Fren-08 Élie Le Prophète (Elijah the Prophet) — Art Katz

Elijah as the Prophet of Restoration

I'm ready to introduce a new topic or a new prophet for which we can say everything till now has been preparation. He's not a prophet with which one wants to begin. He's really more of a prophet with which we shall conclude.

Because Jesus said that Elijah must first come to restore all things that was true in his first coming and it shall be true also in his final coming. Elijah must come and restore all things. Or at least a people in the character of Elijah.

An Elijah people, a prophetic church in keeping with the character and ministry of Elijah himself. It's the ministry of restoration and it's a phenomenal task because a way needs to be prepared for the coming of the Lord.

The crooked, twisted, distorted way needs to be made straight. The rough places smooth and the high mountains of human exaltation and self-assurance need to be brought down. And the equally false valleys of despondency and defeat and insecurity need to be filled up.

For the coming of the Lord and the brightness of his glory. This is the task of the church in the last days. And it must be done in the power and the authority of Elijah. The most eminent man of God in the most wicked and corrupt age.

God reserves his best for the world's worst and we are certainly moving toward the fulfillment of these things. That we are abruptly introduced to Elijah in 1 Kings 16. Very abrupt. No introduction at all.

Here is the man full blown and put before us without any preparation. And he comes in an age of apostasy. When all of the prophets have been slain. And the altars of God have been broken down. And the people of Israel have gone whoring after other gods.

And there is a conjunction between an Ahab and a Jezebel. The coming together of the most sinister and sensual political and religious coalition. A kind of one world ecumenical mentality. To which we are now also presently moving.

And before this formidable and fearful entity which has slain all the prophets of God stands one man in absolute assurance in God without trembling without fear without inward or personal contradiction and we hear these first words as the Lord my God lives before whom I stand it shall not rain nor dew but according to my word I want to clutch the edge of this podium to keep from falling under the impact of those words.

Elijah's Word and the Incarnation of God's Authority

We must not rush this we need to extend our seminar for another week just to adequately weigh and ponder these words. What an introduction of a man of God words that would be astounding and exceptional under any circumstance but multiplied in their significance in that they are spoken before Ahab this dreaded despot in union with Jezebel and before him the prophet stands this single eyed man of God and makes this announcement commanding the elements bringing judgment upon Israel and all the surrounding world.

It shall not rain nor dew not even dew but according to my word that has got to be either the most absolute and colossal egotism or exactly the opposite an absolute selflessness in which you cannot tell where the prophet ends and God begins.

God's word is his word and his word is God's word. It's no longer the word of the Lord coming to the prophet. It's the word of the Lord in the prophet. It's the word made flesh. And it's to this that we're tending.

I'm feeling Shakespearean again that scene in Hamlet where he holds the skull of the court jester excuse me the madman of the court do you remember his name? He holds the head of the skull in his hand and he says where be your jibes and gambles now?

Where are your wisecracks and your jokes now? Where is your charismatic fun and games now? Where are your cheap amens and hallelujahs now? When God is bringing us to this the incarnation of his people with the prophetic spirit of God that commands elements and stands before the most dreaded anti-Christ forces in the earth without trembling.

Where be your jibes and gambles now? Your conferences and your clinics your fun and your games. This is a solemn hour. It's an hour of restoration. Elijah must come before the day of the coming of the Lord.

It's a divine imperative and I cannot say with assurance whether it's going to be a single man. My greatest inclination is to think it's going to be a corporate man an Elijah band over the entire earth making straight the way for the coming of the Lord.

And so I want to ask you ministers that are in the room. Are you preparing the people of God for this? Let that sink in a minute's respectful silence. Are you preparing the people of God for this? To be an Elijah people in the intensity and character and singleness of eye as this man because we are also moving toward an age of apostasy.

Apostasy and the Need for an Elijah People

The falling away of the church iniquity shall abound and the hearts of many shall grow cold. Paul said that do not be deceived. The Lord shall not come until there first be a great falling away. The parallel between the age of Elijah and our age is stunning.

People will still mouth God's words. There will still be a Christian rhetoric. There will be one great ecumenical charismatic thing that envelops the earth. There will be utterly deceived. They will leap on their altars.

