Akhtar Shah is a a truly inspirational Christian, deeply well-versed in scripture and if you are ever lucky enough to meet him you will recognise him as someone who truly walks with Jesus. (That, by the way, is the biography James wrote because the one that Akhtar supplied was a bit rubbish.) Akhtar works on several Christian projects including https://www.thefoundryinternational.com and www.allthroughthishour.com. He won't mind at all that James has been rude about his potted-biography-writing skills because he is so nice and good.
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Psalm 144 King James Version Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight, my goodness and my fortress, my high tower and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I trust, who subdueth my people under me.
What is man that thou takest knowledge of him?
Or the son of man that thou makest account of him?
Man is like to vanity.
His days are as a shadow that passeth away.
BOW THY HEAVENS, O LORD, AND COME DOWN.
TOUCH THE MOUNTAINS, AND THEY SHALL SMOKE.
CAST FORTH LIGHTNING, AND SCATTER THEM.
SHOOT OUT THINE ARROWS, AND DESTROY THEM.
SEND THINE HAND FROM ABOVE.
RID ME, AND DELIVER ME, OUT OF GREAT WATERS, FROM THE HAND OF STRANGE CHILDREN, WHOSE MOUTH SPEAKETH VANITY, AND THEIR RIGHT HAND IS A RIGHT HAND OF FALSEHOOD.
I will sing a new song unto thee, O God, upon a psaltery and an instrument of ten strings will I sing praises unto thee.
It is he that giveth salvation unto kings, who delivereth David his servant from the hurtful sword.
Rid me and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood.
That our sons may be as plants, grown up in their youth.
That our daughters may be as cornerstones, polished after the similitude of a palace.
That our garners may be full, affording all manner of store.
That our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets.
That our oxen may be strong to labour.
That there be no breaking in nor going out.
That there be no complaining in our streets.
Happy is that people that is in such a case.
Yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord.
Welcome to the Psalms with me, James Delingpole.
Today we're going to do Psalm 144, which is one of my faves, and we're doing it with Akhtar Shah.
Welcome to the Psalms, Akhtar.
Before we go on, I've got to ask you about yourself.
Akhtar Shah, it sounds like another religion, not Christianity.
Is it?
That's right, yeah.
Well, yeah, my dad's from a Muslim family, from Singapore originally, so I'm a mongrel.
My grandparents are, on my dad's side, Chinese and Pakistani, and my mum's side are Greek-Cypriot and English.
So a real mix growing up of atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Greek Orthodox.
Enough to put me off religion.
I'm going to ask you more about this because I'm fascinated by how people arrived at their Christian faith.
Can I ask, were you raised a Muslim?
Are you technically an apostate?
No.
No, no, I wasn't.
Yeah, very, very strange.
So I think I was born again at nine, around the same time that my mum found Jesus, got born again.
She's an amazing woman, but was a survivor of some pretty horrific stuff.
And we grew up with her having mental health problems.
And so when she got saved there was quite a big change in dynamic to our family.
My dad's always been a very private Muslim.
I say always.
There's a happy ending to that story as well.
So he started to take us to mosque around that time.
And so every Sunday we had this sudden season where every Sunday we would go to Sunday school at the local church and then go to mosque afterwards and learn Arabic.
And learn bits of the Quran.
Having been raised for about nearly 10 years with no religion at all, apart from what was taught in schools, we suddenly had that thing.
So, but my dad's, yeah, my brother's, so I didn't really, I was born again at nine, I think, never went to church apart from Sunday school, which didn't do me much good, to be honest.
And then around 20 years old, I started to read my Bible again and decided I was going to get baptized, which my dad was absolutely furious about.
We had a several hours long stand up argument where he told me that I'd have to change my name and everything.
My full name is Syed Akhtar Ali Shah.
So very Muslim.
Syed actually means you're well, it either means you're descended from Mohammed or it means one of your ancestors was canny enough to adopt the name Syed so that people would think he was descended from.
So very Muslim name, Syed Akhtar Ali Shah.
And he was absolutely furious, said, you need to change your name.
You can't keep it.
His name is Akhtar as well, which I didn't do.
And then around two years after that, both my brothers.
I found Jesus one after the other, one year after the other.
I baptised them both, yeah.
And then in 2018, I can tell you the date, December 13th, my dad and my 10-year-old daughter gave their lives to Jesus on the same day, separately from one another.
Exactly the same day, which is amazing.
So Jesus has literally grabbed each one of my five strong family at different times, different ways.
We've all ended up in different types of churches as well, but he's done quite a number on our family.
Hadn't he just?
I mean, God must really have a plan for your lot.
I think so yeah he's yeah he definitely he's been very very gracious to us yeah we've had just growing up I mean we had we had yeah an extraordinary childhood really I'm a scholarship boy at a public school but grew up with a working-class family, working class friends.
What school did you go to?
It was Epsom College and yeah, so I think I'm medical School there and all that kind of stuff.
So I yeah, I did pretty well academically, but I've had friends growing up From all sides.
And it's carried on into my adult life, really.
I'm very comfortable in... I became a social worker, so I've always worked with the homeless, with poverty, prisons, that kind of thing.
But, yeah, I think as we've spoken previously, just have a real love for those.
I live in Kingston, which is one of the wealthiest boroughs in London.
And so, yeah, very, very much carrying the love of God for all strata of life, really.
Well, you're definitely doing the things that We learned from the Psalms.
You're meant to look after the poor and fatherless and deliver the outcast and poor.
See that such as are in need and necessity have right.
That's what you're meant to do.
That's right.
But also to have compassion for those that are wealthy.
I mean it's very hard for them to enter the Kingdom of God and that's not as common actually.
There can be almost a despising of the rich.
So I've tried to raise my kids recognising that if you live in England And we've got a mortgage on a house and all that kind of stuff.
And if you've got food from all over the world in your fridge and you're not starving, you're actually one of the wealthiest people in history and in the world right now.
So we need to recognize where we're at as well.
And David, obviously, who wrote most of the Psalms, He knew what it was to be an outcast and an outlaw on the wrong side of the law, but also was king.
And so there's something about just coming... Yeah, I love the Psalms.
I think the humanity on display and the ability of David and other psalm writers to see through the surface level of things to what God is actually doing and how he... His graces to the righteous and the wicked, to the rich and the poor is quite remarkable.
I agree.
Envy David.
I'm not I'm not sure that I'd want to be David exactly because he had a pretty mixed life, didn't he?
He did.
What I find extraordinary is that clearly he had a hotline to God.
Because to write these psalms, what he's doing is essentially doing the groundwork for everything that we Christians believe now.
I mean, the psalms are absolutely key, I think.
They are the cornerstones.
of what we believe, aren't they?
they and and and even Jesus they are amazing he quotes them so so yeah what better um uh what's the word I'm looking for um um Jesus is telling us you know these psalms matter that they're not just kind of old stuff that that is going to be supplanted now that I've arrived for this for this New Testament stuff he
He's saying no this stuff is the basis of of our faith Yeah, um Absolutely.
I mean David is he's one of my favorite Bible characters.
He's actually, we've taught a very saccharine kind of Hollywood version of his life, that he slays giants, becomes king and lives happily ever after.
But if you follow his story, he's literally rejected at every point from when he's a boy, left out of the lineup of brothers and all of that kind of stuff.
Probably a lot of commentators think he was illegitimate.
That's why he was left out of the lineup.
But he's rejected by his first wife, by his surrogate dad Saul, even his men try and kill him at one point when they lose all their bits and pieces to the enemy.
His son, all the way through to the end of his life, he's rejected over and over again.
But he strengthens himself in the Lord.
He's got, as you know, Bathsheba and killing Uriah.
He's got some of the worst sins on record in the Bible.
That's pretty, that's really dodgy.
It's incredible.
So the short version.
It's pretty vile, yeah.
He's having an affair with Bathsheba, who is the wife of Uriah the Hittite.
And he gets, poor old Uriah, he bumps him off, doesn't he, by sending him to the front to get killed.
That's right, yeah.
And the Bible's so clear about, you know, this is a time when David should have gone to war.
It's a time when kings go to war.
He's lounging about, sees this beautiful woman, takes her, gets her pregnant.
Brings her husband home slyly to get you know, so calculating and then and then and then and then the Bible tells us Uriah is too Noble a man to go and lay with his wife.
He's going to sleep with the guards until he can get back to the fire I mean, there's no it's incredible and and yet David is honoured almost above everyone.
He's the only really good king.
There's four others actually in the history of the kings of Israel and Judah, but that's five in the whole history of generations of kings.
But he's the best and Jesus is going to sit on the throne of David.
This baffles me because David's constantly saying, who am I?
I'm just a guy.
I'm just a man.
And Jesus is going to sit on the throne of David for eternity, which is literally the equivalent of him sitting on the throne of Delingpole.
For all eternity it's amazing like he's honored despite his sin He is like in a way that no no no one else is I mean He's not Jesus not going to sit on our throne.
He's going to sit on the throne.
I just find it astonishing We used to have when I was growing up we used to have a reptile house and we used to keep snakes and lizards and and crocodiles and amphibians and we had Two boa constrictors, one of which was six feet long, and one of which was nine feet long.
And the six foot long one was called David, and the nine foot long one was called Bathsheba.
No way!
At home?
Yeah.
Bathsheba was really kind of heavy.
You tended not to pick her up, but David was more active.
Beautiful.
I'm only telling you that because... I'm a former snake keeper, so yeah.
My son's bearded dragon just died about three days ago, so he's just been buried in the garden, yeah.
I used to keep snakes as a kid gave them to my neighbor and he's still he's got he's been collecting them for like 10 years now afterwards but I've given them up.
Bless you that sounds amazing.
I just, I had, yeah, I had a garter snake, I had a grass snake.
Yeah, all manner of animals.
But yeah, but the boy I gave my garter snake to has, I mean, he's got videos of like, I don't know how many snakes he's had over the years.
He's got, he's got a little girl who plays with them now and he gets all manner of them.
Yeah.
What do you think?
I mean, given what the, what the Bible tells us about snakes, the Bible is generally unflattering about, about snakes.
What do you think it says that you and I have been drawn to them and that we like them?
Does that mean anything?
I don't know.
Well, in the Lord's hands, there's probably some redemptive story there, but I don't know.
I'd have to go and ask him, I think.
And I think even just looping back to what you said, David, in the New Covenant, we've been given access to Jesus.
And to his mind and his heart and his truth in a way that no old covenant person has.
So we really can ask him questions about snakes and stuff like that.
He'll answer.
Again, just the Psalms are special because David seems to have almost a new covenant relationship with, he doesn't have a new covenant relationship with the Lord.
