In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of being prepared for crises and not being dependent on technology. He encourages the audience to simplify their lives and become less reliant on material possessions. The speaker shares personal experiences of facing financial struggles and receiving unexpected financial blessings. He also discusses the need for a deeper understanding of the Bible and encourages the audience to study it more deeply to gain a better understanding of its meaning and significance.

So let's look at chapter 11, at the first expression of these rudiments, these, what's the word? Intrinsic dispositions against God, when men formed together to exalt themselves over God and establish their own identity and nationality. So, they migrated from the East, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. Maybe even the selection of a plain, like Lot's selection of the plain, is already an indication of greed, because it's suitable for agriculture and the blessed... So in other words, men are predicating a decision of where they shall locate, not on the basis of God's will and wisdom and choice, but what their eye sees and what their hearts lust after as an advantage for themselves. And, how many of us have chosen our locations on exactly the same basis? We're living in Florida, or in a mild climate, or in a place of the country where the conditions are suitable for us, they are the plain, they are conducive to our advantage and to our blessedness, but did God himself choose it? I'm not boasting in myself, God has chosen this place for us, northern Minnesota, sub-arctic conditions, for 26 years. Inga has never recovered from the loss of her 70 room house in New Jersey, or our charismatic lifestyle. But here's the issue of whether the Lord is the Lord, for if the church itself is only directed by its self-interest, or an opportunity has come, a total, what do you call it for school, what is that you're enjoying brother? What do they call it? A scholarship. Is that the grounds for acceptance? We're getting down to the nitty-gritty here. Merely because opportunity presents itself, is that necessarily the statement of God's will. The very first era of mankind, where the seed of rebellion is both expressed and cultivated, that has its continuation throughout history, and is yet to have its most final, drastic and violent expression, is men choosing their own location because of its convenience, or its promise, or its acceptability. They have not sought God. This is the initial era, but if the church itself is subject to that era, if we are living like the world and predicating our decisions on self-interest, we like the climate, we like the fishing, we like this, we like that, then how shall we be a voice to the nations of the sovereignty and lordship of our God? We're losing it right from the first. So this is instructive. You may ask the Lord, is that scholarship from you? Is this opportunity from you? Did I predicate this decision on self-interest, analyzing and viewing the benefits that would accrue to me by moving here and doing that? Or did I seek you and know that this is your will? And even now, am I willing to forsake and give up the advantage and benefit that I have enjoyed, if you are not the author of it? That will more advance your ministry as a significant voice in the nation than finishing the course and getting the diploma. I just recently got a diploma, not because I have sought it, but because God has required it, which means something else entirely. So let's learn, dear saints, that we are not of the world, and we don't predicate our decisions on the basis of the plane or the advantage of the thing that is attractive or would redound to our benefit. But what does the Lord require? Maybe as they migrated from the east, who told them to leave? What instigated their migration? Was it self-appointed? Was it directed of the Lord? The rebellion may have had its inception right at the very beginning, which it invariably does. And so they came upon this attractive land and settled there. Another decision. No indication whatever that God is in any way directing this entire enterprise. And so it's not a surprise to see what follows. Come, let us make bricks. And burned them thoroughly, and they had brick for stone and tar for mortar. What do you make of that? Anything wrong with that? Aren't bricks convenient and accessible, and you can make them by burning them? Would God be offended? Do you ever read of any altar that God asked Israel to raise up that they would make out of brick? That man fashions out of his devices and intelligence and expediency? Let us make? Why wasn't there stone to build the tower? Because God never had an intention that there should be one. And so man, in his own ingenuity, acting as Lord, finds a way through technology to erect his own symbol of kingdom. Is that a problem for the church today? Are there any movements and ministries that are making bricks? And using tar? Which is to say synthetic, artificial, humanly contrived ingredients to build? Why don't they wait for stone? Why don't they not build if there's no stone? I think Nimrod was the author of technology. If I'm not mistaken, tubal, the use of metal and instruments and so on, is the beginning of the implementation for human rebellion against God. So what's the implication for us today with regard to touch it sparingly? Be aware that when you're touching