This is tape number K011.
Art Katz with a message entitled, The Fire
of God.
So precious God, even now, Lord, even though
we receive the honorary certificates of men, to
you be all honor and praise and glory
and acknowledgement.
Thank you, gracious God, for this unspeakably rich
presence.
Thank you for these choice saints of God,
Lord, that the love of you is written
in their faces and in their utterance and
their, their manner and in their being.
Thank you for this glorious fellowship that we
have as believers in you.
And Lord, we give this time to you.
May you redeem every single moment of it,
Lord.
May you speak so deeply and richly to
our hearts and minds and lives that not
a syllable shall fall to the ground, and
all that you intend by this hour shall
be wholly transacted for your glory.
In the name of Jesus, we ask these
things.
Amen.
The Lord has given me certain experiences as
a Jewish believer, which is not available to
you.
Because you've grown up, I guess, to this
part of the Bible belt, or at least
in a part of believing America, that takes
for granted the great doctrines of God and
the questions of faith and even the name
Jesus.
All of these things are alien and removed
from my life, not only as a Jew,
but as a modern man coming from a
great urban center of New York City.
And it's just a wholly different style of
life.
The things which you've all along accepted and,
and which to you would make such innately
good sense and which have been confirmed daily
in your experience, were to men like myself,
the preposterous and foolish and not just harmless
kinds of foolishness, but even dangerous obstacles to
human progress.
And so was I an enemy throughout all
of my adult life, from early manhood right
until my 35th year when God saved me.
Not one who just looked with some mild
disdain and contempt upon religion and especially the
Christian religion, which I saw as the single
greatest oppressor of the Jewish people and persecutor
and who had been bent upon our forced
conversion for centuries and would not let us
alone.
And in fact, which is still the mentality
of the Jewish people, even as I speak
and not merely, merely willing to entertain your
existence, but looking upon you as dangerous obstacles
to the progress of mankind because of your
foolish beliefs.
And I'll tell you that what I felt
then has become more compacted and more intense
and is growing like a great swelling thing
underneath the surface of our life is going
to break forth in great volume in our
generation.
We are not merely going to be tolerated
by the world.
We're going to be looked upon as a
very great offense and a dangerous obstacle to
what seemed to enlightened men to be progress.
And there shall come the hour, and it
should be far sooner than we think, when
men shall kill us and claim that they're
doing God a service.
So I bring you a report from a
frontier which you don't experience.
And because it pleased God to make of
me a mouthpiece and to bring me to
places of exceptional confrontation with the spirit of
the world, especially as it is caught up
and expressed by my own Jewish people in
their unwitting place deep in the bosom of
this world and its values and its rewards,
we've had many fierce confrontations.
And I've seen men gnash teeth at me
and be driven to great fury and anguish
of soul because all that I represent in
one fell swoop by the power of the
spirit is a contradiction to which all they've
given their lives and all to them that
seems eminently reasonable and right and sane.
And here I come with this foolish message,
preaching the gospel of that one who had
not a place to lay his head and
controverting all that seems to them to be
wisdom.
If they accept the things which I speak
and claim to be the truth of God,
it makes all their life to have been
a vain excursion to this moment.
Can you understand what I'm saying?
And that's why men, when they come to
a confrontation with Jesus Christ, even as I
did myself 10 years ago, were stunned and
shaken to the very foundation and pit of
their being.
I remember in the course of my growing
up years as a high school dropout, frenzied
Jewish kid trying to understand the bewildering universe.
As I traveled the length and breadth of
this land looking for experience and understanding, I
was coming back to New York from California
and I was hitchhiking.
And I found out that if I, when
a car stopped and the man asked me
if I could drive, if I admitted that
I could not, I would not get a
lift.
And so I quickly learned that I had
to tell people that I knew how to
drive, though I did not.
And it was that year when the model
changes were coming out, when they were putting
the gear shift up on the wheels, you
know, instead of the floorboard.
And so if a man had a wheel
gear shift, I said, I only understood the
floor gear shift.
And if he would shift for me, I
would appreciate it.
And if he had the floor, I told
him I only understood the wheel.
And so by the time I got to
New York and he had a drive.
And see, there's something missing from the body
of Christ and we Jews are not in
our place in it.
And in my experience, I was so green,
I remember I was somewhere in the, maybe
even in this part of the country trying
to overtake a very slow moving car up
on a hill.
And my judgment was so poor that I
should not have done it.
And over the crest of the hill coming
down on the opposite lane where I was,
was a car coming at a furious speed
and it was a sure collision.
And it seemed like imminent death.
There was no way to avoid it.
And I just threw my foot on that
brake with all the power that I had
and gripped that wheel.
My knuckles were white and I could see
the face of the man at the, in
the car approaching me in exactly the same
condition.
And those two cars convulsively shuddered as we
both tried to reverse the enormous impetus and
the direction in which we were traveling.
And we succeeded sufficiently for one moment in
that violent shaking and trembling of cars trying
to reverse all of the power and the
movement in which they were caught up and
just narrowly averted each other and averted death.
I'll never forget that experience because I see
it time and time again, both in my
own confrontation with a Jesus whose name was
a bone in my throat.
And as I represent him now, even to
my own kinsmen and to modern men at
the universities, a great shuddering and a shaking
when we're confronted by that one and, and
induced to change the whole course and sweep
and direction of our lives.
The very meaning of repentance.
And I can't think of a more profound
message for this high holiday season, the days
of awe, Yom Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
for Jewish people, right?
Even as we sit this morning and that
men should be stopped in their way and
be turned to the living God.
But the Lord even acknowledges that his gospel
is a very foolish thing.
Paul says for the preaching of the cross
is to them that perish foolishness, but unto
us, which are saved, it is the power
of God.
And I see it time and time again,
when I speak at universities, that the moment
I'm finished with my foolish presentation, men get
up as for example, at the university of
California at one of the campuses.
And it happened to be a Jewish man
and an Israeli man and a professor of
psychology.
And he told how enormously embarrassed he was
by my presentation.
And had he known that I was going
to try to induce men to return to
the middle ages, he would never have come.
And that what I had to say was
an offense to his sensibilities and to his
intellect.
And then he went on further to denigrate
my personality and the way I speak.
And everything that was about me was all
wrong.
And in my concluding remarks that night, I
told the students that I had been instructed
that I was not allowed to pray publicly
at that campus, but for their convenience, I
would recite a prayer for salvation.
And I did so.
And then I concluded the meeting.
And when the meeting was over, some kids
came up to me and I, the first
one, I took one look at that face.
I knew it was Jewish, beautiful brown eyes
and the eyes were glowing with a certain
kind of a light.
And I knew that she had just been
saved.
And there was a trembling and a tearfulness
and had a voice was broken.
And I, as she came to me, I
spoke to her first.
I said, something has just happened to you,
hasn't it?
She said, yes, Mr. Katz.
She said, even though you said that we
couldn't pray, that it was illegal.
She said, when you prayed, I prayed under
my breath.
It's foolishness to them that perish, but unto
us which are saved, it is the power
of God.
For after that, in the wisdom of God,
the world by wisdom knew not God.
It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe.
For the Jews require a sign and the
Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ
crucified unto the Jews, a stumbling block and
unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which
are called both Jews and Gentiles, Christ.
How many people know the meaning of that
word?
Christ, Christos.
What's the Hebrew equivalent?
Moshiach, Messiah.
There I was all those years stumbling over
the sidewalks of Brooklyn, and I never heard
a name more alien and more removed from
my Jewish consciousness than the name Jesus Christ.
And not one person ever took the pain
or the labor to explain to me why
art, that's only the Greek rendering of the
Hebrew Yeshua, haMoshiach.
