K-016 the Two Judaisms — Art Katz

The day that I was saved, eight years ago, as soon as the Spirit of God entered my life, I instinctively or intuitively understood that I was being enrolled in a great conflict. I knew it. It was a war, a contest.

The Jewish People and the Spiritual Conflict

And there's nothing that more reveals the nature of this conflict than bringing the gospel to the Jewish people. Now you say, Art, why is that? Aren't the Jews merely another ethnic group? No, not so.

They are a very special and distinct group. We know that God's, what can I say, dealings with men began with the Jewish people. And I believe that his dealings with men will end. There are significant people in all of the things that God has been working.

They're an instrument of his revelation. They've been a kind of a barometer, as they are to this day, of the spiritual condition of Gentile people. I have only to know how a Gentile believer regards the Jew to understand where he is spiritually.

In the same manner, for example, if you find an anti-Semite, you know exactly where he is spiritually. He's a despiser and a hater of God, no matter what religious vocabulary he employs. A man's real regard for the Jewish people is the most sensitive indication of where he is in relationship with God.

And my experience in these eight years walking with the Lord is this, that those Gentiles who have the highest regard for Jewish people, the most spiritual people, and that figures because in the natural we Jews have little to commend ourselves to Gentiles.

We rub you the wrong way. In the natural, we would move you to envy and to jealousy and to resentment and irritation. You break your necks in school to get passing grades, and there we sit without even batting an eyelash and lean back and whip out those A's, one right after the other.

And we come back from the concentration camps with a tattoo on our arm and maybe a pair of gotgas on our back, long johns. And we start life anew in America, and within 25 years we've got two or three businesses and we're living in a palatial home, and our garage is crammed with beautiful new cars and our kids are going to the finest schools in the country, and you're still struggling along at $75 a week.

Of course, I'm exaggerating, but not too much. Not too much. It takes unusual spiritual disposition to rise above these natural considerations and yet have a loving regard for the Jewish people. So what I'm doing now is what I'm going to be doing for this entire time I'll speak this morning.

You're going to be required to listen very intently, not just for what I say, but for what shall be expressed between the lines. I've already expressed enough meat to ponder for the rest of this session, if we want to stay on this one point alone, of how God has raised up this peculiar people and the many purposes which they serve in His economy.

Now, for example, this Jewish people is dispersed all over the face of the earth. There's not a community hardly over the face of this earth where they cannot be found. I've been to Tokyo, and there's a Jewish community in Tokyo.

And I think if you went to Shanghai and Timbuktu, you're going to find Jews there. And I've been in the Midwest, and in the most nondescript towns in Iowa, there's at least one Jewish family. All of this is an expression of the veracity of God's word that a judgment would fall upon this Jewish people, that they would be made a byword, a hyst, and a proverb to all the nations to which He would send them.

That's one aspect of His dealings. But our God is a manifold God. He's a Jewish economical God, and there are many purposes served at one time. And another purpose is this, that as these Jewish people are in every community, there's not one of us who is not challenged to the root of our being to bring to them the witness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And as Al may have mentioned the other night, it's one thing to witness to a Gentile. You tell some guy rolling in his vomit in the gutter that he needs the Lord, and he'll quickly acknowledge. And he's already had rudimentary training in the vocabulary of Christianity.

He knows his need. He knows he's lost. He knows he needs to be saved. But you tell a Jewish man whose life is well-ordered, stable, ethical, moral, who has a greater seeming concern for the world than you, who palpitates for Vietnam and Biafra, and has on his wall two or three university degrees and awards from the Dene Brith and the Chamber of Commerce, who has never so much as barked at his wife, let alone struck her, and you're going to come to that man with your inadequate grammar, and you've barely gotten through high school, and tell that man in all his seeming solidarity that without Jesus he's lost.

I tell you that if you're leaking spiritually, there's no confrontation on the face of this earth that will more quickly reveal your spiritual inadequacy than confronting such a Jew as this. Aren't God's ways best finding out?

And that's exactly why he's placed him there. And that's exactly why you've shrunk from doing it. Now I say you. I don't mean you particular ones sitting here. I mean Christianity in general. Paul is right.

There's no more grievous, neglected ministry than a ministry to the Jewish people. And if you read the whole substance of the Scriptures, there's something that's very clear that's revealed. Jesus gave commandment when he came out of that tomb.

That's a reason why a lot of people would much rather see a Messiah who's not resurrected. There's something about our nature that loves to adorn a body with spices and wrap it in rags and wine over it and have funeral processions and draped coffins and all of that jazz, and we're going to have melancholy tears over that one whom we thought was the deliverer of Israel.

