This is tape number K013.
Art Katz speaking on the subject, The Holy
Ark of God.
It's a great honor given of God to
bring the word at this holy convocation.
And it wasn't until this afternoon that I
was told by my precious brothers that I
had the word, that I was first informed
that I was going to be speaking it.
But this is not an uncommon experience in
these days, to sit in an auditorium and
to know that you're to be the speaker
that night, and to hear a word come
forth by the Spirit of God that enjoins
God's people to hearken to the word that
shall be spoken, and you yourself wondering who
is the speaker, what it is that you're
going to speak.
But I'll tell you that from the very
inception of Shekinah 74, this has been the
characteristic mode of God.
The Spirit of God has given us the
name of this convocation.
He gave us these dates, He called us
to this location, and He told us to
call it a convocation of charismatic Jews.
We've enjoyed a wonderful peace of God.
There's been no human sweat nor striving.
No flesh has lifted up a tool.
God is all in all.
And after my colleagues told me that I
was to bring the word in this service,
and I had nothing, I went to my
room and sought the face of God, and
I have a word.
It's a word which I've never before spoken.
It's a subject for which I am vastly
in the natural unqualified to speak.
It's a subject so ambitious, so profound, that
I think it would terrify the most astute
scholar.
It's got to do with the holy ark
of God.
I'm going to ask you just to bow
your head with me.
I believe that that ark and that presence
has already been born into this place, and
that God wants to speak to us something
utterly significant for the end times.
Precious holy God, Lord, we're full of tremblings,
mighty God, to stand before Thy people, Lord,
and to open our mouths, Lord, to proclaim
the holy things of God.
But we ask You, precious God, such a
possession, Lord, of Your vessels in these days,
that no flesh shall boast, Lord God, in
Your presence.
All to the glory of God.
To God be the glory.
Lord, speak to us this night.
Oh, precious God, unburden Your heart.
Speak to us things, Lord, that have been
concealed from the beginning of the ages that
are now being revealed.
Breathe upon us the spirit of revelation.
Open to us Your mysteries.
Teach us, Lord God, the enigma of our
Jewishness.
Work Thy great work by Thy word and
by Thy spirit.
We wait upon You, Lord, and anoint our
ears and hearts to receive and to respond
to Your word.
In Yeshua's great name we ask it.
Amen.
I had read references to the Ark of
God here and there.
I had never made it before a study.
I knew it was a vast theme, one
that I should keep my hands off.
This isn't something for a novice.
I knew that it was attended by mystery.
I knew that it had its inception in
the beginning of Israel and that it shall
come again in its glory at the culmination
of the ages.
I knew that when it existed, Israel's glory
existed.
And when it departed, Israel's glory departed.
And I just reviewed this afternoon some of
the highlights that pertain to the Ark of
God.
And if there's anything that has been pressed
upon my consciousness is that however sacred and
holy a thing this is, it has been
something that has been grossly maltreated by the
children of Israel.
Early in our history we committed it to
the keeping of two of Eli's sons who
brought it out to a battlefield where the
battle was lost and the holy ark fell
into the hands of the Philistines.
Maybe we should have known better than to
entrust it to the hands of two such
priests as these, who are priests in name
only, who seduced women at the temple door.
One's name was Hophni and the other's name
was Finis.
And I understand that the name of the
first means fisty.
And I don't know what that suggests, but
I get a picture of something belligerent, something
that has to do with prowess and muscles
and throwing one's weight around.
And maybe we have some expression of that
in our modern Jewish scene today.
God calls these two sons of Eli, though
they were technically priest sons, and sons of
Belial, sons of worthlessness, because no fistiness and
no belligerence and nothing that has to do
with a knotted fist can have anything to
do with the purposes of God.
The other's name, Finis, means mouth of pity.
And here I'm at a greater loss.
And if the first has some shadowy suggestion
of a J.D.L., perhaps the second
has a suggestion of an American Jewish committee,
an A.J.C., and the whole spectrum
of Jewish organizations that are mouths of pity,
well-meaning, humanistic, philanthropic, having to do with
good intention, but not truly of a priestly
kind.
Sons of Belial also, worthless in the sense
of affecting God's end-time purposes.
And so was the holy ark of God
lost to the Philistines in that battle.
You may wonder how it is that God
allowed so holy a thing as his ark
to fall so into their hands.
But a clue is given us in Psalm
78, where we're told that the Lord cast
out the heathen also before them, in the
55th verse, and divided them in inheritance by
line, and made the tribes of Israel to
dwell in their tents.
Yet they tempted and provoked the Most High
God.
They kept not his testimonies, but turned back,
and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers.
They were turned aside like a deceitful bow.
For they provoked him to anger with their
high places, and moved him to jealousy with
their graven images.