technology, you're touching bricks and tar, you're touching what man has contrived and made for his own self-adulation and self-exaltation. And if you touch it, you leave yourself prone to be corrupted. Isn't it interesting that at the end of the age, the issue of the mark of the beast is the issue of the convenience of technology. Because without it you cannot bind yourself. You cannot transact. How then shall you live? So we need to consider now a faith by which we can obtain sustenance without subscribing to a system that requires its mark. For the eternal consequence of having taken that mark is too horrible to contemplate. Isn't it remarkable how the issues of the first will come at the end? So what's my suggestion? Begin even now to insulate yourself from the advantages of technology. Simplify your life. Make yourself less dependent, less responsive of those things. And so that when the time comes that they're not available except by the taking of the mark, we can well afford to be without them and not expire. It's amazing in my travels with brothers how I've seen men collapse for the want of a McDonald's hamburger. I went with a brother to Egypt and he could not eat the local food. He was like a man panting for water in the wilderness until he found a hamburger joint in Cairo. How many of us are hooked and do not realize that we are so engaged and dependent until it's removed from us? I had a secretary who went to Germany, a pietistic German group, and she went because she wanted to experience the cross, and the thing that killed her was that she could not find or go out to a Chinese restaurant. She didn't realize it until it was denied, that it was for her a fix. And for us, going out, what is that? That's like breathing. But we don't realize that it's more than just gastronomy, it's more than just nutrition. There's psychological, social, emotional aspects of eating, of going out, of enjoying certain kinds of things that are almost narcotic. So, there would be a separated people. I remember how Howard, when he was suggested that we should get a fax machine. A fax machine? What do you think we are? We have a fax machine. And a computer? For three days, when it was a gift, I looked at it without turning it on. Afraid to turn it on, now it's indispensable. The highest ratio in the world of cell phones to population is in Israel. Do you like this going into a text? Not the least of our purposes in receiving the value, the meaning, is the practice itself. And we said in the prayer time, most of us have been lazy, and we have not been encouraged. But we need to get in, as what we are doing here will remain with you as a disposition. You'll never again be shallow, you'll never again superficially pass it over, and just find a text for your point. What is being said here, the heart of this? What is the significance about bricks and burning and fire that has implication? What is the genius of this? This is the drawing out that I believe the Lord is encouraging. So, they had brick for stone. See the way it's expressed? Why doesn't the text just say, and they had brick? No, they had brick for stone. Indicating that there was a human alternative to a divine provision. And we need to ask, in our life, where have we yielded to brick for stone? Where have we built of ourselves, rather than wait for the divine provision? Just in one of the recent meetings from which I've come, I said, when the phrase, the body of Christ, was popular, I was not the first in my neighborhood to have it, but the last. I could have had it, just like anybody else, and I have become conversant in that phrase, and used it with just the same degree of cleverness as anyone else. Why did I even avoid and shrink from employing the phrase? Because I knew that I had not the reality. I didn't want to adopt the terminology until I had the reality to which it corresponds. And so I was the last in my neighborhood. But how did I obtain it? Through the Lord. Not through human cleverness. Not through becoming phraseological, and adopting a new terminology that is now popular and in vogue. It came through the struggle with Inger. With female and male. With Gentile and Jew. Trying to work it out in marriage, I began to realize the genius of what the body of Christ is, and its diversity, and how it's obtained, not by smoothing things over, but through the redemptive work of God. Then I began to realize the genius of the body of Christ. Now it's used as a catchword. So here's an instance of bricks versus stone. There are things that we can conveniently acquire. They seem to serve the purpose, but they do not correspond to the reality. Do we have a jealousy for the stone only, that is to say, the thing which is God-given? And are we willing to have our faces sticking out when everybody else seems to have it and we have nothing? That's the issue of devotion, and receiving something from God as truth, rather than as phraseology. Most of us are phraseological Christians with a whole backpack of correct terminology, but without the adequate reality. Because we've been too quick for the convenience of something, and unwilling to wait for that which is God-given. So all of that is in the phrase, brick for stone. Would you have missed it? Brick for stone. Oh, there's an alternative to brick? They didn't wait, they were impetuous, impatient, self-exalting, using their God-given soul to manufacture and fabricate by man what