This is tape K-036, entitled The Holocaust,
spoken by Arthur Katz.
One of my intense passions is for the
truth.
But it's only more recently that the Lord
has been reminding me that that apostle of
truth who speaks most of the truth, both
in the gospel and in his epistles, John,
is the one also who had his head
on the bosom of the Lord.
That the apostle of truth is also the
apostle of love, and that the two are
never to be separated.
If I can just ask you please to
withhold applause.
I don't know if you're going to want
to applaud at the end, but if you
feel that's a response, fine, but just for
time's sake.
I have a message before me which I
have never spoken before, and unusually in my
experience, the Lord sat me down in the
hotel room here in Kansas City, and I
did not get up for eight hours.
And I have that writing before me.
It's not that lengthy.
In fact, I stared at the notes and
the materials that I've been accumulating.
This theme has been on my heart for
many years.
I stretched it out on the desk, and
I despaired of finding a way of putting
it together.
And I'm not sure that it's together yet.
It's going to be awkward and groping and
choked.
But I believe that the Lord wants it
expressed.
Among my burdens is the burden for repentance,
and I have been grieved at the absence
of this great theme in modern evangelism.
And I've oftentimes in my talks commented about
the egocentric Christianity that seeks to induce men
to accept Christ, if you will, on the
basis of the benefits that will accrue to
them for so doing.
This spoke not the apostles, and is wholly
out of keeping with the whole tenor and
the power and the magnitude and the glory
of the apostolic time set forth in the
book of Acts.
And I am that kind of view that
has a heart only for that glory.
And so I'm going to ask you to
pray with me as we try to speak
the truth in love, taking as a theme
something that Paul says in the 20th chapter
of the book of Acts when he reviews
his service for God, of how he strove
and sacrificed and witnessed, testifying both to Jews
and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God
and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
May I suggest that there's no faith toward
Jesus Christ until there is first repentance toward
God.
And that you can assemble however long the
list you want of messianic scripture and bring
the Jew to read them and to draw
a line at the bottom and to sum
them up correctly, but that will not in
itself engender either repentance nor faith.
That there have been numbers of Jewish casualties
in the messianic movement and undoubtedly greater numbers
of non-Jewish casualties who never repented unto
true faith and had some kind of show
of faith which was not sufficient to sustain
them.
We are called as a final generation for
a cataclysmic conclusion to a conflict which has
ever been brewing between light and darkness and
only those who live by faith shall be
sustained in such a trial as that and
be able to give testimony to the glory
of God.
So I'm concerned both for true faith which
grows out of true repentance, repentance toward God
and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
Will you bow with me now in prayer
that we might hear from the Spirit of
truth in love.
Precious God, Heavenly Father, I tremble, Lord, to
find myself at this place.
You know what's in my heart, Lord, and
the condition of my own tremblings to have
such a word as this to speak.
And Lord, I just ask that I might
be made so transparent that very God himself,
even the Lord Yeshua, by the Spirit, might
speak to the hearts of this people what
is in his own true heart.
Lord, you've been preparing us.
You've been bringing us to a place of
increasing maturity.
You have winced in times past as you
have waited, as we have frolicked and have
had our charismatic fun, Lord God, and you've
allowed us to enjoy it for a season.
But there's a spirit, a sense in the
air of solemnity, of deep things, of preparation.
We thank you, Lord God, that you've prepared
us, and now we ask to speak truly
and enable us to receive it, mighty God.
And we'll thank you and praise you for
this in Jesus' name.
I'm going to quote a series of scriptures
out of the book of Acts that characterizes
and typifies the ministry of the apostles to
the Jews in that first generation.
Acts 2.36-38, Therefore let all the
house of Israel know assuredly that God hath
made that same Jesus whom you have crucified,
both Lord and Christ.
Now when they heard this, they were pricked
in their hearts and said unto Peter and
the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren,
what shall we do?
Then said Peter unto them, Repent.
I'm not concluding the statement.
I'm ending on the word that I want
to emphasize.
Acts 3.13-15-19, The God of
Abraham and Isaac and of Jacob, the God
of our fathers, hath glorified his son Jesus,
whom ye delivered up and denied him in
the presence of Pilate, when he was determined
to let him go.
But you denied the Holy One and the
just and desired a murderer to be granted
unto you and killed the Prince of Life.
Repent ye therefore and be converted.
Acts 4.8-10, Then Peter, filled with
the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers
of the people and elders of Israel, be
it known unto all and to all the
people of Israel that by the name of
Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified.
We know that they suffered terrible delusion and
reproach for such speakings.
They were told and strictly commanded that they
should not teach in his name.
Behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine
and intend to bring this man's blood upon
us.
