I am very glad to be able to be back with you, especially as I thought there was a possibility that I would not be able to be with you this year. But the Lord worked it in a marvellous way, and here I am.
Now, I want to read a few Scriptures. If you will turn to the Hebrew letter, Hebrews 11, we will read from verse 25.
Choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;
accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt:
for he looked unto the recompense of reward.
By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king:
for he endured, as seeing Him Who is invisible.
Then, if you will turn to the Old Covenant, 2 Kings 6, I will read from verse 8.
Now the king of Syria was warring against Israel; and he took counsel with his servants, saying, In such and such a place shall be my camp.
And the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying, Beware that thou pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are coming down.
And the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him and warned him of; and he saved himself there, not once nor twice.
And the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not show me which of us is for the king of Israel?
And one of his servants said, No, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.
And he said, Go and see where he is, that I may send and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan.
Therefore sent he thither horses, and chariots, and a great host: and they came by night, and compassed the city about.
And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, a host with horses and chariots was round about the city. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! How shall we do?
And he answered, Fear not: for they that are with us are more than they that are with them.
And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.
And when they came down to him, Elisha prayed unto the Lord, and said, Smite this people, I pray Thee, with blindness. And He smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.
And Elisha said unto them, This is not the way, neither is this the city: follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom ye seek. And he led them to the king of Israel.
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful that we have been in Your presence this morning and that, Lord, we have been able to worship You, glorify You, and praise You from our full hearts for all that You mean to us.
Dear Lord, as we come to the ministry of Your Word, You know the days that we are living in, and You know the enormous danger that lies ahead. We want to ask You, dear Lord, that You will be very gracious this morning and that You will anoint both the speaker and the hearer.
We stand by faith in that anointing which You have won at Calvary for us and made a reality in the outpoured Holy Spirit. As we sang earlier, “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on us.” In this way, let there be a double portion of that anointing for the speaking and for the hearing, that Your purpose in this time may be fulfilled in its entirety.
And we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah. Amen.
I do not have to tell you, in introduction, that the rapid paganisation of the Western nations is appalling.
Some people do not quite understand my use of the word paganisation, but if I said heathenisation, maybe that would help you. We are returning to the society that was pagan and heathen. We are adopting nationally, in all the once so-called Christian nations, pagan principles and heathen principles for society, for marriage, for relationships, for everything—for education, for social life, and for government life.
This is extraordinary. I remember years ago—Paul Madison speaking to me; it must now be something like forty years ago—when we were talking about Sweden. He knew that I had a Swedish aunt, and he knew that I knew Sweden rather well.
He said, “Do you know Sweden had the highest standard of living of the nations of Europe? She was the most moral and most ethical of the nations of Europe. She sent out thousands of missionaries all over the world. Her preaching of the gospel, and the biblical principles which she put at the heart of her national life—all the rest of the Scandinavian nations knew.”
Then the collapse came. He said it took ten years for them to collapse from a high position of being a Christian nation, with biblical principles at the root of their society and government, to being nothing—anything, anywhere.
I think those of you who ever listen to my updates will know that I have said it. I do not wish to say it to you, dear people, but it was only the Catholics who stood up and said something. Nobody else has—not a single leader of any denomination has spoken up against what is happening, or warned their own people as to what is happening.
When Pope John Paul asked the European Council to consider their preamble, in the essay they wrote about European and Anglo-Saxon civilisation, they had not mentioned the Bible or the preaching of the gospel as a source—or the source. He said, “Surely you should say that the preaching of the gospel was the thing that changed the whole of Europe from pagan Europe into something that was biblical.”
The awakenings, revivals, and renewals that came only enforced that, so that country after country in Europe became a great mission home, sending missions out to the ends of the earth.
They wrote back to him and said, “The gospel and the Bible have nothing whatsoever to do with European civilisation or Anglo-Saxon civilisation. Hellenism is the source of European civilisation and of Anglo-Saxon civilisation.”
