Tulsa 2000 - Part 2

From US history, remember? Something out of the American Revolution, one of the first encounters between the colonialists and the British. Don't fire until you see the whites over their eyes. I haven't said that or remembered that in over 30 years till now. What does that mean? What? I didn't hear that. I love to give sudden quizzes. Well, praise the Lord. The prophetic man is always asking, what does that mean? We had a birth in our community that came early, unexpectedly, where Simon and Naomi, one of our couples, began to have strange disturbance about the time of our summer prophetical school and convocation. And then she was rushed from one hospital to another and has just now had the birth of a child they thought would have to be, what's the word? C-section. C-section and prematurely encouraged. But they waited and she had a natural birth, a five and some pounds, some ounce baby, and with the largest placenta they had ever seen. So we're asking, what does this birth mean? The unusual circumstances of this birth, coming right at the time of our 25th anniversary and brought forth to no small extent by the intercession and the travail of the Ben Israel community itself for the birthing of a baby boy whose name is Micah. So we see him as a prophetic event. The birthing of a prophetic entity through travail, struggle, premature, great expense and the attendance of God is more than just a circumstantial thing. We're always looking, what's the meaning? What is God wanting to say? Which is not a bad disposition. I wish that the church would have it and not so readily dismiss its circumstances as just being circumstantial. Okay, well I'm happy for a Saturday morning with you guys. Isn't that a precious way to spend a Shabbat morning? So we thank you Lord, my Lord. What a privilege. Close us in with yourself. Cut us off at the pass. Quiz us. Bring up, my God, things that are upon your heart and have a full abandon to yourself. Enjoy yourself, my God, and romp and do what you will, where you will and we just thank you for the privilege. We'll follow so well as we can wherever you lead us, my God. And we thank you for the privileged use of a Shabbat morning. Even the Rosh Hashanah morning, my God, when Jews are going into their synagogues that we are here, my God, by your ordination. So come and guide us and take your full liberty, we pray. Receive our acknowledgement of how privileged we are to be closed in together with you and a sent servant. Thank you, Lord. We bless your name. Have your perfect way. First word to the last. In Jesus' name, Amen. Well, I want to look into this Psalm 102 this morning but before we get there, I want to glean a little bit more from Hosea of last night's text that was so inadequately addressed. I looked at it again this morning and it came from my devotional reading and somehow a lot of things were quickened this morning that I was not in a position to either see or attend yesterday but it would be a pity to rush on and to miss it. So we're looking at a text in Hosea chapter 13, verse 15 kind of an ominous note about Jewish history. Although he may flourish among rushes, the east wind shall come, a blast from the Lord, rising from the wilderness, and his fountain shall dry up, his spring shall be parched, it shall strip his treasure of every precious thing. We just have to take a deep breath and a pause because the scriptures themselves are so unique, such another kind of literature. The Psalms are unique within that uniqueness and prophetic proclamation is equally unique. So much so, such a weight of things, so compressed and so terse a statement that it requires a very special attention and we have not been schooled to give to the scripture that kind of attention. We have been schooled by Gone with the Wind, by novels, by glib casual reading. We don't know how to invest ourselves in the word and the danger is we would just read through something like this and gain nothing. So let's just ponder this first to say again, this is such an echo, a statement that has resounded through the whole of Jewish history. Though we may have prospered for a season and what would be more a statement of that than German Jews. I wish that you could have been with me at the most recent visit to Berlin and the ruins of their reform synagogue, an elaborate piece of architecture even in its ruins and then the exhibits that go back and show, there was one photograph showing the stately congregation, somehow the building probably so vast as it was, was not adequately heated. They were sitting with their winter overcoats on but such overcoats with fur collars, with their fedoras, with their top hats, with their nice dark collars and ties and the women resplendently dressed. If ever you saw a picture of affluence, security, comfort, assurance, stateliness, it was this Jewish congregation. But you're seeing it in the ruins of their synagogue, devastated by the bombing of the World War II and probably also by Kristallnacht. You know that night in October was it, when every synagogue or many of them were set afire. Kristall is the German word for glass, the shattering glass. That came out of these synagogues as the Nazis rampaged through and then right on the heels of that was the setting in motion of the whole process of Jewish annihilation. So wherever we Jews have had opportunity to prosper, it's only for a season. And surely, sooner or later, the bottom falls out. If any Jewish community ever thought itself secure, it was the German Jewish community. Reform Judaism was born in Germany. That is a secular adaptation of Judaism that is acceptable to a mind that is offended by the supernatural. Can you guys follow me? How did they come to a mentality like this? Because they were German Jews. Because rationalism is a German mentality of that generation and they wanted to be accommodated to that civilization. Do you know that this generation of Jews was opposed to the reestablishment of a Jewish community in Palestine. They wanted to be integrated into their diasporic exile homes. They wanted to show the German nation that they were first and foremost German Jews, that they were first German citizens, that their first loyalty was to Germany and only secondarily as a cultural and historic response to their Jewishness. That's why Reform Judaism had its birth in Germany. And yet, however accommodating that community was, it was obliterated. And that's exactly what God is saying through Hosea. And it ought to be a somber warning for American Jews. What? You're comfortable here? You're secure here? You're respected here? Take note that wherever you have enjoyed that kind of security in the world, it has only been temporary. And there's a moment in which the axe falls and you find yourself again thrust out and suffering. So although he may flourish among rushes, you know what rushes are? Those reeds that grow by riverbanks. I don't know why this kind of metaphor is being used by the prophet. It's set in nature because the blast that comes is a natural phenomenon known in the Middle East. There's a special name for it, maybe somebody here knows it. Where this unexpected dry heat comes out with a wind and a gush unexpectedly and so blistering away that wherever it passes, it brings a devastation. You might have been abounding by the riverside, by access to water, by