K-466 Agenda for Biblical People — Art Katz

The Kingdom as a Present Reality

What we had thought to do was to have a discussion based around some of the statements of what I consider to be an enormously significant book, written by a young man, I think I made some reference to him earlier in these days, who went from the seminary to the establishing of a community in the inner city in Washington, D .C., to test the reality of the Gospel, to see if the kingdom can be a present reality in the thick of a black ghetto of hopelessness and despair.

Out of their experience that God has tempered in them has come this little book and a magazine which they produce called Sojourners. You can almost start from the first page of this little book and read your way through it.

I've just marked places throughout the book, but I just feel like leaping in to a statement that he makes on page 36. By the way, I think you ought to take the title and get yourself a copy and circulate it around your own fellowships and chew on it.

You'll not find everything digestible. He has a kind of social concern that doesn't seem to be characteristic of many of us, but he has also an insight into the reality of the kingdom, the meaning of the church.

The name of the writer is Jim Wallace, W-A-L-L-I-S, and the book is called Agenda for Biblical People, published by Harper and Row, so it should not be difficult to obtain. Jim Wallace, W-A-L-L-I-S, Agenda for Biblical People, Harper and Row.

I don't think that I'm exaggerating too much to say that it's almost something like the Magna Carta of the body of Christ or the communist manifesto, so to speak, for the believers of our generation. I've not read anything more pointed, more challenging about the meaning of our faith than what this young man has expressed.

You know the way God has a manner of putting something in your hand at the propitious time, and it seems that just as our hearts were becoming kindled for the reality of the kingdom, bang, this book came.

I had just returned from weeks overseas with one powerful conviction that the gospel of the kingdom of God needed to be proclaimed in the church first before it's proclaimed in the world, that the church does not understand or know the gospel.

And probably one of the most stunning observations that came to me through the course of those weeks, staying in the homes in different countries of ministers, was the shock to see that when they made their decisions and their fundamental choices, they were made on exactly the same basis by which the world makes theirs, that there was enormous disparity between what men preached on Sunday and what was the actual constitution of their life, that when it came to the security of their family or their future or the future of their children, they made their decisions as any solid middle-class burger would make it anywhere.

In a word, they did not make their decisions on the basis of a kingdom. It showed that their lives were really effectually lived in the world, and that their Sunday religion was some kind of an appendage, something tacked on, a kind of a ceremonial something, a word game, and not really the platform or the foundation of their actual lives.

I think that's a description not only of ministers, but by and large, Christendom, for which reason we have not had the impact in the world that God intends. Here's what he says, The environmental facts of our life have become more determinative of our style of life than our identity as Christians.

This problem is most crucial, for in a situation of widespread social conformity, the lifestyle of those in the churches becomes evidence for the view held by many that the gospel does not transform people's lives, but is a mere appendage which provides religious sanction and justification to lives really lived on other grounds.

I have to look at your faces to see if you're comprehending. Some of these statements deserve and require second and third repetitions. Okay. The environmental facts of our lives have become more determinative of our style of life than our identity as Christians.

I think I'm in a better position to perceive this perhaps than you, because you know what I notice in my travels? Whether I'm in Yugoslavia or Germany or Denmark or Holland or England or the States, the nationality of the believers has more to do with their lifestyle and character than the fact that they are Christians.

They are Dutch Christians, they are German Christians, they are English Christians, and the fact that they are Dutch, German, and English has more to say and more to do with their effectual lifestyle than the fact that they are Christians.

For example, the English are very parsimonious. That means stingy. You'll come to an English household as a guest for dinner, and they will serve you the plate. They will put on the plate the portion of meat, vegetables, potatoes, and so on, and serve it to you.

That's it. Very different from our lifestyle, which is more or less everything is on the table, you help yourself. And I notice that when it comes to offerings and love offerings in response to speakers, in some churches we got like $30.

And that was a matter of fact. Their whole style of life is scaled down. They're very parsimonious, stingy, everything is measured by teaspoons, because English society itself is conducted in that manner.

Whereas conversely, in America, we're accustomed to a much more freewheeling and commodious style of life. The kind of square footage, for example, that we think that we need for adequate space for living is maybe twice that which is required in England.

In England, if you've got a cubicle in which you can put a couch and a chair and have a table in which you can put your teapot, that's adequate. Here's my point. Neither is the parsimoniousness right, nor the largesse of American life, if the determination has been the culture in which those things are enacted.

