Tulsa 2000 - Part 1

Well, sorry to disappoint your expectancy, but I'm without inspiration, kind of drained and discombobulated thanks to American Airlines Eagle shuttle, where we were brought out twice to the plane and brought back again to the terminal. For some petty, I don't know what it was, and the second time they had fixed it, but then the stewardess was not aboard, and then the third time we finally made it. So I thought getting up around four this morning, well, I'll come early and I'll have a few hours to rest and gather my thoughts and be before the Lord and not come directly into an expectant audience, but so be it. So what do you think I've been reading today? I couldn't read anything serious because I'm hazy from the lack of sleep, don't want to even look into serious things that I had with me, but instead I stumbled upon two copies of the New Yorker. Who knows the New Yorker magazine? I'm going to get a subscription. Sublime, not spiritual, but aesthetic, intellectual, and I thought I envied the perspicacity of these writers. Remarkable, what to God we had such facility. And one of the magazines are two articles about Jewish writers and intellectuals. Have you ever heard the name Lionel Trilling? See how alone I am in the room? He died of 1975. He was considered one of America's great literary critics and a novelist, poet, and writer, a Jew from New York, taught at Columbia University. So someone has come out with a biography and the woman who's reviewing it is herself Jewish and was one of his students and talk about astute and insightful remarks and the precision of language. So that's what's been going into me today. But what is today? Friday, the Shabbat, and the commencement of Rosh Hashanah. Everybody know that? The days of awe. So there'll be a trumpet, a shofar sounded, and it begins the 10 days in which Jews are to reflect on their moral spiritual condition. Would to God that they would. And so interesting that our schedule dovetails with that and I'm reading about Jewish intellectuals and lost men, lost souls. But in their lostness, there's something very precious I can, I ache, I can identify. It bears some resonance of my own earlier struggle that finally led me to the Lord. Something, I don't know what it is, whether it's a New York upbringing or a Jewish New York upbringing or a coming of age at the end of World War II and the statistics of the Holocaust, living in the city of eight million. All of these factors come together to affect Jewish personalities like my own. So I can quote you from those magazines. We can go off in some direction. I can move you to envy with the excellence of language. Here are unsaved people, but the faculty that they have in analyzing, critiquing, examining the depth of personality, the literature, the output, the man, the dilemma, the frustration of the life was just remarkable. So let me pray. Again, Lord, so often when I stumble on something and you allow something to come into my thought and into my preoccupation, you draw from it. And if not tonight, perhaps tomorrow, or if not in these days, some future time. But let us not miss, my God, anything that you want to employ. You can take the back of a ketchup label and send us into directions, my God, that are so remarkably profound, we will be left stuttering. Or is it what you had me look at, my God, earlier this morning in Hosea, or something else that you would yet quicken? So we invite you, my God, to be the Lord of this time. From the commencement tonight and through our time together, the Alpha and the Omega of this time, to bring forth the beginning, my God, that is in keeping with the end that is already in your heart. You know the need, my God, of these whom you have assembled, these sons and daughters, and the occasion, my God, that you have given us together. God forbid that I should humanly, my God, miss it, or go off in a tangent or direction that engages my own delight or curiosity and is not where your heart is. Or to miss it because it's not out of the Bible, but from a magazine, and yet that was the source that we should be examining. So Lord, we're betwixt and between, our usual dilemma, and we look to you. Come and be the Lord and satisfy and delight your own soul, and whatever delights you will delight us. And we thank you for that, Lord, now in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I did look at something this morning out of Hosea that came out of my devotional reading. I thought it lends itself to an appropriate message for Jews on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur season, and why I would be speaking it to believers, maybe to stir your heart for them, and because of our identification with them, it may have some value. You want to turn with me to Hosea chapters 13 and 14, and we'll just examine the kinds of things that I was considering earlier in this day. Verse 4 of chapter 13, the Lord ruminating, and there's a real note of sorrow in the history of his people with him. I have been the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt. You know no God but me, and beside me there is no Savior. It was I who fed you in the wilderness in the land of drought. When I fed them, they were satisfied, they were satisfied, and their heart was proud. Therefore they forgot me. So I will become like a lion to them, like a leopard I will lurk beside the way. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs, and will tear open the covering of their heart. There I will devour them like a lion as a wild animal would mangle them. I will destroy you, O Israel, and who can help you? Where is now your king that he may save you? Where in all your cities are your rulers of whom you said, give me a king and rulers? I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath. Ephraim's iniquity is bound up, his sin is kept in store. The pangs of childbirth come for him, but he is an unwise son, for at the proper time he does not present himself at the mouth of the womb. Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death? O death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your destruction? Compassion is hidden from my eyes. Although he may flourish among rushes, the east wind shall come, a blast from the Lord, rising from the wilderness, and his fountain shall dry up, his spring shall be parched, it shall strip his treasury of every precious thing. Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against God. They shall fall by the sword. Their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open. Well, fierce, relentless text, and one that has been fulfilled more than once in Israel's history, and will yet again be their experience before the age ends. Remarkable poetry. It's just a delight, in a sense, to read the flow of this, and to be reminded of a perennial, perpetual condition, that yet is the nature of this people. The iniquity is bound up, his sin is kept in store. So even when there's a time of birthing, Israel is unwilling to come forth, resists even the coming into the newness of the things of God's intention, of a millennial way, and how it will have to be brought in through forceps and force, as I'll probably have occasion in these days to speak in one way or another, or you've heard from me in tapes. I think what arrested my attention this morning, and is in keeping with reading of these Jewish intellectuals, one was this Lionel Trilling, the other was a Romanian Jew, of whom I'd never heard before, who lived through the World War II time, and was saved from having to go to the concentration camp. And so someone has translated his journal, his diary, right up through the war years, and when he dies, at the end there's a little italic at the end of the selection from his journal, killed by being hit by a truck in the streets of Bucharest right after the war. So the poor soul who was a playwright, though he survived Hitler, did not survive the loss of his life through violence anyway. And both lives are so sad, as these impassioned Jewish lives invariably are. Although he may flourish among rushes, the east wind shall come, a blast from the Lord, rising from the wilderness, and his fountain shall dry up, his spring shall be parched, it shall strip his treasury of every precious thing. What a remarkable way for the Lord to sum up what we have experienced in our history, in places of our diaspora, our exile, that though we have prospered for a season, there's invariably a time when the east wind comes, and something issues out of the wilderness, out of the wilderness of Nazi Germany, or out of the wilderness of an anti-semitism of a time of Jacob's trouble that is future and already brewing, but it dries everything up, and what we had enjoyed is suddenly removed, and our treasury is stripped of every precious thing. You would think we would learn. So the cry of God in poetically expressing what has been our history, all through these generations, is sounded in verse 14. Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you, and return to the Lord, and say to him, take away all guilt, except that which is good, and we will offer the fruit of our lips. Assyria, or any dependency on alliance with any power, shall not save us. We will not ride upon horses, or employ technology, or armament, or the IDF, or the world's number one Air Force, or nuclear capability. We will say no more, our God, to the work of our hands. In you the orphan finds mercy. This is a remarkable text for Yom Kippur. Would to God that rabbis would be reading it, and expounding from it, because there's very little, if any, consciousness that there's any necessity to take words to God, and that the calamities that we have suffered, and will suffer, have somehow to do because of our iniquity. And despite that, and God yet waiting for this kind of contrition, the Lord himself will extend mercy. In verse 4, I will heal their disloyalty. I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them. I will be like the dew to Israel. He shall blossom like the lily. He shall strike root like the forest of Lebanon. His shoot shall be shall spread out. His beauty shall be like the olive tree, and his fragrance like that of Lebanon. They shall again live beneath my shadow. They shall flourish as a garden. They shall blossom like the vine. Their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon. Pretty hard to reconcile that picture of Israel's millennial place in glory with God, and to the nations, with they shall fall by the sword. Their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open. This is a day of discombobulation for me, both physically, naturally, in the word, in the articles that I'm reading from, the magazines that I've picked up, and this text that the Lord has quickened this morning. Am I appealing for your sympathy, or something? But just to enter into this, this thing that's in my innards appropriately at the commencement of this Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur season. I'm going from here, you know, to the Oklahoma State University at the Silwater, and the precious couple who are inviting me, our faculty members. They'll be here tomorrow, and they have Jewish colleagues on the faculty. I'm sure there's a B'nai B'rith chapter on the faculty. I'm sure there are Orthodox Jews to be found there, and also numbers of foreign students. And they foolishly are advertising me as a Jewish prophet. And they wrote me that in an email letter, and I wanted to answer and say, I don't think that that's the right way to describe me before Orthodox or secular Jews. To whatever degree it's true, they'll not know how to understand that. It's going to antagonize them. And I never got around to stopping them. I don't know what happened, a distracting phone call, something else took my attention. I forgot it, and now it's too late. The fat is in the fire. I'm sure that it's done, and I can just see my kinsmen rubbing their hands in glee in anticipation of this freak, this cop-out, this... I'm trying to think of dastardly words. Mishumad is the Hebrew word for traitor. So why would a Jew do this, and flagrantly come before Jews that are either pious or sincere in their ethical sensitivities, and try to make of them Christians? Such a man, the only motive that can be understood, he's being paid for it. He's a flunky, a paid missionary sent out by this notorious right-wing evangelical church to do its dirty business with Jews. And to use a word like Jewish prophet, first of all, I'm not even considered a Jew anymore, and then the word prophet is calculated to offend and to rub them raw. And yet, this is a word that they need prophetically to hear. Maybe in the wisdom of God, you're preceding, my time with you precedes them, so that you will come under the burden of this once and for all outreach for which we have been praying fervently at home. Jewish and other life is at stake. And I have to bring to them a worldview, a perspective of reality that is completely at odds with everything that they have learned to respect and to value. If the Lord gives me grace and the appropriate anointing, it has got to turn their world upside down. Whether they are secular and atheistic or orthodox and pious, they will equally be upturned because the way of the Lord is so at odds, so opposed to their either religious or secular understanding. And so once and for all time, it will be a week from tomorrow on a Saturday night, this public meeting at campus. So I pray that you'll come under the burden of that. And wouldn't it be something if this is the very text that the Lord is to employ. And this morning was the first sounding to get something into my spirit, both of the severity of God's judgment, the cause of that judgment, the cry of God calling Israel to repentance and to return. And then a flicker and suggestion of what that return will mean not only for Israel, but for the nations when Israel shall fill the world with its fruit and its fragrance shall go out in every place. So help me to exegete this portion of the prophets and to draw out from it. I was on TV last night in Odessa, Midland, Texas. What an arid place. And coming down by looking over this parched piece of geography and having been once before with the same Christian television station now moved to a new location. I don't know how and why they called upon me after about a seven year lapse. But I found out