K-012 to Whom Is the Arm of the Lord Revealed — Art Katz

Impending Worldwide Crisis and the Revelation of Human Hearts

I think it's really a happy accident that the audience is sitting in kind of this darkened atmosphere tonight because I don't really sense that it's a sinister dark. It's just a rather comforting kind of an environment and just perfectly, I think, in keeping with what God has given me to speak tonight.

Of course, what I have to speak is full of nuances and subtleties and soft things. It's not a strident thing where all the lights have to be on. So I just ask you to submit yourself to the atmosphere that God has given us and to the word which he's chosen to speak through me.

I just feel very much relaxed myself, almost more like a teacher just wanting to lean on his elbows and just softly share than some kind of pulpit pounder. I hope I'll not disappoint anybody who came for the latter.

I think that anybody who's a student of life has a sense in his heart that we're on the eve of impending crisis. I think we've always known that and we're seeing these crises multiply. We have a sense that this shall not pass, that they shall increase both in magnitude and intensity, that we're in somehow for a very severe shaking throughout the face of the earth.

Crises of staggering and worldwide proportions, ecologically, in terms of resources, politically, economically, socially, culturally, in every aspect of our modern life. We're beginning to sense reverberations and shakings and the life has become so complex and so interdependent that there's a sense that the whole massive thing may come tottering down.

And I think that as these crises mount, the passions of men are going to be loosed in increasing proportion. Any man who thinks that he has a claim to the solutions to the crises that face mankind will feel himself more vehemently disposed to make his views known and accepted.

So I sense that with the increasing crises that shall come into the world shall come also increasing controversy, increasing rancor, increasing anger and passion and vexation being loosed all over the earth.

Men are going to be crying out for some kind of a solution for the enormous disorder and chaos in which they shall suddenly be plunged. And yet paradoxically in that same time, political authority and authority of every kind shall be at its lowest ebb.

To whom shall we turn and who shall give us answer? I know that there's a political axiom that says that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but I'd like to give my own rendering tonight in keeping with what's on my own heart.

Crisis reveals, an absolute crisis reveals absolutely. And I think that this is going to be an age, among other things that I've cited, it's going to be an age of revelation. Many of us shall be staggered ourselves to see what panic shall reveal about the condition of our own hearts and what it is to which we shall seek in the desperation of our own crises for answer.

Messianic Jewish Controversy and Two Responses to Crisis

And I think that we've already begun to hear the first, what can I say, responses, the first beginning wave of the notes that shall be played more loudly and more stridently in this hour. And some of it, interestingly enough, has come in reaction to what we represent, we Jewish believers, in this messianic Jewish movement or whatever name you care to call it.

All of a sudden we've become an object of some controversy and although we've been long ignored, I guess the phenomenon now has reached such proportion where Jewish people of every age and every place in this country have come to a knowledge of God and Christ that the rabbis have begun to sound their voices and official guardians of the Jewish community.

And I want to quote now from an article, I believe it's Newsweek Magazine, on the Jews for Jesus phenomenon. And I'm quoting here Rabbi Balfour Brickner, I've forgotten now what his official title is, something about interreligious affairs.

And he writes, or he's quoted as saying, everybody has the right to proselytize, says Reformed Rabbi Balfour Brickner, but people also have the right to resist. Brickner distrusts, as do many Jews, the evangelical spirit that they see in Christianity just now.

Then it goes on to quote him again, this coming together of religious and political conservatism, especially this looking to the sky for salvation, he feels, is exactly the kind of environment which led to the advent of Jesus 2 ,000 years ago.

I hope that you can understand the import of that statement. It's utterly profound. This rabbi is beginning to panic because he senses in this kind of emotional and hysterical movement, or so it seems to him, a turning from the things which are sensible and right and established and wise, and choosing to seek after phantoms for the important crises of our age.

And somehow in some sinister political way, this is a collaboration of conservative political groups and conservative religious theology, and it's given rise to a new movement that shall impede the serious and sensible working of men when it is most needed.