But the question is, what is the culture of the kingdom of God? None of us have ever asked the question or thought that there is an alternative to being English, German, French, or something else. And I think that God is wanting to bring us to a place and to a situation that wheresoever we travel in the world and meet others of the same kingdom, there is an immediate and instant identification that transcends the culture of our given localities.

If you understand what's being said here, it's an answer of the deepest kind for the things that have brought profound division between God's people, because they happen to be black or white, northern or southern, rural or urban, American or English.

I believe that what God wants as a final testimony in the earth is a transcendent culture that is visible, demonstrative, tangible, it can be handled. Remember what John said, the word of life which we have handled.

He wasn't some ephemeral ghost that you glimpse from afar, they handled him. As we say in Yiddish, he was zaftik, he was juicy, he was pulsating, he was something, he was phenomenal. He wasn't just a spiritual entity walking on eggshells, he was a total man.

And God is calling us also to a total and a transcendent kind of culture that very much is incorporated in the cry, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. I hope I'm not going to weary you by my repetitions, but this has the power, the burning meaning of that apostolic cry is so with me that it has ruined me for Jewish evangelism.

I just can't get excited for Jews for Jesus and B 'nai this or that or all the other cutesy approaches to Jews that is affected by the wearing of stars of David and other kinds of little gitchy goose.

I mean it's cute and maybe you'll win a peripheral Jew so long as you'll assure him that there's no risk in the loss of his Jewishness. I want to assure them that there's every risk, not only of their Jewishness as they've known it, but of their very life, that God is calling them to something that transcends and that the key to it is to follow him in death and burial and be raised with him to newness of life, to ascend up to the throne and to have the actuality of our being established there.

You guys can think me maniacal if you want, but I am absolutely persuaded that Paul was serious when he said that he had a citizenship in heaven. You know, Paul is something else again. When you read Paul, when you get the sense of his personality, you don't get any sense of a rabbinical man.

Somehow, however deeply ensconced he was one time in that Judaic culture, and he was, however great his future in it might have been, he was so profoundly converted that the apostolic giant that comes forth out of the pages of the New Testament is not in any way characteristically Jewish as we have ever understood that word.

He's a new kind of entity altogether. He's larger than life, and therefore we see a man who can enter the synagogues and dispute with the Jews and is equally comfortable and at home on Mars Hill with the Greeks.

There's nothing for which he was out of place because he was the citizen of another kingdom. This problem is most crucial for in a situation of widespread social conformity, the lifestyle of those in the churches becomes evidence for the view held by many that the gospel does not transform people's lives, but is a mere appendage, something tacked on, which provides religious sanction and justification to lives really lived on other grounds.

Paul in Athens and the Collision of Kingdoms

When Paul was at Athens, it says that his spirit winced as he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore, disputed he in the synagogues with the Jews and in the marketplace with the devout persons who came unto him.

What are devout persons doing in the marketplace? And why is a man who has been cut by idolatry dispute with Jews in the synagogues? Because it is a statement of a whole world and a system ruled over by a prince of darkness, which is in utter opposition to another kingdom.

And if you want to come to the crossroads of that system, you'll find it in the marketplace and in the synagogues of the Jews. You'll find it in the universities and in the places of culture and refinement.

Not only in the synagogues of the Jews, as I said the other day at the university, but the synagogues of the Gentiles, one and the same. I'll tell you that the Jewish ministers and the Presbyterian ministers and Methodist ministers and all of the others of that ilk are virtually interchangeable.

You can swap them and their congregations would not even look up and note the difference. They're all equally as antiseptic. They're all equally as removed from God. They're all equally religious functionaries, providing a minimal service for people who want religious cop-out.

And we have not impressed the world that the church is anything else but that. That's the point he's making here. We're a mere appendage, something packed on, a Sunday afterthought, but our lives are really lived not on gospel grounds, but on other grounds.

Let me just give you a contrast out of the book of Acts in the fourth chapter, 29th verse. Here's a band of believers whose life is so lived on other grounds that they are incompatible with the world about them, with the Jewish society out of which they were converted.

Remember what Peter said on the day of Pentecost? Repent, how do they say it, and save yourself from this untoward and perverse generation. How many of us have the powerful conviction that this generation is untoward and perverse?

