Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of
Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.
I hope the following message challenges, encourages and
ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.
Revelation verse 1 of chapter 1. We are we're going to continue
on in the vein that we've been in.
We're going to go ahead and I want to look at what what I
would call throne room protocol. There's a, a situation a, a
scenario that John is ushered into that actually changes
history. It begins to move things from
heaven to earth and things are he alters human history through
his encounter. We see in chapter 1 verse 1,
John says the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him
to show to his servants the things that must soon take
place. He made it known by sending his
Angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God
and to the testimony of Jesus Christ even to all that he saw.
And so John is ushered into this encounter.
Now we need to understand the, the circumstance, the historical
circumstance, the setting in which John receives this
revelation, because if you can understand what someone's going
through when they got something, it will add to your insight and
why they got it. So God, there, there was a
certain scenario that John was going through.
John was at this time the only apostle left of the original 12.
I believe there's still apostles today, but I'm talking about the
original capital, A apostles. He was, He was the only one
left. He had walked with Jesus.
He was the youngest of the disciples, and he walked with
him and saw all these tremendous miracles, the dead being raised,
the blind eyes being opened, and then Jesus was crucified.
And Can you imagine how that shook the disciples?
They're trying to compute. Wait a minute, man, This guy, we
could see him taking over. We thought the Kingdom was
coming, and now he's dead. And then three days later, it
was bigger than they thought. He raised from the dead.
And then they watch him ascend to the Father.
And then they went into their ministry.
And by this time, John's the only one left.
All the other disciples have been murdered.
They've been all been martyred, hung upside down, crucified, you
know, burned it, burned out the stake.
And now John is the only one left and there.
And now he's doing hard time for preaching the Gospel.
And the mission is still the he's the one that's ruling as
the Caesar in Rome. He's a like most of those guys
are psychos and they're just, they have no value for human
life. They're crushing the vulnerable
under the wheels of history. And the the Roman government is
going on conquering more territory.
And you can imagine how that could have been very
disillusioning for John. Have you ever been there?
You saw great things. You have great promises.
You think that, man, this thing is going to change history.
And as time goes on, you look around you and it's like, man,
this didn't turn out like I thought it would.
I thought things were going to go much faster.
I think that things were going to grow much bigger.
I thought there was going to be much more effect from what I'm
carrying. And so John is now, he's on this
island in Patmos. But it says later on in this
passage she says I was in the spirit on the Lords day.
So even though things hadn't gone the way they planned, John
is still doing the stuff, man. He's still being faithful.
He's having his DeVos. For those of you that don't
know, that means devotions. He's he's that.
That's Teen Challenge talk for doing your DeVos.
You're getting in the word every day, you're praying, you're
getting before the Lord. And John was in the spirit on
the Lord's day. And so he was positioning
himself for encounter. He was positioning himself for
God to reveal himself. The reason John received the
revelation is John positioned himself for one.
So the question is, are you in the Spirit on the Lord's Day?
That's the first thing we've got to fight our way into the
Spirit. First service.
I had someone pray for me, Andy and Melissa, I said, man, pray
for. They said, how you doing?
I said, I'm doing OK, but man, my mind is on 50 million
different things. I need you to pray for me.
And man, they prayed a great prayer, just that God would help
me to get focused. You know, I don't think I'm the
only one. But there's times, man, I'll be
in worship, man, spirit of God's moving.
I'm walking around, people are crying, getting touched.
And then I'm thinking, I got to get my oil changed.
I'm going to get those. You know, I hate that dealing
with the things of this world, they're important, but we've got
to fight for focus and get our mind, get in the spirit on the
Lord's day so that we can receive from the Lord.
And so that's the backdrop of the revelation.
And so I, I know I'm taking a little bit of license thinking
what John was going through, but the fact is he's the only one
left and it would have been very easy for him to think, wow, I'm
a little disillusioned. I thought this was going to go
better. I thought this was going to be
greater. I thought this was going to move
faster and now I'm the only one left.
