In this sermon, the preacher describes a horrifying train journey through Europe, where people were living in filth and despair. He emphasizes the need for a message on the judgment of God and the soon coming of a king who will judge the earth. The preacher warns that the world is condemned by God and that judgment is coming in the form of fire. He also challenges believers to open their homes and lives to others, showing true hospitality and sharing the gospel with those who need it. The sermon references the book of Revelation and highlights the horror that awaits those who reject God's message.

So precious God, even now, Lord, even though we receive the honorary certificates of men, to you be all honor and praise and glory and acknowledgement. Thank you, gracious God, for this unspeakably rich presence. Thank you for these choice saints of God, Lord, that the love of you is written in their faces and in their utterance and their manner and in their being. Thank you for this glorious fellowship that we have as believers in you. And Lord, we give this time to you. May you redeem every single moment of it, Lord. May you speak so deeply and richly to our hearts and minds and lives that not a syllable shall fall to the ground and all that you intend by this hour shall be wholly transacted for your glory. In the name of Jesus, we ask these things. Amen. The Lord has given me certain experiences as a Of course, you've grown up, I guess, to this part of the Bible Belt, or at least in a part of believing America, that takes for granted the great doctrines of God and the questions of faith and even the name Jesus. All of these things are alien and removed from my life, not only as a Jew, but as a modern man coming from a great urban center of New York City. And it's just a wholly different style of life. The things which you've all along accepted and which to you would make such innately good sense and which have been confirmed daily in your experience were to men like myself, the preposterous and foolish and not just harmless kinds of foolishness, but even dangerous obstacles to human progress. And so was I an enemy throughout all of my adult life from early manhood right until my 35th year when God saved me, not one who just looked with some mild disdain and contempt upon religion and especially the Christian religion, which I saw as the single greatest oppressor of the Jewish people and persecutor and who had been bent upon our forced conversion for centuries and would not let us alone. And in fact, which is still the mentality of the Jewish people, even as I speak and not merely willing to entertain your existence, but looking upon you as dangerous obstacles for the progress of mankind because of your foolish beliefs. And I'll tell you that what I felt then has become more compacted and more intense and is growing like a great swelling thing underneath the surface of our life is going to break forth in great volume in our generation. We are not merely going to be tolerated by the world. We're going to be looked upon as a very great offense and a dangerous obstacle to what seems to enlightened men to be progress. And there shall come the hour, and it should be far sooner than we think when men shall kill us and claim that they're doing God a service. So I bring you a report from a frontier which you don't experience because it pleased God to make of me a mouthpiece and to bring me to places of exceptional confrontation with the spirit of the world, especially as it is caught up and expressed by my own Jewish people in their unwitting place, deep in the bosom of this world and its values and its rewards. We've had many fierce confrontations and I've seen men gnash teeth at me and be driven to great fury and anguish of soul because all that I represent in one fell swoop by the power of the spirit is a contradiction to which all they've given their lives and all to them that seems eminently reasonable and right and sane. And here I come with this foolish message, preaching the gospel of that one who had not a place to lay his head and controverting all that seems to them to be wisdom. If they accept the things which I speak and claim to be the truth of God, it makes all their life to have been a vain excursion to this moment. Can you understand what I'm saying? And that's why men, when they come to a confrontation with Jesus Christ, even as I did myself 10 years ago, were stunned and shaken to the very foundation and pit of their being. I remember the course of my growing up years as a high school dropout, frenzied Jewish kid trying to understand the bewildering universe. As I traveled the length and breadth of this land looking for experience and understanding, I was coming back to New York from California and I was hitchhiking. And I found out that if I, when a car stopped and the man asked me if I could drive, if I admitted that I could not, I would not get a lift. And so I quickly learned that I had to tell people that I knew how to drive, though I did not. And it was that year when the model changes were coming out, when they were putting the gear shift up on the wheels, you know, instead of the floorboard. And so if a man had a wheel gear shift, I said, I only understood the floor gear shift. And if he would shift for me, I would appreciate it. And if he had this before, I told him I only understood the wheel. And so by the time I got to New York and he had to drive, I was missing from the body of Christ. And we Jews are not in our place in it. And in my experience, I was so green. I remember I was somewhere in the, maybe even in this part of the country trying to overtake a very slow moving car up on a hill. And my judgment was so poor that I should not have done it. And over the crest of the hill coming down on the opposite lane where I was, was a car coming at a furious speed and it was a sure collision. And it seemed like imminent death. There was no way to avoid it. And I just threw my foot on that brake with all the power that I hadn't gripped that wheel. My knuckles were white and I could see the face of the man at the, in the car approaching me in exactly the same condition. And those two cars convulsively shuttered as we both tried to reverse the enormous impetus and the direction in which we were traveling. And we succeeded sufficiently for one moment and that violent shaking and trembling of cars trying to reverse all of the power and the movement in which they were caught up and just narrowly averted each other and averted death. I'll never forget that experience because I see it time and time again, both in my own confrontation with a Jesus, whose name was a bone in my throat. And as I represent them now, even to my own kinsmen and to modern men at the universities, a great shuddering and a shaking when we're confronted by that one and induced to change the whole course and sweep and direction of our lives. And I can't think of a more profound message for this high holiday season, the Days of Awe, Yom Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur for Jewish people, right even as we sit this morning, and that men should be stopped in their way and be turned to the living God. But the Lord even acknowledges that his gospel is a very foolish thing. Paul says, for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. And I see it time and time again when I speak at universities, that the moment I'm finished with my foolish presentation, men get up as, for example, at the University of California at one of the campuses. And it happened to be a Jewish man and an Israeli man and a professor of psychology. And he told how enormously embarrassed he was by my presentation. And had he known that I was going to try to induce men to return to the Middle Ages, he would never have come. And that what I had to say was an offense to his sensibilities and to his intellect. And then he went on further to denigrate my personality and the way I speak. And everything that was about me was all wrong. And in my concluding remarks that night, I told the students that I had been instructed that I was not allowed to pray publicly at that campus. But for their convenience, I would recite a prayer for salvation. And I did so. And then I concluded the meeting. And when the meeting was over, some kids came up to me. And the first one, I took one look at that face, and I knew it was Jewish. Beautiful brown eyes, and the eyes were glowing with a certain kind of a light. And I knew she had just been saved. And there was a trembling and a tearfulness. And her voice was broken. And as she came to me, I spoke to her first. I said, something has just happened to you, hasn't it? She said, yes. Mr. Katz, she said, even though you said that we couldn't pray, that it was illegal, she said, when you prayed, I prayed under my breath. It's foolishness to them that perish, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. Unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness. Unto them which are called both Jews and Gentiles, Christ. How many people know the meaning of that word? Christ. Christos. What's the Hebrew equivalent? Messiah. Messiah. There I was, all those years, stumbling over the sidewalks of Brooklyn, and I never heard a name more alien and more removed from my Jewish consciousness than the name Jesus Christ. And not