Spiritual Authority — Carter Conlon

This message is one of the Times Square Church Pulpit Series. It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times Square Church in Manhattan, New York City. Other tapes are available by writing World Challenge, P .O. Box 260, Lindell, Texas 75771, or calling 903 -963 -8626.

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The Call to Spiritual Authority

I'm going to speak this morning on spiritual authority. It's not a message I prepared because we are praying. It's a message that God gave me because I've been seeking him. And he gave it to me for you and for me today.

And if you'll go with me in the New Testament to Acts chapter 3, Acts chapter 3, and I'm going to begin to read at verse 1. Now, Father, I come before you today and I thank you for your incredible mercy.

Lord, it's because of your mercy that I can stand here. If you marked inequities, nobody could stand. But there's mercy with you that we may learn to fear you. Jesus, I thank you for your presence. I thank you, Holy Spirit, how you so honor our prayers and you so come and manifest the glory of Almighty God through Jesus Christ.

I thank you today for opening this word and giving me the intelligence to speak it simply. I thank you, God, that you will take me as always so far beyond any ability that I may have in the natural and you'll take a hold of my mind and even animate the way I speak.

Lord, so that I may disappear and you may appear. Jesus, I'm humbled before you. I'm humbled that you'd even choose to use me to speak your word. But nevertheless, you have. And God, I'm asking only that I may glorify your name.

And I thank you for the anointing that breaks every yoke of hell and darkness. I believe that your kingdom has come and your will shall be done in this place. In Jesus' mighty name. Acts chapter 3, beginning at verse 1.

Peter, John, and the Healing at the Beautiful Gate

Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer. It was prayer time, in other words, and this was the ninth hour, of course, in their time zone. And a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple, which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple.

Who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked an alms. And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, Look on us. And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them.

Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up. And immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.

And he, leaping up, stood and walked and entered with them into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God. Now that's an incredible beginning to a prayer meeting. And they knew that it was he which sat for alms at the beautiful gate of the temple.

They were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened to him. Now here are people praying, obviously they're gathering, as they do perhaps daily at the ninth hour, to pray. And they're all familiar with this man who lives outside of the temple.

He sits at the gate, and the gate has a name. The name is beautiful. And he's carried there daily, he's sat down, as it were, by his parents, and he's on the outside looking in. And I'm thinking of all the people in our own respective families, perhaps, who are...

We've done everything in our power. We carry them to the temple, literally. But somehow they always seem to be on the outside. They can acknowledge that this is a beautiful place. They can acknowledge the beauty of God, and perhaps even some of the history of God.

But they themselves seem to be, strangely, on the outside, always looking in. It was the entranceway to something which this man had been... He'd heard of it, but he'd been denied it all his life. And I can't help but think of so many people, especially those who are familiar with the Christian church, and are raised even, in some cases, daily, laid at the gate, but are so unfamiliar with the beauty, as it is, of Christ.

Perhaps he'd heard the scripture in Psalm 96, verse 6, where the psalmist said, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary, and yet here he is, weak, and certainly without any kind of an exterior radiance of any transforming work.

He's begging, asking for little tidbits of mercy from the people who are coming in and going out of the presence of God. Isaiah chapter 4, verse 2, had written that the day was coming in which the branch of the Lord would be beautiful, something that God was going to do, something he was going to give life to, he was going to bring into existence, and there would be a beauty about it, there'd be a wholeness, there'd be a sense of well-being, of health and fruitfulness about this, that was going to bear the mark of the life of God in it.

Isaiah had further stated in chapter 61, verse 3, that in a future time, an anointed messenger was coming to lead the way out of ashes and into beauty, and I cannot but wonder, did his parents think, or perhaps did this man think, that perhaps this is the day?

Could it be? This is the hour of the season when I'm going to be led out of ashes and into beauty? Is it all just rhetoric? Is it all just something that people talk about, yet there seems to be no authority in it?

All these scriptures that are expounded, how many times did people get up in the temple and read Isaiah 61 about a messenger that God was going to send, who was going to take people out of lives of ashes and bring them into a glorious beauty?

