MXp

A Man in Whom the Spirit of God Is
By Art Katz

Part 3 (of 3)

For three weeks, I sulked and licked my wounds. There was Satan at my elbow saying, "Katz, you blew it! You never should have left the teaching profession. What made you think you were called to minister to your own Jewish people? God gave you a grand opportunity and you were pitiful! You couldn't answer those Jews! It was a failure! There will never again be such an opportunity." I sulked and whimpered for three weeks until there was a phone call. A thin voice said, "Mr. Katz, I read your book. I'm a Jewish woman. Could I come over? I've got some questions." I said, "Lady, I can't answer a thing. Can't you find somebody else?" However, she came over, with her veins sticking out and her eyes sunken into her skull. She was a nervous wreck. She was a compulsive chain smoker. She filled up my ashtray with cigarettes and asked me questions.
The last question was, "Mr. Katz, what must I do to be saved?" I told her, "Believe on the Lord Yeshua Ha'Mashiach, Jesus the Christ, and thou shalt be saved and thy house." So she bowed her skinny little neck and followed me in a prayer for salvation. She has gone on from death to life to distribute New Testaments, Christian literature, and copies of my testimony, Ben Israel, from her apartment in New York City. As I was putting her coat on her frail shoulders that night, walking her to the door I said, "By the way, how did you get my book and how did you come here?" "Oh," she said, "My son was at your meeting three weeks ago at City College. He came home so excited. He said, 'Mom, a man came to the school today, a Jewish man, and he just simply stood up and spoke of his convictions. The moment he finished he was mercilessly attacked, and he answered his accusers not a word. I've never seen anything like it. Here, read his book.'"
 
"The eye of God roves to and fro over the face of the earth, seeking that one whose heart is perfect toward Him" (2 Chr 16:9). What are you looking for? Numbers? Can you be moved from your success for just one? God gave me an experience in Japan. It spoiled me. I will never be the same. God showed me the Jewish-like authenticity of the faith in Japanese believers. I have never seen such unparalleled glory, freedom, spontaneity, and fervent love. I have never heard such prayer and travail as came from that body of Japanese saints. It is called "The Tabernacle Movement," because they do not own buildings. They sit their haunches on floors in crowded rooms with sliding doors. What glory!
 
I noticed the beauty of the wife of the founder of that movement. She was so beautiful; I could not take my eyes from her. It was embarrassing and compulsive! One day, I had a rare opportunity. They placed me behind the post, and I could look around it to just bask in the glory of her beauty. As I had this opportunity, I noticed that it was not her natural features that constituted her beauty. There was such a glow and godly vibrancy in that life and face; it was divine glory. What a beauty! When the conference was over, we were driving down the Japanese toll-road, and I mentioned something about the beauty of this man's wife. "Oh," he said, "Art, don't you know the story?" I said, "What story?"
"Oh," he said, "Professor Toshima's wife was a syphilitic when he first met her. She was dying from syphilis. She was in the advanced stages of the disease. Her parents had sold her as a concubine to a man who had four other wives. When Professor Toshima first began his ministry, she used to taunt him, mock him, and throw his words back in his teeth when he talked about God and His love. 'Easy for you to say, you're handsome, favored, and eloquent, but look at me - my beauty is ravaged. I'm a waste!'" According to them, she was a woman who had to sit after every ten steps to catch her breath.
How this man, Professor Toshima, travailed in prayer for this one woman! God said to him, "Marry her." When he proposed, she thought he had lost his marbles, but she accepted. Then, when she became pregnant, unbeknownst to him, she had an abortion because she was convinced that the baby would be born blind or otherwise deformed. When he heard about the abortion, he was grieved and made her promise that when she became pregnant again, she would not abort this birth. When the baby was born, he was born perfect. His name is Isaiah Toshima. "Though your sins be red as scarlet, yet shall they be made white as snow." Mrs. Toshima was examined, her disease was gone, and her husband never contracted it. What a beauty, what a glory of redemption because of the love of this man for an ugly syphilitic!
 