The word Christ from the word Christos is
the Hebrew word Moshiach, which means Messiah.
Well, that's a far more Hebrew word, far
more positive and far more warm and redolent
of Hebraic sound than the word Christos.
Christ, the Messiah, the power of God and
the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than
men and the weakness of God is stronger
than men.
For you see, you're calling brethren, how that
not many wise men after the flesh, not
many mighty, not many noble are called, but
God has chosen the foolish things of the
world to confound the wise.
And God has chosen the weak things of
the world to confound the things which are
mighty and base things of the world and
things which are despised has God chosen, yea,
and things which are not to bring to
naught things which are that no flesh should
glory in his presence.
And I want to tell you out of
my own experience that of all the foolishness
of which God is and of all of
the foolishness which God chooses, that there's no
point which more staggers modern men and more
makes them to gnash their teeth and more
makes them to be incredulous than the foolishness
of that particular point of the gospel.
Then Jesus saying that I am the way,
the life and the truth and that no
man cometh to the father but by me.
And I'll tell you people that upon my
first reading of those words about aboard the
deck of a tramp steamer 10 years ago,
broken, desolate, modern man, a lifelong seeker after
truth with a contempt for Christianity, for the
Bible, for religion as the religion of cop
-outs too weak to live in this world
unaided, a book which I had long despised
came into my hands, the New Testament.
And as I described last night in the
first reading from the first line, I was
immediately impressed that this book was awesome and
different from anything I'd ever previously read.
I staggered as I read on and began
to recognize that this is ultimately a Jewish
book and the characters are essentially Jewish and
none more Jewish than the great Jew of
them all, Yeshua.
But when he came to make these grandiose
statements, these unspeakably dogmatic statements, something in me
began to shake and to shudder like a
car with the brake thrown on for the
first time.
I was a relativist.
And I'll just as a footnote and as
an aside say that if it were not
for us Jews, this modern world would not
be in its present form nor condition, that
the whole world, although they may not be
Jewish by birth, are living in an essentially
Jewish universe, that the three greatest architects of
the modern world happen also to be Jewish,
Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein.
The impact of Marx we know and the
impact of Freud we have some understanding.
But you think, well, Einstein, you say, I
understand that it's physics and the theory of
relativity and it had something to do with
the advent of the atom bomb definitely.
But I'll tell you that the explosive content
of the work of Albert Einstein in the
thinking of most men is far more significant
perhaps than even the advent of the atomic
bomb.
The theory of relativity has percolated and found
its way even to the ordinary thinking and
feeling and experiencing of men and women all
over the face of this earth.
I didn't know a cotton picking thing about
science.
I don't know anything about physics, but I
was eminently a relativist.
And you know what that means?
All things are relative.
Who's to say what is truth?
Who's to say what is right or what
is wrong?
It's all relative.
Maybe in one instance it is fornication, but
in another it's love.
It depends upon the circumstance.
It's relative.
Who's to say that headhunting is murder?
In certain conditions, among the primitive people, it's
an aspect of their culture.
No man can say something is right or
wrong or true or false.
I tell you that that is the most
devastating thinking in the history of the human
race and is going to bring the modern
world to its ultimate death.
And there's going to be unleashed upon this
earth such a soul sickness and such a
wave of anarchy and chaos and a breaking
down of every institution that men's hearts shall
fail them for fear because no man can
say what's right or what's wrong.
I was a relativist and I like to
believe in my fancy as a modern man
that there are many paths to truth.
It was an offense to the sensibilities in
which I was schooled for 35 years to
insist that there's only a single path to
truth.
And the reason that I shrink from turning
to the Bible, although I was an omnivorous
reader of the printed word in all my
quest for truth in all those years, is
that I resented so much as the implication
that any one book could be the answer.
Why every intellectual worth his salt knows that
truth is to be gleaned from many sources
and it's a search into which we give
over our entire lives and never have hope
that we're going to come to the end
of it.
To insist that there's a way, a single
way and that it's even a narrow way
is an offense that God has planted deeply
in the bosom of this world.
Jesus is an offense to the world for
many reasons and I think none so great
in that he insists upon himself, I am
the way, the truth and the life and
no man cometh to the father but by
me.
There's not a place in the time that
I speak that men do not leap to
their feet outraged that I dare insist upon
that and they attack me as if I
am preaching the gospel of Arthur Katz.
And I'll tell you if you'll receive it,
I faced more vehement and bitter opposition at
a Baptist liberal arts college than ever I
experienced in any secular university on the face
of this land.
There's a way that seemeth right unto a
man but the end thereof is death.
And there's a great filthy spirit being poured
out on this earth by that seducer of
souls that beguiles men and assures them that
their wisdom is true and enhancing and honorable
and and tolerant and liberal that such men
will look upon those who insist upon a
single narrow way as a deep offense.
Away with them!
And they cast Jesus over the brow of
the hill and they stoned Stephen to death
and when when the apostle Saul all his
great outrage against that heretical Jewish sect on
his way to Damascus to extirpate them was
struck and brought to his face in the
dirt by a blinding light that Ananias that
simple believer whom God instructed to go lay
hands upon him that he might receive his
sight in the baptism of Holy Spirit said
go tell him what great things he must
suffer for my name's sake that he might
bear my light to the Gentiles and to
the people Israel.
He's a chosen one unto me God said
and I'll tell you people we Jews have
shrunk from the implications of the phrase the
chosen people but praise God everyone in this
room is a chosen one to bear light
unto the Gentiles and to the people Israel
and God said go tell them what great
things they must suffer for my name's sake.
