In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding a deep mystery of God that is unknown to the church. This mystery is not only the key to Israel's restoration but also the key to the church itself. The speaker emphasizes that the church will remain out of order and warped until this mystery is restored to its consciousness. The speaker also reflects on personal experiences of silence, a torturous seminary, and the loss of a community, all of which were preparation for speaking on this holy mystery of Israel and the church in the last days.

Let this earth hear your voice, my God. Give us your appointed word, what is upon your heart, your understanding, that's on time for your people. Keep us, my God, from erring against you, even in our best intention. So we thank you. You're powerful enough even to inhibit us from that error, and we trust you, therefore, that your regard for this time, this hour, is more jealous than our own, and you'll not allow us to trespass. Come, my God, and be perfect. How can it be otherwise? That's what you are, and we thank and give you praise for the great privilege of hearing from the living God. Thank you, Lord, for your wisdom, your heart, your knowledge, your understanding. Change us by it, we pray. Be glorified through a church so changed. In Yeshua's name we ask it. Amen. So it's only a matter of time before I have to speak on the subject of the mystery of Israel and the church. The time has come. Because I am indebted to the Lord for a remarkable perception of that mystery that requires a stewardship, and no mystery is susceptible to mere human intelligence. Mysteries can only be understood through revelation. They're given by the grace of God to those who receive them. And the mystery of Israel and the church, what shall I say of that? Is it an exaggeration to suggest that every present defect of the church, its carnality, its ambition, its exaggeration, whatever is at want in the last analysis can be reduced to this, the failure to have been apprehended by this mystery. It is central to the church's own perception of itself. To miss this is to assure that the church will be warped, losing its center and be out of whack, turning to itself, or taking to itself ambitions and designs God never intended. It's the one mystery of which Paul warned that there would be a consequence if we fail to apprehend it. I would not have you to be ignorant of this mystery, brethren, lest you become wise in your own conceit. This is the penalty. You miss this of necessity, you're going to become inflated, pompous, conceited. Your understanding of the church will be exaggerated. You'll take to yourself things God never intended. You yourself will become the Israel of God. You're bringing the kingdom of God. You are the kingdom of God, the kingdom now. Every kind of sloppy, nondescript thing that has characterized our present Christianity, I think in the last analysis, can be understood as stemming from the omission of this mystery. The character of the church itself, which is to say, in keeping with that of its God, who is meek, lowly, and mild, requires the apprehension of this mystery. The church needs to be tempered by the understanding that it has a purpose for itself that is beyond itself, that is even other than itself, namely, to be the salvific agent of God for the restoration of another, namely, Israel. What makes it all the more remarkable is that the church is essentially gentile, and the Jew is different other than that which is gentile, and in fact the whole history of mankind is nothing other than the friction between that which is Jewish and that which is gentile. All you need to do is grow up with a Jewish mother to know that. Them, the other, the goyim, the gentiles, the enemy. So God is not just making some peace, some resolution. The great glory of God will be revealed by forming a gentile church whose essential purpose is not its own, but the restoration of the Jew. Totally unnatural that a church should take to itself such a purpose, and that's what glorifies God. It is so unnatural it cannot be attained except by the grace of God, so that in the last analysis the wonder of this accomplishment, not yet obtained, will redound to the glory of God forever. Wow, what an initial introductory statement. Did you get that? And who speaks of this in this way, that this is the issue of the glory of God forever? None other than your friend and mine, the Apostle Paul, who warned the church in Romans, you should not be ignorant of this mystery, and ends the book of Romans with the most glorious outburst of praise to be found anywhere in scripture that almost stretches language to the point of breaking. Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Who has been his counselor? Who has given to him and it shall be given again? For of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. That outburst is the heart of the Apostle. It's the genius of the Apostle. There's no understanding of him independent of what that outburst signifies. He has seen something, and what he has seen is central to his own whole preoccupation with the church as the Apostle to whom the stewardship of the mysteries of God are given. And so the question is, how can anything have so preoccupied and filled the Apostle Paul's heart that he ends with such a statement that can barely be confined by language, and that the church should be altogether ignorant, if not indifferent, if not hostile to the same thing that has provoked him to this uttermost exclamation? And that's the church. I cannot fathom that this statement should conclude Romans 11, and that a church should go on with its entire existence, never ever understanding or seeking to understand, let alone share in the remarkable euphoric praise that poured out of Paul's own heart. That such a church must, of necessity, be in error. Got the idea? So what are these three great chapters that Paul devotes to this theme, 9 through 11, in the book of Romans? And what is the book of Romans? Paul's centerpiece. Paul is not a systematic theologian. He comes out from his seams. The great profundities of Paul that have enriched the church are hardly anything more or other than his practical counsel to the church in its infancy. How to conduct church. How to have communion. How to deal with recalcitrant members of the body. He's a man answering practical questions for the church, but his answers have been the most lofty and noble statements of the church in its glory available for our edification. So the church asked him a question in Romans, the Roman church, is God finished with the Jew? They had every right to believe that, as indeed the church has today. Look at the condition of Jews worldwide. Look at their indifference, if not resistance, to the gospel. Look at the genius that this people has for conceiving of alternatives to the gospel. Other messianic programs that have swept the world, as for example communism, authored by a Jew by the name of Karl Marx, is an alternative schema to bring about resolution for mankind that they may live happily ever after without God, through an atheistic regime that will employ force in order to subdue or eliminate the bourgeoisie, the class that exploits and lives upon the innocent proletariat, the working stiff, who has evidently some virtue of his own, some innate virtue, that if you remove the oppression of this class conflict and release the proletariat, you'll have, what do you call it, not only peace on earth, you'll have kingdom come. What has it in fact brought? Unbelievable bloodshed, devastation, and devastation of the minds and hearts of men. I'm just learning from my own activity in Russia and the Ukraine where I have eight books in Russian. What do you think of that? Never having lifted a finger for one of them. And then when I came on the last trip to Kiev, I