In this sermon, the speaker shares a personal experience of a conversation with a man who had a profound impact on him. The man suggests that what the world needs is for people to wash one another's feet, a symbol of humility and service. This statement deeply affects the speaker, causing him to reflect on his own arrogance and the need for a revolution against the system. The sermon emphasizes the importance of recognizing our own lostness and anguish for the salvation of others, drawing parallels to the cries of Paul and Jesus in the Bible.

Precious God, so we bless you, and we sense that we are on, at a threshold Lord. We've not been this way heretofore. There's something that you're wanting to impart, to express, to bring your church to a new sense of awareness, of consciousness, in what is preparation for our ultimate call, to be the saviors of Israel in the last day, so to speak. And it requires, my God, an extraordinary empathy toward this people, who will not be in their best frame. Everything that would be calculated to rub us raw, and to make us to recoil from them, they themselves will bear in their distress. So we know, my God, that the issue is not them, it's us. What we will be in that hour, how we will receive them, how we will respond, what they will see in us, will be not only the issue of their survival, but the issue of their salvation. That among them, there will be a remnant that will return to Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads, and mourning and sighing, fleeing away. They will say that their whole final exile, being the outcasts of Judah, and the castaway of Israel, was worthwhile. Like the blind beggar, it was worthwhile they had regained their sight to follow you. So, my God, work with us, work in us, and bring forth in this precious congregation what you will. We thank you, Lord, for the privilege of this time. Again, we confess we don't know how to proceed. You overrule anything, Lord, that I thought to employ and have your precious way as the Lord over all. Our ears are tuned to hear, Lord, what you're saying. Speak, for your servants are hearing. And we thank and give you praise again for our privilege, and our call. In Jesus' name, Amen. Well, I'm going to read some, Lord willing, something from the messages given at Canada that began by a statement that after 38 years in the faith, I am persuaded that anti-Jewishness is intrinsic to all Gentiles, that there's a latent anti-Semitism resident in all Gentiles. It's just the name of the game. It's the very nature of the truth, of what it means to be a Gentile, and to have in our midst a people of a kind that chafe us, and are different, and excite every kind of reaction toward them being different from them and other. It's the name of the game. It's intrinsic. It's built into reality itself. And the only thing that can alter that is the grace of God, the spirit of God, the converting power of God, the sanctifying work of God. Where that work is yet incomplete or partial or has been resisted, even in believers, even in spirit-filled believers, something of this latent disposition against the Jew remains. And many of us would be shocked to be accused of either being anti-Semitic or even having the potential, because we're not conscious of any rage or inflammatory thing. We would never say anything that is indecent. But there are other ways in which this disposition is expressed. And until it's met in full, we cannot be to them what we ought, nor can we be a bride to the bridegroom. The two issues are one, and may the Lord show us that, and that in fact it is even the Jew in God's provision for us to obtain our status as a bride to the bridegroom. I want to flat out say that I'm coming to the conclusion, and I'll probably be sharing it in these days, that the Jew is God's provision for our ultimate sanctification. That there's no way that we could have attained to a bridal nature, adorned for the bridegroom, independent of the work, the sanctifying work that comes to us in that relationship with this most, what's the word, most something people, most fill it in, inflammatory, most provocative, most abusive, most offensive, most arrogant, abrasive, yeah. They are that condition for our sake. They are the enemies of the gospel process for your sake. Have you ever pondered that? Who needs an enemy like that? They are an ultimate enemy, as you can only know when you seek to confront them with the gospel. If you have avoided that mandate, which is a first mandate to the Jew first, and then to the Greek, you don't know the radical character of the gospel itself. Until you see men foaming at the mouth with indignation and rage, and your audacity to presume to say to them that they need, quote, to be saved. Saved from what? They're not even conscious of their sin. They see themselves as exemplary, and by every human measure they are. Didn't they win the B'nai B'rith Man of the Year Award? And haven't they contributed philanthropies, not only to Israel, but to Gentile causes? Didn't the head of a big publishing firm in San Francisco, when I went up to his tower office in the hotel which he owns, want to bribe me and say, what do you want? You know, how can I, do you want a contribution to your ministry? Is that what you're angling for? I said, no, I only want to tell you that your philanthropy is not going to earn you an eternal place in God. There's everything about them calculated for us, and they don't even know that. It's like the wife who has to suffer living with a prophetic man who happens also to be Jewish, not realizing that that suffering is intrinsic to the differences between us, and has to be born, even though being a Gentile, she doesn't understand the prophetic wisdom of it. You understand what I'm saying? Okay, that's the mystery of Israel and the Church. Let me read how difficult the relationship with the Jew is. You can read Michael Brown's book on Their Blood is on Our Hands. That's a classic survey of all of the miscarriage of justice, of murder, mayhem, bloodshed, forced conversions, of which the Church today has little consciousness. And even if Jews do not know the particulars of that history, they know the substance of it, and they still carry it generation by generation. The cross, the name Christ, the very appearance of a church. I often say a Jew will avoid allowing the shadow of the spire of a church even to fall upon him. You know that there's some Orthodox Jews who will spit when passing a church, because what is represented by that cross is not the statement of atonement, but the statement of mayhem, persecution, and murder. That's what the Crusaders had on their chest, and the so-called Christians of the pogroms of the Ukraine and Russia, the seasons of persecution, have always been identified with that which is called Christian. In a word, we have every card stacked against us. When we are called to break through into a new quality of relationship with this people, for our sake and for their sake, well, everything is stacked against us, historically and in their understanding, as will be expressed in this quote, of those who want no dealings with Christians at all. And Rabbi Eliezer Berkovitz, whose name I know, an outstanding theologian, Jewish theologian, very respected, Orthodox, says, what was started at the Council of Nicaea, that was under Constantine, in which the rudiments of the faith were clarified and elaborated, was duly completed in the concentration camps and crematoria. At this stage, he said, it would be as immoral as it would be emotionally impossible for a sensitive, historically conscious Jew to have anything to do with Christians at all. All we want of you Christians is that you keep your hands off of us and our children. If that doesn't let the air out of your balloon, I don't know what