Apostolic Centers 2 7-21-24

The speaker is discussing a series called "Apostolic Centers Advancing" which is a sequel to a previous series about the Kingdom. They talk about the attacks many people have been experiencing and how these attacks have been a proving ground. They mention the concept of the threshing floor, where God refines believers. They emphasize the need to move forward with God in a new wineskin, as the old wineskin cannot move forward. They mention that revivals are often attacked by people from previous revivals. They refer to a passage in Matthew 9 where John the Baptist's followers question Jesus about the new wineskin. Jesus responds by saying that those who are not offended by him will be blessed. They discuss the idea that even a new believer is greater than John the Baptist because they have the Holy Spirit. They explain that Jesus is the ever-flowing wineskin and is bringing something that existed in the past but died out, back to the church. They mention the greater works that Jesus spo series, I'm calling it Apostolic Centers Advancing, but there's a lot more to it. It's really more a sequel to the Kingdom series I did two or three series ago, something like that, maybe the end of last year, I lose track. And the attacks that many of us have been experiencing, and some are still experiencing, attacks like Leon, some others, Kathy, still dealing with an attack. Many of us have been experiencing these, they have really been our proving ground. You may not feel all that proven at this point, but you'll look back at your life at some point and see the different places where you made a transition to a very thin place, not thin, but a very narrow place. And we've been on that. It's basically, we've probably still there, it's been our threshing floor, to use a biblical terminology. The threshing floor is where God blows the chaff off of us, where he takes away all the wood hay and stubble and we come out refined gold. He's called the refiner's fire for a reason. And he's doing it so we can all move forward with God, because you can't move forward with God in the old wineskin. And I'm going to be talking about wineskins a good bit in this series. Only a new wineskin can move forward. That's why so many, just about every revival in history was attacked by the people from the previous revival. And it'll happen again. It's already happening. There's all kinds of websites bashing people like you and I. We're spirit filled, just because we're spirit filled. And we dare to believe that God actually lives today, he works today, he moves, he answers prayer, he heals, he baptizes. The gifts of the Spirit haven't gone anywhere, they never went anywhere. But we need to be able to move forward with God. This is illustrated to a degree in Matthew 9. I didn't put up a specific scripture because this is a whole chapter, you can go back and look at it. It's when John the Baptist was in prison. Now John, you know, was the forerunner for Jesus. He was a cousin, he was a relative, he was a forerunner. He spent years prophesying about the kingdom of God in the desert. Years and years and years. I don't really know how long he spent. It ain't working, but now it's working. You've got to prove me wrong, don't you? Bad, bad thing. So the leaders from John the Baptist's wineskin came to Jesus, and they questioned him about the new wineskin he's bringing. In chapter 11, Jesus responds with what he is doing as the new wineskin. He was the new wineskin, he still is. They asked him if he was the coming one or should they look for another? We do that a lot, don't we? God is moving, he's answering our prayer right in front of our eyes, and we're like, is that God? Jesus looked at them, and this was his answer, very famous answer. He said, the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, deaf hear, dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them. Blessed is he who is not offended by me. So Yeshua was saying, in effect, he was saying this, go tell John in prison that I'm doing everything he prophesied would be done. But then he ended with, blessed is he who will not be offended by me. That's a very strange ending to that answer to them. Very strange. So let me paraphrase it a different way. Tell John that if your disciples don't get offended by the way I am doing things in this new administration, they can move forward into the new, but they must choose not to be offended, which is a choice to not be offended. So Jesus was saying, you can't go back and say, John never did it this way. At my last church, we did it like this. Well, why aren't you there if you loved it so much? Sometimes pastors just like to shake people when they say stuff like that, and say, you know what, if you loved it that much, why don't you go back there? Have fun. But we can't say anything like that because pastors are supposed to be all full of love and nice. But if you know me, I'm a smart aleck, more than probably nice. But sometimes I just can't help myself. But I understand. I've probably done it too. I've moved into many different churches in my life. I probably did the same thing. Jesus is standing before us just as he stood before all of Israel. He's standing here. He is the new wineskin of the new season that we just entered. We really entered it in 2008. I can actually also make a case that we entered it in the year 2000. Not because it was the year 2000, but because that was a point I'm going to talk about in a little bit, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. In that passage in Matthew 11, Jesus continued talking to the disciples, and he said, John was a great man of God, the greatest ever born of woman, but the least, the weakest, the biggest baby believer is greater than John. That's what Jesus said. You put it in today's vernacular. The person who just became a Christian just asked Jesus into their heart ten minutes ago is greater than John the Baptist is what Jesus is saying. Greater. We have better promises. We've got the Holy Spirit. Of course John had the Holy Spirit to a degree, but not like us. Not at all. See, John represented the Old Testament, the Old Covenant. Jesus represents the new that we're still in. It hasn't changed. The book of Acts, we're still writing it. You and I, we're in it. It never ended. But how could a baby believer be stronger than John the Baptist? How could a baby believer be stronger than John the Baptist? Well, like I said, John's the old wineskin, and John, we don't have any true record of him baptizing anybody in the Holy Spirit. We don't have any record of that. I don't think he could. I don't think that was possible, because