Art Katz explores the intricate reasoning of Paul in Romans 11, emphasizing the centrality of Israel in God's plan for the church. He challenges the Gentile church to embrace a Hebraic understanding of faith, recognizing their roots in Jewish heritage and the importance of mercy towards the Jewish people. Katz warns against superficial Christianity and calls for a deep, authentic relationship with God that reflects His glory and fulfills the mandate to provoke Israel to jealousy. He stresses that the restoration of Israel is not just a theological issue but a matter of God's glory and the church's identity.

intricate reasoning of Paul out of Romans chapter 11, of which the theologian scholars say that is the heart of the book of Romans. Everything leads to it from chapter 1 through 8 and then everything follows from 12 through 16, but the centerpiece to which all things lead and from which all things derive is this issue and mystery of Israel and the church. I'm struck this morning looking out on you, on how Gentile you appear. Well, how else should we look, brother? Well, I would hope for something that would have subdued and rounded the edges and taken the harshness out and the Gentilic quality out and have put an Hebraic element in. Something to transpose, something to bring a quotient that God intends as normative for every saints. He doesn't want to Judaize you, God forbid, but he would like to Hebraicize you, and that is not a cultural thing, that is a spiritual thing. It comes with being imbued with the genius of our faith that has its origin and its matrix in that which is Hebraic. The psalmist David, the apostles, all of the writers of the scriptures but one were all Jews, steeped in and expressing an Hebraic perception of God, of the faith, of reality itself. And once you're infused with this, it will touch everything and make you yourself a presence in the community and in the earth that is redemptive. And if any Jews could catch wind of it and sniff it, they're on the road to salvation. So Lord, great grace we pray to restore that which has been lost. Something difficult to comprehend and something that our flesh does not necessarily desire to consider. Reinsert, my God, what was central in Paul's whole apostolic mindset for the church. Give us an understanding, my God, that will not only touch all aspects of what we believe, but will transfigure it. We need more than a facelift. We need a powerful, mighty, potent coming of the Lord in truth. And for us, my God, to pray for revival outside of the purview, the construct, the parameters of the biblical New Testament faith is to ask in vain. If you're going to revive us, you're going to revive us within the parameters of the scriptures themselves, and especially this which has been lost to our consideration, that has been called for at the end of the age where the end of the age does not end. So I ask your blessing, Lord. Bless these children, young and old. Give them a capacity to hear and to receive and to consider. We thank and give you praise for the privilege of this morning and what's on your heart for us in Jesus' name. Amen. We'll turn to Romans 11. We should be looking at Romans 9 through 11, but I hope that you'll be sufficiently stirred this morning that you'll do that yourself, but we'll get right to the heart of Paul's great statement, which he understands and conveys, not necessarily because he himself is a apostle. It's remarkable that chapter 9 begins with the hot cry of Paul the apostle, that he would even wish himself a curse for his brethren's sake, that they might know Christ. And most of us who read that think, oh, what a precious man, what an identification with his own kinsmen, but you know what I suspect? This cry does not issue out of Paul's ethnicity. Am I getting too fancy for you guys? Out of Paul's Jewishness, it issues out of Paul's apostolicity. You say, big deal. What's the difference? The difference is this. If Paul's identification with the Jew is only a fleshly and natural and ethnic identification, we can admire that, but we can't share that. But if Paul is crying out of his apostolic heart, which is to say the heart of God, for who is in greater proximity and union with God's heart than the apostle? That's what an apostle is. That's why the apostles are foundational to the church, because they communicate the foundational understanding and desire of God's own heart. They come to us out of his very presence. They communicate the sense of God as God himself is, and not as we thought him to be. Oh, may God revive apostles and prophets, the foundation of cornerstones, the pillars of the church, for only they can bring these foundational teachings. And that's what you're enjoying this morning. I'm not an evangelist. Sorry about that. I'm not even a teacher. I'm a prophet. I'm a prophetic man. What shall I say? Shall I deny that I'm Jewish, that the sunlight is shining, that today is Sunday? So much shall I deny my calling, because no man chooses his calling. It's given. But God forbid that we should reject it and fail to acknowledge it or speak out of the authority of it. So you're privileged this morning, because only a man out of a foundational calling can convey foundations. That's why the church is essentially without them. That's why we're barking up the wrong tree. That's why we have programs that are sound and furious, signifying nothing and end in frustration and essential failure, because we haven't attended to the foundations. Out of the foundations comes the superstructure, and the superstructure raised up on the foundations must be of exactly the same quality, timber, and kind as the foundations themselves. It's not only the foundation that God wants to be the apostolic and prophetic, but the entire church. Its stature, its mindset, its heart, its disposition, its understanding, its authority, its witness. That's the church. The great question is, will the denominations allow it? Will they make room for it if it threatens their interest and their programs and their organization and their structure? Will they allow, again, the restoration of biblical foundational things that don't necessarily flow together with organizational premises? Well, I love Paul. My God, what a privilege, what a gift to the church, who was an enemy and a murderer and was profoundly converted and made the chief of the Apostles, though he called himself the chief of sinners. And you know what? That's not some obsequious reference. See how your English will improve if you listen to me? That's not some ingratiating salesman's cutesy little reference that seems to be humble. That's Paul really believing that not only he was, but he is the chief of sinners. How do you explain that, Art? This man is sublime in his spirituality, deep in his profound understanding of the faith, and he sees himself as a sinner? Yes, because the deeper you penetrate into God, the greater your apprehension of the reality of who God himself is, the more the awareness of the depths of your own sinfulness. I pray every day, Lord, to purge me from the iniquity that is ever before me. Praise God for the blood. Okay, to leap right into this, in verse 11 of chapter 11, Paul is answering as an apostle the question raised for him by the church at Rome. This is Paul. This is the apostle. This is nuts and bolts. This is not some academic theoretician who likes to play around with conceptual things. Paul is right there, grounded, right in the reality of the church, its issues, its questions, and its struggles. He's a lover of the church. When he had to take his leave of the church and say, you'll see my face no more, they came all the way from Ephesus to Miletus, because Paul bid them to say goodbye. Can you picture this, these Gentiles? They hung on his neck and wept that they would see his face no more. There's never been anything like that, to that point in history, that Gentiles were so enamored of a Jew that they wept when he announced, you'll not see my face again. He was their father. He was their mother. He labored day and night that Christ be formed in them. He loved them with the love of God. He broke through the historic enmity of Gentile and Jew, because he was an apostle. He was deep in the faith and in the reconciliating heart of God that made the two one new man. And when we'll have that again in the church, the church will be full of the glory of God. You ought to be inviting Jews to Dunville, if they're not living here, but I'll tell you what, the time is not too distant when they'll be coming through. Not because they want to, but because they will have to. Because there's going to be a last days persecution again of Jews that will eclipse the Nazi time. They're going to be so persecuted, so uprooted, so forced, so driven, so pushed through the nations, that they'll find themselves in backward places, and out of town, and rustic, and rural, and primitive locations that they would never have chosen. They're going to be knocking at your door. We'll see in that day what your relationship with them is. We'll see in that day whether you will recognize them as the least of these his brethren, and you'll be willing to give them water, and food, and clothing, and shelter at a time when they are universally hated. Will the true church please stand up? Because the true church