K-475 Last Days Tumult — Art Katz

You know the way the Lord will quicken certain things right on the spot and use little inauspicious things like a button that somebody's wearing in the lapel and the scriptures that the Spirit induces a man to read to move you in a certain direction.

How many people know what I'm talking about? It's called being led of the Spirit. As I came in here today, there was a young chap wearing a button It said the great snatch and it showed a pair of pants and pair of shoes just passing out of sight Being lifted up into sweet oblivion.

Then our brother read certain scriptures and as he was reading them, my eye fell on passages which I suppose that I'd read before but The Lord just chose this moment for me to see them In a little pointed way that I hadn't before noticed.

The Affliction of the Last Days

So let's turn back To mark the 13th chapter 19th verse the affliction Such as was not from the beginning of the creation Which God created unto this time neither shall be in those days. No flesh should be saved.

But for the elect's sake whom he hath chosen He hath shortened the days. That sound to you as if we're going to be snatched out. It's as if we're it's. I'm not a theologian guy So I won't presume to announce anything Queasy feeling about the great snatch and My experience now and the direction which the Lord is leading me Seems to suggest everything to the contrary.

I Mean the Lord has given me visions also. The most recent of which was a vision to establish conferences on discipleship and That young people especially and those who are committed and really Want to walk with God? might understand what it is that's going to be required from them in this day and to begin to Shape themselves by the grace of God to be fitted for this day.

It doesn't that doesn't seem economical of a Jewish God To deal with people in that way if we're just going to be in those days shall be affliction. Well, how many of you precious young people and have ever tasted of any affliction in your life at all at least my claim To fame was that I was a depression, baby.

We were actually new real want real privation real struggle Just for physical existence and some of the other gray heads and all the people in the audience this morning can remember those days. But you know that your generation is about the most spoiled the most grossly indulged softest probably in the history of our civilization.

I Think it's rather ironic That Jesus says in the 30th verse verily I sent you this generation Shall not pass. Mark into the moon shall not give its light and the stars of heaven shall fall and the powers that are in the heaven shall be shaken and Then they that shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and his angels and shall gather together his elect From the four winds from the uttermost parts of the earth To the uttermost part then after those days shall he send his angels back to gather up.

I Just have to say again that I'm not a theologian, and I don't want to make suggest any definitive statement about What the character of those days is going to be? But I have just a presentiment the sense That if we're not going to pass through the whole of it, we're certainly going to pass through a portion of it.

And I believe it's going to have something to do with purifying the body of Christ. With preparing that bride that will be without spot and without wrinkle. How many of you young people are conscious this morning?

That the bride of Christ and the body of Christ is very far yet from that condition. Many corruptions right many fleshly carnal things. Much that is passed in the name of Christianity is hardly better than mere entertainment.

Shallow casual. Perhaps it is because of the kind of ministry that the Lord has given us university campuses and encounters with atheistic groups with radicals with Jewish people like myself that we begin to get a sense of what the sharp Response of men is going to be to the gospel in the last days.

I think the issue is becoming joined and Heretofore the world has looked upon us with a kind of nonchalance. We've fitted in quite. Well, we've condoned the establishment. We've sanctified Establishment life.

They could safely allow us to go about our little Christian business on Sunday because we didn't threaten a thing. But I tell you that when the walk becomes more intense. When the issue will become was severely joined.

When the centrifugal forces which are now at work in the earth Polarizing and sucking people into one of two great Centers light or darkness when these forces are more revealed when men will see that the neutral ground is fast Disappearing and they're going to be required to make a radical commitment to one or the other.

I think we're going to see more and more men railing gnashing their teeth. We're going to experience what the scriptures described that those who live godly lives in Christ will suffer persecution. And I just want to share with you some observations out of the text in the scriptures, which the Lord has Really quickened to my heart in the 16th chapter of the book of Acts.

The Pattern of God in Acts

Because I love to see in the scriptures the pattern of God. The way of God. And I realize that the things that are written here are not just mere historical descriptions of episode episodes from the lives of Jewish men who served him but a real framework a pattern an Indication of things which must be and always are.

And I don't I can't begin to share with you my experience and the things which the Lord has pressed into my own heart. But I can I can just say it with finality and you just wait on your own heart and spirit.

Guys, not a cotton-picking thing has changed nothing. Not a thing has changed. The issues are exactly the same as it was in the days of Jesus forces that are a contention are just as severely in contention now.