the rushes, but when this heat comes, everything withers. So God is using a metaphor of nature as a warning to Jewish communities, don't be deceived by your present affluence, security and comfort because that kind of affluence that you're enjoying is obtained independent of me. You have an obligation being the Israel of God to make me known, but your very lifestyle that is the expression of godlessness, of only a superficial Saturday accommodation to me, but that your main purpose and being is your own success and prosperity is contrary to the witness for which you are intended. And therefore though I allow you to enjoy the benefit of it for a season, there must come a time in which it will be judged. As I read this this morning, I thought that though this is set in time and in history, it's actually a warning of an eternal blast where everything withers, but it is irrecoverable. It is a final and ultimate judgment for which reason God gives preliminary judgments. I'll have to check, am I okay, am I coming through? Do you know the name Baselius Schlenk? If you don't, you need to. Talk about 20th century articles. This is the German founder of the Evangelical Sisters of Mary in Darmstadt, Germany, who is a prophetess and has written some remarkable books on repentance, on Israel. It's a German movement born out of the rubble and ruin of World War II where the firebombing that fell on Darmstadt was so horrendous, Darmstadt was not a military target. But it was firebombed just as... I'm trying to think of these other German cities. One was famous for its ceramics, Dresden, China. You know, it's nice to talk to a literate audience that knows something about history and can help a stumbling speaker who can't... The description in those places was the heat was so intense in the firebombing people in flight were caught in the melting asphalt and trapped and the air was sucked right up from the city so that tens of thousands died from asphyxiation before they were burned. And this movement interpreted that as a judgment upon Germany for being the diabolical rod of God's judgment upon Israel. And so the whole movement was born out of a repentant attitude toward the Jew. And indeed they have a home in Israel for surviving Holocaust victims and they had, I don't know if they still have it, on the Mount of Olives a precious little place where I used to bring groups whenever we conducted a tour to Israel to visit. And these are just sweet sisters. I'll tell you how remarkable an environment they have or had. That I'm told that David Wilkerson when he visited there threw himself on the compost pile. The sense of holiness was so great, so hallowed over there at Darmstadt property that, the story goes and I think it's true he flung himself upon the compost heap. I didn't move, I was not so moved myself but I was profoundly affected. The moment that I walked through that gate no longer in Darmstadt, you were in heaven. It was a hallowed atmosphere. And there was a time when they dispersed their women's movement. See this is outside of our American experience that there are pious communities of women who have chosen to be married to the Lord and have forsaken natural marriage. They wear wedding bands, they're married to the Lord. Very precious dedication. And when they dispersed and I had an occasion to visit their representation in Egypt I thought it's one thing to have a hallowed atmosphere in Germany but let's see you have it in Egypt, in Cairo. The city of 14 or 16 million that stinks from the dung of camels and oxen and goats and donkeys where in four lanes of traffic you have six to seven lanes of cars who move by sensor, by honking of horns they feel each other's presence. It's another environment you can't even begin to understand it coming from Tulsa, Oklahoma. The congestion, the filth, the air, the spitting, the nose blowing. You don't dare shake hands or extend a left hand to any person. It's considered an insult because that's the hand you use in tending to your hygiene after you have defecated in a land that does not know what toilet paper is. That's a luxury only the West can afford. Can you understand things like that? So I remember going up the steps of their apartment in Cairo thinking yeah it's one thing to maintain this pristine hallowed atmosphere in Germany. Let's see you pull it in Cairo. And the door opened and I was back again into heaven. So it's possible to bring heaven to earth and to maintain a heavenly environment even in the midst of congestion, traffic, noise, filth, and all the rest. Now how did that come in? What made me turn aside? About a movement born in repentance toward the Jew. So I commend Basilia Schlink, S-C-H-L-I-M-K, for your consideration. Her book on repentance, The Secret of the Joy-Filled Life is an all-time 20th century classic. And when I was asked once to recommend what one book would you recommend ought to be translated into Russian this was at a time when there was not much access in that nation for the church I said this one book on repentance, The Secret of the Joy-Filled Life. Because it came out of the hard school of judgment. Because they prophetically interpreted the calamity of the destruction of World War II on Germany as a statement of God's judgment for the mistreatment of Jews. They were prophetically attuned to interpret their history prophetically. And to explain that meaning to the nation itself. So would to God that we had a church in America and in the world that could explain to the Jewish communities within its midst the meaning of Jewish history. And what the pattern of it is that however successful a season we may enjoy and rise to places of prosperity, affluence and security you always need to remember that the pattern is that there's a day that comes when the east wind blows and brings a withering blast and dries up and removes all of the treasure that you have obtained. And why is that? Because the treasure that you have obtained you have obtained independently of God. It's through your own striving, your own effort, your own energy and you have assumed that God has gone behind to bless and condone or consecrate but you're living out of your own independence from God. And he allows you a season of prosperity some kind of an acceptance even the thought that maybe finally we have found a home where we can have a security, the United States of America. Germany, what is the United States next to what Germany had meant for Jews? The land of Goethe, G-O-E-T-H-E Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer great philosophers, Kant, K-A-N-T ethical philosophy, the ideals the land of reformation, the land of culture, the land of history that such a nation can one day fail to provide the kinds of amenity of civilization that its culture suggests and that within a decade that whole thing can come tottering down and that nation that is most esteemed for its civilization can become the most brutal, the most vile that the death, it was not just a systematic death but the cruelty of that death the stripping of their identity as human beings the giving of a number, not even a name and the whole relentless persecution of Jews right through to ashes was out of the land of Goethe, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Wagner Mendelssohn, all of the great names of music, philosophy culture, poetry, literature, art