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Lecture 1
We've got a good crowd here today. I see your faces in the spirit. It's wonderful that we can still continue to preach and minister, though that our numbers are reduced and we're locked down.
I thank God that he's given us the ability and also the experience to continue to minister the word as though we are preaching to a crowd. Because as we live stream and reach the world, we are indeed preaching to a crowd. There's no difference.
Today, because of the lockdown, many are not able to do this anymore. Preachers are sitting ministering from home, sitting in a situation that is really not quite the same as preaching. I find it difficult for me to sit and share and have the same kind of anointing and power as when I stand up and preach.
So I thank God that we have the opportunity to continue to preach in spite of the situation. The devil in my message today resurrected to what? I want to read one scripture from Psalm 118 verses 8 and 9. It says, it is better to trust in the Lord Yahweh than to put confidence in humanity. It is better to trust in the Lord Yahweh than to put confidence in princes.
Because of the situation we all find ourselves in today and isn't it amazing that all over the world we can identify with one another. You know, so often we think of our circumstance and we think of people that at the end of the world they're in their own circumstance. But today when we speak about the virus, about the lockdown, about the deaths, everything that's going on, everybody all over the world from the highest, from the leaders of the land down to the lowest, we all know what you're talking about because it's affected and impacted every one of us.
And I'm afraid there are also some misconceptions and some confusions especially in the body of Christ concerning this whole thing. People have been asking why did God allow this? Why did God not warn us ahead of time to be prepared for it? What does God require of us to do right now? Now before we look at that today in some detail, I want to start by telling you what God does not want us to do and I want to correct some misconceptions and some misunderstandings that I've seen many believers fall into as a result of this pandemic. Firstly, this pandemic is not a hoax and it's not a conspiracy created by some person or some nation to take over the world.
People are working on that all the time. Yes, there are conspiracies. There are people in high places that are trying to pull strings.
But this virus is more than that. So don't get sidetracked on all this propaganda that you're hearing and trying to find out who we can blame. Was it the Chinese that made this virus so they could take over the world? Was it all the wealthy people who made the virus so they could take control of the finances of the world? I don't believe any of that is true.
I know that as a result of it many of them are trying to manipulate and use the situation to get better control and that's always been here. Now listen, just because you don't know anyone who's contracted the COVID-19 doesn't mean that it's not real. You know when it first started out it was so far from us we felt it wouldn't touch us.
Well you know it was there in China. You know a couple of other countries they got it but you know we in South Africa we seem to be immune. We were one of the last countries to get it.
But it arrived. Some people are believing that the whole thing is a hoax, that the numbers that are being published of people who are contracting this disease and the number of people are dying that it's all fictitious figures used to manipulate us. Again it's possible.
It's possible that some nations have not fully revealed the truth. But no folks this virus is here and it's real. Stop listening to the political agendas that are trying to get you sidetracked.
People are dying each day and actually it's nothing new. Men are simply taking advantage of this for their own benefit. Now pandemics of this nature have come and gone through the years.
If you want to know a little bit more just go into Google and type influenza pandemics and you'll see that there's been many of them. One of the most serious was the one that took place in 1918 in which anywhere between 20 and 100 million people died. Since then there's been many more and from what I can see and count this is the fifth main pandemic that has been experienced in the last 100 years.
These things come and go all the time. Each one of them having their own flavor and this one certainly has a new flavor in that it is very, very addictive, not addictive, contagious and it affects a certain part of the body more than others. But it's still a pandemic.
People have faced these before and come through them. Now this one I want to hit right on the head. This is not a sign of the end times.
The rapture is not about to take place and Jesus is going to come and rescue us out of this. Folks we were all born in the end times. Everyone listen to this right now.
We were born in the end times. We've seen a manifestation of this kind of thing all our lives and every five minutes when something serious happens some person's got to jump on the theological bandwagon and say Jesus is coming soon. Get ready.
These are the end times. Listen we're nowhere near ready. Seeing the church being ready for Jesus to return.
Nowhere is the church anywhere near ready. Jesus could come tonight and he won't. He won't.
He may not even come in our lifetime and if he does we'll praise the Lord. We go to heaven but you see people their hope is being taken away. If the Lord is coming tomorrow or next week or if this is the sign of the end times and we got at least three and a half or seven years when the tribulation takes place, well why should I get married? Why should I have a career? Why should I prepare for ministry? Why don't I just sit and wait for it to all happen? You know the prime urgency of the leadership of the body of Christ is to prepare the bride of Christ by putting every believer in their right place and equipping them to do their part in making the church the spotless bride without blemish that Jesus is coming to receive.
There's a great danger to emphasizing the end times especially at a time like this. Why? Because it uses fear to motivate people. Well don't you know that fear is the force of Satan not of God.
God doesn't use fear. God's power is shown in love and if you're afraid, if you're afraid that Jesus is coming, if you're afraid that you're not ready, if you're afraid that you have failed, that doesn't come from the Lord. He doesn't work that way and then it produces complacency as I said or it just produces false works.
I'm going to work really hard now because I'm afraid. I'm going to put an extra effort in now because I'm afraid. Fear is never a good motivation folks, never to serve the Lord ever.
Our motivation should always be love. The scripture says perfect love casts out all fear. An extra misconception.
God is not judging the world and the church because of their sin. Now I want you to realize that God has set laws in motion. Laws like the law of gravity.