We've gone through a 19th century Kind of semambulism and sleepwalk, but in the end of the ages the cover is being lifted back. And we're going to see the same kinds of things that punctuated and characterized the ministry of Jesus and the disciples which followed him.

Interesting that every one of them Suffered the fate of martyrs. Interesting that the word for witness in Greek means martyr. And so I just want to strike a very somber note from the beginning. Will you excuse me?

I'm just not one of the rah-rah-rah guys and You might just be able to shake this off after an hour or two as the meetings go on. But I've got to speak the thing which is in my heart. I'll tell you the kind of feeling I have That there's a great corollary between as we know the natural and the spiritual worlds.

And we know that in the world of nature there's a great process of attrition. A Fish can spawn many thousands of eggs and out of these perhaps only several hundred will survive the initial process of birth and And of those hundreds many fewer will survive the first stages of life to become fingerlings and Of these most will be condemned or will condemn themselves To live out their little stunted lives around the periphery of great bodies of water living in the shallows and the scum.

But one or two will forge out into the deep To take all of the attendant risks that come with launching out into the deep and Also enable themselves to enjoy that process that leads to full growth and maturity but they have to survive the risks that come with Predators and sportsmen and maybe out of all the initial birth of thousands of eggs one will survive To come to full maturity that it might reproduce itself.

And I got that same kind of sneaky suspicion that's exactly true of the things which are spiritual. Frankly guys, I'm just a little bit wary of the enormous popularity that Jesus is enjoying in our day.

He's just so groovy that I can hardly recognize the Jesus who had not a place to lay his head from whom Hundreds turned when he said that you must eat of my flesh and drink of my blood. When even his choicest disciples who walked with him for three and a half years Fled from him and in the time of his greatest crisis and affliction Would not even believe the accounts of his resurrection from from the lips of first-hand witnesses a process of attrition take place and Many that are on the bandwagon today grooving with Jesus Are not going to survive the enormous What can I say trial and testing that's going to come in our day.

So I'm speaking today to prepare you for an hour, which is not yet struck. Okay, I'm choosing the 16th chapter of the book of Acts because I believe that it gives us a pattern that we're going to see Duplicated and it's just an ordinary day in the lives of two Jews for Jesus doing their Jewish thing serving their Most High God and They're about doing the thing which the Lord commanded them to preach the gospel.

Paul’s Macedonian Vision and Reverence for Scripture

Now we begin with the sixth verse now when they had gone throughout forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia here, but the Spirit allowed them not and They passing by might he came down to troll us and a vision appeared to Paul in the night.

There stood a man of Macedonia beseeching him and saying come over into Macedonia and help us. I Think we ought to pause there First to remind you That I'm doing gross injustice to the Word of God by this kind of glib and casual reading.

But I believe that this is the kind of reading that characterizes the reading that most of us do. We don't give the Word of God the extreme reverence and care that it deserves. We were instructed to live by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God.

And I think that many of us are missing the deep things which God has inserted in this word by our very Casualness in just breezing through it. I believe that my first year as a believer was wasted. Because I brought to the Word of God the same kind of slick and shallow Habits that I had developed in the academic world.

And I even was so presumptuous as to think that I had to interpret the scripture as I interpreted Shakespeare and Milton and other writings. It was a wasted year. I spun my wheels in vain until the Lord brought me up short and I realized that this is not just literature.

This is the word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. I Began to take it with the seriousness and earnestness it deserves and to do it my life Started to become radically transformed. You know that we just read of three manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

Three very vital manifestations that those of us who in the dimension the charismatic full gospel dimension ought most of all to acknowledge to respect to celebrate. See being filled with the Holy Spirit is more than just elation.

It's an enormous equipment for service. And I just began this morning bias by just describing. The very modest way by which the Spirit of God was already operating in me. To direct me to speak and to be a channel for him to address you in the given way.

Just by allowing my eye to fall on a button. Just by having my spirit quickened by the reading of certain scriptures and by a certain weight. Subtle on my heart by the Holy Spirit. Now look at this first verse guys.

We talk about the Holy Spirit and we always think of the Spirit as one that leads us. But here's the Spirit of God which checks us. It says they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia and you say are impossible the Spirit of God is not going to contradict the Word of God.

Didn't we have commandment to go into all the world and preach this gospel to every creature? Well, I want to tell you something about the Spirit of God. That we ought to be prepared at any given moment for the Spirit of God so to lead us.