I'll tell you of all of the offenses
of the gospel when we come down to
the ultimate nitty-gritty there's always someone who's
going to stand to his feet as I
experienced two days ago at the University of
Massachusetts when a rabbi got up bristling and
he said are you trying to imply that
if I reject your Jesus that I'm going
to hell that I'm going to burn for
an eternity in hell have you ever experienced
that doesn't have that has that question come
up in your witness or have you been
shrinking from your witness in the fear that
that question would come up we had a
little bite to eat last night after the
service I'll tell you there's not a detail
that comes into my life from a word
of conversation to being drawn to a single
individuals in a certain affinity of the spirit
to a book that comes into my hand
to being called to a meeting or an
invitation that's not ordered of God and that
woman in a crowded dinner table that restaurant
happened to sit next to me with no
accident and I said to her she came
from Little Rock I said they happen to
know any of the Jewish community there why
yes she said as a matter of fact
quite well and I said are they a
rather withdrawn community or is there a really
good fellowship you know between the Jewish people
and Christians there oh she said there's really
quite a bit of you know socializing and
fraternizing and that I myself should have you
know several Jewish friends I said have you
witnessed to them well gulp no I really
haven't you said I I really lack boldness
I have to admit that and I just
couldn't bring myself to suggest to them that
somehow that they were wrong or that they
have to and I'm just paraphrasing now but
this was the sum and substance of it
that they have to see things particularly my
way and I didn't want to offend them
I didn't want to offend them praise God
for that very lovely kindness and the world
loves that degree of kindness and concern but
I'll tell you there's a God who has
called us to more than sentimentality there's a
God who has called us to love and
it's not the love that makes nice nice
it's the love which speaks the truth in
love and is willing to pay the price
of love which is the painful forfeiture the
risk of the loss of friendships the bringing
of offense people were so nice to me
for 34 years in America that I never
met so much as a single individual and
I knew many who spoke to me about
the gospel of Jesus Christ or the Messiah
of Israel I guess they didn't want to
offend my feelings and were perfectly prepared therefore
that when my life should come to its
terminus and there were many narrow escapes that
I would be plunged into an eternal darkness
and I would be one condemned to wailing
and a gnashing of teeth people don't we
believe the scriptures I didn't seek for any
any ministry I didn't know what the word
meant when it pleased the Lord to bring
me into this university ministry I obeyed though
I knew I was well over my head
they invited me to the University of Illinois
where there to be eight days of activity
four to six meetings a day from fraternity
houses and and student union buildings and all
kinds of places and I was taken by
the hand from one meeting to another just
stunned out of my head exhausted I couldn't
think straight and I just experienced the flow
of God the power coming into my body
over and beyond my own exhaustion and God
giving me a choice word to speak on
every occasion and souls being saved and a
fantastic confrontation at a Jewish fraternity house that
lasted six hours at the conclusion of that
week when they had called me long distance
before the meetings arc do you think you
can handle this the only condition upon they're
willing to have you is if you'll debate
the professor of comparative religion who's a notorious
atheist who has subtitled this course laughing your
way through the world's religions and who speaks
Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek and other Semitic
languages you think you can handle him why
of course not I can't handle him no
more than I can handle any of those
meetings and it's either going to be that
it's no longer I that live but Christ
who liveth in me or I perish there's
only one reason why a pipsqueak like me
wet behind the ears not yet 10 years
old is standing before an audience like this
many of you two and three times older
in the Lord than I but I've had
experiences that would make your hair stand straight
up and I've experienced a resurrection power of
Christ again and again and again and that
very night they made a mistake by allowing
me to speak first and I'll tell you
that the moment I opened my mouth a
holy hush fell in that crowded Jewish fraternity
house that place was jammed to the rafters
with Jews who had come to see me
get my comeuppance as a traitor in their
side against the Jewish people at that meeting
at the University of Massachusetts the night before
there were special posters put up by the
hello committee a special meeting called at a
certain hour what to do about the apostate
I'm a traitor in their sight my own
mother has slammed the door in my face
and called me mad and the moment I
opened my mouth in that in that crowded
place that holy hush fell and mouths were
stomped and I went on in the power
of the unction of God to begin to
relate this foolish gospel about a half hour
later some of the Jewish kids began to
elbow and dig this professor who had not
opened his mouth he was stunned and silent
and said aren't you going to answer this
man and he got up and he made
one or two lame apologetic remarks and he
slipped out like a cur with his tail
between his legs that man has since invited
me to address his classes on two subsequent
occasions and he took a poll at the
end of the year of all of the
speakers that they had that the kids said
that art cats was the most impressive but
you and I know what they were impressed
by when he left that meeting went on
for six hours I've never seen such rage
such anger such bitterness Jewish kids got up
out of their seats with disgust and anger
and stormed out of that house they couldn't
hear another word they wanted to stop their
ears and three minutes later they came back
in again they hated it but they couldn't
stay away they were too Jewish Laurie after
four hours into that meeting and I saw
guys come out of their seat one kid
came out of seat with his fist knotted
ready ready to bash me in my face
and I just stood very quietly he said
if you're God he said if you're Jesus
can save me as you say let him
let me see him do it right this
minute I looked at that boy and I
opened my mouth and I heard myself saying
brother your spirit stinks oh you say art
where's that written in the manual of how
to witness the Jews what a question to
come from people who believe in the holy
spirit I want you to know that every
utterance that came from the lips of Jesus
was born of the spirit of God and
was bathed in love every single syllable even
the cry to the Pharisees hypocrite I'll tell
you the loving remark is not always nice
nice the loving remark might be repent else
you shall all likewise perish that kid was
the first one to be saved that night
and he was followed by 14 other Jewish
kids in the first hearing of the gospel
they were falling like flies on their knees
and on their faces one kid came up
to me trembling and weeping he said already
said even my rabbi is afraid to pray
for me because my name is cats you
see my name is cats also and I
used to be embarrassed by it because you
know the kinds of jokes to which that
can lend itself and I thought boy of
all the names to have where did we
get that one I thought well that's something
that we Jews must have picked up in
in Germany somewhere in the course of our
wanderings but when God saved me he showed
me in an instant what it means to
be a man because I've been seeking my
manhood all my adult life he showed me
what it means to be a Jew is
to have the spirit of the Holy One
of Israel in you and even told me
what what his name Jesus Christ means and
then he told me what my name means
cats is not even German it's not even
Jewish it's Hebrew and it's a contraction of
two Hebrew words Kohan Tzadik Ko and Tza
makes cats if you know a Jew by
the name of Kohan or Kahn or some
derivation of that that word means priest and
Tzadik means righteous and this boy said my
rabbi doesn't feel qualified to pray for me
because I'm a cat I'm a Kohan Tzadik
I said that's okay brother I am one
too and I'll pray for you I put
my hand on his head and I said
oh gracious God of Israel in the name
of Jesus make this Kohan a true priest
of Israel and that kid sagged and fell
into a seat he told me later that
when I touched his forehead something went right
through his body by the power of God
and he had a soot or he would
have collapsed that's what God was doing by
the power of his spirit because a mile
away on campus there were 20 Christian kids
on their faces before God for six hours
while the meeting was in progress from every
denomination forgetting their little doctrinal differences they knew
that there was a war on and they
were bombarding heaven for Jesus sake and when
we picked those kids up at midnight with
I just we hadn't yet had a word
to say to them and their faces were
just beaming with light and they were overjoyed
and they said oh brother cats didn't wonderful
things happen from 10 o'clock on I
said how did you know they said because
from 6 to 10 we knew that there
was a war on we can know it
tell it now spirits but from 10 to
12 God was doing glorious things precious people
I have not yet begun my message and
I've got something to say and I don't
want to have to abbreviate it okay in
that same university series of university meetings that
first one began at the student union building
at one o'clock weeks before my coming
all kinds of publicity had gone forth and
special stickers had been printed and were pasted
all over the place cats is coming is
one word cats is coming cats is coming
and when I got there I was so
embarrassed to see that they played up my
name I said why did you do that
well we prayed art and we felt that