Laws like Newton's laws and all the things that the scientists have discovered. There are laws which when we violate them, they automatically bring a judgment. If you put your hand in the fire the judgment comes from the fire.
It burns you. When your child puts their hand in the fire you say I'm going to give you a hiding. I'm going to discipline you now for putting your hand in the fire.
You don't need to do that. He already got disciplined. There are things that will bring an automatic discipline when we step out of line with the way God has set things up in this world but God does not deliberately bring his judgment upon us especially not his church because of their sin.
I'm going to tackle the scripture that people are quoting all over the place and I've heard this proclaimed for years. I'm going to read you the part everybody loves to quote. In 2nd Chronicles chapter 7 and verse 14 it says if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
People are quoting this scripture now in relation to the coronavirus and they are saying we must repent and ask God to heal our land. Open your bible and read the verse that came before that. It goes like this 2nd Chronicles 7 30.
If I shut up heaven so that there is no rain or if I command the locusts to destroy the land or if I send a plague among the people if then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves. This is an old testament passage folks. It was given to the nation of Israel who are required to obey God's laws and God sent judgments upon them.
He withheld the rain. He sent locusts and plagues. This only applies when God sends judgment on his people.
On his people it says. What I want to tell you God sent his judgment on his people over 2,000 years ago on a cross where his own son hung on that cross and took the full brunt of the full judgment of God and when Jesus hung there he said it is finished. God will never judge his church again except to give them a reward one day when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ and we will be rewarded according to our works and given different levels of reward but we'll never be judged for our sin because Jesus took the penalty for our sin.
We are no living under no longer living under the old covenant folks. Jesus took away the curse on Calvary besides the church did not cause the problem. They actually simply failed to stop it.
I'll be sharing more on that. You know while we concentrate on our failures we struggle under condemnation and Satan's got us right where he wants us feeling weak and frail and a useless failure and somebody that God can't use. Folks it's not a time for repentance.
It's a time for taking what we have and rising up and using it to conquer this enemy standing against us. So what are the main causes of COVID-19? A man of God who blazed the trail in the early days of the healing ministry was a man by the name of Earl Roberts. Many people hero worshiped him.
Others hated him. He was known to say things that upset a lot of people and to this day people are still criticizing him but you know Earl Roberts had a basic philosophy and a doctrine which I don't think we can ever fault and this was his famous famous saying. God is a good God and the devil is a bad devil and Earl Roberts key saying was something good is going to happen to you.
Expect it because God wants to bless you. Scripture says in John 10 and verse 10 the thief comes to do nothing but steal kill and destroy. I came so that they may continually have Zoe life and have it in far greater measure.
God is not the author of the pandemic. God is not the author of death and curses. He's the author of blessing and life.
Are we saying well God's judging us so we must repent. Oh Satan is so clever. He's got us right where he wants us.
He produces it and then we blame God for it. Oh our foolish folks. Now we failed.
Yes we failed. We didn't fail in the way everybody's getting in and saying well there must be sin in my life. No no.
No the church has failed and I want to point out some of the areas that the church has failed and because of that failure not God has judged but because of that failure a door was open for Satan to get in and destroy. There's a big difference between those two. The church has become just like the world.
We've sought our own desires first. We built a name for ourselves and lifted ourselves up instead of lifting up the Lord. We've been caught in the motivation for fortune and fame just like the world.
The strong have dominated and they've suppressed the weak. You know sometimes we become no different to the animals where survival of the fittest is the rule and so today the strong rule. The strong rise up and are seen and are known.
The strong prosper and most of the time they do it at the expense of the weak. Only the beautiful people are lifted up and promoted. Shepherds dominate and keep their sheep dumb because that's the nature of sheep to be dumb isn't it? You stupid sheep just do what you're told.
I am the shepherd here and I will say what we're going to do and you just follow me and obey because I'm the shepherd. Oh folks you got it so wrong. You got it so wrong.
I'm not denying that God raises up shepherds but I want to tell you every sheep in God's sight is equal. Every sheep in God's sight has the same right to blessing. Because of the structure of the status quo church there is no protective network.
Now it's human nature to go this way. Many years ago when God raised up the first great pastor, the first great shepherd, the one to lead the flock of God, the nation of Israel and by the name of Moses. Moses stood up as the great strong leader, gave the words of God to the people, fed the sheep and led them.
And if the sheep had a problem they'd come to Moses because Moses was the only one who could hear from God. Moses is the only one who was trained and had the wisdom to be able to counsel them and help them. Moses father-in-law came to visit him the one day and he never got a chance to even speak to Moses because he had to wait all day in line while all the people lined up to have their turn to go and speak to Moses and tell him their problems.
And he pointed out to Moses, hey you got it all wrong Moses. Moses you're going to kill yourself. This is so foolish.
Why don't you set this up correctly. Moses you've set yourself up for failure. The scripture says smite the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered when it all depends on the shepherd.
The sheep are destined to disaster and it's so easy for the enemy to take one person out, one person and destroy the whole flock. Moses learned to set up a chain of command. He broke the people up into groups of 10 and appointed leaders over them.
He broke them up into groups of 100 and appointed leaders over them. He broke them up into groups of a thousand and put leaders over them and he said if you have a problem go to your immediate leader. If your immediate leader cannot solve the problem your immediate leader will go to his leader.
