It's our pleasure to introduce Arthur Katz, who
is now directing Evangelism in New York City
for the American Board of Missions to the
Jews, a great organization that has done great
work to reach Jewish people with the message
of the Messiah.
God bless you, Arthur Katz, that you share
what God has put upon your heart.
Would you stand with me, please, as we
read out of the word of God?
31st chapter of Jeremiah, starting with the 31st
verse.
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that
I will make a new covenant with the
house of Israel and with the house of
Judah, not according to the covenant that I
made with their fathers in the day that
I took them by the hand to bring
them out of the land of Egypt, which
my covenant they break, although I was a
husband unto them, saith the Lord.
But this shall be the covenant that I
will make with the house of Israel.
After those days, saith the Lord, I will
put my law in their inward parts, and
write it in their hearts, and will be
their God, and they shall be my people.
And they shall teach no more every man
his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying,
Know the Lord.
For they shall all know me, from the
least of them unto the greatest of them,
saith the Lord.
For I will forgive their iniquity, and I
will remember their sin no more.
Precious holy God, bless us now by thy
great Spirit, Lord.
Have thy perfect way with thy people, through
thy servants purge our lips.
O God, and fashion the words that you
would have spoken, and deeply touch thy people.
Have thy way now, Lord.
We bless thy name, and praise thee, and
glorify thee, Jesus, because we ask it in
thy great name.
Praise God.
Please be seated.
I think if I had to find a
word to express my single great burden as
a Jewish man, it's that my people might
know God.
That the knowledge of God might go forth
over the face of the earth.
As a former academician, high school teacher, university
graduate, and laboring seven years with students for
knowledge, I know that there's knowledge in knowledge.
There's a deep kind of knowing of God
which can save the world.
Unless we know God in spirit and in
truth, we perish.
They shall all know me from the least
of them unto the greatest of them, saith
the Lord.
I staggered for thirty-four, thirty-five years
without knowing God.
The first conviction of my young adolescent life
as a Jewish young man growing up in
New York City was that God was the
most preposterous fiction that had ever been foisted
upon a gullible mankind.
And I felt really emancipated that my life
was to be freed at so early an
age from notions as tired and as worn
as that.
I was an obedient Jewish boy in a
certain sense and went to Hebrew school daily
where I was prepared for a single ceremony
at the age of thirteen to oblige my
mother that she might discharge her sense of
Jewish obligation.
But I saw no evidence for the living
God anywhere.
My attitude toward religion, both Jewish and Gentile,
was a pox on both your houses.
I was a restless, seeking, hungry man.
I could already sense, even before I had
words to express it, that somehow the world
had betrayed some deep design for our life.
That we were not truly human.
That we were just batting at the air
and going through all kinds of mechanical motions,
just only too happy to feed our faces
and to compromise and merely sustain ourselves on
a physical level, but that that was not
life.
I didn't know what life was, but I
knew that somehow it had to be abundant.
It had to be deep.
It had to be something total.
And I began a career as a high
school dropout at the age of sixteen, seeking
for life, and that more abundantly.
The name Jesus was among the most alien
names that I knew.
It was a curse word.
It was something that I had delegated only
to the Gentiles.
It had nothing to do with us as
Jews.
I knew of Jewish people who had crossed
the street rather than let the shadow of
the cross from the church fall upon them.
They considered it a curse.
And indeed that's what the name Christianity and
Christ and the cross has meant to Jewish
people for 1900 years.
It's been a curse of oppression, exploitation, forced
conversions, exile, pillage, rape, looting, and death.
How is God going to reach the people
who have been steeped in that kind of
tragic history and let them to know that
the Messiah has come and in Him is
life?
It takes a miracle.
And that miracle was wrought in my life
six years ago when I was brought first
to a place of death.
I don't know why, but the word death
is just ringing in my heart this morning.
Death, death, death.
And I may be misquoting the scripture, but
I know that there's a place in there
where Paul speaks of death working in me
that life might be worked in you.
I came to God as an act of
death and every step in my life in
God since has been from death unto life.
Death working in me that life might go
forth into the world.
And Gentile Christian people occasionally come to me
and say, What is it about you Jewish
believers?
You're so zealous.
You're so completely caught up in the things
of God.
Every Jew I know is either in full
-time service or among the most active people
in their congregations.
