In this sermon, the speaker addresses the state of the American body, particularly those who consider themselves charismatic or spirit-filled believers. He criticizes the tendency for believers to rely on formulas and a push-button approach to their faith, seeking instant results. The speaker emphasizes the importance of spiritual hunger and the need to go beyond simply asking God to move, but also speaking forth commands and decrees in alignment with Scripture. He shares stories of Jewish tradition and the dedication of Rabbi Akiva and his disciples, highlighting the power of sanctifying the name of the Lord and the consequences of slander.

...an agreement now that God would share His heart with us. Can we do that? Abba, Father, we come to You now, and we say that we are desperate to hear from Heaven. We say that You must speak to us. You must move on us. You must change our hearts. Otherwise, we cannot fulfill Your will. Otherwise, we will not be Your covenant people in faithfulness, living out Your call. Otherwise, we will fall infinitely short unless You come down by the power of Your Spirit through Your Word and speak to us and share Your heart with us. We open ourselves too. We make ourselves vulnerable. Break our hearts today for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. In the name of Jesus, Yeshua, the Messiah. Amen. I want you to turn with me to Romans, the ninth chapter. Romans, the ninth chapter. I want you to realize as we begin reading these words that Paul, who was not a liar, Paul, who spoke the truth, Paul, who wrote the truth, wanted everyone to know how truthful he was being here. He went out of his way to say, Hear what I am saying, people. He said, in verse 1, I speak the truth in the Messiah. Notice that. I speak the truth. He's emphasizing the point. I speak the truth in the Messiah. Hear me. I am not lying. He's saying it again. My conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit. Paul, what? What are you trying to tell us? I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. That's not an exaggeration. That's not some televangelist preaching religious hyperbole. That's the broken heart of a sold-out servant of God. One translation says, I am in sore pain. I suffer endless anguish of heart. Why? What could possibly be so bad? You know the Lord. Paul, you're the one that told us to rejoice always. Paul, you're the one that's had a visitation from Jesus. You're the one that gets such great revelations that you've had to be humbled. Paul, you're the one seeing the beginnings of a world harvest. What could possibly burden you so, Paul? He said, I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from the Messiah for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption of sons. Theirs is the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah who is God over all, forever praised. Amen. Over a hundred years ago, there was a conference of Scottish Presbyterian ministers. And one man raised the question to one of the brothers who was involved in Jewish ministry. And he said to him, what is lacking on behalf of Israel? What is the critical need in ministry to the Jewish people? And the answer given was, more tears. More tears. I want to make some observations on the state of the American body today. In particular, we who consider ourselves charismatic or spirit-frilled, although nowadays I think we should just be called spirit-frilled, not spirit-filled. Today we are a generation of high-tech believers with a push-button God. We want everything reduced to formulas. We want to just make it happen. We have what I call microwave ministry. Instant results with no preparation. We want to learn how to heal the sick. We want to go to seminars. We want to learn where to put our hands or how to do it. We want healing anointings imparted to us. But we don't have a broken heart of compassion. We don't have a heart that is long-suffering for the sick and that weeps because of the suffering of mankind. And yet we want all the gifts. Oh, we want to learn how to prophesy and move in the Spirit and hear the voice of God without having the fire in our bones, without being shattered by the divine vision of judgment. Oh, we want to win souls. We want to go to soul-winning seminars and find out how to bring people to Jesus. People have said, if you can close a sale, you can convert a sinner. What hogwash! Oh, we want to go to the seminar and learn how to win souls, but who stays home and weeps for the lost and can't eat for days on end because people are perishing without the Lord. We want the manifestations of the Holy Spirit when we ourselves are not holy. We have what I call a game-show gospel. We want it all as long as it costs us nothing. We're willing to make any sacrifice as long as there's no personal suffering involved. We're willing to persevere in prayer as long as it doesn't take too long. One of my friends facetiously