Would you turn with me to Acts 7? We will read again those verses we read last night, beginning at verse 2.
And Stephen said, Brethren and fathers, hearken.
The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran,
and said unto him, Get thee out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee.
Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Haran: and from thence, when his father was dead, God removed him into the land wherein ye now dwell.
And He gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: and He promised that He would give it to him in possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child.
Then in the Hebrew letter, Hebrews 11, from verse 8:
By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
for he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Then in Genesis 12, from verse 1:
Now the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto the land that I will show thee:
and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing:
and I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse: and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
Then I want to turn you to Psalm 2, from verse 1:
Why do the nations rage,
And the peoples meditate a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord, and against His anointed, saying,
Let us break their bonds asunder,
And cast away their cords from us.
He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh:
The Lord will have them in derision.
Then will He speak unto them in His wrath,
And vex them in His sore displeasure:
Yet I have set My king
Upon My holy hill of Zion.
I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said unto Me, Thou art My Son;
This day have I begotten Thee.
Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,
And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron;
Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
Finally, Romans 11, from verse 24:
For if thou wast cut out of that which is by nature a wild olive tree, and wast grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree; how much more shall these, which are the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?
For I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery, lest ye be wise in your own conceits, that a hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in;
and so all Israel shall be saved: even as it is written,
There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer;
He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:
And this is My covenant unto them,
When I shall take away their sins.
As touching the gospel, they are enemies for your sake: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake.
For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
Shall we just bow in a word of prayer?
Beloved Lord, we are so glad that we are gathered here in Your presence. We are glad that we have been able to worship You.
And now, as we come just to the ministry of Your Word, we want to confess and acknowledge before You that, without that anointing, grace, and power which You have so dearly won for us at Calvary, it will amount to nothing—many words, many truths, Bible teaching—but it will amount to nothing.
But, Lord, we are so thankful that when there is an anointing upon both the speaking and hearing, the eyes of our hearts are illumined, and we come to know what is the hope of our calling.
Dear Lord, we pray this evening that You will grant that anointing in full measure upon the speaking of Your Word, the translating of it, and the hearing of it. We stand into it by faith, and we shall be careful to give You the praise and the worship of our heart for answering this, our prayer.
We ask it in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, I think you all know what the theme of this conference is: “I was therefore not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” We have been considering that in three ways: in the life of Abraham, in the person of our Lord Jesus, and in the life of the Apostle Paul. My responsibility has been Abraham.
I am always amazed at the simplicity of God’s Word when it comes to really big matters. The simplicity of this statement by Stephen, just before he was martyred: “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham.”
That is my responsibility: to talk about the heavenly vision in connection with Abraham. Think for a moment: the God of glory.
There could have been many other ways that, by the Holy Spirit, Stephen could have spoken of that vision Abraham had. But he said it was the God of glory that appeared to our father Abraham.
Man was made for the glory of God. Man is constituted in such a way that, apart from God’s glory, he is incomplete.
God never meant us to be just flesh and blood. He meant us to inherit incorruption and glory.
It is put very simply by the Apostle Paul, again by the Holy Spirit, in Romans 3:23:
For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.
In that one single sentence, you have the whole story of mankind—the fall of man. We have all sinned, and therefore we have fallen short of the glory of God: that which we were created for, that which we were destined for.
But what? His glory.
There are certain words that cannot be adequately put into language. You have to have them revealed to you. For instance, the word grace. People go into reams of explanation about what grace is.
But the simplest and most uneducated child of God, once the Holy Spirit reveals what grace is to them, lives in it. It becomes their life. How can you explain grace? “Unmerited favour”—that leaves me cold.
I have heard thousands of explanations for grace. I can hardly explain it myself. All I know is that I experience His grace every day.
I know exactly what it is, even if I cannot put it into a word. It is mercy, yes, and more. It is love, yes, and more. Steadfast, persistent, loyal love—yes, and more. It is covenant love. Yes, it is. It is amazing, this word grace.
Now glory is another word. I find it pathetic when some of the new versions translate it as “splendour.” We were made for splendour? It is a devaluation of the word glory.