And yet, hearing it, perhaps even at the door, he could hear it when it was time for certain to read the Old Testament scriptures, perhaps even heard these things being read, but he himself is lame, he himself is a beggar with no beauty, sitting and listening, but outside of this realm of supposed glory.

And so he laid daily at the gate, asking and perhaps even longing for evidences of kindness, even from God possibly, kindness that could come to him, and from those who seemed to know God and dwelt so freely in his presence, coming in talking about God, going out talking about God, hearing the scriptures.

And perhaps he just, as they're coming in, this man is sitting there saying, is there a bit of kindness for me? Without doubt, he was familiar with many who had an outward appearance of this promised beauty of God, but it hadn't seemed to change their interaction with him.

Perhaps some of them even seemed to be a bit annoyed or embarrassed that he was even there. Maybe this man at the temple gate called Beautiful was a daily reminder that something that God had intended them to have was missing.

Inward Beauty and the Power of God

Why, with the talk of all this power and the talk of all these promises of God, are there such impotent, powerless people who are attending even the house of God? Now Paul in 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 5 warned us that in the last days there would arise a spiritual condition, as it is, where there'd be a lot of people who had a form of godliness.

There would be an exterior appearance of this beauty of God, but their inward lives would deny its power. Their lives would be a very denial of the power of God that he wants to give. You see, the beauty is an inward beauty.

There's something of Christ that can only be truly reflected when it has been embraced on the inside. It's not enough just to go to church and put on a suit and carry a Bible and change a few words that we speak on Sunday.

That's powerless. There's nothing there. There has to be an inward working of God. There has to be an embracing of Christ. There has to be an illuminating of the Word of God by the Holy Spirit that finds a resting place in our very inward character and begins to carry us in the power of God.

And there is a radiant beauty that begins to emanate from the lives of those who truly know God. And Paul said, turn away from this form without power. If you are finding yourself and your religion is all on the outside, Paul just said, now just turn away from it.

I believe that as Paul says, reckon all of that to be dead and give your life to God and trust that the spirit of Christ, the spirit of God that raised Christ from the dead will also raise you, quicken you and give you new life inside.

Jesus had his strongest words of condemnation for the religious leaders of the day. He said to the scribes and Pharisees, he said, you appear beautiful. You appear to be transformed on the outside, but inside death is at reign in you.

You are full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. You have no heart. Beloved, all religion that has no authority, it has no heart for those who are outside. The gate is powerless. It's empty. It's absolutely worthless.

You see, the essence of Christ is that he came to us in our need. He came providing the resource of his very life that we may have access to the life of God. He came to us. We were outside the gate, beloved.

We were outside of the realm of all hope of of any kind of abundance here on this side of eternity and certainly any hope to spend eternity in heaven with God. He saw our bankrupt condition and came outside the gate as it is to us and gave his life, which was the only resource that could give you and I access back to God.

Standing Against the Enemy’s Advance

You see, the enemy, the Bible says, comes to of humankind, comes to steal, kill and destroy. And those who do nothing to stop his advance are by their very silence identifying their allegiance with him.

One of the psalmists in Psalm 50, he said to those, he said, What have you to do? You say you've taken the covenant covenant of God in your mouth. You say you belong to God. He said, But you are consenters with the thief.

And consenting with the thief means I see the enemy stealing. I see him destroying. I see him like a roaring lion devouring all around me. And I do nothing. I do absolutely nothing to meet the need. I'm not moved by the plight.

I have no sense of going to God and crying out to the Lord and saying, God, you've got to do something inside of me. My heart is like a stone. It's dead. You've got to take away the stony heart out of my flesh.

I'm self-consumed. I have a form of righteousness, but there's no power that exhibits the very heart of God to fallen humanity. God, you've got to do something in me. You've got to take this out of me or I'm going to end up just like Paul said, self-consumed with all this form of holiness.

But there's no real life in it. There's no real power that enables me to go out beyond my own needs and my own hurts and my own wounds to a fallen humanity all around me that are not only doomed in this world, but damned for all eternity without the grace of God.