I'm in prison and he's in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and
the Lord takes him into a fresh revelation of Jesus Christ.
The answer to your problem is a fresh revelation of Jesus
Christ. That's the beginning.
That's not the end, but that's where you need to get.
You need to get in a place where he he fills your vision, where
you are arrested once again by who he is.
I prayed all the time. God save me again.
Lord, I need you to save me all over again.
Lord, I am so easily distracted. I'm prone to wander.
Lord, save me again and God will graciously step in.
And so that's that's the backdrop of what's going on with
John. And so look here in verse of
chapter one, verse 9. And so it says John says, I
John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and in the
Kingdom and the patient endurance are in Jesus.
Stop there. Listen to that.
I John, your brother and partner in what the tribulation, the
Kingdom and impatient endurance. That's a sandwich right there.
I like the meat, meaty middle, the Kingdom, but this
tribulation thing and patient endurance bread, I don't like
that. But John said we're partnering
in this tribulation, the Kingdom and patient endurance that are
in Jesus. All three of those are in him.
Well, I didn't get a lot of amens out of that, did I?
I might need to move on. Here was on the Isle of Patmos
on account of the word of God in the testimony, and I was in the
Spirit on the Lord's Day. And I heard behind me a loud
voice like a trumpet saying, write what you see in a book and
send it to the seven churches. And then he lists them.
So the first encounter John is ushered into, John was the
answer to other people's problems while he was having his
own. And the reason he could be is he
got his eyes focused on the right thing.
He was in the spirit on the Lord's Day.
He positioned himself to get a fresh revelation for his vision
to be consumed with the glory of God and God begin to give him a
download for these seven churches.
And so he writes it down. But then we go to chapter 4 turn
to chapter 4 with me and John is ushered into another encounter.
Now we talked about this a few weeks ago in chapter 3.
John closes the this this initial revelation when he is
preaching to the church at Laodicea and he tells him,
behold, I stand at the door and knock.
Jesus is saying he's knocking at the door of our heart and it's a
door we have to open. It's locked from the inside.
You've got to let him in. But then right after that, John
is ushered into another encounter in chapter 4.
This is not just for the seven churches.
This is this is for the historical church.
It's for John in the moment. It's for the immediate audience
that he's going to send this to, but it's also for you and I.
And this he looks up and he says, behold, there was a door
already opened in heaven. So there's a door you have to
open and there's a door that God has already opened and you will
never open the door in the heavens unless you open the door
in your heart. So he says, after this, I looked
and behold, the door standing open in the heaven.
Man, we read over this stuff and we, we can just breeze by.
Just think of that man. Here's this guy, he's in prison,
he's doing time. He's on the Isle of Patmos.
He's downhearted man. He's he's the last one left.
Rome is still marching on, crushing human, the human
existence. And all of a sudden John's
caught up and he sees an open door and there's an invitation.
And it says, he says, come up here and I will show you what
must take place after this. And he says at once I was in the
spirit. There it is again.
Three times. John says I was in the spirit
and behold a throne in the heavens and one seated on the
throne and now all of a sudden he's ushered into this throne
room vision where he sees the Lord sitting on a throne.
Listen to his description. This is amazing, he says.
Let me see here. Look at verse 3.
And he sat there had the appearance of Jasper and
carnelian, and under the throne was a rainbow that added the
appearance of emerald. Around the throne were 24
Thrones. Seated on the Thrones were 24
elders clothed in white garments with golden crowns on their
heads. From the throne came flashes of
lightnings, rumblings and peals of Thunder.
And before the throne were 7 torches of fire burning, which
are the seven spirits of God. And before the Thrones it was as
this. There were a sea of glass like
crystal around the throne. On each side were these four
living creatures. We won't get into that.
It says they were full of eyes. Dean Briggs mentioned this last
week. And by the way, he doesn't, he
didn't know what I've been preaching about.
God's trying to talk to us. By the way, the worship team
didn't know I was going to preach out of this passage.