Then came Pope Benedict, and he asked them, “Well, at least say that the gospel of the Bible is a source of European civilisation.” But again they said, “No, it is not.”
It is absolutely clear from what is happening not only in Europe, Britain, and New Zealand, but also here in the States, that this rapid paganisation is not human. It is a collapse of righteousness, of justice, of uprightness, of morality, and ethical standards, and the replacing of it all with something that is a free-for-all.
Of course, Hellenism did believe in democracy of a kind. It was not democracy as we know it, but it was a democracy of a kind.
I believe that this paganisation cannot take place without severe judgment.
I find it very interesting that in the three places in the Old Covenant where the prophet says—Jeremiah or Ezekiel, for instance—“Peace, peace,” where there is no peace, it relates to our so-called peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis.
It is extraordinary, anyway. I know of no nation in the world that is being forced to sit down with people who have within their constitution our annihilation and elimination, and make peace with them. It is not a peace process; it is a process for national suicide.
We are being forced by America, by Britain, and by the European Union to do this. It is interesting that whenever the prophet Jeremiah—twice—speaks of “peace, peace,” where there is no peace, and Ezekiel does likewise, it ends with this: the Lord will show His displeasure by hail, gales, and storms; there will be no fruit on the tree, no figs on the fig tree, and no grapes on the vine.
In other words, I think all this suffering has nothing to do with warming, as they all tell us, so that we can put it right simply by stopping these emissions. I think it is the Lord. He is showing His displeasure.
Britain has seen the greatest floods. The main railway between London and Cornwall—part of it was washed away in these huge storms. Part of Somerset was underwater for three months. People lived in their homes on the higher levels and went by boat to do various things. Extraordinary.
The floods were not just in Britain. Here, the floods were also in Bosnia and Serbia, with many deaths—enormous rains that have not been seen before in Europe.
Well, I might be boring you stiff or alarming you; I do not know which. But the fact of the matter is, in my estimation, you cannot reject Christian principles, the Word of God, and the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ without some form of judgment coming upon those nations.
Furthermore, I have to say that I think the Lord is extremely gracious. Just as He did with Egypt, He began with very small problems when He judged Egypt because they would not let the people of God go free. Gradually it got worse and worse and worse, and still they did not listen and did not repent. In the end, it ended with the death of the firstborn.
Now, I am not saying that will happen in the States or in Britain. But what I do think is that the Lord is being very gracious. He is just troubling the weather at present. But I think that once it is clear that we are absolutely set in our ways, then I think very severe judgments will come—earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes such as we have not seen before.
What are we to do? We who are the children of God—what are we to do?
You see, with the paganisation there has come heaviness in the atmosphere. I remember when I was saved, which is now seventy years ago, listening to missionaries. Again and again, they would say—and I got so weary of it that I used to go up to them afterwards, though I was only twelve, and ask them questions.
They said, “You have no idea, you who live in a Christian nation, how easy it is for you to pray and how easy it is for you to follow the Lord. But where we are, in Africa, in Asia, elsewhere, in idol-worshipping nations, there is a darkness.”
I remember Fraser of Lisu-land actually saying that he could not pray, because he said it was like an iron hand around his throat, choking him, until he got that Scripture: “The Lord reigneth.”
The Lord said to him by the Spirit, “Go up to the highest mountain in Lisu-land, face the north, and say, ‘Jesus Christ is Lord of Lisu-land.’ Face the south and say the same thing; face the west and say the same thing.”
He went up. He must have wondered what the animals thought as they saw this man—he was quite a poor man; he was a doctor—standing there and yelling at the top of his voice, “Jesus Christ is Lord of Lisu-land! He reigns over Lisu-land!”
When he came down, the thing around his throat was broken; he never had it again. But what he did discover was that the chiefs of the tribe came to him immediately and said, “What is the God that you worship?” From that came the great revival awakening among the Lisu people.
