In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the cataclysmic end that awaits the world, where the kingdoms of darkness and light will engage in a final violent conflict. The church is seen as having the opportunity to demonstrate its faith and be purified during these last days. The centrality of Israel is highlighted, affecting various aspects including the concept of rapture. The preacher also emphasizes the importance of understanding and acknowledging the judgments of God, as they reveal both His severity and goodness. The sermon concludes with a call for the church to recognize the significance of Israel and the need for God's enablement to fulfill its mandate.

of your faith, your church, what you understand about faith, the Holy Spirit, church government structure, evangelism, world missions, everything hinges on this one pivotal thing with a people with whom you have little to do or even little consider, namely, the Jew, of which I am one. And I'm not speaking this because I'm Jewish, I'm speaking it because I'm a messenger to the church, and because God is rectifying in these last days these ages-old omissions. Let's pray again, especially for the young people who cannot comprehend conceptually the complex and intricate reasoning of Paul out of Romans chapter 11, of which the theologians scholars say that is the heart of the book of Romans. Everything leads to it from chapter 1 through 8, and then everything follows from 12 through 16. But the centerpiece to which all things lead and from which all things derive is this issue and mystery of Israel and the church. I'm struck this morning looking out on you, on how Gentile you appear. How else should we look, brother? Well, I would hope for something that would have subdued and rounded the edges and taken the harshness out and the Gentilic quality out and have put an Hebraic element in. Something to transpose, something to bring a quotient that God intends as normative for every saint. He doesn't want to Judaize you, God forbid, but he would like to Hebraicize you, and that is not a cultural thing, that is a spiritual thing. It comes with being imbued with the genius of our faith that has its origin and its matrix in that which is Hebraic. The psalmist David, the apostles, all of the writers of the scriptures but one were all Jews steeped in and expressing an Hebraic perception of God, of the faith, of reality itself, and once you're infused with this, it will touch everything and make you yourself a presence in the community and in the earth that is redemptive, and if any Jews could catch wind of it and sniff it, they're on the road to salvation. So Lord, great grace we pray to restore that which has been lost. Something difficult to comprehend and something that our flesh does not necessarily desire to consider. Reinsert, my God, what was central in Paul's whole apostolic mindset for the church. Give us an understanding, my God, that will not only touch all aspects of what we believe, but will transfigure it. We need more than a facelift. We need a powerful, mighty, potent coming of the Lord in truth, and for us, my God, to pray for revival outside of the purview, the construct, the parameters of the biblical New Testament faith is to ask in vain. If you're going to revive us, you're going to revive us within the parameters of the scriptures themselves, and especially this which has been lost to our consideration that has been called for at the end of the age where the end of the age does not end. So I ask your blessing, Lord. Bless these children, young and old. Give them a capacity to hear and to receive and to consider. We thank and give you praise for the privilege of this morning, and what's on your heart for us in Jesus' name. Amen. We'll turn to Romans 11. We should be looking at Romans 9 through 11, but I hope that you'll be sufficiently stirred this morning that you'll do that yourself, but we'll get right to the heart of Paul's great statement, which he understands and conveys, not necessarily because he himself is a Jew, but because he himself is an apostle. It's remarkable that chapter 9 begins with the hot cry of Paul the apostle, that he would even wish himself a curse for his brethren's sake, that they might know Christ. And most of us who read that think, oh, what a precious man, what an identification with his own kinsmen. But you know what I suspect? This cry does not issue out of Paul's ethnicity. Am I getting too fancy for you guys? Out of Paul's Jewishness, it issues out of Paul's apostolicity. You say, big deal. What's the difference? The difference is this. If Paul's identification with the Jew is only a fleshly and natural and ethnic identification, we can admire that, but we can't share that. But if Paul is crying out of his apostolic heart, which is to say the heart of God, for who is in greater proximity and union with God's heart than the apostle? That's what an apostle is. That's why the apostles are foundational to the church, because they communicate the foundational understanding and desire of God's own heart. They come to us out of his very presence. They communicate the sense of God as God himself is and not as we thought him to be. Oh, may God revive apostles and prophets, the foundation of cornerstones, the pillars of the church, for only they can bring these foundational teachings. And that's what you're enjoying this morning. I'm not an evangelist. Sorry about that. I'm not even a teacher. I'm a prophet. I'm a prophetic man. What shall I say? Shall I deny that I'm Jewish, that the sunlight is shining, that today is Sunday? So much shall I deny my calling, because no man chooses his calling, its given, but God forbid that we should reject it and fail to acknowledge it or speak out of the authority of it. So you're privileged this morning, because only a man out of a foundational calling can convey foundations. That's why the church is essentially without them. That's why we're barking up the wrong tree. That's why we have programs that are sound and furious, signifying nothing, and end in frustration and essential failure, because we haven't attended to the foundations. Out of the foundations comes the superstructure, and the superstructure raised up on the foundations must be of exactly the same quality, timber, and kind as the foundations themselves. It's not only the foundation that God wants to be apostolic and prophetic, but the entire church. It's stature, it's mindset, it's heart, it's disposition, it's understanding, it's authority, it's witness. That's the church. The great question is, will the denominations allow it? Will they make room for it if it threatens their interest and their programs and their organization and their structure? Will they allow again the restoration of biblical foundational things that don't necessarily flow together with organizational premises? Well, I love Paul. My God, what a privilege, what a gift to the church, who was an enemy and a murderer and was profoundly converted and made the chief of the apostles, though he called himself the chief of sinners. And you know what? That's