Mark of a True Prophet — Art Katz

The Prophetic Call and the Labor of Scholarship

An organization that I think the Lord himself, that's not to say that I've not been reading extensively and familiarizing myself with what I think the Lord wants us to consider, I've just been kept from organizing, from having something set, and just to find day by day how the Lord himself will unfold it.

So I'm looking forward to these times myself for my own edification, aspects of things that pertain to the prophetic calling that I myself have never considered but need to be considered, and finding that there's a rich literature on some of those things that I have not before tapped.

So one of the blessings of our times together is to bring to your attention writers, theologians, scholars who have invested their life in this whole area, and I hope that you're not of a frame of mind that thinks that if something is intellectual or involves the mind that it's somehow unspiritual.

I'm greatly appreciative of the labor of these scholars, and it opens up whole insight, as I trust you'll find today and in these days, that would have been lost to us except for their labor. One of the remarkable anomalies of the faith is that the most intensive and insightful exploration of the Old Testament comes from German scholars, and it's a German scholar whose book I have before me now, Old Testament Theology, by Gerhard von Rath.

It might be just to write down these names and to begin to develop a familiarity, and you might bump into one or more of their books in a used bookstore and be greatly benefited. How do you spell that last name, please?

Von Rath, R-A-T-H, Gerhard von Rath. I think he's gone on, but he was the, and probably still is recognized as the outstanding Old Testament scholar. When you begin to get into these men, they refer to each other and quote from each other's books, and so you find that there's a fraternity of German scholarship, and though sometimes invoked the names of others who are American or English, whose writings were also directed along the same lines of inquiry.

Just once in a while, I'll stop and I'll just read you a footnote where they begin to cite their sources, and you'll be astonished how painstaking and exacting their work is. Maybe that's the genius of German scholarship, is a mental stamina, mental and spiritual, to explore something thoroughly right through to the root, and their Hebraists, their knowledge of Hebrew as Germans exceeds that probably of most Jews, and so they're thorough in their background, their knowledge of the original languages, and so on, and it's a great blessing for us.

So, Lord, we just ask your blessing again, right from the beginning, as we get into the insight and the study of this precious scholar, and to stir us up, my God, in areas that we would not otherwise have considered.

Bless this and make it fruitful for us, and we thank you for the work, the life's labor, the labor of love of men who poured themselves out in that kind of labor, Lord, that is so exhaustive, that is so innovating, more than anything that we could know physically.

They have wrestled with the deep things of God, and we're grateful, my God, for their contribution. Help us now to be the beneficiaries by your spirit, as we look into this, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, when we first mentioned the prophetical school in the newsletter, we had no title, and usually we don't ever give a title, because we don't ourselves know what it is that the Lord wants us to take up when we begin.

Jeremiah, Judgment, and Restoration

But since the newsletter has gone out, in the weeks that followed, the Lord began to quicken Jeremiah. We found ourselves increasingly aligned with Jeremiah, who is the prophet of doom, but also the prophet of restoration.

The two great prophets who announced judgment for Israel, or maybe three, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, are also the prophets of restoration. So it's a remarkable thing that the same ones who did not shrink from the painful requirement of having to announce impending doom, tragedy, devastation, expulsion for Israel, much against the protest and the opposition of the people of their own generation, was an unwelcome message were the ones also to whom God gave the privilege of speaking of an eventual and final hope of restoration and return.

And this is also our own burden and call. I hope you don't think me dramatic in any way, but personally, I'm persona non grata. That means unwelcomed in Israel by the Jewish believers, by the Messianic fellowships, because of a message that we bear that is as unwelcome now in the ears of this generation as the message of Jeremiah and Ezekiel were to their generation, which is to say the necessity for a soon coming devastation, probably eventuating in an expulsion from the land, a serious final chastisement or judgment of God for Israel, out of which a remnant will be sifted who will be restored to the land and to God as the redeemed of the Lord and open the establishment of the kingdom of God and the law going forth out of Zion, the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, that will affect all nations.

This is the remarkable concluding drama of all the ages is Israel's final restoration after a last day's time of the most serious tribulation that Israel has ever experienced in its entire history, which would include even the recent Nazi Holocaust.

So we are speaking already freely as much as opportunity is given and the Lord prompts us without stinting that there is a coming devastation for Israel. Could you imagine how that would fall on the ears of those who have established their life there since 1948 in the hope that this is the completion and the fulfillment that would have long been hoped for, a national homeland or the fulfillment of prophecy for the establishment of a nation.