will. And the writer says, these words are hard to hear and hard to bear, but hear and bear them we must, for I think for some time to come. So history has done a number that will be enormously difficult to overcome. Here's another statement by Rabbi Abraham Herschel, whose two volumes on the prophets are classic and whom I had the privilege to meet years ago when I was being trained in New York City as a missionary to the Jews. Probably one of the most, if I should say, sympathetic to Christ of any of the significant Jewish voices he's now passed on. He said, I had rather enter Auschwitz than be an object of conversion. I've heard Jewish mothers say to me, I'd rather see my son go to hell as a drug addict than he should subscribe to your faith. There's no way to plumb the depth of the animosity against the faith that is dear to us and repulsive to them. It's going to take an extraordinary stroke from God and not just a one-time thing, a remarkable dealing of God with us to fit us somehow despite all of the historic and present difficulties to establish even a minimal line of communication. Maybe we will be helped by the fact that as anti-Semitism becomes increasingly prevalent throughout the world, Jews will be so desperate for any kind of ally that they're willing even to consider us in our friendship. We'll have to show ourselves friendly and not in any way inadvertently be clumsy and express something that will immediately trigger a reaction against us. So it's a real measure of the grace of God with us and in us. And for that reason, we're afraid to enter their synagogues. We're afraid to establish contact. We don't know how to speak to them. We're walking on eggshells. And more than a Jew being turned off by anything that issues from Christians, are you saved, brother? They will be more turned off by what is obsequious and condescending toward them. Excuse my language. That which is stilted and making nice. Oh, I've always loved Jews. And Jews are my, I have a Jew who's my best friend. And that is really icky. It turns them off more than just a blunt anti-Semitic statement. They would have more ability and patience to hear a man who's true and is prejudiced than to hear someone condescending and making nice. Well, Art, then how do we strike the balance? How do we deport ourselves? Well, there's no rule. There's no way how to. It's the truth of what you are in Christ that's at stake. For he has made unto us wisdom, sanctification, redemption, and power. And you've never been tested on the truth of that in the ultimate test that the Jew represents. And that's why we're slack. So I'm encouraging the church to make its contact with the Jews of its own locality who are positioned there for our sake. The Lord has seen to their wide distribution in the judgment that has come to them that has cast them into all nations and will increasingly cast them. But they're there where we are. And we will be tested to see if we are taking the Lord seriously in the mandate that has come to the church to the Jew first and also to the Greek. And because we have voided that mandate and have avoided that people knowing that they constitute such an ultimate challenge to us, we have not been to the Greeks what we ought. Well, had we gone to the Jew first, of necessity, we would have had to learn what Paul knew, that this gospel is the power of God unto salvation. To the Jew first. The message itself does not commend it intellectually. It is not respectable. It is not rational. It is absurd, actually. It's a piece of foolishness. And it's a calculated piece of foolishness that God has laid aside His deity, come down to earth as an infant, totally dependent, doing doo-doo in His diapers like us to take upon the humiliation of a human form and to live 30 years in obscurity and have a shot-in-a-pan, three-and-a-half-year public ministry that will end with His excruciating death as a criminal outside of the city in the garbage dump between criminals. And that's our Messiah, our King. Rightly was He mocked in three languages with the sign over His head, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, ha, ha, ha. And taught it and mocked even in His suffering unto death. This is so despicable. This is so outlandish. This is so uncommendable. How do you dare have the presumption and the arrogance to come to a Jew with that message whose moral life is more exemplary than your own and whose English and education and erudition is more impressive than your own? You're going to come to Him with your high school drop-out English and your inadequate spirituality and bring a message of that kind? It's suicide. It's intimidation. It's mortification. And for that reason we have resisted it. But you know what we have signaled to the powers of the air overhead? These people say, Lord, Lord, and their choruses are full of adoring phrases with regard to Jesus the Lord. But when the rubber hits the road and the Lord gives a mandate to the Jew first, we have not obeyed it. That's why the powers of the air say, Jesus we know and Paul we know, but who are you? We're not obliged in any way to take you seriously so long as we see that the language of the faith is only a phraseological thing because when it comes to the issue of actual obedience to the Lord, you have failed. And you continue to fail. And you're not even at all in any way distressed over that failure. So how should we take you seriously? There's a great drama, you guys. This is cosmic. And the Jew is at the heart of it. And the Lord in His wisdom has established the whole thing. Have the faith of the Son of God for He believes and knows that He will yet prevail even with a church of the kind that we are. Can you believe? In fact, He must prevail with the kind of church that we are for that itself is the wisdom of God that is contrary to the wisdom of the powers of the air. For out of the mouths of babes and sucklings has He perfected praise. It must come out of the makeshift, motley, nothing composition that the church is that is not prestigious as the Jewish community is that is not as learned, that is not as powerful, that is not as wealthy that the triumph of Christ must come as it was displayed at the cross in foolishness and in weakness. There's a drama, you guys. I don't have a word for it. A saga. It's an immense, overwhelming thing. And it ends the age. When that foolish thing in which God has trusted and given His Spirit and His Word and His ministers, His prophets, and His apostles His evangelists, pastors, and teachers that they will be brought to the place of an obedience and a fulfillment by which Israel shall be redeemed and the church transfigured and to be raised up in a glorified body to be with its Lord as bride to the bridegroom and everlasting righteousness and a new heaven and a new earth. Well, to contrast the two Jews that I've just read where a man would rather go to Auschwitz than to be converted Can you imagine I was brought up to meet that man? I don't know that I even said boo. Precious, weighty, prestigious man. Scholar! You read the prophets and see if you can follow him in Greek and Latin and French and German and all of the quotes that he cites the breadth of his understanding is astonishing as well as his insight into the prophetic phenomenon itself. So I was a piece of foolishness against a Jew who represents what Jews themselves celebrate the wisdom of this world. Here's a statement by Dietrich Bonhoeffer Everybody know who he is? Was? Who died a week before the end of World War II hung by the Nazis for his collaboration with a plot to assassinate Hitler who could have remained in New York or in London or other places of safety but came back to Germany because he felt that unless he was with his own nation and church in that nation in the time of ultimate Nazi peril how can