(Becoming a Prophetic Church) 2. Jewish Unbelief — Art Katz

The Resurrected Christ in Earthen Vessels

Pleasing to yourself we're not looking for novelty but to demonstrate to this people that what they're observing is the mystery of incarnation. That this is not a piece of Brooklyn expertise but the resurrected and ascended Christ dwelling in an earthen vessel and bringing forth out of the wisdom and will of his own life words and expression that are given spoil them and show them that nothing less will suffice for the church of the last days.

And that any attempt out of our own well-meaning intention and humanity to serve God must necessarily fail. It will be as embarrassing a collapse as Peter denying you three times with oaths and cursings who thought on the basis of his own Jewish impudence that though all the world deny you yet will we deny you never.

And there was the first to deny you atrociously because man cannot serve God in himself. And that's why Paul concludes Romans chapter 11 the great dissertation on the mystery of Israel in the church 9 through 11 with that great doxology all the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God who has been his counselor who shall give to him and it shall be given again for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever.

Now hear this you dear Saints this is not Pauline rhetoric this is not biblical flourish. This is the heart of axiomatic apostolic mentality that the issue of God's glory forever is the issue of what is of him and through him that it might be to him.

Any attempt to fulfill an apostolic destiny on the basis of charismatic or evangelical well-meaning intention is a patent contradiction that cannot avail for the glory of God. It may be sufficient for you to succeed for the moment and get by without embarrassment but it cannot attain to the glory of God forever.

And don't think that Paul talks tax the word forever at the end of that statement as if it's an embellishment. You know what makes Paul Paul. That he's eternally minded. That the issue of God's glory though it is affected in history and time has reverberation and consequence.

That's eternal. Or else it's not the issue of his glory. His glory is never the issue of a moment it has its occasion in a moment but the consequence is eternal. And that therefore it must be not only of him but through him got the picture.

Emptied of Confidence in the Flesh

So don't be deceived by a Brooklyn accent or to think that this is Jewish expertise or something that is uniquely mine by virtue of some kind of gift or talent. God sought to it that I was emptied of all talent when I came back from Jerusalem 40 years ago and resume my place in the same school system where I was the leading faculty radical and led students over a cliff in an interracial club after school as a inspired idealist who's going to attain racial harmony out of his humanism.

The remarkable thing is that return to that same district and resuming the teaching career was a patent failure failure and a colossal flop. I was a greater success as an atheist than ever I was as a believer.

And that failure was not just a moment but daily. I was the laughing stock of my students. I was a picture of absurdity and contradiction who couldn't even formulate his face. I lost all charm. I couldn't bring two words together.

I was just a jumble of painful contradiction less than I was as an atheist. How do you figure that if that's a conundrum for you. And you can't understand why God would submit an intense Jewish personality to a collapse.

Who's expected that if he was impressive as an atheist what would he be as a believer. And to find out not only is he not as impressive but he's a colossal flop. And that every day is a dismal reiteration of that failure before students who are laughing up their sleeves at the absurdity of that spectacle.

And that it went on for weeks maybe months that going to school every day was another walk to Calvary in humiliation. Can you understand that if you don't understand it you're virtually outside the faith.

So I'll explain it to you. Well I'll tell you how it was explained to me. Finally a believer came and I cried out. I said brother I was so impressive as an atheist. My students would follow me over a cliff.

But I have lost every faculty that I enjoyed as an atheist and as a natural man. And now I can't even communicate the most elementary things. The words choke up on me. I my face is grim. I can't even smile.

I'm a patent collapse. Oh Artie said not at all alarmed. Don't you know what God is doing. No I don't. He's emptying you of all confidence in the flesh. So I believe that he's continuing to empty me. And if anything comes out that is coherent and articulate that makes any kind of sense and is commendable.

It's because the God who emptied is the God who has filled and replaced that human and natural propensity with his divine enablement out of his resurrected and ascended life that we might live through him got the picture.

So we prophetic men few as we are very few are required not only to explicate but demonstrate the actuality by which our prophetic this is real which is exactly the means by which you're going to fulfill the mysteries that we proclaim to you.

The Church’s Call to Israel

Because I don't know if you've noticed so far that the call of the church to Israel and to the Jew of the last days is eminently beyond any capacity in yourself to fulfill. We Jews are tough cookies. And that's why you have circumvented us historically though you had a mandate from the Lord himself to the Jew first begin in Jerusalem and then Judea and then to the uttermost corners.