And I myself had once subscribed to that view, but over the more recent years, the Lord, by a process of things, not unlike the process by which he brought Jeremiah and other of his prophets into a growing awareness of judgment, he's done the same for us.

Until I see now and believe without any hesitation that there must come these final judgments and chastisements, even to the possible destruction of the present state of Israel, it will no longer exist as a political entity.

And one thing that I'm required to make clear to those who will even allow us to share this is that we need to distinguish between the state of Israel and Israel as a nation, because the nation will never be done in, will never lose its reality.

But the state may well be something that will have to go in the course of God's judgment. So this is a painful message. Any message on judgment is painful. And you can imagine why people stop their fingers in their ears and gnash their teeth upon those who bear it, because invariably the man is the message.

People cannot disassociate the message from the man. And if they reject the message, they must necessarily reject the man who brought it. In fact, the way to reject the message is to reject the man, is to find some disqualification in the man.

That would discredit the word, and therefore absolve those who hear the word from any obligation to believe it to be the word of the Lord. So a prophet is subject to rejection, particularly if he bears the word of judgment.

And so judgment is not only coming to Israel, it comes to the house of God first. It's coming to all nations. So whoever are the prophetic bearers of the word in those nations will necessarily experience a degree of rejection from within their own nation, and especially from the religious structure within that nation who wants to preserve itself as a self-perpetuating entity.

Nobody wants to consider a judgment that might include themselves and bring an end to their own involvement, their own work, their own purposes. In fact, the cry that I've heard most frequently from men in Israel when they hear what I'm about is, well, what about our ministry?

It's as if, well, too bad about the nation, what about our ministry? This can't be solved because God has brought us, and secretly, if not overtly, they believe that their ministry is the key to Israel's redemption.

So to bring a word of judgment, how shall I say it, is an ultimate, final, total kind of responsibility that will grind most men to powder. Most Christians have not the moral, spiritual stamina to bear the responsibility of bringing such a word.

The Prophetic Church and Its Responsibility

But what we're talking about is not only men who are called to bear it, but a church that is called to bear it, because the church that is true church has of necessity a prophetic constituency. The church is intended by God itself to be a prophetic entity, and to be in the nation the voice of God of things that pertain to that nation's future, and also how the nation must understand its own history as it affects its future.

For nations are also under the judgment of God for the same reasons that Israel is under the judgment of God. So the church itself is called to a certain kind of stature, certain kind of growth. And so I'm really appreciating this scholar's attention to the call of a prophet and some of the things that pertain to the prophetic call.

And he talks about this call, and we can examine the call that came to Isaiah in Isaiah 6, where he cried out, Woe is me, I am undone. He saw the Lord high and lifted up. And who shall go for us? Remember that?

Send me. Jeremiah's call. And often the reaction of the prophets is, who am I that you should send me? Or I'm a child, I cannot speak. Moses made that same excuse. So there's something about the call of the prophet that needs to be examined, and how it comes in God's own time, having nothing to do, that we can observe, with the man's necessary qualification.

In fact, his qualification might be his disqualification, as Moses was 40 years in exile, having murdered an Egyptian in some attempt, humanly or religiously, to effect something for his own people. So God never argued with Moses when he said, who am I that I should be sent?

But once the call comes, something is set in motion of a radical kind that affects everything for the man himself. The scholar says, this created a totally new situation for the man concerned. It removed these men from all their previous mode of life for at least a considerable time.

It brings about a whole radical alteration in the life of the man who is called. Whether it's just for an immediate task, like Amos had certain things to proclaim, and then we don't hear more about him as prophet.

But in Jeremiah, the call was not just for a task, the call was for a lifetime. The call was for the man and his entire being for all his life, beyond just the task itself. And it changes the whole mode of that man's life.

From the very beginning, not only the prophet's lips, but also their whole lives were conscripted for special service. Because it's not just a voice that God is wanting to employ, but it's the whole man, the whole life of the man.

Because the man is so identified with his message, that God has got to invest himself in preparing that vessel in every way. So the cold man is subject to a kind of refining and chastisement himself. How does he speak about the judgments of God abstractly or academically if he has not first himself in some measure experienced personally God's judgment and chastisement for himself?

See what I mean? So to be called to bear the message of judgment is to be made a candidate for judgment for yourself. And no wonder that men shrink from the call. And as we'll see with Jeremiah, what makes Jeremiah extraordinary, he's the one prophet who gives us biographical details about himself and his response to his call and his complaint against God for the call, like as if he were seduced.

