Beyond Categories — Art Katz

A Prayer for God’s Word to Become an Event

Unless you, the great author and the finisher of our faith, the great shepherd of our faith, will lead us, my God, through the tumult, and even confusion and tension of these days, into green pastures and still waters by which we may dwell.

So we're asking, Lord, again, unashamedly, in our characteristic way, that your word would become an event. Surely, it's called for. The hour and the tension and the crisis to which we have been brought calls for a word of such a kind that if it is to give answer to the crisis that has been brought, it must itself become an event, not for us only, but beyond us and through us, to the greater church at large, and ultimately, to the Jewish community, to Israel itself.

So, my God, who is sufficient for these things? How better do we understand Paul, continually palpitating and continually crying out that repeated cry, Paul, giant that he was, who is sufficient for these things?

And we thank you, Lord, to be called to such a faith for which we always will make that cry. It is ever and always beyond us, exceeds our understanding, exceeds our ability. It stretches us, my God, to breaking.

It compels us to come into such a place in the knowledge of you that we would not even have thought to sort, let alone think to find, if you had given us a manageable religion that we could perform out of our own well-meaning intention and ability.

Salvation Beyond Our Adequate Understanding

We thank you for a salvation to the uttermost that brings us beyond that pathetic and inadequate place into the ultimate place with the Lord himself. Oh, Lord, precious God, may we hear your voice today.

May we hear the words of your speaking, the on-time, now word, Lord. I may there be rejoicing in heaven for the proclamation of an event that has come in time and place into this earth and will not return to you void, but accomplish every purpose whereunto it is sent.

Thank you, Lord, for the privilege of gathering this congregation to the historic moment. Open our hearts and our understanding and give us such an acuity of hearing and receiving, my God, as it has exceeded all past experience till now, for such a word requires it.

And once we come to that acuteness, shall we ever go back to where we were before? We're stretched and we're stretched permanently, and we thank you, Lord. We desire that. We need that. We ask that. We thank you.

Give you the praise for this morning and this day. Come, gratify your own soul. Have nachas, Lord, as the Jews say. Have satisfaction in your own soul, Lord. Kvel and bubble over. Let your cup run over, Lord, with the joy as you look upon your inheritance who are coming now within view to the thing for which you have given all, even your son to obtain.

We bless you. We give you praise. Receive our gratitude now, Lord. If this were the whole service, we give you gratitude and joy. We thank you for our so great privilege. In Yeshua's holy name we pray.

God's people said, Amen. Dissolve anything and everything that stands between us and between you. However correct it might be in itself and however cherished, if it constitutes any kind of an obstruction to the totality of union with you, who alone is God, we invite that dissolving.

That itself would be a great grace. So we bless you, Lord. Come from first word to last, Lord, and lead us in the things that are upon your heart this morning for all the church. We bless you, Lord. Great grace indeed in Yeshua's holy name.

Wonderful grace. Amen. So the Lord is looking for a virginal first-fruits company that will follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. And I think that that whithersoever is going in the last days to bring us to places where we could never have imagined and where we ourselves would balk.

Something like Peter saying, Let this be far from you, Lord. That would have obtained for Peter the man of the year award as being a statement of such remarkable generosity and breadth of spirit and compassion for his master.

And yet it would have impeded the cross. Let it be far from you, John the Baptist, of whom Jesus said there's no greater. I have need to be baptized of you. He had to be persuaded to perform the whithersoever of Jesus, to baptize one who patently had no need of repentance, that it might fulfill all righteousness.

This whithersoever is so remarkable. It requires an uttermost abandon from that virginal company in order to follow him. And today's selection in Oswald Chambers is exactly on that question, who raises the question, Have I ever yielded an absolute submission to Jesus Christ?

We would instantly answer, Of course, we have ever been yielded, but there's an absolute and an ultimate abandonment, which is total. But I think few of us know that all of us are being called to in such an hour as this.

The word abandon, when you look up in the dictionary, you'll find dimensions of meaning that are always a surprise. To give up the intent of never again claiming one's right or interest, to give over and surrender completely to any attempt at self-control, quit, relinquish, renounce, vacate, resign, discard, forswear, forsake, abandon, denotes the absolute giving up of an object.

It's surrender to the mercy of something or someone else greater. Wouldn't it be remarkable if the object that needs finally to be given up is not some carnal thing, but a spiritual thing, and a correct thing, and a thing about the Lord himself?