not some obsequious reference. See how your English will improve if you listen to me? That's not some ingratiating salesman's cutesy little reference that seems to be humble. That's Paul really believing that not only he was, but he is the chief of sinners. How do you explain that, Art? This man is sublime in his spirituality, deep in his profound understanding of the faith, and he sees himself as a sinner? Yes. Because the deeper you penetrate into God, the greater your apprehension of the reality of who God himself is, the more the awareness of the depths of your own sinfulness. I pray every day, Lord, to purge me from the iniquity that is ever before me. Praise God for the blood. Okay. Okay. To leap right into this, in verse 11 of chapter 11, Paul is answering as an apostle the question raised for him by the church at Rome. This is Paul. This is the apostle. This is nuts and bolts. This is not some academic theoretician who likes to play around with conceptual things. Paul is right there, grounded, right in the reality of the church, its issues, its questions, and its struggles. He's a lover of the church. When he had to take his leave of the church and say, you'll see my face no more, they came all the way from Ephesus to Miletus because Paul bid them to say goodbye. Can you picture this, these Gentiles? They hung on his neck and wept that they would see his face no more. There's never been anything like that, to that point in history, that Gentiles were so enamored of a Jew that they wept when he announced, you'll not see my face again. He was their father. He was their mother. He labored day and night that Christ be formed in them. He loved them with the love of God. He broke through the historic enmity of Gentile and Jew because he was an apostle, he was deep in the faith and in the reconciliating heart of God that made the two one new man. And when we'll have that again in the church, the church will be full of the glory of God. You ought to be inviting Jews to Dunville if they're not living here, but I'll tell you what, the time is not too distant when they'll be coming through. Not because they want to, but because they will have to. Because there's going to be a last days persecution again of Jews that will eclipse the Nazi time. They're going to be so persecuted, so uprooted, so forced, so driven, so pushed through the nations that they'll find themselves in backward places and out of town and rustic and rural and primitive locations that they would never have chosen. They're going to be knocking at your door. We'll see in that day what your relationship with them is. We'll see in that day whether you will recognize them as the least of these his brethren and you'll be willing to give them water and food and clothing and shelter at a time when they are universally hated. Will the true church please stand up? Because the true church will be identified in that day by its identification with the despised people because they are the least of these his brethren. Because the church is not afraid to suffer. Because the church doesn't mind getting caught and being found out and going to their concentration camp. They count it a privilege even if that should befall them so much as they have helped God's ancient people to be called again to his salvation as the redeemed of the Lord returning to Zion. I can't tell you all this in one morning, in one message. But we have it in books, we have it in tapes. And I somehow have been plucked up by the Lord as one of the single authoritative figures who is presenting this schema, this scenario of last day's affliction for Jews all around the world. Don't think it makes me popular. Don't think that other Christians want to hear it. Don't think that Messianic Jews want to hear it. But it's true and it's coming and we need to be prepared for it. So the church in Rome wants to know, is God finished with the Jews? You know, it's a question that is even being asked today. Listen, they're still apostate, they're still hostile, they reject the gospel, they're the toughest people to witness to, they're not just indifferent to the gospel, they're actively hostile. They come up with their alternate Messianic schemes called Marxism or Freudianism or some other ism that some Jewish genius has conceived as an alternative to the salvation of God. They are our adversaries. Paul says in Romans 11, they are our enemies. They are the enemies of the gospel. And then he adds this remarkable phrase, for your sake. You're having trouble with me? What would you have with Paul? He's full of bewildering contradictions and paradoxes and perplexities because our faith is not a little simple teacup thing. It's charged with remarkable complexity. The gospel is simple, salvation is simple, but after that, then we need the apostles and the prophets. They are the enemies of the gospel. Yes, we know that historically. I began in ministry as a missionary to the Jews. I know how tough they are. I know how tough I was. I would have scared you stiff. Even now you're not too comfortable. And I'm spirit filled. I'm a tongue speaker. So what will it be when they come, unbelieving, unregenerate, uprooted, plucked out, shot, the bottom has gone out from them, they're not going to be at their best behavior. They're going to be rude and ungrateful and ready to turn you off and rub you the wrong way and irritate you and quicken and awaken the depths of the resentment that lies only beneath the surface in most Gentile lives, unless that Gentile life is profoundly regenerated and filled with the spirit of the God of the Jews. They'll test you. And that's why God is moving them through the nations, not only to test them, to test you. Otherwise, you would have sat in the pew and felt you had it all together. But the Jew will find you out. He found Luther out, the greatest of the apostolic giants and the leader of the Reformation movement of Germany, a giant, failed in this one test. There's something about us Jews, we're abrasive, we rub you the wrong way. And if you're just superficially religious, your little Sunday face will hardly last the moment. But if there's a depth of the sanctifying work of God that has reached deep to the wellsprings of resentment, self-pity, bitterness, the kinds of things that operate in most Pentecostal assemblies. I know because I never received my baptism in my Assemblies of God church. I received it on the sloping floor of a farmhouse with a few saints who loved Jews and were studying Hebrew. Why didn't you receive it in your Pentecostal church? How can you? My God, that place was so charged with resentment, with unresolved relational conflicts and unspoken this and that, that people would not even leave through the same door. But the Spirit of God is going to be there to induct you into the Jordan of the Spirit? No way. I remember when I preached that by your mercy, this is right out of Romans 11, Paul says, by your mercy they may obtain mercy. And some woman cried out of the congregation, Archie said, we don't even have mercy for each other. How shall we have it for Jews? And my answer