I need to pray.
Thank you, precious God, for mercy upon mercy
in these days.
You cannot help yourself.
It's what you are in yourself.
And so we ask yet another expression.
And the way it pleases you, forgive it.
Come, my God, and take possession of this
night.
And employ it as if it were a
once-and-for-all occasion.
As if life and death
rested upon it.
Eternity itself.
Who's sufficient for these things?
Be our sufficiency.
Thank you again, and give you the praise.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, I had the best night's sleep last
night in quite a while.
But I would never know it when I
see my present condition.
Feeling extraordinarily weak and tired.
I don't share that just as a matter
of mild curiosity.
But something in the mystery of the prophetic
calling.
Just in case it might be your experience
one day.
Not in the bringing of the word, but
the fulfilling of it.
Wouldn't that be something?
The church itself called to prophetic stature.
Corporately.
Not when you're feeling inspired.
But just the opposite.
When you're feeling especially uninspired.
And weak.
And tired.
Then God calls for ultimate service.
When we're not at our spiritual best.
Wouldn't that just be like the Lord?
If the object is to reveal His glory.
And not our expertise.
Or spirituality.
Well, I want to encourage you to get
this book while you can.
Not because it's mine.
But because the subject is so precious.
There's so little respect, let alone reverence for
truth in our generation.
And yet the Lord warns us.
That it's not just respect for truth that
will keep us from deception.
But the love of it.
That will bring you to places of inconvenience.
So this encourages that kind of love.
It's a critical examination of what truth is.
What it takes to both obtain and maintain
it.
One woman said, I can't read more than
one page a day.
That's the kind of book it is.
It will change you.
So I commend it to you.
Now, what do you mean by truth, brother?
What do you mean by loving it?
Well, to the point where you would be
willing to put aside your own opinion.
Of things as you would like to see
them.
As you have been taught to expect them.
For example, like Israel.
That present Israel, however embarrassing its condition, Will
one day assuredly succeed in the future.
And they deserve to succeed.
They've had enough trouble in the world.
Enough suffering.
They deserve a national homeland.
And God gave it its beginning in 1948.
And it will become the prophetic fulfillment.
That is conventional truth.
But what if God were to say, present
Israel is not going to succeed.
But what if God were to say, present
Israel is not going to succeed.
What if God were to say, I have
called their land for judgment and death.
I've assembled them, not for success, but for
testing and trial and judgment.
That they might find themselves yet again, once
more, dispersed into the nations.
As the outcasts of Israel.
Who thought that they could have established their
own state.
By their own admirable Jewish ability.
Which I had to allow them a last
opportunity to attempt.
So that they could finally realize.
Not by might and not by power.
But by my spirit, saith the Lord.
What if that is the truth.
A painful truth.
Requires a radical readjustment of our whole view
toward Israel.
The girding of our loins to expect calamity
and disaster.
And not success.
That would mean re-examining not only our
view about Israel.
It would mean that we would have to
examine not only our view about Israel.
But also our view about God.
How could He?
Is that love?
I present to you my view.
And of course there are many views and
interpretations of prophecy.
But I don't offer my view as another
opinion.
I offer it as a prophetic interpretation of
prophetic scripture.
Because someone I think rightly said that not
the least of a prophet's functions is the
interpretation of prophecy itself.
So you have to examine my credentials.
Because there are many presuming today to be
prophetic.
Even the oracles of God.
So it's a bewildering and confusing hour.
Where perhaps only the love of the truth
will save us.
So you're going to have to weigh me
up and assess my speaking tonight.
And see what the witness is in your
own spirit.
What is your own discernment?
I'm on my way to Israel.
Where I have not been in four years.
I used to go every year.
There that I came to the Lord 32
years ago.
As a Jewish atheist looking for philosophical answers.
I kept a journal of that 14 months
of travel.
It became a book.
It was even published in Finland.
But it's out of print now.
Maybe you could persuade Patmos to reissue it.
It's a remarkable saga of a man apprehended
by God.
A God whom he was not seeking.
Who was thrust out into the world and
through the nations.
When all of the categories of his modern
life collapsed.