But there will be no answer. But they expected an answer because they thought they knew God. Because they said all the right words and were inducted in all the right phrases but had not the reality of God which is the very quintessence of the prophetic burden.

And indeed they were unwilling to hear it or to receive it. It's an age which destroys the prophets that Elijah can say. I alone am left to choose a vocation like this. Or to choose to be chosen is to sign your death warrant.

I'm not expecting to end in a bed. Indeed I'll be disappointed. But I know that there's a logic to my life that brings me to a modest course. And it's not the world that I fear. It's religion. In this age of apostasy Elijah says as the Lord my God lives before whom I stand.

He knew him as a living God. It wasn't a piece of cheap phraseology. It was something in wrought in the depths of the experience of the man. He's a man with a personal history in God. That's my only credential to stand before you.

And it's the only title I can present to you to stand before you. I've never been a student in a Bible school. I've never attended a seminary. I've never even gone to a discipleship training school. Tom is praying for me.

I have only one credential a certain volume of experience in God most of which has been painful before it became glorious. I know that my Lord lives because he's feeding 55 of us every day up in a remote location in North America in a community that has no organizational connections for which none of us receive any salary or have personal income or bank accounts or insurance policies or any such thing.

Divine Provision and a Personal History in God

Over seven years now we've been fed by ravens and I'm doing pretty well. And I'm not wearing it so badly. And you saw the beautiful three-piece suit I wore last night. It was a gift. See these shoes?

Got them in Africa as a gift. See this watch? A Lebanese saint got it in Germany because I had given my own watch away in Czechoslovakia only some weeks before I saw this man sitting with his arms folded as I was speaking there in Germany.

My eye fell on his watch. The Lord says that's your watch. He came up to me after the meeting. He said the Lord has spoken to me that I'm to give you my watch. I just bought it. It has an alarm clock and everything.

So I've got it. According to the definition of the United States government we live beneath the poverty line. Our income is so infinitesimal that we have no requirement even to pay income tax. Yet we own our own airplane.

We have our own pilot who is also a mechanic. Also our printer whose wife is a nurse. They receive no salary. We live together every day many problems unspeakable trials and aggravations. No one can cause you greater hurt than saints themselves.

But they are often the very hurts that we need if the Lord is to cut in order that he might heal. I could take days to speak on this subject but just to suggest that I know that my Lord lives. I know it even in these days that I should come here after two months of travel through Africa and Egypt and Israel without time for preparation or even thought not knowing what to find but to expect and to see the day by day unfolding of God that we have been experiencing.

I know that my God lives. To go to bed last night without knowing what I'd be speaking this morning too tired to give it any consideration. It has not to do with me anyway. And then to hear these words this morning I know that my God lives.

That knowledge is not cheap. It costs something to cast yourself upon such a God to trust him for your provision both spiritual as well as material. To welcome the dealings of God in your life however painful however humiliating.

To enter into another realm of glory that you can stand before a whole unbelieving generation that has only its cheap religious rhetoric and phraseology and say I know that my God lives before whom I stand.

Experiencing the Prophetic Word

That's a precious phrase. Can you see why prophetic texts need to be spoken by prophetic persons. This is not for teachers. There needs to be something here that lies too deep for words. There needs to be an emanation a spirit of something coming forth.

I'm glad you're French speaking so you can understand me when I say that this is like a rare wine. I'm glad you're French speaking so you can understand me when I say that this is like a rare wine with an American Coca-Cola audience.

I wouldn't be able to use such a comparison. But a phrase like this before whom I stand. We don't need exegesis for that. We need to be able to savour it like a rare wine on the tongue. You don't want to suck this down quickly.

This needs to linger. The fragrance of it needs to go up into your nostrils. You need to feel those prickly dots that come up into your senses. This is resonant of a life lived before God. What does that mean?

It is so distinctly different from anything that we understand as Christians. That has only to do with the attendance at Sunday services. As the Lord lives before whom I stand. Who of us can say that?

And what will it take before we can say it? And whatever it takes must be fulfilled or the Lord will not come. We need to hasten the day of His appearing. I say again, it's not a fixed chronological event.

It's waiting upon us our maturity as sons and daughters of God who are making straight the way for His coming in the bringing of the church to a maturity that it can say as the Lord my God lives before whom I stand.

