In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of communicating and fulfilling the mystery of God. He challenges the audience to evaluate their measures of success in Christendom, such as programs, numbers, and budgets, and instead focus on being a people who are utterly yielded to God. The speaker highlights the need to break free from self-centeredness, even in religious or spiritual matters, and to prepare for the coming historic moment of eternal magnitude. He encourages the audience to be a formidable presence for God, extending mercy and wrestling in prayer. The sermon concludes with a prayer for understanding and a recognition of the profound nature of the message being conveyed.

Bless you, Saints. I am so blessed by your National Anthem. It makes me envious that we have not anything that near equals it in our own nation. Would to God that every National Anthem would be so prayerful and so God-minded. Can everyone hear all right? Not too much draft or anything like that? I'm the old high school teacher who still always is aware of the room and its effects. Well, thank you for coming. Join me now in prayer. Something fresh is stirring in my heart. I don't know how you'll hear it or receive it or how I will express it. It has to do with the mystery of Israel and the Church that we need to apprehend and be apprehended by for we are on a collision course to be participants in it. It's not for the few who have that kind of interest. It's for the Church. It's the Church's making as a matter of fact. So many speak of Israel from the point of view of Israel, but I want to speak about Israel from the point of view of the Church. The mystery that Paul saw that is yet somehow not revealed to us, but it's one that he would not have us to be ignorant about lest we become wise in our own conceit. So, in seeking the Lord and waiting upon him today for this evening, that seems to be his burden. Thank you, precious God. We want what you want. We sense, Lord, where we are and how quickly we're approaching a final hour, a consummation, my God, of all things, the end of the age, moving toward the climax, my God, of the ages, and that you alone, my God, and all of your infinite wisdom and knowledge and ability and power can bring us to the things that are appointed, even for this night. And that's what I'm jealous for, and you've put that jealousy in my heart, that we would be the recipients of something, my God, that was foreordained for this hour, this time, this city, this nation, this people. Now, come, Lord, and firmly hold the reins of this heart and life and personality, and bring forth as only you can the mysteries, Lord, that have so long been concealed and must now be revealed, that we ourselves might come into the fulfillment of the things for which we are appointed, that you might receive the eternal praise of glory. Bless this people tonight and the people beyond them, my God, through the tape, and just bring something in of a foundational kind to your church in this city and in this nation. Through this mouth, we just give you the praise and the acknowledgement and adoration for such a phenomenon, asking largely, because we know that you're able, open our ears, our hearts, our understanding, even as you open this mouth. And again, yours be the praise, the glory and the honor, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, in the book of Genesis, in the book of beginnings, is a character by the name of Jacob. And I can't help but see the remarkable parallel between that figure, that patriarchal figure, who had such a long struggle with the God of his fathers, whom he himself did not know, until finally he could become the Israel of God. It's a process, and for Jews especially, and the church next, it's often a painful process. For the knowledge of God is not some kind of glib, facile thing that can be acquired at will. I'm talking about something beyond doctrine. I'm talking about being apprehended by God, that meeting, that union, that something that comes of such a kind that having entered it, experienced it, we ourselves are no longer the same and can never be again. If we have not come to a knowledge of God by which we ourselves are transformed, we have not come. And this is the knowledge for which God is waiting and wants. For us as the church, and for Israel, as the people appointed to bless all the families of the earth. Now there may be some among you who think that they have forfeited that destiny and that we have inherited it. That is a pitiful, erroneous view, and I don't know if I can correct you in one night, but I just ask you to kind of hold it in abeyance while you hear this word. Utterly assured that the view that I have is the correct one, the apostolic and the prophetic one, and the one that the church itself needs to hold, or else it cheats itself of the fulfillment of its own destiny. Am I speaking mysteries? That's what it is. I can't help it. And I'm not trying to be impressive. I'm trying to be simple and tell you that what Paul saw and tries to express in Romans 9 through 11 is not just an occasional peripheral Jew being added to the body of Christ, like myself. Praise God for that. But that's not the reason that he ends Romans 11 with the ecstatic doxology, oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, who has been his counselor. That kind of outburst, that kind of thing that stretches and breaks through the limitations of language is more than just the acknowledgement of a Jew being saved, to be added to the body of Christ in every generation. That is the recognition of a destiny for the people as a nation at the end of the age. But even yet more than that, through the agency of another entity called the church. For