I think many more prefer a Messiah who will stay in his tomb than one who will be resurrected and who will say to us in his resurrection life, all power is given unto me under heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, into all the world and preach this controversial, despised gospel to every creature beginning at Jerusalem.

Lord, isn't that the place where you just got killed? And isn't that the same city that slew all the prophets that were sent unto it? Exactly. You begin with the acid test. When we read in Romans the first chapter, Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. People, there's an order of God which we have grievously neglected. And I don't understand, and I don't think any man does, the beauty and the wisdom behind God's ordering.

But I don't think that it's something that we should ignore because we don't understand it. God is speaking to us about a restoration to divine order and to his pattern and to his way and to his authority.

And there's a reason why God says to the Jew first. And if this will be any kind of a helpful insight, I'll give you a little episode out of my experience as a high school teacher. I learned very readily at the very beginning of the year that when there were cut-ups in the class, that the first temptation is not to pick on the severest test but on some lesser challenge.

I would pick on some cut-up that I knew that I could handle, but I was afraid really to challenge that one guy who was the most obstreperous and who really contested my authority because what if I could not master him?

And I realized that if I took the lesser troublemakers and didn't deal with him, I was going to have trouble all through the year. So I had to come to this, take a deep breath, and go to the severest troublemaker first.

And when I handled him, I had the whole class under authority. I'll tell you that when you go to the Jew first and you can handle him, of whom then shall you be afraid? Who is there in the community that shall present you some case for foreboding?

If you can handle the Jew people, you can handle anyone. The Jew is not another ethnic group alone. Here's why he is the most signal challenge. All this essentially Jewish. You say, Art, what do you mean by that?

Do you mean we're all going kosher? No. I mean Jewish in its mentality and its spirit. Well, what mentality is that? Well, just look at the three great geniuses who have shaped the 20th century. Had they not been born and had they not expressed that particular insight, we could not recognize the modern world today for what it is.

What are these three names? Marx and Einstein. Absolutely. Three Jews. Freud, Marx, and Einstein. And you may say, well, Art, I don't know a thing about Freud. Oh, is that right? Well, it shows with your children.

You may not know about him consciously, but you'll be amazed to know to what degree your kids, their upbringing, their conduct, their attitude, their whole manner and way of life, what they're receiving at school and what they're imbibing from their culture is a direct, if you can trace it back, to the contribution of this one genius.

The whole of our understanding about child rearing, much of our aspect of education, our own relationships with each other and marriage and the whole permissive nature of our society, it can be directly traced back to the contribution of this one great genius.

Of Karl Marx, what must I say? His contribution has disfigured the modern world. And you know what the fantastic thing is? These aren't just men who have just woven fabrics of lies. That would be easy to put aside.

Their genius is so acute that they have significantly laid hold of much that is true. But you know that it's not a lie that's so dangerous. It's the half-truths that are far more dangerous. What then about three-quarter truths and nine-tenths truths?

Oh, I can go on and on and on. You can see I'm a peculiar character myself. Remember when Jesus said, Who do men say that I am? And who do you say that I am? I believe it's the most profound question for our generation.

And what God has shown me in my experience is that it's true that he's a teacher. It's true that he was a prophet. And we can acknowledge all these truths. But until we've come to the full and whole truth, partial truth is a grievous lie and a distortion that will turn men from God's salvation.

Do you understand what I'm saying? There are a lot of things that are true about the analysis of Marx, about our social conditions and our society. There are enormous truths in Freud's understanding of the human psyche and the subconscious.

But until it's the whole truth and the total truth, a partial truth is a distortion and a lie and can seriously divert the lives and conduct of men and nations, which is exactly what's happened. You say, how about Einstein?

He had nothing to do with psychology or with social systems or mass movements. But I tell you, it may be that his contribution was the more devastating of the three. Now, I don't have the slightest interest in science as such.

And yet as an atheist, I used to say that science will provide the answer. Isn't it fantastic that although I didn't like science, yet my confidence was in science, that whatever the problem, whatever the difficulty, that one day it would be resolved by science.

I tell you, that's more of an infantile faith than the most simple-minded, literal, fundamentalist believer. Every man has a faith of one kind or another upon which his life is sustained and carried.

And I would say that God's great purpose in our generation is to take the faith of men which are of no substance and bring them to correct faith. I had a faith as an atheist in science, in men. I had a very Jewish faith.

