In this sermon, the speaker recounts his experience of hand-delivering a book to a Jewish man named Mr. Sherman. Despite the speaker's hopes for a face-to-face conversation, Mr. Sherman never responded to the book. Feeling discouraged, the speaker began writing an essay on the necessity of violence to awaken Jewish consciousness. However, a believer reminded him that God was emptying him of self-confidence and filling him with divine enablement. The speaker emphasizes the need for the church to rely on the resurrected and ascended Christ, rather than their own efforts, and concludes with a reference to Romans chapter 11.

Pleasing to yourself, we're not looking for novelty, but to demonstrate to this people that what they're observing is the mystery of incarnation. That this is not a piece of Brooklyn expertise, but the resurrected and ascended Christ dwelling in an earthen vessel and bringing forth out of the wisdom and will of his own life, words and expression that are given. Spoil them and show them that nothing less will suffice for the church of the last days and that any attempt out of our own well-meaning intention and humanity to serve God must necessarily fail. It will be as embarrassing a collapse as Peter denying you three times with oaths and cursings who thought on the basis of his own Jewish impudence that though all the world deny you, yet will we deny you never. And that was the first to deny you atrociously because man cannot serve God in himself. And that's why Paul concludes Romans chapter 11, the great dissertation on the mystery of Israel and the church, nine through 11, with that great doxology, oh the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, who has been his counselor, who shall give to him and it shall be given again for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. Now hear this, you dear saints. This is not Pauline rhetoric. This is not biblical flourish. This is the heart of axiomatic apostolic mentality that the issue of God's glory forever is the issue of what is of him and through him that it might be to him. Any attempt to fulfill an apostolic destiny on the basis of charismatic or evangelical well-meaning intention is a patent contradiction that cannot avail for the glory of God. It may be sufficient for you to succeed for the moment and get by without embarrassment, but it cannot attain to the glory of God forever. And don't think that Paul tacks the word forever at the end of that statement as if it's an embellishment. You know what makes Paul Paul? That he's eternally minded. That the issue of God's glory, though it is affected in history and time, has reverberation and consequence that's eternal or else it's not the issue of his glory. His glory is never the issue of a moment. It has its occasion in a moment, but the consequence is eternal and that therefore it must be not only of him but through him. Got the picture? So don't be deceived by a Brooklyn accent or to think that this is Jewish expertise or something that is uniquely mine by virtue of some kind of gift or talent. God saw to it that I was emptied of all talent when I came back from Jerusalem 40 years ago and resumed my place in the same school system where I was the leading faculty radical and led students over a cliff in an interracial club after school as a inspired idealist who's going to attain racial harmony out of his humanism. The remarkable thing is that returning to that same district and resuming the teaching career was a patent failure and a colossal flop. I was a greater success as an atheist than ever I was as a believer. And that failure was not just a moment but daily. I was the laughing stock of my students. I was a picture of absurdity and contradiction who couldn't even formulate his face. I lost all charm. I couldn't bring two words together. I was just a jumble of painful contradiction less than I was as an atheist. How do you figure that? If that's a conundrum for you and you can't understand why God would submit an intense Jewish personality to a collapse who's expected that if he was impressive as an atheist, what would he be as a believer? And to find out not only is he not as impressive but he's a colossal flop. And that every day is a dismal reiteration of that failure before students who are laughing up their sleeves at the absurdity of that spectacle. And that it went on for weeks, maybe months that going to school every day was another walk to Calvary in humiliation. Can you understand that? If you don't understand it, you're virtually outside the faith. So I'll explain it to you. Well, I'll tell you how it was explained to me. Finally, a believer came. And I cried out, I said, brother, I was so impressive as an atheist. My students would follow me over a cliff. But I have lost every faculty that I enjoyed as an atheist and as a natural man. And now I can't even communicate the most elementary things. The words choke up on me. My face is grim. I can't even smile. I'm a patent collapse. Oh, Artie said, not at all alarmed. Don't you know what God is doing? No, I don't. He's emptying you of all confidence in the flesh. So I believe that he's continuing to empty me. And if anything comes out that is coherent and articulate, that makes any kind of sense and is commendable, it's because the God who emptied is the God who has filled and replaced that human and natural propensity with his divine enablement out of his resurrected and ascended life that we might live through him. Got the picture? So we prophetic men, few as we are, very few, are required not only to explicate, but demonstrate the actuality by which our prophetic this is real, which is exactly the means by which you're going to fulfill the mysteries that we proclaim to you. Because I don't know if you've noticed so far that the call of the church to Israel and to the Jew of the last days is eminently beyond