In this sermon, the speaker shares his personal experience of being called by God to deliver a message in an unscheduled manner. He expresses the fear and trembling he feels before God, emphasizing the importance of seeking the mind of the Lord in preaching. The speaker then recounts a harrowing story of a train journey where people were terrified and suffocating, symbolizing the world in its last days. He contrasts this with the story of Elijah and the widow, highlighting the obedience and faithfulness of both Elijah and the woman in desperate circumstances. The sermon emphasizes the need for an Elijah people who will cry out and warn others to repent before the day of the Lord.

This is tape number K015, Art Katz delivering the Jerusalem Conference address. I'd like you to turn, if you can see, to the book of 1 Kings and the 17th chapter. While you're turning, I'll remind you how well we have eaten thus far at the Lord's table. The bread of life has been broken. We've eaten of the very lamb himself. But the question that God has put in my heart to ask you tonight is, with which attitude have we eaten? Have we eaten with loins girded and with staff in hand? Or have we eaten with another attitude far more characteristic of Christianity in modern times, even including the charismatic movement? And that is the attitude of, they ate, they drank, and they rose up to play. There's something in the atmosphere of this conference that suggests another room in this city, 19 centuries ago, where a band of disciples enjoyed a Pesach or a Passover meal with their master. How many of us like them are not even aware that this might be a last supper? For how much longer shall we enjoy such privileges as this? I know that we're already busy making plans for next year, but the tempo of events is such that we ought to very prudently consider if this might not be a last supper at the Lord's table in such a convocation of believers commemorating the Holy Spirit of God. Like that other last supper, hardly shall the last echoes of the praises be sung and fade. Then we shall be required to go out into the night to be accosted by the same mobs who were but a few days before shouting, and cutting and strewing branches before the donkey upon which the Lord rode, and out of the same throats was to come to cry, How many of us who are today enjoying this meal will like them be too surfeited, too overfed to watch and pray even one hour, and will in the hour of crisis which shall assuredly come run and flee naked, leaving behind superficial garments of religious conviction which were never too securely tied to begin with. Lord, let us not leave this table except we eat the lamb, roast with fire, letting nothing remain, even the pertinences thereof. Even those parts that are not pleasing to the appetite, because we've been a spoiled generation, and we pick and choose the comely parts. Our appetites have grown fastidious and delicate, but there's a God who knows the wilderness through which we must march, and there's a mount to which we must come greater even than Horeb, it's Mount Zion, upon which God's end-time temple shall be built, and the Shekinah glory of God shall dwell. We shall not persevere in that journey except we eat the lamb entire, roasted with fire, with all of the pertinences thereof. I'm going to ask you to bow your head with me. I don't know what the Lord's going to put on the table in my brief presentation, but that he gives us a stomach, a heart, a disposition to receive it and to devour it entire. Will you bow your heads with me? Precious God, you see us and know us, and you see the tendency we have to pick and to choose. You've heard our squeals of delight at the kinds of things that come upon the table, Lord, that please us. But put on this table now, Lord, before we leave, such things as we need to consume, Lord, as shall fit us for the journey to which you have called us, even the least pleasing parts. In Jesus' name, precious God, have your way and speak by your Spirit and pour forth such things out of your own heart and life and passion and understanding as you would give to this people this night. Mighty God, make every moment count. We'll thank you and praise you for this opportunity to be your mouth. In Yeshua's great name we pray. Amen. I don't know why I speak of the Passover table tonight. This is not the Passover season, but I'm reminded that in the Orthodox commemoration of the Passover, there comes something at the conclusion of the long night of a seder, of a service, when the whole meal has been consumed, when the youngest son goes to the front door to open the door. Every person at that table rises with glass in hand and looks with deep fascination to this door. There had been a chair at the table that had not been occupied all through the meal and a table setting. It's called Elijah's chair. Now the door is opened in the hope and the anticipation that this year, in this Passover, in this Pesach, Elijah the prophet shall appear as the forerunner of the soon coming Moshiach. And I don't know how to describe to you, precious people, the countless hundreds upon hundreds of years in which Jewish people have looked with pained disappointment at a door opened and no Elijah standing in the doorway. Many of us speak about the body of Christ and we're expecting another advent of the Messiah, the corporate Christ, the many-membered man. I believe that with all my heart and I believe also that as the first Christ was preceded by a forerunner, one who came to make the way straight before him, to proclaim the soon coming day of the Lord, to call men to repentance, so too must there be as a corporate Christ is to come, a corporate manifestation of Elijah. And I'll tell you that I think we've not been well-prepared for such an anticipation, let alone that we should be members of such an Elijah band. I think it behooves us tonight to be reminded again of what an Elijah is. What a contrast to the whole temper of our own age, a wilderness prophet. I don't think that there's any more dramatic introduction, any more shaking verse, words that more suggest in one sentence what a man