K-550 the Mercy of Conversion — Art Katz

Israel’s Opposition, Paul’s Conversion, and the Revelation of the Lord

They are the enemies of the gospel, for your sake, they have been historically and to this present moment. When the magnitude of that opposition breaks upon the nation's soul, that in opposing what they thought was contrary to God, they were opposing God himself, and actually being an agent of persecution, and even producing alternate messianic schemes.

And that comes with the revelation of the Lord, when they shall see his wounds, we shall see him whom we have pierced, and mourn for him. That explains why our conversion is not as radical. Our calling is not as profound, our sin was not as grievous.

So I don't want to make that a rule, but I would say that that should be factored in. That both the enormity of Paul's sin in Israel, and also the magnitude of their calling, required the radicalness of the revelation of the Lord, and the depth of their conversion.

You know that we published a booklet called Apostolic Conversion, centered on Paul's experience. And a pastor who had read it said, well, that's fine for Paul, but I have not seen that kind of revelation.

That light has not come to me. So how can one be expected to have a conversion as profound, as deep? I said, well, now that you have read the booklet, that light has come. The challenge of that word is, for that reader, a measure of that light.

So I think it's something that Paul's saying about that we have the seed of it, but we need a more profound appropriation of it. Paul got it in one fell swoop. It blinded him. And he remained blind, and would have died blind, if God had not sent an Ananias to lay hands on him, to receive his sight.

And for three days he neither ate nor drank. That is to say, he was as a dead man. The depth of that revelation, no man shall see God and live, almost became literally true in the life of Paul. So that God had to raise him from a death of repentance to become the great apostle.

And his proclamation of the gospel had such a power on those who heard it, that they were turned from idols to serve the living God. And maybe what it's waiting for is a church that has appropriated, to some measure, the radicalness of Paul's conversion, that they might proclaim the gospel of that conversion with an appropriate intensity.

We're saved, but not converted, I often say. So many saved, few converted. It's a good question. But because the circumstances of our coming to God were not as Paul's, does not mean that we're condemned forever to a shallowness of faith.

One of the mercies of God is that what Paul got in one fell swoop, the Lord piecemeal gives it to us in proportion. So 30 years later, I have a greater apprehension now of sin than the day in which I was saved.

I'm repenting now, inwardly and brokenly and continually, in a way that was not possible for me 30 years ago. And it's a mercy that God gives it to me over a span of time, or you would be extinguished.

We can be envious of Paul, but also fearful. So just to conclude and sum up, the magnitude of the sin and the magnitude of this calling, I think are related to the magnitude of the revelation which came to him that brought the depth of that conversion.

Human Sinfulness and Israel’s Final Conversion

Some thoughts on the nature of conversion. Maybe what's wanting is that we need to see ourselves as murderers. Where we in fact have the nice middle class kids who have kept our noses clean. Potentially, the capacity for murder and atrocity is always with us.

The fact that we have not performed it is merely a providential grace that it was never required. But if it were, what hideous crime and sin and enormity would we fall short? The best of us. And isn't that why Germany had to be the promulgators of the Holocaust?

In all of their self-celebration, as the land of Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, art, culture, philosophy, refinement, civilization, they became bestial in the annihilation of the Jew.

And we who have condemned them as Germans, the German sin, and we won't put a foot in the Volkswagen, are now ourselves moving closer and closer to the revelation of the same thing as Jews taught Arabs.

So it's a mercy of God to go that far to arrange the re-creation of the state politically and put us in a position of power that if for no other reason that we can walk out and enact the revelation of our sin that would never have come to us if we had remained in ghetto seclusion, living in our fanciful imagining about ourselves as being virtuous.

He's put us in the place of power, threatened, where our very existence is threatened, that requires us to act in such a way so as to say, finally, that we're no better than any and they were capable of the horror and the atrocity that was inflicted upon us, we are now inflicting upon others.

Truly, there's no man good nor not one. That's all the preliminary to Israel's final conversion. How far will God go? And the only thing that justifies it is the issue of eternity, that to save us from the fire that shall not be quenched.

It's not extravagant to go all this way, even to the establishment of a state and the whole drama of Israel with this final revelation. Well, God did not think it too extravagant to give Stephen's life for Paul, a man who was radiant and whose face shone like an angel and who miracles and demonstrations of power flowed from him and yet he was made a sacrifice, brutally beaten stone to death, clothing laid at Paul's feet, Saul's feet, that he would be goaded by the demonstration of the magnanimity of that man's death in martyrdom.

