What if..? — Art Katz

Good morning Saints. Believe me. I'm more scared than you are. This has got to be the most frightening obedience to which I have ever been required and I have had some hairy requirements over the years.

Well, we sometimes joke we're living in community on a farm in northern Minnesota where the Lord brought us 25 years ago. Making clear that we're to establish a place of refuge for Jews in flight from persecution in the United States of America.

Art Katz's Jewish and Marxist Background

How's that for an opening line? And it's been a searing experience to be in community with God's people. I'm a Jewish believer former Marxist atheist left-wing Radical history teacher who came to a place of disillusionment 35 years ago With a failed marriage with a German wife whom I had met in the service there and it set me on the road to salvation.

I put a pack on my back and Went back to where I was as a high school dropout at the age of 16. Where I didn't leave school because I was not interested in knowledge and truth, but because I was Can you understand that.

And truth was only a truth. School was only a place in where in which careers were obtained for split-level success. I had no appetite or interest in that and Not only were the answers not forthcoming, but the questions were never asked that are real questions.

So I was a high school dropout at the age of 16 a merchant seaman. Subsequently became a Marxist left-wing radical. Embraced what they called Marxism as a worldview until I came to a time of disillusionment.

I've gone through a succession of gods with a small G and In my final disillusionment in the I was then a high school history teacher graduate of the University of California at Berkeley. I Took a year's leave of absence from the teaching profession put the pack on my back again and set forth once more To somehow find the truth that I would leave no stone unturned.

Through Western Europe where of which we Jews are essentially the architects of the modern world. We've given the world that's basic contour with Karl Marx Sigmund Freud Albert Einstein Steven Spielberg.

It's amazing if you but knew the Jews who influence your thinking your mode of life and I wasn't looking for God. I didn't know there was a God to be found. I was looking for philosophical ideological truth.

But in the course of it God was looking for me. I Had one of my students a little Gentile girl with a snubbed nose and freckles Whom her mother said to me my daughter used to come home from school. She said weeping over you knowing that you were an atheist and a radical and since that day She said both my daughter and I have been praying for you and the Lord nudged me in the ribs and said She's the one whose prayers have entered you into the kingdom of heaven.

Conversion and the Pursuit of Apostolic Community

So I'm in grad I'm Grateful for snubbed nose freckle face Gentiles haven't always been but especially when they're the key to your salvation and Can pray fervently because they're righteous and God hears that prayer pursued me as the hound of heaven for 14 months throughout Europe.

I kept the journal in those days Which subsequently became my first book out of print in English, but I can get it for you in Russian French German Hebrew Swedish Finnish, it's called Ben Israel. That means son of Israel odyssey of a modern Jew.

It's a remarkable Existential saga of a modern man. That's what we Jews are in search and apprehended by the God Whom I was not seeking. Well life was too earnest after being saved to go back to anything less than the continuing pursuit of truth and It wasn't long maybe Three four or five years into my new faith having traversed evangelical fundamental Christianity charismatic full gospel movements to realize that something was still Grievously missing that we could not be to the Jews what we what we ought Until we were somehow back into the vitality Texture quality that characterized the church at the first and apostolic way that somehow the issue was lifestyle and That we had to find our way back to community and that's how the Lord brought us to our place for 25 years in community, Northern, Minnesota 40 below zero winters nine months out of the year and That intensifies every question.

So I often joke and say that there's an invisible Saying over the entry to our property, you know to the concentration camps. It was our bite mocked fry. Work makes free, of course, they weren't coming to be free, but to be released by death After exhaustion or extermination over our property.

I would have said all you do enter here abandon hope of retaining any kind of fleshly self-esteem or any kind of mirage or any kind of illusion because you're going to be ruthlessly dealt with. Not because anyone has that as their intention.

But it's the very nature of community the intensification of all of the issues of life that become brutal. I've been accused in that place of being an enemy of the gospel by my own people after Sacrificially pouring myself up that they might have a place to come of that kind.

So Someone said you could have to give a little Introduction a description of yourself that people might know where you're coming from. I jokingly said maybe it's not too much of a joke at the Sunday school hour.

Jewish and Gentile Members of the Church

You can see why the church desperately needs Jewish believers. You guys left to yourselves as a formula for deception and disaster. You bring a wonderful balance to our intensity, but without our intensity and insane jealousy.

You would go the way of all flesh and not even know it so God intended a body in which these remarkable elements Jewish and Gentile would kind of counterbalance one another and Be sane and right and true and real.