Something of a preview of what will befall
Jews in the world before the end comes.
They will be thrust out again into the
nations.
Amos chapter 9 says that.
I will sift you among all nations.
So prepare yourself.
For the odd catches that will be coming
through your land.
Likely from Russia.
But may well be other places.
Men facing a sudden urgency.
Global anti-semitic fury.
That compels them out of their places of
security and affluence.
To be brought through nations of the world
where they had not expected.
A national road to Calvary.
A despised and rejected people.
Even by those who formerly approved them.
For this is for me the final scenario
of the sifting of Israel in the world.
You'll need to get last night's tape.
I spoke of it then more extensively.
And so I used to go to Israel
every year taking groups from America.
The believers there used to say that when
At comes to Israel the word of the
Lord comes with him.
That's what they used to say.
But they don't say it anymore.
Now he's a man in error.
Who's missed the mind of the Lord.
He may be a false prophet.
Because his message now has become very somber.
Very threatening.
He speaks of impending disaster and calamity in
the land.
By men who don't want to hear that.
Who expect some degree of trouble.
But not to the extent that he expects.
So brother why are you going back now?
I can tell you I don't enjoy going.
But a Jewish brother who is a minister
whom I had led to the Lord and
baptized.
He said At we're conducting a tour in
Israel.
And my spirit leaped when I heard that.
I said count me in.
But not just a tour.
A conference tour.
On the theme of my most recent article
in my newsletter.
The coming time of Jacob's trouble.
The coming calamity of Israel.
Oh he said our brochures are late with
the printer.
What title shall we give it?
I said I'll pray and I'll call you
back when the Lord gives it to me.
Well the next day I prayed I asked
the Lord for a title.
And when I lifted my head.
These words came into my thought and spirit.
It's from the prophet Joel.
Blow the trumpet in Zion.
And proclaim a warning in my holy mountain.
That's what we shall be speaking.
Four days in Jerusalem.
October 18th through the 21st.
Will you be praying?
They say you're not a prophet unless you're
stoned in Jerusalem.
And this might well be that time.
I sent out 80 copies of this message
around the world.
Before it was published.
To every responsible biblical commentator that I knew.
And especially leaders in the body of Christ
in Israel.
Only one responded favorably.
Even those who had to agree with the
truth of the scripture.
Felt that I was carrying it too far.
And who are you to come from the
safety of North America.
And warn us of disaster and calamity in
the land.
Why don't you come here and live with
us and experience it.
Or else your word is not valid.
Answers like that.
Well I wish I had copies for you
in Finnish.
Maybe if you persuade Patmos they might publish
it.
But can I pick out some major thoughts
from this article.
To show you why I have a biblical
expectation of a time of Jacob's trouble.
That must necessarily take place in the land.
Though it will not be confined to Israel.
But wherever Jacob is to be found.
Even in Finland.
One of my key texts is Isaiah chapter
6.
Chapter 6.
It's the time of Isaiah's call to a
particular and ultimate form of service.
When he saw the Lord high and lifted
up.
And was made conscious that he was a
man of unclean lips.
And he lived in the midst of a
people of unclean lips.
For his eyes have seen the king.
The Lord of hosts.
That is a very particular kind of seeing.
It wouldn't hurt us to perceive the Lord
in that way.
A soon coming king and a soon coming
kingdom.
Will very much affect the way in which
we see God.
See ourselves as the church.
And see his purposes.
But that's another subject.
So he heard the Lord say, who will
go for us?
And he said, send me.
Having had his lips purged by a cold
from off the altar.
Here am I, send me.
And the Lord said, go and tell this
people.
That keep on listening, but they do not
perceive.
They keep on looking, they do not understand.
Make the hearts of this people insensitive.
Their ears dull, their eyes dim.
Lest they see with their eyes and hear
with their ears.
And understand with their hearts and return and
be healed.
What a remarkable prophetic message.
To be born by one sent by the
Lord.
Not to bring blessing, but judgment.
That in the hearing of the prophet's words.
They lose their ability to hear, their ability
to see.
Their ability to be changed in their hearts,
their ability to turn.
