Plans to build a giant mosque close to Ground Zero have caused a storm of protest from families who lost loved ones in the September 11 attacks.
Angry relatives claim the move is an ‘insult’ to the victims of the World Trade Centre atrocity.
The mosque is part of a proposed 13-storey Muslim community centre, which will include a swimming pool, gym, theatre and sports facilities. Construction of the $100 million project just two blocks from Ground Zero is due to begin on September 11 next year – the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack... Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, said: ‘The time for a centre like this has come because Islam is an American religion.' ...Hezbollah leader Ayatollah Mohammad Bagher Kharrazi said the formulation of an ‘Islamic United States’ would herald the coming of Islam’s messiah.
(From London's The Daily Mail, May 16, 2010)

'Satan set this up with great brilliance'

See how great this mystery is - the dimensions of this great cosmic struggle of which the church is the key factor? Who understands this and will not be offended when the judgments come and Israel is being progressively reduced? It will be shocking. Jesus said that this time of trouble that is coming to the nation will exceed any previous trouble that the nation has known or will ever again know. And, if that time is not cut short, then no flesh would survive, he said.
But, for the elect’s sake, for the restored remnant, the time will be cut short. So, he is giving the description of something yet future, greater than the nation has ever known, even the Nazi Holocaust that took six million lives. We can expect an attrition greater than the six million, and certainly that this devastation of Israel will not be confined to Europe. This will be global. When the Lord comes, two-thirds in Israel will already have perished and one-third is brought through the fire. So, I suggest if that is the ratio of survival in the land – that will likely the ratio of survival in the world. If two-thirds of the Jews will be fated in the time of Jacob’s trouble to perish, we are talking about the demise of ten million Jews in a three-and-a-half year period of time.
Think of it – Jews worldwide in flight, and wholesale massacre! And yet, if we take the word of God seriously, it will be that devastating because of the vehemence and bitterness of the powers of darkness who know that their time is short.
What will save their false governing except that Jews are eradicated? By preventing Israel from returning to Zion as restored nation. How do you prevent them? By eliminating them. By abolishing them through genocide against that entire people.
So, where is there a church that is prepared by a scenario of this kind? Which will not take place in distant nations – but in our own nation? How can that be?
Because there will be an Islamic presence of such a kind that no government will be able to control or resist.
Look at what happened to the Pope who made one historically true and valid statement that is indisputable, about what was always the nature of Islam, the name by which uncounted churches have been burned in recent years. And he – the leader of the great Catholic church! – is retracting! Because no nation can stand up to the threat from Islam that now proliferates around the globe. You oppose them? Then your churches will be burned.

I wondered years ago how the predicted global devastation will take place and nations would become ‘Nazi-fied’ and participate in such genocide and be otherwise powerless to hold back the vehemence that is inherent in Islam and is now being expressed throughout all nations.

Islam is absolutely vile, absolutely deadly. And they are playing a so-called passive role. But, their peacefulness is only a momentary illusion. At the opportune moment, they will with great enthusiasm join the horde in seeking Jewish blood because it is their ticket to eternity. Killing a Jew and dying in the process is to guarantee their eternal salvation, according to the Islamic perspective.
Satan set this up with great brilliance.
So, just the contemplation of this scenario has got to stimulate the necessity for maturity in the church. It has got to bring a note of seriousness that these indeed are the Last Days, and they are apocalyptic. There will be great devastation right to the time of the Lord’s re-appearing. These will be the realities that prevail. There will be an anti-Christ spirit triumphing in the world, and it will hate the church as much as the Jew.
It makes our coming together now much more significant and serious than it otherwise would be. Now, we are not just available for a series of meetings. Now, every meeting, every coming together, every hearing of the word of God, every visit of a valid speaker is a provision from God to fit us and to prepare us for the awesome realities of the Last Days.

- Charlotte, North Carolina (2006)

Ships that pass in the night and speak to each other in passing;
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak to one another,
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.
- Tales of a Wayside Inn (Longfellow)


'We've never BEEN there with each other'

We’re utilitarian. We want God for what we can obtain from Him that we might do it and teach it and be seen teaching and enjoy the kind of exhilaration of serving God. He’s only an expediency to provide us with that which is needful. But knowing our hearts and loving us and being the God who sees that utilitarianism is the spirit of the world and not the spirit of the Kingdom, He says, “Come up unto me – and BE there.”

An apostle must, above all men, know this in his experience. Because the apostle and the prophet are the foundation of the church. There is no true church except by the foundation laid by the apostles and the prophets. Not only in their teaching and what they impart in the sublime knowledge of God and His ways but what they convey and communicate and exude from what they have obtained in His presence – because they have come up and they have been there!

You know, guys? This is how we’re failing each other?

That’s why guys like me have had to go eighteen years of too frequent harshness at home – because we are so shallow in our own relationships with “brothers” that I could not find a friend who would love me at all times. We’ve never BEEN there with each other.