and if that could happen within a decade in a nation of that history what could happen then in America? what kind of assurance and security can Jews have here? where our civilization is only skin deep and if Jews are enjoying any sense of assurance or security how much confidence can they have and how much would it take to bring the whole thing down and that's what we're being warned of in the scripture although he may flourish among rushes the east wind shall come notice the prevalence of the word shall shall come a blasphemy of the Lord rising from the wilderness and his fountain shall dry up his spring shall be parched it shall strip his treasure of every precious thing this shall is irrevocable finality it's unassailable certainty shall, it's inevitable, must come God is speaking, it shall there's no if or maybe or I guess or it shall come whatever you're enjoying now there's a moment that shall come a blast out of the wilderness even the image out of the wilderness like German civilization turned to a wilderness civility turned to brutality something coming unexpectedly will take all of your prosperity all that you've enjoyed and bring a blight and make it to be parched and strip this treasure of every precious thing it's a fearful statement and what in fact is hell but this this is a statement of what could happen in historical time but it is also a statement of what will happen eternally and it's for that reason that God allows preliminary judgments where you're stripped of your treasure in this life that you might recognize the hand of God in it because it says the Lord, a blast from the Lord not from Hitler not from Nebuchadnezzar a blast from the Lord, not from Arafat from the Lord it's a judgment from the Lord in historical time in order that you might be awakened to the fact that you're under double jeopardy as Jews you have a double indictment you have a double obligation you're the only singular covenantal nation I have not spoken to any other nation as I have spoken to you I have not called any other nation to the kind of relationship to which I've called you to the Jew first blessing but also curse you have a double obligation and you suffer a double consequence so if I allow these things to befall you in time and in history it's a warning of what will be a final and irrevocable judgment that will be eternal where you'll be stripped of every treasured thing what does it mean to be prophetic? it is to understand history and contemporary events as a statement of that which points to what is eternal Baselius Schlinck speaks of the judgments in time as being preliminary judgments because what is the ultimate judgment? hell itself eternally in which there's no recovery no second chance there's a finality and if this is not at the foundation of our perspective we have no ground to see ourselves as being a prophetic church if we do not understand the issues of time as seen in the context of eternity we do not see and this is the character of our American Christianity it is not set in the context of eternity there's no solemn sense that these things are coming from God as forewarning of a time in which there will be a final and irrecoverable judgment that this is a preliminary to save you from that well that's so remarkable a way to understand time and history and circumstance that's so unusual that is prophetic that's God's own seeing that's the way God sees and that's the way he would communicate and commend reality to men what is the church? it's God's agent in the earth to communicate to an unseeing and a world that is unwary, unsuspecting the truth and the meaning of its own history, life and eternal future because it can't be expected to see as you see it has not your advantage it has not the spirit of God it has not the scriptures they're secular, they're lost, they're blind they think that this life is everything they're caught up in material things and success and they're living a fool's paradise they don't know that there's going to be a blast coming out of the wilderness that will strip their treasure of everything and that the author of that blast is not accident but God himself, the Lord in judgment that there's a sword of Damocles over their head that can fall at any moment there needs to be a warning proclaimed it's a fool's paradise to think that your treasure is secure whether you're a Jew or a Gentile or a prosperous nation the blast of God can come at any moment of his choosing and deserves to come and it's not because he's malicious but because he's just and merciful that that blast comes now while we have yet to understand it and bring us to a place of repentance because the treasure that we have accumulated we have accumulated independent of him and have made it our idolatrous substitute for him and so he allows the blast to come that we might recognize this is the hand of God and repent and be saved from an eternal blast where we're stripped of all treasure eternally this is prophetic seeing this is definitive reality this is the way in which the church and every nation should understand its own history and circumstance and be able to relate to the nation this understanding for it is God's and it is intended for their repentance the drought in the southwest when I flew over Midland, Odessa my God was it barren why? all of the freaky weather circumstances inundation with so much rain and flood in one place and absolutely out in another reversal patterns all kinds of adversities and crises are preliminary judgments are you saying every single thing? well, why not? isn't God sovereign over every single thing? and if there are exceptions in which it is caprice in which it is an accident and not the deliberated judgment of God at least from our point of view as believers our first consideration is that it is from the hand of God as judgment and if it proves not to be that then we're free to consider other speculation and other thought but our first disposition always ought to be to see things coming as from God which is not itself a cruelty but a grace to save us from a greater judgment that is eternal and irrecoverable I'm giving you the broadest parameter of how reality itself is to be understood prophetically for to understand it in that way is to understand it in God's way that's our calling as church and to understand it so that we might proclaim it to those who are completely naive and unsuspecting and lost what does lost mean? you're in a darkness of misconception and deception about the meaning of your own life and existence you're not interpreting it rightly you're living a fool's paradise you think this is going to go on forever and you'll enjoy this kind of lavish lifestyle that is itself morally an offense but the day will come that there's a blast that will come out of the wilderness and it will strip your treasure of everything if God gives us that to understand he gives it to us that we might proclaim it to the unsuspecting but how shall we proclaim it with prophetic credibility if we ourselves are living in that fool's paradise see what I mean? we're robbed of credibility if we ourselves are enjoying that prosperity and living that lavish lifestyle in a way that is hardly to be distinguished from the world itself we can only speak prophetically as one coming out of the wilderness with a loincloth you understand? as being separated