Praying the Peace of Jerusalem - Part 2 — Art Katz

I don't think that we can pray that until we are ready. Yeah, that's what I mean. So, but the church is then permitted also having the authority to pray that the judgment is held until the church is ready.

Is that true, too? Yeah, it will not be a consideration until we're ready. Until we ourselves have passed through. So the invitation to pray is really the invitation to set in motion those redemptive things that will enable us to pray lightly.

It's not an invitation to a cheap verbalization that dismisses obligation. It's a prayer that opens the door to God to bring into our own life, corporately as the church and into our lives privately, those redemptive dealings that will help make us to recognize what therefore is necessary for Israel and to pray appropriately for them as we do for ourselves.

Redemptive Dealings and the Peace of Jerusalem

I think we need to see our failed marriages, the collapse of family, children and rebellion, various things that we have seen as isolated phenomena as being somehow coordinate with this whole redemptive program of God to get us in the right place.

And for any of us here now, and I know increasing numbers personally, of marriages that have gone asunder almost in a moment after a quarter of a century, if you had the option of getting back to where you were, reconciled with your wife and enjoying the conjugal benefits of marriage and the certain kind of harmony, would you prefer that or would you rather wait for God to work through redemptively at that deeper level that requires judgment, that when there is a reconciliation, you will enjoy the shalom of God, the peace that passes understanding and the marriage that has become not only a joy rather than a pleasure, but a glory to God.

We need to put this in, folks. The issue of the peace of Jerusalem is not just that Israelis should enjoy it, it is the ultimate glory of God when that peace comes. It's the statement of the conclusion of His great redemptive work through the church that will glorify Him forever.

There's got to be a motive for our peace beyond the benefit that comes to us in enjoying it. Can you follow that? But the temptation, the desire of the flesh is peace at all costs, absence of conflict, marital harmony, so to speak.

It's not the issue of God being glorified through that marriage. That will require devastation and judgment before it becomes a glory and peace. We have to have a stomach for this. And I would say that only a pilgrim will have such a stomach, only those who are going up.

Because this is what going up means. If we're satisfied with something less, if we're satisfied with a mere succession of Sundays, if we're satisfied with the form of things, with prayer as a kind of a duty or a cathartic experience, it's not an ascent.

We're called to a pilgrim walk. And the end of it is Israel. Only pilgrims will be able to pray the Peace of Jerusalem. Others will either be opposed to that peace or will ceremonially displace it with a prayer that is hardly more than a beep.

Either where our prayers are trite, predictable, mechanical, humanly formed, or we don't pray at all. We're bereft of inspiration. We let somebody else do it. That ought to put us on alert. Something is rotten in Denmark.

Something is amiss here. Because the capacity to pray is the statement of the truth, I'm repeating myself, of where we in fact are in God. And if you have not first had your own devotional time before the Lord in personal prayer, before you come to the place of corporate prayer, how then can you sense the mind of the Lord and the heart of the Lord to pray with the saints?

Personal Prayer Before Corporate Prayer

Most of us do not come out of the prayer closet and then into the place of corporate prayer. And so we make the place of corporate prayer to stand for both. And it fails. We're not going to be capable of public corporate prayer if we have not a valid place of personal and devotional prayer in our own closet.

And I count myself privileged in one of my visits to London to visit the house occupied by John Wesley and to see his literal prayer closet. He actually had something built. I can't tell you how... It was maybe the size of the broom closet there, only it was kind of horizontal rather than vertical.

Barely enough for a man who weighed about 145 pounds to find a place to put himself before God at the commencement of the day, which began for him for 65 years at 4 o 'clock in the morning. But he was also a man who went to bed for 65 years at 9 o 'clock at night.

He did not dissipate the hours away the way we do, watching the TV, making small talk, bumbling around, doing this, getting occupied until late hours. When it got dark, he went to bed. When the sun rose, he got up, and he began his day with God.

Mark 9 and the Deliverance of Israel

I'm going to be speaking... I thought to begin with another message. Maybe it will come tonight or tomorrow. You can read the text in advance. Some of you have heard it as I've spoken it publicly in other places.

It is a paradigm. It's a classic message, something like Ezekiel 37. Mark 9. The epileptic boy who was thrown into the fire and into the water, foaming at the mouth. Whom the disciples could not deliver and were surprised at their failure and who were reprimanded by Jesus, O ye of little faith, how long must I tolerate you?