have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid. But through their fall, salvation has come to the Gentiles, so to move them to jealousy. And when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, so all Israel shall be saved as it is written, the deliverer shall come out of Zion and remove the transgressions of Jacob. By your mercy they might obtain mercy, that God might comprehend us all in his mercy. Are three of the profound points in the concluding chapter on Paul's dissertation on the mystery of Israel and the church, that signifies the remarkable role that we are called to play in their restoration. A role of such a magnitude, of such a weight, that we cannot charismatically or Pentecostally or evangelically or fundamentally succeed at it. The Jew, historically and especially at the end of the age, rattled, shaken, disheveled and unkempt is going to be in such a place of paroxysm and moral, intellectual and religious disorder that only a church that itself has come to a place of ultimacy with God can be able to fulfill God's intended mandate for them. Now don't panic at anything I'm saying and don't rub your forehead trying to comprehend everything. Understand that if it's a word from God, it's a spirit word and you're not required to have everything come to the level of consciousness and understanding, especially in a first hearing. And this word is not only for you but through you and beyond you. And it's a word that will become increasingly meaningful as we go on to the consummation of this age. And God's dealing with that Jacob people who are presently called Israel but are not yet Israel will become more apparent and understandable to you because of tonight. So I'm required to speak a mystery and you're required to hear it. And later on, if it indeed is a word sent by the Lord, as I believe it is, it will rise to the level of consciousness. But don't contend against the spirit by wrinkling your brow. Just open your spirit and try to hear and try to understand. Just take the first part of this. That we are not saved for ourselves. That there's a purpose for our salvation, praise God, beyond ourselves or we would never be, in the fullest sense of the word, saved. Because if there's anything that characterizes the Church today in even its best forms, that's a good girl. It's the, bear with me, the intrinsic, powerful, egocentrism of the Church itself. Locked into itself and for itself and enjoying itself and its programs and its activities. Which prevents us from being a transcendent people. We need something to wrench us out of the orbit of self-centeredness, which is so powerful that though we are no longer self-centered in the things that are carnal or worldly, that there's a way in which, finally, the power of the things that are yet religious or spiritual have a self-centered character. Like, for example, when you leave tonight, what will be your first question? How did you like the meeting? How did you like? How did you like the program? How did you like the speaker? How do you like the service? So much of our things, spoken and unspoken, center on how things affect us, even as the Church. And so long as that remains so, we will never come into the configuration that God desires for and for which he waits. The Church that is called not only to a mandate in the earth, but to an eternal destiny to rule and to reign with him. These powerful things need to be broken. And in the wisdom of God, he gives us something outside of ourselves of such a kind that raises such a standard beyond any that we would require of ourselves that in the fulfilling thereof, we're required to be larger than life. We're required not only to approve the doctrine of resurrection, but to enter the reality and move and live out, have our being in it. For nothing less than a people who are moving in that power can move my people for jealousy. Nothing that you can charismatically presently perform is calculated to do that. That's what Paul glimpsed. Not only God's intention for Israel, but God's intention for the Church that ironically cannot be fulfilled except in our relationship with Israel and for Israel. For they are the enemies of the gospel for your sake. Do you mind, brother, if you just change your posture and take your hand away from your head? I find that very disconcerting. Do you mind? Thank you. That's the thing that my brother was talking about. Where is this fellow coming from? Dare we trust him? Are we being told a whole fib? Where was I? There's something about a mystery, dear saints, that takes an extraordinary grace from God to communicate. And there's a God who wants the mystery not only communicated, he wants it fulfilled. And what I'm trying to say to you, and it would really take a seminar to really begin adequately to sketch it, is that that fulfillment requires something of such a transcendent kind from us that nothing else could have demanded. What are the present measures by which we weigh our Christendom? What are the standards that we cite to see if we're doing well? Our program, our numbers, our missionary budget. Did you like the meeting? Are you happy? You see what I mean? I mean, and all these things are good, but they're not calculated for greatness. But the challenge of a people who are formidable, intimidating, who are ultimate in their opposition to the gospel, as we Jews have historically been, as any student of church history knows, that the greatest of the apostolic fathers themselves formed at the mouth and lost their cool. Do you use that expression in New Zealand? They lost their composure because they were so rattled by the adversarial posture of the Jewish community toward them in every place where the church was located in the Mediterranean world. Oh, we Jews can really threaten and intimidate. You know what they were telling the church? Where do you come off to give this messianic interpretation to these scriptures? You don't even know Hebrew. You're a bunch of dumb Gentiles who have come to certain presumptions about the scripture that you've only lately come to. I mean, take my word for it. Just catch the intonation, catch the spirit of the speaking. There has been a long historic enmity between the Jew and the church throughout the entire history, these two millennia. And sometimes the vexation that has come to the church through the nagging criticism and opposition of the Jewish community has erupted in violence, in something of like kind. My mother thinks that Hitler was a Christian, because what else could he be? He was not a Muslim and he's not a Jew. My mother thinks, and she's alive still and 85, that every Gentile who is not a Muslim is automatically a Christian. That every crime perpetrated against Jews historically in European nations is a Christian crime. We know better, and we know that the knights that came through the Crusades and pillaged and looted and raped and set afire Jewish communities throughout Europe to finance the expedition to the Holy Land were not, in fact, Christians. They were the unregenerate who subscribed to some kind of thin culture and wore white crosses on their tunics, but were as removed from the Lord as any lost man can be. But Jews don't know that. We know it, they don't know it. You need to have my experience and to stand before Jewish audiences, as I've had occasion over the years in university encounters, and to watch them form at the mouth with anger and bitterness and wrath and look upon me as a paid flunky, a missionary, someone sent by the church, pays my bills, and I mean, what other motive would a man have to do a work like that? And to say things like, you're worse than Hitler. Hitler only sought to destroy our bodies, you're seeking to destroy our souls. You want to rob us of the very one distinctive that we have and that we've clutched through the centuries, our Jewish identity. And that's the way they see it. You know that you don't want to destroy it, you want to see it fulfilled, spiritually. But they don't know it. How many times have I had to stand in the eye of the storm and let the fury and the anger and the historic wrath that has been built up by centuries of abuse of Jews by what is called the church or Christendom, just be vented against me until it is spit out. Then, when they sag and heave and wait to draw another breath, maybe I can get a word in edgewise. You know why I'm describing that? Because you are on a collision course with that. Don't think you're safe because you're New Zealand. Don't think that because you're away from the places where Jews are to be found in numbers in the great western centers of commerce and trade that you can just look on as spectators. I believe that the true church of Jesus Christ, everywhere in the earth, is on a collision course with this people at the end of the age by which God will sift out the rebels and bring forth the redeemed through the wilderness of the nations and that the redeemed of the Lord will return to Zion and mourning and sighing will flee away. You need to pray for me because I have a kind of sober, fearful anticipation of calamity that few evangelicals can bear to hear, let alone consider. Namely, that God's determination of such a kind as to transform Jacob into Israel will stop short of nothing of the most pressing calamity to obtain, even perhaps, however much they have said never again, to find themselves tragically again cast into the nations as the dispersed, exiled people of God and that their present Israel will collapse under the weight of all of the opposition that God himself has allowed to be mustered against it. How far will God go to have an Israel who is a prince with God and with men and who bears from that point on an historic limp the end of Jewish arrogance, that chutzpah. Do you know that word? That haughtiness, that self-confidence that is so characteristic of us even when we came out of the Holocaust. Auschwitz was not enough, even with the tattoo and the tragedy to break us, to humble us so much as to ask, where was God? Could it be that somehow we have suffered yet again a judgment at his hand in proportion to the magnitude of our sin? But we didn't ask that. What we came out with the resolve was never again. Talk about chutzpah. And you who don't know what that word means it means that cockiness, that Jewish self-confidence I'm not trying to encourage you to anti-Semitism saints I'm just trying to tell you that a Jew is nothing more than what man is honed to its sharpest edge. It is humanity in its ultimate self-insistence and confidence in its own ability and prowess. And a people in that condition can never bless the families of the earth. But a people with a limp can. The lame shall take the prey. And those saints who have not seen me for the eight years that I've been away from Australia and New Zealand you know what they're saying? Perhaps it's changed a bit. There's a little something softer and more tender in him than I recall. But if you only knew what it took for God to obtain it even as a saved man there's a necessary limp that must come. And when in that wrestling match the angel of the Lord touched the socket of Jacob's thigh that was the blessing. He changed his name when he crippled him because this crippled man who forever thereafter would walk lame and halt and with a limp only in that condition and that weakness and that brokenness and that dependency could he be a prince with God and a blessing toward men. Not in his Zionist ability. Let's take a look at that text in Genesis 32. And while we're looking I want to say to those of us who have so much desire to see Israel succeed and I know there are many of you in this room like that I myself was one. And did you notice that as we were prompting ourselves for the celebration in 1988 in the 40th anniversary of Israel that at that very time when everything seemed just to be about falling into place for the great celebration of a people who had transformed the wilderness resuscitated a dead language and become the third greatest military power in the earth with an awesome technology and civilization at that very time the seams began to burst and the calamities began to multiply and the Palestinian crisis and the economic crisis and now even the Jews coming out of the Soviet Union by the thousands are in one sense a blessing another sense a calamity. They're forcing Israelis out of their own apartments who can no longer afford to pay the rents that have escalated by the influx of the thousands that are now coming and tent cities are raising up in just about every city in Israel. There's not enough water for the influx of population. And I can multiply the contradictions the paradoxes, the complexities of that little nation that would beggar our minds. No nation has been pummeled from pillar to post and faced such extremities and contradictions as this little nation. You know why? Because we Jews have such a powerful confidence in our ability to resolve every difficulty. Our intelligence our wit our prowess our ability our arsenal would not turn to the God of our fathers for help. How far will God go to have a people for his name? And the fact that you are so willing and so easily moved to celebrate present Israel in its 40th anniversary is such a statement about you that you can't imagine. What does that say about you? That you were so quick to celebrate this Zionist success and were intrigued by it and had a love for this Israeli mystique. I've even heard some Christians say that's exactly what we need in the church. A little of that Israeli, you know don't we love that music and the tempo and all of the things that have come into our services? We need to see by the eye of God what so much of that signifies. That we have been celebrating something that is more the statement of our carnality than we can imagine. That we ourselves did not intuit and recognize that God could never use a people in that condition. It's a statement of the fact that we did not realize the truth of our condition. And that's why in the determination of God in the mandate that has come to us toward them we ourselves will be transformed. For except we be that we cannot move them to jealousy. Except we be that we cannot extend mercy. Except we be that the fullness of the Gentiles will not be come in. There's a wrestling ahead saints and I think it's first for us before it's for them. And God has given me a perception of this text tonight in a way that I had never before seen it and I do not believe that I'm going to suggest this because I'm looking for some cunning interpretation of scripture or to find some new thing to tickle your ear. But I just invite you to just weigh it in your spirit and see if indeed you do not get a yea and amen about the description of Jacob wrestling with the Lord. In chapter 32 Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him. Jacob saw them he said this is God's host and he called the name of that place Mahanaim and Jacob sent messages before him to Esau his brother unto the land of the country of Edom. And he commanded them saying thus shall you speak unto my lord Esau thy servant Jacob saith thus I have adjourned with Laban and stayed there till now I have oxen, asses, flocks, men servants women servants etc. And the messengers came back and said well your brother is coming and 400 are coming with him. Jacob was on a course to face an ultimate confrontation from God beyond even his own ability to resolve. And so also is present Israel not only the Israel that is in the Middle East but the Israel that is scattered among us throughout all of the nations of the world. We are on the verge of one of the most dramatic dealings of God with a people in the history of salvation. That there is going to be a trying of this people and a sifting of them not only in Israel but even more so among the wilderness of the nations. As perhaps I'll direct you tonight in the text in Ezekiel 20th 20th chapter of Ezekiel For there I will meet with you in the wilderness of the nations face to face with fury poured out will I meet with you and there I will contend with you or strive with you or if you will wrestle with you and bring you into the bond of my covenant and under the rod of my authority. I'm saying tonight that I'm anticipating a global persecution of Jews from which even New Zealand will not be exempt for all nations shall come against Jerusalem to destroy it. Any student of society and the world what's the first phenomena after the collapse of these communist regimes and that monolithic totalitarian systems that have so long suppressed the peoples that have been under that political authority. What happened when the lid came off and the restraints came off? The very first thing that happened was the rush to get a copy of Playboy and the second thing was the venting of the ancient ethnic religious racial hatreds that have been seething under the surface of these Eastern European nations for centuries and now can be expressed without any restraint which includes the hatred against the Jew. Why do you think the Russian Jews are coming out by the thousands to face conditions of unemployment and social distress and difficulty in the adjustment to a new land threatened about by Arab neighbors stocked with arsenals that include gas warheads because they know that to remain