In this sermon transcript, the speaker describes a series of university meetings where he preached the gospel. Despite facing opposition and being seen as a traitor by some, the speaker boldly proclaimed the message of Jesus Christ. The power of the Holy Spirit was evident as the speaker shared the gospel, leading to conversions and confrontations with those who opposed him. The speaker also mentions a specific incident where he was asked to debate a professor of comparative religion, and despite feeling inadequate, he experienced God's power and saw the impact of his message.

This is tape number K011. Art Katz with a message entitled, The Fire of God. So precious God, even now, Lord, even though we receive the honorary certificates of men, to you be all honor and praise and glory and acknowledgement. Thank you, gracious God, for this unspeakably rich presence. Thank you for these choice saints of God, Lord, that the love of you is written in their faces and in their utterance and their, their manner and in their being. Thank you for this glorious fellowship that we have as believers in you. And Lord, we give this time to you. May you redeem every single moment of it, Lord. May you speak so deeply and richly to our hearts and minds and lives that not a syllable shall fall to the ground, and all that you intend by this hour shall be wholly transacted for your glory. In the name of Jesus, we ask these things. Amen. The Lord has given me certain experiences as a Jewish believer, which is not available to you. Because you've grown up, I guess, to this part of the Bible belt, or at least in a part of believing America, that takes for granted the great doctrines of God and the questions of faith and even the name Jesus. All of these things are alien and removed from my life, not only as a Jew, but as a modern man coming from a great urban center of New York City. And it's just a wholly different style of life. The things which you've all along accepted and, and which to you would make such innately good sense and which have been confirmed daily in your experience, were to men like myself, the preposterous and foolish and not just harmless kinds of foolishness, but even dangerous obstacles to human progress. And so was I an enemy throughout all of my adult life, from early manhood right until my 35th year when God saved me. Not one who just looked with some mild disdain and contempt upon religion and especially the Christian religion, which I saw as the single greatest oppressor of the Jewish people and persecutor and who had been bent upon our forced conversion for centuries and would not let us alone. And in fact, which is still the mentality of the Jewish people, even as I speak and not merely, merely willing to entertain your existence, but looking upon you as dangerous obstacles to the progress of mankind because of your foolish beliefs. And I'll tell you that what I felt then has become more compacted and more intense and is growing like a great swelling thing underneath the surface of our life is going to break forth in great volume in our generation. We are not merely going to be tolerated by the world. We're going to be looked upon as a very great offense and a dangerous obstacle to what seemed to enlightened men to be progress. And there shall come the hour, and it should be far sooner than we think, when men shall kill us and claim that they're doing God a service. So I bring you a report from a frontier which you don't experience. And because it pleased God to make of me a mouthpiece and to bring me to places of exceptional confrontation with the spirit of the world, especially as it is caught up and expressed by my own Jewish people in their unwitting place deep in the bosom of this world and its values and its rewards, we've had many fierce confrontations. And I've seen men gnash teeth at me and be driven to great fury and anguish of soul because all that I represent in one fell swoop by the power of the spirit is a contradiction to which all they've given their lives and all to them that seems eminently reasonable and right and sane. And here I come with this foolish message, preaching the gospel of that one who had not a place to lay his head and controverting all that seems to them to be wisdom. If they accept the things which I speak and claim to be the truth of God, it makes all their life to have been a vain excursion to this moment. Can you understand what I'm saying? And that's why men, when they come to a confrontation with Jesus Christ, even as I did myself 10 years ago, were stunned and shaken to the very foundation and pit of their being. I remember in the course of my growing up years as a high school dropout, frenzied Jewish kid trying to understand the bewildering universe. As I traveled the length and breadth of this land looking for experience and understanding, I was coming back to New York from California and I was hitchhiking. And I found out that if I, when a car stopped and the man asked me if I could drive, if I admitted that I could not, I would not get a lift. And so I quickly learned that I had to tell people that I knew how to drive, though I did not. And it was that year when the model changes were coming out, when they were putting the gear shift up on the wheels, you know, instead of the floorboard. And so if a man had a wheel gear shift, I said, I only understood the floor gear shift. And if he would shift for me, I would appreciate it. And if he had the floor, I told him I only understood the wheel. And so by the time I got to New York and he had a drive. And see, there's something missing from the body of Christ and we Jews are not in our place in it. And in my experience, I was so green, I remember I was somewhere in the, maybe even in this part of the country trying to overtake a very slow moving car up on a hill. And my judgment was so poor that I should not have done it. And over the crest of the hill coming down on the opposite lane where I was, was a car coming at a furious speed and it was a sure collision. And it seemed like imminent death. There was no way to avoid it. And I just threw my foot on that brake with all the power that I had and gripped that wheel. My knuckles were white and I could see the face of the man at the, in the car approaching me in exactly the same condition. And those two cars convulsively shuddered as we both tried to reverse the enormous impetus and the direction in which we were traveling. And we succeeded sufficiently for one moment in that violent shaking and trembling of cars trying to reverse all of the power and the movement in which they were caught up and just narrowly averted each other and averted death. I'll never forget that experience because I see it time and time again, both in my own confrontation with a Jesus whose name was a bone in my throat. And as I represent him now, even to my own kinsmen and to modern men at the universities, a great shuddering and a shaking when we're confronted by that one and, and induced to change the whole course and sweep and direction of our lives. The very meaning of repentance. And I can't think of a more profound message for this high holiday season, the days of awe, Yom Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur for Jewish people, right? Even as we sit this morning and that men should be stopped in their way and be turned to the living God. But the Lord even acknowledges that his gospel is a very foolish thing. Paul says for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us, which are saved, it is the power of God. And I see it time and time again, when I speak at universities, that the moment I'm finished with my foolish presentation, men get up as for example, at the university of California at one of the campuses. And it happened to be a Jewish man and an Israeli man and a professor of psychology. And he told how enormously embarrassed he was by my presentation. And had he known that I was going to try to induce men to return to the middle ages, he would never have come. And that what I had to say was an offense to his sensibilities and to his intellect. And then he went on further to denigrate my personality and the way I speak. And everything that was about me was all wrong. And in my concluding remarks that night, I told the students that I had been instructed that I was not allowed to pray publicly at that campus, but for their convenience, I would recite a prayer for salvation. And I did so. And then I concluded the meeting. And when the meeting was over, some kids came up to me and I, the first one, I took one look at that face. I knew it was Jewish, beautiful brown eyes and the eyes were glowing with a certain kind of a light. And I knew that she had just been saved. And there was a trembling and a tearfulness and had a voice was broken. And I, as she came to me, I spoke to her first. I said, something has just happened to you, hasn't it? She said, yes, Mr. Katz. She said, even though you said that we couldn't pray, that it was illegal. She said, when you prayed, I prayed under my breath. It's foolishness to them that perish, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews, a stumbling block and unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called both Jews and Gentiles, Christ. How many people know the meaning of that word? Christ, Christos. What's the Hebrew equivalent? Moshiach, Messiah. There I was all those years stumbling over the sidewalks of Brooklyn, and I never heard a name more alien and more removed from my Jewish consciousness than the name Jesus Christ. And not