they should have waited for from God, because their motivation was not His glory, but their success. That's what we need to see. What's the root, what's the motive, the incentive for seizing upon the expedient? Why doesn't it wait for the true? Because the motive is not the glory that would come to from the God who gives stone, but the self-exaltation that comes from our own promotion. And that characterizes many, if not most, of present-day ministries. Promotion and acceptance in wide popularity and success, but where is the glory of God? So maybe we can say the root of rebellion is the indifference to, the ignorance of, and the rejection of God. And maybe the state of Israel would be a leading expression in the world of this kind of human endeavor, seeking to establish by human effort what could only be given by God. More concern for success than for glory. And where is the church that will bring the consciousness of that to the nation, that it might repent and forsake the making of bricks and wait and seek God? Because what has happened in the human substitution for the things given of God, the wrath, the anger of their neighbors, children who are willing to blow themselves up and thinking that they're doing God's service because their anger and hatred is so great, having been excited and stirred by the nation that has established itself through brick and mortar. Imagine my saying that in Israel. My head would be handed to me on a platter. So to sound the perspectives of God and bring them to the consciousness of the secular or to the religious, taking the risk. Okay, they had bricks for stone and bitumen or tar for mortar. Then they said, come, let us build ourselves. Look at the language here. Or build for ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves. The only city that God endorses is Zion. Every other city is a rival. And cities are the incubations of evil. Every vice and every vile thing that panders to man and to sin is to be found in cities. When we came here 26 years ago and my kids said, can we go into town? What do you want to go into town for? I want to go to the mall. What do you need? We don't need anything, Dad. We just want to see the mall. We want to see the merchandise. We want to see the diverse and interesting different stores and booths and things like that. There's something about city and its awareness which is contrary to God. The millennial blessedness of every man under his own vine. The image of God is not prospering in the city except the city of God that comes down from above. But it's more of a rural and agricultural symbol that is a statement of millennial blessedness. Every man under his own vine. Not every man in his own apartment and parking lot. So city is a study in itself. Anybody know the name of the French theologian who has majored in this, whose name escapes me? I'll bring one of his books in a future time where he examines the whole subject of city as being the very entity and seat of rebellion against God. Well, have you been to New York? Have you been to Sydney, Australia? I was impressed on this trip with Sydney, Australia. The towers, the skyline, the bridges. It was awesome. It took your breath away. You gasped. And what you thought was, where is God? He's eclipsed. The invisible God. These are all the monuments of men. And I remember as a kid in Brooklyn coming up out of the subways and onto the Brooklyn Bridge or the Manhattan Bridge where the train came and looking at the skyline and the East River and the skyscrapers. Awesome, compelling. Man vying against God. And having all of the models, all of the credentials to impress and to win the loyalty and submission of men. We were intimidated by Bemidji, Minnesota. After a 10-day fast, and the Lord called us to conduct an outreach at Bemidji State University. I've spoken at the University of California. North Carolina. North Carolina. I've been in Germany, in Denmark. I've been to universities all over the world. But to come to Bemidji, what is that? 6,000 students? Big deal. And we left after a 10-day fast. And as we left and began to negotiate the roads and come up into the city, as we began to see the first evidences of town and came onto the campus and saw the big dish in front of the media communication building, the spirit went right out of me. The virtue went out of me. I was intimidated. I, intimidated by Bemidji State University. Its buildings, its apparatus, its technology. Be instructed and be not impressed. The interesting question is, were they building a house? What were they building? They were building a monument and a tower to themselves that would exalt themselves above God. Let's read that. Let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves. Lest or otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. So mankind, almost just out of a flood, perceives that its own self-exaltation comes with its own unity. By being together rather than being scattered. It may well be that the nations and their boundaries today is God's judgment and chastisement against us and to keep men from a false ecumenical unity that would conspire against God as God. In fact, the whole of our modern time now is the conscious seeking for an ecumenical world government of a religious and political kind which is going back to the very thing that we're reading here. Men still want what the Lord has reprimanded them for all those thousands of years. And why do they