Indeed, the atmosphere is something kindred to that 2 ,000 years ago, when our Jewish people then as now were in a condition of most earnest crisis. And again, the issue is most solidly established. Those who shall look to themselves, to their own wisdom and their intellect and their human strength and endowment for their solution, and those, to use his phrase, who shall look to the sky for salvation.

I think that the Bible has much to say about both these categories, and if you will receive it, I'd like in my simplistic way to suggest to you tonight that these two absolutely fundamental points of view represent the two Judaisms which are the only two options for men on the face of this earth.

In the last analysis, when absolute crisis shall reveal absolutely, men, by whatever name they call themselves and by whatever label they choose to label themselves, shall reveal where their ultimate trust and confidence is.

And the great many shall, as men have always done to their sorrow, look to themselves or to their computers or to the things which they have made by their own hands. And a much smaller band, utterly foolish, scorned and despised, looked upon as anathema and even a handicap and an obstacle to the course of mankind, shall look to the sky for their salvation.

Jeremiah's Contrast Between Trusting Flesh and Trusting God

I want to read to you from the book of Jeremiah where these two Judaisms are clearly delineated. In the 17th chapter of this great book, we read the words that begin, thus saith the Lord. And I want you to understand that those who look to the sky for their salvation are also the same who believe that the phrase, thus saith the Lord, is not a rhetorical flourish.

It's not some kind of poetical embellishment to adorn the scriptures. It is exactly what it says, thus saith the Lord. It's every bit as foolish as expecting God to speak through men and for that word to be recorded for us as a guide to conduct in life, as to expect our salvation to come from the sky.

But I'll tell you, that's the Judaism to which I have subscribed. Thus saith the Lord. And I'll tell you, it gets stickier as we read on. Cursed be the man that trusteth in men, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.

Say, Ought, just what gospel is this? This is the gospel of the God of Isaiah, and the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and the God of every believer, and that God who is the father of lights, the giver of every good and perfect gift, in whom is no shadow nor variableness of turning.

Many of us have subscribed to the wrong gospel, and we thought that the scriptures clearly enunciated that God helps those who help themselves. But I defy you to show me where that scripture is contained.

O foolish children, who has deceived you? There's a God who has called us to a most real relationship, that our confidence and trust should not be in ourselves. That's idolatry, but in him. Don't you remember where it said that Abraham believed God, and God accounted that to him for righteousness.

Cursed is that man that trusts in men, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart has departed from the Lord. It's interesting to follow some of the references to arm in the scripture. I remember as a kid, going to school in Manhattan from Brooklyn, every day in high school, as long as my abortive career lasted, before they were glad to see the back of me, I used to come out of the subway, out of the tunnel, out of that long darkness, and up over the Manhattan Bridge.

And on the skyline, I marveled every day, as I had another view of the enormous works of men. Very impressive, very breath-catching, that there was something of an exaltation in that, that I was somehow equated with the great works that men have done, and it made somehow my confidence to rise, that whatever the problem, our goodwill and our intelligence were equal to the task.

And in one part of that horizon, there was a little blinking sign. It was to me the most foolish thing. It was a little pathetic red-pinkish thing, half-shot, and it feebly blinked on and off two words, Jesus saves.

Jesus saves. For as many days as I saw that sign, it had no meaning whatsoever. And I tell you that if you have some sense for the ironies of life, and for the God who chooses the foolish things, that pitted against the skyscrapes of this world with their impressive towers and expressions of human achievement, there is yet, if your eye can discern, one feeble expression which really is the ultimate hope for men.

Jesus saves. But to us who have been groomed and attuned to other things, it's but a pathetic blinking thing. And my prayer tonight is that at the end of these words, as a result of God's power and by His Spirit, that that thing which you have scorned as something pathetic and blinking will be to you a new source of confidence and trust.

The Lord's Arm in Isaiah's Prophetic Witness

Isaiah 40, verses 10 -11. Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and His arm shall rule for Him. Behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him. He shall feed His flock like a shepherd.