that's the old wineskin. Jesus was bringing the new. That was something that nobody could do until after the day of Pentecost, when they were gathered together in the upper room. Remember the old song? Some of you can remember it, I'm sure. This is probably even before my time. I can do anything you can do better. You know, that's an old tune. I don't know who sang it, but something like that. Well, we all can do everything better than John the Baptist. Every one of you. Everybody, every believer in the world can do better than John the Baptist. That's what Jesus was saying. And right now, Jesus, he is the ever-flowing wineskin. It never stops. He is flowing everywhere. Everywhere. All around the world. He's coming into places in America that maybe he's never even been before, and I'll be talking about that a little bit too. And he's calling us to go higher. In order to go higher in the Lord, you've got to take a test. Sorry to say. I know it's not really gospel, which means good news, that if you want to get promoted, you're going to have to take a test. But I talked about that last week, so I won't talk about it much anymore. But he tests us. It's very clear in the Bible. He'll never tempt you, but he will test you. And he's testing us frequently. In order to go higher, we have to be tested, and we've got to pass that test. If we don't pass that test, we're going to go around that mountain for a while until we can pass that test. He's bringing the new, but like I talked about last week, it's the kynos, not the neos. The kynos, it's not something brand new, it's just new in the fact that it was around before, but it died, and now it's back. That's what the church is moving into the kingdom about, that died in around the 4th century. And I'll be talking about that too real soon, it looks like. But now he's back. He's transforming us into what used to be 2,000 years ago. Talk about back to the future. But, because he's doing it, we're not going backwards. Jesus can't go backwards. It's not in his nature to go backwards. Because if Jesus goes backwards, then that means he's failing at something, and he never fails. Never has, never will. We're not going backwards. He's basically bringing the first church up to us, basically. And I believe that since a lot of scholars would probably agree with me, did the early church, did they really do the greater works that Jesus said? I mean, in some instances, in some accords, probably, because when Paul and all the other apostles just went out from Jerusalem and went all over the known world at the time, they did amazing things. They saw church growth like Reinhard Bonnke saw church growth. A million people in one night at one crusade. I mean, that's just remarkable. I believe we're either still in the time of the greater works, or we're going into the time of the greater works. It's one or the other. And they're both basically the same thing. Getting back to Matthew 11, Jesus was trying to explain to them that all of history up until that point was overseen by the law. And Jesus was bringing a huge shift to mankind. Shift. He shifted. Jesus brought a new administration that was no longer ruled by the law. The old covenant was ruled by the law. That's why everybody that died in the old covenant, they couldn't go to heaven. I've talked about this before in one of the previous series. They couldn't go to heaven. Heaven wasn't prepared for them yet. There was still sin in heaven. I know that sounds weird, but when I talk about, I've talked for weeks about the secret ascension and what that was and what Jesus did. He had to take all the sins out of the secret ascension and what that was and what Jesus did. He had to take the blood of the lamb to heaven to get rid of the sin from Lucifer in order to open it up for us to go there. But in the old covenant, they went to Abraham's bosom when they died. Paradise. When Jesus told the sinner on the cross, the thief on the cross, today you'll be with me in paradise. He wasn't mixing up paradise with heaven. He knew full well that that guy couldn't get into heaven just yet. He probably had the shortest time to go of anybody else that was in Abraham's bosom. Days instead of years and years and years. But Abraham's bosom, when you look at the way the rabbis described it and everything, it was just like heaven. It just didn't have God the Father hanging around in there as much. But it was still a lot better than living here. I can assure you of that. But since they were ruled by the law and nobody could follow the law, so nobody could go to heaven. Nobody could do it. Jesus had to come, follow the law, fulfill it, so that we don't have to do that anymore. Jesus changed everything. When I say everything, I mean everything. Jesus fulfilled everything that the prophets had been talking about since the book of Genesis. If it's supposed to have happened by now, he fulfilled it. There are still some scriptures, of course, that haven't been fulfilled yet, because they're about when he comes back. You know, those haven't been. But anything that's supposed to have been fulfilled by the year 2024, Jesus did it. All of those prophecies, there are 333 prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament. Most of them have already happened. Right on the money, just as God said it would. Even looking at Cyrus. Cyrus was named 300 years before he was born. Oh, but the Bible's just full of lies. There's just a bunch of stories. Maloney. Everything in the Bible is true. It happened. It's accurate. It has never been proven any differently. Never. Every archaeological discovery backs up the Bible. The archaeologists, there are atheists who are archaeologists. There's a lot of them. And guess what they bring to every archaeological dig? Atheists, archaeologists, the Bible. Because they know, they won't want to admit it, but they know that it is 100% accurate. So Jesus, as the son of David, walking as we walk today, he brought the kingdom to earth. They had a good life, I'm sure. They probably thought it was a good life, you know. Looking back at the way we live today, you know, living a hut, basically, some kind of a dwelling with a dirt floor. And most people were in the dirt at the time of Jesus, you know. Being ruled by the Romans, you could really be flogged for violating any kind of a Roman law. Not a great time to be alive, but the Jews in Israel, they would have said, it's a good life. But Jesus came to change even that. He brought the new wineskin. He brought the Zoe life. The Zoe life is kind of, I look at it as a better promise than what the Israelites had coming out of Egypt. The Israelites