Together in the Old Testament, the forty-sixth Psalm. Psalm 46.
God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change,
And though the mountains be shaken into the heart of the seas;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains tremble with the swelling thereof.There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved:
God will help her, and that right early.The nations rage, the kingdoms are moved:
He uttereth His voice, the earth melted.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.Come, behold the works of the Lord,
What desolations He hath made in the earth.
He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth;
He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;
He burneth the chariots in the fire.
Be still, and know that I am God:
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Shall we pray?
Father, we bow here in Thy presence, and we are thankful that, Lord, Thou art so much more desirous of meeting with us than we are with Thee. Thou hast made such provision for us, Lord.
As we come to Thy Word again, Lord, as we have already said, we want to hear Thee. We do not want to ignore or bypass any of that provision which Thou hast made for us, Lord. We know that of ourselves we can speak words, and we can hear words; but, Lord, we know that it amounts to nothing unless Thou art the life, the power, and the energy of both our speaking and our hearing.
Dear Lord, we come to Thee, and we open our hearts to Thee, and we take what we need of Thyself. Come in, O Lord, we pray, in a deeper, fuller way than before, and grant, Lord, that Thy Word shall find a lodgment in us. May the Word of Christ dwell in us richly. May this Word be an implanted Word that takes root, increases, and is fruitful.
Lord, watch over Thy Word to perform it. We ask this in the name of Jesus.
Now, before we finish, just a moment of quietness. I believe God gives me an interpretation of that tongue.
“I know your heart,” says the Lord. “I know that you desire to follow Me. And I want to tell you that I have taken note of that desire in every one of the hearts before Me that has opened up to Me.
“And I will be with you, and I will cause that you shall not fall or stumble. For you will come into great trial and testing, many of you. There is a time of great adversity coming upon the face of the earth, a time of great shaking and trouble.
“Many, many of My dear children will panic. Some will lose their faith. Others will begin, in one way or another, to go back. But all those who will follow Me entirely, these I shall keep and will bring through to that place in My throne where they will reign with Me for ever.
“And even those that somehow succumb because of compromise, unbelief, sin, or because they would not open their hearts to all My counsel—even those I will purge in the fire and finally bring through.
“Now, My dear ones, do not fear. But lift up your heart and your head, because I purpose to do a work in your heart, and in you together, that will be wholly to My praise and glory.”
Lord, we simply pray that Thou wouldst help us, all of us. Would to Thee that every single one of us opened up to Thee, Lord; that there would not be a single person, from the youngest to the eldest, who has not responded to Thee, who has not opened up.
Lord, we pray concerning any of these things where somehow we have blind spots. Be faithful with us, Lord. Cast Thy Spirit upon us, Lord, we pray, as we have sung in that hymn: “Then down from the glory, and cast Thy Spirit upon us, that we might be overcomers to the last.”
Lord, here we give ourselves afresh to Thee now, as we turn to Thy Word, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, now we come to the last time of this particular conference. And as our brother prayed when we were praying before the gathering, it is not really the finish; it is, in fact, the beginning.
Although the Lord has finished this little phase of conference together, and being gathered up on this mountain with Him, now He begins to work the whole thing out in us. Of course, very often we all have a real fear when we go back to face routine life—the problems, the difficulties, jobs, homes, normal church life, and so on.
We so often feel that it is lost somehow or other. There is a kind of curtain that comes down, and it becomes a dream—something that, in the recesses of our mind and memory, we remember: God spoke to us and did something with us.
This does not have to be. If we are doers of the Word and not hearers only, then God will watch over His Word in our lives to perform it.
We believers have fallen into this terrible trap, especially in the twentieth century, of being hearers and hearers and hearers and hearers, and hearers again, and never doers. The result is that somehow we have developed a capacity for hearing the most marvellous things. We even know the Lord has spoken to us, but we do not do anything.
We are never obedient. Our lives are never straightened out. Our home lives are never straightened out. Church life is never influenced or changed. We just go back to the same old routine almost immediately.
So may the Lord help us in this matter to really move on with Him and allow Him to challenge us. His Word—He will watch over it not only to perform it in us, but that Word will become flesh and blood. It will be an implanted Word in us.
Now I want, finally, this morning, to speak about the God of Jacob.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
I do not think there could be any other explanation for the life of Jacob—for his being turned from Jacob into Israel—than the God of Jacob. It all began in the heart of God. It all ended with the grace of God. That is the whole story of Jacob.
It is very wonderful when we come to the last book of the Bible. We find this thought again and again and again in it. Listen to Revelation 1:8:
I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God,
Who is, and Who was, and Who is to come,
The Almighty.
What a marvellous thing: Alpha and Omega. In Hebrew, we would say Aleph and Tav. In English English, we would say A and Z. You say in American English, A and Z. Where you ever got that from, I do not know, but still.
Some people have a very funny idea about this Alpha and Omega—the first letter and the last letter of the alphabet, as if the rest of the letters have dropped out. He is the first letter and the last letter; He is the beginning and the ending, the first and the last, and in between it is something else.
But that is not so. What the Lord means is this: He is the language of God. There is no thought of God expressed, as it were, in divine language, which is not summed up in Jesus—Alpha and Omega.
All the letters by which we write words and define thoughts are summed up in Him. When you come to the end of the book of Revelation, you have exactly the same thing all over again.
In Revelation 21:5-7:
And He that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.
