It has turned out to be a beautiful day’s weather—nice and cool and rainy. So I feel much more at home. But I do not see any possibility of extending the conference for the sake of the good weather we have.
It is really an answer to prayer. Some of us have prayed for that weather, and in the end, as always, the Lord has answered our prayers. I wish that we really could learn, as God’s people, to pray in matters that are more important.
I heard, when I was in New York, that some Christians had been praying against this Moon preacher from Korea. The Lord heard their prayers, so that rain poured down the whole day when this deceiver was going to have his big meeting at Madison Square Garden. Only half of those expected came, and it seems it turned out to be a failure.
How much we could see God working in our nation if we, as the Lord’s people, could really understand this lesson which we have sung in this chorus:
If My people, who are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face,
and turn from their wicked ways;
then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
—2 Chronicles 7:14
Now, brothers and sisters, it has been my privilege to share with you on the Beatitudes. But it would be impossible to cover the last four of those beautiful Beatitudes.
Besides, I have felt, during the last twenty-four hours, an increasing burden concerning this matter of learning to pray and intercede for our nation—learning to rule by prayer, not only in theory, not only when we come home one day, but also while we are here on this earth.
So, if you will forgive me, I feel the Lord has given me liberty to share tonight, in this last session of mine, on this very important matter.
I would like to read, first of all, two Scriptures. The first is found in Isaiah 56:7. It is only the last sentence:
For Mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.
Then, from Matthew 21:12-13:
And Jesus entered into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple,
and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold the doves;
and He saith unto them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer:
but ye make it a den of robbers.
Shall we pray?
Lord, we come to You this evening. Lord, we are well aware of our great need this very hour of Your presence with us. Lord, we feel like Your servant Moses: if Your presence shall not go with us, it would be better for us not to move.
If Your presence will not be with us this night, Lord, there will be nothing to speak of, nothing to hear. O God, we pray that You will come right in.
We have been singing of that blessed name of Jesus, of the mighty power in that name. Lord, we remind You that You have said that when we gather together, two or three, in the name of Jesus, You will be with us. You will be in our midst.
We pray tonight, Lord, that this may indeed be reality among us. Help us, dear Lord. Open up our eyes. Let us see Your desire for Your church, Your purpose for Your church. In Jesus’ name, amen.
The Lord Jesus entered into Jerusalem and went into His Father’s house, into the temple. But He did not find the thing that was the purpose of it all.
He found many other things in the house. He found a lot of religious activity: buying and selling, various forms of sacrifices. But the very thing that was in God’s heart, and which He had designed His house to be, was not there.
He got angry. He took a cord and drove out all those money-changers. He turned over the tables, and He said with a very strong voice:
My house shall be called a house of prayer; but ye make it a den of robbers.
Brothers and sisters, I wonder: if the Lord were to come back and enter into His spiritual house today—enter into His church—I wonder, really, what He would do.
I wonder if He would find the same lack of prayer, the same lack of understanding that the church has not been put here on this earth for its own sake. God has a great plan. He has designed His people, on purpose, to use His people in things that have to do with the whole earth and every nation upon the earth.
I wonder whether He would do the very same thing as He did in Jerusalem that day. I am afraid, to a certain degree, He would do it.
Wherever I go today to meet the people of the Lord, I very rarely find many groups of believers, or many local churches, that really have any concern for the nations of the earth—and perhaps no concern for their own nation.
My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.
Very often we see that the church has become introspective. It has become self-occupied, self-centred. It has been filled with religious activities.
But the very important—indeed, the most important—function of the house of God is lacking. There is a tremendous lack of prayer today among the people of God.
Look at the prayer meetings wherever you go. Look at that little group of people, often old sisters, gathering together in the ordinary prayer meeting during the week. They struggle and pray and intercede, both for the church and for all that is of concern to our God.
I met an American Pentecostal pastor in Scandinavia. He said to me, “We have a saying in America: Sunday morning, we can see how popular the pastor is. Sunday evening, we can see how popular the church is. But at the weekly prayer meeting, we can all see how popular God is.”
I believe it is a very true thing. Oh, the lack of prayer there is among the people of God today.
“You have made it a den of robbers.” You have made it something else.
I am quite sure that what robs, more than anything else, the glory of God and His desire to see His purpose fulfilled on this earth is the lack of prayer.
