To God Be Glory in the Church — Art Katz

This is tape number K040, entitled To God Be Glory in the Church, spoken by Arthur Katz.

The Heavenly Standard and the Glory of Christ’s Church

A plumb line will fall down from heaven. If you have any other standard of measure, it stinks. There's only one standard, that which drops down from heaven. It's perfect. Would you have a heart to discard and scrap and alter and adjust everything that is not in perfect conformity with the perfect standard?

I'm quoting so much Shakespeare these days, but you know a line just came to me? How weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable seem to me all the things of this world. That was the cry that went up in the spirit of our brother earlier in this night.

It's God's cry also. There's something about the drive that I had today to get down here, past the walnut stands and the gas stations and the hot dog joints and all of the drab, gray, utilitarian joints that pockmark America, that just makes my spirit crumble.

To think that men spend entire lifetimes in merchandise, making a living so-called. There's something so pathetic about unredeemed living. And out of all that greenness, there should be one glory conspicuous.

It's the Church of Christ Jesus. I want that plumb line to be dropped. Okay? Shall we pray for that? You're not mad at me, are you? Okay. Precious God, Lord from heaven, by the operation of your own spirit and life, out of your own mouth, words, out of your own heart, out of your own book, by the anointing of your own spirit, brand something in our hearts tonight, a divine discontent for this people, for anything less than that which comes down from heaven.

Mighty God, give this people a blueprint and a pattern by which to measure their life together, so that at the end result, Lord, there shall be a glory to God, shining brightly and bringing out of dens and coves and little two-bit joints and all of the cheap paraphernalia of the world, desperate souls who will find life because they've seen the light.

Bless this night, Lord, and make it historic for this people, a signal night in their walk with you, and we'll thank you and praise you for it now as we ask it together in Jesus' name. Amen. If you didn't say amen, you didn't agree with the prayer.

Okay, you can be seated. My text tonight is Acts, the 13th chapter. I think the full title of the book of Acts is The Acts of the Holy Spirit Through the Apostles, and I want to tell you while you're turning that one of my very favorite words is apostolic.

I'm liable to spit it out at you tonight so many times you'll get sprayed. Apostolic. It's my opinion that the apostolic church described in the book of Acts is the heavenly standard. It is the plumb line of God.

And more than this being an hour of renewal, a word so popular among charismatics, I would much rather say it's an hour of restoration. God is not renewing tired, fagged-out denominations and jazzing up their services to make it a little bit more interesting for the saints.

He's restoring us to the apostolic model. How many of you love the book of Acts? Do you love the book of Acts? How many of you would desire to live in the glory of the apostolic age? How many of you if you had the opportunity and it were possible would turn the clock back and you'd much rather live in the first century when the church was besieged and oppressed and persecuted, harrowed and pursued, but lived in the fullness of the glory of God with signs and wonders and demonstrations and great grace was upon them all and with power gave they testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

I'll just make that a rhetorical question. That means I ask it, but you're not required to answer it now. You just file it in your think box and chew it over because if we ain't going to be honest with each other tonight, I'm prepared to sit down now.

I'm not here to entertain and if this is just going to be another night's diversion, a visiting speaker, keep it. Now here's my question. How many of you would give up your present security, comfort and well-being, nicely accompanied by church services, dutiful attendance, participation in the choir, visiting the jails and the elderly and give all that up to face the rigors, the trials, the hounding, the persecution, the living by faith, the want that is the accompaniment of the apostolic age?

Did I say to you the last time? If I did, it's worth repeating. The absence of persecution of the Church of Jesus Christ in America is a scandal. Something is grievously wrong that the world has not found sufficient offense with us to hound us, harass us, to reproach us, rebuke us and to persecute us, let alone to slay us.

I'll be far more comfortable and heave a great sigh of relief when persecution returns to the Church, for I will know by that symptom that the Church has returned to God. Are we together so far? Oh, dear children, let us not impede God one iota tonight by any stiffening of our spirits or tightening up or reacting adversely to the personality of the speaker or any such thing.

Let us be wide open to God, not to find offense in a comma or a punctuation or a manner of speaking and miss God's great point. I just have a sense in my spirit that God has a divine destiny for this Church and if it were not so, we would not be here.

I don't want you to miss that destiny and I think it has everything to do with God restoring the apostolic model with you. It far eclipses anything that you presently now understand as Church. It might take and will take the most radical revision of your present practices.

