K-022 Ministry in Truth — Art Katz

The Spirit of Truth Versus the Spirit of Deception

I'll tell you what God is brewing in my inner man. It has a great deal to do with deception and the spirit of this age, which is not the spirit of truth, but the spirit of darkness and seduction. And already we can see in a very disheartening way how such darkness is spreading over God's people and even some select servants.

No one is immune. I can't tell you how close to home we have already been hit. So, just like every message I have, which there are not many, but they're all living, all out of experience, all out of the guts, all brewed by the Lord in the whole context of our life.

Active Participation in the Living Word

Let's pray about this one. If it's awkward, don't look at the technical aspect as if this is some virtuoso who is well, what's the word, well-groomed and seasoned speaker. It may choke a little bit, it may sputter, but ignore that.

Just burrow in on what's being said and help it to come into being. Something is going to be born tonight. Travail for it. Don't just be a passive audience because that's the world's game, it's not God's.

We're in this together. I said this morning at the Bible College, I said we've already become so spoiled that we think in terms of good messages, as if God sent his only begotten son to suffer excruciatingly unspeakable torment that no man has ever approached in understanding that we might have services with good messages.

That would be the ultimate, what's the word, the ultimate indignity, the ultimate blasphemy if we should degenerate to that place that the word of God and the life of God and the calling of God in the end are reduced to good services and good messages.

What shall we say then for the overwhelming places on the face of the earth that have not even that virtue? I'll tell you that my Jewish heart is ready to declare war. In the last several weeks overseas in Germany, the word I'm ready to declare war has leaped out of my mouth here, there and everywhere.

I'm ready to declare war against all things nominal, against religious posturing, against every kind of desecration that is performed in the name of the Lord and is called religion. So I pray that something of that spirit is going to come to you tonight, that this is going to be more than a message.

It's going to be an event, a signal event in your life and your understanding, something that's going to be registered in the depths of your soul that shall keep you in your integrity for the purposes of God to the very end of the age.

Let's pray, going for broke. Precious Lord God, hallelujah. Oh, gracious God, Lord. After such preliminary marks as that, Lord, what piece of flesh would dare open his mouth and to proclaim the word of the Lord?

Truly precious God, who is sufficient for these things, being called beyond speakings and to the events of God which are holy? And we ask, Lord, that the resurrected life of Christ, so possessed as vessel, to speak the thing which is in your own heart, Lord, by your own voice, by your own spirit, by your own life.

Penetrate our hearts, Lord. Open our eyes, Lord. And wherever there has been a degree of darkness or seduction, a mingling or a mixing with things in the world or even a condescending to the things which are ostensibly good, we ask that this night it might all be purged out.

We might take a giant step toward being pure as thou art pure, being fitted and prepared for our holy end-time purpose. According to your great wisdom, speak to us now, Lord, out of your word and by your heart and spirit.

And to you be all glory and praise and acknowledgement. In Jesus' name, amen. Hallelujah. Turn with me to the book of Leviticus and the ninth chapter. I think it might be interesting for you to know that God gave me this message in Winnemucca, Nevada.

You say, what's so interesting about that? Ever been to Winnemucca lately? Even the name alone speaks volumes. It is nowheresville. And I can think of a few other choice ways to describe it, but I don't dare use that kind of language anymore.

It's zero. It's a little blob of insignificance in the American wasteland of Nevada. And on my way, sorry about that, but God calls you out of nation, kindred and father's house. We're pilgrims, remember?

And I'm from Brooklyn and I can say that. We were driving from California to Minnesota where God has given us a farm also in a remote and bleak place, anxious to get home and wanting to drive all through the night.

And something went wrong with the heater on the car. It was really freezing cold and we just couldn't go further. Our feet were turning blue. And finally we had to give up and turn into an inexpensive motel in Winnemucca, Nevada.

And wouldn't you believe that three o 'clock in the morning the Lord waked me and gave me this. And I said to my brother when he finally waked and it was time to get dressed and go the next morning, I said, you can't believe the glories that God has spoken to me in the early morning hours in Winnemucca.

I have a sneaky feeling that when we start the car this morning, the heater is going to work. And it did. I think there's a reason why God wanted to give this in Winnemucca. Because there's a great principle there.

It's the principle that there's no life without death. It's the principle that the God of glory delights in the things that are unseen, the things that are low profile, the things that are obscure, the things that are reproach to men.

