In this sermon, the speaker expresses his deep concern for the state of the world and the future. He believes that the current cultural changes are just the beginning and that things will become even more bizarre and grotesque. He warns that there will be a breakdown of civilization and people will be desperate for basic necessities like water and air. The speaker emphasizes the need for a strong relationship with God and the ability to rely on Him in times of darkness and confusion.

Well, I think the topic this morning is Jewishness and discipleship. I'm so happy for the session that we had yesterday afternoon, where many voices were raised and disconcerted voices as we were groping for the definition of these very weighty words. I've learned long ago that there's no easy recourse to dictionaries when it comes to the seeking of definitions, but that they have to be wrought in the heart and out of the experience. And I know that God gave us a fit title for these conferences, and yet in the coming here I thought to myself, how would I define the meaning of the word discipleship where I called to speak upon it? It's no easier to do than to define the meaning of the word holy, or the meaning of the word love, or truth, or God, or any other such great word. And so we have to probe and feel and reach in the scriptures, and I have a sense that somehow the words Jewishness and discipleship are synonyms, that when we shall come to the meaning of one, we shall come to the meaning of the other, for they're truly one and the same. And I'm just going to take a rambling survey through the scriptures. I hope you'll just loosen your spiritual tie and relax. I really want to take my time in this and not feel pressed to have to discharge my soul in an hour. And I'm just going to begin in First Corinthians, the second chapter. I'm so glad that it's Paul who wrote these things. Great towering intellectual, if ever a man were endowed with great natural endowments of intellect and character and natural spirit, it would be Paul. And yet he, I think more than any man, recognized that except that it come out of a battered piano by the glory of God, it is nothing. So in the second chapter of First Corinthians, we read, And I, brethren, when I came to you, I came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world that come to naught. But we speak the wisdom of God in the mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew. For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, I hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God, but God, but God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit. For the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man but the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for they're foolishness to him, neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he might instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. The scriptures are a great embarrassment for any man who presumes to think that he's insightful or eloquent or any other such foolish nonsense, because the scriptures speak themselves. We have only to recite them and they eloquently preach themselves. If we could just let this word lift off the page and through our voices and just resonantly reverberate in our hearts and minds and the full weight of them pierce our souls, we would be done in, stretched out on the floor, our eyes glazed and rolled back in our skull and the spittle falling from our lips. This is glory. This is unspeakable glory. The world has never known such a thing and even we, children of God, have yet to understand what it is that this speaks. And I'm not going to attempt to exposit. This isn't even my text. It just sounds, what can I say, the tenor of the thing which is on my heart this morning. When Paul says, for I am determined not to know anything but Christ and Him crucified, in that is compacted such wisdom in such unspeakable depth. Because in one phrase, the two Judaism's are expressed. The Judaism that prides itself in the excellency of mind, the Judaism that boasts in the caliber of its rabbis, that looks to its human commentaries and is replete with the words of Rabbi Akiva or other such sages, continually quoting, and that's what the whole substance of the Talmud is, but the brilliant commentaries of men. In the last analysis, flesh, brilliant flesh, but flesh. And here's a man who is groomed in that tradition and equipped, naturally endowed, to brilliantly continue it. But he says something very resolute. I have determined not to know anything but Christ and Him crucified. He's passed out of the one Judaism and in to the greater. And I tell you, we Jews, whatever it is that we are, and we've taken centuries to ponder it and yet don't understand, but whatever usual endowment we have by zeal or intensity or intelligence, I tell you that speaking for myself, these things have not enhanced my spiritual walk, they've been an encumbrance. And I speak especially of mind. For the first year of my life as a believer, I got nowhere thinking to bring to the Bible the same skills and abilities that I honed to a sharp edge in my academic career. What I was going to do with the Word of God, what I had done with Shakespeare and Dreiser and other such writers. Well, and I did, I spun fanciful things, very lovely, and it would have enhanced any kind of coffee time hour, but spiritually it meant nothing. It was nothing. There was no life in it, and my first year was spent totally spinning my wheels. I think we Jewish believers in the passing from the one Judaism to the other, and to understand now, I'm not speaking in necessarily religious terms. I was an atheist for 35 years, but in a certain sense I was a deeply religious Jew in the deepest traditions of our Judaism. What tradition is that? It's the tradition which exalts the human mind, which has its confidence in flesh, and knows not God by the Spirit. Many of us are required now by an act of will to determine not to know anything but Christ and Him crucified. That foolish, battered, rejected, and despised Christ, whose back hung in strips, and the blood poured down that visage that was marred more than any man in that scrap heap, in that dump outside of Jerusalem called Golgotha. He's the only one with to know what He represents in His blood and the cross upon which He lay out His life. That's it. It's the Son, the substance of all things, the two Judaisms. And I can go on where Paul talks about the wisdom of men, the power of God, but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory. Children, what an hour is this. We're just nearly on the threshold. I can't begin. Two hours, I need four hours, I need a day, I need an uninterrupted week to pour out what I have in my heart, the impressions, the sense I have for the condition of the world and where we stand, how bizarre and grotesque things are yet to become, and however shocked and horrified we are by the fantastic changes which have been wrought in our culture and our life in less than a decade, we're only yet at the beginning. We're in for such things, such defilement, such pouring out, such a bilge of dark spirits, such a confusion, such a breakdown of the apparatus of civilization, that men will quest for a glass of pure water, air to breathe, the most elementary things to sustain their lives. We're coming to such a place, confusion as you cannot understand, and men are going to be groping for answers and stumbling about as in a great darkness. And isn't it interesting how in certain microcosmic things, like a little episode, an exchange, a conversation, God can reveal the great macrocosms. It was in Kansas City that I led a Jewish man to the Lord, he and his son together in my living