if we just made an abstract gospel invitation
few people would come let alone your own
people but they're people are intrigued by personalities
so we used your name I said man
I said I'm nothing cats is coming and
coming for what I'm not a Jewish Billy
Graham and I'd like to be so I
remember that first meeting at that student union
building one o'clock every day some radical
comes to that microphone and sends out such
fumes and such filth and such incitement to
violence and from that same microphone we were
going to begin our eight days of gospel
meetings and we all got together in a
huddle and we prayed and they hugged me
and they embraced me and they said go
get him tiger and I got pushed out
into the middle of that great crowded room
300 people and I was all alone then
to remember it's no longer I that live
but Christ who liveth in me then to
remember it's not your battle but mine saith
the Lord but go you out before them
and I gave a message and I finished
and I did the foolish thing I opened
to questions and answers from the moment that
I began for some reason my eyes were
fastened on a guy who is directly in
front of me at the back of the
room I just couldn't take my eyes off
his face it was so cynical so wise
alicky and sure enough when the question and
answer period came he was the first one
to raise his hand and he went like
this to his colleagues okay fellas watch this
I'll take care of this guy right at
the beginning uh hey uh Mr. Katz yes
do you believe there's a hell watch this
fellas I got him now ha ha ha
I wasn't prepared for that question as a
matter of fact I wasn't prepared in any
technical way for any question I didn't have
a little book to which I could thumb
what's the answer to the question on hell
and you know I was believing God I
was coming out of a boat because the
holy one of Israel bid me come and
if his word could not sustain me I
was ready to perish I breathed on my
breath I said Lord you've got me into
this now you answer and I opened my
mouth and here's what I heard myself saying
I said brother even as an atheist if
there was one thing that distinguished my life
from earliest consciousness is that I've always had
a high regard for the value of words
now I tell you there's no figure in
all scripture who shares and expresses the significance
and the profundity of words than the man
Christ Jesus he himself warned us that we
shall be held accountable for every idle word
we speak and I tell you brother in
the same breath that there's not a figure
again in all scripture who has spoken more
consistently and more powerfully about hell about a
lake of fire that shall never be quenched
about an eternal darkness about a wailing and
gnashing of teeth than Jesus Christ himself in
one place in the gospel of Mark five
times he uses the phrase a fire that
shall not be quenched and I tell you
brother that it behooves you who have asked
this question to embarrass God's messenger to be
reminded of the things which Jesus spoke lest
you find yourself standing one day far sooner
than you think before him hearing again your
vain question played back in God's answer which
you ignored now too late to remedy the
fire and the judgment and the eternal trembling
and anguish of soul which he described those
weren't my exact words but something to that
effect and I'll tell you they went forth
by a very great unction and I watched
this guy like an air being let out
of a balloon just go he just folded
up and collapsed and that was the beginning
of eight days of meetings people I'm a
believer almost 10 years I have yet to
hear except out of my own mouth and
that recently any message on the judgment of
God any message of a soon-coming king
who is coming to judge the earth any
message that this world is condemned of God
and that he's coming in fire to bring
judgment upon a world that has long ignored
and rejected him the consequences of which are
written in the conduct of men and nations
in their depravity in their filth in their
brokenness in their excess we've we've had a
heart to see the great revivals of God
and we read with great wistfulness the great
exploits of men like Finney and Spurgeon the
great revivalist of times past they didn't just
come and bring great times of enthusiasm and
blessing to single congregations they shook entire communities
cities were changed jails were emptied saloons were
closed broken marriages were reconciled men were permanently
and deeply and profoundly converted by the ministries
of men like a Charles Finney how different
from our own age in an easy believism
and a groovy gospel and Jesus emblazoned on
t-shirts and making men rich in the
production of cheap jewelry and suction cup things
that are to fit on dashboards and stickers
to go on bumpers and everybody's getting on
the bandwagon and having a ball I can't
understand his enormous popularity in the vogue for
Jesus because I know in my Jewish heart
that the holy one of Israel has never
been popular and well it is that he
spoke through Dave Wilkerson at a recent Lutheran
charismatic congress when this brave man spoke the
vision which God had given him of what
shall soon befall this nation in the end
times and of the fearful things which he
spoke a coming persecution upon the saints of
God governmental harassment of the ministries of God
and the ministers of God persecution of Catholic
charismatics out of their own denomination the honeymoon
is going to be over and the Jesus
movement which has had such great popularity in
vogue is going to fold up its tent
and silently creep away and those who are
its loudest adherents and most boisterous guitar strumming
adherents are going to be the very persecutors
of those that shall remain to go on
as disciples bearing their cross for Jesus Christ
my lord was never popular but we've been
preaching another kind of gospel and trying to
induce people to accept him that somehow their
lives might be made more groovy and we're
continually reminded of the benefits and indeed who
can speak of the benefits more so than
I I'm as one whose life has who
has been brought from death unto life there's
not a thing that I want in God
I who was a teacher and labored as
a high school dropout to make good whose
whole life has been been been marked by
frustration and defeat and failure came finally to
a place with a master's degree degree from
the University of California at Berkeley and eminent
in my profession and well received and tenure
and couldn't be fired and annual wage increments
and retirement benefits and medical insurance and even
a happy little congregation that I to which
I belonged and even a little ministry on
the side beside my teaching duties I had
all this in heaven too and God said
come follow me and led me out of
that security while my wife was pregnant for
the third time to enter a full-time
ministry with my Jewish people wondering how I
would fare standing on a soap box in
New York preaching the gospel and what if
I failed where would my security be then
and how could I get by in a
hundred bucks a week when I've been used
to all of the advantages of of wage
increments year by year and having our own
home and car and all that stuff but
now I don't even have a salary now
I don't even belong to an organization and
I found out I didn't even keep track
of it that this past year God poured
forty thousand dollars into my life and ministry
gave us a television program and and we've
been everywhere in this past year and in
recent months from Leningrad to Tokyo to Mexico
and places in between by the providence and
by the provision of God this rabbi said
are you trying to suggest that if I
don't receive your Jesus that I'm going to
hell and I'm going to burn eternally what
an embarrassment what a piece of foolishness God
has implanted at the very heart of the
gospel and how we have shrunk from relating
the entire counsel of God to men and
if there's one quality which is missing in
the body of Christ and in fact I
have to sadly confess also in my own
life and to and if I would ask
it of God I would ask this thing
oh great God that we might know the
fear of God the holy fear of God
the awesomeness of a God of righteousness and
truth and holiness and we could communicate this
fear to men who are so cavalier so
casual so indifferent so sophisticated so dying many
of us are embarrassed by references in the
bible to the anger or wrath of God
and almost feel constrained to defend God from
such unloving allegations we're quick to explain how
that might perhaps characterize the God of the
old testament but never the God of the
new oh foolish children who has deceived you
don't you know the shema Yisroel adonai Eloheinu
adonai echad hear O Israel the Lord your
God is one Lord there's only one God
one Lord one faith one way and if
I would have any criticism uh be it
far from me for this precious convention I
would say it was in the name all
faiths why my God there's only one a
pox on that fiction of the three great
faiths what a colossal caricature when there's not
an iota to be found in any of
the conventional so-called three great faiths a
travesty against a deep calling and way of
God for men who wanted only religions of
convenience and are willing to accept the Jewish
or Gentile equivalents that required nothing more than
a few bucks in a collection plate or
an Israel bond and allow them to go
on being lords unto themselves no power to
save and to keep men from the eternal
judgment of God or to bring them to
a place of eternal joy exchanging pulpits on
Mother's Day and Thanksgiving and going through other
honorific thing of exchanges of awards and making
nice nice while the world teeter-totters on
the brink of eternal doom there's only one
God and he's the same God that inspired
the scriptures in the book of Isaiah in
the 13th chapter very appropriate to be read
in this season in the sixth verse how
ye for the day of the Lord is
at hand it shall come as a destruction
from the Almighty therefore shall all hands be
faint and every man's heart shall melt and
they shall be afraid pangs and sorrow shall
take hold of them they shall be in
