Well, I would like to say straight away that I am very glad to be able to be here with you this evening, because normally you are all buried in the enormous crowd at the conference. So, for once, I can see you all together and I can identify you; and if you need a heavy word, I can give it.
I want to turn you to a number of Scriptures this evening. First of all, in the Old Testament, I want to turn you to the two very well-known passages in Psalm 46.
God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change,
And though the mountains be shaken into the heart of the seas;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains tremble with the swelling thereof.
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved:
God will help her, at the dawn of the morning.
The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved:
He uttered His voice, the earth melted.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come, behold the works of the Lord,
What desolations He hath made in the earth.
He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth;
He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;
He burneth the chariots in the fire.
Be still, and know that I am God:
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
And then Psalm 27, from verse 1.
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength, or stronghold, of my life;
Of whom shall I be afraid?
When evildoers came upon me to eat up my flesh,
Even mine adversaries and my foes, they stumbled and fell.
Though a host should encamp against me,
My heart shall not fear:
Though war should rise against me,
Even then will I be confident.
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.
For in the day of trouble He will keep me secretly in His pavilion;
In the covert of His tabernacle will He hide me;
He will lift me up upon a rock.
And now shall my head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me;
And I will offer in His tabernacle sacrifices of joy—
Or, joy-shouts, is the actual word in Hebrew—
I will sing; yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord.
Then, in your New Testament, Ephesians, the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 10—the well-known passage.
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.
Put on the whole armour 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 hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenly places.
Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; withal taking up the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: with all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints, and on my behalf, that utterance may be given unto me, in opening my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
And then 2 Corinthians, chapter 10. We will read from verse 3.
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh; for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God—or through God, or in the presence of God—to the casting down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
And yet another, in 2 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 3.
Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
No soldier on service entangleth himself in the affairs of this life, that he may please Him Who enrolled him as a soldier.
1 Timothy, chapter 6, verse 12.
Fight the good fight of the faith. Lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called.
Lastly, a very strange little prophecy in Isaiah, chapter 21, from verse 11.
The burden of Dumah.
One calleth unto me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night?
Watchman, what of the night?
The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night:
If ye will inquire, inquire ye:
Turn ye, come.
Shall we just have a further word of prayer?
Lord, when we turn to Your Word, we are so conscious, dear Lord, that we can use our own talents and energies, and we can present truths and doctrines, and we can make up our own kind of sermon or message. But, Lord, it is all to no avail. We need You, Lord.
We believe that we have not met here this evening by accident. You have planned it, and this is an appointment, Lord, of Yours. Therefore, Lord, we believe You have made specific provision for our time, and we do not want to miss it. We want to take that provision which You have provided for this particular evening—in fact, these few times we have together.
We want, by faith, to stand in that anointing, grace, wisdom, and power that You have made available to us through the finished work of our Lord Jesus, manifested by Your Spirit, Lord. Grant, Lord, that both in the speaking and in our hearing, there may be divine ability to speak Your Word and to hear Your Word. We shall give You all the praise and all the glory, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I want to speak to you in these few times about the call to spiritual warfare.
I do not want the times to be unnecessarily heavy because we are going to talk about warfare. There is no need for them to be heavy. The fact of the matter is, every child of God, whether he knows it or does not know it, is in a battle.
It is just as well that you and I wake up in time and realize that there is no way you can be in a battle without God’s provision, and without some understanding of why there is a battle and what the goal of God is in that battle.
Some people think that, if they ignore this subject, it belongs sort of to those who are rather heavy and have to talk about what they feel are the more negative things in the Christian life and in church life. Somehow or other, if we ignore this subject, we shall be able to live in some kind of paradise.
Well, the only paradise that I have ever known down here is a fool’s paradise. There are Christians who can deceive themselves and can live in such a kind of paradise, but they are always casualties.
You will never find a child of God who has refused to become a good soldier of the Lord Jesus who is anything but a casualty. When people have remained spiritual babes twenty years after their conversion, thirty years after their conversion, they are casualties. It is abnormal. It is not the normal Christian life, and it is not normal Christian church life.
It means that somewhere along the line, something terrible and abnormal has taken place, and we have actually, without even knowing it, become a casualty.
We have to wake up to the very simple fact that you cannot be delivered from the powers of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s dear Son without being in a battle. If we think the enemy is just going to surrender us easily, without a fight, without any strategies for undoing us or trying to trip us up, we have another thing coming.
Now, one of the greatest sadnesses is that, by and large, in Christianity, the larger number of Christians are casualties in this war. It is for this very reason that I am talking, or sharing with you a little, about this matter.
Now, I am also fully aware that many of the battles we Christians are in are battles of our own making. Our church scene is filled with divisions and factions and collisions and incompatibilities—awkward and difficult people who cause battles that are quite unnecessary.
Then again, because we do not always really experience the Lord as we ought to, we are not prepared for the cost of discipleship. We are not prepared for the work of the Holy Spirit. Often jealousies and rivalries and ambitions, and a thousand other things that belong to this world, lie just beneath the surface of church life.
The enemy has only to play on those things and they burst up through the surface. Everybody thinks we are in a battle which is the Lord’s battle, and I am sorry to say that very often it is our own battle. We are found colliding with one another, hammering one another, slicing one another down, and running one another through. I do not know what else we do in church life.
I do not have to tell you. There must be a thousand examples of it at hand. We are amazing at fighting the bad fight with one another.
It is no good trying to spiritualise that kind of thing and saying that it is the Lord. The fact that stones have to be shaped, that we have to be beaten into shape, and that the Lord uses one another, is perfectly true. But very much of this is not really the Lord’s battle. This is a battle that we have ourselves produced.
But having said that, there is a battle by which the whole of world history is bound. In other words, if we take this Book and turn to Genesis, we find this battle almost in the first chapters. We go right to the end of the Bible, to the book of Revelation, and we find the same battle in the last chapters.