And the thing about the Lord is so cherished that we will not relinquish it for the Lord himself. That's the ultimate irony of the last impediment that stands between ourselves and him, to be that bridal company that follows him in the river soever that he goeth.

It's not the carnal or the wrong thing, it's the correct thing, and a cherished thing. And because it is, it is for that reason most difficult to forsake or to abandon. Whether to give up or to abandon, whether to yield, carnal or material things are no sacrifice at all.

But the abandonment for which the Lord waits is clearly a sacrifice. So the desire for, or the interest in, or the protection of that which is correct, even the desire to be right, the enjoyment of rectitude, the wonderful feeling of being really lined up with God, strangely and ironically can be that impediment, that that itself needs to be forsaken.

But it's remarkable how few will. And maybe it's for that reason that Jesus' murder was inevitable, not by the apparently wicked or evil, but the best of Israeli society and religious life. Because he seemed to constitute a threat to what they held to be as correct, and they must defend it in such a way as to crucify the Lord himself who gave the truths which they cherish and defend.

Saul is the wonderful example of that. In his zeal to protect the faith of Israel, being inviolate from what appeared to be a dangerous heretical sect, that he found himself persecuting the Lord himself in the name of his own zeal.

Maybe that's the ultimate thing to which the candidate for apostolicity must come. That he recognizes in the last analysis that the very zeal to protect and to defend is the very thing that will ultimately persecute and crucify the Lord afresh.

So that we must have no vested interest, even in our correctness, that the Lord has always to, because he's Lord, to be allowed the privilege of leading us where he will and contradicting our categories.

And perhaps he'll test us in just those areas, and perhaps what is going on now with us is that test. Is the Lord of the Lord, unless we allow him the right to set aside his own categories, to alter his own truths as we understand them, to bring a new dimension of something that seems to threaten that which is and is established and given of him even, is he really the Lord unless he has that prerogative and that right in our sight to bring anything of his own choosing that seems even to contradict himself.

We're not abandoned until we have abandoned ourselves to that. So there's no category so sacrosanct that the Lord cannot alter if he's to be Lord and the Lamb of God whom we follow with us wherever he goes.

And the last and deadliest hiding place of self is not in our carnality, but as I so often say, in our spirituality. And until we recognize that and are open to be dealt with in that place, we will oppose the God, the Lord, even in defending him.

The thing that killed him at the first will kill him again. The zealous intent of defenders of the faith to protect the faith from seeming danger or onslaught of prospective heresy. And the great paradox is that in the last days, the potential for heresy is never more evident than now.

So how do we abandon and yet defend? It is a remarkable quandary of an ultimate kind. And it's these ultimate brain-breaking quandaries that break us into a dimension of God that we would not be required to find or to enter.

Psalm 73 and the Perplexity of Faith

And that the psalmist in Psalm 73 has been compelled to discover. And that's my text for this morning. I mentioned it yesterday briefly, but it is one of the great psalms that touches this ultimate quandary.

And that is the experience of a psalmist, sweet singer of Israel. It may not be David in person. There are others who have contributed to the psalms, but they all share the Davidic mindset, the Davidic heart, the Davidic spirit, the Davidic intensity for God.

And that is the fulcrum of their quandary and their perplexity. If they were more casual about their faith, they would not be forced into these ultimate perplexities and tensions. It's the very devotion that brings it to them.

But the fact that something had to happen to this psalmist to break him into a dimension he had not known before shows that however exceptional a saint and however great the devotion, there was a realm that was not yet in his experience, that he could only enter it by virtue of the quandary, the perplexity, the confusion, the vexation that came to him and brought him to that frontier.

So let's look at this. We can't read it all. We can't take the time to read it all. If you do it, you'll read of a man who is described as upright, and it describes God as upright for those who are pure in heart.

And we believe and assume that the psalmist has that heart. And yet, as for me, my feet had almost stumbled. My steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant that I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

Their bodies are sound and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are. They are not plagued like other people. Therefore, pride is their necklace. Violence covers them like a garment. Their eyes swell out with fatness.

Their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice, with complete disregard for harming God or injuring His name or His reputation as if He's nonexistent. And they prosper in that. Their hearts overflow with follies.

They scoff and speak with malice. There's no reticence to express themselves. And they're prospering in all of that. That is apparent contradiction to God. And the psalmist is bugged out. He's vexed beyond all speaking.

Where is the righteous God who does not cut these men down right on the spot and allows them to profane and bandy His name about in filthy jesting and disrespect and disregard? They speak with malice.

