In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of resurrection and its centrality in the lives of believers. He starts by highlighting the magnitude of the issue at hand, suggesting that it is a matter of life or death and eternity. The speaker then discusses the necessary death and resurrection of Israel, using Hosea 6 as a reference. He believes that true living in the sight of the Lord comes from being raised to newness of life, not just having correct doctrine or subscribing to the truths of the word. The speaker challenges the audience to believe in the attainability of this condition and recognize their need for it.

You don't want to presume something as eternally significant as that. Test yourself and know that you're in the faith. Well, it falls to me not only to proclaim the word, but to demonstrate it. And the word that's in my heart tonight is the word of resurrection. And my condition tonight is nigh unto death. You may not know it, it may not appear that, but in terms of the magnitude of what is before us, not just a fill-in or a little ceremonial slapdash or the curiosity of a speaker passing through, but supposing that the issue tonight were the issue of life or death, supposing that the issue tonight were the issue of eternity, supposing that there were great things that we cannot imagine that God has as intention for us this night through the word, and that you're somehow appointed to be the mouth through which it's to come, you find your seat, little man. Here comes Dad, you're going to catch it. And to feel altogether out of it, no adrenaline flowing, no being geared up. It's as if, if there were not a living God, if there were not the reality of resurrection out of our continual death, then the purposes that God intends for this night, which are mighty and eternal in their significance and their consequence, must fail. You've got to believe me that if you hear anything tonight, that's of value. And if something is transacted tonight, that's of value. It will have nothing to do with me, but another power and another life, or everything is vain. I think God wants to impress upon us the centrality of resurrection and do it through the illustration of something that God has always intended should be textbook illustration for us upon whom the ends of the age have come, namely, the people Israel. I want to speak tonight about the necessary death and the resurrection of Israel, trusting that we'll see in that the necessity for our own. Because if the Lord gives me grace, I hope to demonstrate out of the scripture that the agent, the instrument of God's use to bring Israel out of its grave is none other than the church, but the church of a particular character, quality, and kind. A church of a prophetic constituency. A church moving in the power of God that yields to his commandments and whose word constitutes an event for those who would otherwise remain in their grave. Everything is stacked against us tonight. To understand a word as complex and as rich as that, the shortness of time, the difficulty of the subject, the place where you yourself presently are tonight, the only thing that could possibly make it succeed, and it's imperative that it will, is the power and the reality of resurrection itself in the very preaching. So I want to pray for a resurrection event. I'm not content with mere instruction or even inspiration, but the word itself as event. If you'll understand me and not be offended, I'm looking out myself tonight upon those who are yet in their graves. I'm looking out upon a sea of the dead that need themselves to be brought out of a grave into a quality of life beyond mere correct doctrine, subscription to the truths of the word, the actual coming into a dimension of being that God intends as normative for the end-time people of God. And I just have to say we have not yet attained to it. First, because we don't really in our hearts believe that such a condition is attainable. And secondly, because we don't think that we're in need of it. Thirdly, we don't see ourselves as we need to see ourselves. Fourth, we don't recognize how everything is predicated on the issue of resurrection, that God will not have anything except that which comes out from the grave onto the resurrection site. He'll not utilize well-meaning religious intention. He will not employ things merely because they're correct or because they're well-intended. Only that that meets the test of resurrection that has passed from death unto newness of life can be employed by him because only that assures him that no man will touch his glory and only that will glorify him. For the resurrection is power and glory. I want to say that the church at large tonight is not living in that realm and is falling short of the glory of God. And one of the ways by which we can understand that is that too many of us are celebrating present Israel, hoping for its success, and even somewhat disappointed that the 40th anniversary of that state last year, or 1988, did not issue in the kind of messianic nation that we had hoped Israel to be, and that since that time there had been an unfolding of increasingly distressful circumstances that seems to conflict with the hope that we had had that that nation would at last be the prophetic fulfillment of which the Scriptures speak. We were too hasty to congratulate modern Israel, too anxious to see its success, because we ourselves were congratulating ourselves on the things to which we had attained, charismatically speaking, and therefore our very measure was the projection of our own condition. We simply did not understand what God is wanting, how ultimate His intention is, that He'll satisfy Himself with nothing less than that which pertains to His eternal glory. And that an Israel that would have succeeded in 1988, which we would have complimented for its success, having resuscitated a dead liturgical language, having become an impressive military power, having made the desert to bloom and all the kinds of accomplishments