In this sermon, the speaker reflects on a radical message he gave as a young believer at a Full Gospel Businessmen's Conference. Despite facing backlash and criticism, the message brought about a significant change and impact on the attendees. The speaker emphasizes that God's ultimate strategy for the nations, as mentioned in Genesis 9, will face opposition from the powers of death and hell. He also mentions a prophet in Habakkuk who corrected him for missing the mind of the Lord and causing damage to the body of Christ. The speaker acknowledges the importance of seeking the Lord through fasting and prayer in delivering messages and standing firm in the face of opposition.

We need to be especially tempered by the Lord for the delicate thing that's before us. Because what is God's provision for the nations? The nations left to themselves, left to their Gentile propensities, to their pagan propensities, is a formula for murder, mayhem, violence, destruction, and death. God's stratagem is to Hebraicize the nations, to temper them, and to bring them into the tent of Shem, whatever that means. And oftentimes, as we know from the prophets, they speak beyond their own comprehension. Something comes up in their spirit. They don't wait for it to be fully formed, or even to understand what they're saying, if it's a word that must go forth on time. And I believe that this tent of Shem theme is of that kind. I myself don't have a full cognizance of what it means, but I know it's very alive in my spirit, and it has been coming in and out like a symphony theme over this past year or so, being sounded here, being sounded there, and now more explicitly at the conference from which I've just returned in Canada. But the remarkable thing was that there was such a backlash against it, or it could have been against me. I don't know. We need to examine that. But you can believe that if it's God's ultimate stratagem for the nations, as was given at the first in Genesis chapter 9, to which I ask you to turn now, that every power of death and hell will be opposed to its fulfillment. It's remarkable that just one little fragmentary statement can so set in motion from the beginning something that finds consummation at the end. That what we would think would be so remarkably important should have a greater enlargement in the scripture, but the Lord gives us only a terse fragmentary statement. For example, the scripture in the prophet Habakkuk, the just shall live by their faith. Oh, really? Where's the enlargement on that statement? It just stands. If it's that critical, and it is, shouldn't there be further expressions of it? No? I think it's the only one place in Old Testament, the just shall live by their faith. And so the statements of Paul and Romans, and so much is left to us to borrow into the Lord and to extract those meanings he will give to those who will seek him for them. What shall we say of Deuteronomy 32, 8? I've never heard anyone make that a message. That when God established the number of the nations, he did so in terms of, or in proportion to the number of the sons of Israel. What a cryptic and mystical statement without elaboration, sandwiched somewhere in Deuteronomy 32 that has oodles of things to say of another kind about Israel, about judgment and covenant failure. This one verse is inserted. And here in Genesis, the book of beginnings, is this inserted in the statement of the prophet Noah after the disgrace that had come in his drunkenness, chapter 9, verse 18, the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was peopled. Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard. He drank some of the wine and became drunk, and he lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, I don't know why we're always told that. It's the Canaanites, the descendants of Canaan, that seem to be Israel's principal adversary today and have historically been. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away. They did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, Cursed be Canaan, lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers. He also said, Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem, and let Canaan be his slave. May God make space for Japheth, and let him live or dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his slave. And after the flood, Noah lived 350 years over the days of Noah, 950 years and he died. So on that fragmentary text is writing a great weight of meaning that I think is on time. Through whom else would the Lord bring to the consciousness of the church those things that are on time that have been placed historically in the Word and need now to come alive in the consciousness of the church as we stand close to the fulfillment of that mystery hinted at in this one expression, but a prophet or prophets. I'm not saying I'm the exclusive messenger of this theme and may well be. Other men, unknown and unheralded, are equally being started to bring their consciousness to the church of that which is on time. That's the dimension that God himself has employed and intends. That's the function. The apostle has his function, the teachers, the evangelists, pastors, but the prophetic calling is to be quick and to bring out of the Word that which is on time for the consideration of God's people. And that's what I think is happening. So let's look into this text, burrow into this text. Verse 26, the heart of it. Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem, who is the father of the Shemites. Abraham was a Semite that came out of four of the Chaldees, a Semitic people. Hebrews are Semites, Jews are Semites, Palestinians are Semites. Egyptians are sons of Ham. So maybe one of the things that will establish the full tent of Shem are all the sons of Shem coming together into great unity that only the faith itself can obtain. So long as sons of Shem are themselves divided between Jews and Arabs, then we will not have the place or the significant provision of God for Japheth. Japheth is the father of all the European nations and his name means enlarged. May God make space for Japheth because he's going to be enlarged. And I'm implying and sensing and intuiting, which is a prophetic disposition, that the enlargement is technology, economics, culture, trade, commerce, civilization itself, which can redound to the good of mankind, but could also be the harbinger of dread things like war and death. The enlargement can be for the good, could also be for evil. And so what is God's provision that Japheth not be, live alone in his Japheth spirit, temper, and enlargement? That all the more because he's enlarged, he needs something that God provides to temper a man who is expansive in his own ability, in his own technology, in his own power. And that provision is that which is antithetical to enlargement, that is not technological, but spiritual. It is a tent. And we read in the psalm today, David asking that he be allowed to dwell in the tent of God. Something about a tent, of what a tent suggests is altogether opposite to what we would expect a Japheth to dwell in. He would have buildings in keeping consonant with his technology, with his ability, with the emphasis on power, prestige, wealth, and left to himself. Though it may, as I've said, constitute a blessing, it also constitutes a threat. It necessarily encourages arrogance. Success in technology, armaments, economics, trade, commerce, even culture, education, produces necessarily a disposition toward arrogance and pride. And unleashed on the world, in that ability, with that pride, that arrogance is disaster. God's provision is that Japheth must dwell in the tent of Shem. There's a function for Canaan as a servant people, but there's a function for Japheth to be enlarged as it will bless the earth, but also threaten the earth. And God's provision is the uniqueness of Shem called to be dwellers in tents. Isaac was a dweller in tents. Abraham was a dweller in tents. It implies mobility. You don't get founded in one place and then increase in your establishment, your organization, and the visible signs of your success. A man who's in the tent can move and follow the lamb whithersoever he goes. That's the reason that he's mobile. So he's not a dweller in the tent, looking for the place in which he can settle and obtain prosperity, but because he's following after the Lord who called him and said, follow me in the land that I will show you. The dweller in the tent is by nature a pilgrim. He's a journeyer and his journeying is not for himself, but the God who called him. What a grace for the world that there are such a people in the earth, or else we would all be stuck in our Japheth mentality and think to have the blessing of God when God's provision is for us to enter. So let me, this is the thing from which I spoke in that final message. You heard what preceded it. The first message was a kind of an outline of the issue of the Jew and why it is that the church has maintained a distance between ourselves and them, why there is a native and inherent implicit anti-Semitism in Gentiles. Remember the first statement with which I opened my mouth was, I have come to believe after 38 years in the faith, traveling the world largely, that every Gentile by nature is a candidate for anti-Semitism, that there's a latent anti-Jewish disposition in every Gentile heart. It's the very nature of the thing, because of the difference that the Jew represents as an ingrown company, a community of their own, at a distance from the Gentiles, implying a kind even of superiority that would move those who want to have them mix in and be like us to be held in suspicion. So the first message was reviewing some of the elements that give evidence of this disposition in the Gentile heart. The only salvation from it is not to be Gentile, is to become yourself Hebraicized, and not to carry with you the distinctives that mark the Gentile, which is enlargement, power, prestige, wealth, which we see unhappily becoming prevalent in many modern day ministries, prestige, power, influence, wealth. So how do we obtain this saving characteristic? It's to the degree to which we have come into the place where alone it is to be found, the Tent of Shem. The great irony is that present day Jews are not themselves in their own tent, and do not themselves represent that tent, because a lack in the last, talk about the ironies of history, who is more technological, more involved in business, trade, commerce, culture, power, wealth, and prestige than Jews themselves? They don't even know that this is their calling, to be for the nations this distinctive thing. How can they be it when they themselves not only resemble the nations, but desire to be like the nations? And if you take a poll of present day Israelis, and maybe modern Jews everywhere, and ask what their preferences are, you know what they say? Leave us alone. Don't bother, don't tell us about being chosen. We want to just to be like all other nations. In fact, we really want to be the most superior expression of nations. What we want in Israel is not to be a place where the Gentiles will come to the house of prayer for all nations, because we ourselves are not in that house. We ourselves are not even praying. What we want is for present Israel to be the Hong Kong of the Middle East. And our appeal to our Palestinian neighbors, who are our threat to our success, is give it up already. Why don't you guys cool it? Listen, if only you cooperate, you will participate in the prosperity that we will share with you. So give up this bloodletting, this vendetta, this vengeance, and you fool and receive the benefit. You never had it so good when you were under Arab and Islamic authority. You were in a far worse condition economically and socially than you have been with us. However much you'll complain, you've never enjoyed the universities that now exist in the West Bank, and education, other kinds of amenities that have come by being under Israeli authority. How much more if you'll cooperate with us? Appealing to the self-interest of men as if that is the means by which men live their lives. That men being like Jews predicate their conduct on what serves their self-interest. That is a humanistic assumption that is going to be disappointed, where we'll find men not acting in their self-interest, willing to be blown up, and for their parents to delight and boast in their children who have been blasted to smithereens in taking some Jewish lives with them. Jews