one person ever took the pain or the labor to explain to me why art, that's only the Greek rendering of the Hebrew Yeshua, haMoshiach. The word Christ from the word Christos is the Hebrew word Moshiach, which means Messiah. Well, that's a far more Hebrew word, far more positive and far more warm and redolent of Hebraic sound than the word Christos. Christ, the Messiah, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see, you're calling brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. And God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty and base things of the world and things which are despised has God chosen, yea, and things which are not to bring to naught things which are that no flesh should glory in his presence. And I want to tell you out of my own experience that of all the foolishness of which God is and of all of the foolishness which God chooses, that there's no point which more staggers modern men and more makes them to gnash their teeth and more makes them to be incredulous than the foolishness of that particular point of the gospel. Then Jesus saying that I am the way, the life and the truth and that no man cometh to the father but by me. And I'll tell you people that upon my first reading of those words about aboard the deck of a tramp steamer 10 years ago, broken, desolate, modern man, a lifelong seeker after truth with a contempt for Christianity, for the Bible, for religion as the religion of cop-outs too weak to live in this world unaided, a book which I had long despised came into my hands, the New Testament. And as I described last night in the first reading from the first line, I was immediately impressed that this book was awesome and different from anything I'd ever previously read. I staggered as I read on and began to recognize that this is ultimately a Jewish book and the characters are essentially Jewish and none more Jewish than the great Jew of them all, Yeshua. But when he came to make these grandiose statements, these unspeakably dogmatic statements, something in me began to shake and to shudder like a car with the brake thrown on for the first time. I was a relativist. And I'll just as a footnote and as an aside say that if it were not for us Jews, this modern world would not be in its present form nor condition, that the whole world, although they may not be Jewish by birth, are living in an essentially Jewish universe, that the three greatest architects of the modern world happen also to be Jewish, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. The impact of Marx we know and the impact of Freud we have some understanding. But you think, well, Einstein, you say, I understand that it's physics and the theory of relativity and it had something to do with the advent of the atom bomb definitely. But I'll tell you that the explosive content of the work of Albert Einstein in the thinking of most men is far more significant perhaps than even the advent of the atomic bomb. The theory of relativity has percolated and found its way even to the ordinary thinking and feeling and experiencing of men and women all over the face of this earth. I didn't know a cotton picking thing about science. I don't know anything about physics, but I was eminently a relativist. And you know what that means? All things are relative. Who's to say what is truth? Who's to say what is right or what is wrong? It's all relative. Maybe in one instance it is fornication, but in another it's love. It depends upon the circumstance. It's relative. Who's to say that headhunting is murder? In certain conditions, among the primitive people, it's an aspect of their culture. No man can say something is right or wrong or true or false. I tell you that that is the most devastating thinking in the history of the human race and is going to bring the modern world to its ultimate death. And there's going to be unleashed upon this earth such a soul sickness and such a wave of anarchy and chaos and a breaking down of every institution that men's hearts shall fail them for fear because no man can say what's right or what's wrong. I was a relativist and I like to believe in my fancy as a modern man that there are many paths to truth. It was an offense to the sensibilities in which I was schooled for 35 years to insist that there's only a single path to truth. And the reason that I shrink from turning to the Bible, although I was an omnivorous reader of the printed word in all my quest for truth in all those years, is that I resented so much as the implication that any one book could be the answer. Why every intellectual worth his salt knows that truth is to be gleaned from many sources and it's a search into which we give over our entire lives and never have hope that we're going to come to the end of it. To insist that there's a way, a single way and that it's even a narrow way is an offense that God has planted deeply in the bosom of this world. Jesus is an offense to the world for many reasons and I think none so great in that he insists upon himself, I am the way, the truth and the life and no man cometh to the father but by me. There's not a place in the time that I speak that men do not leap to their feet outraged that I dare insist upon that and they attack me as if I am preaching the gospel of Arthur Katz. And I'll tell you if you'll receive it, I faced more vehement and bitter opposition at a Baptist liberal arts college than ever I experienced in any secular university on the face of this land. There's a way that seemeth right unto a man but the end thereof is death. And there's a great filthy spirit being poured out on this earth by that seducer of souls that beguiles men and assures them that their wisdom is true and enhancing and honorable and and tolerant and liberal that such men will look upon those who insist upon a single narrow way as a deep offense. Away with them! And they cast Jesus over the brow of the hill and they stoned Stephen to death and when when the apostle Saul all his great outrage against that heretical Jewish sect on his way to Damascus to extirpate them was struck and brought to his face in the dirt by a blinding light that Ananias that simple believer whom God instructed to go lay hands upon him that he might receive his sight in the baptism of Holy Spirit said go tell him what great things he must suffer for my name's sake that he might bear my light to the Gentiles and to the people Israel. He's a chosen one unto me God said and I'll tell you people we Jews have shrunk from the implications of the phrase the chosen people but praise God everyone in this room is a chosen one to bear light unto the Gentiles and to the people Israel and God said go tell them what great things they must suffer for my name's sake. I'll tell you of all of the offenses of the gospel when we come down to the ultimate nitty-gritty there's always someone who's going to stand to his feet as I experienced two days ago at the University of Massachusetts when a rabbi got up bristling and he said are you trying to imply that if I reject your Jesus that I'm going to hell that I'm going to burn for an eternity in hell have you ever experienced that doesn't have that has that question come up in your witness or have you been shrinking from your witness in the fear that that question would come up we had a little bite to eat last night after the service I'll tell you there's not a detail that comes into my life from a word of conversation to being drawn to a single individuals in a certain affinity of the spirit to a book that comes into my hand to being called to a meeting or an invitation that's not ordered of God and that woman in a crowded dinner table that restaurant happened to sit next to me with no accident and I said to her she came from Little Rock I said they happen to know any of the Jewish community there why yes she said as a matter of fact quite well and I said are they a rather withdrawn community or is there a really good fellowship you know between the Jewish people and Christians there oh she said there's really quite a bit of you know socializing and fraternizing and that I myself should have you know several Jewish friends I said have you witnessed to them well gulp no I really haven't you said I I really lack boldness I have to admit that and I just couldn't bring myself to suggest to them that somehow that they were wrong or that they have to and I'm just paraphrasing now but this was the sum and substance of it that they have to see things particularly my way and I didn't want to offend them I didn't want to offend them praise God for that very lovely kindness and the world loves that degree of kindness and concern but I'll tell you there's a God who has called us to more than sentimentality there's a God who has called us to love and it's not the love that makes nice nice it's the love which speaks the truth in love and is willing to pay the price of love which is the painful forfeiture the risk of the loss of friendships the bringing of offense people were so nice to me for 34 years in America that I never met so much as a single individual and I knew many who spoke to me about the gospel of Jesus Christ or the Messiah of Israel I guess they didn't want to offend my feelings and were perfectly prepared therefore that when my life should come to its terminus and there were many narrow escapes that I would be plunged into an eternal darkness and I would be one condemned to wailing and a gnashing of teeth people don't we believe the scriptures I didn't seek for any any ministry I didn't know what the word meant when