We turn once again to that Scripture in Nahum, Chapter 1.
I will just read Verse 3 tonight:
The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power,
And will by no means clear the guilty:
The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm,
And the clouds are the dust of His feet.
Then, if you will turn with me to Revelation, Chapter 19—the nineteenth chapter of Revelation. From Verse 3:
And a second time they say, Hallelujah. And her smoke goeth up for ever and ever.
And the four and twenty elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshipped God that sitteth on the throne, saying, Amen; Hallelujah.
And a voice came forth from the throne, saying, Give praise to our God, all ye His servants, ye that fear Him, the small and the great.
And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigneth.
Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, and let us give the glory unto Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready.
And it was given unto her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure: for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
Then also, staying in the same book, Revelation, Chapter 10, from Verse 1:
And I saw another strong angel coming down out of heaven, arrayed with a cloud; and the rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire.
And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left upon the earth;
And he cried with a great voice, as a lion roareth: and when he cried, the seven thunders uttered their voices.
And when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying, Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.
And the angel that I saw standing upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his right hand to heaven,
And sware by Him that liveth for ever and ever, Who created the heaven, and the things that are therein, and the earth, and the things that are therein, and the sea, and the things that are therein, that there shall be delay no longer:
But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then is finished the mystery of God, according to the good tidings which He declared to His servants the prophets.
Then again, back into the Old Covenant, to Zechariah, Chapter 4:
And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep.
And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have seen, and behold, a lampstand all of gold, with its bowl upon the top of it, and its seven lamps thereon; there are seven pipes to each of the lamps which are upon the top thereof;
And two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.
And I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are these, my lord?
Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, Knowest thou not what these are? And I said, No, my lord.
Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain; and he shall bring forth the top stone with shoutings of Grace, grace, unto it.
Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you.
For who hath despised the day of small things? For these seven shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel. These are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.
Could we just bow in a further word of prayer?
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful. Now, when we come to Your Word, we do not have to depend upon our own energy or talents. But, Lord, You have provided us with an anointing—an anointing both for the speaking of Your Word and the hearing of it.
Dear Lord, we want to recognise that this evening. We want to recognise, Lord, that we can do nothing ourselves by our own energy, our own talents, however great they may be. But, Lord, we praise You that You have given us an anointing through the finished work of our Lord Jesus, and You have made that anointing a living reality in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
Dear Lord, will You come upon us now? By faith, we stand in that grace and power that is ours in the Lord Jesus, that we may be enabled to speak Your Word this evening, and we may be enabled to hear what You are saying.
So, Lord, we commit ourselves to You, and we shall give You all the praise and all the glory for answering this prayer. For we ask it in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
And I had laid on my heart that little phrase in Nahum 1:3: “The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm. The clouds are the dust of His feet.” Quite an extraordinary revelation.
A tornado, for you folks here, is not generally the kind of thing we expect to find the Lord in. We expect Him to come behind it, mopping up, helping us, enabling us, as it were, to come back to normal life. But that the Lord should say that His way is in the tornado, in the whirlwind—which is the Middle Eastern version of the tornado—is quite extraordinary.
And the same that He should be in a storm. We tend to think that all storms that come to us have to be devilish. But it says that the Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm.
It says, “The clouds are the dust of His feet,” which means that you cannot see Him. Only by faith can you believe that His way is in the whirlwind and in the storm. There are clouds; you cannot see the Lord. Yet we are told the clouds are the dust of His feet.
In other words, He is progressing. He is walking; He is moving through. And as He moves through, you may not see it. You may not feel that there is any way that you can see a purpose in it. But the Lord has a purpose in it all.
Last night, I spoke of this in connection with the nation. We spent quite a time talking about the way the Lord has His way in the whirlwind.
In this past century, we have seen a whirlwind in the First World War, from 1914 to 1918, and we have seen it again in the Second World War, from 1939 to 1945. In those two terrible wars, which hit the world like a whirlwind, like an enormous storm, the Lord had a purpose.
And now we are in the presence of the possibility of a third. What happened on September 11, which I think has changed the whole climate in the United States, probably has woken up the people of God more than they have been woken up for a long, long time here.
Because even in the First World War and the Second World War, it did not touch American soil. Americans were involved, but it did not touch American soil. For the first time, something happened on American soil.
For most Americans, I am sure, it was incredible—almost unbelievable—that here in this safe haven planes could be hijacked, stewards and stewardesses could have their throats slit, and the planes used as bombs to destroy over three thousand people in one single day.
It was a savage thing. It cannot ever be justified. But the fact is, in that whirlwind was the Lord. Because the church in America did not wake up, cruising along in its affluent way, riding sort of along on the crest of its own waves. It never woke up.