The word of the Lord to the nation
through the prophet is a judgment.
And who of us have not seen this
condition in Israel to this very day?
Ears that do not hear and eyes that
do not see.
And a heart that does not understand.
Except for a small remnant of isolated Jews
like myself.
And elect from every generation.
There is a judgment that yet remains upon
the nation.
We do not have the ability to see.
No wonder that the prophet says, Lord how
long?
How long is Israel going to languish in
that condition?
And here is the remarkable answer in verse
11.
And he answered, the Lord answered.
Until cities are devastated and without inhabitants.
Houses are without people.
And the land is utterly desolate.
The Lord has removed men far away.
And the forsaken places are many in the
midst of the land.
Yet there will be a tenth portion in
it.
But it will again be subject to burning.
Like an oak whose stump remains when it
is felled and the holy seed is in
its stump.
So here is the way that I read
this.
This until has not come.
Or else Israel's present condition would be changed.
They would be hearing, seeing and understanding and
be turned.
But God has established an inexorable barrier to
understanding and to conversion.
There is a divine until.
Until the cities are devastated and without inhabitants.
Houses without people.
The land utterly desolate.
The Lord has removed men far away.
And the forsaken places are many in the
midst of the land.
I believe that that's a statement that is
future.
And yet must come in the land.
That God has allowed a preliminary return to
the land.
In order that these final episodes can be
fulfilled in the land.
That will again be made desolate.
And forsaken.
And many removed far away.
If this were the only text.
I could understand how we would resist this
truth.
But I want to assure you there are
many texts.
An enormous number of texts in all the
prophets.
That speak of future desolation and ruin and
waste in the land.
Let's look at the book of Ezekiel 36.
In verse 33.
On the day that I cleanse you from
all your iniquities, I will cause the cities
to be inhabited and the waste places will
be rebuilt.
Now listen to this you Bible scholars.
Has Israel's sin been removed?
Has Israel to this day been cleansed from
her iniquity?
We're still waiting for something.
Spoken in Romans chapter 11.
That when the fullness of the Gentiles be
come in.
So the deliverer will come out of Zion.
According to the covenant that I have made
with them.
And take transgression from Jacob.
There is going to come a day.
In which God is going to purge and
cleanse the people.
Just an act of his divine mercy.
But that day has not yet come.
It waits for the fullness of the Gentiles
to be come in.
It's got nothing to do with them but
with you.
Whatever that fullness of the Gentiles means.
God is waiting on it.
Then the deliverer comes out of Zion.
And takes transgression from Jacob.
Jacob is inert and helpless.
And must be so.
Because we Jews are so self sufficient.
We're so able to come out of disasters
and succeed.
But God says not on that basis will
you bless the families of the earth.
Not on the basis of your ability.
On the basis of my mercy.
That is extended to you without qualification.
For it is not you who is to
be glorified among the nations.
But the God who is your deliverer and
your redeemer.
After I have judged you.
I will return you.
And you will build the waste places.
And the cities that were left in ruins.
And the land that was made desolate.
Verse 33 of Ezekiel 36.
On the day that I cleanse you from
all your iniquities.
I will cause the cities to be inhabited.
And the waste places will be rebuilt.
Which waste places?
Which cities?
Haifa?
Tel Aviv?
Siberia?
Jerusalem?
Can you see why I'm not welcomed back
in the land?
Who wants to hear such dread things?
Though there's such a weight of scripture confirming
it.
Men don't want to hear.
There's something in us that doesn't want to
consider that the unthinkable.
There's something in us Jews yet that says
this too shall pass.
We said it in Germany in 1933.
But it didn't pass.
It came.
The unthinkable took place.
Though we had celebrated German civilization.
It didn't save us.
We went up as smoke through the chimney.
And we're still saying the same thing.
This too shall pass.
This shall not come upon us.
I preached something like this in an American
city once.
And many of the Jewish believers came out
to hear me.
And they were stupefied by that word.
And one girl came up to me complaining.
She said, but I have an aunt living
in Tel Aviv.
Don't you understand, Brother Katz?
I don't care what you're saying about the
scripture.
