Span-12 Art's Testimony — Art Katz

Span-12 Art's Testimony — Art Katz

You know that recently I met my brother Aaron in Israel. So we set a date that was delayed for a year more or less, his arrival here. And when finally the date was set again, he wrote me a note in the email and asked me if it would be a problem if I brought a partner with him.

Yes, that's fine brother, with pleasure. So he brought this partner and we started talking about how the Lord guided us and he told me in particular about genealogy and that in a matter of two weeks in Pennsylvania, miracle after miracle, I learned things that my mother and her sisters tried to find out for 80 years.

And by pure miracles. So I mentioned to them something about who my grandfather was, one on my mother's side. So this couple started asking me, and your grandfather, by chance, didn't go to Canada to work on a farm?

Yes, yes. And your grandfather died there, working on that farm, helping the indigenous people? Yes, that's how it was. And his first name is Santiago James? That's right. So the sister says, my grandmother married him.

So we are cousins. Politicians. First. How do you say it? First degree. Politicians. Because his father and my mother were sisters. Imagine how the Lord is. What confirmation that we are walking in the Spirit and that all of this was organized by a God of love.

A tender God. Amen. So it is a joy to have these brothers, Daniel and Sarah Gautalese. And they are working with Brother Arturo in his work in Minnesota. Amen. Stand up, please, and let's sing this chorus one more time to the Lord, and then another little chorus.

The Priority of the Jew First

Well, brother, it's not all that important.

Whose first or second? What, are you interjecting your human thoughts? When God himself has established a priority and an order,.

To the Jew first,.

Don't save them for last. Last somehow never comes.

They are the enemies for your sake.

Witnessing Without a Formula

Someone has asked Jose in the little intermission, ask Art, how do you witness to a Jew?

Someone has asked Jose in the little intermission, ask Art, how do you witness to a Jew? Step one. Principle number one. Wouldn't you like that? How to do it? One, two, three, and you are becoming so Americanized.

There is no one, two, three. There is no formula. It's an ultimate requirement.

Just like preaching. As if life and death is at stake. And who is sufficient for these things?

That there is a God who has to be made unto us wisdom.

Give us his very words.

We might start with them with an insult. As I have done on numerous occasions with my Jewish kinsmen. What, you call yourself a lover of truth? And spend countless hours in university libraries? Searching out esoteric information?

And have never once inquired.

As to the validity of the credentials of this Jesus?

Who all the world worships as their Messiah? What intellectual integrity is that? As I said to a woman on an airplane and we sat on one on the flight coming here. If you are not jealous for the truth which is always inconvenient how then are you Jewish?

Now, I'm not saying that you have to say that. I'm not giving you a principle.

I'm giving you an illustration.

Of how variable the Lord will be when he has the possession of your mouth.

And you're not counting on John 3 .16.

As a secure formula.

When you don't know what to say.

When it's only for you an expediency and a convenience. John 3 .16 is no longer the word of God.

John 3 .16 is no longer the word of God.

It's an inept cliché. The Lord did not give it.

How dare you then to employ it?

To save yourself from embarrassment when you had not the faith to trust God.

With that unique word calculated for that Jewish soul whom he knows from their mother's womb and has brought to a moment of truth.

To hear something that will pierce them through out of your mouth.

Out of your mouth.

The Church's Calling Toward Israel

The Jew compels us to be the church.

Their unbelief in apostasy is our challenge.

And that church that can confront the authorities of its nation on Mars Hill will also be able to confront the Jew.

Are you praising God for this?

Of how the Lord has joined us with this people in an inextricable reciprocity. We would not have chosen them. They would not have chosen us. God in his wisdom has compelled us to be for one another what we must.

Or neither one of us will come to the eternal place of God's glory. That's why God has dispersed us Jews into all nations. I have found them in Tokyo. I have a Jewish Hasidic Orthodox friend who speaks Mandarin Chinese.

The church is not exempt anywhere.

If they are not here, he will bring them.

When, brother? In a soon hour. In the fulfillment of his word.

Jacob's Trouble and the Jewish Remnant

In the time of Jacob's trouble.

Of which Jesus spoke to Jacob. Of which Jesus spoke in Matthew 24. That there is coming such a time.

Of tribulation that will exceed anything that had previously come before.

Or will ever come again. And if that time were not cut short.

No Jewish flesh would survive.

You can count on this.