from that world that is having a ball at the expense of God without any acknowledgement of him but if we ourselves are playing their game we're robbed of any testimony of any credibility we cannot pronounce a warning and therefore their blood will be upon our hands church is not a picnic it's a responsibility it's a profound calling the church has as its intrinsic call this prophetic function what, are we to be all Atatzis? all Elijahs? no but as a corporate entity, yes we have a function in the corporate life as the prophetic presence of God in the community and nation in which we're placed and this is how we need to perceive reality because we have the privilege of the scripture to instruct us but you see how that has to be read? I'm almost embarrassed for last night and the feebleness in which this scripture was introduced but this morning we're hoping to do it a little bit more justice and in this to give you an example of how the scripture itself needs to be understood needs to be searched that we cannot bring our gone with the wind reading mentality to the word of God and brrrr I show my mother something in the Psalms I said, mom, read Psalm whatever it was current at that time 118, I forgot so she read, right through 118 right through 125 in about 15 minutes yes, she read it she mechanically read it she gained nothing I said, what? you read all through that in so short a time? yeah, but my mother checks out eight books a month in the library large print edition of every piece of romantic pap that you can imagine full of erotic detail for a 95 year old woman she's ruined by the reading pattern of a lifetime in which she reads through the books retains nothing it's an amusement and a moment's distraction and brings this reading habit to the scripture gains zero because she does not know how to dwell how to ponder how to ruminate word for word that this is not gone with the wind this is wholly writ this is the word of God to teach us how to understand and how to live rightly and not only to avoid judgment but to save others from it who are totally naive and unwary and are on a collision course not only in time but in eternity although he may flourish the east wind shall come see what I've done here? every shall is yellow marked I want it to leap off at me from the page shall, no if and or but it's not a speculation it's a possibility that maybe it's an inevitability shall come it's irrevocable you can't fight against it be warned by the word it shall come live now in anticipation of that shall do now what will save you from that blast because the word of God says shall do you read it that way? this is high seriousness that this is making this the measure of all things this is taking God's word to heart because he's not a man that he should lie he doesn't play with words we do words and communication are cheap trivial but when God says something we need to heed it and if we'll heed God in his speaking then how much more will we be tempered in our own how much more will we be saved from triviality from cheap unctuous how you doing brother blah blah blah our words will be measured sane significant it will be a blessing it will be a sacrament to hear a word coming from a saint because we know that it will be well chosen and well spoken because the saint by his training will avoid anything that is trite it's a grace to hear the word from a saint in conversation because we have been schooled and raised up by the Lord about the significance of speaking words by him who is the word and it affects everything phew well what I would give Lord to be speaking this to a congregation of my own people on the Shabbat morning in their synagogue where we're blocked out and the rabbis hold full sway who endorse the lifestyles of their congregants because they receive the benefit Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur is a fashion show go into your local synagogue you should be there and see what they come like we in our Easter finery they in their Yom Kippur best and all nicely what's the word sanctimoniously endorsed as appropriate lifestyle by the paid flunkies who give them a little seasonal encouragement until next year so long as they pay their dues it's a system of lie and deception to reinforce men in their mode of life that they have chosen independent of God and slightly sanctified by a casual allusion to him on high holy day occasions where there is no solemn searching of one's soul or being contrite before God in failure because they have no knowledge and just to suggest that you need to examine your lifestyle and that is being lived independently of God and your good deeds and your charities are only throwing a bone to the most high that man would be out the next day and his $150,000 a year income with him and whatever other benefits which by the way bears a remarkable comparison with our own Christianity we have flunkies of our own who are well paid and handsomely rewarded so long as they don't raise the questions about the truth of our life it's a stink before God the whole filthy system of it but where is the cry? where is the cry coming up out of the earth? where is the prophetic anguished cry of God about this? where is the blowing of the whistle and the whole fraudulence of it? that it's a mock that it's against God and that there will be an eternal comeuppance that there's a blast that will be coming out of the wilderness that will be an eternal blast and all treasure will be lost and men will rue and lament for eternity their misshaped misbegotten mislived lives too late to remedy anything where's the cry? it's a blast from the Lord oh dear saints if we will not see in the adverse circumstances that come to us that come to the nation that come to the world that come to Israel as coming from the Lord we don't see if we don't see God in judgment we don't see and if we don't see God in judgment we don't know God we have created a fiction of our own and put the label Jesus upon it that satisfies our own carnal hearts and in no way is the truth of himself unless we understand that the blast comes from God this is the deepest respect for God in judgment to allow that to be dismissed as accident or the aberration of history a Hitler who comes to power or an Arafat or whatever as somehow not coming from God is to do the gravest injustice to God himself it's to say that he's not sovereign it's to say that it's accident and caprice that rules in life and God is somewhere obscure he has set the thing in motion it's ticking away but he's no way involved or intervening or present in the history of what takes place in his creation and with mankind and with Israel what a slight, what an offense to discount God as God while seeming to pay him an honorable respect and yet not to see him as a viable presence in his own creation and moving it toward his own end so if you don't bring this perspective to the Jews of Tulsa who will? they surely don't have it if you don't bring it to the church at large who will? for the church doesn't have it the world is secularized it's devoid of God it's full of its own ruminations and speculations but God is not a consideration it's a horrendous denial to the God who is creator and coming king it shall unassailable certainty from the Lord unquestionable source humankind here's the commentary of Eugene Peterson praying with the prophets