Do you not feel that we ought to be responsible in some way, as the church, as the Lord’s people, for the things that are going to happen and the things that are already happening in our nations on this earth? Do you really believe that God is not concerned, that He is indifferent?
If you look in Ezekiel 3, you have some very strong words that have often shaken my heart. Ezekiel 3:16-21:
And it came to pass at the end of seven days, that the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel:
therefore hear the word at My mouth, and give them warning from Me.When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die;
and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life;
the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way,
he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.Again, when a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity,
and I lay a stumbling-block before him, he shall die:
because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin,
and his righteous deeds which he hath done shall not be remembered;
but his blood will I require at thine hand.Nevertheless if thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin,
he shall surely live, because he took warning; and thou hast delivered thy soul.
Do you understand that kind of responsibility? Have you sometimes wondered whether God might hold us responsible for the things that are happening around us?
When I look at my own country, there is only one thing I truly can say. After being in prayer groups for six years and praying regularly for my own nation, I believe that the church has a great deal of the guilt for my nation and the way things have gone.
I believe that because of the lack of prayer, there has been no watchman who could warn the wicked, who in prayer could build a wall to defend the people from all the enemy’s wicked attacks.
One morning, as I was praying, I saw before me a bill. On that bill were written some of the dreadful, terrible things that our nation had been involved in through the last years.
There were twenty thousand abortions every year in Denmark. This is murder. There were thousands of drug addicts on that list. There were thousands of broken homes.
There were things in the Danish church which had already begun to undermine biblical morality. I thought to myself, “Well, one day there must be someone who shall pay that bill.”
I often think that we are blaming our government too much. We think that they are the ones responsible, and that they will have to stand and be responsible for all the evil things around us.
But it came so clearly to me that morning, when I prayed for Denmark: I am afraid that the bill may look different. I am afraid there is a bill that will be presented one day to the people of God, and what is written upon it is only one thing: lack of prayer.
Lack of faith. Lack of prayer caused the enemy to come in like a flood in our nation, and we have not felt responsible for it in any way.
Oh, if the Lord came into His church today—the church which has been appointed and called to be a house of prayer unto all nations—the Lord would find a lot of entertainment in the church.
The Lord would find many beautiful sermons in the church. The Lord would find the exercising and enjoying of different blessings in His church. The Lord would find singing and choirs, perhaps even clapping of hands, and in some places dancing too.
He would find a lot of religious activities. But would He find that the house of God really functions as a house of prayer unto the nations?
Brothers and sisters, the devil is not scared in the least of sermons. He is not scared of the activities we normally have in the church. He is not at all frightened. It does not mean a thing to him.
The only thing he fears is a praying church. The only thing he knows will be able to overcome all his evil assaults and break down his authority is the praying church—a church that knows how to pray and intercede and win victories.
Not only when we come home to heaven, because now we need to win some victories around us.
If the church comes to understand something of what spiritual warfare involves—what it means—it is a church that is willing to go into battle.
The Lord spoke to our whole fellowship at the beginning of this year. He spoke very strongly. Through some terrible accidents among us, He brought us down on our knees. We called upon the Lord and inquired why things like that were happening.
The Lord said to us, “I want you to understand that I am calling you throughout the whole year of 1976 to pray as you have never prayed, for the church in Denmark and for the nation of Denmark.”
Right from the beginning, we have set apart nights to pray together—whole nights waiting upon the Lord and battling in prayer.
The Lord says in 1 Peter 4:7:
But the end of all things is at hand:
be ye therefore of sound mind, and be sober unto prayer.
Oh, how we need to understand, brothers and sisters, that we have a high calling to come into this prayer warfare and indeed be a house of prayer unto all nations.
God has invested all in His church. That is very true. He has tied Himself and His purpose up with the church.
If you look in Ephesians 1:22-23:
And He put all things in subjection under His feet,
and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
This means that there is nothing from God that can come to us except through the church. The church has become a pipeline. Everything that God wants to do must come through the church.
God is sovereign. He can do everything at any time. But in His sovereignty, He has chosen to work with His people. He has tied Himself up with the church. He has made the church His body, and into that body He has put all the fullness of Christ, all the life of Christ, all that Christ is and has won, all the authority of Christ.
It is only when the body really understands its calling and begins to function and cooperate with God that the purpose of God and the fullness of God can flow through to all the needy people on the earth.
Ephesians 1:22 says that God “gave Him to be head over all things to the church.” It does not say that Christ was made head over all things in the church. It says that He was made head over all things, and as head over all things, He was given to the church.
