Truth, Reality, and the Anointing, 2

by Art Katz
(Transcribed excerpts from a video interview of Art Katz in Raleigh, North Carolina, 1997)

Now in Zechariah 4 there's a remarkable discussion about the two men who stand by the Lord and by the candlestick of God to feed it and it says the anointing is within themselves. Its not some artificial linkage, but that there's an accumulation of something that has come through obedience, it comes through prayer, it comes through anything in which there is a replication of the cross.

A suffering that is born in an obedience to the Lord. A willingness to suffer humiliation, to bring disappointments, to be disappointed even in ourselves. In other words, a suffering that need not be our experience if we want to play it safe, to go along, to be promoted within a system. When we risk those things, have no interest in those things, then we serve the purposes of God.

We see examples of the unreality that parades as anointing and is called even revival. We saw a young minister get up and bring a series of cliched statements even referring to the cross, but there was no explication of the cross; there was no word of the cross or requirement to face the cross in one's own experience but just to rev up the atmosphere and create a certain thing through verbiage. That's not going to build a residue of anointing or oil.

A beautiful portion of Scripture is about the five wise virgins and the five foolish. The five wise virgins had an abundance of oil so they didn't have to go searching for it when the midnight hour came, the Lord called, and door was open for the wedding banquet. But the five foolish virgins, their light flickering out, had only oil to carry them to midnight but not through it and they missed out.

It's interesting that when they finally sought to get in to the wedding supper and cried out, the Lord would not open the door to them. Instead He said, "I never KNEW you". It raises the question, what kind of oil did they have even until midnight? Was it some kind of synthetic equivalent of the true, seeing that He didn't know them?

The oil is His conferring of Himself, His Spirit, because the believer and servant is in union with Him according to His purpose and will. Or it might have been that they had a minimal amount of oil obtained with prayer in petitions that had only to do with their own need. The residue that would have been sufficient beyond that, would have been prayers beyond their own needs.

Often testimonies have to do with "me" and "my". The benefit and blessing God gave ME, does for ME, what He will do for ME; me, me, me! It's true and I've been a recipient as all believers, of the things God gives and does for us. But when our whole Christian viewpoint is fixed at the level of what we will receive in our petitions and prayers, when they become "Lord do for me" and "give me", there's no abundance beyond that.

I think that the abundance, the extra oil, comes when we go beyond our own needs and take up the things that have to do with the Lord's need; His Name, His honour, His glory, His purpose, His will. The virgin's lack of abundance indicates that their petitions were fixed at the level of self. I think that's characteristic, unhappily, of most of the church today. Even all the more painfully, the Charismatic and Pentecostal segment of it.

Even when believers pray for revival, what they're wanting is a shot in the arm, a benefit and a blessing that will accrue to them. Where is the 'spirit of revival' when these believers are in contact with the lost and when eternity is hanging in the balance? Where is that vitality, anointing, and Spirit so ostensibly displayed in a Christian cultural setting which is a performance?

The fact that it is lacking in the world where it should penetrate the unbelieving, is embarrassing. If they had it, they would not have to be encouraged or provoked to speak to the lost, the very Life within them would be pressing them for expression to the lost!

Something is profoundly amiss. The contrast raises some very serious questions about truth, integrity, righteousness, and our relationship with the Lord. What we have been exaggerating and building up in a kind of phraseological Christianity in key words that evoke certain responses, is in fact not truth. God is the God of Truth. The Spirit is the Spirit of Truth before He's the Spirit of power. We need to return to reality, to a God who is truth and in truth or we're going to find ourselves painfully deceived.

Here's what I want to say, here's my burden. The Lord has impressed this upon me: Don't spare, name names so to speak. Identify and share with people the experience through which you have passed with them. If they do not howl at the deviousness of their life and the deceit of it, in the Name of the Lord, what will happen in the day of the Lord's appearing and before the throne of His judgment when we stand before Him?

