The Cosmic Setting — Art Katz

The Church as a Prophetic Exemplar

Wow. Not bad. Let it be Lord. Let it be. Not only for this servant, but the church that is called to be the exemplar of that prophetic reality in the earth. So do we bless your great name, my God, for the privilege of this morning of today.

And ask from the first word to the last, you would be the alpha and the omega of this concluding time as we believe you have my God, from the beginning. So may we hear your voice. So may we catch my God, the sense of your heart, the disposition of your spirit.

Speak my God unerringly right into the deeps, the foundation of the church. My God, this little microcosmic audience, sufficient to draw your heart out, but to record it and give it my God, amplification and circulation beyond those whom you have assembled today.

We bless you, Lord. We love to hear you. We look my God for the precious truth that issues from your heart and throne. Give us hearing ears, willing hearts. We thank and give you praise for the occasion, my God, that you have given in Jesus name.

Be delighted, be gratified in your great name. We ask it. Amen. Well, I have so much. I don't know where to begin. Already what I have surveyed from the earliest morning hours from Isaiah on the Shabbat of God would be a topic deserving in itself and looking at it.

Principalities, Powers, and the Cosmic Setting

Who is it at Jericho? Moses' successor, Joshua at Jericho, crossing the Jordan, the whole entry into the land so fraught with significance for us who stand exactly at that threshold. And then my subject for today, which is at least a day long seminar in itself, the principalities and the powers of the air.

And then on top of that, I found some notes that I had made for myself in Minneapolis, invited on April 28th through a conference called Wisdom 2001, where they invited some of the significant speakers of the charismatic generation to express now their review of that charismatic past and the wisdom to which they had been brought thereby and how they perceive the present and the future.

And here's the prayer that I encouraged the congregation, mostly Catholic charismatic to pray with me. That is equally as appropriate here. I suppose in every place that the foe would be discombobulated that the cosmic alignment of powers over the city and the nations, and those especially that have God have great sway in all the institutions that affect the life of men through falsehood, lying deception that corrupt their values, rob them of eternal reward and honor and glory of eternity itself.

And in the institutions, may you especially penetrate and set in disarray those powers that prevail by cunning and deceit in the most powerful of all institutions, religion itself. Through a word of events out of your apostolic and high priestly heart that is appointed and on time in the glory and the power that raised Jesus from the dead and enabled him to ascend on high for your eternal glory, praise and honor in the holy name of Yeshua I pray, amen.

And then I went on the great corrective that needs to come to the church that in fact constitutes it's very distinctive as the church is not that which pertains to the needs of men either in healing so much or even yet in their salvation, devoutly and rightly as desired as those things might be, but the glory of God realized in the coming of the king and his theocratic kingdom, the consummation of all the ages in these final and consummating last days.

Not bad statements and that the crucial axis, the nub of that consummation is the millennial reign of Christ in the establishment of his throne through a redeemed Israel obtained through a final Davidic cataclysmic judgment and return accomplished through a self-sacrificing church that demonstrates his very mercy and before the face of all nations so much as to acknowledge that the God of Israel, the God of Jacob, the creator of the heavens and the earth is alone God to the eternal praise of his glory.

All of these are thematic statements that I had hoped to amplify in the one speaking given me in that conference and to speak of the church of the 21st century, this is the kind of phraseology that other of the speakers were making is to betray a complete loss of this eschatological and apocalyptic expectation because to speak of the church of the 21st century assumes that there's a continuation and that we go on endlessly and timelessly the 21st century, 22nd century that there's no termination, there's no climax, there's no conclusion.

They lack eschatology, they lack an apocalyptic expectation and they substitute a lesser excitement and leave undisturbed and still ruling and prevailing over men and nations, the kings and rulers who rage against God and against his anointed and seek to break their bands of sender.

Their final defeat and the release of the nations to that rule is the eternal purpose of the church, the forfeit of which constitutes apostasy, the great falling away, however much we may be occupied with the benevolent concerns of men.

Israel’s Restoration and the Church’s Identity

Well, it goes on in the unfathomable wisdom of God, I believe that the issue of Israel rightly and prophetically understood it's God's very provision for an errant E-R-R-A-N-T church for it alone produces the perspective by which the church itself is to be understood and understands itself.

That is to say, if the church only subscribes to Israel in a nominal or sentimental way, it loses all this value. The only way that Israel can be to the church what it must that defines the church's own understanding of itself is when the subject is rightly prophetically and apostolically understood, which is the complete contravention of the sentimental and present affinity that most charismatic and evangelicals have for Israel that omits the necessary judgment and suffering through which the present Israel must pass in order to prevail as that Israel of God that is the locus of his theocratic rule.

