Gleanings From the Garden - Part 1 — Art Katz

The Deceptive Appearance of Cultural Good

Cultures are predicated on what is good, the consensus of men, and how they view values. And just one illustration of what I'm talking about is the day that I removed my TV set from out of my house. It has found a way back in, but hardly has any use at all, more of a video player.

But in the old days, I came into the house, the room was dark, the living room, and the kids were glued to the screen. My children and the children of other people in the community, they were watching a program, a drama, whose setting was the Olympics.

And there was a love affair between a woman Russian athlete and an American athlete. There was nothing lewd, there was no foul language, there was nothing depicted that was sex. It had every appearance of being a very fine drama.

And as I just looked in, passing through, I just caught something of the dialogue and the conversation between this man and this woman that passed for romance, that was so sinister, so evil, all the more because it was not apparently evil, but purported to be good.

And my kids, the kids were drinking it up. I went right to the machine and I pulled the plug out of the socket. It was almost like Phineas putting a spear between the fornicating Israelite and the pagan woman.

It was all the more evil because it had the appearance of good, but what was being communicated in that good was deadly. It was anti-Christ, it was contrary to God and had everything to do with a false reality that somehow is benign and has every appearance of attractiveness.

And that's what made good evil. So when the Lord forbids the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we need to understand that the good is as evil as the evil, perhaps even more evil, because its appearance is disarming.

And the culture is interwoven with what men endorse that seems to have the appearance of benevolent understanding and kindness, but if we could see through it, it's opposed to God. Now there's a wonderful line that I often quote from the play Hamlet by Shakespeare, where Hamlet confronts his mother.

I don't know if you know the play, but in my opinion, it's probably the greatest play ever written, shows forth the genius of Shakespeare. And I don't know to what degree the Bible was formative in his own understanding, but there are certain things that come up in his writing that are remarkably rich.

So here's a student who has come back from school to find that his father has died mysteriously, and that his mother has remarried, and she's remarried the murderer, who was the brother of the deceased husband.

And Hamlet is learning about this terrible plot and subversive usurpation of power, and that this woman in her mindlessness and in her sensuality has married even the murderer and doesn't even know it.

And there's a scene of confrontation in which he opens the locket from around her throat, and in it, on one side is the picture of the deceased husband, and on the other side is the picture of the husband who now is.

And he pushes this thing right into her face and convicts her of what she has done, lying between incestuous sheets. And all of a sudden, her heart is struck because the reality of what she has in her mindlessness done comes upon her in this confrontational thing.

And she cries out, Hamlet, no more. No, I can't take any more. And he says, sometimes one must be cruel in order to be kind. Well, in my short career in the Lord, I have had more than one occasion where I've had to be cruel in order to be kind.

And you're going to have more than one occasion when you will appear to be cruel in order to be kind. But if you're stopped by cruelty or what appears to be offensive and violates the sensibilities of men and their definitions of what is good, you will have fallen short of God's requirement in that moment.

And the last thing, the most powerful thing that disarms saints from an ultimate obedience toward God is their respect for what is good and wanting to be found respectful of what is good and to receive the approval and the benediction of those who subscribe to what is good, not knowing that more often than not, what is good is evil.

Only that which is from above is good. You remember when a man came to Jesus and called Jesus good? And Jesus stopped in that moment. He wouldn't tolerate it for a moment. Why callest thou me good? There's no man good but God.

He might just as well have said, there's nothing good but that which issues from God. We mustn't be deceived by the appearances of good and we mustn't look upon good as somehow a sanction, as being respectable and approved and therefore we can affirm it also.

And I think we're moving toward a head-on collision with culture, with society and the thing that will offend society more than anything is when you blow the whistle on its apparent values. When you remove the veil, when you remove the disguise that appears to be benevolent and show it to be vicious, self-seeking, anti-Christ and opposed to God.

The world does not want to be found out. The whole world lies in the wicked one who is the father of lies and the master of deceit. And remember that in the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, his every probing thing was apparently good.

Why don't you turn the stones into bread? You have this coming, you deserve all the kinds of things where Jesus was impervious, he could not be seduced. So we need to be alerted to the peril of good. Why is it a peril?