found that I was a culture hero, and people were falling on my neck, and I was interviewed on TV because there was something in my books, unbeknownst to myself, that had touched the deepest heart of the Russian-speaking church, namely a release to believe that they can sense God, know him, be led by his spirit, who had been so automated and so brainwashed by an oppressive hand over them that they had lost their confidence in their own humanity as believers. So, so much for Marxism, Freudianism, and all of the other isms that have been coined out of the minds of Jewish geniuses who knew not God. And that's why Paul in the book of Romans chapter 11 says, they are the enemies of the gospel. That's what I love about the candor, c-a-n-d-o-r of the scriptures. God does not mince words. But how does he finish the statement? They are the enemies of the gospel for your sake. Who needs it? We need it. They present a particular quality of opposition that is ultimate. But what are we to do with our enemies but love them and bear their sting and their opposition? Because unless they are returned to their God and their God returns them to their land, the Lord has not a place designated by which he will rule over his creation. For the law must go forth out of Zion. Believest thou this? You uninducted church who are the victims of a Christianity that has been bereft of this centerpiece that the issue of Israel is the issue of the kingdom. Didn't you know that the kingdom is of David and that it must be enacted and the rule must come forth from the throne of David and that that throne can only be located at one place? The holy hill of Zion in the city of Jerusalem in the land of Israel. And that gives to Israel a particular prominence and significance beyond being merely another ethnic group that needs to be saved. And that explains to us why this child from his inception was under the attack of the enemy for his destruction. For the gods of this world are the prevailing rule over creation and will continue to be until God's ordained rulers take their seat. The Lord himself in Zion in a restored nation that will be supportive of and express that kingdom and in the heavenlies a host of co-rulers who rule and reign with Christ who have overcome in this world every opposition directed by those same powers so that some will rule over five cities and some over ten. You don't even know your destiny as the church. How shall you know Israel's? Or to put it the other way, how shall you know your destiny unless you know Israel's? And to put it another way, how shall you obtain your destiny except by and through Israel? It is your sacrifice in being the agent of God for Israel's salvation that brings the discipline and the relationship with God and with each other that qualifies you to rule and reign with him in heavenly places hereafter. Lord have mercy on these people. They can't take it. They have not been prepared to take it. You see what happens? All you have to do is drop this pebble in the pool and the ripples go out through the whole circumference. Once Israel is rightly inserted in the context of God's redemptive purposes, the ripples touch every aspect of the totality of all that is included in the faith. Nothing is exempt. Everything has got to be seen anew, examined and understood in the light of this remarkable mystery that is at the heart of God's whole redemptive saga. The redemption of Israel after thousands of years of apostasy to such a point where God says you have blasphemed my name in every nation where I have driven you so that he has every right to permanently dismiss them from any consideration. They have forfeited it by their terrible track record is what we would think and what the Roman church thought. Is God finished now with the Jew? Not only have they stoned every prophet sent to them, but they crucified the Lord of glory. They're so removed from any place taught from God that they can't even recognize him whom he has sent and were so offended that they would not be satisfied with anything less or other than his death. Isn't that the evidence that God is now finished with them once and for permanently and we the church who have been grafted into their tree. We are now the Israel of God and we will now inherit their promises and we will be the way we will. We, we, we, we. And Paul says, God forbid that you should think that I'm not a Greek scholar. I'm not a scholar at all, but I understand that in the Greek Paul's phrase, God forbid is the strongest exclamation of warning that can be given in that language. Don't begin to think that by any means he's finished with them. Their fall is only a stumbling. It's only a temporary being out of the way. Let it, though it has been 2000 years, but there's a purpose in it of a strategic kind that through their fall, salvation has come to the Gentiles. So as to move them to jealousy. There's a purpose for your salvation beyond yourself and beyond any benefit you receive from it. It is for them who have been cast out momentarily by their own sin, their own rejection, but they will be brought back through envy. When they see the marvelous expression in Gentiles of what they themselves have forfeited in losing their covenant relationship with God. So now after 2000 years of the church, has that mystery been fulfilled? Not at all. Well, Art, you're saved and there are numbers of Jews being saved now. Yes. What does Paul say? That even though the word had been rejected yet in every generation, there is a remnant and elect according to grace. And most of us Jews have not been saved because of the church, but almost in spite of through personal revelation dealings of God and the faithful prayer of here and there, a saint or a witness that has turned us. The nation itself still remains to this day outside and opposed to the purposes of God. And all you need do is consult the nation that is called Israel in the middle East and look at its conduct and this attitude and the way in which it is governed and responds even to the greatest threats to its existence. For what a man will do and what a nation will do when it is in extremity and required to strain for its own preservation and survival is the indication of where it is. So have you heard that Sharon, what's his first name? Ariel Sharon has called for a day of fasting and prayer that we should, that the nation should seek, should seek to the God of its fathers, that he might yet be a living God and that the God who has answered the cry of his people in times past will answer this cry, not so much as a scintilla. It is absolutely absent from the consciousness of the world's most secular nation. Therefore the air force, therefore the IDF, the Israel Defense Force, therefore the bombings first time since 1967, jet bombers bombing Palestinian targets with great precision, but God help us they should not miss and hit a residential area and they would be the scandal of the world. So desperate that the only way they know how to respond to a terrorist blowing himself up at the entrance to a mall is to bomb. And so we're going to see this continuation of reprisal through terror and then reaction through force, through reprisal, through force, through reprisal, till the whole thing will go up because they have no alternative not knowing God. And yet the age cannot end without the restoration of this nation. And so turn to Romans 11 and we'll fasten on one verse of how Paul says this is going to take place. Verse 25. So he says that you should not be inflated or conceited in some pompous exaggeration of yourself to the exclusion of Israel. I want you to understand the verse 25 this mystery. The hardening has come upon part of Israel until there's an until this is not God's final statement. It will be ended when when the full number of the Gentiles has come in and so all Israel will be saved as it