for which this spirited and impressive people could be commended, is not the thing that would have brought glory to God. Something more and something other. And be patient to hear me through tonight as I try to make this clear out of the Scriptures. You don't necessarily have to turn to everything I'm going to quote. Hosea chapter 6. Just listen rather better than turning. It's not my text for tonight. Come and let us return unto the Lord, for He hath torn and He will heal us. He hath smitten and He will bind us up. After two days will He revive us. In the third day He will raise us up and we shall live in His sight. I want to be on record tonight to say that I believe that the only kind of living that is truly living in the sight of the Lord is the life that is the newness of life that comes out of the grave by those that are raised unto newness of life. If we're around long enough, and I don't know when the event is going to take place, I believe that there's going to be a literal, visible resurrection of a people brought into a death by the power of God through the instrumentality of the church that will be His testimony before the face of all nations. He will sanctify Himself through a restored Israel that is brought from death to life by the power of God through His Word on the third day. If Jesus had to pass through death, if Paul saw himself as crucified with Christ, if the whole genius and power and glory of the apostolic life of Paul was from the resurrection side of the grave, which Jesus Himself had to experience, how then shall we serve at the end of the age except in the same power and quality of newness of life? How shall Israel bless all the families of the earth except in that newness when God will raise us up and we shall live in His sight? After two days, will He revive, restore us? In the third day, He will raise us up. Not we ourselves. Not our Zionist intentions or Jewish prowess or ability or any of those things which the world and even the church is so quick to congratulate. He will. That's why Paul concludes Romans 11 with unto Him. For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things to whom be glory forever. What I have to say tonight will fall on deaf ears. It will be so much nonsense if not an irritant except for one thing that you have a burning jealousy for the glory of God and intuit that there's only one quality of things that can redound to God's glory that can never come from us but only from Him in the power of His own life. For of Him and through Him as well as to Him are all things. That's why Paul says if the falling away of them has been blessing to the Gentiles what shall their return be but life from the dead. Not only in the sense of the blessedness that shall come to the nations of the earth by a people who do not exhibit characteristic Jewish chutzpah. Look what we have done. Look how we ourselves have made a nation out of a desert wilderness. That does not redound to blessedness but to irritation. But to come to the nations of the earth out of the grave to have been restored to life by the power of God according to His word and to His promise for which they can have no boasting and no credit will bring another quality of blessing to the families of the earth that will be life unspeakable. Do you remember that prophet who fled from the requirement of God and was swallowed by a whale? And on the third day he was spit out on the beach? The reluctant prophet who would not go to a Gentile nation and preach the message of repentance because he wanted to see them suffer the judgments of God? But on the third day after three days in the whale or whatever that animal was that swallowed him up and decimated him by all of its gastric juices I want to tell you that the reason that Nineveh repented and that the king commanded the whole nation to put on sackcloth and ashes and that the lowliest brute animal that existed in those provinces also had ashes put upon it that an entire nation was smitten to a place of such profound repentance that God had to stay the hand of judgment because of the preaching of one Jewish prophet. And the thing that made his preaching so effectual as to evoke that depth of repentance was not his virtuosity was not his Jewishness but that he was spit out on the third day and what came among the nation of Nineveh was a piece of the resurrection glory proclaiming the word of God in the power of the newness of life. And when my Jewish people will hear that quality of preaching from a church itself that has passed from death to life we'll see them come out of their graves also and repent. Dear, dear children take my word for it by faith wherever you are in your ignorance or confusion or not knowingness and I don't blame you a bit but it's where you are we are on a collision course at the end of the age in the things pertaining to the destiny of Israel that is not only their making but also our own. We are reciprocally bound up with the destiny of this people. God has appointed us to them not only for their sake but also for our own. They are the enemies of the gospel for your sake Paul says. And I want to tell you knowing my Jewish people there is no more formidable enemy. Few of you in this room tonight would have had the courage or the spiritual acuity and anointing to have confronted me a quarter of a century ago when I was in the deeps of my own despair my own anger my own vexation and my own bitterness by a man out of joint and out of time in the world. Ex-Marxist ex-pragmatist ex-existentialist nothing new under the sun who of you could have confronted me in that condition and spoken a word that would have raised me out of my grave? If you would have spoken anything very likely it would have been a cliché Are you saved brother? Or maybe you would have quoted to me the four spiritual laws or five we Jews require an extra one or the greater likelihood is you would have been entirely indifferent. The fact of the matter is if you knew I was Jewish you might even have been resentful