It is almost as if the whole of world history—the history of the nations, the history of God’s covenant people, the history of the work of the Lord—is, as it were, the history of a battle: an enormous battle between God and Satan, between Christ and the powers of darkness, between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world.
It does not matter where you turn. For instance, I have read a little psalm which is prophetic in its content:
God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change.
As we read on, we find that this poor psalmist, in his experience, because he knows the Lord, because he has been saved by the Lord, because he is one of God’s covenant people, finds himself in an enormous turmoil. It is not of his own making, but something into which he has been introduced, as it were, by being covenanted to the Lord.
Then we read:
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved.
So all this warfare, all this antagonism, has as its objective the destruction of the city of God—the moving of the city of God, the forcing of the city of God out of its God-given position and status into something else. Then we begin to see the nations raging, peoples doing this and that, and all the rest of it.
Then we have this marvellous refrain:
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Of course, I do not have to say anything to you about the phrase “the God of Jacob.” I imagine most of you know that this is a title of the God of all grace. It is just an expression of God’s enormous grace that can take a man like Jacob and turn him from a sinner into a saint, and never forsake him, never leave him, until in the end he sees the Lord and becomes a prince with God.
But “the Lord of hosts,” I am afraid, is not understood in Christian circles, because everyone just thinks this is a title for the Lord. The word in Hebrew is “the Lord of armies.” It is the very word that is used of armies—not armies down here, but His spiritual armies.
Immediately, we are face to face with the fact that this God of all grace is the Commander of the armies of heaven. He has a war on, and He intends to win that war. That is why we must know Him as the God of all grace, or we shall never come through in that war in which you and I are found.
Further on it says, “Come, behold the works of the Lord.” He causes devastation over the whole earth. It is a military thing. Of course, some Christians think, “Oh dear, dear, dear, this is Old Testament. Oh no, this is not love. This is not turning the other cheek.”
I always say to people who bring up this matter, “What about the book of Revelation?” There we finally see the Lord riding out on a white horse, King of kings and Lord of lords, with that name, Word of God, crowned with many crowns, and the blood up to the horses’ bridles.
So much for this namby-pamby, anaemic, spineless kind of Christianity that is all around us. You know, where we have got to be sweet, and that is all. It is sentimentality; it is not reality. The fact is, we are in a battle, and we are to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ. You cannot be spineless, anaemic, filled with sweet, sugary sentimentality, and be a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
It is not that we should not be filled with love. We need to be filled with love. If we are going to get through this battle, we need the love of God. But the fact of the matter is that the love of God is the love of God which enables us to suffer hardship, to endure discipline, to stay together with one another in this battle, and to encourage and support one another until finally the Lord wins the battle.
He says that He makes wars to cease. How does He make wars to cease? By removing the enemy. It is devastating the enemy.
He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;
He burneth the chariots in the fire.
Be still, and know that I am God:
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.
What marvellous terms these are. They are all military terms.
We had the same thing in Psalm 27. Here again the psalmist—this time David—is speaking, and he says:
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
We might well ask: What is he fearing? What is this man afraid of? This great warrior, this young fellow with such courage, this one who took the lamb out of the lion’s mouth and out of the bear’s mouth because it was his responsibility to keep his father’s flock—why is he afraid? What is it that has made him blanch, as it were? What has he seen?
Then he says:
The Lord is the stronghold of my life.
Stop there for a moment. Why do we get words like, “The Lord is my fortress,” “The Lord is my stronghold,” “The Lord is my high tower”? These are all terms to do with war and battle. Why do we find them again and again in the Psalms and in the Prophets?
When evildoers came upon me to eat up my flesh.
Cannibalism! Even mine adversaries—not just decent soldiers coming up, but those who want to eat us. They want to make a meal of us. Anyone who thinks that these powers we are facing are just sweet, decent soldiers on the other side of the line might as well know this: they have sharpened their teeth to a point. They mean to have you and me for a meal.
Though a host should encamp against me,
My heart shall not fear:
Though war should rise against me,
Even then will I be confident.
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.
Now we are at the heart of the battle. Here we have got it. Here we are at the root of it.
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God.
Spiritually, it is belonging to the Lord; being, as it were, the body of the Messiah; being living stones built together. Here we get to the heart of the whole matter of the conflict.
This is why the whole powers of darkness are in an uproar. This is why they are preparing to make us a meal. This is why they are encamping against us with strategies and devices to undo us. This is why war has been declared upon us as the people of God.
The enemy will not allow the house of the Lord to be built. He will not allow living stones to be built together into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. This is the heart of the whole conflict.
Here we are, as it were, at the focal point of world history: that which is on the very heart of God.
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God.
City of God, house of the Lord—it is really, almost in one sense, the same thing. It has somewhat different meanings when we really examine it, but the point is that we are dealing with God’s eternal purpose.
God cannot save you, deliver you from the powers of darkness, transfer you into the kingdom of His dear Son, and have no antagonism from the spiritual forces around us—no war declared upon us or upon those with whom we are in fellowship. It is impossible. Why are we so blind on this matter?
If you are a child of God—if you are not, it does not apply—but if you are a child of God, if you have truly been born of God’s Spirit, you have got to wake up to the fact that you are marked, signed with the name of the Lord Jesus.
You have the mark of the Messiah upon you. You may not see it, but all the spiritual forces around us immediately see one clear mark in you, and that mark is the mark of the Lord Jesus: the mark of the Lamb, not the mark of the beast—the mark of the Lamb.
When they see that mark, you are a marked person. As far as they are concerned, you are a target. You have got to be waylaid. You have got to be diverted. You have got to be deceived. Somehow or other, you have got to be disillusioned.
You have got to be brought to a place where you are out of favour with your brothers and sisters, disillusioned, disappointed, or whatever else he can do. But he has got to get you. You have got to be a casualty.