will be identified in that day by its identification with the despised people, because they are the least of these his brethren. Because the church is not afraid to suffer. Because the church doesn't mind getting caught, and being found out, and going to their concentration camp. They count it a privilege, even if that should befall them, so much as they have helped God's ancient people to be called again to his salvation as the redeemed of the Lord returning to Zion. I can't tell you all this in one morning, in one message, but we have it in books, we have it in tapes, and I somehow have been plucked up by the Lord as one of the single authoritative figures who is presenting this schema, this scenario of last day's affliction for Jews all around the world. Don't think it makes me popular. Don't think that other Christians want to hear it. Don't think that Messianic Jews want to hear it. But it's true, and it's coming, and we need to be prepared for it. So the Church in Rome wants to know, is God finished with the Jews? You know, it's a question that is even being asked today. Listen, they're still apostate, they're still hostile, they reject the gospel, they're the toughest people to witness to, they're not just indifferent to the gospel, they're actively hostile. They come up with their alternate Messianic schemes called Marxism, or Freudianism, or some other ism that some Jewish genius has conceived as an alternative to the salvation of God. They are our adversaries. Paul says in Romans 11, they are our enemies. They are the enemies of the gospel, and then he adds this remarkable phrase, for your sake. You're having trouble with me? What would you have with Paul? He's full of bewildering contradictions and paradoxes and perplexities, because our faith is not a little simple teacup thing. It's charged with remarkable complexity. The gospel is simple, salvation is simple, but after that, then we need the apostles and the prophets. They are the enemies of the gospel. Yes, we know that historically. I began in ministry as a missionary to the Jews. I know how tough they are. I know how tough I was. I would have scared you stiff. Even now you're not too comfortable. And I'm spirit-filled. I'm a tongue speaker. So what will it be when they come, unbelieving, unregenerate, uprooted, plucked out, shot, the bottom has gone out from them? They're not going to be at their best behavior. They're going to be rude and ungrateful and ready to turn you off and rub you the wrong way and irritate you and quicken and awaken the depths of the resentment that lies only beneath the surface in most Gentile lives, unless that Gentile life is profoundly regenerated and filled with the spirit of the God of the Jews. They'll test you. And that's why God is moving them through the nations, not only to test them, to test you. So otherwise, you would have sat in the pew and felt you had it all together. But the Jew will find you out. He found Luther out, the greatest of the apostolic giants and the leader of the Reformation movement of Germany. A giant failed in this one test. There's something about us Jews. We're abrasive. We rub you the wrong way. And if you're just superficially religious, your little Sunday face will hardly last the moment. But if there's a depth of the sanctifying work of God that has reached deep to the wellsprings of resentment, self-pity, bitterness, the kinds of things that operate in most Pentecostal assemblies, I know because I never received my baptism in my Assemblies of God church. I received that on a sloping floor of a farmhouse with a few saints who loved Jews and were studying Hebrew. Why don't you receive it in your Pentecostal church? How can you? My God, that place was so charged with resentment, with unresolved relational conflicts and unspoken this and that, that people would not even leave through the same door. But the Spirit of God is going to be there to induct you into the Jordan of the Spirit? No way. I remember when I preached that by your mercy, this is right out of Romans 11, Paul says, by your mercy they may obtain mercy. And some woman cried out of the congregation. She said, we don't even have mercy for each other. How shall we have it for Jews? And my answer was, exactly. And you never would have recognized that or cried that out unless you were being pressed by a requirement that you now know you're not able to make. Listen, dear saints and dear kids, if mercy is only a word in your vocabulary, if only it's a creedal and doctrinal supposition but is not authentic in your experience, as only a prostitute saved by God would know it, or a drug runner or some decrepit bum whose life was in gutters and in vomit and was saved by God, these know the mercy of God. But we respectable middle-class people who have never conspicuously sinned, we know it only as a concept. We don't know it as a reality. And God says that by your mercy you'll extend mercy, not the concept, the reality. So get mercy. And in fact, you know what? We need mercy this morning. If God does not give us mercy, does not give me mercy to bring this forth, and mercy for you to receive it, our whole labor is in vain. So the whole issue of the Jew in the unique genius of God awakens and calls for the deepest realization of God, of his mercy, of the faith, of the reality that would not otherwise be our requirement. It's the issue of the Jew that makes the church. The Jew compels us to be what we what we ought and have shrunk from becoming because the cost is too great, because the cross has only become a piece of church architecture and not the thing in which we would want to be impaled. So Paul answers the question, have they, are they finished? Listen, they slew the prophets, they killed the Lord of glory, they sought to crucifixion. Aren't they finished now? Didn't God give them their chance and they blew it and now we can be the Israel of God? Isn't that the way we're supposed to understand that? Paul says, God forbid that you should think that. Praise God that this is in the book. By no means have they stumbled that they should fall. It's not a fall, it's a stumbling. Listen to the way the Holy Ghost gives Paul an artful way to describe the dilemma of Israel. Yes, they have rejected their Messiah, that ought to be the end of everything, but Paul does not call it a fall in a sense of a finality with no hope of return. He calls it a stumbling. See how these Apostles are? How gracious they are in their words and in their hearts. It's only a stumbling because one who stumbles can be lifted up again, but one who falls, he may be down for the count. They've only stumbled historically. Don't count them out and their salvation has come to you because they have stumbled. God has turned from them and given you the message that they have rejected and you now have received grace. You who are far off and without hope in the world, without God and without hope, who drank beer out of skulls and fornicated like jackrabbits and killed one another just with a look, you God has saved and by the blood of their Messiah has brought you into their covenants and hopes and promises and into the commonwealth of Israel itself. So how come you look so Gentile? Why don't you show that you've been brought into something that is Hebraic, that the grace of God has admitted you into salvation for salvation is of the Jews. You guys knew nothing about that. You've come into their salvation. You've been grafted into their tree. You ought to be reflecting that and showing at least this much a conspicuous gratitude that there was a faith for you to enter, that there was a faith that had been maintained, that there was an expectation of Messiah, that though the mainstream of Jews rejected it, there was a faithful remnant who received him and continued to make this faith known, like Peter. But Peter required a vision and a trance in order to understand that you goyim, that's the Hebrew words, nations, the Gentiles, my mother spits that word out, the goyim. She used to say to me when I was a kid, you're just like them. You're goyish because you've blown your whole allowance. You went and did it in one fell swoop. You didn't save. Jesus saves, but Moses invests. You're just like them, the goyim. My mother is 95, living with us now as I still in unbelief, and I've been a believer 36 years. She's seen her son's life transformed and she's still resisting, but she's right next door to me, aching out the last days of her life. You know what she can remember at the age of 95? When she was thrown into the swimming pool in London, England, by her Gentile teacher who said to her, sink or swim you fat Jew. My mother has not forgotten, and I'm not even sure that even happened, but somehow over the years she has believed it has happened. It's in keeping with what she understands about Gentiles as being hostile to Jews, and she clings to this. There's a deep prejudice, a deep fear, a deep enmity, and now she's living in a Christian community, almost entirely Gentile, but for the exception of me, and they're loving her and spoiling her and lavishing affection and attention on her, and she's got to recognize this is more than human kindness. This is God in the sweetness of this people toward me because I'm a bitchy old lady who's grumbling and griping and discontent and finding everything