Bad Nauheim, Germany
October 2004

'But a Germany of What Kind?'

(Katz was one of several speakers who attended a three-day conference, billed as a gathering to promote "…building bridges between the nations and Israel – setting up partnerships with Israel in sharing the gospel – unifying the Body – sending volunteers to Israel – power evangelism – prophetic evangelism – setting up five-fold ministry teams – setting up bridges between business enterprises in Israel and in the nations.” He chaffed at his single occasion to address the audience.)

'I'll be giving you the heaviest message of which I am able. It is so heavy you’ll not be able to understand it in one hearing. You will need to study it more than to read it.
“So, we have come all this way for one message. But let it be such a message as to be worth all the distance and all the expense, sinking something very deep into the foundation of the church of this land."He spared no harshness toward the "new" generation of Germans, prodding them for their vulnerable history as architects of the Holocaust... confronting the believers before him with a stern, almost intimidating demeanor, addressing them directly and without any pulpit patronizing, emphasizing the word "you" accusingly.

'To forfeit taking the gospel to the Jew first is a woe unto you. It will be as much a threat to your apostolic character as it was to Paul’s. Of course, you’re not yet a church that even is able to understand what such a loss means, which is already a statement of that loss because you have too long ignored the mandate of the gospel to the Jew.
"You have lost the distinctive that makes the church 'the church.' For the issue of the 'gospel to the Jew first' is the issue of the gospel, and the issue of the gospel is the issue of the church. And the issue of the church is the issue of the nation. And as recent history has revealed, the loss of this nation affects all nations. More than we understand, as Germany goes, so goes the world. "But a Germany of what kind? A Germany that is not affected by the presence of an apostolic church in its midst is a danger and a threat to all civilization.
"History has revealed that, and we stand now even presently before the possibility of yet another such unthinkable repetition. If you forfeit the issue of the gospel to the Jew NOW, you condemn the church to irrelevancy, to leaving a spiritual void in the land, a nation that is not tempered and affected by the presence that God intends through the church of an apostolic kind. And what could be more dangerous for the world than a Germany that still harbors imperial ambition and has already assumed a foremost place in the European Union of nations?
"And if that 'Japheth' nation is not somehow touched and affected by the issues from 'Shem,' it will be condemned…
"God never intended a separation of the sacred from the secular. The sacred is to affect the secular, to temper and to modify, and to bring even such humane consideration into the exercise of its power in order to save it from that unbridled secularism that results in bestiality.
"And, the issue of the Jew is the issue. Because 'they are the enemies of the gospel for your sake' because it makes bringing the gospel to them a greater requirement."

His words boomed louder, like distant thunder growing closer and becoming more threatening to his paralyzed audience that listened wide-eyed.

"...We are all called to be pilgrims, strangers and sojourners in the world. And, to a pilgrim path. And the Jew is compelling us to find it and to walk in it – unbeknownst to themselves.
"Even in their unbelief and even in their apostasy, their formidable presence in our midst compels US to wholly review OUR life and purpose and meaning, and OUR ‘lifestyle’ itself. And if we will obey, if we will respond, God will not only have a restored Israel, he will have a bride for the bridegroom adorned for him, having his glory because it shares his consecration and his totality.
"The Jews bring US to this necessity - or else we will continue to be content with so much less.
"Paul saw something more than Israel’s redemption; he saw the church’s transfiguration compelled by the crisis that the Jew represents that can only be met in an apostolic way, not by individual virtuosos. But by a church that is a body that is integral, that is related, and that is authentic and shares the calling and purpose of God.
"The issue of the gospel to the Jew, especially in Germany, is not some ethnic consideration, as if they deserve consideration only as gypsies. What Germany needs is a large purpose of meaning. "If it will not receive God’s purpose, it will serve evil. These are the 'powers' that brought Nazi-ism into your land and took possession of the whole apparatus of state by which the whole of civilization was threatened, and one-third of Europe’s Jews was exterminated; these powers are not defeated by military defeat. They still brood in the air over the nation, awaiting their next opportunity when there will be a spiritual void into which they can come. "And this is created by a church that has forfeited its identity because it has forfeited the gospel in forfeiting the Jew.
"Your nation’s future is at stake. And, as your nation goes, so also goes the world.
"You need to be saved from trifles, to be saved from some ersatz substitute. For the true relationship with the Jew that is more than blowing his shofar. However tedious, you must be taught what 'hell' means. And, who has had more opportunity historically to know that than any other nation - and may yet know it again unless the church be 'the church.'
"That is why this room is half-empty, because your pastors and counselors have warned you not to attend and to hear a man who is 'anti-Semitic' because he believes Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus.
"These last days will require all from Germany - beyond 'all' that your fathers were willing to give and who wanted only a beggarly Christianity without a heart for the apostolic faith.
"It has been a woe unto us. May it not be a woe again. We are without excuse. With hundreds of thousands of Jewish kinsmen in our midst, what a test of fidelity to the truth for those rightly called the 'enemies' of the gospel, who have every right to be its enemy, seeing how it has been depicted for them by those who made their blood to flow in every German hamlet and town!"

Suddenly, a woman cried out unintelligibly from the back of the audience, gasping with loud guttural shrieks and groans. People jerked around to see. Katz and his translator were even surprised. Others began to weep. Such a validation of a "message" instantly transformed it into an "event." *

*From

katz:
'Return' to Ben Israel
Parable of a Legacy

Copyright 2010 (unpublished)

(Go to http://benisraelblog.blogspot.com/ to view Ben Israel Fellowship blog)