The Loneliness of a Christian. A.W Tozer

The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share his inner experiences he is forced to walk alone. The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.

The man [or woman] who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over-serious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.

It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else.

“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.” -Revelation 12:11

The Ministry of Jeremiah

” The Word of the Lord came unto me, saying , before I formed thee in the womb, I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations”

” Ah Sovereign Lord I said, i do not know how to speak; i am only a child

But the Lord said unto me ” Do not say i am only a child. You must get to everyone i sent you to and to say whatever i command you to. Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you and will rescue you, declares the Lord.”

Then the Lord reached out His Hand and touched my mouth and said unto me, Now, I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” ( Jeremiah 1:5-10)

Jeremiah lived through the terrible last days of the kingdom of Judah. He had his ministry at a time of great religious revival in Israel during the reign of the righteous king Josiah.

The Bible recorded that King Josiah was deeply moved to follow the Lord. He pushed for certain reforms and called for a national gathering to celebrate Passover. The people at the time committed and declared themselves ready to do the same.

However,in-spite of the great religious fervour at the time, Prophet Jeremiah will not be fooled, he noticed the superficiality and the lip service the vast majority of the people gave to God.. He understood to have the nation truly coming back to God will require more than having mere emotional outburst called revival. He was the one prophet of the time who was unmoved by the apparent show of religiosity of the people.

 ” Although they say, As surely as the Lord lives, still they are swearing falsely”  ( Jer 5:2)

Prophet Jeremiah faced a situation similar to what we have today. Amidst a strong and emotional spiritual outburst that is often mistakenly termed ” revival”, is this hypocrisy and superficiality and lip service to God that does nothing to show the genuineness of people’s allegiance to God.

The Remnant of God in this last days will find themselves repeating Jeremiah’s ministry. The Lord will call out His chosen out of the apostate church, anoint them to confront, root out, pull down and destroy the doctrines, traditions or patterns that turn people away from the true knowledge of God. These true saints of God will be filled with all boldness, and they will also stand to warn people who are complacent in their Faith towards God, and free those trapped by the sleight deceit of men.

The situation then is no different from what we have today. Rather than believing and living their lives according to the commandments of the Lord, the people choose to believe their religious leaders who tickle their ears with messages they wanted to ear.

They were told God was pleased with them in-respective of how they lived their lives. The messages were all Blessings, Glory and Hallelujahs. Concerning these false teachers Jeremiah said

” For from the least of them even to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for gain, and from the prophet even to the priest everyone deals falsely. They have healed the brokenness of my people superficially, saying Peace, peace, but there is no peace”. ( Jeremiah 6:13-14)

” An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land, the prophet prophesy falsely, and the priests rule on their authority, and My people love it so, but what will you do at the end of it” ( Jer 5:30-31)

The Church today needs to hear the message of Jeremiah again.

Yes it’s true there are many leader-like Josiah’s out there who are doubtlessly genuine in their desire for God- sent revival in the Church today which we truly need, but make no mistake about this, the church is been invaded with a false gospel today that only entertains and meets people’s needs for socialization, without any regard for what pleases God.

People flock to places today where they can have their ears tickled with promises of wealth, health and enjoy some good feeling. God is Love, and Salvation is by grace, so we can do anything and still go to heaven. That’s the message of today, and is no different from what the people were told in the days of Jeremiah.

It should be understood however that Jeremiah’s stand then, got him into trouble  with the false religious Establishment. He was seriously persecuted and isolated by the false religious establishment and anyone wishing to be use of God in this last days must understand and be willing to accept the kind of suffering and ridicule that Jeremiah suffered in the hand of these men.

” But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, Faith, long-suffering, charity, patience, persecutions, afflictions which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra, what persecutions i endured, but out of them all the Lord delivered me. Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” (2 Tim 3:10-12)

Jeremiah was seen as a negative person with a critical and destructive spirit. The same thing that is said today of those who come with the true Word of the Lord.

Of Jeremiah, the Scripture records, ” Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that i might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.” ( Jer 9:1)

There is a great deal of difference between the passing of critical judgements, or fault finding or people with discontented spirit, and we do have them in the church and those who have a truly sorrowing heart that truly suffers with God over the state of His Church. It is usually easy to see faults and to criticise, but it is very painful to see through the eyes of God and sorrow with Him over the state of His people.

“‘ And the Lord said to him, go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in the midst of it.” ( Ezek 9:4)

These ones who make themselves available to God, will He separate and anoint. They will have much boldness and fear no one, for He will put a fire, a divine -fire in their bones that will keep them unconstrained or silent even in the midst of much opposition. These ones be the ”Watchmen” of the Lord unto His Church in these last days.

” Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel, therefore hear the word at My mouth, and give them warning from Me.”

 

 

Apostolic Confrontation 2 Art katz

Neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things; (v 25)

Paul is speaking in the midst of the temples, more impressive then when they stood in their original, pristine beauty. They were powerful statements of human civilization. There is something about the visible evidence of this world that is intimidating, but Paul was representing another reality that would only be verified in the eternal future, yet would seem like absolute foolishness to those who were hearing him. Paul told them that there is a God who does not need things that men make with their hands, or their monuments, as if He needed anything.

Paul had a knowledge of a God who gives all things, including his imprisonment with Silas in Philippi, in the chapter before, where they were stripped naked and beaten within an inch of their lives. It was an absolutely forsaken place, miles from their friends, yet they were there in obedience. It says that at about midnight, the darkest hour, when you give up all hope and confidence, Paul and Silas were praying and singing praises unto God.

Times of adversity and affliction are among the ‘all things’ that come from the hand of God. Can we rejoice in them, and praise God in them, and say with conviction to the unbelievers of this world, that He is the God who gives all things? That is what makes an apostle’s word so penetrating. He has experienced the ‘all things,’ and received them as coming from God’s hand, and you do not have to understand ‘why.’ We can say that there is a God who gives all things, but it will not mean anything, or have penetration, or be a challenging and compelling statement, demanding the attention of men to that God, except that we really believe it, in the sense that we are living it, and it has been tempered into our experience.

If Paul had seen his Philippian imprisonment as some kind of an unhappy circumstance, he would not have found himself on Mars Hill speaking to Greek philosophers. God is waiting for men who believe that there is a God who gives all things. Have we really surrendered to the total sovereignty of God? The evidence of that is in the way we express our disappointment. We see men as being the problem, or circumstances, or we ourselves were at fault: “If only we had done this instead of that, then something might have been changed.” We do not recognize, however, that there is a Supreme God in the heavens, who gives all things. It is not an excuse for our indifference, or neglect, but we need to recognize that He is the God of all things. When we can rejoice in the sovereignty of God in the things that are painful, as well as the things that are pleasant, then we can stand before secular men and speak of the God who gives to all, life and breath. If He is the God of life, then is He not also the God of death? And if He is not the God of the one, then He is not the God of the other. If He is not God of all, then He is not God at all.

 

 

The Nations in Paul’s Message

And He made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation. (v 26)

Paul is beginning to really focus in on the subject of nations. The nations are not geological accidents, but God’s creation, and He has established them, and given them their boundaries. It implies that we are not to make our own boundaries. In fact, wars are about boundaries, territories and land. We do not want to be bound, because a boundary is a limitation, and we do not want to know a God who imposes and requires it. Paul is giving a cosmic view of creation and the nations, and of a God who has created them for His purpose. God does not establish boundaries and times for no reason, being a purposeful God, and He has an intention for the nations. Nations are not accidental entities, or something to be explained by anthropologists. Paul explains it in one statement: God has established the bounds of the nations. This is contrary to the freethinking of modern men; it is very restrictive, and gives no latitude for mankind to ‘do his thing,’ or to use this planet as if it was a toy or plaything for their purposes.

That they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His offspring.’ Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. (vv 27–29)

 

 

The Purpose of Man’s Existence

Paul’s statement does not even sound religious. He did not quote any Scripture, and in fact, it sounds philosophical and very much like Greek thought and teaching. Paul was saying that the whole of creation, the complex, manifold civilization and world, nations and races, the formation of men themselves, and their life on earth, was for one reason only: “to seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him.” This is despite every appearance to the contrary. The history of the world, its outpoured blood, its fortunes that have been dispensed, its technology, its architecture, and its institutions are only secondary things to provide sufficient stability and order for life, that men might seek after God. This view is so utterly narrow, and does not make room for anything else. It is a gush from Paul that in one short moment tells them what the whole purpose of human existence is.

Paul has reduced the whole of human existence to one pursuit only, namely, that the whole purpose of human life on this planet is for the purpose of finding God before we enter into eternity, either God-less or with Him. This is a view that has been dismissed in modern times, but needs to be restored. Paul believed it, but do we live as if we believe it? Our lives contradict our words, and if we do not live as if we believe something, then we need to understand that we do not really believe it.

The purpose of man’s existence is not to seek his happiness, but to seek after God. In fact, the happiness that is to be found outside of God, and which the world is quick to provide as substitute, is delusion and deception. God is the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, but He has not established them that we could have a fun time, pursue our careers, promote our interests, build our civilizations, or any other thing¾those are secondary things.

The message that we can live and move and exist in God is unwelcome to the ears of mankind. They do not want to know of such a possibility, because they want to live and move and have their being in themselves. They do not want to be bound by their habitations according to what God has determined or fixed for the purposes for which He has appointed them. Every single syllable that came from Paul’s lips is a calculated offense to the sensibilities and mindset of man. They do not want to be restricted, and therefore they prefer to have their monuments to the “Unknown God.”

When Paul said, “… this I proclaim to you,” he did not say, “There is a living God.” Paul was saying, “This is His nature; this is His purpose; this is His requirement.” It is a declaration of God that men do not want to hear, being unwelcome and abrasive. It not only is contrary to their opinion, it altogether contradicts the whole foundation of all their believing, and the whole structure of their thought and value system. Paul is contradicting an entire way of life, and makes it invalid. This is so different from the temper and way in which modern believers share their own faith; they offer it more as an opinion than as a conviction.