The Christ whom we serve is not only head of the church; He is head of the universe. He is head of the earth. Yes, He is head of the nations. He has been put over all creation. He is head of all creation.
But we have made Him head only over church affairs. Yet He wants, through His body, to extend His unlimited power, glory, and authority—His reign—from the church over all nations and all rulers.
Colossians 1:13-18 says:
Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love;
in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins:
Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;
for in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers;
all things have been created through Him, and unto Him;
and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
And He is the head of the body, the church.
“Also,” it says. That means He is more than head of the church, of the body. He is head of creation. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. He is Lord of all.
He is saying, “The earth belongs to Me.” One day the glory of the Lord shall fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.
The church is a vessel through which God is going to work. It is a prayer house.
In Revelation 1:6, we are told that we have been made kings and priests. Now, any king is meant for ruling and reigning. It is only the Scandinavian kings who have no power to rule; they are only figureheads. The Danish Queen has been in the United States recently, but she has not the least power.
But when Revelation says that we have been made kings, it means that we have been called to reign and to rule, as we have been listening all this week.
When it says that we have been made priests, it means that we have been put into an office—priests, those who intercede between the people and God. We have been put into a position where we have been called to intercede for the nations, for the people. We are a house of prayer for all peoples.
Look at Psalm 149:5-9:
Let the saints exult in glory:
let them sing for joy upon their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,
and a two-edged sword in their hand;
to execute vengeance upon the nations,
and punishments upon the peoples;
to bind their kings with chains,
and their nobles with fetters of iron;
to execute upon them the judgment written:
this honor have all His saints.
Praise ye the Lord.
Oh, if we could see it. We have been called to sing praises unto God—praise the Lord for that—but we have also been called to have a two-edged sword in our hands, to execute judgment, to bind kings with fetters of iron, to execute upon them the judgment written. This is an honour for all His godly ones.
May I ask you a question? Do you believe that Christ is King now? Do you believe He is crowned King, or is it something that is going to happen? Has He been put into authority? Has all power in heaven and on earth been put into His hands now, here and now, today?
Look at Psalm 2:2-6:
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord, and against His anointed, saying,
Let us break their bonds asunder,
and cast away their cords from us.He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh:
the Lord will have them in derision.
Then will He speak unto them in His wrath,
and vex them in His sore displeasure:
Yet I have set My King
upon My holy hill of Zion.
The King has already been installed. He has been given as head over all things to the church, which is His body.
Oh, friend, what marks the mature church is what we find in the letter to the Ephesians. It begins with a revelation of all the fullness that is in Christ, all the blessings. How wonderful that is, and how we need it.
It goes on explaining how we need to walk in all that we have received. It goes further, explaining how necessary it is to see the house of God built up—the church being built up.
But it ends in the sixth chapter, as you know well. Ephesians 6:10-12:
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.
Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood,
but against the principalities, against the powers,
against the world-rulers of this darkness,
against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Finally. This is the last part of the address that the apostle Paul has for the church in Ephesus. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.
When we see the fullness of God in Christ, we come into it. We grow, and we walk in it. We see the church being built up. But it ends up finally: God wants to express through that church and use that church for conflict, for great things, to put it up against the power of evil, the rulers of this darkness.
Even in the beautiful Song of Solomon, where we are taught about this lovely bride, in the first two chapters we see how she is blessed by God. She enjoys the banquet and all the wonderful experiences of the Spirit.
But there comes a phase in her walk with the Lord where He takes her out into the wilderness to give her a new vision. There she beholds the king, seated in his palanquin, lifted up by sixty mighty men of war.
This is a picture of God’s longing: not only that a people may be blessed, walk in Christ, and be built up as His body, but that we might be able to lift up the Head and walk into warfare.
We are to bring that supreme authority, that supreme power of God, into operation against all the terrors of the night, as it is put in Song of Solomon 3.
Oh, how God is longing for the body to be able to lift up the Head and to bring the Head—the victorious Head, the mighty name of Jesus—into battle and into victory.
We read, among all these wonderful bridal words about the bride, that she has the most extraordinary, remarkable beauty. It says in Song of Solomon 6 that the beauty of the bride is “terrible as an army with banners.”
What a beauty. Have you seen, sometimes on television, when they have a great display in Moscow and the whole army comes with all the tanks and rockets? It does not look beautiful. But in the eyes of God, that is beauty: when He has a church He can use in spiritual warfare.