Jesus is quite clear on that as well.
Jesus says in Matthew 11.11, he says an amazing thing.
He says about John the Baptist.
There's been no word of God for 400 years.
There's been nothing, no prophetic voice in all Israel for 400 years.
It's like these are myths and legends, the stories of God and what he did and who he is.
And suddenly John the Baptist appears baptising people and ranting about the king and all that kind of stuff.
And Jesus in Matthew 11 says, I tell you the truth of those born of women, which is everyone, none has risen greater than John the Baptist.
So John is like greater than David even and greater than Elijah and Elijah.
None has risen greater than John the Baptist.
But I tell you the least in the kingdom.
is greater than he.
And so the whole New Testament is at pains to tell us that because we received the Spirit of God inside us and because Jesus has died and his blood has offered us complete forgiveness of sin, so now we can come into the most holy place, Hebrews 10.
It says, whoever believes in me, as the scriptures have said, rivers of living water will flow from their heart, John 7.
John 14, 12, whoever believes in me will do the things I do.
Healings, miracles, all of those things, preaching with authority, and even greater things, because I'm going to the Father, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit.
It goes, whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
Like the least and last Christian on the face of the earth today has got more grace and ability to hear from God than any old covenant person, including David.
And yet when you read the Psalms, you know, something like Psalm 51, David seems to have the closest thing approaching a new covenant understanding of God's mercy, God's forgiveness, God's love and that intimacy with God.
The key, the key to the house of David talks about in Isaiah 22.
Revelation speaks of that.
The key to the house of David seems to be this key of intimacy with God that is so rare and unusual in the Old Testament.
David is a sinner.
He's he also has been with the poor.
He's been with the criminals and he's, you know, he's acted mad for a season.
He's had this extraordinary life, he's a man with blood on his hands so he's not allowed to build the temple.
It's extraordinary and yet he seems to have this intimacy with God that as you say is foundational to our new covenant life in Christ.
It's absolutely amazing.
So let's let's focus on this particular Psalm because this is a this is a very particular Psalm.
I mean, it's up there with with Psalm 91 as the most Warlike psalm, I'd say.
I recite it every day when I'm having my cold shower.
Which, this psalm?
144.
So you know it by heart?
I only do, when I do the psalms podcasts, I only do psalms that I know by heart, so that I can flit around them mentally.
So I've got, so far I've got about 25 psalms, maybe getting on for 30.
got about 25 psalms maybe getting on for 30 obviously there's 150 and I haven't learned 119 yet which is the equivalent of about 20 psalms yeah so
So I've been cherry-picking my psalms and 144 was one of the first ones I learned and you can tell because the later psalms I learn, I learn from the Book of Common Prayer version because I prefer the Coverdale translation to the kind of the committee version in the KJV.
but I But I still like the KJV for the for the kind of for the language.
I like the Richness and they the sort of archaic feel of it.
It feels it feels yeah.
Yeah the poetry of it exactly But this one is a real it's a barnstormer It gets you going doesn't it blessed to be the Lord my strength because if my hands to war and my fingers to fight I mean, what what a great intro Yeah, absolutely amazing.
It really is.
And it's a psalm for our times.
I really believe that.
So I think that's where you and I started to speak about it a little while back.
The times we're living in are They're turbulent, it's getting tired to say that, but they're times of intense warfare, spiritual warfare.
Jesus spoke about natural wars and rumours of wars and those are raging as well, but there's definitely an increase in spiritual activity, or at least awareness of spiritual activity.
There's always been war since the fall.
But I think in the West, we've been mostly, again, as a social worker and a pastor and different walks of life, you will see some of the conflict and the brokenness of society.
But there's been this illusion and veneer of comfort, respectability, civilization over your and my lifetimes, you know, since the Second World War, where people expect that we're living in times of peace.
And I think the Lord would say, you know, he's got that mocking voice kind of through there.
But it's not a mocking voice.
God's never a mocker like that.
But there's anger when he says, you know, these false prophets say, peace, peace, but there is no peace.
So we've always been in a war-torn world, but in the West we've missed some of that, and we've settled for this illusion of comfort, even while people around us are dying or sleeping in the streets, and this psalm is a psalm for our times, I think.
I think that people who talked about the so-called post-war peace dividend, We're actually part of this collective delusion.
That I've learned since waking up.
I don't know how far down the rabbit hole you are, actor.
I've learned that the the first and second world wars were not as sold to us.
They were not you know, these suddenly evil figures the Kaiser and Hitler springing up to wage war and having to be defeated by the forces of goodness of light.
Yeah much more complicated and dark than that.
Yeah, and and actually What you're experiencing now is an illusion of peace.
It's not... So when you say that the spiritual war is hotting up, I mean, I agree with you, but what sort of evidence are you seeing this?
I mean, are you seeing more sort of dark forces around?
I get the impression you're quite in touch with that side of thing.
Yeah, I do.
To quote another psalm, Psalm 131, I don't concern myself with matters too great for me to understand.
So I've got a fairly... Yeah, I'm not on the fence about anything.
I know that the world is basically governed at some level by principalities and powers and evil forces.
I grew up with an early awareness from a young age about the brokenness of Life so without going into details.
I knew from an early age that child abuse was a thing that Satanism was a thing as well had had a couple of them genuinely like people couple of people staying in my house who were former Satanists who'd become Christians.
One of them was hounded.
So, I grew up knowing this stuff.
I knew that there were political people involved in that world.
So, yeah.
So, and you know, even today, I'm gentle.
I never want this stuff to become another gospel.
I think there's a danger for Christians who start going down the rabbit hole, as you say, to form another gospel where they need to convince you that everyone's bad and that this is going on in the background.
And I think a lot of that's true.
There are people complicit with principalities and powers who are trying to build their own unified kingdom.
And you read Revelation, there's enough there to see what's going on.
But you notice Jesus didn't tackle the Romans in the way that some of his disciples and Judas might have wanted it to.
He's waging a different war.
Exactly.
He's waging a different war.
So I'm quite careful about that.
But even something around, you know, what you've spoken about the First and Second World Wars, I think even now I feel a responsibility to say to the people that I'm shepherding in some way, shape or form to seek
The spirit of God rather than the news about what's actually happening and one simple clue I'll give people is like that one of the most commercialized industries in the world is war and one missile costs millions of dollars and there's very little almost nothing if not you know there's nothing in the mainstream media about where that money goes there's there's a tiny sliver of you know this nation selling this these arms to but people are making bank on war we've got this expression the theater of war
There's real death and destruction happening, there are people suffering, but there's a perpetual war being waged because it's good business.
And so, you know, Jesus said, out of all of the things he could have chosen, he said, you can't serve two masters, you can't serve mammon and God.
And so we, in our very individualised way in church, we're like, OK, what does that mean for me?
How do I make sure I'm not serving mammon?
Well, All around us, the whole world has been sold to mammon.
Everything is commercialised.
Healthcare.
War, as I said.
Education.
Everything is commercialised.
Everything is subservient to mammon.
And again, that's where this psalm It comes into play because you've got a very passive form of Christianity in the West.
By and large, there are some amazing things happening.
There are some amazing churches.
The younger generation right now, there are some things happening that are incredible.
The stuff that I've been dreaming about for a long time, starting to see it.
People are still getting saved and baptized.
But by and large, Christianity in the West is is passive at best and completely, you know, it's just it's just wrong in so many ways.
It's unbiblical.
It's not loving.
It's divisive and divided.
And so there's this sense at best that we need to wait for good politicians or Christian politicians or Christian billionaires to solve the world.
No, the Lord literally says you are the light of the world.
You're the salt of the earth.
And so this psalm is all about, Lord, teach us to war, teach us to stand so that this, and come down, which he obviously has since David wrote a psalm.
And then it says at the end, and my most familiar version is the NIV, but no breaching of the walls, no more going into captivity, no more cries of distress in the street.
I think it says something like no more going in, no more going out.
It's like, you know, in the King James, but it's like, It's time for the church to arise and recognize that we have been given the Spirit of God to effect change and to speak truth.
To a dying and broken world, and nobody else has the answer.
It is the church who has Christ.
Christ in us is the hope of glory.
They triumphed over him by the blood of the land, so we understand covenant.
By the word of their testimony, we speak truth, where lies are everywhere.
And again, this is not a new thing.
Genesis 1-3 says, let there be light, the first recorded words of God.
And Genesis 3-1, the reversal, has Satan undermine and say, did God really say?
And that's been his trick ever since, to undermine truth.
Revelation 12 again, 12 11 says they triumphed over him, over Satan, by the blood of the lamb, the word of their testimony, by loving not their lives so much as to shrink back from death.
It describes Satan, we're talking snakes again, as that ancient serpent who leads the whole world astray.
Jesus called him a liar and the father of lies.
Like this, everything in life, you're talking about spiritual war, is a battle for truth.
And as Christians, we know that Christ is the truth, like there is no other truth outside of him.
So anything that comes close, my son's getting into a more left perspective politically, and I'm trying to show him that there's a drawing out of some of the compassion and the In Marxism and Communism, there's been this drawing out of stuff that Christ gave us through his character.
But without Christ, it just leads to death, destruction and death spots.
And in terms of going back to your original question about what am I seeing?
As I say, I grew up.
I'm 47 this year.
I've grown up knowing that there is rottenness, brokenness, even in my own heart.
Amazing.
Paul used to murder Christians, write letters to get them rounded up.
He's breathing murderous threats against the church.
He meets with Jesus and he's almost transformed, isn't he?
And I've seen it happen even recently with people.
You're transformed by the Spirit of God.
And then he writes, if you follow the letters chronologically that he writes to the church, he starts off by saying, the other apostles added nothing to my message.
So he knows he's been promoted to this position of leadership within the church.
And then he writes again and he says, I'm the least of the apostles.
Then he writes again.
And he says, I am less than the least of all the saints.
And then right at the end of his life, Paul, who's planted, you know, how many churches and has travelled preaching the gospel, he literally says to Timothy, 1 Timothy 1 15, he says, Here is a saying worthy of full acceptance.
Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of which I am the worst.
King James, I think, says, of which I am chief.
And that's true of any one of us.
I am the greatest sinner that I know.
I know my thoughts, I know my speech, and I live with myself.
So I know my sin more than I know yours, James, more than I know, pick a politician, Rishi, Donald Trump.
I can't sit against them because I know my own sin.
And so you live in a broken world, you live amongst broken people, you've got to recognise inhumility.
Our need of a saviour and our need of a truth that is not objective, you know, through the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.
We ate that fruit.
We become little gods.
We decide what is right and what is wrong.
And that's a perpetual battle for every believer to live by the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.
