Jerusalem Conference Address — Art Katz

This is tape number K015. Art Katz delivering the Jerusalem conference address.

The Passover Table and the Call to Watchfulness

I'd like you to turn if you can see to the book of First Kings in the 17th chapter. While you're turning I'll remind you how well we have eaten thus far at the Lord's table. The bread of life has been broken.

We've eaten of the very lamb himself, but the question that God has put in my heart to ask you tonight is with which attitude have we eaten? Have we eaten with loins girded and with staff in hand? Or have we eaten with another attitude far more characteristic of Christianity in modern times, even including the charismatic movement.

And that is the attitude of they ate, they drank, and they rose up to play. There's something in the atmosphere of this conference that suggests another room in this city 19 centuries ago where a band of disciples enjoyed a Pesach or a Passover meal with their master.

How many of us like them are not even aware that this might be a last supper? How long shall we enjoy such privileges as this? I know that we're already busy making plans for next year, but the tempo of events is such that we ought to very prudently consider if this might not be a last supper at the Lord's table in such a convocation of believers commemorating the Holy Spirit of God.

Like that other last supper, hardly shall the last echoes of the praises be sung and fade. Then we shall be required to go out into the night to be accosted by the same mobs who were but a few days before shouting Hosanna to the King and cutting and strewing branches before the donkey upon which the Lord rode, and out of the same throats was to come to cry, Crucify Him, Crucify Him.

How many of us who are today enjoying this meal will like them be too surfeited, too overfed to watch and pray even one hour, and will in the hour of crisis which shall assuredly come run and flee naked, leaving behind superficial garments of religious conviction, which were never too securely tied to begin with.

Lord, let us not leave this table except we eat the lamb, roast with fire, letting nothing remain, even the pertinences thereof, even those parts that are not pleasing to the appetite because we've been a spoiled generation, and we pick and choose the comely parts.

Our appetites have grown fastidious and delicate, but there's a God who knows the wilderness through which we must march, and there's a mount to which we must come greater even than Horeb. It's Mount Zion upon which God's end-time temple shall be built, and the Shekinah glory of God shall dwell.

We shall not persevere in that journey except we eat the lamb entire, roasted with fire, with all of the pertinences thereof. I'm going to ask you to bow your head with me. I don't know what the Lord's going to put on the table in my brief presentation, but that he gives us a stomach, a heart, a disposition to receive it and to devour it entire.

Will you bow your heads with me? Precious God, you see us and know us, and you see the tendency we have to pick and to choose. You've heard our squeals of delight at the kinds of things that come upon the table, Lord, that please us.

But put on this table now, Lord, before we leave such things as we need to consume, Lord, as shall fit us for the journey to which you have called us, even the least pleasing parts. In Jesus' name, precious God, have your way and speak by your spirit and pour forth such things out of your own heart and life and passion and understanding as you would give to this people this night.

Mighty God, make every moment count. We'll thank you and praise you for this opportunity to be your mouth. In Yeshua's great name we pray. Amen. I don't know why I speak of the Passover table tonight.

This is not the Passover season, but I'm reminded that in the Orthodox commemoration of the Passover, there comes something at the conclusion of the long night of a seder, of a service, when the whole meal has been consumed, when the youngest son goes to the front door to open the door.

Every person at that table rises with glass in hand and looks with deep fascination to this door. There had been a chair at the table that had not been occupied all through the meal and a table setting.

It's called Elijah's chair. Now the door is opened in the hope and the anticipation that this year, in this Passover, in this Pesach, Elijah the prophet shall appear as the forerunner of the soon coming Moshiach.

And I don't know how to describe to you precious people the countless hundreds upon hundreds of years in which Jewish people have looked with pained disappointment at a door opened and no Elijah standing in the doorway.

The Corporate Elijah and the Forerunner of the Lord

Many of us speak about the body of Christ and we're expecting another advent of the Messiah. The corporate Christ, the many-membered man. I believe that with all my heart and I believe also that as the first Christ was preceded by a forerunner, one who came to make the way straight before him, to proclaim the soon coming day of the Lord, to call men to repentance, so too must there be, as a corporate Christ is to come, a corporate manifestation of Elijah.

