K-551 the Gospel & Interfaith Dialogue — Art Katz

This will be some expression of my response to things that have been expressed through Marvin and his presentations to us centering in interfaith relationship which has every sound of something to be desired.

The Absoluteness of the Apostolic Faith

But I hope to indicate that I think that in essence it's deadly to everything that's apostolic. So I'm writing interfaith relationship is predicated upon and requires not only a respect But the acknowledgment of the validity of rabbinical Judaism as being equal to or comparable to that of Christianity.

This is in my opinion a deadly condescension. That in one fell swoop destroys the apostolic foundations of the one faith. That is alone the basis and provision for the one God for the redemption of mankind and that of Israel itself.

It destroys the faith that is the faith. The world talks about the three great faiths. I've never Acknowledged three great faiths. There's only one great faith. Any faith after that is devious, deceptive, a distraction, a Alternative that has its origin from below rather than above so Christian faith is not another competitive alternative to other faith postures whose tenets are as deserving of respect.

But the one redemptive act of God whose proclamation to the ends of the earth make disciple of all nations We are enjoined to obey The signs and wonders following go you into all the world and proclaim this gospel to all creatures.

Those that believe and are baptized shall be saved those who believe not shall perish. That language now sounds so antique so archaic more than that. It sounds offensive. One of the great Scandals of the faith is the absoluteness on the insistence of that solitary message as if there were no other Go you into all the world and that's why the North American Indian if he embraces Christianity is accused of embracing white man's religion.

Or the Jew would become Gentile eyes. It's as if who dare has the presumption to think that your faith is the only an absolute standard To which all mankind is to subscribe. Well, that's the that's just the name of the game.

Sorry about that. I myself was offended when I picked up a New Testament for the first time in my 34th year and read Of a Jesus who said no man comes to the father, but by me if any man comes any of the way He's a thief and a robber.

Hey, that's that's what running right across the grain of my whole Relativistic upbringing many paths to truth. It sounds of honorific. Everything has its own distinction and appropriate one way one man one faith one salvation that the whole of our myth of our present civilization is Antithetical to the absolute insistence of God in one way.

Question is are we uncomfortable with that? Are we aware of how much that jangles the nerves of the world and how impolite To insist upon Jews that they should somehow subscribe to our quote Christian faith as if it's one of three or other faiths deserving of equal consideration Apoxic democracy if you will.

So this uncompromising Absoluteness is integral to the whole apostolic character of the faith from its inception. Though it is today embarrassingly out of place in the pluralism of a relativistic world of quote many paths truth.

If the app if the apostolic faith is not absolute it's not apostolic. There's an absoluteness and insistence a singularity. I'll touch this as I go on. So this is embarrassingly out of place in the pluralism of a relative relativistic world of many paths to truth.

I believe that we ourselves have opened the door that is Christianity in its present disposition particularly in its Interfaith mentality has opened the door to this destructive pluralism that neither Jesus nor Paul Would for a moment of confidence by our condescension to the Christ rejecting Jewish community whose Judaism was birthed out of the rejection of the Crucified One and the Atonement obtained through his death.

Rabbinical Judaism and the Rejection of Christ

So this sounds on the face of it like a very hard indictment Against Judaism. It's only stating the facts come. That present rabbinical Judaism was born out of the rejection of the Christ event followed by the destruction of the temple and the priesthood and sacrifice that constituted the foundation of the then biblical Judaism.

So that we have opened the door once we have acknowledged the validity of any other faith. We have opened the door to a plurality of faiths of the whole world now is written With these faiths all contending and all claiming their right To contend one with the other as if they have valid grounds.

There's only one valid ground. That's the Presumption of our faith and it's more than embarrassment. It's a ground for persecution of The Atonement obtained through his death unwilling and unable to recognize with the Gentile centurion that this is the Son of God.

Remember that acknowledgment this professional murderer. Watching this man on the cross. Dying with such a magnanimity forgiving his his murderers. They laid not this into their charge forgive them. They know not what they do.