it pleased the Lord to bring me into this university ministry I obeyed though I knew I was well over my head they invited me to the University of Illinois where there to be eight days of activity four to six meetings a day from fraternity houses and and student union buildings and all kinds of places and I was taken by the hand from one meeting to another just stunned out of my head exhausted I couldn't think straight and I just experienced the flow of God the power coming into my body over and beyond my own exhaustion and God giving me a choice word to speak on every occasion and souls being saved and a fantastic confrontation at a Jewish fraternity house that lasted six hours at the conclusion of that week when they had called me long distance before the meetings arc do you think you can handle this the only condition upon they're willing to have you is if you'll debate the professor of comparative religion who's a notorious atheist who has subtitled this course laughing your way through the world's religions and who speaks Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek and other Semitic languages you think you can handle him why of course not I can't handle him no more than I can handle any of those meetings and it's either going to be that it's no longer I that live but Christ who liveth in me or I perish there's only one reason why a pipsqueak like me wet behind the ears not yet 10 years old is standing before an audience like this many of you two and three times older in the Lord than I but I've had experiences that would make your hair stand straight up and I've experienced a resurrection power of Christ again and again and again and that very night they made a mistake by allowing me to speak first and I'll tell you that the moment I opened my mouth a holy hush fell in that crowded Jewish fraternity house that place was jammed to the rafters with Jews who had come to see me get my comeuppance as a traitor in their side against the Jewish people at that meeting at the University of Massachusetts the night before there were special posters put up by the hello committee a special meeting called at a certain hour what to do about the apostate I'm a traitor in their sight my own mother has slammed the door in my face and called me mad and the moment I opened my mouth in that in that crowded place that holy hush fell and mouths were stomped and I went on in the power of the unction of God to begin to relate this foolish gospel about a half hour later some of the Jewish kids began to elbow and dig this professor who had not opened his mouth he was stunned and silent and said aren't you going to answer this man and he got up and he made one or two lame apologetic remarks and he slipped out like a cur with his tail between his legs that man has since invited me to address his classes on two subsequent occasions and he took a poll at the end of the year of all of the speakers that they had that the kids said that art cats was the most impressive but you and I know what they were impressed by when he left that meeting went on for six hours I've never seen such rage such anger such bitterness Jewish kids got up out of their seats with disgust and anger and stormed out of that house they couldn't hear another word they wanted to stop their ears and three minutes later they came back in again they hated it but they couldn't stay away they were too Jewish Laurie after four hours into that meeting and I saw guys come out of their seat one kid came out of seat with his fist knotted ready ready to bash me in my face and I just stood very quietly he said if you're God he said if you're Jesus can save me as you say let him let me see him do it right this minute I looked at that boy and I opened my mouth and I heard myself saying brother your spirit stinks oh you say art where's that written in the manual of how to witness the Jews what a question to come from people who believe in the holy spirit I want you to know that every utterance that came from the lips of Jesus was born of the spirit of God and was bathed in love every single syllable even the cry to the Pharisees hypocrite I'll tell you the loving remark is not always nice nice the loving remark might be repent else you shall all likewise perish that kid was the first one to be saved that night and he was followed by 14 other Jewish kids in the first hearing of the gospel they were falling like flies on their knees and on their faces one kid came up to me trembling and weeping he said already said even my rabbi is afraid to pray for me because my name is cats you see my name is cats also and I used to be embarrassed by it because you know the kinds of jokes to which that can lend itself and I thought boy of all the names to have where did we get that one I thought well that's something that we Jews must have picked up in in Germany somewhere in the course of our wanderings but when God saved me he showed me in an instant what it means to be a man because I've been seeking my manhood all my adult life he showed me what it means to be a Jew is to have the spirit of the Holy One of Israel in you and even told me what what his name Jesus Christ means and then he told me what my name means cats is not even German it's not even Jewish it's Hebrew and it's a contraction of two Hebrew words Kohan Tzadik Ko and Tza makes cats if you know a Jew by the name of Kohan or Kahn or some derivation of that that word means priest and Tzadik means righteous and this boy said my rabbi doesn't feel qualified to pray for me because I'm a cat I'm a Kohan Tzadik I said that's okay brother I am one too and I'll pray for you I put my hand on his head and I said oh gracious God of Israel in the name of Jesus make this Kohan a true priest of Israel and that kid sagged and fell into a seat he told me later that when I touched his forehead something went right through his body by the power of God and he had a soot or he would have collapsed that's what God was doing by the power of his spirit because a mile away on campus there were 20 Christian kids on their faces before God for six hours while the meeting was in progress from every denomination forgetting their little doctrinal differences they knew that there was a war on and they were bombarding heaven for Jesus sake and when we picked those kids up at midnight with I just we hadn't yet had a word to say to them and their faces were just beaming with light and they were overjoyed and they said oh brother cats didn't wonderful things happen from 10 o'clock on I said how did you know they said because from 6 to 10 we knew that there was a war on we can know it tell it now spirits but from 10 to 12 God was doing glorious things precious people I have not yet begun my message and I've got something to say and I don't want to have to abbreviate it okay in that same university series of university meetings that first one began at the student union building at one o'clock weeks before my coming all kinds of publicity had gone forth and special stickers had been printed and were pasted all over the place cats is coming is one word cats is coming cats is coming and when I got there I was so embarrassed to see that they played up my name I said why did you do that well we prayed art and we felt that if we just made an abstract gospel invitation few people would come let alone your own people but they're people are intrigued by personalities so we used your name I said man I said I'm nothing cats is coming and coming for what I'm not a Jewish Billy Graham and I'd like to be so I remember that first meeting at that student union building one o'clock every day some radical comes to that microphone and sends out such fumes and such filth and such incitement to violence and from that same microphone we were going to begin our eight days of gospel meetings and we all got together in a huddle and we prayed and they hugged me and they embraced me and they said go get him tiger and I got pushed out into the middle of that great crowded room 300 people and I was all alone then to remember it's no longer I that live but Christ who liveth in me then to remember it's not your battle but mine saith the Lord but go you out before them and I gave a message and I finished and I did the foolish thing I opened to questions and answers from the moment that I began for some reason my eyes were fastened on a guy who is directly in front of me at the back of the room I just couldn't take my eyes off his face it was so cynical so wise alicky and sure enough when the question and answer period came he was the first one to raise his hand and he went like this to his colleagues okay fellas watch this I'll take care of this guy right at the beginning uh hey uh Mr. Katz yes do you believe there's a hell watch this fellas I got him now ha ha ha I wasn't prepared for that question as a matter of fact I wasn't prepared in any technical way for any question I didn't have a little book to which I could thumb what's the answer to the question on hell and you know I was believing God I was coming out of a boat because the holy one of Israel bid me come and if his word could not sustain me I was ready to perish I breathed on my breath I said Lord you've got me into this now you answer and I opened my mouth and here's what I heard myself saying I said brother even as an atheist if there was one thing that distinguished my life from earliest consciousness is that I've always had a high regard for the value of words now I tell you there's no figure in all scripture who shares and expresses the significance and the