He cannot afford to leave you in the army of the Lord, growing in your knowledge of the Lord and your experience of the Lord, with all the awful possibilities—as far as he is concerned—that you might put on the whole armour of God and start using some of the weapons of our warfare.
So you are a marked person. From the moment you were born of God, though you hardly realised it, you were a marked person.
Now, do you think the Lord does not know this? Do you think the Lord saved you and then tipped you out into a hostile environment and said, “You are saved now. That is all that matters. You are gone”?
Do you think the Lord does not know this battle that you are in? Do you think that He came into this world and laid down His life at Calvary for you and for me, and had no idea that, once having snatched us out of the jaws of the enemy, the enemy would not in fury pursue us?
Oh, my dear friends, it is a wonderful thing when you see a psalm like Psalm 27. It is marvellous.
For in the day of trouble He will keep me secretly in His pavilion;
In the covert of His tabernacle will He hide me;
He will lift me up upon a rock.
And now shall my head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me;
And I will offer in His tabernacle sacrifices of joy;
I will sing; yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord.
With these cannibals after us, these spiritual cannibals wanting to make us a meal; with this army encamped against us with its strategies and devices; with this war declared against us—the psalmist David says that the Lord can hide him in the day of trouble. “I am absolutely safe in His booth,” the Hebrew word is sukkah.
He is going to keep me, and now he says, “He will lift me up. He will put me on the rock. My head shall be lifted up above mine enemies, and I am going to worship the Lord with joy-shouts.”
In the midst of all this war, in the midst of all this antagonism, and in the midst of all the enemy’s strategies and devices, I am going to worship the Lord.
So much for heaviness. No, I mean it. The people who are really heavy are the people who do not know they are in a war.
Once you know you are in a war—now listen to me, because some people are bound to say, “Oh dear, you frighten me to death with all this talk”—people who know they are in a war know they are not going to come through unless they keep their eyes on the Commander.
If you keep your eyes on the Lord Jesus, if you behold the beauty of the Lord in His temple and inquire, do not do your own thing. Do not do your own will. Really inquire of the Lord.
You will not only know the Lord’s way for yourself; you will know the Lord’s way for us as a fellowship of God’s people. We can inquire of the Lord as to the meaning of world events. We can get understanding in the house of the Lord that gives us an interpretation and an explanation of what is happening, so that we know how to wage the warfare of His service—how we can really be involved by the Spirit of God in the fulfilment of God’s purposes, both locally and even on a wider scale.
I say that this is wonderful. Begin to see this, and it transforms everything. Why should we be heavy? The heavy people are the people who do not understand the war they are in. Then they cannot understand why this is happening, why that is happening, why these circumstances are so difficult, or why this inexplicable thing comes into their lives.
They do not understand it, and then they become heavy because the enemy says, “See, where is your Lord now? Were you not promised a bed of roses? It seems you have got thorns. Were you not promised beds of ease? It seems you have got a nail bed. Dear, dear, dear. There must be something terribly wrong with you.”
Of course, most of us are great recipients of enemy propaganda. We say, “Oh yes, there is something terribly wrong with me. I think it was grandmother or grandfather. There must be something I inherited from them. Truly, it must be. Or maybe I am a very unique personality. The Lord did not realise, when He saved me, what kind of person He had saved. Now the Lord is holding His head and saying, ‘I wish I had not saved so-and-so. They are so difficult.’”
You laugh because you know how stupid it all is. This would be to make God an idol, a creature of our own making, who can only think our thoughts and do what we will let Him do.
But if God is God, when He saved you, He knew all about you. You are not too big a problem for the Lord. He says in the Word of God, “Nothing is too hard for the Lord”—not even you. Nothing is too difficult for the Lord—not even you.
Now the heaviness begins to disappear because we suddenly realise we are in a battle. If we are in a battle, then we need to begin to discover why we are in this battle, what is the goal of the Lord in this battle, and what provision He has made for us in the battle. Do you understand?
Then we begin to understand that maybe we shall become good soldiers of the Lord Jesus.
This battle you will find wherever you turn. Take God’s ancient covenant people all the way through the Old Testament, from Abraham all the way through to the coming of the Lord Jesus: you find them in the midst of battle.
Think of all those wonderful stories that are used again and again as illustrations for us. What was it all about? It does not matter whether it is Moses in Egypt and coming out of Egypt; whether it is facing the Amalekites while he is lifting up his hands, with Aaron on one side and Hur on the other side. What was it all about? A battle.
It does not matter whether it is Joshua going out to Jericho, going round the walls of the city once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh. It is a battle. It does not matter when they are defeated at Ai. It is a battle. All the way through, it is battle.
We think of Jehoshaphat, and we see him putting the choir in front of the army—a thing I have often wanted to do: putting our choir in front of the army and sending them out into battle because the word has come, “The battle is the Lord’s.”
He does not send them out with a war song. I would have imagined He would say, “Now listen, everybody. I want you choirs to go out in front, and I want you to sing this great song: ‘The Lord is the Lord of hosts, a great warrior. His is the victory.’”
No, He gives them a Sunday-school refrain. He says, “Now, you choirs, you go out and sing, ‘For His mercy endureth for ever,’ and you repeat, ‘For His mercy endureth for ever.’” There they go out with all these hostile, fully armed, fully mobilised armies, singing a little Sunday-school ditty about the mercy of the Lord, as if there is no enemy. In fact, the enemy had destroyed each other. Do you remember?
This is only one story. I could keep you here all evening. We could take one story after another, all the way through. What do we find? Everywhere it is battle. Everywhere it is conflict.
We find that this covenant people of God, because they are the vessel of God’s salvation, because they are going to be the means of the Messiah coming into the world, because to them have been committed the oracles of the living God, because to them God has committed covenant, because through them the Word of God is to be communicated to the nations—the whole of hell is up in arms against His people to destroy them, to wipe them out.
