Preaching - a Sacred Responsibility - Part 2 — Art Katz

Resurrection Preaching Requires Death and Trust

Having courted Bonhoeffer, but he anticipates a new kind of speaking, new language, perhaps completely unreligious, which liberates and redeems. If our word does not liberate and redeems, it's not the Lord's word.

I was just saying at the break, what did they say of Jesus? No man spake as this man. And there's a degree to which, if he is the one speaking in us and through us, that men ought to acknowledge that again.

It says in the Apostles that they took note that they had been with Jesus.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ brought into existence, not of one man but of the whole world, into a new light. The living breath of a new era permeates all authoritative preaching. The living voice of the gospel drives away the power of darkness.

That's an interesting statement. If you're not only addressing your audience, the powers of darkness are being affected by that proclamation, what is issuing. Thus everything is made new. The liberating air of the new moves through all our words and blows through all our sentences.

Pedantic biblical knowledge is shattered. It is the spirit who brings life. What's the new thing? The resurrection of Jesus Christ. So that true preaching, true proclamation is a resurrection phenomenon.

If it's going to be imbued with the power of that risen life, what also must accompany it? If it's to be a resurrection phenomenon, what also must accompany it? Death. There's a measure of death that needs to be born if there's to be a measure of the life expressed through that word.

And it may be a death that precedes it in the formation of the vessel, the history with God. It may be in the very message itself. It may be the mortification, the willingness to be disappointing or to fail is a death that the preacher has to bear.

It may be a trusting. What is faith if it's not death to any human dependency and an utter casting of yourself upon God? As I so often give the example of being in the seminary for two years and having every day to sit in the chapel service, and I cannot remember one message in two years of the speaking from the most astute biblical scholars and teachers and administrators.

Why? Because every message was so well formed. They knew months in advance when they would be called upon. And when their time came, they had an airtight word. It was perfectly exegetic. It was biblically and doctrinally sound.

And it was correct, but it was not life-giving. There was no death. Why? Because the speaker took pains to avoid death. He was not going to give God an opportunity on the spot to fill in the spaces. He came thoroughly prepared from the first word to the last to see to it that he would not fail before his colleagues or his students.

He was not willing to taste the death of trust that the Lord would on the spot bring something of his rhema into that message. And for me, the greatest delight is when I see that, when God brings himself.

Because though you have a thought or a direction, you don't have the word. And you're trusting the Lord on the spot through the operation of his life to bring it. And that trust is a form of death because the death is the prospect of failure, the disappointment of men, etc., etc.

It's more right, not so much the preparation of the message. I'm continually writing, preparing, and studying. But in the proclamation, there's a great space for God where I don't know how. I didn't know yesterday.

There were phone calls from overseas, email letters. A crisis had come up. I got up late for the first time since the school began. Everything was a mumbo-jumbo. And I remember how many times I said yesterday, this is experiment perilous.

Do you remember that? What was I saying? I don't know which way this is going to go. I know that we should be looking into the text on Daniel, but what will happen with it, who knows? What happened? It became an event.

The Word became an event because the Lord on the spot did something in the areas where we could not bring our preparedness. But the greater sense is this. We should always be preparing, not the message but our life.

We should always be preparing. We should always be students, always be in a place of study, always in a place of examination, discussion. But in the actual proclamation, there's got to be room for God on the spot as the rhema, the now speaking.

And if we're unwilling to take that risk because we're afraid that we'll lose the attention or the respect of our hearers, then they get a nicely prepared thing, but they don't get the now speaking of God, the resurrection lifting that power that transports and brings you into that which is new because you have not been willing to suffer some proportion of the death that must precede it.

That's why Paul said, I die daily. There's a daily dying if there's a daily serving, if our service is to be and our preaching a resurrection phenomenon and that this is God's way to the world which was begun in Israel and must be the intent of every sermon.

Divine Love Makes Preaching Offensive When Necessary

The stumbling block of Jesus is inseparable from Israel. Jesus Christ in his person, the saving and healing Word of God, in this form he upholds and permeates the preaching of those whom he has sent. It is only through divine love that a man surrenders and is fully able to serve other men.

Love does not come from a person's ego but from God. It is only through love that God acts in us through Jesus Christ while otherwise we ourselves are always the one acting, we're always the one speaking, we're always the one teaching, always the one preaching.