profundity of words than the man Christ Jesus he himself warned us that we shall be held accountable for every idle word we speak and I tell you brother in the same breath that there's not a figure again in all scripture who has spoken more consistently and more powerfully about hell about a lake of fire that shall never be quenched about an eternal darkness about a wailing and gnashing of teeth than Jesus Christ himself in one place in the gospel of Mark five times he uses the phrase a fire that shall not be quenched and I tell you brother that it behooves you who have asked this question to embarrass God's messenger to be reminded of the things which Jesus spoke lest you find yourself standing one day far sooner than you think before him hearing again your vain question played back in God's answer which you ignored now too late to remedy the fire and the judgment and the eternal trembling and anguish of soul which he described those weren't my exact words but something to that effect and I'll tell you they went forth by a very great unction and I watched this guy like an air being let out of a balloon just go he just folded up and collapsed and that was the beginning of eight days of meetings people I'm a believer almost 10 years I have yet to hear except out of my own mouth and that recently any message on the judgment of God any message of a soon-coming king who is coming to judge the earth any message that this world is condemned of God and that he's coming in fire to bring judgment upon a world that has long ignored and rejected him the consequences of which are written in the conduct of men and nations in their depravity in their filth in their brokenness in their excess we've we've had a heart to see the great revivals of God and we read with great wistfulness the great exploits of men like Finney and Spurgeon the great revivalist of times past they didn't just come and bring great times of enthusiasm and blessing to single congregations they shook entire communities cities were changed jails were emptied saloons were closed broken marriages were reconciled men were permanently and deeply and profoundly converted by the ministries of men like a Charles Finney how different from our own age in an easy believism and a groovy gospel and Jesus emblazoned on t-shirts and making men rich in the production of cheap jewelry and suction cup things that are to fit on dashboards and stickers to go on bumpers and everybody's getting on the bandwagon and having a ball I can't understand his enormous popularity in the vogue for Jesus because I know in my Jewish heart that the holy one of Israel has never been popular and well it is that he spoke through Dave Wilkerson at a recent Lutheran charismatic congress when this brave man spoke the vision which God had given him of what shall soon befall this nation in the end times and of the fearful things which he spoke a coming persecution upon the saints of God governmental harassment of the ministries of God and the ministers of God persecution of Catholic charismatics out of their own denomination the honeymoon is going to be over and the Jesus movement which has had such great popularity in vogue is going to fold up its tent and silently creep away and those who are its loudest adherents and most boisterous guitar strumming adherents are going to be the very persecutors of those that shall remain to go on as disciples bearing their cross for Jesus Christ my lord was never popular but we've been preaching another kind of gospel and trying to induce people to accept him that somehow their lives might be made more groovy and we're continually reminded of the benefits and indeed who can speak of the benefits more so than I I'm as one whose life has who has been brought from death unto life there's not a thing that I want in God I who was a teacher and labored as a high school dropout to make good whose whole life has been been been marked by frustration and defeat and failure came finally to a place with a master's degree degree from the University of California at Berkeley and eminent in my profession and well received and tenure and couldn't be fired and annual wage increments and retirement benefits and medical insurance and even a happy little congregation that I to which I belonged and even a little ministry on the side beside my teaching duties I had all this in heaven too and God said come follow me and led me out of that security while my wife was pregnant for the third time to enter a full-time ministry with my Jewish people wondering how I would fare standing on a soap box in New York preaching the gospel and what if I failed where would my security be then and how could I get by in a hundred bucks a week when I've been used to all of the advantages of of wage increments year by year and having our own home and car and all that stuff but now I don't even have a salary now I don't even belong to an organization and I found out I didn't even keep track of it that this past year God poured forty thousand dollars into my life and ministry gave us a television program and and we've been everywhere in this past year and in recent months from Leningrad to Tokyo to Mexico and places in between by the providence and by the provision of God this rabbi said are you trying to suggest that if I don't receive your Jesus that I'm going to hell and I'm going to burn eternally what an embarrassment what a piece of foolishness God has implanted at the very heart of the gospel and how we have shrunk from relating the entire counsel of God to men and if there's one quality which is missing in the body of Christ and in fact I have to sadly confess also in my own life and to and if I would ask it of God I would ask this thing oh great God that we might know the fear of God the holy fear of God the awesomeness of a God of righteousness and truth and holiness and we could communicate this fear to men who are so cavalier so casual so indifferent so sophisticated so dying many of us are embarrassed by references in the bible to the anger or wrath of God and almost feel constrained to defend God from such unloving allegations we're quick to explain how that might perhaps characterize the God of the old testament but never the God of the new oh foolish children who has deceived you don't you know the shema Yisroel adonai Eloheinu adonai echad hear O Israel the Lord your God is one Lord there's only one God one Lord one faith one way and if I would have any criticism uh be it far from me for this precious convention I would say it was in the name all faiths why my God there's only one a pox on that fiction of the three great faiths what a colossal caricature when there's not an iota to be found in any of the conventional so-called three great faiths a travesty against a deep calling and way of God for men who wanted only religions of convenience and are willing to accept the Jewish or Gentile equivalents that required nothing more than a few bucks in a collection plate or an Israel bond and allow them to go on being lords unto themselves no power to save and to keep men from the eternal judgment of God or to bring them to a place of eternal joy exchanging pulpits on Mother's Day and Thanksgiving and going through other honorific thing of exchanges of awards and making nice nice while the world teeter-totters on the brink of eternal doom there's only one God and he's the same God that inspired the scriptures in the book of Isaiah in the 13th chapter very appropriate to be read in this season in the sixth verse how ye for the day of the Lord is at hand it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty therefore shall all hands be faint and every man's heart shall melt and they shall be afraid pangs and sorrow shall take hold of them they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth they shall be amazed one at another their faces shall be as flames behold the day of the Lord cometh cruel both with wrath and fierce anger to lay the land desolate and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it for the stars of the heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light and the sun shall be darkened and is going forth and the moon shall not cease or cause her light to shine and I will punish the world for their evil and the wicked for their iniquity and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible I spoke at an assemblies of God church in Louisville Kentucky and there was a prophetic cry about the two Judaism's the Judaism of God which by his grace he has called us both Jews and Gentiles to the biblical messianic Judaism of God which centered in the coming of a Messiah the Holy One our atonement who was to be made unto us all the fullness of the Godhead bodily in whom we would move and live and have our being and the Judaism's of men which stand in distinction against it by whatever name either the Jewish or the Gentile kind the lesser religions of men which flatter and applaud pump up and lift up the flesh celebrate men in tone scriptures without meaning employ handsome liturgies and have hallowed tradition but it's a religion without the power and the presence of the Ruach HaKodesh the Holy Spirit of God and it cannot save and I gave such an impassioned cry that day to call men to the true Judaism of God even those sitting in the assemblies of God who were speaking the right words and had given mental assent to the right creeds but were effectually practicing that other kind of Judaism and some men got up in the middle of the message and cried out speak on prophet when I stood outside