The Sheep vs. the Goats — Art Katz

Israel’s Sifting Through the Nations

Well, we need to look at a classic text, I would say a definitive text, in Matthew 25 that has always positionally been there, but until it came into the context of our understanding of the calamity that awaits Jews worldwide, the time of Jacob's trouble, the dispersal of Jews throughout all nations, I will sift you through all nations, which by the way has everything to do with our location right here in Minnesota.

Maybe we'll take a little walking tour before you leave, and I'll show you the spot where God called me, where I was a speaker 40 miles away, and they said, Art, there's a camp, a bankrupt camp for sale.

Would you care to see it? I was living in New Jersey in a 17-room house. You can ask Inga, it was her darling place, nine bedrooms, five baths, she loved it, it was a gothic masterpiece, no intention of leaving it, I was a charismatic Jewish darling.

Not anymore. I said, sure, let's go for a ride, you know, why not? So they drove up to the entrance of the camp, the top of the road, there was a chain across it, I stepped over the chain, my foot came down on the ground of this property and the words said, these exact words, Dominion, end-time teaching center, that's what you're enjoying, community, that's what we are, refuge, that's what we will be.

This building that you are now occupying is only serving its external and outward purpose. Its true inward and yet-to-be-fulfilled purpose is that it will be housing Jewish refugees in flight from persecution in North America.

I'm just getting a little Holy Ghost chill as I say that, and that's what has chosen this place, perhaps geographically, our proximity to Canada, where we leave Jews, we'll be coming out of New York and other eastern seaboard places and up into Canada and down through Canada to us and from us en route to Mexico.

We have our Mexican brother here, Homero, and I've been with him in Chihuahua, where he's from, and another brother has joined us there, an American brother, who called me years ago and I resisted his visit, he sounded so off the wall before the Lord opened these things, to say that God had given him a call to establish a flight of route for Jews through Mexico, through the Sierra Madre Mountains, coming out of North America, and that I was one of the five men to be employed in this whole last day's process, and so I met with him and have continued to meet with him and was with him in Chihuahua.

I've been with him in other places in the Sierra Madre Mountains, in such wilderness locations because God says, I will meet with you in the wilderness of the nations. There's a necessity for wilderness, wilderness is the place of stripping.

All of your categories go in a moment when there's nothing between you and life and death, but the barren piece of earth where you've been brought, independent of your own will. So there's a great drama, and I've not become popular in seeking to communicate this to the church, and encourage them to anticipate the flight of Jews everywhere, because God says, I will sift you through all nations.

In Amos chapter 9, if we have leisure, we can take a look at that chapter together, you might want to read that at your own leisure now, because it gives the whole panoramic sweep of that last day's sifting of Israel that concludes with their return, where I will plant you, and you'll not again be plucked up and brought out.

So, and then, where the reaper cannot keep up with the sower of seed, there's such millennial blessedness that Israel will profusely fill the earth with its fruit. So the last dealings of God in the sifting of that nation will be an enormous saga.

I believe it will take, from what we learn in scripture, three and a half years, and Jews, I believe, who have been brought up out of one place, will probably pass through maybe a number of nations, en route to Zion.

It's not the most expedient going from point one to point two, the shortest possible route, but maybe the lengthiest possible route that would give the Jew in flight ample opportunity to see the consistency of mercy that he will be receiving, whether it comes to him through the North American Indian, through black believers in the ghettos of New York City, through the Indians of Mexico in the Sierra Madre Mountains, or ordinary white believers in Timbuktu in Kansas and wheresoever they are, they will see the same consistent grace and mercy of God until they'll have to be disabused of any notion that, well, this one is a nice guy, that one, they're all nice.

The Nations Judged by Their Treatment of Israel

This was my mother's experience in this community. Years ago we used to send her to this one for lunch and to that one for dinner. She would make the circuit of the families of the community, and every time she would come home just gasping, and, the children are so beautiful, they're so well behaved, the atmosphere, she thought that she could attribute that to the nicety, the nice guy-ism of that family.

But when it happened again and again and again consistently in every place, I had to say to her, do you realize that it's not the issue of nice guys, that what you're observing is not some virtuosity to be found in this one or that, it's the statement of one kingdom to which they all subscribe and which they all express.