When we said open the scroll, you know that that's this
passage. They didn't know God's speaking
to us. Don't miss it.
And so he he sees these four creatures and there look at
verse, verse at the end of verse 8, they're singing holy, holy,
holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.
And whenever the living creatures gave glory and honor
and thanks to him who was seated on the throne, who lives forever
and ever. The 24 elders fell down before
him and they were who were seated on their Thrones and they
worshipped him who lives forever.
And they cast their crowns before him, saying, worthy are
you Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power, For
you have created all things, and by your will, all things existed
and they were created. Man, this is intense.
So John is ushered into this worship meeting in heaven.
Sometimes that's just all we need, man.
We just need to get a good vision of what's going on around
the throne. We're so tuned into what's going
on here. We need to be ushered in.
And I actually think that this passage is where we're at right
now. Yes, yes, yes.
I think this is the juncture that heartland is existing in
right now. Week after week, the Lord has
been causing us to ascend the all of the Lord and come before
the throne. And some of you are aware of it,
and some of you aren't. But you realize there's a whole
lot of heavenly activity around the throne when we began to
worship. And we're simply adding our
worship to what's already going on.
This is not just us down here in our weak, anemic voices.
Oh, Hallelujah, Lord, Hallelujah.
We're down here. We have ascended the hill of the
Lord, and we're adding our voice to what's already going on
around the throne. But there's more, and I believe
the Lord wants us to crossover into something greater.
He's inviting us in. So listen to what it says here.
Verse 5, chapter 5, verse one. Then I saw in the right hand of
him who was seated on the throne, a scroll written and on
the back sealed with 7 seals. He didn't see the throne the the
scroll in the right hand of the one who sits on the throne until
he was in the middle of Heaven's worship service.
There are things you will see in the moments where God is most
lifted up and glorified. All of a sudden your eyes are
open up and you see things clearly.
Sometimes the the thing you need the most is simply to get in
God's presence and see Him glorified.
And when you see Him for who He really is, everything else comes
into focus. Actually, everything else kind
of fades and He comes into focus and those things take their
rightful background role in your life.
And there's something about getting in that place that all
of a sudden our eyes are open and the the language is very
vivid here. It says there was one who sat on
the throne, Speaking of authority.
Obviously it's the throne of the cosmos.
And the one who is seated on the throne has something in his
right hand. That idea of right hand, we
still use it that way. We talk about the right hand
man. Jesus sits at the right hand of
the Father. The right hand is the hand of
power and authority, and Jesus held in his hand the one or not
the Jesus, but the Father sat on a throne and in his right hand
was a scroll. What is that scroll?
The scroll was something that was written.
It had the seals written about around it, those ancient
documents that were little twins that would be wrapped around a
document and then a wax seal. And the witnesses, each one of
the witnesses and this setting it was the seven witnesses, most
likely the seven spirits of God alluded to by the Lord.
You know what those are? I don't know either it there was
this seal on those waxy seriously, I've I've wondered
about that. I've you're kind of discouraged
your pastors up here doesn't even know right.
Well, hey, get used to it. There's a whole lot of things I
don't understand, but he knows we're still pulling on that.
OK, so there's these wax seals. And each witness would put their
stamp in the seal, and it would guarantee that that document was
preserved until the legal time of opening that seal.
And so in this setting though the seal, often the documents
were like will, last will and Testament.
And so it was sealed up until the time that would register the
release and the register and a will was when someone died.
And so it had to be broken, the seals, and then it could be
enforced. And so John is standing here.
He's living in this time where in their minds, early on, they
would have thought a lot more would have happened.
They would have thought that Rome would have toppled the
Kingdom of God would have been set up on earth.
Now everybody's dead. He's the only one.
He's doing hard time. And what he needs is a fresh
encounter. He's brought in the throne room,
and they're not worried up there.
He's taken aback by the glory that he sees.
And then in the midst of this extravagant, intense worship
where lightning bolts are flying out from underneath the throne,
that's intense. All of a sudden he sees
something he didn't see previously.
