Depart From Me, I Never Knew You - Part 1 — Ralph Mahoney

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Just a few comments before we get to what we really feel in our heart today for this gathering. One thing I should clarify about some who are expecting to hear some kind of a prophetic declaration, the thing that hasn't been revealed is who it's going to come through.

And so that may be some of you sitting there today, and don't close your hearts to that. It might not be the one standing in front of you. So just keep your hearts open and let the Holy Spirit have his way.

Unity Through Sanctification and Righteousness

Secondly, I know that one of, I presume at least, one of the reasons that you, brethren, get together with your wives and so on for meetings like this is a desire for unity and to come together in fellowship.

And one of the keys, of course, in unity is John 17. And while I've never heard it stated until a week or so ago by a dear black brother, we miss, I think, the two essential keys in unity. Before the Lord prayed that they might be one, he prayed, Sanctify them, sanctify them through thy truth.

And there can never be unity as long as there is lack of sanctification in the body of Christ and especially among leadership. The old story that the snake and the frog want to get together by the snake swallowing the frog.

Sometimes that's the way others perceive unity. And until there's a sanctifying work in our hearts, we're walking clean and straight and upright before the Lord. When our lives are a model for believers to follow, there's little chance of unity.

Sanctify them, then, that they might be one. And that order is very essential. The kingdom of God is, first of all, righteousness. Then it's peace. There's never the peace unless it's preceded by righteousness.

And then there's joy following the peace. So righteousness, as you all know, is not just that which is imputed to us by the gracious work of God in justification when we believe on Jesus, but it is the expression of that, according to Paul's teaching in Romans 8, of right acting, acting right, expressing right behavior, being honest, integritous, moral, upright people who show care and love and concern for one another.

And until righteousness is in our lives, there's never peace. I've had men come to me who were wanting peace in their marriage, but there's been unrighteousness in their marriage. They've been unfaithful to their wife.

And sometimes they want peace without righteousness. They want the wife to accommodate their licentious lifestyle, and they want peace. Well, you can't have it without righteousness. And that just follows right on through.

And that's the same with unity. So may we join the Lord in his prayer for us. Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth, then that they all may be one. As thou art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.

The Prophetic Ministry and Revelation 17

Today I'm going to ask you to turn to a passage of scripture in the book of Revelation. This past week at Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas, I just flew in from Dallas last night. We were speaking the whole week on the prophetical ministry in the Church.

It was a very interesting week. I always enjoy speaking to the students at Christ for the Nations because there's a unique mantle and call of the Lord on that institution and its mission and work and outreach and vision.

The one who leads it now, Sister Gordon Lindsey, I think has provided a beautiful model of what a godly woman should be, and students have a lovely model in her of leadership. It's one of the reasons that I enjoy going there every couple of years to minister is because of those who lead the ministry.

But there is a dimension of the prophetical ministry coming in the Church today that we feel the Lord wants to increase, and I trust that you're open to that as well. Maybe in the second half of our session today we'll talk a little bit about some of the implications of that.

We turn to Revelation 17 and verse 14, and we're wanting to pick up on the last part of verse 14, where it says, These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them. For he is the Lord of lords and King of kings, and they that are with him are called and chosen and faithful.

Lord Jesus, as we bow in your presence today, we pray the Holy Spirit now will energize our hearts and our minds, that the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Jesus will rest upon us here together today.

We know we cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God by our natural minds because they are spiritually discerned. So Lord, cause your Holy Spirit to anoint us today to speak and to hear, and cause your word to be heard among us, for which we'll give you thanks and all God's servants said, Amen.

The First Call Is to Be With Christ

They that are with him are called and chosen and faithful. I walked out my own Christian life as one who was called to do a work of ministry for many years without realizing that the first call of the Lord to all of us is to be with him, they that are with him.

Jesus called his disciples was first, Follow me. When you go back to God's dealings with the children of Israel in the wilderness, you know that he said concerning their coming out of Egypt into the wilderness and later into the promised land, he said, I called you forth unto myself.

His call was to himself. What most of us haven't recognized is that the first call of the Lord is to the Lord himself. We spend much of our time attempting to do the work of the Lord without first of all establishing a relationship with the Lord.