of God truly is, than the first verse of the 17th chapter of 1 Kings. And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, as the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand there shall not be due nor rain these years, but according to my word. I don't believe that there's a commentator living who can do justice to the weight of these words, as the Lord my God liveth. We would need an hour to suggest all of the things that are implied in that one statement. We would need to be reminded of the kind of age in which the prophet spoke this, an age of such dark apostasy, of such a backslidden Jewish people, of such a people going through nominal outward motions of their Judaism, who had lost the inner knowledge of God by His presence, that for any man to rise up in such a generation, to say that as the Lord my God liveth, is an astounding statement. And what a correspondence that age shall have to the age to which we are rapidly moving, in which it says, when the Lord shall come, shall there be faith found in the earth? Unbelief shall be characteristic of that age. Men's hearts cold, the love of God departed, and in that generation God is seeking a band that shall stand in the same boldness before the Ahab's of their generation, and pronounce, as the Lord my God liveth, before whom I stand. I'll tell you people that such an utterance is not born in a moment, and I praise God for the discreet silence that precedes the seventeenth chapter of 1 Kings. Not a word about what it took to make such a man as this. It pleased God not to tell us, and I believe that in the silence of our own lives, unseen by those who are everywhere about us, there's a God now who is shaping and molding and forming His Elijah band. Lessons of discipline and of obedience and of necessary suffering, of resisting the spirit of the age, of turning our backs on comfort and affluence and all of the seductive spirits which seek to beguile us. God is shaping a people in obscurity and shall raise them up in a moment to work His great end time purposes. As the Lord my God liveth before whom I stand, this wilderness prophet spoke into the face of Ahab. And I don't suppose that Elijah was any very imposing person in the natural. I rather suppose he was lean, and yet his boldness was not a reflection of his physical condition, but of something inward. And to whom was he speaking this utterance? But the most feared and dreaded despot in the history of all of Israel's backslidden kings, of whom it says in the previous chapter that Ahab did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him. And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, that he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Etbaal, king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him and reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. What an unholy union between a king of Israel and a whore of abominations. What a marriage between politics and sickly religion that has to do with every kind of erotic form devised by human ingenuity in the name of religion. And what a foreshadowing of that union that shall characterize the end times, when we shall see politics and whoredom wedded together in a fierce assault upon the prophets of God. That Elijah has to cry out, I alone am left. He was worse than all that preceded him, and the name Jeroboam is given us in the scripture. And if we turn back but a couple of chapters, what are we told about him? This king took counsel and he made two calves of gold and said, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. What a suggestion of those who provide for us today religions of convenience. It's too much to go up to Jerusalem. Here are golden calves, far more conveniently at hand, at which you may worship. And he went and he chose priests who were the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi. And haven't we seen that, and are seeing it in our own generation? As if religion was some kind of profession, as if men could obtain a certificate or degree by submitting themselves certain numbers of years in academies or places of theology. Men who have no more notion of God and communicating dead things Sunday after Sunday to people who are going to their doom. False priests, false gods, and he chose even a day on the 8th month and the 15th day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, but was not it, nor was it on the day which God had appointed, false worship. And that is the configuration of end times religion. False gods, false priests, false worship. And Ahab did more evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him, even Jeroboam. And it was before this despot that Elijah stood and spoke that one bold statement, as the Lord my God liveth before whom I stand, it shall not rain nor dew according to my word. I'll tell you at first reading it sounds like a piece of a front tree. As we say in Hebrew it's chutzpah for a man so to speak to command the elements. Who does he think he is? God? But I'll tell you people I think that there's a process going on in my own life with which you yourself may be familiar. It was in this very city ten years ago as a rank atheist spending two weeks at the Hebrew University trying to extricate myself from the embarrassing predicament of a Jesus who was trying to make of me a Christian. Reading every book I could lay my hands on to get out of this unwanted predicament. And the more I read the more I realized I was impaled on the hook of God and was put on a bus one day to visit a Hasidic community and never got there. Got off at the bus by the King's Hotel and walked into a bookstore to find out that they sold New Testaments and Bibles and Christian commentaries and to learn that they were a congregation of Jewish believers in the Messiah Jesus and that this was their bookstore adjoining their chapel. And something clicked in my heart and I heard the still small voice of a God who knew me by name and commanded me that I should not leave. I heard the still small voice of God in this eternal city. And a moment ago as a modern man I would have condemned anyone who would have suggested such a hearing