Then you understand that it is the God of all grace Who keeps this failing, obstinate, sinning people on course. It is the God of Jacob Who keeps them on course. It is only a remnant. He takes them, and by that remnant He fulfils His own purpose.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
It does not matter where you turn; you will find this battle. When you come to the Lord Jesus, do I have to talk about battle concerning Him? When He was born, all the children under two years of age in the whole Bethlehem region were murdered. Is that not battle?
Take the life of the Lord Jesus from the moment He starts His Messianic ministry. It is as if all hell comes out against Him: misinterpretation, misunderstanding, the gainsaying of sinners, contradiction everywhere on every side. Even His own disciples do not understand Him and become a burden. It is battle, battle, battle.
We come to Gethsemane. We see the Lord Jesus facing an enormous battle, so terrible that He sweats great drops as of blood.
I do not believe that Jesus was afraid of physical death at all. I do not think it had anything to do with it. I think it was the fact that He Who knew no sin was going to become sin for us. This, for Him, was the unknown.
He Who knew no death was going to taste death for every man. He Who had always been the victor over Satan and over the forces of darkness was going to surrender His life into the grip of the powers of darkness. He called it “the hour of darkness.”
That is the thing He fought in the garden of Gethsemane and won when He said:
Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.
Then He went to Calvary with His face set towards it. He had won the battle.
Now, dear folks, we could go on and on. What about the early church? Have you ever seen such a battle as over the early church? My word, look at this early church. No theological seminaries, no Bible schools, no great organisation, no fundraising schemes, no great missionary organisations.
They started with one hundred and twenty people, the majority of whom we do not even know by name; they were so insignificant. Yet they turned the known world upside down. Suddenly, into the midst of the kingdom of this world came an alien force so dynamic, so powerful, that all of hell was mobilised to destroy them.
The more the powers of darkness sought to touch them, the more God caused the believers to multiply and the Word of the Lord to increase. This is a battle.
We do not have to confine ourselves to the New Testament. We can look at church history. Has there not been a battle? Look at church history. See the whole range of the last two thousand years. See the way this battle has raged backwards and forwards over every single move of the Holy Spirit.
From the day of Pentecost, there have been many expressions of Pentecost. Every move of the Holy Spirit has been, as it were, another Pentecost: an outpouring of the Spirit with the same unbelievable results—men and women saved by the grace of God, joined to the Lord Jesus as Head, and suddenly a community and a fellowship developing, the Word of God alive and powerful. Suddenly the whole world is up in arms.
Then we find that every single move of the Spirit crystallises, institutionalises, traditionalises, and dies. Then the Lord starts all over again.
It is not that He completely forsakes any one of those moves. You will find those who know the Lord and love the Lord in every one of these traditional organisations. But you find that the Lord moves on. He does it again in the next generation, and then in the next generation, and then in the next generation.
We see an amazing apostolic succession that runs right the way down through the last two thousand years. It is a spiritual apostolic succession; it is not physical. It is a spiritual thing. Every time the Holy Spirit works, you find the same features reasserting themselves.
I must curb myself and discipline myself in this matter, or we will not get through. But I want you to understand this evening one simple thing: we are in a battle.
This battle is not something new, as if suddenly the enemy, who has been asleep for two thousand years, woke up in 1990 and said, “Oh, I must do something about that fellowship in Richmond.” I mean, we are small fry. He has been at this thing the whole time.
Let me put it another way: by the grace of God, whether we knew it or not, we have stepped into a battle that has its origins from the foundation of the world and has its end in the coming of the Messiah.
We have stepped into it. The more clearly we have seen what the purpose of God is concerning the Lord Jesus, so, in a sense, the more defined is the battle into which we have stepped.
I read that passage in Ephesians, chapter 6.
You want me to take this off?
See what I mean about a battle? Well, at least we have not had a dramatic storm tonight, or water coming into the roof, or an earthquake.
You see, I read that passage in Ephesians, chapter 6, because I want you to see the way the Apostle Paul concludes this amazing revelation that the Lord has given him.
It is generally agreed by most Bible teachers and expositors that the letter to the Ephesians is the high-water mark of revelation in the Bible concerning God’s eternal purpose. I think it is very interesting that when he comes to conclude, he says:
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might.
You might have thought he would have said, “Now then, see that you fulfil the commission to go and make disciples of all nations.” This would have been right, but he did not say that.
Or he might have said, “I think that you must give yourselves to deeper things. Do not just be kindergarten saints. Give yourselves to deeper things.” That would have been good, but he did not.
Or he might have said, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might, and the only way that you can be is to know the work of the Cross and the power of the Holy Spirit. There is no other way. So make sure that you are baptised in the Holy Spirit and that you know the work of the Cross.” This would be absolutely right, but he did not.
There are many other things he could have said which would have been right, but this is the way he ends. He tells us, whether we know it or not, that if once we are in that purpose of God, if once we have begun to understand that it is not me alone or you alone, but us together in Christ, then all hell is going to come out against us.
If you and I do not know how to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might, if we do not know how to put on the panoply of God—the armour of God—then we will not be able to stand in the evil day. Paul is saying there will be days of evil, when it seems as if all hell will overrun everything.
If you and I do not know how to stand in the Lord, if we do not understand that we are not dealing with flesh and blood, then we shall fail to see the real issue.
Take our problems here in a fellowship like this. We always descend to flesh and blood. We think, “Well, it is brother so-and-so who is the problem,” or, “It is sister so-and-so. Let us kick them out. If we could get rid of them, the whole work would just move in a new way.”
“It is such-and-such a family. They are so ill-disciplined. If only we could hammer them on the head—and their children—something might happen. I think the Lord is grieved with that family.”
Then we think, “Oh, there is such-and-such a brother. He is doing this and that and the other. I am sure we should have a special prayer meeting and ask, ‘Lord, hammer brother so-and-so.’”