one person ever took the pain or the labor to explain to me why art, that's only the Greek rendering of the Hebrew, Yeshua, HaMashiach. The word Christ, from the word Christos, is the Hebrew word Mashiach, which means Messiah. Why that's a far more Hebrew word, far more positive and far more warm and redolent of Hebraic sound than the word Christos. Christ, the Messiah, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see, you're calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things which are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. And I want to tell you out of my own experience, that of all the foolishness of which God is, and of all the foolishness which God chooses, that there's no point which more staggers modern men, and more makes them to gnash their teeth, and more makes them to be incredulous, than the foolishness of that particular point of the gospel, than Jesus saying that I am the way, the life, and the truth, and that no man cometh to the father, but by me. And I'll tell you people that upon my first reading of those words, about aboard the deck of a tramp steamer, ten years ago, a broken, desolate modern man, a lifelong seeker after truth, with a contempt for Christianity, for the Bible, for religion, as a religion of cop-outs too weak to live in this world unaided, a book which I had long despised came into my hands, the New Testament, and as I described last night, in the first reading, from the first line, I was immediately impressed that this book was awesome, and different from anything I'd ever previously read. I staggered as I read on, and began to recognize that this is ultimately a Jewish book, and the characters are essentially Jewish, and none more Jewish than the great Jew of them all, Yeshua. But when he came to make these grandiose statements, these unspeakably dogmatic statements, something in me began to shake and to shudder like a car with the brake thrown on for the first time. I was a relativist, and I'll just as a footnote, as an aside, say that if it were not for us Jews, this modern world would not be in its present form nor condition, that the whole world, although they may not be Jewish by birth, are living in an essentially Jewish universe, that the three greatest architects of the modern world happen also to be Jewish, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. The impact of Marx we know, and the impact of Freud we have some understanding, but you think, well Einstein, you say, art, I understand that it's physics, and the theory of relativity, and it had something to do with the advent of the atom bomb, definitely, but I'll tell you that the explosive content of the work of Albert Einstein in the thinking of most men is far more significant, perhaps, than even the advent of the atomic bomb. The theory of relativity has percolated and found its way even to the ordinary thinking, and feeling, and experiencing of men and women all over the face of this earth. I didn't know a cotton-picking thing about science. I don't know anything about physics, but I was eminently a relativist, and you know what that means? All things are relative. Who's to say what is truth? Who's to say what is right or what is wrong? It's all relative. Maybe in one instance it is fornication, but in another it's love. It depends upon the circumstance. It's relative. Who's to say that headhunting is murder? In certain conditions, among the primitive people, it's an aspect of their culture. No man can say something is right or wrong, or true or false. I tell you that that is the most devastating thinking in the history of the human race, and it's going to bring the modern world to its ultimate death. And there's going to be unleashed upon this earth such a soul sickness, and such a wave of anarchy, and chaos, and a breaking down of every institution. Men's hearts shall fail them for fear, because no man can say what's right or what's wrong. I was a relativist, and I like to believe in my fancy as a modern man that there were many paths to truth. It was an offense to the sensibilities in which I was schooled for 35 years to insist that there's only a single path to truth. And the reason that I shrinked from turning to the Bible, although I was an omnivorous reader of the printed word, in all my quest for truth in all those years, is that I resented so much as the implication that any one book could be the answer. Why every intellectual worth his salt knows that truth is to be gleaned from many sources, and it's a search into which we give over our entire lives, and never have hoped that we're going to come to the end of it. To insist that there's a way, a single way, and that it's even a narrow way, is an offense that God has planted deeply in the bosom of this world. Jesus is an offense to the world for many reasons, and I think none so great in that he insists upon himself, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man cometh to the Father but by me. There's not a place in the time that I speak that men do not leap to their feet outraged that I dare insist upon that, and they attack me as if I am preaching the gospel of Arthur Katz, and I'll tell you if you'll receive it, I face more vehement and bitter opposition at a Baptist liberal arts college than ever I experience in any secular university on the face of this land. There's a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is death, and there's a great filthy spirit being poured out on this earth by that seducer of souls that beguiles men and assures them that their wisdom is true and enhancing and honorable and tolerant and liberal, that such men will look upon those who insist upon a single narrow way as a deep offense. Away with them! And they cast Jesus over the brow of the hill, and they stone Stephen to death, and when the apostle Saul, all his great outrage against that heretical Jewish sect on his way to Damascus to extirpate them, was struck and brought to his face in the dirt by a blinding light, that Ananias, that simple believer whom God instructed to go lay hands upon him that he might receive his sight in the baptism of Holy Spirit, said, Go tell him what great things he must suffer for my name's sake, that he might bear my light to the Gentiles and to the people Israel. He's a chosen one unto me, God said. We Jews have shrunk from the implications of the phrase, the chosen people, but praise God, everyone in this room is a chosen one to bear light unto the Gentiles and to the people Israel, and God said, Go tell them what great things they must suffer for my name's sake. I'll tell you of all of the offenses of the gospel when we come down to the ultimate nitty-gritty. There's always someone who's going to stand to his feet, as I experienced two days ago at the University of Massachusetts, when a rabbi got up bristling and he said, Are you trying to imply that if I reject your Jesus that I'm going to hell, that I'm going to burn for an eternity in hell? Have you ever experienced that? Doesn't that question come up in your witness, or have you been shrinking from your witness in the fear that that question would come up? We had a little bite to eat last night after the service, and I'll tell you there's not a detail that comes into my life from a word of conversation to being drawn to a single individual's in a certain affinity of the Spirit, to a book that comes into my hand, to being called to a meeting or an invitation that's not ordered of God. And that woman in the crowded dinner table in that restaurant happened to sit next to me with no accident, and I said to her, she came from Little Rock, I said, Do you happen to know any of the Jewish community there? Why yes, she said, as a matter of fact, quite well. And I said, Are they a rather withdrawn community? Or is there a really good fellowship between the Jewish people and Christians there? Well, she said, there's really quite a bit of, you know, socializing and fraternizing. And that I myself should have, you know, several Jewish friends. I said, Have you witnessed to them? Well, gulp. No, I really haven't. I, I really lack boldness. I have to admit that. And I just couldn't bring myself to suggest to them that somehow that they were wrong, or that they have to, and I'm just paraphrasing now, but this is the sum and substance of it, that they have to see things particularly my way. And I didn't want to offend them. I didn't want to offend them. Praise God for that very lovely kindness. And the world loves that degree of kindness and concern. But I'll tell you, there's a God who has called us to more than sentimentality. There's a God who has called us to love. And it's not the love that makes nice, nice. It's the love which speaks the truth in love, and is willing to pay the price of love, which is the painful forfeiture, the risk of the loss of friendships, bringing of offense. People were so nice to me for 34 years in America, that I never met so much as a single individual. And I knew many who spoke to me about the gospel of Jesus Christ or the Messiah of Israel. I guess they didn't want to offend my feelings and were perfectly prepared, therefore, that when my life should come to its terminus, and there were many narrow escapes, that I would be plunged into an eternal darkness, and I would be one condemned to wailing and a gnashing