What is it about you Jews?
Well, I think one thing is that we're
Jews.
Very peculiar people and people who are out
of joint and out of place in the
world.
And there's no one who knows that better
than Jews who have succeeded at the world's
game and are laden with honors of every
description and no one has to tell them
that inside they're convinced that they're hollow men.
We've won every award that the world has
in science, in culture, in music, in literature
and we know that we're empty men and
we're going to know it in this generation
with such severity and such distress that our
collective cry is going to go up before
God.
In a certain sense my sensibilities are jarred
and tamed by the great travail and affliction
that's coming upon the world and that I've
had occasion to see even in Chicago.
But on the other hand I rejoice because
I know that it's death which worketh life.
And the same thing which took place in
my life and it's the only reason why
my testimony is worth hearing because it's a
perfect reflection of how modern men and Jews,
by the way, are modern men par excellence.
They have created the modern man.
They've created the modern world.
They've given this world its tone, its content,
its ideologies, its attitude, its culture, its lifestyle.
All you have to do is think of
the great terminal thinkers in the 20th century.
You come up with names like Karl Marx
and Sigmund Freud and if you want to
bring it right up to date just throw
in Jerry Rubin and A.B. Hoffman and
you've got Jewish men who are molders and
shakers of the world and of cities.
It was just a couple of months ago
when the four students were killed at Kent
State that I was here at the University
of Illinois at Chicago.
I'd just come from the University of Illinois
at Urbana where a curfew was called and
there were the troops and the jeeps and
it was like a wartime atmosphere.
I could hardly believe that this was happening
in an American city.
Our meetings had to be rescheduled because of
the curfew and the strange atmosphere in which
things were happening.
Then we came to Chicago where a noon
meeting had been called at the Chicago campus
of the University of Illinois and that day
they closed the campus for fear of violence
and destruction.
So in a sense our right to the
amphitheater around which this whole university faculty was
denied us.
And the strike committee had itself circulated leaflets
that day announcing that they were going to
have a rally at that same amphitheater at
noon.
So there's a conflict.
And we sought out the strike committee and
although the school was closed I don't know
how this happened a building had been opened
to them the architecture building and they were
using the basement as their headquarters and I
walked into an atmosphere that I could hardly
believe.
It was like a scene out of Franz
Kafka or some existentialist writer or some way
out TV strip and there were these students
in every state of dress and undress stripped
to the waist with their hair strewn over
their faces and Indian type bands around their
foreheads and arms.
Some were wearing T-shirts with the letters
MEDIC stamped out carrying first aid kits.
It was a wartime atmosphere and it was
an intoxicating exuberant spirit that was possessing these
young people that they themselves knew that they
had power and that they had closed down
this campus they could well close down the
establishment they could well close down the world.
I tell you that's a heady and intoxicating
spirit and you're not ready to handle such
a spirit at the age of 18, 19
or 20.
And we told them that we had the
legal right of that amphitheater but we understood
that the school was closed so all that
we would desire of them is if they
would give us five to ten minutes on
their program.
They hardly knew what we represented but they
put us down as speaker.
Our cats.
And I had a sit for two hours
in the boiling sun listening to speeches of
the kind which I myself was making seven
and eight years ago as a Marxist left
winger and radical and I tell you it
was a crushing bore.
It was so utterly inane.
It was so bereft of life.
It was so ceremonial.
And I was struck as I had never
been struck before that what this radical causes
for these young people is a substitute religion.
But religion in its worst form and if
you sat in churches and heard ceremonial talking
and just maybe in parenthesis if you sat
at full gospel meetings and heard ceremonial talking
and there are other places where this goes
on because the pure is always commingled with
the other you know what a tremendous weight
that is on our spirits.
It's only the spirit which brings us life.
And I would see these guys make speeches
one after another full of slogans full of
smart clever things full of heavy phrases of
destroying the destroyers and down with the imperialists
and everyone exulting in their slogans and finally
after two hours of this they said now
we have a speaker his name is, and
they list on these sheets Art Katz he's
got some religious faith Are you here Katz?
