This sermon emphasizes the importance of understanding the mystery of Israel's restoration and its inseparable connection to the establishment of God's rule on earth through a literal king on the holy hill of Zion. It challenges the church to embrace the scandal of specificity and supernaturalness, urging believers to align theocratic and theocentric perspectives over democratic ideals. The speaker passionately calls for a deep yearning for God's theocratic kingdom and the restoration of Israel as pivotal to the fulfillment of God's ultimate plan for the nations.

Jesus above God. And we see the beauty of their lives, and their character, and their integrity. And we hear them speak their many languages, and see their intensity, and their passion, and their character, and their nature. And our hearts come at them for the kingdom of God, that they might be an end-time people of God, proclaiming the salvation throughout the earth. The issue of history, which is the issue of the nation, is the issue of the church. Precious prayer, introduction, and platform. I am especially happy for the reference to the word prophetic, because that gives me opportunity to make excuses. That if you're looking for a coherent and systematic statement, don't look this way. A prophetic statement is of necessity messy, and unordered by man. And even now, a tremulous thing of an uncertain kind. I have no knowledge of how this is going to come forth. Just appreciating the opportunity to stammer, and stagger, and splutter before you brave ones who have come. On such a topic, such a theme, that has remained to this day for the purposes of God, and maybe the derelict condition of the church and of men, relatively unknown. And it's a mystery that needs to be revealed. And it is given to apostolic and prophetic men to be stewards of the mysteries of God. And so to the measure that this is my calling, and to the measure that the Lord has given me some illumination, and to the measure that I'm going to enjoy a grace now of function, in order to make known the mystery that has been concealed, you'll hear it. And I'll announce it as the mystery of Israel and the church. The mystery of Israel's restoration. Knowing that you've heard, likely, some statements about the subject, and yet feeling that I have a perspective that is to a degree unheard. And that you're hearing it not because I'm Jewish, because I've been Jewish for 61 years, and I've been a Jewish believer for 25 or 26 years, but that did not in any way entitle me to have a handle on the things that I'm about to share. You're hearing them because it has pleased God to give me a measure of revelation pertaining to them, not so much because I'm Jewish, as because I'm a servant to the church. And it's the perspective of the mystery of Israel as it pertains to the church that is my particular burden. And who and what that Israel is, and how it's to be fulfilled, I pray the grace to unfold, commencing from now. I want to pray, and having looked forward to this occasion, and asking your patience as it comes forth in spits and spurts and jerks, that by the time that the last occasion is over, there will be some kind of a statement that makes sense. But for now, I believe that the Lord wants me to begin with an aspect that is rather new for me, tenuous. That is, I'm not quite clear, and yet extraordinarily important. Namely, that the issue of Israel's restoration as a nation, we're not talking about the peripheral Jew like myself, who is by the grace of God brought into the body of Christ. I'm talking, however precious that is, about the destiny of this people as a nation. And not implying that the nation today, the political nation Israel, is yet that people. But that there is a nation of that people that will be restored, that has everything to do with the Lord's own coming. That in fact, the Lord's coming is so inextricably bound to the restoration of this people, that you cannot dismember or disassociate the one point from the other. You will not see me until you shall say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And I think I can say with a certain degree of confidence that if they will not see him, nor shall we. That his coming for them is his coming for us. And more than that, his coming is a coming as king. And that the issue of his coming is the issue of his kingdom. Despite other references to the kingdom now that is becoming increasingly circulated in the church, it is my view that that is a presumption. I don't know to what degree I'm going to address that. And a conceit of the kind for which Paul had already warned us. Lest we would be ignorant of the mystery of Israel and become wise in our own conceit. And our own conceit is to think that we as the church either are the kingdom, or will of ourselves bring in the kingdom, or have replaced the Israel of God and are that Israel. Are all, in my opinion, expressions of the conceit about which Paul warned, if we continue to be ignorant of the mystery that pertains to them. So the issue of Israel's restoration is the issue of the king and his coming, and the establishment of his kingdom. That's my theme, my opening theme. And if you understand that, and if I'm correct in that, you can understand why it is that the heathen rage, and that the nations and its rulers imagine a vain thing. You of all people ought most to be aware that the gods of this world have reigned and influenced the conduct of races and of nations since time immemorial, and do not want to give up their vaunted—what's the word?