What is glory? Glory is the manifested presence of God. It is when God is so satisfied—if I may so use it of the Lord—so thrilled with what He sees, that His very Person is manifested. That is glory.
When the glory of the Lord filled the temple, nobody could stand in it. They all fell on their faces before the Lord. It has happened again and again and again.
John says, “We beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father.” He was the manifested presence of God: the heart and mind of God expressed, revealed, articulated.
He was the Word that was in the beginning, the Word that was with God, and the Word that was God. A word is a thought that you cannot understand in a person’s head until it is articulated. I prefer “articulated.” I know I should not say this on July 4, but it is a good English question. If we put it in good American English: verbalised.
Here it is, on July 4: verbalised. The mind of God verbalised, articulated, put into expression, expressed in words.
No wonder Jesus said He was the Alpha and the Omega. That is the whole alphabet of God, the language of God, the means by which we can understand the heart and mind of God in the most practical and relevant manner.
Glory. Did you realise that you, sinner as you are—and do I realise, sinner as I am—that we were created for the glory of God? Not just to glorify God, but that the very glory of God should be in us.
When the Lord Jesus was transfigured in glory, there is a common idea amongst Christians that a spotlight sort of came out of heaven—a glorious, unbelievable white light—shone onto the Lord Jesus like a spotlight, and He glistered with it. That is not what happened.
What happened was that the light went on inside of Him, and through His very hair, His skin, His body, His clothes, this glory shone. Did you realise that you were made for that glory? Only through sin did we fall short.
When this great turning point in divine history came about, the God of glory appeared to a man who was a sinner, living an empty life in a successful business.
It was there that the Lord revealed Himself to Abraham: the God of glory. I do not suppose that Abraham had ever heard of glory as such, but when the God of glory appeared to him, he was never the same again.
God touched him, changed him, redirected him; and Abraham began the pilgrimage that would lead him to the city of God.
The Apostle Peter put all of this very simply in his first letter, in 1 Peter 5:10: “The God of all grace”—here is that word again—“who hath called you unto His eternal glory in Christ Jesus.”
You could almost say that is a commentary on what happened with Abraham. The God of glory appeared to Abraham, called him to His eternal glory in Christ Jesus.
Or I think of the wonderful words in Hebrews 2:10:
For it became Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Bringing many sons unto glory.
I think of another Scripture in Romans 9:23-24:
And that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He afore prepared unto glory, even us, whom He also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles.
Is that not a wonderful word? Vessels of mercy, afore prepared unto glory. Think about it. Are you a vessel of mercy? Do you realise just how your whole standing before God is to do with His mercy, with His grace?
Have you ever realised that God, from the moment you were born, was preparing you for glory? Before you even came to a saving knowledge of Himself, He was preparing you for glory.
Vessels of mercy, afore prepared unto glory—not just the Jews, through whom and in whom God first began to work, but also the Gentiles. What a wonderful picture we have here.
Everywhere you turn in the Word of God, you will find this matter of glory. The trouble is that because glory is a sort of strange word, it somehow runs off us. It does not have the impact on us that it ought to have.
I think of a very well-known Scripture, 2 Corinthians 3:18:
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.
That is what happens when you are a child of God and when you let the Holy Spirit really deal with you. When you surrender to the Lord, then you have an unveiled face. Otherwise, there is a veil—you do not see.
But once you make Him Lord, and once you allow Him to do what He wants to do with you, then it is an unveiled face. So it is the ministry of the blessed Holy Spirit of God who is supervising our being changed from glory to glory.
Actually, in our experience, it seems more like change from tribulation to tribulation, from affliction to affliction. But it is one capacity for glory to a greater capacity for glory.
So then, you see, a marvellous pilgrimage begins for every child of God once you obey the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
If you are living in contradiction to that law, the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, you not only have a veiled face; you have a civil war going on between you and the Lord. But once that civil war is done with, and you surrender to the Lord, you give Him the keys of your whole life and allow the Holy Spirit really to supervise your life and lead you in the way He wants to lead you, then you are moving from glory to glory.
Listen again, same letter, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18:
For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory;
while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen:
for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Is that not a wonderful, wonderful word? Our light affliction for a moment. Sometimes I almost question that: is it just a moment? It is a question of what you compare it with.
