The Preached Word — Art Katz

Good evening, you dear Saints. Isn't this all strange? Unrealistic? Is this really taking place? This this is a set from a movie. Little Church in Canada and a foolish preacher. I don't know where I said it somewhere today.

The Foolishness and Centrality of Preaching

I said we never get used to this. It is forever strange and even the Lord says that it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Preaching is a foolish endeavor. It's a foolish phenomenon.

It's at the heart of the church. It's the purpose for the church's being. The church lives from the preached word and the church lives to send out the word of proclamation. Preaching is the name of the game and I have never ever spoken a message on preaching per se as a message till tonight.

It's come up in our conversation in that lunchtime session and someone had transcribed something that I had shared at our recent summer convocation on on preachers of righteousness. So let me pray. Lord, redirect me if I'm barking up the wrong tree.

If this is just my own personal fancy and not your appointed subject and theme, I think you're powerful enough to redirect me. But and if somehow in the wisdom of God it behooves your people to understand something of the phenomenon of preaching and this is your intention then I invite you Lord to give me grace to share it.

For surely I feel foolish. I always feel foolish and maybe we are condemned to foolishness in the wisdom of God. And suspect that anyone who comes up to the pulpit leaping with assurance and even enjoyment that something is amiss.

If he doesn't come up dragging his feet like a snail and feeling strangely out of it and what he's being expected to perform to bring your word to men out of his own humanity then it must be something other than the preaching of righteousness.

So I ask your blessing Lord sink something deep into the foundations of the church of this community and beyond. Bless those who are called to be proclaimers of your word. Give us my God a new deep apprehension of this remarkable thing which you have made the center of your activity.

Biblical Foundations for the Preached Word

Blessed are the feet of them who proclaim the good news. How shall they believe except they hear and how shall they hear except one preach and how shall one preach except he be sent. Teach us what these things mean my God and hence our whole appreciation for the preached word that we might sustain our preachers in prayer and not look to them as glib professionals who can somehow pull it off look man no hands.

But may we enter into their anguish and to their consternation and to their palpitations and to their tremblings to stand from this holy place and to send forth your word before your people in the point of time that shall not be given again.

Deepen our whole appreciation my God for this phenomenon and the church out of whose bosom it comes and the world into whom it goes. We thank and give you praise Lord and bless you for the strangeness of this occasion and the topic my God it has pleased you to finger.

Bless it now grant grace Lord grace for speaker and hear alike. We thank and give you praise in Jesus name. Amen. Well the difference between a preacher of righteousness and a preacher who is a professional.

The Preacher of Righteousness Versus the Professional

I spoke today about the gift of Gap. I've been around long enough that I'm beginning to become a little wary of men who are fluent and have easy ability that don't choke and splutter like me. How come they're not gasping?

How come the words tumble out so effortlessly? How come they say it so cleverly and so properly? Because the real preached word will always be in disjunction and in opposition with the tenor the spirit and the wisdom of the world.

God's mind and God's thought is other and contrary to that which the world accepts as wisdom as being conventional as being proper. The word of the Lord is always in opposition to those things that men esteem and look upon as being prestigious.

What the preacher has to do is to bring the divine perspective to them. He's got to bring the heavenly vista the perspective of God to those that are dwelling on the earth. Because they're living in la-la land.

They're living in the land of make-believe and fantasy and false values and deception and darkness and lies. The whole world lies in the wicked one who is a liar from the beginning from the and it doesn't know it.

It's deceived and doesn't know it. So the word of God brings the divine perspective the truth of God. It's a shaft of light. It's cuts in and therefore it's going to be inconvenienced to be considered.

It's going to require something. In fact, I would say if we hear a word preached that does that requires of us nothing. It is not likely to be the word of God. The word of God is not an amusement. It's not a convenience.

It's not to fill in the Sunday hour. The word of God is holy proclamation. The word of God is a timed event in which the present truth as it is in Jesus needs now to be expressed in a point of time and place.

And that word will always require something from us. You might almost say the church is moving from faith to faith and glory to glory by its response in obedience to what is required from it by the word that is preached to it.

Got the picture? We need to heighten our whole expectation about the word. God forbid that we should ever fall into a state in which preaching or the word is predictable or just fills in the hour or we can yawn our way through it or it's biblical.

The fact that it's biblical does not make it God's word. Anyone with any measure of wit and ability can go through a concordance and find certain scriptures on any particular theme and construct a message.