and by every reckoning that's where you should be as Gentiles. There's something in culture there's something in time there's something in history of which God himself has set the factors working that accept that we be in a certain place in God as non-Jewish believers there's an almost automatic resentment, irritation, envy, jealousy anger or hatred against this people. And if you have an ear for what's happening in the world today even with the decimation of the communist empire and the lid of restraint being off what is rising up in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries is an unparalleled and accelerating hatred against the Jew which I predict is moving toward a worldwide phenomenon of which no nation will be exempt including your own. A hatred and a bitterness so pervasive there'll be blame for the collapse of economies which collapse will surely come and indeed it's at the door here in Australia. How will you be exempt from that spirit of anger and bitterness that is so endemic and so natural to Gentiles however well intentioned they are Christianly speaking. The only thing that will save you from that and bring you to a place of identification with this despised people and a willingness to extend yourself toward them that by your mercy they might receive mercy is that you yourself have passed from death to life. You're dead to the things that are Estonian Gentile, Slovakian, Eastern European, Russian all of the kinds of things that you took in with your mother's milk and that's in the air that you breathe. You're coming not from earth but from heaven and you love what God loves and you don't share in the hatreds of the world because you're not of the world you're dead to it having passed from death to life. Are you following me? The only catch in all this is that death is total and death is painful and if that were not so we would all of us be rushing to the grave to enjoy the power and the freedom and the reality and the spontaneity and the richness of resurrection life as it is because of our fear of death and our unwillingness to bring to death the things that we still clutch in our natural life which we think good and even usable by God we're still on the wrong side of the grave and the issues of the last day will reveal in fact where we are. Listen to this saints and I'm glad you're going to have it on tape you'll need to hear this several times You know what's going to distinguish the true church from the false at the end of the age? Do you know that those are the two categories? And nothing in between? That at the end of the age will only be an apostolic remnant of true believers beyond denominational labels or the great sea of apostate Christendom with many labels and the one will despise, oppose and persecute the other. You know what the distinguishing thing will be between the two? Not that the apostate have left the churches not that they no longer sit in their pews or even sing the choruses and say the amens and hallelujahs and put the dollars in the collection plate. They even subscribe to the correctness of the doctrines of the faith but they don't inhabit them. They're not possessed by them. They're merely content with the outward subscription to the correctness of the truth without insisting upon living in the truth. The thing that will distinguish the true from the false is the larger body that subscribes to resurrection as doctrinal truth and the other smaller group who are actually moving and living and have their being in it. Those of us who are in that remnant people will be a savor, a fragrance of life unto life to some and a fragrance of death unto death to others. Let's take a look in Romans chapter 4 about our father Abraham who is the father of us all. We who are Jews genetically and naturally those of you who have been brought into the faith of Abraham I want you to look in chapter 4 and consider what is the nub the heart of Abrahamic faith which was required for him and every son of Abraham since and especially in this last generation. Let's start with verse 16 For this reason it is by faith that it might be in accordance with grace in order that the promise may be certain to all the descendants not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all as it is written a father of many nations have I made thee in the sight of him whom he believed even God who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. I want to say tonight except we know that God as the God who gives life to the dead not technically or even scripturally because it is written but unless we know him in the truth of the experience of that life from the dead we do not know God as we ought nor can we make him known. To be a son of Abraham is not merely to subscribe to the truth of a God who brings life from the dead but to be a piece of it calls into being that which does not exist in hope against hope he believed in order that he might become a father of many nations. I think the Amplified Bible says when every human basis for hope was gone Abraham yet hoped against hope being a hundred years old not being weak in the faith and he contemplated his own body now as good as dead since he was a hundred years old. How far will God go to obtain the true thing? Why does he wait till a man is at the final extremity and at the end of his natural life and not yet have fulfilled the promise? When he was as good as dead he contemplated his body now a hundred years old. Well, I'm seeing the visible evidences of age and I'm only a little half way to that hundred years but what is a hundred year old body? But a decrepit, wrinkled, shriveled shank of a thing looking upon himself. God had him to contemplate his own body now dead. He rubbed his face in it that there could be no basis that there could be any fulfillment coming from Abraham or Sarah whose womb had always been dead, dead, dead. God set the stage of such an exacerbating death of such finality of such totality that the man could not even hope humanly speaking except in a God