place of faith and in fact until we look upon them in that way and treat them in that way can they even hear our word so the issue is the church and God is sounding a new thing and when it came forth the remarkable thing was how greatly it was resisted and how it unmasked and revealed the depths of anti Jewish transigence in the Gentile believing heart not of just ordinary believers but men of the most celebrated stature in the body of Christ who think themselves to be on the very cutting edge of God and yet when this thing was touched something came up that was horrific to observe I had the audacity to say in those days that the issue of the recognition of the Jew and his centrality in the purposes of God and our identification with him in the mystery of God is the very nub and key and matter of apostolicity itself to miss that is to miss the prospect of being apostolic it's at the heart of it it was at the heart of it for Paul it needs to be at the heart of it for the church so we'll come back to that again let's look at the pattern of the prophet whom God will raise up not just as a fore view of the Jesus to come but as the paradigm and the model of all propheticness that unless he be a resurrected man who has been raised up out of a death to his own humanity how can he be one in whom God's word will be placed so this language is so suggestive I don't think that I'm taking liberties here this is not being mystical or romantic the very language that the way in which the statement begins the Lord thy God will raise up unto thee Paul said I am beside myself for their sake and for your sake it's a prophet raised up unto thee not unto him it's not unto Joe Blow Ministries International Limited it's unto thee he's raised up out of death not for his own self aggrandizement or the his reputation name or fortune but unto thee I will raise up unto thee a prophet the prophet has no purpose in himself no nothing to seek in himself no reputation to maintain in himself other than the purpose for which he was raised up is unto thee and that's what's so beautiful about Paul and all of the true prophets they were beside themselves for their sake and for your sake never for their own sake and their life shows it will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee thy brethren like unto me so what a standard is already given as Moses is considered by Israel the greatest prophet ever given Israel and that he himself is the paradigm of the prophet to be raised up he'll be like unto me he'll have my same singleness of mind heart and will he will be a fool for Christ's sake he will be totally taken up with the purpose of God he'll bear the enormity the pressure the weight the calamity the scandal the disappointment the frustration the vexation that comes in being unto thee a prophet that's what Moses bore and that's what the prophetic man like unto Moses will also bear and unto him shall you hearken so not just hearken to his words but hearken unto him because he is not just a vessel for the sounding of a word but he is the embodiment of the word he is the thing in himself you need to hearken unto him and that's the very thing that makes men to draw back and as you'll hear from the message in Canada the final invitation was to bow to enter the tent of Shem that the Japheth nations need to bow and break in their Gentile pride and enter into that provision God has made to temper them in the tent of Shem and our arrogance and our pride will not allow us you can't enter without bowing and my invitation was to bow to enter and I explained as you'll hear and I'll tell you now how the thought was birthed in me out of the existential reality of my walk and situation in Russia where this remarkable young pastor 31 years old had one of the greatest evangelical congregations in all Russia over a thousand in his congregation and it began in his living room as a 19 year old newly converted believer but he has wonderful verve and ability and the Lord has promoted him and the unhappy thing is that he has an arrogance to match his success. There's a bristling pride that treated me with suspicion and was caustic and wise-alecky in putting questions to me not in order to obtain answers but to reveal me and find me out there are questions in questions and so I said to him at one point you know what you need brother you need to bow and enter the tent of Shem that I represent for you as an older man and as a Jew you need in your arrogant pride to bow and enter and come unto me in a submissive way not only did he not bow he took all of the tapes of my messages out of circulation and my great fears we were talking in a break I did not come back from Canada with the tapes. The remarkable thing was though the man who was making the tapes had his earphones on and saw the needles dancing with every syllable when they checked the tapes they were all blank from the first to the last not a single message was recorded not a remarkable coincidence not the first time it has happened in my experience and so they have CDs as a backup so our hope now is that the tapes will be made out from the CDs but I would not be altogether shocked to find out that the tapes or the messages will be taken out of circulation because after all if it is only the exclamation of an arrogant Jew and his Jewish flesh inducing the church to bow before some false God other than Jesus which is the way in which my invitation was interpreted why would you allow those messages to be circulated so this thing about unto him shall you hearken and who is the prophet who will allow men to hearken unto him and not be exalted in his own ego but be humbled that men will hearken unto him recognizing that he not only bears the word of the Lord but he is so much the statement of the Lord being the thing in himself what we are seeing today by those who purport to be prophets is exactly the opposite arrogance, conceit commanders in chief, leading the army of God, having personal visitations in heaven with Jesus himself as the tour guide and meeting with Paul who acknowledges that he had missed it on some occasions but you won't as God returns you to the earth as the commander in chief of the armies of God you know, it's either you are or you aren't and what kind of preparation a man like unto me from the midst of the other brethren, like unto me how much of an investment of God was in Moses in the 40 years in his wilderness in