And I'll tell you that I think we've not been well prepared for such an anticipation, let alone that we should be members of such an Elijah band. I think it behooves us tonight to be reminded again of what an Elijah is.

What a contrast to the whole temper of our own age. A wilderness prophet. I don't think that there's any more dramatic introduction, any more shaking verse, words that more suggest in one sentence what a man of God truly is than the first verse of the 17th chapter of 1st Kings.

And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.

I don't believe that there's a commentator living who can do justice to the weight of these words. As the Lord my God liveth. We would need an hour to suggest all of the things that are implied in that one statement.

We would need to be reminded of the kind of age in which the prophet spoke this. An age of such dark apostasy, of such a backslidden Jewish people, of such a people going through nominal outward motions of their Judaism, who had lost the inner knowledge of God by his presence, that for any man to rise up in such a generation to say that as the Lord my God liveth is an astounding statement.

And what a correspondence that age shall have to the age to which we are rapidly moving, in which it says when the Lord shall come shall there be faith found in the earth? Unbelief shall be characteristic of that age.

Men's hearts cold, the love of God departed, and in that generation God is seeking a band that shall stand in the same boldness before the Ahab's of their generation and pronounce as the Lord my God liveth before whom I stand.

I'll tell you people that such an utterance is not born in a moment. And I praise God for the discreet silence that precedes the 17th chapter of 1st Kings. Not a word about what it took to make such a man as this.

It pleased God not to tell us. And I believe that in the silence of our own lives, unseen by those who are everywhere about us, there's a God now who is shaping and molding and forming his Elijah band.

Lessons of discipline and of obedience and of necessary suffering, of resisting the spirit of the age, of turning our backs on comfort and affluence and all of the seductive spirits which seek to beguile us.

God is shaping a people in obscurity and shall raise them up in a moment to work his great end time purposes. As the Lord my God liveth before whom I stand, this wilderness prophet spoke into the face of Ahab.

And I don't suppose that Elijah was any very imposing person in the natural. I rather suppose he was lean and yet his boldness was not a reflection of his physical condition, but of something inward. And to whom was he speaking this utterance?

But the most feared and dreaded despot in the history of all of Israel's backslidden kings, of whom it says in the previous chapter that Ahab did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him.

And it came to pass as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, that he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Eba 'al, king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him and reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria.

What an unholy union between a king of Israel and the whore of abominations. What a marriage between politics and sickly religion that has to do with every kind of erotic form devised by human ingenuity in the name of religion.

And what a foreshadowing of that union that shall characterize the end times when we shall see politics and whoredom wedded together in a fierce assault upon the prophets of God that Elijah has to cry out, I alone am left.

He was worse than all that preceded him and the name Jeroboam is given us in the scripture. And if we turn back but a couple of chapters, what are we told about him? This king took counsel and he made two calves of gold and said, it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem.

Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. What a suggestion of those who provide for us today religions of convenience. It's too much to go up to Jerusalem. Here are golden calves far more conveniently at hand at which you may worship.

And he went and he chose priests who were the lowest of the people which were not of the sons of Levi. And haven't we seen that and are seeing it in our own generation? As if religion was some kind of profession.

As if men could obtain a certificate or degree by submitting themselves certain numbers of years in academies or places of theology. Men who have no more notion of God and communicating dead things Sunday after Sunday to people who are going to their doom.

False priests, false gods and he chose even a day on the 8th month and the 15th day of the month like unto the feast that is in Judah but was not it nor was it on the day which God had appointed false worship.

And that is the configuration of end times religion. False gods, false priests, false worship. And Ahab did more evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him, even Jeroboam. And it was before this despot that Elijah stood and spoke that one bold statement, As the Lord my God liveth before whom I stand, it shall not rain nor dew according to my word.

I'll tell you at first reading it sounds like a piece of a front tree. As we say in Hebrew it's chutzpah for a man so to speak to command the elements. Who does he think he is? But I'll tell you people I think that there's a process going on in my own life with which you yourself may be familiar.

Hearing the Still Small Voice and Obeying God

It was in this very city ten years ago as a rank atheist spending two weeks at the Hebrew University trying to extricate myself from the embarrassing predicament of a Jesus who was trying to make of me a Christian.