So you're gonna get a little taste of what you're missing and maybe they thank God That it's only a periodic visit that we don't have someone of this kind. Continually in our midst, you know. What it says are these prophets that lay in the street for three and a half days before they're resurrected?

These are they who torment those who dwell on the face of the earth? We're tormentors. Well, some of my books are out there. They're probably already all gone in the few that were left to be made available.

I but I want you to know their existence and I've asked one of the ladies in the congregation to put a sheet out there. That you can request them by filling out your name and address. Giving the money for the book and for the mailing will mail it to you.

Because it's exceptional literature. Reality is my second book for principle Essays or themes of an inspirational kind the message on Elijah is worth the price of the book alone and that's in several languages French and I Don't know Russian and so on a more recent single message Apostolic conversion was given in California.

The Failure of Superficial Christianity

Where I was to speak for four days and after the second day, I despaired. I could not go on. I Cried out to God. I said Lord these people ostensibly have it all together. This is a groovy swinging charismatic fellowship.

But why then do I feel like I'm up against a brick wall? I can't go any further. They the word is coming back into my teeth. It's as if these people have silently covenanted to go this far, but no further.

Of course, we were living in a home of I don't know how many thousands of square feet many of the people were wealthy and Contractors and cars and double and triple garages with boats that must have had something to do.

With the fact that they could say this far no further. And so we spent the day in fasting and in prayer. The Lord gave this word that night. This is the actual verbatim transcript of that spoken message when you read it.

You'll marvel you would have thought that this was months in preparation. It is articulate. It is ordered that there's a divine logic as it flows out from page to page just spontaneously on the spot. But when they heard this word down they went.

Alan spoke about going down twice in his life. This was one of those going downs. Probably one of the fraudulent things about our Christianity is both the frequency and the shallowness of our altar calls.

There are times when I almost want to call a moratorium and say that's a no-no. If we're not going to be changed by our coming forward if we're going to return to our seats. And the condition in which we left them better remain where you are.

And we can't play with God. So these people went down and when they got up I knew that they were changed. And that change has remained through these years the pastors preaching changed the third the church left they were plunged immediately into a financial crisis, so you know that something happened and That this little booklet now is in Danish and in Dutch and in French and in German no not German yet Russian it deserves to go around the world it will you must get this and Then the most recent book the Holocaust.

The Holocaust and the Church's Obligation to Face Evil

Where was God? How many of us have asked the question? I can't believe that a phenomenon of this kind has taken place in modern times and Especially that it has taken place in modern times and that we should somehow sweep it under the carpet.

That we should not wrestle with the ponderous questions that the systematic annihilation of six million Jews creates for modern men throughout the world. Maybe it's so painful. Maybe we're so fearful of what the answer might be if we Leaped into the grave with these bones that we avoid it.

You know that the world has a wonderful talent to sweep things under the rug and to and that for history to lose its Cogency. I shared this morning how if you went to the concentration camp Dachau today where I went in 1952 where the original Barracks stood with the stink of death and whipping posts places of torture and the gold fillings from teeth that That were kept in the hair and and the ovens with the bones and the ashes in you would have one impression.

But if you went there today, it's all nicely tidied up. It's all nicely landscaped. They've removed all of the stink of death and put up one barrack according to specifications. That's the German mind so There's something in man that is escapist we don't have a stomach for hard things and for truth and That's pitiful for mankind at large.

It'll lead to to a life not rightly lived and to an eternity that will be shameful to consider but for the church to be evasive for the church to be escapist for the church to have no Stomach for truth for the church to be a kind of a get-by phenomenon that goes on from Sunday to Sunday with predictable services.

That is inexcusable all the more in the last days. I have to assume That we're closer to the end than we know if what I was given me from 1 30 this morning till 4 30 was the Lord. I'm willing to run the possibility that it's my flesh and Pay the price for it because you know that we men who stand before God's people are under a double obligation.

The Message as a Moment of Truth

This is no small thing. We're not little professionals doing our cute thing and Grabbing the honorarium and running we have an obligation before God and what we bring to God's people and what we think He has put into our hearts to share so I've shared that already because I've written out four pages Unusual for me with Alan and if he did not witness that I was ready to call it quits then.

But he has encouraged me. So I'm going to go on The final book and the subject of today is the subject of truth. It's much more than just a mechanical thing or just an approximation of things that are externally true or even doctrinally true.