I think there is a difficulty everywhere I go. In Britain, here, and elsewhere in Europe, Christians are telling me of troubles that they are facing in the atmosphere—difficulty in prayer, difficulty in getting through.
The worst thing has been the number of young people who have suddenly collapsed. Now I am talking about literally teenagers or those in their early twenties. I could give you a whole number of examples of those whom I personally knew, who were very keen to follow the Lord, and I can only describe it this way: they have been kidnapped by the forces of darkness.
Suddenly, they wake up and they no longer believe the Bible. They do not believe in God. They do not believe in the gospel. I have said everywhere I have gone in Britain and Europe: pray for your young people, because this is a work of darkness.
If we have chosen paganism, then we are going to go back to demonism, which was the biggest single thing about paganism: savagery and demonism.
What can we say? Well, it seems to me that we are very near to the man of sin being revealed. This is not human.
People always tell me about conspiracies. I am really weary of these conspiracies. First of all, the Rothschilds are conspirators, who somehow ordered war after war in Europe for their own gain. Then I am told the Rockefellers are the conspirators. Then I am told poor old Kissinger, a Jew who lost most of his family in the Holocaust, is another conspirator.
Then it came to an end when someone in the Northern States said that Watchman Nee was an Illuminati. Then I knew that it was the enemy. I was always being told about the Illuminati—what they were doing secretly and how they were working together for this and that. I do not think it is that.
I think the key is Satan and the fallen angels, whether archangels, powers, world rulers of this darkness, or wicked spirits.
What are we to do? Good question.
I notice that some companies that were very good twenty or thirty years ago have lost steam. That is the only way I can put it. Certainly, the fervour is no longer there—not in prayer, not in testimony, not in evangelism.
What are we to do? Are we to be swept along until we go over the precipice? Or are we to do something?
I think the book of Revelation, this fearsome book for many Christians, has on nearly every page the overcomer. So I take great courage from that: whatever the enemy is seeking to do, there are going to be overcomers at every stage of judgment, or whatever else, right the way through until the Lord Himself returns.
Furthermore, I take great courage from the fact that Revelation 8 says there is an angel—I do not know whether he is an archangel or what his status is—but he takes fire from the censer and incense, and he puts it into the prayers of the saints.
It is as if He knows very well that somehow or other they are battling forces that they do not realise—huge spiritual forces. They need divine help, spiritual help, to be able to prevail.
I think it is amazing that when it happens, all the wonderful attributes of the Lord Jesus are poured into the prayers of the saints. And then what happens? It says there is thunder and lightning. At least something happens.
Some of our prayer meetings are so dull. Nothing ever happens. I have the greatest sympathy with people who feel, “Well, what is the point of going to the prayer meeting? It is so dull. Nothing ever happens in it. We never hear an answer to prayer. We never see anything happen—no miracles, nothing.”
But when you read the book of Revelation, it looks as if the Lord deliberately has made provision that in prayer there should be something that will marvellously help us.
I read to you from 2 Kings what I consider one of the most amazing stories of the prophet Elisha.
The story is very simple. The king of Syria was always warring with the king of Israel. There is nothing new in that. Syria and Israel have always been at loggerheads.
Nor is there anything new about the fact that the king of Syria thought he was being bugged. He brought all his staff together and said, “Who is the traitor in this lot? Someone is telling this king of Israel everything that we plan.”
Then one of the staff, with great courage, said, “No, king—no, sir, lord. There is a prophet in Israel, and he hears everything you say in your bedroom. He is translating it immediately to the king of Israel, who then takes action.”
So he said, “We will put an end to this.” He sent a whole battalion, or more, down to Dothan in the Galilee, where Elisha was headquartered.
Dear Elisha was by that time somewhat old—I am—and he had a young man to help him. The young man really loved the Lord, from what you take from the story. He seemed to love the Lord. He had great respect for the prophet Elisha, and he was baking the old prophet’s breakfast.