And the only way the Lord could wake up the church was through something so dreadful as September 11. Before you criticise the Lord, first we should criticise ourselves. Maybe it would not even have been necessary if the people of God had woken up.
It is very easy to blame the President, to blame the administration, to blame the CIA, the FBI, and everybody else for the lapse in security. But it may never have happened if the people of God had only been walking, as it were, with the Lord—sensitive to the Lord.
So the real responsibility lies at the door of the people of God.
I spoke last night for some time on Islam, because I believe that we are now facing a possible holy war. The American administration, the British government, and most of the European governments have bent over backwards, speaking about Islam as a glorious faith, as a nonviolent faith, as a peace-loving faith, and I do not know what else.
Because they are so afraid of Muslim communities within their borders becoming the object of the anger of many people within those countries, they try to protect them. But, in doing so, they have done a great disservice, because people get the idea that what is happening is not Islam but some aberration of Islam.
Well, I am not going to go back over what I said yesterday, or we will not be able to say anything tonight. But it still remains a fact that Islam was born in violence, was spread in violence, and those of us who live anywhere in the shadow of Islam know the spirit of violence that is within it.
There are millions of decent, peace-loving Muslims who just want to live their lives in peace. There is no doubt at all. But the principality, the world ruler of darkness, that is behind Islam is not peace-loving.
That spirit is a spirit of enormous power. And Islam is coming to its climax. It is very likely that if the United States does not take it on, poor little Israel will—not because she wants to, but because she will have to. They will try to obliterate her as well, and in so doing Israel will have to, as it were, fight for her life.
Well, I said all this yesterday, so I will not go over it. There is so much more that could be said. But there is one thing I want to add to what I said last night: why I personally believe that we are on the verge of a very great conflict.
I had a very dear friend. I have known him for many years. His name is David Pawson. I do not necessarily agree with all his views, but he is a very dear and choice servant of God, a faithful servant of God.
About five months ago, he woke up in the middle of the night and felt that the Lord spoke to him and said to him, “Islam will take over Britain.” He was so shocked that he could not go to sleep.
His dear wife saw him in a very disturbed state and wondered what was troubling him. She said, “What is wrong with you? Are you feeling ill?” And he said, “No, but I think the Lord has spoken to me, and I cannot believe it is the Lord.”
She said, “Well, what did He say?” He said, “He said to me that Islam will take over Britain.” Well, she said, “Why do we not commit it to the Lord in prayer?” Ladies are often very practical.
“Why do we not commit this thing to the Lord in prayer and go back to sleep? Tomorrow morning, we will see if the burden is still with us.” So they committed it to the Lord in prayer, got back into bed, and went to sleep. In the morning, they both woke up with a far greater burden.
They both began to ask, “Lord, what are we to do?” And the Lord said to them, “You are to make a study. Withdraw from all other things for a while, and make a serious study.” Now, David is an academic. “Make a serious study of Islam, and I will give you much understanding as you do this. Make a series of videos to be spread all over Britain about what you will discover.”
So he booked the studio, booked the technicians—everything else, which you have to do almost three months in advance—and began his studies. He said, “In all the time of my sort of fifty years of ministry, I have never had so much revelation given to me on any other subject.”
Because he was so uncertain, he brought together some of his closest friends, most of them ministers who really do know the Lord. He fully expected that they would say, “David, you are overboard.” But instead, the whole lot unanimously said, “We believe God has spoken to you, and you have to do something.”
So he went ahead. He asked one hundred people to come as a kind of audience, a congregation as it were, to speak to in the video. One hour before the video, he had a stroke.
He was actually there, ready to do it. He had a stroke which struck his tongue and his lips. He asked some of the brothers who were already there whether he should stop, whether he should get into hospital, or whether he should go on.
He felt, “This is too odd. This has to be the enemy. Here we are; we have got everything done. We are right at the point of having it recorded, and we have this.” And he went through eight sessions, beginning at ten and ending in the evening, with breaks between.
That is eight hours of ministry. Somehow the Lord gave him back his voice, but he said it was very difficult. Nobody who has seen the video will detect the stroke. But when it was over, he was paralysed down the whole of his left side and was taken back into hospital, into intensive care.
The specialist came to him and said, “Mr. Pawson, we are very puzzled by this whole thing. You had none of the normal evidence of a stroke, but there is no doubt you have had a stroke.”
I believe that is very significant. It shows me that Islam is coming to its climax, and woe betide anybody who confronts it.
Well, David is now back to normal. He travelled all the way out to Jerusalem to speak in the celebrations over the Feast of Tabernacles, and we praise the Lord for it. But this is the thing that made me feel there is something far bigger in this war on terror and what is happening.
You know yourselves: we do not want to be racist, and we do not want to single out certain ethnic groups. But the fact that the men involved in the sniper attacks were converts from Islam, and that throughout the world—in Bali, in the theatre in Moscow, among Chechen Muslims and some Arabs—you see the same thing, is extraordinary.