of teeth. People, don't we believe the scriptures? I didn't seek for any ministry. I didn't know what the word meant. When it pleased the Lord to bring me into this university ministry, I obeyed, though I knew I was well over my head. And they invited me to the University of Illinois, where there would be eight days of activity, four to six meetings a day, from fraternity houses and student union buildings and all kinds of places. And I was taken by the hand from one meeting to another, just stunned, out of my head, exhausted. I couldn't think straight. And I just experienced the flow of God, the power coming into my body, over and beyond my own exhaustion, and God giving me a choice word to speak on every occasion, and souls being saved, and a fantastic confrontation at a Jewish fraternity house that lasted six hours at the conclusion of that week. When they had called me long distance before the meetings, Art, do you think you can handle this? The only condition they're willing to have you is if you'll debate the professor of comparative religion, who's a notorious atheist, who has subtitled this course, laughing your way through the world's religions, and who speaks Hebrew, and Aramaic, and Greek, and other Semitic languages. You think you can handle him? Why, of course not. I can't handle him, no more than I can handle any of those meetings. And it's either going to be that it's no longer I that live, but Christ who liveth in me, or I perish. There's only one reason why a pipsqueak like me, wet behind the ears, not yet ten years old, is standing before an audience like this, many of you two and three times older in the Lord than I. But I've had experiences that would make your hair stand straight up. And I've experienced the resurrection power of Christ again, and again, and again. And that very night, they made a mistake by allowing me to speak first. And I'll tell you that the moment I opened my mouth, a holy hush fell in that crowded Jewish fraternity house. That place was jammed to the rafters with Jews who had come to see me get my comeuppance as a traitor in their sight against the Jewish people. At that meeting at the University of Massachusetts, the night before, there were special posters put up by the Hello Committee, a special meeting called at a certain hour, what to do about the apostate. I'm a traitor in their sight. My own mother had slammed the door in my face and called me mad. And the moment I opened my mouth in that crowded place, that holy hush fell and mouths were stopped. And I went on in the power of the unction of God to begin to relate this foolish gospel. About a half hour later, some of the Jewish kids began to elbow and dig this professor who had not opened his mouth. He was stunned and silent and said, Aren't you going to answer this man? And he got up and he made one or two lame apologetic remarks. And he slipped out like a car with his tail between his legs. That man has since invited me to address his classes on two subsequent occasions. I took a poll at the end of the year of all of the speakers that they had that the kids said that Art Katz was the most impressive. But you and I know what they were impressed by. When he left, that meeting went on for six hours. I've never seen such rage, such anger, such bitterness. Jewish kids got up out of their seats with disgust and anger and stormed out of that house. They couldn't hear another word. They wanted to stop their ears. And three minutes later, they came back in again. They hated it, but they couldn't stay away. They were too Jewish. After four hours into that meeting, and I saw guys come out of their seats, one kid came out of his seat with his fist knotted ready to bash him in my face. And I just stood very quietly. He said, If you're God, he said, if you're Jesus can save me as you say, let me see him do it right this minute. I looked at that boy and I opened my mouth and I heard myself saying, Brother, your spirit stinks. Oh, you say, Art, where's that written in the manual of how to witness the Jews? What a question to come from people who believe in the Holy Spirit. I want you to know that every utterance that came from the lips of Jesus was born of the spirit of God and was bathed in love every single syllable, even the cry to the Pharisees, hypocrite. I'll tell you, the loving remark is not always nice, nice. The loving remark might be repent, else you shall all likewise perish. That kid was the first one to be saved that night. And he was followed by 14 other Jewish kids in the first hearing of the gospel. They were falling like flies on their knees and on their faces. One kid came up to be trembling and weeping. He said, Art, he said, even my rabbi is afraid to pray for me because my name is Katz. You see, my name is Katz also. And I used to be embarrassed by it because, you know, the kinds of jokes to which that can lend itself. And I thought, boy, of all the names to have, where did we get that one? I thought, well, that's something that we Jews must have picked up in Germany somewhere in the course of our wanderings. But when God saved me, he showed me in an instant what it means to be a man because I've been seeking my manhood all my adult life. He showed me what it means to be a Jew, to have the spirit of the Holy One of Israel in you. And he even told me what his name, Jesus Christ, means. And then he told me what my name means. Katz is not even German. It's not even Jewish. It's Hebrew. And it's a contraction of two Hebrew words, Kohan Tzadik. Ko and Tza makes Katz. If you know a Jew by the name of Kohan or Kahn or some derivation of that, that word means priest and Tzadik means righteous. And this boy said, my rabbi doesn't feel qualified to pray for me because I'm a Katz, I'm a Kohan Tzadik. I said, that's OK, brother. I am one too, and I'll pray for you. I put my hand on his head and I said, oh, gracious God of Israel, in the name of Jesus, make this Kohan a true priest of Israel. And that kid sagged and fell into a seat. He told me later that when I touched his forehead, something went right through his body by the power of God. And yet, suddenly he would have collapsed. That's what God was doing by the power of his spirit. Because a mile away on campus, there were 20 Christian kids on their faces before God for six hours while the meeting was in progress. From every denomination, forgetting their little doctrinal differences, they knew that there was a war on and they were bombarding heaven for Jesus' sake. And when we picked those kids up at midnight, we hadn't yet had a word to say to them, and their faces were just beaming with light and they were overjoyed. And they said, oh, brother Katz, didn't wonderful things happen from 10 o'clock on? I said, how did you know? They said, because from 6 to 10, we knew that there was a war on. We can know it, tell it in our spirits. But from 10 to 12, God was doing glorious things. Precious people, I have not yet begun my message. And I've got something to say and I don't want to have to abbreviate it. In that same university series of university meetings, that first one began at the student union building at one o'clock. Weeks before my coming, all kinds of publicity had gone forth and special stickers had been printed and were pasted all over the place. Katz is coming, is one word, Katz is coming, Katz is coming. And when I got there, I was so embarrassed to see that they played up my name. I said, why did you do that? Well, we prayed to God and we felt that if we just made an abstract gospel invitation, few people would come, let alone your own people, but people are intrigued by personality. So we used your name. I said, man, I said, I'm nothing. Katz is coming and coming for what? I'm not a Jewish Billy Graham. I'd like to be. So I remember that first meeting at that student union building, one o'clock every day, some radical comes to that microphone and sends out such fumes and such filth and such incitement to violence. And from that same microphone, we were going to begin our eight days of gospel meetings. We all got together in a huddle and we prayed and they hugged me and they embraced me and they said, go get him, Tiger. And I got pushed out into the middle of that great crowded room, 300 people, and I was all alone. Then to remember, it's no longer I that live, but Christ who liveth in me. Then to remember, it's not your battle, but mine, saith the Lord, but go you out before them. And I gave a message and I finished and I did the foolish thing. I opened to questions and answers. From the moment that I began, for some reason, my eyes were fastened on a guy who was directly in front of me at the back of the room. I just couldn't take my eyes off his face. He was so cynical, so wise, alicky. And sure enough, when the question and answer period came, he was the first one to raise his hand. He went like this to his colleagues. OK, fellas, watch this. I'll take care of this guy right at the beginning. Hey, Mr. Katz. Yes. Do you believe there's a hell? Watch this, fellas. I got him now. I wasn't prepared for that question. As a matter of fact, I wasn't prepared in any technical way for any question. I didn't have a little book to which I could thumb. What's the answer to the question on hell? And I was believing God. I was coming out of a boat because the holy one