That's the actual word that he uses, and we'll look at it maybe today or tomorrow. So it's a strenuous call, all demanding, and in fact you can almost sense that the prophet is free to reject it. It can't be conscripted where man would come kicking and against his will.

But there's a surrender of will and life to the totality of that call. He goes on to say that the complete absence of any transitional stage between the two conditions is a special characteristic of the situation.

There's no transition. There's no graduating. There's no progressive thing. It's a radical what the man was before the call, what the man is since the call. And as a rule, as I've said before, what he was before is not a qualification.

God did not choose him because he had an academic background or a theological degree. God chose him because God will choose whom he will choose. So neither previous faith nor any other personal endowment has the slightest part to play in preparing a man who was called to stand before Jehovah, Yahweh, for his vocation.

I think this is important because there's a lot of romanticization about prophetic calling. This is one of the corruptive things taking place now, I believe, in the charismatic realm, is to romanticize the prophetic call as if these men have some special attribute or some mystique or something that would uniquely set them off from other men of flesh and blood.

God is quite explicit in the scripture to say that these men are flesh and blood like as we. That's very important because if these men are extraordinary in some mystical way or have some previous qualification that other men do not have, then what shall we hope for in a church that is made up of flesh and blood men?

You see what I mean? But there's something in man that likes to romanticize, especially the prophetic call. And men who have taken this identification for themselves, who have not received the call that Isaiah or Jeremiah or others have, but think they have in their romantic imagining, are the men most likely to be bizarre in their dress, in their personalities.

They run off to Israel, they carry placards, they announce the day of doom, they wear long beards, I mean, I don't know. There's something about the true prophet that is remarkably un-extraordinary, quite ordinary.

They are flesh and blood men like as we. In fact, if there's something extraordinary, I would be suspicious that this is not a man authentically called, but one affecting a prophetic demeanor that he thinks is appropriate and wants everyone to know that he in fact has it.

Probably we would be more safe to say that the man who is wearing a three button, what do you call it? Three piece suit is more likely to be a candidate for the prophet than a man who is wearing a camel's hair garment.

Unless the Lord has explicitly, as with John the Baptist, called him to that. As a rule, the prophetic man is a man, is an ordinary man, and therefore he's subject to all of the liability, failure, sin of all men.

And that must necessarily be so, because he's addressing all men and cannot speak to them from the place of some assumed spiritual superiority, but he's identified with them in their sin. And probably one of the greatest statements of that is Daniel in chapter 9 of his book, where he cries out to God and says, we have sinned against you.

There's no way that Daniel disassociates himself from Israel. There's a complete identification with the sins of his people. And later on when the angel comes to him as a messenger, your prayer was heard from the very first.

I was delayed for three weeks because of some commotion in the heavenlies from the prince of Greece, the powers of the air, but your prayer was heard from the first. You're beloved of God. And I would suggest that the reason is that God loved when the prophet identified himself with the sins of the people.

He may not be a conspicuous sinner, but he knows himself to be a man and capable of all of the shortcoming and the failure of his own nation. And that is a necessary qualification if he's going to address the nation.

So these are ordinary men called to an extraordinary call, and the call itself, the nature of being a prophet, changes a man from ordinary to extraordinary. And we're going to go into that this morning.

The Prophetic Office and the Church's Maturity

And what a wonderful encouragement, therefore, for the church. The church is ordinary. It's too ordinary. It needs to be extraordinary. And when it will perceive its own prophetic call corporately as the church and embrace it willingly and suffer the chastisements and the refinements of God to attain to it, it will become the extraordinary witness that God intended the church to be.

The church that is not prophetic, in my opinion, is ipso facto not the church. It's an institution. It's a cultural embellishment. It's something that provides services and benefits. But church, in the sense of God's intention, must necessarily be a prophetic and apostolic entity.

And it may well be that if it's not prophetic first, neither can it be apostolic because the church is built on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles. But when God says prophets and, he puts prophetic before apostolic.

And I think that there's a logic to that, that the prophetic thing must precede the apostolic. Maybe we'll talk about that later. But if we're not prophetic, neither can we be apostolic. But the church that is the church is both.

But it needs first to be prophetic before it can be apostolic. So what does that mean? What does it mean to be prophetic? If we have romanticized that word and embellished it and given it meanings that God never intended or see it in a way that we expect extraordinary characters, then the church is deceived about its own call and its own identity.