And a lot of it was the Einsteinian contribution in that although I knew nothing about physics, I was a relativist. Remember the theory of relativity? Well, I don't know a thing about what it means in terms of physics, but I know everything of what it means in the intellectual realm.

Here's what it means. A relativist is one who believes that there is no fixed place of understanding or truth. Who's to say that anything is right or wrong? Headhunting might be wrong in our civilization, but in the jungles of the Amazon, it's quite feasible.

Who's to say that extramarital relationships are in themselves wrong? Certain circumstances are at work. If it's loving, if no one is offended and hurt by it, if it furthers blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then it's right.

You see what I mean? It's relative. It depends on the circumstance. And therefore, the God that said, Thou shalt not. Well, he's all wet. Now, you can only intuit by the spirit to what degree the thought of these three great men has permeated the whole spirit of the modern world.

The modern world is essentially a Jewish world. It has imbibed this spirit, and it's found its way and permeated even into the poor, poors of Christian lives. If you could see, as God sees, it's fantastic to what degree you've absorbed so much of this spirit, and it's expressed in so much of your conduct and your attitude and your way of perceiving things.

And yet, it's completely inimical to the way of God. For example, Jewish people or Gentiles with Jewish mentalities will often quote this scripture. God helps those who help themselves. You'll take the grossest biblical illiterates are persuaded that that is in the scriptures.

And that is one of the fundamental underlying tenets of the Jewish faith. It's a faith of self-confidence, assurance. It exalts man. Its confidence is in flesh. And be not deceived if it employs a religious vocabulary.

Because is there a religious vocabulary in the world more becoming, more astute, and more impressive than Jewish religious vocabulary? I mean, you poor Gentiles have to carry on with mere English, but we have Hebrew.

And your traditions are only a few centuries old. Ours goes back through the thousands. And we've got liturgy in Hebrew melody that would be the envy of all. And I tell you, when it comes to masterful human religion and conspicuously endowed ministers, you can't beat us.

Intellectual and eloquent, we've got all of the trappings of religion that make for great impression. But at the heart of it, it has not the knowledge of God, and it exalts men. Now, let me just check and take your pulse.

Do you understand what I'm saying? Praise the Lord. Now, if we had had three sessions, I wouldn't go on the way I'm going on now. But I'm throwing a lot of material at you that is so fantastically deep that you have to savor this and roll this on your tongue and really let this get into your heart.

The Two Ways in Jeremiah 17

I want you to turn to Jeremiah, the 17th chapter. Because in a few verses, I want to suggest what the whole issue is all about. Because this issue is coming to its head. Collision in our generation. There are two things being described in the verses that we're going to read.

The basis for blessing and the basis for curse. There are two ways that are described. The way of God and the way of men. First, it's the way of men that's described in the fifth verse of the 17th chapter.

Thus saith the Lord. Now, let's hold it right there for a second. People, I'm really... My bowels are constrained. You know? There's so much that I want to express. Thus saith the Lord. You see, I have to speak in mysteries because we don't have time for me to expand beyond that.

There are two Judaisms in the world. And I know this sounds strange to you. You say, what two Judaisms? There's one Judaism which encompasses all of the religions of men and I call the Judaisms of men.

And you must not be deceived by the titles. There's a God who is calling us to maturity and to a perception and discernment by the Spirit which will raise us above labels. And I'll tell you that among the Judaisms of men you'll find such things as Presbyterianism, Methodism and just about every kind of Christian denomination.

We mustn't be deceived by the name alone. We must see it to the reality. There are a lot of people who call themselves Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and you name it who are really practicing the Judaisms of men.

Now you say, what do you mean by Judaisms of men? Well, all of these Judaisms have this in common. They are essentially religions of convenience. They require little or nothing from men and they are not in the position to give anything to men but a modicum of psychological and emotional satisfaction.

They have not the power of God. They may employ a vocabulary, God but they know not God and they're mere religions of convenience who give men a psychic relief and all they require is an hour on Sunday or on the Shabbat or the high holidays the Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah or Christmas or Easter and that's it.

A little buck in the collection plate. And that's the kind of religion that most men want and in distinction from the Judaisms of men there's the Judaism of God and it has at its center a cross. It's a religion which is total.

It requires all and everything in our nature shrinks from such a religion as that. It's a call to complete severance from all that is in the world the flesh and the devil. And when God called Abraham to that Judaism we have the clearest expression of the totality of that call from nation, kindred and Father's house and follow me into the land that I will show you.