humankind cannot hope to salvage anything from its sin God will wipe out both the sin and its so-called benefits in much the same way as the dread east wind comes out of the desert and dries up everything in its path he says humankind and I wrote over it that's what Jewry is that's what Israel is why is Israel the object in the textbook of God's instruction for us all because it is the summation of mankind it is the personification of man this is man in his independent self-will and rebellion it's an instruction for all nations in God's dealing with that nation God will wipe out both the sin and its so-called benefits this is the blast from the Lord because God is the supreme causative agent in history believest thou this God I wrote this in the supreme causative agent in history not only in nations but in your history you see God as the supreme causative agent unless we see God like that we do not give him the respect and acknowledgement that is his what then is our praise what then is our prayer what is our so-called worship if we have not seen God in this way it's hollow it needs to be aided and abetted by overhead projectors and sound equipment the praise of Israel that knew God did not need any electronic assistance it bellowed up it gushed it was a testimony they knew that they knew that they knew this is before the advent of modernity in ancient times before there was such a thing as evolution they knew that they knew God is the causative agent why did God bring Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans to a land of promise follow me in the land that I will show you what was Ur, what was Chaldea what was the whole Mesopotamian civilization the fertile crescent fertile for what reason rivers the mighty Euphrates and the Tigris along which Ur was located you know those rivers moved their banks over the course of time so much as 10 miles those civilizations fail he called Abraham from a land that looked down to rivers as the source of their economy their traffic, their commerce their civilization to a land where there was only one river hardly worth talking about the Jordan no more than a glorified stream the Jabbok where Jacob wrestled with the angel these are not major tributaries they are only significant spiritual waterways but you don't derive your economy from them you don't look down for your Nile to overflow its banks and to bring its sediment and its riches you look up to the heaven hence cometh your early rain and your latter rain if you are indeed being blessed by the God who issues it in your covenantal faithfulness to his way you see the radical shift for Abraham from looking down to looking up to see God as the causative agent for these early and latter rains are not geophysical phenomena they are a blessing that comes down by a God who sees a people living in the consciousness of him and are faithful in their covenant responsibility we've lost that sense we've lost it we're seeding clouds with airplanes and creating rain or trying to assuage the lack of rain we don't see God as causative agent this is the age of science, modernity, man this ancient view needs to be restored for this is very truth and you're going to do it in your occupation, in your field of endeavor with your sophisticated colleagues where you'll be an anachronism you'll stick out like the proverbial sore thumb you'll be looked upon as freaky they'll be whispering about you behind the water cooler he's gone strange, he used to be a nice guy he was a Christian but he was a nice guy now he's so suffused with God everything is God, God, God he sees God in everything come on, give us a break you become strange and indeed that's what we're called to be strangers, pilgrims, and sojourners in the earth if we're not strange and we're acceptable we are out of the faith Christianity has only become a commonplace that they can well afford to tolerate, and even give us tax benefit and deductions because it threatens nothing but validates a whole system that is anti-God and we're just a little little something to ordain the opening of sessions of Congress and for the candidates to say that they believe God or that they're born again to take this view of God as causative agent and that he's already bringing preliminary judgments into the earth as a forewarning of a soon coming and final irremediable judgment that is called Hell and that is eternal and unchanging and fixed is to mock you as queer you're strange, you're out of it that's why they took believers and brought them to mental institutions in Russia under its communist rule and gave them shock treatments and put them in straitjackets because they had this strange devotion to an invisible deity didn't you know that? it's a kind of insanity that society needs to cure by drugs and shock treatments because here's this stupid people in deference to an invisible deity and living as if he's true and as if he has spoken and has called us to another way in opposition to the way that is demarcated by the secular political authorities who are in the know and have all the marbles these people trust this invisible God they hope in him that their physical condition and their own well-being is not the issue of the state but the issue of a God that's insanity or its highest sanity, one or the other and it's a sanity of a kind that will save a nation from looking to man by a people who not only affirm that as truth but live it as so and if it's not so, they're willing to perish they would rather perish in a failed God than succeed according to a system that's been a witness unto me oh... Doug wasn't with me on this trip to Russia you know what I found out? I'm a celebrity people were falling on my neck on the streets who have read reality apostolic foundations, spirit of truth it changed their lives I was telling Doug and Laurie this morning I addressed them as a deep-souled people it's a wood to God that your history and your tradition as a deep-souled people you know, when you go down into the underground in the metro, in Moscow, in St. Petersburg the subways are not like New York there's no stink, there's no mess, there's no graffiti they are places of marble and tiles, and art, and decor, and cleanliness and people hanging on their straps in the car are reading hard-bound books I'm not talking about the sport page or a little sneaky pornography they're reading Tolstoy, Turgenev, Gogol they have a literature, and they read it they're readers, they're deep-souled people no wonder they responded to my books as they did I've never seen that kind of response in the French edition, in the English edition but the Russian edition they are the hope of their nation so, you know that line from Shakespeare from Hamlet where the returning prince is watching the grave digger preparing the place for Ophelia Hamlet's girlfriend, unbeknownst to him she had committed suicide and he comes and he sits by the graveside while this man is digging up and they're having one of their beautiful philosophical conversations and he strikes a skull and it's the skull of the old court jester Yorick, Y-O-R-I-C-K and Hamlet holds the skull because he had one time been bandied on the knee of this court jester and Shakespeare puts into his mouth this great line where be your jibes and your gambles now where are your jokes now where are those things that were once so entertaining