said, Mike, we prayed for an hour. Where's the revival? We fasted last week. We fasted one day a week for the last month. Where's the outpouring? We're willing to bring it to birth as long as there's no labor pain. I mean, that's the way we are. You know, one of the latest fads in the body today is subliminal Bible tapes. Yes, you can grow in faith while you sleep. Hallelujah. Just plug the tape in. You can get the whole New Testament on a single one-hour cassette. Your mind doesn't understand it. It's going too fast. Your conscious mind can't take it. In fact, all you hear, the one tape a friend once played for me, the only thing you could hear was this kind of whooshing, whirring sound like you're at the beach and the water was coming in and the wind was blowing. But you see, your subconscious mind, your inner man takes it all in. This way you can be having a vicious fight with your spouse and still growing in Jesus. My friend said, I don't know. He said, I played it for a day. It cost $30. I said, you spent $30 for a single tape? He said, well, yeah, you know. He said, but it's the whole New Testament on a single tape. You put it in, he said, and we kind of felt peace in the house that day. I said, that's probably because you thought you were at the beach. Whoosh. Oh boy. That's what appeals to us. I've taught at times on spiritual hunger and people say, okay, we're hungry, now what? Now what button do we push? How do we push the button? How do we make the thing happen? We want to do it. We want to be in control. You go to almost any prayer meeting. People are crying out to God, asking God to move, asking God to work, and there's an amen that rises. But then somebody else stands up. I command this. I decree this. I ordain this. And the whole place shakes. Now listen, I believe in speaking things forth. I believe in commanding and decreeing according to what the Scriptures say. I believe in spiritual warfare as I understand what the Scriptures say. But we like it when we're in control. We don't like the posture of being on our knees or on our faces. Leonard Ravenhill said to me, you know, we want to get down on our knees and stand up twice as strong, twice as wise, twice as anointed, twice as powerful. Except meek and lowly and broken and dependent on God. We want to make it happen. But when you get into Jewish ministry, you can't make it happen. That's why so many people, like Martin Luther, we quoted yesterday, they start off on the right foot and they end up hostile. Because these religious Jews don't come and kiss your feet and say, thank you for telling me that the Messiah has already come. I never knew that. You come up with your prophecy and your testament and flash out some verse at them and say, can't you see this has to do with Jesus? And they read it back in context and they say, you're completely twisting the whole thing. You have no idea what you're talking about. You're mistranslating it. And they get even angry. And Jesus looks even worse in their eyes. And you say, oh, they're stiff-necked, hard-hearted rebels. You can't just make it happen. You know, it's like having a passing interest in Muslim evangelism in Saudi Arabia. Friends, that won't do it. We want the power without the pain. We want the glory without the grief. We want to be mighty, but we don't want to mourn. We want to be warriors, but we don't want to weep. Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. We want all the comfort without the mourning, without the anguish, without the pain, without the shaking of our souls. Blessed are you who weep now. That's what the Son of God said. Paul said he was sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. The two go hand in hand. The sorrow of the Lord and the joy of the Lord. We want to experience the joy of the Lord without experiencing His pain. How hypocritical, how selfish, how non-relational can we get? We talk about a hell and we have no tears. How can that possibly be? Someone came up to me last night, a believer from this area. She said, what about my grandfather? She's a Jewish believer. She said, what about my grandfather? And she started crying. She said, is he in hell? She said he loved God, but he didn't know Jesus. She said, well, that's not possible. Forget the theology, hear her heart. She said, is he in hell? She started crying. She said, sorry for the tears. I said, no, the tears make sense. It doesn't make sense that we can have conferences on this subject and that subject and not weep and not break and not pour out tears. It doesn't make sense that we can believe that people are eternally lost without losing days and weeks of sleep over it. We're deceived if we think we're carrying the burden of the Lord without a broken heart, without periods of devastation where we grieve for the lostness of the human race. We've got this end time prophecy frenzy. We want to know what's going to happen, what and