 

 

The Purpose of Nations

“… That they should seek God …”

For a long time I thought that the ‘they’ referred exclusively to individuals, and in a sense that is true, but it would be more exegetically correct to see the ‘they’ as referring to the nations whose boundaries, habitations and times were established by God. Paul is implying that the nations should seek God for the reason for which they were established. The failure to do so, and to have established their own purposes, without consulting God, is the very essence of what sin is. It is for this reason that God calls every man to repent, because He has chosen a day in which He will judge the world. It is a scandalous rejection of God by the world as nations, and God will judge it. That is Paul’s message in Athens to the heart of nations, and therefore to all nations. Nations have an obligation toward God as nations, and that is what makes Paul’s statement so profound in Athens, a city-state nation in itself, and living in complete disrespect and ignorance of the God who made it.

What is it the nations are to seek God for? It is to find out the purpose for which they have each been created as a nation, and the purpose for which their boundaries and habitations were given. The requirement of men and nations is to seek Him who is the Creator and Lord. It is a continual seeking, and because the church has been guilty of not seeking Him, we have no message for our nations. How much of our present church activity has been initiated out of ourselves, even for God’s sake? We cannot blame the nations for not seeking God when many of us have not asked it for ourselves. Most of us live in complete disregard for the God who made us, and assume that whatever purposes we appoint, He must certainly approve. The great love that the church can demonstrate to their nations is to save them from the judgment of God by saying, “God has a controversy with you.”

To find God is to find Him for the purpose for which we were intended. There is no finding of God, as God, nor is there any knowledge of God that is a true knowledge, independent of His revealed purpose. He is a purposeful God by very definition, or else He would not be God. To think that we have found God, and yet not to have found Him for His purpose, is not to have found God. Satan will let you think you have found God, and even give you a measure of certain subjective enjoyment and fulfillment, but the true discovery of God is the knowledge of God as the God who has purpose. And it is in the seeking of Him for that purpose that we come into the truth and depth of real relationship with God. To seek Him for the sense of His presence, which is characteristic of recent ‘revival,’ and not to seek Him for His purpose, is not to seek Him as He desires to be sought. Those who are merely satisfied with a measure of religion, without the power thereof, will not seek God. The true believer will seek God to find out and know the purpose for His creation. To purport to know God, and to be bereft of the knowledge of His purpose is not to know Him as God, and it betrays, and is evidence of the failure to have sought Him. The same principle applies to nations.

 

 

The Nations in Relation to Israel

God Himself has established the boundaries of the nations, and yet there is something about the nature of nation that inevitably encourages an idolatrous preoccupation to the point where it becomes very ‘God.’ Men worship nations, and will die for nations, and compete against nations, even in their sports. God made a provision to keep nations in certain boundaries and relationships that would be sane and healthy for them, and yet allow Him to be the recognized Head over all. There is a place for legitimacy of nations, but only within a certain structure that God Himself provided. He has made Israel central to all the nations—for the law must go forth out of Zion—or there never will be a turning of swords into ploughshears. Israel is the pivot, and nations cannot be related, and recognize the boundaries and purposes of God, independent of their recognition of, and their submission to, the centrality of Israel for all nations.

When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel. (Deuteronomy 32:

It is a statement in Scripture that no one ever sees or refers to, and yet it is the center of God’s design for the nations. There will never be peace and justice in the world until it comes back to God’s intention as at the first.

Thus says the Lord God, ‘This is Jerusalem; I have set her at the center of the nations, with lands around her.’ (Ezekiel 5:5)

This is not just the issue of God’s strategy and design; it is the issue of God as God. That is why men oppose it. It is not just the way in which He wants real estate to be understood, but the way in which He wants Himself to be understood, by appointing what He appoints, and choosing what He chooses. Nations want to be autonomous so that they can choose their own course, and perform their own will, in the seeking of their own glory. The very existence of Israel in the world is a stubborn reminder of a God whose will they hate. To remove Israel is to remove God’s righteous demand upon them. To blot Israel out from their sight, by the liquidation of that people, is one of the reasons why Jews have suffered near annihilation in all their history. They were not innocent victims though, for their own sinful conduct justified the wrath that has been poured out upon them. Both things are true at the same time. Nations ventilating their hatred against God, and the fury that comes upon Israel, are exactly Israel’s deserving in proportion to their sins—not least being their failure to desire to be chosen, and to be for God what He has always intended.

The greatest drama of the Last Days (which is already in process) is the attempt to annihilate Israel by the nations so as to remove God’s very provision for their relatedness to Him. That is why the “nations rage and take thought against God and His Anointed and want to break their bands from them” (Psalm 2). If you want to be freed from the requirement of God, as a nation, in the relationship of nations to God, then you must remove the nation Israel. That explains why the last drama in history, before the Lord’s coming, is the attempt again to annihilate Israel, as well as the motive for it.

 

 

The Heart of Paul’s Message

Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead. (vv 30–31)

In that one statement, Paul abolishes every kind of other religion, and every kind of thing that purports to be truth, or to serve the purposes of men. He hones right in: Judgment—Resurrection—That man—a day. It was something specific, clear, unequivocal, uncompromising, sure, certain and absolute. That is apostolic love, and anything less would be a disservice to men. Can you imagine Paul telling someone to “accept Christ, and it will go well with you”? God will judge all men is a chilling totality. Whatever justification there might have been for your ignorance before, there is now no longer any excuse, because there is a people in the earth, who not only proclaim, but also demonstrate the reality of His resurrection.

God is patient, but there is a Day coming when His wrath, which has been mounting up, will be expressed. It is called the ‘Day of the Lord,’ and it will come against the nations of the world after He has dealt with Israel. He begins with the house of God, but no nation will be exempt from the fury of God poured out in wrath against all nations. That is why Paul is warning them in Athens. God has overlooked the times past, but now He is declaring to all men everywhere to repent, for He has appointed a day in which He will judge the world by that Man whom He has raised from the dead. Jesus is not just King of the Jews, but God’s Theocratic Ruler over His entire creation¾and the nations. To Him every knee will bow, to the glory of God the Father.

I can just sense the chill that came into the spine of those who heard him. They had likely never before considered that God has appointed a day in which He will judge. There is nothing more appointed for foolishness than to bear the message of judgment, especially in a world that is completely without any sense of law and order, and ‘doing its own thing’ in what is right in its own sight. We can measure how deep we really are in God, and how much our own hearts have been affected by that truth, by our willingness to say it to another. It is an ultimate message, announced by Jesus at the commencement of his ministry,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” (Luke 4:18–19)

He was reading from Isaiah chapter 61, but He did not complete the verse:

“… and the day of vengeance of our God.” (v 2)

He did not end with that verse, because it was not His task, but the final, end-time word that needs to be proclaimed, but this time by His Body, the church. The ‘Day of the Lord’ is at the door, and the elements shall burn with a fervent heat. We know it technically, but do we know it actually? Can we say it to Epicureans and Stoics with conviction? Paul knew God as Judge, and if we knew it to the same degree, we would not be so carnal in our behavior.

If that was the message two thousand years ago¾that God commands all men everywhere to repent¾what shall we say who are living now? Do we have the same sense of urgency that Paul knew? The early church was certainly not deceived into thinking that the Judge was ‘at the door’ and soon coming. For them the issue was not chronological, but expectation and urgency. If we are not living in this kind of dynamic, we are not the church in any true sense. This is intrinsic to any true, apostolic church, and to the degree that we do not have this sense of urgency and imminence of the things that are shortly to come to pass, then to that same degree we are not the church. Do we see this expectation as being the logic of our faith? Do we bring it to bear on our decisions? Do we plan our vacations, and where we are going next year, and the purchase of boats, as if these things are not shortly to come to pass? Do we betray, by our actual conduct, what we purport to believe?

The message of God has always been, “Repent and believe the gospel!” There is no way to believe the foolishness of the gospel by our intelligence. In God’s intention, the gospel is beyond the ability of any man to understand. The natural man cannot perceive the things of God, for they are spiritual. Repenting is the key that gives the release to the supernatural grace, unobtainable through our own intellect. God commands all men everywhere to repent. Does our presence compel men? Does our speaking to men guarantee that they will be without excuse in the ‘Day of Judgment’?

 

 

The Nations in the Light of Judgment

The nations are in rebellion against God, and their proliferation and increase in number is only one statement of it; their false gods are another, while their opposition to Israel is the most graphic expression of their rebellion. The Millennium, and the peace of the Millennium, pave the way for the nations to come into God’s ordained formula, as it was from the beginning. Israel is at the center; the Law goes forth out of Zion. The nations come up to Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles to pay respect to the God of Israel. That is how God intended it from the first, but He has first to deal with the rebellion in His own nation, whom He has chosen, and then with the nations who are in rebellion against Him. We have not understood the magnitude of man’s rebellion against God, even though they have their monuments to the ‘Unknown God.’ Paul understood it, and he addressed it.

Our relationship and understanding of Israel, both as a nation and even as individuals, is the evidence of whether or not we have sought God and found Him. If we say we have found God, then what have we learned about the nation Israel with regard to ourselves, not just as mere acknowledgment of that nation’s centrality, but the actual and existential submission to that centrality? To have sought God, and found Him, is incompatible with being indifferent to Israel as His chosen and revealed center for all nations. Is it for the fear of such a discovery that God is not sought? Who wants to find Him if the revelation that comes with that discovery is injurious or threatening to our own self-interest?