that you set the whole court to with ripples of laughter now it's a vapor, it's gone and here you are, skull where are your jibes and gambles now that's what we need to be saying to Jews where's your prosperity now Steven Spielberg and your dream factory and your multi-million billion dollar corporations you're not just millionaires, you're billionaires you're rolling in it but where will it be one day when the blast comes out from the wilderness in the heat of God to bring your treasure to ruin and you'll lose everything may God give me the personal privilege of having Steven Spielberg come up our muddy road in northern Minnesota in flight from southern California and up into Canada and down through us that I might personally consult him and explain to him the meaning of his present misfortune it's going to happen saints and if it doesn't happen I'll be surprised but we ought to live as if we expect it to happen because that is living that is serious living and that is speaking the warning that's proclaiming an alert that's setting before men the things that they need to understand whether or not it takes place in their generation we have every reason to believe it will take place because this is the end of the age are you living like that? do you believe this is the end? and does your lifestyle and manner of living express that belief? when people are confronted by you or come in touch with you is there something implied by the way you conduct yourself that this life is coming to its conclusion this age is running down it's irrecoverable morally it's degenerate it's becoming a Sodom and Gomorrah but I'm looking up for my redemption the Lord is at hand the judge is at the door we're coming to the conclusion of the ages and it's marked with a final apocalyptic judgment and burning and a great heaving of nations in a final last gasp before the new and everlasting and enduring kingdom comes and this is the predicate of my life this is the foundation of all my understanding I'm only a transient resident here I'm a pilgrim, stranger and sojourner in this earth I'm looking for a city whose maker and builder is God I'm not giving you a new gospel this is definitive faith why haven't we had it Art? because we haven't had prophetic men to proclaim it to restore it to speak of these verities that are unchanging that we might ourselves proclaim it to the unsuspecting and the unwary who will soon have to face this God in a terrifying moment when he comes and at the throne of his judgment so I write little notes do you do that? whenever I come to another country and there's an interpreter and he opens his bible and it's unmarked my heart sinks what? an unmarked bible? what kind of interpreter can he be? he's never marked his bible there's never anything that has caught his attention that he wants to put in brackets with an asterisk and an arrow how can you read without a pen in your hand? and write marginal notes like this so should the church see and see in order to proclaim and make known the perspective of God to the unsuspecting and unwary Tulsa, Oklahoma 7am, 8am September 30th, year 2000 are you writing notes? are you commenting your margins? are you in the scriptures on the morning of September 30th, 2000? do you have a morning devotional time? when you get up early, inconveniently and look at the scriptures for that day you're reading the psalm for that day the chapter of the book of Proverbs your devotional readings I've got four devotional readings that I go through every morning not the least of which is Oswald Chambers, my utmost for his highest how many people in this room have never read Oswald Chambers, my utmost for his highest? come on only two? everybody else? three get thee to a bookstore today and demand a copy Oswald Chambers, my utmost for his highest there is a selection every day and what a selection I don't know of another writer with greater depth of insight into the subtlety and intricacies of the spiritual life than he every morning you should be reading what the Lord has spoken through this man whose life was taken when he was 36 or 38 but his wife kept fastidious notes of all his utterance it's so precious and here's Eugene Peterson who's not dead either God will wipe out both the sin and its so-called benefits in much the same way as the dread east wind comes out of the desert and dries up everything in its path where be your jibes and gambles then? where's your stock market result then? where's your hope for retirement then? and all of the other things that have invested a false confidence and have celebrated idols where will it be then when that east wind blast when that comes? your so-called benefits are only ephemeral e-p-h-e-m-e-r-a-l which means momentary and subsiding everything in this world will turn to dust or rust but your treasure that is in heaven hey these are not quaint little spiritual aspersions this is truth and we ought to live as if we believe that the things that are eternal are the things that are abiding and that which that you can handle and see will be corrupted in passing Paul said I how does he say it in first Corinthians beholding that which is invisible and eternal makes my present affliction both momentary and light in view of the eternal weight of glory whew my lord if that doesn't leave us hanging limp on the ropes what kind of a distorted perception of reality is that that the thing that is invisible is eternal and that he beholds it in such a way that it makes his present affliction momentary and light that he sees something with so acute an appropriation that it affects his present condition he does not feel pain like others it's light and how much pain has he had to bear much in every way because of his apostolic suffering but he doesn't feel it it's like Stephen the stones bounced off of him he was hardly aware all he saw was the heaven opened and Jesus standing by the glory of God the father this is either madness or this is definitive sanity that's not for us in a final moment of martyrdom but all our moments oh saints, saints, saints and that's not a casual seeing that's the result of an intention of an intense and personal kind that looks, that puts aside the things that are visible does not give them the kind of credence that they think that they command it's a false reality and you just give it a passing acknowledgement only to the measure that it's required but your real attention is focused on the thing that is invisible and eternal that's what you see and that seeing is definitive it's a choice that needs to be continually maintained because have we ever lived in a civilization, in a society that has made more of a demand upon our natural seeing and feeling and sensibility than this generation listen, how many people share my age how many can remember the depression years the little corner grocery store before the advent of the supermarket and corridors with goods and merchandise and foods stacked up with boxes in the most appealing colour and attraction which men have psychologically determined even the level of at which level your eye is going to fall upon it don't you understand there's a psychology of merchandise there are men who give their lives to studying the principles by which human beings can be drawn to buy, to purchase to have, to possess and unless you're consciously aware of that and are resisting