The day will come.

When they will be coming up out of Argentina Brazil and Peru.

All the nations in which we have been dispersed and come through the little neck of landmass that is called Central America.

And we will come through the little neck of landmass that is called Central America.

Destitute, hopeless and forsaken driven and persecuted unto death because the powers of the nations do not want their survival.

Lest their king come and rule over all nations.

When this comes it will come suddenly.

They will not be able to take their fortunes with them what is only on their back.

I have had a dream of Argentina. I have never been there. But I know it was Argentina. Because in the dream a man says, Well, how do you like Argentina? But what is the one scene that is burned into my memory?

By looking into a building like this what we call in the States an armory and it was filled with canvas cots where people sleep.

And evidently there were people that had slept in it that very night.

But had to be moved on from that place to another in flight.

That is coming. Will they come from North America as well? Is that why we ourselves are in Minnesota? You cannot imagine the winter there. It is impossible for me to describe my winter to you. They are winters that come from the Arctic.

And we have been there 24 years.

Because the time has come.

When the Lord brought me to a property in that remote wilderness.

As an urban New Yorker.

A graduate of the University of California.

To a remote nothing place.

To establish a refuge for Jews in flight in the last days.

Judgment of the Nations and Care for Israel

Matthew 25 speaks of the Lord's first rendering of judgment. After he is seated as king.

With the restoration of Israel's remnant.

That will constitute the restored nation. And on what question does he make his judgment of the Gentile nations? What did you do with the least of these, my brethren? When did we see you, Lord? When did we see you naked?

As you did not do it for the least of these, my brethren.

As you did not do it for the least of these, my brethren.

You did not do it unto me. You thought you were spiritual. But you were not able to discern my affinity and union with my own people who had been brought to become the least.

In all nations despised and rejected of men marred more than any man.

In that day they will not have any beauty that we should desire them. And maybe we did not want to recognize.

That they were the Lord's brethren. Because to take them in.

To clothe them and to feed them to shelter them and give them refuge to extend mercy that they might obtain mercy.

Might well require our lives.

For if the Antichrist's power is loose to torment and to pursue them through all nations.

Of which the power of the Antichrist is loose.

Of which the Nazi time was only a preview. What will be the fate of someone who is caught helping them? It may well be your life. And why should you? And what did they ever do for you? They are probably getting what they deserve.

The international bankers. Etc. etc. It's going to take an uncommon love by a people who will not be in their best and most polite condition. Angry and disturbed by the suddenness of what has come upon them.

Everything stripped and taken from them. They might blame the church as they do now for the last holocaust. And they will blame the church again and come to you in that condition.

Embittered and hostile the enemies for your sake and not even grateful. For your costly sacrifice in hospital. What will be your response then?

In the crisis of that confrontation what will it reveal about you? You can read these scriptures at your own leisure.

Ezekiel chapter 20 from verse 33. Don't look at it now.

God says, I will meet with you.

Speaking to Israel.

The Jews globally Jacob the Jacob people. I will meet with you in the wilderness of the nations face to face. And there you will come into the bond of my covenant. And under the rod of my authority you will be stripped in your wilderness experience and be able to consider categories that you never would have considered had you remained in your luxury and prosperity.

That is how I got saved.

35 years ago.

In the nations in flight moving from place to place a man who had come to the end of himself the end of his categories the end of his humanistic assumptions the end of his ideologies cast out in the world uprooted from the place that was familiar everything that I owned on my back being moved and carried.

I knew not where.

I kept a journal of that experience. It's my first book. It's in English, French, Hebrew, German, Swedish but it's not in Spanish. Pray for that. It is a remarkable insight.

Into the mind of the modern Jewish man confronted with Christ in the extremity of his life and need by a God whom he was not seeking. Because someone picked him up off the side of the road. Someone took him in.

Someone spoke to him not a cliché but the word of the living God.

Somebody put into his hand a book which he had never read. A book which he had never opened. He was an intellectual. The New Testament.

And in the very first reading. Aboard the deck of a tramp steamer a cheap ship.

The least expensive way that a man could travel from Italy to Greece. I'll be making the same trip in a few months.

As a believer. That I made then as an atheist.

And I opened up this book and the only reason I wanted to read it.

Having been contemptuous of the Bible.

Let alone the New Testament.