Wherever you look, every outrage has the spirit of Islam behind it. So it is no good saying that this is not Islam. Who is it? It is not the Chinese, it is not the Indians, it is not the British, and it is certainly not the Americans.
In other words, whilst we do not want to single out one particular group and heap everything on them, we have to be honest anyway. We talked about it last night, and that is enough.
Now I want to speak this evening about the church. The Lord says that His way is in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet.
In the midst of all that is happening—the storm, the conflict, the battle—God’s purpose for the church will be completed. If we think that His purpose for the church is going to be completed in sunshine, spiritual sunshine, we have another thing coming.
There is an enemy that hates the purpose of God concerning the church more than anything else. There are two things that the enemy hates: one is the true church, and the other is Israel. We are going to confine ourselves this evening to the whole question of the church.
In my estimation, the conflict over the church, the compromising of the church, the lukewarmness of the church, the artificiality of the church—all these things require the most drastic action on the part of the Lord.
The only way sometimes He can bring those who really love Him and really want Him into utter devotion is by a whirlwind. In that whirlwind, He blows away all the self-manufactured churchianity. He blows away all the self-manufactured Christianity.
It is like a kind of spiritual nuclear bomb. It clears everything on the ground, and you are left with only what originates in God.
It is such a shame that the Lord has to use such methods. But the problem is you and me. We are the problem that the Lord has. It means, basically, that He has to take the most drastic action sometimes in order to bring us to the place where we will commit ourselves to the purpose of God in our day and generation.
It is much easier to be in a kind of affluent society producing an affluent church. It knows it all; it has it all. It believes it has all faith. It believes it understands the mysteries. It believes it is the steward of those mysteries.
And the Lord says, “You have no idea. You are blind, and naked, and miserable.” It must have come as an enormous shock to the church of Laodicea to discover that the Head of the church and the Saviour of the body was outside of it.
It was His party, and He was not in it. It has become something else. It is incredibly pathetic—and I use that in a proper English way—when you hear the Lord knocking on the door and saying to the church, to born-again believers, “If any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in and sup with him.”
He was not supping with His church. They obviously did not even know that. They think, “We have our Bible studies.” Of course they have Bible studies. This is not some dyed-in-the-wool, dead institutional thing. This is a church—a living church, a good church—but somehow or other it got divorced from the Lord.
The Head of the church and the Saviour of the body is actually outside of it. They have the Lord’s table, Bible studies, evangelism, and prayer meetings. It is incredible to think, and the Lord Himself is outside. The door is closed on Him.
How could the Lord ever get Laodicea somewhere? By spewing them—by vomiting them out of His mouth. That is a whirlwind. That is a whirlwind. He will have to deal with them so drastically that they either become ice-cold or they become red-hot.
It is amazing to me that in these days, in which we shall see so much conflict, so much tension, so much fear, and so much death, the purpose of God for the church will be completed—fulfilled.
Not necessarily in every believer, but in those who will be purged of all that is contradictory and brought to the place where they ought to be. It is the grace of God.
Maybe we shall complain at the time because we cannot see the Lord. There are clouds. Actually, the clouds are the dust of His feet. But we complain: “Where is the Lord in all of this? Why should He do this to us? Why should a whirlwind hit us? Why should a storm hit us with such force? We are children of God. Where is this God of grace and mercy?”
But it is His very grace and His very mercy that brings the whirlwind upon us and the storm. Because in so doing, do you think that any one of us, once the work is completed and we are in glory with the Lord, will complain about the whirlwind and the storm? I think not.
We will worship the Lord with tears that He should have been so much in love with us that He was prepared to take the most drastic measures to bring us to the place where we could see what was false, artificial, and shallow, and be done with it.
It is very interesting to me that in that vision of Zechariah, the house will be completed in spite of all the conflict of mountainous obstacles and difficulties. It will require living faith to work with the Lord until, in the end, the top stone is brought forth with shouts of “Grace, grace.”
I have said it, I think, many times here, so some of you older ones will probably remember. I used to say, “Is it not interesting that they say, ‘Grace, grace,’ unto it?” Especially when the top stone is going right into place. Does it need grace any more?
When I was young and had never read the Bible, I used to think to myself, “Surely it should be, ‘Glory, glory.’” But all the builders could say was, “Grace. Grace.” As if they were saying, “This work began by the grace of God. It was preserved by the grace of God. It was developed by the grace of God, and it is now completed by the grace of God.”
That requires faith when you cannot see the Lord in the storm, as in the whirlwind.
I do not want to labour the point, but it seems to me that the Lord will use the whirlwind and the storm to blow to pieces everything that is not of Himself. He is not going to play games so that we can be comfortable.
