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Is Jesus Literally Present?

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 22:05:45 GMT

Catching Up With Jacob Ep 277

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:26:34 GMT

Catching Up With Jacob Ep 276

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Catching Up With Jacob Ep 275

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Catching Up With Jacob Ep 274

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Catching Up With Jacob Ep 273

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Catching Up With Jacob Ep 272

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:17:20 GMT

Book of Jeremiah Part 44 Chapter 33

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:10:28 GMT

Book of Jeremiah Part 43 Chapter 32

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:09:46 GMT

Book of Jeremiah Part 42 Chapter 31

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:09:11 GMT

Book of Jeremiah Part 41

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:06:58 GMT

Book of Jeremiah Part 40

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:06:20 GMT

Book of Jeremiah Part 39

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:52:15 GMT

Catching Up With Jacob Ep 271

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 06:47:06 GMT

Copy of Catching Up With Jacob Ep 269

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Catching Up With Jacob Ep 269

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 06:40:02 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 38

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 06:38:05 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 37

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 06:37:01 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 36

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 06:31:38 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 35

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 06:30:56 GMT

Catching Up With Jacob Ep 268

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 06:20:18 GMT

Catching Up With Jacob Ep 267

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 07:55:02 GMT

Word for the Weekend - Remaining on the Right Road, Part 1

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 06:42:04 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 34

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 06:41:56 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 33

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 07:02:24 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 32

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 07:00:26 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 31

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:59:50 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 30

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:56:57 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 29

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:42:58 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 28

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Jeremiah Bible Study Part 27

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Jeremiah Bible Study Part 26

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Jeremiah Bible Study Part 25

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Jeremiah Bible Study Part 24

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:38:44 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 23

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:32:31 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 22

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:31:47 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 21

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:30:17 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 20

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:29:49 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 19

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:18:00 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 18

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:09:30 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 17

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:07:47 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 16

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:06:36 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 15

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:05:36 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 14

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 01:23:06 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 13

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 01:22:33 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 12

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 01:21:43 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 11

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:09:22 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 10

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 23:43:38 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 9

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 23:43:34 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 8

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 23:26:58 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 7

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 23:25:48 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 6

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 23:23:42 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 5

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 23:23:01 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 4

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 23:05:11 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 3

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 22:55:18 GMT

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 2

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 10:53:06 GMT

In Part 2 of Jacob Prasch’s study on the Book of Jeremiah, we are challenged to examine our calling and patiently wait for God's confirmation before stepping into ministry. Watch as Jacob draws powerful lessons from Jeremiah’s life about discernment, preparation, and trust in God's timing. #JacobPrasch #BibleStudy

Jeremiah Bible Study Part 1

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 10:48:59 GMT

📖 Moriel Thursday Bible Study — Weekly Livestream Join us every Thursday for an in-depth Bible study with Moriel Ministries, exploring the Word of God through expository teaching, current events, and the lens of sound doctrine. With insights from Jacob Prasch and other Moriel teachers, we examine Scripture verse by v

Catching Up With Jacob Ep 265

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 10:35:10 GMT

Catching Up With Jacob Ep 265

New Paragraph

Catching Up With Jacob Ep 266

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 07:35:51 GMT

David Pawson The Pre-Tribulation Rapture Is False Doctrine and Its Not in the Bible

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David Pawson The Pre-Tribulation Rapture Is False Doctrine and Its Not in the Bible

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 23:55:06 GMT

Christianity Is Fantasy

https://youtu.be/wlWQsk8UWHA?si=7ryunxUvJfmOBCwe

Video Title

straffordmedia@olivestreetdesign.com (Brian Lee) — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 18:37:26 GMT

YOU NEED TO SEE THIS ONE!

Here is a description of the video.

Catching Up with Jacob Ep 182

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 05:26:08 GMT

Catching Up With Jacob Ep 177

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 05:36:41 GMT

The Gospel Of John Part 1

Fri, 24 May 2024 05:56:20 GMT

Is April 8th 2024 A Sign or A Hoax?

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 06:17:40 GMT

Responding To Bad Pretrib Arguments No. 1

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 06:39:02 GMT

Responding To Bad Pretrib Arguments No. 2: Does Luke 21 Really “Ruin” Prewrath?

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 06:34:53 GMT

Responding to Bad Pretrib Arguments No. 3. Are the Day of the LORD and the Great Trib the same?

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 06:29:55 GMT

Answering Bad Pretrib Arguments No 4 Are The Great Trib & The Day of The LORD The Same? Part 2

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 06:26:59 GMT

Catching Up With Jacob Ep 146

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 06:41:51 GMT

Catching Up With Jacob Ep 143

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 07:04:26 GMT

What Jesus Told This Catholic Man Shocked Him!

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 07:11:54 GMT

Moriel Ministries Europe

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 07:19:07 GMT

Catching Up with Jacob Ep 140

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 07:29:26 GMT

“THE SUBMERGING CHURCH” – Welcome to Great Britain 2023

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 07:39:11 GMT

StreetPreachers are thrown in jail while radical moslems and militant LGBTQ activists are allowed to openly peddle their wares unhindered.

Pastors are having their bank accounts closed for expressing biblical views of morality, while Christian teachers , medics, and social workers are fired for the same reason. Christian social media platforms are taken down without notice or meaningful right of appeal, again, for the exact same reason. The Church of England refuses to ordain conservative Evangelical clergy for not subscribing to same sex agendas, while denominations such as Methodists and Presbyterians move further away from their biblical heritage and into anti zionism.

The Prime Minister of England, like the Taoiseach of Ireland, is a Hindu who celebrates Diwali and worships Hindu gods in No. 10, while the First Minister of Scotland is a Moslem, as is the Mayor of London who demands further concessions be made to Islam. While some of the deceivers of yesteryear who promoted their counterfeit revivals based on levity and inebriation when no revival ever came , have been summoned to the judgment seat of Christ to give account for misleading the church, newer and even more sick figures are replacing them. One arch compromiser with LGBTQ is now Chancellor of Spurgeons Bible College. What would Charles Spurgeon have thought?

David Pawson, the last truly gifted British bible expositor in the tradition of Chas. Spurgeon, Martin Lloyd Jones, and G. Campbell Morgan is now with The Lord, but there does not appear to be another British expositor of that caliber to take his place. As we and others warned over 20 years ago, more and more believers are unable to find Christ centred scripturally based fellowships where they live. Coved amplified this.

The “Emergent Church” was a sick joke whose chief guru has flung himself headlong into the same sex marriage abomination. “Hill Song’ is now “Hell Song” with a publicly media reported and legally verified legacy of pedophilia, homosexuality, adultry, major financial corruption, and substance abuse, DUI, and intoxication among its founders and top leaders. Lie upon Lie and heresy upon heresy has defined British and most of Western Evangelicism. What is left of it? Like Jeremiah of old, the predictions of voices such as

Stephen Gardner, David Noakes, and things once printed in ‘Prophecy Today’ magazine have proved true. The rest have been proven to be a lie. But what is the God’s honest truth right now as incipient persecution of faithful believers looms?

With everything from AI to digital currencies and social credit scoring , backslidden Judeo-Christian nations like Britain are being set up for the anti christ. But with woke-ism infiltrating the already ecumenical denominations, so is most of the church. This is the current reality.

Despite these things God’s Word warned would come before Jesus returns, Jesus remains The Rock upon which His church is built and He promises us that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. But where in contemporary Great Britain is this church that in the end is assured the victory in Christ? The sins of Sodom have returned but its judgment comes as does the the rescue of the righteous. The “Emergent Church” was just one of many demonically inspired charades invented by false teachers, promoted by crackpots, and subscribed to by doctrinally ignorant and undiscerning Christians who preferred to rather read ‘The Purpose Driven Lie’ and ‘The Shack’, instead of reading the Word of God. The SUBMERGENT CHURCH however is a God given reality.

IN THE NEXT ONE TO TWO DECADES THE TRUE BODY OF CHRIST WILL BE AN UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT LIKE THE EARLY CHURCH.

We may lose most of the battles, but because of Jesus and His Return, in the end, we win the war. There can be no other outcome.

You are invited to come hear Pastor Tim Leech and James Jacob Prasch address these painful yet hopeful realities. Maranatha!

MORIEL BIBLE CONFERENCE 17th- 19th November, 2023

Venue:
Yarnfield Training & Conference Centre
Yarn Nr Stone, Staffordshire, England
ST15 0NL

Cost £190 per person all rooms en-suite – No supplement for singles
5 star restaraunt

For booking forms contact
Beryl Hunter
lifeline.wigan2@btinternet.com
Or tel 07485630836

(nearest airports: Manchester International or Birmingham International; nearest rail station: Stone, West Midlands)

CLICK HERE

Catching Up with Jacob Ep 133

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 08:02:14 GMT

5 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Transitioned

Wed, 24 May 2023 08:15:39 GMT

Catching Up with Jacob Ep 127

Sat, 06 May 2023 11:44:51 GMT

Jacob Prasch Bible Study Hebrew Chapter 11 Part 1 Hope for the Hopeless

Sat, 29 Apr 2023 11:52:28 GMT

CUWJ Backstage 125

Sun, 23 Apr 2023 11:53:31 GMT

Important Notice concerning a video by the Menelaws

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 12:03:23 GMT

Concerning a recent pathetic tirade which we only reluctantly address

To Whom It May Concern, Christian Greetings & Season’s Blessings.

A Moriel volunteer who monitors the internet forwarded us a link to a ridiculous video entitled: ‘Jacob the deceiver’. While we have had no correspondence from our subscribers regarding this new attempted maelstrom of defamatory and slanderous cyber harassment against Moriel & James Jacob Prasch, once again by Deborah Menelaws of ‘Studio Scotland’, we do wish to pre-empt any with a quick and to the point reaction. Admittedly, most people , like ourselves, are long tired of this cyber vendetta, and their GV 24/7 gets too few views to take very seriously. We therefore only respond to her latest baseless polemic “Jacob the deceiver”, for the sake of any of our newer subscribers who per chance may see it, (although we have not heard from any), doing so with reluctance.

Moriel only operates one website, and that is its own. No such person is known to us as ‘Caio Michael’ to whom Menelaws ascribes the following remarks: *Hell Deborah you fat smelly mutant tuna fish stinking aids ridden unwanted piece of garbage”. We do not even appear to have such a person on our mail list. We cannot comment on his claim that Deborah Menelaws has aids; her personal health issues are none of our business. We simply object to her efforts to link us to a person who dislikes her whom we have never even heard of. Indeed, a range of people we know dislike her, but him we do not know. Menelaws appears to be claiming that this ‘Caio Michael’ has a counterfeit website of some description, posting bogus content for which she falsely blames Moriel. This is pure nonsense. We do not even know who he is. In the last few years a wide gamut of people (most, but not all of them, women) have contacted us denouncing Menelaws. We know pastors in Scotland, England, & Northern Ireland have banned her from their churches, calling her ‘End Time Handmaiden’ show (where Deborah Menelaws is a self appointed ‘mother-hen’) ” Cultic” and built on mysticism and Gnostic perversions of scripture. Such pastors however may speak for themselves , and Caio Michael speaks for himself. We speak only for Moriel.

Before James Jacob Prasch worked with Studio Scotland, he authored several books, and did conferences in the USA (sometimes with thousands attending) with major Christian figures such as Tim La Haye, David Hocking, Chuck Missler, Dave Hunt, and Chuck Smith. With no reference to Menelaws, he had what at the time was the most regularly viewed Christian TV program in Britain (and possibly Europe), before leaving due to his objection to money preachers. Hideous claims by Menelaws that the Menelaws ‘made Jacob known’ are demonstrably absurd. God made him known. Caspari, which has its own centre in Jerusalem, Israel is where Jacob Prasch commenced his formal theological education with Cambridge University (he had previously been to university, but not seminary or bible college – although he had earlier learned Greek & Latin in the USA, and already acquired Hebrew). The Cambridge University Diploma in Religious Studies (which Jacob did in Judaism) is the Cambridge University curriculum which issued the credential. The course material , exam grading etc. was all by Cambridge University professors & examiners in England. However, the advantage of studying on site in Israel instead of in England of course, were the Hebrew language and local proximity to relevant archaeological excavations , Judaica museums etc. Jacob did do a theological degree in England however at London Bible College (today called ‘London School of Theology’) , and then commenced post graduate studies for a M. Phil. Instead however, he enrolled in a doctoral program at Fuller Seminary electing to turn an M. Phil into doctorate. A very serious auto collision in 1996 however put an end to his efforts, (which he later saw as providential given the unfortunate direction Fuller gravitated towards theologically and spiritually).

Without a doctorate, Jacob has defined himself as “academically trained, but not an academic – scholarly but not a scholar”. While he has published academic journal papers, as an author , in terms of style, he follows A.W. Tozer, FB Meyer, Martyn Lloyd Jones, Chas. Spurgeron, Francis Shaffer etc. in recycling academic material for an ordinary Christian readership. As with these authors and others, Jacob avoids scholarly syntax, explains the meaning of technical jargon (which academic books do not do need to do), and instead of footnoting, uses parenthetical referencing, and instead of Hebrew & Greek script that the average Christian cannot read, he uses italicised transliteration. Most authors making scholarly material digestible to an ordinary Christian readership do this same thing in lieu of publishing in an academic format (which is theology written for other theologians, but not for ‘feeding the sheep’). Classic examples are the Credal Apology by Oxford Don CS Lewis’ ‘Mere Christianity’ , the ‘Commentary on Matthew’ by Wycliffe Hall Oxford Principal RT France, and Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum’s epic ‘Hebrew Christianity : Its History & Philosophy’ . While CS Lewis & RT France (who was also one of Jacob’s lecturers at London Bible College) were Oxford professors, neither published books for general readership in an academic format. In imitation of them, neither does James Jacob Prasch. To dismiss the validity of Jacob’s books on the basis of not being academically formatted and footnoted, would automatically require that the doctrinal & prophecy books by figures such as David Pawson, Tony Pearce, Roger Oakland, and many , many others also be discredited on precisely the same exact basis.

Authors, commentators, and editorialists have moreover always expressed similar opinions using similar phraseology and terminology. This is obvious. This however does not constitute plagiarism where there is a verbatim false attribution of authorship. While Jacob would refuse to sue on the basis of 1 Corinthians Chapter 6 prohibiting such civil litigation, the vicious charge by Menelaws’ that Jacob is a ‘plagiarist’ is a badly manufactured libellous lie.

Moriel never sought conflict with the Menelaws. We simply believe that Studio Scotland , legally registered as a commercial enterprise, is misrepresented as being a ministry, when it is in fact not Christian ‘ministry’, but is in the ‘ ministry business’. When secular actors were paid handsomely for working on films such as ‘The Daniel Project’ and ‘Daniel Connection’, while James Jacob Prasch and other Christians were told do it pro bono ‘For The Lord’ and ‘For The Gospel’ , only for the rights to such films to then be sold to the Hollywood, and to Communist China (who persecute Christians and who want to prevent Christian films from being translated into Mandarin), is an unethical sham and a shame and a disgrace. We were told those films were for Christ, not for the fallen world. For Menelaws to continue to sell these videos featuring Jacob Prasch while publicly excoriating him moreover, seems like financially driven religious hypocrisy on steroids. This is the very kind of reason James Jacob Prasch refused any further filming by Menelaws, (just as he quit digital TV due to money preachers).

The other motivating factor was Menelaws’ attack on Moriel for our disassociation and refutation of David Nathan whom Menelaws promoted endlessly. Promotion of a supposedly saved Messianic Jew who teaches ‘God The Father is Not the Creator’, ‘The Blood of animals, (not the Blood of Christ) will cleanse from sin in the Millennial Kingdom’, ‘the Gospel is Not eternal’, and ‘we can pray God’s power into the cloth of a tie or jacket to knock people over for healing’ is their business, not ours. But to attack us for opposing it is something different. David Nathan grew up Jewish, Jacob Prasch did not. Jacob Prasch’s family is Jewish, David Nathan’s family is not. So what? But ancestry became the basis of the attacks by supporters of David Nathan’s heresy such as the Menelaws. Mr Nathan ‘being more Jewish than Jacob Prasch’ is not a defense of his heretical abberation theology. He is false teacher whom Menelaws promoted and defended for month after month, attacking Moriel for our stance opposing such apostate dogma that we were forced to renounce as he was a former team member.

In pursuit of her vendetta, Menelaws has formed alliances with some very strange bed fellows. The video produced by ‘Blood Bought Ministries in South Africa’: “Is Chris Roebrough Fit to Be A Pastor’ ? is available for free viewing on Moriel TV & RTN TV. We suggest any who are interested view it. Rosebrough dresses in clergy vestments and prays before a statue of an un-crucified Christ. He teaches forgiveness of sin comes from confessing one’s sins to him, and that there is no antichrist, no 666, that the book of Revelation is only symbolic, and that both the Great Tribulation and the Millennial Reign of Christ have simultaneously existed since the First Century. The penchant Rosebrough and his producer (his son Joshua) have for fecal & four letter word vulgarity is disgusting. In the estimation of many Christians, Menelaws’ mate Rosebrough seems to be crazy.

Rosebrough claims to have a pie chart of Jacob Prasch’s personal DNA, which would require a miracle (since he has no blood or saliva sample). Contrary to his claims, when he harassed Jacob’s family, they told him nothing except to get lost. He correctly stated the original family name of James Jacob ‘Prasch’ was ‘Brasch’ and is a common Jewish name, but insisted that ‘Prasch’ were unrelated to the Jewish ‘Brasch’. The Jewish burial certificates of ‘Prasch’ specifically stating the original name is ‘Brasch’ is on the Jewish burials website, and also copied in the article on the Moriel website “The Rant of The Desperate” (an actual James Jacob Prasch DNA report was offered to our supporters).

Like Israel College of The Bible/ One for Israel, Jews for Jesus, and others – Jacob Prasch teaches that ‘The Angel of The Lord’ in the Hebrew scriptures, whom Kaballistic Judaism calls “Metatron” is a Christophany – an Old Testament manifestation of Jesus. This has been asserted in evangelizing Jews for over a century, first by Oxford lecturer in Hebrew Rabbi Tzvi Nassi (who became a saved believer in Jesus). Caballists variously also mystically identify “The Angel of The Lord” (or as they call Him ‘Metatron’) with Enoch, an Arch Angel, or the Messiah. Jacob Prasch explicitly warned on his video that Kaballah is occult; any elements of truth are combined with error. The only purpose of this teaching was Messianic Apologetics: to teach Christians how to evangelistically deal with rabbinic objections to The Trinity. The rabbinic mythologizing the scriptural ‘Angel of the Lord’ is false ; it is Jesus who is beyond, or at the centre of the throne ( a term appearing in the Book if Revelation). Watching our original video proves beyond question the dishonesty of Menelaws in misrepresenting our doctrinal position in the apologetic reference to Metatron, where Jacob repeatedly and specifically warns against the rabbinic mythology. Again, there is no euphemism for their plain calumny and bearing false witness.

The other odd bed fellow whom Menelaws draws on in her attempts to paint Moriel as a cult, is the very controversial, and self admittedly non-Christian, ‘Catalyst’ organisation that has been involved in legal battles with the press. On its website, ‘Catalyst’ makes it clear that it holds ‘NO RELIGIOUS BELIEFS” and will represent persons of ANY FAITH (Hindu, Moslem, Mormon etc.), and of any sexual orientation (homosexual, lesbian, trans-gender etc.). Why Menelaws would resort to a non Christian organisation like this in order to attack Moriel is a question for Menelaws. Catalyst, promoted by Menelaws, made three claims. The first is that Moriel was under investigation, when in fact Moriel has never been investigated in any jurisdiction. Secondly, that Moriel & Jacob Prasch reap high profits from the sale of recorded material. Everyone of course knows that , unlike Menelaws & Studio Scotland who sell recorded material as merchandise, all Moriel recorded material is publicly available on-line without charge for free downloading (we also allow multiple other channels to post our material free of charge). It is rather Menelaws who sell recorded material. Moriel believes: “freely you received, feely shall you give”. Menelaws even sell recorded material of Jacob Prasch, calling him nefarious, yet openly making money from his name!

The third claim is that Moriel is a cult. Moriel cannot be a cult because it simply has no members. Its team all attend other churches and affiliated churches are autonomous. Our statement of faith reflects 100% Conservative Evangelical orthodoxy.

In the UK, Moriel is registered as a Charity. The audited accounts annually submitted to the Charities commission prove Jacob Prasch takes no UK salary and accepts no book royalties. In the USA, the charity laws are different than in the UK. There is no Charity Commission, but charitable organizations are non-profit corporations regulated by the IRS tax authorities like any other corporation. Under American law, book royalties are paid to the author, but can be donated back as a tax deduction. This however must be publicly declared, and it is (such can reach $150,000). In Britain there are ‘restricted funds’ (called ‘designated funds’ in the USA) . If a donation is received for India or Africa or a specific missionary, or team member (including Jacob Prasch), the money, by law, must go to where the donor requests. Team members can accept love gifts etc., but by the rules Moriel operates by, they may not solicit them. These distorted financial claims of profiteering by Menelaws are twisted. Moriel puts its audited accounts & financial records out for public viewing. Why won’t Menelaws disclose for how much they sold the rights of “Christian” films for to Hollywood, Communist (Christian persecuting) China, and Satan’s world?

* * * * * We regret having to reiterate this cumbersome folly again. Unfortunately, Menelaws is at it again. By God’s grace, we have had just slightly over a 300% increase of subscribers in the last thirty or thirty one months, plus a volumetric rise in RTN, other channels, websites, & Facebook pages carrying Moriel material. Our subscribers, old & new, mostly just ignore Menelaws (as they should). Should any newer subscribers like a response to this nonsense from Moriel, they now have it. Moriel has but one website (though there are non English language Moriel websites in Japanese , Dutch, & Danish etc.). We conclusively and categorically assure everyone, that we have nothing to do with Caio Michael, and we don’t know who he is. He certainly may speak for other people; but not for Moriel. Neither do any imagined death threats come from anyone connected to Moriel. Such assertions are nothing short of deranged. No christian ministry could ever engage in such things. Moriel is once more the target of sickeningly hostile, tragicomical fabrications from which The Lord Himself will defend us.

Lessons from Britain’s Brexit breakthrough

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 12:44:12 GMT

An object lesson in strategy and diplomacy for every democratic nation – by Melanie Philips

This New Year’s day, Britain finds itself in a position that few expected even as late as last week.

With the arrival of 2021, it regains its status as an independent, sovereign nation governed by laws passed by its own democratically elected parliament free of control by a foreign power. Brexit has finally been achieved.

For those squinting at Britain from elsewhere, how this came about and what it amounts to might appear both bewildering and irrelevant to any other country’s concerns.

Courage, Anxiety and Despair- Watching the Battle; James Sant, 1850-1916

In fact, what Britain has now so remarkably achieved, and how it did so, provides an object lesson in strategy and diplomacy for every democratic nation, not least when it comes to dealing with the Middle East or threats from foreign aggressors.

Although the United Kingdom formally left the European Union on January 31 2020, it entered into a transition period of 11 months within which to negotiate its future relationship with the EU.

The Europeans were determined not to give Britain any advantage that might enable it to prosper far more than EU member states ruled by Brussels. Since Britain obviously wanted to gain precisely that advantage, a battle was inevitable.

But the EU made a fatal error. It failed to realise that Britain really meant what it said.

Eurocrats are locked into the progressive mindset that regards democratic national self-government as an impediment to trans-national utopia. So the EU negotiators never took seriously the passionate desire of the British people to become once again an independent self-governing nation, as expressed in their 2016 Brexit referendum vote, nor the pledge by their prime minister, Boris Johnson, to honour that vote.

Moreover, the Eurocrats shared the attitude displayed by many in Britain who voted to remain in the EU — that the UK was too weak and useless to go it alone in the world.

The European negotiators assumed that, regardless of Britain’s formal exit, it would still want to keep many of the advantages of EU membership and would therefore swallow the back-door control by Brussels that these would entail.

Accordingly, even when Britain’s former prime minister Theresa May was dumped from office last year after trying to foist upon her country departure terms that would have turned it into an EU “vassal” state, the EU assumed that her successor, Boris Johnson, would prove equally feeble and pliable.

So when the British government maintained that sovereignty was its absolutely non-negotiable red line, the EU assumed that it was speaking with forked tongue. And when Johnson declared that he would opt for no deal at all rather than breach his sovereignty pledge, the EU didn’t believe him.

Confident that he was an opportunist anxious to avoid compounding the damage done by Brexit, it offered terms designed to play upon what it assumed was Britain’s main weakness. This was its supposed desperation to safeguard what the EU believed to be the UK’s most valuable assets—the City of London financial centre, the creative industries and the professions.

So to minimise disadvantage to these areas, the EU offered to keep them alone within the EU single market—and thus hook the UK under EU control in perpetuity.

Certain that Britain would want to protect these assets, the EU was therefore astounded when it turned the offer down.

With the clock ticking last week to the deadline, the astonishing truth suddenly dawned on the Eurocrats that Johnson actually meant what he said. As a result, they were staring down the barrel of no-deal.

Problematic as this would have been for Britain, it would have been far worse for the EU And so, at the last minute, a trade and co-operation agreement suddenly materialised.

True, it’s a flawed deal for Britain — not least because of areas like financial services that have now been left out of it altogether.

Other elements of the previously agreed UK withdrawal terms — in particular, a fudge over Northern Ireland which will follow certain EU single market rules — are very bad.

But the point is that these are now merely flawed treaties the UK can renegotiate, exit or supersede if it chooses.

For crucially, it has regained its sovereign power to make its own laws and policies, the essence of a democratic and free nation. That was the fundamental point behind the Brexit vote.

And the important lesson for other nations is that the British government pulled off this feat because its opponents didn’t believe it actually meant what it said — but it really did, and acted accordingly.

The assumption that the west believes in nothing strongly enough to fight for it has fuelled conflict in the Middle East and elsewhere. Around the world, aggressors gain the advantage because they know that western democracies that say they’ll bring them to heel don’t actually mean it.

From Iran to North Korea, from China to the Palestinians, rogue states, terrorist regimes and other aggressors have been able to continue their murderous, expansionist activities because they think that, however much the west may threaten them, it won’t follow through.

So the Palestinians never believed the west meant it when it told them they had to accept the right of Israel to exist. Why should they have believed this, when until 2016 at least the west never stopped excusing, funding and incentivising their aggression?

The one exception to this has been US President Donald Trump, who called the Palestinians’ manipulative bluff. Told by the rest of the west that moving the US embassy to Jerusalem would provoke the Arab world to violence, he ignored this and moved it anyway.

Not only was there no such uprising, but now the Palestinians have been marginalised by an Arab world that’s increasingly making its peace with Israel in a way that was previously unthinkable.

That’s largely due in turn to Trump taking the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal and reimposing sanctions on the regime. He thus showed that, unlike former President Barack Obama or the British and the Europeans, when he said he intended to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons he really did mean it.

Now there are fears that President-elect Joe Biden may reactivate the Iran deal and start pumping money again into the regime’s nefarious activities; or he may once again incentivise the Palestinians’ agenda of destroying Israel; or he may allow China to walk all over him in its drive to dominate the west.

This is based on the fear that Biden may behave as the left always behave. They have no red lines of principle over stopping aggressors and protecting their victims. Instead, their doctrine of moral equivalence means that they make no such value judgments between aggressor and victim.

Their red line is instead merely to keep negotiations and peace processes going. The result is that they excuse and empower aggressors just to keep them from walking out of the talks.

So when they claim to be against tyranny, racism and oppression, the world’s tyrants, racists and oppressors know they don’t mean what they say.

Britain now faces more battles with the EU The free world faces more battles with Iran, China, Russia, Islamic jihadists and other lethal foes. The Jews face their interminable battle against those who wish to destroy them.

What the Brexit deal reminds us is that hypocrites are dismissed with contempt as paper tigers; and that for freedom, justice and democracy to win against aggression, injustice and tyranny, the leaders of the free world must not pay mere lip-service to defending the former but actually mean what they say.

Joseph Prince’s Jesus or Bible Jesus?

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 12:34:40 GMT

This is a much-needed message regarding Joseph Prince that is best presented by another Chinese Singaporean rather than by a Westerner.

https://youtu.be/1SEI8oG-t_8

Live Zoom & Moriel TV Bible Study, Wed, March 3

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 12:31:43 GMT

Upcoming Event! Live Zoom & Moriel TV Bible Study with James Jacob Prasch

Study Topic: Introduction to Colossians

Date: Wednesday March 3, 2021

Time: 11 a.m. PST, 2 p.m. EST, 7 p.m. GMT

JOIN ON ZOOM – CLICK HERE

OR ON YOUTUBE – CLICK HERE

Famous Teachers gone Bad

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 12:27:19 GMT

MORIEL PODCAST · The great Distortion of Calvinism

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 12:24:31 GMT

MORIEL PODCAST · The great Distortion of Calvinism

AN IMPORTANT NOTICE FROM MORIEL MINISTRIES

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 12:17:21 GMT

HOW MORIEL, MORIEL MISSIONS, MORIEL TV, MORIEL QUARTERLY, and MORIEL SOCIAL MEDIA WORK ADMINISTRATIVELY, FINANCIALLY and LEGALLY.

Moriel.org, Moriel TV, BE ALERT, Moriel TV Facebook, and all printed and social media material of Moriel are exclusively published, web hosted, web served, and web posted in the USA only by Moriel USA (a US 5013 non profit organisation).

Moriel USA, most members of the Moriel team (including James Jacob Prasch), are American based and are legally domiciled in the USA (Coved has however stranded some missionaries and team members abroad).

Moriel Australia , UK, Canada , (and 8 other countries) are all legally and financially – totally separate from one another as independent legally incorporated or chartered entities, and none have any ownership, operating control. or responsibility for web posted or published material of the platforms which are incorporated in the USA. All are affiliated on the basis of common Christian doctrine and mission goals only. Mission projects are funded from multiple international branches,

All inquiries concerning Moriel TV and Moriel Social Media, as well as publications, are forwarded to the USA where they are established and legally located. The independent international Moriel agencies outside of The USA exercise no executive responsibility, and hold no liability, or propriety for these American platforms or their content. All content is the intellectual property of Moriel USA. Each country’s Moriel organization is 100% legally and financially autonomous and self administrated. Moriel is a united theological voice only, but is not a legal, financial, or administrative monolith.

MORIEL ANNOUNCEMENT – midweek bible study

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 12:15:26 GMT

We will resume Wednesday Bible Studies on RTN TV at 7:00pm British Time next Wednesday (12:00 noon EST, 9:00am PST)

April 28th by livestream, We hope to re-introduce ZOOM shortly after that.

The Live Stream will be available on both RTN TV and Moriel TV.

Livestream Bible Study with James Jacob Prasch, Saturday, March 20, 2021

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 12:13:50 GMT

Upcoming Livestream Bible Study with James Jacob Prasch

Saturday, March 20, 2021 4 p.m. PST, 7 p.m. EST, 11 p.m. GMT

Study Topic: Jonah

Watch the live broadcast on YouTube or RTN TV!

Click on here to watch via RTN TV LiveStream meeting, or click here for YouTube

Live Zoom & Moriel TV Bible Study, Wed, March 17

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 12:10:43 GMT

Upcoming Event! Live Zoom & Moriel TV Bible Study with James Jacob Prasch

Study Topic: Colossians Chapter 2

Date: Wednesday March 17, 2021

Time: 11 a.m. PST, 2 p.m. EST, 7 p.m. GMT

Join the Bible study live on Zoom or watch the live broadcast on YouTube. A question & answer session with Jacob is planned after the teaching.

CLICK HERE TO JOIN ON ZOOM

OR ON YOUTUBE – CLICK HERE

Listen to Jacob on the Moriel Podcast

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 13:38:20 GMT

Description: Jacob is now on Podcast with his prophecy update. Go to Soundcloud and subscribe https://soundcloud.com/amos-farrell

What is the apostasy?

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 13:35:59 GMT

MORIEL PODCAST · What is the Apostacy-JAMES JACOB PRASCH

I’m Shocked! – They said it was Copyrights

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 13:34:58 GMT

https://youtu.be/ccvJmQBnkyw

Description: The Screen shots and the of the content screen shots in this film come under ‘Fair Use’.

Two Narratives, which one is true?

Christ “Is Returning! Is this the 4th Reich?”

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 13:33:17 GMT

Another new Moriel video: Christ “Is Returning! Is this the 4th Reich?”

Link to Youtube: https://youtu.be/S62k6Rk9iS0

Description

“Throw out everything you think you know about past history. Close the approved textbooks, turn off the corporate mass media, and whatever you do, don’t believe anything you hear from the government. In this video, Jacob, reveals the frighteningly real possibility that today the radical left globally, is becoming the Fourth Reich, the continuation of an ideology thought to have been vanquished more than a half century ago”.

8 Signs of the Antichrist

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 13:29:52 GMT

Compilation Questions by Jacob Prasch” on MorielTV and RTNTV.org

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 13:28:09 GMT

Good morning brothers and sisters,

please see, “Compilation Questions by Jacob Prasch” on MorielTV. m

Link MorielTV Youtube:https://youtu.be/vDUMM5LorV4

RTN Link: https://rtntv.org/Videos?id=5f777fef337df3d0b9a2b9d0

Amir Tsarfati – Cyber Bully – MTV

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 13:25:26 GMT

Amir Tsarfati – Cyber Bully – MTV

https://youtu.be/eAHhYeH8SfY

Copyright Violation is wrong. Filing complaints for legitimate violations is both ethical and appropriate. Lying however is not. To misrepresent a “FAIR USE’ citation of a clip as a Copyright Violation is both dishonest and despotic. To further claim that a video not even showing clips of the complainant (Amir Tsarfati) is a ‘Copyright Violation’, in order to suppress open, fair, and reasonable doctrinal disagreement or theological discussion – is nothing short of lying. Amir Tsarfati’s dishonest actions are shameful and unbecoming of someone claiming to be a saved believer in Yeshua. How can an Israeli professing to be a follower of his Messiah go to the secular world and make false accusations against fellow believers like this? This is done only to silence criticism of his teaching, which many believers who support Israel, including a number of Jewish believers, hold to be doctrinal errors. When the world behaves like this, that is the world. When believers behave like this, it is a disgrace to the Name and cause of Yeshua, bringing reproach upon His Gospel.

We ourselves normally agree with Amir Tsarfati’s political commentaries. His “teaching,” however, is in the view of many believers a mixture of truth and error warranting honest, scripturally based discussion. Amir Tsarfati is indeed a tour guide and an officer in the military reserves, and is in a position to produce such political and strategic commentaries as a believer. He does not however pastor a congregation in Israel, he is not a Messianic theologian, nor speak for the Messianic leadership in Israel. Amir Tsarfati’s ministry is primarily to the church in the diaspora. We publicly call upon Amir Tsarfati to repent and apologize to Dean Gibson and Sonia Azam.

The specific teaching of Amir Tsarfati challenged, concerned his false Christology that Yeshua is the Archangel Michael. When first accosted, he reacted by citing a Jehovah’s Witness cult false teaching, then Amir Tsarfati angrily blamed others as if he were a victim of something other than his own erroneous dogma. Now Amir files copyright violation claims where no violations exist. Regarding his second bogus copyright strike against the converted Moslem sister Sonia Azam, some of us even agree with Amir Tsarfati’s position on a Jewish antichrist. This however does not constitute a right to dishonestly sequester, by such utterly disingenuous means, material that reviews and dialogues about his proposition. The habitual belligerence exhibited by Amir Tsarfati in response to those in honest disagreement with him has now been replaced by a policy of demonstrable dishonesty.

7 Pretrib Problems and the Prewrath Rapture (Full Movie)

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 13:24:02 GMT

7 Pretrib Problems and the Prewrath Rapture (Full Movie)

https://youtu.be/-UnZgFDI54I

This video was produced by Alan Kurschner and Chris White. https://7pretribproblems.com/

*DISCLAIMER : MORIEL TV stands in complete doctrinal agreement and theological harmony with the excellent contents of this video production with regards to the Pre Tribulational Rapture position

which we deem to be unscriptural and fundamentally incompatible with the unignorable factors highlighted in this video, as well as certain other further exegetical and historical considerations supporting the same conclusions.

While the doctrinal positions of those within MORIEL TV are absolutely congruous with the producers and contributors of this video regarding the Pre Tribulational rapture view which we in common with the producers & contributors hold to be erroneous, there may be other areas outside of the scope of this video where we may either agree or disagree or partially agree. The academically well-presented and scholarly argumentation set out in this superb production, precisely parallels and echoes our own assertions with respect to this increasingly vital subject irrespective of any extraneous matters not specifically addressed in this video.

We Thank The Lord Jesus , the Producers, and the Contributors for this important and valuable resource, and we encourage its circulation and dissemination within The Body of Christ globally.

***

Moriel TV is active in the area of discernment withstanding the popular apostasy in the contemporary church that The Word of God warns would precede the return of Jesus. We remain firmly aligned to the conviction that contemporary events in The Middle East , Europe, and in the church make the present time in history different from other eras when people thought it was the last days. We affirm the belief that Jesus is coming again and prophecy of His return is radically being fulfilled increasingly.

If you have any questions, please let us know.

Every blessing to you

Watch Live IN Focus on RTNTV.org

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 13:17:44 GMT

Good day brothers and sisters, we have a new video that I just posted on MorielTV. It’s a promo for the new In Focus Program

Watch Live IN Focus on RTNTV.org

Link to Youtube: https://youtu.be/tlHrMIe-R7U

Watchman Nee – A brief history and appreciation

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 13:00:26 GMT

His writings and a post-script from the present day, 50 years on

A generation ago, the writings of Watchman Nee were very well known and appreciated in the Christian world of the West, though many of the readership who benefitted from his spiritual insights knew almost nothing of who he was. This in itself would have brought him much satisfaction!

The writings of Watchman Nee and probably of many others of the spiritual giants of our past however, may be far from well known today, so some introduction is in order. Some of the information below which had faded from my memory was gleaned from Wikipedia which in this case seems to be reasonably accurate.

Early days

Watchman Nee (in Chinese Ni Tuo-Sheng 倪柝声) was born in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China on November 4, 1903. He was a third-generation believer, his grandfather having been ordained in Fuzhou as an Anglican minister by the Church Missionary Society. Watchman was the third of nine siblings. Though his mother brought up all her children with the instruction of piety, Watchman by his own confession only came to faith in the Lord Jesus at the age of 17. A lady evangelist called Dora Yu had come to the Methodist church his mother attended, the “Church of Heavenly Peace” and was holding 10 days of meetings. It was 1920.

One evening his mother returned from the meeting, sat her son down and gave him her heartfelt apology for a previous incident of unjust punishment. This kind of action is almost unthinkable within normal Chinese culture, an elder apologising to a younger person, especially a parent to her own offspring. Watchman was so deeply impressed he resolved he must find out at the next meeting what had brought about this new humility in his mother.

After the meeting, he returned home and this is his testimony: —

“On the evening of 28th April, 1920, I was alone in my room, struggling to decide whether or not to believe in the Lord. At first I was reluctant but as I tried to pray I saw the magnitude of my sins and the reality and efficacy of Jesus as the Savior. It seemed I could see the Lord’s hands stretched out on the cross, welcoming me, and the Lord was saying, “I am waiting here to receive you.” Realizing the effectiveness of Christ’s blood in cleansing my sins and being overwhelmed by such love, I accepted Him there. Previously I had laughed at people who had accepted Jesus, but that evening the experience became real for me and I wept and confessed my sins, seeking the Lord’s forgiveness. As I made my first prayer I knew joy and peace such as I had never known before. Light seemed to flood the room and I said to the Lord, “Oh, Lord, you have indeed been gracious to me.”

Watchman was at that time still a student, within the middle school section of the prestigious Trinity College of Fuzhou. Much of the tuition of the school was in English. He was a very gifted student, with very high grades. He began to speak to his classmates of the Lord. Here again from his “Testimony”: —

“Immediately I started putting right the matters that were hindering my effectiveness, and also made a list of seventy friends to pray for daily. Some days I would pray for them every hour, even in class. When the opportunity came I would try to persuade them to believe in the Lord Jesus… With the Lord’s grace I continued to pray daily, and after several months all but one of the seventy persons were saved”.

— Watchman Nee, Watchman Nee’s Testimony.

Watchman aspired to be a worker for the Lord, and attended Dora Yu’s Bible Institute in Shanghai, even while still a high school student. He was unable to keep up with the curriculum however and was eventually expelled for sleeping late and other breaches of discipline. These failures humbled him to seek help, and he was thus brought into touch with a British missionary living in Fuzhou, Margaret E. Barber. She became his teacher and mentor. He would visit her on a weekly basis to receive spiritual help. Miss Barber was a remarkable missionary in not being part of any society, not making any appeals for support, and spending much time in meditation on the scriptures, intercession and prayer without involvement in much “Christian activity”. Her faith, trust and also her gracious responses to those who criticised her for not being more “active” without doubt put a profound stamp into the young man’s life.

She had taken Watchman and several other young men under her wing to disciple them. He said of her life “I shall always remember Miss Barber as a “Christian living in the light”. She was very strict with him in various matters, especially “looking first at the beam in your own eye” before speaking of others. On her death in 1930, she left all of her belongings to him. He wrote:

“We feel most sorrowful concerning the news of the passing away of Miss Barber in Lo-Hsing Pagoda, Fujian. She was one who was very deep in the Lord, and in my opinion, the kind of fellowship she had with the Lord and the kind of faithfulness she expressed to the Lord are rarely found on this earth”.

She had written many hymns and poems. Here is one: —

If the path I travel

Lead me to the cross,

If the way Thou choosest

Lead to pain and loss,

Let the compensation

Daily, hourly, be

Shadowless communion,

Blessed Lord, with Thee.

Miss Barber had originally been an Anglican missionary with the CMS, resigning from the mission when she came into an understanding of believer’s baptism and “every believer a minister”.

She introduced her young men to the works of Robert Govett, D.M. Panton, T. Austin-Sparks and Jesse Penn-Lewis, who were all writing on the nature of the church as a mutually interdependent body with many members and on “the life of the overcomer”. This led to Watchman acquiring works by J.N.Darby and many of the “Brethren” classics, C.H.Mackintosh, William Kelly, J.G. Bellett. He was by all accounts a phenomenal reader and accumulated in his library over 3000 titles on church history, Bible commentary and the spiritual life. In the early days of his ministry, he is said to have spent one-third of his income on personal needs, one-third to assist others, and the remaining third on spiritual books.

His understanding of the nature of the church led him into contact with different strands of the “Brethren” movement in USA and Britain and he made visits to USA, UK and Europe in 1932 and 1933. In the group sometimes labelled the “Exclusives” led by James Taylor he was initially well received, but they rejected him when they found he had broken bread with T. Austin-Sparks of “Honour Oak Fellowship” and indeed with some missionaries of “the denominations” in China.

There is an anecdote of Watchman sitting listening to a long discourse on doctrinal matters among the learned brethren going into tremendous detail, when he lost patience with them and exclaimed “Dear brothers, can any of you cast out demons in Jesus’ name?!”

As a young man (30??)

Marriage

Watchman was severely tested in his love for Charity Chang, a young woman he had known from a childhood years. She ridiculed his faith when he was converted. There was a long struggle — “If you let me marry that girl, I will go to Tibet!” he had said. It seems the Lord was not at all interested in his volunteering to go to Tibet with the gospel; and at last he surrendered her into the hands of the Lord, and gave himself to the work that had opened up to him.

Ten years later, however, after university graduation, Charity turned to the Lord. She began attending church meetings in Shanghai in 1934, and in the same year they were married.

In those days Watchman was frequently ill, and Charity cared for him. Later in prison she was the only visitor he was permitted during his imprisonment. They had no children. Charity suffered one miscarriage.

(Watchman and Charity at their wedding in Hangzhou in 1934)

Ministry

(From Wikipedia) In 1936, before a group of fellow workers, Watchman Nee outlined the commission of his ministry:

“From the time I was bedridden by illness until the time I was healed by God, I was being shown more clearly the kind of work God wanted me to do: —

Literary Work: After my illness, God made it known to me that the primary purpose of His imparting messages to me was not for explaining the Scripture, nor for preaching the ordinary Gospel, nor for prophesying, but for laying stress on the living word of life (as per John 5:39-40)… All that I have written has one aim, which is that the reader will, in the new creation, give himself wholly to God and become a useful person in His hands. Now I wholeheartedly commit my writings, my readers and myself to God, who preserves men for ever, and hope that His Spirit will guide me into all His truths.

Meetings for the Overcomer: God opened my eyes to the necessity of raising up in churches at various places, a number of people who are victorious to be His witnesses… Therefore once every year a meeting for the victorious was held in which I faithfully proclaimed the messages which God has revealed to me.

Building up Local Churches: When the Lord called me to serve Him, the prime object was not for me to hold revival meetings so that people may hear more Scriptural doctrines nor for me to become a great evangelist. The Lord revealed to me that He wanted to build up local churches in other localities to manifest Himself, to bear testimony of unity on the ground of local churches so that each saint may perform his duty in the Church and live the Church life. God wants not merely individual pursuit of victory or spirituality but a corporate, glorious Church presented to Himself.

Youth Training: If the return of the Lord be delayed, it will be necessary to raise up a number of youths to continue the testimony and work for the next generation… My idea is not to establish a seminary or a Bible institute but to have the young people live a corporate life and practice spiritual life, that is, receive training for the purpose of edification and to learn to read the Scripture and to pray in order to build up good character. On the negative side, to learn how to deal with sin, the world, the flesh, natural life, and so on. At a suitable time they are to return to their respective churches to be tempered together with other saints to serve the Lord in the Church…

In the future my personal burden and work will generally comprise these four aspects. May all the glory be to the Lord.

— Watchman Nee, Watchman Nee’s Testimony.

I believe it may be seen that indeed the Lord enabled His servant to fulfill this calling, in some ways beyond his anticipation; though no doubt as we all will do at the end, he would have said “We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do”.

(Some facts here also from Wikipedia)

Watchman began to write and publish at a very early age. In 1923, he began to publish the magazine The Present Testimony, and in 1925, he started another magazine entitled The Christian. It was also in 1925 when Nee changed his name from Ni Shu-tsu to Ni Tuo-sheng. The English translation of this is “Watchman Nee”, though actually the name means “Sound-of-the-bell Nee”. At the moment of his birth the watchman whose job it was to patrol the town through the night hours had been passing by. There were five “watches” in the Chinese night, and his mother had heard the watchman sounding one of these with his bell or clapper. He adopted this circumstance for his new name. At age 21, Watchman established his first assembly in Sitiawan, Malaysia while visiting his mother, who had moved there from China. In 1926, he established up another local church in Shanghai, which became the center of his work in China. By 1932, this example of meeting simply around the Lord’s table as local churches had spread throughout China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore (The house churches which sprang up throughout the UK in the 70’s initially all followed this pattern “sitting together as family”, rather than as “facing-the-front-churches”).

(Still from Wikipedia) In 1928, Watchman published a three-volume book entitled The Spiritual Man. In February of the same year, Nee held his first “Overcomer Conference” in Shanghai. In January 1934, he called a special conference on the subjects of “Christ as the Centrality and Universality of God” and “The Overcomers”. According to Nee, this was a turning point for him in his ministry. He said, “My Christian life took a big turn from doctrines and knowledge to a living person, Christ, who is God’s centrality and universality.”

In 1938, Watchman traveled to Europe and gave messages that were later published as The Normal Christian Life. Upon his return, Nee gave a conference on the Body of Christ. This he said “was the second turn in my ministry” — “My first turn was to know Christ, and my second turn was to know His Body. To know Christ is only half of what the believers need. The believers also must know the Body of Christ. Christ is the head, and He is also the Body.”

We will add a little more later on recommended reading from Watchman.

The most controversial book he ever published was at first entitled (in Chinese) “Rethinking the Work” in 1938; then published in English in 1939 as “Concerning Our Missions”; later retitled “The Normal Christian Church Life”. The controversy here was the contention that the work of planting churches and preaching the gospel “in all the creation” in God’s economy was the full responsibility of local churches, and that missions and parachurch organisations formed in this intention came short of God’s fullness or purpose and indeed in certain ways hindered His purpose. He was very careful however not to say that God in His grace was not using these ways of working, or that He had done very much in China through the sacrificial labours of such mission groupings; indeed he maintained fellowship with many brethren who saw things differently, and had cooperative work with them. But the work was explosive in the storm of criticism it generated. Time however has validated so very much of what he has said; particularly on the soil of China itself where the growth of the church from 500,000 in 1949 to perhaps 50 million in 1990 took place substantially without overseas finance, aid, or “supervision”. One of the contentions of “Rethinking the work” was that each local church should be independent, responsible solely to the Lord as the Head to direct their labours. His thinking on “church” and the independence of each assembly before the Lord included the following principles: —

(i) “The church” in any location, as defined by the Lord and owned as His body in that location, is composed of all the believers in that locality (1Cor.1:1). Whether brothers and sisters recognise each other and receive each other or not, this is the one and only true identity of the church. (this teaching was later much distorted by the “Witness Lee” group’s “local church doctrine” — see later).

(ii) Each local church should rely on the Lord for needed finances, not looking to some overseas organisation or group for the financing of a “pastor” or evangelists (though giving and receiving gifts is normal in fellowship between churches, the expectation should always be from the Lord).

(iii) Leadership of the local church should not be by a single “pastor”, but if possible be led by a plurality of elders. The commonly held structure of “pastor-elders-deacons” should be “elders-deacons” only; the qualification of each elder however given in 1Timothy and Titus effectively means that each elder must be a pastor by gifting and calling. If he is not a pastor in function, he should not be an elder. “Pastor” in the New Testament is not a title (Matt.23:8-11) but a function and gift. Brothers should not be calling anyone “Pastor”.

(iv) All believers are priests and have a ministry; churches and church meetings should be oriented and arranged such that each believer has the opportunity to exercise his or her gifting for the building up of the whole; without that liberty and opportunity the church will be unable to grow to full stature.

(v) Church structures where groups of churches are linked together with overall superintendence is maintained in a kind of “pyramid structure” were unbiblical.

(vi) The responsibility of the Great Commission of Matt.28:19 to preach the gospel to all the nations is incumbent on each local church; before the Lord each church must know its responsibility and part in the whole.

(vii) It should hardly need stating, but of course it must be stated, that Watchman along with the whole Brethren movement (this writer firmly included) that leadership (at least within the categories of elder and deacon) within the body of Christ is male.

(viii) Those who go forth preaching the gospel establishing churches are “apostles” (“sent ones”). After churches are established, the apostle does not maintain any kind of formal authority over those churches he establishes (see Paul’s letters to the churches in Corinth especially); the apostle chooses elders in consultation with the saints, and then they are the ones in responsibility.

Watchman would have abhorred the current usage of “apostle” as it is heard now in many Western churches; indeed his doctrine of “apostles” such as it is demolishes the NAR concept. An apostle in his definition could be simply substituted by the word “missionary” with no implication whatever of a man who is in receipt of new divine revelation. Indeed the only man who can be thus considered “apostolic” is one who has soaked and saturated himself in the “doctrine of the apostles and prophets” as foundation.

Those who go out preaching the gospel should follow the instructions of the Lord to trust Him for their supply (Luke 10:4, 22:35). They are not to make appeals except to the Lord. This of course was upsetting to many missionaries and many missionary groups who constantly appealed to the churches of the West for funds. Watchman appreciated the labours of the CIM founded by Hudson Taylor more than most (CIM was founded on the principle of making no financial appeals); but one of his key observations was from Paul’s words in Acts 13:36: —

“For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep…”. Watchman’s perceptive comment was that “David served his own generation; he could not serve two”. To seek to perpetuate a work of God through large-scale human organisation was the reasoning of the tower of Babel “Let us make us a name…”, going beyond trusting God for His grace. Our present generation has certainly abundant evidence that large organisations and indeed large denominational structures with oversight over whole areas or groups of churches not only inevitably fail but in the end apostasize, leaving behind what can often only be described as pagan temples and priesthoods. On the other hand “apostolic teams” can operate flexibly as need requires on a small scale, and groups of churches can cooperate in outreach together.

These were some of the basic outlines of “Rethinking the work”. Ironically Watchman’s emphasis of “self-government” “self-support” and “self-propagation” (articulated it must be said also much earlier by some of the mission groups) was taken up by the so called “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” established by the Marxist regime in 1952 to act as a means of control of believers. However the meaning was completely changed — here “self-government” meant government by the state, “self-support” meant no contact or support from outside of any kind, and “self-propagation” meant only keeping the message inside the four walls of the “TSPM” state-controlled churches.

That is still the general situation of the TSPM churches of China today, though local situations vary enormously, from men in TSPM pulpits fervently preaching the gospel to men putting forward basic Marxist propaganda in Christian disguise. In that respect it resembles something like the “Anglican” church, but with lots more state control. Probably 80% of China’s Christians meet entirely outside the regimen of the “TSPM” and will not join it in principle.

Into Business

In 1939, Watchman became involved with his second brother’s failing pharmaceutical company. He was under considerable family pressure to use his abilities to help his brother. At that very time because of his encouragement many young men had stepped out into ministry, shepherding the flock and going out to preach the word. He was intensely burdened to see many of them in desperately sore straits financially, and this enterprise looked like a solution. If successful, he could support them in their time of need. Later he was to make the judgement in hindsight that this had possibly been an error, and that painful though it was, he had left the path of faith in so doing. No doubt we will hear the final verdict in eternity.

He took over full management of the factory, reorganised it, and began to employ many local church members from Shanghai. Some of the elders at Shanghai questioned his motivations and refused him their blessing and even their fellowship. To avoid controversy Watchman suspended his outward ministry activities in 1942. Ironically, at the very time he was being most heavily criticised, he was anonymously supporting some of the very brothers who were criticising him. Shortly afterward, the church in Shanghai stopped meeting altogether.

When the Japanese surrendered in China on September 9 1945, Watchman returned to Shanghai from Chongqing where he had been overseeing the pharmaceutical factory. He revived his spiritual work in Shanghai, purchased housing for some of his co-workers, sold the factory and business and donated all the proceeds into the Lord’s work. Within a short time, the church in Shanghai grew to over 1000 members.

Persecution and imprisonment

After the “Liberation” of China by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) on October 1st. 1949, great persecution began. False charges and arrests were also brought against many foreign missionaries. Through intensive propaganda campaigns and threats of imprisonment, believers were influenced to accuse one another (Wikipedia). Part of the intimidation included the setting up of the state-run “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” (TSPM) church and pressurising all Christian leaders to join it. Wu Yaozong, a so-called Protestant minister, led the charge. Hundreds of brothers and sisters were subjected to “accusation meetings” and sentenced to jail. These included Allen Yuan (Yuan Xiangchen) and Wang Mingdao of Beijing, Moses Xie (Shanghai), Samuel Lamb (Guangzhou) and many other prominent leaders.

It seems in the beginning however that Watchman had counselled that those churches in fellowship with him should express their positive resolve to submit to the new government; he did not publicly oppose the “TSPM”. Was this a mistaken counsel to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves”? From his trial in 1952 onwards, his counsel would certainly have been different.

On April 10, 1952, he was arrested in Shanghai by Public Security officers and charged with bribery, theft of state property, tax evasion, cheating on government contracts, and stealing of government economic information. He was at that time pronounced “re-educated”. On January 11, 1956, there was another nationwide sweep targeting the co-workers and elders in the many of the “Little Flock” local churches with more pressure to conform. Some died in labour camps, while others faced long prison sentences. On January 18, 1956, the Religious Affairs began twelve days of accusation meetings at the church assembly hall on Nanyang Road in Shanghai, in which many accusations were brought against Watchman in large “struggle meetings”.

On June 21, 1956, he was brought before the High Court in Shanghai, where it was announced that he had been excommunicated by his own elders in the church in Shanghai and found guilty on all charges. He was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment with reform by labour. These years were passed in different prison locations. Only his wife, Charity, was allowed to visit him.

On January 29, 1956, Public Security took over the Nanyang Road building, and many of his co-workers were arrested, put into isolation, and forced to repudiate him. Some co-workers joined in the accusations while others, such as Peace Wang, Ruth Lee, and Yu Chenghua remained silent and were punished with life imprisonment. Following this, mass accusation meetings were held across the country to condemn the “anti-revolutionary sect of Watchman Nee”.

Watchman’s friends in USA and elsewhere had all besought him to take the opportunity while the door was still open to stay in HK (he was on a visit there in 1950) and emigrate to USA, but he had steadfastly refused, saying that the shepherd’s place was to remain with his flock.

Watchman’s remaining with the flock may be contrasted with a much later incident in 1997 when Hong Kong was officially “returned” to Chinese control. It is a matter of public record that over 50% of HK pastors and ministers purchased a foreign passport by one means or another and emigrated before the critical day of July 1st. (Many missions also in panic moved their offices to other locations in Asia). Of course all their anxieties as to an immediate clampdown were unfounded, but their emigration demonstrated what kind of shepherds these were — not shepherds but hirelings.

These days Watchman Nee is often wrongly linked to a man who for some years was his co-worker, Witness Lee. Even before Witness Lee’s departure to Taiwan in 1949, there is some evidence of disagreement between them on the matter of authority and how it was to be exercised in the local assembly.

After 1949, from his time in Taiwan onwards, Witness Lee began to espouse many other aberrant teachings including modalism, (denying the Trinity) and promoting his own translation of the scriptures (sometimes called the “Recovery Bible”).

The disagreement between Watchman and Witness Lee is disclaimed however by Witness Lee’s group (sometimes called “Living Stream”) to this day. Initially they had both espoused the same definition of the “local church” which we gave above (we would too!). However Witness Lee went beyond that to say that unless believers in a locality submitted to elders which he or his people had appointed (as God’s “apostolic representatives” in the earth) then they were in rebellion against God’s appointed authority and under His chastisement. They could not indeed be considered as belonging to any church whatever.

Shades of some other doctrines we have heard before somewhere, someone will say!!

Witness Lee then sitting amid the perilous luxury of Taiwan began to send out a stream of instructions and exhortations to those who had espoused his teaching on the mainland, telling them in the face of all opposition they should march forth on the streets shouting “Hallelujah! Jesus is Lord!” at the top of their voice. Their meetings were also to be similarly conducted with prayer at maximum volume. Consequently they became known among the churches of China as “the Shouters” (呼喊派). Not surprisingly, many of these simple souls were very swiftly hauled off to the swelling labour camps.

Those who encounter the teachings of Witness Lee can benefit from Walter Martin’s analysis of their movement here: —

The helpful information below also is available on this Web page: —

The False Gospel of Witness Lee and the Living Stream Ministries

Walter Martin’s analysis of “Living Stream” was repudiated by CRI after his death, but see the later article below which show that fundamentally nothing has changed.

“In late 2009, the Christian Research Institute (which is now headed by Hank Hanegraff, who is plagued with controversy and criticism and whose proper succession to Martin at CRI is disputed) published a special issue of the Christian Research Journal simply titled “We Were Wrong.” The whole issue is an apology to the “Local Churches” and an explanation of how CRI was wrong and how the LC are actually “soundly orthodox.” Norm Geisler and Ron Rhodes wrote a response to the CRI piece:

http://www.open-letter.org/pdf/Geisler_Rhodes_Response_to_CRI.pdf

— to which Hank Hanegraaff subsequently wrote a response in the latest issue of CRJ. ”

Later imprisonment and death

(Taken again from Wikipedia) One year before Watchman’s death in 1972, his wife, Charity, died due to an accident and high blood pressure; he was not allowed to attend her funeral. Her eldest sister then took the responsibility to care for her brother-in-law in prison. Though scheduled for release in 1967 he was still detained in prison until his death on May 30, 1972. There was no announcement of his death nor any funeral. His remains were cremated on June 1, 1972 before his family arrived at the prison.

His grandniece recounts the occasion: —

“In June 1972, we got a notice from the labor farm that my granduncle had passed away. My eldest grandaunt and I rushed to the labor farm. But when we got there, we learned that he had already been cremated. We could only see his ashes… Before his departure, he left a piece of paper under his pillow, which had several lines of big words written in a shaking hand. He wanted to testify to the truth which he had even until his death, with his lifelong experience. That truth is— “Christ is the Son of God who died for the redemption of sinners and resurrected after three days. This is the greatest truth in the universe. I die because of my belief in Christ. Watchman Nee.” When the officer of the labor farm showed us this paper, I prayed that the Lord would let me quickly remember it by heart… My granduncle had passed away. He was faithful until death. With a crown stained with blood, he went to be with the Lord. Although Watchman Nee did not fulfill his last wish, to come out alive to join his wife, the Lord prepared something even better—they were reunited before the Lord”.

As with many ministries which have been of blessing to the saints, Watchman’s personal integrity has been attacked. Two books in particular, one in US published by Amazon by Lily Hsu and another published in Chinese in HK by the head of a Bible seminary have done this. These distasteful attacks are largely based on the evidence brought against Watchman in 1952 and then in 1956 by the Communist regime (accusation amounting to 2300 pages!). If any reader wishes for the sordid details the present writer has dug into this material and can show it reflects on the lack of integrity of those who have penned these two works, rather than in any way on Watchman’s integrity.

The apostle John tells us “Demetrius has witness borne to him by all, and also by the Truth itself” (3John 12) and this writer believes that is true of Watchman — not that he never made a mistake or that his teachings are without defect — but that all who love Truth would know that this is a brother worthy of our high esteem.

“Out of the eater comes forth meat” however, and in the course of looking at this deprecatory, indeed accusatory material, I found this very charming testimony (translated here from Chinese): —

https://aboutbible.net/Ab/E.61.WatchmanNee.html

“Back in Shanghai, Watchman Nee spoke about the importance of prayer. He told the congregation that knocking on the door is not knocking on the wall, just as looking for a specific goal, so is prayer.

One afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Nee were invited to a tea party. A missionary there gave a wrapped gift to Pin Hui. She opened it and was surprised to find that it was their lost wedding gift: a Bible.

Asking her how she found it, the missionary told her a wonderful story：

The missionary had returned to Ireland for a holiday, and was preaching a message at a party. In the midst of her message, she said, “If someone here has a Chinese Bible, it will help me explain it more clearly.” Someone handed her a Chinese Bible. When she opened the flyleaf, there in English were the words: “Reading this book will keep you from sin; sin will keep you reading this book.” . In Chinese, however it reads: “From Tuo Sheng to Pin Hui”. Now the gift was returned to its rightful owner, the two were deeply moved and rejoiced.

It turned out that there was a British soldier serving in Shanghai, and when the Japanese army invaded setting houses on fire (sic) he also took advantage of the fire, entered a burning house hoping to get something. He saw the Bible and took it back to England, to give to his parents as a souvenir. Now, the “unfindable had become found”..”.

Watchman’s books and writings

As Watchman authored or was indirectly the “author” of over 150 books (many were put together from notes made at conferences where he was speaking) we only commend simply here a few. A fairly full list is found below: —

https://www.cbmministry.org/Books_By_Watchman_Nee.php

His best best-known book in English is The Normal Christian Life , which is based on talks he delivered in English during a trip to Europe in 1938 and 1939. This is a straightforward exposition of Romans for a new believer (and was a great help to this present writer as a young believer).

Other books which are simple to follow and very useful: —

Sit, Walk, Stand (1957) (exposition of Ephesians)

What Shall this Man Do? (1961) (a look at the different ministries of Peter, John and Paul)

Love Not the World (1968)

“Normal Christian Church Life” has already been mentioned

“The Spiritual Man” was a book he later said he regretted writing. Some have found parts of it mystical; it is written as a book of Biblical psychology, looking at man as body, soul and spirit. Certainly not a book recommended for new believers; my own view of it as a book was that it produced much introspection. One point in which I would qualify what our brother writes is that he places the three functions of will(power), emotions and thought/reason within the soul (psuche) of a man, and the three functions of knowledge, intuition and conscience within the spirit (pneuma). I would place the function of will(power) as overlapping into both. Now some will say I am being mystical!

One small book which I think deserves attention is “The Latent Power of the Soul” which was a kind of “addendum” to “The Spiritual Man”. This also appeared slightly rewritten as “Spiritual Obsession”. This book gives some very useful understandings (among other things) as to why some men of our present age have seemingly begin in genuine spiritual giftings and ended up in falsehood, deception and manipulation, even functioning in the demonic, by functioning in their own “soul-power”, not the true power of the Holy Spirit.

Watchman’s biography written by Angus Kinnear who spent two months with him before himself setting out for service in India as a medical missionary, is also very much worth the read: —

Kinnear, Angus (1973). Against the Tide . Fort Washington: Christian Literature Crusade.

On the overall history of the churches of China and the phenomenal growth over the last 60 years, readers who have not seen the 4-part series produced by “China Soul” on the history of the church in China, are commended to watch. Online links below. A mighty encouragement to the soul!

The original documentary “The Cross in China” was in mandarin but these are dubbed over into English.

They are about an hour each

English translation on Youtube — the four parts: —

Part II (Seeds of Blood) is the most moving of all, the interviews with the older brethren.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYt003mw5_I&list=PL8ADlW-GGgLHiX_vj6RrGVuBcLMXR5tI-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egWC9URk77k&index=2&list=PL8ADlW-GGgLHiX_vj6RrGVuBcLMXR5tI-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieWkFzCcdVg&index=3&list=PL8ADlW-GGgLHiX_vj6RrGVuBcLMXR5tI-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa1saiWejjo&index=4&list=PL8ADlW-GGgLHiX_vj6RrGVuBcLMXR5tI-

All of the heroes rightly celebrated in the hall of faith in Hebrews chapter 11 show in one way or another that they as we have feet of clay, and Watchman is no exception. But as a man among those who “have hazarded their lives for our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 15:26) he commands the respect of every follower of the Lord. God give us such men of fire in our generation, and make us such ourselves!

Postscript 50 years on

Our Lord tells us concerning prophets and teachers that “by their fruits you shall know them”. One fruit of Watchman’s labours across China was that by 1949 some estimates say there were 500 (some say 1000) assemblies of the “Little Flock” as they came to be called, with perhaps 150,000-300,000 believers.

One of these was in a city in a very remote corner of China where this present writer had the privilege of spending some time. The assembly had been established there since 1941. They had moved there “lock, stock and barrel” as a group of families from another location, as was a common practice among the Little Flock to establish a work in a new area. The church was led by an elderly brother in his 80s whom everyone called “Uncle Hu”. There were 3-400 meeting in a private courtyard in the city each Sunday morning early, at a time when the government had made a kind of concessionary but unofficial allowance to house churches that meetings were allowed in homes with no more than 20 in attendance. The gathering was therefore under much pressure with so many present on a Sunday.

Uncle Hu himself had spent over 14 years in jail. This particular assembly had separated from another Little Flock congregation in the city over the issue of government registration (a sort of “half-way house” towards the “3-self” TSPM position). Uncle Hu and his eldership were firmly set against this.

I never got to meet Uncle Hu in person but one of the young men within their team of “co-workers” and with some responsibility for preaching would come visit me on occasion. Our conversation would always be solely taken up with the Lord and His word, and the task of spreading His word to some of the various ethnic minorities in the area.

I knew from many that brother Hu had a most powerful preaching and expository ministry, often continuing for about 2 hours each Sunday. His ministry often incorporated something very specific for some of his hearers, which we might call a word of knowledge. These were always very significant for the recipients and a great encouragement. There were healings both in and outside the meetings and other miracles. But what was impressive not only with this congregation but with other ministering brothers I met across north China at that time (early 90s) that the true miraculous workings of the Lord were accepted as “a matter of course”. I never saw anyone “make a big deal” out of it; the ministry of the word and the regeneration of souls was the priority. I am quite sure that this was the legacy of those “mighty men” of the 40s who set this tone in their own ministry for the generation to come in regard to a balanced view of spiritual gifts.

Though this was a “Little Flock” assembly, in fact my conversations with brother Z. hardly mentioned Watchman or his ministry. This was no man-centred cult, the Lord and His word were constantly at the centre. I am quite sure Watchman would have rejoiced to see that in one sense he had been forgotten or in another sense “left behind”. He will certainly have much joy in it one day if he does not rejoice in it even in the present.

Another aspect to many spiritual giftings I observed in operation within the church was what I can only call their “unrepeatability”. Nobody could ever have the foolish idea of imitating them.

Here was one. After one Sunday morning meeting I happened to meet a sister who had been present. She told me very much moved that a certain beloved brother had been taken from them the previous night at about 3 am, simply dying in his sleep. He was apparently in good health, but the family discovered at 3 am that he had gone.

Another sister had been in prayer late at night the evening before and related that the Lord had given her the revelation that this dear man would be taken from them that very night. She rose up to the matter and began to plead earnestly with the Lord for him to be allowed to remain with them. After some hours of intercession, at about 3 am she had said “I simply gave him into the hands of the Lord, and with complete peace I knew that this was His gracious will”.

At the morning meeting, when his family had stood to relate to the assembly the matter of his passing, this sister then rose with tears to tell the company what had transpired for her in her waiting upon the Lord. It was not an exaggeration to say that “fear came upon every soul”.

The assembly continued to grow week by week despite regular visits from the government to brother Hu and his eldership to warn them they would not tolerate this large unofficial Sunday meeting. One Sunday Uncle Hu rose and told the congregation “Do not think that it is the government who is pressing us to divide up into small groups for fellowship and ministry. This is the hand of the Lord; and now all of us, sisters included, must be ready to take up responsibility for the ministry to one another in small groups. It is time for us to be scattered”. I knew not a few brothers rejoiced to hear this, as many of the congregation had had this very conviction; but shortly afterwards it seemed Uncle Hu became fearful that the saints were not ready and backtracked on his plan. Some of the young men of the congregation went to plead with him, especially a group of about 5-6 very gifted young men who were seeing hungry people coming to their small meetings in the suburbs; many of those coming to listen were elderly people who found the Sunday journey to the centre of town very arduous, on buses jammed to the very doors, and in the winter in freezing temperatures of below -20˚C. Apart from everything else, they were so impoverished that they could not afford the bus fare of about 5 US cents equivalent.

Uncle Hu remained adamant, however. Despite their great respect for him, the young men saw their responsibility as shepherds of His sheep as a greater priority than their normal submission to him on many issues; and so (without his blessing, indeed in the face of his solemn warning) they began meetings in 3 or 4 locations on a Sunday around the city with groups of 20-40 people attending. It seemed like the sovereign Lord smiled on their decision and within the space of a further 5 years these small meetings had blossomed into 50 congregations across the whole region, and as far as this writer knows, are expanding still.

These very precious young men (actually now not so young!) continue in their ministry, with the firm hold on the new covenant principle of “the priesthood of all believers” which our brother Nee so thoroughly imparted to those God gave him 50 years before in Shanghai.

“Let us not grow weary in well-doing; for in due season, we shall reap, if we faint not” (Gal.6:9).

The author is a UK born evangelist who also represents Moriel in Hong Kong.

Moriel has a Spanish Channel!!

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 12:46:38 GMT

Sergio Mariani has begun a series on the book of Romans.

https://youtu.be/siTTfg6zn6U

It is a must watch. Great exposition of the book or Romans.

Please share this with your Spanish speaking family and friends.

Much needed reminder of the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

More teachings to come, stay tuned!

Follow Sergio Mariani on his own channel where you will find worship music, teachings and well done series on “Know your enemy” in Spanish.

https://www.youtube.com/user/sergiomarianimusic/featured

The Rant of the Desperate

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 02:13:45 GMT

AS THEIR SHIP SINKS, THEY ARE AT IT AGAIN. JUST LET THEM RANT.

THE Sinking Ship is Studio Scotland, and its adjuncts ‘Bethel’, and GV 24/7 TV. It is difficult to call this enterprise a “declining ministry” because it operates not as a ministry, but as a ‘ministry business’, which represents itself to the Christian public as if it were a ministry.

This week, it was disclosed to the international news media what becomes of ‘Christian ‘ films in Communist China. This policy is not new, but the law on the books is.

Moriel terminated its relationship with Studio Scotland & GV 24/7 due to both doctrinal and ethical concerns some time ago. Their efforts to re-launch GV 24/7 have floundered as the stats indicate that practically no one watches it; viewership is chronically low. The mysticism charged conspiracy theory charade of the women’s ministry’ saw pastors informing us that Deborah Menelaws is ‘lunatic fringe’ and will never be permitted back to their churches. The big decline however is in their film and video production and the shameful scandal surrounding their premier film ‘The Daniel Project’ (and the rather low-grade flop with acting, supposedly based on it, ‘The Daniel Connection’).

The Menelaws produced the Daniel Project around the narration of myself in dialogue with a major secular voice artist who was paid secular professional rates (footage of myself was also included in the idiotic Daniel Connection after I refused to ‘act’ in it). I agreed to be paid nothing as did the Christian extras etc. on the Daniel Connection because we were told that ‘it was for evangelism and we were ‘doing it for The Lord’. The film was then sold to Hollywood (California Pictures/ Paramount), and The Daniel Connection was sold to Communist Chinese interests, assuring it would not be translated into Mandarin to evangelize Chinese people, even while China was stepping up its cruel persecution of believers. This is Deborah Menelaws.

I did this as an evangelistic endeavor, not a commercial one. I did it Jesus and for the lost, not to sell it to Hollywood or Communist Chinese. I am still waiting for my money which I want donated to a charity helping persecuted Christians. Our lawyers and the BBC confirmed that someone need not be a member of an actors union to be paid for a role in a film, and contributors are regularly paid for documentaries. I want to give my pay to the persecuted Christians in China whom Menelaws betrayed for money, selling the film ostensibly produced to evangelise.

The Communist Chinese Party & government (which control regulates all sectors – social & commercial), maintains strict policies against any Christian films that can be used to spread the Gospel:

please view: https://fxn.ws/308cUT6

But the Menelaws just did not care. Ministry is only a business, and Business is Business. As long as it sells, you can pay top, expensive secular Hollywood talent, such as Caroline Goodall handsomely, but use, exploit, and bamboozle good and well-intentioned saved Christians into working in it without any pay at all by telling them they are doing it for The Lord and for the

Gospel of Jesus. Then it is sold it to a cruel, demonized, Christian persecuting regime in Communist China, assuring the film will never be used to spread the Gospel of Jesus. This the Menelaws did.

Unlike legitimate ministries which are registered and incorporated as Christian Charities, the Menelaws’ Studio Scotland is registered as ‘for profit’ commercial enterprise they portray to people as being a ministry. Several people were shocked to discover the truth and have described them to us as religious frauds pretending to be a ministry.

The Daniel Project is their Premier production, which ironically, and in an act of Divine retribution, features me and promotes our ministry at the same time they are endlessly attacking myself & Moriel. I must laugh.

No other Christian film they have produced has achieved the merit and notoriety of The Daniel Project, and no other film they produce ever shall. God has removed His Hand from them and as a supposedly ‘Christian’ venture Studio Scotland and its ancillaries have declined as has GV 24/7. All they can do is wallow in the mire of their decline and moan & rant with malice, resenting others for their reaping of what they themselves have sowed. What the Chinese paid them is by scriptural definition ‘filthy lucre’ good for nothing other than buying a potter’s field.

After webcasting the videos of the David Nathan heresy promoted by Menelaws & GV 24/7, and producing copies of the sales certificates of films to the world that Christians worked for free on believing it was for the Gospel, Moriel was showered with letters and emails thanking us for showing them the truth about Menelaws and their shameless escapades. Now, they no longer watch GV 24/7. Indeed, hardly anyone does. That ship is sunk and won’t be salvaged. God will not be mocked. He won’t allow it.

They seem to have abandoned their server & platform due to diminished viewership and only post on Youtube with a very low amount of interest.

After posting a heavily edited video from Bill Randles’ church misrepresenting what transpired with David Nathan, even Mr. Bill Randles was publicly compelled to acknowledge that Menelaws lied intending to deceive the Body of Christ.

William Randles Yet you call him out, accusing him of being self-seeking. Facebook is not the only front this battle is being waged on. We are sincere when we say that David Nathan’s doctrines are a problem, just as I have been sincere when I called Jacob on his language. What you seem to want is to call me out and shame me for not being as adamant as you think I ought to be about Jacob. There are other issues as well, for example, the Menelaws are using an excerpted video (from our church) which can be construed as having Jacob agree with David Nathan’s teaching on the Millenial sacrifice. Nothing could be further from the truth, but they continue to run it anyway(last time I checked). This is a mess brother indeed, but don’t exacerbate it by wildly implicating people who either have no real connection to it, or like me, who are and have been trying to deal with the problem, and don’t deserve to be treated a though they haven’t. I thought you already said you wanted to “Move On”?

In reaction to our response, Menelaws reacted by cyber vendetta with a non-Christian organization called ‘Catalyst’ known for controversy in the UK. This organization states on its website that it has

‘no religious beliefs of any kind’ and represents people of any faith (Moslem, Mormon, Hindu) and of ‘any sexual orientation’ (homosexual, lesbian, bi-sexual, trans-sexual). Having no scriptural basis for their defense of the heresies of David Nathan etc., they went to the world just as they sold the Christan films to the world. Because David Nathan is fully Jewish, though his family is not (I am the opposite; I am not but my family are), his orthodox Judaism was why he taught on one video that he, and not non-Jews could not understand his heretical denials of fundamental Judeo-Christian truths. This fueled a stupid campaign attacking my own genealogy as not being sufficiently Jewish, (or Jewish at all), as a standard to establish David Nathan’s theological credibility over mine by David Nathan’s heretical followers.

It was asserted that I & Moriel were ‘under investigation’ when in fact we have never been investigated by any juridical body or agency in any jurisdiction. It was asserted that we are a cult that abuses its members, when in fact we have never had any members. It was also alleged that I reaped large financial earnings from the sale of recorded material, when in fact all of our material had long been available on-line for free download.

When these ridiculous efforts (which our lawyer, a well known Christian Rights Crusader, himself a believing Jew, made fun of) were shown as disingenuous and contrived, Menelaws maliciously fabricated other concocted strategies they invented.

The first was false allegations of financial impropriety. Our audited accounts in both the UK & USA are in complete accord with the laws & regulations of both countries as in other countries. The UK records filed annually with the UK Charities Commission indicate that I receive no salary, solicit no personal support, nor accept any book sales royalties. Thus they resorted to distorting publicly available financial reports in the USA where the tax laws and charity regulations differ from Britain.

In the American system, the legal & financial manner in which book royalties are not accepted is to accept the royalties and return them to the incorporated charity as a tax deduction, where the author becomes a donor. Book sales are a fiscal mainstay of Moriel. The royalties must be paid, reported in the audited annual financial report, and declared on my income taxes as a deduction. Also, the designated fund’s regulations apply. If a donor sends a gift designated for a specific country, mission project, missionary, evangelist, or otherwise, by US law it must go to where designated and this must be shown in the audited accounts for the IRS. I am not allowed by the policies of Moriel to solicit personal gifts or honourariums, but as long as reported and declared, I can accept them.

What Menelaws did was to only report the income ($147,000) without reference to royalties being redonated as a tax deduction under US law and duly reported. This caliber of slander and defamation has become Menelaw’s hallmarks.

Lest our right-hand knows what the left-hand does, I can give no figures. For the record, however, David Lister & myself are two of Moriel’s largest supporters, and the ministry gets 60% of earnings from my secular intellectual property business. Some of these assets are South African domain names, but were acquired – not registered, and are not even held in South Africa itself, nor is their sale being negotiated with South Africa. This does not meet the legal definition or criteria for further false allegations of a form of extortion known as ‘cybersquatting’. It is a lie.

Following their David Nathan fiasco, the Menelaws and a few accomplices supportive of David Nathan, then attacked my genealogy. My testimony has been in the public domain for decades. Ancestorily, my family name was Brasch altered to Prasch (as the burial records show, and as Rosebrough & Menelaws themselves affirmed), and were buried in Jewish cemeteries with burial certificates in both names – Brasch & Prasch. The altered name means ‘Pharisee’ but is not original.

I have copied dozens of people the original ‘Prasch’ Jewish burial documents.

Today, apart from Orthodox Jews, many Jews are buried with non-Jewish spouses in Christian or secular cemeteries (In Forest Lawn, George Burns is buried in the same crypt as Walt Disney and New York Mayor Ed Koch is buried in Trinity churchyard, etc.). In pre holocaust Europe however, this was not the case.

The original Family name moreover is Jewish, not German as claimed by Meelaws etc. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Moritz Brasch (1843–1895), Polish-German Jewish philosopher

Charles Orwell Brasch (1909–1973), New Zealand Jewish poet, literary editor, arts patron Arno Brasch (1910–1963), German Jewish physician; (de)

Rudolph Brasch (1912–2004), German-Australian rabbi, author

Thomas Brasch (1945–2001), German Jewish writer, dramatist, editor, lyricist Walter M. Brasch (1945–2017), an American Jewish journalist

Claims by Menelaws/ Bethel echoing claims by Chris Roseborough and supporters of David Nathan to have received genealogical data from my family are a lie. He contacted two of them and both thought he was someone crazy and told him to cease contacting them. Additionally, apart from cemetery records (the Nazis only desecrated, vandalized and defaced Jewish graves with swastikas), in the ‘Juden Spulen‘, all German Jewish birth, death, and marriage records were incinerated by Hitler to purge any record of German Jewry. Rosebrough & Co. (Menelaws, Rogers, etc.) could not possibly have pieced together an accurate genealogy without such essential documentation.

In his fabricated DNA chart, Rosebrough redefined Nationality as Ethnicity to mislead. The inaccurate genealogies I have seen have do not contain relatives familiar to me but do have ones I never even heard of. Every member of the Moriel team now has the burial record from Jewish cemeteries verifying Prasch/ Brasch is buried as Jews. It is Jewish burial records and DNA that are used by the Jewish Agency and Diasporic Institute (Beit Ha’Tfutsot) to determine Jewish heritage and ancestry where there are no civil birth, death, and marriage certificates or synagogue records.

Unfortunately, we cannot post much of this data on-line as Rosebrough has lied about other documents we have posted and harassed my family (including non-believers). However, any Moriel supporter already on our mail list who wishes to physically see certified documentation can be allowed to do so by prior arrangement. I also agreed not only to bring my documents to debate, but even go directly to the Jewish Agency with Rosebrough, but Rosebrough declined to debate the issues that he initially raised concerning John Mac Arthur’s teaching on the ‘mark of the beast’, and Roseborough’s endorsement of Doreen Virtue following his initial denunciation of her as a “polished scam” on the video of her sold by Sid Roth.

Some graves have ‘Prasch’, others ‘Brasch’, but others have both – substantiating it is the same family. My ancestors lived in Hamburg, Bad Orb, Dresden, and Leipzig. Most however emigrated (and assimilated) to the USA & UK. As with all German Jewry, certain burial records and grave locations survive. The other data being burned when synagogues were demolished. Some of these

interment records are available on-line on Jewish burial sites .

It is also scientifically impossible to construct a DNA chart without a blood or saliva sample. The ridiculous forgery that Rosebrough concocted is ludicrous. My actual DNA report indicates that I do not have even 1% German DNA. (My maternal DNA however is mainly Irish/ Celtic).

I attended the Jewish community with my siblings in my youth, and although I was in the Jewish community – I was never at all brought up in the Jewish faith (despite circumcision in infancy). Based on ancestry, however, the Israeli Jewish Agency issued me an immigration certificate (called: t’udah oleh) specifically stating my ethnic identity as ‘Jewish’ after I marrying and returning to Israel from abroad. While this is a legal document for various civil purposes, I am not recognized as Jewish by the rabbinic authorities for any religious purposes.

In the coalition government of Israel, the Ministry of Interior controlling, not immigration, but Citizenship & National ID cards is in the hands of the Religious Political Parties. Unlike my Teudat Oleh, it does not state I am Jewish on my National ID card (Teudat Zeut) because I could not have been eligible under the ‘Law of Return’ to immigrate to Israel unless I converted to rabbinic Judaism (due to none of my Grandparents being practicing Jews by Religion despite any ancestry). There are literally tens of thousands of immigrants (or more) from the former USSR, the USA & Falasha community from Ethiopia with this same status in modern Israel. It is quite common. Contrary to what has been falsely reported in a lie, my wife & I did not even legally marry in Israel; the rabbinic authorities create too many bureaucratic & legal problems for believers.

I was named after a relative named ‘Jacob’. In the USA this was Anglicized to ‘James’. When I immigrated to Israel, James & Jacob are in Hebrew the same name translated ‘Yakov’ (thus I have both names “James Jacob” on my Passport & Driving License). This is all legally documented on all of my ID, bank accounts, etc. This is

also the usual common practice in Israel in assigning Hebrew names to new immigrants. My legal name is, therefore ‘James Jacob’.

My wife is the 100% Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors and our children were born in Galilee. Our son served in a combat brigade in the IDF as a Jewish soldier, before being transferred as a lawyer to the legal corps. My family is Hebrew speaking Israeli Jewish believers in Jesus. My family is gravely offended that

Rosebrough depicted me in a video clip as Adolph Hitler, as most of my wife’s family were murdered at the behest of Hitler.

Being a cult, abject claims of financial impropriety and even disputed genealogy all became desperate rants of the declining. Now, there has been yet one more rant of hideous desperation. It is not insignificant that several Lutherans, by his admission, have called Rosebrough a cult leader.

A final attempted hit job by Bill Randles, adopted by Chris Roseborough, and imitated by Menelaws is the distortion of our evangelistic teaching on the Metatron, where I warn repeatedly about the occult nature of Caballa (mystical Judaism). The Cabalistic perverts what the scriptures teach concerning both The Messiah and ‘The Angel of The Lord’. Cabalistic corruptions do not invalidate the concept of The Messiah or what scripture states about The Messiah, nor do such rabbinic perversions invalidate what the Word of God states regarding ‘The Angel of The Lord’ whom rabbinic Judaism calls the ‘Metatron’ but whom Christians hold to be a Christophany.

Bill Randles is not a man of formal seminary education (not that this troubles me), and he does not know what he is talking about. Menelaws, as is evidenced by their promotion of David Nathan’s heresies, of course, knows even less. Rosebrough of course is formally educated in theology but is either in this case also ignorant, or deliberately disingenuous.

The Christian teaching on the Metatron has been used to refute One-ness Sabellianism (Trinity Denial) and to evangelize Orthodox Jews sine 1863 when Oxford University Hebrew lecturer Rabbi Tzvi Nassi became a believer in Jesus and authored his book on the Judaic basis for the

Divine Tri-unity. Most Jewish Mission organizations train their evangelists in messianic apologetics that includes evangelistic reference to The Metatron. Instead of defending myself, I will draw the reader’s attention to the basic evangelistic instruction of ‘Jews For Jesus’ on the Metatron, and

a video clip with citations from the pertinent curriculum of the Israel College of The Bible and its evangelistic arm – One For Israel.

https://youtu.be/lqepaDSgUA8 The Metatron – One For Israel

https://jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/issues-v18-n02/kabbalahs-best-kept-secret/

As anyone can see for themselves, the ranting of those who have gone into error doctrinally, and lost their integrity (although we are very sadly forced to question if Menelaws or Rosebrough ever

had any to begin with), is like the abject howling of a terminally wounded beast. They are drowning in their sea of decline and are too arrogant and deluded by religious pride to yell for help, so they just yell.

When I took almost fatally ill in 2015 I knew it was God’s purpose to address things in my life & ministry. Moriel went from being mainly itinerate to becoming mainly on-line. Now with Coved 19 Cannabis clinics and abortion mills are open but churches are by law closed. Leftists can congregate to riot and tear down statues, but Christians can not congregate to worship. We knew The Lord allowed my illness to reorganize our ministry to prepare for the future. Without a doubt, this accounts for the growth & blessings we have experienced since my illness. Now with RTN TV, new branches in Holland and India, and an expansion in missions the growth has gained momentum. Satan of course attacks, but by God’s Grace the growth only continues. God tried to get my attention but it frankly took a health crisis and a partial disability to get me to do what God knew I & Moriel should be doing.

When Deborah Menelaws nearly died in a medical emergency recently, having had that experience myself, I prayed that The Lord would show her mercy and spare her life. God did, but she has had her last warning.

Bal is the Hebrew term for ‘husband’ and YHWH was to be Israel’s ‘Bal’. But a false Bal who had the same name mimicked the true Bal. Queen Jezabel was a wicked woman whose husband did not stop her from promoting a false Bal. She died with only her hands and skull in a puddle of blood lapped up by dogs under God’s judgment. She misled people into false belief and hated and rampaged against Obadiah, the Sons of The Prophets, and Elijah who opposed her demonic agenda. Promoting the false God the Father of David Nathan who, according to him, is not the creator is no different. Scorn driven rage against those who opposed this lie is the precise character of what Jezabel did as is a husband who facilitates it. The death of Jezabel is what awaits those who imitate Jezabel. When she could not get Naboth’s Vineyard she began her rant.

When The Lord removes His Hand from something, it will always self destruct. In the decline, those responsible for the decline will blame everyone other than themselves. When the decline becomes undeniable and they can no longer lie to themselves because reality trumps delusion, they become frantic. Then – all they can do is rant, and rant she shall.

ROSBROUGH & SON

Another ranter with a ministry in visible decline in decline is the Pirate Radio & Fighting 4 Faith the hyper Lutheran figure Chris Rosebrough , and his son & producer Joshua.

Rosbrough teaches that Forgiveness for sin comes from confessing the sins to him Roman Catholic style, to receive ‘absolution’ from him. He is ecumenically conference partnered with the Roman Catholic activist Matthew Walsh and Rosebrough worships before statues and graven images. He denies a literal antichrist or actual ‘mark of the beast’ or 3-1/2 years etc. and rejects any prophetic meaning to the Book of Revelation. He also teaches that Satan has been bound and the 1.000-year reign of Christ began 2,000 yea§rs ago at the Ascension of Jesus. He likewise believes in an odd combination of post and premillennialism where the 7 vials of wrath in the Book of Revelation have

always been being poured out. He is a firm believer in communion bread & wine being the ‘true Body & Blood’ of Christ, and in infant baptism for salvation.

Rosebrough has been collecting slanderous and defamatory material from Menelaws and Bill Randles. He opposes us due to our objections to the false christ never crucified of Doreen Virtue.

In the public domain, are claims by Joshua Rosebrough’s first wife of homosexuality that led to the destruction of their marriage (having male to male sex while on a submarine while in the navy, having homosexually contracted STDs and in his own statement in response to his firmer wife & her family, he conspicuously does not deny being a homosexual. There are similar claims of his homosexuality by other Lutheran Refugees from Rosebrough’s church. We have no interest in family disputes and we neither affirm or deny the allegations of his very Christian first wife.

The videos of Chris Rosebrough’s outrageous behaviour towards the family of his daughter’s first husband (available on ‘The Devil’s Triangle’ on RTN TV.org) reveal a very troubling calibre of individual that does not befit a Christian, much less a pastor.

The most conspicuous attribute of his activities however is nothing short of shocking. Both father & son are known for their filthy language and vulgarity and posting profanity on the internet, especially the son., but also the father. We apologize in advance for his disgusting content, which is somehow imagined to be ‘Christian’.

Their internet material displays what the Rosebroughs in reality are:

BILL RANDLES

The saga of my former friend & colleague Bill Randles is a tragic one. To have his church with all but one of his elders depart quickly on hostile terms, along with his secretary of 25 years. To have seen very nearly all of the young people who grew up in his church from the time they were babies walk out the door in disgust to another church whose pastor Bill Randles denounced as a “psychopath” was ugly. To deliberately drive off church members and long-standing colleagues like myself who had loyally been with him for decades resembled a death wish for his church & ministry. Most of his church left rather suddenly, but the reasons had built up for some time. When the wall is hit, it is hit suddenly and quickly. Angered by the fact that Moriel can no longer organize his itineraries, advertise or promote his meetings, or market his books, he just squawks at us and others from the sidelines for his self inflicted fate.

To remain visible with a low web presence and shrunken profile, Bill Randles has resorted to grasping at straws to attack me to recoup some degree of attention. This is sadly pathetic to watch, so we generally just ignore it. His recent ignorant rants about our evangelistic teaching on The Metatron are instantly discredited by the material posted by Jews For Jesus, One For Israel & Israel College of The Bible, and the book by Rabbi Tzvi Nassi who became a believer.

Bill Randles has no platform in his own country the USA, and now has only a mere vestIge of a church left. He instead ventures further afield as an author to places like Australia where he is represented by a patripassionist/ pneumapassionist heretic who teaches that the 2 witnesses of Revelation Chapter 12 are ‘God the Father & The Holy Spirit’ who must come in human form as Christ did to Jerusalem to be crucified’. In New Zealand, he is represented by a devotee of Robert Breaker who teaches the Zodiac gospel that the prophecy of Revelation 12 was fulfilled 23rd September 2017 because ‘the Moon was in Virgo’. This is what Bill Randles has been reduced to. Interest in his ministry in these other countries has likewise declined conspicuously and there is very little interest in his books. The Lord has removed His Hand from Bill Randles’ ministry leaving him a failed pastor and failed author.

Once more, all the desperate can do anymore is rant. Praise The Lord for earplugs.

The Devil’s Triangle

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 02:24:00 GMT

Debate Offer: Jacob Prasch -v- Chris Rosborough, July 2020

Sun, 19 Jul 2020 02:29:28 GMT

James Jacob Prasch would indeed be happy to debate Chris Roseborough on the diversionary issue of ‘The Metatron’ in a second public debate in Jerusalem as is proposed, once the actual John Mac Arthur/ Doreen Virtue issue that Mr. Roseborough himself initially and publicly accosted Jacob Prasch for on video, is first debated.

As his videos document, Mr. Roseborough’s defense of John Mac Arthur’s ‘Mark of The Beast’ teaching, and his support of the ‘ministry’ of Doreen Virtue with the apparition of her “3 D Jesus with the radiating ‘sacred heart’ but no nail marks”, was and remains the basis of conflicting opinion as was voiced and video documented by Mr. Roseborough himself.

Once his ‘John Mac Arthur Derangement Syndrome’ & ‘Doreen Virtue’ polemics as first raised by Mr. Roseborough are publicly debated in front of a live stream camera, we will be utterly delighted to debate the ‘Metatron’ in Jerusalem. As the headquarters of ’Ha Sochnut’ (The Jewish Agency) which determined that Jacob Prasch is of Jewish descent and awarded him an immigration certificate on that basis, is also located in Jerusalem, it would be an ideal location. The bogus amateur Wikipedia Genealogist antics, and fraudulently concocted DNA pie chart (that is not even Jacob’s actual personal sample DNA) fabricated by Mr. Roseborough can be permanently debunked with a simple visit with two independent witnesses (and if security allows – a video recording) to The Jewish Agency. We would look forward to debating the Metatron in this second debate, once the original matter publicly presented on Youtube by Mr. Roseborough as the grounds for his contention has been debated first.

Any efforts to circumvent or circumlocute the core issue however by means of changing the narrative, moving the goal post, or diverting to another issue in order to avoid the real one as first laid out By Mr., Roseborough, can only be viewed as a cowardly sham. We therefore accept the second debate challenge in Jerusalem on The Metatron, after the first debate on the very core issues Mr. Roseborough himself first confronted us with in the public arena. We now look forward to not one debate, but two. We respectfully propose that the first debate be held in the USA as it would give the most streamed live time accessibility to the most viewers.

Moriel/ JJP

CHRIS ROSEBOROUGH IS RUNNING FROM LIVE-STREAM DEBATE

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 03:00:14 GMT

In public reply to Mr. Roseborough’s support of John Mac Arthur’s position on accepting the ‘mark of The Beast’ and still being saved in league with Doreen Virtue & Phil Johnson, I extended to him a willingness to debate these issues he raised on live-stream (I also expressed my willingness to bring my ID and DNA report if he was interested, although this was not the issue).

Mr. Roseborough embarked on a frantic tirade, first insisting people ignore my opposition to his promotion of Doreen Virtue and her bogus Christophany and his defense of the Mac Arthur 666 teaching which I regard as false. They source of these cult allegations was an agency professing to have no Christian beliefs and representing homosexuals, lesbians, Moslems, Mormons etc. The evidence we provided undermined his claims and he suddenly dropped yelling ‘cult’ and shifted to attacking the evangelistic teaching ‘Metatron’. His attacks are likewise demonstrably devoid of foundation. Next he attacked my ancestry with a lunatic video mixing baseless rubbish with elements of truth. All of this to divert from debating.

