In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of knowing God as the revelation of Jesus as king and the beauty of the kingdom. He criticizes the superficiality of worship and the lack of true understanding and celebration of God's majesty. The speaker shares a personal experience of delivering a powerful message that offended many people, but was recognized as an anointed word by some. He encourages the audience to seek a comprehensive worldview of the faith and the destiny of the church, which can be found in his books.

Demonstrate him and the demonstration was of such a kind, I had to leave the platform and the auditorium because everything in me was going haywire. Now I don't like the way my voice is sounding. It's too empty, it's too cavernous. I guess that we can't help it, huh? But you can hear okay. I'm hard of hearing so I'm sensitive about how a voice is heard. Well, that was a remarkable message when I came back on that platform and I felt like what did I do wrong. My poor wife was on the platform with me and went virtually hysterical because I was offending many people including my publisher and my co-author Jamie Buckingham who has since gone on to be with the Lord. All of the charismatic big shots were on the platform but a voice rang out from the platform. This is the word that I've called you to hear. Not the sugar candy that has been so far been proffered but this is the word and I'll tell you that the anointing was so great. They made a film of that conference and then they submitted it to a board of rabbis because they had hoped to circulate it through the Jewish community as well as the Christian community and the rabbis loved it except for that one man at the end, me, and so they scissored me off. I went down on the cutting floor. That's how great the anointing was and I found out later that the prophetic word that came from the platform was repeated in several parts of the auditorium at the same time the identical word because there were 4,000 people in the auditorium and of course I didn't hear that I found out later. People who stood to the invitation, I've met them over the years since 1974, it's about a quarter of a century, they said their life was changed by that standing. That message is in this book. It's a hundred dollars today, a special. This is even more devastating but it's not for, well, I say it's not for the young. It'll mature you fast. It's an attempt to explain the holocaust. You know what my astonishment was? I was a history teacher. I'm a depression baby born in 29 and when I came to high school teaching I was going to be a savior for my students. I was going to be for them what no teacher had been for me in the struggle of my adolescence to find meaningful life. You know what I found out? I was standing before a generation that didn't give a rap about meaning and I had come to them from another planet and that I spoke strangely and I was completely out of tune with that generation. I had to go back to the drawing board to square one to find out how to find a basis for communication and I labored for four years in a great struggle at the same time being married to a German lady, schizophrenic and a former member of the Hitler Youth who in her the paroxysms of her schizophrenic agony she was a victim of the war, surviving it physically but carrying the moral and the emotional strains into a marriage with a Jewish man. That's how God prepares a Jew for conversion. I'm speaking like a fool this morning. You don't mind, do you? You don't have much choice in the matter but all of that combined to break down my humanistic categories, the deep idealism that many of us Jews carry and the hope for mankind predicated on human intelligence and human goodwill independent of God. So I found in the struggle as a teacher that I could raise great and ultimate questions but I could not answer them. I found in my marriage with a German woman who was really the great love of my life that however well-meaning my intention I could not respond to her schizophrenic torment finding the one place where I was vulnerable, my Jewishness and react to that with kindness. See what I mean? It broke me down in all of my categories and the things in which I trusted as a humanist and so my crisis became so serious that in my 34th year I took a year's leave of absence and I should have recorded all of this. A year's leave of absence from the teaching profession. Maybe this is on. Is this on? It is on. Oh it was on all the while? Oh praise the Lord. Thank you Lord. We didn't miss anything. The Lord outwitted me again. And I spent 14 months traveling through Europe and the Middle East looking for philosophical answers. I had been a high school dropout at the age of 16, a merchant seaman at the age of 17, a seeker after truth, finally the US Army, the GI Bill. What do you think they sent me during the Korean War? Not the Korea, Germany. So we Jews have a long-standing love-hate relationship with Germany. There's so much I could tell you. There's so much beyond your present understanding, so much that you need to understand because the Jews are so predominant a factor at the conclusion of the age and the church's own call, the identity, the recognition of itself and I may not even speak that this morning, but sometime between now and my departure, I've got to say something, maybe tonight, that you need to understand something about that because you're going to be faced by them. Do you know what Yiddish is? It's a Germanic language that the Central European Jews adopted from the German language, became a kind of lingua franca, a language of commerce that Jews would speak because Hebrew at that time was not a language for street purposes. It is today in Israel. It's their national language. Yiddish was for street purposes. Hebrew was for liturgical purposes. So the German language, German culture, German civilization. Did you know that Karl Marx was a Jew? Did you know that Sigmund Freud was a Jew? Did you know that Albert Einstein was a Jew? Do you know that Steven Spielberg is a Jew? Do you know that Rubin, who was the head of the Department of the Treasury and who's the head of the Greenspan and Jews, Jews, Jews, Jews everywhere, but especially of German origin, have been a remarkable influence in Western civilization. So when the Holocaust came, you know what my astonishment was as a history teacher? These kids didn't know what the Holocaust was, that they were born after World War II. Why didn't I realize that? They were non-compassmentists. It had no comprehension for them. Here I'm bursting at the seams over these great epical events of modern times and these kids are totally impervious. A lot of them black and out of Oakland, California, the place of the Black Panthers, they had other things to preoccupy them than the issue of Jewish tragedy. You see, like two ships passing in the night, but all of that conspired to bring me to a final pre-predicament where I had to take this leave of absence from the teaching profession. I couldn't go on asking questions I could not answer. I couldn't go on with a failed marriage and a failed philosophical principle of life. I had to find answers and there was a God looking for me because one of my students had been praying for me. I probably ridiculed her faith as a strenuous atheist, not the village kind, but the professional kind, who not only looked upon religion as the opiate of the masses and an obstruction to the progress of mankind, but of all the religions none more nefarious than Christianity itself. Why? Because we Jews were persecuted by Christians. Did you know that? Christians of a kind with which you would not identify, you would say they were unregenerate and indeed they were not. They were. Crusaders with white crosses on their tunics or the Spanish Inquisition or the Catholic Church. But the fact of the matter is that Jews who have suffered that persecution and have learned of it and taken it in with their mother's milk cannot distinguish between born again Christians and those that are institutionally Christians. To them that's Christianity. My mother thinks, God bless her, pray for her, 94 years old, Hitler was a Christian. Why? Because he's not a Muslim, he's not a Jew. What else? So we suffered at the hands of Christians and we're going to suffer again. This book not only seeks to explain biblically, and I don't know of anyone else who has attempted it, the reasons for the Holocaust in view of God and his word, that this was not an aberration in history, some mystical event that cannot be explained, but rather the fulfillment of God's predictive word that such an event would take place in the latter days, that we have not received it as an event coming from God's hand to precipitate a national repentance means that we're going to experience it again in