But it says that when they prayed that
they might speak with all boldness the word
that the rim shook where they prayed by
the power of the Spirit.
Great power and great grace was upon them
all.
And on another occasion when the angel had
to bring them out of imprisonment he said,
he brought them forth and said Go stand
and speak in the temple to the people
all the words of this life.
I want to suggest that our modern evangelism
has lacked the power of the boldness which
is imparted by the Holy Spirit because we
have not brought the totality of the same
message that was brought in that first generation.
It's much easier to induce men to believe
for benefits than to let them to know
that they are participant and are responsible and
stand guilty before God for the death of
the Holy One of Israel.
Then Peter and the other apostles answered and
said we ought to obey God rather than
men.
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus
whom he slew and hanged on a tree.
Him hath God exalted with his right hand
to be a prince and a savior for
to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of
sins.
And we are his witnesses of these things
and so is also the Holy Ghost whom
God hath given to them that obey him.
I think if there is an honest charismatic
among the forty or fifty thousand who are
in this city at this time they may
acknowledge that though they have had a baptism
in the Holy Spirit and speak with tongues
and have been the instrument of the expression
of other gifts of the Spirit there has
been a notable and if I may say
it a lamentable absence, a corresponding absence of
the power of God both in their life
and their ministry.
We have been like children thinking that if
we received this gift alone that that is
the sufficient qualification for the fullness of the
power that ought to attend it.
But may I suggest that the power will
be there in exact proportion to the unpleasantness
and the difficulty and the reproach and the
ungainliness and the difficulty of hearing of the
message that we shall be impelled to bring.
If we shall bring a patsy message we
shall have a patsy attendance of God and
if we shall bring the bold and full
message of God unto repentance to men that
shall strike them in the heart till they
shall again say men and brethren what shall
we do that we might again answer repent
we shall experience the fullness and the operation
of that Spirit unto boldness.
It says that when they heard that they
were cut to the heart and Peter and
the apostles departed from the presence of the
council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to
suffer shame for his name.
I don't know how to say this and
I'm not an artful man and I'm clumsy
and it's brought reproach on my head but
I can't help but survey my charismatic experience
which has been rather extensive in these fourteen
years having once initially been a kind of
Jewish darling to the movement growing less popular
as I go on and I see the
dove of God everywhere celebrated sometimes peering at
it and squinting wondering exactly what manner of
bird it is maybe some other kind of
pigeon but I have to note the absence
of the cross of Christ Jesus in our
charismatic conferences.
I think it's Dr. Leo Schlink who said
that the great calamity of the church has
been its failure to prepare God's people for
suffering.
We don't have a stomach for suffering, folks
and that might well explain why it is
that we have shrunk consciously or unconsciously and
inadvertently from bringing that message alone that cuts
men to the heart.
It will either bring them to repentance or
it shall bring them to latch upon us
with their teeth and rather than suffer the
prospect of the last we are unwilling to
contemplate the prospect of the first.
God did not give us his spirit just
to jazz up our denominational life.
He gave it to us to equip us
at the end of the age to stand
and to serve God in hard places for
those who are willing as these men and
to rejoice that they were counted worthy to
suffer shame for his name.
We look at men who are nothing in
the natural men who are not in any
way impressive who had no kind of credential
that they should ever have been noteworthy.
A man by the name of Stephen was
no more than a busboy but by the
operation of this spirit he stopped the mouths
of his adversaries and demonstrated a wisdom that
far exceeded theirs.
I want to quote a portion of the
message that culminated in his own death.
He reviewed for them the history of Israel
and I think that it may be incumbent
upon us to review for our own Jewish
people the history of Israel because it is
amazing as was mentioned in this morning session
how great is our biblical illiteracy though we
are sophisticated in many other areas.
I wonder which modern Jew it is who
has ever sat down to ask himself the
question why it is that he was born
in Kansas City or as myself in Brooklyn,
New York or Moscow or as I've had
occasion to meet Jews even in Tokyo in
just about every remote corner of the earth.
How is it that we were born in
such places as that and how is it
that our history has been marked by such
suffering and unspeakable calamity.
Maybe our function before we mention the name
of Jesus to Jews is to bring them
to the place where they ask us the
right question before we provide an unwanted answer.
In his review he said for he supposed
his brethren speaking of Moses would have understood
how God by his hand would deliver them
but they understood not.
This Moses whom they refused saying who made
thee a ruler and a judge the same
did God send to be a ruler and
a deliverer he brought them out this is
he who received the lively oracles to God
oracles to be given unto us to whom
our fathers would not obey but thrust him
from them in their hearts turned back again
into Egypt.
You stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart and
ears you do always resist the Holy Ghost
as your fathers did so do ye.
Which of the prophets have not your fathers
persecuted and they have slain them of the
coming of the just one of whom you
have been now the betrayers and the murderers.
It's evident that this apostolic generation did not
mince words they spoke a necessary truth and
I don't believe that it has again been
spoken since the eclipse of that generation and
in modern times.
When they heard these things they were cut
to the heart and gnashed on him with
their teeth but he being full of the
Holy Ghost.
There's a pattern here folks and it behooves
us to see it.
Now it's not like me to read from
a prepared manuscript but this is so important
that I'm going to do it with such
liberty as the Lord will be pleased to
give me having spoken these initial things.
While indeed salvation is of the Jews yet
do they least of all seem to know
what salvation is for the sense of sin
is conspicuously absent in their estimation of themselves
and without the sense of sin there can
be no deliverance from it.
To this do the scriptures attest for can
we expect to hear a Jewish cry from
Psalm 51 as I heard it spoken a
week or so ago and my own spirit
was crying out oh that the Jewish people
might cry this repentant psalm of David to
the God of their fathers even as David
before them that the whole nation Israel might
cry out have mercy upon me oh God
and blot out my transgressions wash me thoroughly
from my iniquity and guilt for I acknowledge
my transgression and my sin is ever before
me.
I think if anyone has any familiarity with
modern Jewish life there is no element on
the contrary more conspicuous from it than the
sense of sin.
We are a people who are given to
self-exaltation and to self-congratulation.
It is in our religious services it is
in our Jewish cultural life it is in
our periodicals and in our literature.
We are a proud and puffed up people
if you scratch us deeply we'll tell you
that we believe that we gave the world
monotheism as part of our Jewish culture that
we gave the world the Bible and as
a matter of fact we have just about
taken upon ourselves all the things which God
has given and see it as the expression
of our own Jewish genius and brilliance.
What is there in the corporate experience and
history of the Jewish people sufficient to stir
such consciousness of sin and acknowledgement of transgression
that would lead to repentance and to conversion?
The first event I think in Jewish history
is their participation in the death of the
Savior and the second one like unto it
and growing out of it as a consequence
of it is the more recent crucifixion of
world Jewry itself the Holocaust.
These two events in my opinion have got
to be the two greatest events single events
in Jewish history both of which are grossly
neglected in Jewish understanding.
One is wholly put aside it's not even
worthy of our consideration and if it is
so much as mentioned the one who has
the gumption to mention it shall be immediately
accused of anti-Semitism.
The second, the Holocaust is only trotted out
on ceremonial occasions on annual commemorations in a
sentimental way by which Jews again have occasion
to congratulate themselves for having died for being
Jews.
May I say with a broken heart in
truth and in love that contrary to their
having died for being Jews the greater truth
is this they died for not having been
Jews enough and where is there a man
who will say that to their face?
There is little action as I think that
both these events the enormity of which is
incalculable as well as inexpressible have been slighted
and glibly dismissed in present Jewish understanding for
the first the mere cry of anti-Semitism
with references to the absurdity of deicide that's
an actual quote from a Jewish spiritual leader
that has come to my hand or the
instrumentality of a pilot all of this is
just piled upon the Gentiles the Romans this
was a Roman punishment and Jews are absolved
of responsibility all this I think sufficient to
absolve them of implication notwithstanding the cry the
oath of their fathers His blood be upon
us and our children the magnitude of the
horror of contemplating the Holocaust as a fulfillment
of these words is so great even for
us who believe and who are even called
to be ministers of God's salvation to them
that we have shrunk from its consideration this
did not Peter, Paul, Stephen and the apostles
and have been carried therefore by that same
logic to what is in my opinion a
lesser evangelism with a lesser result if you
want to know why it did not applaud
this morning in the presentation of some of
my brethren when they explained how Jews have
had their resistance melted and have come to
a place of healing through their messianic synagogues
and they've seen ten, twenty, so many of
these saved it's because there's something in my
Jewish heart that hearkens back to an hour
when three thousand were saved and
the hour is short and the numbers are
great and we can make all kinds of
accommodations and condescensions to men but I believe
that it will not be until we preach
this message and the power and the boldness
of the Holy Spirit that men shall again
be stricken in their hearts cut in their
hearts and cry out men and brethren what
must we do and we can give the
answer that has not been sounded in oh
so long repent rather than bring to the
consciousness of Jewry the shame of the banishment
from God through transgression we ourselves get giddy
and exult in and seek to win them
by a promise to keep them in the
exilic ghetto culture that sprang from it I