he be to that nation after the war what he might but he never made it. But what he wrote and what he learned in those days is one of the great contributions to the church. If you've not read the book Life Together it's a classic that must be in every believer's library and more on the library right on their nightstand and continually being read and internalized and walked out. Here's what he wrote when he was in a prison cell in 1943 before his death My thoughts and feelings seem to be getting more and more like the Hebrew scriptures and no wonder I have been reading it much more than the new for the last few months it is only when one knows the ineffability of the name of God ineffable means cannot be spoken that one can utter the name of Jesus Christ Remarkable statement for a German Christian so much in keeping with my own painful early time as a newly saved Jewish man in my Pentecostal assembly in California hearing the name of Jesus on everyone's lips Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Lord I had not come out of an orthodox background that refuses even to spell the word God G-O-D but omits the O and puts a hyphen as a statement of respect for God that's why the orthodox use the word Hashem the name because you don't speak the name you just refer to the name only the high priest once in the year on Yom Kippur could speak the name known only to him by mystery and revelation when he made atonement for the sins of Israel otherwise who knows how to say Yod-Heh-Vov-Heh the four consonants called the tetragamaton it could be pronounced as Yahweh, Jehovah what is the authentic pronunciation? I don't know and they don't know and in a certain sense they don't think it's even rightful to know or to probe beyond what God himself would reveal but we Christians Jesus, Jesus Lord, Lord, God, God so what is he saying here? he finds himself in his prison cell I don't think that that should be ignored there's something about prison cells waiting execution that prepares a soul for a depth of understanding of God of eternity and of ultimate issues of truth and reality that nothing else will provide there's not been a Christian who has ever been put into a cell who has not received the benefit you have only to read Richard von Braun's testimony that he cherishes his 13 years in solitary confinement he would not exchange it for anything for the revelation that came to him in that place where he was cut off even from daylight and for communion and fellowship with human beings that he received at that time such a sense of the Lord as the Lord for which there could be no price and he not at all sees himself does not see himself as a victim but as a privileged man for that experience and everything that issued from him after that has continued in Leicester Church so here's another soon to be martyr speaking out of his prison cell in 1943 my thoughts and feelings seem to be getting more and more like the Hebrew Scriptures I have been reading it much more than the new for the last few months and he was a New Testament scholar it is only when one knows the ineffability of the name of God when you know that it cannot be uttered it's too holy to take to your lips that one can utter the name of Jesus Christ don't utter don't merchandise in that name as if it's a reflex action and you can speak it at will unless you have first experienced the sense of the ineffability of the name of God the one tempers the other the Old Testament exposure tempers your understanding of the new but to avoid the Old Testament is to leave yourself crippled in the appreciation of the new so there's a remarkable there's something about shooting the or cracking gun it is only when one loves life and the earth so much that without them everything would be gone that one can believe in the resurrection and the new world that's a remarkable statement here's a man imprisoned facing impending death when one loves life and the earth have you noticed in the Old Testament and in the Psalms remarkable and frequent references to God as creator I always wondered why is that always being put before us in the Psalms we're always being reminded of God as creator of the heavens and the earth and all that in them is is part of the great sense of the majesty and the splendor of God that is breathed out of the Old Testament scriptures that does not have as much place in the new because the new serves other purposes the new presumes that you are as familiar with the old and therefore it's not a competition or a rivalry but there's a certain breadth of the grandeur of God that is given to us in the Psalms and in the prophets and other places even in the law itself of Moses that is not to be found in the new but God forbid that you should have neglected that and come to the new as if the original is passé and you can get everything that you need out of the new exclusively it's one unbroken continuum and it needs to be understood and that's what he's seeing in the prison cell it's the sense of God as creator the whole majesty of the earth and the significance of life the sacrament of life the wholeness of life that I can believe in resurrection and a new world did he not believe it before? being a New Testament scholar and a pastor of course he believed it but the depth of that belief has been enhanced by his prison experience in which he finds that there's a solace and a comfort and an impartation of a certain kind that is coming to him now increasingly out of the Old Testament so here it is side by side in the same book Dietrich Bonhoeffer saying that and the Jewish commentators saying quite the opposite and somehow we are suspended betwixt and between well let me try to summarize what the Lord gave me to begin in Canada the third message that concluded that was so controversial I'll save for the end but let me give it to you as it began remembering that the Lord had given me the experience of visiting a synagogue in Spokane and what an experience that was I don't know that I can call it holy but it was a sense of Jewish life Jewish community Jewish respect Jewish feast days it was something that we lack in our own experience and I coveted that we would have photographs on our hallway walls that showed the unbroken continuum of our faith and our relationships of people who have stayed together and that their children not only bar mitzvahed there but they're subsequently married there if it goes on long enough they'll yet be buried there's you need to go to Brooklyn and visit the Hasidim the Lubavitcher Hasidim the ultra orthodox who have moved out from their long island dwellings and other places of luxury and comfort to move into a black ghetto why? because that's where their synagogue is and you can only walk to the synagogue on the Shabbat, you cannot drive to drive would be to work and in fact if even the walk is too long you have somehow violated the Shabbat I'm not saying that to endorse such views I'm saying that to show the mentality of this people who are willing to sacrifice a life of comfort and seclusion in the suburbs to come into a ghetto why? because there are available the brownstone houses and dilapidated tenement buildings that are cheap and can be bought because for them the issue of proximity to each other and the place of worship is more important than suburban comfort that puts us to shame it's like my sharing about community and the privilege of morning prayer times which for me are more dear than I can say that if I travel the thing that I miss most are the morning prayer times, no two have ever been alike, always choice always something from the Lord always precious and a brother would come up to me after and say Art I really delight I would love to enjoy what you're describing but I live so far out that there's no way that I could meet with believers with whom