your lifetime and probably within this decade. There's a second Holocaust coming greater than the first, will eclipse the first, and not a Jew presently alive in the world today will survive it. The majority will perish in it. Only a remnant will survive, and they'll survive only because of you. That's the church's mandate, the church's call to extend mercy, that they might receive mercy at the hour of their final extremity. When if you have only the doctrine of mercy or of grace, or you know it only as an article of faith and not a palpable thing that can be extended, they will perish. Boy, that's a statement. You know what I'm saying? If you're only a doctrinal Christian, Jews will perish. They'll only survive if you're really a saint and know the mercy of God. And I'll tell you what will bring you to that knowledge, having to be to them what God will call you to be. You'll cry out for mercy and you'll receive it. This is a remarkable book. I think this month it's coming out in German and in French, and it'll probably find itself in other languages. Most of these books are in other languages. Spirit of Truth is in French, Lithuanian, I just came back from Lithuania, it's published there, and the pastor, the largest evangelical work in that nation that meets in a great tent, thought I was going to speak on the subject, instead I spoke on the issue of the church and the Jew, and he was disappointed. You know why I did that? Because Lithuania, together with Poland, are the two most anti-Semitic nations of Eastern Europe. The fact that he was displeased that I made this a subject rather than this may actually be an indication that that anti-Semitism is more latent and more real than even the church itself recognizes. How are we doing for communication? Yeah? I speak English well, and I love words, so you have to listen in for exacting meaning. We've already been praying for you for that, that God would give you a grace to hear, as if I know what I'm going to be speaking. You know why I don't have a message? Because a message will not suffice for today. What you need is a Weltanschauung. Anybody here who's German? That means Welt is world. Anschauung is a view. What you need is a worldview. You need a cosmic perception of the faith and of the destiny and the call of the church. That is more than any message, and I don't know how the Lord is going to bring that, but I'm willing to be squeezed out before you that something of it will be communicated, and whatever I miss or the Lord will choose not to express orally, you'll find it in these books. Gary was very insistent that this be made available. This is a gem. Single message, but what a blockbuster message. What does it mean to be converted? Do you think you are? Is conversion and salvation synonymous? I opened the question by asking the question, or making the statement, many saved, few converted. Conversion is a profound state of being that actually might follow on the heels of your salvation, but is not automatically part and parcel with it. This is a single message that brought an entire congregation down on its face. I've seen people go down, but when they went down and went into the woodwork, I knew that this was a very special word, and they would change thereafter, and so it's in Dutch, it's in Danish, it's in Russian. All of my books are in Russian. In fact, I have more books in Russian than I have in English. There's a book on our website called Apostolic Foundations. It's coming in English, not yet, but you'll find it on the web. We have a book on the website called Prophetic, The Prophetic Call, 12 juicy chapters. You need to know the Jewish word for juicy, which is the same as the German word, because is the word for juice in German. When we say, when we do say something is, it means it's resonant, and if you squeeze it, it's going to so they're all up there. They're expensive. It's all get out. I don't know. Adam says eight. I say seven dollars, three dollars for Venezuela. We don't charge, but be generous, and then there's a newsletter that comes out about three or four times a year. If you, after hearing me, want to be in touch, put your name somewhere on a piece of paper nicely printed with a zip code, and we'll put you on a mailing list. The letter is also on the website, if you prefer to receive it that way. Okay, also a tape catalog and a description of our books. Let me pray, okay? So Lord, this is it. The moment that you have ordained, we're here, we're waiting, and we have a sense of the gravity of the hour. The time is short. Great ponderous things. The clouds are already forming. There's a darkness beginning to billow, my God, over the land and over the nations. There are great things that yet need, my God, to be affected before your coming and before your kingdom. What shall we say, and what shall we speak, my God, in view of that to these precious people, my God, this nuclear body, and that will go even beyond them through this tape? So remember, Lord, the prayers that went up from the earliest morning hours till this moment, and now give your answer. We thank and give you praise that you are the high priest and the apostle of our confession. How we need you, my God, in that category, in that definition. Who's more jealous over your church than yourself? Who knows better what it needs? Whose wisdom is more precious and deep? Whose ability is greater to address us than yours? And we pray that you will give us open ears, Lord, and require of us. We know this is not going to be a cheapie, that when you speak, my God, it's not just to titillate, but to require, and we want to be required of. It's a privilege, and it leaves us changed. We can't go back to where we were before you have spoken, and so take your full liberty, my God, and redeem this time in full, and receive already our gratitude and our praise as a God who speaks. We thank and give you the praise, the honor, the glory, in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so we had dinner last night with Gary and Cindy, and dear brother was expressing his heart and his qualms and concerns, and about the kingdom of God, and feeling it go up in his way, and I thought, well, that's a great subject, and in fact, it's only of late that the Lord has begun again to stir my heart over the subject of the kingdom of God. There was an earlier time when it was a predominant message in my repertoire, and then it kind of faded. Now, here's what happened. I was in East Germany again on my last trip to Europe, and visited two pastors whom I had known 20 years ago, and very precious men. They were Lutherans, which is what you almost have to be in Germany, Lutheran or Catholic, anything else is considered a sect or a cult. Hitler did not recognize even the Baptist church, let alone the Pentecostals. Only the Catholic and Lutheran were the official state churches. Well, these were Lutheran clergymen, but they were spirit-filled men, precious, and living under certain duress, certain pressure, under a communist system, and it was exciting to visit them and to speak. In those days, when I would come, there was an excitement. Now when I come, well, you're just one of many Western speakers, because the wall is down, and East Germany has now been taken back into the whole of Germany, and their economy is being revived, and so the special conditions that prevailed 20 years ago no longer prevail. Then they were an island of sanity and faith in a sea of atheism and unbelief and communist propaganda and every kind of strain. The one pastor was actually threatened with a prison sentence if he continued to speak about Israel, and he wasn't speaking dangerously radical things, but even the mention of the word was considered so offensive to the communist authorities that he was serving continually under the risk of prison sentence. All of the men of God in that nation lived in that tension, and there was an excitement. There was a dynamic when you came to their churches, and they waited for the word of God because they needed to hear from God. They were on a sharp edge of faith as an island of belief in a sea of atheism and hostility. Now the wall has come down, and so I'm seeing them after 20 years under Western conditions, and everything has changed. The dynamic is no longer there, and they've become like Western churches in any place. There's a kind of a, what's the word, a torpor, t-o-r-p-o-r, kind of a benign calm where one service is like another. The radical requirement has gone with the end of the communist system, and so I raised one question with both pastors. What have you seen or found to replace the dynamic of challenge that existed when you had to survive and serve under a communist regime? And they looked at me like, what are you talking about? They didn't know. For one of those families, 20 years ago, I prayed