who brings life from the dead and makes those things to be which are not. Having said all these things and trusting myself as I'm speaking the resurrection power and not your intelligence to convey this word into your spirit I want you to take a look at a text with which we have some familiarity and I want to announce that I believe we're at the threshold of seeing its fulfillment in actuality as it is given in Ezekiel the 37th chapter the Valley of Dry Bones. How many people, just to be honest aren't altogether very familiar with this chapter? Raise your hands. Oh, bless you. I love you for your honesty. There's hope for the church after all. Okay, let's read it together. The hand of the Lord was upon me and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley and it was full of bones and he caused me to pass among them round about and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley and they were very dry and he said to me, capital H, the Lord Son of man, can these bones live? and I answered Lord God, thou knowest again he said to me prophesy over these bones and say to them, oh dry bones hear the word of the Lord thus says the Lord God to these bones behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life and I will put sinews on you make flesh grow back on you cover you with skin put breath in you that you may come alive and you will know that I am the Lord as I said before there's no true knowing that I am, is the Lord except on the ground of death unto resurrection anything else is sham anything else is religious counterfeit anything else satisfies our religious needs but cannot in any way fulfill his need for the revelation of his glory I interrupt myself to raise the rhetorical question do you know God and the power of his resurrection have you passed from death to life was your baptism a burial unto death that you might be raised with him unto newness of life and in fact, if you never had such a baptism and it were available tonight how many of you would enter it as a burial listen, we Jews have been around too long we know that man without the ability of the Holy Spirit can perform religiously and perform impressively we've been doing it for thousands of years without the Ruach HaKodesh don't think that Christendom is not capable of the same and in fact has been doing the same historically I want to persuade you tonight, dear saints there's a dimension of reality that is so utterly necessary to us who will endure to the end who will face every rigor and trial of persecution that is calculated to come upon the true church of Jesus Christ in the final days of time where the antichrist forces are already growing which we will not be able to overcome except in the power of this life we need to examine ourselves and ask tonight whether in fact we are in that faith and whether we are living consistently in that faith and how many of you would have gotten out of your seats when you were introduced and come and stand before a crowd of this size and be completely uninspired and decrepit and done in and tired and exhausted and trust for the power of that life to communicate not just a message that will satisfy the need of the hour but will transact things for time and for eternity every true act of ministry and service is another opportunity for dying every true prayer is a death every true intercession is a travail and a groaning which is nothing less than a dying true relationship is dying true church is dying there's a suffering and a death that precedes a glory it's not just a once and for all it's a reiteration again and again and again of who is sufficient for these things and coming in obedience as a dead man to trust God for his life and his power and that this is not some kind of radical innovation some kind of recently conceived version of the gospel it is the gospel it is the faith it is the definitive and normative faith but we have been apostolically so long out of it that we're impressed with any kind of new wrinkle any kind of hyped up and jazzed up and speakered up kind of thing that gives the semblance of life but is not the life and in fact the strange mood that's upon me tonight I would say even if it is would we be willing to consider it as death? would we be willing to bring it into death? our messianic aspirations the various kinds of things that we have adopted in which we have put a hope whether it's charismatic, messianic are we willing to allow God to bring into the grave even the best of what we have obtained and attained even by his grace in order that superlative thing that might come forth which alone redounds to his glory the newness of life that will issue on only one condition death Jesus had to experience it Paul had to experience it Abraham had to experience it how shall we be sons of Abraham except we also experience it for only on that basis indeed are we sons of Abraham who is the father of many nations and the father of this nation when it too will pass from death to life when God brings it into the valley of death as dry bones unless you understand that you're going to become increasingly irritated with an Israel that disappoints you by its mistreatment of the Palestinians by its willingness to employ atomic or nuclear weapons for its own defense and what expediency will it not employ however much it disappoints the nations of the world in order that there should be a never again but in my strange prophetic sense I believe that the PLO the being surrounded by Arab nations the Palestinian presence every kind of thing the whole configuration of things the balances of power the issues of oil are all the handwork of God to bring this people into a necessary death that out of which they might come and bless all the families of the earth for only that that comes up out of death and on the resurrection side alone can bless God brings a prophet down into the valley of death by the spirit he brings him out and he brings him down into a valley because that prophet and his ability to respond to the