Well, Art, what's the difference between that and the word of God? It employs scripture. Isn't scripture the word of God? Well, positionally, but it's the word of God when it's appointed, when it's quickened, when it comes out of a divine intent for a given time and place.

Like, for example, tonight. Well, what if I should miss it? What if I should be speaking something that I like to explore and is not the heart of the Lord or the Lord's mind for now, for this time? So what, have we missed an evening?

Preaching as Eternity Breaking Into Time

Well, you know, you win some and you lose some. It's only a service, Art. Don't get excited. Don't don't get melodramatic. Don't have grandiose notions that that this service is a once and for all that will not be given again, because that's just the way I happen to look at it.

It's a once and for all that will never be given again. It's eternity breaking into time. And we dare not miss it. So how can you know with assurance that this is what the Lord wants you to speak? Well, I don't know with assurance.

I'm trembling. I'm sitting there fidgeting. I'm agitated. I'm uncomfortable. I'm looking for the exit. Isn't there a better way to make a living? It's an anguish, saints. The preacher of righteousness does not come running up as God's man of faith and power and smiling from ear to ear.

And he's got a neat little thing to go forth. He's wrestling. He has taught the Lord as much as time will allow. And he thinks and has a disposition that this might be the word, but there's always the question that he may miss it.

But there comes a time when he's called up and he has to begin to speak. That happened last night. Were you there? How would you like to have been on the spot? The hour strikes and you're required to open your mouth.

It's a terrible paradox, an ungainly tension that the preacher of righteousness has to face. He could seek the Lord with all sincerity, fastings and prayers, and believe that he has the Lord's mind and thought.

And yet when it comes to opening his mouth, there's always the prospect that maybe you've missed it. And yet you're required to speak. You know what I'm really saying? I'm not just describing some professional quandary that is peculiar to men who have this election.

I'm really, in the largest sense, describing what it means to be a believer, what it means to be obedient to God, what it means to be faithful, what it means to give a word of witness in the time of the Lord and to whom and when and by what means and by what word.

A Timely Word and Personal Conversion

If I did not receive the word of the Lord 36 years ago in the time of my ultimate distress as an unbelieving Jew, ready to die in frustration and hopelessness, I'd be dead today. But the man who picked me up from the side of the road in Switzerland didn't say, are you saved, brother?

He didn't quote John 3, 16. In fact, he didn't say anything. But did he ever listen? And as I poured my soul out to a Gentile stranger, this guy was drawing out the coiled tensions and conflicts and hopelessness and despair of a modern man who saw no hope for the future.

And when I finished pouring out my medley of complaint, I looked at this guy. He was nothing conspicuous to look at. I thought, what's he going to tell me? I'm an ex-Marxist, university graduate history teacher, well-read.

There's nothing new under the sun. And he said to me with a quiet but assured voice, Artie said, do you know what it is that the world needs? I thought, boy, this guy knows how to ask the questions. I'm dying for what the world needs.

And we Jews have been largely responsible for that world. We Jews have given this world Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx and every other German Jewish genius that has profoundly affected the world and the way it thinks and operates.

And it's a dying world. Yeah, I want to know what the world needs. Double dare you to tell me. And I leaned forward with such a scowling cynicism. Boy, it would have scared you to death. And this man looked up at me and he said, Artie said, what the world needs is for men to wash one another's feet.

And down I went. Talk about an ox being felled by the power of God, a spiraling down. I sat on the chair with my arms folded over my chest. I didn't look in any way affected. Don't let that fool you when you're witnessing to Jews that they're not at all impressed.

Something is happening inside, explosive. But my spirit was on the floor whimpering because that statement had touched the deepest strands of my heart. What the world needs is for men to wash one another's feet.

And all of a sudden I had a vision of the angry hotshots of the world who are going to change the world and bring bloodbaths with their Bolshevik revolutions and their strategies and plans, humbling themselves to wash the feet of the lowly and the despised.

And something went up like a cry, Eureka, this is it. The world doesn't need plans and programs. It needs a spirit of humility. What if that guy had said, are you saved, brother? You know, Jesus, you know, I'd be today's saints dead.

Even if he had quoted John 3, 16, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, I'd be dead. Because for him to employ John 3, 16 at that critical moment, and it was not the word given of God by the spirit, it would have fallen to the ground with a thud.

The word of the Lord is the now, rhema, speaking of God out of his own wisdom in the moment of time through a vessel yielded and available to that speaking. It's a perilous thing to be a believer. We can't do this by the numbers.