was, exactly. And you never would have recognized that or cried that out unless you were being pressed by a requirement that you now know you're not able to make. Listen, dear saints and dear kids, if mercy is only a word in your vocabulary, if only it's a creedal and doctrinal supposition but is not authentic in your experience as only a prostitute saved by God would know it, or a drug runner or some decrepit bum whose life was in gutters and in vomit and was saved by God, these know the mercy of God. But we respectable middle class people who have never conspicuously sinned, we know it only as a concept, we don't know it as a reality. And God says that by your mercy, you'll extend mercy, not the concept, the reality. So get mercy. And in fact, you know what? We need mercy this morning. If God does not give us mercy, does not give me mercy to bring this forth and mercy for you to receive it, our whole labor is in vain. So the whole issue of the Jew in the unique genius of God awakens and calls for the deepest realization of God, of his mercy, of the faith, of the reality that would not otherwise be our requirement. It's the issue of the Jew that makes the church. The Jew compels us to be what we ought and have shrunk from becoming because the cost is too great, because the cross has only become a piece of church architecture and not the thing in which we would want to be impaled. So Paul answers the question, are they finished? Listen, they slew the prophets. They killed the Lord of Glory. They sought to his crucifixion. Aren't they finished now? Didn't God give them their chance and they blew it and now we can be the Israel of God? Isn't that the way we're supposed to understand that? Paul says, God forbid that you should think that. Praise God that this is in the book. By no means have they stumbled that they should fall. It's not a fall. It's a stumbling. Listen to the way the Holy Ghost gives Paul an artful way to describe the dilemma of Israel. Yes, they have rejected their Messiah. That ought to be the end of everything. But Paul does not call it a fall in a sense of a finality with no hope of return. He calls it a stumbling. See how these apostles are? How gracious they are in their words and in their hearts. It's only a stumbling because one who stumbles can be lifted up again. But one who falls, he may be down for the count. They've only stumbled historically. Don't count them out. And their salvation has come to you because they have stumbled. God has turned from them and given you the message that they have rejected. And you now have received grace. You who are far off and without hope in the world, without God and without hope, who drank beer out of skulls and fornicated like jackrabbits and killed one another just with a look. You, God has saved and by the blood of their Messiah has brought you into their covenants and hopes and promises and into the commonwealth of Israel itself. So how come you look so Gentile? Why don't you show that you've been brought into something that is Hebraic, that the grace of God has admitted you into salvation for salvation is of the Jews. You guys knew nothing about that. You've come into their salvation. You've been grafted into their tree. You ought to be reflecting that and showing at least this much, a conspicuous gratitude that there was a faith for you to enter, that there was a faith that had been maintained, that there was an expectation of Messiah, that though the mainstream of Jews rejected it, there was a faithful remnant who received him and continued to make this faith known like Peter. But Peter required a vision and a trance in order to understand that you goyim, that's the Hebrew words, nations, the Gentiles. My mother spits that word out, the goyim. She used to say to me when I was a kid, you're just like them. You're goyish because you've blown your whole allowance. You went and did it in one fell swoop. You didn't save. Jesus saves, but Moses invests. You're just like them, the goyim. My mother is 95, living with us now as a still in unbelief, and I've been a believer 36 years. She's seen her son's life transformed, and she's still resisting. But she's right next door to me, eking out the last days of her life. You know what she can remember at the age of 95? When she was thrown into the swimming pool in London, England, by her Gentile teacher who said to her, sink or swim, you fat Jew. My mother has not forgotten, and I'm not even sure that even happened. But somehow over the years she has believed it has happened. It's in keeping with what she understands about Gentiles as being hostile to Jews, and she clings to this. There's a deep prejudice, a deep fear, a deep enmity. And now she's living in a Christian community, almost entirely Gentile, but for the exception of me. And they're loving her, and spoiling her, and lavishing affection and attention on her, and she's got to recognize this is more than human kindness. This is God, in the sweetness of this people toward me, because I'm a bitchy old lady who's grumbling and griping and discontent and finding everything wrong, and yet they patiently bear it and are sweet to me. It's going to save her. Okay, listen to this. They stumbled, but through their stumbling and their fall, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Well, you knew that, but what you didn't know is what follows. So as to move them to jealousy. You didn't just receive something without a string attached. There's a profound string attached. There's a reason why salvation has come to you, so that you then in turn can move them to jealousy who have forfeited what you have received. I want to tell you that the church that does not take that to heart, this mandate and this requirement given to Gentile believers, is ipso facto out of the apostolic faith. It's only become a denomination. It's only become a purveyor of services. It only brings a modicum of blessing. It is out of the reality to which God calls us, because we have forfeited our identification, our mandate, and our obligation to the people for whose salvation God yet waits through you. Move them to jealousy. What are you going to show them that will make them jealous? You don't think they have their synagogue services replete with Hebrew and liturgy that goes back through the ages, that puts our few little choruses in the shade? You don't think they have eloquent rabbis that make our preachers look like country hicks? You don't think that they have every advantage, that there's nothing in our services that is going to necessarily attract them, let alone make them jealous? Where do we find the explanation? Is there an asterisk and there's a footnote at the bottom of the page? Paul does not explain. He just gives us the mandate, the charge, and the requirement. And you know what? We have totally ignored it. As Paul begins the book of Romans, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Why should I even raise that question? Because the gospel itself is not intellectually respectable. It's not commendable. It's a foolish statement about God laying aside his deity