So glad that this is being recorded, because there's no way unless you have a gigantic IQ and spiritual perspicuity that exceeds Paul's that you can fathom statements like this in there in the hearing.

But they have got to be spoken. They have got to be sounded. So the church's origin is derived from Israel, salvation being of the Jews. Its continuation is by being grafted consciously and willfully, gratefully into a tree, which is the life of God that flows from her root.

And the church's destiny is as God's salvific agency in moving Israel to jealousy, extending mercy, that they might become the Zion that the church itself might become the Zion out of which Israel's deliverance comes.

That deserves such explication as will require another weekend. But I commend Psalm 102. My brother wanted scriptural references that what is the set time to favor Zion? It's when my servants have compassion on her stones and pity upon her dust.

When God sees that, the deliverer is released to come and to save Israel. It's something that does not issue from Israel, it issues from Zion. Zion in this case, being a symbolic statement of the servant people of God, who contrary to all the world who are gloating over Israel's disaster, and the fall of present day Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv, and all of the other modern day cities of Israel, does not join the course of the world's delight in Israel's disaster, but laments it and mourns and has compassion upon her stones and pity upon her dust.

And even that is not a statement of sentiment, but a statement of identification with Israel in her judgment. When God will find a church like that, the set time to favor Zion has come. For what God has been waiting for is not Israel's disaster, but the church's coming of age.

And it's measured by its ability to identify and relate with Israel, not in had her best but had her worst, in the same way that he related to us while we were yet in sin and transgression and rebellion.

He loved us and died for us. When he'll find a church that will be like that to Israel, he will have obtained a bride for the bridegroom. So the church is not the kingdom, but an interim provision for Israel's restoration.

For it is time now to restore the kingdom to Israel on David's throne on the holy hill of Zion, or there is no kingdom at all. It is the tabernacle of David that must be restored, or there will be no theocratic rule for Edom and the nations, which the Lord our God shall call the churches and means and not the end in itself, but the being that obtains an end more glorious than the redeemed millennial nation itself.

By the church being to Israel, what it must as a means to Israel's restoration, it obtains an end for itself more glorious than that of redeemed Israel, namely the exaltation of having glorified bodies and ruling and reigning with Christ ascending and descending upon the son of man.

I'm Jewish and I resisted the revelation of the mystery of Israel and Israel's restoration because I was fearful that there would be some measure of loss for the glory for the church. I was so imbued with the church and the glory of God in the church that I was a little bit concerned that Israel's restoration might take from the church anything of God's intent and glory.

But I'm saying now that when the church will recognize itself not as the end of itself, but a means to an end greater than itself, Israel's restoration and be willing to play, if you'll use my, excuse my language, second fiddle to come under in a priestly way, in a supportive way to bring this people back in restoration both to God and to the land in truth, that very process of being willing to play second fiddle and come under in a priestly way will exalt the church to a yet more glorious eternal future than that of Israel itself that has only millennial blessedness, where if a child dies at the age of 100, it's considered an anomaly.

They will have prolonged existence, and the reaper cannot keep up with the sower of the seed, and they will, the fruit of Israel will flow out to the nations, and yet I'm saying that the glory of the church will exceed that.

Only if the church will serve the purpose of God, which is to come down and under in support of the restoration of this people at the period of their sin will have required the kind of judgment that must fall.

To identify with someone in judgment is really to identify, and that's why when Jesus entered the waters of baptism, the father was so pleased that the son was willing to lower himself and to come into the water of Israel's judgment that poor John was so perplexed that he was, he said, I have need that you be baptized of me, that I be baptized of you.

What are you doing in these waters? You have no need. You're the impeccable son of God. It's needful for righteousness sake that I come into the water of Israel's repentance because I'm identifying myself with the nation in her sin, or I have no prophetic relationship with her and no messianic prospect for her redemption through me.

I must come down and into that condition of sin. And when, when he came up out of those waters, the heavens opened and the father said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. And he'll say it today when he'll see a church willing to go down and into the shame and depravity and increasing transgression and sin of present Israel, which will grow worse until its sins will exceed that of its fathers, but we will not be repelled by it for they must go down before they come up.

And our willingness to go down with them is, is the set time that favors Zion. So the church is not the kingdom. That's the chutzpah, the exaggerated sense of itself of which Paul warned that if you miss the mystery of Israel and the church, you'll become wise in your own conceit.