When you come over to John's Gospel, the 17th chapter, you have an interesting passage that's worthy of our brief examination today. That's in verse 3 of John 17, where it says, This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God in Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

Most of you are aware that the word know, as we use it in the English language, is a word with a number of meanings. That is, I can say, I know you. That may mean that I have been introduced and shaken your hand and met you on some past occasion and had a few words of conversation, and so I know you.

This word, as it's used in the New Testament, is not a word of that kind of knowing. It's a word of intimate relationship. It's the word we have in Matthew 1 .21, where it says of Mary that she knew not Joseph until she had brought forth her firstborn.

That is, there was no intimate relationship established. There was no consummation of a union that God ordered until she had brought forth her firstborn. It's a word of intimate relationship. Jesus teaches us that life eternal consists in knowing God and Jesus Christ, whom he sent, and establishing what some have referred to as a love relationship with him.

Mary and Martha: Hearing the Word Before Serving

In contradistinction to that kind of relationship, we see the story of Mary and Martha in the gospel of Luke. It might be worthy of taking a few moments to look at the story of these two sisters. I'm sure they both loved the Lord, yet one understood what was involved in that relationship and one did not.

So we have the testimony in Luke 10, verse 38, that it came to pass as they went that he entered into a certain village, and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. She had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus' feet.

She also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. That hearing of his word is going to become very important before this day is over. She sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?

Bitter, therefore, that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her.

In a sense, Jesus psychoanalyzed Martha. She is typical of many of us. I would have to say that that is my nature, my propensity to be cumbered about much serving. I have to fight that propensity to ever find time to be at Jesus' feet and hear his word.

Maybe you don't have that struggle. But people who are driven to that level of constant service and serving, workaholics, which probably most of us in the room here today could fall into that category, we don't recognize it.

But when Jesus psychoanalyzes Martha, he points out what drives her in that impetuous service. He says, thou art anxious and troubled about many things. Inner anxiety and failure to come to grips with ourselves and others and relationships drive us onward and onward and onward, sometimes in almost a tyrannical drive on our own life of finding things and activities and new mountains to conquer when maybe the Lord doesn't want them conquered.

Sometimes we think that we are being spiritual by that incessant, insatiate conquest and so on. Of course, if the Lord has given you the mountain and told you to conquer it, that's one thing. Then you're hearing his word and acting upon it.

But if it's only unbridled human ambition and zeal and an unfulfilled ego that needs reinforcement by a bigger project with more money, etc., etc., etc., that becomes a very hard master to work for and under.

Yet many of us, especially in our Western culture, are living under the dominion of such a principality and such an influence, the unconscious drive of our own inner anxieties, our own inferiority complexes, and we've got to constantly be tearing down our religious barns and building bigger ones to make more impression, to reinforce ourselves, to be somebody in our society.

And that is an unholy drive that the enemy lays upon us as a mantle and drives our lives onward, sometimes far beyond and outside the will of God. I see in America, of course, things that trouble me very, very deeply.

I spend the greater part of my life in the countries of Asia and Africa and Latin America. Since 1959, when the Lord first began opening doors of ministry in those parts of the world, and since that time, we've given a substantial part of most years to those parts of the world.

Of course, when you spend a great deal of time outside this culture and constantly have to come back and reenter it, I must acknowledge that the older I get, the more culture shock I experience every time I come back.

I've never had culture shock for some reason going to Asia or Africa or Latin America. Most complain of that aspect, but I hit it when I come back from those parts of the world. But I see our leadership in America and our churches in America in an incessant drive for nonessentials and an incessant drive for inconsequential things in the light of eternity, things that fifty years from now won't mean that, a hundred years from now won't even mean that.

I mean, we are doing things with such a temporary, short-term view, and in that drive that has come upon the churches and the spiritual blindness that accompanies it, we have got into monument building that is unbridled and out of control and not the drive of the Holy Spirit's action and activity upon the minds of leaders nor upon the Church.

We have abandoned the essentials of which the gospel is composed to get involved in our monument building and in our memorials to our own ignorance. On and on we drive in the incessant work of a Martha who is out of control and doesn't realize it.