and referred him to a psychiatrist. But I'll tell you in the first hearing of that voice every Jew intuitively recognizes this is the voice of Him with whom I have to do. And if anything has characterized my ten year walk it's a continued succession of the hearing of the still small voice and continuing obediences from faith unto faith and death unto death. Those speakings are ever so uniform, always brief, never with explanation and yet once to ever call me to convenience. And yet that voice is growing dim in these days. You say, Ott, are you getting carnal that you're no longer hearing the voice of God? I don't understand the process. In times not too distant when I received a commitment to come and speak someplace maybe months before I was to go or in the very making of the commitment the message flashed on my heart and I knew what was to be spoken. Then that disappeared. And maybe some weeks just preceding the meeting God would begin to stir in my heart and shape me for what was to come forth. Then that disappeared. And then maybe the day of the meeting or the very night before something would stir in my heart. That disappeared. Then in arriving at the meeting I would understand what would have to be spoken. Then that disappeared. Sitting on the platform waiting to be called on I would hear the still small voice and know what had to be spoken. And then that disappeared. I'll tell you people, it's getting so now that I have to move almost by intimating what is the will of God. Cleaving to God in such a way as to catch the very intimations of His heart. Intuiting His spirit. And I believe that there's a God who's bringing me even closer than that. That the very thought that is in my mind and the very impulse of my heart is His thought and His impulse that the day might come that the very word out of my mouth unpremeditated and spoken in the impulse of the moment is the word of God. Such a thing is not born in a day. It's a process. And few there be that enjoy submitting to it. I'll tell you that people look at speakers as if they were some kind of slick professional who have a battery of messages that they could yank out at any convenient moment. But I'll tell you that there's an agony of trembling and fear before God to miss the mind of the Lord. And what shall we say of a moment such as this? In the concluding hour of a historic conference being brought forth in an unscheduled way told first to be given a few moments to explain an event taking place in New York for which I was going to invite your prayer and then to be told subsequently I would be given seven minutes to speak and then after that fifteen minutes and having a growing conviction is it perhaps that I am to be a mouth through which God is going to speak a fit and concluding word? How do I know that this shall be the message? When there are four thousand lives in this building and all kinds of machinery whirring and tapes being recorded and men and women going back to forty nations of the world who might have heard from God except that a man interposed himself between the mind and spirit of God and God's people. I'll tell you people that every act of obedience is an act unto death and Elijah's are not made except by a willing obedience to such deaths. Little wonder that my Jewish people have had to look century after century at doors open and not a one not an Elijah standing in that place and the word of the Lord came unto him saying get thee hence and turn thee eastward and hide thyself by the brook sheriff that is before Jordan and so shall it be required of us also. Such anger, such wrath, such bitterness shall come upon the people of God we who have been looked upon with a degree of tolerance and maybe now a slight degree of irritation as a fly buzzing around the head of the world are going to come into a season of something far worse than that because the world is going to tremble it's going to be shaken to its foundations great catastrophes and crises unimagined are going to afflict it and pity the fool who shall stand in the way of such a world and speak with a voice Christ is the answer I'll tell you that men shall not brush him away as a fly but shall gnash their teeth upon him as an obstacle to the necessary progress of mankind it was a groovy thing to be a Christian but praise God that season is over and there's a God calling men to serious commitment at the end of the ages oh ha ha ha that's not God that's Satan don't you know his wiles don't you know how deceitful he is he wants to take God's prophet and bring him to a remote place where there is no stream and there'll be no ravens and that prophet will be extinguished ravens why everyone knows that that's a bird of prey it's a scavenger bird it's a bird designed to eat out of garbage cans it's the last instrumentality that shall feed a prophet of God but we read so he went and did according to the word of the Lord oh precious people if you'll not think it melodramatic and you should have ever an occasion to have something to do with my burial and you want to inscribe something an epitaph on my tombstone will you please quote this so he went and did according to the word of the Lord and a Jewish man who interviewed me today from Newsweek magazine he said well Mr. Katze said since your experience in Jesus 10 years ago and your continuing walk are you more Jewish or less I said if you measure Jewish by culture or Yiddishkeit or the eating of certain foods or certain cultural practices I can't say but if you measure Jewishness by the knowledge of and the obedience to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob I have never been more Jewish than I am in this moment is to hear the still small voice of God calling you to absurdity and foolishness and certain death and to go and do according to the word of the Lord but how did he know it was the Lord's word it might have been Satan but I'll tell you that the answer is this he was a man much practiced in the hearing of the still small voice these were familiar accents it was not a first time experience now I'll tell you there's a God who speaks prolifically over the face of the earth for