any capacity in yourself to fulfill. We Jews are tough cookies. And that's why you have circumvented us historically, though you had a mandate from the Lord himself to the Jew first, begin in Jerusalem and then Judea and then to the uttermost corners. And you've reversed the whole priority of God and you've left us last and not at all. Because you wisely recognized you have not what it takes. We Jews are intimidating and intellectual and articulate. And it was right in this city as a missionary to the Jews that I had the first door shut in my face by an outraged Orthodox Jew whose wife I met at the local laundromat because having arrived in Kansas City and being trained in New York by Moshe Rosen, I wondered, well, how do you, now what? How do you begin to be a missionary to the Jews in Kansas City or anywhere? And so I took the dirty wash to the laundromat and not knowing how to function, I asked the lady who was accessible, can you help me to, and she was Jewish, well, what are you doing here? You just arrived? Yeah. One word led to another and through that, finally, a visit to her husband on the Shabbat. I came up his walk, he was standing by the door with his hand on the handle, that glass, what do they call that, like a storm door? And as I approached him, he opened and he shouted, how dare you to come on the Shabbat with your King James Bible and seek to convert me, wham! That was my introduction to Jewish ministry. I want to tell you, dear saints, it has never gotten easier and nor will it. They are the enemies of the gospel, Paul says, for your sake. You need an enemy like that because you're a bunch of soft touches and your Kansas City environment does not help one bit, it's too soft, too indulgent, too fleshly, too carnal, too materialistic. You need a tough people to oppose you to the teeth and make your little formulas turn to dust in your mouth and fall to the ground with a thud. Thank you, Lord, that you've called me to insult the church. Because heaven knows they need it. So we Jews are characteristically tough, resilient, resistant, but it's for your sake. And Greeks will undoubtedly receive the benefit if you can succeed with us. But to succeed with us, you have got to be the epitome and the statement of the resurrection life. Well-meaning evangelicalism, forget it. Charismatic hyperbole and enthusiasm, forget it. Resurrection authority and power and wisdom, yes. And you'll not find it in a moment if you're not consistently living all your moments in that reality. Got the picture? Got the picture? So look at the wisdom of God to have saved us from becoming what? A Sunday culture? Something that satisfies ourselves? He's put right into our midst wherever we are. I have found the Jewish community in Tokyo. I have found them in former Yugoslavia. There's hardly a place where I traverse the earth where I've not found some semblance of my people as a presence, if for no other purpose than to antagonize and provoke and challenge the church of that locality. So we are without excuse. So what will it take? I don't think the Lord himself succeeded so well and became victim at the hands of the very people to whom he came who received him not. So, Lord, show us that this is not hypothetical, that as you have lived through the Father, we are called to live through you. And living is an all-inclusive word that is more than just Sunday performance, but the total reality to which we're called in a world which is at enmity with God. Where we need your wisdom, your word, your direction, your enablement, your life, your vitality, especially if we're 75 years old, as I am. And we'll be going from here to St. Louis and the University of Missouri and other meetings and Pennsylvania and then New York and two weeks later, Holland, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Israel for a short interval before going out again into Mexico, Panama, San Salvador, and Argentina with a short interval before going out again to Israel, India, New Zealand, Australia, Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon, and Upper Volta on the west coast of Africa. Bang, bang, bang. See, you dear saints, I have an advantage over you. If there's no resurrection, I am, of all men, most to be pitied. You know that Mike had to wake me up. I almost dozed off in the waiting room before being called on to speak. But some of the greatest things that God has ever expressed through me has come from being wakened. Because his life is there and resident and available because he knows better than we that what we are about is more than a Sunday service. He knows that the stakes are immeasurable. Only he knows the full consequence of these speakings. And therefore, only he can meet it in the fullness of that life, which is the fullness of the Godhead in him bodily. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels. Do you believe that? Then why aren't you living out of that treasure and not your Kansas City ability? And so the Jew is given to test us and to provoke us, to bring us across that threshold and into the realm of moving, living, and have our being that Paul occupied and expressed and that God intends as definitive and normative for all the church. If I stopped there and went no further, you got that much, you've got plenty. Okay. Well, on top of everything else, I have a residence in New York. The rent is extravagant. And yet New Yorkers tell me the Lord has done well by me and has given me opportunity to have some contact with Jews. I was seeing a rabbi weekly until we reached the point of no return where he could no longer remain polite and had to be insulting because I subscribed to a deceiver, a magician. And therefore, I must myself be deceived even though I have a strange aura, as he told a friend of mine, that he can't quite explain. And an affection that God has himself engendered in his heart and mine. Other