wrong, and yet they patiently bear it and are sweet to me. It's going to save her. Okay, listen to this. They stumbled, but through their stumbling and their fall, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Well, you knew that, but what you didn't know is what follows. So as to move them to jealousy. You didn't just receive something without a string attached. There's a profound string attached. There's a reason why salvation has come to you, so that you then in turn can move them to jealousy who have forfeited what you have received. I want to tell you that the church that does not take that to heart, this mandate and this requirement given to Gentile believers is ipso facto out of the apostolic faith. It's only become a denomination. It's only become a purveyor of services. It only brings a modicum of blessing. It is out of the reality to which God calls us, because we have forfeited our identification, our mandate, and our obligation to the people for whose salvation God yet waits through you. Move them to jealousy. What are you going to show them that'll make them jealous? You don't think they have their synagogue services replete with Hebrew and liturgy that goes back through the ages, that puts our few little choruses in the shade? You don't think they have eloquent rabbis that make our preachers look like country hicks? You don't think that they have every advantage, that there's nothing in our services that is going to necessarily attract them, let alone make them jealous? Where do we find the explanation? Is there an asterisk and there's a footnote at the bottom of the page? Paul does not explain. He just gives us the mandate, the charge, and the requirement. And you know what? We have totally ignored it. This Paul begins the book of Romans. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Why should I even raise that question? Because the gospel itself is not intellectually respectable. It's not commendable. It's a foolish statement about God laying aside his deity and taking upon himself the form of flesh, being rejected, crucified, and that by his blood that was shed in that atrocious death that came upon him, you're saved. I mean, there's nothing about that that's commendable to human intellect. But Paul's not ashamed of it because it's the power of God. That message itself is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Well, we've not gone to the Jew first and we've not even gone to them last. We have not gone to them at all. I'm not saved because of you. I'm saved because of the grace of God that picked me up off the side of the road as a hitchhiker 36 years ago, looking for philosophical answers as a disillusioned ex-Marxist. I lived in Christian America for 35 years and was never once affected, influenced, in any way challenged. The church has failed to take up this mandate because this mandate would transform the church itself. Yes, the Jew is the beneficiary, but the church, in fulfilling this obligation, is required to go deep. The church is required to become earnest. The church is required to become authentic. Its relationships have got to be more than the casual conglomerate of individuals sitting in pews, but the congregation of God's people living a heavenly mode of life while they're in the secular earth. It's got to be transparent. It's got to be true. It's got to be authentic. It's got to be real. It's got to be unfamed. When Jews will see this, they'll know you could never have attained to this by yourself. This is very God. It reveals God in the way you live, in the way you deport yourself, the way you look, the way you talk. There's a reality. There's a kingdom that you're expressing, not a denomination, and it's the kingdom of the God of Israel who sent his Son with the first word, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. To fall below that and only to become religious, only to have a series of Sunday services and an occasional program, is to betray the faith. There's no way that we can fulfill this mandate if we accept that kind of Christianity because it's convenient, because it doesn't require of us, because we can perform that. But to move Jews to jealousy requires something beyond our ability. You know what it requires? The life of God himself. And that's what makes them jealous. You'll be able to say with Paul, for me to live is Christ. You'll tap into the resurrection life and you'll despise any human substitute that will get you by. You'll be the sons and daughters of the resurrection. And what is there in our present church life that requires this radical appropriation of God's life? Zero. Nothing. Hey listen, we can do this by ourselves. We can conduct meetings. We can speak from the platform. We can introduce. We can this. We can that. We can have programs. But get apostolic. Take Paul seriously. Receive the mandate of God toward a despicable people for whom we have no natural affinity and they not for us. And find out what God means by moving them to jealousy. By some demonstration of heaven while yet in the earth as is corporately displayed in an unfeigned way by a people who have transcended earthly things and religious things. And you'll find that you can only do that on the basis of the life of God himself. Resurrection is not a doctrine that to which we give approval. It's a mode of life to be lived. And we're falling short of it, because there's no present requirement that compels us. And because whatever is presently required, we can fulfill humanly, naturally, and religiously. And thereby fall short of the glory of God. Praise God for Jews. Praise God for the mystery. Praise God for the requirement. Or else we would have been as satisfied with our condition and just want a little revival to kind of just tone it up a little bit. Improve our denomination. Give a little luster to our services. But this is ultimate requirement. This is beyond anything that we can perform out of our humanity, out of our religiosity. This requires God. Even my preaching this morning is that. If it was a cutesy message, a little revival thing, look my no hands, anybody could perform that. But to open the mystery of God neglected through the ages and needing now to be restored and taken to heart as the mandate of the church and the reason for its being, that takes Holy Ghost, Pentecostal, resurrection enablement. So we prophetic men not only proclaim the long-forgotten message, but we demonstrate what by the means by which it's to be fulfilled. What do you mean Art? Here's what I mean. God is not only putting before you this requirement that has never subsided, never dissipated away. God has never changed his mind. He's still waiting for this fulfillment. The Lord is pent up in the heavens, it says in Acts 321, waiting for the restoration of all things spoken by the prophets since the world began. He's not coming until he has something to do with the restoration of his people because he's going to rule out of their Zion. Don't you know that? The law shall go forth out of Zion. Where is Zion? Don't be among those dum-dums that say God's not interested in real estate. Oh yeah? He's interested in this piece of earth. It's his. His Jerusalem, the city of peace, his Israel, his land. It's the Holy Land, not presently in its character and and its occupants, but ultimately in his intention. And that when the rule of God goes forth and the law goes out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, nations shall study war no more. They'll not need to study it. There'll be no need for war for peace will reign supremely through the equity, justice, and righteousness of God who rules now over his own creation because he has been established and restored into one place that he has chosen as the locus of his kingdom, the holy hill of Zion where he has put his king who is a descendant of David and will rule forever. You don't know that? Wow! You don't have this in your consciousness? No wonder that that your Christianity is just the sum of services. You don't have a kingdom context. You don't have a kingdom expectation. You don't understand the whole drift of history. You don't understand what's breaking forth in Israel now is the very prelude to the fulfillment of the things that I'm speaking and not some historical aberration or accident. You guys ought to be alive on the edge of your seats watching those newscasts and knowing that Israel is the time clock of God and we're coming close to the end and something is required from us through in their restoration that by our mercy they may obtain mercy if we have indeed a mercy to give. So why did why did God make Paul an apostle to the Gentiles? This guy was the prized student of the rabbi Gamaliel. He he knew this Judaism and right to his fingertips and God makes him the apostle to the dum-dums and he takes Peter who has no background is only a fisherman and makes him the apostle to the Jews. Can you figure that out? Only if you know this that Paul understood that the issue of Israel's restoration was the issue of the Gentiles was the issue of the church and therefore God with the interest of Israel's final redemption in mind sent Paul to the place where the action is taking place the church the Gentile church to move them to jealousy to extend mercy and what a church that is for if their rejection in verse 15 is the