— usurping role as the power that lies above the earth in the realm of the air, and influences the conduct of nations. And that we have had in modern times the revelation of how vivid, real these influences are. That though they are invisible, and at least in every city and nation constitute an invisible realm of influence, at least one time in our modern history have actually taken over the whole apparatus of state itself. Namely, Germany in the Nazi time. That there's no way to explain, sociologically and politically, the phenomenon of Nazism independent of the dark, demonic, satanic powers that had not only opportunity to exert their sway and influence, but actually to possess the whole apparatus of state, and give us in modern times a demonstration of what is their ugly nature and character. Coming within a hair of threatening the entire civilization of the world, and expunging or exterminating systematically the people, in this one they are people, and land, and place, go forth out of Zion, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, to all the nations of the earth, then the way to avert the threat to the loss of influence and sway is by exterminating the people through whose return his kingdom comes. Capish? Good. That's a tremendous thesis. And if I could have the grace so much as to establish that out of the scriptures, we would have more insight into the nature of anti-Semitism, and the virulent hatred of the Jew and of Israel, which is even while we are here, daily escalating, and I believe will flood the entire earth. That there'll be a demonic anti-Semitic fury poured out over the earth, which God himself will employ, as I hope to show sometime in the course of these days, as an instrument in the sifting and the finding for himself among that people, that Israel that will be the nation through whose restoration his kingdom comes. Did I say that this was not going to be coherent? I take it back. That was as coherent a statement as I think I've heard from my own lips. And so Lord, I thank you for that grace already. I'm panting and sighing, not because only this is complex and rich, but that it's the fulcrum I've got to pivot. That remarkable central issue, that foundational stone, that I believe is critical to the church's whole apostolic and prophetic view of the faith, not only that it is called to understand the mystery, lest it be wise in its conceit, but is called to be the very agent and instrument by which the mystery is itself fulfilled. Lord, give us grace to speak, to make known, to hear, to understand, and to receive this word, which we believe is untimely given now for this church and this nation. We'll thank you and give you the praise, my God, for our privilege. In Jesus' holy name, amen. Well, let me take you on an uncharacteristic for me tour of the Scriptures. This is not my thing, saints, and I have no particular relish in being a man who leads people through a survey, but I feel that it's necessary to give some sketch of these things in the Word with this statement, that as many Scriptures as I'll have the grace to share with you this afternoon, they are only a faint indication of the enormous welter of Scripture on the subject. It is an extraordinary phenomenon to note the remarkable plethora, p-l-e-t-h-o-r-a, abundance, the prolific weight of Scripture on the subject of the restoration of Israel that is to be found throughout the entire Holy Writ, and particularly in the Prophets of Israel, having to do with this restoration, and sounded again in the New Testament Scriptures, and yet, despite that, to have such a remarkable ignorance on the part of the church toward it. I can't understand that, and yet I know it to be true, and it was true indeed in people or place, is to think that rather these are suggestive words that mean something of a metaphorical kind pertaining to the church. And in that way, and with that habit which has characterized the church throughout all the ages since the apostolic time, we have lost the mystery. More than that, we have lost the key to hermeneutical treatment of the Scripture, the key to interpretation of Scripture itself, because the issue of Israel is so much the issue of the church, more than you can possibly now imagine. If already I'm beginning to suggest that even the way in which we read the Scriptures are affected by our consideration of whether indeed it means a literal people, a literal place, a literal Jerusalem, a literal Zion, a literal restoration, or these are only words that are to conjure up spiritual implications for us who believe, because those things are written for us upon whom the ends of the age have come. Understand what I'm saying? This is a critical issue of Scripture interpretation itself. It's a critical issue of how we deal with the Word of God, which is to say the issue of God himself for the church. For if the church itself will take liberty with the Word of God, what is the significance or the consequence of that for the church in its own constitution, its own integrity, and its own presence in the world? So I believe more than we know, the church has suffered significantly by a tendency to dismiss the literal meaning of the words of God that pertain to that nation, to that people. And therefore, all of our scriptural reckonings have suffered to that degree. You say, why would we avoid the first evident meaning of Scripture in the contextual and grammatical sense? Because there's something in our carnal, Gentile hearts that is reluctant to acknowledge that God has a place for this people of such an ultimate and significant kind. There's something in our insecurity as God's people that cannot find the magnanimity, the graciousness, the largeness of heart to believe that God will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy, all the more when they so evidently and patently don't deserve it. It's a real test for us whether we will love what God loves and hate what he hates and line ourselves up with him despite the character and conduct of that people, that though we were at one time fascinated by them and interested about them and made dancing little trips to Israel to plant trees and to attend Feast of Tabernacles