where and how, and the second coming has reduced to Bible fascination trivia. We don't need this prophecy frenzy. We need a prophetic fervor. Where our hearts beat with the heartbeat of God and with a suffering human race and with a sick and backslidden church. I want you to understand something. With all my heart, I believe that Jesus still weeps over Jerusalem. He's the same yesterday, today and forever. He hasn't divested Himself of His burden. The Scriptures say He ever lives to make intercession for us. How did He pray on the earth? Hebrews 5, 7 says He prayed with loud crying and tears. I'm not saying that you have to work it up. I'm not saying that you have to be loud to be heard. I'm not saying you have to weep to be heard. But if there is no loud crying and no tears ever in your prayer life, then you don't have the heart of the Son of God because there's loud crying and tears at a funeral and there's shouting when the local sports team wins and there's a raised voice of anger when someone provokes you in the flesh. But the cords of our emotions are rarely touched because we don't carry that same burden. Jesus wept over the city. If only you had known. If only you had known the things that belong to your peace. The city is called City of Peace. If you had only known, He foresaw the disaster and the destruction and the judgment and the brutalization of His own people and He wept. One of the greatest intercessors who ever lived was a man named John Hyde. He was called Praying Hyde. What an honor. When he was in his 40s, he was a missionary in India. When he was in his 40s, he was having health problems in his early 40s. He died somewhere in his mid-40s. He was having health problems. He was brought to a specialist. The doctor checked him out and told him that his heart had literally moved from the left side of his chest cavity over to the center. He prayed with such intensity, with such grief, with such a burden that literally moved his physical heart. And this was the foundation of the intercessory ministry of John Hyde. He said, Our Lord still agonizes for souls. And I say to you, Our Lord still weeps over the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But what if they're rebellious? All the more reason to weep. What if they're hard-hearted and stubborn? All the more reason to weep. What if they're secular and caught up in this world? All the more reason to weep. What if they're prosperous and thinking this world is it? How much more reason to weep? Jeremiah the prophet said to his people, Because you won't hear me, I'll go weep in secret. I won't say, Well, I delivered my soul. Praise the Lord. He said, No, I'll go weep in secret. I want you to understand something today. And I want to talk to you about the religious Jew. No people is so near and yet so far. I want you to catch a burden today. I want you to allow God to break your heart and give you a pain that will not end until the lost sheep of the house of Israel are found once again by their shepherd. Listen to what Paul said. This is not my opinion or my judgment. This is what he spoke of the religious people in his day. Yes, most Jews today are not religious. Most Jews today are secular. I got saved in a church. Most of the friends I know got saved in churches. In other words, being Jewish was not the giant obstacle. There were bigger obstacles. Drugs and sin of all kind and pride in my life were the bigger obstacles. But there is a tremendous revival of Orthodox Judaism today. And I believe as we get closer and closer to the end of the age, the real battle in the Jewish community is going to be between Jewish believers and Orthodox Jews. It's been the religious Jews through the ages who have preserved the people in many, many ways. Yes, God has preserved the people, but it has been through those who have kept to the rabbinic commandments and traditions. Now look at what Paul said about contemporary religious Jews in his day. He says in Romans 9.31 that Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. Notice, Israel did in fact pursue a law of righteousness. Then in the 10th chapter, beginning in verse 1, My heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God. I can testify about some rabbis I've known over the years, some Orthodox Jews. They are zealous for God. But their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to God. Then go over to the 11th chapter, verse 7. What then? What Israel sought so earnestly, it did not obtain. But the elect did. The others were hardened. I want you to hear something. When I came to know the Lord, it was in the context of being raised in a fairly non-religious Jewish home. So yes, I knew I was Jewish. Yes, I was bar mitzvahed. Yes, we would attend synagogue services on certain special occasions. Yes, I knew that the other guys were Christians or Catholics or Protestants or Gentiles. But we were Jews. We were different. But I was