Militant Evangelism! (21 page)

When Sue came out to the truck with me, I saw something I hadn't seen before.
The skunk was stuffed.
It looked alive, but it was as dead as dead could be. I felt stupid, but quickly picked it up and ran to show my daughter Rachel, who was on the phone. She thought it was real, screamed almost lifting the roof off the house. It seemed the deceased skunk could
raise
as much, if not more of a stink, dead, than it did alive.

When Jesus lay in the tomb, He was dead. Death had laid its ice-cold hand upon His body. His skin was drained of
color
. His heart sat like a cold rock within His breast. His cold fingers lay still and stiff. Suddenly, deep within the heart of the Son of God
came
a beat ... one beat whose implications resounded unspeakable and blessed hope throughout the whole earth. Another heart beat followed, then another. Within seconds,
color
began to return to the flesh of the Messiah. His stiffened fingers began to move, His chest
raised
as He breathed air into His still lungs. Life broke the steel bands of death from the body of the Son of the Living God. Just as four words from the mouth of the Creator had caused light to flood the universe in the beginning, so, in this new beginning, light had flooded the dark tomb and like a flash of lightning, filled the earth.
It was not possible that death could hold Him!

Death, the stinking skunk that it was, is now dead, in fact, it is more than dead.
Its
very guts were torn from its body. Now, death is but a stuffed beast, and like Steve's skunk, can only scare those who lack the understanding that it is lifeless:

"Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is your sting? O Grave, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the Law" (1 Corinthians 15:54-56).

The wages of sin is death. Jesus appeased the Law in full on the cross when He "redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us." He paid the Court of Eternal Justice, now the prison doors have been swung open wide for those held captive by
satan
to do his will.

I was preaching at a fake funeral in Colorado. As I stood on a soapbox in front of six pall-bearers and a (living) corpse, which (who) was covered by a white sheet, about 150 people stood and listened to the good news that death had been conquered in Christ. Suddenly, the crowd began laughing. I turned around and saw a very small child sitting on the corpse! While most who watched the funeral stood wide-eyed in the face of death, this toddler rested himself on the corpse, as though it were nothing but another of life's everyday experiences.

Those who fully understand the victory wrought on the cross, and the triumph of the resurrection, refuse to fear death. They, like the child, see no threat. It is but an empty hand grenade, a defused bomb, a stuffed skunk. It is no threat to them, nor does it have any power over them. It is but a dark door with a golden handle that opens to the pure and brilliant light of eternal joy.

How tragic that the world doesn't know what we have found in Jesus Christ. We must work while we can use our energies. God forbid that life should pass us by while we are building a Kingdom that
can
be moved. If the Lord tarries, we will find that old age will hinder us from doing exploits for God that
are a breeze
to the young. It is fine for the elderly to be young at heart, but the heart needs a body that can move.

May He use our eyes to see the harvest, while we can still
see.
May He use our ears to hear the cries of the lost, while we can still
hear.
May He use our mouths while we can still speak, our hands to reach out to the unsaved, and our feet to carry to them the Gospel of
peace.

Graven
By
Art

I can recall speaking to a man who totally rejected the Bible as having any worth. Besides that, he was sure that it was not possible that any human being could understand its message. He told me that monks had been studying it for hundreds of years, and not even their learned minds could interpret its words, so how could any man "off the street" understand the Scriptures? When I informed him that was why he needed the Holy Spirit to lead him into all truth, he said he didn't believe in the Holy Spirit—"just in God."

As he puffed on his cigarette, he spoke of the sins of other Christians, used God's name in vain, and told me that he went to church every week and confessed his sins. Then he said that all we need to do was follow the Ten Commandments, something it was obvious he didn't do. If we do "follow" the Law, it acts as a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ.

So, we went through the Law. He admitted that he had stolen ("just a comic" when he was young). He also acknowledged that he had lied (when he was young), but when I said that God considered lust to be the same as adultery, he recoiled. It was one sin he didn't confine to his youth. That touched a raw nerve. He said there is nothing wrong with lust... if "you don't dwell on it for too long." Now here is a strange thing. Lust is O.K. for a time, but the duration of period in which a man lusts, turns it from purity to iniquity. The god he believed in was obviously not the God of the Bible. When I asked him what his name was, he told me it was "Art," and suddenly it made sense. Here was another case of idolatry. His was another god, "graven by art and man's device."

Of course the Bible is a hard book to understand, until we are born of the Spirit. There are many passages in scripture that don't make any sense at all to the unregenerate. If a sinner is seeking salvation, he may read the words of Jesus to the rich young ruler and end up in error:

"If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in Heaven; and come, follow Me" (Matthew 19:21).