those whose ears are attuned to hear him I'm not talking about religious dilettantes who love to spice their coffee time conversation and boast about a God who so loves them that he treats them to extraordinary revelations by a still small voice that they might show how astute they are in their understanding of the things of God my God does not speak to such my God speaks to those whose hearts are prepared to receive and to do the word of the Lord I remember speaking at a university campus on hearing the still small voice of God and when I finished these radical students came over to me and they said what are you talking about hearing the still small voice of God how do you know it's God and not Satan I'll tell you people if the world could ask such a question as that what then should the people of God ask it's a tremendous question and as I stroked my chin looking to that God who was made unto me wisdom for I had none of my own and that very moment in that crowd and the tumult and the noise and the distraction of many bodies there was a shaggy dog wending his way through the crowd I said look at that dog he's not aimlessly wandering in all of this tumult and noise of many voices he has heard the voice of his master and he's going I'll tell you in that day we had best be able to discern the familiar accents of the still small voice of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Elijah how often has he perhaps spoken to you and you will not hear when he has spoken a word of repentance spoken a word of forgiveness spoken a word that would have brought you to a place of your humiliation and you stopped your ears oh precious people may we open our ears and our hearts and hear that in that day when it shall be a matter of life and death not only for ourselves but to a world to whom God calls us in ministry we shall not fail to hear the voice of him and I'll tell you there's another reason why Elijah knew it was God's voice because it was a very foolish expediency to be fed by ravens and he knew far better than many of us who have forgotten that my God does things in stables that when my God chooses a people he chooses one not great in number or mighty or in power he chooses a foolish people, the Jews my God is a God who ever and always chooses foolish things to confound the things that are wise and the things that are mighty and if there are two things that are incumbent upon us in this hour it's to become familiar with the voice of his speaking and to become familiar with the ways of his acting he's a God who chooses the foolish things and so the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening and he drank of the brook and it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up because there'd been no rain in the land hallelujah I tell you people for my own sake I am sick of bumper stickers on cars that have some very glib and facile things to say that if the driver of this car is absent tough on you you're going to remain to face the tribulation but he's going to be neatly caught up and be spared any such trials there's something leaden in my heart when I see such things I don't rejoice, I become saddened it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up and I want to suggest theological nincompoop that I am that I believe that the prophet is not exempt from the conditions on the earth which he himself brings by his own word the brook shall dry up but there's a God that shall lead us from brooks to widows there's a God that shall cup us in the hollow of his hand and there's a God who would even now show us that our sufficiency is not from our employers nor our organizations nor even from the people of God but from our Father which is in heaven the giver of good and perfect gifts in whom is no shadow nor variableness of turning do you know that now and do you realize that now so that when the brook dries up you shall not look down but look up to a God who shall never fail you and so the word of the Lord came to him saying arise and get to Zarephath I've commanded a widow woman to sustain thee so he arose and went I just have to take a respectful moment's pause so he arose and went no ifs, no ands, no buts no discussion with God no controversy that this is a Gentile woman why should she honor a Hebrew prophet so he arose and went oh for such a people whose obedience is implicit and immediate and he came to such a woman and what a picture and type she is of the world in its last extremity there she was gathering sticks to make her last fire and meal and as she was going to fetch a little water he stopped her and said bring me a drink and a morsel of bread and she said as the Lord thy God liveth I have not a cake but a handful of meal in a barrel a little oil in a cruz and behold I'm gathering two sticks that I may go and dress it for me and my son that we may eat it and die I'll tell you people that this says something more than a woman who is hungry this is a woman who is broken a woman who is utterly dejected this is a woman who is disconsolate and depressed why do you ask because she has been abruptly plunged from great affluence and comfort and security and leisure and luxury to a world in which men's hearts shall fail them for fear and every kind of crippling shortage and every kind of devastating affliction shall come upon a modern civilization that we shall see the fulfillment of visions that are now being shed by the spirit of God in the hearts of his children of one I heard recently where an affluent businessman in the backyard of his very sumptuous home with his wife and children huddled around a little fire upon which he was blowing upon the coals and had a little kettle brewing a soup made from herbs and grasses out of his own backyard can you believe that the modern world would ever be so reduced as that if men leaped out of windows in the depression years what then shall this generation do who has been born to every comfort and every kind of luxury that the modern world has ever known I'm just going to die broken and despairing and it's to such a world that God shall call his Elijah band Elijah said unto her but fear not, go and do as