It wasn't until that worship service of the the four living
creatures and the elders that it says.
Then I saw there was a scroll. That scroll contained the
purposes of God in his hand. And so there's purposes that God
wanted to release from heaven onto the earth.
And the rest of the book is the story about God doing just that.
But there's something that had to take place in fact, earlier
in this passage when, when the, the whoever's talking to John,
whether it was the Lord or an Angel, he really doesn't define.
He does say there was an Angel, but there's also some voices in
there. We're not sure.
I'm not going to surmise who that is.
Verse, chapter 4 verse. Listen to this verse 1 and 2.
After this, I looked and behold the door standing open.
The first voice which I heard speak to me like a trumpet.
Come up here and I will show you what must take place after this.
That word must is spelled DEI, die, to be necessary, to be
unavoidably determined by prior circumstances, sometimes
understood with contingency. In other words, this, this is a
necessity. It's the revelation of a
necessity. The voice said it must take
place. John's ascension was part of
that necessity. There are things that God is
wanting to do. This is what I want us to catch,
that there are things that God wanted to do on the earth that
required John's involvement. And listen, we need to
understand why. Why does God have mentioned all
this? Why does he if, if John is just
here to tell us what God told him, then John could have just
said this is what God said. But that's not the nature of
this book. We have details of John's
interaction and John's response, even his heart response to
what's going on. There's a reason for that
because this is not a one off anomaly that happened
historically, that we look back and think, oh, isn't that
awesome? John got this experience.
We are not cessationists in this room.
We are continuous. We believe that these things
still happen, that God is looking for a people to usher
into His presence so that He can release His purposes on the
earth. And it requires of us some heart
responses that John has recorded for us so that we can enter into
this. Do you believe that this is this
is not something that we look back and think, oh, wow, that
would be awesome if we live then Jesus himself said, it's better
that you live when we do than when they did because he's
giving to us a spirit that will usher us into these kind of
experiences. And whether you realize it or
not, we've been touching this thing Sunday after Sunday.
We've been bumping up against this dynamic.
But I believe there's a something we need to crossover
into. So listen to what he says here
in chapter 5. We read it this morning.
Let's read 51 again. Then I saw the right hand of
him. He was seated on the throne, a
scroll written within and on the back sealed with 7 seals.
And I saw a mighty Angel proclaiming with a loud voice
who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals.
So this Angel yells out with a loud voice, and no one in heaven
or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or
to look into it. That's a wild statement.
OK, I understand nobody under the earth was worthy.
I even understand that nobody on the earth was worthy.
But no one in heaven, nobody in heaven could open that scroll.
No one was worthy. There were sinless angels up
there, but they couldn't touch it.
So the worth was connected to something more than mere
innocence. It wasn't just that they were
innocent. Because later on when the elder
tells John, he says weep no more, He said, because the Lamb
has overcome. So there was this overcoming,
this conquering that had to take place.
You see, somebody had to go through the gauntlet and pass
every test. We've talked about this before
and more from a discipleship perspective, but Oswald
Chambers, some of you have read some of his stuff.
My Utmost for His Highest is one of his great devotionals, but he
has some fascinating teaching on this whole concept of there
being a distinction between innocence and purity.
And he says that innocence is nothing to be bragged about
because it's never been confronted.
It's never had an opportunity to sin, but purity, on the other
hand, has been confronted. It's gone through the fire, it's
been tested, and it maintained its integrity.
It comes out the other side and it's what the New Testament also
refers to as perfected. It means it's completed, that
what was in it by potential had unfolded and been realized.
And that's what Jesus did, the opening of the scroll.
And I don't fully understand why that was a requirement to open
the scroll, but I, I want to tune my ear and realize that
there are certain things that God wants to release on the
earth that only those who have gone through the fire can
access. In fact, there's God won't allow
people to even see those purposes until they get in the
place where Jesus is at the center when he's being
glorified. All of a sudden we begin to see
things we didn't see before. Things come into focus and we
see things properly. And they were asking, is there
anyone worthy? And it says that John began to
weep loudly. John begins to wail.