You see, we have always come down to flesh and blood. Now, I am not saying that we do not have flesh-and-blood problems. I am not saying that there are not ill-disciplined families. I hope there are not in this fellowship. I am saying that if it is a normal fellowship, there will be at least a third of the families that are ill-disciplined.
I am not saying that there are not problems in our marriage relationships because, if it is a normal fellowship—especially, I say it with great sadness, a normal American fellowship—then two-thirds of the marriages are in trouble.
I am not saying that we do not have flesh-and-blood problems. We have people in business who sail near the wind. We have people who, for one reason or another, are legalists, always hammering this brother or that sister with a heavy word about how they look or how they should look.
Do you know the kind of thing I am talking about? These are flesh-and-blood problems. But, my dear friends, our real problems are with principalities, powers, world-rulers of this darkness, and hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenly places. They are playing on these flesh-and-blood problems.
If we could only stop at flesh and blood, it would be simple. But we cannot. Most of us do. We say, “This is the problem. Why do we not take so-and-so? Maybe something will happen to them.”
We think that if we can go to someone and give them a heavy word and hammer them into the ground about the way they look, the way they dress, the way they speak, or the way they behave, something will happen. They will do it. But it does not. Very often they resist even more.
Then we have got a real problem, because we have someone in our midst who resents so-and-so for having ever spoken to them.
Do you understand what I am talking about? If we stop at flesh and blood, we will always use flesh-and-blood means and flesh-and-blood weapons to try to get spiritual things done.
My dear friends, if we want spiritual results, we have to use spiritual weapons. We have to understand that it is by spiritual character, in the end, that things are done.
We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenly places.
How interesting that this apostle—this apostle who knew so much about battle, so much about conflict, this apostle of such revelation and such worship, this dear apostle, the greatest rabbi of them all—ends by saying:
Put on the whole armour of God,
Praying at all seasons in the Spirit,
And watching thereunto with all perseverance
In prayer and supplication for all the saints,
And on my behalf also.
Well, dear friends, I find that very interesting, because it is almost as if the Holy Spirit is saying to us: if you do not understand something about spiritual warfare, if there are not those among you who can together enter into that area of true spiritual warfare and see the purpose of God fulfilled, it will fall apart.
It is a fact of church history that not a single thing that God has done has remained more in spiritual power and character for more than two generations. It just institutionalises, traditionalises, and dies. The Holy Spirit then has to start all over again, and we have yet another great move of the Spirit.
It is interesting, is it not? Why should we think that we will be any different? I am now old enough to have seen works of the Lord grow in power, come to a climax, mean something to God, and then die—fall apart.
We must never think there is something special about us, that we are immunised against such a thing. The more we have seen of the Lord, the more we have understood the purpose of God, the more we have an understanding of the times in which we live, the greater our responsibility is.
We have got to guard that. We have to guard that. It is something we are going to have to guard spiritually, together.
So I hope that you are beginning to understand a little bit of what I mean. Here is the Apostle Paul, writing to his son in the faith. He has seen Timothy come to the Lord. He is a rather soft fellow in some ways, gentle and not aggressive—at least, reading between the lines.
The apostle knows very well that once he is gone—and he says in his second letter, “I am ready to go. I am being offered up on the altar of your faith”—he knows his time has come. Everything that God has entrusted to him, he is entrusting to this Timothy.
He says to him:
Fight the good fight of the faith.
Lay hold on the life eternal whereunto thou wast called.
If you do not learn to fight this good fight of faith and lay hold—arrest, apprehend—this life that is yours in Christ, you will end a shell, a façade, in a routine, doing the duty.
Then, in his very last letter, he says to Timothy:
Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
Now, my dear friends, I believe that this is a message that you and I need to hear because we are living in amazing days. I have basically covered what I want to say, but before we go, I would like, just for tonight, to say something further.
Tomorrow night I will talk about actual spiritual warfare: what is the goal of it, and what are the weapons that we must use? But I would like finally this evening to say that we are in a most amazing time.
I do not know whether you feel it, but it is a very great privilege to live in these particular days. There are patriarchs and prophets and kings and apostles who have longed to live in these days and to see what we are seeing—to witness the fulfilment of age-long prophecies, two thousand years old, three thousand years old, actually being fulfilled in our day and generation.
All these died in faith, not actually seeing the fulfilment of these things, but knowing that in the end God would fulfil them. But to us has been given the privilege of actually seeing these things with our own eyes.
Daniel spoke very much about these days. Two thousand five hundred years ago—six hundred years before Christ—God gave that great statesman, that great intercessor—do you know, in Jewish tradition, he is not called a prophet. Is that not amazing? For most Christians, Daniel is the prophet. Of all the others, he is desperately a prophet.
But according to Jewish tradition, Daniel is supremely an intercessor. That was his calling. Of course, he was a prophet, because most intercessors have to have prophetic insight.
This Daniel saw the whole course of world history, from Nebuchadnezzar right the way down through four successive empires: the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Hellenistic or Greek, and finally the Roman—until our own day, a mixture of iron and clay.
He saw it under two symbols. One was a great image, a human image, magnificent and monolithic. But this image could not breathe. It had no heart.
This is how Nebuchadnezzar saw it. He saw it as a human being. But in fact, God was saying something to Nebuchadnezzar. He was saying, “All fallen world history is the product of fallen man, and everything he does is a form of self-worship. He is producing a great monolithic idol that he bows down before and worships.”
But it has no heart. That is world history: the beauty of architecture built on slave labour. We go to see the pyramids, we go to see the great magnificent columns in Greece and other parts of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and we marvel at the beauty of the architecture. But we forget that it was at the cost of the blood and broken hearts of millions of people.