that somehow that one visit was so pregnant and so consequential. And I wasn't even aware that there was any impact to speak of, not only in the televised interview then and last night, but also in personal private contact with the people that are at that station. I'm learning now seven years later, life was changed. Something was set in motion. Something was profoundly touched and affected. The man who came this morning and drove me to the airport was one of the principal ones who had received. I said, I'm not at all conscious that in any way I had that effect. And that's probably when we are at our best when we're not at all conscious. But I wish you could have been there for that TV interview. Two hours with hardly a break and very rare to find a platform to be able to express my anticipation of the depth of suffering that is yet to befall Jews in the world globally. And in some of the questions that came while I was speaking, one asked, how will Texas itself be involved in this? And I said, much in every way. That all the more because you're arid, because you're forlorn, because you're forsaken, because you're a grub nothingness and a piece of wilderness, be assured Jews will be passing through your terrain. You need now to anticipate that. So I know that it's a word that is going to astonish or stun hearers who have a happier expectation for the success of Israel and think that you were suffering as at last behind them. And now whatever the troubles that assail them, they'll find their way through and Israel will be established. And I'm saying no, it's a preliminary to disaster. And it's a disaster that will not only afflict Jews, but astonish the church and maybe even test the depth of their own faith and understanding of God. They may be offended at how far God will go to save a remnant out of this people that they might be a fragrance in the earth and a fruitful branch. So pray for last night's program that went out live and is again to be shown two or three times in the next immediate days. And if the Lord was really in it, they may have occasion to play it again. The night before I was in Dallas at a biblical art museum, speaking from Psalm 102, when the set time to favor Zion has come very precious night. So I'm telling you that all of this to say, you need to come into my skin and to walk with me in days that like this being moved from one location to another one message to another one audience to another one exposure and reality to another going to bed at midnight and having every anticipation of very leisurely rest and not having to be on the plane till 1140 this morning to get here and finding myself up at about four in this text and then reading the little booklet of the history of that station and how this brother and his wife were led step-by-step into the realm of Christian broadcasting a real faith venture. And so all of these things are percolating and then the Lord has to add the New Yorker and the articles on Lionel Trilling and this Romanian Jew. And I ought to read you portions of the Romanian experience because he chronicles the rise of anti-semitism in Romania itself, even before the advent of German conquest that Jewish life was every day becoming more precarious. That something of that same Nazi mentality was afflicting or affecting Romanian society and even intellectuals. This man was a playwright and other of his colleagues and those whom he knew were already being affected by this mistreatment or the changing attitude towards Jews. Really vile. So I'm thinking as I'm reading that if that could have taken place in Romania when a certain spirit was coming over Europe that did not have its sole expression in Germany and these are Romanians themselves. One woman, a poet or a literary person said Romania is for Romanians and fat Jews and she went on to speak in a derogatory way about Jews making this Jewish playwright to wince at what he was hearing from the mouths of people whom he had esteemed and who had never spoken like this before. Never knew that they had sentiments like this or that they were capable of being affected. I thought this is a valuable chronicle not only to show the phenomenon of anti-Semitism sweeping like a bilge over Europe and even among non-Germans but a picture of the future of how the same process can take place with us. And as much as he was astonished to hear what was being expressed by people whom he esteemed that they actually were enjoying the dilemma of Jewish suffering and wanted to see Jews catch it that I thought how long will it be before we see a spirit phenomenon of that kind in our own nation and it will take place as rapidly not just among the the unwashed and the rednecks and the the semi-literate and high school dropouts and the dregs but playwrights, poets, artists, the intellectual from the bottom of society to its top. This spirit of hatred against the Jew resonated and found responsive courts. So all of that is being factored in me and I don't know why but the Lord is just bringing this impulse this exposure and that and I'm standing up before you half-baked without a chance for it to be formed and to be expressed in a way that might be significant for you. I thought I said to Doug maybe we would have a question and answer period. I don't have a message and maybe the Lord will just capitalize on some question or response and move us in a direction through that and you guys have had exposure now you've seen videos and heard tapes read books what question have you always been wanting to put to a Jewish believer like myself having some exposure of the kind that you've had and hearing me now this tonight and just giving you this is really a prophetic scenario this is how God form fits a word through a prophetic vessel using the grit of his daily circumstance to feed in and to bring certain valences thoughts dispositions of spirit in the context of the time and circumstance and out of that issues his prophetic statement. So you're catching a little glimpse I've reviewed these just these few days since leaving Minnesota at the crack of dawn to make the appropriate flight and fearful that I would oversleep and not be up at 4 30 I'm up at 2 30. So all of these days have started off so to speak on the wrong foot physically lacking adequate rest which itself affects the way in which you hear and see things and take them in. Have you experienced that? And I have such a sublime confidence in the sovereignty of God that I believe that every factor the places where I have been the men that I'm meeting the word that I'm speaking the early and unexpected risings and the way in which the days are programmed to end in still water at a university outreach and a minister's breakfast next Wednesday morning is part of this complete sovereignty of God that will bring the word out of the grit and details of this day including the New Yorker magazine. Of all the things upon which my eye could have fallen and there were two issues and I took them both. So what do you think? Yeah. You mentioned that you can even see it develop the United States where it quickly turned against the Jew anti-Semitism wouldn't wouldn't it more so be turning against the church as well because