the ascension and the authority of Christ. The Ascension Day has tremendous implications for today. I was asked by a Christian leader, why is there so much corruption, crime and violence in our society? And why is there so much immorality even in the church? Why are we seeing so many moral failures and scandals amongst leaders and business in every level of government and even in the church? My answer was, all of these symptoms are the inevitable consequence of the spirit of age. Antinomianism, the hostility to God's law, the rejection of God's law, inevitably leads to lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. Where every man does what is right in his own eyes. Egalitarianism. The rejection of authority and the lack of respect for elders produce a self-centered and selfish society. Such as these students on Sodom and Gomorrah on the hillside at UCT burning oil paintings, irreplaceable oil paintings of founders of this university. and trashing things that they get for free. Other people sacrifice to build. Evolutionism and its denial of the Creator and therefore denial of accountability to Almighty God on Judgment Day. Evolutionism erodes the very foundations of Christian civilization. All ideas have consequences. Foundational truths have been ignored. Vital pillars of Christian civilization have been eroded over the last century. What we are seeing today are the inevitable outworkings of false doctrines being introduced, tolerated, accepted, in many cases even celebrated. One of the great problems of the age is the separating of salvation from the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It is the Lord Jesus Christ alone who can save us. You cannot accept Jesus as Savior without submitting to him as Lord. Those who preach a cheap grace and an easy believism, just believe, just pray this prayer, just raise your hand, it's easy to be a Christian. While every eye is closed and every head is bowed, it's so embarrassing to commit your life to Christ. While the lights are dimmed and so-and-so plays on the piano, just slip your hand up. Honestly, this betrays an inadequate understanding of sin. The nature of God, Christ's mission is not purpose and calling as Christians. What did Jesus do when he evangelized? We read of this rich young ruler who ran to Christ while every eye was open, every head was raised. He ran to Christ in the open, in public, and he knelt before Christ. Good teacher, what must I do to receive eternal life? And what did Jesus say? Why do you call me good? Only God is good. You know the commandments. He repeats the commandments and then said, do these and you'll live. Rich young ruler said, I've done all these things since I was young. And Jesus says, one thing you lack, sell everything you've got, go give the money to the poor, then come and follow me. And the man went away sad. Now if he'd gone away angry, it would have indicated he didn't believe Jesus. But he went away sad, indicating he believed what Jesus said, but he wasn't willing to pay the price. Jesus put his finger on the first, second, 10th commands. I mean this man was making an idol of his wealth effectively. So his coveting, his wealth was more important than obedience to Christ and obviously it was more important to him than God effectively. So he claimed that he'd obeyed all the commands but Jesus just touched three of them and he walked away sad. And Jesus didn't run off and say, look, 90%, 50%, 10%. He didn't lower the standard. And Jesus looked at him and loved him, but he gave him the standard and he didn't lower the standard. Today, how many people are censoring, editing, abridging, repackaging the gospel in order to make it more palatable to a hostile audience? It would not have been sufficient for Moses to proclaim to the Hebrews, who were slaves in Egypt, that they should accept that Yahweh gives them perfect freedom while leaving them in bondage and under the whip of slavery in Egypt. Because that would be analogous to what we're doing today. You remain addicted to porn, drugs, drink, bondage of whatever. you've got some spiritual freedom. I mean physically you're still being beaten up by the devil, you're still serving his cause, you've got no freedom. But somehow you've got some spiritual freedom even while you have no physical freedom. Make sense? Well that's the gospel preached in all too many places. And I say gospel with a small g in inverted commas and italics. Anything less than deliverance from slavery in Egypt and freedom from the bondage of slavery would have been inadequate. I mean, the picture we have of salvation in the Old Testament is freedom from Egypt, leaving Egypt, going out of Egypt, and how dramatically did the Lord do this for them, and going into their own land where they were free to serve the Lord. God's eternal purposes required the people of Israel to survive the Passover, when the angel of death passed through Egypt, to leave Egypt, to cross the Red Sea, to be established as a free people of the Promised Land on the other side of the Jordan too, by the way. That's the parallel, that's the parable for us. Sin is serious. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, and he will freely pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, says the Lord, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Compromise and cowardice have catastrophic consequences, as we have seen. We can recognize the outworkings of the classic tactics of corrupt and conquer, confused, divide and conquer, that people have so little fear of God that they can be so openly blasphemous and rebellious and hostile to God and his word to try and make fun of eternal judgment. No, I don't think hell will be fabulous for this person or anyone else. And the truth does not change just because you don't want to hear it. All too many have been deceived, distracted, divided, and disarmed. There are those who are openly advocating the destruction of Christian civilization. Every single pillar and foundational block of Christian civilization is being dismantled, attacked, and everywhere. In many cases, Christians are participating, cooperating in the destruction of these essential pillars of civilization. Yet, in the face of all these disastrous developments, the response of all too many Christian leaders has been compromise and cowardice. Professor Martin Luther declared almost 500 years ago, if I profess with the loudest voice every portion of the truth of God except precisely that point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, then I'm not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefront besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point. Ascension Day points us to the solutions to all these problems. Ascension Day deals with authority. Christ has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him. The trouble is that today, most Christians just want to stop with Christmas. Christmas is the biggest, most popular holiday of the year. For good reason, it celebrates the greatest gift of all, the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. The incarnation of Christ when God took on human form and was born Bethlehem is very important. But many would prefer to think of Christ as the babe in the manger, rather than the risen, ascended, sovereign Lord reigning on high. Yet the classic Christian verse that we love so much and quote every Christmas, Isaiah 9, verse 6 to 7. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. Many like the idea of a child is born, But they'd like to stop then, edit out, and the government shall be upon her shoulder. Mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His governed peace there'll be no end. Many rather don't have that part emphasized. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this, we read. Anaziah 9. This is all too intimidating. This is too threatening. This is too intrusive. It has implications for every area of life. We like a God of love and mercy who answers our prayers and provides all our needs. However, we're not very comfortable with a holy God who sees everything, even the thoughts of a heart and is the eternal judge that we must give an account to. We live in a society where God's government is decapitalized and man's civil government is capitalized. Many people put a small G for gospel, put a big G for civil government. Well, how's that for idolatry? When we refer to the government, we should only be referring to God, the one who determines whether we live and when we die, because there's self-government, there's family government, there's church government, there's civil government, small g. God's government is only the government, capital G. He is the one who governs the universe, who determines the seasons. God alone is all-knowing, everywhere present and all-powerful. All human authority is limited. All human authority is delegated by God and is answerable to Almighty God. Jesus said to Pontius Pilate, you would have no authority of me unless it was given to you from above. We will all have to bow before Christ and give an account of our lives, every word spoken. on that last dreadful day of judgment, which should be a fearful thing for anyone who's thinking about it soberly in the light of scripture and the nature of God. Each one of us has an appointment. There's one appointment not one of us will be able to be late for. We won't be able to miss it. We won't even be able to be late for this appointment. It is appointed unto man once did I and after this the judgment. Hebrews 9 verse 27 is not just a great verse to prove that reincarnation is not viable or to prove to people that you only have one life to live and it'll soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last. But it should make us sober and realize one day I will have to give an account for what I've done with all the choices and freedom that I had here on earth during this time on earth. Christmas is the first holiday in the Christian calendar. The second most important holiday in the Christian calendar is Good Friday, when we solemnly remember the atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the great sacrifice on the cross of Calvary. He suffered, he bled, he died for our sins. He endured the punishment we deserve so that we could enjoy the reward only he deserves. This should inspire us afresh to repentance, thanksgiving, consecration. In view of God's mercy, we should present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. This is an interesting picture, too, depicting that behind the Roman soldiers who represent the power of the Roman Empire, there were God's angels who, with a word from Jesus, could Annihilate everyone in Jerusalem, Rome, Roman Empire, world actually. In fact, Jesus said to Peter when he pulled out his sword, could I not call upon 10,000 legions of angels? I mean, the Lord had all the power. His word alone could annihilate. He didn't need Peter's puny sword. He had all the power. And yet the Lord allowed this. He wasn't an innocent victim. He was a willing sacrifice. However, many Christians stop there. They stop at Good Friday. They worship Jesus as the suffering Savior. Roman Catholics have crucifixes depicting Christ suffering on the cross, and you will still see in Catholic churches, in some Catholic hospitals and homes, a crucifix on the wall. Protestants have tended to reject crucifixes. To us, Christ is no longer suffering on the cross. We have a simple, plain, rugged cross because Christ is no longer on the cross. He's risen, ascended, victorious, King of kings, Lord of lords, reigning on earth, never again to be humiliated, never again to be degraded, never again to die, never again to suffer. So we reject the Catholic mass and we reject the Catholic crucifixes. Christ is risen. The third great Christian holiday event is Resurrection Sunday. Surely one of the most joyful celebrations in the Christian calendar. It's a joyous celebration of the victory of Christ over death, hell and the grave. Christ Jesus is risen from the dead. He is alive forevermore. Death is defeated. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Our Lord and Savior has been declared to be the Son of God with power called the Spirit of Holiness by the resurrection from the dead. All the founders of religions are dead. You can visit the graves of Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius, Marx and Lenin. Not that I would bother, but you can. But in Jerusalem, there's an empty tomb. He's not here, he's risen. Raised for our justification. So it's absolutely essential that we include Ascension Day and Pentecost Sunday also in our Christian calendar. Many Christians only have these three pegs of their stool, so to speak. Christmas, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Resurrection Sunday. But that's not enough. We actually need five pillars in a sense. We've got to go on to Ascension Day and Pentecost Sunday. We need the power. We need the authority of Christ. The Christian calendar must have at least these five days. Now you notice what a country organizes its holidays around is super significant. You know that Ascension Day is a public holiday in 30 countries in the world at least, including Botswana and Namibia. Lesotho, they have it, Germany, Austria, Belgium. So Ascension Day is a Lichtenstein. There's many countries in the world that still observe Ascension Day as a public holiday. And South Africa used to. And I must say, to my shame, I never appreciated it until the ANC government abolished it. And in 1995, I was asked by John Wycliffe School to give a presentation to the school and the school assembly on why Ascension Day is important. I actually go to my Bible and I couldn't give a quick answer. I didn't have a polished presentation because I'd never even thought about it before. I mean, essentially there was part of the calendar. Now it wasn't. Now for the first time I looked and I realized what we had lost. And I'm afraid there's a lot of things in the old South Africa and the old Rhodesia that I never appreciated until we lost it. You take a lot of good things for granted, just like your health. I mean, which of us think about our kidneys? Until you have kidney failure or kidney stone, then you think about your kidneys. You know, you don't tend to think about your teeth until you've got a toothache and so on. So actually, pain in life is often there to teach us things. And a lot of pain is actually useful because, well, without it, we wouldn't learn a whole lot of things and we'd end up in deep trouble. For example, you may think that pain is just a curse. There's nothing good about it. But just take, for example, lepers. I've come across lepers. I worked amongst them up in Sudan. And the lepers can't feel at the ends of their extremities. So they'd wake up and they're missing fingers and toes and so on because rats have been eating them at night. And they didn't wake up because they couldn't feel it. And they could put the hand on something hot, not realize that it's burning off their flesh, and so on. So actually the pain is something to alert you to something's wrong so that you do something corrective. Even backache, which I've had my share of, is there to tell you there's things you're doing wrong, such as leaning over and picking up. boxes the wrong way without bending with the knees, picking up, using the power of your legs, not your back and so on, and strengthening your core. So there's a lot of pain that actually has important things to teach us. And terrible things happening in history often draw our attention to the scriptural principles and to the appreciation of God and of previous generations who put in place protections against us, which we either took for granted, despised, or rejected, only to realize later why Those things were important. And it's that way with Ascension Day. What a curse that Salafis put aside Ascension Day and replaced it with what? Youth Day, Women's Day, Workers' Day, which is May Day, occultic things. Why on earth would we want to put man in the place of God? This is what is all too often missing. 