room, and they came from one of the most influential families of that great Jewish community. In fact, the father of that man was the president of one of the leading temples, and he himself, university educated, wealthy, the head of a great advertising company, a real swinger, was paralyzed, his life was done in. He was a psychological mess, an alcoholic, and he had been through AA and through other devices and seeking spiritual answers, and that night in my living room he received the Lord. And for a season he flourished, and then unhappily he fell back again. And I think in this I can't speak on without pausing to say that there's a very great attrition rate among Jewish believers. I don't know what it is, whether Satan with a great uncanny zeal seeks more to destroy these than any other, and especially is the attrition rate great among Jewish ministries. Well, this man did not last long. He got sucked up again in lusts and things of that kind. Well, I came recently through Kansas City and I tried to see him, and I could not. He wouldn't see me. He was afraid to see me, and I finally got him on the phone, and his voice was shrill and hysterical and full of trembling. I never heard such confusion and brokenness and disorder. And the upshot of our conversation was this. He was seeing a Jewish psychiatrist, and I put it to him like this, and at the end of our conversation I said, Brother, you have a choice between two Jews. This Jewish psychiatrist was to me, and I'm sure to him, kind of, what can I say, the symbolic expression of all that stands in the world that represents wisdom, answer, all that that the world has to offer to bring reconciliation and wholeness meaning into the life of men. It was this last, this man's last desperate, clutching hope, and I was trying to persuade him to let go of that psychiatrist and all that the psychiatrist symbolized, and fall wholly into the hands of the living Christ, to abandon himself to the resurrected Christ. You know what this man said? I'll never forget the way, it was like a cry. Artie said, you're dangerous. Artie said, you're dangerous. And all of a sudden, something struck my soul, and I realized, he's right. I'm dangerous. Why, I'm so dangerous that the day is going to come, and soon, that men are going to seek to slay me and claim that they're doing God a service. Because I'm not just offering men a religious alternative for a desiccated and impoverished Judaism. I'm calling them out of one kingdom and into another. I'm calling them from one wisdom and into another. From one way and into another. And I tell you, if that other way does not work, it's curtains. We're not just playing with religious alternatives. We're playing with all that, of which life consists. An answer to the minds of men, and the hearts of men, and the bodies of men, and the totality of all they are, and all that they hope for in the, in this life, and the life to come. Now, can you see that? And men are going to tremble, and be chagrined, and gnash upon us with their teeth. Have you ever understood why it is that seemingly religious men gnashed upon simple disciples like Stephen with their teeth, and killed him? Have you ever sought to understand why it is that when the world had its opportunity to lay its hands upon God, they practically rent Him limb from limb? The world is at enmity with God. It despises God and all that He stands for. It cannot abide His wisdom, for to it, for to them, it's utter foolishness. Their wisdom resides in the power of intellect, in human solutions, in stratagems, in political programs, in devices to to free the air of pollution. Can you understand that we're coming to a showdown, and everything that touches upon our technology, our politics, our sociology, the whole sum and substance of our life, is coming to one great crossroad, and over it lurks a great question mark. How will men solve the final and utter ultimate predicament of their human existence? There are only two ways. One shall be the solution of men trusting in the arm of flesh, and the other is the whole and utter abandonment to the foolish wisdom of God, which is known and revealed by God, by His Spirit. It's a fearful thing. The world has long tolerated so-called Christianity, because the stakes were not high, and no one understood. And even up until recent times, the whole controversy between Judaism and Christianity was just a kind of a foolish prattle, hardly any more in character than the foolishness of the competition and rivalry between Catholicism and Protestantism, or various other denominations. Just men's foolish pride. It wasn't the issue at all. The real issue is not Christianity and Judaism, as I've said so many times. The real issue is between Judaism and Judaism. The Judaism out of which Paul was lifted by the grace of God, that exalts the mind of men, and has its ultimate confidence in flesh, and the Judaism to which Paul was drawn, which is a mystery, and is revealed, made known by God, by His Spirit, unto us who believe. I just want to take you through a tour of the scriptures, because we desperately need models. I've long recognized that we desperately need models. It's one thing to speak about discipleship, we need to see it. I want you to start with me this morning, in the book of Genesis, story of Joseph. And I would to God that we had all kinds of time to get to begin at the very beginning and explore this enormous life. Talk about the quintessence of Jewishness. I would happily rest in that Jewishness. If I were as Jewish as Joseph, I would not want for more. And what a strange one he was. Maybe that's something also about the nature of Jewishness. Not unusual, nor hard to understand that he was despised of his brethren, because he was a dreamer. And they hated him not only for his dreams, but also for his words. There's something about the nature of a Joseph that always will enlist from men, or elicit from men, a reaction of scorn and reproach and The world that world despises a dreamer. Oh, I'm not talking about one who has ecstatic revelries, but I'm talking about that one who walks by another beat. Have you ever seen such a one? He's in the world, but he's not of it. He's a dreamer. His inspiration comes not from the counsels of men, or their flattery, or their sophistication, or their verbiage, or their concepts. But he seems to hear another beat, and by that beat does he truly walk. He's a dreamer, and the world despises him for his dreams, and the more for his words. And they manifest that hatred, and they cast him into pits and seek to kill him. And so will it ever be. Those that live godly lives in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. I don't say that because I'm a masochist, and have any natural delight in being worked over by the world, but I just understand only too well that the reproach that was upon him must of necessity be also upon us. Because we walk by his beat, the mystery of God, the offense, the spirit, and the world will always rise up and enrage, gnash its teeth upon it. So in the 39th chapter of Genesis, we read a fantastic first utterance, and Joseph was brought down to Egypt. That's the real beginning of his story. And Joseph was brought down to Egypt. What is it about the wisdom of God that has so to do with being brought down? What is it with the wisdom of God that speaks continually to us, that he who exalts himself shall be abased, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted? What is it about the understanding of God that requires us to be drawn up out of dungeons? I can't express it, and I just pray that the Spirit of God is breathing something in between these lines that will persuade you of a certain logic, which many of you are