So the leader of 10 if he couldn't solve it would go to the leader of a hundred which was his leader and he would ask for advice and then pass it down. And if the leader of 100 couldn't handle it they'd go up to the leader of a thousand and only if that guy didn't have the answer would they finally bring it to Moses. Now if you wanted to destroy the flock and you hit one of those leaders, if you hit a leader of 10 you only wiped out 10, 11 people.
If you happen to succeed in hitting a leader of 100 you only wiped out 101 people. If you really succeeded in hitting the leader of a thousand you wiped out a thousand and one. The rest of the million were intact and you see there's a protection in setting up a structure and a network where each person knows their place and fulfills it and their function and their float together is one big.
Even the army knows how to do this. Even unbelievers know. Even in the army you look to your lowest your immediate rank and from there it goes up the ranks until it gets to the top.
Imagine the president of the country taking time every day to get emails from people and to be on chat in our modern society so you give them advice and counsel. How foolish. We're trying to do that in the church and no we're not trying to give the people counsel because I'm too busy.
I'm the big man at the top. I've got my thousands of congregation here and I don't have time and yes we appoint our little assistant pastors but I'm the senior pastor and the assistant pastor basically is doing all the dirty work that I don't feel like doing. There's a big difference there.
I'm going to be looking at that more as we go on. I just want to show you the picture as it is. The best solution for an army that is powerful is for every soldier to be an expert in something.
I've shared this many times in my ministry and I want to share it in context now. Many years ago I watched the Spartacus movie, the original one with Kirk Douglas acted in. If you've never seen it go and look it up and and watch it for this spiritual lesson.
Spartacus was a slave who was sold to become a gladiator. He was trained to be a powerful fighter for one purpose for some wealthy person to come and say I want this gladiator to fight that one until one dies. They had to fight to the death.
That means those guys had to be well trained and fit and very good fighters. There were no ordinary soldiers. They were experts.
The time came when Spartacus and the prisoners with him they rebelled and they broke out of their prison and they went out and they began to find other groups of slaves that had been bound and they attacked and freed them. And as they freed those slaves they brought them into their camp and they trained each one of them to become a gladiator like themselves. And there they went to find another group and another group until eventually Spartacus was the leader of a small army where every single soldier in that army was an expert, was a gladiator, was a, if you like, a professional fighter.
And Spartacus' little army of about 20,000 people came against the legions of Rome. The legions of Rome trembled in their boots. They were no match for that kind of army, small as what it was.
Now I've believed for many years and I've taught and I've preached and we set up this ministry to train people to fall into this pattern. Every single one who comes in to be trained must be trained to the highest level they can reach. Have you come in as a private? The idea is not to train you as a private, it's to train you to start as a private and move up through the ranks.
And there's nothing to stop you moving as high up the ranks as you're capable or desire if you're prepared to pay the price. We don't do that in the church, do we? We say I'm the pastor, I'm the senior pastor, you're the assistant pastors, you're the deacons, and we'll keep the structure that way. And as long as I have people to preach to who will pay their tithes and support the ministry, things are going to be fine.
What happens if that senior pastor is suddenly taken away? And it's happened. Could drop while preaching, fall dead. It's happened.
What happens to the church? The flock is scattered because nobody knows how to lead that way. Nobody's been given a chance to rise up. I'm afraid that's what's happened in the body of Christ, folks.
Out of the millions of believers that there are in this world, one tiny little fraction have been trained in warfare. One tiny little fraction have been given the principles of the word of God and have been encouraged to tap into the power of the Holy Spirit and to rise up and to lead and to do the of the ministry. The rest are considered too uneducated, too foolish, too weak, too incapable.
After all, I can't have every one of you come and stand behind the pulpit and preach because I'm the preacher. Only one person can preach and we'll keep it just the way it is. And we can build our congregation and make it huge.
Wow, it makes my preaching so much better. Oh, there's a feeling, there's a vibe about preaching to a crowd, isn't there? Now, there's a place for that and I'm not saying we shouldn't have that. But I'm saying that God wants us to get back to his order.
I'm going to get to that shortly. In the pattern of Moses, we're beginning to see perhaps a picture of how it should look. Now, as I look to the Lord concerning the circumstance that we all find ourselves in and people are each taking it upon themselves to attack this demonic power that is behind COVID-19 and we're hoping that we can rout it and send it off so that we can get back to normal.
Come on, what is your prayer today, believer? Oh, that we could get back to normality. Oh, that I could just have normal. We can go back to our normal, wonderful church services where we can enjoy the worship group and the wonderful preaching of the word and go home again.
I can just have a normal job and a career because I'm sick and tired of sitting at home, being stuck with my family, not being able to do anything. It was probably fun in the beginning after a couple of weeks, some of the stresses begin to show. You know why? Because we've neglected that part of our life.
We don't know how to deal with it. This is what it looks like, folks. There is a set of balances in the spirit and Satan has dumped a big chunk of lead on the one side.
The balances are sitting like this. If we're going to get the balance to swing, to destroy this thing, we're going to have to start putting some weights on the side of the balance. We're going to have to put what's needed to push this thing out.
Until the balance swings, the problem will remain. Oh Lord, I just wish you'd make the balance swing. I'm afraid not.
That's in your hands. That's in your hands. And it's going to take time and it's going to take growth.