coming out of Egypt had perfect health. The Bible makes it very clear there was not one feeble among them. They figure that's about a million people. You can't even give me this amount of people today that there's no feeble, no sickness, disease, pain, nothing. Even this many people. I'm not even going to ask you to raise your hands if you've got something wrong in your body. There's too many of us. I'm one of them. No, not the Israelites coming out of Egypt. And they came out filthy rich. Filthy rich. They plundered the Egyptians. Plundered them. They just knocked on the door. Say, if you could be so kind as to give me all of your jewelry. Thank you. And they gave everything. Everything. That's another reason Pharaoh decided to chase after them because he wanted to get all that money back. He was a bad guy. I'm sure all the Pharaohs were pretty greedy. But the Zoe life is kind of like what they got coming out of Egypt, but better. But better. Zoe is a Greek term. It's a lot of the shalom. The same meaning as shalom, only it's basically a Greek understanding of it. It's an overcoming life is what it is. But one of the biggest things that blinds people to what God's doing is offense. Offense. There's a lot of books that have come out just in the last few years about offense because God's trying to deal with that. And Jesus, I just read, Jesus understood offense even 2,000 years ago. He's saying, now you guys that follow John, don't get offended because I'm not doing things like John did. No. Why would I come if I'm going to do things like John? You got John. He don't need me. No, he did it way different. Way different. Don't be offended by that. You can't see the kingdom if you're going to get offended. You just can't. It's not going to happen. That's why many Christians, many of the ones who are cessationists, it's because they are offended. Many of them were offended by a pastor someplace, maybe their parents, the church as a whole, whatever. But they're offended. So they don't want to have anything to do with what God is doing today. I'll just go sit in my pew on Sunday morning the rest of my life and that's enough. I'm just going to do that and that's it. Because they're offended. So what's the difference between the church and the kingdom? I'm glad you asked that question. These are what I think are the best definitions. The kingdom. The kingdom is the whole of God's redeeming activity in Christ in the world. I'll say it again. Kingdom is the entirety, the whole of God's redeeming activity in Christ in the world. That's the kingdom. Now the church, a little simpler, that's just the assembly of those who belong to Jesus. Those are excellent definitions. The church is just the assembly of those who belong to Jesus. Dutch Sheets says it a little different, but it means the same thing. Dutch Sheets says this. Kingdom takes visible form in those who have assembled as the church. Kingdom takes visible form in those who have assembled as the church. Another really good definition. So when we assemble together, the way this is supposed to work, when you assemble together as the church, as the kingdom too, then we should exhibit more power and authority than we had alone. That's the corporate anointing versus the individual anointing. You all bring your anointing, we all bring our anointing, but when our anointing comes together, we're unstoppable. We have power and authority that just one person can never have except Jesus. Chuck Pierce says this about kingdom. He says, Kingdom people know warfare. They do not back away from a fight. They have to learn how to maneuver in the warfare of the kingdom. They purpose to go on a mission every time they go out the door. If there's one person that has a very good idea of what kingdom warfare is, it's Chuck Pierce. He's got a good idea. He knows it very well. I want to take a couple of minutes and hit on some attributes of what a kingdom is. I'm not going into the ones that we already talked about in that series before that this is a sequel to. I'm going to hit on some of the ones that we didn't spend much time on before. But I'm still going to try to move kind of quick. Number one, kingdom is connected through generations. Older saints aren't allowed to tune out and younger saints have to tune in. That was that old saying, Timothy Leary in the 60s. Tune in and something else, something about opt out or tune in or whatever. I don't even remember the whole thing, but it was pretty common. The hippies said it all the time. I wasn't a hippie, so I didn't say it. So I don't even remember the whole thing. Number two, the kingdom of God is beyond man's natural thoughts. You can't grasp the kingdom by following a bunch of rules. It's impossible. The kingdom has to be revealed to you supernaturally. There's nothing supernatural about following a bunch of rules. Nothing. Your flesh loves to follow rules, I hate to tell you. I know this bothered me from the very beginning, that whole mask thing. From the very second, I'm like, no. You're not the boss of me, government. You're not the boss of me, Fauci. I'm not wearing some stupid mask. Have I ever had to wear a mask before when we had all these other things? No. So why do I have to wear one now? I'm not wearing one. We only wore masks around here when we absolutely have to, when Giant Eagle wouldn't let you go in, you know. So we had to suck it up, but I still had it below my nose so I could breathe. And you remember, they saved lives by having arrows on the ground, so that you had to go the right way down the rows in the grocery store and at Walmart. I purposely went the wrong way just to tick people off. I don't have to follow a rule made by stupid men. I don't have to follow that. I don't. We have to follow the Bible, period. And I don't see mask wearing in the Bible, so that's fine. It's just that then, no mask. No mask and no mass. Number three, the kingdom of God cannot be obtained. This is a biggie in the church today. This is huge. This is bigger than offense and it's bigger than unforgiveness. Ambition. The kingdom of God cannot be obtained through ambition. I can't emphasize that enough. I've seen so much of it. I see it every day almost. Not here, necessarily. With people. With other people. Christians and non-Christians. Ambition. There are so many people and so many Christians, even spirit-filled Christians, that are ambitious. But that's not what Jesus wants you to be. Because ambition is the opposite of humility. You may not have ever seen ambition like that, but truthfully, it's a sin. And it is in the church and it's hurting us greatly. I can't tell you how many people became pastors through ambition. That is the wrong motive. The absolute wrong motive. But I've met a lot of them. And they're in La Trobe. I know some. I could name them, but I'm not going to. It's not my job. Ambition. I've seen it destroy churches. I've first-hand seen it destroy churches. I've first-hand seen ambition destroy three Christian schools. The whole three that I worked at. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. Lord, really? I got tired of fighting against stupidity, basically. People get faced with a choice. The other day we were taking a walk and I was talking about this to Colette as we were walking. All three of my Christian schools, I could pinpoint the moment when the leadership backed the wrong horse. They backed the wrong horse. Two out of three of those schools are gone. The other one's barely hanging on. They backed the wrong horse. Sometimes the horse they back isn't the person. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's ambition. Remember the Sons of Thunder from the Gospels? I know it's hard to forget them. Even their mother was ambitious. Their mother wanted them to sit next to Jesus and be like generals in the kingdom. Mom didn't want them to be privates. She wanted them to be generals. Because they're my boys. That's not good. That's not the kind of mom you want to be and that's not the kind of mom you want. Chuck Pierce actually calls ambition a mean demon. That's a good definition of it. And I know this is probably shocking to some of you to think ambition is this bad thing. In the kingdom of God it's bad. Even in the world it's bad. How many of you have been... What did Henry Blake say in MASH? He said something in effect of... Houlihan and Hot Lips and Frank Burns. They went over his head so many times he had footprints on his scalp. Well, that's ambition. That's ambition. That's what ambition will get you. Chuck Pierce puts it this way. We must first develop the presence of God in any kingdom structure. If you put church above kingdom, you will develop a gathering structure as your priority rather than a presence structure. This is so important I'm going to read that again. Because I've been operating like this for 12 years here. And some of you had no clue that's what I was doing. But this is what I was doing all this time. Because God talks to me. He talks to everybody. I've just developed ear to ear. And I obey as much as I choose to. Obedience is a choice. Chuck Pierce says we must first develop the presence of God in any kingdom structure. If you put church above kingdom, which is bad, you will develop the gathering structure as your priority rather than the presence structure. You will not be driven by God's presence. Instead, you will end up program driven to meet the needs of the people. Never realizing that his presence alone will bring you into success. Instead, you will end up program driven to meet the needs of people. Never realizing that his presence alone will take care of those needs. You may have noticed, if you've been here for any length of time, that I have been very reluctant to add programs here. There are churches that you can actually go to something every night of the week. That's what I call programs. It's in the place of the presence of God. Sorry, but it is. I know very well that this puts me at odds with 99% of the pastors in America. I know that. I don't care. I don't follow them. I follow Jesus. That's their problem. Here, I am very reluctant, and I always will be reluctant, to add things on the schedule for you to do. Unless it's presence driven. When we're having a house of prayer, or we're doing a hop, that is obviously presence driven. Those we're going to have at least twice a year now, but sooner in the future, I have no doubt. And some of the other things that we've done. Presence driven. You can attend churches all around us. They have a different activity every week. They have activities every evening. They have activities in the morning. I've been to churches where you can go to the women's Bible study in the morning. Because way back when, women didn't go to work. Like I said, when I was growing up, I only had one friend whose mom worked. One. Out of like 30. One. Things have changed drastically. And I never once heard any of those women complain. Not once. They were happy to be home. Raising their kids. They were happy. Don't listen to the lie of the media that tells you that women's liberation is a good thing. Women were liberated with Jesus. Period. Same as men. We may have different foci, which is like the plural of focus. People say focuses, which is not a word, but you know how people get it. Don't get me started on that. I have so many pet peeves with the way people talk. I'm an English teacher. It's with me for life. My desire from day one here, and I told God this, I want to get all of the sheep here to an unwavering faith in God as your supplier. And supply doesn't just mean money. It doesn't just mean food. It means mental health. Physical health. Everything. It means shalom. It means zoe. It means all of that. He's your supplier for all of that. Is Jesus Christ the first person you turn to in a crisis? He needs to be. If He's not, He needs to be. He supplies mental well-being, spiritual authority against demonic attacks, fellowship, relationship, walking in divine health every day, and all kinds of other things that I just couldn't think of when I was writing this. Kingdom equals presence. Church doesn't necessarily equal presence. The kingdom does. There's no kingdom without the presence of God, and there's no presence of God without the kingdom. Presence is the kingdom. Kingdom is the presence. You can go to a church that looks a lot like the world. They gather. They fellowship. They enjoy each other. There might be some good music. They meet people. I just described any party that people throw, but I also just described every church service in America. Or you can choose to go meet with the presence of God, which is what people get here. I have had people come here and tell me that they've been going to church all their lives, but this is the first place they've actually felt the presence of God. I've had multiple people tell me that in 12 years. Multiple. And you know what? That makes me feel pretty good. That tells me I'm doing it right. Because that's what I wanted from day one. I read about, this is probably just some anecdotal story, probably didn't happen, about God asking a certain pastor at some point in history, what would you rather have, a thousand people or my presence? One pastor says, I'd rather have a thousand people. Another pastor says, I'd