Saturday, August 07, 2004

Art Katz on community

Art Katz is a Jewish man in his 70's who travels the globe teaching on the prophetic. Although I'm not deeply familiar with him or his ministry, I was reading an interview with him and was struck by the following question and his answer:

Question: "So then, moving on to experiences, what would be some of the experiences that have brought you to where you are now and caused you to think the way you think now?"

Art: "I would say that the greatest experience has been that of community for this past quarter of a century, having to go through various ordeals and trials, as I mentioned this morning, coming into meetings that are so compacted and tense that you stop breathing when you enter the room and feel that there is no answer to the predicament, then coming out two or three hours later walking on a cloud, because the Lord has brought some transcendent answer. One of the highlights was a trial of the brother whose flesh was given over to the devil, that his soul might be saved, a three-hour actual judicial hearing that was a transcendent experience; we heard housewives speaking out of such depths of wisdom and compassion, prompted by the significance of what we were about, and performing righteous judgment. I have had a host of experiences through the community that have been very formative in my life, and I am sure that I would be something other than what I presently am if my lifestyle had been modeled more along the lines of those who live privately and comfortably. I would not have appreciated the hardships, difficulties, confrontations, and misunderstandings. In recent years, the Lord has even tempered me in giving me a bit of a father’s heart and a pastoral heart, which I have never had in all the good times and did not think I was required to have, but it has come out of the necessity of living real life."

The full interview can be read at http://www.benisrael.org/articles/art_biog_interv.htm

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