of Israel bid me come. And if his word cannot sustain me, I was ready to perish. I breathed on my breath. I said, Lord, you've got me into this. Now you answer. And I opened my mouth. And here's what I heard myself saying. I said, brother, even as an atheist, if there was one thing that distinguished my life from earlier consciousness is that I've always had a high regard for the value of words. Now, I tell you, there's no figure in all scripture who shares and expresses the significance and the profundity of words than the man Christ Jesus. He himself warned us that we shall be held accountable for every idle word we speak. And I tell you, brother, in the same breath that there's not a figure again in all scripture who has spoken more consistently and more powerfully about hell, about a lake of fire that shall never be quenched, about an eternal darkness, about a wailing and gnashing of teeth than Jesus Christ himself. In one place in the Gospel of Mark, five times he uses the phrase, a fire that shall not be quenched. And I tell you, brother, that it behooves you who have asked this question to embarrass God's messenger to be reminded of the things which Jesus spoke. Lest you find yourself standing one day far sooner than you think before him, hearing again your vain question played back in God's answer, which you ignored. Now too late to remedy the fire and the judgment, the eternal trembling and anguish of soul, which you disgrunt. Those weren't my exact words, but something to that effect. And I'll tell you, they went forth by a very great unction. And I watched this guy, like an air being let out of a balloon, just go, he just folded up and collapsed. And that was the beginning of eight days of meetings. People, I'm a believer almost 10 years. I have yet to hear, except out of my own mouth, and that recently, any message on the judgment of God, any message of a soon coming King who is coming to judge the earth, any message that this world is condemned of God, that he's coming in fire to bring judgment upon a world that has long ignored and rejected him. The consequences of which are written in the conduct of men and nations, in their depravity, in their filth, in their brokenness, in their excess. We've had a heart to see the great revivals of God. And we read with great wistfulness, the great exploits of men like Finney and Spurgeon, the great revivalist of times past. They didn't just come and bring great times of enthusiasm and blessing to single congregations. They shook entire communities. Cities were changed. Jails were emptied. Saloons were closed. Broken marriages were reconciled. Men were permanently and deeply and profoundly converted by the ministries of men like a Charles Finney. How different from our own age, in an easy believism, in a groovy gospel, in Jesus emblazoned on t-shirts, and making men rich, and the production of cheap jewelry and suction cup things that are to fit on dashboards and stickers to go on bumpers. Everybody's getting on the bandwagon and having a ball. I can't understand the enormous popularity and the vogue for Jesus, because I know in my Jewish heart that the Holy One of Israel has never been popular. My Lord was never popular, but we've been preaching another kind of gospel and trying to induce people to accept him, that somehow their lives might be made more groovy, and we're continually reminded of the benefits. And indeed, who can speak of the benefits more so than I? I'm as one whose life has been, who has been brought from death unto life. There's not a that I want in God. I, who was a teacher and labored as a high school dropout to make good, whose whole life has been marked by frustration and defeat and failure, came finally to a place with a master's degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and eminent in my profession and well-received, and tenure and couldn't be fired, and annual wage increments, and retirement benefits, and medical insurance, and even a happy little congregation to which I belong, and even a little ministry on the side beside my teaching duties. I had all this in heaven, too. And God said, come, follow me, and led me out of that security while my wife was pregnant for the third time, to enter a full-time ministry with my Jewish people, wondering how I would fare standing on a soapbox in New York preaching the gospel. And what if I failed? Where would my security be then? And how could I get by on a hundred bucks a week? And I've been used to all of the advantages of wage increments year by year, and having our own home and car, and all that stuff. But now I don't even have a salary. Now I don't even belong to an organization. And I found out, I didn't even keep track of it, that this past year God poured $40,000 into my life and ministry, gave us a television program. And we've been everywhere in this past year and in recent months, from Leningrad to Tokyo to Mexico, and places in between, by the providence and by the provision of God. This rabbi said, are you trying to suggest that if I don't receive your Jesus, that I'm going to hell and I'm going to burn eternally? What an embarrassment, what a piece of foolishness God has implanted at the very heart of the gospel, and how we have shrunk from relating the entire counsel of God to men. And if there's one quality which is missing in the body of Christ, and in fact I have to sadly confess, also in my own life, and if I would ask it of God, I would ask this thing, oh great God, that we might know the fear of God, the holy fear of God, the awesomeness of a God of righteousness and truth and holiness. And we could communicate this fear to men who are so cavalier, so casual, so indifferent, so sophisticated, so dying. Many of us are embarrassed by references in the Bible to the anger or wrath of God, and almost feel constrained to defend God from such unloving allegations. We're quick to explain how that might perhaps characterize the God of the Old Testament, but never the God of the New. Oh foolish children, who has deceived you? Don't you know the Shema Yisrael? Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad? Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord. There's only one God, one Lord, one faith, one way. And if I would have any criticisms, be it far from me, for this precious convention, I would say it was in the name all faiths. Why my God, there's only one? A pox on that fiction of the three great faiths. What a colossal caricature, when there's not an iota to be found in any of the conventional so-called three great faiths. A travesty against the deep calling and way of God, for men who wanted only religions of convenience, and are willing to accept the Jewish or Gentile equivalents, that required nothing more than a few bucks in a collection plate, or an Israel bond, and allowed them to go on being lords unto themselves. No power to save, and to keep men from the eternal judgment of God, or to bring them to a place of eternal joy. Exchanging pulpits on Mother's Day and Thanksgiving, and going through other honorific thing of exchanges of awards, and making nice knifes, while the world teeter-totters on the brink of eternal doom. There's only one God, and he's the same God that inspired the scriptures in the book of Isaiah, in the 13th chapter, very appropriate to be read in this season, in the 6th verse, How ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand. It shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt, and they shall be afraid. Pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them. They shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth. They shall be amazed one at another. Their faces shall be as flames. Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel, both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate, and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of the heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light, and the sun shall be darkened, and is going forth, and the moon shall not cease, or cause her light to shine. And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity, and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I spoke at an Assemblies of God church in Louisville, Kentucky, and there was a prophetic cry about the two Judaisms, the Judaism of God, which by His grace He has called us, both Jews and Gentiles, to. The biblical, messianic Judaism of God, which centered in the coming of the Messiah, the Holy One, our Atonement, who was to be made unto us all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, in whom we would move and live and have our being, and the Judaisms of men, which stand in distinction against it. By whatever name, either the Jewish or the Gentile kind, the lesser religions of men, which flatter and applaud, pump up and lift up the flesh, celebrate men, intone scriptures without meaning, employ handsome liturgies, and have hallowed tradition. But it's a religion without the power and the presence of the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit of God, and it cannot save. And I gave such an impassioned cry that day to call men to the true Judaism of God, even those sitting in the Assemblies of God, who were speaking the right words and had given mental assent to the right creeds, but were effectively practicing that other kind of