I have an aunt living in Tel Aviv.
Therefore, this cannot be true.
This cannot take place.
Can you understand why the church must be
the ground and pillar of the truth?
Who else is jealous over it?
And will love it.
Even when it is painful to consider.
The church that can love that truth is
the church.
And only a church of that kind can
save Israel from its final distress.
The prophet in Ezekiel 37 who spoke to
the dry bones and Israel will come into
that death and come into those graves where
only a word that comes to it prophetically
will raise it from that death.
That prophet had to come out from where
he was.
The hand of the Lord came upon him
and he came out and he was brought
down into the midst of the valley of
dry bones.
And he was forced to move through the
midst of it.
And God even teased him with an agonizing
question.
Son of man, can these bones live?
Before you can speak for God prophetically you
have to see as God sees.
And not as you would like things to
be.
This is the prophetic requirement.
If we will not see, neither shall we
speak.
And if we don't speak, Israel will remain
in its grave.
Now can I be truthful?
I don't know when I've looked out on
an audience like this with less hope that
they can understand what I'm saying and be
willing to hear it and to receive it.
This is not just a service tonight, saints.
This is a prophetic event.
The issue of Israel, unbeknownst to them, is
being decided here.
For you are the representative church in the
land.
No better, no worse than others.
God's people.
Housewives and widows.
Young men with ponytails.
All of the variety of the condition of
God's people.
And will you believe me when I say
the issue of Israel is not Israel, but
the church whose word to Israel can raise
it from its grave.
If it will first see as God sees
that it can speak as God would speak.
All of these thousands of Sundays and services
that have proceeded tonight have they prepared you
for this?
All of that passive sitting in pews and
looking up and listening.
Has it fitted you to be a prophetic
people who are able to bear and to
love painful truths who understand that before there
is any glory there is always a necessary
suffering that the issue of Israel is not
the success of a state but the glory
of God forever.
And that you are called to be participants
in this drama not when you are feeling
spiritual or strong, but in your weakness in
your tiredness without the sense of being spiritual.
God will call you to obedience as he
has called me tonight.
Do you know why I am weak tonight?
For your sake.
Because if this is the way that the
foolish message must come to you out of
weakness by what means will you fulfill it?
Verse 34 of Ezekiel 36 The desolate land
will be cultivated instead of being a desolation
in the sight of everyone who passes by.
They will say this desolate land has become
like the garden of Eden.
The waste, desolate and ruined cities are fortified
and inhabited.
Brother, that may have been some statement out
of Israel's past.
There have been desolations before.
What makes you so sure that this is
a future condition?
We don't want to have to consider Haifa,
Tel Aviv and Jerusalem destroyed and made desolate.
Because the next verse says Then the nations
that are left round about you will know
that I the Lord have rebuilt the ruined
places and planted that which was desolate.
I the Lord have spoken it and will
do it.
So I'm asking you is this future or
past?
The nations around Israel today do they know
that God is the Lord?
That there's only one God and that is
the Holy One of Israel and the God
of Jacob who performs what He speaks?
Do they know that today?
Not yet.
But they will know it when they see
with their own eyes the desolation and the
ruin being restored which they themselves have brought
upon Israel.
The nations that are left round about them
indicates a regional disaster which is yet future
but near.
You think I'm enjoying this?
You think I want to make you distressed?
You came expecting blessing to hear a Jewish
believer and to reinforce your present view of
Israel's happy future.
And he's speaking nothing but calamity and disaster.
But if I didn't speak this I would
be accountable before God.
I'm accountable to bring this perspective to God's
people and you're accountable to hear it and
to prepare for it.
I think I shared somewhere in these days
what my message was in Odessa in the
Ukraine only a year or so ago and
I didn't come there with that message because
the Christians there were so happy to tell
me how much they had helped Ukrainian Jews
to leave Odessa and get to Israel.
Oh, I said, you think you've done God's
service?
The greater requirement is still before you to
receive them back in flight and in terror
in seeking to escape the violence and the
disaster that will come.
Let's see how spiritual you are then how
much you can receive them then in the
condition of panic and terror in which they
will come.