In fact, one of the first things that God is doing with us is cleansing us from our own perversities. He's going to have a holy people, sinless and unblameable. The fact that we have not been alarmed by the world shows that we ourselves have been too accommodated to it.

Unlike Paul, our spirits have not winced because we've been watching the box too much and endorsing its values too much. This apostolic band was something else. They experienced almost an immediate persecution.

I think that persecution, there's a phrase in Latin, sinquanon, how do you say it? It is the essential necessity, a requisite of true faith. I don't think that persecution is an accidental happenstance or it's reserved for those behind the Iron Curtain.

The moment that Paul and Silas cast out the demon spirit in one who made her masters much gain, in that same moment, they were brought into the marketplace before the magistrates and the rulers and were publicly disrobed and beaten.

And it says the whole mob rose up together against them. Dear children, if I can just deposit one conviction in your souls this morning, you know what it would that there are two kingdoms in absolute and uncompromising collision.

We need to sense that and to realize that. Although the conflict is often masked and subdued that we don't see it in its true proportions, though it is always in opposition and collision. And at the very end of age, that mask is coming off and the sparks are going to be struck and it's going to be teeth again gnashed upon believers and great vexation and distress and anger and bitterness when the gospel shall become the controversy that it indeed is and ought to be before all men.

And that's a manby-pamby little kind of thing that is a polite appendage to our culture and takes the rough edges off and gives us a little polite Sunday experience to which we, all our children should be brought for Sunday school.

If Satan can't destroy something by actual opposition, he'll destroy it by widespread acceptance. Circumcision is a profound act of cutting that is mortifying, humiliating, and draws blood and was the seal of a radical covenant with God.

And today the whole world accepts it as mere hygiene. If you can't beat him, join him. Well, he was a persecuted band who could not be joined because no man dared join himself to them the awe of God was so great upon the church.

It wasn't a little Sunday club thing that you might consider filing your membership or that you entered by accepting Jesus. You entered it by dying to everything. To enter this was to sign your death warrant.

You were finished. And for what reason then should you clutch your possessions, your homes? You are cast your lot with the people of God to suffer what they will suffer in anticipation of the hope and the glory of his coming.

By the way, may I ask this? How many of God's people today are living in anticipation of the hope? Isn't it strange to consider that those that were 2 ,000 years farther removed from the hope lived in its expectation and those of us with 2 ,000 years closer and even mild the platitude, that's what it's become, of the coming of the Lord, the soon coming of the Lord, he's coming soon, it's become a platitude, are not actually living in the hope.

You say, how do you know that? Well, if we were, we would be palpitating less over our clothing, over our summer vacations, over our security, over our orange juice, over whatever it is that occupies our lives.

We'd be living in the hope. And that's another kind of living. I hope you're not getting the impression that you're being bawled out this morning. See how much nicer we were eating bagels at the same time.

The Apostolic Church Prays in One Accord

Acts 4 29, and now Lord behold their threatenings and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word by stretching forth thine hand to heal and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus.

And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together. I just challenge you to study the word together from the first verses of the book of Acts and right through, just study the word together.

And I want to say this just to help you in that study, it doesn't mean what we think it means in colloquial present day English usage. Together is more than physical proximity. Together in the biblical sense is a profound state of being so unparalleled in the experience of near earthlings that it cannot be known.

And it's a condition that can only be affected by the very power and life of God and by the spirit. That's why the room was shaken. They had come into a profound new condition of being, which is called together.

First thing that God has got us to do with us is to get us together. Get it together, cats. Get your whole life reconciled. Become the full man, mind, body, soul, and spirit flowing together by the spirit and your own disharmony and your own internal warfare and your own conflicts where flesh and spirit are in contention.

Get together. Then you get together with those whom God has joined you, being knit by the spirit. And as you've heard last night, I think as much was said that was intimated and left between the lines as was actually spoken.

I enjoyed last night enormously. With the God that it could have gone on for hours and hours, and there was that much to say. And every one that got up to speak, I thought to myself, wow, if people only knew the whole story.

And our experience is yet relatively brief. The whole history of the community is three to four years old. And as you heard from some of them, they've been only here a year, two years, three years. But the depths of God's dealing, what it has taken.