And He saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true.
And He said unto me, They are come to pass.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit these things;
And I will be his God, and he shall be My son.
Again, in Revelation 22:13:
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
And in Revelation 22:16-17:
I, Jesus, have sent Mine angel to testify unto you these things for the churches.
I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright and morning star.And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.
And he that heareth, let him say, Come.
And he that is athirst, let him come.
He that will, let him take the water of life freely.
The God of Jacob is our refuge. There is a colossal conflict over the purpose of God for His own people. This conflict spans the whole of time. It goes back to the very beginning of creation, and it goes right on to the coming of the Messiah at the end of this age.
In between, there has been nothing but battle and conflict raging furiously over this whole matter. This little Psalm 46 is almost the heart of the Bible. It lies almost directly at the heart of the Bible.
What is the cause of all this conflict? What is the cause of all this shattering? What is the cause of this battle? Why is there such antagonism, such fury, over it all? It has something to do with this:
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her;
She shall not be moved.
That is the heart of the whole conflict. You and I, because we have been saved, have been introduced into this conflict. It is not because you are anything or I am anything. I am nothing; you are nothing. It is not as if Satan has a tremendous interest in you and me as people.
He knows we are fodder. He could walk over us at any time. There is nothing he could not do with any one of us left to ourselves. If you think the devil could not get you, you just wait.
For God may allow Satan to have you, as He did with Peter, when He said:
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat:
But I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not.
We are no match for Satan or for the powers. Satan himself would be enough, but even one of those little minions right down the satanic hierarchy, right at the bottom, can deal with me apart from the grace of God and the power of God. I know that; I am sure you do.
So what is it that occasions this colossal conflict, unless it is the Christ of God? Unless it is the purpose of the Father for the Son? Unless it is something to do with that heart-desire of God which spells out the total, absolute, and complete defeat of Satan and the powers of darkness?
If that is what occasions the battle, I understand. If, by being saved, I have been—whether I know it or not—delivered from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, what has happened? Is Satan going to take it lying down?
Someone who was in bondage to him, in captivity to him, fettered to him, in the realm over which he was boss—by the grace of God, by the finished work of the Messiah, we have been wrenched out of it, delivered from the power of darkness, and our whole position changed so that we are put into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.
We are marked people, even if we backslide. Some people think, “Oh, if I take a lesser part, if I go back, it will be easier.” Satan always says, “Yes, of course. Go back.”
We often see Satan through human eyes. We think there is somewhere some good in him, and that if we only follow a little of his whisperings, it will be easier. We will not have the suffering. We will not have the battle.
I will tell you something: you can opt out of the battle, the building work, and the overcoming work. You can opt out of all these things, but Satan will hate you as he hates no one else in his own domain, for one simple reason: you are still marked with the mark of the Lord Jesus.
He will pursue you until finally he has destroyed your body and your mind. Is there a backslider—a real backslider—who does not know this? Does not every truly born-again backslider come to the place where they eat the husks that the swine feed on?
If it does not happen, it means they were not born again in the first place. They went out from us because they were not of us. But everyone who is truly born of God has a mark on them.
Sometimes we succumb to satanic propaganda and go out thinking we are going to have it easier. For five years, ten years, we do have it easier. Let us be honest: we do have it easier. Then it catches up with us, and we begin to find that the locusts have eaten away the years—the palmerworm, the cankerworm, God’s great army. They have eaten and eaten and eaten, and now suddenly we find we have nothing. Only up here. It is all gone.
Once you have been saved by God, you are caught, and there is no escape. You might as well face it. You young ones, if you think you are going to get away into the world and be able to do this and this and this, you listen to me: once you have been saved, you are caught. There is no real escape.
So I think it is spiritually rational and intelligent to go on with the Lord. If God, in His glorious predestinating counsel, has taken hold of you, then, dear child of God, there is only one thing for it: go on.
I am going to say something that may shock some people: go on with your weaknesses, your sin, your failings, and everything else. Take the whole lot up, even if it holds you back from going as fast as you ought to, and go on like Jacob until you come to your Jabbok.
Do not go back. Do not go, as it were, back into Egypt, Babylon, or somewhere else. Go on. There is no other course.
The wonderful thing is this:
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
This is how the Psalm begins: God is our refuge—the God of Jacob. God is our strength—the Lord of hosts.
This wonderful term, the Lord of hosts, is a picture of God as the leader of the armies of heaven. It is a military term. It has all the strength of a military commander with a fully armed army behind him: the Lord of hosts.
God has a purpose, and God is going to achieve that purpose. All the strength of God is behind it. All the wisdom of God is directed to it. God has a purpose; He is going to do it. He is going to fulfil it.
But in His mercy and grace, He has taken frail human beings like you and me into this purpose. This purpose of His is centred supremely in the Lord Jesus. Yet, since we are saved through the work of the Lord Jesus and have been joined to the Lord Jesus, it is centred in us.
God knows what frail, failing, weak, sinful people He has saved. So we have this wonderful term:
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
We will never, never come through to the end of God unless we know the God of Jacob. We shall never, ever come through to the realization of God’s full purpose for our lives individually, or for our lives together as God’s people, unless it is through the grace of God—the God of Jacob.
There has always been a battle over the purpose of God. Do not think that the battle was any less in the Old Testament, under the old covenant, than it is under the new covenant. It has always been the same.