That's exactly what the Jews have to experience. The consistency of God in every place. And it will be every place, because not only will they be sifted, but the places themselves will be sifted. The nations will be sifted over their response to Jews and their helplessness and their extremity at that time.

And the one most compelling text in the New Testament that confirms the scenario is the text to which we will now turn in Matthew chapter 25. From verse 31, When the Son of Man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory.

So this is the first sitting, the Lord has ascended his throne, the climax of the age has been concluded. He has been released from heaven to take his throne at the seat, the throne of David in Jerusalem and at Zion.

The whole dynamic, the whole remarkable saga of redemption has come to its conclusion. And the statement of Acts 3 .21, that the king has been contained in the heavens waiting for the restoration of all things spoken by the prophets since the world has begun, has now taken place.

That restoration is not the restoration of the church, that an exultant, triumphalist church has employed to think that it means themselves. That's the scandal, that the church has taken to itself those things that are expressly and literally intended for Israel.

But because they are so contemptuous of Israel, and so disdainful of the Jew, and so lacking in the understanding of God's unfailing mercy, that they feel that they have replaced them. So, they don't realize that the issue of Israel is the issue of the kingdom.

That the law must go forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem is not a piece of poetry, it's the most literal statement of God's theocratic intention. That Israel was indeed chosen for the purpose of being central to all nations.

As we learn in Deuteronomy 32 .8, when God established a number of nations, he did so in terms of the number of the sons of Israel. From the very first and the divine intention, there's an explicit conjunction between Israel and the nations.

So, that's why out of Shem comes that Semitic line that becomes, out of which we receive Abraham, who becomes the father of all nations. And that this is the whole answer to the rebellion of nations in chapter 10 of Genesis, who build the tower to be higher even than the most high God.

You have got to understand the subject of Israel in the context of the nations or you cannot understand Israel. Merely to desire the success of the state and not understand the destiny of the nation will lead you to miss God's purpose and to be offended by how far he will go in obtaining it.

And that will cause a lot of disappointment among Christians who are at a fixed sentimental level, want humanly to see the success of the present state. Who should not desire that? If the Jews have been knocked about in the world through all of these ages, that they should at long last have a safe homeland.

That's humanly to be desired. But it falls short of God's greater intention that Israel is not for itself but for him. And that there's a suffering that precedes the glory and a death that precedes the resurrection.

No state that man can form or that Jews can form which is the, what shall I say, the epitome of man can succeed to be the agency by which God will bless all nations. So this is a remarkable drama, remarkable mystery, which Paul said I would not have you to be ignorant.

To be ignorant of this mystery, what shall I say, it condemns you to be a church. It condemns you to an institution. It condemns you to something without its heart, to something just in its form as an institution that mediates blessings.

The glory of the church is the issue of Israel. And Israel will not come into that fulfillment except through and by the church. That in the wisdom of God we are locked into an irrevocable destiny, a reciprocal relationship where neither we nor Israel can come into the fullness of God's intention independent of the other.

The Church’s Union With Israel in God’s Redemptive Purpose

And Israel is already fulfilling that function for us without its understanding that it constitutes for us a challenge that compels us to come upon resurrection ground. That we cannot be the salvific agency of God to Israel on the basis of mere charismatica but only on the basis of resurrection itself.

We have got to become larger than life. We have got to become transcendent. We have got to become shem-like. And that's not by discipline but by infusion, by union with the life of God himself. In death unto resurrection which we would not ourselves have sought or been willing to bear except we see the greater glory which is at stake.

May we see what Paul saw that he could not contain himself at the end of chapter 11 of Romans the man goes virtually berserk. Language is stretched to the breaking. It's a paean of praise. It ought to be put to music and it has been.

All the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God who has been his counselor. What makes Paul stagger? Why does he say that? Because he's glimpsed something of the enormity of God's conceiving that no man could have led God to entertain.

It comes out of the very deity of God himself. It's majestic in its proportions. It will take eons of time. It will take eternity of eternities to celebrate to the very ends of the earth of the remarkable redemptive glory of God that have taken a people who have blasphemed his name in every nation in which he has driven them whose track record is a stench.