Was the quality and character of the people whom I was meeting off the side of the road. I was a proud man being stripped. As my entire nation will be. And must be. For there will not be an easy way for them to come to the Lord.

To merely say, Are you saved, brother?

Would be like the proverbial water off the duck's back. An idiom, an American expression. But in the crisis of destitution stripped of our arrogance and of our ideologies our ear is strangely opened to hear some new thing.

Even with the despised name of Jesus.

I was standing in the rain for three hours in Switzerland. The cars went by as if I didn't exist. Where was human brotherhood?

In which my faith had been invested all my life long. They went right on by without seeing me. Wise to avoid me.

In the angry and bitter condition I was in. But a man stopped. With a brand new car. I thought, uh-oh. What's in it for him? And he didn't just greet me, come on in now. He got out of the car. And took my filthy, wet rucksack my backpack and threw it in the back of his car.

I thought, isn't he concerned about his upholstery?

What kind of man is this? And he had me sit down.

And we drove off. And I felt as if I were the exalted guest. How can a man be made to feel like that? Who has been reduced to absolutely nothing.

Who has been reduced to absolutely nothing. And he turned to me and he said in German, Why are you traveling like this?

And somehow I had a grace to answer that I've been good in languages.

I said, I'm a modern man.

I might have said, I am THE modern man. We are the epitome of modernity. We have established it. You watch our movies. Read our books. Go to our psychiatrists. The modern man at the end of himself. Whose world had failed.

And his false gods. I said, I'm a modern man. Whose life is broken at its foundations. And I'm seeking for the deepest answers to life. And I said, and by the way, I'm a Jew. I wanted to catch the words and bring them back into my mouth.

You had to tell him that.

Now watch him get turned off. I turned to look. And the man was beaming like a radiant light. A Jew he said. As if this was somehow something special.

For me it had only been an enigma and a problem all my life.

And he insisted we stop for refreshments. What a golden conversation. What a moment of truth. What did he say? Nothing. But did he ever listen? Did he ever draw my heart out? I couldn't believe what I was sharing with him.

The deepest secrets of my life.

The anguish of my soul. The frustration of a man whose gods have failed.

A world without hope. Collapsing under its own moral weight. Nation against nation and race against race. Genocidal bloodbath. No answers. So I looked at this man. What is he going to say to me? I'm a former Marxist.

I'm a university graduate. There's nothing new under the sun. He was very ordinary looking.

Edwin and the Word of Humility

He said to me in a quiet voice. He said, Art, do you know what it is that the world needs? I thought, this man knows how to ask the questions. I'll take a good question. Over ten cheap answers any day.

Maybe the fault of the churches. We've given answers before the questions have been raised. Anybody can give an answer as a formula. But who can raise the question? Not only by their words, but by their life.

Yeah, I want to know what the world needs.

I've been looking all my adult life long.

That's why I was a high school dropout, a merchant seaman.

Attending Marxist institutes. I want to know what the world needs. Yeah, I want to know what the world needs. With my arms folded over my chest. He said to me in a quiet voice.

Art said, what the world needs is for men to wash one another's feet. And down I went. Pierced through. I had a vision on the spot. Of all of the angry, self-sufficient art catses of the world. Their ideologies, their programs.

Humbling themselves. To wash the feet of the world.

And a silent cry went up out of my heart. You listen to this? We don't need programs.

We need the spirit of humility.

It was the first time in 34 years that the word spirit had ever issued from my lips.

It's a category I did not know. I was an empirical Jew that had to feel, touch, and measure.

What is spirit? Spirit of humility. That could change the world overnight.

That could change the world overnight.

Without a drop of blood being shed? If this man had said, would you need brothers to be saved? Do you know who he is? Do you know where I would be now? Dead! That's all I needed to hear was one more cliché.

One more word that was only a formula.

A religious reflex action. But God had a man.

Out of whose mouth the word could be spoken.

Calculated in the wisdom of God to pierce my heart.

And then he began to speak to me about the gospel of Jesus Christ in German. I wanted to say, hey, that's not for me.

I'm Jewish, we have our own book. That's for you. But I had no voice. My voice had gone out from me. I was stupefied by what he had said.

I had to hear what he was saying. And I left that man like a drunken man. I lurched and staggered under the weight of what he said. How many times have I looked for that man? How many times have I been in Switzerland?

In that very neighborhood, outside Zurich.