is written out of Zion will come to deliver. He will banish ungodliness from Jacob and this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. Is that a remarkable statement? Now you who are dozing off, I don't know what to recommend to you. Take a walk, get an air. Don't miss this. Don't miss this. An afternoon session is always a peril. But here's the Lord trotting out one of the deepest mysteries of God unknown to the church, which is not only the key to Israel's restoration, but the key to the church itself. The church must necessarily remain defunct, out of order, out of balance, warped, having a false center itself until this mystery of Paul is restored to its consciousness. And I'm not talking about an admiration or a sympathy for the present state of Israel. That's something else. That's sentimental. That's nice. What I'm talking about something much deeper for the church to apprehend and be apprehended by for when it will, it will require the adjustment of the church in every point in particular about itself. It could no longer after this be an auditorium fashioned, a theater looking up to an elevated platform and a performing minister who is credentialed, whose salary is being paid in order to conduct a service. That will be a no-no. It will be a contradiction. It will be an apparent deviation from what will really be needed is a return to the apostolic beginning. And when you assemble together, Paul said, each one has a tongue and interpretation, a hymn, a psalm, a revelation. The church must of necessity go back or find again the pattern where God was in his glory in the early church when the church before the advent of Constantine moved into its theater-like architecture, its elevated platforms, its credentialed clergy, and losing the whole character of the reality that the church knew at the first when the house was filled with the glory of God. And no man thought that the thing which he had was his own. When the apostles performed mighty wonders, how does it say it? Great grace was upon them all and with power gave the apostles testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We should not look upon that wistfully as something out of the past that from which we have moved and never can return, but something that must again be found and appropriated. Because unless we come to that configuration, we cannot be to Israel what we must. And in fact, does this scripture that we just read hint at it? That Israel's deliverance comes out of Zion. Paul is quoting from Isaiah that somehow when the full number of the Gentiles come in, so all Israel will be saved as it is written. Here's the apostle cleaving to the expressed word of God and believing that though he's quoting from Isaiah, there's yet a fulfillment of that in the last days. As it is written, out of Zion will come the deliverer. Well, the deliverer is the Lord, but what is the Zion out of which he comes? Is it a geographical, physical place? Is it a condition? If it's the church itself being referred to in Isaiah before the word church has had its advent and introduction, then whatever Zion is, if that's us, has got to come to the until. Something has got to happen for the deliverer to come out from Zion, not something that comes out of Israel. Israel is to be acted upon. Israel will be dry bones. Israel will have no ability in itself to affect its own restoration, and this must necessarily be the case. Why? Because Israel is man. Israel is human prowess honed and perfected. Israel is the Jew who in a half century can take a malarial swampland and turn it into one of the high-tech civilizations of the world and among the leading military powers with atomic arsenal. That's man, and that is not how. God's word to Abraham shall be fulfilled that his descendants will bless all the families of the earth. Can you follow that? Am I going too fast, too much, too far? He will banish ungodliness or take transgression from Jacob. Dear saints, we've got to become Bible scholars. I'm sorry about this. I know you're spoiled. I know you're lazy. I know you're indifferent. I know you're slothful. I know you don't study. I know you read casually. You're waiting for someone to tell you that's what you're paying for. You have got to become exegetes. You've got to draw out the meaning. God is going to banish ungodliness from Jacob. God is going to take transgression from Jacob. Jacob is to be acted upon. He's not to go through a reform movement. He's not to learn to improve his ways. He cannot. He's got to be transformed. He's got to be turned from Jacob to Israel by God's action, not his own. God will banish. God will take away as it is written. And if God does not do it and it is written, what does that say about God? He's a loud mouth and a braggart who makes promises he's unable to fulfill. So the issue of this fulfillment of the word spoken in Isaiah through the inspiration of the Spirit is the issue of God. If this is not fulfilled, I'm not talking about the benefit that comes to Israel. I'm talking about the issue of God in the world. He has made himself a non-God by his own inability to fulfill his word. And if an apostle is anything, he's jealous, not for Israel so much as for the God who speaks and it is written according to the covenant that I have made with him, must be fulfilled for God's own sake. Where is the jealousy of the church like that for God? That's why we're a bunch of, I don't know what we are. We're a bunch of exploiters where we're using God, we're using the scriptures, we're using the songbook for ourselves. Where is the heart of the matter that distinguishes the church as the church, which is to say that is jealous for the name, the honor, and glory of God? If you lose that, you lose all. I don't care what you do. I don't care what your programs are, what you profess to be concerned about these ethnic groups and you're going into admissions and you're having this program. If you have not this apostolic jealousy, you are ipso facto not the church. You're a social phenomenon, you have services, you perform things, there's somebody being blessed, but you are not the church in any apostolic definition of the word unless you have Paul's jealousy for the name and honor of a God who honors covenants that he makes and keeps them, who gives words to his prophets Isaiah and will fulfill them, and all the more gloriously through a people who don't give a rap, who have no interest in being chosen, who don't want to be Zion. They only want to be the Hong Kong of the Middle East, don't you know? And that if you squeeze them, their real statement is, we want to be like every other nation. We want to have a ball, we want to have malls, we want to have Gucci shops, and the latest word in merchandise, which in fact we do, so that wealthy Jordanians can come into Jerusalem not to worship the Most High God, but to go to the Gucci shops and get the most exquisite merchandise available. That is our ambition, that is our intention. We don't even know that God has purposes for us, and we don't even want to know. Can God find a more obdurate, resistant, unwilling people for the fulfillment of his will and glory? No. That's why he's chosen us for him. Not because of our virtue, but because of our obstinacy, stiff-necked, unwilling, self-centered, so that if he succeeds with us, it's through the eternal praise of God's glory forever. God has stacked the cards against himself, and put all of his eggs in one basket, and says, I'm going to fulfill this through the church. Lord, come on, it's difficult enough just with Israel, but through the church? Have you seen it lately? Are you kidding? Can you believe for that? They can't even stay awake. To him be glory forever. It's going to take eternity of eternities to praise God for the magnificence of the fulfillment of his brilliant design and intent. That can only