for the pregnant wife of the pastor who had been told by the medical authorities that she needed an abortion, that that child could not survive their own life, and health was at risk. What do you think, God? Well, I thought that she should have that baby, and prayed for her, and she believed for that, and had the baby, and now I'm seeing the baby as we drive up to the house, now 20 years old, with spiked hair, tinted blonde, and I don't know if he had a nose ring, at least he wasn't wearing it, but he's certainly a candidate. He was, what is the word, a punk rock, you know, I'm out of this. I don't know the terminology. I only know the recoil. This is what I prayed for? This is what this woman risked her life for? A punk rocker in the home of a pastoral family? It was a statement, a symbol of a departure from the radicalness of the faith that evidently, even within the ministerial home, let alone in the congregation, there was not enough that was compelling to engage this young boy, 20 years of age, to be part of that faith, but instead he was going to the discotheques, and into the whole rock thing, and the family was just, of course, agonizing over his condition, but living with it. And so I said to these two pastors, what has replaced the dynamic of the challenge of living as a Christian and serving as a minister under communist authoritarian rule? They had no answer. I said, what about the kingdom of God? They looked blank, and I said, what does the kingdom of God mean to you? And they gave me the conventional and traditional answers. Well, it's the kingdom of God that's within, or we're living by the principles of the kingdom of God. What they were expressing was the way in which most Christians view the kingdom subjectively and personally as some kind of an interior fact that comes with believing. But they did not understand the kingdom of God in the sense that I'm being instructed to understand it, that the church has historically lost and must recover if it's going to have the dynamic that the church had at the first, and the expectation of that kingdom come, not as some interior or subjective or personal thing, although it is that, but as a theocratic thing. That is the question. The kingdom of God is the issue of rule. We know what democratic is, and it stinks. It's a lot better than autocratic, like the self-rule of dictators. Democratic gives some possibility of grassroots participation. I appreciate that. But Clinton and who is the guy in Serbia? Milosevic shows how arbitrary, mindless, spineless, characterless, democratic rule can be. That is as much a gateway to hell and death and devastation as an autocracy. Demo is the Greek root for the word people, demos. Cratic is the Greek suffix for rule. Democracy is the rule of the people. Autocracy is the rule of self. There's other forms of it, I can't think. So what is theocracy? Theocratic. Theo is God. Theophilus was the one to whom Luke wrote, was it the book of Acts? Because he was, he's a lover of God. Theophilus. What's theology? What would that be? The study of God. Theo is God. So what is theocracy? What does it mean in the kingdom of God to think of it theocratically, to think of it as the rule of God? And we don't think of that enough. And because we don't, we're missing, I think, not a profound, but perhaps the most profound point of perception of understanding the faith that God intended as normative. When you start to consider theocracy, you must necessarily then consider the coming of the Lord as king. It's no more the coming of the Lord as an escape that is going to take us out of something, but the word parousia, the Greek word that many have interpreted as being taken out from a troubled world, actually means in Greek to meet a coming dignitary and to escort him to his place of prominence and rule. We will meet him in the air and we shall always be with him, but where will he be? He's going to be not only in the earth, but get this, a place in the earth that he has designated and of which many so-called hotshot Christians are contemptuous because they say he's not interested in real estate. God doesn't have any specific intention for any place in the earth. Oh yeah? The scriptures are full of a particular place that God has designated from which his rule shall emanate, and if it doesn't take place there, it will not take place anywhere. Where is that place? Is it Geneva? New York City? The place of the United Nations? You'll never guess what God would have chosen, not because it's impressive, but because it's weak, foolish, contemptuous, has a lousy track record. God has chosen Jerusalem, the city of peace, Jerusalem, Sholem, Sholom Aleichem, peace be unto you, is going to be the locus of the rule of God, which will be the peace of God because it's the righteousness of God for all nations. Now how do we know that? Because there are several texts to tell us that, can you think of any? Like for example, Isaiah chapter 2, that the law shall go forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem. Let's take a look at that. It's one of the rare texts that's repeated identically word for word in another prophet altogether. Micah chapter 4, verse 1 says exactly the same thing, and they didn't whisper to each other. You know how Micah got it? The same way Isaiah got it, by the transmission of God by the Spirit, but that God would repeat it twice through different prophets indicates that there is a enormously significant that text is. So it's the word in chapter 2, which Isaiah, the son of Amos, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. I mean, the prophets saw this. It was made visual for him about Judah, which is that the Southern kingdom and Jerusalem. So right away from the very beginning, God is designating a very literal place. You know what we call this? This is the scandal of specificity. People don't like it when God chooses. They like a God who is more amorphous, more general, more undefined. They don't like the specificity of God, but you know what Paul says of him or what he says of himself? I will elect what I will elect. I will choose what I will choose. I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy. So in the ways that I would love to take the whole rest of this time to celebrate and to make clear to you, the God who chooses is the God who is God. And in fact, the fact that he chooses is the very distinctive of God. And who does he choose? Israel. Who does he choose? What city? Jerusalem. What in Jerusalem? The holy hill of Zion. What King? David. What Messiah? Jesus. What church? Us. He will choose what he will choose. The question for the church is in the last days, will we agree with his choices? Will we celebrate his choice? It may not have been our choosing. In fact, a Norwegian theologian, Mo Winkle, whose book I found in a second-hand bookstore in no place, a little village in England, says that God's choice of Israel, God's choice of the Jew, God's choice of Zion is the very stumbling stone for the church. It's the stumbling stone set in the path of the church that is essentially gentile and would not have chosen what God would have chosen. It would have chosen not a hill, it would have chosen a mountain, a Mount Olympus, or New York City, or Geneva, or another nation. The issue of God's choosing is the issue of God and the issue of our submission and surrender to the wisdom of God and to his choice. You can't believe how important that is. It tests and reveals our secret heart, because in most gentiles, if they are not deeply established in God and in the spirit of God, being gentile, being non-Jewish, would recoil against and be irritated by God's choice of the Jew. It really tests us to see to what degree our own heart is aligned with his. So, this is what the prophets saw concerning Jerusalem. It will come about in the last days that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains and will be raised above the hills. This is typical poetic and metaphorical language that a prophet employs. Well, I'm sounding like a lecturer. You know why prophets have to use language in that way? Why they are poetic? Anybody who took English 1A here? Why is poetry the most coveted, precious expression of language? Why is poetry to be desired even over prose? What's the difference between the two forms of the use of language? What is special about poetry as against chapters of prose? It speaks to your heart. It speaks to you more distinctively. Every word means something. Right. Fewer words, more pointedly addressed, requiring a greater skill to say in fewer words what prose would have given you, what prose would have required chapters to express. Poetry condenses and states in the most intense and penetrating form in the space of a few verses. To be a poet is an ultimate form of expression. And most, if not all, of