He will blow everything to pieces that has to be blown to pieces because it is not going through to glory. If it does not originate in the Lord, it will not end with the Lord. Only what begins with the Lord will end with the Lord.
In other words, when the Lord Jesus said, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end,” what He was saying is this: if I am not the Alpha, I cannot be the Omega; and if I am not the beginning, I cannot be the end.
But the problem with us is that we are so susceptible to the work of the enemy. He comes as a seducer, an angel of light, a messenger of righteousness, a minister of righteousness. Can you imagine the devil as a minister of righteousness and a messenger of light?
The enemy works unceasingly to bring things into the life of the church that do not have their source in the Lord. Sometimes it comes as light. Sometimes it comes seemingly as righteousness. But once it has come in, the whole work is compromised.
So it is a tremendous thing to me that the Lord will use the whirlwind and the storm to blow away the chaff. Praise the Lord: He gets the wheat. The only thing you lose in a whirlwind is the chaff. What is that worth?
That is why the Lord takes this kind of dramatic action, especially as we near the end of the age and the completion of the purpose of God.
So, dear child of God, what I am trying to say is that what does not originate in Christ will go to its own place. I hope you heard that. What does not originate with Christ will go to its own place. Its home is Babylon. That is where it came from, and that is where it will return to. Birds of a feather flock together.
But that which is the work of the Spirit of God, that which originates in Christ, will reach glory. Do you think the Lord, who is the Master Builder of the church, is going to stand by and allow all other kinds of things to come in? Of course not.
What He will do is say, “I am going to use a whirlwind. My way will be in that whirlwind. I will knock the whole thing out.” I am now talking about the church in general.
What is not of God, what did not originate in the Lord Jesus, will go to its own place. The Lord will actually use the whirlwind and the storm to force it that way, so that there will be a whole false church.
We read about it in Revelation 13, 14, and 15. You know it, I am sure: this woman who rides on the beast. She is called Mystery Babylon, the mother of harlots.
Is that not interesting? She is gilded with gold, precious stones, and pearls, so she looks just like the real thing. The real thing is a virgin; she is a harlot. The real thing is the bride of Christ, produced out of gold, precious stones, and pearl.
But this woman who rides on the back of the beast looks like her, but she is not her. It is artificial—a veneer, skin-deep. When the storm comes, everything that belongs to that kind of harlot will go to it.
And those who are truly of God will be forced to make a decision. Will they go that way, or will they go that way? I hope that I am making sense to you.
The fact of the matter is, when an affluent society produces an affluent church, what else can you expect?
When I go sometimes to places where I am asked to speak, I see magnificent buildings costing tens of millions of dollars. There is a minister of music, a minister of education, a minister of youth, the chief minister, and a whole lot of other things. It is simply amazing to me.
They are such well-oiled machinery—absolutely marvellous. I always get the same feeling. Now, do forgive me. That is only someone from abroad who can say some of these things and get away with it. But forgive me.
I think American believers, especially evangelicals, want to have a challenging message. It must be challenging. If the minister does not give a challenging biblical message, it is not good.
But you must not have a message that is revolutionary. That is too much. You want the kind of message where you go back home, sit down, and say, “Wasn’t that amazing? Did you ever hear? Did you even know what he said?”
But they do not want anything that would disturb the architecture. That is a Laodicean church.
Money-raising schemes and a thousand and one other things as well. How can the Lord deal with this? With a whirlwind.
Whenever persecution comes, it destroys everything that is not of God. It all goes to Babylon, and the real thing goes underground. Indeed, sometimes the church is more the church in violent persecution than ever it is in freedom. It is the storm and the whirlwind.
Consider Revelation 19. When I was first saved—and I cannot say that I am a sort of gentle type of person—when I first read Revelation 19, I was quite shocked.
I thought, “This is the Old Testament in the New Testament.” All these people are praising the Lord for the destruction of Babylon, and everybody in it, and everything to do with it. Here they are, as it were, looking over from the balcony of heaven and saying, “Look, its smoke is going up.”
“What about the women, the children, the babes that were all dying in that smoke?” I just said, “That is a bit like the Old Testament.” Well, of course, I understand sometimes more about the Old Testament than I do about the New.
But I am saying that it seems very strange that these are so full of praise that people would say the New Testament is a new phase, in the sense that God has changed His complexion. That is utter rubbish, of course.
God is as much a God of grace in the old as He is in the new, and He is as much a God of war in the new as He was in the old. That is obvious, is it not, if He is God?
I find it very interesting that all these people are praising the Lord for the destruction of Babylon—everything and everyone in it—and say, “Its smoke is going to go up for ever and ever. Hallelujah.”
We just believe we should not do that kind of thing. We are lovers of peace.
And then it says, “Hallelujah. The Lord God, the Almighty, reigneth.” Then it says, “The wife of the Lamb hath made herself ready.”