It'll scare you stiff. It'll mortify you and humiliate you. It'll be extravagantly expensive in every way. Maybe half the people who are presently in this room will not be able to take it. You'll cop out and cut out and you'll find another place that is more comfy.

The Antioch Church as the Apostolic Model

But the glory, the prospect for the glory that remains for those who remain is unspeakable. Let's take a look at a Church that was a glory to God and is a model that came down from heaven in Antioch. Now there were in the Church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers as Bonibus and Simeon that was called Niger and Lucius of Cyrene and Menaion which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch and Saul.

As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me, Bonibus and Saul, for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.

So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed unto Seleucia, and from thence they sailed to Cyprus. And when they were at Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. Period.

You say, what's so hot about that? That sounds commonplace and dull. Oh yeah? Let's take a look at what is disarmingly described in those few verses. Because I tell you that in those few verses is all of the pattern of the true Church of God, which is a glory.

Now there were in the Church, it doesn't say there were those that attended the Church, and it doesn't say there were those who were registered or there were in the Church, it's more than men who attended.

It's a description of men and women who are organically joined and knit by the Spirit of God, who themselves are the Church at Antioch. And what kind of men were they? They were prophets and teachers.

That's not a picture of a way station where prophets and teachers happen to stop off for refreshment. I believe it's a picture of a Church so in the keeping of the pattern of God that it produces teachers and prophets.

And I want to suggest that if you want a standard of measure by which to examine yourself, to ask, how close are we to the apostolic model? You can ask it in this way. Are we producing teachers and prophets?

True Church of a people knit with each other and with God will produce apostolic ministers. You say, big deal. So what's a teacher or a prophet? Everything. You know, the world is dying for the want of hearing the words of God in the earth.

You know how desperately needed the prophetic cry is? Where are the prophets of our generation that will shake a slumbering nation? Where are the men who will cry out to the people of God, how long do you hold between two opinions?

If God be God, follow Him. Where are the men who are passionate and consumed with the things of God, who see by the eye of God right through the haze and the mist to the true and the eternal realities and can speak them by the power of God that will shake people awake?

The prophetic ministry is desperately and urgently needed in this particular generation. Where are such men being produced? Where is the environment that is conducive to the bringing forth of men of apostolic stature?

That's the point, guys. Such men are not produced in the day and they're not made by magical wands being waved. They need to be born in an environment that is hospitable and be nurtured and be brought to maturity in a congregation that loves them.

You say, what has love got to do with it? Because prophets are obnoxious. They're hard to live with and they're ungainly. And they don't worry too much about their politeness. And they're abrasive and they come on hard.

And they're strange ducks and they jostle you and it's better not to have such in the midst. And it's tough enough when they've come to maturity but when they're in the process of growing they're even worse.

Then it's a mishmash of both flesh and spirit. It's an ungainly bird flapping its wings and squawking with a hoarse voice. But unless you give such birds an opportunity to squawk they'll never be able to bellow for God in due season.

Where is the environment that will encourage the birth and the nurture and the coming to maturity of men of this kind? True church is such an environment and it cannot be produced by mere Sundays alone.

It takes a people who have come together in a certain quality of relationship that is hospitable to the Holy Ghost and are willing to pay the price of sacrifice that such relationship entails. The first thing that'll have to go is your seating arrangement.

You're not going to produce apostles, prophets and teachers looking at the backs of each other's heads. It's going to be by the dynamic interplay of a people who meet each other and God face to face. Because this kind of arrangement encourages passivity and not participation.

There might well be potential prophets in this audience right now. But you're not likely to hear from them in the present structure of things. But you turn the chairs around and make it a kind of spiritual free-for-all in the sense that the Holy Spirit has sway through whatever vessel He pleases to speak and touch and sound.

And you'll begin to notice certain men coming forth in a certain way and you'll recognize the prophet's mantle. It's much more convenient to remain seated as we are and look up and let somebody else do it on the platform.

Why my God, you might well be the prophet. And you know what the usual fate of those men are. There were certain prophets and teachers and God even names them. Barnabas and Simeon, it was called Niger and Lucius of Cyrene and Menaean which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch and Saul.

Why does God take the pains to enumerate them by name? Because He reveals the diversity of these men. Barnabas was a Hebrew, an Israelite. Simeon that was called Niger was likely according to most biblical scholars to be a black man.