reconciliation of the world what will their acceptance be but life from the dead literally life from the dead for when the Lord comes as their final deliverance sets his feet on the Mount of Olives against all those nations that have come to destroy Jerusalem and pours out upon the city of David the spirit of supplication and prayer the dead rise those that are asleep in Christ's first and those that how does this say are helping someone those that are alive and remain you know what that means in Greek those that have just are barely surviving last days persecution not that they happen to be alive they are alive because and not asleep because God has retained them in the face of the last days diabolical opposition to the church and to the people of God and when he comes they meet him in the air that's the Rapture not before and they come with him and escort him the parousia the word parousia in Greek is meeting a dignitary as he is approaching his place of honor and accompanying him to that place it's not being taken up and out so that we can avoid and be saved from tribulation it's in the time of tribulation that the church is called to shine to exhibit itself to show its courage to show its sacrifice to show that it is aligned with the cross of Christ and understands that there's no glory without the suffering that precedes it revelation says the woman shall be given the wings of an eagle and shall flee into the wilderness where a place has been prepared for her and where she is fed for three and a half years who's going to provide that place and who's going to do that feeding if the church has been remarkably removed that's only a theory that's less than two centuries old and the church fathers never ever dreamed about anything like that it's those that endure to the end that will be saved it's a cataclysmic and it's an end of final violence between kingdoms of dark and lightness in which the church has its opportunity to show itself and to be purified and purged through the intensity of those last days that it might ascend to its place in the heavenlies to rule and reign with him as the overcomers you see what when you begin to put the key back into place you begin to restore the centrality of Israel then it affects every issue even this even the question of rapture which I don't want to go off on this morning so verse 17 if some of the branches were broken off and you were wild olive shoot were grafted into the place to share the rich fruit of the olive tree don't boast over the branches for if you boast remember that it's not you who supports the root but the root supports you you will say the branches were broken off that I might be grafted in that's true they were broken off because of their unbelief but you stand only through faith so don't become proud hot shots but stand in awe and reverence and fear for if God did not spare the natural branches will he will he spare you so note the the kindness and the severity of God severity toward those who have fallen God's kindness toward you provided you continue in his kindness otherwise you'll be cut off also God did not hesitate to break off the natural branches how long had they been in their own tree for millennia but he broke them off so don't think that you're a Johnny come lately who has been grafted in that you could not be broken off if you do not abide in the faith therefore Paul says fear you want to know the most conspicuous absence in the church today as I travel around the world and I touch it in its myriad forms the absence of the fear of God is the most conspicuous lack in the church worldwide we're too glib we're too shallow we're too light we're too I don't know what there's something missing there's a depth of something that ought to pervade the church it's the deep respect and awe and fear of the Almighty God who will not hesitate to judge and to break off you know why we don't have it because we have missed this mystery because we have not been instructed by how far God will go with his own ancient people we've not understood God and one of my books out there speaks on it on the Holocaust where was God I dare you to read it not only will instruct you of a biblical way to understand the Holocaust past and to anticipate the Holocaust coming it will totally and radically alter your entire view of God for the better we have a shallow view because we have omitted the judgments of God it's not compatible it doesn't fit with God as being sweet God nice God kind God loving how do we figure God judging isn't there a contradiction somehow or is he a seamless garment and you can't single out one attribute and and place that over another in fact to remove the judgment of God is to remove God as God and then you have some wishy-washy saccharine sweet sugary Jesus in which you have put the name but it's not true you're not you need to know the severity as well as the goodness of God and God's dealing with Israel past present and future reveals it it will temper you it will modify you it's what you need that's why if you don't understand this mystery you will become inflated wise pompous hotshot we got it together we are the we're bringing in the kingdom we are the kingdom we displace Israel all of those things are the symptoms of about which Paul warned we lack the temperedness of God and that very temperedness that moderating influence would itself make us attractive to Jews you know what the Jews have called the church historically the arrogant kingdom you know who turns off the the shrill cheapie tell evangelist first are the Jews they saw through them before you did the Hucksters the men whipping up their own kingdoms and and deriving millions by you sending your seed faith to them what did they have you send it to India and let them live by their faith and not yours Jews have seen right through that I'll tell you something about us Jews we have an instinct for what is real we may be deceived in many ways ourselves but there's a there's something about us that senses what is authentic and until you put that up before us we're not going to be moved to jealousy God is waiting for something from the church that will be the church's own making so you're rooted into their truth and you're living from the sap of that root which SAP is the life of God if you only recognize that you're rooted in by the grace of God unless you recognize that if you're not rooted in you would have been a dry branch that cannot bear fruit a wild olive tree by its nature never bears fruit it cannot it's genetically impossible it can only bear fruit when it is grafted in to a lively root whose sap can then flow through its branches you would be fruitless unless you were grafted into their tree and in fact unless you're conscious of being grafted in you are fruitless grafting in needs to be acknowledged recognized with humble gratitude thank you Lord that we're grafted into their tree it's not a tree that we would have chosen we're a little bit embarrassed that we have to be associated with Jews but that's the way your wisdom has called for it and that's the only way that your life is going to be moving through that the branches of the church that are grafted in then we acknowledge with gratitude we're grateful for that grafting operation because we want to be fruitful so let me try in and and forth in verse 24 if you have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree God is able to graft them back again my first Pentecostal pastor was astonished he never had a convert like me he never saw anyone grow up in the faith so rapidly he never saw anyone more avidly take notes out of every message he spoke within within six months I was already eclipsing his faith and his understanding you know why not because I'm clever I was being grafted back into my own tree how much more when they are grafted back into their own tree and yesterday morning I spoke to men my what a sorry-looking lot pot-bellied and out of shape physically and spiritually giving no evidence whatsoever that they represented another kingdom and I spoke to them firmly if not severely in the love of God and challenged them to the root of their being you know what I said to them you're receiving a little preview of coming events I'm a Jew speaking to you in a way that only Jews filled by the Holy Spirit will speak who are uncompromising and not afraid of man and the day will come soon when Jews like myself of whom now I am only a representative and a remnant when all Israel shall be saved they will be blessing all the families of the earth by doing in the nations and in Canada what I'm doing for you and with you this morning Canada is living a substandard life so also is North America so also are all nations they're falling short of the glory of God they can't even tell the difference between the sacred and the profane and they're all lapsing into profanity and celebrating it and paying the the the mongers and of sport and culture and and rap music colossal fortunes in in the love of profanity and that which is profane because no one has come to them in a priestly way to tell them the difference between the sacred and the profane only we Jews have that calling when we're saved when you save us it's life from the dead for all the nations it's not just another ethnic group like the Puerto Ricans or or the Indonesians getting