the prophets were poets. This is poetry. And when Isaiah uses the word mountain, he's using a symbolic language. What mountain refers to biblically is form of government. Mountain is something elevated. It has to do with rule itself. But this mountain of the Lord is going to be the house of the Lord and be established as the chief of the mountains and will be raised above the hills. All that presumes to be in competition with or have an authority equal to will have to be less than this mountain for all the nations will string to it. Now, listen, you guys. The issue of God's rule is the issue of the nations. The Lord gave Israel a king and gave Israel a kingdom. But the kingdom of Israel is unique in that it's not intended for itself alone but for all nations. God is jealous over his creation and over the nations. And at your own leisure, take a look at one brief mystical reference that I've never yet heard anyone ever speak on, Deuteronomy 32.8, where just to paraphrase it now, it says something like that when God appointed the nations, he did so in terms of the numbers of the sons of Israel. There's some kind of a conjunction in the mind and wisdom of God between Israel and the nations. You need to know that because Israel itself does not know it. You know what they say now in the present state? We want to be like all nations. And God says, you're the tail, but I will make you the head of the nations. And in fact, in this very text, as well as in Zechariah 14, it says nations will come up to Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles to honor the God of Jacob. Israel will be central to the nations in the conception of God for his rule over his own creation. That's why the nations rail against Israel, and that when the Lord comes again, he will come as Israel's deliverer at a time in Zechariah 12, when all the nations of the world will come against Jerusalem to destroy it. Why? Because they do not want the establishment of his rule in that Jerusalem over their nations. Can you think of another place where this is cogently expressed in one of the greatest kingdom statements in the whole of Old Testament scripture? Psalm 2. So put a little marker there. We'll hopefully come back to Isaiah 2, but it's a convenient way to remember Psalm 2 and Isaiah 2 over the issue of the kingdom and the nations. I'm giving you a Weltanschauung. Remember that word? A world cosmic view of the faith. I want to give you a context in which you can understand your call. The place of the church, the meaning of your salvation, the thing to which we're heading is the consummation and the conclusion of all this at the end of the age. One final paroxysm of opposition by the nations to defeat God's intention by doing what? By destroying Israel, by destroying the Jewish people, by genocidal... what do they call that word when you eliminate an entire race? That's genocide. Annihilation. The spirit of Antichrist and of the powers of darkness will be calculated for one last thing for which they had opportunity through Hitler 50 years ago and almost succeeded in annihilating the whole of European Jewry. Had they won the war, kid cats would not be speaking to you today because they would have caught up with me in Brooklyn or in California with every other Jew because they were literally hell bent on the annihilation of world Jewry. There's no way to explain that sociologically. Yes, we Jews are troublesome. Yes, we're irritating. Yes, we've had great influence in culture. There's a reason why we could be resented. But a program of annihilation, even to the point where the military historians cannot even to this day understand why Germany diverted material manpower, wealth to the systematic annihilation of Jews that they should have used for their own preservation to the very last days of the war. That's how the fury of a spirit of darkness had seized the whole apparatus of state and nation bent on one thing, the annihilation of the Jews. There's no way to explain that if you've never read Psalm 2, having read Psalm 2, the light will come on. And you know why I'm taking pains about this sense? It's not over yet. What does it say that he shall be cast out to Satan from the heavens and come into the earth and know that he has but a short time left and his fury shall be unimaginable and the church shall experience much of that opposition and persecution in the last days. To think that we're going to be raptured out is one of the most mischievous, perverse, I don't have a word for it, has left the church totally emasculated, totally unprepared not to embrace ourselves and and to hear the cry of God that we be the people of God in a corporate way, really bonded, really joined, really integral, not just a conglomerate of individualities that are willing to come together for the purpose of a service, but a people who are the family of God, the people of God, the body of Christ is more than just a piece of nomenclature. It's not just a title. It's a phenomenon and it doesn't come easily. It comes with blood, sweat, and tears. The cross is at the issue of the of people coming from a privatistic lifestyle of Sunday services to an integral people who go from house to house daily, breaking bread, whose intercessions and prayers are calculated to pierce the heavens for they're real and they reveal in themselves the whole mystery of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who themselves together were a company. Nothing will drive us to the reality that to which we're intended unless we understand what's at stake here. The whole coming of his kingdom is at stake and the issue of his kingdom is the issue of his rule because it says that when he comes and the law shall go forth out of Zion and the word of Jerusalem, nations shall study war no more. Oh, I can't wait for the day. And they'll turn the swords into spears, pruning hooks and their spears into the implements of peace, not war. And what about the whole NASC? What is that space program? Is it because I'm Jewish that I can't bear it? How many billions did they expend and they're not even getting a beep back from Mars? You know, you know what undergirded, you know what they're real search for? You know what, why all those billions are being expended? They wanted to find moisture because if they could find moisture in space on another planet, they would have the possibility of a theory of creation that does not require God. And we're paying the bill for boys, men playing boys games with expensive toys at the time when there's a mankind bleeding, when the streets of Buenos Aires and the Latin American cities are peopled with kids that live in the streets and Indian and in India, people are living on cardboard mats and have never seen an indoors. There are people dying from poverty and want, and we're expending billions for space programs, for armament development. The United States is the single greatest producer of armaments. I don't know, was it $40 billion a year of sales? And Israel is second to third. My people are in the arms business. It's hot money, it's profit. And I went to the factory, boy, I don't know how many hours I'm going to keep you today, where they make the F-16 only because there's a Christian brother who's an engineer and I got a tour. I'll never forget it. You know what the word the Lord gave me when I looked at these employees? It was Saturday, they were getting time and a half and they were sleepwalkers. They went from one place to another like that and they screwed it in ever so slowly and they turned because the clock was running at time and a half or double time at our expense. The Lord gave me the word gnomes, G-N-O-M-E-S. They were not human. They were pot bellied, beer guzzling, pornographic looking characters who are in the armaments business making big bucks to produce F-16s and they were all going out to Thailand and to Indonesia. Countries that have the sparsest budget must have an F-16 or a fleet of them because it's prestige, because it's status. Because if the other neighboring country has it, you have to have it. It's the world, saints. It's the world's wisdom. It's corrupt. It's filthy. It's vile. It's destructive. It's death. It's death for those men working there morally and humanly, let alone spiritually. It's death. When the Lord goes forth out of Zion, when the Lord is seated in his sanctuary on the holy hill of Zion, which only he can occupy as a descendant of David, because it's the throne of David from the holy hill of David, or else the Lord shall not go forth at all. How come the powers of darkness know this better than you? What kind of a church is it that doesn't know this, that has not read forever? Luke chapter one, the very first angelic pronouncement to Mary, taken by astonishment. Do you mean me? I'm a nothing. Yes, you. This one who's going to