Now this is interesting, because if you look at Revelation 13, 14, and 15, you have the most fearful revelations. You have this beast—both a person and a whole system—that covers the world in darkness.
Nobody can buy or eat without this mark on the head or this mark on the hand. Everyone who refuses to join it is persecuted by it. It is terrible.
You have this false prophet, which I do not believe is Christianity, even institutional Christianity or dead Christianity. I believe it is, in fact, a new faith, with Hinduism as its face. He calls fire down from heaven, does miracles in the sight of many, and causes everybody to worship the image.
Then we see this woman riding on the back of the beast until, interestingly, the beast turns round and devours her. That is her end. So you have only got the new faith and the antichrist. Then you have the Lord moving, and there is destruction everywhere. It says, “In one day Babylon is destroyed.”
Now, I find it amazing that in the midst of all this, which is certainly not sunshine, the bride makes herself ready. Is that not encouraging? Well, maybe it is not to you. Perhaps you prefer to live on in this affluent society and with this affluent type of churchianity.
But the amazing thing to me is that this church, this bride, is actually in the midst of all these judgments, and she makes herself ready. In other words, the purpose of God for the church, for the bride, is fulfilled—not in spite of the conflict, but in it and through it.
That is a tremendous thing to take in. I find it so amazing, too, that the work will be finished in the midst of all the judgments. That is why I read Revelation 10, when it says the mystery of God, according to the good tidings, will be finished.
So, for those of us who are devoted to the Lord and have committed ourselves to the Lord, come wind, come weather, this is of great comfort.
But I would like to move on and talk for a little while about the effect of the whirlwind and the storm. Listen carefully to me: every true work of God has its evil day.
Sometimes such works of God, especially if they are very significant and very much used by the Spirit of God, will have more than one evil day. But in that day of evil, it seems as if hell is supreme. It seems as if the powers of darkness are sovereign. It seems as if God is a million miles away.
It seems as if the whole thing has been given over to Satan. It is a day of evil—an evil day. Paul says in that tremendous letter in which so much concerning the eternal purpose of God concerning the church is revealed, that we might be able “to stand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand.”
Every real work of God has its evil day. It has a baptism of fire. I would say that any so-called work of God that does not have such a day of evil and does not have such a conflict, I doubt whether it really is the work of God.
For it seems as if the Lord deliberately allows this kind of thing. His way is in the whirlwind and in the storm. He allows it in order to keep that work of His pure and alive and moving with Him—in other words, to preserve it, if possible, from becoming a Laodicea.
In such a time, there is always confusion. Clouds—heavy clouds. We cannot see the Lord. “Where is He? He does not seem to be here. It seems as if He has gone. He has given us up. He has left us. Where is He?”
Actually, beyond the cloud is the Lord.
The interesting thing is that when this day of evil hits any assembly or any work of His, confusion is the thing the enemy uses. One wonders why the Lord allows it, because the enemy uses the confusion to set brother against brother, sister against sister, and sister against brother. It becomes an arena for the enemy.
It always happens. Such fogginess. Why does the Lord not disperse it quickly and get us back into the sunshine of His presence?
But the Lord actually uses this time to bring out all the weaknesses in any work of His and to bring out all the weaknesses in an assembly—weaknesses we did not even know existed, all sorts of weaknesses. It is a day of evil.
I wish I could be more clear on this thing, but when there is such heavy cloud, the only way through is to use the autopilot.
When Henry and I flew into Washington, having endured this dreadful security thing—for which many of you will have no experience—forty-five or fifty minutes outside Washington, we hit cloud: above us, below us, on either side. You could not see anything.
The pilot put on these great lights, which meant it was like a wall of fog all around. For forty-five or fifty minutes, we bumped around in that thing and wondered to ourselves whether we were going to make it.
With all everything else that had happened, I began to wonder, “Is there someone who does not like our coming?” We finally landed. The incredible thing was that just a few minutes before we landed, we came out of the fog, and we were so low you could almost see what people were watching on television.
It was this great rain that had recently hit everywhere for two days. But for us, it was amazing. You wonder, “How does he drive this great aircraft through this thing?” It is on autopilot.
I think when we have such heavy cloud, as it were, in the confusion that comes with it, the only thing to do is trust the Lord. You may not know it, but you are travelling. You may think you are travelling with very little safety and security, but in fact you are in the hands of the Lord.
When that day of evil comes, every weakness in the work and in the assembly is exposed: weaknesses in leadership, weaknesses in the members of the body, weaknesses in the character of the assembly, and weaknesses in the character of the work.
If you think that the church does not have weaknesses, again, you have another thing coming. I think we are all looking for the perfect church, which is in itself a great weakness.