Then, suddenly, out of a window, I suppose he saw movement. He thought, “That is funny. What is that movement?” He went to another window, and then he saw Syrian soldiers. He went to another window, and more. Then he went out and looked, and the whole place was filled with Syrian soldiers.
Then he panicked, fled to Elisha, and said, “We are done. We are completely surrounded. What are we to do?”
Elisha merely was a prophet. Instead of sitting him down, as we would have done, and giving him a heavy word—telling him, “Now, there is no need for fear. We are the Lord’s. We are perfectly protected,” and so on—why should we be afraid? It did not bother him.
All he said was, “There are more with us than are with them.” Then he prayed the shortest prayer in the Bible: “Lord, open his eyes.”
In that moment, the young man’s eyes were opened, and suddenly he saw armies of the Lord everywhere on the hills around Dothan—chariots of fire, full of the armies of God.
You see, this world we live in is essentially a spiritual world. Now let me explain. It is not merely a physical world; it is essentially a spiritual world. After all, Who saved you? The Lord Jesus. Do you see Him physically? No. That is something spiritual.
Everything that is eternal is spiritual. In other words, what we learn from this young man is that the armies of God are the key to everything.
The Lord Jesus is enthroned at the right hand of the Father. The Father has said to Him, according to Psalm 110, which the Lord Jesus quoted when challenged:
The Lord said unto my Lord,
Sit Thou at My right hand,
Until I make Thine enemies
The footstool of Thy feet.
Then it goes on to say that the Father gives to Him the sceptre, which is ruling authority. Please forgive me for saying this, but I hope you understand what I am saying: people who live in a republic do not always understand the kingdom.
When it speaks about the kingdom, it is really speaking about the throne and the One Who sits on the throne. It is not just territory; it is the government that comes from whoever sits on the throne.
This is the old idea, because today it is not quite the same. But the kingdom of God is not presidential. You do not vote every four years for who is going to be in charge of the kingdom of God. It is a kingdom, and the King is King of kings. It is the Lord Jesus Who is King.
That makes a tremendous difference. No wonder Psalm 110 was the favourite psalm of the early church, the most quoted psalm in the New Testament.
That means—are you following me?—something very simple, but something tremendous. It means that this spiritual world, once it is somehow channelled into the physical world, will see that the will of God is done, as it is in heaven, so on earth.
The kingdom of God, the throne of God, can be brought to bear on situations in the world as we know them. Do you believe it? Do we really believe it in our hearts?
Do we really believe that when we seek the Lord in prayer, and above all in intercession, it really is touching the throne of God? It is all to do with the kingdom, all to do with the will of God.
In other words, however dark the forces are around us, and however manifest they are in all kinds of ways, we can be seated with Christ, the Messiah, in heavenly places.
You know, I have told you before the story of T. Austin-Sparks when he was a young man. He had a great love for Dr. F. B. Meyer, and he thought he would go for an interview. So he wrote to him and said, “Can I have an interview with you?”
He travelled down to London for this interview, which was fixed. But when he got to Dr. F. B. Meyer’s home, the lady who ran the house said to him, “Dr. Meyer is out just at present, but he said he will be back shortly. Would you like to go into his study and sit down?”
Mr. Sparks went into his study. He was in his late teens or early twenties. He sat down and, like so many, began to look at the books. What was the great man reading? Did he have a Bible open anywhere, so that he could see what part of the Bible he was studying?
Then suddenly, on the mantelpiece, he saw a piece of wood, that long and that deep, engraved and gilded so that it stood out. On it were the words: “Look down.”
He could not believe it. He said, “I have always been taught to look up. How come that this great man has got this motto over his mantelpiece—‘Look down’?”
At that moment, Dr. F. B. Meyer came in. He said, “I am awfully sorry I have kept you waiting, but I came as quickly as I could. I hope you have made yourself at home. But I see you are very interested in my motto on the mantelpiece.”