And finally he delivers this young man in an instant where they fail. And then they turn to him and say, how is it that we could not deliver him? Oh, he said, this kind, this ultimate kind, cometh not out but by fasting and prayer.

We're going to take up that text and try to understand what Jesus himself was saying of what is the requisite thing in the last days for ultimate deliverance, not of an individual epileptic, but of an epileptic nation, Israel itself thrown into the fire, left for dead.

So this issue of prayer, you know what scares me? It's becoming a methodology and a technique like church growth. There's a mentality that has its origin in America from California, interestingly and significantly, that is now spreading out to the world and they're all looking at us with admiration on how to do it.

Prayer as methodology, worship as technique, church growth as statistics. When Jesus said this kind cometh not out by prayer, he was not talking about the kind that you can learn by a method. He's talking about something ultimate.

Prayer is the ultimate statement of where we are in God. Don't measure yourself by any other reckoning. Your feelings, your sense of the Lord's presence, how easily you can break up into tears, how you're moved by worship, these are all precious things.

The accurate and unsparing measure is your capacity for real prayer that pierces through the ceiling and reaches and touches heaven and obtains answer. That he hears that moves him, it's in accord with his own heart.

There's an agreement between heaven and earth that brings release. Prayer of that kind is exceedingly rare and until it comes, we will not be able to cast out that ultimate demonic spirit. So, pray for the peace of Jerusalem because those who pray for it may prosper who love you.

Love, Prosperity, and the Chosen City

So just let me suggest that this is not only Israel's deliverance but our own. We prosper in proportion to the effectiveness of our own prayer for Jerusalem. The church itself will prosper. Those who love her.

And what is prayer if it's not inspired by love? What is prayer if it's only antiseptic, mechanical, compulsory, obligatory? There's got to be a quotient of love but it's not sentimental schmaltz. It's a loving of Jerusalem because it's the chosen city of God.

It's because it's the sanctuary and the dwelling place of the Most High. Because his honor and his name has everything to do with the day that will come when his law shall go forth out of that city and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.

That's why we love her. Because he has chosen her. Because his honor and his glory rest with her. And therefore our prayers, like our faith, work by love. But God forbid that that love should be some kind of sentimental blather.

This is informed love. This is instructed love. This is love that comes with the awareness of what Jerusalem is of God's own choosing. And we will prosper who love her and pray for her. I believe that Israel is the key to the unity of the church itself.

That every other attempt is a false ecumenicism based on subduing or removing actual issues of doctrine. As if they no longer count the issues of truth. And finding some basis for mutuality and accommodation by turning our back on the truth of God and the faith of God.

For which men died and were burned at the stake. As if the Protestant Reformation was a needless exercise. And that we could attain now with Catholicism what somehow they were unable to obtain in the 16th century and were ready to die for.

And call that the unity of the body of Christ. That's what we ought to do with that. I don't think we're going to have a unity of the body of Christ until we prosper. And that will be the prospering. We will be brought together because we are together over the issue of the city of God and the restoration of the people of God and the issue of the glory of God that will go forth when peace prevails in the city of peace.

That word prosper I think has a connotation of shalom too. Say that again? The word prosper there has a connotation of shalom as well. You know it brings peace. It's an abounding.

It's flourishing to flourish. Like a healthy plant. Like the lily that was described to us that came out of the stink of human sewage. To prosper to the shalom of God. So deep. Well, we're fighting for something guys.

We're fighting for words. We're fighting for meaning. What does faith mean? What does prayer mean? This kind cometh not out but by fasting and prayer. What do you mean by prayer? What do you mean by peace?

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. What do you mean by Jerusalem? Israel is helping us and saving us from what would otherwise have been an inevitable shallowness. We would have become non-church in the midst of our hollow amens and hallelujahs if it were not for the earnestness of the issue of Israel in our obligation as the church that cannot be met on any other basis or ground than the resurrection life itself.

I say it again. True prayer is resurrection prayer. Have you ever heard a prayer out of your mouth of which you have not been the author? And how many of us rehearse our prayers before we speak them? To make sure we got it all together before we express it publicly so that we will not be embarrassed?

Have you ever let go and just open your mouth and let the Lord bring forth something that will even astonish and surprise you even though you stumble and choke? You may have heard me a few times already these days stumbling over prayer.

