Revival's Golden Key (23 page)

It seems rather that Jesus, in His usual consistency, is speaking of true and false conversions as He did in the Parable of the Sower, the Wise and Foolish Virgins, the Wheat and Tares, the Good and Bad Fish, the Goats and Sheep, and the Wise and Foolish House Builders. He again uses the word “many” here in describing them, as He did when speaking of the “workers of lawlessness” He never knew (Matthew 7:22,23).

Remember to what Jesus likened the kingdom of God? He said, “It is like a man going to a far country, who left his house and gave authority to his servants, and to each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch” (Mark 13:34). The doorkeeper should keep the door. He should “watch
,
” to allow in only those who should enter. Instead, we have forsaken our watch.

Acceptable Fodder

Again, the false convert is like the Prodigal Son
before
he understood that his appetites were base, that he had “sinned against heaven” and in his father’s sight. Be-cause modern evangelism fails to show him heaven’s holy standard, he doesn’t see that his sin is against God, so he thinks it is quite acceptable to desire “pig food.” He returns to his father, but his heart is still with the harlots. He chooses to be with the people of God, and to secretly enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. He also finds it easier to lie (white lies) than to speak the truth, easier to steal (white-collar crime) than to pay for something, easier to lust than be holy, easier to live for himself than for others, easier to feed his mind on the things of the world rather than the things of God.

The professing convert’s mind is on the things of the flesh
because he is still “bound by iniquity,”
as was Simon the sorcerer (Acts 8:23). Like Simon, he may believe, associate with the apostles, and see the miracles of God.

He may pass through the waters of baptism and impress many with his subtle trickery, but those who understand the Parable of the Sower and its broad implications are not swayed. They see beyond his sleight-of-hand illusion into reality. They can see, to their horror, that the Church by preaching a Lawless gospel is ushering multitudes through hell’s broad gate... a gate that is oiled smooth by modem evangelism.

Nehemiah chose two men to be in charge of gathering citizens for Jerusalem. Their names were
Hanani
, which means
gracious,
and
Hananiah
, which means
Jah
(Jehovah) has
favored
.
Scripture tells us that
Hananiah
was faithful and that he feared God. This was what Ne-
hemiah
charged them: “Do not let the gates of Jerusalem be opened until the sun is hot” (Nehemiah 7:2
,3
). God has
favored
humanity with the gospel of grace. Those faithful servants who fear God will seek citizens for the New Jerusalem, and they will not open the gates until the sun is hot. They will let the heat of the Law do its most necessary work.

CHAPTER 21

RAIDERS OF THE
CONTENTS
OF THE LOST ARK

A
s I sat in my car, I really did expect to receive a punch in the face. I had screened a series of television advertisements, warning of rock music that advocated violence and murder. One of the groups that stirred me to do so was called “The Dead Kennedys.” The lyrics to one of their songs went:

I kill children. I love to watch them die. I kill children, make their mommas cry. Crush them under my
car,
I love to hear them scream. Feed them poison candy, spoil their Halloween.

The advertisements had caused me to wonder if I would get my face rearranged by someone who didn’t like what I had done. Now a gentleman in his forties, with a clenched fist and a determined look on his face, was making his way toward my car.

As he approached the open window of my vehicle, he looked me in the eye and asked, “Are you Ray Comfort?” I meekly said that I was. Then, without saying a word, he lifted his large clenched fist, thrust it toward me through the
window, ...
and
dropped $20 in my lap.
Then he walked off without a word.

It would seem that God delights in bringing victory out of what appear to be disastrous situations. Israel stood at the Red Sea, trapped, with no possible way of escape. Then God did the impossible. He brought victory out of what seemed to be a sure fist in the face. Daniel found himself in a pit of ferocious lions. Once again, God brought victory in the face of what appeared to be a devastating situation. Jesus of Nazareth had been crucified. The disciples had been scattered. It seemed that the body had been stolen.
How much darker could life become?
It was then that God revealed the brilliant light of the resurrection. He brought the ultimate victory out of the ultimate disaster.

Criminal Moral Code

The story is told of a mother who rushed her 10-month-old baby, who had an acute case of
diarrhea
, to a hospital near her village in Bogota, Colombia. When she came to get her baby the next day, his eyes were bandaged and he was covered with splotches of blood. Horrified, she asked what was wrong with the boy, and was coldly dismissed by a doctor who told her that the child was dying.

In a panic, she raced her baby to another doctor who examined his wounds and said, “They’ve stolen his eyes!”

Her baby was the victim of “organ-napping,” where eyes are removed and the corneas sold on the black market. In one sense the baby was fortunate—most victims are murdered.

In 1980, when the Ten Commandments were re-moved from the schools of the United States, the eyes of an entire generation were removed. The “Commandment is a lamp, and the Law a light” (Proverbs 6:23), and removal of the Law left a generation in the dark as to moral absolutes. We now live at a time when a breed of human beings can kill, steal, hate,
dishonor
their parents, and revile God without qualms of conscience.