When God heard this, he was wroth and
greatly abhorred Israel, so that he forsook the
tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which he placed
among men, and delivered his strength into captivity,
and his glory into the enemy's hands.
The news of the lost tabernacle of God,
of the glory of God, the ark of
God, was brought to Eli in the very
hearing, in the mere word of that loss.
Eli fell backward and broke his neck, and
was killed.
When the same word came to his daughter
-in-law, the son of one of these
two that were described, who was in travail
and childbirth, the child was born, but in
her dying breath, she named that child Ichabod,
meaning the glory of God is departed from
Israel, for the ark of God is taken.
And later on in the melancholy history of
that ark, when it had for 70 years
remained with the Philistines, and I wonder then
what Jewish religion was without the holy ark
of God in its place, that we learn
that in attempting to bring it back, some
very sorrowful lessons.
It came finally to a community of Israelites
in Beth Shemesh, and some men peered into
the holy ark, and we read in the
scriptures that God slew over 50,000 of
the men of this Israeli community for peering
in the ark.
I don't know what that suggests to you,
but I know that that kind of curiosity
is not honored of God.
And I suppose that there's something still of
this nature that persists in Jewish life.
Men that love to play with the law,
and love to expound upon it, and love
to delight themselves in the expounding of great
sages and seers, and the great rabbis of
old, they play with it, they examine it,
they turn it over, and I wonder if
we haven't suffered a kind of spiritual death
far greater in number than the 50,000
who peered that day into the ark of
God.
It's not an object for curiosity.
It contains the holy tablets of the law,
not something that we should calculate, but something
by which we should live.
And then when David came to obtain again
the holy ark, and bring it back to
its rightful place, he brought it on a
cart that, instead of bearing it upon the
shoulders of the priests, separated unto God, and
when that cart was jostled, when the animal
stumbled, a man raised his arm to touch
it, and God immediately slew him.
He was not a priest separated unto the
Lord.
And again, the ark was put aside, and
when David finally came to obtain it, it
was borne as God intended as it should
from the first, on the shoulders of the
Levites of God, under separated priests, according to
his word.
There's a mystery about the ark, but in
numbers and early references made in the 33rd
verse of the 10th chapter, where we read,
they departed from the mount of the Lord
three days' journey, and the ark of the
covenant of the Lord went before them in
the three days' journey to search out a
resting place for them.
Is this mere biblical style?
Can we suggest that an ark has the
attributes of personality, that an ark can search
out a resting place for Israel?
That's clearly what the word of God says.
And the cloud of the Lord was upon
them by day when they went out of
the camp, and it came to pass when
the ark set forward that Moses said, Rise
up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered,
and let them that hate thee flee before
thee.
And when it rested, he said, Return, O
Lord, unto the many thousands of Israel.
Precious children, I don't think that this is
some kind of biblical style.
Moses addressed the ark as if he were
addressing God.
It was the ark that searched out a
resting place for Israel.
When the ark moved, Israel moved.
When the ark rested, Israel rested.
Return, O Lord, Moses said, unto the many
thousands of Israel.
We see again in 2 Samuel, in the
7th chapter, in the 5th verse, Go and
tell my servant David, Thus saith the Lord,
Shalt thou build me a house, a house
for me to dwell in, whereas I have
not dwelt in any house since the time
that I brought up the children of Israel
out of Egypt, even to this day, but
have walked in a tent and in a
tabernacle, in the places wherein I have walked
with all the children of Israel.
Spake I a word with any of the
tribes of Israel, whom I commanded to feed
my people Israel, saying, Why build ye not
me a house of cedar?
In the 6th chapter of the same book,
in the 2nd verse, And David arose, and
went with all the people that were with
him from Balale of Judah, to bring up
from thence the ark of God, whose name
is called by the name of the Lord
of hosts, that dwelleth between the cherubim.
I learned something this afternoon.
I learned that to the ark is ascribed
all of the prerogatives and even the character
and nature of deity, all of the things
that pertain to the personality and power of
God.
I learned in the verses just spoken, that
God himself acknowledged that he was in the
ark and one with the ark, that he
dwelt and he walked in that tabernacle and
in that tent.
And I learned in the verse most recently
spoken, that the ark of God has a
name, and that name is the name of
the Lord of hosts, that dwelleth between the
cherubim.
And I suppose for us Jews, one last
reference on this theme in 1 Samuel, in
the 4th chapter, in the 7th verse, it
comes from the lips of Philistines themselves.
When that ark was first carried into battle,
when Israelites thought that by the bringing of
such an object into battle, that somehow they
had a good luck charm, something that was
going to win the day for them, when
the glory of God had already essentially departed
them.
And the Philistines heard a great shout as
the ark came into the camp and girded
up their loins to meet these inspired Israelis
who had the ark in their possessions.
And the Philistines, it says in the 7th
verse of the 4th chapter, 1 Samuel, were
afraid, for they said, God is come into
the camp.