We do not seek, because we do not want to be found. Our conduct and indifference speaks for itself. Our ignorance is willful, and the failure of nations historically to seek God has been unbelievably tragic for mankind. Wars, conflicts, devastation, and death have been the result of self-seeking, autonomous nations acting out of their ambition and rivalry for glory and fame, and who did not seek God for His purpose. The nations need to be told, which is not to say that they will listen, but if we know that judgment is coming, and we do not sound a warning, then their blood is on our hands. It is unlikely that governments will respond, but individuals hearing the message, and seeing our colossal faith and insistence upon it, will be stung in their hearts. Those who have treated the issue of God with a certain kind of casualness will now be alerted to something that for them will be salvation. This is the issue of the Last Days.

This is why the church, generally speaking, is anemic and weak. Its goals and purposes are so vain, and center in their own success and perpetuation, because it has not the apostolic setting. It has neither the overview, nor the cosmic context for which the church has been set in the earth, and no wonder that it is condemned to a vision of petty things. It is falling far beneath the glory of God, because it has not glimpsed the purpose of God.

“For behold, I am beginning to work calamity in this city which is called by My name, and shall you be completely free from punishment? You will not be free from punishment; for I am summoning a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth,” declares the Lord of hosts. “Therefore you shall prophesy against them all these words, and you shall say to them, ‘The Lord will roar from on high, and utter His voice from His holy habitation; He will roar mightily against His fold. He will shout like those who tread the grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth. A clamor has come to the end of the earth, because the Lord has a controversy with the nations. He is entering into judgment with all flesh; as for the wicked, He has given them to the sword,’ declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 25:29–31)

Judgment begins with the house of God, but it does not stop there. It will include “all the inhabitants of the earth.”

The Day of the Lord, so central to the apostolic thinking and to the prophets, will be the epochal Day when the wrath of God will come in the time of God, and be released in a fury against the nations. It is not a twenty-four hour chronological period, but it will be a time of unspeakable devastation. That is why we read in Psalm 9 of the ruins to which the nations are brought. There are even suggestions that one third of the inhabitants of the earth will be obliterated.

At the end of history, God is preparing an apostolic entity in the earth, bearing the authority and message of Paul to the nations before the judgment promised by God falls. God cannot bring His judgment until the nations have heard the warning, and refused to regard it. The church has not performed this, and we have ourselves been so caught up at the individual level that we have not considered God’s message to the nations. Paul was schooled in this, but we are not, nor do we like to hear about the judgments of God, and the Day of the Lord has no cogent meaning for us. We know it exists, and it has a familiar ring to it, but it is not central to our understanding. If it is not central, then we are not apostolic.

And with many other words he (Peter) solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” (Acts 2:40)

Peter was addressing the individuals who had come up to Jerusalem for the high feast days, and his appeal to them was to be saved out of the judgment coming upon the nation. The Day of the Lord was at hand—the signs, the wonders in the sky, blood and fire, the sun being turned into darkness—that is what Peter preached. That which they were hearing in other tongues was what Joel promised when the Day of the Lord would come. “Be saved” is not salvation as we commonly understand it now. It was a salvation out of the judgment that is coming in wrath upon the nations, and that is the message of the Last Days. As it was at the first, so shall it be at the end. We have made salvation something much less and other than what God intended, and have missed the larger context of God’s wrath exhibited toward the nations.

This message is completely at odds with the world as it sees itself. It does not perceive an end, or else they would not be building their skyscrapers. There is not even a sense of end or judgment. Yet we have got to communicate a reality that is completely at odds with what the world thinks is real. It must be communicated in such a way as to compel them to an acknowledgment of that reality so as to repent of the false reality, and to bow to the true before the fulfillment of that reality comes as judgment. To be able to convey that reality means that there has to be an imminent sense of God as Judge, and at the door, and a sense of God’s wrath, by men who have opened themselves to some expression of that reality in their own lives. To omit God in His judgment is to dismiss God as God.

Do we really have a message for individuals if we have not a message for the nation? If we cannot confront the corporate sin, can we really confront the individual sin? The failure to identify sin as sin has made our evangelism so shallow, where the basis for the appeal is for the benefit one receives for believing. It goes back to the fact that we have not identified ourselves with the sins of our nations, because what is the sin of the nations but the same sin as individual men. Nothing will more enable men to see sin than in the context of the sins of their nation for which God holds them culpable and responsible. For example, the Germans are responsible for Hitler. The German nation is responsible for the sins of that nation. The people of a nation are accountable for the conduct of the nation, and God will judge them for the sins of their nation. We have not really had an effectual gospel to individuals because we have not shown them their sin in the context of their nations. Far from the message of the gospel to the nations being an alternative to the gospel to individuals, it may well be the key of the gospel to individuals. Men have a difficulty in seeing their sin as sin. That is the nature of sin; it disguises itself as not being sin. But the conduct of nations is so blatant and conspicuous, but we need to see it as the statement of ourselves—for what is a nation, but the celebration of man. There is a way in which we as individuals rationalize our sin away, but we can more readily see it in the conduct of our nations, where it is clearly seen.

We have got to be to the nations what Paul was to Athens. History is waiting before judgment comes, and that is why Paul could say that God has appointed a Day in which He will judge the world: “If you Athenian philosophers and Stoics did not know it before, then you know it now because I am telling you. You who celebrated yourself and complimented yourself for your ‘spirituality’ to the Unknown God need to know that God is not impressed. He sees your heart, and you are a bunch of devious phonies, always seeking after the truth and never finding it. You want to hear some new thing, and that is why you are willing to give me a hearing, not because you really want to be instructed, but because you just want a novelty. You want to continue the posture of seeking without having to find.”

 

 

Resurrection—The Power of Paul’s Message

“… having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

The whole of Paul’s message, and the obligation of men in the hearing of it, rests on one thing only¾the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah from the dead. What gave Paul the right to demand of his hearers an eternal accountability on the basis of a doctrine of Hebrew faith for which pagans had absolutely no awareness? How could he expect them to understand the concept of resurrection when Jews themselves rejected it? His hearers had no biblical framework even to begin to understand, and yet Paul holds them accountable, and puts them under every obligation to understand it unto repentance.

Of all the articles of faith, resurrection is the one most calculated to offend against human sensibility and intellectual respectability. Paul took the one thing most offensive to their credulity, and based everything on that. For him, it was not a viewpoint to be expressed only on Sunday in a religious environment, but totally relevant in the affairs of men in the world now. There is nothing more pertinent for secular men than the subject of God, and the truths of God, despite the offense it will bring to the hearers. The apostolic mindset, which is the definitive mind of God, brings the divine view, whether it is accepted or not.

Everything that came out of Paul was incarnate in him; it was the living word. Paul did not just proclaim the message of the gospel; he was the visible demonstration of it; he was the word made flesh. Those Athenians heard a convicting word, coming out of the mouth of one who is steeped in the reality of the things which he is proclaiming. That is what made him an apostle, and to reject that witness is to reject the finest of what God can present to men; there is nothing more that God can do in His mercy¾then shall the end come. They could only believe in the phenomenon of resurrection because Paul was in the resurrection. He was a man raised up out of death. His speech to the Athenians was itself a resurrection phenomenon, and not merely conceived in the religious mind of a man. It was God’s very own statement given in God’s very own power, and unless we, as the church, come to individuals or the governments of our nations in that power and identity, our attempts will be in vain.

Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, “We shall hear you again concerning this.” So Paul went out of their midst. But some men joined him and believed, among whom also was Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. (Acts 17:32–34)

Those who believed the message joined themselves to Paul, and believed. This is not a little chance expression; it is rich in all of its meaning. The hearers did not subscribe to some abstract gospel, they did not sign their name on the dotted line to a set of precepts. The point here is that you cannot separate the man from the message, for he was the thing in himself. He was the message, and not some abstract conveyor of a technical word of truth. There was something about the reality of his own life, something that exuded from his own spirit, which, in itself, was the demonstration. He was already a man in eternity, a citizen of heaven, and living already in the power of the age to come. It was a statement of his apostolic life, and it needs to be ours also.

Paul could have contradicted his message, even though he might have said all the right things. If the voice of his speaking, or the spirit in which it was spoken, lacked real conviction, and if he was living a life unto himself and for himself, as most Christians do, then they would have been completely unimpressed and unaffected. To believe the man is to believe the message, and to believe the message is to believe the man.

The resurrection from the dead is an absolutely supernatural phenomenon. It does not leave men any options, because it does not speak about the resurrection as a vagary; it is not a theory. Paul is speaking about an actual resurrection with an actual Man whom God has raised from the dead, and this same Man will judge all nations. It is utterly supernatural and utterly specific, and that combination is deadly to the secular mind. They do not want to be boxed in with something so specific as this, and that is why Jesus is a ‘bone in the throat’ of the modern world. It means that we can no longer construct gods of our own imagining, which men love to do. But if a specific God, who in the form of a man was raised from the dead, requires your allegiance to that Resurrected Man, who is going to be the Judge, then it does not leave you any options.

“… having furnished proof to all men …”

This is not just referring to Jews, nor the witnesses in Jerusalem, but to all men by raising Him from the dead. The reality and the power of this resurrection had got to be demonstrated right there on Mars Hill to the Greeks. For if that resurrection is not demonstrated through Paul himself, then it is only an abstract concept. Paul said that he had given proof to all men, because the very life that came out of Paul, and his speaking, were the very demonstration of a resurrected and ascended King, whose kingship, love and conviction were pouring out of that beggarly Hebrew vessel.

At the end of the age there are going to be two religious bodies, and the profound thing that separates the one from the other, and makes the one the enemy and the victim of the other, is the whole issue of the supernatural. The resurrection is eminently the issue of the supernatural. Men may squabble about the issue of virgin birth, but they cannot squabble about the issue of resurrection. It either is or it is not. It was the proof even for the unbelieving disciples of Jesus, who were “slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had written.” Even when Jesus appeared to them in His resurrection body, it says that they did not believe unto joy. There is something so profoundly deep in our human nature that opposes the supernatural, that even when it is demonstrated in the person of Jesus Himself, there was unbelief. He ate before them in His resurrection body, yet their carnal minds, and the spirit of the world, were so opposed to the supernatural God that they staggered over the issue of the resurrection.