Isn't that a beautiful picture? And God says, I've given men for you. I've given Ethiopians and maybe he'll give the church for them. Maybe we will suffer a martyrdom even at their hands in order to demonstrate the magnanimity of God, his forbearance, his love and forgiveness that will not produce an immediate repentance but when they will see the Lord, boom, it all comes together.

Zechariah 13 and the Pain of Repentance

How shall we understand Zechariah 13? Every family apart and every husband apart that the depth of their, the pang of their repentance is so profound they can't even bear to be in each other's presence.

Each one has got to go apart and cry out before God personally. That's more than just the revelation of the Lord. That's the revelation of the Lord plus a whole history of witness that had been all along rejected and comes to bear in a single moment when the Lord comes.

The gasp of recognition of all that had been spoken to you which you have not only rejected but killed and stoned those who have brought it to you now is seen, comes to light in the revelation of him when you see his wounds.

I tell you what, I would rather see a Jew saved now than to wait for that moment and accept that God had poured out the gift of the spirit of grace and of supplications they would have perished in their very repentance.

It would have killed them. Their bodies would have been so wracked by the anguish of soul of repentance that it might well have snuffed out their lives. It's a mercy to be saved now and before that kind of last moment's revelation.

So this is a great subject and if this was in our hearts I think that we would be spurred now to a much more intense witness to that nation, to that people to save them from the horror of that final revelation though praise God it will come.

Mercy as the Ultimate Revelation of God

Just to throw out a question, to dwell on it and maybe we can take it up after the break. Why has God himself chosen the demonstration of his mercy as the ultimate demonstration of himself and of his glory?

Of all of his attributes, why does he himself select mercy? What is there about mercy that is so revealing in God's own sight of himself? When Moses asked to see his glory God showed him his mercy. But what is it about the nature of mercy?

And I think it's important for us to understand it because a great measure of that demonstration will be required to come through us that by our mercy they may receive mercy as a final enactment of God's mercy toward Israel through the church.

But if we don't fully understand what it is what is it to demonstrate that they may obtain? What is mercy? That God himself has chosen it as the ultimate expression and demonstration of himself and calls it his glory.

I'm trying to seek for a definition. How would we define the word? Loving kindness. Is there a difference between kindness and loving kindness? Usually extended, if not invariably to those who are totally undeserving.

In other words, if it's deserved, is it still mercy? Mercy by definition is a kindness of love extended to those who don't qualify for it. It's not a payment for virtue or services rendered. It's something of God by his nature that is given independent of the condition of those upon whom it is bestowed.

It's bestowed because of God. Not because of the virtue of those or the lack of virtue of those who receive it. Maybe all the more the lack. So I refer to that scripture in Romans 11 that by your mercy they may obtain mercy.

What mercy do we have? God is implying that we have a mercy that we can bestow. In fact, that historically it's critical that this bestowing be made in the last days through the church, through Israel that will be absolutely bereft of anything and just hanging on the ropes, ready to sink into death and oblivion unless a mercy comes.

But it's not an abstract mercy. It's the mercy that the church itself bestows because it has obtained mercy. Come on you guys. What mercy have we obtained that is a palpable something that we are able then to transmit, convey or minister?

You think by and large that there is a consciousness in the church that they have received mercy? So you think it's fair to say that more mercy has been bestowed upon us than we are aware of? Definitely.

Even that verse that His mercies are new every morning. Who is conscious this morning of any mercy that has come to us? Yet His word says every day nothing lends itself to being more transfigured. The holiest things of God, the greatest demonstrations of God, namely the mercy of God depicted of Jesus on the cross lends itself to being religionized.

That there is something uncanny that the deepest revelation of God to man has a potential to be transfigured into something less sentimentalized, distorted, misunderstood, misused, misrepresented. I don't know how to understand that but are you understanding what I'm saying?

I think the one single word that would describe that phenomenon I would call it religious or religion. Religion is the propensity of men to take the holiest things of God in all of their well-meaning intention and so to transfigure them as to rob them of their cogency and power.

How many of us, even as the most sincere believers, have been really smitten with the awareness of the mercy of God that is revealed at Calvary? I have to confess that I'm not in the foremost strengths of those that have been smitten.

I want to be, I know I need to be, but for some reason I have not been. I don't know what's wanting, but we need a fresh, deep appropriation or apprehension of the cross or we will have scant mercy to give.

When I preached this one day in a church a woman just cried out spontaneously out of the congregation. She said, How can you expect us to manifest mercy to Israel? We don't even have it for ourselves.

