Would you turn with me to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 13? I am going to read certain verses in this chapter.
Mark 13:5-8
And Jesus began to say unto them, Take heed that no man lead you astray.
Many shall come in My name, saying, I am He; and shall lead many astray.
And when ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars, be not troubled:
these things must needs come to pass; but the end is not yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:
there shall be earthquakes in divers places; there shall be famines:
these things are the beginning of travail.
Mark 13:9-10
But take ye heed to yourselves:
for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in synagogues shall ye be beaten;
and before governors and kings shall ye stand for My sake, for a testimony unto them.
And the gospel must first be preached unto all the nations.
Mark 13:23
But take ye heed: behold, I have told you all things beforehand.
Mark 13:33-37
Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.
It is as when a man, sojourning in another country, having left his house,
and given authority to his servants, to each one his work,
commanded also the porter to watch.
Watch therefore: for ye know not when the lord of the house cometh,
whether at even, or at midnight, or at cockcrowing, or in the morning;
lest coming suddenly He find you sleeping.
And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You this morning that we can turn to You as we come to Your Word. We want once again to thank You that You have made provision for us in a specific manner.
We would avail ourselves of that provision, of that anointing, both for speaking and for hearing. Make this last time of this particular conference a very blessed and memorable time, Lord, because of Your working in our hearts.
Draw everything together and conclude things, we pray, Lord. Even if we forget many things, may Your abiding presence, and the sense of Your speaking and working, be with every one of us.
Lord, You know the days in which we are living, and You know our need to hear what You are saying. Will You help us, Lord, to take in and not to misinterpret what You are saying to us? This we ask together, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
We come now to the last of our times together in this particular conference. I must say, at times I really wondered whether I personally would be here to participate in this particular conference. I think Brother Stephen was the one who had the faith that I personally would get here. I am very thankful to have been here, if only for the latter part of these days.
As we come to the end, I have one last burden which, in a sense, is certainly, as our brother said earlier, nothing profound. There really is nothing profound, in one sense, about what I have to say, and furthermore, nothing new. But I think I need to restate certain things and emphasize them in the light of the days in which we are living.
The most wonderful thing about the coming of the Lord Jesus is that it is the climax of all history.
There is no way in which you and I can read the Word of God honestly and spiritualize away the coming of the Lord Jesus, as if it is some golden millennial age that is somehow going to descend upon this war-torn, weary, unhappy world.
The Bible says quite clearly: in the same manner in which He went, He will return. Even a little child in the midst of that group of disciples who watched the Lord Jesus ascend into heaven, and heard the words of the angels—“He shall come again in like manner”—would have understood that in the bodily way in which the Lord Jesus ascended into glory, He would return to this earth.
His feet would stand again upon the earth of this globe. His feet would stand upon the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem again. It is the climax of all history.
In His return, all the glorious plans of God find their complete fulfillment. Indeed, I would go further and say this: in my estimation, the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ is not really complete until He actually returns, because it is then that we have our redeemed bodies.
We shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye, in a flash. We shall be changed, and we shall have bodies like His.
In other words, the coming again of our Lord Jesus, the return of the Messiah, is the completion of the whole movement of God for salvation. Isn’t that wonderful?
It means that until He comes, there is something incomplete about you and me. I can tell you right away what it is: you and I have bodies that are decaying. We may have spirits that have been justified, and souls that are being won by His grace and by His working, but we have still got bodies in which sin is in their members.
There is going to come a day when that is going to be put away. So complete, so full, so marvellous, so eternal is our salvation that it is not only a matter to do with spirit and soul; it is a matter to do with our physical bodies. We are going to have a body like His.
I cannot wait for it. It excites me, the thought of going through walls and going up vertically and down and around—all kinds of things like this. People get so excited about getting a man on the moon. What does it matter about getting a man on the moon, or photographing the other side of Mars, when we can have a body like His in another dimension of experience?
The return of the Lord Jesus is the climax of all history.
It is a very interesting fact, if I may underline it again, that the Lord Jesus spoke more about His coming again than ever He did about His cross. This does not devalue the work of the cross. But if we look at the amount of material He gave to us concerning His coming, it is far, far more than what He said about the cross.
That is not to devalue the cross or the work of the cross. But what it means is this: until He returns, the work is incomplete. It is all part of a symphony, and His coming again is the last movement of the symphony. It is the finale of the whole thing.
Surely that should lift up your heads and cause a little flash of some kind of ecstasy to go through your spirit. Even if there are persecutions and tribulations and distress and pressures—and I do not know what lies ahead—the very thought that we are so near to the completion of our salvation, so near to the coming of the kingdom of God, to a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, ought, I say, to thrill us.
