In this sermon, the speaker laments the death of four students and criticizes the tendency to point fingers at others without recognizing the flaws within oneself. He emphasizes that slogans and ceremonies are not enough to save us, even in the context of Christianity. The speaker shares his personal experience of feeling uncomfortable with the phrase "Christ is the answer" because it seemed empty and devoid of life. He recounts being asked to speak at a gathering of well-dressed middle-class kids and feeling conflicted about delivering a pep talk instead of preaching about the cross.

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 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. 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?