and taking upon himself the form of flesh, being rejected, crucified, and that by his blood that was shed in that atrocious death that came upon him, you're saved. I mean, there's nothing about that that's commendable to human intellect. But Paul's not ashamed of it because it's the power of God. That message itself is the power of God unto salvation, to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. Well, we've not gone to the Jew first, and we've not even gone to them last. We have not gone to them at all. I'm not saved because of you. I'm saved because of the grace of God that picked me up off the side of the road as a hitchhiker 36 years ago, looking for philosophical answers as a disillusioned ex-Marxist. I lived in Christian America for 35 years and was never once affected, influenced, in any way challenged. The Church has failed to take up this mandate because this mandate would transform the Church itself. Yes, the Jew is the beneficiary, but the Church, in fulfilling this obligation, is required to go deep. The Church is required to become earnest. The Church is required to become authentic. Its relationships have got to be more than the casual conglomerate of individuals sitting in pews, but the congregation of God's people, living a heavenly mode of life while they're in the secular earth. It's got to be transparent. It's got to be true. It's got to be authentic. It's got to be real. It's got to be unfamed. When Jews will see this, they'll know, you could never have attained to this by yourself. This is very God. It reveals God. And the way you live, and the way you deport yourself, the way you look, the way you talk, there's a reality. It's a kingdom that you're expressing, not a denomination. And it's the kingdom of the God of Israel, who sent his son with the first word, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. To fall below that, and only to become religious, only to have a series of Sunday services and an occasional program, is to betray the faith. There's no way that we can fulfill this mandate if we accept that kind of Christianity, because it's convenient, because it doesn't require of us, because we can perform that. But to move Jews to jealousy requires something beyond our ability. You know what it requires? The life of God himself. And that's what makes them jealous. You'll be able to say with Paul, for me to live is Christ. You'll tap into the resurrection life, and you'll despise any human substitute that will get you by. You'll be the sons and daughters of the resurrection. And what is there in our present church life that requires this radical appropriation of God's life? Zero. Nothing. Hey, listen, we can do this by ourselves. We can conduct meetings. We can speak from the platform. We can introduce. We can this, we can that. We can have programs. But get apostolic. Take Paul seriously. Receive the mandate of God toward a despicable people for whom we have no natural affinity, and they not for us. And find out what God means by moving them to jealousy, by some demonstration of heaven, while yet in the earth, as is corporately displayed in an unfeigned way by a people who have transcended earthly things and religious things. And you'll find that you can only do that on the basis of the life of God himself. Resurrection is not a doctrine to which we give approval. It's a mode of life to be lived. And we're falling short of it because there's no present requirement that compels us. And because whatever is presently required, we can fulfill humanly, naturally, and religiously. And thereby fall short of the glory of God. Praise God for Jews. Praise God for the mystery. Praise God for the requirement. Or else we would have been as satisfied with our condition and just want a little revival to kind of just tone it up a little bit, improve our denomination, give a little lustre to our services. But this is ultimate requirement. This is beyond anything that we can perform out of our humanity, out of our religiosity. This requires God. Even my preaching this morning is that. If it was a cutesy message, a little revival thing, look, my no hands, anybody could perform that. But to open the mystery of God, neglected through the ages, and needing now to be restored and taken to heart as the mandate of the church and the reason for its being, that takes Holy Ghost, Pentecostal, resurrection enablement. So we prophetic men not only proclaim the long forgotten message, but we demonstrate what, by the means by which it's to be fulfilled. What do you mean, Art? Here's what I mean. God is not only putting before you this requirement that has never subsided, never dissipated away. God has never changed his mind. He's still waiting for this fulfillment. The Lord is pent up in the heavens, it says in Acts 3.21, waiting for the restoration of all things spoken by the prophets since the world began. He's not coming until he has something to do with the restoration of his people because he's going to rule out of their Zion. Don't you know that? The law shall go forth out of Zion? Where is Zion? Don't be among those dum-dums that say, God's not interested in real estate. Oh yeah? He's interested in this piece of earth. It's his. His Jerusalem, the city of peace, his Israel, his land. It's the Holy Land, not presently in its character and its occupants, but ultimately in his intention. And that when the rule of God goes forth and the law goes out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, nations shall study war no more. They'll not need to study it. There'll be no need for war for peace will reign supremely through the equity, justice, and righteousness of God who rules now over his own creation because he has been established and restored into one place that he has chosen as the locus of his kingdom, the holy hill of Zion, where he has put his king who is a descendant of David and will rule forever. You don't know that? Wow! You don't have this in your consciousness? No wonder that your Christianity is just a sum of services. You don't have a kingdom context. You don't have a kingdom expectation. You don't understand the whole drift of history. You don't understand what's breaking forth in Israel now is the very prelude to the fulfillment of the things that I'm speaking and not some historical aberration or accident. You guys ought to be alive on the edge of your seats watching those newscasts and knowing that Israel is the time clock of God and we're coming close to the end. And something is required from us in their restoration that by our mercy they may obtain mercy if we have indeed a mercy to give. So, why did God make Paul an apostle to the Gentiles? This guy was the prized student of the Rabbi Gamaliel. He knew this Judaism right to his fingertips. And God makes him the apostle to the dum-dums. And he takes Peter who has no background, he's only a fisherman and makes him the apostle to the Jews. Can you figure that out? Only if you know this that Paul understood that the issue of Israel's restoration was the issue of the Gentiles, was the issue of the Church. And therefore, God