Articles by Theme
Articles by Art Katz available online and in PDF download format.
Born from Above
He (Jesus) was born in a stable, and it is a debatable question to ask if He will come and have an advent in any person, except in that same way. He will not enter through any other door but the lowliest door, coming in as the Highest. So if we try to open a door to Him from the level of our own superiority or self-esteem, as if we deserve a visitation, He simply will not come. He will only come into a stable, the lowliest place. His advent is a paradigm and a pattern. It is a statement, not just once but always.
Cautionary Thoughts on the Revival Phenomena
I venture out with some trepidation to raise some questions about a “revival” phenomenon that is already perplexing many. Unlike such previous moves of God as the Welsh Revival, noted from its inception for its unmistakably holy character, the present revival generates mixed reports from unequivocal enthusiasm to those that are dubious, critical and utterly rejecting. Some suggest there is more than one stream with a fleshly counterfeit paralleling the God-given and authentic. Via video tape of the principal and evidently original stream, I have been able to observe things that I find entirely repugnant. Ministers of the word were ostensibly so drunk in the spirit that they were unable to be coherent, railing finally into a collapse from their stupor. I found this entirely unbecoming to the dignity of their professed call, and felt the preached word to he denigrated by joking references to the feeble results obtained by it in comparison to the results procured now by the experiences of the “power” to which they were testifying. In watching some helplessly convulsing in laughter, I sensed that they had been gripped by something beyond their control and was actually causing them a physical pain? Can those manifestations be described as “holy”? On the contrary, they appeared to be irreverent if not indeed demonic and hellish.
Contemporary Worship: The Malady of the Church
Whatever is self-initiated, however well-meaning the motive, is not of God. He alone is the Creator-King who disposes from the Throne what He wills when He wills.
Counsel to a Distressed Wife
From a letter of counsel for a wife in time of distress and estrangement from her spouse. I suspect that there are circumstances in your past that affect how you perceive things that could exaggerate your fears and heighten your insecurity. That is true for all of us. Over a process of time, the Lord […]
Critiquing the Visions of the Last Days
It is only with some reluctance that we are responding to a request (2004) to give an evaluation of two videos we have been given to consider that have to do with an End Time vision of judgment upon America – given by prominent American ministers of the gospel.
Cross Evasion: The Subterfuge of our Modern Christianity
God’s actual visitation, the coming of Himself, and the form that it took, and the way that it was culminated in His crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection has got to be the single greatest epochal event in the whole history of the human race.
Crying Wolf
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, is quoted by Eric J. Greenberg in a September 19, 2003 article of the Jewish Week as citing Mel Gibson, producer of the film The Passion, as “spouting classic anti-Semitism.” My personal fear is that a too frequent reiteration of that cry will ironically serve to provoke the feared phenomenon itself.
David’s Cry for Mercy
The Lord wants to pull out all the stops and touch a subject that has suffered chronic and historic neglect: the Cross, which is central to all that I will be sharing about the crucifixion of Jesus, His death and atonement, and sin and righteousness.
Deep Calling Unto Deep
I have long suspected that the deepest issues that are at the root of strife and division in the Body of Christ are not at the level of doctrine. Doctrine is often employed as the subterfuge beneath which the real issues of fear, insecurity and mistrust are too often concealed.
Eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
Few of us, even as Christians, realize the continual danger that this ultimate temptation constitutes. It is the delicious area of being ‘as God’ – judging and deciding, usually about others, those delicate and intangible things that can only be known by Him who alone is Judge.
Esteeming the Presence
I have for a long time been secretly irked in my inner man with the growing preoccupation of many of God’s saints to desire the ‘presence’ of God.
Exploring Israel’s Deliverance through Zion
I have long been intrigued by the phrase, “There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer.” Clearly Israel’s deliverance is a final, eschatological, closure event. But how is it to be effected?
Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth:
While it is true that Jesus enjoins us in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38) not to requite others who have requited us, and that while we must not require ‘retaliation,’ may God for the purposes of righteousness and cosmic justice not require it of Himself?
FREN-10 Le Royaume de Dieu
English Title: The Kingdom of God
Gleanings from Psalms 18 in the Light of Current Revival Phenomena
I am going to take look at portions of Psalms 18 because this psalm evokes a sense of God that I think we desperately need. The sense of God is the only all-important reality. And what is the church without a sense of God or the holiness of God?
God as a Factor in the Secular Affairs of Men
I don’t know if anyone has noticed lately, but God, so long restricted to mere Friday through Sunday religious acknowledgment, is threatening to become a factor in the more serious affairs of men where He is usually excluded.
God as Father
I rarely, if ever, call on God the Father. My prayers are always directly to the Lord Jesus. Even though Jesus said we should pray to the Father in Jesus’ name, I pray directly to the Lord. I am more comfortable with the word Lord than I am with the word Father. Maybe this is […]
God Crucified
We shall be the victims of such compromise as the intensity of the temptations increase enormously as we come deeper into the end of the age, and increasing to the degree to which we have not really appropriated the Cross of Jesus Christ!
God: The Forgotten Father and Author of His Son’s Passion
In all of the present and increasing controversy over Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion, little or nothing is said about the role of God the Father, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Israel’s God, in the suffering and Crucifixion of Jesus.
God’s Preliminary Judgments?
As I write this (January 1994), some 20,000 victims of the recent California earthquake suffer in improvised and inadequate tent shelters, in abysmal conditions, totally unfamiliar to their accustomed and normally privileged lifestyles. A soldier-enforced curfew seeks to prevent widespread looting, but no legal restraint impedes the greedy from charging exorbitant prices for the simplest amenities, even water.