The % pie chart he designed is NOT my DNA and I have no ancestors I ever heard of with names such as ‘Gray’ . What I do know is that my own DNA confirms that I am not even 1% German (although I had ancestors who lived in Germany, they were not ethnic German; he seems to try to mislead people by using civil national identity as if it were ethnic). He engages in Wikipedia Genealogy just as he does Wikipedia theology. He admits my original family name is Brasch and that it is Jewish, and that I had a forefather named Jacob (anglicized to James upon immigration to USA, reverting to Jacob or Yakov when I immigrated to Israel as I documented). Somehow he tries to determine that because my ancestors arrived in the USA from one place and not Leipzig where there were a number of Jews named Brasch, that the name does not apply to me. This is of course ridiculous. Since he likes Wikipedia all he needs to do is Google “Brasch’ on Wikipedia to find prominent Jews of that name in Britain, Germany & The USA. He also makes a big deal of burials. In fact NY Mayor Ed Koch (the most famous Jewish politician in American history) is buried in Trinity Church, and many intermarried & assimilated people want burial with their spouses (this is very common and means nothing). I grew up in the Jewish community but never in Judaism (I was Roman Catholic). But after the ‘cult’ claims & Metatron he needs another straw to divert away from the debate. He bickers on line, but no debate.

The absurd and obvious lie of Mr Roseborough however is that a legal Israeli government document I presented on video to show I have 3 names was a form to report & replace my misplaced Israeli ID (I stated on the video that the form was not the certificate). If someone reports a lost license or passport it automatically proves there is an original one. This is common sense. Mr. Roseborough idiotically states that it is an ‘application’ for an Israel immigration certificate. The application process for immigration called aliyah takes about 2 months and requires vetting etc. The ‘sochnut’ (Jewish Agency) which legally determines Jewish identity for civil (non-religious) purposes, issued me an immigration certificate stating Jewish identity ( I was legally declared Jewish because I did not discuss my faith). He said it was like him “applying for a pilot’s license and stating he can fly”. This is lunacy. A legal ID form to report a lost immigration certificate requesting it be replaced is not an application to obtain one. As usual, he is irrational, dishonest, and only trying to avoid debate on the actual issues he is running from. If he wants to examine my ID and DNA report etc., as I offered, all he needs to do is to show up to debate. His genealogy diversion, his Metatron diversion, and his cult leader diversion all prove that he is afraid to debate.

JJ Prasch / Moriel

Moriel Podcast, June 2020

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 02:45:33 GMT

https://soundcloud.com/amos-farrell/dispensations-and-covenants-james-jacob-prasch

Pre Trib Confusion Part 3

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 02:36:34 GMT

China imposes harsh new rules governing religious groups in 2020 | Fox News

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 03:16:15 GMT

https://www.foxnews.com/world/china-imposes-harsh-new-rules-governing-religious-groups-in-2020

Also read: http://blog.moriel.orgauthors/scott-noble/made-in-china-the-history-of-buddhism-in-the-middle-kingdom-part-vi.html

Fwd: China imposes harsh new rules governing religious groups in 2020 | Fox News

http://blog.moriel.org/authors/scott-noble/made-in-china-the-history-of-buddhism-in-the-middle-kingdom-part-vi.html

Trump Should Not Be Removed from Office: A Response to Mark Galli and Christianity Today

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 03:22:56 GMT

Trump Should Not Be Removed from Office: A Response to Mark Galli and Christianity Today

Trump Should Not Be Removed from Office: A Response to Mark Galli and Christianity Today

A timely word about Jeremy Corbyn and the British Chief Rabbi

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 03:18:04 GMT

As much as I welcome, the Archbishop of Canterbury for his solidarity with the Chief Rabbi’s stance on Jeremy Corbyn, I do not welcome the so-called support of Muslim Council of Britain, because, what is the difference between Adolph Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajimi Al-Alhusseini during the European Jewry Holocaust?

Let the Muslim Council of Britain first condemn the actions of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem’s role in the holocaust before jumping onto a popular bandwagon at this point, because the Labour Party has been hijacked by Islamists and it is the reason for Jeremy Corbyn counting on the Muslim’s voting block to ignore blatant Muslim hijacking of the Labour Party to impose a culture of antisemitism, hatred of Jews, anti-Israel and anti-Zionism in the Labour Party.

The root of antisemitism in the Labour Party comes from this Muslim hijacking of Labour. It must not be swept under the carpet, as the role played by the Grand Muffti of Jerusalem during the holocaust, which has remained ignored that the Muslims were as guilty as Adolph Hitler. They should not just pretend and blame it on Jeremy Corbyn. Although Jeremy Corbyn is antisemite, and Muslims have exploited it for their benefits when they hijacked the Labour Party. Both are not different from the other, as Hajimi Al-Alhusseini was the tail, and Adolph Hitler was the head of a penny coin.

These two are not better than the other. Birds of the same feathers flocks together. No whitewash of their culpability should be ignored. They drove Jews out of the Labour Party. The slogan was Jews and Bible-Christians out of the Labour Party… Muslims take over. Therefore, any vote for the Labour Party, is a vote for ISLAM, sharia, and Islamisation of Great Britain. That is the agenda of MCB. They should not pretend, they hound with the DEVIL in the wee hours of the night, and come out publicly to weep with the bereaved, they murdered in the secret.

Sergio Mariani statement on Bill Randles, Oct 13, 2019

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 03:27:27 GMT

The following is a copy of the comment that was made publicly and directly to Bill Randles, by Sergio Mariani. Sergio is a retired police officer who formerly was appointed by Bill Randles to be part of the media team for believer’s in grace church. His statement was issued independently without any reference from or to, or without any input from Moriel Ministries:

“Bill, by your own words which you have spoken to me face to face, I know you are looking for nothing more than vengeance for what you perceive were wrongs done against you. You are good at semantics and at manipulating words to appear as a victim. This is deception and just adds to the wrongs. You are acting under the influence and authority of the emotionality your wife mistakes for spirituality. I don’t blame her because you have allowed it, just as Adam did with Eve, but it is the regrettable truth. You have engaged in unbiblical practices! Give up the worthless emotional bickering and practice what you once preached! REPENT AND RESTORE THE CHURCH THAT HAS BEEN ENTRUSTED TO YOU BEFORE IS TOO LATE! GIVE UP THE IMMATURE AND SICK BICKERING AND QUIT SHAMING YOURSELF! I told the same to your wife when she couldn’t resist her fleshy impulse to argue back and “compile evidence”. Not Godly. Jesus remained silent towards his accusers…

I have not answer publicly since I sadly left Believers in Grace Fellowship, but your contempt has gone too far.

This is NOT an argument. This is the end.”

Sergio M.

Important Announcement re: Bill Randles and Moriel. Sep 22, 2019

Sun, 22 Sep 2019 04:05:59 GMT

The board of Moriel Ministries finds that Moriel Ministries can no longer be supportive of the ministry of Bill Randles due to doctrinal differences.

The continued support and promotion by Bill Randles of various false teachers of serious false doctrines that Moriel finds heretical are of great concern to the Moriel board.

Mission Update Thailand – Sept 2019

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 04:07:59 GMT

Dear believers in grace,

Open Air Preaching

Last month and the previous month we went open air preaching in an area where there are many tourists. Micah and Isaiah both preached open air for the first time (and the second time) from Proverbs 3:3-8, which they had memorized, and we also preached in Thai and English. Videos of this are on my Facebook page. One man from Australia and his girlfriend came to church as a result of the outreach. Many others received tracts and we pray that God will continue to draw people to get right with Himself.

Khae’s Outreaches

At the school where the boys study, Khae and I both teach there once a week now. It’s not a Christian school, but we have freedom to teach the Bible and to be witnesses for Jesus. I try to teach them fun lessons, such as vocabulary for making paper airplanes, a Buddy Davis song, etc. Khae makes creative crafts during a different hour of teaching with the children.

Also, Khae goes to teach at another school, which is a government school, where her friend is a teacher, and Khae teaches a Bible lesson there as well, in addition to helping with Math and Reading, etc.

On another day of the week, Khae goes to a restaurant to have a Bible study in the book of John with a Buddhist lady. Sometimes her daughter, who is in high school, also joins them.

Each week Khae also teaches the children in our children’s classes a Bible story in Thai. She is a good story teller, but makes sure the kids know it’s not just a story, but God’s Word, and real events from history.

Karenni and Lahu Outreaches

Jallay and his family continue to teach some young men and women who are migrant workers from Myanmar. Last week three of the men from that camp turned up dead in the river. These were men from the same camp, but not ones who attend their Bible study. It is probably something unrelated to the elephant camp, but rather some mess those men got themselves into after hours, going out drinking, or something like that. Please pray for this situation. Jallay and his wife and daughter plan to continue to go there and teach the Karreni men and women, as well as possibly a new group of Lahu people.

Women’s Prison

We just got a brand new group of students for our English Massage/Bible class. I’ve been teaching them a Buddy Davis song with actions, which they like. It’s the same song I’ve taught our Saturday class children (The Seven C’s of History). May God open their hearts to see the truth of His Word.

For the new prisoners who identify as Christians, we continue to teach them a couple of times a month. Last time I taught on the Ten Commandments, and Jallay not knowing what I would be teaching on, taught on God leading the Children of Israel after they left Egypt!

Handicapped Center

Each week we also go to the handicapped center to show part of the Jesus movie and then explain it afterwards. We also play worship songs. One lady in a wheelchair said she would like to get baptized. She’s from a Christian home, but has never been baptized. We may do this next week. Also, Samati the blind man continues to come with us to church.

God is good. He cares for the outcasts of society, as well as opening the door to anyone who will call on His name in genuine repentance. The times we live in are dark, but let us press on, draw close to Jesus, and continue to share the gospel:

Galatians 6:9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

Peace in Christ,

Scott, Khae, Micahberekiah, and Isaiah.

Herescope Part 1: Anti-Semitism and the Rise of Techno-Media Imperialism

Tue, 02 Jul 2019 04:24:25 GMT

Part 1: A Christian Responds

One of the lessons we learn from studying Jewish history is that anti-Semitism corrupts the people and the societies possessed by it. ~Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews[1]

When the Nazis occupied Holland and forced the Jews to wear the yellow Star of David so they could be quickly singled out for punishment or imprisonment, it is not surprising that Father [Casper ten Boom] reported in the line to get his Star of David. It was the only way, at the moment, for an old man to protest the oppression of his brothers. His international citizenship was never more obvious than this. ~Corrie ten Boom, Father ten Boom: God’s Man[2]

Herescope Part 2: Ethnos vs. Ethnos & Big Media Narratives

Tue, 02 Jul 2019 04:20:22 GMT

“Woe to the media, false prophets….” ~Lewis Markwood[31]

“Those who manipulate the organized habits and opinions of the masses constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of the country…. It remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world…. As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.” ~Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)[32]

Fake Prophets (from the Herescope)

Tue, 02 Jul 2019 04:18:41 GMT

Part 1: The White Lab Coats

“…FAKE prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.” (Mark 13:22)

Exhibit A: Synonyms for fake

ψευδοπροφήτης pseudoprophḗtēs, from G5571 and G4396; a spurious prophet, i.e. pretended foreteller or religious impostor:—false prophet.[1]

By Sarah H. Leslie

Christians tend to think of FALSE prophets in terms of purveyors of heretical religious doctrine within the Church only. We also recognize false prophets in cults, the occult and the New Age Movement. But for the past half-century, we have also witnessed the rise of false prophets coming from seemingly secular paradigms in society such as Progressivism, Humanism, and Postmodernism. But these worldviews come with their own belief systems, codes of ethics, and behavioral norms. In other words, these ungodly systems promote a DIFFERENT spirituality based on FALSE theses which are not biblical Truth. In our lifetimes we have watched as advocates of these worldviews use their platforms of influence to proselytize their dogma.

The extent to which these false prophets have entered the Church is a concern we have often warned about. We are warning once again, but this time in a different context.

It was the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer who tipped us off about FAKE prophets over fifty years ago. He identified the rise of a FAKE science that would be enhanced by technology and spun by media. He warned that their FAKE facts could be deadly.

A typical white lab coat

Herescope Part 4: Civic Church Anti-Semitism

Tue, 02 Jul 2019 04:16:33 GMT

In the year 1569 Dirk was arrested at Asperen in Holland for committing a crime against both the Church and the State. He was held in a residential palace turned into a prison. He escaped using a rope made out of knotted rags. Using this he was able to climb out of the prison onto the frozen moat. A guard noticed his escape and gave chase.

Dirk had lost considerable weight on the meager prison rations. He ran over the thin ice, barely getting across with considerable peril. The thief-catcher following him broke through the ice and began to sink into the frigid waters. Dirk, perceiving that this state agent was in danger drowning, quickly returned and aided him in getting out of the icy waters. Dirk saved this man’s life!

Herescope Part 3: Ethnos Dominionism

Tue, 02 Jul 2019 04:11:59 GMT

News release: “The New York Times will no longer be publishing political cartoons following the uproar surrounding an anti-Semitic depiction of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a political cartoonist whose work was featured in the paper.”[2]

Abortion is now a protected religious ceremony!

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 05:27:10 GMT

Satanic Temple Claims Killing Babies in Abortions is a Protected Religious Ceremony…

The Satanic Temple admitted proudly Wednesday that, in their belief system, killing an unborn baby in an abortion is a religious ritual similar to communion or baptism for Christians.

OBITUARY – DAVID LISTER Sr, Jan 18, 2022

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 05:15:25 GMT

OBITUARY – DAVID LISTER Sr, Jan 18, 2022

David Lister Sr., our dear friend and brother in The Lord , and father of Moriel’s International Administrator David Lister, has gone to be with The Lord at the age of 91.

David ListerA career US Naval veteran, David Sr. came to a saving faith in Jesus through the prayers of his Christian wife, and he then served The Lord in deaconship at his Baptist Fellowship, and was also a friend and support to the ministry of Moriel in the USA.

David Sr. is ‘home free’ (Psalm 116:15). We rejoice that we shall be united with him again when Jesus returns. In the interim , we express our prayerful condolences in Christ to his son David Lister and to his daughter Linda (who is also a saved believer) at their TEMPORARY loss, which is their father’s gain.

In Jesus,

J. Jacob Prasch

(Moriel Ministries)

OBITUARY – PASTOR STEVE MITCHELL, September, 2020

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 05:13:24 GMT

MORIEL OBITUARY – PASTOR STEVE MITCHELL

The Lord took me to Hosea 13: 14 this morning in my devotions before I opened my email and learned from John, in the USA, that Steve went to be with the Lord. The text struck me: ‘Oh, Death – where is thy sting? Oh, Grave where is thy victory?’ (1 Corinthians 15:53-58).

‘The last enemy to be destroyed is Death’

Praise God that Jesus died our death to give us His Life Eternal.

Praise God that He has abolished death; that is ‘katargeo” : (Rendered “Death Inoperative”) due to the certain Hope of The Resurrection.

Praise God that Steve is with Jesus and no longer suffers from pneumonia, Coved 19, diabetes, or cancer and wouldn’t want to come back even if God allowed him to.

‘TO LIVE IS CHRIST, TO DIE IS GAIN’!

Praise God that Steve will be back better than new for 1,000 Years to an earth better than this fallen one and that we will be with him as Jesus reigns.

Praise God that in this age of reprobation and apostasy and the coming antichrist Steve has been blessed with going home early.

Indeed we can and should thankfully praise God for all of these things.

Though this painful separation is but temporary, my soul grieves for Steve’s beloved Supriya and precious little daughter Malia.

The Word of God tells us that ‘The Lord is near to those who mourn’. Psalm 34:18 & Matthew 5:4

The God of all comfort will see them through this awful bereavement and secure their future

until they and we are with our friend and brother Steve again.

James Jacob Prasch

(Moriel)

In Jesus,

J. Jacob Prasch

(Moriel Ministries)

OBITUARY – BROTHER DAVID PAWSON, May 21, 2020

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 05:11:03 GMT

OBITUARY – BROTHER DAVID PAWSON “THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS”

I once told my friend David Pawson a number of years back that he was the proverbial “LAST OF THE MOHICANS”, an American colloquialism with which he was familiar.

I did like David Pawson personally, I usually agreed with him doctrinally, but to me he was more than that. He was truly the last of a dynasty of great British expository preachers dating back through Campbell Morgan, Dr. Martin Lloyds Jones, and all the way back to the era of Charles Spurgeon & JC Ryle.

His teaching ministry was a surviving vestige of an age gone by when Britain was still a Christian Country with an Evangelical heritage that evolved under God’s Hand from the Great Revivals of John & Charles Wesley and George Whitfield with hymn composers like Issac Watts and Augustus Toplady and heroic missionaries such as Hudson Taylor and William Carey.

The last British born figure in scriptural exposition of that calibre of gifting has gone to be with The Lord. David was gracious and less confrontational concerning things he knew to be wrong than I would have been. Yet he would speak out when he saw a need to. In this he reminded me of my friend Chuck Smith who is now also awaiting us in Glory with Jesus.

David lived in the emotional pain of having been bereft off his dear daughter and in the closing years of his temporal life was greatly restricted in his mobility. When I last spoke with him by telephone he was bed bound due to his infirmity and advanced age.

Now however, David is living his eternal life with and in the Jesus whom he loved and served, and is now very happily reunited with his beloved daughter and no longer bound by anything. Despite my sense of loss, In these things I of course rejoice. Miss him we shall, in a separation however that will only be temporary.

From John Bunyan and William Gurnall to CS Lewis, British Christianity produced its authors.

From Richard Baxter to John Newton Britain has produced its pastors. From Stephen Gardner to Clifford Hill Britain has had its voices of warning that some have described as prophetic. From Wycliffe to Tyndale to Coverdale it has produced its textual translators, and it has produced more martyrs than we can readily count. I do not think I am being unduly flattering in

lauding the legacy of David Pawson among the category of the greats whom The Lord raised up in Britain in times past. My only uncertainty is if or not God will send Britain such figures again.

To me, David Pawson will always be fondly remembered as ‘The Last of The Mohicans’.

In Jesus,

J. Jacob Prasch

(Moriel Ministries)

The Book of Enoch – June 2019

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 05:40:45 GMT

Question:

Good Evening. Where can I find accurate commentary on the Book of Enoch? Even better, can Mr Prasch record a short synopsis of the book and it’s meaning as the historical context of Noah and the events leading to the flood.

Answer:

Blessings

The only commentaries on the inter-testamental apocryphal literature of which I am familiar are lexical commentaries focused on Greek grammar, vocabulary, and syntax .

As with the Septuagint, (LXX) , apocryphal literature is of value in understanding the New Testament in terms of literature and history. Unlike the LXX however, it is not canon and thus not a basis of doctrine.

Such books assist in understanding New Testament books from a literary and historical perspective which in turn as exegetical supppament, indirectly contributes to our grasp of doctrine.

Jesus for instance observed Chanukah in John chapter 10 ( translated ‘Feast of Dedication’). He knew and accepted that the prophetic predictions of Daniel have their fulfillment recorded in The Apocryphal books of I & II Maccabees, not in scripture. In the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 additionally, Jesus made it clear that the partially fulfilled predictions of Daniel with the ‘Abomination of Desolations’ recorded in the Apocrypha was a type of the future apocalyptic prophetic predictions of the antichrist in The Book of Revelation and in 2 Thessalonians.

Thus, it is biblically important history necessary to comprehend future prophecy.

Enoch is cited in the Epistle of Jude. One of the features most important about Enoch is that it is the Literary primer for the Book of Revelation showing how the literary genre of Hebrew apocalyptic literature from Daniel, Zechariah, Isaiah, Ezekiel etc, is translated into Greek apocalyptic and vocabulary

where Sheol becomes hades, Leviathan becomes Apollyon etc. From a literary viewpoint, Enoch helps us make sense of certain Gospel portions , sections of Peter’s epistles, of Jude, and again The Book of Revelation in light of the Old Testament.

From a historical aspect, Enoch bears similarities to the Book of Jasher , to the ‘Antiquities’ of Josephus, and to certain early Mishnaic writings from early Mishna . In the Book of Acts for instance at Stephen’s apology in Acts 7 he begins with the saga of the Patriarch Abraham not in Haran where Genrsus commences it, but in Ur of the Chaldees. In Timothy Pail informs us that the names of Pharaoh’s magicians in Exodus were Janus and Jambres. In other words, The New Testament tells us that there were historical facts of some theological importance that , as with the story of the Maccabees, were recorded outside of the canon of scripture but which are necessary to correctly understand scripture. Another short Treatise like this is The Didache.

What is important to remember is that such books are of literary and historical value in contributing to properly interpreting The Word of God, but on their own are not a basis of doctrinal theology.

The only apocryphal commentaries I would have had use for are lexical academic commentaries of little use to readers not knowing Hebrew, Aramaic. and Greek. If you are competent in biblical languages however, please get back to us and I will suggest a few lexical commentaries. Not to sound arrogant, however the likelihood is that if you know biblical languages, you went to seminary and do not need to ask me what you already know. Therefore I assume you do not read biblical languages which the most serious commentaries on apocryphal books essentially require.

In Jesus,

Jacob Prasch / Moriel

Food for thought

Wed, 19 Jun 2019 05:42:52 GMT

Food for Thought

A Call For Repentance – Reprinted from Geri Ungurean. June 2019

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 05:46:11 GMT

A Call For Repentance: God Waits For Steve Berger and Amir Tsarfati to Humble Themselves Before Him

It certainly gives me NO pleasure in writing this piece. As a matter of fact, it breaks my heart. I have wrestled with what I’m about to write for the last week.

I have prayed for God to show me if I was to expose the darkness which has seeped into, and is now permeating the Prophecy community. Today, I felt certain that it is God’s will for me to write about this.

God reminded me that the name of this Blogsite is “Absolute Truth From the Word of God.” How can I not write the truth from the Word of God on a topic of such magnitude and potential harm?

First, I would like to give the reader the link to a well written and solidly Bible-based article by Alice Childs – A prolific and much loved writer for Raptureready.com:

READ THE FULL POST HERE:

https://grandmageri422.me/2019/05/04/a-call-for-repentance-god-waits-for-steve-berger-and-amir-tsarfati-to-humble-themselves-before-him-2/

Is Jacob Prasch Really Under Investigation?

Fri, 31 May 2019 05:52:28 GMT

“…the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service.” (John 16:2)

In the fall of 2018 David Nathan was dismissed from Moriel Ministries due to heretical teachings that included the affirmation that the blood of animals would atone for sin in the millennium apart from the blood of Christ and that believers can prescriptively anoint clothing with divine power for healing, going so far as to cite examples of people being “slain in the spirit” as a result of touching his jacket and tie quite as a matter of fact. He is on record as saying there will come a time when, “…the blood of Jesus Christ will not profit anyone anything.” There is no possible reality in which this statement is true. It is a demonstrable heresy that denies the gospel and every book of the bible in some way. In the wake of his dismissal, many were confused and upset. One such individual was Graham Baldwin who claims to have began independently “watching” the situation as he is supposedly a cult “expert”. Baldwin has produced a 3-part yellow journalism entry that sounds about as personal as any attack could. This so-called cult “expert” claims that Jacob Prasch is under investigation, but is he really?

LEVIATHAN – THE GEO POLITICAL, ECONOMIC , AND STRATEGIC REALITIES

Tue, 07 May 2019 05:55:00 GMT

WILL AN ENERGY PRODUCTION COMPETITION BETWEEN ISRAEL AND RUSSIA WITH ISRAEL AS AN ECONOMIC RIVAL TO RUSSIA’S EUROPEAN MARKETS HELP FOSTER A FUTURE CONFLICT? COULD IT BECOME A DRIVING FACTOR IN ANY GOG & MAGOG SCENARIO?

LEVIATHAN – THE GEO POLITICAL, ECONOMIC ,AND STRATEGIC REALITIES by:RUBIN ROTHLER(WRITING FOR MORIEL – ISRAEL)

Since its establishment, Israel’s Achilles heel has been its reliance upon imports to meet its energy requirements. The situation radically changed in 2009 with the discovery of the Tamar off shore gas field within Israel’s maritime exclusive economic zone. This win fall was fortified by the discovery of the even bigger gas and oil reserve -Leviathan the following year. Not only have these reserves placed Israel in a position to become energy independent but they have also transformed it into a net exporter of gas. So far its principal client has been Jordan. Withstanding the objections of a majority of its Parliament the Hashemite Kingdom purchased ten billion dollars worth of gas last year. Indeed this new found abundance of natural resources has profound political, strategic and economic implications for Israeli relations with its neighbors.

Leviathan has featured as a maritime border dispute between Israel and Lebanon. In particular, Hezbollah has trumpeted Lebanese sovereignty claims over part of these reserves. Israel has not been hesitant in repudiating such assertions. Several Cabinet ministers have affirmatively stated that Israel will take swift military action to counter any use of force against the infrastructure being installed. As a practical measure the Israeli Navy has purchased a number of additional corvettes to bolster its presence in the disputed waters. At present, it seems that Lebanon has neither the will nor ability to take matters further. The only plausible scenario for an eruption of conflict would be a situation in which Hezbollah acquires advanced anti ship missiles from Iran (as it has in the past) and launches them against Israeli Naval targets and rigs.

A notable geo-political outcome of the gas fields has been the blossoming relationship between Israel, Greek Cyprus and Greece which until recently has been lukewarm at best. The precursor to this was the deterioration in ties between Israel and Turkey. Israel’s traditional military cooperation with Turkey precluded a closer alliance with Greece, as Greece and Turkey were historically mutually alienated even though they are both ostensibly NATO allies. However Erdogan’s rise to power altered this drastically. His Islamist party has acted with hostility towards Israel. He has adopted inflammatory rhetoric against Israel, reflecting some of the excesses of the Ayatollah’s in this regard. He views himself as the leader of the Islamic world, resurrecting notions that hail back to the days of the Ottoman Sultans. This has involved advocating for the Palestinians, particularly those in Gaza. Relations hit rock bottom following the Mavi Marmara incident when Israeli commandos boarded some of the vessels headed to break the blockade on Gaza that resulted in the deaths of eight Turkish citizens in the Summer of 2010. Consequentially joint military drills were called off and the Israeli Air force is no longer welcome to utilize Turkish Airspace for training. The Greek government has enthusiastically come to Israel’s assistance in filling this logistical gap. Indeed both military and economic ties have been strengthened with expanded trade particularly in the area of technological goods and services. In concert with these moves, Israel and Greek Cyprus have signed agreements to endeavor in joint future exploration of bordering regions of their respective gas fields.

Furthermore, ministers from Israel, Greece, Italy and Cyprus, as well as the European Union’s commissioner for climate action and energy, signed a joint declaration in 2017 to commit to building a gas pipeline that would bring natural gas from Israel and Cyprus to Italy and the European market via Greece. The pipeline, which Israeli Minister of Energy Yuval Steinitz described as “the longest and deepest subsea gas pipeline in the world”, is projected to be in operation by 2025.

Steinitz surmised the project as the “beginning of a wonderful friendship between four Mediterranean countries”, while Miguel Arias Canete, the EU commissioner for climate action and energy, commented: “We strongly support the development of the region, both from a general point of view and in particular as future gas suppliers.”

Although Canete could not make “formal commitments”, he expected the project to meet all the necessary requirements to receive funding via the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility, a program that supports the development of trans-European infrastructure, and which already funded the project’s commercial and technical viability study.

Defined as a “project of common interest” by the EU, the pipeline has been marketed as an alternative to the bloc’s current reliance on Russian energy and on the depleting North Sea reserves. But some analysts have expressed reservations that the high infrastructure costs, coupled with low gas prices, will be able to compete with Russian gas and that the project will be able to attract large amounts of investment capital. Brenda Shaffer, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Centre, suggested that the agreement represents the four countries’ common political goals, which will not necessarily translate into investment decisions by commercial companies.”Their considerations and goals may be very different than the political level,” Shaffer told one publication. “At this stage, the proposed project is a political aspiration and far from a commercial reality, and it is not certain that current gas demand trends in southern Europe commercially justify an additional new gas supply project.”

However, It is important to note that Texas based Nobel Energy which owns almost 40% of Leviathan has access to advanced American technology such as sophisticated innovations in horizontal drilling which Russian state owned Gazprom lacks. This gives Israel a competitive edge in terms of extraction. Also, as of yet we are unsure of how large Leviathan is. So for now the jury is out on whether Israel will be able to compete with Russia as an alternative source of gas for the EU. What is certain, is that this new Greco-Israeli nexus has proved to be the conduit for improved EU-Israeli relations. This is cemented by the fact that unlike other Middle Eastern gas producing countries like Qatar, Israel has direct access to European sea ports.

Kristien in Australia – April 24, 2019

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 05:56:10 GMT

Kristien, lives in Scoresby – Victoria – Australia. She immigrated to Australia from Germany with her mother.

Her mother is quite ill and now suffers with dementia. She doesn’t know any believers nearby to fellowship; please contact Moriel & Marg if you are a believer and can offer some fellowship.

PROFESSIONAL ASSESSMENT OF MORIEL & JACOB PRASCH BY SENIOR POLICE INVESTIGATORS

Thu, 18 Apr 2019 05:59:18 GMT

We the undersigned as professional experienced police investigators with over half a century of detective experience combined in the investigation of crime wish to respond regarding the vexatious claims made against Moriel Ministries and Jacob Prasch by those supporting a Mr. David Nathan of South Africa in a theological dispute and those acting in concert with them.

We specifically refer to internet posted material by the Catalyst organisation acting in apparent concert with the ‘My Organizer’ business enterprise of Stuart & Debora Menelaus of Fife, Scotland operating variously under the names of Bethel Communications and GV 24/7. Along with the continuing diatribe by someone using the pseudonym tbckwaii. Who does not have the credibility or courage to disclose who he really is.

We first of all note that the claim that Moriel is under investigation is in itself devoid of substance as there is and has been no investigation, criminal or otherwise, by any government , police, or judicial agency. It is a contrived and defamatory assertion. intended to give Catalyst kudos but shows them to be rather inept and foolish.

As senior police detectives we fundamentally reject such assertions directed against the Moriel Ministry and against Jacob Prasch as bogus and having no merit nor actual evidence. We have all known Jacob Prasch personally and are well familiar with Moriel for a number of years and any inordinate activity either personal or financial would have been recognized by us, and detected by any police investigator over a period of time. There has been none however. From the perspective of a police investigation, these allegations appear manufactured and meritless and personally vindictive using immature bullying and harassment tactics falsely portrayed as qualified superiority. From the initial leading of the witness David Nathan on the GV247 program to the continued use of hearsay and conjecture by Catalyst, they have only made themselves look vindictive and motivated by spite. There is no evidence that would pass any criminal or civil threshold test, and they know it, otherwise they would have handed it over to a statutory authority .There is no justifiable or evidential basis for this continued attack by supposed Christian brethren harassment; there is nothing established on the basis of any verifiable fact.

Such defamatory claims moreover are readily off-set by a range of witnesses intimately familiar with Moriel and its director whose testimonies are uniformly an endorsement of honesty and good character.

It is our assessment as senior investigating police detectives from three different nations with lifetime careers investigation crime and fraud that no credible police agency or jurisdiction would lend credence to the demonstrably contorted insinuations and character assassination attempts found in these unsubstantiated charges aimed at Moriel Ministries and against Jacob Prasch. His integrity remains secure, but that of the afore mentioned must be considered tarnished.

Sincerely,

Sergeant Amos Farrell

Sr. Investigating Detective (ret.)

Scotland Yard

London, UK

Captain Michael Benade

Commanding Police Detective (ret.)

South Africa Police

Sergeant Michael Keaney

Senior Detective – Investigator

New Zealand Police

Statement of CMFI concerning Moriel, April 2019

Fri, 12 Apr 2019 06:01:30 GMT

To CMFI Members

Regarding the ongoing dispute involving certain members of Christian Ministerial Fellowship International (CMFI) and others.

After much prayer and careful consideration, the CMFI Council would respond to requests for it to comment as follows:

We would, in the first instance, encourage all interested parties to revisit Scriptures relating to the resolution of disputes, to matters of church discipline, and of dealing with false doctrine, in particular: Matthew 18:15-17; Romans 16:17,18; Galatians 6:1; 1Corinthians 6:1-8; 2Timothy 2:23-26; James 4:11; 2John: 9-11.
CMFI remains of the opinion that central to, and at the core of this dispute, remains the questionable teaching of David Nathan. Had Mr. Nathan responded quickly and privately to requests to clarify certain aspects of his doctrine, it is likely that the situation would not have escalated to current levels. Much of that which has followed has been a deflection away from the issue of doctrine to become an issue of behaviour. Whereas neither bad doctrine nor bad behaviour is condoned, many have lost sight of the fundamental issue at the core of the dispute.
In regard to bad behaviour, a difficulty in dealing with the ongoing dispute is that this is, for many of us, the first time we have had to process such a dispute taking place in such an open public forum, so widely available to many. The fact that opportunity exists to make derogatory and defamatory statements in a wide range of media, does not necessarily make it right to do so. The anonymity, easy access, and availability of a platform afforded by the internet is no excuse to disregard the authority of the Bible. There is much comment on this dispute, posted on the internet purporting to be godly, made by those who have not in every instance sought to follow Biblical procedure.
In regard to the internet and social media aspect of this dispute, CMFI is aware that certain of it’s members, actively involved in Moriel Ministries, have previously offered to remove all inflammatory content from those sites for which it is responsible. In return, request was made for the other protagonists in the dispute to do likewise. This would have afforded some protection against further damage being done not only to the individuals concerned, but perhaps of greater importance to the wider church also. CMFI is given to understand that this offer was declined by those who continue to pursue certain CMFI members, not all of whom represent Moriel Ministries. CMFI is thankful that Moriel have desisted from retaliating against certain claims made against it, via the internet and social media, though it respects it’s right to respond according to Biblical protocol.
In regard to certain of those claims. CMFI is not aware of any formal investigation being made against Moriel Ministries in any of the countries in which it operates. Furthermore, to the best of it’s knowledge, Moriel Ministries continues to operate within the fiscal regulations of those countries in which it and it’s associated organisations operate.
Further, CMFI does not believe that Moriel is a cult which venerates it’s own leader. Not only does Moriel not have members, but it adheres to a statement of faith which is broadly that of most evangelical churches. Also, all CMFI members are required to agree with the CMFI statement of faith. Jesus Christ is central to that statement of faith.
To those who would hold CMFI accountable for the behaviour of its members, we would point out that all para-church ministries are in the first instance accountable to their own board of trustees, and individuals are accountable to their own local church leadership. Where any member of CMFI is considered to be acting in a way that is prejudicial to the interests of CMFI, the CMFI Council will undertake any relevant action internally and privately, and is under no compulsion to make its findings public.

The CMFI Council

www.cmfi.org.uk

Upcoming elections in Israel – April 2019

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 06:04:29 GMT

The upcoming elections in Israel have been appraised by commentators both left and right for potentially broader regional significance beyond that of domestic politics. The outcome could reshape the Middle East for generations to come.

If Netanyahu is able to further cement his position as the second longest serving leader in Israeli history, coupled with unprecedented support from Washington, and a burgeoning relationship with Saudi Arabia and especially some of the Gulf states; we may see a final death blow to any notion of the two state solution agenda, involving land for peace which has been peddled by the international community since Oslo in 1993. Indeed, this process had already begun when Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last year and then rather conveniently recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights three weeks before the election (thereby handing his ally an Ace). The next logical continuation of this sequence of events (after a win) would be for Netanyahu to seek a green light from Trump to annex at least those major settlement blocks in close proximity to the green line such as Gush Etzion.

Netanyahu has been posturing the promise of security at the forefront of his manifesto pledge. According to polls, after two Intifadas and near continuous low-level conflict the majority of Jewish Israelis are disillusioned by the prospects for peace. Instead they are resigned to transforming Israel into a fortress and view Netanyahu as the man who can deliver the goods. That is, until Ganz appeared on the scene as a viable contender and formed a centrist-left wing party to challenge Likud’s grip on power. Akin to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Ganz comes with stellar military credentials, being a former Chief of Staff. Previous electoral challengers to Netanyahu have been rebuffed as being soft on security. Obviously it is far more difficult to characterize Ganz in such a light. But that hasn’t prevented Netanyahu from trying. He went as far as to insinuate that his opponent may be being black mailed by Iran after reportedly having his iPhone hacked by their subversive operatives.

In the international arena, if Likud wins Israel will become both more and less isolated. The existing natural ties between Trump and Netanyahu will presumably strengthen. Israel will likely continue to forge relationships with certain elements of the ruling classes of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states; especially in the face of continued Iranian belligerence and attempts to attain regional dominance over the Sunnis. Under Netenyahu’s leadership India has also recently emerged as a strategic partner, with Israeli arms sales being the bedrock of their cordial relations. This will probably continue. Conversely, Israel will likely become further alienated from the EU. This is in part due to the strained relations between the Trump administration and Brussels. But is further exacerbated by the EU’s opposition to Likud’s stance on settlement building. With Netanyahu plausibly emboldened by US support to accelerate such activity post – election victory, this animosity will increase.

Israel has been involved in a proxy war with Iran on three main fronts: Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. The IDF sustained a bloody nose at the hands of Iranian funded and directed Hizbollah in the summer of 2006, despite delivering significant damages to Hizbollah in return. Since then the northern border has largely remained quiet and Israel’s efforts to contain the paramilitary group have mostly centered on supporting opposing Sunni forces in the ongoing Syrian Civil War.

In Syria, Israel has launched direct military strikes against Iranian assets. This low-level tussle may blow up into full scale conflict should Netanyahu win a further term. This is largely due to the fact that Assad, animated by Russia and Iran, has de-facto won the Civil War and Iran’s military presence in the country has become entrenched. Netanyahu has indicated that he is unwilling to accept such a state of affairs. There will also most likely be a major operation in Gaza; especially if there are further rocket attacks, like the ones we have witnessed recently.

The weak policy of Obama not keeping his “red line” warning to Syria, and the vacuum left by the Obama administration in Iraq that was filled by Isis whom Obama ridiculed as a mere “JV team”, created a complicated mess inherited by Trump. Israel and the USA on one hand, as well as Syria and Iran backed by Putin on the other, were both pitted against an Isis that is now all but destroyed in Syria as Trump pledged. The three-way conflict thrust on Netanyahu and bequeathed to Trump however, further complicated by the ambiguous position of Turkey and Erdogan, engendered an insurmountable quagmire that left Assad in power despite the success in eradicating Isis. The Sunni Isis Caliphate was effectively replaced by a Shia Iranian nexus extending via Syria into Lebanon with adjuncts in Gaza.

On the financial front, in the absence of unforeseen circumstances the economy overall will continue to grow due to favorable free market policies championed by Netanyahu that attract foreign investment in terms of both capital and research and development -especially in the high-tech industry. Adversely, Chareidi participation in the workforce will remain stunted due to Likud being obliged to concede subsidies to this sector in order to retain the support of the religious parties in its coalition; thus demotivating this community from obtaining gainful employment.

Netanyahu has promised to reserve several seats in his coalition and cabinet posts for ultra nationalist parties who many would argue are opposed to the fundamental tenets of western democratic liberalism. Giving them such a platform may impact government policy vis a vis Israel’s Arab minority; as has arguably already been the case with the right wing coalition passing Israel’s Jewish nation state law last year. This piece of legislation defined Israel as a State for the Jewish people rather than for all its citizens. We may see additional comparable statutes promulgated by the Knesset following a Likud win.

GROUNDLESS RUMORS – Dec 31, 2018

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 06:11:49 GMT

GROUNDLESS RUMOR THAT MORIEL & JACOB PRASCH ARE ALLEGEDLY UNDER INVESTIGATION

Blessings, an organization calling itself ‘CATALYST’ has posted a video clip produced apparently by STUDIO SCOTLAND (makers of the documentary ‘The Daniel Project’ featuring Jacob Prasch and its sequel that was commercially sold to Hollywood and communist China ‘The Daniel Connection’ ) alleging that Moriel and Jacob Prasch are “under investigation”.

We can absolutely confirm that neither Moriel or Jacob Prasch are under any investigation by any civil, judicial, or law enforcement authority anywhere, in any nation or jurisdiction. The ‘Catalyst’ organization moreover did not contact us in any manner nor question anyone from Moriel before posting this video clip.

According to their website, ‘CATALYST’ has no religious beliefs, and represents persons of any religion or of any sexuality, yet declares ‘Jacob Prasch’ to be a pagan and a non-believer urging people to contact them with a possible view to suing him & Moriel. It has no pretense of being a Christian or Evangelical organization with its services being available to Hindus, Moslems, Buddhists, homosexuals, bi-sexuals, lesbians, trans-sexuals etc. as is their legal right , but such an organization has no legal investigating authority as a government agency, nor scriptural authority to rule that a professed Christian is a pagan.

Jacob Prasch receives no royalties from either his books or recorded materials, and all Moriel recorded material is freely available for download on-line, (unlike Studio Scotland , which contrary to our wishes continues to commercially sell recorded material of Jacob Prasch). How Moriel or Jacob Prasch can possibly profiteer from recoded material it gives away for free as is insinuated on the clip is not explained.

Reading what is posted on social media is not ‘stalking’. However Jacob Prasch is not even on Social Media or Facebook and charges that he “stalks” by such means (whatever that means) are impossible.

The BBC & UK Channel 4 both deny that expert commentators on documentaries are never paid, and the ‘Daniel Connection’ was not a documentary format but a movie with a plot and paid secular actors. While doing it free of charge as an evangelistic endeavor, Jacob Prasch objected to what he did unpaid as an evangelistic effort being sold to Hollywood (Paramount – California Pictures) and to Communist China preventing it from being used evangelistically. He and we found this to be unprincipled.

The root of such hostility expressed towards Moriel & Jacob Prasch by Studio Scotland appears to be our objection to them selling filmed material of Jacob Prasch while they are promoting a ministry that denies God The Father as Creator, that the blood of Jesus is not an Eternal Covenant, and their posting an edited video on GV 24/7 featuring Jacob Prasch misrepresenting the context in support of this other ministry.

Moriel is in full legal compliance with all reporting requirements as a USA non-profit organization and as a UK registered charity. The giving away of our recorded material free of cost is encouraged and book prices are largely set by Amazon with the author , Jacob Prasch, donating all royalties to The Lord’s work.

What is God Really Doing in Israel? Dec 23, 2018

Sun, 23 Dec 2018 06:17:12 GMT

WHAT IS GOD REALLY DOING IN ISRAEL?

HOW MANY ISRAELIS ARE BECOMING BELIEVERS IN YESHUA?

WHAT IS IT LIKE FOR ISRAELI BELIEVERS?

SO MUCH HAPPENS IN THE NEWS EVENTS EVERY WEEK OF PROPHETIC IMPORTANCE. BUT HOW ISRAELI BELIEVERS EXPERIENCE AND VIEW THESE THING?

YESHUA TOLD US PLAINLY IN MATTHEW 10 THAT WE SHALL NOT FINNISH EVANGELIZING ISRAEL BEFORE HE RETURNS. PETER’S EPISTLE SAYS WE CAN HASTEN HIS COMING. CAN WE ‘HASTEN THE SECOND COMING’ OF YESHUA BY EVANGELIZING ISRAEL?

PLEASE JOIN US IN WELCOMING ISRAELI PASTOR YOSI OVADIA FROM GALILEE AS HE JOINS JACOB PRASCH IN EXPLORING ‘”THE BODY OF MESSIAH IN MODERN ISRAEL”.

Moriel Northern Conference (Moriel’s Israel Conference) see the posting on our itinerary site: https://bit.ly/2EGq2En

March 8th to 10th 2019

“The Body Of Messiah in Last Days Israel & Israel Today “

Speakers are…

Jacob Prasch & Pastor Yossi Ovadia from Israel.

£150 per person – all rooms ensuite (Cheques payable to Moriel Ministries).

Daresbury Hotel ( Britannia Hotels )

Daresbury Business Park, Daresbury, Warrington, Cheshire WA4 4BB

For Booking Form please apply to Mrs Beryl Hunter 07894862590 (ring only Mon-Fri Up to 8pm ) bookings not taken weekends or late evenings

Email. lifeline.wigan2@btinternet.com

Bookings ONLY by booking form.

Closing date Feb 28th 2019.

Announcement, Dec 20, 2018

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 06:22:29 GMT

A staged and scripted video clip falsely claiming that Moriel & Jacob Prasch are ‘Under Investigation’ is of course completely without foundation. Such fabrications are as untrue as they are malicious. We are able to confirm that neither Moriel or Jacob Prasch are under any investigation of any kind by any civil, governmental, judicial, or police authority for anything in any country or in any jurisdiction.

Moriel TV has already ceased commenting on the David Nathan issue and we have ceased responding to his proponents and defenders such as Deborah and Stuart Menelaws though we stand by the factual accuracy of what had been reported.We reject as hyperbolic nonsense the hideous demands of Graham Baldwin & his Catalyst organization and the Menelaws of GV 24/7 framed in language that may legally constitute blackmail and urging litigation against us.

According to their website, Baldwin’s ‘Catalyst’ “have no religious beliefs” and will represent anyone of any religion (Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist), or of any sexual orientation (heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian) claiming religious abuse for the suggested contribution of 50 British Pounds per hour, and say they are not a ‘Christian’ organization of saved believers in Christ.

Jacob Prasch moreover is not even on Social Media and is therefore in no position to ‘e-stalk’ or harass anyone. As the ROKU financial report of Moriel shows, no wages for Jacob Prasch appear in the audits of Moriel UK because Jacob does not receive any, nor any royalties, and all of our recorded materials are freely available at no cost on the Internet. We invite anyone to download any material of Moriel or Jacob Prasch free of charge, only requesting it not be edited or commercially sold. Giving it away is encouraged. Sadly however, contrary to our wishes, the Menelaws continue to commercially sell filmed material featuring Jacob Prasch.

Emails sent by us in response to vitriolic attacks against Moriel Ministries and Jacob Prasch claimed to be abusive by Mr. Baldwin and Menelaws have notably not been produced by them, essentially because read in context such do not exist. These are merely replies to hostile attacks upon us including libelous allegations of mental illness. Claims that expert opinion in documentaries are not paid is denied by the BBC & UK Channel 4, and the ‘Daniel Connection’ in which Jacob Prasch and other Christians appeared unsalaried was a movie with a plot and acting, not a documentary, and as reported, was commercially sold to Hollywood and to China. Unlike Moriel which publishes its audited financial records, the Menelaw’s operations have not.

Moriel has declined to reply to more recent emails by David Nathan and Deborah Menelaws who seem pointlessly intent on keeping this monster alive. All that needs to be established doctrinally and otherwise has been stated and re-stated already and we do not intend to be participants in this Christ dishonoring religious charade triggered by such heresy as ‘God The Father not being Creator’, and those who defend such lies. For us it has been over for weeks.

Others wishing to drag it out, will continue to be ignored. while acting on behalf of Menelaws in a video produced by Menelaws we have been pronounced as ‘unbelievers & pagan’ by ‘Catalyst’, themselves professing to hold ‘no religious beliefs’ . They have threatened us with suing in rejection of 1 Corinthians 6, yet we challenge anyone to produce documented evidence that we, (or the threat victim Jacob Prasch), have ever threatened anyone. We have meanwhile thanked Bill Randles for his apologetic removal of a blog critical of Moriel & Jacob.

Sincerely,

Moriel Board

Privacy

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 06:25:26 GMT

How We Collect and Use Information

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Abortion Vs Science – The Sanctity Of Life. Sept 2018

Tue, 18 Sep 2018 06:30:18 GMT

Sanctity of life, Sept 2018

Ireland supports boycotts and calls Israel an apartheid state/Anti Israel

Fri, 07 Sep 2018 06:34:08 GMT

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First EU country to legalise Same Sex Marriage First EU country to elect an openly Homosexual Prime Minister/ Taoiseach (a half Hindu; I was in India the week before last and Hindus were catching cow urine and rubbing it on their faces in the streets – the Taoiseach’s version of “holy water”. I watched cows being fed while small kids were left in hunger).

First EU country to legalise non-therapeutic abortion with no clinical warrant as a mere means of birth control by means of popular Public Referendum. The vote was a landslide.

First EU country to enact pro-radical Islamic anti Israel boycott bringing the promised curse of God on itself (Genesis 12:3). The Republic of Ireland is a nation that has truly gone from bad to worse , going from my fellow New Yorker De Valera cum ‘Devilera’ to the Devil himself – from Maynooth to Mecca. Ireland has failed, and for political reasons categorically refused, to criminally prosecute a single Roman Catholic Bishop for illicitly conspiring to protect pedophile sex criminal priests , “christian” Brothers & nuns, despite the Dail formally establishing that every Irish Bishop is guilty of it. Yet it makes trade with Israel’s biblical heartland a criminal act.

The Irish Left complains of a ‘British occupation’ of Ulster claiming that history proves the Irish are the indigenous people, yet adapts a different standard when history and archaeology (not to mention the scriptures including the four Gospels) prove that the Jews are the indigenous people of Bethlehem, Beth El, East Jerusalem, Shilo , Jericho & The West Bank. Whatever one’s politics, there is no elective abortion, same sex marriage, or anti Semitism in Northern Ireland (except of course in Andersontown, Short Strand, or up the Falls Road).

All you need is a feigned “Mea Culpa” , a stupid joke of a papal visit, and getting your shirts starched at a Magdallen laundry in order to sweep sex crimes against children perpetrated by Roman Catholic clergy under the rug in Ireland. But if their own children don’t matter to the Irish government , why should Jewish or Arab children matter? My lunatic Fenian distant Irish cousins murdered Catholic and Protestant children alike in the Omagh bombing. I was in Australia at the time and I vividly recall watching the news report on TV of the funeral of a little four year old Catholic girl murdered in Omagh, and I have likewise seen Arab as well as Jewish children murdered by Islamic terrorist bombing in Israel. Not a word from Frances Black.

Upwards of 350,000 Arabs killed by other Moslem Arabs in Syria alone, Hamas & Hizbollah persecuting and murdering Arab Christians as do Iran and Saudi Arabia, yet it is Israel with the best Christian rights, women’s rights, and over all human rights record in the Middle East that is singled out by the Irish government for bogus “war crimes”. If the Dail wants to see real war crimes the FF , FG, Labour, & Sinn Fein politicians should go to Syria or Gaza or ask about the 3.3 million Christians slaughtered in a 14 year period by Islamic militias in Sudan. Where is the Irish boycott on Saudi oil or on Iran where 98% of the Christian pastors were hung? As a Christian I thank God that there is at least one nation in The Middle East where Christians are safe – and that nation is Israel.

Vradaker the Taoiseach should go the Middle East with one of his boyfriends and experience what is decreed by Islamic Sharia law for his homosexuality. He won’t be returning to Dublin. Frances Black should do the same and see what happens to feminist women in Islamic countries. I can almost hear her screaming now while they are mercilessly flogging her. Yet these hypocrites vilify Israel for standing up to this radical Islam that is steadily being imported into Ireland under EU immigration policies. But don’t be fooled – justice is coming (Obadiah 15).

We must pray for Ireland. The judgment of God is surely coming upon the land of my maternal ancestors. The moral avalanche into placing a benediction on everything from unnatural marital unions to the genocidal murder of the unborn to the serial protection of sex pervert clergy guilty of the most heinous of crimes enacted inside of convents and confessionals against defenseless children, has now reached a new low. For the pedophile sagart Jesus said it would be better to be tossed off the dock in Dun Laohaire into the Irish Sea with a millstone around his neck. For those who curse the descendants of Abraham, Issac, & Jacob whom remain beloved for the sake of their patriarchs (Romans 11: 28), God has another impracatory guarantee. According to Zechariah 2:8, an increasingly God-less Ireland has now touched the “Apple Of God’s Own Eye”, and I don’t mean Patsy Fagan.

Seamus Jacobus (aka: James Jacob Prasch)

Jacob Prasch response to David Nathan – Sept 5th 2018

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 06:38:08 GMT

Blessings from Vietnam While the response by David Nathan to Moriel separating from him for serious doctrinal reasons will be responded to with point by point a rebuttal shortly, we just wanted to clarify the issues by allowing you to watch and listen for yourself to some of what we objected to the point where we had no option to distance Moriel & ourselves from David as his material (which we can only regard as flatly of a heretical nature) was in the public domain and many people were accosting Moriel as sharing and promoting this heterodox error.

Please watch it carefully and draw your own conclusions.

As you will be able to determine for yourself, this issue is not about the Millennium or differences of opinion on secondary issues, the primary issue is rather the Truth.

Allow me first on behalf of Moriel to please preface any comment by pointing out that we did not violate Titus 3:10 by failing to issue the “once, then twice” warning commanded in that verse. In fact, as he admits we warned David Nathan of this face to face in Los Angeles in May of this year pointing out our belief that the Millennial sacrifices are memorials of The Lord’s death etc. to teach the Gospel to those born during that time who will not have a developed concept of sin in a restored earth as it was prior to Adam’s sin (this was in addition to a brief chat on the Marriage Supper of The Lamb). Our view is the long-established doctrinal position of conservative Evangelical Pre-Millennialism.

On another video we have, David Nathan of course asserted that those not accepting his view cannot do so because they are Gentiles, when in fact Messianic Jewish scholars from Alfred Edersheim, David Baron, Dr. Louis Goldberg, Professor Dr. Michael Rydelnik, Dr. David Hocking, and Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum and a litany of others we could name hold the same precise doctrinal position in this regard as we do.

In any event, in Los Angeles David Nathan agreed to a retraction that was to be made available for the next edition of the Moriel periodical so we could lay the matter to rest.

We waited three months for what he said he would provide and he was back in South Africa for a portion of that time, but unfortunately it was never forthcoming. A second effort to remind him by email (of which we have a copy), but the deadline was missed and after 3 further months of very concerned and troubled believers contacting us from May to August we were forced to do as we did. Titus 3:10 was followed to the letter.

In the meantime, David’s ‘Foundation Principles’ series also in the public domain which we were additionally accosted concerning came to light containing an index of what we can only consider to be errors, some of them egregious. We had no earlier notion that David held these views when he came into Moriel and we began promoting; something him for which we must accept partial responsibility, mandating a responsibility for us to correct it. At least three South African pastors have since contacted us informing us that they knew David Nathan taught serious error, (but there are others in addition). Three months is a long time and he was contacted a second time during this period. A charge of Titus 3:10 being violated is untrue.

Because we like David Nathan personally, this has been a very difficult episode. There are churches Moriel planted and others where I (Jacob Prasch) am a trustee and I have responsibilities before The Lord to these congregations to keep the Lord’s Sheep away from dangerously false dogma, as do pastors who will one day give account for the welfare of His sheep to the Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:1-4).

A more comprehensive treatment of David Nathan’s response will again appear in the rebuttal, suffice to say it is permeated with multiple demonstrable errors as shall be addressed.

This will be forwarded to David Nathan by Moriel.

* While this is only one of the videos we have of David Nathan, it is self-explanatory. Note please that before what he presents as ‘theory’, David Nathan teaches at the 20 second mark that Redemption”, “Salvation by Faith”, being filled with The Holy Spirit and being ‘Born Again’ will be “Finished”. People born in the Millennium will be descendent from the survivors of the final 7 years of history (Daniel’s 70th Week) and there is nothing in scripture to say these people won’t need salvation or redemption and believers in the Millennium will most certainly be Spirit Filled (Just as the Apostles were after John Chapter 20 before Jesus ascended).

* David then goes on to teach that they will, instead of by redemption by Christ, obtain atonement by the blood of animals so that they can participate in “religious” rituals. This is of course impossible according to Hebrews 10:4 as the blood of these animals in Levitical sacrifice are in Greek are ‘ADUNAMON” (devoid of any power; it is symbolic only). David also mis-defines the term “Atonement” (as invented by Wm. Tyndale) to be the translation of the Hebrew “Corban” instead of “Kapporah”. As shall be noted in the rebuttal, in the verses in Ezekiel 44 & 45 David highlights is the infinitive “L’CAPER”, not “L’HACRIV”. I know David attended yeshiva in his youth and surely, he can read this for himself, so I am at a loss to explain his confusion. To sacrifice for sin and to cover sin (not cover up, but cover) because if the provision for the sin by another are two different terms entirely in Hebrew with two different meanings and no common ‘shoresh’ (root) linking them etymologically. What David so assertively teaches makes absolutely no linguistic sense whatsoever. Lay people may swallow it out of ignorance, but not anyone versed in the original languages.

* At the 14:55 mark David teaches, (by his own admission-speculatively) that heaven will not only be for those who are Born Again. Positively nothing in scripture however anywhere negates or reverses John 3:3.

* David’s reasoning for the missing Holy Days in the Millennium is utterly mistaken. On the basis of The Book of Ezekiel, we can only be certain of Passover & Hag Matzot because The New Testament shows that Passover will have its Millennial culmination in the ‘Marriage Supper of The Lamb’ and of Hag Sukkot of which the Millennium is the fulfillment (Zech. 14). The others will have had their total fulfillment.

* David’s “theory” that we as believers will not have access to eat of the Tree of Life in heaven is nearly as implausible as his reason for believing it. He conflates and confuses the Fruit (representing the Divine Nature in Christ; e.g. ‘The Fruit of The Spirit’) with the Leaves (good works). As we see in Jesus cursing the Fig Tree (in Judaism, both ancient & modern, the Fig Tree represents the Atz Hayim or Tree of Life). Jesus said that we most assuredly will eat of the Tree of Life in Heaven Revelation 22:14. Those who do not are the dogs, sorcerers, murderers, and idolaters outside of the city.

* David’s teaching on this video that “no one will be Born Again after the rapture” is directly contradictory to Revelation 14:6. The Gospel being preached via angelic agency from midheaven at that time of God’s wrath being released concurrent with the rapture is defined in that text as a Gospel that is ‘Eternal’ (eugalion aonion eugalesai). The Gospel of repentance, faith, and salvation will be preached and it is an ‘eternal’ message of salvation. Eternity is an all-encompassing term in both Greek and English and includes the Millennium. David Nathan’s forceful assertions in this regard and the teaching of the plain meaning of text are mutually exclusive. The circumstances in which it is preached in a post grace environment will be very different, but the message itself will not be. David Nathan appears confused as to dispensations and their meaning. Not until the death & resurrection of Jesus and Pentecost did the season of Grace formally arrive. The Law was still in effect concurrent with the ministry of Jesus, yet He preached the Gospel announcing a coming age of grace before the age arrived (Matthew 4:23). The Law and its wrath moreover was concurrent with the preaching of the Gospel until climaxing in 70 AD/ CE. Isaiah 61: 1-2 (partially cited by Jesus in Luke 4 & Matt. 4) moreover, makes it clear that the proclaiming of the Gospel (‘Besora’ in Hebrew; ‘Evangelion’ in Septuagint & New Testament) encompasses both the Grace period and the time of divine vengeance. David’s teaching that the Gospel message entailing Second Birth can only exist in an era of Grace is a not only a concept alien to scripture, but at odds with it.

David’s teaching on this video that no one will be Born Again after the rapture is directly and mutually exclusively at odds that the Gospel preached by angelic agency from the air at that point will be “eternal’; there will be Salvation by faith etc.- howbeit in circumstances of unprecedented duress very different from the present time.

Neither I or Moriel, derives any pleasure from any of this, however we cannot allow the public impression that we agree with such horrible false teaching or allow believers in churches where we bear responsibility to be fed this brand of poison.

WATCH and HEAR DAVID NATHAN TEACH THESE THINGS BY CLICKING HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwjqvkLWfpM

Bill Randle’s Blog – On David Nathan – Oct 12th 2018

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 06:36:18 GMT

One Helpful Suggestion ( …maybe)…an open Letter to David Nathan – with permission from Bill Randle’s blog.

https://billrandles.wordpress.com/2018/10/12/one-helpful-suggestion-maybe-an-open-letter-to-david-nathan/

Dear brother Dave, I have been observing the back and forth ever since you were removed from Moriel with much concern, perplexity and even sorrow. Of course I am concerned for you, your precious family and ministry, because I know how difficult it can be to go through times like these. Actually my concern extends to brother Jacob as well, and to the larger flock of God, and ultimately for the glory of God.

As you well know Ministry , with all of its demands can be brutal at times, which is why James warns Christians not to aspire to teaching, “… knowing we shall receive the greater condemnation”. You and I and Jacob all know this, and we have long ago accepted this as a reality.

As I said, I am also perplexed about this whole discussion. I will put aside the issues of slain in the Spirit, Anointed prayer cloths (I do not regard you as a Benny Hinn by any means), impartation of the Spirit through laying on of hands, all of which I consider to be peripheral to the main problematic charge, which is your comments about the Blood of Jesus, in the Millenium.

Your recent release of a response to Jacob is vague, one isn’t sure from the outset whether or not it is Jacob’s response or your own. It becomes evident that you have shown us Jacob’s Video and that you are responding with fuller clips of your own, ( I suppose proving that indeed you teach that the blood of Jesus is sufficient, and that we are saved only by the blood of Jesus). There is little or no narration, only clip answering to fuller clip.

It is almost as if you are saying, “Whats the problem?, I preach the same gospel as you do, I preach the efficacy of the blood of Jesus”.

As far as I know, no one has accused you of not preaching the gospel, to those of us on this side of the Millennium. One would wonder what all of the fuss is, if they merely went by your response tape, or even by the excellent GV247 interview with Stewart Menalaws. You said that no one at Moriel had ever spoken to you about any problems until May.

People are perplexed, thinking ‘Why all of this argument, David preaches the standard gospel, so why is He being accused of not doing so? ‘

It will always be confusing and contentious as long as that impression is given. I cannot speak for Jacob , ( I am not Moriel), but I would not assume you would ever have been a part of Moriel if Jacob had any doubts about the gospel you preach in this current dispensation.

If you want to bring real clarification to this issue, You would have to acknowledge where the confusion springs from. The issue is what you have said about the blood of Jesus during the Millennium. “The Blood of Jesus will not profit anyone, anything in the Millennium”. Remember I warned you that such a statement would cause problems and vast misunderstanding ?

This is the real contention which has eventually come to a head, and which must be acknowledged as problematic. Obviously Moriel, and others, including myself would have a problem with this.

The issue isn’t really about whether or not people are born again, or part of the bride in the Millennium, it is all about your statements on the Blood of Jesus, and on cleansing in the Millennium. Misunderstanding this has obfuscated the whole discussion, in my humble opinion.

I just want to say that the true starting place would be for you to acknowledge the statement and to try to see why that would be problematic. This very issue has come to the surface before between you and I, ironically once in a Q/A at Bread of Life, and one in a Q/A at Believers in Grace. I regret that I didn’t pursue my concerns further with you along those lines, I didn’t know this would become the conflagration which it has become, but I am not surprised that it became an issue.

Have you corrected your teachings? If so is there any way you could list the corrections, in order to validate the concerns others have raised? How about a point by point list ? “Here is where I see Moriel could have a problem with what I said, Here is what I meant or where I have changed….”

That would greatly lessen the confusion and perplexity. For example I was blessed to hear that the prayer cloth teaching was ten years old and that you had retracted it. We have all had to go back over some of our earlier teachings and make corrections.

People are being given the impression that you are being accused out of the blue, as if there has been no cause for any alarm. But any teaching on the blood of Jesus, (the only means for the salvation of all men) is extremely serious. Any perceived denigration of the blood, in this age or the age to come, would obviously be problematic. There is nothing wrong with being a Berean.

As for how this issue has been handled, how you have been treated, whether or not your answer was forthcoming, I can not speak for any of that. That is another issue entirely. For example I do not think it fair to compare you to Benny Hinn. There is no comparison. Nor do I think it wise to call anyone a liar. As the Apostle Paul said, “Wouldn’t you rather just suffer wrong?”.

I have always loved you brother and respected your work and demeanor, but you know also that I have had reservations about your teachings on the blood of Jesus in the Millennium, and the role of animal blood sacrifices. Never to the extent that I couldn’t fellowship with you or have you to my church. I had always hoped this could become a teachable moment, (and it may yet be).

I think you would help a lot of people if you clearly, point by point took this subject up, answering, acknowledging or explaining on why you either were misunderstood, or perhaps where your detractors are right, or partially right, “Agree with thine adversaries quickly while you are on the way with them…“- Your friend and Brother, Pastor Bill

I welcome any thoughts, (as long as they are expressed in the Spirit of Jesus).

Meet Mike Benade, our new South African Administrator. Aug 2018

Wed, 15 Aug 2018 06:44:04 GMT

About Mike Benade our new South African Administrator. Aug 2018

In 1973, aged 16 I answered an altar call by an American missionary preaching in my hometown. I really experienced the Lord Jesus working in my young life. being a Presbyterian at that time I was soon frustrated by the deadness of the church and found myself drawn to a group of Christian “hippies” from the Jesus movement and went about handing out tracts and singing from campers equipped with amplifiers and p.a. systems. I also visited many pentecostal tent meetings but quickly learned that white doves flying around the tents were the acts of men and not holy spirit manifestations. an older couple took a fancy to me and decided to lay hands on me to receive the gift of tongues. they pressed down upon my head so hard that I realised if I did not come up with something fast, I was going to pass through the pearly gates by virtue of a broken neck. I promptly recited my Latin amo,amas… which caused them to release my head and exhorted me to go home and practice my new gift.

By the time I left high school, I was little more than a sceptic and very disillusioned by all things Christian. I joined the South African police force instead of going to the army and after basic training found myself fighting in a bush war which few of us really understood other than it was supposedly preventing communism from taking over Namibia and eventually South Africa. after my second stint in the operational area, I was transferred to the narcotics section where I mostly did under-cover drug gang infiltrations and eventually transferred to the criminal bureau where I did C.S.I for about 26 years. in all of these years, I lived as a sinner yet the consciousness that I was lost never left me.

in 1996 I was reading a book, “the final battle” by Hal Lindsey and clearly experienced a voice saying to me, “this is the last time!”. I immediately knew that God was speaking to me but soon afterwards fell back to my former ways yet the experience haunted me. driven by a need to silence this inner voice I started seriously studying the meaning of life and began a quest to disprove the bible and Christianity. I read Stephen Hawking and other scientist but found they had little to nothing to offer. their postulations were absurd and empty. Egyptology and Hinduism was obviously such rubbish that I found it incredulous that people actually believed in those things. then I found the Apocrypha and my curiosity as to why they were excluded from the canon of scripture won me over to study them. these quaint writings intrigued me until I read the book of Nicodemus, about the trial of Jesus and I was deeply moved by the unfairness and lack of jurisprudence throughout this ordeal. as an expert state witness myself, I could appreciate the corruption of the Sanhedrin in framing Jesus and it actually caused me to weep for the first time in many years. I started reading the bible again and on 1 September 1998 my wife and I had a powerful encounter with the Lord Jesus in our home and we were born again.

A few weeks later a friend of mine gave me a VHS cassette and asked me to “see” what I could make of it. it was by one James Jacob Prasch and it turned our lives upside down and challenged us to pursue truth and not follow men. this I have done and later I met Jacob in person and became his friend and co-worker in the kingdom.

I am honoured to serve the Lord Jesus and to be entrusted with the Moriel South Africa administration.

morielmikeben@gmail.com

Moriel S.A.

P.O.Box 15071

PORT ELIZABETH

SOUTH AFRICA

6011

Important Notice regarding David Nathan – Aug 2018

Sun, 12 Aug 2018 06:46:26 GMT

Blessings & Thank you for your questions regarding David Nathan whom we all at Moriel like and love and whose separation from Moriel we frankly regret.

We cannot however speak for David personally, and you will need to address any doctrinal questions to him and to ‘Bread of Life’ ministries. Attached below are the teaching materials by David Nathan that have been at issue. While we are agreement with some of it, certain aspects are incompatible with Moriel’s understanding of scripture, statement of faith, and charter.

It is better if we decline further comment and allow David to speak for himself should you see fit to contact him with reference to his own theological positions. However, by way of clarification our positions in terms of doctrinal theology are incongruous with certain of David’s positions as published in his Foundation Principles material attached below.

Without hostility or personal attack, we cannot endorse a teaching that urges believers to stand on a personal word from The Lord which he, like many others, defines as a Rhema (although Greek scholars dispute these definitions) in the same way they would stand on scripture, defined as Logos. Neither can we, (on the basis of Exodus chapter 30 and the absence of exegetical warrant in the New Testament) sanction David’s understanding of “laying on of hands”, although we do agree with the practice itself as mentioned in the Epistle to Timothy, and we do hold to Spirit Baptism as it is explained on the Moriel recorded teaching on ‘Baptism’.

Another problematic issue has been David’s view of atonement for sin in the Millennial reign of Christ being by Levitical sacrifice (which will be practiced at that time as a typological ‘pedeon‘ to teach the Gospel to those born during that period), instead of by the blood of Christ. We expected David to retract this statement, which he had agree to do, (in accordance with the Epistle to The Hebrews that animal sacrifices can never atone for sin), but the retraction has not been forthcoming. David may and undoubtedly will respond to these matters for himself, however Moriel is simply going by what David published and recorded – that multiple believers on Facebook etc. have as a result, wrongly interpreted to be the doctrinal beliefs of Moriel. This compelled Moriel to clarify that such is not the case.

Again, we all stand united in our personal fondness of David and we freely acknowledge that many have been blessed by other aspects of his teaching ministry with which we are in agreement. We additionally once more thank David his administration work for Moriel in South Africa. It is Moriel hope that he will retract these doctrines which we only hold as erroneous.

Sincerely in Jesus,

Moriel Board

Update (Sept 5th, 2018). David responded to us. Jacob Prasch has responded back – please see here

Mission update – Philippines June 2018

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 06:56:21 GMT

Dear Bro. Jacob and Bro. David,

Grace and peace be multiply unto you from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Another activity for some batch of our children, we took them to a Christian fellowship, venue at Fiesta Community Homes, Subic Zambales. We let the children swim on swimming pool to refresh them from summer heat, eat lunch together as like at a picnic and hearing God’s word delivered by Pastor Edwin. A Young Peoples Fellowship hosted by the church at San Felipe Zambales. Some of our young children attended on the fellowship and participated on the program activities.

Moriel Ministries brought again a blessings for the children through Moriel Give a Gifts school supplies and school uniforms. The parents were thankful and the children were happy and ready excited to go to school on June 4. The gifts encourages the children not only in secular school but also in Sunday School.

The children are familiar on Moriel Give a Gifts because they received it on a regular basis, like this coming rainy season they are expecting Moriel gifts- umbrellas and raincoats. We’re teaching the children that all the blessings we received belongs to God, to Jesus Christ our Lord and from your abundant heart the blessings flows and we be always thankful deep in heart. Thank you very much for all the blessings, may God continue to bless you.

Please let we know the update of our concern on the residential lot.

Thank you.

Sincerely,in Christ

Ptr. Paul

DISGRACED REVEREND STEPHEN SIZER, WHO CLAIMED ISRAELIS WERE BEHIND 9/11, ANNOUNCED AS SPEAKER AT PRO-HIZBALLAH PARADE IN LONDON

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 06:54:34 GMT

from the Campaign Against Antisemitism website:

Disgraced conspiracy theorist Rev. Dr Stephen Sizer, who claimed that an Israeli conspiracy was behind 9/11, has been announced as a speaker at the annual pro-Hizballah “Al Quds Day” parade through central London on 10th June.

In February 2015, the notorious Rev. Dr Sizer was ordered by the Church of England to stop using social media after posting the conspiracy myth that Israel planned 9/11. While the Church said the material Rev. Dr Sizer posted was “clearly antisemitic”, the Daily Mail revealed that Jeremy Corbyn wrote to the Church defending Revd Dr Sizer, saying that he was being victimised because he “dared to speak out against Zionism.”

Mick Napier, the Secretary of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPCC), is another controversial figure announced as a speaker at the parade. Last year, Mr Napier was found guilty of aggressive behavior at a protest outside an Israeli-owned cosmetics store in Glasgow during the 2014 Gaza war. The SPCC has previously been exposed over many of its supporters’ extremely antisemitic views.

The “Al Quds Day” march is nothing more than a celebration of genocidal antisemitic terrorist group Hizballah. It is organised by registered charities, principally the self-annointed Islamic Human Rights Commission, which the Charity Commission has yet to open a statutory inquiry into despite repeated complaints by Campaign Against Antisemitism.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has also launched a private prosecution against the leader of the march last year, Nazim Hussain Ali, after the Crown Prosecution Service declined to prosecute him.

In a joint open letter earlier this month to the new Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, the Chairman of Campaign Against Antisemitism, Gideon Falter, and the founder of anti-Muslim hatred watchdog Faith Matters, Fiyaz Mughal OBE, called on Mr Javid to stop the march and proscribe Hizballah in its entirety.

The joint letter says that the march “makes a mockery of counter-extremism initiatives” and has already provided motivation for a terrorist attack in Britain. The letter concludes: “Please help us to thwart those who seek to portray all Muslims as terrorist sympathisers and those who would walk our streets carrying the flag of an organisation whose sworn mission is the genocide of Jews. Through your Great Office of State, your signature, and yours alone, can stop this.”

Over 10,000 people from 646 of the UK’s 650 Parliamentary constituencies have now signed a Parliamentart Petition calling for Hizballah to be fully proscribed. The Parliamentary Petition, started by Campaign Against Antisemitism, rapidly gained 10,000 signatures after a number of days as the most popular petition on Parliament’s website.

Now, as one of his first acts as Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, will be required to formally and publicly respond to the Parliamentary Petition, as the Government is required to respond to any Parliamentary Petition gaining more than 10,000 signatures. If the number of signatures on the Parliamentary Petition now climbs to 100,000, a debate in the House of Commons will be triggered. The petition can be signed at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/219020.

The parade will be closely monitored by a substantial evidence gathering team from our Demonstration and Event Monitoring Unit and then analysed by our Crime Unit and Regulatory Enforcement Unit. It is our intention to take legal action if possible.

The announcement of such speakers at Rev. Dr Sizer show precisely what the “Al Quds Day” parade is all about. Hizballah should be fully proscribed so that it cannot take place as a brazen show of support for Hizballah.

Gideon Falter, Chairman of Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “10,000 decent people from every part of the UK, from Orkey to St Ives, have stood together to say that enough is enough. We want these pro-terrorist parades off our streets. They make a mockery of counter-extremism efforts, are a rallying point for supporters of Islamist terrorism and fuel the far-right, already resulting in a terrorist attack which has killed one British Muslim and injured twelve others. Under Parliamentary rules, the Home Secretary is now required to respond to the petition, and as a decent man who has long stood firm against Islamist extremism, we ask him to respond by fully proscribing Hizballah under the Terrorism Act and thereby closing the legal loophole which allows these revolting and dangerous pro-Hizballah parades to take place.”

Marco Quintanna — Senior Trustee, Moriel USA. May 2018

Wed, 16 May 2018 06:57:23 GMT

Moriel & Jacob Prasch welcome pastor Marco Quintanna as Senior Trustee of Moriel USA.

Marco has been a pastor of a Moriel affiliated church in Devore, California for some time and an Advisory Counsel Member. Marco will be overseeing both the USA and Moriel’s Spanish language ministry. Marco’s tenure commenced formally May 1st, 2018. This has been a major step in faith for Pastor Marco & his family, for Devore Church, and for Moriel financially as Marco has left his secular position in logistics management to launch into full time ministry due to the growth and demands of time.

PRAYER REQUEST May 10, 2018 – REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

Thu, 10 May 2018 06:59:09 GMT

Moriel & Jacob Prasch request prayer for the referendum to alter the Irish 8th Amendment to legalise the non-therapeutic abortion of unborn babies to be rejected.

The moral landslide in Ireland in recent years has reached once unbelievable levels with an openly homosexual activist Prime Minister , Ireland being the first EU nation to legalise same-sex marriage, and now a drive to use non-therapeutic abortion as a form of birth control. The widespread pedophilia and child abuse perpetrated by Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland and cover up conspiracies protecting child molesting and abusing priests and nuns by the church hierarchy at the expense of not protecting Ireland’s children has

left Ireland with no moral standards or voice that anyone can trust or respect. The true Body of Christ is still very small in Ireland as a percentage of the population with doctrinal error often imported into Ireland from apostate nominal Evangelical churches & denominations in the UK & USA. Satan has capitaised on this moral vacuum with an avalanche of new laws courtesy of godless politicians as corrupt and hypocritical as the Roman Catholic clergy. Cults, New Age, and Islam are all growing in Ireland yet there is a spiritual hunger among many of Ireland’s young people disillusioned with both organised religion (Catholic & Protestant alike) and government. The often struggling scriptural fellowships of Ireland need our prayer as do those who preach the true Jesus and The Gospel of salvation. Abortion on demand would once have been nearly unthinkable in Ireland. Now suich abortion is on the verge of becoming the next nail in Ireland’s spiritual coffin. We earnestly urge prayer that The Almighty would stop this bid to exterminate the unborn in Ireland and that He would raise His Hand against the promulgators of this blood-fest slaughter of the most innocent of Ireland’s innocent.

Al Dager – now with Jesus: May 2nd 2018

Wed, 02 May 2018 07:02:23 GMT

It is with a predictable combination of sorrow and joy that we learned that our friend & brother Al Dager has gone to be with The Lord.

He with his beloved wife lived in the American state of Washington in the Pacific North West. Al has battled heart disease for some time.

Al was a solid and much respected voice for discernment and strong scriptural doctrine in the present age of intense satanic attack on the truths of God’s Word.

The ministry he directed ‘Media Spotlight’ combined research with publishing and his book ‘Vengeance is Ours’ is a quintessential response to the theological errors of Dominion Theology, Latter Rain heresy, and over realized eschatology.

Al also was the Moriel USA & Canada book printer and a part of our team and spiritual family. He is now with Jesus in glory.

We shall none-the-less miss him greatly until we see him in glory. Moriel & Jacob Prasch requests prayer for his dear wife and that The Lord will raise up others to follow his foot steps.

Al completed his role in the work of the Watchmen as a voice of truth in an age of apostate deception. Yet the work itself goes on until the night comes when no man can work when it becomes darkest before the dawn and Christ returns – Al with him.

CHUCK MISSLER – RIP May 1st 2018

Tue, 01 May 2018 07:05:11 GMT

Moriel & Jacob Prasch commemorate the life & ministry of our friend Chuck Missler, with whom Jacob Prasch shared platforms at multiple conference events in the USA & UK.

Chuck has rejoined his wife Nancy in the presence of The Lord.

Chuck endorsed Jacob’s assertion that the New Testament authors writing under the inspiration of The Holy Spirit engaged in the Midrashic hermeneutics of the First Century Judaism of the day in their handling of scripture. It was Chuck who catalogued the medical statistics supporting the teaching of Romans chapter 1 that homosexuality reduces longevity and Chuck Missler also pioneered apologetic argumentation drawing upon his technical secular background of the implausibility of Darwinism in light of the determinations of modern Information Science. Chuck also stood by the scripturally based conviction that Supercessionism (Replacement Theology) was not scriptural and he strongly affirmed the prophetic purposes of God for Israel & The Jews and the conviction that contemporary Middle Eastern event portend the Return of Jesus. Although we disagreed with Chuck’s book ‘Kingdom, Power, & Glory’ and differed with him on the timing of the rapture, we liked Chuck very much personally and the important contributions he made to the work of Jesus in the era in which he lived are beyond dispute. We aslso remain grateful for the sanction he lent to the ministry of Jacob Prasch and Moriel.

As is not uncommon, Chuck did not remain with us much longer after his beloved wife Nancy went to be with The Lord and in his last few years battled the effects of struggles with poor health in New Zealand where he lived. We pray The Lord will give guidance to Ron Matsen and Chuck’s team as they seek to continue the ministry that Chuck bequeathed. The volumes of Chuck’s purley scriptural commentary and teaching we would rate as very good and some excellent, his elaboration on the Maji and on the prophetic & historical significance on the Parthnians cum ancient Persians being just a few cases in point. We shall miss Chuck as a friend & brother until he returns with Jesus.

Important Notice regarding Moriel Conferences

Sun, 04 Mar 2018 07:10:26 GMT

Please note the change of procedures for Moriel Conferences in the U.K.

Bookings for the Moriel Hayes Conference will only be taken from April through to October.

Bookings for Moriel Northern Conference will only be taken from December to February.

This is so bookings do not overlap and gives us time to Visit Israel in our Ministry Work with Lechlcha.

All bookings for both Conferences are now via Peter & Beryl Hunter. lifeline.wigan2@btinternet.com Mobile- 07894862590

The Legacy of Billy Graham

Sun, 25 Feb 2018 07:13:24 GMT

He was flawed as we all are. Like well-meaning preachers who compromise by buying airtime on TBN or any other ‘Christian’ network that uses shysters to raise their seed money, I called them out publicly, although I doubt they were listening.

Like so many other ecumenically minded ministers and Christian music artists, Graham entertained wolves to open the door to their goats and sheep.

I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a former colleague my husband worked with on a Christian publication. Ed Plowman was an editor at Christianity Today before becoming Billy’s press agent. Ed traveled around the world with him in the 1960s. He told us that one day Billy looked very troubled and told Ed the dilemma he faced. He said he knew the Roman Catholic Church had so many false teachings and didn’t want to associate with them, but if he didn’t offer them the right hand of fellowship, he would be barred from holding crusades in Catholic countries. The only way he could live with it would be the hope that if Catholics heard the true Gospel of Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit would eventually lead the new believer out.

Well, that’s how it started, but it didn’t take long before his organization was pressured into returning those coming down for the altar calls back to Catholic officials who would be there alongside other churches to take it from there. Keep in mind that while his crusades were getting results in those Catholic countries, Vatican II was in session, in which the Catholic Church was hard at work to make themselves more palatable to their Protestant comrades.

Unfortunately, that compromise led the way for many who followed and the end result was the popularization of the ecumenical movement and true doctrine taking a back seat for the sake of expediency.

Billy Graham’s public relations decisions are the norm for all the stadium crusades for evangelists like Greg Laurie and false revivalists like Lou Engle and all the rest.

I do know one thing: Thanks to the work of Billy Graham, millions of people heard the Gospel, got born-again, and indeed left the Catholic Church as a result. Since the Billy Graham crusades began and Vatican II’s ecumenical changes took place, Rome has lost the allegiance of around 800,000,000* souls, even though they are still counted in the rolls of one billion since ‘once a Catholic, always a Catholic’ is the policy of Rome.

So in spite of our 20-20 hindsight in believing Billy Graham made the wrong call for the purity of the Church of Jesus Christ, he still deserves the honor of going down in history as the greatest evangelist of all time. That cannot be taken from him. Rest in eternal peace, Billy!!

Posted by kind permission of ‘The Sentinel’ & the authoress. http://christiansentinel.com/ 2018/02/22/legacy-billy-graham/

You can make a difference (if you live in the UK)!

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 07:16:42 GMT

The British government has launched a Survey on what should be taught in sex education in schools and EVERYONE (including children) can take part, but as usual it doesn’t seem to have been widely broadcast.

At first glance, the wording seems to indicate that only those who are childrens’ leaders can take part, but this is not so, and it is an opportunity for all of us as believers to have our voice heard. Also it is an independant survey & we don’t have to say to which ‘organisation’ we belong.

The Survey Form is accessible on the following website:

https://consult.education.gov.uk/life-skills/pshe-rse-call-for-evidence/consultation/intro/

The Consultation was only announced on 31 December, and we just have until 12TH FEBRUARY to respond.

Jacob Prasch Recommends … Jan 2018

Fri, 19 Jan 2018 07:21:35 GMT

Jacob Prasch Recommends this new video on Phil Johnson & Todd Friel

Moriel Thailand – Dec 2017 UPDATE!

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 23:58:57 GMT

Dear believers in grace,

This month has felt like two months squeezed into one! We’ve been busy, but in a good way.

At the beginning of this month, David Lister came to visit us. He came with me to the Women’s Prison and gave his testimony. The women listened and it seemed like some of them were really touched by the message. Then, my parents also came to visit us, and are still here. We did not plan the timing this way, but just as we had baptisms last year when my parents came to visit, we also had baptisms this year…

Mana and Daeng’s Baptism

Mana and Daeng have been nominal believers for several years now, but just in the last year have really gotten serious about their walk with the Lord. Khae has been teaching her and her daughter twice a week, and I’ve been teaching Mana and another man twice a week. It is a joy to see them walking with the Lord and leading their children to know the Lord also.

Pat’s Decision and Baptism

Pat is the young lady who recently had a baby. As a young mother who was not planning to become a mother, she has really taken good responsibility for her daughter and not just left her at the government orphanage or worse. With this new responsibility she also seems to be thinking more clearly about her life and about her relationship with God. Pat has been coming to learn the Bible with us for several years now, but for a while was tempted away by the video game shop and preferring her cell phone to coming and studying the Bible and English. Khae has also started going to her house to teach her twice a week. Last month Khae asked her directly what she believes. Her answer was non-committal. But, then a few days later she saw a ghost and then prayed to Jesus for protection and felt peace. After that time she became much more interested in the Bible and even asked to be baptized. That was another blessed day. Praise be to God for this!

Woman on the Beast

While here, David also asked me about an idol that is seen some places here. I put together a short article about that, attached here.

May God lead each of you and bless you in the New Year for His glory.

Thanks be to God for His love and reconciliation through Jesus!

Peace in Christ,

Scott, Khae, and Micahberekiah.

Im Keller Helps the New Yorker Siphon Off Support From Republicans

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 00:19:19 GMT

We are including this article from Dr. Robert Gagnon because we are gravely concerned that the Intelligentsia leaders of New Calvinism are leading the Reformed World into leftist progressivism, and in some cases, Marxism. From Keller to Piper to The Gospel Coalition to Russell Moore, there is a grave cause for concern that these Calvinists are opening up the door to the political, cultural and theological left.

http://pulpitandpen.org/2017/12/23/tim-keller-helps-the-new-yorker-siphon-off-support-from-republicans/

RC SPROUL

Sun, 17 Dec 2017 00:30:15 GMT

Reformed theologian RC Sproul has given up the ghost after a long battle with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease at the age of 78.

RC Sproul was a genuine Calvinist in the Covenant theology sense that John Calvin was, in effect equating Baptism with circumcision and sprinkling infants etc. He was not a mere adherent to the ‘TULIP’ of The Remonstrance of Dort. He was additionally a staunch cessationist. These, of course, are doctrinal positions we at Moriel do not share, but still his dogma was by no means all erroneous and RC Sproul could indeed be a voice for scriptural orthodoxy in an age of compromise and apostasy.

While we did not hold a very positive view of RC Sproul doctrinally or theologically overall, he was to his credit and by God’s grace not ecumenical and we appreciated his strong positions on intelligent design, pro-life opposition to non-therapeutic abortion, and above all we must pay tribute to his firm position on the inerrancy of scripture as God’s infallible and inspired Word in opposition to the satanically inspired quagmire of higher critical theological liberalism that he very correctly and often nobly challenged.

We must not be hypocritical in eulogizing him; RC Sproul admittedly was not a great champion of truth to us or anything like it – his pneumatology was flawed and infant baptism is fundamentally unscriptural. Yet Dr Sproul certainly was not devoid of his areas of personal virtue. In addition to his negative points of doctrine theologically, as a conservative Evangelical scholar he most definitely also exhibited better points in the sphere of apologetics in particularly We do believe him to have been a brother in Christ, (how be it one with whom we often disagreed as well as at other times found ourselves agreeing with). Our prayers are with his family at this time.

When we meet Jesus face to face, Jesus will surely straighten out all of our imperfect doctrines.

Harvey Weinstein IS the Face of Hollywood: A Cesspool Of Sin

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 00:31:35 GMT

Harvey Weinstein IS the Face of Hollywood: A Cesspool Of Sin

We should expect such treachery from politicians, but nor from Jewish Mission Organizations

Thu, 10 Aug 2017 00:34:56 GMT

We Should Expect Such Treachery From Politicians, But Not From Jewish Mission Organizations

By James Jacob Prasch

I personally was not surprised when this anti Zionist left wing politician supported Stephen Sizer. I fervently remain utterly disgusted however that Richard Harvey, Susan Perlman, and Jews For Jesus did their back slapping photo op visits to Sizer’s pulpit as his Messianic Jewish stooges so he could tell the church “see – I am not so bad despite my links to Christian persecuting & Jew murdering Islamic terrorists, holocaust deniers, anti Semitic conspiracy theorists re. 9/11 etc. because ‘Jews For Jesus’ likes me”.

I hope Sizer at least paid his shameless patsy Jews For Jesus stooges a generous honorarium for their PR services when they ignored the official position they once published by Moishe Rosen in their newsletter calling ‘anti Zionism the mere current expression of anti Semitism’ and pandered to Stephen Sizer to the public assassination of their testimony for Yeshua to the Jewish community. Politicians are, by definition, hypocrites. So are Richard Harvey, Susan Perlman, and Jews For Jesus. The Jewish community, the rabbinic establishment, and Jewish community media outlets all propagate the idea that Jewish believers in Jesus as Messiah have joined the ranks of historical “Christian” Jew hatred and anti Semitism as a tactic to discourage Jewish consideration of the claims of Jesus. By virtue of their sickening actions Jews for Jesus are out to prove them right

‘Jews for Jesus’ are no longer “for Jesus”. Jews for Jesus are for themselves. They are plainly and primarily about theocratic politics and fundraising – not about the cause of the Gospel to lost Jewish souls because they have categorically proven themselves to be quite willing to sacrifice their testimony to the Jewish people for the sake of such church politics and fund raising. I hope the theocratic socializing and honorariums are worth it. Having assassinated their own witness for Yeshua to the Jewish community they are no longer witnesses to the Jews but demonstrable, and some would say, paid suckers for Stephen Sizer.

Citing a recent article concerning the correspondence to a true Christian Zionist who both stands with Israel and with the cause of Israel’s salvation; a brother of the kind castigated by Sizer and Jeremy Corbyn. Cast your minds back a few years, and you’ll remember that the Church of England decided to investigate Stephen Sizer, after he had:

Commended a call for the Jews to “ get the Hell out of Palestine “
Suggested that the Jews were behind 9/11
Cited Holocaust denier Dale Crowley
Cited Holocaust denier Michael Hoffman
Cited 9/11 “truther” Michael Collins defending Holocaust denier Dale Crowley
Travelled to Iran as a guest of the Iranian regime, having been invited by the same man who previously invited Robert Faurisson on an expenses-paid tour
Spoke at an IHRC conference aiming towards “ a new liberation theology on Palestine ” – alongside Rima Fakhry of Hezbollah and terror advocate Achmad Cassiem
Shared a platform with Holocaust denier Fred Tobin
Supported the IHH flotilla
Proposed a boycott of Greece after they blocked another Gaza flotilla
Hosted a speaker at his church who thinks suicide bombers are martyrs
Agreed that Hamas had every right to “hit back” against the West
Linked to antisemitic website The Ugly Truth
Joined with with Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, commander of Hezbollah’s armed forces in Southern Lebanon
Joined with with the Blood Libel Sheikh, Raed Salah, whom Jeremy Corbyn brought into Parliament
Joined with the granddaughter of Ayatollah Khomeini, Zahra Mostafavi
Toured Malaysia speaking about Palestine , following an invite from a Holocaust denier
Posted a link to Veterans Today, which dismisses the Holocaust as an “Israeli psy-ops operation”, denies the gas chambers, defends Hitler, sneers at “the Jewish crooks on Wall Street”, publishes pieces by Gilad Atzmon, and says of the Jews, “they should wholly be burnt in ovens”.
Posted a blog link to the Palestine Telegraph, which supported the writings of ex-KKK leader David Duke.

Here was Corbyn’s spirited defense of Stephen Sizer, in a letter to Sizer’s bishop back in 2012

Dear Right Reverend Christopher Hill

I am sorry to hear that problems have arisen, for Reverend Stephen Sizer, at least in part due to a technical oversight in terms of computer links, though I understand that the problem has now been rectified. I hope it was no more complicated than that.

Reverend Stephen Sizer seems to have come under attack by certain individuals intent on discrediting the excellent work that Stephen does in highlighting the injustices of the Palestinian Israeli situation, in particular by his very thorough analysis of “Christian Zionism”. Might I suggest that such criticism is part of a wider pattern of demonising those who dare to stand up and speak out against Zionism, a philosophy that precludes the existence of the state of Palestine?

Your own expertise, wisdom and experience will, I am sure, allow you to appreciate just how much distance exists between anti Semitism, anti Zionism, and anti Israeli government actions for that matter. Overzealous critics find it convenient to conflate them all. Active and well informed individuals such as Reverend Stephen Sizer, withstand a considerable amount of inappropriate criticism. Indeed many MPs and Peers are also attacked.

The internet is a complicated piece of technology and with the best will in the world, imperfect links are made and one would have to spend 8 hours a day “surfing” the net just to be 100% certain one’s views to not become contaminated in any way at all. Even then, connections can inadvertently be made.

I do hope you’ll take the above into consideration when meeting with Reverend Stephen Sizer today, for I do admire the excellent work that he does and personally, I would give no credence at all to any claims that he is anti-Semitic.

With kind regards

Jeremy Corbyn MP

Islington North

Draw your own conclusions.

UNESCO is Throwing the Bible in the Garbage!

Mon, 10 Jul 2017 00:43:09 GMT

with thanks to the Hebron Fund

UNESCO IS THROWING THE BIBLE IN THE GARBAGE!

Tell UNESCO To Keep Their Hands off of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Abraham was a Jew, not a Palestinian!

This Petition will be sent to UNESCO.

Let Your Voice Be Heard!

Sign the petition

Dear Friends,

I am writing to you as I am sure that you join me in feeling shock and heartbreak at UNESCO’s latest ploy which throws the Bible and history into the garbage by denying the Jewish connection to our beloved city of Hebron.

UNESCO’s vote, ironically in Poland, has declared the Tomb of the Biblical Patiarchs in Hebron a Palestinian Heritage Site. This effectively destroys the Jewish connection to this holy city where our forefathers and mothers are buried and where King David first established his capital.

If you are as outraged as I am, let your voice be heard and sign our petition to keep UNESCOâs hands off of Jewish Hebron.

Hebronâs Jewish history is indisputable. From Abraham’s purchase of the Machpela Cave (Genesis 23), there has been 3,800 continuous years of Jewish presence in Hebron. The Jewish people and their history must not be removed.

UNESCO must hear loud and clear that the Palestinianâs are creating a fake history ploy against Israel. If you agree, sign the petition to keep Hebron a Jewish city.

Shalom,

Rabbi Dan Rosenstein

Executive Director of the Hebron Fund

PS – After signing the petition, please forward it to friends who are concerned about the future of Hebron!

OBITUARY June 1st, 2017 Antony Simon

Thu, 01 Jun 2017 00:44:39 GMT

It is with a sincere sense of grief that Moriel & Jacob Prasch learned that Antony Simon (from Manchester, a UK-born Jewish/Israeli evangelist) was killed in an automobile accident in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq while there on an evangelistic outreach.

Tony was led to Yeshua by Jacob Prasch in Israel on Christmas Day (around Hanukkah) in 1982 and emerged as a radical evangelist in The Middle East to both Jew and non-Jew alike. His zeal to see lost souls come to salvation in Jesus was without exaggeration nothing short of phenomenal.

We ask for prayers for his Scottish born wife Donna and for their children. Antony is with Yeshua. We will see him again in glory and in the Millennial reign of Christ. In the meanwhile however, The Body of Christ has insurmountably lost an evangelist whose enthusiastic drive to see souls saved is without exaggeration nearly unparalleled. We do not state this hyperbolically. He was indeed unique.

A REVIEW OF RANDY WHITE’S ARTICLE DELEGITIMIZING DISCERNMENT MINISTRIES

Sun, 28 May 2017 00:46:11 GMT

Christian Greetings.

As requested I have carefully read Randy White’s article with its summary dismissal of all Discernment ministries.

* As with most deceptive agendas , the opening paragraphs of his article reveal his motive:

He is attempting to misrepresent his heretical view as a non essential (Gnat instead of a Camel) ,

when in fact it is a fundamental distortion of the scriptural Gospel as per Galatians chapter 1: 6-9.

The New Testament unambiguously teaches that believers are indeed already under the

New Covenant (eg.2 Corinthians 3:6, Hebrews 7:22) and the denial of this is not the biblical Gospel.

I & our ministry have always taught that The New Covenant was made with Israel (Jeremiah 31:31, Romans 9:4), to state that Christians are not under this New Covenant (be they natural branches or grafted in) is absolutely false and directly contrary to scripture.

This moreover, rides on the back of his extreme Neo-Bullingerist hyper dispensational hermeneutic (resembling the hermeneutics of ancient Marcionism, though not its christology). So extreme is his hermeneutic that he teaches that the 7 Churches in Revelation chaats. 2 & 3 are not churches but future Jewish synagogues during the final 7 lunar years of history. We remained sickened by the on going promotion of the heretical ministry if Randy White

by Jan Markel who at the time of this web posting has continued to feature Randy White on her radio broadcast website knowing it to be heretical.

* The first ‘Discernment Ministry’ in the modern sense was the original CRI of Dr. Martin. It was an evangelistic ministry to people in cults and an apologetics ministry equipping Christians to evangelize cults.