Be strong in the Lord. Put on the whole armour of God. What a beauty.
God has called us to exercise authority. Go with me to Revelation 8. We will read some verses.
And when He opened the seventh seal, there followed a silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
And I saw the seven angels that stand before God; and there were given unto them seven trumpets.
And another angel came and stood over the altar, having a golden censer;
and there was given unto him much incense, that he should add it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.
And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand.
And the angel taketh the censer; and he filled it with the fire of the altar, and cast it upon the earth:
and there followed thunders, and voices, and lightnings, and an earthquake.
—Revelation 8:1-5
This is the exercise of divine authority by the prayer ministry of the church. It is wonderful that God is preserving all the prayers of the saints.
I never read anywhere in the Bible that He is going to preserve all my beautiful sermons. None of my dear brothers’ sermons, however good they have been this week—God will not preserve them, only in your hearts, we trust.
But He is keeping the prayers of the saints. They are the most precious thing. They are on the golden altar.
Those prayers, however weak they are, however feeble they are—oh, God is making them perfect through the incense of the Spirit.
Remember Romans 8:26:
And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity:
for we know not how to pray as we ought;
but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
We do not know how to pray, but the Spirit helps our weakness because the Spirit intercedes on our behalf. He knows God; He knows what is the will of God.
When these prayers are coming up before God, they are being conformed into tremendous power that falls down on the earth: thunder, sounds, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. In Revelation, all this fulfils God’s plan.
I believe that God has designed His house to be a house of prayer unto all nations. I believe that God has tied Himself up with the prayers of His saints. I believe that God is not moving if there is no prayer.
There was a sister who once dreamed a vision. She came into heaven, and while she was walking around, she saw a great reservoir. It was filled with some water.
In the dream, she found herself asking the angels, “What is this?”
“Oh yes,” he said, “this is the place where we are preserving the prayers of the saints.”
“Oh,” she said, “I am so sad because there is only a little water in the reservoir.”
“Yes,” he said, “but whenever it is filled up, we will pour it out upon the earth.”
Oh, how necessary is the prayer ministry of the church. That sister became an intercessor from that day. She interceded both for the church and for her nation before God.
There has never been any move of God, there has never been any outpouring of the Holy Spirit, without prayer. Not that God could not do it—He is sovereign—but He has tied Himself up with that vessel of His church, that pipeline through which all that God will do today has to come.
He has tied Himself up with the prayers of the saints. So how important it is for us to understand, brothers and sisters, that we are to become truly a house of prayer unto all nations.
In Matthew 18, we have a well-known Scripture about the prayer ministry of the church. Matthew 18:18:
Verily I say unto you,
what things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
As you may know, it does not say that God will bind on earth and then it shall be bound in heaven. He does not say that God will loose on earth and it shall be loosed in heaven.
It says that we shall bind, and we shall loose. When we are binding, God will confirm it, and He too will bind. When we are loosing, God will confirm our loosing, and He too will loose in heaven.
We have got the key. There is nothing being bound if the church is not binding anything. There is nothing being loosed if the church is not loosing anything.
It says in the old story about Moses fighting the Amalekites in Exodus 17. You remember how Moses went up on the mountain and lifted his hand with the rod of God in it.
As long as his hands were lifted, they had victory down in the valley, where Joshua and all the warriors fought against the enemy. But as soon as his hands sank down, the enemy came against them and was able to subdue them.
You remember how Aaron and Hur went to sustain and support the arms of Moses, so that his hands could be lifted up with that rod of God until the sun went down. They got total victory that day.
This is a picture of exercising authority. That rod was a picture of God’s authority. We must learn, through prayer, to exercise authority in the church today over all things that God is putting beneath our feet.
We have seen in Denmark that God is able to do far above exceedingly beyond what we even can ask or pray for.
One day I was walking in the streets of Copenhagen. I had seen so many evil things coming forth in our nation in the last few years. I saw an advertisement for a movie called I Saw Jesus Die.
I found my co-worker, a brother in Christ, and we decided to go and see what it was all about. We went in, but we were not able to stay there for more than ten minutes. It was the most wicked thing of everything.
How blasphemous it was. How untrue. How they tried to defile the Lord Jesus in that film.