rather have your presence. Well, I just beat God to the punch when the day Leon called me and asked me to preach here, that day I said to the Lord, you don't even have to ask me that question, I'm telling you right now I want the presence. I want the presence. I preached to my family a number of times. I'm fine. I'll preach to whoever shows up. I don't lose sleep over the fact that we don't have a thousand people. We couldn't fit a thousand people in here anyway. I'd have to do like ten services. Maybe more. But they get together and fellowship and do all this stuff. You get to meet your friends, you know. A lady stood up here yesterday, right here, and she said, yeah, I've always, I've gone to that church my whole life and I'm going to go do it until I die. I'm like, really? I thought that was the saddest thing I heard yesterday. It's so sad. I don't understand the way that works. My grandparents went there. My great-grandparents went there. My great-great-grandparents went there, you know. So, whoop-de-doo. Were they right or wrong? Were they after the presence of God? Were they after Jesus or were they just in it for themselves? That's the question you want to ask. Look, I used to tell my kids and some of them, I actually got yelled at by a couple of parents because I used to tell my kids, look, when you're 18, especially, I really only talk to the seniors like this, you guys are either 17 or 18, you're adults. You're adults now. You don't have to be, you're not an adult when you graduate high school. I mean, that's just a little thing that we just throw people into, you know, in America to make them feel good, you know. But if you were Jewish, you're an adult at 13. Come on. So, big difference, right? And I used to tell them, look, the Bible says to obey your parents, but you only obey your parents when they're righteous and giving you righteous things to do. If your parents are telling you to go to the Mormon church down the street, you don't have to go. If you're an adult, they're wrong. They're always wrong. That's a cult. They're anti-Jesus. I don't care what they say. They're lying because I know all about them. I taught a whole year's course in my first school on cults. I'm very familiar with them. I know what all of them really, really mean. No, you don't. Now, I grew up in a spiritual Christian home where I didn't have that problem. But many people have that problem, you know. Because let me tell you, the Jewish way, the bar mitzvah, the bat mitzvah when they're 12 or 13, I never can get that straight. But around that age, they're considered adults at that point. And there is no doubt in my mind that a 12-year-old can understand being born again. So when you can understand being born again, now you're responsible for that. Now, if you're not, you're going to go to hell. It really is that simple. If you're not born again, that's where you're going to end up. There's only two destinations when you die. Heaven or hell. That's it. That's it. There's nothing in between. We come to church because we want to meet with the presence of God. We want a face-on-face collision with the Holy Spirit. Just blammo. That's what we want. When we come to meet with the presence of God, your needs are not the issue. Neither are mine. Our needs are not the issue. But, my favorite Scripture, and Yale made me narrow this down recently, when we make Him the priority, He meets all of our needs. That's the thing. Matthew 6.33 Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be added to you. Seek the kingdom. God will take care of the rest. But when you focus on yourself and your needs, that's a problem. It's always been a problem. It always will be a problem. If you have sin in your life that you just can't seem to get over, quit focusing on the sin and focus on the Savior. I wish I'd have known that when I was this big. But I didn't learn that until I was probably in my 40's. By then, there was a lot of damage done. And I did take care of. You've got to repent for that stuff and make sure it's not affecting your family line. He is the priority. Alright, number four attribute of any kingdom really. Kingdoms have war units. War units. You can go to church all your life and never go to war. But that's not the kingdom. Sorry. The minute you said yes to Jesus, you just signed up for the draft. They didn't tell you that. They didn't tell you that. Sorry. I try to be a little more truthful with people that I lead to the Lord. It is a wonderful thing. Don't get me wrong. It is a wonderful thing. But without it, you're not going to the right place. At Glory of Zion, which is Chuck Pierce's church, they have war units that will meet at 3 a.m. if God is calling them to war on that watch. Anybody besides me up at 3 a.m.? I was up at 3 a.m. last night. Of course, I can't say I was praying. I was watching the British Open, but that's okay. I didn't hear it, but that's okay. It's probably close. I used to have a job where I had to get up at 3 a.m., and I went to bed at like 6 p.m. I went to bed early. That's a military unit that's meeting with God. A war unit like Chuck Pierce's, like they do. They meet with God to get strategy to overcome the enemy. If you've got to do it at 3 a.m., then you've got to do it at 3 a.m. Our prayer team here that you all signed up for, we call Shamar. You're all watchmen. Watchmen work 24 hours. I'm just saying, if Maureen didn't explain that to you, talk to her. She's in charge of that. Not me. I'm a good boy. Don't come yelling to me. Talk to Maureen and God, because there have been many times in my life he has awakened me in the middle of the night to pray. I'm sure that a lot of you have done exactly that. And you'll do it again. If he needs something, he'll wake you up. Number five, kingdoms have music and sound. They do. They always have. Remember David playing the harp and the lyre or whatever for King Saul? When David was playing, the demons left Saul alone. When he stopped playing, the demons came back. There are singers, musicians, and dancers in the kingdom. Dancing with the Holy Spirit is one of the mightiest things that you can do. One of them. It's huge. The last song we sang, Rita Springer, You Are Still Holy, that was the first solo dance I ever did. And I did it at the men's retreat at Word of Life. And I had to laugh. I learned how to dance with very little space. They gave me like a little postage stamp to dance in. It was out at Laurelville. And they had monitor here and monitor there. They gave me a little space here. So I had to dance in like a two-by-two spot area. I did it. I did it in front of a bunch of men that had never seen anything