not raised in a religious home where God, in any sense, was central. Yes, my father would pray for my sister and I before he'd go to sleep. But he didn't pray a traditional Jewish prayer. He prayed a prayer out of his own heart. When I came to know the Lord, I was consumed with God. That's all I wanted to know. Day and night, that was it. I look back at what I had before, and to me that was just hypocritical, empty religion. It was no different than going to some dead Catholic or dead Protestant church. The local rabbi began to talk to me. He said, you need to meet people who are as spiritual as you are, but they're traditional Jews. I said, well, you know, let's get together. Let's talk. So he brought me into Brooklyn. And there I had my first encounter with ultra-Orthodox Jews. I mean, there they were with the long black beards, black coats, black hats. And I remember the rabbi said something to one of the guys. He said, how are you doing? And the ultra-Orthodox rabbi answered him and said, thank God. I said to myself, that's what we say. I mean, how are you? Oh, praise the Lord. That was the way you'd greet one another in the church. I was saved. You'd shake hands and say, praise the Lord, praise the Lord. Even if the person was unsaved, visiting for the first time, you'd shake their hand, praise the Lord, brother, praise the Lord, sister. This rabbi said, thank God. You know what I'm saying to myself? He's not just going to roll over and say, because I'm a rabbi, therefore I'm a hypocrite, therefore I'm stiff-necked, stubborn, hard-hearted, and do not know God. And you have the truth, but I just refuse to follow you. No. How are you doing? Thank God. This guy was sincere. He was gentle. He was nice. He led a very ethical life. I was really surprised. I mean, he and this rabbi, they were talking about religious experience can be like mountain peaks and valleys. I think I just started a sermon on that the other day. I went downstairs in a synagogue one time, and there was printed, you know, a little poster, the family that prays together stays together. I said, who got what from who? See, saying the prayers as I grew up had no substance. I didn't understand Hebrew. I just read it. I didn't understand it at that time. It had no substance to it. So I just thought it was just like dad wrote prayers. And listen, there are plenty of hypocrites, even among the Orthodox and the very religious. There are plenty of people who are not living what they profess. There are plenty of people who are filled with pride. But hear me. There are also people who are sincerely praying and doing what they believe is right and following steadfastly in the tradition of their forefathers. And in their minds, God forbid that they should despise the blood of their grandfather, who was beaten to death by some frenzied mob, who after a Passover service in Eastern Europe decided they were going to go out and honor Jesus by beating to death some of the Christ killers. In his mind, God forbid that he should dishonor his ancestors by apostatizing and joining some other religion. That's how he feels. I went to New York University when I was getting my PhD in Semitics. I was studying there with an Orthodox rabbi who lived in the town next to me. And this fellow had launched a campaign on Long Island. Many of you know there was the Nationwide I Founded campaign years ago, a nationwide evangelistic thrust. This rabbi launched a counter campaign for the Jewish community called the We Never Lost It campaign. He and I would talk, you know, dialogue honestly, heart to heart. But I mean, that's the Jewish position. We Jews don't need to be saved because we were never lost. Oh sure, we sinned and everything else, but God's given us a religion with mercy and atonement and other things, and we have it. And sometimes you've got to hear this. And listen, here's why I'm telling you this. Please understand it. It is not so that you will get a fascination with Judaism. It is not so that you'll go out of here and say, oh boy, you know, if I could just meet a rabbi, he's certainly more spiritual than I am. That is not what I'm trying to tell you. Here's what I'm trying to say, and I'm going to give you some examples of some of the rabbis who've lived and died in ways that have set examples for the Jewish community for centuries. I'm going to read you just a couple of prayers, but this is what I want you to understand. Someone comes up to you and says, well, what about all the Jews who died in the Holocaust? And a great number of them were not religious Jews at all. Someone says, are they burning in hell? Did they go straight from the gas ovens into hell? And you say, yes, they're burning in hell. That answer almost despises the blood of Jesus. What do I mean? If you could just kind of nod and just say, theologically, with your theological correctness, with your scripture proofs, yes, they're burning in hell. And