This is the Son of God something was revealed of the ultimate nature of that victim to forge a Confession and acknowledgement out of a Gentile centurion that the nation Israel was unwilling or unable to make except for the numbers that became believers.

And following that by bribing those who guarded the tomb to tell the story that his body had been stolen by his disciples. Denying the testimony in power and miracles of the post Pentecost Church. Refusing the corroborating destruction of Jerusalem in its temple.

Prophesied by Jesus that took place in 70 AD. It's a system predicated upon repentance. This was the new innovation in Yafna in that city. By a particular rabbi who is celebrated as being the founder of present rabbinical Judaism.

Predicated on repentance and as I wrote that somewhere about 4 or 5 a .m. This morning I put the word sick s-i-c in parentheses. After the word repentance, which means what? It's predicated on repentance and you've watched the crucifixion of the Son of God very God and Have dismissed that and you saw to it that a God was put around his tomb because there was the outrageous Possibility that is that his body would be stolen and that the mischief of his disappearance would be worse than What began it and yet his body?

Was not in the tomb and we know what happened. There was a resurrection and power and the remarkable paintings of these Roman gods. Being disheveled their helmets falling off their heads being cast in every direction in the power by which Jesus Jesus was raised from his death by the glory of God the Father.

Well, they went and told the story and they were bribed by the authorities the Jewish authorities. To say that his disciples came at night and stole his body. And then the gospel says and this account is believed to this day.

Yes. Yes. I'm just going back and reviewing the melancholy Elements that led to the rejection of Jesus and the formation of the present Judaism with which we hope to be in some kind of constructive interfaith dialogue.

With whom are you dialoguing? You're dialoguing with the descendants who refused the testimony of Jesus. If you'll not believe that I am he you shall die in your sins. Who refused to receive the testimony of the centurion though?

They had as much opportunity to see the glory of God revealed in the ultimate suffering and death of the Son of God and then the absent the lost body that they knew was resurrected because these Gods gave the true account of what happened.

Well, you you say this hereafter and they bribed them. When I read that I'm staggered. If ever men had an opportunity to repent and say boy, we really missed it we thought this guy was a presumer and that his miracles were some kind of magic and He was leading Israel astray down another path contrary to what we understood Judaism to be but now.

That he has been resurrected by the power of God the father. This evidently is the statement of father's approval for what was performed at the cross through him. And we've got to go back to square one to the drawing board and acknowledge repentantly before the nation.

We have missed it and have been even the perpetrators of his death. But instead of that they swallowed down the the evidence of the resurrection. Bribed the gods to tell another story. And of course the veil that was rent from top to bottom by the power of God when Jesus gave up his ghost.

Which I think I say it was nine inches thick had to be sewed together. So that they could continue in their normative practices until the temple itself was destroyed according to the prophecy of Jesus.

Forty years later forty being the number of judgment. This is a remarkable indictment of that generation. But the point that I'm making is that that whole rejection Constitutes the foundation of what's today called normative Judaism with who with whom we hope to be in some kind of constructive dialogue.

Compassion Without Compromise

Now the world ought you're really laying it on strong and This sounds like it has all of the earmarks of anti-semitic indictment. No the truth Can be born in another way. It doesn't have to be an incentive for anger irritation.

Jesus said they don't know what they do. But now that we know it ought to affect the way in which we relate to them. Not bristling with anger and in the day indignation, but a greater heart of compassion.

For for the tragedy that was ensued by the rejection of him whom God the Father sent. And so it gives us a different handle a different disposition in our relatedness with them. So we're not condescending that they have a faith.

However, I'm honored and attended by the sages of Israel and the commentaries of rabbis. I know how beguiling and Impressive that weight of tradition is. I'm now being faced with it for the first time in my Jewish life in my 74th year with a wonderful rabbi and Mark, and I went to a session at the at the Lubavitch Hafsidim in Brooklyn.