Right within our own congregation there's a wanting of mercy within the people of God. So though the mercy has been poured out, if it's not recognized, not understood, not deeply appropriated, we'll not be able to demonstrate it.

So something needs to break on our deepest consciousness and I think I can safely say that that is not the least of the prophetic task. In the work of restoration is to take the things that have been cheapened, made commonplace, turned into religion, artifacts, things hanging on walls, around necks, whose meaning has been lost and to restore the original meaning that God himself intended.

I would say that this is probably one of the most, if not the most, critical area of need if the church is to fulfill its mandate toward Israel. That by our mercy they may receive mercy. Something has got to happen to move us from mere creedal acknowledgement that we have received mercy to an existential appropriation so real, so vibrant, that we can extend it.

This is a last day's requirement of put up or shut up and a measure of whether we have moved from mere nominal religiosity and acceding to the truths of the faith in a way that would be acceptable in any church situation to such a radical, prophetic, and apostolic appropriation that we can actually manifest it.

And if that manifestation does not come, this people will in fact actually perish. It's going to be a life and death question. In other words, what I'm saying is, and I've said it many times, mere religious obligation will not enable us to be to a distressed Israel what their last hour's predicament will require.

It's going to take more than just mere civility or, what can you call it, the polite response. It's going to take mercy. And how many, I feel like asking the same question in another form, how many Christians are actually conscious of the mercy they've received?

We can say, how many Christians are actually conscious that they've been grafted into the root of another people? That we who were without God and without hope, and were far off, had been brought nigh by the blood of the Messiah into the spiritual commonwealth of Israel.

Now, if it cost God something to pour out his mercy, namely the death of his son in the most excruciating agony, what will it cost us? To put it another way, is mercy still mercy if it comes without cost?

Religious politeness we can perform, but mercy, the bowels of mercy, that they might obtain mercy, when? At their ultimate crisis point, despised and hated among all nations, when to be a kori tenbum to them, and to take them in and to extend mercy, means to sign your death warrant.

It means to put your head on the block, because you're identifying with that people and you're going to be subjected to the same persecution and penalty, maybe even more outrage. I don't have many dreams, but one dream I had, of being yanked out of bed by men who pounded the door at like three or four in the morning, like Gestapo jack-booted hooligans, and being yanked out, and weren't even allowed to get dressed, and thrown into the back of a car.

I don't know if it was my vision or another that related this to me, but the description of it is accurate. And the question was asked as they were bundled up and thrown into the back of a car and driven out in the middle of the night.

Shit, they cried out, why are you doing this to us? And the answer was, you are among those who are helping the Jews. There might be a greater fury directed against Gentiles helping the Jews than against the Jews themselves.

So, I don't think I'm overstating something, but that we need to recognize that the mercy that God will require, which will be a life and death provision, will come at cost. It was so for God, and it must be so for us.

And indeed, if it does not come at cost, how will those who receive it recognize it as mercy? These are great questions. So, it behooves us even to attempt to define that word, and I think we're getting at it, we're feeling for it, not the least of things that were included, is that, now by virtue of my death by obedience unto suffering at the cross, is released that which is set in motion that will eventuate in Israel's final and ultimate deliverance, because I'm raising up a people who will receive my mercy through this death that will then be able to extend it to them.

It's all together connected in one piece. It's the final consummation of what was established initially at the cross. And when that breaks on the consciousness of Jews in their distress, to recognize that what is being expressed toward them is not some sentimental or human temperamental thing peculiar to the personality of the one who has taken them in, but they're going to find it in Minnesota, they'll find it in Kansas, they'll find it in Arizona, they'll find it in Mexico, they'll find it in Canada, wherever they are, they're being moved from place to place, the consistent mercy from place to place will finally have to bring them to this question.

What I'm seeing is more than just the temperament or the personality of a single individual, I'm seeing the consistency of a nature that seems to be in all those to whom we're being brought, and they're all goyim, they're all gentiles, how can I understand this?

What gives them this same character and nature but the fact that something was released in that initial sacrifice that makes this sacrifice possible? In other words, this revelation will draw them to that revelation, and that indeed is the ultimate mercy, so that the redeemed of the Lord shall return to Zion.

They didn't begin their journey as redeemed, but in the course of it, they've passed from unbelief to the faith of the revelation of the Son of God in the face of God's people. See what I mean? That's the great thing that is subsumed in that statement.