wonder how many of you who squealed with
delight at the various aspects of Jewish culture
that was either mentioned or demonstrated realize that
much of it if not all is the
more recent expression of Jewish culture since the
dispersion since the diaspora it is ghetto culture
folks and it harkens back to what should
be a remembrance of our shame having been
banished from God and from the land and
I don't know what my spirit is saying
in me that we are again seeking to
revive it and to use it as a
vehicle of drawing Jews to a place where
they might condescend to accept Jesus this
culture which we so exult in is a
testimony to our shame and not our glory
as one commentator puts it quote one is
appalled and saddened by the continual crying up
of Jews of the virtues attributed to their
beloved Jewishness not seeing that the very starting
point of the faith of God is that
of humility of mind and of humbling as
to what all are in the flesh even
down to self-abhorrence and deep repentance before
God for what is not only our sad
inheritance through Adam but especially for our own
actual sinfulness this is in my opinion or
there is in my opinion an unbroken continuum
of sin for which no Jew is absolved
merely by the fortuitous circumstances of birth and
time which needs desperately to be pressed upon
his consciousness I'll tell you how foolish a
man I am I think that every individual
in every generation shall stand before God for
the decision of choosing Barabbas over Jesus though
they were not there in the actual moment
of time Stephen said as your fathers did
so do ye and there is a principle
in here that I want to express here
it is the failure to acknowledge the sins
of the fathers as sin and to repent
of them as our own in our own
unwillingness or ignorance or silence implicates us and
makes us one with them in the sin
now a woman came up to me at
the end of this morning's session a Gentile
woman of Polish extraction a Catholic and as
she spoke to me the spirit of God
just touched me in the way that he
has and what she expressed to me was
that she needed an opportunity to be absolved
from the responsibility of guilt of what Catholics
have inflicted on Jews through the centuries and
I do not lightly ignore such a desire
as a matter of fact if you're going
to bear with me I believe that God
is going to lead me at the conclusion
of this message to a most unusual alter
call which has been histories has been generations
in waiting something is going to be released
that has hovered in our ancestral darkness of
crimes that we have inflicted one upon the
other as Jews and Gentiles which we have
never acknowledged in having part nor sought each
other's forgiveness I think such an act needs
to be performed and if God will so
lead me it will be performed here in
this theater today Martin Rosen
said in one of his first presentations he
feels no mandate to stand in the place
of the Jewish people and to accept the
forgiveness of Gentiles I'd like to say that
I feel that I have such a mandate
and I might offer other Jewish believers who
are in this room who also want to
stand in the place of the Jewish people
perhaps to come on the platform at the
conclusion of the message that we might receive
from the non-Jewish believers in this audience
the expression of their forgiveness as we stand
in the place of our people and receive
ours for what we have inflicted upon you
both in our unbelief in our atheism, in
our cynicism in all of the adverse things
we have done as manipulators of culture in
breaking down the faith of many it needs
to go both ways here's the illustration from
the scriptures of the principle that I'm suggesting
that there's an unbroken continuum of sin that
stretches from father to son, which unless we
consciously sever it even infects our own spirit
and life Jesus said in Matthew 23 the
27 through 36 verses Woe unto you scribes,
Pharisees, hypocrites which indeed appear beautiful outward, but
are within full of dead men's bones and
of all uncleanness and say if we had
been in the days of our fathers we
would not have been partakers with them in
the blood of the prophets wherefore you be
witnesses unto yourselves that you are the children
of them which killed the prophets wherefore behold
I send unto you prophets and wise men
and scribes and some of them you shall
kill and crucify that upon you may come
all the righteous blood shed upon the earth
from the blood of righteous Abel unto the
blood of Zacharias, whom you slew between the
temple and the altar fill ye up then
the measure of your fathers what was Jesus
saying, whom ye slew when they were not
anywhere near the time and the circumstance of
that slaying what he is saying is this
if you do not see yourself as implicated
with your fathers if you do not acknowledge
the craven condition of your heart that if
you had been with them you would have
assuredly participated in the blood of the martyrs
then most assuredly you shall participate in the
blood of the martyrs of your own generation
acknowledgements that our fathers have sinned and that
we do not want to be in some
unspoken continuation with that sin but stand to
separate ourselves from it there's a lot of
talk about save, save, save but I love
the word converted and I don't believe there
shall be any Jew converted who will not
stand and suffer the reproach of the Jewish
community when he shall say I refuse to
accept the verdict of my fathers, choose ye
Barabbas I choose Jesus, which
Jew is there which if he had not
been present with his fathers at the trial
of Jesus would not have chosen Barabbas how
ironically did the prosecuting attorney for the state