going to experience before you pass out of this life. I can spiritualize being brought down to Egypt and spiritualize being cast into dungeons or being brought up out of pits, and there's great meaning of that, and many of us have already experienced that in our lives. Being broken before God, prostrated, stretched out, how God uses the natural circumstances of our lives needfully to break us of our pride and the various things which clutter us, that he might bring us up and out. But I believe that this is not only spiritual, it shall also become literal, and is already literal for many believers right now on this earth in places where to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ is to bring upon you the whole wrath of a society who calls you insane, clutches the children from the bosom of their parents, throws you into cells, and brings husbands back to their wives three days later in caskets with rags stuffed in their mouths, and when the rag is removed to find that the tongue has been ripped out. These things are happening now, and shall happen in greater measure not just behind the Soviet Union, but everywhere in the world, because it's the same world ruled over by the same prince at enmity with God, and God has called us to a generation where the veil is going to be taken off, and the issue revealed in its total nakedness, and whatever mask of respectability and tolerance the world has worn toward the three great faiths and other expressions of that nonsense, it shall show forth its hostility and its bitterness, and many of us shall be cast into pits and into dungeons. Why does the Lord allow us? Joseph was brought down to Egypt, but the Lord was with Joseph. There was something necessary in that experience, in the preparation of one who was to become the Savior of Israel. You say, Art, what are you talking about? Joseph was not the Savior of Israel. Oh, is that so? Had he not survived, had he not allowed himself to be humbled at the hand of God, had he not resisted the chastening which God wrought through his own brothers, he would not have been in that place and in that time, and in that condition, to have been the instrumentality by which God saved the same brothers who had cast him into the pit, and out of whose loins and seed was to come the generations of Israel, and that one out of Judah, who is Judah's lion. And so his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand, and Joseph was a goodly person and well-favored, and in the seventh verse we read, and it came to pass after these things. Isn't it fantastic? You think you've gone through it. You've survived your dungeon experience. You've been brought down and humbled at the hand of God and he's lifted you up, but then there's something that yet awaits you. You're blessed for a season, but it's only the beginning of things. It came to pass after these things that his master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph, and she said, lie with me. Precious children, if ever there's going to be a theme struck by the spirit of this world and resounded again and again and again in increasing volume and crescendo, it's going to be the cry of Potiphar's wife, that succulent babe of Egypt, lie with me. I tell you there's a brand of temptation and invitation to the exercise of the senses in this generation such as the world has never seen. Temptation of such a fierce and burning variety that few shall be able to resist it. Orgiastic practices and devilish things concocted out of hell and disseminated not just in dark places of the earth, but in the midst of flowering civilizations to bring them to their knees within a generation. I've seen it already having lived a year in Scandinavia. What kind of filth Satan can pour out and break civilizations a thousand year old? What then shall it be for us who are Johnny-come-latelys on the scene celebrating our Declaration of Independence just a few centuries old, when these enormous temptations, these great things shall reach right into the pit and nook and cranny of every vestibule and home and school and street. We'll get it out of our television tubes and out of our radios and our conversation. The very atmosphere is going to be charged with, come lie with me. What is the essence of discipleship? It's the same as the essence of Jewishness and it's in Joseph's answer, but he refused. I thank God that I'm a theological simpleton. I know nothing about theology and God has not allowed me to know. And I know that there's a great issue that has been raging through the centuries about Arminianism and Calvinism, about free will and determinism, whether all is the sovereignty of God or whether all is the free will of men. I don't understand it and I don't want to know, but this I know. He refused. Paul determined not to know anything but Christ and Him crucified. There's something required from us. Our will. But he refused and said unto his master's wife, Behold, my master doesn't know what is with me in this house and has committed all things he has to my hand. There's none greater in this house than I, neither have they kept back anything from me but thee, because thou art his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? I have to confess people with great embarrassment and shame that I had no conception whatsoever of the meaning of the word sin right up and through and beyond the time of my own salvation. I didn't come to the Lord as a broken sinner. I came to the Lord as one who recognized that he's the way, the life and the truth and that I could not, being a Jew and a man of integrity, who respected truth, turn from him. It was subsequent to that that the Spirit began in very gracious stages to reveal to me what my own nature in life is. And I don't think I've yet come to a place where I have the horror of sin that I ought. Many of us have been completely disheveled and have not been able to understand how it is that God could have asked of Abraham that he take Isaac, the son whom thou lovest, and make of him an offering in the mount that I shall show you. And it says that he rose up early in the morning and saddled his ass and took his servants and his son, and he went. No ifs, ands, buts, and hows. Well, we know that God had been grooming him in the art of obedience, but even that doesn't fully explain it. Until I came to a statement by a writer by the name of Myers, and he said something like this. He said, even the filthy Canaanitish peoples who are contemporaries of Abraham, knew something of the horror of sin and that a holy God must be requited. Why is it that the world has not been able to understand that God had to send his only begotten son and make of him a sacrifice and atonement for our sin? The problem is this. They have no understanding of the horror of sin. No understanding of the offense against the holy God. We make a mistake in preaching Jesus prematurely to a Jewish people who yet have no need. And I don't know whether I'm rewriting the book on Jewish evangelism or contradicting the methodology of Jewish missions, but I believe that our first thing, and I think it's consonant with the scriptures, is to bring men to a place of repentance. It's repent and believe the gospel. Believing is a function of repenting. And Jesus makes no sense to a man who's self-sufficient, fully assured, and completely persuaded that he's absolutely righteous and has no need. Men's souls must be broken first of the understanding that they've offended against the holy God. So something needs to be exuded from us that there is such a God. Something, a presence needs to be created by those of us who believe that men coming into it shall break and sob and fall on their faces for things that are inexplicable and for which they cannot identify and find themselves within a few minutes calling upon the name of the Lord, which name was a bone in their throat which they could not even have uttered all through their lives. How about this Joseph when he cried out, how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? Four centuries before God thundered the law from Sinai, this Jewish man knew that adultery was a great offense against God. Here we are on the other side of Sinai. We've had thousands of years to live with the Ten Commandments and the world can recite its provisions glibly. And we even have gone beyond that, we who believe by the Spirit of God and yet have not the sense of sin and offending against the holy God. That Joseph had. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? I think it's going to be incumbent upon us to have this great conviction that Joseph had both of the nature of sin and the nature of the holiness of God for the two go together. If we're going to stand in an hour and a day when the Spirit of Potiphar's wife is going to reach out into every aspect of life and come and daily cry, come lie with me. Well, we know what the outcome was. That on an occasion when he was about his business, doing his master's business in the house and there was no other servant there that she clutched at his garment and again tried to persuade him to lie with me. And we read in the 12th verse, she left his garment in her hand and fled and got him out. Faith is always an act. Do you know that? Whether it's an act of speech or something of volition that results in some manifestation through result of human energy. And in this instance, leaving. I don't know how many times the Lord has brought me to peculiar places where a precious young Christian couple will come and say, Art, will you pray for me? We're engaged or we think it's time to be married, but we're having a terrible time lusting after one another. Pray for me. So I say, well, what point? I'll pray for you. And then you'll continue to see each other privately and alone and in a car. And if you'll make provision for the lust of the flesh, you shall surely experience them. The prayer is in vain. He fled and got him out. And I think that God shall bring us to such situations where something shall be required of us by an act of volition and will to flee and to get out. This is the meaning of Jewishness, and this is part of the meaning of discipleship. And you know what the consequence is going to be? Because of your virtue, because of your whole commitment to a God who is holy, holy, holy, because you cannot do this great wickedness and sin against him, you're going to be lied against and reviled against, and you're going to suffer for Christ's sake. Because what happened? The wife told the husband just the reverse, that this servant tried to take advantage of me in your absence. The husband was enraged, and Joseph was cast again into a dungeon. The consequence of obedience to God in this world is persecution. It was for Jesus, it was for Joseph, and it is and always shall be for everyone who shall follow God in complete obedience. The master's wrath was kindled, and Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison, a place where the king's prisons were bound, and he was there in prison. But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy. I think that Richard Wurmbrand, how many of you know of him? This Jewish brother, 13 years in communist prison camps, three and a half years in solitary confinement, banged out of shape and extended beyond anything that the human mind and psyche can take, and yet in the depth of what he had to receive at the hands of the world, God was with him. And I've heard this great saint of God out of his own lips say, I would never exchange that experience. He came to such an intimacy and knowledge of God as available to only those who know him in the fellowship of his sufferings. But God was with Joseph. The Lord showed him mercy, and made to prosper again many things at his hand. He received favor while he was again in prison. And we know what happened, that he was able to interpret the dream of two men, the pharaoh's baker and butler. And as a result of that, in time, his fame came to the attention of the pharaoh at a time when the pharaoh himself was in great extremity and crisis. He had a dream. And in the 41st verse, we read that in the 8th verse, it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled, and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof. And pharaoh told them his dream, but there was none that could interpret them unto pharaoh. People, we've come again to that hour. There's no man so brilliant. There's not a man wise enough in all Egypt that can unravel the mystery of the complexity of this civilization. We stand at the ultimate crisis. And men are going to be beside themselves with fear and with terror. And there's not going to be a computer made or a man so brilliant, a wise man in Egypt that shall be able to interpret this dream. But someone's going to be brought up out of a dungeon, out of obscurity, out of foolishness. A banged up piano, a thing that has no promise in its outward appearance. A foolish Hebrew shall be brought up out of a dungeon, and his face shall be washed, and his head shaved, and clothing shall be put upon him, and he's going to be brought into the court of the pharaoh. And look at the answer when pharaoh begins to look upon this Jew. And remember how despised the Hebrews were by the Egyptians. They looked upon as lowly sheepherders, a secondary race of men. Not worthy of their admiration. The 16th verse, Joseph answered Pharaoh saying, It is not in me. God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace. It's not in me. I came not in human preaching and eloquence, but in demonstration and power by the Spirit. The answer is not in me. And so Joseph, by the Spirit, was able to interpret the dream of Pharaoh, which all the wise men of Egypt were not able to do. And because of the ability to interpret that dream, and by that to make provision both for Egypt and ultimately for Israel, a people survived. I often think to myself, What would have happened if Joseph had failed to correctly interpret that dream? You see, guys, this is no light business. This is no kind of a thing like trial and error. Well, if you make it, great. But if we miss it, okay. The Lord is preparing us now. And I think of the question that came forth yesterday afternoon by the fellow who was sitting by that side of the room. Well, how do you know there's still a small voice of God? How do you know what the will of God is? How do I know that it's God's voice? How do I know what He wants? And many answers went forth about the bat that learns by experience, by continual bumpings of its head, finally to discern the sense of space and things. And out of our own experience, how we catch it one time and miss it another, God is preparing us and training us. The discernment of the Spirit is not a thing easily obtained. And Brother Paul spoke about the thing that comes by practice. I think that this is one of the great virtues of being in the body of Christ. That in our small body situations relating one to another face to face, we can attempt to raise our eaglet wings. We can dare in God and be bold in God and seek to express ourselves in the Spirit. And it shall not be a pure stream, especially at the first. But as we go on trying ourselves in that situation where we can afford to take such risks, we can come into a larger situation like this where believers have come from different parts of the country. And when we feel the prodding of the Spirit and we sense that discernment to speak forth the thing of God, and