The Holy Spirit Who Checks and Redirects

Even for God to set aside the things which we think and know are established in his Word. The Spirit of God can do anything. In and through that vessel yielded to him and what is in fact a great hindrance.

To the receiving of the baptism of the Holy Spirit among denominational people in our generation. They've got certain fixed principles which in a sense really are biblical which prevent them from understanding and and entering into a dimension which God has.

The Spirit of God is always in the last. Analysis of choice voice to move to direct the check to stop. I Was telling in assemblies of God pastor last night how at a church of that denomination The Spirit of God bade me to mock a congregation and you say all right now I know you flip.

The Spirit of God is loving and he'll never mock his own people. And I tell you that with every breath in my body and anything. I know about God the Spirit of God Passed through my mouth and mocked the congregation.

That I just sung a really rosy song full of clapping of hands and full of lifted up spirits. We need Jesus. You need Jesus. I need Jesus and I tell you I looked out on that congregation of seeming Seemingly healthy folk and the young choir was singing full of gusto and verve and I thought man I have need to be ministered to of them but when I opened my mouth, it was God who mocked him.

I need Jesus you need Jesus. And Following that was I just a like a sword proceeding forth into the bosom of that people one word. Really and people go Catching their breath all of that audience because the Lord zapped them.

And I went out to speak just like a fool. What do you need him for? Take up an offering. Play a church create your pretty little sermon do a little singing. We don't need him for that people. We need him in the extremity.

We need him when we're utterly obedient to follow him in the places to which he shall lead us. We need him when we're utterly over our own heads when our power and our own human resources and intellect and heart and courage are Wanting.

But how many of us have ever been so led by the Spirit to places like that? It's no longer the groovy Christianity. It far more resembles the book of Acts. That's when we need him. And I'll tell you one of my greatest disappointments as a young believer taking up my place in the Pentecostal congregation eight years ago Was the failure to see the correspondence in the life of that church and its place in the community and the book of Acts.

Which I believe was the normative standard standard of conduct and service for believers. The God of the book of Acts has not changed one bit. But we have there's a spirit of God that's sovereign who can not only lead but check.

Deliverance, Authority, and the Spirit’s Guidance

My first such experiences that came at a college actually the Pentecostal College. Where I always trembled of what what would happen if the Lord would have to use me to cast out a demon spirit. I wouldn't.

I didn't mind laying on hands for healing because you can always safely walk away from that with your pride intact. You don't have to see the necessary evidence on the spot. It's an easy and sometimes a cheap thing to do.

But one who is bound and needs to be set free is quite another thing. I thought that the spirits would turn and rend me and say Jesus I know and Paul I know but cats who given us a name which is above every name.

But do we actually have the authority to exercise it? Have we are we so separated from the world? We've come out. And we touched not the unclean thing and he's been made a father unto us. We are his sons and his daughters and we speak and do with an authority.

That is something more than the mechanical citation the name of Jesus. So right in a college one night about one o 'clock in the morning. I've been up all through the day. It was the chapel speaker. I was counseling kids and that night there was a devotional thing in the dormitory and I was coming back to my bunk.

Just weary and would you believe it one o 'clock in the morning in that narrow hallway. There's a student reading to both my board. I Thought that's unusual and the nor the hallway was so narrow. I brush shoulders with this guy.

I said, oh, hi, mr. Katz is a high fellow. And I just had one or two pleasant words with him. I said good night and I started to walk on all sudden quick. I Was checked by the spirit. I said say you want to talk to me about anything?

Oh, no, he said. I said, are you sure? Well, then good night good night I started to walk again check. I Said are you sure? That you don't have something that you want to share with me. Well, he said not something that you'd probably really be interested in.

I Said are you walking this way? It's it. Yeah, and I said look just walk with me. We began to walk with me. We hadn't walked 50 paces. When this kid who was the son of a minister told me that he was on the verge of suicide.

That he was possessed by spirits of murder and anger and bitterness which he could not control and he was at the end of his rope and Something in my heart went dump that I'm done. I Knew that the Lord had backed me into a corner, you know people.