Judaism. And some men got up in the middle of the message and cried out, Speak on, Prophet! When I stood outside the door that day, people walked by me with stricken faces. Oh, a few dared venture those little words like, Oh, I enjoyed your message, lovely preaching. And my soul always cradles when I hear that kind of talk. Jewish men had been brought to that meeting by his Gentile-believing wife that day, and he walked by me, his face set as flint. He wouldn't even acknowledge my existence. He was so rent. They took me out to eat that afternoon, and lo and behold, there he was sitting in the banquet room with his wife. And so with typical Jewish chutzpah and a plum, that means brass, I took my plate, the knife and fork and cup and saucer, and I went and I sat by his table. He was a precious man and so typical of my people. Educated, cultured, well-spoken, a professional lawyer, humane, altruistic. And he went on to tell me, Artie said, I don't know very much about God, he said, but if there is a God, surely he's not that impressed with what men believe. It's an easy thing to believe. It's what you do that counts. And he says, as far as doing is concerned, he said, I'm sure I find approval in God's sight. I go to back to the underdog. I take free cases for the underprivileged. I do this and I do that. And he went on to speak to me the conventional Judaism of the world. When he finished, I began to relate to him the foolish Judaism of God. And about four o'clock, his face had visibly changed. A trembling had begun to sneak into his confidence, and his visage was altered and gray. And being a Jew, if he couldn't win, he would at least come out with a draw. So he said to me as a final parting shot, Artie said, it's quite evident that you're a sincere man. And I'll tell you what he said. I'll tolerate and acknowledge what you believe to be true, if you'll tolerate and acknowledge what I believe to be true. And he extended a hand in friendship. And the stage was all set for me to be nice. And I looked back at him with a face equally as flinty, more. And my eyes and face filled with the Holy One of Israel, who shall soon come in judgment and wrath. And I said, brother, as long as there's breath in my body, I shall never cease to persuade you to abandon your human notions. For if you will not, you shall surely perish. As if someone had struck him in the face with a wet cloth, that man just shuddered and came to a halt like the car that I described earlier. He threw on his brakes. In a word, no one had ever spoken to him more lovingly. I've not seen that man since, but I know that he's fully impressed in the depths of his heart that the things that I spoke to him that afternoon were not just little idiosyncratic fancies of an odd cat's or my little bag or my hang-up, but veritably the truth of a living God. And that knowing the truth of God, knowing the terror of God, I persuade men. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. And would to God that more men who live everywhere about us, yes, they may be Gentiles by birth, but they're effectually Jewish by conviction, by the style of their lives, shall know that there's a soon-coming judgment which men have shrunk from preaching because they were more concerned for the applause of men than the favor of God. I have yet to get into the heart of my message. We conveniently forget that it was Jesus who, in sending out his disciples into the world to proclaim the gospel, said, He that believeth not shall be damned. And as I said before, in that same gospel, mentioned in one particular place five times the fire that shall not be quenched, and spoke of a hell in which him that shall be cast in a fire that shall not be quenched, and time doesn't allow for the many references to the day of the Lord as a day of judgment in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. It's obvious also from the description that the Lord gives of the end times that we are just entering this initial stage of nations rising against nations and a time of famine and pestilence and earthquakes which are the beginning of sorrows. It's an ominous thing to come to a gas station and to be told, no gas. Something happens in my heart, people, and it's not just the inconvenience of having to look elsewhere. As if it's the first echo of something that shall increase in volume and magnitude when we shall see signs and breakdowns and closures and seizures. No gas, no electric, no water, no food, no services, and a great calamity stealing over this earth in that great shaking which God has promised that shall come upon this earth, that everything that can be shaken will be shaken, and only that which can remain will remain because it is planted in that rock, Christ Jesus. And if you are sitting here this morning wondering why it is that your marriage is being shaken, why your life is being shaken, and you had the most beautiful marriage, you've never had any problems, you were so temperamentally inclined one to the other, you had such a happy accident of right disposition, it's because God is not going to let us get by with that. We're not going to survive by any happy accident. We're going to survive and stand and flourish because we're grounded in Him. I tremble for the increasing darkness that's coming upon the earth, socially, economically, politically, our institutions breaking down, our confidence in government crumbling, but I know that that same darkness shall make our lights to shine all the more brightly. Oh, we wanted all this in heaven, too. We love to be Christians and enjoy the hallelujah times, but we wanted to be respectable, also, and didn't want to give offense, especially to our Jewish neighbors. But when the end shall come, then shall be great tribulations such as not since the beginning of the world, and immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened and the moon shall not give us light and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And who is there whose imagination is so powerful as to assess the devastating horror of which these words speak? Who of us here this morning can begin to imagine these conditions? And I'll tell you the great difficulty of a prophet is to speak things that are yet to come to a people who are yet experiencing the affluence and the comfort and the ease and all of the amenities of our modern civilization. No wonder that it is that men stop their ears with their fingers, and when that will not suffice, fly upon the messenger and stone those that are sent unto them. In the sixth chapter of the book of Revelation we're told about apocalyptic horrors of war and famine and death and hell, and a power that was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth to kill with the sword and with hunger and with death and with the beasts of the earth. Many of us are not even yet disposed to open our homes to hospitality. We think Christianity means a potluck supper or a full gospel bear hug, but if it comes to the actual giving up of our privacy, the actual taking away of the masks, the actual opening of our lives for the intrusion, the unwelcomed nuisance of others, the inconvenience of other lives, we shrink. But I tell you the hour shall come when we shall be given to hospitality, and we're going to find ourselves, those who've been uncomfortable, thinking, how shall I be bedfellow with that one who rolls in sawdust? That's not nice. It's not my style. I'm a little skittish, a little offended by that particular way. It's not the thing to which I'm familiar. We're going to find ourselves, even against our wills, be driven and seek for the fellowship of the saints when these conditions shall come upon the earth. And the mere potluck supper shall be put away for what it was, a mere token and a crumb, a caricature against the fulfillment to the thing to which God has called us, that we should love one another as he has loved us, that we might be one as he is one, that the world might know that the Father sent them. Oh, the stakes are enormous, people, and our parks and every lesser substitute which we've accepted to shrink from the fulfillment to which God has called us. The bumper stickers and the literature distribution and all of the evangelistic devices that were convenient and spared us the embarrassment of bringing to our next-door neighbor or our Jewish friend or lawyer or a teacher the gospel which is foolish to them that perish, but the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. How can we imagine what shall be the horror of those who have to face the stern, consuming judgment of God which every man must face? For the kings of the earth and great men and rich men and every free man shall hide themselves in dens and rocks and mountains and say to the rocks in the mountains, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of his wrath has come, and who shall be able to stand? One would think that all these dangers imminent and that they should be seen in their real magnitude, that all mankind would be in a frenzy of concern about their eternal salvation, and yet just the opposite is true. A universal indifference, a great casualness over these enormous issues, and men willing to speak of dozens of lesser things and be completely impervious to the truth of the living God in Christ Jesus. It's amazing this indifference of