We have failed in everything to which we were called. We have sunk to the lowest levels of idolatry and even now we are the leaders in the world of everything that is antichrist and yet for all that his hand and his mercy is not turned away.

He has not cast us away because he's spoken, because he's made promises, because he's given us a chosenness not because of any virtue in ourself but because of what he is in himself. He's the God who chooses and he chooses those things that are least and he chooses those things that have no virtue that can commend them that all of the glory and honor will redound to him.

So here's Jesus on the throne. Oh, are you guys waiting? Are you expecting? Are you desiring? I appreciate Bush. Praise God that his competitor is not in the place of Bush today or if I would not want to consider having to pass through the tumultuous time that we have with Gore in the place of that occupancy.

God in his great mercy by our fluke in the election process in the state of Florida by elderly Jews who couldn't figure out their ballots and would ordinarily have voted Democratic voted Republican whether their ballots were disqualified and so Bush won by Jewish, what's the word, default.

If ever our Jewishness came in handy, it did then because we're so affected now by his administration and the things that shall follow. You know, I find very little kingdom expectancy in the church as I travel.

The word kingdom has become kind of a euphemistic catch word that is so vague and is ambiguity can be used in any way where the kingdom of God is within, yes, how nice, but there's no expectancy of the vivid reality of a kingdom, of a political reality that shall govern God's creation that has its nexus and source and center in Zion, not because it's the greatest of mountains because it's the least, but it's a holy hill that he has chosen and except his law goes forth out of that place, then the word of the law out of Jerusalem, it will not go forth at all.

So men will continue to make their weapons, which is today's great principle industry in many nations of which Israel is one of the leaders and United States not far behind. Weapons of death, they'll not beat their swords into plowshares until the word of the Lord comes to them out of Zion and then we'll study war no more.

See what's at stake here? Can you understand why the powers of darkness want to do everything to keep the redeemed of the Lord from returning to Zion? Because I never finished that verse from Acts 3 .21 that the king is contained in the heavens.

He's confined in the heavens, it's a self-imposed restriction waiting the restoration of all things spoken by the prophets since the world began. He cannot come as king until what the prophets have spoken is fulfilled and what have they spoken?

The restoration of Israel after a long tenure of degradation and apostasy in the last days, not by their own virtue, but by the mercy of God that is extended to them to the father most corners of the earth as he brings them back to Zion from the place where he himself has expelled them in judgment.

If you read the rest of Psalm 102 as we started before the break, you'll see that he looks down upon the prisoner in his dungeon. He hears his cries out of a desolate place from which no man could free him and he rises up to be the deliverer of Israel.

It'll be miraculous, it'll be a supernatural deliverance that we secular Jews who are so adamantly opposed to anything that is mystical except it be demonic, then we're partial, but to believe in the supernaturalness of God has been difficult for us until by that supernaturalness we ourselves shall be saved out of situations in which we could not be retrieved humanly.

That's coming. So here's the king now come in his throne. That has taken place and now he renders his first judgment for king is judge. He who has suffered judgment now performs judgment because he's impartial, because he can judge with equity and with justice.

So when the son of man shall come in verse 31 in his glory and all the holy angels with him then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. What a reason for us to make every sacrifice that he should attain to that throne.

He'll not have his glory until he is so enthroned. And where will it come? In the place where he was most disgraced. Where over the cross in three languages was the defaming virulent statement, Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews, mocked upon whom they put the robe in the crown of thorns.

It was all a mock. It was all a degradation in that very place where he suffered that humiliation in that place he will sit on his throne in glory and that ought to be a prime motive for the church in every activity to which we're called in our evangelization and our missions and suffering what we need to suffer with each other as the church.

We're willing to be a community and suffer the loss of privacy and open our lives to humiliation being found out and all the kinds of things that only take place in community because we know that except there be community how shall there be refuge?

How shall there be any saving of this remnant people that cannot be the activity single individuals. It has got to be the work of a corporate expression of this body who have really been tempted before the suddenness of that need comes.