God, you've got to help me. It's tragic when the devil sweeps in on a society or sweeps in on individual lives, and we are seeing it in our generation. Now, in the book of Nahum, I want you to turn back with there with me.

It's if you go to Matthew, it's six little books back from Matthew into the Old Testament. Now, the book of Nahum. Now, Nahum is a prophet that God raised up to pronounce the end of a very wicked reign, a very wicked kingdom called Assyria.

You remember, it's the kingdom that the Lord had sent the prophet Jonah to about 100 years before Nahum. And Jonah had called the capital city of Assyria at that time, which was Nineveh, to repent. And of course, they did.

And that's why Jonah was so adverse, because the Ninevites or the Assyrians were so exceedingly, they were an incredibly cruel people, I believe, in many regards. When you see what they used to do, they were they were given over.

They were a physical type of what the devil does in the spiritual realm to those that he captivates. The Assyrian kings delighted in writing on the pillars of their houses, the history of their conquests.

I was reading some of this, and it's it's beyond understanding how they gloried in their in their barbaric cruelty to conquered peoples. The incredibly wicked and evil wasn't enough for them just to conquer.

They had to torture and humiliate to the to the worst degree everybody that came within their grasp. On one particular writing, I want to just read to you to give you an example of what they would do to a conquered people.

They suspended their corpses from poles, they tore off their skin and they put their skin, attach their skin to the walls of their cities. They cut off their noses, ears, their lips and their eyes. They burned the young alive men, young men and young women.

They bored through their jaws with ropes and tied them like dogs to cages outside of the city gates. They sent them on forced marches and cruelly treated. And of course, on these forced marches, many of the people died.

Now, you remember, the northern kingdom was swallowed by Syria after the division of Israel, and many of them were forced to march into distant lands. And so to give you an idea of the cruelty that came upon even the people of God when they had turned away from the protection of of almighty God.

This is a physical type of a spiritual reality that some even here today are are aware of. This is what the devil will do to you if he gets a hold of your life. He will suspend you from a pole as it is and prove you make an open shame of you, show that you are powerless.

You can't stop. He'll get you convinced and convicted as it is that he is the absolute supreme ruler of your life. You have no power over your sin. He will tear off your skin. He will take away all your self-worth, take away all of your defense.

He'll take away any feeling that you have of of being a lovely or even worthy to be accepted by God. He cut off their noses, ears, lips and eyes and take away all natural senses. Your spiritual senses will be gone.

You won't be able to see or hear or taste or feel anymore. The burns, the young alive to see a generation now that is so given to lust and passion. The television, the musicians videos are becoming increasingly sensual and evil.

We are moving very rapidly to becoming as evil a society as Sodom and Gomorrah were. And we see our young generation just burned with this passion that is infused with the devil himself, this immoral passion that is that is godless and leads them nowhere but to despair and desires for suicide and destruction.

And he bores through their jaws with ropes and ties them like dogs to cages outside the city gates. And that's exactly what the devil does to those he gets his hands on. He finds a cage for you and ties you to it and says, here, let it be just a daily reminder of your powerlessness to ever escape my grip.

And he ties them to pornography and he ties them to a lying tongue. He ties them to pride and fear and hate. He ties them to these cages and begins to bore away and eat away at their minds. This is the type of what the devil does to anyone he gets his hands on.

Nahum and the End of the Enemy’s Reign

And this is what was happening to the children of Israel. Assyria was encroaching it and it already encroached on the northern kingdom and now was encroaching on the southern kingdom, which was Judah.

And the Lord saw this. And finally, he raised up a man called Nahum and Nahum brought a word to the children of Judah. And in chapter two and verse 13, the Lord said to Nahum, well, actually, let me go backwards to verse 13.

He says, behold, I am against thee. For now, I'll break his yoke from off thee and I will burst thy bonds. And he says, I am against thee. And actually, in the original and a better translation of that, it says these words.

He says, behold me, I'm against you. There finally came a time when God just sent a word and he said to the Assyrians, not to the children of Israel and Judah, the Assyrians, their kings with all of their pomp and all of their roaring about like lions, all of their devouring power.