Why? Because John intuitively
understood where he just came from and the circumstances he
just left behind momentarily, how desperately the world needed
the the purposes of God to be released upon the earth.
And so there's this cry that erupts in John, nobody worthy.
And he understood the desperate need for those purposes to be
released. And they weren't, they, no one
could access them. And that's when the elder comes
and puts his armor on him and says, weep no more, for the lion
of the tribe of Judah hath triumphed over the Prince of
origin. No, that's I'm getting ahead of
myself. The lion of the tribe of Judah
hath triumphed. I'll get there before 1.
And so he tells him, Weep no more.
Now that we've got to be very careful that we don't brush over
that, Let me, we don't have much time.
Let me read you a couple things here, so I'll OK weep no more.
This particular phrase is not a command for all, for few have
wept at all. Let me say it again.
He didn't say don't weep, he said weep no more.
There was a point at which the weeping was necessary, but they
crossed a line in which it was no longer necessary.
And if we're not careful, we accept the comfort of not
weeping when we haven't wept yet, we think that oh, we, we
don't need to be engaged. Jesus already overcame.
Jesus had already overcome before John wept.
So why did he say weep no more? Why didn't he say, hey, that's,
that's not proper up here. You got to be happy.
I think that there is a requirement, an emotional
response required of the human being to release the purposes of
God. And that there are some things
that God wants to do that he must have a people of
wholeheartedness. He must have a people that get
inside this thing and feel his emotion and pray until it is
released. How did I do that?
Man, I almost got way off because I was.
I switched notes. We must jump.
We must not jump to this encouraging word of weep no more
before we've been gripped with the weeping of travail.
We must not embrace the release before we've carried the burden.
Now I was thinking about this this morning.
I'm just going to read you what I was thinking about.
When it comes to commentaries, one can find a plethora of
material on the cultural background and implications of
these passages, but very little commentary on the spiritual
significance of the humans responses.
In other words, you start reading commentaries and they
talk about the scroll and all the little strings and the legal
ramifications and what that meant in the Roman Grecian world
and all this stuff, but they blow right past John weeping.
Why? I'm convinced it's this, the
spiritual psychology, that's what we'll call it, the
psychological emotional response of John when he's in the spirit.
The spiritual psychology must be interpreted by those with
experience in the spirit or the lesson can be easily missed.
So while academics look at that, oh, just blow right past it,
there is a key to unlocking the purposes of God embedded in this
story that is left there for our lesson.
And if we're not careful, we think that, oh, that's just
that's that's for human interest or it's, it's, you know, a
literary filler to fill in the gaps so that we understand what
was said to him and don't realize that's part of the
message for you and I that what John entered into was crucial
for what was happening. The purposes of God were not
seen until John got in a setting where Jesus with the lamb was at
the center, the father was at the center and everybody was
worshipping. And all of a sudden his eyes
were open. He saw the scroll.
And it's very specific. Then I saw the scroll and but
still no one could open it. And everybody began.
John begins to weep. And the elder comes up and says,
now weep no more. Something was released and when
he says the lion of the tribe of Judah, a lamb steps forward.
And now we're off and running. And the rest of the book begins
to unleash on human history. And depending on your
eschatology, you know how much of that is still going on or
still to happen. I'm sure we have people that are
all different stripes in this room.
That's why it takes. I'll tell you what, I'm going
into Wednesday night with fear and trembling.
But the fact is, what unlocks it is the tears of the Saints.
So weep no more, for the lion of the tribe of Judah hath
overcome. I was reading this and could not
help but think of the story of the revival in 1954 in the
country of Argentina. That's why I said the lion of
the tribe of Judah hath triumphed over the Prince of
Argentina, because they heard that very word from the Lord and
it rocked a nation. In fact, I believe that right
now that is one of the key case studies in Kingdom studying
right now. So I I believe the Lord told me
that there are two books that are Kingdom case studies that
are crucial for us to understand in this hour.