saved this is the people of God being restored to their own tree because of you because of that guy that picked me up as a hitchhiker 36 years ago and spoke to me in such a way that my heart was pierced through and he didn't say are you saved brother do you know Jesus if he had given me any one of those cliches I'd be dead today you'd have another speaker this morning I'm alive because that at the critical juncture of my life when I was despairing unto death I met an angel and how I've tried to find this man I remember his name and ask again every time I go back to Switzerland you know when Edwin he was a salesman he was a an accountant in a car agency he sang in the church choir he knew about art he knew about history knew about culture everything that I knew about him nobody's ever heard of Edwin I had his address in my wallet and I got pickpocketed my first day in Cairo and lost it that's what happens when we Jews go to Egypt that man if he had given me one religious cliche I'd be dead but he said to me after he heard my heart and what a hearing he drew my heart out I gave him the whole content of my consternation of my sense of futility and hopelessness for a world that was dying there was no hope I've been a Marxist there's no ideology there's nothing new under the sun you know what he said what the world needs wow this guy knows how to ask the questions yeah double-day you to tell me what the world needs art is for men to wash one another's feet well maybe that's not new for you but I had never read the New Testament I had never read the Old Testament I was a secular biblical illiterate and when I heard that phrase wash one another's feet something broke upon my heart I had a vision of the arrogant art cats is washing the feet of those with whom they're opposed kids washing the feet of their parents black and white Palestinian and Israeli hey by that simple humility of washing and being washed the world can be changed overnight without it abide the worship never really moved by it's very loud and she said the moment you open your mouth art it was like the sword of the Lord and the Lord pierced them through it was a historic message and give me a copy of the Holocaust book Mike where oh it's going to be in the German edition of this book coming out this month it's going to be in the appendix that's that means a little supplement at the end of the book is the transcription of this word it will be devastating for the German Christian reader the book itself is devastating it's on the Holocaust and I know that you kids don't know what that means right it's one of the most awesome shattering events in modern times and it happened in the nation with the deepest culture and the longest history of impressive civilization so I say to the church now if we allow an event of that kind to go unplumbed and unexamined we're signing our spiritual death warrant how can we allow an event as momentous as that six the annihilation of six million of which one and a half million were kids and children infants and where was God at a time like that and these are his covenant people wouldn't you ask a question like that the bombs we need to humble ourselves as the Lord himself demonstrated I was pierced through because he spoke to one word calculated to break my heart how did he know it because he was an angel that's how he knew it he was a messenger that's what angel means and until we will be angels like that in Dunville and to Jews and to the end to the world how shall they know but to give them a quick easy cheap answer rather than the Holy Spirit response because we are not in union with God by his spirit and have only the convenient quickie scripture that we can throw out John 3 16 and think we've done God's service hey guys your job your career your business is a secondary enablement from God your first business is the church your first business is the purposes of God your first business is the salvation of the world your first business is the restoration of Israel it'll transform you and save you from a day of chagrin and shame when the Lord comes you want to be rejoicing in that day and not cowering you want to be able to lay a crown at his feet and not be bareheaded because when he comes it says he brings his reward with him to give to every man according to his work are you gonna obtain a reward is mere pew sitting going to obtain a reward and and the little things we do as ushers and whatsoever that little opportunity for service going to obtain a reward only the works that can pass through the fire obtain a reward and these are not the works that we have designed but that he has given and I'll tell you one thing about any work of God that he gives you'll not be able to perform it on the basis of your own ability like this morning I'm gonna get a reward for this but it's something I can't perform because I'm required not only to explain something but to demonstrate something that if this mystery is going to be fulfilled it's going to be fulfilled on the same basis by which it was made known to you the operation of the life of God of his resurrection life through the medium of his spirit so we Pentecostals will be the most embarrassed in that day who have celebrated the Holy Spirit and are not living in the reality of his power and therefore not performing his works therefore not obtaining a reward and therefore entering eternity with a wailing and a gnashing of teeth the issue of the Jew is the issue of God it's the issue of the church it's the issue so how does Paul end this remarkable statement we're just skimming it pitifully about this mystery this hardening that has come upon Israel in verse 25 until the full number of the Gentiles has come in and then all Israel but will be saved as it is written Israel is not saved by anything that it does is saved by something that you do it'll be so depleted so whacked out so incapacitated that whatever comes to it must come to it from outside of it when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in all Israel shall be saved God is released to come out of Zion and take transgression from Jacob when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in when every last soul in Dunville has had opportunity to hear and to respond to the gospel that has been presented them to them with apostolic authority and vigor when you have gone into the nations and proclaimed this message of the kingdom to all nations when you will have a fullness that is not only numeric but qualitative what do you mean by that cats I mean that the fullness of the Gentiles is not only numerical but a quality of something that transposes and changes you from mere Gentiles into the Hebraic Israel of God in the realm of spirit that's the fullness are you moving toward that it's going to mean turning you back on culture upon nationality upon denominational distinctives upon all the kinds of things that keep us bound and earthbound and breaking forth in the power of the life to appropriate his life and the character of his life his life is power but it's also sweet it also has a nature you know I'm taking communion daily I don't just wait for Sunday I had it already this morning before I came to church and when I take the bread and the wine I thank the Lord for his body the substance of his character what he is in himself and his integrity in his humility and his righteousness and his understanding and I want that in me I want that to be formed in me I'm I want to feed that life and that I might be like him and when I take that cup the wine the essence the blood the spirit of the Lord the sweetness of the Lord the the mercy of the Lord the quality of godness that is in the Lord by eating and drinking when the fullness of the Gentiles become in don't be satisfied with your Gentilic condition there's a much more for you if you'll open yourself to the great influences of the word of God and steep yourself in the Psalms and learn about God through the Hebrew psalmists who understood him and called God their refuge and they weren't playing with words he was actually in fact that by the by the quality of their faith there's something in the scriptures in the faith to which you have been brought in you who are far off by the blood of their Messiah you have been brought into their promises covenants and hopes and into the Commonwealth of Israel itself I should be completely at home with you and not feeling edgy and and discomfited as if I'm a lonely Jew in a Gentile setting this should be home for me this is the family of God this is the the Israel of God the saved ones who know the God of Israel and love him and reflect him that will move my people to jealousy and so when that fullness comes in and they'll not come in automatically you just sit there before the TV set and it's going to take place no it comes in when you shut off the TV set and pull out the plug pull out the plug on the world and on its culture and invest yourself in the scripture and steep yourself in the reality of God and speak about it in the way something will come in by your morning devotion time early before you go to work while it's still dark out sacrificial though you're tired though you think you need the rest you're making time for God you're breaking the power of sloth and indifference you don't just come to the Sunday service after a