thou hast said but make me a little cake first and bring it to me and after make for thee and for thy son for thus saith the Lord God the barrel of meal shall not waste neither shall the cruise of oil fail until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth and she went and did according to the word of Elijah and she and he in her house did eat many days and the barrel of meal wasted not neither did the cruise of oil fail according to the word of the Lord which he spoke by Elijah what a demonstration of a living God corroborating the word of his servant and yet it was not enough to bring a widow woman a dejected world to a place of salvation how many of us who are sitting here tonight have come home time after time weary ourselves and dejected and dispirited because we have poured out our souls we have persuaded men knowing the terror of God and they have brushed us aside as so much nonsense and our cry especially with our Jewish people is what does it take I'll tell you what it takes it came to pass after these things that the son of the woman the mistress of the house fell sick and his sickness was so sore there was no breath left in him I'll tell you that if my Jewish people will not come to the knowledge of their God for the love of truth or the love of him my God shall put his finger upon that thing which is more dear to them than their own life God knew well the vulnerability of the widow woman and took her son and I'll tell you however untutored she was in the things of God she immediately recognized that this had something to do with her own spiritual condition and she said to Elijah what have I to do with thee O thou man of God art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance and to slay my son oh I tell you I love this impasse because up till now God has led his prophet by his spoken word but now all of a sudden without any warning without any speaking something untoward has happened and I'll tell you that it's in a moment like that that the spiritual condition of the man of God is revealed here we are sitting this night well fed, warm, comfortable in the fellowship of the saints praising God and singing his praises but what shall we do in extremity and crisis if I can make a play upon words we spoke in political science about power where we said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely I would suggest this crisis reveals and absolute crisis reveals absolutely and isn't it a paradox to say that as the thick gloom and darkness shall cover the earth there shall be a revelation a piercing revelation not only of the condition of the world which has always been in enmity with God and shall now have its fangs bared but also the condition of God's people what shall we reveal if we should be caught when the lights go out and the power fails between floors and an elevator of a building shall our hearts beat for fear and panic or shall we believe that God is in this moment as he is in every other crisis reveals and crisis reveals absolutely what did the crisis of Jesus apprehended reveal in the life of Peter but one who had made loud professions though all the world deny you yet will I never deny you but crisis revealed a beggarly life full of hot shot bravado full of fleshly assumption but full of spiritual failure in the hour of greatest need when crisis comes upon us may it find revealed a people of God not found wanting interesting then to see what Elijah's response was and he said give me thy son and he took him up out of a bosom and carried him up into a loft where he abode and laid him upon his own bed and he cried unto the Lord and said oh Lord my God hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourned by slaying her son what is this and he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried unto the Lord and said oh Lord my God I pray thee let the child's soul come unto him again what we have just read precious people is not just a description of a historical episode in the life of one of God's prophets what we have read is the definitive pattern of God's end time evangelism and it shall not come by bumper stickers and literature distribution and other means of impressing the world at our convenience where we need not extend ourselves and be brought to places of reproach persecution suffering and death the only kind of evangelism that shall save the world in its end time extremity is taking the dead corpse and cadaver of the world in all of its sickly cold up to the abode where we live where we haven't wanted that we didn't mind those silent prayer requests in the Sunday service and the other seeming shows of fellowship and back slaps and bear hugs and potluck suppers and then to retreat to the privacy of our own homes where we were yet something other than what we were publicly but there's a God that shall require of us our privacy to be invaded and we shall have to take the dead sickly corpse of a dead world up to our abode where our abode is and stretch it out over our own satiny sheets right into the inner sanctum itself and if that were not enough we shall be required to prostrate ourselves over that dead corpse eyeball to eyeball and fingertips to fingertips and cry unto God three times oh I know that there's crying and crying and I suppose one of the chiefest irritations of my life as a Jewish believer is that pale schmaltzy sentimental kind of fascination that many Christians have for Israel and for the Jewish people it's sentimental only people and it shall not endure when the storms shall rage those now who make a show of concern for Israel shall find their own knees buckling when we shall find increasing labels of oil yes and Jews no it's going to become uncomfortable increasingly to display concern and affection for Israel and mere affection will not sustain us in such an hour only something born by the spirit of God and a love that beats in our hearts for the people which are the apple of his eye because they are still loved of the Father through us a woman told me of a dream she had that was more of a nightmare that in the late hours there was a terrific pounding on her door and she and the family