Our jaws were agape at the beauty and insight of the things were being shared. Nevertheless Despite the impressiveness of the erudition Intellectuality scholarship that marks this Jewish people we have to recognize the brute fact of the one event That has come in point of time and once it has come Everything is changed.

Nothing can after that be honored that refuses to acknowledge recognize and make that the predicate of all faith reality and being to ignore that and then found a Judaism on repentance and good works and mitzvot is a flight from reality.

You're gonna have a Judaism based on repentance and not repent of your repentance. And what kind of repentance is that that's then only religious. That's only Play acting that's so that's unreality and you're condemning generations to an alternative to God's redemptive provision and consigning them to perdition.

For what could be a substitute for the blood of the Lamb? What kind of religious practice what kind of good deeds what what deeds can be good? That issue from men who are not good and can only be made good in Messiah alone.

For God alone is good. So there's a whole ideological conflict of Fundamental kind that if we do not face it and bring it up as issue We do them the service and consign this generation to the same position to which generations have preceded them.

Because they go into death not believing if you'll not believe that I am he you shall die in your sins. I can't say I know what that means. But I shudder only to quote it and evidently God knows what it means and thought it's so significant that he didn't spare my mother.

After 38 and 39 years of resisting me to my teeth. Though we brought before her every saint who has ever crossed these grounds and she heard and saw Everything that should have been sufficient to win her acceptance of the Lord.

She was a stubborn Jewish holdout till ten days before her death. Nothing that we could say demonstrate or plead could ever persuade her. Her son was transformed before her sight the world was coming to this door.

Her son was being honored in nations around the world. But my mother was unwilling to bend acknowledge or concede until She was given a vision of hell. I don't know if you've got that when crystal was sharing the other night.

My mother was terrified. Stark terror the Lord did not spare her so much. So she was beside herself and her friends are there and I had to be called the two or three in the morning come down. I'm at this bedside and in 20 minutes.

She was falling in a prayer to receive the Lord taking like taking candy from the proverbial, baby. What happened to that backbone of Jewish resistance and stubborn opposition that could not even name the name of Christ?

And taking my hand and following word-for-word in a prayer to receive Jesus as Messiah. Not by any expertise of mine or the daughter. It was the Lord who out of fear and terror in the anticipation of an eternal hell Was willing to consider and even to speak that name in which he had grown.

So hard I said not even be able to utter it and the moment she spoke. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. The Lord did for her what he did for me. Hey, I could no more get them the name of Jesus out of my mouth 38 years ago that she was able In her 96th year to do we were so schooled Against that name and the only way it could be spoken even passively was blasphemously.

To call upon that name with any kind of respect and reverence Was actually beyond our ability to do. Do you know that it's a grace to call upon the name of the Lord? You think it's a vocalization that anyone could perform at will that's how little you know.

It's a grace to call upon the name of the Lord as I saw it performed through my mother and through myself. It was given. It's not a faith of our own. It's a gift lest any man boast. And that this new foundation of rabbinical Judaism synagogue attendance prayer good deeds as determined by rabbis is Supposed to be an acceptable alternative to the Levitical requirement for the shedding of blood in the absence of temple priesthood and sacrifice.

When what Jesus prophesied took place the temple was destroyed Jerusalem was destroyed the priesthood dispersed even the records of the priesthood so there could not even be a Resuscitation of priesthood because it was dispersed and gone and this with it the ability to perform sacrifice.

That was a tragic impasse that requires one kind of radical response or another. Either you have to rethink about this Jesus who bled at the cross as the eternal lamb of God without spot Who gave himself by the eternal spirit or you have to find some kind of cunning?

Equivalent and assume that God finds it acceptable because if he doesn't you're an eternally dead duck. So the millions have followed this have been sent into eternal Provision and its perpetrators not willing themselves to enter have kept back generations by the continuing hostility to the gospel.

Apostolic Urgency and the Scandal of the Gospel

I'm paraphrasing that famous scripture not willing themselves to enter they prevented others from entering any condescension to the above necessarily diminished the apostolic distinctives of insist of insistence on the singularity of the church's message its absoluteness and urgency.