conferences, are growing less attractive, more difficult to support, and finally, unless we are really rooted in God, we will find ourselves with the world hating them. Because we are on such a distinct and prophetic course. The prophetic scriptures say, all nations shall come against Jerusalem to destroy it. And we are on our way to seeing that fulfillment. Even its greatest ally, the United States, is now beginning to sound another kind of note about its attitude toward its up-till-now choice ally, in that the conduct of this people increasingly forces the United States to be put in a strange position at the very time that they're wanting the alliance of Arab powers in this crisis that has unfolded for it in the Middle East with an intransigent Iraq. Am I getting fancy? Let me say that again. Because of the strange amalgamation of powers that the United States has been required to establish to be a counterweight to a threatening Iraq, which includes Syria, Egypt, and other of the Arab nations with whom we never thought we would be in any kind of alliance, let alone military partners, that our attitude toward Israel now is even more painfully examined by those nations and that we find ourselves more and more disposed to line up with them and against Israel in the issues that are arising. Like, for example, the recent disturbance in Jerusalem, where a number were killed around the temple area over that stone-throwing thing. And Israel was universally condemned for the violence that was employed in order to quell that disturbance. We need to read the papers and see the news with a scriptural eye, with a biblical awareness that there's an unfolding taking place, moving us toward the consummation of what the prophets have all along spoken. All the nations of the world will come against Jerusalem to destroy it. And on that day, the Lord himself will defend that people, but not before there's a tremendous decimation and a suffering. It raises an interesting question. If I don't have another occasion in the course of these days to speak it, I'll say it now. Where will the church of the nations be in the day that the nations themselves officially turn against Israel and likewise come to a place of anti-Semitic hatred toward the Jews within that nation? Where will the church be in that nation in that day? Where was the church in that nation in Hitler's day in Germany? It collapsed like the proverbial deck of cards. It could not stand the enormous pressures that had come against it. For to stand with that besieged and oppressed minority in that land and at that time would have meant to join them in their fate, in their suffering, and in their extermination. So in that sense, the issue of Israel might well become, at the end of the age, the issue of the church. In fact, I'm bold enough even now to say that the issue of Israel at the end of the ages, which is not that distant, may well determine who is the church and reveal it. The apostate who continue to call themselves Christian will identify and align themselves with the policy of their nations, but a remnant people who have long before made their peace with the necessity for suffering and even of martyrdom will stand with that people, knowing that the issue of that people is the issue of the Lord's coming and the issue of the establishing of his kingdom. There's a remarkable verse in Deuteronomy 32, and if anybody has any particular light on it, please see me at your convenience. I only sound it now to bring it into your consciousness and into your prayer. It's that little kind of a nugget that God occasionally gives. Deuteronomy 32, verses 7 and 8, really verses 8 and 9, but 7 leads into it. Remember the days of old. Consider the years of many generations. Ask thy father, he will show thee, thy elders, and they will tell thee. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children or of the sons of Israel. For the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. Don't ask me what that means. I can only share what I intuit that it means. Something like this, that in the mystery of God, the very issue of the nations, their number, their geographical disposition, their purpose in the ultimate economy of God is altogether pegged and related to the issue of Israel itself. Now wouldn't that be enough to make the Gentile nations chafe? There's a mystery here, saints, about nationhood itself, about government itself, about the economy of God and the purposes of God in his creation, having established nations that somehow is central to one nation, the nation which he has created and chosen and established for himself. It says in Zechariah, the God who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Why he would do this? It's because, as I'm going to say again and again through these days, because he is who he is and will be who he will be, that's why. Because he will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy. Because he has chosen Jerusalem. Because he has set his king on his holy hill Zion, that's why. Because it pleases him to take a people that were not a people, a scummy nothing, a band of desert rats and sheep herders, the lowliest of all occupations, and make of them a people for his name and through whom his government would come that all the families of the earth would be blessed through them. And I'll tell you what, that our relationship to God, our identification with his purposes, the whole mystery of God, the issue of his kingdom, who he himself is, will be profoundly and adversely fallen to the degree that we do not understand, do not relate, and do not align ourselves with the things which he has chosen. There's a certain scandal of which I'm becoming aware, and I really appreciate your patience for the funny way that I speak, fancy words and all that. It's the scandal of specificity. It's the scandal of particularity, which makes