While it is very true the first defense against error is a knowledge of the truth; thus a need for ‘Teaching Ministry’ , Galatians, 1 Corinthians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, , Jude etc. as well as most if Israel’s prophets were inspired by God primarily to refute and correct error. Randy White ignores this as it does not suit his agenda.

In a qualified yet quite scriptural ‘Watchman’ sense , Discernment ministries can be understood to be prophetic ministries functioning as prophetic voices did.

I point these things out bearing in mind that Moriel is primarily a church based Missions organization that is evangelistic, church planting, teaching, caring for the poor and persecuted church etc. and is not in any primary sense a Discernment Ministry, even though when appropriate we will speak on on discernment issues.

While some of his criticisms of some Discernment Ministries indeed have merit as we and others have often stated ourselves, his article tells what is at best a half truth.

There are indeed purely reactionary blogs etc. misrepresenting themselves as :Discernment Ministries’, and the only way to know what they are for is by determining what they are against. Many of these are caught up in conspiracy theory speculation, Ruckmanism, and all manner of convoluted

pseudo theology. This however is not a fair or comprehensive perception of all Discernment ministries. There are also church based and church sponsored Discernment ministries (eg. Bill Randles, Sandy Simpson) that are entirely scriptural.

Randy White’s generalizations constitute an elongated litany of half truths designed once again to defend the unscriptural nature of his own erroneous dogma and his agenda to promote it.

In Jesus,

Jacob Prasch

Moriel

Prayer for Pastor Jack Hibbs

Thu, 04 May 2017 00:47:21 GMT

Moriel & Jacob Prasch request prayer for Pastor Jack Hibbs in Chino Hills, California. Jack has a sizable and growing church with a radio ministry. Unfortunately however his health has currently come under a debilitating attack. As yet undiagnosed, Jack’s symptoms include chronic insomnia that has reached the point of interrupting his physical capacity to function. Specialist medical examinations are continuing. Whatever the physiological cause, we do sense that the enemy has a hand in this and as is always the case in these things, God has a purpose in allowing it at least to a degree, working all things together for the better to those who love Him as Jack does , and are called according to His purpose.

Please pray that God grants Jack a recovery and encourages Jack and his wife Lisa while giving guidance and wisdom to his physicians. Please also pray for Jack’s church and ministry and his assistants who are keeping it operational during this battle with frail health.

German judges sanction Jew hatred

Wed, 15 Mar 2017 00:49:04 GMT

This from the Israeli newspaper, The Times of Israel

http://www.timesofisrael.com/how-german-courts-ok-violent-jew-hatred

Ode to Martin Luther

Mon, 13 Mar 2017 00:50:22 GMT

Your scholarly Ninety-five theses challenged a lost papal church.

You wielded the sword and divided the marrow from the bone exposing that no godly treasures could be sold.

Disputation on selling indulgences, inner spiritual repentance, true sorrow over sin not mere external sacramental confession. Repent and believe.

You revealed anew salvation to be received as a free gift of God’s grace through faith alone in Christ Jesus alone not by works.

Heavenly treasures sprang forth, a fountain of forgiveness. Paid in full. Sacrificial love. Victory over sin and death. New nature birthing into a new life yielding spiritual fruits. A changed heart.

Bible final authority. Translated for the common man. Read. The truth shall set you free indeed.

What is this? No! Heretic! Excommunicate him, outlaw him, and issue a Papal Bull to silence him. But the Diet of Worms could not stop him. Church ruptured and Europe fractured.

Your heart’s empathy towards the Jewry like the dew of only one morning.

You challenged absurd theologians who defend hatred for the Jews in ” Servitude of the Jews ”

In ” Jesus Christ was born a Jew ” you penned, “If I had been born a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner become a hog than a Christian”.

Leave them alone, I will bring them home…….

But what the Catholic church could not do; you could not convert them to Christianity either.

Understanding of love’s free will was transplanted by a dogmatic darkness that seeped into your heart. God protect me.

Were you primed by a kosher meal? Nevertheless, your now volcanic heart spewed and vomited an historic non-precedent anti-Semitism violation. Torrential.

Three years before you died, you published ” The Jews and Their Lies “. Men of faiths agreeing and other disagreeing.

Biblical proportion of abuse of biblical text to conjure anti-Semitic racism, apartheid, incendiary and scatological wording with future genocidal ordering.

Your 7 point plan was soon adopted throughout your land and beyond.

Scare mongering, burning, hate stirring and blood shedding.

Your contempt for the Jacob’s seed and bloodline set Persian Haman in your hero’s eye.

Haman plotted that the Jews be destroyed for pieces of silver.

But for a time such as this, Haman’s gallows tree served him unwell as for his 10 sons.

The tree’s Prophetic pattern.

Purim’s celebrated as a reminder of The Hand that saves.

Luther, in ” The War against the Jews “, your roots nourished Adolf Hitler obsession.

Germination of your 7 plan blueprint for the 4 point final solution

Kristallinacht birthday present

Did you turn in your grave?

Those generational planted seeds sprung from death to life to reap destruction

Compliant German Christian sickles swung in unison.

Sold the lie, they justified in part, to avenge deicide of “purely Aryan” Christ Jesus.

Was Suffering Messiah king robbed blind again?

Harvesting the bony flesh of the defenceless to smoke, to dust….

Mr Woods took no silver for the 10 for the gallows tree at the Nuremberg Trial – Julius Streicher is last and snapped “Purim-Fest 1946”

Nobody and nothing can ever undo the forever Covenanted Chosen of God.

The hope Messiah King

By Rosie Coyne, Purim 2017.

STOP PRESS – AMAZING NEWS FOR ALL LOVERS OF TRUTH

Sun, 12 Mar 2017 00:56:41 GMT

STEPHEN SIZER EFFECTIVELY FIRED BY C of E FIVE WEEKS PRIOR TO RETIREMENT FOR VIOLATING TERMS OF REMAINING IN MINISTRY AMIDST RENEWED ANTI- ISRAEL RANTS.

A statement by the Bishop of Guildford, Andrew Watson, re: Stephen Sizer

Date: 10 March 2017

A statement by the Bishop of Guildford, Andrew Watson.

“I have become aware that Dr Stephen Sizer has again contravened the agreement he made in February 2015 just five weeks before his planned retirement on Easter Sunday, 16 April 2017. Needless to say I am very disappointed by Dr Sizer’s actions.

“Dr Sizer admits that material shared on his Facebook page in the past two weeks has breached our agreement, and so I have required him to cease all preaching, teaching and leading of services with immediate effect. He will also desist from all use of social media until his retirement takes effect.

“To allow the parish of Virginia Water to say a proper goodbye, I have conceded that Dr Sizer leads ministry over the Easter weekend.”

STOP PRESS – AMAZING NEWS FOR ALL LOVERS OF TRUTH

Sun, 12 Mar 2017 00:54:23 GMT

STEPHEN SIZER EFFECTIVELY FIRED BY C of E FIVE WEEKS PRIOR TO RETIREMENT FOR VIOLATING TERMS OF REMAINING IN MINISTRY AMIDST RENEWED ANTI- ISRAEL RANTS.

A statement by the Bishop of Guildford, Andrew Watson, re: Stephen Sizer

Date: 10 March 2017

A statement by the Bishop of Guildford, Andrew Watson.

“To allow the parish of Virginia Water to say a proper goodbye, I have conceded that Dr Sizer leads ministry over the Easter weekend.”

Missions Report – Moriel Thailand Feb 2017

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 00:59:50 GMT

This month has been a good month to see my parents here in Thailand. We just sent them to the airport. Micah has been enjoying the extra attention and tomorrow will probably be crying for “Gampa” and “Gamma.”

Baptisms

This month also has been a good month to celebrate the baptisms of 4 of our students and the baptism of our gardener also. Here are some pictures attached of that. Please pray for them and their families. This is only the beginning of their walk with the Lord and fruitfulness for His kingdom.

At one of the baptisms I handed out some tracts to 4 young men before the baptism and asked them where they would go if they died. One of them answered plainly that he would go to hell. I asked him if he’s worried about that and he said yes and then shared the gospel with them. They looked like rough individuals. I don’t know what they have done before, but they did not think they would be going to heaven. May God touch their hearts to repent and commit their lives to Jesus.

Women’s Prison

My Dad and I had “Happy Birthday” sung to us (we have the same birthday) and received some gifts from our students and the staff in prison. Tomorrow they said we will have about 95 students! We are enjoying teaching there and sharing the gospel.

Juvenile Prison

Teaching at the juvenile prison has been a good opportunity for sowing seeds. Last week we had a good group of students and I shared with them about the prophecies of the Bible and how God used that to reveal Himself to people. We do not know the future, but we commit our lives to the One who does.

Thank you for your prayers and support.

Peace in Christ,

Scott, Khae, and Micahberekiah.

Scott Noble — our missionary in Thailand. Latest Report: Jan 2017

Mon, 02 Jan 2017 01:19:41 GMT

Dear believers in grace,

We wish you all a blessed New Year in the Saviour of the world!

Teaching at an Elementary School

The first week and a half of December we went to another province to help teach at a Christian school. Most of the parents and students are not Christians so it was a good opportunity to share the gospel. I taught English to 1st-5th graders. The 4th and 5th graders were pretty good, but it was challenging to teach the 1st-3rd graders. There are few foreigners in that province so the children enjoyed seeing a foreigner and I got to hand out many tracts and also share Bible lessons at the flag pole and at chapel one day. Micah got to join the nursery school for 3 days until he got some kind of a stomach bug. He enjoyed learning very much and according to Khae was the most enthusiastic student in the class.

Women’s Prison

We came back to Chiang Mai in time to have a Christmas worship service at the Women’s Prison. We’re still teaching them from the book of Revelation. The massage class there is also going well—still a big group of about 80 students.

Christmas Party

We had a Christmas party for our students and invited their parents also. I also invited my adult students. About 20 people came. We sang some Christmas songs and then Khae shared the gospel through the Christmas story and we gave everyone either a gospel of John in the Shan language or some Thai gospel books. Here are a couple of pictures from that.

John’s Signature Words

A couple months ago Khae read a book by a Thai Lutheran pastor who (following in Martin Luther’s footsteps) doubted that John wrote the book of Revelation or if it even should be in our Bible. I did a very interesting word study on this comparing the gospel of John, I-III John, and the book of Revelation. I think the results are beyond any coincidence. The book of Revelation not only has the “fingerprints” of John all over it, but the author also has such a rich knowledge of the Old Testament woven into the book (by divine inspiration)– it is unmistakably God breathed. I’m attaching a short paper on that here.

Peace in Christ, Scott, Khae, and Micahberekiah.

Sandra’s Prayer Request, Sep. 19th, 2016

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 01:23:19 GMT

Sandra asks for prayer for her and her husband and that God will lead her husband to Truth.

I didn’t know whether or not my request to you for prayer is acceptable protocol, but necessity brings me here.

I’ve been married for over 33 years. Dan was an atheist when I married him, I a pagan. I was converted to Christ within 18 months of marriage, and shortly after a Great War with Dan, he also embraced Christianity. Along the line my husband became indifferent to the things of God. Really too much to write concerning the in between. Only that he has been addicted to pornography for a very long time, and much has been lost because of it.

He has informed me that he ‘through much research’ has embraced preterism and replacement theology, and that we have been lied too. It’s funny, I have endured years of financial, emotional, physical neglect, and mistreatment,

But somehow I am having such a hard time dealing with this blatant heresy! I believe strongly in marriage, and have seen the goodness of God in my life in spite of all I’ve endured, and know that my place is here. Yet, this is harder for me climb through.

I need prayer. Not many saints out there who really pray any more. Sad, and difficult times when your supposed Hebrons are no where to find. I don’t know if you would, but I need grace to help me in my time of need. I am praying, and fasting.

Thank you for taking the time.

Sandra

Thailand Update August 2016

Wed, 31 Aug 2016 01:25:06 GMT

Jacob’s Trip

It was a blessing to see Jacob here last month. He preached a message on Sunday, which I thought was an excellent message. It’s uploaded to YouTube here… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZZs4B-1vdc

Women’s Prison

The following day we went to the Women’s Prison to hold a church service there. About 150 ladies were there. The praise and worship was really uninhibited, and there were lots of “Amens” during the messages also. It’s different from going to a typical Thai worship service outside, where they might have a lot of noise, but the atmosphere is different. Jacob preached there about the Last Days, and I translated. With time constraints it was a fairly short message, but really got them interested in the topic (which we hope to teach about more month by month), talking about “birth pangs,” which many of them could relate to, as this is a biblical metaphor used regarding the End Times.

One of the ladies in our weekly English class there showed a strong interest in the gospel. Please pray for her and others who may not outwardly show an interest, but who are thinking nonetheless.

Shan Camp

We went to a Shan work camp not far from our house and gave them a lamb to eat. Jallay preached in Shan about the Passover and how Jesus is the Lamb of God. After that we gave an invitation and about ten of the adults raised their hands to pray with us. In Thai/Burmese culture this may or may not mean they really were touched and want to get right with God. Sometimes people may raise their hands just to be friendly or because the message sounded good, but not necessarily that they will commit their lives fully to Jesus. We need to follow up with them.

Khae’s Testimony

Khae had a chance to share her testimony in English last month and she spent about 6 hours writing it out again. The way she wrote it this time I thought was really good. I’m attaching that here.

Also, here are some pictures of Micah with Jacob and also of our time at the prison. We went to a friend’s birthday party last month and I prayed for him. During the prayer Micah said “Amen” all throughout the prayer. I think Micah’s a pentecostal ?

Peace in Christ,

Scott, Khae, and Micahberekiah

James Parker, former ‘gay activst’, on ‘AFL Pride’ & health risks

Mon, 15 Aug 2016 01:34:51 GMT

Last Saturday, 13 August, the AFL held their first ‘Pride Game’ to promote acceptance of LGBTIQ issues and to oppose ‘homophobia’.

There were rainbow coloured numbers, rainbow socks and rainbow flags.

The following article, by James Parker, is insightful…

James describes how he visited Australia twenty years ago and watched football. He says, “I had not long left behind my own involvement at the heart of London’s gay community where I had witnessed a significantly higher than average percentage of men struggle with depression and addiction, with some both attempting and succeeding in committing suicide.”

James then goes on to discuss the AFL ‘Pride Game’ – as well as the health risks of homosexuality and other issues.

The article was printed in Sydney’s Catholic Weekly prior to the Pride Game.

FIRST – Who is James Parker?

James spoke in Sydney earlier this year, where he was subjected to protests.

That’s because James speaks against the endorsement of homosexuality. Twenty years ago, he was an active ‘gay activist’ and was living with a male partner. Then James became a Chistian. His partner went to church with James, and he was “deeply touched by the word of God”. Initially, they tried to live as a ‘gay Christian couple’ – but James found that didn’t work… James said, “I had to leave that relationship because the call from Jesus was a greater love.” Read articles here and here.

After counselling, which he says is ‘NOT conversion therapy’ but rather ‘standard psychological therapy’ (see here), James was able to form friendships with men and women, and eventually married a woman and became a father. James now lives in WA with his family.

Read James’ story…

The long and winding road: A one-time activist reflects on his journey out of the gay lifestyle (22/3/2016)

Now for James’ article on ‘AFL Pride . . .

AFL “PRIDE”

by James Parker

I first visited Australia twenty years ago. I had not long left behind my own involvement at the heart of London’s gay community where I had witnessed a significantly higher than average percentage of men struggle with depression and addiction, with some both attempting and succeeding in committing suicide.

A third of my three-month Aussie visa was spent glued to a television screen in Jannali in NSW watching Australian Football. I became mesmerised by each player’s speed, talent and swift decisive reactions, and by every team member’s phenomenal level of fitness. For me, Aussie Rules took gold on the podium of the sporting elite.

This coming weekend will see Round 21 of the AFL host the inaugural Pride Game between the Sydney Swans and St Kilda. It is being hailed as the first Pride Game for a professional sporting competition anywhere in the world.

St Kilda CEO Matt Finnis is quoted as saying that “the Saints were committed to this game because ‘pride’ is the opposite of ‘shame’”. He states that, “St Kilda firmly believes that communities can only thrive when all people belong”.

We can all agree that people need to belong, but history shows that pride is not the opposite of shame. The pathway through shame into belonging demands humility and raw honesty and not its nemesis, pride. Ask any addict or trauma victim who has truly moved through recovery.

Swans CEO, Andrew Ireland, has said that “the match will help raise awareness and champion change”. But what type of awareness is being raised? And what change exactly is being championed?

Nearly thirty years ago when in the gay lobby, I was in discussions with others how we might desensitize the public to view homosexuality with indifference, or better still to see such a lifestyle as something to be celebrated. Much of the discursive outcome is brandished in the book After The Ball by authors Kirk and Madsen, a marketing and a psychology graduate from Harvard.

Simply put, the strategy involved encouraging openly proud members of the LGBTQI community to obtain leadership roles in key sectors of society: the entertainment industry, the Media, education, politics, the military, and healthcare, especially psychology and psychiatry. We knew then that the most challenging bastion needing to fall would be the sports sector as this literally embodied male and female. Sport would be the final hurdle before the rainbow winning line.

The only major stumbling block that future leaders would need to quash would be public concerns that might rise about the health risks linked to homosexual practice – and the risks are frightening. It is for this reason we are taught that it is impolite to discuss what happens in, ahem, gay sex. So, let’s look at the risks.

Aside from numerous STIs and physical injuries, some of which are virtually unknown in the heterosexual population, there are high rates of psychiatric illnesses and of cancers. There exists a considerably higher rate of ‘chemsex’ and general drug abuse. Ongoing suicide attempts are not uncommon and epidemiological studies show that gay and bisexual men can lose up to 20 years of life expectancy. I can honestly say that not even copious amounts of LGBTQI promotion, legislation and social acceptance over three decades have significantly changed the outcomes for many who practice homosexually. So is the problem society’s issue, or do the roots lie in the activity itself?

The risks of gay sex, which our young people are being encouraged to consider and practice, are the crack in the dam to be hidden from public examination at all costs. And this has meant keeping many sexually active youngsters in the dark as well.

If ever the entire risks were to be wholly revealed, then any carefully constructed casuistic glitz and pride would rapidly fall away. Society would again be outraged, and rightly so, by the devastating long-term effects of homosexual practice, only this time out of genuine and deep concern for those who practice it.

The way to keep whistleblowers silent has been to employ homophobia-phobia which involves creating an atmosphere where anybody, including the strongest CEOs of AFL clubs, would be fearful of questioning any matter relating to homosexuality for fear of upsetting the LGBTQI community and their allies. Or even more frightening still, of being seen to be politically incorrect.

But what about the truth? What about humbly and honestly “raising awareness and championing change” first and foremost among the gay community? Why not first consider donating any monies willingly being spent on AFL’s temporary one-day rainbows to raise awareness across the gay community and the sporting world at large of the serious health risks linked to certain sexual practices?

I have also witnessed many times that those who end up infected with any number of ailments as a result of homosexual practice often find themselves further isolated rather than belonging, and clothed more deeply in shame than ever. In the long run, this is the opposite of what Finnis and the Saints seem to wish to achieve.

Australia’s first religion is sport, and young children often see footy players as demi-gods. To entwine LGBTQI ideology with sport, without notifying young and old alike of the entire risks contained within the dogma being promoted, is tantamount to knowingly advertising the destruction of health. Surely this isn’t the remit of the AFL’s CEOs or its top executive Gillon McLachlan. There would be outrage if footy players were to be linked to the promotion of tobacco, and yet the detrimental effects of homosexual practice are often way more serious than smoking.

I believe the AFL is unwittingly barracking for a greater injustice of the very people it is seeking to try and support, and all in the name of justice. It’s not as if the AFL’s history doesn’t already have enough sexual and narcotic scandals on its leaderboard without needing to give birth to others that will mature in the future.

Where Round 21 appears to be entirely shrouded in benevolence by the Media and AFL officials, there lies just beneath the surface a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Trying to break down the barriers of what is seen as a patriarchal culture within the AFL is one thing. Rebuilding it with resources from a gaytriarchal culture is another.

I am left wondering what another groups of saints – the Ugandan martyrs, St Charles Lwanga and companions, who were burnt alive for opposing homosexual practice and ideology a decade after the Sydney Swans and St Kilda teams were founded – might just think of Round 21 of the AFL. An eternal own goal for each team I reckon.

THE DEVELOPMENT AND ORIGINS OF MODERN PRE WRATH & INTER SEAL POSITIONS

Sun, 14 Aug 2016 01:43:58 GMT

THE DEVELOPMENT AND ORIGINS OF MODERN PRE WRATH & INTER SEAL POSITIONS – A BRIEF SYNOPSIS

The first author to identify himself as “Pre Wrath” was CS Lovett in his book “The Latest Word on the Last Days” (1980). It was probably Lovett who actually invented the term ‘Pre Wrath’. His view of Pre Wrath combined the Post Tribulational views of Dr. Samuel Tregallis with a Pre Wrath position because he placed the wrath of God only at the very closing phase of the final 7 years preceded by the rapture.

Dr, Tregallis, an able Greek scholar, had a much more basic view of dispensationalism than John Nelson Darby and he did not subscribe to Darby’s Pre Tribulationism. His works were republished by the Sign Ministries of Bob Van Kampen who saw Tregallis as important in developing Pre Wrath in that the church would suffer tribulation, but it was Lovett who first set the precedent in modern terms of the Rapture being Post Tribulational, yet Pre Wrath in his book in 1980.

Others began to hold to a Rapture following the 6th seal claiming early Patristic history supported it. This included Stuart Traille who fell into apostasy and became a cult leader but who, like Lonnie Frisbee, Moe Berg and other figures who turned sour in the Jesus Movement, had a pervasive influence on saved hippies (it was at this time in the Jesus Movement that I was first exposed to and believed the rapture followed the 6th Seal in the early 1970s). The Jesus Movement of Chuck Smith that became Calvary Chapel however was staunchly Pre Tribulational.

Another very influential figure in the Jesus Movement at this time who was not Pre Tribulational was Dr. Walter Martin.

This trend in mainstream circles was spawned in considerable measure in the 1970s by Robert Gundry’s book ‘First the Anti Christ’, (although Gundry himself favored a Post Tribulational view seeing the Great Tribulation as the full seven years). Gundry explored the implications of the eschatological writings of Hippolitus in particular.

Along this line in the nineteen eighties and nineties, Bob Van Kampen and Mar Rosenthal both claimed that they were not setting any new precedents and denied they were entering new territory. Marvin Rosenthal stated: “Pre Wrath is consistent with what is known of the beliefs of the early church” and Bob Van Kampen stated that “Pre Wrath simply expands on the position of the church fathers”. Both claimed not be setting a new precedent, but influenced by Tregallis, Gundry and others, claimed they were only returning to what the early church believed. Others such as researcher Ed Tarkowski disputed this and saw Pre Wrath as breaking new turf suggesting that there is as much evidence from the early church that could just as well support a full seven year Post Tribulational position.

Much of the initial controversy surrounding Pre Wrath was not about the position itself but the effect of theocratic politics as Marv Rosenthal was a known figure within the world of Jewish missions and evangelism when nearly all Jewish mission agencies were solidly Pre Tribulational and Marvin Rosenthal dared to break ranks. It cost him his leadership position with an established evangelistic mission to the Jews.

Intra Seal is closely akin to Pre Wrath. Intra Seal is Post Tribulational but it does not view the entire seven years as the Great Tribulation. It varies from Pre Wrath however on the identity of the restrainer which Intra Seal sees as The Holy Spirit (akin to Pre Tribulationalism). In a sense, just as the original Pre Wrath of CS Lovett combined Pre Wrath with Post Tribulationalism, Intra Seal combines Pre Wrath with Pre Tribulationism concerning the identity of the Restrainer.

Conclusion

Patristic history cannot absolutely confirm Pre Wrath, Intra Seal, or Post Tribulastionism. It does however confirm that Pre Tribulationism was never the view of the early church.

Although Dr. Tregallis was Post Tribulational, as Bob Van Kampen asserted in his republishing the works of Samuel Tregallis, he nonetheless had a profound impact on the development of Pre Wrath. Van Kampen actually purchased the publishing rights for Tregallis’ book.

The influence of Robert Gundry in academic and scholarly circles in the development of Pre Wrath and Intra Seal cannot be over stated, pointing back to the early church.

It was CS Lovett however who is the best demonstrable candidate to be called the father of modern Pre Wrath, and it was he who at least in published form, first coined the term.

Pre Wrath and Inter Seal became refined versions of what technically commenced, at least in modern terms, with CS Lovett.

Moriel gets questioned… and we respond…

Fri, 05 Aug 2016 01:50:08 GMT

We received these questions:

The first time I ever heard of you was watching THE DANIEL PROJECT on Netflix (probably 4 years ago). The second time I saw you was this week, on YouTube. It was a response to Dr James White. That was … “wow.” I’m deliberately keeping this short because I want to get to the reason I’m reaching out to you, but I have to say, I also agree that Calvin was a brutal and bloody man who caused his beliefs to spread by the sword. I cannot see how any modern Christian can be a Calvinist not only because of how Calvin was, but because of the whole ‘once saved, always saved, do as you like’ pitch.

I also looked at your video on John McArthur, suggesting that he said we can take the mark of the beast and still go to heaven. Well, you handled that just as well. I actually shared both of those videos with a few communities I’m a member of.

Right now, I’m listening to a YouTube video on “what is apostasy,” and you are sharing your beliefs, which isn’t Pre, or Mid (kinda) and certainly isn’t Post. You seem to have your own beliefs, but they You have a good amount of knowledge on stuff, and I’d like to ask you a few questions to get your feedback. Some are more essential to me, others not as much.

If you think making a video will be easier to answer, that would be fine … just please don’t mention my real name. My online alias is ‘MessengerOfTruth” and has been for 15 years.

Little bit about me. I am a Christian. I was born into Christendom (raised by devout parents, disciple by God-fearing men who loved the Lord, read since I was a child, etc). Pentecostal: because retaining that which has been taught from the beginning is vital. Protestant: because I’m against that whore, Ba’al, who is the enemy of the Jews and Christians.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN – Moriel update: July 29, 2016

Fri, 29 Jul 2016 01:51:36 GMT

Contrary to baseless reports being circulated on feminist blog sites calling themselves “Christian” , neither Moriel or its leadership have issued any apology for our doctrinal opposition to this feminism of the secular world infiltrating the Body of Christ under the clear influence of Satan. The doctrinal ignorance reflected on these feminist blogs is unmistakably evident as is the fact that their feminist rants are fuelled by emotionally charged outbursts reflecting the demonic Jezebel spirit where the husbands submit to their wives in an abrogation of God’s order.

Moriel recognizes the indispensable role of women in ministry in the Body of Christ , including in leadership and teaching ministry to other women as well as in deaconship, and exercising charismatic gifts in scriptural order which includes ministering under the authority of protective male covering , and as help mates to their husbands. To this end, Moriel additionally has also funded the ministry of various women and sponsored women’s conference events and continues to do so. There are in fact also two Moriel branches administrated by women whom we doctrinally classify as deaconesses. We also continue to sanction the excellent women’s ministries of notable figures such as Johanna Michaelson, Caryl Matriciana, and a number of Precept women discipled by the teaching of Kay Arthur. There are indeed a number of women’s ministries who deserve our prayers, support, and endorsement – but neither the Paula White, Cindy Jacobs, and Joyce Meyer houses of heresy, the lunatic fringe “Women’s Aglow” or the cultic “End times Handmaidens of The Lord” movement, or their first cousins – the blogging pseudo Christian feminist Jezabel clubs are among them.

We also however stand by the unambiguous scriptural teaching that leadership is male and that women cannot teach doctrine to mixed congregations or function as pastors. When God uses an Esther, there is always a Mordecai. When God uses a Deborah, there is always a Barak, and when God uses a Priscilla, there is an Aquila. Where there is an Ahab however, there is also a Jezebel.

The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church (Ephesians 5:22-23). This is God’s position, and thus it is therefore also ours. This is the unambiguous teaching of God’s Word and we unapologetically abide by it.

Ahab, Jezebel & Mohammed

Mon, 13 Jun 2016 02:58:51 GMT

The death of boxer Mohammed Ali (Cassius Clay) dwarfed the media coverage on the death of Queen Jezebel (Jan Crouch).

As we know, the instant he arrived in eternity the boxer wished he had never changed his name to Mohammed or embraced the racist variation of the Nation of Islam of Wallace Fard, Elijah B. Mohammed, or Malcom X (whom the former is said to have had murdered). The boxer knew immediately he had wasted his life pursuing a lie, that Islam is not true, and that he was not as he claimed “the Greatest”. In the end he was a deceived loser who likely lost his soul for all eternity.

I take no delight in this. I would have preferred that he turned to Jesus before it was too late.

In a sickening parody of Ahab & Jezebel mimicking Jim and the late Tammy Bakker, Jan Crouch, the wife of the late Paul Crouch – whose financial and moral shenanigans were openly confronted even by members of her own family, gave up the ghost almost simultaneously with Mohammed Ali.

Paul Crouch was reported on the front pages of the LA Times daily three days consecutively for the $425,000 in hush money included in a legal settlement with secrecy clauses about charges of homosexuality. Jan was actually filmed, while Paul was alive and married to her, in an amorous embrace of an actor who played Jesus at their theme park in Orlando at night in the parking lot. Little of this mattered, however, to their die hard supporters and followers. Like the Bakkers, the Crouches were people who actually began right with integrity, honest motives, and a scriptural Gospel – only to become corrupted by religious pride, the love of money, and immorality. As with ‘Jim & Tammy’ the Crouches became vehicles of Satan to discredit the Body of Christ, distort the Gospel of Jesus into a financial con-job, and to propagate heresy and false prophecy among undiscerning believers of the type whom St. Paul described as “wanting to have their ears tickled” (2 Timothy 4:3) whose ranks would swell in the last days. TBN was transformed by Crouch into a platform to make the term “Born Again” a household joke.

To be sure, the PTL Club, proven false prophet and conniver Pat Robertson’s CBN, and Howard Condor’s Revelation TV were and are none better. TV was too powerful a medium God could use for good, so Satan needed to corrupt it and he found a willing agent in Jan Crouch.

As her late husband Paul on TV literally denounced doctrine (the teaching of Jesus) as “excrement”, Jan exclaimed that those critical of the apostate doctrine, bogus prophecy and financial con artistry continually broadcast on TBN were “going straight to hell”. In defiance of 1 Corinthians chapter 5 which forbids followers of Jesus from being associated with “so called brethren” who are swindlers, figures from Greg Laurie to Ed Hindson appeared regularly on TBN lending that mouthpiece of Satan an artificial credibility to merchandise its heretical wares.

New Testament guidelines for Christian women to adorn themselves modestly were jettisoned by Jan Crouch and Tammy Bakker and their clones in favor of cakes of makeup and cosmetics with laughable hair styles that caused the world to mock her as a whorish looking gaudy old hag.

Jan Crouch literally dressed and resembled the Whore of Babylon in Revelation chapters 17&18, thinking of herself in the same character: “I sit as a queen and no sorrow will overtake me” (Revelation 18:7). Well, like Tammy Bakker, Jan Crouch now understands – she was wrong.

From Paul White to Juanita Bynum to Hillsong’s Bobbi Houston, to Cindy Jacobs and Gloria Copeland -and other such daughters of Queen Jezebel who backslidden churches tolerate (Revelation 2:20), we see in them the very nature of spiritual seduction incarnated. Like wicked Queen Athaliah they manipulate and connive. Yet in the end, the ultimate victims of their deception are always themselves.

I pronounce no judgments concerning these women. Yet I do know what God has already judged in His Word. Jan Crouch served Satan, not God.

European stage is set for Antichrist

Sun, 12 Jun 2016 04:41:51 GMT

Europe is being prepared for a one continent government with one leader: Antichrist.

The second most important prophetic development of the last century – after the rebirth of Israel – was the creation of The European Union which in major ways already runs its 28 nation states as one country.

The continent is in turmoil. The nations of the European Union – 28 countries from the United Kingdom to the Baltics – are facing an influx of immigrants unseen since the end of the Second World War. Hundreds were filmed attacking Hungarian border guards while screaming “allahu akbar” which in Arabic means “god is great”.

I write “god” with a lower case “g”. For the key point for those looking at the spiritual dimension of this invasion is that we do NOT all worship the same god. We detail this in our book Cults and Isms: True or False? which is stocked by this ministry. We would like to see a copy on every believer’s bookshelf, as a way to quickly discern the difference between true and false faith.

Most of the current immigrants are Islamic, with up to 90 per cent being men aged around 25 to 35. So are they mainly coming to Europe to work, when Europe already has an average of eleven per cent of its workforce unemployed? Further, there is over 20 per cent unemployment of those under 25 across the EU. If the immigrants were really being attacked by terrorists, would they not wish to stay and defend their wives and children? When Hitler threatened to invade England, the men dug in and were ready to defend inch of British soil; they did not run away.

Couple this unwanted influx with major financial and political problems and you have the calls for drastic action – and the entry of a commanding figure to lead the continent out of its crisis. However, he will NOT be Islamic, despite the false prophetic interpretations being spread by those who misunderstand the book of Daniel.

This article describes the chaos engulfing the European Union, written with an eye on prophecy.

It looks like a tale of woe and is certainly not good news. However, the real good news is that when we see these things happening, the end times turmoil, we are to look up, for our redemption draweth nigh!

As the world hurtles headlong into the ultimate crisis, understand that all of this was predicted and it indicates the soon return of our Lord Jesus Christ. So be encouraged! The right understanding of prophetic events leads to the conclusion drawn by a dear old friend of ours who said this: ”Alan and Pat, all these things mean our Lord will soon be back to rule and reign from Jerusalem.” So we should adopt her attitude and pray: ”Maranatha, come quickly Lord Jesus.”

So let’s look at the EU, future base of the Man of Sin. According to London-based TV news network Sky News, Germany alone expects one million refugees this year. Saudi Arabia, our alleged “ally”, is coming to the rescue. Although refusing to take a single refugee or asylum seeker themselves, they are offering to build 200 mosques for their fellow religionists now flooding into Germany!

Mosques in the west have in the past been bases for extremist preaching and the spreading of their savage ideology. As I write this, Saudi Arabia has just sentenced a 74 year old English grandfather to 350 lashes for doing some home-brewing in a nation that bans alcohol (except when wealthy Saudis arrive in London and send for the whisky and call girls, of course).

Saudi Arabia doesn’t permit any Jew to set foot in its territory, bans all Christian services and Bibles, yet is allowed to fund mosques around the world, including all over the USA and UK, many of them massive, lavish, structures towering over ancient church steeples in England, giving them a good vantage point to blast out the calls to prayer.

On an island off England’s south coast is a Baptist church where I have spoken. Around the corner is Chapel Street. However, the picturesque old chapel that gave the street its name is now a mosque. Our nations are being transformed before our eyes at lightning speed.

This is from the Sky News report: “In a letter to party members, Germany’s vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said other EU nations should take their fair share of refugees, and wanted a ‘common European effort’ to tackle the crisis.” Alan’s comment: Note the reference to the need for joint European action – the way things are fast traveling.

“With the Schengen system of border-free travel through much of the continent under increasing pressure, the European Commission is to outline plans to distribute 160,000 refugees across 22 EU member states over the next two years. Several countries are opposed to the quota policy.”

That’s putting it mildly! Poland has spoken against the planned quota scheme, with its Prime Minister, Ewa Kopacz, insisting: “We will accept only as many refugees as we can afford, not a single one more or less.” This is the reaction of the average resident of The United Kingdom: You are talking about fundamental and permanent changes to the countries of Europe. Housing, schools, welfare and health services will all be overwhelmed.

The EU asylum laws give anyone allegedly at risk of ‘serious harm by reasons of indiscriminate violence in situations of international or internal armed conflict’ the right to admittance to the European Union. This means they stay permanently, as anyone touring the big cities of Great Britain can see from their car windows: in many areas the former local inhabitants are either a minority or long dispersed to outer suburbs.

When I speak at churches in the large cities of the United Kingdom I often hear the same story. It goes something like this: “Our family lived in (a big city) for decades. Islamics started to move in. They were all right at first, when there were just a few of them.

“The numbers increased and a redundant church was turned into a mosque. We were made increasingly unwelcome and eventually the area became dangerous for those of us who grew up in it. It was clear we had to move out.”

One old man told me that he went back into the inner city area where he grew up. It was now Islamic. A group of aggressive Muslim youths came up – Islam is a very aggressive ideology. They surrounded the old man. He said to them:”That’s the house where I grew up.” Their response went something like this: “This is our town now and you’d better get out of it, old man.”

Another man said Islamic young men started driving their cars at him when he crossed the street. Not quite hitting him, but not far off. He got the message and moved away. A woman said that in a supermarket a burka-clad woman barged ahead of her and snarled: This is our area now – you can clear off.”

Now as a reporter for many years, then a chief reporter and editor, I know that people exaggerate. I like provable facts. This is first hand. In one Islamic area of a big English city, Pat and I were in our car when a crowd of Islamic youths in a van drove at us on the wrong side of the road. Yes, this in England today.

Don’t expect gratitude.

In Macedonia Muslim “refugees” refused Red Cross food parcels, as they were not “halal” (prepared in a way acceptable to muslims).

In Germany Muslim illegal immigrants have refused donated food for reasons including it not being halal.

In Hungary they were filmed hurling away food gifts – non halal – and even water bottles, the latter because Hungary refused to send them to the welfare haven country of their choice.

Destroyed windows lie in front of a first registration center for refugees in Suhl, eastern Germany. One of the smashed signs has a heading in English, which looks almost satirical after what happened: “How to behave properly.” Lesson clearly not learned….

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban was the first European leader to take decisive action after the flood of immigrants reached 10,000 a day into his small nation. He put up fences, which hordes of angry young men have been trying to storm ever since, starting fights with guards.

He said his nation, one of the newer members of the European Union, put up fences to ‘protect our way of life’ saying ‘Hungary has had 1000 years of Christian culture. We Hungarians don’t want the worldwide movement of people to change Hungary.’”

I saw one TV commentator describe this as “racism.” This is the caliber of so-called commentators: they don’t know the difference between race and religion!

The fence between Hungary and Croatia is an extension of one built along Hungary’s border with non-EU member Serbia. It is designed to reduce the influx of people, now hitting 8,000 to 10,000 a day, many coming via Croatia in the hopes of reaching Western Europe.

Patriotic Dutch politician Geert Wilders called the refugees pushing into Europe an “Islamic invasion”, during a September parliamentary debate. He commented: “… Masses of young men in their twenties with beards are singing Allahu Akbar across Europe. It’s an invasion that threatens our prosperity, our security, our culture and identity.”

Former Libyan leader Ghaddafi said: “Islam will take over Europe without violent force within a few decades. We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe – without swords, without guns, without conquests. The Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”

The bulk of migrants seeking asylum in EU countries are not from Syria, despite media coverage suggesting otherwise. Only one-in-five appear to be fleeing the Syrian conflict.

Of 213,000 arrivals in the EU in the second quarter of 2015, 44,000 were from Syria. The second largest group – 27,000 – were from Afghanistan. Another 17,700 claims were made by Albanians, where there is no war or serious unrest. Meanwhile, 13,900 asylum seekers came from Iraq.

The figures have been compiled by Eurostat, the EU’s number crunchers. They also show that migration from April-June was double the level for the same quarter last year.

So far this year, half a million migrants have arrived in Europe, 156,000 in August. They cross the Mediterranean and usually arrive in the south of the continent, with half landing in Greece and Italy, before trying to reach northern Europe, from Germany to Sweden. Others are causing havoc in the Channel Tunnel, where thousands sneak on to trains heading for the United Kingdom, hiding in the backs of trucks.

So what are all these vigorous young men going to do when they arrive in Europe? Few women travel with them. There have been a series of trials and ongoing investigations in major British cities of Islamic sex-grooming of often very young girls, while much the same has been reported in nations across Europe. French girls are often at risk in cities like Paris if caught out in the wrong clothes and in the wrong area.

The usual liberal media and bleeding hearts – the people whose views are paradoxically the opposite of Islamic fundamentalism – describe concerns about this as “Islamophobia” or racism, despite the fact that race and religion are unconnected. Many Muslims do want peace and a quiet life, but their religion contains exhortations to violence and at any time they can turn to those tenets.

The problem is that Europe is borderless. You can drive across Europe, as our son has done, without showing a passport until the Ukrainian border. So the mainly Islamic mass migration engulfing Europe means that the whole continent is affected. Once in any European country, you are free to move to others.

Already parts of major cities in Europe from Malmo in Sweden to Marseille in France have Muslim quarters where non Muslims are intimidated and driven out and the police and emergency services are afraid to enter. Much of the outer suburbs of Paris are like this.

A district of The Hague in Holland is run by unofficial Sharia law, while in Belgium radical Muslim leader Abu Islam heads a group called Sharia4Belgium. He says it is a matter of time before Muslims, with their high birth rate compared to the low birth rate of Europeans, are a majority in the country. At that point he hopes to impose Sharia law on Belgium.

Here is how the Daily Telegraph of London reported the tidal wave of Islamic immigration: “Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policy-makers are talking about it.

“The numbers are startling. Only 3.2 per cent of Spain’s population was foreign-born in 1998. In 2007 it was 13.4 per cent. Europe’s Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 30 years and will have doubled again by this year (2015). In Brussels (main capital of the European Union), the top seven baby boys’ names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza.

“Europe’s low indigenous birth rate, coupled with faster multiplying migrants, will change fundamentally what we take to mean by European culture and society. The altered population mix has far-reaching implications for education, housing, welfare, labor, the arts and everything in between.”

This is fundamental, fact-based reporting, of the type that is too rare. I wonder how many Germans know that the number of Muslims in the country is now nearly six million? Islam is the fastest growing religion in post-Christian Germany with many former church buildings converted into mosques, some of which are publicly sounding calls to prayer (the adhan) from outdoor loudspeaker systems.

A German document dated August 18th this year from a refugee center in Hessen (Germany) sounds the alarm about Muslim immigrants raping the women AND children. They clearly state that it is not incidental: it happens a lot. Women don’t dare go to the bathroom at night and sleep in their day clothes.

In Germany a campaign called “A Koran in Every Home,” is distributing 25 million copies of the Koran, in German, to every household. At the same time the media and the political establishment are attempting to silence critics of the rise of Islam in Germany, accusing them of hate speech.

Lebanese education minister Elias Bousaab told British Prime Minister David Cameron that two out of every 100 Syrian migrants into Europe are ISIL fighters. He said the extremist group is sending trained jihadists under cover to attack targets in the West. If true, thousands of jihadists could be entering Europe without passports, avoiding detection.

According to the US Migration Policy Institute, Muslims will account for more than 20 per cent of the EU population by 2050 and already do so in a number of cities. In Brussels, self-styled “capital of Europe”, they number over 300,000.

If you just looked at news stories, and believed in a coming world leader called Antichrist, you might be deluded into thinking that an Islam-dominated Europe will produce such a man. This is not what will happen. The Bible clears the mind of error.

Scripture tells why we won’t have an Islamic Antichrist. Daniel 9: 26 confirms the Antichrist’s Roman origin. Verse 27 shows he will make a peace/protection treaty with Israel, which will signal the start of the Tribulation. Chapter 11:37 is interesting in that the NASB correctly translates it as stating Antichrist will show no regard for the gods – plural – of his fathers. That again proves he will not be Islamic. Islam has one (false) god – Allah.

1 John 2:22 says, “He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son.” While Islam states that God has no son, Muslims don’t deny there is a God in heaven. And that is what this verse is portraying. See also 2 Thess. 2:4: The Antichrist “opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”

The Antichrist will not only deny the Son of God, he will claim worship himself, which would not be acceptable to any Islamic. Islam wants the world to accept Allah as the true god with Mohammed as his prophet.

The fact that he shows no regard for the desire of women indicates that he may be homosexual which, I suspect, is the reason for the worldwide move to promote homosexuality as just another “normal” lifestyle.

The reason I wrote my first book, EU: Final World Empire, was to wake people up to the fact that Antichrist will be based in the EU, which he will lead. The EU is the Revived Roman Empire, established at The Treaty of Rome, held at The Vatican in1957. It is a profoundly Catholic institution and all heads of it have been RC.

However, world religions are fast merging, with the Pope to the fore. Mary is being used to bring many Catholics and Muslims together and Mary-like beings, the “Mother of God,” are found in all the main religions. This is, of course, a demonic spirit with many names in many religions, right back to Babylon, the fount of all false religion.

Despite this I do not see Islam as a major end times force and Psalm 83 indicates that the Arab nations around Israel will shortly be dealt with once they unite to attack Israel. Next comes the Ezekiel 38/9 Russian-led invasion which puts paid to the Russian Army plus all the outer ring of Islamic states.

Europe is where the power will be, as America, like the UK, is ripe for judgment, and will shortly be out of the picture – America is not in end times prophecy.

You are seeing prophecy fulfilled before your eyes here in Europe, happening at ever faster speed. The role of Europe as the future base of Antichrist is clearly set out in the book of Daniel as the late Dr. Noah Hutchings explains in his book: Daniel The Prophet. The EU has arisen out of the remnants of the old Roman Empire (see Daniel 2 and 7 and Revelation 13).

It takes a crisis to force actions that in normal times people wouldn’t tolerate – like giving up their sovereignty, or what’s left of it. One EU official even said, as a major problem emerged: “Never waste a good crisis.” In most major respects Europe is already run as one nation, with common borders, laws, a court, parliament, a president and much else. The motto is: “Ever closer union.”

Those who live under the 12-starred flag of Europe are mainly unaware that the stars are the stars of Mary, which indicates the EU’s spiritual origin and base. Remember: the Revived Roman Empire is the world’s last empire prior to our Lord’s return.

If churches in America would like to learn more, I am available in 2016 to talk about this and other subjects, from cults and isms to the Middle East in Bible Prophecy, majoring on the Bible in the News. alan@thefreepressonline.co.uk

22 Hard Questions for Pre-Tribbers

Thu, 09 Jun 2016 08:05:03 GMT

22 Hard Questions on the Pre-Trib Rapture Theory:

First, some badly needed definitions:

The “Doctrine” of “Imminence” … Dispensationalism teaches that our Lord Yeshua could actually return at any moment now, and refers to this teaching as the “Doctrine of Imminence”. Briefly, this is the totally false idea that absolutely every event Biblically prophesied to happen BEFORE the return of our Lord Yeshua has already happened, and that he therefore could return “at any time”. Unfortunately for them, this is not taught as a doctrine ANYWHERE in the Bible. The actual Bible verses which they have twisted to try to justify this interpretation are actually simple warnings to us to behave as though the Lord could return at any time, not that he actually could.

Their “doctrine” of imminence is absolutely central to the “Left Behind” myth, for without it, there is no hysterical urgency about the Lord’s return. It is also impossible, because it ignores many literal Bible verses and other indisputable Bible FACTS which directly contradict it, as we will prove! What is even worse,it ignores our Lord Yeshua’s ONLY actual warning and command to his disciples as to what we are actually to DO in the very moment that the Abomination of Desolation is established! This will have the effect of GUARANTEEING that most who follow the FALSE Dispensationalist “Pre-Trib Rapture” myth will suffer and die needlessly for that belief.

The Second Coming … Dispensationalists have SPLIT this single prophesied event into TWO parts. The first “part” is supposedly when Christ returns “silently, invisibly, like a thief in the night, FOR his Church” (the “pre-Trib Rapture”), and a second “part”, which is the actual Second Coming referred to in the Bible, the Glorious Appearing, when Christ returns WITH his Church. It is the TIMING of the “first part” in which Dispensationalism (and most of evangelical “Christianity Today”) errs.

The Wrath of God… The phenomenon known in the Bible as “the wrath of God” is clearly a series of PLAGUES which the Bible says will be visited by God upon all of lost, unrepentant mankind AFTER they have been given ample opportunities by God to repent. The “wrath of God” is NOT the same thing as “the Tribulation”, nor will it take place DURING the Tribulation, although pre- & mid-Tribbers are required by their false, man-made Dispensationalist “doctrines” to believe that it will.

As the name suggests, “tribulation” is a trial or a test (see: tribunal), and there is either a prize to be won or bad consequences to be suffered, depending on how one reponds to the test.

But the Wrath of God is a series ofPLAGUES, NOT tests or trials, nor any part of “The Tribulation”. Plagues are only sent by God as PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT on irredeemably lost individuals, BEFORE those being punished are to physically die. No matter how a lost individual responds to a PLAGUE, he or she cannot get it to stop, or change the outcome of it. By the time the Wrath of God has started pouring out, it will then be too late for anyone on the receiving end of it to do anything about it. Their fate will have already been inescapably sealed for all eternity to come, and that is the full horror of it.

But Yeshua’s Torah-true disciples have been delivered from it: “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” (Romans 5:9) Please note that this nowhere even suggests that we will not suffer, and many die, during the Tribulation! It merely states that we will not suffer the wrath of God, since that is reserved for the lost, and indicates the permanent loss of salvation/eternal life.

According to the Bible, by the time that the Wrath of God starts being poured out, the Church will have already been removed from the earth to meet (Greek: apantesis) the Lord in the air, and will have received our glorified (immortal) bodies “in the twinkling of an eye”, to return to the earth with him soon thereafter for the Battle of Armageddon (1 Thessalonians 4:17; Revelation 15 & 16).

But the pre-/mid-Tribbers typically believe that there is NO WAY that Yeshua, the Lamb, would allow his Church, the “Bride” of the Lamb (Revelation 21:9), to go through what is described as happening in the Tribulation, with the anti-Christ, the False Prophet, martyrdom, the mark of the beast, etc., swirling all around them. This, despite the clear teaching of the ENTIRE BIBLE that suffering for Christ is supposed to be normal for us (1 Peter 4:12-19) . . .

12 Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:

13 But rejoice, inasmuch as you are sharers in Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy.

14 If you be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are you; for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you: they speak evil of him, but you glorify him.

15 But we pray that none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters.

16 Yet if any man suffer as a disciple of Christ, let him not be ashamed; but let him give glory to God because of this.

17 For the time is coming that judgment must begin with the house of God: and if it first begins with us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?

18 And if the righteous shall scarcely be saved, how shall the ungodly and the sinner fare?

19 Therefore let them that suffer according to the will of God entrust the keeping of their souls to Him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator. (1 Peter 4:12-19)

Dispensationalists also err in their identification of “the Bride of the Lamb/Christ” as being ONLY the “Christian” Church. The Bible states that the Bride of the Lamb/Christ is “spiritual Israel” [Galatians 3:29], who is also “the woman” of Revelation 12. This includes ALL who will ever be righteous before the throne of God, according to God’s standards, whether Hebrew, Christian, or “other”.

Having established these things once and for all (we hope), we press on with our . . .

Twenty-two Hard Questions for pre-Trib Theorists:

#1… “This same Yeshua (“Jesus”), who is taken up from you, shall so come again in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven.” [Acts 1:11]

So the Lord Yeshua left the earth once, in plain sight of all in the area, and ascended up into the clouds and out of sight. According to these angels, whom we assume are the messengers of YHVH, this same Yeshua will return in exactly the same manner in which he left.

Question #1: Since Dispensationalism predicts the the Lord Yeshua will NOT return in exactly the same manner in which he left, and the two manners of his return are in fact mutually exclusive, why should Dispensationalism be considered anything other than a cult, and the pre-Tribulation Rapture of the Church be considered anything but a false cultic teaching?

#2…“I do not ask You to take them out of the world,

but to keep them from the evil one.”

[From the prayer of our Lord Yeshua in the Garden of Gethsemane: John 17:15 – NASB]

Question #2-A:So, according to our Lord Yeshua, it was not necessary for his Church to be removed from the earth, in order for them to be KEPT FROM Satan’s forces. In view of this explicit prayer on behalf of his disciples by the suffering Son to his Father, HOW could Dispensationalists – or other pre/mid-Tribulation Rapture theorists – expect the Father to deny His only-begotten Son’s prayer, and go ahead and “rapture” the Church anyhow, seven (or 3½) years before the Lord Yeshua’s ONLY prophesied loud, visible, 100% public, non-thief-like return? How?

Question #2-B:

If the Lord Yeshua did know that his Church was going to be “raptured” from the world before the Tribulation, contrary to his specific prayer to his Father , WHY would he (1) DISobediently oppose his will to the will of the Father; and, (2) not make ANY specific reference to this supposedly certain, singular, future event anywhere in his Word?

Question #2-C:

Moreover, if Scripture “really does” describe a pre-Trib rapture, WHY would the Lord Yeshua be so disproportionately concerned with those who would be “left behind” [the unrighteous] without ever mentioning explicitly that they would be, OR that there would be a pre-Trib Rapture in their future if they would be righteous? WHY? Especially since he has specifically promised us all that he would tell us such things: “If it were not so, I would have told you.” [John 14:2]

#3…A Psalm of David. YHVH said unto my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” [Psalm 110:1]

In the above Psalm, YHVH is the Father, and “my Lord” is Yeshua. He even quotes this verse himself in the gospels as applying to him! [Matthew 22:45 & Luke 20:44] And the Apostle Paul states the same thing in Hebrews 12:2. Therefore, this single Psalm verse should assure us all that the Lord Yeshua will surely NOT leave His Father’s side until the END of the Tribulation.

Question #3: If our Lord Yeshua must sit (obediently) at the Father’s right hand UNTIL our Lord Yeshua’s enemies are humbled by the Father’s intentions and power – which SURELY does not happen until the END of the Tribulation and his Glorious Appearing – HOW could our Lord Yeshua leave the Father’s side (disobediently) and come “for” his Church seven (or three and one-half) years BEFORE the Father has done what He promises to do in Scripture?

#4…“But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Messiah would suffer, he has thus fulfilled.

“Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord;

and that He may send Yeshua, the Messiah appointed for you,

whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.” [Acts 3:18-20]

If they really are Biblical literalists – as they claim – pre/mid-Tribbers must therefore believe that this “period of restoration of all things” would actually be beginning with the seven years of the Tribulation, which is described in Scripture as a period of ever-increasing destruction – fires, floods, pestilences, plagues, earthquakes, tsunamis, and perhaps meteoric collisions, volcanoes, Satan and his angels walking around on the earth in physical bodies, fake “aliens”, the Mark of the Beast, the Abomination of Desolation, etc.

Question #4: Is it even conceivable for anyone to regard the SEVEN YEARS of such phenomena as a “time of restoration”?

#5…For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep (died).

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. [1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 – NASB]

Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall ALL be changed,

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, AT THE LAST TRUMP: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. [1 Corinthians 15:51-52]

According to these Scriptures, no matter when the Church is to be “raptured”, ALL of those who are going to be included in this FIRST resurrection (of the righteous dead in Christ) and those who are going to be raptured (the living righteous), these MUST ALL receive their glorified bodies at the same time.

Oops! There go the pre-Trib & mid-Trib rapture theories, since that pesky Apostle Paul declares that NO ONE will be changed until the LAST Trump, which can ONLY be at the END of the Tribulation.

Question #5: Do Dispensationalists somehow believe that it is possible to be “raptured” into “heaven” for SEVEN YEARS without first receiving a glorified body? They must, despite all of Scripture making that impossible. If ALL who are going to be saved MUST receive their glorified bodies at the same time, AND if this is going to happen AFTER the FIRST Resurrection – which is of ALL the righteous dead in Christ, both Christians AND Jews – at the END of the Tribulation, then the Dispensationalists MUST ALSO somehow expect this First Resurrection of the dead in Christ to happen BEFORE their “pre-Trib” Rapture! This is also impossible, according to the above, which plainly states that this event happens at the END of the Tribulation (the Last Trump). Given the crystal-clear message of these Scriptures, HOW is a pre-Trib or a mid-Trib Rapture of the Church even possible?

#6 . . .The Lord Yeshua tells us, in his own words, that the world will see him coming in all his glory, and then the Wrath of God will be poured out “upon them which dwell upon the earth”, which is a figure of speech meaning “all of wicked, unrepentant mankind”.

26 “And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.

27 “They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.

28 “Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built;

29 “But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.

30 “Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.” [Luke 17:26-30]

And this:

29 “Immediately AFTER the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

30 “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” [Matthew 24:29-30]

And this, which establishes precisely when the Wrath of God is actually poured out, relative to the other events of the end times:

And they gathered them together to the place which in Hebrew is called Har-Megiddo (Armageddon).

Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl upon the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple from the throne, saying, “It is done.” [Revelation 16:16-17]

In other words, the lastof the seven bowls of the Wrath of God is not poured out until just before the Battle of Armageddon and the destruction of the two Babylons, which can ONLY happen at the END of the Tribulation, and is NOT what happens at the BEGINNING of the Tribulation, as the pre-Tribbers claim. These verses PROVE that the “Wrath of God” is NOT the same thing as “The Tribulation” and does NOT happen DURING the Tribulation, but AFTER it!

The Wrath of God also FOLLOWS the removal of those to be saved immediately, in the same day, and not seven (or 3½) years later! The Lord Yeshua here says, unmistakably, that his return will be just like these two historical examples. So, according to the words of Yeshua, the resurrected righteous dead in Christ and the living Church are raptured to meet the Lord Yeshua in the air [1 Thessalonians 4:17]. At the same time, the entire lost world AND WE will see him coming in his glory, and then the wrath of God will be poured out immediately, “in the same day…”

Totally ignoring these Scriptures, pre-Tribbers contrarily assert that the “wrath of God” actually occurs DURING the Tribulation, and is in fact, synonymous with it! They maintain that this is WHY the Church HAS to be removed BEFORE it starts, so we will not have to endure the Wrath of God, despite these clear, unmistakable words of our Lord that the Wrath of God is not poured out until he comes back visibly, at the END of the Tribulation!

Question #6: HOW does an intellectually HONEST, TRUTH-SEEKING, born-again Christian square the Lord Yeshua’s own words with belief in a Scripturally-impossible pre-Trib or mid-Trib “Rapture” of the Church?

#7… In Matthew 24:29-31, our Lord is describing the end times to his disciples:

29 “ Immediately AFTER the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars (fallen angels) shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

30 “And THEN shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and THEN shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and (THEN) they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

31 “And he shall (THEN) send his angels (“eagles”) with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall (THEN) gather together his elect from the four winds [everywhere on earth], from one end of heaven to the other [everywhere in heaven].”

In other words, NONE of “his elect” are gathered together from heaven AND earth until they are ALL gathered together at the SINGLE moment of his visible (and ONLY) Second Coming. Moreover, in the Book of the Revelation, the apostle John clearly states that there will surely NOT be any wedding until the number of those who make up the “the guests” (ALL of “the dead in Christ”) is complete:

“And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’ And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.” [Revelation 6:9-11]

NOTE: White robes are SURELY a sign of righteousness (Revelation 19:8 & 14), so these are not some kind of second-class martyrs who will miss the Wedding of the Lamb, as many Dispensationalists (pre-Tribbers) preach. Quite the contrary.

This singular event (the moment when the total number of those to be killed by the forces of the anti-Christ is completed) cannot possibly happen until the one responsible for all of the killing – the anti Christ – is himself slain by the Lord Yeshua, at his Glorious Appearing. [2 Thessalonians 2:8] This is further confirmed by the author of Hebrews, speaking of the Old Testament righteous, “the Jews” <Gasp!>: ?

39 And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise:

40 God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. [Hebrews 11:39-40]

This further affirms that all of God’s righteous will be dealt with appropriately at one and the same time, which utterly contradicts the theory of a pre-Trib or mid-Trib Rapture, even as prophesied:

“Behold, I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me, to render to every man according to what he has done.” [Revelation 22:12]

Behold, the Lord YHVH will come with might, with his arm ruling for him. Behold, his reward is with him and his work before him.

Like a shepherd he will tend his flock, in his arm he will gather the lambs and carry them in his bosom; he will gently lead the nursing ewes. [Isaiah 40:10-11]

You shalt no more be called “Forsaken”; neither shall your land any more be called “Desolate”: but you shall be called Hephzibah (My delight is in her), and your land Beulah (Married): for YHVH delights in you, and your land shall be married.

For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons (the sons of God – John 1:12-13) marry you: and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

I have set watchmen upon your walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: you that make mention of YHVH, keep not silence,

And give him no rest, until he establishes, and until he makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

YHVH has sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, “Surely I will no more give your grain to be food for your enemies; and the sons of the stranger shall not drink your wine, for which you have labored:

But they that have gathered it shall eat it, and praise YHVH; and they that have brought it together shall drink it in the courts of my holiness.

Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way of the people; build up, build up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up a banner for the people.

Behold, YHVH has proclaimed to the ends of the earth, “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your salvation (yeshuah: salvation – Strong’s H3444) comes; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.’”

And they shall call them, ‘The holy people’, ‘The redeemed of YHVH’: and you shall be called, ‘Darash (Sought out), A city not forsaken. [Isaiah 62:4-12]

So if his reward is with him when he comes visibly, loudly, and publicly at the END of the Tribulation, what would it be that the “pre-Trib-raptured” church would be receiving before any of this happened, if there were such a thing?

Directly contradicting still other dispensationalist dogma, Revelation 19:7 also absolutely establishes the relative timing of the START of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. This states that it does not happen until AFTER the destruction of Babylon, which can only be sometime near the END of the seven years of the Tribulation.

Most important, in Matthew 24:29-31, our Lord is describing the end times to his disciples:

29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars (fallen angels) shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds (of earth), from one end of heaven to the other.

As previously noted, these are the words of our Lord describing the situation on earth at the very moment of His return. The angels (the “eagles” of Matthew 24:28 {resurrection of the DEAD in Christ} and Luke 17: 37 {Rapture of the LIVING Church}. See also Exodus 19:4) shall gather his elect from the four winds (which is every point of the compass on earth), and from every part of heaven.

Question #7:If ALL of “his elect” are NOT gathered together from heaven AND earth until the END of the seven years of the Tribulation, HOW can there have been a prior “Marriage Supper of the Lamb” if ALL of “the Bride” could not possibly have been there at any time prior to that moment?

#8…“Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at THE revelation of Yeshua Christ;” [1 Peter 1:13]

According to the pre-Trib and mid-Trib Rapture theorists, there will actually be TWO “Second Comings”, despite there being not one scrap of evidence of this in the pages of any non-Scofield, non-Ryrie, non-Moody, non-Zionist-cult Bible. According to those who are pushing this Laodicean doctrine of demons, Christ’s “first second coming” will be invisible and silent (thief-like), and will happen seven (or 3½) years before his loud, public “Glorious Appearing” at the END of the Tribulation.

Question #8 (in three parts):

(A.) Whenis “THE revelation” of Yeshua Christ? (1 Peter 1:13 ) If his “first second coming” at a pre-Trib or a mid-Trib “rapture” is silent, invisible, and “thief-like”, how can it be a “revelation”?

(B.) If the Lord Yeshua, Peter, and the rest of the Apostles “really” knew and “really” preached a pre-Trib Rapture of the Church as the dispensationalists claim (despite there being not one scrap of evidence of this anywhere in non-cultic Scripture), why would they make a statement like this, which contradicts the very concept of a pre/mid-Trib Rapture itself?

(C.) And if “the grace” of which Peter speaks here is to be brought by the Lord Yeshua at his APPEARING (which can only be at the END of the Tribulation), WHAT is it that he will be bringing at his theoretical “pre-Trib” raid? “Pre-grace”? Or “Un-grace”, to go with the “UN-gospel of grace”?

#9…

Concerning the Lord’s visible, physical return, the apostle Paul tells us,

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then WE which are alive and REMAIN shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet* ( Greek- apantesiς/ apantesis) the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” [1 Thessalonians 4:16-17]

“WE which remain”? What is this? If the apostle Paul really believed in and preached a pre-Trib Rapture, as the Dispensationalists insist, would he expect to be “remaining” on the earth at the Lord’s loud, physical return at the END of the Tribulation? That is, he would hardly expect to be among those who were previously “left behind”. IF pre-Trib were true, would he not have expected to be “raptured” along with the rest of the righteous at the beginning of the Tribulation? From the Apostle Paul’s own words in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, it is apparent that he did not.

* The Greek word for “meet” used above, apantesis, is a very precise, and very unusual word. The sense is of “a going forth by a group of people to escort an arriver back into the city or the dwelling from which they had just come”, as the people of a city would go out to greet a returning victorious general or king. This particular word only appears in three other places in the entire New Testament:

1.) twice, in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, a group who waited to go out and greet the bridegroom and then to escort him back to his dwelling place, back to the place from where they had just come [Matthew 25:1-12]; and,

2.) once, in Acts of the Apostles [Acts 28:14-15], which describes a group of people coming out from Rome to meet Paul and then escorting him back to Rome, from where they had just come!

“Where we found brethren, and were desired to tarry with them seven days: and so we went toward Rome. And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet (apantesiς) us as far as Appii forum, and the three taverns: whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, and took courage.”

ALL of these cases clearly describe a GROUP of people GOING OUT to meet an INDIVIDUAL, and then shortly escorting HIM back to the place from which THEY had just come.

IF we truly are Biblical literalists (as all Dispensationalists claim to be) we will understand that in the actual Rapture of the Church which is prophesied, when Christ comes, believers will be caught up to meet (apantesis) him in the air, and then to soon return WITH the Lord to the earth, but not in any predictable or specified amount of human time. All of which is IMPOSSIBLE with a pre-Trib/mid-Trib rapture of the Church, but ALL of which fits a post-Trib scenario perfectly.

Question #9-A:Since Paul says “WE which are alive and remain”, is it even possible that the apostle Paul did not consider himself to be righteous enough to have been previously “raptured” along with the rest of the Church?

Question #9-B:Since Paul says that, at the Rapture of the Church, we will meet the Lord Yeshua in the air and then immediately return with him to the earth, what does this do to the pre-Trib/mid-Trib theories which are the eschatological cornerstones of so many Laodicean churches today?

#10… The apostle Paul says, in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4:

1 Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ AND by our gathering together unto him,

[Paul here treats the two events – the Lord’s second coming AND the Rapture – as happening at the same time, even as all of the rest of Scripture does. There is NO suggestion here of a separation of seven (or 3½) years between the two events! Not even a hint!]

2 That you be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as thoughthe day of Christ were at hand.

[I.e., Paul here says that it is NOT “imminent”. He is assuring them (and us) that “the day” (of the Lord’s return AND the Rapture) WILL NOT COME until certain events happen. Which blows the dispensationalist theory of “imminence” out of the water. He does not want them to be “troubled” by the “leaven” of this false doctrine, namely that Christ could come at any time. Neither do we want that.]

3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

4 Who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

Question #10:So, since Paul says that the Great Apostasy (“a falling away”) MUST happen first, AND that the anti-Christ MUST be revealed first, AND the Abomination of Desolation MUST be established first, BEFORE “the day of Christ” (which he equates with BOTH the return of the Messiah AND the Rapture of the Church), what does this necessarily do to the pre-Trib/mid-Trib Rapture theories?

#11… The Apostle Peter says, in 1 Peter 1:7…

“That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Yeshua Christ:”

First, this states that we are to be praised and honored because of the way we endure the trial of our faith until Christ appears. What “trial of our faith” is there to be endured in a pre-Trib or a mid-Trib rapture? None. We would all be sucked out of the middle of our perfectly ordinary days, to party-hearty with the Lord for seven years?

There are so many things wrong with this, it’s a book all by itself. We recommend ours:“Exposing Satan’s ‘Left Behind’” at http://torahkingdomliving.com

Second, this states that the praise and honor doesn’t happen UNTIL “the appearing of Yeshua Christ”, which even the most rabid pre-Tribbers concede doesn’t happen until the the pre-Tribbers’ “second” Second Coming, when the Lord Yeshua DOES physically and visibly return “with His Church”[Revelation 14:1 ff].

Question #11:So how does a logical, Truth-loving, born-again, Spirit-filled Christian square all these LITERAL Bible truths with the pre-Trib/mid-Trib theories we have described and so many have believed?

#12… “And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.” [Matthew 25:10 – KJV]

Dispensationalists generally teach that, immediately after the Rapture of the Church, all those who were removed from the earth are immediately taken to “heaven” to celebrate the “marriage supper of the Lamb” with “Jesus”. Not understanding the logical consequences of their own teaching, they often refer to the parable of the wise and foolish virgins as being a metaphor for their “pre-Trib” rapture scenario.

But in that parable, as soon as the Bridegroom arrives, he goes in to the wedding feast with ONLY the wise virgins (those who were prepared) and the door is shut, and no one else is admitted after that. IF this really were a metaphor for the Lord’s return – as most dispensationalist Bible “experts” seem to consider it to be – and IF there were going to be a pre-Trib Rapture, this would necessarily mean that NO ONE ELSE COULD BE SAVED during the Tribulation, which theoretically happens AFTER the pre-Trib Rapture.

Question #12:Since we know that people WILL be saved during the Tribulation (the souls beneath the altar, etc.), HOW can this parable from the Lord Yeshua be reconciled with a pre-/mid-Trib Rapture scenario?

#13… Further in the Book of the Revelation, we find this:

When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained;

and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”

And there was given to each of them a white robe; and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, would be completed also. [Revelation 6:9-11]

Question #13: These are ALL of those who have EVER been martyred, INCLUDING those killed DURING the Tribulation. They are wearing WHITE robes, a sign of righteousness. This states LITERALLY that they MUST remain where they are UNTIL the martyrdom ceases (their number is complete), which CANNOT happen until the Lord Yeshua slays the anti-Christ at his Glorious Appearing! IF this number includes ALL of those who are killed by the forces of the anti-Christ DURING the Tribulation (and it does), and IF the resurrection of ALL of the dead in Christ MUST, in fact, precede the Rapture of the Church (as Paul states in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17), how is a pre-Trib/mid-Trib Rapture of the Church even POSSIBLE?

#14… The Lord Yeshua also said, “And unless those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” [Matthew 24:22] Excuse us, but if “the elect” will have already been “raptured” seven (or 3½) years previously, they would not even be ON the earth!

Question #14: WHY would those days (of the Tribulation) be shortened for people who are not even supposed to be ON the earth, according to the pre-Trib/mid-Trib theories?

#15… The Lord Yeshua also promises us that, “And you shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endures to the end shall be saved.” [Matthew 10:22] This promise of eternal reward to those who “overcome” is repeated twelve times in Revelation!

Question #15-A:First, to whom is this addressed, if not to the Church?

Question #15-B:Second, if the Church is removed from the earth before the Tribulation even starts, what is there to be “endured” or “overcome”?

Question #15-C:Third, if the pre-Trib removal and reward for the Church is to be automatic, universal, and unqualified, WHY all these warnings that we MUST overcome, endure, hold fast, etc., OR we will lose our reward? [Revelation 3:12]

#16… In the theoretical pre-Trib Rapture of the Church, even as portrayed in the “Left Behind” series of “religious fictions”, there would be millions of unsaved people, in effect, killed by God without warningas a direct result of His sudden, unilateral, catastrophic, and global intervention in the affairs of men, by His removing the Church all at once, with NO warning whatsoever. Many of these people killed by God without warning would therefore have had no chance to hear the salvation gospel of His Son, Yeshua Christ!

Question #16: Since “The Lord is…not willing that ANY should perish, but that ALL should come to repentance” [2 Peter 3:9], how does this crystal-clear LITERAL New Testament statement about the eternal, unchanging character and intentions of our Creator square with the undeniable eternal consequences to the unsaved who would be killed without warning as a consequence of the catastrophes resulting from the instantaneous removal – by God – of “the elect”?

#17… So, one major “unintended consequence” of the Dispensationalist “doctrine of imminence” (that Christ “could” return “for” his Church at any moment now) is that millions of lost people around the world who will have never have heard the Gospel of Yeshua of Nazareth could be killed by the hand of God. But the Lord says to the prophet Ezekiel:

“When I say unto the wicked, ‘Thou shalt surely die’; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his sin; but his blood will I require at thine hand.” [Ezekiel 3:18]

Question #17:If YHVH Elohim requires that we warn the wicked in order to try to save their souls, WHY would He not also be bound to at least the same moral standard? If He is so bound, then a pre-Trib/mid-Trib rapture of the Church is utterly inconsistent with the revealed moral nature of the God of the Bible. If He is not bound, then He is not the God of the Bible, and is but another false god, the “god” of Dispensationalism, which IS the Church of the Laodiceans.

#18… If one really believes in dispensationalism’s bogus “doctrine of imminence”, that one could be literally “raptured” at any moment now, and if one were driving a car, truck, boat, or plane when it happened, it is highly likely that such careless behavior would directly cause someone who had not yet heard the Gospel of Yeshua Christ to be killed in the ensuing “accidents”, exactly as are described and prophesied in the “Left Behind” series of hi-tech pipe dreams. In fact, in their misbegotten desire to scare people into accepting Christ as Savior, the producers of these pseudo-Christian, ANTI-CHRIST nightmares have devoted a substantial portion of their special effects budget to depicting just such gory events in great detail, “the better to scare you with, my dear.”

Question #18-A:To be theologically consistent, SHOULD NOT anyone who claims to be a disciple of Yeshua/Jesus Christ, and who also believes in and preaches the “doctrine of imminence” have a genuine Christian duty to protect ALL such lost people by immediately, today, RIGHT NOW surrendering ALL of his or her vehicle operator’s license(s), and immediately ceasing to operate all motor vehicles?

Question #18-B:If not, WHY NOT?

#19… The “Left Behind” series of “religious fictions“(and all similar Dispensationalist deceptions) portray people hurriedly making “decisions for Christ” only after seeing people disappear before their very eyes.

Question #19: How just would it be for these people to be accorded such incomparably preferentialtreatment by the God of the Bible, as compared with those true saints who had lived, suffered their entire lives, and DIED in true faith – “faith”, as the God of the Bible describes it – and made those same “decisions” WITHOUT having seen the evidence of the promise, even as Abraham, Joseph, David, and all of the rest of the faithful have – the “cloud of witnesses” [Hebrews 11:1-40] – down through the centuries? And what other example is there ANYWHERE in the Bibleof such extraordinarily undeserved preferential treatment by God of ANY other group of people?

FYI, in the Book of the Revelation, there is only ONE group who believe such things about themselves, and that is the church of the Laodiceans. [Revelation 3:14-19]

And unto the messenger of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;

I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot: I would you were cold or hot.

So then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth.

Because you say, “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing”; and you do not know that you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:

I advise you to buy from me gold tried in the fire, that you may be truly rich; and white raiment, that you may be truly clothed, and that the shame of your nakedness does not appear; and anoint your eyes with eyesalve, that you may truly see.

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.

#20…The Bible states that “Without faith, it is impossible to please Him (God).” [Hebrews 11:6] IF it is IMPOSSIBLE to please this God without faith, and IF this God defines “faith” as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1), and IF one’s “religious conversion” does not involve UNseen things, but only SEEN things, then such a person is not demonstrating Godly faith, but is merely taking a desperate, rational – but not necessarily repentant – step in order to try to save his or her otherwise doomed neck.

Question #20:If the Church were to be removed by God prior to the Tribulation, and tens of thousands of VCRs and DVD players were “Left Behind” with slick, multimedia explanations of what had just happened,how much “faith” would it then take for anyone to “believe” in God, and what chance is there that such a “choice” – according to the Bible – would actually result in the individual’s salvation?

#21… Dispensationalists believe that “the Church” is to be removed by God before the start of the prophesied seven-year period known as The Tribulation. Despite the LITERAL declaration of ALL of Scripture to the contrary, they also believe that this group of “unrefined”, “untested”, “non-overcoming”, “non-enduring”, selectively-commandment-keeping (“We’re not under the law, we’re under grace”) people – who believe that they “have need of nothing” – will, in some way unspecified in Dispensationalism OR in Scripture, somehow still achieve the righteousness deemed essential by the God of the entire Bible. They persist in this belief, despite the 100% consistently CONTRARY message of the ENTIRE Bible that ALL MUST be purified and refined by tribulation in order to enter the kingdom of God [Deuteronomy 4:30-31; Isaiah: 48:10; Daniel 12:10; Zechariah 13:9; Matthew 3:11-12; 24:21; John 16:33; Acts 14:22; Romans 5:3-5; 8:35; 12:12; 1 Thessalonians 3:4; Revelation 2:9-10; 7:14].

Question #21:HOW could this “purification” and “refining” POSSIBLY be accomplished if the entire believing, righteous Christian Church were to be sucked out of the middle of a perfectly ordinary day, right in the middle of a perfectly secure, safe, comfortable, and predictable life?

#22… The Bible tells us that it is THE READERS of His words (the end-times faithful) WHO WILL SEE the Abomination of Desolation, in Matthew 24:15:

“When you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso READS, let him understand:)”

Question #22, (in four parts):

First, the parenthetical expression “(whoso reads, let him understand)”, which was inserted in the text of our Lord’s words by both Matthew and Mark, is a crystal-clear indication that the intended audience for this warning extends far beyond the tiny circle of people who were actually listening to our Lord’s spoken words. So to whom is this addressed, if not to the Church?

Second, in a pre-Tribulation Rapture scenario, the faithful wouldn’t even be ON the earth when it happened, so HOW would it be possible for them to SEE the Abomination of Desolation?

Third, if this is “really” addressed to “Tribulation saints” who had been “left behind”, WHY would our Lord (and Paul) be MORE concerned about THEM than they were about those who were going to be “raptured” BEFORE the Tribulation, to which “pre-Trib rapturees” neither the Lord nor any of his disciples addressed a single specific word?

Fourth, IF our Lord Yeshua knew that the faithful were going to be removed by God 3½ years BEFORE the Abomination of Desolation, WHY would he intentionally mislead them (and us) with the above statement? Why would he, at this particular juncture, NOT tell us that we have nothing to worry about, because we will have already been taken out of the world? This is even harder to swallow, given his repeated assurances about other things he told the disciples: “If it were not so, I would have told you” [John 14:2], PLUS his prayer to the Father, previously mentioned: “I pray not that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.”

FYI, the TRUE hope of the TRUE disciples of the Lord Yeshua during the Tribulation is in the Biblically-prophesied physical deliverance by the angels of YHVH to a physical sanctuary ON THE EARTH for the entire 3½ years of the Great Tribulation.

Not a problem for Torah-keeping saints. How’s that working for you?

Details on request.

In our Lord Yeshua’s Love,

Bob & Suzanne Hamrick

http://torahkingdomliving.com

ru12@runbox.com

The EU’s Pagan Foundation!

Fri, 03 Jun 2016 08:06:41 GMT

Contribute to the Brexit debate.

People want information!

Help them by copying and pasting it as a post or tweet, editing as you wish:

Where exactly was the EU’s founding document signed?

View this informative short video on the European Union’s Pagan Foundation:

https://youtu.be/388QrjlEJE8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=388QrjlEJE8&feature=youtu.be

Resist Obama’s unconstitutional school bathroom decree

Sat, 21 May 2016 08:10:20 GMT

On May 13, President Obama took the most blatantly unconstitutional step of his entire tenure in office—threatening to cut federal funds unless local school districts allow students into opposite sex bathrooms and locker rooms if they identify as “transgender.”

The New York Times called Obama’s drastic executive action a “decree,” conjuring up images of King George rather than an American President.

That means teenage girls in high school locker rooms around the country will be forced to undress and shower in the presence of biological males. It also means that on overnight school trips, schools must permit biological males to share rooms with girls.

This is nothing more than the Obama administration unlawfully rewriting federal law to meet its own radical social agenda. When Congress passed Title IX in 1972, nobody thought “sex” included some abstract notion of “gender identity.” Sex didn’t mean “gender identity” then and it doesn’t mean it now either. Ironically, Title IX was designed to protect women from discrimination—typically described as creating a “hostile environment” on the basis of sex. Now it’s being used torequire the creation of a hostile environment for women and girls, since boys who “identify” as girls will now be able to invade spaces reserved for feminine privacy!

Congress has specifically rejected proposals to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to statutes dealing with school and workplace discrimination. Yet the Obama administration has declared it has the authority to unilaterally rewrite federal law so as to include those categories within Civil Rights statutes like Title IX.

This is an unprecendented overreach into an area that has traditionally been governed by state and local regulation. It’s a bad policy imposed by federal overlords without any basis in law or regulatory authority.

Obama’s guidance document for schools rejects potential compromises(like single-occupancy bathroom facilities for “transgender” students), stating that “A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so.

It’s time for parents, teachers, school boards, and other state and local authorities to stand up and say, “We cannot comply with these regulations in good conscience, regardless of what the consequences may be. Enough is enough!”

Sign the petition to President Obama, Asst. Attorney General Vanita Gupta, and Asst. Secretary of Education Catherine Lhamon, informing them that we do not accept these illegal regulations that

Please click here to sign petition.

Titanic

Tue, 26 Apr 2016 08:12:25 GMT

Titanic

Pope calls Italy’s foremost abortion promoter one of nation’s ‘forgotten greats’

Mon, 18 Apr 2016 08:15:00 GMT

February 25, 2016

(LifeSiteNews)

In a February 8 interview with one of Italy’s most prominent dailies, Corriere Della Serra, Pope Francis praised Italy’s leading proponent of abortion – Emma Bonino — as one of the nation’s “forgotten greats,” comparing her to great historical figures such as Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman. Knowing that his praise of her may be controversial, the Pope said that she offered the best advice to Italy on learning about Africa, and admitted she thinks differently from us. “True, but never mind,” he said. “We have to look at people, at what they do.”

At 27, Bonino had an illegal abortion and then worked with the Information Centre on Sterilization and Abortion which boasted over 10,000 abortions. There are famous photos of Bonino performing illegal abortions using a homemade device operated by a bicycle pump. Arrested for the then-illegal activity she spent a few days in jail and was acquitted and entered politics.

When she was appointed Italy’s foreign minister in 2013 there was a general outcry from life and family leaders at the appalling situation.

Responding to the Pope’s praise of Bonino, pro-life leaders in Italy expressed disbelief. “How can the pope praise a woman that is best known in Italy for practicing illegal abortion and promoting abortion?” commented Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro, who was until last year the head of the Rome office of Human Life International.

Luca Volonte, an Italian politician and the president of the pro-life Novae Terrae Foundation, told LifeSiteNews he believed the Pope “was not really informed about how much Mrs. Bonino has done in Italy and at the international level to promote abortion and euthanasia.” Even though he admits “she did well in Egypt,” he adds that even there “she promoted her anti-life values.” The Pope, said Volonte, “was wrong and worse were the members of His secretariat for not informing him.”

The Pope’s possible ignorance of Bonino’s stance is unlikely given his justifications in the interview. She has been for decades the most prominent supporter of abortion in Italy. Moreover, the Pope already received criticism for his contact with Bonino in 2015 when he called her about her cancer and invited her to the Vatican.

The Duck

Mon, 04 Apr 2016 08:17:43 GMT

Keep this old adage in mind: If you walk like a duck and quack like a duck; have feathers like a duck; like a duck and lay eggs like a duck there is a very high probability that you’re a duck!

Mike Gallagher, the 8th most recognized talk radio personality in the country, is heard by over 2.25 million listeners weekly. He compiled and wrote the following essay entitled,

“Obama: It was You.”

President Obama:

This is why you didn’t go to France to show solidarity against the Muslim terrorists:

* It was you who spoke these words at an Islamic dinner -“I am one of you.”

* It was you who on ABC News referenced -“My Muslim faith .”

* It was you who gave $100 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to re-build foreign mosques.

* It was you who wrote that in the event of a conflict-“I will stand with the Muslims .”

* It was you who assured the Egyptian Foreign Minister that -“I am a Muslim .”

* It was you who bowed in submission before the Saudi King.

* It was you who sat for 20 years in a Liberation Theology Church condemning Christianity and professing Marxism.

* It was you who exempted Muslims from penalties under Obamacare that the rest of us have to pay.

* It was you who purposefully omitted – “endowed by our Creator ” – from your recitation of The Declaration Of Independence.

* It was you who mocked the Bible and Jesus Christ’s Sermon On The Mount while repeatedly referring to the ‘HOLY’ Qur’an.

* It was you who traveled the Islamic world denigrating the United States Of America.

* It was you who instantly threw the support of your administration behind the building of the

Ground Zero Victory mosque overlooking the hallowed crater of the World Trade Center.

* It was you who refused to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, but hastened to host an

Islamic prayer breakfast at the White House.

* It was you who ordered Georgetown Univ. and Notre Dame to shroud all vestiges of Jesus Christ BEFORE you would agree to go there to speak, but in contrast, you have NEVER requested the mosques

you have visited to adjust their decor.

* It was you who appointed anti-Christian fanatics to your Czar Corps.

* It was you who appointed rabid Islamists to Homeland Security.

* It was you who said that NASA’s “foremost mission” was an outreach to Muslim communities.

* It was you who as an Illinois Senator was the ONLY individual who would speak in favor of infanticide.

* It was you who were the first President not to give a Christmas Greeting from the White House,

and went so far as to hang photos of Chairman Mao on the WH tree.

* It was you who curtailed the military tribunals of all Islamic terrorists.

* It was you who refused to condemn the Ft. Hood killer as an Islamic terrorist.

* It is you who has refused to speak-out concerning the horrific executions of women throughout the Muslim culture, but yet, have submitted Arizona to the UN for investigation of hypothetical human-rights abuses.

* It was you who when queried in India refused to acknowledge the true extent of radical global Jihadists, and instead profusely praised Islam in a country that is 82% Hindu and the victim of

numerous Islamic terrorists assaults.

* It was you who funneled $900 Million in U.S. taxpayer dollars to Hamas.

* It was you who ordered the USPS to honor the MUSLIM holiday with a new commemorative stamp.

* It was you who directed our UK Embassy to conduct outreach to help “empower” the British Muslim community.

* It was you who funded mandatory Arabic language and culture studies in Grammar schools across our country.

* It is you who follows the Muslim custom of not wearing any form of jewelry during Ramadan.

* It is you who departs for Hawaii over the Christmas season so as to avoid past criticism for NOT participating in seasonal WH religious events.

* It was you who was uncharacteristically quick to join the chorus of the Muslim Brotherhood to depose Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, formerly America’s strongest ally in North Africa; but, remain muted in your

non-response to the Brotherhood led slaughter of Egyptian Christians.

* It was you who appointed your chief adviser, Valerie Jarrett, an Iranian, who is a member of the

Muslim Sisterhood, an off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

* It was you who said this country is not a Christian nation.

Please Sign Petition

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 08:19:21 GMT

Three Christian teenagers in Egypt were just sentenced to five years in prison for blasphemy: http://www.citizengo.org/en/pr/33335-sign-here-three-egyptian-teenagers-were-just-sentenced-five-years-prison-blasphemy?tc=gm

Messianic writer Olivier Melnick: CATC is getting worse & Larnaca is a trap

Tue, 01 Mar 2016 08:21:48 GMT

by Dudi

March 1, 2016

You have to read Olivier Melnick’s excellent article at the Times of Israel, taking an open-eyed look at the upcoming Christ at the Checkpoint conference.

Here’s his conclusion:

So forgive me for not getting too hopeful about the fourth iteration of “Christ at the Checkpoint.” I think that it is progressively getting worse. How can we possibly speak of Christian love, justice and reconciliation with such a line-up of hypocrites at best and antisemites at worst?

Instead of watching the conference online and be indoctrinated by a false narrative, you would better spend your time watching a series of videos directed by my dear friend Perry Trotter from New Zealand. The site is Evangelical Zionism and it divides into seven videos for a total of 45 minutes very well spent. I really wish that the speakers and attendees of CatC 2016 would spend that 45 minutes watching these videos, then I would be hopeful that we possibly could have a balanced dialogue. Unfortunately, I think that CatC has now gone too far. Sadly, many evangelicals do not see it that way!

Olivier Melnick ought to be commended for his clarity and integrity, as the first prominent Messianic teacher in ministry to buck the trend of tolerating the Larnaca Document, whilst also providing an in-depth and skilful critique of the upcoming theological-antisemitism-fest that goes by the name of Christ at the Checkpoint.

ESCAPE TRIBULATION? – WRONG!

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 08:27:19 GMT

by Corrie Ten Boom

NOTE: Miss Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch survivor of the Nazi Concentration Camps, and a lifelong missionary. Corrie was a believer in facing tribulation. She was one of the many people who were persecuted in concentration camps during World War II. Her family was murdered before her eyes, but though her life was threatened, God led her through that terrible time. Here is her exhortation to us from a letter she wrote in 1974:

“The world is deathly ill. It is dying. The Great Physician has already signed the death certificate. Yet there is still a great work

for Christians to do. They are to be streams of living water, channels of mercy to those who are still in the world. It is possible for them to do this because they are overcomers.

Christians are ambassadors for Christ. They are representatives from Heaven to this dying world. And because of our presence here, things will change.

My sister, Betsy, and I were in the Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbruck because we committed the crime of loving Jews. Seven hundred of us from Holland, France, Russia, Poland and Belgium were herded into a room built for two hundred. As far as I knew, Betsy and I were the only two representatives of Heaven in that room.

We may have been the Lord’s only representatives in that place of hatred, yet because of our presence there, things changed. Jesus said, “In the world you shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer,

I have overcome the world.” We too, are to be overcomers – bringing the light of Jesus into a world filled with darkness and hate.

Sometimes I get frightened as I read the Bible, and as I look in this world and see all of the tribulation and persecution promised by the Bible coming true. Now I can tell you, though, if you too are afraid, that I have just readthe last pages. I can now come to shouting “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” for I have found where it is written that Jesus said, “He that overcometh shall inherit all things: and I will

be His God, and he shall be My son.” This is the future and hope of this world. Not that the world will survive – but that we shall be

overcomers in the midst of a dying world.

Betsy and I, in the concentration camp, prayed that God would heal Betsy who was so weak and sick. “Yes, the Lord will heal me,”, Betsy said with confidence. She died the next day and I could not understand it. They laid her thin body on the concrete floor along with all the other corpses of the women who died that day.

It was hard for me to understand, to believe that God had a purpose for all that. Yet because of Betsy’s death, today I am traveling all over the world telling people about Jesus.

There are some among us teaching there will be no tribulation, that the Christians will be able to escape all this. These are the false teachers that Jesus was warning us to expect in the latter days. Most of them have little knowledge of what is already going on across the world. I have been in countries where the saints are already suffering terrible persecution.

In China, the Christians were told, “Don’t worry, before the tribulation comes you will be translated – raptured.” Then came a terrible persecution. Millions of Christians were tortured to death. Later I heard a Bishop from China say, sadly,

“We have failed. We should have made the people strong for persecution rather than telling them Jesus would come first. Tell the people how to be strong in times of persecution, how to stand when the tribulation comes – to stand and not faint.”

I feel I have a divine mandate to go and tell the people of this world that it is possible to be strong in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are in training for the tribulation, but more than sixty percent of the Body of Christ across the world has already entered into the tribulation. There is no way to escape it. We are next.

Since I have already gone through prison for Jesus’ sake, and since I met the Bishop in China, now every time I read a good Bible text I think, “Hey, I can use that in the time of tribulation.” Then I write it down and learn it by heart.

When I was in the concentration camp, a camp where only twenty percent of the women came out alive, we tried to cheer each other up by saying, “Nothing could be any worse than today.” But we would find the next day was even worse. During this time a Bible verse that I had committed to memory gave me great hope and joy.

“If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you; on their part evil is spoken of,

but on your part He is glorified.” (I Peter 3:14)

I found myself saying, “Hallelujah!

Because I am suffering, Jesus is glorified!”

In America, the churches sing, “Let the congregation escape tribulation”, but in China and Africa the tribulation has already arrived. This last year alone more than two hundred thousand Christians were martyred in Africa. Now things like that never get into the newspapers because they cause bad political relations. But I know. I have been there. We need to think about that when we sit down in our nice houses with our nice clothes to eat our

steak dinners. Many, many members of the Body of Christ are being tortured to death at this very moment, yet we continue right on as though we are all going to escape the tribulation.

Several years ago I was in Africa in a nation where a new government had come into power. The first night I was there some of the Christians were commanded to come to the police station to register. When they arrived they were arrested and that same night they were executed. The next day the same thing happened with other Christians. The third day it was the same. All the Christians in the district were being systematically murdered.

The fourth day I was to speak in a little church. The people came, but they were filled with fear and tension. All during the service they were looking at each other, their eyes asking, “Will this one I am sitting beside be the next one killed? Will I be the next one?”

The room was hot and stuffy with insects that came through the screenless windows and swirled around the naked bulbs over the bare wooden benches. I told them a story out of my childhood.

“When I was a little girl, ” I said, “I went to my father and said, Daddy, I am afraid that I will never be strong enough to be a martyr for Jesus Christ.” “Tell me,” said Father, “When you take a train trip to Amsterdam, when do I give you the money for the ticket? Three weeks before?” “No, Daddy, you give me the money for the ticket just before we get on the train.”

“That is right,” my father said, “and so it is with God’s strength. Our Father in Heaven knows when you will need the strength to be a martyr for Jesus Christ. He will supply all you need – just in time.”

My African friends were nodding and smiling. Suddenly a spirit of joy descended upon that church and the people began singing,

“In the sweet, by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

Later that week, half the congregation of that church was executed. I heard later that the other half was killed some months ago. But I must tell you something. I was so happy that the Lord used me to encourage these people, for unlike many of their leaders, I had the word of God. I had been to the Bible and discovered that Jesus said He had not only overcome the world, but to all those who remained faithful to the end, He would give a crown of life.

How can we get ready for the persecution? First we need to feed on the word of God, digest it, make it a part of our being. This will mean disciplined Bible study each day as we not only memorize long passages of scripture, but put the principles to work in our lives.

Next we need to develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Not just the Jesus of yesterday, the Jesus of History, but the life- changing Jesus of today who is still alive and sitting at the right hand of God.

We must be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is no optional command of the Bible, it is absolutely necessary. Those earthly disciples could never have stood up under the persecution of the Jews and Romans had they not waited for Pentecost. Each of us needs our own personal Pentecost, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We will never be able to stand in the tribulation without it.

In the coming persecution we must be ready to help each other and encourage each other. But we must not wait until the tribulation comes before starting. The fruit of the Spirit should be the dominant force of every Christian’s life.

Many are fearful of the coming tribulation, they want to run. I, too, am a little bit afraid when I think that after all my eighty years, including the horrible Nazi concentration camp, that I might have to go through the tribulation also. But then I read the Bible and I am glad.

When I am weak, then I shall be strong, the Bible says. Betsy and I were prisoners for the Lord, we were so weak, but we got powerbecause the Holy Spirit was on us. That mighty inner strengthening of the Holy Spirit helped us through. No, you will not be strong in yourself when the tribulation comes. Rather, you will be strong in the power of Him who will not forsake you. For seventy-six years I have known the Lord Jesus and not once has He ever left me, or let me down.

“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him”, for I know that to all who overcome, He shall give the crown of life. Hallelujah!

A Welcome Yes to Thomas Ice

Sun, 10 Jan 2016 08:31:40 GMT

Blessings Thomas.

We have been notified on Social Media by a Calvary Chapel Pastor, whom I frankly had never heard of, named Joseph Bell in Indiana that you have challenged me to a debate regarding the rapture.

Thomas, while I would have appreciated a direct debate invitation either from you or from your Pre-Trib Research Center instead of one relayed second hand by Mr. Bell, I am frankly delighted to accept. I am cordially willing as a fellow Pre-Millennial believer in the Rapture to accept this invitation via Mr. Bell to debate you in a video live streamed debate at a neutral venue regarding your contention that the ‘Great Apostasy’ is the rapture in support of your Pre-Tribulational timing position with which I respectfully disagree. Our dichotomy, of course, is the timing of the rapture; not its solid reality.

If what Mr. Bell has relayed is indeed from yourself, can either you or your Pre-Trib Research Center contact our American Moriel office and we shall get to work at arranging the debate. There is no need to communicate through Mr. Bell as I know nothing of him (apart from what I have just been informed) and prefer to deal direct.

For the record however, I am most certainly interested in your debate challenge (if it is authentic and Mr. Bell is speaking on your behalf on Social Media) and it is with personal appreciation that I note you issue such a debate challenge instead of resorting to the cowardly and unbecoming slanderous sniping of a Paul Wilkinson who actually denounces those not placing the rapture where he does in the course of prophetic events, stating that they “do not love Jesus Christ”. Following Mr. Wilkinson’s slander one would have to conclude that non Pre-Trib figures from Charles Spurgeon to A.W. Tozer to Dr. Walter Martin to Ray Comfort, to David Pawson to Marv Rosenthal and so many others – do not love Jesus Christ as Paul Wilkinson has stated on film. Thus, while I am disappointed that your Pre-Trib web site posted his slanderous and defamatory diatribe, that is no cause for personal hostility between us. We should just debate our differences in doctrinal theology as you propose in a Christian manner devoid of vitriol and personal contempt.