40 days after Resurrection Sunday, we celebrate the ascension of Christ into heaven. He is alive forevermore. He is exalted and enthroned at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. He is above every other name, every other authority in heaven and on earth. Jesus Christ is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. We have an advocate in heaven. Now, on Tuesday, Em and I went to 4SA, Freedom of Religion SA, report back about the parliamentary threats to our religious freedoms. And amongst the things they're reporting back on, boy, there's a lot of threats coming out there, our government claims that the Constitution, with its spelling errors, grammatical inconsistencies, logical inconsistencies, is the highest authority in the land. And any other authority that is in conflict with it is invalid and is under the Constitution. We have a higher authority, there is a higher law, and so if the government says you must perform this abortion, a Christian medical person can say, no, I have a higher authority. Life begins at conception. Abortion is murder. I will not do it. And the government's trying to say, you don't have the right to work for the government. Well, advocate Nadine Bardon says, no, actually, not just God's higher law allows you to not violate your conscience, to go in accordance with your conscience and say no to the government, but in fact, our constitution even allows you to exercise your religious freedom, not just in your mind and your heart, but in your speech, in your posts, in your writing, and in your life and work and with your hands, including in the workplace and school, even in a government school, even as a teacher, even as an employer in a government hospital, your religious freedom is inviolable. And of course this is the battle that we've got. Now I'm glad we've got an advocate like Nadine Baden-Host in 4SA standing up for us in the courts of South Africa, but we have a even greater advocate, ultimately, who's also the Supreme Court Justice, by the way. He hears our prayers. He will crush all his enemies. He will come again. Therefore, we must go and make disciples of all nations. The Great Commission is inextricably linked with the ascension of Christ. It is most significant that some governments, like the Antichrist nepotism and corruption party, the ANC, have seen fit to abolish the long-established Ascension Day as a public holiday. Ascension Day deals with authority. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you. Ascension is about authority. No wonder they don't want to have Ascension Day. The Ascension proclaims the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all areas of life. Jesus has all authority. He is Lord over the world of business, and sports, and entertainment, and government. Jesus Christ is Lord over the schools, and the shops, and the cinemas, and the factories, and the hospitals, the law courts, and the parliament. There is no area of life that is outside of His authority. Every doctor, teacher, policeman, businessman, parliamentarian, factory worker, farmer, mother, father, magistrate, and what are called the Supreme Court justices, will have to individually stand before mighty God on the Day of Judgment and give an account of our lives to Him. There is then not a square inch of space nor a minute of time in which the believer of Christ, thank you, can withdraw from the responsibility of being a soldier of the cross. Satan must be driven from the field. Christ must rule, not a square inch in the universe where Christ is not Lord. The Ascension proclaims the vindication and the victory of Christ. Now, no doubt the high priest, Caiaphas, and King Herod, and the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, thought they were very important and powerful people. But, you know, we only remember these political, religious leaders today because they arrogantly dismissed Christ and unjustly condemned our Lord Jesus Christ. They are just a footnote in the history of Christ, suffered under Pontius Pilate. Darius Pontius Pilate remembered as having presided over one of the worst cases, the worst case of injustice in history. They did not recognize that they were condemning to death the creator, the giver of life, the eternal judge before whom each one of them must stand. Psalm 68 verse 18 says you have ascended in high, you have led captivity captive. The picture given here is of a Roman general returning from a victorious campaign and behind his chariot, maybe you've seen the Ben-Hur film and Of course, I'm talking about the grand old classic of Charkness, not the disgraceful, disreputable, pathetic modern remake, which dares to use the same name. But a Roman general in his chariot going forward would have behind him the kings, the chiefs of those that he had just conquered. And of course, a whole lot of trophies that they may be able to bring back. And the idea is that Christ has led captivity captive in Christ's victory train. will be people like Pontius Pilate, Caesar Augustus, Caiaphas, King Herod, and all the others. They will be enchained, walking behind his chariots, so to speak, disgraced forever. Jesus is the eternal judge. The Emperor Augustus, who issued the decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world, requiring everyone to return to the town of his birth, Augustus could not have realized at that time that the baby born to third class subjects in faraway Judea would one day judge him. How could he have known that or imagined that? Can you imagine? The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. Psalm 110 is one of the most quoted Old Testament passages in the New Testament. Repeated again and again. The victory and vindication of Christ over all authority. The Lord said to my Lord, and Jesus even asked people, how is this possible? How can David speak of the Lord said to my Lord? Who is he talking about? Not talking about himself. The Father says, the Son, sit at my right hand till I make all your enemies your footstool. The Ascension proclaims the ultimate victory of Christ. Yes, the first time he came to this world he came as a Savior, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But the next time Jesus comes he will not come as a lamb. He will come as a lion. He will not come to save. The second time he comes he comes to judge. Those that refuse to bow to Christ as Saviour and Lord today, in the day of grace, when forgiveness is freely available, will one day be forced to bow to Christ as the eternal judge, when the day of grace will be ended and they will be condemned to hell forever. He shall execute kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the nations. He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall execute the heads of many