And you've reversed the whole priority of God. And you've left us last. And not at all because you wisely recognized you have not what it takes. We Jews are intimidating and intellectual and articulate.

And it was right in this city as a missionary to the Jews that I had the first door shut in my face by an outraged Orthodox Jew whose wife I met at the local laundromat. Because having arrived in Kansas City and being trained in New York by Moishe Rosen I wondered.

Well how do you now. What. How do you begin to be a missionary to the Jews in Kansas City or anywhere. And so I took the dirty wash to the laundromat. And not knowing how to function I asked the lady who was at accessible can you help me to.

And she was Jewish. Well what are you doing here. You just arrived. Yeah. One word led to another and through that finally a visit to her husband on the Shabbat. I came up his walk. He was standing by the door with his hand on the handle.

That glass. What do they call that. Like a storm door. And as I approached him he opened that he shouted how dare you to come on the Shabbat with your King James Bible and seek to convert me. Wham. That was my introduction to Jewish ministry.

I want to tell you this ain't it has never gotten easier and nor will it. They are the enemies of the gospel. Paul says for your sake you need an enemy like that because you're a bunch of soft touches and your Kansas City environment does not help one bit.

It's too soft to indulgent too fleshly too carnal too materialistic. You need a tough people to oppose you to the teeth and make your little formulas turn to dust in your mouth and fall to the ground with a thud.

Thank you Lord that you've called me to insult the church because heaven knows they need it. So we Jews are characteristically tough resilient resistant but it's for your sake. And Greeks will undoubtedly receive the benefit if you can succeed with us.

But to succeed with us you have got to be the epitome and the yes and the statement of the resurrection life. Well-meaning evangelicalism. Forget it charismatic hyperbole and enthusiasm. Forget it resurrection authority and power and wisdom.

Yes. And you'll not find it in a moment if you're not consistently living all your moments in that reality got the picture. So look at the wisdom of God to have saved us from becoming what a Sunday culture something that satisfies ourselves.

He's put right into our midst wherever we are. I have found the Jewish community in Tokyo. I have found them in former Yugoslavia. There's hardly a place where I traverse the earth where I've not found some semblance of my people as a presence if for no other purpose than to antagonize and provoke and challenge the church of that locality.

So we are without excuse. So what will it take. I don't think the Lord himself succeeded so well and became victim at the hands of the very people to whom he came who received him not. So Lord show us that this is not hypothetical that as you have lived through the father we are called to live through you.

And living is an all inclusive word that is more than just Sunday performance but the total reality to which we're called in a world which is at enmity with God where we need your wisdom your word your direction your enablement your life your vitality.

Especially if we're 75 years old as I am. And we'll be going from here to st. Louis and the University of Missouri and other meetings and Pennsylvania and then New York and two weeks later Holland Germany Singapore Malaysia Indonesia and Israel for a short interval before going out again into Mexico Panama San Salvador and Argentina with a short interval before going out again to Israel India New Zealand Australia Kenya Uganda Cameroon and upper Volta wet on the west coast of Africa.

Bang bang bang. See you dear saints. I have an advantage over you if there's no resurrection. I am of all men most to be pitied. You know that that Mike had to wake me up. I were almost dozed off in the waiting room before called being called on to speak.

But some of the greatest things that God has ever expressed through me has come from being wakened because his life is there and resident and available because he knows better than we that what we are about is more than a Sunday service.

He knows that the stakes are immeasurable. Only he knows the the full consequence of these speakings and therefore only he can meet it in the fullness of that life which is the fullness of the of the Godhead in him bodily.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels. Do you believe that. Then why aren't you living out of that treasure and not your Kansas City ability. And so the Jew is given to test us and to provoke us to bring us across that threshold and into the realm of moving living and have our being that Paul occupied and expressed and that God intends as definitive and normative for all the church.

If I stopped there and went no further you got that much you got. You've got plenty. Okay. Well on top of everything else I have a residence in New York. The rent is extravagant and yet New Yorkers tell me the Lord has done well by me and has given me opportunity to have some contact with Jews.

I was seeing a rabbi weekly until we reached the point of no return where he could no longer remain polite and had to be insulting because I subscribe to a deceiver a magician and therefore I must myself be deceived even though I have a strange aura as he told a friend of mine that he can't quite explain and an affection that God has himself engendered in his heart and mine.

Other than that we are in total opposition continually. But it's a love love your enemy. So then the New York experience has been significant. I subscribe to all three Jewish periodicals as well as the New York Times.