with the interest of Israel's final redemption in mind sent Paul to the place where the action is taking place, the Church, the Gentile Church to move them to jealousy, to extend mercy. And what a Church that is. For if their rejection in verse 15 is the reconciliation of the world what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? Literally, life from the dead. For when the Lord comes as their final deliverance sets his feet on the Mount of Olives against all those nations that have come to destroy Jerusalem and pours out upon the city of David the spirit of supplication and prayer the dead rise. Those that are asleep in Christ rise first and those that, how does it say, are helping someone. Those that are alive and remain. You know what that means in Greek? Those that have just are barely surviving last day's persecution. Not that they happen to be alive. They are alive because and not asleep because God has retained them in the face of the last day's diabolical opposition to the Church and to the people of God. And when he comes they meet him in the air. That's the rapture. Not before. And they come with him and escort him. The parousia, the word parousia in Greek is meeting a dignitary as he is approaching his place of honor and accompanying him to that place. It's not being taken up and out so that we can avoid and be saved from tribulation. It's in the time of tribulation that the Church is called to shine. To exhibit itself. To show its courage. To show its sacrifice. To show that it is aligned with the cross of Christ and understands that there's no glory without the suffering that precedes it. Revelation says the woman shall be given the wings of an eagle and shall flee into the wilderness where a place has been prepared for her and where she is fed for three and a half years. Who's going to provide that place? And who's going to do that feeding if the Church has been remarkably removed? That's only a theory. That's less than two centuries old and the Church Fathers never ever dreamed about anything like that. It's those that endure to the end that will be saved. It's a cataclysmic end. It's an end of final violence between kingdoms of dark and lightness in which the Church has its opportunity to show itself and to be purified and purged through the intensity of those last days that it might ascend to its place in the heavenlies to rule and reign with Him as the overcomers. You see when you begin to put the key back into place you begin to restore the centrality of Israel then it affects every issue even the question of rapture which I don't want to go off on this morning. So, verse 17 If some of the branches were broken off and you were wild olive shoot were grafted into their place to share the rich root of the olive tree don't boast over the branches for if you boast remember that it's not you who supports the root but the root supports you. You will say the branches were broken off that I might be grafted in. That's true. They were broken off because of their unbelief but you stand only through faith so don't become proud hotshots but stand in awe and reverence and fear for if God did not spare the natural branches will He spare you? So note the kindness and the severity of God severity toward those who have fallen God's kindness toward you provided you continue in His kindness otherwise you'll be cut off also. God did not hesitate to break off the natural branches. How long had they been in their own tree? For millennia but He broke them off. So don't think that you're a johnny-come-lately who has been grafted in that you could not be broken off if you do not abide in the faith. Therefore, Paul says, fear. You want to know the most conspicuous absence in the church today as I travel around the world and I touch it in its myriad forms the absence of the fear of God is the most conspicuous lack in the church worldwide. We're too glib. We're too shallow. We're too light. We're too, I don't know what there's something missing there's a depth of something that ought to pervade the church it's the deep respect and awe and fear of the almighty God who will not hesitate to judge and to break off. You know why we don't have it? Because we have missed this mystery. Because we have not been instructed by how far God will go with His own ancient people. We've not understood God. And one of my books out there speaks on it on the Holocaust, Where Was God? I dare you to read it. Not only will it instruct you of a biblical way to understand the Holocaust's past and to anticipate the Holocaust coming it will totally and radically alter your entire view of God for the better. We have a shallow view because we have omitted the judgments of God. It's not compatible. It doesn't fit with God as being sweet God nice, God kind, God loving How do we figure God judging? Isn't there a contradiction somehow? Or is He a seamless garment? And you can't single out one attribute and place that over another. In fact, to remove the judgment of God is to remove God as God. And then you have some wishy-washy saccharine, sweet, sugary Jesus in which you have put the name but it's not true. You need to know the severity as well as the goodness of God. And God's dealing with Israel. Past, present, and future reveals it. It will temper you. It will modify you. It's what you need. That's why if you don't understand this mystery, you will become inflated, wise, pompous, hot shot. We got it together. We're bringing in the kingdom. We are the kingdom. We displace Israel. All of those things are the symptoms about which Paul warned. We lack the temperedness of God. And that very temperedness, that moderating influence would itself make us attractive to Jews. You know what the Jews have called the church historically? The arrogant kingdom. Whew! You know who turns off the shrill, cheapy, tell evangelists first? Are the Jews. They saw through them before you did. The hucksters. The men whipping up their own kingdoms and deriving millions by you sending your seed faith to them. Why don't they have you send it to India and let them live by their faith and not yours? Jews have seen right through that. I'll tell you something about us Jews. We have an instinct for what is real. We may be deceived in many ways ourselves, but there's something about us that senses what is authentic. And until you put that up before us, we're not going to be moved to jealousy. God is waiting for something from the church that will be the church's own making. So you're rooted into their tree. And you're living from the sap of that root. Which sap is the life of God? If you only recognize that you're rooted in by the grace of God. Unless you recognize that if you're not rooted in, you would have been a dry branch that cannot bear fruit. A wild olive tree by its nature never bears fruit. It cannot. It's genetically impossible. It can only bear fruit when it is grafted in to a lively root whose sap can then flow through its branches. You would be fruitless unless you were grafted into their tree. And in fact, unless you're conscious of being grafted in, you are