nations. You can imagine, on that day of judgment, The Lord will be taking people like Barack Hussein Obama, and Nelson Mandela, and Fidel Castro, and Mugabe, and Barack Hussein, who is this criminal running sedan, who's just been overthrown, Omar al-Bashir, and all these characters, they will be thrown into the lake of fire. He shall execute the heads of many nations. The question is not will you bow to Christ, but when will you bow to Christ? Will you bow to Christ as Savior and Lord today, or will you only bow to Christ as your judge on the day of judgment? But every knee will bow, every tongue will confess. Therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and of those on earth, And of those under the earth, that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The day will come. There is no authority above that of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we marched to Parliament under the banner Chronfet Obchotzvet. The Constitution must be under God's law. God's law is above all law. Any law not in accordance with God's law is invalid. It's got no authority. You'd have no authority of me unless it was given to you from above, Jesus said to Caesar. Every knee will bow before Christ. Compared to Christ, the kings and presidents of this world are as nothing. Queen Victoria, attending late in her life, a presentation of Handel's Messiah was asked by the organiser, said, Your Majesty, we know you want to stand for the Hallelujah Chorus, which had been a tradition started since King George II. He stood during the Hallelujah Chorus saying, it is impossible to remain seated for the anthem of the King of Kings. When the King stood, everyone had to stand. And this started the traditional English speaking world of standing when the Hallelujah Chorus is sung in the Handel's Messiah. And so Queen Victoria, of course, had done this for years, and because she is so old and they knew it was hard for her, they said, please remain seated, nobody will mind. Well, she stood for the whole Hallelujah Chorus and she bowed. Because even though Queen Victoria was Empress of the greatest empire the world had ever seen, close to a quarter of the world's population and land surface, she still knew she was nothing before the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, as dust in the scales. Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. This includes King Herod and Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate. They will bow. This includes Caesar Augustus and Nero, Muhammad, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin. On several occasions when witnessing to Muslims, I've heard Muslims say, I believe as Muhammad believed. At this, I normally reply, then you must become a Christian. But Mohammed did not believe in Jesus, they will reply. And I can say, no, he did not then, but he does believe now. The ascension is a great comfort to believers who are suffering persecution. Seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. He was in all points tempted as we are yet without sin. Christ endured the full extent of temptation, to the fullest extent, because he never gave into temptation. Therefore, you know, we often have given into temptation when temptation has gone to maybe 20% of its power or something, but the Lord endured 100% of the power of temptation without giving in. We've got a high priest to sympathize with our weaknesses. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. We have an advocate in heaven. He hears our prayers, he ever lives to make intercession for us. You know, it can often intimidate people when they know that you have a lawyer. To get a lawyer's letter can sober some people. Well, when you've got not just an advocate, you've got the advocate, what can man do against us? We can be more than conquerors through Christ Jesus who loved us. He will come again. He will crush all his enemies. On the day the Lord returns, I want to be on his side. As Ronald Reagan once said, it is not appropriate for us to ask, is God on our side? But it is right for us to ask, are we on his? That's the correct attitude of any politician. God is not on our side. Who do we think we are? We need to be on his side. Therefore we should not fear popes and governments and councils and we will not bow before idols. We will respond as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego's friend said. Our God whom we serve is able to save us and he will. But even if he doesn't we still won't bow before your idols. nor where we compromise the essential principles of our faith. I think Professor Martin Luther may have been the bravest man in the history of mankind. He stood alone against the entire ecclesiastical and political structure of his time. He couldn't just go down the road and join another church. It didn't work like that in the Middle Ages. You had one church, the Roman Catholic Church, one authority, the Pope. You had one Holy Roman Empire. He couldn't just go down the road and get some political asylum in another country. It didn't work like that. He was making a stand against people who claimed that they could cast him into the lake of fire for all eternity, and it could of course behead him or burn him at the stake now, as they had done to other reformers like Savanarola and Huss shortly before. For Martin Luther to have made that stand on that day, it's incomparable to anything you and I could face, because you and I, if we have to, even if we have to give our lives for Christ, we do so in the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of other Christians have done so through the ages, even in the last century. We know that there are millions of Christians around the world who believe as we do. And so for us, it would not take the same amount of courage to make a stand today as it took for him to make then, because he was really alone. And at that stage, you know, for all he knew, they'd condemn him, excommunicate him, condemn him out as a heretic, have him burned to ashes, and that would be it. Nobody would ever hear again of what he accomplished. How could he have known that God would use this courageous act to bring about the great Protestant Reformation? Though Christ is physically absent from the earth, yet through his Holy Spirit he is spiritually present. He is all-knowing, he is everywhere present, he is all-powerful. He must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. One great, wonderful, inspiring example of this is Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, a magnificent church which was condemned to be destroyed by the Communists under Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, who in 1931 ordered this be dynamited. On the 5th of December, 1931, with cameras rolling, they filmed the destruction of the tallest building in Russia, the largest church in Russia, the third largest church in the world. They filmed it and they proclaimed this to the world and the newsreels went out. the victory of atheism over faith. Christianity is in ruins. The Soviet Union atheism is triumphant. And his plan was to build a Tower of Babel type buttressed idol up with Vladimir Lenin's fist in the air. Basically a revised Tower of Babel called the Palace of the Soviets. This would be a great monument to the triumph of atheism over the Church of Christ the Savior, which had been built to commemorate the victory in 1812 over the French revolutionary forces of Napoleon. And it was also the scene of the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky, which was held in 1882 at the inauguration of this cathedral. Well, Vladimir Lenin died. His