Reading every book I could lay my hands on to get out of this unwanted predicament. And the more I read the more I realized I was impaled on the hook of God. And was put on a bus one day to visit a Hasidic community and never got there.

Got off at the bus by the King's Hotel and walked into a bookstore to find out that they sold New Testaments and Bibles and Christian commentaries. And to learn that they were a congregation of Jewish believers in the Messiah Jesus and that this was their bookstore adjoining their chapel.

And something clicked in my heart and I heard the still small voice of a God who knew me by name and commanded me that I should not leave. I heard the still small voice of God in this eternal city. And a moment ago as a modern man I would have condemned anyone who would have suggested such a hearing and referred him to a psychiatrist.

But I'll tell you in the first hearing of that voice every Jew intuitively recognizes this is the voice of Him with whom I have to do. And if anything has characterized my ten year walk it's a continued succession of the hearing of the still small voice and continuing obediences from faith unto faith and death unto death.

Those speakings are ever so uniform, always brief, never with explanation and yet once to ever call me to convenience. And yet that voice is growing dim in these days. You say, Ott, are you getting carnal that you're no longer hearing the voice of God?

I don't understand the process. In times not too distant when I received a commitment to come and speak someplace maybe months before I was to go or in the very making of the commitment the message flashed on my heart and I knew what was to be spoken.

Then that disappeared. And maybe some weeks just preceding the meeting God would begin to stir in my heart and shape me for what was to come forth. Then that disappeared. And then maybe the day of the meeting or the very night before something would stir in my heart.

That disappeared. Then in arriving at the meeting I would understand what would have to be spoken. Then that disappeared. Sitting on the platform waiting to be called on I would hear the still small voice and know what had to be spoken.

And then that disappeared. I'll tell you people it's getting so now that I have to move almost by intimating what is the will of God. Cleaving to God in such a way as to catch the very intimations of His heart.

Intuiting His spirit. And I believe that there's a God who's bringing me even closer than that. That the very thought that is in my mind and the very impulse of my heart is His thought and His impulse that the day might come that the very word out of my mouth unpremeditated and spoken in the impulse of the moment is the word of God.

Such a thing is not born in a day. It's a process. And few there be that enjoy submitting to it. I'll tell you that people look at speakers as if they were some kind of slick professional who have a battery of messages that they could yank out at any convenient moment.

But I'll tell you that there's an agony of trembling and fear before God to miss the mind of the Lord. And what shall we say of a moment such as this? In the concluding hour of a historic conference being brought forth in an unscheduled way told first to be given a few moments to explain an event taking place in New York for which I was going to invite your prayer and then to be told subsequently I would be given seven minutes to speak and then after that 15 minutes and having a growing conviction is it perhaps that I am to be a mouth for which God is going to speak a fit and concluding word?

How do I know that this shall be the message? When there are 4 ,000 lives in this building and all kinds of machinery whirring and tapes being recorded and men and women going back to 40 nations of the world who might have heard from God except that a man interposed himself between the mind and spirit of God and God's people.

I'll tell you people that every act of obedience is an act unto death and Elijah's are not made except by a willing obedience to such deaths. Little wonder that my Jewish people have had to look century after century at doors open and not a one not an Elijah standing in that place.

Elijah’s Obedience in the Wilderness

And the word of the Lord came unto him saying get thee hence and turn thee eastward and hide thyself by the brook sheriff that is before Jordan and so shall it be required of us also. Such anger, such wrath, such bitterness shall come upon the people of God.

We who have been looked upon with a degree of tolerance and maybe now a slight degree of irritation as a fly buzzing around the head of the world are going to come into a season of something far worse than that because the world is going to tremble.

It's going to be shaken to its foundations. Great catastrophes and crises unimagined are going to afflict it and pity the fool who shall stand in the way of such a world and speak with a voice Christ is the answer.

I'll tell you that men shall not brush him away as a fly but shall gnash their teeth upon him as an obstacle to the necessary progress of mankind. It was a groovy thing to be a Christian but praise God that season is over and there's a God calling men to serious commitment at the end of the ages.

It shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook I've commanded the ravens to feed thee there. Oh, ha ha ha, that's not God. That's Satan, don't you know his wiles? Don't you know how deceitful he is? He wants to take God's prophet and bring him to a remote place where there is no stream and there'll be no ravens and that prophet will be extinguished.

Ravens, why, everyone knows that that's a bird of prey. It's a scavenger bird. It's a bird designed to eat out of garbage cans. It's the last instrumentality that shall feed a prophet of God. But we read, so he went and did according to the word of the Lord.

Oh, precious people, if you'll not think it melodramatic and you should have ever an occasion to have something to do with my burial and you want to inscribe something, an epitaph on my tombstone, will you please quote this?

So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. And a Jewish man who interviewed me today from Newsweek magazine, he said, well, Mr. Katze said, since your experience in Jesus ten years ago and your continuing walk, are you more Jewish or less?

I said, if you measure Jewish by culture or Yiddishkeit or the eating of certain foods or certain cultural practices, I can't say. But if you measure Jewishness by the knowledge of and the obedience to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I have never been more Jewish than I am in this moment.

In a word, to be Jewish is to hear the still small voice of God calling you to absurdity and foolishness and certain death and to go and do according to the word of the Lord. But how did he know it was the Lord's word?

It might have been Satan. But I'll tell you that the answer is this. He was a man much practiced in the hearing of the still small voice. These were familiar accents. It was not a first time experience.

Now I'll tell you there's a God who speaks prolifically over the face of the earth for those whose ears are attuned to hear Him. I'm not talking about religious dilettantes who love to spice their coffee time conversation and boast about a God who so loves them that He treats them to extraordinary revelations by a still small voice that they might show how astute they are in their understanding of the things of God.

My God does not speak to such. My God speaks to those whose hearts are prepared to receive and to do the word of the Lord. I remember speaking at a university campus on hearing the still small voice of God and when I finished these radical students came over to me and they said, what are you talking about hearing the still small voice of God?

How do you know it's God and not Satan? I'll tell you people, if the world could ask such a question as that, what then should the people of God ask? It's a tremendous question. And as I stroked my chin, looking to that God who is made unto me, wisdom!

For I had none of my own and that very moment in that crowd and the tumult and the noise and the distraction of many bodies, there was a shaggy dog wending his way through the crowd. I said, look at that dog.

He's not aimlessly wandering. In all of this tumult and noise of many voices, he has heard the voice of his master and he's going. I'll tell you in that day, we had best be able to discern the familiar accents of the still small voice of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Elijah.

How often has he perhaps spoken to you and you will not hear when he has spoken a word of repentance, spoken a word of forgiveness, spoken a word that would have brought you to a place of humiliation and you stopped your ears.

Oh, precious people, may we open our ears and our hearts and hear that in that day when it shall be a matter of life and death, not only for ourselves, but to a world to whom God calls us in ministry, we shall not fail to hear the voice of him.

And I'll tell you there's another reason why Elijah knew it was God's voice. Because it was a very foolish expediency to be fed by ravens. And he knew far better than many of us who have forgotten that my God does things in stables.

That when my God chooses a people, he chooses one not great in number or mighty or in power, he chooses a foolish people, the Jews. My God is a God who ever and always chooses foolish things to confound the things that are wise and the things that are mighty.

And if there are two things that are incumbent upon us in this hour, it's to become familiar with the voice of his speaking and to become familiar with the ways of his acting. He's a God who chooses the foolish things.

And so the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening and he drank of the brook and it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up because there'd been no rain in the land.

Hallelujah. I tell you people for my own sake, I am sick of bumper stickers on cars that have some very glib and facile things to say that if the driver of this car is absent, tough on you. You're going to remain to face the tribulation but he's going to be neatly caught up and be spared any such trials.

There's something leaden in my heart when I see such things. I don't rejoice, I become saddened. It came to pass after a while that the brook dried up and I want to suggest theological nincompoop that I am, that I believe that the prophet is not exempt from the conditions on the earth which he himself brings by his own word.

The brook shall dry up but there's a God that shall lead us from brooks to widows. There's a God that shall cup us in the hollow of his hand and there's a God who would even now show us that our sufficiency is not from our employers nor our organizations nor even from the people of God but from our Father which is in heaven the giver of good and perfect gifts in whom is no shadow nor variableness of turning.