be fulfilled by the power of his risen life. If there's no resurrection, saints, and that was a sleight of hand, and Jesus was just groggy and doped up on the cross to look dead, because who can believe that God can actually raise the dead, then we of all men are most to be pitied. When Jesus said, it is finished, he meant this. He meant all of God's redemptive design, the great saga of redemption, over-creation, the restoration of nations who are in active rebellion against God, whether it's polite or hostile. The fact that we begin sessions of congress by praying, by swearing an oath on the bible, does not disguise the fact that the nation itself is at enmity with God as all the world. All of the nations do their own thing. The rulers, the powers of the air, are the ones that really jerk and manipulate them. And until every nation shall bend its knee and confess with its mouth that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father, he has not yet succeeded. That's why when you read the psalms and the sweeping statements that his praise shall be to the ends of the earth, the psalmist knew what it was about, but the church doesn't know. Local, most narrow design and ambition from Sunday to Sunday, one Sunday being like another, no movement, no direction, no consummation, a church without an eschatology, that means without any consideration of the end toward which it should be moving, a church without an apocalyptic expectancy, which means the actual direct divine intervention of God in the affairs of men, in judgment and in restoration, is not a church. It's a social club. It's a Christian culture. It's a nice Sunday addendum, but it's not the church in any sense of that which God intended from the first. But if God can succeed in Australia, then there's hope. And the fact that we are here, I hope this doesn't sound immodest, indicates to me he has that intention. You know why? He would not squander us in some place where there's not going to be the acceptance of his word and the acting upon it. He sends us to those places where there's potential for response or we would not be sent. We're not at the big conferences. We're not charismatic darlings. I'm not your cutie Jewish messianic personality, but to the remnant people of God, God is speaking. Okay, if you don't ask us some good questions over this, I'm going to pout. If tonight or some other time we open for questions and you have no questions, you're going to see the most dejected man slump before you. How can you not have questions? My God, we're sweeping through a whole remarkable saga of redemption, touching the enormous highlights that you've never before heard nor considered. And you have no question that God has chosen the church as he has chosen Israel in a reciprocal relationship by which neither the church nor Israel can come in to the fulfillment of God's intention for each, independent of each other. The mystery is that the church is locked in with Israel, with the Jew, and cannot obtain its own fulfillment without the embrace of the thing to which it is called toward a people which it would never have chosen because they are unlike you, different and other, because there are deep-seated and lingering resentments against Jews, because the normative condition of every Gentile by nature and by birth is to be anti-Jewish. I finally have seen that on my last trip to Europe, especially in Poland, Lithuania, and other of the Baltic nations, there is a resident and innate anti-Semitism in every Gentile. The only way that it can even be identified, if you suggest it, they say, oh me, never! The only way that it can be healed is by the recognition of what lingers and the work of God's blood, word, and spirit to meet it. That's why when a Gentile believer has an authentic love for a people that he should, by every reckoning, despise or reject, you know God has been at work. It's not a natural thing. It is supernatural. And I received my baptism in the Holy Spirit 35 or more years ago with a small group of believers on a sloping farm floor, not in my Pentecostal church, but a small group who were distinguished by the fact that they were studying Hebrew, that they loved Israel, they were caught up with prophecy pertaining to that fulfillment at the end of the age, and with them in the atmosphere conducive to the Spirit's presence, the Lord baptized me in the Holy Ghost. God has made us Gentile and Jew exactly to reveal His glory, in the same way that He has made us male and female, exactly to fulfill His glory. He delights in pitting opposites and requiring them not just to get by, but to come into a union of a transcendent kind by which He can be glorified. Merely to be compatible is to miss it. There's struggle, collision, contradiction, opposition, not because you're mean, but because you're female or male, or Jew or Gentile, or black or white. God Himself has so formed these tensions that unless He has been invoked and brought in with His great redemptive power, we cannot move through these staggering oppositions and fail in the divorce court, or run to another church, or have a fight with another nation, or even within the American Civil War, or the recent genocide between tribes in Africa, Rwanda. This is man. God has set the stage, stacking all the cards against Him, that when He shall succeed, it will be to the everlasting praise of His glory. And unless that's your motive, you will end in the divorce court. I'm speaking symbolically and actually. Unless your motive is more than your personal happiness, and your accommodation, and your satisfaction, you will fail. That is to say, the glory of God has got to be the foremost singular motive for being, whether it's marriage, church, or society. Then you're able to bear the suffering that precedes the glory. Listen, I've been at this for over 35 years, and we have not come through yet. But I'm not breaking it off, because I'm a covenant-keeping man. And I know that God is the God of covenant. And He's the third chord in the threefold chord. And though it seems hopeless by any measure, and even inhibits the success of my ministry, that would do so much better if I had a raven-haired Jewish woman as my partner, who's in agreement with me, and recognizes my calling, and lends herself to it, I'll still stick with that Danish, Gentile, snub-nosed, sandy-haired, freckled-faced woman who doesn't have a notion of what anybody sees in her husband, because what he speaks and does is a complete mystery to her. And why don't I tell jokes like the other speakers do? You think that such a union is an accident? Or is it the most perfect expression of God's intention for the perfecting of a servant, and bringing about a reconciliation in a marriage that is symbolic and representative of the mystery of the church of Gentile and Jew made into one new man? And 35 years is nothing. It's a vapor, it's a moment, it's a blink of His divine eye. And you'll only bear it and be patient for it if the issue is more than compatibility. And you still have your looks, and get rid of the bum, and start over again. You deserve happiness. That's the world and its wisdom, destroying what God has created. We're a spongy, easy, soft, quick-to-quit church, because we have not taken to our heart the jealousy for God's glory, and have not understood that the issue is not compatibility. He's the master of incompatibility in order that His glory might be obtained in a resolution that is not just a truth, but a transcendent and heavenly breakthrough that only He can effect. And the holiest piece of furniture in the holiest place of all, and the temple of God, is the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant, with a mercy seat, and in that cabinet, not much bigger than this, the scroll of the law, the pot of manna, the rod of Aaron that budded, made of pure gold, which is all God. Gold