It's why Paul says to the Galatian church, you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?
You started out in faith and you received Christ.
Do you think you can continue by living by rules?
You can't do it because that fruit inside us is constantly batting our opinions.
This is right.
This is wrong.
These people are wrong.
I'm right.
All of that stuff is death to us.
But there's something that the Lord has opened up of life in the spirit, which is a life of love, loving people, a life of humility and a simple life actually of following the Lord.
But it is a life of war because we have to wage war with what's happening in our hearts, what's happening around us.
I'm glad you brought it back there.
I was going to say that one of your problems, if I may say so, is that you know way too much scripture and we've got to try and stick to the psalm in hand.
You made a very good point, which I totally agree with, about truth.
Truth, it seems to me, is one of the essences of Christ's teaching.
As long as you cleave to the truth, you're going to be pretty alright, I'd say.
Now, I can do that.
I can do that with my eyes closed.
It's not a problem for me.
It's what I do.
But the war stuff... Okay, so I did a bit of Tai Chi when I was younger, and it is actually a martial art as well as a kind of fancy arm-waving thing, you know?
I learned a few moves.
But frankly, when push comes to shove, when it all kicks off, I'm not going to be very good at the fighting stuff.
So, what's the deal here?
Is God going to imbue me with these magical fighting powers?
Or, as a Christian, how does the fighting part, which obviously David is very good at, he killed Goliath with a stone and he won lots of battles, there's no question he killed lots of people.
How does that square with thou shalt not kill?
Where should a Christian be on killing and fighting?
Yeah, okay.
So I want to actually answer a different question that you haven't asked, but I'll say that to you really quickly, just my sense of, and a little ramble through the scriptures as well, my sense of that around pacifism, I'll say a couple of things.
One is that Jesus is not a pacifist.
That's a misrepresentation of him that he's a pacifist.
It says in Revelation 19 that with justice he judges and he wages war.
And it is the same God in the Old Testament.
I've been really troubled by the 10 spies who got killed by God on the outskirts of the promised land.
You remember 12 spies were sent in Joshua and Caleb came back and said this is good God's given us a land and the the other ten spies were like this is terrible they're like giants in there we're going to get murdered and our children will suffer and God says no your children are going to be the ones to get in you won't get and then he kills the ten spies.
God does?
Just like that?
God kills them, literally, and it's because their leadership is so powerful.
I mean, you go to Acts 5 and Ananias and Sapphira are struck dead by God on the threshold of a door for deceiving the Holy Spirit.
And it's because God loves people so much This is where I was going to answer the question that you haven't asked but quickly to talk about pacifism about the army Ephesians 1 says that God has placed everything under the feet of Jesus and made him head over everything It's really important, these next three words, for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
And I'll just say to you, I cannot imagine, I cannot conceive of an army that has no Christians in it.
I love that film Hacksaw Ridge, true story of a Christian who had to go to war but couldn't kill and found his own way with the Lord.
I don't believe you can charge a Japanese machine gun position holding the body of a Japanese person in front of you and using it as a shield.
I reckon the bullets would go through that.
I have my doubts about Hacksaw Ridge, but yeah, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it's Hollywood Hollywood eyes without a doubt, but but the the the fact is I cannot conceive of you know, you take it back to your own house.
If someone was attacking your house attacking your family your children.
I hope so!
I'm okay doing that.
I'm okay killing all those imported young men who have been brought into this country to act as a police force and kill us, basically.
That is the deal.
They've been trained in the Middle East and places like that.
They've been imported.
And they've been put in hostels.
Their job is to control us and kill us if necessary.
So am I okay in killing one of those if they try and hurt me?
So this is where, again, and this is not a wriggle, this is the truth of how I try and live my life.
This is where what you said right at the beginning about your own life, that you cleave to the truth.
Well, the Lord Jesus is the truth and the way and the truth and the life.
And the Bible is so clear in the New Covenant, we keep in step with the Spirit.
And so I'm constantly practicing His presence, imperfectly.
But the only way we're meant to live is not by deciding, like at this point in time, there are rules in the Bible.
There's a guidance that the Bible gives us.
It gives us parameters.
It's a light for our feet and a lamp for our path.
So the Bible guards us from not straying too far left or right But the Spirit of God leads us and guides us in the moment.
So I can't tell you how I would respond I know really like that what you're saying there because only enough you just reminded me there of another line from the from from the New Testament where where Jesus is saying look some of you are going to be arrested and and and put to death and and Don't worry what you're going to say when you go to trial or whatever.
God will put the words into your mouth.
That's right.
Luke 12, 12.
Yeah.
The Holy Spirit will teach you in that moment what you're to say.
And actually, if you look at how Jesus lived, he says this weird thing.
I've talked about Matthew 11 before, but he says this strange thing, which needs a bit of deciphering in Matthew 11 again.
He said, to what shall I call the people of this generation?
You're like children in the marketplace.
He said, we sang a song, we played the flute and you didn't dance.
We sang a dirge and you didn't mourn.
Well, he's saying it because he is so at odds.
With everybody, because he's the first human being since Adam, who's been born, who can relate completely to God, and is free from having to live by his own opinion, his own thoughts about... He says in John 5, I only do what I see the Father doing.
He says the Son... Amazing!
Jesus, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, God in Spirit.
He says in John 5, 17, He says, My Father is always at work to this very day.
And then in the next verse, it says the Pharisees were plotting to kill him because that's what they did.
And then in 519, he says, I tell you the truth, the son can do nothing by himself, but he only does what he sees the father doing.
He does everything he sees the father doing because the father loves the son and shows him.
And so you've got Jesus' M.O.
is to literally follow the father.
There were these bracelets a few years ago called, What Would Jesus Do?
WWJD.
And it was a lovely thought.
They went viral.
But it's really bad theology because the whole of the New Testament goes to great lengths to tell us we needn't speculate about what Jesus might do in any given situation.
His name is Emmanuel.
He's with us and in us.
We have the mind of Christ.
We're, as many as are led by the Spirit of God, the same are the children of God.
We're meant to learn this union with Christ.
That means he tells us there's a voice in our ear saying there's an intimacy with him that carries you moment by moment and his spirit will fill you to defend to attack like in that moment.
That's my sense.
What you are saying makes absolute sense to me and it's a thing I've noticed.
I read the Scriptures every day.
I say the Psalms every day.
And sort of non-Christians might go, well, you know, what?
And I go, well, first of all, believe me, the Bible is really, really interesting.
It's just got some great... Every time, you know, I really look forward to reading it.
I don't go, oh, I've got to read the Bible.
No, no, it's really interesting.
Same with the Psalms.
I don't ever tire of listening to the words, repeating them in my head.
I start with my stretching exercises in the morning.
They accompany on my runs.
I then have my cold shower in the evenings when I go swimming.
You've got to pick your moments.
But what you're doing is you're building up the relationship with God that you need Because on your own, you're kind of helpless.
So you need to have that connection, don't you?
You do, yeah.
And a thing the Lord is emphasizing right now is word and spirit, which is again, it's not a new thing.
It's been born since Pentecost, but you need both.
You really need both.
And the word of God, Ephesians 6 says, is the sword of the spirit.
And again, you mentioned Psalm 119, your word is a lamp to my feet, a light for my path.
It is a guard.
It helps us not go too far off track, but it contains some crazy stuff in it.
It contains a God who says to Abraham, kill your son.
that i promised you the same god who says thou shalt not kill i know he spares it's it's a but he also tells other people to kill and they do kill and then he strikes people dead including ananias and sapphira you've got i mean what he says to mary in luke 1 38 is in she says in 1 38 let it be to me according to your word but he's telling this young woman that you're going to get pregnant and people are going to think you've had sex and they're not going to they're either going to think you're a liar or they'll think you're delusional but you'll do this You're going to carry Messiah.
And this amazing woman says, let it be to me according to your word.
I mean, he's very wild.
He's the God who made his son, who knew no sin, to become sin, to die on a cross as a rescue plan.
I mean, it is offensive beyond all our understanding.
And even what Jesus did in his three years ministry, constantly offended
People who knew the scriptures and so there's something about holding the scriptures in your heart eating them every day as you say it's nourishment it starts to give us a an Understanding of you know who he is and how he works because he's not like us, but now we've got the spirit as well We have to live by both the letter kills Paul says to the Corinthians But the spirit gives life and so we need both if we just have the Word of God you get into all manner of problems all manner of heresy with God is
Yeah, I'll say no more than that, but we need both in these days.
But you do definitely need the scriptures because otherwise... 100% yeah.
I encounter this quite a lot.
People just sort of make up stuff about what they think that God represents.
They say, I don't believe in a God that would do that because it seems to me that if he's loving, how does...
A hundred percent.
This is the deal.
Never mind what you think.
Actually look at... Exactly right.
A lot of people feel uncomfortable about Psalm 137 and what God gets up to in there.
But that is one of the Psalms that... Remember the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem, how they said, down with it, down with it, even to the ground.
A daughter of Babylon wasted with misery.
People don't like the children of Edom having their children bashed against the stones, but God is not just... No, and it's not just the Old Testament.
I've had this sense for the last two weeks or so of God just emphasising, I think it's Romans 11.23, but Paul speaks about the kindness and severity of God.
And there is a severity to God, which is not, it's surgical rather than cruel.
He loves the world.
And this goes all the way back to the question I wanted to answer, which you didn't quite ask, which is about, you know, when I was at school, and I never understood these words, where duty calls or danger be never wanting there.
When I was a little kid singing that song, I think it's Onward Christian Soldiers, where duty calls or danger be never wanting there.
As a little kid in primary school, I thought that was like, you don't want to be there where duty calls or danger, but it's don't be lacking there.
And the only way that we're really going to show up on the front lines of whatever battle God has called us to fight, because we each of us have a race to run that he has marked out for us with each of us Ephesians 2 10, his handiwork created by him for good works that he prepared for us to do in advance.
Psalm 139 says, Before a single day of my life came to pass, it was written about me in your scroll.
There is a plan.
You know, we're living letters.
There's a plan that God has for each of his children.
And we will have battles to fight.
And if we're to show up and fight those battles, this is the absolute key for me.
You've got to walk close to the truth, which is Jesus, so that his love can fill your heart, fill your mouth and fill your arms and feet.
Like there is something about the love of God that is essential.
One Corinthians 13 basically says, if I give all I have to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I'm paraphrasing, I have nothing and I am nothing.
And I've been praying for the last several months for the church in the West, in the UK.
I suddenly had this realization, conversation with God, that I could walk into any church in the UK, and I'm blessed and privileged to spend time with a lot of different churches.
I could walk into any of those churches and do a quick straw poll.
