In this sermon, the speaker reflects on a powerful spiritual experience where they witnessed the glory of God. However, they admit that they were unable to fully retain and bring that glory to the world where it is most needed. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding our destiny and the ultimate call we have in Christ. They share a personal experience of receiving a message from the Lord and the urgency to share it, highlighting the contrast between the visible and temporary things of the world and the invisible and eternal reality of God's kingdom. The speaker also emphasizes the spiritual warfare that exists and the belief that the church has the power to bring God's reality into the world through devotion and communion with Him.

We are looking with great respect at this invitation. You know how large our intention and aspiration is, not just to bless the local saints, however we desire that, but to go in beyond and through them to the larger community, to the region, to the state, to the nation, to the nations. Lord, if there's such a thing as an apostolic sending yet, if there's such a thing as a prophetic word yet, may the words of these days from this first speaking to the last be that. We ask it, my God, momentous, significant, historic penetration. We're asking largely because we know that the time is short and the issues are great. Bless us, my God, from the very first. Be the alpha and the omega of these days. You know how to begin and you know how to conclude. So I give you a fresh blood, this dust that I am, that you've shaped for yourself, even from my 94-year-old mother's Jewish womb. For your purposes in these last days, come now and be the incarnate God in me to speak and do of your good pleasure. We thank and give you the praise for our privileged time together in Jesus' name. Amen. You want to turn to Mark, chapter 9? We're all familiar with what this chapter contains. It begins on a mountaintop and it ends in a valley. It begins with spiritual elevation and it ends with morbid confrontation with the powers of darkness. It's as if in this one chapter is encompassed the ultimate degrees of the range of prospect and possibility in the believing life. And I'll tell you how I'm beginning to read the scriptures these days and especially these episodes in the life of Jesus, which are altogether historical. These are perfect transcriptions of everything that was said and done at that time. It was a moment in history, but it's a moment beyond that moment. That in some remarkable ability of God, as he affected the course of the walk of Jesus and the things that he spoke and did, many of those things coming upon him with the same degree of surprise and astonishment as things come upon us. Yet they were divinely determined by his father in heaven that they should convey something for us in the last days of an enormous import and kind. So it's an event in itself. It's historically accurate, which would be interesting to read for that reason alone. But at the same time, it constitutes a parable for the last days, for our instruction. So, no accident that it begins with a mountain and ends with a valley. Isn't it just like God? And what a mount that is, the mount of transfiguration, where six days later we read, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up to a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. What a scene. You know what's astonishing about the scripture? It is terse, T-E-R-S-E. That means very compact, very spare. There's no schmaltz here. God doesn't have to work it up. There's no hype. He just gives the simple, straight account, like, and they crucified him. But what is implied and concealed in these simple statements would take an eternity to unfold. Like six days later. Why wasn't it five days later? Or seven days later? Because six is the number of man. And something had to happen to those men who were at the heart of the twelve of Jesus. These were the three who were the nucleus. And he brought them up to a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them. Someone has wisely said that the unusual thing is not that Jesus should become transfigured, but that he should be seen transfigured. That the remarkable thing is that God the Father concealed his glory. And only on this occasion was that veil lifted that they might see the intrinsic beauty and radiance of Jesus that was always and ever with him. And it's something like that for us. The Lord needs to bring us up to a high mountain apart to glimpse what is always there, but that we have not sufficiently and adequately seen. And if the Lord gives me the grace to bring us all the way through this work tonight, you're going to learn that that seeing is not some minor matter of our own satisfaction or delight, but the critical point of Israel's own deliverance in the last days. It begins on the mount, but it ends in the valley. And the thing that we glimpse on the mount is not something that we should continually enjoy as if we could remain there, but somehow bring down into the place of confrontation where it makes all the difference. And we're going to see how these disciples failed to bring the buoyant image of Jesus and the vision of God, the hearing of the Father speaking out of a cloud. This is my beloved son, hear ye him. What an unparalleled experience, but they had hardly gotten down below when the whole of it almost dissipated away. All the more when what confronted them was the most ugly, brutal picture of demonic activity in taking a young man and throwing him down in convulsion. They didn't have enough retention to bring the glory of that vision to the place where it was most needed, where it is most absent. And that's our situation also. And he was talking with Elijah and Moses. My, what a vision. How did they know that these two men were Moses and Elijah? Because they know, because there's a revelation. When we shall see the great saints of God in their glorified form, we'll know. You'll know me in heaven. And I think I'm going to look younger. And