A Church that is not urgent is not the church. A church that lacks absolute Apostolic absoluteness about the primacy of its message is not apostolic. To lose that distinction and that urgency and that insistence is to lose the church is the church.

Where as that's what I'm saying by that We're risking very great loss in this ecumenical dialogue and interfaith relationship with the Jewish community because of necessity it brings a toning down and an equivocation and a compromise from the absoluteness that is intrinsic to true faith.

The church that has become bland and nondescript Ironically must fail the Jewish people itself and its mandate to them and bring corresponding loss to the Greek by a diminished gospel. Which by its very nature is always a divinely calculated scandal and offense.

We prayed about that this morning and even thank God that the gospel is an offense. And it is a scandal and not an easy-to-communicate message. It does not commend itself to human intellect. It's as if God has gone out of his way purpose purposely to calculate a message of such a kind.

That no man can entertain or receive on the basis of his own intelligence. It defies intelligence it defies every human thing by which men can endorse something. It can only come as a gift an Understanding imparted by revelation in conjunction with the unsparing and uncompromising word of its absoluteness.

But if we bring an equivocating word by which we retreat either in content or in tone. The Spirit of God and the anointing of God will not be there to bless. It'll bounce off our hearer like how nice for you.

Do you believe that? How nice for you? You're happy? Good. It would not be the kind of message like oh is me I'm undone. God anoints what he appoints. But he's not going to anoint a deluded message that has suffered compromise in order to find some kind of accommodation acquiescence with our Jewish kinsmen.

If we really love them we'll not spare them and we'll not spare ourselves because You don't know the gospel you cannot know it in its character and its shameful scandalous Nature until you bring it to a Jew.

Likely that a Jewish theologian Jacob Yosh J O C Z whose brother Yates the anglicized name married Ingrid me in Oakland, California. In one of his books, I think Jesus and Judaism He says nothing reveals the radical character of the gospel then bringing it to the Jew.

And this was God's intention to the Jew first before you go anyplace else begin a Jerusalem Samaritans cause. Begin with the Jew first come and bring the message of my birth my Divine origin my coming down from heaven my laying aside my deity my 30 years of obscurity.

My three-and-a-half-year public ministry my rejection my crucifixion my suffering my death my resurrection my ascension my seated in the right hand of glory and Begin it with with it with the same people who crucified me begin in the same city where the prophets were stoned.

Don't take it to Connecticut first into the Little places in the country and see if it'll if you can hoist that flag up or for the go over. The way Broadway productions are first begun in Connecticut and Rhode Island place.

And then if they find some sympathetic then they'll bring it to Broadway. No God says begin in Broadway. Begin where I was crucified so our respect for even our admiration for Judaism's erudition scholarship gentility and charm.

Even the unrecognized design for the approval of the Jewish community has resulted in incalculable loss to the purity or authority and power of contemporary Christianity. Because Paul was not ashamed of this gospel.

Though it be a scandal for it is the very power of God at the salvation to the Jew first and also to the Greek. We are diminishing what the Greek gets if we have not gone to the Jew first. This is not an invitation in saying all these things to resume again the unhappy if not tragic Triumphalism and arrogant disdain of the early church's history with the Jew.

Do we get mad at them now? Put a number on them this this is what has been implied or actually stated in these days that the only alternative to speaking this kind of hard truth is to be gentle to understand the cross-cultural elements and Function in a kind of I mean What was it the How do I begin this the three great faiths your faith interfaith dialogue as if the the only alternative to interfaith?

Dialogue is to lapse again into kind of harshness and triumphalism arrogance that characterized the church in previous generations. I'm saying now I'm saying no. We need every lesson that we've been given in these days on how to understand our Jewish kinsmen and how to speak In a right way and knowingly but not sparingly.

Despair is to allow to destroy. To love is to take the risks of offense and even of rejection but to placate condescend that one scene in the film that That we saw that pierced me through was this Irish rabbi Rosen I'll never forget it with his van Dyck beard and real evident assurance and having it all together polished and urbane.