Because then we have very high standards for everything and everyone, and leadership in particular. We do not really know whether we are going to stay too long, because if we cannot find the perfect and the pure, we shall continue our church search until we find another assembly or another work—only to find, after so long with it, that it is neither pure nor perfect.
The fact of the matter is, the church on earth, in place and in time, is by its nature imperfect.
I fully understand when Moody was speaking with somebody and they said, “I am looking for the perfect church.” He said, “When you join it, it will not be perfect.”
The point of the matter is that there is no such thing as a perfect church on earth in time. The only way you can get a perfect church is to have a group of people who are absolutely elite, well taught. You must have no conversions, no additions.
If you can keep them a small group of ongoing saints—elite—you might just conceivably get a perfect church. But it is really not what the Lord wants at all. It is like an old-age home—a spiritual old-age home.
That is not the church. The Lord wants babies. He wants drug addicts. He wants prostitutes. He wants the gay. He wants alcoholics. He wants the divorced. He wants to add; and every one of those whom He saves brings in imperfection.
Do not tell me that a person becomes perfect overnight. We all know it is not true. Some of you who have that kind of background of high standards may appear to be perfect until the storm hits the assembly. Then you become as great a gossip as anybody else, and as great a critic as anyone else. All that sort of syrupy sweetness disappears in the evil day.
It is so interesting when you really look at this whole thing. If you were to be a perfect little group of overcoming saints, with great understanding of the purpose of God and understanding of the times in which we live, and you held a prayer meeting and prayed that the Lord would do something in Richmond, that He would save the unsaved, and the Lord heard your prayer and answered—
—and there were an awakening all around, and let us say something like a thousand people got saved and entered the church—suddenly in comes the divorcee, the prostitute, and the alcoholic. Where is your perfect church now?
I speak from experience, at least in Halford House. We had juvenile delinquents, drug addicts, heroin addicts, morphine addicts—the whole lot of them, young fellows. They were truly saved. There was no doubt it was a real work of God that they got saved. But it took us years. It took the Holy Spirit years to straighten them out.
Because the problems that took them to drink, drugs, and gangsterism were inside of them. Where is this perfect church?
My point is: the church is not an exclusive elite. It is all those who are saved in any given area.
It would be much easier to kick out everyone who does not come up to the standard that we fix as perfection. Would that not be nice? If we kicked out this one, that one, and the other, then we would not have the same problems, you see. A very nice way to do things.
But sometimes someone might kick you out, because in some single moment of time you fall below the standards. It is not the church.
It is very interesting that when the march between Egypt and the Promised Land was undertaken, Moses said, “You shall go at the pace of the slowest in the march.” In other words, do not make the young, strong, and fast-moving the pace of the march. Take the old, the young, the pregnant, and go by them.
That seems to me to be the spirit of fellowship. When you have an imperfect church, those who become intercessors and travail for others within the assembly, that Christ may be fully formed in them, become more perfect.
Do you understand? The people who pray, the people who prevail—there is an amazing thing happening within the assembly.
So, dear people of God, listen to us in this matter. When this day of evil comes, the whole place is filled with charge and countercharge, with accusation and counteraccusation.
It is amazing to me—amazing to me—and the Lord is a thousand miles away. The amazing thing is that people become very, very convinced that the things that are wrong are significant, significant, and really serious.
But when you look back years later, you will think to yourself, “Whatever was all the fuss about?” It is a day of evil, when darkness—not sun—seems to fill everything.
Suddenly, during that time, when the powers of darkness seem to be in charge, it becomes clear whether we have really seen or only academically, mentally, received truth.
One of the biggest shocks for me, when I have lived through some of these things in an assembly or in a work of the Lord, is how people who have for years asserted and declared certain truths completely collapse.
It is very interesting, because I remember Mother Sparks saying to me years ago about some of his co-workers, to my great shock at the time, “He only wants a mission hall. He would be very satisfied with a mission hall.” Of another one, he said, “All he wants is a Brethren assembly.”
I was so shocked, but I lived to see that what he said was true. The fact of the matter is that the Lord allows that evil day to try everything—to make it clear whether it is up here or in here.
So I must draw all this to a conclusion, but let me say this: the purging work of the Holy Spirit. That is how I just want to end.
What is the foundation of our fellowship? What is the foundation? The foundation is Christ. There is no other foundation. We meet upon that foundation of the Lord Jesus. He is our foundation.
We take it one step further: all whom He has received. In other words, our unity is based not on what we think or feel, but upon our Lord Jesus and whom He has received.
If He has received the Catholic, that Catholic is more my brother than a dead Protestant. I mean it. If He has received that Catholic—and I happen to know quite a lot of Catholic believers—they are more on the foundation and in the family than a dead Protestant who has never been born from above.
This foundation is our only foundation. What is the basis of fellowship? Is it exclusive or inclusive?