In that moment when we stand before Him, we see as we are seen and we recognize the fraudulence of our life too late to remedy any part of it. We are fixed and stuck with that unreality for all eternity. It is an unspeakable shame. It's an eternal embarrassment without remedy.

Every one of us have had experiences where we've been flushed with embarrassment. There's a red burning and the most uncomfortable feeling when you're caught in moments like that. But praise God, it passes! What if it was fixed for eternity and it never passed? God is giving men an opportunity to see their condition and the untruth of it, however well meaning their intentions and thinking they were in even doing God's service in promoting that, to cry out in acknowledgment of truth and ask for God's forgiveness.

The Lord put upon my heart the word "caul" or veil, a portion of the amnion, especially when it covers the head of a fetus at birth. It's a viscous, transparent kind of tissue. For every untruth, every lie, every deceit, every cutting of corners, every unfaithfulness, every taking of liberties where we don't insist upon the truth, something develops over our heart.

This caul or veil of the heart is a membrane that becomes thicker and thicker by every untruth until our hearts are rendered dull. The Spirit of God cannot come through that veil that is over our own heart, that is, the product of our own insincerity and our own deceit.

Psalms 24 says, "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted himself up to falsehood, not given to vanity or deceit." My impression is that an overwhelming number of "Charismatic, Spirit-filled, Pentecostal believers" cannot ascend that hill. They have given themselves to deceit.

The system itself ENCOURAGES it. On the few occasions when I get into churches like that and speak in the integrity of God the things that He gives, people stop breathing. They know a moment of truth has come that requires the most radical of adjustments and many of the believers will respond. But the officialdom whose positions and religious office is caught up with the system are defensive of it.

What's the issue of ascending the mount of God? Why is it so critical? God raises the question WHO shall ascend as if to say, how many candidates are there? Who is even desirous of going UP? Most of us like to remain at the plateau of familiarity in things that give us some vibes, kicks, warm feelings, and sentimental things.

We don't want to go up because doing so is defying gravity! You get burrs and sticky things in your legs, you pant for air, its hard. But WHO will go up? Who will ascend the hill of the Lord? Those of clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted himself up to falsehood or vanity. Psalm 24 ends speaking about the King of Glory is at the gate, as if to say he's waiting to come in, but he will not knock the gate down.

He has restricted Himself and imposed a condition upon Himself that the gate must be opened by those who ascend the hill of God and have hands clean enough to throw the bolt that allows the King of glory to come in. Our unreality, religiously, is costing us dearly. It will eventuate in rivers of blood unless there's a true church that will ascend the hill and throw open the bolt the gate that allows the King of glory to come in.

The issue of anointing is the issue of truth. The issue is of authentic relationship with God. If we are not authentically related to Him in truth, moment by moment, how can we relate to men? If we're not authentic with ourselves, with those of the same race, the same religious persuasion, what shall we be expressing to those who are outside of our orbit and to whom we need to bring a greater reality? The challenge is to bring to them a greater reality than what they themselves know and esteem. You cannot fabricate that.

Ironically, I've been a believer for 32 years and struggled with these issues. I was a Jew who was turned off by these issues for the first 35 years of my life. I could not stand cliches, empty, vacuous phrases, cheap things that seemed even to be an obstruction to the progress of mankind and still are.

There's something about the nature of that which is holy, that if it's not jealously guarded and watched over, becomes the cruelest of deceptions and cliches. It becomes the introversion, the negation of what is holy - it becomes, in a word - "religion".

Jesus came to bring us life and that more abundantly. Because we, the church, have not jealously guarded the Life, have not lived in the Life, have not been jealous for the Spirit of the Life which can only go forth in truth, the life and the faith has degenerated into mere religion, empty cliches.

We're looking for revival to bring some kind of jump start to a very grave condition that needs a much deeper remedy than some kind of back thumping, back slapping preacher who can string together a number of cliched phrases with a hype-up ability and call that revival!