We can't do this mechanically. It requires such a disposition before God. And the first requirement is, is that you're free from your own agenda. You have no, nothing to perform and nothing to prove. You're available to God.

Jesus, Nicodemus, and the Heavenly Answer

And what if the Lord would have given that man something harsh to say to me, as I have been given to say to Jews in the course of my believing life? I've seen God slap men in the face with my word and that arrested them.

But supposing I would have thought, it's not nice to talk like that. You don't want to lose this guy. Look at Jesus with Nicodemus, a sincere man and a ruler of the Jews, a religious leader, and Jesus mystifies him and perplexes him that he must be born again or he cannot see and he cannot enter the kingdom.

Must I through a second time pass through my mother's womb? Jesus did not alleviate his tension. He compounded it by mystifying and perplexing him yet more. Not because he took a delight in confusing the man, but because the man was asking an earthly question and he was receiving a heavenly answer.

And Jesus trusted the father who gave that answer to bring about the right result in his own time. What a feather in anyone's cap to lead a Nicodemus to the Lord, a leader of the Jewish community. Wow.

What a prize. We better handle this right. Step one, step two. We were given the whole nomenclature, how to be saved. Jesus confused him. He even said, no man can ascend to heaven. Who's not first come down from heaven.

Even the son of man who is in heaven. He's speaking about himself while he's talking to Nicodemus in the earth. He's saying the son of man who is in heaven, he's confusing time and space, but he's speaking the truth because though he was physically in the earth, the source of his speaking and of his being was above and he was speaking from that place.

Apostolic Proclamation and the Demand for Response

Speaking is a remarkable phenomenon. Have you noticed lately or are you mumbling your way through life? Do you prize and esteem the thing that is given to us and no other creature, the ability to speak, to put words together, to express thought, to pray, to witness, to convey, to communicate, to articulate.

It's a remarkable phenomenon, but those who spoke God's word in that first apostolic generation of them, it was said, they turned the world upside down. What kind of words were they speaking? They were controverting and contradicting everything that was established and understood, whether they were speaking to Jews or to Greeks, they turned that world upside down, they brought a contrary word, another sense of things that has its origin in heaven and is truth.

So the preacher of righteousness has an unwelcome task of an ultimate kind that requires an ultimate function because his words require a response from the hearer, such words cannot be heard and passed over merely as being interesting or biblical or inspirational or instructive.

If God is speaking through a man, something is required. And usually as the true word of the Lord, it's the man's life. The thing that the Lord is requiring is the death of the hearer. He's raising the issue of the cross for those who have not submitted to it.

And it's not a welcome word. And you know where the resistance is the greatest to the cross and the message of total surrender to God, which is death in the church. So the speaker has to look out on stony faces.

And that's why the Lord has said to me many times, don't look at their faces. You don't know what is churning up in their guts. You don't know the depth of the conflict that they're going through and why they're looking so sullen because you're touching things that they can't even articulate, their ambition, their career, their hopes for the future.

You're raising up a standard that begins to give them a chill and they would rather stick their fingers in their ear and run if they could, or gnash upon you with their teeth or stone you to death for bringing the unwelcome and demanding word.

I'm not expecting to die in bed Saints. And wouldn't it be ironic that when my end comes, it doesn't come from outraged Jews. It might come from outraged Christians who will kill me and claim they're doing God a service.

Well, whether that's true or not, those of us who are called to be preachers or desire to be so used need to understand that that might well be the ultimate requirement. And how are you going to call your hearers to the cross and to death if you yourself have not come to it?

You want to know why, why the same text and the same message from two speakers, one will leave the hearers totally unmoved and they'll yawn and walk away. And what are we eating for lunch? And the other one using the same text, the same verses and speaking essentially the same message leaves the people hanging on the ropes.

How is that? Because for the first one, it's only a message. For the second, he is the message. He's come to the cross that he's putting before his hearers. He is a man brought back out of, out of, out of the death, dead.

And in fact, his proclamation is itself a death. It's an anguish for him to try and grow up and form and find his way through that word with all, all the while the possibility that it might not even be the word of the Lord.

The Once-for-All Accountability of Hearing

And you've missed the occasion that will not be given again. Well, there's always tomorrow art. Yeah. But this occasion tonight will never be given again. It's a once and for all. You can be there tomorrow.