And we're willing to suffer. That's the worst kind of suffering is what we experience in the church. But Lord will bear it if it has anything to do with your being enthroned in the place of glory and in verse 32 and before him shall be gathered all nations and he shall separate them one from another as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats and he shall set the sheep on his right hand the goats on the left.

The Sheep and the Goats: Compassion as Evidence of Righteousness

Then shall the king say unto them on his right hand come you blessed of my father inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food I was thirsty you gave me drink.

I was a stranger you took me in naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison you came to me unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him saying Lord when shall when saw we the hungry and fed the thirsty and gave the drink.

When did we see you a stranger and took you in or naked and clothed you. When did we see you sick or in prison and came to you. And the king shall answer and say unto them verily I say unto you in as much as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren you have done it unto me.

Then shall he say unto them on the left hand depart from me. You cursed unto everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry you gave me no meat I was thirsty gave me no drink I was a stranger you didn't take me in naked you didn't clothe me sick and in prison you didn't visit me.

Then shall they also answer him saying Lord is it interesting that they say Lord anyone can invoke that word. But to invoke it in truth is to be righteous. And to be righteous is to be sacrificial to his brethren in the hour of their final extremity even if it should require your life.

Righteousness is not a little complimentary term. It's a designation of an ultimate kind because righteousness is God. And here are people who have come to such union with him that inadvertently that they could not do otherwise whether they recognize these broken and despairing and naked stripped people as being the brethren of the Lord they could not withhold giving them food clothing drink because righteousness compels it no matter the consequence and what a reward a place in his eternal kingdom.

But the others who fail to see fail to acknowledge. They look the other way something like the precious German man in Berlin that I met years ago when I was a full gospel speaker and who lived through the Nazi time.

And he said I looked out of my apartment window and there below in the Jewish neighborhood where I lived the truckload of brown-shirted Nazis had come with their armbands and began to kick in the store windows and pull the Jews out of their stores by their beards and forced them to clean the sidewalk with a toothbrush and your kick and punch and humiliate and terrify the children.

I said you looked on it and you saw that. I said what did you do. So the artist said what could I do. I pulled the curtain down I pulled the shade down and I walked away. The whole church worldwide is going to have an opportunity to pull the shade down and walk away or come out of its safety and its own comfort zone and come down into the place where Jews are so being treated and identify with them and put their bodies even in the way of those who are their oppressors.

That's beyond sentiment. That's identification. That's Shem not able to do other than what he did with his father and now cannot do other than what he's doing to the sons of Shem to the to the line of Shem that has come to its final degradation humiliation before it shall ascend itself to its own glory as being central to all nations.

Then shall he answer them in verse 45 saying verily I say unto you in as much as you did it not to one of the least of these you did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment but the righteous into life eternal.

Interpreting “The Least of These My Brethren”

Well the scholars have disputed who are the brethren to whom Jesus alludes. I think the text itself answers the question. It's obviously not the church because the church is represented both by the goats and the sheep who both say Lord to be found among all nations.

The brethren then are some other entity who are experiencing such tribulation that it has left them hungry and naked thirsty and cold. And all nations are judged. Give gives evidence that this is not local.

This is not confined to Germany and Poland and Central Europe. This is global. For God is sifting Jews throughout the nations. We are in all the nations and we'll find ourselves in nations where we were not.

That the nations themselves will be judged by the response to us in the calamity of our last days desperation. I was a stranger you took me not in naked and you clothed me not. And for some reason maybe in context with Noah naked and exposed lying in his tent in shame exposed before God before his own kin even before the mocking powers of the air that he had to be clothed that the issue of nakedness is more than just an apparel it's more than just keeping the chill off your body.

It's a spiritual provision that has to do with the essential dignity of the one who is naked who has been made naked and left destitute and helpless in his weakness. So the righteous are those who will not only feed the Jew and feed them more than food feed them prophetically with an explanation of why it is that they are passing through such a final time as this the church will prophetically be able to communicate an explanation for the Jew who will be taken in suddenness without any not understanding of why this has befallen him.

So we will feed them in more than one way but we will clothe them also in more than more than one way. They will be naked they will be stripped they will be barren and we will be putting clothing on their backs.

And I know a place in Denmark right now where their whole attic and barn is full of clothing and someone has said to them why don't you distribute it already to the what are you storing it for. No we'll not touch it.