We went out, and the next day we went back to our church fellowship for a prayer meeting. In the prayer meeting, God put it upon our hearts to exercise authority over that wicked movie.
I had been travelling in Denmark for five years, going to schools and colleges to speak to young people about the Lord Jesus Christ. I knew what such influence could do in order to break down the pure image of the Lord Jesus—the highly exalted Saviour without sin.
That night, we decided before the Lord that we would ask Him to forgive us and give us permission to bind that film. I shall never forget what happened that night.
We were one hundred and fifty. I have the privilege of being in a group of believers whose prayer meetings almost exceed the Sunday morning worship in number. They are the biggest meetings we have.
There were one hundred and fifty of God’s children standing on their feet, and we spoke as one man: “In the name of the Lord Jesus, we bind this movie and its influence.”
We went home after we had prayed for some other things too. The next morning I opened the paper, and to my great surprise, the movie was no longer there.
I phoned the theatre to try to find out what had happened. They told us that, during the second performance, the soundtrack broke down.
Two weeks went on, and then it came up again. They had got the soundtrack repaired. This is like the enemy: he comes again, and again, and again, and again.
Two weeks later, we saw the same advertisement. We had a prayer meeting that very same day, so that night we said to the Lord once again, “Lord, in the name of Jesus, we bind that movie.”
We went home after we had prayed for other things. The next morning I was very interested to see my morning paper. Can you believe it? It was gone.
I phoned the theatre. Do you know what had happened? The police director had called the director of that theatre, and he had received appeals from some very important people.
That night, the director of the theatre did not need to be persuaded. He was afraid. So he decided by himself to take that film off, and it has never been there since.
It was just like that. But the enemy has many other things.
At the beginning of this year, there was a very famous actor in Denmark who was playing in a theatre production. It was the most expensive play there had ever been in Denmark. They came to America and were here for several months to study all kinds of things to make it a big, smashing show.
But it turned out that this actor was to perform a scene in which he was to walk on water like the Lord Jesus, speaking in the most filthy and dirty way, mocking the name of God.
When we heard it, we were together, and I told some of the brothers, “We ought to pray about it,” because it was to go on television.
We have only one television channel in Denmark. Everyone watches television, and the whole nation would hear and see that mocking. You have so many stations and programs, but everything that happens on Danish television, everybody knows about it.
So we decided to bring the matter before the Lord. While we were praying, the Lord said to me, “Ask that this whole theatre shall come to economic ruin.”
What type of prayer was I to suggest to my dear brethren—that we pray for an economic disaster for this whole thing? Yet I stopped the fellowship and said, “Brothers, I feel that we should pray that God will make it so that this whole thing will go into economic ruin.”
So we prayed that night. You will not believe what happened. They only went on for two weeks, and then they discovered that they were lacking one million dollars. So they decided to quit. It was an economic disaster.
We are called to rule, even in our cities and in our nations.
The apostle exhorts us to pray for those in authority, that there may be suitable conditions for the Word of God to come to as many as possible. God desires that as many as possible may come to salvation.
We have a responsibility. But so often we are not aware of it, and we do not bother. We do not care about these things.
I remember Brother [unclear] told me about a similar thing in Richmond. I do not think he would mind my mentioning it here. A pornographic shop had started up in the Richmond area of London.
As far as I remember, the brothers and sisters prayed about it. One brother prayed that God would put a bomb on the whole thing. I thought he was so spiritual and so saintly.
Do you know what happened the next morning? It had all burned out in a fire. There was a gas heater that had overheated. No people had been injured, but all the material had gone. Praise God.
It is amazing when we discover that God will bind when we bind, and God will loose when we loose.
The last thing I will speak to you about is another well-known, evil, wicked, blasphemous film about the Lord Jesus, called The Many Faces of Jesus. You may have heard about it here in the United States. It has gone around the whole world.
It happened three years ago that a very evil film producer, who had earned a great deal of money on a dirty pornographic movie, conceived this wicked idea of making a pornographic film about the Lord. He announced it openly.
Through an independent film institute in Denmark, he got governmental support. He got one hundred thousand dollars, and he started up.
When I saw that, do you know what I did? I went to see that man. I called him on the telephone and asked for an appointment. I went to see him, and I spoke with him for four hours.
I did exactly what Ezekiel had been told to do: I warned him about doing it. Brothers and sisters, we have seen in history that God can punish a nation when the measure of sin has become full.