Satan hates anything or anyone who has anything whatsoever to do with that purpose. I have just said to you: if you fall away, if you go back because you think it will be easier, you will get what you want, you will be master of your own destiny, and you will somehow opt out of the building work of God and the fellowship of His sufferings—you will find that the enemy will give you what you want for a few years and then later destroy you.
Had it ever occurred to you what is the reason for the furious, violent, jealous, implacable hatred of Satan for the Jewish people? It is a good question.
When people tell me there is no future for the Jewish people, no hope for them, that they are rejected under the wrath of God and finally and completely out of the purpose of God, I want to know: why is it that Satan hates this people so?
Next to the real, true, redeemed people of God, no other people have ever known such implacable hatred. The Jewish people have suffered as much as the church in the same things, again and again and again and again. Why?
Because even though fallen, alienated from God, and having rejected the Messiah, they still bear the mark of election. Satan follows them and follows them and follows them. Why? Because, if they are finally rejected, that would be very strange.
It must be that Satan, though he does not know all things, intuitively recognizes that something, somehow, is going to happen to that people to bring them back into the elect stream in the end. So he hates them, and he will do anything to destroy them.
That is what will happen to you if you backslide. He will do, in the end, anything to destroy you so that you cannot become the scene of transcendent, triumphant grace.
Jacob—dear Jacob—was a trophy of grace. Jacob into Israel: a trophy of God’s grace.
No, dear ones, we are certainly in a battle. But I want to say this: we are now at a period of time in the history of God’s economy where we have entered into an irreversible shaking of all things. Woe betide any brother or sister who does not recognize this fact.
We have now entered into that time spoken of in Hebrews, where God says:
Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
In that word in Haggai, He says that He will shake not only the earth and the sea, but the heavens; and the desirable things of all nations—or, as it may be rendered, the precious things of all nations—shall come. And He says:
I will fill this house with glory.
The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine, saith the Lord of hosts.
The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former,
And in this place will I give peace.
In the end, mark my words, the only place where there will be real, eternal, abiding peace will be in the building work of God. God will shake everything in the whole world—moral, spiritual, religious, political, economic. Everything will be shaken.
There will be no peace in religious systems. There will be no peace in philosophies, humanistic philosophies, and ideologies. The only place there will be real peace will be in the house which God is building.
There we shall be at the centre of a colossal conflict, but there we shall have that abiding peace, deep, deep within, which is a greater prize than anything else in this world.
We have entered into this time. It began with the First World War, in 1914 to 1918. Most people did not even recognize it, but that was when the shaking began.
In that time God began to shake kingdoms, monarchies, empires, and institutions which had lasted, in some cases, for fifteen hundred years. He began to shake them and shake them and shake them.
When we came out of that war, two things had happened: the whole face of the world had changed, and the face of Europe above all had changed. Kingdoms, thrones, and empires had disappeared completely. The great Russian Empire, the great Austro-Hungarian Empire, the German Reich—all had gone. New nations appeared; new peoples came onto the scene.
Out of it, in the midst of it, rose that great ideology which is not a philosophy of man, not an ideology of man at all, but a spirit from hell: Marxism.
If there had not been that great shaking, then Germany, Britain, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire would have united with the Tsar and put down the Bolsheviks completely. But the flower of European manhood, and even of American manhood, died on the battlefields of Europe.
When, finally, the Bolsheviks swept through after the beginning of 1917, there was no possibility of anyone doing anything. So there arose, in that First World War, a system and an ideology—a religion—that was to shake the whole known world.
Something else happened in that time, too. In 1917, General Allenby liberated Jerusalem, and four hundred years of Turkish rule ended in a moment. He entered Jerusalem on 9 December 1917.
Is it a coincidence that that was the first day of the festival of Hanukkah? Every Jew in the world recognized it: something is happening. Hanukkah is the commemoration of the great Maccabean freedom movement that liberated Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the pagan Greeks. Now it had happened again.
Was it coincidence? Maybe it was coincidence. I do not know. It is up to you to work it out. But something happened in 1860. A godly old Irish servant of the Lord called Grattan Guinness wrote a book. He had made a study of prophecy and published it under the title Light for the Last Days.
Now, there are some things in those books that—oh dear. Like all of these things on prophecy, you need to put a pack of ice on your head and sit down for a while. You can get some very strange, weird ideas.
But this is very interesting: Grattan Guinness was the first man to say that 1917 would be the most significant year for the Jewish people since the destruction of the temple in 70 AD and the dispersion of the nation to the ends of the earth. How could a man in 1860 say that?
That was the Balfour Declaration, in November of that year.
Now, I do not want to turn this into a history lesson. All I am saying is this: God started to shake the world, and two things happened in the First World War. Apart from the geographical and political changes over the whole world, Marxism burst onto the world scene and became the single greatest factor in shaking the world.
The other thing that happened at the same time was something concerning God’s exiled, dispersed, judged, and suffering Jewish people.
The Second World War was the outcome of the First World War. In the Second World War, God shook the whole earth again. This time something more happened: Marxism spread like a cancer right over one-third of the world. Half of Europe was taken by it. It began to influence all kinds of things everywhere in society all over the world.
The British Empire disappeared. Anyone who knows anything about history knows that all our problems and all our ills have come out of the Second World War.
What was the result of the Second World War? Not only did this great ideology now seem supreme in its power to threaten the whole free world, but a miracle took place. In 1948, after nineteen hundred years of dispersion and exile, the Jewish people regained national statehood.