And who's to say that we've arrived? We're not yet together in the sense that our presence will cause the room to be shaken. But we're moving that way. And I can tell you, it takes something to bring people to the place where they are together.

And that something is the cross of Christ Jesus. That something is pain. That something is suffering. That something is disappointment. And the deepest kind of disillusionment, how I have disillusioned people myself.

You know what the worst disillusionment is? Yourself with yourself. Seeing things you would never have glimpsed if you had not been thrown on a daily basis into the most intense experience of life with other souls.

That's why the kingdom cannot be affected on Sunday. I just want to make a flat pronouncement. If you have an intention for the kingdom of God, you might as well forget it if you think that it's going to be established by mere Sunday fellowship.

They went from house to house daily breaking bread. And I can just say, and being broken. I tell you, it's the episodes over the orange juice and the little mundane trivialities that are really the sand and the grit of God that is used to make us into a people that can be together.

What you did not hear last night seeing our beaming faces were the crises to which God had brought us when we were not beaming. When our chins were scraping the ground. When we were so utterly discouraged and downcast and depressed that we couldn't even go on.

And that if there was any way out, we would have taken it. But where shall we go? He had the words of life. We were trapped. He had us. And because there was no place to go and we had nothing to do but to just eat this death out of ground zero, out of utter despair.

If you can picture some of the same people you heard last night on their faces before God for 13 hours in a living room together, you'll have a picture of what was our final condition. So out of it, so bereft of anything to say or do or to be clever, religious or spiritual, or to play at the body of Christ, that all we could do was occasionally whimper or groan.

We were talked out, we were prayed out, and then God began to do something. In a day, a nation was born. The same people who dreaded to be with each other in the morning by that night did not want to leave each other.

God did it. Together is something that God does when there will be people who will yield themselves to him, willing that he should break all of their earthly ties and connections, bringing them out of the culture of this present world into his.

When they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and they spoke the word of God with boldness, till we all come. Either we're going to come all or we're not going to come at all.

This has been a trial of my patience because I'm constituted to be quick and impetuous and want to get to the heart of the matter. That's the way God has made me. It was an agony last night to get two elders together with me in a room to speak to another family, just to get us together in that room.

How they traipsed their slowly down the aisle and stopped off to see this one or that till we all come. But I recognize, except that we're all there, nothing can be transacted for God. I think the most profound revelation that God has given us in the depths of our experiences in Minnesota is this, that despite our brave vocabularies, despite the spiritual sophistication that many of us had in being able to articulate with conviction and sincerity, the principles of the body of Christ and submission and authority and all of that, when it came to the actualities of our life, there was a shriek and a howl that came up from the deepest places of our being that were testimonies to our individualism and our independence of spirit, self-willed, proud hearts that would not condescend to be submitted to men.

Maybe if we could see as God sees, the reason it takes us to get from down the aisle to a room is for that very reason. Maybe the way we shuffle our feet and drag is an unspoken expression of a subtlety of rebellion that we have not recognized.

But this kingdom is holy. It's clean through and through, and it's true. And such subtleties are dealt with and removed in the process of God's people grinding together daily. It's easy to say, thy kingdom come, but this is what it's going to take to effect it.

And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul. The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul. We've had some enormous adventures testing God, whether he had the power to have us as a multitude be of one heart and of one soul.

I wondered if Art was going to call me last night, here's what I would have shared, how there came a time when a very radical suggestion was made that the Katz family should leave the community and have a sabbatical of their own in another city, hundreds of miles removed from our Minnesota community, at a time when families were coming to join us.

It was so absurd, it almost sounded suicidal. There's no kind of human or religious logic that could have approved it. And I said, of course I'll not do that. Other families are coming and we should leave?

I'll not do it except that God will give a witness to the entire fellowship. Guess what he did? The very next morning, he gave a witness. Everybody was in agreement to the most radical proposition that they ever had to contemplate, which could have cut their own throat and could have been the death of the community.

And on the basis of the unanimous witness that the whole multitude was of one mind and one soul, we left. We were gone something like nine months in Kansas City, and I think it was a turning point in the salvation of my own marriage, which is to say also the salvation of our own ministry, which is to say also the salvation of our community.

It was a critical step in which we dared not miss God. And I was amazed that not only was the whole multitude of us agreed, but three beautiful prophecies came that morning. The one that I remember best is where the Lord said that if you'll submit to this pruning, I'll make you exceedingly fruitful.