quickly put on nightgowns and came down to see what the noise was and unlatched the door and hooded men came running into the room and commanded that they immediately be dressed and leave as they were without taking anything and were bundled and tied up and thrown into the backs of cars and were driven off in the night and she cried out in terror and panic why are you doing this? and the answer came you are among those who love the Jews it's going to take something more than sentimental concern it's going to take a people who will prostrate themselves over a dead son and cry out of the depths of their hearts three times and I'm just thrilled that to this conference came hundreds of German people I can't express to you the love in my heart for you and for your country and the things which I cannot even understand that are deep in my heart and independent of my mind our Yiddish and your Deutsch our zest for life and your Gemütlichkeit and how much of our lives have been inextricably bound together strange the correspondences through the centuries in tragedy and suffering and death and so shall it also be in joy and I believe that God shall require of that same people whom Satan used to cast Jewish people into the flames such travail and supplication by the spirit as shall keep them from the fires of his soon coming judgment oh but when we think of the German people what impression do we have? circumspect nice, fastidious not given to demonstration everything in order but I'll tell you that there's got to be such an operation of the spirit of God that goes far beyond culture far beyond temperament far beyond personality that an entire people shall tremble and shake and cry and anguish and bring forth an Israel into the kingdom of God so that God might comprehend all in his end time mercy how many of us shall be willing to take that dead son that dead Jewishness that has done hardly more in the world but to traffic and pornography and corruption and culture and other such things that have not shown them to be a nation of priests and light unto the world and bring them from death unto life that they might again fulfill the intentions of God for them for if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead Elijah prostrated himself and cried out three times and we read that the Lord heard the voice of Elijah and the soul of the child came unto him again and he revived and Elijah took the child and brought him down out of the chamber into the house and delivered him unto his mother and Elijah said see thy son liveth what a demonstration my Jewish people need what a demonstration the world needs of life out of death and how many Jewish families I know personally where fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and bubbas and zedas have been swept into the kingdom of God because a son has been brought back out of the death of drug infliction where medicine and specialists and psychiatrists avail nothing a baptism in the Holy Spirit which set the son free and brought him up out of death was the evidence that turned a family inoculated against the name of Jesus to believing in that name unto salvation and the woman said to Elijah now by this I know that thou art a man of God and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth God have mercy upon us who have thought in our childishness that if we said the right words and intoned the correct formulas that somehow we could expect the correct response right words are not enough correct theologies are not enough subscription to right doctrines are not enough the word of God in our mouths has got to be truth how precious little preaching we hear on the cross of Christ Jesus and how wise men who speak from pulpits are to avoid it who have not experienced the cross in their own lives and would be speaking only theologically and doctrinally you say what shall be the reward for such faithful obedience to the still small voice what shall be the reward for boldness by the spirit of God standing before the Ahab's of this world without trembling what shall be the reward for bringing salvation to the widow's son shall you be born up on the shoulders of men and applaud it shall you receive a plaque an award from Jewish organizations for philanthropic and humanistic work the reward shall be what Elijah's reward was and the reward of righteousness in every generation for when Elijah again saw Ahab he heard this Ahab said unto him are thou he that troubleth Israel oh precious people I tremble for what we are going to hear in these soon coming days and what we've already heard when we had key 73 in the United States which was hardly more than a pop and a fizzle and touched my Jewish people not at all and yet for all the clamor and outcry from rabbis you would think it was one of the most extensive programs of evangelism to the Jewish people and here's the kinds of deep things we heard coming from the Jewish community what are you trying to do wasn't it enough what we Jews suffered in the holocaust and 6 million of us went up through smokestacks what are you trying to do isn't it enough we're struggling in Russia today to preserve our Jewish identities what are you trying to do make Christians out of us and steal from us our Jewish identity anti-Semite call that the love of Christ art thou he who troubleth Israel and I can see legs turning to jelly Adam's apples bubbling men gasping and sucking for air when they shall hear such furious accusations and it shall not come from my Jewish people only but it shall come from numerous churches calling themselves Christians and saying that if you are obedient to the injunction of the Lord to preach this gospel to every creature beginning at Jerusalem and to the Jew first that this is not the love of Christ only those in whose bones the word of God is a fire only those who stand before God and can say to such a world as the Lord my God liveth before whom I stand shall not tremble and weaken and fall in such a moment and so we know the rest of the story Elijah called for a showdown the false prophets and himself the two sacrifices that were built let that God be God who answers by fire and