Mr. Bell from Lafayette, Indiana unfortunately hypocritically resorted to a circumlocution dance not responding to the documented facts I raised concerning John MacArthur’s Pre-Trib position that people can take the mark of the beast, worshipping the antichrist, and still be saved. He likewise completely ignored my citation of David Reagan’s published annihilationist Pre-Trib position that there is no such place as eternal hell. He again did not address my objections to Tim La Haye’s support of the self proclaimed antichrist Sun Yung Moon attempting to organize 300 Evangelical leaders to go to prison in solidarity with Moon upon Moon’s felony conviction. Nor does he address my disagreement (and Mark Hitchcock’s and many other of your fellow Pre-Tribulationists) that the Great Apostasy of 2 Thessalonians is not a great falling away but instead the Rapture itself. Instead he just avoids the issues presented and dismisses it as ‘character assassination’. I find this Sanhedrinesque hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of circumventing the issues stated and resorting instead to an ad hominem attack … most troubling coming from a supposed pastor who should be an example.

I was just advised additionally however that it was at Mr. Bell’s church that you stated during a Q&A that you did not accept that the rebirth of national Israel or the events of 1967 to be fulfilling of prophecy but merely possible stage setting events. This view that you espoused at Mr. Bell’s church of course was not the view of Chuck Smith or of the majority of Calvary Chapel pastors and we both know many Pre-Tribulationists who would decline to agree with you.

Be these things as they may I indeed look forward to debating you and I would welcome the presence of an independent Hebrew and an independent Greek language professor as moderators should you so desire.

Thomas, you know I have always valued and endorsed your excellent refutation of Dominion Theology and Reconstructionism and be assured there is no acrimony on my own part between us. I just do not understand why you did contact myself or Moriel directly instead of announcing your challenge on Social Media by the surrogate voice of Mr. Bell.

Sincerely in Christ,

Jacob Prasch

Moriel

A RESPONSE TO DAVID REAGAN ‘S “In Defense of the Pre–Tribulation Rapture” AND AN APPEAL TO MY TRADITIONAL PRE-TRIBULATIONAL BRETHREN

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 08:33:30 GMT

By James Jacob Prasch

Jan 8 2016

Dr. David Reagan is an avowed annihilationist, a false teacher who rejects eternal hell and denies what the Scriptures clearly teach:—namely, that for those who worship the Antichrist and take the Mark of the Beast, the “smoke of their torment” in hell shall go up εἰς αἰῶνας αἰώνων “for ever and ever” (Revelation 14: 9-11). In his thinking, no such place as eternal hell exists.

Though a proven and documented annihilationist, David Reagan is also an avowed pretribulationist who has attacked non-pretrib believers. I myself, (Jacob Prasch) and others are described by Mr. Reagan as representing ourselves in the following manner:

“sarcastic, mocking, vilifying pit bulls who make Tommy Ice look tame in comparison.”

He does not however, address any of the facts I state regarding his apparent hero,—cult-leader J. N. Darby, founder of the ‘Exclusive’ or ‘Closed’ Brethren cult. The ‘Open’ Brethren leaders who knew Darby, (such as: George Muller, B. W. Newton, Dr. Samuel Tregelles, and James Grant) all denounced him as a despot who maligned scripture; and he was similarly regarded by Charles Spurgeon, D. L. Moody and other major Evangelical luminaries of the time who knew him;—many of whom were themselves pretribulational dispensationalists. My citation of these irrefutable facts is ignored by annihilationist David Reagan, and dismissed as “character assassination” by “pit bulls”.

David Reagan likewise ignores that modern Brethren historical scholars and authors such as E. H. Broadbent (author of The Pilgrim Church, to which Dave Hunt provided the foreword) and Dr. Harold Rowdon, (academic author of The Origins of The Brethren) have portrayed Darby in a manner altogether consistent with those contemporaries who opposed him. Unable to counter such evidence, and apparently unable to debate the issues; he takes instead the ad hominem approach of vitriol and personal attack. David Reagan also ignores the fact that my Intra-Seal views, and the Pre-Wrath views of Joel Richardson are not Post-Tribulational,—for we do not hold to the erroneous belief that the ‘Great Tribulation’ constitutes the full 70th week of Daniel chapter nine. We, for instance believe,—just as he professes to believe,—that the rapture and resurrection precede the actual Second Coming of Christ to establish the Millennial kingdom. His misrepresentation is conspicuously dishonest.

My own disapproval of Darby is not because of his Pretribulationalism, but because he established a cult after he had turned against the outstanding Brethren co-founders, and in a thoroughly outrageous manner, excommunicated those leaders not submitting to his despotic reign and insane hermeneutics. Those leaders whom he put under a ban, ranged from George Mueller and B. W. Newton, to Hudson Taylor James Grant and Samuel Tregelles,—most of these men were Premillennial themselves. I also disapprove of Darby because of the published testimony of Charles Spurgeon and D. L. Moody and others.David Reagan likewise ignores that modern Brethren historical scholars and authors such as E. H. Broadbent (author of The Pilgrim Church, to which Dave Hunt provided the foreword) and Dr. Harold Rowdon, (academic author of The Origins of The Brethren) have portrayed Darby in a manner altogether consistent with those contemporaries who opposed him. Unable to counter such evidence, and apparently unable to debate the issues; he takes instead the ad hominem approach of vitriol and personal attack. David Reagan also ignores the fact that my Intra-Seal views, and the Pre-Wrath views of Joel Richardson are not Post-Tribulational,—for we do not hold to the erroneous belief that the ‘Great Tribulation’ constitutes the full 70th week of Daniel chapter nine. We, for instance believe,—just as he professes to believe,—that the rapture and resurrection precede the actual Second Coming of Christ to establish the Millennial kingdom. His misrepresentation is conspicuously dishonest.

Moreover, I disapprove of Darby because he was a demonstrable heretic with a neo-Marcionite hermeneutic, whose errors and heresies included the claim that the Epistle of James, most of the Sermon on the Mount, and nearly all of the Olivet Discourse, (along with other portions of the New Testament) are only for unbelieving Israel and not for the Church!

I disapprove of Darby because he directly inspired the false doctrines of E. W. Bullinger, (whose errors were soundly refuted by the legendary Harry Ironside) and of C. I. Schofield (a non-theologian who was imprisoned for fraud and embezzlement; proven guilty in a court of law and criminally convicted, and who swindled and defrauded his own wife’s family). To hold up men such as these as “heroes of the faith” is, to be perfectly frank, sick. To hold up these men as champions requires a disconnection from documented reality.

The Open Brethren are mostly good, but Darby’s ‘Closed Brethren’ are bad. Originally founded on the sin of part spirit, and a destroyer of families and marriages;—”Closed” or “Plymouth” Brethrenism, also has an ugly history of financial corruption.

I dislike J. N. Darby as a nefarious figure for the same exact reasons that Charles Spurgeon, George Mueller, Samuel Tregelles, and D. L. Moody disliked him. My distaste for Darby has nothing to do with his Pretribulationism. I stand with the Open Brethren, not with John Darby who unjustly kicked them out. This is not sarcasm, as David Reagan insidiously claims in his vitriolic remarks, but a mere honest citation of unchallenged facts.

David Reagan also disregards the fact that the film Left Behind or Led Astray (of which I was not involved in the production and only appear in for a total of no more than seven minutes) was directed at challenging the ‘Left Behind’ thesis of Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice, a thesis that is now a profiteering industry replete with video games and Grade B Hollywood films which employ secular actors and contain wild and fanciful theories that are out of all harmony with traditional Pretribulationism.

Such fanciful nonsense, would include Tim LaHaye’s & Thomas Ice’s stated position that the Great Apostasy in 2 Thessalonians Chapter 2 is not a great End Times falling away from the Faith, but is rather the Rapture itself! This claim; based neither or context or co-text, is a pseudo-exegetical folly that was never believed by traditional pretribulational brethren, and now another notion being propagated by Tim La Haye is that the Rapture will trigger a great revival; this stands in diametric contrast to the traditional pretribulational plea not to miss the Rapture; ‘I wish we had all been ready’. At their pretribulational conference, the key pretribulational debater Dr. Mark Hitchcock, admitted that if 2 Thessalonians meant what Thomas Ice and Tim L Haye are now teaching, the term would have been ‘Harpazo’ not ‘Apostasia’. The fact is, that pretribulationists are now a very divided camp,—divided against each other. Thomas Ice has attacked David Reagan as having an “inconsistent eschatology”. The David Reagans and Thomas Ices of the Pretrib cadre are not simply attacking non-pretribulationists now, but they are actively turning on each other. They are truly a ‘house divided’ and losing ground quickly to alternate positions.

Why anyone in their right mind would go to the lengths that this annihilationist does to defend something, when he admits “there is no declarative statement in scripture on the timing of the rapture”, is baffling enough in itself, but hardly peculiar to him alone. From Dr. John Walvoord, former President of Dallas Seminary, to John MacArthur to David Reagan:—Pretribulationists are compelled to admit that they treat as a de facto fundamental of the faith something that is not even found stated in God’s Word.

Unlike most pretribulationists however, David Reagan admits that others, including the hyper-charismatic Irvingites, had “secret rapture” and other Pretribulational notions, and that Darby had indeed dialogued with such people. Most Pretribulational advocates attempt to sweep these things under the rug and downplay their influence on Darby; something which David Reagan does not appear to do. According to the quintessential Brethren academic Dr. Harold Rowdon however, Darby did not formally embrace his pretribulational stance until a much later point.

David Reagan’s diatribe is predicated on conventional rhetoric and rank ignorance of Scripture and Greek. The terms for “wrath” (ὀργή) and “tribulation” (θλῖψις) are not the same thing and are certainly not synonyms as he pretends. They are used exegetically to mean different things; but to David Reagan, this does not register, neither does the reality that imminency is not doctrinally dependent on the timing of the Rapture,—because the Lord can come at any time for any one of us, and thus we are exhorted to live godly lives. The doctrine of imminency is for all believers at all times, not simply those in the Last Days. His definition would have resulted in licentiousness in earlier ages. That Jesus can come at any time for any of us; this is true imminency. He is not coming for all of us corporately however, until the Antichrist is identified by the faithful Church. David Reagan’s convoluted attempt at exegesis fails to determine that the ‘Day of The Lord’ is the day of God’s wrath as triggered by the removal of the true Church. He takes an index of Pretribulational presuppositions built on nothing more than opinion and reductio ad absurdum argumentation to stake his case. His argument is devoid of solid doctrinal substance.

We have warned repeatedly that: David Reagan’s annihilationism; Thomas Ice’s contention that the Great Apostasy is the Rapture and not a great falling away; and John Mac Arthur’s position (supported by other Pretribulationists such as Phil Johnson, Jimmy De Young, and Brannon House) that it will be possible to take the Mark of the Beast, worship the Antichrist and yet still be saved,—are doctrines of demons that are dangerous and false.

So too is the public saga of Tim LaHaye’s partnership with self confessed antichrist and cult-leader Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed “return of Christ incarnate”, and his alleged ‘Holy Spirit’ wife. When Moon was finally convicted of fraud and sent to Federal Prison, LaHaye attempted to organize 300 Evangelical leaders to volunteer to go to prison in solidarity with this literal antichrist! The Pretrib camp, including many of its most visible leaders, have journeyed into serious doctrinal, theological and spiritual error:—in some cases to the perilous point of of open apostasy. The Pretrib annihilationist David Reagan is very sadly among them.

Surely, many Pretribulationists realize that John MacArthur, Brannon House, Jimmy De Young, Tim LaHaye, Thomas Ice, and David Reagan have departed from traditional Premillennialism and would not subscribe to their deviations such as annihilationism, or embrace such antichrists as Sun Myung Moon, or preach that salvation is possible after accepting the Mark of the Beast and joining in worship of the Antichrist. Surely, they do not believe the Great Falling Away to be the Rapture. Surely, many would not endorse the shameful and cowardly silence of Liberty University Professor Ed Hindson, when Jerry Falwell called Sun Myung Moon “an unsung hero” while hugging him on stage and accepting over $2 million from a man who, in his ‘Divine Principle,’ declared that Jesus failed in his mission so now he, Moon, is Christ returned, to prevail where Jesus failed. This apostasy is not traditional Pretribulationism, and sincere Christ-loving Pretribulationalists will separate from such heretics who compromise with evil and deception.

To our more traditional Pretribulational Brethren such as Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum, Tony Pearce, Jack Hibbs, Dr. Mark Hitchcock and so many other good and godly men of God whom we love, respect, and embrace in Jesus, our plea is what it always has been. Myself, non-Pretrib advocates such as David Pawson, Bob Mitchell, Ray Comfort, Ken Hovind, the late Dr. Walter Martin, Al Dager, Marvin Rosenthal, John Haller, Joe Schimmel, Doug Krueger, and so many others like us, are not men ‘who do not love Jesus Christ’ and who teach “terrible heresy” as the malicious slander of Paul Wilkinson falsely asserted. We are your brothers in Christ, fellow staunch premillennialists, and Rapture believers, but who merely place its timing at a point other than the one you do.

We seriously need to discuss this vital timing issue in the spirit of Christian fellowship and not divide. As I constantly reiterate,—’we need to tackle the issue and not each other’. We need round table discussions, academic symposiums, and scholarly forums. We need constructive dialogue and honest debate, that seeks with joint prayer the illumination of God’s Spirit to understand the Return of Jesus and not engage in a mere quest to advance our own interests or opinions. We should not be dividing over this. We should be uniting to defend the doctrine of the Rapture from those who are now aggressively denying it; we should be coming together to learn from each other and to hear from Jesus.

This division and hostility is not of God. There are reasonable and sincere Pretribulationists who have not climbed into into bed with an antichrist like Sun Myung Moon in the manner that Tim LaHaye has; or who have not said it is possible to accept the Mark of the Beast and be saved as John MacArthur[1] has; or who have not condemned all non-Pretribulationists as men ‘who do not love Jesus’ as Paul Wilkinson has; who do not teach the Great Apostasy is the Rapture as Thomas Ice does; and who are not annihilationists who deny eternal conscious damnation as David Reagan does. To Arnold Fruchtenbaum, Mark Hitchcock, Tony Pearce, Jack Hibbs and so many other traditional Pretribulational leaders:—our doors and our hearts are open. I am absolutely positive that God wants discussion, not division but Satan wants division, not discussion.

My appeal for unity of the Spirit in this situation; that has become so divisive over the mere, yet important, timing issue is genuine. Ultimately, it does not matter where John Darby obtained his views; his Pretribulationism was not the main reason that other Premillenialists such as Charles Spurgeon and George Mueller, and even other pretribulationists publicly warned against him; like them, it is his legacy as a heretic and cult-leader I disapprove of. The issue and urgency now is for traditional Pretribulation leaders (who do not subscribe to the deviant theology and praxis of David Reagan, Thomas Ice, Tim LaHaye, and John MacArthur, all of whom have radically departed from traditional Pretribulational beliefs) and those with Post-Tribulational, Intra-Seal, and Pre-Wrath positions to join together as premillennial Rapture believers, and seek to Jesus to correctly guide us by his Spirit in comprehending the prophetic theology surrounding His soon coming Return. We all have much to learn from Him, and from each other through Him. We could all use a dose of Christian humility and we could all benefit from coming together to seek Jesus to show us all the truth. It is a foolish man indeed who does not admit that there is so often as much to learn from those other believers with whom we differ, as from those with whom we agree.

To this very day Darby’s Closed Brethren remain the proverbial prisoners of history, still arguing over Darby’s excommunication of the Open Brethren like George Muller and B. W. Newton. We ought not be prisoners of such history but instead exegetically focus solely on what the Word of God teaches concerning the Rapture and the Return of Jesus. The history of Darby is irrelevant and only clouds the real and increasingly vital issues. Let us forget Darby.

Not all Pretribulationists have embarked on the road to false doctrine as David Reagan and John MacArthur have done. Not all of them have joined forces with an actual antichrist as Tim LaHaye has so tragically done. And being a non-Pretribulationist like Ray Comfort, David Pawson, or myself, does not mean we do not love Jesus Christ or propagate “terrible heresy” as Paul Wilkinson charges. It is time for a meeting of the sane. In Acts 15 the issues that first council confronted were as divisive and theologically complex as almost any issue, with rival opinions -but not rival factions (such as Judaizers etc.). They sought The Lord and were given the right course of action by the Holy Spirit. God placed the Apostolic record of Acts 15 in His Word for a reason, and in large part that reason is to provide a guideline for us. Let us ignore the factions ,and assemble as brethren, seeking the Lord’s Wisdom, not our own. It is the only scriptural way to resolve this. If there was ever a time to remove heretical factions as per 1 Corinthians 11 it is indeed now. But co-equally, if there was ever a time for unity of the Spirit among non-heretics it is now.

With much love in Jesus,

Jacob Prasch

Prophecy From David Noakes

Tue, 29 Dec 2015 08:38:24 GMT

Prophecy from David Noakes who is endorsed by Jacob Prasch as a valid prophetic voice.

Given at a Ministry Leaders meeting November 2015<br

Quoted In Clifford Hill’s December 2015 Issachar Update Message

“Nation of Britain, I have loved you with a love which has not ceased, despite the state of apostasy and degradation into which you have fallen. My anger towards those church leaders who have taught false things in my Name, and encouraged others to believe and act as they do, is intense and my judgment upon them will be severe. Yet I have compassion upon those who have been like sheep without godly shepherds; and my heart still longs to exercise mercy upon a nation whose forefathers upheld my Name and took my Word to the ends of the earth; a nation whose belief in the truth of my Word framed godly laws and inspired a culture of uprightness.

“Rather than rely on Me and my faithfulness to you, you chose, for worldly purposes, to join yourself to an institution which has denied my Name and refused to acknowledge Me in its councils. My fierce anger is upon that institution on account of its rebellion, its defiant rejection of me and its hardness of heart towards my ancient people Israel.

“I warn you now that the European institution will not repent, even though I bring disaster and destruction upon it. I urge you, O Britain still beloved by Me for the sake of your godly forefathers, come out of her, so that you may not be caught up in that same destruction, for I am even now arising in judgment to bring to nothing what she has sought to achieve. If you will separate yourself from her declared rejection of God, I will have mercy upon you and restore my hand of protection; and I will use you once again to bring light to many lost in the darkness which is now steadily increasing.

“Hear Me, O once godly nation and respond to my call, or you also will come to ruin in that same judgment of destruction. This is not my will for you, but you must choose the course which you will take. I urge you to respond to Me and choose life under my hand of discipline and protection, rather than death in the disaster which is even now coming upon Europe.”

Muslims Exterminating Thousands Of Dogs With Insane Brutal Methods

Mon, 16 Nov 2015 08:41:09 GMT

This his how they get rid of “street animals.”

According to The Oslo Times, contractors have been hired by the Iranian government to get rid of stray dogs and puppies with the help of lethal injections. The problem is that these shots are a simple acid concoction that leads to an extremely painful and slow death.

WARNING: This video contains scenes and language that some viewers may find very disturbing. Viewer discretion advised.

Labels: A European Tradition?

Sat, 14 Nov 2015 08:52:30 GMT

Labels: A European Tradition?

Condolences – Nancy Missler

Sat, 14 Nov 2015 08:47:00 GMT

Moriel & Jacob Prasch express our sincere condolences in Jesus to our friend & brother Chuck Missler on the temporary loss of his beloved wife Nancy. Our prayers are that Chuck will know the consolation of .Christ during this time of bereavement.

Her battle against the gruesome facial cancer was not lost; but rather the victory of Jesus was won.

Jacob of course knew Nancy and Chuck and we rejoice that through a sincere faith in Jesus death has been conquered.

The Islamization of Britain in 2014

Wed, 28 Oct 2015 08:58:50 GMT

by Soeren Kern

December 30, 20

“Britain remains the world’s leading recruiting ground for al-Qaeda.” — Con Coughlin,Daily Telegraph.

When she sought help from the police and a lawyer, “the family of the defendants were insulted that she had gone to the law. They wanted her back within the family fold… Therefore, it was decided that she should be forced to comply or be killed.” — Prosecutor of Ahmed A-Khatib, who murdered his wife for becoming “too westernized.”

British school teachers are afraid to teach their students about Christianity out of fear of offending Muslims. — Roger Bolton, BBC Radio 4’s Feedback program.

Rather than taking steps to protect British children, police, social workers, teachers… and the media deliberately played down the severity of the crimes [of Muslim sexual grooming gangs] in order to avoid being accused of “Islamophobia” or racism. — From the report “Easy Meat: Multiculturalism, Islam and Child Sex Slavery.”

A group of British lawyers launched a website, Sharia Watch UK. The group called Sharia law “Britain’s Blind Spot.”

After Adebolajo, who murdered and tried to behead British soldier Lee Rigby with a meat cleaver, was given a “whole-life” prison term, his brother said his sibling was the victim of “Islamophobia.”

“The problem of honor-based violence and forced marriages in England is “worse than people think.” — Claire Phillipson, Wearside Women in Need

The Muslim population of Britain reached 3.4 million in 2014 to become around 5.3% of the overall population of 64 million, according to figures extrapolated from a recent study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe. In real terms, Britain has the third-largest Muslim population in the European Union, after France and Germany.

Islam and Islam-related issues were omnipresent in Britain during 2014, and can be categorized into four broad themes: 1) Islamic extremism and the security implications of British jihadists in Syria; 2) the continuing spread of Islamic Sharia law in Britain; 3) the sexual exploitation of British children by Muslim gangs; and 4) Muslim integration into British society.

What follows is a chronological review of some of the main stories involving the rise of Islam in Britain during 2014.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

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JORGE MARIO BERGOGL alias POPE FRANCIS THE RELIGIOUS CHARLATAN WHOSE HYPOCRISY KNOWS NO APPARENT LIMITS

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 09:04:12 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

September 22, 2015

As Pope Francis arrives in the USA, the Vatican characteristically expects the media, the Congress, and the public to simply ignore the fact that when Cardinal of Buenos Aires, Francis staunchly refused to meet with the children sexually victimized by his priests and nuns and with their families. His pedophile sex criminal clergy were protected as the defenseless little children were raped and he refused to even meet them or their parents. So the College of Cardinals in a convocation that included multiple protectors and de facto enablers of baby raping sexual deviants frocked in their vestments, habits, and cassocks, including Los Angeles Cardinal Mahony and Boston Cardinal Law, elected Bergoglio pope and said he is ‘the ‘Vicar of Christ’. But didn’t Christ say that “It is better to have a millstone tied to one’s neck and be cast into the sea rather than harm a helpless little child”? Now this same Francis is coming to the land of Mahony with his lies and baloney, and of Law, who rather proved himself to be utterly law-less. These reprobates who shielded dangerous sexual deviates at the expense of the children whose molestation and sexual and homosexual violation these servants of Lucifer helped facilitate are among those who helped elect Bergoglio, so why wouldn’t George (Jorge) Bergoglio cum Pope Francis come to the USA? How can such a disgusting pretender misrepresent himself as the vicar of a Christ whose very Words he nullifies and whose example he shuns in favor of a public relations motivated charade packaged in pseudo sanctimonious pomposity of the very same brand Jesus flagrantly condemned in the Gospel of St. Matthew chapter 23?

It is obvious to any honest observer that Bergoglio’s only real god is the centuries old Vatican idol of theocratic politics that millions of former Roman Catholics who have accepted the real Christ, including now regenerate priests and nuns, can readily testify to. The real Jesus did not double talk or engage in the legalistic practice of pilpul in their attempt to defend the indefensible. Jesus appealed to the spirit of the law and did not engage in the pilpul of disputing about words Bill Clinton style as in: “it depends on what the definition of ‘is’ ‘is’”; or ‘ “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” (when he performed acts other than intercourse). Jesus issued clear unambiguous moral dictates in response to hypocritical religious rhetoric looking for technical loopholes to avoid what in substance amounted to perjury or in practice amounted to transgression despite religio-legal attempts to camouflage it with pilpul and the Gospels are emphatic that He did so ‘speaking as one with authority not like the scribes’ (Matthew 7:28-29). There was no ambivalence or uncertainty as to what He meant. What Clinton was in the White House however, Pope Francis is in the Vatican. We see a return to the pilpul condemned by Jesus in The Sermon on The Mount. Concerning the issue of homosexuality Pope Francis stated “if two men are in a committed relation – who am I to judge”? The point is that Jesus Christ has judged the matter already and the Judeo- Christian Scriptures say so plainly (Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Timothy 1:10, 1 Corinthians 6:9). If the Scriptures judged it and he claims to speak for Christ (which he most certainly does not nor does any other Pope), why does he not simply uphold the teaching of Scripture judging it wrong?

What we see from Pope Francis is the pilpul that Jesus taught against and was a well defined alternative to. In Pope Francis we see a Pharisaical faker magna cum laude. Indeed, after his wife Laura and his former Vice President Dick Cheney (who daughter is in a lesbian marriage) appeared on YouTube urging Republican Party support for same sex marriage, former president George W. Bush stated with regard to homosexuality “I have to remove the log from my own eye”, as if his out of context citation of that verse from Scripture justified his ignoring that God’s Word strongly calls homosexuality morally abominable. The Sanhedrin may have invented pilpul but phony unprincipled politicians have perfected it with media spin, and as is solidly evident Pope Francis is nothing more than just another such politician whose theological roots are not in the Jesus whose vicar he fraudulently pretends to be, but in the Sanhedrin who collaborated with the Roman government to turn the Jewish people against their own Messiah and have Him murdered. It is of course a factually ridiculous legally and doctrinally false contention to corporately blame Israel and The Jews for the death of Jesus. Jesus stated that He laid His life down and no one took it from Him. The Hebrew prophet Isaiah informs us in chapter 53 that it was His Father’s will to slay Him as an atonement for our sin when He took our sin on Himself and thus in the larger sense we are all His killers. Moreover , all of His initial followers and the New Testament authors were themselves Jews with Jewish belief in Him as Messiah reaching a very high percentage of the Jewish population by the early Second century. Juridically, all four Gospels and the earliest Creeds of the church dogmatically profess that He was crucified by the Roman government under Pontius Pilate. Yet, although He forgave His executors – and us – from the cross, there is no question that the pagan Roman government and Sanhedrin conspired to kill him and they are still conspiring to kill Him. Only today the Roman authorities are the Roman Catholic church, the Sanhedrin are the College of Cardinals and Papal Curia, and Pontius Pilate is now called the Pope. My own family is a combination of Jewish and Roman Catholic backgrounds, and as such I would not be surprised if the pedophile protecting Roman Catholic church gambled for His cloths at a Bingo game.

Like all such phony politicians be it a Clinton, a Bush or otherwise, Francis has his media spin. His PR machine says “He has not changed the moral teaching of the church, only the emphasis”. He has done this in two ways. The first is divert away from inconvenient issues by changing the narrative. Thus we see Francis railing about capitalism and global warming in a cheap ecclesiastical version of ‘Occupy Wall Street’. The second, as we have stated is to engage in a Roman Catholic imitation of pilpul. So when Francis concerning homosexuality publicly asks “who am I to judge”? The liberal wing of Roman Catholicism can claim that pope has modified the Roman Catholic opposition to homosexuality and he no longer will say it is flatly wrong; he says “who is he to judge”? Simultaneously, the traditionalist hypocrite wrong of Roman Catholicism reacts by saying “the Pope has not officially changed the opposition of the church to homosexuality”. For the sake of political expediency he placates everybody but offers no clear moral direction. This Jesus did not do according to St. Matthew, yet this impostor Francis claims to be The Lord’s personal vicar acting vicariously on Christ’s behalf.

Another example is his liberalization policy on the issuing of marital annulments. To begin with the term itself as it is used colloquially or legally is not found in the New Testament. The only New Testament basis for the nullification of a marriage is only where in God’s eyes there was no valid marriage to begin with due to one partner already being married (John 5:17-18). In Roman Catholicism an annulment may amount to nothing more than a mere euphemism for divorce. Apologists for Roman Catholicism of course conventionally resort once again to pilpul; the strategic use of semantics is of course pivotal in pilpul. In the political hypocrisy that we witness in the parlance of international diplomacy we encounter this all of the time where a synonymous or ambiguous phraseology can be interpreted by two different parties to mean two different things in order to forge a meaningless agreement or concordat that eventually breaks down. In ecumenical dialogue between Roman Catholic and supposedly ‘Protestant’ theologians we see the same hypocritical idiocy. Both panels of theologians sign a joint declaration stating “we agree both Catholic and Protestant that we are saved by grace”, when in fact the Protestant understanding of grace is unearned and undeserved favor deriving from the Greek and Hebrew definitions of the term etymologically, while the perverted Roman Catholic definition is an ethereal substance , (be it actual or sanctifying grace as they describe it) that is ritualistically earned by sacraments even in the ex opera operato case of infant baptism (which in fact most Reformed, Anglican, and Lutheran Protestant denominations absurdly an unscripturally share). Both can agree they are saved by grace and issue a worthless proclamation to that effect that has no capacity to do anything but deceive, yet in actuality they have two fundamentally variant definitions of what grace is. While this fails theologically and spiritually, it works politically. It is little wonder St. Paul condemned such semantically charged dialogue involving disputes about words in circumlocution of the divinely intended meaning of Holy Writ (1 Timothy 6:4).

The Roman Catholic church engages in this kind of stupid semantic dialogue without reference to what the Scriptures actually state concerning the issue divorce by a convoluted argumentation that declares a marriage invalid for considerations that are extra biblical and grant annulment when in fact they are simply calling a divorce by another name. For many centuries popes routinely granted European monarchs annulments to remarry when it was in the political and or economic interests of the papacy to do so. Thomas Moore, the notorious villain who was party to the horrific persecution of regenerate Christians during the Reformation was executed by King Henry VIII not because Moore opposed Henry’s divorce and remarriage, but rather because the pope did not approve of it for political reasons. Pope Francis did not invent this ‘divorce by another name’ practice of the papacy. He is just making it easier to do in order to be ‘seeker friendly’ to trim his falling mass attendance numbers. Likewise with the majority of reported cases of clerical pedophilia by his priests and nuns being of a homosexual and lesbian nature, Francis knows that without homosexuals and lesbians the already thin ranks of religious vocations in the Roman Catholic clergy would be much thinner still and he would not have enough priests and nuns for his religious system to function. It is all pilpul and all politics from homosexuality to annulment to pedophilia.

“Gorgeous George” Bergoglio has changed his name to “Frank the Phony”. But he is no Vicar of Christ. Like his papal predecessors he is just another anti-christ and as he visits New York and Washington, the other crooked politicians will roll out the red carpet for him and listen to his pilpul. And why should they not? He is the only politician in the world who can give the other politicians in the congress, White House and at the UN lessons in hypocrisy and how to connive.

Pope Francis is truly a religious charlatan whose hypocrisy knows no limits. When he changed his name from George (Jorge) , instead of Francis he should have called himself Caiaphas or maybe Pontius. But he should not be calling himself ‘The Vicar of Christ’. What he does, Christ did not do.

May The Lord Jesus graciously continue to save Roman Catholic souls and deliver them from the demonic clutches of the pedophile cult and anti-christ false religious system of Roman Catholicism. Please pray for the salvation of Roman Catholic people and for their clergy who mislead them with lies and hypocrisy and destroy their children.

James Jacob Prasch

New announcement from Jacob on the persecution and growth of believers in Israel

Sun, 20 Sep 2015 09:12:37 GMT

Blessings from Israel.

Despite its battles and opposition from Satan and harassment from unbelieving Orthodox Rabbinic Organizations such as Yad L’Achim, we are witnessing a wonderful tide of steady growth in the Body of Yeshua in Israel. Moriel is committed to helping indigenous congregations inane way we can especially in the area of evangelism. But growth creates challenges and presents needs. The increase in numbers of Jewish believers we are seeing has been a blessing that at one time would have been unfathomable.

Among other projects, Moriel is assisting a fast growing congregation of Israeli believers in Galilee.They have outgrown their old premises and located into a new one still being renovated with a view to using it for evangelistic outreach. It has been a step faith. It is our policy to only make needs known and not do fund raising drives except in exceptional circumstances of extreme need (eg. Earthquake appeals). We do however request prayer. There are also a number of needy immigrant families in this fellowship in need of assistance. We know that with prayer, god provides in His way and in His time. Please pray for Moriel’s ‘JERUSALEM EVANGELISM FUND’ as we work with local believers and congregations to ‘Bring The Good News of Yeshua Home Again To His Own People In Their Own Land’.

All we ask for is prayer. If any of our readers are led of The Lord to contribute to the work of The Lord in Israel, all funds so designated will be applied to that purpose only.

Donations can be made on-line but please include a note or email designating the funds for this “Local Congregation Expansion” or by post to any Moriel branch in any country in any major currency.

May The Lord God of Israel Bless You From Zion.

Is Dominionism Working?

Sun, 06 Sep 2015 09:18:44 GMT

Since the counterfeit revivals of the mid 80’s there has been a claim by many Latter Rain /Word of Faith groups that the church is going to take over the world, taking control of the governments, businesses and every other aspect of life. Movements such as the Toronto “Blessing”, Brownsville “Outpouring”, Word of Faith, New Apostolic Reformation, Emergent Church, and many other related Latter Rain movements have been claiming that they are making radical changes in people’s lives due to miracles, prophecies, dead raisings, and growing numbers of people attending mega churches. So by now, in 2014, we should be seeing the effects of this wonderful scenario that the false apostles, false prophets, false teachers, and false Christs of these movements have predicted.

Where is the actual proof that Dominion IS is working?

The answer is that what we’re seeing in society and in the church shows that it is not only NOT working but these Latter Rain features may actually be driving the world to hell and the church into apostasy faster than might have been otherwise. To prove my point I want to quote from the latest statistics put out in a new Harris Poll of 12/17/13 entitled “Americans’ Belief in God, Miracles and Heaven Declines – Belief in Darwin’s theory of evolution rises” to show you what is actually going on and then I will comment on it. However, just to further prove my point that the Latter Rainers don’t have a clue what is actually going on, notice the retitling of this Harris Poll in the CNS News article: “Poll: Americans’ Belief in God Is Strong–But Declining” Note the slant they give the facts that “belief in God is strong” because they are tied to the New Apostolic. But this facts was not the first thing I noticed about the Harris Poll.

New York, N.Y. – December 16, 2013 – A new Harris Poll finds that while a strong majority (74%) of U.S. adults do believe in God, this belief is in decline when compared to previous years as just over four in five (82%) expressed a belief in God in 2005, 2007 and 2009. Also, while majorities also believe in miracles (72%, down from 79% in 2005), heaven (68%, down from 75%), that Jesus is God or the Son of God (68%, down from 72%), the resurrection of Jesus Christ (65%, down from 70%), the survival of the soul after death (64%, down from 69%), the devil, hell (both at 58%, down from 62%) and the Virgin birth (57%, down from 60%), these are all down from previous Harris Polls.

Belief in Darwin’s theory of evolution, however, while well below levels recorded for belief in God, miracles and heaven, is up in comparison to 2005 findings (47%, up from 42%).

Absolute certainty that there is a God down vs. 10 years ago: In a separate line of questioning, focused on Americans’ degree of certainty that there is or is not a God, two thirds of Americans (68%) indicate being either absolutely or somewhat certain that there is a God, while 54% specify being absolutely certain; these figures represent drops of 11 and 12 percentage points, respectively, from 2003 testing, where combined certainty was at 79% and absolute certainty was at 66%.

Meanwhile, combined belief that there is no God (16%) and uncertainty as to whether or not there is a God (also 16%) are both up from 2003 findings (when these levels were 9% and 12%, respectively).

Outside of specific religious samples, the groups most likely to be absolutely certain there is a God include blacks (70%), Republicans (65%), Matures (62%) and Baby Boomers (60%), Southerners (61%) and Midwesterners (58%), and those with a high school education or less (60%). (emphasis mine).

So, to summarize, belief in God is down while belief in evolution is up. Almost any biblical believer would site the influences of secular schools, TV, movies, books and leaders who are Godless as a reason for these statistics. But many Christians, following the Dominionists, either willingly or unwittingly, are taught to believe that the Church will usher in the return of Christ by handing Him a Christian world on a silver platter. The fact of the matter is, the churches (not the Church) are the reason why this is happening. When the emphasis went off the Gospel and on to signs and wonders, church growth, seeker friendly, contemplative prayer, hyped up revivals with slain in the spirit, and now trending ever more heavily into Inclusivism and Universalism, this Harris Poll only documents the decline of true Christianity in this world and the rise of secularism, humanism, pop psychology, New Age, and pantheism. How can the world believe in God when they have no internal relationship on which to base that idea? A person has to be changed from the inside out by hearing and believing the Gospel message and repentance of sin. They cannot be “Christianized” from without because the Bible tells us that in the end times the churches will apostatize, not secure some glorious victory in this fallen world. This decline is happening because the Gospel has been left by the roadside.

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Fri, 15 May 2015 23:28:25 GMT

Seduction of the Hebrew Root Movement Part 1 of 2

Fri, 15 May 2015 23:14:12 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

Moriel has long urged the Body of Christ to rediscover the Hebrew root of its faith for four reasons.

The first is that the destiny of the church is bound up with God’s prophetic plan for the future of Israel and the Jews.

The second is that Christians need to evangelize the Jewish people, in recognition of the fact they remain the eternal people of God by covenant relationship and that the plan of God for the salvation of the nations is bound up with His plan for the salvation of Israel.

The third is that we need to understand the scriptures in their original Judaic con-text. We advocate that Christians familiarize themselves with the works of those who have understood this, from Alfred Edersheim to Arnold Fruchtenbaum. We have also tried to reacquaint the church with the lost art of Jewish hermeneutics in terms of New Testament uses of Midrash, and the illustrative Hebraic models of typology and allegory.

Fourth, the church needs to learn from Israel’s history and not repeat the same kind of mistakes as Israel. Israel’s history was written for our instruction. The church has replayed the mistakes of Israel and sometimes done worse.

Blinding the Church

Satan seeks to blind the church to the prophetic purposes of God for Israel in order to deceive the church about its own future. The exegesis of biblical prophecy that states that the Olivet Discourse and the Book of Revelation is only about God’s rejection and judgment on the apostate nation of Israel and not about the Last Days, is demonic in origin and dangerous to the church.

Satan also knows that the eschatological mysteries surrounding the return of Christ are sealed up, and a key to this unsealing will be understanding a Judaic approach to biblical interpretation. Where Satan is unable to blind Christians to the need to return to its Hebraic root, his alternative strategy is to corrupt that trend.

True and false Philo-Semitism

There are various areas in which Satan is attempting these seductions of the trend back towards the Hebrew Root.

The Christian Zionist Movement is not a monolith. There are good factions, ones that do some good but no harm, and others that are simply dead wrong.

Some are “over the top” about Israel and the Jews, often focusing on every-thing except the Messiah of the Jews or His command that we bring His message of salvation to His ancient people. Such Christian Zionist groups are as unbalanced and unscriptural on one extreme as are the replacementists denying the prophetic plan of God for Israel and the Jews on the other.

In order to justify not witnessing to Jewish people, these groups tend to pervert biblical passages such as Romans 10:14 and Isaiah 40:1-9.

They falsely claim that they can fulfill the church’s mission to Israel and the Jews with immigration programs, political and social programs, and inter-faith dialogue. This is not to suggest all of those involved in these organizations are intentional deceivers. On the contrary, while some of their leaders are plainly money grabbing heretics, many sincere people are misled into joining and supporting these deceptions.

Neither is it to suggest that all of what they do is wrong. The problem is that in trying to communicate Christian love to Israel to undo the damage done by Christian anti-Semitism, they leave out Christ and the whole purpose of God – they preach a Christless social gospel. The church must both proclaim God’s purpose in returning the Jews to their ancient land and the way of salvation. Some ministries indeed do both. Moriel endorses Church’s Ministry Among the Jews, Jews For Jesus, the Messianic Testimony, Chosen People Ministries, Ariel, the Lausanne Consultation On Jewish Evangelism, the Danish and Norwegian Missions To Israel, and Christian Witness To Israel, but warn against such deceptions as Bridges For Peace, Wings Of Eagles, the Ebenezer Fund, Christian Action For Israel, and above all the International Christian Embassy. Once examined biblically such agencies are deceptions and not of God.

The Messianic Movement, the true and the false

Messianic Judaism also has multiple trends within it, some scriptural, others not. Another aspect of Satan’s attempted seduction of the trend back to our He-brew root has been the lunatic fringe of the Messianic Movement.

This is characterized by so called ‘rabbis’ who are not, an emphasis that lifts up Judaism and Judaica, but rarely the King of the Jews, and seems good for little other than rebuilding the wall of partition that Yeshua died to break down.

To the detriment of seeing Jews saved, this unfortunate axis of Messianic Judaism has discredited Jewish belief in Jesus as being unJewish. Its make-believe rabbis have been debunked as charlatans by the orthodox (as happened in the case of Chuck Snow, an ex-messianic rabbi who renounced Yeshua after his ignorance of Judaism was demonstrated to him by a real rabbi), and in debates between real rabbis and the messianic fake ones.

Yeshua commanded believers not to use the term “rabbi” as a title (Matthew 23). This axis also ignores the fact that for all of the academic and apologetic value in studying it, the Rabbinic Judaism it imitates is a corruption of biblical Judaism that points people away from their own Messiah.

The Lord wants a Messianic Movement capable of pointing the Gentile Church back to a solid, biblical expression of what it is supposed to be, but instead many of the hyper-messianic extremists are into Toronto, Pensacola and the seductions destroying the Gentile Church.

Most Jews are skeptical of anything to do with Yeshua to begin with, and seeing the sick depravity of Toronto and Pensacola does not help.

While Moriel has sympathy for the more balanced and more biblical Hebrew Christian-Messianic Jewish Alliance, we must distance ourselves from the extreme lunatic fringe factions.

Women in leadership

What is perhaps most absurd is the fact that, contrary to both New Testament Christianity and Orthodox Judaism, the extreme axis of the Messianic Movement has women teaching mixed groups and in positions of senior leadership.

Both faiths allow women to teach other women, but to have women in leadership and teaching roles violates the teaching of the New Testament.

It also discredits the presentation of the gospel and offends the very orthodox Jewish community the messianic extremists supposedly try to imitate in order to reach with the gospel.

Moriel supports a biblical Messianic Judaism which is both Judaic and Christian. However, the issue of women in what observant Jews can only see as rabbinic roles, and, so functioning in these roles in rejection of the plain New Testament instruction, makes one question to what degree such extreme factions of the Messianic Movement can claim to be either Judaic or Christian.

There is hype, trappings, and trimmings but little substance.

Second class believers

The other thing that the extreme axis of the Messianic Movement appears good at is making non-Jewish believers feel like Second Class believers on the basis of race – as if Jewish birth, instead of New Birth, was a spiritual qualification.

In actual fact there are totally non-Jewish messianic writers, like Walter Riggins and Dwight Pryor, who are not only quite scholarly and adept in Hebrew rabbinics, but could very easily run rings round 90% of the Messianic Rabbis in terms of what they know about Hebraics and Judaism, not to mention the Word of God.

Judeo-Christian scholarship, the true and the false

The problems of Messianic extremism and non-evangelistic Christian Zionism are not new problems. What is new is Satan’s attempted corruption of Jewish hermeneutics and the use of the return to the Hebrew Root trend to undermine the Authority of God’s Word.

Liberal scholars are ci

ting Jewish mid-rash to justify dismissal of the historicity and doctrinal authority of Scripture, claiming midrash employed in the New Testament provides an alternative basis for establishing doctrine other than what is literally stated.

In no place does the Bible use allegory, typology, symbolism, or any midrashic material as the basis of doctrine. It is rather a mode of illustration of doctrinal truth.

In the Judaic midrashim we never see a denial of the historical authenticity of biblical accounts.

For decades the liberal theological establishment tried to dismiss the historicity of the Gospels and the authenticity of Apostolic doctrine on the basis that it was a creation of a later Gentile church. With the Dead Sea Scrolls supporting the compatibility of the gospels with First Century Jewish thought, and both conservative and Jewish scholars having demonstrated the familiarity of the gospel writers with the sitz im leben (cultural and life situation) of Second Temple Period Palestinian Judaism, the old liberal presuppositions are discredited. Since the newly demonstrated Jewishness of the gospels wreaks havoc with their old arguments, they must now invent seemingly Jewish (bogus) arguments to continue to argue against the historical and doctrinal truth of the scriptures. The lie is the same, but the method of telling it has changed.

The Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research

A further threat to the authority of scripture coming up through the Hebrew Root Movement is found within the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research.

This facility has expanded into a broader network of individuals looking for a better grasp of understanding of the scriptures from a Judaic perspective. I would not be prepared to dismiss all of the Jerusalem School as Satanic. I agree with the need for a scholarly investigation into the Hebraic nature of New Testament literature. There are things in the Jerusalem School with which I would agree. There are other aspects of it however that I can only regard as false and dangerous.

Bivin and Blizzard, in essence, argue that Jesus’ words, even affecting the meaning of His doctrinal pronouncements, can have a very different meaning from the way they are conventionally understood, because – they maintain – the original gospel documents are in He-brew, and the Greek translations are less than reliable translations in relating the actual meanings.

Indeed there is a credence in uncovering the underlying Hebraic thought pat-terns of the Greek texts, and this has as much to do with linguistics as it does sitz im leben.

However to suggest the reliability of Christian doctrine drawn from the Greek manuscripts must be brought into question is baseless.

No one reading the Greek text can determine linguistically if the manuscripts are translations from orally transmitted accounts of Jesus and His words from Aramaic or from Hebrew; both are similar semitic languages.

No one can tell an Aramism from a Hebraism by reading translations in a third language.

Only odd episodes record Hebrew being employed for vernacular purposes during the Second Temple Period. Most of the Qumran literature (apart from biblical manuscripts) are Aramaic, few are Hebrew and one Nabatean. The existing biblical manuscripts (with the possible exception of Matthew) tend to follow the Septuagint, and nothing akin to the Masoretic Hebrew.

The volume of codexes, manuscripts, and fragments of the gospels are astronomical in number. There are literally thousands, having no parallel in any of the Greek or Latin Classics. Yet not one is in Hebrew.

We do have an argument in Eusebius, which he traced back to the time of Heggisipus, that Matthew was originally Hebrew and there are source critical arguments for a Hebrew Matthew original.

But to suggest that the fundamental doctrinal meaning is therefore misunderstood, is absurd.

We have at least two good Hebrew translations of the New Testament. Neither determines a need to question again traditional Christian understanding of the gospels in a fundamental way based on linguistics.

We also have the Epistles, written to both Hebrew and Greek believers and communities of believers, which are inspired apostolic commentary on the gospels.

Traditional Christian understandings of doctrine in the gospels have never rested on the gospels alone, but how the Apostles understood, interpreted and applied them.

It is ludicrous how much time and effort has been wasted on the conjectures of the Jerusalem School. It is profitable for nothing other than casting unnecessary doubt on the credibility of an orthodox Evangelical understanding of the doctrinal content of the gospels.

The Jerusalem School trumpets the endorsement it receives from Rabbi David Flusser, admittedly a major scholar. Yet they fail to mention that his American counterpart, Rabbi Jacob Neusner dismisses their theory.

They also fail to note that David Flusser has an interest in giving a different meaning to the Words of Jesus. Flusser argues that Paul taught a different Christianity from Jesus, and seeks to establish a discontinuity between Pauline and Early Apostolic Christianity.

Learn More

Fri, 15 May 2015 16:22:09 GMT

Moriel Ministries new email News Alert is a publication which is sent directly to your inbox regularly, warning the body of Christ to Be Alert! for the present signs of the soon-to-be Returning King of kings and Lord of lords, our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

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Issue of Idol Worship

Fri, 15 May 2015 16:18:42 GMT

How can Hinduism and the Bible agree, when God says do not make any carved images of anything? “Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the LORD your God.

Exodus 20:4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. Leviticus 19:4 “‘Do not turn to idols or make gods of cast metal for yourselves. I am the LORD your God. Deuteronomy 4:16 so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, Deuteronomy 16:22 and do not erect a sacred stone, for these the LORD your God hates.

Deuteronomy 27:15 “Cursed is the man who carves an image or casts an idol–a thing detestable to the LORD, the work of the craftsman’s hands–and sets it up in secret.” John 4:24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

Issue of Re-Incarnation

The next distinction between Christianity and Hinduism are the beliefs of what happens once we die. While Christians believe in salvation of he soul and Hindu”s in “freedom” of the soul, the Hindu believes this is achieved through rebirth (re-incarnation). While most of us here in the west would say, “you only live once,” such a saying would be viewed as odd for a Hindu. If you mess up in this life, the Hindus believe you get another chance. You might be reborn to a lower form of life (a lower caste even), but at least your punishment is not eternal. Christianity is quite different. Only those who are “born again” will inherit eternal life through Jesus Christ. Those who are outside of God’s protection in Christ will be subject to an eternal destruction in a lake of fire. This may explain why the Hindu God(s) are more tolerant than the Christian God. If there is reincarnation and if there is no hell, Hindus can afford to be patient and to learn the long, hard way: by experience rather than by faith and revelation.

Issue of Scripture

In Christianity, the Word of God comes from only one source – the Holy Bible. The Word of God has a strict code of morals and basic life for humans to follow, just as the Hindu Gods in the Hindu scriptures do. However, the Hindus rely on many written sources for their faith: the Vedas, the Puranas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Manu Smirti.

How Do You Defend

Fri, 15 May 2015 16:18:29 GMT

The Philistine is powerful, the Philistine is aggressive, the Philistine is confident, the Philistine is haughty, and God’s people shake in their boots unable to defend their land from the invasion.

How can God protect Britain when the royal forces will allow a ship in the Royal Navy, her majesty”s vessel, to have a Satanist practicing his religion? But how can the Church of Jesus Christ stand against the onslaught of Darwinism, of militant homosexuality and lesbianism taking over the schools, teaching little children it”s normal, broadcasting their perversion on the BBC ” channel 4 and ITV ” with impunity?

How can the church stand against the tide of ecumenical deception, and not least of all if not most of all, how can it withstand the aggression of militant Islam in Birmingham, London, Manchester, Bradford, getting worse by the day, seeking to deprive Christians of their rights in this country they deprive us of in their own countries? And a government that will just give it to them. A Christian leader like Steve Chalke saying, “Well they can be loved to Christ”. We can”t beat them so we”ll just say they can be saved, too.

How can the church of Christ withstand the rise of a paganism when the Archbishop of Canterbury joins a Druid sect and ordains homosexuals himself?

How can I stop it? No wonder these people are confident. Looking at the church, if the church today were my opponent I would balk at them as well. The church is being mocked and deserves to be; it does not have the wherewithal. All of their battle plans fail, be it Teen Challenge, Alpha , Purpose Driven ” none of it can stop the invasion of the Philistine. He gets more aggressive, he gets more bold, he gets more haughty, he gets more aggressive, more assertive, more downright nasty.

And the so-called armies of the Lord cower to the point where a Christian leader will say, “They can belong to Christ, too”. Where a Colin Chapman will say, “They can be saved, too. We have to oppose Israel, but we have to embrace the Muslims”. That’s an evangelical; least he claims to be. Where a Stephen Sizer will turn his back on the persecuted church in the Middle East and embrace the Muslims who persecute them, ganging up on Israel, the one nation that protects the rights of Christians. “We give up; come, Goliath”. Goliath doesn’t give up. You”re not going to placate Goliath, he”s going to get more nasty; he”s demon-possessed.

Islam is demonic, New Age is demonic, Mormonism is demonic, it”s the fastest growing so-called Christian sect in this country. They are confident. The Mormons are confident. The Muslims are confident. Can you blame them when homosexuals and lesbians are being ordained? Can you blame militant homosexuality for being confident when the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the United Reformed Church will all ordain them? No wonder they”re confident. And anything they try to stop it fails.

Sermons in Japanese

Fri, 15 May 2015 16:15:31 GMT

Watchmen Who Are Not Watchmen

Fri, 15 May 2015 16:08:57 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

What Ever Happened To Matthew 24?

On Your Walls O Jerusalem I Have Appointed Watchmen; All Day And All Night they Will Never Keep Silent. You Who Remind the Lord Take No Rest For Yourselves (Isaiah 62:8).

The prophetic watchman of Jerusalem and Judah, then and now

It was Isaiah who first prophesied God would raise up watchman concerning the forthcoming events in the history of the Hebrews generally, and their country Judah specifically, with special reference to their capital Jerusalem, where the Temple and Holy Ark were located – God’s presence with them. As the events prophetically predicted by Isaiah unfolded we indeed see God calling the Prophet Ezekiel as the definitive watchman in the scriptural usage of the word (Ezekiel 3:17, 33:7), and it is Ezekiel that biblically most demonstrates what a watchman is and what he does.

But first we must note that it is not a term found in the New Testament, it firstly was an office for the ancient Hebrews. Therefore, although there are without doubt those functioning as ‘watchmen’ in the church, in order to grasp their raison d’etre we must first grasp their Old Testament nature exemplified in Ezekiel (the only individual specifically called a ‘watchman’). We need to understand some of the differences between Old and New Testament prophets (which despite the license that cessationists effectively issue themselves to pronounce passages of scripture not to their liking null and void, still do exist in the church – eg. 1 Corinthians 12:29 & 14:32).

One difference is not that Old Testament prophets had to be always right (Deuteronomy 18: 20-22), but since ‘we prophesy in part’, New Testament prophets could be part right and part wrong. Such perversions of 1 Corinthians 13 out of all reasonable context is the justification people in the Vineyard Movement invented to justify proven false prophets such as Mike Bickel, Paul Cain, Gerald Coates, and Rick Joyner to still be considered prophets after they made God’s people trust in a lie (Jeremiah 28:15-17). There is nothing in the grammatical construction of the Greek text warranting such a wild concept and nothing in the context even in an English translation. Like their cessationist opposites, these too pervert the text.

A prime difference between Old and New Testament prophets is that to have a prophetic ministry today even to Israel (or to any nation) one must be a saved believer whether Jew or Gentile, there were no saved believers in the New Testament sense before the Messiah. Additionally, Corinthians tells us prophetic ministry can also be to the church, which did not exist as such in the Old Testament. New Testament prophecy moreover may be purely for exhortation, edification and consolation (1 Corinthians 14:3), and may but need not necessarily contain a ‘watchman’ element in the Old Testament sense. Israel’s prophets warned and called the people back to the Torah in repentance as well as encouraging etc.

The most essential difference however is that Old Testament prophets wrote the canon of Old Covenant scripture as the Apostles wrote the New Testament. Even the Hebrew prophets warned and called the people back to the Law, and predicted on the basis of things written in the Hebrew canon before them (Daniel 9:2); but the entirety of the bible had not yet been written, so there was further doctrinal revelation. Now that the canon is complete there is no new doctrinal revelation (Revelation 22:18-19), only a clearer understanding in the Last Days of what is already in there (Daniel 12:4). As we read in the prologue of the Epistle To the Hebrews 1:1 ‘God in times long past spoke to the patriarchs in prophets in many ways, but in the Last Days He has spoken to us through His Son’. Thus any predictive prophetic ministry in the form of warning as in a ‘watchman’s’ function will need not only be in character with the prophetic watchman of ancient Israel such as Ezekiel, but be in accord with what is already revealed in both the New Testament and in the Old Testament as the Old Covenant is interpreted and fulfilled in the New Testament revelation in and of Christ.

Looking at the biblical character and nature of watchmen however we see that so much of what is being promoted as ‘Watchman Ministries’ are actually the mere devices of men out of character with the biblical model. Again, in the bible as we saw with Ezekiel, the watchman ministry often had particular although not exclusive reference to Jerusalem and Judah. It is therefore no coincidence that the first major example of New Testament prophetic ministry was by Agabus specifically concerning the plight of the believers in Jerusalem and Judah (Acts11:27-30). As we note, when God commissioned the watchman, he was also to be an assayer of the people. Ezekiel called the people to repentance and denounced the lunacy and deceivers who misled the nation. Thus understood biblically any watchman in Jerusalem today will be in that character – calling the Jewish nation to repent and accept Yeshua as Messiah and warn against the lunatics and deceivers for which Jerusalem is a virtual magnet. Today however there are unscriptural organizations sucking large sums of mission support from Jewish and Arab evangelism and the local Israeli congregations refusing to preach Jesus in Jerusalem to His own people. These include ‘Bridges For Peace’ (when biblically there can be no peace without ‘the Prince of Peace’) and the so-called International Christian Embassy with its notorious history of infighting and heresy and in one case violence perpetrated against an Israeli Messianic Jew while he was preaching the gospel by the embassy’s Jim Schutz and threats by embassy personal on another occasion, that included hostility towards believing Jewish children during their ‘Feast of Tabernacles’. God’s Word of course teaches the only Christian ambassadors in Jerusalem are those who preach Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20) and no other.

A major Christian magazine, itself known for its endorsement of hyper charismatic extremism, exposed Ruth Hefflin’s group on the Mount of Olives who displayed footage of women with “miraculous gold dust in their hair”. A metallurgical analysis however revealed it was plastic based stationery glitter. Hefflin’s miracle gold was exposed as bogus. Yet her followers seem to claim a prophetic calling in Jerusalem! Perhaps the saddest excuse for a watchman in Jerusalem has become Lance Lambert who teamed up with the most extreme example of Toronto style ‘charismania’ ever captured on video in the person of Mahesh Chavada. The antics of shirtless people yodelling and swinging swords in church yelling ‘Prepare For War’ in a manifest sons style ritual was the most bizarre demonstration of charismatic chao

s imaginable. Chavada has in the past been associated with the Christian Embassy ( who have imported a variety of heretics into Israel including Morris Cerullo), but despite the protestations of many of his friends, Mr. Lambert joined his colleague Chavada in the Cranbourne fiasco. Biblical watchmen in Jerusalem, as assayers of the people, tried to protect God’s people from lunacy and deception. While Mr. Lambert is misrepresented as a watchman in Jerusalem, far from protecting God’s people from deception and lunacy he in fact joins forces with it. Whatever Lance Lambert may be, he is certainly no watchman.

Israel and Jewish ministry are breeding grounds for every assortment of ‘kooks’ imaginable, including false watchmen. Genuine messianic bible teachers explaining the original Jewish context of the scriptures like Arnold Fruchtenbaum and Dwight Pryor must contend with the competition from proven heretics like Joseph B. Goode and Peter Michas (who deny the Tri-unity of the God Head as One God in Three Persons). They are heretics who are ignorant of Hebraics and Rabbinics, yet represent themselves as Messianic Bible Teachers teaching Hebrew Roots, and are likewise seen by their followers as watchmen, but aren’t. Perhaps the most notorious false watchman of this category has been Michael Brown of the Brownsville Assembly of God clone of the Toronto deception in Pensacola. At a Jerusalem messianic conference several years ago Brown interpreted the national disaster of forest fires destroying nearly a quarter of Israel’s reforested land as emblematic of ‘God pouring out His Spirit’. Brown then had people up half the night awaiting a second Pentecost in Jerusalem! Nothing of course happened, and not surprisingly Brown wound up a ‘watchman’ in Pensacola.

Finally, watchman were most of all as Isaiah stipulated, ‘to remind the Lord’ of His covenant promises to Israel and give themselves no rest in the process. The Covenant promise of course is the New covenant promised to Israel and Judah (Jeremiah 31:31). The emphasis of a real watchman in Jerusalem will always be prayer and intercession reminding the Lord of His promise to save Israel (Romans 11:25). Some of the counterfeit watchmen today are influenced by the ‘identity movement’ deceptions related to the myth of British Israelism, such as are propagated in Northern Ireland by Elim’s Jim McConnell at Whitewell in Belfast. Such nonsense of course is void of any serious biblical or anthropological merit and in certain cases its proponents are clearly anti Semitic. As such, these ‘would be’ watchmen are given to the doctrinal errors of supercessionism or replacement theology and the hideous notions of such teachers of error as the late Charles Alexander (other more moderate reformed preachers like Charles Spurgeon affirmed the prophetic purposes of God for Israel and the Jews as did the Puritans). Therefore such people must automatically divorce ‘watchman ministry’ from its biblical context, which is first of all largely Judaic. This is simply not scriptural. Even when we apply the watchman ministry to the church, the same principles seen for example in Ezekiel must still apply or they cannot be legitimate watchmen.

The preachers who cried ‘wolf!’

Another contemporary category of watchmen who are not watchmen is more painful to describe. These are not all necessarily wilful deceivers, false prophets, hyper charismatic lunatics, religious con artists, anti Semites, or heretics. On the contrary, most are sincere believers, genuine in their motives, and often people otherwise gifted for a valid ministry – which they should stick to instead of trying to play a role God has plainly not called them to fulfill. In the aftermath of the Y2K foolishness, we speak of course of ‘The Preachers Who Cried Wolf’. These are true brethren who are na ¯ve, lacking in discernment, and in certain areas deficient in spiritual wisdom and Christian maturity. Above all they proved themselves as not having the depth of doctrinal and theological grasp of scripture they imagined they did. I am not prepared to judge them or their motives. If their open folly was a matter of pride, ignorance, or just plain gullibility or some combination of these things I am not prepared to say. Yet, as we read in 1 Thessalonians, such crazy things created problems in the apostolic church at the close of the First century. This precise kind of foolishness continued throughout the church age from the Montanists at the close of the Second Century to Pope Sylvester’s hollow parousia at the close of the 10th century when the second Julian millennium began, to the Munster Anabaptists at the close of the 16th century, to the Shakers at the close of the 18th Century, to the Millerites at the close of the 19th Century. Is it any surprise it has occurred again at the close of the 20th century? As Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones said; “If we fail to learn the lessons of church history we are doomed to repeat the errors”. Thanks to the watchmen who are not watchmen, we have.

It is no coincidence that many of these ‘self proclaimed instead of God ordained’ watchmen, such as Morris Cerullo advocate Grant Jeffrey, similarly went with the Bible Codes absurdity, and other such groundless fads. The real problem however is not as much with the watchmen who are not watchmen, but with those who continue following these fads. Sadly, this fad-to-fad pattern exactly mimics the behavior of the people who still follow false prophets with failed prophetic predictions of Revival from Kansas City to Toronto to Pensacola (the latest is Wykoff, New Jersey and some little town in Missouri) even though they know they were wrong the last time (Jeremiah 5:30-31). Concerning things like Y2K, there is in the secular world a certain unstable and insecure personality type identified even by secular psychiatric medicine with an almost paranoid predisposition to conspiracy theories. They piece together odd bits of vaguely related data and conjecture a grand conspiracy theory which they become convinced is fact and it becomes their obsession to alert everyone. I do not hold much belief in secular psychology, but this is indeed a compulsive disorder. This is not to belittle the kind of deception that exists in the world of global politics. Many very knowledgeable people never doubted the American government for instance conspired to cover up essential facts about the Kennedy assassination involving dubious activity by the intelligence community. This however was born out of forensic investigation and investigative journalism, not wild speculation.

The problem for the church comes when these kinds of people become Christians and retain their paranoid concoctions, repackaging them under the eschatological guise of end times biblical prophecy, and call it a ‘watchman ministry’ of some description. The Internet is literally loaded with such irresponsible rubbish. It is the devotees of such silly rambling that swallowed the Y2K foolishness.

I do not doubt that Freemasonry is demonic, influenced by Felix Weisshaupt’s illuminism and is something no saved Christian should ever be a member of. Many of the most pivotal figures in the sphere of international finance, law and politics are Freemasons. But to argue vociferously as some do that a Masonic conspiracy exists to seat the anti Christ in control of the global economy is unwarranted. There are clearly plans of Satan afoot today with de facto conspiracies to reunite Christendom under the anti Christ institution of the Roman Catholic papacy. But this view is not based on conjecture, but rather published and substantiated fact. So too are plans to ramrod Great Britain into a federal Europe at the expense of sovereignty and some would say political liberty without what many people would consider democratic process. Events in Europe a

nd the Middle East today are of tremendous prophetic significance and there is much going on of a conspiratorial nature. But investigating such things requires both a sound biblical position, and sanctified journalistic skills.

There are those such as Christian journalist David Dolan or University journalism lecturer Bill Alnor whom God has called to review current events with a biblical eye. But God has rather called Chuck Missler to biblical exposition and Barry Smith to evangelism. For me it has been a personal tragedy to see, among others, two such outstanding brothers make public fools of themselves, discredit their ministry, and eclipse much of the good they have otherwise achieved with a preposterous level of unfounded, badly researched, and unbiblical alarmism that only a low grade tabloid would publish. Their videos have gone out, and now the world is laughing at us, and Moriel is being deluged with complaints of people who feel misled by ministries we endorsed. In fact, Moriel promoted Dave Hunt’s book on Y2K calling it ‘mass hysteria’. While I felt no need to do so personally, I do not fault those who picked up a few cases of long shelf life food and extra batteries as a precaution. But Jesus said not to be anxious about what we eat etc., yet in open defiance of His command there were those preachers going around to churches delivering seminars promoting anxiety.

A watchman on Zion’s walls would blow a clear series of notes with his trumpet that sounded a proper alarm (Joel 2:1,Jeremiah 4:5, Hosea 8:1, Amos 3:16). A cacophony of mixed notes tells no one anything but only generates further confusion (1 Corinthians 14:8). People look to leaders for clear, unmixed signals. Instead today they are getting mixed signals only compounding the confusion. When David Pawson’s followers looked to him for a clear biblical direction on the last days deception of the Toronto Experience he wrote a book entitled: ‘Is the Blessing Biblical?’. It gave just such a mixed signal, saying that the light was neither red nor green, but yellow – and concluded telling people to proceed into Toronto with caution. The light in fact was red. The Fruit of the Holy Spirit is self control (ekreitei), not the lack of it, and as true watchmen predicted no revival came from Toronto. The fact it was a mixture of good and bad indicated it was an impurity (akatharsis) proving it was not of God (Greek text of 1 Thessalonians 2:3), and the fact that it mixed true doctrine with error (parasouxousin) proved it was a deception (Greek text of 2 Peter 2:2). David Pawson himself watched the videos of Rodney Howard Browne and Kenneth Copeland yet, as Isaiah predicted leaders one day would, he tottered when rendering judgment while they reeled with wine (Isaiah 28:7). In these Last Days we don’t need those who totter and send mixed signals, but watchmen who sound a clear alarm. Neither do we need watchmen who are not watchmen sounding false alarms. Several years ago Barry Smith issued a public statement distancing himself from my stated opposition to the Toronto Experience, as he himself had been preaching in churches that were into this deception, (although he himself was not). My argument was that Jesus never told us to make converts but disciples, and placing converts into Toronto churches such as Richmond Assembly of God in Melbourne, Australia was not biblical discipleship. Indeed, Jesus told the Pharisees that they went to the ends of the earth for one convert and made him twice the son of hell as themselves. Under Brian Houston and his predecessor Andrew Evans the Australia Assemblies of God has become a whirlwind of everything from the hype artistry of Hill Song to the heresy of Benny Hinn. It has gone almost as far away from the bible as Elim in the UK.

I say it not to criticize Brother Barry, yet I myself turned down TV programs offered to me in both America and Britain because I would not associate with heresy. Each day I ask the Lord not to allow the work of the Lord, as important as it is, to become more important to me than the Lord of the work, lest the ministry itself becomes an idol. The day I compromise biblical truth to get a platform is the day there is no further point in me even having a platform as far as God is concerned. Brother Barry stated in his published announcement about me that ‘God called him not to criticize but to preach the gospel and to prepare the church for the last days’. When a gospel preacher places people saved under his ministry into zoos instead of bible-based churches, there is a serious deviation from God’s bible stated standards. In the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24&25, Luke 21), Jesus warned of Middle East events surrounding Jerusalem: wars, rumors of wars, pestilence, and increased famines and earthquakes once each. However Jesus warned of deception perpetrated against the elect and false prophets four times. He did not warn of computer failures causing widespread chaos even once. If someone is called to prepare the church for the last days, why do they not concentrate on alerting the church to the rife deception as Jesus said, in the very churches they preach in – instead of compromising what Jesus said for the sake of keeping a platform in order to concentrate on alerting the church about things Jesus never even mentioned as signs of the end such as Y2K, and making themselves look utterly ridiculous in the process?

Predictably, the most extreme proponents of Y2K mania were not Pentecostals, but hyper-calvinists such as Reconstructionist Gary North, D. James Kennedy and R.C. Sproul as well as the more moderately Calvinistic Jerry Falwell. The Post millennialism of Calvinism is one pillar of Dominion (‘Kingdom Now’) theology, while charismania and extreme Pentecostalism the other pillar. So too, Calvinistic determinism was a pillar of American slavery and South African Apartheid and it is one pillar of prosperity theology, while Charismania and hyper-Pentecostalism, represented by sensationalists like Jeffrey, are the other. It is therefore not surprising that both extreme Pentecostals and extreme charismatics were but one faction caught up in the Y2K frenzy, while hyper-Calvinists were the other. Worst of all was the virtual scare mongering of Michael Hyatt propagated with the assistance of James Dobson’s ‘Focus On the Family’. I have never had any regard whatsoever for the so called ministries of an anti Israel theonomist like Gary North, much less an out and out son of Judas like Jerry Falwell who among other outrages commended Korean anti Christ Sun Yung Moon (who claims to be ‘Lord of the Second Advent’; eg. ‘The returned Christ’) as “an unsung hero”. As was noted by Hank Hanegraaff, Grant Jeffrey has a track record that had already established him as a crackpot. But I personally however have always appreciated the ministries of both Chuck Missler and Barry Smith, as I have to a lesser degree appreciated R.C. Sproul, (at least for his anti ecumenical stance), and for their sakes as well I am very sorry to see the Y2K rubbish leaving them looking like a public spectacle. May the Lord provide the grace to prevent me from going off into the futility of some ludicrous speculation. When a gifted minister of the Word deviates away from the Word into a focus of his own design, he winds up reducing himself to the level of a crackpot. Here lies the unfortunate result, because both

Barry and Chuck are not crackpots. Yet that is precisely what their Y2K antics have been left appearing to be.

Some of the Y2K crowd, for all of their outlandish folly and the damage they have done to the church and to themselves, are still our brothers in Christ (such as Barry Smith and Chuck Missler). They are not those impostors of the Last Days who are deceiving and being deceived mentioned in 2 Timothy 3:13 – so why did they behave like them?

The real problem however is not that their predictions of nuclear cataclysm, mass power failures, social and political calamity, huge air crash disasters, and a global economic meltdown did not happen (Italy spent only 1.5 million pounds on Y2K preparation compared to Britain’s nearly half billion and nothing happened in Italy). The real problem is that when events that are truly of some crucial prophetic importance take place and the real watchman sound the alarm, the world and indeed much of the church will now think it is just another false alarm. I hate to say anything good about the devil, but he certainly knows his business. If he can use misguided Christians to engineer deception and mislead the church, what better pawns can he have? The Last Days are too serious a time and biblical prophecy too serious a subject for those clearly not called to it to pretend that they are and hurt the church. We must have real watchmen. Let us pray that the watchman who are not watchmen will display the integrity to apologize to the body and ask God to repair the damage done to the church’s credibility and to their own.

The false Maccabees, Ruckmanites, Constance Cumby, and the Cyber-cult

In Daniel 11: 33-35 we read what some theologians term a ‘double prophecy’. Daniel makes a prediction of what Matthias the Maccabee and his sons John, Eleazar, Jonathan, and Yehudah would do in the face of the deception of Antiochus IV (known as Epiphanus) who slaughtered a swine in the temple, outlawed Jewish observance of the Torah, hellenised and paganised the popular culture, and set up an image of Zeus in the temple with his own features. He was of course a major type of the anti Christ and up to verse 36 of the chapter there was a historic fulfillment by this mad Selucid King. The anti Christ will replay the saga of Antiochus Epiphanus and recapitulate his deeds, then after verse 36 go even further. Like Antiochus he will achieve much of this by intrigue and deceit (we explain this on the Daniel & Maccabees tapes and video series). As at that time there were the Maccabees who gave understanding to the many, so too in the last days ‘those who know their God will take action’ when the covenant is violated.

I have no doubt that the Ecumenical movement is a prelude to the rebirth of Babylon the Great in Revelation and that deceptions like Pensacola are preludes to the Great apostasy of Thessalonians. With the current drive for a false peace with Islam in Israel and the reconfederation of the Roman Empire via a pseudo-democratic federal Europe, the juxtaposition of these trends and the constellation of events that result indeed are setting the stage for the Man of Sin which Antiochus, among others, typifies and foreshadows (explained in greater depth on ‘The Judeo-Christian Understanding of the Antichrist’ tape and video series). There will be those who know their God, will take action, and give insight to the many. But as in the days of Antiochus, there will likewise be those who join with them in hypocrisy and betray them (two of the original Maccabees were killed as a result of internal betrayal). However, we already see the embryo of this in existence. There are those pretending to be watchmen, alerting the church, allies in the cause of truth calling themselves ‘Discernment Ministries’; but who are largely a collection of charlatans, frauds, and deceivers with their own agenda who already betray the cause.

These people have much in common and tend to imitate each other, akin to the conspiracy theorists operating along the same kind of line. They postulate things on the basis of conjecture, and those not agreeing with them are branded as false or even New Agers in disguise.

Constance Cumby, who herself has published statements supportive of Roman Catholicism, has attacked Dave Hunt. Kevin Burgess (a real ‘cyberworld fruit cake’ if there ever was one) has attacked Mike Oppenheimer, a Jewish brother who directs the Hawaii based TV and radio discernment ministry ‘Come Let Us Reason’. Tex Marrs has attacked a host of good people including Dave Hunt. Two things seem to characterize these false watchman. The first is that they are ‘would be’ Christian academics who merely have theological veneers with no real background in any scholarly sense in the matters in which they profess expertise. One need not be an intellectual to be a minister or have discernment, but one must have the qualifications to know what one is talking about. Peter, in his epistle, left scholarly matters to Paul, and some scholarly matters Paul appears to have left to Apollos. People of this ilk such as Gail Riplinger, Barbara Aho, Victoria Dillen, Wendy Howard and Richard Engstrom would be laughed out of any academic forum, but sincere believers not trained in academic theology can be sucked in by their endless production of nonsense, often bordering on pure idiocy. The second thing that defines the false watchmen of this category is their ceaseless propensity to defame and slander true watchmen.

The foundational strata of these false Maccabees are undoubtedly the Ruckmanites, named after their patriarch Peter Ruckman, who is on his third marriage after yet another divorce. Ruckman holds the view that the King James Version of the bible is the only one authorized by God to the point of virtual heresy, claiming that even the additions of the 1611 edition not found in ancient manuscripts are further revelation. Not all of Ruckmanites agree with all of Ruckman’s extremes, but they are all influenced by him. The worst of these is Gail Riplinger, who was debunked as a charlatan and a fraud when Christian Research Institute revealed that she can not even read Greek and that her academic credentials are not in theology or in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic manuscript analysis (basic skills as essential in bible translation as anatomy and physiology are in medicine, or mathematics is in engineering) but absurdity of absurdities, rather in home economics! Unfortunately, instead a writing a thesis on cost effective detergents which she may be qualified to do, she published an outlandish book on ‘New Age Bible Versions’, doing more harm to the cause of protecting textual orthodoxy from paraphrases, Roman Catholic annotated bibles, and the censored and politically correct ‘inclusive version’ (dealt with on our tape ‘Bible Versions’).

Let me state that Moriel and I have no problem with the KJV, I read it devotionally myself. And I respect how God in times past has used it. More to the point, who cannot value the noble heritage of Wycliffe, Tyndale, and Coverdale from whose labors it arises? I am additionally perfectly open to considering serious scholarly arguments from academically qualified Christian sources concerning their theories of Textus Receptus etc. (again, we refer our readers to our own audio on the subject). But these people will have no association with Ruckman or Gail Riplinger. The Trinitarian Bible Society as one example made it clear in print that they do not wish to be identified with her or her book. There have been excellent books on the reliability of New Testament manuscripts authored by reliable scholars such as F.F. Bruce and Dr. Craig Blohmberg. Ruckman, Engstrom, Aho, Dillen, Marrs and Riplinger however are not scholars. Neither are they watchmen. They are mere fakers who only wish they were and pretend to be.

Again the pseudo-academic pretense of these people is at times laughable. When E

ngstrom was confronted with my response to his nonsensical insistence that the New Testament did not use Midrash citing two known scholars (R.N. Longenecker and John Lightfoot), he reacted by saying only two scholars ever agreed with me (after implying at first there were none). Had Engstrom read Longenecker’s bibliography before replying to me on Internet, he would have seen that there are at least 58, and not made a public joke of himself! Another case was Paul Fahy who objected to our critique of the Reformers as not having gone far enough and took exception to our views on the Judaic background of the New Testament. Among other things he insisted that Paul used Greco-Roman concepts such as a Roman legionnaire’s armor, not knowing that Paul’s usage was simply a recontextualisation of the Hebrew armor straight out of Isaiah 59:17 & Isaiah 52:7. He also asserted that he knew of no scholar who ever attributed Gnostic influences to Augustine, while every first year seminary student knows that Augustine had been a member of the Gnostic Manichean sect. While no scholarly source would attribute any credibility to such people, the average well meaning Christian unfortunately just may.

Along a similar line is hyper-Calvinist Peter Glover, who ignorantly equated Midrash with gnosticism, only to have it pointed out in the public arena that it was a renowned Puritan hyper-Calvinist theologian who first documented Midrash in the New Testament and wrote the first Midrashic commentary on the New Testament. Like Cumby who assails other discernment ministries while she herself is party to serious doctrinal error and ecumenical deception, Glover, likewise attacking other valid discernment ministries such as Michael Penfold professes to be an anti charismatic/anti Pentecostal. Yet he himself teamed up with Patrick Dixon in an AIDS charity. Dixon is the most extreme and experiential of charismatics who is a virtual mystic and who teaches New Age experiences such as ‘Altered States of Consciousness’ as manifestations of the Holy Spirit and grounds for irrational behavior.

We again point out that while generally having the beliefs of Ruckman and Riplinger about the King James Version etc. and being clearly influenced by them, not all follow them to the same degree. Yet, Cyber cultists like Aho, Dillen, Thomas Lamb, and Engstrom with their Ruckmanite and identity movement leanings can be operationally compared to small time gangsters. They do not have the organization, crooked lawyers, money-laundering accountants, or power of a professional criminal. This is like what happens when the cyber cultists get access to the Internet. Most cyber cultists have no church membership, do no evangelism, discipleship or anything else biblically ordained as a normal aspect of Christian discipleship. Theirs is mainly a cyber church where like their paranoid conspiracy theorist counterparts of the secular world they carry on the latest conjecture and attack anyone not getting on board, once more only revealing their ignorance each step of the way.

One recent example of this was their aversions to ‘The Star of David’. This aversion is partially shaped by the anti Semitism of the identity movement with which the cyber cult is favored. The identity movement in turn is influenced not only by British Israelism but by the misogenic Manifest Sons/Latter Day Rain heretic William Branham who held to serpent seed beliefs and cursed the Trinity. It is no coincidence for example that Engstrom’s partner in the “US1” email network circulates email statements supportive of Branham.

In fact in Judaism, what non-Jews wrongly call the Star of David is actually known as ‘The Shield of David’ or Magen David and is not seen as a star. Its rabbinic interpretation is the configuration of the 12 tribes around the holy Ark sojourning through the wilderness. It was indeed a pre Christian pagan symbol in Babylon, Phoenicia, and Egypt. But only as the cross was a pre Christian pagan symbol in Celtic Britain and Ireland. The menorah, not the Star of David was the actual ancient symbol of the Jews (and is still the symbol of the State of Israel and the official seal on Israeli government legal documents). So too, the fish, not the cross was the original Christian symbol. The fish also had been a pagan symbol of worship of the fish god dagon (as in the Old Testament). It is a five star pentagram that is a satanic emblem, not a six pointed Star of David. Both these Christian and Jewish symbols had pagan equivalents. The Hebrew Temple had architectural parallels in pagan Egypt and the Flood Narrative in Genesis has a literary parody in the Myth of Gilgemesh and the Masonic Jahbalon is a trinity. Do surface parallelisms dismiss something as evil?

It is rather what the symbol means in a given historical setting and cultural context that determines if it is evil or not. The American manned space program carried project names like Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, but no one identified these project names with pagan deities or astrology or labeled them inherently demonic. Cyber cultist however, driven by a combination of theological ignorance and paranoia can do no other. Again, we are dealing with charlatanism. There are very good Christian researchers like Dr. John Weldon, Dr. Ron Rhodes, and Dr. Tal Brooks who are bona fide experts on cultic influence. There are superb Christian experts on the occult such as Dr. Curt Koch. We have an anthropological and archaeological masterpiece ‘The Two Babylons’ by Alexander Hislop documenting the influx of pagan symbolism into Christendom. The Ahos, Dillens, Howards, and Engstroms of the cyber cult however are not anthropologists, archaeologists, psychologists or theologians. They are basically an unbalanced fringe element who are but false Maccabees posing as the watchmen they are not.

You have read about the watchmen who are not, now here are some who are. One thing the Body of Christ needs in these Last Days are true watchmen. We need people who are bible based, and who operate valid discernment ministries to alert the church and give understanding to the many, as Daniel predicted by the Holy Spirit would rise up. These legitimately help prepare the church for the End Times in the correct biblical sense. Among others (as of February 2000), Jacob Prasch & Moriel are pleased to endorse the following Watchmen ministries as true ones. We may not agree with every aspect of their ministry, nor they with every aspect of ours, but we stand by them as comrades in Christ’s cause and we sanction them as honest and credible voices for truth and righteousness in an age of deception and compromise who are worthy of the prayers and support of concerned believers.

The Berean Call (Dave Hunt & Tom McMahon)

Belfast Berean (Mark McAlister)

Media Spotlight (Al Dagger)

Apostasy Alert (Jackie Alnor)

CWM (Philip Powell)

Eddy Cheong Ministries (Dr. Eddy Cheong)

St. Matthew Publishing (Philip Foster)

PWM (Clifford Hill & David Noakes)

Spirit of 88 (Michael De Semlyn)

Living Word (Gary Hall)

Bread Upon the Water (Bill Brehm)

Christian Voice (Stephen Green)

Light For the Last Days (Tony Pearce)

Take Heed Ministries (Cecil Andrews)

Come Let Us Reason (Mike Oppenheimer)

Personal Freedom Outreach (Dick Fisher)

Utah Lighthouse Ministry (Sandra Tanner)

Reach Out Trust (Doug Harris)

Discernment in the Church (Sandy Simpson)

Discernment Ministries (Jewel van der Merwe)

Kings Divinity School (Calvin Smith)

How Can Jesus Be an Angel?

Fri, 15 May 2015 16:08:39 GMT

And so I look at the Scriptures in the original languages. That is one of my questions. Having read The New World Translation and the diaglot, I had problems with what the original Greek manuscript said and the way certain things were translated. But let me begin with my first question.

I”m reading from the epistle to the Hebrews in chapter 1. Beginning in verse 5â€¦

For to which of the angels did He ever say,

“You are My Son,

Today I have begotten You”?

And again,

“I will be a Father to Him

And He shall be a Son to Me”?

And when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says,

“And let all the angels of God worship Him.”

And of the angels He says,

“Who makes His angels winds,

And His ministers a flame of fire.”

But of the Son He says,

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,

And the righteous scepter is the scepter of His kingdom.

You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness;

Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You

With the oil of gladness above Your companions.”

And,

“You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth,

And the heavens are the works of Your hands;

They will perish, but You remain;

And they all will become old like a garment,

And like a mantle You will roll them up;

Like a garment they will also be changed.

But You are the same,

And Your years will not come to an end.”

But to which of the angels has He ever said,

“Sit at My right hand,

Until I make Your enemies

A footstool for Your feet”?

Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?

I agree with the Jehovah’s Witnesses that there are angels. But the Jehovah’s Witnesses told me something that I researched: They said that Jesus was an angel. They identified Him with the angel Michael the Archangel. The idea that Jesus was an angel was something that began with someone called Arius of Alexandria in the early centuries of Christendom. And the Jehovah’s Witnesses had this view that He was an angel, not God. They will say He is “a god”.

Now there’s a problem. “En arche kai ho logos“. “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. ( Jn 1:1 ) My Jehovah’s Witness friends told me that in The New World Translation it says “a god”; the Word was “a god”. But there is no indefinite article in the Greek language.

In the book of Isaiah Jehovah says, “I am God and there is no God other than Me”. ( Is. 45:5 ) If there”s no God other than Jehovah, and there is no indefinite article ” “a god” ” in the Greek language (and in that text it”s not there), how can Jesus only be “a god” if there”s only one God? That is the question. I”ve never been able to find somebody who could answer.

When I simply ask the question they say the word “trinity” is not in the Bible. But you know, my Jehovah’s Witness friends would use words like “theocratic rule” and “millennial kingdom”. Now I believe in a millennial kingdom, but the word “millennial kingdom” and “millennium” are not in the Bible. The doctrine of the millennium is in the Bible but the word isn”t. I don’t understand why it is acceptable to use words not in the Bible for some things but not for others. Do I reject the millennial reign of Christ or a millennial rule because there’s no word “millennium”? No, I don’t. The question is not, “Is the word “millennium” in there?”, the question is, “Is the doctrine, the teaching in there?” Well, it is. I agree with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, there is a millennium.

Now I have an advantage a lot of people don”t have. The name of God they call “Jehovah”, and they insist that is His personal name. But speaking Hebrew I was kind of startled how few Jehovah’s Witnesses knew what it meant. In Hebrew it does not say “Jehovah”, it says “ Yehowah “. Some people pronounce it “ Yahweh “. “Jehovah” is another word based on “ Yehowah “, but they didn’t know where it came from. So I told them where it came from.

There was a hymn written by someone who was not a Jehovah”s Witness, Guide Me Now , O Great Jehovah . But the term came from Diaspora Jews in Europe. Jews considered the name of Yahweh ineffable ” inutterable, for fear of taking it in vain. So they either referred to God as “the Name” ” “Hashem ” or they referred to God as “the Lord”. When an Orthodox Jew reads the Old Testament, when it says “ Yahweh ” he says “Lord” ” “ Adonai “. So what they did was they took the accents and syllables of “ Adonai ” ” “Lord”, and combined it with the word “ Yehowah “. “Yehowah Adonai Yehowah” ” “Jehovah”. That”s how they got it.

I met many Jehovah’s Witnesses who would insist on believing these things ” some of them true things ” but they didn’t know where they came from or what they meant. Well, I have no problem saying “Jehovah”, but His name is “Yahweh“. “Jehovah” is a made-up word combining “Yahweh” with “Adonai“. However, to say that Jesus was only “a god” when there”s only one God, this brings a question. I was told He was an angel. My question is this: In verse 8 of Hebrews 1 it saysâ€¦

â€¦ “Your throne, O God, is foreverâ€¦

â€¦and it quotes from Psalm 45:6-7 â€¦

Your throne, O God, is forever and ever;

A scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Your kingdom.

You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;

Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You

With the oil of joy above Your fellows.

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, and the word here for “God” is “God” ” “ Elohim “. But the Lord has “anointed” somebody. That word “anointed” is where we get the word “Messiah” ” “ Mashiach ” in Hebrew, translated to Greek, “ Christo ” ” “Christ”. And so the epistle of the Hebrews tells us that Psalm 45 is talking about the Anointed One, the Messiah ” Christ. And I agree with it. It”s a good translation into Greek from Hebrew. And I just read you a good translation from Greek into English. This is my question: if Christ it’s called God and there is only one God, and if Hebrews 1 makes it clear He was not just an angel but if Hebrews 1 by comparison says, “To which one of the angels did God ever say “Your throne, O God, is forever””, how can you say Jesus is simply an angel?

Hebrews 1 says, “Let the angels of God worship Jesus” in verse 6. Why would they worship Him if he was not God? The Greek word is “ proskynesatosan “, from the word “ proskuto ” ” “worship”. It”s not “obeisance”, it is translated from the Hebrew “ hishtachvaya ” and there”s an accusative particle: They worship Him . Please answer me that question. How can He be an angel when Hebrews 1 says He’s not and the angels worship Him? How can He only be “a god” when there’s only one God? “I”m the Lord, your God, you”ll have no gods before Me”. ( Dt. 5:6-7 )

Questions are always asked of me. I don’t mind when people answer my questions with a question as long as they eventually give me the answer. But so far I haven’t gotten one from a Jehovah’s Witness and maybe you’ll be the one who is able to give me the answer, Some of the questions they ask me is this: “Well, how could Jesus say His Father is greater than Him if He’s God?” Now I”m happy to answer that question as long as you can answer mine.

In Philippians 2:8-11 we read about something that theologians would call “kinosis“. In Philippians 2 we read how it can happen.

Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation â€¦

â€¦not “work for”â€¦

â€¦ work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure .

God becomes a man in the person of Jesus and therefore as a man He is less than His Father.

For instance, there”s an electrical company called “Robert Jones and Son”. The father is a master electrician, his son began as his apprentice. They were both called “Robert Jones” ” Robert Jones, Sr. and Robert Jones, Jr. They were both human beings. They were both males. They were both one in nature, but the senior was greater in position than the junior. They were co-equal in nature, they were both humans, they were both electricians, they were both men, but one was greater than the other in position. Based on Jesus becoming a man, being equal with God, but not saying it”s something we couldn’t grasp, I have no problem saying His Father was greater than Him.

That is my answer to your question, the question that Jehovah’s Witnesses always ask me. But please tell me your answer to my question: How can He be an angel if the angels worshipped Him? How can He be “a god” if there”s only one God and when the text “Your throne, O God, is forever” says He”s not an angel? Well, when I continue to ask for an answer, I”m usually told, “Well then who was Jesus praying to if He was God?” I”ll answer that question providing you and can answer my question.

In Hebrew the confession of faith is what Jesus said when they asked Him the greatest commandment. He said, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is oneness”. ( Mk. 12:29 ) “ Sh”ma Yisra”el Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad “. ( Dt. 6:4 ) There is no Hebrew word for “water”, only “waters” ” “ mayim “; there is no Hebrew word for “sky”, only “skies” ” “ shamayim “; there is no Hebrew word for “God”, only “Gods” ” “ Elohim “, it is plural. You have an abbreviated form called “ El “, but it is simply a conjunctive or something used in in place of “Elohim” where it”s used in connection with other words. “ Elohim ” is plural. “ Sh”ma Yisra”el Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad “. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our GODS is oneness”. That’s what it says. Does this say there is more than one God? No, He is “oneness” but the word is “ echad “, it”s a plural oneness. It is the same oneness when Adam and Eve become one flesh. ( Gen. 2:24 ), you shall become “ echad “; the two become one. And a third person is procreated, there is one in three, there is three in one. We are made in His image and likeness. Yes, there is one God but there is more than one person.

You’re confused? When Stephen was martyred he saw Jesus at the right of the Father. (I don’t pretend to be able to understand this any more than the Bible reveals it, but I understand it well enough to know it is true because that’s what it says.) His Father is God and He is God. They are two different people yet one God. What makes me with my finite mind think I can understand God’s own nature this side of eternity? The Scripture says one day we will know as we are fully known ( 1 Cor. 13:12 ), but right now I know well enough to know I have enough in the Bible to tell me that it is true. Who was He praying to? He was praying to His Father. His Father was God, yes, and how could He be God? Because He was. How could Robert Jones, Sr. and Robert Jones Jr. both be Robert Jones? One is greater in nature, greater in position? No, greater in position but not in nature. They”re co-equal in nature, different in position.

When I”m looking at a pregnant lady, an expectant mother, am I Iooking at one person or two people? They are metabolically integrated. I”m looking at both one person and two people. When a marriage is being consummated God says they become one flesh. In God’s eyes am I looking at one person or two people? Well, biblically I”m looking at two people but I”m also looking at one person. The Bible says your wife’s body is your own and so forth, ( 1 Cor. 7:4 ) and the husband”s body is the wife”s. We”re made in His image and likeness ” it teaches something about Him; we”ll understand it when we see Him face to face, right now we see through a glass dimly ( 1 Cor. 13:12 ) but we know it is true.

That is my answer to your question, now I would like to hear your answer to my question. If the angel’s worship Him and if it says, “To which of the angels did He say, “Let the others worship Him”, if it says, “Your throne, O God is forever” and there”s only one God, if there”s no indefinite article in the Greek ” the word was “a god” is not in any Greek manusc

ript and would make no sense in the Greek language ” can you please explain to me how Jesus is not God and only an angel?

The Trinity, things like this, I’ll be happy to talk to you about further ” I’ll be happy to answer your questions, but please answer mine. That”s my first question for my Jehovah’s Witness friends. Please answer this question and we”ll talk further.

Pedion Ha Ben

Fri, 15 May 2015 15:56:35 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

The Donkey, the Lamb & the Human

â€œYou shall redeem with a lamb the first offspring from a donkey; and if you do not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons. None shall appear before Me empty-handed. (Exodus 34:20)

This is something in Judaism called the â€œpedion ha ben” the consecration, or the redemption, of the firstborn. We know from the messianic typology it is a figure of Christ the firstborn, the only begotten of the Father. (Jn. 1:14) The firstborn was redeemed for silver, (Num. 18:16) a price of redemption which is a picture of Jesus. Here we have the donkey, we have the lamb and we have the firstborn of the sons, all in the same verse.

â€œBut every first offspring of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, then you shall break its neck; and every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem. (Exodus 13:13)

Once more we have the lamb, we have the donkey and we have the human, all three. It is strange because it puts something that is ritual and juridical right in the middle of a narrative, the story of Pharaoh. But why does it put a donkey in the same passage in which it talks about a human? If a donkey is not redeemed by a lamb, its neck must be broken.

We know what the firstborn son is—it is a type of Christ, we know what a human is—that is us, and we know what the lamb is a picture of—a figure of the Lord Jesus. â€œBehold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn. 1:29) And we know that Exodus 13 is paschal because it is talking about Passover, so obviously it is talking about Him as the lamb. There is no problem identifying the human, no problem identifying the lamb, that leaves the donkey. Why must a donkey be redeemed by a lamb?

The Nature of a Donkey

A donkey is not too clever. Unlike its equestrian cousin the horse, it is not a brave animal; a donkey is fearful. So it is not too smart and it is not too brave. Among other things, zoologically, it is promiscuous. It will breed across the genus barrier and mate with something other than another one of its own. Sexually it will mate with anything. Hence in the Hebrew Prophets, in castigating Israel for its sin of carrying its idolatry to harlotry, compare Israel to a wild donkey. (Jer. 2:24; Hos. 8:9)

A wild donkey accustomed to the wilderness,That sniffs the wind in her passion.In the time of her heat who can turn her away?All who seek her will not become weary;In her month they will find her. (Jeremiah 2:24)

So a donkey is led by its passion, it is not too smart and it is not too brave. It also has other characteristics. I am told by others who are knowledgeable about such things that a donkey is, above all, a very stubborn animal. (I have to be careful because â€œdonkey” is sometimes a derogatory label. I live in England where â€œdonkey” is a derogatory term for an Irish laborer by English people.)

But we are also told other things about the nature of a donkey: it is stiff-necked. The Hebrew idiom for being stubborn is â€œstiff-necked”. (Acts 7:51) In the Old Testament when we see the term â€œstubborn”, the Hebrew is â€œstiff-necked”.

A man who hardens his neck after much reproofWill suddenly be broken beyond remedy. (Proverbs 29:1)

They stiffen their neck and their neck is broken—they are killed and therefore â€œbeyond remedy“. Donkeys are figures of fallen man. God applies them to backslidden Israel.

(Again, I do not use the term in an anti-Semitic way or an anti-Irish way. My own family, in fact, is a combination of Jewish and Irish, so I am not against my own kind. I am using the term in the sense the Prophets did.)

Israel is compared to a wild donkey. What are people like? Remember that Israel is a microcosm of the human condition. According to 1 Corinthians 10, God uses them to teach what people are like. Other nations will do the same things like Israel. If God had chosen someone else other than Israel, I guarantee you the Filipinos or Norwegians would have done the same things as Israel. Just look at the Church; the Church has gone the same way as Israel.It will stiffen its neck, it will stiffen its neck, it will stiffen its neck, but then its neck will be broken beyond remedy. It is stupid, cowardly, governed by its passions and stubborn. In fact, it is self-destructively stubborn. That is the nature of a donkey.

Nonetheless, it has at least one other characteristic anatomically. I do not know why, but I have seen donkeys, and it has been pointed out to me in California by people who are ranchers who have donkeys, and it is a characteristic that of all the quadrupeds, donkeys are the ones who have a cross on their back. Why did God put a cross on the back of such an ignoble animal? It is not a noble animal, but a stupid one. It is a stubborn one, a rebellious one.

Broken Beyond Remedy

A donkey cannot help being a donkey. It is born stupid, it is born lazy, it is born driven by passion (governed by hormonal metabolism), it is born with a stiff neck. It is naturally stubborn. There is nothing we can do with a donkey—it must be redeemed by the lamb. There is no other hope for the donkey. If the donkey is not redeemed by the lamb, its neck must be broken, and it will be broken suddenly.