Because it does not appear as evil and because the world sanctions and approves it and condones it as good. There's no man good, Jesus said, but God and there's no thing good but what comes from God. And what Hamlet was doing with his mother as cruel and as fierce as his insistence upon confronting her with the truth of her sensuality and of her lie was God.

Even though it brought an extreme pain. Now, I'll just give you, I said I have to draw from episodes out of my own life. Not too long ago, maybe the south in North Carolina, I was the guest of a couple whom I've known for many years.

I had known the wife for maybe 30 years. At one time she wanted to be my secretary. That's how close our relationship was. Some of the greatest adventures in our history, that first conference on messianic discipleship was conducted in Raleigh, North Carolina.

And she was one of the instrumental people in setting that thing up. So we had a long history. I've been in their home many times and have spoken in the area. On this occasion, the visit began by attending a full gospel monthly meeting, whatever it was, where her husband is the full gospel president.

I was not the speaker, but we just attended. The next day my own activity began. In fact, it began at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at the pit, which is the open debate area where the evangelists come and engage these students in face-to-face confrontations.

And I've been there before and have had really significant times of confrontation. But the night before, I'm at this full gospel thing, and it is horrendous. It is full gospel at its worst. Back-slapping, amens and hallelujahs.

It was a carnal, I don't know what to call it. I could barely sit my way through it. It was so bad. It's a culture. It's a full gospel culture. And full of loud, ribald statements and ain't we got faith and all of that kind of thing.

I could barely get through it. Well, the next morning was the confrontation at the university. And this brother, who's the president, came and brought one of his officers with him. And we sat around the perimeter of this pit area.

And instead of my preaching or speaking, the Lord had another format. It was one-on-one, just going to these students, sitting around that perimeter and engaging them in conversation and earnest discussion.

A number of black students and white, of course. And the last one that I spoke to was a Jewish boy. I would not have known it, blonde and blue-eyed. So the Lord was really engaging representatives of the whole of humanity around that pit.

Students who are earnest about questions of an ultimate kind. But these two men sat watching and had not a single word to say. They had nothing to say. They were not involved in engagement, though it was available to them.

And something in my spirit was being chafed in the contrast between what was taking place the night before, in this so-called evidence of the Holy Spirit, and ain't we got faith, and blah, blah, blah, and their complete silence when it counted.

Where was your Holy Spirit then? Where's your anointing now? Where's your unction? Where's this fullness of the Spirit when life and death and eternity is at stake right now? Why are you silent? Well, I didn't say anything then, but the final meeting was at this brother's house.

The Prophetic Dilemma of Confrontation

And that morning, as is my practice and the Lord's thing with me, I was up early because I had a premonition that that night I must address this and speak it. And it's going to be offensive. It would be a naming of names.

It would be clear to everyone that if I drew the comparison between the full gospel, look my no hands, fulminations, and the silence of the same men were counted, that it would be clear who was being referred to, but that I would have to do it.

That there was something at stake. It wasn't the Lord just wanting to needle someone. It was the Lord wanting to expose a whole counterfeit Christian culture that revealed its paucity, its emptiness, the night, the morning after the night before by the failure to be able to bring that so-called fullness of the Spirit to the point of confrontation where life and eternity was at stake.

Can you understand what I'm saying? I'm giving you a little picture of the prophetic dilemma of having to offend and that your heart is pierced in a strange way that would have passed completely over the mind or the heart of the understanding of others.

But somehow the prophetic heart is zinged by the contrast of the profession of the one and the failure of the other. And somehow to the prophetic man, it's more than just a moment that took place in North Carolina.

It's an eternal moment. It's a statement of a condition that is pervasive, that goes far beyond North Carolina. It's universal in our contemporary Christendom, and it needs to be confronted, it needs to be revealed, it needs to be...

The whistle needs to be blown, see what I mean? But you can't blow that whistle and be nice. You can't register the heart of God and spare those who are the very ones that were involved. There's a necessity to be cruel in order to be kind.

And I felt that these people were living a kind of dream world, a fantasy, that their amens and hallelujahs and turning up the volume of the loudspeakers and the whole ribald, R-I-B-A-L-D culture, I don't have another word for it, was somehow representative of reality.

But where was it when it counted? It was revealed as wanting, and it needed to be addressed. So I was early in the morning in their house. They were still sleeping. The brother who was with me from Ben Israel was still sleeping.