statues were pulled down and smashed. His pictures and those of Lenin destroyed. The Leipzig prayer meeting began and the symbol of the Leipzig prayer meeting in East Germany was the candle. And the symbol was light is more powerful than darkness. Not all the darkness can put out one flickering little candle. Light is more powerful than darkness. Like life is more powerful than death. Jesus is a resurrection life. Truth is more powerful than lies and deception. And so the Leipzig prayer meeting grew and grew. And I remember hearing the beginning of this. Incredibly, I was just out of my national service, went back to my mission, Hospital Christian Fellowship, the first mission I worked for. And Brother Andrew, who I'd seen just before I went in the army, was there as I came out, taking devotions at Hospital Christian Fellowship up in Kempton Park. And Brother Andrew announced, this is the end of 1981, he said, next year we are launching, 1982, a seven-year Jericho prayer march to focus on bringing down the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, and opening up the communist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to the gospel of Christ. And I sat there thinking, Brother Andrew's lost it. This will never happen. I'd seen the Berlin Wall. It wasn't going anywhere. It was going to be up until Jesus returned to earth. I was as certain of that as anything. There is no way on earth in my generation time, in that time when I was in my 20s, that I would have believed in my lifetime the Berlin Wall would come down, the Iron Curtain would collapse, servitude would be opened to gospel. In fact, with pre-mill, pre-trib, dispensational, rapture fever mentality, I thought these were signs of the end and it was going to be up until Jesus returned. And yet, do you know the seven-year Jericho prayer march? Seven years later, it had spread so much, not just people in the West praying for Eastern Europe, but the Christians in Eastern Europe, and they would put all lights off in the home, put one candle in the window, open window, and people would see darkened streets, just a candle, a window of each house, and you could just see this resistance. People going to prayer meeting with a candle, unlit, but at the prayer meeting, that light, and the symbolism, light is more powerful than darkness, and this would spread. And at the end, you'd have this massive blaze of light like here in Leipzig in East Germany. The message was clear and the people were getting more courage and boldness. And the day came in 1989, seven years after they started this Jericho prayer march. Instead of marching seven times around Jericho, they prayed for seven years for coming down the Iron Curtain. And it came down in my lifetime. 1989, Berlin Wall came down. This was the greatest seismic event in history in my lifetime. The Berlin Wall, symbol of the Cold War, of the Iron Curtain, came down and there the people are singing Christian hymns with candles sitting on the Berlin Wall. The V for victory is the victory over communism. V for victory. This is the sign in Eastern Europe that people would often be using. Down came something in the region of 26,000 idols of Lenin, Marx, Stalin, and so on. All over. Off to the rubbish dump. And the people were celebrating Christmas for the first time in 40 years. The celebrations over the reuniting of Berlin, where people had been shot in the back for years for trying to escape from East Berlin going to West Berlin. Joseph Stalin's statue even dismantled from his hometown of Gori in Georgia. and today hundreds of churches being built in Moscow, hundreds, including the Church of Christ the Saviour Cathedral, built to original specs. One million Russians, poverty-stricken Russians, paid their own, contributed their own meagre resources to rebuild this cathedral to its original specifications. No prefab this. They built it to the original plans and the first item on the agenda was to give a decent burial and recognition of the last Tsar of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his beautiful family who were murdered by these Bolshevik savages in 1918. And this is one of the pictures, portraits on the wall in Christ Savior's Cathedral where they have a chapel dedicated to the memory of the Romanovs. Now this is not our style. We're Protestants. But I still have to rejoice to see our Russian Orthodox brothers-in-law showing their strong nationalism, their strong rejection of atheism. This is not our style of art, but it plainly depicts a strong Christian faith and a rejection of atheism. And for that, we can rejoice. This is a massive church, by the way. They can fit, they say, 12,000 people in this cathedral. This is massive. You think the auditorium at Quasimodo Mission can see 10,000. That's the size you're talking about, except with a lot more artistic detail. And I believe they've actually got gold on the roof. Now there's another vision of Daniel that we get in Daniel 2. The head of gold, the chest of silver, the stomach of bronze, the legs of iron, the feet of iron and clay. And a stone came, not with human hands, and this stone struck the statue, which symbolizes all the empires of the world, from the Babylonian through the Medo-Persian, the Greek, the Roman, all the way through to present day, and smashed it. And the stone grew to be a mountain that filled the whole earth. In Luke 20, our Lord Jesus said, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. Whoever falls on that stone will be broken. On whoever it falls, it will grind him to powder. So in Moscow, about 900 meters northeast of Red Square, you get Lubyanka Square, where there's a huge statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka, which later became the NKGV, which later became the KGB. the terrifying secret police. This statue was erected in 1958 and if you heard someone was called to the Cheka or you were called to the Cheka or to Lubyanka your heart would stop and your blood would run cold. This was a place where thousands of Christians were tortured and murdered. KGB headquarters in the Soviet Union with his idol outside, the notorious Lubyanka KGB HQ. Well, 1991, the statue of Dzerzhinsky was torn down. In fact, all over Russia, statues of Dzerzhinsky came down. This vicious atheist, Satanist, Antichrist, butcher, and torture of Christians. And today, you can go and wipe your boots on him in the park where they've abandoned a whole lot of these like this Friedrich Engels statue and so on. Today, Lubyanka Square no longer has the statue. The statue is gone. But the Christians brought a stone in memory of the Christians who died in the communist concentration camps and placed it in that square. So if you look here, where are we? I think I'll find a better place to show where it is in that square. But this stone is to remember all the people who suffered under the KGB. And it's a stone that comes from Solovetsky Monastery from Solovetsky Island, which was the first prototype communist concentration camp of the Soviet Union. Now, the Solovetsky Island is up in the White Sea. It's in the Arctic Circle. It's right up there where you get six months night, total night, no sun for six months. It's an island in the White Sea, up in the Arctic Circle. So the monks chose to be a place to get away from temptation and distractions. I guess it would do that. But the Soviets killed 95,000 ministers shot to death in this island. So, there we go. Right in this park here, which is just across from the Lubyanka on this side. Here's the circle. So the stone now is in this park, symbolizing the victory of Christ over communism. Whoever falls on that stone will be broken, but on whomever it falls, it'll grind them to powder. the failure of atheism and the triumph of faith in Russia. The Ascension is a wonderful reminder and assurance that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. First time I read this I thought that means the world will be 70% evangelized. Because the world is 70% covered in water. But it doesn't say as the waters cover the world. It says as the waters cover the sea. How much of the sea is covered in water? It's pretty much 100%. The Ascension proclaims Christ's glorious triumph and future return on the Day of Judgment. Therefore, we as Christians should return to observing Ascension Day as a holy day of faith, applying its implications to every area of life. We have focused often on the incarnation and on the atonement and on the resurrection of Christ. We need to focus more on the authority of Christ. the essential of Christ. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, not the removal of your mind, but the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. R.C. Sproul had the name of his radio ministry, Renewing Your Mind. just like James Kennedy had truths that transform. You can see, but that's so important to R.C. Sproul. His great ministry as a theologian was to renew people's minds by helping them to understand and apply the scriptures. Well, this is what we as Christians need to not be conformed to the world. And yet so many churches today seem to think their primary mission is to be conformed to the world. Conformed to the world's music, styles, fashions, fads, whatever the world's into, that's what we ape and echo and mantra. No, exactly the opposite. We are meant to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, by the washing of the word, so that we can prove, test what is the good, acceptable, perfect will of God. Ascension Day calls us to committed discipleship, consistent obedience. We need to take up a cross, forsake this world, and follow Christ. Israel could not fulfill its calling by being in bondage in Egypt, and we cannot fulfill our calling today. We cannot effectively serve God today if we remain conformed to this world in bondage to its sins and its idolatries. Attempting to accept the benefits of Jesus as Savior, while denying his authority as Lord over all areas of life is futile. There's only one Savior and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we need to go beyond celebrating Christmas, worshiping the babe in the manger. We need to go beyond accepting atonement for our sins and recognize that Jesus is the risen, ascended, reigning on high, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, who is going to come again to judge the living and the dead. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Do you fear God? Have you surrendered to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? This statue, this monument in Switzerland is of the reformer William Ferrell lifting up an open Bible. Sola Scriptura. Scripture alone is the ultimate authority. Are you studying His Word and seeking to fulfill, faithfully apply Biblical principles to all areas of life? Let us get back to the Bible for reformation and revival. Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Any questions, any comments? I heard just this week speaking to Michael Swain at the 4SA that they have committees right now in Parliament planning to remove Christmas and Good Friday from the public holidays. You can see they've been inching out not just the history and heritage, but our Christian heritage. And all we've got left is, as public holidays, is Good Friday and Christmas Day, basically. All the other Christian holidays, because Resurrection Sunday is on a Sunday anyway. So public holidays recognized by this government is effectively only two. We should have five. at least Christmas, Good Friday, Resurrection Sunday, Ascension Day and Pentecost Sunday. Those should be the most important events in our calendar. Of course as a Protestant I'd add Reformation Day. But what we shouldn't be doing is taking any of them away. So make no mistake, these things are under attack. Use them or lose them. And we've got to get our people standing for faith. We should be like, if you're part of the Greek Orthodox Church in Salafka, you will observe the Greek Orthodox Christian calendar. Jewish people observe their calendar. Muslims observe their calendar. Why should we as Christians say, oh, oh dear, it's not in the government's calendar. I guess we can't observe it. Who cares what the government's calendar says? We should be true to our own faith just like people in minorities in other countries still keep their heritage. So to us, Ascension Day is in some ways one of the most important holidays in the year because it deals with authority and the Great Commission. Other comments? Questions? I think Freedom of Religion SA4SA has done well. It seems like they're making some good progress. Well, for example, they've derailed them quite a bit. You take three years ago. The government was trying to go for registration of all religions, registration of all religious practitioners, passing a hate speech bill that would have made you or I saying something like, well, marriage can only be between a man and a woman, hate speech. The definition of hate speech is bizarre. We were told by Advocate Nadine Badenhorst that the way they're going, they want to have it that if you as a pastor suggest from the pulpit that prostitution may not be an acceptable choice of career for a Christian. This could be hate speech where you are offending somebody because, in fact, not just your sexual preference, but your... Yes, of genders, but there's also more than that. It's your work. And somehow or another, they've got sex workers are now a protected species according to their laws. So that if you suggest that that is an unacceptable profession, well, or if I was to say something like, well, an abortionist, a murderer. You should be tried by due process for killing an innocent life. That could be construed as hate speech. And according to Nadine Badenhorst, the plan of the government in these draft acts, they're not acts yet, they're bills, they're proposed bills, they haven't been passed yet. Three years in prison for your first thought crime, and 10 years in prison for your second thought crime. So that if you just think and say something like, well prostitutions, unchristian, or an abortionist is a murderer, that sort of thing could get you into prison for what you thought and said. For effectively a thought crime. You know, when I first read 1984, back at school in Rhodesia, it was like, gee, this is funny, but it could never happen. I mean, gee, nobody's that stupid. And it's like governments around the world are working on 1904 as being a manual, not a warning. They seem to think, oh, these are good ideas. Thought crimes, thought police. So, yes, 4SA is making progress, but as they said, one thing that was disturbing, they said for some, maybe you can remember, there was some LGBTQ something that was being pushed in Parliament, and there were 400 submissions from the public in support of it, from the LGBT community, and only 30 against. Do you remember what that was for? Yes, but so it said, the other side is super well-funded and very organized. Something like that, yes. We've just had the first transgender student, which means a boy, claiming to be a girl, going to Weinberg Girls High. So he said, make no mistake, these people are busy, and said, they pleaded, tell your pastors they've got to preach these sort of things on the pulpit, they've got to warn their people, we've got to get mobilized, we've got to pray against, we've got to act against, we've got to mobilize, we've got to get organized, because the other side is working to take away every single vestige of freedom that we've got. Not just freedom of action, but freedom of speech and freedom of thought. So they said religious freedom, freedom of speech is very much intact. Now, the good thing is the government's behind schedule. I mean, they've been trying to do a lot of these things from years ago. Mbeki was trying to close Christian radio stations back in the year 2000. In fact, he closed nine. Many of them are open again, thankfully. And he tried to close down homeschooling and Christian schools as well. Well, now we've got over 2,000 Christian independent homeschools in the country. Sorry, not homeschools. 