And, even while we’re talking to each other our minds are racing to some next thing. Or, what awaits us on Sunday? Or this commitment and that responsibility… Or did I forget this or that…Do we ever really give our whole attention to each other? That’s fellowship of the kind that God intended.

The mystery of the fellowship.

That mystery is so little known to us. Our fellowship is so much less. Back slap; brusque bear hug.

Ships passing in the night.

The briefest kind of acknowledgement.

And, I praise God that we are canceling our convocations this summer. We’re not going to have any schedule of meetings, with the thousands pressing in, and this whole weary mechanic of things that need to be served. But, as many who will come who are sent in God’s own time, when He has bidden them come up by the Spirit.

“Aw, c’mon, Art. You’re getting melodramatic now. You’re just talking about ‘summer vacations’- aren’t you?”

What do you mean “just”? What are you trying to imply? That a summer vacation is some kind of ordinary excursion?...

How dare you bring that ordinary, the earthly mentality into the holy place?

What do you mean “just” a vacation? The word “just” ought to be abolished from our speech.

How dare we presume to go anywhere, or to do anything except that we be bidden…

Woe unto us if we dare to presume so upon God.
- Dallas, Texas (1982)

'We're always looking up!'



Dresden (at right), the capital of Saxony reduced by four fire-bombings in three days at the end of World War II - and after an unrenounced pre-historic legacy of occultism and pornography.


'I'll never forget my experience in East Germany in some remote section of that country infamous for occultism and every kind of filthy and dark, degenerate thing that goes back in primeval and barbaric Germanism before the advent of Christianity. Still alive and still lurking in that dark place.
Until a Lutheran pastor and his wife had come.
And in their sincerity toward God to be in that place, He brought them into the knowledge of the Holy Ghost. And they became full of the Holy Ghost.

'And when I talked with this brother's wife, she hardly looked at me.
She would nod as she would look up, putting her hand over her heart, looking up, nodding, looking up, nodding...
And I thought, 'My God, what is she looking at?'
And as I was leaving I asked her: 'Are you aware that you are always looking up?'
You know what the heck of it is? She wasn't?

'And those who are 'aware' - aren't 'looking up.'
We've got to come to that place of total unawareness, of such utter selflessness, so lost in God that, habitually and characteristically, we're so suffused with him, His purpose, the jealousy for His glory... We're always looking up!
As against that class of men who are always looking down, who dwell on the earth and whose hearts will fail them for fear when they see the things that are coming upon the earth which we don't see.

'I mean, we're not ignoramuses. We're very aware of the things that are happening, but it's not affecting us. That's not what determines our being or our response or our conduct.
Our determinations are from Heaven wherein also is our citizenship.
- Sacramento, California (1985)

'The immersion into reality itself'

'What is the practical value of 'apocalyptic', of end-time considerations?

It is 'the completion of what NOW is - NOT an escape from it. The wholeness of what we NOW see in part - NOT its repudiation.'

Such Biblical or Prophetic anticipation 'is thus thoroughly practical; it assures us of the reality of all the acts and words whose transcendent sense is disputed and contradicted by the age we live in.' This preoccupation with Apocalyptic 'is not a florid [fanciful] passage tacked onto an end to give a flourish to our rhetoric but 'the immersion into reality itself,' the issue of God's coming Kingdom and its rule in our present life. It has a unique power to stir us to new and greater obedience, deepening our resolve and consecration and 'fortifying us for the long haul… It gives stamina to our courage and energizes our witness - realities that are in strict correspondence with what has already been begun in us and will [assuredly] be completed. This is not a new form of escapism, but the intensification of involvement with God in His [final] purposes by employing the stuff that is in our lives right now.' (From Eugene Peterson’s devotional entitled, The Completion of What Is)

'This preface is appropriate in view of the dire and tragic events of 2001 sounding an ominous note of yet greater dread for the year and decade ahead. It may well be a final decade - or at least it should be lived as if that were so. What greater evils will yet be loosed? What real defense from demonic terror against which the best of societal safeguards might be vain? On the positive side, the issue of God and of the Faith have as suddenly become elevated and central. No longer can believing constitute a mere Sunday addendum, a pleasant amenity in an ordered and secure world. The fellowship of the saints no longer casual affability, but become now the very grit of apostolic living! The wisdom of God in the uncertainty of the future to be had only in the counsel of the many; the 'time to speak to one another in the fear of the Lord' our privilege and our sanity.

'For now, at the end, as it was at the first, those that believe must be together. The one heart, and one soul and one mind that alone issues from true fellowship break the power of selfish and private living that has until now so effectually robbed us. Private, personal, devotional prayer must become a vital daily engagement with the Living God - early and late. Corporate prayer, the measure of truth of our Body, must become the apprehending of our High Priest's intercessory mind and heart. Time must be found, made, ruthlessly contended for in the daily urgent seeking of the Lord. Unabashed and unashamed witness, our responsibility in the world, be expressed in the very places from which we have shrunk - and this now in the more hostile prevailing atmosphere that abhors 'fundamentalist fanaticism'!