The same brother who slept while I was run over by a hundred Mack trucks in the Philippines and in Australia and in New Zealand, where he accompanied me on a Southeast Asia trip, where every time we came to a capital city, I spent an entire sleepless night being worked over by the evil one.

I can't tell you, not just physically as well as spiritually. Groanings and agonizings of the powers of darkness while my brother snored all through the night. I even took my flashlight to see what he was doing.

Could he remain in that sleep while I'm going through this agony? Yes, he did. And this is a brother who has subsequently left us because his wife heard from the Lord that Ben Israel is under judgment and they're getting out while they're getting his good.

Doesn't the scripture speak about those with whom you went into the house of the Lord together and they ate your bread and now they've kicked up their heel against you? You see how I'm required to draw from these things, not because I want to identify anyone or embarrass anyone, but this is the grit of life and the prophetic men are groomed in it and draw from it.

That's why they marry prostitutes. That's why their wives leave them. That's why they're confronted with infidelity. Is there anything that more crushes a man's spirit and leaves him hanging for dead than to find his wife in bed with another man?

I'm speaking that symbolically. Whatever corresponds to that, that must come into the experience of men who bear God's burden for an Israel that has gone to bed with idols. That somehow those that are called to that nation and are involved in the process of their restoration have in some measure to know God's own grief.

What he has had to bear over the ages in the unfaithful wife that Israel has been. It's remarkable when I look back over the years how many men I see that are being dealt with like that and it's for me the evidence that they have that role.

So, that morning I was on my face before God. If I could have run and found an exit, the time I finished crying out to God because I knew what he was calling for that night and the meeting was in the man's own house.

Well, brother, haven't you ever heard of southern propriety? You don't do that in the south. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. You don't offend those who have prophet hospitality. What kind of a brute are you anyway?

So, I knew what was coming and I was crying out. By the time I finished and this is not an appeal for pity but a description of what is intrinsic to the prophetic call. To whatever degree that call is yours, it's the call of the church at large in itself.

The church that's not prophetic is not the church. So, there's a measure in which the church must bear and experience realities of this kind and if it's not your call personally, you're called as an intercessor for those who have that call who have got to groan through episodes of this kind all the more as we come closer to the end of the age where the issues are so pregnant that they can't be addressed in any other way without being cruel.

So, when I finished my time before the Lord, while my brother was yet sleeping, who later on, though he was with me the whole thing, accused me of arrogance. That my speaking that night, though he didn't tell me that then, but later on in his indictment against me by which he has been justified in leaving Ben Israel, he recalled that episode as being a statement of my arrogance.

Well, I want to tell you dear saints, I'm not saying that the man's not right. He may be right, maybe I'm wrong, and that the prophetic man has always to live with the tension of that very possibility.

You'll never know with uttermost certainty that what you spoke and what you did was the Lord. It may well have been human arrogance. It's either that or it's uttermost humility, the one or the other. When Jesus upset the money changers' tables, was he being arrogant?

By every appearance, where did he take it upon himself to physically turn over these tables? Who did he think he was? These are long-established practices and people needed to buy pigeons that couldn't afford a lamb for sacrifice.

So it's a moot question of whether that act of obedience to the Father was a man acting out of his own rambunctious presumption and arrogance or really the uttermost humility. If humility is not the issue of walking on eggshells and being self-effacing, but humility is doing the will of God, no matter what the requirement, and knowing that the greater the obedience, the more it will be misunderstood and be misconstrued as exactly being opposite of what it is.

So that the act of love is looked upon as cruelty. Do you know what I mean? And you'll be accused of lovelessness when it's the very act of love that people misconstrue. Do you know why? Because they are attuned to the world's definition of that which is good.

And they're judging you by that standard because they themselves are living consistently from the tree of knowledge of what is good. Rather than knowing what is good from the life of God. And what is good from the life of God in one moment may be for the very next day not good.

In other words, you can't act on it because it was the Lord one day, as if he's given you a principle or an allowance that that act can always be... No. It's a moment-by-moment obedience to God which is good and never our determination by our thought of our assessment of what is good.

Because by every human reckoning that night it was not good to name names. I didn't name the man by name but it's clear who's being described. But there was no way to reveal the issue of what has happened to our American Christendom in its charismatic form than its blatant failure were accounted in the issues of eternity around that pit area with those students.