Austin-Sparks said, “Yes, I am. You see, I have always been told to look up, and you have got something up there in gold letters: ‘Look down.’”
Dr. F. B. Meyer said, “It all depends on your position. If you are seated with Christ in heavenly places, you look down. If you are under situations, you have to look up.”
Makes all the difference, does it not? But you see, that is a spiritual thing—being seated with Christ. We are not physically seated there, but just because it is spiritual does not mean it is not absolutely real.
Well, I must watch the clock. I am very glad you have got a clock right in front of the preacher. But I want you to understand that the world we are living in is a spiritual world.
Now, I do not want you to become angel-conscious, as they did in the church in Colossae. They nearly worshipped the angels. They got all wrapped up with them, and I do not know what else happened. Paul had to write that letter to put them right on it.
We must not go to one extreme or the other. Either we see a demon under every cushion, or we find angels everywhere and get all wrapped up with angels. It is the Lord Jesus we need to be wrapped up with.
The amazing thing is that all the angels who are sent out to minister to those who are heirs of salvation turn us to the Lord Jesus. They glorify the Lord Jesus.
I am sure many of you have had experience, surely, of angels helping. I certainly have had many. I can only explain it by saying—I have quoted it ever since I saw Auntie Ella on her knees, saying, “Lance and I, Lord, we are claiming that promise: ‘How many soever be the promises of God, in Christ is the yea, and through Him is the amen.’”
She said, “Lance and I are asking You now, standing on a promise—Hebrews 1:14: ‘Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?’”
Then she bowed her head. She had been trying to put the sewing machine right; it was absolutely jammed. She had said to the Lord, “Lord, You know Lance, dear boy, does not know the first thing about sewing machines. He tried to help us, but we are nowhere. Then I have tried to do it, and I do not know what is wrong.”
So she claimed it, and then bowed her head. I said to her, “Auntie Ella, why do not you try the machine?”
“Shush,” she said. “You must give the angel time.”
Then she got up, pulled the chair under her, and went straight down. I could not believe it. I knew that I had tried to get that machine going. I saw her trying to get it going. But the moment she got up, she just said, “Praise You, Lord. You are so wonderful. You have sent an angel exactly as You said You would.”
It changed my life, because, you see, I was in a Baptist church—God help us, that I was in a Baptist church! In the Baptist church, we had all these famous preachers that came. No one ever expected what they said to be put into action.
There were wonderful messages about this, that, and the other, but nobody ever expected anything. They all thought she was crazy, Auntie Ella. She was an opera singer, a well-known one in her day, and they thought she was a little nuts because she was always talking about the Lord Jesus.
She would even go further than that. She would say, “You know, if I ever get to glory, I have got to make a beeline for Isaiah, because I have some questions to ask him.” Then she would say things like, “Zephaniah, that dear young man—I would like to have a talk with him.”
She lived with them, and now she is with them. But I never forgot it. It changed my life because I understood for the first time that there was a spiritual world.
I never saw an angel. I had my eyes out like this, all the time waiting to see whether this angel came. He never came. But then I saw the machine working, so I knew that something had happened.
It was a spiritual world. It changed my whole understanding of the Word of God—that it is not there as something pretty, sweet, and wonderful, but which does not work and cannot be put to the test.
I discovered that you can take the Word of God and stand on it. You can stand on the promises of God, and they are yes and amen through the Lord Jesus.
So, how are we to face this problem? There is a kind of terrible dearth amongst the people of God—a lifelessness.
You have either those who are, I think sometimes, almost crazy—sort of falling all over the place—yet nothing ever really happens; or those who are totally lifeless.
I believe that in the days to come, if we are not raptured, intercession will take on a new meaning.
What do I mean? There is an enormous difference between prayer and intercession.