of Israel against Eichmann, Gideon Hausner touch upon
the same principle in his memoirs it's interesting
how God will put a book in a
man's hand at the appropriate time if there's
been a cry rolling up in my heart
in recent months it's this, oh God that
we might see as you see our viewpoint
is so temporal, so limited so human, bring
us into the dimension where you are independent
of time in God's sight children there is
an unbroken continuum from the day of the
death of Jesus to this present day and
all men are implicated in that most heinous
crime except those who have by confession absolved
themselves from it and avail themselves of the
very blood that was shed in that act
God requires that which is past this inherent
truth was ironically stated by Gideon Hausner about
Eichmann one must hear it as the divine
prosecutor and judge as though this were the
judge speaking and not this man speaking of
Israel and not of a German criminal he
says it may well take some time before
a criminal is brought to justice in Eichmann's
case it took 15 years since he had
gone into hiding when he was ultimately found
exposed to the obloquy of mankind and executed
then comes this punchline neither the passage of
time nor the distance of asylum saved him
these facts are worth bearing in mind indeed
neither the passage of time nor the distance
of asylum shall save our people and if
you want a little foretaste of a kind
of hellishness that shall not be eternally relieved
you need only turn to Zechariah in the
12th chapter which describes the response of Jews
when they shall see him whom they have
pierced and mourn for him as one mourns
for one's only begotten son and be in
bitterness as one is in bitterness for one's
firstborn their mourning shall be relieved but what
of the mourning of those who shall see
him whom they have pierced after they have
passed into an eternity in which no correction
can be made there needs to be a
message spoken to the Jewish people in this
final generation and if it shall not be
spoken by the people of the Holy Spirit
by whom then shall it be brought neither
the passage of time nor the distance of
asylum saved him Micah 6-2 Hosea 12
-2 the Lord hath a controversy with his
people Israel and who is there among modern
Jews today who has even an iota of
awareness that God has such a controversy and
who will ever know it from the swagger
and esteem by which the Jewish community continues
to hold itself how much do we in
our own well-meaning efforts confirm them in
their self-sufficient and present alienation from God
by flattering their present Judaism by imitating or
emulating it is not our most serious mistake
revealed in reference to quote and unquote completed
Jews as if our only one omission omission
was the failure to acknowledge the messianic credentials
of Jesus you forgot a little something look
here's what it says in the scriptures Jesus
is the Messiah of Israel oh hey that's
right friends this is not conversion this is
biblical bookkeeping and the result is sadly to
be seen merely to establish the link of
seeing the fulfillment of prophecy is not necessarily
accepting Christ or coming to him as a
sinner needing a savior the sob father I
have sinned against thee is that alone which
is answered by the father's kiss and many
of us who have not received that kiss
because we have not cried that cry reveal
it in our own impoverished and loveless Christian
lives such shallow conversions leaves us resembling the
Pharisee who thought himself a big sport to
condescend to have Jesus to dinner isn't that
the spirit by which most men accept Jesus
not having experienced much forgiveness he was incapable
of loving much and even murmured about the
great sinner who lavished Jesus' feet with her
tears and filled the room with the fragrance
of her outpoured love our impatience with each
other the short shrift we give each other
even as Jewish believers and messianic leaders belies
the lovelessness which is concealed in the guise
of being busy about the Lord's business but
there's much more that hangs on this great
question than the Jewish acknowledgement of their chronic
ages old rejection of God more than their
own redemption is involved in this great question
glorious enough as their redemption is seeing that
it will be life brought back from the
dead there's a scripture that says God was
in Christ reconciling the world to himself and
the final revelation of God's glory to unbelieving
mankind will be in the reconciliation of those
who have had the longest and bitterest history
of enmity between themselves I can't think of
a greater demonstration of the glory of Christ
in earth than that an Israeli and an
Arab shall clutch each other in the love
of the Messiah I prophesize
and this is no radical utterance a fool
will tell you that blood shall flow in
the streets of this city and every major
city in America and in the world as
we come to the final explosion of what
has been building a crescendo of hatred and
bitterness and third world groups in the colored
peoples of the earth the downtrodden, the deprived
we had a little preview in the shutting
out of the lights in New York City
when that particular segment of the population went
berserk to smash windows and to loot and
to steal only a foretaste of what shall
be experienced wholesale unless this bitterness is reconciled
at the cross of Christ Jesus some of
you may know that though my book Ben
Israel begins with the chapter describing my experience
in Dachau a quarter of a century ago
as a Jewish GI going to this terrible
concentration camp hating a people that I thought
I could never look in the face the