It was a cutting, it was a pruning. Well, you know what happened in Kansas City? I wasn't looking for any ministry for the Jews. We were there on a sabbatical to attend to the family, but this Jewish person needed help, and this lawyer was coming to me at seven o 'clock in the morning for a little scripture help, and this one needed...

And I said, well, finally, I just let them all come together one night of the week, and it turned out to be a kind of a regular weekly Bible study. And before you know it, a Jewish work was beginning to commence, and the believers were getting excited and interested, and hey, look what God is doing.

So finally, by the time the nine months had gone, it reached such proportion that it was quite clear to me that this was really the purpose of God. And then the brothers were coming to me and saying, Art, it's time for you to return.

Well, I didn't have that witness. Look what God was doing. This was God. I wasn't seeking for this Jewish work. God himself was doing it, and he was unfolding a new pattern that would really could be something that could go beyond Kansas City of apostolic proportion.

What am I going to do, go back to Minnesota and twiddle my thumbs in the woods? Come on, fellas. I remember four of them came down in a car, driving 700 miles each way to seek to persuade me that it was time to return.

They had fasted and prayed, and that was their unanimous witness, but I did not share it. And by the way, I'm no babe in the faith, and I'm a man led by the Spirit of God, and God has led me in sensitive things, so exacting and you can't believe.

So if I don't have any witness, you know, well, finally it was evident that I would have to go up to Minnesota and straighten them out. So I took two prominent leaders from the Kansas City Jewish believing community, who many of you know, really tested them, the true men of God who agreed with me, and we flew up to Minnesota, and we were going to really straighten this thing out once and for all.

I remember we assembled the entire community in the living room of the house, and I recounted to them the whole story of how it is that we were brought to Kansas City by the ordination of God, what has happened in the months that we've been there, and the significance of what is happening there, the foolishness of returning now in the light of these things, and what God is evidently doing, and I rested my case.

Out of the mouths of the babes of the community, Jeffrey was one of them, I remember that. Within the space of less than five minutes, God shot me down and let me to know that I was wrong, and that they were right, and that I was to return, and that ministry flows out of life, and life out of relationship, and that if I were to be severed any longer from that life and from those relationships, there would be no ministry, and that it was time to return now.

My head fell on my chest, and I said, yes, Lord. I was saved from deception. I'm not ashamed to tell you that big boys like me can be deceived, and the saving grace was the truth of God expressed through the body of believers with whom I was in real and actual commitment.

It'll save you every time. We're not playing a little game about submission and authority. It's no little system that we're practicing. We're not giddy little kids who got a box top and sent it in for a junior d-man set, and we're playing body of Christ.

These are vital things, life and death, for ourselves and for those to whom God will bring us, and you know what we found? That when the commitment is real, when you trust God, that he can bring you together, and that the multitude can be of one soul and one mind, he'll do it.

The same God that sent us returned us, and so it continues to this day. Are you in that kind of commitment? Are you willing to be? Are you willing to have your life submitted to men and maybe your own self-interests?

We'll be violated. You can't believe how independent we are, because we have drunk too long and too deeply from another fount. I want to say that the spirit of individualism is utterly satanic. It has its origins in the pit of hell.

It is an appeal to the egoistic hearts of men, and wholly contrary from the spirit of the kingdom of heaven, which is a society of men and a corporate glory. One of the favorite phrases that I heard from a precious brother, Ern Baxter, was that God himself is a sweet company, and he wants a sweet company on earth just like him.

As submitted one to another as the son is to the father and the spirit to the son, that we might be one. I am so suspicious of these hokey, full gospel type shindigs and themes of unity and ecumenicism with big banners of the dove, with glad-handing and back-slapping and hugging, as if in so cheap and easy and glib a manner is that this kind of true togetherness is going to be established.

It's established at the cross. The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul, neither said any of them that order the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things common, and with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

A Christian Economy Distinct from the World

Christian lifestyle begins with a break with the world situation and its givens. It is a choice of a path which leads the Christian out of conformity to the world. Therefore, it is the choice of a path moving in a different direction from those who persist in conformity and uniformly with the patterns and structures of the world system.

What we're learning in our community situation is that the community is much more than a religious entity. We're having a new kind of economy, a new kind of political order, a new kind of a social order, a new kind of society.