something in the soulish, carnal nature of the church, let alone the world, to chafe that God is so explicit that he is a God who chooses a particular people, a particular location, a particular geography, a particular nation, a particular city, and a particular hill on that city upon which he will set his king. And I have to confess, I'm one who has been offended. I like the larger view. I like the metaphorical sense of these things and their spiritual application of what they really mean. But I don't like to be hemmed in with the narrowness and the confinement of a God who says what he means and means what he says, and when he says Zion and the holy hill and Mount Zion, he means that pimple in Jerusalem, literally. Why is it we're offended by the literalness of God? And I'll tell you that if Israel served no other purpose than to confront us with something in the depths of our own carnal hearts that doesn't want to give God the leave to be literal, then let it serve that purpose. Because lest we find ourselves with Israel of old, of being guilty of the sin of, what's the word, of restricting the Holy One of Israel? That's not the word. Somebody help me. It's not restricting. Limiting the Holy One of Israel. Hey, if he wants to be particular, if he wants to be literal, if he has in fact chosen a particular people, however much their present conduct and character does not even indicate that choice, the fact of the matter is that it seems to say that they have blasphemed his name in every nation where he has driven them. They seem to be patently disqualified for the fulfillment of his choosing and have run from their mandate and their call. And they've given the world its Karl Marx's and Sigmund Freud's and Steven Spielberg's and every other one who's mucking about in Hollywood now and in the rock scene and culture to proliferate the world with their own messianic alternatives that have their origins in hell. I can say that as a Jew and know that it's true and still know at the same time that they do not qualify because they qualify. In fact, they strangely qualify because they are disqualified. That he might have the eternal praise of the glory. I mean, look at me. Why am I here? And sharing these things when only a quarter of a century ago you wouldn't have dared pick me up off the side of the road. Belligerent, angry, vicious, anti-Christian. Looking upon the goyim, the Gentiles, with such disdain and looking upon Christendom, Christianity itself, as the single greatest obstruction to the progress of mankind. And like Paul of old would have breathed out murderings and threatenings against the church if I had the ability. And yet I'm standing before you as the minister of God. Not because I was qualified, but because it pleased him to have mercy upon whom he will have mercy. What is there in our pharisaical hearts that resents that? I think it may be that because we think in our own secret hearts that he chose us because we do have some qualification. That though we subscribe to the doctrine of grace in our secret hearts, we believe that there was something in us that caught the attention of God which he so urgently needed for the perfection of his kingdom. And therefore we chafe a little bit when God will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy. And the best we can do is begrudgingly say, well, if you have to. Like the older prodigal brother, that we don't rejoice in one with the father to put a robe around the erring son's return and to slay the fatted calf and to rejoice with him. Oh, dear children, the issue of Israel, more than you know it, is really the issue of the church. It's heart, it's condition, it's love for God, it's identification with his heart. Despite everything naturally, socially, nationally, and culturally speaking that is calculated to bring you on exactly the opposite ground. What, is there not one among you who is in the same classroom with a Jewish student who got straight A's while you struggled nearly to get by? Don't you know any Jew who's come out of the Holocaust with a tattooed number on his arm? And in the space of a decade or two has a beautiful home and garage with two or three cars and is living much more comfortably than you, they've been working so hard all these years to make ends meet? Isn't there every reason, naturally speaking, to be irritated, to be resentful, to be chafed by a people of this kind and even their superiority and their swagger? I'll tell you what, they are calculated to reveal our secret heart and where in fact we are and just how converted we have been. The ultimate test of whether we are indeed the people of God is our ability not only to love the unlovely but to love the enemy for they are the enemy of the gospel for our sake. Hallelujah. Psalm 2, why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying, let us break their bands asunder and cast away their courts from us. And he that sitteth in the heaven shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision, then he shall speak unto them in his wrath and vex them in his sword displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion, I will declare the decree the Lord hath set unto me, Thou art my son, this day have I forgotten you, and have asked of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel, be wise now therefore, O ye kings, be instructed you judges of the earth, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling, kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little, blessed are all they that put their trust in him. How many of us have read that and read that and have not understood what it is that vexes the kings of this earth and the rulers, the principalities and powers, the rulers of this world's darkness. Why it is that they have been so viciously opposed to this nondescript little nation and have attempted historically again