We need to start by mobilizing all of our spiritual resources. We must learn to amplify those three main spiritual forces, which are faith and hope and love, because they're too weak. They must be amplified and magnified.
Now, crying out to the Lord's just not enough, folks. We have to release his will into the earth. How do we do that? We authorize his power in the earth.
You know, we're praying for God to do something, but I want to tell you something. God does nothing in this earth except he uses the human channel. Whatever God does in this world, he does through a human vessel.
That's the way he's set it up. He's put man as the authority in this world. And until we release God's authority and allow God to work by making ourselves available to him, God is, I hate to say powerless, because he has all power.
God is restricted from manifesting that power in this world because he's chosen to do it only through human channels. God's will must be decreed and burst into this world before we can say thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. A powerful part of the Lord's prayer was not a request.
I preached on the Lord's prayer before. I'm not going to cover it now, but every statement of the Lord's prayer is not a request. It's a command.
Thy kingdom come. Not, Lord, please let your kingdom. No, thy kingdom come.
I'm authorizing it. I'm commanding it. Thy will be done.
I'm authorizing it. I'm commanding it. It's how the Lord said we should pray.
Every believer has to become an agent of God's power. Now, when the early church faced an attack from the enemy, it sought to destroy them. It wasn't the same kind of attack we're facing, but let me tell you, folks, this is only one of Satan's steps.
The time may come when Satan will fight us at a higher level, and in some countries they're doing that. He's fighting at political levels where people are forbidden to worship the Lord in freedom, where religious groups like Islam have taken control and are limiting and forbidding Christianity. It's the same kind of attack.
It's designed to destroy the church, to make it ineffective. Now, when the early church faced that, when the authorities of the day arrested them and punished them and told them to stop doing this, let's see what they did. In Acts 4, verse 24, it says, And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord and said, Lord, you are God, which hath made heaven and earth and sea and all that in them is.
Now, there's a whole lot of verses there. I don't have time to read it. You go read it in Acts 4, and you'll see how they prayed and sought the Lord and asked him that he would move in the name of his holy child, Jesus.
And what happened after they were finished praying? In verse 31, it says, And when they had prayed, the place was shaken, where they were assembled together, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness. Now, I do not see the early church saying, Lord, we must have failed you some way. Lord, there must be sin in my life.
Oh, Lord, please forgive us. Please forgive us and heal our land. Oh, nonsense.
No sign of that. They stood up, they said, Lord, you are God, and Lord, we're asking you to move now through your people. God answered and said, Absolutely, I will.
Let me show you. The whole place shook. And they said, they went out in boldness, in boldness, not groveling in their sin.
They went out in boldness to take his power to the world and to proclaim it. Folks, we want that balance to swing. It's not going to take pretty little prayers of repentance and groaning and moaning and begging and pleading with God.
But it doesn't lie in his hands. It lies in your hands. It's up to us to put the weight on that side of the balance and displace this thing that the enemy has brought upon us.
Then once the balance swings, we need to maintain it and make sure that it stays that way. Otherwise it will happen again. Next time the enemy may bring something worse.
Even unbelievers are saying this pandemic is just the first test. There's more worse things to come. Let's make sure we're ready for the next one, folks, by rising up as God's people and saying, no, you don't.
Oh, we're waiting for the big name preachers to do that. We're waiting for those who have the gifting, for those who've been trained. Oh, we're waiting for the prayer warriors to do that.
All those that God has raised up to be our leaders, we're waiting for them to do that. God's waiting for you to do that. I don't care what level you are in the body of Christ.
It lies in your hands. You have a part to play making that balance swing. It's time to repair, to renovate, and to rebuild.
It's time to build the God kind of church. What does the God kind of church look like? I've done a complete course of that many years ago, which we've been teaching to our leaders. I really think that every believer should go through that course, and Lord willing, we're going to try and make it available to you at a price you can afford, or if necessary, we'll even give it to you free, if you can't afford it.
But I believe every believer needs to see and learn. But I'm just going to give you a few principles from that right now. You see, there are three roads that we must walk in the spiritual life, three distinct roads.
We have to walk all of them at different times. Most of the time, we walk all of them together. Some that God raises up in leadership, they become experts on one of those roads, or two of those roads.
But ultimately, those three roads are the way to our destination. There are three roads that the church, the body of Christ, should be walking. But I'm sad to say those roads are in disrepair.
Those roads are full of potholes. Some of them have got walls. Some of them are overgrown with weeds.
Nobody's walking them. I want to look quickly at those three roads and try and give you just a few hints as to what we must do in order to rebuild them. The first road is the ministry road.
So of course, that's for the ministers, right? Who are the ministers? Minister is a servant. You want to know who are the ministers? Are you a believer? Are you born again? Are you a member of the body of Christ? If you are, you have a ministry. You have a ministry.
God hasn't called me to preach. No, not everybody's called to preach. But you have a ministry.
You have a function that God's called you to. And every single believer can reach out and function in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The nine gifts, the vocal gifts, the revelation gifts, the power gifts, every believer can flow in those gifts.
Every believer should be offered an opportunity to qualify and rise up and be promoted in the kingdom of God. We often hide behind, well, what was God's calling for me? What did God choose me to be? Well, you know, God just called me just to be the cleaner. You know, pastors love to do this.