even then we shall not hit it perfectly. But what shall happen when we shall come later this year in Dallas and have a great convocation of all of the Messianic Jews of this country and all of the Jewish charismatic ministries and want to hear exquisitely and perfectly the Word of God for this hour to lead us, then we can't afford to miss it. We've got to know exactly when to stop playing the piano, when to stop singing, when the speaker must speak, when it is that we're hearing a true prophetic word, when it is that hands are to be laid on, when it is that we're not to speak at all. I'm not sure that there should have been any preaching at all last night. The glory of God was so manifest, I knew it as soon as I came to this pulpit, that nothing was required from flesh. That God was wanting the priests out of the sanctuary, out of the Holy of Holies, that His Yerkinah glory could have filled it, that we would have seen the fire fall and we would have fallen on our faces and cried out, the Lord, He is God, the Lord, He is God. We've got to know. And I can't think of any more precious gift of the Spirit than the discerning of spirits, the interpreting, if you will, of dreams, the ability to understand. When all the world is confused and is desperately groping like blind men, staggering in darkness for answer, that a lowly Hebrew raised out of a dungeon can speak perfectly the wisdom of God, discerning by the Spirit what the will of God is and give Pharaoh answer. I'll tell you that Joseph's answer was so right on that the Pharaoh was stunned and all the wise men of Egypt with him. And we read in the 38th verse the kind of compliment that the Pharaoh, the very symbol and type of Satan himself had to make for this lowly Hebrew. And Pharaoh said unto his servants, can we find such a one as this, a man in whom the Spirit of God is? This is the definitive Judaism of God. This is true Jewishness. This is discipleship. Can we find such a one as this in whom the Spirit of God is? And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, for as much as God hath showed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art. Paul spoke in Corinthians about the mystery of God, the wisdom of God revealed by His Spirit unto us. It's foolishness to the world and boggles their minds and confounds them and drives them to a fury. But it's the way of God and it has ever and always been the way. And when Jewish people say, are you trying to convert me? Are you trying to bring me into some new thing? I believe in the traditions of Judaism. I've got something sacrosanct, something old, something tempered by generations. Something redolent with antiquity where when we sing in our synagogue and this great heritage goes forth. Well, it's beautiful, but there's something much richer. There's something much deeper, something much more profound, something that's life-giving. It goes back to the beginning of time. Abraham knew it, Isaac, Jacob, every man who has ever walked with God. Joseph knew it. Can we find such a one as this in whom the Spirit of God is? This is an hour of restoration and God is calling men and women, both Jew and Gentile, back to his original Judaism in whom the Spirit of God is. There is none so discreet and wise as thou. And Pharaoh himself had a change, Joseph's name. And it says in the 45th verse that he called him Zaphnath-pa-aneah. And in the margin it reads, the translation, a revealer of secrets. A man to whom secrets are revealed. Oh, precious people, accept that we walk as Joseph walked. Accept that we know the holiness of God by intimation because we know him who is holy because we're in the same relationship that Joseph was in because we have an affinity with him by the Spirit and we have his Spirit and walk by that Spirit. We shall not be able to reveal the things which must be discerned for our generation. We shall not be able to resist the clutching cries of the Potiphar's wife that says, come lie with me. I want to just jump from Joseph to Daniel. Same God, same Jewishness, same discipleship, same way. The first chapter of Daniel, isn't it interesting that it says that Joseph was a goodly person and well-favored, that Paul with whom we began was a man of great natural endowments. Daniel himself, we have the sense, was also well-favored with natural endowments. But these men did not live and act out of these things. In fact, put these things aside. They were holy men in whom the Spirit of God was. It was the glory of God always being manifest and not themselves. Here was Daniel who was favored and found a position of esteem even in exile. But we read in the eighth verse of the first chapter, Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat nor with the wine which he drank. Therefore, he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. People, I don't know what to say about this verse. My spirit knows and my heart knows but my mind is yet unfruitful. I can't express it. There's something in that so weighty, so meaningful, so charged with meaning that you must lay it upon your heart. Because there's a world ever about us conspiring to say, here, taste this, drink of this, eat that, have a ball. It won't hurt you. Come on, don't be so stuffy. Be groovy. You could have all this in heaven too. Daniel purposed in his heart. Here's that volition, that will again. He would not defile himself to eat from the king's table or to drink his drink. He requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself and satisfy himself with simple fare rather than he should eat from the table of the world. We're just scratching at the meaning of this verse but except that we enter into the spirit of its meaning in our own experience, people, we shall not be a Daniel nor a Joseph nor a Paul to our generation. No wonder that God loved these men so and favored their lives so by his spirit. And in ninth verse you read, God had brought Daniel into favor and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs. And the 17th verse, as for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. Another one, just like Joseph, a discerner, not because of his own brilliance or his own ability. God gave them knowledge. God is the giver of every good and perfect gift. The father of lights in whom is no shadow nor variableness of turning. And this is why the world despises God's way. I'll never forget one time speaking at a college in California and some of you may have heard this episode related. And I finished speaking and several people came up to me and among them was a professor from the school with his wife, professor of psychology. The man was trembling from head to foot. Mr. Katsy said, as you were speaking tonight, he said, I just felt the breath of God on my neck, he said. And in so many words, his question was, what must I do to be saved? I told him, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. And right there on that gymnasium floor, I gave him an invitation to call upon the name of the Lord and be saved. And I looked at that man's face, why it was horrified and stunned. He was so utterly disappointed. And I knew in a moment what he wanted. He wanted me to say, well, you go out and write a paper a dissertation on the anatomy of the conversion experience and its psychological ramifications and nuances. And if you'll get an A from God, you'll be saved. Men want to do, they want to show themselves. They want to enter into their own glory. But God, but God, but God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom. There's a God who is wanting to make available to us all things, who the fullness of the God, of the Godhead bodily is. And we are made complete in Him. And we can experience this the moment that we're ready to