We cannot help what we are. We may be born Jew, we may be born Gentile; we may be born Black, we may be born Asian or Hispanic or Caucasian; we may be born male or female. We are born and that is what we are. We cannot control it. None of us had any control over the circumstances of our birth. There was one person who could have controlled the circumstances of His birth, but He chose to be born a member of a despised race in a stable in an occupied country and of a non-affluent family in order to identify with and redeem us. He was the only one who could have chosen it, but the rest of us had no choice.

We cannot help the fact that we are stupid, but that is what we are. We are certainly spiritually stupid. We cannot help the fact that we are spiritually lazy. We cannot help the fact that we are driven by passion. We cannot help the fact that we are what we are: stubborn. That is the human condition. There is no hope for such creatures other than redemption by the Lamb. If they are not redeemed by the Lamb, their stubbornness will kill them. He who stiffens his neck will suddenly have it broken beyond remedy.

There are people who hear the Gospel, we witness to them, we tell them the Gospel over and over and over and they will not listen. I am even talking about members of our own family. They will not listen, and suddenly their neck will be broken beyond remedy. When the donkey”s neck is broken, it is dead; it is beyond remedy—there is no hope. It is a one-way ticket to hell with no way out. Their own stubbornness will be the cause of their own destruction. Their own unbelief, their own rejection of the cross, their own refusal to repent and accept the Gospel will cause them to be destroyed beyond remedy. It does not matter what they say now. I guarantee you the second they give up the ghost they will no longer be Darwinists; the second they give up the ghost they will no longer be atheists; the second they give up the ghost they will no longer be homosexuals; the second they give up the ghost they will no longer be anything.One of the things which makes people really stubborn is religion.

They cling to the faith of the fathers, simply thinking that because that was what their fathers believed it makes it right.

Abraham”s Descendants

What are we told will come about concerning the Arab nations? We are told they will be â€œa wild donkey of a man“.

â€œHe will be a wild donkey of a man,His hand will be against everyone,And everyone”s hand will be against him;And he will live to the east of all his brothers.” (Genesis 16:12)

I have witnessed to many people, but I have lived for many years in the Middle East. I always say that the two most difficult people to see get saved are Orthodox Jews and Arab Muslims. Asian Muslims are generally easier than Arab ones. The anthropological descendants of Abraham are the most difficult. Salvation would come through the seed of Abraham, so we would think that descendants of Abraham anthropologically—Jews and Arabs, would be the first to get saved by the promise to Abraham of the Messiah. No, they are the two hardest. â€œHe will be a wild donkey of a man” speaks to the stubbornness of Islam. But it goes beyond this; look at what Moses said about Israel.

â€œKnow, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people. (Deuteronomy 9:6)

In Hebrew, Moses tells the Jews they are a â€œstiff-necked” people.

â€œSo circumcise your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer. (Deuteronomy 10:16)

Circumcision is an Old Testament shadow of salvation, of course, as we are told in Romans and Jeremiah. â€œStop stiffening your neck! Believe! Get saved! Get converted!” But it does not work.

The LORD said to Moses, â€œI have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people. (Exodus 32:9)

In Hebrew, â€œobstinate” literally means â€œstiff-necked”. (If someone calls Jews â€œstiff-necked” it is a generally anti-Semitic term. We should not say it to Jewish people today because it will hurt our witness to them; I am using the term in the biblical sense.)What happens to Israel if they continue to stiffen their neck?

â€œNow do not stiffen your neck like your fathers, but yield to the LORD and enter His sanctuary which He has consecrated forever, and serve the LORD your God, that His burning anger may turn away from you. (2 Chronicles 30:8)

God is angry and He is angry at sin; He is angry at the human condition. He is angry at Israel and He is angry with Abraham”s other descendants, the Arab nations. God is angry at the Arab world and God is angry with the backslidden Church. He is angry and His anger will be vented; His wrath will be poured out. Every micro speck of God’s wrath and anger is going to be poured out. The only question is upon whom. Those who stiffen their neck and refuse to believe, the wrath of God will come upon them. For those who do repent and believe, the wrath of God was poured out on the Lamb.

The Worst Jackass

Let me tell you about the worst jackass I ever met in my life. I mean, this guy was a real jackass. I still run into him from time to time, especially when I am shaving or brushing my teeth. When he was sixteen years old he was fooling around with heroin and cocaine. He thought a biochemistry exam was no problem if he took enough speed to win the fifth at New Market. That is how I got through college. I was immoral, a communist, self-destructive. What a jackass! What a moron! What a loser! What a reprobate! That is all I was. I was nothing but a jackass.

Why should God become a man to die in place of a cocaine addict? I do not know, but I know He did. I cannot understand the depths of His wrath, but neither can I understand the depths of His love.

I had been saved for some time before I understood what â€œpersonal Savior” really meant. I thought it was just the colloquialism that meant I had accepted Him personally—that is only half of what it means. What it means in its totality is that if I were the only one who ever sinned, if we were the only one who ever sinned, He would have come to the cross just for us. He is not just the Savior of all of us, He is the Savior of each of us. He would have went to that cross just for me and just for you.

Everything I did, every drug I sold, every woman I slept with (other than my wife), every joint I ever rolled, every line of coke—everything was poured out on Him. The jackass was redeemed by the Lamb. I am not proud of who I was or what I did; it cost Christ His life. But I cannot deny what I did and He did for me. It does not matter how successful or educated or attractive somebody is, a jackass is still a jackass. It must be redeemed by the Lamb.

No, it is not just the Jews, it is not just the Arabs, it is all of us. But what happened to God’s own people when they stiffened their neck?

â€œThus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, “Behold, I am about to bring on this city and all its towns the entire calamity that I have declared against it, because they have stiffened their necks so as not to heed My words.”” (Jeremiah 19:15)

Their neck is broken beyond remedy. It does not only happen to individuals, it happens to societies and nations. It does not just happen to jackasses, it happens to herds of jackasses. And this is what this country has become, a herd of jackasses driven by passion who are stubborn, self-destructively stupid and too cowardly to face the reality.

That is what happens when a donkey is not redeemed; its neck will be broken beyond remedy. The second they die they will know what they rejected and, in some cases, what they mocked and belittled. It was the only thing that ever could have saved them. So many of these guys are arrogant like Bill Maher on television. Who do they think they are mocking? God will not be mocked. (Gal. 6:7) They have no wisdom because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (Prov. 9:10) The second they die they are broken beyond remedy.

The Way of Balaam

Let us look at the other side of the coin. Let us see what happens when a donkey does get redeemed by the Lamb, this cowardly animal, this stubborn animal, this lazy animal, this passion-driven animal, and above all this stubborn, stiff-necked animal.

forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; but he received a rebuke for his own transgression, for a mute donkey, speaking with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet. (2 Peter 2:15-16)

A redeemed donkey is always better than a mad prophet. A follower of Brigham Young, Charles Taze Russell, or Rev. Moon—even a jackass is not that stupid providing it has been redeemed.In my youth there was a comedy television program which aired on Sunday nights, â€œMr. Ed the Talking Horse”. (His voice sounded like Nixon.) It was modeled after a series of comedy films in the late 30s and 40s with the actor Donald O”Connor called â€œFrances the Talking Mule”. The character Donald O”Connor played was not very clever but the mule was.

The donkey provided a warning. And here is mentioned â€œthe way of Balaam”, who for profit loved the wages of unrighteousness but was rebuked by a donkey.

“But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality. (Revelation 2:14)

Of course, Balaam did it for money. Serving as a metaphor for the devil, Balak offered Balaam money. Jesus uses this to explain spiritual seduction and false religion—eating food sacrificed to idols.As believers we understand this to be transubstantiation and the Eucharist. They say that it is Christ incarnate, that it is not a memorial, that it is protoplasmically Jesus Christ, that He dies again sacramentally and then He is eaten cannibalistically. I do not think Catholics are cannibals, but they think they are cannibals. That is what it is says in their Catechism—they actually think it is a cannibalistic ritual. Balaam did it for money. Someone has to be a jackass to believe that stuff.

There is always a financial angle. It does not matter what religion it is, it is always a racket. No matter what false cult it is, which televangelist, or which false religion, there is always a racket.But a redeemed donkey was able to see through Balaam.

â€œNow, therefore, please come, curse this people for me since they are too mighty for me; perhaps I may be able to defeat them and drive them out of the land. For I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.” (Numbers 22:6)

Notice that the devil says the opposite of the Lord. God says, â€œI will bless those who bless Israel and I will curse those who curse Israel” (Gen. 12:3); Satan, however, will curse those who bless Israel and bless those who curse Israel.

But God Was Angry

Remember, the Lord is angry. His anger is going to be poured out. It is either going to be poured out on the Lamb or it is going to be poured out on the donkey, but one way or the other, somebody is going to pay. Every wrong thing I ever did, every wrong thing you ever did, somebody is going to pay.

But God was angry because he was going, and the angel of the LORD took his stand in the way as an adversary against him. Now he was riding on his donkey and his two servants were with him. When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand, the donkey turned off from the way and went into the field; but Balaam struck the donkey to turn her back into the way. Then the angel of the LORD stood in a narrow path of the vineyards, with a wall on this side and a wall on that side. When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she pressed herself to the wall and pressed Balaam”s foot against the wall, so he struck her again. The angel of the LORD went further, and stood in a narrow place where there was no way to turn to the right hand or the left.

(Unsaved people will always find themse

lves in a situation they ultimately cannot get out of. Unsaved people, be it on their deathbed or sooner, will be confronted with their reality; they will always find themselves in a situation they cannot get out of, and an angry God is going to be standing in front of them.)

When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she lay down under Balaam; so Balaam was angry and struck the donkey with his stick. And the LORD opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, â€œWhat have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?” Then Balaam said to the donkey, â€œBecause you have made a mockery of me! If there had been a sword in my hand, I would have killed you by now.”

(Notice how he talks to the donkey as if it is a normal conversation. When we go to the post office and talk to an unsaved postal clerk, we forget that we are talking to an unredeemed donkey. The waitress in a restaurant is an unredeemed donkey. The mechanic working on our car is an unredeemed donkey. The dentist polishing our teeth is an unredeemed donkey. We talk to donkeys as if it is normal because we forget that is what they are. I try to carry Gospel tracts wherever I go and to have my pocket Bible. It becomes normal for us to interact with unsaved people. We talk to them as if it is a normal thing.)

The donkey said to Balaam, â€œAm I not your donkey on which you have ridden all your life to this day? Have I ever been accustomed to do so to you?” And he said, â€œNo.” Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand; and he bowed all the way to the ground

(In Hebrew this would be an act of worship.)

The angel of the LORD said to him, â€œWhy have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out as an adversary, because your way was contrary to me. â€œBut the donkey saw me and turned aside from me these three times. If she had not turned aside from me, I would surely have killed you just now, and let her live.” Balaam said to the angel of the LORD, â€œI have sinned, for I did not know that you were standing in the way against me. Now then, if it is displeasing to you, I will turn back.” But the angel of the LORD said to Balaam, â€œGo with the men, but you shall speak only the word which I tell you.” So Balaam went along with the leaders of Balak. (Numbers 22:22-35)

First of all, we have not â€œan” angel of the Lord, but â€œthe” angel of the Lord. This is the one known in Judaism as the â€œMetatrone”; it is a Christophany, an Old Testament enfleshment of Christ. It is the angel who wrestled with Jacob at Penuel at the Brook of Jabbok. It is the angel of the Lord who went before Israel. It is an Old Testament manifestation of the Lord Jesus. And again we see He is angry.

The Redeemed Donkey

Once a donkey has been redeemed, and this donkey had to have been redeemed, otherwise his neck would have been broken, it is able to see the Lord when others cannot. Unsaved people cannot see Jesus. We do not see Him physically, although sometimes Christians may in some kind of vision like Paul did or something like that, but we will one day see Him physically. Nonetheless, we are aware of His presence. Unsaved people do not see the Lord, but a redeemed donkey does.

Secondly, although donkeys are fearful animals, something happens. I once took my son down the Grand Canyon. They went down there on these donkeys. (I did not try it myself because I would have had to carry the donkey back up myself after crushing it under my weight.) The ledges of the Grand Canyon are about a mile deep and very narrow. It is amazing how sure-footed those creatures truly are. They can actually do things which horses cannot. What used to be cowardice now becomes sure-footedness. The donkey knows where to go and where not to go.

A redeemed donkey who had a drinking problem will stay away from a saloon. If they used to be a gambler they will stay away from a race track. A donkey knows where to go, and where not to, once it has been redeemed.

But something else happens, in that this fearful animal now becomes a brave one. Balaam keeps beating him. It was only that persecuted donkey that stopped the wrath of God from falling on him.

Because of these churches in countries where they are persecuted, it is only the sacrifices of the faithful saints which stops the judgment of God from coming against those nations and those societies. A redeemed donkey that is willing to be persecuted can delay the wrath of God.

I honestly believe we are at the precipice—the threshold—of persecution of the Church in the Protestant democracies, and the only thing that is going to stop the wrath of God and His judgment from falling on America more than it already is, is a faithful Church that is willing to be persecuted. Most of the Church will not be willing to be persecuted because most of the Church is no longer faithful to Jesus. I speak in countries where the Church is persecuted. I speak in Muslim countries and I go to places where I see what it is really like.

A Redeemed Donkey Speaks & Sees

He hits the donkey again and then the donkey speaks.

I do not know too much about veterinary anatomy, but I suppose it is the same as for a human, that the jawbone facilitates speech. A donkey cannot say anything before it gets redeemed. All a donkey can do is to bray like the vain philosophies of this world, bray like secular existentialism, bray like Darwinism, bray like Marxist dialectics, bray like situational eliptics—that is all a jackass can say until it gets redeemed and God gets hold of its jaw. How many Philistines were slain with a jawbone of an ass? (Jdg. 15:15-17) That is what happens when a donkey has been redeemed; now he speaks the Word of God.

The donkey causes a situation to come about where Balaam now sees the Lord. â€œYou are My witnesses”, says the Lord. (Lk. 24:48; Acts 1:8) Balaam sees the anger of an angry God hovering over Him. â€œIt is only that donkey whom you have been beating that stopped My wrath from coming upon you”. He uses us to cause others to see His anger.

And what is the first thing God says to Balaam? The first words out of God’s mouth are â€œWhy are you beating that donkey?” When Rabbi Shaul of Tarsus, who we now know as Paul the Apostle, was knocked off that horse, the first thing the Lord said to him, â€œSaul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?” (Acts 9:2) It was another way of asking, â€œYou are beating that donkey? Persecuting the Church?”

When the donkey has been redeemed, everything changes. A stupid animal becomes intelligent, a lazy one becomes industrious, a stubborn one gives himself over willingly to the purpose of God, a cowardly one becomes brave, something given over to passion now become motivated by something that transcends the highest human ideal. This is what happens when the donkey has been redeemed by the Lamb.

The Messianic Fulfillment

In Zechariah we have a prophecy which even the rabbis acknowledge is a prophecy about the Messiah.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem!Behold, your king is coming to you;He is just and endowed with salvation,Humble, and mounted on a donkey,Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zechariah 9:9)

That is the prophecy, let us see the fulfillment.

When they had approached Jerusalem and had come to Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, â€œGo into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied there and a colt with herâ€¦

(Notice there is always two to represent both Israel and the Church.)

â€¦ untie them and bring them to Me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, “The Lord has need of them,” and immediately he will send them.” This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

â€œSAY TO THE DAUGHTER OF ZION,”BEHOLD YOUR KING IS COMING TO YOU,GENTLE, AND MOUNTED ON A DONKEY,EVEN ON A COLT, THE FOAL OF A BEAST OF BURDEN.””

(Remember, these donkeys would have had to have been redeemed by a lamb or they would have had to be killed.)

The disciples went and did just as Jesus had instructed them, and brought the donkey and the colt, and laid their coats on them; and He sat on the coats. Most of the crowd spread their coats in the road, and others were cutting branches from the trees and spreading them in the road. The crowds going ahead of Him, and those who followed, were shouting,

â€œHosanna to the Son of David;BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD;Hosanna in the highest!” (Matthew 21:1-9)

Once the donkey has been redeemed, he becomes a carrier of Christ and His salvation to Whom others call out, â€œSave us! Save us, O Son of David!”

Conclusion

This is what happens when the donkey is redeemed by the Lamb. The coward becomes brave, the stupid become clever, the passion-driven becomes God-driven. They have a passion for the right things now. What used to be fear is now sure-footedness—it knows to â€œgo here” and â€œdo not go there”. He sees the Lord. Where he could only bray, he now speaks His word—God’s own words come out of his mouth. He becomes a carrier of Christ, one who is even willing to be persecuted, one who can withhold the judgment of an angry God. He becomes one who is the bearer of His salvation. I am convinced that this is why, of all the quadrupeds, God put the cross on the back of the donkey. That is what happens when the donkey is redeemed by the Lamb.

If you are reading this, and you do not know Jesus, I am not going to tell you, â€œDo not be a jackass”. You cannot help being a jackass. We are all jackasses because that is the human condition, that is fallen man, and God is angry. He is going to cause something to happen. You are going to cause something to happen because God is going to break your neck. Your own stubbornness will destroy you; there is no hope for you just as there is no hope for me. What can be done with a donkey? Nothing, because it is a donkey. There is no hope for the donkey so break his neck. He is too stupid, too stubborn and too passion-driven. There is no hope for that donkey, no hope except one: you must be redeemed by the Lamb.God bles

The Rock of the Church?

Fri, 15 May 2015 15:54:19 GMT

The second question I would like to ask is this one: I was always told in Catholic schools and by my mother that Peter was “the rock”. “Upon this rock I will build my church” from Matthew 16. ( Mt. 16:18 )

I was told that in English and, when I was a little boy, I was taught to read Latin. The Bible was the Vulgate, the only one read ritually; it was not studied. However, having learned to read the original Greek and Hebrew languages, I looked at the original meaning in the original languages. I would not call myself a Protestant, but remember Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Cranmer and every one of the reformers, every one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation was from the intelligentsia of the Roman Catholic priesthood. Everyone had been a Roman Catholic priest who went back and read the Scriptures in the original languages. I”m not defending Protestantism, I don’t identify with it; I”m a Christian, but I”m just asking the question, “Is Peter the rock?”

I lived in Israel for many years and at the base of Mt. Herman there”s a place called “Banyas”. In the Bible it was called “Caesarea Philippi” and it is there where Jesus said, “Upon this rock I will build My church”. And I was told that He gave the keys and power to Peter. “Whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”. ( Mt. 16:19 )

I’d like to read directly from the Greek language what it says in the New Testament. Jesus spoke Aramaic, but when Matthew wrote it down on the testimony of the apostles who”d been eyewitnesses he wrote it in Greek. Or if it was written in another language it was quickly translated into Greek. We have one historical reference that Matthew might have been in Hebrew or the Hebrew dialect of Aramaic according to Haggis Sippus, but there”s no manuscript ever found. We have the Greek. And it is the translation of the Greek which the Roman Catholic church bases its doctrine that Peter is “the rock”. Is that what it says?

Verse 18, and I”ll translate it word by word:

“Kago de” ” “Also I” or “And also I”â€¦

â€¦”soi lego” ” “to thee” or “to you say”â€¦

â€¦”hoti sy ei Petros” ” “thou art Peter” or “you are Peter”â€¦

â€¦”kai” ” “and”â€¦

â€¦”epi” ” “around” or “on, but in the context it would mean “on”, with that I agreeâ€¦

â€¦”taute te petra” ” “on this rock”â€¦

â€¦”oikodomesoâ€¦ (from where we get the word “oikos” ” “house”) â€¦mou” ” “I will build of Me”â€¦

â€¦”ten ekklesian” ” “the church”.

It would be built on Christ, not of Peter.

At Banyas ” Caesarea Philippi, there”s a cascade with millions and millions of flat chips of stone washed out of the cascade. The Greek word “petros” ” “Peter”, “little Peters”. There is a big boulder on which the temple of the Greek god Pan that had been there at one time had been built and the temple to Caesar Augustus, the deified emperor, had been built that Jesus was referring to where the house would be built. That is called a “petra“. “You are one of these little chips of stone; upon this boulder I will build my church of Me.”

When asked to explain this, Roman Catholic scholars say, “But Jesus was speaking Aramaic, or a language related to Hebrew. and because Peter was a male He had the use the masculine form ‘petros‘, which is the word for ‘a little rock’ instead of ‘petra‘ which is the word for ‘a boulder””. I went to a pretty good university and a pretty good bible college and I’m told by people who are from Greece that my Greek is not bad so far as my understanding of its meaning. But I know people who are really, really fluent in Greek, they grew up speaking it and they”re experts in reading the Old Testament, the church fathers, and so forth, they are from Greece. I know people like this in Australia particularly, and they confirm what I say is right. And so if there”s any academic or a person with a degree in Greek saying what I say is right, what I say is what I was taught. Gender in Greek does not have to do with sex in any primary sense; it has to do with the way a word is used in the context of the sentence. It is not male and female as in sex, it”s male and female as in the way the word is used in the context.

Let us look 1 Corinthians 10:4 â€¦

and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ.

In Greek it says, “de he petra en ho Christos“. “Petra“. Christ Himself who was a male is referred to in the feminine. The idea that they changed the gender because Peter was a male is ridiculous. That is not how Greek grammar works. I don’t believe St. Paul made a mistake, nor did the Holy Spirit when He inspired St. Paul to write Corinthians. “The rock” is Christ and it”s called “petra“. What does it say in Matthew 16? “You are “petros” and upon the “petra” I will build My church.” You cannot use a little chip of stone the size of your thumb as the foundation for a building; you cannot use a “petros” as the foundation for a building; you can only use a “petra“. If you”ve been to Caesarea Philippi you would see it makes no logical sense. If you know Greek you would see it makes no logical sense.

But there’s more. In 1 Corinthians 3:11 we read something else.

For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man”s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man”s work. If any man”s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man”s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

If anyone ” if anyone ” builds on the foundation of something else ” gold, silver, precious stones, etc., it”ll be manifested on the day of the Lord; it will be revealed with fire; it won’t stand. The only foundation we can build on is Christ, not Peter. Was St. Paul wrong? For that matter, were the early Roman Catholic popes and councils wrong? Or were the later ones wrong who said that Peter is “the rock” instead of Christ even though the New Testament says the opposite, and even though their early popes said the opposite?

The Roman Catholic Church claims that its doctrines are not only “apostolic”, but “patristic” ” they come from the church fathers. I do not believe in the doctrinal authority of the church fathers. I do not believe the “apostolic” necessarily equals the “patristic”. However, even if I did, of the church fathers the Roman Catholic church looks to as a way to define what the apostles believed, most of the church fathers said that “the rock” was Christ, not Peter. A minority of them said “the rock” was the faith of Peter. Most say “the rock” was Christ, a few said “the rock” was Peter”s faith. None ” not even one of their own church fathers ” not only one of your church fathers has ever said that “the rock” was Peter,

Given the fact that you cannot use a chip of stone the size of your thumb ” a flat chip of stone the size of your thumb ” as the foundation for a building, given the fact that the original language says “You are the “chip of stone” and upon “the boulder” I will build My church”, given the fact as St. Paul says we can build on no foundation other than Christ Himself,

and given the fact of the New Testament says that Christis “the rock” ” “petra“, “the boulder”, and given the fact that none of your own church fathers of the Roman Church believed that “the rock” was Peter, why do you? Why do you believe something which is practically, historically, biblically, patristically unfounded? And in fact, having been to Caesarea Philippi so many times, I have to say asbsurd. Why, in the early centuries, did no one believe it? Popes were fired ” sacked by church councils. That is the question.

My mother has the view that many people would have ” Irish, Catholic, British, Protestant. I just got back from Ireland a few days ago and I”ve studied Irish history at some length. I was astounded to discover that most of the founders of Irish Republicanism, originally called “The Home Rule Movement” ” Isaac Butt, Theobold, Napper Tandy, Charles Parnell, Wolfe-Tone ” every one of them was a Protestant. “The Irish patriots like Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, was a Protestant. It was only later identified with Catholicism in the times of Daniel O’Connor and so forth. But I was more astounded to learn how the “English”, quote/unquote, first got involved in Ireland. There was a non-English king, an ethnic Norman. He was not Anglo-Saxon, he was a French Viking. Henry II was threatened with excommunication by Pope Adrian IV if he would not invade Ireland and put an end to the local Celtic church in Ireland, and force them to acquiesce to Rome and the papacy. How did the English first become involved in invading and occupying Ireland? The pope sent them.

The term is “revisionism”. I”m no admirer of Voltaire”s values, but he was a talented writer. And he was right about one thing: “History is the lie everybody agrees on”. When you read what really happened you get a different picture. But the problem I have in speaking to my very Catholic mother is her Catholic identity is part and parcel of her Irish identity and can’t see beyond it. There is a historical prejudice that’s emotionally charged. It would be family disloyalty. Jesus said, “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me”. ( Mt. 10:37 ) Do I love my mother? Yes, but I love God first and I want them to know the truth.

When I looked for the truth I found that “the rock” was and is Christ, not Peter, not only according to the New Testament but according to Roman Catholic history itself, That’s my second question: Why do you believe Peter is “the rock” when the New Testament and your own church fathers and just the practical circumstances of trying to build a house on a chip of stone all dictate he could not possibly be?

Popes have been warlords. They ordered nations to go to war with each other. They”ve been homosexuals, they”ve had illegitimate children. The banking families of Europe would vie to get their man into the papacy ” the Borgia popes, the Medici family. Sometimes there would be two or three people claiming to be pope and the one that had the biggest military backing, usually from France, would declare the others to be antipopes. Well, I’ll leave that to others to sort out. The only question I’m asking you is how can Peter be “the rock”?

And even if he was “the rock”, where does it say that Peter was empowered to pass that position on to others? If Peter was the first pope, why is it in the book of Acts 15 at the first council of the church that James presided, not Peter? James says, “Brethren, listen to Peter”? No, “Listen to me”. ( Acts 15:13 ) And he does not rule by decree. He says, “It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us”. ( Acts 15:28 ) It was a collective decision by all the apostles, it was not the pope speaking autocratically ex cathedra. Why was James presiding and doing all the talking if Peter was the pope? It”s a fair question.

Why did St. Paul rebuke Peter in the presence of all in the book of Galatians? ( Gal. 2:11-14 ) When is the last time you saw a bishop or a cardinal or a priest standing up in public and face-to-face challenging the pope and telling him off for being a hypocrite or behaving hypocritically? I’ve seen them kneel down and kiss his ring, but I’ve never seen any of them tell him off. You don’t talk that way to the pope. If Peter was the pope, why did Paul talk to him that way? Fair question? Why did James preside if Peter was the pope?

Even in its earlier centuries the Roman Church didn’t believe that. Now of course I would argue that the Roman Catholic Church did not exist as such until the 4th Century, but we”ll put that aside. The question I’m asking is in light of the evidence ” biblical, patristic, and historical and practical, how can you possibly believe Peter is “the rock” when the Bible says “the rock” is Christ and we can build on no other foundation?

Moriel Council

Fri, 15 May 2015 15:51:27 GMT

This Generation

Fri, 15 May 2015 15:50:13 GMT

This Generation

Physical Resurrection?

Fri, 15 May 2015 15:50:03 GMT

But that leads me to my final question. I am told by my Jehovah’s Witness friends that the resurrection of Jesus was not literally physical. They said when He appeared and took a physical form it is because He had other bodies after the resurrection which He appeared in because people couldn”t recognize Him at first like Thomas didn’t recognize Him, or didn’t believe it was Him. The resurrection was not literal.

Well first of all, if it was only spiritual and the spirit of the pnuma ” the psuchei, call it what you will ” is only “breath”, how could Jesus have risen? His breath rose? Now I’m confused. How could “breath” appear as a person? The tomb was empty. We”re told in John the tomb was empty. (Jn. 20:1-10) there was no corpse found in it. In John 2:21 Jesus said his body would rise. The Greek word “soma” ” His bodywould rise.

Let”s look at John 21:12. I”d like to read it to you.

Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples ventured to question Him, “Who are You?” knowing that it was the Lord.

“Come eat breakfast”. When Jesus raised a little girl from the dead He said, “Talitah t”kumi“, and His first instruction was, “Give her something to eat”. (Mk. 5:40-43) When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead the next thing we see them doing is eating in John 12. Whenever somebody raises from the dead in the Gospels you always seem them eating. “Come eat breakfast”. On the road to Emmaus He goes to the house and they recognize Him in the breaking of bread. (Lk. 24:30-31) Why is He eating? Any time in the Bible when someone rose from the dead they ate to prove it was a literal, physical resurrection. It was only a ghost? No, it could not have been. Let me explain why.

Let’s look to the story of Jesus calming the raging sea. It says they thought He was a ghost. (Mt. 14:26; Mk. 6:49) He said no it”s not a ghost; a ghost does not have flesh and bones. He appeared physically. So if He was only some kind of a ghost, a phantom, how could He have appeared physically when He said ghosts don”t do that? I’m told He had multiple bodies and this only happened because when Thomas didn’t recognize Him or on the road to Emmaus when they didn’t recognize Him. But we are rather told in Luke 24:16 they were keptfrom recognizing Him. The reason they didn’t recognize him was not because He had other bodies, because they were kept from recognizing Him; in other places they knew it was Him such as in John 21:12, it says they knew He was Him.

At His resurrection of John 20:17, Jesus says, “Stop clinging tor Me”. You can”t cling to a ghost. The tomb was empty. Why would bribes have been paid to say His disciple stole the body if it was only a spiritual resurrection? It just doesn’t make any sense. It makes no sense whatsoever. First I am told that psuchei, that pnuma is only “breath” and that I”m told His “breath” rose? His body had to rise ” “Stop clinging to Me”. The tomb was empty, He ate physically, He said directly that His body would raise up from the dead in John chapter 2:21. If Jesus said His body, His physical body ” He used the word “soma“, He didn’t use the word “psuchei“, the text does not use the word “pnuma” ” but “soma“, “body”. He says His body would raise from the dead. If the tomb was empty, He said “Stop clinging to Me”, if He repeatedly did things like eat and so forth, how can you say it was not a literal, physical resurrection, it was only spiritual? How? How could it be anything other than an actual literal, physical resurrection? How?

Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path

Fri, 15 May 2015 15:48:56 GMT

WELCOME TO MORIEL MINISTRIES

Moriel is an international multi-faceted ministry of Jewish and non-Jewish regenerate believers one in Jesus the Messiah.

Moriel is committed to the evangelization beginning with The Jews but also of people of other faiths including Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and theologically deviant expressions of Christendom including Roman Catholicism (which we view as aberrational much as we deem Talmudic Judaism to be likewise largely unscriptural). To this end Moriel plants churches, and operates missions especially among impoverished children in the Third World. While mainly rejecting the later midrashic writings of the rabbis, Moriel is also a teaching ministry seeking to exegetically interpret scripture with the Judeo-Christian hermeneutic of the apostolic church including the midrashic exegesis used by Jesus and Paul (midrash is a term found multiple times in the Tenak or Old Testament).

Lastly, Moriel is active in the area of discernment withstanding the popular apostasy in the contemporary church that The Word of God warns would precede the return of Jesus. We remain firmly aligned to the conviction that contemporary events in The Middle East , Europe, and in the church make the present time in history different from other eras when people thought it was the last days. We affirm the belief that Jesus is coming again and prophecy of His return is radically being fulfilled increasingly.

The Great Church Robbery

Fri, 15 May 2015 15:48:39 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

Introduction

We are going to focus on two main Greek words: “kleptos” is the primary New Testament word for “thief,” and “harpazo” is what a kleptos does—”to seize away by force; to rip off.” Harpazo is to rip something off and a kleptos is the one performs this action. (This is where we get the word “kleptomaniac.”)To be absolutely accurate, some people try to tell us the word “rapture” is not in the Bible. It is in the Bible coming from the Latin Vulgate derived the Latin translation of “harpazo.” The word “rapture” comes from Latinizing the Greek word “harpazo,” and is most certainly in Scripture. However, it is in more than one place in Scripture. We are going to examine every place it occurs in the New Testament because every place it occurs teaches something about the Rapture. But we must take this a bit further.”Harpazo” plus “anastasis” equals “episunagoge.” The “snatching away” plus “resurrection” equals our “gathering together” to Him. The Greek prefix “epi” means “around.” So in other words, the Rapture and Resurrection are simultaneous; they are two aspects of the same event with the return of Jesus, which is called the episunagoge. It is functionally the same as “parousia,” the revelation of Jesus Christ that is coming. This is not “revelation” in the sense of “apocalypse,” but the revelation of the true believers. “Apocalypse” is a different word for “revelation” that means “unveiling.” This will not be an unveiling but takes place instantlyâ€“every eye shall ultimately see.

A Practical Example

I have a friend in England who is a computer software engineer. He is a nice guy with a family, and is an elder in a church near Stonehenge. He runs his own business with an interesting line of work. He is a computer consultant but he is hired by banks, credit card companies and corporations to hack into computer systems. He is actually hired to hack into computer systems to steal highly confidential information, usually of a financial nature, in order to test the strength of their security. He tells me that Chinese triads and Russian mafia are the most dangerous computer thieves. They are not like American gangsters but are usually ex-KGB agents from the old Soviet Union who have masters” degrees and PhD”s, and are multi-lingual. If they do not themselves have degrees in computer science, they will hire such to do the hacking for them. He says this is a growing problem and therefore he has a growing business. He does the same things a thief will do: he hacks in and steals the information.When he gets a contract the people in the company do not know when he is going to do it and he does not tell them when or how he is going to do it. He does it remotely such as going through Hong Kong to hack into a system in England so they cannot trace it to him, the same kind of thing a professional hacker would do. He tries to steal that information before a real thief steals it, on the supposition that if he can do it they can do it. Therefore he is going to find out how to do it before they will. As it were, he comes to rob the thief. This is his livelihood. He is a Christian who has never stolen as much as a paper clip, but he does the same thing a thief does. He is hired to break into secure systems.

Aware of the Harpazo

“So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force â€¦”

â€¦harpazo Him—rapture Him. It is the same word. Jesus perceived that they were coming to “rapture” Him.

“â€¦to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone. (Jn. 6:15)

Notice He was aware the rapture was coming. This same Jesus will make us aware the Rapture is coming. Every time we see this word it teaches something about the coming Rapture. He knew it was going to happen before it happened. We will not know the day or the hour, but we will know it is getting closer and we will know what action to take.Of course, they were coming to try to forcibly make Him king, and since His kingdom was not of this world (which was not the purpose for His first coming but the purpose in His second coming), He did not allow himself to be raptured and made king; He will come back and make Himself King when He returns. In other words, they wanted to rapture Him, but no, He is coming to Rapture us. But He knew it was going to happen.Grammatically it occurs here in the future-passive—it is “harpazomai,” but it is the same word.

Snatching by One Hand or the Other

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy;”

(“Kill” “thuso,” “destroy” “apoleso” where we get the word “Apollyon.”)

“â€¦I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatchesâ€¦

â€¦”harpazos“â€¦

â€¦them and scatters them.” ( Jn. 10:10â€“12 )

The wolf “harpazos” them—raptures them. Going back to my friend in England, his job is to rob the thief, to steal the information before the thief can steal the information. He does the same thing the thief does. Satan comes to harpazo—to rapture, to snatch away by force.

“and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them outâ€¦

â€¦”harpazo” themâ€¦

“â€¦of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them outâ€¦

â€¦”harpazo” themâ€¦

â€¦of the Father”s hand. ( Jn. 10:28â€“29 )

This is saying that if we are in the hand of Christ, Satan cannot snatch us away from Him; he cannot touch the new creation. He cannot snatch us out of the hand of Christ.This Scripture does not address the issue of backsliding. People have taken it out of context and given it a meaning that is not warranted in the context. It does not say someone cannot get out of the hand, it simply says they cannot be snatched out of the hand, and has nothing whatsoever to do with a person choosing not to be in the hand of Christ. It simply says if someone chooses to be in the hand of Christ they cannot be snatched away.Unsaved people do not have a free will; their will is in bondage—they cannot choose Christ unless they are convicted by the Holy Spirit. They have to be empowered and convicted to choose Christ and it requires divine intervention for them to be saved. “Nobody comes but that the Father draws him” ( Jn. 6:44 ). In our salvation we get back our free will when we come to Christ. He empowers us to be able to make that choice we could not make had He not so empowered us. Free will is restored at the cross; free will is something we get back; it makes it possible to choose and remain in Christ. John 10:28-29 has nothing whatsoever to do with backsliding or the will of the individual; it only says that the thief cannot do it. Very often this has been misapplied.

“When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one on whom seed was sown beside the road.” ( Mt. 13:19 )

Somebody hears the Gospel, gets convicted, and they think about getting saved. No one can snatch them out of the Lord”s hand, but if they have not gone that far yet and the seed has fallen to the earth and died, we know what is going to happen: the devil is going to try to snatch it away. That is how he operates.We witness to someone, tell them the Gospel, they believe it and say they will come to church on Sunday, but the next day Jehovah”s Witnesses knock on their door. The devil sent them there. That is the devil coming to snatch away what was sown. But in Matthew 24 we seeâ€¦

He is coming like a thief in the night. In other words, He robs the thief. Jesus comes in the character of the devil and snatches us away before the enemy does. It is the master gambit—He beats the devil at his own game. The devil is a kleptos. Jesus is not a kleptos but comes like a kleptos and does the same thing a kleptos does. In other words, to understand the nature of the Rapture we have to understand the nature of the devil. The Lord comes to rob the thief.

The Modern-Day Kleptos

Let us look at this idea of the kleptos who comes to “steal and kill and destroy,” how the devil does this, and how it manifests itself. Everybody gets robbed, but the question is, who is going to do it? We are either going to be “harpazoed” by the kleptos or “harpazoed” by the one who is like the kleptos.In Psalm 50 the leadership of the nation was being castigated and they were toldâ€¦

“When you see a thief, you are pleased with him,And you associate with adulterers. ( Ps. 50:18 )

Notice the relationship between impropriety and immorality. So often when we see these ministers fall from grace it involves spiritual pride, financial impropriety, and sexual immorality. It is usually one of those three things, and in some cases they hit the jackpot. The same guys fooling around with women are very often the same ones who are preaching Word-Faith or have their fingers in the cookie jar. This is not a new problem but, as described in this Scripture, existed in ancient Israel.Todd Bentley, a criminally-convicted homosexual pedophile who was in prison for molesting a seven year-old, claimed to become a Christian, had himself covered in tattoos, was kicking old ladies in the face, and night after night was preaching that the Lord showed him there were a thousand people attending each of his services who were going to give him $1,000. And he was getting the money, sometimes raking in over $1 million a night it would seem. The whole time this was going on he was being unfaithful to his wife and yet being trumpeted as a hero by Rick Joyner and C. Peter Wagner. After they prophesied over him that he was going to lead a great revival, four days later he abandons his wife and three children and takes off with this other woman. Soon after, he divorces his wife and marries her. Now they are trying to bring him back into ministry.

“When you see a thief, you are pleased with him,And you associate with adulterers. ( Ps. 50:18 )

He is an adulterer! They are pleased with him! This is only one contemporary example, but there are many examples of this. In other words, they are getting clipped already.

When I would heal Israel,The iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered,And the evil deeds of Samaria,For they deal falsely;The thief enters in,Bandits raid outside,And they do not consider in their heartsThat I remember all their wickedness.Now their deeds are all around them;They are before My face.With their wickedness they make the king glad,And the princes with their lies.They are all adulterers,Like an oven heated by the bakerWho ceases to stir up the fireFrom the kneading of the dough until it is leavened. ( Hos. 7:1â€“4 )

(Leaven, of course, is a figure of sin and false doctrine.)Look at this: these people are adulterers and they are thieves, but the kings and the princes are happy about their lies—they make the king glad!Why do we see major pastors and leadership figures lending credence to these con-artists? They make them happy with their lies! They make them happy with their thievery! This brought about the Assyrian Captivity—God’s judgment—on the ten northern tribes, and it is bringing God’s judgment on the contemporary church. As it says in Romans 11, if He did not spare the natural branches He will not spare you either. If Israel and the Jews could not get away with this kind of activity, neither will the church. And yet they continue in it.Todd Bentley leaves his wife and children and they are actually trying to bring him back. It means nothing to them. Money talks. They do not care about the adultery.

Your rulers are rebelsAnd companions of thieves; ( Is. 1:23a )

Their leaders are in rebellion against God and companions with thieves!It is so shocking that it has been hard for me to believe this has happened, but when I recite these things in the public domain I am not throwing mud; I am simply stating facts.When Oral Roberts said a nine hundred foot tall Jesus Christ appeared to him and told him if he does not cough up $6.5 million by the end of the month He is going to kill him, people like Jack Hayford defended him and somebody gave him the money to save the hospital. (The hospital wound up closing down anyway and Jesus did not kill him.) He was on television crying, “Please, He”s going to kill me.” Apparently there was a nine hundred foot Jesus who was running a protection racket—that is what gangsters do. And yet there were pastors defending him.

Your rulers are rebelsAnd companions of thieves; ( Is. 1:23a )

Jesus warned us how His Father”s house became a den of thieves. ( Mt. 21:13; Mk. 11:17; Lk. 19:46 ) He did not use the word “kleptos” because a kleptos harpazos; these were swindlers.That is how the devil kleptos—he steals and destroys. Jesus is coming in the manner of the enemy to do the same thing the enemy does with an entirely different motive. He comes like a kleptos. To understand what Jesus is going to do we have to understand what the enemy does. The kleptos is always the enemy, but He comes like a kleptos.

The Example of Paul

Let us look at the other side. Everywhere this word “harpazo” occurs it teaches something about the Rapture.

And as a great dissension was developing, the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them and ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by forceâ€¦

(To harpazo him—rapture him. It is the same word in Greek.)

â€¦and bring him into the barracks. But on the night immediately following, the Lord stood at his sideâ€¦ ( Ac. 23:10â€“11a )

That is the Peshet, the straightforward meaning. Paul was going to be seized; they were going to rip him in half, literally tearing him to pieces. So the Roman commander dispatches his soldiers to rescue Paul before they could rip him to bits. Notice he harpazos Paul before the mob could harpazo him. This is a picture of the Rapture. The Antichrist is going to try to rip the body to pieces. “Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather” (Mt. 24:28). But before that can happen, our Commander is going to send His angels to gather His elect. He will harpazo us before the enemy can. Every time we see this word it teaches something about the Rapture. Our Commander is going to snatch us away before the enemy can rip us to pieces; there will be a rescue.

There Is Always a Rescue

“But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. ( Mt. 24:43 ) “Now at that time Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people, will arise. And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued. ( Dan. 12:1 )

Notice that those whose names are in the book will be rescued. There is a rescue coming, and this rescue is the Rapture. In England we have Gerald Coates, and in America there is Rick Joyner—people who teach against the doctrine of the Rapture, saying there is no rescue. How is someone going to get rescued if they do not believe there is a rescue?In the Olivet Discourse Jesus gives a list of signs to look out for and He says, “I am coming like a thief in the night, so look out for these signs. This will tell you it is getting closer. If you had known at what time he was coming you would not have allowed your house to be broken into. Well, I am coming just like that burglar.” We are told by Paul that day should not overtake us like a kleptos ( 1 Th. 5:4 ); it is the world that is to be taken by surprise; it is the apostate church that is to be taken by surprise, not the faithful Bride. But in Matthew 24 Jesus says, “Be alert, watch for these signs, I am coming like a thief in the night” ( Mt. 24:42-43 ).Suppose you were going to take your children or grandchildren down to Orlando to Disneyworld and somebody says, “Don”t bother to turn on the burglar alarm. Turn off the lights, leave the door open, drive off to Florida and have a good time.” Who is going to do that? Who is going to believe somebody who tells us that? If we visit the website of Rick Warren and his Purpose Driven Lie we are told to avoid End Time prophecy because it is a diversion. Jesus says to watch out, He is coming like a thief, to be alert, but who cares what Jesus Christ said if you have Rick Warren? Who needs the New Testament if you have the Purpose Driven Lie? Jesus commands that we be alert and watch for these things, but Warren says no. Do you understand who he works for? He works for the thief—the burglar.This is not a “mistake,” this is blatant. Jesus teaches to do one thing, Warren teaches people to do the other. It is unbelievable, but that is what is happening.

Paul”s Personal Example

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a man was caught upâ€¦

(â€¦harpazo â€“ rapturedâ€¦)

â€¦to the third heaven. ( 2 Co. 12:2 )

He did not know if he was in the body or out of the body. When we are raptured we will not know if we are dead, we will just know that we are alive in Christ.The ancient Greeks had three concepts of heaven: the first was the atmosphere of the earth, the second was outer space, and the third was eternity. We have two Greek words for “time”: “chronos” and “kairos.” “Kairos” is the clock, but eternity is not a clock that keeps going; eternity is no clock at all. Yet there is in eternity “chronos” where we get the word “chronology.” It is an order of events, but they take place out of time, such as where it states in Revelation that the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world ( Rev. 13:8 ). John says in Revelation, “And then I sawâ€¦and then I sawâ€¦” but he speaks of future events in the past tense and past events in the present tense—there is no “kairos,” just “chronos.” There is an order of events which take place out of time. Time as a clock depends on the second heaven (outer space), on planetary motion.Strictly speaking there is a time and a clock that works by particle emissions. It does not work by planetary motion but it still has to be calibrated in nanoseconds; it still has to express its measurements by planetary motion. Even the one clock we have that does not have to work by planetary motion still has to be calibrated in terms of planetary motion.So when we read in Revelation or Zechariah that the “shamayim” “sky” is rolled up, this means that eternity meets earth; time and space meet heaven because the “second heaven” is “rolled up.”

And I know how such a man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows—

Notice that he says this twice because it is a mystery; he did not even understand it when it happened to him.

â€¦was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak. ( 2 Co. 12:3â€“4 )

Paul was raptured—”harpazoed,” caught up. This teaches about what it is going to be like to be raptured. We will not know if we are dead; we will just know we are alive. We will not know if we are in the body or out of the body.

Always an Earthly Return

When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away;

(â€¦”harpazoed” him, raptured himâ€¦)

â€¦and the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he kept preaching the gospel to all the cities until he came to Caesarea. ( Ac. 8:39â€“40 )

Notice when Paul was “harpazoed” we see him again back on earth and when Philip was “harpazoed” we see him back on earth. There is a Millennial Reign of Christ. Every time we see somebody “harpazoed” we see them coming back to earth. It is not a one-way ticket—it is a return ticket, only it will be back to the earth as it was before the Fall of man.Always remember that if someone has only six months to live, they actually have one thousand years plus six months to live. Believers go to sleep and then wake up again; death is for unsaved people.In Acts 8:39 he is “harpazoed” and they do not see him any longer in just the way that Enoch was snatched away and they did not see him anymore.

Then we who are alive and remain will be caught upâ€¦

(â€¦“harpazoed”â€¦)

â€¦together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words. ( 1 Th. 4:17-18 )

I have heard people say the word “rapture” is not in the Bible. Should they rather say “harpazo“? The word “harpazo” is many places in the Bible, and every time it occurs it teaches something about 1 Thessalonians 4:17 .

The Nativity Narrative

And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught upâ€¦

(â€¦“harpazoed”â€¦)

â€¦to God and to His throne. ( Rev. 12:5 )

As I have explained in other teachings, this is a Pesher interpretation of the Nativity narrative. Herod wanted to kill Jesus coming out of Mary, but Jesus by divine intervention was rescued. Herod comes and kills the other babies and so we see here the dragon was enraged with the woman and makes war with the woman and the rest of her offspring. It is a Pesher interpretation of the Christmas story (if you want to call it that), but it is a future event because as Jesus was taken to Egypt, the man-child is here taken up to God and to His throne.There is going to be a harpazo; there is always a rescue. In the context of Paul it is a rescue. Before the dragon could snatch the child away, God snatched Him away. Before the mob could snatch Paul away, God arranged providentially for the commander to snatch Paul away. There is always the context of a rescue. But if you do not believe there is a rescue, how are you going to get rescued?

The Amputation

For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thiefâ€¦

â€¦kleptosâ€¦

â€¦in the night. ( 1 Th. 5:2 )

Remember that the “Day of the Lord” is inaugurated by the episunagoge. When the Church is removed, God pours out His wrath on the kingdom of Antichrist. This is the “Day of the Lord,” but it comes suddenly.Another term for “rapture,” as it were (or at least it is synonymous in its use for “rapture”), is “kolobo” “the amputation,” as in, “Had those days not been cut short” “kolobo” ( Mt. 24:22 ).If someone has a highly metastasized cancer in an extremity or organ, he needs a surgical incision before it can spread to other organs. Or if someone has gangrene in an extremity it is necessary to amputate in order to prevent the entire body from dying. This is what is going to happen—the bad parts of the Body of Christ are going to be cut off; there will be an amputation. It will be cut short before the Body dies. When the shattering of the holy people happens ( Dan. 12:7 ), the suffering of the faithful Church is going to be cut short. The faithful Church will not experience the wrath of God, but it will experience persecution, but that persecution will be cut short by an amputation, the kolobo. This is an important word in eschatology.

JUST Like a Thief

In 1 Thessalonians 5 it does not say that it will come like a thief, but “just like a thief.” How does the devil operate? That is what Jesus is going to do. Just like my friend back in England, they do not have a clue they are going to get robbed, they do not have a clue how he is going to do it, they do not even have a clue when he is going to do it. He might hack into their system at 2:30 in the morning when everything is closed but the system is running. He may hack into their system remotely through another computer in Asia or Africa. They do not have a clue. It says “just” like a thief—it is emphatic.

But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief; ( 1 Th. 5:4 )

It should not overtake us like a thief! I am frightened when people are ignoring End Time prophecy or are taught to avoid it by Rick Warren and company.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thiefâ€¦

(There it is again: like a kleptos.)

â€¦in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. ( 2 Pe. 3:10 )

That word for “elements” in Greek is “stoicheia” where we get the word “stoichiometry” for elementary chemistry and the period chart of the elements. The Greeks knew about elements, but they did not know about subatomic particles or subatomic physics. They did not know about positrons, electrons, neutrinos, or protons, they just had an idea about elements and had a word for “atom” “atomos,” which meant “that which is most indivisible.” They did not know it could go any smaller than an atom elementally so that was the smallest to them. It was not until the 20th century that people knew an atom could be dissolved, but this fishermen from Galilee said that not only can an atom be dissolved but the biosphere can be destroyed by doing it. This was long before anyone knew about the critical mass of plutonium or cobalt or uranium 238. It is amazing, but that is exactly what it says in Greek, that an element can be dissolved, that which is indivisible, with enough explosive energy to destroy the biosphere.

“I will make it go forth,” declares the LORD of hosts, “and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of the one who swears falsely by My name; and it will spend the night within that house and consume it with its timber and stones.” ( Zech. 5:4 )

This is referring to the flying scroll—”magillah” in Hebrew. It goes into the house of the thief and will leave that house in ruins.How many people used to be in crazy churches that were teaching seriously false doctrine, and the Lord got them out of it through His Spirit—through showing them what the Scriptures meant? This is the scroll that went into house of the thief. There are people who through no fault of their own are in these loony churches which preach money, ecumenism, and God knows what else—who do not know any better; it is all they were ever told. I was saved in a cult called “The Children of God.” You would not believe the things I believed when I was first saved, but that was all I knew. I did not know it was crazy. There are people is these places who just do not know any better, who are in ignorance; I was in ignorance. But the scroll goes into the house of the thief.

“So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent.

“Sardis” comes from the Greek word “sarx” “of the flesh.” It was the church who heard and knew the truth at one point

Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you. ( Rev. 3:3 )

These are people who used to know the truth, and He is warning them to wake up and remember what they heard.There are churches which at one time stood squarely and solidly on biblical truth. Not many years ago you would have been hard-pressed to find a Baptist church that was not biblical. You would have been hard-pressed to find a Pentecostal church that was not biblical. I am only talking 30 years ago. They heard the truth, but they are not ready for the coming robbery.

(“Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his clothes, so that he will not walk about naked and men will not see his shame.”) (Rev, 16:15)

He keeps saying it over and over and over: “I am coming like a thief.”The people who are caught up in this lunacy of the televangelists and things like that are being robbed already. I know Christian businessmen who have been taken to the cleaners by religious con-artists. They are being robbed already. I do not mean giving money to missions, to honest ministries, or to Christian charity, I mean that these are con-artists. They are fleecing the sheep. But there is a bigger robbery coming. If someone cannot see through an obvious false prophet, what is going to happen when the False Prophet comes? If we cannot see through a petty thief cum televangelist, what is going to happen when the real crook shows up?

Which Thief Shall It Be?

Jesus is coming like a thief. He is going to rob the thief. He is going to do exactly what my friend in England does. He is going to behave just like a thief and He is going to do exactly what a thief does before the thief does it. Everybody is going to get “harpazoed”; everybody is going to get ripped off; everybody is going to be snatched away. The only question is, who is going to do it?

The kleptos comes to harpazo in order to kill; the one who is like a kleptos comes to harpazo in order to save.

The kleptos comes to harpazo in order to destroy; the one who is like a kleptos comes to harpazo in order to rescue.

The kleptos comes to harpazo what is not his; the one who is like a kleptos comes to harpazo those who are His by His own blood.The kleptos comes to harpazo in order to bring death; the one who is like a kleptos comes to harpazo in order to bring life.

The kleptos comes to harpazo in order to steal; the one who is like a kleptos comes to harpazo in order to restore.

One way or another everybody gets “harpazoed.” You are going to be “harpazoed,” I am going to be “harpazoed.” Your family is going to be “harpazoed,” my family is going to be “harpazoed.” Your church is going to be “harpazoed,” my church is going to be “harpazoed.” We all get “harpazoed.” The only question is, who is going to do it?

We have no choice about being “harpazoed,” what we can chose is who we want to do it—either the kleptos or the one who is like a kleptos. That day should not overtake us like a kleptos—that day should not overtake us like a thief.God bless.

Midrash

Fri, 15 May 2015 15:46:59 GMT

The Way The New Testament Writers Handled The Old Testament

by James Jacob Prasch

Midrash is the method of hermeneutics (Biblical interpretation) used by the ancient rabbis in the time of Jesus and Paul. Midrash incorporates a grammatical-historical exegesis, vaguely similar to the western models of Biblical interpretation that the Reformers borrowed from 16th century Humanism, but it sees this as simply a first step.

In its handling of various Biblical literary genre — such as narrative, wisdom literature, Hebrew poetry and apocalyptic — it seeks cognate relationships between different scriptural texts in order to interpret them in light of each other. The approach is more topical than linear.

The clearest set of guidelines in Midrash are the Seven Midroth attributed to Rabbi Hillel, the founder of the Pharisaic School of Hillel, where St. Paul was educated as a rabbi by Rabbi Gamaliel, the grandson of Hillel.

Midrash makes heavy use of allegory and typology to illustrate and illuminate doctrine, but never as a basis for doctrine. It sees multiple meanings in Bible texts found in strata, but this is very different in certain fundamental respects from the Gnostic and Alexandrian uses of figurative interpretation associated with Philo and Origen, reflecting more of Hebraic, rather than Hellenistic philosophical world-view and view of theology.

Midrash interprets prophecy as a cyclical pattern of historical recapitulation (prophecies having multiple fulfillment), with an ultimate fulfillment associated with the eschaton, which is the final focal point of the redemptive process. A classical work of Midrash in Judaism is the Midrash Rabba on Genesis (Berashith). Another is Lamentations Rabba.

Midrash follows certain formats. One is the Mashal/Nimshal format seen in Proverbs or the parables, where physical things are representative of things spiritual. Figurative midrashic exposition in the New Testament is viewed, for instance, in Jude”s epistle or Galatians 4:24-34. It is Midrash which accounts for the manner in which the New Testament handles the Old Testament.

Another format is the parashiyot; sections opening with a petihah in which a base verse is followed by commentary. In addition to exegetical midrash, there are homiletic midrashim, arranged in topically argued pisaqaot. These frequently follow a yelammedenu rabbenu format used by Jesus in the gospels. Both of these kinds of midrashim are haggadic. There are also wide bodies of midrashic literature which are halakik, but these are of less importance to New Testament scholarship.

Unless someone has been educated in Judaism, Hebrew, or theology, it is easier to demonstrate midrash than to explain it. Moriel provides various tapes and videos where midrashic exegesis is practically applied and demonstrated in interpreting Scripture. One example would be €œThe Woman at the Well,” a midrashic interpretation of John chapter four, used to expound the Scriptures relating to the subject of Roman Catholicism.

If you look at the way the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, it is clear that the apostles did not use western Protestant methods of exegesis or interpretation. Jesus was a rabbi. Paul was a rabbi. They interpreted the Bible in the way other rabbis did-according to a method called Midrash.

Something went wrong in the early Church; it got away from its Jewish roots. And as more Gentiles became Christians, something that Paul (in Romans 11) warned should not happen, happened. People lost sight of the root.

Whenever you have a change in world-view, you”re going to have a change in theology. A positive way to handle that change is called recontextualising; a negative way is called redefining. Recontextualising the gospel when Wycliffe Bible translators translated Isaiah 1:18, Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow, for tribal people in equatorial Africa — a place where the people had never seen snow — they translated it as they shall be white as coconut. That is recontextualising — taking the same truth and putting it into the context of somebody else”s language or culture or world-view. That is perfectly valid; it does no harm to the message, in contrast to redefinition.

Instead of re-explaining what the Bible means, redefinition changes what the Bible means. That is wrong. And that is what happened in the Early Church. After Constantine the Great turned Christianity into the religion of the state, people began redefining the gospel in increasingly radical ways. Some of the Early Church Fathers believed that what was best in Greek theosophy, for example the monotheistic ideas of Plato and Socrates, helped to prepare the Greek world for the coming of Jesus, in the same way that the Torah (the Old Testament) prepared the Jewish world. Up to a point, that is a fair statement.

There is a Greek (Hellenistic) way of thinking and there is a Hebrew (Hebraic) way of thinking. Paul used both. When Paul spoke to the Jews he used the Hebrew way of thinking, but in Athens when he was preaching the gospel to the Areopagites (Acts 17:22-31), he used the Greek way of thinking. Jews seek a sign, Greeks seek wisdom. There is validity in both, if they are used biblically.

A problem arose when people began to Hellenise a Jewish faith. Instead of recontextualising the gospel for Greeks, they began redefining it in Greek terms. This happened especially in Alexandria in the time of Origen, but it became a major problem after Constantine. With the introduction of the teachings of Augustine of Hippo, and the people who influenced him — Cyprian of Carthage, Ambrose, and others.

The Greeks knew many things from Plato and Socrates that were true such as the fact that man is made in God’s image and likeness. Anybody — even people with no Judeo-Christian background and no access to the Bible — can know by natural reason there is one true God and that man is sinful (Romans 1:18-20).

We can agree with the things in Greek theosophy up to the point they agree with the Bible. But when people begin reinterpreting and redefining the gospel in the light of a Greek world-view, we have a problem. The Greeks believed in Dualism. They thought that everything of the flesh was bad and everything of the spirit was good. A Greek reading the words, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1), could agree with them. But he could not agree with the statement, The Word became flesh (John 1:14). The Greeks believed that something physical was bad, simply because it was physical. The Bible teaches that the spiritual and the physical were meant to work in harmony with each other. There was not to be any contradiction or any conflict between the two. The flesh is fallen, that is true, but there is nothing wrong with the physical elements themselves.

When Augustine came along he did not recontextualise but, rather, redefined Christianity as a Greek, Platonic religion. Augustine said things like, €œThe only good thing about marriage is having children who will be celibate.” The Manichaeans, who said that the first sin was having marital relations, introduced these ideas into the Greek world. That is why, to this day, Roman Catholicism cannot handle sexuality, and why it has so many restrictions and hang-ups, and why Roman

Catholics are even hung about marital sex.

People began reinterpreting the Bible, not using the Jewish method of midrash, but using Greek methods. Typology and allegory Midrash uses typology and allegory — symbols — in order to illustrate and illumine doctrine. For instance, Jesus is €œthe Passover Lamb.” The symbolism of the Jewish Passover perfectly illustrates the doctrine of atonement, but we never base the doctrine of atonement on the symbolism. The symbolism illustrates the doctrine, which is itself stated plainly elsewhere in Scripture. In the Gnostic world of Greek thinking, the opposite happens. Gnostics claim to have received a subjective, mystical insight — called a gnosis — into the symbols. They then reinterpret the plain meaning of the text in light of the gnosis. For Gnostics, symbolism is the basis for their doctrine, contrary to the ancient Jewish methods.

These methods first started to creep into the Church through people who were influenced by Philo. His teachings progressively entered into Roman Catholicism, to the point where Augustine would say, €œIf God used violence to convert Paul, the Church can use violence to convert people,” which led to the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and so on. Instead of recontextualising, they were redefining Scripture. They were reading a Jewish book as if it were a Greek book. That was a mistake.

It started with Origen in the East and Augustine in the West, and steadily worsened over the centuries. It became much worse in the Middle Ages with something called Scholasticism. Aristotle”s ideas were absorbed into Islam, then the Crusades brought those ideas back to Europe, and into medieval Roman Catholicism. Moses Maimonides rewrote Judaism as an Aristotelian religion, then Thomas Aquinas rewrote Christianity as an Aristotelian religion.

The Reformers came along and tried to correct what had gone wrong in medieval Roman Catholicism. Unfortunately, although the Reformers were dynamic personalities, they were not dynamic thinkers. The Reformation was born out of something called Humanism. (Note: the first Humanists were not secular, they were Christians.) The best of the Humanists were men like Thomas A Kempis, John Colet, and Jacques Lef ¨vre. But the greatest of them all was Erasmus of Rotterdam. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and most of the other Reformers got their ideas from Erasmus. Erasmus and the other Humanists attempted to study and teach the Bible in its plain literal meaning, in order to undo the medieval abuses of Roman Catholicism. They placed the emphasis on reading the Bible as literature and as history, and gave us the system of grammatical-historical exegesis that has been used in the Protestant churches ever since.

The problem with the Reformers is that they only went so far. They made rules governing the application of their grammatical-historical system in order to refute medieval Roman Catholicism, and many of those rules are still taught in theological seminaries today. One such rule is this: There are many applications of a Scripture but only one interpretation. That is total rubbish! The Talmud tells us there are multiple interpretations. Who did Jesus agree with? The Reformers? Or the other rabbis?

Jesus said, A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah (Matthew 12:39). What was €œthe sign of the prophet Jonah?” In one place Jesus says it was this, that €œas Jonah was three days and nights in the stomach of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). But, at the same time, He says that it was the fact that the men of Ninevah repented at the preaching of Jonah (Luke 11:32). The Gentiles would repent when the Jews did not, that is also the sign of the prophet Jonah. He gave two equally CO-valid interpretations of what that sign is. So, where Protestant hermeneutics say that there is only one interpretation, all the rest is application, it is out of step with Jesus.

Another rule of Reformed Hermeneutics says that, if the plain wording of Scripture makes sense, seek no other sense. Take it at its face value, full stop. That is also total rubbish!

A First or Second Century Jewish Christian reading John”s Gospel, chapters one, two and three, would have said it was the new Creation narrative — the story of the new Creation. He would have seen that God walked the earth in Genesis, and now God walked the earth again in the new Creation in John. He would have seen that the Spirit moved on the water and brought forth the Creation in Genesis, and now the Spirit moved on the water and brought forth the new Creation in John. He would have seen that there was the small light and the great light in the Creation in Genesis, and now there was the small light — John the Baptist — and the great light — Jesus — in the new Creation in John. The fig tree, midrashically, in Jewish metaphor, represents the Tree of Life that we see in the garden in Genesis, in Ezekiel 47, and in the Book of Revelation. So when Jesus told Nathaniel, €œI saw you while you were still under the fig tree” (John 1:48), He was not simply saying to Nathaniel that He saw him under a literal fig tree (although He did), He was telling him that He had seen him from the garden, from the Creation, from the foundation of the world.

By reading the Bible as literature and history, as the Humanists did, you only see part of it. The Humanists were reacting to medieval Scholasticism and the Gnosticism that much of Roman Catholicism is based upon. Nonetheless, their approach prevents people from seeing much of the depth of Scripture. Using the grammatical-historical method, the Reformers were able to discover truths such as Justification by Faith and the Authority of Scripture. But that is all they could see; they could not go beyond it. Martin Luther considered Romans to be the main book of the Bible. He totally rejected the Book of Revelation. Yet the Book of Revelation is the book for the Last Days. Luther admitted that you cannot understand it with a Protestant mind.

What is wrong? Is the Book of Revelation wrong? Or is the Protestant mind wrong? Be very careful. Daniel (Daniel 12:4) and John (Revelation 10:4) were told to €œseal these things up” until the time of the end. In the fullness of God’s time, the interpretation of these books will be manifested to the faithful. When you see people writing out diagrams and charts, saying that they have got the whole eschatological program and all of Revelation figured out, be very cautious. It is sealed up until the appropriate time. God will unveil it in His way and in His time. And that will be done step by step. The first step is going back to reading the Bible as a Jewish book, instead of as a Greek one.

The Epistles are commentary on other Scripture; they tell you what other Scripture means on a very practical level. It is fine to read the Epistles as literature and history, using grammatical-historical methods. But there are different kinds of literature in the Bible, different literary genre that God put in there for different reasons. Psalms (Hebrew poetry), Revelation (apocalyptic literature), the Gospels (narrative), and Proverbs (wisdom literature).

You do not read a letter in the same way as you read poetry. You do not read The Narnia Chronicles (C.S. Lewis) in the same way as you would read a letter from

Aunt Harriet back in England. If you read the Epistles, you will see that the apostles did not interpret the other books of the Bible by the grammatical-historical method. The book of Hebrews is a commentary on the symbolism of the Levitical priesthood and the Temple. Look at Galatians 4:24 onwards, the story of the two women — it is a midrash on the purpose of the Law. Look at the epistle of Jude, it is midrashic literature. The apostles did not handle the Scriptures according to Protestant grammatical-historical methods.

There are different kinds of prophecy in the Bible. The two kinds that are important in understanding the Last Days are Messianic prophecies and, connected to those, eschatological prophecies. When we come to consider biblical prophecy, this is very important. Because the Western mind, with its basis in Sixteenth Century Humanism, says that prophecy consists of a prediction and a fulfillment. To the ancient Jewish mind, it was not a question of something being predicted, then being fulfilled. Rather, to the ancient Jewish mind, prophecy was a pattern which is recapitulated; a prophecy having multiple fulfillments. And each fulfillment, each cycle, teaches something about the ultimate fulfillment. For example: In a famine, Abraham went into Egypt (Genesis 12:10-20). God judged Pharaoh. Abraham and his descendants came out of Egypt, taking the wealth of Egypt with them, and went into the Promised Land. Abraham”s descendants replayed the same experience. In a famine they went into Egypt (Genesis 42). God judged Pharaoh again, a wicked king. Abraham”s descendants came out of Egypt, taking the wealth of Egypt with them (Exodus 12:36), and they went into the Promised Land.

What happened to Abraham happened to his descendants. Then the same thing happened with Jesus. When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. €œGet up,” he said, €œtake the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: €œOut of Egypt I called my son” (Matthew 2:16).

Matthew says that when Jesus came out of Egypt, after the wicked King Herod died, that fulfilled the prophecy of Hosea. “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11:1-2). Very plainly, Hosea chapter 11 is talking about the Exodus, about what happened with Moses. In its grammatical-historical context, it is talking about the Exodus, not about the Messiah. But Matthew appears to take the passage out of all reasonable context and twist it into talking about Jesus. We have to ask, is Matthew wrong? or is there something wrong with our Protestant way of interpreting the Bible?

There is nothing wrong with Matthew, and there is nothing wrong with the New Testament. But there is something wrong with our Protestant mentality. The Jewish idea of prophecy is not prediction, but pattern. Abraham came out of Egypt, when Pharaoh was judged; his descendant”s came out of Egypt when the wicked king was judged; then another wicked king was judged and the Messiah came out of Egypt. There are multiple fulfillment”s of prophecy. Midrashically, €œIsrael” alludes to Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah. When you see verses like: “Israel my glory and Israel my first born,” they are midrashic allusions to the Messiah.

Then, in 1 Corinthians 10, something else happens: We come out of Egypt, which Paul tells us is a symbol of the world. Pharaoh, who was deified by the Egyptians and worshipped as God, is a symbol of the devil, the god of this world. Just as Moses made a covenant with blood and sprinkled it on the people, so did Jesus. Moses fasted forty days, and so did Jesus. Jesus is the prophet like Moses, predicted in Deuteronomy 18:18. Just as Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, through the water, into the Promised Land, so Jesus leads us out of the world, through baptism, into heaven. It is a pattern.

Then the horse and its rider are thrown into the sea (Exodus 15:1). We sing the song of Moses — the horse and rider thrown into the sea — in Revelation 15:3. Why? Because it is a pattern. The ultimate meaning of “coming out of Egypt” is the resurrection and rapture of the Church. The judgments that happen in Exodus are replayed in Revelation. And just as Pharaoh”s magicians were able to counterfeit the miracles of Moses and Aaron, so the antichrist and False Prophet will counterfeit the miracles of Jesus and His witnesses. They brought Joseph”s bones with them when they came out of Egypt (Exodus 13:19). Why? Because the dead in Christ will rise first. It is a pattern.

The ancient Jewish mind that produced the New Testament looks at prophecy, not as prediction, but as pattern. To understand what is going to happen in the future, you look at what did happen in the past. There are multiple fulfillments, and each successive fulfillment teaches something about the ultimate one.

You will never understand the Book of Revelation with the kind of limited approach to biblical interpretation that is taught in Protestant seminaries. Midrash is like a quadratic equation or a very complex second order differential equation, a thirteen or fourteen step equation. Some people take the first step of grammatical-historical exegesis and think the equation is solved. There is nothing wrong with what they do, but there is plenty wrong with what they don”t do. The equation is not solved. There is nothing wrong with grammatical-historical exegesis. It is a necessary first step, it is a necessary preliminary, and it is okay for reading the Epistles. But that is all.

It takes the wisdom of the ancients to really understand these things — Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast… (Revelation 13:18) — not the wisdom of the 16th century, but the wisdom of the first century.

The Death of Reason

Fri, 15 May 2015 15:40:48 GMT

By James Jacob Prasch

Introduction

Political Correctness has gone mad in the secular world and has overtaken most of the Evangelical Church. Biblically, blindness is one thing, but willful blindness is quite another. Due to this suspension of reason, the stage is being set for Jesus’ warning that “For this reason” He will come at an hour when He is not expected.

For God has not given us a spirit of timidity but of power and love and discipline. (2 Timothy 1:7)

In this verse we see it is not of the Holy Spirit to be cowardly. The context of the passage suggests a willingness to suffer for the sake of proclaiming Christ (as Paul did), for upholding sound teaching and having no sense of ignominy in this proclamation and upholding (verses 8-14). If God’s Spirit is infusing our spirits with the true character of Christ it will be evident in a power to proclaim Christ and uphold right doctrine, and in a love that furnishes us a desire to do it.

Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher. For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day. Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you. (2 Tmothy 1:8-14)

In this text, Paul directly and strongly relates this to the Last Days and the Return of Christ (verse 12). This contrasts with many situations in these Last Days where cowardice in the church results in a lack of love so that evangelism is either abandoned (e.g. Ebenezer Fund) or where the gospel presentation is diluted (e.g. Nicky Gumbel’s Alpha Courses), and where the upholding of truth is compromised. Contrary to the will of God expressed for us in the text and as demonstrated in the apostolic example of Paul, many Christians today find a sense of ignominy in proclaiming Jesus as the only Way of salvation in an age of interfaith and ecumenism.

The third element of the new spirit God gives us is discipline, or “sound mind”. The Greek term here is “sophronismou“. This term means “sound judgment” resulting in the capacity to control one’s behavior accordingly. The “soph” prefix of this term carries the meaning of wisdom in Greek. (When linked to the Greek word for human love it forms our English word “philosophy”). It is almost the same as the Greek word sophoi, meaning “wise ones”, those with an informed ability to reason logically. Sophoi is also a Greek translation of the Hebrew “wise ones” or chakamim—those possessing the divine wisdom mentioned repeatedly in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes that governs their actions. It is not however the same Greek term for “self-control” (ekreitei) as in the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, (although by definition it relates to it) but sophronismou is rather a spiritual nature resulting in the mental ability to think and act logically and reasonably with wisdom in accordance with God’s Word.

Where it is lacking, real power and real love are also in deficient supply, but cowardice is not. Bearing in mind the eschatological (end times) emphasis Paul injects, let us examine, in light of this passage, the erosion of this “sound judgment” which, on the basis of God’s Word, should be reflected in sound action.

The Current State of Affairs

The Body of Christ can never stop the world from being the world. Once the true Church fails to be salt and light, however, the world will only become more worldly. Once we go beyond this and the true Church becomes like the world, it can no longer be considered the true Church.

Secular society in the Western world is no longer secular but has a new spirituality (which is actually the old Gnosticism that threatened the early church in new packaging) called “New Age”, which is essentially modified Hinduism, Buddhism, Shamanism and mysticism. From the Fourth Dimension heresy of Yonggi Cho to the Paradigm Shift of the late John Wimber and his ecumenical Vineyard Movement that has so influenced Sandy Miller, David Pytches, Nicky Gumbel and British Restorationism, the New Age Neo-Gnosticism is now the experiential theology of the British Charismatic Movement. So too, in recent years, we witnessed the Kundalini Yoga of John Arnott, Rodney Howard-Browne and John Kilpatrick that deceived most of both Elim and the Assemblies of God. This did not begin with Peter Wagner or the Kansas City Prophets, however neither did it begin with Wimber or Arnott, nor even with William Branham or E W Kenyon, the harbingers of Copeland, Hagan, Hinn etc.

This is the third time that Eastern religion has invaded and seduced Western Christendom. The first time was during the Pre-Nicean church in the era of Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Basilides and Valentinus, whose Gnosticism in the form of perverted hermeneutics (style of biblical interpretation) was imported into the West by the Neo-Platonist Augustine of Hippo, the hero of John Calvin but also the chief doctrinal architect of Roman Catholicism. The second time was when the Crusades imported the influence of Islam and Hinduism into Western European Christendom before the Renaissance. The rosary beads, hideously attributed to the Virgin Mary via Dominic (the founder of the Dominican Order responsible for the torture and murder of perhaps half a million people in the Catholic inquisitions, whom the Roman church considers a canonized saint), in fact originated from the Vishnu prayer beads of the Hindu world, brought from the East by the Crusades and spice traders. Today, however, is the third time Eastern religion has invaded the evangelical church of the West. Because the Charismatic Movement had no biblical doctrine but its theology was largely experiential and mystical in orientation, it was inevitable that it would take its so-called doctrine from Eastern mysticism instead of from the Word of God.

This is not to deny a biblical understanding of charismatic gifts of the Spirit, or a genuinely scriptural understanding of Pentecostalism. Cessationism (the belief that gifts of the Spirit ended with the first century Apostles) is itself a wrong doctrine, originating in its current form with B. B. Warfield, but having roots in some of the Reformers, who were reacting against the bogus miracles of medieval Catholicism. Cessationism was not believed by Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, George Whitfield or D. L. Moody any more than Toronto or Pensacola were believed by the saner generation of earlier Pentecostals.

This sad saga, however, is long established and Moriel’s readers are already well aware of both the errors of Cessationism on one extreme, and the bogus counterfeits of hyper-Pentecostalism and charismania on the other. But the yet newer wave of deception has not been the New Age beliefs. The newer wave of deception has rather followed on the heels of this existing deception in the form of the political correctness of secular society entering the Church.

Suspending Common Sense

To an academic, “criticism” simply means the scholarly study of something. It does not mean “fault-finding”. It simply means literary criticism as in the critical examination of something in order to understand it intellectually. In the media, “criticism” simply means to review a book, a play or a film. In The Word of God, the Greek word kritikos means to judge something spiritually according to the Bible (Hebrews 4:12). It is related to the Greek word diakrino, meaning to investigate something (such as a prophecy, for instance) on the basis of Scripture in order to discern whether or not it is of God (1 Corinthians 14:29). Understood biblically, Christians are directly commanded to “be critical” by the Word of God. What the academic world, the theatrical world or even the Word of God means by “critical”, and what the term “critical” means in an era of political correctness and in a politically correct church are two entirely different things.

Being critical becomes redefined as mere fault finding or contention. Sadly, we currently have an entire generation of mainly charismatic and Pentecostal Christians who have never been to a proper Bible study in terms of exegesis of Scripture (didaskein—Greek), nor heard a proper sermon in terms of expository preaching (homilea—Greek). The exposition of Scripture is replaced by psycho-babble, anecdotes, verses out of context and, too often, just plain hype and con-artistry. Since such people never had actual pastors in the biblical sense of shepherds who feed the sheep, they die slowly of malnutrition, eating straw instead of grain (Jeremiah 23:28) and have no grasp of the biblical doctrine that Paul says is essential to Christian growth and health (Titus 2:1). Consequently, they wind up believing anything, including the very deceptions we are warned would come in the last days (2 Timothy 4: 3-5). They accuse those who follow the command of the Lord (1 Timothy 1:3) in condemning unbiblical doctrines, of being unloving and divisive. The modern state of affairs has become one where such people simply do not know any better and do not understand that it is rather those who depart from the teachings of Scripture who are divisive (Romans 16:17), not those who will attempt to protect the Body from such deception.

When someone is really starving, they will eat anything set before them, including toxins which will make them ill, but their condition is compounded by the prolonged lack of nutriment, resulting in a failure of the immune system, so they will not have the means to identify and counteract infectious invasions.

It is like a charlatan on the old American frontier, pedaling snake oil as a miracle cure that makes those who consume it ill, but his living depends on them continuing to consume it, so he warns his customers to avoid a legitimate physician as a bad and dangerous person. This is precisely what we see today, for example, in the attacks of Robert Schuler, W. De Artega, and Wynne Lewis against Dave Hunt. The message is always the same: what the Bible calls being discerning now becomes the sin of being negative or critical which, when examined biblically, is not sin but virtue. If we accept such a perverted definition of being critical it would mean that the Hebrew prophets, the Apostles and, for all of their faults and mistakes, even the Church Fathers and Reformers should never have been used by the Lord to say, write and act as they did, but instead should have allowed the mystery of iniquity and demonic deception to destroy the true Church for the sake of some unbiblical definition of “unity”, contrary to the true unity of the Spirit, which demands a basis in doctrinal truth (John 17:17-23) in order to be united in Christ.

Once the critical faculty is suspended, reason is automatically assassinated. People engage in every form of circumlocution and spin leading to what amounts to plain stupidity.

Homosexuality & Lesbianism

Let us, first of all, see this trend in secular society, before we begin to understand how it infiltrates the Church.

As one example, we are, in today’s world, supposed to ignore the fact that in the animal kingdom penetrative same-sex relationships do not exist among any other primate species. We are supposed to ignore the fact that same-sex relationships cannot reproduce; but since homosexuals are unable to have children they demand children of others by proxy, claiming equal rights of adoption and access to surrogate motherhood to bring children up as homosexuals in homosexual relationships. We are expected to ignore the fact that a homosexual and lesbian minority demand the right to impose their will on a heterosexual majority, insisting that heterosexuals have their children taught, in tax-funded schools, that homosexuality is as normal as heterosexuality and that children, often from dysfunctional family backgrounds, must discover their own sexuality on the basis of this presupposition. Social policies on everything, from education to same-sex marriage rights, are demanded (increasingly as well as affirmative action policies in favor of homosexuals) while we are expected to ignore the scientific fact that, zoologically, homosexuality among humans is unnatural.

We are expected, for the sake of political correctness, to ignore the medical evidence that among practicing homosexuals, average life expectancy may become reduced by as much as 25 years. We are expected to ignore the medical statistics that homosexuals are more inclined to suffer dozens of maladies and kinds of trauma than non-homosexuals and, in the developed world, are statistically thousands of times more prone to HIV infection. We are expected to ignore psychological studies, some of which indicate that partner abuse is far more widespread in same-sex relationships than in heterosexual marriages, and that substance abuse is often considerably more prevalent amongst homosexuals.

We are also expected to deny in our understanding of the homosexual and lesbian psychology that nearly all homosexual males lacked a positive father image, just as most lesbians lacked a wholesome mother image. Instead, we are expected to pretend that there is some conclusive scientific evidence that people are born with that orientation when, in fact, genetically none exists.

If we raise the issue of the scientific, medical and social evidence concerning the abnormal nature of homosexuality or the detrimental impact it has on longevity, we are considered to be homophobic. (The fact that homosexuals are very often heterophobic does not, of course, factor into the equation). In other words, in a politically correct environment, we are expected to turn a blind eye to reality and to behave irrationally in our consideration of homosexuality and lesbianism. Reason becomes the enemy of social harmony.

Several years ago I believed myself led of the Lord to warn that the compromise among Anglicans, Methodists and Reformed churches on the issue of homosexuality and the clergy would soon become an issue among Pentecostals. Those who faulted Jim Bakker for his ecumenism, money preaching, extravagance and heresy were portrayed as evil and “touching God’s anointed”, (a pathetic distortion of the story of David and Saul at Ein Gedi). In the aftermath of Bakker’s public fall and being sent to prison for his criminal activities, his homosexuality was revealed by former associates. Just as an Elim superintendent in the North of England was found to have engaged in homosexual activity, now Roberts Liardon, the American counterpart and friend of Elim’s Colin Dye, has been found to be a practicing homosexual. Yet those who had been warning about Liardon for years were the ones who were condemned. Heresy is very frequently a symptom of immorality!

Islam

We see an equal abrogation of sane thinking in the popular disposition towards the Islamic religion. Political correctness states that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. History and current events show the diametric opposite to be the case. Yet in the aftermath of September 11th, Tony Blair and George Bush Junior, rush before the TV cameras to insist that Islam is a religion of “peace and tolerance”.

We are expected to ignore the fact that thousands of Muslims demonstrated in Trafalgar Square against the institution of democracy, demanding that Britain adopt the feudal Islamic form of government. We are expected to forget that Muslim history supports the contentions of Osama bin Laden that his is the true Islam and that Muslims not agreeing with terrorism and murder have apostatized from true Islam. Abu Bakir (father-in-law of Mohammed) contended on behalf of Mohammed that the only assurance of salvation was to be a shaheed—a Muslim who dies killing infidels in a jihad becomes a martyr.

We are expected to forget that Islam admits that Mohammed was a filthy pedophile who married a 6 year-old girl Aisha, and took her virginity when she was the age of 9. We are expected to forget that 70-80 year old Saudi men were exposed on prime time American TV buying little girls from impoverished families in India, justifying it on the basis of the fact that their prophet Mohammed was a pedophile. Islam is still, we are expected to believe, a civilized religion.

We are expected to ignore the fact that even small Christian girls, abducted in Muslim societies, are forcibly subjected to clitorectomy (female circumcision), often performed on queues of them with the same rusty razor blade under dangerously septic conditions in the name of the faith of the Quran.

We are similarly expected to ignore the fact that 1,000 British girls a year are taken to Islamic countries and forced to become one of the four wives of people they have never met, often not infrequently blood relatives as old as 60 years of age. Islam, we are told, is a moral religion and such practices, we are expected to believe, have nothing to do with Islam. Who, other than Muslims, religiously engage in such disgusting abuses of human rights?

If Islam is a civilized faith of justice and virtue, where is the justice in the feudalism of nearly the entire Islamic world? Where is the justice and virtue in a religion that allows pedophilia in imitation of its founding prophet, polygamy and the oppression of women, and even slavery? If Islam is the faith of tolerance (as Bush, Blair and their Muslim acquaintances insist), where does tolerance exist anywhere in the Muslim world? The answer, of course, is that it exists nowhere in the Muslim world.

If Islam is a faith of peace, as the politically correct media continually misrepresents it as being, why are there three times as many armed conflicts in the world involving Islam today as there are all of the other religious people groups in the world put together? Once more, the White House, Number 10, and CNN expect us to relegate common sense to the status of prejudice, in a new worldview designed to facilitate a New World Order (a term first coined by Bush Sr.) where reason becomes unreasonable.

In this “new think”, we are expected to believe that neither Lockerbie nor September 11th nor the assassination of Robert Kennedy nor the suicide bombing of American embassies nor the endless stream of Islamic outrages perpetrated against the nation Israel had anything to do with Islam. Who did such things? Was it the Quakers? Now a Byron, California school system is requiring 7th Grade students to take courses in Islam. One thing we may be certain that the syllabus will not contain, however, is the fact that no place in the Muslim world would courses on Christianity be allowed, let alone required as mandatory curriculum. Such an absence of reason means that Islam will not have to destroy the West with jihad, the West has become far too adept at destroying itself.

We are expected to believe that, as was demonstrated by the involvement of senior Bush administration officials with Enron, and the fact that Bush and Cheney are owned and operated by Texas oil interests has nothing to do with their unwillingness to stand up to the House of Saud and the Wahhabi sect of Islam in Saudi Arabia, which decapitates Christians and finances Islamic extremism globally.

We are expected to forget that Bush’s father was vice-president of an administration that supplied weapons to the Islamic terrorist government of Iran, and then denied it. We are expected to forget that, as a former CIA Director, Bush Senior saw American commandos training Gadhafi”s terrorists in Libya, and as President he left Saddam Hussein in power and now the disgraceful Bush legacy of Islamic appeasement is perpetuated by his son, who appeared on TV after September 11th singing the praises of Islam at an Islamic institution in Washington and allowing the U. S. postal service to issue a stamp commemorating Ramadan. Islam is a religion which interprets kindness as weakness and by calling for a Palestinian state in the aftermath of September 11th, the only signal Bush’s attitude is to Islam is “terrorism works, we are winning the jihad, allah is giving us the victory, America is making concessions out of fear.” We are expected to pretend that none of this has anything to do with the politics of Arab oil and the economics of petro-dollars recycled through the banks of London and New York.

We are expected to forget that 18 months prior to September 11th Vladimir Putin warned Tony Blair that the Islamic terrorism he was fighting in Chechnya would soon arrive in the West and that the Western position towards Serbia, who was fighting the Islamic Kosovo Liberation Army, backed by Al Qaeda, was unbalanced. Blair and Clinton intervened militarily on the side of the Muslims in defiance of the NATO treaty, which only allows intervention when a NATO country is attacked.

We are also expected to forget that prior to September 11th the Israeli Government had repeatedly warned the White House that the Islamic terrorism they live with would soon become a reality in the American mainland, whilst Bush held a Ramadan celebration in the White House!

We are expected to believe it despite the fact that in one poll 40% of British Muslims and more than 90% of Saudi Arabian professionals expressed support for bin Laden. We are expected to forget that British TV broadcasted well-educated Pakistanis at one of Pakistan’s most elite private schools regretting only that Bin Laden did not kill more people. Instead of protecting British and American citizens, Blair and Bush reject the clear need for the mass deportation of Muslims not holding British or American citizenship and the closure of mosques funded by militantly orientated Islamic interests and governments but would rather leave their own citizens at risk of further terrorism. “Islam”, the politicians tell us “is a religion of tolerance and peace that believes in justice”—something only an imbecile could possibly believe.

In being expected to believe that Islam is a peaceable, tolerant and just religion, we are expected to suspend our powers of reason and to ignore the irrefutable fact that there is not a single Muslim country in the world that is an authentic democracy and that there is not a single Islamic country in the world where Christians are not persecuted. Our politicians expect us to believe their rhetoric and to accept at face value the propaganda of Muslims living in the West, that their religion is not one of hostility towards the West nor towards the Judeo-Christian faith, despite the fact that while the Saudi Arabians fund the construction of mosques all over Britain, America and elsewhere, these same heathen savages, who decapitate people for becoming Christians, will not allow the construction of a single church in Saudi Arabia. These are clear facts the Blair Government and the Bush White House expect us all to ignore.

We are expected to forget the 200,000 Christian refugees in East Timor—Islam is a religion of “peace and tolerance”.

We are expected to forget the 50,000 murdered in the Southern Philippines—Islam is a religion of ‘peace and tolerance.’

We are expected to forget the World Trade Centre, Lockerbie and the Pentagon—Islam is a religion of “peace and tolerance”.

We are expected to forget the Saudis hanging a 15 ye

ar-old boy for his Christian faith while their country is under the strategic protection of America and Britain—Islam is a religion of “peace and tolerance”.

We are expected to forget thousands upon thousands of Muslim barbarians rioting in the streets of Britain’s cities, demanding the murder of Salmon Rushdie, a British citizen, for authoring a book they didn’t like—Islam is a religion of “peace and tolerance”.

We are expected to forget the Islamic genocide in the Sudan and the church burning in Nigeria—Islam is a religion of “peace and tolerance”.

We are expected, by the BBC, CNN, the British and American governments and the Anglican Bishop of Wales (who like Desmond Tutu favors homosexual and lesbian ordination) to ignore the fact that the heathen pedophile faith of Islam, based on murder, terrorism, hatred of Jews, and the decapitation of Christians divides the world into two camps: “Dar al Islam” (the world of Islam) and “Dar al Harb” (the world of the sword).

If you do not ignore factual reality and refuse to live in the fantasy world of political correctness created by the media, politicians, and spiritually and morally dead churches, you are the one who is somehow daft, morally deficient, and detached from reality!

Political correctness has indeed gone mad and reason is a casualty of a misguided sense of what brotherhood and equality actually are. Now we are expected to further ignore the absolute and incontrovertible fact that in their own backward countries, Muslims uniformly deny to others the same rights and privileges they aggressively demand from Great Britain, the USA and other more civilized nations.

Social Welfare & Euro-Federalism

When the British Welfare State was formulated by Sir William Beveridge in the aftermath of the Second World War, a single parent family was a war widow with children whose husband and father was killed, either in the Blitz, or the forces or Merchant Navy in the struggle against the Nazis, the fascists or the imperial Japanese.

The sense then was that the tax payer and the Government had a moral obligation to help these war widows and orphans whose breadwinner was killed in the war. Now a single parent family may be a young mother with 4 or 5 different children from 3 different drunken yobbo football hooligans whom the taxpayer is expected to support in addition to his or her own children. Everyone knows this to be true. Everyone knows this to be an injustice and an inequality, and everyone knows this was not why the Welfare State was established. But we are expected to forget this. We are expected to pretend that these single mothers and absentee fathers are the victims, instead of the working taxpayers.

There is not an economist or banker in the world who does not realize that once a nation loses control of its money supply its government becomes irrelevant. Once a nation loses control of its capacity to control its economic destiny it automatically forfeits its capacity to control its political destiny. As we see Daniel’s prophecies fast taking shape in the confederation of a non-democratic Europe with an ecumenical/inter-faith religious establishment, the British Government has lifted control of the nation’s monetary system out of the realm of voter accountability and placed it into the hands of the Bank of England, restructured along the anti-democratic lines of the American Federal Reserve System, as a stepping stone to junking the pound sterling. We are expected to ignore the fact that the future of British government will not be British but European, and will not be democratic but bureaucratic.

We are expected to forget that in the last federal Europe, the Germans dominated the Holy Roman Empire in league with the papacy and we are expected to forget what that meant and what it will certainly mean again. As Romano Prodi said, the Euro was not an economic move, but a political one. The European Common Market was the direct result of the Second World War. Thanks to the Europhiles of all major British political parties, contrary to popular myth, Germany won the War.

As the European agenda is propagated in the school systems, Britons are supposed to forget their history. They are expected to not have their children taught the truth, that it was the desire to be free from the scourge of Roman Catholic heresy and its blood butchering papacy and its murdering Jesuit henchmen from the 16th and 17th centuries onward, and that it was the ambition to pioneer the parliamentary democracy which Rome opposed, and gun powder plotting Roman Catholics like Guy Faulks tried to destroy that united the United Kingdom.

The Scots are expected to forget that it was the pro-papal agenda of Bonnie Prince Charles acting at the behest of Catholic France in league with the papacy that prompted the Presbyterians to fight with the disliked English against Roman Catholic Bonnie Prince Charles who was born in Rome. Britons are expected to ignore that it resisted everyone from Catholic Spain’s Armada to Catholic France’s Napoleon and to the Roman Catholic Adolph Hitler and all others who tried to make Britain part of Continental Europe, and which the Roman Catholic church in Britain is trying to make it become today, even telling Catholics to vote for pro-European/anti-British candidates. What the Armada, Napoleon and Hitler could not do with invasion and war, Britain’s own politicians are now doing with the mere stroke of a pen, as the heritage that was once the glue of an empire dissipates in a post-Christian/neo-pagan UK. It is not reasonable to pretend that this is not the very obvious case, but since when is political correctness reasonable?

Evolution

Educators continue to predicate all bio-medical education on Darwinian presuppositions. We are expected to overlook the fact that there is no proven instance of DNA transmutating across the species barrier in the natural environment. We are expected to overlook the fact that the kinds of mutations and permutations that would be necessary for evolution to take place would be mutations of a kind that works to the detriment and ultimate extinction of a species, not to its advancement. We are expected to overlook the fact that any genetic pairing involving nucleic acids requires previously existing information. The replicative functions of RNA require an existing bio-database; and information cannot exist without the pre-existing intelligence to create it. Nonetheless, reason is suspended and we are expected to assume a hypothesis whose plausibility is, at best, precarious and certainly unproven, as if it were a fact.

We are expected to deny the fact that there is an absence of transient forms and tremendous gaps in the fossil record that can only be explained by mere conjecture that we are further expected to treat as fact. In a generation that has seen ethnic cleansing on a genocidal scale unprecedented in human history, where other races are portrayed as sub-human, we are expected to ignore that Darwinism, applied anthropologically and taken to its natural conclusions, was the basis of Hitler’s holocaust. We are also expected to forget that this same anthropological application of Darwinian presupposition would relegate non-whites to the status of genetic inferiority to Caucasians providing a supposedly scientific basis to racial superiority.

The scientific dilemma created by the abject premise of Darwinism, however, extends well beyond life science and social science, but even spreads its tentacles into physical science. We are expected to discount the fact that when the world of cosmology and particle physics was in a tumult of debate over questions surrounding propositions such as “Plank’s Constant” and “Heisenberg”s Uncertainty Principle”. Albert Einstein, the greatest theoretical physicist since Newton, retorted “God does not play dice with the universe”, putting a nail into the coffin of known causal random effects on the basis of pure mathematical improbability. Yet this same caliber of mathematically quantified improbability is the very standard upon which evolutionary views of physical existence depend.

We are, for example, expected to ignore the odds in enzyme synthesis against the right combination of amino acids finding the right balance of covalent relationships and forming bonds to begin the complex process of forming extremely long protein molecules. Peptides must form according to a precise genetically controlled prescription into chains of polypeptides to make even a single protein which must be able to biochemically interact with other proteins in an organism which must maintain a level of homeostasis (chemical balance) enabling it to survive in, and interact with, an ecosystem containing countless other organisms of equal complexity. The notion that the entire biosphere could happen to evolve by chance on one particular planet conducive to sustaining life, and not on the other planets in our solar system, is statistically ludicrous.

In the name of modern science, we are expected to neglect the fact that the founders of modern science, from Newton and Pascal to Keppler to Pasteur and Einstein, were uniformly theists, believing in an intelligent creator, to say nothing of the fact that others, such as Rutherford and Faraday, were professing evangelical Christians.

There are both scientifically and theologically good and scientifically and theologically bad versions of creation science. There are, however, no good versions of Darwinism, scientifically, theologically or otherwise. The Word of God specifically warns of such foolishness concerning futile speculation about His creation; “professing to be wise they become fools” (Romans 1:21-24), and God gives them over to such foolishness to allow them to believe what a logical mind would call unbelievable.

Medical Science

We are expected to ignore the neo-natal survival of premature babies at earlier and earlier stages of gestation. We are expected to ignore the avalanche of advances, not only in neo-natology, but in ante-natal obstetric surgery, genetic medicine, improvements in amniocyntotic (embryonic fluid), ultra sound and magnetic resonance diagnostic technology, and in rehabilitative pediatric medicine, all of which provide less and less clinical grounds for non-therapeutic abortion and are on the verge of making the only difference between abortion and infanticide semantic. Yet it is not politically correct to confront the medical and scientific facts in regards to abortion for what they are. Medical science is supposedly based on logic. But now gynecologists are expected to adopt abortion policies void of logic. Euthanasia is the next battle on the horizon.

The social dimension of this human catastrophe, however, is even more outlandish. There are actually organized black markets for illegal adoption of children from the Third World and the waiting lists of childless couples wishing to adopt a baby, even a handicapped baby, are longer than the amount of babies available for adoption can satisfy. The social reality is that there is no such thing as an “unwanted baby”. Yet because there are unwanted pregnancies, we are expected to ignore the fact that there is no such thing as an unwanted baby and pretend as if there is, even though everyone knows there is not. Not only are human fetuses being aborted, human reason is also.