One is Reese Hall intercessor and it gives us the keys to
winning wars on our knees, literally world wars, to
steering human history and and deposing dictators through
prayer. Reese Hall Intercessor by Norman
Grubb. The other one is The Secrets of
the Argentine Revival by RE Miller and RE Miller.
Some of you have heard me tell this story.
I'm sorry. I, I only have a little, I have
a small number of stories. I, I talked to a preacher one
time. Some of you know, Norm Wenig, he
told me, he said, Dave, you can preach the same thing again and
again if you tell different stories and different jokes.
I said that's not good. I preach different sermons, but
the same stories and the same jokes.
So anyway, but Ari Miller was an American missionary down in
Argentina back in the late 40s. He had labored there for many
years and pretty much saw no fruit.
And he had eased his conscience think, you know, telling them
all these reasons why himself, all these reasons why his
ministry wasn't fruitful. Well, these people are gospel
hardened. They, they've heard it before.
They've already backslidden there.
That's why otherwise we would see fruit.
And he just kept telling them all the giving himself all these
excuses. Then one time him and a buddy
went out to an area of Argentina where the gospel had never been
preached before. They set up a tent.
And after three days, nobody got saved.
The people mocked them and he had to come face to face with
his own barrenness, the lack of fruit out of his life and he it
broke him and he cried out to God and he was wrestling with
this lie. What he was toying with is, is
it that there's just some special people who are anointed
those those few people who have a a unique touch of God.
And then there's the rest of us normal Joes that life just
happens to us and we watch the big hitters and we're spectators
and then we die. He was living in an era of
people like Catherine Coleman and some of the others that had
these tremendous healing ministries and he had eased his
conscience just kind of got out from underneath that burden by
buying into the sly. But God was challenging him and
the Lord spoke to him and said, if you will pray and fast like
you've worked on the field, if you'll spend that much time in
my, in my presence, praying and fasting, I will use you
powerfully. I'll show you.
So he made a commitment. I'm going to start praying 8 to
10 hours a day. So he locked himself away,
started fasting, praying, studying the word and just
crying out to God, learning to pray.
And this went on for one, two, 3-4 months.
The other missionary started getting irritated because he
wasn't pulling his weight. Yeah.
Oh, sure. You're in the secret place.
I understand. Like he's just back there taking
naps, but he's crying out to God.
And I don't remember the exact timeline.
I want to say it was about the nine month mark.
He hit a he hit a wall and he said, God, I can't do this
anymore. I'm done.
If you don't move by. I want to say it was midnight.
It might have been like 9:00. But he said, Lord, if you don't
move by this time today, I'm going to take that as a sign
I've been deceived. I was imagining all this.
And indeed, I am just the normal Joe, and you only use special
people. So he was praying that day,
trying to stay in the pocket, you know, be faithful until that
hour came. And it's getting closer and
closer, and he's getting more and more depressed, coming to
terms with, yes, I was deceived and I am just a normal Joe, not
God's not going to use me. And about 15 minutes till his
deadline, there's a knock on the door.
He opens it and there's an Argentine pastor with his
backslidden son and he says, Pastor Miller, I need you to
talk to my son. He's backsliding.
He's running from God. There's a kid listening to all
this, you know, parents are preach to my son and the kids
being dragged in there. And Arne Miller, he, he, he was
so broken hearted. He had no desire.
He had nothing in him to give. But just out of deference to his
friend, he sat down and starts talking to this young man.
And all of a sudden the power of God hits the kid and he gets
radically saved. And the Lord spoke to him and to
Ari Miller and said, I can use you whenever I want now get back
to doing what I told you to do. God graciously gave him that
little nugget, that little little breadcrumb to hold on to.
And he went back in prayer for a couple more months.
And then finally it this was the story where then the Lord said,
OK, call a prayer meeting at a very inopportune time, very
inconvenient time. Four people signed up, 3 ladies
and one of their husbands who wasn't even saved.