In fact it's worth moving to New York just to subscribe to the New York Times daily. It's an education that you need and clip out articles. You can't do the Times justice on any weekday less than two hours.

And it deserves that attention. And the magazine section the book section. It's a remarkable resource. Plus the three Jewish periodicals. And so I know what's taking place the lectures the seminars the special occasions.

I don't suppose any you are old enough to know who Sid Caesar is. Raise your hand if you hey you've been watching too much TV. That's your problem. Well I went to sit see that sit Caesars what we call it wouldn't be a memorial.

He was still alive and spoke. It was a kind of acknowledgement of a man now in his 80s as a significant personality in the entertainment industry. And it was advertised and I went to it. I brought a copy of Ben Israel and signed it and gave it to him in hope that he would read it and something would be ignited in his soul that might turn him to the Lord.

I do things like that when I'm in New York and I attend seminars and lectures and almost invariably the topic now is the anti-semitism. How is it distinguished from the old. It's. It's distinguished by its universality.

It is ubiquitous. What does that mean. It's as frequent as you can find MacArthur franchises McDonald's hamburgers. It's everywhere. It's no longer a gutter phenomenon. It's no longer for the uneducated classes at the university level at the professional level our rabid anti-semites whose vocabulary is more refined but whose vehemence and hatred is just as profound as that which is generated from the gutter.

It's a new kind and it's at work in the world in nations that have formerly been sympathetic to Israel. So a dear sister in the Lord who has whose paintings have been hung in the synagogue in Holland has recently let us know that that synagogue was bombed set afire but her paintings were saved.

And it's the first instance of that kind of violence against a synagogue in the nation that remembers and Frank which role she herself played both on stage and in film. And it's a sign of the times the French Jewish community has been warned by the government that we're no longer in a place to protect you.

After all you're only 500 ,000 Jews but you're living in the midst of five million Muslims. And we cannot provide that protection. And so Jewish leaders are saying to their populations in France Germany England learn another language.

Pack your suitcase be prepared to move. We can no longer guarantee your safety. Do you Saints. Do you know about this. It's dangerous. It's fierce. It's vehement. And it's bringing together an amalgam of political radicals from left and right and the peace the green movement the people concerned for ecology.

It's amazing what has come together under the banner of anti-seism anti-semitism and Jewish hatred. And so the Jewish community is alarmed and rightly so it's no longer just some freaky characters out playing in the bushes somewhere but at the highest echelons of society and University life and culture you find some of the most vehement expressions of anti-jewish hatred growing out of a dissatisfaction and a criticism of the nation Israel and its policies.

So at first what was anti Israel became anti-zionism and now becomes anti-jewish not just for Jews who are living in Israel but use anywhere. So the plot is thickening the noose is tightening and we're going to see Jacob's the time of Jacob's trouble coming out of this growing hatred that is diabolical in its origin and will not be satisfied except with the annihilation of the Jewish people.

Anti-Semitism and the Need for the Gospel

So I attend these lectures and one that comes to mind this morning recently a message by the man who wrote a book on the new anti-semitism whose name is shown felt which means a Jew of German extraction.

And he gave a brilliant talk on the extent of this phenomenon but he had no answer as to either understand its origins or to find solution. There were 500 Jews in that audience. There was a proliferation of yarmulkes.

How many people know what a yarmulke is the little kipper the head covering throughout the audience. So they were all Jews. There must have been at least I'm guessing a dozen or more rabbis in that congregation.

And there was not so much as one question and the question and answer time that had to do with God. So being the fool that I am at a certain propitious moment I raised my hand and was recognized. And I raised this question.

I said sir I'm astonished having attended now many of these functions on the subject of anti-semitism. I have yet to hear a first reference to God. Can it be that anti-semitism itself has something to do with him.

Could it be some statement of his disfavor or that our neglect of him as is being expressed by the failure even to bring them into our consideration has provoked an anti-semitism so as to wrap our knuckles and to turn us toward some consciousness of himself that anti-semitism is itself a phenomenon of mild and preliminary judgment to turn us to the attention of him who is suffering gross neglect from us as Jews.

And if we'll not consider him in the growing Paul of this global phenomenon now when will we consider him. And if we don't consider him at all don't we deserve the chastisement that anti-semitism is because don't we have in a special obligation as Jews to be mindful of our God and to make him known.

Could it be then that the root cause of anti-semitism is our neglect. And that the solution will be a turning to God. There's a deadly silence. He choked and spluttered PhD. And he finally said something like I'm sorry this is not scientific.