empty ourselves of the things that we want to do for God and how we want to serve God out of our own flesh, out of our own skill, out of our own ability. The world has had a long exposure to that. And it's availed nothing. Well, that man would not receive the salvation of God that night. He was disappointed. But there was a tugging at my sleeve. And it was his little wife who had not said a word. She stood there in complete silence. And she said a little troubling words. Mr. Ketchy said, I'll have it. She was a little bad at piano. But she said, I feel self-conscious in the middle of this, this gymnasium, the Holy Spirit said, can't we go outside? I said, okay. We went right outside. It was pitch black outside that building, right on the sidewalk. I think she was a Methodist or Presbyterian, something like that. But never knew the Lord, never had his spirit. The world could not say of her one in whom the spirit of God is. And in fact, she said, I don't even know how to pray. She said, you pray and I'll follow you. So I just recited a very simple prayer for salvation. And she just followed me word for word, very simply, just like a child. And the moment we finished, I felt the pressure of a hand come down on my scalp. And I heard that voice. It said, thou art my servant in whom I am well pleased. It was well pleasing unto God. A simple woman, crying out, not even knowing how to pray. But God gave her his spirit, his salvation, as he's the giver of every good and perfect gift, but God. And so in the second chapter, we see that Daniel was brought to a situation much like Joseph. Again, a dream that the wise men not only could not interpret, but they could not even describe. And the Chaldeans in the 10th verse answered before the king and said, there's not a man upon the earth that can show the king the matter. Therefore, there is no king, lord, nor ruler that asks such things that any magician or astronomer, astrologer or Chaldean. That's the place where we've come in the modern world. There's not a sociologist or a physicist or a psychologist or a Freud or a Karl Marx that that's brilliant enough to help us out of our ultimate predicament. And it's a rare thing that the king requires. While there's none other that can show it before the king, except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh. I'll tell you, my heart is all the more pierced when I hear men who are unsaved speaking in prophetic wisdom. Have you ever had that experience where sometimes some completely spiritually unleaded person who knows not God inadvertently will say something that will tear your heart to pieces. They have stumbled upon some truth of God as these magicians, these astrologers and wise men. They knew intuitively only God can give answer to this whose dwelling is not with flesh. People, that is the fixed principle of God. In a sense, he dwells. Of course, it's true in earthen vessels, but his dwelling, his presence, his power, his wisdom is not with flesh. Even the priests had to come out of the holy of holies, though they were clothed in white vestments and were ordained so to do. Yet the Shekinah glory of God could not fall until all flesh was out. His dwelling is not with flesh. And what is God doing with us through these days from the very first night of the beginning of this conference without any preaching, with just the simple leading of the spirit who spoke one word, introduce. And one by one, we came up and we introduced each other and the spirit of God just began to come over us like billows. And we ended up that night, several of us on our faces, broken and heaving and sobbing before God in that room, breaking us in the deeps, flushing out, cracking, cutting, taking away flesh for his dwelling is not with flesh. And so Daniel came before this great ruler that desired explanation. And we read in 19th verse. Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. And Daniel blessed the God of heaven and Daniel answered and said, blessed be the name of God forever and ever. For wisdom and might are his and he changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He giveth wisdom unto the wise and knowledge to them that know understanding. He revealeth the deep and secret things. He knoweth what is in the darkness and the light dwelleth with him. I don't want to be any more Jewish than Daniel. God takes from me every Yiddish kite, every flourish, every kind of synagogue enhancement. But let me be a Jew as Daniel was. Let me understand who God is. That he is the giver of every good and perfect gift. He's the revealer of secret things. The light dwelleth with him. Every true Jew knows in every fiber and atom of his being that God is the source of all. And the great work of God with us Jews who have been 15, 20, and 30, and 40 or more years in the world operating out of our own flesh, out of our own ability, out of our own zeal, out of the very endowments which God has given us to serve him, to bring us out of the one Judaism and into the other. And it begins by determining not to know anything but Christ and him crucified. The 28th verse, there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. The 29th verse, he that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass. And so it was revealed. And when we find the reaction just like the Pharaoh in the story of Joseph, here this king in the story of Daniel, and in the 46th verse of the second chapter, then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and worshiped Daniel and commanded that they should offer an oblation and sweet odors unto him the way that men almost sought to worship Paul and thought verily that he was a god. And almost in a sense he was because it was no longer he that lived but Christ who lived in him. It was Christ they saw through that earthly tabernacle and they were ready to worship the Lord of glory in Paul. He was ready to worship the Lord of glory in our brother Daniel. They were so one with God that to see them was to see God. That's why Jesus could say to his own disciples, have you been so long with me that you don't see the Father? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I and the Father are one. And precious people and those of you who know me, my heart's cry is that the day will come when my people will look at me and not give me this business and chuck me under the chin because they see a Jew whom they recognize as a kinsman with themselves or they'll be impressed, say this art, he's really a talker and wonderful natural endowments and gifts but they'll be stunned unto silence because they'll see through this earthly thing, this piece of clay, the God of glory. Of a truth it is, the king said, that your God is a God of gods and a Lord of kings and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret. I'll never forget when I spoke at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the power of God was so manifest, the glory of God. And the moment I finished speaking, a Jewish man got up to count to me who was a professor of psychology and an Israeli and he took me to task. I was never so stripped bare before men in my life. He didn't like the way I spoke. He didn't care for my addiction. He didn't like my personality. He certainly didn't like my message. He said it was an intellectual embarrassment. It brought him back into the Middle Ages that if he had known that that was what I was going to speak, he never would have come. And he went on and on like that and he just left me stripped. And I remember concluding the meeting that night, I said, Jesus said that his sheep would hear his voice. And I've been told that I'm not allowed to pray publicly. It's against the rules of this institution but I just want to commend a prayer