you're seeing that more and more. Yeah the church will be invariably involved the church that is the church for how shall it be impervious or indifferent when it sees the climate of opinion becoming so vile towards Jews and know knowing from past history that that's the preliminary that is before the actual suffering is a remarkable corollary if you study the history of the Nazi time that there was not a blatant and outright anti-Jewish program but it began with a cartoon in an editorial page or a letter to the editor or the editorial column itself making some snide remarks about the place of Jews and their influence in the culture or in business and then by a deepening process and a greater boldness it held them up to derision and contempt and it was not contested and people allowed these expressions until finally it became social governmental policy and the whole process of annihilation what I'm describing is now taking place with Christians I don't know if you've noticed right-wing fundamentalists are in the same pejorative excuse my language a negative focus in articles newspaper items letters to the editor and cartoons as Jews were in the very early part of the of the decade of the 30s and then by a process of this deepening thing one thing will lead to another so we will be involved we'll be hated all the people of God are the object of the demonic attack Jews in their unbelief and Christians in their faith and of course our identification with them will put us in the place where we will be hated for that very reason the only way we can avoid the persecution that befalls them is to keep a safe distance and to look the other way when these mounting distresses come to them but then how are we Christian if we're capable of that so I think we need to rightly to anticipate that their distress will be all the stress yeah well two things I was going to say before that but we will be locked in with them we will what we will be locked in with them yeah and but I was going to say it isn't it the atmosphere and the attitude of the church that allows for this that it sets the stage for that type of thing the joking of the news or anything like that the church being asleep the church being later this year you know if the church was I don't know if I'm mistaken if the church was being the church you know this type of thing be allowed to happen yeah that's that's a really good statement in question it's interesting that the this station I didn't know it is so identified with Israel and with the Jew and they were very much occupied with Jewish roots of the faith that they had been forced out of fellowship from a charismatic non-denominational thing that where the owner and his wife had been attending and about 30 of the ministers got together and accused them of what's the word heresy that they're bringing the church under the law by their emphasis on Jewish roots which is not their intention at all and I was astonished that they're suffering that kind of backlash and exclusion they've lost support and it has deepened their financial crisis because of this identification with Jews and with Israel and this I said I'm I'm astonished to hear that well art in our part of the country this is not unusual so this is news for me but I think probably it'll not be confined to parts of the country and where the church has adopted a what do they call this theology this a replacement theology where the church is the Israel of God and Jews are just another ethnic group another nationality have no special distinction or claim on our attention or God's we can expect that those who will be identified with them will will suffer even from that kind of church itself in fact the issue of Israel as I've said and many times in places has a unique ability to heighten every issue of the faith and even to distinguish in the last analysis who in fact the church indeed is so it's a remarkable mystery but in my 36 years as a believer I've never seen any subject have so profound an ability to raise the issues of identification about the faith the church what it means to be a Christian the issue of the Holy Spirit the issue of last days as the issue of Israel so Israel even in her unawareness that she's affecting so many things is indeed the critical factor and you're right already we a process of separation over that subject is taking place and will become more clear as the issues as we come closer to the fullness of that of this time yeah Doug I've been thinking and praying about coming to Tulsa and your dad out looking up before you at the itinerary that you traveled and I don't know what it is I think you think about where you're going to be going speaking but as you've been praying and thinking about coming to Tulsa have you you remember any of the thoughts or perceptions for the Lord as you were anticipating this time well I have had you know some conventional thoughts isn't it isn't this the nexus of the faith prosperity school Hagen and Oral Roberts and and I'm expecting that when we have this minister's breakfast next Wednesday morning that these ministers will likely reflect that kind of view of the faith and I'm hoping and expecting the Lord is going to use me to raise the issue of the cross so you can pray for that also well this is the bible belt right and I don't know I'm coming as an innocent wide-eyed and bushy-tailed and not so bushy more more limp with my tail between my legs and discombobulated knocked out and tired but when the smoke clears I'll know better what this trip represents and why the Lord is fingering this locality because so so much of my activity now is overseas like my next trip again is Canada and I will have a trip in Phoenix and Mexico and then other trips back to Russia and Poland a minister's conference you guys can follow these things from our website and our newsletter by a woman who had the burden to you bring together German and Polish pastors because she sees a corridor of flight from northern Europe through through Slavic nations and through Poland and in and through Germany of Jews and is beginning now to bring together Polish and German ministers in anticipation of that reality and got hold of my message on true and false German repentance toward the Jew and said this man has got to be the speaker at this conference in Warsaw so that's the end the last week of February of 2001 so when my activity in the states is so rare and the Lord fingers Oklahoma and Texas and I suspect that he has something up his sleeve and that something needs to be expressed of the new kind that God gives me and I trust that this area will get a full measure and there's already a repository of tapes and books and things like that that can be circulated and made known oh no this young man yeah um how do you this is kind of a general question is how do you deal with the the Jews that are not saved knowing that God has committed them to disobedience because I find I have a lot of friends from home in New Hampshire that are that are Jewish and not saved knowing and even my stepdad is Jewish knowing that they've been committed to disobedience is real hard for me as a Christian you know I want to share with them I want to see them commit