fruitless. Grafting in needs to be acknowledged, recognized with humble gratitude. Thank you, Lord, that we're grafted into their tree. It's not a tree that we would have chosen. We're a little bit embarrassed that we have to be associated with Jews. But that's the way your wisdom has called for it. And that's the only way that your life is going to be moving through the branches of the church that are grafted in that we acknowledge with gratitude. We're grateful for that grafting operation because we want to be fruitful. So let me try and... In verse 24, If you have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree? God is able to graft them back again. My first Pentecostal pastor was astonished. He never had a convert like me. He never saw anyone grow up in the faith so rapidly. He never saw anyone more avidly take notes out of every message he spoke. Within six months, I was already eclipsing his faith and his understanding. You know why? Not because I'm clever. I was being grafted back into my own tree. How much more when they are grafted back into their own tree? And yesterday morning, I spoke to men. My, what a sorry-looking lot. Pot-bellied and out of shape physically and spiritually, giving no evidence whatsoever that they represented another kingdom. And I spoke to them firmly, if not severely, in the love of God and challenged them to the root of their being. You know what I said to them? You're receiving a little preview of coming events. I'm a Jew speaking to you in a way that only Jews filled by the Holy Spirit will speak who are uncompromising and not afraid of man. And the day will come soon when Jews like myself, of whom now I am only a representative and a remnant, when all Israel shall be saved, they will be blessing all the families of the earth by doing in the nations and in Canada what I'm doing for you and with you this morning. Canada is living a substandard life. So also is North America. So also are all nations. They're falling short of the glory of God. They can't even tell the difference between the sacred and the profane. And they're all lapsing into profanity and celebrating it and paying the mongers of sport and culture and rap music colossal fortunes in the love of profanity and that which is profane because no one has come to them in a priestly way to tell them the difference between the sacred and the profane. Only we Jews have that calling when we're saved. When you save us, it's life from the dead for all the nations. It's not just another ethnic group like the Puerto Ricans or the Indonesians getting saved. This is the people of God being restored to their own tree because of you, because of that guy that picked me up as a hitchhiker 36 years ago and spoke to me in such a way that my heart was pierced through. And he didn't say, Are you saved, brother? Do you know Jesus? If he had given me any one of those cliches, I'd be dead today. You'd have another speaker this morning. I'm alive because at the critical juncture of my life, when I was despairing unto death, I met an angel. And how I've tried to find this man and remember his name and ask again every time I go back to Switzerland, Do you know an Edwin? He was a salesman. He was an accountant in a car agency. He sang in the church choir. He knew about art. He knew about history, knew about culture. Everything that I knew about him, nobody's ever heard of Edwin. I had his address in my wallet and I got pickpocketed my first day in Cairo and lost it. That's what happens when we Jews go to Egypt. That man, if he had given me one religious cliche, I'd be dead. But he said to me, after he heard my heart, and what a hearing, he drew my heart out. I gave him the whole content of my consternation, of my sense of futility and hopelessness for a world that was dying. There was no hope. I'd been a Marxist. There's no ideology. There's nothing new under the sun. You know what he said, what the world needs? Wow. This guy knows how to ask the questions. Yeah, double dare to tell me. What the world needs, Art, is for men to wash one another's feet. How did he know it? Because he was an angel. That's how he knew it. He was a messenger. That's what angel means. And until we will be angels like that in Dunville and to Jews and to the world, how shall they know? But to give them a quick, easy, cheap answer rather than the Holy Spirit response, because we are not in union with God by His Spirit and have only the convenient, quickie scripture that we can throw out, John 3.16, and think we've done God's service? Hey, guys, your job, your career, your business is a secondary enablement from God. Your first business is the church. Your first business is the purposes of God. Your first business is the salvation of the world. Your first business is the restoration of Israel. It'll transform you and save you from a day of chagrin and shame when the Lord comes. You want to be rejoicing in that day and not cowering. You want to be able to lay a crown at His feet and not be bareheaded. Because when He comes, it says He brings His reward with Him to give to every man according to his work. Are you going to obtain a reward? Is mere pure sitting going to obtain a reward? And the little things we do as ushers and whatsoever, that little opportunity for service, going to obtain a reward? Only the works that can pass through the fire obtain a reward. And these are not the works that we have designed but that He has given. And I'll tell you one thing about any work of God that He gives. You'll not be able to perform it on the basis of your own ability. Like this morning. I'm going to get a reward for this. But it's something I can't perform. Because I'm required not only to explain something but to demonstrate something. That if this mystery is going to be fulfilled, it's going to be fulfilled on the same basis by which it was made known to you. The operation of the life of God, of His resurrection life through the medium of His Spirit. So we Pentecostals will be the most embarrassed in that day who have celebrated the Holy Spirit and are not living in the reality of His power. And therefore not performing His works. Therefore not obtaining the reward. And therefore entering eternity with a wailing and a gnashing of teeth. The issue of the Jew is the issue of God. It's the issue of the Church. It's the issue. So how does Paul end this remarkable statement? And we're just skimming it pitifully about this mystery, this hardening that has come upon Israel in verse 25. Until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And then all Israel will be saved as it is written. Israel is not saved by anything that it does. It's saved by something that you do. It'll be so depleted, so whacked out, so incapacitated that whatever comes to it must come to it from outside of it. When the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, all Israel shall be saved. God is released to come out of Zion and take transgression from Jacob when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. When every last soul in Dunville has had opportunity to hear and to respond to the