be born out of you is holy. He's the coming king of Israel and the father shall give unto him the throne of David, the Davidic throne, the tabernacle of David, and he shall rule over the house of Israel forever. The first angelic pronouncement. Do you know what the word Christ means? Jesus the Christ king, anointed king. Kings were anointed. The Christ is an anointed one to rule. This is the rule of the anointed, the Lord's anointed. And where will you be then? In the day that the Lord comes as king to take his rightful place of authority over the place designated by God in the city of Jerusalem and over a restored Israel from the holy hill of Zion and from the throne of David. When he'll be ruling, what will you be doing? If you're an overcomer, you'll be ruling and reigning with him from the heavenly places formerly occupied by a whole fallen angeology who are today's principalities and powers of the air. Am I giving, saying too much too soon? Oh, bless you. My great cry to God was Lord, how can I communicate this in one day? Who's ruling today? Yes, the Lord is at his throne, but who is effectually jerking and manipulating nations? How do we explain the annihilation of the Bosnians in a program of ethnic cleansing conducted 50 years after the Nazi regime right in before the face of the whole world with impunity that it took a massive air attack day after day to finally bring a partial ending of that conflict with the Albanians having perpetrated a genocidal program on the Bosnians? That was Milosevic, that was Serbia, Yugoslavia and the very cities in which I myself administered only some months before those bombs came. What about Rwanda? What about the genocide between black tribes in Africa? You can multiply the instances of perverse rule in the nations that is violent, that is racial, that is contemptuous of men, that is destructive of humanity. That's present human rule. And you know what? They want to continue to remain in office. Have you ever seen anyone who has found office and obtained the prerogatives of the privileges of office who had been willing and voluntary to give it up even in American politics? How do we explain Bosnia and the Albanian things? And now what's happened? They pushed this Milosevic back into Belgrade and they have a United Nations army to maintain peace in Kosovo. Now the Albanians are persecuting the Serbian minority in the same bloodthirsty and violent and destructive way in the use of torture and death that had been previously inflicted upon them. You know what we ought to be saying? Come Lord Jesus, thy kingdom come in earth as it is in heaven. Let there be righteousness on earth and equity and justice as only you can perform it because men are corrupt, they're self-seeking, they want their own ways, they don't give a rap what it takes and whose mankind is going to be destroyed. Even rape has become a systematic form of the intimidation of your enemy, no matter at what age. We're not talking about a light question here, saints, but one that is grieving the heart of God. And when we say come Lord Jesus, we need to think come and rule, not come and take us out of this. Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing? What's the vain thing? That they're seeking to perpetrate and to continue their usurping false rule, trying to keep at arm's length the coming of the God who alone is the just and righteous ruler over his own creation. What gives Jesus the right to rule from the throne of David beside being a descendant of David or that God himself should rule over the nations because he's the creator of the nations? You remember Paul at Athens and Mars Hill speaking to those philosophers who every day think looking for some new thing? He said, don't you guys know that God has made of one blood all manner of men and established the bounds of their habitations and their nations that they might seek after God if they might be found, happily be found of him? Don't think that your nation is your little playground. Don't think it's yours to do with what you will. God has created it. God has created races and nations and established the bounds of the habitation that they might seek after God. And he's winked in times past, he's allowed you to make it your playground, but the day is coming when he will judge all men by that one whom he's raised from the dead. He's going to judge the nations for what? For their misuse of their own nationhood. Japan. My Lord, you ever been to Singapore and seen the monument that has four strands that goes all the way up representing the four races oppressed by Japan in the World War II. The Singaporeans, the what's that nation that's just north of Singapore? Kampala, what's the name of that capital city? Those kids who come from Bemidji State that come to my house to eat. They're all from that nation. It's a race. And the Chinese and the English. Did you know that the Japanese were racist? That they thought that the sun rose on them and that the Japanese empire would extend over the face of the earth and that they were a superior race and even God men and that the emperors were deities? Did you know that? Did you know that the same number of lives were lost in the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as in the rape of Shanghai? You don't even know about the rape of Shanghai. That when the Japanese took Shanghai, the Chinese forces surrendered on the grounds that the that the military would lay down their arms and be treated as prisoners with respect. You know what they did? They murdered them in cold blood. They raped women, right and left women, girls. They buried people alive. 330,000 Chinese died in the rape of Shanghai and 330,000 Japanese died in the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Don't tell me there's no God and righteous judgment. It's amazing how little conscious we are of history, how little aware we are of the significance of nations, of how little we understand the cosmic struggle over nations and over the rule between the usurping false powers of the air that influence Serbia, influence Japan, influence Germany to be destructive and violent because that's the nature of these false rulers and they want to retain that rule. And they are devising a vain thing that can't work. The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together. Is this redundant, the kings and the rulers? Is that like saying the kings and the kings? The kings are the visible human magistrates. Who are the rulers? Who's behind the scenes really ruling through Clinton, through the magistrates, through Hitler, the invisible principality and powers of the air, that whole spectral realm of fallen angels who have revolted against God and followed Satan are the factual rulers of this world because their Satan and their king is the prince of this world. Jesus called him that. The prince of this world comes, but he has no nothing in me. The final showdown is between two princes and the church is in the middle of that struggle. The rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their courts from us. But he who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. He will speak to them in his anger and terrify them in his fury. And his answer is, as for me, I have installed my king. Do you have another word for installed? Set my king upon Zion, my holy mountain. Is Zion a mountain? Have you ever been to Jerusalem, the hill of David, the city of David? It's not a mountain, saints. It's a pimple. But God calls it a mountain because she's not impressed with physical sight or size or dimension or number. The fact of the matter is that God will choose exactly the opposite of what men revere and esteem who are who are moved toward glorifying size, number, prestige, stature, wealth, power. He'll choose what is weak, what is insignificant, what is foolish to confound that which is mighty and wise in the sight of men. Did you know that? That's why he chose us. We're a bunch of foolishness. We're nothing. We're just a handful of nothing. And yet, and you'll read in Ephesians chapter three, he created all things in order that through the church, this nothing, he might demonstrate to the powers of the air the manifold wisdom of God. Our king chooses foolish things. I'm sorry. He said Mount Zion is like a little bitty. Yeah. Mount Zion is not really, it's a hill. The holy hill of Zion is chosen because it is insignificant. God says to Israel, I didn't choose you because you were mighty. I chose you because you were few. You were a stinking slave nation building fortresses and fortune cities for Pharaoh. You were nothing. You lived on leeks and garlics and preferred that. And I chose you. He'll choose the foolish and the weak thing. He'll choose a stable rather than holiday in, in which his king is born. Unto this day there shall be born unto you in the city