He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. Isaiah 51, 5th verse. My righteousness is near, my salvation is gone forth, and my arm shall judge the people.

The isles shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall they trust. Isaiah 52, the 9th verse. Break forth into joy. Sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem. For the Lord hath comforted His people. He hath redeemed Jerusalem.

The Lord God hath made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. What is this arm? What expression is this? Is this some poetic metaphor?

In the very first verse of that very controversial 53rd chapter of Isaiah, we read, Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? Precious people, accept that God make bare and reveal His holy arm.

You have no alternative but to trust in the arm of flesh. And another characteristic of those of us who expect our salvation from the sky, and believe that there's a God who says, Thus saith the Lord, is that the only way to know His arm is by the revelation of His Spirit.

To whom indeed is the arm of the Lord revealed? And that brings us to the substance of what I want to share with you tonight. And it takes us for our purposes into the very first chapter of the Gospel of Luke.

Luke's Announcements of John the Baptist and Jesus

And in it are things recorded, which I had long scorned as an atheist and a scoffer. The kinds of things that we Jews heard growing up in Brooklyn and Philadelphia and other places around Christmas season, that were part of the mythology of the Gentiles, and had no currency in our life.

I'm reading from the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, because my theme tonight is, to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? And it speaks of some foolish characters, and the first are a husband and wife, Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth.

And of them, it says that Elizabeth was barren, and that they were both well stricken in years. But they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless.

And to this couple, barren, God gave John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah, to come. And this was announced to them by an angel. And the angel said, Thou shalt have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth.

For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. And he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel shall return to the Lord their God.

And he shall go before him, the Messiah, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, and to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

He shall be great, and shall be called of the highest. In a time soon following this, another couple, or another woman, was attended to by an angel of the Lord. A virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary.

And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail thou that art highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.

And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus, Yeshua. He shall be great, and he shall be called the son of the highest.

And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Maybe these words sound strange to the ears of contemporary Jews.

It sounds like more like a Christian theology than it does a Jewish. But I tell you that the fault lies with us, and not with God. If we had known the prophets, didn't he foretell that unto us a child would be born, and a son would be given, and his name would be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, and that the government shall be upon his shoulder.

He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. What kind of mystery is this? What kind of foolishness and patent nonsense is this? That one shall be born to a Jewish virgin, who shall reign over the house of Israel forever, and of the end of his kingdom there shall be no end.

To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? To whom does God come, sending his voice by an angel, a messenger? Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word. The angel or the messenger of the Lord comes with the foolishness of God in an age of crisis to those who can say, Be it unto me according to thy word.

And blessed is she that believeth, for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.

She was evidently one whose confidence was not in her own arm. For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden, for behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is his name, and mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.

He hath showed strength with his arm. He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.

He hath helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever. On the day of the birth of the prophet John the Baptist, when the speech of his father Zechariah was returned to him out of unbelief, he spoke these words, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people.

How could a man make such a statement, having seen only the advent of his own son, who is only a forerunner of that one yet to come, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, by which which have been since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham.

Two precious allusions to our father Abraham, and to the promises which God spoke unto our fathers by the mouth of the prophets. To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed, but to those who are of low estate, those who are barren and stricken in years, those who are attuned, not to the zeal and to the intensity and the competence and the powers of men, but to a God who speaks through angels, who brings salvation from the heavens, who makes promises through the prophets, according to Abraham and to his seed forever.

These are the definitive aspects of the Judaism of God. And when Jesus, the infant child, was brought to the temple on the eighth day according to the custom, to be dedicated according to the law of the Lord, it says that, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Ghost was upon him.

And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him after the custom of the law, then took he him up in his arms and blessed God and said, Lord, now let thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel.

Simeon, Anna, and Those Waiting for Redemption

I tell you that this is no mere description of an accidental incident of a man who happened to be waiting in the precincts of the temple. There's a pattern here and a formula. Not everyone has recognized the babe born in the manger.