Well, I haven't even looked at my watch
at how long I've been speaking.
I just have to add this little biographical
note about my life.
I'm a Jew from New York City but
I'm not living there.
I'm living in one of the most remote
locations in North America.
The travel agents can't even find it.
What are you doing there, brother?
That doesn't sound appropriate to your background.
What are you doing living in the wilderness
of your nation?
In severe arctic cold where the winter is
the longest season of the year.
By the word of the Lord that came
to me supernaturally when I was a speaker
in the area and someone said, Art, there's
a property for sale.
Would you care to see it?
Sure, why not?
So they drove me out to this abandoned
camp.
It was a sign, no trespassing allowed.
I got out of the car and I
stepped over the chain across the road and
my foot came down on the property.
And the Lord said, End Time Teaching Center
Community Refuge We've been there 23 years.
In such struggle such trials such sufferings to
prepare a place of refuge for Jews in
flight in the United States of America in
a soon coming hour the time of Jacob's
trouble are you prepared to take them in
to give them refuge the condition
that the church has just passed us by
Dear saints, I plead with you Get the
other tapes of these days Tonight is insane
I'm beside myself I'm all foolishness but I
can't help it It's not for me to
determine what to speak or how to speak
I'm a dead man who has no life
in himself except that which is given and
I can only open my mouth and speak
with God Get the other tapes where I
make much more sense in which I plead
with God's Finnish believers to prepare themselves because
the cities of Israel are going to be
made desolate and without inhabitants and in ruins
and if it's true in what is said
in Isaiah 49 that the land of Israel
has become our destruction where shall they go
who are taken captive or flee in terror
but pass again through the nations in which
God will sift them and sift you Oh,
I'll take them in, brother In the anti
-Christ time when to be caught taking in
the Jew is to lose your breath you're
going to extend yourself What did they ever
do for you Why take the risk It
was one thing to love Israel from afar
and enjoy the sentimental effulgence to go to
a conference and plant a tree but to
take them in at the risk of our
life and the peril to our families in
all of their ingratitude is the ultimate test
of the church to move them to jealousy
for no other demonstration has succeeded God's final
dealing with them and with us will the
real church please stand up one thing will
identify it those who will extend themselves sacrificially
for this people at an anti-Christ time
where it might mean one's life by a
people whose life is not dear unto themselves
nor for themselves and even if they get
caught and it costs them their life they
count it a privilege to receive a crown
in helping a remnant of Israel to survive
and to be restored that the redeemed of
the Lord can return to Zion with mourning
and sighing fleeing away and everlasting joy upon
their heads that the Lord might come and
be their king that His law might go
forth out of their Zion and His word
out of their Jerusalem unto all nations who
will not thereafter study war anymore let's pray
so I thank you for tonight Lord where
did this strength come from when I was
so weak in my beginning and who are
this people whom you have assembled tonight who
came for blessing your people and the hope
of Israel when Israel shall be without hope
and cut off and as dry bones and
Lord you have spoken mysteries tonight who can
comprehend it and I'm asking blessing that the
word that you have been pleased to express
shall not return to you void it shall
accomplish every purpose where unto it has been
set that there are men and women sitting
in this room tonight who will not die
in a bed whose blood will be shed
for your people Jacob that they might become
Israel such an hour beyond sermons and
services where the word is a trumpet call
to wake the sleeping of the soon coming
disasters and calamities out of which the restored
nation shall be birthed bless these children may
they take hold of this their privilege to
have part in this last days drama and
enjoy the eternal reward of it that will
result in your glory forever stir them lead
them into your word give them my God
new seeing a new understanding of the prophetic
scriptures and of the things that shall shortly
come to pass give them a heart of
courage to put aside all imagining of things
as we would like them to be and
give them a heart to agree with you
and to see things as you see them
for that alone is truth have a church
in the land that is the ground and
pillar of truth so only in that condition
can it save the remnant of Israel that
shall pass through seal these things tonight may
tonight be an historic event in the history
of the church of Jesus Christ in Turku
in Finland and we thank you for giving
it and God's people said Amen