and again to expunge and to exterminate them entirely because they know better than the church that God has reserved that nation, that people, that place, that city, that hill for his king and that he who is to be king over Israel is not king over Israel only but all of the nations. And if we don't understand the issue of Israel in the context of the nations and the issue of rule and of government, we don't understand the issue of Israel. You notice that I'm not appealing to you on the basis of sentiment and I'm not appealing to you on the basis of guilt. You ought to love the Jew. Look what they did for us and they gave us the Bible, they gave us Saul and Paul and all. That's true but that's not the appeal. I'm appealing to you on a much larger apostolic and prophetic ground, namely the glory of God that shall cover the earth. The knowledge of God that shall cover the earth as the waters cover the seas when his rule shall go forth over his creation that is so centered because of his own wisdom in the restoration of this people to whom he said, you shall not see me except you shall say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. I think we've missed the mystery of Israel to the degree that we have missed the mystery of God. We don't understand him who chooses what he will choose. He likes that little pimple of a hill, Zion. And indeed, I believe with all my heart, saints, in all the particularity and specificity, he will have a literal king on that hill called David who will rule over Israel forever and through them to the nations. And the nations and the powers that influence them today know this mystery better than you. And therefore, they want to expunge, remove, put their fingers in their ears, block this thing, drive that people into the sea, and get them out of the way so that there's no possibility whatever of the fulfillment of God's intent for his king on their hill. If we don't see that and we don't understand that, we don't understand. Bless the Lord. Hallelujah. Psalm 83. Keep not thou silence, O God, hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God, for lo, thine enemies make a tumult, and they that hate thee have lifted up their head. They have taken crafty counsel against thy people and consulted against thy hidden ones. Could that be the remnant that is yet to be revealed? Because Paul says not all Israel is Israel, but from among them not all will jury, because he will purge out the rebels. He will shake them like a sieve over and through the nations that not so much as one kernel shall fall to the ground. And I believe that New Zealand will be among the nations in which that sieve will be shaken. And the redeemed of the Lord will return to Zion. To that Zion, literally. And sighing and mourning will flee away. So what do you do in singing that as a chorus for yourself? That's not for you. When did you ever sigh and mourn? And why should you have? It's only a people who are going to be so utterly broken, so utterly disappointed, so utterly and unspeakably dejected, their every and final hope destroyed, cast again into the nations and through the nations dispersed and exiled, hunted and pursued and hated, that God will find from among them, purging out the rebels, those whom he will return to Zion, having been there before, but not as the redeemed of the Lord, and mourning and sighing will flee away, and they'll come with singing and rejoicing. The very fact that we have sung that as a chorus for ourselves painfully indicates how erroneous an understanding we have, how presumptuous we have been as the church, and that we have fulfilled what Paul had spoken, that because we were ignorant of this mystery, we became wise in our own conceit, and took all the references for Israel to ourselves, when if we had but a spiritual eye to see, there's no way that he could have spoken of us, but of people who have suffered his judgments, suffered his wrath, that's not the statement of the church, and will also experience his mercy, because he will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy, and also their restoration out of desolation. And this, I believe with all my heart, is the great and final drama at the end of the age, in which God will do this before the face of all nations, and not in a hidden corner, and it is his final demonstration of who he is in himself, for who he is in his mercy is who he is, and the nations that will not recognize God in his merciful dealing with the remnant of this people, and the return which he will effect when he will restore them to the land which he promised their fathers, in the fulfillment of his word and his covenant, and his promises, which is the issue of God and his character and his faithfulness, shouldn't we be jealous over that? It would be a demonstration that to refuse that is to invite the judgment of God. And if I'm correct in believing that this is already working, in time and historically, and is to be the final and greatest dramatic revelation of God through that people and for the church, what is the statement of ourselves in our own prophetic understanding and character and constituency who are so sublimely ignorant of it? The veil needs to come first off our eyes before it comes off theirs. Repentance needs first to come to us for our conceit before it comes to them, that he might comprehend us all in his mercy. Oh, the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, who has been his counselor? Who suggested this to him? For of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. Dear saints, if any of you think that I am promoting the subject of Israel because I'm a Jew, you've got another thing coming. I'm promoting the issue of Israel for the church because it's the issue of his glory forever, more so than any single factor at the end of the age. And though it's the issue of his glory eternally and forever, the