It's only in love that God will come into the picture and be the speaking of our speaking. Now, that doesn't mean you're playing patsy or making nice or saying favorable things that are easy to be received and then treated.

It might be the love of God requires you to be harsh, requires you to be foolish. One of the greatest demonstrations of the power of God in the Word is, as many have heard from past tapes, is when God had me to mock the congregation.

And they were singing, and I was brought up to the platform, we got Jesus, you got Jesus, I got Jesus, we got Jesus. It was the happiest Pentecostal full gospel assembly. I thought, what am I doing here?

I'm completely out of place. They don't need anything from me. They got it all together. I need from them. And then when I got up to speak, I had no message. That's the death, no message. More times than not, when I get up to speak, I have no message.

I've got many messages, but unless the Lord is giving a thought or a word, you're bereft. You stand trusting that after you pray, something is going to quicken. And you know what quickened? I opened my mouth, I had not yet prayed, and out came, I got Jesus, you got Jesus, we got Jesus, and a complete mock of their ceremonial performance.

And people were horrified and shocked. I was horrified myself. If you're not offended by your own word in you, you're likely not proclaiming the word of God. And so I thought, oh, Lord, forgive me. I've not prayed yet, and look what's coming out of me.

Oh, what must be my carnal condition? Mocking your people. Oh, Lord, forgive me. Wash me in your blood. Take this corruption from me. Bring forth your word that is appointed for this hour. Lord, I pray once and for all for Jesus' sake, for your congregation, for the church.

I went on like that, I opened my mouth, and I said, I got Jesus, we got Jesus, you got... The same mocking after the prayer as before, and the people broke when I said, you got Jesus? I said it, the Lord said it.

It was like a stabbing indictment. You got Jesus? You blow hard, singing lustily out of the top of your lungs. Have you really got him? And that was the beginning of a service that went on until 2 o 'clock in the morning.

The man who had brought me up to the platform, a full gospel official, came to the microphone and confessed that he was in a continuous state of adultery. People were coming up to the platform and confessing their sins.

That began with a mock. But here's what I want to say. That mock was God's love. When Paul at Mars Hill said, I perceive in all things you're too superstitious. Whap! He gave it to them right in the kisser.

What are you saying? We're intellectuals and philosophers, superstitious and for the ignorant, and you begin your monumental address to us by accusing us of that? It began with an insult, but it was an insult that engaged them.

So I'm saying that the love of God, more often than not, is going to be some patsy, condescending, nice thing that entreats the people. It may well be the insult. But does God have the possession of you if his love requires that expression?

Or will you stop if you yourself are offended? If his love has not the operation, he's not going to be speaking. That's what this German theologian recognizes, and we need to recognize it otherwise, or else we're acting and performing correctly, but life is not going forth because it's only his life out of his love.

The Sermon Must Become an Event Through Prayer and Response

And that love might well be offensive before it's a blessing. So it's essential for the sermon to eventuate in prayer and petition. Faith must come to life in the hearer. The listening community cannot maintain an attitude of passive hearing, but must enter the powerful movement of the spirit.

Something is happening. Something is coming from God. It's a transaction. The audience cannot be less passive hearers. Something is required over that word. Some response, some interaction, some time of prayer, an event.

And I often say to the people, after I finish the message, now you have the choice of allowing this to remain as a message or becoming an event by what you are now going to do. You can walk out saying, I liked it or I didn't like it, but if you'll pray according to the word that has come and transact something with God, the message becomes an event by your participation.

I give them always that opportunity to respond. Not that I need to be gratified by hearing people pray or coming to the altar, but I know that it's a moment that will not come again in quite this way.

It's a once and for all. And that they themselves are not called to passivity, but to participation. For we are ruined by passivity. And I love, therefore, what this man is saying. Faith must come to life in the hearer.

Something must happen in the hearer, for the hearer, by the hearer. The listening community cannot maintain an attitude of passive hearing, but must enter the powerful movement of the spirit, which is to say the word of God is that powerful move.

So the place where the preacher is required to hear most exactly what the biblical word is saying is where the prophetic or apostolic message is bringing the error of God's people to light. It's not going to be a transaction and it's not going to be an act of love unless it deals with God's people, where they are and where they need to be.

More often than not, the prophetic word is a corrective word, a challenging word, if not a threatening word. And that's God's very love. And the preacher is always the first to be involved, which is to say he's the first one in and the last one out.