Lucius of Cyrene is yet another nationality, Gentile. Menaean which has been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch was a Roman and Saul we know was a Jew. You say, what has that got to do with anything? And my answer is everything.

The true church is not a country club where people of the same economic and social status have a little cozy thing going together. The true church is the expression of the local believers in a given locality.

If they're black, they're white, they're Jewish, they're Gentile, they're older, they're younger, they're poor, they're skinny, they're fat, they're every shape and size and description but they are God's people together.

This was a remarkable church. It was diverse men as one and the fact that they had different racial origins, different nationalities and even different callings of God did not separate them but they were a brilliant church together.

You say, how do you know Art? Are you just assuming that? The very next verse indicates it. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted. I want you to know that that is not any light accomplishment. When men of that diversity can minister unto the Lord and fast together, you have a measure of a church that has touched the glory of God.

It's interesting how discreet God is and he doesn't give us all the particulars. We know what fasting means. Have you ever fasted together with others? Can you suffer the rumbling of each other's stomachs?

You know how stale your breath becomes when you fast? And if you get breathed on, would you be offended? But what does it mean they ministered unto the Lord? Did they sing charismatic choruses? My own suspicion is that they had come to the highest pitch of true worship which is silence before God.

Fasting, Worship, and Dependence on God

You ain't seen nothing yet. You know it's easier to sing than to be silent. I'm only speaking from the sparsest personal experience but sufficient to give me a little clue and an insight of what God did to us in Minnesota up there in the woods when he brought us to a certain impasse in our lives when we came to a terrible dead end where we didn't know how to go any further.

We were beyond our own knowledge, our own expertise, our own ability. We confessed, we prayed, and God's answer did not yet come. We were suffering terrible poverty, financial distress, debts, and we didn't know why.

The place was loaded with suspicion and jealousy and irritation and resentment. That's what we had come to. We were at a dead end. And if God did not break through, we would have perished. And the last thing that we did was call a fast.

And toward the end of that fast, the Lord had us on the floor in one room together for 13 hours. And all you could hear is an occasional sob or a whimper. You say, wasn't it boring? No, it was not. I can't describe to you the profound engagement between the Spirit of God and men.

Something was taking place in the heavenlies that we could not identify. Something was being transacted for which we did not see the result that day. It was a kind of worship unto God. How many people know what the root meaning of the word worship is?

It is utter prostration and bowing before God in abject and total dependency upon Him. Have you ever been that flat out? Where you can't even whimper or groan, let alone have anything clever to say or to pray.

You are finished, and you are finished together. And if God doesn't answer, you've had it. It's a form of worship of which few saints know anything. But I have a sense that these men at Antioch, different though they were in race and background, at a time when for a Jew to associate with a Gentile was considered unthinkable, these men were so knit as the family of God.

They were so much true church that they could fast and minister unto the Lord together. We've got to come again to that place. And we shall not attain it in our present conventional structure. I wonder if you're listening intently tonight.

I wonder what this is sounding like in your ears. Is this some kind of harebrained thing? Or you're just listening to some eccentric guy sounding off? Or can you believe that God is crying out for the restoration of true church?

And I want to ask you a question, guys. You're at a crossroad right now. What would you rather have? A successful church or an apostolic glory? What is the extent of your ambition in God? You want to have a snazzy program and multiply the congregation and have all kinds of youth work and retreats and nice things going and prison ministries and elderly and all that stuff and have your budget balanced and have a good staff and a happy congregation and every service will be a delight?

How many people think that what I've just described is the ultimate end of what a church could be? It's good. And few churches have attained that. But I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy for something more than that which is good but that which is perfect and is the heavenly and apostolic model.

Apostolic Mission and the Cost of Persecution

For these men that were separated by the Holy Ghost by name and were sent forth by the laying on of hands shook the earth and turned cities upside down. Don't tell me about successful ministries. They can't compare to the apostolic splendor and the glory of what happened from those who were sent forth out of Antioch.

For God's sake, wake up and become discontent with things that are merely good and successful. Two such men turned cities upside down. These are they which turned the cities upside down was said of these apostolic giants who brought with them the reality of God that was nurtured in the assembly of the saints which was true church or a peace of the kingdom of heaven on earth.