The truth to which God calls the church is the spirit of truth the intangible Indefinable essence of something through and through not just its external Ramifications, it's the whole truth and I recommend this to you.

So you can order any or all of these books on the sheet back there they're all seven dollars each except the hot leash the slim one for three and And Throw in a little something more for the mailing and as soon as I get back It'll be sent out and you'll be blessed for the having of them.

Well I'm tired physically. I was tired before I came to Georgetown. I'm more tired now having been up since 130 and Disturbed sleep and I jokingly said this morning in the senator class. I am NOT I Alert enough to be What's the word?

Careful about my speaking to be discreet. I'm too tired to exercise that kind of watchfulness. So I just have to blurt out Somehow what the Lord has given and you will see that it is extremely personal.

You say would God go that far to name names identify things that are Known to the congregation or perhaps should be known and Will he go that far couldn't he say the same thing in general terms? Evidently not maybe at an earlier time When the last days were not as imperative and the issues as grave he might have spoken generally.

I don't know but now if nothing more this will scare us to say if God is in this and Willing to go that far and to risk this kind of embarrassment how Earnest must the issues be that he's willing for that cost.

So Lord if there's some way that the floor could open up and Conveniently swallow me. I would welcome it. But if the time has come a moment of truth, and I'm the appointed one to deliver it. You're fool and what you what I have from 130 on this morning is actually from you that I'm asking that the spirit of truth should be so invested in these statements that however much they pinch and even stab That we have to acknowledge The truth and the God of it and bow before it and let it perform its work Lord.

It will have it's either going to Require a violent rejection or a prostration before you. I can't conceive that there's any middle ground. So speak Lord as if This is a moment of truth that has arrived and we're not to be spared.

The issues are too great. And we thank and give you praise for such a love and such a jealousy that will not let us go and requires this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, I was wakened with two words. What if?

The “What If?” Posture Against Deception

What if? What we understand and think to be true and even from God that sanctions and condones and blesses is Not so and that there's another way to understand and perceive Some of the things that we have assumed that need to be brought into question.

I would say I can't think of a healthier posture. For any true segment of God's people that can rightly be called the church and the apostolic meaning of that word. Then to periodically have a reality check and to raise the question about all of its categories in the sense of what if?

What if we're wrong? What if we're mistaken? What if we're deceived? You don't think you're a candidate for that? I can't think of anything that would more facilitate deception than to think that you're exempt the best of us.

The Lord has saved me from deception. I'm so grateful for the experience not out of some carnal thing or some Ambition for ministry or anything like that that might have been the format for deception but out of very spirituality itself.

I Mean I was saved By the correction that came to me by the youngest and weakest member of our community newly saved high-pitched cracked voice pimple. Oh knees and elbows and the most awkward thing you can imagine.

And in this high-pitched voice and cracked voice I said well you know art that we have agreed that that the ministry flows out of the Life and the life out of the relationships. And if you are disconnected from the life then what ministry?

Of course the Lord had already developed something in Kansas City where I had gone for an excursion with Jews that I hadn't sought and it was so profound and and Kansas City is the heart of the nation and God is doing this with prestigious Jews.

This must be God and a reason to stay there not to come back to the boondocks of northern, Minnesota Where they only wanted me because of the insecurity the Lord corrected me. I went there to straighten them out flew in with two Jewish brothers and The Lord straightened me out through the weakest and youngest member of the community the moment those words came.

It went right into my kiss kiss. My gut and my head fell on my chest and I knew that I had been in error and I was deceived. I came back. What if the Lord who is truth? Saw through our pretensions as Being unimpressed our assumptions and confidences in which we boast as being false vain pretentious and Apostolically insignificant what if?

What if the best of what we? Boast in and exalt ourselves in is seen by God being actually the opposite in the antithesis of what we presume it to be. What if? Doesn't the scripture say that his thoughts are not our thoughts and That his thoughts are as distant from our thoughts as the heaven from the earth.

The heart of deception is the presumption upon God that assumes because we think something godly or Increase of church or enlargement or building a program that he necessarily comes along to sanction condone bless and approve.

What if he doesn't. What if he's allowing us to? Prepare for our humiliation and our failure and out of that will come a reality that will be significant for this community and not The hope for building that we thought would once we provide the room of course God will fill it.

What if? Will we welcome the sort of the spirit to pass pierce through and lay bare and reveal our emptiness? Would we be willing for a reality check which we ought periodically to take which we would not allow our cars to avoid.