but I also see that commitment made in there by God yeah but don't be fatalistic about it I don't you know but I wonder how you deal with it knowing that they have been committed you know God will show mercy on all of us you know outside of the root you know and I thank God for that for them to see them outside of the root is it's hard for me and I imagine it's very hard for you especially at this time it's beginning of Rosh Hashanah yeah I'm toughing out the issue with my own 95 year old mother who's living now next door to me whom we have brought from Florida to spend her last days with us and as stubborn and intractable despite being in a believing community and being having love lavished upon her by its members and every kind of consideration is all the more defensive of her Jewishness and her Judaism than ever she like she feels that she's under some kind of threat and she herself is valiantly defending the monotheistic faith so I know what you're talking about until such time as the Lord lifts the veil he concludes us all uh under disobedience that he might have mercy upon all and the thing that will loose my mother is not something that will have its origin with her as if she has a virtue and an ability to break the fetters of her own blindness but will have to be the consequence of what has come to her from outside of herself the prayers of the saints the intercession of the saints the consistent and faithful witness that's continually striking her heart I've got some photographs with me of our recent activity we had the convocation at a prophetical school and we were visited by a busload of Hutterites who are out of the Mennonite Anabaptist 16th century tradition have you ever heard of them they're up in northern Canada and from the Dakotas and they wear simple clothing and they're community centered and in one week we had four visits as if something is coming from God that was completely unanticipated and when they heard that my 95 year old mother was living next door to me they brought the bus by and the young people came out of the bus and came into her little screened porch and began to sing hymns and you should have seen my mother's face I took two photographs it is a study because she's she didn't know whether to choke or what to gasp for the love of these of these young people their apparent faith their ability to express it and heartfelt praise and worship of which she herself is not capable and they're goyim they're gentiles celebrating the God of Israel in a way which she is yet not capable and her face was a study so there's hardly a day in a week where something is not coming from God it's like some relentless beating on the door in one form or another until hopefully there'll be a surrender but I appreciate your prayer for that it's a frustration and it tests me as if I can hold her responsible for getting with it and getting with the program and understanding already what the issue is come on how how much exposure do you need and knowing that the the issue is entirely with God and his grace just as we read in this text though God cries out return oh Israel to the Lord your God and explains that their separation is because of their iniquity and and enjoins them to take words with them and to return to the Lord still in the end I will heal their disloyalty it's God who takes the initiative it's the grace of God that comes because of Jews themselves could be a factor in their own deliverance in their own salvation it what then shall they eternally boast and that's why they must be reduced to such a an absoluteness that they know that they know that their salvation has come from God and he has taken the initiative and so what shall I say for myself I was a a poor man's trilling the same essential disposition same blindness the same ethical intellectual kinds of concerns that I see expressed in the article about him was known to me why is it that he died unsaved and here I am not only a believer but serving the Lord all over the world and how did it come to me out of a distress but the mercy and the grace of God that even when the Lord gave me 14 months of revelation studded revelation the first reading of the New Testament people picking me up off the side of the road penetrating words that moved my heart in the last analysis when the Lord himself opened my understanding in Jerusalem I and I was invited to call upon the name of the Lord I could not myself call the calling on the name of the Lord is not a vocalization that we can invoke or perform at our will so my heart goes out to those Gentiles who know about the Lord and are postponing the day they want to have a ball they want to enjoy their independence and self-will but at some later time when it's convenient for them they will call on the name of the Lord they may find out that they're completely incapacitated when when they think that that time has come and that we need to call when the grace is given and so though I found myself incapable of calling of speaking the name of Jesus peaceably because that name has been so polluted and corrupted it was a curse word I just I could not summon it and in that choked sputter the Lord himself brought his own name up through my mouth and I was saved when that when the name of the Lord whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved and the moment that that name in such a broken choked way came out instantly something went out with it that was dark and something came in to replace it that was like the Ruach HaKodesh the Holy Spirit of God I was born again by the Spirit boom in a moment as soon as that name came out and I've been pleading with my mother to call upon the name of the Lord it's near you as close as your mouth oh I know the name of the Lord it's Hashem the name I said no that's not the name that's the word name what is the specific name for which God waits she knows what she won't speak it and maybe she can't so so intractable and so deep is the aversion to the name that the powers of darkness have inculcated in Jewish hearts that it will be a grace as it was a grace for me it will be a grace for her given that we shall not boast we have been delivered out of ourselves by the power of God the new American says I will heal their apostasy I will love them for you yeah in the text you were thinking that Hosea there's at least three entrances that the real chief seven people has been their idolatry I know we in our church many of us have come out of a real group of idolatry making it difficult but not impossible and that's the deliverance in itself yeah is Israel in any way aware that what they're dealing with is no not at all even this is a remarkable conundrum we Jews are patently devoid of any sense of sin and have an exalted sense of our own virtue and righteousness if you would accuse a modern Jew of idolatry that they would right away the word conjures up some image of pagan altars the last thing that even a secular Jew would entertain but if you suggested to them that your idolatry is Judaism itself or the exaltation of your Jewishness as an ethnic distinction that that's an idolatry and even the misuse of the word God even in your synagogue services the way that the the