have never encountered a mentality like that ever in their history, and what shall they say about it? How can these people be appealed to in their self-interest when they're only too willing to be made modest, and to see their children made modest, and count it highest honor? How do you meet with the people like that, and how do you find the basis of cooperation with people like that? This is an intractable, insoluble predicament that we've never before faced, and in the end it will do us in. And that's exactly God's intention. So, because God is jealous that this Semitic people, these Jews, have got to be the Tent of Shem, or the Japheth nations will continue to have their World War I, World War II, World War III, and as many world wars as their ambition, their rivalry, and their power will make necessary. World War I is the first of these great conflicts, as we suggested the other day. It came over tables like this, where kaisers, and statesmen, and naval commanders, and generals played with their tin soldiers, and wanted opportunity to show that their military might was greater than that of Great Britain, than the Queen of the Seas, or France. And so, out of ambition, out of rivalry, out of power, out of the buildup of armaments, that great conflict was birthed. The assassination of, who was it, the Serbian Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo was only the spark that ignited that great conflict. Any spark will have done, because the condition for international war was already established. That's Japheth, left to himself. Terrible devastation. How many millions of lives? I told you about the Ossieri in Verdun. You can visit it today in France. Ossieri is a building in which the bones are contained. It's as large as a football field. And how many of those bones represent potential Beethovens, and philosophers, and fathers of the church, and great commentators of the scripture, and blessings to mankind went up in that generation. And left the conditions by which World War II was an inevitability. Because the victors in World War I were so merciless in the demands made upon the defeated, that they left the ground for resentment that Hitler later played upon in giving Germans a sense of self-esteem that had been ravaged and taken from them as being implied as the sole cause of World War I, and that they would have to pay reparations that would strip that nation and make it a second-class or third-class nation. Hitler had fertile ground to whip the nation up to become a master race and to take its place in the sun and defeat those that had defeated them. And what are our present conditions? Issues that have come out of World War II that give rise now yet again to great threat. The Russian Revolution, the rise of communism, Bolshevism, even the issues of the Balkan nations that sparked World War I are still alive with us now. And so we're on a ground for explosion yet again. And it will not be solved by the United Nations or any other human agency. It will only be peace and accord when nations fit themselves to the plan of God for all nations with Israel, redeemed Israel at its center, and the law going forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, so that nations will not study war anymore and beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into hooks. This is not poetry in Isaiah chapter 2. This is God's prescriptive answer to the world. And no other solution will bring the accord of nations than God's way. It requires the recognition of one nation in particular against whom the Japheth nations are inflamed and irritated and resentful. They will not bow to that nation. They'll not come into that tent. Nothing more reveals Japheth pride than its unwillingness to agree to the condition of God in the offense and the scandal of particularity that Israel represents as the tent of Shem. The first object is to get Israel to be that tent. And the second is the willingness of nations to bow and, as someone has said this morning, kneel to enter. For it's in the very bowing and the kneeling that Japheth pride is broken and in no other place. Because the larger thinks itself the greater. And because it's a humiliation to come into something smaller or less than itself. But it does not know that God who chooses to take upon himself the form of man and that of a slave, chooses to be born in a stable, chooses to die outside the city in the garbage dump, chooses to come down in the triumphal entry into Jerusalem as king on the back of an which never man sat. That's why the law of the Lord, which is the way of the Lord, not legal prescription, the Torah, the teaching of God has got to come out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, the place that is despised, small and offensive in the sight of Japheth nations. What is Zion? Have you guys ever been to Jerusalem and seen the hill of David, Zion? It's a hill. I call it a pimple next to the great mountains that God would more rightly have chosen or nations that he might rightly have chosen. Who's a greater candidate to be the nexus and pivot of God's rule over the world than Germany? And if you go to Berlin today, you'll see what I have seen when they brought their government from where it had been previously, when the nation was split between East and West, where was it located? On the Rhine River, Bonn, B-O-N-N, which is an idyllic pastoral place. Bonn is dreamy. There's no configuration of power. It's a sweet kind of residence for government that must temper those who make law. Just the geography of it. But Berlin, Mamma Mia. When the nation became one, by the way, I was not celebrating that union. I preferred a divided Germany. And East Germany in those days was a privilege to minister. They hung on to every word that issued from the mouth of God's servants and counted it privilege. Now, the same people that delighted in your coming, yawn, because many have come now and there's no difference now between themselves and West Germany. They are just like the other side and exalting the same materialism, standard of living and values for which they were denied under communist rule that made them more susceptible and open to things of the spirit. I was not happy when that wall came down. And why did that wall come down? Because the German nation itself wanted the full power that it desires to be central to all nations. So the whole European union is essentially a German plan. And its greatest figures are German. And it gives German an opportunity for the kind of prevalence for which it thinks it is designed. When you visit Berlin today, when I was there last, not only have they created a brand new dome over the Reichstag that cost in itself millions, but they say there are over 500 of those things that go up in the air that move heavyweights. What do they call those? Cranes. Those cranes. 