There are things upon which we can be absolutely one about that coming. There is much controversy, confusion, and difference of opinion concerning the coming again of our Lord Jesus. But upon certain matters, we can be dogmatic and absolutely one. We can be unanimous.
He is going to come back literally. In the body in which He went, He will return, with the marks in His hands, in His feet, and in His side—glorified, but there forever for every one of us to see. They will be a glorious reminder of the cost of our salvation and of that great love and mercy which has won every single one of us to Himself.
The second thing is this: His coming again will be the final vindication that He is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. It will be the vindication of His person, the vindication of His work, and the vindication of His words.
Until then, people can argue, people can doubt, people can do what they want. But when He comes, that will be the final vindication that God has given us the Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world. There is salvation in no other name, for there is no other name given under heaven among men whereby men and women must be saved.
Thirdly, it will be the vindication of all those who have followed Him. Oh, how often we have been tempted to compromise. How often we have been tempted to find an easier way. How often it would have been easier to tone down the proclamation of the truth, to leave certain things out, or not to go the whole way with the Lord.
But that coming again of the Lord Jesus will be the vindication of all those who have followed the Lamb whithersoever He goeth—those who have paid the price, whatever the cost, to follow Him and to be uncompromising in every single aspect of their lives.
It will be their glorious vindication. Then, if we do cry, it will be tears of joy and tears of relief that God will have to wipe away from our faces. It will seem to us so stupid that we ever argued with God about the way He led us, that we ever rebelled over the ways He wanted us to go, or that, when He asked us to surrender something, we held on to it.
We shall be so glad that the Spirit of God enabled us to let go of things, to do His will, and to follow Him. We will not have a single regret. Can you imagine anybody being there and saying, “Oh, I do wish I had held on to that. I wish I had not really agreed to go that way with Him”?
We will not even talk about it. We shall just say, “Oh, the grace of God that got me in a corner. The grace of God that got me into a place where I had to surrender. The grace of God that followed me and almost pressured me into going the whole way with Him. Oh, I am so thankful.”
I think there will be many tears—many tears of relief and joy at the very thought that God, in His great love, took us at our word and cornered us so that we had to go the whole way with Him.
Think of those who have lost their lives. Think of brethren like Watchman Nee, who spent over twenty years in imprisonment. Oh, the vindication of these people in glory! Then their affliction will seem, in the light of the eternal weight of glory, just light affliction—transient and temporal compared with the eternal and exceedingly great weight of glory which it has worked.
Again, it will be the vindication of the Word of God. Oh, sometimes the Word of God seems so stupid. May I be forgiven if what I mean is misunderstood, but sometimes the Word of God seems so stupid, does it not?
When we take Darwinian theory, it is so clever, seemingly so logical. And look where it is leading the world: to abortion. There are more human beings who have been destroyed in the United States than a third of the Jewish people who died in the Holocaust. Did you know that?
Before Mr. Begin, may God bless him for it, abolished abortion in Israel, one million young Israeli lives had been exterminated—one-sixth of all our people who died in the Holocaust.
Oh, my dear friends, this Darwinian theory seems so clever: that we are just the evolution of matter; that somehow or other we have come up from some kind of primeval sludge or mulch, or whatever else it was. They do not always say we are descended from monkeys, but somehow we have come up from green slime, and somehow we have moved upward and upward and upward.
If this present century is the result of moving upward and upward, I think it would be good to move downward. With the millions and millions and millions of people who have died at the hands of their fellow human beings in the most ghastly circumstances, is this the upward process of evolution?
It seems so clever, does it not? Hitler, of course, and the Nazis introduced abortion; they legalized abortion. Before very long, they legalized euthanasia—mercy killing of the mentally ill—and, of course, it led to genocide: the destruction of the Jewish people and, often forgotten, one hundred and fifty thousand Gypsies. It would have led in the end to the destruction of the Slavic peoples.
Once you have agreed that man is nothing more than matter, that he is not made in the image of God, that he is not an individual in whom God has put something of eternity, you can destroy him and exterminate him.
The coming again of the Lord Jesus will be the vindication of the Word of God: that man was made in the image of God; that man is accountable and responsible to God; that every man must stand before God.
I use that as an illustration. There are many other things. The Word of God says many other things that at times run counter to modern philosophy and to the attitudes of this world. At times, because of our education and cultural background, it is much easier to believe what happens to be the fashionable idea of today than the Word of God.