Well, brother, your ministry is keeping the church clean and tidying up after everybody leaves. That's the ministry God's given you. You know, I don't need the Holy Spirit to learn how to do that.
Every ministry that God's given has a supernatural element to it. It's nothing that you can do naturally. It requires supernatural power.
Now, Moses got it all wrong, but he fixed it. He allowed everybody to finally rise up and find their place. And those who qualified were promoted up to a higher level of leadership.
Now, what does the pattern look like today? That was the pattern that was set in Israel. What does the pattern look like today? Well, these are the parts we need to look at. The lowest unit or group, if you like, in the body of Christ is the family.
The family is the smallest church. Oh, well, you know, how can you call the family a church? Because it only takes two or three to make a church. Jesus said, where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am.
Well, a family usually starts with a husband and wife. That's two. That's enough.
That's a church. Once you have children, the parents are the leaders of this group over the children. And amongst the parents, there's one leader, and he's the father or the husband, because that's God's order, right? But all the family members have a job to do.
We must all get involved together. You have a church in your home. Do you have a time of gathering together your family members in the presence of the Lord so that Jesus can come and make up the difference? He said, where two or three are gathered, I will come in and make up the difference.
We have a complete church. Do you have church in your home? Do you pray with your husband and wife? Some people don't even do that. Do you bring your children together for a time of prayer and worship, a time of sharing the word? Are you too busy with the demands of our modern society? I don't have time.
My wife can take care of the kids. I've got work to do. I've got a career to follow.
I'm working hard all day. When I get home, I'm tired. See, that's where the problem starts.
If Satan can destroy the family unit, he's destroyed everything, because that's the smallest cell that makes up the whole. And oh, he's been so good at that, hasn't he? Destroying marriages, destroying families, children who've been damaged by parents that have abused them. Oh, what a destructive society we have.
And even as these people come in and find the Lord as their savior, they bring with them the pain and the hurts and the damage that was caused in them by a home that was out of order. The first place we've got to start, folks, in fixing the church is to fix the home. Isn't that amazing that God can take the very attack of Satan and turn it into something good? See, that's what Romans 8.28 means.
God will cause whatever is there to work together for good. And God has caused this inconvenience that you're in. Of having to sit home and not go to work.
Of having to have your kids home instead of sending them off to school. You can take time to build your marriage relationship, to learn to become one in the Lord, and pray together, and get into the Word together, and bring your children together, and instruct them in the ways of the Lord. They're not getting that in school, let me tell you.
Are they going to get it? Oh, we'll take them to church. Let the church do it. Can't do that anymore.
Not allowed in public meetings. So you're stuck with it. Instead of moaning and groaning and complaining, why don't you take up the challenge? If you're the man in the home, you're the pastor.
You're the pastor. Well, you know, your wife and the kids don't have to call you pastor. Can you imagine if I get my wife and my kids to call me pastor? Pastor, I have a question.
Pastor, pastor, pastor, pastor. I'm sick of hearing people refer to themselves as pastor, insisting on having their big title. See, if you want your title out, they've started in the home.
From now on, you call me Pastor Les, or Pastor Dad, if you like. How stupid. Nevertheless, I have responsibility before the Lord as the head of my home to be the shepherd of my little flock.
Here's where the church is going to start. Here's where the new church is going to be built on the new pattern. And then we can have a slightly bigger one.
We can have what's known as the home church or the cell group, where you invite a few folks around into your home and you have a little time of fellowship. See, that's your group of 10. The leader of that group of 10 is kind of like Moses, leader of 10.
They're all under that one cell leader. That's church. Every week we come together and we have church in the home.
Oh, it's not so exciting, is it? We don't have the praise group singing their latest recordings. See, we've forgotten what church is supposed to be. It's supposed to be people coming together in the Lord and fellowshipping together in him.
Now, let me ask you this question. Now that you can't have your big church, now that the coronavirus has taken away that opportunity, has church stopped for you? Well, if you've never learned to build the church in your home, yes, church has stopped for you and you're waiting now. Or we go online, we watch our preacher who's now finally learning to use a bit of the internet and some of the technology that we have.
Most of the time, they didn't need to do it because they had other people to do that for them, all the experts. It's quite funny, if you look online, even these great big TV stars that have their big shows are now starting to have to go on Facebook or YouTube with a little iPad or something. And they say that an ordinary blogger on YouTube does a better job than them.
These are the people who paid thousands. They're famous. They're the stars.
Take away all of that from them. And what are they? They're nothing. These big preachers that are used to standing before the crowds and preaching.
Well, I'm just going to sit you in my lounge and in my back porch, and I'm going to share the word with you. It's not the same, is it? And even if you're able to watch and get some ministry from the pulpit, it's not the pulpit, but it's ministry from the leader. It's not the same because there's no fellowship, but you have a home and you have a family and you have two or three and that's fellowship.
You know what fellowship is defined as? Two fellows in the same boat. Fellowship. At least two of you, you got fellowship, you got church right there in your home.
So why are you waiting to get back into your big church and to go and hear your big preacher preach? Come on, husband. Are you preaching the word to your family? Come on, wife. Are you ministering the word to your kids? And God's husband needs it from you too.
Oh, what an opportunity we have right now to build the basic unit of the future church. Then as we can, we can have our home fellowship and have little groups like that. And from there it goes bigger.