Even when we profess to believe, we do not really believe. The issue is not whether we believe technically to the correctness of the doctrine of resurrection, but do we believe to the point where we are living in the power of it? Are we willing to stand before men on Mars Hill, not on the basis of our cleverness or preparation or our ability, but His life? Is our life hidden with Christ in God? When His life is revealed, our life shall be revealed also with Him unto glory. For many years, I could not understand why there was such a painful absence of the glory of God upon the earth. There are many correct believers—moral, clean, giving no offense, living nicely prescribed lives and models of propriety—but where is the glory? The glory is only in the resurrection, and the life and power that comes when we are dead and hidden with Christ in God, until His life is revealed.

We cannot command, exploit, use or manipulate the resurrection life for our convenience. It embraces and apprehends us, and there will be times when the most glorious things will come from our mouths, statements you know that you are patently incapable of expressing. But there will be other times, in the purposes of God, where nothing will come, and you will just look like the fool, weak and powerless. You will be incapable of giving an answer, and likely become an object for the derision and reproach of men. You could have said something clever out of your own ability to get by, but you would have missed a moment for the glory of God.

Paul always preached ‘Jesus and the resurrection,’ which is Christ and Him Crucified. It was the supernatural faith, and basis for all of his dogma, practice and thought. There are so few believers who have attained to this faith, to this resurrection, to this reality and to this supernatural basis, which may be the reason why we do not proclaim it to men.

 

 

The Finality of Paul’s Message

There is something about taking eternity into one’s life in that kind of reality that brings an urgency to every human kind of deliberation. Those men will be without excuse. They not only heard, but were also encountered by the foretaste of the things to come and in which Paul was already living, and having his being. There is something about the bringing of the gospel in that kind of authority that compels men to decide for or against God; there cannot be indifference.

What are our foundations if they are not Paul’s? Can we, with him, see the things that are invisible as being more impressive than the things that are temporal and seen? Athens was a mighty city, one of the great glories of the ancient world. Men quaked when they saw its glory for a first time. It took one’s breath away, yet Paul walked right through it wholly unruffled. It was the world, which was passing away, but the Word of God endures forever. There was something about Paul that made him immune to the things that are in the world, the very things that make cowards and compromisers out of us. In one moment of time, they heard from a man who had no qualification or credential from their intellectual point of view, and furthermore, it was not offered as an opinion, but a conviction. Men have no obligation to hear our opinions, but they shall be held eternally responsible for our convictions.

Apostolic confrontation 1 Arts Katz

Paul on Mars Hill is the sacred man confronting the secular; the spiritual mind verses the worldly mind; the heavenly perspective brought to bear toward that which is earthly. It is an ultimate, classic, and eternal confrontation, and therefore every element in this text, and everything that the Spirit of God is expressing through Paul to men, is not only powerfully pertinent in that express moment, but it continues to reverberate throughout all time and history, and even to this hour. It actually might be said that it is more pungent and significant now at the conclusion of time and history, than it was two thousand years ago when Paul spoke it. The elements are the same, because nothing has changed.

But when the Jews of Thessalonica found out that the word of God had been proclaimed by Paul in Berea also, they came there likewise, agitating and stirring up the crowds. And then immediately the brethren sent Paul out to go as far as the sea; and Silas and Timothy remained there. Now those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens; and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed. (Acts 17:13–15)

 

When the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, they went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. The brothers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. The men, who escorted Paul, brought him to Athens, and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible (Acts 17:13–15). And so, Paul was fleeing from persecution, and while he was waiting for his colleagues to catch up with him, the Spirit of God set something in motion in his spirit. This is a pure, apostolic episode and revelation of the apostolic man, all the more beautiful and profound because it was unexpected. It was not sought for, or humanly arranged, but totally ordered of by God.

 

 

The Inception of Paul’s Message

Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was beholding the city full of idols (v 16).

 

We need to understand that this incident is as much in the intention of God as were all of the other places where Paul found himself. It was all the same to Paul whether he went because he saw a vision of a Macedonian beseeching him, or he goes circumstantially in flight, or even when being taken somewhere by other men. For such a man with such a mentality, and such an apostolic consciousness and perception, nothing is by chance. Everything is in the ordination of a Sovereign God, who attends to every detail. If God has not one means to get his man to the explicit and appointed place, then He has yet another. Nothing is therefore accident; nothing is wasted; nothing is out of its time. That needs to be our consciousness also. We need to have that abiding sense of the sovereignty of God, and if we miss a plane, or some untoward thing takes place, we are not to be chafed in our spirits, or murmur under our breath, but to rejoice for the inadvertent thing that God will turn to His glory. We need to put on another mindset, and not see ourselves as victims of circumstance, even when it is ungainly or unpleasant. It was not pleasant for Paul to be in flight from persecution, and yet it is the very thing that God employed to bring His apostolic man to the appointed place and in the appointed time. Paul never lifted a finger in his own behalf, or in the promotion of his own ministry—the way we would—and yet God had him in the right place at the right time.

Paul’s spirit was grieved and provoked within him as he saw the city wholly given to idolatry, and right here we have the point of inception of an apostolic event. That which is apostolic is eminently of the Spirit. It begins in the Spirit, conducted in the Spirit, and performed in the power of the Spirit, but it is in a man who sees and who grieves.

Now while he was waiting … he was beholding …

 

This is a man with his eyes open. He was a true worshipper of God, and that qualified him to discern the things that are false. He was not some hyper-spiritual type that kept himself aloof from the world. He saw right through the pretensions of men, because he was a man who was very much in the world, and even quotes their poets. Paul knew the world and how it thought, and he confronted it in the power of God by words that the Lord gave in the moment.

Many of us could have been in the same place, and we would have been entirely unmoved. It is not because the Spirit has ceased grieving, but because we do not have, to our shame, Paul’s proximity to the Spirit. Our eyes are not beholding as God beholds, and therefore we would miss it completely. There is a pattern here that must be at the inception of every apostolic and authentic act, namely, the stirring of the Spirit in a soul that can be grieved in what he beholds with his eyes. This issue of true perception, and seeing as God sees, and seeing through outward appearances, is so imperative for the things that are apostolic.

 

 

The Essence of Idolatry

The idolatry that is present with our generation is exactly the same as the idolatry of Paul’s day. Idolatry is not something that only has to do with pagan altars and shrines. We need to understand, in essence, what the whole idolatrous thing is that permeates the spirit of our age, and has been with us since the Fall of man. This was Athens, the seat of humanism and everything that the world continues to celebrate. Every present-day philosophy and mindset has a direct linkage to the philosophies of that day. Nothing has changed, except the titles¾Epicureanism and Stoicism may be defunct topically speaking as philosophies, but the substance of them, what they are about, the mind-set, the self-servingness of these philosophies as alternatives to true relationship to God, still exist. Athens was a place of ultimate prominence in the civilization and glory that was Greece. Athens was known for its love of worldly wisdom, but it was a wisdom that does not make place for the true God.

So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present. (v 17)

 

Why does it say that Paul immediately went and disputed with the Jews in the synagogue? He was moved by idolatry, and it says that he therefore confronted the Jews in the synagogue. What has that got to do with a city that is wholly given over to idolatry? How do you go from idolatry on one hand to disputing with the Jews in the synagogue? Well, the synagogue is the place where idolatry is most rampant with idolatrous substitution for the true worship of God. We might just as well add the synagogues of the Gentiles, or any religious establishment that offers to man a religion of convenience, and that requires nothing in terms of true relationship, or service to the Most High God.

Idolatry is anything that gives man a modicum of psychic and emotional satisfaction, and that produces something ethereal through the combination of organs and stained glass windows, or whatever the modern equivalent is. It lets them feel that they have done their ‘Sunday thing,’ and they are now free for the golf course or the football game. That is idolatry in its very heart, and it is powerful. It is any religious substitute for the truth, the reality and the requirement of God. Idols do not require anything from their worshippers, but the Living God does: “Take up your cross and follow Me.” An idol is dumb, satisfying the religious needs of men, and absolves them of the requirements of God. Even ‘church attendance’ can give men a sense of religious satisfaction, and save them from the radical requirement of God. It is idolatry by whatever name it is called wherever it is practiced—in the marketplace, the synagogue, or the church.

To have an apostolic heart is to have a heart that continually pounds with a jealousy for the glory of God, and cannot stand to see something that competes for the attention of men, that calls itself worship and is not. If we do not think that this kind of idolatry can even be practiced invoking the name of Jesus, then we are naive indeed. We need to see apostolically, if we are going to be employed apostolically. If Paul had not been grieved, or provoked in his spirit, there would not have been the event that followed. Paul’s grief had its source in his jealousy for the love of God, the knowledge of Him, and because he knew that those, who have been seduced by an idolatrous substitute, are doomed eternally. Paul cannot stand it, and when God finds such a man, then you can be sure that that man will be brought to the place of confrontation.

And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. And some were saying, “What would this idle babbler wish to say?” Others, “He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; we want to know therefore what these things mean.” (Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.) (vv 18–21)

 

 

 

Ultimate Confrontation

“Spending their time doing nothing” is not only a statement of the philosophers of that generation, but also right here and now. Men are still seeking after truth, but never come to the knowledge of it. It is a phony posture that celebrates and exalts man. They presume to be seekers after truth, but never come to the knowledge of the truth. They are always in the process of seeking, and while they are yet seeking, they are fornicating and indulging themselves, never coming to the truth, but always with a self-satisfying posture that wants to hear some new thing. Do we see the desolate condition of mankind, the misspent hours, the waste, the meaninglessness of almost all of human existence in the way it perpetuates its life? Are our hearts stirred and grieved at the condition of men in the world without God? In contrast, Paul’s moments were filled with eternal consequence, and what a difference!