is divinity. But it's wood encased in gold. And what kind of wood? Acacia. It's a desert shrub, and it's gnarled and twisted and somehow fitted into the gold, or it would not be glory. Pure gold without the wood is not glory. God, independent of His church, is not glory. God is glorified in and through His church, or He's not glorified at all. And what's on the top of this mercy seat? Two angels, cherubim, with wings at each end, hammered out of the same piece of gold. But both are hammered out of the same piece on either end, and whose wings are made to touch. And they are made to look at each other, right eyeball to eyeball, and at the same time look down through the place of mercy to the righteous requirement of God in the law. God said to Moses, build this according to this pattern. And he said, and here I will meet with you, above the mercy seat and between the wings of the cherubim. And there I will give you an instruction and commandment for the sons of Israel. Where do you find God? You find Him in the tension of opposites, right in the middle between the two, each representing different interests, male, female, Jew, Gentile, black, white, Israeli and Palestinian, what Tony and I represent, but brought to a place of looking each other in the face. Glory is not by escape or looking away, it's by seeing things as they in fact are. Hard things to see, painful things, not only about the other, but what is revealed in yourself because of the other. See, I would have been a great saint if it were not for my wife. But in this relationship with her, this demand and annoying interruption and contradiction, I have had to see through it things of myself that would not otherwise have been revealed. I needed that opposition, and you need it also. You know what a saint is? Are you taking notes? A saint is one who is willing to live in the tensions of the faith and not give up, because attention is a suffering. But it's not attention that is endless. It's attention that will finally be resolved and consummated to the glory of God forever. In this life, humiliation, reproach. What, you're a minister and you don't have your marriage together? How come? Can't you buy her chocolates? Don't you know how to take her out? Okay, why don't you do this? Why don't you do-do-do? Why don't you manipulate? Why don't you come, you know? You poor sap. I'm not in something for accommodation and compatibility so that I'll have my sex life fulfilled. There's something greater at stake. It's the glory of God, and it's not going to be obtained with a box of chocolates. It has to wait upon Him, who is a covenant-keeping God, although He takes His sweet old time about it. You see what I mean, saints? Rightly understanding Israel opens whole dimensions to the most intimate aspect of one's life as a person in your marriage, and the issues with your children, the issue of authority in your household is the issue of the church, which was before never considered. We look over that. We hope for a spiritual roulette on a Sunday morning that does not touch these problems and areas of discontent, and then we go home to the problems, because we only want an evasion. We want a momentary surcease. We want a blessing. We're not realistic. We're not dealing with the realities to which God has called us. And why are the kids in that surly, rebellious condition with their rings through their navels as well as their ears? Because they're in rebellion, and they're crying out in some inchoate and unarticulate way that something is missing that they crave, that they were born to receive and are not obtaining. It's the love of God, the love of the Father, through their parents and especially their fathers, most and best demonstrated when he whacks them. Chastisement is love, and the avoidance of it is self-love and the hatred of your own children, and they are unconsciously crying out for the deepest statement of your love, which you are withholding, because you don't want to be chastised either, because you're self-sparing, because unlike the Father you cannot bear the pain. He does not withhold even the chastisement of his own son. That's love. You see, we would never have to be required to consider any of these questions. We could be the soppiest church in awe, because we have omitted the centerpiece. Once that comes into place, boom, boom, boom, everything comes into a new examination. Praise the Lord, I'm getting to like bawling you out. So, Art, if the church, in all of its deficiency, which registers all the way through to our children who are out of sorts and untempered and rebellious, and our failed marriages, is in the last analysis for the want of a jealousy for God's glory, that would have been communicated with the awareness of this mystery, how then are we to be restored? By restoring the mystery. You go back to the point where the critical error was made, and there bring the rectification. And that's exactly what I'm attempting to do. You privileged saints, but to whom much is given, much will be required. Okay. Now we know what an apostle is, and we know the foundation upon which the church is to be built. The apostles and the prophets. Not their expertise, not their great knowledge, to however much a blessing, but profoundly and most for their jealousy for God's glory, name, and honor. That there must be a fulfillment of that which is written, and a covenant which must be kept. So therefore there's an until. Though right now it doesn't look like any prospect of Israel's restoration, yet there's a word and a covenant that must be fulfilled when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. It doesn't say when Israel wises up, when Israel comes to its senses, when Israel has a fresh determination to honor the God who has chosen them. When the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, then their deliverance comes, and not before. It has nothing to do with Israel, or her performance. It can never have anything to do with Israel's performance, because that's exactly the problem. There's an Israel who performs, and therefore it'll be her glory and not God's. Israel has to be acted upon by God. The Deliverer, with a capital D, has to deliver. Take transgression from Jacob. Change them all together. Give him a new heart, new mind. Give him an eternal covenant that can never be broken, despite the whole history of covenant failure which marks the tragedy of Israel. That's why we have been expelled from the nation. That's why we're born in Melbourne, or New York City, or Brooklyn, or Moscow, or Kiev, or Odessa. We're in exile. It's a statement of judgment, of being cast out of the land for our failure to keep covenant with God. But he said, I will restore you and make a covenant with you that will be everlasting. How come? Because he'll give us a new heart, and the right spirit, and because he will be in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. We cannot break it. We cannot fail. For he who has made it will fulfill it. It's the everlasting covenant. What we call the new covenant will be their covenant, and Israel ready when he will bring them. Can you see that merely to sentimentalize present Israel, and hope for its success, or have an affinity for Jews because you find them cute, or you have a romantic illusion about some virtue you think they have, is to completely miss the subject. And to do as much error in opposition to God's will as if to be outrightly anti-semitic. Can you see that? Why I am as vehement in opposing churches that have only sentimentalized the Jew in Israel as I would be in waking them up for their being in active opposition. For their sentiment is tantamount to active opposition. So you say, what one attitude alone is acceptable? False. An apostolic understanding of Israel, and the centrality of that people and nation, and the stratagem of God for their