mankind that stand at the very brink of destruction, doing business as usual, eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage, as if God had not spoken, as if the warning of his sooncoming judgment had not been proclaimed, and the truth of the matter is that it had not. There's a wonderful book written by a contemporary Jewish writer by the name of Eli Wiesel, and he's the sole survivor of a concentration camp. All of his family were the victims of the Holocaust, and in a book which he has written called The Night, he describes his little Jewish community in Transylvania in central Europe, up in the mountains. In the last stages of the war, what had happened to the Jewish communities of Poland and Germany had not happened to them, and they thought somehow in hope against hope that they would be spared what others of their kinsmen had suffered. The war was almost in its final stages, and yet one day a man came to their community, a strange, freaky kind of individual who had escaped the concentration camp, and he tried to cry to them, a warning, a warning, and they didn't want to hear. It frightened them, and they pushed this strange one from the midst of them, and they stopped their ears. This too shall pass, they thought. It shall not come upon us. Isn't it amazing how every man, one way or another, is a man of faith? I was an atheist for 35 years, but I was eminently a man of faith, but the problem was it was a faith misplaced. It was a faith in man rather than God. It was a faith in odd cats rather than in the Messiah of Israel. It was a faith in inevitable human progress. It was a faith in science. It was a faith that this too shall pass. So believed they all until one day there was a strange, ominous rumbling in the distance, peculiar noise, and even the ground shook beneath their feet, and on the horizon they saw great clouds of dust which they could not interpret, and they got closer and closer and closer, and the noise was deafening, and finally it came right into their little village and community. Great Panzer tanks and armored cars with the swastika and the iron cross and booted Nazis getting out, and then day by day the edicts began to be plastered on the wall. The Jews had to leave their homes and move into a certain portion of the community where brick walls had been installed at the little ghetto, and they thought, well, this too shall pass. We'll suffer this, but we'll get by. We'll survive, and one day the sign was put up, tomorrow morning at daybreak you're to be at the train station with only such things as you can carry. Oh, that night they worked furiously, and they dug holes in the backyards and in the basements, and they buried their menorahs and their family heirlooms and their money and their jewels and things precious to them, and they thought, we'll come back. We'll survive this. This too shall pass, and the next morning they were out there with trembling with their children with their meager possessions, and they're on the tracks with the great freight cars, cattle cars, waiting to receive them, and in they were pushed and jostled and jammed so tight and so choked that they could barely breathe, and the doors were slammed shut and locked, no food and no water for three days and nights as they hurtled through Europe, train lurking and rumbling and great cries and teenage kids fornicating, sensing the last opportunity to taste of that joy. People going into shock and stunned, and there was a woman in a coma, and he described her waking from her coma and crying out, fire, fire, I see fire, and they're so frightened them that they punched this woman into unconsciousness, and she would wake up again and revive, and she would cry out again, fire, fire, I see fire, and they would punch her again, and she would go unconscious, and finally one day the trains came to a slow halt in effect, and as it stopped, they began to smell a most peculiar odor, and when the doors broke open, the flames, the light of the flames just danced right into those dark cars loaded with human excrement and urine, puke, and right out by the tracks were great troughs of burning gasoline, and the half-baked infants were plucked out of the screaming, out of the arms of screaming women and thrown into the flame, and the men and the women were separated, and one went to one line and the other to the other line, and they walked into the ovens and into the death. He alone was spared to write this book, and as I read that book, something in my heart broke. I thought of the great suffering of my people. I've been to Dachau, I've seen the ovens, I've seen their bones in the ashes, I've touched the smokestack, but what is the cremation of six million to a fire that shall not be quenched, to an eternal burning, to a wailing and gnashing of teeth, and that my own mother shall be among that multitude whose howl and wail and anguish of soul shall never be stopped rent from her lips. I want you to turn with me to my texts, which is 1 Kings, the 18th chapter. My intention had been to read the entire story of Jeremiah to speak from it. I'm sorry from Elijah. God has had me to speak things I didn't intend. Appreciate your patience. I'm fascinated with Elijah. I can't take my eyes off him. I think of him continually. He's in my heart and my consciousness. There's something about Elijah from which I cannot turn. There's something about what he represents that I can't take out of my consciousness. The Lord is drilling it into my heart. Elijah, Elijah, Elijah, Elijah, Elijah, that one who would come before, that one who would turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, that one of whom it says, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Oh, I know many of us have subscribed to that very neat theory about rapture, and I have to confess, people, and you know it already, you're not listening to an eminent theologian. I'm an income poop. I'm right behind the ears, but I tell you, everything in my experience and everything in my spirit and my heart doesn't seem to verify that very happy theory. When I see these stickers on bumpers, watch out any moment the driver of this car might vacate, I don't jump for joy. I rinse with pain. It makes me sick. That glib, unctuous nonsense of that giddy sense that, well, you guys might be stuck with suffering, but we've got it made. Don't be so sure. There's a reason why God is leading us to establish conferences on discipleship. There's a reason why God is putting fearful words in my mouth. To begin to encourage people to tighten the belt, to gird up the lungs of their minds and their lives, to begin to walk with God in disciplined ways, to begin to resist the spirit and the blandishment of the world, which makes nice, nice, and have, have, and eat, eat. There's a reason why God has blazed in my heart the story of the prophet Elijah, the forerunner who comes to prepare the way for the soon coming Messiah and King. Prepare the way, make the way straight. Repent ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand. It's a great day for those who shall await his coming. It's our hope for those of us who, like him, have been fed by ravens and have been watered by the brook sheriff and have been sent to widows who shall sustain us when the drought shall come and everything shall be dried up and we shall live by faith in immediate obedience to him who speaks by a still small voice. I would to God you would hear that voice now and begin walking with that voice now. Lest when he speaks, go, I have commanded the ravens to feed you. You think that you're suffering indigestion and no God that you know shall ever commend raven birds or birds of prey or ravenous birds that feed on refuse to feed you and you will have missed God's provision because you knew not his voice and you knew not that he was the God who always chooses the foolish things. Now is the hour of preparation that when that hour comes and it shall come far sooner than any of us think, we shall hear and immediately obey and we shall be sustained in the drought and in the famine and God shall prepare us in that widow's home with whom we shall stay when that son shall be suddenly taken and die and that widow who would not believe in the God of the prophet who called him the man of God and saw that the meal was not wasted nor did the oil be exhausted according to the word of the Lord that came through the mouth of the prophet and yet would not believe and make that God her God and so by necessity her son had to be plucked from her bosom and God shall put his finger on the sons of many in our modern world those who are indifferent about their own lives but who tremble for their children or that thing most prized the Isaac of their lives. If we'll not come to God for the love of truth and for righteousness and to flee from the from the terror to come God shall touch us most deeply where we live and put his finger on the cherished Isaac and take the breath out of him and we shall the world shall come to us with thunder mason and say as the widow said have you come to call my sins to repentance of our man of God? Simple ignorant woman but she recognized that the sudden taking of her son had to do with her spiritual condition. I tell you I know Jewish mothers only too well and though they will not be saved for their own sake they'll be