the 40 years of leading the people through the wilderness what was the depth of God's dealing what was the value of the revelation that came out of the burning bush that is an indescribable confrontation with God in the midst of the fires of judgment take off your shoes for the ground upon which you stand is holy ground so the whole history of Moses is a paradigm of the exquisite attention of God to the character of a man who is to be a prophet for the nation and save it from the Canaanite temptations that are everywhere about it and will seduce it and bring it ultimately to apostasy to judgment and to exile to blaspheming God and all the nations where unto it has been driven because they should rightly be in the land in the covenant relationship to which they were bidden but they've allowed themselves to fall into practices and the adoration and worship of false gods from which God had warned them and for which reason he raised up his prophets to go from divination to revelation so now we can examine that the first thing that comes to mind and I've never thought about this before I'm just talking off the top of my head divination is immediate you can order it right now kill that animal, spill its guts out on the floor and the way in which the kishkas lie will be the thing that the false prophet interprets and tells you about your future. You pay for it, you get it right now. What about revelation? You don't pay for it and you don't get it right now. You get it when God gives it in the time that he gives it and until that time you wait. Israel's inability to wait for Moses to come down with the revelation of the tablets of the law is a very stark and dramatic depiction of the failure of men to wait for the revelation, for the revealed will of God in the holy law which Moses had to smash at the base of that mountain when he saw them dancing around the golden calf which their own hands had made because they wanted something instant. Where is this man? Hey, it's 40 days already, how long do we have to wait? So the whole temper that's appropriate to the church, that is to be prophetic its ability to wait to hold back its own impatience and I said to these men after they interrogated me over the first message, I said can't you wait to hear the whole statement of God? How is it you're jumping me already? I've just barely introduced the subject, not that I myself know what the second or third messages are, I myself am waiting for that disclosure but how do you already prematurely bring a judgment instead of waiting for the whole? Let's get the whole thing out because when we'll have the whole thing we'll understand better what was meant at the first. They were too impatient they want it now. So we need to understand the anatomy, the elements that make for false worship is impatience, self-gratification, the inability to wait for the cherished thing that can only come from God as of when he will give it and who is to instruct the church in that patient waiting and rest if not men who not only speak the word about it but are it. They are the very demonstration of those who wait, of those who are in the rest of God who are not prompted by any impatience for their own success. See what I mean? Like a man unto Moses took 40 years which is number of judgment to prepare such a vessel and we would expect to be a comparable investment of God in those that are like Moses in our generation because this prescription is paradigmatic. This is a paradigm. It's not just a once a once and for all thing. It's a statement of the constituent elements that will always distinguish what a prophet is whom God sends unto you unto thee whom I will raise up. We need to fix on not only what this woman cried out I've been ripped off but what her husband cried out pointing to me across the auditorium saying don't leave us like this right now fill in all that we have missed over the years and I yelled back hey there are two more messages to come. They wanted right now explanation which is so much the tenor of our American mentality because it lacks the influence of a church that should have affected the world and the civilization which it set. Instead the world and the civilization has affected the church and therefore our modern day prophets are so much like the CEOs that we spoke about last night commanders in chief of corporations, executive whiz kids with ability to perform and set up and administer but lack the character of a Moses who says of himself I am the meekest man in all the face of the earth. Well so much for Moses you're finished buddy. That's the most colossal conceit of which I have ever heard when even the book of Proverbs says don't speak for yourself let others acknowledge you. How dare you as the author of the five books of Moses write in them that Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth. It's either a statement of uttermost arrogance or the statement of uttermost humility that recognizes a truth that needs to be communicated because Moses is the paradigm for all prophets and that it will be expressed even though it gives every appearance of a man who will be construed as arrogant and the issue of the complaint of arrogance is the one with which I am most continuously confronted and it's the arrogance that comes from an obedience which is a humility and a submission to God and yet is construed by men whose ox is gored by that piercing word as being an arrogance so I'm saying that not to occasion your sympathy but to say are you willing to bear that? Are you willing to be misconstrued that your acts of greatest obedience born out of your greatest meekness and submission to God for that very reason ironically will be construed by men who don't want to hear that word because it challenges and threatens them as being uttermost arrogance and there's no way to use it you have it all wrong buddy let me explain. There is no explanation you simply have to bear being hit on the chest with their Bibles and their books which a propriety would allow it would not be your chest, it would be your head and the day will not be far when it will be our heads and we will bleed for this word and they will kill us and claim they're doing that as service because we're bringing threatening heresies contrary to what we have understood the faith to mean and you're trying to Judaize the church and bring it under the law, etc, etc, etc we have to take the risk of obedience