Paul could not have asked for a more supreme opportunity to bring the message of God to men, not just any men, but men in the ultimate place of a human civilization that celebrated itself above God. Paul was the pitiful, Hebrew, itinerant servant, without credentials, or any authority that Greek philosophers would in any way respect or understand. They called him a ‘babbler,’ and looked upon him with complete contempt, because he was the antithesis of all that was respected and celebrated by Greek civilization. And yet they were curious, and gave him an opportunity to speak. And, therefore, whatever Paul was to say, in that place, and in that time, is eternally significant. It was born of the necessity of the moment, which in fact is the very genius of apostolic speaking. It is a revelation of what apostolic is, namely, the man is the thing in himself. Paul is the genius of what God is about, and that is why Paul is the foundation of the church. To meet an apostolic man, or to hear from a true apostle, is to be held eternally accountable. Those Athenians came as close to God as is possible on the earth, because it was the very High Priest and Apostle of our confession who was being expressed through Paul. God cannot do more for men than to put before them the apostolic testimony, and it has got to come through the flesh and blood vessel. We need to have a reverence for apostolic things, and a deep sense of what it takes for such a thing to be wrought in the earth by God in and through man.

So what does a man say when he has to stand before pagans, whose philosophy, mindset, and whole civilization are a direct offense against God? What one thing could he say to them for which they would be eternally responsible? That is what the message of Paul on Mars Hill is. It is interesting and ironic that the message did not result in revival. It did not create the church of Athens as was created, for example, in Ephesus or Corinth. There were two or three who are mentioned by name, who cleaved to Paul and believed. Why therefore does this find a prominent place in the New Testament? The word that he gave went far beyond Athens, but the fact that it took place in Athens is significant. Athens was not just the capital of Greece, in a sense, it was the capital of the whole world at that time.

We need also to understand what it means to stand in the midst of these philosophers at Mars Hill. Paul was facing everything that opposed the wisdom of God. These men whom he faced were every bit as much a representative of the kingdom of darkness and the powers of the air as, for example, a sorcerer is. They may have been clothed with philosophical garb, and spoke another kind of language that does not seem to be as alarming, yet in its nature, they were every bit as antithetical and opposed to the Kingdom of God, and the purposes of God, as witchcraft. Paul was meeting something head on, a certain spirit that prevails in the world today—especially in the religious world. When God confronts it, He is going to confront it apostolically, which is to say, foolishly!

And Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious (‘superstitious’—King James Version) in all respects. (v 22)

 

What a mocking statement! If you want to get an intellectual, philosophical type mad, tell him that he is superstitious. What an indignity! They pride themselves in being above superstition, and so, by beginning with an insult, Paul is already needling them. He was a man who spoke what God gave him, nor had he any concern for the consequences of that speaking as it pertained to himself. That is apostolic, but if we are fearful, and walking and speaking in a guarded way, and calculating what we shall say so as not to offend, or be misunderstood, then how shall we be a mouth for God in confrontation with a hostile world? There is only One who can determine what is appropriate in any given moment, namely, the Lord Himself.

For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘to an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. (v 23)

 

We will never be able to identify, or confront the thing that is false, unless we can also say with Paul, “This I proclaim to you.” It is not enough to know about the truth; we need to be intensely and intimately in the Life of that truth before we dare expose the lie. Paul’s statement may sound arrogant, but it is his very boldness and incisiveness that are themselves a demonstration of the God whom Paul was proclaiming. Paul taunted them with their superstitious, play-acting charade about the ‘Unknown God,’ as if somehow it shows a respect and reverence, when really it was a phony deceit.

Those Athenians may have worshipped their idols ignorantly, but we need to know that it was a willful ignorance. They chose to worship a god who is unknown, because an unknown god makes no requirement at all, and Paul saw right through it. The thing that sounds at face value to be so spiritual—monuments with inscriptions to the Unknown God—is in fact a phony deference that saves men from any excruciating demand of being in relationship with the God who is. They prefer that He remains unknown, but Paul will not allow them that luxury. To know God as He is, is to have a serious intrusion into your life that changes everything.

That is why my Jewish kinsmen and their Rabbis love to speak about ‘a higher power’ and ‘an impersonal force in the universe.’ It sounds so spiritual, but will we congratulate them for that kind of spirituality, or will we see how deceitful such a statement is? There is something in the human heart, not just the Jewish heart, which likes to keep God at a great distance. The human heart wants an impersonal God, because an impersonal God does not say, “Thou shall not commit adultery. Thou shall love the Lord Thy God with all your heart.” We need to see through the deception of the human heart, and Paul was always conscious that this was an eternal moment to whereby he could not spare them. His love was too great to flatter them, and so He let them have it right in the face, because the truth is painful before it is glorious. True comfort comes after we have been discomforted.

 

 

God as Creator and Lord

He then begins his remarkable statement—a whole basis for understanding God in relationship to individuals, but equally to the nations as distinct entities in themselves. And so Paul begins with God as Creator:

The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; (v 24)

 

This statement could not be more fundamental. Everything rests upon God as Creator. The earth is the Lord’s, and therefore He has a right over His own creation. He is not just the Creator of heaven and earth, He is the Lord of heaven and earth. If we do not have a perception of God as Creator, we have no foundation for truth or reality. For Paul, to begin here with God as Creator, was not an accident, but a divine revelation of the foundational premise upon which everything rests: “In the beginning God created …”

Since He is Lord of heaven and earth, what then is the implication for the piece of earth called Athens? He is the Lord also of Athens. Paul did not say it, but it is implicit in what he is saying. He was giving more than just correct views; it was in his spirit and life, because the Creator of Paul was also his Lord. When Paul used the word ‘Lord,’ it would have gone into the hearts of those men like a dagger. To evoke the word ‘Lord’ can only have power and penetration to the degree that it is true for us who speak it. Paul was directly and totally under the authority of the One whom he called Lord, and the evidence was in his very speaking. If the Lord were not Lord, he would not have begun with an insult. Paul would have begun with a compliment the way most of us would, because our speaking is, for the most part, what we determine, not what He determines.

This is a beautiful portrait of what the word ‘apostolic’ means. It is all the more perfect because it is not self-conscious. The moment it is self-conscious, it becomes religious, and however technically it might be true, it loses its power. God is putting something before those men in Athens that was beyond philosophy and religion. It was very God Himself, because that which is apostolic is authentic, and that which is authentic is apostolic. This is the genius and beauty of apostolic, and we need to pray, therefore, that God will again give such men to the church, for until He does, we are without foundation.

Apostolic Conversion Art Katz

I have greatly been blessed by the writings of bro Art Katz who went to be with the Lord last year.

His work on the Apostolic foundation i believe should be a must read for all believers. Fortunately, Ben Israel, his website makes all of their books and writings free on-line, I intend to post the whole series with much prayers that it will bless all those that will get to read them and challenge us to living the truly authentic Christ- like life we have been called into.

 

This is the verbatim transcript of a message given in 1993 to an American congregation of a spiritually impressive kind. That is to say, that it had all the appearances of a committed body, serious in the Lord, and whose lively worship seemed to testify of its abounding health. Nevertheless, after two nights of meetings, I felt, as the speaker, an increasing sense of despair that not much had been transacted and that if the Lord did not radically intervene there would be little point in continuing.

This message was given on the third night, having spent the day in fasting and earnest intercessory prayer. With hardly a single exception, the entire congregation went down on their faces at its conclusion in a depth of groaning and intensive seeking of the Lord.

The word is like an arrow to the heart of the need of the church world-wide especially in its seeming ’success’ and how much more in its static predictability. May it affect you as a reader as it did those who heard and received it as the Lord’s word.

---

Tonight I believe that the Lord’s heart is on the subject of conversion. I’m very fond of saying, “Many saved, few converted,” and I’ve come to a realisation after two nights, that to continue along the lines that we have been speaking would be vain unless there has in fact been a radical crossing to the other side. I can’t think of a greater cruelty or delusion than to speak about apostolic things when we are spiritually incapacitated or incapable of walking them out, especially when something foundational to our relationship with God has not yet been effected. The apostolic things that pertain to His glory can only find fulfilment in a people who are utterly abandoned to God. If we embrace only the vocabulary of apostalicity, we engage the cruellest of all deceptions. Let’s talk about anything else, and use any other kind of language, but let’s not embrace this language unless we have an intent to fulfil it. Somehow we need to pause in the course of what is being unfolded in these days and raise the question of the authenticity of our own conversion. Can you understand that it is possible somehow to be saved and even born again of the Spirit - even be filled with the Spirit - and yet not be converted in the sense of an utterness toward God that apostolic reality requires?

Seeing that we are focusing on Paul, I want to read an account of his conversion from Acts, Chapter 9. It is remarkable to note that in the book of Acts there are three expressions or recordings of that conversion. Perhaps it is not an exaggeration to suggest that the apostolic life that followed was altogether proportionate to the kind of commencement or beginning that it had from the first. Or to put it in another way, maybe we can’t exceed or go beyond what is the point of our beginning. Some of us may need a day of new beginnings or a beginning that has never in fact been made; which if it is in fact not made, would condemn us to being fixed at a certain level of Christian response beneath what the Lord himself intensely intends and desires.

I’m going to ask that we stand and ask the Lord’s blessing before we read the Scriptures. I don’t know where that thought came from, but somewhere in the course of the day I just had a sense of us standing to pray and I just want to invite you to call on the Lord even now. No lengthy prayer from one saint, but just a brief inviting of God to pull out the stops, to ask Him for something of an extraordinary kind. I’m always believing the Lord for something like that, an impetus like that in your spirit, so just sound out from where you are standing and then I’ll conclude in prayer and then we’ll get into the word for tonight.