the door that day people walked by me with stricken faces oh a few dared venture those little words like oh I enjoyed your message lovely preaching and my soul always cradles when I hear that kind of talk Jewish men had been brought to that meeting by his Gentile believing wife that day and he walked by me his face set as flint he wouldn't even acknowledge my existence he was so rent and they took me out to eat that afternoon and lo and behold there he was sitting in the banquet room with his wife and so with typical Jewish chutzpah and aplomb that means brass I took my plate the knife and fork and cup and saucer and I went and I sat by his table he was a precious man and so typical of my people educated cultured well-spoken a professional lawyer humane altruistic and he went on to tell me Artie said I don't know very much about God he said but if there is a God surely he's not that impressed with what men believe it's an easy thing to believe it's what you do that counts and he says as far as doing his concern he said I'm sure I find approval in God's sight I go to bat for the underdog I take free cases for the underprivileged I do this and I do that and he went on to speak to me the conventional Judaism of the world when he finished I began to relate to him the foolish Judaism of God and about four o'clock his face had visibly changed a trembling had begun to sneak into his countenance and his visage was altered and gray and being a Jew he wasn't if he couldn't win he would at least come out with a draw so he said to me as a final parting shot Artie said it's quite evident that you're a sincere man and I'll tell you what he said I'll tolerate and acknowledge what you believe to be true if you'll tolerate and acknowledge what I believe to be true and he extended a hand in friendship and others the stage was all set for me to be nice and I looked back at him with a face equally as flinty more and my eyes and face filled with the Holy One of Israel who shall soon come in judgment and wrath and I said brother as long as there's breath in my body I shall never cease to persuade you to abandon your human notions for if you will not you shall surely perish as if someone had struck him in the face with a wet cloth that man just shuddered and came to a halt like the car that I described earlier he threw on his brakes in a word no one had ever spoken to him more lovingly I've not seen that man since but I know that he's fully impressed in the depths of his heart that the things that I spoke to him that afternoon were not just little idiosyncratic fancies of an art cats or my little bag or my hang-up but veritably the truth of a living God and that knowing the truth of God knowing the terror of God I persuade men it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God and would to God that more men who live everywhere about us yes they may be Gentiles by birth but they're effectually Jewish by conviction and by the style of their lives shall know that there's a soon coming judgment which men have shrunk from preaching because they were more concerned for the applause of men than the favor of God I have yet to get into the heart of my message we conveniently forget that it was Jesus who in sending out his disciples into the world to proclaim the gospel said he that believeth not shall be damned and as I said before in that same gospel mentioned in one particular place five times the fire that shall not be quenched and spoke of a hell in which sinners shall be cast in the fire that shall not be quenched and time doesn't allow for the many references to the day of the Lord as a day of judgment in which the heaven shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat and the earth also in the works that are therein shall be burned up and it's obvious also from the description that the Lord gives of the end times that we are just entering this initial stage of nations rising against nation and a time of famine and pestilence and earthquakes which are the beginning of sorrows and I tell you it's an ominous thing to come to a gas station and to be told no gas something happens in my heart people and it's not just the inconvenience of having to look elsewhere as if it's the first echo of something that shall increase in volume and magnitude when we shall see signs and breakdowns and enclosures and seizures no gas no electric no water no food no services and a great calamity stealing over this earth in that great shaking which God has promised shall that shall come upon this earth that everything that can be shaken will be shaken and only that which can remain will remain because it is planted in that rock Christ Jesus and if you are sitting here this morning wondering why it is that your marriage is being shaken why your life is being shaken and you had the most beautiful marriage you've never had any problems you were so temperamentally inclined one to the other you had such a happy accident of like disposition it's because God is not going to let us get by with that we're not going to survive by any happy accident we're going to survive and stand and flourish because we're grounded in him I tremble for the increasing darkness that's coming upon the earth socially economically politically our institutions breaking down our confidence in government crumbling but I know that that same darkness shall make our lights to shine all the more brightly oh we wanted all this in heaven too we love to be Christians and enjoy the hallelujah times but we wanted to be respectable also and didn't want to give offense especially to our Jewish neighbors but when the end shall come then shall be great tribulations such as not since the beginning of the world and immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened and the moon shall not give its light in the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of heaven shall be shaken and who is there whose imagination is so powerful as to assess the devastating horror of which these words speak who of us here this morning can begin to imagine these conditions and I'll tell you the great difficulty of a prophet is to speak things that are yet to come to a people who are yet experiencing the affluence and the comfort and the ease and all of the amenities of our modern civilization no wonder that it is that men stop their ears with their fingers and when that will not suffice fly upon the messenger and stone those that are sent unto them in the sixth chapter of the book of Revelation we're told about apocalyptic horrors of war and famine and death and hell and a power that was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth to kill with the sword and with hunger and with death and with the beasts of the earth many of us are not even yet disposed to open our homes to hospitality we think Christianity means a potluck supper or a full gospel bear hug but if it comes to the actual giving up of our privacy the actual taking away of the masks the actual opening of our lives for the intrusion the unwelcomed nuisance of others the inconvenience of other lives we shrink but I tell you the hour shall come when we shall be given to hospitality and we're going to find ourselves those who've been uncomfortable thinking how shall I be bedfellow with that one who rolls in sawdust you know that's not nice it's not my style I'm a little skittish a little offended by by that particular way it's not the thing to which I'm familiar we're going to find ourselves even against our wills be driven and seek for the fellowship of the Saints when these conditions shall come upon the earth and the mere potluck supper shall it shall be put away for what it was a mere token and a crumb a caricature against the fulfillment of which to the things which God has called us that we should love one another as he has loved us that we might be one as he is one that the world might know that the father sent him all the stakes are enormous people and our parks and every lesser substitute which we've accepted to shrink from the fulfillment which God has called us this the bumper stickers and the literature distribution and all of the evangelistic devices that were convenient and spared us the embarrassment of bringing to our next-door neighbor or our Jewish friend or lawyer or a teacher the gospel which is foolish to them that perish but the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Gentile how can we imagine what shall be the horror of those who have to face the stern consuming judgment of God which every man must face for the king of the earth the kings of the earth and great men and rich men and every free man shall hide themselves in dens and rocks of them and mountains and say to the rocks and the mountains fallen us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb for the great day of his wrath has come and what shall be who shall be able to stand and one with one would think that all these dangers imminent and that they should be seen in their real magnitude that all mankind would be in a frenzy of concern about their eternal salvation and yet just the opposite is true a universal indifference a great casualness over the over these enormous issues and men willing to speak of dozens of lesser things and be completely impervious to the truth of the Living God in Christ Jesus it's amazing this indifference of mankind that stand at the very brink of destruction doing business as usual eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage as if God had not spoken as if the warning of his soon coming judgment had not been proclaimed