Not everyone has recognized the arm of the Lord made bare. But to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? To those who are just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. How many of us have been in conversation with our own kinsmen, and they brush us aside by saying, well, you're wrong because the Messiah has not yet come.

Not when he comes. And I always get the impression that they're not actually too eager for the day of his coming. It's a put-off and a cop-out. How many of us are waiting for the consolation of Israel?

How many of us realize that the establishing of the state in 48, and the victory in the 50s, and the war in 67, and the present conflict now, that the successes are not to be attributed to the arm of flesh, or to the valor of Israeli soldiers, or to their strength in arms, but to a God who overshadows his people, and has progressively in every conflict more greatly revealed that he is the great intercessor and the one alone to whom we trust for salvation.

A just and devout man waiting for the consolation of Israel. It was revealed unto him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And I tell you people that if you can accept this foolishness, accept that we see the Lord's Christ before we see death.

It shall be a very long and dark night. To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? To men who are just and devout, who wait for the consolation of Israel and are directed by his Spirit to the manifestation, to the realization, to the revelation of that babe that we might say as this one had said, now let thy servant depart in peace according to thy word for mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared before the face of all people a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of the people Israel.

Another woman to just round out this cast of characters is described in the early chapters of Luke. Her name was Anna and she's called a prophetess, again an aged elderly woman. She was a widow of about four score and four years but served God with fastings and prayer night and day.

And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord and spoke of him to all them that looked for redemption in Israel. She coming in the same moment, by the leading of the same spirit, thanking the Lord, spoke of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.

This coming together of religious and political conservatism, especially this looking to the sky for salvation, is exactly the kind of environment which led to the advent of Jesus two thousand years ago.

The Quiet Ones Waiting for the Kingdom of God

In a book that I was, that the Lord led me to pick up just a day or two ago, I came to a portion that really arrested my attention. The writer spoke, and he used a German expression, of a certain group of peculiar souls and he gives them a collective name.

He called them die stillen im Lande. I don't know how good my German is or yours. Die stillen im Lande. And I guess if I would just try for an interpretation, I guess it would be the quiet ones who were in the land.

Those whose mouths are stopped. Those who are not given to contentiousness. Those who are quiet and waiting for the consolation of Israel. And he describes some of these characters. Of Joseph of Arimathea, the one who took Jesus's body from the cross and brought it and buried it in his own tomb, it is said that he waited for the kingdom of God.

And the same was in all likelihood true of Nicodemus and of other persons of rank and influence. The majority, however, of those to whom waiting for the kingdom of God was a portion of living piety, belonged to the humbler ranks of society.

To their circle we are introduced in the opening pages of the Gospels, which tell of Simeon and Anna and the shepherds of Bethlehem and other kindred spirits. In this circle were born both John the Baptist and Jesus.

And as in the songs which at the time of their birth burst from the inspired lips of Mary and Elizabeth and Zechariah and Simeon, that we discover the truest image of what the messianic hope actually was.

I pray God that you're hearing this without any impairment. In this age of crisis, ultimate and final crises to which God has called our lives, the final showdown will be between two conflicting messianic hopes.

Those who believe that the kingdom of God, however they define it, shall be ushered in by the activity and the energies of men, by their own zeal, by their own righteousness, by their own programs, by their own legislation.

And those that believe, as the shepherds of Israel, as Anna, as Simeon, and such kindred spirits, that the messianic hope is that babe which they saw which was God's Christ, to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed.

He says that in this true image is infinitely something more deep than any creed. It is redolent not of the schools of the scribes, but of the inspiration of the prophets. Above all, it is instinct with the humility of broken hearts and of souls passionately longing for salvation.

The Need for Salvation and the Golden Calf

Have you ever passionately longed for salvation? Have you ever had any cognizance that you've a need to be saved? I remember on the ship coming back from Israel about a year ago this time, after some months living there, it became known that I was a Jewish believer on a ship that was crowded with Jewish people.