We talk of the great Babylonian Empire, with its philosophy and what it has given to us—an understanding of astronomy and mathematics and so much else—but we have no idea of the cruelty of the Babylonian system: its forced deportation of whole tribes and nations from one end of its empire to the other, and then deporting those nations again in order to make them rootless and thus easy to govern.
I could talk about the Greek and Hellenistic world, so magnificent in its philosophy and so immoral in its practice. I could talk about the great Roman Empire, with all its magnificent roads and its magnificent system of law, and its cruelty.
It is an image. It has no heart. It is not human.
Then Daniel saw this whole thing of world history again under another picture, and this time he saw it under the image of four wild beasts. These are not domestic creatures—not an ox or a cow or a pet dog or a pet cat, something that you know is pleasant.
I mean, these creatures have got very pleasant and attractive attributes as well, but they are unpredictable: a lion, a bear, a leopard, and an exceedingly strong and diverse beast. These are wild animals.
A lion looks so cuddly at times, especially when it is young, but it is totally unpredictable, especially when it is hungry. A bear seems so sweet and pleasant, but, my dear friends, there is an unpredictable creature. So is a leopard—so agile, so elegant.
What was that saying to Daniel? It was saying, “Daniel, do not be fooled by what I showed Nebuchadnezzar in his dream. This is the real character of world history.” It is a savage beast at heart.
My dear friends, we have lived to see it. We would have thought, with all the educational, scientific, and medical progress of the twentieth century, that we would have left behind us the wickedness of former times. Yet one hundred and fifty million people were murdered in cold blood.
We would have thought of the Germans, one of the most educated and sophisticated of all the European nations, which has given to us such magnificent music and literature—and yet they were capable of gas chambers and incinerators, in which about fifteen to eighteen million people died: six million Jews, two million Gypsies, and many others.
My dear friends, the Japanese are such a clever people, so sophisticated, so artistic, and capable of unbelievable, monstrous savagery—bestiality. This is world history.
Then we see one like unto a son of man. This Son of Man moves. He speaks. He has a heart. He is quite different. He is not an image. He is not a wild beast. He is the Lord Jesus, the new Man.
Suddenly we understand the whole of world history in terms of self-worship, self-glorification, self-expression, savagery, and inhumanity. This is what the battle is over.
It is not just that Jesus is the new Man in Himself. He is the new Man with His body. Do you understand? It is the Lord Jesus and the church—those He has truly brought to Himself, to whom He has given His own life and His own nature. Here is the new Man.
We find it everywhere in the letters of the New Testament. Now you begin to understand, when we come to the book of Revelation, that we find this whole battle from beginning to end—one huge conflict. Then we find the Lamb. Is that not beautiful? The Lamb and the followers of the Lamb: those who overcome, those who are with Him, chosen, called, and faithful.
Now we begin to understand something that is at the heart of this whole thing. This is what the battle is about. This is why war has been declared upon us. Do you understand? There is something drawn on you.
Then here we are in our little fellowship, with all our humdrum, routine problems, our incompatibilities, our divisions, our misrepresentations and misinterpretations, the gossip and the rumour, our poorly attended prayer meetings, and the thousand and one problems that go with a little fellowship such as ours. We think, “Are we really in this?”
Are you really? Yes, my dear friends, we are. Because it is just here, in a small fellowship of God’s people, that the Holy Spirit begins to work all this into experience. He begins to make us new people. He begins to give us a new character. He begins to produce and manifest a new nature.
That is why the Lord allows the incompatibilities and the collisions and the things that are inexplicable, so that by the grace of God we overcome these things and prove that it is not self-worship and self-glorification that we are after, nor is it just animal nature.
It is something that God has wanted from the beginning of time, found in the Lord Jesus. Now the Lord Jesus wants to bring many sons unto glory with Himself.
Now, dear friends, that is where we are. We are in the midst of the most exciting period, because all of a sudden, all around us, things are happening so fast, with such unexpected suddenness and rapidity, that we hardly know what to say.
Most of us would never have believed a year ago that the Kremlin would be so shaken to its foundations that it would start talking about democratic elections and start to talk about—I do not know what.
We would never have thought that the Soviet Union would allow Eastern Europe to go free, so that tonight there can be open-air meetings in any of the cities of Eastern Europe; so that, for the first time, Bibles and Christian books are being published in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, in Hungary, and in East Germany.
It is an unbelievable thing that has happened, and it has all happened in a few months. I wish that I had known about it when I was here last year, because I would undoubtedly have told you. Then, as I have said to them, I would come back and I would not have to say, “Do you remember what I said last year?” You would all be coming up to me and saying, “Oh, was that not remarkable? You said so-and-so, and it has come to pass.”
But I did not think that it would happen quite so suddenly. I had myself believed for a long time that Russia was going to be free.
You see, this is where I am talking about spiritual warfare. There are people who somehow or other get so narrow, like Jonah. They become so narrowed in their vision, so straightened in their vision, that they cannot see beyond the confines of God’s people. Therefore, they cannot pray for the nations.
Why do you think the Apostle Paul said in 1 Timothy—well, we will come to it tomorrow and look at it a little more carefully along with the other things—but why do you think he said:
I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men; for kings and all that are in high place.
Do you know these kings were godless, pagan kings, some of them savage and cruel? Do you know that these people in authority were anything but believers? Paul says, “I exhort, therefore, first of all, that you pray.”
I remember very well some years ago, in a prayer meeting at Halford House. We were having a week of prayer. Our beloved brother Dennis Clark was with us at the time, and that dear brother had a great gift of insight into the things of God, particularly in the matter of intercession.
I remember on that day of prayer, when we had three big sessions, the brothers had talked just before the first session, and he said to us, “Do you think that we could pray for Russia?”
“What shall we pray for?” I said.
“Well, do you not think,” he said, “we could pray that the Lord will do something in Russia? We will pray for the prisoners. We will pray for the underground church. We will pray for the compromised church.”