restoration as being the issue of God himself, to keep covenant, to fulfill what is written, to restore. It's the issue of his glory, and it will require sacrifice, even unto death, before it is obtained. Not so much only by them as by us. And the most recent wrinkle that the Lord is giving me to express now, haltingly, is that our suffering, sacrifice, and death as martyrs, will not be so much from the world which is opposed to this, as from the Jew himself. In their misunderstanding, in their opposition to themselves, in their ignorance, they will see us as a threat. Who is more to be hated in the Jewish community today than a Jewish Christian? It's okay for you to be a Christian. They like it that way, because they know that you're partial toward Israel, but for a Jew to become a Christian is the greatest threat to Jewish life, which is already on the defensive, because of the high rate of intermarriage and the various other pressures that are breaking down the Jewish community, so that the man who is really, if they could see it, the blessing sent from God is construed to be the greatest threat. And it may well be that before the smoke clears, some of us, at their hands, will have to pay the price of martyrdom, as they express in their ignorance and vehemence and bitterness and anger against us, who appear to them to be a threat, because they cannot construe and understand. And then, as we suffer their opposition with magnanimity and grace, counting it even blessing, and do not rail back at them, because there's nothing resident in us that's going to rise to the surface of an anti-Jewish kind, because God has dealt with us through and through the cookie. He has found anything in the deeps that would have been expressed in a retaliation against them as Jews. You dirty Jews! Here I'm struggling for you, and investing my life for your salvation, and sacrificing, and even now you're opposing me physically, and bringing about my death. Will you deserve everything you're getting? They have got to see the face of God, and the grace of God, and the unconditional love of God, even when they are opposing us, because we Jews have an uncanny way to test the church. And we have been the test of the church throughout the church's whole history, and the test has failed. Some of the greatest saints and giants have failed the test. Martin Luther, Chrysostom, was called the golden mouth artist, but he was a notorious anti-Semite, and yet a father to the church. Something about the Jews gets under the skin, and rubs the Christian church raw, because of the Jewish boasting, because of Jewish superiority, because they say, how do you dare presume to know our scriptures, you Gentile dumb-dumbs, you don't even read Hebrew, and you have totally misconstrued it, and have celebrated some criminal who was killed between other criminals, a political misfit, and called him, and think him to be the Messiah. And you're going to instruct us? Don't tell me that you can't be jabbed, and pricked, and something come to the surface that will not only astonish you, but embarrass you. Unless the depth of God's redemptive work, his sanctifying work, has gone very deep, and there's no thing that can be pushed, that is going to reveal something that his sanctifying power has not already met. Did you understand what I just said? And where does that take place? In the church. That's why the church is full of bristling differences of personalities, to test our patience, and to bring us through the veil of God's sanctifying work. The church is where we're tested before the Jew tests us. As I was preaching Romans 11, where Paul cries out, by your mercy they may obtain mercy. A woman in the congregation could not contain herself, and cried out, but Archie said, we don't even have mercy for each other, how shall we have it for the Jew? Exactly. So now you've got to go back to square one, that before you can even entertain the thing that you're going to exhibit to that people, that they might receive mercy, you've got to come to a place of mercy within the church itself, and my God it needs it. Those pastors, and elders, and others that have rubbed you raw, their carnality, their ambition, their programs, and you've run. Maybe what you should have done was stayed, and bore the suffering that yet must be fulfilled in the body for Christ's sake. For in my experience, no suffering has been more painful, more exquisite, more profound in its perfecting power, than what I have suffered in the church. For Jews to kick and spit at me is kid stuff. The real suffering is the church. Not because it's intentionally mean, but because it is what it is. Immature, carnal, soulish, opinionated. The church is a place of suffering, saints, before it's a place of glory. And because you're unwilling to suffer in the church, and for the church, it's in its present condition. And the reason you have not been willing to suffer it, is because of your self-interest. Wanting to be blessed, wanting to enjoy, wanting to have your spirituality fed, increased. Because you have become the object of the church's purpose, rather than the glory of God. You missed the center. I almost feel like repenting before we go any further. You see, can you follow the logic that is coming forth here? And do you think that I premeditated any of this? That I came here with this plan in mind to state this, this, and this? I just began by beginning. I didn't even think to dwell that long in the Scripture in Romans. I have another text. But look what the Lord is unfolding. We have paid a very great price, and have a church that is deformed, if not incapacitated, for the want of a correct center. That God in His wisdom has supplied, because it is contrary to our own self-interest. That your salvation is not so much for yourself, but another. That by their fall, salvation has come to the Gentile, so as to move them to jealousy. Who's the them? The same ones who crucified Him, and will now persecute the the apostolic church, to move them to jealousy. And Paul doesn't say how. There's no footnote at the bottom of the page telling us what program to perform, or what lustrous service to conduct, or how to get together our choir, our chorus, and our organist, and give them a wow of a show. The fact of the matter is that any synagogue without the Holy Spirit will put the local church to shame right on the same corner. By virtue of its liturgy, its Hebrew, its eloquent rabbis, its history, where Johnny come lately, so we're going to move them to jealousy? By anything we can perform as service? Or does God have another thought about that? And why doesn't Paul state it? He only allows us to surmise what conceivable thing will move these obdurate and resistant Jews, who are the enemies of the gospel, to jealousy. And so, in my first series of messages, after 14 months of a sabbatical silence, in which I was forbidden to speak on any subject without being instructed or informed why, the Lord broke the silence when I had come to a certain understanding, having been enrolled in a liberal Lutheran seminary, 65% female and 99% of them feminists and witches, out from my blood. And after the first quarter, the Lord began to open, or during it, the mystery of Israel, what I'm sharing with you. And my thought was, what is the implication of this understanding of Israel for the church of the last days? And I had no sooner thought that thought than the phone rang. A pastor from California, whom I did not know, Art, we are praying here and believe that God wants you to speak to us a seminar on Israel and the church in the last days. Click. Guy took the word right out of my mouth. And I knew my sabbatical was over. Now, why would God have me on a sabbatical of silence 14 months long, where a man who lives from his mouth is forbidden to speak publicly? Why would God enroll me in a seminary