than that, we are in total opposition continually, but it's a love, love your enemy. So then the New York experience has been significant. I subscribe to all three Jewish periodicals as well as the New York Times. In fact, it's worth moving to New York just to subscribe to the New York Times daily. It's an education that you need. And clip out articles. You can't do the Times justice on any weekday less than two hours. And it deserves that attention. And the magazine section, the book section, it's a remarkable resource. Plus the three Jewish periodicals. And so I know what's taking place. The lectures, the seminars, the special occasions. I don't suppose any of you are old enough to know who Sid Caesar is. Raise your hand if you, hey. You've been watching too much TV, that's your problem. Well, I went to Sid Caesar's, what do you call it? Wouldn't be a memorial, he was still alive and spoke. It was a kind of acknowledgement of a man now in his 80s as a significant personality in the entertainment industry. And it was advertised and I went to it. I brought a copy of Ben Israel and signed it and gave it to him in hope that he would read it and something would be ignited in his soul that might turn him to the Lord. I do things like that when I'm in New York. And I attend seminars and lectures. And almost invariably the topic now is the new anti-Semitism. How is it distinguished from the old? It's distinguished by its universality. It is ubiquitous. What does that mean? It's as frequent as you can find MacArthur franchises McDonald's hamburgers. It's everywhere. It's no longer a gutter phenomenon. It's no longer for the uneducated classes at the university level, at the professional level. Our rabid anti-Semites whose vocabulary is more refined but whose vehemence and hatred is just as profound as that which is generated from the gutter. It's a new kind and it's at work in the world in nations that have formerly been sympathetic to Israel. So a dear sister in the Lord whose paintings have been hung in a synagogue in Holland has recently let us know that that synagogue was bombed, set afire, but her paintings were saved. And it's the first instance of that kind of violence against a synagogue in the nation that remembers Anne Frank. Which role she herself played both on stage and in film. And it's a sign of the times. The French Jewish community has been warned by the government that we're no longer in a place to protect you. After all, you're only 500,000 Jews, but you're living in the midst of 5 million Muslims. And we cannot provide that protection. And so Jewish leaders are saying to their populations in France, Germany, England, learn another language. Pack your suitcase, be prepared to move. We can no longer guarantee your safety. Dear saints, do you know about this? It's dangerous, it's fierce, it's vehement. And it's bringing together an amalgam of political radicals from left and right and the peace, the green movement, the people concerned for ecology. It's amazing what has come together under the banner of anti-Semitism and Jewish hatred. And so the Jewish community is alarmed and rightly so. It's no longer just some freaky characters out playing in the bushes somewhere, but at the highest echelons of society and university life and culture, you find some of the most vehement expressions of anti-Jewish hatred growing out of a dissatisfaction and a criticism of the nation Israel and its policies. So at first, what was anti-Israel became anti-Zionism and now becomes anti-Jewish, not just for Jews who are living in Israel, but Jews anywhere. So the plot is thickening, the noose is tightening, and we're going to see Jacob's, the time of Jacob's trouble coming out of this growing hatred that is diabolical in its origin and will not be satisfied except with the annihilation of the Jewish people. So I attend these lectures and one that comes to mind this morning recently, a message by the man who wrote a book on the new anti-Semitism whose name is Schoenfeld, which means a Jew of German extraction. And he gave a brilliant talk on the extent of this phenomenon, but he had no answer as to either understand its origins or to find solution. There were 500 Jews in that audience. There was a proliferation of Yarmulkes. How many people know what a Yarmulke is? The little kipper, the head covering. Throughout the audience, they were all Jews. There must have been at least, I'm guessing, a dozen or more rabbis in that congregation. And there was not so much as one question and the question and answer time that had to do with God. So being the fool that I am, at a certain propitious moment, I raised my hand and was recognized and I raised this question. I said, sir, I'm astonished having attended now many of these functions on the subject of anti-Semitism, I have yet to hear a first reference to God. Can it be that anti-Semitism itself has something to do with him? Could it be some statement of his disfavor or that our neglect of him as is being expressed by the failure even to bring him into our consideration has provoked an anti-Semitism so as to wrap our knuckles and to turn us towards some consciousness of himself? That anti-Semitism is itself a phenomenon of mild and preliminary judgment to turn us to the attention of him who is suffering gross neglect from us as Jews. And if we'll not consider him in the growing pall of this global phenomenon now, when will we consider him? And if we don't consider him at all, don't we deserve the chastisement that anti-Semitism is because don't we have a special obligation as Jews to be mindful of our God and to make him known? Could it be then that the root cause of anti-Semitism is our neglect and that the solution will be a turning to God? There was a deadly silence. He choked and spluttered, PhD. And he finally said something like, I'm sorry, this is not scientific. Like