The meaning of that word is critical. What does it mean to be prophetic? And the way we'll understand it is by examining those men historically who were it, who have received this call, and their call has been legitimized or vindicated by history.

Their words have come true. Their books have spoken. They have shown the validity of their call. And so in going back into their life and their call, we can learn something about what God intends biblically as the meaning of prophetic.

And probably if we look into it, those things that are being celebrated today as prophetic that are questionable have very little biblical justification or explanation because they have not gone into the scripture.

They've not read and examined the work of men who have given their lives to this study. And therefore they can go off on their own tangents and their own fanciful imaginings of what they think prophetic to be.

Usually if it's bizarre, if it's extraordinary, if it's way out, if it's outlandish, people think that to be prophetic. Or if it has a degree of prediction or can tell you something about your background.

We're not talking about those things. We're talking about an office, not a gift, not the gift of prophecy. We're talking about the prophetic calling as an office. What that has meant historically, what God intends it to mean presently.

People talk about Old Testament prophets and New Testament prophets. And maybe there is a New Testament prophet in some sense. But I think ironically as we come to the end of the age, if there's any glaring need, it's for prophets of the older kind.

The prophets of the Old Testament kind who brought the oracles of God. What we need is not fortune tellers or men who can tell us that we have this name or that background and we have this need. But what is the heart and mind of God for this hour in the last days?

That's the oracle of God. The message that comes from the throne of God as a sent word to a sent man is what we need. So I wouldn't want to dismiss it by saying, well, that was Old Testament. That's classic, pervading through all generations.

And we have as much a need for oracular, true prophetic statements that can only come through true men at the end of the age as we needed it at the commencement. In fact, the whole disjuncture between Old Testament and New Testament is itself false and has given us an erroneous picture of the faith.

And that could be a good subject for one of our evening get-togethers about the unbroken continuity of the one faith from the beginning as against the idea that the church is a new phenomenon that began on the day of Pentecost and that the Old Testament is relegated to the dustbin and that was the God of judgment and wrath and now we have the God of mercy and kindness and that like there's a rupture between old and new.

That's not the faith, that's not God. And one of our prophetic tasks is to restore to the church the sense of the faith as an unbroken continuum from the beginning to the end. So neither previous faith nor any other personal endowment had the slightest part to play in preparing a man who was called to stand before Yahweh for his vocation.

And we need to make a real point out of that. It's entirely the chosenness of God. Amos was a vine dresser and a herdsman. He had no qualification. Isaiah and Jeremiah were priests but that was not the qualification.

That just happened to be their ancestral and hereditary calling. It gave them access and privy to certain things at the heart of their current Judaism but it was not the basis for their call. The basis for the call is the sovereignty of God.

Maybe we need to know that who have that call or have resisted that call or have not recognized that call because we say to ourselves, who are we that we should be called? I don't have the qualification.

Well, there is no qualification other than the sovereign call of God himself. The real question is, if it has pleased God to choose you, are you pleased to accept it? Knowing that prophetic calling is a synonym for suffering.

And in Gerhard von Rad uses the phrase, the martyrdom of Jeremiah. The fact of the matter is that we don't know how Jeremiah died. He's not talking about what was Jeremiah's final demise in Egypt. That's lost to history.

We don't know. What he's saying is the whole life of the man was a martyrdom. Because once you're called and God has you in his grip and you've got to speak the things that are unpleasant for men to hear and that they're quick to reject, it's equally unpleasant for you.

Who likes rejection? It's a martyrdom. And so it may well be that historically there have been men who have rejected the call and we don't hear about them because they're not left behind a testimony. But I think this scholar talks about the freedom of the prophet.

Not only freedom in accepting the call, but freedom in continuing in the call. That every word that God subsequently gives, he's free to hear or to reject or to withhold from proclamation. That is to say, the prophet is always in a continual state of tension, of decision, freely chosen to act out what God is giving him to speak.

He can withhold it, he can swallow it down, he can spit it out, he can run from it, or he can express it. And even how he expresses it, there's a great element of freedom of choice in the manner of the expression when he does express it.

Which is to say that nothing gives us a more profound understanding of the issue of freedom in the life of a believer than as we see it brought into a particular focus in the call of a prophet. And so if we apply that to the Church, nothing more enhances the Church than its freedom in accepting and rejecting its own call and its own obediences to God over a course of time.

And freedom is the name of the game. Freedom is the making or the breaking. Freedom to obey or to reject is the foundation for personality, for humanity, for distinction as a person. If you have no choice in the matter and you're just rubber stamping and you're being processed out of an assembly line, there's nothing there either for your own edification and ultimate glory or for God's.