They're going to have prayer meetings, 2 hour prayer
meetings. He's arguing with the Lord.
Lord, let's at least have it a convenient time.
Just do what I say. So they do it.
They're praying. It's like dusty dry crickets.
You ever been to one of those permits?
I've LED a lot of those permits, OK, you know.
And so they're, they're praying for two hours and then finally
everybody come for OK, did anybody get anything?
Nope, Nope, Nope. Of course, the unsaved guy.
Absolutely. Nope.
And then his wife says, yeah, I just had this weird impression.
I wanted to punch the table over there, but of course I'd never
do that. That's so weird.
And it's just not proper for a lady to do.
And Ari's like, hey, just do it. No, I wouldn't do that.
That's weird. So he can't talk.
OK, let's go home. Same thing the next night.
Anybody get anything? Nope.
Of course Nope.
And I just had that desire. So the next night he says, OK,
we're going to do a prophetic act tonight.
We're going to March around the table and everybody's going to
punch this table as an act that we're praying for revival.
Everybody goes, punches the table, boom, boom, boom.
Her unsaved husband, boom. And that Lady, she still hasn't
done it yet. They said, he said just punch
the table. She hits the table and the power
of God hits her husband. He's thrown under the table.
He was saved before he landed. And if I remember that he was
already speaking in tongues on its way down and he got
radically saved and that all of a sudden something broke and
they started having wonderful meetings.
They had their small church began to be visited.
Other churches started inviting them.
And it's starting to spread among these little bitty
churches. And they're like, this is what
we've longed for. And the Lord said, shut it down
going to the Bible school and began to teach the students how
to pray. And he's like, Lord, this is do
what I say, yes, Sir. So he starts teaching at the
Bible school. And one night, a young German
student, it was in the middle of the night, he got up, he was
restless. He went out, out of the compound
because it was a walled compound around the Bible school.
And he walked out into a field and he was crying out to God.
And all of a sudden, this Angel appeared to him and scared him
spitless. He screamed, started running, he
ran back into the compound and as soon as he crossed the
threshold of the compound, the Angel is coming right behind
him. When the Angel entered the
compound, every student that was dead asleep rolled out of their
bed simultaneously and began to just cry out to God.
This just travail hit the whole school they went into.
I believe it was 7 days of just intense travail.
And at times that Angel would appear, he'd just stand in the
corner of the room, and this one young man would speak in tongues
the language he heard from the Angel, and another young man
would dictate what he's saying. He would give the
interpretation. And they all knew that they
weren't making this up even when they didn't see the Angel,
because the young man who was given the interpretation was a
very, very uneducated young man with a very small vocabulary.
But he spoke very eloquently with big academic words.
So finally after a few days, I thought, man, we need to write
this stuff down because it was all about prophecies of what God
was going to do across the earth.
They prayed and prayed and prayed.
They were. There was such a travail that
came over them. They would weep for days.
There's one of the stories, there was a young man leaning
against a cinder block wall crying.
After about two hours, literally the cinder block that would
absorb the tears would now wet to the touch and he was just
still crying. They said after 8 hours, he was
literally standing in a puddle of his own tears.
That's physically impossible. But they were so gripped by a
burden. God had gripped their hearts and
they were crying out. And it was, I believe on the 7th
day of their prayer, there was a prophetic word and this is what
it said. It's right out of this passage.
Weep no more for the lion of the tribe of Judah.
That's what I said earlier. Hath triumphed over the Prince
of Argentina. And Ari Miller said once that
word was released, he said we couldn't have worked up a tear
if we tried. There was such a joy that came
in the room that the the weeping, the travail lifted and
they knew they had the victory. Matter of fact, they saw a
vision of Eva Peron, the the occult witch dictator's wife,
who was introducing witchcraft at every level of government.
She was appointing witches and warlocks into all their
government. They had a vision of her pulling
your hair out, cursing God and dying.