issue itself is determined in time, namely in the last days. And before I let you go, by Monday morning, you will understand deeply that it will not take place independent of us as the church, but necessarily through us at a church of such an ultimate kind who could not fulfill the mandate on the basis of its present charismatic constituency, which is okay for us and satisfies us and blesses us, but cannot possibly fulfill the obligation of God given us toward them, who are the enemies of the gospel for our sake. We are on a collision course. We're locked in with God in a reciprocal relationship with his people that not only determines their destiny as a nation through whom his rule will go, but our destiny as a people who will rule and reign with him from the heavenly places in concordance with their earthly kingdom role. I'm speaking this by faith. As I look out on the people of God, I have to stagger, hold tight, my knuckles go white on the pulpit to believe this. But that's what it says in the word, and I do believe it. And despite what we presently are and how we appear, I know that we will be transformed, transfigured. We must be. And the heck of it is this. We will not be if we continue to be ignorant of this mystery. And don't rise in awareness and determination to fulfill it. For it is our making as well as theirs in the ultimate prophetic and apostolic sense. Whew! What a statement. You'll have to take it by faith for now. And as these sessions go on, the Lord, I think, will persuade you. Psalm 83, They have taken crafty counsel against thy people and consulted against thy hidden ones, and have said, Come and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance. For they have consulted together with one consent, they are confederate against thee. Isn't that an interesting statement? That to be against Israel, to take thought against that nation, is to put yourself in opposition to God. Well, that's one thing for the nations who are ruled by the principalities and powers, but it would be a far more shameful thing if that were the statement of the Church. You take note of these verses and ponder them. Why it is that the heathen rage, why it is that the enemies of God have such a vicious opposition to this people being a nation, and that want the name of Israel to be no more in remembrance. It's not because they don't like Jews. It's because they don't like the king of Israel, the greater David, and the fulfillment of the promises made to the father, David, to be king on that hill, because it's the end of their influence and their sway in jerking, manipulating, and destroying the nations. Wood to God, you know what I would ask for today? Not so much as simply for Israel, but the vexed soul of a Job who cannot abide one day more the muck, the filth, and the degeneration, and the corruption that is swallowing the earth. The systematic abortions, the bloodshed, the incest, the rape, the looting, pillage, the filthy subculture that is being paraded and celebrated as good. The degeneration of language and values, everything that's taking place in this world that is dark and satanic and being sold and merchandised and purported as good. That our souls would chafe and say, How long, Lord? How long? Come, Lord Jesus, for your coming means a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. If we but had this in our deepest heart, it'd be remarkable how the issue of Israel would so come clear. But alack and alas, the world is too much with us. We don't chafe and rush to the Target and other stores to buy our children their mutant ninja turtles like everyone else and think them harmless. For it shall come to pass in the last days. Is that where we are? Are these the last days, saints? Are we living as if we really believe that? It shall come to pass. Praise God for the truth of that and the finality of that. It shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains. I'm reading from Isaiah chapter 2. And shall be exalted above the hills and all nations shall flow into it. Let them come screaming, let them come kicking, let them dig their heels in the earth, let them chafe, let them be vexed, let them spit out their guts, that they have to come there and to that place and to that people in order to come to where God has established his holy rule. But come they will, for it shall be established in the last days. And all nations shall flow unto it. God speaks in Zechariah 14 of what is his judgment on the nations that will not. What is his judgment on the nations that continue to harbor resentment for Israel and can't bend themselves in their pride to humble themselves to come up to Jerusalem and acknowledge the feast of the Lord in the day of tabernacles. Severe judgments and the denial of rain and other chastisements and judgments and curses if they continue to stubbornly hold a vicious view against the people whom God has chosen because you will choose what he will choose. Because in the last analysis, to hate Israel, to hate the Jew, is to hate the God who has chosen them. He who sees all things and knows the hearts of the nations and of the peoples knows that everything is transparent and open to him. That in the last analysis, the thing that really bugs us is not the people who he has chosen but the God who chooses. And we vent our spleen on that people but our real controversy is with him. Many people shall go and say, come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. Not some indeterminate, airy God but the specific, particular God who is the God of his people however much historically they have blasphemed his name. He is yet the God of Jacob and he calls them my people. And he will teach us of his ways for we will walk in his paths for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Now why do we have to get metaphorical here? Why do we have to say that that does not