that was a torture tank? Why would God bring our community in Minnesota into death and require us to abandon the entire property so that the one brother who wanted to remain was warned by the Lord? If you don't leave, I'll kill you. Why all of that extensive and intensive preparation for the first speaking on a mystery that is holy, holy, holy, and central to God's whole program of restoration at the end of the age, that it must be preceded by a death of the abolition of a community and bringing everything into death and leaving it to the vandals and to the weather, losing everything, children, wife, everyone scattered with the cry, they'll never return. And a man approaching 60 years of age with two university degrees, unable to find employment, even as a dishwasher, coming back every day for my job hunting search, defeated and demoralized, feeling absolutely obsolete and having no value in the world. Death, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, experience felt, realized to proceed even speaking on the holy subject of Israel and the church in the last days. I was not to take another subject to my lips for 14 months before I could speak this. So if only the speaking and the communication of the mystery required so extensive a death, what will its fulfillment take through the church? Now the issue of the cross, the issue of death, and the issue of resurrection becomes critical for the church's not only her understanding, but in her experience. For this mystery cannot be fulfilled by any ordinary church, even of the best charismatic kind. It can only be fulfilled by a church that is made up of the sons and daughters of the resurrection, who themselves have passed through death in order to obtain the imperishable life and live consistently in it. That's why you're not hearing this message. So I went to California 10 days in advance for another season of death called fasting, fasting and prayer, because not having spoken for 14 months, will I be able, will I be a rusty gate that has not been oiled? Can I put two words together? Can I speak on this subject? I'm not a systematic teacher who has outlines. I'm a prophetic man who has internalized something, has been so fused with it, and has never yet once expressed it. How will it come out? And the people paid for the seminar, and their tape recorders, and they were right in front of my face to catch every pearl from my mouth, because I was in a place both to bless or to do damage over the subject of Israel, if we were not rightly expressed. And so I began on the first night, without, I had no program, I just went at it, right out of Romans 11, what kind of church can conceivably move Israel to jealousy? I raised the great question that the church has not considered in modern times, and therefore has substituted other criteria for its success, not the criterion of the Jew being moved to jealousy, which is God's measure, but numbers, programs, budget, influence, that's been the standards that the church has created for itself in putting away God's one criterion, the Jew. And so I raised the question, and never answered it. And I went through six messages in about four days. The final message was Sunday morning, the seventh, which is the number of completion of the answer to the question, what kind of a church will move the Jews to jealousy, not yet being answered. And I went to bed Saturday night without the answer. Could you do that? Talk about the rest of God, and trust that somewhere between the going to bed late, and the rising early, the Lord will give you the answer, the word. Three o'clock in the morning, not 259 or 301, 3am, with the same precision by which the Lord ended our morning session at 12, I leaped out of bed with one word. Martyrdom. And my message on Sunday morning, the church that will move Israel to jealousy is a martyr church. Not how it dies, but how it lives. Martyrdom is not the issue of a final moment, it's issue of all the moments that have preceded it. That is the testimony of God. A church not only willing to bear martyrdom, but bear it joyously as privilege, not as, why me? And bear it for Israel's sake. Which is to say, if you chose not to embrace this call and this burden, you needn't be a candidate for martyrdom. It's your choosing to be identified with God's purpose, as will obtain his glory, that makes you a candidate for martyrdom. You could have avoided it, and many do. Now can you understand why Paul ends Romans 11 with, Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out for who has known the mind of the Lord, who has been his counselor, who has first given to him, and it shall be recompensed to him again, for of him, this mystery, and through him, the resurrection power and life, and to him be all things to whom be glory forever. Amen. I want to pray that the church of the last days, the distinctive, authentic, last days remnant church, will be jealous for God's glory forever, for only that jealousy will permit you to bear any and all suffering, even martyrdom, with joy. And when you can do that, not only is Israel restored, but the powers of the air that brood over the nations, the principalities and powers are forever finished by that unnatural demonstration through Gentiles for the Jew. Let's pray. So Lord, my God, it hurts when you've got to make up for lost time. It hurts, my God, to be adjusted after generations, if not centuries, of willed ignorance, of rejection of the mystery, though it's there in black and white in Paul, and the church going off to do its own thing in complete and willful rejection of this remarkable apostolic statement, and even using the word apostolic as if it's the newest fad, and the new wrinkle that's somehow verbally going to change anything, and does not bring the requirement of the suffering that precedes the glory. Lord, look at these children you've assembled here for this. It's not fair. Why lay this on them, my God? This is too much, even for them to take it up as a burden of prayer, to intercede for the church of Australia, that somehow it will be open to receive what has been lost, that the center will be restored, that there will be a fulfillment of what it is written, to the everlasting praise of your glory, that they will believe for this, and pray for this, and be witnesses to this is a remarkable requirement, Lord. In fact, if this people knew it, if most of them here in the room knew it, they would never have come. But you engineered, and captured them, and brought them in. They only came for a blessing, and you're putting before them that for which they shall now be eternally responsible. You've given them much, and much will be required. So do I bless them, Lord, and I ask mercy for them. Mercy, Lord. They're flesh and blood. They're ordinary folk. They're not called to gospel heroism, let alone martyrdom. They just want to get by. I ask mercy, Lord, that when they shall say, yes, Lord, I'm not here by accident. You've appointed me, you've chosen me to hear this, and not just for my amusement, I should be clever, but somehow to be a participant in the fulfillment of this in my own nation, in the church in which I feel is hopeless. I need mercy. Mercy for patience, mercy for love, mercy for faith to believe for this. And by that mercy, you'll be able to extend mercy. It takes mercy even to hear this. It takes mercy to understand this. What will it take to fulfill this? So, my God, give them mercy, I pray. Mercy, Lord. Mercy, precious God, to make up for the deficit of many generations. These ordinary saints, men and women, the gray-headed, who just want to get by with a little something more interesting. I bless them, Lord. I marvel at your faith. I marvel at your love. Look, you've chosen me to be the communicator. And if you can succeed through this ex-atheist, Marxist, blasphemer to communicate, then surely you