I can't even understand your question. God is not an equation that I know how to factor in. And then he just turned to and began to receive other questions out of the audience. They went right back to politics. What about the next election? What about this? What about this secular, this political? There was not one that took up the subject that I had introduced. And then it came to an end. I remained in my seat. I thought out of 500 people, how many will come up and say to me, are you for real? Were you taught, do you really believe that God knows our situation? That there's a God who can intervene? Haven't you ever heard about the Holocaust? Where was he then? How do you come to this perspective? I sat there and everyone passed me by and left the room. Not a single soul of 500 came to take up any response to the subject of God as Jews in New York City in an age of increasing threat of anti-Semitism. So being the obstreperous character as you've already observed that I am, who takes delight in insulting the church, I went back to my Brooklyn apartment and turned on the computer and I started an essay entitled The Necessity for Violence. Something along the lines of what will it take to jar Jewish consciousness and sensibility to an awareness of the truth of our condition when what we have suffered historically for the neglect of God and continue to suffer and will suffer in greater measure if we continue in this present secular obstinacy and neglect, nothing less than violence. So this evening, as I told the first session, I plan to look at Isaiah 53. You can do your homework and read it afresh yourself but read it with this perspective, not as a statement only of the suffering of the Messiah who fulfilled it in full but also a preliminary and a picture of a suffering of a nation that will pass through the same road to Calvary in the necessary preliminary through violence by which they will be marred more than any man in order to fit them for the fulfillment of our national destiny and calling which is a nation of priests and a light unto the world. How far will God go to fit a nation for its destiny is the issue of the violence of the last days that God will allow to come upon us as Jews both in proportion to the sin of our neglect and both in anticipation of our ultimate calling which even the church does not rightly understand or esteem. Got the picture? And that is to say, the more profound the calling, the more profound the preparation, the more the necessity for suffering in its attainment. And the only reason why you stagger at this that Israel would have to bear this logic is because you've not received it for yourself because you don't see the necessity for suffering in the fulfillment of your call and your destiny. And that's why your walk and your service is less than and other than God's apostolic and prophetic intention. You're shrinking from the suffering that is intrinsic to the preparation of any vessel that is to be used by God and the things that pertain to his glory. And because you're unwilling for it yourself, you shrink from Israel having to consider it and you would rather placate the Jew and make nice and plant trees in Israel and go to a Feast of Tabernacles conferences and dance with your yarmulkes and tzitzis and all of that shticklach that you enjoy in the deep corridors of your soulishness than to take up the issue of suffering that is inexorable, that is unavoidable in any true ministry to the Jew. The suffering of rejection from them to you, of insult, of reprimand, of reproach. You can't even take it if someone looks at you cross-eyed and you want so much to obtain their approval and their affection. If only they would chuck you under the chin and pinch your cheek and love you for the evangelical Christians that you are who support Israel. Woo! But if you have to tell them that there's a coming time for which you have no awareness that will strike you in the bastions of your present security like New York City itself, that you better brace yourself and in fact, there's a place of safety, there's an arc of safety available even now if you believe upon him whom you have up till now rejected. You'll find that mask of civility removed and men and women bearing their teeth and their fangs and accosting you for the ultimate insult of daring to propose that they need to consider that man whose name Jews have historically suffered the very anti-Semitism that haunts them even now which they see as a Christian phenomenon rooted in the references in the New Testament to the Jews. You've got your work cut out for you. So you can pray for me on October 16th, I'll speaking one time about Nauheim, Germany near Frankfurt on a conference on evangelism to the Jew where the dear sister who is promoting this has had to field a number of phone calls protesting my being on the program, having that man, if he's gonna be speaking, we're not coming. Nevertheless, there are a few who are saying if he'll not speak, we'll not come and she still is having the courage to have me. Do you know what it means to tell the church in Germany that their obligation to the Jew is the issue of the gospel? That the same people who are still shrinking from the shame and the guilt of the recent Holocaust would be performing another act of anti-Semitism by withholding the necessary message of the gospel to the Jews who are increasingly in their midst, 100 to 300,000 and when the tidal wave breaks and Jews are forced out of other nations, they'll be coming to Germany where the rewards and the benefits are liberal because the temptation, the tendency of a German Christian is to make nice, is to assuage the pain of the past by being a comforting presence but to antagonize the Jew of the necessity for the consideration of Jesus through the gospel is the last thing that a German Christian wants to consider and I'm going to say