But I will tell you this: the Word of God lives and abides forever. When these ideas have long since been discarded, God’s Word is still the same, still as powerful, still as alive, still as creative as ever.
Everything else passes away, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. When the Lord Jesus returns, that Word of God will be vindicated before the nations of the world. Then the whole universe will know that the Word of God is truth and that it is eternal.
Thank God for that. In my little life, I have never seen a person whose life has been totally changed, turned inside out, renewed, and remade by a word of Shakespeare, Goethe, Confucius, or anybody else.
They may have some marvellous things to say, and at times it may be the insight of genius. But I have never found a person born of God through a word of Shakespeare, or joined into union with the living God through some word of Goethe or Confucius.
But take this old Book that people have despised, spoken against, contradicted, devalued, and denigrated, and what do you find? Here in the twentieth century, some drug addict, into whose heart comes a word from this Book, is saved and remade. Or an alcoholic, who cannot be saved by anybody—into his heart, by the Spirit of God, comes this living Word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword, and something happens in that life.
Even if you and I have not had such dramatic experiences as being saved from alcoholism or drug addiction, have we not all known the Word of God coming alive and coming into our hearts? Sometimes this Book has so risen up that it has almost hit me. Has it not done that to you, or am I alone in this kind of experience?
When somehow something that you have known for years, suddenly a phrase leaps out at you and catches you, you are never the same afterward. Never again are you the same. Something has happened.
It is the living and active Word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing between soul and spirit.
It will also be the proof that only when God is King will the universe be in harmony. I cannot wait for that day, when finally it is proved before the nations of the world that only when the Lord Jesus is King and Lord of all, when He is in the seat of government, will this whole universe finally be harmonized.
No more war. No more strikes. No more corruption. No more decay. Absolute righteousness as the foundation of all government.
Oh, I cannot tell you how I wait for the day when righteousness and truth are the basis of all government in this world, instead of having to witness heads of state hugging and kissing killers, murderers, and assassins, giving them banquets and fulsome, untrue tributes for the sake of coexistence.
May that day come soon when we do not have to coexist with evil; when we do not have to sit down at a table and have a banquet with a man who has murdered hundreds of thousands of other human beings; when we do not have to have a president describing Mao as one of the greatest lights that ever shone in the East.
May the day come when righteousness, truth, mercy, and love are the foundation of government—when government is exercised on the basis of what is right and not what is politic or diplomatic. That day is going to come when the King comes.
He will be a King who will reign in righteousness. The sceptre of His throne is a sceptre of righteousness—not a hard, heavy, dark thing that people associate with narrow-mindedness and bigotry, but something so broad, so loving, so universal, so magnificent in concept, and yet absolutely righteous and true.
What a wonderful day we have to look forward to.
In that day, when the Lord comes, the whole universe will suddenly flow in harmony. Ah, the prophets can hardly contain themselves when they speak about this. They speak about a leopard and a kid feeding together, and a lion eating straw like an ox.
They speak about a little child playing with a cobra and putting its hand in the nest of vipers. Nothing in all God’s holy mountain will injure or harm, but the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Oh, what a marvellous day!
The apostle Paul speaks about it. He says the whole natural creation groans in pain, in the pain of childbirth, in travail, waiting for the manifestation of the glory of the children of God.
How wonderful it will be when this old world, which even in its fallen and unharmonious state is beautiful—nature red in tooth and claw, as one hymn writer described it—when this whole creation is suddenly released from its bondage to corruption and division, and becomes what God intended it to be.
The prophets cannot contain themselves. They speak about fields and hills singing for joy. They speak about the trees of the woods and fields clapping their hands for joy when the Lord comes. You have never seen a tree clapping its hands, have you? I do not think it means literally, but it means that this whole natural creation will burst out of its bondage.
It is even now so beautiful, in spite of its disharmony and fall. Is it not so beautiful? What will it be when the King comes and the whole thing is released into what it was intended originally to be? Oh, how marvellous—the King!
There are many other things we could say that we are all absolutely one upon in this matter. But when we come to the actual coming again of the Lord Jesus, there are basically three different schools of thought.
One view is that the Lord Jesus will return, and it will be one movement. There will be no rapture—certainly no going before any tribulation. Everyone has to go through the tribulation, according to this school of thought, and at the end the Lord will come.
This has an attractive simplicity about it. At first reading, it seems so very clear, so very logical, so very simple. We shall all go right through to the end. They say there are not two comings of the Lord, but only one.
It also has the added advantage, if you like to call it an advantage, that the church fathers and the Reformers all happened to believe this view of the coming again of the Lord Jesus.