So I staggered out of the stand blinded
by the sun almost suffering sun stroke my
spirit crushed and I grabbed that microphone and
I looked up into the stands and there
were these bodies draped in every imaginable posture
it might have been the kind of scene
that had taken place in Rome in its
days of worst debauchery and there were lunch
bags and wrappers and leaflets and every kind
of refuse and litter strewn in those stands
and there were these kids some of them
half naked draped over each other it was
a scene that I'd seen not too long
ago like that at Greenwich Village where they
were just sitting on the rim of that
Washington Square fountain and as I squinted my
eyes I thought that these were these are
snakes writhing and squirming this must be the
pit of hell and I looked up and
I didn't know what to speak as I
don't know what to speak to you now
as I never know what to speak but
I praise God for his word that says
that he gives us all utterance and I
began saying something like for two hours I've
been sitting here and listening to your speeches
and I want you to know that as
a Jewish man I've been greatly concerned with
the questions of righteousness and social justice all
my life long but I have to say
this also that you've been another reminder to
me of just how inept and just how
ceremonial and shallow our human solutions are mere
words without any real substance and without life
here you've been lamenting the death of four
students but it's only been a shabby sentimental
lament if you're really concerned with death you'll
be the first to see the death which
is in your own throat and your own
mouth your shepherders of death yourself you're quick
to point the fingers of accusation with brims
full of self-righteous indignation at the exploiter
and the imperialist but slow to see the
imperialist and slow to see the exploiter within
you know how come I was able to
say those things?
because that's exactly the revelation God gave me
about my own heart and life six years
before I had said the same slogan and
I'd been filled with the same self-righteous
indignation not realizing that I was the worst
and the least slogans are not going to
save us not even Christian slogans and I
wondered why it was as a young child
of God four and five years ago six
years ago I used to somehow flinch when
I would hear Christians say Christ is the
answer why did I flinch?
and in a sense I knew it was
true and only recently God revealed to me
why I was flinching it's because it's a
slogan slogans are not going to save the
world even the slogan that Christ is the
answer is not going to save the world
but when it no longer is a slogan
when it's an authentic reality when it's something
that's creative in our heart and life Christ
is the answer and God wants us to
shift gears from slogans to reality from doctrines
to reality we've got all the right doctrines
but we don't have the right reality and
if you would have the right reality I
would not have had to wait 35 years
to have discovered that my God lives because
I wasn't an insulated Jew holed up in
a ghetto in Brooklyn I was a wandering
Jew like so many of my people and
my Swedish brother broken off from the mainstream
and just floating like like flotsam and jetsam
over the face of the earth to California
on six different occasions looking for a city
young, stupid, romantic thinking that if I found
a certain city my soul would be at
ease and only to find after city after
city that it's only it's one universal rat
race and hardly makes a difference what the
accident of culture or language is but a
city is not going to do it no
special vocation is going to do it and
sorrow upon sorrow and tragedy upon tragedy no
human relationship is going to do it either
and oh oh oh for the broken lives
and bodies that have had the misfortune of
crossing mine in the first 35 years of
my life when I like some fiend was
ready to suck blood and nutriment and life
out of them there's not a woman made
who can answer to that need God bless
you precious ladies and there's not a man
made that can answer to that need for
you and we're killing each other and cursing
each other and destroying each other because of
our terrible disappointment in each other because we're
seeking for that relationship that's totally deep totally
engaging that would mean life that only God
himself can bring and we're making of each
other gods and we weren't designed that way
so I lived in a Christian country quote
unquote for 34 years and not a single
Christian ever spoke to me about the gospel
of Jesus Christ I traveled this country one
side and down the other in every mode
of transportation you can name including hick-hiking
and not a single Christian ever put in
my hands a single piece of literature or
a tract I didn't know a single thing
in the Bible and I'm amused or is
it saddened now when Christian people come to
me and say oh you must have a
wonderful background in the Old Testament being Jewish
and I have to confess with shame and
embarrassment that the first scripture I ever read
was out of the New Testament I'm learning
now the things of my heritage and my
ancestry thanks to the kindness and the mercy
and the grace of God we Jewish people
are in ignorance and in darkness and I
was a university graduate and I didn't know
that Jesus Christ was the Greek name for
Yeshua HaMashiach Jesus I didn't know that the
New Testament was a Jewish book and that
all of its characters are Jewish I didn't
know that Christianity was the fulfillment of our
Jewish faith and that there's only one God
and one way and one book and one
salvation and it's the God of Abraham Isaac
and Jacob I thought that the Gentiles had
their religion and we Jews had ours and
both equally bloodless a culture only but one
day seven years ago as a man who
has died say of death which work is
life when I had come to the other
end of myself it took 34 years it
took succeeding to fail did you know that?