And on one of the Oneg Shabbats, I came and I joined several hundred of the Jewish passengers, and the Israeli rabbi was giving a kind of a devotional out of the Torah portion for that week. And he spoke of Moses bringing down the tablets of the law from Sinai, all the while that Israel, the children of Israel, had made for themselves a golden image and were eating and drinking and rising up to play.

And I remember when he finished, they opened up for discussion, and I was amazed at the kind of things that were spoken. People were making clever remarks about the comparison of Israeli Jews as compared to Western Jews and their observations in their trip to Israel, but not a one had anything to say about the enormous passage from the scriptures which had been commented upon.

In due course, I felt that strange thing welling up in my heart that I knew could not be suppressed, and I raised my hand and I was called upon. And I forgot now the exact substance of what I spoke. Something very strange, something with a prophetic ring, something like, I can see that we've not changed in all these thousands of years.

God was tonight bringing us from Sinai something holy, and here we are again dancing around golden idols, something much less, eating, drinking, and rising up to play. Later on, a day or two later on the ship, a man came up to me and struck up a conversation who had heard that, and he asked me what I was about and what I believed, and I told him, Jesus, he said, what do I need him for?

I have no need to be saved. Oh, precious people, people, may the same Holy Spirit that brought Simeon to the temple and directed Anna the prophetess give you a revelation this night, not only of your own need personally, but of our people Israel, of our own little nation tottering between great contending powers, of an age of impending crisis and great threats seeking to bring down the civilization thousands of years in the making, that we have need once again as a people who know God, who shall look to the heavens for their salvation.

May God find us as the stiller in wonder, a quiet people waiting for the consolation of Israel, our mouths stopped, no longer contentious, no longer hot shots ready to go about speaking anxious phrases and humanistic slogans of how we're going to save the world when we can't keep ourselves from our own masturbations.

Two Kinds of Jewishness and the Mystery of Christ

To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? To the stiller in wonder, to those who are aged and of low estate like the Virgin Mary, to those who are barren and never fruitful, to those who are waiting for the consolation of Israel, devout and just men in their hearts.

He makes a distinction between the Israelite and Jewish elements in the intellectual atmosphere in which Jesus grew up. Though Judaism reigned in the schools of the scribes, this author writes, and held the field to outward appearance, yet an Israelite strain of piety and conviction prevailed in a certain section of religious society.

Those who walked in the green pastures and beside the still waters of this faith of the heart were in touch with the prophets and understood all that is deepest in the Old Testament. I remember as a young believer, I was so disturbed I couldn't understand, oh God, how is it that some of us have been able to see who Jesus is, and others are utterly vexed and angry and embittered against us, and that cannot, for the life of us, no matter how we pour ourselves out, be brought to the same understanding.

And so has it always been. There are those who looked upon him and followed him. They heard but a word, or they saw his face, and they knew that this was the Holy One of Israel. I'll take you one better.

There were those who looked upon a babe and said, Now Lord, let me depart, for mine eyes have seen the salvation of Israel. And there were others who saw that babe, grown to full maturity, speaking such words as no Jew had ever spoken, bringing forth life from the dead, giving sight to the blind, receiving tribute and acknowledgement due only to God, who acknowledged clearly that he was the Messiah and the Holy One of Israel.

And when they saw his great works, they rebuked him and told him that he got his power from Beelzebub, Satan, king of the flies. How is that? Some fell at his feet and worshiped him, and others scorned him and taunted him from the cross, and defied him to come down and to save himself.

Is it that there are two basic dispositions in the world, two kinds of Jewishness? One is that Jewishness with which we've long been familiar, contending, strident, loud, claimant, full of a sense of superiority and conviction that we're ever so right, and if we were given the power and the opportunity, we can make this world the right?

Deeply citizens of this present world and full of its spirit, factual, confident in mind and intellect, proud, assertive, seeing only the outward forms and the visible things, full of self-righteousness, offended by certain things like the name of Jesus, offended by references to sacrifice and to blood.

We can't understand that foolishness. Repulsed by the name of Jesus, and not only because of the name, but the reluctance to be humbled by submission to a single given thing. Confident in our own opinion, assuming ourselves to be wiser than God, fancying ourselves morally superior.