Prayer, in the Greek word, is just to pour out the heart. You have not because you ask not, James said. As someone said, the Lord can say yes, no, or wait. That is prayer. You pour out your heart to Him. Sometimes the Lord says, “I will do that.” Sometimes He does not. We wait. Or sometimes He says no.
Intercession—listen carefully to me—begins with a knowledge of the will of God.
Let me put it another way. Intercession comes from the Intercessor, the Lord Jesus. The Spirit of God brings a knowledge of the will of God to us, and then, together, we pray that into being.
Now, you say, “That is ridiculous. I have never heard of anything so—did they really ask you to come and give us a message like this? This is ridiculous.” No, it is not ridiculous.
So often in our prayer meetings, we never see anything happen. But once you learn about intercession, things actually happen. It is extraordinary.
What am I trying to say? I am trying to say this: the Intercessor is always interceding for the purpose of His Father to be fulfilled.
What is the purpose of His Father? For one thing, it is that the bride should make herself ready. That is one purpose of the Father. Here is another: that the house of God should be built. Here is another: that Israel should finally be saved in the same way that you and I are saved.
This is all the will of God. Any of you who know your Bible know very well that it is here in the Book. It tells us clearly what the will of God is.
Therefore, we know that when the Holy Spirit brings a burden into our hearts, that burden is from the Intercessor. It comes into our hearts, and then we get so burdened that the only way we can get relief is to pray.
Now, I do not know if you have had that kind of experience. If you have not, you have had a real experience of prayer, but not intercession. Once you begin to know what intercession is, you will find conceived in your heart by the Holy Spirit a burden that requires travail of spirit.
Just like the apostle Paul said, “I travail for you, that Christ may be fully formed in you.” Is it not clear from the Word of God that it is the will of God that, in those whom He saves, Christ should be fully formed? Of course.
Therefore, the apostle Paul knew this was not merely prayer. He was not just saying, “Lord, please cause these people to grow.” He was actually taking what was the will of God for them and seeking to bring it, as it were, into being.
Do I make any sense? If I were to put it another way—and forgive me, those of you who have heard me before on this subject; it is a favourite one of mine—the greatest intercessors are found at every single turning point in divine history.
It does not matter where you look. Every one of them is an intercessor: Moses, David, Joshua, Samuel, Abraham.
Then you come to the New Testament. It was the Lord Jesus Who interceded again and again. It was the apostle Paul who was eaten up with a burden that came from the Intercessor Himself.
Every turning point. I could tell you about the Hebrides revival: the two old ladies, one blind and the other arthritic so that she could not move, who, in their little old cottage, turned it into a temple of praise, worship, and intercession.
They were so burdened that no young people were found in the parish church. They were all white-haired old people. Then God gave them a promise:
I will pour water upon him that is thirsty,
And floods upon the dry ground:
I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed,
And My blessing upon thine offspring.
That is in Isaiah 44, I think it is. They held on to that for year after year. Every week they prayed, beginning at ten p.m., on their knees until four a.m. They prayed that thing into being.
They had a feeling from the Spirit of God that He had heard them. Then one of them had a vision of a man standing in a place packed with young people. She said, “You know, I believe the Lord is showing me something.”
Seven men met in the same area and had the same burden, and were also given Scriptures about the same thing. Then that amazing thing happened: Duncan Campbell stood in that church packed with young people. Where did they all come from? Nobody really knows. But there they were, packed from door to door.
So began the Hebrides Revival that swept through the whole of those islands in northwest Scotland.
The Welsh Revival—Evan Roberts prayed so much, with such a burden. He was so horrified at the dearth and lifelessness of Christians, and he prayed so much that his landlady asked him to leave because he used to pray in the middle of the night and it woke her up.
Then it began in other people in Wales who began to pray. When it happened, it was the most extraordinary thing. It happened all over Wales—not so much elsewhere, but all over Wales.
The Spirit of God fell on people. Pubs were closed because there was no one there to drink. Brothel places were closed; there were no clients. It was extraordinary.