500 cranes establishing the new capital of Germany. I said to the German brother with me in the car, as we drove around those grounds and I saw this remarkable display, I said, this is not the capital of the nation. This is a world capital. This is a global capital. It is too ambitious in its extent and its architecture merely to serve the purpose of being the capital of a nation. These Germans yet have global aspirations and global designs. Fancy then bowing to enter the tent of Shem? But unless they will, they'll remain all too German, all too Japheth, all too powerful, all too arrogant, and all together capable again of a yet another world conflagration. Well, it sounds like a dangerous formula to exalt Jewish pride at their chosenness to be central to all nations, which is not the least of the reasons why they have to be submitted to the most painful and devastating judgments of God in the last days, that they will retain a broken character and a priestly disposition alone by which this mystery can be fulfilled. The fact that it's confined to them is the statement of God's chosenness. If it was not ethnically identified, what does God's chosenness mean except it can be seen in a particular people called for that particular purpose? But it's not their Jewishness that is going to be celebrated because that is not the essence of what Semitic is. The essence of what Semitic is, is what we considered this morning out of the Psalms, that is Davidic, that is Abrahamic. The question that I would raise is, is there actually a bowing to the God of Shem without, in fact, some acknowledgement of Shem himself? Is the issue of Shem the issue of God? Otherwise, we can think that we're bowing to God, we can have all of the suitable vocabulary making the acknowledgement, but there's a stubborn specificity that is very humiliating that is in the actuality of Shem himself. And Shem is not going to take the light in this as if you're saying, I always wanted to get you Gentiles under my thumb, but he himself is broken and recognizes the mystery. So we're feeling our way through something. I'm liking the way that John phrased the question. If Shem is not Shem, if there's any Jewish pride or a desire to make up for the injustices of the past at the hands of Gentiles, and now we have them under us because of God's requirement, the whole thing is defeated. It becomes a caricature, a grotesque caricature. Shem must be Shem in an ultimate character, which is God's, or else Japheth does not receive the benefit. So I'm responding to John by asking, is there really a bowing to God that is not, in fact, also a bowing to that specific and stubborn entity whose acknowledgement God requires as being the statement of your bowing to him? And if you're unwilling to bow, is it because there is yet a latent and still existent pride of arrogance that finds spiritual and religious terminology that seems to be God-exalting, but in fact is God-resisting, and that nothing will have revealed it more profoundly than this narrow, very narrow and stubborn insistence on the specificity of a particular people? I would say exactly what I've said if I had been born John Jones, I'm not speaking out of my Jewishness, I'm speaking out of a prophetic heart trying to sense what is the mystery here, grateful for the question being raised, because as we used to say in Brooklyn, a miss is as good as a mile. If we miss this by just so much as a hair and let it become distorted to be an issue of ethnicity and ethnic Jewish pride and getting those Gentiles to recognize that we're chosen, the whole thing is defeated. And so I say again, God's provision is exquisite and extravagant that Israel is going to be moved, the survivors, the remnant, the Israel that is Israel will be moved through such a last days sifting and dealing that will even eclipse the Nazi Holocaust, that the redeemed of the Lord might return to Zion, not just a place of geographic existence, but in fulfillment of what their calling was given from the first in the book of Genesis appropriately. They need a breaking, they need a humbling in order not to be exalted. Paul himself needed a thorn in his side that he would not be exalted out of measure because of the revelation given him. There's something in the very nature of man that even the call of God and the use of God will exalt unless there is a countermeasure of a kind that is breaking and humbling and keeps us continually in that frame of mind. When you read the scriptures like Psalm 102, after Israel's redemption, they are forever rejoicing in the Lord who had brought them back in last days mercy out of the nations to which they had been thrust and brought out of bondage and out of prisons and chains by his own hand. They celebrate that deliverance forever throughout all generations, they speak one to another, they tell their children of the so great salvation that came to us the last days by the mercy of God whom whom we had spurned and rejected. And so they're continually in reminder and therefore tempered not to be exalted by everything which would otherwise exalt the nation being made central to all other nations. When God chose the number of nations he did so in terms of the sons of Israel, maybe we ought to say the sons of Shem, for not all Israel is Israel. It's interesting that there were two kinds of hearing. It's almost as if a sword had gone through the congregation. There are those who heard it as a celebration of ethnic Jewishness to which they should not bow and others heard it in the way that was spiritually intended and came forward. So hearing the same word but not hearing the same way is something