nothing fails like success I'm turning it around
because I who had been a high school
dropout and who had brought my mother gray
hair and who was distressed still waiting for
some happiness and satisfaction from her son finally
had that day come when I was a
high school teacher I was a professional I
was a university graduate and when I obtained
all the things for which I had been
in hot pursuit all my life long I
realized then finally you're finished, Katz you have
nothing you are nothing you have nothing to
communicate to your students but your grief for
a world that's dying and what are your
slogans?
and what are your ideologies?
and what are your anxious phrases about human
brotherhood when you yourself are quite able to
grind the heel in the face of one
close to you all the while speaking the
right slogans you know what I feel about
my students?
they weren't so innocent they weren't so different
from the adult generation outside them that our
little classroom was not just an innocent classroom
it was a microscopic universe and every great
passion that rages in the world that brings
death was raging in that room see it
hardly matters whether it's business success whether it's
pursuit of nations whether it's economic advantage or
just the obtaining of a grade we're human
all too human and in my 34th year
I came to this realization nothing that we
have will avail psychiatry is not going to
do it legislation is not going to do
it Marxism is not going to do it
no human program is going to do it
education is not going to do it we've
got to become some kind of new creature
but I didn't know how so I took
a year's leave of absence from teaching and
began a trip that lasted 14 months I
began it as an atheist seeking for philosophy
what else have modern men to seek although
I had exhausted them all and I began
to have the strangest series of encounters in
the course of the 14 months of travel
I remember gentile men that picked me up
off the side of a road in Switzerland
I was pitch hiking by the way we
teachers are not that well paid that we
can travel for 14 months in any other
fashion I was a bum traveling with a
knapsack living out of that for 14 months
I was a foreboding angry looking sight having
learned what it means to stand for two
and three hours in the drizzle and the
rain by the side of the road and
a man picked me up one day in
a brand new car and didn't just wait
behind the wheel and give me the come
on hurry up sign I'm doing you a
favor he got out of the car and
greeted me at the side of the road
beaming from ear to ear as if I
was doing him the favor you know what
my first suspicion was I'd been around and
this guy took my filthy rucksack and tossed
it in the backseat of his car when
I thought he'd hit the brim with poetry
I winced for him and I looked at
his face he hadn't even noticed I thought
what manner of man is this and he
bade me sit down on a front seat
and made me to feel like the exalted
guest as if I was doing him the
favor and you know people you can't get
someone to feel that way by singing it
and he turned and looked at me as
we drove off and he could see I
was not a high school kid it was
well past the tourist season and he asked
me in German he said why are you
traveling as I could I tried to explain
in my broken way I said I'm a
modern man what I should have said is
I'm the modern man I'm modern man personified
I've drunk deeply from the fountains of modern
life where is it the fountains it's a
cistern that's trapped and I said I'm seeking
for a foundation to my life my foundations
have crumbled and for some reason I don't
know why I told the stranger I told
him I'm Jewish now I didn't share that
with most Gentiles because most Gentiles they grunt
or they nod or they go silent or
they scratch their heads or worse but you
know what happened to this man when I
just conveyed that little piece of information he
began to glow and radiate like a neon
tube his face literally began to shine oh
and he insisted right away that we stop
for refreshments at his expense for which I
was grateful and we had a conversation that
day at that Swiss coffee house that I'll
never forget and I'm so grateful for this
opportunity now and I didn't seek it I
praise God for that no looming and dealing
I was a wheeler and dealer for 34
years a pox on that to be free
in Christ is to be free indeed and
if God wants to bring something to pass
He will and if He doesn't want to
bring it to pass I don't want it
either I think God wants you to know
this because many of you ask Art how
do you witness to a Jewish person Art
how do I share the things of God
with my Jewish friends and I want you
to know and I know that you do
know there's no mechanical way there's a precious
holy spirit of God who knows that Jew
better than he knows himself and you know
what that man did with me that day
he kept his mouth shut and he listened
I don't say he listened he heard hearing
is a deep act of love and I
found myself pouring out to this entire stranger
the content and burden of my life I
shared nothing every single grimy detail that I
had not shared with mother wife, friends I
was sharing with this strange Gentile I talked
to him about cats what are you doing
as if a dam had burst out it