And they said, Even
the uncircumcised knew when they heard the shout
that the ark of God had come into
the camp of Israel, and when the ark
of God came, God had come into the
camp.
God wants to remind us tonight something about
a holy ark who, when its presence was
with Israel, so also was God's glory, and
when it departed, so also did God's glory.
It was an ark made of very precious
wood, overlaid with gold, and set about with
a crown of gold.
What a wonderful picture of the humanity of
Jesus in that wood, a fleshly kind of
tabernacle, overlaid with gold, that substance that speaks
to us of deity, and then set about
with a crown of gold, the lordship of
Yeshua HaMashiach.
The ark of God is God.
And when that ark shall again return to
Israel, so shall the glory of God return.
No accident that in the gospel of Luke,
in the second chapter, when that little child
was brought to the temple to be dedicated,
of all of the thousands of infants that
have been brought to the temple to be
dedicated, I don't think that the infant Jesus
was distinctively different from other of the Jewish
children.
And yet there was an elderly Jew whose
natural sight was dim, of whom we are
told that he was brought by the spirit
of God to the temple, for he had
been told that he shall not depart this
life until he had seen God's Christ.
And when he looked upon that child, he
said, Lord, let thy servant depart in peace
according to thy word, for mine eyes have
seen thy salvation.
What an embarrassment to us, who have had
the advantage of this testimony in our possession
for 2,000 years, and who profess to
be waiting for the coming of the Messiah,
and are willing in our disputations with Jewish
believers to say, well, I have no need
of your Messiah, mine is yet to come.
I wonder with what eagerness are they waiting?
Because of this, when it was said, he
was a devout and just man waiting for
the consolation of Israel.
And I believe that that has got everything
to do with being able to perceive God's
Christ.
Mine eyes have seen thy salvation, this precious
Jewish man said, which thou hast prepared before
the face of all people, a light to
lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of the
people Israel.
Nothing has changed, children.
It's still an ark made of wood, overlaid
with gold, and set about by a crown,
the lordship of Yeshua HaMashiach.
And this ark has ever and always been
at the heart of Israel's destiny.
It was with us in the wilderness years,
in the tabernacle.
It was with us at the Jordan crossing,
when God said, you've been on this side
of Jordan long enough.
When you see the priests of God and
the Levites bearing the ark, then prepare yourself
to cross over, for you've not been this
way heretofore.
The following of the ark has ever and
always been the heart of Israel's destiny.
We took it with us through the wilderness,
and we brought it with us into the
new land of promise.
It was with us at Shiloh, and it
came again at Zion, where David brought it
up with the shouts of priests, and music,
and trumpets, and dancing, and was himself rebuked
by his own wife for the unabashed demonstration
of joy that he gave in the day
when the ark came to that tabernacle that
rested on Mount Zion.
And then it came finally to a permanent
abode in Solomon's temple.
How Jews have been ruminating and lamenting over
the destruction of the temple of Solomon.
And even to this very day, can we
find our Orthodox brethren bowing, and weaving, and
lamenting, and wailing by the proverbial wailing wall.
Why?
The last physical remnant of something that once
housed what was the glory of God.
And I tell you, when the ark of
God departed the temple, the temple was but
a shell.
And it wasn't long before the glory departed
Israel, and not one stone was left standing
upon another.
Precious children, where is the ark of God
today?
Where is the glory of God today?
Because I know from my own experience, however
sharp and bright, lustrous, prepossessing, impressive a specimen
I was until ten years ago, I have
covenanted with my God, and he has utterly
stripped me of every such natural endowment.
And you never met a more dull thing
than art cats without the holy anointing of
God.
Except that the Holy One of Israel, who
came to lighten the Gentiles, is my glory,
I have none.
And so is it for the entire tabernacle
of God, which is being built in this
hour.
He is our glory.
Where is the ark of God today?
Two thousand years of religious history without the
glory of God.
Oh, what a wearisome exercise, however well-meaning
and well-intending.
All kinds of shackles and bobbings of our
heads, all kinds of dutiful attention to our
religion.
It's a pitiful thing without the presence of
God.
Ceremony, ritual, duty, without God's presence, without God's
shekinah, without God's glory.
What is God doing now to restore it?
In Acts, in the 15th chapter, a reference
is made to Old Testament portion from the
prophets, when James answered, saying, Men and brethren,
hearken unto me.
Simeon hath declared how God at the first
did visit the Gentiles to take out of
them a people for his name.
And to this agree the words of the
prophets as it is written, After this I
will return and will build again the tabernacle
of David, which is fallen down.
And I will build again the runes thereof,
and I will set it up, that the
residue of men might seek after the Lord,
and all the Gentiles upon whom my name
is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all
these things.
Known unto God are all his works from
the beginning of the world.
I will return, God promised.