It was part of the conquering of Canaan that the measure of sin in that wicked country had become full, and God would destroy it and punish it.
I went to see him, and I spoke with him for four hours. I tried to persuade him. I even tried to bring him to the Lord. But nothing could stop him.
He had a map on the wall, showing a beautiful place down in France where he was going to shoot that movie. I noticed that place in France very carefully.
I went home and said to the friends, “We have got to pray that the Lord will hinder this man from getting down to France and using his film.”
The most unusual thing happened. I have never heard of anything like that before.
As we were praying, one of the brothers stopped the meeting and said, “Well, I see that our leading brothers ought to write a letter to the Pope in Rome.” Can you believe it? It is a very, very Protestant fellowship we have in Copenhagen. Why do you not come over and see for yourself?
We prayed about it, and we found that this idea came from the Lord. So two of us sat down and wrote a letter to the Pope.
But we knew the Pope would get a lot of letters and perhaps never read them. So we mailed it to the Roman Catholic newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, to the editor, and asked him if he could publish it.
Do you know what? He did it. Two days later it was on the front page of L’Osservatore Romano.
It was just before Easter. Down at his summer residence, the Pope was sitting and reading his own newspaper, and he saw that thing. In his Easter speech, he took up the whole matter and spoke against it.
All the cardinals in France began to tremble, and Catholic priests began to say, “In our country, this film is not going to be made.” The French government also began to act.
It ended with the filmmaker being forbidden to enter France. They turned him down. Not only there: he tried to get into nine other countries in South America, but no one would let him come in.
When they heard about it in the United States, they wrote so many letters to the Danish ambassador in Washington that he was actually called home to confront his government in Copenhagen.
He appeared on Danish television. I saw him. He said, “This thing could easily damage Danish exports. We have got to stop it.”
Do you know what happened? The government took back all the money.
Nothing happened for a while, but a year ago this man came back again. In some way, he succeeded in getting another grant of money for this wicked film.
This time, something happened for which I am happy there was a minister of culture. He was still the same man who had been in and out of office for some time. This has really been an answer to prayer.
I will tell you the story and finish with that. The Danish minister of culture was a left-wing socialist minister, very atheistic. The second time, he defended the film and the money which had been provided.
When we heard about that, we said, “We had better pray a little for this minister of culture. We had better put him under the authority that is in the name of Jesus.”
It is incredible what prayer can do. Christ is head over all things. He is head over prime ministers, presidents, ministers of culture, parliament, and everything else. He is head over all the wicked powers that are behind. He is head, and every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess.
I remember that prayer as if it had been prayed yesterday. The prayer went like this: “God, if this minister of culture cannot be used for Your purpose, get us another minister. Get us another minister.”
In two months’ time, there was an election in Denmark, and this minister of culture and the whole government fell.
The strange thing was that, as minister of culture, he not only lost his position as a minister; he lost his seat in Parliament. He was unemployed for one year.
Do you know what happened in that year? He came back again. We have many elections in Denmark, and then he came back again.
But he was completely changed. He took off his whole support from the film and defeated it. He brought it through to a final victory. He was the very man who had supported it before.
God can bend the heart of a king and change the attitude of a man.
Now it seems as if we have got the final victory. But we know the enemy has transferred it to Sweden, and even to Spain. The Christians in Sweden and Spain are in the highest degree of alarm. I guess those two countries have the same reason.
When I come home, we will be travelling a bit to visit the churches, the children of God, the people of the Lord. For we have seen that the house of God has been called to be a house of prayer unto all nations.
Now, if we are going to reign with Christ forever and ever, if we are going to rule—whether it is in the millennium, one city, five cities, ten cities—I think it is about time that we get started right here and right now.
There is no such thing in the Word of God as coming from spiritual ignorance and lack of responsibility into being a king and a priest and ruling over it. It has got to start down here, by the prayer ministry of the church, by being involved in spiritual warfare against the rulers of darkness.
Brothers and sisters, it was all meant as an encouragement to you.
Lord, we pray that You will raise up Your church, which is not only equipped, gifted, and filled with the Spirit, but which will also put on the whole armour of God and be raised up in prayer.
O God, give us this vision that we have a battle to fight. We have a struggle, not against flesh and blood—not with men, not with politicians, not with Parliament—but with the evil forces, the rulers in this darkness.
God, open our eyes and lead us into a practical outworking of this great calling in these desperate days in which we are living. In Jesus’ name.