mean the literal city? It's an airy term that designates spiritually this, that or the other. I think the first rule of scripture interpretation is to read something in its evident and grammatical plainest meaning in the context in which it's given. After that we're free to seek and to find rich and suggestive secondary applications but to substitute the secondary for the primary is a grievous error. God means Jerusalem saints. You take it up with him and ask if I'm speaking from his heart. And he shall judge among the nations. They hate that. And shall rebuke many peoples and they hate that. And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn any more war any more. Oh house of Jacob come ye and let us walk in the light of the Lord. How did that get in there? Because the issue of Israel its restoration, its condition its relationship with their God is tied up and is inextricably bound with the issue of his rule to the nations. It's all one thing, one God, one king and I will put my prince David over you and he shall rule over the house of Jacob forever. But P.S. at the same time also over the nations. Isaiah 45 and believe me saints I'm just skimming. For every single verse I'm giving you there could be 10 verses saying the same things in as many books of the prophets and elsewhere. Chapter 45 of Isaiah verse 6 that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none beside me I am the Lord God there is none else I form the light and create darkness I make peace and create evil I the Lord do all these things. Verse 22 look unto me and be saved all the ends of the earth for I am God and there is none else. He's the prince of peace and he shall rule over the throne of David and of his kingdom and of the increase of that kingdom and of his peace there shall be no end. You know what part of our problem is? We're just too darn democratic and not sufficiently theocratic. And lest anybody in this room stumble over that word and don't understand what it means Theo means God. Theophilus is lover of God. Theology is the study of God. Theocracy is the government of God. And how come we're not panting for that? How come that we're more excited by the establishment of democratic regimes in Czechoslovakia and Poland and all of these newly emancipated countries that have come out from under the iron hand of Marxist-Socialist rule as if democracy is the answer. Dear saints, at the very best democracy is only an interim gracious provision of God until the real thing comes. Do you yearn for his rule? Because it's perfect equity. It's perfect justice. It's perfect judgment. He alone is righteous. Oh, saints, I'm groaning, groaning for a new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. I'm an ex-social activist. I'm an ex-Marxist. I'm an ex-schemer and dreamer and visionary trying to find some way to establish brotherhood in the earth humanly. To no avail. And those who have had the most colossal and visionary concepts of human good, of brotherhood through social arrangement are the very ones who have plunged this earth into the deepest blood baths in its history. There's only one rule. That's true. That's righteous. And it's his. Something's wrong with us. That there was an excitement in us for the democratic things that would take place in Eastern Europe and are not taking place. They're collapsing and falling all over their ears. They don't know how. They can't. And too many problems and ethnic hatreds and unrest. Dear saints, one rule only. His. The theocracy of God. But it happens to be the Davidic kingdom. It's the kingdom promised David that upon your throne will come that one who will rule. For unto us a child is born and unto us a son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulder. His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end. Upon the throne of David. Eat your heart out. Upon the throne of David. That's where it's going to be established. On the holy hill. And upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. Isaiah 9 verses 6 and 7. The scandal of specificity, the scandal of particularity offends us. And also the scandal of supernaturalness offends us. Because it's one thing for men to organize democratic governments. We can go along with that and relish that and believe for that and pray for that. But a government that comes down from above a king who bears the wounds of his earthly suffering for they shall see him whom they have pierced who will actually occupy a sanctuary and a place of government and a tabernacle out of which his rule will come in the literal city of Jerusalem, that's offensive. It's too supernatural. Too weird. It's actually God coming into time and history and place when everything in us that's religious wants to keep him at a very safe airy distance in front of David and in no other place. Listen to what a precious theologian has written. Alas, multitudes take a position of an inheritance without the personal presence of an inheritor, a marriage with the bridegroom absent, a kingdom without a visible king, a millennium without the restorer's presence and work, all to avoid the conversion and restoration of the Jewish nation as inseparably united with the personal advent of the Messiah. Know what he's saying? That because we don't have a stomach for the restoration of this people, we have had to suffer the loss of the whole theology and expectation of the coming of a king and his theocratic rule because God has inseparably put them together on the throne of David and as we have had no stomach for the restoration of that Davidic people and that kingdom, though Jesus himself was very patient with the question, is it time now to restore the kingdom to Israel? What a supreme once and for all opportunity to demolish this petty national aspiration and say, when are you guys going to wise up? When are you going to grow up? Are you still nursing