He's got to be the priest that puts his feet in that water first and trusts that that Jordan is going to part. And he's got to stay in that place of tremulous uncertainty while all Israel passes through.

He's got to continue that word. He began it, he's got to continue it, while at the same time looking at their faces. Mamma mia! The deadliest ambush and trap for the word is looking into the faces of God's people while you're speaking.

And it may well be that they're not just cynical or mean or angrily looking at you with contempt. It may well be that they're deep in thought over what is being said to them. They have never been so challenged.

But the way they look is hostile, or at least you imagine it to be that. And the devil is at your elbow to help you to that interpretation so that their very faces chill your soul. And the temptation is to quit or to turn to something more pleasant.

You're the first one in, but you've got to remain in until they all pass through and the word has brought them to the other side. This is the priestly faith and task that true preaching is. If it is to bring to God's people the errors that need to be brought to the light.

Courageous Preaching Confronts the Church’s Cowardice

So it's a task that demands struggle and will experience resistance. And Kierkegaard, who's he? What's his first name? Søren. Who? Søren Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher and critic of the ceremonial formal church of his generation in Denmark, which pertains to this very day.

Dead as a doornail, and it killed him. It was an anguish. One of his books is called Attack on Christianity. Is he really opposed to the faith? No. He's attacking what purports to be Christianity in that bourgeois liberal culture of his generation that was totally inoffensive and predictable.

Well, what does he say? In a certain sense, the preacher should bring his hearers to proclaim, How shall we flee from this man? How do we get away from this? This guy is unbearable. We can't bear to hear him.

What he says searches out all my hiding places. But how can I get rid of him? For every moment, he looms over me. This is an exaggerated statement. But unless people are wanting an escape, then probably they're not being challenged.

And so that's what he's saying. True preaching will almost make the hearer to cringe against the man and against the word that's coming because it's so fearful, so demanding, and so requiring. Would to God they had not heard it because now once they hear it, they're responsible for that word.

And I tell them many times, You'll be sorry you invited me. You'll pay for this. This is going to cost you. Or you thought you were getting a Jewish cutesy experience? Well, it's a surprise. You're going to get a word that is going to flay you, and you'll be responsible for it because it will be the word of the Lord.

And that's, in fact, what they get. They've got to hate it even as they hear it and hate the one who brings it because if they'll not receive it, it's got to be dismissed as not being God's word and actually being false, and therefore you're false also and deserve to be stoned.

This is what's involved if the word is to be truly the word and not many preachers are wanting to suffer those conditions. So the church should be the place where we could exorcise the evil nonsense which the blind leaders of the blind practice on their people.

It's not the place where the nonsense is perpetuated. It's the place where the nonsense is revealed as nonsense. Again and again, German nationalism finds expression. Now he quotes Friedrich Nietzsche.

He went from a Danish philosopher to a German philosopher who committed suicide in the collapse of his whole mind and reason and the desperate thing to which he was brought by the failure of the same kind of church in Germany as Kierkegaard had to observe in Denmark which essentially remains to this day.

It drove a precious man insane. But while he yet had his sanity, he wrote, this inner cowardice in the face of reality which is cowardice in the face of truth. It's a matter of discovering the authoritative nonconformity of the gospel against the world free from all confusion and concealment.

What's wrong with the church? Cowardice. In the face of reality, cowardice in the face of truth. It doesn't want to hear and it doesn't have preachers who want to bring a word that should be heard. Then that cowardice is death.

It was death for the man and it became death for the nation. So this kind of preaching demands courage that no one has of himself. It comes through Christ's victory over death. Only in confrontation with the real dilemmas of life does the listening church come to know the power of God's word.

If it's just an abstract word or a general word, however true, however biblical, it doesn't become a living word. It becomes a living word when the word deals with the substantial issues of the life of the hearers, which is empty and hollow as long as it is governed by a detached biblicism and carefully avoids the urgent daily questions that arise as crisis in the life of God's people.

The word should address the living situation, the crisis through which individuals pass and not circumspectly pass them by because it's a biblical word. That biblical word is biblicism. It's a deformed thing, though it's a correct thing.

It's not a life-giving thing. Why would a preacher shun dealing with the issues of the life that the congregation faces? Too nitty-gritty, too explosive, too likely to be misunderstood, too likely to offend.

Safer to avoid any particular application to the real conditions of those whom you're addressing and safer to give a general biblical message that they can approve without being personally confronted.