Lawfully, they threaten oppression. They set their mouths against heaven. Imagine the audacity of that. And their tongues range over the earth. And God does not shut them up. How then can He be righteous?

How can He be God? Where is His power? Where is His jealousy for His name? Where is His honor? Doesn't He know He's being discredited and defamed and therefore deprecated and diminished in the eyes of all the world?

The poor psalmist is beside himself with ultimate vexation for the failure of God to be God. His every category of understanding is being stretched agonizingly to breaking. And the people praise these characters in verse 10 and find no fault in them.

They're celebrated. They're given places of distinction. They're called the men of the year. They win all kinds of awards. And they're looked upon as even being religious and successful. If a holy man will be galled, it will be galled by that.

These phony apostles taking to themselves such labels and such titles and merchandising and franchising the world as if they have a mandate from God when they are so apparent a contradiction to the very heart of what apostolic is.

And they're getting away with murder. And the flocks, they run in great mobs to these men and to these prophets to hear a word from the great oracle and all of that. And you want to spit your guts out.

Is the whole world deceived? Where's the church? Where's their discernment? Where's God? And they say, how can God know? Is their knowledge in the most high? They dismiss even the prospect that God can see and know and understand what they're pulling off.

Such are the wicked. Always at ease, they increase in riches. And in vain, as for me, I've kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. Yet, all day long, I have been plagued and I'm punished every morning.

Hey, what kind of universe is this? Where is the righteousness of God and his creation? That the evil and the wicked, the malicious, the foul-mouthed, the self-aggrandizing have a ball and prosper and the righteous look forward to a program of being plagued and punished every morning.

We're the ones who struggle. If I had my way, I would even go on and talk in this way, I would have been untrue to the circle of your children. I'm almost tempted to join them. I mean, they're running away with the show.

They've got all the marvels. They've got all the cards. The world is running after their autograph. I'll get in this act also. Why not? If it was not for your children. The thing that keeps me is my obligation to your people.

Otherwise, I'd be tempted to be an actor and a performer also. And I'd make a better show of it than them. When I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task until I went into the sanctuary of God.

Then, I perceived the end. Well, can I take the liberty again of suggesting that the sanctuary of God and the house of God and the Zion of God and the Tent of Shem are all one and the same thing? Amen.

But it's a place, note this, that the psalmist has not yet come. Who of us have shared his vexation? Who of us are so aligned with his righteousness and so great a love for God and the jealousy for his name and honor that we have been stretched to breaking over evils much greater than what he knew in his generation and that are everywhere about us and are called Christian, called charismatic, called apostolic, called prophetic?

Where's our vexation? Have we come to the righteousness and love and identification with God as this psalmist? And yet, for all that, however he exceeds us in authentic spirituality, he had not yet entered the sanctuary of God.

And it's only his vexation that brings him to it. But we who are more ordered, poised, have a handle on things, are not, in any sense, anguished by the seeming contradictions about God in the church and in reality and in life, are never brought to that place.

There's a place, saints, that this psalm indicates for which God waits, but it's not an easy or an accessible place or a place of convenience. You have almost to be driven by your own vexation to seek for an answer that all your categories, however correct, will not give you.

Unless you see from that place, you'll not see. You'll misconstrue. You'll misunderstand. You'll be offended. You'll take offense at even the things of God. There's a true place of seeing that God waits to enter.

And wouldn't the ultimate irony be that there's no understanding of the Tent of Shem except in the Tent of Shem? It cannot be given to you from outside of it. You understand it at the point of entry, but the point of entry requires you being provoked.

It's something like baptism. Maybe in earlier years, I used to wait until a young convert would come to a certain comprehension and understanding of the value of baptism, and then I would baptize him or her.

But in the more recent years, instantly. Why? Because the very understanding and the knowledge and the significance and the mystery of baptism comes in the baptism itself. The same thing with Jesus. Come unto me, he said to his kinsmen, because I am myself the key to the understanding of me.

I am the interpretive key. I am the hermeneutic of the faith in myself. Unless you come unto me and into me, you'll not understand it. You'll not understand it from outside the sanctuary. I am the sanctuary.

I am the Zion of God. I am the Tent of Shem. Unless you come in, you cannot see nor understand who I myself am. I am the key of my own interpretation and understanding. So you'll never get it from outside looking in.

You'll be vexed. Until I went into the sanctuary, then I perceived their end. Then he saw that though these guys are having a field day, getting away with murder, it's only a moment in time. Their ultimate destiny and eternity is horrible beyond all description.