employment of God is a projection of your own fancy and of your own making that is suitable to your purposes but it's not the God who is God is idolatry in its most subtle and powerful of all forms because it's disguised as being religious and therefore acceptable so let me go take this a step further who has the capacity to identify idolatry of this kind when we ourselves as Christians are flirting with the same kind of propensity in other words except that our spirituality is free from the misuse of God where we are not using Jesus as an idolatry the word and name but our hearts are far from him or he's a projection of our own creation that serves our purposes how shall we call them to a correct view of their own misuse and maybe that's what's been wanting for the church to come to such a freedom from the subtlety of its own idols what shall we say about the culture our culture our sports the Olympics the salaries the phenomenal I turned on the TV in my room last night in the Holiday Inn I it's never on at home for me I just want to catch a little bit of the the Olympic report and after about 10 minutes I couldn't take it they're just I was chafed so I'm flicking the dial and I come to one of the candidates for the presidency and I and I found greater difficulty listening to him with his wife being interviewed by a Jewish king what's his first and I shut I so could not bear to hear it I turned the mute button on and then it gave me another picture talk about prophetic seeing of the wife and her candidate husband leaning in with such intensity to feel the questions and make response and force a smile and it was so artificial so altogether piece of unreality of a god forbid that such a one should ever come to a place of power in fact remind me to read you tomorrow sometime a review of a play that has the issue of presidency as its theme and the playwright makes a statement of that a man who does not even know that he's so artificial and feigned and false that for such a one to come to a place of power is really to put the nation in the place of jeopardy so we have idolatry in politics idolatry in sports I can pick up the newspaper and read about the nine million dollar bonus for signing for a young football player whose contract will bring him 90 million dollars for the next five six or seven years I mean all values have gone to pot because I grew up in a generation where pepsi cola how the hell was the little jingle the five cent pepsi cola all this for five cents and my brother and I and my mother shared one bottle a birthday party was chocolate pudding these were the depression years if we got a dime for digging a car out of a brooklyn blizzard and went to the candy store and pointed out a penny's worth of this and a penny's worth of that and came out with a sack of goodies with our hands trembling it was valued now easy come easy go kids are up to their knees and plastic toys and junk that in two days is ready for the garbage can my my grandson loves legos and I was over this place the other day and he's receiving in the mail a comic book with legos characters but also lego advertisements for the newest robot the newest spaceship and the newest newest newest these kids are being victimized they are a market so talk about idolatry we will take the most radical conscious separation ourselves from the subtleties of our own culture and our religious culture to be able to speak to jews and point them to the truth of their condition and maybe for the want of that that they're languishing and to speak the truth in a way that you know all the more because it is true will prove to be an offense of an ultimate kind what they want from you is a condescending backslap and making nice and applauding them they want to hear from you that they're more christian than any christian that you know they want to be recognized for their ethical and social concerns and for you to say that's a facade according to the scripture nothing has changed your sin is kept in store it's a fixed and unchanging aspect of your jewish life and when has it ever been recognized and repented of and even now in its 10 day season of awe in which you're supposed to reflect upon your condition and of your soul to what degree are you in any way intending seriously to do that to what degree are you even willing to suspect that you're that there's anything to consider that could be in any way offensive to god in any way do you regard the statement of the word that there's no man good no not one that if god were to mark iniquity who can stand so of necessity bringing this perspective as i hope to do at that university is a calculated offense and yet it must not be spoken mincingly it has to be boldly presented and how do they interpret your boldness as not being arrogant and who are you to bring it are you the epitome of righteousness and virtue this is an ultimate demand to be both bold and loving and to know that your love will be misconstrued and the church has been silent and call bought my favorite theologian says the very existence of synagogues in our communities alongside our churches is itself an indictment of failure against the church to allow so to speak that existence as if it represents a validity of an alternative for jews appropriate to what is for gentiles is a great movement away already from faith so it will take the attitude of a martyr to be able to confirm jews in this season with the truth of their condition you'll know that you're going to be scorned can we be scorned can we bear to be rejected to be looked upon with contempt and distaste i'll give you a little example of prophetic fidelity maybe i'll end with that though it has not to do with jews it has to do with christians and my responsibility in bringing the word so that about two years ago in the south in north carolina though it could have been in any place i was a guest at the full gospel chapter of the people who were my hosts he was the president of that chapter and i stayed at their home and i've known this couple for years the lady one time wanted to be my secretary in some of our earliest activity 30 years ago she was a significant member and contributor now she's married to this full gospel director and they're in business together well that full gospel meeting that night where i was not a speaker praise god was a horror it was a i don't have a word to describe how carnal the guff was the amen to hallelujah the back slapping it was a piece of religious culture of the hollowest kind i could barely suffer it and the next morning i was at the university of north carolina at chapel hill at the pit the open confrontational uh place where men come to come to confront students i've been there before i preach from that place well this brother and another officer from his full gospel chapter came with me but they did not come to participate they came to observe and as the lord had it there was no preaching but i i went from student to student sitting uh at the rim of this pit this this confrontational area and just talking with black students with white ones the last one i spoke to blonde and blue eyed proved to be a jew and i'm looking at these men they never once bestirred themselves