I don't stand before men as if I crave their approval. I need their assurance. I'm impervious to their compliments as I am to their scathing condemnation. There's only one voice that you crave to hear the voice of Him with whom you have to do.

This is my servant in whom I am well pleased. It's the only voice you hear who is more blind or deaf than my servant Israel. Don't look at their faces and don't listen for their compliments their seductive flattery or their condemnation or contempt.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I was told that I'm destroying the unity of the body of Christ. It almost invariably comes at Catholic charismatic conferences. Excuse me for that. It just happens that God gives me fearful things to say about golden calves and eating, drinking and rising up to play and not waiting for the holy thing to come down the mount brought down by the prophet of God in God's own time that I cannot give myself to these Jesus rallies where they wear shorts and crack gum and having a great ball.

And when they ask me to speak I speak what the Lord gives. And there's a bit of a tremor and a shock. And yet strangely it brings some people to life but always without exception. Some condescending charismatic leader will come and take me aside privately later brother I need to tell you you're really injuring the unity of the body of Christ.

You went and burst our little bubble in our ecumenical unity. And I love it because I'm jealous for the real thing and not the facsimile thereof. Do we think that this unity is going to be obtained because there's a big canvas banner with a dove.

And we should embrace men with their turn around collars and call them brother whose churches have murdered the true saints of God since time immemorial that the blood of the apostolic saints has run right through France and Switzerland and that these crimes have never been acknowledged before God or men never been repented of.

And you speak now of unity of the body of Christ. It's a false ecumenism. And if a prophet is anything he stands for the truth and will not give himself to the counterfeit no matter how beguiling men are or how fierce their criticism.

That you're destroying the unity of the body. Indeed there's something that needs to be destroyed locked up and rooted out and destroyed if there's to be a true building and a planting. And there's only one kind of a man who will stand for this.

It's the man who will say as my God lives before whom I stand. That's why God doesn't give us any introduction to Elijah. The world would not be great enough to contain the books. You can only imagine what it takes to prepare a man like this of whom we are told in James that he was flesh and blood like as we I want to destroy something right now in you any romantic notion that you have that these men were made of different flesh.

That's a lie. But it's a lie that you want to encourage and dwell in because it absolves you from the responsibility to be the Elijah for your generation. You think well they were extraordinary and I'm just ordinary.

And I can't of course assume to be such as they. But it's a lie. You're not getting away that easily. God has called you to more than a seminar. He's called you to the reality to be a prophetic people an Elijah people to work the work of restoration to destroy the pluck up and root out that there might be a building in the planting.

How discreet the Lord is to just draw the shade over the life of Elijah the extraordinary dealings of God. How many times was he left broken and despairing and repentant and dissolved in his own tears.

How many times had he failed God in disappointment. What does it take to learn the lessons of obedience. How does one come to such an acute hearing of the still small voice. It cannot take place in a day.

Seeking First the Kingdom of God

So I repeat again to the leaders of the church that are here what are you doing to prepare your people for this. How much beyond Sunday services we need to go. How much do we need to see what our first purpose of life is to be Gods to be yielded to him to do his will to seek first his kingdom to break the powers of the deception that have made the faith a secondary and a supplementary phenomenon.

A Sunday addendum to our busy life that we've allowed ourselves to be seduced by the universities and the emphasis on profession. And you've got to make a living and all the things that pertain to prestige and pride in which you have become so ensconced.

Take it off that your life in Christ is supplementary rather than first and foremost. A mere Sunday phenomenon. What a caricature of God's intentions. But we sing it beautifully. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

But we don't do it. Seek ye first and all through this trip we share about our community experience out of which has come the revelation of the gospel the kingdom of God not as some ephemeral and abstract thing but as practical possibility here in the earth as it is in heaven by going from house to house daily breaking bread morning prayer meetings together giving the Lord the best and first part of our day until he shall release us.

No session less than two and a half hours. It's confrontation, it's existential dealing. It's the word of God given in the context of our life and experience. It's a foundation for community and the changing of our character in life.

And a man will come up to me afterwards and say oh Artie said I would love to meet on a daily basis with other believers in prayer like that. But my house is in the suburbs and I'm too far away from where the other saints live.

So I tell him move! Seek ye first the kingdom of God. Or another one will come and say well I'm an engineer, I'm a professional businessman and I don't have the time for that kind of giving myself to the body of Christ.