also that we need to consider. And who is that skillful to present a theme that is coming in the Lord's time to be sounded that can sound it with such expertise and surgical exactitude as to eliminate any prospect of misconstruction. How much is dependent upon the hearer to hear what the Spirit of God is saying to the church is also something that needs to be considered. When we make men like Elijah or the prophets, somehow they transcend national ethnic identity. Jesus himself does not come through as a Jew as we understand that. There's something transcendent. We would hope that the bearers of words like this that are so charged with the prospect of misconstruction would be above their own national and ethnic identity. How is that obtained? By the realities of God and the dealings of God and what comes to such ones in the church. That's why the Lord had to wait for the call to Antioch. Separate unto me Paul and Bonibus for the work were unto I have called them. They're safe now to be employed because they are separated men from their own Jewish origins. That's why they hung on Paul's neck when he called for the elders at Ephesus to tell them that they will see his face no more. He reminded them, you know what manner of man I was with you from the beginning. Weeping and going from house to house daily in public places proclaiming the whole counsel of God, never taking anything from you, working with my own hands, my own sustenance. They hung on his neck and wept when they heard they would see his face no more. This man was so transcendently above being the Pharisee and Hebrew of the Hebrews by which he himself identified his origin through the work of the cross that God does not amplify for our understanding but had evidently taken place or the call at Antioch would not have come. Separate unto me are men who are already separated. Separated from their Jewishness, separated from their national ethnic origin, separated even from their own religious ambition. So let's just trust that this is God's intention and that that has been performed but that men will identify you as Jewish and discredit the message for that reason is more the statement that they are not separated than that you are separated. Amen. Let's remember this principle. Whenever God's people want to reject a requiring word they will always find a point of objection not only in the word but more so in the man. The way to reject the word is to reject the man. If you can reject him on the basis that he's a Jew, the basis that he's black, the basis whatever, it's still constant. So we need to know that this has got to be factored into the equation as well. If you're willing to hear the word of God that requires of you an ultimate humbling and breaking but that could not be obtained by any other means than by but by this suspicious charged and loaded invitation, are you willing so to be broken? Are you willing so to be humbled? Or is there something tenacious in your own person that you're wanting to maintain which God calls pride and for that reason find a basis to reject both the word and the man. The fact that I was assaulted outside the building as being a proud Jew and Jewish flesh is itself I think suggestive of the depth of things that God was wanting to touch on the most profoundly spiritual men of our knowledge still have a propensity to speak that word as being the Jewish thing. Why wasn't I just condemned as arrogant in myself or arrogant as a man or proud as a man? Why is it my Jewish flesh and my Jewish pride? Is that a statement of what I was in fact expressing or is it more the revelation the expression of the depth of intransigence called the Jew as I said to be found in every Gentile except that the deepest sanctifying work of God be performed? And maybe both things are true at the same time. I've got to go back to the drawing board. I've got to submit to this depth of sanctifying work amongst my own brethren but the one who made the accusation himself also needs to see what his statement reflects. I believe that was expressed by the woman that Reggie described when she said is it inappropriate for a dog to eat from the crumbs of the table of God's children? That was the grace that she humbled herself to recognize salvations of the Jews. This is bread for the for God's children but can I have a crumb of it? That kind of humility will provide more than the crumb but the whole substance. So there an arrogance was broken and in effect by that statement she entered and received the benefit God intended in that place. The one time that Jesus overturned the money changers tables was in the court of the Gentiles where those tables were set up. He flew into a rage and turned them over because you have said he said you've turned my father's house into a house of merchandise that he intends as a house of prayer for all nations. Jesus was jealous for the purpose of Israel to the nations and when you saw this violation that had mutilated that purpose and made it merchandise we see the one act of Jesus that seems to be contrary to the whole tenor of his public ministry in a violent physical action against that defamation. So he has a jealousy for God's intention for Israel for the nations. Israel was chosen for the nations. Is it time now to establish the kingdom of Israel? No it's not yet time. There are other things first but you mustn't think that that kingdom is for Israel. It's for the nations through a redeemed Israel but it must have the character of the kingdom and the character of the king who is lowly and meek. The Lord could have saved us all this difficulty by just calling it my tent. Will you not bow and enter? Of course no sweat but when you call it the tent of Shem and raise the resonance of that which is particular and having to do with Jews that's where I balk. All the Lord says otherwise you would have not in fact entered my tent because my tent will not permit your arrogance your conceit and your pride your self-exaltation but you're found out now because I have labeled this the tent of Shem and that's therefore are you balking. I'm just surmising that that might be the wisdom of God but if we are seeing in not only saved men but men who are the exemplars of the profoundest expressions of the