Balaam: Correct Prophecy With Corrupt Motives

Now, when Jesus spoke to her, he said, Martha, Martha, one thing is needful. One thing is needful. I suppose one thing that marks the Martha, as I remember Bob Mumford saying some years ago, he told about a woman who was like Martha, very, very active in her community.

She belonged to the flower club, the women's club, every kind of a club in the community that she could join. She belonged to it. And when she died there was this epitaph written on her grave, she was clubbed to death.

I think that epitaph could be written on the grave of many ministers, clubbed to death. Activities that occupied their days, their years, their time, until they were driven to perhaps an early demise.

The Prophet Balaam has some interesting things to say in the Old Testament in chapters 21 through about chapter 25. Those chapters are the primary chapters concerning his life, and I think that most of you no doubt have studied Balaam.

If not, I'd surely recommend that you do so. He is the epitome of a false prophet. The interesting thing about Balaam's ministry is this. There is not a single prophecy recorded that left his lips that was false, and yet he was called a false prophet.

We are warned three times in the New Testament about Balaam, his way, his doctrine, and one other aspect of his life that we are warned about in the epistles. Peter talks about it, Jude talks about it, and so on.

What marked Balaam's error was not that he was wrong in his ministry. His ministry was right. It was 100 percent right. He was wrong in his motive. And that is what made him a false prophet. Not his ministry, not his words, not his prophecies, but his motivations.

And when his motives went wrong, he went wrong. He was willing to begin putting his ministry on the auction block to the highest bidder, and when Balak came along and offered to bid high with promise of position, with promise of money, with promise of fine clothes, with promise of prosperity, then he took the bait and he became Balak's man instead of God's man.

And you know the tragedy that followed. And yet in even going after the reward of Balak, and in pursuing a materialistic goal, and a goal that would put him into prominence and fame, and that becoming the motive of his life, even then his prophecies still were not wrong.

When he got over on Balak's territory, he said, I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord my God to do less or to do more. Even then he understood the principle that God controlled the boundaries and parameters of his ministry, and he couldn't do less or more than God ordained.

Now he had a lot more wisdom in that than some of us, because some of us are trying to do far more than the word of the Lord over our lives. Some of us are falling short by doing less than what God has ordered over our life.

As I look at the body of Christ and leadership, I see both these things happening. Now there are those few who I would love to be numbered among, I don't say that I am, that are walking out that central ground of God's order for their life.

Most of us are involved in one excess or the other. One, either we are falling short because of some past hurt and wound and injury that hit us like dynamite and neutralized our commitment to do the will of God, or on the other side there are those with unbridled zeal and ambition who are seeking prominence and acceptance and all the subliminal drives that get involved in motivation, who are going way out beyond the word of the Lord, and in the process getting themselves and the body of Christ in trouble if their sphere of influence gets quite large, as it does oft times.

Past Wounds and Abandoned Calling

So in this word that we have in Balaam's testimony, I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord my God to do less or to do more. We see then that God establishes boundary and parameter, and if we are not hearing his word we will not be aware of that.

Just to speak to these two issues briefly this morning, Brother Hal and I were, as he has already indicated, sharing last night a little, and he was telling me about an acquaintance of his some years ago who he loved very dearly and who, by the Holy Spirit, Hal was able to see that here was a man who had a calling to a dynamic and large ministry in the miraculous, and yet, because of very difficult things that came into his life, had been neutralized by those burdens and pressures and problems.

I am going to talk about that a little later today as we talk about being called, chosen, and faithful. But as he was sharing that story with me, I thought of two men that I have known in my life, and I must say that I respect these men very, very highly in the Lord.

They are both great men of God. They are both men of sterling character. They are both men who I would trust with my life, and I know that they would not in any way take advantage of that trust or in any way betray that trust.

But both of them are men who have been walking out their lives the last 25 years far below that which God ordered for their life. In the one case, I was in this man's church many years ago, in 1968, in fact.

He lives in another part of the world, not even here in the United States. When I came into his church I had heard of him from numbers of people and the outstanding dimension of the ministry he had had in the past, and I suppose this man has the most in-depth knowledge of the Bible of anyone I have ever met in my life.