night before the TV set watching the late show the fullness of the Gentiles must come in or Israel will not be saved the issue of Israel's restoration is the issue of you and the truth of your life and your faith in your walk for out of Zion will come to deliver he will banish ungodliness from Jacob for this is my covenant with them all Israel will be saved as it is written hey you're Christians and you're not jealous for the honor of God that he has something to fulfill that is written that he has made a covenant and a promise that has to be fulfilled because if God cannot keep what is written and the covenant that he has made with them that he will be their deliverer how is he God he's a failed God a discredited God undeserving of the attention of the nations but when he will fulfill his word toward them not because they deserve it but because he's full of mercy because he will have mercy upon whom we will have mercy then indeed is he God then the nations will recognize him because he's a God who honors his word and keeps it and fulfills his covenant because he's a God of power as well as a God of righteousness and you're not concerned for that issue then how are you the people of God how are you jealous for his name no wonder then that you allow the whole quality of the church life to sink because if we have not the intense jealousy for God's glory and honor and name what are we and what is our activity as regards the gospel they are the enemies for your sake you need an enemy like that put keeps you on your toes but as regards election they are beloved for the sake of their fathers for the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable he'll not take them back we're called to be a nation of priests and the light into the world and we will be it even against our own will and desire we just want to be like all other nations we want to be the Hong Kong of the Middle East we want to have the Gucci shops and all of the the smart shopping malls that's all we want we want to succeed in business and culture and all of that stuff but what does he want he wants the fulfillment of the word that he has given to our fathers that of all the peoples of the earth I have chosen you you're peculiar I have made you my own you'll be a nation of priests and a light into the world like it or not because I have said you will you'll be it and if you're not it then I'm not the God who speaks the God who promises and the God who keeps the issue of Israel is the issue of God and you're not concerned for that and not pleading for that not interceding for that praying for the peace of Jerusalem in more than just the shabby superficial way you don't have to have Jews locally in order to be involved in this fulfillment the Zion of God needs to travail for the birth of this because Israel will be too weak to travail for itself you have to enter in to their spasms and contractions and bear the agonies of birthing a nation in a day by the depth of your supplication your prayer and your intercession for Jews you'll be a remarkable Gentile if you can do that and you're called to be remarkable don't tell me you're just an ordinary Saint there ain't no such thing as an ordinary Saint a Saint by definition is extraordinary Oswald Chambers calls them sacramental personalities you kids have such a privilege my god may he save you from spiked hair and earrings and beads and all the rest of that and make you extraordinary without any external demonstration at all but inwardly a reality that will shine out to those poor kids around you who are dying and did and your teachers are dying also and what are they seeing of God through you that will challenge them what did my students ever show me who gave you the most predictable papers as a history teacher that any kid could write in order to get a grade I didn't see one thing coming from a Christian kid that showed originality that showed inspiration from heaven that showed anointing that showed unction they were just grade getters playing the game like everybody else you have a ministry at school you have a mission field at school and life and death is hanging in the balance for some of those kids are not even gonna make it to adulthood when they go careening on their motorcycles under a truck because they despise their fathers and their mothers and cannot have a long life well all the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God how unsearchable are his judgments how unscrutable his ways who's known the mind of the Lord who's been his counselor who has given to him that should be given in return for from him and of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever that's an apostolic conclusion Paul is not celebrating Israel he's not celebrating the church he's celebrating the glory of God forever that is obtained through Israel's restoration through the church the issue of the church the issue of Israel is the issue of God's glory forever when is the last time you said that when's the last time you thought that when's the last time you were motivated by that only the glory of God and the jealousy for the glory will keep you from the beers the beads and the spiked hair and whatever the equivalent of that is for the adults the jealousy for God's glory will keep you separate devoted serving let me pray for the church at Dunville Canada but why did you bring me here what's done though why why wasn't I in Toronto where the action is what to us this little out-of-the-way place of neat little houses and inconspicuous streets is all nice and tidy well art it's the peace it's a piece of Canada it's the statement of Canada it's what Canada is everywhere and if you succeed here then there's hope for the nation and the nation has a destiny with regard to Israel and to Jews or we would not be living 100 miles south of your border and five hours south of Winnipeg there's something up God's sleeve with Canada and the moving of Jews in the last days that he'll show you at some future time when and if you ever have me back so Lord in Jesus name mercy Lord mercy Lord mercy this is too much to lay on anyone any congregation on a Sunday morning when they came groggy and and half asleep and we're hoping that it they can get through the hour and you lay on them a trip like this the restoration of a lost understanding that is central to the church for its apostolic character and stature and call and that the kids have to hear this mercy Lord mercy for without mercy we can't understand such a message we can't receive such a burden and we know that if we receive it it's going to be costly it's going to require something and something has got to give we can't continue as we are and take up these burdens also something radical has got to be shifted something got to happen with Randy with with the elders of the church with the whole construct the whole configuration and we're willing Lord because the issue is your glory forever not our career not our ministry not the success of a young pastor who wants to make it big or be impressive or move on to larger things because of increase in numbers but because he has a heart for the glory of God forever and he's willing for whatever that will require he's in something together with this people he's not going to lean on this pastoral mystique that keeps him separate and hit the issues of his own life and need from the body it's a body that has come of age and knows that its pastors are flesh and blood just as they have problems and struggles just as themselves and that their hearts can go out that their very prayer and sympathy and identification will be the answer for the for the young pastors in their midst it's a people who have come to maturity come my God we played too long with this religious stuff and we're crying out for reality this morning whatever the cost whatever needs to be altered come Lord take hold of us sink your foundations deep make us to esteem the Holy Spirit for the reason for which he has been given on Pentecost not to spice up our meetings or to make our denomination distinctive or attractive but the very enablement of your life to live the kingdom reality while we're in a hostile world that enmity with you Oh Lord we repent of a falling short of your glory and and we weren't even aware of it it didn't bother us we want to just a good time successful meetings nice program make us jealous for your glory ruin us for that with this consideration make us go home now and look over the way we're situated what we're reading what we're seeing bring change deal with us have a people for your name make Israel jealous through them come as king to a restored Zion we thank and give you praise for your word for your jealous love that will not let us go Lord we receive it and we say whatever the cost fulfill it we're selfish we're vain we're fearful we're individualistic we're not really a body in any authentic sense we're just a line sitting alongside but we're separate we're privatistic we have our own life our own thoughts we're not one with God's people this is not like the church that was at the first when no one thought that the thing which he had was his own this is so different and so short of the glory but we're willing to be a people for your name hear our repentant cry and give answer help us Lord for the hour is at hand the time is short and the