to them that if you fail in this, it's not only the Jew that will suffer the loss of that message but the church will suffer the loss of its identity as the church for the issue of the gospel is the issue of the church and that church that will not take it up in its first and most radical expression to the Jew first forfeits its identity as church and so you're gonna open the door a second time for the want of a viable and apostolic presence to the same demonic forces of darkness that swept through Germany in the 1930s because there was not a church of a kind that could identify, discern or oppose that darkness. The issue of the Jew in the gospel is the issue of the church but for you as a German to promulgate that message to the Jews who are now thick by the hundreds of thousands throughout your nation is the call to you of the cross. You've got to die to your timidity, to your fear of man, to your need to be applauded and received and recognized and to that thing that is most dear to you, Jewish approval. Oh, I could tell you stories. Being on an airplane as I'm so constantly am and there's a Jewish woman sitting next to me. No identification but everything in me knew that I knew and I'm talking to her and pressing the issue of the faith and the woman who was sitting on the third seat by the window, a Gentile, I think probably from Kansas City, she turned and she said to me at a certain heated moment, why don't you leave her alone already? Leave her alone and that's what you're going to hear. Haven't they suffered enough? Do you have to badger them? Do you have to provoke them? Leave them alone and what will the German Jews say to the church of Germany that seeks to promulgate the gospel? Wasn't it enough that you destroyed our bodies a generation ago? Are you now seeking to destroy our souls? Got the picture? What is an issue now for the church in Germany should be an issue now for the church in America. Wherever there is a Jewish presence is the issue of the church that will make it, make us or break us depending on how urgently we sense the need to promulgate the gospel to the degree that we ourselves know it and understand it because there's not one in a hundred here who can even write a paragraph on what the gospel in fact is, let alone say as Paul, my gospel or our gospel in which he speaks of his message with an affection and a personal attachment that none of us have ever known. And for the want of which he would not for a moment hesitate to confront Peter to his face and that publicly for the truth of the gospel sake. Remember that in Galatians? Evidently the gospel for Paul was not only a critical issue it was the critical issue for which he was even willing to be misunderstood as a Johnny come lately who dares publicly to confront the foundational apostle Peter the Rock and take him to task for a deviation by which if it continues as Barnabas was already won by that deceit would compromise the gospel message itself which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and then only also to the Greek. The promulgation of the gospel is for the church the taking up of a cross and of a suffering particularly in the light of recent history and what Jews have suffered and interpret as being the necessary outgrowth of the New Testament itself as I've mentioned. And in a word every card is stacked against us and I'm just perverse enough to say yes Lord thank you that it is. Thank you that the faith is not a snap. Thank you that the gospel cannot be reduced to a little formula step one, step two, step three. I you say brother God has a plan for your life appealing to the selfishness of men at the benefit they will receive by believing. We have enough fainthearted so-called Christians now who have come into the faith so-called by that kind of decision by accepting Jesus who will do good for them. It's not a message that will impress Jews. So I was looking over my holocaust book. I've only had two Jewish responses and both of them were as foul-mouthed and vehement and angry and bitter as anything I have ever experienced. And one came from the head of the Israeli Bible Society. You would have thought at least from that source a certain measure not of acceptance but an acknowledgement that however vile the thesis that the holocaust is a statement of God's judgment it's one that can be supported biblically and prophetically. Instead this man said, I don't often write to the authors of trash. I just automatically throw their garbage into the waste bin but yours is so unequivocally vile, so reprehensible that I had to write to tell you of what a sickening thing your book is. Who do you think you are? Blah, blah, blah, goes on like that. I always remember his name because it's spelled, it sounds like bacon. Bacon I guess you would say with the Israeli Hebrew accent but it's spelled B-A-C-O-N. So one day on the internet I found a Dr. Bacon who's a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and so I sent him a little note. I said, are you the Dr. Bacon who felt that my book was so vile? And I got an answer, he said, no that was my uncle but he showed me your book and I agree with it completely. It is altogether detestable. Well I have a chapter in the book called The Judgment of Sin and Its Consequences. God has a controversy with us concerning our alienation from him. Remember I mentioned no mention of God even in discussions about the threat of present anti-Semitism. We have been unwilling to face the meaning of our own history and to consider the horror that was the result of that alienation. You cannot reject God without consequence. Have you learned that? He's too formidable, he'll not allow, he'll not suffer that rejection of himself without there being painful consequence. The unhappy fact is that the interpreting of catastrophe as the consequence and judgment for sin is totally incompatible with