Like I can't even understand your question. God is not an equation that I know how to factor in. And then he just turned to and began to receive other questions out of the audience. They went right back to politics.

What about the next election. What about this. What about this secular this political. There was not one that took up the subject that I had introduced. And then it came to an end. I remained in my seat.

I thought out of 500 people. How many will come up and say to me are you for real. What were you talking. Do you really believe that that God knows our situation that there's a God who can intervene. Haven't you ever heard about the Holocaust.

Where was he then. How do you come to this perspective. I sat there and everyone passed me by and left the room. Not a single soul of 500 came to take up any response to the subject of God as Jews in New York City in an age of increasing threat of anti-semitism.

So being the obstreperous character as you've already observed that I am who takes delight in insulting the church. I went back to my Brooklyn apartment and turned on the computer and I started an essay entitled the necessity for violence something along the lines of what will it take to jar Jewish consciousness and sensibility to an awareness of the truth of our condition when what we have suffered historically for the neglect of God and continue to suffer and will suffer in greater measure if we continue in this present secular obstinacy and neglect nothing less than violence.

Isaiah 53 and Israel’s Suffering

So this evening as I told the first session I plan to look at Isaiah 53. You can do your homework and read it afresh yourself but read it with this perspective not as a statement only of the suffering of the Messiah who fulfilled it in full but also a preliminary and a picture of a suffering of a nation that will pass through the same road to Calvary and the necessary preliminary through violence by which they will be marred more than any man in order to fit them for the fulfillment of our national destiny and calling which is a nation of priests and a light unto the world.

How far will God go to fit a nation for its destiny is the issue of the violence of the last days that God will allow to come upon us as Jews both in proportion to the sin of our neglect and both in anticipation of our ultimate calling which even the church does not rightly understand or esteem got the picture.

And that is to say the more profound the calling the more profound the preparation the more the necessity for suffering in its attainment. And the only reason why you stagger at this that Israel would have to bear this logic is because you've not received it for yourself because you don't see the necessity for suffering in the fulfillment of your call and your destiny.

And that's why your walk and your service is less than and other than God's apostolic and prophetic intention. You're shrinking from the suffering that is intrinsic to the preparation of any vessel that is to be used by God and the things that pertain to his glory.

And because you're unwilling for it yourself you shrink from Israel having to consider it. And you would rather placate the Jew and make nice and plant trees in Israel and go to Feast of Tabernacles conferences and dance with your yarmulkes and and tzitzis and all of that shtiklach that you enjoy in the deep corridors of your soulishness than to take up the issue of suffering that is inexorable that that is unavoidable in any true ministry to the Jew.

The suffering of rejection from them to you of insult of reprimand of reproach. You can't even take it if someone looks at you cross side and you you want so much to obtain their approval and their affection if only they would chuck you under the chin and pinch your cheek and love you for the evangelical Christians that you are who support Israel.

But if you have to tell them that there's a coming time for which you have no awareness that will strike you in the bastions of your present security like New York City itself that you better brace yourself.

And in fact there's a place of safety there's an arc of safety available even now if you believe upon him whom you have up till now rejected you'll find that that face that mask of civility removed and men and women bearing their teeth and their fangs and accosting you for the ultimate insult of daring to propose that they need to consider that man whose name Jews have historically suffered the very anti-semitism that haunts them even now which they see as a Christian phenomenon rooted in the references in the in the New Testament to the Jews.

You've got your work cut out for you so you can pray for me. On October 16 fell speaking one time. But now I'm Germany near Frankfurt on a conference on evangelism to the Jew where the dear sister who is promoting this has had to field a number of phone calls protesting my being on the program having that man if he's going to be speaking we're not coming.

Nevertheless there are a few who are saying if he'll not speak will not come and she still is having the courage to have me you know what it means to tell the church in Germany that the that their obligation to the Jew is the issue of the gospel that the same people who are still shrinking from the shame and the guilt of the recent Holocaust would be performing another act of anti-semitism by withholding the necessary message of the gospel to the Jews who are increasingly in their midst a hundred to three hundred thousand.

And when the tidal wave breaks and Jews are forced out of other nations they'll be coming to Germany where the rewards and the benefits are liberal because the temptation the tendency of a German Christian is to make nice is to or swash the pain of the past by being a comforting presence but but to antagonize the Jew of the necessity for the consideration of Jesus through the gospel is the last thing that a German Christian wants to consider.