We get to what I like to call original church. That's our group of a hundred. See, so if you've got a cell group with 10 people, we take 10 of those cell groups and we meet together in a bigger situation and we have a hundred and we can have a leader that's appointed over that hundred.
It's like a regional church. It's a little bit bigger. Well, you know, a hundred folks is a fair sized church these days.
Many people have got less members in their church and we're battling and trying to get people in to fill our chairs. Why didn't you just build 10 home cells? And you have it. And we get to the bigger ones.
Now tell me who leads each of these? In the home, it's led. If there's only one parent, that parent is leading. If there's a husband and wife, the husband is the leader.
Doesn't have to necessarily do all the work. The wife may have a better ministry. When we come to the home fellowship, one person is the leader, but everybody gets involved.
Each person has something to contribute. We're not having church in the home where somebody stands behind the pulpit and preaches and the rest of the people listen. No, we're having fellowship where every person has a chance to share and the leader simply controls it.
Now we come to the larger and here is now where some of God's appointed leaders begin to manifest the fivefold ministry. Some of these may be even in full-time ministry. And then we come to the final one, which I would like to call the mega church.
That's a group of a thousand plus. A mega church is made up of several regional churches, which are made up of several home churches, which are made up of several families. Can you see the networking? Can you see the structure? Can you see that if Satan destroys one of those, he only destroys one link? If Satan destroys the home church, he only destroys the link to the families that are in that home church.
If it destroys the regional church, he only destroys the home churches that were part of that. He destroys the mega church, he's destroying a lot more. Now we get to the mega church, we see a higher level of leadership needed.
This is where apostolic ministry and leadership begins to manifest itself. But the apostle is not the pastor of a mega church. And if you're the pastor of a mega church, you think you have a right to call yourself an apostle, perhaps you should come and have some training from us and find out what an apostle really is.
No, I'm not going to major on that now. That's the ministry road, folks. Can you see that it's done all wrong? We usually start with a big mega church.
And yes, many of these have been split into regional churches where people are involved. But ultimately, everything's still built on the big church. And the Sunday meeting is when we all come together.
And everything is built on the meeting instead of on the fellowship. I've taught that in detail in the course that I mentioned. If you want to learn more, I suggest you get it.
The second road is the business road. Well, there are different kinds of businesses that can function. Because now we're looking at a more secular thing than ministry.
We start by looking at the family business. Do you have a family business? I think most of you are saying, no, no, we don't have a family business. I have a normal job and I go and I work for a boss.
Well, if you don't have a family business, your family has failed. Now, let me explain to you what I mean before you get confused. I'm not saying you as a family should have a secular business out there where you're trading.
I'm saying that this business activity should be taking place right in the home. What is a business? It's a group of people under a leader who are all given a specific task to do that together you flow towards one goal. You have a business in your family.
You have a goal to accomplish in and for your family. And if you've got children, you have some built-in employees. What jobs do you give them to do? And when they work, what rewards do you give them? Because people don't like to work without reward, do they? You know, if you've ever wanted to run a business and you failed to run your own home, don't give up your day job.
You will fail. Take it back to the home again. In the home, you can learn to be the shepherd and the minister.
In the home, you can learn to be the leader of your own business. Your family should be structured and in order. Each one should have a role to perform and know what their function is.
And each one should be interrelating to each other, working together towards that one family goal. But you don't even have time to talk to your kids because you're too busy. You don't have time to sit down and speak intimately with your wife unless you want some sex.
Oh, boy, the home is a mess. God's changing that. He's forcing you to have a look at this.
And until you do, folks, there's no more weights going on the balance. Because that's the first weight that goes on the balance is when you fix your home. And we get the church business.
What's the church business? Now, that's when we sell books in our bookshop, right? It's about all that church business consists of these days. Now, you know what the church business is? The church business is when God raises up members of the church to do business as a calling. And this ministry is known as Global Business Ministries because we have majored on teaching people how to do both ministry and business as a calling.
And we have whole schools of training on the business calling. What's the difference between a normal business and a church business? It's very simple. A normal business is owned by whoever started the business and owns it.
The church business is owned by the church. You see, you don't give 10% of your business profits to the church or more if you really want to bless them or if you want to control them, as a lot of people do. Now, the business calling is when God raises up those within the church to be an arm of reaching out to bring the finance and the income into the body of Christ.
If you've set up a church, who amongst your leaders are running your church business? And again, I'm not talking about the bookshop or the tape ministry. I'm talking about something much bigger than that. If the church business is meant to benefit everybody, it's meant to support those that are in ministry.
Now, we do that from the tithes, you know. So, who's supporting the ministry? The people. The church business is meant to support the poor and the needy.
In the early church, they even had to appoint men whose permanent job was that, called deacons. You know, we have enough needs running this church. We don't have time to take care of the poor.
We'll send them off to the government and to other charitable organizations. I faced that situation once where I'd lost my job and we had no money. We lived across the road from a church that was in a building program and they were raising money to build their new church building.
Do you think they even once even came to ask us how we were doing? To maybe bring us a packet of groceries or something to help us? No, they were building the church. God's going to give us this great big church. We've lost it, haven't we? We've lost one of the major outreach arms of the church into this world.
We've neglected those of our people who are poor and needy and weak. We don't need them. And we promote the beautiful people.
Those who give us the right amount of money, they are made the elders of the church and rise up and take places. Church business can provide jobs for believers who are unemployed. And then we get the secular business.