So then, first reading from Acts 9…

And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem. And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? And he said, Who are thou Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus who thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord what would thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man. And Saul rose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink. And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananaias; and to him said the Lord in a vision, Ananaias. And he said, Behold, I am here, Lord. And the Lord said unto him, arise, and go to the street which is called Straight, and enquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth. And hath seen in a vision a man named Ananaiascoming in, and putting his hand on him that he might receive his sight. Then Ananaias answered, Lord I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem. And here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name. But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake. [Acts 9:1-16]

Thank you precious God, for the light that shone upon an enemy and deeply converted him, my God, from the murderer to the chief apostle of the Church. What a work, my God, that comes down from heaven in the moment that you appoint, even in all our opposition. We pray that tonight’s speaking, my God, might be for us who have not yet fallen to the earth and who are still proceeding from our seeing, and not yet from yours – that we might be brought down in order that we may be brought up, and that we might learn what great things we must suffer for your name’s sake, whom you will bring before Gentiles and kings – and especially in these last days, before the house of Israel. Come and speak to us out of this text, my God. We thank you and praise you for the privilege of a word about it that might be for us the event of it, in Jesus’ holy Name, Amen.

So, as I’ve already said, the inception of the apostolic life greatly determines its end. Many of us are malfunctioning, not walking in fullness, because of inadequate beginnings. I can go off on a long dissertation about the inadequacy of our contemporary gospel, of it being more of a kind of formula for salvation than it is an induction into the most holy faith, and how the pagans in Thessalonicawho heard an apostolic proclamation of that gospel were saved “from their idols to servethe living God, and to wait for His son who comes from heaven and who will save them in the day of His wrath.” (1 Thess. 1:9). Evidently, they heard a much fuller and more powerful presentation of the gospel than most of us, and therefore, right from the instant of their conversion, a quality of things was released that made that church distinctive. Indeed, they reflect their beginning and we reflect ours.

But praise God that if our beginnings have been faulty and inadequate, if our poverty of beginning has affected our subsequent walk, then there are ways in which God can give us a new beginning.

I see in this a kind of parallel with Israel and the great ‘crossing over’ that they were required to make with Joshua. There is a Jordan, which means literally, “a descent into death.” And this crossing leaves behind those who stumbled about in the religious wasteland for forty years where many cadavers had been left behind who did not have the fullness of heart of a Caleb or Joshua (Caleb means “Whole-hearted”). Only two out of an entire generation had the privilege of being welcomed into the land of promise and participating in the taking of the land. We stand at this kind of crossroad today. It is time to cross over, and this sense of crossing has been heavy on my heart in all the days I have been here and even the days that immediately proceeded my coming to you.

But do you know that not all of the house of Israel crossed, but that a portion of the tribes of Gad, Manasseh and Reuben chose to remain on the other side? They remained because the ground there was lush, and the grasses were high and they were cattle breeders, who obviously recognised something of immediatevalue. They were unwilling for that risk of a faith in what might be found on the other side. They pleaded with Moses and got what they wanted, and they were allowed to remain on the wrong side of the Jordan and have been subsequently lost to the whole history of Israel. The only melancholy reminder we have of the tribe of Gad, who chose the wrong side, are the Gadarenesof the New Testament time who raised pigs and were unwilling, even at that later time, for a deliverer to come because it proved expensive for their flesh. They much preferred to sustain their herds, rather than welcome Him who casting those same herds into the sea delivers from demon spirits!

What a commentary on the consequences of an unwillingness to cross over, of a languishing on the wrong side. I think that the reason is always the same – because it is conducive to the ‘flesh,’ because back there we have an assurance to things that pertain to ‘herds’ (i.e., our immediate self-interest).

So there is now, as then, a real necessity for “crossing over,” lest our own carcasses be found on the wrong side, or that we degenerate into the melancholy that became true for the tribes of Gad and Manasseh, who refused to go over but remained fixed for their “cattle’s sake!” We just reviewed what the land of the Gadarenes had become by the time of Jesus, centuries later; they are lost even now to any kind of historical remembrance, let alone value.

Consequently, the conversion of Paul, and our conversion, is critical. It begins with the phrase, “As he journeyed…” I think there is more hope for an enemy of God journeying in full sincerity, even in his error, than for those who purport to be the friends of God and have long since ceased journeying and are just kind of ‘treading water’ or occupying some kind of safe place. There is more hope to convert an enemy who is in motion, however grievous his error (and the error is a consequence, even, of an intensity for God, however misconceived), than there is for those of us who are safely ensconced in correct credos and doctrines but are not moving at all!

So, there is something in my spirit that rises up in the words we read, “But as he journeyed…” You wonder if there would have been a conversion if Saul would have been content to rest on his lees and to be satisfied with the conventional categories of orthodoxy that satisfied most of his contemporaries. “But as he journeyed, suddenly there came a light from heaven,” and I’m wondering if journeyingis a condition of that light for us as well? Is it that when the Lord sees a questing there is more hope of our being arrested by the light of God than if we are merely treading water, satisfied with the spiritual status quo of our lives? But until that light shines, until something comes down to us from above, we are fixed in the place where we are. Everything is from the great, sovereign hand of God. Whose eye “roves to and fro over the face of the earth, seeking that one whose heart is perfect toward Him.” If that were not so, I would not be speaking to you now. I would not be in the faith but would have been a dead man a long time ago. But even as an atheist, and as an enemy of God, “pouring out threats and murder” against the Church thirty-seven years ago in the same kind of vehemence and opposition as Saul, I was arrested. (See Art’s “Odyssey of a Modern Jew,” the testimonial book of his own conversion). Probably for the same kinds of reasons that even in my error, even in my opposition to the Church and the faith, unable to mouth the name of Jesus, except as a blasphemy and a curse, God saw a heart that was desiring truth, that was willing to be on the way, ‘journeying.’ I think this is a disposition pleasing to God, even after one’s initial encounter with God!

I love the way the Lord encountered Saul, who fell to the earth and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul. Saul, why persecuteth thou Me?” I think that if we are examining the anatomy of conversion, of what it is that must be radically turned, it is thisfatal error, if it is allowed final expression, will ultimately result in the persecution of God and the Church. And what is this error? It is this – putting our ‘thou’ before God’s ‘Me.’ “Why persecuteth thou Me?” Why do you celebrate, and put your self-interest, however religious and sanctified you think it is, before Me? Here is where I have to trust the Holy Ghost to take that simple thing that lies too deep for words, and reveal the crux of the matter. We are not converted until His ‘Me’ is before our ‘thou.’ That is the fatal mishap, we go through an entire lifetime with our ‘thou’ preceding His ‘Me,’ even religiously. Something needs to be wrenched about, radically altered and corrected; the one thing must be before the other – His ‘Me’ before our ‘thou.’ If that does not take place, be assured that in one form or the other, we are persecuting God; we are opposing God even while we purport to be labouring and serving in His interest! Isn’t that exactly the picture of Saul? Note that here is not some calculated atheist, indifferent to God, but here was a man zealous for God. The error that led to the persecution of God’s own people, and God Himself in His people, was committed by a religious man in error whose ‘thou’, however well meaning, was yet before God’s ‘Me.’

How does it stand with you tonight? If that basic and fatal error is possible for a man of religious zeal, who, with every right intention, sought to serve God and to seek out opportunities to round up heretics and bring them back to Jerusalem, how much more then are we capable of exactly the same fatal error? Why we put our ‘thou’ before His ‘Me’ is the nub of the matter, so long as we have made ourselves central and prior to Him. That, I think, is essentially characteristic of the Church today, even in its best ‘charismatic’ form. It is still our ‘thou’, it is still, “How are we affected?” That stubborn, spiritually egocentric attitude, however unconscious and expressed, can only be dislodged by profound conversion. For this in fact is what conversion is.

We can be saved; we can be filled with the Spirit; and yet, this central thing can remain unattended until a light shines down upon us from heaven and brings us down to the earth. Have we not, even in these two nights, integrated His word into the existing categories by which we affirm ourselves, misappropriating the very thing intended by God to unseat and even to devastate us?

I’ll say it again. How many of us, in the hearing of the word on these very nights, have taken that word in through the prism of our own subjectivity and fitted it into the existing construct of our life, our categories, and found a way in which the Word would be amenable to our view of ourselves, of our spirituality, of our call? In a word, what are we doing, even unconsciously, is elevating ourselves above the Word, and ourselves determining how it is to be fitted comfortably into the categories that we approve. Instead of allowing the Word to devastate and demolish our categories, we stand or sit above it as arbiters, carefully moulding it so that it can neatly be taken in and even acknowledged and celebrated as the Word of God, applauding the speaker for having brought it, thinking we have done God’s service!

Can you see why we need to be converted? This egocentrismis unspeakably deep, and ironically, deepest in the religious and spiritual realm. What greater affront to God, what greater expression of putting our ‘thou’ before His ‘Me’ than the way in which we even hear and conditionally receive the Word? It is an entirely unconscious process, and we havebeen doing it for years, thereby missing the value and intent of the God who gave it!

I have to say that last night after the service I left depressed. I felt dejected. My spirit had sunk, I was slumping. I felt a tremendous exhaustion, a tiredness not only of body, but of soul. The word was good – the word was precious in God’s intention, but somehow by the time it had been transmuted to the hearer, the way in which the hearer had received it and even responded or did not respond was already showing that our ’thou’ was before His ‘Me’. That is why the Lord is saying tonight, “Halt – I’ll go no further! I’m not going to share the holy things of the apostolic faith with a people who are going to take it, internalise it, and so construe it as to fit into their existing mindsets. By so doing, they somehow find a way to exalt what the word is intending to devastate.”