How many of us who are sitting here this morning would obey such a call as that? I mean literally. A call to complete rupture and severance. And here because we're limited by time I can't expound on what this call means but just play it over in your own heart.

Come out of nation, kindred and Father's house. Now I'm a Brooklyn boy and I remember in times past when Ebbets Field still stood and those hectic days when the Dodgers were quite a team and were fighting for the World Series that when they lost a game or a World Series do you remember that with the Giants in 1951 the brank of pitch that was a home, Whitey Lockman and they lost in the last game I was ready to jump off a roof.

Men were prepared to commit suicide. We had such an investment in the Brooklyn Dodgers our hearts were so attuned to the rise and fall of their estate and that's just a crummy ball team. What then shall we say of the totality of all that a nation represents in the life of a man?

I'll tell you it's a deep and pervasive thing. It's so deep I'll give you an illustration in modern history. In modern history Jews in Germany were so attached to their nation that when the dark clouds came over instead of leaving they said I'm more a German than a Jew and this evil shall not fall upon me and they looked with adoring eyes on their mantles and saw the pictures of their families and their Bubbas and their Zetas with those German pot helmets and their iron crosses that had served the state so well through the generations.

They loved Germany, its culture, its gemütlichkeit. They could not leave the nation. The hooks were so deep and they paid a bitter price for the inability to come out. What then shall we say of nation kindred?

Mishpucha, the clan. The Bubbas and the Zetas that dangled you on their knees and chucked you under the chin and stipped you with candy and with good things. Jewish people loved this family life. Very rich.

And to be wrenched from that a total severance and a separation. Oh God what are you asking? And father's house? And all the things that are implied in looking to him as a hero and almost an object of worship and veneration and we look to him with great adoring eyes and God says get thee out from nation kindred and father's house.

But that's not all he says. And follow me.

To the land that I will show you. This isn't just a one time thing. This is a continuous day by day and progressive walk with a living God through a wilderness into a land of promise without a map, without a blueprint trusting that he who called you is also able.

I tell you people it's a frightening proposition. Religion is so much more comfy and secure. Do you understand what I'm saying? Therefore when you challenge a Jew with this call and there's only one call there's never been any other.

It's the same call by the same God 19 centuries ago when Jesus said to Jewish fishermen come out of your boats and away from your nets to whatever your vocation whatever you're calling whatever hooks have implanted itself from the world into your heart and your father's house and follow me.

The same call. And it's the same call today. When a Jew is challenged by the gospel of Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit of God he knows that he's not merely being suggested to embrace an alien Gentile religion or to contemplate a mythical Santa Claus that he can just laugh away.

But he senses in his deepest heart of hearts a piercing challenge to all in which he has invested his faith, his trust, his confidence to all that he has looked upon and has established as wise and right and proper and true to all to which he has given his energy and his life in a word to all that is in the world because there's a God who calls us to a total separation out of this present world and into the kingdom of God.

The reason you haven't understood it as well as you ought is this because Christianity has become in modern times so groovy so much a part of the establishment life so traditional and so comfy and so well understood and recognized as a nice thing to have that takes the rough edges of our personality and provides a nice Sunday flourish to our lives that we've not seen it for what it is the radical call of God to separation from this world and to the following of Him.

People, the world is at enmity with God. We've not had to see this in times past but we're going to see it. Do you know why? Because the hour has struck for God to again turn His attention to the Jewish people.

In 19th centuries we've not seen it but you know what happened 19th centuries ago when He did it? There was a screech and a holler and shrieks and persecution and violence and death. That was the response of bringing the gospel to the Jewish people.

They gnashed their teeth at Stephen. Paul was five times beaten with stripes forty strokes save one. Left for dead, stone, beaten with rods. Have you ever had anybody gnash their teeth on you? I've had it.

My mother who loved me with a passion and looked at me with great adoring eyes all through my young manhood and loved the adventurous intellectual son who flitted from cause to cause and ideology to ideology philosophy to philosophy great intellectual seeker lost as all get out.

But when he came home from Jerusalem eight years ago with a new face with a new peace and told my mother I have found Him of whom Moses and the prophets spoke she slammed the door in my face intrigued He's mad!

He's gone mad! I've had people gnash their teeth upon me. Why do men react that way? Because they're threatened in the deepest aspect of their life and their being when they understand that you're not just representing an alien religion or a substitute for their impoverished Judaism but that this is the fearful call of God to totality to commitment to separation.