You'll think that you are the object of all things. And that rather than the kingdom being Israel's, is it time now to restore the kingdom to Israel? Never offended Jesus. It was a perfectly valid question.

The kingdom is and must be Davidic. It must have its reign out of Zion. There must be a son of David to occupy David's throne from that holy hill, or there's no kingdom at all. Israel's mistake in its narrow nationalism was to think that the kingdom was for itself.

It has its origin with you, but it's not for you. It's for the nations. And it is time to restore the kingdom to Israel and to restore Israel to the kingdom, but not for the church to presume that it either is the kingdom or brings the kingdom in and of itself.

You see how the relationship with Israel is the very factor that affects the church's own right and proper identification of itself. And it's evangelistic and missions function that when the fullness of the Gentiles come in, so all Israel shall be saved as it is written.

So the church is not to the nations to save the nations, but a people for his name from all nations so that the fullness of the Gentiles may come in. What is the fullness? The number, some number from every nation for his name that I believe in my own prophetic and intuitive heart is the exact number of principalities and powers of the whole angelic realm in the usurping governmental role over the nations that will be dispossessed and cast out from those places.

And that those vacancies need to be filled by those who will rule and reign with him from the heavenly places. The number exactly to fill the vacancies, the fullness of the Gentiles being come in. Oh, I'm getting a little holy ghost chill at the grandeur of God's intention and the terrible distortion that has come to the church to think that it's going to save the no, a number, elect number of Gentiles that must come in.

And the incentive for that salvation is that by it deliverance shall come out of Zion for Israel. Israel will be acted upon having no virtue in itself and no power in itself to establish its own redemption, being the epitome of man in his own human self-sufficiency is the very thing that God is condemning before the world.

In the example of Israel, Israel is acting out something for the world that they need to see for. It is the epitome of human arrogance, presumption, and conceit almost succeeding in 50 years to, to accomplish what no other people would dare even begin to aspire to attain, to take a malarial wasteland and to convert it to a high-tech society in half a century and resuscitate a dead liturgical language and make it a modern Hebrew language and all of the other remarkable accomplishments of a remarkable accomplishing people, but they cannot accomplish that which will bless all the families of the earth.

That's God's accomplishment and requires the death of their human excellency in order to obtain, which is what we are about and should have known. That's what the church ought to be, the resurrection phenomenon that knows that what God is waiting for is not the death of our defects but of our virtues.

The very thing that we cherish and least want to relinquish is our human ability, our religious ability to think, to accomplish, and to perform, and God is waiting for the willing death because we know that in man is no good thing at all, that even his good is not good enough.

In fact, as good as the very deterrent to the glory of God, that only God is good. Jesus would not allow himself to be complimented. Why callest thou me good? There's no man good but God, and do you think I'm going to surrender to your temptation to enjoy your compliment?

Because if I do so, I reinforce all your categories, and you need to know that all your categories are in error. Though you have followed the law impeccably from your childhood on, there's no man good but God.

Israel needs to learn that, and they'll learn it painfully, but they will learn it. At least the surviving remnant will learn it, and that's the great drama of the age of which the church is God's salvific agent, but only on that resurrection basis, because if it comes to Israel and Israel's own ground of human excellency, then it has accomplished nothing.

It has got to demonstrate to Israel the very thing to which God itself calls Israel, namely, resurrection reality. So the church is not the means, not the end, but the means to an end, and the willingness to come under and play that second fiddle role obtains an end for the church that will glorify it forever and qualify it to reign from the heavenlies.

Martyrdom, Opposition, and the Example of Stephen

So in the final frenzy of the end which is now brewing in their own self-opposing ignorance, they may likely regard us as enemies and as a threat to their Jewishness in the anti-semitic furor of the last day's time of Jacob's trouble.

We may have to suffer this even as modest at their hands as Stephen did as a crucial or critical necessity of sacrifice to bring by it the revelation of the Lord that turned Saul from persecutor to apostle.

Remarkable statements. I don't expect you to understand that it's being recorded. That's the purpose. You know what I'm saying? Martyrdom may well be our experience. In fact, that is the genius of what the church has ever and always been in every generation is a martyr church.

But what we had not considered is that we might suffer the first pangs of martyrdom, not at the hands of the world, but at the very Jewish people whose salvation we desire and who cannot recognize the goodness of our intent and see us as a threat, as Saul saw the early church as a threat to the interest of the God whom he did not know.