end is near bless the young people and bring them to maturity before the time there's no time left to remain a kid so do I bless these children Lord and I leave my peace behind in their house seal this word let not a syllable fall to the ground may they receive it as the day of the Lord's visitation a holy deposit something to be cherished to be reconsidered to be heard to be examined to be taken to heart to be done we thank and give you praise for this love that will not let us go in Jesus name praise God what a challenge hot-bellied I like that hot-bellied hot-bellied man good sermon in there somewhere praise God well we have a lot to think about and the challenge so I'm not going to add to that we've heard from God this morning so be open to be changed and receive that as I know that you are I thank God that you're hungry people not just physically right now but spiritually you are hungry people and you're so open to change at the back of the church you will see offering plates and don't feel any pressure at all but we're just asking that you would be a blessing to whether our cats today and he just comes in love offering bases there's no pressure at all for it the churches to give but he just comes ministering and what a blessing he has been to us so feel free to give as you feel the Lord leading you remember tonight seven o'clock at the Baptist Church come prayed up and expected and and wanting God to change God bless you all if you'd like to talk to brother cats he's right here as well and all in the books also at the back in the foyer as well God bless you everyone you you that's why you guys are on the outside looking in so I'm saying this to German Pentecostals this is a charismatic work in Berlin in Nuremberg where I've been many times you know what the significance of Nuremberg is Nuremberg was the city where Hitler staged his greatest pagan rat rallies not Berlin Nuremberg Berlin was the official center of Nazism it was the what do you call it the the technical the bureaucratic the office but the spiritual center of Nazism was Nuremberg because there's a history of Nuremberg that goes back to the Middle Ages that has to do with the worship even early back even before recorded time into pagan deities like Thor and Wotan and these primal pagan gods were still an alive tradition in German civilization though at the surface of German civilization you have great names like Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kant, K-A-N-T, these great philosophers beneath the surface was a deep running unspoken and unrecognized theme of paganism the swastika is a pagan symbol that it's a broken cross burning books leads to burning men but great bonfires if you you can go today to the great sport arena where Hitler came in with with these great swastika banners hanging down and spotlights and a hundred thousand men at attention shouting Sieg Heil it's awesome big torchlight parades and drums and music and it's just the kind of pageantry and drama that captivates the souls of men and that the church itself does not provide Hitler talked about a thousand year Reich where did he get that he got that out of the scripture because and and the German people went for it because there's something in man that wants to be identified with a significance that cannot be measured in today and tomorrow that has a thousand year duration and that they're supermen the Nazism is not a political phenomenon it's a spiritual phenomenon and it is the the the counterfeit of authentic faith because the Christianity of Germany was defunct and shallow in its orthodoxy in its liberalness in this vacuum came a Hitler to play upon the needs of a people who wanted dramatic significance for their lives and he gave it to them with a thousand year life and he gave it to them in great rallies in the city that had a history of occultic demonic and pagan influence someone said Nazi Germany may have been defeated in World War two but the spirits that prompted Nazi Germany still remain overhead waiting their next opportunity you guys need to become spirit conscious you need to recognize what is the the overlay of reality what underlies the things that are visible are the invisible realm of principalities and powers of the air that there's only one agency given in the world that can recognize this truth and meet it and that's the church only the church has the wherewithal the spiritual acuity the discernment to recognize these spirit realities and to confront them the rest of mankind is helpless and is jerked and manipulated in ignorance but if you don't see these truths and live in them the awareness of them that will compel you to be the church then what hope for unbelieving mankind that all around you in Dunville if you guys are just a casual conglomerate of individuality sitting in pews for service you know what the powers of the air say Jesus we know when Paul we know but the church at Dunville who they're totally unimpressed they yawn but let them see a new seriousness and an awareness of what we are about in terms of the purposes of the kingdom of God that requires us to be a body of believers that are really joined and not a conglomerate of casual pew sitters and they'll sit up and take notice and be terrified that's revival so maybe we'll never come to this until we first repent of our present condition if you had not been called from the back of the church you would have remained there because you like that you don't want to be conspicuous you don't want to be called upon you just you're rendering God a nominal attention by being in the room where you can hear what's going on there's not a sense of participation of being integral of being related of being joined got the idea you want a religion of convenience and that's what you got and therefore the powers of the air over Dunville are yawning keep it up they like it have all the speakers you want and and revival this and that and and the musical programs and they're totally unaffected and unimpressed but let there be a repentance Lord we have fallen short of the glory of God we're living beneath the high calling of God in Christ Jesus we have become only mere religionists concerned for successful services and measuring our success by numbers trying to whip something up through our amplifiers and we're missing it and they'll take note that you guys are beginning to get scary true repentance is the awesome acknowledgement of God as he in fact is and not as we thought him to be and before that holy presence no man dare lift his head no man dare play at the game of Christianity or prayer for Israel or revival or any of the other predictable things that we do that are sound and fury that signify nothing God described Job as being righteous and the foremost among men God boasted on him and yet at the end of God's dealings with him the same man cries out I've heard of you at the hearing of my ear but now my eye sees and I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes this is classic and definitive and we fall grievously short of that kind of repentance if the one in whom God boasted have you seen my servant Job have you found anyone more righteous than he and he had to repent of an inadequate understanding of God and of himself and cry out I abhor myself righteousness and all what then shall we say we're living in a fool's paradise we we don't know the truth of our condition and neither do we know God as we look and the powers of darkness would love to have it remain so so what does it mean to repent in dust and ashes why why does this symbolically represent having gone under the ground in burial it means that there's no place for me other than to be buried when when Job repented in dust and ashes you see we would just read that as poetry but what does it in fact mean when a man puts ashes on his head what he's saying is the only place for me now that I recognize the truth of who you are God and who I in fact really am the only place that's appropriate for me is underground I'm a dead man I'm a cadaver I don't even dare lift my head in your presence I'm as good as dead and God said to Job's friends and my anger is kindled against you because you've not prayed as my servant Job has prayed you're full of hotshot opinions and clever theologies and you know how to counsel my servant Job and to explain to him why he's suffering from the head of his top of his head to the soles of his feet but my anger is kindled against you you're just a hotshot religionist but my servant has prayed the one prayer that blesses me and that is he abhors himself in my sight and now I'm gonna have him pray for you lest I ventilate my anger against you so I doubt whether there was a nation today in which the issue of repentance is more important than Germany that nation lives continually under the shadow of their historic past it seems they will never be washed from the stain of the Holocaust see unless there's a unless there's an authentic national repentance we continue to live under the shadow of the past only repentance breaks the unbroken continuum of the sins of the fathers that's why God that's what God is waiting for from Jews that we will acknowledge repentantly that our fathers missed it when they crucified the Lord of Glory when we got rid of the bum who was threatening our institutions we were getting rid of