Do you know that now and do you realize that now so that when the brook dries up you shall not look down but look up to a God who shall never fail you. And so the word of the Lord came to him saying arise and get to Zarephath I've commanded a widow woman to sustain thee so he arose and went.

I just have to take a respectful moment's pause so he arose and went. No ifs, no ands, no buts, no discussion with God, no controversy that this is a Gentile woman why should she honor a Hebrew prophet so he arose and went.

Oh for such a people whose obedience is implicit and immediate. And he came to such a woman and what a picture and type she is of the world in its last extremity. There she was gathering sticks to make her last fire and meal and as she was going to fetch a little water he stopped her and said bring me a drink and a morsel of bread and she said as the Lord thy God liveth I have not a cake but a handful of meal in a barrel a little oil in a cruz and behold I'm gathering two sticks that I may go and dress it for me and my son that we may eat it and die.

The Widow of Zarephath and Faith in Extremity

I'll tell you people that this says something more than a woman who is hungry. This is a woman who is broken a woman who is utterly dejected this is a woman who is disconsolate and depressed. Why do you ask?

Because she has been abruptly plunged from great affluence and comfort and security and leisure and luxury to a world in which men's hearts shall fail them for fear and every kind of crippling shortage and every kind of devastating affliction shall come upon a modern civilization that we shall see the fulfillment of visions that are now being shed by the Spirit of God in the hearts of his children.

Of one I heard recently where an affluent businessman in the backyard of his very sumptuous home with his wife and children huddled around a little fire upon which he was blowing upon the coals and had a little kettle brewing a soup made from herbs and grasses out of his own backyard.

Can you believe that the modern world would ever be so reduced as that? If men leaped out of windows in the depression years what then shall this generation do who has been born to every comfort and every kind of luxury that the modern world has ever known?

I'm just going to die broken and despairing and it's to such a world that God shall call his Elijah band. Elijah said unto her, Fear not, go and do as thou hast said but make me a little cake first and bring it to me and after make for thee and for thy son for thus saith the Lord God the barrel of meal shall not waste neither shall the cruise of oil fail until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.

And she went and did according to the word of Elijah and she and he in the house did eat many days and the barrel of meal wasted not neither did the cruise of oil fail according to the word of the Lord which he spoke by Elijah.

What a demonstration of a living God corroborating the word of his servant and yet it was not enough to bring a widow woman a dejected world to a place of salvation. How many of us who are sitting here tonight have come home time after time weary ourselves and dejected and dispirited because we have poured out our souls we have persuaded men knowing the terror of God and they have brushed us aside as so much nonsense and our cry especially with our Jewish people is what does it take?

I'll tell you what it takes. It came to pass after these things that the son of the woman the mistress of the house fell sick and his sickness was so sore there was no breath left in him. I'll tell you that if my Jewish people will not come to the knowledge of their God for the love of truth or the love of him my God shall put his finger upon that thing which is more dear to them than their own life.

God knew well the vulnerability of the widow woman and took her son and I'll tell you however untutored she was in the things of God she immediately recognized that this had something to do with her own spiritual condition and she said to Elijah what have I to do with thee O thou man of God?

Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance and to slay my son? Oh I tell you I love this impasse because up till now God has led his prophet by his spoken word but now all of a sudden without any warning without any speaking something untoward has happened and I'll tell you that it's in a moment like that that the spiritual condition of the man of God is revealed.

Here we are sitting this night well fed, warm, comfortable in the fellowship of the saints praising God and singing his praises but what shall we do in extremity and crisis? If I can make a play upon words we spoke in political science about power where we said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely I would suggest this crisis reveals and absolute crisis reveals absolutely and isn't it a paradox to say that as the thick gloom and darkness shall cover the earth there shall be a revelation a piercing revelation not only of the condition of the world which has always been at enmity with God and shall now have its fangs bared but also the condition of God's people.

What shall we reveal if we should be caught when the lights go out and the power fails between floors in an elevator of a building? Shall our hearts beat for fear and panic or shall we believe that God is in this moment as he is in every other?