Who wants to see people saved?
Everyone would raise their hands.
But if with the eye of God I could see how many people actually needed people to be saved, like it was a deep longing and a need and a pain in their heart that people must find Christ and be saved, I fear that the reality would be that barely anybody would actually care that much.
So I began to pray, Lord, put your need for people to be saved in the heart of the church And as is so often the case, it started with me.
And honestly, the last few months I can feel it in myself right now, welling up.
I started to feel this terrible burden.
It's the third time in my life I felt it when I was newly filled with the Spirit about 24 years ago.
I'd weep.
Walking through Wimbledon, where I lived at the time, or just driving my car and seeing people around, and I'd be like, Lord, where are they going without you?
And it would begin to break my heart.
2016, 17, 18, three years on and off as a pastor, I started to weep for the church that we were so apostate.
And we were a successful church in London, but I knew there was much we were doing that was about success and growth.
It wasn't actually about Christ and compassion.
So three years he had me weeping.
And then this has started again.
And it's not a weeping that leaves me debilitated or unable to act.
It is the very thing I need if I'm going to get up out of my bed, out of my comfort zone and go and wage war against the enemy.
Now, here's something the Lord told me, and we need to get into the psalm as well, but it does relate.
He said to me, he said to me once really clearly, he said, my perfect plan for you, and this will be true of you, James, as well.
God's perfect plan for you is that you know that you're so loved by him that you need nothing.
So John 13, where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, it said he knew he'd come from God, was going back to God, and that God had placed all things under his feet.
Knowing this, he washes the feet of his disciples.
So God says, my perfect plan for you is that you know you're loved so well that you can love me and love other people perfectly.
And when you love me and love other people perfectly, you will contend, you'll fight for me and for others against principalities and powers.
But if you don't know that you're loved perfectly by me, You can't love me and you can't love people perfectly.
You begin to love things and you'll contend for those, you'll fight for those things, first against other people and then against me.
And he said that so clearly to me.
So the thing that will get you up and fighting is that you love well and you love enough to defend your family, defend your nation, defend the poor, defend whatever it is that God has called you to.
And God himself has to teach you, Psalm 144 verse 1, praise be to the Lord my strength, the Lord my rock, which or who teaches my hands for battle, my fingers for war.
There's a detailed plan.
It's not just your hands, it's your fingers.
But he has got to train you in the warfare that he's called you to from the moment you're a believer.
This is John 6, 45.
They will all be taught by God.
That's why I love this psalm so much, because we've divorced The Church from the Spirit of God, largely.
And the reason Jesus can say in Matthew 11 that the least in the kingdom is greater than John the Baptist, who is the greatest born of women in history till that time, is because now God can teach us, he can train us for the very peculiar, unique battles he's called us to in the sphere and domain he's called us to.
You remember in Daniel, those boys at the beginning, they were going to be taught by the Babylonians, but it says God taught them.
The way of Babylon and now in the New Testament you are to be trained in whether it's media, politics, whatever it is that you're called to James.
There's a war that God wants you to fight and he will train you and he will teach you by the Spirit of God.
I find what you're saying very reassuring because it means that you know, like God's got this one.
He has got it.
I do kind of know this but it doesn't mean that I'm not slightly Pissed off that having to live in these times where the forces of darkness are taking all our freedoms away from us and are going to stop us travelling and going to lock us down and force us to take these kill shots and spraying the clouds with chemicals.
It's hard not to go, does it really have to be like this?
Couldn't it have just been nice?
Couldn't we just be living in the delusional peace dividend era?
I've lost you, James, for some reason.
Is that my signal?
I heard you say that you're peed off about living in these times and then I heard the whole list of things that people are up to.
Anyway, can you hear me now?
Okay, well that's good.
So we've got... So, blessed be the Lord my strength, who teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight, my goodness and my fortress, my high tower and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I trust, who subdueth my people under me.
Well, that's obviously a David line.
That's not really relevant to most of us.
I don't see my people being subdued under me.
What is man that thou takest knowledge of him, or the son of man that thou makest account of him?
So that's similar to the line in Psalm 8, isn't it?
It's very typical David.
Yes, I suppose it's the question we all ask, isn't it?
It's like...
How can somebody as small and insignificant as I am yet?
How can God be so omniscient and all-powerful that he has time and space to deal with me?
That's one of the amazing things, isn't it?
If you believe this stuff, which we do.
Incredible.
We do, and I see the evidence of it.
And again, I'm going to pray quickly, just a moment, James, if that's alright.
But yeah, I was worshipping, we had a little church plant in Croydon several years ago, and I was worshipping there, and the Lord suddenly spoke to me, this amazing thing, and this is my delight, like, you know, Deuteronomy 8, God taught them in the wilderness that man doesn't live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
Every believer should hear God speak to them in the Spirit every day.
I believe that with all my heart.
And on this day, he said to me, he said, he said, I have chosen never to think of myself without thinking of you.
To me directly, he said that.
I've chosen never to never to think of myself without thinking of you.
My invitation is never think of yourself without thinking of me.
And that sense that David has constantly, who am I?
That you, God of heaven and earth, would pay me such kindness, pay me such regard, would have me in your view, would love me, would bless me, would give me favour.
That is a very, very healthy way of living your life.
Really, to live a life of gratitude, even in the darkest of times.
To say, Lord God, you have been good for me.
It's well with my soul.
I don't deserve any of the blessings.
I don't deserve your attention.
Not as a kind of a worm or anything, but just the reality.
I've made mistakes yesterday.
I've probably made mistakes today and it's only not even 11 o'clock in the morning and yet God loves me and pays me regard.
Of course he does!
Go for it!
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, Father, I just thank you.
I thank you for James, Lord God.
I've not had a non-fascinating conversation with you, James, since we first met.
I thank you for his heart, Father.
I thank you for this gift, these psalms, Lord God, of actually a race and a nation that's alien to us in so many ways.
And yet the spirit of God that inspired these words is the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead and the same spirit that lives in us, Lord God.
And we are so blessed, Lord.
There's something about the word, about language, which is It's almost quantum.
It carries so many meanings in just 26 letters of the English language.
It's incredible.
And yet, by the Spirit of God, Lord, your word is living and active.
And Father, even as we get into the psalm, it feels like we've had a long prologue, Lord.
As we get into the psalm, Father, would you just speak new Jesus, you taught it.
You said that out of the word, the teacher will bring treasures old and new.
Father, would you just help James and I and anyone listening to see something new in the word about your goodness, about your kindness, and Lord, about the love that you carry that takes you to war.
With justice you judge, Lord God, and you wage war.
And you are calling us to warfare, Lord, not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers, the rulers, the authorities of this dark world.
You're calling us to be light in the darkness, to be those that stand for truth and speak for truth.
And just speak to us, bless us Lord God, and draw close to us as we draw close to you, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
That's going to be good because that means we're going to have no more fumbles.
We're going to be just like, we're going to be hot shots.
God's in the fumbles as well.
Yeah, well, again, yeah, he uses every mistake we make.
It's incredible grace.
On that detail, yeah, I think that it's almost the key thing that non-believers need to understand, you know, what's the deal?
That what they don't realise is that this stuff that we do actually works.
If you say your prayers, God answers God listens and God answers you I mean, that's that's a recurring theme of the Psalms, but I think I think a lot of people don't realize this they think it's just some some kind of Game we play because we're we're all po-faced and we've bought into this this this crazy religion stuff and yeah, no We wouldn't be doing it.
Yeah, we wouldn't be doing if it weren't real.
No, no, I I think, and it's even, in these days, it's even worse than that in some ways, because, you know, again, sorry to jump around the Bible, but 2 Timothy 3 says that, mark this, there'll be terrible times in the last days.
People will be boastful, proud, disobedient, lovers of money, lovers of pleasure, lovers of themselves, not lovers of the good.
And you think, yeah, that speaks to our society in these days.
And then he says something, it's like a bombshell revelation.
He says, having a form of godliness, but denying its power.
And so where you've got a powerless church, actually the fruit of that is a Christianity that is about self, about power, about money.
Unbelievable!
And mark this, he says, there'll be terrible times in the last days.
He says in 1 Timothy, it's Paul again.
He says the Holy Spirit told him that some will abandon the faith and give in to the doctrines of demons.
And then he goes on to speak about, you think, oh gosh, are we in those days already?
And then he says they're going to tell people not to get married.
And Paul was celibate, but he's speaking to some parts of the church that enforce celibacy.
In a way that's non-biblical.
And you think, well, that can't really impact the world.
Well, yes, it can.
Because if you have... The people of God are meant to be salt and light.
And if their light grows dim, or their salt loses its flavour, then the whole world suffers.
And that's where the subdue bit from Psalm 144 does make a kind of sense to me.
Because God says, let there be light, first words.
And there was light, but he's also prophesying the coming of Jesus, the light of the world.
And he's prophesying the coming of James Delingpole, full of the spirit of Christ and all of the church in the 21st century.
He's saying, let there be light.
That prophetic word carries through every generation until Jesus returns.
Let there be light.
But he says to Adam, go forth, multiply and subdue the earth.
And then when he goes again, because as in the days of Noah, you see, they started to change what the human race were with the Nephilim, Genesis 6.
That's happening right now with transhumanism and all that kind of stuff, as in the days of Noah.
So it will be.
He told us there's richness.
We think, oh, it'll be a shock.
No, people will be trying to change the nature of human beings.
And that's literally what they talk about.
Fourth Industrial Revolution, not just what we do, but who we are.
So then he says to Noah, go forth and multiply and subdue the earth.
And then what does he say to the disciples?
Go forth.
He says all authority in heaven and earth, Matthew 28, has been given to me.
Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them.
Which is a form of subjugation, but it's glorious, it's loving, it's self-sacrificing.
Teach them to obey everything I've commanded you.
Baptise them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
So that same command to go out and rule with Christ in the earth is huge.
And where we've given up the power of godliness and given up the power of his spirit, the very rapid change in a generation is I mean, it's chaos.
It literally is chaos, lawlessness in the church first and then in the world.
And as you say, most people who don't know Christ would never attribute the state of things.
Well, either they think nothing's really wrong, it's a blip and civilization will rule the world, which is what a lot of my well-educated friends think, that this is just a blip, civilization, we're intelligent, this is the best we've ever been.
And I'm looking at ancient architecture and history thinking, no, the Bible says that the first humans We're very close in nature and strength and purity to God, but they sinned.
And just as everything degrades over time, I think our human race has degraded over time.
Look how much longer they live.
Honestly, it's just stuff like that that's in the Word of God.
What do you do with that?
It's true.
It's really strange.