want the tower higher than the heavens? Higher, not as high, higher. Whose spirit is that? And whose mind is that? But that fallen angel who wanted to exalt himself above God. And that spirit prevails in the nations of which he is the prince and the false ruler of this age. The gods of this world still have this as their inspiration to exalt themselves above God. And when the Antichrist comes and seats himself in the temple, what is he doing? But seeking to be recognized as being above God and exalted as God and above all gods. So here we're going to have a final last day's manifestation of this spirit which is already at work in the world. One of my messages on the trip from which I've just returned is that Antichrist is already seated in this temple. Not the one to be built in Jerusalem but the one that is the church. And parading himself as God and being accepted as God though he is a no-God. Which is to say that unperceiving and understanding Christians are saying and attributing things to God that is not God and therefore exalting that false spirit that is purporting to be as God. And it's already seated in the church which is his temple. Get the tape. Okay. Let us make a name for ourselves otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. So the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which mortals had built and the Lord said look they are one people and they have all one language and this is only the beginning of what they will do. Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come let us go down and confuse their language there so that they will not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of the earth and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the earth. We need to dig into that sense. Out of all the ways in which God could have negated this anti-God movement he did it by confusing language. He could have done any number of things but no, it was language that somehow is the key to a false unity. And maybe a tongue that the Lord will give will be a key to true unity of being of one mind, one heart and one soul. The word Babel means confusion but I have a footnote here that's interesting in my Bible. It says the Akkadian, not the Hebrew definition of Babel means gate of the gods. Gate of the gods. Remember that the wise men sit at the gate and that the godly woman in Proverbs 31 frees her husband that he might sit at the gate and give counsel. The gate is the locus of government and of rule. So here again is another anti-God attempt at government. Not just the tower as a celebrated thing that's high but as a government of man independent of God. It was their gate, it was their place of authority and God cannot allow that. And there are comparable statements like that in modern times. Maybe the United Nations or the attempt at an ecumenical global unity is of course a false government and rule. Any other comment about confusing their language so they will not understand one another's speech and that stopped the whole thing dead on its tracks? Any way to take that and to turn it upside down in a way that would constitute blessing for us? If God undid something that was ungodly by confusing speech, what about speech rightly understood and rightly employed that will obtain blessing and will build? Can we think on that? I think there is a place where Paul says and speak the same thing. Be of one mind and one heart and speak the same thing. So is Paul encouraging the church to become autonomous? What is he saying and what is he after? What should we be after? What is he encouraging? That we should speak the same thing. And a matter of fact, will Israel ever be brought back from the dead as dry bones until the son of man, company, a church and its corporate reality can speak the same thing and prophesy to those bones? Not because they have been pushed off the assembly line as automatons, but they have come to an agreement with God and with his mind and with his heart and with his words. They speak the same thing because they are all in the same relationship with the one God whose only speaking is the true speaking. How do you come to that? If you don't first give up your own babble. There is so much babble in the kingdom. Cheap talk, profuse words, gift of gab. We are not going to get the word of the Lord until we rid ourselves of our own. Well, there are those who believe that the last days tribulation for the church is that purification and that purging. Of all the cheap and easy things that we speak and say that have to do with our own advancement will be purged. And then we will be viable instruments for the Lord's own word. And we will all be saying the same thing. Not because we are automatons and are compelled and stamped out, but because we have all come to a reality of relationship with the God whose speaking alone is the true speaking. So this thing prophesies, son of man, is the issue of Israel's salvation. And it's got to come as one voice and as one word when God commands it. Peter rising with the eleven. Of necessity, there were not eleven men speaking at one time. That would have been confusion. When one spoke in accordance with the eleven, they were of one heart, one mind, and one agreement. And though it was spoken out of the one appointed vessel, it enjoyed the support and the weight and the authority of men in agreement. They spoke the same thing, though one did the actual speaking. It was the speaking