like that before because that was my first time. I don't know, was there anybody? The only dance I think at Word of Life before us was some people like Chris Toth that would just jump up and down during praise and worship. You know, and that's great. That's great. Especially when a man does it. But when a man dances in the Spirit for the Lord, that's powerful. I had an ex-marine, an ex-marine come up and tell me one day after I danced in front of everybody at Word of Life. Well, it was the dance team that I was in charge of. After we were done, he only came up to me, and he came up to me and he said, this wasn't everybody else up there, but he said that you looked like you were ten feet tall when you were up there. You just looked bigger and stronger when you were dancing. I was like, wow, that's coming from a marine. That's high praise indeed, which is what I want. I never wanted anybody to see me. When they said, you can dance at that men's retreat, but you get this little thing to dance in, I did it. I did it. Because God said to. God wanted me to do it. I didn't want to do it. Believe me, I didn't want to do it. Ask Colette. She'll tell you. I didn't want to do it. I never wanted to do any of the dances. The only dance that I ever really wanted to do, that really nobody even had to ask, was when we got to dance with the swords in it. Real swords, by the way. We got to dance with the swords. Now that one I wanted to do. That was fun. Number six. This is the last attribute that I'm going to go over. The kingdom of God has power. And there's power coming to us because we're going to need it more than we've had in a long time. I'm talking about the church as a whole, all over the world. Unprecedented infusion of power because we are going to be bringing in the billion soul harvest. Not million. Billion with a B. That was prophesied by Bob Jones in the 1970s. Well, it has already begun in certain spots. It has already begun. Now you're aware of the fivefold ministry gifts. There also can be called ascension gifts. Apostle, prophet, evangelist, teacher, pastor. That may be the wrong order. I don't know. But God gave those positions to the church. But really their job is to equip the church and establish the kingdom. The fivefold ministry, those positions. They establish the kingdom and they equip the church. That's another thing I said to God at the very beginning. Day one I said, this is an equipping church. There is no topic off the schedule, off the topic. There are certain topics that a lot of pastors will not talk about. Tithing is one of them. This is the least talked about thing in the Christian church in America. Around the world, it's talked about a lot around the world. But in America, for some reason, pastors don't really talk about money. I don't have that problem because I tithe. And we tithe, sorry. And we've seen the difference it makes. We've seen it with our own two eyes. Four eyes. Well, we both have glasses. So eight eyes. When those gifts and callings are in alignment with all the gifts and callings, there's more than just five. It's just that those are the five that really represent the government of the church and the government of the kingdom. Because there are more than five gifts that God has given to the church. Helps is another gift. It's just as important. There's a lot of gifts. Just as important. A lot of callings. But when those are in alignment, we're going to see David's tabernacle restored. I've seen it. I've read the books. I've listened to them. There's a bunch of churches, spiritual churches, that will teach the tabernacle of Moses and they actually teach you to do what they did in the tabernacle of Moses, you know, and use it as a model for prayer. You know, you start off with the laver, the wash, and all this stuff. You know, and I never liked that because I learned at a very young age that the church is not modeled after Moses' tabernacle. The church is modeled after David's tabernacle. They're completely different. Moses' tabernacle, how can you use that as a model of prayer when it was based on the law? And it was based on, I have to get clean. I have to do everything just right. And even in Moses' tabernacle, even if I get clean and I do everything right, I still can't go into the presence of God because I'm not the high priest. And only he can go in. He's the only one that can go in and he can only go in one day a year. Does that sound like the church to you? Well, here's David's tabernacle. David's tabernacle, no walls. Those side walls, gone. David's tabernacle, 24 hour, seven days a week, praise and worship going on in David's tabernacle. They paid musicians and singers to be there. They paid them well. David was rich. Very rich. Good Jewish boy, very rich. They paid them. David used to hang out at that tabernacle because the presence of God was there. You could go in. You could go out. You could go in. You could go out. It's amazing. You couldn't go in and out the tabernacle of Moses. And you didn't have to do anything. In the tabernacle of David, there was no labor to wash, bronze labor. There wasn't any of that stuff. There weren't any sacrifices. The sacrifice, as we learned in the New Covenant, but in David's tabernacle, they were already doing it. The sacrifice was praise and worship. We bring a sacrifice of praise, the Bible says. And we sang that song back in the 70s that had that in it. I think that was the title. David's tabernacle was based not on the law, but on the presence of God. Period. Oh, and there was praise, worship, and dancing at David's tabernacle like all the time. The dancers were paid too. I'm just saying. You know, there are corporations. Corporations in America, around the world too, but I know they're in America. There are corporations that are owned by Christians. They actually pay intercessors to go to work every day and all they do is pray all day. Monday through Friday. And they get paid very well. And those corporations do very well. And they always will. Always. Because they're giving God precedence. They're giving the presence of God. They know that with the presence of God involved in their business, they're going to thrive in the midst of all kinds of famine and whatever else is going on. The spirit of religion controls, well, every non-Christian of course. And even some Christians. They're much more comfortable following a bunch of rules. It's amazing. When you study other religions, and you study the different denominations in Christianity too, it's all about rules. You have to follow a whole bunch of rules. And it's so sad because we know from the Bible that following those rules, that's