came and he wasn't gingerly holding up his
skirt for fear that it was going to
trail in the dirt he was reheating my
life into his it's painful but it's an
act of love we're so desperate to be
heard we're willing to pay twenty five dollars
for a half hour and we'll experience a
therapeutic effect just to be heard and when
I finished and I came to the end
of myself leaning back exhausted and world weary
and I looked at this man he wasn't
doing anything very special to look at I
said what did he say to me he
said are you going to tell me now
about philosophy big deal I've been an existentialist
a Marxist a pragmatist you name it and
I've wrestled with it and gone through it
is he going to tell me about ideologies
and mass movements and politics why my god
I belong to half a dozen organizations on
the attorney general's list I distributed leaflets and
carried packets when these kids still had pacifiers
when it was dangerous to be a radical
there's nothing new under the sun and this
man turned to me he said you know
Art what the world needs and I looked
with my arrogance I was very arrogant hoardy
angry safe skeptical I said watch and he
said what the world needs Art is for
men to watch one another sleep how did
he know how did he know that the
one great crushing burden of my life was
the inability of men to be reconciled to
each other my heart was broken because wherever
I looked I saw division and enmity and
strife students and teachers black and white Jew
and Gentile male and female husband and wife
wherever I looked rich and poor enmity and
division breaking and crushing the human race and
when he spoke that one line Art what
the world needs is for men to watch
one another sleep ooh something exploded in my
heart I felt pieces and smithereens and fragments
flying around inside my chest saliva began running
in my mouth there was an inner cry
that went up from my heart that said
Eureka catch this is it by a simple
spirit of humility and love the world could
be changed overnight without a drop of blood
being spilled and what have your ideologies and
philosophies brought mankind but contention suffering strife and
death and I had a vision in that
same moment of the arrogance of the arrogant
and the haughty peoples of the world humbling
themselves to wash the feet of the lowly
and the despised we're not going to take
three centuries of racial hatred in America and
divide the legislative program to overcome that please
tell Mr. O.
to hear the balance of the message we're
not going to take three centuries of racial
hatred in America and divide the legislative program
to overcome that and I remember when I
was a high school teacher and one of
my black brothers was at the other side
of the lunch table with me in the
school cafeteria and he said Art he said
all I want is the legal right to
sit opposite you and eat I said big
deal so you'll masticate your food on one
side and your guts will be churning within
you and I'll masticate my food on the
other side and shoot darts at you with
my eyes and you'll have your legal right
that kind of eating is death the kind
of eating that's life is the breaking of
bread in love see that's not going to
come by a piece of legislation that's going
to come by the washing of feet by
the humbling of the haughty and the arrogance
when we'll recognize that there's no man good
no not one that there isn't a good
guy and a bad guy we're all bad
guys there's no man good that's the knowledge
that the world needs lest we perish it's
the knowledge that came to the prophet Isaiah
when he was already in God's service he
was already a choice oracle he was already
the prince of the prophet but then he
caught a glimpse of God high and lifted
up and he cried out oy vey that's
Jewish oy vey my people have been beating
their chests for centuries crying oy vey for
the wrong thing but I'm waiting to hear
that one last great oy vey when my
Jewish people are going to have the experience
that the prophet Isaiah had and they're going
to catch a glimpse of God high and
lifted up his glory he's already filling the
temple no more slogans no more cliches no
more religion as culture but something deeply spiritual
something authentic out of the bosom and the
heart of the living God and they're going
to cry oy vey I'm undone I'm a
man of unclean lips and I live with
the people of unclean lips you'll never understand
yourself until you catch a glimpse of him
it's a double revelation it's the same revelation
that came to Job who spoke so eloquently
he was so righteous but when he caught
a glimpse of the living God before whose
creation we tremble he said I spoke once
I spoke twice but now I stop my
mouth I abhor myself and I repent in
dust and ashes and then God spoke to
Job's comforters the theologians the ones that have
all the slick and right answers my wrath
is kindled against thee because you've not spoken
as my servant Job has spoken there's only
one thing that I want to hear from
you my creation I want to hear oy
vey I'm undone I want to hear you
say you abhor yourselves that you spoke once
or twice but now you're going to stop
your mouth that's the only such thing in
the presence of the most high God the
world is choking on its arrogance and its