I will build again the tabernacle of David,
which is fallen down, and the runes thereof.
I will set it up, that the residue
of men might seek after the Lord, and
all the Gentiles upon whom my name is
called.
Upon which Gentile was God's name called?
When the prophet, by the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit, recorded and spoke that passage.
I believe that this is an utterance for
our ears.
When Gentiles the world over are called by
his name, many of whom have missed also
the same glory of which we speak tonight.
But the set time is come, God tells
us in Psalms, in the hundredth and second
Psalm, thirteenth verse, twelfth
verse, but thou, O Lord, shalt endure forever
thy remembrance unto all generations.
Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion,
for the time to favor her, yea, the
set time is come.
We don't have time now to breathe to
you God's present day dealings with his Jewish
people.
Many of you know them intimately well, and
if we had the occasion, the opportunity, to
pass a microphone through this audience, how well
could we acknowledge out of what God has
done in our lives, as unsuspecting Jewish men
and women, who had not so much as
the vaguest notion of a living God, falling
on the sand by the beaches of New
York, in our utter desperation, not so much
as having received witness from human lips or
a piece of literature, in our desperate cry,
O God, if you are, show me, to
see in the heavens a vision of Christ
on his cross, and offer it the death
and the resurrection of the Lord, and to
fall upon our faces and cry out, the
Lord he is God.
We can multiply such testimonies in this day,
for the time to favor her, yea, the
set time is come, for thy servants take
pleasure in her stones, and favor the dust
thereof, so the heathen shall fear the name
of the Lord, and all of the kings
of the earth, thy glory.
When the Lord shall build up Zion, he
shall appear in his glory.
He will regard the prayer of the destitute,
and not despise their prayer, and I suppose
perhaps we can call ourselves the destitute.
We had invited two renowned rabbis to address
us, and although they instantly assented, as we
came closer to this event tonight, first one,
and then the other declined.
One without so much as the courtesy of
himself giving the explanation, and the other with
much explanation of the enormous pressure that had
come upon him in rabbinical circles not to
participate with us in this convocation.
We're a sorry thing in the eyes of
some of our kinsmen, a destitute thing, and
a beggarly thing, but God says that he
will regard the prayer of the destitute, and
not despise their prayer.
And this shall be written for the generation
to come, and the people which shall be
created shall praise the Lord.
We are hearing the words that were addressed
to us early in the time of David
for this generation now.
The time to favor her, Zion, yea, the
set time is come.
And so God reminds us in Isaiah 60,
arise and shine.
For thy light is come, and the glory
of the Lord is risen upon thee.
For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
and gross darkness to people.
But the Lord shall rise upon thee, and
his glory shall be seen upon thee.
And the Gentiles shall come to thy light,
and the kings to the brightness of thy
rising.
Lift up thine eyes round about and see,
all they gather themselves together.
They come to thee, thy son shall come
from far, and thy daughter shall be nursed
at thy side.
Then shalt thou see and flow together, and
thine heart shall fear and be enlarged, because
the abundance of the sea shall be converted
unto thee.
The forces of the Gentiles shall come unto
thee.
The time has come again, children, for the
ark of God to be lifted by the
priests and by the Levites.
For a great darkness and intense and thick
gloom is covering the earth, and God is
speaking to us to arise and shine, for
our light is come.
If we return to 2 Chronicles, the 5th
chapter, we have a reminder of one instance
when that light and that glory came to
Israel.
An enormous occasion in the history of our
people when after God had dwelt with us
in tents, he allowed a house to be
built, a permanent abode and a dwelling.
And what went into that temple staggers even
our modern imagination.
So unstinting and so lavish was the pouring
out of Israel to prepare a dwelling for
the Shekinah glory of God.
Gold and silver and jewels and earrings and
bracelets and all that they had poured out
for the building of this great temple.
Sums of money that would stun modern economists.
And the glory of that temple was so
great that no man now can have some
sense of the magnitude of it.
And imagine when it was completed.
God did not allow a hammer to be
lifted that the sound of labor could be
heard.
Stones fitted together that were prepared in obscurity
and so also is the pattern to this
hour.
But when it was finished, we read in
the second verse of that fifth chapter, then
Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all
the heads of the tribes and the chief
of the fathers of the children of Israel
unto Jerusalem to bring up the ark of
the covenant of the Lord out of the
city of David which is Zion.
Wherefore all the men of Israel assembled themselves
unto the king in the feast which was
in the seventh month.
And all the elders of Israel came and
the Levites took up the ark and they
brought up the ark and the tabernacle of
the congregation and all the holy vessels that
were in the tabernacle.
These did the priests and the Levites bring
up.
Also King Solomon and all the congregation of
Israel that were assembled unto him before the
ark sacrificed sheep and oxen which could not
be told nor numbered for multitude.