My God delights. Have you understood that? You know, it says in Luke, I think the 14th chapter, that that which is esteemed of men is abomination in the sight of God. You can't believe, children, to what degree we are called to be united with a God whose spirit and way and wisdom is in complete enmity with all that is applauded in the world and is called good, respectable, decent, honorific, and all of the other plaudits and adjectives that the world heaps up.

In God's sight, it's a blech, dreck, filth. If you don't understand this essential nature of God, how shall you fathom that the God of glory chose, condescended to lay aside his deity and take upon himself the form of a man?

Ministry Through Weakness, Suffering, and Death

When God is speaking to you about that, wow, I think only two or three or four nights ago I was giving a message. The glory of God was pouring forth. Great word of God, pow, with great force. And if you can take this, can I speak to you nitty gritty, I mean, man to man, can you take this?

I had to go to the bathroom desperately. My bowels were rumbling. It was like a race for time, whether I'd finish the message or the message would finish me. Not a soul in the audience knew it, only I.

It was not only painful, but humiliating. A young Christian came up to me once after such a night of glory, I mean, when the message of God was really going forth, and he said, Brother Katz, how do you keep yourself from becoming boastful or inflated or proud the way God uses you?

I didn't have the heart to tell him. All I can say is that God has ways. But you know what, children? We're laughing. Jesus was tempted in every point like this way. Can you imagine that the great God who created heavens and earth and all that in them is, was voluntarily submitted himself to every restriction known to man, to a human, what's the word, to the mechanics, the physiology of living in the body.

I'll tell you that's humbling. I was an American history student and teacher, and it took a while for me to think that Thomas Jefferson or George Washington or any of the greats had also bowel movements.

Somehow we think that great men are immune from the necessities of nature. But it's good to be reminded, isn't it? Especially when the glory of God is coming out of your mouth. Good to be reminded that you're only dust, only flesh, only a particle.

Hallelujah. So there's a reason why God chose Winnemucca, Nevada. What do we see in the ninth chapter? On the eighth day, Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel. I'm reading from the Amplified, and he said to Aaron, take a young calf for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering, each without blemish, and offer them before the Lord.

And say to the Israelites, take a male goat for a sin offering and a calf and a lamb, both a year old without blemish for a burnt offering, also a bull and a ram for peace offerings, the sacrifice before the Lord, and a cereal offering mixed with oil, for today the Lord will appear to you.

They brought before the tent of meeting what Moses had commanded. All the congregation drew near and stood before the Lord. And Moses said, this is the thing which the Lord commanded you to do, and the glory of the Lord will appear to you.

And Moses said to Aaron, draw near the altar and offer your sin offering and your burnt offering, and make atonement for yourself and for the people, and offer the offering of the people and make atonement for them as the Lord commanded.

So Aaron drew near the altar and killed the calf of the sin offering which was designated for himself. The sons of Aaron presented the blood to him. He dipped his finger in the blood and put it on the horns of the altar and poured out the blood at the altar's base.

But the fat, the kidneys, and the lobe of the liver from the sin offering he burned on the altar as the Lord commanded Moses. And the flesh in the hide Aaron burned with fire outside the camp. He killed the burnt offering and Aaron's sons delivered to him the blood which he dashed round about upon the altar, and they brought the burnt offering to him piece by piece, and the head, and Aaron burned them upon the altar.

And he washed the entrails and the legs and burned them with the burnt offering on the altar. Then Aaron presented the people's offering and took the goat of the sin offering which was for the people and killed it, and offered it for sin as he did the first sin offering.

And he presented the burnt offering and offered it according to the ordinance. And Aaron presented the cereal offering and took a handful of it and burned it on the altar in addition to the burnt offering of the morning.

He also killed the bull and the ram, the sacrifice of peace offerings for the people, and Aaron's sons presented to him the blood which he dashed upon the altar round about. And the fat of the bull and of the ram, the fat tail, that which covers the entrails and the kidneys and the lobe of the liver, and they put the fat upon the breasts, and Aaron burned the fat upon the altar.

But the breasts and the right thigh, Aaron waved for a wave offering before the Lord as Moses commanded. Then Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them, and came down from the altar. After offering the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the peace offering, Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting, and when they came out they blessed the people, and the glory of the Lord, the Shekinah cloud, appeared to all the people as promised.