can succeed with this church to fulfill. To the everlasting praise of your glory, which is the whole thing. That's what it's all about, the everlasting praise of your glory. And we invite you, my God, to break us up in the deeps, where we have substituted our pleasure, our satisfaction, our enjoyment, our success, as being greater than the issue of your glory. There's a warp in our own lives. There's a want of a true center in our own lives. And we're recognizing it now as the mystery is being communicated. We have been jealous for our success, for our enjoyment, but not for your glory. We didn't even know that there was an issue of your glory. But now that we know, we invite you to break us up in the deeps. Give us a spirit of repentance, a gift of brokenness, because we have had a wrong center. And our broken lives, our marriages, our children are all the expression of the want of it. Forgive us that we have not trusted you. As the God of covenant, it was seen to us hopeless situations, and we're quick to end them, because we had ourselves as our first consideration. And we listened to that seductive spirit in the world. You're young yet, and you're good looking. Why tolerate the bum? Try, try again. You don't have to be stuck. So, my God, break our hearts, and open an understanding of yourself as the covenant-making, covenant-keeping God. To whom belongs all glory and praise and honor, both now and forever. Have a church, Lord, that loves you like this, that is jealous for you like this, that is willing for whatever shall be required for this. So do I bless them. And thank you, my God, for the way in which you have apprehended us this afternoon, beyond any thought that I could have had. Let not a word fall to the ground. We thank and give you praise for how you have spoken to us. Uttermost love, as if we're sons and daughters, as if we already have a maturity that welcomes and can receive such words. You have treated us, my God, wonderfully. Your faith, the way you perceive us, is more than we perceive ourselves, and in fact compels us to rise, to become sons and daughters of the living God. Seal your word, give us the grace to perform it. Let this be an historic hour for the Church of Jesus Christ in Australia. Yes, in this little place, this little nothing place, it's like you, you choose little nothing places. Stables and caves have always been the matrix of your greatest purpose, and so also this place, in this time, for Jesus' sake, in whose name we pray, and God's people said, Amen. Sit back for a moment. Just sit quietly. Let the Lord seep in, seep through. We should not be quick to move or have another activity. Just let this resonate. What a statement. Oh, my God. Let it permeate the inner man, even beyond the level of your understanding. The Spirit of the Word, work in your deeps. Thank you, Lord. Precious God on high, just sigh before the Lord. Wow. We came to hear a speaker, and you've given us a day of visitation. You've taken us by surprise. You've exceeded any intention of our own. We're called. This is holy ground. This is historic. This is a time in Church history. This is full of portent for all the future, Lord. We're not worthy of such consideration. We're not able for such fulfillment. Grant us the faith of the Son of God that does not balk, that knows, my God, your power, your everlasting might. Thank you, Lord. Whisper a little something to the Lord. Express a little gratitude for your privilege. Let him know something of your intention. Lord, I can't hear this and go back to business as usual. No way. I'm ruined. I can't go back to things as they were. I don't know what this is going to require, but I know that it's going to require, and I'm willing to be required of. I'll not dismiss myself because I'm over 70, and I'm retired, or whatever reason, or I'm just a housewife. You've called me to hear this. I have an obligation of a new kind, and I want to fulfill it by the grace that is given. Let him know that. You don't want to be exempt. You don't want to miss the glory. You don't want to stand before him ashamed in the day of his appearing, that you've fallen short of what would have been an eternal inheritance. Let him know something. Right where you're sitting, say something covenant with him. Transact with him. It's a word that deserves our response, saints, and we're not used to being addressed like this, but we can't get up and walk away as if this is just a message. It's a calling, and it needs to be acknowledged. You need to choose to be chosen. Let him know that, and if you got real courage, you would say it even aloud, right out of your seat. Yes, Lord. Whatever it takes. Here am I. Come on, saints. Don't wait for the last meeting if God's calling for some response on your part now. Let him have it. It will change everything that you hear, the cries of our heart, that you see how we are chafed in our spirits in one fell swoop. My God, you've made us to see our abandonment of you, our lack of trust, the seeking of our own pleasure, our own will, our own way, and we are the critics of the church, and yet we ourselves are guilty of the very things, my God, that we see wanting in it. We are the church, and we identify with the church in its present condition, and we know that you love it, my God, and you've not given up. If you've not given up on Israel, if you've not forsaken Israel for her apostasy, surely you've not forsaken the church either, and both Israel and the church, my God, will be the recipients of your mercy. You'll reconcile both, and we bless you for your great love that will not let us go. We thank you, my God, that you have such intentions for us. So blessed, Lord. So continue your gentle press upon our spirits. So bring to our recall the things that we have swallowed down that are painful even to remember. Not that we want to wallow in it, my God, in some self-pitying thing, but we want to acknowledge what's true, and because we're the church called to be the ground and the pillar of truth. So thank you for the love of your convicting spirit. Thank you that you don't look the other way. Thank you that you don't whitewash, but you bring us to awareness, to confrontation, to acknowledgement, and with you there's forgiveness. So we bless you, Lord, and if we are not a church broken by the mercy that has been extended to us, how shall we extend it to them? We've got to know your mercy. It's got to be a palpable and real mercy and not some theoretic acknowledgement, some phraseological, doctrinal, but an authentic, perceived, realized mercy that you have extended. Not because we deserve it, but because of what you are. Not that Israel will deserve it, but because of what you are. You'll have mercy on all. So we bless you, Lord. O precious God, O Lord, we have fallen short of your glory. We acknowledge. Restore, my God, that lost apostolic passion, the very distinctive of the church that makes it the church. Put it in our hearts. It's got to be a gift. It's got to be something given. We can't fabricate this. We can't manufacture this. We ask you to impart it. You are the high priest and the apostle, the chief apostle, and we ask you to give us this apostolic heart that is jealous for the glory of God, that wants you to be honored, my God, as a God who speaks, a God who fulfills, a God who covenants, a God who respects and honors his own word. So do we bless you. Thank you, my God. Praise your great name. Continue that your word should be as a hammer upon our rock. In any place where we have stiffened, where we're unwilling to admit you into our deeps, continue to pound on that very hard place until it splits and breaks. Thank you, my God, holy one. We don't want to reflect Australian civilization and culture, but the kingdom of God from heaven, a supple, yielded, broken people, the Israel of God in the truest and best sense.