body of Christ today still having a resident anti-Jewish antagonism have they been saved yet to the uttermost. Yes it was it was a provision for Gentiles to enter the kingdom and the faith and the salvation of God but evidently we're seeing expressions of things that are possible even for saved men that require a deep and ultimate consecration at the end of the age which if it doesn't come how shall we depict and set forth before Israel its own destiny and calling if they have not seen it first expressed by us. I haven't even gotten into the heart of the message I'm saying to this Gentile audience Jews don't even know their own identity and their own call and therefore how shall they fulfill it. Paul said you see in me a man out of time and out of joint what you see in me as an apostle to the Gentiles is a picture of Israel's future apostolate to the nations but if we don't see that picture represented to us by the church how shall we come into our own identity for we are not in our own tent we are more in the frame of the Japheth nations that's the model that's been set before us so how then shall that model come but by the church itself that has come into its final and ultimate union with the Lord that waits for it in one place that he has designated in his wisdom that sifts and identifies that one last thing that has kept the believing saved church from its ultimate identification union with God namely a pride that will not acknowledge his whom he has chosen that still has objection to election and would never have found it out until this invitation comes they could even agree with it theoretically and conceptually and doctrinally and yet in their deepest heart have a realm of reservation against the God who chooses and the God who elects because it will not be found out until the actual call comes to that specific thing now in retrospect seeing that some were blessed and some were offended we can go back to the drawing board and repair and learn that's why we're doing this to learn prophetically what obedience means and what we can anticipate in the charged last days and the issues that will be raised not only in the world but within the church itself and so to be instructed and to avail ourselves of a wisdom from this experience i'm wanting to raise the question of whether by necessity by necessity and definition that the prophet is called to often to speak mysteries that he himself is speaking beyond his own comprehension of his own word let alone what his word will occasion in others and yet he's under obligation to speak it something was set in motion something was struck that is reverberating and resonating i don't know what's going on in canada since but something has come in point of time through a prophetic obedience that resulted in offense and i'm i'm speaking at a prophetical school to those who either have this calling or a call to be intercessors for it that this is the name of the game this is intrinsic to the calling not that we delight in the offense or that we would not seek to be prepared so as to avoid what offenses are avoidable but in the last analysis be assured offense will come an offense must come in bringing forth even the mysteries that we ourselves understand only in part and yet are required to speak in point of time i wouldn't take back a single word of anything i said in those days so convinced that it was utterly in god's time and had to come forth at that time astonished by by what it brought but nevertheless not retracting now because of it and how many times have i been called to retract maybe this is just if i can throw this in at the moment the first radical message i ever gave as a young believer eunuch for christ's sake where the lord exceeded the testimony that was being asked of me in the regional full gospel businessmen's counts conference in washington dc before 5 000 people and when i spoke that message in utter guilelessness because the lord gave it there were two lines waiting to meet me at the end of the meeting one to do me in because their children had stood to the invitation and now would become eunuchs and how would they become grandparents and others to thank me on this conference has been stale pop the fizz had gone out of it until you opened your mouth and spoke it was like we said yes we changed when something has happened isn't remarkable just like in canada two reactions to the same word and then when the smoke cleared a man came up to me he said i'm a prophet sent of god a jewish prophet to tell you that you have done incalculable damage to the body of christ and you need now to go immediately to the microphone and retract your message i had fasted five days for that one word and when he said that it was like a knife in my heart why because it might well be true and that's the prophetic tension that in whatever obedience it might be true and i'm just standing there gasping under with the knife and the knife was twisted i heard exactly the same word when i gave the message on the holocaust at the kansas city conference in 1974 whatever it was a man came up to the platform brought by ern baxter's young man whom i knew to say ah this is a jewish prophet who has a word for you from god oh yeah what because there's a deathly silence after i spoke and it sounded like the worst failure and he said god has sent me a prophet to tell you you have misdemeaned the lord you've done incalculable damage exactly the same words to the body of christ you need to go immediately to the microphone and retract your message second time again after five day fast i'm not saying that a fast guarantees anything i am saying that all that was in my ability to do in fasting and seeking the lord and praying i had done and had come forth with that message which was spoken in a terrible monotone and seemed a dismal failure and while i'm considering that this might yet be true and suffering the anguish of the possibility that it might be true before 2 000 people something broke in the and people began to cry out for repentantly uh reggie was there there was it was a historic time that took hours of foot washing with 200 jewish believers stood before the congregation asked forgiveness for their fathers in any disparaging of the faith that jews had