He probably has got to be up in the top three men I have ever met in my life in terms of his understanding of the scripture by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, not just an intellectual assimilation learned in a cemetery or seminary, not just that sort of an approach to the scriptures, but a God-gifted, revelatory insight into the word of God.

As I was with him and praying, the Spirit of the Lord gave me a picture in my head, some called them visions. In this picture I saw this man in two countries of the world with massive, massive, massive numbers of people out in front of him, numbering up in the hundreds of thousands.

I saw that God's call on his life was first to that as an Apostle evangelist, to go out into these pagan nations, these two nations were both pagan nations, and there to proclaim the word of the Lord, and if he would do so, he would have established a movement that would have changed the direction and force of both those nations.

As I continued praying about this and the dimension of what I was seeing, I was so troubled in my heart because here he was in this city, a large city. He had bought a very prominent piece of property in that city, and he was trying to make a Church go and work and function in that city as a pastor.

But the call of a pastor was not on his life. His call was Apostle, Prophet, evangelist. He was all three, a man of tremendous depth in God. And yet there he was, carrying on, and not that pastoring is a lesser work than those others.

I'm not suggesting that for a minute. It just wasn't his work. And here he was, outside the sphere of God's call, and that man for twenty-one years, almost nineteen years, he has continued to struggle in that city.

His congregation has never reached more than 250 people. And he goes on and on, and he has got to be the greatest orator and preacher in that country. He has got to be the man with the greatest depth.

He has seen some of the greatest miracles in his ministry. When has he been out doing what God wanted him to do? He has had a dimension of ministry that was just staggering in years past, but he was a man who became the victim of a group of Church leaders who, because of some little point of preaching and teaching in his theological briefcase, I suppose I could say, a whole group of preachers got together and dashed that man's ministry to the ground.

Overnight he was off of a national radio hookup, and a large tent ministry of evangelism they had going was collapsed, and overnight he was destroyed in that nation. Because of the deep hurt and all the vicious things that were said about him that were untrue, he went back and effectively crawled into his little nest and has stayed there ever since.

A man locked up because of a past wound and a past hurt that was unjust and was not right, and God judged, in fact, the men in that other country severely who, in fact, attacked him, and they came under a judgment of God that was very severe.

But he himself, being so wounded by that, gave up his inheritance in God, in effect, being pressed to do less than the word of the Lord. To do less than the word of the Lord. And I shared that mental picture with this brother, and as I did, he broke down and wept, but he didn't do anything about it.

He hasn't done anything about it. He's still sitting there in that situation, and I just heard this past week from someone I met down at Christ for the Nations who knows him well that now he's gone into politics and is running to become a member of Parliament in his country.

And my heart breaks for him, because here's a man that would probably have led millions to Christ had he gone out and fulfilled the apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic ministry that God had anointed him to fulfill.

But being deeply wounded and hurt, he somehow decided to close his briefcase up and fold up his Bible and go back to pastor, and he wanted to build a successful church. He tried hard to do it. He was doing everything in the world to do it, but he could never make it work.

Why? God's anointing and blessing wasn't on that in his life. And I could go on to tell you a similar story of another brother, again with a very powerful call, men who did less than the word of the Lord their God.

And on the other hand, I don't have to tell you, you have more examples of it in America than anywhere else in the world, of men who go out and go far beyond the word of the Lord in their zeal and in their ambition and in their drive for whatever.

I think most of it flows out of insecurities in men's lives who have to prove themselves something that maybe God didn't call them to be or to do. And their projects get out of hand and out of bound, and unfortunately many of them end up in economic catastrophe and give the enemies of the Lord great cause to blaspheme.

And that's the other tragedy of going beyond the word of the Lord, and that's the tragedy of the Martha syndrome that many of us operate in, anxious and troubled about many things, and our compensation is to escape it with incessant activity and bigger projects and bigger things that we all do in the name of faith when much of it is bordering on or a plunge into presumption.

And we whip people up to try to help us with these projects God has not ordered and end up, not meaningfully I'm sure in most cases, but functionally trampling on God's flock, fleecing the sheep to support our towers of Babel, because we have determined we're going to make us a name.