I'm just as chicken as most and I see that it's always been the Lord backing me into corners. In fact, I was saved by being backed into a corner. I was backed into a corner in Jerusalem. By having gotten on a mistaken bus to find myself lost and walked into a bookstore for directions to find out that it was a bookstore selling New Testaments and Bibles operated by Jewish believers in the Messiah a Pentecostal Jewish assembly and it was in that bookstore that the Lord spoke to me and told me that I was not to leave he backed me into a corner and Every act of service and every kind of commitment is almost the same kind of thing.

God was behind me doing this. Well, I prayed with that boy, I knew that there was only one remedy. I laid hands upon him in the name of Jesus. I took authority against the spirit of murder. Spirit of suicide and I don't know what else that the Spirit of God inspired me to pray and I left him at that Chapel and I Walked across campus the next morning.

And I saw a guy coming toward me and he looked familiar. He was not familiar and sure enough. He was the same guy, but he bore a new face. Just joyous brimming with light it had worked. So be prepared people as you walk on with God that there's a spirit that will not only beckon you go.

There's a spirit that may likely beckon you stop. Be checked be redirected. The spirit allowed them not and a vision appeared to Paul in the night. There stood a man of Macedonia beseeching him and saying come over into Macedonia and help us and maybe you're saying gee I've never had a vision like that.

Let me give you a little clue. There are a lot of us who have never had any of these manifestations of the Holy Spirit. You say but art why. Well, I've got a few things. I'd like to suggest That such manifestations as these only come to a choice few.

Those who are prepared to obey. Because look at the next verse and after he had seen the vision. Immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia. Assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel unto them brother, that's what it means to be a Jew is to receive vision of God and immediately Endeavor to go no if ands but whys or hows.

Hearing and Obeying the Still Small Voice

How many of us will say gee I don't know about that vision. Maybe it was indigestion. Maybe it was too much pastrami and corned beef. I better wait to see that. This is confirmed and blah blah blah blah blah.

How come that they knew instantly that this was of God? I'll tell you how come. Because their walk was such that they were familiar with the still small voice. Walking in the spirit is not something that's accomplished in a day.

It's a walk and I tell you it begins right where you are now. And if you are insensitive to hearing that still small voice of God and run roughshod over it in Things that pertain to your life now. How then shall you hear when he speaks even more inaudibly and more dangerously?

Summoning you to places of service that might require your life. I spoke at a college campus outdoors in a public meeting big crowd and noise and tumult and had been speaking about the still small voice of God.

And when it was over some of these kids came up to me and were really curious about this. What do you mean by the still small voice? Are you putting us on? I? Don't speak about the still small voice lightly.

I heard it that day in Jerusalem and it turned my life around because it called me by name and commanded me not to leave. I've heard that voice since on Platforms waiting to be called upon to speak and in various other times of ministry and service.

I know it's a very real voice. They said well, how do you know it's God's voice and not Satan's good question, isn't it? And just as that question was asked there was a big shaggy mutt Wending its way through that plaza that campus and it wasn't just aimlessly wandering it was on target.

It was going somewhere. I Said to these guys look at that dog and all of this great crowd and all of this tumult and noise and all of this Distraction that dog is not one with distracted. It's going exactly to where it knows it needs to go.

It has heard its master's voice. Out of all of that great tumult of voices. It's picked out its master's voice. We have the kind of devotion that animals have with their tongues rolling out of their mouths.

Palpitating and panting just to be in the presence of their master savoring that presence. Knowing him in a way that is beyond words. Anticipating even the wishes of a master not just waiting for his direct commandments.

Harkening to his voice. Desiring to be at his side always prepared to do his bidding. God help us to be as devoted to him as shaggy animals are to men. We're not worthy of us have seen a vision of a man beckon us to come Over into Macedonia and help, you know, I think we don't see it.

How many of us are in a position to do it? How many can come to Macedonia and bring help. How many of us far more need help ourselves? How much of our own prayer life is occupied with the distress of our own personal lives and our fallings and stumblings and backslidings and Indecision and weakness and all the rest of these things children.

The vision of God comes and the Spirit of God beckons those who will immediately endeavor to go and Those whose lives are so ordered and disciplined in God that they can bring help. And let's just follow on to see what the consequence of obedience results in.

Therefore losing in the other 11th verse from trials. We came with a straight course to Samothrace in the next day to Neapolis and from there to Philippi. Which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia?

See wherever the Spirit of God leads us is where the action is. It's the chief city. It may be to an audience of one or two. It might be to some little hick town. It might be to New York City. It might be the Jerusalem, but wherever God leads you you could be assured.