In June 1993, six teenage gang members in northwest Houston raped and killed two girls ages 14 and 16. The leader of the gang, Peter Cantu (age 19), boasted how he and other members abducted the two young girls, raped and sodomized them before strangling them. According to their testimony, “It took a while for them to die.” They kicked one girl in the mouth with a steel boot, knocking out three of her teeth,
then
strangled her with a belt until it broke. They strangled the other girl with a shoelace. Then they took turns stomping on their necks to make sure they died. These heinous crimes are all too common in our lawless society.

Today’s generation doesn’t just lack the moral values of its grandparents; it doesn’t have
any
moral values. In previous years, there was a “moral” code even among criminals, that when you stole from someone, you didn’t blast him with your gun as you left. This is not so nowadays. We are daily reminded that what one generation permits the next embraces as normality. Years ago, a woman would hesitate to walk in front of a group of men for a concern that they would undress her with their eyes. Nowadays, her fear is that she will be viciously raped, sodomized, and murdered.

In light of the statistics we looked at in the beginning of this book, it would seem that the enemy has removed from the Body of Christ its ability to be salt and light in a dark and decaying world. Jesus warned that if salt lost its flavor, it would be good for nothing except to be trampled underfoot by men. This is why so many hold the Church in con-tempt. The world has trampled us underfoot, and is reaping terrible consequences.

We are living in times of gross darkness, but remember, this is not a “God-forsaken” world—it is a world that has forsaken God. He can, in His great sovereignty, open Satan’s clenched fist and drop the riches of revival in the lap of the Church. Eric W. Hayden, in his book
Spurgeon on Revival,
wrote, “Almost every book dealing with spiritual awakening or a revival of history begins by describing the pre-revival situation in approximately the same words. For instance, you will read such words as these: ‘The darkness before the dawn’; ‘
The
sleep of midnight and gross darkness’; or ‘dissolution and decay.
’
W. T. Stead, who was a child of the Welsh Revival of 1859, when writing of the later revival in the twentieth century, said of it: ‘Note how invariably the revival is preceded by a period of corruption.’”

There is great hope for the masses of false converts who sit within the Church. It is a rich field of evangelistic
endeavor
. The fact that they are still there is a testimony to the fact that they remain open to the things of God. History shows us that virtually every major revival of the past has been birthed out of a great awakening of those who thought they were saved, but were not. I have seen this teaching awaken many false converts as to their true state. God has soundly saved them, and from there they have begun to be the witnesses they are commanded to be.

Enemy Attack

In closing, let me share with you some insightful words from Martin Luther. When speaking of using the Law as a schoolmaster to bring sinners to Christ, he said, “This now is the Christian teaching and preaching, which God be praised, we know and possess, and it is not necessary at present to develop it further, but only to offer the admonition that it be maintained in Christendom with all diligence.
For Satan has attacked it hard and strong from the beginning until present, and gladly would he completely extinguish it and tread it underfoot”
(emphasis added).

The enemy has duped the Church into believing that it is advancing by getting decisions for Christ. What has actually happened is that he has invaded our ranks and stripped the gospel of its power. The ark has been raided.

John Wesley said to those who forsook the Law in its capacity to prepare the heart for grace:

O take knowledge what Satan hath gained over thee; and, for the time to come, never think or speak lightly of, much less dress up as a scarecrow, this blessed instrument of the grace of
God.
Yea, love and value it for the sake of Him from whom it came, and of Him to whom it leads. Let it be thy glory and joy, next to the cross of Christ. Declare its praise, and make it
honorable
before all men.

I know that his words are true. The enemy hates this teaching. I have many examples of the enemy’s resistance, but one stands out in my mind. For years as I spoke on this subject, we tried to get a master audio-tape of this teaching so we could share it with others. Each time we listened to the tape, we would find a mysterious “buzz” running through it, or a fifteen second silence in the middle of an important illustration. How-ever, in the late nineties, I spoke at a large church in Chicago that had a sophisticated sound system. They gave me a one hour audio master with no flaws on the entire tape. That is, except for an eight-word sentence that had to be removed because it was cut in half when the sound man turned over the tape. That eight-word sentence that had to be deleted from a one hour teaching was: “Satan doesn’t want you to hear this teaching.” The devil is quite happy if the Church sings of the power of the presence of God. But remember that in the Old Testament, the
ark of the covenant
signified His presence. It wasn’t the ark that God prized; it was what the ark
contained.
Have you ever wondered why it was that God manifested Himself in such a glorious way that the priests in the house of the Lord could not minister (1 Kings 8:10
,11
)? It happened when the priests brought in the
ark of the covenant
. Scripture tells what was in the ark:

Nothing was in the ark except the two tablets of stone which Moses put there at Horeb (v. 9).