We were just coming to the tollbooth and the car stopped. I said, almost out of breath, "But this movement is so powerful and it is spreading through Japan!" They do not have any evangelistic outreach. God adds to that church daily, such as should be saved. They have had such an impact in Israel. There is not a Christian movement in the world that has had the access and the love of the people in Israel as that Japanese movement. When the missionaries left Israel in that six-day war when it looked like curtains for Israel, Professor Toshima loaded up a jet and flew to Israel to stand with them in their moment of crisis.
I said, "How could this man have been willing to risk this great ministry and this movement for one woman?" "Well," the brother said as he paid the toll and turned to look at me in the back seat, "unless you're willing to cast your ministry away for one, you have no ministry." I just spiritually slumped off the seat and lay whimpering on the floor of that Japanese car, utterly smashed. God took men away from a successful field of venture, arrested them and stopped them. Their spirits suffered them not to continue, in order that a woman who sells purple in a city called Philippi might be found on the day of the Shabbat outside the city and there receive the word of God unto salvation. "A man in whom the spirit of God is."
 
Verse 16: "It came to pass as we went to prayer a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying. And the same followed Paul and us and cried saying, 'These men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation.'" Can you hear that ugly pitch of that cracked demoniacal voice? She was making the correct declaration, but by the spirit of a demon! It sends chills up my spine! "But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, 'I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her,' and it came out the same hour." It does not say, "Paul, being bugged" or "Paul, being irritated." It says, "Paul, being grieved."
You say, "Art, when I see a demoniacal woman whose life is not her own, I'll also be grieved." Well, what is the matter already? What about the ones all around you whose voices may not be high-pitched, cracked, or shrill? Are their lives any more their own than this woman's was? What is the matter with the idolatry that is everywhere around you? Why is His Spirit not wincing in your spirit? Where is that grief, born of the love of God, that makes faith into power to set the captives free, the faith that works by love, not our human thing pumped up, but the divine fervency of God that flows in the lives of those who have put away their shabby, sentimental, and temperamental substitutes?
 
May God keep me from another backslap, bear hug, or any other kind of pseudo expression of affection, except there be a burning fervency in my heart by His spirit for the man to whom He would bring me in embrace! May they think me a cold fish; may they think me unloving-and they do! May I suffer the reproach of being a man who is supposed unloving! I do suffer it! I do not allow any shabby, schmaltzy, sentimental substitutes to stand as "good things" and deter the perfect, divine fervency of God that takes faith and makes it alive to set the captives free. I don't give a rap for the so-called love for Israel that so many Christians purport to have. They wear their stickers on their bumpers until the oil crisis comes! Then it is "Oil, yes!" and "Jews, no!" Oh, those Christians who palpitate for the beautiful Israelis. How they "love" the Jews, yet they have never witnessed once to the Jew who lives down their block in their American city. It is a shabby, sentimental substitute for the divine fervor of God.
 
"Paul, being grieved," or the scripture could better say, "God, being grieved in Paul." May God keep me from my own sentimental thing until His grief finds expression through me! If He cannot speak two languages through one mouth, then He certainly is not going to pump two kinds of grief through one frame. It is either Him or us, folks! I have determined that it is going to be Him! That spirit came out "and when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers, and brought them to the magistrate saying, 'These men, being Jews!'" This is the definition of true Jewishness of heart. It is not by the Stars of David. It is not by the pastrami, gefilte fish, lox or anything else that you consume.
 
"These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city and teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive neither to observe being Romans. And the multitude rose up together against them and the magistrates rent of their clothes and committed to beat them. And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison charging the jailer to keep them safely, who having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison and made their feet fast in the stocks."
Can you picture us, if we had been there that day? "Lord, how did we miss it? We thought we had a divine vision and look at us now, publicly humiliated, clothes rent from our bodies as orthodox Jews, thirty-nine strokes of a fearful instrument that has left our backs hanging in strips. We are cast into a filthy, stinking dungeon that reeks from human excretion and urine, with the scurrying of rats and vermin and the moans and groans of prisoners. Where did we fail?"
That is your reward when you set the captives free. Those that live godly lives in Christ shall suffer persecution! However, "At midnight"-in the depths of the darkness, in the greatest aloneness, with Satan breathing all kinds of words of discouragement and failure: "You missed it. You never should have left Asia. What are you doing out here anyhow? This is just some pagan outreach. So you got a woman saved, look how you missed it! God was building the church" - "At midnight" - Do you have a stomach to be brought to the place where God would have you, at midnight? "At midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God. And the prisoners heard them." I am expecting to see every one of the prisoners in heaven. Oh, that the prisoners might hear us, children! Not our little bleeps, evangelisms, and tract distributions! May they hear the praise of God's people, not when our stomachs are full and we are well-clothed, fashionable and sitting in comfort in the company of the saints! May they hear our praise in the midst of our distress, duress, and affliction, as most assuredly they will! I do not think that the Lord is going to conveniently take us to be saved from a time of distress. Our God-sent distress will be the hour of the church's greatest glory, through those that can praise Him at midnight!
 