Who art thou, Lord? And so we may have to bear their violence in the defense of their Jewishness which is now being threatened and they will see us, quote, as Christians constituting that threat and we bear it.

And I have a little preview of that speaking at universities and confrontations all over the world where Jewish students are in greater proportion than any other place where you can find them. And I have to, I say I'm like a pincushion and I have to absorb their anger, their bitterness, their confusion.

I represent the enemy. It's like a white man in a black high school. You represent white, you represent the establishment. So your heart is something completely other. What you are physically and overtly is what they see and identify.

And so for the Jewish students, I'm a missionary, paid flunky. Why else would an intelligent man speak this Goyish, Greek and thing that is antithetical to all Jewishness unless there's some financial remunerative motive.

So he's the lowest scum betraying his own people for financial personal gain and putting himself in continuity with every injury that Jews have ever received in the name of Christ. And they give it to you harshly and you just stand there and receive it like a pincushion.

You can't say, hey, hey, no, no, no, I don't represent that. That's not really the church. Those crusaders were not regenerate. They don't even know what the word regenerate means. To them they were Christians and that's it.

For my mother, Hitler was a Christian. Germany was a Christian nation. You can't argue with them at Columbia University, City College of New York, right on the spot and straighten them out. You have to absorb their frenzy, their anger, their furor.

And after they have spit it out, then maybe you'll get a word in edgewise. All of that will be greatly heated in the last days. And we may be on the receiving end a lot of their pained reaction, opposing themselves in their own ignorance.

And how we receive that will be critical to their salvation. And the way that Stephen received it, Lord laid not the sin to their charge. Dying with such equanimity, with such grace, he fell asleep. What a precious race.

He had fulfilled his purpose. He bore the insult and the injury, speaking courageously, giving them a whole survey of the history of Israel and its apostasy from the beginning. And he saw the heaven opened, being full of the spirit and Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father.

And they could not bear to hear that that one whom they had crucified, thinking to put him finally out of business as a threat to Israel, was now in the holiest place of all, in the very presence of God the Father.

And they put their fingers in their ears and ran and gnashed upon him with their teeth to extinguish the reality that this great bus boy was seeing. I believe that that is a foretaste of the end, a little preview of some of us will have to play that Stephen role in order to turn the persecuting adversary from assault to appal.

Nothing less will bring that conversion because Israel has an apostolate to the nations. And that's why Paul could say, when you see me, I'm a man out of time and joint. I'm a representative of Israel's future.

And in my apostolic ministry to the Gentiles, you catch a glimpse of God's intention for the whole nation Israel in its apostolate to the Gentile nations. They will be to the nations what I presently am to the church, brooding over a jealous mother, father, nurse, that Christ be formed in them, laboring day and night without reward, with tears and from house to house in public places, giving the whole counsel of God.

That when it was time for Paul to come to the end of his apostolic career, and he called the elders of Ephesus, they wept when they heard that they would see his face no more. That kind of love for Paul from Gentiles who knew that they had received something from this precious Jewish man that was not in any way tinged or tainted by Jewish pride or religious superiority or anything like that, but who humbled himself.

He came under, he was a priestly administrator of the wisdom of God for the nations. We will see exactly the same thing that the Jews who today are anathema, feared, despised, resented, will one day be clutched by the nations to have one come into their midst to clutch the skirt of one who will take us to God for they know him.

That's Israel's destiny. And to be to the nations what Paul was to the Gentile church will of course take a conversion as profound for Israel as it was for Saul himself. So our as the church coming under the purpose of God for Israel's redemption, God's firstborn son among the nations is calculated for our humility.

We cannot expect their understanding nor gratitude nor our sacrifice in their behalf. Like Christ dying for us while we were yet in transgression, dead in sin, we will die for them while they are yet in transgression and sin.

And that very process and the very willingness is that final sanctification that fits us as a bride for the bridegroom. See the mystery of God. Oh, the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.

The Mystery of Christ and the Church

Well, imagine speaking that in one hour. Again, I felt like it was a flub as I have been feeling in these days, but I'm told that it was an miraculous statement. We'll turn to Ephesians chapter three, and we'll consider the mystery of which our great apostle Paul was the steward, which has been lost to the church's comprehension in modern times.

And therefore the church has lost the whole heart of its being and condemns itself to becoming an institution. It has lost its apostolic identity to the degree that has lost its understanding of the mystery of which Paul was a steward, which was granted him because he was the least of all saints and that he really believed that of himself.