Now I know that some will say that this cannot be of God. But I only want to say this: I do not want to cause any problems. It is all part of this matter—the God of Jacob.
Do not have hang-ups on these things. Be objective. Ask God. Just because there are strange views and weird things, just as there are concerning the person and work of the Holy Spirit and the Lord’s Table, do not throw everything out, or you will damage God’s ways with you. You will not be able to understand where you are in the economy of God.
For years, some Christian Bible scholars told us it was nonsense to think of a recreation of Jewish nationhood. Then it happened. It has been a source of serious embarrassment to them ever since.
Now they have changed their view and said it was a political accident, nothing whatsoever to do with the Word of God. I find it incredible. In the whole history of mankind, search through the chronicles of human history: you will not find a single example of a people dispersed into the whole world twice and brought back twice to the national territory from which they were dispersed.
Once, after seventy years; the second time, after nineteen hundred years. The first time, a thousand miles east; the second time, from the far corners of the earth. Is not that a remarkable coincidence? I would have thought that perhaps somewhere God is saying something, since it is so unique.
Since that declaration of Jewish statehood, the world has reeled on as God has shaken the world more and more and more. We are now, since 1973, in a process of shaking which has reached unparalleled proportions.
When the Yom Kippur War burst on the Middle East, most folks over here and most folks in Western Europe thought, “Oh, another little squabble in the Middle East.” They did not realize that that war, which began on the Day of Atonement, was a further milestone in God’s shaking of the world.
Now what do we find? We find the President of America and other great experts on energy saying, “Since 1973, 1973 was the turning point” in all these shortages of basic materials and energy.
We are in a shaking. Now we are just on the brink of a much greater shaking. I do not know what it will be. I have my own suspicions.
I personally believe—and I do not want to be quoted as saying anything dogmatic from Scripture—that we are heading for global war. This third world war will do what the other two had not done: it will shake the whole structure of human society, spiritual as well as physical, material and invisible as well as visible.
When we come out of that, there will be such a moral, political, and economic vacuum in the whole world that there will come a great reaction from the peoples of the world: “We must have a leader. We must have a world leader, with a world government and a world army.”
Now, we Christians have believed these things for years. We must be nuts if we have not. We believe Antichrist is going to come. The Book is full of it. We believe that, in the end, there will be a system that will spread over the world and that no one will be able to make war with him, as it says in Revelation 13.
We believe that, in the end, there will be some kind of great hardship and persecution for God’s people. Of course, some believe we are going to be raptured before the whole thing starts. Thank God for that. That is all I can say.
I am not sure whether we shall be raptured before, whether we shall have to go through the tribulation and be raptured at the end of it, having triumphantly come through by the grace of God—even if it is martyrdom—or whether, as I personally am persuaded, there is a partial rapture.
Now, do not shoot me down on this, but I personally believe in the partial rapture. I think that those who are ready are going to be taken, and the rest are going to go through and be purged.
People get terribly horrified. But if our Lord had wanted to sort this whole thing out, He could have told us in a few good, well-chosen words. He could have said, “Now, this is what will happen: this and this and this and this.” He never did.
What He said was, “Be ready.” “In an hour that ye think not the Son of Man cometh.” He said, “Watch and pray.”
But what do I find? I find that the Lord’s people everywhere have become so sick to death of prophetic schemes, people fascinated with prophecy, and all these weird little things on the side—diversionary things that take people away from facing realities in their own lives, home lives, and church life, and from being built together—that they will not even look at it.
It is a work of Satan. It is like people who will not even think of the Holy Spirit because they saw people doing the weirdest things—vulgarity, crudeness, soul and flesh in the guise of the Spirit. People say, “I do not want anything to do with it. Do not speak to me about the Holy Spirit.”
I go to some places where, if I dare to speak about the Holy Spirit, they all clam up. You can see little shutters come down behind their eyes, and they think, “Oh, when is he going to finish?”
They will accept anything else if you talk about the Lord Jesus, the power of resurrection life, or the cross; but they want nothing to do with the Holy Spirit because they have been so wounded and shocked by the excesses.
The same thing has happened over prophecy, and this is Satan’s terrible weapon. It will mean that we go on with our routine meetings, just careering on, thinking that we are doing the will of God, when we do not realize that suddenly it will burst upon us with dramatic suddenness and we shall find the whole of our nation in trouble and panic.
We are supposed to be a prophetic community. The testimony of Jesus that we have been talking about is the spirit of prophecy. We are supposed to be a city set on a hill that cannot be hidden. We are supposed to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth.
What a denial of the very significance of our being saved and joined to God in Christ if we are caught out by world events and panic as much as the world does.
Do not tell me Christians will not panic. What happened in China, where sixteen thousand believers committed suicide rather than face the accusations of their brothers and sisters in Christian meetings pressurized by the Communists, by the Maoists?
You must understand this: no Christian was ever put on trial in China by Marxist authorities. Every single person put on trial was put on trial because some Christian accused them.
What happened to all that centuries-old missionary work in China? Within a year it completely collapsed.
Dear friends, do you think that the American scene would be any different? Now, it is my own personal conviction that America will not be occupied. Maybe that will be a comfort to you. I do not know. But I personally do not believe that America will be occupied.