Then there came a fire out from before the Lord, and consumed the burnt offering and the fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. Amen. How many times have we read chapters like that and turned to the next?

I know I have. This has been the driest dust portions of the Scripture. This offering and that offering, and they took this and they took that, and they burnt this and they cut this, and it's just a wearisome catalog of offerings.

But this is where the action is, children. Those chapters that we've been turning by to get to where the real meat of the Word is, God is now calling back to our attention. You want to be a priest of the Lord?

You want to serve God in His end-time calling? You want to see the glory come down from heaven and people fall on their faces? Here's the prescription and the description. And when you shall be finished in doing all that the Lord has commanded, like Aaron, you're going to be splattered with blood from head to toe, and you're going to have blood and gore up to your elbows.

As my wife says, how do you like them apples? They didn't tell us this when I registered at Youth with a Mission. No one has told you this. Everything has been groovy, right? All the luster and the glory and service to God and big red and white buses gleaming and shining.

There's a place for the red and white bus, only to bring you where God's service is, and if it's true service, when you're finished, you're going to be standing knee-deep in blood. It was so from the beginning, and it shall be so till the end of the age.

You want to be a priest of God? We think of priest, we think of a man dressed in these celestial garments, holy garments they're called. He may have begun that way, but I'll tell you, when he was finished, he looked more like a butcher than he did a priest.

And I'll tell you, oftentimes when I'm finished, I look more like a butcher than I do a priest, and the blood has splattered, not only over the victims, but over the walls and over myself. It's been gory, but the fire has fallen from heaven.

It's good that the chapter begins on the eighth day. You think that an accident? Eight is the day of new beginnings. Eight is the number of resurrection, and that's the kind of ministry and glory to which God calls us.

The Crucified Christ and the Glory of Resurrection

I have to share with you a moment, I don't know how long this message is going to take. You prepared to sit it out till it's finished? Praise the Lord. I'll not rush it then, okay? This is a historic utterance.

A couple of days ago we went out of our way to stop at a little town called Colmar in France only to see one painting. It's my first time in twelve years that the Lord has brought me back to see a painting which was instrumental in my salvation as a bitter atheist, an antagonist against God and against Christianity twelve years ago.

In the course of my wanderings looking for philosophical resolution to my life, it had been recommended to me by a German artist whom I met as a hitchhiker that I go out of my way in Colmar to see a painting of Jesus crucified.

And I did it. For the guy who couldn't stand depictions of Jesus and who cringed every time as a kid, he saw Jesus with blonde wispy hair every wisp in place, an ackley nose, and milky blue eyes and receding chin, on black velvet pillows with sequins.

I went, yuck! God made it all worthwhile and brought me to stand transfixed before a painting which is greatly celebrated by the Sisters of Mary at Darmstadt, alone. There's not another group on the face of the earth that has made of that painting what these women have, because it's ugly as all get out.

It is grotesque. You've never seen such a Jesus. He is so misshapen. He is so cruelly twisted out of shape. His flesh is so gangrenous and green, and pieces of wood and other things still impeding in the flesh from the flagellations which he received.

His face is a grotesque mask of the last agonies and paroxysm of death. You want to turn your head away, as the Father himself was required to do, to see that Jesus limply draped over the cross with his gnarled fingers up like that.

You could hardly believe it's a man. Marred more than any man, no comeliness that we should desire in him. I am sick to the teeth of every icky depiction of Jesus. And I'll tell you that Satan is busy to mar and to distort the image of the Lord, to cheapen and to deprecate and to make less what he is.

But it's not so in this painting. It was inspired by the Holy Spirit. I've never seen Isaiah 53 rendered and Psalm 22 more faithfully by the Holy Spirit to the genius of a man than that ugly picture of Jesus crucified.

Praise God that it's only one side of the painting. The other side is an unspeakable glory. It's the resurrection of Christ bursting forth out of the tomb. On one side is Jesus so extended and misshapen that his form is hardly human.

And on the other side is a man of such perfect symmetry, of such balance and beauty, such radiance that the light is even pouring out of his wounds. You wonder how it could be a depiction of the same man.

But I'll tell you, children, it's more than a picture of a man. It's also a picture of us who are called to walk as he walked. You want the glory? You want the radiance of the light to pour out of your ministry?