After so many thousands of miles they put to put the certain tests because we have to have a confidence. That when we're on freeways and going 70 and more miles an hour that we know that the brake system works this works that works.

Testing Programs, Buildings, and Christian Assumptions

Reality check for cars, and we don't allow it for ourselves and require it for ourselves. Periodically are we willing to go back to the drawing board. Are we willing to for example suffer the stigma of an unfinished building to haunt us as The statement of our pretension and presumption that God was never in it even though we were able to raise the money to bring it That far, but the Rotarians could have done that and the Eagles and and other human societies.

That's not necessarily an evidence that God is in something. What if he's not in it? See the issue of truth is the willingness to bear the what-ifs and in the Sunday school class I quoted from a script in Jeremiah of the Lord's rebuke of Israel Who was not valiant for the truth, and I raised the question?

What's a synonym for valiant, and they were I was rightly informed. Courageous courage. Truth requires courage sense and. And Because it's going to be painful often if not invariably before it becomes glorious.

So even the willingness to bear a what-if requires a courage. The what-if of being wrong the what-if of being mistaken the what-if of being vain conceited presumptuous about God. And willing to go back to square one truth requires something.

It's not just the mental acknowledgement, but it might require a very costly Adjustment maybe even the acknowledgement that tens of thousands of dollars May have been misspent or other kinds of things.

Truth is not a cheapie and The church is called to be the ground and pillar of the truth. I Think that the Lord could lay at the doorstep of the church in the world and in this nation the full accountability for the condition of the world about us.

We are God's plumb line. We are the statement from heaven of what reality is and if we are not that thing. Not that we approve it or even speak it, but are the thing in itself corporately as well as personally what hope for the world?

The Church as God's Witness to the World

No wonder they're deluded. No wonder they're vain. No wonder they're there. They're on some Alice in Wonderland trip in which there's no eternity. No judgment. No day of reckoning. No day of the Lord.

Until when it comes they shriek with a horror and cry for clefts in the rock to hide. Because no one had warned them. No one had lived in such a way before them as to make even the issue of the of eternity a reality.

Let alone the judgment the apocalyptic judgment that comes in the suddenness of that day. Oh I believe that brother art. I believe that. Oh, yeah. Well, you're not living as if you do. How come you don't give you the impression of that in the way you deport yourself and carry yourself and conduct yourself?

You're living as if this is the best of all worlds and if it's not it can be made better. You're making plans for your vacations and and all the other kinds of things as if the world will go on in an endless way and with and we have Plenty of time and there's no urgency.

There's no apocalyptic expectancy in you. There's no sense of an end toward which we're moving. That is of a grave kind which was if we deeply understood it and subscribe to it. It would change our whole atmosphere.

There would be a high seriousness of what we are about and our jobs and our careers would be recognized for what they are mere secondary provision from God to keep body and soul together for the principal purpose of being the Church of God in this locality and Making known the realities to which the world is otherwise blinded not only by what we say, but what we in fact are in ourselves.

Got the picture so you're willing to go back to the drawing board square one to repent of the whole verbal masquerade. Listen guys, I've been around a long time. I'm a wordsmith myself. I'm an author and an eloquent man who loves the English language.

I'm a student of language and you know what? I realize that the church is a phraseological phenomenon. It's like an extension of what I knew as a as a high school teacher that if you say something verbally.

Or can master the statement. Do you think you have the corresponding reality? They used to put my grades up on the board first and then the rest of the class. I broke the curve. But when it came to teach the things in which I was a plus student and I had a stand before flesh-and-blood kids.

No, I found out I didn't know as I ought to know. I Was able Verbally to give back the information given sufficient to pass the test. But that is does not constitute Knowledge that is of a life-changing kind.

I had to go back to the drawing board. I had to relearn my subject. I had to learn it with my students and blood sweat and tears day by day. Well much of our Christianity is merely phraseological verbal.

Truth Must Become Embodied in Church Life

It's a games playing and we think that because we can intone and invoke words like apostolic prophetic Body of Christ kingdom of God that somehow we have the awesome realities to which they point. We need a reality check unless we find ourselves empty symbols and bumbling Characters who say the right things without the corresponding reality, you know that a Great revival began in Argentina because one man of God called the moratorium on one word He refused to allow his church to speak the word Lord.

With the God I had that authority. First of all, I think the church would be called to a silence for a few months and not be allowed to say anything. But you know what? He recognized the word Lord had become a teepee.