of David, a Messiah, the Lord. Where is he born? In a manger. That's where the animals salivate when they eat and drop their drool in into their food. That's where they laid him. And where was the, the, the kingdom of David conceived and first formed in a cave. And who was the king? Who is this David who feigned madness and drooled in his beard and scribbled on the doorposts so that the Philistines would, would not pursue him. And, and he's the prototype of the Jesus to come the great king. Yes. Yeah. And who's his spokesman? High school dropout art cats. You know, he chooses the things. In fact, it says in Luke that that which the world esteems is an abomination to God. You know why Jews have not surrendered to Jesus where they've not recognized him as the Messiah, the anointed, the, the in Christ and one, the kingdom of Israel, because he didn't come in pump. He didn't come with a motorcycle cavalcade and a whole, what do they call it with a fleet of, of armored cars and, and limousines. He came on the back of an ass in fulfillment of Zachariah chapter nine, your king shall come to lowly and meek upon the back of an ass, the cult, the full of an ass. And those Jews who knew their scriptures and saw this Jesus coming down a month of olives on the back of an ass upon which never meant sat cried out Hosanna to the king and blessed is the king and blessed is the kingdom that comes in the name of the Lord. It'll always come when it comes on the back of an ass. Hmm. And he said to his disciples, go into yonder village and there you'll find an ass and it's a cult, it's full, it's offspring and take them. And if anyone interferes, tell them that the Lord has need of them. And so they found it. Imagine Jesus's whole prophetic stature and reputation was at stake. If, if those animals were not found, there they were and they bought them. And instead of taking the donkey upon a mature animal prepared to bear the weight of a strapping six foot carpenter, he takes the offspring, the full, the cult upon which never man sat. And on that, he comes down the most precipitous descent that amount of olives is. If you ever were there, as I have been many times, you cannot even walk down and maintain your dignity. It's just too steep. I mean, you look foolish, you know, but you imagine coming down on this week, a little animal upon which never man sat. You don't know whether to laugh or to cry. That's your king coming in glory into his holy city in preview of his coming at the end of the age to the very city where he was crucified in the most cruel torture and agony of body and soul and outside the city of the dump between criminals with a sign in three languages, Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews is exactly where he's coming to be. That isn't just like God. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm thinking sense? You don't know God as you ought, unless you know these things. It's the revelation of Jesus as king and the revelation of the kingdom and the beauty of the king that brings the Lord and God, the father into a perspective of understanding and celebration and majesty that nothing else will provide. You know why our worship is so hokey, why we need the overhead projectors, why it's strained? Because we have not the sense of the majesty of God and the genius of God and the glory of God that is nowhere revealed more profoundly than in his kingdom and his kingdom. When you say thy kingdom come, you're not asking for bluster and bravado and motorcycle cavalcades, you're asking for the kingdom of a God himself who came down into his city on the back of an ass to die the death of a criminal. That's our king, that's his kingdom. My kingdom is not of this world, else would my servants fight. My kingdom is another thing altogether, it's another quality, it's another wisdom, it's exactly in opposition to, in every point in particular, to the kingdoms of this present world. You know what I'm realizing? Having been a believer now 35 years and been around a little bit in the world and in Christendom and in the charismatic realm, where that kingdom is not understood, not celebrated, not recognized, not sought, invariably other kinds of petty kingdoms will fill the void. Call them what they will, the ministry of this one, that one, this denomination, that movement is a cheapie that must necessarily surface in the absence of the centrality and the recognition of that kingdom, which is the kingdom of God. If we are not kingdom conscious and kingdom waiting and kingdom seeking and kingdom living, we'll find ourselves candidates for false kingdoms. So I had to say to these East German pastors, what has replaced the dynamic that came when you used to be under persecution? And they had, nothing has replaced it. I said, what about the kingdom? Huh? Well, the kingdom is something personally, Jesus said the kingdom of God is within you. Yes, but what did he mean by that? There's a sense in which that's definitely true, but does that exhaust the larger and deeper reality of what the kingdom is and what we ought to expect and be laboring for and knowing the conflict that's going to come because the nations rage and you think their rage is over or we haven't seen it yet. There's a mask of civility. Saints, you've got to see it. This is why they're elders in the body of Christ, because we've lived longer and we've seen more and we understand we've seen through the pretense. Yeah. High school dropout now has a couple of master's degrees from the university of California, Berkeley and the Lutheran seminary in St. Paul. And I had opportunity to see through the civility, the decorum, the propriety, the amenities of civilized institutions of learning and theology to the jungle that they really are. When that mask is taken away of civility and the teeth are bared and you see the truth of the world and its lust and its power and its desire to perpetuate itself at whatever cost, you will have looked into the face of Satan. There's a war on and the end of the age will be that final conflict. And we're not going to make it as a superficial Sunday service attending people, congregations. I have set my king on the holy hill of Zion. Today I have declared the decree. Thou art my son. Today I have begotten thee. Ask of me and I will give you the nations as your inheritance. That's poetry, but it's also literal. Don't think that that's a play on words any more than the nation that the mountain of the Lord's house will be above the mountains and hills of the world and that the nations will come up to Jerusalem and that they'll beat their swords into plowshares and study war no more. That's literal. It's intensified. It's compact. It's poetic, but it's speaking of very real, very actual things in the world and things that we ought to be coveting and praying for, because the world is misusing its wealth and producing forms of death. The whole world is sick. We stayed in a motel, was it night before last, and we got the complimentary newspaper. We, both of us were so upset. We were so, our spirits were so jarred and there was nothing in them that was flagrant, but ads for Christmas shopping. That's enough to do it for me. The world, the system, profit, seduction, fascination, stars, personalities, glitter, while a whole generation is being ground to powder and our own children are being made merchandise. The souls of men being made merchandise. That the children themselves constitute a multi-billion dollar market who know brand names and want this kind of gene and that kind of gene and that kind of shoe. And if they don't get it, they're miserable and they'll make you miserable. The whole, the system has got us. It's another kingdom. You got the idea? We have, once you start putting on the spectacles of the kingdom, it's remarkable as how you begin to perceive the false reality that purports to be reality, that is everywhere, bringing its victims into death, into mental institutions, into nervous breakdowns, into tumors, into heart failures, into all the kinds of things that the bodies of men can't even bear because it's not in keeping with truth and with integrity and with righteousness. But when this kingdom comes, oh, it'll be a mechaya. That's from the Hebrew word meaning life. It'll be a relief. We'll have shalom. We'll have peace. Not because of some pseudo kind of a thing affected by men, but because it issues from righteousness and right relationship and truth and equity and justice, because our king is impartial, because he doesn't have to butter up anyone, because he doesn't have to line his pockets, because he doesn't have to worry about reelection, because he doesn't have to be everybody's popular. He can rule with perfect righteousness and equity as God. And then the trees will spring up the fruit of the earth. I mean, nature itself will