I've launched out but I've not yet reached the other side. And I can't quite find the right word. My spirit knows it but I can't articulate it. But I prefer that than some little smooth complete thing that I can articulate and that doesn't count at all.

I'll tell you God is more blessed and more responsive to choke splutterings and gasps for air and embarrassing inability to find our way through a prayer than something that is smoothly spoken that emanates from us.

And as your prayer is so also your walk. So also your life. So also your relationship. And what are we going to read in the Psalms? Where the psalmist says you are my strength. Is he being poetic? He's come into such a relationship with God as an Old Testament saint that he can say what we have not yet even dreamed to aspire.

God has become his strength as well as his fortress and his high tower and his peace. Saints, we're living beneath the glory of the faith as the called out ones the elect that were predestined. And it's Israel that is showing us the disparity between what we are and what we ought to be.

Israel's Suffering and the Church's Prosperity

And until we come to that reality it will languish in violence, in corruption. I can't tell you what Israel's present condition is. Prostitution, unpaid foreign labor for people who used to be occupied with the issues of social justice.

There are 250 to 500 ,000 foreign workers in Israel who have no social security, no official recognition, no social services. They are a cheap source of labor for Jews who don't want to get their hands dirty.

Other injustices, violence. Israelis now are becoming terrified over their own police force in demonstrations. The horses come riding down on them. They're beaten with clubs. They're stupefied that this could happen, that Jews would inflict this upon Jews.

Corruption in the Knesset. 250 satanic witch covens in Israel attended by middle and upper class Israeli youth who are bored. Shocking statements in the Ministry of Culture of youth that love films that have to do with dismembering and torturing and bowels being cut open.

There's a whole degradation increasingly day by day in Israeli civilization and culture. When you're praying for the peace of Jerusalem it's not some icing on the cake to make nice. There's got to be a death of God that brings all of that down and out and raises up something that will be to the eternal praise of his glory.

And at the same time it will prosper us who pray for that peace. We're wanting in prosperity. We're anemic and malnourished. Lacking in maturity, lacking in unity. We're like hitting on only a portion of our cylinders because God is reserving our prosperity with their peace.

We're tied in with them. We cannot have it independent of them. And those churches that think that they can are a farce and a hoax and they turn up the amplifiers and they give other seeming indications of prosperity but it's not the prosperity of God.

That waits for the same people who will pray for the peace of Jerusalem that those who love her may prosper. We're caught together with these people and their peace is our prosperity. And our prosperity is their peace.

You can't get away from it. So when I'm accused by significant men in the church body of Christ you've gone off on a tangent, Katz. You've forgotten Christ and you're occupied with Israel. Yes, there's a place for Israel but not the central momentous thing that you make it to be.

I just look at them and I I don't even know how to answer. The issue of Israel is the issue of the church. The issue of the church is the issue of God's glory. Inextricable and bound up together. And that's where most of the church is.

There can't be fervent prayer unless we become one man. Unless we become Christians and love the children. We can't have fervent prayer for that. Those here assembled know the Jew and love the Jew. But so many in the church don't know the Jew.

They don't love the Jew. Like you said God chose him. God chose the Jew.

And maybe that's the reason they don't love him. I don't know. You know what I suspect? What I suspect is that their love for God is no greater. It's one and the same. That the love of the Jew who are an obnoxious people I'm one of the few exceptions is the statement of the love of God that tests our love and its truth and its authenticity.

If you could love them in the unconditional love of God it's only because you love God and the love of God should have been brought in your heart by the spirit of God. Any other kind of love is a sham.

And if it's a sham love for Israel how do we purport to think that we have an authentic love for him? It's one love. And the test of it is not the euphoric feeling that we get in choruses but in the cold grey dawn what is our attitude toward people who are obnoxious who become increasingly despicable and especially when they're going to be cast out of their nation and pushed through the nations and be upset they're going to be in their least attractive condition their most agitating condition which has always triggered an unhappy response in Gentiles.

So our response to them will be the measure of our love. And our love will be the measure of our knowledge and love of God.

The Cross, Israel, and the Revelation of God

I'd just like to say this is not a statement of the church that they find Israel such an offence but also the cross ultimately becomes the offence which forms such doctrines as the rapture which leaves the church lifted out and yet again Israel to take the full wrath of God.

But ultimately isn't that the statement of the church?