And I say to him change your job. Give up your career simplify your lifestyle. Work a few hours. Establish the first priority his kingdom come. You can understand why the phrase is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

It will never come though it's burgeoning and pulsating and waiting to break forth until we ourselves first repent not the world. We for our Sunday Christianity for the shabbiness of our religious life with our placid satisfaction of this short of the glory of God that we have learned to live without that glory and think that that's normative and measure religious success by numbers and whether the services were good.

We need to repent for falling short of the glory of God and not believing for a kingdom come. I hadn't planned to say any of these things. I have written in my margin alongside where it says before whom I stand.

And you need to write it in your margin that this is a life lived deliberately and consciously for God in his presence. A deliberate conscious living of one's life for God not for oneself. This alone is revolutionary.

This alone challenges and controverts the whole egocentric theme of modern civilization which has come even into the church. Whether we like the services whether we enjoy the song service whether we enjoy the preaching whether we like the pastor whether we have received benefit from coming whether we have been fed by our coming.

Everything is predicated in terms of us. Our satisfaction our delight our benefit. The egocentrism of the world living for one's own self is the cancer also of the church and needs to be ruthlessly excised cut out and removed by God's prophetic people.

Are you consciously living your life for God? That's how the great apostolic life begins. Paul knew how to ask the right question Lord. And he said it with trembling not the facile glib way in which we say it.

Lord one who has total authority over me in everything. What would you have for me to do? How many of us have ever dared once ask that question? How many of us would even dare now to ask that question?

Lest we would hear to our horror that what we are doing is not his way. No, he never called you to business. Never called you to a profession. Never called you to ministry. Never called you to marriage.

It's something you chose without even consulting without even considering you assumed. Well, one has to make a living. God needs doctors. Of course it's natural to be married. And so that God would come afterwards and bless what you have chosen.

We are guilty children for a sinful presumption before God in virtually everything. Because the question what would you have for me to do is not the question that is asked only at the inception of the apostolic prophetic life.

It's the question in which our life needs daily to be lived hourly moment by moment. What would you have for me to do. Have you the faith to ask it and to believe that God could answer that indeed that he has a will a purpose might be contrary to your own.

And that indeed he will express it if he sees a heart that has vacated its own desires and will do the will of God that is revealed. Get thee to the brook sheriff. I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.

So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. No ifs, no ands, no buts. Surely he should have asked a few Jewish questions for which we Jews are famous. Is that really God. Or is that Satan. Because the raven is a bird it's an unclean bird.

It's the kind of thing that feeds on dead and rotting things. Surely God will not select that as an instrument for feeding me. Contradicts all that I understand about God. Exactly. There's nothing that God delights in more than contradicting your French, Swiss, German understanding.

So he arose and went. And American. Because I'm not offended by that. Because I don't represent that nationality or that culture something far more transcendent a heavenly. So he arose and went. And did you love those words.

If you have anything to do with my burial would you put that on my tombstone. Art Katz born in Brooklyn, New York February 13th, 1929 died in Lausanne, Switzerland. November stoned by women. And then this one inscription.

So he arose and went and did according to the word of the Lord. No ifs, no ands, no buts. No explanation required. You know that's how my life in God began 18 years ago in Jerusalem. I walked into a Christian bookstore as a Jewish atheist in Jerusalem.

And I was stunned to find that they were selling Bibles and New Testaments. All she said innocently. This is our bookstore adjoining our chapel. We're a congregation of Jewish believers in the Messiah Jesus.

And in that moment I heard a voice the voice of him with whom I have to do a still small voice that I had not heard throughout all of my contentious adult life so long filled with my own rhetoric and humanistic slogans my Marxism, my ideologies.

But when all that was stilled I heard a voice calling me by name and commanding me to remain there. And I obeyed and obedience brought life. I left four days later saved. So he arose and he went and he did according to the word of the Lord.

And this is my only credential before you 18 years of arising and going and doing according to the word of the Lord. And I can't tell you how many times we have moved from California to New York to Kansas City to New York to Denmark to Israel to New Jersey to Minnesota.

We're a people dwelling in tents and it's disrupted the life of my children. And my wife doesn't like that. And I had to announce to her seven years ago God is calling us to Minnesota to live in community with other saints.