rejoice that is now even under bondage. To be kingdom minded is to become eschatologically minded. And the church that is not eschatological is not the church. I'm using a fancy word, eschatology, the study of the things pertaining to the end, the conclusion of the age, the end of human history, the coming of the kingdom, the advent of the millennium. Come on, you guys. Tell me that you're millennial, millennially minded, except in the sense that Y2K. Where is our millennial anticipation? Where is the sense of what is going to come and the joy of it and that creation itself is going to rejoice? The early church that was the church was eschatologically minded. Paul speaking in Thessalonians to the Thessalonians, newly saved out of paganism and idolatry, who were saved by his word. He said, I read, I praise God that when you heard the word of God from me, you received it for what it was, not the word of man, but the word of God that performs a work in them that believe and has turned you from your idols to serve the living God, not just get saved, serve the living God and to wait for his son who's coming from heaven and will save us from the day of his wrath. What a message. What a message. Who's preaching like that today? Who's, who's telling people they're being saved from a wrath to come that the Lord is coming and in judgment that there's a wrath and a fury against the nations that have blasphemed his name and the church that has mocked him in the pursuit of its own petty kingdoms. Who's hearing a message like that? That's apostolic proclamation that saves men from the idolatries to serve the living God. That church was eschatologically minded and to be eschatologically minded is to be equally apocalypticly minded. Both Greek words, eschaton, the coming of the Lord, the end, but apocalyptic in judgment. Where's the fear of the Lord in the church? We're a bunch of flakes. It's a cheapie. I mean, what we get away with is horrific because there's no fear. We prayed about this. I don't know what hour of the morning for the fear of the Lord, the awe and the reverence of God to come into the church. What is a church without it? But a culture, a Sunday phenomenon. We have not that sense of the fear of God because we have not the sense of God. We have not the sense of his coming. We have not the sense of his kingdom. We have not the sense that he's coming in judgment. And the fact of the matter is, if we're scratched deeply enough, we're offended by a God who will judge. That's why this book on the Holocaust is devastating. A man wrote to me, said, my whole view of God has exploded. I'm seeing a sense of, I've never considered because to exclude judgment from God is to exclude God. You can't separate out his attributes. Oh, I like his goodness. I like his mercy. I like his love. I like his, what about his judgment? His judgment is his righteousness. And when his judgments come in the earth, the world shall learn righteousness. He's not some arbitrary, capricious God who just comes to destroy. His judgments are redemptive and altogether wise and needful. When we say, come Lord Jesus, we're saying, come in judgment. When we say we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we're not hoping for some magical wand to be passed over troubled city, but for judgment that must come and a chastisement that must come before they can be the restored people of God. We don't even know what we're praying because we have omitted the most significant aspect of God as God in judgment, because we're not eschatologically minded because we're not apocalyptically minded and we're even offended. And we want all things to remain as they are in the hope of amelioration and improvement. We're progressivists, we're humanists and not apostolic in our anticipation and it shows in our character, our relationships. We're casual one Sunday like another. We've lost the intensity and the purpose for our being that makes us the people of God only in the context of the kingdom of God, not as a subjective and personal thing however precious that might be, but in the sense of the theocratic rule of God over the nations from the place that God has designated through a nation yet to be restored through the mercies of the church in the last days. In the latter days, Isaiah said concerning the division of Jerusalem, the mountain of the Lord's house will be higher and above and all nations shall flow into it to the God of Jacob. Got the picture? You're getting the picture? Hallelujah. Well, let me pray a little prayer. This God of Jacob, if you don't know him as the God of Jacob, do you really know him as you ought? I came back from Nuremberg, Germany, out not far from Wagner country in Bavaria and I went out to a Jewish cemetery that survived the Nazi time. The gravestones were so thick like that that the Nazis could not topple them and the Hebrew was effaced because they went back to the 1400s. You can barely discern some of the Hebrew on one side, German on the other side. I'm always so moved. I always go out of my way to find Jewish cemeteries where we are distributed throughout the world and where we have died for one unkind reason or another. And I came back to that meeting to address a German congregation, charismatic. And I said, Hey, my Jewish people have been here since the 1400s. There's no place in Europe where they've been longer since the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. They came to the Rhine and were merchants before Germany even came into its national identity. It was the Holy Roman Empire, but it was Germanic. And we've lived that long with you and never got saved. How come that you never told us that the God that you're celebrating in Jesus Christ is the God of Alphabets? And do you even know today that the God whom you ostensibly worship is the God of Jacob and the God of Israel? And you should have seen their jaws drop. Not only did they not know it, they did not want to know it. Their God was somehow Christian, separate, unrelated to Israel. And that church that chooses that posture, that mindset, that separation is ipso facto, not the church, certainly not the church of the last days. It's only the church and its recognition of its identity with that people and with that people's God and with his coming King. That's why Jesus stopped when he was going through Jericho and a blind beggar cried out, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. They tried to shut him up. He couldn't, they couldn't contain him. Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. He stopped. Who's that? A blind beggar knows my truest identification. I'm the son of David. And that's my qualification to rule on his throne forever in the day when I shall come with the wounds that were the evidence of what I have received in the house of my friends. This blind beggar knew it. And you Pharisees and teachers of the law did not know it and could not recognize me as your King and would not have me to rule over you. It's going to cost you. And it has. This kingdom of God is the kingdom of heaven, but it's the Davidic kingdom. It's the raising up again of the tabernacle of David, the ruins of it, that his rule might go forth over Edom and over the nations. I have given you the nations for your inheritance. We're involved in that cosmic drama and what an involvement and what a requirement it is. We cannot afford to be patsy Christians. We cannot afford to have as our standard of measure the success of our meetings, the enjoyment, the program. We've got to be involved in the anticipation and the preparation of the coming of that kingdom, knowing that it's going to come apocalyptically in violent collision in the last days, for they will not let go and relinquish their false rule. They'll rail against the Lord against his anointed. And they know better than the church that the king will not come. That is contained in the heavens in acts 321, waiting for the restoration of all things spoken by the prophets since the world began. You know what the prophets all spoke about Isaiah, the psalmists, Hosea, Micah, the minor prophets, the major prophets. What was the last days restoration that permits the king to come the restoration of Israel itself, because how shall he rule from the holy hill of Zion if it's not holy? If it's a place of merchandise where you get your Gucci leather goods and where they come from Jordan to do their expensive shopping in Jerusalem, the king's coming to that? No, no. That present Jerusalem shall turn to rebel saints. There shall be devastation, widespread judgment on all the present cities of Israel. They'll be cast out again into the nations. There'll be one final chastisement, then sifting of the time of Jacob's trouble, and they'll perish, except that you know they have a destiny and that a remnant of them must return to Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads and mourning and sighing fling away. And you're willing to extend mercy at the risk of your own life at a time when anyone who will extend themselves to a Jew puts his head on the block, just like Corrie ten Boom. Are you going to be willing? What, for a Jew? Why should you? What did they ever do for you? Unless you see yourself in identification with them as the people of God, of the God of Jacob and the God of Israel, who is your God and your coming king through their restoration. And whatever measure of sacrifice, inconvenience, suffering, the greater your rule and reign with him when he comes and brings his reward with him to give to everyone according to their works. See how eschatological? See how the church needs to labor in anticipation of a future event and the reward of sacrifice for that? That is the church saints. Anything else is a kingdom of another kind. So Lord, Precious God, how could anyone message? And you've given me gorgeous messages. I love your messages. I would to God I had the liberty to preach a message, not a Weltanschauung. But these children need a cosmic view. They need an overarching construct to understand their call in these last days. And you've given us a sketch. You've given us the rudiments, my God, and there's much to be filled in. But I pray that not a syllable of the sharing shall fall to the ground, that even what was not explicitly spoken, but insinuated throughout between the lines will be communicated into their hearts by your spirit and that you'll birth in them a jealousy for your kingdom that is more than a vague generalization of some kind of interior and subjective thing that we have within us. But they'll have also the sense of the reality of the political rule of God who deserves that rule because she's the creator of this earth and these nations and that it's that kingdom that we shall desire and labor to obtain. Bless these children, Lord, as the ambassadors of your kingdom. Give them the high seriousness that only the awareness of the kingdom brings and the willingness to sacrifice that only the kingdom justifies. Let them be co-rulers with you and share, my God, from your throne to the measure of that sacrifice and that service in this earth and in this nation and among the nations in these last days. Call your sons and daughters even now to heroic participation and willingness, whatever the cost, that when they say thy kingdom come, the only prayer you ever taught your disciples, pray this, but our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name for nothing else will hallow your name than your kingdom come in earth as it is in heaven. Give these children a kingdom-mindedness that eclipses and minimizes and makes trivial all that is in the world that seeks to clutch at them to gain their loyalty, their energies, their interest. May they see it for the cheap, shallow thing that it is that can only be seen in that way in the light of your kingdom. Bring kingdom consciousness, my God, to your church, we pray, even the kingdom of David and that great David who will establish his throne. Thank you, my God, have us to palpitate for the righteousness and equity and justice that will issue from that one place that you have appointed and we bless you for you're the God who is only God and the God who chooses. We agree with your choice. Bless these children, bless this word, set things in motion by it that would not have taken place without it and we thank you and give you the praise for the jealousy that broods over us and will not let us go. Thank you for my young brothers agonizing, trying to to struggle through to come to an understanding of how all this fits together and I pray that he'll be the chief recipient of this word today, that it'll go click, click, click, click in his soul, things would fall into place as it did for me and all of the things that constituted the baggage of my faith came into a comprehensive unity when you inserted the key of your kingdom. So we bless you, Lord, and we thank you. Turn it in our hearts that you might perform it. Thank you for the Holy Spirit without which it could never be obtained. Thank you for the resurrection of Jesus that raised him from the dead, that declared the decree this day I set my king on the holy hill and that there's a resurrection for us that is our day that will that you can say this is my son because it's only in that power and in that authority that we shall be for you what we must in these last days. To say thy kingdom come is to say through thy resurrection and thy resurrection alone that you might be glorified. It's not enough to approve it as a doctrine. I bless these children, Lord. Trouble us with your word. Let it percolate in our soul and in our spirits. Let it drive us into your word to search out the prophets and the allusions to your kingdom and in the psalms and in the many places that you make your profound hints. Bless this congregation, bless this work. Thank you, my God. Lay its foundations in the kingdom of God that are removable. We thank and give you praise in Jesus name. Thank you. Don't don't lift your head. Transact something with the Lord. I'll tell you something about the kingdom. It's entirely voluntary. No man will be conscripted into the kingdom. It's going to come through the voluntary sacrifice of saints who are jealous for it because they know that the issue of the kingdom is the issue of God's glory forever. And they're willing for the sacrifice in this life, whatever it is to obtain it. You let the Lord know right where you're sitting, either audibly or out of your heart, preferably audibly that the powers of the air will take note that you want to be observed and to be feared for you've made a kingdom declaration. You're not content to be merely charismatic. You have intentions beyond the success of your own fellowship in your own numbers that you're a kingdom saint and you're willing for the cost of it in this life. And it will cost you'll be marked. Let him know thy kingdom come Lord is at the heart of my whole identification of myself as a saint. Thy kingdom come not my career, not my ministry. Thy kingdom come. It might even take the sacrifice of my ministry, the sacrifice of my vested interests to obtain it. But let your rule of my life, my family be upon your shoulder for unto us a son is given, a child is born and the government shall be upon his shoulder. The government of the church first, and then also Israel. And then also the nations, wherever we are still independent, self-willed, calling our own shots, making our own plans for the future, making our own determinations, our own ambitions that have not consulted. You have not recognized your Lordship and your kingship. Forgive us and we surrender. We give all of them. I got every interest. Your kingdom come. We have no right to determine our retirement, our leisure, our whole, our saving our, our, our, our, our, thy kingdom come whatever it requires from this day forth in Jesus name. Let the Lord know it. Let the powers of darkness know it and everything will change. Somebody make a verbal declaration for yourself, for this congregation. Come God in my heart, my life, my family, of all places in Atlanta. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. My own discernment and my own perception. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. I'm asking. Oh God save. Thank you Lord. You come Lord, come God, come. Yep. My children, my house, oh God. As for me and my house, Lord God I serve the Lord. Oh God let me serve, oh God and not dictate. Oh God rule, oh God. Rule over this family, rule over this church. Amen. Come oh God, come and rule. Be the son of David here. Yep. Oh God. That's right. Reign in us, oh God. Reign with us. Give us a, oh God, a kingdom vision. Yep. Thank you Lord. That Atlanta should not be known for its Coca-Cola, for its Braves, for its football teams, for its sports, for its productions, for its promotions, but for your kingdom in this very place that so exalts the petty kingdoms of men. We ask that your kingdom shall come crashing in and bring to smithereens, my God, the presumptions of men to exalt their industries and their businesses and their sports and their pettiness and to leave you as a Sunday supplement only. God forbid. Bring Atlanta, my God, to a place that glorifies the king. Thank you my God. Correct, my God, its faulty values, its imbalance. Thank you my God. Thank you Lord. Its high presumptuous towers, its city landscape, all of the pretense and presumption of men that relegates you to the dustbin of insignificance as a Sunday supplement only. Come my God, be glorified in this great city. Yes. Let it be great for the right reasons. Yes Lord. In Jesus name. Thank you Lord. Oh Holy Spirit. Thank you. Thank you Lord.