In effect, we set ourselves above His Word, determining to what degree we allow it credence and acceptance. We determine to what degree we intend practically to internalise and implement it.

Do you realise that this is almost continually going on? Ours is a holy God. He’s pouring His heart out to us and there we are, consciously or unconsciously calculating to what degree we are going to realistically receive such a word with the intent of doing it!

I think in this one thing I have described the essential malaise of the Church, why It is so stale, why It is not going from faith to faith and from glory to glory, why its services are replete with “sermons” rather than the word of God, which by its very nature demands response and change and is the purpose for which the Word is given. We are not hearing with the intent of doing. We are hearing with the intent of approving the Word as biblical and enjoying it.

Can you see that we bring a whole kind of mindset that stymies the very preciousness of the Word and intent of God?

FOR IF WE WILL NOT BE CHANGED BY THE WORD, BY WHAT ELSE SHALL WE BE CHANGED? But are we receiving it in an open and naked way and letting it have its full work? Are we willing to say, “Lord, let be unto me according to Thy word?” I don’t know what the consequences will be – it may mean the eradication of my home and lifestyle, of my whole mode of being, or the loss of that for which I have laboured so long that is not intrinsically wrong in itself. But until we come to the place where our heart says continually, in the hearing of the Word, “Let it be unto me,” we no longer hear the Word as God’s; it can no longer perform the work of God. It becomes merely a ‘sermon’ that we approve or dismiss.

What did it take for Mary to say, “Let be unto me according to Thy word?” It meant nothing less than receiving a pregnancy that could not be explained, and that to a pious, self-righteous generation totally prepared to stone to death on the doorstep of her father’s house that woman who had an inexplicable pregnancy. To this day, the Talmud, the writing of the rabbis, makes shaded allusion to Mary’s pregnancy as having come from a Roman soldier. How else shall inexplicable pregnancies be understood? And when Mary said, “Let be unto me according to Thy word,” she meant, “I am willing to bear the full consequence of receiving this word, even if it shall mean my death in disgrace although I am in fact a virgin in Israel.”

I’ll tell you, when God shall find a heart like that, there is no limit to the extent of the divine work that can then haveits inception. When I think of the potential in this room for the works of God in these last days, not only in this community but beyond it, in a world that is rocked and wracked by violence and filth and muck and perversion and corruption of every kind, waiting for those who will come to it, being sent by God, I sense the frustration of God, who cannot even perform it until a people will first receive His Word inthat same virginal disposition of spirit, willing for its full consequence, whatever that consequence might be! “Let it be unto me according to Thy Word.”

You’ll save yourself much unnecessary aggravation wondering what the outworking of that word will be in its particular application, if you have reconciled within yourself that it will inevitably lead to the place of death. And once you’ve made that reckoning, what difference by what form it comes – stoning at the doorstep of your father’s house, disgrace, rejection of men, hostility, misunderstanding, catcalls, or shrieks or reproach – these kinds of things with moral and physical hazards of all kinds? God is yet waiting, and has never had any other inception for His works than one who will say, “Let it be unto me according to Thy Word!”

Let us note Saul’s answer when he was confronted by the Jesus who said, “Saul, you celebrated and elevated your ‘thou’ before my “Me?” From it came that one great apostolic statement that underlines the whole of the great career that would follow, “Lord, what would You have for me to do?” I want to say that every invoking of the word “Lord” without also following it with the balance of Paul’s statement, is playing with a holy thing, even a taking of the name of the Lord in vain.

I want to ask you dear ones…When was the moment that youtransacted with God something of the utterness with which Paul commenced his apostolic walk? That one question subsumes and includes every and all other questions, “Lord, what would You have for me to do?” No ifs, no ands, no buts. No stipulations, no conditions, no guarantees, no requests – even for illumination, understanding, or explanation. If the Lord is Lord, we have but one posture only, to be down on the earth before Him, with this one cry resonating throughout the balance of our natural lives, “Lord, what would You have for me to do?” We say it once, but we liveforever in the resonance of that question or we do not live apostolically at all. And that is not one of the least of the reasons why we are hearing tonight what we are hearing. I came with a briefcase full of many choice messages, but I’m not at liberty to cite or to employ any one of them, however much I would delight in the promulgation of the precious, holy seed that God has given me. But my every speaking, my every service, like yours, needs again and again to be conducted in the resonance of that one question only, “Lord, what would You have for me to do?”

How many apostolic careers are in abeyance tonight? How many prophets are there in this room? How many evangelists and teachers and pastors? How many women of travail and intercession, how many callings of God hanging and waiting for the one question God yet waits to hear – a word that has never been sounded in His hearing with every stop removed and with all qualifications forsaken? It is the statement of utter, apostolic abandon. And until the Lord hears it, He is not going to tell you what to do.

That there are things to do is beyond question; but they can only be performed in the power given to those to whom they can be entrusted. “The Spirit is given without measure” to the sons who have no purpose in themselves and no life for themselves, but who live by one question only, which indeed is living! “Lord, what would You have for me to do?” Anything less is deprivation. Anything less is conditional and inadequate. It is being seized with fears and doubts and vacillations and all those things that cripple and compromise and show us up. There is a release only when we have come finally to that place where with full integrity we say and put before God that thing for which He waits, that thing which He cannot command or compel, but must be utterly and freely and totally given. And no matter what we intone, He’s not Lord until it has been given.

“Lord, what would You have for me to do?” I think that the answer is eternally the same, though the form of the fulfilment of it may vary – “I will show him how great thing he must suffer for my name’s sake.” No wonder we don’t ask the question.

How wisely we intuit what the necessary answer must be. But I’ll tell you dear saints, if you don’t know it, that for every suffering that comes as the consequences of obedience to the Lord is a glory unspeakable, is reward eternal, is a joy even in the midst of the suffering and pain and distress and misunderstanding of men and the reproach that follows an obedience to a God who would have us do.

We need to ask ourselves, has there ever been a point, in the whole of our Christian life, where each of us has asked God, “Lord, what would You have for me to do?” – with full intention, not in just giving answer to something that would be spoken in that moment, but living continually in the light of that question ever after?

THERE WILL BE NO APOSTOLIC CHURCH UTIL THAT QUESTION IS BOTH ASKED, AND CONSISTENTLY MAINTAINED.

“Well Art, you don’t understand, I’m a professional, I’m a doctor, I’m not some off-the-wall “Jesus freak” like Saul. He didn’t have much to lose. You have to realise that I have a family and professional responsibilities.”

Saul was the prized student of the Rabbi Gamaliel, and if there is any man who committed religious suicide by the raising of that question and forfeiting an entire career that would have won him a celebration to this day in Jewish orthodoxy, it was Saul. But he forfeited all that, and counted it as dung, as we know, by raising the only question, the right question, that any creature can raise before its Creator, “Lord, what would You have for me to do?” Whatever the consequences, whatever the loss, You are Lord, and if You are not the Lord of that question, then anything I would presume to speak in that name is a mockery and a travesty and a religious exercise that even at best falls short of the glory of God!

The irony is, and mark my words, if you continue in such an exercise, in the last days you’ll find yourself, not among the persecuted, but among the persecutors! Centrifugal force continues to work, ever bringing us into the one orbit or the other – into that which is apostolic or that which is finally apostate! “For the love of many shall grow cold,” and the last days shall be marked by the great apostasy and falling away of many who could not bring themselves to follow the Lord withersoever He would lead them, but who found themselves in a vortex of a kind less than that which is apostolic and themselves offended by those who are apostolic and ironically opposing and persecuting them! This is the end of those whose ‘thou’ is yet before His ‘Me.’

We must not ask, with Saul, “Who art thou, Lord?” and receive the answer, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.”

Do we really know Him until we do? Lord, give me grace, I don’t know how to say this, I have been trying to say it for two nights,. “Who art thou Lord?” Even the revelation of You as Lord so much waits on our ‘pulling out the stops’, that You are not going to squander and give us such treasure of the revelation of the knowledge of Yourself in truth until You see a people of truth willing to serve You in truth, but who are presently labouring with a truncated and inadequate understanding of God. If we really recognise it, we would see it crippling our spiritual life; we cannot rise above our inadequate vision of Jesus that we have subjectively internalised for our own purpose. We need to ask, really and truly, “Lord who art Thou?”

I have myself been guilty of mouthing that word glibly in a facile way. Who hasn’t? But I haveto acknowledge in the light that is shining down on us from above tonight – I really don’t know as I ought to know! ‘Who art Thou?” The answer is, “I AM. IAM THAT I AM THAT I AM. I will be who I will be. I am Jesus. I’m not your ‘buddy boy’ and I am not the one to help you along the way and patch up your marriage, though I do all those things. I am above your need. I AM JESUS.” Unless that revelation comes, and comes when our faces are upon the ground, what kind of apostolic service can we perform? For it cannot exceed, but must necessarily reflect whatever our knowledge of God in truth is. Is that not why we ourselves are victims of inadequate ministries? Is not that why we have been invited to “accept the Lord” and repeat a prayer? Praise God for the measure in which He honours that, but look now how stultified our lives have been, banging around, divorced and remarried, doing the kinds of things that reflect not having a true beginning from the first. We never knew Him as we ought, and yet we are ‘singing His praises,’ or think we are!And the powers of darkness, brooding over us, relish the continuation of just this kind of thing that causes them no perturbance at all! There is nothing here that alarms them. Go ahead, continue your round of services; continue your programs. It in no way jeopardises the kingdom of darkness, because you cannot rise above and exceed your inadequate knowledge of God. Even the use of His name is a kind of ‘nomenclature,’ a formula, a shallowness that does not invoke much.