Gospel that has been presented to them with apostolic authority and vigor. When you have gone into the nations and proclaimed this message of the kingdom to all nations. When you will have a fullness that is not only numeric but qualitative. What do you mean by that, Katz? I mean that the fullness of the Gentiles is not only numerical but a quality of something that transposes and changes you from mere Gentiles into the Hebraic Israel of God in the realm of Spirit. That's the fullness. Are you moving toward that? It's going to mean turning you back on culture, upon nationality, upon denominational distinctives, upon all the kinds of things that keep us bound and earthbound and breaking forth in the power of the life to appropriate His life and the character of His life. His life is power, but it's also sweet. It also has a nature. You know, I'm taking communion daily. I don't just wait for Sunday. I had it already this morning before I came to church. And when I take the bread and the wine, I thank the Lord for His body, the substance of His character, what He is in Himself, in His integrity, in His humility, in His righteousness, in His understanding. And I want that in me. I want that to be formed in me. I want to feed that life that I might be like Him. And when I take that cup, the wine, the essence, the blood, the Spirit of the Lord, the sweetness of the Lord, the mercy of the Lord, the quality of Godness that is in the Lord by eating and drinking. When the fullness of the Gentiles become... Don't be satisfied with your Gentilic condition. There's much more for you if you open yourself to the great influences of the Word of God and steep yourself in the Psalms and learn about God through the Hebrew psalmists who understood Him and called God their refuge. And they weren't playing with words. He was actually, in fact, that by the quality of their faith. There's something in the Scriptures, in the faith, to which you have been brought in, you who are far off. By the blood of their Messiah, you have been brought in to their promises, covenants, and hopes and into the commonwealth of Israel itself. I should be completely at home with you and not feeling edgy and discomforted as if I'm a lonely Jew in a Gentile setting. This should be home for me. This is the family of God. This is the Israel of God, the saved ones who know the God of Israel and love Him and reflect Him. That will move my people to jealousy. And so when that fullness comes in, and it will not come in automatically. You just sit there before the TV set and it's going to take place. No. It comes in when you're shut off the TV set and pull out the plug. Pull out the plug on the world and on its culture and invest yourself in the Scripture and steep yourself in the reality of God and speak about it in the way. Something will come in by your morning devotion time early before you go to work while it's still dark out. Sacrificial. Though you're tired, though you think you need the rest, you're making time for God. You're breaking the power of sloth and indifference. You don't just come to the Sunday service after a night before the TV set watching the late show. The fullness of the Gentiles must come in or Israel will not be saved. The issue of Israel's restoration is the issue of you and the truth of your life and your faith and your walk. For out of Zion will come the deliverer. He will banish ungodliness from Jacob. For this is my covenant with them. All Israel will be saved as it is written. Hey, you're Christians and you're not jealous for the honor of God? That he has something to fulfill that is written? That he has made a covenant and a promise that has to be fulfilled? Because if God cannot keep what is written and the covenant that he has made with them that he will be their deliverer, how is he God? He's a failed God. A discredited God. Undeserving of the attention of the nations. But when he will fulfill his word toward them, not because they deserve it, but because he's full of mercy, because he will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy, then, indeed, is he God. Then the nations will recognize him because he's a God who honors his word and keeps it and fulfills his covenant because he's a God of power as well as a God of righteousness. And you're not concerned for that issue? Then how are you the people of God? How are you jealous for his name? No wonder then that you allow the whole quality of the church life to sink. Because if we have not the intense jealousy for God's glory and honor and name, what are we? And what is our activity? As regards the gospel, they are the enemies for your sake. You need an enemy like that, who keeps you on your toes. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their fathers, for the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable. He'll not take them back. We're called to be a nation of priests and a light unto the world, and we will be it, even against our own will and desire. We just want to be like all other nations. We want to be the Hong Kong of the Middle East. We want to have the Gucci shops and all of the smart shopping malls. That's all we want. We want to succeed in business and culture and all of that stuff. But what does he want? He wants the fulfillment of the word that he has given to our fathers, that of all the peoples of the earth, I have chosen you. You're peculiar. I have made you my own. You'll be a nation of priests and a light unto the world, like it or not. Because I have said you will, you'll be it. And if you're not it, then I'm not the God who speaks and the God who promises and the God who keeps. The issue of Israel is the issue of God. And you're not concerned for that and not pleading for that, not interceding for that, praying for the peace of Jerusalem in more than just a shabby superficial way? You don't have to have Jews locally in order to be involved in this fulfillment. The Zion of God needs to travail for the birth of this because Israel will be too weak to travail for itself. You have to enter in to their spasms and contractions and bear the agonies of birthing a nation in a day by the depth of your supplication, your prayer and your intercession for Jews. You'll be a remarkable Gentile if you can do that. And you're called to be remarkable. Don't tell me you're just an ordinary saint. There ain't no such thing as an ordinary saint. A saint, by definition, is extraordinary. Oswald Chambers calls them sacramental personalities. You kids have such a privilege. My God! May he save you from spiked hair and earrings and beads and all the rest of that. And make you extraordinary without any external demonstration at all, but inwardly a reality that will shine out to those poor kids around you who are dying. And your teachers are dying also. And what are they seeing of God through you that will challenge them? What did my students ever show me? Who gave you the most predictable papers as a history teacher that any kid could write in order to get a grade? I didn't see one thing coming from a Christian kid that showed originality, that showed inspiration from heaven, that showed anointing, that showed unction. They were just grade-getters playing the game like everybody else. You have a ministry at school. You have a mission field at school. And life and death is hanging in the balance for some of those kids who are not even going to make it to adulthood when they go careening on their motorcycles under a truck because they despise their fathers and their mothers and cannot have a long life. Well, oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments. How unscrutable his ways. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor? Who has given to him that should be given in return? For from him and of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. That's an apostolic conclusion. Paul is not celebrating Israel. He's not celebrating the church. He's celebrating the glory of God forever. That is obtained through Israel's restoration through the church. The issue of the church, the issue of Israel is the issue of God's glory forever. When is the last time you said that? When's the last time you thought that? When's the last time you were motivated by that? Only the glory of God and the jealousy for the glory will keep you from the beads and the spiked hair. And whatever the equivalent of that is for the adults, the jealousy for God's glory will keep you separate, devoted, serving. Let me pray for the church at Dunville, Canada. Lord, why did you bring me here? What's Dunville? Why wasn't I in Toronto where the action is? What do us this little out of the way place of neat little houses and inconspicuous streets is all nice and tidy. Oh, art. It's a piece of Canada. It's the statement of Canada. It's what Canada is everywhere. And if you succeed here, then there's hope for the nation. And the nation has a destiny with regard to Israel and to Jews or we would not be living 100 miles south of your border and 5 hours south of Winnipeg. There's something up God's sleeve with Canada and the moving of Jews in the last days that he'll show you at some future time when and if you ever have me back. So Lord, in Jesus' name, mercy, Lord. Mercy, Lord. Mercy. This is too much to lay on anyone, any congregation on a Sunday morning when they came groggy and half asleep and were hoping that they can get through the hour. And you lay on them a trip like this? The restoration of a lost understanding that is central to the church for its apostolic character and stature and call? And that the kids have to hear this? Mercy, Lord. Mercy. For without mercy, we can't understand such a message. We can't receive such a burden. And we know that if we receive it, it's going to be costly. It's going to require something. Something has got to give. We can't continue as we are and take up these burdens also. Something radical has got to be shifted. Something's got to happen with Randy, with the elders of the church, with the whole construct, the whole configuration. And we're willing, Lord, because the issue is your glory forever, not our career, not our ministry, not the success of a young pastor who wants to make it big or be impressive or move on to larger things because of increasing numbers, but because he has a heart for the glory of God forever. And he's willing for whatever that will require. He's in something together with this people. He's not going to lean on this pastoral mystique that keeps him separate and hid the issues of his own life in need from the body. It's a body that has come of age and knows that its pastors are flesh and blood just as they have problems and struggles just as themselves and that their hearts can go out, that their very prayer and sympathy and identification will be the answer for the young pastors in their midst. It's a people who have come to maturity. Come, my God. We played too long with this religious stuff and we're crying out for reality this morning. Whatever the cost, whatever needs to be altered, come, Lord. Take hold of us. Sink your foundations deep. Make us to esteem the Holy Spirit for the reason for which he has been given on Pentecost, not to spice up our meetings or to make our denomination distinctive or attractive, but the very enablement of your life to live the kingdom reality while we're in a hostile world at enmity with you. Oh, Lord. We repent of falling short of your glory and we weren't even aware of it. It didn't bother us. We wanted just a good time, successful meetings, nice program. Make us jealous for your glory. Ruin us with this consideration. Make us go home now and look over the way we're situated, what we're reading, what we're seeing. Bring change. Deal with us. Have a people for your name. Make Israel jealous through them. Come as king to a restored Zion. We thank and give you praise for your word, for your jealous love that will not let us go. Lord, we receive it. And we say, whatever the cost, fulfill it. We're selfish, we're vain, we're fearful. We're individualistic. We're not really a body in any authentic sense. We're just a line sitting alongside, but we're separate. We're privatistic. We have our own life, our own thoughts. We're not one with God's people. This is not like the church that was at the first where no one thought that the thing which he had was his own. This is so different and so short of the glory, but we're willing to be a people for your name. Hear our repentant cry and give answer. Help us, Lord, for the hour is at hand, the time is short, and the end is near. Bless the young people and bring them to maturity before the time. There's no time left to remain a kid. So do I bless these children, Lord, and I leave my peace behind in their house. Seal this word. Let not a syllable fall to the ground. May they receive it as a day of the Lord's visitation, a holy deposit, something to be cherished, to be reconsidered, to be heard, to be examined, to be taken to heart, to be done. We thank and give you praise for this love that will not let us go. In Jesus' name, amen. Praise God. What a challenge. Pot-bellied. I like that. Pot-bellied. Pot-bellied man. There's a good sermon in there somewhere. Praise God. Well, we have a lot to think about and the challenge, so I'm not going to add to that. We've heard from God this morning, so be open to be changed and receive that as I know that you are. I thank God that you're hungry people, not just physically right now, but spiritually you are hungry people and you're so open to change. At the back of the church you will see offering plates and don't feel any pressure at all, but we're just asking that you would be a blessing to Brother Art Katz today and he just comes and loves offering bases. There's no pressure at all for the churches to give, but he just comes ministering and what a blessing he has been to us. So feel free to give as you feel the Lord leading you. Remember tonight, 7 o'clock at the Baptist Church. Come prayed up and expected and wanting God to change. God bless you all. If you'd like to talk to Brother Katz, he's right here as well and all in the books also at the back in the foyer as well. God bless you everyone. God bless you. You