So we think we're amazing because of our iPhones and Teslas and all these kinds of things and low constellation satellites and you know, we're so arrogant about our strength and and yet we we are we are living in the end at the end of a civilization that was paltry in comparison to some of the other.
Well, you might civilizations not that they were say actor that man is like to vanity.
His days are in the shadow that passes away.
And the only answer to that is, bow by heavens and come down.
Touch the mountains in facial smoke.
Cast forth lightning and scatter them.
It's great, isn't it?
Beautiful.
It's wonderful.
Yeah.
It's wonderful.
And yet when he came down, this is what's amazing to me, David sees in part, and like Psalm 22 is literally the words of Jesus on the cross, isn't it?
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
He sees so much of Christ.
Kiss the son, Psalm 2, lest he be angry.
Like there's so much of Jesus in them.
And yet he sees in part.
And so when God came down, He comes down as a baby in a manger born to a young woman who really would have faced so much ridicule and shame for carrying the Messiah.
And yet that tiny footstep, that tiny drop into history has split our calendar, has caused shockwaves.
Just the birth of Jesus has everyone I know in the UK and most people around the world measure their birth year from the year of Christ, whether it's right or not.
The principle remains your birth year and the year we live in right now is marked by the arrival of Jesus who bent the heavens and came down.
And every religion wants him in there.
You know, the Muslims want him.
The Hindus want to say that he visited India.
All this kind of stuff goes on.
More songs about him, more books about him.
I always challenge my non-Christian friends, like, please just take a look at this man because nobody comes close to Jesus Christ for fame.
He's even a swear word around, you know, like there's nobody like Jesus.
Take another look at his life and like you said, Even just try, I've said it to people who've gotten saved, just call on his name.
If I see you on the street and call out James, you'll turn around.
The Bible says if you call out to Jesus, he will answer you.
It doesn't matter if you're in need or anything.
Just sincerely try him, seek him for a moment with all your heart.
And I've seen people literally born again because they were like, alright, I'll see if he's real and he answers for himself.
Doesn't need us to... You know the corollary of that?
People who...
Who for a bet, or for a joke, for banter, sort of sell their soul.
Yeah.
I feel terrible for people who do that.
Because we've been taught, haven't we?
This is not really relevant to...
Well, I'll tell you where I think it is relevant.
It says right at the end, verse 14.
Again, I'm more familiar with my brain with the NIV.
There's no breaching of the walls, no more going into captivity and no cries of distress in our street.
To me, just three really obvious things that speaks about is the breaching of the walls of what is good and healthy.
Into our homes, into the education system, into society.
They're going into captivity.
There are more slaves in the earth than ever before.
They're genuinely, again, social work background.
I remember planting into Kingston, very well-to-do town, South West London, and praying for prostitutes to get saved.
And a dear friend of mine who's a pastor in the same area said to me, well, there aren't any prostitutes in Kingston.
And he had no idea.
At that time, 2013, there were about 85, 90 brothels in the town centre.
operating so so you've got people going into captivity you've got human trafficking at an unprecedented scale again because of mammon so you can sell anything once but you can sell a child or a woman or a man over and over and over it's it's mammon all the time and it's happening all around us and so what you're describing the entertainment industry hollywood the music industry again people open your eyes you're
Eurovision was, you know, it's very obvious when there's an Irish witch singing an ancient curse that's to do with death as a Eurovision song.
But you look at Selena Gomez, Billie Eilish, these very famous young girls, Taylor Swift, honestly, Just open your eyes, prayerfully, go and look at what happens at the American Music Awards, the MTV Awards, all these things.
They are spiritual events.
They are absolutely spiritual events.
And so there is this allegiance to Satanism.
That is very real.
And again, different ones of us are called to tackle it and called to warfare in different ways.
But it's absolutely what you're describing is absolutely part of the problem.
And a sleeping church doesn't see it.
A sleeping church just thinks Eurovision is quite fun.
It's a bit of a diversion.
You know, it is.
Yeah, I'll get on my high horse in a moment.
But that's that's that verse 14.
If you come down, Lord Jesus, and if you train my hands for war and my fingers, I love the detail.
David the Shepherd.
I mean, you've got to look at the detail in the Bible.
A lot of the church and Christians are trying to feel their way through life.
But God will instruct you in the detail of things.
Jesus says, go to that house and get that donkey.
David says, 1 Chronicles 28, 19, he designs the temple.
When did he ever do an architecture study or anything?
It's incredible!
He's a shepherd, he's a warrior, he's a king, he's a poet, and then he says, all of this I have in writing because the hand of the Lord was upon me.
He's a musician as well.
He gave me to understand all the detail of the plan.
A musician, but he designs this temple in detail.
Because he trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle and these are days for us to seek the Lord like never before because some are called to smash trafficking rings and I know people who are involved in that work and it's messy.
There are some NGOs that are anti-trafficking NGOs that I believe and I've got friends of you in that.
World who would agree that are actually front traffickers.
I mean how how horrific is this like you we're in that world where and and Charity, there's just this there's rock.
Oh, they say that James and the only thing that would turn the tide is is Christians waking up to their calling About about child line that thing that was set up in the in the 80s or 90s.
It was basically designed to to Allegedly.
Yeah.
Anyway, I don't know about that.
We won't get there.
So, um, yes, uh, cast forth lightning and scatter them.
Shoot at the hounds and destroy them.
Send thine hound from above.
Send thine hound from above.
Rid me and deliver me from out of great waters, from the hand of strange children, whose mouths speak of vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood.
Who are these strange children?
Yeah, well, immediately I'm going back to Jesus, who speaks to some of the Jewish leaders at the time and says, your father wasn't Abraham, but your father is the devil.
And so there's something, just as we're adopted into Christ, There is something, whether people have sold their souls or they're just working in that way, they've rejected Christ in some other way, there is a choice that we make that speaks to our ancestry and there's some allegiance that people have to anything other than Christ is an idol and there's a fathering and a nurturing that takes place when we give in to those things.
So again, I genuinely, I don't know, I won't go too much into what I believe about cabals and all that kind of stuff, but I do believe there are people complicit with Principalities and powers.
I told you I grew up knowing that there are Satanists out there and I know God is saving them.
So even those that have given their lives to Satan, Jesus can redeem them and save them.
Even in the midst of them doing all manner of stuff because he saves powerfully and he comes down.
So there are definitely people who are complicit.
There are people who are maybe complicit in a different way.
They may not call themselves Luciferians or Satanists but they are absolutely pursuing their own ends and pursuing their own goals.
And there's a convergence of this stuff going on, James.
I'm not a historian at all.
Both my kids love it.
I had a history teacher who used to call me Craphead all the time, which I think put me off history.
Yeah, it really put me off history.
That's a bit of an unimaginative nickname, isn't it?
No, I don't know where it came from, but it's amazing how you get shaped by those things.
So I really had no appetite for history.
Both my kids astonish me with what they know about history.
They love it.
And I'm feeling their lack of it.
Because you see these trends like the kings of Israel and Judah, after David you get Solomon and then the kingdom is divided and you get this whole list of people in Kings and Chronicles about those that did right in the eyes of God and those that didn't.
Do you know there are no good kings in Israel at all?
There's not one in all of Israel.
David is a good king, Solomon's a mixed king, Saul is a bad king.
That sets the paradigm.
And in total, including those three, there are five good kings, five mixed kings, and all the others are bad kings.
You can quote this bit, I'm sure.
There's a bit in the Bible, in the Old Testament, where they're saying, we want a king.
And God says, it's really not a good idea.
I'll give you a king, but it's not going to work out well for you.
They're going to go to the bad.
Which bit is that in?
Yeah, it'll be in Kings, I think, but it's exactly, no, not in Kings, sorry, I think it'll be in like Exodus or Deuteronomy or something, but you're exactly right, he warns them that if you have a king, he's going to take your sons to war, he'll take your daughters to serve him and his concubines and take gold from you, and Solomon Oh how right, well Solomon received 666 tons of gold every year.
Isn't that a fascinating detail when you then get to the Revelation 13.
If you had to be anyone in the gold, you know, okay he was a rongan, but you'd want to be Solomon wouldn't you?
You want all the wisdom.
Oh I really wouldn't, no.
It's terrible, he breaks my heart because he ends so badly.
Starts well.
He ends so badly and yeah and that's that's not the way to be.
We want to end well.
I take it back, I'd like to be someone in the beginning.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And maintain the course.
And this is the thing.
Honestly, James, this is the wonder of the New Covenant, that there's going to be a renewal of this teaching in these days.
What you have been given in Christ is more than Solomon ever had.
And I mean that with all my heart.
There's access to God's heart, to his mind, to the riches of heaven.
That brings an authority to the believer.
I've seen miracles of healing.
I've seen demons come out.
I've seen people's bones knit back together.
Cancer go.
I've seen the homeless housed.
All the stuff in this psalm.
I've seen a reversal.
What's that one?
Tell me about that.
Well, yeah, I can tell you.
That's the one that comes to mind immediately is a friend of mine.
First time I met her, she came with a plastic cast on her leg.
This would have been 2013.
Wonderful woman.
Came to my house.
My wife and I prayed for her because she had these fragmented bones in her feet.
It had been an accident, like she'd shattered the bone and torn a ligament and she'd had x-rays, MRIs.
They couldn't do anything.
They'd done all this stuff to her foot.
Prayed for her three times and the third time the pain had gotten so bad at my house that I was like, I'm stopping now.
So we stopped praying for her.
It looked like nothing had happened.
It had gotten worse.
And then during the week she had an MRI scan where they showed her that everything had been knit back together and the following Sunday She was dancing.
I was in my little office.
We'd been given this two million pound church building in the middle of town.
Literally given it, amazingly, by a miracle of God.
Planted a new church in there and I looked out my window while the band were rehearsing and she was literally dancing.
And she used to dance at the front of the church for the next several years.
I met a guy on the bus, again, doing a homeless thing overnight with the YMCA.
Sleep easy, getting people to sleep out.
School kids sleeping out to raise money for the homeless work that they were doing.
met this young Asian guy on a bus and was chatting to him about Jesus he was a slight Muslim if you know I mean he wasn't he wasn't practicing and he came later on and as he got up off the bus he picked up a stick and was limping said he'd been in a car accident so I said I'll pray for you later on prayed for him later on with about three other people in front of the mayor's chauffeur and literally watched his leg heal and then somebody said he's got a bad back as well he
I said to him go and run upstairs he ran up to the balcony somebody downstairs said he told me he's got a bad back as well and then and he's got a back brace and suddenly the back brace came sailing over the balcony completely healed and he didn't didn't give his life to christ i've seen him again around town i saw him a couple of years later i didn't see him for a couple of years and he waved at me out of the window of his car he was driving and i could tell you so many miracles like that
i can tell you things that haven't worked out but the power of god to undo the power of sin and death in our lives and to see people saved You know, my whole family, mental health problems, all manner of stuff that was wrong and dysfunction with my family and all five of us saved by Jesus.