Freedom is a cardinal thing. It's at the heart of propheticness and therefore at the heart of prophetic Church itself. So we'll have a better understanding of the Church's own call and the thing that will bring it to its own maturity as we explore the men who are the forerunners and are the thing in themselves.

So we have to disabuse ourselves of all romantic notions of what we think propheticness is. It may well be ironically that men who are trying to affect the becoming prophets are opposing authentic calls by trying themselves in some glamorous, eye-appealing, attention-getting way the very thing to which they're called, if they would only shut up and let go and not bring their own design to bear and let the Lord bring forth the fulfillment of his own call.

That's true apostolically as well. Men opposing their own calling in their ignorance because they've not given adequate study to the way in which God calls and establishes his true servants. So neither previous faith nor any other personal endowment had the slightest part to play in preparing a man who was called to stand before Jehovah for his vocation.

He might by nature be a lover of peace, yet it might be laid upon him to threaten and reprove. Isn't that remarkable? That the man by his natural temperament has a disposition for those things that are peaceful, he would have loved to have brought that kind of message.

But no, God controverts his natural tendency and calls that same man who has an affinity for peace to bring the jarring, painful, and discordant message of judgment. And just the reverse might be true.

He'll take some guy who's hard-nosed and would love to take out the sword and give it free play and call that man to be like a mouse and to speak the kinds of things that don't thrill his own soul at all.

I would expect that that, as a rule, would be God's procedure. He'll not be ruled by a man's natural disposition, but he will controvert it, all the more to show that he's the one who both calls and shapes and forms the messenger.

He might employ a natural propensity, but he's not going to be ruled by it. And Jeremiah was just such a woman. I would suspect, when you read about him and his complaint against God, that if he had his choice in the matter, he would never have been an instrument to proclaim a message of doom, of impending judgment.

Nevertheless, God called him, and he was required again and again in freedom to speak it. Remember in Ezekiel 37, when God calls Ezekiel to speak to these dry bones, that they might live. It's not only Ezekiel's faith in question, whether those bones can live.

In fact, he says, when the Lord said, Son of man, can these bones live? And Ezekiel said, Lord, thou knowest. It's not only that he perhaps had not the faith to believe for it, but there's a good question of whether he desired it.

Maybe he was of a heart that Israel got what it deserved. It deserved its death. They should not be restored from it. And he didn't want to have part in seeing them restored. Can you think of another prophet who exhibited exactly that?

Jonah. He didn't want Nineveh to come to repentance. It bugged him. He even had a controversy with God, that why should they? I mean, they were horrific, and they had been the enemies of Israel. He didn't want to be employed for their restoration.

So, talk about an illustration of the freedom of a prophet to balk from against the very call of God. And God's employment of a man, contrary to his own natural aptitude and disposition, can be seen in instances like that.

So, so deep is the gulf which separates the prophets from their past, that none of their previous social relationships are carried over into the new way of life. And Amos says, I was a herdsman, a dresser of sycamore trees, but Yahweh took me from following the flock and said to me, Go prophesy against my people Israel.

Notice the word, Go prophesy against my people Israel. What a word. We wouldn't have mind going to prophesy for Israel, bring them a word of encouragement that the Lord has seen their suffering and seen their distress, and now benefit is going to come and prosperity, now they will...

No, prophesy against. When Isaiah got his call, seeing the Lord high and lifted up, he said, Who shall go for... The Lord said, Who shall go for us? And Isaiah said, Send me. And what was the message that were to be sent?

Speak. And so that the ears can be stopped and their hearts hardened that they should not believe. Your word is not going to bring life and restoration. Your word is going to bring judgment. But speak it.

No wonder God had to say, Who shall go for us? Who wants that? We want to go when it's gratifying. We want to go when men will be pleased and benefited and blessed and slap us on the back and say, Oh brother, I so appreciated the word that you brought.

It was life for me. But to have people shun you and turn from you as you speak despicable things is quite something else. But I would say that God does not have the prophet until he is willing to speak whatever the Lord gives, whether it's a word that will bring judgment or a word that will bring blessing.

Because he's brought to a place where he's indifferent to whether he's going to experience rejection or approval. Can you imagine what kind of a place that is? How many of us have come to that place? And by what process shall we be brought to it?

Because we're talking about the very foundations, the pit and the marrow of being a person. It's human. It's natural. It's registered in our corpuscles. In the very knit of our humanity to desire the approval of men.