it and touching it only in a minimal way you're going to be sucked into that and that will be the predicate of your reality you will be made unable to contemplate the things that are invisible and eternal they'll have no meaning for you the word eternity itself will have only a shallow faint kind of ring if it has anything at all it will be one of the most idle words that can be spoken eternity? I'll think about that when I die or will you be thinking too late the church that is the church takes eternity into its profoundest consideration and it affects every consideration well I'm so reluctant to let this text go I want to wring it out every drop God forbid we should miss any iota of God's intended meaning because this is not just a little piece of policy, this is out of the blood sweat and tears of a nation this is out of the tragedy of a failed apostate Israel again and again and again in its history whether it's 586 B.C. and the destruction of Jerusalem where the blood was up to the bridles of the horses over a million were slain the whole nation was cast into exile the loss of the temple the holy city one of the greatest tragedies of Jewish history or 70 A.D. under Rome or the recent holocaust even the article of this Romanian Jewish playwright and what was happening in Romania in the World War II time to Jews again and again and again that blast has come out of the East and will come yet again one final time even in America wherever Jews have enjoyed their prosperity there will be the time of Jacob's trouble because they have not lived as Israel they have lived as Jacob schemers and manipulators who have not yet met God and wrestled with him in a final night a Jacob's trouble must come who's warning them? who's preparing them? who's inviting them even now to come into the arc of safety in the Messiah who awaits them with open arms even in the Yom Kippur season because the making of mitzvot the good deeds in the day of fasting avails nothing who's pleading with them to understand that? and what will your reward be for your effort? scorn and rejection anger even hatred you're willing to suffer that? to suffer the misunderstanding of men? because you can't remain silent and it's not the issue whether you're going to succeed or not but the issue is that you cannot remain silent and still maintain an integrity before God the eternal destiny compels you to play the fool with your Jewish neighbor or acquaintance or business associate or whosoever and if you don't have them all the more shame on you how is it you don't have them? why have you not a Jewish contact? why have you not sought it? why have you not visited their synagogue or their cultural institutions and prayed Lord bring me contact you know how Richard Wurmbrand was saved? you know who Richard Wurmbrand is? 13 years in solitary confinement the most Christ-like figure I have ever seen in my 36 years of believing I was reminiscing the other day I was only saved months and back again in Oakland California back into the teaching profession and invited to a local meeting through a Jewish missionary I came into the room and I panned the room and there was my eye stopped at a man sitting on the piano bench I couldn't go beyond that I looked at that man I was riveted I said that's if ever I would see Christ this is what he's got to look like it was Richard you know how he got saved? a shoemaker with a minimal education barely literate himself a tradesman in a Transylvanian village in Romania had one prayer before the Lord all his believing life long Lord give me one Jew let me be your instrument and agent in salvation to one Jew and the Lord brings this atheist Richard Wurmbrand to this shoemaker and the man speaks to him about the Lord and brings him into the reading of the New Testament for the first time and Richard is zapped he takes the New Testament to a rabbi and the rabbi reads it for the first time and he says in Yiddish Wie schön, wie schön how beautiful, how beautiful because of a shoemaker I've got one photograph in my study and it's not my natural father or any other figure like that it's a man whom I've never met a German man and I got the one of two pictures from his daughter who's the historian of the village in which this German man lived who was kicked out of his own state Lutheran church because of the radicalness of his testimony and in the Hitler time Jews used to come at night the village was 65% Jewish there's a cemetery to this day that still exists and the daughter knows every address of which Jew lived in what house where the synagogue was, where the mikveh was now occupied by Germans and when they forbade Jews to buy anything from stores they would come at night and he would give them food he was himself a shoemaker but he had a garden, he had an animal he had milk, I don't know what he had and he warned them to get out while the getting is good as many as heeded him fled and their lives were saved as many as disregarded him perished you ought to see this portrait of this man talk about a visible saint how many times was he interrogated by the Gestapo as Basilea Schlinck herself was and they never laid a hand on him it's the one picture that I have in that room of the man so God can use a shoemaker and in fact that's the reason for your existence as the church you shall be a witness unto me you shall move them to jealousy by your mercy they may extend mercy it's the mystery of God to raise up a church of an essential gentile kind to be to them the testimony of their God that in seeing you they would be moved to jealousy and realize what they have forfeited by their ersatz, synthetic and artificial rabbinical religion or secular pursuit because they see in you the reality of their God that's all I got saved since you never had a more rabid anti-christian than this guy was you would have avoided me at a hundred yards angry because I saw the holocaust as being a christian crime but the Lord put them in my path precious, transparent guileless saints girls high school graduates with no credential of an intellectual kind that would be of interest to me that I should have turned on my heel and walked away in contempt but I could not there was something magnetic something I couldn't identify that came through this transparency this guilelessness, this innocence the willingness even to walk with me with a pack on my back hitchhiking through Europe 34 years old looking for philosophical answers and I meet this little girl on vacation in Switzerland who had graduated from the midwest some place a wasp, white anglo-saxon protestant the deadliest kind that a jew could ever encounter but something about that girl and she's walking with me and I'm probing her motives hey, what are you doing this? aren't you afraid of me? no, she said it's the love of God how come you're being kind? it's the love of God every question is the love of God, the love of God what are you trying to do, drive me up a tree? I can't stand this God talk it's cheap so this kid mentions God one more time she's had it she engaged Christians in debate and wiped them out and sure enough she mentions God again how could she not? I said, ok kid, look you sweet girl that I can't stand this God talk answer me the one question that no Christian has ever been able successfully to answer you're talking about God how do you know that he is? got her