So I spoke that night. You could have heard the proverbial pin drop. And it was a real call to resurrection life that there's no alternative for us but to live and move and have our being in him because we're moving by our own humanity our own thought, our own definitions of what is propitious and appropriate.

We will miss God. It was a real call to a death and resurrection. And I naively thought that the word of God would bring that man and those who are with him in subscribing to that culture down on their faces nigh unto death and that they would be raised up into a whole new dimension of a resurrection life that is what the South really needs what those students really need.

But no, he sat quite complacently and listened because he's a southern gentleman and I'm a Brooklyn lout. And so he has the largesse and the magnanimity to tolerate this offensive and crude thing that is biting the hand that feeds it and violating against one's own host in his own home.

That man today is dying from cancer. When I got home there was a letter waiting for me or soon after making sure that I understood what an offense I had been and that I had burned the bridges behind me and I had destroyed relationships that were over a quarter of a century old by my brute insensitivity.

And I tried to answer how do you answer a letter like that? Now that man is dying of cancer. He's had all kinds of treatments and we prayed for him here at Ben Israel and then, I don't know if Adam remembers or Pearl, morning of prayer times I had the thought should I write him a letter?

I wonder if there's any conjunction between his cancer you remember that? And the fact that he had repudiated the word of the Lord and the servant who bore it. Could that be? That God would allow a judgment of that kind nigh unto death by refusing that critical word?

At least it's a possibility and how can we pray for his healing or deliverance if God is waiting for a repentance? So what am I going to do now? Write him a letter and say that your cancer this is what they call this is putting salt in the wounds this is heaping offense upon injury it was one thing to be a loud mouth and a bull in the china shop and a boor and violating southern conventions and propriety and what is good then but now when the man is suffering cancer and is staring death in the face to bring an accusation or an indictment and a suggestion you know how they interpreted his cancer?

It was a brave testimony because the man's doctor is Jewish and they're really showing their faith and it's the enemy attacking them. Well that's one way to perceive it and maybe they're right am I saying that thus saith the Lord that that cancer is directly related to the rejection of God's word and God's messenger?

I can't say thus saith the Lord but I know it could be a possibility and do I have the responsibility understanding that to write that to them? While the man is down what would you do? Stay on with the Lord and it will be.

That's why I'm taking the pains to recount this. I'm in advance this is coming having offended once. Do you now perform the greater offense and suggest that the man's cancer is not the statement of his spirituality where he's giving a brave testimony and fighting against the devil but a consequence of a rejection of a time significant word and the man who bore it.

And that you'll not be delivered from your cancer unless you acknowledge that and repent of that. And it will release the deliverance of God. I sent that letter. I wrote that letter. I sent that letter.

I have not heard from them since. I can only imagine the horror when that letter came. Wow. Well it was one thing when he did that. But now do you know what I mean? So how are we led? What are the basis for our obediences?

Testing Cultural Politeness by the Two Trees

How do we assess and act? And here's where the issue of the two trees comes in. Are we acting on the basis of what we think good? And how much of our thinking is socially and culturally conditioned? I can remember an episode some months ago a couple had come to us.

They were only here maybe a couple of weeks we were having a bible study in their home on the cross. And at a certain moment I don't know what possessed me. I turned and I looked at the wife and I said something about your politeness is a mask.

I don't remember the exact words just like that and the Lord was uncovering something that had been what shall I say a guarded personality all through that woman's lifetime. And the Lord was pressing to open it and she started crying.

I said oh praise God it was the word of the Lord. And she needed this relief and this confrontation. I don't take any delight in that but there it was. And one of the sisters in the room the next day in the prayer meeting made sure to make clear how that was an offense and look at how the poor woman was upset and disturbed by it.

And that that that that that that the woman who is making these comments the next day is speaking herself out of a cultural mentality that you don't do certain things publicly it's not nice. Look how she was offended.

More recently in one of our community meetings just before the advent of this school the issue came up about Inga cooking in the kitchen. Well if you know the history my wife is not at all reticent to let you know her whole history of grief with Ben Israel.

And this is wrong and that's wrong. And that that that that that. And my husband she's going to make sure that you're not all that carried away by being that impressed with her husband because she can tell you his foibles, his failings and will just give her this much opportunity.