He finally sent a word and he basically said, lift up your heads and look at me. Behold me. Take a look at me. He says, I'm against you. You've gone far enough. You've hurt my people long enough. You've destroyed long enough.

Yes, they've sinned against me and many are deserving of the punishment that has come upon them. But God says, I will never leave my glory in the enemy's hand. I will never let darkness swallow my heritage.

Look at me. Look at me. I'm against you. Behold me. And in chapter one, verse. Thirteen, it's actually a chapter, yes, it's chapter one, verse 13. He says, now, now I'll break his yoke from off of you.

Now he's speaking to the children of Israel. And then he says, and I will burst thy bonds in sunder. Remember, he said in chapter two, verse 13, he says, behold, take a look at me. I'm going to do something now.

Kings of Assyria, who delight in your cruelty and your destruction of my people, I am going to break your strongholds. I'm going to do it. God said it was just God's time. There are times throughout history where it's just God's time.

And perhaps finally, once and for all, God's the ears of God's people finally open and they say, well, who is he? Who is this God that we serve? Why are we called his people? And what is his intention towards us?

And finally, the Lord raises up and says, I'm going to do something now. He says kings of Assyria, all the demonic powers. Now, you have to understand the kings of Assyria are only heathen humanity that are under demonic influence.

I don't believe anybody other than other demonic influence can do the horrible acts of cruelty that these people have done to other human beings. We saw that in Hitler's Germany. And we know that only a depraved, possessed humanity could ever do what was done to another race of people.

He said, I'm going to burst your bonds and sunder. I'm going to break your strongholds. Verse 14. And the Lord has given a commandment concerning thee that no more of thy name be sown. In other words, your kingdom stops here.

It grows no more. God said, I'm going to stop the advance of your kingdom. You are not going to encroach on my people anymore. I make a decree. I make a declaration that this day your rotten seed dies in the ground.

It no longer grows. It no longer is going to have increase in those that are mine. He goes on, he says, I will cut off the graven image and the molten image, and I will make thy grave for thou art vile.

He says, your image and the reflection of your violence upon my people will vanish and I'm going to put you in a grave. Hallelujah. Praise be to God. That's exactly what Almighty God did on Calvary. He took the violence of sin.

He took the violence of the work of the devil and he poured it out on his son and put it in a grave and declared it dead. And three days later, by the power of God, he raised up Christ in newness of life.

He said, devil, your reign of death is over. Your reign of terror is finished. Your destructive rotten seed comes to an end. I'm going to have a people and these people are going to know my power, my glory, my life.

I'm going to take their ashes and I'm going to make them beautiful. Chapter two, verse 10, he says, she is empty and void and waste and the heart melts and the knees smite together and much pain is in all loins and the faces of them all gather blackness.

Where is the dwelling of the lions and the feeding place of the young lions where the lion, even the old lion walked and the lions, well, but none made them afraid. The lion did tear in pieces enough for his whelps and strangled for his lionesses and filled his holes with prey in his dens with rabbit or that means meat that stored for a future time.

The Lord says you're going to be terrified because your strength is going to be gone. Now he's speaking to the devil himself. You have to understand that it's Satan himself. It's always been a battle between almighty God and Satan himself.

And he's speaking to Satan, to all of his powers. And he says, yes, for a season you devoured, for a season you destroyed, for a season you made people afraid, for a season you tore them in pieces, for a season you stored them up as if they were meat for your vile kingdom forever.

But he says, I'm against you and I'm going to terrify you and take away your strength. He said, I'm against you. In verse 13, said the Lord of hosts, and I will burn her chariots in the smoke and the sword shall devour thy young lions and I will cut off thy prey from the from the earth and the voice of my messengers shall no more be heard.

I'll cut off your prey, he said. And it's interesting when you look at this in the Hebrew text, the word cut off means to cut covenant. It's amazing. It's amazing. God's basically saying, I'm going to cut covenant with your prey.

That's why I'm going to destroy you. I'm going to bring your prey into a covenant that I'm going to make with God, the father. Amazing. When you begin to see it in the scriptures, he says, I'm going to cut them off from you because I'm going to make a covenant with the father.

They're going to enter into that covenant by faith and you're going to have no more access to them. You're going to have no more authority over them. You will have no more power over them, he says. And there will be no the voice of your messengers shall no more be heard.

There'll be no more reports of victory in hell against those who are mine. No more. No more. No more devil saying we triumphed over him or we triumphed over her or we stole their family. We took their kids and ground them up to powder.

There'll be no more evil reports. I'm going to make a covenant. And those who come into that covenant by faith will be no more a prey to the works of darkness on the earth. May him chapter three. He says in verse two, the noise of a whip and the noise of the rattling of the wheels and the prancing horses and the jumping chariots, the horsemen lifted up both the bright sword and the glittering spear.

And there's a multitude of slain and a great number of carcasses. And there's none into their corpses. They stumble upon their corpses. He says your kingdom is going to be a kingdom of absolute defeat, absolute death.

Verse five, he says, I will discover thy skirts upon thy face. I will show the nations thy nakedness in the kingdoms thy shame. I will cast abominable filth upon thee and make thee vile and will set thee as a gazing stalk.

He says, I'm going to show the whole world your powerlessness. Every nation is going to know that I raise up kings and I take them down. And there is a time as God that I just simply say enough, enough.

You've had enough encroachment in the houses of my people. You've tried to swallow up my heritage long enough. I am going to raise up. I'm going to come into covenant with God and with the people are going to enter it by faith.

They're going to become a strong people. They're going to do exploits for God. There's going to be spiritual authority in these people. They're going to begin to take back what you stole from them. Everything the moth and kangaroo has eaten, they're going to begin to rise up and take it back.

You'll be no more reports of victory in hell against those who are mine. I will show your nakedness before all nations and set you up as a gazing stalk. And that's exactly what Christ did. Paul says in Colossians 2, 14 and 15, he blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us and took it out of our way and nailed it to his cross.

And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly triumphing over them in it. He made a show of powers and principalities and triumphed over them. He made a display as it is to all of the world and all of the worlds to come.

The Messenger Who Brings Good Tidings

The powerlessness of the kingdom of darkness because of the victory that he won for us on Calvary. Now, back again in NAM chapter one, this is what I love of this particular book of the scriptures. Verse 15, he says, behold, upon the mountains.

The feet of him that bringeth good tidings and that publishes peace, he says, soon a messenger will be coming to you. You can see his feet already climbing mountains to bless you. He's on the way, a messenger is coming, a messenger.

Now, I may have been a physical messenger and in names day, but certainly a spiritual application to Christ and secondarily, obviously an application to you and I who are the body of Christ, the church of Jesus Christ in our generation.

He says, now, don't be worried. Yes, your enemies are on every side. And yes, you seem to be outside of the goodness of God's promises. But I'm sending a messenger to you. And this fellow is already on the mountains.

He's already climbing hard places. He's made a determination in his heart. I'm getting there and I'm bringing the good news of God. To these people, I'm not going to let any mountain stop me. And if a mountain rises in my way, by God's grace, I'm just going to say, get out of my way and be cast into the sea.

I'm going. I'm going where people are that need this word of God. I'm going to those who are outside of the gate. I'm going to those who are lame and impotent and begging for arms and hoping just for crumbs from the Lord's table when he's prepared a feast for anyone who wants to come to him.

I'm going to them. I'm going and I'm bringing them a word of peace. The word in Hebrew is Shalom, which means health, security, tranquility and wholeness. He says, behold, behold, you who are hungry. There's a messenger on the way to you.

Somebody I found somebody and he's got good news and he's heading up over the mountains and he's just he's got a message. Hey, the enemy has been defeated. They're all dead corpses. The powers that they once had are gone.

They can't touch our homes. They can't touch our children because God is for us. God has risen up. He has raised up his head. He has confronted the enemy himself and said, look at me, look at me, devil in the face.

You are not going to touch that which is mine. You are not having those that call out to me. You have messed with my children long enough. You have messed with my people long enough. You are not going to have the homes of the people of God.

Hallelujah. I see Peter and John in Acts chapter three, scaling mountains of religion, scaling all types of personal struggles and difficulties. We know that both had run in the garden of Gethsemane. They had failed Christ, but nevertheless, they had finally come to understand his mercy, knowing that in his mercy, their enemies could never overpower them.

I see them going to the temple, knowing that the prayer meetings there have been so powerless for so long. I see them scaling these mountains of religion to bring Christ to those that are needy. Isaiah 52, 7.

Isaiah said, how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of them that brings good tidings and publishes peace, that brings good tidings of good, that publishes salvation, that says unto Zion, thy God reigns.

I see Peter and John coming up to this lame man who's sitting at the gate of this temple, which is supposed to be the place of God's promise, the place where God says, I beautify that which dwells nigh unto me.

He saw Peter and John and asked an arms. He was so used to just looking for little crumbs of kindness from perhaps those who profess to know God. But Peter, it says in verse four of Acts chapter three, fastening his eyes upon him with John said, look on us.

You see the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead is now in us. The same Holy Ghost that gave this word to Nahum is now in us. The same confrontational God as it is who loves to confront the powers of darkness is now in us.

And I believe you see, this is always a spiritual conflict. It's not just Peter and John and the lame man. No, this lame man perhaps is in this condition because of he's captivated, at least. I'm not going to say because of his family or whatever, but he's in this particular condition.

And the devil obviously has him in that condition and loves to have him placed every day to perhaps convince those who are going into the prayer meetings that there's no point in praying. Always there to say, well, just consider the lame man at the door.

You pass by every day. Nothing happens to him. He never gets blessed. Here you are praying these prayers, these eloquent prayers. And just look at this. And you know, the devil's doing this in many homes even here today.

You come to pray and the devil is right on your doorstep saying, why bother? Look at your own children. Look at your husband. Look at your wife. Look at your own family. Look at the mess. Look at the lameness and the unsoundness and the wholeness.

And everybody's outside of the temple. And here you are going to pray one more time. And the attempt to use these captivations that is established as reasons why you shouldn't pray or there's no power in prayer or prayer is fruitless.

But Peter and John, having plowed through all of these lies of the devil and made a determination that we are going with God, we understand his power. We know that what he does touch does become beautiful.

They entered in and they looked at this man and they said, look at us, look upon us. It's the same spirit that spoke through Nahum and Nahum chapter two, verse 13 or verse and said to the Assyrians, look at me.

Behold me. This is what God always says before he's about to do something very powerful. Look at me. In other words, it's a face to face confrontation that God is looking for. And Peter and John said to this layman, look at us.

The same spirit is in them. There's no cowering. There's no let's all close our eyes and just say some little prayer and hope that God does something. No, they're standing and saying, look at us. There's the same spirit is now multiplied.

That rose Christ from the dead is now in both of them. They said, look at us, look on both of us. And there's something that rises up in the heart of those who know Christ. When we see the devil on a society, on a people, on a country, on a family, on a home, there's something in us that just says enough, enough of this devil.

You've reigned here long enough. You've captivated this people long enough. I have come to declare that you are defeated. You have no authority here anymore. You have no authority. They're looking at this man and deep inside saying the devil's reign of poverty, shame and confusion and powerlessness is over.

You've sat outside the temple long enough. I'm going to introduce you to the living God. They said silver and gold is not what you need. It's not what we have. It's not our strength. It's not what we trust in.

It's not giving us the ministry we have. This is what we have in the name of Jesus Christ. Stand up longer. You don't have to be tied to a cage. You don't have to walk around like a skinned animal.

You don't have to be led by the devil.

Stop Jesus.

You come looking for a word from God.

Well, in the face and say, no, you've tied me to your cage long enough. No house, no more stealing my children out from under my roof. Stand up. He took him by the right hand and lifted him up and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.

He leaping up, stood and walked and entered with them into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God. All the people saw him walking and praising God. And they were filled with wonder and amazement.

Sent Preachers and the Full Authority of God

Now, Romans chapter 10. I'm going to close with this. Verse 14 says, How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?

And how shall they preach except they be sent? And as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. How shall they preach except to be sent?