pain as a woman that travaileth they shall
be amazed one at another their faces shall
be as flames behold the day of the
Lord cometh cruel both with wrath and fierce
anger to lay the land desolate and he
shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it
for the stars of the heaven and the
constellations thereof shall not give their light and
the sun shall be darkened and is going
forth and the moon shall not cease or
cause her light to shine and I will
punish the world for their evil and the
wicked for their iniquity and I will cause
the arrogancy of the proud to cease and
will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible
I spoke at an assemblies of God church
in Louisville Kentucky and there was a prophetic
cry about the two Judaism's the Judaism of
God which by his grace he has called
us both Jews and Gentiles to the biblical
messianic Judaism of God which centered in the
coming of a Messiah the Holy One our
atonement who was to be made unto us
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily in
whom we would move and live and have
our being and the Judaism's of men which
stand in distinction against it by whatever name
either the Jewish or the Gentile kind the
lesser religions of men which flatter and applaud
pump up and lift up the flesh celebrate
men in tone scriptures without meaning employ handsome
liturgies and have hallowed tradition but it's a
religion without the power and the presence of
the Ruach HaKodesh the Holy Spirit of God
and it cannot save and I gave such
an impassioned cry that day to call men
to the true Judaism of God even those
sitting in the assemblies of God who were
speaking the right words and had given mental
assent to the right creeds but were effectually
practicing that other kind of Judaism and some
men got up in the middle of the
message and cried out speak on prophet when
I stood outside the door that day people
walked by me with stricken faces oh a
few dared venture those little words like oh
I enjoyed your message lovely preaching and my
soul always cradles when I hear that kind
of talk Jewish men had been brought to
that meeting by his Gentile believing wife that
day and he walked by me his face
set as flint he wouldn't even acknowledge my
existence he was so rent and they took
me out to eat that afternoon and lo
and behold there he was sitting in the
banquet room with his wife and so with
typical Jewish chutzpah and aplomb that means brass
I took my plate the knife and fork
and cup and saucer and I went and
I sat by his table he was a
precious man and so typical of my people
educated cultured well-spoken a professional lawyer humane
altruistic and he went on to tell me
Artie said I don't know very much about
God he said but if there is a
God surely he's not that impressed with what
men believe it's an easy thing to believe
it's what you do that counts and he
says as far as doing his concern he
said I'm sure I find approval in God's
sight I go to bat for the underdog
I take free cases for the underprivileged I
do this and I do that and he
went on to speak to me the conventional
Judaism of the world when he finished I
began to relate to him the foolish Judaism
of God and about four o'clock his
face had visibly changed a trembling had begun
to sneak into his countenance and his visage
was altered and gray and being a Jew
he wasn't if he couldn't win he would
at least come out with a draw so
he said to me as a final parting
shot Artie said it's quite evident that you're
a sincere man and I'll tell you what
he said I'll tolerate and acknowledge what you
believe to be true if you'll tolerate and
acknowledge what I believe to be true and
he extended a hand in friendship and others
the stage was all set for me to
be nice and I looked back at him
with a face equally as flinty more and
my eyes and face filled with the Holy
One of Israel who shall soon come in
judgment and wrath and I said brother as
long as there's breath in my body I
shall never cease to persuade you to abandon
your human notions for if you will not
you shall surely perish as if someone had
struck him in the face with a wet
cloth that man just shuddered and came to
a halt like the car that I described
earlier he threw on his brakes in a
word no one had ever spoken to him
more lovingly I've not seen that man since
but I know that he's fully impressed in
the depths of his heart that the things
that I spoke to him that afternoon were
not just little idiosyncratic fancies of an art
cats or my little bag or my hang
-up but veritably the truth of a living
God and that knowing the truth of God
knowing the terror of God I persuade men
it's a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of a living God and would to
God that more men who live everywhere about
us yes they may be Gentiles by birth
but they're effectually Jewish by conviction and by
the style of their lives shall know that
there's a soon coming judgment which men have
shrunk from preaching because they were more concerned
for the applause of men than the favor
of God I have yet to get into
the heart of my message we conveniently
forget that it was Jesus who in sending
out his disciples into the world to proclaim
the gospel said he that believeth not shall
be damned and as I said before in
that same gospel mentioned in one particular place
five times the fire that shall not be
quenched and spoke of a hell in which
sinners shall be cast in the fire that
shall not be quenched and time doesn't allow
for the many references to the day of
the Lord as a day of judgment in
which the heaven shall pass away with a
great noise and the elements shall melt with
fervent heat and the earth also in the
works that are therein shall be burned up
and it's obvious also from the description that
the Lord gives of the end times that
we are just entering this initial stage of
nations rising against nation and a time of
famine and pestilence and earthquakes which are the
beginning of sorrows and I tell you it's
an ominous thing to come to a gas
station and to be told no gas something
happens in my heart people and it's not
just the inconvenience of having to look elsewhere
as if it's the first echo of something
that shall increase in volume and magnitude when
we shall see signs and breakdowns and enclosures
and seizures no gas no electric no water
no food no services and a great calamity
stealing over this earth in that great shaking
which God has promised shall that shall come
upon this earth that everything that can be
shaken will be shaken and only that which
can remain will remain because it is planted
in that rock Christ Jesus and if you
are sitting here this morning wondering why it
is that your marriage is being shaken why
your life is being shaken and you had
the most beautiful marriage you've never had any
problems you were so temperamentally inclined one to
the other you had such a happy accident
of like disposition it's because God is not
going to let us get by with that
we're not going to survive by any happy
accident we're going to survive and stand and
flourish because we're grounded in him I tremble
for the increasing darkness that's coming upon the
earth socially economically politically our institutions breaking down
our confidence in government crumbling but I know
that that same darkness shall make our lights
to shine all the more brightly oh we
wanted all this in heaven too we love
to be Christians and enjoy the hallelujah times
but we wanted to be respectable also and
didn't want to give offense especially to our
Jewish neighbors but when the end shall come
then shall be great tribulations such as not
since the beginning of the world and immediately
after the tribulation of those days shall the
sun be darkened and the moon shall not
give its light in the stars shall fall
from heaven and the powers of heaven shall
be shaken and who is there whose imagination
is so powerful as to assess the devastating
horror of which these words speak who of
us here this morning can begin to imagine
these conditions and I'll tell you the great
difficulty of a prophet is to speak things
that are yet to come to a people
who are yet experiencing the affluence and the
comfort and the ease and all of the
amenities of our modern civilization no wonder that
it is that men stop their ears with
their fingers and when that will not suffice
fly upon the messenger and stone those that
are sent unto them in the sixth chapter
of the book of Revelation we're told about
apocalyptic horrors of war and famine and death
and hell and a power that was given
unto them over the fourth part of the
earth to kill with the sword and with
hunger and with death and with the beasts
of the earth many of us are not
even yet disposed to open our homes to
hospitality we think Christianity means a potluck supper
or a full gospel bear hug but if
it comes to the actual giving up of
our privacy the actual taking away of the
masks the actual opening of our lives for
the intrusion the unwelcomed nuisance of others the
inconvenience of other lives we shrink but I
tell you the hour shall come when we
shall be given to hospitality and we're going
to find ourselves those who've been uncomfortable thinking
how shall I be bedfellow with that one
who rolls in sawdust you know that's not
nice it's not my style I'm a little
skittish a little offended by by that particular
way it's not the thing to which I'm
familiar we're going to find ourselves even against
our wills be driven and seek for the
fellowship of the Saints when these conditions shall
come upon the earth and the mere potluck
supper shall it shall be put away for
what it was a mere token and a
crumb a caricature against the fulfillment of which
to the things which God has called us
that we should love one another as he
has loved us that we might be one
as he is one that the world might
know that the father sent him all the
stakes are enormous people and our parks and
every lesser substitute which we've accepted to shrink
from the fulfillment which God has called us
this the bumper stickers and the literature distribution
and all of the evangelistic devices that were