It is finished. What I've quoted Ezekiel 20, I will meet with you in the wilderness of the nations face to face, quoted Romans 11, that by your mercy may I obtain mercy. But what brings the Scripture in Romans into conjunction with the Scripture in Ezekiel?

My prophetic sense of the connectedness. You see what I mean? It's fantastic. It's phenomenal. The mercies of God. And to break on our consciousness first, that we might in turn be the voice by which to break on the consciousness of those who are totally unsuspecting and indifferent to it.

Receiving Mercy Before Extending It

Would you say that the present conduct of Israel toward its Palestinian population suggests the knowledge of mercy? Talk about questions that answer themselves. They are just as ruthless and as methodical and violent and inconsiderate as anyone has ever been to them, to us.

They're bereft of mercy because they've never obtained mercy. You have no capacity to extend it until you have first obtained it. The same thing is true of forgiveness. That's why they're unforgiving to the Germans.

My mother, to this day, until we recognize to what degree we have received mercy, and that in God's sight our atrocities, whether or not we have actually performed them, identifies us with the grossest sins that mankind has ever performed.

So, to communicate that is another seeing. So, you need first to see it, and then you need to proclaim it or to make it known. And that very thing defines what prophet is. We can be enriched by the teacher and be brought into an investigation, but in the last analysis, when that word will come to a desperate and final people, and even to the church today in its sleep, has got to come to it prophetically.

Then they can have teaching, but they need first to be wakened, stabbed awake, so to speak, by a penetrating word. But here's the thing. Can we speak it persuasively and penetratingly if we ourselves are not the conscious recipients of it?

That's the nub. The prophet, therefore, must be the thing in itself. He himself is the Word made flesh. It's integral to his whole life, his circumstances, his condition, his testings and his trials. He is not allowed to know mercy academically or theologically or exegetically.

He's got to know it by having his face rubbed in the dirt, being dragged through circumstances, knocked from pillar to post, till he knows that he knows that he knows. Then his word is not only credible, but penetrating.

And that's what distinguishes that proclamation from teaching or other ministries of the Word. Everything brings us back to the cross. And I think to the degree that Satan knows that, he would do everything in his power to nullify the meaning of the cross by cheapening it, by sentimentalizing it.

Recovering the Brutality of the Cross

When I went to Germany with a message for Germany, I said, you are the victims of the influence of the poet Goethe, G-O-E-T-H-E, who was horrified by the brutality of the cross. It offended his liberal, artistic temperament.

And he said, we need to garland the cross with roses. Take the sting out of it. Because that was his humane or humanistic disposition, which in fact took place. And maybe more than we realize, it has taken place with us.

And something has happened to cheat us and rob us of the brutality of the cross. I mean, the horror. And if you read Venezuela, you know that my experience when I met a German artist on the road, a Jewish hitchhiker, who said, Art, you must not miss this.

You have to go out of your way to see this famous painting of Christ crucified, the Eisenheim altar. What's the other thing? Gruenwald. That's the name of the artist. The 15th, 16th century masterpiece.

And so, I've seen a lot of pictures of Jesus crucified, and it looks like a ballet dancer with a piece of cloth, nicely wrapped around, even sensual in the way his body is depicted. When I stood before that painting in that day, my God, I was stunned.

And I had to avert my face. The horror, the way in which that body was depicted. Was I looking at a man? Or some grotesque caricature of a man? More animal than man. So brutalized. And the flesh, gangrenous, green hue, and splinters and pieces from the flagellation sticking in his flesh, and his mouth agaping, drool of death out of the corners of his mouth, and this poor, stricken, broken hulk of humanity.

That was another depiction. And I'm saying that we need to get back to that. And that's the prophetic task. And we're going to have to fight for that. We have to contend for that faith. It's not going to come easily.

And if we ourselves are satisfied with mere creedal affirmations of the truth of that faith, and have not pressed in and wrestled to get the existential power of it, we will not be able to communicate it to anyone.

We will allow the Church to remain in its passivity, giving condescension to the truth of something, but never having been profoundly affected by it, to be broken and to be emptied, seeing His emptiness, that we might be the vessels of mercy in our generation.

This is the prophetic task. And can you understand my insane jealousy when I hear that word bandied about by men who don't even begin to perceive this, let alone perform it? And I'm being flattered and honored everywhere, as the man of the hour, the great oracle, and they're running by the thousands to hear, and maybe he's got a word for me.

And maybe what we're seeing in this crop of prophets is the testimony of a failed Christianity that has not pressed in, has not wrestled, has been satisfied with mere creedal affirmation. Sufficient for us to get by, but insufficient for His glory.