It'll only come from wounds in which you have been extended and distended and cruelly twisted out of shape. I said to the audience this morning, I am suspicious of any message that comes from me that is glib, easy and facile.

If I have not had to pay for it in some measure of suffering and death, it can't be very much worthwhile. True service is true sacrifice. And when you shall be finished according to the commandment of the Lord, you'll be standing in blood and gore up to your elbows.

But the fire of God will fall from heaven. What shall I say about pseudo-Christianity and all of the fictitious and quasi-gospels that are now being proclaimed? So groovy, Jesus movements and every kind of guitar strumming.

You know, I'm not against buses, I'm not against guitars, but you know what I'm saying? There's only one everlasting gospel. There's only one holy gospel. It's the one that has to do with the painting that I've just described.

But there's a world that has very little stomach for that kind of religion. They want an easier variety. It's glib, unctuous, easy come, easy go, just in complete keeping with the character of the age.

Ten week course and you're a finished disciple, bang, ready to go, where's my ministry? Priests did not perform their function until they were 30. Jesus had to wait for the same age and God did not bring Joseph out of his pit until he was 30 also.

Now, Katz, are you a legalist and insisting upon 30 years of age? No, I'm only insisting upon what the number 30 speaks, perfect maturity. As we say in Yiddish, be a mensch. God wants menschen. He wants mature, full-orbed men and women.

He doesn't want a bunch of supercilious kids with stars of David around their neck, as I see among the Jewish believers today, with a yarmulke on their head, all ready to do great deeds for God, shallow, an offense to God and to men.

It's not that easy. Takes a priest who's called of God in the year of his maturity, obeying the commandment of God in bloody sacrifice on the eighth day, the day of new beginnings, the day of resurrection, true life, which comes always out of one condition only, true death.

It's death which worketh in me, Paul said, but life in you. We cannot, try though we will, escape the inexorable principle of God. No life without death. And your ministry, the power of God made manifest through you, is going to be in proportion to only one thing, the measure of death that you personally are willing to absorb.

All right, what do you mean by death? Do you mean like really death, death, like cessation of consciousness, like you fade out of the picture? Oh no, that's too groovy. With to God it were that men would rush to that death.

It's the death where you suffer it and yet remain for other deaths. I think I'm indebted to Spurgeon, whose sermons I began to read one night in the office of a Danish minister where I was sleeping. We had the sermons in English and I saw one phrase recurring again and again and again, branded on my heart, the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus, the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus, the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus.

He never mentioned the death without the sufferings, until I came to a place where I recognized that death is only another name for suffering. It's not the death which scares us, it's the suffering. We don't want to suffer.

Or the other way around, even the Russian artists used to say, and became a cliche, they wanted to be a great artist, I want to suffer. They knew that suffering had to do with great art, always. That painting that I saw was not the glib work of a man who had physical or dexterity, it was not a little glib virtuoso piece.

It was the statement of a life, and I'll tell you if you've seen that painting, seen the luster and the quality of it, you would think it had been painted yesterday. The care, the painstaking attention to detail, with a man who ground his own colors and knew the technology of color and varnishes, shellac and all these kinds of things, that that painting is as lustrous today as it was painted almost five centuries ago.

It was the statement of a life. It was a work of sacrifice. And therefore it continues to give life to this present day. The world will want to sell you something cheaper, something more convenient, something more instantaneous.

You are the product of that generation. Instant. Tea, hot or cold, fly now, pay later. We've been weaned and groomed on this and we have no idea that anything expensive is required from us. You can't believe the enjoyment I had this afternoon having a cup of tea with people who have lived through the depression and the war years in Great Britain.

For me, it was a mechaya, it was a blessing for me. For people have passed through a time of ordeal and want when great demand was made upon their life and there was great value in every single thing they had.

Oh, this minister reminisced, those were the days, he said, we had nothing. But when we came together in the Assembly of the Saints, oh, oh, my heart is bleeding for you kids, that you have missed this opportunity, that you've not known real want, real duress, real demand.

It's been easy come, easy go. You've been victims for the want of a real demand upon your life. We notice in the fourth verse, well, beginning with a calf in the second verse and also a ram for burnt offering without blemish.

Then it says in the fourth verse also, well, in the third verse, a goat and a calf and a lamb and a bull and a ram. My goodness, this wasn't just sacrificial offering, this sounds like massacre. This sounds like livestock was hacked to pieces left and right till there was nothing left in sight.