I do believe there could come a day in America when lynch law will take over. You can have all kinds of things in the Constitution, but when a mob comes along, breaks into a meeting, beats a few people in a mini-pogrom, and people are left dead, what can you do? It is lawlessness.
Another thing that could well happen in America is that, as a result of global conflict, the American economic and political system will be devastated. Now, if that is so, we are talking about serious things. It is speculation, I grant you.
But we are talking about a shaking. May I ask you, what does it mean when God says, “I will shake not only the earth, but the heavens also”? What does it mean? He does not say, “I will shake the earth excluding the American continent.”
If He is going to shake the whole earth, what is it going to mean for America? What is it going to mean for Canada? What is it going to mean for you?
Then you say, “Well, we are believers. We will not be touched.” Oh yes, you will. Once you find that your economic well-being, your standard of living, your homes, welfare, and security are touched, you will find many fears in your heart that were never there before.
The day of luxury, the day when everything was at your fingertips, will have gone. If this is so, and God says it, then we need to be a people who wake up. God is with us.
Then we shall understand the Word:
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God.
God is in the midst of her;
She shall not be moved.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
If you look at this Psalm, it is earth-shaking:
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change,
Though the mountains be shaken into the heart of the sea;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains tremble with the swelling thereof.
I do not know whether I quite like it all, but in the midst of all that, do you? Most of us as Christians, as we say in Ireland, are like water off a duck’s back. We are not used to it. “Oh, is it not beautiful? Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change.”
If San Francisco disappeared into the sea, then do we fear or do we not fear? If suddenly it happened, and everything around us began to change, and mountains were thrown into the sea, and the waters began to roar—as Jesus Himself said:
There shall be signs in sun and moon and stars;
And upon the earth distress of nations, in perplexity for the roaring of the sea and the billows;
Men fainting for fear, and for expectation of the things which are coming on the inhabited earth.
Do we just think this is all poetic, or do we really believe what our Lord said to us? If we do, we do not have to fear. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear.
Here comes the thing:
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God.
The city of God can be glad in the midst of all this change, shaking, tumult, and conflict. The city of God is glad in the midst of it. She will not be moved because God is in the midst of her.
I would rather be there than any place on earth. I would rather have allowed God to do His building work in my life, building me with you—however difficult you are, however difficult you think I am.
I would rather be built together when this shaking comes and know that God has said, “In this place will I give peace.”
Then we shall suddenly ask ourselves: where is our pleasure? Is it in heaven, in the Lord, or is it on earth? Where is the centre of our lives?
For years we have talked and sung about being in glory. I have always been interested in how we sing these wonderful hymns about being with the Lord, and as soon as there is the slightest chance of it, we run a thousand miles.
We say, “Oh, to be with Him. Oh, to see His face.” But the moment there is a possibility we are given six months to live, my word, we suddenly decide we are not so sure that we want to be with the Lord. We prefer to live a little longer down here, in all this trouble, conflict, and difficulty.
We are all the same in this kind of thing. We believe certain things which, in the end, have never really sunk into us.
Do you know what the purpose of God is? The purpose of God, at the present time, is fourfold, in my estimation. This is the occasion of the conflict.
I want to tell you something else: behind this shaking is not Satan. It is God. God is shaking, if that is a comfort to you. God is shaking everything that can be shaken to pieces, and will do so until the whole thing falls.
That which cannot be shaken will be manifested, which is the kingdom we are receiving.
The first thing that has to happen in our day—and thank God, it is happening, and I pray with all my heart that you are one hundred percent behind it—is found in Matthew 24:14:
This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, we have one great objective to which the Holy Spirit is giving His energies: that this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all nations.
Thank God, today we have things like radio. We have television. We have literature and a far greater literacy rate than we have ever had in world history. This means that the gospel of the kingdom can go into whole areas where we could not physically go and preach the gospel.
Praise God for that. I thank God for the gospel going into Tibet. I thank God for the gospel going into Bhutan. I thank God for the gospel going into those sad areas—Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Thank God for the gospel going into China.
Thank God for the Chinese believers who are now once again leading so many thousands to the Lord all over mainland China, especially in the south. Thank God for the Word that is beaming into Russia and other Eastern European nations. We thank God for this. It is wonderful in our eyes.
But do you not think we should be behind this? What a terrible thing it is when the Lord’s people are not behind any gospel work, when somehow they feel it belongs to something that is kindergarten, something left behind, something to do with the flesh.
It is not. It is a burden on the heart of our blessed Lord.
Here is the second thing I believe our Lord is seeking to do now: to build the house of God, to complete the building of the church. Praise God for that.
In Zechariah 4, it says:
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain:
And he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings of, Grace, grace, unto it.The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house;
His hands shall also finish it.For who hath despised the day of small things?
I have made reference to this on a previous occasion, but praise God, we are not some little group of people isolated from all the rest of the Lord’s people. We are one body—not only one body here on earth, in time, today, but one historically. We go right back to the beginning.
These movements that go off the rails do not seem to realize this historical oneness of God’s people. We go right back to Pentecost, and indeed, in my estimation, beyond that.
God has been doing a most wonderful and marvellous work. Is it not wonderful that you and I are privileged, as the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles were not privileged? We are in the age, we believe, when we shall see the headstone come forth.
Oh, how wonderful. People are always telling me how they wish they had been alive in the good old days. Some would love to have been there when the Red Sea was split in two and they could have walked over on dry ground. They say, “Oh, it would have done something to me.” I bet it would.