convenient and spared us the embarrassment of bringing
to our next-door neighbor or our Jewish
friend or lawyer or a teacher the gospel
which is foolish to them that perish but
the power of God unto salvation to everyone
who believes to the Jew first and also
to the Gentile how can we imagine what
shall be the horror of those who have
to face the stern consuming judgment of God
which every man must face for the king
of the earth the kings of the earth
and great men and rich men and every
free man shall hide themselves in dens and
rocks of them and mountains and say to
the rocks and the mountains fallen us and
hide us from the face of him that
sitteth on the throne and from the wrath
of the Lamb for the great day of
his wrath has come and what shall be
who shall be able to stand and one
with one would think that all these dangers
imminent and that they should be seen in
their real magnitude that all mankind would be
in a frenzy of concern about their eternal
salvation and yet just the opposite is true
a universal indifference a great casualness over the
over these enormous issues and men willing to
speak of dozens of lesser things and be
completely impervious to the truth of the Living
God in Christ Jesus it's amazing this indifference
of mankind that stand at the very brink
of destruction doing business as usual eating and
drinking and marrying and giving in marriage as
if God had not spoken as if the
warning of his soon coming judgment had not
been proclaimed and the truth of the matter
is that it had not there's a wonderful
book written by a contemporary Jewish writer by
the name of Eli we sell and he's
the sole survivor of a concentration camp all
of his family were the victims of the
Holocaust and a book which he has written
called the night he described his little Jewish
community in Transylvania in Central Europe up in
the mountains in the last stages of the
war what had happened to the Jewish communities
of Poland and Germany had not happened to
them and they thought somehow in hope against
hope that they would be spared what it
what others of their kinsmen had suffered the
war was almost in its final stages and
yet one day a man came to their
community a strange freaky kind of individual who
had escaped the concentration camp and he tried
to cry to them a warning a warning
and they didn't want to hear it frightened
them and they pushed this strange one from
the midst of them and they stopped their
ears this too shall pass they thought it
shall not come upon us isn't it amazing
how every man one way or another is
a man of faith I was an atheist
for 35 years but I was eminently a
man of faith but the problem was it
was a faith misplaced it was a face
that faith in man rather than God it
was a faith in art cats rather than
in the Messiah of Israel it was a
faith in inevitable human progress it was a
faith in science it was a faith that
this too shall pass so believe they all
until one day there was a strange ominous
rumbling in the distance peculiar noise and even
the ground shook beneath their feet and on
the horizon they saw great clouds of dust
which they could not interpret and it got
closer and closer and closer and the noise
was deafening and finally it came right into
their little village and community great panzer tanks
and armored cars with the swastika and the
iron cross and booted Nazis getting out and
then day by day the edicts began to
be plastered on the wall the Jews had
to leave their homes and move into a
certain portion of the community where brick walls
had been installed at the little ghetto and
they thought well this too shall pass we'll
suffer this but we'll get by we'll survive
and one day the sign was put up
tomorrow morning at daybreak you're to be at
the train station with only such things as
you can carry oh that night they worked
furiously and they dug holes in the backyards
and in the basements and they they buried
their menorahs and their family heirlooms and their
money and their jewels and things precious to
them and they thought we'll come back we'll
survive this this too shall pass and the
next morning they were out there with trembling
with their children with their meager possessions and
they're on the tracks with the great freight
cars cattle cars waiting to receive them and
in they were pushed and jostled and jammed
so tight and so choked that that they
could barely breathe and the doors were slammed
shut and locked no food and no water
for three days and nights as they hurtled
through Europe train lurching and rumbling and and
great cries and teenage kids fornicating sensing the
last opportunity to taste of that joy people
going into shock and stunned and there was
a woman in a coma and she would
he described her waking from her coma and
crying out fire fire I see fire and
they're so frightened them that they punched this
woman into unconsciousness and she would wake up
again and revived you cried again fire fire
I see fire and they would punch her
again and she would go unconscious and finally
one day the trains came to a slow
halt and a thud and as it stopped
they began to smell a most peculiar odor
and when the doors broke open the flames
the light of the flames just danced right
into those dark cars loaded with human excrement
and urine puke and right up by the
tracks were great troughs of burning gasoline and
the half-dead infants were plucked out of
the screaming out
of the arms of screaming women and thrown
into the flame and the men and the
women were separated and one went to one
line and the other to the other line
and they walked into the ovens and into
their death he alone was spared to write
this book and as I read that book
something in my heart broke I thought of
the great suffering of my people I've been
to Dachau I've seen the ovens I've seen
their bones in the ashes I've touched a
smokestack but what is the cremation of six
million to a fire that shall not be
quenched to an eternal burning to a wailing
and a gnashing of teeth and that my
own mother shall be among that multitude whose
howl and wail and anguish of soul shall
never beings be stopped rent from her lips
I want you to turn with me to
my texts which is first Kings the 18th
chapter my intention had been to read the
entire story of Jeremiah to speak from it
I'm sorry from Elijah God has had me
to speak things I didn't intend appreciate your
patience I'm fascinated with Elijah I can't take
my eyes off him I think of him
continually he's in my heart and in my
consciousness there's something about Elijah from which I
cannot turn there's something about what he represents
that I can't take out of my consciousness
the Lord is drilling it into my heart
Elijah Elijah Elijah Elijah Elijah that one who
would come before that one who would turn
the hearts of the fathers to the children
that one of whom it says behold I
will send you Elijah the prophet before the
coming of the great and dreadful day of
the Lord oh I know many of us
have subscribed to that very neat theory about
rapture and I have to confess people and
you know it already you're not listening to
an eminent theologian I'm an income poop I'm
wet behind the ears but I tell you
everything in my experience and everything in my
spirit in my heart doesn't to verify that
very happy theory when I see these stickers
on bumpers watch out any moment the driver
of this car might vacate I don't jump
for joy I rinse with pain it makes
me sick that glib unctuous nonsense of that
giddy sense that well you guys might be
stuck with suffering but we've got it don't
be so sure there's a reason why God
is leading us to establish conferences on discipleship
there's a reason why God is putting fearful
words in my mouth to begin to encourage
people to tighten the belt to gird up
the lungs of their minds in their lives
to begin to walk with God and disciplined
ways to begin to resist the spirit and
the blandishment of the world which makes nice
nice and have have and eat eat there's
a reason why God has blazed in my
heart the story of the Prophet Elijah the
forerunner who is to comes to prepare the
way for the soon coming Messiah and King
prepare the way make the way straight repent
ye for the day of the Lord is
at hand it's a great day for those
who shall await his coming it's our hope
for those of us who like him have
been fed by ravens and have been watered
by the brook sheriff and have been sent
to widows who shall sustain us when the
drought shall come and everything shall be dried
up and we shall live by faith you
know in immediate obedience to him who speaks
by a still small voice I would to
God you would hear that voice now and
begin walking with that voice now lest when
he speaks go I have commanded the Ravens
to feed you you think that you're suffering
indigestion and no God that you know shall
ever commend raven birds or birds of prey
or ravenous birds that feed on refuse to
feed you and you will have missed God's
provision because you knew not his voice and
you knew not that he was the God
who always chooses the foolish things now is
the hour of preparation that when that hour
comes and it shall come far sooner than
any of us think we shall hear and
immediately obey and we shall be sustained in
the drought and in the famine and God
shall prepare us in that widow's home with
whom we shall stay when that son shall
be suddenly taken and die and that widow
who would not believe in the God of
the Prophet who called him the man of
God and saw that the meal was not
wasted nor did he did the oil be
exhausted according to the word of the Lord
that came through the mouth of the and
yet would not believe and make that God
her God and so by necessity her son
had to be plucked from her bosom and
God shall put his finger on the sons
of many in our modern world those who
are indifferent about their own lives but who
tremble for their children or that thing most
prized the Isaac of their lives if we'll
not come to God for the love of
truth and for righteousness and to flee from
the from the terror to come God shall
touch us most deeply where we live and
put his finger on that cherished Isaac and
take the breath out of him and we