the false priests jumping and cutting themselves with lances and noise and tumult but there was not an answer silence and so shall there be a most sickening silence in that last day when those who have fixed themselves to false religions shall cry and jump and cut themselves and go through every commotion for their salvation but there shall be no answer from heaven what shall my rabbis say then spiritual leaders of my people who have spoken of God as an impersonal force in the universe as an abstract power no impersonal force shall answer from heaven but only the living God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob in the name of the Holy One of Israel Yeshua HaMashiach and rebuilt the altars that were fallen down and laid out his sacrifice and watered it with twelve barrels of water and saturated it through and through and so shall it be required of us also a whole offering cut wide open saturated with tears a barrel for each of the twelve tribes of Israel then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench and when all the people saw it they fell on their faces and they said the Lord he is God the Lord he is God how my heart beats to hear my Jewish people cry out the Lord he is God the Lord he is God but they shall not cry it except there be a demonstration of fire from heaven and my concluding word is this people fire of one kind or another fires of repentance or fires of judgment in a tremendous book written by a contemporary writer Eli Wiesel called The Night it describes the biography of this man's own family all victims of a holocaust last survivors of a Jewish community wiped out all throughout Europe surviving in Transylvania a little outpost in the mountains believing in hope against hope that this shall not come against them somehow they would make it to the end of the war and they would survive where their less fortunate kinsmen had not and some freaky character came one day some kind of man who escaped from the concentration camps and he cried to them a warning and they would not hear he was an unsavory thing to look upon they didn't want to hear his unwelcome words they pushed him out of their sight this too shall pass it shall not come upon us how men will have one faith or another and how the issue of the last day will be having the faith that saves and one day there was a tremendous rumbling in the ground and a shaking and off on the horizon they saw a strange phenomenon a cloud of dust something coming closer and closer an apparition they didn't know what to make of it and then the ground shook the more and then they saw these objects and tanks and armored cars with the swastikas the distorted perverse cross broken with the helmets and the boots coming into their community and their hearts beat for fear and day by day how the announcements went up and how the Jews were required to move out of their homes and move into a certain walled section their ghetto oh but they thought this shall not come upon us somehow we're going to survive they had a faith that they would make it but the day came when the announcement was put up tomorrow morning at sunrise you're to be massed at the square by the train station with only such articles as you can personally carry oh that night they dug furiously in the backyards and the cellars they buried their menorahs and their family heirlooms and their watches and their wealth this too shall pass we shall come back we shall make it fantastic the faith the perverse faith of men in the face of imminent disaster and they came that next morning and saw the cattle cars all lined up at the train station and their hearts pounded out of their bodies and the children clutched at their legs and in they were crowded bodies so thick that they could not sit nor fall to the ground and could not stand direct and the doors were jammed shut and locked no food no water and three days of suffocating darkness and people fainted for fear and shrieked and adolescent children fornicated believing this was the last opportunity to steal something of a joy that would soon be lost to them what a picture of the world in its last days extremity in a dark car locked riding to a place they know not what choked and suffocating unable even to breathe fornicating trying to catch a moment's gratification before they perish oh how there's a God looking for an Elijah people who will cry out warning repent for the day of the Lord is at hand and when that three day journey was over the train came one day to a shuddering halt and in their half conscious condition a woman who had been in a coma on and off and would wake up crying out fire fire I see fire and the word so terrified her these people that they punched this woman into unconsciousness and she would wake up again and cry fire fire I see fire and they would punch her again they couldn't stand to hear the word and when they arrived and the doors were burst open the first thing that they sensed was a peculiar acrid smell and the next thing when the doors were opened was the flickering light of fire from gasoline lit in troughs right by the railroad tracks where the half dead infants were plucked out of the arms of shrieking women and tossed into the flames and the women walked one way to the doom and the men the other oh I tell you people there's a God who's seeking an Elijah people who will proclaim the soon day of the Lord for behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven and all the proud yea and all that do wickedly shall be stubble and the day that cometh shall burn them up saith the Lord of hosts that shall leave them neither root nor branch but unto you that fear my name shall the son of righteousness arise with healing in his wings and you shall go forth and grow up as calves calves in the stall you shall tread down the wicked for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet and the day that I shall do this saith the Lord of hosts behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord great for those of us who persevere and overcome and who are waiting his return but dreadful for those who have been too long indifferent and have kept God at arm's