And I'm going to say to them that if you fail in this it's not only the Jew that will suffer the loss of that message but the church will suffer the loss of its identity as the church. For the issue of the gospel is the issue of the church and that church that will not take it up in its first and most radical expression to the Jew first forfeits its identity as church.

And so you're going to open the door a second time for the want of a viable and apostolic presence to the same demonic forces of darkness that swept through Germany in the 1930s because there was not a church of a kind that could identify discern or oppose that darkness.

The issue of the Jew in the gospel is the issue of the church. But for you as a German to promulgate that message to the Jews who are now thick by the hundreds of thousands throughout your nation is the call to you of the cross.

You've got to die to your timidity to your fear of man you're to your need to be applauded and received and recognized and to that thing that is most dear to you Jewish approval. Oh I could tell you stories being on an airplane and as I'm so constantly am and there's a Jewish woman sitting next to me no identification but everything in me knew that I knew and I'm talking to her and pressing the issue of the faith.

And the woman who is sitting on the third seat by the window a Gentile I think probably from Kansas City at what she turned and she said to me at a certain heated moment why don't you leave her alone already.

Leave her alone. And that's what you're going to hear. Haven't they suffered enough. Do you have to badger them. You have to provoke them leave them alone. And what will the German Jews say to the Church of Germany that seeks to promulgate the gospel.

Wasn't it enough that you destroyed our bodies a generation ago. Are you now seeking to destroy our souls. Got the picture. What is an issue now for the church in Germany should be an issue now for the church in America wherever there is a Jewish presence is the issue of the church that will make it make us or break us depending on how urgently we've we sense the need to promulgate the gospel to the degree that we ourselves know it and understand it.

The Gospel to the Jew First

Because there's not one in a hundred here who can even write a paragraph on what the gospel in fact is let alone say as Paul my gospel or our gospel and which he speaks of his message with an affection and a personal attachment that none of us have ever known and for the want of which he would not for a moment hesitate to confront Peter to his face and that publicly for the truth of the gospel sake.

Remember that in Galatians evidently the gospel for Paul was not only a critical issue it was the critical issue for which he was even willing to be misunderstood as a Johnny come lately who dares publicly to confront the foundational Apostle Peter the Rock and take him to task for a deviation by which if it continues as Barnabas was already won by that deceit would compromise the gospel message itself which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and then only also to the Greek.

The promulgation of the gospel is for the church the taking up of a cross and of a suffering particularly in the light of recent history and what Jews have suffered and interpret as being the necessary outgrowth of the New Testament itself.

As I've mentioned in a word every card is stacked against us and I'm just perverse enough to say yes Lord. Thank you that it is. Thank you that the faith is not a snap. Thank you that the gospel cannot be reduced to a little formula step one step two step three.

I you say brother God has a plan for your life appealing to the selfishness of men at the benefit they will receive by believing we have enough faint-hearted so-called Christians now who have come into the faith so called by that kind of decision by accepting Jesus who will do good for them.

It's not a message that will impress Jews. So I was looking over my Holocaust book. I've only had two Jewish responses and both of them were as foul-mouthed and vehement and angry and bitter as anything I have ever experienced.

And one came from the head of the Israeli Bible Society. You would have thought at least from that source a certain measure not of acceptance but an acknowledgement that however vile the thesis that the Holocaust is a statement of God's judgment it's a it's one that can be supported biblically and prophetically.

Instead this man said I don't often write to the authors of trash. I just automatically throw their garbage into the waste bin. But yours is so unequivocally vile so un so reprehensible that I had to write to tell you of what a sickening thing your book is.

Who do you think you are. Goes on like that. I always remember his name because it's it's spelled it sounds like bacon but con I guess you would say with the Israeli Hebrew accent but it's spelled with BAC on.

So one day on the internet I found a doctor back on who's a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and so I sent him a little note. I said are you the the doctor back on who's who felt that my book was so vile.

And I got an answer. He said no that was my uncle. But he showed me your book and I agree with it completely. It is altogether detestable. Well I have a chapter in the book called the judgment of sin and its consequences.

God has a controversy with us concerning our alienation from him. Remember I mentioned no mention of God. Even the discussions about the threat of present anti-semitism. We have been unwilling to face the meaning of our own history and to consider the horror that was the result of that alienation.

You cannot reject God without consequence. Have you learned that he's too formidable. He'll not allow him not suffer that rejection of himself without there being painful consequence. The unhappy fact is that the interpreting of catastrophe as the consequence and judgment for sin is totally incompatible with contemporary Jewish self-assessment.