We are expected to ignore, in contemplating the problems of reduced attention capacity in children, the fact that children today are the third generation groomed by a television culture, now reinforced by computer games and other electronic pastimes. resulting in very short attention spans. The decline of the nuclear family, due to the divorce rate and out of wedlock births, contributes to instability in a child’s home environment during his or her formative years. All this we are expected to ignore.

In medical science the best way to diagnose a disease is to use some tool, such as an X-ray, a CT scan, a blood or urine analysis, or a biopsy. In the absence of this, the worst way to diagnose a disease is, instead of beginning with a disease and finding a cure, to begin with a cure (or supposed cure) and find the disease; if you cannot find what is wrong with someone, find out what therapy or medication they are responding to is used as a last resort in trying to identify the source of their complaint. Today, as we ignore the social and environmental factors affecting attention span in children as too politically incorrect to address, instead we prescribe Ritalin. No one at Moriel is stating categorically that there is no such thing as attention deficit disorder (ADD), but unlike hyperthyroidism (a hormonal imbalance also creating attention disturbances), the medical journals state that there is no pathology to diagnose ADD.

So, too, we are expected to ignore the psychological impact of peer pressure to live up to the manufactured image of a super-model or a female pop video icon as possible causes for the tragedy of increased anorexia amongst teenage girls. Instead, the syndrome BDD (bodily dysmorphic disorder) becomes the cause, despite there not being a physician in the world who can diagnose its existence with any objective pathology of a definite organic nature.

More preposterous still is GDD (gender dysmorphic disorder), which is the name given to the condition supposed to explain why homosexual men wish to have sex change surgery. We are expected to ignore the plain scientific fact that there are X and Y chromosomes and sex is determined by what we are chromosomally. It is not politically correct to take note of the fact that the DNA in every cell of our body says that we are either male or female. Instead, these people suffer from GDD, a disorder corrected by surgical intervention in the form of emasculation, a sex change surgery which they now demand be funded by the national health plans. It is politically incorrect to accept the scientific fact that in order to change someone’s sex you would have to change the genetic constituency of every cell in their body.

Inter-Faith Unity & Ecumenism

What we call reason is no longer reasonable. When secular society abandons reason for the sake of political correctness, that is one thing. But once the Church does it, we are dealing with something that has much more lethal repercussions both socially and spiritually.

As we have noted many times, the seminal blame for this, however, is not to be found in either the corridors of power or in the godlessness of secular society. Rather, it is to be found in a Church that has failed to be salt and light. How can Evangelicals remain in the Church of England that ordains homosexuals? How can supposedly saved Christians financially contribute, via their parishes, to the diocesan funds that pay the salaries of homosexual clergy? Evangelical Anglicans are expected by their leaders to ignore these irrefutable facts, because it is not politically correct to do otherwise.

False religions are, by definition, irrational (including counterfeit expressions of Christianity). Only the authentic faith of the Bible is grounded in reason (Isaiah 1:18, Acts 17:17). This is not to say that the Gospel is merely an intellectual faith, but it is to say that unlike false religions, it is intellectually defensible. Empirical evidence affords us an apologetic foundation for our faith in Jesus and the Scriptures. It is unreasonable for Hindus to believe in an unjust caste system based on a belief in karma that values the life of a cow who is well fed above that of a hungry abandoned baby on the streets of Calcutta. It is not logical to drink cow urine or water from the Ganges believing it to be sacred and dying of cholera.

There is simply no empirical evidence for the claims of The Bagavagida, or The Tibetan Book of the Dead. There is certainly no logical reason for faith in a divinely inspired authorship of the Quran, or The Book of Mormon.

The Quran confuses Mary the mother of Jesus with Miriam the sister of Moses, who lived 1,000 years before. The Quran states that Haman from the book of Esther was an official in the court of the Egyptian Pharaoh, many centuries earlier than when he actually appeared in the court of the Persian king. The Quran teaches that upon growing weary in the evening, each night the sun sets into a miry pit. No one in their right mind can believe such rubbish. Just as no one in their right mind can believe in a righteousness of a depraved pedophile sexually violating a 9 year old child as Mohammed did. It is just not reasonable.

No-one can believe in a surrat containing the Quran’s teaching of Umma, the doctrine that Muslims are one nation and one people. In fact, most jihads are Muslims fighting other Muslims and not so-called infidels. The actual reason Islam must make war against the Christian and against the Jew is because, without a common enemy, these savages will war against each other as they always have done.

The Jordanians in Black September of 1970, systematically exterminated upwards of 10,000 Palestinians in 12 days, to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. In the war between Iran and Iraq, 1.5 million Muslims, many of them children, were killed by other Muslims. After invading Kuwait and being driven out by America and Britain, Saddam Hussein once more turned his sword against his own people, annihilating countless Shia Muslims in southern Iraq and earlier murdered thousands of Kurdish Muslim women and children with nerve gas, just as the Syrian Government used its air force to eradicate somewhere between 20 and 35 thousand of its Shia Muslim citizens in a single series of air strikes directed against civilian populations, while in its notorious hypocrisy, Muslims decry limited American and British air strikes against terrorist targets or the internment of genocidal barbarians.

The simple fact of the matter is that the Quran is wrong and proven wrong. There is no umma and never will be. Whenever Western countries have had wars, at least one of the participants was not a democratic nation. While radical Islam denounces Western democracy in favor of the Islamic caliph system, the fact remains that no two Judeo-Christian democracies have ever had a war while Muslim nations have rarely had anything except war, usually against each other, a bloody history that continues to this very day. Reason dictates that, as a religion, Islam is something that simply does not work as its history and contemporary events prove beyond any reasonable doubt. Belief in the unworkable demands the rejection of reason.

Joseph Smith was a convicted swindler and Brigham Young, with 23 wives, a proven false prophet. Nobody in their right mind would believe that someone who said Quakers living to be 1,000 years old resided on the moon, as Smith did, nor on the sun as Young did in his Journal of Discourses, Volume 17. Only an ignorant bigot would believe that black people are the descendants of fallen angels and are ugly, wicked and mischievous, and that any white person marrying a black should be killed because of the Mormon law of atonement. Yet this is what Brigham Young taught. It is simply not reasonable to believe such evil men were God’s prophets. The first requirement of being a Mormon is to abandon any sense of reason.

This is even more true when one examines the repeated legacy of false prophetic predictions by Charles Russell and Judge Rutherford, the founders of Satan’s Jehovah’s Witness cult.

No one reading the Torah could reasonably believe that the Talmudic Judaism of the rabbis is the biblical Judaism of Moses and the Prophets (now fulfilled in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah). It is just not reasonable.

As the Reformers, themselves from the intelligentsia of the Roman Catholic clergy discovered, no-one reading the New Testament could reasonably argue that either the Roman Catholic church or the Eastern Orthodox church are the Christianity of the New Testament. This is why Roman Catholicism to this day denounces scriptura sola and why it placed the Bible on the index of banned books for so many generations, actually burning those who read it for witchcraft and often placing an eternal anathema on their souls.

None of these false religions have a reason based faith, unlike the faith of the bible. All demand that one suspends reason.

The Jesuit founder, Ignatius Loyola, taught “that if the papacy says it is daylight when it is dark outside, we must believe it is night.” Catholicism can simply not accept common sense. Its pagan ideas of transubstantiation, derived from Aristotle’s misunderstanding of physics and chemistry, where something could be atomically one substance on an elemental or stoichiometric level invisible to the human eye, but appear to be something entirely different on a visible level, known as its mere “accidents”. The advent of molecular chemistry, however, debunked this peculiar concept of physics and chemistry as demonstrable nonsense, yet Roman Catholicism continues to believe it to be true of its Eucharist. It began with a misunderstanding of the scientific nature of matter, but once science understood molecules it was proven utterly wrong. To continue to believe something disproved is superstition and superstition requires an absence of logic. It is just not reasonable to believe in the mass. Yet in order to be a devout Catholic, one must be devoid of reason.

What About Contemporary Evangelicals?

The abrogation of reason, unfortunately, is not the exclusive domain of evolutionists, homosexuals, politicians, the media, or false religions. The abrogation of reason has been preached repeatedly by apostate evangelicals, such as Rodney Howard-Browne, Kenneth Copeland and John Arnott from among a long list. Such nonsensical and maniacal paths to apostasy have been adopted and promulgated by such figures as Paul Weaver, Colin Dye, John Glass, Sandy Miller, David Pytches, Gerald Coates, Bryn Jones and others. Death of reason in the world is rivaled by a death of reason in the church.

When the Scriptures, no fewer than six times in both testaments, issue strict caveats against spiritual drunkenness, and portray animal imitation as a divine judgment, it is unreasonable to believe that deceptions stemming from such abominations can possibly be of God. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control, and God does not contradict Himself or He would not be God. To remain in churches led by such false shepherds is unreasonable given their proven track record of failed routes to revival, from the afore-mentioned to Jim Challenge to Alpha courses.

According to The Brierley Report, the UK has seen a 22% decline in church attendance in the first ten years of Alpha alone, with Anglicanism losing approximately 1,000 per week and a 16% decline in the number of charismatics and Pentecostals since the laughing experience, while Islam has become the fastest growing institutionalized religion in the UK and the Mormon cult the fastest growing supposedly Christian sect. Reason demands that the false leaders who misled the Church into these deceptions be abandoned by their flocks, but reason is openly preached against.

It is both dangerous and unreasonable to ignore physical symptoms of illness. Doing so can result in premature death. Yet the bastardized gospel of Copeland and Hagin urge biblically ignorant Christians to do this very thing. It is not reasonable, but they do it and consequently place themselves at risk of self-inflicted death.

It is no more reasonable to call the faith of the prosperity preachers the faith of Hebrews 11 than it is to call Talmudic Judaism the faith of Moses or Roman Catholicism the faith of the Gospels and Epistles. Yet now professing evangelicals sacrifice reason and true faith for a false faith that in the end is but faith in “faith” and not in Christ, and therefore no faith at all.

It is not reasonable in light of the warnings of the Olivet discourse, Deuteronomy 18, Jeremiah 23 and 28 to continue to heed the words of those proven to have prophesied falsely in the name of the Lord. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons do this, but so too do the adherents of the ministries of Gerald Coates, Rick Joyner, and the Kansas City (false) Prophets. It is not reasonable to be a Mormon or a Jehovah’s Witness for these reasons, but for these exact same reasons neither is it reasonable to be a member of New Frontiers.

I have rarely encountered as much illogical and emotional reaction to a challenge than I have from Reformation Protestant Christians in general and Calvinists in particular. Unlike, as in Biblical narrative where both the good and bad points of hero figures are portrayed for what they are, a sure mark of “religion” and religiosity is the tendency towards hagiography (misrepresenting religious heroes as totally sanctimonious figures, where reference to the human imperfections is omitted and mention of them considered virtually blasphemous). Roman Catholics call it “canonization of saints”.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses do it with C. T. Russell, the Mormons with Smith and Young, and, not least of all, the Muslims with Mohammed. Orthodox Jews even resort to it among some of the most sinister characters in rabbinic history, such as with Simon Bar Kochba (who kicked a 90 year-old rabbi in the head and killed him and bought the nation into destruction and dispersion as a false messiah), and Rabbi Akiva who persuaded the Jews that Bar Kochba was the Messiah.

Nonetheless, many Lutheran Missouri and Wisconsin synod churches do precisely the same with Luther, calling him “the Beloved” and expecting everyone to join them in dismissing Luther’s polemic against the Jews, which later inspired Hitler, and his “stab them in the back” position during the Peasants’ Revolt. Luther and the Reformers may have been the founders of what came to be called “Protestantism”, but they certainly were not the founders of the Reformation; they more or less hi-jacked it. It was actually Erasmus who first pointed the Church back towards the Scriptures (and attacked the papacy for its hypocrisy and corruption in the most vitriolic terms imaginable!) and the Baptist sects (whom the Protestants and Catholics alike would persecute) who were the most Biblical Christians.

In Northern Ireland, extreme Calvinists engage in open revisionism (the rewriting of history), pretending that the Pope did not bless William of Orange with a papal decree centered in Vienna, controlled by the Catholic Hapsburgs, and likewise behave as if there were not Catholics from Holland fighting with William at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. More absurdly, they expect everyone to join with them in pretending that Irish republicanism was not founded by reformed Protestants in the Home Rule movement by figures such as Isaac Butt, James Napper Tandy, Charles Parnell and Wolfe Tone. They act as if their Protestant forebears were always for the British crown when, in fact, at the close of the eighteenth century the British crown massacred their Protestant ancestors fighting the crown for Irish independence. There is simply no logic to Orange Protestantism, but bigotry is never logical.

Reading the Quran and Islamic history, the Taliban were indeed genuine Islam. The only thing the Taliban regime actually amounted to was Islam taken to its logical conclusions. Yet, the police states of the Reformed church in Calvin’s Geneva, Zwingli’s Zurich, Knox’s Scotland and Puritan England and Massachusetts were the Taliban of their day, complete with the judicial flogging and execution of women on religious grounds as public entertainment. Whenever one points out that Mohammed was a pedophile to a Muslim, they become extremely disturbed, not because it is a lie, but rather because it is true. I have experienced similar responses evoked from Calvinists by citing George Whitfield’s support of the institution of slavery; again, not because it is false, but because it is true.

The history of injustice in Muslim society is paralleled by the history of injustice in Calvinistic society, from the apartheid of South Africa to the slavery of the American South to the Plantation period of Ireland, all endorsed from the pulpit by the Calvinistic clergy and sanctioned by the Reformed churches of those places at the time. Muslims resent someone looking at the reality of their own societies for what they are just as some Reformed Christians share the same aversion for the same reasons. It is not reasonable, but neither hyper-Calvinism nor Islam are reasonable, because neither one works.

Just as Islam was unable to prevent Muslims from massacring each other, so too Calvinism was unable to stop Calvinists from massacring each other in the Puritan war against the Presbyterians. Both killed each other. And just as Islam requires a common enemy to stop fighting amongst themselves, the recent shoving spectacle by Protestant Parliamentarians in Stormont illustrates how, in principle, the same thing can be true of Calvinists. This is a reasonable observation, but the political correctness of Northern Ireland insists that reason be jettisoned.

Just as Muslims become enraged when you point out its failure to bring unity, so too, Calvinists become angry when you document its similar failure. As we have often noted, the fatalistic Islamic doctrine of Insha’Allah and the Calvinistic misunderstanding of the biblical doctrines of election and predestination are essentially two variations of the same thing in two different religious and cultural packages—one Islamic, and one Protestant.

In Hinduism it is not reasonable to exhibit the serpent spirit demonic manifestations and animal imitations of Kundalini yoga or find an allure in Brahman priests or gurus as little gods who prey upon and exploit them and to believe them to be untouchables whom it is blasphemous to criticize. Yet in Vineyard, Elim and other churches where Hindu-oriented New Age deception has been given a Christian label by David Blake, John Arnott and others, we see the same demonic manifestations. Like any Hindu guru, Rodney Howard-Browne and John Arnott urge people in the name of spirituality to suspend analytical thought in order to become “more spiritual” in what the Bible calls a counterfeit spirituality. So, too, the same allure is paid to the faith-prosperity con men whose followers are the Bhagwan Rajneesh devotees of hyper-Pentecostalism, and the untouchable status of Brahmans becomes an exegetically twisting of “touch not my anointed”. Just like a guru propounding yoga, Pioneer’s Patrick Dixon calls altered states of consciousness and irrational behavior “spiritual experiences” (which they may be, but not from the Holy Spirit whose fruit is self-control as stated in (Galatians 5:23).

Worse still was Elim’s David Blake’s defense of the animal imitations common in Hindu mysticism as Christian, published in the Elim tabloid (and called “excellent” by the Elim leader of the time Wynn Lewis). But in The New Testament, it is only backslidden Christians whose behavior is compared to that of animals (2 Peter 2:12). Remarkably, the term used here is aloga from the Greek term alogos translated (e.g. Acts 25:27) “irrational and unreasonable”, but whose etymological root is “without the logos”. The logos is of course the Word of God and the logos is the incarnate Word of God—Jesus Himself. Where His Word is negated, Jesus is negated, and consequently so are reason and rational behavior.

Indeed, the message of the Gospel itself is God wanting to reason with man about our sin and how it can be forgiven (Isaiah 1:18). The Gospel is reasonable.

Conclusion

In order to accept the unreasonable with the attitude of nonchalance we see in so much of the contemporary church, a deranged strain of complacency is required. It is a pitiful complacency that treats reason as unreasonable and substitutes the reasonable with that which can never be supported with reason, let alone justified by God’s Word. Such complacency in the Last Days always relates to the church of Laodicea. But this complacency accepting the abrogation of reason is not primarily the usual complacency of Laodicea that stems from being deluded due to being lukewarm and materialistic; it is rather one that comes from the spirit of deilias actually meaning “cowardice” that Bible translators euphemistically call “a spirit of timidity”. It is what happens when we fear other men instead of fearing God—we lose the logos. As a direct result, we lose power, we lose love, and then we lose the power and the love of “reason”.

This is precisely what Jesus warned the elect would happen before His return. He told us that in just such an age, where reason has been sacrificed to the point that the reasons He gave to be alert for His return are ignored is the time He would return. We have apostatized from reason because we have apostatized from the Word of God. Truth no longer matters (2 Thessalonians 2:12). This is why doctrine (the teaching of Jesus) no longer matters in the Church, but is seen as divisive and undesirable, forgetting that Jesus Himself is both the Word and the Truth, and once we depart from the Word and the Truth, we have departed from Him.

What is happening today defies reason, because reason has been rejected. It is for this very reason that the Son of Man is coming at an hour when people do not think He will (Matthew 24:44).

Tongham Christian Fellowship

Fri, 15 May 2015 15:00:05 GMT

Poyle Road

Tongham GU10 1DU

www.yeshuaspeople.com

Bible Seminars for 2015

Tea and coffee and biscuits will be served between sessions. Please bring packed lunch for Saturday. And bring lunch on Sunday for Arnold Fruchtenbams meeting. Everyone is welcome. Why not bring a friend?

Please visit the web site www.yeshuaspeople.com for details, maps & if there is a cancellation or ring John & Trish Baker 01483 831007

Moriel Branches

Fri, 15 May 2015 14:47:03 GMT

Own Scientists

Fri, 15 May 2015 14:36:52 GMT

The first question I have is this: In my youth I studied biomedical science and something has developed now that was in its sub-infancy when I was a student. It is mitochondrial DNA which no one was sure even existed until fairly recently. It is not in the nucleus. When I was in university we were told there was RNA, but not deoxyribonucleic acid in the cytoplasm, it was all in the nucleus; only RNA was known to be in the cytoplasm. People began to speculate that you could have in the mitochondria of cells, mitochondria like the power houses of the cells where the work is actually done, the biochemical level, it”s where metabolism takes place for the most part, we have a form of DNA that is non-mutative because it does not go through the nucleus. And it will go from generation to generation to generation as long as you get a good strand.

The Book of Mormon has the fundamental teaching of two ancient Jewish tribes arriving, one about 600 B.C., in North America or Central America. They had a war ” Nephi and the tribe that became known as the Lamanites ” and the Lamanites won. The sinful tribe had won. And God punished them for their sin by darkening their complexion, making it reddish ” red Indians. Yet they defeated the tribe who”d been faithful, for some reason, so the book of Mormon tells us. This is fundamental to their beliefs. When Jesus said, “I have other sheep not of this fold”, (Jn. 10:16) He came to North American Indians.

Anthropologists, however, have long speculated that North American Indians were people who crossed the Bering Straits from Siberia. They were Asians who came from Siberia down via Alaska, Canada, and into North America, and from there to Central and South America. Some people like Thor Heyerdahl tried to prove they could have crossed the Atlantic, but essentially the anthropologists disagreed.

One of the benefits of mitochondrial DNA is its capacity to conclusively prove ancestry. There were a number of Mormon scientists, specifically microbiologists and biochemists, who were well-versed in biogenetic engineering who are interviewed on a video I watched about DNA and the Book of Mormon. Some of them had been apologists or advisors to the Mormon apologetics society called “FARMS” at Brigham Young University, but these were Ph.D. scientists, all Mormon. And they were interviewed and they looked at the evidence independently. These Mormon scientists said the following: “Mitochondrial DNA absolutely and conclusively proves from all the specimens taken all over Canada, North America, United States, Central and South America from dozens of Indian tribes that these people have the same mitochondrial DNA as people from Siberia.”

There is nothing in common with Semitic DNA. We can look at Jewish DNA, we can look at Sephardic-Jewish DNA, Yemanite-Jewish DNA, we can even look at Arab DNA, Persian DNA, other Semitic DNA, but the mitochondrial structures are different. The nucleotides just don”t add up, The sequence is completely ” completely ” of another strain of people. Racially and ethnically it cannot be the case. And these Mormon scientists said on the basis of the mitochondrial DNA evidence that they can no longer accept the Book of Mormon as factually true in its historicity. Some of them work with mitochondrial DNA in their own secular work all the time. A few of them have been honest enough to say there have always been questions about the personal honesty of Joseph Smith, who of course was accused of being a swindler and was killed in the aftermath of an alleged swindle in America back in the 19th Century.

My question to you, my friend ” and I’m speaking to you as a friend, not as an enemy ” if Mormon scientists, if Latter-day Saints scientists ” some of them from Brigham Young University ” people who are involved actively in microbiology about biogenetic engineering have considered the mitochondrial DNA evidence and have arrived at the same conclusion as non-Mormon microbiologists, that the anthropologists are proven right and vindicated, that North American Indians cannot be from an ancient Semitic people who were Jewish who were called “Lamanites”, but in fact are descended from the same people who presently inhabit Siberia, how can you expect me to believe the Book of Mormon when your own scientists say its credibility has been made into Swiss cheese?

I’m just asking a question. I invite you to watch the video. If you”re in Utah, go to Salt Lake City to the Lighthouse. You”ll find it in the yellow pages or on the Internet. They”ll give you a copy of the video. If you really want to see a copy, e-mail us . If you”re a Mormon, e-mail us; we”ll make sure someone meets with you and shows you a copy.

That’s my question. The belief that the Lamanites were ancient Jews and there were people arriving about 600 B.C., how can you possibly say that is correct when the mitochondrial DNA says otherwise and your own scientists ” Ph.D. scientists ” so acknowledge it? It”s a fair question, the believability, the plausibility of the fundamental premise of the Book of Mormon.

You claim to be the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Let”s see what the last thing Jesus Christ said in the New Testament because as Mormons, of course, you believe in the King James Bible. The last thing Jesus said in the book of Revelation 22 is that anyone who adds to this book, God will add to them the plagues that are in the book. (Rev. 22:18) Now that does not only apply to the book of Revelation, Moses was told the same thing ” “Do not add to the words”. (Dt. 4:2) First Corinthians 4:6 says the same thing, “Do not exceed what is written” in the Judeo-Christian Bible. And of course in Matthew 15, Jesus said the same thing, “Do not teach other doctrine other than what”s there, they”re the inventions of men”. (Mt. 15:1-14)

The Book of Mormon must add to the New and Old Testaments in order for the Church of Latter-day Saints to exist. And fundamental to it, it claims this story of the Lamanites being ancient Hebrews. But your own scientists say otherwise. Please answer my question: How can you expect me to believe something your own scientists do not?

The Messianic Element

Fri, 15 May 2015 14:28:04 GMT

What will preaching the Gospel of the Last Days be like? Let us look at the Messianic element. Turn with me, please, to the book of (Acts 2:14), Peter”s charigma.

But Peter, taking his stand with the eleven, raised his voice and declared to them: “Men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give heed to my words. For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only the third hour of the day; but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel:

This was like that analogy.

“And it shall be in the last days,” God says,

“That I will pour forth of My Spirit on all mankind;

And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

And your young men shall see visions,

And your old men shall dream dreams;

Even on My bondslaves, both men and women,

I will in those days pour forth of My Spirit

And they shall prophesy.

And I will grant wonders in the sky above

And signs on the earth below,

Blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke.

The sun will be turned into darkness

And the moon into blood,

Before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come.

And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Now as you might know from the “Future History of the Church” tape, of course, (I”m just touching on things you already know right now) none of that happened, did it? The moon didn’t turn to blood, the sun wasn”t darkened, He didn’t poor out His Spirit on all flesh, there was no visions, there was no dreams, no wonders in the sky. It didn’t happen then, but so it shall be in the Last Days. The preaching of the Gospel in the beginning of the church is a harbinger of what the preaching of the Gospel will be like in the Last Days.

Now obviously this was the Hebrew Feast of Weeks, “Hag Shavu”ot”, the Day of Pentecost, when the book of Ruth is read ” the megilot is read in the synagogues virtually to this day. A powerful Jewish man takes a Gentile bride and exalts her. We”re told in the Mishnah the rabbis calculate that the Law was given on Mt. Sinai on this same day. Only when the Law was given ” according to the Mishnah now, this is not in the Bible ” according to the Mishnah a whirlwind was heard from heaven, and based on the table of nations in Genesis 10, they said, 70 tongues/languages were heard from the whirlwind when the Law was given. So, therefore, when the Holy Spirit was given, 70 tongues were heard. Those 70 tongues were heard. To the Jews this would have been, “Wait a minute! What happened on Mt. Sinai is happening again!” The Old Covenant was given, now there”s a new one. Only when the Law was given 3,000 fell, when the Holy Spirit was given 3,000 were saved. But you know that, OK? But the rest of the stuff didn’t happen. The rest of the stuff simply didn’t happen. But it isto happen in the Last Days. This eschatological scenario has to transpire, and much of it concerns the Jews. Peter begins next, “Men of Israel“.

Let”s turn back to what he was quoting from. Turn with me, please, to the book of Joel ” “Yo”el Hanawbe“, chapter 2, verse 28â€¦

“It will come about after this

That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind;

And your sons and daughters will prophesy,

Your old men will dream dreams,

Your young men will see visions.

“Even on the male and female servants

I will pour out My Spirit in those days.

“I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth,

Blood, fire and columns of smoke.

“The sun will be turned into darkness

And the moon into blood

Before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.

After the Lord comes.

Now you know from the “Rapture” tapes the “Day of the Lord” is introduced when the church is raptured and the resurrection happens. Once we are taken out of here, the Day of the Lord arrives. The Day of the Lord commences with the “koloboo” ” the “amputation” in Greek, the removal of the church. “Those days will be cut short for the sake of the elect”. (Mat 24;22) Once we”re taken out of here, it’s the Day of the Lord. The Day of the Lord is when God pours out His wrath on the kingdom of Antichrist and draws the nations against Israel to destroy the enemies of Zion. We”re taken out of here before this happens we”re told.

“And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord

Will be delivered;

For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem

There will be those who escape,

Then it goes back, much of a Jewish focusâ€¦

As the Lord has said,

Even among the survivors whom the Lord calls.

Where it says all Israel will be saved it is talking about those who survive the Great Tribulation.

“For behold, in those days and at that time,

When I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem,

I will gather all the nations

And bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat.

Then I will enter into judgment with them there

On behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel,

Whom they have scattered among the nations;

And they have divided up My land.

I believe the Jews are back in Israel and obviously they have to stay in Israel until Jesus comes, particularly in Jerusalem. But already we see efforts to re-divide the land, don”t we? Now this is all tied up with the Antichrist and so forth, he”s going to make a covenant and break it . The reestablishment the state of Israel certainly fulfills prophecy ” they have to be back in Jerusalem for Jesus to come as in Matthew 23, Luke 21 and 24 and so forth, but they will pack up. Bush is doing it, the UN is doing it, they”re all trying to do it, making conditions so bad you”ve got Russian Jews going back to Russia now. It goes on explaining what will happen, but we know how it will all end in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. It”s the Jewish element. Turn to (Mat 10:23), pleaseâ€¦

“But whenever they persecute you in one city, flee to the next; for truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes.

Israel must be thoroughly evangelized before Jesus comes. In Romans 11, the natural branches will be grafted in again, Israel must be evangelized for Jesus to come. In understanding the Gospel of the kingdom this is one of two basic texts that tell us about what the Scriptures call “hastening His coming”. (1 Cor 1:7, 2Pet 3:12)

How do you hasten His coming? Evangelism. We”re not waiting for Jesus to come back. Remember what He said? “When the crop permits the Lord of the harvest sends the harvester”. (Mar 4:29) We are not waiting for Jesus to come, He is waiting for the church to be ready. We can hasten his coming with evangelism; the fullness of the Gentiles comes in. (Rom 11:25) We hasten His coming by evangelizing Israel. His coming can be hastened. In eternity it”s fixed, relative to us it”s a variable. We can make it happen quicker. In other words the C-section, the Cesarean. An obstetrician is only going to let an expectant mother family stay in labor so long ” after that point it becomes dangerous. There”s the procedure, it induces labor, whatever”s necessary. Get it over with quick. We can get it over with quick. We can make it happen faster. Witnessing and evangelism can bring back the return of Jesus faster, providing the people who get saved are also discipled. Witnessing and evangelism can hasten the return of Christ.

Why Is Anti-Semitism So Irrational?

Fri, 15 May 2015 14:25:07 GMT

But I have another question: if “Yasha”yah Hanawbe” ” Isaiah the prophet in chapter 11 said €¦

The nations will resort to the root of Jesse €¦

€¦the “sores Yisay“..

€¦the peoples €¦

€¦the “ammim“.

The rabbis have always said the “Sores Yisay” is the Messiah. Jews and Christians, their scholars have always agreed: “the nations”, “the Gentiles”. “the peoples” will come to the “Root of Jesse“.

I look at an anti-Semitic world. I look at a world where becoming a Christian in Saudi Arabia somebody is beheaded or hung. A world where in Sudan nearly 2-1/2 million Christians have already been killed and more facing the prospect of death. Yet Gentiles of so-called Christian nations remain almost silent, no one calling for a boycott on Saudi Arabia oil or an academic boycott on the many nations that persecute Christians: Islamic countries. But when the one nation in the Middle East that protects the rights of Arab Christians, Israel, the one nation that protects the rights of Arab Christians defends themselves from this same militant Islam that murders Christians, everybody wants to condemn Israel. It’s not logical, it”s not rational. Israel is treating most Christians (apart from Jewish ones), apart from Jewish believers in Jesus, they treat most Christians better than Christians treated them, except in the United States and, to a degree, in Britain. Most nations have never given Jews the kind of freedom that Israel gives to Christians. It”s not rational that they hate Israel; it’s not rational-behaving people who receive three quarters of the Nobel prizes for the advancement of science, chemistry, physics, and especially biomedical sciences that have saved countless lives. Why would you hate these people? It”s not rational.

All over the world there”s anti-Semitism. Even people saying they”re Christian, there”s anti-Semitism. Although all four Gospels make it clear that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate ” the Roman government has legal responsibility for His death ” and although Jesus said, “I lay My life down, nobody takes it from Me”, (Jn. 10:18) and although Christians believe that God said He was going to put the Messiah to death as an atonement for sin, although Jesus never blamed anybody for His death, and although the apostles said it was the Roman government together with the Sanhedrin but it was not the Jewish people, although blaming the death of the Jesus on the Jews is directly contrary to history and to the teaching of the New Testament, they”re still saying the Jews killed Jesus. It”s not rational. No, this anti-Semitism is not rational, but there”s something even more irrational.

“We hate you, Jew! You”re a kike! You”re a yid! You”re a sheenie! Get out of here! We hate you! You”re no good! We don”t want you in our land and to go to your own land you have no right there either! You have no right to exist! But we”re going to worship your God.” We hate you but we love your Messiah; we”re going to follow your Messiah; Why will Eskimos worship a Jewish God? Why will Pygmies worship a Jewish God? Why will Scandinavians worship a Jewish God? It makes no sense. If you hate these people, why do you worship their God? Because “the nations will resort to the root of Jesse“.

My question, might dear Jewish friend, is you and I both hate anti-Semitism but you and I are at a loss to explain it or at least intellectually. We can come up with some explanations but the entire history of it coming back to the same thing again and again? It”s not logical. But if you hate somebody, why would you follow one of them? Why would you believe their books and worship their God? There”s only One, One, and One alone who could make people worship the God of a nation and race they otherwise hate.

Now I”m not saying true Christians ” born-again Christians, real evangelicals ” I”m not saying that they hate the Jewish people. If you look at the countries with a high evangelical population you’ll find even in the Holocaust it was countries like Holland and so forth, in Denmark, that protected the Jews. It was mainly the Catholic and nominal Protestant countries that persecuted them.

The American Jewish Congress, the American College of Rabbis, knows very well the backbone of Jewish support for Israel in America is not the Jewish community, there’s only 6 million in North America at most. It is the evangelical Christians who are pro-Zionist. Most of them. Not all Christians are anti-Semitic. You see, the same as there are people who will hate you because you are a Jew, claiming to be Christian, there are other Christians who will love you because you are a Jew. They will say, “How can we worship a Jewish God and believe in a Jewish Messiah and read a Jewish book and stake our eternal destiny, our faith on it and hate these people who gave it to us?” They”re not all irrational, but you shouldn”t be irrational either.

Many people calling themselves Christians are behaving irrationally. They”re worshiping a Jewish God and believing in a Jewish Messiah while hating Jews. It”s irrational. But don”t you be an irrational Jew. It”s a rational question that deserves a rational answer. If He is not the Messiah who would make the Gentiles worship your God, who is? Why else do they worship your God if He is not the one who God said would make them do it?

Five Questions for You

Fri, 15 May 2015 14:23:37 GMT

The following resources were especially developed by Jacob as a result of his own spiritual search and personal research. Nothing here is intended to be mocking or derisive, but provided as legitimate questions needing to be answered by those who embrace these particular faiths. Anyone may contact Moriel directly for further information by sending an email to: MorielCarol@Yahoo.com.

Simchat Torah

Fri, 15 May 2015 14:17:37 GMT

By James Jacob Prasch

Our subject today is an extended Bible study from John 8. We begin in chapter 7 to get the background and continue into chapter 8.

The gospel of St. John in Hebrew among the first Jewish Christians was called Ha Besora B al’ pei Yonathan, the good news according to the mouth, literally, by the lips of John. John and Matthew, Matitiyahu (Matthew”s Hebrew name) are the two most Hebraic, the two most Judaic, the two most Jewish of the gospels. They are written largely for a Jewish readership. Luke has Judaic material that is not in Matthew or John only because the Jewish Christians would have understood things on which Gentiles had to be instructed. Luke is the most Gentile of the gospels, and Luke is concerned with teaching Jewish concepts to non-Jews. So, again, there is certain Jewish material, Judaic material, in Luke not found in Matthew or John, but Matthew and John are the most Jewish of the gospels.

We need to understand John”s theme. We are told at the end of the gospel that it was written so the Jews of the first century would believe. That doesn”t mean it is not for us today, but it does mean we have to understand what it meant for its own time. John”s theme is Jesus is God. It points to the deity of Christ more than any other of the gospels. It points to His deity as the incarnate logos, or what the Jews or the Greeks called logos, what the Hebrews called ‘Dvar‘ or in Aramaic ‘Mamra‘. (We have other teachings on this.) Nonetheless, if a Jewish Christian at the end of the first century were reading John”s gospel, he would read it quite differently than most of us would. He would say it is the story, or the narrative, of the new creation. He would also say this story is a midrash on Braeshiek, on the book of Genesis. He would say that John 1, 2, and 3, particularly, and then continuing throughout the gospel, is a midrash on the story of creation. The new creation in John is a midrash on the creation in Genesis. Midrash is the way that Jews and rabbis, like Jesus and Paul, interpreted scripture in the first century. It is the midrash, an inquiring into.

In Proverbs 8, we have Jesus in the creation. Then we link Genesis and John with Proverbs 8. That is Jesus next to the Father. He preexisted from eternity. So this Jewish Christian reading John 1, 2, and 3 at the end of the first century would say, €œThis is a midrash on the creation. This entire story of the new creation is a literary parallelism that illuminates the creation story in Genesis.” This first century Jew would say, €œGod walks the earth in the creation in Genesis. Now the Word becomes flesh?” God walks the earth in the new creation in John. He would say, €œGod comes to separate the light from the dark in the creation in Genesis.” Now, God comes to separate the light from the dark, ‘hoshek‘ in Hebrew, ‘phos‘ in Greek, in John 1. He separates the light from the dark in the creation, and He separates the light from the dark in the new creation. The first century Jewish Christian would say, €œIn the creation in Genesis, you have the small light and the great light. Now in the new creation in John, you have _Yochanan Ha Matbil and Yeshua Hamashiach, John the Baptist, the small light, and Jesus, the great light.” He would also say, €œThe Spirit moves on the water and gives forth the creation in Genesis, now born of water and the Spirit. The Spirit moves on the water and gives the new creation in John.” He would say, €œOn the third day, God does a creative miracle with water in Genesis, and Jesus begins His public ministry with the miracle on the third day at the wedding of Cana as it says in John 2:1.” God begins His first plan for man with a marital union with Adam and Eve. Of course, man falls and loses what God had for him. When Jesus comes to restore that, He begins His public ministry at a wedding.

More than that, in Judaism, the tree of life that we call Atz Hayim that we see in Ezekiel 47 and in Revelation and Genesis, is represented by a fig tree. The subject of the fig tree is a complicated subject, but the fig tree represents the tree of life. So, you have the tree of life in the garden, but in John 1:48, Nathanael asks Jesus, €œHow do you know me?” Jesus answered, €œBefore Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Jesus obviously saw him under a literal fig tree, but what Jesus was really saying to Nathanael, in midrash, in Jewish metaphor, was, €œI saw you in the garden, from the creation, from the foundation of the world.” I”m not a Calvinist, but God does know us from eternity, and He does know who will be saved.

John is new creation that parallels the book of Genesis. This is a theme that runs throughout the entire gospel as well as pointing to Christ as God becoming man.

In John 7, we have the background of the Feast of Tabernacles which draws on the imagery of the millennium in Ezekiel 47. The meaning of the Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles is the millennial reign of Christ. That is why when Jesus comes back (Zechariah 12) and the Jews look upon Him Whom they pierced when He sets up His millennial kingdom, they begin celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles (Zechariah 14).

The Hebrews had three spring feasts which were Passover, First Fruits, and Pentecost, or Weeks. Jesus fulfills those in His first coming, but in His second coming, He fulfills the autumn feast, the final one, the Feast of Booths, Hag Sukkoth, which is what we see in John 7. In His first coming, He totally fulfills the spring feasts but only partially fulfills the autumn feasts. In His second coming, He will fulfill the autumn feast in its totality.

Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, [Yeshua is His name] Jesus stood and cried out, saying, €œIf any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scriptures said, “From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.””

This again draws on the millennial imagery in Ezekiel 47.

The Latter Day Rain movement and the Manifest Sons of God heresy, of course, pervert this out of all context to arrive at a lot of silly nonsense. I once watched a video of a Pensacola meeting, and they were saying, €œThe river is going to come through the wall at exactly a quarter to 8. Don”t stand here. You all might get swept away.” John Kilpatrick”s wife was there. The women of Pensacola (I call them the harlots of Babylon) are all standing there and waiting for the river to come through, and at a quarter to 8 precisely, they all swoon. Now I am a Pentecostal myself, but that is not Biblical Pentecostal. That is absurdity.

The meaning of Ezekiel is, of course, in the millennium. Jesus draws on this background when he says I will give you €œliving water. But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus [Yeshua] was not yet glorified.” €œI will pour out My Spirit” as rain comes from Isaiah 44:3.

Living water, what we call in Hebrew Mayim Hayim, was formed by rain going into the water table. It is a figure of the Holy Ghost. Jesus says this to the woman at the well in John 4 that He will give her l

iving water.

Another characteristic of John”s gospel is this. Jesus is speaking on a midrashic level. He is addressing things in one context, but the people are understanding Him only on a natural level. You must be very careful of this. There is something called Gnosticism when the Bible is spiritualized with mystical interpretations. Midrash never does that. Midrash, Jewish hermeneutics, Jewish interpretation, only uses symbolism to illuminate, to illustrate doctrine. We never base doctrine on it. When people base doctrine on symbols that is very, very dangerous! It is spiritual seduction. On the other hand, to ignore Midrash is also an error. So, living water is a figure of the Holy Spirit in Isaiah 44:3, John 4, and John 7.

Some of the multitude, therefore, when they heard these words were saying, €œThis certainly is the Prophet.” Others were saying, €œThis is the Messiah.” Others were saying, €œSurely the Messiah is not going to come from Galilee, is He? Has not the Scripture said that the Messiah comes from the offspring of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” (John 7:40-42)

They did not know where He was born. They only knew Him by His Galilean accent. There was a prejudice against Galileans; in fact, it was later written in Talmudic literature that a Galilean would not be allowed to read the Torah in a synagogue because he could not properly pronounce the difference between the Hebrew letters aleph and ayne. The rabbis did not like the Galilean accent.

So there arose a division in the multitude because of Him. And some of them wanted to seize Him, but no one laid hands on Him. The officers therefore came to the chief priests and Pharisees, they said to them, €œWhy did you not bring Him?” [But] the officers answered, €œNever did a man speak the way this man speaks.” The Pharisees therefore answered them, €œYou have not been led astray, have you? [No one of the rulers or Pharisees has believed in Him.] But this multitude which does not know the Law is accursed. “Nicodemus said to them (he who came to Him before, being one of them), €œOur Law does not judge a man, unless it first hears from him and knows what he is doing, does it?” They answered and said to him, €œYou are not also from Galilee, are you? Search, and see that no prophet arises out of Galilee.” And everyone went to his home. (John 7:43-53)

Understand the background. This was the last day of the feast that lasted a week. On the last day of the feast was an elaborate ritual called Simchat Beit Ha Shoyiva, a festival of joy, when the Levites would go to the pool of Shiloach, usually called Siloam in English, almost the same word as €œapostle.” The Levites would take water in a procession up to the Temple Mount and pour the living water, Mayim Hayim, out on the pavement. It was in reference to this ritual that Jesus said, €œI will give you living water.” He was saying that He was the Messianic fulfillment of what the feast meant. He would be the One to give the Holy Spirit just as He told the woman at the well. Nicodemus pops up here in this context. Again, Jesus was speaking on a spiritual level, but the people were thinking on a physical level. When Jesus said to Nicodemus, €œYou must be born again. Are you a ruler of the Jews? You don”t know this?” As a member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus knew midrash. He should have known what Jesus meant by new birth. The Jews had multiple concepts of new birth including having the bar mitzvah, becoming a rabbi, and getting married, but ultimately, it was this thing the Messiah would do.

Lazarus is asleep. Jesus was speaking of biological death. They thought He simply meant that Lazarus took a nap. He”s speaking spiritually. The people are thinking physically.

So it is with living water. Jesus is speaking spiritually. The people are thinking physically. This was what was happening in the gospels, and it was one of the reasons the Sanhedrin hated Him. Instead of being servants to the people, they used their supposed knowledge of scripture to make themselves overlords. They used their knowledge to create a political, and certainly financial, power base for themselves. €œThe people do not know the Torah. They are accursed. We know the Torah. Knowledge is power.” This very much began to approximate the Gnosticism of the pagans who said, €œWe have the secret knowledge.” Jesus did not like that. Ordinary people were called the Am Ha Aretz, the people of the land. This is found in Matthew, for instance. It says the Pharisees knew He spoke the parable about them, but He had to explain it privately to the disciples. The religious establishment knew what He was teaching, but they were going through the roof because He was taking these mysteries, what Solomon called €œthe words of the wise,” and their riddles, and taking the interpretation of Proverbs and of what we call Hebrew, mashalim or mishla, parables and giving it to the ordinary people.

He was giving it to fishermen. He was giving it to farmers. He was giving it to tradesmen. He was giving it to slaves. This was the key to their power, and He was giving it to ordinary people whom the religious establishment thought were accursed. The establishment did not like Him. He is speaking spiritually. The people are thinking physically, but then He begins explaining what these spiritual things are. This He spoke of the Spirit.

John”s gospel is the most festal. It has the most to do with Jewish feasts. In John, we clearly see Jesus as the fulfillment of the feasts. He is the fulfillment of Hanukkah, the Jewish Feast of Dedication in John 10. He is the Messianic fulfillment of Passover; the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world. (If you went to Catholic school, you have my sympathy, but perhaps you remember your Latin, Agnus Dei Qui Tolles Pecatamundi.) Here, it is Jesus as the Messianic fulfillment of the Feast of Booths, the Feast of Tabernacles.

The Hebrews had three pilgrim feasts. They had Passover, and they had Pentecost – Hag Shavuot (or Weeks) in the spring, but at this time of year in the autumn, there was another one, the Feast of Booths. By Jesus” day, after the Maccabees, there was a fourth one. The pilgrim feasts were when Jews came from other places to Jerusalem to celebrate. That was Hanukkah. The time between the Feast of Booths and the Feast of Hanukkah could be less than two months, sometimes seven weeks. Considering they had to walk all the way down from Galilee and then back again, often they would do what Jesus did, just stay in Jerusalem with friends or relatives, celebrate both holidays at once, and then go home again. It was the holiday season. One holiday season in the spring ranged from Passover to Pentecost, and a second holiday season in the autumn ranged from Booths all the way to Hanukkah, and these were both harvest seasons. So, after people did the work, then they would have a kind of religious holiday, a kind of vacation in Jerusalem after reaping the fruits of the harvest.

So everyone is in Jerusalem, and they are contending with Jesus because He is teaching the people these things. Notice the attit

ude of the religious leaders. It is exactly what you see today. €œWho is this man who is teaching the people things we don”t want them to know? Who is this man who is publicly exposing our corruption and hypocrisy? Who is this man who is threatening our power base by teaching them the Word of God? These people are accursed! They don”t know the Torah. We know!” Well, in fact, they did not know. They did not know at all. No prophet comes from Galilee? What about Jonah? He was from Gath Hepher less than two miles from Nazareth. They did not know themselves. They should have known, but they did not. They were more concerned with church politics and preserving their own financial and positional interests. They say, €œThe people are accursed!” They set themselves up. Nicodemus is here. (The Greek prefix €œnico– €œ is also the one used for Nicolaitians which means €œsuppression of the people.”)

Nicodemus was a good man in the Sanhedrin, but he tried to change the system from within and failed. Today, in so many of our denominations, some good people are trying to change the system from within but are failing. There are godly men in the church, but other men and denominations are ordaining homosexuals and opening heroin rooms. There are some godly pastors left within the Assemblies of God while the national executive leadership has taken the church from one heresy and deception after another. There are people, like Nicodemus, who are still part of the system trying to call the church back to repentance or to implement God’s standard but are frustrated by the corruption of the system.

The state of Judaism, when Jesus came the first time, very closely mirrors the state of the church before His second coming and is one of the things that testify to the deplorable state of the church in the last days, particularly in the West. It is the same thing. €œWho do these people think they are?” They made themselves a clergy class. €œWho are you to question us?” It is the same attitude we see today. Many people over recent years have seen things which they knew were not of God, perhaps deceptions that were heretical or unethical, and they try to go to the pastors of the leadership, but these pastors have, basically, set themselves up as overlords, and instead of dealing with issues Biblically, they made everyone think that they [the pastors] understood the Bible. €œWho are you to question us?” How many people have encountered that attitude in the past five years? We get similar numbers of response in America, England, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. That is exactly what Jesus was up against, and it is what we are up against today. They set themselves up over you, making believe they know things that they do not.

One person trumpeting pop psychology today is a psychologist in the Assemblies of God. I am not slinging mud. His name is Allen Davies, and he was teaching New Age visualization in his so-called Bible College. He did that. I am just reporting facts, not attacking. He makes himself out to be this Biblically knowledgeable man who is running a Bible college. He wrote an article in Evangel Magazine where he said the demoniac in Gerasenes, that the man”s name was €œlegion“. The text, Mark 5:9, says the demon”s name was legion €œfor we are many.” I do not expect everyone to be able to read Greek or Hebrew. It is a plus if you can, but I certainly expect a minister with a degree in psychology to be able to read English! Yet, these pastors and ministers set themselves up over the people, not knowing what they want you to think. €œWho are you to question us?” That is what they say. This is not Biblical! €œWho are you to question us?” And if there is someone like Nicodemus speaking up from within the system, they put their feet down. €œWe”ll take your credentials away!” And if you are someone outside the system, like Jesus, they will send a lynch mob after you if they can.

People ask why I am not comparing myself to Jesus, and people ask why I walk back and forth while I preach. It is more difficult to hit a moving target. That is the background. That is the introduction. Now we get into Simchat Torah, John 8, the Jewish background of John 8.

But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. And early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to Him; and He sat down and began to teach them. And the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the midst, they said to Him, €œTeacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?” And they were saying this, testing Him in order that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down, and with His finger wrote on the ground. (John 8:1-6)

In the Greek text, when Jesus uses His finger to write, this indicates that action is emphatic.

But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, €œHe who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” And again He stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And when they heard it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman, where she had been, in the midst. And straightening up, Jesus said to her, €œWoman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” And she said, €œNo one, Lord.” And Jesus said, €œNeither do I condemn you; go your way. From now on sin no more.” And therefore Jesus spoke to them, saying, €œI am €¦.” (John 8:7-12)

Notice that term, €œI am,” and how many times it appears. The Greek word would be Ego Ami. (I only know how to read Greek. I do not know how to speak it. Jesus gets closer and closer. There is a progression here in the Greek text. Jesus gets clearer and clearer in the progression through the Greek text to identifying Himself as the I AM. God. He is the God of the book of Exodus. I AM who I AM identified Himself to Moses. He gets clearer and clearer, the way the text says I AM, until He finally identifies Himself as God. Here is the first I AM the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12).

The Pharisees therefore said to Him, €œYou are bearing witness of Yourself; Your witness is not true.” Jesus answered and said to them, €œEven if I bear witness of Myself, My witness is true; for I know where I came from, and where I am going. You people judge according to the flesh; I am not judging anyone. But even if I do judge, My judgment is true, for I am not alone in it, but I and He Who sent Me.” [He associates Himself with God.] Even in your law [meaning the Torah] it has been written, that the testimony of two men is true. (John 8:13-17)

I have to point out here that there must have been two witnesses against the woman in order for her to be stoned under the Torah, the Jewish Law. There had to be two witnesses who were not guilty of the same sin. Jesus is

dealing in juridical terms here. There must be two witnesses to verify every fact that would bring any kind of indictment, according to the Torah, and Jesus is appealing again to the same juridical principles from the Torah. Jewish Law with rabbinic additions was later called halacha.

€œI and He Who sent Me” in verse 17 is the testimony of two which meant it was true, or correct. In verse 18, Jesus says, €œI am He Who bears witness of Myself, and the Father Who sent Me bears witness of Me.” This points to a future event when two liars are brought against Jesus at His trial. This is the same idea and a continual theme throughout the text.

€œAnd so they were saying to Him, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither Me, nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father also.”” This relates back to John 5 where Jesus told the Hebrews, €œIf you believed Moses, you would believe Me also.”

My family is Israeli, and I have been an evangelist to the Jews for over twenty years. I can tell you this. The problem of the Jewish people is not that they reject Christ. Their rejection of their Christ is not their problem. Their rejection of their Messiah is the result of their problem. Their problem is that they reject the Torah.

They do not believe in Moses. If they believed Moses, they would know Jesus is the Messiah. Their problem is that they reject Torah by substituting Torah with Talmud or reading Torah through the prism of Talmud as rabbinic commentary. This is much the same as Roman Catholicism corrupting the New Testament or liberal Protestantism or Greek Orthodox corrupting the New Testament, so the rabbis, after rejecting Jesus, corrupted the Torah. If they knew the Father, they would know the Son. If they believed Moses, they would believe Jesus was the Messiah. That is why I do not witness to Jewish people from the New Testament until I show them from the Old Testament. That is my approach.

Look at verse 18. €œI am He.” This is a play on words from the Greek text again. €œThese words He spoke in the treasury” (verse 20). Jesus always hits people where it hurts, and the religious establishment was into what they are into today. You know what is going on? You know what is really in back of all this hype artistry and manipulation? Money. They copy these hype artists and religious con men from American and South African television, and they want to be like these Americans with the big cars and mansions, and of course, their ministries become their tickets to a form of success they could not have in the secular world.

With some sense of embarrassment, I admit to being a Pentecostal preacher. The old time Pentecostals did not have many Greek or Hebrew scholars, but they knew the Word of God. They knew their Bibles. They knew why they believed what they believed. They knew why they were pre-millennial. They could give a coherent argument why they believed the gifts of the Spirit still operated in the church, not based on experience but based on Scripture. They could argue. There were some Pentecostal scholars, academics, in America and Scotland, but they are largely gone. There are exceptions today, but most contemporary Pentecostal ministry has become a dumping ground for people who cannot do anything else. Again, there are exceptions but not many. These men in church leadership roles would not have these cars, this international travel, this income if they were not Pentecostal ministers. They would not be good enough to be dentists, plumbers, skilled tradesmen, or professionals, so they become Pentecostal preachers because there is no standard anymore. Unless they can rightly divide the Word of God according to Timothy and Titus, they have no Biblical right to be in the ministry, most of them. They stand up, take some verses out of context, give a lot of waffle and hype, and they do not even know what they are talking about. They are mindless babblers. It is a disgrace. The Pentecostal ministry has become a dumping ground for people who cannot do anything else. It becomes their ticket to some middle-class success because they could not make it in a secular profession or business. There are exceptions. Faithland is an exception. Oak Park is an exception. The Assemblies of God where I would speak are exceptions, but they are exceptions. The mainstream is not what it was twenty-five years ago when the Assemblies of God and other Pentecostal movements rejected what we see now. They would have nothing to do with William Branham or E. W. Kenyon or A. A. Allen. They rejected the Manifest Sons of God and the Latter Day Rain movements in the 1940s and 1950s. The very things their fathers rejected, they have now accepted. These Assemblies of God no longer exist in the sense of what they once were. It is just another movement with the same name. They are gone. This kind of decline is terrible, and it was that kind of decline that Jesus was up against in the Judaism of His day.

€œHe said therefore again to them, “I go away and you shall seek Me, and shall die in your sin; where I am going [a play on words again], you cannot come.” [I AM]. Therefore the Jews were saying, “Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, “Where I am going, you cannot come”?”” (John 8:21-22)

Notice the repetition of I AM. In the Greek text, the progression is very clear. When it says €œthe Jews,” it does not mean people who are Jewish. They were all Jewish, including Jesus. What it meant, and there is a translation problem from the Greek word iaodaoi, was the Judeans, the religious establishment in and around Jerusalem and those whom they influenced and controlled as opposed to the rank and file Jew. It refers to the religious aristocracy and those whom they directly controlled largely based in and around Jerusalem. They are all Jews. So, when the text says €œthey” wanted to stone Jesus, it meant the religious establishment and those they controlled around Jerusalem.

€œAnd He was saying to them, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world. I am [I AM] not of this world. I said therefore to you, that you shall die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He [I AM He], you shall die in your sins“” (John 8:23-24).

This harkens directly back, and He would have been speaking Aramaic from the Targumim. It would have been exactly Exodus 3:14. Now, He is almost calling Himself God. He gets closer and closer with the I AM expressions.

And so they were saying to Him, €œWho are You?” Jesus said to them, €œWhat have I been saying to you from the beginning? I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you, but He Who sent Me is true; and the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the world.” They did not realize that He had been speaking to them about the Father. (John 8:25-27)

Again, he is speaking spiritually. They do not realize it. €œJesus therefore said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me“” (John 8:28). Notice that He did nothing on His own initiative.

This ridiculous idea that we can go around laying hands on every sick person commanding them to be healed is absurd. Jesus only laid hands on people as His Father directed. If the Holy Spirit empowers you in a given situation and you say, €œThat cancer be gone,” it will be gone. If the Holy Spirit empowers you to say, €œGet out of that deathbed,” that person will get out of the deathbed. However, if you are going around yelling and commanding it, ranting and raving like an idiot, that is all you are behaving like, an idiot. In Corinthians, Paul uses the word €œidiot” (idiota) for those who are spiritually ignorant. You see people going around commanding poor people to be healed, and when they do not get healed, that puts them under condemnation. €œYou don”t have any faith.” This is just idiocy. Can you imagine a precious, old saint of God, say a widow on a pension, at the end of her day; she is ill, sick, with nothing left except her faith in Jesus. They have taken all her money. All she has left is her faith in Jesus, and they even want that too because she is not being healed. At best, this is being done out of ignorance, but however you look at it, it is the worst form of psychological cruelty because they are perverting the Christian message to do it.

Jesus only did what He saw His Father doing. He never used His divine power even once. In Matthew 4, when Satan tempted Jesus, Satan was trying to get Jesus to act out of concert with His Father, to use His divine power apart from the Father”s leading. Jesus would not do it. He tried to get Jesus to act in the flesh. Jesus would not do it. The idea that you can go around demanding this and speaking that into being is Gnosticism. It is arrogance. It is motivational psychology. But it is not Christianity!

Jesus said He only did what He saw His Father doing. His only acts were the initiative of the Father. €œ €¦but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. And He Who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him” (John 8:28-29). He walked perfectly in the Spirit as our example. €œAs He spoke these things, many came to believe in Him” (30).

Those who are sincere of heart will always know spiritual authority as opposed to heavy shepherding and Nicolaitanism. They will know real anointing if they are right with God, and they will know the difference automatically. It will not even take much discernment. They will know automatically what is an anointing and what is hype artistry. They will know automatically what is spiritual authority and what is heavy shepherding. €œMany came to believe in Him” (30).

€œJesus therefore was saying to those Jews who had believed in Him, [Now, He is touching the religious establishment.] “If you abide in My Word, then you are truly disciples of mine; [This idea of €œword” goes back to John 1.] and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free“”(31-32).

Elsewhere, Jesus is defined as the Truth. This is another problem today. During the laughing, drunken deception a few years ago, one of that group tried to tell Philip Powell that €œGod is bigger than His Word.” Philip Powell, who used to be an Assemblies of God executive in this country, had too much integrity to keep his mouth shut when the heresy began taking over. Philip Powell showed this man in Isaiah where it says, €œGod magnifies His Word above His name,” and said, €œWho is right? You or the Bible?” He had no response to Philip Powell. Philip was dead right because the Bible is right. €œYou shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” After people have been in psychological bondage to cult groups and then they learn the truth, they are free.

€œThey answered Him, “We are Abraham”s offspring, and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, “You shall become free”?””(32). Jesus is speaking about slavery to sin. He is speaking spiritually. They are thinking physically, temporally.

€œTruly, truly, €¦.” When you see the words, €œtruly, truly” in the gospels, or €œverily, verily,” this tells you the original language was not Greek. It tells you the original language was Hebrew, or more likely, the Hebrew dialect, Aramaic. In Semitic languages, like Aramaic, Hebrew, Hamo Semitic, other Chaldean dialects such as Syriac or Acadian, to make something emphatic, or to make it superlative, say it twice. If you want to say, €œIt is very cold,” you say, €œcold, cold,” or €œvery warm” say, €œwarm, warm.” When you say something twice or you see that emphatic repetition, that is driving the point, and it means the rest of the text, everything that follows, hinges on that verse.

€œTruly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin” (34). The Greek text here is present continuous. The Greek language has no present tense as English does. In Greek, John is not John the Baptist. First of all, he was a Pentecostal. In Greek, he is John the Baptizer.

In John 8:34 , it says, €œ €¦everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.” That does not mean that every time we sin, we are slaves to sin. It means we do not practice sin. €œHe who is born of God does not sin.” It is present continuous active. Christians may fall into sin, but they do not practice it habitually.

And the slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. If therefore the son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. [Now He is getting close to calling Himself God’s Son.] I know that you are Abraham”s offspring; [Here He is speaking anthropologically.] yet you seek to kill Me, because My Word has no place in you. I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father. They answered and said to Him, €œAbraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, €œIf you are Abraham”s children, do the deeds of Abraham. But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do. You are doing the deeds of your father.” They said to Him, €œWe were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.” Jesus said to them, €œIf God were you Father, you would love Me; for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My Word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar, and the father of lies.” (35-44)

When you see the money preachers lying, they are speaking from their own nature because they are of their father, the devil. People ask how can I speak so strongly about preachers. How could Jesus tell them they were of their father, the devil? I honestly believe that John Avanzini, Kenneth Copeland, and Benny Hinn are of their father, the devil. €œBut because

I speak the truth, you do not believe Me” (45). If I were to stand up here and lie to you, put on a show, blow on you, put my coat on you, and con all your money out of you, I would be acceptable to the Sanhedrin. But if I tell you the truth, I stand here condemned.

He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God. The Jews, [that is, the Judeans] answered and said to Him, €œDo we not say rightly that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” (47-48)

When you point out their heresy and their con artistry, these people say you are demonic. Many people did not go along with the Assemblies of God bringing in Benny Hinn or did not go along with the laughing and drunken thing, and they were told there was something demonic about them. How many of you were told something like that? They will always say something like that and those who speak against it are told they are demonic. We have a video of the lawyer of Pensacola, John Kilpatrick, the liar, lying about the vibrating girl. He lied saying that she was from a good Christian family, and he knew her parents when, in fact, she grew up in a broken home. He lied, and he was caught lying on video. He also predicted, gave this big prophecy, against Hank Hanegraaff who warned that Pensacola was not of God. Kilpatrick said God was going to bring down Hank Hanegraaff in three months. Hank Hanegraaff had a countdown on American radio, and at the end of three months, he pronounced John Kilpatrick a false prophet. While I don”t endorse Hank Hanegraaff now, he was right concerning this situation and at the end of the three months, John Kilpatrick, the leader of Pensacola, fell off a roof, smashed his pelvis, and was brought out in a wheelchair. The only one God brought down was John Kilpatrick, and now the women of Pensacola are coming to Kevin Conner”s place. What do you expect?

€œJesus answered, “I do not have a demon; but I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me. But I do not seek My glory; there is One Who seeks and judges. Truly, truly, [There it is again.] I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death” (49-51).

Again, this is present continuous active. This does not mean you will not die. It means death will not be a permanent, ongoing state because of the resurrection.

The Jews [the Judeans] said to Him, €œNow we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets also; and You say, “If anyone keeps My word, he shall never taste of death.” Surely You are not greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets died too; whom do You make Yourself out to be?” Jesus answered, €œIf I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My Father who glorifies Me, of whom you say, “He is our God”; and you have not come to know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I shall be a liar like you €¦.” (52-55)

Notice how He talked to these people in front of the congregation where the biggest religious leaders of the day were liars and deceivers. That is what Jesus did. Now I am not like Jesus, but I am supposed to try to be like Him. I want to be like Him in righteousness and in love, but I also want to be like Him in truth.

€¦but I do know Him and keep His word. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad. The Jews therefore said to Him, €œYou are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said,. [There it is again. It is emphatic in the Greek, in its meaning in the original spoken Aramaic, or in Hebrew, Ani Hu Ani. This is it! This is it!] I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the temple. (55-59)

This happens in the holiday season between Feast of Tabernacles and Hanukkah. Hanukkah is the Jewish Feast of Miracles and Lights. Right after Tabernacles, the morrow day when this takes place is known as Simchat Torah, the Joy of the Torah, which is the climax of the Feast of Tabernacles. To this day, Orthodox Jews take the Torah scrolls, and they dance with the scrolls, and people throw rice at them like at a wedding because the Jew is married to the Torah. It is usually the members of the Jewish community who have contributed the most to the Jewish causes of the synagogue who are invited to dance with the scrolls. They are called the calim, the bridegrooms. It is the only time during the year that the little boys who have not yet been bar mitzvahed are allowed to pray the blessing in the synagogue. This is Simchat Torah. The Jews read the Law and the prophets the Torah and Ha Torah, annually, an election, an annual liturgical cycle together with the prayer book called the Siddur. The annual cycle begins on Simchat Torah. This very day goes back to Genesis 1:1.

When Jesus gives a new law, it is the idea of a new beginning, a harkening back to the beginning, the creation and the new creation. The theme of new beginning becomes paramount.

Simchat Torah is the Jewish Feast of Light. Two giant menorahs, lamps, with seven candlesticks (like we see in Revelation 1) would be topped up with oil. At Hanukkah, it had nine branches, but the normal one in the temple had seven. They were about three and a half stories high, pure beaten gold, but hollow inside. It was at this time of year that the Sanhedrin would top up the tanks in the lamps with olive oil that came from the Mount of Olives. This was the time of year the lamps were filled, and the wicks were trimmed.

It was against this background that Jesus says, €œI will give living water.” In verse 1, He comes down from the Mount of Olives and says, €œI am the light of the world.” He took what was being done in the temple and applied it to Himself. These lamps are symbols of the Word of God. Jesus says, €œYou do not believe My Words?” What are these words? €œThy Word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). The wise virgins will have oil in their lamps. Faithful Christians will understand the Scriptures when Jesus comes back in the darkness at the end. Jesus is taking the background of Simchat Torah to explore and explain everything that is happening here. To understand what this is and how it works, we have to read about Simchat Torah in Leviticus 23.

This is the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles.

You shall live in booths for seven days; all the native-born in Israel shall live in booths, so that your generations may know that I had the sons of Israel live in booths when I brought them out from the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God. [There it is again.] So Moses declared to the sons of Israel the appointed times of the LORD. (Leviticus 23:42-44)

Notice the parallel between Leviticus and John. John 8 is Leviticus 24 fulfilled in Jesus. We have the end of the Feast of Booths at the end of Leviticus 23, and the beginning of Simchat Torah in chapter 24. The New Testament parallel of Leviticus 23 and 24 is the end of the Feast of Booths in John 7 and then Simchat Torah in John 8 when they go back to Genesis.

€œThe

n the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, €œCommand the sons of Israel that they bring you clear oil from beaten olives for the light, to make a lamp burn continually” (Leviticus 24:1). The Levites are bringing the olive oil from the Mount of Olives to the temple to trim up the lamps. In John 8:1, Jesus, the light of the world, comes down from the Mount of Olives. He is the light of the world. He is going to explain the Scriptures. The Levites were very sure about the lamp and how to fill it up physically. Jesus was speaking about what it meant spiritually. Outside the veil of testimony in the tent of meeting, Aaron shall keep it in order from evening to morning before the Lord continually; it shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations. He shall keep the lamps in order on the pure gold lamp stand before the LORD continually. (3-4)

In the ancient near East, in order to maximize the amount of sun, or light, inside a room, you have a convex, concave architectural design. The windows were wide outside with decreasing angulation, a funnel effect, coming to the inside, so the sun made spotlights to light a room. The temple was the opposite, like a reverse triangle, so the light of the Torah would shine out over Jerusalem. The lamps represented the Word of God, so they had to burn day and night, so light would always be coming out of the temple. His Word is the lamp, always shining out over His people and over His city.

Then you shall take fine flour and bake twelve cakes with it; two-tenths of an ephah shall be in each cake. And you shall set them in two rows, six to a row, on the pure gold table before the LORD. And you shall put pure frankincense on each row, that it may be a memorial portion for the bread, even an offering by fire to the LORD. (5-7)

There are twelve cakes, one for each of the tribes. The grain comes first. Only after you had the grain did you have the incense. We are told in Revelation that frankincense represents the prayers of the saints. It is our prayer and worship. Notice, the grain must come first. There must be oil in the lamp. The illumination of the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures and the grain must be there. Then and only then can there be worship! There is no doxology without theology. In other words, if the doctrine is not right, there is no acceptable worship. The Father wants to be worshipped in Spirit and in truth. If you do not have the truth, the Spirit is wrong. This takes place at the Jewish Feast of the Bible, the Feast of Booths, followed by the Simchat Torah.

In Nehemiah 8:1, at the Feast of Tabernacles, living water flows. Ezra the scribe stands. The book is opened, and in verse 8, the men with Ezra and the Levites translate the Law for the people. After their capture by Babylon, most of the Jews did not know Hebrew anymore. They knew Aramaic. So, they were given the original meaning of the words of the original language. The priority of the original languages is Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. This is more important than any translation. God gave His Word through these languages, and the priority of the original languages comes first when scripture is expounded.

Some of the King James only fanatics actually are lifting up a seventeenth century edition of a translation over the original text. Some people in this country are influenced by this identity movement and neo-Nazis like Wendy Howard and Wendy Booster on the Gold Coast. They are into this idea that lifts up translations over the original texts. In Nehemiah 8, they expound the original meaning of the original language.

Notice, in verse 3, it was an all-day Bible study from early morning to midday. The people studied for hours, and then, and only then, did the people stand up with their hands raised and say, €œAmen. Amen.” They bowed down and worshipped. First, the living water flows, and the Word of God is preached and expounded. Then, when people understand what God wants them to understand, they worship Him in Spirit and in truth. This is one of the reasons that after thirty years the Charismatic movement has totally failed to bring revival. It is the New Age movement that has changed society, not the Charismatic movement

The New Age movement and the Charismatic movement began at the same time in the late 1960s when the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi came to England to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Hollywood film stars. This was the same time the Charismatic movement got going. Both movements declared they were going to spiritually transform Western society. After thirty years, which one has done it? Has the Charismatic movement made it more Christian, or has the New Age movement made it more New Age? The New Age movement has. The Charismatic movement has failed shamefully and indefensibly. It has not changed society. It has not changed the church, and one of the reasons it has failed so totally and miserably is that it is experiential theology. It is not Bible based. In a real move of God, the Jews expounded the Scriptures. Then they worshipped. The Charismatic movement said, €œWho needs this? We will just worship.”

So you have an Alpha course book? Put a match to it. Jesus never said to make converts. He said to make disciples. Alpha is not Biblical. Alpha, among other things, is nemocentric. It is based on the Holy Spirit. Our faith is based on Christ. It is Christocentric. In John 14 and 16, the Spirit of God points people to Christ, never to Himself. He lifts up Jesus. All this, €œGood morning, Holy Spirit; come Holy Spirit. We worship you,” is not Biblical. We worship the Holy Spirit? How? In the context of the Trinity of God, yes, but not one place, not one time is He ever prayed to alone outside of the Trinity. That tells you that is not His Spirit. Old time Pentecostals” emphasis on the Holy Spirit was to point people to Christ. Old time Pentecostals used to sing, €œGive me oil in my lamp. Keep it burning.” They loved the Bible. Some people say, €œWe do not need the Bible. We just need experience.” That is New Age. That is not Christianity. Today, most of the Pentecostal movement is theologically or philosophically New Age. It is not Christian, and I am a Pentecostal.

After more than thirty years, the Pentecostal movement has failed, and it has failed because there is no worship. What we see today is the worship of worship, the worship of experience. The purpose of Alpha, according to Nicky Gumbel, is the Holy Spirit weekend away to get people the Toronto blessing. None of it is Biblical. Again, Jesus never said to make converts. They say, €œOh, so many people are being saved.” Saved into what? The Pharisees made converts, and they became twice as much the sons of hell as they used to be. In England, where Alpha comes from, a poll was taken of over two hundred people who took Alpha. Only four of them could explain the gospel, and it is likely they were saved before they took the Alpha course. If you took Alpha, put a match to it. (We have tapes and a book dealing with Alpha.)

I am only using this to illustrate a point. There is no doxology without theology. There is no right worship and praise without right doctrine. The Charismatic movement is a lot of garbage, but not Charisma, not the gifts, but the movement has failed and failed miserably. People have been saved, but saved

into what? A zoo?

In the Bible, first they top up the lamps with the oil. The grain was there, and only after the grain was there was there incense. This is what Jesus was explaining. In Leviticus 24:10, something happens. There is a radical shift in the literary genre. It goes from ritual prescription to a narrative, a story, of a blasphemer with a false father. What happens in John 8? Jesus speaks of blasphemers with a false father. This very text, Leviticus 24, is what the Jews would have read concerning that feast day, but they did not understand what they were reading.

Now the son of an Israelite woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the sons of Israel; and the Israelite woman”s son and a man of Israel struggled with each other in the camp. And the son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the Name [YHWH, I AM] and cursed. So they brought him to Moses. (Now his mother”s name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan.) And they put him in custody so that the command of the LORD might be made clear to them. Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, €œBring the one who cursed outside the camp, and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head; then let all the congregation stone him. And you shall speak to the sons of Israel, saying, “If anyone curses his God, then he shall bear his sin.”” (10-18)

Look at John 8 now in light of what is happening in Simchat Torah. There are similar elements. In Leviticus 23 and in John 8, there are the lamp and olive oil, shemen zayit, and Jesus comes to the Mount of Olives where they get the olive oil. There is a story of a stoning. There was somebody who was anthropologically a Jew but paternally had the wrong father. Jesus says in John 8, €œI know you are Abraham”s children, but he is not your father.” Simchat Torah in Leviticus 24 and John 8 are the same day of the Hebrew calendar. (You will not get this from commentaries which are written by people who think Christianity is a Greek, or Hellenistic, religion.)

Look at John 8 in light of the Simchat Torah. The very day they bring the olive oil from the Mount of Olives to put in the lamp, Jesus comes down from the Mount of Olives and says He is the light. A woman is caught in adultery. Generally, the Jews stoned people to death for most crimes. Sometimes certain people were burned or slain with the sword, but the normal capital execution was stoning. Why? What does Paul tell us in 1 Corinthians 3? The Law of Moses was the Law of death engraved on stones. It is a midrashic illustration. The Law shows us we are condemned. Stoning shows we are condemned by the Law. The whole purpose of the Law is to show us that we are fallen. We are condemned, we need a Savior, and we cannot keep the Torah. Through the example of the Jews, we cannot keep God’s Law. The Jews exemplify the human dilemma. God has a standard we cannot keep, and it shows we need someone who can fulfill it and keep it for us. We need a Savior. The Jews are an illustration of this €œstoned people,” but now with a new beginning, grace will triumph over mercy. In the Greek text, Jesus writing with His finger is emphatic. €œThou shalt not commit adultery” is one of the decalogues, the Ten Commandments.

All Torah is based on the Old Testament. The New Testament is based on the Old Testament. The New Testament is simply the Messianic fulfillment of the Law and the prophets. There is nothing in the New Testament not found in the Old except for the New Covenant, but the doctrine and teaching are there. Again, the New Testament is the Messianic fulfillment of the Law and the prophets. The Law and the prophets, however, are based on the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue. All other Scripture was given by God through human agency written by people inspired by God, except for the Ten Commandments. God wrote those with His own finger. That is scripture that was not the inspired of God because it was simply The Word of God ; God inspired no else to write it. So, by Jesus writing with His finger, He is showing Himself as the I AM. €œI gave the Torah.” This is the Simchat Torah, the joy of the Torah? Jesus is showing them what the joy of the Torah is. The Law says we are condemned, but the real joy of the Torah is that He Who gave the Torah is here to save us.

This is similar to the Blue Laws we have in the United States. A Blue Law is not normally enforced. The Jews would not normally stone a woman for adultery. Islam will still do it with Sharia law, but the men usually get away with it, especially if they are connected with the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, but they will stone women. By the second temple period, the Jews did not normally stone adulterous women, but the law was still o

Mezuzot (The Doorposts) Part 2 of 2

Fri, 15 May 2015 14:12:46 GMT

You see, glue rinses off; but superglue does not rinse off with a detergent or a solvent. It scrapes off; the polymer binds with the cornified epithelium of the epidermis. In other words, when it does come off, some of you comes off with it, leaving a mark that should never have been there. In a marriage, that kind of bonding is one of the things God uses to preserve a marriage; it is good in that situation. Outside of matrimony, however, it is not a good thing. Did God forgive the sin? Yes. At the Resurrection or when Jesus comes will it still matter? No. But does it leave a mark now? Absolutely. There is a mutual vulnerability with this kind of bonding, which is what led Samson to become emotionally and to a degree spiritually susceptible to Delilah.

Let us continue: Samson foolishly lets Delilah know that the source of his strength has something to do with his hair; he begins sharing the things of the Lord with someone who does not even believe in the Lord. “So while he slept, Delilah took the seven locks of his hair and she wove them into the web, and she fastened it with a pin. And she said to him the third time, ‘The Philistines are upon you, Samson!’ But he awoke from his sleep and pulled out the pin of the loom and the web.” He thinks he has gotten away with it once more, not knowing how close he is to the abyss of his self-appointed doom.

Verse 15: “And she said to him,” – check this out – “‘How can you say, “I love you”?'”

“You don’t love me! If you loved me you’d let me kill you. You don’t really love me, otherwise you’d let me get you knocked off so I can get paid!” What a jerk Samson had to be! There is no question he acted like a moron. This guy is a real jerk. And I’m a real jerk. And you’re a jerk. ‘The sin that so easily besets’.

Understand something here: this took place under the Old Covenant. It was not then as it is now, where the Holy Spirit is for all who believe. Under the Old Covenant, only certain people at certain times for certain reasons had the Holy Spirit: high priests, prophets, kings, patriarchs, and judges. Samson may well have been the only person on the face of the earth at that time who had the Holy Spirit. He was someone who had been supernaturally conceived as a type of Jesus: the angel appeared to his parents to tell them he would be born, and he carried the thing he would die on, just as Christ did. So Samson is a type of Christ, as all of these Old Testament figures are in some way. This was a man who was called by God before his conception; this was a man whom God empowered. He had God’s hand upon him for the glory of God’s name and for the deliverance of God’s people – this was the judge of Israel! Called by God, empowered by God, anointed by God, and used mightily by God. But he continually returned to that same stupid sin.

In the same way, you could be witnessing and leading people to Jesus, laying hands on people and seeing them be healed – God could have His hand on you, you could be filled with the Holy Spirit, and God could really be using you; yet you could still so easily fall back into that same old thing. That’s Samson, that’s me, and that’s you – it’s all of us. Do not ask me why God continues to put up with someone like Jacob Prasch – I don’t know. Fortunately, I am not God; because if I was God, Jacob Prasch would be in big trouble. Thank God that He is He and I am me; because if I was He, me wouldn’t be here.

What Samson says next to Delilah shows the power of sin to deceive, and the vulnerability that takes place in that kind of bonding that should be reserved only for wedlock. Let us look at verse 16: “It came about when she pressed him daily with her words and urged him, that his soul was annoyed to death.” Why does he put up with this kind of nagging? That would drive any man crazy – the book of Proverbs tells us that living with a contentious woman is like trying to sleep next to a dripping faucet. Samson could have had any wife he wanted, with his position as the Judge of Israel. But he had bonded with Delilah, “so he told her all that was in his heart, and said to her, ‘A razor has never come on my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaved, then my strength will leave me and I will become weak like any other man.’ When Delilah saw that he had told her all that was in his heart, she sent and called for the Philistines, saying, ‘Come up once more, for he has told me all that is in his heart.’ And the lords of the Philistines came to her, and brought the money in their hands.” So Samson bought the whole bill of goods; he told her the truth, “and she made him sleep on her knees and called for a man to shave off the seven locks of his hair. Then she began to afflict him, and his strength left him.” Notice that Delilah began to afflict him before the Philistines did.

People are not initially judged for their sin; judgment for our sin is not the first thing that happens. Rather, what initially takes place is that we are judged by our sin. The sin itself turns against you; after that come the consequences for it.

“His strength left him. And she said, ‘The Philistines are upon you, Samson!’ And he awoke from his sleep and said, ‘I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.’ But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him.” His strength was gone, his God evicted, yet Samson did not know it. We grieve the Holy Spirit with our sin; He does not stay where He is not wanted. He will not leave us, but we are certainly good at evicting Him from our lives. A question many people ask me is at what point the Holy Spirit leaves an unrepentant backslider: that is just the point – you do not know, and you cannot know. ‘Is Saul among the prophets?’ – Saul didn’t know when the Lord departed from him, and neither did Samson. But we do know what follows; let’s read it in verse 21: “Then the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes, and they brought him to Gaza and bound him with bronze chains. He was a grinder in the prison.” What happens when God’s Spirit leaves? You lose your sight and you lose your might. You become spiritually blind, and you no longer have the strength to pick up your cross; now you no longer have a way out, because you have gone too far for too long.

God’s Spirit left Samson; he lost his sight and he lost his might. That is what happened to him, and if we are not careful, that is exactly what can happen to us also. None of us is immune.

Let us continue, however, in verse 22: “However, the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved off.” Romans 11:29: “The gifts and calling of God go forth without repentance.” God does not take away what He has given; but although we may lose our hair very quickly, it only grows back slowly. You may lose it overnight, but getting it back is not so easy. Only slowly does a backslider who has gone this far for this long recover; they are blind, without strength, and have made shipwrecks of their lives.

Verse 23: “Now the lords of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon, their god.” Dagon was the fish-god of the ancient Philistines. The miter of the Roman Catholic bishops has its origin in Dagon-worship. “And they said, ‘Our god has given our enemy, Samson, into our hands!'” In the mentality of the ancient Near East, the battles between armies were simply an extension of the battles between spiritual forces. We see this clearly in Daniel and in Revelation, and we have other messages that explain this. Therefore, in the minds of the Philistines, Samson’s capture did not merely mean that they were stronger than he, but that their god was stronger than his God. But God will always vindicate His name – He will not give His glory to another.

Verse 24: “When the people saw him, they praised their god, for they said, ‘our god has given our enemy into our hands, even the destroyer of our country, who has slain many of us.'” So often, God blesses His people even when they are unfaithful for His own name’s sake; we often fail to understand that. “It so happened that when they were in high spirits they said, ‘Call Samson for us, that he may amuse us.'” Backsliders will always wind up in a state of humiliation – as Isaiah 31 says, ‘woe to those who go down to Egypt, for the safety of Pharaoh will turn to your disgrace and humiliation.’

Continuing in Judges 16:25, “So they called for Samson from the prison, and he entertained them. And they made him stand between the pillars.” The word here for ‘pillars’ indicates the pillars of the city. They made a mistake: he could not go to the Cross, but they brought the Cross to him and didn’t know it. “Samson said to the boy that was holding him, ‘Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, that I might lean against them.’ Now the house was filled with men and women, and the lords of the Philistines were there. About 3000 men and women were looking on while Samson amused them. Then Samson called to the Lord and said, ‘Oh, Lord God, please remember me and strengthen me just this one time, that I may at once be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.’ And Samson grabbed the two middle pillars on which the house rested, braced himself against them, one with his right hand and one with his left” – he stretched out his hands – “and Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines,’ and he bent wi

th all his might, so that the house fell upon the lords and all who were within it. So the dead whom he killed in his death were more than those whom he had killed in his life.” Once again, Samson is here a picture of Christ: he goes from a place of defeat by stretching out his hands to a place of unprecedented victory, when his enemy thought he had been completely defeated. Instead it was the chess gambit; you got my rook, but now your king is in check.

Verse 31: “Then his brothers and all his father’s household came down, took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaole in the tomb of his father Manoah. Thus he judged Israel twenty years.” Samson should have judged Israel sixty years; instead, it was only twenty. Do I believe in unconditional once-saved-always-saved? No. Calvinism is a perversion of Christianity. Neither do I believe, however, that God saves people in order to lose them. One does not need to understand the New Testament teaching about He who is able to keep you in terms of the Calvinistic misinterpretation and corruption of that truth; the gifts and calling of God go forth without repentance, as quoted earlier.

To understand this, we must go to the New Testament equivalent of this story: we always interpret the Old Testament in light of the New Testament revelation of Jesus – I Corinthians 5: “It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind that does not exist even among the Gentiles” – that is, the pagans – “that someone has his father’s wife.” The Greek scholars usually reckon that this was the man’s stepmother. Be that as it may, there is an incestuous relationship going on, where a believer was sleeping with his father’s wife. A believer! Paul says, remember, ‘among you’. Paul called this so grotesque and ugly, so morally repugnant, that even the heathens would not do it. Even the pagans had more morals than to do such a thing. Paul goes on to rebuke them: “Yet you have become arrogant, and have not mourned, in order that the one who had done this deed might be removed from your midst.” Notice that the politically correct, compromised, half-backslidden contemporary church today says that the one who is arrogant is he or she who will stand against immorality. God says, on the contrary, that the one who will not stand against it is the arrogant one.

Ray MacCauley divorced a Christian woman in order to marry another woman who had been married to another man; yet if anyone speaks against it, that person is rebuked for daring to stand up for God’s standard of righteousness. If anyone calls you arrogant for this type of action against immorality in the church, you may tell them from God’s Word that it is rather they who are arrogant for refusing to speak against the immorality themselves. God calls it arrogant not to stand against obvious evil.

Paul goes on to say this in verse three: “For I on my part, though absent in body, yet present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his soul might be saved in the Day of the Lord Jesus.” This is not something anyone may do arbitrarily; it is similar to binding and loosing: both concepts come across more clearly in the Greek text, where the verb tense is present continuous active; you can only bind on earth what is being bound in Heaven, and you can only loose on earth what is being loosed in Heaven. (This actually has nothing to do with territorial spirits and the like.) In the same way, the Lord was leading Paul to hand this person over to Satan in the text of I Corinthians 5 that we read above.

Notice here that Paul was not Reformed; he was not a Calvinist. He did not say here, as a Calvinist would, that since this person was backslidden and sleeping with his father’s wife that was in itself proof that he had never been saved to begin with. Neither, however, does Paul say anything to support a belief in unconditional eternal security (once-saved-always-saved). He never implies or leaves room to imply that this man still had the assurance of salvation while living in this backslidden state. Rather, he states directly that this man was in danger of going to Hell.

But once again, the Lord does not save people only to lose them. What Paul does say is this: If this man is going to sow to the flesh to this degree for this long, this habitually, and will not repent, the enemy will have him. We will let the enemy have him, that he might be driven in the end to fear God and repent, though he forfeits his life. I have heard many parents talk about how good and godly their children were until they went away to University; then a boy began living with his girlfriend, or a girl began living with her boyfriend, and they won’t repent. (My children are at that age now, and I am praying that God keeps them from sin.) But then one day these wayward children come home and knock on the door. They say, “Mom, Dad, I’m HIV-positive. Will you pray with me?” or, “I’ve been diagnosed with Kaposi’s Sarcoma, and they tell me I will soon be dead; please pray with me.” Terrible! Horrible! But better that than burning in Hell.

I prayed for the salvation of my children from their mother’s womb; I actually prayed that my children – whom I love just as indescribably as you love your children – would die in their mother’s womb rather than spend eternity apart from Yeshua their Messiah.

The life is destroyed, but the soul is saved. Samson should have had many more years, many more decades of fruitful service. Sin can kill. Please do not misunderstand me – I do not suggest that all illness is the result of some personal sin; it is only the result of sin in the sense that illness is a result of mankind’s fallen state. Yet as Psalm 32 and the epistle of James tell us, sin can cause illness. In fact, by defiling the Lord’s table with unconfessed sin we can eat and drink judgment to ourselves and die prematurely, as Paul tells us in I Corinthians 11. It does say here ‘fall asleep’ rather than ‘die’ with reference to these believers who sin against the Lord’s table, so we know that this does not mean they will go to Hell for it; believers fall asleep, unbelievers die. Similarly, even the New Testament says that if we neglect needy parents we reduce our own longevity. Sin can indeed kill; we see it in I Corinthians 5 and we see it in Samson’s life. God forbid this should happen to any of us or to our children, but once more, better that it does than that we burn in Hell. God does not save in order to lose.

Samson could have had a nice godly wife, and many more years and decades of judging Israel. All of the blessings that God had in store for Samson he forfeited. He lost his calling, his sight, his might, his blessing, and even his earthly life; what a tragedy! Yet, as Hebrews 11 assures us, in the end his soul was saved. Samson was defeated by the sin that so easily besets; but even then, God’s mercy stood.

The most difficult, painful book of the Bible is without doubt, in my view, the book of Lamentations, written by Jeremiah. It recounts the consequences of stubborn, continual, unrepented sin and rebellion against God by a nation, its capital, its people, and its children. Yet right smack dead-center in the most painful, depressing book of the Bible, we read this: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning – great is Thy faithfulness” – see Lamentations 3:22-26.

You may be right in the middle of your worst trial, but the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

Maybe even as a Christian, you do not love Jesus Christ as you should; but you cannot stop Him from loving you.

Certainly what happened to Samson was a tragedy, and what happened to this unnamed man in I Corinthians 5 was a tragedy, and what happens all too often today is a tragedy; it should never happen, yet it can and it does, because of that sin that so easily besets. If you are in that sin now, do not get comfortable in it – get out now, before it turns against you, for you can be sure that it will. There are a million ways into that quagmire; there are countless ways into that debacle; but there is only one way out: the Cross of Jesus Christ.

What About the Promise of Jihad?

Fri, 15 May 2015 14:11:30 GMT

But I have another question. The question is on “Jihad” ” “holy war”. Western Muslims like to say, “Jihad is a struggle within oneself to keep the five pillars of Islam within your own life.” It is a holy war within your own self. But it is still defined in the Quran and the Hadith as a struggle to defend Islam and, the fundamentalists say, to advance it for Mohammed said, “Allah has commanded me to make war against all nations and all people until all say there’s no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet”.

He organized 65 military campaigns and personally organized 27. To this day the indigenous people of North Africa, the Berbers, are second-rate citizens in their own country; the Kurds are second-rate citizens in their own ancient homeland. Why is Iran, which as a Zoroastrian nation, Muslim? Why in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia Muslim? Why is Turkey Muslim? Why is Iran Muslim? They were invaded and occupied and forced to become Muslim at the point of a sword. That is the history Islam. Everyone knows it. How then can it be a religion of peace?

Now again, westernized Muslims would say, “Jihad is the struggle within oneself”. I accept that there are those who do not agree with it and they will put it in the same category as what the English did to the Irish or what the Europeans did to the American Indians and so forth, but let’s look at Jihad.

Whether you interpret “Jihad” one way or the other is not the issue. The Quran says, “Allah will give the Muslim victory in the jihad against the infidel”. Irrespective of your view of Israel and Palestine and whose land is it and who was there first or who has the right to be there, let’s just look at the subject “Jihad”.

One Arab leader, one Muslim leader after another ” both Sunni and Shi”a ” have called the struggle “Jihad”. After six Jihads, surrounding Muslim nations ” just the Arab ones of 150 million plus in population ” cannot defeat less than 5 million Jews. There”s 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, only 13 million Jews. Israel, even with the West Bank, consists of less than 1% of the land that is today Arabic-speaking. Less than 1%. It”s small, it”s surrounded, it”s under-populated, and has none of the vast oil wealth found in the Arabian pan handle, or in Iraq or Iran or Libya. Why is it? If Allah is God, and if He will give the Muslim victory in the Jihad against the infidel, that Israel has proven consistently indestructible?

When I”ve asked this question I’ve been told it”s because of America. I don’t believe God is afraid of America or of any nation. If Allah is God, He”s not afraid of America or Russia or China or India or Britain or France. He”s not afraid of anybody, He”s God! On that I think we can agree. But how can it be because of America if Allah”s going to give you victory?

The fact is, under Nassir when the Soviet Union was backing the Arab-Muslim nations against Israel in 1967, America did not begin backing Israel in any significant way until 1973. East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip were conquered in 1967 ” June of “67 ” six years before the Americans began backing them. Your argument makes no sense.

Now the Katub ” the Bible, says the Jews would return to the land. Jesus said Jerusalem would be trampled down by the feet of the Gentiles until the time of the Gentile was completed. (Lk. 21:24) They go back to Jerusalem. The prophet Zechariah says they would be there and they would be indestructible because of Jesus. Read it. You can read it in Arabic. They”ll look upon Him whom they have pierced. (Zech. 12:10) When the nations come against Jerusalem He will make war against the surrounding nations.

Moriel Ministries South Africa

Fri, 15 May 2015 14:09:29 GMT

HARPAZO: The Intra-Seal Rapture of the Church

by James Jacob Prasch

Copy-Edited by D. E. Isom

When it comes to books devoted to eschatology in general and the Rapture specifically, they often either read like a formal academic argument written solely for the benefit of scholars or employ the use of fiction to avoid directly handling the underlying biblical text. As with Jacob’s previous books and exhaustive list of sermons covering nearly every area of theology, Harpazo presents the doctrine of the Rapture and Resurrection in the strictest biblical sense possible, leveraging the handling of Scripture in the same manner as passed along to us by Christ through the Apostles and Early Church of the 1st century.

Often the typical format of such books is to spend more time explaining and refuting all the positions the author does not subscribe to rather than focus exclusively on what they believe and have derived from Scripture. Harpazo may be unique in the complete absence of charts and seemingly endless trips to sidebars to constantly compare alternate interpretations the author does not subscribe to in the first place. Jacob was asked to continue to employ in an expanded book format the same exegesis of Scripture which is present in all of his teachings regardless of whether or not they are eschatological. After all, “The Apocalypse” means “unveiling”, and that “lifting of the curtain”, so to speak, as we approach the ever nearer Return of Christ is the Holy Spirit’s revelation of Scripture as already given, not a new opinion by man..

The Gospels are clear that immediately in the wake of His Resurrection, Christ not only imparted the Holy Spirit to His disciples, but directly instructed them in how He was the fulfillment of the whole of Scripture. (Lk. 24:27, 44-45) In other words, the interpretation of all of God’s Word, every Book of the Old Testament included, was re-cast as Christological, having not just a literal, primary meaning for the times any Scripture was originally given, but an added meaning for either Christ’s First Coming, Second Coming, or both. Like every doctrine and theology, the Rapture and Resurrection are illustrated through many scriptural people, places and events throughout the whole of God’s Word and not simply limited to a single biblical reference.

Using the Early Church hermeneutics of typology to illustrate and illuminate doctrine, Jacob shows how there are many raptures and rescues in Scripture which combine to teach what is going to ultimately take place in the Parousia—the Second Coming of Christ. Likewise, there is a wealth of similar events and patterns throughout Scripture which teach us what to expect from related issues such as the Two Witnesses, the role of the 144,000 and Israel yet to come, the pattern of judgments in Revelation and how they actually replay Old Testament and historical parallels, and a wealth of other such End Times teachings already established in the canon of Scripture.

Jesus Himself established this hermeneutic by categorically teaching that the Last Days would be realized in the character of the days of Noah as well as Lot. The Apostles in their writings not only confirmed these specific examples but built upon them. The question for believers in the Last Days is not whether or not some kind of “new” revelation or word from God has been revealed, but how what has already been given is, in these final hours, being unveiled to believers by the Holy Spirit. What Daniel was told to seal until the end, John was told would be ultimately unsealed.

Some of the chapter titles in Harpazo will sound familiar to those already acquainted with Jacob’s teachings, but he has never tied everything together overall to this degree before. This book is not about creating another End Times chart, but making a good faith effort to draw together in one place what the whole counsel of God’s Word is teaching not just for a single event or prophetic fulfillment, but the overall doctrinal basis by which believers are supposed to act and behave as they are putting His Word into practice. Whereas many limit their teaching on the Rapture to just the drama of the physical event itself, one of the remarkable differences presented in Harpazo is the believer’s place in the Rapture and Resurrection and their active role in preparation for it. Recognition of the nearness of His Return invokes a responsibility to live accordingly.

Those expecting an academic treatment of eschatology or hoping for a formal rebuttal of alternative positions will not find such in Harpazo. But those placing a priority on what God’s Word is saying more than the word and opinions of man will derive tangible benefits from the book regardless of which “ism” or eschatology currently held. Jacob presents us with a thorough proactive exegesis of Scripture by concentrating on what Scripture affirms rather than a reactive rebuttal of the beliefs of man, which all too often actually fall outside biblical boundaries.

Reiew

Electronic version is now available as an Ebook and is available at Amazon for $9.99.

Harpazo will not be available until after the first of the year. Contact David Nathan at david@bolm.co.za

Future History of the Church Part 1 of 3

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:56:04 GMT

By James Jacob Prasch

Introduction

Everyone wants to know the future. For this reason, people will go to fortunetellers, the occult, and all kinds of other sources to try to discover it. Jesus, however, told us the future.

Before I was a believer, I used to go to a witch who read my tarot cards; she was quite skilled at it, and one day she saw in the cards that I was going to become a follower of Jesus. When she saw it, she began saying “Don’t come back and burn me when this happens; it’s going to happen, but don’t come back and burn me”. She was quite accurate. The occult can often be very accurate in its predictions of the future. However, Deuteronomy 18 says that “quite accurate” is not good enough; a true prophet must be exactly right every time. I see many people today who claim to be prophets and build prophetic ministries around themselves, yet they make outlandish predictions that fail to happen. When this occurs, people defend the false prophet by saying that he is “usually right”. That may be so, but the witch in New Jersey who used to read my tarot cards was also usually right.

Deuteronomy 18 is very clear: if you speak a word in the name of the Lord, it had better happen or you are a false prophet. (Deut. 18:20-23) This is dangerous; people are better off keeping these “prophecies” in their mouths rather than speaking them when they’re not of God. We should never suppress the Holy Spirit, but if a word is truly from the Holy Spirit it will surely happen.