Then they say, “I wish I had been in the wilderness and seen the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, and the manna coming down six days out of seven, and on the sixth day a double portion. It would have done something to me.” I am sure it would.
Others say, “I wish I could have seen the water brought out of the rock in a miracle. It would have done something to me.” Oh yes, I am sure.
Other people say, “I wish I had been there when the walls of Jericho fell down.” Well, well, well. You want to be there with the water? “Yes, yes. I think it would have done something for my faith if I had seen the walls of Jericho fall down.”
Others say, “If I had only been there when the sun stood still at Gibeon and the moon in Aijalon.” Oh, you think that would? “Yes, it would have done something for me.”
Others tell me they wish they had been there when the Lord fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes. “Oh yes, it would have done something to me if I could have seen His blessed hands taking the bread, breaking it, and feeding so many. I wish I had been there.”
Others say they wish they had been there when Lazarus was raised from the dead. “Oh yes, I would love to have been there and seen Lazarus come out with those grave clothes. It would have done something to me.” Really? It did not do much to the Sanhedrin. They had a special committee meeting to see how they could put him back to death.
Others say, “Oh, I wish I had been there on the day of Pentecost. If I had been there at Pentecost, and those tongues of fire had come upon us all and upon me, and I had spoken in Italian, I would be a different person.”
It is strange how the Lord’s people are antiquarians. They are all antique lovers. Everything to do with the past has a safe, quick kind of thing about it—past, past, past. God does not do anything.
I will tell you something: it is the most exciting thing to be alive in this generation because we are seeing purposes fulfilled before our very eyes—things that the prophets have longed to see fulfilled and died in faith over.
We are actually present, and we may—I am not sure—we may be those who with our eyes see the coming of the Lord. Can you believe it? What a privilege to be alive in a day like this.
All right, there is going to be conflict. All right, there is going to be shaking. But then there can be no half-measures. It is no good staying on the periphery of your fellowships, looking on, being a spectator, being a good old critic.
Sometimes you say, “Oh, was that not good?” Another time, “Ah, no good.” We can all do that on the fringe. The times are coming when there will be no neutrality. We will either be out or we will be in.
It is time to begin now. Time to begin. Settle the issues. Let us commit ourselves. Let us get into the building work of God.
Someone says, “Well, you know, you get so excited about all this thing. I am not sure that I quite agree with you.” That is why I do not think the Lord has given us a clear thing about His coming at all. It has to be by faith.
You can always be what I call a mañana Christian: tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow—always tomorrow. “Tomorrow I will go to the prayer time. Tomorrow I will start to learn the lessons of intercession. Tomorrow I will give time to really studying the Word.”
“Tomorrow I will commit myself to this fellowship of believers. Tomorrow I will allow God to start doing His work in my life, after I have finished my business course, after I finish my whatever-it-is.” Always, always, always tomorrow. Mañana, mañana, mañana. Mañana never comes.
God’s people have always been tomorrow people. God says, “Today, if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts.”
I think it is a wonderful thing that God is going to complete this work of the building of His church. Now, I do not believe in some great universal, complete, absolute recovery of the church which will bring in every single believer from the four corners of the earth and become some vast system with a papacy—a spiritual one, perhaps, but nevertheless a kind of papacy—or whatever. I cannot see it.
What I do see is this: that as at the end of every age, there will be a remnant of God’s people who see the purpose of God, understand what God is doing, and by the Holy Spirit commit themselves wholly to Him and go through whatever the cost.
Somehow God has got to train us for the kingdom. Somehow God has got to train us for the throne. Somehow God has got to train us in building work. Somehow or other, we have got to experience what it is to be built together.
Somehow we have got to learn something of the functioning of the body of Christ and its influence upon a godless locality. What is this talk of the house of God when we cannot even pray for our national government, when we have not learned how to influence them in the secret place of the Most High?
What is this talk about reigning with Christ when we cannot even cause the kingdom of God to have an influence upon the State Department, upon the presidency, or upon the way the nation is going?
People say, “Oh no, no, no, I do not believe in this.” Well, you will believe it one day when you face the Lord, and the Lord will say to you, “What were you doing? Why did you live as if you were isolated? Why did you take no concern for the people around you?”
Were you not supposed to be the salt of the earth? What is salt of the earth if it does not stop corruption, if it does not bring in the light of God and the life of God, even in national and international things?
Oh, dear people of God, we talk about being built together as if that is the end. That is not the end. The building together is so that we might become a house of prayer for all nations.
The King may then be able, through us, to exercise authority. We may see men and women saved out of the most depraved circumstances. We may see pornographic centres closed down by prayer in the unseen—the exercise of authority.
We may see other vile satanic things somehow counteracted and undermined by the power of executive prayer. It is all very well always moaning and saying, “Oh dear, dear, dear, I do not know what is happening to American life. Everything is going back. Of course, I suppose the Book says it.”
What are you doing? What am I doing? We are supposed to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world. We have a responsibility.
As we come nearer to the completion of this building work of the house of God, we shall know a greater and greater conflict and a greater and greater shaking, for this is the heart of the matter.
The preaching of the gospel to all nations is not only that they may have no excuse, but that out of them may be called a people from every tongue, kindred, and nation for the Lord.