contemporary Jewish self-assessment. In my first early morning, earlier speaking, I said there's no way to understand blood atonement and the sacrifice of Jesus, the crucifixion of God only in proportion to an understanding that comes to that one who acknowledges himself as sinner. The key to revelation of the remarkable phenomenon of atonement through blood and that of the son of God himself is only revealed in proportion to the knowledge of ourselves as sinners. If we don't see that, it's an incomprehensible and unnecessary sacrifice, if not a vile thing that God would allow his own son to suffer. It's incompatible with contemporary Jewish self-assessment. Listen, we Jews are impressive, have you noticed? Steven Spielberg and what's his name, Eisner, the head of Disney Corporation, and many of the giants of American economy, finance, culture, art, intellectuality are Jews. And we have a sense of our own esteem that is quite formidable and by every reckoning deserved. It takes an acute discernment to see through such exterior and recognize the truth of the condition of the most accomplished of men as being lost and deep in sin and deserving the eternal judgment of sin, which is hell. Only those who operate by the eye of the spirit will be able to pierce through and see the truth of the condition of Jewish life despite its external impressiveness. But you soft saps are impressed with that impressiveness and want yourselves to emulate it. Little wonder you have nothing to say to those whom you admire and want to be like. So sin, Jewish consciousness of sin is virtually a non-existing phenomenon. So your first function is to make the Jew with whom you're in conversation aware of the truth of his condition. How do you do that? Well, one way that you do it is the way I'm given to do it as I'm pursuing some of the most estimable Jews in New York at the highest echelons of Jewish life who I met at a banquet for Commentary Magazine, one of my favorite publications, I commend it to you. It's a Jewish publication, conservative, and I'm out after Norman Port Horowitz's soul, a man exactly my age and also from New York with comparable histories but taking different directions. And in order to attend the banquet, I was willing to make $1,000 donation. You know how long it took me to write the letter that accompanied my check? Weeks and much prayer for fear that if that letter was ill phrased, if it was clumsy, if I said what I ought not to say, if I let the cats out of the bag, it would have been the end of something that I hoped to begin. So that letter had to be propitious and on top of that, it had to be excellently written because Norman Port Horowitz is a Columbia University graduate in English literature and a Rhodes Scholar to Cambridge and a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary and he's a brilliant and towering intellectual whose letter of appeal for funds for his magazine was so classic that I commended it to our community as an example of what English writing should be. So if I write to him with my $1,000 check and I make a grammatical mistake or misspell a word or write in a clumsy way to confirm that Christians are after all rednecks and fundamentalist dum-dums, everything would be lost. You understand what I'm saying? It takes exquisite care because the Jewish soul is at stake who is an influence in the world who has himself written a book on the prophets that is commendable though it sidesteps Jesus in a remarkable sleight of hand that I hope one day to bring to his attention as a lapse of integrity should God give me the opportunity. So I sent the check finally with a little note. I don't know if I, I think I said I'm a Messianic Jew and that nevertheless I deeply respect the publication and that I have no hesitation for the first time to make a $1,000 contribution to a secular cause because your magazine is the issue of righteousness. And so I got the invitation and bought my $139 suit that I told my wife I didn't need. And I went into that Brooklyn discount men's clothing store looking for a sport jacket and then I looked at the suits and there was this gorgeous pinstripe. And I just was impressed. I thought I didn't think I needed it to buy it and that's what I wore the night of the banquet. You should have seen me. Was I ever impressive? And I took with me because you're able to take one guest, one of the ladies with whom I'm connected in New York is an ex-nun who received the Lord when mass was being served and has gone on to be a precious saint and a woman of prayer ever since. She's never married and we talk about the S word that she doesn't like me to pronounce called spinster. So what a couple we made, this old crock with this lady on my arm dressed to kill because we were there with the upper crust, you dear saints. You wanna know something? It's more stimulating than any charismatic environment I've ever been in. And so the hors d'oeuvres are served and you stand around and you have a drink, a wine or something and of course you fall into conversation. There was not a Jew with whom I fell into conversation who was not a physicist, a scientist, a PhD, a writer, an author, an artist, a man of accomplishment. What an environment to be in the midst of Jews like that. But as I came in the door and there's Norman Port Horace receiving the arriving guests and I said, I'm the one who sent you that little booklet on the spirit of prophecy. Oh, he said, I'm too old to be evangelized. I said, all the more reason. And that was the last that we had to say to each other. And so we went through the dinner, we had to listen to him to pontificate as he gave a talk and we had some fellowship with the two doctors at our table. One was a refugee from Germany whose wife has written a master's dissertation on the early Christian church and the Jewish presence. Can you believe that? You never know