you can have the head knowledge without the broken heart. It brings reproach. If it doesn't pierce you to the gut, well, what about the Holocaust? What about the agony of our people? Whether there was judgment involved or not is not the question. What about the pain? What about the anguish? The prophets were weeping because their people were being judged. Not because the innocent were suffering. That was part of it. But because the guilty were being judged in such a terrible way, and the nation was falling. It still broke their hearts. What I'm saying is, it should break our hearts. It should cause us anguish that these people who are so near are still yet so far. These should be difficult questions for us. I don't mean theologically difficult. I mean life difficult. Just like it was difficult for me, I was over in Italy recently. When I go overseas, sometimes, somehow I have this reputation of having a healing ministry, which I don't. God has not called me primarily to heal the sick. Although we pray for the sick, and we've seen God do many special things. That is not the primary call. Somehow, when I go overseas, there's this reputation. And people come in with these hopelessly ill people. I say hopelessly in the natural. It's difficult. Here an unsaved woman comes up, and at the end of the service, she comes up, she wants to receive Jesus. She's heard about the love of God, and now she brings up her seven-year-old kid. Totally paralyzed. Totally retarded. Like a vegetable in a chair. Would I pray for her? That's a painful situation to be in. I know God's desire. I know the promises of God. I know that if we were in the fullness of the Spirit, that kid would be instantly raised up. But I also know sometimes my own unbelief. How do I tell that person that I don't have the faith to see her healed right now? It's difficult. No, my theology is sure. The Word is clear. But it's painful. It should be painful that the lost sheep of the house of Israel are lost. One of the most famous rabbis of the early Jewish sages was a man named Rabbi Akiva. He made the mistake of believing that a Jewish general who lived about a hundred years after Jesus was actually the Messiah. And this Jewish general tried to lead a revolt against Rome and ultimately failed. A lot of Christians, that's all they know about this fellow named Rabbi Akiva. They say, yeah, he chose the wrong Messiah. Ha, he got what he deserved. In Jewish eyes, though, even though he made a mistake, he's looked at as a hero. He continued to teach the Torah even when the Romans banned it. Finally, he was arrested. He continued to teach in prison. Then the day of his execution came near. He's about 90 years old. And the Romans were sadists when it came to execution. The executioner began to comb his flesh with iron combs to rip his flesh off his body slowly while he lived. And according to the traditions, Rabbi Akiva began to smile. He began to recite the words of the basic creed or the basic confession of faith given in the book of Deuteronomy. It's become a foundation of Judaism. Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Or as traditionally translated, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And his disciples, you know, according to the tradition, they asked him, you know, Master, why are you smiling? Why aren't you howling in pain? He said, all my life I've wanted to fulfill the commandment to love God, not just with all my heart, but with all my life, with all my being, with all my might. He said, now I finally have the opportunity of loving God with all of my being. And according to the tradition, as he said, the closing words, the Lord is one. He hung on that one word and died. People look at him and say, was he lost? If you say he was, it should break your heart. It should tear at you. One of the most famous rabbis of Eastern Europe, the last generation, was a man named Elchanan Wasserman. He had fled from Nazi persecution. He was hiding out in Lithuania, studying with another group of leading rabbis. They were studying Talmud together, Jewish law, religious law, literature. And again, the Lithuanian fascists that I mentioned yesterday broke in. They rounded him up. They said, you guys are plotting rebellion. You're plotting a revolt. They were studying Talmud is what they were doing. They rounded him up to be killed. Listen to what he said. I mean, we're so caught up with our trite clichés and we're so caught up with being right, and we're so caught up with being blessed, prospering, having a good life, having our needs met. Oh, maybe we're more spiritual. We want to flow in the anointing more. We want to be used by God in a greater way. It's so exciting. Yeah, it is exciting. But there's some deeper things. There's some deeper things. Because God is not impressed with our shallowness. Listen to what this rabbi said. He's about to be butchered. He said, A short time after that, he