Art Katz

Arthur "Art" Katz (1929 - 2007). American preacher, author, and founder of Ben Israel Fellowship, born to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York. Raised amid the Depression, he adopted Marxism and atheism, serving in the Merchant Marines and Army before earning B.A. and M.A. degrees in history from UCLA and UC Berkeley, and an M.A. in theology from Luther Seminary. Teaching high school in Oakland, he took a 1963 sabbatical, hitchhiking across Europe and the Middle East, where Christian encounters led to his conversion, recounted in Ben Israel: Odyssey of a Modern Jew (1970). In 1975, he founded Ben Israel Fellowship in Laporte, Minnesota, hosting a summer “prophet school” for communal discipleship. Katz wrote books like Apostolic Foundations and preached worldwide for nearly four decades, stressing the Cross, Israel’s role, and prophetic Christianity. Married to Inger, met in Denmark in 1963, they had three children. His bold teachings challenged shallow faith, earning him a spot on Kathryn Kuhlman’s I Believe in Miracles. Despite polarizing views, including on Jewish history, his influence endures through online sermons. He ministered until his final years, leaving a legacy of radical faith.
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Art Katz emphasizes the significance of Israel's message as a vital hermeneutical key for understanding the Book of Revelation and the urgency of God's judgments in the last days. He argues that this message compels believers to engage deeply with their faith, countering spiritual complacency and deception. Katz highlights the importance of responding to the needs of the Jewish people, as it relates to righteousness and eternal reward, and calls for a prophetic presence that brings healing and restoration to Israel. He believes that through God's judgments and mercy, Israel will ultimately fulfill its divine mission to glorify Him among the nations.
Israel and the Apocalypse: A Hermeneutical Key for All the Faith
"Art Katz encouraged the duplicating of his audio messages, and there are no copyright claims for those who desire to share them with others. However, Art’s books and writings (including articles on this website) do still carry a copyright, and permission needs to be sought if quoting from those is required." ----- Eugene Pederson in his devotional message for February 25 in Living the Message speaks of the effect of the Book of Revelation in stimulating his spiritual life. It is the message of Israel that has had a like affect upon me and which I believe is God’s normative intent for all the Church. Because it “forces and enables me to see with fresh eyes, to look at what is spread out right before me, because being the concluding book, i.e., the concluding act I cannot finish my call apart from it.” With the message of Israel, my inmost being is called into participation of a radical kind as it brings a corrective against soulish counterfeits and lesser alternatives in the earnestness of what is at stake. The issue of God’s judgments, so prominent in the finale of the Age, provides a hermeneutical key [principle of interpretation]. It brings an urgency of what is real, primary, ultimate—a virtual counteraction against last days’ deception, even the sense of Reality itself! We recapture an elemental involvement in the basic conflicts and struggles that establishes moral existence itself-and then go on to ignite the true worship and adoration and primal affirmations for which God created us. The salutary effect of the apocalyptic message of Israel will save us from a depleted eternity. As Matt. 25 indicates, a response to “the least of these My brethren [Jewish life]” is the issue of righteousness and eternal reward to those who do not withhold it. Likewise, Psalm 102 indicates that the “set time to favor Zion” is precipitated by those servants who have compassion on her dust and mercy on her stones! Finally, a prophetic presence in the wilderness with frayed and depleted Israel in Isaiah 35 speaks a word that enables the lame to leap and the blind to see, nature itself spouting pools of water in waste places! ”God empowers them [Israel’s comforters] to gather His people from exile to Zion through all the hostile elements-fire, water, and wilderness” (Avraham Gileadi in his book The End from the Beginning, p.138). Is this not the very provocation for the attainment of the fullness of the Gentiles (Romans 11:25? —completing the Church even as it delivers Israel! …[I]n all His chastisements and judgments with which He has to visit his people on account of their great and manifold sins…they may, by these very judgments, as well as by the abundant mercy which He will reveal to them “in that day,” be brought as a nation, fully and forever, to know Him, in all the divine perfections of His glorious character, so as to be able to fulfill their foreordained mission to show forth His praise, and to proclaim His glory among the nations. (David Baron, Commentary on Zechariah p. 485).
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Arthur "Art" Katz (1929 - 2007). American preacher, author, and founder of Ben Israel Fellowship, born to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York. Raised amid the Depression, he adopted Marxism and atheism, serving in the Merchant Marines and Army before earning B.A. and M.A. degrees in history from UCLA and UC Berkeley, and an M.A. in theology from Luther Seminary. Teaching high school in Oakland, he took a 1963 sabbatical, hitchhiking across Europe and the Middle East, where Christian encounters led to his conversion, recounted in Ben Israel: Odyssey of a Modern Jew (1970). In 1975, he founded Ben Israel Fellowship in Laporte, Minnesota, hosting a summer “prophet school” for communal discipleship. Katz wrote books like Apostolic Foundations and preached worldwide for nearly four decades, stressing the Cross, Israel’s role, and prophetic Christianity. Married to Inger, met in Denmark in 1963, they had three children. His bold teachings challenged shallow faith, earning him a spot on Kathryn Kuhlman’s I Believe in Miracles. Despite polarizing views, including on Jewish history, his influence endures through online sermons. He ministered until his final years, leaving a legacy of radical faith.