probably the most unfortunate terminology that the church has adopted in the want of better terms is Old Testament, New Testament implying that the old is past and wasted away although of course Paul does indeed speak that in Hebrews so I like the terms Hebrew Scriptures the New Testament so we need to break that separation of the unbroken continuum of the one faith, the one God and the one way and to see it in it's entirety and it's totality and not fragment it and shove off it's origins as being passe or the people who have borne and still keep it's traditions it's truth and it's respect for that law but find a joining and a reconciliation in the prophet of whom Moses spoke that God would send out from the midst of their brethren like as unto me verse 18 continues I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren like unto thee I will put my words in his mouth, there is the prophetic distinction Art was that you who brought that word in Canada was that your Jewish propensity or was it the word of God well I believe that it was the word of God but I'm believing it with a reservation that I might well be wrong and that if I'm not wrong it may have been even a mixture and that I'm willing to consider that possibility and be responsible for it and therefore welcome all the more not what I speak in the moment but all of the preparation that proceeds that speaking, namely my life in a community with brethren who will admonish and rebuke and correct me in those character deficits and flaws that might give rise to a mixture later on on the platform the correction does not come on the platform, the correction comes in the community before the platform that's why I'm suspicious of anyone who purports to be a prophet and is not in a body of Christ context or perhaps had never been and all of a sudden they appear full blown and are taken on the stage and quickly obtain national international reputations where is the body context in which the correction and the sanctifying work of God takes place so that when the man is on the platform his work can be trusted so I would say to those men who are questioning me if you are not confident that I have such a history and that God has and is performing such work don't invite me, but if you invite me, receive what issues from me as being the word of God unless there is so apparent a contradiction where it can be shown as false but if it's a fresh word something that the Lord present truth as it now is in Christ Jesus, be open to hear it, for if it will not come from a man like that, from whom will it come? and I was assuring in the break there was a man there from Scotland, the pastor who got up and he gave a little statement on truth, I think he was preparing the audience to hold steady and not be rattled by this Jewish man, and he said, even the truth, if we remain fixed in that level, becomes a rut, and if we remain in that and are disdainful of the fresh or present truth to which we are being brought even that rut becomes a grave and that in fact is what I was glimpsing it's a rare privilege to receive so explicit a statement from God this is what you ought to say, I have had that experience for example in Chicago during the whole ferment of the Vietnam anti-war furor I was at a big Pentecostal church of freshly scrubbed kids, nicely dressed, in a rah-rah environment and the Lord said, preach the cross just as clearly as I'm saying it now, and I thought to myself I can't think of a message more in opposition to the atmosphere that is before me visibly, ought preach the cross don't look at their faces, don't look at the environment don't look at the rah-rah atmosphere that has been generated, preach the cross, I preached the cross and everyone went down on their faces their bodies strewn around the room as if an explosion had taken place, the Lord honored and vindicated, but that is a rare experience, where did I get that message then for Canada entering the tent of Shem bowing to enter the issue of intransigence in the Gentile European mind, especially prominent among Anglo-Saxons where I've had the greatest difficulty those of descent from Great Britain, I don't know why that is, maybe you can explain it and even saying in the course of those days, some of God's greatest spokesmen whom I've had the privilege to know over the years, have been able to say to me with a straight face I've never understood Romans 9 through 11, Romans 11 to me is a mystery but they say it with such an aplomb a-p-l-o-m-b with such a nonchalance, such a matter of factness, as if it's no big deal that I don't understand the mystery and my question is, how can they be men of such international prominence and not be chafed in their hearts that they don't understand the mystery, how can they announce it in a matter of fact way, as if it's of no consequence, when Paul said I would not have you to be ignorant of this mystery lest you become wise in your own conceit there's a penalty for the omission of the mystery how then can they be so matter of fact in dismissing it and all of these men come out of that same Pentecostal Latter Day Reign movement, or the men that I was referring to at least, and have a British Anglo-Saxon origin it's interesting that next to Great Britain the greatest source of anti-Semitic literature in the world is Japan and where have they seen so much as a Jew but I think that Great Britain and Japan are examples of the nations that have had the greatest empires the sun rises or the sun sets, that there's no place where the sun does not set that is not part of the British Commonwealth there's a pride of empire both in Great Britain and in Japan though they no longer have those colonial vested interests the pride of it and the identification with it remains and is antithetical to the placement of Israel as being central to all nations that all Japheth nations must bow to enter the Tent of Shem and that that is God's very provision to save the nations from their own arrogance something happens when you bow and break to enter and dwell in that tent as I said to this Russian brother, it would do you well it's the only provision of God against your arrogance but he would not avail himself so there's a mystery in this so where did you get that art? I don't know the visit to the Spokane synagogue things germinating in my heart the issue of anti-Semitism rising in the world in nations where Jews have had comparative