The third thing—I do not think everybody will be with me on this, but I will mention it in passing—is this: I believe that the purpose of God is to take away the hardening which has befallen the Jewish people and restore them to the elect people of God.
I have in my own heart absolutely no doubt about it whatsoever, and I base it entirely upon the Book. There are things in this Book which people do not seem to understand at all and yet which are quite clear, in my estimation.
Why, for instance, in Acts 1, when the disciples came to our Lord and asked Him:
Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?
In modern parlance, that would be sovereignty. We would say, “Dost Thou restore national sovereignty to Israel?” And He said unto them:
It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within His own authority.
Why did the Lord not say, “Now listen, you are quite wrong. It is going to be something totally spiritual from now on. There is no such thing as the restoration of the kingdom to Israel. It is gone”?
But He said, “It is not for you to know the times.” He did not want them caught on these fascinating prophetic things. He wanted them to get down to the work. What was the work? Listen to what He said:
But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you:
And ye shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Praise God, they were faithful. They left the whole matter of the restoration of Israel to God, and they got on with the job. They preached the gospel in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.
By 44 AD, if we believe church tradition, fourteen years after the death of Christ they had taken the gospel to southern India, to the Caucasus and western Siberia, to Armenia, Mauritania on the South Atlantic coast, Gaul, and even the British Isles.
Who were these people? Jewish believers. Jewish believers.
I get the most amazing thing because of my Jewish background. Sometimes I have been introduced: “Our dear brother Lance Lambert is a Jew, but he is a very good brother.”
There is a latent anti-Semitism in many ways, and people do not even know it. What is that about? Why should there be a battle? I grew up hiding my Jewish background. I was so afraid of it.
It has taken me a long time to come back to God on this matter. But now I am back, thank God, and I am not ashamed of it anymore.
What did the Lord mean? Sometimes people say, “What has Judaism, what has being a Jew, anything to do with Christianity?” It has everything.
I remember a friend of mine, a dear little Jewish Christian—a Hebrew believer, or whatever you like to call Messianic believers now—who was introduced on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral to a very aristocratic lady.
He was introduced as a Jewish Christian, and she said, “Ah, I have never met such a thing. What on earth have Jews to do with Christians?”
This dear little brother was only this high, but he stood up and said, “My dear sister, you are meeting me on the steps of a cathedral named after a Jewish Christian.”
There is hardly a single cathedral not named after a Jewish Christian: St. Mark’s, St. Matthew’s, St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s. Where do you get them all, may I ask? They were all Jewish believers.
Take this Book. Out of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, there are only two possibilities that were written by non-Jewish hands: Luke and Acts. Even that may have been a Jew; we do not know. But we will give it to the Gentile believers. All the rest were Jewish hands.
Now you say, “Oh dear, do not start on all this. You are making the whole thing so earthly, so fleshly.” No. What I am trying to say is this: God’s purpose was that a remnant should be saved and the rest hardened.
We have a most extraordinary word in Romans 11, which so few people understand. The apostle wrestles with human language. He says in Romans 11:11:
I say then, Did they stumble that they might fall? God forbid:
But by their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles.
In other words, did God make them stumble? He says, “God forbid.” But then he frankly says, “I think there is some mystery behind it.” Their fall meant the salvation of the Gentiles, and their loss, the riches of the Gentiles.
I will not go on for long on this, but I do not believe all these fanciful theories about the future—about the Jews being the missionaries in the millennium and all these other things. Sometimes I wonder, when I hear it, why on earth we got converted. Would it not have been better to remain a Jew?
It seems as if God first thought about the Jews and then the church was an afterthought: “Oh dear, they have fallen. What shall I do? I know what I will do. I will save the Gentiles.” Then the Gentiles come, and God says, “Now I am finished with the Gentiles. I will go back to those who are My first love.”
I do not see that. What I see is this: when God chose Abraham, He chose Abraham as the beginning of an elect people. Isaac and Jacob followed, and Jacob’s name—Israel—was given to the elect people of God ever after, for all eternity.
If you are a Gentile and do not have a drop of Jewish blood, but have been saved by the grace of a Messiah Jewish according to the flesh, you have been introduced into the commonwealth of Israel. You have been made a fellow heir with all the Old Testament saints.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will come and sit down with you in the kingdom of God. What a privilege. What a privilege.
But notice: it is the other way around from what we see. You have become part of them; they have not become part of you. They are the root, and the root bears the tree.
Romans 11:18 says:
Glory not over the branches: but if thou gloriest, it is not thou that bearest the root, but the root thee.
There may be millions and millions and millions of Gentiles who have been introduced into the commonwealth of Israel, made the Israel of God, and born to God through the Messiah, through His finished work and by the outpoured Holy Spirit. But however many millions there are, they are still borne by the root, which is a Jewish root.
For they are not all Jews who say they are Jews, nor are they all Israel who are of Israel. Just because a man was circumcised under the old covenant did not mean he was automatically saved. Caiaphas was circumcised, but he was not saved. Judas was circumcised, but he was not saved. Annas was circumcised, but he was not saved.
The real Israel of God was within Israel. The real Jew was within the Jewish people. When the remnant was saved, that was the flowering and fulfilment of it, and it went on.
Now millions and millions of Gentiles have come into this elect people of God, and they are the people of God. Where it was said, “Ye are not My people,” it is said, “Ye are My people.” Where they were not His sons, they are now called the sons of God.