2,000 Christian independent schools in the country. So they're behind schedule. Remember last year they were talking when they start this expropriation right compensation that they would start at the end of August. Remember that? And then we had Donald Trump send some kind of tweet and before you knew it they were delayed and then they were talking about 31 March. 31 March 2019 they'll start expropriation of land. Well next thing they'll postpone that too, obviously for the elections. So it'll be interesting to see what goes on, but obviously they've got an agenda and they're going. But just a tweet from the President of the United States and then him sending out his Secretary of State to investigate. seem to have delayed and derailed him. And of course, the huge amount of opposition, even from the Australian government and from people all over the world who were speaking out in AfriForum, doing excellent work. So there's obviously resistance, light shining on it, exposure of this has derailed their plans on different ways. I've seen them trying to take away all guns from us in the year 2000. Farm Control Act, closed down Christian radio stations, also 2000. Closed down Christian schools, year 2000. Banned homeschooling, also year 2000. Tyburn Beccy was a busy, busy commie. Boy, there was one Marxist who really, really... I personally think Tyburn Beccy was the worst, most dangerous president this country's ever had. Many people think Zuma was, but, well, he was taking more headlines, but Mbeki was solidly working, quietly pushing a Marx agenda, and him getting derailed was a super good thing. I'm afraid that Romoposa is far, far more dangerous than Zuma. And many people seem to think this country has been saved because we've now got Ramaphosa instead of Zuma. I'm convinced this is a far more insidious enemy to our cause. So, 4SA is doing a lot of good, but there's a lot more we need. Ramaphosa said something along the lines, last week, something along the lines of he wants to get rid of South Africans having any firearms because he's just come back from North What's it? North Korea. And he thinks it's such a peaceful country and so we should also get rid of our fire alarm. It's a very peaceful country. Got like the peace of the graveyard, yeah. Yeah, there's not too many crimes take place on cemeteries. North Korea. So why are people wanting to escape from North Korea to South Korea again? It's like Mandela thought that Cuba was just the best, and then why did millions of Cubans risk drowning and being eaten by sharks to escape across the Caribbean to get to Florida and so on? Why is it that people always try to flee from communist utopias, workers' paradises? So, any other comments, observations? Well, we continue putting articles on our FrontlineMissionSA.org website, and there's a lot on the go at the moment to pray for our mission. I think many of us may have been surprised, pleasantly, and delighted to see that the Chief Justice of South Africa opened Parliament calling for three minutes of prayer and silence and meditation, and he actually knelt and prayed, which is a first in the last 25 years, about time. There's some good news from the last week, and that is from the wicked EU. They've just had their European Union elections. Now, European Union elections are proportional representation. So it's not just this borough and so on. It's across the board. And this gives the smaller parties a good chance. Now, in this last election, they have been stunned as the so-called Eurosceptics, or the populist nationalist anti-globalist parties, the anti-EU parties, have swept the board and won overwhelmingly in many places. Salvini, who's now president of Italy, he's running Italy and he is a completely 100% anti-EU, anti-globalism, anti-immigration by Muslims, Islamic invasion, all that sort of thing. And, of course, you've got Marine Le Pen, whose Front National Party now has been renamed the National Rally instead of National Front. And they beat the government of France. They got more votes in France than Macron's government, Renaissance Party, that's meant to be running France. So that's extraordinary. Geert Wilders, as always, has done well in the Netherlands. Also, in Britain, what has amazed many people is how the Brexit Party has done. Marine Le Pen, that's the niece of Marine Le Pen, she said, the European Union is not Europe. It is an ideology without land, without people, without roots, without soul, without civilization. The European Union is slowly killing millennium nations. She's a good, strong pro-lifer who we trust may one day be president of France. But the real big news is how the Brexit party, which only started six weeks ago, didn't exist two months ago. Nigel Farage got discouraged with what had happened with his UKIP party since he resigned and retired, because he said he was just working for the Brexit, but Britain voted for Brexit three years ago. But they haven't done anything about it. The British government under this worthless Theresa May, or as they call her, traitorous May, she's accomplished absolutely nothing. And all she could say when she resigned last week was, I was only the second woman prime minister in Great Britain, but not the last. So, she puts herself in the same category as the greatest Prime Minister in the last century of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher. What's her connection? Well, Margaret Thatcher was a woman, I'm a woman too. Well, since when did gender politics have anything to do with anything? It's your character, it's your policies, and Theresa May has neither. She isn't worthy to untie the shoes of Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher was a great, tremendous Prime Minister who left Britain immeasurably stronger economically, politically, spiritually, militarily. In every way she improved Britain, which is more than you could say for Churchill or Theresa May for that matter, who've left it in a much worse state. Here the British people voted three years ago for Brexit, leave the EU. Why are they still in there three years later? And at any rate, so just over six weeks ago, Nigel Farage started the Brexit Party, and would you believe it, they got 32% of the votes in Great Britain for the EU elections. The Conservative Party, which is the governing party, got 8.8% of the votes, 8%. And the Labour Party got something like 12%. It's just a disaster. So in France, you've seen how the opposition has beaten Macron's pathetic renaissance party who's meant to be ruling France and basically the set of an election was to be held tomorrow, Macron would lose and Marine Le Pen would win. So what we've seen across Europe is something absolutely phenomenal. This is quite extraordinary. By the way, the Brexit