We're going to build us a city. And that spirit gets not only into local churches and pastors but into denominations who, driven by the same spirit, go out and trample the body of Christ down around the world with no regard for the implications of what they're doing in their blind zeal to spread the influence of their denominational name.

And oh, what a horror it inflicts on the mission fields of the world when people come in motivated that way with all of their American money and begin to buy up the national preachers and pastors with their money and bait these men into prostituting their gifts for your dirty dollars.

And oh, how many thousands of Third World leadership have thus been corrupted and ruined and dirtied by unwise missionaries with all of their backing from America who come in to pervert and subvert the work of God in Third World nations.

And I could go on to speak to that issue, but I better stop before I get in big trouble. Because I see my brethren suffer in Asia and Africa and Latin America under the heel of the American with all of their wealth and their manipulation and control by their wealth.

And it was the prophet who well said, the priests rule by their means. And it still goes on. The fact they've got the resource financially, they rule by their means, and certainly it brings havoc and hurt to the body of Christ.

Knowing God as the Antidote to Religious Ambition

What is God's antidote? It is getting to know him, getting to know him. This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. Some years ago I taught a whole series on knowing God based on the book of Ruth.

Ruth, the beautiful story of a woman who was disenfranchised because she was of the wrong birth, disenfranchised because she was a widow, but who came back to the land of promise and met the Lord of the Harvest and established a love relationship with him and ended up in the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

A Moabitess woman who had no name or claim to be in that line, and yet because she established a love relationship, she got in with the Lord of Harvest, Boaz. And the steps of that relationship are not mine to exegete to you today, but I would recommend them to you by a reading of the third chapter of Ruth, because they are all there in very beautiful sequence, and at your study times and prayer times, if you wanted to get into that little book for a time, I think you would be much blessed because leaders, more than anyone else, need the message of Ruth, chapter 3.

And the very simple steps that were outlined for Ruth by her paraclete, the one called alongside to help her, Naomi, were these. I will seek rest for thee. And that's where it first starts, ceasing from your own labors and entering into his rest.

Laying down your work to allow God's work to begin to be expressed in you is the hardest thing we are called to do. Entering into rest. It was Dad Spencer, the founder of Elam Bible Institute in Lima, New York, who told me years ago, Brother Ralph, as long as you work like you're working, God is resting.

And he was right. But when you start resting in faith, God will start working. And he was right. When I laid down my own works to enter into his rest, and that takes faith, it takes a tremendous amount of faith, to stop doing it and let God start doing it, to quit working for God, to begin to learn to work with God.

That's a tremendous transition and a very difficult one to make. And I don't profess I made it all. I'm still laboring to enter into his rest. But the word to Ruth was, wash thyself. And that's where it begins after resting is cleansing.

Anoint thyself. The anointing of the Holy Spirit, not by might nor power, but by my Spirit. Put thy raiment upon thee. The raiment being the priestly garments that come upon us after our washing and anointing, if you know the sequence, in the tabernacle of Moses and the dedication of the priests.

They came first to the altar for the blood sacrifice, then to the laver for the washing and cleansing. And then the raiment, the priestly garment, was put upon them. That's the order that Jesus speaks of in Luke 24, verse 49.

Wait in the city of Jerusalem until you be clothed with power. The baptism in the Holy Spirit should result in our being clothed with power. That's our priestly garment as New Testament priests. And then, number four, get thee down to the floor, meaning take the low place of humility.

Don't be lifting up yourself. Promotion doesn't come from the North, South, East, or West, or professional promoters. It comes from the Lord. And then lie down. Again, secession of your efforts and your work.

And then and only then he will tell thee what thou shalt do. He will tell thee. And as I say, I don't have time to elaborate that sequence, but that's where you'll start hearing God's voice at the end of that sequence of establishing relationship with the Lord of harvest.

The Minority Who Remain Faithful

So if we could flip back briefly then to Revelation 17 and verse 14. They that are with him. Oh, how wonderful to be with him. They that are with him. So many are not with him, even though they are serving him.