Years later, I asked two very old ladies in Aberdare in South Wales, “Did you witness the revival?” “Yes, we did,” they said.
I said, “What is the thing that you remember?” They said, “Well, coarse and vulgar people were completely changed overnight, and a beauty came through them. We could not believe it.”
“But,” she said, “the thing that most amazed us was that everywhere we went in Aberdare, we heard music coming from under the ground.”
“Under the ground?” I said. “Yes,” they said, “under the ground. It was all the miners. They all got saved, and while at work in those dreadful places right under the earth, they were singing hymns of worship. And it came right up through the earth.”
So amazing was it that the pit mules and donkeys would not work, because they were so used to obscenities being hurled at them and kicks to get them moving. Now these men were changed, so the animals just stood there looking at them. They did not get on with the work.
The Moravian revival—shall I speak about that? Shall I speak about the first great evangelical awakening? I could give you all these examples. They began with people who somehow knew the difference between prayer and intercession.
They sought the Lord and received Scriptures from the Lord, given to them by the Holy Spirit, and these Scriptures made them realise that the will of God was to change society. And it changed society.
How are we to face this? There is going to come a day, if we are not raptured, when we will be unable to meet.
Already this anti-Christian spirit is in the government of our Western nations. Everything that has to do with the Bible or Christian organisations—even the IRS investigating Christian organisations—it is all a spirit of antichrist in its infancy.
There will come a day when we may not be able to meet, but you could meet in twos and threes and fours, maybe even six. I remember years ago, hearing from China these dear young people telling how they were not allowed to meet together and were not allowed to have a prayer meeting.
“But,” they said, “we used to go for walks in the park, and nobody realised that we five were interceding, because they just thought we were talking to one another. But actually, we were praying to the Lord.”
There will come a time when we will need to know what intercession is all about.
Here is the most wonderful thing: intercession always leads to fulfilment.
When you really pray, the Lord may say, “Not yet,” or “Not at all.” But in intercession, it always leads to fulfilment. Why? Because the Lord is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
He is not only the Author of faith; He is the Finisher of faith. The Lord does not believe in unfinished things. He always finishes what He sets out to do.
So we have tremendous confidence in this matter. When we really begin to learn that, you know, I am often told by people that they do not like to read the book of Revelation.
I say, “Why? It actually says there is a special blessing for those who read it.” “Oh,” they say, “all those judgments.”
These are the same people who used to tell me that the Old Testament is full of a God of judgment, but not the New Testament. The New Testament, they say, is full of a God of grace—Old Testament: judgment; New Testament: always grace.
I always say to them, “Well, what about the book of Revelation?” The worst judgments actually recorded in all sixty-six books of the Bible are in the book of Revelation. Yet in that same book, on every page, you will find the overcomer.
You will find those who are following the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. There is movement. They are seeing the things with which they are burdened fulfilled.
I will finish, but let me just take you one step further. Intercession.
Prayer is not necessarily fellowship with the Lord. You may be in need of something, so you turn to Him because you think He can answer. That is not fellowship. That is looking on the Lord as a kind of charlady, a sort of worker at home who cleans up the mess and so on.
But the interesting thing about intercession is that it is fellowship, because it comes from the Intercessor into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Then it is almost as if the Lord says, “If you do not pray along this line for the fulfilment of this, I will not do it.”
You say, “Well, why do You not do it? Would it not be better for You to do it? We have such a load of trouble, all of us. Why do You not do it Yourself?”
The Lord says, “Because I believe in fellowship.”
When He shares a burden with us for intercession, it is His fellowship with us. He says, “I have left a part of it for you to fulfil—to see fulfilled in prayer.”
I often speak about Daniel because I think Daniel is one of the most remarkable intercessors in the whole Bible.
