Short Interview - Part 2

Was I picked up by an angel? And surely what he spoke was so inspired by God, who knew my heart, who knew my searching, and spoke that one thing calculated to pierce me through and open me to a message that I would have otherwise spurned. And in that condition I went on in that journey, and day by day, virtually, God was impacting me with yet another life picking me up, another life sharing with me, another life of these strange Gentiles that I could not dismiss as Gentiles. They were like another species, another humanity. They were not Jews, but nor could I say Gentiles. There was a quality in them that I could not define, but it affected me. There was a calm, a peace, and the words that issued from them were so penetrating. Only a few days later I met an American girl in that same Switzerland on vacation, having graduated high school. I was twice her age. She was to me the epitome of all that we Jews denigrate as wasp, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant girl with whom I should have nothing to do, but there was a certain artlessness and naivety, transparency about that girl, and she was willing to walk with me in the woods surrounding this European city, and I'm probing her motives. How is it you're being kind to me? Oh, she said, it's the love of God. How is it you're not afraid of me? I'm a forbearing, angry man. Oh, it's the love of God. Every question I ask, she would answer, it's the love of God. I thought, if this kid mentions God one more time, I'm just afraid I'm going to have to lower the boom, because my hobby was engaging Christians in debate and wiping them out. So what was this little girl to me? Sure enough, she mentioned God. I said, look, you're a sweet girl, but I can't stand this God talk. I'm a man who's dying because of the clichés of this world, whether they're ideological or Christian. So don't give me this God talk. But just answer me one question that no Christian has ever successfully been able to answer. You're talking about God. How do you know that he is? After all the long silence, pained, awkward silence, she'll think of something from Sunday school, and I'll get my intellectual steamroller all geared up and I'll run over her, flatten her, because what is this little snippet for me? But without a moment's hesitation, David, she looked up at me and she said, Art, she said, I know that God lives. He lives in me. And when I heard that, I went down again. I was felled again, like an ox clubbed and trying to recover. Like, what hit me? What's the power of that statement? It wasn't theological. It wasn't even intellectual. What gave that statement its power? I was just brought down by it. And I finally recognized that the power was its truth and that she had the face to prove it. This little snippet, this white Anglo-Saxon Protestant that I could easily have dismissed, had a quality of life and light in her that made me conscious for the first time that I was in the darkness. I was the university graduate, the teacher, Marxist institute, well-read, and yet this girl had a light that made me jealous. And that's how God was dealing with me, day by day by day. The significance of this book, David, is this. It's not just the account of a single Jew, but it is a picture of what is yet future for my entire people. For I believe prophetically that we're going to see in a soon coming time Jews uprooted all over the world from their places of security and affluence, like Montreal, like Toronto, like Minneapolis, and all of the places in which we've had uninterrupted relative peace, we're going to find ourselves again haunted and pursued by a spirit of anti-Semitism in which our places of safety will no longer remain such, and we will be uprooted and find ourselves by the side of the road, dependent on those who will pick us up. And in that condition, stripped of everything, as I was 38 years ago, we will be in a position to hear a message that we have too long spurned out of the still small voice of God, spoken by those who have a mercy and a compassion to meet us in our extremity and in our need in these last days. I began talking with Art Katz by saying it was a story that he told on 100 Huntley Street about 25 years ago, and out of some 14,000 stories, I've never forgotten that one. That's why I wanted him to say it again. Let's kind of reverse roles, Art. Someone right now is watching 100 Huntley Street. They're the guy on the side of the road. You're the guy that's in the car or the truck, you know, and we're stopping right now. What do you got to say to that person? Talk right to them. Well, I would have to say what the Spirit of God would put in my mouth to say, which may not be conventional. I don't know that I would find myself quoting John 3:16 unless the Lord himself gave that text to be spoken, or else it would then itself become a lifeless cliché. I would have to speak the word of life, as I myself was addressed by the God who knew me through the mouth of a man who was attuned to that God and could speak the word inspired by the Spirit. That person has just got up in the car sitting beside you, or you've gone into lunch like you did there. I would ask him, of course, why it is that he's traveling as he is, and is he seeking after something? And maybe I would relate something of my own journeying and how God in the course of search apprehended me and to indicate that that's the ultimate end of every search, that is a significant search for reality and for meaning. And I don't know, I may offer to pray or whatever word the Lord would quicken. I'm being reminded of myself driving a Volkswagen on the Italian freeway. I forgot what they called it, the strada. And I was just humming along, and there were hitchhikers along the road waiting to be picked up, and I was just riding by. And there I caught a blur of a blonde head, and I found my foot on my brake, and the car coming to a convulsive stop, thinking to myself, you could have picked up hitchhikers anywhere along the way. Why are you arresting your motion for this blonde head? And before I could think further, I stopped, and this blonde young man is running up to the car, opens door, and as he came in, a gush of the Holy Spirit came in with him, and off we drove. He was an American Jew, blonde and blue-eyed. There was no way that I could have identified him. He was just being arrested by the Spirit in point of time. And I can't remember, David, what I shared with him, but I think I can say with confidence it was a word from the Lord, and I can only trust that it had the effect upon him that the word of that Swiss man had for me. And so everything is so dependent upon what the Spirit inspires in the moment, who is able to arrest us and to put his word in our mouths, if we are in that quality of relationship with him, which is why I say that the issue of the Jew is really, in the last analysis, the issue of the Church, because we Jews will be so broken, so dispirited, so emptied of any content and any ability in ourselves to save ourselves out of the last day's extremity that will come, that we will be totally dependent on what comes to us from outside ourselves. Can we learn from the past? Can we find the God who holds the future in his hands? Yes, we can. You can go to our website, crossroads.ca, and that will link you to Arthur Katz. And you can find out, you can get his books, The Holocaust, Where Was God?, Ben Israel, Odyssey of a Modern Jew, and other books that he has, Apostolic Foundations, The Spirit of Prophecy, an examination of the prophetic call, crossroads.ca. And check up, link over to Arthur Katz's site. Thank you, Art. Please come again. Don't wait another 25 years. God bless.