The ancient prophetic hope and aspiration—that what God gave to His elect people under the old covenant would go out to the ends of the earth and that all peoples from all over would come into it—has come to pass, not through the success of the Jewish people but through their fall.
If anyone says there is no hope for these people, I want to ask just one question: what does it mean when Romans 11:12 says:
Now if their fall is the riches of the world, and their loss the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?
What does it mean? Listen again, Romans 11:15:
For if the casting away of them is the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?
So there is a receiving of them. It is going to be life from the dead. There is a fullness, and it does not mean that they are apart from the church.
Listen to Romans 11:24:
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?
Their own. Has it sunk in? Their own. Oh, they do not know it, but the church, the redeemed community of God, is their own olive tree.
So now I understand when it says:
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 without repentance.
Dear people, we are at the place when those people from whom I sprang naturally are going to be grafted back into their own olive tree. Not all of them, any more than the fullness of the Gentiles means all Gentiles will be saved.
But those whose eyes are opened to God, who believe in the Messiah and are saved by His finished work—then will come to pass those words of the prophet Zechariah:
I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication:
And they shall look unto Me whom they have pierced;
And they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son,
And shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
Jewish mourning habits are incredible, and the prophet Zechariah goes on to describe them. He says the husbands and wives will mourn apart—this family, that family, the other.
This will not happen in a single moment of time. People say, “The whole Jewish people are going to be saved in a single moment of time.” It is nonsense. It is not in the Word.
What is going to happen is that the mercy drops of God, this work of the Holy Spirit, will begin somewhere—I do not know where—amongst the Jewish people. Suddenly there will be a movement of the Spirit within Judaism.
The hardening in part will be taken away. What a day. What a day.
That will be the final piece of evidence God will give to the whole world, when all over the world it will be recognized that this people, who crucified Jesus along with the Gentiles—both totally responsible—have recognized that He was the Messiah and is the Messiah.
The poor thing about the days in which we are living, which will occasion such shaking, is that the judgment of God is abroad on the nations. We have not yet started to see it, but it will begin very shortly.
We shall begin to see the judgments of God coming upon the nations of the earth. This will come in forms of famine—famine of energy, shortages of basic materials, causing a dropping in living standards and affecting the economies of the world.
It will come in pestilences, earthquakes, all kinds of things, wars, and rumours of wars.
Dear, dear people of God, how wonderful it is that at the heart of this whole thing there is a city, and God is in the midst of her, and she will not be moved.
God is the One who will cause the wars to cease to the end of the earth and says:
Be still, and know that I am God:
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Is that not beautiful?
So we leave dear old Jacob. In my mind’s eye—I have rather an imagination—I see him white-haired and deeply lined, with a lot of sorrow in his eyes.
I see him crippled, frail now, still straight-backed but frail, leaning on his staff. In the last moments as he died, I see him blessing the two sons of Joseph and worshipping.
That is how I would like to go. If the Lord does not come first, I would like to be a blessing in my dying moments, and I would like to be a worshipper.
On these occasions, I have been a bit poetic. So I want to read you, finally, two little poems. One perfectly describes Jacob, and the other is for you and for me. Both are by Amy Carmichael.
But I have seen a fiery flame
Take to his pure and burning heart
Mere dust of earth, to it impart
His virtue, till that dust became
Transparent loveliness of flame.O Fire of God, Thou fervent Flame,
Thy dust of earth in Thee would fall,
And so be lost beyond recall,
Transformed by Thee,
Its very name forgotten in Thine own,
O Flame.
From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee;
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher;
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings;
Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified;
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
O Lamb of God, deliver me.Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay,
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire.
Let me not sink to be a clod;
Make me Thy fuel, O Flame of God.
Shall we pray?
Lord, we do pray that none of us may sink to be mere clods—dull, heavy, unchanged, untransformed, bound to earth, mere dust.
O God, we pray that we might be Thy fuel, eternal fuel for eternal fire. Lord, only Thou canst do this work in us. Give us that faith, Lord—that faith that will bring us into all Thy perfect plan for each one of us and for us as companies of Thy people.
We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Let us stand and sing number 375.
Encamped along the hills of light,
Ye Christian soldiers, rise,
And press the battle ere the night
Shall veil the glowing skies;
Against the foe in vales below
Let all our strength be hurled;
Faith is the victory, we know,
That overcomes the world.Faith is the victory!
Faith is the victory!
O glorious victory,
That overcomes the world.
His banner over us is love,
Our sword the Word of God;
We tread the road the saints above
With shouts of triumph trod.
By faith, they like a whirlwind’s breath,
Swept on o’er every field;
The faith by which they conquered death
Is still our shining shield.Faith is the victory!
Faith is the victory!
O glorious victory,
That overcomes the world.
On every hand the foe we find
Drawn up in dread array;
Let tents of ease be left behind,
And onward to the fray.
Salvation’s helmet on each head,
With truth all girt about,
The earth shall tremble ’neath our tread,
And echo with our shout.Faith is the victory!
Faith is the victory!
O glorious victory,
That overcomes the world.
To him that overcomes the foe,
White raiment shall be given;
Before the angels he shall know
His name confessed in heaven.
Then onward from the hills of light,
Our hearts with love aflame,
Will vanquish all the hosts of night
In Jesus’ conquering name.Faith is the victory!
Faith is the victory!
O glorious victory,
That overcomes the world.
And all the Lord’s people said, Amen.