There is a second view, now very widely held amongst God’s people, which began about two centuries ago, principally with the leaders of what have come to be known as the Christian Brethren—godly and remarkable men.
That view is that, if we look into the Word of God, we cannot accept that there is only one final movement. We are told on the one hand that He is going to come as a thief—in a hidden, stealthy, unexpected way. On the other hand, we are told that He is going to come with blazing fire, trumpets blowing, and the whole earth quaking; that His sign will appear in the heavens.
They say, “You see, there seem to be two quite different sets of Scriptures for His coming. How do you explain that?” They say that the Lord will come for His own, and then He will come with His own.
Now, with both these views, I have to tell you, I think there are problems. If we take the first view, we have very real problems. I cannot go into them because of time this morning, and I do not wish to upset anybody who cherishes that first view, because amongst us here there must be people who have come to their own satisfaction and peace of mind over one or other of these views.
I can only say that, for myself, if I want to be absolutely honest, I find real problems that cannot be explained away about that first school of interpretation. But I have to tell you also that I have problems with the second school of interpretation, as real as the first. Oh dear—now what do we do?
About the same time as this second school of interpretation began to come into existence and gain acceptance, another view was expounded by some quite remarkable men and teachers of the Word of God: D. M. Panton, G. H. Pember, G. H. Lang, Austin-Sparks more latterly, and others.
They felt that the former schools left much to be desired. They said that there will be two movements in the Lord’s return: He will come for His own, and He will come in the end with His own. But they said—and this is the unique feature—only those who are ready will be taken. The rest will be left to go through the tribulation and will be purified in it.
Some people say that this creates more problems than it solves. But I have to tell you that, as far as I am concerned, I think it solves nearly all the problems. Having said that, I must also say that it is not problem-free. There are still some very real problems.
I have always had a fear of what I call theories of adjustment. That is, you get a view, and you force the Scriptures into your view. You get a line, and then you take the other things and somehow press them until finally you make them fall into line with whatever view you have adopted.
May I say something which I hope will be of real help and not confusing? I suspect that if our Lord Jesus had really wanted us to have a cast-iron view of the details of His return, He could have given one short supplementary discourse in which He clearly stated exactly the sequence of events. But He never did it.
Do you mean to tell me that He was not aware of some of the confusion that would result from what is said in the New Testament on this matter? Of course not. Therefore, I come to this conclusion: it is by design.
It is by design. In other words, the Lord is more interested in His people walking by faith with Him, with an ear open to the Spirit of God in the last days, than in having a cast-iron system of what is called eschatology—the events of the end.
Is it not interesting that the Lord Jesus said, “Take heed, take heed, take heed. Watch and pray. Watch. Be ready.”
If you and I are really ready, does it matter? If we are ready and He only comes for those who are ready, we shall be taken. Thank God for that. If we are ready and He comes for all born-again believers and takes all to be with Himself, thank God we are ready. We will not be ashamed.
If we have to go through distress and tribulation before His coming, at least being ready will mean that we are prepared for whatever is coming. So, for me, I think the point of the matter is: be ready.
I think it is a good thing to have honest convictions on this matter. I have my own convictions about the coming of the Lord. I personally believe the third view is the most scriptural and, to me, the most obvious.
But having said that, I will not divide from any brother or sister who feels differently to me on this matter of the coming of the Lord. I want to be open and loving, and yet hold my convictions as you hold yours.
What I want to see in you, and what I want to find in myself, is a readiness for His coming—not some hopelessly dogmatic spirit on all the details of His coming, in which we are factious and divisive, but a spirit of real love, openness, and humility in which you and I can hold convictions concerning His return strongly, yet not in a fierce spirit.
The one thing we can say is: He is coming. His coming is drawing nearer every day now.
People say, “Well, did not the apostle Paul expect Him to come in his lifetime?” Yes. “Well then, it must be much nearer than it was in his life.” That is all I can say.
People seem to think that because the apostle Paul thought He was coming back in his lifetime, we should discard the whole idea. What nonsense! Does anyone come nearer to the Lord Jesus and not become quickened by the thought of His coming?
Once you come near to the eternal, it is as if His coming is right on the brink, because you have left time and entered the dimension of eternity. I can quite understand how, in different ages, people have thought, “The Lord is coming.”
The only thing I have to say is that today we not only have the fulfillment of certain signs; we have that one unique sign concerning the Jewish people, which is the confirmation of all the others.
What is the vital need for us all? What does it mean to be ready? This readiness is the priority; all else is secondary. How we see the coming of the Lord, the details of it, and everything else is secondary to the question of being ready.