and the truth of the matter is that it had not there's a wonderful book written by a contemporary Jewish writer by the name of Eli we sell and he's the sole survivor of a concentration camp all of his family were the victims of the Holocaust and a book which he has written called the night he described his little Jewish community in Transylvania in Central Europe up in the mountains in the last stages of the war what had happened to the Jewish communities of Poland and Germany had not happened to them and they thought somehow in hope against hope that they would be spared what it what others of their kinsmen had suffered the war was almost in its final stages and yet one day a man came to their community a strange freaky kind of individual who had escaped the concentration camp and he tried to cry to them a warning a warning and they didn't want to hear it frightened them and they pushed this strange one from the midst of them and they stopped their ears this too shall pass they thought it shall not come upon us isn't it amazing how every man one way or another is a man of faith I was an atheist for 35 years but I was eminently a man of faith but the problem was it was a faith misplaced it was a face that faith in man rather than God it was a faith in art cats rather than in the Messiah of Israel it was a faith in inevitable human progress it was a faith in science it was a faith that this too shall pass so believe they all until one day there was a strange ominous rumbling in the distance peculiar noise and even the ground shook beneath their feet and on the horizon they saw great clouds of dust which they could not interpret and it got closer and closer and closer and the noise was deafening and finally it came right into their little village and community great panzer tanks and armored cars with the swastika and the iron cross and booted Nazis getting out and then day by day the edicts began to be plastered on the wall the Jews had to leave their homes and move into a certain portion of the community where brick walls had been installed at the little ghetto and they thought well this too shall pass we'll suffer this but we'll get by we'll survive and one day the sign was put up tomorrow morning at daybreak you're to be at the train station with only such things as you can carry oh that night they worked furiously and they dug holes in the backyards and in the basements and they they buried their menorahs and their family heirlooms and their money and their jewels and things precious to them and they thought we'll come back we'll survive this this too shall pass and the next morning they were out there with trembling with their children with their meager possessions and they're on the tracks with the great freight cars cattle cars waiting to receive them and in they were pushed and jostled and jammed so tight and so choked that that they could barely breathe and the doors were slammed shut and locked no food and no water for three days and nights as they hurtled through Europe train lurching and rumbling and and great cries and teenage kids fornicating sensing the last opportunity to taste of that joy people going into shock and stunned and there was a woman in a coma and she would he described her waking from her coma and crying out fire fire I see fire and they're so frightened them that they punched this woman into unconsciousness and she would wake up again and revived you cried again fire fire I see fire and they would punch her again and she would go unconscious and finally one day the trains came to a slow halt and a thud and as it stopped they began to smell a most peculiar odor and when the doors broke open the flames the light of the flames just danced right into those dark cars loaded with human excrement and urine puke and right up by the tracks were great troughs of burning gasoline and the half-dead infants were plucked out of the screaming out of the arms of screaming women and thrown into the flame and the men and the women were separated and one went to one line and the other to the other line and they walked into the ovens and into their death he alone was spared to write this book and as I read that book something in my heart broke I thought of the great suffering of my people I've been to Dachau I've seen the ovens I've seen their bones in the ashes I've touched a smokestack but what is the cremation of six million to a fire that shall not be quenched to an eternal burning to a wailing and a gnashing of teeth and that my own mother shall be among that multitude whose howl and wail and anguish of soul shall never beings be stopped rent from her lips I want you to turn with me to my texts which is first Kings the 18th chapter my intention had been to read the entire story of Jeremiah to speak from it I'm sorry from Elijah God has had me to speak things I didn't intend appreciate your patience I'm fascinated with Elijah I can't take my eyes off him I think of him continually he's in my heart and in my consciousness there's something about Elijah from which I cannot turn there's something about what he represents that I can't take out of my consciousness the Lord is drilling it into my heart Elijah Elijah Elijah Elijah Elijah that one who would come before that one who would turn the hearts of the fathers to the children that one of whom it says behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord oh I know many of us have subscribed to that very neat theory about rapture and I have to confess people and you know it already you're not listening to an eminent theologian I'm an income poop I'm wet behind the ears but I tell you everything in my experience and everything in my spirit in my heart doesn't to verify that very happy theory when I see these stickers on bumpers watch out any moment the driver of this car might vacate I don't jump for joy I rinse with pain it makes me sick that glib unctuous nonsense of that giddy sense that well you guys might be stuck with suffering but we've got it don't be so sure there's a reason why God is leading us to establish conferences on discipleship there's a reason why God is putting fearful words in my mouth to begin to encourage people to tighten the belt to gird up the lungs of their minds in their lives to begin to walk with God and disciplined ways to begin to resist the spirit and the blandishment of the world which makes nice nice and have have and eat eat there's a reason why God has blazed in my heart the story of the Prophet Elijah the forerunner who is to comes to prepare the way for the soon coming Messiah and King prepare the way make the way straight repent ye for the day of the Lord is at hand it's a great day for those who shall await his coming it's our hope for those of us who like him have been fed by ravens and have been watered by the brook sheriff and have been sent to widows who shall sustain us when the drought shall come and everything shall be dried up and we shall live by faith you know in immediate obedience to him who speaks by a still small voice I would to God you would hear that voice now and begin walking with that voice now lest when he speaks go I have commanded the Ravens to feed you you think that you're suffering indigestion and no God that you know shall ever commend raven birds or birds of prey or ravenous birds that feed on refuse to feed you and you will have missed God's provision because you knew not his voice and you knew not that he was the God who always chooses the foolish things now is the hour of preparation that when that hour comes and it shall come far sooner than any of us think we shall hear and immediately obey and we shall be sustained in the drought and in the famine and God shall prepare us in that widow's home with whom we shall stay when that son shall be suddenly taken and die and that widow who would not believe in the God of the Prophet who called him the man of God and saw that the meal was not wasted nor did he did the oil be exhausted according to the word of the Lord that came through the mouth of the and yet would not believe and make that God her God and so by necessity her son had to be plucked from her bosom and God shall put his finger on the sons of many in our modern world those who are indifferent about their own lives but who tremble for their children or that thing most prized the Isaac of their lives if we'll not come to God for the love of truth and for righteousness and to flee from the from the terror to come God shall touch us most deeply where we live and put his finger on that cherished Isaac and take the breath out of him and we shall the world shall come to us with stunned amazement and say as the widow said have you come to call my sins the repentance of our man of God simple ignorant woman but she recognized that the sudden taking of her son had to do with her spiritual condition I tell you I know Jewish mothers only too well and though they will not be saved for their own sake they'll be saved when God puts his finger upon their sons and so is it already in our generation entire Jewish families coming into the kingdom of God when their drug addict sons which no amount of money can save no amount of fancy institution or hospital a psychiatrist can save finds his way stumbling in his death in a teen challenge center and is saved of God and filled with the spirit and they come and they bring their son and said as Elijah said that a widow woman after he had prostrated his body over him and cried to God three times and the breath of the Lord had come back into him see thy son lipids and whatever our