Someone has said, "When God's people find the paradox of joy in suffering, they'll sing at midnight." Sure enough, there was someone who came up here last night to speak to you after I had spoken, in order to make sure that you did not go home with your feelings hurt and that you did not go home heavy, that somehow you would be reminded of happy things and be sort of cheered up.
What is the matter with going home heavy? What is the matter with letting a heavy word reverberate in your spirit? What is the matter with being brought down into a pit or a dungeon for a season, if it shall please the Lord to put iron in your soul there? "Send them home happy! Oh, watch out, you may have bruised the sheep!" I will tell you that this scriptural, true, and holy kind of praise does not come just by charismatic exercise. It is the same kind of praise that Jehoshaphat sent in front of the army of Israel that day they had to tangle with those three armies of the uncircumcised. They sent forth the sweet singers of Israel who could praise God in the beauty of holiness. You do not learn that from a songbook. It has naught to do with virtuosity or the timber of your voice. It has to do with the knowledge of God, which is not cheap or conveniently obtained. This kind of praise and this kind of man are not fashioned in a day.
 
"And suddenly there was a great earthquake." What a "coincidence"! "The foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's bands were loosed." It is not a coincidence, folks. It is because God inhabits the praises of His people. Where the Spirit of God is, there is liberty. He will be there in proportion to the authenticity of your praise in the midst of the direness of your distress. We are those who cannot crack our faces when we get back the wrong income tax return or get stood up by a boyfriend. How shall we do when our backs are hanging in strips in excruciating pain, when we cannot even adjust our posture because our feet have been made fast in the stocks? We are those who have been squirted, sprayed, pampered, and spritzed with underarm deodorants and powder. How are we being prepared for the eventualities that must come to those who are obedient to the heavenly vision? Suffering must follow obedience, and you can say I said so!
 
The important thing is, the prisoners heard them singing while they suffered. Then the earthquake shook the bars, and the fetters fell off. Everyone's bands were loosed! "And the keeper of the prison, awakening out of his sleep" - Hallelujah! That is a perfect picture of the Jewish guy with his social security, savings account, bankbook, and meager security or the Christian guy who keeps his nose clean, the respectable Christian "awakening out of his sleep"! It is going to take an earthquake, and we have got to be the ones who will precipitate it. "Seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing the prisoners had been fled, but Paul cried with a loud voice saying, 'Do thyself no harm: for we are all here.'" "Cool it! We haven't gone anywhere! We are no more prisoners now than we were before because 'bars do not a prison make.'"
To be free in Christ is to be free indeed! If Christ has brought you to a cell, then you are free in it. When the doors burst open, there is no disposition to run. You are as free within as you are without. It is the man who holds the keys who is bound! "Paul cried with a loud voice." I do not know if he could even see the jailer with his eyes, but Paul saw by the Spirit. "Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas." This is the anatomy of a conversion, not cheap salvation! This is a life that is going to be transformed. It is not some guy who is superficially saved, who goes on just as fleshly and carnally as he was before. "He called for a light, and sprang in…and said, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?'"
 
Do you want a picture of pathetic disgrace? Picture Art Katz, a teacher and humanist, giving answers to students that had not yet asked the questions. So many of us give answers to men who have not yet asked the question! We have our bumpers loaded with stickers, with answers for men who have not yet asked the question. Our function ought to be to bring men to such a divine discontent that they implore us, "Sir, what must I do to be saved?" Paul then told him. "And he [the jailer] took them the same hour while he washed their stripes, and Paul baptized him and all his house straightaway. When he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house."
This is a little episode in the life of Paul, a man "in whom the spirit of God is." Stopped by the Holy Spirit, directed by visions, he never did see that Macedonian man, but God put him on the divine course. He was kicked out of the city, persecuted in Thessalonica, and brought by other men to Athens, en route to another city. His spirit winced, and God gave him yet another divine encounter of eternal consequence. Oh, children, God is looking for a man "in whom the spirit of God is."
 