And you know what they know? Instinctively and you know what my mother knows? That if she were ever to receive what I've received she would have to pay immediately a very fearful price. The loss of her Jewish friends.

How would you like for people to call you traitor? How would you like that? Your closest and dearest friends whose opinion you respect looking at you with great burning hatred in their eyes loathing and shrieking at you wildly.

Traitor! You've forsaken your people. You've embraced the religion of the enemy. You know what my mother believes? That I've made myself one with the same religion that has persecuted our Jewish people for 19 centuries.

The same religion that stretched us out on the stake and tried to convert us quote unquote to Christianity the Spanish Inquisition that pounded us over the face of Europe that promoted the pogroms in Russia and in Poland during the Passover seasons that was responsible for the Holocaust that drove us in exile out of Spain in 1492 and drove us from England and all the other things we've suffered in the Crusades with men coming at us with crosses on their chests to loot and to rape and to pillage and now I've gone and joined the enemy's camp I've become quote unquote a Christian.

That's the way Jews will see it. And Satan has seen through it. Why? Because God says there's no other name given on the heaven or in earth whereby a man may be saved and to this name Jesus Christ every knee shall bend and every mouth shall confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

You know what it takes for a Jew to speak that name? Listen, I'm a believer eight years but I would say very frankly it's only in the last two years that I finally come to a place that I can speak the name Jesus Christ with any kind of ease.

That's the work that Satan has done to poison the one name alone in which is the salvation of the Jews and all mankind. You've got your work cut out for you. And when I go on university campuses which is a principal part of our ministry and one by the way which I've never sought for myself as I've never sought anything else for eight years the fury that we face the anger and the bitterness of 19 centuries of compressed frustration and prejudice and misunderstanding comes pouring out upon us as the convenient target.

And I know that there's no way to avoid it. I've just got to stand there and take it. And when they spit out their guts and their venom and their anger and they're finally drained then we can begin to transact real business for God.

I've seen the same students who have left meetings in disgust and rage and anger come back five minutes later because they couldn't stay away. I've seen students come out of their seat and come within an inch of bashing me in the face and in disgust change their seat and the same guy that cried out and called me madman and fanatic were the first ones that night to call upon the name of the Lord and be saved.

I'm saying a lot of things. Now let's look at these verses. The Judaism of God is not only a Judaism of power that requires everything and gives everything it's a Judaism of the scriptures which is utterly supernatural.

See, we Jews are rationalists. We just shrink from the idea of a supernatural God. And I remember in the high school debate with some Jewish teachers one guy was a Talmudist deep in Jewish law. And all of a sudden I realized something.

I said, say, do you believe that God parted the Red Seas? And the guy began just to choke and sputter a little bit and he looked a bit embarrassed and he hemmed and hawed and finally he said well, he said, I believe it was a shifting of the tides.

And I began to dum-da-dum-dum I'm on to something here. And he began to explain it was really a natural phenomenon just a happy coincidence. And I went on to ask him about other miracles and sure enough he denied every miracle in the book.

You see, the idea of a supernatural God is an offense to the mind of men. They don't mind talking about God as an abstraction as a higher power and an impersonal force in the universe but a God who is a living God who speaks to men who can touch and transform the character of men who can work miracles that kind of God offends men.

That's one of the differences in the two Judaisms. You must not be confused because men speak the word God that they mean by that word what you mean. That's why God was specific in Christ Jesus to separate the sheep from the goats.

My mother speaks the word God prolifically but as I said the other night, when she says God what she really means is Yiddish kite, gefilte fish matzah ball soup, Israel bonds, Jewish friends and all the rest put together.

It's God. These are warm, groovy feeling schmaltzy, it's nice and it sends up certain kinds of vibes. And poor woman, what else? That's the only God she's ever known. But there's a God the Father who is seeking those who will worship Him in the Spirit and in truth.

And there's no way to come to that worship and to that knowledge and bypass and circumvent Him whom He has sent. The very incarnation of the living God Himself who said if you see me you see the Father I and the Father are one.

A man's reaction to Jesus is the ultimate test of his real response to God Himself. I hope you're taking copious notes. And the Jewish problem people is not essentially the problem of Jesus. It's the problem of the Word of God.

We have been in flight from the Word of God. Do you know why? Because the Word of God is specific. It says thou shalt not. And we want a God whom we can keep at an arm's length that we shall. Do you understand what I'm saying?

I remember a conversation once in a home with Jewish people. There were two Jewish teenage girls sitting on the floor. Beautiful, bright kids. And they were telling me how dull high school was. And as a former teacher I sympathized.