Germans that God has given me as a
converted Jew a great passion and love for
the same people much of our activity is
in Germany preaching a message of reconciliation as
a Jew who has been reconciled to his
God now enjoining Lutherans and nominal religionists also
so to be reconciled both to their brothers
in a broken fragmented body of Christ and
also to our God the reconciliation of German
and Jew I think is one of the
profoundest themes of God for the end of
the age but how shall the Jew forgive
the German until he first sees that he
crucified the son of God even as he
was himself crucified and thereby reap what he
has sown having therefore no basis whatsoever for
any presumed moral superiority or presumed innocence no
Jew will ever be reconciled to a German
in his heart until he finds himself broken
and sobbing for the magnitude of his own
guilt and implication in the death of the
Holy One of Israel whom you slew and
hung on a tree when the magnitude of
that shall break upon the Jewish soul that
we have killed God so also shall the
magnitude of the Holocaust and the crimes against
men the crimes of men against us also
find a basis for forgiveness for he who
has been forgiven much, loves much how shall
we understand and the Jew understand the enormity
of that until he has first acknowledged the
dispersion to the Holocaust as the fifth judgment
of God for unspeakable transgression we don't have
to slap ourselves on the back that we're
Brooklyn Jews who know how to play stickball
and love pastrami, it's a statement unto our
shame that we have been cast out of
the land of our fathers and have become
a curse, a byword a hiss and a
proverb to all the places to which we
have been driven God has a controversy with
his people for thus saith the Lord if
they shall confess their iniquity I'm reading from
Leviticus the 26th chapter 40th through 43rd verses
if they shall confess their iniquity and the
iniquity of their fathers and that they also
have walked contrary unto me if then their
uncircumcised hearts be humbled as they then accept
of the punishment of their iniquity and acknowledge
it as just and righteous altogether and can
speak what David spoke in the Psalms against
you and you only have I sinned and
done that which is evil in your sight
so that you are justified in your sentence
and faultless in your judgment.
Dear friends my Jewish people need to know
that they died not because that they were
Jews but because they were not Jewish enough.
Though God be fulfilling the purposes of his
own counsel and will this does not absolve
men from the responsibility they have as willing
instruments in evil here's what many of us
are telling Jewish people listen you didn't kill
Jesus he was foreordained of the father to
die for our sins so listen don't let
this bother you you were just an instrumentality
it's really the Romans pilot he had to
die so cool it.
Listen to these words children though God be
fulfilling the purposes of his own counsel and
will this does not absolve men from the
responsibility they have as willing instruments in evil
that's true for the Jews as it pertains
to the death of their Messiah as it
is for the Germans as it pertains to
the Holocaust of the Jews.
God says it needs be that there be
evil in the world but woe unto him
by whom it comes.
The Jews are just as culpable in the
atrocity against God as the German in his
atrocity against him.
One writer puts it this way.
Is man's responsibility to be nullified and evaded
because God's eternal counsels are inviolable although on
the surface they may appear to align with
man's atrocious wickedness is his responsibility to be
ignored or thrown back on God because his
insupportably wicked act can be viewed as in
accordance with and even of assistance to God's
eternal purposes God's eternal purposes were fulfilled in
the shedding of the Messiah's blood but it
is yet needful for Jewish people to acknowledge
as a people their implication and their guilt
in being the willing instrument in performing it.
All hands were implicated in the Savior's blood
and on all hands it lies unless shelter
be sought under it.
Matthew 27 24-26 When Pilate saw that
he could prevail nothing, but that rather a
tumult was made, he took water and washed
his hands before the multitude saying, I am
innocent of the blood of this just man.
See ye to it.
Then answered all the people and said His
blood be on us and on our children
Then released he Barabbas unto them and when
he had scourged Jesus he delivered him to
be crucified John 19 10-11 Then said
Pilate unto him Speakest thou not unto me?
knowest thou not that I have power to
crucify thee and have power to release thee?
Jesus answered Hear the words of the Lord
himself Thou couldst have no power at all
except it were given thee from above therefore
he that delivereth me unto thee hath the
greater sin We've held up our Bibles from
time to time in the course of these
meetings and reaffirmed again and again how much
devoted we are to the word of God
Are you still as devoted?
Tell me, has the controversy been settled?
Or is it possible that the same evil
heart in their fathers which gave up Jehovah
for idols slew their own prophets rejected the
Messiah as well as the Gospel through his
blood is in them still?
Why is it that man's obdurate and proud
heart will never face up to the record
as it really stands and as it inevitably
one day will face us Revelations 6 16
-17 Hide us from the wrath of the
Lamb for the great day of his wrath
is come and who shall be able to
stand He came as the Lamb of God
meek and lowly but the world and my
people have yet to experience the wrath of
the Lamb.