To live without that and to suffer rejection has got to wither you and strike at the very foundations of your own identity, your own self-consciousness, your own confidence. It can destroy you if you need to be applauded and approved by men.

As most human beings do. It's a rare person who can live without that approval and live without coming apart at the seams. And all the while being haunted by the thought that maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they're right.

Maybe this is not God's word. Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe they're right, that I am loveless and I am cruel and vindictive and enjoying. Maybe that kind of a doubt is always operative and the prophet has got to eat that.

So he's a man and he'll suffer doubt even about his own calling and his own obedience. And that's what Von Watt means when he said Jeremiah, the martyrdom of Jeremiah. It's a continual dying. So go prophesy against my people.

This was more than simply a new profession. It was a totally new way of life to the extent that a call meant relinquishing normal social life and all the social and economic securities which this offered and changing over instead to a condition where a man had nothing to depend on or as we may put it to a condition of dependence upon Jehovah or Yahweh and upon that security alone.

So if there's anyone who is completely dependent upon God it's the prophetic man because he cannot look to man he cannot look to his own nation he can't even look to his own family he can't even look to his own friends because as Jesus said he's not without honor except in his own home and his own country.

The place where he needs it most is the place where he'll get it least. Someone said that I can take an insult from someone on the street but when my own wife says the same thing I'm shattered. Or my own friend or my closest associate but that's exactly where the prophet is likely to experience rejection and misunderstanding.

Jesus did not obtain that in Nazareth and we're not likely to obtain it in the places where we are. So the prophet is cast upon God not just for the receiving of the word that is called to proclaim but for the very sustenance of his own life that he'll not sink in despondency and doubt but that the Lord is his sustainer.

Jeremiah said in chapter 15 verse 17 of his book because thy hand is upon me I sit alone. Talk about freedom if you know that are you still willing to be called? All of us who want to be prophets if you know that it's going to mean exclusion being solitary, alone rejected because your hand is upon me I sit alone.

Are we still willing for that call? Because I do not sit lively in the company of the merrymakers because your hand is upon me I sit alone. It's even being alone when you're in company. Everybody else is a merrymaker and they're having a blast and it's amen and hallelujah and they're enjoying the Lord and you're sitting like a lump.

You simply are not able to enter into their merriment. Either it's false, it's superficial it's carnal well I'll give you a recent example from this trip from which I've just returned a meeting in Pennsylvania and I had to sit through all the choruses and what an anguish and every chorus was about Israel and they were banging their tambourines the pastor and his wife were in the worship team and every chorus was about Israel and away go Israel and finally when I got up I said there's something foundationally wrong here I've realized something tonight in hearing you that I've never understood before and this is it that there's something flagrantly wrong in singing these choruses of Israel as if their restoration has already been effected and as if there's not a trial and a time of unspeakable trouble that is yet to be experienced how do we sing these merry choruses as if it's already taken, done.

There's an unreality there to celebrate something before the time it's a false celebration. Well they didn't know that there was a chastisement that is yet future they thought it's all past I know it and so I'm sitting there and listening to the songs of merriment and celebration that I know is premature to sound and then when I got up I expressed that there's something discordant here there's something not right about singing choruses of celebration as if Israel is already through what is yet future for it there's an unreality.

And when there's an unreality with regard to Israel there's a pervasive unreality with regard to everything. Well we were supposed to go out for coffee with the pastor and his wife after that service and he came up to me and he said Ot, please forgive us.

But my wife is not feeling well and will not be going out with you. You better believe she was not feeling well. That woman was undone and I called the next day for one reason or another and the man was so cursed and short and not even a gracious word of thanks either.

You can see already something was setting in, the recoil from the unwelcomed word that came because I went on from that beginning to set forth the kinds of things that Israel must necessarily experience as judgment that were yet future.

And it was a painful contradiction of all that they understood and had been led to believe in one night complete. But my point is this that I was sitting in the company of the merrymakers but I was all alone in the agitation of my own soul and the discomfort to the point of anguish of a pain that you cannot describe because it's like a conflict between realities and either you are insane and they're right or they are all wrong and you're the only one who knows it and the only one in a position to correct it got the picture?

And I suspect that that was only a faint first installment of what we can expect more and more as we come into these issues at the end of the age. More jarringly before I had left for this trip I had made an arrangement to speak at a messianic congregation in Pittsburgh only a short distance from this meeting that I'm describing in Pennsylvania.