I love what this man is summing up about the condition of the German church that remains still, and it's more our condition than we know. So true proclamation is the call to wake up from the sleep of death, the kairos, K-A-I-R-O-S, the Greek word, not chronological, but the decisive time and moment has come.

The gospel of the proclamation summons us to take part in a great movement, and where the gospel is heard calling us to wake up, we have new desire to experience the whole of reality. It's remarkable that the issue of Israel, which I think is central to the church in the last days, does not just awaken the church to Israel, it awakens the church to reality.

And I don't understand it more than any subject that I've ever seen or proclaimed that when this message, this subject is addressed, it's not just an awakening to that subject, it's an awakening to reality, it's an awakening to life, it's an awakening to all kinds of issues.

The church itself, what ought it to be, how is it to be it? The issue of the word, the issue of the spirit, the issue of the gifts, the issue of church government, the issue of politics, the reality, involvement in the world, the issue of true prophets against false, the issue of what is apostolic.

Every issue becomes an issue when this issue is powerfully attended. And for the want of attending that issue, every other issue has lapsed, and therefore we find ourselves in an increasing unreality, majoring on minors because we have avoided or the great subject has not been brought to our attention.

We don't even know how anti-Semitic we are until it is brought up. It's latent in us, I believe that, it's intrinsic to being Gentile. I'm not condemning, I think it's just the nature of the thing until the word itself about the subject reveals how deeply resistant we are to it, if not hostile.

I have seen the most enormous and embarrassing reactions to the word of God on Israel that I have never faced with any other subject. In England especially, in Great Britain, I don't know what it is, there's a hostility to the place of Israel and the purposes of God for the Jew that the church does not want to recognize.

Israel, the Church, and the Awakening to Reality

So I came to a church, I'll never forget the event, where I was with John earlier in that same trip where I was kind of a guest to a conference sponsored by his movement. My books were available, they were never mentioned or located.

The congregation, my name was not mentioned as if I were not even present and there's a complete dismissal of myself in that congregation that no meeting of the Elks or the Rotarians or any secular worldly society would have permitted as being impolite.

Here, a movement calling itself apostolic did not even acknowledge that I was in the room and though I'm known globally and my books were not even mentioned, it was a total insult. Why? Because I bear a message.

In fact, I told them, I told John, I have to say I have not only a message for this conference, I have a message for the nation of Great Britain. And at one point the apostolic leader said, I don't care who comes thinking that he has a word, we are going to seek this experience.

They were into the Toronto move and in fact they did receive or have that experience and it was a complete dismissal. It's not the issue of myself but the issue of Israel that is really the offense. Later on in that same trip, I came to a congregation.

I had diarrhea that night and the brother had desperately to find me a place to take care of myself before coming to the service so we came in late, hot, perspiring, flushed, no time to prepare, out of whack, out of joint and they're calling me to speak.

I had no message. And the moment the Lord said, Romans 11. I said, Lord, that's kid stuff. That's elementary, my dear Watson. Everybody knows that. Romans 11. I came up and I spoke Romans 11. More fetchingly and preciously in a new way that I had never before spoken but the faces were so hostile, so antagonistic, you would have thought I was inviting people to an orgy.

What am I saying that they're looking at me as if I'm bringing dung and refuse and stink into their congregation. I spoke the word of God in Romans 11. I sat down and the meeting was never dismissed. There was no prayer that followed, no thank you but no thank you.

They got up and they left the room and that was the end. I had never experienced anything more crude and impolite than that. But their custom was to serve tea. And so one elder had to remain to serve tea and I was the only customer and I'm dangling my tea cup and I look up at this man and I said, You know, my dear brother, please convey to your colleagues that they're not under obligation to receive my understanding of Romans 11 but they are under obligation to recognize that it was a sound biblical word.

It may not be an interpretation of it to which they are suited but at least have a respect for someone coming bearing a word that is consonant with Scripture. And this treatment, this abject leaving the room without even ending the meeting in prayer will come back to you to haunt you and it may well be an end of your fellowship in the rude way in which you have treated the man and his word.

I don't know if they still remain but it was an event I'll not forget. I've never seen such rudeness except over the issue of Israel. What is it with men? What is there in the antagonism that God yet has a place for this people because they have a place for themselves and the very word restoration, I found out later this was the restoration movement but what are they restoring?

Not Israel but the church. The church has become the thing in itself, the end all and the be all and has replaced Israel and they are offended by any reference to this people who have had their time and have blown it and they don't want to hear this again.

So you don't even know that you're anti-Semitic because to be hostile to the purposes of God for Israel is to be hostile to the God who has the purposes. Anti-Semitism by whatever veil form in this last ultimate expression is anti-God.

It's an attitude against God and a resentment against that which he has chosen and it needs to be recognized and it will not be recognized until the word comes. So the word needs to come. Back again to the issue of the tabernacle of David.

Why has the charismatic movement chosen to interpret that as a form of worship rather than what it seems to me clearly to be and verified in scripture as being a statement of Davidic rule because to understand it as Davidic rule is to understand that it pertains to a kingdom that is Israel's.

Is it time now to restore the kingdom to Israel is not a question that Jesus dismissed as being false only as a question out of place and out of time. Something must proceed it. But he never dismissed the validity of the question.

The kingdom is Israel's but it's not for Israel. It's through Israel to all the world. But why hasn't the charismatic movement seen it that has turned the phrase on its ear and made it a self-aggrandizing thing as worship for their own enjoyment because they have no view of the kingdom.

They have no view, no expectation of the real government of God that will be seated in one place only, Zion. From that holy hill I have established my king and given him the heathen for his inheritance.

So to the degree that they have no heart for God's purpose for Israel and for the Jew they have taken to themselves in this arrogance definitions and understanding that celebrate themselves as the church.

Even the word restoration. Where did they get it from? Acts 3 .21 that Jesus is contained in the heavens, self-contained waiting for the restitution or the restoration of all things spoken by the prophets since the world began.

The prophets did not speak about the restoration of the church. They spoke about the restoration of Israel. That in the last days a mountain of the Lord's house will be elevated above all the mountains and hills and to it all the nations will come to learn the ways of the God of Jacob.

That's the restoration which the Lord is waiting. And my experience that the greatest opposition that I have faced and conflict is not so much from evangelical and fundamental Christians but as those who purport ironically to be either apostolic or prophetic.

Figure that one out. Men with whom I should have the greatest affinity in the likeliness of our callings are the ones from whom I have the greatest rejection and the greatest opposition because they are in a restoration movement that has as its object not the thing of God's choosing but their own.

And I said to my brother until the church will surrender and submit and break from its arrogance and receive the humbling thing of God's choice of Israel that cannot even define itself or know itself as the church.

Its own perception of itself is deformed if it has omitted that very subject which is the grace of God for its own perception of itself for its call for that purpose to move them to jealousy, to exhibit, express mercy, they might receive mercy.

To omit that consideration as a central if not fundamental mandate for the church that is the church is to lose your definition of the church even when you applaud present Israel. So what is the task of preaching of the proclamation of the word of the prophetic function?

Prophetic Preaching Awakens the Sleeping Church

It's to awaken the church before the world from the depths of the sleep and bizarre dream world from which we also must be called. Whether it's charismatic, whether it's the play on revival, whatever the emphasis that is not authentically of God or suffers distortion for the want of the central thing that God would put before us.

The church itself is in a sleep and in a bizarre dream world from which it needs to be awakened and the only thing that can awaken it is the true word of God to those who will preach it with courage. It demands courage but it's not a courage that any man has of himself.

It has got to be the courage which is very laud. So people say to me sometimes after they hear a fearful word come out of mouth, Art, weren't you afraid to proclaim that? I said, no, not at all. The only thing I was afraid of was not to proclaim that.

My fear was not of men's anger against the word. My fear is failing to be obedient to the God who sent me to speak it and who give us a courage to face men and he tells us don't look at their faces. You've got to have an inward sense of what you are about in God as being sent and bearing that word.

That's not just your own little personal, private and particular thing that you enjoy for its intricacies or the delight of the word but the sent word. The momentous now appointed word that must come forth in point of time as sent and you may well displace it by being preoccupied by something that you enjoy and which will bring you a happy response from the audience rather than their antagonism to the bringing of a hard word that makes a requirement that they don't want to hear.

If you don't get a copy of the little booklet on the rack of apostolic conversion, you're missing the classic. All that is is the transcript of a spoken word in California when after two nights of ministry I was ready to quit and it was a charismatic congregation and yet the word kept coming back into my teeth.

I had to suffer the frustration of a word against which a wall had been erected and I'm sitting on the treasure of God ready to pour out and I knew it was pointless. And on the third day I said, Lord, unless you do something this night there'll be no fourth night, four nights of meetings.

We fasted and prayed that day with the exception of the brother from Venezuela who accompanied me because I fasted didn't mean he had to fast. After all, what am I trying to do? Bring a spirit of control that manipulates him that because I'm fasting he should fast?

He ate. Nevertheless, when the word came, you'll read it, that booklet is the transcription of the word exactly as it was spoken and down they came because this people had covenanted with God silently this far but no further.

And interestingly enough, and I don't think it accidental, they enjoyed a superior lifestyle. The very house where we were staying, I don't know how many thousands of square feet with gorgeous cars, SUVs, boat in the driveway, they had a lifestyle to maintain that was yet to be Christian but not so radically Christian as to threaten those vested interest and therefore the resistance.

But when the word came, down they went and remained down and I knew that a transaction was taking place out of confrontation of a once and for all word that had come that would not come again. And when they got up, they were different and have remained different since.

That word is now in Dutch, Danish, Russian, other languages and bringing its effect worldwide. It was the word of the Lord given in the moment of crisis time in which it had to be spoken with courage.

So, it's this kind of proclamation that world which seems to us to be a final reality sinks away and the true world appears. Our first look at real life, man finally begins to really live, to live significantly and as we spoke yesterday, to embrace true values for the word of the Lord has come.

And the word of the Lord, that puny, frail, verbal, auditory thing in contest with all of the paraphernalia of the world, all of its nomenclature, all of its assets, all of its visible attributes, all of the things that speak of its power, its prestige to which men have subscribed in their lifestyles comes a frail, verbal word that counters and is contrary to the supposed reality and values of that world to which even the church subscribes until the word comes.

The Word Reveals the Hidden Condition of Worshippers

One more illustration and I'm not giving you these illustrations in any way to laud myself but what else shall I draw from to give insight into what the word of God means. In Australia, many of you have heard these illustrations but they're timeless and I praise God for all of them.

It's a church that was not on my schedule. The greatest charismatic success of that district in Australia. So, I went tripping like a doe and what a delight this is going to be and I'm sitting on the platform and they're having a bash.

I mean talk about worship, talk about praise. My God, what am I doing here? I'm absolutely superfluous. These people have it all together. I myself have never approached such dimensions of praise and celebration of God that they're expressing and while I'm looking on them waiting to be called on no message, again, the Lord froze the scene and they're like this.

But instead of seeing joyous countenances, the mask was removed in a moment of time and I saw the truth of their condition. Insecurity, fear, self-contempt, hatred of God, the truth of their condition of a nation whose foundations and origins go back to the English prisons that were emptied to send them colonizers and that they have never gotten over their complex that the nation was built on the foundations of England's social scum.

They bear a continual national inferiority complex and that's why they have to be macho and crush beer cans and have tattoos and win the world tennis titles because there's a lingering disdain for themselves and that was under the superficial exterior of the amens and the hallelujahs and the Lord only gave it to me for a moment and then he took it away and they went back again and then I'm hearing my name called.

I felt like a man going to his execution. In fact, as I've said on many occasions, when I watch other men come up to the pulpit with glee and with delight, I think they're almost disqualified. I invariably go up like a snail.

Isn't there some other alternative? Where's the exit? What am I doing here? Why do I have to be the one? That they take delight in this? They must be doing something enjoyable. For me, it's a dread experience.

I'm hearing my name called. I get up and I look out on this happy scene and I have a choice to make. Do I speak in view of the reality that these people are expressing or do I speak out of the reality that God gave me in a flash of a moment when he froze the scene and showed me another reality which I believe is the truth of the condition?

No choice for a man who was sent from the Lord. I opened my mouth and I described to them what I had seen. Whew! Dear saints, if you've ever come to a near head-on collision, you're out of your lane and you're coming to the crest of a hill, you thought you could turn in before the hill, but you didn't turn in fast enough or you were blocked and there's another car coming right at you and it's sheer death.

That's what I faced. It's like people slapped on the brakes. You could feel the shuddering because a moment had come of put up or shut up that either they would kill the man bringing this disparaging word and daring to bring any kind of suggestion that what they are about is false or they must fall before that word as being the truth of their condition and go back to square one and begin all over again.