expressed in their history in europe and people who are polish and german extraction getting up for what their father said i mean it was an event in god that for a moment seemed to be not only a colossal failure but a colossal betrayal of god himself and an injury against the body of christ so what shall we say prophetic obedience always run this runs this risk and that the one who's accusing you might well be right but but for that reason should we retract and withdraw or not speak what is what is before us by the lord if the real correction for the prophet is not going to come in the moment of speaking but all the moments that have preceded that speaking in the issue of the earnestness of the fellowship the body of christ with which he is placed and to which he submits that's where the issue of submission and character are formed not on the platform here's the two things i'm seeing because of this discussion agreeing with reggie about what needs to come to the prophetic man from the community in which he's placed and we need this critiquing examination to identify unnecessary causes of offense and to sound a clear note at the same time what in my heart i'm wanting to identify those elements that need to be recognized as have been the root of full submission and consecration to god as for example in such statements as jacob have i loved and esau i have hated that before they were even born and had any distinction god had already made a choice and it's not predicated on the character the performance of either one it's just an opportunity for the lord to say that i am who i am and i will be whom i will be i will choose who i will choose i will have mercy upon whom i will have mercy the question is are you in agreement with me as that god or do you have areas of reservation that are personal ethnic racial national human that keeps you from that total submission to me that is that has to be the character of my church in this final day so there's two things yes practically we need this critiquing for the future but at the same time remember that the lord is wanting to use the occasion to identify these deep-seated and intractable things that i think were flushed out in the same course of time and are more prevalent in the church than we know yes and for which reason has hampered us in being attentive shem to those called to be that tent they've not seen in us that thing to which they themselves are called for we are more jayforth than we are shem so long as we contain and hold these subjective and personal oppositions to god that are ultimate and will and are never revealed to us until we face the stubborn point of specificity jacob as jacob the god of jacob the crumbs from their table grafted into their tree as i suggested the other day will not receive the benefit of the root that flows the sap that flows to that root until that identification is not remade but humbly and gratefully acknowledged and received that we're still branches not bearing fruit we might just all be back into our wild tree for as much good as being grafted in has done us unless we're receiving the sap what hinders it the flow that comes to those who acknowledge and are grateful for the privilege of being grafted in to another tree and i'm not so prideful as to say i don't want that identification now where does it say that i can't show you where it says it i sense i intuit i'm suggesting and i don't know that i'm going far afield but that's the that's the very character of prophetic proclamation is to make suggestions of that kind okay just to show you how stubborn this is god has got the threatened nations in ezekiel i mean in zachariah who refuse yet to come up to jerusalem to uh celebrate the feast of tabernacles why why is there a threat of rain and of judgment for those that yet refuse to come up seeing the sovereign work of god and the redemption of that nation because there is that stubborn intractable resistance to god as is located with that nation with that jerusalem why is it that after a thousand years of the millennial rule of christ through that nation and a glorified church in which there's a righteousness in the earth there's satan coming unbound after a thousand years confined to chains and is able to precipitate quickly a rebellion in the nations against god where is it expressed in israel on the mountains of israel against the people of israel so deep and so intractable is this this thing that is at the heart of japheth that only the bowing and breaking will ever meet so when that subject was celebrated at the conference by one of the other speakers i came up to him afterwards and said what you've said is correct but you have missed both the mystery and the glory the one new man is not god's last final ultimate statement it itself is is preparation for the fulfillment of the greater mystery through that church to the restoration of israel of which you're still non-compassionate this because you're fixed on the church as being the end of the b-wall in itself and therefore you're guarding it and are threatened even by any suggestion that there's something even beyond that for which the church itself is preparation and i want to say this nations coming up to jerusalem for the feast of tabernacles is not some little innocuous celebration you can't come up to the tent that is itself coming up to the tent of shem you cannot come up and enter on those occasions and return to your place as you were before there's transfiguration something happens of a profound kind by which you take on something of the coloration and the spirit and the character of that to which you have come in that feast you no longer go back again as you were as a nation you're losing your japheth character even by your coming up and so ultimately the lord will have transfigured all nations whose very nature from the beginning was autonomy and rebellion in the building of the tower of babel and were dispersed into different parts of the world the end will be the praise of god going to the ends of the earth in hebraic semitic davidic praise that has been wrought in the nations by their coming to the place where god will mediate that character in the point in which it has been established jerusalem the tent of shem the nation