reasons whatever our confusion whatever has Satan has done to pollute that name which is above every name and the only name where we're in whereby men may be saved we call upon that name and come father mother sisters and brothers into the kingdom of God to the name of Jesus Christ because we've seen one brought back from the dead oh I tell you it's no easy thing to bring life from death no cheap kind of evangelism is going to do it nothing less than the prostration of our own bodies and lives over the dead corpse of the world oh I tell you it's icky to take that stiff cadaver up to where our abode is and put them down on our own satiny sheets talk about privacy being violated and if that's not enough to make our bed a mess God calls us yet to stretch out our own bodies and lives over that dead corpse eyeball to eyeball and fingertip the fingertip and cry out Oh God take that breath which is in me and impart it into that dying world we don't have a cheap gospel and we don't have a cheap evangelism that gospel required all and so shall God's evangelism of the end times also and there's a God who is shaping a corporate body of Christ and he's also a corporate figure that must come before as a forerunner before that the appearance of that corporate Christ and it's a corporate Elijah one who walks by the still small voice one who trusts God for every provision fed by ravens one who shall bring life back to a dead world by the prostration of his own body and life over it and one who shall call in first Kings 18 an apostate people to a reckoning before God and I'll tell you what the reward for such an Elijah shall be it shall not be the kinds of things which were being given today praise God for this happy season but it shall not last much longer we shall not receive the B'nai B'rith man-of-the-year award or see as I saw when I was resting in Pat Boone study one day before a gorgeous meeting in his living room 150 to 200 Jewish film colony intellectuals where we ended up baptizing nine people that night and I was I was resting I looked around and I saw Pat's white buck shoes now cast in bronze and I thought my only a little while ago how I despised this guy how he was a symbol to me of that alien Gentile Christian world of which I knew nothing and could never relate he was the epitome of that nice nice Gentile type so unrelated to my Jewish life of we Jews who beat out chess and cry out in anguish and now I love him like a brother what a soul and as my eye went from award to award in his bronze shoes and his and his golf awards it finally rested on a plate from the B'nai B'rith man-of-the-year award for community service I think it was 1956 and I kind of chuckled under my breath and thought Pat baby it's the last time you'll receive one of those but there's a reward laid up for you in heaven I'll tell you what the reward shall be when you shall cry as an Elijah to people who will not welcome the message repent for the kingdom of God is at hand repent for the day of the Lord is at hand you shall hear what the Prophet Elijah heard when when King Ahab encountered him in the 17th verse of the 18th chapter and it came to pass when Ahab saw Elijah they have said to him art thou he that troubles Israel that shall be your reward oh I know it's going to make you to tremble because I know I'm looking at a people ironically who have a greater love for my Jewish people than any on the face of this earth I received a mighty baptism in the Holy Spirit not at the Pentecostal Church which I attended loaded with strife and enmity and jealousy and dispute where people were afraid to leave by the same door lest they touch elbows the Spirit of God could never have cut through that maze but one night in a ramshackle farmhouse in Northern California with eight spirit-filled Gentile believers who loved the Jews in Israel and making plans to live and to serve God there who knew more Yiddish kite in Hebrew than I in one spirit in one accord with those who loved the Jew the heavens opened and God poured upon me such a mighty stream of His Spirit as from which I've been God's fool since that day and I'll tell you what the reward shall be art thou he who troubles Israel and you'll gulp and your Adam's apple shall bobble and your knees shall turn to gel and your legs tremble me I love the Jewish people but you know what you shall hear and we've already begun to hear the first ominous choruses with the advent of key 73 weak feeble ineffectual thing though it is great cries from the leaders of the Jewish community great rabbinical swellings what about our pluralistic society what is this harassment of the Jewish people isn't it enough that that that we suffered all these centuries and in the Holocaust in recent times six million of our Jewish people lost their lives and in Russia they're trying to extirpate our Jewishness are you too trying to make Christians out of us and to take from us our Jewishness I get this all the time people I'm being told that I'm worse than a Hitler that what I'm trying to do is more insidious that when Hitler did and that what he did by physical force I'm doing by cunning and spiritually trying to wrest from Jews their Jewishness what a paradox when we know that God is not calling us away from Jewishness but to authentic Hebraic life in the God of Israel and by his spirit and yet that's how the world shall read us anti-semite when your heart is breaking for the love of Israel that shall be your reward art thou he who troubleth Israel but you know how Elijah answered I have not troubled Israel but thou and thy father's house in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and thou hast followed by a limb as long as there's breath in my body I shall not cease from persuading you to give up that bankrupt human Judaism and receive the Judaism of God for if you will not you shall surely perish now therefore send and gather to me all Israel to Mount Carmel and the prophets of Baal 450 and the prophets of the groves 400 which eat at Jezebel's table all of God's prophets wiped out by Jezebel except those who left the Lord's table to eat at hers and we're watching that phenomenon beginning to take place even now and even at that university meeting two nights ago a priest a minister stood up with white collar and all the whole thing the jewelry the whole bit and sided with my own kinsmen my adversaries and said I believe that Jesus Christ died for all the world and it doesn't matter whether you personally receive him he's a much bigger God cats than what you've been representing and his mercy is for every person what are you trying to do harassing those Jewish people you call that Christian loves and that the Christian kids that were there that night were so stunned at the encounter their prayer that night was so jocular and light-hearted but the next morning they were stunned different group their prayer was had been much deep and much more travail they said art we've not seen anything like this in all our life when this was like going back into the book of Acts this encounter and we saw as these things came forth both the Jewish opposition and those that sided we saw the configuration of what shall be in the end times a small band of disciples who believe the Word of God even unto death and do not flinch from bringing the entire counsel of God to men and those who cannot stand the cost and shall for one reason or another find themselves gravitating more and by more to that growing centrifugal force that shall become a groovy world church very nice full of all kinds of blandishments and rewards and nice cliches about human brotherhood and love but without the power of God thereof sitting at Jezebel's table so Ahab gathered and all the children of Israel and the prophets together Mount Carmel and Elijah came unto all the people and said how long do you halt between two opinions if God be God follow him might well God raise up a band of prophets today to cry to the Gentile denominations as well as to my own people how long do you go on with mock motions of religion how long do you go on with your cliched nonsense and speaking correct words without true knowledge of God and then masquerading and discarding you the disguising your lives while affectionately being Lords unto yourselves if God be God follow him there's a reason why we've not heard that still small voice because we've stopped our ears I've heard it many times from that first day in Jerusalem ten years ago when I walked into that bookstore operated by Jewish believers in Jesus with their chapel next door where when I found out what it was God spoke to me and said art you are not to leave audibly and I've heard that still small voice on other occasions since and I can tell you people there's one thing that characterizes every utterance I've ever heard by this little small voice of God it has never once called me to convenience there's never been an instance when it's called me to anything but great inconvenience great prospect of suffering and death if any man would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me if God be God follow him how long do you hold between two opinions and you know what happened that day they had a sacrifice and the end of false prophets of Baal they built their altar and they laid out their wood and they took their their great ox and they laid it open and they they danced and jumped on it and they cried out to their God and silence nothing all they jumped they went they all through all kinds of motions and all Baal hear us but there was no voice nor any that