That's where the action is. And there's a God who delights in those who set forth with a straight course to reach it. I was speaking last night about Some guy that visited me in Kansas City. I guess you would call him a Jesus freak or whatever.

He had down his shoulders barefoot his shirt unbuttoned down to his navel Jesus plastered all over that shirt and real grooving and swinging and Love the Lord quote unquote and told me that he wanted to work with me and he wanted to be a Missionary to the Jewish people he thought that that would be just groovy.

I said, well what background do you have you had? What experience have you had? Well, nothing. What's your what's been your most recent work? Well, I was a dishwasher. How long did that last. About a week?

Well, have you gone to college? Well, I copped out or I quit in my freshman year. Were you in the service? Yeah, but I last a few months and I was discharged. I said, what have you ever done? That's systematic and disciplined and He said nothing, I don't think that that man is Prepared to enter a ministry.

That's very demanding. There's a God who wants us to set forth with a straight course. And you young kids who are in school a lot of you when I speak with you in colleges and places like that. You decide you sort of suggest gee when I get out of school when life will begin.

What's the Lord's will for me and then you ask questions like that and I'm always constantly amazed that you don't recognize. That right where you are now right in school and right in your present situation and right in your present relationships with friends classmate teachers and parents you have every opportunity to come to a place of discipline of a controlled life of Maturity that when the vision of God beckons you you can bring help to men.

I'm a city by the riverside where prayer was accustomed to be made and we sat down and spoke unto the women who resorted there. My natural instinct would have been to have gone to the greatest synagogue to see what opportunity I would have had there but the Spirit of God led them in a place where the natural mind does not dictate and Those of us who call ourselves full gospel have got to understand that that this is what the Spirit of God is all about.

To be filled with the Spirit to be empowered by the Spirit and to be led by the Spirit. Even to foolish places that contradict our own reason and undetermined. It opened that she attended of the things which were spoken by Paul.

Come into my house and abide there. And she constrained us the kinds of indecisive Believers that we see in our own day. Wishy-washy lukewarm. Compromised this woman was decisive whose heart the Lord opened that she attended to the things which were spoken.

Attending to the things which were spoken. You know, I went to Hebrew school as a kid. We all have to perform that chore to prepare us for our 13th year for our bar mitzvah. It was a drag and I try to play hooky whenever I couldn't.

I should sit in that class just like a zombie dead. But I remember after being there for years one day a new kid came into a class. And he was just a few months short of the sale of his 13th birthday and he was going to make up in a few months what I had been laboring for six years to learn and I had a revelation.

What it means to become a student this kid? In a sense spiritually rolled up his sleeves and unbuttoned his shirt and Began to dig in and to learn the alphabet. I'll affect that gimbal dollar table and my eyes just went pink.

Who is diligently applying himself to learn. He attended to the things which were spoken by an active Assertion a conscious act and in a moment I was made to realize that all my school years not only in the Hebrew school, but even in secular school I've been sitting like like a lump and by osmosis I was just allowing a little kind of nonsense to infiltrate my consciousness.

I Wonder how many of us are guilty of that kind of thing? Even in churches even in our congregations and assemblies even when we hear the Word of God. Are we consciously extending ourselves. Are we attending to the things which are spoken.

Lydia, Baptism, and Costly Commitment

He was baptized. Isn't that fantastic? Isn't the Bible is beautiful for what it leaves out as for what it says. No, if and but why she attends the things which are spoken. She knows the truth of God. She was baptized immediately guide that we Jews Have some I think a deeper recognition of the profundity of baptism than most Christians.

Because the Jewish kid can come home from school and say to his mom mom I believe that Jesus is the Messiah and his mother say that's nice Irving sit down and eat your lunch. So it'll come home a few weeks later and say mom.

I've been baptized. Enter Jesus Christ. She'll say you're no longer my son. You're dead. Baptism is it's going down into the deep waters of death. They come up and cover your head. You're going six feet under death to self to the world to the devil and coming up unto resurrection of newness of life.

It's interesting that if you want to apply it as you for immigration to Israel They ask you What your religious identification is and you can say messianic Judaism or something like that. But the real minute great question is have you been baptized?

Because if you've been baptized You've been sealed off from the world from Judaism from tradition from culture and you've been entered into another dimension. Which is hostile and at enmity with the world.