Seven animals hewn to pieces by the priest. I'll tell you, this is demanding. This isn't some little token thing where you make a little nick and you extract a drop of blood. This is a man who slaughtered one animal after another and hewed them in pieces.

And that's the condition of God. Seven perfect blemishless animals utterly sacrificed, killed, laid bare before the fire fell then and now. And it says in the fourth verse, also a bull and a ram for peace offerings to sacrifice before the Lord and the cereal offering mixed with oil for today the Lord will appear to you.

Isn't that a great verse, a glorious verse? I love the word today and I can't tell you what God is speaking in my heart in a reverence and a respect for his time and his place. Do you have it? Oh dear children, never, never, never initiate any religious activity or act of service out of your own skull and human volition and will.

It's always a today. It's the eighth day. It's always the day of God's choosing, must always be so. How long has this message been in my Bible and I'm not speaking it till tonight. Why Art? Because the Lord did not commend it until tonight.

That's why. And I've had many glorious opportunities. I could have spoken it as well in Lausanne as here. It was in my Bible. These are the notes. From three o 'clock in the morning on in Winnemucca, Nevada, full with insights, ready, waiting.

And God did not give me that until tonight. Why? I don't know why. I don't have to know why. I'm not required to know why. I'm only required like Aaron to be obedient to the commandment of the Lord. But nothing has changed, children, then or now.

And I don't think that there's any accident that the same generation that has been raised up on fly now, pay later, instant this, instant that, is also the generation that wants instant ministry when they want it, where they want it.

Wouldn't it be a groovy thing to go here? Hey, how about it? We'll send the musical group. Hey, how about if we do this? Wouldn't it be great? How about Munich? Oh, I'll tell you what, Art, this will really blow your mind.

Let's go to Jerusalem. We'll not only have a tour, but we'll have a conference at the same time. It'll be a blockbuster. It'll be a double barrel shotgun. Man, people will flood. There'll be at least 4 ,000.

We'll fill the stadium. That's the way modern Christendom is carrying on, children. And there's a God whose heart is grieved. He's holy. And we are called to that generation that shall see the consummation of the ages.

We're circled about even now by a cloud of invisible witnesses, none the least of which is Aaron himself, who have waited for your generation to see the completion of all things. It's all coming to a conclusion.

In the end of the ages, in the extraordinary complexity of God, his purpose and his plan, such a tapestry, such a complexity, centering and concluding in Jerusalem. What man dare initiate his own work in his time and his place?

What he's going to do? And I'll tell you, to the great shame of Christendom and to the great grief of God, there's no city on the face of the earth that is more a travesty and a jungle of competing and conflicting so-called ministries than Jerusalem itself.

May God keep you and reserve you for the things which are holy and pure and have their beginning in him, in his time, when it shall be today. Can you wait upon the Lord till that time? And I'll tell you, for no one is waiting more difficult than for you, all right?

An old crock like me can afford to wait. I've been around the world dozens, dozens of times. I've been to Israel seven times. I've seen all kinds of ministry and glory and service. If I hung up my glove tonight, I could retire with honor.

There's no thing in me that needs to perform, to be seen, to be heard, to do, to go. If you would know the truth, I sought desperately to cancel this trip overseas. I called Germany long distance from Minnesota.

Can I get out of it? I called my English brother here. Can I get out of it? And the Lord showed me I was not only not to get out of it, but I was to go. Why did he bring me to such a place where I was willing to cancel commitments for the first time?

Because he had to show me that on this particular trip, holy, holy, holy, it's his from beginning to end. Every step, every place, every word. How did you get here tonight? Do you think I know? I don't have the vaguest idea how I got here tonight.

Who arranged this? I don't even know how, what, where, but there's no question in my mind on a divine course. Today has come and so must it be for all of us who are called for God's priestly service in the end times at the end of the age.

Can you wait, children? Have you put to death and made a sacrifice of that flesh that has been pampered and powdered and palpitates to be seen, to be heard, to be acknowledged, to receive honor and glory of men?

Oh, look what I did. Young people want to show themselves approved. It's a very natural desire, but there's nothing natural that is acceptable in God's sight. Everything that's natural, everything that's fleshly must go upon the altar.

His works are holy and pure from beginning to end. There are three levels of operation in Christendom so-called. At the lowest level are men who are crass opportunists, feathering their nests and building their fortunes out of the gospel.