in Russia is yet more perilous than to move to Israel even in those conditions. God is tightening the screws. God is deepening the dilemma the perplexities and these people are going to be cast out and among the nations and for the first time tonight though I know that in the wilderness of the nations this dealing will come that I myself am living in the wilderness of my own nation I'm not in New York City where I was born I'm in Minnesota I'm up in the boondocks I'm up in Nowheresville I'm up in the remote wilderness woods and I know that I know that I know because God told us from the first 15 years ago end time teaching center community Refuge Refuge I know that I know that the day will come when I'll be seeing my own people straggling in unkempt and undone bewildered what hit me all of a sudden forced out of the orbits of their security and affluence and finding themselves on a on a pilgrimage in an exile moved from place to place by by forces they know not and to find to their astonishment places prepared for them in the wilderness able to produce food able to sustain life and able to communicate the purposes of God to a people who have been so long obdurately resistant to him for there he says I will meet with them face to face I believe that means you but not as you are presently constituted lovely though you are impressive though you are there's something that is required that is more than you are the radiance of God and a people that have moved into a place of transcendence of such a kind that one of the ways to measure it is this though all the world has come to the most rabid hatred of the Jew you alone love them not because they're lovable, God knows but because of your proximity to the Father's heart and for no other reason because you love what he loves and you will not hate what the world hates and that your love is not the result of the approval of a people that you like but a people who are eminently unlovely agitated we had an experience already, a preview I was away at the time but some Jewish hobo do you use that word here? a drifter was picked up off the side of the road and someone who knew about us that were called Ben Israel brought him to us thinking well we're a Jewish oriented community well we'll receive one of our own I was away but a Jewish brother and one of the finest in our community and the most spiritual received him and showed him where he was to stay and provided him with food and to his utter consternation this Jewish drifter bundled in rags didn't like his accommodations and turned his nose up and it wasn't good enough and the food was too elementary and this Jewish brother said as he related this to me he said Artie said something rose up out of my gut that astonished me and his ingratitude and I could hardly contain it what will rise up in your gut and you're not even Jewish when these people come amongst you not only in the wilderness of the nations but your whole nation is a wilderness among the nations you're off beat, you're out of the way you're not in the mainstream and it may well be I'm talking like a fool and I don't know God's strategy but he's not told me I don't even know why I'm in New Zealand and Australia and all of the other places where I should be where it seems that the issues of the faith are much more paramount and urgent than with you but could it be that God has a meaning for you of all peoples because you are out of the way that somehow this driven exiled people will be in your midst let alone the small handful that are already here I don't know but I know that God is going to increase with fury poured out I will meet with you why? because when we're comfortable and secure we have no propensity at all either to seek or to be found of God anyone here who has ever heard my own testimony personally or read the book Ben Israel knows that this was true with you cats you were a Jacob you were staggering about in the world and you had your own opinions and you were artful and cunning and a schemer and a dreamer and all these kinds of things and it took God 34 years to empty you to break you to bring you to an end of your ideological and philosophical convictions by which you were going to save the world hot shot who couldn't even muster your own marriage with a German and in that condition to be found of him with a pack on my back wandering around throughout Europe looking as any good atheistic Jew would for philosophical answers for what else should an atheist look? but I was being found of something that I didn't think I was being picked up by by a strange kind of people who were not Jewish but were Gentile but were not Gentile something else there was a quotient there was a quality I couldn't identify but it was impressive there was a radiance there was a light there was a confidence there was a peace there was a word that was piercing and the whole thing broke with a little girl for whom I should have had scant respect an American girl on vacation in Europe having finished high school a nothing little wisp of a middle class Gentile Protestant who was willing to spend time with this staggering brute who was breathing murderings on the church like Saul of old despised Christianity for all of its historic crimes against the Jew including the Holocaust God sent his little David out to this Goliath in this little wisp of a girl who was unafraid unassuming utterly transparent and somehow was available in a destiny of meeting this man and willing to spend time with him that David I'll never forget walking the woods around Zurich and my probing this girl's motives all through the day hey how come aren't you afraid of me why are you willing to spend this time with me don't I intimidate you and every question answered the same way oh she said