party under Nigel Farage in Britain will be the largest single political party in the EU. In this next, they've got something like 28 seats, which is more than any other single party has got. As you'd expect, Angela Merkel's party did not do well in the German section of the EU elections. The Freedom Party in Netherlands and the Freedom Party in Austria, which is no relation, but they just happen to have the same name, have both done extremely well. And basically, you can see the recent elections in the EU shows a real awakening of resistance to globalism, resistance to policies as usual, the establishment, anti-EU. So this is encouraging. It wasn't just a phenomenon three years ago with the Brexit referendum vote or the Trump revolution in America in 2016. What you're seeing is a rising tide of opposition to globalism. So this is a good thing. Now, this last week, we've marked an important date in history which should not be forgotten. If you're on the Coalition on Revival emailing list, then I'm sending out every so often these on this day, something that happened in history. And you would recall that on the 28th of May, 1453, Constantinople, the greatest city in the world, was sacked and destroyed. In fact, San Sofi was the greatest building in the world. It was the greatest church in the world, the largest church in the world. And it was destroyed by the Turks. Of course, this used to be the Byzantine Empire. It was a Greek empire. This was not the first time they were besieged, but it was the last. Constantinople was besieged by Turks who devastated this city. This was once the greatest city in the world and they destroyed it, ransacked it, looted it and they wiped out something like 9,000 Christians in San Sofi alone. Emperor Constantine XI, the last emperor of the Roman Empire, in this case the Eastern or Byzantine part of the Roman Empire, died in battle leading his soldiers in a charge out of the walls where they wiped out vast numbers of the Turks. They sold their lives dearly, but that was the end of Christian civilization in Asia, in The land that today is called Turkey, but in the Bible we know Turkey as the land of the seven churches of the book of Revelation. This is where Smyrna was. This is where Polycarp and John and others were leading. This church, St. Sophie, was turned into a mosque. It wasn't that long ago that President Barack Hussein Obama walked inside the Sansofi and praised Islamic architecture. Now, the chief of Islamic architecture. Sansofi was built in the 4th century. The 4th century. Islam started in the 6th century. How on earth could this be Islamic architecture? But anyway. This is the picture that was used to mark the victory of Mohammed the Magnificent, so-called, at his victory over Constantinople, 28th of May in 1412. 53. Notice Mohammed standing or sitting on his horse but what's directly on his horse? A white Christian princess with a gold crown and her blonde hair and a white dress lying dead under his horse. Now this isn't a photograph this is an autistic imaginative depiction but the artist conscripted or authorized by Mohammed the Magnificent to depict his victory, depicted his victory not with an armored Christian knight, or even King Constantine, Emperor Constantine Andrus, the hooves of his horse, but a civilian, non-combatant, Christian woman, blonde, in a white dress with a crown. She's not even with a sword and armor. showing the absolute contempt that radical Islamic jihadists have for women, especially Christian women and non-combatants. That is their picture. This isn't a propaganda picture the Christians drew. This is their portrait that they put out. And of course there's lots of civilians lying here decapitated and all that sort of thing. Well, I don't know how many Christians remember Emperor Constantine XI, the last emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who died on the 28th of May 1453, but they should. But in Greece there is a monument to him. In fact, both these monuments are in Greece to commemorate the extermination of Greek Western Christian civilization in a land that today is called Turkey. In Constantinople, which today is called Istanbul, On the 27th of May this last week we would have marked the death of John Calvin, arguably the greatest theologian of all time, certainly the greatest theologian of the last millennium. Some would say Augustine is the greatest theologian of the first millennium, John Calvin the greatest theologian of the second millennium. And if you had to choose between two, most would say John Calvin is the most influential, positively influential, theologian of the last thousand years. But he did not want to be the reformer of Geneva. He just wanted to be a student. John Calvin had set his mind on literary ease and a life of scholarship in a study until a war forced him to divert his travels through Geneva. He only planned to be there for one night. But William Farrell, who had just won Geneva to Christ, was not having any of it. And he rushed around and he called upon the young 26-year-old theologian John Calvin to become the pastor of Geneva. And John Calvin was not interested, and the more that William Farrell explained his vision, the less inclined John Calvin was to accept this challenge. In fact, as he said, Being shy by nature, my whole life shrunk from the controversies and unpleasantness that this position must necessarily entail. And so William Farrell stood to his feet and thundered, may God curse your studies. If now in an hour of need, you forsake Christ Church. And John Calvin said he heard the voice of God, he felt the terror of God, and he submitted. And Geneva, which went from being one of the most immoral cities in Europe, went to being one of the greatest cities of reformation ever, the greatest place of refuge. And this commemorates John Calvin on Easter Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, refusing to serve the libertines communion in the Saint-Pierre or the Cathedral of Saint Peter's in Geneva. And you can see these people came in with their swords and they start to threaten him with pistols and swords. Well, anyone knows Calvin knows that wouldn't work. Didn't work with Pharrell at another church either. and they were kicked out, but later, three years later, he was asked to come back. John Knox, who was a refugee from Scotland, described Geneva as the most perfect school of Christ since the time of the apostles. And so again, we remember 27 May 1564, John Calvin died in Geneva and his instructions were an unmarked grave so nobody would know because he was afraid that people might want to turn it into a place of pilgrimage like Catholics had with their people. And so we to this day do not know where he is buried. But they've got some magnificent monuments and here you can see of the four great reformers of the French-speaking world. John Calvin with the Bible in his hands, both hands on. Everyone's holding a Bible, but you've got Theodore Beza and you've got John Knox and you've got William Farrell. The odd one out here in one sense is John Knox because he's Scottish, not French-speaking, although he could speak French. William Farrell is the only one who is not holding his Bible in his right hand. His right hand is in a fist. His left hand is holding his Bible and he's got his finger in the Bible. So like he's ready for street preaching. He's the street preaching debater. And these are the theologians, well this one's also a real fighter as well, but John Knox was God's firebrand as Calvin called him. But that's an interesting just depiction in a Geneva wall, the Reformation monument.