I think that is a very big question to ask. I say it is inclusive. Our basis is not exclusivism. It includes everyone whom the Lord Jesus has received—whoever it is, whatever condition they are in, whatever colour they are, whatever ethnic background they come from.
If the Lord has received them, they belong to Him; they belong to me. There may be those who are big noises in the institutional church, or in a lot of other things, and are not really of God. I do not belong to them; they do not belong to me. We are going in different directions.
That kind of fellowship, then, is very, very important. The church on earth, in time and in place, is by its nature, as I have already said, imperfect. The more the Lord adds, the more the imperfection will continue.
So if it is a healthy assembly, there will be people being saved all the time, and the imperfection continues.
We do not receive one another for interrogation. I love that. It says it in Romans 14:1: do not receive one another for interrogation.
In other words, I do not say, “Have you been baptised? By immersion, I mean. If you have not been baptised, I have nothing to do with you, because you ought to get baptised.”
“Have you quit smoking? Do you know it will kill you? You silly fool. Really good, because it means you might get into glory quicker.” It is a little silly when you think about it, is it not?
“Do you smoke? I cannot have any fellowship with someone who smokes. The very smell of tobacco just kills me. It paralyses fellowship. I cannot do it. You drink? Drink? You cannot do that. You absolutely cannot do it.”
I mean, even in the New Testament church they never drank. It is always very strange to me how, in the church at Cana, they managed to get drunk on grape juice.
But the fact of the matter is, it is so ridiculous when you think about it. Interrogation. We are perfect past masters at being able to interrogate one another.
“Do you go to movies?” “Well, the Lord dealt with me. I gave it up.” In other words, how the Lord dealt with me is the way you should be dealt with. Something is wrong with you; you are not hearing properly. Interrogation.
It then goes on to say in Romans 15:7, “Receive one another, as Christ also received you.” Now, how did Christ receive you?
Did He receive you as a pure, sweet, loving child of God? Even before you were saved, you were so sweet and so pure that the Lord said, “I will not have to do much work here. This one is half there already.” Of course we know not.
How did the Lord receive you? He received you as a sinner saved by grace. He received you knowing full well the depravity you are capable of if put into the right circumstances. You do not even know yourself.
If you knew the depravity that is in you, once put into the right circumstances, you would go into a mental home. But He knows it. He received you as a fallen human being with no hope of salvation. He received you by grace.
How, then, should you receive one another? “Oh, so-and-so, that fellowship—they are so imperfect. The smell of tobacco in that house is something dreadful. I cannot have fellowship with them. They watch television day and night. I cannot have fellowship with so-and-so because I do not even know that the Lord has really saved them.”
Go back to the matter: you have to receive one another as Christ received you. What does that mean? I will receive you in the same way the Lord Jesus received me.
Now, it is easy to say it—easy to say it—and not so easy to practise it. That means I will never be shocked by any revelation concerning you.
Well, now that gets us. Because as soon as someone does something wrong, we phone up and say, “Have you heard? So-and-so has done so-and-so.”
What are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to mollycoddle one another? No. Are we supposed to become partakers of one another’s sins? No. Then what are we supposed to do?
We are supposed to wash one another’s feet. Feet are the smelliest part of us. When people went out on journeys in the ancient world, they went in sandals. Their feet were covered with dust, sweat, and perspiration.
The first thing anyone did when they came into your home was to get their feet washed.
When the Lord Jesus washed the feet of His disciples, Judas was included. He knew very well what Judas was up to.
If some of us acted on the principles on which we are acting now, we should have said the Lord was doing something quite wrong there, giving a completely wrong impression. He washed Judas’s feet. He should not have done it.
Did He not call him a son of perdition, going to his own place? He washed his feet. He was stealing. “That is absolutely wrong. The Lord should have exposed him.” Oh, that is very interesting.
And the Lord Jesus said, “This is an example to you, that you should do to one another what I have done to you.”
Peter was to deny Him with oaths three times. He washed his feet. Would it not have been better for Him to wait until Peter got to a slightly better position?
It is very interesting when you begin to see it. Anyway, all I am trying to say is that we have to be so very careful.
If we were to receive one another as Christ received us, we would not have shocks about one another. It does not mean that we would support what is wrong.
I find it very interesting that in Revelation 2 and 3 you have seven churches representing the whole church on earth, in time and in place.
Nicolaitanism is in at least two or three of them—something the Lord said, “I hate.” Now that is a very strong word for our Lord Jesus to use. “I hate this thing,” He said.
He commends the church in Ephesus for judging those who say they are apostles and are not. But He never said, “Get out. Nicolaitanism is here; it is spreading like wildfire. Get out.” He never did it. He said, “Overcome.”
There is a Jezebel in one of them teaching the deep things of Satan. I do not know what someone teaching the deep things of Satan is doing in the church in the first place. Unbelievable.