There was an occasion where I witnessed a true prophet: About 40 people were in a room in Mount Carmel, Israel with this man who came from the Soviet Union (as it was called then). There were no diplomatic relations or direct air flights between Israel and the Soviet Union in those days; he had to fly via Europe. He flew into Tel Aviv where someone picked him up at Ben Gurion Airport and brought him up to Galilee. He began speaking in English, making prophesies and predictions. When I heard what he was saying, I decided that either this man was a true prophet or not only was he a false prophet, but he was also out of his mind. This gentleman wrote a book and in it he told of taking the Lord’s Supper in Red Square. He said that the Lord told them to throw the communion cup into the Moscow River after which they stood in Red Square and predicted that God would do to the Soviet Empire what He did to Egypt because their government was persecuting the church and refusing to allow Jews to immigrate to Israel; they proclaimed “‘Let My people go’, and ‘Let My Gospel be preached’, or God will destroy your empire. We proclaim a curse on your land â€“ God is going to curse your land.” Immediately after that Chernobyl happened and they had the worst harvest of all the bad harvests they’d had. These Christians also said, “God is going to destroy the Soviet war machine”; right after that, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and the Warsaw Pact collapsed. Next these believers turned around to face the Tomb of Lenin in which Lenin was kept permanently embalmed and on display and they said, “This is the spirit of death; God is going to destroy the spirit of Lenin-worship.” There were about eleven factories in the Soviet Union that manufactured nothing but statues and busts of Lenin; every one of them closed and on the evening news we saw all these busts and statues with their heads cut off. The believers then turned around to the Kremlin and said, “God is going to destroy your empire; the Soviet Union will collapse, and no one will be able to believe how fast God will judge it. ‘Let My people go, and let My Gospel be preached’!”

To say these things in 1984 or 1985 would have been unfathomable, totally unthinkable. You would either have to really be hearing from God or crazy. These were outrageous things to say, but they all happened. I have never met that brother since, and I never even read his book, but I know what he said and I saw it happen right in front of me.

After that I came to Britain to go to Bible College and I saw some people from Kansas City and California calling themselves the Kansas City Prophets and the Vineyard. They came before tens of thousands of people and predicted a great revival and a great Latter-Day Rain was going to come to the United Kingdom in October of 1990. In the years since the “great revival” more mosques have been built in England than churches.

Infiltration of the Church

Deuteronomy 18 says that a false prophet is a “neve sheqer“; we don’t stone them to death any more, but the sin is no less serious. Jeremiah 5 and 28 make it very clear what false prophets are and Jesus said they would come during the Last Days. One of the biggest mistakes born-again Christians make is this: when we read the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 where Jesus repeats Himself four times regarding false teachers and false prophets in the Last Days, most of us automatically say, “That’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Moonies, the Mormons, the Hare Krishnas, Christian Science, etc.” While there is no doubt that these people are false prophets and false teachers, and also no doubt that the proliferation of these cults over the past 100 years is in itself a sign of the Last Days and certainly emblematic of the time we live in, if you read the context of Matthew 24, Luke 21, Acts 20, and Matthew 7, those were not the false prophets and false teachers that Jesus and the Apostles were warning about. The ones they warned about are the ones that deceive the elect.

The unsaved are already deceived by the devil; he is out to deceive two kinds of people: the nation of Israel and the Bible-believing church. The nation of Israel is under a spiritual darkness. We see their signs in many places, including Jerusalem, Stamford Hill in London and Crown Heights in Brooklyn, saying “We want the Mashiach now!” Jesus gave a double prediction in John’s Gospel that the Jews would believe another who came in His name, though they did not believe Him. (Jn. 5:43) This was fulfilled in the early church’s time bySimon bar Kochba but it is certainly also a symbol of the Antichrist who will deceive the Jewish people into thinking that he is their Messiah. The Jews are being set up for this.

So we see that the devil has the world deceived and the Jews deceived; who is he out to deceive now? You and me. Read Matthew 7, Acts 20, Matthew 24, and Luke 21. The false teachers and false prophets that we are warned about in these passages are the ones who get into the church to deceive the elect.

I am very concerned about cults such as the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, because if born-again Christians were as zealous for the truth as the cults are for their lies, a lot more people would be getting saved rather than joining these cults. The fact that they are so zealous for a lie while the Bible-believing church sits around is in character with the church of Laodicea. It shows what has become of the church in the West. Nonetheless, very few Christians get sucked into the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you see a Christian who does, he is either a brand-new believer whom they sheep-napped, or he is a very weak, awkward believer to begin with. Those are not the false prophets with whom we must be primarily concerned, though we are responsible to warn the unsaved about them. The ones we have to worry about are the ones coming into the church. Spiritual deception increases in the Last Days.

Biblical Interpretation from the Jewish Perspective

There is a Biblical principle understood from a Jewish perspective called “Qol veh Homer“, which in English means “light to heavy”. It is the first of the Migdoth of Rabbi Hillel, who was Rabbi Gamaliel’s grandfather. Rabbi Gamaliel was tutor to the Apostle Paul when Paul became a rabbi. Rabbi Hillel had seve

n Migdoth, or principles, of interpreting Scripture. The New Testament uses these repeatedly. Ool veh Homer, or light to heavy, is again the first of these. One example of it is in Hebrews 10:25:

“. . . not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Something that is true in a light situation becomes especially true in a heavy situation. In this passage we are dealing specifically with the subject of fellowship: fellowship is always important, but in the Last Days it becomes especially important. If we cannot stand together, we’ll never be able to stand alone when persecution comes.

Another example of “light to heavy” concerning the Last Days is false prophets and teachers. They’ve always been around â€“ that’s the “light”; but in the Last Days, they multiply â€“ that’s the “heavy”. Things that are always true become especially true in the Last Days, and things that are always dangerous to the church become even more so during the Last Days.

Jewish people in the time of Jesus did not interpret Scripture the way we do. Jesus was a rabbi who taught the same way other rabbis did; He used Midrash. He also used something called the mashla and the nimshal format. The mashal is a description of something from everyday life, from nature, and the nimshal is the spiritual meaning in back of it. The book of Proverbs is called in Hebrew “Mishla“, the book of mashlas. For example, Proverbs 11:22: “As a ring of gold in a swine’s snout,” â€“ that is the mashla â€“ “so is a lovely woman who lacks discretion.” â€“ that is the nimshla. A parable is simply an elongated mashla.

Our Western concepts of allegory and typology are basically Western repackaging. We need to understand the way Jews thought about the Bible because in Daniel 12:9 it says this:

“Seal these things up until the time of the end.”

When you see people who write books about Revelation and claim to have it all figured out, be careful. We’re told directly in Daniel that these things are sealed. There is no new truth, and no new revelation; however, in the Last Days the Holy Spirit will give understanding to God’s people regarding the deeper things of Scripture. We will have no new doctrine, no new truth, and no new revelation, but we will have a deeper and clearer understanding of what is already in Scripture. What liberals do is try to interpret the Bible out of its Sitz im leben, its cultural context. Evangelicals do the same thing because we use Greek methods of hermeneutics and exegesis to try to understand a Jewish book. There is a lot more that could be said about this subject, but concerning the Last Days I’ll simply give you the most important aspect.

How Biblical Prophecy Really Works

Western Protestant exegesis interprets prophecy in one of four different ways: Preterism, Historicism, Polemicism, or Futurism.

Liberals love Preterism; they say, “There is no God, and even if there was He wouldn’t know the future, and even if He did He certainly wouldn’t tell Isaiah.” Therefore, in their minds when Isaiah predicts events concerning King Cyrus 200 years before their occurrence, (Is. 44:28; 45:1) it proves automatically â€“ prima fasci â€“ that Isaiah actually wrote it after the fact, or rather that the book of Isaiah was not written by Isaiah but by someone after the Captivity. Their basis for this is that Isaiah could not possibly have known about King Cyrus 200 years ahead of time. This is an ex-Vaticina interpolation, if you like theological terms. Liberals cannot believe in a supernatural knowledge of the future, so they embrace Preterism.

The second, Historicism, is what Kingdom-Now people prefer. The Reformers were also greatly inclined toward this view.

Historicism says, “The eschatological prophecies of the New Testament were completely fulfilled in the Early Church.” The Early Church identified Rome with Babylon; when Peter closes his first epistle he says, “She who is in Babylon greets you.” (1 Pe. 5:13) False religion begins in Babylon with Nimrod, finds its way through Asia Minor (particularly the city of Pergamum), and from there, into Greco-Roman civilization. From there it comes into things such as Roman Catholicism, Freemasonry, etc.; however, the root of it all is in Babylon, the false religious system of the world in confederation with the corrupt political system.

The Babylonians destroyed the first Temple on Tisha ba’v, roughly the 9th of August on the Hebrew calendar. Under what were nearly identical military circumstances, Rome destroyed the second Temple on the same date, Tisha ba’v. Therefore the early Christians began identifying Rome with Babylon; it is the same false religion.

The example I generally use to explain this is Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard is the name of an alleyway between two buildings running from Whitehall to Victoria Embankment in London; it was the original headquarters of the metropolitan police. Now, unlike in the days of Sherlock Holmes, the metropolitan police are located a half-mile away on Victoria St. However, their headquarters is still called Scotland Yard although it is no longer located on that little street off of Whitehall. In other words, the name of the institution has taken the name of its original location. With Babylon it is the same idea. Therefore, in the book of Revelation, when the early church saw the woman on seven hills, representing the Capitolina, since the woman is a city, it would have been Rome to them. (Rev. 17:9)

Therefore, when Rome burned under Nero, it fulfilled the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah that predicted the fall of Babylon. This is the way the early Christians thought. When Mount Vesuvius exploded. Volcanic ash accumulated in the ionosphere and the upper stratosphere, thus preventing solar and lunar radiation from giving their light over much of the Roman Empire. This actually does happen; I believe the last time it happened was in Iceland during the 1960’s. Next, in roughly 70 A.D., the Temple is destroyed and the Romans set up pagan images and worshiped them on the Temple Mount; the Christians of the day believed that was the Abomination of Desolations â€“ ha shikutz ha meshomen. Thus these things have been fulfilled; that view is called Historicism.

The Protestant Reformers loved Historicism, because they said that it was the Roman Empire, Imperial Rome, which stopped the medieval papacy from blossoming. After Constantine moved his capitol to Constantinople and the Visigoths moved in, then Rome blossomed. When Scripture says that “He who restrains them will be taken out of the way”, (2 Th. 2:6) they interpreted that as Imperial Rome restraining Papal Rome and then being taken out of the way. This is why the Kingdom-Now proponents say that the “Last Days” only refers to the events leading up to 70 A.D., usually denying any future meaning to the book of Revelation and so on.

The third way of interpreting prophecy is Polemicism. Polemicism says: “The book of Revelation is only given to encourage Christians during times of persecution. It reminds them of

the glory to come and the judgment of their persecutors, and is thus designed to encourage them.” This is a true point: Revelation opens by stating that there is a blessing on anyone who reads it, and apocalyptic literature will certainly always encourage a persecuted church. That is part of its purpose, but not in entirety.

The fourth method of interpreting prophecy is Futurism, which states that these things are going to happen in the Last Days.

Which Method is Right?

To a Western Gentile mind using Protestant hermeneutics which are Hellenistic in orientation for reasons I cannot go into here, one of these four methods is the true one. The question is concerning which one you support: are you a Preterist, a Historicist, a Polemicist, or a Futurist? A Jew in the 1st Century, however, would have been all foursimultaneously, as Jesus was Himself.

In Matthew 24:15-33 Jesus says that when you see the Abomination of Desolations spoken of by the prophet Daniel, then you will know the End is near. The problem is that the Abomination of Desolations spoken of by Jesus in Matthew 24 and in Luke 21, the Olivet Discourse, had already happened before He mentioned it. Jesus celebrated Hanukah in John 10, the Feast of Dedication.

He knew all about Antiochus Epiphanes setting up the image in the Temple, the pigs being slaughtered in the Temple, and the Temple being re-consecrated by the Maccabees. The Abomination of Desolations prophesied by Daniel had already happened during the intertestamental period, but Jesus took that event and prophesied that it would happen again. Jesus used Preterism: He took a past event and spoke about it in the future tense.

Then there is Historicism: Once again, look at the Abomination of Desolations as prophesied by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse. When you read Josephus and discover how the Romans destroyed the Temple and set up pagan ensigns on the Temple Mount and worshiped them, you see that it was an Abomination of Desolations. Then, in the 2nd Century, the Emperor Hadrian built a city called the Aerolinas Capitolina, putting a temple of Jupiter on the Temple Mount. Yet another Abomination of Desolations. Julian the Apostate, the nephew of Constantine who tried to re-paganize the Roman Empire, tried to rebuild the Temple, and all these mysterious fires broke out on the Temple Mount; anotherAbomination of Desolations. Today on the Temple Mount, we have the Mosque of Omar, the Dome of the Rock. On the outside of it, around its periphery, is inscribed a quotation from a surah in the Koran, which is translated: “God has no son”. That is still another Abomination of Desolations.

Yet there is still an Abomination of Desolations to come. All of these preceding ones typify the one that is coming. The point is this: Western ideas of prophecy involve prediction and fulfillment. The Hebrew idea of prophecy is a pattern that is recapitulated; multiple fulfillments with one ultimate fulfillment â€“ that is how Jewish prophecy was understood. Each of the multiple fulfillments is a type of and teaches something about the ultimate one.

Let me continue with another example: When Matthew writes his Nativity narrative he says of Jesus,”Out of Egypt I have called My Son,” (Matt. 2:15) quoting from Hosea chapter 11:1. The problem with this is that when you read Hosea chapter 11, you find that Hosea was talking about the Exodus, when the children of Israel came out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses. Yet Matthew takes this, seemingly out of all context, and applies it to Jesus. However, the problem is not that Matthew took it out of context, but that the Western church has taken a Jewish book and constructed its own rules of context. Matthew thought midrashically; he thought of prophecy as pattern. Let me explain:

Midrash

It begins with Abraham. God judged Pharaoh, and Abraham came out of Egypt along with his descendants in Genesis; Abraham is the archetype, the father of all who believe. Then, in Exodus, God again judges Pharaoh â€“ the wicked king gets judged â€“ and once again Abraham’s descendants come out of Egypt. Thus the pattern begins; what happened to Israel replayed what happened first to Abraham. Just as Abraham received money from Pharaoh, so the Israelites plundered the Egyptians in Exodus.

Next, Jesus comes out of Egypt, after once again the wicked king â€“ Herod this time â€“ is judged. Midrashically, Israel alludes to Jesus. When you see things in Scripture such as “Israel My glory, Israel My first-born son”, (Ex. 29:43) it is a midrashic allusion to the Messiah as even the rabbis know. Therefore Jesus, the embodiment of Israel, also comes out of Egypt.

Just as the church is the Body of Christ, so is Israel in some sense. Then, in 1 Corinthians 10, we come out of Egypt ourselves! Egypt is a figure of this world; Pharaoh is a figure of the devil, who is the god of this world. And just as Moses goes onto the mountain and makes a covenant with blood on behalf of the people, so does Jesus. Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, through the water, and into the Promised Land. Jesus leads us out of the world, through baptism, and into Heaven. One is a type of the other; we all have an Exodus experience.

But the ultimate meaning is the resurrection and rapture of the church: the same judgments that take place in the book of Exodus are replayed in the book of Revelation. In the same way that Pharaoh’s magicians were able to counterfeit the miracles of Moses and Aaron, the Antichrist and his False Prophet will be able to counterfeit the miracles of Jesus and His witnesses. Why is the song of Miriam (“I will sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously â€“ the horse and the rider are thrown into the sea!”) â€“ sung in Revelation? (Ex. 15:1; Rev. 15:3) The book of Exodus shows us that the destruction of Pharaoh was a typology of the destruction of the devil. Why did the Israelites bring Joseph’s bones with them out of Egypt at the front of the procession? As the scriptures tell us in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, “the dead in Christ will rise first“, and we will shall come out together.

Once again, the Hebrew idea of prophecy is that of a pattern being recapitulated. It is not a prediction, but a pattern with an ultimate fulfillment. That is the Hebrew concept of eschatological prophecy. In order to really begin to understand what the Bible teaches about the Last Days, we have to stop thinking with a Western, Gentile, Hellenistic mind and begin thinking of the Scriptures in the way the Early Church did. Remember that in Revelation 2 and 3, the church of Ephesus had a lamp stand that the other churches did not have;

“Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path,” (Ps. 119:105)

The virgins needed oil in their lamps in order to see in the night (Mt. 25:1-13) â€“ we’ll come back to that.

In the Last Days, understanding and faithfulness become very important. Remember that the wise virgins of Matthew 25 had the oil in their lamps so that they could see in the night, representing the illumination of the Holy Spirit in our

understanding of Scripture. Laodicea needed salve with which to anoint the people’s eyes, so that they could see. (Rev. 3:18) Understanding of Scripture is going to be very closely associated to faithfulness in the Last Days. It says in Daniel that none of the wicked will understand. (Dan. 12:10) Now, it is very easy for God to take somebody who has a pure heart and an empty head and give that person wisdom. However, it is much more difficult for Him to take somebody with a big head and a big intellect and give him a pure heart. Spirit and Truth; God wants us to have both. Simple people are much more likely to get saved than are sophisticated people; but after they do get saved, those simple people are not supposed to stay that way.

God’s Timeframe

Now, with these things in view, let us look at Matthew chapter 10, beginning in verse 1:

“And when He had called His twelve disciples to Him, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease. Now the names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him.”

Do you know what “Judas Iscariot” really means? “Jude the Suburbanite”. Continuing in verse 5:

“These twelve Jesus sent out and commanded them, saying: ‘Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans. But rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand’. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. Provide neither gold nor silver nor copper in your money belts, nor bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor staffs; for a worker is worthy of his food. Now whatever city or town you enter, inquire who in it is worthy, and stay there till you go out. And when you go into a household, greet it. If the household is worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Day of Judgment than for that city!

“‘Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues. You will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. Now brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in this city, flee to another. For assuredly, I say to you, you will not have gone through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes. A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.'”

When Jesus sent out the apostles in pairs, were they brought before governors and kings for His name’s sake? No. Did the Holy Spirit give them utterance when they were on trial in Matthew 10? No. Did brother deliver up brother and parents deliver up their children? No. Were they hated by all nations for His name’s sake when He sent them out in pairs? No. None of it happened. Jesus had been training them, and before that they had been trained by John the Baptist; now He sends them out for their first dry run, saying ‘Here is what is going to happen’, but none of it did. What happened is that in verse 16 Jesus totally changed time frames.

We have today the Restorationists, who claim they are going to conquer the whole world for Jesus Christ and set up His kingdom before He comes back. They say these prophecies were fulfilled in the Early Church, that we are going to be the “Church Triumphant”, etc. etc.; this is total rubbish. The Kingdom is now, but not yet. There are two terms: One is “inaugural eschatology” and the other is “over-realized eschatology”.

Inaugural eschatology means that the Kingdom has broken in, Satan’s powers are being thrown back, he can’t possibly win, but the ultimate victory does not come until Christ returns. Look at Daniel chapter 7:21:

“I was watching; and the same horn was making war against the saints, and prevailing against them, until the Ancient of Days came, and a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom.”

That replays the story of the Maccabees, so the Restorationists would say that this was fulfilled with the Maccabees or with the Early Church, but that we are the Kingdom Now. That is over-realized eschatology, and it is totally wrong. There will be a falling away, there will be a persecution, and there will be an Antichrist. The church will be victorious, but that ultimate victory depends on the return of Jesus.

The Issue of the Cross

The other thing is that Matthew 10 says we will be brought before governors and kings, persecuted for the sake of the name of Jesus Christ, and that a servant is not above his master.

I have a friend who was involved in Christian Science for 20 years before he was saved. E. W. Kenyon admitted that Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, influenced him. The whole line of thinking begun by Kenyon â€“ “My body is lying to me”, etc. â€“ was begun by Christian Science, which also does not believe in the medical profession. The things you hear being taught by Kenneth Copeland and Kenneth Hagin were all learned from Kenyon, who admittedly got it from Christian Scientist doctrine.

Every false cult and every distortion of the Gospel of Christ will deny the Cross of Jesus in some way, without exception. The Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t even like to call it a “cross”; they call it a “torture stick”, and they say that salvation is obtained through their organization and each individual’s commitment to it.

It is the same with Roman Catholicism: Jesus said from the Cross, “It is finished”. Roman Catholicism, however, says that the Mass is the same sacrifice as Calvary, that it happens over and over and over again. Roman Catholicism is a fundamental denial of the Cross of Jesus; it is a false religion. There may be true believers in it, but if they are true believers they need to come out of it. You cannot believe or participate in those doctrines and be in the will of God.

Then you have the teaching of the faith-prosperity preachers that teach Jesus died spiritually. Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, E.W. Kenyon, and all who follow them say that Jesus got the victory not on the cross but by going to hell and becoming a satanic being of one nature with Satan. That is what they teach, and it is a fundamental denial of the cross. So what happens as a result?

“A servant is not above his master.” (Mt. 10:24) Because the cross of Jesus is made unimportant to His ministry, living the crucified life becomes unimportant for us also. Instead we are told, “God wants you rich, you’ll never get sick, God wants you to have this and that and the other”, etc. The cross be

comes factored out of the equation.

Again, every distortion of Christianity in the world will reject the cross of Jesus in some way. Paul, conversely, says, “I glory in it (the Cross)”. Like the old hymn says â€“ “I will cling to the old rugged cross, and one day exchange it for a crown.” We get the crown on that day, not this. Kingdom Now denies this and says we get the crown now. The Bible says the Kingdom is now but not yet; the proponents of Kingdom Now say it is all now.

Switching from the Present to the Future

Nonetheless, let us return to the basic problem: In Matthew 10 Jesus sends the apostles out, warns that these things will happen, but then they do not come to pass. Look at Matthew 24; Jesus begins by talking about the Temple in verses one through four.

Jesus speaks about the prophecies of Daniel 9, that the Messiah would have to come and die before the second Temple was destroyed. However, He then speaks of events which happen in the lifetimes of some of the apostles and the destruction of the Temple. Jesus does here once again what He did in Matthew 10 â€“ He changes the timeframe in the middle of a conversation.

Matthew 24 is the same way â€“ He begins talking about 70 AD, but then He changes timeframe and talks about the end of the world.

The same thing happens in Acts chapter 2, when the Holy Spirit is outpoured and Peter explains it. Peter quotes from Joel chapter 2 in Acts 2:15:

“‘For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

‘AND IT SHALL COME TO PASS IN THE LAST DAYS, SAYS GOD,

THAT I WILL POUR OUT OF MY SPIRIT ON ALL FLESH;

YOUR SONS AND YOUR DAUGHTERS SHALL PROPHESY,

YOUR YOUNG MEN SHALL SEE VISIONS,

YOUR OLD MEN SHALL DREAM DREAMS.

AND ON MY MENSERVANTS AND ON MY MAIDSERVANTS

I WILL POUR OUT MY SPIRIT IN THOSE DAYS;

AND THEY SHALL PROPHESY.'”

Were there any prophecies made on the day of Pentecost? No. Verse 19:

“I WILL SHOW WONDERS IN HEAVEN ABOVE AND SIGNS IN THE EARTH BENEATH:

BLOOD AND FIRE AND VAPOR OF SMOKE.

THE SUN SHALL BE TURNED INTO DARKNESS,

AND THE MOON INTO BLOOD,

BEFORE THE COMING OF THE GREAT AND AWESOME DAY OF THE LORD.'”

Was there any great sign in heaven or on earth, any blood, fire, or vapor of smoke on the day of Pentecost? No. Did the sun then turn to darkness or the moon to blood? No. Remember that the sun is a type of Jesus, who is the Son. As it says in Isaiah,

“Arise and shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the risen LORD is brighter than the sun”. (Is. 60:1)

All four gospels tell us that the resurrection of Jesus happened at sunrise. The rising of the sun is a metaphor for the rising of the Son. The moon, on the other hand, has no light of its own; it only reflects the light of the sun, just as the church has no light of its own but reflects the light of Jesus. I am not denying that these astral phenomena will happen; I am simply saying that if and when they happen, they will simply be a reflection of something deeper. The light of Jesus will no longer be reflected by the church onto the earth and the church will have blood on it â€“ will be persecuted. I don’t say that the literal astral events will not occur, only that we must understand the meaning of the metaphors. Verse 21:

“‘AND IT SHALL COME TO PASS THAT WHOEVER CALLS ON THE NAME OF THE LORD SHALL BE SAVED.'”

This is called Peter’s “charigma“, and in Greek it literally states, “This is like that”.

So in Matthew 10, Jesus sends the apostles out in pairs, telling them that some things will happen that don’t happen to them. In Matthew 24, He tells the church about something that will happen, which does not happen to them fully, but only partially. Then, in Acts 2, Peter describes what is happening, but none of it actually happens.

But let us take another look at Matthew 10: To whom do these things happen? Jesus sends out the apostles in pairs, telling them they will be brought before governors and kings, they will be persecuted, the Holy Spirit will give them utterance, and they will be betrayed by their families, but to persevere to the end and they will be saved. That didn’t happen to the apostles in Matthew 10; but to whom did it happen? Every one of those things happened to Jesus. What happened to Him in His last days will happen also to the church in ourlast days. Betrayed, brought before governors and kings, people selling each other down the river and stabbing one another in the back, but the ones who persevere will be saved; it will happen to us as it happened to Him.

It Begins to Be Replayed

But then there is something else: in the early chapters of Acts, these things do happen to the apostles. For example, let us look at Acts 4:18-23:

“So they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said to them, ‘Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.’ So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way of punishing them, because of the people, since they all glorified God for what had been done. For the man was over forty years old on whom this miracle of healing had been performed. And being let go, they went to their own companions and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them.”

So we see the apostles brought before governors and kings, scourged in the synagogue, given utterance by the Holy Spirit, which no one can refute. Then they go on to quote Psalm 2, in Acts 4:25-26:

“‘WHY DID THE NATIONS RAGE,

AND THE PEOPLE PLOT VAIN THINGS?

THE KINGS OF THE EARTH TOOK THEIR STAND,

AND THE RULERS WERE GATHERED TOGETHER

AGAINST THE LORD AND AGAINST HIS CHRIST.”

The Bible frequently represents the tribulation of the church at the hands of the world in the End times by a raging sea.

Psalm 2 happened to Jesus; the Gentiles took counsel against the Lord and against His anointed; now, in Acts, they begin doing it to the church also. Yet then the pattern increases. Let’s look at Acts 5:19-25:

“But at night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out, and said, ‘Go, stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life.’ And when they heard that, they entered the temple early in the morning and taught. But the high priest and those with him came and called the council together, with all the elders of the children of Israel, and sent to the prison to have them brought. But when the officers came and did not find them in the prison, they returned and reported, saying, ‘Indeed we found the prison shut securely, and the guards standing outside before the doors; but when we opened them, we found no one inside!’ now when the high priest, the captain of the temple, and the chief priests heard these things, they wondered what the outcome would be. So one came and told them, saying, ‘Look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people!'”

It is fairly obvious what we have here. Let’s look at Matthew 27:65:

“Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how.’ So they went and made the

tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard.”

Down to Matthew 28:11-14, after the resurrection of Jesus:

“Now while they were going, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all the things that had happened. When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, ‘Tell them, “His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept.” And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.'”

So we see that just as an angel made the way for Jesus to come out of the tomb, so an angel also led the apostles out of prison. Next, the chief priests feared the people in Acts 5:26, just as it says in Luke 22:22.

Once again, in Matthew 10 we see Jesus sending out the apostles in pairs and telling them what will happen; it doesn’t happen to them at that time, but it does happen to Jesus, andthen it begins to happen to the apostles and the Early Church. So we know that what happens to Jesus and what happens to the Early Church will be replayed again and will happen also to us. How do we know that? Again, let’s look at Matthew 10:17:

“‘But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues. You will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. Now brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake.'”

This does not happen in Matthew 10, but let’s look at Luke 21:12:

“‘But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons. You will be brought before kings and rulers for My name’s sake.”

Notice that He says “before all these things”; the church will be persecuted before the end comes. Continuing in verse 13:

“But it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony. Therefore settle it in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But not a hair of your head shall be lost. By your patience possess your souls.”

The timeframe then changes again to 70 A.D. What Matthew 10 predicts did not happen then; it did happen to Jesus and to the apostles and to the Early Church, and it is going to happen again to the church in the Last Days. He uses the same words, and I read it from Luke intentionally to show that it is not only Matthew’s attempt to construct that idea, but the Holy Spirit put the same thing in Luke.

Then, however, it becomes very conspicuous. We must realize that when we read Acts we are not merely reading the history of the 1st Century church, but also the history of the last century church.

First Christ, Then Paul

In John 9:4-6, the rabbis make false charges against Jesus to the Roman authorities. In John 19:4-6, however, Pontius Pilate wants no part in judging Jesus. This is the beginning. The ministry of Paul and his last days replayed what happened to Jesus in His last days. False charges were made by the rabbis against Paul to the Roman authorities, but the Roman governor wanted no part of judging Paul either as we see in Acts 18:12-18. What happened to Jesus also happened to Paul.

In Mark 14:12-15, prior to His arrest, Jesus met with His disciples at Passover in an upper room to break bread. In Acts 20:6-8 Paul met with his disciples in an upper room to break bread before he was arrested.

In John 10:15 and in Mark 10:32-34 Jesus predicted His death to His followers, accepting it as God’s will for His life. In Acts 20:24-25 we see Paul doing the very same things.

In John 18:11 Jesus’ disciples attempted to convince Him to avoid this death, not to go to Judea in order to spare His life. In Acts 21:11-13, Paul’s disciples also try to persuade him not to go to Jerusalem in order to save his neck.

Matthew 7:15, 24:11, Mark 13:6, and Luke 21:8 contain warnings from Jesus about wolves that would come to devour the sheep once He left, and He did this at the end of His three-year relationship with them. Acts 20:29-30 shows Paul at the end of three years warning his disciples about false prophets who would come in among them.

Mark 15:12-15, John 19:15, Luke 23:21, and Matt. 27:21-23 record that the multitudes cried out for the death of Jesus, having been incited by the rabbis. In Acts 21:36 and 22:22we find the multitude demanding Paul’s death after having been incited by the rabbis.

Matthew 26:59-61 shows the rabbis trying to obtain false testimony against Jesus; He was falsely accused of teaching against the Torah and the Temple. Acts 21:28 records the same thing happening to Paul â€“ the rabbis falsely accused him of teaching against the Torah and the Temple.

In Luke 23:8 we see how Jesus aroused cur

iosity, then intrigue, with the civil Roman government; in Acts 22:30 we find that Paul, too, aroused curiosity and then intrigue with the civil Roman government. We will see this happening in the Last Days as well: governments will become infatuated with Christians just as they were in the Early Church, wondering what makes us different.

In John 19 and Matthew 27 the Roman government tried to release Jesus, but then turned the entire affair over to the rabbinic authorities once they were unable to free Him, knowing He was innocent. In Acts 22:30 and 18:15 it happened to Paul.

Matthew 27:24 reveals that the Roman authorities were forced to re-intervene in the case of Jesus in order to prevent rioting; Acts 23:10, 21:34-36 records that the Roman government also had to intervene in Paul’s case to prevent rioting.

The Roman governor in Matthew 26:4 came from Caesarea to Jerusalem to judge Jesus when the rabbis formed their conspiracy to kill Him; the Roman proconsul came from Caesarea to Jerusalem to judge Paul under the same circumstances, in Acts 23:12, 21.

Jesus was delivered by His Jewish brothers into the hands of Gentiles and the governor in fulfillment of a specific prophecy as seen in Luke 23:1, Matthew 27:2, Luke 18:32. In Acts 10:18 Paul underwent the same ordeal, again in fulfillment of a specific prophecy.

John 18:22 tells of Jesus being struck for the way He spoke to the high priest; Acts 23:2 tells of Paul also being struck for the same reason.

In Matthew 23:27 Jesus called the religious hypocrites “whitewashed tombs”, alluding to the whitewashing of sepulchers for the Pesach. In Acts 23:3 Paul calls the priest a “whitewashed wall”.

Jesus used the Resurrection to counter-manipulate the Pharisees and Sadducees against each other when they had come together against Him, in Luke 20:26-40. In Acts 23:9, Paul uses the same strategy.

If you’ve ever heard the joke that says if you have two Jews you have three opinions, that comes from something known as “pilpul“. Pilpul is a manner of Rabbinic argumentation which allows you to quote various rabbinic authorities who have commented on other rabbis in order to justify any opinion or condemn any position you choose. It is argument for the sake of argument, and Jesus would not engage in it. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, when it says the people were amazed because Jesus taught as one with authority and not like the scribes or Pharisees, what it means is that He would not engage in pilpul; He simply said, “This is it”, and would not get into all the theological haggling and nit-picking of the rabbis of His day or the liberals of today.

There was one exception to this: Jesus used pilpul in order to get the Pharisees and Sadducees to fight with one another; Paul did likewise, refusing to engage in pilpul except with the aim of causing infighting among the Sadducees and Pharisees.

Once again: Matthew 10 did not happen at the time Jesus spoke those words, but it did happen to Him, then to the apostles, and then to Paul in very conspicuous detail â€“ there is much more to it than I have listed here. Then, in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 we see that it is going to happen to us as well. What happened to Jesus happened to the Early Church, and both of those things together teach about what is going to happen to us. Jewish prophecy is a pattern recapitulated; multiple fulfillments, with each fulfillment teaching something about the ultimate fulfillment. If you want to know how we will end up, look at how Jesus ended up; if you want to know what will happen to the church in the last century, look at what happened to the church in the 1st Century.

The Typology of the Hebrew Calendar

Again, when you read the book of Acts, you are reading not only past history, but future history as well. The early church experienced a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit, corresponding to the spring rains. The Hebrew term “maim haim“, or “living water”, is a term for the Holy Spirit. Outpourings of rain are representative of outpourings of the Holy Spirit. There is a spring rain and a latter or autumn rain; there was a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Early Church, and there will be again on the church of the Last Days. That is one of the reasons you see such an abundance of the gifts of the Spirit in the Early Church and why they return during the Last Days; it has to do with the seasons of rain. This is also why you see Jewish people getting saved in large numbers again â€“ the harvest.

Jesus fulfilled the Spring Feasts of Israel during His first coming. He fulfilled Passover as the Passover lamb that was slain, He fulfilled Firstfruits as the firstfruit of the Resurrection, and He fulfilled Pentecost when He gave the Holy Spirit. Those are the spring holidays, when the spring rains come and prepare the harvest. The long, hot summer corresponds to the age of the Gentile church, but then Jesus fulfills the autumn holidays upon His return. The rainy season begins again in the autumn, and another harvest comes. Acts 2 quotes Joel 2, saying directly that what was seen in the Early Church will be replayed in the Last Days.

This is one of the most powerful arguments against the error of Cessationism. The Cessationist error that the gifts of the Spirit ended with the apostles, never to be seen again, is just as false on one extreme as Charismania is on the other extreme. The truth is the via media. These things are seen in the Early Church, and then you have an outpouring on the church in the Last Days and these things are seen once again.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit was accompanied by signs and wonders. Acts 2:16-21 predicts that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the Last Days will also be accompanied by signs and wonders. Unfortunately, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the resulting signs and wonders was followed by false doctrine, experiential theology, carnality, and misuse of spiritual gifts â€“ read 1 Corinthians. What happens today? The gifts of the Spirit are followed by experiential theology, carnality, immorality, people substituting the gifts for the Giver, crazy doctrines; the very same thing they had in the Early Church.

The relevance of the law of Moses became a divisive issue among the early Jewish believers as seen in Acts 15 and Galatians 5. Once again, among Messianic Jews, this is

happening. Tens of thousands of Jews have been saved during the past 15 years, and we now have the same kinds of issues that were around in the Early Church coming around to us again.

The Move of the Gospel

The known world during the time of the Early Church was the Roman Empire, the Mediterranean Basin, and so on â€“ not much beyond that. Yet we are told in Acts 17:6 that the Gospel turned the world upside down in that time. Matthew 24:14 states that in the Last Days God will shake the earth one more time; the Gospel will go to the ends of the earth and in the Last Days God will shake the earth once more.

We have seen whole Buddhist nations like Korea turn to Christ within one generation. In the largest Muslim nation on earth, Indonesia, two to three million Muslims give their lives to Christ every year, turning their backs on Mohammed. As the Gospel and Christianity decline in the Western world, they explode in the developing world. As the Gospel declines in Protestant countries, it explodes in the Roman Catholic nations. And as the Gentiles turn away from the truth and the grace given to them, the Jews are returning to it.

In the early church, we see in Acts 1: 8, God used the Jews to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles. We see in Revelation 7 possibly, Romans 11 certainly, “What will their restoration be but life from the dead?” â€“ that there can be no mistake about it; God is going to bless the church through the Jewish people. He is going to use Jewish people to evangelize Gentiles as well. Just as God used Jews to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles in the 1st Century, so He is using Gentiles to bring the Gospel back to the Jews in the end. When that happens, God will use these Jewish believers to bless the church.

The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism

Acts 19:33, 34 shows that in the time of the early church there was growing anti-Semitism. In the Last Days, we will again see growing anti-Semitism. The two kinds of people that the Bible calls God’s chosen are Jews and born-again Christians; it all goes back to Genesis chapter 3, where God addresses the serpent to say that He will put enmity between it and the woman, between its seed and hers. Anti-Semitism and persecution of the church is like a coin, heads and tails: you can distinguish between them, but you cannot separate them.

Who do Moslems hate the most? Jews and born-again Christians. Under the Communists, behind the Iron Curtain, who was persecuted most? Jews and born-again Christians. Who did the Roman Catholic Church persecute the most over the centuries with its Crusades and its Inquisitions and pogroms? Jews and born-again Christians. Who did the Russian Orthodox Church persecute the most? Jews and born-again Christians.

It all goes back to the Early Church: after the Roman government turned against the church it went after the Jews. That’s what happened in 70 A.D. and again in 120-132 A.D. withBar-Kochba’s rebellion, and that is exactly what is going to happen again in the Last Days with the Antichrist. He will come after us first, and then he’ll go after the Jews. Anti-Semitism will increase, and through certain Restorationists,\ it is even coming into the church.

Martin Luther, as an early example, was a man of God if there ever was one; but how he could end up the way he did is a shocking tragedy: he said that peasants should be stabbed in the back, that Jews should be herded into corrals and forced to confess Christ at the point of a knife, and that the German people were to blame for not murdering them to prove they were Christians. This is what is re-entering the church now.

Corrupt political leaders who have tried to exterminate the Jews have always attempted to justify it theologically by quoting people such as Chrysostom and Luther. Today we have the same situation; just read some of the books being published in our time, such as Whose Promised Land? or Blood Brother â€“ very biased against Israel. People are trying to find Christian preachers who will justify their hatred of Israel and their denial of God’s end-times purpose for the Jews, and they are succeeding. Yet God’s plan for world redemption will ultimately depend on the redemption of Israel; His plan for the salvation of the world is prophetically bound up with His plan for Israel’s salvation. Israel is God’s timepiece. This does not mean that the Jews are higher, better, or anything else, but it is true nonetheless.

The Resurgence of Rome

Daniel 7:19,20, Revelation 17:9 â€“ Rome ruled the world in the time of the Early Church. I have no doubt in my mind that the fourth beast of Daniel has to be some kind of a re-confederation of the Roman Empire; we have not heard the last of Rome. The council of Europe was founded by the Treaty of Rome. We must remember this: the emperor was head of the Pantheon of Rome; you could have any god you wanted, as long as you also bowed the knee to the Emperor of Rome. The Hebrew word for “to worship” and “to bow down” is the same word â€“ “hasta kovot“. When you see Roman Catholics genuflecting before a statue of Mary, that is an act of idolatry.

All gods came into the Pantheon which was headed by the Emperor, who allowed the people to worship any god they wanted as long as they acknowledged him as the spiritual guide of all religions and the political head. He was called Pontificus Maximus, the Pontiff. After Constantine removed his capitol to Constantinople, the Pope became the Pontiff. It amounted to the same thing â€“ someone had a pagan god of gift-giving, so the Pontiff decided he would be called Saint Nicholas; someone else had a pagan god of love, and he was dubbed Saint Valentine. Artemis, Minerva, and all these other goddesses became Mary. Essentially, it remained the same false religion. This is what will happen again in the Last Days.

The Romans had religio licita and religio illicita; a licensed religion was fine so long as it acknowledged the Pontiff as the guide. Unlicensed religions were those that refused to bow the knee to the emperor and there was only one religion which ultimately fits into this category: ours. The Pontiff condemned it. Pope John Paul II has met with the Dalai Lama, a man worshiped as God by Tibetan Buddhists; he has met with Zoroastrian priests, witch doctors, Moslem imams, orthodox rabbis, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. He says that he respects all religions, and receives the Dalai Lama as a “great spiritual leader” â€“ a man worshiped as God! That is antichrist. He only asked that all these people acknowledge him as the Pontiff.

However, there was one religion that the Pontiff, John Paul II, did not approve of. In Bolivia about six years ago and again in Santo Domingo less than one year ago, the Pope called born-again Christians “rapacious wolves”. Religio licita and religio illicita; every religion is all right except ours. That is what the Pontiff did two thousand years ago, and that is what he still does today.

Looking at the Greek word for Antichrist, we find that it does not simply mean “against Christ”, but “in place of Christ”. The Pope’s title is Vicarius Christus, the Vicar of Christ; translated into Greek, the “Vicar of Christ” is “Antichrist”.

That is what was happening in the Early Church, and that is what is happening today. Pope John Paul II has said openly that he wants to see one Europe with one church. He knows very well that with a confederated Europe they have only one thing in common: Roman Catholicism. The Church of England is dropping dead, going back under Rome. George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a book called The Meeting of Waters, urging the Anglican church to go back under the papacy. Across Europe, the only thing those people of different languages, different cultures, and different anthropological heritages have to unite them is Roman Catholicism, and the Pope knows that. He wants one Europe with one church; in other words, to go back to what exi

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Fri, 15 May 2015 13:53:59 GMT

One Messiah: Two Comings

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:46:47 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

And gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, “Which,” He said, “You heard of from me; for John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

And so when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth'” (Acts 1:4-8).

Restorationism

“Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom?” We hear much talk today about a movement called the Restorationist Movement.

The term “restoring the kingdom” is only used in one place in the New Testament, not in connection with the Church Triumphant, but with Israel.

The Restoration Movement is committed to restoring three things which never existed to begin with.

The first thing they are trying to restore is a version of eschatology, which is over realized It is called Dominionism or Triumphalism: the erroneous view that the church will conquer the world for Jesus, before He returns to set up His Kingdom.

The church will ultimately be victorious, but that victory depends on the return of Christ.

And the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet (Roman 16:20).

Daniel speaks specifically and plainly of the persecution that is to occur in the Last Days.

I kept looking, and that horn [ speaking of the Antichrist ] was waging war with the saints and overpowering them until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was passed in favor of the saints of the Highest One, and the time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom (Daniel 7:21).

Kingdom Now theology falsely states that the saints will take possession of the kingdom before the return of Christ, but the Bible clearly teaches that they will take possession of the kingdom after the return of Christ.

These kinds of erroneous beliefs have emerged at various times in church history, usually at turning points in world history.

During the decline of the Roman Empire it was called Montanism. It exhibited much the same kind of chaos we see today with the modern Restoration Movement, including the emphasis on “signs and wonders” that drew people into it without any understanding of the biblical theology.

Predictions, and prophecies that failed to happen, followed.

During the Renaissance it was the Munster Anabaptists, who followed people called the Prophets of Zwickow – a group who did the same kind of things as the Kansas City Prophets do today, make wild and irresponsible predictions that fail to happen.

Prophetic authority

The second thing this movement is trying to restore is a view of prophetic authority which is not biblical. In the biblical version of prophetic authority, a prophet is responsible for what he says.

I actually had somebody from the Vineyard tell me that the New Testament says that we “prophesy in part,” so, therefore, John Wimber’s followers, and Paul Cain, can be partly right and partly wrong, and still be biblical prophets. That idea is utterly false and terribly dangerous! People like that are deceived.

Apostolic authority

Thirdly, they are trying to restore a version of apostolic authority, which is not Biblical. Apostolic authority in the New Testament was chiefly doctrinal.

Does apostolic authority, in the sense of the twelve apostles, still exist in the church today? Yes it does. It exists in the writing of the apostles and of Paul.

Apostolic authority was chiefly doctrinal and it exists today in the church, preserved by the Holy Spirit, in the writings of the apostles.

Now there are other kinds of apostles, church-planting missionaries being among them, but as we look into the New Testament, apostolic authority was plural.

The Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2).

Jesus sent the apostles out in pairs. Biblical authority was always plural.

The model of apostolic authority in the House Church movement and in Restorationism is a pyramid scheme, where the apostle is the head honcho. What they are calling “apostolic authority” amounts to a form of heavy shepherding.

Additionally, apostolic authority in the Bible is always accountable.

Paul and Barnabas were always accountable back to Antioch, which sent them out.

Beyond that, apostolic authority in the Bible involved mutual submission to each other, as in Acts chapter 15. It was never a one-man show.

What they are calling “apostolic authority” today in the Restoration Movement is often only heavy shepherding, based on Gnosticism. These people claim to have a gnosis, or a subjective revelation and, if you do not see it, they claim that you are under deception.

True restoration

Nonetheless, there is a true restoration and that has to do with the restoration of Israel.

Replacementism – the idea that the church has replaced Israel, to the negation of any prophetic or end times purpose for Israel and the Jews – is a totally unbiblical doctrine.

Romans 11 speaks directly of Israel as “the root”. The root supports you; you do not support the root. The root is under the ground. Just because you cannot see it, that does not mean that it is not there. If the tree had no root, the tree would die.

If Israel was finished forever, the church would be finished with it. If God has rejected Israel because of their sin and unfaithfulness, He has just as much reason to reject the church, possibly more.

The sins of Israel are easily replayed throughout the history of the church, including the sacrifice of their children to demons, which we see today in the massive number of non-therapeutic abortions carried out even in Western, Christianized democracy.

What Romans 11 teaches is that Gentile Christians who repent and accept Jesus, replace Jews who do not. They are grafted in as branches in place of Jews who reject their own Messiah, but the root remains Israel.

Everything under the ground is Old Testament Israel, but everything above the ground is the New Testament Church. The Church is the spiritual continuity of Old Testament Israel, not its replacement.

Restoration of Israel

The root is still Jewish. The original branches were Jewish. The first Christians were Jews. The writers of the New Testament were Jews, and the final Christians will be Jews.

Jesus spoke of the national dimensions of the restoration of Israel in the Olivet Discourse – Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled (Luke 21:24).

Jesus used the same words that Paul used in Romans 11:25, except that Jesus was speaking of Israel as a nation.

The time of the Gentiles is dealt with soteriologically in Romans 11, but it is dealt with eschatologically in the Olivet Discourse in Luke 21.

The ultimate meaning of the time of the Gentiles coming to an end is bound up with the prophecies of Daniel. God’s final plan for world redemption depends on the salvation of Israel and the fulfillment of His plan, prophetically, for the restoration of Israel.

There is a national aspect of this but, more importantly, a soteriological, as seen in Romans 11:15. For if their rejection be the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?

God’s plan

The New Testament speaks of restoration, not in terms of this silly Triumphalist movement we have today, but in terms of God’s plan for the restoration of Israel, through whom He will bless the nations.

The Hebrew word for Gentile and the Hebrew word for nation is the same word, joy. God is going to bless the church through Jewish people in the last days.

The Lord has given us these events in the Middle East as proof of the return of Christ. They are one of the signs Jesus has given.

Today we have many false teachers within the body of Christ who are misleading others, telling Christians that the very signs Jesus gave so the elect would not be unprepared or deceived, are not signs at all.

Why Jews reject Jesus

There are two main reasons why the Jewish people will reject Jesus as the Messiah. One is the unfortunate history of Christian anti-Semitism, usually carried out by the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, but with the unfortunate exception of Martin Luther, whose works inspired Adolf Hitler in writing Mein Kampf.

Luther taught that every Jew should be herded into a corral, forced to confess Christ at the point of knife. He said that “we, the German people, are to blame if we do not murder the Jews to prove we are Christians.”

The second reason most Jews will reject Jesus as the Messiah is because Jesus did not bring in worldwide peace. He did not subdue the enemies of Israel, or establish the Messianic kingdom in Jerusalem, or bring justice to the nations, or prosperity and tranquillity to the world.

If He is the Messiah, where is the Messianic reign in the character of David?

To the end there will be war

The answer is found in Daniel 9. The Messiah would have to come and die before the Second Temple would be destroyed.

It was not the purpose of the Messiah to bring worldwide peace at His first coming. It was His purpose to deal with the source problem – sin. It will be at His Second Coming that He will bring in worldwide peace.

And its end will come with flood and even to the end there will be war and desolation’s are determined (Daniel 9:26).

According to Judaism (the midrash Bereshith on page 243 of the Warsaw edition), the Messiah was to exit in 33AD. We read confirmation in the Talmudic literature also, confirming that the Messiah should have come and died before the Second Temple was destroyed.

We read that the Sanhedrin wept and said, “Woe to us! Where is the Messiah? He had to have come by now.”

Rabbi Leopold Cohen

Rabbi Leopold Cohen, a very senior, ultra-orthodox rabbi, sought to understand the meaning of Daniel chapter 9.

He found two things in the Rabbinic literature of the ancient sages. One is that the Messiah was supposed to have come already. The other is that there is a curse on anybody who reads Daniel chapter 9.

So Rabbi Leopold Cohen did the only honorable thing he could. He became a Baptist minister.

Christian anti-Semitism

It’s relatively easy to deal with the subject of Christian anti-Semitism.

“How can you expect me to believe that Jesus is the Messiah when Christians murdered my grandparents?”

The way you deal with the problem of Christian anti-Semitism is to tell Jewish people about the real Jesus – Jesus the Jew, Rabbi Yeshua Ben Yosef of Nazareth, and remind them that the Jewish people murdered their own prophets in the name of Moses.

It was in the name of Moses that they put Jeremiah in prison, sawed Isaiah in half and killed Zechariah.

Should you reject Moses because of what Jews did in his name?

Should you reject Moses because of the orthodox Jew who recently went into a mosque in Hebron with an automatic weapon and murdered fifty Moslems? Do I blame Moses for that, because people murdered in his name?

Well, then we cannot blame Jesus for what people have done over the centuries in His name.

I have to accept Moses and the Torah on the basis of what Moses said. And I have to accept or reject Jesus and the New Testament on the basis of what He said and did.

Fulfilling all the prophecies

The other subject though – Why the Messiah did not bring in worldwide peace – is another issue. For Jesus to be the Messiah, He has to fulfill all the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament.

There are two kinds of Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament – the “Suffering Servant” prophecies (seen in the Servant Songs of Isaiah and elsewhere, and in some of the psalms of David), and also the “Davidic Messiah” of the conquering triumphal King who will subdue the enemies of God, establish the Kingdom and bring in worldwide peace, reigning from Jerusalem.

If Jesus is not the Messiah of the Jews, neither is He the Christ of the church. They mean the same thing: “Christ” and “Messiah,” the “Anointed One.”

Jesus has not fulfilled all of the Old Testament prophecies as yet. He has only fulfilled the “Son of David” prophecies in a spiritual sense, not yet in an historical sense. For Jesus to be the Messiah, He must fulfill all the prophecies.

The ‘Suffering Servant’ Messiah is called HaMashiach Ben Yosef, the Messiah, the Son of Joseph. The ‘Conquering King’ Messiah is HaMashiach Ben David, the Messiah, the Son of David.

Palm Sunday

We see this in the Jewish background of Palm Sunday. Passover was one of three pilgrim feasts where the Jews sing something called the “Hallel Rabah” (from Psalms 113 to 118).

The highlight of the Hallel Rabah is: Hosanna, hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord. Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His loving kindness endures forever. Hosanna, hosanna.

The Jews were meant to sing that on Passover, with their hands waving. They were also meant to sing it at the Feast of Tabernacles, while waving palm branches in their hands.

On Palm Sunday, the Jews began to celebrate Passover (which teaches about the Messiah who was the Lamb who would be slain), as if it were the Feast of Tabernacles, which corresponds, in the typology of the Jewish calendar, to the Millennium.

The Feast of Tabernacles (seen in John 7:2), drawing on the background of Ezekiel 47, is associated in Jewish thought with the Davidic Kingdom.

That is why, when Jesus was transfigured with Moses and Elijah, Peter wanted to build three booths, three tabernacles. Peter was saying, “Here is the Messiah. Now let’s set up the Kingdom!”

When Jesus came on Palm Sunday, they wanted somebody who was going to get rid of the Romans, in the same way as the way the Maccabees had gotten rid of the Greeks, and set up the Messianic Kingdom. So they began to celebrate Passover, as if it were the feast of Tabernacles.

In His first coming, Jesus fulfilled the first three (Spring) holidays in the Jewish calendar: Passover, First Fruits (which was the Resurrection), and the Feast of Weeks (which was Pentecost).

In His Second Coming, Jesus will fulfill the last three (Autumn) holidays: the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and finally and ultimately, the Feast of Tabernacles.

Fulfilling all the prophecies

The Jews of His day did not want to know about a Suffering Servant Messiah, who was going to come as the Passover Lamb to be slain. They wanted a conquering King, who was going to set up the Millennium.

The suffering servant Messiah is called “the Son of Joseph,” HaMashiach Ben Yosef. The conquering king Messiah is called “the Son of David,” HaMashiach Ben David.

For Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah, He has to fulfill ALL the prophecies.

But Jesus has plainly and clearly not fulfille

d all the prophecies. He has only fulfilled the Suffering Servant ones, the Son of Joseph ones.

In other words, it is one Messiah, two comings. In His first coming Jesus came as the Son of Joseph, the suffering servant. In His Second Coming He will return as the Son of David, the conquering King who will set up His Kingdom.

False doctrine: Amillennialism and Postmillennialism

The doctrines of Amillennialism and Postmillennialism were the invention of the Roman Catholic Church, following the errors of Constantine and Augustine, at the time when Christendom was made the religion of the state. Amillennialism and Post Millennialism are totally unbiblical.

From the original Jewish perspective of the New Testament, only a Premillennial position is tenable.

If there is no Millennium, Jesus is not the Messiah. And, if He is not the Messiah for the Jews, neither is He the Christ for the church. He must fulfill all the Old Testament prophecies and, so far, He has only fulfilled the Son of Joseph prophecies.

Restoring the kingdom

What the apostles were really asking with the question, “Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the Kingdom?” was: “We know that you are the son of Joseph, but when are you going to be the son of David? When are you going to restore the kingdom the way David did?”

Even John the Baptist could not understand this.

And summoning two of his disciples, John sent them to the Lord, saying, “Are You the Expected One, or do we look for someone else?” (Luke 7:19).

Even the apostles, after the resurrection, on the Mount of Olives at the Ascension, were unable to understand that it is one Messiah, but two comings.

In His first coming, the Lord Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of Joseph. In His second coming, He will be the Messiah, the Son of David, the conquering king who will fully establish the kingdom.

Let us look at Jesus, the son of Joseph.

Beloved of his father

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all of his sons (Genesis 37:3).

Joseph was the beloved son of his father.

And behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

The Messiah, the son of Joseph, was the beloved son of His Father.

Fellowship and service

Then he [Jacob] said to him [Joseph], “Go now and see about the welfare of your brothers and the welfare of the flock; and bring word back to me.” So he sent him from the valley of Hebron, and he came to Shechem (Genesis 37:14).

Joseph lived in Hebron which, in Hebrew, means “the place of fellowship.” Joseph dwelt with His father at the place of fellowship and was sent by his father to seek the welfare of his brothers.

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men (Philippians 2:5-7).

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

Jesus dwelt with His Father in the place of fellowship and was sent by His Father to seek the welfare of His brothers.

His brothers’ sin

And Joseph brought back a bad report about them to his father (Genesis 37:2).

Joseph testified to his father about the sins of his brothers, and his brothers hated him.

“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19).

Jesus testified about the sins of His brothers and so they hated Him.

They hated him still more

Then Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more (Genesis 37:5).

Joseph revealed to his brothers the exalted position he was to receive.

They already hated him for testifying against their sins, but now they absolutely despised him.

And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds in the sky with power and great glory (Matthew 24:30).

And the scribes and chief priests tried to lay hands on him that very hour, and they feared the people; for they understood that he spoke this parable against them (Luke 20:19).

Jesus revealed to His brothers the position of glory that He would receive and so His brothers hated Him.

Foretold that he would rule

Joseph told his brothers that “we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf rose up and also stood erect; and behold, your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf” (Genesis 37:7).

“You shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power” (Matthew 26:64).

Joseph foretold that one day he would rule. Jesus foretold that one day He would rule.

Rejected and condemned

When they saw him from a distance and before he came close to them, they plotted against him to put him to death (Genesis 37:18).

“We do not want this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14).

But they kept on crying out, saying, “Crucify, crucify Him!” (Luke 23:21).

Both were rejected and condemned to die.

Out of His mind

And they said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer!” (Gen. 37:19).

And when His own people heard of this, they went to take custody of Him; for they were saying, “He has lost His senses” (Mark 3:21).

Joseph was accused by his brothers of being a dreamer. They said of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of Joseph, that He had lost His senses.

Sold for silver

And Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it for us to kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; for he is our brother, our own flesh.”

And his brothers listened to him. Then some Midianite traders passed by, so they pulled him up and lifted Joseph out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver (Genesis 37:26-28).

Judah betrayed Joseph and sold him for twenty pieces of silver.

Then one of the twelve, named Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests, and s

aid, “What are you willing to give me to deliver Him to you?”

And they weighed out for him thirty pieces of silver (Matthew 26:151).

Judah betrayed Joseph for twenty pieces of silver.

Judas (same name as “Judah” in Hebrew) betrayed the son of Joseph, after inflation, for thirty pieces of silver.

Servant’s heart

So Joseph found favor in his sight, and he became his personal servant; and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he owned he put in his charge (Genesis 39:4).

Everything Joseph did, he did as a servant.

Luke 22:25-27 and Philippians 2:7 tell us that everything Jesus did, He did as a servant.

Everything to prosper

And it came about that from the time he made him overseer in his house,and over all that he owned, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house on account of Joseph (Genesis 39:5).

The Lord caused all that Joseph did to prosper.

And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand (Isaiah 53:10).

God shall cause all that the son of Joseph does to prosper.

Tempted

And it came about after these events that his master’s wife looked with desire at Joseph, and she said, “Lie with me.” But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Behold, with me here, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house, and he has put all that he owns in my charge. There is no one greater in this house than I, and he has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great evil, and sin against God?” (Gen. 39:7-9).

Joseph was tempted to the utmost, but he endured and would not sin.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Then Jesus said to him, “Begone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God,and serve Him only.’ ” Then the devil left Him. (Matthew 4:1-11).

Joseph was tempted to the utmost and endured. The Messiah, the son of Joseph, was tempted to the utmost, but He endured.

Falsely accused

When she saw that he had left his garment in her hand, and had fled outside, she called to the men of her household, and said to them, “See, he has brought in a Hebrew to make sport of us; he came in to me to lie with me, and I screamed.

And it came about when he heard that I raised my voice and screamed, that he left his garment beside me and fled, and went outside” (Genesis 39:13-15).

Joseph was falsely accused.

Now, the chief priests and the whole Council kept trying to obtain false testimony against Jesus, in order that they might put Him to death; and they did not find any, even though many false witnesses came forward.

But later on two came forward and said, “This man stated, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.’ “

And the high priest stood up and said to Him, “Do You make no answer? What is this that these men are testifying against You?”

But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest said to Him, “I adjure you by the living God, that You tell us whether You are the Messiah, the Son of God.” Jesus said, “You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

Then the high priest tore his robes, saying, “He has blasphemed! What further need do we have of witnesses? Behold, you have now heard the blasphemy.” (Matthew 26:59-65).

Joseph was accused falsely and lied about. The Messiah, the son of Joseph, was accused falsely and lied about.

Predicted life and death

Then the cupbearer and the baker for the king of Egypt, who were confined in jail, both had a dream the same night, each man with his own dream and each dream with its own interpretation . . Then Joseph said to [the cupbearer], “This is the interpretation of it: the three branches are three days; within three more days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office; and you will put Pharaoh’s cup into his hand according to your former custom when you were his cupbearer . .

Then Joseph answered and said [to the baker], “This is its interpretation: the three baskets are three days; within three more days Pharaoh will lift up your head from you and hang you on a tree; and the birds will eat your flesh off you” (Genesis 40:5-19).

Joseph predicted that one of these criminals would live and that the other one would die.

And one of the criminals who were hanging there was hurling abuse at Him, saying, “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!”

But the other answered, and rebuking him said, Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.”

And he was saying, “Jesus, remember me when You come in your kingdom!” And He said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:39-43).

Jesus was condemned with two criminals and, as He predicted, one lived and one died.

Promised deliverance

Then Joseph said to him, “This is the interpretation of it: the three branches are three days; within three more days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office; and you will put Pharaoh’s cup into his hand according to your former custom when you were his cupbearer (Genesis 40:12-13).

Joseph promised deliverance to a condemned man.

And he was saying, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!”

And Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:42-43).

Yeshua, the son of Joseph promised deliverance to a condemned man. And that same son of Joseph is promising deliverance to condemned men today if they will repent and ask Him to forgive them, and follow Him.

A way of salvation Joseph was betrayed by his Jewish brothers into the hands of Gentiles, but God took this betrayal and turned it around and made it a way for all of Israel, and all of the world, to be saved.

So too, the Messiah, the son of Joseph, was betrayed by His Jewish brothers into the hands of Gentiles. God took this betrayal and turned it around, making it a way for all Israel, and all the world, to be saved.

Forgotten by those he helped

Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him (Genesis 40:23).

And Jesus answered and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? But the nine – where are they? Was no one found who turned back to give glory to God, except this foreigner?” (Luke 17:17,18).

Joseph was forgotten by those he helped, and the son of Joseph was forgotten by those He helped.

Raised to glory

Then Pharaoh sent and called for Joseph, and they hurriedly brought him out of the dungeon; and when he had shaved himself and changed his clothes, he came to Pharaoh

So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has informed you of all this, there is no one so discerning and wise as you are.

You shall be over my house, and according to your command all my people shall do homage; only in the throne I will be greater than you” (Genesis 41:14,39-40).

Joseph was taken from a dungeon, a place of death, and he was raised by the king to the place of glory in one day.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power towards us who believe.

These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come (Ephesians 1:19-20).

Joseph was raised from a place of condemnation to a place of glory in one day, and the son of Joseph, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus, was raised from a place of condemnation to a place of glory in a single day.

Wonderful counselor

So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has informed you of all this, there is no one so discerning and wise as you are” (Genesis 41:39).

Joseph proved to be a great counselor. In Isaiah 9:6 we read that “And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor.”

Highly exalted

And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See I have set you over all the land of Egypt” (Genesis 41:41).

Joseph was promoted to glory and honor and given a new name.

Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name (Phil. 2:9).

Jesus was promoted to glory and honor and given a new name.

Took a Gentile bride

Then Pharaoh named Joseph Zaphenath-Paneah; and he gave him Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On, as his wife. And Joseph went forth over the land of Egypt (Genesis 41:45).

After being exalted, Joseph took a Gentile bride.

For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the Body (Ephesians 5:23-32).

Jesus, after exaltation, took a Gentile bride – in figure, the Gentile church.

That is why the book of Ruth – the story of a Jewish man taking a Gentile bride – is read in the synagogues at Pentecost, which we call “the birthday of the church.”

And, in both cases, the brides were given to share the glory.

About thirty years of age

Now Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharoah, king of Egypt (Genesis 41:46).

Joseph was 30 years old when he began his work.

And when He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about thirty years of age. (Luke 3:23).

The son of Joseph was 30 years old when He began His work.

“Do whatever He says”

So when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried out to Pharoah for bread; and Pharoah said to all the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph; whatever he says to you, you shall do” (Genesis 41:55).

His (Jesus’) mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it” (John 2:5).

Of Joseph it was said “Do whatever he tells you.” Of the son of Joseph it was said, “Do whatever He tells you.”

Every knee shall bow

Then Pharaoh took off his signet ring from his hand, and put it on Joseph’s hand, and clothed him in garments of fine linen, and put the gold necklace around his neck.

And he had him ride in his second chariot; and they proclaimed before him, “Bow the knee!” And he set him over all the land of Egypt.

Moreover, Pharoah said to Joseph, “Though I am Pharoah, yet without your permission no one shall raise his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt” (Genesis 41:42-44).

When he was exalted, every knee bowed to Joseph and he was given all power and glory.

Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9-11).

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18).

Every knee shall bow to the Son of Joseph, and He has been given all power and glory.

The Bread of Life

So when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried out to Pharoah for bread; and Pharoah said to all the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph; whatever he says to you, you shall do.”

When the famine was spread over all the face of the earth, then Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold to the Egyptians; and the famine was severe in the land of Egypt, And the people of all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in the earth (Genesis 41:55-57).

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).

And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

The whole world had to get their bread from Joseph – there was no other way the people could be saved. And there is no way for us to be saved except through the son of Joseph.

Not entrusting Himself to men

Now they were seated before him, the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth, and the men looked at one another in astonishment (Gen. 43:33).

Why? Because Joseph knew the past sinful history of his brothers.

But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, an

d because He did not need anyone to bear witness concerning man for He Himself knew what was in man (John 2:24,25).

Jesus the Messiah is like Joseph, knowing the past history and sins of his brothers.

Not recognized first time

However, as we read in Genesis, Joseph’s brothers do not recognize him at the first coming. They recognized him at the second.

Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried, “Have everyone go out from me.” So there was no man with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers.

And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharoah heard of it.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Please come closer to me.” So they came closer. And he said, “I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt” (Genesis 45:1-4).

Joseph’s brothers did not recognize him at the first coming, but at the second.

And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so they will look upon Me who they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him, like the bitter weeping over a first born (Zechariah 12:10).

The brothers of the Messiah, the son of Joseph, did not recognize him at his first coming, but they will at the second, realizing the one they betrayed is now the exalted one who was going to save them.

The one who was crucified is the one who is the Redeemer, the King. The son of Joseph is also the son of David.

The Suffering Servant is also the Conquering King

When his brothers repented, he forgave them. And when Jesus’ brothers, the Jewish people repent, He forgives them.

In the beginning Joseph used the Egyptian people, the Gentiles, to give bread to his brothers, but a time came when the Gentiles were sent away and he revealed himself to his brothers.

Right now the son of Joseph is using Gentiles, Christians, to send the food, the Bread of Life, to His brothers, but a time will come in the Great Tribulation when the son of Joseph will personally reveal Himself to His brothers.

All power to the King

Joseph, after his exaltation, turned around and delivered all into the hands of Pharaoh (Genesis 47:20).

Then comes the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and authority and power (1 Corinthians 15:24).

Joseph gave all rule and authority and power into the hands of the king.

The Messiah, the son of Joseph, will give all power and rule into the hands of the King.

Savior

So they said, “You have saved our lives! Let us find favor in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharoah’s slaves” (Genesis 47:25).

Joseph was acknowledged to be the people’s savior.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior., Christ Jesus; who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds (Titus 2:11-14).

The Messiah, the son of Joseph, the Lord Jesus Christ, is acknowledged to be the Savior. of all mankind.

Not recognized

When Joseph was adorned (Genesis 41:42) with the garments of Egyptian royalty, he became totally unrecognizable to his Hebrew brothers (Genesis 42:8).

After the first century, Jesus was taken and made king of the Gentiles. It was forgotten that He came as King of the Jews and He became totally unrecognizable to His Hebrew brothers.

One Messiah : Two Comings

Joseph was given a new name upon his exaltation (Genesis 41:45). The Gentiles call Rabbi Yeshua Ben Yosef by a new name – Jesus – a Greek name, not His original one.

One Messiah, two comings.

The Jews did not recognize Joseph at the first coming but at the second. And they will recognize the son of Joseph at the second coming, seeing the one who was betrayed and crucified as the one who has indeed come to bring salvation.

One Messiah, two comings.

Jesus is coming back as the son of David. Every eye will see Him. The Jews will look upon Him whom they have pierced and mourn as one mourns for an only son.

Those who look upon Jesus, whom we have all pierced, and mourn now as one mourns for an only son, will have the same blessing and promise that He gives to His own people.

The Messiah, the son of Joseph, will return as the Messiah, the son of David. And He will restore the kingdom to Israel.

The Boiling Pot

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:46:38 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

Introduction

For me, Ezekiel was always the single most difficult book of the Old Testament (arguably of all Scripture) to understand, but in more recent years I believe the Lord in His grace has been giving more Christians more insight into the Book of Ezekiel. Remember, in both Corinthians and in Hebrews, we have a distinction between “milk” and “meat.” “Milk” is baby food and is right for young believers and “meat” is for older believers, and we are told in Hebrews if we continue to give people “milk” there is not going to be calcification of the bones and baby is not going to grow properly (Heb.5:12-14). This has happened to many churches and many movements; they just continue to teach “milk” and never go to “meat.” It is dangerous to give babies meat, but it is also dangerous to give growing people milk because they are not going to grow if that is their primary diet.

The New Testament is mainly milk. There are heavier books in it such as Hebrews, and there is deeper veiled content midrashically in the Gospels (particularly John). There are elements of meat in the New Testament, but it is primarily milk. The Old Testament, although there are drops of milk in it, is primarily meat. Always remember, “The New is in the Old concealed, the Old is in the New revealed.” Of course, the Plymouth Brethren have been saying that for generations, but not until a German academic said it in Latin did it become academically acceptable.

Say there was a medical nurse in the hospital, she liked nursing, but she became interested in medical science, so she decided to quit her job as a nurse and go to medical school to become a medical doctor. When she was a nurse, all she had to learn was how to tourniquet a wound and stop the bleeding; when she began to study medicine she had to understand protein synthesis and how blood clotting works. She did not have to know this when she was a nurse; it is more complicated as a physician. Nurses and paramedics save people”s lives, but when someone really wants to get into it, they have to go into biochemistry and physiology and the deeper things like that.

Or think of a policeman who decides to quit his job and go to law school. There he is studying the same subjects, but much more deeply. He has to learn the rules of evidence; he has to learn Latin; he has to learn things he did not need to know as a cop that he will need to know as a lawyer.

Thank God for the New Testament, but the fact of the matter is that about 70% of Scripture is the Old Testament. However, there is an exception. The big exception is the Book of Revelation.

The Link Between the Old Testament & Revelation

From a literary perspective, the Book of Revelation can be considered to be Old Testament literature. It is the most Hebraic—most Jewish of the New Testament books, even more so than John”s Gospel, even more than Matthew. It draws on Old Testament themes and motifs more than any other book in the New Testament. From a literary perspective it is like Old Testament literature. In fact, if we were to read the Old Testament in the Greek Septuagint, we would see how incredible are the parallelisms to the Book of Revelation.

The literary link between the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation are the apocryphal books, particularly 1 & 2 Enoch. Those books are not a basis for doctrine, but they are biblically important history and literature. One would have to understand the literary transition to get the theology right, and it would be important to read 1 & 2 Enoch. It gets very, very complicated.

There is another reason. In the Last Days God turns His grace from the Gentile nations back toward Israel and the Jews. The times of the Gentiles comes to an end. Jesus warned of this in Luke 21; Paul warned of this in Romans 11. God will turn His grace back toward Israel at the end of the age, and that is another reason why we see the Book of Revelation being like an Old Testament book in its content. But there is a further reason.

We need to be careful not to take the truths of Dispensationalism too far. It is a basic truth, but some people take it way too far. Nonetheless, understand that right now we are in the covenant of grace; a time comes when grace comes to an end. God’s Spirit will no longer strive with man (Gen. 6:3). When the Holy Spirit comes, He will convict the world of sin (Jn. 16:8); when grace comes to an end, the Holy Spirit will no longer convict people of sin. God will revert to dealing with mankind the way He did in the Old Testament. It is the God of wrath. Those same judgments seen in the Book of Exodus are recapitulated in the Book of Revelation and replay the curses of Egypt on the Jews. He goes back to dealing with the nations the way He did in the Old Testament. The era of grace comes to an end. This will really take off with “the day of the Lord.” Once the faithful Church is removed between the sixth and seventh seal, the day of the Lord is inaugurated, and then it is basically an Old Testament scenario. There is a tribulational temple in Revelation 11, and God turns His redemptive focus back toward the salvation of Israel in very, very terrible circumstances—the worst hour of their history.

The Book of Revelation is theologically different from the rest of the New Testament. It has as much in common with the Old Testament as it does with the New. It was not even authored in the same time period, but authored at the end of the first century after the rest of the New Testament had already been written. It was a further revelation beyond the earthly ministry of Jesus. Everything that had been provided, up that point, were the Apostles explaining the Old Testament and the teachings of John the Baptist and Jesus. Everything the Apostles wrote in the Epistles and Gospels were things Jesus taught while He was here or that were developed from the Old Testament based on the teachings of Jesus. In Revelation, Jesus actually gives an additional, final revelation to John on Patmos.

There are many books that are important in understanding Revelation, most obviously Daniel. Another is quite obviously Zechariah, another as already mentioned is Exodus, but not least of all, and in some aspects most important of all, is the Book of Ezekiel. We do not study Ezekiel just for the sake of understanding Ezekiel, but for the sake of understanding the future. The key to understanding the future is properly understanding the past. As we get closer to the return of Jesus, we should be aiming for the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation to become clearer and clearer and clearer.

Again, we can learn to be a paramedic or learn to be a nurse, but that is at most advanced first-aid. But if we are going to study medical science, that is quite another thing. Or if there is an electrician who decides to become an electrical engineer, he is going to have to go back and study electro-physics and equations for four years. One has to go back and get the background. When we go back to Ezekiel to get this background, understand why we are doing it: it is to understand the future; it is to understand what is going to happen.

The Same Then As Now

In Ezekiel”s day, the Babylonian Captivity was well underway. The prophecies of Joel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Micah had been vindicated and the false prophets had been indicted. Nonetheless, the people still continued in their sin and their rejection of the truth and in their persecution of the true prophets and acceptance of the false ones. In the Last Days, it is the same thing. Expect people to continue to listen to proven false prophets.

It does not matter how many false prophecies Rick Joyner or Cindy Jacobs make, they are still going to follow those people the same as they did in the days of Ezekiel. It is the same motifs re

cycled: the Temple, the false prophets, and the Babylon motif (“Fallen, fallen is Babylon”) all come from the time of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah around the events of 585-586 BC. To understand the future we have to understand the past. Ezekiel is a type or shadow of Jesus eschatologically. He is called “son of man” same as Christ, a picture of Jesus coming again.

In Ezekiel 23 we are presented with “Oholah” and “Oholibah.” “Oholah” “tent” or “tabernacle; “Oholibah” “My tent/tabernacle is within her.” Ezekiel laments the fact that the two southern tribes Judah and Benjamin, along with the Levites and refugees who came south from the ten tribes of Israel during the revivals of Asa and so forth, had become just as corrupt as the ten northern tribes. Judah had become as corrupt as Israel. The same thing happens in the Last Days.

Thirty or forty years ago, when Christians used terms like “the harlot church” or “Babylon” or something similar, it was colloquially understood in Christian nomenclature that one was talking about the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, liberal Protestantism, the World Council of Churches, or a cult like the Jehovah”s Witnesses—that was “Babylon” or “the harlot church.” What is happening now is the same thing that happened in the days of Ezekiel. Today we have mainstream evangelical denominations that are just as much a part of the harlot church. The kind of stuff we see on TBN and such, or coming from the ecumenical movement, these are just as corrupt as the harlot church. What does the term “evangelical” mean anymore? It certainly does not mean what it does in Scripture—”evangelion.” It no longer means what it did, now that all kinds of people claim to be “evangelical.”

But that has always been the case in Europe. In Continental Europe, the term “evangelical” simply meant “Lutheran” as opposed to “Reformed” as opposed to Calvinist. It did not necessarily mean “born again.” Now America is becoming the same as Europe. What does “evangelical” mean? It is just a term that does not really mean anything anymore. Judah became as bad as Israel. Now mainstream evangelical denominations have become as bad as the World Council of Churches, the papacy and so forth.

It Gets Worse

This is the background of Ezekiel 23 where he invokes the background of the motif of the harlot bride borrowed from Amos and Hosea, and also picked up in the New Testament in James 4. Israel becomes an unfaithful bride of Yahweh as the Church becomes an unfaithful bride of Christ in the apostate church. Ezekiel takes this motif of comparing the immorality to idolatry, equating idolatry with adultery: Oholibah—”My tabernacle is in her.” Because the holy ark and the Temple were in Jerusalem, the Jews thought they were special. They had the Lord and they had the truth, but once they become apostate—morally corrupt and looking to Babylon, it was not just bad, but Ezekiel said, “You are worse than your sister Oholah” (Eze. 23:11).

We all know what the Roman Catholic Church is, but at least officially they denounce things like abortion, homosexuality and same-sex marriage. We know that among their clergy this stuff goes on, and even worse things like pedophilia, and they cover it up. We know what they do in practice is different than what they preach, but at least officially they do not sanction these things.

Recently in England, at the Anglican Synod in London, one hundred twenty Anglican pastors—vicars, put their signatures to a document demanding the right to perform same-sex marriages. Remember, America was evangelized by Britain, the mother country spiritually as well as politically. The Church of England (also called the Anglicans or Episcopalians), the United Reformed Church, the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church are all ordaining homosexuals and lesbians, but even the Roman Catholic Church would not officially do that. What they do and what they teach are two different things, but if we were to look at a Roman Catholic book of theology, we would not find a single Roman Catholic scholar or theologian who would deny the historicity of the virgin birth or a literal resurrection. Not one. But we have no shortage at Yale Divinity School, or Princeton Divinity School, or Harvard, or so-called Protestants denying these truths. Protestantism has become worse than Catholicism, worse than what it set out to reform. It is more morally depraved and spiritually bankrupt than what it came from. So, too, Oholibah became worse than Oholah; Judah became worse than Israel.

Look at the money preachers, what they do, and their complete lack of ethics. There are unsaved people who would not prey on the poor and uneducated and elderly the way those money preachers do on TV. There are unsaved people who have more ethics than those predators of Satan.

This is what took place in the last days of Judah, and that is what happens in the Last Days, full stop. It is what happens in the last days of the Church, and it is what happens in the last days of the Jews before the Messiah comes. This is the background of “Ezekiel” “the strength of God.”

The Beginning of the End

And the word of the LORD came to me in the ninth year, in the tenth month, on the tenth of the month, saying, (Ezekiel 24:1)

I do not speculate on dates of the return of Jesus, but this is a superscription—it tells us the timeframe in which these events took place when this prophecy came true. I only mention this in passing, but that date by the Hebrew calendar and how far it was into the Captivity may be an indication about the time when the Antichrist will be revealed.”

€¦the word of the LORD came €¦” Jesus is the Word. In Greek He is the “Logos,” in Hebrew He is the “D”var.” False prophets will always give us a word which is not prophecy but clairvoyance. “The word came” Jesus came. It was an Old Testament revelation of Christ by the Holy Spirit. Unlike in the New Testament, of course, in the Old Covenant the Holy Spirit was only for certain people at certain times: high priests, prophets, kings, judges and patriarchs. The message came from an encounter with the Lord. If a message does not come from an encounter with the Lord, it is a false message; they are putting the focus on the message instead of on the Lord. The focus should be on the Lord, not the message. False prophets will always give someone a word; true prophets will always point them to the Word. There is nothing the Lord has to reveal to any of us, predictively or otherwise, that will not be doctrinally based on what is already revealed in Scripture, and the focus will always be on the Lord Himself, not on the message. Once that happens, then the message is real and we can act on it.

The King of Babylon

“Son of man €¦”

(Again, this is an eschatological type of Christ. When we see “son of man,” it is pointing to the Last Days in some way.)

” €¦ write the name of the day, this very day. The king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day. (Ezekiel 24:2)

Nebuchadnezzar was worshiped in the Book of Daniel as God. Whenever we see a human being other than Jesus deified and worshiped, be it the pagan emperors of Rome or in this case the king of Babylon, it is a shadow or picture of the Antichrist. As Jesus was God and became a man who was worshipped, the Antichrist will be Satan, as it were, in an incarnated form, seeking worship. That the king of Babylon is directly associated with Satan is further confirmed by other Scripture.

that you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon, and say,

“How the oppressor has ceased, And how fury has ceased!The LORD has broken the staff of the wicked,The scepter of rulers

(As we see in Daniel, when Jesus comes back, He will put an end to human government.)

Which used to strike the peoples in fury with unceasing strokes,Which subdued the nations in anger with unrestrained persecution.The whole earth is at rest and is quiet;They break forth into shouts of joy. Even the cypress trees rejoice over you, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying,”Since you were laid low, no tree cutter comes up against us.”

Remember, the trees of the field will clap their hands (Is. 55:12); we shall be trees of righteousness (Ps. 1). These cypress trees and cedars that Hiram sent down from Lebanon were used in the main construction of the Temple. The Church is described seven times in the New Testament as the temple, and these “Gentile” trees which came from Hiram when the Gentiles were at peace with the Jews under David and Solomon are figures of believers. When Jesus opened the eyes of the blind man, the man saw men as trees walking (Mk. 8:24). A good tree cannot bear bad fruit (Mt. 7:18). The trees are going to be happy when Satan is judged.

“Sheol from beneath is excited over you to meet you when you come;It arouses for you the spirits of the dead, all the leaders of the earth;It raises all the kings of the nations from their thrones.They will all respond and say to you, “Even you have been made weak as we,You have become like us.Your pomp and the music of your harps Have been brought down to Sheol; Maggots are spread out as your bed beneath youAnd worms are your covering.”

God has a sense of humor which is sardonic and satirical; He mocks His enemies. On the cross, Jesus, the King of kings, was mocked. The way Jesus was mocked on the cross is the way Satan is going to be belittled and ridiculed for all eternity. Part of the judgment of Satan is that he is going to be perpetually mocked, ridiculed and belittled for all eternity (Is. 14:16). His first sin was pride and that is where judgment is going to fall on him in large part.

Your pomp and the music of your harps Have been brought down to Sheol;

(This very closely parallels Daniel 2 when they had to worship the image.)

“How you have fallen from heaven,O star of the morning, son of the dawn!You have been cut down to the earth,You who have weakened the nations!

Notice how Satan tries to counterfeit Jesus. Whereas Jesus is “the bright and morning star,” (Rev. 22:16) what is Satan called here? “Star of the morning” and “son of the dawn.” Jesus rose at dawn. Antichrist will attempt to counterfeit Christ and he will put on a resounding imitation.When we understand Luciferian theosophy, their argument becomes (and this is even incorporated into elements of Freemasonry) that they see God and Satan as the same. Because we are imago dei, beings made in God’s image and likeness, and because there is good and evil in us, they think there must be good and evil in God. They reason, “How can we have light without dark? How can we have good without evil? God requires evil so there can be good. God requires dark so there can be light.” But there is no darkness within Him we are told (1 Jn. 1:5). These are the convoluted theories to which Luciferians ascribe. And looking at it from a human perspective, it appears to make sense. Satan manifests himself as an angel of light (2 Co. 11:14), and we see that here very clearly. It is almost the same in Hebrew as what Jesus would be called.

“But you said in your heart,”I will ascend to heaven;I will raise my throne above the stars of God,And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north.I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;I will make myself like the Most High.” (Is. 14:9-14)

Satan as the Antichrist

Who is that? Who wants to be God? It is obviously speaking about Satan who is called “the king of Babylon” is Isaiah 14:4, but it also says “the recesses of the north” which can also be read as the “sides” of the north. It is the same as Psalm 48:

Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised,In the city of our God, His holy mountain.Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth,Is Mount Zion in the far north,The city of the great King. (Ps. 48:1-2)

This is talking about the temple. Antichrist in his human form will take his seat in the temple of God (2 Th. 2:4). He wants to be worshiped both by Israel and the Church. He will take his seat within Christendom and he will apparently take his seat in Jerusalem in the rebuilt tribulational temple according to 2 Thessalonians and Revelation 11. This is the king of Babylon.

“Son of man, write the name of the day, this very day. The king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day. (Eze. 24:2)

That may be the day by the year of the lunar calendar that the Antichrist sets up the “shiqutz ha meshomem” the abomination of desolation. (I am not being dogmatic about this, I am only saying it is a possibility that has to be weighed into account as something that could possibly be.)Ezekiel is talking about Satan, but he is talking about Satan coming in a human form; he is talking about Antichrist. What happened then is a picture of what is going to happen. The Babylonians desecrated the first temple as the Romans did the second temple on the same day of the year—T”sha B”Av.

The Parable of the Boiling Pot

“Speak a parable to the rebellious house and say to them, “Thus says the Lord GOD,”Put on the pot, put it on and also pour water in it; Put in it the pieces, Every good piece, the thigh and the shoulder; Fill it with choice bones.Take the choicest of the flock, And also pile wood under the pot. Make it boil vigorously. Also seethe its bones in it.”” Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD, “Woe to the bloody city, To the pot in which there is rust And whose rust has not gone out of it! Take out of it piece after piece, Without making a choice. For her blood is in her midst; She placed it on the bare rock; She did not pour it on the groundTo cover it with dust. That it may cause wrath to come up to take vengeance, I have put her blood on the bare rock, That it may not be covered.” (Eze. 24:3-8)

Remember, the life is in the blood (Gen. 9:4). The Jews were not to consume the blood or get into the ritual consumption of blood (Lev. 17:14). This in part, of course, has a New Testament meaning for the Roman Catholic abomination of the Mass where they claim wine is transubstantiated into blood and they drink the blood in a vampire ritual. The Apostles condemned the consumption of blood in Acts 15. It is a complete vampire religion. It is cannibalism and is utterly condemned by both the Old and New Testaments, what Paul calls “the cup of demons” (1 Co. 10:21). If it was the real blood of Jesus, no one should be drinking it because the Apostles said not to drink the blood (Acts 15:28-29), but they get into these blood-sipping rituals. It is also making an allusion to the human sacrificing of their children, sacrificing the blood of their children which was a big thing. Well, it is also a big thing today. In supposedly what is an evangelical country, we have aborted 50 million babies. A country that is supposedly the most founded on New Testament principles is just as guilty of the same thing being spoken about by Ezekiel.

The Physical Nature of the Pot

God says, “boil the pot.”Today we have a mixture of ceramic and diamonds, and before that we had Teflon ®, invented by the American space program. In the ancient world they did not have this; what they had were two other metals: “barzel” “iron” and “nachosheth” “copper” or “bronze.” (The Nehushtan—the bronze serpent in Numbers 21 which Moses raised in the wilderness, has the same root.) In the same way that we would coat a pot or skillet with Teflon ®, they would use bronze. That is as far as metallurgy went in those days; they did not have alloys much as this was just after the Bronze Age. Long before the advent of microbiology, God knew that microbes have a capacity to induce corrosion by oxidation. If we go back to high school or the first year of college, we learned that if we react iron with heat we are going to get iron oxide gas which will be noxious. If a welder does not wear protective equipment, he is an ultra-high candidate for emphysema. It is dangerous to breathe iron oxide gas; it is lethal. By not cleaning the pots correctly, microbial film would build up and begin to oxidize the metal. In chemistry, when something is being oxidized, something else is being reduced.This is true even with us. By breathing we are destroying tissue—it will kill us, but by not breathing it will kill us quicker. Because of sin, bio-entropy has set in and oxidation will kill us. We eat, but to convert carbon to energy our body requires energy in Krebs Cycle—this requires oxygen. Eating will kill us, but not eating will kill us quicker. We are under a curse because of sin.They would not clean the pots correctly, allowing the grime to build up and build up and build up, and it began to oxidize the iron. The iron would then rust, and then when boiling water was poured into it, the rust particles would go into the boiling water. But then they would boil meat in it, so the particles permeated the muscle tissue of the animal.

The Condition of the Pot

“Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD,”Woe to the bloody city!I also will make the pile great.Heap on the wood, kindle the fire,Boil the flesh well And mix in the spices,And let the bones be burned.Then set it empty on its coals So that it may be hot And its bronze may glow And its filthiness may be melted in it, Its rust consumed. She has wearied Me with toil, Yet her great rust has not gone from her; Let her rust be in the fire! “In your filthiness is lewdness.

(Again, using the sexual illustration.)

Because I would have cleansed you,Yet you are not clean,You will not be cleansed from your filthiness againUntil I have spent My wrath on you. (Eze. 24:9-13)

They got to the point where the pot was so filthy it began to corrode, but then something happens: God commands to make it corrode even faster. The rust is already coming off, but even so put boiling water into it; turn it up as hot as you can get it to make even more rust go into it. God gives it over to its filth. “You want it to be an unclean vessel? I will make it an unclean vessel!” Make it worse by turning up the heat on the vessel—make sure the copper is glowing, then place it empty on the coals and make it really hot! Get the best meat; go down to the kosher butcher and get the best stuff and throw it in.

The Contrast to Elisha”s Pot

In the days of Elisha there was the toxic stew, there was poison in the pot (2 Ki. 4:38-41). Elisha was able to throw grain into the poison stew. He was able to put grain into the poison pot and the grain was able to absorb the toxins. Right doctrine will clean up false doctrine. Grain can be put into the poison stew—right doctrine will correct wrong doctrine.In Pentecostalism, the Azusa Street Revival went off the rails at a very, very early point, but another generation of Pentecostals came around and began bringing in right doctrine and straightening it out, from which we got the Assemblies of God and such. (Not the way they are now, but the way they were at one time.) People began putting grain into the poison stew. Unfortunately this never happened in the Charismatic Movement; there was very little right doctrine put into it and that is why it has never brought a revival. The poison can be cleaned up with the grain; the toxins can be removed from the stew with the grain. But now it is a situation where it is not the content of the pot that is poisoned, it is the pot itself. We have a remedy for the poison in the pot, but there is no remedy for a corroded pot.

Modern Examples

One example is the Assemblies of God in which people tried in recent history to set things right. There were people like Opal Redding, Larry Thomas and even David Wilkerson who were trying to warn the Assemblies of God 25-30 years ago that there was poison in the pot and that they needed to get right doctrine in there. We are way past that today. Since the Pensacola garbage, the pot is poisoned; now it is unsalvageable. No amount of good is going to remedy it. God says, “Put in the choice meat, the best meat you can get, but it is still going to come out poisoned.” There is no amount of “good” that can be put into an utterly backslidden movement or denomination or church that is going to change it. On the contrary, they come under the judgment of God. When they chronically refuse to repent, God turns up the heat and makes it worse; He makes them even more depraved.

Today it is not just liberal Protestants compromising on same-sex marriage, we have Tony Campolo and others compromising on the homosexual issue; now we have Evangelicals doing it! This is but one example. Abortion will be next. “What about the good things?” No amount of good is going to change it anymore. No amount of good is going to save the Assemblies of God. This is but one example.

My fear is that when Chuck Smith is not around anymore, Calvary Chapel is going to go the same way. We do not see it so much because Chuck is here, but there are Calvary Chapels going away from the original teachings of Chuck Smith and company and it is getting weird already. It is like what John Wesley said to the Methodists: “If this is what they are doing when I”m alive, what are they going to do when I”m dead?” They are going the same way. They have divorced and remarried men in the ministry and all sorts of stuff. It gets to the point where God says, “Turn up the heat!” There is nothing we are going to be able to do because it becomes unsalvageable; no amount of good is going to change it anymore. In Great Britain, the Evangelical Alliance cannot be saved.

But it is not only like that, but God makes it like that; He gives it over to it. According to 2 Thessalonians, He makes it more like that (2 Th. 2:11-12). He says, “Go ahead; try to put good stuff into it and see what comes out.” It does not matter how good the meat is, even if it is the best of the best, it is coming out contaminated.

No Amount of Good Will Help

“Oh, but what about all the people being saved?” Being saved into what? A lunatic asylum? Jesus said to make disciples, not converts (Mt. 28:19). No good is going to come out of it. We can put good into it, but it is not going to come out good. What does Jesus say in Matthew 23? They go to the ends of the earth to make one convert and he becomes twice as much a son of hell as he used to be (Mt. 23:15). He might have been alright when he went in, but he is no good when he comes out.

No amount of good is ever going to change a cult. It does not matter how much good, how much truth, one tries to put into it anymore. Anybody and anything that goes in good is going to come out bad because the pot itself is corroded; the pot itself will poison the meat. It is no longer the content of the pot that is poisoned, it is the pot, and it reaches a point where God says, “Turn up the heat! I”ll make it ever worse! You didn’t want to clean this stuff up? I told you to clean this stuff up!”

God always warns them. Israel had multiple prophets before Ezekiel. Up north there was Amos and Hosea, down south there was Micah, Isaiah, Joel and Jeremiah—there were many before Ezekiel. God warned them.

I can go back and show warnings which were written in the 1950s, 60s and 70s by people like Martin Lloyd Jones in England, Francis Schaffer in the United States, and A. W. Tozer, all giving warnings in decades previous that would have seemed impossible—unthinkable—at the time when they wrote it, but it happened. Over a hundred years ago, Charles Spurgeon warned what would happen to the Baptist Union in Britain. Over a hundred years ago, J. C. Ryle warned what would happen to the evangelical branch of the Church of England. It is documented. These organizations do not want to sell these men”s books anymore; they are right and they are proven right, the same as Micah was proven right, the same as Isaiah was proven right, the same as Joel was proven right. They were proven right, but the people still chose to follow liars. That is what happened in the last days of Judah and that is what happens again in the Last Days: the situation becomes unredeemable. They go beyond the point of no return and God says, “Turn up the heat!”

That has happened to the Assemblies of God; that has happened to every major denomination in the United Kingdom. And if something does not happen quickly, it is only a matter of time before it happens to Calvary Chapel. Even though there are good people and good pastors in it, the movement as a whole is going away from their heritage and what they were taught.

The Inevitability

“I, the LORD, have spoken; it is coming and I will act €¦

It does not matter if we believe it or not.

Look at what they say today as they psychologize the Church: “That is negative, I don”t receive it.” It is like witnessing to an unsaved person. We can tell them the Gospel, tell them about judgment, and they say, “I don”t believe it.” It does not matter whether they believe it or not; its being true does not depend on whether or not they believe it.

A medical doctor tells someone, “You”ve got to quit smoking.” “I don”t believe it.” “Here is the x-ray showing bilateral plural carcinoma.” “I don”t believe it.” It does not matter whether they believe it or not, it is irrelevant. If an alcoholic is so addicted to booze they get sclerosis, it does not matter whether they believe it or not. They are going to reject the truth because God has given them over to the error.

” €¦I will not relent, and I will not pity and I will not be sorry; according to your ways and according to your deeds I will judge you,” declares the Lord GOD.” ” (Eze. 24:14)

Remember, it is always in accordance with their deeds. If someone wants false prophets, God will send them false prophets.

Until now we have been speaking about what is happening in the evangelical movements and denominations, broadly speaking. I am not saying that there are not, individually, good pastors and good local congregations within those movements. I am not saying there are no independent churches and house churches that are faithful to the Lord. I am not saying we cannot find an individual Assemblies of God church or pastor that are not of God—there are some. I am talking about the movement as a whole, but anything good within them is going to be turned bad unless they get out of it. “Come out of her My people” (Rev. 18:4). What is going to come about in the next ten years if the Lord has not returned? Within Western Evangelicism over the next ten years, is what comes next.

And the word of the LORD came to me €¦

Jesus comes to him again.

Now understand that if you are heeding what I am saying, you should pour yourself a cup of tea or cup of coffee, and turn on David Frost on the television. You should not be reading this if it is only me talking. If, however, it is by God’s grace the Lord speaking through me according to what is in His Word, I am just the messenger boy—it is the Lord saying this. That is the decision you have to make. You have to ask the Lord to show you whether this is Jacob speaking out of his own hurt or his own resentment or his own cantankerousness, his own motives, choices or whatever, or is this what the Word of God is really teaching us? If, God forbid, I am speaking of myself, woe to me. Teachers will be judged more strictly than the rest (Ja. 3:1). I am not going to be absolved if I am teaching something false. On the other hand, if I am teaching something that is true, you are not going to be absolved if you do not act on it.

The Bride is Going to Die

And the word of the LORD came to me saying, “Son of man, behold, I am about to take from you the desire of your eyes with a blow; but you shall not mourn and you shall not weep, and your tears shall not come. “Groan silently; make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban and put your shoes on your feet, and do not cover your mustache and do not eat the bread of men.”

(In other words, these were Near Eastern mourning rituals. Today it is called “sitting shiva.” Jews bury the corpse before the next sundown and then mourn for seven days.)