command of God to prophesy to these bones that they might live is the whole issue of whether Israel is going to be resurrected or not and Israel's resurrection is the issue not just of itself but the issue of God's redemptive purposes to the nations and it's the issue of his honor because he has spoken he has made a promise he has given a word and he must fulfill it but do you know what the heck of it is? everything is contingent upon the ability of this prophet to speak that word that those bones might come together and that breath might come into that body that it might become an exceedingly great army here's what I want to say to you saints this son of man described in Ezekiel 37 is ultimate prophetic stuff he's not your Jesus freak he's not someone who's gone through a three-month discipleship program this is a prophet but he's also the son of man he burps he has indigestion bowel movements sweats all of the frailties of flesh yet a prophetic man the ultimate thing wrought in God for faith for obedience what is a prophet if he's not a man of faith? what is a prophet if he will not speak at the command of God the words of God? and yet he himself barks can these bones live son of man Lord, thou knowest I can't bring myself to say they can live they're so exceedingly dry have you ever picked up such a bone? that pulverizes in your very hand and turns to powder and God is going to bring that to life? talk about Abraham being dead being a hundred years old this is beyond the prophet's faith and maybe even beyond the prophet's desire for who among us wants to be brought out of our charismatic hallelujahs and amens and good times and be brought into a valley of depressingly dry bones? because I want to tell you another qualification for prophet saints it's a love for the truth however painful are we willing to be brought by the spirit down into such a place and be brought up and around and be rubbed into the grit and the reality of what in fact is dead in God's sight however much we don't want to recognize it if we will not see the truth as God sees it however painful it is to our own calculation we are ipso facto disqualified from any further use of being the vessel by which we can speak to those bones that they might live this issue is the issue of truth or we're disqualified prophetically how many of us want to see the things as God sees them? our marriage our church life our condition our families the state of the church tonight in the world with all of its hype and all of its excitement and novelties and fads and recognize that if it's not dead God is bringing it into a death the hand of the Lord was upon me and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of the valley it was full of water and so the Lord commands the prophet to prophesy that breath might enter into them that they might come to life that the bones will be joined the sinners will be put on that these flames might live so I prophesied as he commanded me and the breath came into them and they came to life and stood on their feet an exceedingly great army then he said to me son of man these bones are the whole house of Israel behold they say our bones are dried up and our hope has perished we are completely cut off I told you what the requirement is for prophetic obedience an unwillingness to turn away from the truth however painful but what's the requirement for Israel one to which they have not yet come if I'm any student of my own people when they themselves say we are cut off we are without hope we are completely cut off our hope has perished our bones are dried up then then and then only will the word of the Lord come through a prophetic people who speaking will bring that people to a newness of life here's what I feel tonight you can stone me afterwards I feel that my people Israel not only in the land but increasingly worldwide are on a course with God to bring them to this necessary place why is this kind of a death so necessary that they are completely dried up completely cut off completely without hope because we are such inveterate hopers because we are so perennially optimistic we can come out of Auschwitz with a tattoo on our arm and a tatted shirt and in a decade or a generation our kids are going to private schools and we got two or three cars in a garage and how are you doing never again we say as if the issue of never again rests with us rather than him who is our salvation as if our military prowess is going to ultimately be our defense what has God got to do to bring a people to a necessary end of themselves that he might be all in all for except that they recognize him as that as the God who brings life from the dead from death and makes those things to be which are not who is it that they will be purveying to the nation who will they be commending which God we are in such an historical hour and there is so little comprehension by the church of the mystery of Israel and God's intention for that restored nation that is nothing less than life from the dead not only in terms of its blessedness to the nation but the very coming of the Lord and those and as he comes those that greet him in the air who were asleep in Christ that the dead rise in Christ and the Lord's appearing who himself will not come until they say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord you will not see me again until you say listen, since you don't have to be a theologian to figure out that there is a conjunction between the restoration of this people the Lord's coming and the raising up of the dead on the last day you remember what Mary and Martha said to Jesus if you had been here our brother had not died your brother will live again and the resurrection and the life oh we know he will rise again on the last day I tell you what those sisters knew what you don't there is a resurrection on the last day that is the final demonstration of God's glory before all nations who thereafter will not exempt from the judgments of God if they refuse this final resurrection testimony and