shall the world shall come to us with
stunned amazement and say as the widow said
have you come to call my sins the
repentance of our man of God simple ignorant
woman but she recognized that the sudden taking
of her son had to do with her
spiritual condition I tell you I know Jewish
mothers only too well and though they will
not be saved for their own sake they'll
be saved when God puts his finger upon
their sons and so is it already in
our generation entire Jewish families coming into the
kingdom of God when their drug addict sons
which no amount of money can save no
amount of fancy institution or hospital a psychiatrist
can save finds his way stumbling in his
death in a teen challenge center and is
saved of God and filled with the spirit
and they come and they bring their son
and said as Elijah said that a widow
woman after he had prostrated his body over
him and cried to God three times and
the breath of the Lord had come back
into him see thy son lipids and whatever
our reasons whatever our confusion whatever has Satan
has done to pollute that name which is
above every name and the only name where
we're in whereby men may be saved we
call upon that name and come father mother
sisters and brothers into the kingdom of God
to the name of Jesus Christ because we've
seen one brought back from the dead oh
I tell you it's no easy thing to
bring life from death no cheap kind of
evangelism is going to do it nothing less
than the prostration of our own bodies and
lives over the dead corpse of the world
oh I tell you it's icky to take
that stiff cadaver up to where our abode
is and put them down on our own
satiny sheets talk about privacy being violated and
if that's not enough to make our bed
a mess God calls us yet to stretch
out our own bodies and lives over that
dead corpse eyeball to eyeball and fingertip the
fingertip and cry out Oh God take that
breath which is in me and impart it
into that dying world we don't have a
cheap gospel and we don't have a cheap
evangelism that gospel required all and so shall
God's evangelism of the end times also and
there's a God who is shaping a corporate
body of Christ and he's also a corporate
figure that must come before as a forerunner
before that the appearance of that corporate Christ
and it's a corporate Elijah one who walks
by the still small voice one who trusts
God for every provision fed by ravens one
who shall bring life back to a dead
world by the prostration of his own body
and life over it and one who shall
call in first Kings 18 an apostate people
to a reckoning before God and I'll tell
you what the reward for such an Elijah
shall be it shall not be the kinds
of things which were being given today praise
God for this happy season but it shall
not last much longer we shall not receive
the B'nai B'rith man-of-the
-year award or see as I saw when
I was resting in Pat Boone study one
day before a gorgeous meeting in his living
room 150 to 200 Jewish film colony intellectuals
where we ended up baptizing nine people that
night and I was I was resting I
looked around and I saw Pat's white buck
shoes now cast in bronze and I thought
my only a little while ago how I
despised this guy how he was a symbol
to me of that alien Gentile Christian world
of which I knew nothing and could never
relate he was the epitome of that nice
nice Gentile type so unrelated to my Jewish
life of we Jews who beat out chess
and cry out in anguish and now I
love him like a brother what a soul
and as my eye went from award to
award in his bronze shoes and his and
his golf awards it finally rested on a
plate from the B'nai B'rith man
-of-the-year award for community service I
think it was 1956 and I kind of
chuckled under my breath and thought Pat baby
it's the last time you'll receive one of
those but there's a reward laid up for
you in heaven I'll tell you what the
reward shall be when you shall cry as
an Elijah to people who will not welcome
the message repent for the kingdom of God
is at hand repent for the day of
the Lord is at hand you shall hear
what the Prophet Elijah heard when when King
Ahab encountered him in the 17th verse of
the 18th chapter and it came to pass
when Ahab saw Elijah they have said to
him art thou he that troubles Israel that
shall be your reward oh I know it's
going to make you to tremble because I
know I'm looking at a people ironically who
have a greater love for my Jewish people
than any on the face of this earth
I received a mighty baptism in the Holy
Spirit not at the Pentecostal Church which I
attended loaded with strife and enmity and jealousy
and dispute where people were afraid to leave
by the same door lest they touch elbows
the Spirit of God could never have cut
through that maze but one night in a
ramshackle farmhouse in Northern California with eight spirit
-filled Gentile believers who loved the Jews in
Israel and making plans to live and to
serve God there who knew more Yiddish kite
in Hebrew than I in one spirit in
one accord with those who loved the Jew
the heavens opened and God poured upon me
such a mighty stream of His Spirit as
from which I've been God's fool since that
day and I'll tell you what the reward
shall be art thou he who troubles Israel
and you'll gulp and your Adam's apple shall
bobble and your knees shall turn to gel
and your legs tremble me I love the
Jewish people but you know what you shall
hear and we've already begun to hear the
first ominous choruses with the advent of key
73 weak feeble ineffectual thing though it is
great cries from the leaders of the Jewish
community great rabbinical swellings what about our pluralistic
society what is this harassment of the Jewish
people isn't it enough that that that we
suffered all these centuries and in the Holocaust
in recent times six million of our Jewish
people lost their lives and in Russia they're
trying to extirpate our Jewishness are you too
trying to make Christians out of us and
to take from us our Jewishness I get
this all the time people I'm being told
that I'm worse than a Hitler that what
I'm trying to do is more insidious that
when Hitler did and that what he did
by physical force I'm doing by cunning and
spiritually trying to wrest from Jews their Jewishness
what a paradox when we know that God
is not calling us away from Jewishness but
to authentic Hebraic life in the God of
Israel and by his spirit and yet that's
how the world shall read us anti-semite
when your heart is breaking for the love
of Israel that shall be your reward art
thou he who troubleth Israel but you know
how Elijah answered I have not troubled Israel
but thou and thy father's house in that
you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord
and thou hast followed by a limb as
long as there's breath in my body I
shall not cease from persuading you to give
up that bankrupt human Judaism and receive the
Judaism of God for if you will not
you shall surely perish now therefore send and
gather to me all Israel to Mount Carmel
and the prophets of Baal 450 and the
prophets of the groves 400 which eat at
Jezebel's table all of God's prophets wiped out
by Jezebel except those who left the Lord's
table to eat at hers and we're watching
that phenomenon beginning to take place even now
and even at that university meeting two nights
ago a priest a minister stood up with
white collar and all the whole thing the
jewelry the whole bit and sided with my
own kinsmen my adversaries and said I believe
that Jesus Christ died for all the world
and it doesn't matter whether you personally receive
him he's a much bigger God cats than
what you've been representing and his mercy is
for every person what are you trying to
do harassing those Jewish people you call that
Christian loves and that the Christian kids that
were there that night were so stunned at
the encounter their prayer that night was so
jocular and light-hearted but the next morning
they were stunned different group their prayer was
had been much deep and much more travail
they said art we've not seen anything like
this in all our life when this was
like going back into the book of Acts
this encounter and we saw as these things
came forth both the Jewish opposition and those
that sided we saw the configuration of what
shall be in the end times a small
band of disciples who believe the Word of
God even unto death and do not flinch
from bringing the entire counsel of God to
men and those who cannot stand the cost
and shall for one reason or another find
themselves gravitating more and by more to that
growing centrifugal force that shall become a groovy
world church very nice full of all kinds
of blandishments and rewards and nice cliches about
human brotherhood and love but without the power
of God thereof sitting at Jezebel's table so
Ahab gathered and all the children of Israel
and the prophets together Mount Carmel and Elijah
came unto all the people and said how
long do you halt between two opinions if
God be God follow him might well God
raise up a band of prophets today to
cry to the Gentile denominations as well as
to my own people how long do you
go on with mock motions of religion how
long do you go on with your cliched
nonsense and speaking correct words without true knowledge
of God and then masquerading and discarding you
the disguising your lives while affectionately being Lords
unto yourselves if God be God follow him
there's a reason why we've not heard that
still small voice because we've stopped our ears
I've heard it many times from that first
day in Jerusalem ten years ago when I
walked into that bookstore operated by Jewish believers
in Jesus with their chapel next door where
when I found out what it was God
spoke to me and said art you are
not to leave audibly and I've heard that
still small voice on other occasions since and
I can tell you people there's one thing
that characterizes every utterance I've ever heard by
this little small voice of God it has
never once called me to convenience there's never
been an instance when it's called me to
anything but great inconvenience great prospect of suffering
and death if any man would come after
me let him deny himself and take up