It was not a feigned humility, but the more he deepened in his apostolic call and the intensive knowledge of God, the more he recognized the littleness that was himself the least of all saints, murder and persecuted, haunted him all of the days of his apostolic career, not in some kind of psychic sickly way, but in the healthiest recognition that a man needs to know there, but for the grace of God, go I, murderer and persecutor, not out of some malevolent or vicious intent, but out of my best well-meaning intentions to honor the God of my fathers.

That's the point. And that the best intentions of men will, in the last analysis, end in the murder and persecution of God himself. And when Israel will recognize that, there'll be the deepest repentance that the world has ever seen.

So profound a repentance when we shall see him whom we have pierced, that no man can even come to that repentance in the presence of his own wife and no family in the presence of another family, every family apart, every husband and wife apart, for they will be bellowing and prevailing in such an anguish of soul, of depth of recognition of what our historic sin has been, that it's a repentance unto death.

And out of it, out of the ashes of that will rise another nation that will bless all the families of the earth. So Paul describes himself in chapter three as a prisoner for Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, and then reminds them of the grace that was given him.

The mysteries were made known by revelation. And this mystery in verse five was not made known to mankind as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. That word holy is not a little appellation.

That's what these men were and are, who are in fact, authentically prophets and apostles. Not that they go tripping on eggshells and have a superior spirituality that is ethereal. They're men who can knock back a beer with a steak or a glass of wine within a piece of pizza and love jazz and are earthly and or earthy, not earthly, earthy in many ways.

And yet they're holy apostles and prophets because the cross has done its number on false spirituality that requires certain exterior semblances of what is construed to be spiritual and is false. They are authentic men through and through.

They don't have to wear camel hair garments to evidence the fact that they're prophets. They could be wearing three-piece suits. But they have been formed and called, processed at God's hand, and to them can be entrusted the mysteries of God.

Why? Because they'll never abuse that trust. They'll never exploit it. They'll never turn it to their own advantage. They counted, they cherish the precious mysteries that have been commended to them that they might make them known.

And not the least of the mysteries in verse six is that the Gentiles have become fellow heirs and members of the same body. What same body? Of the body that already exists of Jews who believe and receive the Messiah and continue in the precious holy faith.

Now you who are far off and without hope in God have been brought nigh by that blood of their Messiah into that revelation, that understanding, and that body, into the commonwealth of Israel itself, into the hopes and covenants of Israel.

Oh, you lucky stiffs. If it weren't for that God's grace to admit you into the salvation which is exclusively Israel's, you'd be a bunch of dum-dums to this day. You'd be drinking beer not out of cans but out of skulls and fornicating like jackrabbits and being given to every kind of vile idolatry.

But God in his mercy has Hebraicized you, brought you out of Gentile dumb-dumbness and into that ethereal transfiguring relationship with their God that is called salvation. That's the grace that has come.

And Paul is a steward of that mystery through the gospel. And then he speaks of another mystery. That's the one that I want to discuss with you this morning. That was according to the gift of God's grace given me by the working of his power in verse 8 on the very least of all the saints.

This is not self-effacing humility of a salesman's kind. This is Paul just telling it like it is. Or else this mystery would not have been given him. The grace that was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things in order that.

Stop. Don't read any further or you'll be transgressing. Don't rush but hold your breath for we are about to hear from the chief of apostles the purpose for all creation itself. And if we have not some sense of that purpose we are floundering in darkness.

I don't care how adept our gifts or how much men honor us or what we bless if we have not a sense of the purposive God who has created out of nothing. What is that Latin term? Ex nihilo. Out of nothing the glory of creation in order that we're now going to hear the reason the purpose why God has willed and performed this.

My God we need to stop breathing or else we will reduce this to a commonplace and read through the book of Ephesians as if we're reading Gone with the Wind or some cheap novel. No wonder we are in the abysmal place that we are.

We don't even know how to read so let's not rush. We're about to hear something that God has given to the apostle as revelation of mystery and given him a mandate to cherish and to make it known that all men might see this mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things in order that through the church.

Stop number two. Stop breathing. Through the church that dinky nothing, that institutional hodgepodge, that cheapy Sunday service oriented institution, that the purpose of creation was that something in order that through the church.

Paul you're going too far. You've only taken one aspect of civilization and culture which has a nice way of taking the edges off the harsh features of life and has Sunday schools and performs marriages and funerals and gives us a biblical message on Sunday.

Come on don't get carried away that the principal purpose of God and creation has something to do with the church or have we been laboring under some kind of dull misconception that the church is only one of institutions deserving some kind of recognition but is the principal purpose for creation itself.