In the name of the Lord, in shallow, brittle, tinsel ministries with promotion and every kind of filthy propagandistic and human engineering thing drafted right out of the business world, they're making names for themselves.

Woe unto them. The second level is far more common. I guess it's a picture of just about almost all Christian activity. Not men who are crass, not men who are seeking to further their own ends in such coarse ways, but men who have initiated their own works, thinking, wouldn't this be a good thing for God?

Don't we have a blank check? Didn't he say, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature? Yeah, that's what he said. But when it came to the actual fulfilling of his word, it says in Acts 16, he forbade them to preach the word in Asia.

They tried to go into Bithynia, but he suffered them not. The God who gives us the commandment to go is the God also who fulfills in particular time and place his own commandment. He's all in all, children, that he'll share his glory with no one.

Can you understand that? How subtly we have, I say we, Christendom has stolen and sought to usurp and appropriate the glories of God. And no wonder in the last analysis, it more resembles show business than it does the bloody sacrifice described in this ninth chapter.

In fact, it's as far removed from this as human sensibility and ingenuity can make it. But I'll tell you that this is the pattern and the standard of God for true ministry and true service that shall bring down the glory of God.

Divine Timing and Obedience in Ministry

Hey, Art, what is it with you? You keep referring to the glory of God, the glory of God, the glory of God. Are you a glory monger or something? You better believe I am. I'm a man who's bent only on the glory of God.

I don't want anything else but the glory of God. I don't want human luster. I don't want human promotion. I want only that which comes down from heaven. Because I'll tell you, children, in the last analysis, there has never been anything else in history to bring men upon their repentant faces than the demonstration of God's glory coming down from heaven.

Never when Elijah invoked fire from heaven, a filthy, backslidden, apostate people eating from Jezebel's table, calling themselves Jews yet. Still carrying on the outward practices of Judaism, whose hearts had gone hooring after false gods.

When they saw that fire fall, whew, no more disputation, no more confrontation, no more academic debate on their faces, and they cried out, the Lord, He is God, the Lord, He is God. That's what I'm waiting for, the glory of God at the consummation of the age.

It's not going to be four spiritual laws, with all due respect, or five, or forty. It's not going to be human cleverness. It's not going to be promotions and productions. It's only ever and always, in the last analysis, one thing, the glory of God brought down to earth.

And there's only one condition for such a bringing down, it's bloody sacrifice according to the commandments of the Lord. And today, on the eighth day, when He shall require it. Do you know what's inspired this message?

God gave us such a calling. Would you believe that God could be so specific as to give flesh and blood men like myself the name of a conference, its location, its time and place, and its content, its purpose and its vision, as explicitly as if two men were conversing?

I'll tell you, once you have operated at that level, once you've experienced God at that level, as a God who speaks and is explicit, who has a perfect time, and a perfect name, and a perfect location, and a perfect purpose, you are spoiled, you are undone, you are made unfit for any lesser level of activity.

And that's the third and highest level to which God calls men to serve Him. Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. Are you afraid that if you cease from your own labors and your own self-initiated works that somehow there'll be nothing to perform?

I'll tell you, my God is a God who acts. Because the book that follows the Gospels is the book of acts. But they're not the acts of men. They're not initiated by well-meaning religious men who wanted to see their stars shine, their holy acts that have their origin in God through men in given time and place.

And I'll tell you, if there were not men whom the Spirit of God could forbid to preach the Word in Asia, there wouldn't be a cotton-picking one of us sitting in this room tonight enjoying our salvation.

The obedience of men who could be checked by the Spirit of God not to speak, and then to await another vision that calls them to Europe, have made salvation available to millions. And as I said this morning in preaching this message, Acts 16, the Holy Spirit forbade them to preach the Word in Asia and checked and stopped them in the midst of their success as the churches were being built and numbers were being added daily.

Which of us could be checked in the midst of our success and be turned to a completely different direction by the Holy Spirit? And you know what it says? It says, immediately we assuredly gathered that the Lord had called us and set forth for the straight course.

You know what we would have said? Hey, that's Satan. I know that wily enemy. This is satanic subterfuge. God is blessing me where I am. Look how the ministry is abounding and growing. And Satan is trying to distract me and take me to another location, that I'll be lost in obscurity and away from the purposes of God.