the wrinkles will be out and the gray. What you're going to see is not a man at a certain day and moment in time of his death, but the essence of the man where his body is the statement of what he is at the grace of God in the summation of all of that dealings through a life of faith. We'll recognize each other instantly. That is quintessential art. And that's how they recognize Moses and Elijah conferring with Jesus. But what does Peter say? Always with his foot in his mouth. Always has to say something. Always has to do something. He's such a picture of the church with its itch that needs to say him do. That has not the capacity to receive something without having to set in motion something religious and ministerial. The rabbi, see there's his mistake already. Rabbi, he's seen Jesus glorified and transfigured speaking with Moses and Elijah and the title is rabbi? You would think that that revelation would have occasioned a much deeper appreciation of who this Jesus is with whom Peter now has been walking virtually for three years. But he still lacks something. It's good for us to be here. Let us make three booths, three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah. And he did not know what he was saying for he was terrified. Let us make. You know, if we had all kinds of time stamps, and I wish we had it, to really go over a text word for word, syllable for syllable. We rush through, we're much too hurried. We want to follow the storyline. But every word here is enormously significant. You know what I would underline in this last statement? It is good for us to be here. Let us make. I would underline the word us. You know what Peter's mistake is? He's us oriented. It's good for us to be here. Let us make. So long as us is at the center of your spiritual frame of understanding, you'll end up by making, doing, and erring. He still is centered in himself and his gratification. And that's unfortunately the statement of too many of us. We've got to graduate from us to him. It may be good for us to be here, but that's not the reason we're there. It serves some purpose in God beyond what value we can receive from it. And this whole magnificent faith is not established at great cost for our satisfaction or our enjoyment, but for the eternal purposes of God. If we gain some benefit and some delight, all well and good, but it's not the purpose for which God has given us so precious a call. How we will ever break this powerful egocentrism that held us in its grip in the world. My car, my savings, my job, my I. And then we come into the kingdom? Well, we've changed the object of our attention from carnal things and possessions, but now it's my church, my denomination, my ministry. There's still a power of self-centeredness that continues to be a canker, if not a cancer for the church. What's it going to take? But a seeing of Jesus afresh and anew. Well, that's the moment that the father picked to boom out his voice from heaven. This is my beloved son. Shut up, Peter. Hear ye him. Not your own clatter, not your own necessity to get a word in. Hear ye him. And they went down. They must have been like dead. And when they looked around, they saw no man with them anymore, but only Jesus. I think the King James says, only Jesus himself alone. I don't think I can take the credit for this, but somewhere along the line, I've picked up the thought that they saw not only no man only, but they did not even see their own seeing. They came to a place in the power of that vision and the voice of the father where they were beside themselves. They saw no man. They didn't even see themselves. They were not even conscious of their own seeing. They were not even conscious of their own spirituality. They saw no man but Jesus himself alone. That's blessing saints. Not even to be conscious of our own seeing, which is the last cruel deception, is spiritual self-consciousness. My face. I'll just loosen it. Huh? My microphone, huh? Hang on. I wanted to start, but I knew I wouldn't stay that way. What's in passing? I'm not even getting yet to the principal theme of this word, but I couldn't speak these things. We couldn't get into this text and not acknowledge them in passing. Well, then they came down from the mount. They asked about Elijah. We'll pass that up, that Elijah must first come and be mistreated. And when they came in verse 14 down to the valley, they came to the disciples. They saw a great crowd around them and some scribes arguing with them. When the whole crowd saw him, Jesus, they were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran forward to greet him. He asked them, what are you arguing about with them? Someone from the crowd answered him, teacher, I brought you my son. He has a spirit that makes him unable to speak. And whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down. And he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. And I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so. He answered them, you wonder now who the them is. Is he speaking to the one who is describing what is taking place? Or is he speaking to his disciples? Maybe both. But this is the most severe reprimand that I believe is recorded anywhere in Jesus. You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I suffer you? How much longer must I put up with you? How do we fathom this irritation, this deep vexation that Jesus expresses because his disciples were unable to cast out a demon spirit that had made this child mute? Bring him to me. And they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, the spirit that was in the boy saw the Jesus to whom he had been brought. Immediately it convulsed the boy and he fell on the ground and rolled about foaming at the mouth. If there's anything calculated to rob us of our faith, it's a sight like that. Now we can pray for someone who has a sniffle or some other need where the answer of our faith and prayer doesn't need necessarily now to be seen. But when someone is convulsing and foaming at the mouth and rolling up in a ball at your feet, it's put up or shut up. It's a faith that has got to be a faith and cannot be deferred for a later time. And maybe that's why these disciples couldn't cut it. This was an ugly, painful demonstration of a supreme reality, the powers of darkness. And it's calculated to intimidate, to bring fear, and to make us feel as if our faith is just ebbing out of us. But every man according to his own faith. We begin with a measure of faith, but we're not all in the same place of faith. As your faith is, so be it unto you. And the issue for us is, are we going from faith to faith? Or are we stalemated, treading water, fixed at a certain plateau, sufficient for our need, sufficient for our church relationship, sufficient for the general configuration of our life. But is it sufficient for a young man who is convulsed and foaming at the mouth and is desperately the victim of the powers of darkness? Like, for example, the black people today, the Native American, the Indian, the despised minorities of the world who have been chewed up, spit out, victimized, demonized, and left for dead. Who is there that can come in a faith that is not intimidated by the evident power of this darkness and confront it? Bring him to me, Jesus said. The disciples failed. They had succeeded elsewhere. They had succeeded previously. Remember they came back with the Galilee report? The demons are subject to us. Maybe it was a honeymoon experience, a first flush of excitement. Maybe it was not a demonic phenomenon in the depth of this kind of depravity and seizure as is being expressed here. This is ultimate sense. And I'm going to give you my prophetic rendering of what is represented here is more than just a boy convulsing at the mouth who happens to be the object of demonic oppression, but representative of something much deeper, much more significant that affects us in the last days. Jesus asked the Father, how long has this been happening to him? And he said, from childhood. It has often cast him into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if you're able to do anything, talk about not recognizing who it is whom he's addressing. If you're able to do anything, have pity on us and help us. Well, dear saints, this is what triggered my understanding of this text. This has been happening from childhood, from the commencement virtually of this life, to this present day, not just to harass, not just to annoy, but to destroy him. Who is this young man and what does he represent? If this event in the life of Jesus is more than an historic moment, but a parable of symbolic meaning for us to be edified in the last days. You know who I would suggest this young man represents? Israel itself, the nation itself. Since its inception virtually, it has been pursued, harassed by powers of darkness, not content merely to provoke or to harass, but to destroy. And we are coming to the end of the age where this vehement and bitter hatred of that boy, of that nation, of that people, is going to be brought to an ultimate boil. You're going to see it in your generation. It may take stock tomorrow. It's already happening. Anti-Semitism, anti-Jewish hatred already billowing up in places that the Jewish authorities would never have thought to expect it. University campuses, not just the rednecks, not just the uneducated, not just the poor, not just those who have a social grievance, but at every level, this deepening hatred of the Jew. Why? Well, if you'll stay through every message in these days, you're going to learn why. Because the Jewish people are chosen and appointed to be at the heart of God's theocratic kingdom. It has everything to do with the rule that must go forth out of their Zion, their Jerusalem, their holy hill. And the strategy of the enemy, the false rulers of this world, remember what it says in Psalm 2? Why do the nations rage and the heathen take thought against the Lord? The rulers, the kings and the rulers take thought against the Lord and against his anointed. Who are these kings we know, the visible magistrates, who are these rulers? The rulers, the kings and the rulers take thought against God. The kings are the visible magistrates who are presidents and rulers of nations. But who are these rulers? They are the invisible spirit entities, the fallen angels that comprise the principalities and powers of the air, that have been the actual jerkers and manipulators of nations throughout history and right till this day. Do you know that? Do you really know that? What lies behind the things that are visible? What is really operating in the backwash of the movement of nations and peoples? Genocide, hatred, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Croatia, Rwanda, genocidal murderous things where people were hacked to death in their churches. You can't understand this phenomenon without taking into consideration the powers of the air. They're very real and they're moving toward a last day and they know that their time is short and they're going to be acting with unprecedented fury. And the greatest fury will be upon the church and the Jewish people themselves. The people of God whose faith is so nil, so nothing that the father has to say, if you can do anything, if you're able to do anything, have pity on us and help us and save us. The fact of the matter is that's exactly what God is going to do. He's going to have pity on us, pity on world Jewry, pity on Israel that's going to be knocked from pillar to post, convulsed and torn like a dog with a rag doll. He'll have pity and it's his pity and his mercy that will save us. This is so symbolic, this is so rich and multi-meaning and so I'm bringing you an interpretation from the breadth of understanding that this pleased the Lord to invest in me. It has often cast him into the fire and the water in order to destroy him. Fire is always a symbol of judgment, water is a symbol of persecution. It's not out to harass, it's out to destroy. And it's so powerful that the disciples were rendered non-involved, they could not cast this out. And so Jesus said, all things can be done for him who believes and immediately the father of the child cried out, I believe, help my unbelief. When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit saying to it, you spirit that keeps this son, this child from speaking and hearing. How long has that been our Jewish condition? That we have been kept from speaking and hearing to the detriment and to the loss of all mankind. Our silence, our inability to hear from God and speak for God has had a terrible consequence for the nations and for mankind. You know why? We're called to be a nation of priests and a light unto the world. We have a destiny, something that it's pleased God to choose, not because we're the greatest, but because we're the least. But not to function in the calling of God is to leave mankind without priests. And if there are no priests, how do we know the difference between the profane and the sacred? Because it's the priests who are commissioned to teach the nations, the Gentiles, the difference between the holy and the secular, between the profane and the holy. Our not speaking and our not hearing has been at an enormous cost for all mankind. And that's why Paul says in Romans, what shall their return be but life from the dead? What shall it mean for this son who from the conception of his life, from his infancy, was a victim of demonic powers and stifled in his call? What will it be when he shall be delivered and raised up and sent out? Something like Lazarus coming out of the tomb. Loose him and let him go. This is not just the deliverance of a single life. This is the deliverance of a people, a nation in the last days by a people who can do what the disciples fail to do, who are able to deliver the son by having the same quality of faith and authority as Jesus himself. Time out. That's awesome. And because we don't know it and don't know what our own destiny is with regard to them and how supreme and ultimate our call is, we are therefore living beneath it. I hope I gave a message in Nashville, Tennessee. What a blockbuster. The Lord gave it to me, 3.30 that morning. I had three pages. You know, I was going to shut the light and then one more thought came to me. In fact, I had shut the light. I needed my sleep desperately. And the thought came, well, I'll remember that when I get up. No, you better turn the light on and write this down while you're... And I turned the light on and that light remained on for an hour or more as the Lord gave me three pages that you might be hearing in these very days of the significance of the issue of the Jew for the church, for the church's own sake, what is represented for us in the mandate to which we are called with regard to them. Not because we have chosen them, but because God has. And he has appointed us as a church to minister to them in the last days that they might receive the pity and the mercy and the deliverance of God. In the same way that Jesus expressed it here, the body of Christ must express it then and not be intimidated by the powers of darkness where the faith you have goes out of you and you are unable to set the captive free. If you can set this captive free, saints, there's no captive after that that will in any way hinder you. That's why it's to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Well, all things are possible to them that believe, but this is a believing beyond credo. This is a believing beyond doctrinal affirmation. Our faith is more than the sum of our correct doctrine. This is a believing of an ultimate kind in the reality of God and the power of God despite every appearance to the contrary. It's one thing to believe when we're safe, sound, healthy, well-fed, comfortable in the congregation of the saints. But to believe when everything is opposed to faith, when the enemy seems to be riding high and having all the cards and calling all the shots and you have never felt more feeble, more weak and more inept, to believe then is real believing. And except that that faith is obtained on the mount, you're not going to have it in the valley. Because when the disciples said later, how come we couldn't cast him out? He said, because this kind, this ultimate kind is not your everyday demon. This is the ultimate expression of the powers of darkness in their severest and mightiest form calculated to destroy from the face of the earth this son and this people whom he represents. This kind is not going to come out with, I believe in the name of Jesus, like rubbing a genie lamp, I hope, I hope it works. Charismatic faith will not suffice at that time. This kind cometh not out but by prayer and fasting. I have never heard anyone but myself seek to understand what that means. And I hope to communicate that tonight in a way that will change your life and make you to be a disciple who will not fail and not disappoint in that ultimate last day when we shall be ultimately confronted. So Jesus commanded the spirit that keeps this boy, this son, this nation from speaking and hearing. Israel's long spiritual blindness, a judgment that gave the enemy a certain right and authority to perform this. But it's not going to be Israel's final condition if their return shall be life from the dead. I command you come out of him and never enter him again. I've taken my yellow marking pen and I mark never again. The Jewish community is very fond of using that expression when it talks about the Holocaust, the concentration camps, the death camps, never again. Well, you hotshots, you better tighten your safety belt, there will be an again. Because it's not in your power to say never again, only in his power. But I want to draw your attention that this deliverance is an ultimate deliverance of an ultimate kind and an ultimate authority and an ultimate power. So ultimate a deliverance it shall never be required again. Our deliverances, well, six months later, two months later, a year later, we're praying the same thing, asking for the same thing, working through the same problems again and again and again. This deliverance of Jesus, he saves to the uttermost all who come unto God through him. This is total, it's permanent and it's enduring. This son representing this nation shall never again after this last day's deliverance affected by you come again under the bondage and constraints and demonic power of darkness. This is a final deliverance. And finality always requires something ultimate. Am I getting too fancy? This is basic training for Sunday. Hallelujah. Never again enter him. You're finished. This is the once and for all. You'll never again be able to wreak your filthy design of devastation and death on this son. And there's no question about that. When Jesus said, come out of him and never enter him again, that was it. That was the supreme authority of very God. And the power, therefore, after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out and the boy was like a corpse so that most of them said, he's dead. This is beginning to take on the appearance of not so much the authority in God to affect a deliverance, but to raise someone from the dead. Because Israel is moving not just into a final paroxysm of demonic possession of foaming at the mouth, so to speak, but they're moving toward a course in which that nation is going to be for all effects and purposes as good as dead. You see, Jesus said, come out of him, but these powers of darkness are so reluctant, they're so full of spite and mischief and malevolence, that though they're under the command to come out, they're going to come out and take everything that they can take with them on the way out. And the Lord allowed that. He could have said, come out instantly and don't touch him one centimeter more. No, he allowed, he knew the mind of the filthy powers of darkness that they're malicious and when they get that rag doll in their teeth like a dog, a mad dog, they'll just wave that thing until the stuffings come out. It left that boy as good as dead. And in doing so, served the ultimate purposes of God. Because now what was required is not just a deliverance, but of being raised up unto resurrection. Talk about the sovereignty of God, the wisdom of God, the purposes of God, that can even employ the devilish malevolence of hell to serve his ultimate purposes. When you hear this tape, mark how many times I've used the word ultimate. You know what's wrong with us as Christians? We're not living in an ultimate way. We don't understand God ultimately. We're not serving with ultimacy. We're kind of, you know, get by, makeshift, okay, but we've missed the genius of the faith that is ultimate, transcendent, transfiguring, glorious. And you know what? It's the crisis of this boy that's going to compel us to come on that ground. It's going to compel us to understand what Jesus meant by this kind cometh not up, but by fasting and prayer. Because it's to this kind that we, as the Church of Jesus Christ, are called to deliver and to raise victims from the dead, this kind. So what is this kind of prayer and fasting? Well, we know what fasting is. It's self-denial. Like, we're not boasting in this. My brother and I have not tasted a crumb of anything today. We wanted to begin these days of meeting with a fast. No big deal. You're not going to die from it, although you may feel that you're going to die. Headache and, oh, I'm constitutionally not able, and I have a serious physical problem. There's very little fasting, but I tell you, saints, what little I know about it. The thing that makes it so powerful is that it contradicts and confounds the wisdom by which the world lives its life, namely self-gratification. Have an extra hamburger. We pass the White Tower, White Castle hamburgers, a whole sack of 10 for how much? $3.30? Man, let's eat it up. I've been around 70 years, saints, and I've never seen anything like what is prevailing today in consumerism, in inducements to have, to eat, to enjoy, to wallow, to indulge. It's a self-gratifying age, and it has been sanctified and sanctioned and endorsed even by the church. Obesity is a principal problem in the United States of America. By teenagers, let alone adults, one out of every three is grossly overweight. One goes, that's got nothing to do with my spirituality. I said, oh, yeah, it has everything to do. I'm concerned myself how easy it is for my gut to hang out, and I'm a preacher. How can I allow my physical profile to contradict what I'm about in God? We should be statements of self-discipline, not statements of self-gratification. This kind comes not out if you're going to give yourself to indulgence and to enjoy not the things that are sinful or even necessarily carnal. They might be legitimate, but you deny yourself the legitimate thing because you know that something is going up into the air, the principalities and powers of the air who despise this act of self-sacrifice because it is so contrary to their own ethos, E-T-H-O-S, to their own value system, which is have, rape, loot, enjoy, violence, death, lust. Self-denial is the antithesis of the wisdom of the powers of this present world. And prayer, this kind comes not out but by fasting a prayer. Well, Lord, I pray, but I don't have the authority to confront these. Well, that's because your prayer, however respectful and nice and well-meaning, is fixed at the level of petition only. What do you mean by that, Art? I don't know of any other kind of prayer. Isn't that when we ask the Lord that we need this, we need that, and, Lord, how about this and that? I'm not knocking that. There's a place for that, but it's not the ultimate place of prayer. You say if petition is not the ultimate place of prayer, what is? If it's not prayer of petition, then what kind of prayer? It's the prayer of communion that is beyond petition where you stop asking and just simply be in the presence of him into whose communion you have come on the mount. What was for them the mount of transfiguration and a going up, because have you ever known of a mountain that has an elevator or a conveyor belt? A going up is always against the flesh. It's always in opposition to that which is easy and convenient. But there's something there that is only obtained by the willingness to go up. But the mountain for us is not the mountain of a physical kind. It's the mountain of the prayer chamber, the quiet place, the early morning time in God's presence. It's a going down on your knees in your BVDs with cold drafts coming up the floor and everything in your body crying out, you fool, what are you doing there? You ought to be back in bed with your cozy wife and enjoying those legitimate things that are rightly yours. To deny yourself to go down, to seek the Lord in the early morning time, don't you need your sleep? How many of us seek him? And you know what, saints? When you go beyond your petition, I'm seeking the Lord every day like this. Would to God I had known about this 35 years ago when I became a believer. It's only the last 10, 12 years that the Lord has opened my understanding and made this not just a delight but the commencement of my day in God. Something happens when you're finished with your petitions and you still yet linger and remain in the presence of the Most High. Something is communicated if you are in the holiest place of all and not in a closet in Savannah, Georgia or downstairs or behind a staircase or in the living room. That's where you are physically. But where are you actually and in fact? Because that's what spiritual means. Spiritual is not the icing on the cake. It's the cake. It's not a subterfuge. It's not an appearance. It's not a little gilding thing. It's the reality. The reality is that you're not in fact in a room. That's only the physical nexus. The real truth and the reality is you're in the holiest place of all before the Shekinah glory of God who waits above the mercy seat and between the wings of the cherubim. And there he said, I will meet with you. But how many of us are meeting with him? Just let me read you from one of my devotional books. I read Oswald Chambers, My Utmost Worst Highest. How many people know that one? How many people are reading that one every day? You don't want to miss a day. This man was a gift to the church. His insights, I've never seen such a depth of understanding as Oswald Chambers. And there's a selection every day. And it's remarkable how often that selection of the day corresponds to the psalm that I'm reading for the day. So I read the psalms like what is today's the 2nd of December? Well, for me, it's the 132nd psalm. Because I'm like 4 months into the psalms. Tomorrow will be the 133rd psalm on the 3rd day of December. And in 5 months, I've gone through all the psalms. But if I say gone through, that is a caricature. It's not like religious obligation to read so many chapters. You've gone through. It's investing yourself. It's dwelling upon every word and turn of phrase. What does the psalmist mean when he describes God as his refuge and his high tower? And he runs into the name of the Lord. Is that hocus-pocus? Is that just a play on words? Is that a kind of a biblical rhetoric? Or is it meaning something of an actual kind that I myself have not yet discovered and need to? The psalms is God's end-time provision for the saints. Because the psalmists had an exquisite knowledge of God, they had a relationship with God in intimacy, they had been brought through the grid, they had suffered, they were unjustly persecuted. How long, Lord, is the frequent cry of the psalmist? How long am I going to suffer this? How come that the wicked are prospering and your servant who seeks to follow you unfaithfully, I'm suffering this, that, and the other. How come? Why? The deep, vexing cries that go out of the heart of the psalmist. And when you come to the end of the psalm, it's not like the happy answer has come. The Lord has not answered, but the psalmist, in reviewing his cry and remembering the past mercies of God, ends on the note, I'm confident that he who has been faithful in the past will be faithful soon. Oh, dear saints, drink it up. Immerse yourself in the psalms, in the chapter of the Book of Proverbs, which would be the second chapter for today. Well, let me read you from another one of my devotional sources that showed God transfigured, showed God in his immensity, showed God in his eternality. Be patient with me. The eternal God is your refuge. And you're not going to know about eternity and the sense of eternity and the things that are eternal until you're in that place of refuge in the sanctuary of God, waiting upon him and his presence. And the sense of what eternal means begins to seep into your soul. You don't know what you're missing to have the sense of eternity communicated to your inmost being. It's a deliverance itself. It saves you from the things that are temporal, present, everyday, mundane, wearying in the flesh and in the soul, the things that are everyday with us, that grind us down. What does it say? In the last days, the powers of darkness will seek to wear out the saints. It's going to be a fatigue just to go through a day in the world. We need to find the refuge of God, the eternal God, because to find him there is to find eternity and the sense of eternity and the things that lie beyond this life. Not that you can contemplate what they will mean to enjoy when you die, but to bring that eternal sense of reality in to your present understanding. It will change everything. Jesus was not intimidated by the powers of darkness. He was not threatened. He came from God. He was with God. He is God. He sees through and above. The demon spirit can shake that boy. He can convulse at the mouth. Jesus knows the passing transient phenomenon. The thing that is enduring is when he is raised up from the dead. He brought a greater reality than was there in that demonic activity. Now, listen to me, saints. I don't know how to express this. It's not an exaggeration to say that our whole Christian life is a conflict between competing realities. Where is the action? Where does the rubber hit the road? Where does it really count? In the thing that is visible and seen