what you're gonna stumble upon. And so it was about over, I went to the men's room and as I'm coming out, the line is forming and my eye falls on one man, tall, stately and imposing. I waited for him to come out of the bathroom and when he came out, I went up to him and I said, sir, your countenance has arrested me. Who are you and what are you about? Could you speak like that to a Jew? Art, where did you get that statement? Out of the depths of the resurrection life without premeditation on what do I say to initiate a conversation that might have eternal consequence and who is sufficient for these things. Well, the man was arrested by my words and my open bravado, oh, he said, my name is Henry Sherman and I'm on the board of commentary magazine. I said, wow, would you be willing Mr. Sherman to read the little publication on prophecy that your editor and publisher has refused? Oh, yes, he said, can I add a cassette message on the prophetic call, which I knew would to be a dynamite tape? Yes, and he gave me his personal address and I was gonna mail it to him the next day when I remembered that I was gonna go into Manhattan anyway to hear a rabbi speak on the problem of evil and so I hand delivered the material, my book, Ben Israel and the tape and brought it to him, rang his bell, I timed it about 5 p.m. after office hours and before dinner, see how strategic you need to be? This kind requires everything, skill, sagacity, that means wisdom, holy ghost cunning, being led by the spirit to hand deliver rather than to mail because it'll give you one more occasion for a face-to-face contact in the hope that something exudes from your face that will be equally as arresting as his Jewish stature even though you're sweaty because you've come up through the subway on a hot day and haven't had a chance to stop for a drink and so he welcomed me in, I gave him the material, I tried to explain something about what it is, he said, I'll get back to you within a week. I waited the week, he never got back to me. I waited a few days more, he still had not replied. I wrote him a little letter, dear Mr. Sherman, I'm the chap who met you at the banquet and has subsequently given you my book, Ben Israel, the story of my conversion as a former Marxist atheist and a tape on the prophetic call and you said you would get back to me within a week. Have I not heard from you because you have learned that I'm a believer and that therefore we Jewish Christians are not deserving of the kind of courtesy that you would ordinarily give to any man, that we are so beyond the pale, so fringe, so out of it that we don't deserve the most elementary consideration? Now if that's true, dear saints, what does it mean for a man who prides himself in his ethicality and integrity as a man of righteousness that he himself is capable of a prejudice, against a certain segment from within the Jewish community that he dismisses at hand and will not give the most elementary consideration that should be given to any human being regardless of their convictions? That very snubbing is itself the revelation and the truth of his condition which my own presence in confrontation with him brought to the surface. And so I said, I'm coming to New York. I'll be Thursday, such and such a date. I'm coming to the Mogliani exhibit at the Jewish Museum on Fifth Avenue and other functions and I hope to be at your place approximately at five unless you call and let me know that you'd rather I would not come. I received no call and I came. I rang his bell again. You know it's in the foyer. You can't get through the door. There's usually a doorman at these prestigious apartments but here was just a, what you would call it, system. I rang his bell, yes. Henry, this is Art Katz, the fellow who recently gave you his book, I just wrote you a letter. I said, what? I'm hard of hearing. I said, I'm sorry, I didn't hear and he hung up. So I thought, well, he's coming to the door now to explain face to face why he's not given me the evaluation that he promised. And he never came to the door. I rang the bell again to let him know I'm still out there, 75 year old man, and waiting to hear an explanation that I could not get out of your gobbled intercom system and he never came to the door. Well, one day, may the Lord give me the occasion to show him there's a little fly in your ointment. There's something wanting in your righteousness that reveals the truth of your condition as the scripture has all along stated, there's no man good nor not one. And though you're living a circumspect life in the level that you occupy on Jewish eminence, when it came to a relationship with me as a contemptible man who believes in this absurd gospel, you displayed a revealing lack of humanity and civility and integrity that shows in the last analysis, you're the sinner that God says and claims you to be. So all things work together for the good, insults, door slammed in your face, neglect. Are you willing to bear it? You Gentile believers who want so much to obtain Jewish approval, what is it with you anyway? Isn't the Lord's approval enough that you're accepted in the beloved, that you have it from man? So I'm saying all that to say this, am I going beyond the time? That nothing less than violence. There's got to be a suicide bomber in New York City and more than one. That Henry will be wakened by the shock and the ground shaking and the collapse of the synagogue around the corner from his apartment and to learn that what was taking place thousands of miles away is now happening here and there's no Jew safe. And maybe what this man was trying to communicate, that there's a time coming of such fearful proportions that exceeds anything we have ever known historically as Jews and will yet again have to know. But that if you'll humble yourself, there's a place of safety available now in an arc of safety of God called