saved when God puts his finger upon their sons and so is it already in our generation entire Jewish families coming into the kingdom of God when their drug addict sons which no amount of money can save no amount of fancy institutional hospital a psychiatrist can save finds his way stumbling in his death in a teen challenge center and is saved of God and filled with his spirit and they come and they bring their son and said as Elijah said to the widow woman after he had prostrated his body over him and cried to God three times and the breath of the Lord had come back into him see thy son liveth and whatever our reasons whatever our confusion whatever has Satan has done to pollute that name which is above every name and the only name where whereby men may be saved we call upon that name and come father mother sisters and brothers into the kingdom of God for the name of Jesus Christ because we've seen one brought back from the dead oh I tell you it's no easy thing to bring life from death no cheap kind of evangelism is going to do it nothing less than the prostration of our own bodies and lives over the dead corpse of the world oh I tell you it's itchy to take that stiff cadaver up to where our abode is and put them down our own satiny sheets talk about privacy being violated and if that's not enough to make our bed a mess God calls us yet to stretch out our own bodies and lives over that dead corpse eyeball to eyeball and fingertip to fingertip and cry out oh God take that breath which is in me and impart it into that dying world we don't have a cheap gospel and we don't have a cheap evangelism that gospel required all and so shall God's evangelism of the end times also and there's a God who is shaping a corporate body of Christ and he's shaping also a corporate figure that must come as a forerunner before that the appearance of that corporate Christ and it's a corporate Elijah one who walks by the still small voice one who trusts God for every provision fed by ravens one who shall bring life back to a dead world by the prostration of his own body and life over it and one who shall call in first Kings 18 an apostate people to a reckoning before God and I'll tell you what the reward for such an Elijah shall be it shall not be the kinds of things which were being given today praise God for this happy season but it shall not last much longer we shall not receive the B'nai B'rith man of the year award or see as I saw when I was resting in Pat Boone's study one day before a gorgeous meeting in his living room 150 to 200 Jewish film colony intellectuals where we ended up baptizing nine people that night and I was I was resting I looked around and I saw Pat's uh white buck shoes now cast in bronze and I thought my only a little while ago how I despised this guy how he was a symbol to me of that alien gentile Christian world of which I knew nothing and could never relate he was the epitome of that nice nice gentile type so unrelated to my Jewish life of we Jews will beat our chests and cry out in anguish and now I love him like a brother what a soul and as my eye went from award to award in his bronze shoes and his and his golf awards it finally rested on a plate from the B'nai B'rith man of the year award for community service I think it was 1956 and I kind of chuckled under my breath and thought Pat baby it's the last time you'll receive one of those I'll tell you what the reward shall be when you shall cry as an Elijah to people who will not welcome the message repent for the kingdom of God is at hand repent for the day of the Lord is at hand you shall hear what the prophet Elijah heard when when King Ahab encountered him in the 17th verse of the 18th chapter and it came to pass when Ahab saw Elijah Ahab said to him art thou he that troubleth Israel that shall be your reward art thou he who troubleth Israel and your gulp and your Adam's apple shall bobble and your knees shall shall turn to jelly your legs tremble me I love the Jewish people but you know what you shall hear and we've already begun to hear the first ominous choruses with the advent of G73 weak feeble ineffectual thing though it is great cries from the leaders of the Jewish community great rabbinical swellings what about our poor illicit society oh what is this harassment of the Jewish people isn't it enough that that we suffered all these centuries and in the holocaust in recent times six million of our Jewish people lost their lives and in Russia they're trying to extirpate our Jewishness are you two trying to make Christians out of us and to take from us our Jewishness I get this all the time people I'm being told that I'm worse than a Hitler that what I'm trying to do is more insidious that when Hitler did and that what he did by physical force I'm doing by cunning and spiritually trying to wrest from Jews their Jewishness what a paradox when we know that God is not calling us away from Jewishness but to authentic Hebraic life in the God of Israel and by his spirit and yet that's how the world shall lead us anti-semite when your heart is breaking for the love of Israel that shall be your reward art thou he who troubled Israel but you know how alive to answer I have not troubled Israel but thou and thy father's house in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and thou hast followed Baalim as long as there's breath in my body I shall not cease from persuading you to give up that bankrupt human Judaism and receive the Judaism of God for if you will not you shall surely perish now therefore send and gather to me all Israel into Mount Carmel and the prophets of Baal 450 and the prophets of the growth 400 which eat at Jezebel's table all of God's prophets wiped out by Jezebel except those who left the Lord's table to eat at hers and we're watching that phenomenon beginning to take place even now and even at that university meeting two nights ago a priest a minister stood up with white collar and all the whole thing the jewelry the whole bit and sided with my own kinsmen my adversaries and said I believe that Jesus Christ died for all the world and it doesn't matter whether you personally receive him he's a much bigger God cast than what you've been representing and his mercy is for every person what are you trying to do harassing those Jewish people you call that Christian love and that the Christian kids that were there that night were so stunned at the encounter their prayer that night was so jocular and light-hearted but the next morning they were stunned different group their prayer was had been much deep and much more travail they said art we've not seen anything like this in all our life but this was like going back into the book of Acts this encounter and we saw as these things came forth both the Jewish opposition and those that sided we saw the configuration of what shall be in the end times a small band of disciples who believe the word of God even unto death and do not flinch from bringing the entire counsel of God to men and those who cannot stand the cost and shall for one reason or another find themselves gravitating more and by more to their growing centrifugal force that shall become a groovy world church very nice full of all kinds of blandishments and rewards and nice cliches about human brotherhood and love but without the power of God thereof sitting at Jezebel's table so Ahab gathered all the children of Israel and the prophets together Mount Carmel and Elijah came unto all the people and said how long do you hope between two opinions if God be God follow him might well God raise up a band of prophets today to cry to the Gentile denominations as well as to my own people how long do you go on with mock motions of religion how long do you go on with your cliched nonsense and speaking correct words without true knowledge of God and then masquerading and discarding the disguising your lives while effectively being lords unto yourselves if God be God follow him there's a reason why we've not heard that still small voice because how it we've stopped our ears I've heard it many times from that first day in Jerusalem ten years ago when I walked into that bookstore operated by Jewish believers in Jesus with their chapel next door where when I found out what it was God spoke to me and said ought you are not to leave audibly and I've heard that still small voice on other occasions since and I can tell you people there's one thing that characterizes every utterance I've ever heard that is still small voice of God it has never once called me to convenience there's never been an instance when it's called me to anything but great inconvenience great prospect of suffering and death if any man would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me if God be God follow him how long do you hold these into opinions and you know what happened that day they had a sacrifice for me and the false prophets of Baal they built their altar and they laid out their wood and they took their their great ox and they laid it open and they they danced and jumped out and they cried out to their God and silence nothing all they jumped they went through all kinds of motions and all Baal is but there was no voice nor any that answered and they leaped upon the altar that was made and it came to pass in the 27th verse that Elijah mocked him and said cry aloud well he's