And that's exactly what happened.
She was a 30 year old woman that just had had hardened her heart
and was introducing witchcraft. And within nine months of that
prophetic word, they were filling the largest stadiums in
Argentina, Hurricane Stadium, if I'm not mistaken, Sat 110,000.
I've got pictures of it where it was filled to the rafters and
thousands of people outside revival swept that nation.
And what the what had happened is there was a an American
evangelist by the name of Tommy Hicks that God called to go
there. And he, I won't go into all the
details because we're already over, but the Lord had given him
a word to go see Mr. Peron, and that would be the key.
And Peron, he didn't know who it was.
He asked the stewardess on the plane.
She said, he's our president. He went to the presidential
palace, talked to a guard. The guard got healed, not
knowing that he was the primary bodyguard of the president,
said, come back tomorrow, I'll get you in.
Went in to see the president. The president's skin was all
cracked and oozing from this terrible bout of eczema.
And so he said, I heard you healed my guard.
He said, no, Sir, Jesus did. Can you heal me?
He said, yes, Sir, give me your hand, He said, in the name of
Jesus. And they said his hand became
like baby skin right before their eyes.
And the president said, you can have all the arenas, you can
have all the transportation, you can have the media, whatever you
need. And God rocked that nation.
Now why am I bringing that up? Because I believe it is a
historical case study of what John is teaching us here.
John didn't just leave us what God said.
He gave us the details of what triggered that.
And those all, all those things are lessons to you and I that
there must be the emotional engagement of the people of God
that there's go ahead and stance.
You know, I'm going to quit. Years ago, I read a book called
Visioneering, and this phrase was worth the price of the book.
This is what it said. What could be is an idea.
What should be is a dream. What must be is a vision.
I believe that is an expression of three levels of prayer.
There's a whole lot of could be praying.
We pray, man. God, that'd be neat.
That'd be awesome, man, if revival came, Lord, if you could
work that out, that'd be awesome.
But I've got other things to do. We're able to leave it there,
and the fact is we can't work that stuff up, but we certainly
can't avail ourselves to the Lord and ask Him to give us His
heart, his burden. And then there's that should be
kind of praying, where all of a sudden our heart is gripped and
it's harder to leave that at the altar.
We find ourselves becoming burdened by that and we find
ourselves sneaking off at work for a few moments just to pray a
few more minutes. That old blue Ingle rock comes
over us. You know, we're, we're crying
out to God. But what needs to happen is that
must be praying where we're so gripped that we're we'll, we'll
wrap our things around it and we'll become a living,
breathing, walking expression of that request.
And I, I truly believe that we're at a juncture as a church,
we've been bumping up against this.
We've been stepping into the throne room, whether you realize
it or not. But what God is looking for are
those who will give themselves wholeheartedly.
And I believe the I've been asking the Lord for 23 years for
two things for this church. Number one, God grant us
Apostolic authority for this region to break things open in
the Spirit and #2 roll out the canons of travail.
Lord, release travail. Grant us the ability to pray
this stuff through so till we're so gripped by it that we will
not let go until we have the answer.
So that's what I want to pray this morning.
If you would just raise your hands, Father.
Lord, I'm asking for an impartation from heaven.
Lord, just as you did with Isaiah, you took a coal off the
altar and touched it to his lips.
Father, we ask that you would take a coal off the altar and
put it in our heart. Father that you would give us a
burden. Lord, that we would travail,
that we would be able to give ourselves.
Lord, we're not looking to manufacture anything, but we
want to receive everything. So, Lord, I ask that you would
grip our hearts, Lord, and that you would begin to move us
towards your purposes, Lord. Lord, I thank you for what
you've been doing in worship. Lord, I ask that you'd open the
eyes of our understanding that we'd have a greater perception
of what's going on around us and Lord, that you would usher a
sin. Lord, don't let us be deceived
by faulty theology that relieves us of our responsibility in
Jesus name, Amen. Thanks for listening to our
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