i never heard a word from them i thought to myself the contradiction between their loud protestation last night of amen and hallelujah with and we got the spirit and the and the silence now jarred me and that night i spoke that as a message i confronted not only the family the man but the culture i naively thought that it was a word from the lord that the lord was taking his sword out of the scabbard and showing the farcical aspect of our religious culture that when it comes to something where life and death is at stake and eternity is at stake where is it and it went over like the proverbial lead balloon that is to say the man himself remained untouched smiling cordial southern gentleman bore the offense of it more graciously and it wasn't until i got home that i got a letter of the offense that i had perpetrated of burning my bridges behind me of destroying relationships that were over a quarter of a century old and don't you know that southern propriety uh looks aghast that any man who will speak almost naming names and identifying in his message those known by all who are in that meeting of who's being addressed yes i knew that but what they didn't know that while they were sleeping that morning and the colleague with me from ben israel was sleeping i was on my face in their study crying out to god knowing and sensing what had to be spoken that night where something had to be named and had to be identified that same brother is no longer with us at ben israel and has accused me of arrogance and conceit and gives this as among other things as being an illustration of it that i dared to speak with that kind of audacity directly to the people and bite the hand that fed me well a few months ago i learned that the man is dying from cancer and she broke a long silence by asking our prayer and so i'm sharing this prayer need at fellowship and i'm hearing myself saying in the morning prayer time i wonder to what degree this cancer is related to the rejection both of the word and the messenger two years ago because it's a costly thing to despise the sent word and the sent man and to repudiate both in his obedience and could it be that if they'll acknowledge that and repent of it it might release the man from the from what seems to be an imminent death and if even if i cannot say yes thus says the lord is a direct connection between your rejection of the message and the messenger and what you're now suffering it is at least something that needs to be put before them as a consideration but what does that mean in terms of human propriety and conduct it means rubbing salt into the open wound it means what's the phrase bringing insult to injury it's one thing to have injured them two years ago with that horrendous public message indicting the whole of that religious culture but now to suggest that there's a connection between cancer and the rejection of the word and the man is to bring insult to injury so what would you have done you have a choice of not adding insult by keeping silent but then you would have removed the incentive that might have led to a repentance and to a deliverance in the end i had to send that word and i've not heard from them again and i know what they i can count on it this is too much this is going too far this is the height of offense who does this man think he is what a presumption to think that he's bearing a word and that he has an office and an obligation and that the rejection of it could have this kind of uh uncomely consequence we thought we were being a witness to god after all that our physician is a jew and he's seeing our faith and we're believing that we're going to overcome this this has come from the devil well there are two perspectives one is the prospect of judgment as we see it here in this song that god links with iniquity and the other is yes you may be right maybe the lord has called you to a heroic demonstration of faith to win a jewish doctor but i have an obligation even to suggest that you you must consider and put before the lord this other possibility because my perspective is grounded in the conjunction of iniquity and judgment well why am i saying all that because the issue of the church to the jew is essentially of that kind it's heaping insult upon entry haven't they suffered enough already hasn't there been enough anti-semitism and forced conversion don't you know what happened in the middle ages when jews were required to sit and to hear disputations uh of the of the interpretation of the messianic scriptures and if they fell asleep they were hit with the rods and to awaken them and how many jews died in in either or um alternatives of convert or perish the very town that's my is my favorite steppler in germany estlingen where i stationed as a gi near stuttgart i learned in in my return to the states that the whole jewish community was burned in their synagogue when the crusaders came through and looted and pillaged the jewish community they went for safety in the synagogue it was put to the torch the whole community was wiped out that's part of our jewish history this is what we've taken in with our mother's milk in the very atmosphere and now you as a gentile are requiring me to convert to that same christ and whose cross worn on the tunics of these crusaders what death we thought you were a friend it's a it's a predicament it's a requirement of an ultimate kind for the church as the requirement for me to suggest the the possibility that that cancer might have its origin in the rejection of the word in the messenger and i would say that that's very love the willingness to bear the reproach of being misunderstood is very love it's it's not what the the jew will recognize as love let me alone would be considered by them love but to harass me to raise troublesome questions to say that my my observance of rosh hashanah and yom kippur is only a cultural reflex action without any real depth of contrition or seeking of god or reflecting on my condition of need or that yom kippur itself is a rabbinical hoax i had to show this to my mother i read her the scriptures out of leviticus of what the authentic biblical yom kippur is in leviticus of 15 16 and 17 11 without the shedding of blood there is no remission for sin my mother didn't want to hear it and i told her why it is that the present yom kippur has not a biblical origin but a rabbinical that with the destruction of the temple and the dispersal of the priesthood and the removal of sacrifice the biblical requirement cannot be fulfilled that could only be performed by a once in the year with the with the blood of calves and bulls and that god has provided a once and for all sacrifice and has given us a predicament where the temple is destroyed and we have either the novelty wrought by rabbis in defense of a judaism of which they are largely ought to turn to the sacrifice of christ that repels us and my mother doesn't want to hear can you imagine communicating this to your jewish neighbors that you are the way that you are observing yom kippur however much it's familiar to you however much it's full of misfortune good deeds fasting charity is not an acceptable yom kippur in the sight of god and you have lived 2,000 