the people the specific geography the specific nationhood so that's the mystery and that's why i said to these guys yes what you're celebrating is correct but you're falling short of the mystery which is to fall short of the glory and paul said i would not have you to be ignorant of this mystery brother unless you become wise in your own conceit which can be expressed as a celebration of the one new man as if it's the end all and be all glorious thing though it is in itself and presages and even is a foretaste of a universal one new man now exhibited by the church so how to break into that how to sift how to open up how to for the lord to reveal where we are in our hearts and comes by all this firmament for which there's no shortcut but unless the church is itself a tent of shem for jews to come and to enter and by by which to obtain their own salvation and call how shall they fulfill it but if we ourselves don't it's in our bowering and ending as the church that we constitute the reality to which the jew can be invited and that's not unrelated to the going to new york the contact with the jewish community the kinds of things that the lord wants to communicate through that relationship may may we be to jews what they themselves are called to be not because i'm going as a jew but going as an expression of the church and even of its of its semitic character that they might be moved to jealousy what is the jealousy to which they ought to be moved has got everything to do with what we are discussing i'm going to take the liberty to call this to a halt i think we've gone as far as is reasonable seeing how charged all of this is pleases the lord will come back to it again if not tonight tomorrow or when he will so i want to end with a prayer and let you continue to ruminate and contemplate dwell on these things talk it out among yourselves you've got a free afternoon not interrupted by meals you can find three or four five other saints and find a place of quiet outsider in the building and talk it over among yourselves look into the description wheresoever you'll be led none of us have been this way heretofore we're on new ground and it's tremulous full of portent full of significance full of craps that's always got to be where it the greatest prospect of glory the greatest prospect of failing so uh i want to just end with a almost arbitrarily i could pick in many places in the scriptures in isaiah 60 the descendants of those who oppressed you shall come bending low to you and all who despised you shall bow down at your feet they shall call you the city of the lord the zion of the holy one of israel and whereas you have been forsaken and hated with no one passing through i will make you majestic forever there's no establishing of the glory of god independent of the people for whom that glory has been revealed and the acknowledgement of that by those who are acknowledging god and acknowledging the specificity of that people and what the lord has made of them your son shall no more go down your moon withdraw or your moon withdraw itself for the lord will be your everlasting light your days of mourning shall be ended your people shall all be righteous they shall possess the land forever they are the shoot that i planted the work of my hands so that i might be glorified i think that's an answer again to john's question why can't we just go directly to god why do we need this troublesome issue over shem the specificity of the bowing because the issue of god being glorified forever being glorified forever through them and the apparent work and the everlasting work that is visible through them that the gentiles who had oppressed them acknowledging that work in them at the same time constitute an acknowledgement of the lord and his glory forever this is inseparable he's not to be acknowledged independent of this remarkable and final everlasting work with a specific and identifiable people in the geographic place of his own choosing the stubborn specificity of god he'll not be receive our acknowledgement and tribute and glory independently of that his deepest glory is that acknowledgement and it's an acknowledgement to the people whom he has restored and given a new name and called the diadem in his hand of people who will all be righteous this is the mystery god forbid that we should fall short of it because of of our being enamored by an equally great work of god and making up to one new man that's not the end though that is the provision for this consummation and so there's a tension as the brother said anyone who remains at the fixed point of truth that rut becomes a grave if they're unwilling to be brought from that truth into the truth that is now being communicated and so there's something in man and in the church that is conservative wants to retain that which it enjoys and which is true and seems to be a fact against the consideration of the oppressive truth or a thing to which god will now lead us so we need to pray for the church where we're the bearers of that mystery not only for its contemplation for its fulfillment so lord we bless your name thank you for the significance of the church for unless the church my god come of age be able to critique it to examine to understand itself to be stretched how shall it be my god what it ought what will move juice to jealousy but a but an entity of this ultimate kind so grant us grace lord thank you for today and what has been churned up what is being examined we recognize lord our frailty our inadequacy but you're the god of all truth we look to you my god to continue with us and to bring us through something that will affect the church in this last days and all my god that will issue from it we know that this is more than a discussion group and however wearying the details of it may be what issues from it is worth it all so grant us the forbearance the patience the stamina even to wrestle with these things and bring it through my god to your own everlasting satisfaction and delight bless these children bless us together this afternoon and our leisure bless us my god as we come together tonight and the times that remain to us order them in your perfect authority and sovereignty we give you praise the glory and honor in jesus name amen