conceit and self righteous indignation and we're going
to kill each other that our programs might
be affected and literally we will that's the
spirit that the devil has been pouring out
over these great campuses so when I began
speaking that day to these kids and they
began to catch wind of what I was
saying cries began to come up around that
amphitheater how did he get the microphone what's
this got to do with the strike and
when I started preaching Jesus I heard the
cries give us Barabbas give us Barabbas the
day is not far off we're going to
hear also crucify them crucify them two worlds
are in collision people and we're right down
to the final showdown two kingdoms in collision
and how I wondered and how I was
perplexed as a young child of God when
I came back from Jerusalem 60 years ago
to take up my place in a Christian
Pentecostal congregation in California where's the persecution I
used to ask where's the persecution why this
couldn't be more comfy we're sitting right in
we're part of the establishment everything is nice
and pleasant we have a little fellowship among
ourselves and we go home where's the persecution
I never did experience it until God brought
me into this work with my own people
and I stood on a soapbox at Broadway
in 72nd Street New York and began preaching
the gospel I began to taste persecution but
I also began to taste the glory of
God that same night in Chicago of the
day that I'm describing to you I was
invited to speak at a great youth rally
at a Pentecostal church of a great Pentecostal
denomination and I sat on that platform hot
and sweaty and tired and dirty we had
been all afternoon talking with the students on
the grass my pants were stained I had
been sitting on my Bible and my Bible
was falling apart and I had a black
tape to hold the seams together and I
had a big black stripe down the back
of my pants and I hadn't hardly had
time to wash and to collect my thoughts
and senses and I looked on the platform
the platform was just laden with the sharpest
men of God with their double-breasted mod
suits and wide lapels and ties and well
cultivated sideburns and they were just real stiffy
this was my first and last time with
the Pope I looked out
on that audience and there were these beautiful
well-dressed middle-class kids their faces were
shined and scrubbed and every hair neatly in
place and they came to a good time
there was a good time spirit and I
got the signal I got a little poke
and I ought to get in the testimony
send them home rah rah rah get them
all fired up a little pep talk but
you know what happened to me as I
was sitting on that platform there was a
still small voice that kept saying over and
over again ought preach on the cross ought
preach on the cross ought preach on the
cross and I was arguing with God on
the platform I said Lord can't you see
this is not the time and the place
these kids have just come for a pep
talk the hour is late I can't see
even these kids holding their Bibles I'm confused
and I'm out of joints and in my
eyes I still have that burning image of
these kids with their hair strewn down over
their faces and their utterly perplexed and distraught
and these two images of two generations one
over the other I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm
I'm confused and I'm perplexed and I don't
have coherence I don't know what to say
I'm just a broken man ought preach on
the cross but this is a young audience
and I know the message you're troubling me
with I've never spoken it Lord because I
know you wanted me to show that the
cross is the one message of the whole
book it's an Old Testament message and that
I should begin in the Old Testament and
go into the new and that this is
only the kind of searching of the word
that only the deepest children of God would
enjoy this is the time if not the
place every human reckoning in the world says
no and they said Art we're going to
give you the service at 8 o'clock
but they didn't tell me they were going
to have a competition that night most favorite
pastor competition and they had this platform with
the last three top contestants and one guy
had 2,362 points the other guy had
2,122 and they got 50 points if
someone shined their shoes and 100 points or
someone cleaned their Sunday school rooms and they
were leading off these point totals and I
was dying dying dying then they finally called
on me gave me a nice little introduction
peppy and I just dragged my body and
you know the first words out of my
mouth were I cried out to God I
cried out to
God I cried out to God I cried
out to God God God God God
God God God God God
God
God God God God God
God God God God God God God God
God God God God to
tell you the things that have happened.
The cry of a student that came in
one night at one of these meetings with
a Van Dyke beard, a Catholic kid, and
he just, he stopped transfixed on the spot,
and he kept saying over and over again,
like a record with a needle stuck, oh,
he said, I'm unworthy to hear this.
I'm unworthy to hear this.
And when we had the hot question and
answer period later, and these guys were asking
snide questions in the back of the room,
he stood to us, reading and said, why
are you guys talking like this?
Can't you see God has come into our
midst to save?