And so the question was see she was not cooking. Last year the Lord gave us a replacement but she wanted to cook. This year should we allow her. And would she begin to express those things that would have an adverse effect on students and those who come.

It was a real question a legitimate question. It had to come up in our community meeting because I wasn't going to push something through that would affect us all and affect the school. It was a critical thing it needed to be publicly discussed.

And we had come to a place of maturity where those things can be discussed sure enough. The same lady who was offended by my abrupt turning to that young wife and saying your politeness is an exterior cover you know and was offended that I allowed my wife to be the object of discussion and she made sure to say in the next morning's prayer meeting.

This didn't embarrass her to say I don't know what man would ever have allowed his wife to be the object of public discussion like that implying that this man allowed that. But why did this man allow that.

Because I have a greater responsibility than quote the protection of my wife. We're in this my wife and I our faces are sticking out we're naked and exposed. That's what community is all you who went to hear abandon all hope of covering your dignity and issues are going to arise in which you yourself are the object of the discussion.

So yes from the point of view of morality or propriety that could be offensive but from the point of view of the health of community for the righteousness of the issue for the necessity to discuss something that could not be veiled.

There was no alternative. It had to be out see what I mean. So how do you view it. From what tree are you eating. So that's what is in my spirit this morning that we must not make sure to pass over the subject of the two trees and miss the subtlety and the power of what issues from the tree of the knowledge of good as well as evil that the good in the last analysis can be more insidious than the evil because it disguises itself and appears as good.

And for us the toughest issues in the last days are going to be seeing through what is good and sometimes having to be cruel in order to be kind. Well what example do we have in the Lord himself and in the God of our fathers in having to be cruel in order to be kind.

Divine Judgment as Painful Love

What do we call his judgments. How do we understand his holocausts. How do we understand the destruction of two temples the inviolability of Zion where the Jewish defenders against the Roman legions were convinced that God had to win.

Because how is he going to allow uncircumcised pagans to destroy the city of God itself and the holy temple of God itself. They died on its roof burned by the fire that was set by the Romans to the temple in order to melt the gold out of it and they were crushed.

Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost. The blood I think was proverbially up to the bridle of the horses. Almost the total population annihilated and a remnant sent into slavery in the Roman Empire.

It was one of the most massive tragedies in Jewish history. And the only thing to which it can be likened is the holocaust of the Nazi time. But where was God. The God who is kind and good. There's no man good but God.

Oh yeah. So how do you explain that. Well I have to explain it that when God has got to be cruel in order to be kind that cruelty is good. That judgment is love painful though it is. And God does not restrain himself because he is violating against the expectation of his own people or their own understanding.

He's willing to leave them devastated not only in their bodies but in their minds and in their hearts and in their understanding and is not quick to give explanation. It's now a half century since the German holocaust the Nazi holocaust.

And they're yet a people without explanation. And in fact the Jewish authorities of the orthodox kind think that it's not propitious it's unbecoming even to seek an explanation. Let alone that your explanation has something to suggest that the holocaust was not some aberration in history or a historical accident but the fulfillment of God's own very word in judgment for sins that go back through the generations and are called for in this historic moment of time.

Now you know that a rabbi in Israel has recently caused a great furor because in one of his public addresses he said the holocaust was God's judgment on sinners who were reincarnated to experience that judgment.

And whoa! All hell broke loose. What are you saying? You're defiling the memory of the martyrs who died nobly. And you're offending their survivors by suggesting that there's even a connection between the holocaust and sin because reincarnation is his own strange twist.

But he's the first religious authority that I know that has even implied that there's a connection between the holocaust and sin. And that that took the top off the howls and screams and shrieks from every sector of Israeli society.

And Avraham Bourg an orthodox Jew with a yarmulke on his head who presides over the Knesset he said well that rabbi had to blame man because he could not bring himself to blame God. Hmm. Can you believe that?

That it's better to blame man than to blame God. In fact if you'll not blame man God is inevitably the culprit. So it's as if the lid is being lifted from the garbage can. And what men are expressing in their horrified responses to this rabbi's statement reveals their hearts.

So be assured that we're going to offend many in the last days. But my concern and I think the jealous heart of God this morning is that we don't miss him at any given moment because we're acting out of the consensus of culture and of society that has established the norms of what is acceptable and what is good.