And the priest brought in the ark of
the covenant of the Lord into his place
to the oracle of the house into the
most holy place even under the wings of
the cherubims.
The tenth verse, there was nothing in the
ark save the two tables which Moses put
therein at Horeb when the Lord made a
covenant with the children of Israel when they
came up out of Egypt.
And it came to pass when the priests
were come out of the holy place for
all the priests that were present were sanctified.
And they were addressed and arrayed in white
linen that in the thirteenth verse it came
even to pass as the trumpets and singers
were as one to make one sound to
be heard in praising and thanking the Lord.
And when they lifted up their voice with
the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music
and praised the Lord saying for he is
good for his mercy endureth forever that then
the house was filled with a cloud even
the house of the Lord so that the
priest could not stand to minister by reason
of the cloud for the glory of the
Lord had filled the house of God.
I believe with all my heart that we're
not just reviewing an historical episode in the
glorious history of Israel but that God is
impressing again upon our hearts a pattern that
has never changed.
How desperately do we need the Shekinah glory
of God to fall upon a world that
is growing increasingly dark upon a Jewish people
who in their most well meaning intention have
wearily grown in a religion without the glory
of God.
How the world desperately needs that light, that
presence, that freedom that invites praise and worship
and love and the extinction of everything in
us that's freshly that leads to separation, divisiveness,
anger, bitterness.
Oh precious children, God gave us the name
around a table wherein were seated several Jewish
disciples, Shekinah 74.
The glorious presence of God but I believe
that we shall not see this presence outside
this auditorium, the world and among our people
where it is so desperately needed until all
of the elders of Israel are assembled together
before the king.
All of the heads of the tribes, all
of the chiefs of the fathers of the
children of Israel before our king.
And I suppose if we could imagine that
nothing should be accomplished in this conference but
this one thing, it would have been justification
enough.
But I know that God has many glorious
things.
But the one thing to which I'm alluding
now is this.
Do you recognize how historic an hour this
is in this university?
In the same place where only a few
years ago, students ran amuck under the inspiration
of satanic spirits to destroy, to ruin, to
make travesty, to urinate and defecate in the
university president's office.
Sadly, much under the leadership of our Jewish
brethren, God has said, in this place you
shall hold this holy convocation.
And we sent out the invitation.
We trembled.
We had never undertaken anything so large.
We wondered if this room was too large
and we would not be able to fill
it.
But I just ask you to turn around
and see what God has done this night.
There are Jewish believers and friends of Israel
in this room from probably almost every state
in this country, from coast to coast, north
to south, from Louisiana to California, and Jewish
ministries are represented in this room who have
never in one place, in one time, ever
been together before.
Precious children, there's a pattern tonight to which
God is reminding us.
You want the glory of God to fall?
You want again His Shekinah glory in His
presence?
When all the elders of Israel and all
of the chiefs of the fathers and all
of the heads of the tribes shall be
assembled together with our King, we shall meet
the first but necessary condition of our God,
for His way has never changed.
They were brought to a feast in the
seventh month, and so also are we.
This is the end of the ages, and
everyone who has an eye, a spiritual eye
to see, knows it.
And we're brought to the final consummating feast
of God.
We are in the seventh month.
And so King Solomon and all of the
congregation of Israel are assembled unto him before
the ox, sacrificed sheep and oxen which could
not be told nor numbered for multitude.
And however ignorant I am, and don't deserve
in terms of natural credentials to be speaking
to you, I can say this on the
basis of my scant understanding, that whenever the
fire of God has fallen, wherever the glory
of God has been revealed, it has always
been preceded by a sacrifice of vast magnitude.
If not numerically, then in great significance and
meaning.
Elijah had to lay out a great sacrifice
before God.
Hack it to pieces and lay it open
before God, nothing concealed.
Bloody, painful sacrifice.
And even that was not sufficient, except that
it first be watered by twelve barrels of
water, each for the tribes of Israel.
And so also is it to this day
that if God's fire is to fall, it
will not fall on dry sacrifice.
We must make of ourselves, our bodies, a
living sacrifice if the glory of God is
to fall in the end of the ages.
This was a mighty sacrifice and we shall
have as much of God's presence, God's shekhinah,
God's glory, as we ourselves shall willing to
be laid out before him in a sacrifice
that cannot be counted nor numbered nor told
for multitude.
I praise God with all my heart that
this convocation is not a Ben Israel production.
I praise God that it's not a Ben
Yeshua production.
I praise God that it bears no man's
name and no organization's name.
It is a convocation of charismatic Jews.
God is wanting to sacrifice children of sheep
and oxen that cannot be counted nor numbered
for multitude.
Our fleshly ambitions, our lusting after the acknowledgement
of men, our craving to be seen and
to be heard, wanting our name, our ministry,
our organization to be promoted and to be
made known.
But God's fire shall not fall except everything
fleshly, everything carnal, and oh, I tell you,
there's a need for a great heaping sacrifice.