now what is she going to tell me? some little thing that she's learned in Sunday school? I've got my steam engine rolled up no hesitation this little snub-nosed, freckled-faced, sandy-haired thing she said Archie said I know that God is he lives in me and down went the ox boom, one blow that one statement and I was crunched lives in me and I thought I don't know how long it took me to recover what hit me it wasn't even theological let alone intellectual anyone can say I know God, he lives in me what's the power? the power was, it was true and she had the face to prove it and when we Jews see that in a snub-nosed, freckled, sandy-haired gentile face we're finished it's unarguable it's the ultimate testimony of the reality of that our God lives because look so here I am, 36 years later because of that little girl and many have benefited in Africa, Indonesia, in Singapore in Egypt, in Israel all over the world, Scandinavia you name it and I've been there in behalf of the Lord who saved me through a gentile face so Lord, precious God on high may the Jews coming out of their synagogues today who think that they have done you service have filled the religious requirement once a year who have a solemn and religious piety for the moment on their faces see a face of another kind bring them somewhere my God in collision with a saint who knows you and can make you known not because they're sophisticated because they have all answers but because they are what they are by the grace of God because they've made you first and foremost because you've heard their prayer Lord give me a Jew mercy precious God Lord how many Yom Kippur's have we left before the bottom falls out before that east wind blows how long will it take before their treasure is dried up and that suddenly and no one has pronounced a warning no one spoke of judgments to come that are the very grace of God grant us grace my God to be a prophetic church a statement in our community of how to read reality how to understand history how to see the scripture as just a little bit more than a Sunday adornment the flippant thing that we can go through in a moment how to get into it and how for it to get into us to change us to see as you see so that we might proclaim as you would proclaim to those who would otherwise perish unwary and unsuspecting victims when the east wind when the blast comes not knowing what hit them and not even any expectation that that very storm is brewing now oh precious God Lord thank you Lord help us break us up in our deeps my God show us how defunct we have been how time serving and convenient our present Christianity is how content we were to go along and enjoy our services and not to in any way constitute a threat to the status quo because we are not threatened so I pray for my brother at the water cooler in the office in the place of business or profession wherever these children are placed strategically by you in the neighborhood where there is life and death issues to be propounded that they will not withhold that they will be willing to be Christ's fool willing to be misunderstood willing to bear reproach willing to be looked upon as strange even to the point where it threatens their own security because the time is short and they're living as if they believe that and if they should lose their present position and security because of this radical obedience to you they'll learn by faith that that doesn't preclude a source of another kind and they're willing to have their lifestyle altered so we bless you Lord we're privileged people you don't talk like this to everybody we even prayed this morning that you would address us as sons and daughters that you would give us your deepest heart on this Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur season that we would hear from your heart what where your heart is what is your present ache and we thank you for the privilege of it Lord God forbid we should dab at our eyes and go back to life as usual afterwards but that being a proper people who have been addressed by the Lord and given the privilege of hearing his heart would say what would you have for me to do how might I factor this in how is this to be understood in my daily life what now Lord how do I go from what do I do with this if you can use a shoemaker how will you use me I want to be used I don't want to be embarrassed in the day of eternity that I live beneath the high privilege of God in Christ and have not much to show for my days I've never led anybody to the Lord I've never challenged anybody to ask me what's with you I've been a nice guy I'm one of the boys I've had all this and Christianity too help us to live our present life in the light of eternity that we need not fear your coming as retribution and as judgment for a failed Christian life but a joyous anticipation that when you come you bring your rewards with you and give to each man according to his labors let there be labors by God issued and released because of this morning because of this time of visitation that would not have taken place if you had not taken the initiative to shake us and to call us to reality in the light of eternity thank you Lord put a seal on this let it be fruitful this is a small congregation this morning let others be affected break the heart of your church my God your church in Oklahoma your self-satisfied church that counts its blessings its little institution its nomenclature its particular pet perspective and theory and doctrine whatsoever that they think is their distinction come my God let your voice be heard in the earth your testimony go forth through a people thank you my God break our hearts for the Israel in our midst whom we have allowed to languish in their ignorance and patted them on the back and paid them compliments of a deceptive kind and have not told them the truth of their condition that there is no man good no not one we've been cowards we've been afraid my God of their reproach but we have not been afraid to disappoint you so before these days are out even these very days Lord let something go forth to the Jewish community in Tulsa that would not otherwise have taken place if you had not spoken let something happen at the campus there at the State University of Oklahoma at Stillwater before Jewish intellectuals and faculty members and orthodox Jews and unsuspecting secular kids because somewhere in Tulsa in those days a travail of birth was taking place among believers who were willing for the inconvenience and the pain of it because they knew eternity is at stake that art is not going in his little ability as if he's got a handle on something he's being borne up by the prayers of the saints that know he's on a headlong collision with powers of darkness that if they could they would chew him up and spit him out that there's a struggle a conflict of an ultimate kind between kingdoms that the university campus is itself a worldly stronghold powerful in pride intellectual pride that needs to be penetrated by the poles of our generation in Mars Hill encounter because they're sent and buoyed and sustained by the prayers of saints who know thank you Lord we bless you for this morning you're taking us by surprise we don't know how to go further maybe we should not go further we just call upon you even ourselves repentantly for our failed Christianity for our shortcomings thank you Lord