I'm joined on Sunday for a morning prayer time what do you recommend Art? move move give up your little nest what's the more important value? your suburban lifestyle or proximity to the saints that you can be in the place of prayer daily these Jews put us to shame in that kind of zeal that accounts for their sacrifice something to pray about, the Lord has given me a 30 year relationship and a history, I've been in that community in and out in fact I had a previous invitation to spend three months with them that never materialized but it's still a live option so pray for that as they're in Brooklyn also, that the Lord will call for that now I'm coming from this the Lord's stirring my heart about the synagogue, the Jewish life what is represented there and it's isolation from the church and from Christians and my first statement that I make to this conference in Canada is anti-Jewishness is intrinsic to all Gentiles by the very nature of things you need to recognize that in your deeps, unless the sanctifying work of God and the cross has met it, it's latent and there in fact by the end, what was latent surfaced so this is a kind of lecture of which I was accused of lacking anointing and the deepest circumcision of the heart because I'm giving reasons why it is that it's in the nature of all things that Gentiles would harbor have as intrinsic an anti-Jewishness because Jews themselves are exclusive and we are always offended by those who are separate from ourselves and want to maintain that separation it makes you question about yourself what do they find offensive in us, right away your furrow is up Jewish exclusiveness of course came out of being separate and come out from the Canaanite culture, civilization and religion and keep kosher keep a sanctity to be separate what God wanted to maintain the integrity of Israel, hardened into a kind of system officiated over by rabbis and elaborated in a rabbinical way to become an isolation from the Gentile world rather than a witness so much so that Peter himself would never have responded to the invitation from that Roman... Cornelius Cornelius, except he first had a vision he had to have a, what was it a, it was more than a dream, it was a vision a trance, in which he saw a sheep coming down with unclean animals and God says Peter take and eat but Lord you know that I've never eaten anything unclean the problem for those who wanted to hasten the execution of Jesus was the requirement to come into the court of Gentiles where Pontius Pilate presided and not be themselves desecrate themselves before the holiday of the Passover they were fastidious to keep themselves inviolate from coming into the presence of a Gentile in order to affect Jesus' death but did not think that the death itself was a violation, so much for Pharisaical not just Pharisaical Judaism but Pharisaical religion so Jewish exclusiveness Gentile envy, imagined or real, the social, cultural and economic superiority of Jews that is visible works as a factor to inculcate a kind of antipathy toward Jews who of us can sit in a classroom with some Jewish students who get straight A's without a beat of sweat and we're breaking our heads to pass what is it, what do they have if you can bless them in their success, you're a superb saint otherwise you'll resent their success and whether you're conscious of that or not, there's something that has taken place in the course of time that works to give us a disposition against them we need to recognize these things and that's why the Lord had me to state them they represent or depict the imagined wrathful God of the Old Testament as a God of judgment to be feared and Israel as the rod of God unto annihilation of the Canaanites I don't know if you've ever thought that this has been an offense to even German theologians and who's the one German philosopher, I think he died as a suicide who was anti-Jewish somebody help me who? Nietzsche Nietzsche hated the Old Testament did dislike Paul and he thought that even Christianity was too Judaic because it entreated believers to the walk of humility rather than an assertion of our manhood in a heroic way. His model was Greek not Hebraic and was offended even by a Christianity that seemed to suggest a Hebrew influence but these men in reading the Old Testament reading how God used Israel out of slavery and out of its 40 years of wilderness to excise out these Canaanite civilizations and leave not a man, woman or child and to actually extinguish these corrupt civilizations strikes a note of fear that these Jews are still with us and have the same enmity now for us as they had once carried against the Gentiles of Canaan and they may seem to be acting civilly that's only because they're weak and because they're in the minority but given the opportunity they would say to us off with their heads now that may be more real than imagined but at any rate it's a fear and a negative note that keeps Gentiles looking at Jews with a degree of suspicion, apprehension and fear just from the Old Testament text even though the present day Jew has no correspondence to that at all, it's a factor that needs to be recognized and if the Jewish superiority over the Gentile the word goyim which means g-o-y-i-m literally the Hebrew for nations, any nation other than Israel are the nations of the goyim but when it's spoken by a Jew there's a little tincture if not little of contempt and disdain, there's a sense of Jewish superiority that we have exhibited that rubs the Gentile the wrong way their rejection of Christ two thousand years later still rejecting Christ and Christianity raises the question of whether or not they are right in that rejection and maybe we are wrong their continued resistance to the truth of our faith raises questions as to the absoluteness of that faith, can we have that confidence, how is it that they have been able to live that long and survive yet being in unbelief and in Christ rejection and prospering doesn't that raise a question, well maybe we got it wrong and I want to tell you that from my experience at a Lutheran seminary this is now being openly expressed that the Jews may have is it right and we need to consider whether in fact Christ really is the Messiah because as they say if he came where is the world peace that Messiah should have brought we know that those questions can be answered but they are troubling questions and for those that are weak in their faith or only nominal Christians, it can rattle their cage and make them resistant and hostile toward Jews who seem to live quite successfully without our Christ it raises the question of the truth of the absoluteness of our faith and for those that are weak in their faith or nominal in their faith as I'm saying it could be a point of antagonism this was Luther's concern and incited Luther to his ultimate powerful anti-semitism that the Jews and the Talmud contained references to Jesus of a kind that were not only uncomplimentary but blasphemous they have since been removed but at that time no Jew ever thought that a Gentile would be looking into their Talmud, but what happened in the age of enlightenment about the time of Luther was that many men were now studying Hebrew and were able themselves to read directly into the Jewish sources and see these anti-Christ references that have since been expunged. For example how could Jesus be born with an immaculate conception to a virgin? That's patent foolishness nothing in life or nature or reality can in any way sustain that, so the only way that reasonable men can explain such a birth and conception is that it must be illegitimate and so the name Jesus was not used in the Talmud but a name that the rabbis coined and another name for Miriam as the one who bore him making clear allusion that they understood that birth to be a piece of