If you compare it with the eternal weight of glory that is being worked in you, then it is a moment—a light affliction for a moment.
Some of us have had many, many problems, thorns in the flesh, difficulties that we have lived with. We have pleaded with the Lord to take them, and He has not taken them, but instead has said, “My grace is sufficient for thee.”
When one day we arrive in the presence of the Lord, we shall bow before Him in absolute worship that those things which seemed so long, so heavy, so continuous, in fact worked for us an eternal weight of glory.
If we look at the scene, at what is seen, the visible, it is not so. But if we look beyond that to that which cannot be seen, and we behold the Lord Jesus, then it is an eternal weight of glory.
It was this God of glory who appeared to Abraham. He changed his life from being an idol worshipper, an idol maker, a salesman of idols. He became a pilgrim on a journey that would lead him to glory. It was the God of glory.
There are two people I have met in my life who, before they died, I actually saw the glory of God in them. Now, I know that sounds very strange, because they will be glorified ahead.
But one was Maria Monsen. I have never forgotten my last visit with Maria Monsen, that great missionary in northeast China. She was so weak she could not lift a cup to her lip.
But I have never forgotten the aura of light around her—in her body, actually in her. For the first time, I did not tell her, but for the first time I understood why they put saints with that circle of light around them.
I used to think, why? In our Jewish tradition, we have a flame of fire on everyone who is sainted. But in the Christian tradition, it is a circle of gold around them. I saw it in her.
The other one was someone nobody here, I think, would know: Dal Mersfeld. She was a matron of one of the biggest hospitals in Copenhagen. When I went to see her shortly before she died, she came down on the arm of a Salvation Army officer. She was in a home for those who were terminally ill.
It was as if light shone through her whole body and through her very hair. I have never forgotten.
Glory is not something that belongs to a fairy tale. It is real. It is something so real that the very light of God, the presence of the Lord Jesus in a human being, can shine through them in their weakness and in their last moments.
If that could be when we are down here, can you imagine what it will be when once you and I are transfigured in glory? This, then, is tremendous.
It was the God of glory that appeared to Abraham, and he was never the same again.
I think probably Abraham had the same desire in his heart that was in Moses’ heart when the Lord spoke with him, used him, met with him, and did so much with him.
Moses said, when the Lord said, “Tell Me what I shall do,” “Show me Thy glory.”
That is like the Apostle Paul. The more he saw of the Lord, the more he knew he did not know. You get it? The more he experienced of the Lord, the more he knew there was yet to experience of the Lord.
It became an obsession with him. It became something that, as it were, took up his whole life, his mind, his heart:
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Vision. I am so sorry when Christians have no heavenly vision, because your birthright as a child of God is to see—not with these eyes, but to see with the eyes of your heart. That is your birthright.
The Lord Jesus died for you that you might live, and you might see. I am so sorry when people live in a cramped straitjacket, a type of Christianity that is somehow not practical.
“Show me Thy glory.” We have no record that Abraham ever said that—only Moses. But I do not doubt that when the God of glory appeared to him, Abraham suddenly saw all that was temporal, transient, tinsel, nonsense, vanity, fall away.
Of course, I will say something about it tomorrow evening. The problem was still there. The Lord had to deal with a whole lot of things with Abraham.
But in that moment when the God of glory appeared to him, I think it was as if all that he thought was life became death. All that he thought was so important and weighty was suddenly shown up to be nothing: vanity, useless.
So, dear child of God, you and I have been created for the glory of God. If we have been saved by the grace of God, if we have been born of the Spirit of God, then these wonderful words come into our spirit: “The God of all grace, who hath called you unto His eternal glory in Christ.”
After you have suffered a little while, He Himself will establish you, strengthen you. Yes, I think it is tremendous, but I must move on. I do not want to spend the whole evening on this.
In the God of glory, Abraham saw the city which hath the foundations.
I must say, in my estimation, Abraham saw more than many Christians. It says he went out of Ur of the Chaldees—no mean city, part of the Babel complex of cities, of ancient civilisation.