for all. Imagine a church like that now? And in fact, until we have it, how shall we confront our governments? How shall we speak to our nation unless we have that one voice with that authority? One may be sent, but the sent one represents the body that has sent them where they are in an agreement. And therefore he goes with an authority that God will only confer from that kind of agreement. So there's got to be a lot of dealing with our individual opinions, our notions, our ideas, all for us to come to this kind of corporate reality. But I can't help but repeat myself. It is not becoming automatons. That would defeat God. He didn't call us to be a bunch of tin saints punched off an assembly line. He loves our individuality. He has framed it. When I offer myself to the Lord every day anew, I'm saying, Lord, take and employ this frame that you yourself have formed. Every day anew, I'm saying, Lord, take and employ this frame that you yourself have formed and possess it, it's your own possession, and express through it those purposes for which it was ordained. There's a particular personality, disposition, a framework that God himself, he knew us in our mother's wombs, but does he have his possession for his expression? When he will, you'll see what will happen in our prayer times. There'll be such a diversity and richness of prayer, but it will be so in agreement, so congruent, one with the other, that it all issues out of one mind, one heart, one soul. If we don't have this as an object of intention for the church, will we attain it? If we don't think that it's possible, will it be our reality? Will Israel be saved unless this is a reality that we can believe for and strive for and are willing to suffer the chastisements of God in the areas of our own babble and confusion and die to it, even when it's correct. If the Lord has not given it, it's a babble. Wonderful instruction in passing over it so quickly, but it's in the beginning. It's the anatomy of human sin, rebellion, and it also offers us a glimpse of what is the alternative. Not bricks, but stone. How do we get to one heart, one mind, one soul, one agreement? I can tell you, and you may have heard from tapes and from books that issue from us what we have gone through here. One of the early crises, because we were always poor, came when a check came to us in the mail for $5,000, which at that time we were so poor, it had the value today of $50,000. We were desperate for insulation, for housing, for food. This was the age of the prosperity movement, and we were languishing here for the most elementary things. When that $5,000 check came, I can't tell you the celebration at Ben Israel, Benet Community 51, what rejoicing. And Friday was our fast day and prayer for Israel, and we're sitting rejoicing, and the Lord speaks to me in a still small voice, He says, send that check away to Jerusalem, to Israel, to such and such a couple. I said, Lord, they have a Volvo and leather jackets and musical instruments. We need it more than they. But that's not how you talk to God. You don't put against Him logic. He has spoken. And so I waited for a great deal of patience. It was like a man pulling the pin out of a hand grenade and rolling it down the floor of his room. Israel, to such and such, whoa, that hand grenade went off, and people were splattered all over, shrieks and howls and screams. If you don't take care of your own, you're worse than an infidel. God honored our faith. We never advertised our need. Now it's coming. You say, only you say? And who are you? And what's your marriage? And do you have it all together? Is your house in order for me? There's God. He has one mind, one soul, one will. And let's go out, each one of us, and seek the Lord, and find His mind and heart, and come back together and see what the Lord is saying. I was hoping that I was wrong. And they came back that night, worse than the morning. Loud. They had found scriptures that justified their position. Full of babble. Full of confusion. God says this. God says that. This is the end of Ben Israel. Crisis. Ultimate crisis. And then the weakest voice in the community, a new Jewish believer, with a little pipsqueak voice, well, he said, I don't purport to have heard what Art says that he has heard from God. But I think that if Art is the elder, and God has spoken to him, we have an obligation to go with that. It was the voice of the Lord. It stopped. A thousand dollar deposit down on four trailers. Eleven thousand dollars for four trailers. They were old then. We still have them and we're still using them. And we waited on the Lord. I went to Israel and I met that couple. They said, Art, the day before your check came, we had turned down an offer of five thousand dollars because it came with strings attached. And we could not in integrity receive it. And the next day, your check, totally unsolicited, came and we knew that you were poorer than the church mice. And we knew that that was God. And we rejoiced. Then I went back and what about Al rejoicing? In time, a ten thousand dollar check came. Why am I saying all that? Rather than the sanctifying over and again, what will glorify him in our obedience? Unless utterly established on the principle of God's glory, God's glory is a greater moment than your self-interest. And justify it. Only the jealousy for God's glory. If we have not the jealousy, what's the name of the, what's the name of the, that came