glory of the resurrection of Israel before the face of all nations in a day in the last day that nation restored the dead rising from their graves and the Lord's appearing resurrection is the name of the game and how little consciousness we have of it or appreciation or walking in the truth and the power of it even now as is available to us then you will know that I am the Lord when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves my people then you will know that I am has brought you back to the land they don't presently know it and they won't until this demonstration comes and I will put my spirit within you and you will come to life and I will place you on your own land then you will know that I the Lord have spoken and done it declares the Lord got the picture? what is our God except a God who creates by speaking what is our God but a God whose word is the issue the word spoken I have declared it I have spoken it then you will know you've not been brought back by your Yiddish achievements and attainments and high IQ and all the rest of that baloney you've been brought back from the grave by the power of my word and unless you know that I'm a God of a word that a mere word spoken by me is the issue of life and death and nothing else you don't know me but here's the catch thing why doesn't God himself directly speak to these bones why does he need a son of man why does he need that bedraggled collection of sweaty corpuscles whose faith is failing and say you speak to these bones you prophesize I command you have you a faith in that hour that can respond how's your word is your word informative prophetically inspiring or is your word an event of such a kind that can bring life to the earth listen saints we're on a collision course not all of you in fact just a small remnant from among the crowd that's here tonight we'll be among that prophetically constituted church at the end of the age that will be a prophetic entity who has been schooled at the school of God disciplined responsive to his commands know many deaths and many sufferings and have been brought beyond the faith even of themselves but the very faith of God by the power of God to speak the word of God in such a unity not this sham ecumenical stuff with a back slap and a hug I mean the kind of unity that comes through suffering through truth, through accommodation through grit, through the real issues that are faced not this being stamped off the assembly line or some banner over the platform with a dove as if ipso facto by one sweep of the magic wand we have come into some kind of ecumenical unity that kind of stuff will never bring forth one word at one moment at one command of God it's the people who speak the same thing it's the people who have one mind and one heart it's the people who could be commanded by God and whose speaking has not been a trifle whose words do not fall to the ground who cherish the word whose mouths are under the discipline of God who will only speak what he commands how much we debate the value of our witness by the flippancy and the frequency of our too much speaking far better that we should know the value of silence and to reserve our mouths until the time that God will employ them then you'll see that there's a weight and a heft to your word that was not there before I wish I had much time with you my heart goes out that you just have to heal all this in one night but listen here's the question look at our present condition there are as many opinions in this room as there are people in this seat how will we ever come to a place of such agreement such unanimity such oneness with the purposes of God that his speaking is our speaking how can he bring us to a place as he did the Israel of old with one shout the walls came down but if there was a note of uncertainty if there was a note of unbelief if it was just a feeble kind of shout that doesn't really believe I think those walls would be standing still and those larger than life enemies would have come out and decimated Israel one shout one people one thing you can always believe that where there's the truth thing there's the counterfeit that where God is wanting this kind of a unity of one speaking and of one agreement that there's going to be something moving at the same time motivated by and performed and orchestrated by men that will encourage shabbier and less costly equivalent that will not serve the purpose of God are we willing for the disciplines of the faith are we willing for the dealings of God to deal with our opinionated mind the softness of our life our indulgent flesh to bring us to a place of obedience that we can by the spirit be brought out and down into a place of truth and not shrink from it and speak the word that God commands us in that place with a faith that is unwavering and a faith that worketh by love and don't give me this gitchy goo stuff about how cute we Jews are how fetching and the Israeli mystique that'll go up like a puff at the first signs of economic collapse but a love for this people who are on a collision course to be made despicable before the nations of the world Jerusalem shall be a cup of trembling and a rock of offense to all nations even we Jews are irritated with them how then shall you feel how then shall you speak the word of faith that works by love except it's the love that is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit the love of God for that people not our sentimental celebration alone will suffice namely His life His love His power His word His faith His speaking by those of us who would otherwise be dead who have no life in ourselves who are dead and hid with Christ and God until His life is revealed for we have no other got the picture? this is a call tonight to the true faith the only faith the Abrahamic faith the faith that knows a God who brings life out of death and brings those things to be which were not are you in the faith? examine yourself and see if you're in the faith have you entered those waters of baptism alone? there's