Rabbi Rosen and the Need for a Mediator

I don't need a mediator. I already have a relationship with God. And then another reference to the Messiah. Well, whatever the issue is of who the Messiah is it no way diminishes what I already have as relationship with God.

Well. Can you have that when Jesus said no man comes to the father, but by me. How then can you have a relationship. One of two things is right? Either your relationship is a more imagined than it is real or our confidence in what Jesus said needs to be reconsidered.

There's an absoluteness in the gospel that says you cannot come. No man can come to the father. To me except the father draw him. There's there's an absolute clarity in that word. So what do you do when a rabbi who gives every appearance of suit not only civility not only erudition.

But a moral tone to his life. That that just makes us gasp and look up with admiration. Says that he has a relationship with God that our knowledge of New Testament scripture says he cannot have. We're faced with a conundrum.

Either we're wrong in our assumption predicated on those New Testament verses out of that very mouth of Jesus and that he has it without Jesus that that means the gospel itself is an irrelevancy not only for Jews, but for anyone or this man is deceived and thinks that his culture and Refinement and ethicality is somehow a relationship with God.

He cannot know him by the spirit. So, what do we do when the presence of a Jew like that he makes a statement and we are silent our silence is Validating that statement our silence is implying. Yes. We're in agreement with your Contention that you have such relationship.

What we really ought to do if we love the man is to say I'm sorry dear sir I don't care what your subjective impression may be. But if their scriptures and the New Testament out of the mouth of Jesus themselves be true.

It's impossible for you to enjoy the revelator the the relationship in which you're boasting. You're a deceived man or we're deceived, but we're not going to be silent so as to condone and validate your presumption and You're the spiritual leader of a Jewish community and communicating that and encouraging others to the same kind of assumed Relationship that cannot exist short of the acknowledgement of the blood and the forgiveness of sins.

For my arm is not shortened that it cannot save nor is my ear dull it cannot hear but your sins God says have separated you from me. What greater sin than the sin of presumption and of spiritual pride that boasts in a relationship that is non-existent and Puts greater confidence in the subjectivity of one's feeling than in the stated Word of God the Son of God Who alone is righteous and not a man that he should lie?

Yes, yes, there's a there's a conflict here there's something struck and it's not happenstance or inadvertent. It's absolutely calculated by God from the beginning. We're we're joined into a remarkable issue with the Jewish community.

How we relate to them in that issue is the issue is the whole thing that we're about in these days and by which the age is concluded. So do we move in the direction of interfaith dialogue and acknowledgement and endorsement that you guys may not have Jesus, but what you do have is impressive, and we don't want to be ungainly and Be a sore thumb the bull in the China shop insisting that you have to share out Jesus.

All the more when in his name you have suffered persecution for 2 ,000 years. What what kind of love is that? What kind of respect is that you shouldn't you back off and not be insistent on your gospel?

Many paths to truth or is there one path and if we if we buckle before the Jew in their seeming civility and Refinement as if they have no need of that path. We're opening the doors for many paths. None of which lead to heaven and all of which lead to perdition which Satan is quite handy to provide for the deceived Millions in the world the issue of the Jew is the issue of the Gospels.

Amen, it's the issue of the gospel to the Greek. It's the issue of the church. And so I'm sharing my burden as it has been triggered by listening to our dear brother Martin and Someone said they're happy that I'm seeing this because they were worried to me in New York.

Is art himself being taken in? Is he being seduced by the impressive scholarship and erudition and refinement of these precious Talmudic men fifth generation why we're like clods next to these men in their remarkable knowledge not only of Hebrew, but the other Semitic language Aramaic and so on.

So, you know, they ask questions. We're stunned and stupefied. We can't give answer. They seem to have all the answers. The effrontery of insisting upon our faith in view of all that is either colossal Egoism and arrogance or absolute humility.