Jealousy, pride, dissension, suspicion, rivalry, contention, but speak
the name Jewish and you think of two
men, you get instantly the three proverbial arguments.
And embarrassingly enough, Jewish believers are not altogether
exempt from this Jewish characteristic.
Oh, children, there needs to be a sacrifice
made before God of sheep and oxen that
cannot be told nor counted nor numbered for
multitude.
There was nothing in the ark save the
two tables which Moses put there at Horeb.
And even when the priests came in to
minister, though they were priests called of God,
though they were dressed in white vestments, yet
were they required to leave the holy place,
for the priests could not minister when the
glory of God fell.
There was nothing in the holy of holies
but the two tablets of the law.
And so must it be also in the
end of the ages.
There's got to be a unity of God's
people.
All of the elders, all of the chiefs
of the fathers, there's got to be a
sacrifice that cannot be counted nor numbered.
There's got to be a purity, a holiness,
that there be nothing but the two tablets
of the law.
And who is fit to speak even on
this word?
Who of us is simple enough to think
that we're going to run to Webster's dictionary
and find an ample explanation of the meaning
of the word holy?
We've got to experience it.
It's got to happen to us.
God has got to breathe upon us such
a spirit that we might understand to what
degree we have already trafficked in this world.
To what degree the things that are subtle
and insidious have already stolen their way into
our hearts and spirits and minds and lives.
There was nothing in the ark but the
two tablets of the law.
And even those called to be priests dressed
in priestly vestments were not allowed to stand
in that place where God's Shekinah glory came.
There's got to be a praise, one sound
to be heard in praising and thanking the
Lord.
And when they lifted up their voice with
trumpets and cymbals and praised the Lord saying
that His mercy endures forever, then the house
was filled with a cloud, even the house
of the Lord.
And every one of us, I think, understands
that there's praising and praising.
And we have already enjoyed this night such
a quality of praise in such a purity
and such an authenticity and such a freedom
and such a joy that it beggars and
makes sickly any lesser thing than has to
do with amens and hallelujahs that are shouted
mechanically and by the numbers.
One voice, children, in a praise that comes
out of hearts and lives that are truly
redeemed in mind, body, souls, and spirits, whose
lives are healthy and pure before God, whose
marriages are a testimony to His redemptive power,
whose fellowships are His glory.
When we shall speak with one voice, one
shout, one praise, the cloud of God shall
again fill His house.
The glory of the Lord had filled the
house of the Lord.
And in the seventh chapter of this same
book we read from the first verse, now
when Solomon had made an end of praying,
the fire came down from heaven and consumed
the burnt offerings and the sacrifices and the
glory of the Lord filled the house.
And the priest could not enter into the
house of the Lord because the glory of
the Lord had filled the Lord's house.
And when all the children of Israel saw
how the fire came down and the glory
of the Lord upon the house, they bowed
themselves with their faces to the ground upon
the pavement and worshiped and praised the Lord,
saying, For He is good, for His mercy
endureth forever.
I don't know what's going to happen in
these days.
None of us who have been with Shekinah
74 from its inception know.
We only know that we have been following
God step by step to this moment.
For the first time God has called such
a convocation as this in the heart of
this great city, my own birthplace and the
place where I grew up as an adolescent
and many times stalked these streets in despair
and futility and trying to understand the nature
of this life and this world.
Two and a half million of our people
in this city.
It's a great Jewish city.
It's the crossroads of our Jewish life, the
heart of our intellectual and Jewish culture.
God said hold Shekinah 74 here, a block
and a half away from the Jewish Theological
Seminary.
Across the street from the Union Seminary where
we have the Gentile equivalent of our desiccated
Judaism.
Across the street from Manhattan School of Music
where Jewish kids are seeking careers in culture
whom God has called to be nation of
priests and a light unto the world.
Teachers college around the corner and so can
we go on repeating the institutions of culture
and intellect that are everywhere about us.
Have you ever come back from witnessing to
your own people and even your own family
with a sense of futility and saying what
does it take?
What does it take?
I'll tell you what it's going to take
and what it has always taken.
It's going to take the Shekinah glory of
God.
It's going to take fire of God falling
from heaven.
Because when Elijah made that great sacrifice, when
he fulfilled the conditions of God, when by
the power of this Holy Spirit he challenged
an apostate backslidden people, how long do you
halt between two opinions?
If God be God, follow him!
And challenged the false prophets of Baal to
build their sacrifice and call on their gods
to bring fire and there was none.
Nor was there any god to hear nor
to answer.
And then he built his own sacrifice and
then he said to God, Lord if I
have done these things according to thy word,
let thy fire fall.
And the fire fell and consumed the sacrifice
and the wood and the stones and the
water and the dust.