it's the love of God it's the love of God it's the love of God and if you want to drive an atheistic Jew furious just talk to him like that we can't stand God talk I thought to myself this kid once more mentions God she'll have it I'm going to lower the boom my hobby is engaging Christians in debate and wiping them out so what's this little wisp of a thing to me and sure enough she mentioned God I said that's it dug my heels in the dirt got myself all revved up and I gave her my famous $64 question hey you've been talking about God all afternoon I'm sick of it answer me one question that no Christian has ever successfully been able to answer how do you know God is which one of you would have whisked out your little four spiritual laws or John 3.16 or something else that the spirit did not indicate on some mechanical response to a moment of eternal crisis like that dear children we're moving toward a moment an historic moment of eternal magnitude beyond our ability and ourselves that's why Paul ends Romans 11 with for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory for ever this is going to be the revealing of God and not of our cleverness but the revealing of God through us by a people who are so utterly yielded to him that they can say with the apostle Paul being themselves an apostolic church for us to live as Christ for us to speak as Christ I thought here comes the delay she'll think of something she heard in Sunday school and I'll get all revved up and I'll demolish her but to my astonishment there was no delay just an answer right away oh Archie said I know that God is he lives in me dear saints I can never do justice to what happened in that moment that little statement that sounds like a cliche and probably would be a cliche in the mouth of many absolutely did me in I was clobbered I was bludgeoned I went down my human spirit crumpled I was like a boxer that was decked by the power of one statement that sounds like a cliche and when I finally got to my feet so to speak and recovered and rubbed my chin and what hit me and I'm looking at this little girl with that splendid little face not a natural beauty just an ordinary girl but such a luminous quality to her face such a transparency and I thought to myself what did she say that gave that statement its power it wasn't intellectual certainly was not theological and then finally dawned on me truth itself and she had the face and I will meet with them in the wilderness of the nations face well Jacob met with the Lord face to face in that famous wrestling that night when he had sent over all that he had trying to placate his brother still trying to extricate himself from this predicament by his wit sending over two companies one gets caught the other gets away and Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed and he divided the people that were with him verse 7 the flocks, the herds, the camels he sent out two bands, he cried out to God and listen to the way he talks in verse 9 O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac the Lord which said to me return unto that was left alone in verse 24 and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day believe me I'm not being fanciful I've never before said this you know what I think that day is? it's the millennial day it's the day of the new age it's the advent, it's the second coming of the Lord it's the end of this age and the introduction of another wherein there's a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness at the end of Jacob and the beginning of Israel is the beginning of something that is not just a blessing to Israel but a blessing to all the nations of the earth it's a new day, it's the end of darkness, it's the end of the final crisis and dissolution and breakdown and corruption of our age everything comes to its final pitch and final collapse with them it's a terrible night but out of it dawns a new day do you have that kind of apocalyptic expectation? how come you don't? you should isn't that the way you read events now? don't you see it? we're moving toward an end? aren't these the end times? aren't these the last days? aren't we yearning for and looking for His coming? aren't we hasting His appearing? for that longing? aren't we sick to the teeth of this world and this age and the filthy homosexuals and the perversion and all that is being celebrated that is evil the corruption that everywhere drowns us like a bilge and for which there's no remedy? or are you still humanists and enlightenment renaissance figures who think that it'll get better that the world will improve that we'll find a solution, this is only a temporary phase, baloney the end, the end, the end we're moving toward an end and there's only one thing to hope for, His coming but He said I'll not come except you say blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord Himself has bound Himself by such a promise such a requirement until Israel who can't even so much as peaceably speak the name of Jesus and has been so poisoned for their consideration will say blessed is He who comes that He will appear not only to their restoration but to the coming of His theocratic and Davidic kingdom yes, I believe that everything is so intertwined that the issue of Israel is the issue of His coming and the issue of His coming is the issue of His kingdom and the issue of His kingdom is the issue of millennial blessing and the end of abortion and incest and child molestation and paranoia suicide and every kind of thing that steeps the earth in blood and violence and death you know why we have not this expectation? because we have not the desire nor the thought of their redemption especially in Anglo-Saxon countries that British Israelitism that you've taken in with your mother's milk