The exact same congregation will not have this once and for all thing that God has given. You can't enter this stream twice. It's a, it's a holy moment. It's eternal. It has significance for this life and beyond and the life to come.

And you know what Paul said about that? Who is sufficient for these things? I don't even want to take a poll, but have you ever had to cry that out? Who is sufficient for these things? You know that there are numbers of Christians.

I would suspect the majority and even the majority of ministers who will go an entire lifetime in Christian service and never once have the occasion to cry out who is sufficient for these things. Because for most occasions we think are so sufficient.

You're only rattled with your insufficiency when you are convicted that this situation before you is a once and for all. That's not to be given again and that eternity itself is at stake. Then you can say, who is sufficient for these things?

I'm saying it tonight. Because the speaker knows that once that word goes forth, those who have heard it are accountable. Paul at Mars Hill, they call them a rag picker. What, what is this, this bumbler going to say?

And some said we'll hear again of this matter and never did, but some clave unto Paul and believed. There's a once and for all in the great capital city of Athens. And once you've heard Paul just once, you are eternally accountable for that hearing.

To hear Paul once is to put you before God as eternally accountable. You don't have to hear five or 10 or a hundred other speakers. One apostolic proclamation by the spirit of God and the word that is given in the strange message that Paul gave, that the God who made the heaven and the earth is not worshiped by things made by man's hands.

That he accused his hearers who are always seeking for the, the unknown God, him proclaim I to you. The arrogance of Paul, the assurance of Paul to speak the message of Jesus crucified and the message of resurrection to Greeks who never had any background in the Bible at all.

He wasn't speaking to Jews who are conversant with these things. He's speaking to, to atheistic pagans and holding them accountable for a message on Jesus and the resurrection. And yet some clave unto Paul and believed to hear Paul once is to be eternally accountable.

How about us to hear us once for someone to receive your witness once? Will they be eternally accountable or you just have quoted some convenient verse or the man pleasing or compromising or condescending the preacher who gives an invitation that is the issue of eternity cannot ask of another what he has not given himself.

He has to speak spiritual words with spiritual thoughts. God is both the alpha and the omega of his speaking. Anyone who has ever stood at the pulpit, the Holy desk knows that he knows that he doesn't know how to begin and he doesn't know how to end.

That's me folks. And I'm not appealing for your sympathy. I'm appealing for your understanding because God is wanting to restore apostolic and prophetic reality. He wants to move us from the realm of religion and glib speakings and, and uh, predictable things into the realm of moment by moment dependency upon God and words that we can't wait to hear because we know we have to live from the word of God that proceeds from his mouth and it's going to come out of the mouth of all preacher.

We're not coming for a service. We're coming for a life giving intrusion from God. That's going to require something and change something. We've got to graduate. We've got to come up and out of this predictable, safe, religious environment that is comforting of a kind but leaves us unchanged.

And if we're going to come out of it, it's going to be in proportion to the word, to the word of God preached. I don't know whether to cry or laugh because there's, there were words and words, but the word preached, what is this preach?

Preaching, Sending, and the Formation of Ministers

God forbid, Paul says, if I preach not the gospel through the foolishness of preaching, God saves those who will believe. What is preaching? It's a particular form of proclamation. It's a particular form of address.

It requires a cooperation between a man who is conscious of his humanity and its limitations and the invisible God and the power of his life through his spirit, which is the resurrection. Having to come together in a moment of time to bring forth the word unto conviction and change.

It's a remarkable phenomenon and only the church knows it and has the privilege of it and has to produce the environment out of which preachers come. How shall they believe in him of whom they've not heard and how shall they hear and accept one preach and how shall one preach except they be sent?

Sent from where? Bible school? A three month course in discipleship? Sent out of the bosom of a believing apostolic community who has suffered that man in its midst and heaven has encouraged his growth as he chokes and splutters his way through to feeling his wings and coming into the maturity and purpose of God by first being tested on the congregation itself.

A man like that is going to spoil your services if you give him a chance to open his mouth because he's not polished, because he's spluttering because just when you know that you're hearing something from God, he's going to lapse into the flesh and into his humanity.

He's feeling his way. He needs to be critiqued, but lovingly. He needs to be encouraged. You need to draw his heart out because you're drawing out the heart of God. These preachers don't come full blown.

Hey, listen, I was a high school teacher for years and an articulate man, but when God called me to the Lord's service, you don't bring natural human gifts to the proclamation of God's word. In fact, my first experience I was sharing it somewhere today with someone was a terrible and painful emptying out of any human resource that I had until the time of my conversion.