Just that one understanding is at the heart of apostolic comprehension that changes the whole way in which we regard that which we have seen only in a minimal way and therefore cannot even serve it in the way for which God has created all things.

So that God has created everything in order through the church. Well this is getting thick. The plot is thickening that the manifold wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Paul much learning hath made thee mad. This is the most abstruse, absurd, irrelevant kind of statement to ascribe to the church that the whole purpose is to make known some kind of wisdom to the principalities and powers of the air.

Hey it's totally irrelevant. Tell us where the church is of value in the world. How it will bless men. How it will affect institutions, touch poverty, sickness, disease. That's what we want to know. That's the real thing.

What is this abstract, abstruse reference to some wisdom to be made known to the principalities and powers of the air? That's a figment of your imagination. That's a hangover of your Judaic mysticism and what do they call that?

Occultic Judaic origin that talks about some phantasmal realm of spirit life. Come on Paul, grow up. And that's why this has been grossly rejected by the most authoritative scholars and theologians of our generation.

That this is a hangover. This is a vestigial remnant of Paul's Judaic upbringing that has to do with some mystical and occultic realm of spirit until the Nazi time came. Then Michael Barth, God bless him whom I love, the Swiss-German theologian who had disregarded this and counted it as a mere residue of Paul's rabbinical origins took a second look and said hey this is not some mere flight of fancy.

This is where the action in fact actually is. For the principalities and powers of the air that we thought a figment of Paul's Judaic imagination have actually taken possession of the whole of the German state and nation and made it an engine for the destruction of the Jewish people and have succeeded by it in annihilating whole European Jewry one-third of the Jewish race and catapulting the world into a cataclysmic conflict that has almost ended civilization.

Where they wore skull and crossbones on their caps and burned books and burned men and exhibited another wisdom that was dark and demonic, satanic that was not content merely to influence nations but to possess them.

That's why German Jews thought this too shall pass. Surely the nation of Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, Nurti, Schopenhauer, Wagner, great giants of poetry, music, literature, science, philosophy are not going to succumb to this riffraff of gutter snipes and homosexuals and deviants who meet in basement cellar beer pubs.

Surely that's a passing phenomenon that they'll get out of their system and we'll get back to men like Bismarck and Chancellor so and so and men of nobility and class who can govern the state in view in light of German culture and civilization.

This too shall pass. It didn't and they went up like smoke. What a graphic demonstration that Paul was not majoring in minors but majoring in majors. This is where the action is you dear saints and though we have not seen the Nazi phenomenon here don't think that it's so far removed from any possibility in good old USA apple pie mama and football.

It waits its opportunity it's already present it jerks and manipulates it usurps it influences but when the time comes it possesses. Paul knew where the action is and the church is the only agency given of God to recognize discern and identify this spirit power realm and to oppose it and to bring it down and the church that does not see that as its task and its purpose for being is ipso facto not the church in any apostolic sense of the world word it's only an institution that purveys services for men because the very next verse says verse 11 this was in accordance with the eternal purpose that we carried out in Christ Jesus.

Oh lord time out stop breathing the eternal purpose. Only Paul could use language of that kind lavish language that he's not ashamed to employ as if this is only an adornment to give a certain sense of importance to inflate something by the use of the word eternity or eternal.

No this is an apostle that's holy given a stewardship over a mystery that he recognizes in its context is eternal in the intention of God it was ever and always in the mind of God from eternity to eternity and needs to come into the comprehension of the church that is not even eternally minded but rooted in time culture lacks the apostolic perspective of eternity.

So how can it recognize that this mandate is in accordance with the eternal purpose of God. And here's what I want to say dear saints. And I say it wherever I have opportunity that church hear this. You ministers who are getting this tape that church you and especially those ministers who purport to be apostolically and prophetically minded where are you today.

Why aren't you here even to contradict me or to find faults or to confirm your suspicions that you should be in the same city where there's a conference or seminar being conducted that is called apostolic and prophetic foundations by a man who's the author of seven or eight books and has a global reputation and a history of 37 years.

And you are content to go to the golf course or to stay home and not even to inquire as to what will be communicated under that great title. And you profess to have a concern for what is apostolic and prophetic that leaves something to be questioned.

I wouldn't stay home. I would break the door down in any place accessible to me where these this subject is purported to be discussed because it's the eternal purpose of God. And that church which will not take to its heart as its foremost purpose for being the eternal purpose of God whatever it is dancing on.