As a minister saying to Christians, do you know an Edwin? I had his name and address in my wallet but I got pickpocketed in Egypt.

That's what happens every time we go there. So I lost it. But he works for an automobile agency.

He's a bookkeeper and an accountant. He sings in the choir. He knows about art and philosophy. You know such a man? Nobody ever knows Edwin. I have to think now. What?

33 years later? Why is there such a man? Why is that a man? He looked so ordinary. But his words were so piercing. His hearing of me was such an act of love. Was that a man? Or was that an angel? Here's what I want to say, saints.

Being Sent to Preach the Word of God

Until the Jews of Guatemala City can say about you. Is that a woman or an angel? Is that a man or an angel? You are the angels when you bring them the word of God that was given in the moment. By the Spirit of God.

By those who live by that Spirit. They have no other source of life than you. They're waiting for that word. So they call upon him of whom they've not heard.

Haven't they heard, brother? Not any more than I heard in North America.

But what did I hear? Some Jesus that looks like a ballet dancer on a cross? Totally un-Jewish? A Christian culture? I never heard. How shall they hear except one preach?

And how shall one preach except he be sent? For hearing comes by the word of God.

For hearing comes by the word of God. Faith comes by hearing the word of God.

It is created by the word.

By those who, until that moment, could not believe. The word that is preached by one whom is sent sent from whom? From an apostolic body. More than the numerical accumulation of saints. The community of faith.

Living in the authenticity of that faith. Can be sent forth out and from them.

By the same way that we have come to you in these days. Out of such a community.

By the laying on of hands. By those who have remained. On us who were sent. That you could hear something more.

Than a clever virtuoso. That the word of God would be for you an event. Through a sent man. Out of a sending body.

The whole meaning of the word apostolic. This is what the Jews are waiting. Even in their ignorance. I had not yet recovered from this confrontation with this man. When I came to the city of Zurich itself.

The American Girl and the Love of God

And walking in the woods surrounding the city. I met an American girl. With whom I should have had nothing to do. She had just graduated high school. In Europe for a vacation. The kind that we Jews call wasps.

White. Anglo-Saxon. Protestant. Wasp. The very antithesis.

Of all that we are as Jews. Antiseptic. Bloodless. Blonde. But she was remarkably But she was remarkably easy to be with her. She wanted to walk with me. Without any kind of bad thoughts. Transparent.

Without fear. And I said to her, why are you being kind?

Why are you doing this? And she said, look, it's the love of God.

I had been a Marxist. A communist. But where had I seen kindness? I was probing this girl.

Her motives. Her reasons. How come? Why? She answered every question the same way.

It's the love of God. I couldn't bear to hear the phrase anymore. God's fault. I thought, I'm going to let this girl have it.

My hobby was to engage Christians in debate and wipe them out. My pastime.

So what's this little girl to me? I said, look kid. You're a nice girl and all that. I can't stand this God talk. Answer one question for me. That no Christian has ever successfully been able to answer.

You say it's the love of God?

It's the love of God? How do you know that God even exists? Got her now. She'll think of some clever things she learned in Sunday school. And I'll demolish her. But she looked up with that Anglo-Saxon face.

Full of the light of God.

And she said with complete sincerity.

All innocence. Art, she said, I know that God is. He lives in me. Boom.

And down I went. Like an ox that had been struck. Boxes sinking to the canvas. What hit me? What did she say? It wasn't even intellectual. Let alone theological. What gave it its power? It was true. And she had the face to prove it.

God's Purpose in Bringing Israel to Crisis

You have a destiny, children. A collision course with history. God is going to uproot his chosen people.

Every place where they have established their security. Their God-rejecting affluence.

Nations. And not so much as one kernel shall fall to the ground. You would do well to believe that all nations includes Guatemala. Well, for one thing, I would not be here. The fact that I'm here indicates to me you have a destiny.

They're going to come to the wilderness of your nation. Not the principal and lofty and illustrious places.

Not the principal and lofty and illustrious places. The back roads. The dirt streets. The poor neighborhoods. At night.

Secretly. And God will meet with them there. Through you. Face to face. No matter how you are provoked.

No matter how impolite they are. No matter how ungrateful.

I see only one thing.

The consistent love of God. That cannot be offended against. This is the mystery that Paul saw in Romans 11.

Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Who has been his counselor? What is Paul celebrating?

Much more than Israel's restoration.

The church's transfiguration.