I was a better teacher as an atheist than I became as a believer. Much more engaging, much more fluent, much more personable. I could, those students would eat out of my hands. When I came back to the same school district after a 14 month leave of absence as a believer, what a mess.

We couldn't put a sentence together. They used to laugh up their sleeves. Oh, he's ridiculous. What an awkward picture this guy is. He's walking into walls. What happened to your charm cats? What happened to your ability to speak and to inspire?

Gone. And it was like that for months, that to go to school every day was the ascent to the cross. I knew it was going to be a day of humiliation and failure. And what heightened the paradox all the more is that I was not now content merely to communicate history.

I was wanting to communicate salvation. Because I had more access to these students than their pastors or their parents. What happened in my classroom was the issue of eternity for these kids. And here I am, stumbling and tripping and walking into walls.

No personality, no attractiveness, no fluent ability to inspire. And it went on for months. It was dying. But it was the crucible out of which a preacher is formed. Are you willing for this? You're not going to get it in three months or a year in a Bible school.

It's a fiery furnace of humiliation. And humiliation is death. Especially when it's before 35 kids five times a day. With your colleagues looking and snorting down their noses at your failure. And you're a Christian.

Emptying Out Confidence in the Flesh

It took months before the Lord sent me a man to explain my predicament. I said, brother, I don't know what's happening to me. I was more successful as an atheist than I am now as a believer. And I have all of this intent to touch the lives of my students.

I'm a mess. I can't put anything together. I have no personality. Oh, he said, don't you know what's happening? No, I don't know. He said, God is emptying you out. That you would have no confidence in the flesh.

I don't have much confidence right now. Or at any time. You don't know how to begin and how to end. You think I came to Dunville with a game plan? Or how to bring revival? Or a series of clever messages?

I came. But I came out of Quebec, out of Montreal, and out of Vermont, and out of previous commitments, right up to the last moment. And all I could do was bring the tired body here and begin by beginning as those of you who were there last night observed.

Painful, awkward, spasms. And tonight, is this the proper use of this night? Who's sufficient for these things? Who knows the beginning from the end? Who knows what is appropriate in the wisdom of God?

For this people in this locality. I don't know it, but to trust. To come up reluctantly. How did I get into this? Who asked with such a calling as this? It's not a delight, it's an anguish. But God has got to be the Alpha and the Omega.

You guys hold tight. And I don't know what the end will be. I don't know tomorrow morning. Or the final message tomorrow night. But if my God is as faithful as he has up to now always been, when the last word comes, and we'll look back on the spate of these messages, we will see in them, at the end, the line upon line, and the precept upon precept.

And that God gave us an Alpha beginning, and he's going to give us an Omega ending. But that ending will be a day of new beginning. For those who have received the word. And who could have known it? Are you guys praying for your preachers?

The Church's Responsibility to Pray for Preachers

I was sharing this morning, I'm astonished how often I'll come to a church on an occasion and sit in the pastor's office, minutes before the service is to begin, and there's not a thought about a word of prayer.

There's a kind of unspoken presumption that somehow kid cats is going to pull it off. That somehow the professional can do it, and we don't need to consult God, or appeal to him, or pray. That somehow there's a convenient grace always available.

All we have to do is begin and it'll come. What presumption? It's only possible from the people who don't understand the dynamic, the paradox, the contradiction, the tension, of trying to bring a heavenly utterance from the throne into the earth of Dunville, Canada, in a point of time that cannot be missed.

That know that it's an anguish that requires prayer. The seeking of the Lord. The going aside and out of the room to go down to the basement or a prayer room and pray while the man is speaking, that the heavens might be opened, and that he might have utterance and be able to speak as he ought.

If we're going to hear the word of the Lord and we desperately need it, not messages, the word of the Lord, we're going to have a people who come into a new understanding and a willingness of sacrifice to pray before and during those messages and after.

When the Preached Word Offends Religious Expectations

Hey, I just came back from Oklahoma. The university, the state, how does it go? Oklahoma State University, still what, Oklahoma. And in the first prayer meeting with the Baptist pastor in his congregation, and I opened my mouth and I heard myself praying, blow, winds, blow.

With gale force from the east and the west and the north and the south, come, my God, and course through the institutions of the university, the secular and religious of this city, and perform what you will in force, in gale force.