Like I, I'm never going to stop thanking him and I'm never going to stop telling people that he is the way, the truth and the life.
And that is warfare.
I mean, I'll say this really quickly with David.
So Revelation 12 11 gives you a paradigm.
They triumphed over Satan by the blood of the lamb.
So you need to understand the blood of the Lamb, the blood of Jesus, has given you access to his heart and mind, to all of his strength and power, to his purity, to his righteousness.
Everything that Jesus had and was, you have and are in him.
And then the word of their testimony, so you can speak with authority the way Jesus did.
And by loving not their lives so much as to shrink back from death, the more we are invested in self-protection, The less Christ-like we are and the less intimacy we have with him, the more we trust ourselves to him and give ourselves to him and others.
So David does this in 1 Samuel 17.
Just look at the story with Goliath for a second.
The same David who wrote this psalm, whose hands were trained with the lion and the bear by God himself.
This is such a picture for our times, right?
Goliath is 40 days hurling insults at Israel.
Israel are the people That God has set apart, a nation he set apart, weak and little as they were.
He said, I'm going to show the other nations of the world what it is to have God as a king and to be blessed by God and protected by God.
And through that, I'll bless all the other nations of the world.
Now, he was speaking to the potential for them to do that properly in the earth, but he knew they wouldn't.
And he's speaking forward to Christ, who will be their king.
But in this moment, these blessed people who are meant to be powerful and a force to be reckoned with are held in check by one Philistine giant who is dictating the terms of their engagement calling them the servants of Saul He's got a narrative This is Satan's work all over the ancient serpent who leads the whole world astray Satan has a narrative for world events the more we buy into it that we will be despondent will be passive Israel's lined up in the valley and they're listening to this Philistine and then David comes
And he understands the blood of the lamb.
He doesn't know about Jesus or the sacrifice Jesus will make, but he understands the covenant God has made with Israel.
And he says, how dare this uncircumcised Philistine speak this way about the children, the servants, the armies of the living God.
So he understands the blood of the lamb.
And by the word of his testimony, he calls out Goliath for who he is.
And then he lays his life down.
by going out armed with a few stones against a giant with a sword and he kills him actually with his own sword he chops Goliath's head off with Goliath's sword the same thing happens with Esther Esther chapter 7 all of Israel has been consigned to death they've been written off there's an edict on this date you can murder all the Israelites around you take all their stuff Esther lays her life down because she understands covenant the blood of the Lamb she goes into to the king who can kill her And she speaks the truth.
Who has done this?
In Esther 7, the king finds out that somebody has plotted to kill Esther's people.
Who has done this?
And Haman, who's held up in 127 providences as the best guy ever, they all want to worship Haman.
She says, an enemy and a villain, this vile Haman.
And by her testimony, he's undone, killed on his own pole, his own gallows.
So in these days, I promise you, James, I'm so excited about this.
You can probably see and hear.
When the church understands covenant, When we understand that we are loved by God and that he loved us so much that he gave Jesus and caused unimaginable suffering to fall on Jesus on the cross, he became 2 Corinthians 5.21, God made him who knew no sin to become sin so that you and I might become the righteousness of God in him.
Because Jesus has done that, because of the blood of the lamb, you and I are favoured and loved like Jesus was on the earth.
And the more we tune into his voice and understand that his word is nourishment and that he's got a purpose for us, the more we can take a stand in whatever field, whatever battle, whatever mandate he's called us to.
And as we stand with him, speak with him the word of our testimony, speak truth.
That's where prayer, prophecy, praise and worship.
Worship is a form of warfare.
Again, the Lord said that to me in the spirit.
He said, your worship is your witness.
and your worship is your warfare.
So you just praise God as David said, yeah, I will yet praise you, my God and my saviour.
Like that's David's mantra, isn't it?
Why is this happening to me?
This is really hard, and yet I will praise you.
And as we do that in these days, I really believe it won't be till the end, Jesus will come back, but there is going to be a pushback against all manner of darkness, all manner...
There'll be no more breaching of the walls, no more going into captivity, no more cries of distress in the street.
There's something that God is about to do.
If the children of God will let him train our hands for war, our fingers for battle.
If we will lay our lives down in service to him every single day.
I pray these two prayers most days now.
Lord God, let it be your will, your work, done your way.
On your terms and in your timing.
I pray that nearly every day because my flesh is always saying, God, can you do this for me?
And can I do this?
And can I do it this way?
And can I do it now?
So I pray that prayer out loud.
And then I pray a version of Wesley's Covenant prayer, a very shortened version.
And I just say, Lord, today, whether you lead me, whether you exalt me in front of people or whether you bring me low, And whether you lead me through joy or lead me through sorrow, my life is yours.
Tell me what I'm to do.
Show me how to love you, how to love my neighbour, which is you right now, James.
How do I love you?
Literally, as simple as that.
How do I love you?
How do I love the person in front of me?
By leaning into covenant, by speaking the truth in love and by putting others before myself.
That's what David did constantly.
And when he didn't, he rushed back to God and said, God, I've sinned against you and against you alone.
And he asked for forgiveness, and that's why he's honoured.
He's got the closest thing to New Covenant life of almost anyone in the Bible.
I think if you want to go to the extremes, Mary and Mary are my favourite New Testament.
They're New Testament anyway, so not Old Testament, but their wisdom to just seek out Jesus, sit at his feet.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, to say, let it be to me according to your word, whatever the cost, let your will be done in my life.
Yeah, that's how we're to live and that's the only way we will see the church rise in strength and power and love and unity.
You make it sound reassuringly easy and it's good.
It's good to hear this.
And of course, this is what the Psalms are always telling us.
They're just telling you the deal.
This is the deal.
As long as you do this, Yeah.
It's gonna be okay.
Which is good.
I will sing a new song.
So, by the name of the Lord, and come down to us, yes, we live out of great waters, and hence, and children, this must be of magic, right?
Right hand of full circle.
I will sing a new song.
I will sing a new song to thee, O God, upon a psaltery, and an instrument of ten strings, while I sing praises unto thee.
It is he that giveth salvation unto kings, who delivereth David his servant from the hurtful sword.
Well, that's, again, sort of affirmation, isn't it?
It is.
It's beautiful, and it's the praise thing, and it's Daniel 2, I've been praying for two years, where he's some similar sentiment there.
He says that God is the one who changes the times and the seasons.
You know, Daniel 7, he talks about the little horn who's going to try and change the set times and laws.
There's the Antichrist spirit in the world.
But no, God is the one who changes times and seasons.
Not these powerful men and women in the world.
God changes the times and seasons.
He deposes kings and he raises others up.
So that sentiment here is absolutely beautiful.
Our call is to live a life of worship, to pray without ceasing.
And the truest worship is to do What he says, Samuel's rebuke to Saul is to obey is better than sacrifice.
This is my son whom I love.
Listen to him.
Do what he says.
So it's definitely not easy, but it's a narrow and difficult path to truly set yourself to say every day, Lord Jesus, I want to do what you want me to do.
I'm believing to hear your voice today.
If you tell me to go here, I'll go there.
If you tell me to go there, I'll go there.
This is John 3 again.
You can't see the wind.
You don't know where it's come from.
You don't know where it's going.
So it is with everyone who's born of the Spirit.
And this stuff hasn't been taught.
Probably in the church, James.
What we're taught is a set of rules and rights and wrongs and all of those kinds of things, which is only a part of the truth, because the Bible gives us those parameters.
This is a really weird picture that's come to mind, but it's really helpful, I found, for church.
Two types of farming.
In the UK, we have bounded farming, like we have fences to keep our animals in.
That's how we, you know, we mark a territory, put fences up, and the animals are there.
In other parts of the world, they have a centered approach to farming, where they just dig a well, and the animals will gather to the water and congregate around the water.
So we've created church structures and systems that are bounded communities.
So if you keep to these rules, you can be a member of our church and you can do this and you need to serve on a team or you need to do this, that and the other.
Actually, what Christ opened up is a well of life in the earth, actually around every believer.
Whoever believes in me, as the scriptures have said, rivers of living water.
So where Christ's living water is flowing from a person, You will find people coming to drink and you will find communities starting to form.
And the truth is, if you were the only Christian on the earth today, this is you, I'm speaking to you James, genuinely, just like if there was only one acorn and no oak trees on the whole earth, you could plant that acorn And within a few generations you could have oak trees everywhere.
If you were the only Christian on the face of the earth for some strange reason, God could repopulate the earth even in a few generations through you.
Funnily enough, we were talking about this yesterday, we've just got rid of our vicar, our local vicar.
Got rid of him?
He was awful.
Oh bless you.
Do you know what he did?
One of the things he was obsessed with was not letting people drink from the communion cup for health and safety and it really annoyed me.
I mean really annoyed me because in our church we've got this 16th century communion cup, silver.
And you're thinking you think of all the people who've drunk out of that and He was he was introducing this horrible new new thing of called Intinction where they dip that they play soggy biscuit with the with that with the okay wafer and they shove it in there It's horrible.
Anyway, that was one of his many.
He was he was also he was woke He was you know lesson he'd talk about rubbish like Ukraine and stuff, you know, and yeah like most of the Church of England because do anyway and A friend of mine said, would you like to be the local vicar, James?
And I said, you have no idea how much I would like to be.
I would rock.
I'd be a hunting person.
Obviously we'd have special hunting services.
And she said, what would you talk to the people about?
I'd talk about the Bible.
Would your sermons be long?
No, they'd be short and punchy.
How would you stop people from getting bored?
I'd just tell them the truth.
Bless you.
What is God calling you to?
That would be my question to you, genuinely.
If he's not calling you to be a hunting vicar, to do this?
Oh, totally.
Come on, this would have more influence than I would have done had I been preaching to my local You've got a different flock haven't you?
So I'll be honest with you, when you talk about your vicar, I'm just being straight with you, I feel terrible compassion for him because I think that it's terrifying to me.
That there are people in Matthew 7, Hebrews 6, who will say, Lord, Lord, didn't I do all of this stuff for you?
And he'll say, away from me, I never knew you.
There's a reality, a hard reality to who God is and what he's doing.
And he's ever so merciful up until that point.
But it's really offensive that someone like David, who murders and commits adultery, is so favoured by God.
And I'll be honest with you, I feel like that half the time.
I feel so blessed by God.
I don't feel deserving of it at all.