God is just. God is righteous. And this life is not the end all and be all. It's only a fragmentary initial episode in which the issues of eternity are being decided. But he had to see the end. And the end of the thing is the truth of the thing and it's only to be found in the sanctuary of God.

It's not only I saw their end, I saw the end. The end of everything. The meaning of it. The thing that disturbs us and that we can't quite reconcile. The understanding of that is to come in that place.

That truly you set them in slippery places. You make them fall to ruin. They are destroyed in a moment. Swept away utterly by terror. They are like a dream that when one awakes on waking you despise the phantoms.

Then he goes back to himself. When my soul was embittered and I was pricked in my heart, I was stupid and ignorant. I was like a brute beast toward you. What a confession. Now that I see their end, it's not only I'm repeating myself, their end that I'm seeing, I'm seeing all end.

And in the light of the end, looking back upon myself, I realize I was as a beast toward you. I was so thick, so dull, so insensate, so incapable of understanding. I was opposing you in seeming defense of your faith.

I was stupid and ignorant. I was like a brute beast toward you. And if we're like that toward him in our unseeing, what are we like toward others? Even others in the most holy faith. If we're capable of this kind of attitude toward the Lord in our best well-meaning intention, of what are we not capable?

And what are we not performing? So I'm taking this very literally. That there's a place in God of ultimate seeing. We ought to stop our mouths and hold ourselves in reservation about any judgment, any temptation to quickly dismiss or conclude about something being from God or not or any of the kinds of things that seem to be in seeming conflict with what we understand, even the understanding which is given of God.

There's always a dimension more. There's always a further understanding. There's always an ultimate light. But it's not to be found outside the sanctuary, but within. So if this psalmist prophet himself had to be driven to that place, what shall we say for ourselves?

Israel, Perplexity, and the Sanctuary of God

This is the kind of dilemma to which Jews will be brought in the last days. Everything that attends the name of Jesus is anathema for them. They got a whole history of persecution in that name. And yet it's the only name given whereby they may be saved.

They've got to pass through something that completely configures and contradicts what they have been given to understand, which they are absolutely assured is correct. So correct they'll die in refusing it.

But they have got to be brought to a place of such perplexity that they are forced through their own categories which have been established and understood and confirmed and into a place of new seeing in the sanctuary of God.

And here they'll recognize that the name that they can hardly pronounce is the name of the Holy One of Israel himself. That what they had been taught to reject is the key to their own salvation. So this psalm is remarkable in what it represents.

And the benefit that comes to the psalmist having entered that sanctuary, and once being spoiled by that light, shall you ever again see it the same? Will you go back again to where you were? Something has happened of a transcendent kind that leaves an indelible mark and an acquisition of a kind that changes everything.

It's an ultimate seeing, not only of the issue that vexed you, but all seeing thereafter. You're spoiled. You have seen now from the light of the sanctuary, and you'll never again yield to being merely correct.

You'll be suspicious of your own correctness, as well you should, because there's a dimension beyond that which is God. And the last testing of our fidelity to Him and our abandonment to Him is our willingness to pass through the veil of our correctness and into the realm where He is, who alone is Lord.

And we seem to contradict Himself, testing us to see where our real devotion ultimately lies. Does it lie in Him, or our convictions about Him? Does it lie in Him who is truth, or the truth about the truth?

See how subtle this is, and how close, that a miss is as good as a mile. Israel missed it right at that point. In the very defense of what they thought right, they persecuted and killed the Lord of Glory, their own expected and awaited Messiah.

Don't think that we are not guilty of the same, and maybe we have to come full circle to perform the same, in order to come to a place of brokenness and repentance, by which we learn to distrust our own humanity, and our own correctness, and say, the Lord is Lord.

That's abandonment. Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it. What? Fill stone water jars with water? What's the sense of that? Whatsoever He saith, whithersoever He goeth. This ultimacy of abandonment, and commitment, is the thing for which the Lord waits.

A virginal company, and the great irony, I'm repeating myself again and again, is the paradox, that we're not kept from it because of our canality, we're kept from it because of our spirituality. And so, the man coming through this remarkable experience, sees himself as he was, as a beast.

You can't find language, more graphic than that, because it's hyperbolic language, it's exaggerated. But in view of, the way I now see, and I now understand, looking back to what I was, before that crisis, I was as a dumb beast.

I thought that I knew, but I say now, I didn't know as I ought to know. It required a crisis, that you have precipitated, by allowing such seeming paradox, and contradiction in life and in the world, or I would not have been brought, by that vexation, into the sanctuary of God.