illegitimacy and that the Christians had been duped to believe that that was some kind of hokey no hands miracle of a what's the word that was just used? Immaculate conception not knowing their own scripture that unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. That's the conclusion to which rational men will come when they themselves do not see the evidence in the Gentiles around them of the reality as to the truth of that birth so Luther saw the Jewish community as a dangerous threat to the Reformation for even in their silence they were making a testimony that they did not subscribe to the truth of the virgin birth of Jesus and that the only alternative to that would be then to believe that he was illegitimate. Can you see the tension? That's why Jesus wept over Jerusalem he knew that when we miss the day of our visitation and our peace, that this would necessarily follow. The destruction of our temple, the destruction of Jerusalem and the casting out into the nations of this Jewish people who would always be an awkward, untoward presence in their Gentile midst and would always excite envy, resentment, bitterness suspicion and bring upon their heads periodically, particularly in the Easter season when the cry of Christ's killer would come Jewish death. You know in the Middle Ages Jews were compelled to attend debates between the local priest and the rabbi over the issue of the truth of Christ and if they dared fall asleep they were poked with long poles to keep awake that in the hearing of this debate it would be straightened out for them. You need to understand the what's the word invidious unhappy position that they occupied which was part of the judgment of the rejection of Christ himself but nevertheless had to be born without explanation. You know about the crusaders on their way to the Holy Land exploiting and pillaging every Jewish community in order to provide through terror and intimidation the finances by which their expedition could be made. In the town that I loved in Germany more than any other Esslingen it looks like it goes back to the Middle Ages to this day. It's never been touched by either world war cobblestone streets, the old Rathaus the city hall. The church in Esslingen was originally Catholic and is now Protestant but it stands on the very place where the synagogue had stood that was burned to the ground in one of the episodes of the crusaders passing through where the Jews for safety locked themselves in their synagogue and seeing that the crusaders brought the whole community to its death in flames. So the fires of the Holocaust had an earlier inception in the Middle Ages and Jews remember that. When you go to Esslingen now and there's the literature of the tourist agency of the bureaus, there's not a word about the history of Jews that goes back into the 12th century. I only found it by accident that as a student after coming out of the army there's a reference to Esslingen and what had taken place during the time of the crusades. And often the threat was convert or die. What we're going to convert to this mock thing this travesty, this sacrilege this paganism that celebrates a woman and her child which goes back to the pagan myths of earliest history never. We prefer death. How is our death affected? By the husband and father killing his own children cutting the throat of his wife and then taking his own life. When the doors burst open and the raging gentile Christian community came in the whole Jewish community lay before them as dead. This is the history. You don't sweep that under the carpet. It's alive in Jewish memory. And so how is God going to bridge that in the last days and bring some kind of communication between communities that have such a history of separation. So you can understand the contempt for the goyim or they may be nice to me now, but it's only when the going gets tough or for any reason we will again be their victim. You have to understand the way which Jews will look upon Christians because the word gentile and Christian to them is synonymous. And they can't distinguish between a nominal Christian because what shall a gentile be if he's not a Muslim but a Christian and those that are born again. I didn't see the distinction myself until my 34th and 35th years in that year's leave of absence from the teaching profession with a pack on my back outside of America and out into the nations being picked up by this strange people almost daily who I could not say were gentile neither could I say they were Jews. They were another species of mankind that I could not identify then and realize now they were born again believers. Most Jews have not the privilege of contact or exposure to Christians of this kind so that with one brush they tar everyone who is not Jewish and is gentile as being quote Christian. My mother could not understand why I could go to Germany and minister there. She herself would not put a Volkswagen because what is German is Christian and what has come from Germany has been our annihilation. We need to be conscious of this lest we come in like bulls in the china shop. Are you saved brother? That's all I needed to hear at that time and I would be a dead man today if someone had come at me with any John 316 cliche. Even though the word of God is true when you quote it as a convenience and it is not inspired by the spirit in a moment of confrontation with anyone Jew or gentile it becomes a cliche. It's a dead word. It antagonizes rather than quickens. You have to be eminently the man of the spirit or the woman of the spirit to speak the right word and don't think that if you're quoting a scripture that that is necessarily the right word. If the Lord himself in his wisdom is not calling for that particular word. You may say something else of another kind that will surprise you and even offend you. As I have had occasion to speak to Jews like that man who wanted to have lunch with me who had the reputation of being a disputer and a debater and he was going to show that my whole faith was a fallacy a businessman in a big shot. I forgot in what community in Tennessee who flew in as the big executive and we had lunch together with a number of Christians and he was blabbing all the way blah blah blah blah and I didn't say a word. Finally he said aren't you going to say anything? I said well now that you ask I want you to know this is the most expensive lunch I have ever eaten and I forgot what followed. It was an insult and I left him with that. On another occasion with a Jewish lawyer that had been brought by his Christian wife to hear me and listened with disgust and was standing in the hallway as I left the church with his face like a mask of scorn. He ended up in the same restaurant where I was taken and when I saw him at the table I took my plate knife and fork and I went over and I sat by him and then he went on to persuade me of what an exemplary man he is. How he gives to charity and if God is God surely you'll have no fault with him because he's full of good deeds and so on. And I forgot how I said it. I said dear brother so long as I have breath in my body I will persuade you that unless you forsake your self-righteousness and call upon the name of the Lord you shall surely perish. What he said was can't we take hands and shake hands and that you will keep your conviction I'll keep mine. I said never. So long as you remain in your conviction you will eternally perish and I walked away. I left with that charge. So these are just illustrations of how and what God will say when God is saying and I praise God that the man whose word pierced my heart in German being picked up as a hitchhiker and taking me into a German inn for something to eat because he was remarkably touched that he picked up a Jew and I didn't even know why I divulged that when he picked me up