Yeah, one of the other The rabbi can't understand why by now I've not thrown in the towel haven't I hasn't he told me enough to show me how fortunate this whole Greek myth is about Jesus. And how it was a commonplace in the ancient world of us of a godly son born Mystically from the heavens and lives and dies and then is resurrected and Jesus is only a takeoff on that Mythical Pagan Origin how can you continue on to be a Jewish man and I subscribe to that nonsense.

Haven't you seen the light yet? What do you keep hanging on? I'm hanging on for your sake you do my boy. That's somehow one at one point in our five six hours together on a particular Wednesday. In some moment when I think I'm not at all succeeding and I'm ready to throw in the towel one last word or look at gesture and The word has come light from heaven a key turn and a man gasp falls on his face and cries out my lord.

Oh my god. That's what we're waiting for. That's what we're praying for. It has nothing to do with my cleverness. It's my learning. Where do I come even to begin to match notes with such men? But trusting a word a word will come that will unlock his soul and Bring light on all that he already knows but has not come to him as revelation.

But you know what it would cost him to surrender to that revelation his wife his family his place in the Jewish community. Is his forebears fifth-generation Talmudic scholar? There's nothing less than a death sentence for such a man to believe in Jesus because if he believes he will equally proclaim being Jewish.

The cost of everything. But it'll be the key to life to those who will do him. So When this is not an invitation to resume again the unhappy if not tragic triumphalism triumphalism an arrogant disdain of the early church's history with the Jew the church was pricked and Provoked by Jews who were saying that that that that that that you claim that you found the Messiah.

You're a bunch of Gentile dumb-dumbs. You don't even know our language and that's how you're interpreting it. You're all wrong and you've missed it and beside that we're coming again the scriptures speak of our restoration.

God is going to honor us. We will be exalted above all nations. Can you imagine men like Chrysostom and other of the early church leaders being? Pricked and chased by that kind of Jewish boasting. Or Luther himself at a later generation.

The church has failed in its relationship with the Jew and has allowed itself to be provoked and irritated unto resentment. Rather than absorbing like a pincushion this necessary Refutation and bearing it and loving them even in it.

Bearing Historical Hostility While Proclaiming Christ

I Know from my own experience speaking at university campuses from Harvard Yale University of California tubing wherever I've been in the world and I've spoken universities why do I speak with them. Because that's where you'd like to define a Jewish audience if you can't get into the synagogues and Very invariably when you come into a crowd of Jewish students the anger.

Because what do you represent? You're a paid flunky you're some kind of missionary with a goyish a Bible under your arm trying to persuade them to forsake being Jewish and Speaking that name that by which we have been persecuted historically and boom.

They let you have it and you're like a pincushion. You just have to absorb all of their accusations all their indictment and you can't say no. No, no, that's not me. I'm not related to the Crusaders. No, no, I'm not with that institution.

They don't know the difference for them. It's all Christianity. You're coming in that name. You're indicted with them and before you can get a word in edgewise you have got to allow them to Express their spleen give off their invective all of that anger and then when it's spent you might get in a word Well, the church has not been willing to do that.

So by all of the things that I'm reviewing I'm not inviting the church to pick up again. Yes, and be to the Jews a hostile arrogant entity. But to know the truth of the situation and to bear that truth and yet come to them and relate to them in the love that knows and Will not be affected.

It does not require our arrogance. It's a realistic affirmation of indisputable centrality of the cross does not imply a corresponding contempt but a pathos of Identification with our Jewish kinsmen who have been inured to the saving faith by a time-honored religious culture.

Commendable and attractive in many ways, but Christ projecting at its heart and hence without the saving faith. That's a tremendous statement. Yes, not bad for 4 a .m. Realistic affirmation the things that are putting before you of the indisputable centrality of the cross as the only one faith this the only one saving faith does not imply a corresponding contempt.

But a pathos if I had got a chance to ask a question last night in that Marvin mentioned Abraham Heschel I would have asked. Could you please enlarge on Heschel's concept of pathos in his two volumes on the prophets?