years without the sanctifying redemption of god that would have been yours had there been a valid sacrifice and the rejection of that sacrifice you're living uncovered kapora is covering and therefore you have been assailed by every devilish force of hell all throughout your diasporic diasporic experience and that even now though you may flourish for a season among the rushes in verse 15 there will be inevitably an east wind that shall come as a blast from the lord at least when there's always an omen of disaster it drives everything up it's ruthless and your fountain shall dry up your spring shall shall be parched and your treasury stripped of every precious thing you german jews with your long history in germany and your respect and admiration of jewish of german culture your picture of your service to the kaiser in world war one the medals that you wore all of those things will go in a moment when the east wind blows because your iniquity is still with you and your sin is kept in store do not hold back it says let you let your voice be like a trump how does how does rosh hashanah begin with a trump it's a call to awakeness to the truth of our condition and god says to the church don't withhold let your voice be like a trump tell jacob their transgression and israel their sins that's love and god's waiting for a church that will be obedient to do it and israel is perishing and subject to what will come up to it in the wilderness and out of an east wind to dry up all their treasure that will come again in the world before this age is over we need to warn them you have no covering you're unprotected somebody sent in a question in my interview last night on the tv well what shall we do now about jews presently if what you're saying is going to come to pass so horrendously i said what you ought to be doing now is to encourage jews to come into the place of safety and into the ark of god which is their messiah and receive his covering and his protection that when these afflictions and troubles come they will be spared my daughter has had an opportunity with a jewish jewish young man that she's been seeking the lord it's not sure if he wants to leave his judaism and come to know christ he was talking to her this week and told her um you know i believe in one god how would you from your perspective answer that yeah but he needs to believe in the one god as the one god has chosen to make himself known that this monotheistic view is a truncated and inadequate expression of god as god that that even the scriptures are full of the holy spirit as being the aspect of the com what's the the compound identification of god so it's the god is not asking him to forsake the defense of the one god but to know the one god in its fullness as god himself has set him forth and nowhere more fully than that to cross the son calling upon the father why has thou forsaken me and giving himself without spot by the eternal spirit all three aspects of deity are expressed in that ultimate crisis of the death of jesus and our rejection of that death means the rejection of the revelation of god in the fullness of his triune godhead so he's just giving you a knee jerk reflex action that defends him but you're not asking him to be a christian in the way that the jewish stereotype thinking would find that repellent you're in fact asking him to come into the fullness of his own jewish faith to which you have been brought by the mercy of god though a gentile into their covenants and promises and hopes by the blood of their messiah that the faith the one faith is jewish is hebraic is biblical is messianic we're not inviting them to an alien culture though unfortunately that's what it has largely become and so we have an obligation then ourselves to esteem and appreciate our own faith in its hebraic character and be able to convey that to them convincingly and that's when the fullness of the gentiles become in when our own culture that is so much part of our present christianity has been stripped and removed and the original character of the faith is restored when we will affirm that we're grafted into their tree and we're living from the sap of it and bearing fruit that shows whose god it is with whom we are joined if sufficient to move them to jealousy we will have fulfilled our obligation transforming for us and salvational for them this is the whole tension of the faith between the church and israel the issue is with us not with them so let's let's pray for that thank you lord gracious god who would have asked for this beyond any capacity that we have in ourselves we lack the courage we lack the wisdom we're cowards lord we don't want to offend we we want to enjoy their esteem our love my god ironically that that desires the best for them if we express it in a way that is challenging will threaten the loss of relationship will be misconstrued will be an offense and we don't want to bear that lord and so i'm asking my god that you will so express something to us in these days of these jewish high holy days that will fit us my god to be for them what we ought our prayers my god will take on a deepened travail our witness my god will be more effective we'll look for opportunity for contact and for relationship we'll be willing to suffer the inconvenience of differences and and and not just the comfort of being with our own we'll we'll study uh more about their their own background their history we'll learn more about lionel trilling about their culture heroes about their mentality their mindsets that we can relate to them and speak to them with understanding lord we need grace and we ask it that you would bless us in these days so as to bless them even unto salvation even to have part my god in this outreach at the state university there at stillwater where jews will be hearing a once and for all statement and a proclamation that has eternity as its consequence that there'll be a depth of travail coming up out of tulsa because of these days that will affect that speaking my god that would not have taken place if you had not brought us here first blessed these days thank you for tonight breaking in my god slowly thank you for this rumbling for this survey of impressions that have preceded my coming here let it let it not be just an idle accounting but affect the understanding of these children and bring them themselves into a sense of what it of prophetic reality that they also must draw from the grit of their own experience their own life and factor in what god is giving them in impression and insight that has an end in view that's redemptive give them the courage to write those letters and make those phone calls and speak in a way my god that neighbors and even members of their own family need to hear though it is calculated to offend before it will be received as blessing help us my god to be the church and to glorify you and to be obedient thank you for tonight lord keep us through the night hours and prepare us my god for shabbat morning and what you will unfold my god in this time together we bless you and give you the praise for the way in which you have been pleased tonight to break in break ground and sound these things in jesus name we pray amen