We had at that time a beautiful 17 room house in New Jersey a gothic masterpiece privacy two vintage Volvo cars. And the Lord said arise and go to this nothing location. We were living 20 miles away from New York City two and a half million Jews the true and the effectual Jerusalem of the modern world.

And the Lord brought us up to northern Minnesota nothing there but Indians and woods. And I had to listen to the reproaches of Christians. What are you doing. Copping out. Is this a flight from reality.

You're right at the doorstep of the Jewish community. What are you going to do. Run up to the woods and play cowboys and Indians. And I could answer them not a word because the Lord did not give me a word of explanation.

Only arise and go. Will you go when it contradicts your logic your reason what you think God would ask. And your wife has not seen the vision or heard that voice. It has come only to the head of the body.

And she says to you. Did God really say that. Because she doesn't want to give up this beautiful house and come into this demanding lifestyle where her pots and pans are going to be borrowed and not returned and the children's bicycles broken and the mud of the saints tramped into your carpets and your privacy invaded and the time of your husband absorbed.

Did God say that. And I had to stand for that moment and ask myself what did you say that. Because I wouldn't even say it was a still small voice. To say that it was a whisper would be an exaggeration.

I would say more an intimation an intuition the faintest intonation of God so that it almost becomes a matter of whether you will choose to hear it when it calls you to a radical obedience and a costly obedience unto inconvenience and more of all that is practical and good and all that is more than that.

Even the anger and displeasure of your wife. Are you ready to hear them. To hear this voice. Soft soft soft and quiet. You know what my experience has been the most radical requirements of God to me have not come with a loud voice out of heaven.

Because what kind of obedience does that require. There is no question about that God has spoken. You do it no matter what. But he brings you into an extraordinary tension. It's the tension of the kingdom which is an utterly voluntary phenomenon.

It cannot be compelled of men. The kingdom is not made by forced conscripts. But those who choose to be chosen choose to hear choose to arise and to go because they have believed that God has spoken even when it's contrary to reason to security to one's own flesh.

That kind of hearing is not born in a day. It needs to be cultivated nurtured day by day in a school of obedience in which the prophets of God are trained. Do you have such a sensitive ear. No accident that the blood of the priest was upon the ear and the thumb and the foot reserved for God only not what men want to speak if you play your cards.

Right brother I can see a prominent ministry for you ahead. You just need to be a little bit more tactful more diplomatic. But with your personality and your remarkable gifts I can see that God could bring you to a prominent place in our movement not the kingdom our movement.

You need to reserve the ear only for him. Go to the brook sheriff I've commanded the ravens to feed thee there. So he arose and he went and he did according to the word of the Lord. That's why when the word comes out of the mouth of such a man it comes with a distinct authority and power.

Because he who has cherished the word and lived only by the word that when the hour comes that he shall speak the word. One whose life has been immersed in the word brings it forth with a power and an authority unknown to those who have not lived in that obedience to the word.

You want to turn this seminar into an event that could potentially shake the nations from which you come. Ask God a question today what would you have for me to do. And prepare yourself to believe for an answer.

And when it comes however foolish however demanding and costly however insanely sacrificial arise and go. And do you say. But brother what if I really have mistaken the word. It's really not God's and I ruin the security of my family and my religious reputation.

Better to err believing that it's God's word by doing it than to err in remaining where you are in the thought that you've not heard it. The capacity to hear is in the proportion of our willingness to do.

That's why the prophet is led in such intimate detail by the Lord. God recognizes that here indeed is a man perhaps only one in the earth of all the millions professing to be Christians who lives by every word that proceeds out of my mouth.

Faith When the Brook Dries Up

Because it came to pass in the process of time that the brook dried up. And don't you think Elijah saw it day by day that the brook was becoming a trickle that there was a devastating drought in the land.

And how long can a man go without water. Shouldn't he use the mind that God gave him. God didn't ask us to abdicate our minds and begin to make other arrangements for himself. And think and analyze what are the prospective possibilities.

Because you can see that the brook is drying up. And logic itself will tell you that you've got to move and do something. But he does not move by circumstances. He does not move by what he sees. He does not walk by sight.

He walks only by faith in the word that comes from the Lord. He does not live by circumstances by conditions but by the word of the Lord is that how you live. Because I want to tell you the brook is drying up.