no other place to pass from death to life except in those waters and did you enter them by faith and with this understanding? did you recognize that you were being buried with Christ and that this burial and this death is not partial but total or it's not death? that it's not your virtues that are saved and that you're just your vices that go down to the bottom of that grave? everything natural even your well-meaning intentions everything goes only the newness of life only His life for unto Him are all things to whom be glory forever with respect to the promise of God He did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith giving glory to God that's the issue today giving glory to God and the issue of God's glory is the issue of resurrection and no other so there's a way in which even tonight whatever our condition or understanding at the time of our baptism that we can by faith tonight make it to stand for this death know you're not, Paul says that as many of you as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death that you're buried with Him that you might be raised with Him unto newness of life how many of you by faith tonight would receive that understanding for your baptism? and if you're not baptized rush to the waters in the light of that understanding that you're going to be buried I predict, I prophesy every well-meaning religious intention in hullabaloo and amen and hallelujah is going to go up like a pop when the trials the exigencies the calamities of the last days come upon us in a ruthless opposition of anti-Christ persecution of the true church we'll either stand in that day in the power of God or we'll be found among the apostates and I want to tell you tonight you're going to make a decision even now that will determine the one or the other you think I had an intention to say these things? you think I came with this strategy? I don't even know where I was speaking tonight if this is not God if this is not His call if He's not showing us by the death to which Israel is being brought how far He will go for the things that pertain to His glory both through those natural sons of Abraham and we who are the children of Abraham then we have not been seeing things aright I invite you to the faith once and for all give of the faith and there's no cheapy way only the way of the cross the way of death unto life so let's bow before Abraham's God let's turn the word of God into an event tonight because the death to which we're called we're not going to be dragged kicking Jesus gave up His life He yielded it up He relinquished all right He gave it over, it was forsaken He trusted in God who brings life from the dead in the name of Jesus Christ whose servant I am and whose word I've borne for you tonight I want to ask very solemnly before Him who is there in this audience tonight who is being called from the death unto life all your messianic aspirations and intentions all your charismatic well-meaning good things good is not good enough only that which is glorious I invite you to stand to the call of God to a full death I invite you to stand to a dealing of God that will bring you to a place where every human basis for hope is gone where you can no longer even hope against hope but trust in Him who speaks who promises and who says because I live you shall live also I'll tell you what that if this is a true standing tonight in integrity before God many of you who are standing who are either indifferent to Jews or had a secret and maybe even unconscious irritation or resentment with them for which you're not to be blamed it's natural you'll find something new percolating in your heart and spirit that was not there before it's God's unconditional love for a people it's the love of God for a people for whom He will have mercy because He will have mercy you'll be seeing the scriptures differently new requirements and trials will come into your life that you could not have imagined before tonight God will test the reality of this standing and bring you to places where if He be not resurrected from the dead we of all men are most to be pitied precious Jesus this standing, my God is testimony itself to the power of your life no man could have worked this people up psychologically and emotionally to make a commitment of this kind unto death I give you the praise, the glory and the honor truly, all things are of you and through you that to you might be the eternal praise and glory Lord, seal by name every saint who has stood tonight for this call beyond categories beyond titles beyond things that we've employed to define where we are in the faith as Christians bring us, my God, to true resurrection ground test us tomorrow at school at work, at business at home, as husbands fathers, mothers, wives sons and daughters to a quality of life beyond our ability that if you don't come through with a power, with a spirit with a word, with a kindness with a love, with a patience we'll blow it show us the reality of your life bring us increasingly, my God to live and have our being in it that when the day comes that one word from us together spoken to this people Israel in their grave will constitute their resurrection that we will not fail and balk bless this people, bless this word and let not a syllable of it fall to the ground but have its full work we thank you and we give you the praise for how seriously you're speaking to us in these last days how great is your love for us that is not content with second best thank you, precious God for drawing us to this ground bless these children and make them a fragrance of Nunessa's life to many in this community and especially to the lost sheep of the house of Israel may the supplication and groans and travail that comes out of the deepest gut of this people be not merely religious obligation but the very working of that power and of that life which is beyond our own we thank you and give you the praise seal now this consecration and perform it in Jesus' holy name we pray and God's people say let's sing