There's nothing wrong with being in a secular business, except for one thing. If God has given you the ability and prospered you to set up your own business in this world, don't ever, ever allow your business to be controlled by the world or by unbelievers. Don't ever entertain the idea of going into partnership with somebody who's not a fellow member of the body of Christ.
Big thing these days is to run an IPO. Initial public offering, it's called, where we take the business and we divide it into shares and we sell shares on the open market and we make millions overnight. And we hand our business over to a whole lot of people out there who now have a control.
Don't ever expect God to bless your business if you want to do that, because it's no longer your business and it's no longer God's business. There's only one partner that you need and that's the Lord. And if you need a fellow person, it should be a fellow believer to be in partnership with you.
And then finally we come to the social road. What is the social road? Social has to do with friendships and relationships. And we start again with the family unit, the central building block of society.
What is the most important relationship in the family? It's the relationship between a man and his wife, a woman and a husband. It's the relationship. And the marriage relationship comes before.
This road is the one place where the other two roads have to bow. Your marriage relationship comes before your ministry calling. It comes before your business activity.
It never comes before God. You must understand that. God comes first.
And after God comes your spouse. And then comes your business activity and your ministry activity and everything else that you do. If you don't follow that order, Satan's going to destroy your marriage and he's going to destroy your ministry and your business.
That's what he's doing. Children need to be given the right model by seeing in their parents what a true relationship should be like. And when they leave home, they seek to enter into a relationship following that model, which is God's model.
And then we have the cell group. Cell group is a place of openness and transparency, a place of mutual love and care, a place where we can grow together. And then we have our local church.
And again, every single member should have a role to play. We should be working together in a structure and in a harmony towards one purpose. Not there to pay tithes and warm the pews and be there as an audience for the big name preacher.
We're there to be actively involved in building the kingdom of God. And then how about the world when it comes to social? Is it wrong to socialize with the world? Well, that depends what your reason for socializing is. We should be open and friendly with everybody while avoiding the contamination that comes from their sin.
We should be shining the light in the darkness. We're not out there interacting with people. How are we going to get to share the gospel and bring them into the kingdom of God? The social roads are a very important part of our activity.
I must move on because we're running out of time. What's happened is the church of God is being destroyed. And the longer that this pandemic goes, the more destruction is going to take place.
And I'm afraid the chances are it's going to continue until the church comes to the place that it's meant to be. And when it gets to that place, the church will suddenly rise up. When the church rises up, the balance is going to swing.
Now there's two aspects. If we take it from the picture of the Old Testament, and especially if we look at the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, where everything was destroyed, the temple of God, the city, the walls, there were two things that needed to be built. Was the temple and the city and the walls.
Both important for a different reason. And I want you to see that the prophets come into action. First, the prophets must function in prophetic ministry at all levels.
Right in the home, there should be prophetic ministry taking place right there as God brings revelation. In the little home fellowship, there should be prophetic ministry. And as we get to the higher levels, we move up into prophetic office.
The prophets function. Now what's the role of the prophets? The first role of the prophets is to get the church to pray. Get the church to pray.
Right now, we've been reaching out to the prophets. Apostle Nadim has been reaching out across the nations of the world for those who are ready to stand up and be counted and to take their place on the walls. 24 hours a day, somebody is praying.
Each person has taken an hour and we're covering the whole of the day and the nights all around the world. That's our first step. The prophets should be doing more than prayer.
Prophets should also be teaching people to praise. Why is that? Because praise, firstly, is the greatest empowering force for every believer. And secondly, it's the strongest means of warfare against the enemy.
Praise is a form of prayer. And if the prayer that is being done does not include an embrace, praise is not going to fully accomplish what's needed. God has raised up the prophets to teach people to praise and worship and to teach them how to intercede.
So we have the building of the walls and we have the building of the church, and they're actually separate and yet part of a whole. As we saw, Israel came, laid the foundation for the building of the new temple, and Nehemiah came and he took charge of the rebuilding of the walls. And so we've looked at the role of the prophets.
I want you to look at the role of the apostles. The role of the apostles is to lay a new foundation. The future church and to rebuild the church according to the right pattern, to set every believer in place.
Now the prophets are part of that. The prophets are to teach God's people how to praise and worship, and the prophets are there to help every believer to identify their calling and find out what place they should take in the body of Christ. And then to release those who qualify and are trained to rise up into places of leadership.
This is what needs to be accomplished first, before the church will rise up back into its place of glory. Now let me ask you this, where do you stand right now in the body of Christ? Doesn't matter what leadership level you have, you have a role to carry out. Do you know what ministry you're supposed to be doing? Do you know how to function in the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Or if you don't, we're here to help you.
It's part of what God has called us to do. We're here to help you to rise up and find your place. Are you called to be a leader? Well, what are you doing to equip yourself to lead more effectively? And what pattern have you been following as a leader? Are you ready to change? If you've been doing it all wrong, are you ready to change? There's help if you need it, help to help you qualify, to show you how to lead correctly.
A resurrection is coming folks, but resurrection brings change. What is resurrected never looks like the original. And Jesus rose from the dead.
His disciples themselves didn't recognize him. He walked with them on the road to Emmaus, discussing the scriptures with them, and they didn't know it was him, because he looked different. How different did he look? I don't know.