In my first early morning earlier speaking I said there's no way to understand blood atonement and the sacrifice of Jesus the crucifixion of God only in proportion to an understanding that comes to that one who acknowledges himself as sinner.

The key to revelation of the remarkable phenomenon of atonement through blood and that of the Son of God himself is only revealed in proportion to the knowledge of ourselves as sinners. If we don't see that it's an incomprehensible and unnecessary sacrifice if not a vile thing that God would allow his own son to suffer.

It's incompatible with contemporary Jewish self-assessment. Listen we Jews are impressive. Have you noticed Steven Spielberg and what's his name. Eisner the head of Disney Corporation and many of the giants of American economy finance culture art intellectuality are Jews.

And we have a sense of our own esteem that is quite formidable and by every reckoning deserved. It takes an acute discernment to see through such exterior and recognize the truth of the condition of the most accomplished of men as being lost and deep in sin and deserving the eternal judgment of sin which is hell.

Only those who operate by the eye of the spirit will be able to pierce through and see the truth of the condition of Jewish life despite its external impressiveness. But you soft saps are impressed with that impressiveness and want yourselves to emulate it.

Little wonder you have nothing to say to those whom you admire and want to be like so sin. Jewish consciousness of sin is virtually a non-existing phenomenon. So your first function is to make the Jew with whom you're in conversation aware of the truth of this condition.

A Testimony to Jewish Intellectuals

How do you do that. Well one way that you do it is the way I'm given to do it as I'm pursuing some of the most estimable Jews in New York at the highest echelons of Jewish life who I met at a banquet for commentary magazine one of my favorite publications I commend it to you.

It's a Jewish publication conservative and I'm out after Norman Port Horace's soul a man exactly my age and also from New York with comparable histories but taking different directions. And in order to attend the banquet I was willing to make a thousand dollar donation.

You know how long it took me to write the letter that accompanied my check weeks and much prayer for fear that if that letter was ill phrased if it was clumsy if I said what I ought not to say if I let the cats out of the bag it would have been the end of something that I hope to begin.

So that letter had to be propitious and on top of that it had to be excellently written because Norman Port Horace is a Columbia University graduate in English literature and a Rhodes scholar to Cambridge and a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

And he's a brilliant and towering intellectual whose letter of appeal for funds for his magazine was so classic that I commended it to our community as an example of what English writing should be. So if I write to him with my thousand dollar check and I make a grammatical mistake or misspell a word or write in a clumsy way to confirm that Christians are after all rednecks and fundamentalist dum-dums everything would be lost.

You understand what I'm saying. It takes exquisite care because the Jewish soul is at stake who is an influence in the world who has himself written a book on the prophets that is commendable though it sidesteps Jesus in a remarkable sleight of hand that I hope one day to bring to his attention as a lapse of integrity.

Should God give me the opportunity. So I sent the check finally with a little note I don't know if I I think I said I'm I'm a messianic Jew and that nevertheless I deeply respect the publication and that I have no hesitation for the first time to make a thousand contribute dollar contribution to a secular cause because your magazine is the issue of righteousness.

And so I got the invitation and bought my hundred and thirty-nine dollar suit that I told my wife I didn't need and I went into that Brooklyn discount men's clothing store looking for a sport jacket then and then I looked at the suits and there was this gorgeous pinstripe and I just was impressed.

I thought I didn't think I needed it to buy it and that's what I wore the night of the banquet you should have seen me. Was I ever impressive. And I took with me because you're able to take one guest to let one of the ladies with whom I'm connected in New York is an ex-nun who received the Lord when mass was being served and has gone on to be a precious saint and a woman of prayer ever since she's never married.

And we talk about the s-word that she doesn't like me to pronounce called spinster. So what a couple we made this old crock with this lady on my arm dressed to kill because we were there with the upper crust.

You dear saints you want to know something. It's more stimulating than any charismatic environment I've ever been in. And so the hors d 'oeuvres are served and you stand around and you have a drink a wine or something.

And of course you fall into conversation. There was not a Jew with whom I fell into conversation who is not a physicist a scientist a PhD a writer an author an artist a man of accomplishment. What an environment to be in the midst of Jews like that.

But as I came in the door and there's Norman Hobart Horace receiving the arriving guests and I said I'm the one who sent you that little booklet on the spirit of prophecy. Oh he said I'm too old to be evangelized.

I said all the more reason. And that was the last that we had to say to each other. And so we went through the dinner. We had to listen to him to pontificate as he gave a talk. And it was we had some fellowship of the two doctors at our table.