with its power, prestige, demonic force, violence, lust, payoff, treasure, the kinds of things that the world pants for. Is that the reality? Or is that a passing thing that will come to naught? And the real reality is the thing that is invisible and unseen, that you can glimpse in one place only, upon the mount, apart from all men and not seeing anyone but Jesus himself alone. To bring that reality down to the valley is the whole object of our spiritual life. It's a put-up or shut-up contest between where is the action and where is the reality that is really reality? Is it the things that are seen, by which the world is motivated and jerked and manipulated and men run here and there and everywhere for the things that are visible and temporal? Or is it in the things that are invisible and eternal, where God himself is, who will one day soon reign and prevail over his own creation when that son is raised up out of the fire and out of the water and out of convulsions and foaming mouth and raised up and delivered. For Jesus extended his hand and he lifted him up. If we are not that Jesus in the last days, that boy, that son is going to die in the fire and the water. Faith is more than giving assent to correct doctrine. Faith is the knowledge of God, not as we thought him to be, but as he in fact is transfigured, radiant, glorious. His garments are whiter than any fuller could make them. We have never seen him that way, but that's the way he always is. And because we have not seen him that way on the mount, we have a view of Jesus and of God that has reduced God, that has made him more minimal, more commonplace. We have profaned him without even being aware of it. He's become our busboy, he's become our guy who's going to do a good deed for us, a helper, you know, I need a wife, I need, need, need. We've missed God and therefore when we're confronted with the opposite of God, we have not an equal and greater reality by which to confront that darkness in the light that was ours only on the mountaintop or in the place of morning devotion by your couch, by your bed or wherever you have found a place to seek the Lord. Till in his immensity, his reality, you forget how small you are, how weak, how inept you are, you forget your limitations because you're taken up with the God who is without limit and you're communicating that God in the place where the rubber needs to hit the road. Until the relief of safety merges into joy of appreciation and you absorb the divine and absorbing gain strength to conquer. I'll go over this. When you are in the holiest place of all, it may be on 13th Street and Jackson Avenue in Savannah if there's such an address, but you at 5 a.m. are in the holiest place of all. It's beyond petition, it is now communion with the God who is God as he in fact is and not as we thought him to be. Something is transmitted. No, I'm so foolish. I say, Lord, if I'm before your Shekinah presence, the effulgent glory of God, can you radiate a little of that into me? Because when I come and stand before your people to speak, I want not only to bring a word of however great and important that is, I want to bring some communication of yourself. I want to bring something of the luster of your glory. Listen, saints, we see too few shining, radiant faces in the kingdom of God. We see respectable, well-meaning and industrious Christians, but where is the radiance that is obtained in one place only, in the presence of the Most High on top of that mount when we see him as he in fact is and save from debasing him and making him smaller and less than he is in the common practice and the way in which we use the name of Jesus. We need to be on that mount daily or our faith will correspondingly suffer and become diminished. And when it comes to a sniffle, yeah, we can pray. But when it comes to an ultimate deliverance, we cannot perform it. We have not the authority. We have not absorbed not only the radiance of God's glory, but the authority of the life that shines out of that presence. And absorbing that we gain strength to conquer, to triumph, to overcome even our own limitation. Let me read you my notes here. The whole of the redemptive saga is to accomplish the defeat of his enemies through this absorption of God by the church whose faith has appropriated that glory. And only on that basis can we replace these demonic false ruling entities when we shall receive glorified bodies to rule and reign with him from heavenly places in the places that they themselves have vacated when they were brought down by the raising up of a body like this. Forget what I just said. Get it on the tape. Because in this life we recognize these conflicting realities. This is the predicate. This is the foundation of the understanding of our faith. There is a moral contest going on between darkness and light, between two princes, two kings, two rulers, two seeking to prevail over creation. That is the underlay of the entire saga of redemption from its commencement to its conclusion. And only a true believer knows that. He knows that the issue of demons is not just the issue of a personal deliverance. The issue of demonism, of the powers of darkness is the great stratum that overlies the earth. It's the place in the heavenlies by which nations and men and races are affected. You can't understand rock and roll and punk rock and rap and this whole filthy, vile culture and the way it is having its degenerating effect on those who subscribe to it if you don't understand the influence that comes down from above. There's a war on, a powerful conflict between two kinds of moral order and God has put his eggs in one basket and believes that the church is going to perform in the last days what he performed in that day by the same radiance, the same power, the same reality because it meets him up on the mountain in the place of devotion beyond petition, in communion and in waiting and can bring that reality down into the valley where it counts. For you have absorbed reality, God as he in fact is and with that things as