But the moment the God of glory appeared to him, he was lost for Ur of the Chaldees. This sophisticated urban dweller became a keeper of sheep, goats, and camels.
As I often say when speaking about Moses, they are the smelliest of creatures. If you have ever kept goats, you know they can smell. If you have ever kept sheep, they are a little better. But if you have ever kept camels—the smell!
This amazing man became a herdsman, a shepherd, a goatherd. He journeyed, and he did not really know where he was going.
He never did actually see, as far as we know, he never ever entered the city of Jerusalem. But the writer of the Hebrew letter says he sought for the city which hath the foundations.
You would have thought that the Babel complex of cities would have been cities, a civilisation with foundations—magnificent. Even today, in archaeological excavations, we have discovered post offices, ladies’ hairdressing shops, cosmetics, jewellery.
In a famous exhibition of modern jewellery a while ago, they had a number of pieces modelled on Ur of the Chaldees. It was no mean city.
But the Word of God says Abraham left it all because he had been captured by another city, a city which hath the foundations.
Revelation 21:10-11 tells us of the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God. Here we have it: the God of glory appeared to Abraham, and now he sought the city which, in the end, will possess the glory of God.
I think in seeing this city within the vision of the God of glory, Abraham understood the purpose, the eternal purpose, of God.
You know, I have said it before, but I will say it again: one of the great themes of the Bible is two cities—the tale of two cities. One is Babel; the other is Jerusalem.
In Hebrew, Bavel, Babel, is the term used in the Hebrew Bible and in the Hebrew translation of the New Testament for Babylon. Babylon is the Greek word for Babel.
That gives an amazing continuity. Think for a moment. In Genesis 11 you have the whole story of Babel. In Genesis 12 you have the God of glory appearing to our father Abraham, and in that moment he became a pilgrim, a sojourner in the land that he was to inherit, and a seeker after Jerusalem.
In other words, from Genesis 11 and 12, you have in Genesis 11 the beginning of Babylon. You run right the way through the whole of your Bible, the sixty-six books, until you come to Revelation 17, 18, and the first part of Revelation 19, and that is the end of Babel, the end of Babylon.
From Genesis 12, running right the way through the whole of your Bible, you have Jerusalem.
Of course, it was a physical city, Jerusalem. God chose it, and nobody else would have chosen it.
It is one of the most extraordinary things, when you reflect upon this matter, that God chose a city which did not have a proper water supply. The water supply was outside of the city wall at the time of David. It was Hezekiah who brought it within the walls, but even that was precarious.
Can you imagine anyone taking a city as a capital city that had not got a proper, secure water supply to keep the people in time of war, in time of siege? It is amazing.
Jerusalem has no harbour. It has no great canals. It has no great navigable rivers. It is not on any great crossroads. The only reason Jerusalem has become a household word for the world is because God chose her.
God said again and again, “You shall not offer your offerings everywhere where you choose, but in the place where I will cause My name to dwell.” Now that is a most extraordinary phrase: “The place where I will cause My name to dwell.”
Think about it. People who read their Bibles often do not think about this. Have you ever heard of a city where someone’s name is caused to dwell? What in the world does it mean?
In the Word of God, names have meaning. Abram: exalted father. Abraham: father of a multitude, the father of all who believe. Jacob: twister. Israel: prince with God. Joseph: addition, multiplication, expansion. Isaac: laughter.
It is amazing, these names. Moses, Moshe: drawn out. He certainly was drawn out. He should have been eaten by a crocodile, but he was drawn out by no one less than Pharaoh’s daughter. It is amazing. His ministry was to draw out a people from Egypt.
Everywhere you look, names mean something. Names express the character, the personality, and, in a sense, the prophetic destiny of that person.
Now, when God says, “You shall not offer your sacrifices or your offerings anywhere where you choose, but in the place where I will cause My name to dwell,” what He meant was this: this city is to be the expression of My character.
It is to represent My heart and My mind. It is to represent truth. It is to represent the reign of God. It is to represent the kingdom of God. It is to represent the Messiah of God. It is to represent the salvation of God.
Therefore, Jerusalem will never disappear, in spite of her sin, in spite of her prostitution, in spite of her disobedience.