not going to get you into heaven. It's not going to get you into Shambhala. It's not going to get you into purgatory or out of purgatory. Or whatever any religion teaches, you can follow all those rules. They're only going to get you to hell. That's it. That's the location without Jesus. But our flesh is actually more comfortable following rules. That's the way we're made. It's not really anything you can do about that until you have Jesus in you, Holy Spirit in you, and you can fight against that now. Because your spirit has been completely regenerated. Now, when you came to Jesus, it wasn't about rules anymore because your spirit is telling your flesh, hey, knock that off. That was then. That's the old man. I'm a new man now. Don't talk to the old man. Talk to the new man. Apostle Joe says that all the time. He says it to his wife. Do you want the old man or the new man? I have not yet had the guts to say that to my wife. I don't know if I ever will. Do this, don't do that. All the religions, it's about that. Do this, don't do that. Jesus came to set people free from do this, don't do that. Because Jesus did all the work. That's the difference between Christianity and everything else. I've got two minutes. I've got to talk fast. Chuck Pierce, Chuck Pierce and his right-hand man, Dr. Robert Heidler. I've mentioned him many times. I love them both. They teach that in 2008, we entered the year of the new wineskin. 2008. 2008, if you remember, it was also the election of Obama's first term as president. That and God starting to move, a new movement, really mobilized the church. It got the church awoke. See, we were woke way before the woke. It's because Satan copies. He can only copy. His woke has nothing to do with God's woke. It's a complete opposite. They got the church praying too. Since 2008, I have seen, you've probably seen it too if you've been with the Lord, going back to that. Prayer movements have cropped up all over the country. I've seen it. Prayer movements have cropped up all over the globe. We have more prayer movements in America, I think, even than we had during the first and second Great Awakening. I think there's more now than in the midst of those two huge Great Awakenings that swept the entire country where you could see entire cities, entire villages, all Christian. Every single one of them. Even their pets were Christian. I'm serious. Yeah. Would I lie to you? I don't know. I'm not answering that question. Interestingly for the Smiths, 2007 is when we started our transition from teaching to pastoring. In 07. That was our transition. It started in 07. That timing is not a coincidence. I'm not setting myself up as anything special. I'm just saying that God has all of us here for such a time as this. Every one of you. There's no coincidence for any of you being here. None. I don't even believe in coincidence. With God, there's no such thing. He can orchestrate anything. And it's amazing how He can do it. He can have this person and this person in the same spot at the same time on the same day in the same month in the same year to accomplish His purposes. And they can come from separate ends of the earth. And He'll get them there. He'll get them there. He's done it with my own life many times. The last 20 years of the church, the Kingdom of God, He has been placing all of us where we're supposed to be. He's still continuing that. There are still some... Pray for the stubborn Christians. Because there's Christians around that are supposed to be here at the way. They're around us. I know this. Some of them I know already. Some of them I know fairly well. They're supposed to be here. But, you know, I know you don't know anybody that's stubborn. I know you don't know anybody that's stubborn. You know. But, know this. You're here at the way for such time as this. Our area of operations in the military, it's an AO. Our area of operations is Latrobe, Westmoreland County and western Pennsylvania. That is our area of operations. God is starting an apostolic center with us. Right here. He's starting an apostolic center and that's our metron in the Greek. That's our metron. Latrobe, Westmoreland County, western Pennsylvania. And it goes in that order. It emanates in that order. Ok, so we may not be focusing a whole lot on western Pennsylvania right now, but we will. We're focusing a lot on Latrobe right now. And that will continue. But all of that is part of our metron. A metron, your metron in the Greek just means your spot. Your influence area. Where you have the most influence. Where you're set up. And whether you live in Latrobe, you're set up here. I know the Moyers live in Smithston, technically. But it's really northern West Virginia where they live. And, they're still kind of in their metron. Kind of. You know. But, keep this in mind. We are the governing authority in this area. We are the governing authority. Not the Latrobe City Council. Not the mayor. Not the district attorney of West Wilmington County or anything. Not the mayor of Pittsburgh. Not the representatives and congresspersons and whatever else. You know, whether it's state or federal. No. The kingdom of God is the governing authority wherever it is. And, one Christian is all it takes for the kingdom of God to be that authority. One. And we have a lot more than one. Our combined anointing scares the devil. It really does. That's why you're getting attacked as much as you'd be getting attacked. Because what does a rabid dog do when confronted? It attacks. Because it knows nothing else. That's what it does. If you come upon a baby bear, you better start running because there's a mama bear that's going to attack you only because you were close to baby bear. The demons are ticked off because we're close to Jesus Christ. And we're doing what He wants us to do. So the demons have been attacking. It's what they are. They can do nothing else. We can't look at them and say, well, why are they doing that? No, the Bible tells us they're here to steal, kill, and destroy. That's all they can do. They can do no else. That's who they are. But God is just the opposite. All God is is Healer, Deliverer, Savior. All that great stuff. Because that's who He is. And Satan hates that. The demons in this area hate that. They hate us. I'm not going to tell you the story or the whole thing because it's already after 12 a little bit. Or I could go on Milwaukee time. They're an hour. We could keep going for another hour. But we grabbed such an attention in the kingdom of darkness that within the first year or two of us taking over as pastors here, I think this happened in about year two, the local coven in Westmoreland