after I'd been standing for three hours in the rain and took my filthy wet rucksack and threw it in the back seat of his car without any awareness that I was doing damage to his upholstery and we drove off and he looked at me and said why are you traveling like this? I was not a kid. It was not the tour season. All I said I'm a modern man whose life is broken at its foundations I'm seeking for the deepest answers to life and I'm Jewish I don't know why I threw that in and I turned to look to see this guy turned off and that I had regrettably given him a piece of information that was not necessary to excite his Gentile resistance and the guy was beaming the fact that I was Jewish was just for him something of enormous moment it's like the shoemaker in that town in Transylvania, Romania humble believer whose one prayer was Lord give me one Jew before I die let me be your instrument in witnessing to one Jew who might be saved and in the course of time came, what's his name? Richard Vonbran Jewish, Atheist, Marxist like me and this shoemaker in his simplicity talking to this erudite Jew began to witness to him and gave him a New Testament and began to pierce him as a New Testament came into my hand also a moment of time and Vonbran takes the New Testament to a rabbi to get the scoop on this and the rabbi himself reading it for the first time and rubbing his beard says the shame Yiddish for how beautiful becomes a Yiddish shame the shame as he's reading for the first time these scriptures by which Vonbran ultimately was converted, became the great godly man that he was suffered for such a faith being a missionary to the Jews in Romania and then having to face 13 years in solitary confinement and much torture and then blessing the church after his release about what it means to follow Christ began with the shoemaker began with the man who picked me up off the side of the road and said, hey, let's stop and have a bite who's not offended by the fact that I'm a Jew and over this table I'm pouring out to this man my deepest soul things that I've not shared with closest friends my mother, then wife or anyone I'm sharing with a Gentile stranger, of all of the vexation of my heart, of a world that is teeter-tottering into atomic and moral holocaust and there's no answer I've been a Marxist, I've been this and that, it's not going to save us I'm wondering why I'm pouring out these things of despair and hopelessness, and the man is not just hearing me, waiting to jump on me with John 3.16 his hearing of me, as I've often said was an act of love, I had never been so heard, that's what was drawing my heart out, was the way in which I was being heard, not a man waiting his moment of opportunity to put a match in his belt, his hearing was an act of love and finally when it drew out my fullest heart, there was nothing more to say, I'd come to the end I looked at this guy nothing at all conspicuous to look at like the church itself thinking to myself what is he going to say to me? Berkeley grad a graduate of Marxist institutes a traveler, reader nothing new under the sun and he looked up and he said to me in a quiet voice are you saved brother? if he had said that I would have died he said Art, what the world needs because I was speaking to him, my anxiety for the world, and it's collapse and hopelessness, Art he said what the world needs, is for men to wash one another's feet when I heard that I went down to encourage your hearts I sat there with my arms folded over my chest my face still showed cynical resistance but my inner man the human spirit was so pierced through by that one statement, it went on the floor and was whimpering I had never heard, wash one another's feet, but in the hearing of it because it was the word of the lord that was sent, it was not a cliché something broke in me and I pictured the arrogant hot shots of the world, like Art Katz who are going to save the world, with rivers of blood like Karl Marx and all of the things that I've issued, out of our Jewish determination to bring causes, that the world would be saved, not by causes, but by humility by men vowing to wash the feet of another and the first thing I thought was teachers washing the feet of their administrators because my last statement at the faculty meeting at the high school in California, was we need a revolution against the the system the enemy, the administrators versus the teachers the children versus their parents the white versus the black the Palestinian versus the Israel the Israeli so everywhere you looked, there's division, strife enmity and death when he said, wash one another's feet, never having read that, I broke and thought, Eureka it's a spirit of humility that will save the world and from that point on the man began to speak to me the gospel in German, and I wanted to resist and say, hey that's not for me, I'm Jewish that's your book, we have ours not that I knew what ours was but the word of truth was coming forth into my inner man and I could not turn from it I left that building that day like a drunken sailor, I was staggered, I was overwhelmed by that confrontation that came by the spirit through a sent word or else I would be dead today that set in motion my salvation because a man stopped who was godly and not ruled by cliches or the necessity to put a notch in his belt who could both hear the hearing of God in love and speak the truth in love and I've tried to find that man, I had his name and address I knew something about him, he was a bookkeeper he was in the church choir he knew about architecture he knew about art, he knew about intellectual things he was impressive and my first day in Egypt I was picked up and had lost my wallet with his name and address and every time I've been back to that area in Switzerland, many times I keep asking the believers, I've now ceased from asking, do you know a man by the name of Richard he works in a car agency he's the bookkeeper, he sings in a choir, he's this, he's that, no one has ever heard of a Richard maybe I've not found anybody who in fact knows him, or there is no Richard per se as a man, and that I was picked up by an angel and we ought to at least be alive to that possibility, that unless we are angels and that Jews cannot distinguish whether it's a man who has encountered us or an angel, we have come to the place of God's intention, and we're not speaking as men, out of conventional wisdom, or out of a cliched collection of appropriate verses but the word of the Lord as it is mediated from heaven because only God knows the heart of that one to whom we have been brought so our task is to move from men to angels, to become angelic how many Christians are willing to be inconvenienced to suffer the process by which we are brought from one to the other we are only too content with our present condition and if it were not for those Jews we might well be satisfied with it but they make a requirement of a kind that shapes us, and why should we be that but for them, what did they ever do for us but threaten the world by their intransigence and their stubbornness unwilling to negotiate and give up a little land it's a rare Christian who can rise above that and not echo that and be willing for whatever the cost would be so another factor is the miracle of the state of Israel itself and that has been sustained for half a century, giving every reason to expect it will yet remain, though I don't expect that myself, raises questions that is God with them in their present condition, maybe they don't need to be saved if God is favoring that nation and has caused it to be and yet maintains it in interfaith dialogue between Jews and Christians the condition that Jews require in order to participate is that the Christians recognize the validity of Judaism that they're not coming to use the occasion of interfaith