And when a Jewish people who had too
long halted between two opinions, outwardly satisfied with
a modicum of Judaism and inwardly following the
false gods of this world, saw the fire
fall, they cried out, the Lord he is
God!
The Lord he is God!
Precious people, there's a pattern here.
I don't know whom God shall bring into
this auditorium in these days and I don't
know if God shall send us out from
this auditorium in these days.
But I know that disputation is past.
There's little room for polemics.
Two thousand years of a painful Christian history
has too well insulated our Jewish people against
the name of Jesus Christ.
Satan has done too thorough a job to
poison that holy name for our Jewish consideration.
Our scholarly brethren say to us, you can't
speak to me out of these scriptures, why
that's the Gentile translation.
You don't know Hebrew and our mouths have
stopped.
I'll tell you only one thing is going
to turn our people and bring them again
as they need to be on their faces
before a holy God to cry out, the
Lord he is God!
The Lord he is God!
When the glory of God filled the house,
when the glory of the Lord had filled
the Lord's house, when all the children of
Israel saw how the fire came down and
the glory of the Lord upon the house,
they bowed themselves with their faces to the
ground upon the pavement and worshipped and praised
the Lord saying, for he is good, for
his mercy endureth forever.
My final word is this, and some of
you have heard it from me.
It's something that burns indeed like a fire
in my own heart.
I'm so preoccupied with fire because I know
that in the end of the ages, fire
is going to be the enormous element with
which men shall have to contend.
A fire of God's judgment, a heat that
shall melt the elements, a fierce afflicting flame
that shall come upon the earth.
And as we had not made sacrifices, so
shall the flame and fire of God lick
at the high fire the wardrobes, the cars,
and all of the aspects of affluence and
comfort and luxury that have so well kept
men from the knowledge of their God.
I've commended to people the book from Elie
Wiesel called The Night, in which he describes
the melancholy experience of the community of Jews
from which he himself came.
In central Europe, Transylvania, a pocket of Jews
who somehow had survived the horrors of the
last war and felt that this shall not
come upon them.
It had come to the Jews of Warsaw,
it had come to the Jews of Berlin
and Munich and other great European cities, but
it had not come upon them.
This too shall pass, they thought.
But one day to their horror, there came
such a rumbling and shaking of the earth
that it caused them to have pained expressions
upon their faces.
Something ominous was in the air, something frightful,
a suggestion of something from which they wanted
to flee.
And off on the horizon was a great
cloud of dust that was coming closer and
closer, and their hearts began to beat.
And finally, with the great noise increased and
the shaking of the ground, and that cloud
of dust became tanks, armored cars with the
swastikas and all of the Nazi insignia as
it swept into their little village.
Their breath stopped for fear, but they breathed
to themselves, this too shall pass, this too
shall pass.
Oh, what a people we are.
We have to cling to one kind of
faith or another.
But woe to that people who, like in
Elijah's time, were calling upon a God who
could not hear and could not give answer.
And one day by day, the edicts went
up on the walls.
Jews were required to leave their homes and
to move in a certain walled section of
that town.
They were required to give up certain portions
of their property, but they believed this too
shall pass, this too shall pass, it shall
not come upon us.
But one day, a sign came up, next
morning at sunrise, you are to be assembled
at the train station by the square of
this town with only such objects as you
can personally carry.
And that night they were busy sweating, digging
holes in the basements and backyards and burying
their menorahs and their Jewish heirlooms and their
valuables.
Oh, we'll come back, this too shall pass,
this shall not come upon us.
And when they came that next morning early
with the early light upon them, to their
horror they saw the cattle trains all lined
up, ready to receive them.
Children clutching their legs, their pants, crying, terror,
fear, and they were herded in like so
many animals, jammed, body upon body, no room
to fall to the ground, to sit, to
stand properly, suffocating, choking blackness as the doors
were locked shut and jerking back and forth
three days and nights through the European countryside
they knew not where.
Hysterical people, shrieking people, women fainting, children, teenagers
fornicating, who had a somehow intuitive knowledge that
this was their last opportunity to taste of
that joy.
What a macabre, solemn picture if we might
see by the eye of the Spirit a
world even this night hurtling to its doom,
locked in such cars as that in inky
darkness, fornicating in a moment's pleasure, not realizing
that they're soon going to come to an
all-consuming fire, a fire of which Jesus
spoke as a lake, a fire that shall
not be quenched if men will not repent
and call upon the name of the Lord.
There was a woman in that train that
the writer describes who was in a certain
kind of coma and would wake up from
time to time and cry out one word
over and over again, fire she cried, fire,
I see fire, and it so chilled the
hearts of those who were in the car
with her that they punched her and beat
her unconscious that she should not speak that
word.
And sure enough she would awaken again and
cry out fire, fire, I see fire.