Our Lord could have solved this whole matter, as I have said, by a few well-chosen words. But instead, He used His breath to say, “Take heed. Take heed. Be on your guard. Be on your alert. Be alive. Be watchful. Be awake. Be ready.”
There are three things, spiritually at least, which I believe we need to take heed to and give attention to if we are going to be ready.
The first is this: the Holy Spirit must be allowed to settle the many issues in our lives, whatever the cost. Let me emphasize this again. I said something about it last night; let me say it again: you will never regret allowing the Holy Spirit to settle the issues in your life today.
I have never met a person who came to me and said, “I am so sorry that I settled that issue with God.” But I have found many people who have come to me and said, “I have wasted ten years of my life because I never settled that issue that God was speaking to me about.”
The issues may be all kinds of things. It may be something in your life that God is telling you to give up. It may be so small. It can be such a small thing as handball, basketball, or even swimming.
Now, do not get me wrong. It is not as if God is saying swimming is wrong. That would be nonsense. But sometimes, because God is disciplining you, He says, “You know this thing that means so much to you? I want you to give it to Me.”
Then we start to argue. We say, “Do not be silly. There is nothing wrong in that. Chewing candy—what is wrong in that?” But it is not chewing candy, swimming, or whatever else. It is your obedience.
A straw tells which way the wind is blowing. That is why sometimes an enormous spiritual experience, life-changing in its influence and power, hinges on a small issue in your life that seems totally insignificant.
Sometimes the issues may be other things. Maybe God is calling you into service somewhere, in some difficult part of the earth, and at present you are not very willing.
Or maybe the Lord wants you to commit yourself to those brothers and sisters in real fellowship, and you are on the periphery all the time. You can see all the faults and failings of those brothers and sisters, and you say, “Oh, if they were only better, if they were only larger, if they were more spiritual, or something else.”
And God is saying deep down in your heart, “Commit yourself. Commit yourself. Commit yourself.” But you say, “How can I commit myself? They are such a clumsy lot. They are so poor. They are so insignificant. They are so little. Why should I commit myself to that?”
But on the issue of your commitment to the Lord Jesus in your poor brothers and sisters, a lot depends. Do you know that is the principle of Bethlehem?
Our Lord Jesus faced just that issue. When somewhere in eternity the Father said, “Who will go for Me? Whom shall I send?” it could have been that the Lord Jesus said, “What? Born in those circumstances, to that lot? They do not care. They do not want Me. They are not very spiritual. You mean that I have to be born of a human being into those kinds of circumstances?”
The Lord may be calling on you to go into such circumstances—circumstances of limitation, circumstances that apparently are full of insignificance. He may be calling you to commit yourself to little people with petty problems and very little horizon.
Yet God is saying in your heart, “You will come out of it, if you follow Me, with a wider horizon and greater character.” You see, dear brothers and sisters, the one thing that matters with God is not knowledge, but character.
Character is all-important as far as God is concerned. He does not want the kingdom of God to be peopled with countless multitudes of characterless babes. They have no character; nothing has ever been developed in them.
He wants people like His Son, with characters that have been developed and expanded and somehow matured by the things which they suffered.
Issues that God speaks to you about—only you can face this matter and say yes to Him. Sometimes it will require, on your part, if I may speak from my own experience: if you cannot be honest and say, “I will,” why do you not ask Him to make you willing to be willing?
That might be the first step in a direction in your life that will end in unimaginable blessing.
If you are going to be ready, you and I have got to settle issues. Sometimes the issues are in our own hearts. Sometimes they are to do with service. Sometimes they are to do with the fellowship of God’s people.
Sometimes God is calling you to do a humble bit of work in your assembly, in the assembly of God’s people, and you would prefer a platform ministry. Perhaps you feel qualified for a platform ministry, and yet in your heart God is asking you to do some mundane little job which you know very well nobody will ever notice.
Like Kenny said earlier, it is all like the hidden part of an iceberg: only God sees. But when the Lord comes, there will not be a single cup of water that has been given in His name that will go unrewarded.
There is not a single bit of service—unseen, overlooked, hidden—that has not been noted by our Lord. It is precisely such service that brings us to the throne.
Sometimes, as I said last night, we may have collisions. I would like to know if there is anybody in this audience this morning who has not had a collision with another human being. If so, I would love to meet you.
Indeed, the more will you have, the more personality you have, and the more strength of character you have, probably the more collisions you have had.