Our culture is being changed in our tastes, and something is being shaped and formed which is neither Gentile nor Jewish, which somehow is removing us from the power of Sears, Roebuck, and Ward catalogs, and the necessity to walk through shopping malls that you can get a psychic fix for the relief that comes from being able to go out for a night on the town.

One thing we pray is that he doesn't take away our ice cream. Have you realized that buying is far more than the obtaining of commodities? You know that, don't you? Buying is a psychic orgy. Even window shopping will give you a fix.

When I heard out of my own 10-year-old son, can we go to a shopping mall? I began to realize that even he had been affected by the fever. He had no intention of buying, he's tight-fisted, but he wanted to see the merchandise.

And I'll tell you that merchandise has never been more cunningly displayed than in this generation. There's a whole psychology of display that has to do with color and arrangement. The very principle of the supermarket.

Listen, I go back almost 50 years, and I can remember the little corner grocery store where all you saw were a few scroungy shelves, and if you bought a quarter pound of tub and dipped the milk out of a container, contrast that with our present supermarkets in all of their splendor, cunningly designed by artful men who know the valences of color and sound and display, and you see merchandise stacked up on shelves in great volume, it has an overwhelming capacity to affect your soul and to influence your choices.

How many of us are buying more than we need? And how many of the things that used to be called luxuries have now become needs? Why there are men right now breaking their brains, the most powerful of human personalities, the most prepared and trained, whose one function it is, is to find new ways to tempt and tantalize and to seduce people into merchandise.

Notice there's only one reference in all the scriptures to hallelujah being cried out in heaven. You know when it comes? When Babylon is destroyed in a day. When those who pander after delicious merchandise cry because their city has gone up in smoke and it's merchandised with it.

That's elicits from heaven, hallelujah. What it needs to elicit from us now is hallelujah. And not to wait for that final day of the Lord, but let it be a day of the Lord now for us. How would you like to see the merchandise filled in smoke?

And your wardrobe? And your high fives? And your books? I'll tell you, I see libraries of individual saints that deserve to be public libraries. The reference volumes and thousands of scholars who are indifferent to slaves of books of which I myself am not altogether innocent.

It's amazing how that stuff accumulates. And almost invariably, and I've said it a few days in this trip, the shock and the contrast of coming back from Holland and England where everything is reduced one third in scale, the size of the houses, the amount of food in the portions, and then being thrust into this sprawling American lifestyle with the square footage and the food and the luggage and the comfort and the luxury is really an adjustment.

But in every house that I stayed, with the exception of perhaps one or two, when it came time to hang up my one or two things in the closet, I could not find room. It took Herculean effort to push back the overflow of their garments in the guest room in order to get up my couple of things when I hung them.

Let's face it, guys, our culture has had more to do with refining our lifestyle than the kingdom of heaven. The most profound experience that I had in Holland, I have to share this with you now, and I've shared it individually, was an overnight visit to a community of believers, founded and built around the man who at one time had been one of the impressive evangelical roost kids of Holland who was going places, and God brought him down into the dust of death and shattered everything.

It moved him to the place of obscurity, and on a two-acre parcel of ground, there are 65 souls living. Two acres. You would call that a ghetto. Congestion. And I remember walking into the building, and when I saw all of the bodies, immediately I sensed the disjointed of crowds.

But after I sat down for a couple of minutes, I began to realize that it was only an instinctive reflex action, but that I was not experiencing that discomfort longer, but I was experiencing, conversely, a profound peace.

Out of proportion with the physical number of bodies present, there was a marvelous peace that prevailed in that place. And this brother was saying to me, you see that one arch? And I saw a woman looking perfectly whole, knitting, and joyous, and people kissing each other, and hugging, and talking, and chatting.

It was just a most wonderful warmth. It was a heavenly environment. He said he was a hopeless schizophrenic. This one attempted suicide last week in a mental institution, and he came to us. This one was a hopeless drug addict.

This one is a notorious criminal who cannot get back into his own country. You know what I saw? The scum and the off-scourings of society. I saw the rejects and the neverses. By the way, if you don't know what the word nevers means, that's what it means.

The helpless, the awkward, the ungainly, for whom the world is not worthy, who are the victims of a world whose system is satanic, and whose values run counter to the organic life for which God has fitted us.