It's being reserved for Jews in flight in some future time through our through our wilderness location and the out-of-the-way place that we occupy in Denmark. So physical and actual clothing is not a thing to be despised and will be a significant provision.

But somehow in the context of what we're discussing in these days it takes one thing to put a shirt on a man's back. It takes another thing to put a garment upon him that clothes him in his nakedness.

And that's not something that can be done except by sons and daughters of Sheol. And I don't I don't know what I'm talking about. I've never before said this. Mark knows that any who's ever heard me I've never before ever spoken and used that text.

With this kind of observation I'm on a new ground and that's a prophetic ground and I'm willing to speak it out without having a part but but a partial understanding of what I'm talking about. Trusting that if God is in this and wanting to communicate something of an utterly symbolic kind he'll do so even now with us.

What does it mean. What did it mean for Shem to clothe his father's nakedness. Why couldn't he have waited for the man to sober up himself and to take a garment of his own and get himself fixed up and come out.

Why did he have to go in in the extravagant way that he did walking backwards holding this cloak this garment upon his shoulders and draping his body. It had to do with not with something more than my father might catch a chill.

It had to do with something essential that there's something chronic. There's something foundationally wrong with a man being exposed and naked not to the elements but to put the powers of the air to the powers of darkness who want to celebrate that nakedness and want to gloat.

I don't have a word for it. I just sense it. I intuit it that the Lord himself seeing Adam and Eve recognizing their nakedness. Why did you hide from me. Because we knew we were naked and we were afraid that something comes with nakedness of fear something uncalmly.

There's something unnatural that's deeper than words that the Lord have recognized and well understood and did not think it extravagant to make them a covering of skins. Reggie is directing us to Revelation chapter 16 verse 15.

Behold I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth keepeth his garments lest he walk naked and they see his shame. Revelation chapter 16 verse 15. You know Saints we have we have to admit this is novel.

This is a line of thought that is totally unfamiliar to us. I mentioned this. I think yesterday. Nakedness and shame are contemplations and modes of thought that are completely incompatible with the modern mind.

In fact in the modern mind shame is to be exalted in and nakedness is to be exhibited. The gay parades of San Francisco and New York City and all of the major cities. This is what they are. They display their flesh they exhibit their their nudity.

They with as much as they can to be uncovered. And those pagan festivals are sanctified and established by the government of those localities because they dare not oppose the political power represented in that gay liberation movement.

So there's a and this comes into the common culture. So our miniskirts become more mini and now not only are we exposed to there but now our navels and our teenage kids going to school are dressed in such a way that their midriff is totally exposed.

And it's a commonplace. That's what quite appropriate today in the classroom. What will be the next stop. Nakedness nudity. Because there is no shame. Thank you Lord. Anger herself is bringing the punctuation.

Clothing Israel’s Nakedness With Righteousness

The same one who will cover their shame are the same ones who have identified with the stones and the rubble of a fallen Israel and have compassion upon her dust. The same one who is capable and responsive in that way.

For that will be the same ones who will be jealous to cover the nakedness of Israel in her humiliation. Because they are servants my servants who have take favor upon her stones and have mercy upon her dust.

My shem like ones if I can put it that way. And so with what garment shall we close them when we see in them the Lord. As you have done it unto the least of them even so much as one of them you have done it unto me.

Which one of us would not lay down our life to see the Lord covered. Which one of us would go to the farthest lengths to save him from an unnecessary shame of exposure. If we in any way could. How many had that impulse as they watched him on the cross naked to cover him.

That he would have even in his last agonizing moments at least this much respite that he doesn't have to be nailed there in a way where he can't even cover himself with his own hands and has to be boldly displayed as naked before his own Orthodox people.

Could there be a more sinful thing that meant to suffer that and he suffered that that our nakedness might be covered. That he became our great Kapora and our great covering. And you know what I want to suggest and I hardly know what I'm saying that the only garment that can cover his brethren the least of his brethren in those days is that garment.

Which is our garment. The garment with which we ourselves are clothed. Our willingness to take off our garment to lay aside our privilege to share their shame lay aside the dignity of our own Christian profession is the garment alone that will cover their essential nakedness.