But I'll tell you, it doesn't come easy to be able to minister unto the Lord and fast together with a black man or a Jew or a Roman or a Cyrene. Oh, I'll tell you, there's a grading. There's a dealing.

There are things that will rise up to the surface that will disgust you. You'll be amazed at the revelation of your prejudices. You didn't even know they were there. And you'll never see it so long as your religious life is reduced to services and potluck suppers.

Anybody can be cordial for an hour but let me see you stretched out 13 hours on the floor with men who are different. Can you understand that relationship is the key, guys? That a kingdom is a social entity, a kind of society, a reality of men and women of diverse backgrounds coming together in an unusual kind of relationship that can only be described as the kingdom of heaven.

Can you see why it will take the power of the Holy Ghost? Can you see why we wouldn't be able to do this out of our own natural aptitude or well-meaning intention? It will take very God. And great grace was upon them all.

You better believe it, it'll take great grace. And God will extend great grace when he is blessed and pleased with people who are walking in the way and whose church life is not structured by the world but by the apostolic model that came down from heaven as the plumb line of God.

I'll tell you, some of those that were sent forth by the Holy Ghost never returned. They found themselves stoned to death, imprisoned, burned at the stake, sawn asunder. They wandered naked and destitute.

They lived in caves and holes. And you want to know something tonight? You can bet your life on it. We are surrounded this night by a cloud of invisible witnesses of the very men that I'm describing are watching this service tonight.

I'm getting a chill, goosebumps, half-inch high. This service is being watched by a cloud of invisible witnesses who will not be perfect without you. They're wondering if you're going to get with it.

They're wondering if you're going to be satisfied with the status quo and be just another groovy and successful church or you're going to break through into the kind of realities that will again shake the earth and turn cities upside down for Christ's sake though it's going to cost you and though there'll be casualties.

How many of you have the faith to believe, Pentecostals though you are, that the Holy Ghost can actually speak into a congregation and separate actual individuals by name? When have you heard such a thing last?

And how many of us would be willing to wait until the Holy Ghost calls the shots and we don't determine who's going where by some committee arrangement or we think it'll be a good thing if this one did that and that we're just as content to minister unto the Lord as to go?

Have you come to that? That is high priestly service of which few saints know anything. Turn back to the book of Leviticus. See what it took for the ordination of priests. See men who had blood dripping from fingernails to elbows and sacrifices and heave offerings and splattered with oil and splattered with blood and washed in water and dressed in linen and publicly humiliated and all of these things before the congregation who stood at the door of the tent of the meeting to watch it.

When the whole bloody business was finished, men who knew what sacrifice meant because you could no longer distinguish them from the sacrifice, they were so full of the blood and the gore of it, wearied.

There was nothing left of them which is God's perfect beginning. No hot shot bravado. No men are going to do things for God. Wiped out and exhausted by the foolish requirement of sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice till they were steeped in the blood of sacrifice and they were not yet ordained for service.

They still had to wait seven days in the door of the tent of the meeting. How many of you have an itch to do for God? To run and go and be seen and perform? Shot through with human ambition, wanting to justify yourself, wanting to be seen doing.

You'll never have apostolic glory from such vessels as that. Only men who are utterly dead unto themselves, steeped in blood and who have been burned out at the door of the tent of the meeting. On the eighth day, the day of new beginnings, the glory of God fell for the priests who gave themselves to that kind of ordination.

Priestly Waiting and Being Sent by the Holy Spirit

Where is the family Zadok, the priests who have the charge of the sanctuary, who have not trafficked in the outer court and accommodated the people with man-pleasing sermons, but have kept the charge of the inner place and have ministered unto him, who can wait on the Lord until they hear the call of the Holy Ghost.

And if it doesn't come, they're just as content waiting as going. I remember I made one of my overseas trips, talk about apostolic glory. I don't have a word to describe how God has saved congregations and entire denominations in four nights in Yugoslavia, going to the meeting every night, not knowing what to speak.

And to be driven to the airport when it was all over and to be told by the men taking you that in the middle of our crisis, when we were helpless and at the point of complete extinction, God sent the living word.

That's because I had people 5 ,000 miles away in Minnesota on their faces, praying and fasting for three days while I was on the firing line. Apostolic glory, day after day and week after week. And so I was going to take a 21-year-old brother with from our fellowship, precious young disciple, full of sap, wanting to do.