and the air that you breathe that somehow there's something so chronic that reflects or reacts against the thought of an actual destiny of Israel the literal Israel the literal Jerusalem the literal land, the literal promises the literal people that we are the Israel is the presumption that has characterized so much of Anglo-Saxon Christianity consciously or unconsciously and so Jacob was left alone and there wrestled with him a man till the breaking of the day and when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with him and he said let me go for the day breaketh, indeed it does and he said I will not let thee go except thou bless me we Jews may be tough but in the end when God has finally got us in his grips and we finally recognize what the issue is we will not let him go and here's where I want to suggest things I think that this wrestling of this final last day Jacob with a man in whose face he sees the face of God is ourselves that somehow we are on a collision course with this people, I don't know what form it's going to take cast upon us in that condition of utter brokenness and confusion and utter extremity and that somehow we're the ones that are going to take them to ourselves, take them to our bosom eye to eye fingertip to fingertip and hold them and bear with them through the last struggle against God that is in them something like Elijah with that dead child that he brought up to his own loft and laid on his own bed and prostrated over that own body and was willing to embrace that cadaver and stretch himself out over it so much as to give his life for it I've never wrestled but I have enough seicho Jewish word for understanding to intimate what wrestling is it's ultimate this isn't cricket this is ultimate everything in one man against and with another not just your strength not just your skill but your grit, your moral condition, your resolve it's the Jew in his last paroxysm struggling over and against the issue of God with a people who will not let him go except that he be blessed and in whose face my people will see the face of God as I did to that little waspish girl in Switzerland 26 years ago and he said, and what is your name? Jacob asked tell me I pray thee thy name and he said wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name and he blessed him there we Jews who could not even mention the name of Jesus we Jews who cross the street lest the shadow of a church spire fall on us actually asking, what is thy name? Who are you? What are you? You're Gentiles but you're not Gentiles. There's something about you, it's the light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of Israel in your face that you will communicate the mystery of his name in that final dealing with the Jew when all the world despised him, you'll be that man for whom they shall find their God and be blessed Jacob called the name of that place Peniel, for I've seen God face to face, that's what the word means, and my life is preserved and he passed over Penuel converted that is, the sun rose upon him and he halted upon his thigh that chapter ends where this Jacob now called Israel comes to Shalom verse 18 or Shalom or to peace or to the Jerusalem of God or to the destiny of the calling of God for this people for the gift and callings of God are without repentance eat your heart out I mean some do they don't like it that God will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy they think that mercy ought to be deserved, God is going to bring that people to Shalom, he's going to bring that people to Shalom, he's going to bring that people to peace, he's going to bring that people to the fulfillment of their destiny and their calling, not because of their virtue, but because of his because he is who he is, and he will be who we will be, he's an I am that I am, and I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy but the whole crux of the matter is can he have it through you will you extend mercy in your wrestling, will you extend yourself eyeball to eyeball and fingertip to fingertip in that last paroxysm of struggle with that people that they might realize that unless they be blessed now they're forever lost to his purposes and they will be, through you there's a destiny I'm groping, I can't find the expression don't ask me how but I know that I know that I know, we're not called to be passive observers we're called to be vital participants in such a way that we ourselves are transformed they are the enemies of the gospel for your sake and how one relates to an enemy despite all the wisdom of the world that says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is the issue to love the enemy is the righteousness for which God waits, so that when Israel becomes Jacob, the church becomes the transformed people who will occupy eternity in ruling and reigning with him in the character of the Jews are our finishing school and we are their final adversary in that final wrestling match, by which they'll realize, I will not let him go what do we do with a word like that I'll tell you one practical thing at least we begin to have a handle and a perception to understand what is happening in the Middle East why the multiplying distresses and perplexities and without resolution, that even if somehow the present Iraqi crisis is resolved, the mere demographic increase of the Palestinian presence in Israel, dooms Israel to the loss of its own nation within a decade or two because they are the leaders in abortion and the Arabs have multiple families, whichever way they turn they're in a terrible inextricable dilemma and perplexity of which God is the author and that we have not been able to perceive that, and even allowed ourselves to grow angry and impatient and disappointed shows how little we