And there are others, you know, like Martha and Mary.
Mary's just sitting at Jesus' feet doing nothing.
Martha says, like, tell her to help me, Lord, because I'm making house for you.
And Jesus rebukes her.
Martha, Martha, you're worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed.
In fact, only one thing.
And that's why it sounds easy when I say it to you, because it's the one thing.
Just follow Jesus, sit at his feet, listen and do what he says.
But she's so wise, Mary.
She's then at the cross.
She's at the tomb.
She needs to be with Jesus, even if he's dead.
And she's given the first job of going to tell the disciples that he's risen.
There's something almost offensive about how God loves on his people.
And the whole Bible, and this is why the bend the heavens and come down lords, there is something about utter dependence on God.
And a recognition of who am I that God loves and moves powerfully through the weak and foolish things.
Again, hands up, I'm a weak and foolish thing.
So when we start to have prideful thoughts about, you know, I'm God's gift for this generation.
He doesn't move in that way.
It's a really strange thing.
So I feel compassion for your vicar.
And I'm like, Lord, what's your plan for him?
Lord, raise him up, wake him up.
Not woke.
It's awake.
Like Satan's such a counterfeiter, isn't he?
You're a better Christian than me.
You can pray for that.
No, I'm not.
Trust me.
No, I agree.
Well, you had to live with him.
I didn't.
You know, you shouldn't apologize for thinking that you need to pray for this guy because obviously that is what we Christians are enjoined to do.
Okay, we're now going to one of my favorite bits, my favorite sections of the psalm because this is where it gets sort of more gently reassuring.
It's not about war anymore.
So we have a repeat of the Read Me and Deliver Me from the Hand of Strange Children whose mouth speaketh vanity and the right hand is a right hand of falsehood.
That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth.
Beautiful.
That our daughters may be as cornerstones polished after the similitude, I like that word, of a palace.
That's really not I mean if you're a parent particularly it's nice to think of that and I like the way it Distinguish in in a way that is not fashionable today.
We've been taught that that boys and girls are the same and that Actually, the girls are more special than boys because girls can be anything they want to be and I like the fact that this Differentiates between girls and boys and and and implicitly what that what it thinks their roles are and Now, sons be as plants, grown up in these, drawn up as cornerstones, polished after the simulitude of a palace.
I'm thinking there, maybe I'm wrong, that it sort of recognises the role of women in kind of holding the family together.
I mean...
Yeah, it sounds that way.
And again, this is such a beautiful thread to pick at.
It really, really is.
And it's been a massive part of my life for the last year or so.
But more than that actually, this difference between men and women and the reason that that truth is under assault right now, it's all to do with the true story of human history, and I absolutely believe this is true, is the raising of a bride for Jesus.
That's why there's such an emphasis on marriage through the Bible.
So male and female, Genesis 1.27, male and female he made them in his image.
There is no complete image of God except that you have male and female together.
And so there's the first union of Adam and Eve and then all the way through up until the end of Revelation where Revelation 19 verses 7 to 9, blessed is the one who's invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb.
You see the whole story played out in Genesis 24 where Abraham sends his servant, unnamed in that point, back to his people Bearing gifts to bring back a bride for his son Isaac.
And the servant's like, shall I take Isaac with me?
He says, no.
Isaac stays with me, with the father.
The son stays with the father.
The servant, which is the spirit, goes back to the people, which is the spirit coming to earth, carrying gifts to bring a bride back for the son.
And so everything about this About the human history is about the preparing of a bride for the son so that Jesus and his bride will stand and rule together in heaven and on earth.
So behind this little story of this future, our sons maybe as plants growing up in their youth, our daughters maybe as cornerstones, is this beautiful design of God that you'll have uh an adam and then there's no one like him in all creation and it's good there's no sin but it's not good for man to be alone so he creates a helper which is the same word used for the holy spirit and it's why right at the end of time there's there's no one like adam so he creates eve there's no one like jesus
and so he prepares a bride and adam's rib is taken out jesus side is pierced and he prepares a bride and he's like And so there's a longing, it's incredible, there's a longing in Jesus' heart for his bride.
That's the longing that he's awakening in his church right now.
There's a longing in the church, the Spirit and the bride say, come for the return of Christ.
And all of that is hidden in these two verses which speak of the prosperity of generations when leaders turn to God, fight off the lions and the bears, the demons, the principalities, the powers, then our children will be raised well.
And honestly, the amount of... this has impacted me and friends of mine personally recently.
I know of young people in the last few weeks who have taken their own lives, teenagers, connected to people in my...
Honestly, the heartbreak of it makes you feel sick.
There is an assault on truth, which is not just some podium pounding thing of, well, my idea is better than your idea.
It has real world implications that are causing death and destruction at an unprecedented level.
And so who is going to sort that out?
Is it the politicians?
The billionaires?
Is it the educators?
No, it's those who have Christ.
who say Lord God this is and this this is why I love these verses as well 12 13 I love them because this is why we go to war.
This is why we need to be in our Bibles.
This is why we need to be seeking the Lord, because if we don't fight and fight on His terms, the weapons of our warfare, not against flesh and blood, He will show us how to deal with people.
But there's a spiritual war behind all of the natural things that are taking place.
And as a spiritual people who are temporarily on the earth, but eternally His now, We've got to stand up in the authority of Jesus, speak the truth.
But we can't even do that except by the Spirit of God.
What would Jesus do?
Well, Jesus was quiet with some, didn't answer, didn't speak before Herod.
He didn't answer the questions he was asked.
He didn't engage in divisive arguments.
He spoke boldly.
You know, people would say, well, don't attack humans.
Well, Jesus said, you brood of vipers.
You know, you're whitewashed tombs.
He was pretty scathing.
Don't use violence.
Well, Jesus went and fashioned a whip and then went back calmly into the temple and less calmly overturned tables and drove people and cattle out of the temple.
There is a time for forms of violence that are not sinful.
And I'm not advocating militancy in that sense or weapons or anything like that.
But violence of speech.
Wilberforce would have used that against slavery.
There is something coming which will be the revelation of the Spirit of God through his people.
And we will speak with authority, speak in a way that catches the heart of people.
But it all begins with a vision for what could be.
Not just, not the vision the World Economic Forum or anyone's painting for a Keir Starmer, you know, giving up Whitehall for, I'm not party political so I can, you know, Rishi, Keir, all of these people.
None of us believe in it.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
It's always Jesus.
Do you not reckon that Jesus could have handled himself in a fight if he'd wanted to?
He could have done, couldn't he?
I mean, he just didn't.
Well, I mean, he did.
This is the whole thing about him.
I love that.
It's one of my favourite pictures of Jesus in Revelation 19, is that he is the rider on a white horse.
His name is Faithful and True.
He's King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
I mean, he's a conqueror.
And we are more than conquerors because he literally took on death and sin and won.
And I remember there was a time a few years ago where atheists, I kept reading this atheist thing about if Jesus was really the son of God, then he didn't die, he just took a holiday.
That's what they were saying, like, you know, he's the son of God, he just took a couple of days off and it's not a big deal.
I was worshipping around that time and I suddenly had like a vision in my imagination of what Jesus saw from the cross.
It was extraordinary.
I saw little people with like far off because he was up on a hill and I could see these people wondering about and dusk falling and I had this sense of darkness coming towards him and that's when God brought that thing to life for me that God made him who knew no sin to become sin.
I mean Jesus literally, go and read Philippians 2, Jesus being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but instead he took on the likeness of a servant, humbled himself even to death on a cross.
Jesus literally picked the fight of fights with death and sin and his whole MO again was to surrender to the Father's plan And when he has nothing left, his friends have deserted him, his health is failing because he's nailed to a cross, he's been beaten to a pulp.
All he's got left is his pure spirit.
And he says, Father, into your spirit, into your hands I commit my spirit.
He gives what is left of his life to the Father.
That is the fight of fights and he won and we need a revelation of what he won most Christians that I know think well I'm not I was never too bad Well, I'm one of those guys who was bad and I knew I know what God has saved me from what he's delivered me from I I I know that I would never have saved myself never have talked myself into heaven he he fought I mean he handled himself in a fight will come back and and Not terrible.
They are really bad things to me.
Even after being a Christian, I struggled with sin for years.
I struggled with hidden sin.
I've treated people badly.
I've done all manner of stuff.
I grew up with all manner of Yeah yeah just there's the the small crime stuff around drugs and all of that kind of stuff was I think we've talked about that before but and a bit of petty theft and all of that kind of stuff but it's just how you treat people and I and I've done it even as a Christian it took me years Again, reading Romans, it took me years to break out of the cycle of sinning because I was hurting about something or I'd made a mistake.
And then you sin some more and you've got these secret shames as a Christian.
And one day I sat in my kitchen and I just gave up.
I said, Lord, I can't do this.
I'm always going to let you down.
And he spoke to me in my ear and he said, this is why I died.
And it completely changed.
He didn't die just to make me a Christian once and then on your own, son, get on with it and live a holy life.
He died because daily you and I need forgiveness.
His mercy is in you every day.
David is forgiven and honoured in heaven because he came back to God and asked for mercy.
The only reason I'm going to have any credibility with God or other people is because daily I know that I need the mercy of God.
I will make mistakes today, hurt people, Get it wrong.
So at that level, and as you walk in purity with him, the little stuff hurts more.
I mentioned the other day, I started a fast in January, mentioned on one of our Foundry prayer calls, family prayer calls, and I'd gone to, I mean, how's this for the crime of the century, right?
I'd gone for a National Trust walk with my wife on the first day of our fast, bought myself a coffee, and reached for a handful of napkins, because I'm thinking I'll take a few tissues, I might need them later, and the Lord said to me, you're stealing.
And I put them back except for one that I needed.
And then I mentioned this on a prayer call and my wife said to me afterwards, why did you mention the napkin?
And I was like, I don't know, it's a bit weird.
The next day we had another prayer call and person after person after person said the Lord had convicted them.
About what I'd said and about little areas in their life that they suddenly realized was not God's best and it was costing them some intimacy with him and then just a month ago I had a conversation with somebody who said to me.
I know you're a godly man and she with tears in her eyes She said I know you're a godly man because God convicted you of stealing a napkin So there's something amazing about the little things in life and just wanting to be more like Jesus more loving more trusting of God Absolutely.
Yeah, you're right.
Absolutely.
Yeah, exactly that Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.
All this talk of sin makes me feel, you know, makes me think of all the bad things I've done.
So we'll move on.
And thank God for Jesus!
Thank God for Jesus, because as far as the East is from the West, so far he's removed Christians from the West.