to you for your availability. And I just breathed a prayer for salvation and then we closed the meeting. And when it was over, some people started to come forward and the first one was a dark haired girl with dark eyes. I took one look at that face, Jewish from the word go, beaming with light and rimmed with tears and trembling. I said, sis, I said, you're Jewish, aren't you? She said, yes. I said, something has just happened to you. Yes. She said, you said, Mr. Katz, you said that we were not allowed to pray, it was against the rules. She said, but when you prayed that prayer, she said, I prayed under my breath and something happened. And that in that group was another Jew trembling, a Jewish guy. He was trembling. He said, man, he said, you are some speaker. The power, he said. I said, brother, that was not me. It was of God. Oh, he said, if that's God, he said, what can you tell me about myself? I said, you're a massive, you're a compulsive masturbator and a slave to your lusts. They go, I never saw a man so thoroughly pinned to the wall as that man. He was wholly disarmed and the air just went out of him. The guy was trembling. I could just, demon spirits had such sway in that life. I said, I'm just going to pray for you. May I? Well, he was Jewish enough to want it. And I just took authority over those spirits and I commanded them to be still in the name of Jesus and not to interfere with the working of God's spirit. And then in two or three minutes, this man who thought he had seen a demonstration of something human, followed me in prayer and received the Lord and came to a perfect peace and left that place saved. We need to be a revealer of secrets. We need to be discerners by the spirit. And I tell you that I'm waiting for the hour which shall come when there shall be no flesh. For God does not dwell with flesh. When some rabbi or some Meir Kahane or some Mark Tannenbaum or some Jewish leader of the community who has raged against us and thought that we're men who are seeking our own purposes shall face us in a face-to-face confrontation and we should just stand in a perfect peace of God and speak something revealed by the spirit discerned about that man's life and say something that shall break him wide open and he shall fall at our feet and say, surely God is with thee. Of a truth, your God is the God of gods, a Lord of kings and a revealer of secrets, seeing that thou couldest reveal this secret. Oh, people, I'm constrained. We're in a battle. This is a war. Lives are at stake. We're not playing games. We don't need the gifts of the spirit to add extra luster and sparkle for meetings and to services. God has equipped us with the magnitude and the power and the glory of his spirit. Can we find such a one as this in whom the spirit of God is that we might go forth in a world that has exalted in its own strength, in its own flesh, in its own power, in its own mind and reveal the things that shall set them free? I want to end today in the New Testament. Same discipleship, same Jewishness, same way. It's never changed. And my example here, and I could have chosen from many, but I just feel especially kindred in the book of Acts to the disciple Stephen. Surely the Lord spoke of him prophetically last night. The sixth chapter of Acts were introduced to this Jewish man. Was there ever a more inauspicious introduction? Was there ever a more battered piano used of God? A crummy waiter on tables. Here are we, bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, PhDs, many of us. God delights in choosing foolish things. They chose Stephen, we read in the second verse, to serve on tables. The third verse of the sixth chapter of the book of Acts, Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you, seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom. Can we find such a one as this in whom the Spirit of God is? Full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom. Fifth verse, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost. And in the eighth verse, and Stephen full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people. The tenth verse, and they were not able to resist the wisdom and spirit by which he spoke. The fifteenth verse, and all they that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel. And we know that Stephen was brought into confrontation with the wisest men of his generation. Men schooled in the law, great Judaistic debaters, men full of human counsel and wisdom and eloquence and gifts. God brought this foolish battered piano, this lowly waiter on tables into confrontation with the mightiest men of his day, and put such words in his mouth as they could not gainsay. Seventh chapter, fifty-first verse, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised and hardeneers, you do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers do, so do ye. Which of the prophets have your fathers not persecuted? You know, we think being led of the Spirit of God automatically means that necessarily we're going to be gracious, kindly, soft. I'll tell you my own experience. I've experienced that. I marvel at the stillness which the Spirit of God brings me to, and the soft answer which will occasionally be emitted out of my mouth, or no answer. And many of the time that students will come up to me after a fiery encounter on a campus when men have nodded their fists in my face and called me fanatic and madman, and practically gnashed at me with their teeth, and hurled such insults at me as flesh could hardly bear. And men will come up, all the Jewish men after me, and say, brother, I didn't believe, agree with a word you said, but how did you stand in the midst of that storm and take it? I don't understand it. That's the thing that impressed them. There's a Spirit of God who will give us a peace in the eye of the storm. There's a Spirit of God that will give us a soft word that will still the wrath of human hearts. But I'll tell you that there's a Spirit of God that spoke through Jesus and cried out to Pharisees, hypocrites, whited sepulchres, dead men's bones. Say, oh, that's not loving. When the Spirit of God gives utterance, that is love for that moment. And I've long ago stopped deciding whether to speak softly as a lamb or to roar like a lion. When God will have us as lowly waiters of tables who have laid aside their human accomplishments and endowments, when we'll allow God to bring us to places out of pits and out of dungeons, broken, when He shall exalt us who are humbled, when there shall be no flesh dwelling with God, we shall also find ourselves by the Spirit of God moved on some occasions to bleat like lambs and on other occasions to roar like lions. He knows. It's His wisdom. It's His power. He's all in all. We are complete in Him. What's the reaction to our obedience to that Spirit? Ever and always the same. When they heard these things in the 54th verse, they were cut to their heart and they gnashed on Him with their teeth. But He, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly unto heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. And they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and ran upon Him with one accord and cast Him out of the city and stoned Him. 59th verse, And they stoned Stephen who, calling upon God, saying, Lord Jesus, receive my Spirit. And he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. When Joseph was cast into the dungeon and the Lord was with him. And when Stephen died by inches, the stones crunching into his flesh and his nose and into his eyes and the blood running into his eyes and down his mouth and down into his body, dying by inches. He yet spoke by the Spirit with a sweet voice and a transcendent posture before men and before