But what is the church? What is the cross but the revelation of God? Where has God been more accurately revealed than at the cross? And the Jewish ignorance of God that has condemned it, its Judaism to a monotheism of the most arid kind stems from the rejection of the revelation that was ultimate of God in his righteousness and his mercy exhibited at the cross.

The issue of the cross is the issue of God. And to reject the cross is to reject God as he has chosen again chosen to reveal himself most accurately in his suffering in bearing the judgment he himself has prescribed which he bears in his mercy for others and reveals himself in the very act.

Jesus at the cross is God ultimately. Well, let's take a little break. Lord, thank you for this exploration. Just to get into a verse, pray for the peace of Jerusalem, which had become a cheap cliche and a glib and easy thing to perform has now become for us an ultimate consideration and praise God that it should.

So, Lord, thank you for helping us to break into something, to open it, to examine, to understand its implications. What does it mean for us as the people of God, the pilgrim people of God who choose to go up?

Give us now, Lord, more. After a break, when we catch our breath, begin to ponder, reflect on these things and receive from you, my God, the conclusion to this portion that you're putting before us today, for which we're grateful.

In Jesus' name, Amen. Reggie has asked for a few minutes to share something that the Lord has prompted in his spirit, so we'll begin with that and then we'll continue again. Okay. Pray for me because I'll have to feel after this again to even revive the contemplations that came while Art was speaking.

And for the most part, this is just a discussion starter to basically engage your own thoughts and input around what was just shared. But as Art was speaking about the issue of prayer, I was moved to think what kind of church is it that can pray after this kind?

Just the recognition that something is required of the church, that the church is indeed the key to all that follows. Of course, God is the catalyst for all that will press the church into this obedience.

It's as though we require to be straightened into a corporate obedience and brought to a place of corporate I ask the question, will the church, does the church yet have a death of a corporate kind that's ahead of her?

So to be identified with Israel requires the church to come into something. And it brought to mind Peter's words, the judgment must begin first at the house of God. Now, that could be looked upon as a general principle.

But I'm willing to believe that Peter had this very apocalyptic scenario in mind when he made that statement. He recognized the church was the key to the redemptive drama coming to its conclusion. And so, in view of what we've heard in recent days, especially last night, we have received these great and precious promises.

The church sees itself as largely as those who have already passed through a judgment and a death. And indeed they have, otherwise they would not exist as the church or the house of God. But what then could be said if we receive such great promises as we were reviewed last night?

What is ahead and required of the church? Can someone who has received such promises as this come to feel such a place of travail? That something is birthed that brings them to a whole new realm that they have never come to before.

So as Art was speaking about this, and made reference to the incident in Mark chapter 9, where the what was it? The demon-possessed son Jesus said, this kind goes not out but by prayer and fasting. I was reminded about the many passages that some, I think, declare explicitly, but many intimate, that the church will come to something of a corporate travail.

And there will be a depth of intercession. Very much an analogy to say Daniel, when he prayed in Daniel chapter 9 and fasted for 21 days. And the opposing angel that resisted Daniel's prayer, if you recall the story in Daniel chapter 9, from the very first day that Daniel began to set his face to seek the Lord, pray and fast, already the prayer was answered.

But as it was sent on its way, the answer was sent on its way, it was opposed by heavenly mediaries that were evil. We get from this our whole view of the principalities and powers. So these things are being opposed.

Jerusalem is something of the high ground. It's like, you know, how that Caleb took the high ground, or David, the Jebusite city. It's an armed fortress in the heavenly. To liberate Jerusalem requires the church to go into something of a death and an identification of a priestly kind with Israel.

And it's this identification with Israel that alone can induce the church to the kind of corporate travail that will bring about a birth of something in the church, a church come of age, will come to a fullness of stature, that will release something in the heavenly, that will cause the great, it will precipitate the great time of crisis and trouble for Israel, but it will eventuate in the kingdom of God itself.

Corporate Travail and Intercession for Israel

So if the church is called to that role of intercession, the question that comes, what kind of church? And what are the things that God has ordained to press the church to that ultimate obedience? I know that when I come up against some great crisis, or even when I just feel urgently and utterly after God, it's only then that I feel the depth and the roots of my own unbelief, and I see the inadequacy of my faith, and I find myself crying out to God, though I've partaken of many of his graces and benefits, it's as though I've never known him as I yet require to know him.