When Daniel began to pray, he was reading the Scriptures in his quiet time—the scroll of Jeremiah. As he rolled it open, as we do in Hebrew, the ancient way anyway, he came across this: seventy years are determined for the desolation of Jerusalem.
Now, he was no fool. He was next to the sultan; he was the biggest man in the Persian Empire. Everything on his desk had to be taken to others to see and vet; then he would take it back to the sultan and get his signature, and then it became law.
He certainly said, “Seventy years.” In his head, he worked it out—he was used to doing it—with only two years to go.
Now, if he had been a good charismatic—and I do not have any problem with charismatics—he would have said, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, let us get together and have a ball. We will praise the Lord and worship Him. I have discovered that it is the will of God. It is only two years to go. It is going to be done anyway, so now we can rest.”
Instead, he clothed himself in sackcloth, threw ashes on his head, and fasted. He prayed day after day after day, and we have the paraphrase of his intercession in Daniel 9. It is incredible.
You would say, “Daniel, are you nuts? The Lord is going to do it. You do not have to get all religious—fasting and throwing ash on your head, and clothing yourself in coarse, irritating sackcloth. I mean, stupid.”
When he prayed, he never said, “They, they, they. They have sinned. They have done this. They have done that.” He said, “We have sinned. We have done this. We have done that.” It was intercession.
I find it amazing. When the archangel Gabriel got to him, he said, “O man greatly beloved.”
Of all the thousands amongst the exiles, he seems to be the only one who understood intercession. When the archangel came to him, he brought with him mathematical prophecy.
However you look at that mathematical prophecy, every single point ends in the birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus.
It was as if God was saying, “Daniel, you have no idea what you have been involved in. You are not just involved in getting the people back from Babylon into Israel. You are involved with the coming of the Messiah.”
They had to go back to build the temple, to build Bethlehem, to build all these things where the Scriptures say this and that would be fulfilled. They had to go back.
But it was as if the Lord said, “You know what? You have entered into fellowship with Me over this matter.”
There could be no greater place for us to reach in the days that lie ahead than to be able to intercede that the will of God be fulfilled.
It may be in the salvation of men and women, in all the troubles. It says, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Or it may be many other things for which we shall pray: the bride making herself ready; the house of God being built. It is fellowship.
Do you not think the Lord is seeking to teach us so that, if we can reign with Him now in intercession, we shall be able to reign with Him in eternity?
It is so simple. He puts us through all the difficulties and problems and helps us to reign with Him and to see His purpose fulfilled.
May the Lord take this word and bury it in your heart, and bring you to a place—even those of you who are young—to be an intercessor.
I was fourteen when I began to be an intercessor. Of course, I was a very poor one. But I went to a prayer meeting for Nepal, and they were all white-haired, every single one of them.
The other young people said, “What are you doing going to a prayer meeting with all those old folks? What are you going to do with them?” I said, “We are praying for Nepal to open.”
Dr. O’Hanlon and Miss Lucy Steele, along the mountains that divide India from Nepal, believed the Lord had told them that they were going to go into Nepal. I said, “We are praying—interceding—for them, that they will get into Nepal.”
They said, “Poof! I would say you are wasting your time with those old fogies. It will never happen. The royal family in Nepal are Hindus; they will never allow it. It is a closed nation to the preaching of the gospel.”
I shall never forget when the cable came: “Dr. O’Hanlon, tomorrow morning we are going over into Nepal, and we have been allowed to set up a clinic.” It became the beginning of a whole work of God in Nepal.
I was so thrilled. I thought, “I was in it.” Oh, I did not pray much, but those old folks—I listened to their prayers and what they were praying, and every now and again I piped in and said something.
They thought I was sweet and wonderful because I was only fourteen. They thought, “What is this boy, coming to us? We are all seventy and eighty years old.” But it happened.
Ever since, I have been involved in one form of intercession or another. Start young. You will never regret it.
Because somehow, you are in the going of the Lord and seeing the will of the Lord fulfilled. May He help you. Thank you.