There's a book that I often quote in
my messages written by the greatest Jewish writer
on the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel in which he
described the history of his own Jewish community
in Central Europe which somehow by dint of
circumstance was saved the horror that had come
on the Jews of the great cities of
Germany, Austria, and Poland and they thought that
somehow they would be spared the terrible horror
and that this too shall pass I don't
know what it is about us Jews we
are so such inveterate optimists always this too
shall pass until one day they heard the
peculiar rumbling the strange shaking of the earth
and their faces grew stricken and sure enough
on the horizon great clouds of dust and
as they came closer they began to see
the iron crosses and the swastikas as a
group of German soldiers and equipment came and
took over their town day by day new
edicts were put up on the walls and
Jews were required to leave their dwelling places
and move to a certain walled up ghetto
and there they hoped that somehow they would
survive to the end of the war but
one day there was a new edict put
up on the wall, tomorrow morning at sunrise
every Jew is required to be at the
marketplace by the train station with only such
things as they can personally carry well what
a furious activity that night as they dug
holes in the basement and the backyards and
buried their heirlooms thinking that they would return
one day to regain them and how pitiful
was the scene described as they stood out
there in the early morning sun the children
clutching the legs of the parents with trembling
as they looked at the great open cattle
cars waiting to receive them into which they
were systematically herded and shut in for days
on end without water, without food and asphyxiating
blackness rumbling to their deaths they knew not
what he describes how these teenage kids fornicated
in the darkness having a sense that this
might well be a last opportunity what a
symbolic picture that is even of stricken mankind
even now fornicating in dark places as they
go to their doom without any knowledge of
eternal burnings.
Wiesel describes how the train came finally to
a shutter and a stop but not before
a certain woman had fallen into a coma
and grown hysterical and would wake up from
this condition and shriek, fire, she said, I
see fire and they so got infuriated at
the hearing of the word that they punched
her into unconsciousness and she would recover again
and cry out, fire, I see fire and
they again would beat her but when the
train finally came to a halt, the first
thing that they sensed before the doors were
even opened they smelled a strange acrid smell
that even penetrated the filth of their own
excrement and sure enough when the doors burst
open the flickering light of a gas, of
a trough of gasoline of fire was waiting
to receive the infants that were plucked half
dead out of the arms of their mothers
and immediately thrown into the fire and the
men were sent off in one direction and
the women in the other into the oven
I mention this not to touch your sentiment
but because Wiesel relates how a man had
come to that community only some months before
who had escaped from a concentration camp and
had tried to warn them and how they
beat this man from them that he was
an ungainly character, they didn't want to hear
what he had to say his words were
frightening, they pushed him from him, mankind doesn't
want to face truth there's a son that
needs to complete the messianic task that had
been left undone by the first son and
I tell you that the spirit of God
has best be upon him God has best
anoint him to open the eyes of the
blind and to heal the broken hearted and
set the captives free and to proclaim the
acceptable year of the Lord that's when Jesus
rolled up the scriptures and gave it back
to the minister because he did not finish
the verse which is left for us to
finish the acceptable year of the Lord and
the day of his soon coming vengeance, no
wonder that Phineas said that in the day
that the church loses its sense of the
power of hell in that day it will
have condemned itself to be a weak and
flabby defective instrument of God if we're going
to save a Jewish people from fire it
shall be only because our own hearts have
been inflamed by God to preach to them
words which are not pleasant to hear but
needful to understand if we could say that
the volumes of shed Jewish blood could equal
the quality of the divine blood that was
poured out if we could say that their
human suffering and wretchedness could equal the anguish
and torment that he had to suffer then
perhaps could they have purchased in their ignorance
and unreconciledness a salvation independent of his own
if and you're going to hear increasing numbers
of men say that Jews have no need
of Jesus because they already have a covenantal
relationship with God which saves them you watch
as this heresy becomes more and more manifest
but there's an apostle Paul who said that
this gospel is the power of God unto
salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew
first and also to the Gentile but there's
no believing to their first repenting because believing
is not the function of intellect, believing is
the function of repenting because repentance opens to
God that accessibility to man by which the
foolishness of the gospel can be breathed by
the spirit of God into his soul I
did not come to God by intellectual deduction
but in my sleep the spirit of God
penetrating a heart that was broken put the
understanding there there is nothing for us Jewish
people but to own the death of the
Messiah and by that acknowledgement making it our
salvation but if we plead exemption in any
measure we are lost without hope we are
as Jews unwilling to face the implications of
it as Germans are to face the implications
of the Holocaust and the reason is the
same a concealed lie hidden and ignored mounts
and becomes too hideous to examine if we