When I gave that invitation, he was the
first to cry out with a loud voice,
and the meeting was over, he immediately fell
into my arms, saved to the uttermost.
You know what happened that night at the
Jewish Fraternity house?
Midnight, we picked up these kids, we've been
praying, they said, aunt, didn't something happen at
1030?
I said, how did you know?
Oh, we just censored now spirits.
From 6 to 1030, it was a war.
That's exactly what it was.
They said, but from 1030 on, they said,
something wonderful was happening.
I said, indeed it was.
The Holy Spirit of God fell in that
fraternity house.
All of the anger, and the rancor, and
the rage, and the animosity, and the egotism
was out.
They had spewed it out, and spewed it
out, and they had laughed, and they were
vexed.
I saw students in and out of the
meeting two, three times.
They left and up, and came back, and
left and up, and came back.
They couldn't break away.
And I said, I've been saying all night
to you that there's a living God seeking
you, and that Jesus is our Messiah, and
that if you'll call upon the name of
the Lord, He'll attest that this is His
Word, and that this is His salvation.
And we finally bowed our heads, and I
gave a prayer for salvation.
I heard a chorus of voices following me,
and when I looked up, I saw 10
to 15 of these Jewish intellectuals, in the
hearing of the gospel for the first time,
trembling and weeping, as the Spirit of God
came.
So now I'm back again at Chicago, standing
at that pulpit, and I was telling the
people my predicament.
I said, as I've been sitting here all
night on this platform, the Spirit of God
has been singing in my heart, I'll preach
on the cross, preach on the cross, and
I've been told to give the testimony.
I know this isn't the time and the
place for a lengthy message.
I said, let's look to the Lord now
for a moment.
And we prayed, and I asked God that
His will be fulfilled, and when we finished
praying, I said to these people, now I'm
going to take a vote.
How many of you people felt as you
prayed that I ought to give the testimony?
When I said take a vote, I looked
out of the corner of my eye, and
there was the pastor of the home church.
He just slipped into his seat, and he
had that thick look on his face.
I've seen it before, and he says, I'll
never invite a Jewish speaker again.
I said, how many people felt as they
prayed that I ought to give the testimony?
And one hand went up in the entire
500 people, one hand falteringly.
How many people think I ought to preach
on the cross?
The hands went up just all over that
room.
I took a deep breath, and I turned
to 1 Samuel 15, and I began reading
those scriptures, and immediately the weight lifted.
My head began to clear.
I felt unction and anointing, the Spirit of
God taking possession.
The words were going out with clarity, and
I saw through that message for 45 minutes
as if I had preached it a hundred
times.
And when I finished, I didn't have to
give an invitation.
No sentimentality, no playing on emotions, no loud,
raucous voices.
They just came broken, because it was an
invitation to death.
It was an invitation to discipleship, and I
so appreciated Derrick Prince's message yesterday on fasting,
and in my own very limited experience, I
know that every fast is a death.
There's no life without a death, and I
think God wants to brand that upon our
souls.
He's not called us to a culture, and
how easy it is, who knows it better
than we do, to take the sacred things
of God and to make of it a
religion and a culture.
Hasn't that been the tragic history of our
race?
Hasn't that been the tragic history of Christianity?
Hasn't that been the tragic history of the
Pentecostal movement?
And I pray God that that does not
become the tragic history of the full gospel
businessmen.
That God keep us in all purity in
the Spirit and in the faith.
That we shudder with revulsion at the slightest
introduction of anything that's not of the Spirit
of God.
That we're ready to receive the death day
by day that life might go forth from
us and through us to a world that's
dying.
I'm going to stop with this now.
We just got an invitation to come to
New York to direct the work of the
American Board of Missions to the Jews to
two and a half million Jews in New
York City.
It's so utterly foolish.
I'm so utterly ill-equipped.
I'm such a Johnny-come-lately wet behind
the ears.
I'm so ignorant about the scriptures and the
things of God.
I need to be instructed.
And God is bringing us to a very
hard place.
My own mother is in that city and
she's not believed.
And she's whammed the door in my face
and called me mad, though she loved me
when I was a radical and an atheist.
What is it going to take to bring
in the light of God, the news that
our Messiah has come, to two and a
half million of our Jewish people?
I tell you people that this is not
just another ethnic ministry.