Backlash, opposition, eventual persecution are prospects now as real for us as the experience of distant, remote Christians, provoking in us a cry for new infillings of the Holy Spirit too long unsounded (and unneeded!). Inhibiting timidity, self-conscious and repressive fear of man [even of Christians!] be crucified with Christ! Buoyant, joyous faith, unfeigned choruses of praise, the inclusion of our committed children, be the staple of the Church is our best wish and prayer for us all in the new year that has come.

'For that has the Lord enjoined us to this end 'that men ought always to pray and not to lose heart' (Luke 18:1). So is prayer, heartfelt, vibrant and alive, the very provision of God for the terrors and uncertainties of the future that would otherwise depress and overcome us - even to the possibility of the very forfeiture of faith. So does the parable of the importunate widow end with the question, 'Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, shall He find faith on the earth?' That is, will he find prayer in the earth? For the issue of prayer is the issue of faith for 'no man comes to God but that He believes that He is, and that He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him' (Hebrews 11:6).

Many Christians would be wise to take note of the feeble and infrequent condition of their prayer as a serious index of a declining faith - for the two are inextricably joined.

'In all this, don't confuse faith with correctly held doctrine about the faith. The issue of faith is the issue of relationship - not credal correctness.

- From 'End-of-the-Year (2001) Meditation' - Laporte, Minnesota;

above photo from the Kathryn Kuhlman program in 1970.

Messianic Judaism
and the Holy Spirit




'I'm a steward of the mysteries of God, and therefore I have to sound a note that is not necessarily sounded by my brothers though I applaud and acknowledge the value of many of the things that they say and that they uphold. But in that I have not made myself, and it has pleased God to fashion me as he has and to give to me the particular burdens that he has, I need to sound them.'
'I attended a messianic conference a few years back and was a bit irritated by one of the speakers in particular. And some of the brothers came to me and said, "Brother Art, we don’t understand why you're irritated. He's like you. He has the baptism in the Holy Spirit." "Oh," I said. "Well, that's odd. Why then does he condescend to inject this humor in his presentations, and this little shticklech, and little do-dads and gimmicks to make himself fetching and attractive?" "Well, Art, don't you know that he's a little nervous and apprehensive, and he's afraid that if he doesn't make himself attractive that people will not receive his word?"
'I've never forgotten that explanation, because it's an illustration of a profound truth: You can have the baptism in the Holy Spirit and still not be living by it. In moments of crisis, in moments of ministry, in moments of demand, in moments of fearfulness, you fall back again on your own life, your own cleverness, your own wit, your own devices. And that has not the ability to bring life. Paul said: "In him I move and live and have my being. For me to live is Christ." What is messianic life? It's to be in Christ – moment by moment, cleaving to the Tree of Life for every necessity, a wisdom beyond our own, a knowledge beyond our own, a strength and a boldness beyond our own.'

- Kansas City, Missouri (1977)

'...Intuiting his Spirit'




‘In times not too distant when I received a commitment to come and speak someplace, maybe months before I was to go or in the making of the commitment, the very message flashed on my heart and I knew what was to be spoken. Then that disappeared. And maybe some weeks just preceding the meeting, God would stir in my heart and shape me for what was to come forth – then that disappeared. Then maybe the day of the meeting or the very night before, something would begin to stir in my heart – and that disappeared. Then, arriving at the meeting, I would understand what was to be spoken. Then that disappeared.
‘Sitting on the platform, waiting to be called on, I would hear the still small voice and know what was to be spoken – then that disappeared.
‘I tell you people – it’s getting so that now I have to move almost by intimating what is the will of God, cleaving to God in such a way as to catch the very intimations of his heart, intuiting his Spirit. And I believe God is bringing me even closer than that – that the very thought that is in my mind, and the very impulse of my heart is his thought and his impulse.
‘And that the day might come that the very word out of my mouth, unpremeditated and spoken in the impulse of the moment, is the word of God.’

- Richardson Springs, California (1985)

Springfield, Missouri
'And, I have some thoughtful things to say also. And then, a further hindrance is that I have such a command of English…
Well, the eye of God goes to and fro across the face of the earth, seeking that one whose heart is perfect toward him. But, I was struck this morning that Satan is equally roaming to and fro over the face of the earth, seeking to devour exactly that one.
That’s a marked man.
And, I’m something of a marked man myself. And, I can remember in Arkansas, in Hot Springs, when George Otis got up and said: “Who will stand with this man,” referring to me, “who is among Satan’s most wanted men in this nation?”
I pray that I’m still in that category…’
- Voice of the Overcomer Convention, March 1983