It was like a reflex action like a beep a hiccup Lord this Lord that Lord Lord. Without realizing that the scripture says there'll be a day when some of us will stand before him and say Lord Lord and he'll say Depart from me you workers of iniquity.

I never knew you. Anybody could say Lord Lord. But is he Lord? In fact, I said to the people in San Antonio That if you're going to be the body of Christ and an apostolic entity in your locality and it's and a life-saving provision from God for Jews and distress in the last days you're going to have to become an integral body that submits to the authority of God in that body and that is not established by credentializing or by office, but by the anointing and the authority that God implants and That you autonomous Christians who do your own thing who think you're doing God's service to come.

Come to a Sunday morning and put a buck in them in the plate. Make your own decisions continually. About a vacation. With whom do you confer? About leaving the body of Christ to which you have been joined for some significant number of days without conferring if it's going to cause any kind of Significant loss or disjuncture or or that it could not be permitted at that time.

Who is anyone who is going to tell me when I take my vacation? It's my vacation. I've got the right oh, yeah, not if we're a militant company an island of sanity Besieged by a hostile world that has got to act in concert.

And we can't we can't be the sum total of subjective decisions made on the basis of our convenience and will. Or else it's not the church. It's just a culture of a Sunday kind that requires nothing of any real consequence and allows us to Continue in the thing that we really are about our own pleasure our own security our own self-interest.

The Sunday thing is a gloss. And we're singing all of these rapturous songs of worship. It's a lie so We're complimenting ourselves and having it together when in fact We think ourselves rich and have need of nothing.

Complimenting selves. We're on the cutting edge. Listen, we'll look to our vocabulary. We must be look how we speak of it and The assurance that the Lord is in agreement with our own self-assessment and endorses it that our five-point plank Enjoys a ringing amen and approval from heaven.

It's not that the five-point plank is in itself in error or unscriptural. No, it's. It's compatible but Is it given has it come down from above? Is it just a kind of a verbalism that gives us the sense of being about?

Substantial things when in fact, we don't have a deepest part of intention of fulfilling it. It's gonna mean a Whole thing can become a gamesmanship and we're not even aware. What if? He sees and now I'm not saying that he does I'm not saying thus saith the Lord about anything that I'm saying I'm only just raising the question.

Discernment, Authority, and False Religious Appearance

What if he sees it in that way? What if he sees the pastor's PhD as? Being vain as being Insubstantial that there's not a recognized theological institution in America that would validate that PhD or Doctor of ministry or whatever it is as being valid that has come from some kind of a diploma mill that Makes it credible by requiring some kind of a paper and certain kinds of things that are far beneath any kind of standard of requirement that an authentic institution of theology in America or the world would require and.

What if it's a An ego thing. What if it's a vanity? What if it's something that the congregation itself likes as well as the minister? Because it gives an aura of a certain kind of solidity and and decorum and weight which it in fact does not bear.

That's called a lie. Got the picture. And I'm not saying that that's the case. But what if it is the case do we have the guts the courage to consider that it might be and even to forsake it? What if our so-called? Liberality and openness toward God in which we would permit almost anything to take place in our congregation is really not so much as the statement of our general generous spirit, but rather a statement of our default of Our inability or unwillingness to exercise real discernment and Requirement in which we let anything go if it's making sounds like animals or writhing like a snake on the floor.

Well, that's the nuts that go with the fruit. Well, where does the scripture talk about? Nuts and fruit as if somehow both are valid. Talks about that which is of God and not of God. But when we use a vocabulary of that kind that seems to be so generous and liberal can it actually constitute a default of responsibility both the exercise of discernment to distinguish between what is godly and godly and Not allow the ungodly thing a place in the house of God.

Following me Isn't remarkable. I don't think I've had Two hours here. I mean last night going out for dinner. I was not very conversational. I was already Whacked out and tired and so on. But if we're living a lie and a sham and going through motions and playing a word game in the day of Eternity whether it's by death or the Lord's appearing we will in fact that moment see all things as they in fact are.

Too late to remedy anything. That's the agony the wailing and the gnashing of teeth all of a sudden truth has come. That we have been blinded to or unwilling to see but it's come now too late to rectify.

Would would to God that he had sent someone earlier. To sound the alarm and to cause us to go through a reality check and to examine what we're saying and doing When it can be rectified. Rather than we should be caught short at that final moment and have to live eternally with the mortification of a life Not rightly lived in God and a church that has been going through motions However much we have enjoyed it.