Some of the issues are simply to humble ourselves before one another. You know, the Lord spoke about washing the saints’ feet. Do you know whose job it was to wash the saints’ feet? It was the most menial of slaves in the household.
It was their job to be at the entrance of the courtyard of the house, and as soon as anybody came in from the dusty highways or paths, to wash their feet in cool water. Sometimes the water had rose petals in it, because feet, as you probably all know, are somewhat smelly.
Would it not have been nicer if the Lord had said, “Shake the hands of your brother and sister,” or, “Put your hand on their shoulder and say, ‘Praise the Lord’”? I know many people who put their hands on the shoulders of brothers and sisters and say, “Praise the Lord,” and it does not mean a thing.
To wash their smelly feet means you have to stoop. You cannot get somebody to stand up so that you can remain standing and erect whilst you wash their feet. To wash another brother or sister’s feet means you have to stoop before them. It is as simple as that.
It is strange how we find a rigidity in us when it comes to washing one another’s feet. It is not so easy to humble ourselves before one another, not so easy to put something right, not so easy to ask for forgiveness.
Of course, sometimes we can do it in a very spiritual way. We go to someone and say, “I wish to ask your forgiveness, but you were so awful, and you are so difficult, that you have got me down. But the Lord has spoken to me, and I am coming now to ask your forgiveness, even though I know you are the same.”
I have seen many such so-called reconciliations, where people put the knife in in a very spiritual way and go to somebody else to get some irritation off their chest.
It would be much better to go and have it out with someone and say, “You know, I find you extremely irritating. I wonder whether you and I could get at ease together somehow.” That would at least be honest. I do not even know whether that is what the Lord wants.
To wash the saints’ feet is not throwing a bowl of cold water in their face. But if God could only deal with you so that you are humbled and broken, maybe you would forget the other person with all their awkwardness and difficulty, and for the first time you could see them as a means of glory and grace.
If we are going to be ready, we not only need to allow the Holy Spirit to settle these issues in our hearts, but we must take up our cross.
To be ready, you must take up your cross. What does it mean when the Lord Jesus said, “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me”?
It would be so much easier if He said, “If any man would follow Me, let him deny himself, take up the cross, and follow Me.” Some people think that a migraine headache is their cross, or a painful hip is their cross, or an awkward wife is their cross, or a grumpy husband is their cross, or difficult children are their cross, or some very demanding boss is their cross.
This is to devalue the work of the cross altogether. What did the Lord Jesus mean when He said, “If any man would follow Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me”?
They never did take up a whole cross. In the old days, the stake was left in the ground. They took the crossbeam. When you saw a man going through the streets of Jerusalem hauling on his back that crossbeam, it meant he was as good as dead.
His opinions did not matter anymore. His circumstances did not matter anymore. The difficulties he had with relationships did not matter anymore. He was a dead man.
It was Tozer who said, “When a man is crucified, he cannot look backwards.” For the first time, he can only look in one direction.
“If any man would follow Me, let him deny himself, and take up his sentence of death, and come after Me.” God has sentenced you to death, so why do you fight for your rights?
One of the new versions puts it very simply and directly: “If any man would follow Me, let him give up all right to himself, take up his cross, and come after Me.”
The matter of rights is the big thing today: rights, rights, rights—women’s rights, men’s rights, the rights of this colour, the rights of that colour, the rights of this nationality, the rights of that nationality, of this race, of that race.
This whole thing has got right into the church because it awakens something in us that is already very powerful: “I have rights. I am not going to be bossed around. I am not going to be directed. I am not going to be trampled on. I am not going to be used as a doormat. If anyone thinks they can push me around or push me into a corner, they have another thing coming. I have rights.”
The heart of the gospel is this: “If any man would follow Me, let him give up all right to himself, take up his cross, and come after Me.”
If you once saw that God has sentenced your old man or woman to death, then I think you would suddenly realize: what does it matter about opinion? Does it matter if someone has the wrong idea of your reputation? Does it matter if someone besmirches you? Not a dead person.
You and I can never be ready for the coming of the Lord, or for what is coming on the face of the earth, unless you and I lay down our lives. Otherwise, our treasure will be in ourselves, in our circumstances, and in our possessions, and not in the Lord.
We are so wedded to these things that it is only when we give up all right to ourselves that we can be severed from them. It does not mean you should not have possessions, but it does mean you should not own them.
Can you imagine what lies ahead of us in the days of the future if you and I are still self-centred, selfish, self-seeking, and self-interested? Can you imagine? We are not safe people.