Crisis reveals and crisis reveals absolutely. What did the crisis of Jesus apprehended reveal in the life of Peter but one who had made loud professions though all the world deny you yet will I never deny you but crisis revealed a beggarly life full of hot shot bravado full of fleshly assumption but full of spiritual failure in the hour of greatest need.

When crisis comes upon us may it find revealed a people of God not found wanting. Interesting then to see what Elijah's response was and he said give me thy son and he took him up out of a bosom and carried him up into a loft where he abode and laid him upon his own bed and he cried unto the Lord and said O Lord my God hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourned by slaying her son?

What is this? And he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried unto the Lord and said O Lord my God I pray thee let the child's soul come unto him again. What we have just read precious people is not just a description of a historical episode in the life of one of God's prophets what we have read is the definitive pattern of God's end time evangelism and it shall not come by bumper stickers and literature distribution and other means of impressing the world at our convenience where we need not extend ourselves and be brought to places of reproach, persecution suffering and death.

The only kind of evangelism that shall save the world in its end time extremity is taking the dead corpse and cadaver of the world in all of its sickly cold up to the abode where we live where we haven't wanted that.

We didn't mind those silent prayer requests in the Sunday service and the other seeming shows of fellowship and back slaps and bear hugs and potluck suppers and then to retreat to the privacy of our own homes where we were yet something other than what we were publicly.

But there's a God that shall require of us our privacy to be invaded and we shall have to take the dead sickly corpse of a dead world up to our abode where our abode is and stretch it out over our own satiny sheets right into the inner sanctum itself and if that were not enough we shall be required to prostrate ourselves over that dead corpse eyeball to eyeball and fingertips to fingertips and cry unto God three times.

Love for Israel and the Cost of Identification

Oh I know that there's crying and crying and I suppose one of the chiefest irritations of my life as a Jewish believer is that pale, schmaltzy, sentimental kind of fascination that many Christians have for Israel and for the Jewish people.

It's sentimental only people and it shall not endure when the storms shall rage. Those now who make a show of concern for Israel shall find their own knees buckling when we shall find increasing labels of oil yes and Jews no.

It's going to become uncomfortable increasingly to display concern and affection for Israel and mere affection will not sustain us in such an hour. Only something borne by the Spirit of God and a love that beats in our hearts for the people which are the apple of his eye because they are still loved of the Father through us.

A woman told me of a dream she had that was more of a nightmare that in the late hours there was a terrific pounding on her door and she and the family quickly put on nightgowns and came down to see what the noise was and unlatched the door and hooded men came running into the room and commanded that they immediately be dressed and leave as they were without taking anything and were bundled and tied up and thrown into the backs of cars and were driven off in the night.

And she cried out in terror and panic Why are you doing this? And the answer came You are among those who love the Jews. It's going to take something more than sentimental concern. It's going to take a people who will prostrate themselves over a dead son and cry out of the depths of their hearts three times.

And I'm just thrilled that to this conference came hundreds of German people. I can't express to you the love in my heart for you and for your country and the things which I cannot even understand that are deep in my heart and independent of my mind.

Our Yiddish and your Deutsch Our zest for life and your gemütlichkeit and how much of our lives have been inextricably bound together strange the correspondences through the centuries in tragedy and suffering and death and so shall it also be in joy.

And I believe that God shall require of that same people whom Satan used to cast Jewish people into the flames such travail and supplication by the spirit as shall keep them from the fires of his soon coming judgment.

Oh, but when we think of the German people what impression do we have? Circumspect nice, fastidious not given to demonstration everything in order but I'll tell you that there's got to be such an operation of the spirit of God that goes far beyond culture far beyond temperament far beyond personality that an entire people shall tremble and shake and cry and anguish and bring forth an Israel into the kingdom of God so that God might comprehend all in his end time mercy.

How many of us shall be willing to take that dead son that dead Jewishness that has done hardly more in the world but to traffic and pornography and corruption and culture and other such things that have not shown them to be a nation of priests and light unto the world and bring them from death unto life that they might again fulfill the intentions of God for them.

For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead. Elijah prostrated himself and cried out three times and we read that the Lord heard the voice of Elijah and the soul of the child came unto him again and he revived.