What if the whole premise of our building program that a larger capacity would somehow assure a larger congregation is not the Lord's premise at all and That whatever measure of success We have had in obtaining funds etc is what any human organization might have obtained and is not necessarily the statement of his approval let alone his blessing.

What if I willing to live with that possibility are you willing to seek the Lord over such a question and Suffer the reproach that it may well be his view. What if a pastor's wife states what pastor's wife statement that he can go to Mexico and start a church if he wants.

He raised that as a possibility, but just make sure that the check comes every month. What if that's not from the Lord somehow to check him from the direction that the Lord doesn't intend but is rather the actual statement of the fear and concern for security above and beyond any issue of a spiritual kind and That we have not understood it as that But have interpreted it in a way as to make it sound as if it's the Lord himself.

Providing a check when it's a condition at the heart of the fellowship That needs to be understood examined and and Repented about and prayed through. What if that the wife's comment is not necessarily the Lord indicating through her That this is not his will for her husband.

But rather the deadly serious insistence of her financial security as the non-negotiable fact of where she in fact is spiritually and whose involvement with the work has been nominal and is unimpressed with what the husband necessarily is saying or the church doing and incandescently goes along so long as the real issue Security lifestyle the things that are really of primary concern are not altered or threatened.

What if that's not only her condition? What if that's the condition of most of us and it's not recognized as a condition? And we swallow it down or look the other way as somehow not affecting the Fabric the character the the texture of the fellowship itself, and it's very truth because at the heart of it is something else more in keeping with the spirit of the world and its values than that of the kingdom and We even boast in that as to somehow being God's provision to keep us from having made an error of judgment and will.

Evaluating Pastors, Families, and Church Projects

What if the pastor himself is involved in and occupied with a merely verbal games playing? You know the kinds of games that men play there are two ways that we can conduct a Safety check a reality check.

One is our wives. Are they really impressed? Well, they just you know kind of let him go along with his harmless blather. Doesn't affect anything real. Anyway, and he enjoys it then it's important for him.

And okay the second is our children. Are they impressed? You know what? I said to the people in San Antonio you'll know that you're on apostolic ground when you will have persuaded your own children of the Earnestness and the seriousness of what you are about and who don't go to your services reluctantly and dragging their feet because they got to.

There's something both in children and in wives that is intuitive and often unerring in sensing that which is Serious and authentic we would do well to hear them. Or else we go on playing our games. And it sounds good.

But it does not affect anything Significantly and even keeps us by that very verbal games playing from the things that are authentic that would be consequential so we can talk about projects and Things that will facilitate the kingdom, but it's almost like toys that men play with.

You see we're living in a world that Billions upon billions are expended in space Travel in getting to Mars and bringing back a stone in The hope that they might find that there really is organic life on another planet which would discredit the Bible and we're paying for that now taxes to the tune of Trillions of dollars.

It's an insanity in a world in which children are dying by the tens of thousands Daily for the want of the most elementary nutrition. We think it justifiable to send off these rockets and men and escapades in space.

It's that the games that grown men play when they've got the finances to provide it. It's tragic in the world. But for the church to emulate that at its own level with its own games is more tragic still.

So our wives will humor us because So long as the real thing is not threatened, okay but it robs ourselves in the church of a real seriousness and The issue of what really constitutes truth in the last analysis lifestyle is not Understood or examined and I'm not in any of these things saying thus saith the Lord.

Just thinking out the what-ifs that might be a possibility. The question for you is are you willing to put them before the Lord and the chance possibility. That his seeing is different from our seeing and other than our seeing and that his thoughts are not our thoughts.

And that even if you are correct in every question raised this morning and that everything that I have sounded as a possibility is Not a possibility. You have been jealous for the truth. You have been zealous for the truth.

You have been valiant for the truth in your willingness to consider the possibility of a what-if and this is not some Strange aspect of Church life. This is definitive. This is normative. The only thing that strikes us is that it's strange is that we're unaccustomed to it when when the Paul enjoined Timothy to preach the word.

He wasn't talking about biblical sermons. He was talking about exhortation. Rebuke and correction preach the word. That's the word. To people right in their face right between the eyes right in the kisser right in their teeth.

Let them know their need let them know their condition where the church is going to become some flabby kind of cultural entity that will. That the powers of darkness will yawn over and say Jesus. We know in Paul we know but the church in Georgetown who I?