answered and they leaped upon the altar that was made and it came to pass in a 27th verse that Elijah mocked them and said cry aloud for he's God or either he's talking or pursuing or he's a journey of perhaps he's sleeping he must be wakened Elijah mocked them always say not nice I'll tell you there's that there's a God who by his spirit is speaking a lot of things that are not nice and they would never think that God would choose to speak in an hour that's becoming increasingly urgent I've heard God out of this mouth mock a Pentecostal assembly and I thought oh my god I have really flipped Lord what's happened to me how dare I mock your people and I prayed Lord stop my mouth and then direct me according to your spirit and I opened it again and the mocking continued but the end thereof was a glib unctuous pastor who had given me the most fancy introduction that I had ever heard in my heart was sinking as he spoke it and a happy face congregation that looked like they needed nothing from me and I had need to be minister to of them but the end thereof was that same pastor on his face like a dead man rising to his feet by one o'clock in the morning as one would pass from death unto life who had passed a thin invisible frontier and had moved from being a man of God to a professional slickster and didn't know it the same elder of the church who had brought me to my seat on the platform that night confessed that night that he was in continuous adultery although that next week he was scheduled to give his testimony to four gospel businessmen many such things that God worked at night because the Spirit of God mocked the congregation out of the mouth of the Prophet all precious people if we shall play it by the numbers and think well God will never do this or say that we're going to miss it there's a God who's calling us to such an intimate fierce walk by the Spirit that many shall not have the stomach for such who enjoy a groovier kind of religion and we shall see that fantastic polarization taking place of people being moved into the one of the two great camps and there shall be no neutral ground between I'll try and bring this to a close and so the Prophet made his own sacrifice and you know what he had to do first he had to build the altars that were broken down it says elsewhere in the scriptures these were the altars that were torn down the Jewish people were not just indifferent to the religion of their fathers they were fiercely opposed and an anger had broken the altars of their God and the first function of the Prophet is to restore the true altar the true worship of the Living God and I tremble before you this morning when I know how a lot of us as clever practitioners have learned that it's a great expedient principle to get people in worship and standing and raising their hands and doing many things and somehow it'll make the meeting far more electric God save us from becoming technicians and manipulators because we've stumbled on a correct principle the altars of God needs to be raised anew the holy altar requires a complete sacrifice and he gave it he took that ox and he cut it up and I tell you sacrifice is painful people and it's bloody and many of us have shrunk from that whole burnt offering of the opening and the opening of the laying out of our lives before God because it's painful but there's there's no other sacrifice that God will consume by fire and he amazed the Jews who were with him that day when after the whole thing was built he said now go get water and endows this sacrifice and they poured out barrel after barrel of water until it was seep and saturated with water twelve barrels full and I tell you people the fire of God shall not fall upon our sacrifice until it be saturated with our own tears we've been dry-eyed far too long and I'm standing here before you this morning because as I said last night although I knew not a single person who knew what the word prayer meant I said one of my own students used to come home from school in the afternoon weeping over me and her mother told me who I met months after my conversion Archie said since that day both my daughter and I have been praying for you the factual fervent prayer of righteous men and women availeth much have you been praying for the lost of the house of Israel have you been weeping for the unnumbered souls everywhere about us lost and facing the prospect of an eternal anguish and cry and that without remedy the fire of God shall not fall until we lay out a whole sacrifice without concealment bloody and costly over an altar that should be raised up again that's authentic and true and saturated with our tears and then we shall speak as the Prophet spoken that day when it came to pass at the time of the offering the evening sacrifice in the 36th verse that Elijah the Prophet came near and said Lord God of Abraham Isaac and of Israel let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel and that I am thy servant that I have done all these things at thy word hear me O Lord hear me that this people may know that thou art the Lord God and that there has turned their heart back again then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice in the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench and when all the people saw it they fell on their faces and they said the Lord he is God the Lord he is God Oh people how often do I come away frustrated with administering to my own people they will not believe they will not hear my own mother although she has seen a transformed son but I tell you nothing less than fire from heaven shall bring an apostate world on its face before God who has gone through the motions of a mock Judaism but has in fact turned from the following of the Living God this world needs to see fire from heaven and when they shall see it on the altars which we shall raise up they shall cry out the Lord he is God he is not a superstar he's not an object of derision the Lord he is God the Lord he is God and they shall be saved God is wanting an Elijah band to go through this earth crying out a warning of a soon-coming judgment and I have a reason why I think that we fail to press the truth on an unwilling world an unbelieving world and it's largely because of our fear to offend it many of us are still trying to be respectable believers evangelical but contemporary too and far from being pilgrims of the tent in the altar we've settled ourselves quite well in the world and have habituated ourselves quite nicely to it in fact we've become so accustomed to this world and its blandishment and its reward and its things that the prospect of God's judgment in fire coming upon the earth does not exactly titillate us and in fact we even shrink from the from the vision of it looking at our own groovy wardrobes or new hi-fi and we think that by evangelistic devices or a few bucks in the collection plate that somehow we can placate a God who has called us to follow him and preach this gospel to every creature beginning at Jerusalem to the Jew first and also to the Gentile thinking to rack up so many points by a kind of heavenly bookkeeping that though we have defaulted in our obligations before God that somehow by giving or by some lesser kind of activity he will allow us to keep that hi-fi and wardrobe and to have all this and heaven too perhaps it'll be easier for us if we could be granted a vision of the guilt and agonizing remorse of that office colleague that next-door neighbor that member of our own family that nominal Christian believer that Jewish dentist or lawyer or friend that we know when we shall contemplate for all the eternity that shall be spent in hell because of the failure to establish in this life a relationship in spirit and truth with a living God who sought him but of whom he knew nothing because we did not press his claims upon him because we didn't want to offend fire fire I see fire that woman cried and they beat her into unconsciousness there's a warning that needs to go forth over the face of this earth by an Elijah bend that shall stay to the spirit this world as the Lord my God liveth before whom I stand hallelujah I don't look for your rewards I don't look for your applause I'm just as immune to your criticism but it shall not rain according to my word God is looking for a people like that who shall hear the still small voice of God and obey it have you been hearing that voice this morning through this Jewish Brooklyn accent have you been crying in your own heart even as the Spirit of God has been going forth Oh great God there's a fire that needful and in fact in the starkest proportions of the end times there are going to be only two alternatives the fire of repentance or the fire of God's judgment and that judgment begins with the house of God Oh gracious God may that fire fall even this morning and through this day upon us may we lay out before you a whole burnt offering cut up and exposed nothing dark nor concealed may it be saturated with our tears that the fire might fall and consume not only the sacrifice but the wood and the hay in the stubble and the dross and the insincerity of the lovelessness and the indifference of our lives of our dry eyed prayer and our failure to be the men and women that would have challenged the world everywhere about us Oh great God may that fire fall upon us today great baptizer who shall baptize us in the Spirit and fire that we shall go from that day forth as ministers of fire flaming ministers to proclaim to all the world the foolish life-saving gospel of Yeshua HaMashiach Jesus the Christ