God. The heavens were opened and he saw things which are not afforded to all men to see. Fernbrand said, I will never exchange my years in that concentration, in that camp. The proximity of God, the closeness of him, the fellowship of his sufferings, the last utterance out of God's men whom the Spirit of God is, not anger, not recrimination, not saying you're going to get yours. He kneeled down and cried out with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he said this, he fell asleep. There's a Jewish man there by whose feet the cloaks of those who stoned this Jewish martyr rested. Brilliant man, full of great human endowments, towering intellectual, prized student of the Rabbi Gamaliel, ticketed for stardom, priding himself in his Jewishness, Hebrew of the Hebrews, full of zeal according to the law, looking at this lowly Jew, a waiter on tables, dying magnificently and saying, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. There's no adherence to law that could ever raise such an expression of equanimity and poise and love for one's persecutor as Stephen spoke that day. I speak especially right now in these concluding moments to my Jewish brothers and sisters because we know each other better than anyone in the world. We're a hard people. We're a stiff, naked people. We're a proud people. We're a gainsaying people. We're unusually endowed and we've exalted in our endowments. What is it going to take to save such a people as this? How many times have we come away licking our wounds, frustrated, defeated, having seen no result of our endeavor to speak to our own kinsmen to induce them to believe on the Lord Jesus. I see this pole as a kind of a symbol, the, what can I say, the embodiment of all that is traditionally Jewish. Not just the synagogue goers, but the quintessence of Jewishness of which I practiced being an atheist for 35 years, never darkening a synagogue doorstep and yet utterly Jewish as anyone who most regularly goes to synagogues because the essential Judaism of our people is this, a confidence in faith. A trusting in the arm of flesh, exalting man and not God. For all its religious vocabulary, this is its ultimate dependency and its ultimate condition. Full of Yiddish kite, but just strip that bare and what do you see? An exaltation of the things which are of the world, the flesh and the devil. Paul saw this lowly waiter on tables dying magnificently by the spirit even as he lived. So did he die. And his last prayer was for God's mercy for those who were killing him. No wonder later the Lord Jesus when he spoke to him out of that blinding light said, soul, soul, why do you kick against the pricks? From that day forth there was something that was registered in his soul and heart and mind from which he could not turn. He saw a demonstration as King Nebuchadnezzar of old, as the Pharaoh before him, of something that is not with flesh. It was a manifestation of the glory of God. Nothing else can explain it. This is definitive Judaism. This is true Jewishness. This is true discipleship. Discipleship is nothing but the continual dependence upon God through Christ for all of life. For we are complete in him. The continuous in-breathing and working of the Holy Spirit is the essence of that life. Can we find such a one as this in whom the Spirit of God is? And Stephen, full of faith and the Holy Ghost, full union and utter dependence upon the ultimate Jew, the root Yeshua HaMashiach, Jesus the Christ. To be Jewish is to be in him. He's the ultimate Jew, people. In him we live and move and have our being. Jesus Christ, Yeshua HaMashiach, the wisdom and the power of God. What is discipleship? Whole separation from the world. It's a Daniel who will not eat nor drink at the king's table. It's a Joseph who will not lie with her but refused. It's a selflessness and utter recognition that God is all. The answer is not in me. God will give you answer. But God. It's purity of motive. It's love for and intimacy, relationship with God, knowing him by his person. That even before the law is thundered, we know that it's a great offense against God to do this great wickedness in his sight. God is bringing us to such a relationship, people. The law was a substitute for relationship. God had to give men by edict and by postulation and by dictum what we should have known by intuition. And when you'll find that rare marriage, when a husband and wife can look at each other and know what it is that pleases the other. He doesn't have to ask us, sweetie, do you need a drink of water? He looks at the face and he gets up and he goes and he brings it. That's the relationship to which God is bringing us and is working in our hearts and lives. Because I tell you people that God is bringing us to such an hour when no edict, no thing which is expostulated is going to suffice. We're not going to be able to operate by the numbers. But in such situations, Mike said to me last night up in my room after the meeting was over, he said, Artie said, I was flustered. I've never been in such a situation like this where I sense the glory of God. He said, I was not even myself. I didn't know even how to speak. That's why I stopped short. And he said, the lights distracted me from the camera. I said, Brother Mike, if you can't operate with lights distracting you from the camera, what shall you do when you shall be in a thick of a howling mob and men shall be ready to gnash their teeth upon you and will you be distracted then? God is grooming us to a time when we shall be in such places that we cannot turn to answers by the numbers. We cannot think, well, what did I do in a situation like this last time? Or what does it say in the scriptures? Or as someone said last night, yesterday, where will I find the biblical principles? In that moment, there's going to be only one leading by the discernment of the Spirit of God to those in whom the Spirit of God is who are full of faith and the Holy Ghost. And I'll tell you, when you'll be obedient to operate by it, you know what it shall bring upon you. Reproach, suffering, persecution, and death. Utter abandonment, whole commitment, trust in God, even unto that death. Yea, though you slay me, yet will I trust you. It's going before the Pharaoh. It's going before King Nebuchadnezzar and giving answer, trusting that this is the Spirit of God speaking. Because if you miss it, it's going to be... But being prepared to miss it because you've wholly cast and utterly abandoned your life upon him. It's the willingness to suffer what we must because we know that he is a reproach in the world against its way and against its spirit. And to the degree to which he has the possession of our lives and makes himself manifest in through us, the world shall react to that as it reacted to him. And all this in a consistent daily walk by the Spirit. This isn't a prescription for the great and heroic moments. This is the prescription for the everyday. In our relationship with each other, in the great naturalness and ease and flow by the Spirit, when we shall at the kitchen table and breakfasting one with another and raising our spoon to our lips, hear coming forth a word of wisdom to set a brother free. The ministry of the Spirit for the body or being in relationship with our Jewish people, giving them a sermon by the Spirit, a revelation of their own need and the character and life that shall bring them to their feet, to their knees before the Holy One of Israel. In a word, people, discipleship is Jewishness and Jewishness is discipleship. God told me that last night. It's one and the same. To be a disciple is to be Jewish and to be truly Jewish is to be a disciple, one in whom the Spirit of God is. Let's bow our heads now, shall we?