You allowed yourself to be dishonored. You allowed yourself to be mocked, by these guys whose eyes are swollen with fat, and having a field day, in their complete disregard of you. You were willing that your reputation, should suffer enormously, that by it, and only by it, I would be brought to such a place, of seeming contradiction and vexation, that even my mind and my sanity were at stake.

You allowed yourself to be defamed, and me to be stretched, almost to the place of ultimate breaking, almost to the temptation to forsake the faith, and become like them, in order that I should come into this place.

Is that place that important? Yes. It is the ultimate place, and few there be of us, that are in it, few there be of us, that even believe, that it awaits us, few of us that desire it, and few of us, who really have so great a love and jealousy, that we are vexed, by their seeming contradictions, to be brought to that place.

And once you come, all seeing is affected, even the way in which you view yourself. Nevertheless, in verse 23, I am continually with you, and I am with you in a new way. You hold my right hand, you guide me with your counsel.

There's almost like a sense of limpness, like this man has been so broken, at the foundations, of his own conceit, and his own religious rectitude, that now, he's like a child, having to be led by the hand.

I'll no longer presume to come in, and bring correction, and I'm going to show you, that da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, I'm led by the hand. I dare not open my mouth. Even when I mean well, I bring injury.

And unless we are this to Israel, how shall they see, their Messiah and their God? So long as we're hot shot, strident, rival, competitive, clear, we've got the message, we have the truth, we continue to alienate them.

They need to see a limp people, broken, looking to the Lord, having the correct view about yourself, and my enjoyment of being correct. That is earthly, even when it's spiritual. Who has been searched out by God, to that depth, where they are willing to forsake, even the enjoyment of being correct about God.

I have no, nothing in the earth, that I desire, other than you. Not the doctrines about you, the truth about you, you yourself, and yourself as is now being revealed, that I had never seen how far you will go.

That you will allow yourself to be defamed, and your name demeaned, and dishonored, and your psalmist to be stretched, to breaking to the point of insanity. Because of the light of the sanctuary, and what alone is to be found there, it makes me to understand you, in a way that I've never understood you before, and to appreciate you, in a way that I've never appreciated you before, and love you in a way, that I have never loved you before.

It took this crisis, and that you are willing to allow me to be stretched, to the breaking of it, shows me how great your love is toward me. Or else I would have died as a dumb beast. I would have gone on into eternity, applauding myself, and congratulating myself, for being the great defender of your faith, only to find out in the day of eternity, whew, that I was a dumb beast.

That my very rightness, was the very thing that threatened, and intimidated your lordship. I thank you, that you love me so much, that you allowed me to be vexed to breaking, while I yet had breath. That has got to affect the way in which I see you, appreciate you, and love you.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever. Indeed, those who are far away from you will perish. You put an end to those who have forced you, but as for me, it is good to be near God.

The Tent of Shem and Ultimate Seeing

Where is that place? In the tent. It's the tent of Shem. Not a Jewish tent, it's Shem's tent. It's the God of Shem, whose tent that is. It's good to be near you, and in that place, I'm spoiled. I've seen something from that place, that is not available from any other, and it has affected all my seeing.

I no longer will trust to my own perception, or analysis, or critique. I'll always hold myself in reserve, knowing there's an ultimate place of seeing, where you are, for there we see as you see, and in no other place.

And when we see as you see, the thing that offended us, and that we were so alert to defend against, we find out in the great irony, was yourself, and you, calling us to a deeper place, and we resisted it in your name.

So great is the want of that seeing, which is an ultimate seeing, and to be found in one place only, and there we're called to dwell, to dwell in the tent of Shem, while we're yet in the earth. I have made the Lord God my refuge, and here's the punchline, to tell of all your works.

Now I can represent you. Now I can speak of you. Now I can proclaim the things, that I myself did not before understand, and proclaim them in the light of this seeing. The commentator here has remarkable observations, that deserve our review and our enjoyment, that this incalculably difficult question, this thing that vexed the psalmist, that raised bodily suffering, to the point of intolerability.

How far will God go? You guys think you've seen something? You call this dissension? You call this a shaking? You call this tension and difficulty? Kid stuff. This is kid stuff, against the kinds of things, that we are likely to experience increasingly, as we come into the last days.

My definition of a saint, is one who can bear the tensions of the faith. These are only preliminary vibrations. These are not tensions of the kind, that bring us to the point of intolerability, where our very sanity is at risk.