length and have been lords unto themselves and will have to experience a necessary judgment of God oh precious people I'm praying that this Pesach this Passover that when my Jewish people send the youngest son to their door and open it they shall stand there one whom they've not before seen it shall be a strange sight a prophet made up of a composite people of Jews and Gentiles a wilderness people loins girded disciplined trained to hardship trained to obedience moving by a still small voice not afraid to proclaim the whole counsel of God a day that shall be finished of the cheap and shallow salvations of a Jesus waiting on a platform of such places as this for people neatly to accept him but the cry going again that the wages of sin is death and people again hearing by the power of the Spirit a fire that shall not be quenched shall you be such a one I want to ask you to bow your head with me now Jewish son was brought forth out of death and therefore great life came into the world and now we've come to the final hour the end times and there's a Jewish son again that God would bring forth out of death how many of us have had our hearts to pound with love and fascination for the Jewish faces that are everywhere about us how we've fallen in love with our bus drivers and our guides and our sleep is disturbed at night and their faces come before us and we see the beauty of their lives and their character and their integrity and we hear them speak their many languages and see their intensity and their passion and their character and their nature and our hearts come at them for the kingdom of God that they might be an end time people of God proclaiming his salvation throughout the earth a son that needs to be brought forth out of death by a people like us German English Danish French Indonesian you name it willing to prostrate ourselves out over the body of such a one and willing to say with Paul that we would wish ourselves a curse almost that the life that is within us might be imparted to them oh it takes something to be an Elijah and he's not made in a day and I'll tell you that I shall give such an invitation now as that you might regret having come tonight because you might say to me some nonsense as a man said to me recently oh he said I don't understand it I'm suffering I said what's the matter brother oh he said I'm an engineer and in the field of my own competence I've been reduced and stripped I can't perform the most elementary tasks why I'm doing work that a high school dropout could perform I'm daily humiliated I said brother how long has this been going on why he said two years now ever since I got up at your invitation at that full gospel meeting and the spirit of the Lord came upon me and God said tell the brother that I saw him when he stood in response to the invitation and all that he has been experiencing has been at my hand I'm going to give an invitation now for those who make up a corporate Elijah body wilderness prophets who shall cry out a warning fire fire I shall see fire and the reward shall be art thou he who troubleth Israel a people that shall stand before the Ahab's of this world without trembling a people who shall be so one with God whose lives are not their own whose minds are not their own whose mouths are not their own that the word out of their mouths shall be God's word and I'll tell you praise God that he's discreet and it pleased him not to tell us what went into the making of such a one will you choose to allow him to submit you to that same process bow your heads with me now precious God in the name of Yeshua HaMashiach almighty God how we wait for the soon coming king how we wait Lord God for the manifestation of the sons of God for the body of Christ that shall be in the fullness and the stature unto a perfect man and we know Lord that even before this that there must be one that shall precede him a corporate Elijah walking in the boldness and power of that one and look upon us great God who have chosen and eaten the finer and the nicer parts and have turned aside from the pertinences thereof in the name of Jesus Lord I ask you to brood over this congregation as I ask this question in the name of the Lord if there be those among you who will show to God a heart and a disposition to be shaped at his hand to be a prophet for this generation to cry out a warning for a world marching to its doom to prostrate yourself in supplications and gaspings and groanings willing to exchange the life of you for the life that has gone out of a dead world to bring forth a dead Jewish son that he might be an instrument of God in the end times a priest and a light unto the world will you stand before God right now don't stand lightly don't stand mindlessly because I tell you with every assurance that the world shall not know and many close to you shall not know but there shall be a God who shall allow into your life such testings, such trials such preparations such cuttings such a walk by a still small voice into less and less convenient things from faith to faith and death to death that you shall save a people from a fire that shall not be quenched in the name of Yeshua HaMashiach precious God we commit this people and ourselves unto thee mighty God seal us for your end time purposes oh precious God help us not to tremble nor to turn away help us mighty God to consume the Lamb of God entire, roasted with fire and all the appurtenances thereof that our loins might be girded with our staff and our hands, our gospel shoes upon our feet to proclaim the whole the whole counsel of God to a world that will not hear to a world just making its last meal willing to die that we might bring such sons out of death by the exchange of the life which is in us by such supplications in the Spirit because precious God the Holy Spirit has had access and sway with us save us from merely having it save us from carnal pride in gifts may we be a people who supplicate and groan and move and are empowered and have boldness and discernment and direction and are obedient by the Holy Spirit of God the Ruach HaKodesh in Yeshua's great name we pray and the congregation of God said