Only that one who is deeply converted, that one who has gone down on his face and must be raised up from it as blind, who can see no man and must be lead away as a child, is the one with the potential to threaten the kingdom of darkness! And how many of us want to be so led away by the hand? Here was Saul, the prize student of the Rabbi Gamaliel, he who could quote you yards of scripture with rabbinical interpretation, lying utterly blind, utterly devastated by the word that came to him in the voice that called him by name. And when he arose, he could not see because of that light and had to be led away, and he saw no man. And I don’t think he ever saw men in the way we see, evoking in us fear and intimidation and compromise. The fear of man is so powerful, so repressive an element in our Christian living because we have never gone down and been brought up in blindness by that light that never again permits us to see man, even ourselves in our own humanity.

Now I want to tell you the last and cruellestof our deceptions – it is our concern to be understood and to be perceived in the way we would like men to acknowledge us spiritually. And until we are blind to men, even to the ‘spiritual man’ that we think ourselves to be or who we desire to be known as, we cannot serve God apostolically . We must come to such a selflessness, such a mindlessness about this last man, this last cruel deceiver, who, after we have given up every other form, yet retains this kind of power by which we are traduced and compromised; the necessity to be understood by men in the way that we would wish ourselves to be seen and to be approved! We need to come to place where we see no man, even our own man, even our own seeing!

That is why Paul could say, “Follow me as I follow Christ,” without an iota of arrogance or audacity. Is it not we who think that he is arrogant because we project upon him the ego in which we still live, not having fallen on our face upon the ground upon which he had fallen, and been blinded by the light of God, which blinded him? You project on him your own idea of “man” and assume that he must mean by that some kind of egotistic statement because you cannot understand a man who sees no man, and in which the element of self is therefore not a factor. He does not have to be recognised, he can be despised, he can be cast out, he can be the offscouring of the world, without so much as blinking at it, for he sees no man. The light that has come down has blinded him once and for all to that last crippling seeing, even the seeing of ourselves that makes us spiritually self-conscious and therefore compromised.

“And he, trembling in astonishment asked, Lord, what would You have for me to do?” I’m a little suspicious, even to give an invitation tonight, and have you say now, “Lord, what would You have for me to do?” Of course you’ll say it, but you will leave unchanged because it must be said “with astonishment and trembling.” God forbid that we should make of thisthe last and worst and cruellest of deceptions in an altar call that wecan glibly fulfil. Aren’t we doing that already, with our so called ‘repentance’s and confessions’ and other kinds of statement that are just a little too easy for us to pronounce? You’ll know it is authentic when you die a thousand deaths in making it. Beware of anything that is fascicle, that is easy, that is glib, however correct. The cruellest delusion is to find ourselves in a lie about the very thing that is correct. It is with an utterness of astonishment and trembling that we need to say, “Lord, what would You have me to do?”

And you can know that if you will say that tonight, the God who inspired this word also will hear your word, and take you at that word. Your life will be changed, from this night and from that speaking. Things will be released that have been held in abeyance, waiting for the pronouncement that must come from you, but may rightly come only if it is true and not just a religious reflex, but made with astonishment and with trembling. This is the point of “crossing.”

Many of us have said, “Lord, what would You have me to do?” but only in a particular moment of distress or need. But who of us asked it foundationallyin a once and for all way, in utter abandonment of something never again to be taken back? Once you say this, the words are irretrievable. Something has been registered and recorded in the annals of heaven and has been heard in the hearing of witnesses and before the principalities and powers of the air. It is once and for all! It requires an utterness that nothing in this world has prepared us to perform.

This is the world of relativism; this is the world of “Easy come, easy go.” This is the world of “maybe,” “I guess,” and “I suppose.” This is the world that shuns and despises the absoluteness of God, and therefore cannot meet Him on that ground. To meet Him on this ground, with that absoluteness, with ‘all the stops pulled out’, is once and for all to be brought out of that relativistic world of compromise into the ‘absoluteness’ of the kingdom of heaven!

That is the reason I’m fasting today as well as praying. I know there is something of a transaction that can be performed tonight with astonishment and with trembling that will shake the earth, that will release in the earth such things that will take eternity of eternities to celebrate. This is the kind of thing that is beyond any man to perform. This thing itself must be given by God, but it must be spoken by men who are willing to ‘go down.’ Be assured, you will never come up again in the same way. TO LIVE A WHOLE LIFE CONTINUALLY REITERATING THAT QUESTION IS CONVERSION.

What is your condition tonight? What is your status? Are you just ‘saved’ – or are you converted? The moment God, Who has waited so long, hears your response, He will answer, “Arise and go, and it will be told you what you must do.” But before it is told you, before there is an explanation, before there is any assurance, arise and go. That rising is in the strength and power of the resurrection life itself! That coming up from that death into that which you have gone, like one struck dead from that light, is not you pulling yourself together, it is the force of the life of the Lord Himself. For the rising and the going is a call to things beyond any capacity in yourself to perform and to do. It is entirely a resurrection requirement! That is what makes apostolic doing a glory, and that is why Paul himself, the Chief of the apostles, was the one who most frequently punctuated his prayers with the cry, “Lord, who is sufficient for these things?” As I say this, I know that I am looking out on a congregation of very sufficient human beings, very skilled, very capable, very well ordered lives, who could make a very impressive show of things. But God is calling you, dear saints, to a dimension of service beyond any capacity in yourself to perform, and says, “Arise and go.” And when He says, “Arise,” it is not just an invitation, but an impartation of life, waiting for the one who has forfeited any hope in himself in any possibility of serving God on the basis of his own ability.

I’ve seen grown men tremble and weep when they heard this astonishing word. They were sailing along marvellously, serving God with adroitness and ability when they heard a word like this that cut like sword through their hearts and brought them down as dead men, trembling on the ground. Later, when they were physically lifted up and seated in a chair in astonishment, with hands clapped over their mouths, each one would say to me, “But Art, I have been encouraged in the Church to perform on the basis of my Ph.D. and my expertise, and I havebeen solicited to serve and do things on that level, and have until now succeeded marvellously.”

But now something has come clear beyond any capacity in the individual; there is no rising, no walking away except in the power of that indestructible life that raised Jesus from the dead, and will raise us also who are willing to be struck dead, brought down into that earth and entirely blinded to the thing that we perceive as capable and celebrated as correct. Must we, like Saul, wait for someone to lay hands on us to confer to us our seeing and an understanding as it is only mediated through a lowly member of the body of Christ?

How classic this conversion is; its every element so formed in heaven, its wisdom so eternal that this great Saul, this giant in himself, was so reduced by the light that had fallen from heaven, greater than the noonday sun, that he was taken like a child by the hand in total helplessness and dependency lying as one dead. Blind for three days and nights, neither eating or drinking, he reviewed his entire ‘charismatic’ understanding. All of the principles of the faith, all of his ‘New Testament’ understanding, the Lord totally put to death. For if he was to be God’s gift to the Church, it had to be by an understanding conferred by God and is received by the laying on of hands by the simplest of the saints, Ananias. In the total dependency to which God brought him, Saul was grateful that there was an obedient servant, who, however great his personal fear, obeyed God and came, laying his hands on Saul, that he might see. God had to teach this apostle, the Chief apostle to the Church, the genius and mystery of the Body of Christ from the very inception of his whole apostolic walk, a lesson that many of us have never yet understood and have not yet seen, though employing its terminology! It must be conferred by revelation to those who would otherwise be blind to it.

However much we mouth the particulars of the ‘Body of Christ,’ (as if a new fad or a new vogue and a new vocabulary with which we can play and express ourselves), if it has not come to us by revelation, it has not come to us. Maybe that is why we are in our current condition. It is only ‘terminology,’ and awaits a receiving of something utterly humiliating that can only come to us through the operation of the lowly Body, or it will not come at all.

This “Arise and go,” saints, that will come for some of us in this hour, need not mean that any factor of our life is in any way outwardly changed. You will still go to work tomorrow, you will still come home to your same house. In fact, nothing of our circumstances will in any way be externally altered, and yet, at the same time, profoundly, everything will be altered. This “Arise and go” sets in motion the whole heavenly dynamic by which in one day that to which we will return may not always be there.

So it is not for you to posture and for you to deliberate what you need to do once you have made this response. Having made it, the arising and going, having been set by God, will have its own logic, its own unfolding. “It shall be told thee what thou must do.” Like Abraham, you will hear, “Get thee out into the land that I will show you.” There is always a future dimension that requires this trembling and cleaving to the God who will show us what is required the next day, even the next moment. That is not the way we have been groomed by our society to live. We want to know; we want to have assurance; we want to have a firm grasp on what we are doing and why we are doing it and what will be the consequences of our doing. But God says, “I will show you what you must do.”

And I’ll tell you, for men who hear the kind of word that the Lord is pleased to give me, it is a “will show you” even for the very next sentence! It is the very next word. I don’t know what follows this one. “Where do I go from hear Lord?” Your notes are not going to be your dependency. There is a necessary cleaving to what is given moment by momentby the God who has called us, and calls us into an utterness of dependency upon Him that violates every strength and confidence in which the world would have us to be established. It is a pilgrim way and you’ll never get used to it.

Yesterday’s success will not suffice today. Now, the consequences are even greater; life and death are at stake, eternity is in the balance, and who is sufficient for this kind of speaking? Once you arise and go, that is, begin to speak, it will be told thee. But you need to live with the tension of it, just as Abraham did, as every true saint who has ever responded to such a call, because there are things you must do. Thing that no one else can, that no one else is intended to do. It is explicit; it is appointed; there is a must that is for you. And God is bound up for the revelation, for the releasing of it, until He has heard your, “Lord, what would You have for me to do?”

“It shall be told thee,” God says, “when you’ll tell Me that you are willing to put your ‘thou’ beneath My ‘Me’ once and for all.” Now your purpose and calling can be revealed; now it can be released. And it will not be what you thought it would be, but what the Lord has intended it to be and will now show you. It is here where God makes the apostolic appointment, the eternally significant purpose