this little petulant desire for your own little national kingdom? Don't you know that there's a greater kingdom that eclipses yours and yours is finished and the kingdom that's come is spiritual blah blah blah blah? He didn't say that. He said it's not for you to know the time. But I want to tell you dear saints, there is a time. I believe that Jesus believed it, the apostles believed it, the apostolic fathers of the church believed it, but in modern times we no longer do. That the establishment of that kingdom and that literal king on that holy hill is inseparably joined with the restoration of a particular nation and can only come about supernaturally. That's what apocalyptic truth is. And we're not going to be apostolic saints until apocalypse is restored to our consciousness. However much it offends our sensibilities, that is to say, there's going to be a time when God intervenes in history. There's going to come an end to the gentile rule. There's going to come an end to nations as we know them. God himself as David shall be prince over them and over us and over all nations. The literal holy one of Israel who was crucified, resurrected and ascended and is even now pent up in the heavens waiting the restoration of all things spoken by the prophets since the world began for his release and his coming. And that restoration is not for Davidic worship called the tabernacle of David. Sorry about that. I think one of the most colossal charismatic conceits is to think that the restoration movement so called predicated on the restoration of Davidic worship that that somehow is what the restoration of the tabernacle of David means that has been broken down and will be restored is one of the most colossal conceits of which the church has been guilty in modern times. And I'm a lover of Davidic worship. Just let them loose. I love to clap and dance and shout and sing. I'm more Davidic than you all. But I would be doing my God the gravest of injustices if I thought that the great mighty things of the establishment of his rule and his government through a restored Israel meant Davidic worship. And that that's what the restoration of the tabernacle of David means. Whew. Talk about conceit. It's the supernatural coming that necessarily accompanies the setting up of a theocracy which unbelief rejects as unworthy of credence. Although the absence of it would vitiate the theocratic idea. Know what this theologian is saying? You're not going to have God coming to establish his own rule in his own person upon a literal throne in a literal place except supernaturally. By the very same supernatural wonder by which he ascended is the same supernatural wonder by which he returns. And though we subscribe to it as doctrine and as being correct, we don't in fact in our hearts truly believe it in the sense that we palpitate for it and yearn for it and look for it so as to haste his appearing. But this power will again be manifested in the ingathering of his people at a time when the world's greatest tribulation is the hour of the Christian's most magnificent deliverance. You'll need to get a hold of a three-volume series that has laid in obscurity and cobwebs that needs to be found and taken off the shelves called The Theocratic Kingdom by a Lutheran theologian who was rejected by his own movement, George Peters, a little-known suffering saint who virtually lost his eyesight pouring through the scriptures and seeing the mystery of God and detailing it in three weighty, potent volumes called The Theocratic Kingdom. Oh, that God would restore. Talk about restoration. It's a mock. The word is a mock and a farce until it means for us the coming of a people through whom the kingdom of God shall be established in the earth. For the increase of his peace waits on that. I make peace. Look unto me and be saved though the ends of the earth. Don't look to your schemes, your connivances, your political alliances. Look to me. Come on saints, let's get with it. We're looking for the wrong things. We're anticipating the wrong things. We're lined up politically. We're not lined up theocratically and supernaturally with the thing that must consummate the age when the fullness of the Gentiles become and their Gentile rule finished. There's a supernatural event coming and you're the key. He's pent up in the heavens waiting the restoration of all things spoken since the prophets began, of which I have been speaking only in part this afternoon. Stagger. It's mighty. It's potent. And we ask your forgiveness, my God, that we have mucked about in things so much less. Thinking that we had a handle on something, that was the key, the panacea to our charismatic doldrums. New form of worship and praise. And Lord, you know that we love to worship and praise you. But God forbid we should make that a substitute for the true thing for which you're waiting, restoration. A tabernacle, a people, a sanctuary, a place for you to abide and from which you'll rule on His holy hill. Thank you, precious God, for the grace to get this much out. And I don't even know how to go from here, but you know. Bless us. Change us, even by this word. For I have already had the privilege of glimpsing even churches changed in a night, in the hearing and the receiving of this mystery by the same power that will birth a nation in a day. Thank you for our privilege to be on such an appointed course. Help us to rise to it and grow, mature, take it, and fulfill it. Seal this much, my God, and bring us through in these days, having given us this as a point of beginning. We thank you and praise you as you take, my God, the scales from our eyes, the veil from our seeing, open our hearts to really yearn for your appearing, to palpitate, to long for. We just thank you and praise you that your appearing might even be hasted by that. In Jesus' name we pray and God's people send. Amen. Hallelujah.