Only one who is jealously driven by the concern for God's glory will welcome the pain of this kind of appropriation of the faith. This is suffering. Hallelujah. And that the fate of a whole people waits on it.

Wow, it's a payoff. The whole destiny of a nation, and more than that, the destiny of all nations by the restoration of that nation. Talk about the faith of God. And then that the whole thing rests with a prophetic core that will be to the church what it must first be, that it might ultimately be to Israel what it might be, that Israel then might itself be the vehicle of God's mercy to the nations.

What a bunch of dominoes. But it begins with this first one here, which is us. Isn't it interesting how discreet God is in showing what goes into the makings of the prophet? We see them come almost full-blown on the stage of history, and great enactments and confrontations with false prophets and apostate nation, where we catch the glimpse of their initial call.

The Prophet’s Formation Through Suffering and the Church

But the preparation is not depicted for us. It's like a discreet shade drawn. But you can imagine what has gone on behind that shade. I just so want to drive this stake into your hearts, the existential appropriation of the faith.

That's the issue. Everything rests on that. What does that take? One thing we can say, it will never be obtained in Sunday services. You can multiply it a million times over. God bless the Lord for the provision of them, but something more than successions of services will be required.

But what is that something more? I was talking to David the other day about our children, both wrestling as fathers with the same issue, not wanting to see our kids brainwashed into the faith. So easy to do.

To run them through the course, and they learn the phrases, and they pick it up. They're so imitative, and they know how to say the right things. But they get out into the world, and bang, they collapse like the proverbial deck of cards.

They have not really a sufficient faith in themselves. So what do you do? Do you abstain from brainwashing? What's the other word for that? Programming. Programming, yeah. Indoctrinating. Indoctrinating, and let them struggle, and go through their own trials, and see the depravity of their own souls, and come to the place where they come up jackedly on their face before God, and cry out for his so great salvation?

Are we willing to take the risks of that? They might get pregnant in the meantime, or go to jail, or who knows what. It's a real tension. Raise up the children in a way that they should go when they become adults.

That's not depart from it. These paradoxes. You realize that the same question that we're raising about fathers with children is the question that we can raise about fathers in the church. The men of responsibility in the church.

Do we baby the congregation? Do we safeguard and protect them from the threat of a word that will leave them rattled and disquieted? After all, they're young in the faith, yet you don't dare take the risk.

They might get unglued. My greatest problem is with pastors who, by the very nature of their call, are protective toward the congregation, and want to keep them from the threat that might come in an ungainly word out of a character of this kind.

Isn't that a paradox? That a man acting in the very character of his office and another acting in the character of his office are in a point of collision out of the very logic of their callings, and yet there's the congregation hanging in the balance, needing this kind of thrust and challenge and not able to get it because they're being protected.

So, right in the church we have the same kind of issue. Well, I've typed up something. I didn't know when I was going to bring it. Maybe this is the point to introduce it. Distinctive aspects of the prophetic ministry and calling.

Distinctive Characteristics of the Prophetic Calling

Taking notes? Maybe the last question, the last examination is define the heart and the essence of the prophetic calling. What are its distinctive characteristics? I've already mentioned several, even as we've been talking, Small.

This passion for the jealousy, this jealous passion for the glory of God. I would almost say an insane passion. Enough to make you a fool, for Christ's sake. That if that pastor does, by some dint of God and the grace of God, allow you to speak, that when you speak you'll be utterly obedient to God, without knowing that this pastor will regret that they ever came, that he allowed you to ever stand up to that platform.

So, only a divine jealousy for God's glory will enable you to be his fool. And the prophet is ultimately God's fool. We've already mentioned, the prophet is the thing in himself. And guys, don't look at me as the finished product.

I wish I could say, come and see. I'm in process, but I know enough to say that what I'm sharing is true. And I'm not yet formed in it, but I desire to be and will be. Remember we said, we cannot call the people to mercy, unless mercy is so integral to our own being.

It's in our deepest heart of consciousness, out of the very dealings of God, that makes our word not only credible, but penetrating. The fact of the matter is, it makes our word an event. And the event has got to come to the church.

The event of the cross. Remember what I was prompted to share with you at the end of the prayer time? I said, I don't know why I'm saying this, but all of a sudden the Lord has just dropped this into my memory, of the event in Chicago, after that open debate with these student rebels who had closed down the campus, to come that night or the next day to this Assemblies of God church, and on the platform, looking down at these well-dressed middle class kids, many of whom were without Bibles, had come from a good time, and the Lord whispered, speak on the cross.