The church's transfiguration. By the crisis of faith that comes to it. By the Jew in his last extremity.

By people who do not love their life to the death.

By people who do not love their life to the death. Who do not regard themselves as precious. But for the purpose of God. Who established the bounds of their habitation. And appointed in time that they might seek after God. And find Him.

For the revelation of His purpose. That you might fulfill it.

Beyond any ability in yourself. But by the power of His life. Released in resurrection. And is now your life. That's much more than being a well-intentioned Christian. That's becoming the thing in itself.

To whom Jews will cling. And believe. Because you are the message.

You are the thing in itself. You are the demonstration of the truth of the resurrection. For you are its sons and daughters. I've led a number of Jews to the Lord. There's one sitting on the front row here.

Personal Examples of Jewish Evangelism

Right over the telephone. Who said, well, what is salvation? And I explained to her. And she said, well, I'm not ready for that. I said, when you are, call me.

And she did a short time later. Right over the telephone. The word of the Lord. There's another Jewish woman. They took me to see her. She was a professor in the state of Wisconsin.

She had lived in excruciating pain for seven years.

No doctor could heal her. That's what happens to a Jew when they practice yoga. Others can, we cannot.

We should be a holy people unto him. We're not to trifle with the world's deviancy. Our sins are doubled. So they brought me to see her.

And I said to her, unrehearsed. What must be the magnitude of your pride.

That God has allowed this infirmity to come upon you?

She told me later, when you said that, she said, you like slapped me in the face.

I thought I was a respectable Jew. I never saw myself as a proud person. But you were showing me as God sees me. And as I in fact am. Because we believers walk by faith and not by sight.

We're not impressed with externalities. And the well-behaved and moral and ethical Jews who have it all together and don't yell at their wives the way we do. They need to be saved. They are the man of the year.

We have a choice to make. We're either going to be impressed by what our eye sees externally or by what the word of God says is the condition of every Jew and every man. However outwardly impressive. There's no man good, no not one.

If God should mark iniquity.

Who can stand? The church is called to its prophetic task.

Is to communicate things as God sees them. Not as men would choose them to be. We have to bring men to how God sees.

Because it's before that God that they will stand in the day of his judgment.

Two Encounters That Led to Salvation

Well I can't give you my whole testimony now.

But I've given you two principal events of it.

One that came through a sophisticated man.

Who spoke to me a piercing statement of what the world needs and then a simple girl demonstrating in her own face.

The light of God which I had never seen being all my life in the darkness with all my university degrees.

And when I recovered from her statement I was jealous. She lured me to jealousy.

By what was in her.

That I had never glimpsed before fulfilling what Paul said in Romans. Have they stumbled they should fall? No, but through their fall salvation has come to the gentiles.

So as to bring them to jealousy.

Conversion in Jerusalem

Well I spent some weeks in Egypt with the Jewish community there. At that time I saw orthodox Judaism and its inadequacy. All religion is inadequate.

As we took a train into southern Egypt crowded with peasant people that we had not a place to sit coming back.

We were the first ones in the compartment. We came to the next station.

And the poor people were pressing to come in this Jewish brother said.

Keep the door closed keep your seat. There is not enough for all. I thought to myself reasonable.

Not generous but what God is asking. Not just to move over and make room.

But to give up your seat to give up your life that's more than religion.

It's the sacrificial nature of what God is in himself to those who are his.

So where does God finish his work with me? Of course in Jerusalem.

Where my trip journey ended and I was at the Hebrew University being supplied with books by a Jewish friend books that explained.

Why I did not have to become a Christian that did not help. I could not get rid of the hook the Lord was pulling me in. I was slipping and flopping.

And the last thing I was going to do was to visit an orthodox Jewish community. I would see real Judaism.

And I was willing I wanted to stay out there.

Can I help it if he put me on the wrong bus? and find myself lost in Jerusalem? going in circles? And I got out of the bus walked into the first store that I could find.

Asked the woman for instructions and she graciously gave them to me and I was about to leave.

And I realized I was in a bookstore and I took a closer look. Bibles Christian commentaries New Testaments and I turned again to this Jewish woman.

And I said what is this place?

And she said we are Jewish believers in the Messiah Jesus. This is our bookstore adjoining our chapel.

And something clicked in my heart and I heard a voice I could tell you exactly what he said calling me by name Art you are not to leave. I was being commanded.