Are you waiting for a vision of someone calling you at night, bidding you to come? Are you in a position to bring the help? Will you set forth with a straight course, assuredly gathering that the Lord has called you and assuredly reckoning that your obedience is going to be rewarded with suffering? In the midst of the suffering, will you praise God? In the midst of the stink, dung, vermin, crawling and discomfort, will you praise God, that the prisoners might hear you? That cannot be done by fleshly exercise or by singing choruses; it must be done by a man "in whom the Spirit of God is." Such a man is not fashioned in a day. Are you willing to be enrolled in the apostolic school? Are you willing to give away your best, in order that you might touch this glory? This age must definitely end with the same apostolic glory as it began, through men "in whom the spirit of God is."
 
I want you to bow your heads, because God did not speak these things for your entertainment! He is recruiting tonight. He is looking for men, apostolic men, who have no morbid appetite for suffering. He is looking for men that have a realistic anticipation that suffering is the consequence of obedience to the heavenly vision and yet are still willing to be arrested and stopped in the midst of their successes, so that God can bring them where He will, even for one soul. If you are such a one and want to be established in the school of preparation for suffering, martyrdom, or going up to hills from which you may not come down, then I ask you to stand right now and settle it with the Lord. You are finished! You are finished!
If you think it is going to be your wit, your cleverness, your ability, your evangelical expertise, then He will empty you! He will undo you! He will bring you to the school of humiliation. He will bring you to impasses that you will not be able to explain to others, because He has not explained them to you. He will ask you to praise Him in that circumstance, so that the prisoners might hear you.
Is there a soul here who has had a gut full of phony burdens that are not heartfelt or a so-called love for the Jews that is sentimental and shabby? Have you never experienced the divine burden of God that burns and will not let you go? Are you willing to be a vessel through whom the grief of God can be expressed? Are you willing to be seen as an ungainly freak because of the way that He would have you to respond to His grief?
Are you willing to confront men in the Spirit of God by calling them ignorant or by telling them that their spirits stink? You will be a reproach and an off scouring, a shame and a scandal, even to Christians. They will tell you that you blew it and will say, "What are you doing in a cell anyhow, when God had you in a groovy ministry that was successful?"
 
Let me pray,
Precious God, in the Name of Jesus, if this has been the Word of Truth tonight, out of Your heart, and if this has not been the exercise of a man, if this has been the cry of God looking for a man, calling us to the apostolic conclusion of the age, then I ask you seal, by name, every soul that has stood to his feet for this invitation tonight. Lord, I do not ask that You spare them. You have not spared me, and I am only at a beginning of these things.
We are not asking that You give us an explanation, Lord, to take the sting out of our humiliation. We are just asking, Lord, You Who know our frame, that You would shape us. Cut away all the so-called "good things." We must find ourselves stuttering at platforms, unable to conduct church, except that You are our expertise. We must be willing to suffer services that fail, rather than manipulating men and getting things moving, in order to give the appearance of something that looks spiritual but is only a soulish counterfeit.
We must be willing to experience failure and disappointment, because we have determined to seek only the glory of God, by the Spirit. Oh, precious God, seal us, Lord, with this divine call. We know that You mean business. We know that You are going to deal with us where we are. We know that we are going to be shaken to the foundations. You are going to show us every counterfeit thing, Lord, which we have been pleased with heretofore. You are going to strip us; You are going to make us barren, in order that You might raise up and bring forth "a man in whom the spirit of God is." Amen.

********************************

End part 3 (of 3)

---

The European Prophetic College
EPC@Comhem.se
 
Please, allow these articles to be circulated among your friends.
To become partaker of the regular flow of mailings from the College, mail us a request.
 

Lars Widerberg
The European Prophetic College
Storskiftesgatan 87
S-58334 Linkoping, Sweden
 
Phone + Fax:  +46 13 213630