And so well as I could, in obedience I spoke, and boom, down they went. Their bodies were proliferated everywhere, in the aisle, on the steps, over the altar. So, the prophet is the thing in himself. He has got to be, or his message will lack that penetration that can produce that event.

The church needs an event, a word that constitutes event, and that has got to come out of the anvil, give me a word, the matrix, the gut, of the man who himself has been, by God's mercy, brought through the reality of that thing.

It's almost like his own crucifixion. To appropriate Christ's, you need such an identification with that suffering, which cannot be yours just by looking at the painting. There's a measure in which you have to get in the frame, and to know something of what that feels like.

Art Katz’s Call and Preparation for Prophetic Ministry

I was a recruited layman, high school teacher, who just agonized over this decision to leave the teaching profession, being a depression baby, and now enjoying the security of tenure and annual wage increments and health insurance and retirement.

There was nothing I wrestled with more in my young believing life than the invitation to become a missionary to the Jews. I was already, I was saved at the age of 35, I was already 38, hardly a time for a man to start beginning to get schooled, but they had a training program, and the Lord supernaturally, after much agonizing, showed that this was his will.

We left our little $11 ,700 house in Oakland, California. The last time I saw it, it was being sold for $60-something thousand, a one-bedroom house, but it was ours. Ingrid and I began in a one-room apartment with the bed coming out of the wall.

So to leave and make a decision like that was fearful, but I had no thought that I was ever to be a preacher. I was willing to be trained to represent the mission and make mission presentations, Christ and the Passover, and present the mission's program to churches for support.

I'd give my testimony maybe, but a preacher, what presumption? The Lord himself had to give me the business, pushing me from behind more and more. But the thing about prophetic, I'll tell you how that came.

After I'd been cast out of Israel as a believer and returning to the States, after many trials by fire, where I gave a message in Washington, D .C., on Munich for Christ's sake, and was virtually run out of the country, and the Lord let me simmer in the pain of having brought such a stabbing confrontation and outcry from people that I had really missed it, we came back from Israel and went to California to get another brother's furniture, and somehow in the course of that trip and the coming back and the beginning of speaking and first messages, I think it was that very brother, Paul Gordon, who said to me, don't you know, Art, that you have the call of a prophet?

I think I was driving the U-Haul truck. I looked at what? I had no notion at all. I had no idea at all. Then the next was Ern Baxter, at whose church I spoke, on the patriarchs, Abraham and Jacob, and I forgot who else, and he introduced me and spoke of them as prophetic presentations.

What? It was by this means, usually coming from others, that awareness was growing that indeed, and then my own life and my own history, my trials, my tribulations, the kind of word that I was bringing, the effect of that word, just like the Chicago thing, made me realize that it was not teaching, it was something else, and so that was the process.

I never had a distinct call of the kind that we read about. So the prophet is the thing in himself, and it's not an instant thing. You know, this is the instant generation. Give me a teabag or a frozen dinner and put it in the, whatchamacallit, then we'll have it in one and a half minutes.

If the prophet is the thing in himself, it's a lifetime's making. And maybe it's all preparation for one episode, Elijah's confrontation, for example, with the prophets of Baal. One or two stark, dramatic things, and then he's removed.

And it would not be a lavish investment in God to prepare a man's whole life, frustration, disappointment, rejection, whatever it is, for one final moment of use. But if that moment is not fulfilled in the intention of God, the whole of his heilsgeschichte, wisdom and determination can be offset or lost.

It's a critical moment, and a once-and-for-all moment, eternal in its ramifications, so therefore it's not lavish to say that it requires a whole lifetime's preparation. Think of our mentality today.

Three months' course and you're ready to go off for God. Youth with a mission. I mean, God bless youth, but we're talking now about a little something else. And we need to have an appreciation for this.

And not an appreciation that will allow the prophet to be formed in our own congregations, whose growth is very painful and annoying and nettlesome. He's a pain and a mixed bag, and he says this and that, and some of it is of God, and some it's of the flesh, and he's always finding something to seize upon, and he interrupts the service, and you never know how he's going to sound off.

He's unpredictable. And part of the maturity of the Church is its ability to provide an environment of love that is conducive to the bringing forth of such a one in its midst. I mean, where will his first speakings take place?

Is God going to set him before men and nations abruptly and immediately? You'll start him off in your own congregation, and you'll have to suffer him. So, here again we're brought back to ecclesiology, the Church, and how little comprehension there is in the Church about this.