The enemy has only to play upon our fear, and when it comes to a question of death or compromise, we will compromise to save our skins. If it comes to a choice between an easier way and a harder way, we will choose the easier way because we have not given up all right to ourselves, taken up our cross, and followed Him.
There is no way for character to be developed in the believer except through the work of the cross. No child of God has gone very far until he finds in his way, stark, bloody, and inescapable, the cross of the Lord Jesus.
When that time comes, you either go through with Him into a new dimension of Christian living, life, and power, or you go out of the way into a side path where you will remain for forty years in the wilderness.
You will go round and round, singing the same things, saying the same prayers, having the same problems, and really getting nowhere. You will have manna six days out of seven, water out of the rock, and a pillar of cloud and fire to guide you, but you will never come into the promised land.
God does not forsake you, but you chose it, not He.
If any man would follow Me, let him give up all right to himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. We are not safe for the days that lie ahead unless we know something of the cross in our lives.
How can we begin to explore and experience the fathomless and unsearchable riches of the Lord Jesus unless first we have been divorced from our own self-confidence, our own energies, and our own talents? There is no other way.
If you and I are going to be ready for the coming of the Lord, we need to have an experience of the anointing of the Holy Spirit and His fullness. There is no other way.
Mr. Sparks said to me many years ago, when we were talking about the end, “I said, ‘What do you think will characterize the very last days for the people of God?’” He said, “Funnily enough, many years ago, when I was young, I asked A. B. Simpson the same question.”
“And he said, ‘The one thing that will characterize the last part of the age will be a rediscovery of the person and work of the Holy Spirit.’”
I have no doubt about that. Nothing else will carry God’s people through the last phase and enable them to overcome than a dynamic experience of the anointing and power of the Holy Spirit.
When people tell me they are afraid of too dramatic an experience, I do not know what is wrong with them. We need supernatural power and grace for supernatural conditions.
The Bible says that in the last days demons will flood the whole earth. Darkness will cover; there will be the workings of Satan, using miracles and signs and great dramatic displays of power that will deceive even the elect, if it be possible.
We need the anointing and fullness of the Holy Spirit. My brothers and sisters, do not be afraid of any experience of the Holy Spirit. Seek God that He may immerse you in the Holy Spirit.
There is nothing more wonderful than to be lost in the person of the Holy Spirit than for the Holy Spirit to be trapped in you. The way some people speak, it seems they have the Holy Spirit. But I think it would be much more wonderful if the Holy Spirit got you.
Then, when you are taken by the Spirit of God, people say, “Well, just wait. I do not want to get unbalanced. I do not want to become extreme. I do not want to become wild.”
Are you telling me that God the Holy Spirit will make you unbalanced, extreme, and wild? Just because some people behave in a very unfortunate manner and call it the work of the Holy Spirit does not mean that the Holy Spirit will make you wild, extreme, unbalanced, and offensive.
When the Holy Spirit gets hold of a human being, He beautifies them. He takes their education in hand and starts to break them. When the Holy Spirit gets hold of somebody, He starts to put His finger on all kinds of things in their lives. He starts to cause light to shine in dark places.
There is nothing to fear in the Holy Spirit. He is like a dove—so gentle, so sensitive—and at the same time, He is fire. He will burn up all the sham and all the gloss.
Do not get afraid of the Holy Spirit. But let me tell you this: if you and I have no experience of the Holy Spirit, we are going to have a very hard time in the days that lie ahead. Believe you me.
When we do not have our own experience with the Holy Spirit, we have to depend on leaders. We have to get our direction from other saints. We are all the time asking, “We do not know the will of God. Would you please tell me? How should I do it? Which way should I look? Should I go this way? Should I go that way? Please explain it to me.”
People phone a thousand miles away and say to a brother, “Brother, would you tell me? Shall I take this job, or shall I not?” Is it not a lot of nonsense?
In the Word of God, it says that the sign of the new covenant is that every one of them shall know the Lord, from the least to the greatest. Of course, you should have fellowship, but only when you think you know what the Lord wants.
When you have something clear, then you go to your brethren and say, “Now tell me, do you think I am right in doing this? This is what I think the Lord wants for me.”
We need the Holy Spirit. May God help us in this matter.
Well now, dear friends, I think our time has gone. But let me finish with these words about watchmen. The Lord Jesus ended this major discourse on His coming again with the words, “What I say to you, I say to all, Watch.”
Are we only to watch for our own lives? I do not think so. What are the duties of a watchman? The duties of a watchman are to guard the interests of the king and of the city.
He must remain awake whilst others sleep. He has to spot from afar any movements that could injure the interests of the king and the city. Therefore, the one great requirement in a watchman is the ability to stay awake.