and the other rabbis were machine-gunned to death. He had a teacher who was considered to be the most pious sage, the most pious Jewish teacher of that entire generation, turn of the century. This man, his teacher, was nicknamed the Chafetz Chaim, the one who desires life based on a book that he wrote against slander, based on words in Psalm 34, if you desire life, want to see long days, keep your tongue from evil, your lips from speaking lies. One occasion, listen to this, he had a shop. Fish were sold there. A Gentile peasant bought a fish from him and accidentally left it there. Maybe the guy was drunk, didn't remember, whatever, he left it there. And this man, this rabbi, couldn't find out who the peasant was. And he was so distressed over it, that the next day he gave a free fish to every single Gentile peasant that came in there. I mean, his ethics were so high that it grieved him to know that someone might possibly have bought something from him and not taken it with him. And he wanted to make sure he didn't have anything that didn't belong to him, so he gave it to everybody. You know, you wonder how religious Jews who look at examples like that feel about our wonderful American gospel enterprise, about our carnal salesmanship, about so much money-hungry emphasis throughout the body. You wonder if they're impressed with the ethics of the church of Jesus Christ at the end of the 20th century. Let me just give you a couple of quotes from this man, this rabbi. Now look, the rabbi down the block here may be just like a regular guy who's doing this because he's a Jew and this is what he does and it's a good living. But there are others who are honestly pursuing something they don't understand. And it's going to take our prayers and intercession for the veil to be lifted. And when anyone truly turns to the Lord, Jew, Gentile, Muslim, Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant, doesn't matter who they are anywhere in the world, when they genuinely turn to the Lord, God will reveal Himself. This man taught, the Chafetz Chaim taught, that this world is not a place of happiness. For true joy is only in the heavens and we are here to do the job assigned to us by the Creator. He lived a life of sacrifice. He said, our sages say that God's throne is not complete as long as the redemption has not yet come. So how can I sit on a comfortable easy chair when I know that God sits, as it were, on a broken chair? He believed in the mercy of the Lord. If not for our good fortune that God has shown us the kindness of accepting our repentance, we would drown in the mud we had created in only a few years. Does that sound like an arrogant man? What do Jews pray when they pray? Recognize that the lostness of the Jewish people is unique because Jews pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jews see themselves as faithful to the covenant God gave with Moses. They see all the traditions and customs they've added as just helping them to keep that covenant. Of course, I disagree with them over that, but that's their perception in their heart. They're not praying to some foreign deity, like the Muslims are, calling Him Allah, the God. They're not praying to some wood statue somewhere. They're praying to the same God we pray to and praying prayers from the Scriptures, the Psalms, every single day. I'm talking about religious Jews. Praying three times daily, not just for five, ten minutes at a shot either. The prayers they go through are lengthy. Many of the prayers written by the rabbis are beautiful, are moving, are touching. Years ago, when I was teaching at Christ for the Nations in New York, I was up late at night. Maybe it was about two in the morning. I was sitting down at my desk, and I had a particular edition of the Jewish prayer book with me. And it was one that a friend had lent me with commentary of one rabbi on the prayers, and I had to return it to him. It was sitting on my desk, and I went to reach for the Word, to read the Word about two in the morning as I sat in my home, and instead I felt led pick up the prayer book, and I picked up the prayer book, and I flipped open to one of the favorite prayers in Judaism. You know, written roughly a thousand years ago, this will give you a very rough day. It's called Adon Alam, Lord of the World, Master of the Universe. Many Jews pray this as a closing prayer before they fall asleep. Let me just read these words to you. Because as I read those words, God gripped my heart. No people is so near, and yet so far. I mean, no people comes right up to the door the way religious Jews do in their prayers, in their lifestyle. Right up to the door, and then refuses to believe that Jesus is that door. No people comes so close, and yet so passionately rejects. This is from a poetic English translation of the Hebrew words. Lord of the world, He reigned alone, while yet the universe was not. When by His will all