out of that illicit relation of a nation that would be God's answer to the rebellion of nations. Taking him out from the place of idolatry, of the Chaldeans, or of the Chaldeans, and to follow him, and to come out of nation, to the rebellion of nations, up a Babylonian system that God had to end. It was not just a numerical, chronological, follow up to chapter 11. It's God's divine, redemptive answer to the rebellion of nations. By bringing a man out from the nations, get he out from nation, kindred, father's house, and follow me in the land that I will show you. That following, Abraham necessary, that is to say he had to pass over, cross through it, because the river was the statement of civilization. River was transportation, river was commerce, river was culture, river was agriculture. We had to cross over and leave that dependency where men looked down to the river to come into a land whose whole economy was predicated on early rain and latter rain. And that was not automatic. That was in response to faithfulness and obedience to covenant. A whole other basis for life in the land was Abraham's call from the beginning and it's ours. Can you see the remarkable difference in economy, prosperity, self-interest now and survival is the issue of obedience, following the God who calls into the place that's unknown by which you follow not knowing. Complete antithesis of the whole rebellion that is going to build because they know, because they want to make a name for themselves. Abraham actually lost his name. In fact, his name was changed from Abram to Abram. Ham is the breath of God. God breathed into him himself and that became his distinctive character as the father of many nations. I will glorify you. I will exalt you. I will give you a name. Look at that in Genesis 12. They sought to make a name for themselves by making and building, God says, I will make of you a great nation in verse 2. I will bless you, make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you, I will curse you and you all the families of Israel shall be blessed. So Abraham went as the Lord had spoken. It seems like God even acknowledges the validity of nationhood and the greatness of nations if it is not the result of human ambition and exaltation against God but is the result of what is given in obedience to God. I will make of you a great nation. So greatness is not to be despised, just the issue of your motive and the source. God has not called us to be nondescript and without distinction or just average guys who get by. We're called to great distinction. We're called to be a royal nation, a nation of priests taking our pattern from the call of Abraham and of Israel. For their call is our call. But the basis by which it is to be obtained is very different from that by which I will make of you. I will, not you, I will. You just follow me in Leviticus. Get thee out. The first principle of God's answer to the rebellion of nations is radical separation from the nation, from its ethos, from its mindset, from its motives, from the whole texture of what makes nations and cities to be in rebellion of God. You must get out. So then what's the meaning for us? Do we have to leave Bemidji and Tampa, Florida and wherever? How do we get out while we get in? Because the call of Abraham is our call. We need to recognize how insidious, subtle and powerful are the things that reside in nations. So if we are a Palestinian living on the West Bank, what is our true and ultimate identity? With whom do we have our greatest affinity? To whom do we owe our greatest loyalty? You'll be a mock man among your own people if you even express or indicate that your loyalty and identification is with the God who is God, who is the God of Israel. The issue of Abraham and the call is as fearful now as it was then. How many of us have departed? How many of us are still insinuated in the nations, in the mindset, the values? I have my citizenship in Ukraine. Lord, my separation has not been as total as Abraham's. The benefit and the prosperity are looking down rather than up. So let's just look to the Lord and ask the Lord for his own prayer for you. God forbid that our prayers, however, thank you precious God. Oh Lord, call us out my God. Thank you for the pattern of what was in the beginning and your great answer to the rebellion that is still, my God, at the heart of nations that defy you and defy Israel because they sense that somehow that nation is linked with your governance and they will not have it. So, my God, and Israel itself will not have it and yet you will succeed and the church will be your instrument. But a church of what kind? A separated church that while they're in, yet are they out. Yes, while we're yet called to be in Babylon as witness and light, we're yet walking. So, Lord, precious God, your word itself severs soul from spirit. It divides even the joints. So, let there be, my God, severance, separation, clarity. Show us where our first loyalty is, my God. We bless you. Help us with a little help by your word and the light, my God, that has issued. We thank and give you praise in your savior's name. Hear the prayers of your saints, Lord, and let this word be effectual for those who have, who have still lingered, my God, in the world and in the nation. Thank you, Lord, you're the truth. What a nation. The American Indian is not yet a recognition, my God. May we bless you, precious God. Model of nation surrender.