In this affliction, the sufferer took refuge with Yahweh. He came to the place of proximity to God, the sanctuary. We have trivialized and cheapened God, to think that that sanctuary and that tent, is a place that we can enter at will, as if we're on a tourist visa, out of curiosity, we'll lift the flap and peek in.

Nothing doing. Holy, holy, holy. It's the Zion of God. It's Shem's tent. There's a light in there, of an uncommon kind. It's not for the curious. It's not for the transient. It's for those who enter in order to dwell, recognizing that dwelling there alone, is the place of safety.

That is rectitude. And anything outside of that place, is less. Here is the end. Not the end of the wicked, yes also, but the end of all things. We must see in view of the end. We must have an eschatological comprehension, of things to which things are tending.

Not because we have it nailed down as doctrine, but because we have apprehended, and been apprehended, by the God who is both the beginning and the end. And will give us glimpse of it, and the glory of it, in that one place alone, where that light is to be seen.

Otherwise we're merely doctrinal. We're merely correct. We have an understanding that we can tick off. But it's not enough, to follow the Lamb whithersoever. It's the end, that enables us to be sustained now.

A real glimpsing of the end, beyond the issue of doctrine. I don't want to demean doctrine. Doctrine is truth. But there's something, to which doctrine points, is he who is the truth. The reality, the ineffable, unspeakable, and ultimate reality of God himself.

God forbid, that we fall short of that glory, and of that reality, and that truth, because we are satisfied with the truths about the truth. The truth about the end times. Is there anything more brittle and doctrinaire, than some hot shot, who is equipped with a knowledge of the last days, and da da da da da, and condemns the church as Babylon, and celebrates an elite sonship, and all the kinds of things.

These are the evils that issue, from merely being correct in our brain box. That have not really seen, because we have not really entered. And that entering, as I'm saying, is so dear to God, he'll not think it too extravagant, to bring us to the place, of suffering, of an intolerable kind, before we experience the joy, of the light of God in true seeing.

Don't fall short, of the glory. This is the fellowship of his suffering. The quest for truth is a suffering. Those who have to proclaim it, who themselves don't have a full comprehension, and yet cannot withhold, and those who have to live with the guy, and respond and bear up, what seems to them, points of remarkable collusion, and threatening heresy.

Hey, bend Israel as a suffering, before it's a glory. Amen. We're not contemplating, glibly, we have never, had access to anything, out of that which is shallow. Everything that we have received, has come out of a suffering, out of a collision, of having to be opposed, and be opposing.

And because we can still hold together, in that framework of tension, ultimately the Lord will bring us, to the true seeing. But it's the suffering for him who proclaims, it's the suffering for them who have to bear him.

That's the church. So, in the end, the prophet, the psalmist, is able to proclaim, and tell of all your works, nothing withheld, because now he has glimpsed, the totality and the utterness of God, and the end of all things, and can proclaim them, in that light.

Scanning through the experience of suffering, and it is asserted, he writes, for all of life, and therefore, for all future generations. The great danger to the psalmist, the thing that vexed him almost to insanity, was the fear of the loss, of the knowledge of God, as God.

The thing that brought him to the brink, of disaster, was that God himself, was being contradicted, in his own understanding. We can bear anything else, and that's why the Holocaust book, is so remarkable a thing.

Because it raises questions about God. Why is a book called, The Holocaust, where was God? Because no one has raised a question. As if there was not a God, around to see, to know, to observe, or he was asleep that day, or he was indifferent, to the plight of his own people.

How can that be God? That is so uncaring, and watching his own people, even in their apostasy, being systematically annihilated, by the millions, including 1 ,500 ,000 children and infants, thrown up and speared on bayonets, or shot in the air, or thrown into flaming tanks of gasoline.

A God who cannot see that, and have no compassion for that, is ipso facto not God. Okay, so he saw it? Well then he has two powers to do anything. What? The creator of the heavens and earth, by his word, was incapable of affecting, and altering, that terror and that devastation?

Well that's, that he's no longer God, if he has not that power. Well then how do we reconcile this? We're afraid to ask the question. We're afraid to look into that burning bush, for we know that once we turn aside to try and look into the fire, that continues to burn and is not consumed, we'll not be able to turn back again to our neat and convenient categories.

God is this, God is that, he's kind, he's loving, and that reinforces our comfort zone, and has him nicely boxed in and packaged in keeping with our bourgeois middle class lifestyle. But to see God in the burning bush, the place of judgment, and begin to turn to consider that, is to open a view of God, to which you'll never be able to turn back again.