dialogue to convert that Judaism is as valid as Christianity and the Christian theologians that participate have accepted those terms it's a remarkable concession, in my opinion why have they moved from evangelism to the Jew, to dialogue around the table because the holocaust raises the question of the issue of the church and it's audacity now to call Jews to conversion after it has been the principal architect of the holocaust, it's a guilt out of the holocaust as somehow being a statement of Christian bankruptcy that has moved the church, the mainline church, from being an instrument of evangelism to moving toward dialogue around the table on the grounds that Judaism is valid it's something that Paul would never have conceded but the church has and it's a remarkable weakening not only in its relationship with the Jew but its presence in the world it has weakened its own knowledge of the gospel and the boldness with which it needs to be promulgated because it makes this concession you might think I'm talking out of two sides of my mouth on one hand I'm appealing for an empathy and a pathos, an identification with the Jews, and on the other hand I'm saying no compromise on the issue of the gospel but the gospel remains a non-issue until it can be presented in a way that bears the sense of Christ to those who have been historically turned off against it that's our tension that's our staggering predicament and it will require us to become saints to pass through it we cannot in our present condition break through in this historical obstruction except that we come to a condition of an ultimate kind to which we would not have come if they were not present to us as the issue of God's requirement if only they would disappear then we would be freed from the issue of the cross and our suffering to become non-angelic I'm going to be reading tonight or tomorrow something from Basilia Schlink on the bride of Christ and she makes the whole issue of the identity of the bride of Christ the issue of the cross, the issue of suffering nothing else will shape the character of the church to be adorned for the bridegroom and that suffering might well come to us most profoundly in our identification with this Jewish people not only a suffering with them and by them and because of their defensive resistance but also the world's enmity against us if we side with the people whom the world despises just like those who went to the concentration camps like Corinth and Boom where their identity with Jews we too will face that persecution so if their state has survived 50 years without Christ maybe we need to think twice do they have a place a validity that does not require our gospel and is our gospel really the absolute requirement that we think it to be if they seem to exist and prosper so without it other factors like the moral and ethical superiority of family and community life appears to exceed our own they seem to be prospering without Christ more than we who have Christ and the answer to that question is this the devil the devil is not in any way troubling them about their sanctity he wants to allow them to presume that they are in a place of superiority and moral acceptability even to God by virtue of their works and their own composure and ethical and moral behavior once they become believers then they'll enter the conflict between flesh and spirit that only a born again believer knows but while you're outside that faith the enemy will allow you to think yourself not only acceptable but exemplary and so they exhibit like the Mormons a moral quality of life that moves us to envy and even raises the question are we so right in our presumption when their moral conduct and ethical concern exceeds our own so all of these are factors that would affect Gentile Christians in their attitude and relationship towards Jews unless we understand these things and can rise above them and that we are not chafed by their air of superiority but rather have a sense of anguish and pathos because we know it's an illusion and that in the day of the Lord when they pass from this life there'll be a shock of horror that what they lived in and congratulated themselves by was a deception and it's too late now to remedy or to correct we know that for all lost persons and it ought to be an anguish that underlies our relationship with them and enables us to bear their hostility and their superiority without ourselves being adversely affected. Am I coming through? Does that make sense? If we don't have that sense of eternal loss as Paul had it in the cry that he sounds at the commencement of the three great chapters of Romans 9-11 that he would wish himself a curse for his brethren's sake, how could the rest of Romans 9-11 have been expressed? It had to begin first by a note of the deepest anguish of soul for the lostness of his own kinsmen according to the flesh. Mirroring and echoing the cry of Jesus himself on his way to the cross looking over Jerusalem and weeping over the city, how often would I have taken you under my wings as a hen her chicks, but you would not. And now you have missed the day of your visitation and the day of your peace. The question is, have we come to that weeping? Have we come to that anguish? Do we have an empathetic heart for the sorrow and the tragedy of Jewish history and Jewish present condition, even when it's untroubled, let alone that which they will soon face. If we come to them clinically and correctly without a pathos of identification like unto Paul's they'll not heal us and even our best intentions will fail and our words will be brittle and mechanical. Something more will be required. And it's in that requirement that we are fitted to be brides for the bridegroom because the bridegroom himself is full of pathos, full of empathy, full of sympathy, full of compassion, full of mercy to those who are undeserving. Mercy has nothing to do with the those for whom the mercy is given. It's not a response to their virtue. It's solely the expression of the one who extends it. It's all the more mercy because it's undeserving. It's easier for us to extend sympathy and mercy to those who have some quality that endears itself to us but to those that are abrasive, hostile, offensive, unpleasant that would be the mercy of God. And how does Romans 11 end? That by your mercy they may obtain mercy. If we have not a mercy to extend and it's only doctrinal and correct as a category of our faith and is not an experiential and existential reality in us formed by God in the school of the cross, what shall we have to extend? The Jew raises the issue of the truth of our life in Christ, the truth of our sanctity and that is the mystery and the wisdom of God. We can go on. The fear of Zionist conspiracy to take over the world? What is that publication about protocols of Zion? Have you ever heard of it? That I think was published first in Russia in mid-1800s that Jews have correctly identified as a fraud, a thing to further anti-Jewish persecutions that describes a conspiracy of Jews worldwide to take over. That comes out of a warped thing of God's own intention that Israel and redeemed Jewry will be central to all nations. That when God established a number of nations he did so in accordance with the number of the sons of Israel. There is an instinctive fear and suspicion on Gentiles that Jews will take over the world. Hey, look how prominent they are. They're bankers, they're in media, they're in communication, they make the movies, they write the books, they shape our mind and thought, and they have something together that's unspoken of which we need to be suspicious. A rumor was circulated that rabbis were telling the Jewish community of New York, do not be present in the trade towers on September 11th for it's a conspiracy of which we are engaged to bring