And I said to him as we came close to the day of departure, I said, Brother, supposing at this late moment I decided not to take you but to take another, what would you do? He said, Art, it's all the same to me whether I go or I remain.

I said, Great, now it's safe for you to go. Have you come to that? Dear children, the world has not seen priestly service unto God. And I want to say with the authority of God, if it's not service unto God first, it's not service unto men either.

How many of us have that priestly sense of waiting on the Lord and ministering unto Him in the inner place, in the sanctuary? What does the Word say? As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate unto me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereinto I have called them.

You think it's coincidence? Or was God waiting and brooding for the moment that men would be found ministering unto Him? Then the call of the Holy Ghost came. And so when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.

I guess that the call was so explicit, it was so heard by the entire congregation that there was no question whatsoever that God had called these two particular men. But before they would let them go, they fasted and prayed again and laid their hands upon them and sent them forth.

That's the way I came from Minnesota to California on this trip. And I wouldn't dare dream to leave except that I was sent forth in that way. It's either some kind of shabby ceremony or it is one of the most profound kinds of requirements of God which has been completely ignored in modern times.

Whose hands do you want laid on you if you're going forth into an apostolic journey where you may not return? You want some guy who was at the pool hall the night before or masturbating or twiddling with his TV set or playing through the sport pages?

Or do you want a man whose hands were raised before God? Do you want to be sent forth by a people whom you know and trust and who are in this together with you or just a bunch of strangers who happen to share a seat in a pew in the church and are sending you forth as just a kind of matter of ceremony?

We're talking about life and death. That was not any little mock gesture. It was an act of the profoundest identification between those who go and those who stay. A commitment that though you are from us yet shall we uphold you in prayer and in fastings oft.

Yet do we give God the opportunity to wake us at any hour of day and night and bring us on our faces prostrate crying out for you wherever you may be. How many times has my fellowship told me that we don't know where you were at but at a certain day we felt that you were in some kind of danger.

You were somewhere in Yugoslavia or some such place and we just prayed. And I said, gee, nothing happened to me. I don't recall anything. But what would have happened had they not hearkened to the Holy Ghost?

So they fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them and they sent them away. And the fourth verse says, so they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost. There must be a typographical error. Didn't the verse before say that they laid hands on them?

So what is this verse saying? So they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost. Because when they laid hands on them it was tantamount to and equivalent to being sent forth by the Holy Ghost. You couldn't tell where men ended and God began.

It was all the same. It was the church that was at Antioch. No one was confused that it was the voice of the Holy Ghost calling men by name. Whether it came as prophecy, whether it came as tongues or interpretation, I don't know.

But the gifts of the Spirit were so tested in that congregation and they knew so well the integrity and the character of the vessels being used that there was no doubt that God was calling these men. How many of us are playing with the gifts of the Spirit?

And in how many Pentecostal assemblies are those gifts rarely expressed? What God has been teaching us is that it's love that releases them. Do you remember back in Israel's history when three Gentile uncircumcised armies stood on the borders of Judah threatening to inundate and invade and crush the life out of that people in the time of King Jehoshaphat?

And he came and he stood on the steps of the temple and he looked up to God and he spoke for the people. He said, Lord, we have no might in ourselves. Neither know we what to do, but our eyes are turned to Thee.

And he proclaimed the fast in all the land and they came from all the cities of Judah and assembled together with their wives and with their children. Boy, I'll tell you, it was an earnest moment. It was life or death for an entire people.

And if they had been destroyed in Judah, there would have been no Messiah. You wouldn't be sitting here. It's not a little idle episode in history. It was a crisis of unspeakable proportions and men were earnest to the uttermost.

And it says in that moment that the Spirit of God spoke into the congregation through the prophet Jehoshaphat. The battle is not yours, saith the Lord, it is mine. But go ye out against them tomorrow.

You know what they did? They fell on their faces and they worshipped. Nobody scratched their heads and said, well, I don't know about that guy who gave that prophecy. Sometimes he's on, sometimes he's off.

And they worshipped. They knew the priest. He's mentioned by name, Jehoshaphat. They knew his integrity in God. They knew he was a tested vessel. They knew they were hearing the voice of God because they went forth the next morning to do battle.

Supposing it were not the voice of God speaking. Supposing it was some kind of fleshy believer who was half on, half off, and you never know when. And that was not God. You know what would have happened that day?