It shall even come to Switzerland. Yes it will shock you. But the brook can dry up here also. Oh you've lived well for generations. But I tell you in the authority of God that the brook which has sustained you for so long is going to be dried up over the earth as the judgment of God.

How will you live in that day if you have been living by circumstances the condition of the Swiss franc the health of the economy your retirement pension your husband's career or any other such physical and earthly circumstances.

And not by the word of God. That's why I say that a prophet has a history in God. See I was born in 1929. It was the year of the great crash. I won't say that my birth brought it but I grew up in that phenomenon.

I know what physical want means. I had no father. My mother had to eke out the barest living a big birthday celebration with chocolate pudding three spoons for one bowl. And those memories remain. And I praise God for them.

Because I'm in a far more privileged position than my own children who have only grown up in an age of affluence. Easy come, easy go. I have no respect for value because they have not had opportunity to learn it.

When the crash comes now for how many will their lives utterly collapse. Not just economically but morally because they have not been prepared for the devastation. And so to come from that kind of beginning and to become a professional teacher as I had been 18 years ago with university degrees and established in my career and annual wage increases and retirement benefits and medical insurance.

And the Lord says arise and go leave the teaching profession. I have called you to my service Jewish missions. And I have called you $100 a week and all the tracts you can eat. My wife was pregnant. We had a nice little house in California.

I had a flourishing little ministry even in the school. Even my minister said you'd be a fool to go. Look how God is using you where you are. But the voice of the Lord came go and we left. And we no longer had the assurances and the securities of being in a teaching profession.

But now we had the security of a mission organization large and well established. And four years later the Lord said arise and go and leave this organization and establish your own ministry. So we arose and went and the Lord miraculously provided I didn't need the weekly income that came from an organization.

The Lord was able to support my family. And eight years ago the Lord said arise and go into a community situation. And for over seven years he's been providing for 55 souls every day. Are you arising and going.

Are you being led from brook to brook not looking down on the circumstances that even when you're a teacher or even working in an organization your sustenance does not come from men nor from the world but from God.

You need to see that now this prophetic seeing therefore it doesn't matter whether it's this brook or that doesn't matter whether it's ravens or a widow these are only the instrumentalities but you are living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

And what if the word doesn't come. And daily you watch the brook drying up it shrivels to nothing and you hear the screeching voice of your wife or the clamoring of your children. Where's your responsibility as a father.

You should be providing. Can't you see the brook is drying. You should be finding some other arrangement. You know what Job said yea though he slay me yet will I trust him. You know what true faith is apostolic and prophetic faith is the willingness to perish alongside of a brook that has completely dried up.

But you will not move because the word of the Lord has not come. And you will not move by any other means even though it kill you. That is prophetic faith and the foundation of the church which needs to be restored by men who know it in their experience and can stand before the Ahab of this world.

That Ahab Jezebel coalition that is the epitome of everything that is sensual and earthly and carnal the whipped cream cakes of the world and security and all that the world majors in because the false prophets ate at Jezebel's table while the true prophet prefers to perish by the side of a brook.

Daniel refused to eat from the king's table. And that's a key to breaking that earthly and sensual connection with the whole world and its system of inducements and beguilements and temptations even if it's caffeine and it's coffee and it's coca cola and it's chocolate which if it was ruthlessly removed from us we would have tremors and shakes like drug addicts needing a fix.

We would sell our souls for a chocolate. So deeply impaled are we in the world today. And to stand before the Ahab Jezebel the power of all these things and say as the Lord my God lives before whom I stand and it shall not rain nor dew but according to my word.

And God honors that word for it is God's own word and comes as a judgment upon the entire earthly, worldly, religious economic system. Is the collision course toward which we are tending and for which we need to be prepared.

It's an exceptional calling. It must come and restore all things Jesus is pent up contained in the heavens until the restoration of all things. True faith true obedience living by the word of God seeking first the kingdom of heaven.

The Call to Radical Obedience

It's an exceptional calling and requires an exceptional preparation to those who lend themselves that they might be prepared by God. I know that I have more time but I don't know if you can take more.

I'm afraid that one rich thing is going to press and push out of consideration another. I had hoped to go further but I you can't rush this. This needs to seep into our spirit and not just be a kind of bible study about some kind of quaint personality that lived in some distant time.