the Messiah Jesus into whom we can run and run into his name because he is a refuge and a strength and a very present help in time of trouble for as many as believe. Believest thou this yourself? Can you say with the Psalmists that he is my fortress and my safety, my refuge in him? How can we commend that to Jews when it's not even the truth of our own condition? And we have dismissed it as some kind of biblical rhetoric in the Psalms that's not to be taken literally nor seriously. You see how the issue of the Jew compels us to be saints and Psalmists and sweet singers of Israel and lovers of the word of God and the knowledge of God where he is safety and refuge and can be commended to them for that because they see the security that is in us for we are without fear even before them. So when everything else fails, when men will not heed the word of God and reject the prophets of God, the next and the last thing that comes from the grace of God is the judgment of God. They will have to experience the very reality for which they had refused to be warned by the word. Got the picture? And out of that violence and out of that judgment, God will save a remnant, the elect. Although there'll be very great attrition, but I hope it will not include Henry and Norman Port Horace precious though they are. Though though it's true, not many noble, not many neither, mighty are saved, but I keep reminding Lord, you didn't say none, you said not many. Lord include these in the not many. If you have brought me face to face with this man and had me to be in communication with that man, could that be happenstance? Or was it the act of your sovereignty that had me to buy the suit and make the donation to bring me to the place where I catch a man going into the men's room and wait for him to come out that he might be confronted? You believe like that? Lord, bless this people, save them from being a soft touch. Save them from being merely phraseological and subscribing doctrinally to that which is correct, but not in fact expressing it or living it or promulgating it with the same kind of passion as Paul himself who knew the terror of God and persuaded men. Lord, save the church because you have made Israel, allowed it to become what it is that it would be the formidable opponent for our sake. And we need that challenge if we are to be to the Greeks what we ought and to be to you what we ought as the eternal bride of Christ having the glory of God. The issue of the Jew is the issue of the church, but if it's an issue that is circumvented, not only are they those that will lose the church itself and the world through the church that is not in the apostolic place that it must, which is determined by its relationship with the Jew in truth. Got the picture? We'll hear the tape a few times. So Lord, I'm praying blessing because I know you hear me and you'll send something into the deeps of this people, a shaft and beyond them and through them wherever these tapes will be going forth to show us the discrepancy, the slack, the failure to take your priorities seriously to the Jew first, the failure to apprehend and be apprehended by the gospel in power. Lord, our fear and our timidity to face a people who are intimidating and make us to feel so inadequate because we are. Bring us to the place where our adequacy is in you and we're sublimely confident that in you we move and live and have our being. It's not the issue of how eloquent or clever we are, but to the degree to which your life is our life for you know how to speak, how to address, how to write letters, how to confront, how to bear insult and injury and reproach because that's exactly what you bore in your earthly tenure and we're called to bear it in ours. Lord, bless this people and let them be a last day's blessing to the Jewish community worldwide who are in for suffering, in for violence, to shake their cage, to rock their foundations, to show them that this is not the best of all possible worlds, but the worst because as I left that auditorium of 500 Jews on that lecture on antisemitism, there were not one came up to ask me, what do you mean by God? They were at the coffee table, noshing with all of the nice little cinnamon things and chocolate covered things and coffee with the impression we occupy the best of all possible worlds and it will always remain so. It's delusion, it's deception, they're blind, they do not see and unless someone comes to speak and to bring a sense of the reality, which is reality, they will assuredly perish. So I'm asking blessing Lord for this Kansas City people who are living themselves in an unreality that is everywhere about them in the proliferation of shopping malls and late model cars and well-dressed people. This is the best of all possible worlds and it contends against the apocalyptic vision given in scripture and prophecy of last day's devastation for which Kansas City does not prepare us. So show this people where reality is to be obtained and maintained in the scripture, in the things that you speak of what shall befall us in the latter days and our identification with that people, which will be more than casual, but costly even to the threat of the loss of our own life for their sake, who are enemies and that will compel us to come upon that apostolic resurrection ground, which is the normative and definitive place of God's intention for saints everywhere and every generation and especially at the end. Anything less is living beneath the faith and beneath the glory of God. Impress them my God and press that upon their hearts and their willingness for the sacrifice to obtain that reality, to live in it and make it manifest that they shall not stand before you embarrassed in that day that they have lived beneath comfortably, but less than your intention. And for that, we thank and give you praise in Jesus name and God's people said, amen.