Because the Lord himself quickened that word for us last summer that that the church needed to come into a pathos of Identification with the Jew is the root of the same word as sympathy. Pathos if you can have a pathos out of a knowledge of the truth of that one.

Not out of a naivety or an unwillingness to see the truth. But knowing the truth knowing the rejection knowing the hostility knowing the Antichrist propensity of this community and its leadership. And still have a pathos and still have an identification and Still have a profound sympathy not just of a sentimental kind but of a kind for which you would lay down your life.

So I could say to my rabbi as he drove me to get my car and my last visit with a broke down. And I had to leave it across the river in New Jersey to be repaired. We were alone in the car together. I said Has any man ever loved you as I?

Who do you know who could match the affection that that's that issues from me for you? From anyone that out of your own Judaism. Don't you have abused me called me names and acted with anger and Insulted me.

Have who else do you know within your Jewish framework who has loved you as amply as I? He did not answer me a word. He knew it. It's the love of God. It's the pathos of God and so I'm saying the knowledge of the truth does not require us to be arrogant or hostile to them.

It's one thing to be innocent and not know and then be blithe in your conduct. But to be knowing and to be to have pathos is a statement of uttermost spirituality in fact. It's coming close to the very character of God himself.

Israel, the Church, and Eschatological Compassion

Remember what the what is waiting for what is being waited for that the deliverer might come out of Zion and take transgression from Jacob. When my servant shall have compassion on her stones and pity upon her dust.

When my church will have pathos for the Jewish community and know how long they have suffered at their rejection of me and how hostile they've come in their framework and how they oppose themselves in their own ignorance and and Bleed in sympathy for that condition and pray for the lifting of that veil.

Then the deliverer shall come out of Zion. Why then? Because his purpose for the church has been fulfilled. He has a bride for the bridegroom. That's just like him adorned for him because he shares the pathos of God himself.

Now he can deliver Israel for the whole object of Israel was inculcating and providing the incentive for the church to come into that condition. That which is not of this faith is still sin. You know that scripture that which is not the faith is sin.

And I'm just enlarging it to say that which is not of this faith is sin. The faith by which salvation is obtained. Because all of the so-called great faiths employ the word faith. But what does it mean a compendium of doctrinal statements of the distinctives of Islam or Judaism?

But the faith that is the faith is salvific and that which is not of that faith is still sin. So what good deeds can issue from those who have not come into that faith and see their own quote faith as a viable alternative.

We are not called to denigrate nor boast. But proclaim the truth in love. This does not mean condescending sentimentality. Sentimentality and avoidance of the intrinsic offense. But of being cruel in order to be kind of being firm of being insistent.

My mother Arthur. I don't want to hear another word of this not another word. I Said look the day will come in eternity. When your cry and regret will be not that I have said too much, but I've not said enough.

Is that a nice way for some to talk to his mother? Well, what's nice when an aged lady's eternal Destiny is at stake and one must be cruel to her in order to be kind to her but not sparing. I'm such an enemy of sentiment.

I can't tell you I see sentiment as As the most devious thing that has ever issued from the bowels of hell that is disguised as being somehow Attractive and commendable and nice to receive and feel and to express but destructive of truth and Keeping people from the kinds of issues that will affect it eternally.

A pox on sentiment. To those and by the way, our kindness will be construed as cruelty. You call that love you call that being a Christian. That's that's the Retort that we'll get but yes, that is being the Christian whether or not you understand it.

And if you don't understand it, I don't wait for your understanding in order to speak that truth. Your understanding will come because I've spoken it. To precipitate a crisis of faith can only be justified in the light of eternity.

I mean why stir an old lady up? Why why why kidnap her from Palm Beach West Palm Beach where she's lived for the last 30 years in her condominium? With all of her adorable little ditchy goo on the walls of her Honorary plaques from Hadassah Hospital and all of the Jewish things to which she's contributed and her husband who was a dead atheist was the vice president of the Jewish congregation and Take her away out of that environment that is so sentimental so condescending to the flesh in December and bring her to Northern, Minnesota.