Babylon is gone. Thebes has gone. Ramses has gone. All these great cities of antiquity—Shushan, name it—they are all gone. But not Jerusalem. Jerusalem must outlast them all.
Why? It says in the Book of Revelation, “Sodom, where also their Lord was crucified.” That is how the Book of Revelation describes the Jerusalem down here.
But the fact that it has never disappeared is because it represents the mind of God, whereas Babel—by the way, we do not know how it ever got chosen, because it means confusion in Hebrew—and that is the perfect epitaph of fallen man’s ingenuity and genius: confusion.
League of Nations, United Nations—disunited everything. I mean, it is crazy, really: confusion.
Every time they are trying to bring heaven to earth and earth to heaven, to unite heaven, to bring a great golden age of prosperity and brotherhood and equality, what happens? It becomes a prison.
Marxism became a prison. Nazism became a prison. Maoism became a prison. Great philosophy, great ideals—but it is confusion.
Why? Because it has no foundations. It is not built on eternal foundations. It is not the God of glory. It is not that city which in the end will possess the glory of God.
Now, I do not know whether what I am saying—because I can hardly see you from here—I could be speaking into thin air and nobody there.
But if I look at my Bible, the beginning of the Bible and the end of the Bible—Genesis 1 to 3 and Revelation 20 to 21—I have the most extraordinary correspondence.
In the beginning there is a garden; at the end there is a city. At the beginning there is the tree of life; at the end there is the tree of life. At the beginning there is a river of life; at the end there is a river of life.
It is amazing. There are trees in the beginning: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which Adam and Eve were told not to touch. At the end you have those trees bearing fruit, with leaves for the healing of the nations.
The most extraordinary thing of all is that it is as if this Bible that God has given us is all to do with the city.
That is what Abraham saw. He saw that the whole history of this world is basically explained by the city of God, the New Jerusalem.
When this earthly Jerusalem disappears, she will not disappear until she disappears into the glory of that New Jerusalem, the eternal Jerusalem. Until then, she is here as a symbol of God Himself.
I wish this could be more clear, but you know, when you come to that city at the end of the Bible, you find the most amazing thing. In the first three chapters, you have the marriage of Adam and Eve. In the last three chapters, you have the marriage of the Lamb and the wife of the Lamb.
That goes to the heart of the Bible. Open it roughly at the heart, and what have you got? You have the Song of Songs: a story of a love relationship between God and the redeemed.
He will not let them go. Even when they become lukewarm and tepid, when they become self-satisfied and settle down, as it were, He will not let them go.
He goes through, stage by stage. He has brought that beautiful bride that He so loves to the place where she says, “I am my beloved’s.”
To begin with, it was, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” I have seen that a number of times: “My beloved is mine, and I am here.”
If you did not hear that, that was deliberate: “I am here.”
Then, after a little bit of dealing, she says, “I am his.” She puts it a different way: “I am my beloved’s, and He is mine.”
Oh, okay. But there were a few more dealings, and then she says, “I am His.” Here is the amazing thing: for the first time, she thinks of others.
“What about my little sister?” she says. “She has not matured. She has not developed. What can we do for her?”
This is the Bible. Do you really believe that Abraham actually saw something like this before some of these things were even written?
I believe it is entirely possible for a human being to understand the purpose of God if the Holy Spirit is present. He may not have indwelt, but He still ministered.
Oh, think again. Has it ever occurred to you that when the Lord Jesus began His Messianic ministry, the first miracle was in a wedding? John makes so much of this: this was His first miracle. It began in a wedding, where He turned water into wine.
Well, throughout history, as far as the Bible is concerned, there are only two cities, and all human beings belong to one or the other.
You either belong to Babylon or you belong to Jerusalem. That is why Psalm 87 says, when the Lord writes up the peoples, He says, “This one was born there.”
Even though their original birth was in Babylon, or in Philistia, or Tyre, or the other places, now they are born again; they are registered in Jerusalem—Jerusalem which is above, which is the mother of us all.
But it is more than that. The purpose of God is not only to redeem human beings, but to bring them into such a relationship with Himself that they grow to maturity, where they will be able to reign with Him.