And as I'm praying, I have a little vision of the sign outside the church on a stanchion, blown off the stanchion and hanging by the thin conduit wire that keeps the thing from crashing to the ground, and it's at an awkward, grotesque angle.

And they tried to brush that away and I said, no, no, I said to the Baptist pastor, unless you're willing to see the sign of your church knocked off its stanchion, which symbolizes the whole tidy little thing that you'd like to have remain, we are praying in vain for the Spirit of God to blow.

Are you willing to have your sign knocked over and dangling grotesquely if the Spirit of God will blow through in the kind of force that is needed in these last days? Well, I can tell you that God answered that prayer, and the poor saints who invited me are now catching it, having to explain me and apologize for me, and how come this and how come that, and the protocols that somehow were offended and to which I was oblivious.

It was an event that shook that city, its churches, and its academic institutions, because the Lord answered that prayer. So if you come to the pulpit after this, too glibly, too easily, too enthusiastically, you're probably disqualified.

You need to come up reluctantly. How did I get into this? I'm a piece of foolishness. And the preacher not only preaches the message, he preaches Christ. And he even preaches Christ when Christ is not the explicit subject of his message.

The Preacher as the Message

Every message that is a true preaching is the preaching of Christ, even when Christ is not himself the subject. How can that be? When Paul says, to preach Christ, because there's something, if it's the word of the Lord, he is that word.

It's something about him that reveals about him, that expresses himself. If it's a prophetic word, it is the spirit of prophecy, which is the testimony of Jesus. The preacher is not only proclaiming, he's setting forth and demonstrating something of the reality of the Lord in preaching Christ, even when Christ is not explicitly the subject.

It's a mystery. And where does the poor sap get his message? In the early morning hours, in his time of devotion, turning through the verses of the book of Psalms and the chapter for that day, or some devotional reading, or something quickened in the scripture.

And he gets excited. And the foolish guy might even make some notes and pictures that night, speaking from that, with great freedom and relish. Well, you know what happens by the time that the night comes?

And he opens his Bible, and he stands up before God's people, and he looks at his outline and his notes, stone cold dead. Where's the excitement of that early morning hour? It has chilled. It has dissipated away.

And now the poor man needs to decide, was that indeed the Lord's quickening? And is this now the word, even though I do not feel the same lift and excitement that I had in the discovery in the early morning hours, in the cold gray dawn, or the hour that now is.

And if you're seeking the Lord for a message, you're already barking up the wrong tree. It's too utilitarian. You ought to be seeking the Lord, not for a message, but because the Lord is the Lord. Your devotional time is not a utilitarian time by which, if you put in your time, God is going to give you what you need that night.

It's not devotion unless it's free of any practical and utilitarian use to which you will put God. If he quickens something for that night, fine, but you're not seeking him for that quickening. You're seeking him for himself.

That's devotion. And out of that devotion, a word might be given. But to seek the Lord for a word is no longer devotional, but utilitarian. Got the idea? So preaching is an act of faith, to trust the Lord that what was quickened early is now his word, though you no longer have that initial excitement and have to fight the battle of faith again in a kind of a death and a kind of overcoming, believing and trusting and speaking, as you look into stony faces.

Failure, Anointing, and Hidden Fruit

I'll tell you the kind of furnace of affliction to which God puts his messengers. Like speaking at City College of New York, 95 Jewish, in the first gospel outreach in their history, where months before, in visiting the school and the Christian club or society that was in the school, the Spirit of God came down and so assured us that we would have this outreach, that we knew that we knew God was appointing something.

And it was three months off. We had plenty of time for prayer and plenty of time for fasting and preparation. The first gospel outreach in the City College of New York, 95 Jewish. And I had been in Harvard, Yale, the University of California, tubing in in Germany, universities in Denmark and Europe, but this was the first time in New York.

And the night before, I was at Boston University, and the Lord blessed. It was rich. And got to bed late and had to get up early the next morning to fly into New York City, and got there and was picked up and driven to the school and walked into that auditorium, and you stopped breathing.

Every seat was taken, and there was a murderous intent on the part of that audience for the man who was coming up to speak. Dignified Jews with Van Dyck beards and yarmulkes on their heads, educated, knowledgeable, came to do in this freak who was going to preach to them the gospel from a Gentile Bible called the King James Version.

But I had seen what God had done at Harvard. I knew what he had done the night before at Boston University. What will he do now, seeing that we have had so long a season of preparation, of prayer and fasting?