And I find myself crying out to God for something that is nothing less than resurrection from the dead, nothing less at all. And it's a liberation of freedom. And it makes me know that I have not adequately known the truth, because if I had, the truth would have made me more free than I presently experience.

And so the question is, is the church in? And it's assumed that we are in, so we're just to pray and so on, or yet we have to come in, we have to go in and possess the land. So, those are some of the thoughts.

And Paul speaks about this this displacement in the heavenlies of this opposing, angelic, what do you call it, this whole principalities and powers. That the church has got to penetrate that so that even though Satan himself would be cast out of the heavenlies, in order for this final drama to be placed in motion.

And so I believe the Lord is bringing judgment to the church. To very much what he said to Peter, when you were young, you girded yourself and went wherever you would. But when you come of age, another will gird you and take you where you would not have gone.

I believe the Lord is going to so orchestrate matters upon the earth as it will press the church into a final crisis, so that there will be, as it were, a mountain of opposition. The church will know that that mountain has to be removed in order for the kingdom of God to come and for Israel.

I believe that the church is must travail before Israel will travail. And it's a mysterious passage in the last chapter of the book of Isaiah that talks about two kinds of Zion. One whose travail is completed before the others even begin.

So the church will have to travail and come to a birthing of a kind that will even bring about the release in the heavenlies for not only the church to come into this ultimate obedience of faith so that their word is very resurrection itself.

And that will set in motion the final sifting and judgment of Israel that will then in turn bring about Israel's final liberation so that Jerusalem will be appraised in the earth. So Jerusalem is in every way the high ground.

And this is the kind of price that the church is reckoning on paying any time it prays, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth. It's requiring us to come up to something and to come into a corporate travail, an intercession that is really nothing less than an ultimate heave of spirit that will literally displace Satan from his entrenchment in the heavenlies and release the revelation of the final conflict on the earth that will complete itself in Israel's ultimate redemption.

So just to garner some of your own sense and feelings about that, we are not there. We must come there together. It's not enough that a few Caleb's take the high ground. Indeed, there may indeed be a remnant, a Caleb remnant, something of that kind.

But something is going to come and press the church into a place that it would not have been able however well-meaning and however earnest and sincere, it would not have been able to come into that kind of ultimacy until it was pressed to it.

I think a true illustration is Peter being girded by another and taking him where he would not have gone. Of course, we know for Peter that was a cross. And it will be nothing less for us. Well, it's clear that the church is inextricably joined with Israel.

This is the design of God. And something transfigures the church when it itself will consciously come into that identification. To put it another way, if you want to find one single thing that would explain the destitution of the church today, the anemic condition, what's the conference we had years ago on the malaise of the church, has been the absence of the centrality of Israel in the church's own consideration.

It has not seen itself in relationship in the way that God intends. And even to interpret that relationship sentimentally is to have some kind of affinity or interest does not do it. There needs to be a recognition of the other as being oneself.

We are together, the Israel of God. This is the prodigal son who's returning, who is our flesh and blood. And we don't resent his return, we share the joy of the father in his return, for it glorifies the father in the mercy that is given to the son.

We're not resentful. We're not fearful that we're going to lose some measure of the father's affection that will now be given to the returning son. We know the breadth of the father's love. We know that we are accepted in the beloved.

We don't have to be reminded by him that you know that everything that I have is yours. We know it. And therefore we can with largesse, with extravagance, not only welcome Israel back into the purposes of God, but at the sacrifice to ourselves be willing for that return.

The Church as Second Fiddle to Israel

In a word, the church is called to play second fiddle. You know what that means? In every symphony orchestra there's a first violinist, then there's a second violinist. The choice solos are played by the first violinist.

Nobody wants to be second fiddle. Fiddle is a unicism for the word violin. The church especially wants the prominent role. We see that today. Kingdom now. The church is going to take over society. The church is going to bring the kingdom.

The church, the church, the church. Grandiose ambitions, even the thought that the church is to evangelize the world and save nations is a gross distortion of its actual calling. That happens to be Israel's own function when Israel is restored as a nation to the nations.

The church's function is a people from among all nations for his name. So even there there's an exaggeration going beyond the parameters of God and taking for itself a large role. Such a church would not be willing to play second fiddle to come under to be the instrument for the bringing forth of another.

So for a Gentile church to pray for the peace of Jerusalem has such an existential power that transforms the church and saves it out of its Gentile-ism. Paul says in Romans 11, when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, so all Israel shall be saved as it is written.