May I just allude to one other reference briefly in passing before we go on to call chosen and faithful. Back in the book of Ezekiel, many of you are aware of the story that is recorded there concerning an apostasy that took place in Israel.

I've often said and do believe that the majority are seldom right. God, almost in every generation, has his minority that are doing the right thing, and the majority are unfortunately often doing the wrong thing.

And it was so in Ezekiel's time. And there was this apostasy that came. Many were bowing down in idolatry, and many were refusing to lift up their voice against the idolatry, those among the Levites who were the priests of the Lord.

I'm pausing here to ask for wisdom because I don't know how much to say or how far to go here. And I don't want to hit God's servants with clubs. But we are living in a land as filled with idolatry as the land of India, which has over 300 million gods.

And the god here is not the carved-out kind or the wooden and stone ones. It's got a different name. It's called Mammon, which is the ancient god of prosperity. Many are bowing to that god and worshiping it today.

I was asked in Australia some months ago on a nationwide radio broadcast, Mr. Mahoney, what's the greatest enemy of Christianity in the Church and the spreading of your message? And I said, well, first of all, let me clarify what my message is.

It's Jesus Christ. I want you to know that. I don't have an ideology. I'm spreading the good news about a person. But I said the greatest hindrance to that is materialism. That is the great impediment.

He was somewhat shocked. He said, I thought you would say communism. I said, well, sir, if I were to tell you the truth, the Communists have done more to help spread the gospel in my lifetime than the Church has.

That shocked him. He said, what do you mean the Communists have done more? I said, they have brought the necessary hardships on the Church through persecution and through depriving them of their liberties to get them spiritual.

And when they become spiritual and they love Jesus for Jesus alone, and it starts costing something to follow him, the Church starts multiplying. The Church starts growing. The Church starts evangelizing.

The Church starts getting its priorities straightened out. And the Church starts doing the work of God effectively because they have one reason only to serve him. They love him. And if I were to take you to Eastern Europe today and compare what's going on there with Western Europe, you would know that five times as many people in Communist lands in Europe attend Church as in non-Communist lands.

What is the greater enemy of the gospel? The materialistic prosperity of the West or the communism of the East? I hope you understand I am not pro-Communist, but I hope you also understand that pressure and persecution and difficulty can become God's instruments of purifying his Church and getting it where it can become productive, as it did in China.

China, Prophetic Vision, and the Growth of the Church

As we were chatting last night, Brother Howell and I, I don't know if I told him this, but it might have been someone else, but it's been wonderful for me to have the experience of going into China, as some of you no doubt have, and working there off and on.

We've been helping place Bibles into that country since 1972 when the doors opened again, and we have couriers that are constantly doing this 365 days a year, year in and year out, and we're able, through surreptitious means, to put anywhere from a half to a million Bibles and testaments a year across the borders and get them into that exploding Church in China, a Church which, after 120 years of traditional missionary effort by Western churches and Western nations, had less than two million adherents and maybe a million born-again believers, if that many.

I'm not belittling or in any way putting down those dear men and women of God who went out to China in those early years. They certainly laid necessary foundations. They certainly were models of sacrifice and willingness to lay down their life for the Lord, and we're not taking anything from them.

But the problem was they brought their Western nations' mentality and Church mentality, which was hostile to the work and power of the Holy Spirit, as most of you would understand, and they also tried to bring, in some cases, their culture along with their gospel.

Without belaboring it, they lacked a prophetic vision for the nation. You know what Solomon or the Book of Proverbs says, Without a vision, the people what? And that word vision isn't what we commonly say in Western nations, a vision for lost souls, although that's certainly right and biblical.

But it is the prophetic vision. Without the vision of the seer, the prophet, someone who sees by the Holy Ghost into the future and knows God's will and God's call and God's purpose over a nation, without that kind of vision, the people perish.

And that's why I'm appealing for us to seek God for restoration of that prophetical ministry in the Church, that when we go into nations, we go in with a prophetic vision of God's will and design and desire for that nation and proclaim what God wants said in all these situations.

And anyway, without belaboring it, after that 120 years of sacrifice, tears and toil, and many giving their life for Christ in China and there to be honored and revered for their sacrifice, yet their work was unproductive for some very practical reasons.