“Yes,” we all said. “Let us do it.” So we began. We had the most amazing time in the morning and another amazing time later, but I shall never forget the evening time, because during the evening time, at the beginning, it was real prayer and real warfare.
Dennis came across to me and whispered, “Do you think that we could pray that Russia will be free?”
I looked at him and said, “Free?”
“Yes,” he said. “Free.”
“Well,” I said, “why not?” I always remember what someone said: “Why ask the Lord for an egg if you can ask Him for an elephant?” So I thought, why not?
We said to everyone, “Have we faith to pray that Russia will be free?” Do you know, that prayer meeting that went on for a couple of hours was one of the most amazing prayer meetings I have ever been in.
Suddenly, the Spirit of God took those three hundred people out of themselves into another dimension. I suppose nobody had ever really prayed for Russia to be free. Most people had always accepted that the Kremlin would be there forever, and that this monolithic Marxist system would be there because it was the Antichrist.
But as we prayed, God would break its power, and we began to declare over it, “There is a time limit, Lord. Just like Nebuchadnezzar, there is a time limit to this thing. You will bring it to an end in its time.”
An amazing release of worship and praise came into that whole company, until in the end it was as if we were gazing into heaven itself. I remember it very well. We ended with a half-hour of worship and praise that I shall never forget.
I remember saying to everybody in prayer, “As surely and more surely than I stand here, we shall see Russia free.” I felt as if I were standing in a free Russia. I do not know if you have ever had such an experience in prayer, when God so answers, as it were, that you suddenly feel as if you are there—actually there in the situation.
I could see it. It was not just me. Everybody who was in that prayer meeting has never forgotten it. From that day on, I have always been convinced: God has a limit to international Marxism. I am glad I have lived to see its death. We are actually witnessing the death of international Marxism.
Now, this does not mean that, at the end, we are going to win. Of course, it may be that peace is going to break out in the world. But the fact of the matter is that we are actually nearer to a world government than we have ever been in the history of the world.
So, in fact, we have almost had a breathing space before another fulfilment. Will it happen as suddenly, as rapidly, as unexpectedly as this other?
I could give you many other such examples. Johannes Fasius was here, I believe, earlier in the year. I remember how Johannes went with three other brothers all over the Soviet Union two or three times, and prayed in the four corners of the Soviet Empire, declaring that God would break the power of the Kremlin over that land and release it; that the gospel would be preached from end to end; and that out of it would come forth people to take the gospel to other nations.
People thought they were crazy. I remember some brethren saying to me, “He has gone off the rails. You had better be careful. He has gone right off the rails. He should be keeping himself to the house of God, not wandering around Soviet Russia praying crazy prayers. What do they think they are doing?”
I remember these four brothers. I must say that, to the natural mind, maybe one or two of them were a little crazy at times. But perhaps the Lord has to have some crazy people to do this kind of thing. I do not know.
Johannes is definitely not crazy. I have known him for more than thirty years. I can tell you this: Johannes has a great love for our people.
He went everywhere in the Soviet Union when not a Jew wanted to come out, except a tiny handful of dedicated Zionists. None of them wanted to come. But they went everywhere—in Kiev, in Moscow, in Leningrad, all over—standing where they knew there were Jewish communities, Soviet Jews, and saying, “Lord, these people are going to go home, and we open the gates in the name of the Lord.”
No wonder Satan came in like a flood and swept Johannes into an illness that nearly killed him. Then people came to me and said, “There you are. He has uncovered himself. I told you he should have kept himself to the house of God. But he has not. He has let go of what God gave him, and now he has uncovered himself.”
I thought many times, because I had had a very close relationship with Johannes, “Is it true?” You often wonder when people say these things. A number of people said them; I got letters from different ones. But then the Lord said to me, “No, it is not true. He is My faithful servant. He will come through this with something the others have not.”
He came through it. The Lord stood in that room with him and, in three minutes, healed him. Well, he still has the fibrillation in the heart, but he was a different man. If you had seen him before and afterwards, you would know what I mean. The light had gone out of him. For two whole years, the light just went out of him. Then God restored him.
My dear friends, we have lived to see the most amazing aliyah in Jewish history. Already, three hundred and fifty thousand have come. Forty-three thousand came from Yemen. Do not think about the politics; just think about the amazing thing. Forty-three thousand came in one year, in 1947 and 1948, from Yemen. One hundred and fifteen thousand came in two and a half years, from 1950 to 1952, from Iraq.
Now they are coming in thousands. It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen—to see old people with sticks, people on stretchers, old ladies bent right over, pregnant young mothers, and fathers with five or six little children all holding hands, coming through—a sea of Russians, a thousand a night.
Two thousand world-class medical specialists, by the end of this year; a thousand top scientists; and enough qualified musicians, when I left in June, to create thirty-one orchestras. Where do we put them? What are we going to do? Is this not amazing?
Of course, it may not mean a lot to you, but for those of us for whom it is in our bloodstream, it is unbelievable. We have wandered from pillar to post for two thousand years. We have heard some people say, “They will come back in the end. They will come back.”
In fact, the problems are enormous. We have an intifada. We have many huge problems. We have a deteriorating economy, and we have around us neighbours who are telling us they are going to gas us and incinerate us.
If you had asked me, “Will these people come back?” I would have said, “Well, they will in the end, but not now.” You would say, “Why not now?” And I would say, “Well, God can do anything, but I do not think anybody in their right senses will come back to Israel just at present.”
And certainly, they all come back. I mean, how do you explain that?
I have been in prayer meetings where people were in my own home. I have seen the prayers in our own home for these selfsame Soviet Jews. I have heard it said in my own home, “In the name of the Lord, thou Kremlin, give these people up. When the Lord says, ‘Give up,’ you give up. When the Lord says to the south, ‘Keep not back,’ they will come home.”