And finally one day the train stopped in
a kind of an ominous screeching halt and
before the doors were even opened they smelt
a most peculiar odor, a kind of an
acrid smell, and when the doors were opened
in came the flickering light from burning gasoline
and troughs lined up alongside the railroad tracks
and half-dead infants were plucked out of
the arms of shrieking mothers and tossed right
into the fire and the men were marched
off in one direction and the women in
the other, fire, fire.
Oh, precious children, we are at the seventh
month and the final feast and the consummation
of the ages but my own heart cries
out that many more of my own kinsmen
may come and sit at that table and
eat at the table of the Lord, dressed
in the spotless wedding garments of God.
And I tell you that we've not wanted
to speak the whole counsel of God, we
wanted to emphasize the love of God, not
how groovy the benefits, the advantages of all
that Jesus would do, if you would accept
him.
But we have not been faithful to proclaim
the full counsel of God for how shall
we know the love of God except we
understand the eternal fate of a fire that
shall not be quenched, from which it is
that he saved us by the shedding of
his own holy blood.
Precious people, in the end of the ages,
only one element shall be pressed upon the
consciousness of modern men.
And how little we have been occupied with
it, who have grown up in a TV
age where even reality has become sort of
glimpsed through a glass and somehow has been
made unreal and we turn switches and lights
and all kinds of objects and gimmicks and
somehow we have heat and warmth and cooking.
We haven't understood the power, the nature, the
all-consuming character of fire.
There's a fire that needs to fall first
upon us.
There's a sacrifice to which God has called
us first, before his fire might fall upon
this congregation of Israel that are assembled before
him in this holy convocation of these days,
when we shall be all assembled, the elders
and the chiefs of the fathers before our
king.
When we shall heap up a sacrifice that
cannot be counted nor numbered for multitude, of
fleshly sheep and oxen that do with ambition
and pride and selfishness and vanity.
When we shall meet the conditions of God
in purity and in praise and in worship
with one voice and one shout, even the
priests shall not be able to minister.
A cloud shall fill this house, the shechina
of God, the glory of God.
A fire shall fall over this city and
a people who have not known understanding shall
understand as they always have in that instant
when they've seen the fire and cried out,
the Lord he is God, the Lord he
is God.
First the fire for us that we might
be a pure people before God and a
united people.
Then the fire of God's presence that many
might be saved from a fire that shall
not be quenched.
I'm going to ask you to bow your
head tonight.
My brothers told me that I had a
message to speak tonight and I didn't know
what it was, but this has been characteristic
of all of the things that have pertained
to Shechina 74.
We drafted a letter that went out to
1500 rabbis, synagogues, temples and Jewish institutions.
I say we drafted it, but it was
written by the Holy Spirit.
A word from one brother, a word from
another, a suggestion, a correction and that's how
this convocation has been shaped.
In submission one to another the Spirit of
God has moved and I have submitted to
my brothers and so at the face of
God and God has given me these words
to speak.
Rough hewn words, unfamiliar even to me.
A theme having to do with the ark
of God made of wood, overlaid with gold
and set about by a crown that when
that God was at the heart of Israel
there was the glory of God.
When that ark departed so departed the glory.
Precious God in the name of that one
of whom the ark is so beautiful a
description.
That one who was always with us precious
God in his humanity and in the gold
of his deity.
Who is with us in the tabernacle in
the wilderness.
Who is with us Lord in all our
stumblings and murmurings and testings.
Who went before us that we might cross
over that river of separation and death to
be possessors of the land.
That the holy ark might come finally into
the tabernacle of David and then again into
that more enduring temple Lord God on Mount
Zion.
And now precious God for two thousand years
and longer we have been without that glory
and you are at the end of the
ages restoring the glory of God.
That light to lighten the Gentiles and the
glory of the people Israel.
We want to see fire in these days.
We want to experience your holy presence and
we ask oh God tonight and through these
night hours that your spirit would point out
to us where the sheep and the oxen
are.
That we might through these night hours and
even before we leave this room tonight put
upon the altar of God everything that needs
so desperately to be consumed by your fire.
Everything that speaks of pride and selfishness and
vain glory, fear.
Oh precious God consume that fire Lord.
We wet it with our tears twelve barrels
for each and for all of the tribes
of Israel.
Let your fire first fall upon us that
we might enjoy the Shekinah presence of God
in these days.
And that that fire Lord God in that
cloud of glory might go forth around this
community to the Jewish theological seminary of America
where young men are being trained to be
rabbis.
Across the street to Barnard's College where many
Jewish young women are who have been sucked
into the poison of women's lib.
Across the street Lord God in the Manhattan
School of Music where men are seeking careers
rather than priestly service.
Oh precious God may your fire fall upon
the people Israel in this great Israel which
is New York City.
Precious God Hallelujah.
Let your fire fall on the sacrifice that
cannot be counted nor numbered nor be told
for multitude even this night.
Precious God Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.