The other is perhaps this Israelite, the Shtilin in Londa, whose citizenship is not of this world, who have a sense for the mystery of things, whose great confidence is not always in mind, but in things which can be intuited and sensed by the spirit, who have a repentant sense, who wait for the consolation of Israel, who need to be consoled, who have been battered in this world, who, like the one who sang to us tonight, had a cry as a 15-year-old, somehow there should be some meaning and some purpose for our being.

But we're told by our English teachers and the spirit they represent, knock it off. There is no such. Who have a sense of our lostness, a sense of being out of time and out of joint and out of place, a sense of the terror of sin, of an offense against a God whom we know not, that somehow something must be requited.

And when we learn of the shedding of blood, to us it is not a scandal and it is not an offense. Some of us have seen a film called Dry Bones, and the film begins with a very blurred image. You can't discern what it is.

And as that image flashes on the screen, it's just a big, white, bulky thing, but it seems to be moving and pulsating back and forth. And in these opening moments is a very strange and ominous music, and your heart begins somehow to get strangely excited, scared.

And the image comes into focus, and you can see that that thing that was moving back and forth, that white blurred image, is the side of a lamb. And just as you perceive that, a dark and ominous shadow falls over it, and your heart practically stops.

And the shadow reveals a man, bearded, dressed in biblical garments, with a sharp knife thrust in his belt. And surely enough, he throws that beast on its side, and takes leather throngs out of his girdle, and ties the legs of this animal as the animal resists.

And your heart is beginning to race. You've never seen anything like this. And it is a secret sense, and you hope that they'll stop and not show this further. But my God, they're going on. And they even take this bound animal and put it upon a stone altar.

And you think, surely they've gone far enough, and they shall not go further. But indeed, the man stands over the animal with his knife poised. And the next scene you see, as the camera focuses on the bound feet of this lamb, is a jerk, and a tremor, and a twitch, as you know that that knife is going into that flesh.

And then you see the blood slowly begin to cascade down the stones of that altar. I've seen the lights go on when that film is finished, and people riveted, stunned in their seats. There's something about witnessing a sacrifice of the shedding of blood which is unforgettable.

For thousands of years, our Jewish kinsmen saw the sacrifice of blemishless animals, of blood being spilled. And it reminded them more eloquently than words of the great offense of sin against a God who is holy, holy, holy, who has established out of his own counsel and wisdom that out of the blood which is life is a requiting of the offense of sin.

Because we have not seen it and not understood, we are offended by the scandal of the Lamb of God and the cross of Christ Jesus. To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? Those who can respond to the faith of the heart, who are in touch with the prophets, who remember the things which were spoken and promised unto our father Abraham, who are waiting for the consolation of Israel, who are devout and just men, and who are led of the Holy Spirit, who can receive the message of God through his angels and say, with Mary, with Elizabeth, let it be as God has spoken.

Responding to the Revelation of God's Salvation

How are you tonight? Are you Jewish or are you an Israelite? Do you walk by the power of mind and you believe that the salvation of Israel and of our life is going to be by the arm of the flesh? Or shall you look to the skies for your salvation?

Are you willing tonight to be barren, to recognize however young you are, that in terms of the desperate conditions that we're soon to face, we really are hopelessly stricken in years, that we're people of low degree.

Can we say, be it unto me according to thy word. Blessed are they because they believe that there shall be a performance of those things which were told them from the Lord, whose spirits rejoice in God the Savior, who know that his name is holy, who fear him from generation to generation, who just and devout wait for the consolation of Israel, trusting in the arm of the Lord.

To which Judaism will you subscribe? This rabbi is alarmed that in this increasing age of crisis, there shall be those that shall look to the sky for their salvation. To all them that look for redemption in Jerusalem and wait for the consolation of Israel, there is something that must be revealed and only can be by the Spirit of God before or unless we see death, and that is the Lord's Christ, the Messiah, the holy arm of the Lord.