We're coming up to another of my favourite lines, because I think this stuff is very relevant, given we've got lots of, we're going to have famines, we're engineered by the Kabbalah, we're going to have You know probably gonna have food rationing where you won't be able to get your government allocated food unless you've got the mark of the beast I'm kind of confident that Unless it's God plans God's plan for me to starve to death in which case fine.
I think probably he will sort it out And I'm always think about this when I say this line That our garners may be gonna say it affording or manner of store That our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets.
Well, I'm surrounded by sheep, Actor.
I'm surrounded by sheep, so I often think about sheep.
And lamb is my favourite food.
I mean, lamb's liver is my, apart from maybe foie gras, but lamb's liver is pretty much my favourite, closely followed by shoulder of lamb.
I love eating the fatty skin and the fat, and I think about the fat of the lamb, and I think, well, It's obvious to me that God wants you to eat lamb and lots of fatty stuff I mean, there's no way that God is a vegan.
It's just I mean, I'm not saying he doesn't love vegans, but I don't think He's not really thinking this is what I want.
He's thinking I will forgive them their sins because I've sent my son to die for their sins, but Yeah, anyway, so That's a whole nother conversation about whether did they did they eat meat and kill before the fall?
Yeah, or is that again something?
So I'm not a vegan.
Okay, I like sheep, you know, another another conversation.
And then it goes on that our oxen may be strong to labor.
That's right.
There'd be no breaking in or going out that this is my brother's favorite line that there'd be no complaining in our streets.
Yeah.
Yeah, which when you look up the Strong's word, it says a screech or cry of anguish.
It's a bit stronger than... Presumably it just means that we're not going to be all be really distressed and unhappy, does it mean?
Yeah well that's so on the food stuff I mean just again this is amazing to me because there are kingdom solutions coming so you've seen all the farming protests and all of that kind of stuff so I love pointing people to the globalist documents so is it c40 cities you know there's 100 odd cities their 2019 report says that by 2030 their aspiration is for every human on the planet to eat zero meat
and eat zero dairy products and that report alone is helpful to show people and say just go and read that page that little table that says that and you'll understand you don't have to draw you don't have to extrapolate but you can see why farmers are protesting all over the world because the squeeze is on them and their industry is being systematically dismantled from under our noses and we're sleeping through it because we're so used to not hunting not catching
Just going to the saints we we're seeing this something another work that I'm involved in Kingdom Embassy with we're working with farmers who are seeking God's way of doing this.
So we're meant to subdue the earth.
So back to the beginning of the psalm, you subdue peoples under me.
Well, we definitely are meant to have some form of dominion over the earth.
And I love talking to people about this as well, climate change stuff, that there is going to be global warming because God says in his word that the earth is going to get incredibly hot in the last days and people still won't repent and turn to him.
But so much of the narrative of of um climate change and all that is is unbiblical anti-biblical go forth and multiply there's no until we have this massive distribution problems this i mean they're glaringly obvious you don't even need the bible in these days to know that distribution is the issue not scarcity and so you've got all of this stuff going on so then you bring it back to kingdom people and currently by the grace of god a lot of churches in the uk are involved in food banks creating food banks we're
Well, I sat in a meeting in Parliament with a lovely non-Christian Labour MP talking about Christian engagement with charities and with charity heads, Christian charity heads.
And one of the questions that we need to be asking is not how do we get more food banks, it's how does the church Get go to war with the central issue of distribution so that we don't need any food banks anymore because because we don't have and so there's plenty in the land there there are gifted farmers Christian and non-christian in the UK we do there need not be any scarcity and so this stuff Speaks exactly to our times again.
But it is warfare.
The victory will come from the place of prayer, from the place of community and communion.
So we're doing our little part.
We're gathering with farmers.
There's a farmer, I've got a very dear friend of mine in Derbyshire.
I spend some time with him every couple of weeks.
And we are praying and working with other farmers early days, even in different countries.
I've got a friend in New Zealand, a friend in Africa.
And there are other organisations way ahead of the curve.
But we can't just sit and pray.
We need to be connecting with one another.
Asking how we can support and serve one another to see this that David saw come into reality because he was a king, right?
He's got more potential and power to do good than most of us feel we have but we have the king of kings within us and we're not one, we're a multitude.
I've got some friends who are not Christians who've known me for years and years and years, didn't see them for about four years over the lockdowns and all that.
They came to have dinner with me and my wife about a year or so ago Ask me what I'm doing for work.
And I told them they have no faith at all.
The guy is as materialist as they come.
He would just believe we're atoms and chemical processes and everything.
But these two people who don't believe in Christ, even they could see that if we could get the church to work for others together as a unified body with all of our money, buildings, resources, we could change the nation for good.
Like, even atheists can see that.
If we could get the church working together, using our resources, our skills, then we could change the nation for good.
They can see it, and they can't even see Jesus.
And yet most of the church feels powerless.
It's the Valley of Elah.
Goliath, Satan is shaping the narrative.
The people have got a passive.
So, we need to be speaking to this future, James, and saying, this is what will happen, even in one generation.
If the children of God will rise up, not in militancy, but in love and compassion and do something.
Pray for your farmers.
If you've got farmers near you, get to know them.
Find out what the issues are and just start finding out if you can grow stuff at home.
You know, there's stuff we can do because it's God's grace.
He's given us a finite world which is imbued with this grace of infinite multiplication.
One seed.
Can produce a multitude of season appropriate commentary.
I said the final line Happy is that people that is in the same as yay.
Happy is that people whose God is the Lord?
I don't I don't think you often get a sort of closing like that and That in the Psalms just just sort of puts everything, you know, you're trusting God you're gonna be okay, and I think and actor.
Yeah, I've really enjoyed Chatting to you That there's loads.
I always enjoy chatting to you as well.
We could have gone off in and maybe, maybe we'll have another chat sometime and tell me about your, your adventures in spiritual warfare.
Where can people find you?
Uh, I guess the, uh, I'm not very visible.
I'm not into self-promotion too much.
Thefoundryinternational.com is a website.
Hang on, this is probably a good one as well.
We've got a work we're doing based around the poem in Big Ben.
Do you know anything about that?
That the chimes of Big Ben, so for five years I prayed on my own because the Lord told me when Big Ben sounds again the church will have her voice back.
Very relevant to everything we've talked about today.
2017 he told me that.
He said when Big Ben sounds again the church will get her voice back.
And I then met two friends, I didn't know them before, Sarah and Chip.
Sarah's in Lincoln, Chip's in Manchester.
And they'd also been praying about Big Ben.
Chip had been feeling that when Big Ben sounded again, he's a guy from the States, then it would be a call to prayer and worship for the nation.
And Sarah had been hearing in the spirit when Big Ben sounds again.
Then the King of Glory will be seen in this nation again.
So we came together, we made a song called All Through This Hour, because Chip, in five years, I didn't research it, I just prayed.
Chip was the one who told me the chimes are taken from Handel's Messiah, I Know My Redeemer Lives.
And there was a poem, they've taken it out in the renovations, but in the Elizabeth Tower, a poem that said, all through this hour, Lord be my guide, just like the last verse of this psalm, happy is the people, all through this hour, Lord be my guide, that by thy power, no foot shall slide.
And we've created this prayer movement out of that.
It's at allthroughthishour.com.
Really easy to find it, allthroughthishour.com.
And you'll find me there.
And we've also created a series of conversations called Blow the Trumpet, Sound the Alarm, which speaks to the food crisis, the looming food crisis, economic crisis, what God's doing in the church and stuff.
That's probably the best place to find me, and there's a contact form on there, and you can see some of the videos we've done as well.
All I will say to add to that is everyone, What you should do, I recommend, is pray that one day you get to meet Akhtar.
Because it's quite an experience.
If you were working for the other side, Akhtar, you would be something like a wizard.
You've definitely got it.
I talk about how envious I am of the Old Testament prophets, that God speaks to them directly.
but I think I think you are you are the modern you are like something out of right for you Bless you.
Well, can I pray for you?
Because, honestly, I'm the least... This is the journey that Paul was on.
The more I grow in Christ, the more I realise I don't deserve anything, and the more I know is available to me.
So, I'm literally... I'm now leading more people in some shape or form through the Foundry, through Kingdom Embassy, and all through this hour, I'm influencing more people than I can count because of the internet and all that.
It's not, you know, thousands and thousands, but I literally don't have a mark on.
And my belief, honestly James, and my hope and prayer is that all of them will do more and be more than me.
Because that's the heart of Jesus.
Whoever believes in me will do the things I do and even greater things.
So God is raising leaders now who will meet anybody and say, you can do what I'm doing and you can go and do greater things.
Why?
Because the Spirit of God is in you.
And so, Father, I thank you for James.
I thank you for his awakening or his birth into you, into Christ, Lord God.
I thank you for his heart and his passion.
And he is waging war, Lord God.
I want to thank you for everything that is in alignment with your plans for him at the moment.
But Lord, whatever I have of the Spirit, whatever I have of understanding of your heart and your mind, Lord God, the ability to hear your voice every more, I ask for that for him.
I really do, Father, with all my heart, I ask that you'd awaken his ears That every day he'd be able to go to bed confidently saying, God said this to me today and God has done this in my life today, Lord.
The adventure of faith that you've called him to, that he would believe with all his heart that the least in the kingdom alive today on the face of the earth is greater than John the Baptist, who is the greatest of all born to women by that point in history, Lord God.
There is more, there is more, there is more.
There's more of your voice, there's more of your power, more of your authority.
More of your righteousness, more of your peace for James.
Lord God, I pray for it all.
Lord, would you open his ears, open his eyes to see you, his ears to hear you, his mouth to speak your truth, and open his heart to receive and pour out your love in a measure beyond anything he's ever dreamt possible in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, thank you.
That makes me feel slightly unworthy.
No, no.
Let's see what God does.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I hope I live up to this.
Bless you.
And it only remains for me to thank all you wonderful viewers and listeners.
You know where to get my stuff by now and you know how to support if you want to.
But most importantly spread the word about the Psalms podcast and start reading the Psalms.
They're really interesting.
I tend to use my copy of the Coverdale translation which comes in a sort of pale blue cover.
But I mean, you can read, you know, Akhtar prefers the more... Which version do you use, Akhtar?
I read widely, like NLT, ESV, NIV.
I love getting the different perspectives.
But I really would recommend to try learning the Psalms.
Probably start with Psalm 23, because that's the sort of the classic, the sort of building block psalm of all the others.
And then go from there.
See how it works for you.
They ward off demons.
They they do I mean demons absolutely hate the Psalms and they make you feel Happy and at one with God, which is which can't be a bad thing.
Um So spread the word Thank You actor that's been great talking to you and I hope to see you again soon bless you James.