understand the dealings of God that are needful if he's going to have a transfigured people because we did not understand the necessity to be transfigured ourselves and were unwilling for the pain and the suffering alone let's grow up saints, this is the end of the age and Israel and the church are the two final great actors at its consummation and the wilderness of the nations of which your nation may be paramount no accident we sang your national anthem, I'm getting a strange chill even as I say that now from the Holy Ghost can we hold this mystery and live with the tension of it without every detail being spelled out and begin to give ourselves to that needful preparation that will bring us out of our reticence, our shyness our timidity, our self conscious Christianity to be that formidable presence for God that can wrestle and that will not let them go, that will extend mercy when to do so will put our own lives at peril you hold this tape and see if it doesn't increase in value month by month year by year until the end comes let's bow before the Lord who has been pleased to speak to us this way tonight hallelujah precious God, Lord Jesus what are you saying my God what kind of meeting is this, what kind of talk is this it's either utter absurdity or utter profundity and we hardly know my God how to receive it, but I believe that you have assembled a people tonight that you will bring this message to the hearing of those who are prepared who can entertain and receive a mystery without it's every implication being spelled out, who can sense the call of God in the church in the fulfillment of this and recognize that church as it is presently constituted a mere succession of services punctuated with mid-week bible studies will not fulfill it, that somehow we've got to find our way to apostolic reality quality of life, integrity corporality true relationship, true fellowship, true sanctification that your light can break forth in our faces that when you bring them into collision with us indeed, they can see in our face not just a Christian who's doing the obligatory thing and I guess I have to but they can see the very face of their God in his mercy and magnanimity and graciousness without stinting that cannot be offended against because he's God who is full of mercy Lord bless this people set in motion by this word what you will put something into our corporate spirit help us to see our condition as in fact it really is and to be divinely agitated to be dissatisfied with it and invite you my God to bring what is needful into our lives personally and corporately that we might be this man this ultimate end time man whom you've ordained to wrestle with that remnant people out of which will come an Israel for God Laman Holt who will bless all the families of the earth while that dawn breaks it hurries in breaking because when it breaks we ourselves having fulfilled that final and last mandate can ascend to be with him and to rule and to reign with him Lord seal this word let it dwell richly in our hearts let it open up new vistas of understanding reveal the condition of our heart as it presently is toward the Jew toward Israel because indeed that is the truest statement of where we are in fact toward you bless the church of this nation this special nation that you have geographically designed to be out of the mainstream a wilderness among the nations a nothing place with no distinction to speak of and yet a calling and a destiny appointed by you that's reflected even in its national anthem my God bring us to an awareness to a preparedness to the fulfillment we give you the praise the glory and the honor this night, this word this call in Jesus name we pray bless the Lord well I'm so accustomed to giving an invitation of a kind that I hardly know how to articulate tonight but if I understand what I'm hearing out of my own mouth God's call for ultimacy to make the church in its ultimate configuration at the end of the age true church and to go from where we are to that surely will require a suffering who here tonight is willing? if you are will you stand up before the Lord? this is going to cost something this is going to require something and it's not for everyone somehow it's not for those that are satisfied with occupying the pew for those that are willing for whatever it takes to fulfill the mysteries of God for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever the issue of Israel in a church sense is not really Israel in a church it's the issue of God's glory forever but it is determined in time this time and this generation Lord in Jesus name every soul that has stood and is yet standing whom you know and recognize by name seal to this holy and ultimate calling to the very end of the age who invite you by standing to perform what is ever required in your wisdom to fit us to wrestle to be that corporate entity that locks in with Israel at the end of the age and by which they are forever blessed and a blessing to the nations bless this people form this people my God put what is needed in us help us in our weaknesses help us in the areas where we're soft, where we're indulgent where we're undisciplined grant that we be truly a corporate people for your name grant us the courage to take off the masks behind which we have hidden and to be open faced with each other and by such a means to move from glory to glory even as by the spirit of the Lord I bless this people Lord let them be eleventh of the kingdom in the places where they are grant them a deepened revelation of the things my God that are needful bless them grant them grace upon grace and the difficult things that will be before them to fulfill the purposes for which we are called in the high calling in Christ Jesus in whose name we pray