but once acknowledge that what about the rest
of our lies and our deceptions the whole
foundation of our false life topples all is
vain we are undone you know what I
say to that I'm concluding
God is waiting for the false foundations of
the lives of modern men to topple and
collapse and when they shall fall to their
first acknowledgement all that is vain and false
shall fall with it a broken spirit, a
broken and contrite heart broken down with sorrow
for sin humbly penitent he will not despise
repent and believe ye the gospel repentance toward
God faith toward Jesus Christ is possible at
last then will I teach transgressors your ways
and sinners shall be converted unto thee, David
said and how our hearts cry for the
day when the Jewish people intended to be
a nation of priests and a light in
the world will no longer be the fabricators
of pornography and modern culture and all of
its filth and defilement but will instead be
the promulgators of the word of God then
will I teach transgressors your ways and sinners
shall be converted unto thee after I myself
have been deeply converted after the woe is
me I am undone, comes the cry of
God who will go for me and send
us he will in the name of the
Lord in the way of brokenness and humility
without the characteristic arrogance and disdain that marks
our Jewish attitude toward Gentiles whose feet we
are now ready to wash for he who
has been forgiven much loves much when our
people shall no more deceive themselves nor be
deceived and this is my conclusion attributing to
men and to circumstances what must be attributed
only to God as judgment when they shall
acknowledge that his judgments are just and righteous
all together when they will have glimpsed the
magnitude of their sins in the magnitude of
their suffering when they will have glimpsed the
magnitude of their sins in the magnitude of
their suffering then shall their warfare be accomplished
then shall we speak comfortably to Jerusalem comfort
ye, comfort ye my people saith your God
speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto
her that her warfare is accomplished that her
iniquity is pardoned for she hath received of
the Lord's hand double for all her sins
then the ransomed of the Lord shall return
and come to Zion with singing and everlasting
joy shall be upon their heads and they
shall obtain joy and gladness for sorrow and
sighing shall flee away I have been a
critic of the charismatic technique and manipulation of
feigning a similitude of joy by repeated choruses
children, joy is the spontaneous overflow of the
truly redeemed heart that has recognized its terrible
transgressions of God against God and has received
total forgiveness and release I
wanted to just take a minute to conclude
this with a very special invitation how many
people are there in this dark audience and
I can't see very many of you who
are of Catholic backgrounds Polish, German, European who
have been wearing and bearing and have a
sense of a heaviness in their heart they
have not been able to articulate it perhaps
it has been toward the Jewish people and
because of it, it may have resulted in
some kind of a sentimental response to Jews
rather than that which is truly spiritual how
many would like once and for all to
experience a kind of relief and to break
the connection with the sins of the fathers
I'm going to ask you to stand right
where you're sitting my second invitation is to
my Jewish brothers who are in this audience
who would like just to stand where they
are at the front of this auditorium, would
you come forward or stand if you're on
the platform and face our non-Jewish brothers
and sisters there's a reason why God waked
me at 3 o'clock in the morning
in Germany to tell me that we were
to conduct a communion service before the 400
Germans before whom we had been ministering that
first there was to be confession before there
could be communion and I planted a Jewish
brother on both aisles and Germans came out
of their seats with men who could not
understand each other's languages and embraced each other
as an act of forgiveness both extended and
received both ways then they came up and
received communion served by myself as a Jew
and by a German brother with me I
want you to extend your hands toward each
other and say amen to a prayer that
I'm going to pray to lift the weight
of the centuries the filthy gloom and darkness
in which dire spirits have had opportunity to
corrupt and to pollute in the name of
Jesus and in the power of your blood
we sever ourselves we set ourselves free from
the adverse inheritance of our fathers we are
absolved of guilt and implication in the crimes
of our fathers against the Jewish people and
maybe for our Jewish brethren who are here
though they be believers and who have never
acknowledged for themselves the sins of their fathers
precious God in Jesus name forgive us Lord
the sins mighty God of our fathers Lord
who have rejected your word in every manner
that you sent it through the prophets through
Moses the written word and the word made
flesh we have been rejecters and slayers and
persecutors of all that you have sought to
send us as the message of your salvation
Lord we ask you to forgive us for
our cowardly hearts that would have chosen Barabbas
rather than Jesus and now we choose you
again Lord and affirm our standing with you
and willing by that also to suffer all
reproach in calling men to a true reckoning
to a true repentance to a true conversion
we release our brothers and sisters precious God
from every weight of guilt of historic and
ancestral sin we are reconciled mighty God in
your blood at the cross of Christ Jesus
we all acknowledge that we are sinners saved
by your grace and freshly put our hands
again under your outpoured blood mighty God wash
us mighty God and make us such instruments
going forth in the boldness of God by
the Spirit to speak to this final generation
the end time message that shall bring again
the cry what must we do that we
might again say repent