The amazing thing is, it is not just the Soviet Union. Ten thousand of the twelve thousand remaining Ethiopian Jews have applied for visas and are on their way back. Another ten thousand of the seventeen thousand remaining Romanian Jews have applied for visas, and they are coming home.
Is this not amazing? At the worst time in our history, at the most—what is God saying? What I am trying to get over to you is this: we are living in the most amazing days. Surely the Lord’s coming must be near.
I am not saying necessarily tonight, but it just seems to me that the Lord’s coming is near, and therefore we need to wake up. Do you think that the enemy is going to allow this work of the Lord here, this company of believers, this building up of the house of God, to continue unchallenged?
No, my dear friends. The enemy is going to undermine this work. He is going to divide it. He is going to smash it to smithereens unless we learn how to guard what God has given us, unless we learn how to win, as it were.
Now you may say to me, “But surely the Lord is able to do this without us.” Of course He is, but what do we learn? Did you get that? Supposing He does it all for us, what do we learn?
It is the very principle of allowing Adam and Eve to fall: you have got to learn how to guard this deposit, how to keep it pure, how to stop leaven from getting into the flour, how, as it were, to go on with the Lord, how to come through together in spite of all our problems.
I think that is enough for one evening. I could say so much about the present situation in the Soviet Union, about Eastern Europe, and about the Middle East situation, but suffice it to say: I believe in the power of prayer.
I believe that one of the supreme ministries of the house of God is to be a house of prayer for all the nations.
This is where we have failed. We have sometimes thought of the house of God as something in itself: just get church truth, and that is all that is required. Once you have got church truth, fight for it—as if church truth in itself is the focal point of the battle.
Now, my dear friends, it is important for us to have church truth, but the really important thing is for us to function as the church.
I go all over the place to little groups that have church truth, and I find them—forgive me, but I find many—half-baked, heart-baked, inward, lifeless, legalistic, and utterly superior. They look down upon everybody else.
The funny thing is that I am often asked to go and speak in other places. Now, my priority is always those who have seen something of the house of God, but I will go to other places. Sometimes I find more church features in an Episcopalian church than in the other group that I am with.
What am I to do? I find more fellowship, more love, more unity, more functioning as the body of Christ than what we do. I wish I could be honest enough to give you examples, but I cannot talk about other parts of the world because some of you know them.
I have been in places where, in one place I know, God did a wonderful work more than forty years ago. It was the living place in that whole city. Then they became affluent, and their whole society became affluent. They sat on their haunches.
Then came this great work of the Spirit in 1960. It flowed right round them, and they hardly knew what was happening because they were now so inward and exclusive that they never touched anything else. But all over this city, people were being saved, Christians were being renewed, and suddenly they began to talk about the house of God, the body of Christ, body ministry, body life, and all kinds of things.
Some of it was extreme and excessive, but it was unbelievable what happened. I was so moved. I was asked to go and speak in the great cathedral in that city, and with great trepidation I went into the cathedral to find that it was the only cathedral I have ever been in that was like a house church.
There were guitars playing, and a whole atmosphere. It was so unbelievable to me that I nearly died on the spot. I thought, “What am I doing here?”
Then I found they were baptising by immersion in this Episcopal church. I thought, “I cannot believe it.” Then I went to one of the others and found they had taken away all the altar rails and everything else. Here they were—I mean, we would not touch them with a barge pole.
Then one day these dear brothers, the elders, this precious company, said, “We would like to come with you to one of these meetings.” I was in great fear. I thought, “Oh dear.”
But they were so moved by what they saw: the worship and testimony, an hour of real worship, all these young people going up spontaneously and giving testimony of how various ones in their family had come to the Lord, what had happened to them, and how they were finding the Lord. It was all so wonderful.
I thought, “Well, now they have exhausted their time—two hours.” By the way, all the sides of this church building had been torn down, and they were all sitting out in the open in the dark—some of them.
Then they said, “Now you must speak for not less than one hour.” Not a soul moved.
Now, my dear friends, I am not saying that that can always be the test of it. What I am saying is this: does that not put us to shame? Here we are with church truth, and sometimes we do not have the freedom that our brothers and sisters elsewhere seem to have in things that are traditional or more institutional.
Here we believe in unity, and we are often divided, while they are moving together in unity. Here we talk about the gifts, but somehow others are using their gifts. Here we talk about really praying together, but we never do.
Now, dear child of God, do not use what I have said as ammunition. That is not why I have shared it. I have shared it because I believe that this particular company of God’s children is exceedingly precious in the eyes of the Lord.
Small as it is, with all its failings and weaknesses, it is exceedingly precious. Do you and I think that it is going to go on unchallenged?
May God meet us in our hearts. May He renew us in our love for Him. May He, in some way, enable us to rise to the challenge, or the call, of this hour.
Let us pray.
Lord, we pray together that You will guard us from any misunderstanding of what has been said this evening, or any misinterpretation. Lord, we need together to guard what You have committed to us.
You have committed to us something so precious, Lord, particularly in this part of Your family. You have committed such a precious ministry, such precious servants of Yours. You have committed such revelation and understanding.
Lord, our prayer is that we might rise to the responsibility. Lord, You have made this particular part of Your family very responsible—deeply and heavily responsible—by what You have committed to them.
Lord, will You wake us all up? Those of us who are passengers, those of us who are spectators, wake us up, Lord. We are living in days when anything could happen. Lord, we do not know how long we have.
Dear Lord, challenge us by Your Spirit. Challenge us. Will You grant, Lord, that there may come into our hearts a new love for Yourself, and a renewing of our ministry to You.
Then, Lord, a new love for one another, a new understanding of one another, and a new recognition of the Lord Jesus in one another. Lord, only You can do it.
Then, Lord, in this matter of spiritual warfare, help us to rise to this challenge.
We commit ourselves now to You, Lord. Oh, dear Spirit of God, watch over Your Word to perform it in us all. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.