And they said the only thing that saves the situation is that one day a week on Friday they have their Zionist club and they have rip-roaring intellectual discussions. So I said to these kids, I said to what degree do you look upon yourself as American and to what degree Jewish?

They gave me a very revealing answer. I think an answer far different now than what would have been given ten years ago. Because there's a growing heightened interest and concern for our Jewishness. And they said 90 Jewish, 10 American.

And I said, well as you survey your Jewishness, what percentage would you say is made up of Yiddishkeit, Jewish culture, the Jewish holidays, Jewish food, Israel, and what percent is made up by God? 90 Yiddishkeit, 10 God.

See, these kids were honest. I said, okay, now on a 10 God, does that say that you don't really believe that he is? Oh no, Mr. Katz. We believe that there's a God, but who's to say he's a he? Maybe a she.

You know, this women's lib thing. Maybe it's an it. We don't presume to be that specific. It is somewhere up there in the stratosphere and it's comforting to know that it is somewhere around. So I said to these kids, I said, how would you like for it to become a he?

And that he should come into your life right now where you sit on this living room floor. What do you think their answer was? Not on your life, no. We like it where it is. Right out there at an arm's length.

We don't want him any closer. Have you got ears to hear? God is not a God of convenience. I told you I've heard, from the first time I heard that little small voice in Jerusalem eight years ago, and every subsequent time that I've heard it, he's never once called me to convenience.

And I'll give it to you straight because you're a small audience and I'm not being melodramatic. If my natural life shall end in bed in a goodly old age, I shall be among men most surprised. And if I shall live through this life without bearing in my body the marks of Jesus Christ, I shall be most surprised.

God has not called me to convenience. He's called me to death. He's called me to the way of the cross. But it's the only place where I could have had an identification merging, joining, oneness with Him.

Who wants it? The flesh shrinks from it. But it's God's call to total severance, separation from all that is in the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. We shrink from a God whose word so specifically calls us to so fearful a proposition as that.

And I'll tell you what the whole nature of our faith is. It's not a morbid faith that centers in death. It's a death which eventuates in a resurrection. It's a staggering resurrection, very supernatural, mind-boggling, and contradicts all that the wisdom of men believe.

Foolishness to them that perish, but to them that believe, it's the power of God unto salvation to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. Saith the Lord. That's the Judaism of God, a God who speaks and a God who has recorded it in the scriptures.

It's trustworthy. You can stand on it. And the first way that I ever knew that was when I first read the scriptures in my 34th year out of a New Testament aboard the deck of a tramp steamer on my way to Greece, mind you, where I was more Greek than I was a Hebrew, and in the very first reading of the scriptures, I experienced a supernatural revelation and had to, even though it blew my mind, realize that there's a God who speaks by His word and that somehow, miraculously, He has maintained the integrity of His word, though it has passed to the hands of translators and made it available to us in our generation.

Jewish people do not believe this. And if you think, I'm afraid to speak to Jews because they have such a knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures, nonsense! We are biblical illiterates who know a few scattered Bible stories and have never consulted the scriptures for ourselves.

It's a rare Jew who has ever consulted the Old Testament scriptures and has any knowledge of them at all. And an even rarer Jew who believes that the scriptures are inspired of God. The substantial understanding of modern Jews is this, that the Bible is a cultural product of the genius of the Jewish people.

It's a compendium of stories and histories and narratives and poetries and psalms written by David. They don't know what divine inspiration means because they've never experienced the Holy Spirit. How then shall they know?

And they don't even believe that you can understand the scriptures except it be interpreted by rabbis, by men, by the wisdom, the sagacity of the Maimonides and the great sages of the past. They substitute flesh for the office of the Holy Spirit.

You say, are you anti-Semitic? No. I love my Jewish people. I'm just telling it to you the way it is, people. And you can understand that it's not only Jews who have this mentality but great numbers of Gentiles too.

Trusting God Rather Than Human Strength

Thus saith the Lord, not Jeremiah, Cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm and whose heart departeth from the Lord. I wish we had eons of time to contemplate that one verse alone.

There's a certain logic there which is inevitable and cannot be avoided. To the degree that our confidence is in man and in flesh, to that degree our heart has departed from the Lord. And someone has wisely said that the cancer of modern Christianity is its lovelessness.

Oh, how he loves the Lord, people say. Yeah, he really loves the Lord. A bunch of unctuous nonsense in most cases. You know, when we love him, when he's shown himself faithful to bail us out again and again and again.