I know that that means something numerical but I think it means something qualitative. I put it this way. When the church is no longer Gentile, when it's no longer characterized by a non-Hebraic posture and mentality, when it's no longer goyish in its taste and in its conduct and its televangelist and celebration of personalities, its love for things big, when it has its Hebraic root and character manifest, all Israel will be saved.

All Israel will be moved to jealousy. For what a profound revelation of the genius of God as when it is revealed in Gentiles who have by the fact of the faith itself been transformed into Hebrews. Remember what Paul said?

We're all Gentiles. Abraham was a Gentile. He became a Hebrew in the act of obedience by which he crossed over the river. The word Hebrew root means one who crosses over. So we're being called to being Hebraic, not in any kind of shallow ethnic cultural sense, but in the sense that what is Hebraic is of God.

This is the mindset of God himself. This is the disposition of God. This is the God who loves the things that are small, hidden, obscure, the cave, the cross, the hill. We think as he thinks. And what is there that God gives that will break the deep power of our Gentilic hearts?

It's the ability to pray for the other, to pray for Jerusalem, to identify with Jerusalem, to pray out of love has a power that enables those who love her to prosper, to come into the fullness of God's own intention for themselves.

So if you're following me, where Paul says in Romans 11, have they stumbled that they should fall? Is God finished with them? God forbid, he says, you should think that. But through their fall, salvation has come to the Gentile so as to move them to jealousy.

That in the genius of God, Israel has been allowed to fall, not some accident of a virtuous nation that would otherwise have succeeded. Its fall is implicit in its own sin. But it's not a finish for that nation.

It's opening up a way for Gentiles to come into the faith that would have been blocked for them. And now they have a purpose for their salvation beyond themselves, namely, to move Israel to jealousy. Take a moment to reflect on this.

Salvation Beyond Self-Interest

This is a saving grace for Gentiles. For the cancer of the modern world is self-interest. And we bring that even into the church in being preoccupied. Our meetings, our ministry, our fellowship, our program.

That same deep-seated egocentricity is a cancer. What is God's provision? That by their fall, salvation has come to you. Not that you should enjoy it as a thing unto yourself and for yourself alone, but so as to move them to jealousy.

There's a purpose for your salvation beyond yourself. It's for them. And unless you see that and do that, you're not going to enjoy salvation. Your salvation is going to be limited and restricted. It'll be a mean and narrow salvation.

The expansive thing that enables you to prosper is when you extend yourself to them. Your salvation is for them. And who's the them? The despised people of the earth who have no attractiveness in themselves and will become increasingly unattractive in the last days.

In fact, they will become so that they will be hated in every nation. They will be globally despised, globally persecuted. Not the least of the reasons for Hitler's success in the annihilation of the European Jewry is that he was able to persuade the German nation that Jews were vermin.

They were sub-human. And it was not like killing a man. It was more like destroying a cockroach. It was more like putting away some detestable and vile thing that was eating at the organ and life of German nationalism and culture.

Well, that's easier to do if people are reduced from being men to becoming worms or vermin, despicable insects. That's a preview of what's going to come. Jews will be despised as being virtually non-human.

And that will release a flow of atrocious conduct against them that would not otherwise have been possible. At the same time, the Church, while the world is hating these people and not even recognizing them as being human, the Church is called to recognize them and identify with them as being the people of God and the chosen people of God who will soon be honored and celebrated and exalted beyond all nations.

In a word, God is calling from the Gentile Church something totally impossible and contrary to its own nature in being Gentile. The willingness and the ability to embrace this and be for them and to pray for them in love and to stand with them in identification is the saving grace for us.

It saves us from being Gentile, from being the Church as a culture, as a Sunday phenomenon. It is the breaking and the loosing and the bringing of us into the fullness of God's intention. He will prosper them who love him, who love Jerusalem.

This is our prosperity. We will then be embracing the same persecution that they're receiving at the time. We'll be just as much as they are. Because we are them. We are one with them. And the people of God is what is hated by the enemies of God.

Do you want to sound without sugar? No, I like it sweet. I'm fully persuaded about what I'm saying. My question is, are you understanding what I'm saying? Are you seeing the genius of God? What made last night so staggering?

We saw the genius of God. What was set before us was all the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Who has been his counselor? Who has given to him? For of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever.