Gleanings From Psalm 87 — Art Katz

Well, I have no message and I am a message. You can't believe how we have prayed for this morning and these days in Buffalo and Canada where I'm going. I was anointed with oil yesterday by our own fellowship.

They laid hands on me and sent me forth as an apostolic sending. And you're the first place where I'm opening my mouth after such a sending as that. And my only thought is from my own devotional reading of this morning in the Psalms.

The Necessity of a Devotional Life

Did you read the Psalms before you came to church? Do you have a devotional reading? Do you have a devotional time? What? You mean you get out of bed and spend a half hour in front of the mirror with your mascara and not five minutes with the word of God to prepare your spirit before coming to service?

No wonder we're so lackluster. No wonder the pastor has to strive to find some kind of, what do they call it, the spiritual roulette to hit something that will revive you. You should come already revived.

You know, I regret that my earliest years were in the assemblies of God. I was a Jewish convert out of atheism and out of Marxism. And no one ever spoke to me about a devotional life. You might have to take my jacket off.

Only recently in the last few years have I learned the remarkable privilege of devotional life. How could I have gone on this long and have been so widely used and circulated without it? So my morning begins early and I give the Lord plenty of time.

And I'm reading Oswald Chambers, my utmost for his highest daily choice, Dwelling on Death and two or three other devotional books. Plus the Psalm for that day. Plus the chapter in the book of Proverbs for that day.

And wheresoever the Lord will lead me in the things that are upon his heart as well as a season of prayer. Then I can face the day and what the Lord has. This ought to be standard operating procedure.

And it's sacrificial if you're going to work and have to punch a clock. But the Lord will honor that and give you stamina for whatever you think you may have lost in an early rising. If we're going to be saints, it's going to take this as a preliminary.

You know, devotional life is a matter of course. Okay, well what was my psalm for today? Psalm 87. Because I follow the calendar. Today is the 17th. And as I go through five months of psalms, the number 17 comes up for me today as 87.

And it's not one of the more grand psalms. It's brief. But it will give me a springboard to share a few things. The title in the New American Standard. Do you ever read the italic title before a psalm?

Zion as the City Loved by God

The privileges of citizenship in Zion. Whatever Zion is. His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the other dwelling places of Jacob. If he loves it, what ought our attitude to be?

And if we can't even identify it, how shall we then love it? Well at least it ought to stir us to be concerned with, well what is the Zion that God so loves? Above all. If it's that important to him, and not just a category, but his devotion and his heart is there, how dare we be ignorant and indifferent to that?

More than all the other dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God. A lot of mystical or mysterious references. Zion, holy mountain, city of God. But you'll find them in the New Testament.

In Hebrews 12, you have not called to the mountain where God dwelled in rings of fire, but you've called to Zion, you've called to Mount Zion. And the city of God is described in Revelation, is it 21 or something like that, where it comes down from above as a bride adorned for the bridegroom?

These are symbols, profound statements that God gives as choice and juicy hints, trying to draw us out to be engaged and to inquire, what does all this mean? That he has engaged the psalmist by the Spirit and inspired this.

And John the Revelator and the author of Hebrews, I think, who was Paul, all touching the same thing. There's a significance about Zion that we dare not ignore except at our own risk. You know that the church can become a commonplace.

You know that the church can become a Sunday culture. You know it can become a place just for our convenience. It could even become a relief for aggravated consciences that want to be able to say, well, I went to church today.

Or I came to the altar. And then go back again to a kind of humdrum, routine, mechanical, predictable lifestyle that is not affecting anything anywhere. All because of the ignorance of Zion and what it represents as dear to God.

That the church that is not occupied with what is dear to God is ipso facto not the church in any significant sense of that word. It's only an institution. It's only a religious culture. We've got to know what God loves.

The eternal purposes of God for the church. What does He have now? What are they? And we don't know about them? How shall we give ourselves to them? And if they are eternal, they must be mighty. And if they're that significant, how much opposed will they be by the powers of darkness?

It opens up all kinds of questions. What kind of a church? What does God mean by church? The aggregate of individualities who are willing to come together for a few hours but who are totally privatistic, individualistic, separated, occupied with their own narrow lives, and not in any way indicating the apostolic koinonia, quality of relationship that characterized the church at the first, the early church, where the glory of God was upon it and the power of God was expressed through it.

The Fellowship and Spiritual Power of the Early Church

How come we don't have it today? What's the difference? What are we lacking that they had? What was the character of their knit of life where no man thought that the thing which he had was his own? Have we been seduced by a worldly lifestyle that emphasizes privacy and thinks that we have it coming?

And rather than going from house to house daily breaking bread, we would be offended if someone came in without first calling and found us with our hair up in curlers or our husbands with a beer can with his feet up on the coffee table watching the football game and doesn't want to be interrupted.

That the football game is more important than the fellowship of the saints. That's a drag because the saints are not that entertaining, not that enjoyable. What would happen if we would be closed in with ourselves alone and there would be a blackout and no TV and no distraction and we had to find out delight in the church?

Wow, what a drag. Unless the saints become saints, unless they have histories with God, unless the Lord has quickened something in their devotional life, that very morning that they hear them share that revives something in you.

You interact over the word of God, your fellowship. They were steadfast in their fellowship and in the apostles' doctrine and the breaking of bread. And that was the matrix that God blessed. Great grace was upon them all.

It's not a grace we have ever known in modern times. It's great grace. It's reserved for a great reality. Which reality? We don't know. But we need to seek and obtain and it's all related to the word Zion.

Priestly Ministry Instead of Religious Performance

Should God be glory in the church? Let's see who's going to fight me when the service is over to get this. All classic messages, priests unto him. What is that, Catholic art? No. We're called to priestliness.

It's intrinsic to the faith. Jesus is the high priest and the apostle of our confession. He could not be that apostle without also being high priest. There's a conjunction, a necessary relationship between priestliness and ministry and calling.

Totally lost to our consciousness. And that's why we have become performers. We know how to respond to the cues. We know how to be cute and winsome. My heart goes out to my young brother. Are you a graduate of an assembly's Bible school?

No, nothing like that? Well, then there's hope for you. Lord, save him from going the way of all flesh and becoming an attractive religious personality that kids like. Let him be a man of God, priestly.

Because you know what distinguishes a priest? He has no concern for himself. That anything should return to him by virtue of his service or ministry. It doesn't have to be acknowledged. It doesn't have to be rewarded.

He can even bear reproach, insult and rejection. And still be faithful in service. The thing that distinguishes priestly ministry from any other is that there's nothing in it for the priest himself. But blood from fingertip to elbow.

Selfless service. Let's see who could come up for that one. Martyrdom. Come on, Tess, this is the assemblies of God. Martyrdom? What are you saying? A little interesting thing of a view in the historic past of the church where some small number had to suffer an unhappy fate like that?

No. This is the definitive call of God to saints of every generation. And particularly the last. Martyrdom is alcohol. Whether or not we pay it, physically or not, it's not a matter of how you end your life, it's how you live your life.

There's a certain mindset, a certain perspective. So on. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the other dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God. I shall mention Rahab and Babylon among those who know me.

Behold Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia. All of these are ancient cities, kingdoms that had a degree of luster and notoriety and fame in times past. Why are they being cited? Because Zion eclipses them all.

Because they're all turned to dust. Because they're all a piece of antiquity that no longer has any significance. But Zion is eternal and abiding. And yet God calls it a mountain, but you know what it is?

It's a hill. It's a pimple. Have you ever been to Israel? And seen the city of David on the hill of Zion? It's only a hill, guys. It's not your Olympus. It's not some great towering peak that commands awe.

It's humble. It's insignificant. But that's where God has chosen to put his name. That's his dwelling place. That's where the law shall go forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem to all nations.

Zion, the Law of God, and the Nations

Believest thou this? Contemplatest thou this? You think that the world needs the law of God? The order of God? The wisdom of God on how to live in righteousness for the nations? That they'll no longer study war and turn their implements into pruning hooks?

You think the world needs that? I wish you were with me in, where was it? Fort Worth, Texas, visiting with friends. And the brother was an engineer who works where they produce the F -16 fighter plane.

I'll never recover. It was like entering another world. The people there were not so much human as they were zombies. I never saw such a strange configuration of men whose humanity had fled from them.

I never saw such a slow method of production where men actually have learned to slow their every step and every action so that they can make it up through overtime. And there's something about working with implements of death that brings death.

I'm telling this brother, get out of it. And there was the F -16 going to Thailand and the F -16 going to Lowis-Lavovia. Any country, however small, has to have an F -16. What are they defending? It's a matter of prestige, pride, pomp, that they're up to date in their technological arsenal.

Billions, billions, billions of the world's wealth expended for that. At the end thereof is death. Hey, I'm the only guy that is not thrilled for our space exploration. So what are we going to find, a rock on the moon?

Hoping that there'll be moisture? You know why? Because the insidious and ultimate motive is to show that the God of the Bible is not really God. That there's creation elsewhere that the Bible does not explain.

That's what they're really after, and we're footing the bill for those jerks. That they can play their adult games at such expense when the world is steeped in poverty and starvation. What is it, 30 ,000 or 300 ,000 daily deaths of children?

Lives that are abbreviated and stunted, and we're out there in space looking for moisture in a rock? How come you haven't cried out? How come you've sat quiet and played Patsy without registering complaint?

What kind of a church are you? Where's your moral and prophetic cry? Of course, your own kids were out there sleeping overnight for the first opening of Star Wars. They didn't want to miss the premiere.

The Eternal Contrast Between Zion and the Nations

So, but of Zion it shall be said, this one and that one were born in her. The Most High himself will establish her. The Lord shall count when he registers the peoples. This one was born there. Imagine what a distinction.

That you were not born in Babylon. You were born in Zion, spiritually. That the Lord registers that. That's important and distinctive. Then those who sing as well as those who play shall say, all my springs of joy are in you.

What are you going to do with a psalm like that? Sounds so mysterious. So little opportunity to find a springboard to comment and to preach anything significant. Well, let me give you some thoughts that occurred to me this morning.

The italics of the title on another revised standard version says, the joy of living in Zion. You know that you can live in the Buffalo area? Or shall I say, you can have your residence there, but your true living is in Zion?

Do you know you can do that? But are you doing that? Where is your effectual life being lived? Here in the earth? With its values, with its mentality, with its mindset? That is corruptive, that is opposed to the faith and opposed to God, however honorific and however it's packaged.

And sanctified and honored by the world? Or is your true residence in Zion? Paul says, I have my citizenship in heaven. And he really did. That's why he was so freaky. And so much peace of heaven that men could not abide it.

Even Jewish men, even orthodox men fasted and threw dirt on their heads and vowed that we will not eat again till this man is killed because he's not fit to live. There's something about him so offensive we can't stand the sight of him.

Wherever he comes he starts a riot. He's threatening our whole system. We had it all made until this convert came and ruined it all. How come they're not saying that about us? How come we're so acceptable?

Who's vowing not to eat so long as we live? You know what I'm saying by all that? There is a joy of living in Zion according to these italics. But as T. Austin Sparks says, there's also a controversy of Zion.

The Controversy of Zion and Spiritual Conflict

Now who's T. Austin Sparks? Raise your hand in this room if you've ever heard that name. Hey, well I thought I... Who else? You've heard of T. Austin Sparks? He's one of those little known commentators, English, who forsook a religious career.

I think he was nigh unto a nervous breakdown or suffered it. Somehow the contradictions in his spirit with what the religious world was expecting him to perform finally brought him to a place of breakdown.

And he was very successful until that time. And then when he, from the process of recovery, the world began to give him insight of an unusual kind. See if you can get anything that he's written. And one of the things that he's written were a series of talks on Zion.

I don't find anybody speaking about it, having any knowledge, any intuitive sense of it. And when I read this transcribed speaking of messages given at a Deeper Life conference in Great Britain when he was alive, I just sense the man agonizing.

He's choking, he's gasping, he's trying to find air, he's trying to say something that's in his spirit that has not yet reached the level of consciousness. He's birthing something. And well, it would require this kind of gasping and travail to bring forth something on so holy a subject that is so little understood or sought after.

But one thing he says in that booklet is the controversy of Zion. What he's saying is, once you become identified with Zion, once it becomes a serious consideration for you, the enemy who has up till now yawned in your face and been totally unimpressed with your taking of cities and whatever else you're going to do, will now make a note of you and realize that you are a person or a congregation that needs to be feared.

You've crossed the threshold. You've come into a realm of consideration that is threatening to the kingdom of darkness that up till now has not been affected at all by anything that you've done, let alone what you think is taking cities or casting out demons or yelling or screaming or shrieking.

Just take an interest in Zion. Just begin to direct yourself this way. Just begin to contemplate why such a city, such a word is so significant to God that he loves it above all the places of Jacob. And you will be noted by the powers of darkness as one to be observed and watched because you're becoming dangerous.

There's a controversy for Zion. Yes, there's a delight in having your essential living there and dwelling there and your values there, but also the enemy will take note of it. And will begin to turn up the juice or the heat.

And the Lord will allow that because God takes that opposition as the very grit by which he brings us to sonship. Is that a strange expression? To be brought to sonship? We're children of God, but are we sons of God?

Sonship, Suffering, and Spiritual Maturity

Like Jesus, the Pattern Son. Have we come to maturity in a priestly way where our one abiding passion is to serve the purposes of the Father no matter the consequence to ourselves? For him it was unto death.

He's bringing many sons to glory, but he's not going to bring you against your will. He's not going to bring you in your indifference. You're content to be a child and you can be a believer 25, 30, 40 years and never have advanced from the childhood of your first salvation.

Sonship is a process and a growth. And growth is painful. Are we willing for that? Are we moving toward that? I wrote here, And ourselves, do we love the gates of Zion? And this is an answer to parochialism as it is of nationalism.

What are you saying there, Katz? Nationalism is one of the most powerful factors in the world today. The Rwanda debacle where a genocidal thing happened between black African tribes. 50 ,000 were hacked to death, many of them in churches.

What will you say about Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia? You know that they are all the same Slavic, ethnic, racial makeup? And yet they hate each other's guts? You know that they can slit open the bellies of pregnant women?

And without batting an eyelash? You know they can rape 10, 11 and 12 year old girls and consider it a military strategy? In modern times, in our generation? Because of their fervent and intense national identification, they can perform ethnic cleansing for those who are not Serbs and they are only Croatians or Albanians.

Don't think we are free from this corruption. Only the power of Zion can save us from identification of any lesser earthly kind. That's why I can go to Egypt as a Jew. And God can give me a text where, Israel I have loved as a child and I have called my son out of Egypt.

And say Lord there is no way that these Egyptian Christians can understand. They are going to be offended. They are going to look upon me as some white imperialist and Jewish Zionist speaking against Egypt.

That's not a text for me Lord. But you know what I spoke? What the Lord gave. You know what happened? They went down like a deck of cards. The pastor who unbeknownst to me in the assemblies of God had cried out that day.

Lord if you do not give me a word this day. If you don't show me some alternative to every gimmick and thing that I have been schooled in. That does not work to bring either numerical or qualitative increase.

I am out of here. I am finished with this. I will go to the garbage heaps but I am not going to continue in this. The Lord gave him a word that night. Israel I have loved as a child but I have called my son out of Egypt.

Even if the son is himself Egyptian he needs to come out of Egypt. You know what happened when Hitler came to power in Germany? And the German church watched the beginning from Kristallnacht. And I think it was 1938 when they destroyed most of the synagogues in one night.

From that time on there was the progressive systematic process of bringing Jews out of their apartments and houses. And putting them in ghettos and sending them in freight trains to the places of extermination.

What did the church say about that? Nothing. It went along with the national policy. They made as if they did not see and they did not know. What happened to our Jewish neighbors? I do not know. I do not see them anymore.

As if they could not smell the stink of the burning flesh. They had not the courage, they had not the guts to stand against the national policy. They were more identified with Germany and its national aspirations than they were with the God of Zion.

And they were unwilling for the identification that would threaten their security. And they went along. They became the German National Church. And they had the German flag and the portrait of Hitler on the front of the church.

And were discouraged from reading into the Old Testament and from removing the Jewish believers from out of their congregation. Or else they would find themselves in concentration camps also. What if we were faced with such a choice as that?

What if our America should politically move in that direction? Would we go along? Where is our identification? Where is our loyalty? Will we stand for righteousness or will we be one of the boys? There was a national church and there was a confessing church.

Martyrdom and Loyalty to God’s People

And many of the men in the confessing church found themselves in concentration camps. Martyrdom is the name of the game, saints. And unless we're willing for it, there's no way that we're going to be the church that will preserve its Jewish people and stand for the God of Israel and for Zion when those very things are threatened.

Oh, there's so much I could tell you. I said that there's a holocaust coming that will eclipse the Nazi time because it will not be confined to Europe, it will be global. And unless there's a church that will extend itself for Jews in their time of Jacob's trouble, in the time of their fiercest opposition and threat to their life, not one will survive.

That's why Paul says in Romans 11 that by your mercy they may obtain mercy. And I'll bet you dollars to donuts, there's very little consciousness in the congregation about Jews at all, about Israel at all, let alone any sense that they are at the threshold of one of the darkest hours in their entire national history.

And it's a time of Jacob's trouble, spoken in Daniel, spoken in Jeremiah, spoken by Jesus, wherever Jacob is, which includes Buffalo, New York and Toronto. You're going to be faced with searing decisions about what is your relationship with that people.

And your willingness to identify with them at the time of their greatest threat. Will the real church please stand up? And those who will not stand up will find that the alternative to radical identification with God and his people is apostasy.

And there's no middle ground. Now when Jesus comes as king, what is the first judgment that he performs? What did you do for the least of these, my brethren? Good Lord, when did we see you hungry, thirsty, naked and in prison?

As you have not done this to the least of these, my brethren, you've not done it unto me. Now be cast into the fire, prepared for the devil and for his angels. What? Such an eternal judgment for the failure of one thing only?

Yes, but that one thing is everything. Your ability to recognize the least of these, his brethren, and to extend mercy to them at risk to yourself is the statement of the truth of your entire personal and congregational life.

You think you're going to be able to rise to the occasion when it shall come suddenly upon you if your every service has not been a preparation to that end before that time? Okay, we need to have the power of our national identification broken and of our parochialism, of our narrow self-interest, our locality, our church, our congregation, our national identification broken and of our parochialism, of our narrow self-interest, our locality, our church, our congregation, our movement, our, our, our.

And there's only one thing given by God powerful enough to counteract all of these secondary and lesser loyalties. It's Zion. Zion is God. Zion is the purpose of God and the eternal purpose and the glory of God.

And unless you're identified with that and are a citizen and have your dwelling there, you're going to be drawn off to parochial, national, and other interests that will compromise you and make you only an ineffective pew-sitter.

Conversion, Hospitality, and the Love of Christ

And that's why I never got saved in America. Where were you? I had to wait until I was 35. My God, and I've been seeking for truth from the time I was a high school dropout at the age of 16 and became a merchant seaman on the high seas as a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, not just looking for adventure, looking for meaning.

I had to be picked up off the side of the road as a 34-year-old hitchhiker by born-again believers who were willing to pick me up in my sodden, wet, messed condition, standing in the drizzle and the rain, watching the cars go by.

By people who didn't want to be inconvenienced or take the risk of such a formidable-looking stranger. But a man stopped for me in a brand-new car, and he didn't just give me the come-on-hurry-I'm-doing-you-a-favor.

He got out of the car and greeted me, took my filthy, wet rucksack, and threw it in the backseat of his car and was even totally unconscious of what it did to his upholstery. I thought, what manner of man is this?

Mother warned me of men like this. There must be something in it for him. And he had me take a seat in the front, and we drove off, and I felt like I was the exalted guest. I was doing him a favor. And he turned and said to me in German, Why are you traveling like this?

It's past the tour season. Oh, I said as well as I could express it, I'm a modern man whose life is broken at its foundations. I've been a Marxist, I've been an existentialist, I've looked into philosophies, to ideologies.

I'm disillusioned. My gods have failed. There's no other god. I've had it. The world is moving toward a racial and atomic holocaust. It's hopeless. I'm a high school teacher. I have nothing to say to my students.

I can raise their questions. I can't answer them. I'm married to a German woman who's schizophrenic from the Hitler time, and I can't be civil to her. I thought I was a nice guy until she revealed how savage I am in the futility of her own psychological and emotional condition.

I have no answer. He said, Let's stop for refreshments at my expense. And I'm pouring out over the coffee table this litany of anguish, sharing it with a Gentile stranger, thinking to myself, Hey, you're sharing things of such a private and painful kind that you've never spoken to your mother or your deepest friends.

Who's this Gentile that you've just met that is opening your heart like this, who didn't jump on me with John 3 .16 to put another notch in his belt, but he was listening to me like I had never been heard.

His hearing of the anguish of my soul was an act of love and not an opportunity to spring with a little formula. Are you saved, brother? God has a plan for your life. Notice how formulaic we Americans are.

We always want something reduced to step one, step two. That's not going to work with Jews, I can tell you. You better have a much greater relationship with the Holy Spirit than a little fragile number of principles, step one, step two.

You're not going to do this by the numbers. You're not going to do your marriage by the numbers. You'll do nothing by the numbers but by the Spirit of God if you're yielded. And so I'm pouring out my heart to this man and I finally came to him and I had nothing more to say.

Finished. I looked at this guy, nothing impressive. I had my arms folded over my chest, my typical arrogant Jewish contempt for Gentiles. What are they going to tell me? I've been this, I've been that, I've been in philosophies, I've traveled.

There's nothing new under the sun. And he said in a quiet voice, Artie said, Do you know what the world needs? I perked up, I thought, hey, I've got to say this. This guy knows how to ask the questions.

I'm dying for what the world needs and we Jews have made this world in which I'm dying. Who else has given the world Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein and Steven Spielberg but us Jews. We have made this world and it stinks and it's nigh unto death.

Yes, I want to know what the world needs. That's what I'm dying from. What are you going to tell me? He said, Artie said, What the world needs is for men to wash one another's feet. Down he went, clunk.

That may be old hat for you, but I was a Jew who had never read the New Testament. I never heard about washing feet. I never read the Old Testament. I was a secular, atheistic Jew who looked upon the Bible as a crutch for the weak.

But when he spoke that one thing, I instantly had a vision of all of the arrogant hot shots of the world, the art catchers of the world, who are going to save it and steep it in a bloodbath, humbling themselves to wash the feet of the lowly and the despised.

I thought of Israelis washing the feet of Palestinians or high school teachers washing the feet of their administrators. We had a war on right within the school structure. Wherever there's authority, wherever there's conflict, children with their parents.

And there's a cry that went up out of my heart, Eureka! Hey, this will change the world overnight without a drop of blood being spilled. And I had never heard of a spirit, let alone a spirit of humility.

And before I could recover, this man went on in German to tell me about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I wanted to complain and say, hey, that's not for us Jews. That's for you guys. We got ours, you got yours.

But I had no voice. And as those words were coming, I knew in my deepest heart, I'm hearing the words of truth in life. How it could come in the name of Jesus, and which name we Jews have been historically persecuted for 2 ,000 years, I couldn't figure out, but I knew I was hearing truth.

When I left that man that day, I didn't walk away. I staggered away. I was like one drunk. I couldn't take it all in. But I was being prepared for that girl that my brother spoke of, who I met the next day, or only a few days later.

An American girl from Buffalo, New York, or some place like that. Some wasp, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. She might even have been in an Assemblies of God, or who knows. She was certainly the symbol of everything we New York Jews despise.

That's why the word wasp is a denigrating and insulting term. And what have I to do with this kid? I'm twice her age. She's in Europe on vacation, having completed high school. What is she going to tell me?

I'm a university graduate. I'm an omnivorous reader. I know this, I know that. And she was willing to spend time with me, walking the woods surrounding this European city in Switzerland. I'm probing this girl's motives.

Hey, how come you're being kind to me? How is it you're not afraid of me? I'm a formidable, threatening, and intimidating guy. You're not afraid? You're willing? Oh, she said, it's the love of God, Art.

The love of God, the love of God. I couldn't bear to hear the phrase. It was a cliche. It was a tired, worn-out phrase that doesn't say anything. It was a religious cheapie. This kid mentions God one more time.

She's had it. I don't care how nice she is. My hobby is engaging Christians in debate and wiping them out. So what's this little kid to me? She mentioned God again. I said, okay, stop. Appreciate you.

You're nice. But look, I'm sick of this God talk. Answer me one question that no Christian has ever successfully answered. She said, what's that, Art? I said, you're talking about God? How do you know that he is?

Supposing you were in that place, and there's a man who's dangling over the precipice of hell, and your answer is going to snap and cut that cord, and he'll plummet to his eternal doom, or it's going to rescue him.

What are you going to say? God has a plan for your life? Are you going to quote John 3 .16 and think that that will save you because it's in the Bible? I'll tell you, if the Spirit of God is not inciting you and moving you to speak John 3 .16, John 3 .16 is a dead letter and a cliche itself.

Don't put your confidence in formulas and principles, but the living God, there's a life in front of you. There's a world dying around you and it's his word. She looked up at me and I thought, here comes a long silence.

She'll quote something she heard in Sunday school, and I'll rev up my steam engine, I'll flatten her. Not a moment's hesitation. She tilted up that little pug-nosed, freckled, sandy-haired, Gentile face that was beaming, and she said, Art, she said, I know that God lives, he lives in me.