And the Lord does not say, “Get out.” That is most amazing. Where do we stand? What are we supposed to do? Here you have assemblies built on the Lord Jesus, and they have very serious problems.
To another church the Lord said, “I know that you have a name that you live, but you are dead.” Well, I can hear anyone saying, “The fellowship I am in is as dead as the dodo. I think I should get out of it.”
But the Lord never said, “Get out of it.” That is the answer. He said, “Overcome.”
I find all of this very, very interesting because in this day of evil there is so much that goes wrong, and there is much that is wrong. I do not care what assembly it is, where it is found, or where in the whole world it may be: there is no real assembly of God that has not got serious weaknesses.
Those weaknesses will come out in the day of evil. But the Lord is in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet.
In other words, the Lord will bring a whirlwind that will blow to pieces everything that is not of Himself. In that time of confusion, charges and countercharges will be made. People will be accused of things which actually have some ground. That is the interesting thing. There is some ground for some of the charges.
But you have to stay with it. Everything is tested.
In the midst of all the problem, gold is produced. Precious stone is produced. Pearl is produced—the only three materials of the New Jerusalem, the bride.
How is gold produced by division? It is not. How is gold produced when we are just full of accusation and charges? It is not.
The way we handle the problem determines whether gold is produced in us—precious stone and pearl.
The point of it all is this: eternal material for eternal glory is produced in an imperfect church.
Interestingly, it is our relationship to the imperfections that determines how much of the material is produced. We have to learn not to have anything to do with someone teaching the deep things of Satan; not to countenance Nicolaitanism, but to reject it, and yet somehow to endure.
Whirlwind, storm, and cloud. We should not be depressed. We should be full of praise and worship, really.
The nearer we come to the end, the greater the conflict there will be. But in the midst of all this, the purpose of God for His own, for the church, will be fulfilled.
The house will be completed. The top stone will come forth with shouts of “Grace, grace.” Of course, the top stone is Jesus, just as He is the chief cornerstone, the head of the corner, and the foundation.
It is wonderful to see it like that. As I said, the very fact that they say, “Here comes the Lord, the heavenly Bridegroom—grace, grace.”
You and I are part of that bride. May the Lord make this real to every one of us and help us.
May He enable us, in the storm that we are in, to lose what is not of God, to be realigned to what is His purpose.
I am finished, but I do remember that I was often asked: “How is it that for so many years in Halford there was always this sense of the Lord’s presence? How is that possible?”
I have been asked many times in different parts of Britain, and I have always answered this way: we adopted a very simple principle.
Every now and again, when we noticed that the church was getting weary and exhausted, we would cancel all meetings. We would meet together, without any programme, on our knees, seeking the Lord.
It normally went on for a week. At the end of every one of those times, we discovered that we had been realigned.
There is nothing like being able to hear the Lord. It is awful when the church has got to a place where the Lord is outside and they do not even know it.
He is actually knocking on the door outside and speaking in a plaintive voice: “If any man hear My voice.” Can you believe that the Lord could say to a whole church of living believers, “If any man hear My voice?”
They are all reading their Bibles, by the way. They are all studying their Bible. They are all having a quiet time, I take it. None of them are hearing His voice.
It is a terrible place to get to. The only way that people can keep realigned is by waiting on the Lord—not imposing a kind of structure on those times, but simply waiting upon the Lord and hearing His voice.
We had a man in the assembly who was twenty years older. This was in the very beginning for any of us. He was a self-made businessman, full of the flesh. I would say, “Backslid,” no doubt about that, but full of flesh.
Whenever we said, “We are considering whether we shall have a week of just waiting upon the Lord,” he would come up to me and say, “It can never be wrong to wait on the Lord.”
He was a man of flesh, but actually I think the Lord spoke to him quite a few times. It can never be wrong to wait on the Lord.
The Holy Spirit is the One who has authority to really build the church, encourage it, correct it, and keep us on course. May He do it. Shall we pray?
Lord, we just commit this time into Your hands and pray that You will have mercy upon us. O Lord, hear us. We are such poor material, Lord.
In many ways You know so well, Lord, we have a tendency to get off course. As for imperfection, Lord, it is in us all.
Beloved Lord, do not give up on us. Work on with us. Even if You, Lord, have to use the whirlwind and the storm, do Your work in it, Lord.
Blow away everything that is not of You in our lives, and bring us, we pray, to the desired end. Lord, produce that eternal material for eternal glory.
Hear us, Lord. We commit ourselves to You in all our weakness. We thank You, Lord, that You have a purpose for the church, and You are going to fulfil it whatever happens. We praise You for that, Lord.
All we ask is, Lord, in some way so get hold of every one of us in this room tonight that we will journey with You to the place where the work is completed.
We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.