That city at the end of the Bible, with which this amazing revelation of the heart and mind of God in these sixty-six books ends, is both a capital city and a wife—two extraordinarily different ideas.
A city: a capital city, the centre of administration, the centre of a civil service, the centre where the policies of a kingdom or empire are dictated, ordered, commanded.
And a wife: the most intimate relationship known to mankind—husband and wife.
If we suffer with Him, we shall also be glorified with Him.
Is it not interesting that that wonderful church at Ephesus, the Lord was prepared to take away the lampstand out of its place for one single reason? They had left their first love.
So, when you come to the city of God, it is a matter of first love. It is a matter of being in love with the Lord.
“You shall love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, with all thy heart, with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.” And Jesus said, “The second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
Such is the city of God: reigning with Him and in love with Him.
As I have often said, the Lord is not interested in an eternal civil service, a bureaucracy that knows exactly what should be done and knows how to do it, and does it with a minimum of fuss and the greatest of efficiency—not always true of bureaucracy.
But that will never satisfy the Lord. He will only be satisfied with a companionship that has sprung out of devotion and love. That is the meaning and significance of this city.
Well, you can see how tremendous this whole subject is. I wish, really, one could spend even longer on it, but you can see straight away that the God of glory spoiled Abraham for anything less than the city which hath the foundations. That is the heavenly vision.
The Ephesian letter of the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 5 that the Lord Jesus loved the church and gave Himself up for it, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church—a church of glory—not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing.
So if we at least get something here that is, I think, tremendous, we begin to understand something about Abraham.
We are now in the process—and, if I may say this, then move on to the last point I want to make—we are now in the process of a tremendous attempt of Satan to regain the whole world.
It is the final attempt to Babylonise the whole world. You have globalisation; it is just Babel. More and more, the whole world is becoming a global village. We speak almost one language. Unbelievable.
It is incredible what is happening, and happening so fast that you can almost be overtaken by it and not wake up to what is happening. We are coming to the chapters in Revelation 13 to 19.
It has always been the same. If you look at Daniel’s prophecy, you will see that those four great empires came out of a typhoon-driven sea, storm-tossed. Out of it came one after another after another.
When you look at Revelation 13, we are not told that the sea is typhoon-driven, but it is the same sea. Out of it comes a homogenising of all four empires. It is the final great empire, the final great Antichrist world.
It is Satan’s last great attempt to take the world. Satan is incredible. I must be careful what I say, but Satan is an incredible person.
Because, in one sense, he studies the Bible. He comes to a prayer meeting. He listens sometimes, if he thinks they are important enough, in conferences. He takes in all the things that God has shown us by His Spirit, and still he believes that he can win.
That is incredible to me. He has been beaten every time he has ever attempted to frustrate the purpose of God. The Lord has turned the tables and defeated him, and out of it has come tremendous blessing and salvation.
Why does he go on, unless he is eaten up with pride and believes that he can still frustrate the purpose of God and the coming of the King, the Lord Jesus?
Why do you think the Lord is shaking everything? This shaking began, in my estimation, with the First World War, was carried on in the Second World War, and has grown ever since.
Now we have come to the place where everything is being shaken—turmoil over the whole world. It does not matter where you turn; there is turmoil. You have Chávez in South America; you have Ahmadinejad in Iran. It does not matter where you turn. You have Putin in Russia. You have the most amazing things happening everywhere you look.
What is it that is happening? Then you have Islamic terror. Islam has an agenda to take the whole world. It will fail, by the grace of God.
Why? Because Antichrist is not that type of person. He is not like Nero, or Hitler, or Mao, or Stalin. This Antichrist, if I may say it without upsetting anyone, is more Clinton-esque: affable, forgivable, attractive, even when he sins.
That is the final figure that will come.
Dear friends, is it any wonder that God is shaking everything? Do you know why He is shaking it? Basically, to shake anybody who can be shaken out of what is transient and temporal into what is eternal and forever.
The wonderful prophecy in Joel speaks about the very final stage of this age and says, “And whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Thank God for shaking, because what it will do is shake businesses to pieces, shake families to pieces, shake all kinds of religious routine to pieces, and bring people to the place where they seek and search for that which is unshakable.
Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God.
I say it is tremendous. Some people are very afraid of the shaking. I am not. I know Who is shaking. You know—the Lord. He is doing the shaking.
I am not the least bit afraid. Let Him go on shaking. I want to see the whole thing come to a quick end. I have had enough of it—all this turmoil, this misrepresentation we have. The sooner it all ends, the better, with the coming of the Lord.
I am not afraid of the shaking. I imagine many of you are not either. Thank God, if the Lord wants to shake out of us what is shakable, let Him do it.
We shall only praise Him in the end that He brought us to the place where what could be shaken was shaken out of us, and we came to focus on what is unshakable.
Now, dear friends, I said there is one other thing I want to say, and it is quite important. When the God of glory appeared to Abraham, he saw the city which hath the foundations. He understood the whole purpose of God was centred, in one sense, in that coming city.
But far more important than this is my last point: he saw the whole purpose of God centred in the Lord Jesus.
In John 8:56, the Lord Jesus says very simply, “Abraham saw My day, and rejoiced.” He saw and rejoiced.
What did Abraham see? Is it not amazing that nearly two thousand years before the Lord Jesus appeared on this earth, Abraham had seen His day and had rejoiced?
It was not some kind of dim apparition that appeared to him and he wondered, “Well, I wonder what that is all about.” But he rejoiced.
He saw that the whole purpose of God was centred, focused, on the Lord Jesus, on the Messiah. He would bring salvation. He would bring the gospel—good news. He would build the church. He would save Israel.
I say it is amazing. Listen to the words of the Lord when He appeared to Abraham:
And I will make of thee a great nation,
And I will bless thee,
And be thou a blessing.
And them that bless thee I will bless;
And him that disesteemeth thee I will curse.
And in thee, in thy seed, shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
In that extraordinary revelation of the God of glory and the words of the Lord, you had the whole history of mankind from Abraham to this day.
A great nation—yes, I do not fear to say it—He was speaking about Israel.
It says in Numbers 23:9 that this people shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations. In other words, there is a uniqueness to this nation that came out of the bowels of Abraham, which has lasted all the way through history to this day.
Could you believe that all these years, nearly four thousand years later, the whole world is in turmoil over a little portion of territory not bigger than the state of New Jersey? Think of that: as small as Hungary or Portugal in Europe, like the North Island of New Zealand, the size of Tasmania in Australia.
Could you believe the whole world, four thousand years later, is in turmoil over this little state? That means they have outlasted everything to this day. I call that a great nation.
It reveals not the ingenuity of the Jewish people or the intelligence of the Jewish people—they have that—but it does not reveal that. What it reveals is the absolute faithfulness of God.
He says in His Word very clearly:
As touching the gospel, they are enemies for your sake: but as touching the election, the predestinating will and purpose of God, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake.
For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
Let it sink in: the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. That explains why Israel is today in existence, recreated. That explains why every attempt to exterminate them has failed.
It explains the amazing thing that is happening in Israel, where Israelis are coming to know the Lord Jesus. Only just a little trickle, but it is the beginning of a tremendous work of the Holy Spirit which will be the completion of the history of redemption.
Dear child of God, we could spend a lot of time on this subject, but I am not going to. All I am going to say is this: the misrepresentation of Israel, the growing hatred of Israel, the growing anti-Semitism now seen in anti-Israelism, means simply that Satan knows that his end is near.
He has always understood that once the salvation of the house of Israel comes near, his time is over. So he will raise up people like Ahmadinejad and others who vow to exterminate her.
Some people believe that there will never be another Holocaust. They think that the Nazi Holocaust was the last ever. I do not. Do you mean to tell me Satan is dead? He is not dead.
Because he is not dead, he will do it again. That is the seriousness of the situation in the Middle East, and at the same time this misrepresentation by the media, the world media, which has basically put Israel in such a terrible light that many people think, as they did in Nazi Germany, that it might be just as well if they were exterminated.
But they will not be exterminated. Did you read those words in Psalm 2?
Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,
And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.
These are the words of the Father to the Son, concerning the Lord Jesus. Concerning the Jewish people, He says, “I have set My King upon My holy hill of Zion.”