things were wrought, then first His sovereign name was known. And when the all shall cease to be, in dread-lone splendor, He shall reign. He was, He is, He shall remain, in glorious eternity. For He is one, no second shares His nature, or His oneness. Unending and beginningless, all strength is His, all sway He bears. Now listen to the last two verses. Because these are often said by Jewish people as they die. So near, and yet so far. He is the living God to save. My rock, while sorrows, toils endure. My banner, and my stronghold sure. The cup of life whenever I crave. I place my soul within His palm, before I sleep is when I wake, and though my body I forsake, rest in the Lord, in fearless calm. It's not just some other religion, friends. It's not just some other statistic. Oh, eleven Jews got saved last month. Praise the Lord. This is life. This is death. During the Holocaust, there were religious Jews who at the very cost of their lives, in the midst of incredible suffering, starvation, diets, brutal treatments, beatings, torture that are indescribable, medical experiments being done on people who received no anesthesia, just guinea pigs for butchers. There were Jews who still tried to observe the commandments. There's one account of a young man when he came into the concentration camp who was fairly secular. In his time, under the Nazi hands, he began to become religious. He was given a transfer to concentration camp and began to work in the kitchen, and there was one German overseer who would do everything he could to get these guys in trouble, so he accused him of stealing potatoes, which was not true. So as a punishment, they amputated his left arm from the shoulder down. They said they should have taken off both, but this way he could still work while he suffered. And he came to a rabbi grief-stricken. Why? Well, here he was going to be maimed for life if he survived the concentration camp, but he was grief-stricken for another reason. Jewish tradition understands the words of Moses, that these words of the law, the law will be as a front lip between your eyes, as a sign on your hands. It was developed what are called phylacteries in the New Testament, which fill in these prayer boxes with scriptures from the Torah. A religious Jew prays with, every morning except the Sabbath, puts the one box with the scriptures on his head with a strap that goes around. You've seen pictures of it. And then ties the other around his left arm with the box going right on the hand, which can then be next to the heart. And he was grief-stricken because he didn't have a left arm, and he couldn't put the prayer boxes on anymore. And what could he do? Would he please be allowed to put them on the right arm? With someone's help, and the rabbi said yes. And he went out joyful. I want you to hear this prayer that was written by a Jew against the flaming backdrop of the Holocaust. Written by a man who probably saw his own family members, little children, when they'd arrive at the concentration camp, there's the burning ditch, and there they take the little babies from the mother's arms and throw them alive into the flames. He saw that with his eyes. Let me read some excerpts from this prayer. You tell me this doesn't touch your heart. Jews sometimes have it out with God just like Job did. Listen to this. I believe in you, God of Israel, even though you have done everything to stop me from believing in you. I believe in your laws, even if I cannot excuse your actions. I want to say to you that now, more than in any previous period of our eternal path of agony, we, we the tortured, the humiliated, the buried alive, the burned alive, we the insulted, the mocked, the lonely, the forsaken by God and man, we have the right to know what are the limits of your forbearance. I should like to say something more. Do not put the rope under too much strain, lest, alas, it snap. The test to which you have put us is so severe, so unbearably severe, that you should, you must, forgive those members of your people who, in their misery, have turned from you. You have done everything to make me stop believing in you. Now, lest it seem to you that you will succeed by these tribulations to drive me from the right path, I notify you, my God and God of my Father, that it will not avail you in the least. You may insult me, you may castigate me, you may take from me all that I cherish and hold dear in the world, you may torture me to death, I shall believe in you. I shall love you no matter what you do to test me. And these are my last words to you, my wrathful God. Nothing will avail you in the least. You have done everything to make me renounce you, to make me lose faith in you, but I die exactly as I have lived, a believer. Eternally praised be the God of the dead, the God of vengeance, of truth and of law, who will soon show his face to the world again and shake its foundations with his almighty hand.