This is the chosen people of God.
This is God's Israel.
New York is the great Babylon.
This is the center of the publishing industry,
the TV industry.
This is where the great opinions and the
culture is shaped that goes forth all over
the world and Jews are at the heart
of it.
I came to Chicago for one great reason,
two great reasons, that my brother who came
with me from New York might be healed
in his back.
And he received that at the Kathryn Kuhlman
meeting.
And my other great burden was that God
might touch your heart to pray for the
Jewish people.
This is the last decade.
I don't speak that with any great personal
authority.
I don't know if the world would go
on beyond the 1970s, but the thing that
God has inscribed in my heart is this
is the last decade when we're going to
be able to work unhindered for the kingdom.
And when this decade ends and perhaps earlier,
that night will come when no man can
work.
Are you preparing yourself for adversity and crisis?
Are you preparing yourself for persecution and for
distress?
I've already heard from a nice middle-class
girl in a Christian liberal arts college who
looked at me without dotting an eyelash and
said, Art, I believe that God is telling
me to kill you.
And that scripture came to mind, the day
will come that they will kill us and
claim that they're doing God a service.
We're not going to challenge the power of
this world system.
We're not going to challenge and crack through
to the center of world Jewry without there
being a great adverse reaction and a response
and great persecution as it came upon God's
apostolic children of old.
Are you preparing yourself now?
I want to know how to fast now.
I want to know how to prevail before
God now.
I want to know how to live unto
God now and not unto our cat now.
That when that day comes that God has
a prepared vessel through whom he can speak
to bring the word of life in great
power and great unction to a people who
are dying.
Will you bow your heads with me now?
Great living God, God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob.
Lord God, how long have you grieved and
how long have you mourned for this peculiar
people who you fashioned for yourself to minister
unto you, to be a nation of priests
and a light unto the world, to be
a people who would cleanse the temple, to
be a people who would bring sick sacrifice
of praise from their lips?
How long have you heard cursing and indifference
and cheap slogans instead?
And we tell God for thy glory and
for thy delight that that day would soon
come when you will again be hearing from
the lips of thy Jewish children all over
the face of this earth great praise to
the God Jehovah.
Oh God, let thy great spirit fall upon
this people in darkness all over this earth.
Work in their hearts to create a hunger
for the divine things.
Make us to be sick and to be
discontent with sham, with pretense, with culture, with
human religion, that we will only desire the
pure things of the living God.
Bless this people, Lord God, and right now,
right into their hearts, your burden for the
nation Israel and for thy chosen people.
Have them to be great warriors.
A few
months after my conversion, after one Sunday night
service, a lowly poly gentile woman came up
to me.
He said, from that day to this, both
my...
Thank you.
And on the way he talked, I kept
meditating my own life.
I appreciate it because he has the pulse
of the time also.
Pulse of the situation.
He is singing from both sides of the
new generation now and of the eyes of
Jesus for the spirit.
I concur my own spirit that our time
is running out in this world.
And all I can say is thank God
you've been visiting us this week in a
tremendous way.
Our hearts have been challenged and challenged and
challenged.
I pray that coming to this banquet this
afternoon, as we close and go back home,
that it's pretty hard to digest everything and
really appreciate everything that has been said and
done during these last few days.
So many things been happening.
He's been moving so fast and God in
his spirit pouring into us so many things
that in the months and months as we
reflect and we'll be...
I believe that when we go back, we're
going to suddenly grow in the spirit of
God, understanding and comprehending what he's trying to
get through to us.
And maybe some of the things we don't
quite understand right now, in a week or
two, a month or two, you will suddenly
understand.
You may wake up one morning like, yeah,
I now understand.
So when we leave this place, let's leave
with an open heart.
We'll leave after tonight's meeting, let's leave with
an open heart, determined, dedicated your life unto
death.
And Lord, I'm willing to do anything you
want me to do now.
Because a year from now, six months from
now, or two years from now, I don't
know.
This could be the next page.
Maybe this thing won't run out like Archie
Katz said.
Praise God.
Then if all the forces of and all
energies break loose, and if this is a
time of the coming of the Messiah, as
he said he's coming back, as the angel
said he's coming back, as the disciples preached
it, it certainly appears that we're coming to
this time, then what is more important in
all our lives than to start doing now
what God wants?