County sent one of their witches here to test us to see if we were real. See, witches go to churches all the time. They're not going to hear the Gospel. They're not going to hear the Word. They're not going to praise and worship. They're going to see if they need to be afraid of these people. And a lot of times they go into churches too to do little things. They've worked a life over the years. Multiple times they found bones, animal bones in the back row because a witch was there and did a little thing with the bones. So, you know, you just pray about it. Toss the bones away. No big deal. Witches have no power over us. But the devil sent a witch to us. I called it a shot across the bowel. A military guy. It was a shot across the bowel. I learned a lesson that day. Don't close your eyes when you're praying for somebody you don't know. Because, you know, she punched me in the face. Don't do that. Keep your eyes open. I mean, if you're praying for me or Lyman or Collette or whatever, we're probably not going to hit you. Probably. But keep your eyes open so you're ready. You never know. But it was a test. It was a test. And they found out that we were real. Because we'd cast out a lot of demons from that girl for three hours here. And she didn't want to leave. We asked her multiple times. You can leave anytime. She said, I've never felt this good. She said, I go to my psychiatrist and say that there's voices in my head and she doesn't believe me. And she looked at me and she said, you believe me, don't you? And I said, yes, I do. Yes, I do. I know you have voices in your head. I heard them with my own two ears. So, we are the governing authority here. What we proclaim, what we decree will come to pass. Don't forget, my wife and I, we've been reminding each other in some things this past week or two, don't forget about the courts of heaven. If you need a breakthrough, take it to the courts of heaven. I passed out a sheet for everybody. You can just read the sheet. Put in there whatever your request is in the courts. And watch God work. Watch God work. Don't forget about the courts of heaven. I didn't spend eight weeks teaching on that so we could just say that was a good teaching and do nothing about it. Don't forget about it. That is a tool that God has given to us. And the courts are waiting up there because probably 90% of Christians don't even know that it exists. They don't even know they can do that. That's alright. More for me. I get more time in the courts because I know they're there. It kind of goes with anything, right? So, let's pray. Father, we thank You. We praise You. We thank You, Lord, for setting up this system of government called the Kingdom. The Kingdom of Jesus Christ. It has always been and it always will be. It is nothing new. We're not doing anything new. We're going back to the future. It's all we're doing. We're saying yes to what the Bible teaches. We're saying yes to what Holy Spirit is asking us to do. And there's a lot that is going to go into this that I don't know yet because God doesn't tell you a whole lot ahead of time. He tells you what you need to know like today. It's really annoying. I want to know what next month looks like. No, no. He's not telling me that. He hardly ever tells me that. And when He does, it's a dream or something and it's symbolic and it's even more annoying. But it's wonderful because obviously, He's got a sense of humor. And He knows I don't get annoyed. We all would like to know everything, but there are many things you don't want to know ahead of time. You just don't. You'd mess it up royally. And so would I. God sees the big picture. Thank You, Lord. You take care of us. You see this drunk driver who is four streets across from us heading our direction. Angel makes the car stop. Runs out of gas. Engine seizes. Whatever. And You know that that was Satan's attack on me or on us. You've shown me many times that You got me out of accidents ahead of time. That You were ready. And I was clueless. You know, oblivious. I didn't know that You did anything until after the fact. But Lord, I also know that every day You do stuff for us that we won't find out about until we get to heaven probably. If then. Because we're probably not going to care then. When we're standing in front of Jesus Christ, I don't think we're going to care too much about our previous life. When faced with the glory in the throne room, can you imagine? You're not going to care about your previous life. We're going to throw down our crowns if we get any. I'll be just happy to get there. I don't need a crown. But if I have any, so be it. I'm in Jesus anyway. It's not me. It's Him. He does everything. We don't have to. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. If you're feeling overburdened, it's not coming from God. So I pray right now, anybody here that is feeling burdened and overcome and have this weight on their shoulders, I command that weight to leave right now in the name of Jesus. It is not allowed to be there because everybody in this room right now follows King Jesus. So that demonic burden must go now in Jesus' name. Thank You, Lord. I pray that You would heal everybody here that needs a touch in their bodies, in their minds, maybe in their mental health area, maybe with anxiety, whatever it might be. I just declare healing for all of that. Let Your shalom just fall on everybody here. I decrease healing. Your river of healing to flow right now through this gathering of the saints. Let Your healing river flow, Lord. Heal people from things they're not even asking for. Heal people from things they don't even know that's there. Thank You for Your healing, Lord. By His stripes we are healed. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, Lord. I declare the mind of Christ over everybody here. What an amazing gift that is. But it's in there. It's in the New Covenant. We have the mind of Christ. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, Father. Thank You, Holy Spirit. I ask that You would bless everybody here. See us all back here safely next Sunday. Ready to enter into Your presence. I ask, Lord, that Your presence would leak out of us throughout the week. Touch people even as we walk by them, as we drive by them, as they walk by our houses. Thank You, Lord. Thank You for moving us from church to kingdom because it's going to really mean everything. It's setting us up for future success. But we have present success too. We're going to all be able to see things change for the better in many, many ways. And Latrobe will never be the same. Never be the same. So we thank You. We praise You. In Jesus' name, Amen.