But did you notice also: “Why do the nations meditate a vain thing?” Why are they in uproar? Why do the rulers and kings say, “Let us throw away these bonds, these fetters”?
Exactly what is happening now: this whole great movement to throw overboard the law of God—what God has said about abortion, what God has said about homosexual marriage, what God has said about euthanasia, about anything else.
“Throw it overboard. We do not want it. It does not belong to modern culture.”
I read those words in Romans for one reason. You have the mystery of the church, and you have the mystery of Israel.
This great apostle, through whom has come so much revelation concerning the body of our Lord Jesus, the church, is also the one who said, “I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery”—the mystery of Israel—“lest ye be wise in your own conceits.”
A hardening in part has befallen Israel until the fullness, the full number, of the Gentiles be come in. That does not mean until the last Gentile is saved. It means that when this great work of the gospel has brought in men and women of every tongue, kindred, and race, then God will turn back to the Jewish people, the natural branches, and will melt the hardening, and give back vision and salvation.
And so it says, “And so all Israel shall be saved.” Not meaning just Jews physically, but all Israel means all those saved by the grace of God—Gentile and Jew—and so all Israel, the elect people of God, saved to sin no more.
Then comes this wonderful word—listen to it:
As it is written,
There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer;
He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:
And this is My covenant unto them,
When I shall take away their sins.
Now this is amazing. Where does he quote it? It is quite extraordinary, because the Hebrew in Isaiah 59:20 says very clearly:
And a Redeemer will come to Zion,
And unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob.
Exactly what happened. The Lord Jesus came to Zion, and He saved those who turned from ungodliness in Jacob. He actually did it. It is wonderful. That was the early church. It was absolutely wonderful.
But now we have this variation. I believe it is the Spirit of God:
The Deliverer shall come out of Zion,
And shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.
I believe we are so near to this day. Oh, dear child of God, listen to this. It is simply amazing.
Is it any wonder that the world is in turmoil? Is it any wonder that this tremendous anti-Semitic force is developing everywhere? Surely it is not flesh and blood. It is to do with Satan and the powers of evil and darkness.
But listen to this: “In thy seed all the families of the earth will be blessed.” That is to do with the whole great gospel work in the whole world.
It says in Galatians 3:8 that the gospel was preached to Abraham through this verse:
And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
I do not know how many Jews ever thought that, in the end, it would go to the ends of the earth, and there would be those who would come into the salvation of God, the fullness of God, the purpose of God, the kingdom of God, through the Lord Jesus.
I say this is tremendous. Where are we? We are not in the beginning. We are at the end. Things are moving now so fast we can hardly keep up with them.
But, dear child of God, in the light of all of this, you and I need to allow the Lord to deal with us. If our vision has grown dim, if somehow or other we have been compromised in our understanding, we need the Spirit of God to touch us.
Just as Abraham was at a great turning point in divine history, we are at another turning point: the completion of the work of the gospel and the salvation of the house of Israel.
Can you imagine the joy in heaven when that is completed? But many children of God are asleep. They just have absolutely no idea.
The Antichrist is coming. That is why I said what I said about America last night. I do not think America is going to escape this.
The Antichrist is coming. I would to God that this would be the place of safety and refuge. I do not think so.
Satan desires this nation more than he desires many others. When he moves in, he will seek to destroy every vestige he can of biblical faith and understanding.
But, dear child of God, there is a rapture also. It could come any time. The Antichrist has not yet appeared. In my understanding of the Scripture, we have to go a little way into this time when he does appear, but praise God, there is a rapture.
And thirdly, the Lord Jesus is coming. And when He comes, the war is over.
Dear child of God, you and I have a tremendous privilege. We have been called with a high calling. We have been granted, as our birthright, revelation.
As the Lord Jesus said to Peter, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father who is in heaven.” So it has to be with you and me.
If you have lost your vision, why do you not get on your knees and tell the Lord, “I believe I have been blinded”? Why do you not ask the Lord to touch your heart, and the eyes of your heart, so that you could see more clearly than ever you saw?
This God of glory—may He give us grace not to be disobedient.