It seems clear—straight from the mouth of the Master. To get to Heaven all a man has to do is sell what he has, give to the poor and then "follow" Jesus. But then he turns to Ephesians 2:8-9 and reads:

"For by Grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."

Those who are not born of the Spirit, and don't understand the difference between Law and Grace, will understandably end up in the State of Confusion. The Chinese language sounds strange to me. Yet, a four year old Chinese child can understand it completely. Why?
Because he has been born into a Chinese family.
The Chinese language is not darkness, but light to him. The language of scripture will be nothing but babble to those who are not born into the family of God. The natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, they are foolishness to him, because they are spiritually understood. He must be born of the Spirit, into the family of God, to understand spiritual things.

Nobody Understands

A pastor friend of mine often takes squadrons of soldiers to the front line of rock concerts to give out tracts. He designs literature with the group's lyrics on the front. He then uses them as a springboard to answer the questions on the inside, then through the Law into Grace.

In April of 1993, he took a team to a "Guns and Roses" concert, and handed out a tract with the lyrics from their hit "Dead Horse" on the front:

"Nobody understands, quite why we're here, we're searching for answers that never appear . .
. "

He and his team walked the long lines of people boldly saying what the authorities at the concert were saying: "No alcohol, no drugs, no cans or bottles." As they did so, they gave out tracts.

When the pastor arrived home, he found a message on his answering machine. It was from Mr. Rose, and he was blooming mad. He introduced himself and then said:

"How dare you
blankity
-blanks give out your
blankity
-blank,
blankity
-blank at my
blankity
-blank
concert.
You have a
blankity
-blank nerve using my
blankity
-blank lyrics on your
blankity
-blank!"
Click!

Had he dropped his four letter words, his message would have been about three seconds long.

The next day, the pastor found another message on his machine. This one was much longer, and it was from a young lady at the concert who had come to the Lord directly as a result of the tract. Her voice was soft and sincere as she spoke words of appreciation, that they cared enough to leave the safety of the barracks to go to the front lines of battle. I'm sure the pastor would gladly face the thorny rebuke of ten thousand nasty roses, if it meant the salvation of even a single soul.

In August of 1993, a firm in San Francisco released a homosexual video game called "Gay Blade," in which the player makes his way through 135 rooms of a castle, and vaporizes 100 bad guys in the process. The castle has within its walls, hidden dangers, such as "hideous Bible thumping lunatics." When the world hates us, we love them because they are our enemies. When they reproach us because we belong to the Christ, we rejoice, because we are counted worthy to bear the brunt of their ignorance. They merely hate us because we testify of their deeds, that they are evil.

I once showed up in the local square to find that one of my preaching buddies was being hampered by peace protesters. They were holding a rally on the other side of the square and had come across to ask him to stop preaching. Their argument was that "we were all on the same side, both standing for peace." I gently told them that we preach peace
with
God while the peace movement preached peace
without
God.

I then told my friend to keep preaching. That upset the peace people, to a point where they persistently pushed, pulled and poked at the preacher. When they stopped him, I felt something erupt within me, and immediately began preaching about 20 feet away. They ran towards me to stop me speaking, and when they stopped me, my friend Wally burst into flames, and so it went on until they gave up.

If you have never felt the wind of persecution blow upon the fire of the Holy Spirit within you, you are missing out on something amazing. You don't know what power dwells in you until that fan fuels the flame and sparks
a boldness
in your spirit. We have tapped into the supernatural realm. The Bible tells us, "that when Saul made havoc of the Church," the disciples were scattered abroad and went everywhere preaching the Word (Acts 8:3-4). Saul merely stirred the winds of persecution. When Paul was placed in prison, he wrote that "many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confidence in my bonds, are much more bold to speak the Word without fear" (Philippians 1:14). Others took up the mantle of Saul of Tarsus, and now persecution against Paul stirred the fire in his brethren. He went on to write
" .
. . in nothing (be) terrified by your adversaries."

In 1993, I was invited to speak at Yale University. I was excited because of the opportunity to speak at a university with such a reputation, and, I learned, a godly heritage. I found out that 78% of the first graduates went into the
ministry, that
famous Christians of the last century, such as David
Brainard
and Jonathan Edwards, who preached America's most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" were students there.

When we arrived, a zealous young man named Brian showed me around. He showed me the poster advertising homosexual activities, on the door of the chaplain of the divinity school. He pointed out that of the 240 students in the "divinity"
school,
only about 10% were Christians. It was so sad to see a place which had old drinking fountains with "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink,"
engraven
into them, and doors with Bible verses cut into the wood, so given to the devil. Posters advertised student orgies in the "
Brainard
underground," and others announced homosexual activities on campus, all with the chaplain's blessing. Divinity professors put
them selves
above scripture as they sat in cynical judgment over it, rather than letting scripture judge them.