he himself sees them. Which eclipses and overturns what is false and purports to be true. The whole world lies in the wicked one. Who's the father of lies? Do you know that? It's a flinky, flunky escapade. It's a charade, it's a grotesque caricature and people call it life and they die in that and don't know that there's an eternity waiting in which the truth that they have evaded in this life will hit them in that day in which there's no change, no remedy, no alteration but they will be fixed in the lie in which they died. Where is the church that's going to blow the whistle and save the victims from the unreality that the world is because they can communicate the greater reality and the enduring reality and the eternal reality because they have absorbed it in the presence of the God who is God on the mount and in the place of prayer and devotion in the early morning hours when everything will tell you don't be a fool, get back to bed, you need your rest, it's cold. This kind cometh not out but by fasting, self-denial and prayer which goes beyond petition and is communion with the radiant God. So, and that's where these ultimate realities are to be found where final deliverance is to be found in the hidden prayer closet. So, my final question, where do you dwell? Where do you live and move and have your being? Don't give me your street address in Savannah. Where is the effectual place where your reality is obtained? Where your sense of God is found and maintained? Where do you have your effectual dwelling? Where are you formed? What are your influences that are eternal and sublime and godly? That's where you live. That's where your reality is obtained and maintained and God is going to call for it. There's a son dying before our eyes. Since infancy, since childhood, he's been chewed up and spit out and thrown into fires and into waters because the devil was out to destroy him. And here in this last and final convulsion, he left him as good as dead. And the disciples could not cast him out. It was beyond them. They were limited. And Jesus said, how long must I suffer you? My God, haven't I been with you enough? Three years took you up on the mount, you've caught glimpse of my glory and you come down from the mount and you see this little demonstration of demonic power and you're intimidated and you're made inert and helpless. How long must I suffer you? I'm the God who is the creator of the heavens and the earth and all that in them lies. And you're allowing this pipsqueak passing demonic thing that is going to an eternal fire to threaten and intimidate you where you can't even take authority against it and deliver this helpless Jewish son. How long must I suffer you? To get us out of the spirit. Have you noticed that? Just when you think you had it all together, you're feeling very spiritual, your wife will say something, your kids will do something, some little adverse thing and boom, we're out of the spirit. Because our resource is so thin, we're so shallow in the ultimate reality, it doesn't take all that much to discombobulate us and get us off the track. We're not steeped in the reality of God on the mount. We need to come to a high mountain apart by ourselves, not to remain there but to bring it down to the valley below. I want to pray for such a church because the son of Israel depends on it. There will be no deliverance, no resurrection, except that there are disciples who are not intimidated by the visible powers of darkness because they know that they know the greater reality which they have absorbed by their daily and frequent waiting in his presence beyond petition. So Lord I pray, oh my God, who would ever have thought that the final mystery of Israel's salvation, deliverance and restoration to its calling has to do ultimately with the prayer life, the secret devotional life of Christians. Where so ever they are, the mount awaits them. That the great issue is not some heroism that we have to muster but the sacrifice of daily frequent morning devotion in the presence of the most high God. To absorb you for you are reality and everything else is a hoax, a phony wounding and a shame and a lie and a scandal that needs to be brought to an end by those who know you as you in fact are. So Lord I bless this church that's before me tonight. I bless the church that will be hearing this tape. Prick our hearts Lord, show us our callow laziness, our indifference, our shallowness, our failure to seek you, our satisfaction with the mere measure that we have which is okay for us and enables us to get by. It is okay for us, it's good for us, us, us, us. But what about them? What about the dying? What about the despairing? What about those that are being chewed up and spit out without mercy by the powers of darkness and are being tossed into fire and water and convulsing and foaming at the mouth and no one can set them free? Raise up a church my God that has your authority, the radiance of your glory and deliver them. Even from saints tonight willing for the sacrifice of the early morning seeking, fighting against the discouragement that nothing seems to be happening and I don't feel anything. So caught up in measuring things by the externalities of feeling and not by faith believing that they are in the holiest place of all and that something holy therefore must be communicated to them and in them that they can bring down into the most dark and desperate valleys where men are dying, both black men and Jew and all of the castoffs of the world who need to have a hand extended to raise them up out of death. Seal this word Lord Precious God and perform it for Jesus' sake, for Israel's sake, for the sake of lost men everywhere. We thank you and give you praise for the provision that you wait for us to meet you in that place. Come my God, beckon us and call us afresh and give us the courage, the desire to ascend that mount and to effectually dwell there and bring its reality into the valley places. We thank you and give you the praise in Yeshua's holy name. God's people sent. Amen.