Because your garment is so much the statement of yourself. That's why the department stores and the fashion houses have so much to do with what what people wear. What. What will the teenagers wear. You cannot know what goes on behind closed doors in in firms that produce clothing or sell it Gap and Old Navy and you name them.

It's big business it's multi-billion dollar business to design something that this generation of youth will wear. And how long will they wear it until the next fashion comes. And then they dispose of what was former.

You know that black kids what will they do to get a pair of the newest Nike sports shoes. Not that they without a pair now but it's not the most recent Jordan pair or the certain signature of a certain athlete or a certain shirt or a certain.

When you go in New York my heart goes out of breaks when I look at the black youth there they're all in uniform. You know they're living on welfare or they they have low incomes. But what they're paying for their clothing is extravagant.

And what is the clothing. It's a billowing sweatshirt or some kind of thing outside their pants with not jeans but like what are the workers with where you put your hammer carpet carpenter pants. Yeah there's another name for overalls coveralls except it doesn't go up to your chest.

But they're big and very baggy. And then that has to be accompanied with a hat turned backwards but over the head. First is a bandana and then jewelry of the most ostentatious kind so that those who have never ever named the name of Christ have huge crosses bulging from their commodious chests.

They wear a uniform. And if you're not in uniform you're a dead man. You're an object of despic of despising because you're not appropriately dressed. The power of fashion and garments and clothing is a remarkable statement in our contemporary culture.

But there must be a spiritual corollary. They're playing upon something that is instinctive but and making it perverse in a physical sense that is material and has to do with the billion dollar prosperity of these companies that peddle that merchandise.

But there's still something that we need to recognize about covering. We will clothe them with the garment of righteousness. And I think someone revelationist says the right the the righteous garment of the Saints is the garment of the Saints is their righteous acts.

Will we have a garment to lay. And I can tell you this much just feeling my way through this prophetically whatever that garment is it'll not be a garment of convenience. It'll be a garment of cost. And will we have it to give.

If that garment is the garment of our righteous acts. Will we have had such a history at that time that we have something to lay upon them. Or will we ourselves be threadbare. And maybe the unrighteous who are condemned to the fire reserved for the devil for his angels have avoided seeing the least of his brethren because they know intuitively that they have not to give what is required brother in the back somebody read that.

Man be rich in white raiment and now may it be clean that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear and that that eyes and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve that thou mayest see.

Okay Chris okay that that last word in an indictment of the church is where we presently are and if we're to be what we need to be in that last days it needs not to be taken to heart. We're naked and we don't see it.

And as you say that allow me my indulgence of a recent episode in Brooklyn where I was invited to speak and brought such a word such a climactic such a pivotal word that I would say had it been received it would have been the turning point for that entire congregation that entire work in Brooklyn with the largest Jewish residential population in New York City.

But the word was refused the word was ignored. I even subsequently had written a letter to the black of the Hispanic pastor who is called an apostle as well as a pastor to say the whole issue of your apostleship rests in the receiving of that word which I know in my heart was never received.

You gave it only scant attention and dismissed it. In fact you are occupied with your building program and the stately figure that you are from the platform well-dressed and I what I have to believe is not just off the rack suit but tailor-made to fill the whole silhouette with great attention.

And in fact as I remember looking upon his cuffs which are not just buttoned cuffs but the kind that Clinton likes French cuffs they are monogrammed. His monogram is on his cuff and I want to say point-blank.

I find that Lord forgive me totally incompatible with all that the word apostolic can be understood to me. You cannot have your monograms on your French cuffs and yet be an apostle. There's some there's something there that's totally contradictory but he has come into a kind of conventional wisdom of a religious kind that says religious success is predicated very much upon appearance on what kind of visage what kind of demeanor what kind of thing you project in the way you carry yourself and how you're dressed.

And I know myself on many occasions over the years where I'm brought into some contact with a pastor either I'm going to be speaking at his church or where he's considering having me. And the first thing he does is look me up and down.

I watch his head move up and down. How is this man dressed. And unfailingly. I'm not dressed as I ought but he's making he's making an assessment on that externality and he himself lives in that pseudo reality.