What good is a watchman if he is always falling asleep? The second thing about a watchman is this: he must have one hundred percent vision. You do not have blind watchmen.
He must be able to spot with his eyes a single movement that might be the beginning of an assault upon the city.
Brothers and sisters, you and I are watchmen. Does it not say in Isaiah 62:
Isaiah 62:6-7
I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem;
they shall never hold their peace day nor night:
ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers, take ye no rest,
and give Him no rest, till He establish,
and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
It was to Ezekiel that God said, “Son of man, I have made thee a watchman over this nation, to the whole house of Israel. If, when I say judgment is coming, you blow the alarm and sound the trumpet, and that man does not take heed and dies, he died in his sin. You have saved yourself.”
“But if you do not blow the trumpet or sound the alarm, and judgment comes and takes that man away, his blood will I require at your hand.”
Dear people of God, we have a solemn, God-given responsibility for the world in which we are found. We—that is, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, wherever she may be found all over this earth—are the only community in the earth that has a knowledge of what is going to happen.
We are the only community in the whole world that can blow a trumpet and sound the alarm.
Unfortunately, because we are also frightened of the word of prophecy, it has become the realm of the lunatic fringe and the domain of eccentrics and cults. The result is that they have moved in where the church of God should have been entrenched, and they are the ones continually talking about this, that, or the other.
Shame upon us, when the Mormons are prepared for three years of siege, every single Mormon family, and yet real believers seem to think they do not have to do a single thing about anything.
When Russellites—Jehovah’s Witnesses, so-called—are more aware that we are in the last days than the people of God themselves, it is because we have become so afraid of the extremists and eccentrics that we have withdrawn from the whole subject of prophecy and left it to the realm of cults and eccentrics.
This does not mean that God will not require the blood of the nation at the hands of the church if they have not warned people—not merely by word of mouth, but by their very conduct, behaviour, mode of living, and by something God has done within them.
They become a prophetic community, a prophetic witness to the world.
There is a little phrase in a prophecy in Isaiah which I am not sure is often rightly applied, but it is in Isaiah 21, verse 11:
Isaiah 21:11-12
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.
Thank God, a morning is coming. That dawn of God’s day is that upon which the whole Word of God focuses.
When it tells us about the night coming and the things of the night and darkness—dragons, serpents, beasts, false prophets, harlot churches, and Babylon with all its splendour and glory—it does not bring all this before our eyes to make us fearful.
He does not even focus attention upon those things of the night. Those things of the night are passing. They are temporal. The word of prophecy focuses all our attention upon the coming of the day of God.
That day of glory, that day of power, that day of vindication, that day of joy, that day when the redeemed will return to Zion with laughter in their mouth—that is the day upon which the whole Word of God focuses attention.
Brothers and sisters, we have a night before us. We do not know how much of the night we must pass through. Certainly, in my estimation, we have to pass through a little of it.
If I understand the words of the apostle Paul in his second letter, we have to see at least the beginning of the appearance of the man of sin before the Lord takes us. If that is so, we have some of a night to endure.
Are we ready? Are we prepared? Are we alive? Are we awake?
The night will pass, but the day of the Lord is forever. That is the issue.
Are you and I living in the light of that day as if it might come tomorrow—ready for His coming, ready for His use, ready to be witnesses whether in life or in death?
God is calling us. We do not know how much time we have. People come to me and say that I said we have twenty years. Some come to me and say that I said we have four years, and others tell me that I said we have seven years.
I do not recall ever saying that we have four years, seven years, or twenty years. I may have said that I thought there would be a world war within a certain period of time. I do not know when the Lord is going to come. I know He is coming.
I do not know when He is coming, but I do know this: it could be tonight.
I personally think we have a little more to go through, but it could be tonight, because I could be wrong. It could be tonight. So there is only one thing to do: get ready.
Do not allow that strange spirit which is in all human beings to take you over: “Well, I think I will do something about this next week. Tomorrow. Mañana.”
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow—tomorrow never comes. You will suddenly find that a week becomes a month, a month becomes a year, a year becomes five years, five years become ten years, and still you are in the same condition that you were in today.
The Lord will have come before you are ready.
So let us get right and be ready—and more than ready, let us be those watchmen whom God can use to awaken others, help others, and bring others to Himself.
May God help us to be ready personally, to be part of the fellowship of God’s people in which we are getting ready together, and to live in a world in which we are holding forth the Word of life to multitudes around us who do not know where they are going or what is happening.
Shall we pray?