The world is eating from the wrong tree and good from that tree is death. God's cruelty that seems not to be good is life. Maybe not in the moment but ultimately. And we have got to have an unswerving devotion to the tree of life and abstain at all costs from allowing ourselves to draw from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Discernment in Obedience and Personal Relationships

It will always be death. Let's get right down to the nitty gritty. Was it good to send that letter to this dying man and his wife. Or just raising the possibility that maybe what is at issue here is a failed response to God and God's messenger that needs to be recognized and repented.

For who says you're right in that. And if you're not right aren't you really pouring salt into the open. Is this a time to make a suggestion like that when a man is gasping for very life. Isn't that cruel.

Isn't that an offense. How would you determine whether to send that letter or not. Are you going to hear a voice from heaven when it says thus saith the Lord my son. Yes send that letter. This is my complete silence where he allows you to choose from the one tree or the other.

And I'll tell you what if you're not consistently living from the tree of life and have too often condescended to the other. You're not likely to know you understand what I'm saying. I don't have a word for this.

I'm saying this now for your benefit. My poor wife has had to suffer me for over 35 years. You know how Inga is made. God bless her. She comes out of a Danish culture that is nice and she wants always to make people feel good.

And it's so solicitous for them that when we had our most recent house guest she laid out two sets of towels on the bed. Two bath towels two this. It's always overkill. It's always nice. It always grates me.

But I have grated her. That poor woman has had to bear the humiliation of sitting on a platform while her husband is bringing offense to the sponsors of a conference whom she loves and wants to spare and not offend.

So I've done more to kill my wife in the area of her sensibilities and kindness because she's made that way. She has the gift of mercy and of kindness. And here she's living with this brute who goes where angels fear to tread and brings uproar.

And that's why she doesn't want to travel with me. So what do you do when you're faced with the issue of obedience to God and offending against a wife who's delicate and whose culture and upbringing will completely misconstrue that moment and will be hurt by it.

Well you can be assured you're not going to have an immediate satisfaction or gratification or seeing God smooth out the wrinkles and placating and making everything right. He'll allow even that obedience to go for a long time to be a sore an exacerbating thing an irritation before you're vindicated.

And your wife has got to bear that for that length of time also. And maybe there's a vindication that has yet not come. Obedience to God will bring that offense to those that are dear to you and are you willing to allow them to be offended and trust the Lord at some future time of his choosing to bring the answer and reconcile and show them that it was of himself and that they actually have received a benefit though you know it's not going to come in the moment.

See we don't suspect our own humanity the way Jesus does. We somehow are convinced that we have some virtue some ability some understandings and knowledge says many believed upon him seeing what the miracles that he performed.

But he would not entrust himself to them for he knew what was in man. He would not even accept the tribute of their acknowledgement of him as Messiah because they came to that conclusion by interpreting the miracles the external work of God.

It was not revealed to them from the Father which is in heaven. So he would not even receive their acknowledgement because it came humanly rather than divinely. So great was his suspicion of that which is in man.

But as Oswald Chambers I think says he was never cynical about man. It didn't allow him to be embittered because he knew what was in man. He just was powerfully realistic and understood that there's only one source of good and that is God.

That's why those two trees are so remarkably important. And I just have to repeat myself unless you are habituated to the tree of life you're continually living from it you'll not miss the critical moments.

So this is more than just an ability that you're going to find in a crisis moment. If you have not consistently and consciously cleaved to the life of God and the life of God. What did we say? Why didn't they go to that tree immediately?

Because somehow it was not as apparently as attractive as the other. In fact it might have had something of the repulsion of the cross itself. And that to go to the place of life is always to go through something that has as its first appearance death.

Isn't that ironic? It's the life that issues out of death. And it would repel us. We want to go to what's more attractive what the world thinks what the world applauds. What's kind what's nice what's good.

That's death. But to go to an offensive letter heaping insult upon injury that appears to be death if it is the word of God could save that man out of death as nothing else will or can. And you have got to be willing to experience the death of sending it because you might be wrong.

You see what I mean? It's a death. Guys going to the tree of life is a death and we have got to be willing for it. And I think one of the most powerful illustrations just a moment Roge is Jesus hearing that his friend Lazarus whom he loved let's put in the scripture here's a zinger Lazarus who's a stranger or a secondary acquaintance or a casual guy whom you love is sick implying sick unto death.