those towers down, to set in motion certain anti- Islamic elements that will serve our purpose, so be absent that day from work. You know that there are hundreds upon hundreds of thousands who believe that? It raises the question of why is it that Gentiles are so quick and so susceptible to believe a rumor of that kind? Because they want to. Because they have already been prepared for. Because they already have an instinctive suspicion. Because there's something about Jews and their clannishness and their identity together that would make such a suspicion viable. You think that that's a fit message to begin a conference? And that I would be taken aside in a room on the next day and be interrogated by the leaders and be accused of lacking anointing and needing a deeper circumcision of the heart because I spoke in this way? They didn't like the subject. And I went on with the same subject for three messages so that when it ended and on my way out of the building and into the parking lot I was accosted by the worship leader with whom I was in a continual tension all through those days. He said if anyone came speaking like you about Indians or Mexicans or black people I would be completely turned off against any of them. And now because you have made that your sole subject I'm completely turned off against Jews. I'm a liberal man and I'm tolerant with everyone and I don't need to have any particular special empathy. And what are Jews? Are they something special in themselves? Brother if you are a brother? His exact words. What antagonized that man so? Because of the repetition of the subject beginning in this way. But before my next message after having been critiqued by these men as needing a deeper circumcision of heart and wanting anointing, a brother came up to me and said I want you to, and not knowing what had taken place privately, I want you to know that your first message pierced me through altogether. And at the end of that message the woman cried out I have been ripped off. She cried out I have been ripped off. Where has this been all my life? I had no consciousness of these things at all is what she was saying. And her husband across the room pointed at me. You can't leave us like this. You can't raise a subject like this and leave us suspended. That came out of this statement. Accused by those who were in leadership that somehow it was wanting anointing. Well I wish you could have seen me sitting there. I looked like a smug Cheshire cat having just lapped up a plate of cream. I'm listening to these men. I'm not at all convicted. Of course I have a naive belief that what I spoke was given of God. That he himself was the author of my visiting to that Spokane synagogue and tempering and setting something in my spirit to make this a first statement. Not knowing what the second statement would be or the end but to begin with this. And so I'm listening to these men. I'm polite, respectful. I'm willing to acknowledge that yes who doesn't need a deeper circumcision of the heart and breaking but at the same time naively confident that I have been obedient to speak what the Lord has wanted and that these men somehow were not able to hear it. Why is it that one man came and said I was pierced through. And hearing the same word. I said it's strange that you should say that. How could you have been pierced through if the word was not anointed? So it's a good question because it gives us a clarity on what this prophetic call is. In your moments of greatest obedience you're going to be misunderstood misconstrued and accused. Not by the world but by the church and not by the church at large but the finest and best expression of it and in the last analysis even those from within your own fellowship. Are you willing to bear that? There's a prophetic tension and a prophetic suffering and a prophetic anguish. And even though you have prayed and the Lord has given you this. So rarely do I write anything like that that I would speak from notes like this. This is a remarkably unusual. Maybe because it was so perilous. Maybe because it's so new. Striking a note like that. These men didn't invite me to Canada to speak on this. They thought they were going to hear the old art. Messages of a kind that they could say yay and amen that's in keeping with the church as the central purpose of God and the restoration etc. etc. They got something else of an Italian other kind. But it was not for them alone. The Lord was using that conference as a platform to bring to the church at large a statement and a theme and a note that was being struck for a first time. And they didn't want to be the auspices. They wanted what was accessible and convenient and appropriate to what they wanted to enjoy. One man who was one of the leaders said to me we had prayed before you came Art that the Lord would stretch us unbearably and break new categories of understanding that would even seem to threaten what we have already understood. I said you dear man the Lord has heard your prayer and answered it far more than you know. So I end asking the question who then being Gentile is not susceptible to an inevitable antagonism or a secret envy toward this Jewish people? Who is not susceptible? Who does not have an underlying suspicion or antagonism? And maybe the first order of business is the acknowledgement of that possibility. We may never have had an occasion to express it but that doesn't take away from its presence. It's latent until it's recognized and confessed and given up and broken. So let's have a little prayer at this point and see how the Lord will follow from this. Gracious God remember how we spoke at the first that you will give us opportunity to critique the recent experience in Canada. Not to exalt ourselves or to see good guys and bad guys but to understand a prophetic event in its constituent elements. They were classic and will always accompany any obedience to which a prophetic person or church is called. And we have got to know it my God and to be fit and to prepare for it. And also to sense what you're saying. What you want in the church to recognize. What depth of real breaking must come in the heart. What ironic circumcision must come in the heart of the man who said to me you need this. When what he's saying not realizing it is prophetic. It's the church that needs a deeper circumcision of heart. It's the church that needs a deeper breaking. And what will be the more likely provision to provoke that breaking than the deep awareness that however our life has been used of the Lord and is for the Lord there is still the prospect of something in our deeps that we have never been called to consider that needs to be recognized as a final obstruction to the full possession of the Lord and the expression of his son of David character to a people who have never seen him so expressed. And although we would say me anti-Semitic? No way odd. I never would ever hurt or physically abuse but this is so deep it does not need that expression. Even the resistance to the message can itself be that expression. The Lord teach us, instruct us, deal with us. You're wanting something new. There's a new wine reserved for the last days that is the best of all but it must have a container supple and yielded to receive it. And so we ask that even as I'm speaking like a fool not even knowing how to proceed further that somehow not only speaking but dealing. Come precious God give us a heart like unto your own as Paul the apostle had that distinguishes him as an apostle and might well be the very critical feature that makes an apostle an apostle is the heart to this people not because they are flesh and blood kingsmen but because they are the brethren of the Lord. So my God work in our deeps we pray, we thank you, give you praise for these privileged days in Yeshua's holy name. Amen.