This woman who attended the things which were spoken commitment strange these dangerous Jewish radicals to come into her house and To abide there. Well, you know in a couple of days They're going to be leaving town, but she's going to remain and they're the stigma and the public reproach not only for her public Baptism, but for having taken these dangerous radicals in her own home.

I tell you guys that's a refreshing Example, it's a vision that God is holding up against our eyes. That we might be reminded of what commitment means in an age that so wishy-washy so indecisive. That just about anything goes saying these men are the servants of the Most High God and show unto us the way of salvation.

And this did she many days but Paul being grieved Turned and said to the spirit. I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her and he came out the same hour. Just an ordinary everyday episode in the life of a New Testament believer.

It wasn't that Paul was irritated by this distraction. He was grieved for a woman panic spirits whose life was not her own. I tell you I believe that that's one of the conditions for a ministry of healing deliverance.

It's a faith which worketh by love. Not that we're bugged or irritated but that we're grieved with a broken condition of men who need to be set free. It's faith that operates by that love which will set the captives free.

Persecution and the Praise of Paul and Silas

And I just want to show you what the consequence of this kind of New Testament obedience and walk is. Because when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone. They caught Paul and Silas and drew them into the marketplace and unto the rulers and brought them to the magistrates saying these men being Jews do exceedingly trouble our city and teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive needs to observe being Romans and the multitude rose up together against them and the magistrates tore off their clothes and commanded to beat them and When they had laid many stripes upon them They cast them into prison charging the jailer to keep them safely.

Who having received such a charge their feet fast in the stocks. I Tell you that we're not going to win the Junior Chamber of Commerce Award for being children of God. But more likely we're going to experience what these men experience when we walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.

With the same anointing that Jesus knew to set the captive free and bring the good news. Touching the world system right at its core and there's going to be a howl and a shrink and a gnashing of teeth.

We're going to be dragged before rulers in the establishment in the whole world system and the mob will be against us. We're going to find ourselves humiliated the clothes torn from our backs. Beaten cast into in the dungeons to be bound hand and foot.

That's the reward of the obedience for following we should realistically anticipate in our own walk. And you're wondering what you wanted to find themselves in this dungeon with their back back hanging in strips and pain.

I Was in the dungeon which Paul lived his last days in Rome and I had a stoop over. I couldn't stand the wreck and the black walls glistened with sweat. And even centuries after its use as a prison there was still the sickly smell of urine and and One can imagine the scurrying of rats with a little light flickering in that terrible overwhelming darkness.

That's where Paul wrote some of his greatest epistles. A Dungeon is not a pretty place let alone the sit there as men are doing right now as we're sitting in this gorgeous place in Dungeons today in ugly places of confinement behind the iron curtain suffering be Humiliated strapped to crosses having other prisoners defecate over their faces being compelled to serve communion with human feces and urine.

Only a beginning of the kind of affliction which God would said said would come in the last days. I wonder if we're preparing ourselves for such Eventualities as that it may be that whenever we may never be required to experience it.

But I think it's best to prepare ourselves of what we suspect might come upon us. How did they how did Paul and Silas respond then did they say? Oh God what happened? I thought I was being obedient to the Holy Spirit and look what happened.

They've thrown us into this jail. We've been beaten. We're sitting in pain. Where did we go wrong? Because a lot of us have suffered much less things than having our backs bloodied and being reproached and persecuted by the world.

We didn't get the grade. We wanted on an examination or we were stood up by a boyfriend or our parents have misunderstood our motives or intentions. And we've moped and we're forlorn and we're sad and with the stress and our faces hang down.

What then shall we do if we react that way now when we shall come to situations like this. How did these men react? I think one of the greatest verses in the old scriptures comes in the 25th verse of the 16th chapter.

At midnight Poland and sang praises unto God. Well, that's one thing to pray and to sing praises in full gospel conventions. Hallelujah, what a wonderful spirit. What a camaraderie all the wonderful bear hugs and embraces and isn't it great?

But to be able to do it in a dungeon. Bound hand and foot with a back that's bloody and raw having been publicly humiliated if you can sing praises then. You've got it all together. I'll tell you guys this is what the baptism of the Holy Spirit is about.

It's not that we might just have it. But that we might have joy and a basis for worship not just when things are going good. But in the depths of our utmost crisis and severity and extremity. One of the most brilliant testimonies that I ever read for speaking with other tongues came from the wife of Richard Wolbron.