They would have gotten smashed. Dear children, we are coming again to an hour when the gifts of the Spirit are going to be crucial, life-giving, life and death instrumentalities of God, operated by love in a people who are in it together with their wives and their children.

When are we going to wake up and start getting serious with God and stop playing at church because it is convenient and doesn't require much of us but a few hours in the week and a small portion of our substance.

The Church as God’s Eternal Witness

Unto God be glory in the church. Paul said he was a bondslave to Jesus that he might make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery. He was passionate for the church. Are we? I love the first word of this 13th chapter, now.

Now there was at the church that was at Antioch. Now. God is waiting for a now. He is waiting for a people who will get it together apostolically, who can fast and minister unto the Lord. A fellowship that produces apostolic men of stature, prophets and teachers, matured that God can call them forth for ministry in the world because there's an environment that is hospitable to their birth, to their nurture and to their growth.

Now, priestly men who can wait and minister unto the Lord and it's all the same to them whether they go or whether they remain. Not an organization, an organism. Organic, growing up together by the spirit of the Lord.

A local body, diverse, but one. Tested gifts of the spirit, submitted to the head of the church. Separate me, Paul and Barnabas, for the work I have called them. Whew. It might be a little different from the work that you would have chosen, but it was true church under the headship of the Lord through the government of men in a people who can minister unto the Lord together.

It was a society. It was apostolic and the results were apostolic. They shook the earth. They were a people who were diverse, but they were a people who were together. Those that believed were together.

Neither thought any of them that the things which he had were his own. They had all things common. It was a different kind of society. Those that had properties and incomes and other things sold them and laid them at the feet of the apostles who made distribution for the saints in need.

There was a koinonia there that the modern world has not seen in two thousand years. There was a quality of fellowship and life and joyful giving to the point of sacrifice that has not been seen in modern times that makes our dollar in a collection plate and even our tithes look anemic and sick.

They were people who more likely lived from the tithe than they lived from their income. They gave the ninety percent and lived on the ten. They were people who lived in the expectation of the soon return of the Lord.

They weren't laying up treasure for themselves on earth. They could be moved at the will of the Holy Spirit. Now had come to Antioch. Great grace was upon them all. Maybe we can just see some of the verses in the third chapter of the book of Ephesians where Paul gets utterly carried away by the church.

Have you fallen in love yet with the church? How many of you really think that the church is a peripheral matter and not the main business of your life? That the main business of your life is making a living and getting it together for your family and seeing to your security and then, of course, whatever time is left over to attend the services and to be faithful in your church attendance.

May I say something flat out? By the authority of Jesus Christ, you've got it all wrong. The purpose for your being is that unto God might be glory in the church. Your jobs, your income, your security are only the secondary things that enables your physical life to continue that you might give yourself to the masterpiece of God that you have been throughout all the ages.

He shall not do anything in the earth outside of his church. And I'm not talking about a building. I'm talking about an apostolic reality. The last verse of the third chapter says, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.

Amen. Look at that verse. Do you think that this is biblical rhetoric? Do you think that these are fanciful phrases? What does God say in that that this church is going to be not only a glory, but an eternal glory?

Listen, guys, you need to repent from a mindset that doesn't understand what eternity means and sees only things in terms of five years, ten years, or you expect to be transient and moving and going. You're too American and have not a notion of things that are built to last.

Everything here is ginsy. If we have a building 50 years old, we think it's old and we'll knock it down. You need to go to Europe and see buildings that were built in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries still occupied because they were built with such craftsmanship in another kind of culture where men spent years in apprenticeship before they were allowed to touch anything that when they built, they built to last.

What then shall we say of the master builder whose supreme masterpiece is the church throughout all ages? World without end. Amen. Are you working with him? Are you willing to give yourself to being shaped and formed at his hand?

I'll tell you, if you had my experience just recently in England of going through the Royal Porcelain Factory, you'd be stunned. You cannot believe what men will do to produce fine porcelain in China.

You can't believe the exactitude and the detail and the concentration, the impeccableness of what they'll do to get the finest ingredients and mix them in exact proportion at the right temperatures to use as clay.

And how they'll press it into molds and how they'll reject anything that's even slightly defective. Because why send it through the whole process if it has a defect and a mar in the beginning? And how those things go through the fire again and again and again.