his cross and follow me if God be
God follow him how long do you hold
between two opinions and you know what happened
that day they had a sacrifice and the
end of false prophets of Baal they built
their altar and they laid out their wood
and they took their their great ox and
they laid it open and they they danced
and jumped on it and they cried out
to their God and silence nothing all they
jumped they went they all through all kinds
of motions and all Baal hear us but
there was no voice nor any that answered
and they leaped upon the altar that was
made and it came to pass in a
27th verse that Elijah mocked them and said
cry aloud for he's God or either he's
talking or pursuing or he's a journey of
perhaps he's sleeping he must be wakened Elijah
mocked them always say not nice I'll tell
you there's that there's a God who by
his spirit is speaking a lot of things
that are not nice and they would never
think that God would choose to speak in
an hour that's becoming increasingly urgent I've heard
God out of this mouth mock a Pentecostal
assembly and I thought oh my god I
have really flipped Lord what's happened to me
how dare I mock your people and I
prayed Lord stop my mouth and then direct
me according to your spirit and I opened
it again and the mocking continued but the
end thereof was a glib unctuous pastor who
had given me the most fancy introduction that
I had ever heard in my heart was
sinking as he spoke it and a happy
face congregation that looked like they needed nothing
from me and I had need to be
minister to of them but the end thereof
was that same pastor on his face like
a dead man rising to his feet by
one o'clock in the morning as one
would pass from death unto life who had
passed a thin invisible frontier and had moved
from being a man of God to a
professional slickster and didn't know it the same
elder of the church who had brought me
to my seat on the platform that night
confessed that night that he was in continuous
adultery although that next week he was scheduled
to give his testimony to four gospel businessmen
many such things that God worked at night
because the Spirit of God mocked the congregation
out of the mouth of the Prophet all
precious people if we shall play it by
the numbers and think well God will never
do this or say that we're going to
miss it there's a God who's calling us
to such an intimate fierce walk by the
Spirit that many shall not have the stomach
for such who enjoy a groovier kind of
religion and we shall see that fantastic polarization
taking place of people being moved into the
one of the two great camps and there
shall be no neutral ground between I'll try
and bring this to a close and so
the Prophet made his own sacrifice and you
know what he had to do first he
had to build the altars that were broken
down it says elsewhere in the scriptures these
were the altars that were torn down the
Jewish people were not just indifferent to the
religion of their fathers they were fiercely opposed
and an anger had broken the altars of
their God and the first function of the
Prophet is to restore the true altar the
true worship of the Living God and I
tremble before you this morning when I know
how a lot of us as clever practitioners
have learned that it's a great expedient principle
to get people in worship and standing and
raising their hands and doing many things and
somehow it'll make the meeting far more electric
God save us from becoming technicians and manipulators
because we've stumbled on a correct principle the
altars of God needs to be raised anew
the holy altar requires a complete sacrifice and
he gave it he took that ox and
he cut it up and I tell you
sacrifice is painful people and it's bloody and
many of us have shrunk from that whole
burnt offering of the opening and the opening
of the laying out of our lives before
God because it's painful but there's there's no
other sacrifice that God will consume by fire
and he amazed the Jews who were with
him that day when after the whole thing
was built he said now go get water
and endows this sacrifice and they poured out
barrel after barrel of water until it was
seep and saturated with water twelve barrels full
and I tell you people the fire of
God shall not fall upon our sacrifice until
it be saturated with our own tears we've
been dry-eyed far too long and I'm
standing here before you this morning because as
I said last night although I knew not
a single person who knew what the word
prayer meant I said one of my own
students used to come home from school in
the afternoon weeping over me and her mother
told me who I met months after my
conversion Archie said since that day both my
daughter and I have been praying for you
the factual fervent prayer of righteous men and
women availeth much have you been praying for
the lost of the house of Israel have
you been weeping for the unnumbered souls everywhere
about us lost and facing the prospect of
an eternal anguish and cry and that without
remedy the fire of God shall not fall
until we lay out a whole sacrifice without
concealment bloody and costly over an altar that
should be raised up again that's authentic and
true and saturated with our tears and then
we shall speak as the Prophet spoken that
day when it came to pass at the
time of the offering the evening sacrifice in
the 36th verse that Elijah the Prophet came
near and said Lord God of Abraham Isaac
and of Israel let it be known this
day that thou art God in Israel and
that I am thy servant that I have
done all these things at thy word hear
me O Lord hear me that this people
may know that thou art the Lord God
and that there has turned their heart back
again then the fire of the Lord fell
and consumed the burnt sacrifice in the wood
and the stones and the dust and licked
up the water that was in the trench
and when all the people saw it they
fell on their faces and they said the
Lord he is God the Lord he is
God Oh people how often do I come
away frustrated with administering to my own people
they will not believe they will not hear
my own mother although she has seen a
transformed son but I tell you nothing less
than fire from heaven shall bring an apostate
world on its face before God who has
gone through the motions of a mock Judaism
but has in fact turned from the following
of the Living God this world needs to
see fire from heaven and when they shall
see it on the altars which we shall
raise up they shall cry out the Lord
he is God he is not a superstar
he's not an object of derision the Lord
he is God the Lord he is God
and they shall be saved God is wanting
an Elijah band to go through this earth
crying out a warning of a soon-coming
judgment and I have a reason why I
think that we fail to press the truth
on an unwilling world an unbelieving world and
it's largely because of our fear to offend
it many of us are still trying to
be respectable believers evangelical but contemporary too and
far from being pilgrims of the tent in
the altar we've settled ourselves quite well in
the world and have habituated ourselves quite nicely
to it in fact we've become so accustomed
to this world and its blandishment and its
reward and its things that the prospect of
God's judgment in fire coming upon the earth
does not exactly titillate us and in fact
we even shrink from the from the vision
of it looking at our own groovy wardrobes
or new hi-fi and we think that
by evangelistic devices or a few bucks in
the collection plate that somehow we can placate
a God who has called us to follow
him and preach this gospel to every creature
beginning at Jerusalem to the Jew first and
also to the Gentile thinking to rack up
so many points by a kind of heavenly
bookkeeping that though we have defaulted in our
obligations before God that somehow by giving or
by some lesser kind of activity he will
allow us to keep that hi-fi and
wardrobe and to have all this and heaven
too perhaps it'll be easier for us if
we could be granted a vision of the
guilt and agonizing remorse of that office colleague
that next-door neighbor that member of our
own family that nominal Christian believer that Jewish
dentist or lawyer or friend that we know
when we shall contemplate for all the eternity
that shall be spent in hell because of
the failure to establish in this life a
relationship in spirit and truth with a living
God who sought him but of whom he
knew nothing because we did not press his
claims upon him because we didn't want to
offend fire fire I see fire that woman
cried and they beat her into unconsciousness there's
a warning that needs to go forth over
the face of this earth by an Elijah
bend that shall stay to the spirit this
world as the Lord my God liveth before
whom I stand hallelujah I don't look for
your rewards I don't look for your applause
I'm just as immune to your criticism but
it shall not rain according to my word
God is looking for a people like that
who shall hear the still small voice of
God and obey it have you been hearing
that voice this morning through this Jewish Brooklyn
accent have you been crying in your own
heart even as the Spirit of God has
been going forth Oh great God there's a
fire that needful and in fact in the
starkest proportions of the end times there are
going to be only two alternatives the fire
of repentance or the fire of God's judgment
and that judgment begins with the house of
God Oh gracious God may that fire fall
even this morning and through this day upon
us may we lay out before you a
whole burnt offering cut up and exposed nothing
dark nor concealed may it be saturated with
our tears that the fire might fall and
consume not only the sacrifice but the wood
and the hay in the stubble and the
dross and the insincerity of the lovelessness and
the indifference of our lives of our dry
eyed prayer and our failure to be the
men and women that would have challenged the
world everywhere about us Oh great God may
that fire fall upon us today great baptizer
who shall baptize us in the Spirit and
fire that we shall go from that day
forth as ministers of fire flaming ministers to
proclaim to all the world the foolish life
-saving gospel of Yeshua HaMashiach Jesus the Christ