I have some ideas, but that doesn't matter now. The point is he arose in a different form to what he'd been before. So firstly, what is resurrected does not look the same as what died.
The body of Christ is in death right now. Internationally, God wants to resurrect his church. It's going to be built on a new foundation.
It's going to have new buildings. It's going to look different. So when you get ready to be resurrected, the title of my message is resurrected to what? Stop crying out to the Lord to get back to normality.
Oh Lord, if we could just go back to normal, where I can go back to my normal job, where I can go to church and worship like we did before. It's going to be different. And then are you ready to move up to a new level in the spirit? Were you content just to stay where you are? Are you ready to give your all to build the kingdom of God? You know, when we find our place and we get active, what's going to happen? Balance is going to swing.
Time of death will be over and the resurrection will take place. What's going to happen when the resurrection takes place? It's going to be a new church and God's going to do some things that he's never done before. Well, what's the new church going to look like? Let me give you a hint.
It's going to be a bit more like the Spartacus army. At the turn of the year, we always look to the Lord for a word for the new year. The Lord gave Apostle Nadine a word for 2020.
It was an exciting word. The gist of the word is this, that God wants to anoint and raise up every single believer, everyone to rise up in his power and to go out and do mighty exploits for the Lord. That was so exciting.
We've been waiting for the fulfillment of this word. How's it going to come, it's going to be a new awakening. Everybody's praying for another awakening.
Yeah, it's going to be an awakening, but you've got to fall asleep first. It's called death. There's no awakening coming until there's death.
So learn to die and let go what you relied on for so long. Let God bring something new. Let him resurrect something new.
Because when the resurrection comes, every member of this church, every member of the body of Christ from the person who just got born again yesterday, is going to learn to tap into the power of God. And you know what, we're going to train each one to become gladiators. We've concentrated for too long on the leadership only.
If we look at the body, we spend all our time fixing the head. We've got this paralyzed body where the arms are just hanging and the legs are weak. Paralyzed body with this awesome looking head.
And we in this ministry especially, it's been our emphasis for many years to train up the five-fold ministry. It was my mandate from the beginning. And now the Lord said, let go of the head for a while.
And start concentrating on the body. That's what we're going to be doing, folks. We're going to be zeroing in on every believer now.
We're not going to stop training the head because it's necessary. We're not going to stop equipping the head because it's necessary. That ministry continues, but we're going to expand now way beyond that.
And we want to reach out to every single believer now. We want to teach you how to tap into God's power. We want to teach you how to learn to heal the sick.
We want to teach you how to pray for people to get filled with the Spirit. We want to teach you how to preach the gospel and reach the lost for the Lord. This church is going to rise up as a mighty warrior.
That word that God gave us is going to be fulfilled. When is it going to be fulfilled? Not until the balance swings. Not until a new church arises that gives place for every believer to do something.
While the church is controlled by the senior pastors and the pastor pastors and all the pastors and all the leaders, the members will just remain in the pews. It must change. The church must come to life.
Every single person must find their place. They're not going to find it in the existing status quo church system. They're going to find it in the new system that God's going to build.
And Lord willing, we're going to be there to help build this new church. And I encourage you to become part of that as well and to rise up and help us build the church that will eventually become the spotless, blameless light of Christ. And then, then only, then we say, okay, Lord, you can come now.
Your bride is ready for you. Oh, I hope I see that in my lifetime, but I may not. I'm not waiting for the Lord to come tomorrow or next week or next year.
If he does, wonderful. If he doesn't, I've got plans to keep me going until I stop breathing. And every believer should have that passion in them.
And if I've inspired you in some way and put some of that passion in you, then I've accomplished what God wanted me to do tonight. If I haven't, I've got bad news for you. Your death will continue.
Your struggle will continue. The balance will remain. Stand together as one.
Put our foot down and say, enough, Satan, enough, enough. We are going to rise up and take this world. Father, I thank you for your word.
I pray for your people now. I pray for those leaders, Lord, that need a bit of humbling. They need to get out of their high pedestals.
Pray that you'll give them the grace, the revelation to know what you require of them. I pray for those who've stood in the background, perhaps hoping, but at the same time feeling unworthy, that you'll encourage them to rise up and step forward now and become active and start becoming part of the solution. Every believer from the top to the bottom, learn to tap into your power, become a gladiator for you and a mighty warrior for you.
Oh, Lord, may we see your church rise up in power. May signs and wonders and miracles be so normal and so average that we're surprised when they don't happen. That's what happened everywhere you walk.
We want that to happen everywhere we walk. Your power will be manifest, that the world may see and know there is a God who cares and who loves and is ready to bless. I ask for your anointing upon your people now, Lord, each one of them.
I ask a special anointing blessing upon each one that has heard this message and that is watching it right now. I ask Holy Spirit that you would place upon them a new mantle of anointing, that you would take them, that you would stir them up, that you would put a resolve and a goal and a motivation in them to say, I'm going to rise up and be counted. I'm going to become part of the solution and together we'll see that wonderful resurrection.
Oh, the resurrection, Lord, that you wrote for us on Calvary and that you made available to us when you rose from the dead. On that resurrection day, that we walk in that resurrection power, Lord, that we manifest it to the world. May you be glorified in your church, universal in every nation, kindred, tribe and tongue upon this world.
May you be glorified, Lord. I ask it in Jesus' name.
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