God either he's talking or pursuing or is it journey or perhaps he's sleeping he must be awakened Elijah mocked him oh you say all right that's not nice I'll tell you there's that there's a God who by his spirit is speaking a lot of things that are not nice and they would never think that God would choose to speak in an hour that's becoming increasingly urgent I've heard God out of this mouth mock a Pentecostal assembly and I thought oh my God I have really flipped Lord what's happened to me how dare I mock your people and I prayed Lord stop my mouth and then direct me according to your spirit and I opened it again and the mocking continued but the end was a glib anxious pastor who had given me the most fancy introduction that I had ever heard in my heart was sinking as he spoke it and a happy face congregation that looked like they needed nothing from me and I had need to be ministered to of them but the end thereof was that same pastor on his face like a dead man rising to his feet by one o'clock in the morning as one would pass from death unto life who had passed a thin invisible frontier and had moved from being a man of God to a professional slickster and didn't know it the same elder of the church who had brought me to my seat on the platform that night confessed that night that he was in continuous adultery although that next week he was scheduled to give his testimony to four gospel businessmen many such things that God worked at night because the spirit of God mocked the congregation out of the mouth of the prophet our precious people if we shall play it by the numbers and think well God will never do this or say that we're going to miss it there's a God who's calling us to such an intimate fierce walk by the spirit that many shall not have the stomach for such who enjoy a groovier kind of religion and we shall see that fantastic polarization taking place of people being moved into the one of the two great camps and there shall be no neutral ground between I'll try and bring this to a close and so the prophet made his own sacrifice and you know what he had to do first he had to build the altars that were broken down and says elsewhere in the scriptures these were the altars that were torn down the Jewish people were not just indifferent to the religion of their fathers they were fiercely opposed and in anger had broken the altars of their God and the first function of the prophet is to restore the true altar the true worship of the living God and I tremble before you this morning when I know how a lot of us as clever practitioners have learned that it's a great expedient principle to get people in worship and standing and raising their hands and doing many things and somehow it'll make the meeting far more electric God save us from becoming technicians and manipulators because we've stumbled on a correct principle the altars of God need to be raised anew the holy altar requires a complete sacrifice and he gave it he took that ox and he cut it up and I tell you the sacrifice is painful people and it's bloody and many of us have shrunk from that whole burnt offering of the opening and the of the laying out of our lives before God because it's painful but there's there's no other sacrifice that God will consume by fire and he amazed the Jews who were with him that day when after the whole thing was built he said now go get water and douse this sacrifice and they poured out barrel after barrel of water until it was seethed and saturated with water 12 barrels full and I tell you people the fire of God shall not fall upon our sacrifice until it be saturated with our own tears we've been dry-eyed far too long and I'm standing here before you this morning because as I said last night although I knew not a single person who knew what the word prayer meant I said one of my own students used to come home from school in the afternoon weeping over me and her mother told me who I met months after my conversion Archie said since that day both my daughter and I have been praying for you the factual fervent prayer of righteous men and women availeth much have you been praying for the lost sheep of the house of Israel have you been weeping for the unnumbered souls everywhere about us lost and facing the prospect of an eternal anguish and cry and that without remedy the fire of God shall not fall until we lay out a whole sacrifice without consuming bloody and costly over an altar that should be raised up again that's authentic and true and saturated with our tears and then we shall speak as the prophet spoke in that day when it came to pass at the time of the offering the evening sacrifice in the 36th verse that Elijah the prophet came near and said Lord God of Abraham Isaac and of Israel let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel and that I am thy servant that I have done all these things at thy word hear me O Lord hear me that this people may know that thou art the Lord God and that thou hast turned their heart back again then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust and lit 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 oh people how often do I come away frustrated with in ministering to my own people they will not believe they will not hear my own mother although she is seen a transformed son but I tell you nothing less than fire from heaven shall bring an apostate world on its face before God who has gone through the motions of a mock Judaism but has in fact turned from the following of the living God this world needs to see fire from heaven and when they shall see it on the altars which we shall raise up they shall cry out the Lord he is God he is not a superstar he's not an object of derision the Lord he is God the Lord he is God and they shall be saved God is wanting an Elijah band to go through this earth crying out a warning of a soon-coming judgment and I have a reason why I think that we fail to press the truth on an unwilling world an unbelieving world and it's largely because of our fear to offend it many of us are still trying to be respectable believers evangelical but contemporary too and far from being pilgrims of the tent in the altar we've settled ourselves quite well in the world and have habituated ourselves quite nicely to it in fact we've become so accustomed to this world and its blandishments and its reward and its things that the prospect of God's judgment in fire coming upon the earth does not exactly titillate us and in fact we even shrink from the from the vision of it looking at our own groovy wardrobes or a new hi-fi and we think that by evangelistic devices or a few bucks in the collection plate that somehow we can placate a God who has called us to follow him and preach this gospel to every creature beginning at Jerusalem to the Jew first and also to the Gentile thinking to rack up so many points by a kind of heavenly bookkeeping that though we have defaulted in our obligations before God that somehow by giving or by some lesser kind of activity he will allow us to keep that hi-fi and wardrobe and to have all this and heaven too perhaps it'll be easier for us if we could be granted a vision of the guilt and agonized remorse of that office colleague that next door neighbor that member of our own family that nominal Christian believer that Jewish dentist or lawyer or friend that we know when we shall contemplate for all the eternity that shall be spent in hell because of the failure to establish in this life a relationship in spirit and truth with a living God who sought him but of whom he knew nothing because we did not press his claims upon him because we didn't want to offend fire fire I see fire that woman cried and they beat her into unconsciousness there's a warning that needs to go forth over the face of this earth by an Elijah band that shall say to the spirit of this world as the Lord my God liveth before whom I stand hallelujah I don't look for your rewards I don't look for your applause I'm just as immune to your criticism but it shall not rain according to my word God is looking for a people like that who shall hear the still small voice of God and obey it have you been hearing that voice this morning through this Jewish Brooklyn accent have you been crying in your own heart even as the spirit of God has been going forth oh great God there's a fire that need fall and in fact in the starkest proportions of the end times there are going to be only two alternatives the fire of repentance or the fire of God's judgment and that judgment begins with the house of God all gracious God may that fire fall even this morning and through this day upon us may we lay out before you a whole burnt offering cut up and exposed nothing dark nor concealed may it be saturated without tears that the fire might fall and consume not only the sacrifice but the wood and the hay and the stubble and the dross and the insincerity the lovelessness and the indifference of our lives of our dry-eyed prayer and our failure to be the men and women that would have challenged the world everywhere about us oh great God may that fire fall upon us today great baptizer who shall baptize us in the spirit and fire that we shall go from that that day forth as ministers of fire flaming ministers to proclaim to all the world the foolish life-saving gospel of Yeshua HaMashiach Jesus the Christ