very God himself and until we acknowledge that with broken repentance we live under the shadow of that sinful rejection repentance breaks the continuum of the past with our nation with our families with generations of whom we're not even conscious there are a lot of Christians suffering from hang-ups and spiritual problems and oppression and things they can't understand that they can find no explanation in their own life and history but very likely they're suffering something that goes back through the generations in ancestors who were guilty of sins and practices of an occultic kind that have never been recognized no no the continuum broken by a repentance for the past repentance sets one free from the inheritance of the past and probably will continue to have problems with the North American Indians or black people today and everything in history that goes back to slavery oppression persecution which we have swept under the carpet and now are enjoying the benefit of having appropriated their lands and resources but spiritually there's something unrecognized that continues its work and will one day erupt in our face as a Jewish believer I'm not impressed and the more I hear these appeals to repentance and witness the character of it the more uncomfortable I feel in the inner man something is wrong with this kind of repentance and one of the evidences of which is the continual need to reiterate it got that something's not right here and I suspect that it's not right because it's not an authentic repentance and the evidence of that is the need to do it again and again and again if repentance is authentic given of God and deep brokenness and strickenness it doesn't need to be repeated it sets free it deals with the past it frees you for the present and for the future but to continue to repeat it indicates that it was never authentic you're only feeling sorry feeling sorry for short of the true thing I have the distinct distinct impression that German Saints are wanting some kind of emotional and psychological relief to go to conferences in the hope of it and seem to need so desperately to experience it there is a word for this in psychology they want catharsis they want relief from a burden of guilt that has not been met in any other way and it misses the truth of the Holocaust itself the magnitude of that tragedy if we are students of God's dealings in history with Israel we would be able to distinguish between two things the judgment that God brings on the rod that he employs well I go on and things that would not profit you now to hear to feel guilty therefore as being the cause of the Holocaust is a false false guilt and one that God would not have the German to assume but that does not mean that Germany is absolved of all responsibility that nation is still the rod of God's chastisement but a willing rod I want to get to the part where I suggest that Germany does have a basis for repentance that is not false that needs to be recognized and that is that the kingdom had not come in Germany and therefore it made room for a false kingdom a satanic kingdom that whose emphasis was bloodshed violence devastation ruin because the Germans were satisfied with Christianity as a Sunday supplement and so also with the Jews if they wanted a form of religion that could accommodate their ambition their their economy their progress their military ambitions their imperialist ambitions but not one that would interfere or threaten with their deepest self-interest so both the German church and the Jewish synagogue were involved in a kind of God evasion they had reduced the radical faith of God and a true relationship with God into into a man-serving institution and into a culture that allowed them the free pursuit of their deepest and truest interests and that is called idolatry and that sin had caught up with them in the devastation of two world wars and finally the Holocaust itself I talk here about baptism true repentance requires a valid baptism one that is a real burial because our best intentions are not good enough only Christ the resurrected resurrected one as our life consistently is our answer a baptism that is more than a religious ordinance is a burial of that which needs to be brought to death and who will enter those waters who wants a who wants a baptism that constitutes a burial the kind of baptism with which most Germans were content was an infant sprinkling but don't think that if full submersion is necessarily a real baptism it's only a getting wet unless the person who is submitting to it like Job abhors himself and repents in dust and ashes and knows that in him is no good thing at all and he's willing to be buried crucified and buried with Christ there's no good thing in me for all my culture for all my accomplishment for all my philosophy I'm capable of horror that's what my own history has revealed and I repent of it even of my humanity and now what am I doing I'm doing the same thing again in my supposed concern for the Jews and my feeling sorry for the tragedies of the past I'm still playing at it I'm still doing something religious something emotional some some shallow thing that does not account for anything but but gives me a kind of personal relief and saves me from having to face the real issues baptism is a real death and brings a real resurrection to newness of life and out of that come resurrection prayers resurrection burden resurrection concern that is not self-serving but is the actual prayer and concern of God that will affect both Israel and Germany am I losing you it's amazing right now all of this was spoken in one night polite Christianity made Nazism possible not only possible but inevitable the kind of Christianity that we thought was polite and humane becomes ironically exactly the opposite because our sins will find us out and it will express itself in the most beastly forms of human behavior Jews were not just annihilated Jews were treated beastly they were deprived of their humanity torture and violence and sadistic misuse of lives that were captive from a nation whose culture was celebrated above every other so what I'm saying is that if a Christian nation is not authentically Christian it's going to be found out and it's going to reveal itself in exactly the opposite in cut and the kind of conduct that is worse than what animals themselves perform against each other it's bestial it's inhumane because your religion was superficial because your poets said that the cross was too brutal and needed to be garlanded with roses because they took the sting out of the faith and domesticated it and made it to serve the purposes of men whose real primary love and passion was success power wealth domination over nations military increase and their religion was only a Sunday supplement or a chaplain to ordain their activity got the point so until that's recognized and repented for it continues 50 years later the conditions remain today very much the same as what brought Hitler into power and into being it has never been recognized not dealt with only it just has a new external cosmetic glaze called charismatic but the reality has not been met or changed and the nation still has a destiny with regard to Israel because the Lord had spoken to me years ago that the same people who had cast my people into the fire the physical fires will be the people that whom I have appointed to save them out of the fire of my eternal judgment is a purpose for Germany among the nations toward Israel but it can only be fulfilled on the ground of truth and reality and not some self-serving kind of religion by whatever name that's called the German church has a destiny and a mandate that is unfulfilled and can only be fulfilled in the power of his life in union with him both in death and resurrection well I don't know what I said but I gave an invitation and a snap crack and pop these Germans toppled out of their seats that stretched out like dead all over the floor and I never heard such a death of broken cry of recognition that their sins are the same as Israel's and that they need to repent for their own sin and that what has happened in history is the judgment for the their failure to be Christian in fact that the religion then and even now is self-serving and has man's own interest as its center rather than that of the Lord and his glory and they went down and they was pulled all over and you heard racking cries of repentance and then at a certain point when they had passed through that death of repentance I began to hear people worshiping God in the spirit without prompting without overhead projector without amplifiers and when I heard this spirit worship and praise for the deep way in which God was meeting them and it was ascending up totally unregulated or prompted by man I said now the powers of darkness over Germany are terrified when the powers of darkness hear this authentic praise that has risen out of authentic repentance they're finished so I had a little preview of God's hope and purpose for Germany through the word through repentance through praise well some of my books are here tonight all my books are here tonight you may want to get a copy of that Holocaust book a copy of apostolic foundations apostolic perception apostolic proclamation eternity the principalities and powers of the air the spirit of truth