I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. And in the morning I did as I was commanded. The people said to me, “Will you not tell us what these things that you are doing mean for us?” (Eze. 24:15-19)e>

Nobody in their right mind wants to be a prophet. Amos said, “I am not a prophet or the son of a prophet” (Amos 7:14). If anyone goes around claiming to be a prophet, the likelihood is they are a false one. Nobody in their right mind wants that lousy job. Who wants to be rejected? They must not only be identified with the people they are speaking to, they must be identified with the Lord and what He is going through.

The Bride of Jehovah was going to die; the Bride of Christ is going to die. Ezekiel had to experience this in his own life and live it out, playing it out in front of society so they would see it. “She is the desire of your eyes, but with a blow I am going to take her. Do not mourn, do not weep—no tears shall come. Groan silently—keep your grief to yourself; let nobody see that you care.” Don”t sit shiva, don”t go to the funeral, don”t mourn, don”t grieve—openly and publicly display yourself as somebody who just doesn”t care. “Your wife is dead!” “So what?”

It is like the guy who paid a scalper a thousand dollars for a ticket to the Super Bowl. He is way at the top where he can barely see the game, and with his binoculars sees an empty seat down on the fifty yard line. So he goes down there and says to the guy sitting next to it, “Is this seat free?” They guy said, “Yes.” So he says, “How can that be?” He says, “My wife has been with me at every Super Bowl for the last thirty years, but she died.” “That”s terrible. Why didn’t you give the ticket to a relative?” And he replied, “They”re all at the funeral.”

He was not only not to care but to let the people see he did not care. “Let them see that, to you, it means nothing whatsoever.”

The people said to me, “Will you not tell us what these things that you are doing mean for us?” Then I said to them, “The word of the LORD came to me saying, “Speak to the house of Israel, “Thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am about to profane My sanctuary €¦

(The Temple is going to be destroyed. The king of Babylon was coming—Antichrist is coming. He is going to take over Christendom as well as what he is going to do in Jerusalem.)

€¦ the pride of your power, the desire of your eyes and the delight of your soul; and your sons and your daughters whom you have left behind will fall by the sword. You will do as I have done; you will not cover your mustache and you will not eat the bread of men. Your turbans will be on your heads and your shoes on your feet.

(They are going to go to Babylon, too.)

You will not mourn and you will not weep, but you will rot away in your iniquities and you will groan to one another. Thus Ezekiel will be a sign to you; according to all that he has done you will do; when it comes, then you will know that I am the Lord GOD.” ” (Ezekiel 24:19-24)

“Your wife is dead!” “I don”t care.” “Are you going to go to the funeral?” “No.” “Are you going to go to the burial?” “No.” Are you going to go to the memorial service?” “No.” “Are you going to sit shiva?” “No.” The bride is dead.

The Assemblies of God are dead! Who cares? If Jesus Christ does not care anymore, why should we? Protestantism is dead! It is morally dead, it is doctrinally dead—who cares? It is not even worth mourning over. She is such a disgusting bride she is not worth crying over. “Get on with your life. Get on with your daily routine. Pretend as if nothing of any significance happened because nothing of any significance did happen.” It does not matter to God anymore, why should it matter to you? That is going to be the next ten years.

But notice there is another thing beside the bride: “your sons and your daughters.”

A lot of these mega-churches—not all of them, but a lot of them running these youth programs based on the worship of “worship,” not the worship of God, have used entertainment to draw people, so they are going to have to use entertainment to keep people. The world will always have a better rock concert; the world will always put on a better show. Once the thrill is gone, the kids are going to wander away. They will go into the world and whatever. They will slowly rot away.

It Rots to Death

In England, the Muslims open one mosque a week; the Methodists close one church a week. Reports such as The Barna Report show that after Toronto it was massive—a 17% decline in church attendance among Charismatics and Pentecostals. The first mega-church, the flagship mega-church which the others imitated—the Crystal Cathedral—has $56 million in debt and it is closed up. That is the first, the Titanic. The Bismarck has been sunk; now for the others. Who cares?”

Oh, the Crystal Cathedral! It was the emblem of the mega-church! It was the flagship for all these big churches!” Schuller is gone, it is $56 million in debt, the Catholics bought the joint—who cares? Jesus does not care. That heretic Schuller had the Islamic mufti preaching in his church, and said he would not mind if his grandchildren became Muslims! Schuller said Jesus Christ went to the cross to magnify His ego! That church belongs dead! Who cares? It is not coming back.

They always talk about these things coming back, but they rot to death. Notice they do not disappear all at once; they die a long, slow, painful death, experiencing a steady period of decline. They just rot and rot and rot and rot. The iron corrodes, corrodes, corrodes; the rust oxidizes, oxidizes, oxidizes. It just rots away. I am not saying that all of these movements are going to disappear overnight; they are going to rot. And the rot has already set in for many of them. This is only the beginning. This is what we are going to see in the next ten years. Do not even mourn. But then what? What does this mean for us?

A Time for the Word

As for you, son of man, will it not be on the day when I take from them their stronghold, the joy of their pride, the desire of their eyes and their heart”s delight, their sons and their daughters €¦

(They are going to lose the youth.)

€¦that on that day he who escapes will come to you with information for your ears? “On that day your mouth will be opened to him who escaped, and you will speak and be mute no longer. Thus you will be a sign to them, and they will know that I am the LORD.” ” (Eze. 24:25-27)

To understand this, we have to go back Ezekiel 3 where the Lord told Ezekiel, “I will make your tongue cling to the roof of your mouth. You will not be able to warn them anymore until I open your mouth” (Eze. 3:26-27). Until now we have not been able to warn them—it does not work. God has given them over to it and these movements will not listen. The Lord makes our tongue cling to the roof of our mouth, it says in Ezekiel 3, but a time is going to come when He is going to put His Word in our mouth and our tongue will no longer cling to the roof of our mouth. A message is going to be given and then they are going to know a prophet has spoken (Eze. 33:33).

The Near-Term Future for Us

That is the future for them, but what is the future for us? What should we be looking at in the next decade or so if the Lord does not come back? “I will take from the desire of their eyes and their heart”s delight; he who escapes will come to you with information for your ears.” There are going to be people walking through our door in Australia, South Africa, around the United States, in Great Britain—all over the place—who have had enough of the mainstream churches and denominations.

I go all over the world and I see the same thing everywhere: more and more people are meeting together in homes and in small groups, or meeting in American Legion halls or schools—they have just had enough. If they cannot find a decent church, they will go meet in a home. They will find fellowship with others who still believe the Scriptures. They will meet in a home if they have to. Sometimes the home groups grow and they have to go find a hall or something like that, but one thing is for sure—they are a semi-underground church and not part of the mainstream, and they tend to be populated with refugees. “Those who escape will come to you with information.”

There will be those who will walk through the door and say, “I used to go to the Assemblies of God; do you know what has happened over there? Do you know what they are teaching now?” Yes, we know. They are always going to come with information. At some point the epiphany comes and they realize what has been going on and finally get the point. It is about those who escape. What do we do? We are here for those who escape. They are going to come through our door.

There is a problem with this, a problem that I have been going on about for at least fifteen years: such groups can tend to become like refugee camps for people who leave bad churches. I think it is altogether fitting and scriptural to fulfill that function. It is necessary to be here for those people the same way as there was somebody here for us. The danger is we become introspective; it becomes based on what we experienced in some bad church. It becomes like Alcoholics Anonymous who are always talking about their past, bad experience instead of looking to the future. Yes, that is one-half of the equation in that we have to re-evangelize the church and get people out of these loony churches—that is true, but not at the expense of evangelism. It cannot be based solely on “they”re wrong,” it has to be based on, “they got it wrong, we have to get it right.” We should be growing by evangelism as well as picking up refugees. That is the problem such groups are facing: they tend to become self-help centers for people who were burned in bad churches.

But pick up refugees we will. Those who escape are going to come through our door confused, looking for answers. “You mean I”ve been believing error for ten years?” “I”ve been believing and following false doctrine for twenty years?” “I got saved twenty years ago and 90% of all this junk is false?” They do not know what to believe. They have been misled, they have been lied to, very often exploited financially, and they are confused and hurt, but they managed, by God’s grace, to escape. They walked through that door looking for somebody to talk to, looking for somebody who will just listen, looking for somebody who can understand what they are saying and who can be used by the Lord to give them a perspective and a sense of direction.

Conclusion

Those guys in these backslidden movements and denominations are waiting for the king of Babylon. That is their future. They are waiting for the coming of the Antichrist. They may not know it, they may not believe it, but that is what they are waiting for. They are being set up for it. By following these false prophets, they are being set up for the Antichrist. They are waiting for Antichrist; we are waiting for Christ.

They are about the past; we, the remnant though we are, are about the future. They are about error—false doctrine; we are about the truth. They are about a compromised gospel; we are about a straight Gospel. They are about a compromised standard of morality; we are about an uncompromised scriptural standard of morality.

Remember, we are far better off—infinitely better off, being part of something that is growing slowly than being a part of something that is dying quickly. Once she dies, who cares?Who among us has lost a night”s sleep over what has happened to the Crystal Cathedral?

Who among us lost a night”s sleep when Jim and Tammy went down the tubes? Of course not; it is not worth crying over! That is the past, we have to think about the future. Ezekiel 24 is the future—what the next ten or so years are going to be like.

God bless.

Mission Activities with Philippine Garbage Dump Children

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:41:23 GMT

The PURPOSE of the Moriel Mission is to obey the great commission of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is to evangelize people around the dump site area and to other communities. To see them saved and to educate people from the word of God for right faith and practice.

Programs and Activities

We focus first on the children who need much care, as the Lord Jesus Christ said in Matthew 19:14 & Matthew 14:16.We gathered the scavenging children from the rubbish dumps to teach them the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and gave them food to eat. The number of children have reached to more than 70, who are regular on the Moriel Regular Teaching and Feeding Program feeding the children daily. After reaching the children, we reached their parents. Some of them are actively and regularly attending the Bible study. Secondly there is education in the form of sponsorship with Moriel Gift Giving. Every start of school year, the children receive school supplies, toiletries and book bags. During rainy season, the children receive umbrellas and raincoats for their protection from rain. Every month of December – Year End Thanksgiving party plus grocery bags containing grocery items. Thirdly there is Moriel Aide where we help pay other school fees, provides vitamins and medicines, help assist the parent to bring the sick child to Hospital when needed.

Activities

Bible Study every Saturday morning

Song practice every Saturday afternoon

Chapel Hour every Sunday morning

Parents Bible Study every Sunday afternoon

Prayer meeting every Friday evening

Children Youth Hour and Gospel tract distribution

Goals for the children

To increase the number of children who confessed and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and personal Saviour.
To become the next generation of God fearing citizen.
To fill what is lacking on their life needs (physically and spiritually) by God’s grace.
To help them pursue their school study to finished their course for good future.
To see them become familiar in all Christian activities, church and mission work, serving the Lord while young until they get mature in their faith.

Goals for the parents and other people

Increase the number of parents who come to know the Lord and be saved.
To grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
People within the community to become worshiper of true and holy God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Improvements

The more serious medical pediatric medical conditions have been addressed including the three with severe congenital heart disease. Rialyn Cali’s cleft lip has successfully been repaired substantially with the first surgery although further operations will be required.

Almost all of them gained weight and some have just the same weight.

Fewer children are scavenging.

They’re conscious about their hygiene

Almost all children go to school.

There are children graduated from elementary grade school.

Having a comfortable multi-purpose room: for feeding, chapel hour, Bible study, Bible seminars, other activity.

Some of the children now know how to play the organ, how to use a computer and they are confident in presenting their praise song number at other churches. The children are active in attending in the Sunday Chapel Hour. Some of the young boys know how to song lead on singing and bible devotion. Also some of them practicing how to teach bible stories.

While the feeding and education of the children is important, their salvation and using the aids programs to evangelize their families is even more important.

Please pray for the work of Jesus among our poor children and their families.

Sermons in Spanish

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:29:18 GMT

Once Saved, Always Saved

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:28:35 GMT

Types of Calvinism

Then we have a more moderate form of Calvinism to the left of Wesleyan Arminianism known as €œFour-Point Calvinism”, and then beyond that is a €œFive-Point Calvinism” which, similar to Finneyism on the opposite extreme borders on the heretical. Let me explain what I mean about €œFour-Point” and €œFive-Point”.

There is debate among church historians: €œWas Calvin a “Calvinist”?” €œCalvinism” as we know it was not formulated by Calvin or from Calvin”s Institutes, but by something known as The Remonstrance of Dort. It was Calvin”s followers who later began to define Calvinism in the sense we know it. In the same way we must make something of a distinction between Wesley”s own personal beliefs and Wesleyan Arminianism, we have to make something of a distinction between Calvin”s own beliefs and what has come to be known as €œCalvinism”. Classical Calvinism, which came out of The Remonstrance of Dort is called €œTULIP”, an acronym or an acrostic.

€œT” = €œTotal Depravity”. Calvinism and Arminianism both believe we are totally depraved. What does that mean? It does not mean we are as bad as we are capable of being; biblically we cannot get any worse. It just means we are totally fallen in body, mind, and spirit. Man is so fallen spiritually even his bodily members are taken with sin. He is totally depraved. It is like a six egg omelet where five of the eggs are good but one of the eggs is bad; the whole omelet is contaminated. Calvinists and Arminianists both believe in €œTotal Depravity”, that we cannot save ourselves and we are fallen. The problem is that Calvinists deny that once quickened by the Spirit and drawn to Christ by the Father that a measure of free will is given by divine grace making it possible to accept Christ. To them because man is dead due to sin it is not only salvation by grace, but we have no option whether or not to respond to that grace.

€œU” = ” Unconditional Election”. The complication is that Wesleyan-Arminians and Calvinists alike view grace as €œUndeserved Grace”. I totally agree, Wesley would have totally agreed €“ we all agree that God’s grace is undeserved. Christ died for the ungodly; while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. (Rom. 5:8) We cannot do anything to earn salvation and it is a sin to even think that we can. (This is the rudiment of Calvinistic thought which I will explain shortly.) It was the reaction to the heresy and corruption of medieval Roman Catholicism. However, Calvinists since Dort at least redefine €œUnconditional Grace” as “Unconditional Election” €“ that is, a doctrine of predestination where God intentionally creates some to go heaven and others so they can be eternally tortured in hell. There are multiple problems with this false doctrine. To begin with it directly contradicts too many scriptures that explain the divine nature relative to salvation which prove God does not create people for eternal torture (e.g., 1 Tim. 2:4, Eze. 33:11).

The second problem is that this notion of God intentionally making people for eternal torment for which they have no choice and others to salvation for which they have no choice logically contradicts the need for evangelism and carrying out the Great Commission since the predestined will, of necessity, be saved anyway and those created by a God of love to be eternally tormented have no choice. While alien to scriptural thought both theologically and philosophically, this is purely a westernized variant of the Islamic doctrine of €œInsha”Allah“; philosophically Calvinism is Islamic, not Judeo-Christian.

It is easy to see why fundamentalist Islamic mullahs esteem the Puritans as they are two of a kind. As the Taliban, Iranian Shia and Saudi Wahabbis have their mutaween (religious police), so did Calvin’s Geneva, Puritan England and Massachusetts. There was a €œkulturkampf” or war on culture where the theater, the humanities and sports were replaced by public burning, hanging and flogging in lieu of entertainment. This carried over into Calvinistic support for slavery in the Southern USA by the Southern Baptists and Methodists, apartheid in South Africa by the Dutch Reformed Church, and plantation displacement of Irish peasants by the Anglo-Puritans in Ireland. Muslims call it €œdemitide”, Calvinists called it €œelection”. While John Wesley opposed the institution of slavery, even an otherwise outstanding figure like George Whitefield, because of the cursed Calvinism to which he foolishly subscribed owned Black slaves resulting in a shameful indictment on the memory of such a great man of God.

As Muslims read the Judeo-Christian Scriptures through the prism of the Quran which combine elements of Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism with a recycled Arabian paganism and then re-interpret the Quran in light of the Hadith in a religion based on The Five Pillars. Calvinists read it through the prism of Calvin’s Institutes which are a recycled Patristic theology of Augustine (the chief doctrinal founder of Roman Catholicism), and then reinterpret that along the lines of the five acronym terms of their “TULIP”. All of this tragedy, treachery, madness and hypocrisy stems from the mal-definition of €œUndeserved Grace” as €œUnconditional Election”. In the philosophical and moral sense, Calvinism is nothing more than Islam pretending to be Christianity.

The final problem is that the primary New Testament definition of €œelection” has to do with a corporate identity such as Israel being an elect nation or the collective Body of true believers. Calvinism distorts Romans 9-11 out of context to misapply election to individuals.

“The Christ of Arminianism”

I have something here and I almost could not believe it was sent by one of these people who otherwise like me: €œThe Christ of Arminianism“. €œArminianism” means that you do not believe in an unconditional €œonce saved, always saved”, that you do not believe that Jesus died for only certain people, that He is willing to receive all. This is Arminianism in a nutshell. I will read from what they sent me.

€œThe Christ of Arminianism loves every individual person in the world and desires their salvation.”

That is true. I believe that Christ loves every single person in the world and sincerely desires their salvation. The Christ of the Bible did not desire the salvation of only those whom God has unconditionally chosen. Citing the verses that would back that, but ignoring the verses that would balance it, they continue €¦

€œThe Christ of Arminianism would offer salvation to every sinner and does all in His power to bring them to salvation.”

I believe that.

€œHis offer and works are often frustrated because many refuse to come.”

That sounds scriptural to me.

€œBut the Christ of the Bible essentially calls for Himself only the Elect and sovereignly brings them to salvatio

n. None of them will be lost.”

And, again, he points to the verses which support his point of view, but not the ones that balance it.

€œThe Christ of Arminianism cannot regenerate and save a sinner who does not first choose Christ with his own free will by which they can accept or reject Christ that free will may not be violated by Christ.”

True Arminianists do not actually believe that; we believe we can accept Christ, He has to give us the power to do it, but so this person thinks.

€œThe Christ of the Bible, however, sovereignly regenerates the Elect apart from their choice”.

According to this we have no choice.

€œThe Christ of Arminianism died on the cross for every individual person and therefore made it possible for everyone to be saved. The Christ of the Bible died only for God’s Elect people.”

In other words, the others were created to go to hell forever by some overstated kind of predestination. The Bible does say God created all things for a purpose, even the wicked for the day of judgment, but He would rather they be saved.

€œThe Christ of Arminianism loses many who He has saved.”

Jesus said many would fall away. (Mt. 24:10) Even if He does give eternal security as some say, it is not necessarily based on His will or His work but the choice of the sinner.

€œThe Christ of the Bible preserves His chosen people.”

And he concludes by saying that people, like most Pentecostals €“ people like John Wesley €“ do not have the same Jesus, the same Jesus as the Calvinists. George Whitfield was a Calvinist, John Wesley was not, but they never had this kind of recrimination where they said each other had a separate Jesus €“ two different Jesus Christs. Some people go so far as to say that if someone believes that Jesus died for everybody and that the Lord can receive everybody, that they have a different Jesus.

This is known as €œextreme Calvinism” €“ €œhyper-Calvinism”. Such people can go so far with this that if someone does not go along with it, there can be no fellowship. Very often they are the same kind of people given to such things that if someone reads another version of the Bible other than the €œAuthorized Version” there can be no fellowship. These groups push further into error and get into something the Bible calls €œparty spirit”: €œWe have it right and others have it wrong”. (Gal. 5:19) I get accused of that, but in fact it is not true. I always stand by the basic things of the Bible. If someone departs from the basic truths, if they go into things the Word of God says are wrong, then I will take a stand. But to divide over these other issues I think is wrong. Nonetheless, let us understand the nature of the division €“ not personal division, but theological division.

Starting at One End of the Spectrum

On one extreme we have something known as €œPelagianism”. Pelagianists were a kind of monk who actually lived in Britain in the early centuries of the Church and Pelagius was opposed by Augustine of Hippo. What did Pelagius believe? Pelagius denied original sin; he denied the fact that man was fallen. Pelagius said we can choose God ourselves because we do not have a fallen nature. The Bible says that is not true.

The Bible says that because of the Fall of man in the sin of Adam and Eve, we have a fallen nature. We are born with sin, therefore we must be born again. Pelagianism is a total heresy. We will find extreme Calvinists, many in Scotland and Northern Ireland, saying that Arminianism is simply another form of Pelagianism or a diluted from of Pelagianism.

Just to the left of Pelagianism is called €œFinneyism”, named after the North American Evangelist Charles Finney.

I do not deny that many people were saved through Charles Finney”s preaching. Things that seemed to be supernatural manifestations of God’s power are associated with his ministry. However, we need to be very careful about making those things a barometer of consensus. Charles Finney also denied that man had a fallen nature. The Bible says because we are born with a fallen nature we must be born again. He denied it, however he admitted we all have sin anyway.

In the Middle

In the middle there is something known as €œWesleyan Arminianism”. Arminius was reacting to extreme Calvinism. His ideas were taken up in this and other countries under the influences of the Great Revivalists, particularly John Wesley, and it is often called €œWesleyan Arminianism” in countries like Great Britain, America, Canada and the like. This view believed that man is fallen, that we are all fallen, and that all men fall short of the glory of God. (Rom. 3:23) This view also believes we cannot save ourselves. As a matter of fact, this view also believes we cannot even chooseJesus of ourselves.

We cannot save ourselves and we cannot choose Christ. He said, €œI chose you”. (Jn. 15:16) However, this particular view is what I believe and which classical Pentecostalism believes: we are dead because of sin. We cannot choose the Lord Jesus, we cannot choose to be born again because our spirit cannot communicate with God’s Spirit because we are dead in our sins; God’s Spirit puts just enough light back in us to communicate with Him. And He gives us just enough of the original state before the fall to make the choice Adam had.

The Restoration of Choice

Adam had a choice between two things: the Tree of Life (the Lord Jesus and eternal life) and the tree of the world (the knowledge of good and evil). He made the wrong choice. Jesus came as the €œSecond Adam”. (1 Co. 15:45) Only two men had a choice: Jesus and Adam. Adam had a choice and Jesus had a choice.

In the Temptation narrative (Mt. 4:1-11; Mk. 1:12-13) Jesus was with the wild animals the same as Adam in the Garden. Christ was the Second Adam. The same things Satan tried on Adam he tried on Jesus. Before Jesus could have went to the cross and died, He had to be tested the way Adam was. In a sense, He had to earn the right to go to the cross tested as Adam. He identified with us.

Adam had a choice, Jesus had a choice, but we do not. What God does when He convicts somebody of sin is to make it possible for them to make a choice they would not make otherwise. We cannot choose Him €“ He chooses us, but He makes it possible for us to respond through His grace. Calvinists deny this. Calvinism (in its classical form) says we will never choose Him in any degree.

An unsaved person has no choice in sinning; they must sin because they are under the law of sin and death, much like the law of gravity. The most an unsaved person can choose about sin is when, where, and how, but this they cannot choose. As believers, because God’s Spirit is in us, have a choice €“ we do not have to sin. God gives us back our free will; we can choose to walk according to the Spirit or the flesh. Calvinism, in effect, denies the restoring work of Jesus Christ when He died and rose from the dead and gave us a new nature. God gives us back free will when we are born again. We have no free will before we are reborn and we cannot choose to be born again until God quickens it. That is what it means to be €œArminianist”.

Types of Calvinism

ate people for eternal torture (e.g., 1 Tim. 2:4, Eze. 33:11).

The Puritan-Presbyterian wars saw Calvinists slaughtering each other as well as non-Calvinists in Britain under Cromwell and Owen as a holy war just as in Islamic jihads Muslims slaughter each other as well as €œinfidels”. The status of women under Calvinistic Puritanism and in Islam is likewise identical; philosophically the two are the same. Jesus said we know them by their fruits and from Calvin’s Geneva, to the Salem witch hunts, to slavery and apartheid we have seen the fruits of what Calvinists call €œpredestination” and what Moslems call €œInsha”Allah” (all that transpires is the perfect divine will). As Muslims read the Judeo-Christian Scriptures through the prism of the Quran which combine elements of Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism with a recycled Arabian paganism and then re-interpret the Quran in light of the Hadith in a religion based on The Five Pillars. Calvinists read it through the prism of Calvin’s Institutes which are a recycled Patristic theology of Augustine (the chief doctrinal founder of Roman Catholicism), and then reinterpret that along the lines of the five acronym terms of their “TULIP”. All of this tragedy, treachery, madness and hypocrisy stems from the mal-definition of €œUndeserved Grace” as €œUnconditional Election”. In the philosophical and moral sense, Calvinism is nothing more than Islam pretending to be Christianity.

A Reaction to Catholicism

John Calvin was a Humanist scholar. None of his ideas were really original. He was a dynamic personality and a capable writer, but his ideas all came from Erasmus of Rotterdam, Martin Luther, and others from the first generation of Reformers and the Humanists before them. He was a Christian Humanist, but he was still a Humanist.

During the Middle Ages during the Renaissance a heresy was represented by people we know as €œThomists”, people influence by Thomas Aquinas, which was known as €œMedieval Scholasticism”. Frances Schaffer explained it very well. What it virtually came to mean in the Renaissance was that although man was fallen, his intellect was not. (Do you see how nonsensical it gets?) And so all this religious argument begins revolving around man”s intellect as not having fallen but only his spirit. Even the Reformers never totally rejected Philanthropism, but the Humanist scholars who influence Calvin and Calvin himself who was a Humanist scholar set out to correct this error in medieval scholarship and delved into Gnostic hermeneutics and a lot of other things. So Calvin was reacting to Roman Catholicism in the Renaissance in the Middle Ages which said man was not totally depraved.

Secondly was the issue of €œUndeserved Grace”. The Roman Catholic church”s teaching is sacramentalism and selling indulgences. (That is how the Vatican was built and what triggered the Reformation.) Luther reacted against Tetzel the Dominican. €œWhen a coin in the coffer rings a soul from purgatory springs”. It expresses the belief that somehow one can earn salvation by buying it or by good works, and this is still found today in places such as Italy. It is terrible to see old ladies, elderly women, trying to go up the stairs €“ the Scala Sancta €“ on their knees with rosary beads trying to get their mothers out of Purgatory. Calvin was very likely acting against the depravity of Roman Catholicism.

The €œT” and the €œU” we both agree on, but then Calvin gets into the €œL”.

The Beginning of Digression

€œL” = €œLimited Atonement” or particular redemption. €œBehold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world“. (Jn. 1:29) Jesus said, €œIf I am lifted up €¦I will draw all men unto Myself“. (Jn. 12:32) Calvinism asserts that maybe He draws, but He is not intending to save everyone He is drawing, only the Elect, only the predestined, only those He foreknew.

God is omnipotent €“ He is all-knowing. He is omniscient. It is impossible to describe God with human intellect. Of course He knows the future. Of course He knows who will be saved. Of course He knows the one who will react to His grace. He chooses the ones He knew would respond €“ that is Arminianism. Calvinists say no, that it is only the ones whose names were written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world and that is all there is to it. Nobody else is going to be saved as their name is not in the Book, and there is nothing anyone can do to get their name taken off the €œhell book” and into the Book of Life because that is the way they were born.

This is quite sad, is it not? One of the two versions of Christianity which cause the most mental illness perhaps, although the Jehovah”s Witnesses have a higher rate of mental illness than the general society, is Roman Catholicism. Take a country like Ireland with its very high instances of alcohol abuse, its high instances of child abuse and homosexual pedophilia €“ all of that stuff is built up in a psyche, a social psychology, that is influenced by the Roman church. The oedipusy because of Mary, the sexual repression because of the influences of Augustine”s Manicheanism, and other such things begin to manifest themselves in different ways. Roman Catholic countries have a lot of mental illness and a lot of alcoholism. But look at the other extreme.

I was in Bible college with people who grew up in strict Presbyterian backgrounds in Northern Ireland and Scotland. They went from one extreme to another. Roman Catholicism teaches one gets saved by works and by the

sacraments, so they are always working to get saved, driving themselves neurotic and giving themselves a guilt trip. Because faith without works is dead and the evidence of our faith, (Ja. 2:17) extreme forms of Calvinism say one has to do these works to prove they are saved. €œI must be saved because look what I am doing.” Neither one of them seems to give a real assurance of salvation. Neither of the extremes gives the people psychologically an assurance of salvation and a real peace.

The modern forms of Calvinism do not drive people crazy. Having a mother who was Irish-Catholic I can tell you that Irish-Catholicism is a form of mental illness. And so is Hassidic Judaism. I have seen both close up. My family is a combination of both Jewish and Catholic and I have seen both sides of it.

€œLimited Atonement” asserts that Jesus only died for certain people, full stop. So say the Calvinists, not so say the Arminians.

€œI” = €œIrresistible Grace”. This says no one has a choice. If God put a name in the Book of Life before the foundation of the world, they have to be saved, they must be saved, and they will be saved €“ they have no capacity to choose Jesus, that is it. God chose us, we have not chosen Him, therefore we cannot even respond to Him except that He has ordained our response to it.

€œP” = €œPerseverance”, which is €œonce saved (unconditionally), always saved”. Notice I said €œunconditionally”. I believe €œonce saved, always saved”, but it is conditional; it is not unconditional.

The Other End of the Spectrum

The moderate Calvinists will hold to €œTotal Depravity”, €œUndeserved Grace”, €œIrresistible Grace”, and €œPerseverance”. Even moderate Calvinists will not hold to €œLimited Atonement”, that Jesus only died for certain people and the others are created to go to hell. Five-Point Calvinists would hold to it all.

Even going further, there is a form of Calvinism that is as heretical on one extreme as it is on the other: it is €œhyper-Calvinism” in the sense of not just being €œFive-Point” but by saying that because God has already foreordained the Elect, the Church does not have to witness or evangelize.

We laugh at it now, but that was the predominant thinking of Baptists in Great Britain until William Carey stood up and challenged them at the Baptist Convention. He wanted to send missionaries to the East to convert the heathens and pagans and was told, €œBrother Carey, sit down and be quiet. If God wants the heathen He will do it without your help or mine.”

Another form of heretical Calvinism is licentiousness. Because somebody went out and made a confession of faith at some point, (they went up at a Billy Graham Crusade or put their hand up in a meeting or said a prayer at the back of the class) they are unconditionally €œonce saved, always saved” and can now go out and keep sinning. Most Calvinists would say that if they do that it proves they were never saved to begin with, but there are others who would say that even if they backslide, if they really made the confession, that it does not matter, they are still going to be saved; it is just their works which will be burned up. (1 Co. 3:12-15) This is heretical. This is not what €œman”s work is burned up” means at all. It refers to the things we do in the flesh not ordained by God, the things we do to €œget” saved instead of what we do because we have been saved. When a Christian is saved we do not work to €œget” saved, we work because we have been saved. Catholics, Jehovah”s Witnesses, etc. do it to get saved, Evangelicals do it because they have been saved. But a lot of the works we do are, of course, in the flesh and a lot of us do a lot more worldly and temporal things than we do the things of the Lord, and those things will be €œburned up“.

The Extreme Results of “Election”

These extreme forms of Calvinism cam be quite brutal. This idea of €œelection” has been taken to such extremes that it has resulted in social injustice. Any time we have had a hyper-Calvinistic society of that extreme we have found its hallmark was not only terrible social injustice, but social injustice perpetrated in the name of Christ and the Church. Let us look at the three big examples of an hyper-Calvinistic church which most of us ought to be familiar with.

One is the American South, the extreme Southern Baptists who believed in slavery. The Baptist Church split between the American and Southern Baptists over the issue of slavery. €œGod elected us; we”re foreordained.” They said Black people were inferior, that God €œelected” them to be that way. They took one verse in Genesis out of context about the son of Ham and so on to justify what happened to the Black people.

Look at Northern Ireland. No one hates the Roman Catholic Church and its heresy more than I do; it is from hell. I despise Roman Catholicism, but I love Roman Catholic people. If I did not love Roman Catholic people so much I would not hate the church that is leading them to hell as much as I do. However, hatred of Catholicism is one thing, oppression of Catholics is another. Look at what the strict Presbyterians did to the Roman Catholics in Ireland for centuries; it is unspeakable. Obviously I have no love for the IRA or anything like it €“ I think they are a pack of thugs. However, there is still a whole history in back of what is going on there that most people in Great Britain do not even know about, and would not want anything to do with, perpetrated in the name of an extreme form of Calvinism. In the aftermath of the Plantation Period all kinds of things were justified by Calvinism in what amounted to social injustice against Catholic people.

The third is the Apartheid in South Africa. The Dutch Reformed Church were hyper-Calvinists.

Whenever we find an extreme form of Calvinism we find oppressors. Calvin had a virtual police state which he theologically designed in Geneva. People were burned alive for heresy. There is a Reformed church in Zurich founded by Zwingli who drowned Baptists. If someone believed in being baptized as a Believer, they cut a hole in the ice and drowned them. In Great Britain there was a terrible war with Presbyterians, Calvinists killing other Calvinists. In Massachusetts they burned witches. Whenever we find extreme Calvinism we find injustice and oppression. I know of no exception.

The more moderate forms of Calvinism, even the Five-Point ones such as the Puritans did other things which were good such as the establishment of Parliamentary democracy and so on based on biblical principles; I am only speaking against the extremes. I will speak against the extremes of Calvinism on the one side of the equation, but I will also co-equally speak against the extremes of Arminianism and beyond with the ideas of Finney and Pelagius on the other. The truth is in the Middle and that is the basic situation.

Arguments from God’s Word

I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh €¦

(This introduces the sections of Romans 9-11 dealing with the soteriological, the salvific and prophetic purposes of God for Israel and the Jews, God’s continuing love for Israel despite their popular rejection of its Messiah by what became of the majority of them.)

€¦who are Israelites, to whom belongs €¦

( €œBelongs” is in the present continuous active tense €“ God is not finished with the Jews. In the Greek it is present continuous active.)

€¦the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises €¦

(Indicating it was written before 70 AD, of course.)

€¦whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. But it is not as though the word of God has failed.

(Meaning the Torah.)

For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel;

(In other

words, being a physical Jew is useless unless one accepts the Messiah.)

€¦nor are they all children because they are Abraham”s descendants, but: €œthrough Isaac your descendants will be named.”

(Now he begins doing a midrashic exposition of the Book of Genesis.)

That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. For this is the word of promise: €œAt this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.” And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls, it was said to her, €œThe older will serve the younger.” Just as it is written, €œJacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, €œI will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, €œFor this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.” So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, €œWhy does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, €œWhy did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, (Rom 9:1 €“23)

Based on this Calvinists will say, €œGod is the Potter, we are the clay, who are we to argue with God? He chooses who goes to heaven, He chooses the Elect, the others are going to go to hell.” And of course they even take €œJacob I loved I loved, but Esau I hated” in some cases and say, €œWhite people I loved, Black people I hated” or €œProtestant people I loved, Catholic people I hated”, etc.

Remember that John Wesley”s revivals were an Arminian reaction to the social injustices bred by a dead church that was permeated with Calvinistic thought. That is when the people began coming out of the coal mines and the sweat shops and began giving their lives to the Lord in the tens of thousands.

The Text in Context

So Calvinists say, €œHow can we argue with God? He can do what He wants, He is sovereign, He makes one son this way and one son that way.” The first mistake these people are making is a text out of its context becomes a pretext. The context of Romans 9-11 is predominantly dealing with nations, not individuals. It is dealing with the Jews and the Gentiles. Paul quotes about the two twins. Let us read what he is commenting on in Genesis.

The Lord said to her, €œTwo nations are in your womb; And two peoples will be separated from your body; And one people shall be stronger than the other; And the older shall serve the younger.” (Gen. 25:23)

What these people do is take something that is talking about nations and apply it to people. There is a principle in midrash called €œkal v”homer” €“ €œlight to heavy”. It says that what applies in a specific situation should also apply in a heavy one. But before we use that principle, we must first look at the context. It is not talking about God creating some people for this purpose and that purpose, it is talking about His election of nations.

The Text in Context

Moreover, we have something called €œcorporate solidarity” in Scripture. Corporate solidarity is where a person represents a nation or a larger group of people. Esau and Jacob respectively represent what becomes the Israelite and Arab nations. As time goes on, Esau is reconciled to Jacob. In Genesis God has prophetic purposes for the Arab people the same as He does the Jews. His election here has to do with His calling for service; it has nothing to do with salvation in the primary sense that these people are trying to make it.

This is the same in the Book of Obadiah. The name of the patriarch becomes a metaphor, or a general term, for the nations descended from him. So before going any further we have to realize that these people are taking something talking about nations and applying it to individuals when that is mainly not even what the text is talking about. It can apply to individuals in some degree, as the text goes on to describe about Pharaoh, but when the New Testament interprets the Old Testament, we have to go back to read the Old Testament”s context.

The Example of a Hardening Heart

Pharaoh hardened his own heart. He repeatedly hardened his own heart. Only after he repeatedly hardened his own heart did God harden his heart. God raised him up and used him. He let the guy get away with murder. He let the guy get away with this, that, and the other thing while thinking he was the big cheese. He was deified by Egyptians, of course, and worshiped as god, and God used him for His purpose, only to bring him down. But it does not say God hardened his heart until he repeatedly hardened his own.

But though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet which he spoke: €œLord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” For this reason they could not believe, for Isaiah said again, €œHe has blinded their eyes and He hardened their heart, so that theywould not see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and be converted and I heal them.” (Jn. 12:37 €“40)

Could not, would not, should not. God’s hardening of a heart is always in response to its own hardening. It was not a case where God just hardened their hearts. Even Calvin admitted that it worked that particular way and according to that kind of dynamic.

This does not quote from the Hebrew text, it quotes from the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament where the mood is subjunctive. The subjunctive mood in Greek allows for the possibility €“ €œLestthey see with their eyes and hear with their ears and turn to Me and be converted”. The possibility of their repentance still exists in the Greek subjunctive.

More than that along this vein is the idea of €œbe converted“. The Septuagint takes Hebrew and translates it into Greek. €œConverted” in Hebrew is €œteshuva“. The Hebrew word for €œrepent” and €œconvert” is the same thing €“ it means to turn away from sin toward God. This idea that He arbitrarily, or by His own sovereign will, just decides who will do this or that is the result of only giving one side of the story. But the Bible speaks of something very different. When He hardens hearts it is because they have repeatedly hardened their own. How many times did He send Moses back to Pharaoh? But let us look even further.

The Potter in Jeremiah

€œGod is the Potter, we are the clay”. This comes from the Book of Jeremiah 18-19. Let us read the Old Testament text in its context to see what Paul is talking about.

The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying,

When we see the €œword” of the Lord, it is €œd”var” in Hebrew and the Greek would be €œlogos“. It is Jesus. This is Jesus Himself coming to Jeremiah in some kind of revelation. It is not like a messagecame, it is like a person came. It had to do with a personal encounter with what the rabbis call the €œd”var” or the €œmamre” (Aramaic), or what the New Testament calls the €œLogos“, a personal encounter with Christ. When we read the Bible in the Spirit, it is not simply an encounter with the text, it is an encounter with the Person. What we get from the text derives from the encounter with the Person. If you are just getting information today you are not hearing from Jesus, you are just hearing from me. The question today is are you encountering Jesus? Are you encounter theWord or just words? If you have the Word the Word will be crystal clear.

The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, €œArise and go down to the potter”s house, and there I will announce My words to you.”

He had to go somewhere. God was going to show him from the illustration of a potter how to understand something. God did not say, €œI am going to show you something now”, but €œI am going to show you something that will explain it as an object lesson”.

Then I went down to the potter”s house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make. Then the word of the Lord came to me saying €¦

(We can almost say, €œJesus said to him”)

€œCan I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord. €œBehold, like the clay in the potter”s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel. (Jer. 18:1-6)

€œCan I not €¦deal with you as the potter does?” Once again, who is He saying this speaking to: a person or a nation? They are taking something that predominantly applies to a corporate group of people €“ a nation, and over-applying it to individuals. Their second mistake is that they do not look at how the potter works.

How a Potter Works

When we take our study tours to Israel, we frequently show people in a Talmudic village in Galilee how the potter made earthenware vessels from clay. If it does not turn out right, the potter smashes it into mortar, lubricates it, and begins over. If he is not happy with that one he re-smashes it, but it is the same material. A potter in biblical times would normally not give up until he remade the thing at least a dozen times.

Jesus does not save people to lose them. When we drop our cross we pick it up. Although we goof our lives up, He does not give up. He may have to break us and remake us time and time again, but it takes a long time for the Potter to give up on the material. So it is with us.

People are always worrying about their salvation, thinking they may be lost, but the teaching of the potter is not like that; that is not how the potter works. However, there is a time, of course, when the potter does give up.

Not Individuals But Nations

€œAt one moment I might speak concerning €¦

€¦an individual? No €¦

€¦a nation €¦

The text of Romans 9-11 is nations, not primarily people.

€¦or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it.

(Like the story of Jonah and Nineveh.)

€œOr at another moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it; if it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think better of the good with which I had promised to bless it. So now then, speak to the men of Judah and against the inhabitants of Jerusalem saying, “Thus says the Lord, €œBehold, I am fashioning calamity against you and devising a plan against you. Oh turn back, each of you from his evil way, and reform your ways and your deeds.”” But they will say, “It”s hopeless! For we are going to follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.” (Jer. 18:7-12)

God will raise up another nation, but if they repent He will take them back. That is what Scripture here says, and that is exactly what Paul is talking about in Romans 9-11.

Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell €¦

(That is, to the mainly Gentile Church.

€¦severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. (Rom. 11:22)

What does Jeremiah say? If this other pot that

the Potter makes does not work out well, He will get rid of that one! But what does Paul then say?

And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. (Rom. 11:23)

What does Jeremiah 18 say? The same thing. €œIf it repents then I will think better of the good”.

This is not the meaning of the €œpotter/clay” teaching in the way they are saying. I wish they would read the text in its context, but they do not.

It is Not What They Cite, But What They Do Not Cite

You will notice that extreme Calvinists will always only use the verses which support their point of view. (I suppose Jehovah”s Witnesses do the same thing, and if we are not careful we can do the same thing, so we have to be careful.)

€œThe Christ of Arminianism loves every person in the world and sincerely desires their salvation”.

And he goes on to say that the Christ of the Bible is not like this; it is only the Elect He has unconditionally chosen. Let us look at some of the verses he does not cite.

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. (2 Pe. 3:9)

I have had Calvinists try to suggest to me, €œThat only means Christians”. First of all, even they are right, even if it means €œonly Christians”, how can Christians €œperish” under €œonce saved, always saved”? (I have not received an answer to that yet.) But then it says €¦

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. (2 Pe. 3:10)

The context is talking about the end of the world for everybody. He is €œnot wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance“. Jesus does not want to lose anybody.

Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. (1 Tim. 6:12)

It is something that must be apprehended. It is not just something that is €œthere”, it is something that must be apprehended.

And he says something even further in Timothy: the Lord says He does not want anyone to go to hell. He takes no joy in people going to hell, He takes joy in people being saved. But when Paul writes about this he is proceeding from a number of Old Testament contexts, one of which is in the Book of Ezekiel.

He Does Not Want to Lose Any

Ezekiel is prophesying at a very bad time, when judgment is well under way, and God tells Ezekiel €¦

€œWhen I say to the wicked, “You will surely die,” and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. Yet if you have warned the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you have delivered yourself. Again, when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I place an obstacle before him, he will die; since you have not warned him, he shall die in his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand.” (Eze. 3:18-20)

God is telling Ezekiel here and in Ezekiel 33 directly (Eze. 33:11) that He takes no pleasure when the wicked perish; He would rather they repent. €œWarn them so they will not perish”. He wants everyone to repent!

Our Calvinistic friends will say that only means €œthe Old Covenant”, but now we are under a new Law of grace. That is some idea of grace they have.

This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. 2:3 €“4)

God €œdesires all men to be saved“! He knows not all men are going to be saved, He knows the ones who will reject His offer of salvation through His Son Jesus, and He knows the one who will accept; He foreordained it €“ He knows how it is going to turn out, but He wants everyone to be saved. Ideally, He wants them all to be saved.

We have to look at everything the Bible says on a subject for the full weight of Scripture. There is a balance. A major part of the problem comes from the fact that we are looking back to the 16th Century and the Reformers instead of to the 1st Century and the early Christians. We have to put ourselves in a situation that the 1st Century Christians were in to understand what the Apostles are writing and how it applies to us. But that principle is no less true when we look at Reformed (or Calvinistic) Theology. What was Calvin up against? Why is he writing the way he does? Obviously he was trying to free people from bondage, not put them in it.

The Roman Catholic Church was keeping people ridden with grief, guilt, and fear. And he was trying to tell them that €œonce saved, always saved” to keep them free from this oppression. On the other hand, there was another oppression that came as a result, this idea of only the Elect. It is a truth, but a misunderstood truth. He does not want to lose any.

There are so many verses.

€œAnd I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” (Jn. 12:32)

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. (2 Pe. 3:9)

This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. 2:3 €“4)

And in Ezekiel 3, €œWarn them so they will not perish”.

Such it is, but let us go further and understand why.

The Roots of Calvinism

Calvin came out of Humanism. It was something that later emerged into what we know as €œThe Enlightenment” and was worse than Rationalism. Whenever there is a change in scientific thought, that changes technology. And when technology changes, it changes the economy, and when the economy changes, it changes the culture and the political situation and people”s worldview begins to change.

Out of the Renaissance, Greek and Roman learning was rediscovered and ideas came from the East. Under medieval Roman Catholicism, Western Europe went into the Dark Ages. If you want to know what a Roman Catholic world would look like, look at what a Roman Catholic world was like €“ look at the Dark Ages. If you want to know what the popes would do if they had their way in the world, look at what they did do; they had their way for twelve centuries. Look at the inquisitions. That is Roman Catholicism.

At one time, for instance, physics was based on Isaac Newton. It was a Newtonian worldview. But since the advent of Einstein and Relativity, we do

not see physics that way. In the old physics matter was matter and energy was energy €“ the two were mutually exclusive. But there was a born-again Christian called Rutherford who moved to England who began to do experiments with photons (light particles) and found out they have mass €“ €œmatter”. A light particle is a €œwave”; it is energy. But it also has mass? In the old physics matter and energy were mutually exclusive; in the new physics things we used to think were mutually exclusive are held in some kind of a tension. The worldview of Calvin could not grasp things not being mutually exclusive, that they could be held in a tension with each other.

In the new physics particle physicists today talk about a universe which is neither finite nor infinite but is €œcritical”. What is emerging in the world of physics is in many way closer to the worldview of the Bible than that which was the worldview of Calvin. Calvin was black-and-white: €œonce saved, always saved”.

For those not conforming to this the explanation was that they were not saved to begin with. The view was that either someone as part of the Elect or they were not part of the Elect. He could not keep things in tension.

Holding Things in Tension

This does not begin with Calvin. Calvin simply amplified it for his time and we have been stuck with it ever since. It does not just go back to Augustine and Pelagius, it goes back to the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Sadducees were €œdeterminists” €“ they were €œfatalists”; the Pharisees were not. Jesus usually agreed with the Pharisees. Only on the issue of divorce did He seem to digress from their point of view. He had a more conservative view than they did, but the Pharisees were much closer to the truth than the Sadducees.

Jesus said, €œThe Son of Man must be betrayed for it is written, but woe to him by whom He must be betrayed”. (Mt. 26:24) The Pharisees said that all is foreseen, all is ordained, but choice is given. They agreed with Jesus. (Or Jesus agreed with them.) It was the Sadducees who were determinists. Calvinism is closer to the Sadducees than the Pharisees with whom Jesus agreed. Jesus held the two in tension. The way a physicist today can allow that light particles have mass, a physicist from a hundred years ago could not. Calvin could not accept it because of his worldview, but wehave to accept it because it is the worldview of the Bible and it is the worldview today.

Think about human emotion. Because of the fall of man there is a curse on human relationships, including the relationships between men and women.

Once Christian Marriage Means Nothing Part 1 of 2

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:23:43 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

‘I say unto you whoever divorces his wife except for unchastity makes her commit adultery and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery’ – Jesus Christ (Matthew 5: 32).

From around the world in recent months, Moriel has experienced something of a minor flood of emails, post, and calls about the divorce, and often remarriage of various high profile preachers. This has not simply included the divorces and remarriages themselves, but also other prominent preachers going along with it almost pretending that nothing has happened – as if the biblical permanency and sanctity of holy wedlock no longer mattered in the Body of Christ any more than it does in secular post Judeo-Christian society.

We have in our teaching tapes often pointed out that as the first kind of fellowship God ordained (apart from Adam’s communion with Him) was marriage. It is in God’s blue print for the human race and the foundation of society.

Once the foundation cracks, society cracks. Thus we see a direct proportional relationship between children from broken homes and single parent families and juvenile delinquency.

More fundamentally still, marriage represented the essence of Imago Dei; that man was made in the image and likeness of his Triune Creator. In the same way that the make up of our being is tripartite: having a body, a soul, and a spirit, so the marital union was to reflect this. The Hebrew term for the eternal oneness of God, Achad in the Shma, (the Hebrew confession of faith which Jesus called the greatest commandment) ‘The Lord your God is One’ is better translated ‘Oneness’ designating a plural oneness. As we are made in His image and because He loves, he designs us to want to love and to be loved, because He is creative, making us in His image. Because His own divine unity within The Godhead is permanent, He designed marriage accordingly as something He joined together that ‘No Man Should Put Asunder’.

Thus the Hebrew term for marital sex in the scriptures is generally ‘niknas ba’, literally “to go into her” where a bond is designed to be formed as a permanent seal between two souls together via an act of physical oneness. Thus, in marital intimacy, one person is inside of another person and a third person is procreated. We have one in three, and three in one. This somehow, albeit mysteriously, reflects something of the Trinity in whose image we are created. While designed by The Creator to be erotically pleasurable, there is a spiritual dimension to marital romance transcending physical and emotional gratification, passionate intimacy, and the procreation of children. It is a bonding agent; a cement intended to last as long as temporal life does.

Yet even this falls well short of a scriptural understanding of marriage. The union was to be physical, psychological (as in emotional and intellectual), and because it is based on a mutual vow made to God, spiritual. The horizontal relationship with its physical, psychological, emotional, social, and legal links was to be predicated on a shared vertical relationship with God sealed with a solemn vow to Him as the basis of marriage. Sadly, blind as they are to the messiahship of Yeshua, Orthodox Jews have some grasp of these concepts, mystically believing the Shekinah hovers over the marriage bed and that Israel’s covenant relationship with God has a counterpart in the Ketubah, a kind of ceremonial marriage contract carrying weight in halakik Jewish religious law. As with so much of the talmudic Judaism invented by the rabbis to replace the biblical Judaism of the Torah – fulfilled in The Messiah – otherwise valid truths are reinterpreted in light of kabbalistic mysticism, but the basic concept itself has a fair amount of biblical merit.

Once we contemplate how marriage, sexual intimacy and procreation mirror things divine and constitute the foundations of God’s idea of society, the manner in which divorce and remarriage undermine His designs becomes obvious.

The biblical theology of marriage however, while certainly inclusive of romance and sexuality (for this we would recommend Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum’s commentary on The Song of Songs), in actual fact goes well beyond it.

Thus even the erroneous talmudic Judaism of the rabbis realizes that Holy Matrimony is the reflected image of the divine relationship with Israel:

Hosea 2:7 – where the word for husband is ish meaning ‘her personal “man”‘.

Jeremiah 3:20 – where the word is rea, meaning ‘her “intimate friend”‘.

Jeremiah 31:32 – where the word is baal, literally ‘the one who possesses her’; as in a husband and a wife sexually ‘possess’ each others body as in 1 Corinthians 7:4, so our bodies – the Greek word Soma – are for the Lord in 1 Corinthians 6:13).

These three terms indicate primary aspects of what Israel’s relationship with God was to be akin to what a marital relationship was to be like. The term used in the Hebrew nuptial ritual for ‘to wed’ is mekudeshet, meaning the husband ‘Sanctifies’ his wife in God’s sight making the union holy by a divine ‘setting apart’. This is essentially the same term used for the consecration of The High Priest to make atonement, and theologically is a very serious and heavy term – never to be used lightly.

The difference was that in those days it was the unfaithful bride (Israel) who departed from her husband, the husband refused to depart. Today, Christian husbands and even preachers are often the ones doing the departing.

Even after a bill of divorce became necessary due to the unrepentant znut or harlotry which was the metaphor for idol worship (Jeremiah 3:8) and God said Lo Ammi (‘not my people’ – Hosea 1:9 ), He immediately claims that despite her infidelity He would reclaim her after dealing with her sin (Hosea 2:1-7). God proclaims that there is no bill of divorce, and that no man can put the relationship asunder (Isaiah:50:1-2). Despite the false doctrines of replacement theology, the so called ‘christian’ anti-Zionism of Rick Godwin and The Restorationists and the anti-Semitic lies of the Identity Movement who influence the likes of W.B. Howard and W. Beuster, The Lord promises and predicts He would again turn His grace back to Israel according to His eschatological calendar (Isaiah 66:20-24, Romans 11:25-27, Isaiah 59:20, Revelation 7:4-8).

It is therefore perhaps no coincidence that promoters of Godwin’s ministry (which teaches God has put his relation-ship with Israel asunder) such as Ray Bevin in South Wales and Ray Macaulley in South Africa, are the very ones whose own marriages get put asunder. Macaulley has just split with his wife against the background of the cricket bribe scandal involving leading

members of his church. A public scandal has rocked Bevin’s Welsh church after he divorced his wife to marry another woman and front page newspaper articles are virtually labeling his church a cult on the testimony of those who have left it feeling like victims of exploitation. Bevin’s church said they have no fixed policy on divorce and remarriage. While Bevin may not have a policy on divorce, God however does – He Hates It, and those not hating it do not take heed of their spirit and they are treacherous (Malachi 2:16).

Similarly, it is of very little surprise that in The UK, the Elim denomination is advertising a conference of Macaulley where he is to be joined by Elim’s elder statesman George Canty, who teaches that “Jesus Christ Had No Jewish Blood”. These same principles of God’s divine marriage with Israel apply to and are replayed and expanded in Christ’s relationship with His bride – the believing church (Revelation 21:2). Concerning Mr. Canty’s Elim Movement, we actually have a copy of a letter from Elim’s recently retired honcho Wynn Lewis to a Pentecostal leader in Texas in which, while not trying to defend the act, Lewis attempts to downplay the seriousness of an Elim minister sent to prison for having sex with a minor in an Elim Church because the girl was 15. This conference Elim is pushing in Birmingham is of all things called ‘Fire’. The cast of characters speaking at that thing may indeed be leading people into the fire, but not the fire of The Holy Spirit. We do see a connection between the false belief that God permanently divorced Israel, and those holding such views getting divorced and remarried.

So too, sexual oneness has its parallel in oneness with Christ, and that our bodies too are not as such our own but are owned (1 Corinthians 6: 16-20). Once more, Christian marriage reflects Christ’s marriage to the church (Ephesians 5:23-25). The romance and the longing of the ancient Hebrew betrothal in anticipation of the nuptial portrays the Church waiting for the return of Jesus (Matthew 25: 1-13, Song of Songs 3:1-5, 7:1 – 8: 14).

Thus, the New Testament plainly outlaws divorce unless one has an unbelieving spouse who abandons the believer, or a partner is involved in unrepentant adultery (Matthew 5:32, 1 Corinthians 7:15). Fifteen years ago, the only cases where a Christian was divorced is if it happened before they were saved Christians, an unbelieving spouse abandoned them or was involved in an adulterous affair, or there was a spouse backslidden into adultery who would not repent and became as a non-believer (1 Corinthians 5:13, Matthew 18: 17).

Today it is different. We now have leading preachers with broken marriages who therefore have no right whatsoever to even be in the ministry (1 Timothy 3:4-5, Titus 1:6). Among others, Richard Roberts, the hyper charismatic son of money preacher Oral Roberts is divorced as a supposed Christian and remarried, yet still has a TV following on the heretical TBN. Hal Lindsay, author of ‘Late Great Planet Earth’ is similarly on the TBN, while he is presently on his third marriage (which is why Moriel will not carry his books). Likewise, Peter Ruckman, godfather of the King James Only Movement, is also divorced and remarried three times.

Again, when one comprehends how Satan is trying to dismantle society and prevent the image and likeness of God being reflected on the earth, one immediately sees the strategy underlying promiscuity, homosexuality, same sex marriages with legal rights to artificially inseminate and/or adopt, and of course a 50% divorce rate. The church of Jesus Christ however is called by Him to be the obvious alternative to this. Instead Anglicans, Methodists, Reformed churches and The Lord knows who else are ordaining homosexuals (something neither Islam nor Mormonism would even do; cults and Islam have higher moral standards than the most visible Protestant churches). Homosexual and Lesbian clergy met in an Anglican Cathedrals in London and the homosexual dean of the Anglican Cathedral in Cape Town appearing on TV dressed in Anglican vestments actually sporting a devil’s tail promoting homosexuality, while other Anglicans caught up in deception, gimmicks, and hype artistry claim there is revival.

But divorce is as much a component of Satan’s assault on the family as is homosexuality. So instead of the Evangelical Christian Church maintaining a witness and testimony for Christ and being salt and light in society with stable committed marriages, divorce among Christians now abounds and the salt is good for nothing but to be trampled on the ground.

Thanks not only to them, but to those who will stand by them and join with them in so called ministry instead of disassociating from them in the prayerful hope they will repent, the only victory becomes Satan’s.

The gospel believing church should be an example to a divorce ridden society of the permanency of Holy Matrimony, and our preachers should be examples of this to the true church. Instead, we have the opposite happening and it is accepted often in the name of love and unity. Such love however is not biblically the love of Jesus, neither is it the Unity of The Spirit! Christ plainly calls such divorce and remarriage nothing less than immoral adultery (Matthew 5:32). It should not even be found among saved Christians. No matter what our marital struggles, divorce is not an option for us.

We have had multiple complaints about Johannas Facius and The Ebenezer Fund bringing Peter Horrobin onto its board with Eliahu Ben Hayim. They are to be joined by Lance Lambert and Derek Prince at a July marathon in Bournemouth, England supposedly to ‘Bless Israel’. We will wait to see how Steve Lightle, also at the conference, will explain why he has been away from the ministry so long, but it is the devil who wishes to sabotage the prophetic purposes of God for Israel and The Jews, and Satan will achieve this with two things: False Doctrine and Immorality.

Mr. Horrobin is the director of an institution with extreme doctrinal positions on deliverance and demonology founded in collusion with New Zealand’s ecumenical Toronto advocate Bill Subritsky. We are moderately charismatic and Pentecostal ourselves in the biblical sense of those terms, but the beliefs and practices of Horrobin are void of biblical foundation, going well beyond the bounds of anything the Word of God teaches about dealing with demons.

More seriously however, Mr. Horrobin abandoned his dear wife, divorced her, and married a younger woman. While there was no evidence of any adultery at all, Mr. Horrobin reportedly accused her of ‘spiritual adultery’, which also has absolutely no biblical basis whatsoever (apart from the limited context of ancient Israel’s

idolatry and worldliness in the church in James 4:4, which even here has nothing to do with Christians getting divorced and remarried). The only adultery according to the New Testament would be Mr. Horrobin’s, and if he is going to cast a demon out of somebody, perhaps he should begin with himself.

I am indeed disgusted and ashamed that such divorce and remarriage takes place within what is suppose to be The Body of Christ. I am additionally appalled that it has infiltrated into what is suppose to be God’s End Times purposes for The Jews. But most of all I am in agreement with those who writing to us who are totally bemused by respected figures like Lance Lambert and Derek Prince joining forces with it in direct rejection of the clear teaching of the Jesus Christ to whom they will one day give account.

God hates divorce, and a true Christian will always not only love what God loves, but because they love The Lord, will also hate what God hates, including so called preachers dumping their wives like a sack of rubbish and taking off with another one. Paul writes that we should not associate with such immoral so called brothers (1 Corinthians 5:9). Jesus’ teaching is that divorce and remarriage are adultery, and those not abiding in his teaching are not even to be greeted. For if we do as much as greet them we participate in their evil deeds (2 John: 9-11).

Not only do Johannas Facius, Derek Prince, and Lance Lambert greet such a one, but Ebenezer promotes him to their board and they all join on a platform in co-ministry with him. This is not guilt by association, but guilt by cooperation. The word of God, not Moriel, says that they participate in his evil deeds.

Moreover, this says to the followers of Derek Prince and Lance Lambert “See, divorce and remarriage must be alright because Peter Horrobin did it and Lance Lambert and Derek Prince co-minister with him”. God however says, that by participating with him, Derek Prince, Johannas Facius, and Lance Lambert have participated in his sin, and as these men purport to be teachers, they will be judged even more strictly than others for doing so, as they willfully chose to allow themselves to be used by Satan to mislead others by giving credibility to a man who did something so terrible (James 3:1).

Compromising with something God calls wrong by ignoring it and acting as if it did not happen is known in scripture as “Winking The Eye” at sin, (Proverbs 10:10) and the bible says: “they cause trouble, they bring sorrow and they become babbling fools who eventually will come to ruination”.

Winking the eye is always ultimately self destructive, but it is sometimes difficult to know where to draw the line between guilt by association and guilt by cooperation, yet the bible is clear that once immorality or heresy are involved, association becomes cooperation. This is particularly true where platforms or TV slots are shared so that approval of one’s ministry becomes automatically implied.

The list of recognized Christian leaders divorcing is incredible. Dr. Charles Stanley, Pastor of First Baptist Church of Atlanta, and one of the few doctrinally sound voices on TV has just been divorced by his wife and Christian singer Amy Grant has recently divorced. Those divorcing and re-marrying, even multiple times is also a very sad testimony to the world and an indictment of the church that ‘winks the eye’ at it.

What the Reformers Forgot Part 2 of 2

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:18:39 GMT

Erasmus of Rotterdam

These failures of the Reformers were recognised by their own harbinger, Erasmus of Rotterdam, who advocated rebaptism in the preface to his translation of Matthew’s Gospel.

Erasmus wrote to the pope that it was rather the Anabaptists, who were persecuted by both Rome and the Protestants, that were the closest to a biblical Christianity. Erasmus, realizing the failure of Luther on a number of grounds, called the Reformation a travesty to which he preferred to remain a spectator. This came from one who repeatedly scorned the corruption and hypocrisy of Medieval Catholicism for its heresy on such brilliantly vitriolic and satirical works as “The Praise of Folly” and “Julius Exclusis”.

While the Reformers were dynamic personalities, they were not dynamic thinkers. Luther drew his ideas from John Huss, Staupidz, and the humanists like Le F ¨vre. Calvin drew on Luther, Farel, Oeclampadius, and Bucer. The English Reformers like Cranmer drew on Calvin and Luther.

All of these however were the natural result directly or indirectly of Erasmus, the greatest Christian humanist. Unfortunately, church history has never done him justice and blamed him for being indecisive. In fact, as we see from what became of Protestantism, he was not indecisive, but rather foresighted and aware of how Protestantism would end up. We must also remember that the Reformers did not rediscover the gospel as their followers abjectly claim until this day.

Long before the Reformation, Wycliffe in England, Huss in Bohemia, and Savanarola in Italy, had large followings of imperfect, but true Christians who believed the Word of God, and were trying to get back to it.

These of course were genocidely exterminated by the papacy using the Dominicans and Holy Roman Empire before the Reformation, as Rome used the Jesuits and Hapsburgs in its holocausts against the true church after the Reformation. But there was never an era when the Lord did not have people for His Own Name, whom while making mistakes did love Jesus, live for Him, die and watched their children die for Him, and tried their best to hold fast to His Word and, as faithful witnesses, point others back to prior to the advent of the reformers.

It was simply the collapse of feudalism and the Holy Roman Empire, together with the rise of humanism that sprung from the Renaissance and the invention of the printing press to mass produce translated Bibles that allowed the reformers to survive where others were exterminated by Rome and her agents.

During the Reformation era and what followed it, it was the Baptist sects (some good like the Menonites following Menno Simons, and some lunatics like the Munster Anabaptists following the Zwickau prophets – roughly late medieval equivalents of Mike Bickle, Earl Paulk, and Paul Cain) who attempted, for better or worse, to return directly to scripture.

The Protestants following the Reformers instead went back not directly to scripture, but to Augustine. Thus both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism spring not directly from scripture, but from Augustine’s Platonised reinterpretation of it to again equate Christian identity with the national and cultural identity; that is making the church the new Israel. The results were, predictably, death.

The death Constantine and Augustine brought to the early church by making the church a temporal political power, was brought to Calvin’s Police State in Geneva, Zwingli’s in Zurich, Knox in Scot-land, etc.

As a pagan Rome was replaced by a Papal Roman State, so a Papal Roman State was replaced by a Protestant Church State.

For all of their good points in the establishment of a parliamentary democracy founded on biblical principles, both the English Puritans and the American Pilgrim Fathers soon found themselves engaging in genocidal war crimes against poor peasants in Ireland and burning alleged witches in Massachusetts.

Jesus said His Kingdom was not of this world.

Constantine, the Medieval Popes, and the Reformers, said it was.

Central to the popular Jewish rejection of Jesus was His refusal to accept temporal political power before the millennium (which the Reformers rejected).

We must grasp the fact that the twin pillars upon which the contemporary errors of Kingdom-Now Theology with its triumphalist over-realized eschatology and Dominionism are built are both the neo-gnostic latter montanism of “charismania”, and the theonomic reconstructionism of highly Reformed Protestantism, particularly hyper-Calvinism.

This is why we see radical replacementist charismatic extremists such as Rick Godwin (a restorationist who teaches Israel is nothing but wasted money and Jews have no right to exist in the land of Israel) drawing their anti-futurist historicist and preterist eschatology from extreme Calvinistic reconstructionists like David Chilton. With both, Israel becomes the church and a theonomic regime that replays the mistakes of the post Nicean Constantinian church, and becomes the political kingdom of God on earth – a New Israel, which therefore can accord no place to the old one.

It is curious that any time an extreme Calvinism, stressing the notions of manifest destiny (stemming from an extreme view of predestination), permeated the social fabric with a church-state influence, the tragic results were gross social injustice.

This can be seen historically in the pro-slavery and later segregationist policies of the American Southern Baptists, the Apartheid policies of the South African Dutch Reformed Church, or the anti-Roman Catholic (not against the Roman church, but against the people in it) discrimination of Orange Unionism with the Strict Presbyterians in Northern Ireland. Hyper-reformed theonomic reconstructionism represents Protestantism at its worst, just as papal theonomy was Rome at its worst.

The replacementist super-cessationism produces a Judaized church with a theocratic government as oppressive and of-ten as hypocritical as the Sanhedrin ever were. Hence, the Reformation was a theologically incomplete, and thus a spiritually incomplete event.

We might see it as an aborted effort to restore biblical Christianity, as opposed to an authentic reintroduction of it.

The same nominalism that threatened to destroy Old Testament Israel, and produced the false church of the Middle Ages, was a fundamental component of Protestantism from its inception due to the errors of the Reformers.

This was recognized by Protestantism itself, when, within a few generations, Zizendorf’s Pietists in Germany and Wesley’s Methodists in England were trying to reform Protestantism from within, as the Reformers began by trying to reform Romanism from within.

The demise of Protestantism spiritually dovetailed with the theological decline of grammatical-historical exegesis going from a humanistic tool in the hands of Christians, to a humanistic tool in the hands of atheists.

The Baptists who tried to return to the kind of genuine sola scriptura faith that Luther only thought he had, were terribly persecuted and not infrequently murdered by the Protestants.

Even today, such evangelicals as Baptists, Pentecostals, Brethren, and Free Church are not, by classical historical definition truly Protestant, (although they are by etymological definition in that they witness for truth).

They are not Protestant in that they do not hold to a state church or accept infant baptism. They are rather the doctrinal heirs of the Anabaptists whom Catholic and Protestant alike persecuted.

The source of all of this tragedy once more relates back to the replacement theology that makes the church the new Israel. The endless arguments of Systematic theology, Dispensationalism verses Covenant / Reformed dividing Evangelicals from each other, stem from this same failure to grasp Jeremiah 31:31 and what it is addressing.

Because Abraham is indeed “Father of All who Believe” (Gen. 12: 1-3, Gal. 3:8, Isa. 63:16), and we see tremendous expressions of God’s grace in the Old Testament (as with King Manasseh) and tremendous expressions of His wrath in the New Covenant (as with Ananias and Sapphira), dispensational theology admittedly understates the continuity between the two covenants, and the hyper-dispensationalism of Darby is erroneous.

Still, more moderate expressions of dispensationalism do more justice to Jer. 31:31 and the eschatology and ecclesiology that derives from it than does Covenant theology.

Dispensationalism (for all the faults of its more extreme expressions) rightly sees a spiritual and theological relationship between Israel and the Church, but keeps the distinction between them.

The Reformed Covenant theology of Calvinism understates the discontinuity between the covenants and overstates the continuity – in its classical form making the church Israel’s replacement.

From this we again have the Protestant theonomic reconstructionism, not only supposedly replacing Old Testament Israel’s theocratic state, but certainly re-placing the papal theocracy, with its Constantinian/Augustinian roots, with a Protestant version of the same thing.

While we should use Christian influence to be salt and light bringing a biblical influence into this fallen world, whether the Pope, Constantine, Calvin, and their latter day doctrinal heirs David Chilton, Gary De Mar, Gary North, Rick Godwin, and William Rushdooney approve or not, Jesus’ true Kingdom is not of this world.

From the Unholy Crusades to the Seven Years War, such Dominionism has never brought us anything but bloodshed, and never will.

By equating the Church with Israel to the negation of Israel, the Reformers simply failed to correct what Constantine, Augustine, and their Papal successors got wrong. The Reformers forgot that Jesus’ Kingdom was not of this world and His followers were called to be witnesses and salt and light in terms of a moral influence and a testimony in it, but they are not called to be of it – nor were they to set their hopes on it in any sense other than hoping in a resurrection and the return of Jesus.

The most sorry manifestation of these old errors still with us is the current state of much of Pentecostalism.

While Baptists sought out to restore some of the things the Reformers failed to (such as believers baptism, congregational autonomy, and a separation of Church and State) Pentecostalism, by definition and heritage, set out to restore the things that the Reformers and Baptists failed to restore, such as Gifts of the Spirit, an emphasis on the approaching return of Christ and Premillennialism. Yet today, we see Pentecostal preachers like Andrew Shearman telling a Nottingham congregation in the U.K. that he repents of ever having sung the hymn “This World Is Not My Home”, leading the young people to chant “This World Is Our Home”.

Such false and dangerous teachings may have no connection with the classical Pentecostalism Shearman now denigrates, but certainly is compatible with the classical Protestantism that the early Pentecostals reacted against.

A new generation of Pentecostal ministers who reject the beliefs of their fathers, yet still define them-selves as Pentecostals, are remembering to forget the things the Reformers also forgot.

They are not Protestant in that they do not hold to a state church or accept infant baptism. They are rather the doctrinal heirs of the Anabaptists whom Catholic and Protestant alike persecuted.

The source of all of this tragedy once more relates back to the replacement theology that makes the church the new Israel.

The endless arguments of Systematic theology, Dispensationalism verses Covenant / Reformed dividing Evangelicals from each other, stem from this same failure to grasp Jeremiah 31:31 and what it is addressing.

Still, more moderate expressions of dispensationalism do more justice to Jer. 31:31 and the eschatology and ecclesiology that derives from it than does Covenant theology.

Dispensationalism (for all the faults of its more extreme expressions) rightly sees a spiritual and theological relationship between Israel and the Church, but keeps the distinction between them.

The Reformed Covenant theology of Calvinism understates the discontinuity between the covenants and overstates the continuity – in its classical form making the church Israel’s replacement. From this we again have the Protestant theonomic reconstructionism, not only supposedly replacing Old Testament Israel’s theocratic state, but certainly replacing the papal theocracy, with its Constantinian/Augustinian roots, with a Protestant version of the same thing. While we should use Christian influence to be salt and light bringing a biblical influence into this fallen world, whether the Pope, Constantine, Calvin, and their latter day doctrinal heirs David Chilton, Gary De Mar, Gary North, Rick Godwin, and William Rushdooney approve or not, Jesus’ true Kingdom is not of this world.

From the Unholy Crusades to the Seven Years War, such Dominionism has never brought us anything but bloodshed, and never will.

The most sorry manifestation of these old errors still with us is the current state of much of Pentecostalism.

Yet today, we see Pentecostal preachers like Andrew Shearman telling a Nottingham congregation in the U.K. that he repents of ever having sung the hymn “This World Is Not My Home”, leading the young people to chant “T his World Is Our Home”. Such false and dangerous teachings may have no connection with the classical Pentecostalism Shearman now denigrates, but certainly is compatible with the classical Protestantism that the early Pentecostals reacted against.

A new generation of Pentecostal ministers who reject the beliefs of their fathers, yet still define themselves as Pentecostals, are remembering to forget the things the Reformers also forgot.

With its rep

lacementism drawn from the post Nicean Fathers, Medieval Romanism said the Lord’s Kingdom is indeed of this world, and the kingdom was them.

So too, today’s Reconstructionists and Restorationists, drawing on the Reformers failure to correct the ramifications of Constantine’s Erastianism (control of the church by the state, usually with a mutual control of the state by the church to some degree) also say the Lord’s Kingdom is of this world and that it is also them, courtesy of their replacementism. As the adage goes: “Failure to learn from History assures we are doomed to repeat its mistakes and reap the same manner of consequences for doing so.”

What the Reformers Forgot about God’s Election of Israel and His Gifts

A final dimension to the replacementist misconstruction of the New Covenant as prophesied in Jeremiah 31:31, is the relationship between replacementism and cessationism – the belief that the charismatic Gifts of the Holy Spirit ended with the Apostles. Romans 11 warns against these twin errors and directly connects the two errors as sharing a common source. Romans 11:29 tells us “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance”. Paul’s use here of the Greek term for repentance is a mere translation of the Hebrew concept of “teshuva”, meaning to turn or return.

He argues that Jews remain beloved and God will not revoke either His sovereign call of Israel as a nation, for the sake of their fathers with whom He made the covenant, nor will He revoke His Gifts.

But which “Gifts” does he mean here? And why link God not revoking his gifts with His not taking back His election of Israel?

The answers are found simply by examining the context of Romans 11 and the structure of the epistle – itself intended to be read as a letter.

To begin with, there are no chapter breaks in the original manuscript. Chapter 11 is to be read in light of chapters 9 & 10, which precede it, and with a view towards chapter 12, which follows it.

Chapters 9 – 11 focus on God’s election of Israel and His prophetic purposes for Israel relative to the church, with the law having been fulfilled in the Messiah. From here the text develops the theme of a remnant, both of Jews and, by implication, of Gentiles.

Grafted into the olive tree

The text of chapter 11 reiterates three times that God is not finished with Israel and the Jews.

While individual Jews may accept Jesus (remaining grafted into their own olive tree), most reject Him (to be cut off from it and to be individually replaced by Gentile Christians who accept Him), or some reject Him but then come to accept Him (being regrafted into the olive tree).

But the tree itself remains the same. Believing Gentiles replace Jews who are not believers and are incorporated into Israel in a spiritual sense, but the tree is still Israel, with its final branches (the last Christians) being Jews once more, just as the first ones were.

After this, in Chapter 12, Paul exhorts the readers to be transformed with the renewing of their minds and be not conformed to the world.

Paul next deals with the issue of spiritual Gifts in body life. These include not only ministry gifts of leadership, service, and teaching, but charismatic gifts like prophecy (verse 5).

Thus, Romans 11:29 serves as a natural transitional link from what precedes it to the things which follow it. The exegetical context of the verse reveals a clear thematic progression of inter-related aspects of church life, one leading into an-other. Hence, the theme that all men (both Jew and Greek), being fallen, require salvation – introduced in the opening chapters of the letter to the Romans – logically and neatly leads in the middle chapters of Romans to the issue of the purpose of the law to illustrate our fallen nature and need for a savior.

Then, with the Law fulfilled in Jesus, the question necessarily arises about the purpose of the Jews, now that the Messiah has arrived to fulfil the Torah.

So Romans 9-11 form the next natural step. Paul addresses it on the basis of what he has built up to that point.

Again, we see a natural progression in themes with a logical chain of theological and doctrinal issues lining up neatly, one following another, to answer the new questions raised by the previous section.

Following this, Romans then deals with the next point in the order of logic: how our subsequent Christian life as individuals and our body life as the church should work to carry out this New Law of Grace. So, after his admonishments to holiness and humility, he speaks of Body Life and the role of individual members with individual gifts.

To this Romans 11:29 again becomes pivotal. Both the gifts and calling are things God will not take back from Israel or the church.

If God is finished with Israel because of its unfaithfulness, I would like to find one reason that a God, who hates unjust balances, should not be finished with the church for its unfaithfulness.

True, there has seldom been anything more than a remnant of Israel who remained faithful – of which Jewish believers are the faithful remnant for now, as for instance those not worshipping Baal were in the days of Elijah (Romans 11:1- 5).

Similarly, there has rarely been anything more than a faithful remnant of Christians who were truly faithful. As we have often maintained, it is fortunate for both Israel and the Church that the validity of a covenant depends not upon the unfaithfulness of man, but rather the faithfulness of God.

Luther and the Third Reich

Going the way of Chrysostum’s anti-Semitism rather than Paul’s Philo-Semitism, Luther forgot Romans 9-11.

This was again very strange, considering Luther regarded Romans as central to the Bible’s overall teaching and ultimate meaning.

Luther expected Jews to accept Christ when they were presented with an Evangelical Protestant Christianity as an alternative to the idolatry of Romanism. When they did not he preached that Jews should be hoarded into corals and forced to accept Christ at the point of a knife.

He taught Lutherans that they were to blame if they did not murder the Jews to prove they were Christians. This they did, culminating in the Holocaust. In Mein Kamf, Hitler loved quoting Luther.

The same Luther who inspired the Reformation also inspired the Holocaust, by forgetting Jeremiah 31:31 and Romans 11:1-29.

Instead of reforming the church from its anti-Semitic history to provoke the Jews to jealousy as God dictated (Romans 11:13-14), Luther ended his ministry as a vulgar old murdering tyrant – like the popes before him – merely replacing the Roman Catholic Jew Hatred of the Spanish Inquisition with a Protestant Jew Hatred which helped to inspire Germany’s Third Reich.

His failure to separate church and state by not comprehending Jer. 31:31 but instead, as it were, Judaizing the church with Erastianism, led him to take a position on the German Peasant’s Revolt where he called for the peasants to be stabbed in the back so as to preserve the church’s marriage to the governing German nobility.

Luther’s deranged viciousness propelled his own prot ©g ©, Melanchthon, to distance himself from him. Calvinists had a marginally more bene

volent disposition to Jews, and later, in Holland and England, other Separatists were also somewhat sympathetic. But not Luther and the first Reformers.

Spiritual Gifts not revoked

The other half of Romans 11:29 notes what God will not revoke: it is Spiritual Gifts, which Paul discusses in chapter 12. Here we see what the Holy Spirit is wanting to warn us against.

Romans 11 urges us not to forget that it is the root that supports the church (the root once more being Israel).

Romans 12 encourages us to exercise our Gifts in concert with the other members of the body. Just as the Lord foreknew the dangers of wrongly believing that God had finished with Israel, so also in the same verse the Lord warns of the dangers in wrongly believing that the Lord is finished with the gifts.

The bogus view that God is finished with the Jews is just as faulty as the bogus view that He has finished with the gifts.

Both errors have the same source: an incipient hyperdispensationalism claiming that a different set of rules exists now than existed in the apostolic church. This sees apostolic Christianity as primitive and ‘the perfect’ as having come in the form of a book (the New Testament), in the same way as the Moslems believe about the Koran, and Mormons do about the Book of Mormon (except of course that the New Testament is truly God’s Word).

Because this faulty view resembles Islam or Mormonism in a qualified sense, (we are not suggesting that cessationism denies the gospel or is fundamentally heretical but simply behaves in the same character) it becomes in essence a belief in a kind of third covenant, in some way distinct from the previous ones, yet claiming an essential continuity with them by borrowing on the motifs of the previous ones, but none the less with certain elements of the Old having passed away.

This position is arrived at by an eisegesis of 1 Corinthians 13, wrongly claiming that the perfect to come is the New Testament Canon.

Exegetically however, if the perfect has already come according to what is in the text, then hope and faith must have also passed away and are no longer necessary either, only love.

Cessationists of course would not reject the need for faith or hope, so we fall to see how their argument can do anything other than collapse.

Even today we see cessationists like Peter Masters and Jerry Falwell reading things into scripture which are not there with the same eisegetical license as proponents of the Toronto Experience do with their getting of things out of scripture that God did not put into it.

The perfect in 1 Corinthians 13 refers, of course, not to the New Testament canon, but to the Return of Christ. In the Pre-Nicean patristic literature the Early Fathers, such as Irenaeus, in the era immediately after the Apostles, strove to defend the “Didache” or true apostolic teaching from the gnostic heresies that threatened to subvert the church.

They made clear that the miraculous manifestations of the Apostolic church did not cease with the apostles.

According to Hegesippus, as quoted by Eusebius, Irenaeus was in a line of doctrinal succession from the Apostle John at Ephesus through Irenaeus’ mentor, the martyr Polycarp.

Likewise both the patriarchs of Arminian Protestantism (not holding to a particularist interpretation of election or unconditional eternal security) such as John Wesley, and Calvinistic/Reformed patriarchs such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield alike testified in writing to Charismatic gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit as not being uncommon in their ministries – when, unlike Toronto, God was truly moving. Both D.L. Moody and R.A. Torrey, founders of Moody Bible Institute, in their biographies testified to an experience of Holy Spirit Baptism.

(I myself hold to “One Faith, One Baptism” – with many recurrent fillings, of which Spirit Baptism is but a chronological first which may happen at the point of, or following regeneration as a subjective experience – even though the Holy Spirit indwells believers at the instant of New Birth as an objective reality).

We can therefore conclude that radical expressions of cessationist pneumatology, like those of their hypercharismatic opposites with their unbalanced pneumatology, both have to engage in the same dangerous and unbiblical practice of eisegesis to argue for their extreme conclusions. Both moreover must ignore the re-corded history of those whom they claim as their doctrinal forefathers in church history.

For instance we see someone like Guy Chevreau, author of “Catch the Fire” promoting the Toronto Laughing experience claiming that such outbreaks happened in the Great Revival by quoting from Daniel Rowland.

When we read Rowland however, we see that these extremes of unruly laughter were stopped by the leaders because they were Satanic disruptions or counterfeits of what God was actually doing. Guy Chevreau literally wrote and published a direct lie to promote Toronto.

Hyper-reformed and hyper-dispensational cessationists will likewise point back to moves of God during the time of great and gifted preachers such as Jonathan Edwards, but simply ignore, and expect others to ignore, that so many of their founding fathers were out and out charismatics. This too is dishonest.

The root of this error again dates back to the Reformers. Because of the fraudulent hearings and bogus miracles claimed by Medieval Romanism, (and the money grabbing indulgence mongering that accompanied it) the Reformers – throwing out the baby with the bath water – had an aversion to all miracles, much the same as non-charismatics, seeing the heretical likes of Benny Hinn or Marilyn Hickey, will similarly shun all charismaticmanifestations today.

As we always point out, Paul warned that correct use of the gifts would induce the unsaved to want to be saved and the non-charismatic to want to become charismatic, but the misused or counterfeit ‘gifts’ would cause them to say we are mad and reject what we have (1 Corin-thians 14: 1-23).

Priesthood of all believers

Further consequences of such errors are the implications for “the priesthood of all believers” as is taught in 1 Peter 2:5. We must again reiterate that before Satan attempted to paganise the church he first attempted to Judaize it with a class of ordained clergy claiming powers apart from the laity.

Biblically, while not every Christian is called to full time ministry or to a ministry in the pastorate or leadership, every Christian is a minister and a priest. The body is to be a ministering organism it-self with varying members having varying functions.

The error of replacing the Old Testament practice of a Levitical priesthood with a clergy class apart from the Priest-hood of all believers and combining it with the heavy shepherding, condemned in Ezekiel 34 and Matthew 23, is known as “Nicolaitianism” (eg. Revelation 2:6).

To his credit Luther rightly reacted to the abominations of a transubstantiated Eucharist (that the bread and wine are worshipped as Christ incarnate and liter-ally eaten), whose basis was the Aristotelian “accidents” introduced into the church in the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas and promulgated by scholasticism.

Along this line Luther and the Reformers stressed the universal priesthood of all believers against the idolatry and cannibalism of transubstantiation and the heresy that the Mass be taken as the same sacrifice as Calvary.

Luther believed in a kind of Consubstantiation which did not deny a literal presence, but did reject transubstantiation and the blasphemy of the Mass. The sacrifice of Jesus was efficacious once and for all, as Hebrews clearly states, and as His atonement was sufficient, Jesus does not die again and again.

Thus, the Reformers correctly opposed the notion of a sacerdotal priesthood. However, while remembering what a Priesthood of All Believers was not sup-posed to be, by embracing cessationism, the Reformers forgot what it was sup-posed to be.

To complete what a priesthood of all believers was meant to be, meant a return to the body concept of ministry instead of holding to the Medieval Roman Catholic clerical model of ministry.

The Reformers forgot to do this.

Biblically, pastors or leaders are simply differing ministries in the body. By forgetting that spiritual gifts include the sign gifts as taught in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12-14, the plague of a separate Protestant clergy class merely re-placed a Roman one.

In fairness however, we must observe that mainly cessationist non-conformist Baptist and, later, Brethren groups had far less of a clergy class distinction. They more closely approximated to the biblical idea of a what a universal priesthood of believers was meant to be than the mainstream Protestant churches.

Many contemporary Pentecostal denominations have become so hierarchical and ‘priest ridden’ – sometimes along virtually cultic lines – that they can be more Nicolaitian than moderate Protestant denominations.

Yet the source of all this started with the Reformers. By forgetting what Romans 11:29 said about God not being finished with the Jews, the Reformers simultaneously forgot about what God in Romans 11:29 said about not being finished with the Gifts.

What the Reformers forgot about Mission

Because of their replacementism, the Reformers (apart from the little known Caspar Schwenkenfeld, the Reformer of Silesia, who was by far the most doctrinally sound of the Reformers) misunderstood many things and left a mainstream Protestantism that could only degenerate because of the flaws in its very foundations.

While Justification and biblical authority were initially reestablished, because of its humanist roots and failure to radically remove what was unscriptural – as Baptists attempted to do, and restore what had been removed that was scriptural – as Pentecostals later attempted to do, even in the early stages many Protestants were unregenerate and neither justified nor biblical.

Today, western Protestantism is effectively dead

We see this today for instance in the rise of Scottish and Welsh nationalism. Celts and Anglo-Saxons were always chalk and cheese and only united over a common fear of Rome. Now that is gone.

While Rome itself is declining, what it is losing numerically it is gaining by ecumenism – except in Latin America and the Philippines where another Reformation is underway – which has spread into Catholic areas of North America and certain Catholic countries in Europe.

Mission

This brings us to Mission. The Reformers saw no need for mission as such, and in the main, did not see evangelism as the best way to win Roman Catholics.

They substituted mission with what was at best a combination of polemics and politics, and at worst war (although they mostly fought defensively).

At the time of the Colloquies of Marlborough, there were actually at-tempts by Protestants to be reconciled with Rome through dialogue, and later Protestants with political ambitions sought the patronage of Catholics, so withdrew efforts to convert them. We now see a replay of this same kind of thing happening before our eyes.

Supposed Evangelicals with political ambitions like Pat Robertson (who has abandoned orthodoxy and embraced Dominionism and Toronto) have joined Chuck Colson, J.I. Packer, and Bill Bright in signing an agreement not to evangelize Roman Catholics and to accept Catholicism as Christian.

This is despite the fact its de fide doctrines still uphold the Council of Trent, the Anti-Christ doctrine of Papal Infallibility, sacramental regeneration (what Paul calls ‘another gospel’ in Galatians 1:8), calling upon spirits of the dead in prayer (which Scripture calls necromancy), and Transubstantiation (which denies the once and for all sufficiency of the cross, literally worships the Eucharist as Christ incarnate, then cannibalistically eats Him).

I write these things as one with a Catholic mother who has a great burden for Catholic souls.

James Dobson and Michael Green also support these views, while George Carey calls for reunification under the Pope, and disenfranchises mission to Jews.

Carey, addressing the Conference of Christians and Jews went along with a draft proposition which condemned the conversion of people from other faiths – in direct defiance of Jesus Christ’s command. Organizations such as the International Christian Embassy and Operation Exodus replace biblical mission to the Jews with a social political-Zionist concept of mission which withholds Gospel Mission.

We also today have theological forums where reconciliation with Rome is at-tempted through dialogue which denies mission to Catholics.

As with the inter-faith dialogue with Rabbis, Roman Priests and Rabbis alike see forums as devices to prevent evangelicals from sharing the gospel with people in these faiths.

Rome moreover openly states that a road to ecumenical dialogue is the road back to Rome.

Like the Reformers, so many of today’s Evangelical Protestant leaders conveniently forget the Bible’s teaching on mission. By forgetting that the New Covenant would not be like the Old (Jeremiah 31:31), the reformers took an Old Testament view of Mission.

Since Europe was Christianized, Luther said the Great Commission had already been fulfilled and had no further meaning. Since the Church was now Israel and Israel was to witness by example instead of by example and evangelism (forgetting also that the Judaism of the Second Temple Period was a proselytizing religion – Matthew 23:15), there was no need to send out missionaries. Like the Crusaders and Moslems before them, the only way most Protestant followers of the Reformers sought to convert souls was by the sword.

Mission rediscovered

Later Justinian Welz rejected this error and disappeared as a missionary into the Central American jungle.

While the early Baptists were somewhat more missionary minded, in time auniversalism infiltrated the General Baptists. Particular Baptists had become corrupted by extreme forms of Calvinism.

They took predestined election and irresistible grace so far that at their convention they denounced William Carey for his desire to send missionaries abroad; telling Carey to “Sit down and be quiet, if God wants to convert the heathen he will do without your help or mine”.

Eventually, it was nonconformists, mainly Baptists, Independents, Menonites, and later Moravians and, then Methodist and finally Brethren sects that restored mission.

The English Protestant martyrs did for a short season proclaim the gospel until their deaths under Mary, and a kind of gospel preaching took place at Calvin’s Geneva and in Knox’s Scotland.

But it was Puritans such as Joseph Alleine with his “Alarm To the Unconverted” (which had a great influence on Whitefield and Spurgeon) who really restored a proper sense of evangelism to England, as the Covenantors did to Scotland.

Concerning mission, unlike the pre-Reformation Evangelicals, such as the Waldensians, who were so cruelly persecuted but remained missionary minded, the Reformers were not.

The pioneers of Mission like William Carey, Dr. Livingston, and Hudson Taylor came later. Later also came the rebirth of Mission to the Jews – Brother Rabbinowich in Eastern Europe, Brother Leopold Coh

en, an Orthodox Rabbi who was saved in America, and David Barren, a Jew who was saved in Britain, who resurrected Jewish Missions from the ash heap of church history and who realized that the Book of Acts is as much history future as it is history past.

Life from the dead

While I cannot overlook the many failures of the Reformation, neither can I lam-bast the Reformers themselves for their failures. They were mainly well intentioned but, like ourselves, fallible men in complicated and difficult times who at least began trying, as best they could for the most part, to what they believed to be best ‘as unto the Lord’.

If I had been in their place, I doubt I would have been immune from some of the same kinds of errors that I can so easily, in retrospect, criticize them for.

Yet when it comes to Israel and the salvation of the Jews, I can only on the one hand lament what the Reformers for-got, but praise God for what so many today are finally remembering-after all of these many long centuries:

If their rejection were the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? (Romans 11:15).

May we never forget it.

Anabaptists

Sometimes called the radicals or left wing of the Reformation, they denounced the baptism of infants. They held that only those who were old enough to understand the meaning of faith and repentance should be baptized. They were widely persecuted and many tens of thousands of them murdered during the sixteenth century.

Augustine (354-430)

Augustine of Hippo, a prolific writer who has been called the father of orthodox theology.

Cyprian (200-258)

Bishop of Carthage. Taught that the unity of the church was Episcopal, not theological: To be disassociated from the bishops meant separation from the true church. Made the classic statements that “He cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church for his Mother” and “There is no salvation outside the Church”

Darby

J.N. Darby, leader (but not the founder) of the Plymouth Brethren. Played a major role in the division of the Brethren into Open and Exclusive groups.

Erasmus (1466-1536)

Desiderius Erasmus, sometimes called Erasmus of Rotterdam, was the leading Christian humanist of the Reformation era. Especially noted for publishing the Greek New Testament and his own translation of it in Latin.

Eschatology

The study of last things; the completion of God’s working in the world; the consummation of history.

Evangelicalism

An informal movement committed to defending the historical Protestant understanding of the Evangel-(Gk.) the Good News. Emphasises the necessity of a personal commitment to Jesus and the authority of the Bible.

Futurist

View of eschatology which holds that most of the ‘end time’ events are still in the future.

Gnosticism

A religious movement which taught salvation, not by faith or works, but by the possession of secret knowledge, gnosis (Gk.).

Heilsgeschichte

German term, meaning “salvation history”.

Hellenistic

Holding to a traditional Greek cultural, linguistic and historical perspective.

Historicist (1554-1600)

View of eschatology which holds that the ‘end time’ events were taking place when the Bible was being written, and are now in the past.

Hooker

Richard Hooker. Anglican theologian. Defended Anglicanism in his eight volume Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Circumvented the Puritan appeal to Scripture and the Catholic appeal to church tradition by proclaiming ‘natural law’ as the primary source of authority. Hooker’s position tended to uphold Erastianism (state control over the church) and royal absolutism.

Humanism

Christian humanism teaches that individuals and their culture have value; the pursuit of secular life is not only proper but meritorious. The Christian humanist values culture but confesses that man is fully developed only as he comes into a right relationship with Christ.

Midrash

From a Hebrew word meaning “to seek, to examine, to investigate”. Used to describe arabbinic method of biblical exegesis used in the time of Jesus and Paul.

Montanism

A prophetic movement occurring around 172, named after Montanus, and his associates. They called for people to prepare for the return of Christ by heeding the voice of the Paraclete speaking through his prophetic mouthpieces. Their confident predictions of the imminent end were shown in time to be false.

Neo-gnosticism

Modern versions of gnosticism, which teach salvation on the basis of secret knowledge.

Parousia

Greek, used with reference to the Second Coming of Jesus.

Origen (185-254)

One of the Greek Fathers of the church. One of the first textual critics of the Bible; one of the first to set forth a systematic statement of the faith; one of the first Bible commentators.

Philo

Jewish writer who lived at the time of Christ. Prolific writer. Embraced a combination of Stoicism and Platonist philosophy, while remaining committed to Judaism.

Preterist

View of eschatology which holds that most of the ‘end time’ events were in the future when the Bible was being written but, having been fulfilled throughout the Church Age, are now in the past.

Replacement

Form of theology which teaches that Israel failed God and, for their sins, have now been replaced by the Church.

Sabellian heresy

Teaching that the Trinity does not consist of three separate Persons of the Godhead, but one Person who manifests Himself in three separate modes-Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Scholasticism

A form of Christian philosophy and theology developed during the medieval period of European history by scholars who came to be known as “school men”.

Sitz im Leben

German theological term = the setting in life.

Tenach

Jewish acronym, used to refer to the Old Testament.

Zwickau Prophets

Three men from Zwickau who visited Wittenberg in 1521. They claimed that God spoke directly to people and revealed His will through visions and dreams, rather than the Scriptures. They made numerous prophecies which failed to come to pass.

Not Even Minyan

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:15:52 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

Rome Then and Now

There are a number of acutely interesting features to the Epistle to the Romans, one of which is that Paul wrote it and not Peter. So the question automatically rises, if Peter was the first â€œbishop” in Rome (as is erroneously claimed), why did Paul write the Epistle? And we know that in Greco-Roman society, Rome was an empire but also a city where bisexuality and homosexuality were prevalent. It was socially acceptable and normative behavior right up through the nobility and the aristocracy in the Senate; even most of the Roman emperors were bisexual. This is the environment in which Paul is writing. Paul wrote against the backdrop of Roman philosophers, particularly Seneca who wrote De Clementia, and also Cicero who wrote The Republic.

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. (Romans 1:22-23)

The people of Rome were very concerned about the fact that Rome had gone from being a republic to an imperial dictatorship. Paul was writing about the moral debauchery of the society. The people who were concerned with the political and philosophical issues of the day were concerned about the political state, the social state, the economic state and the strategic state of Rome. Paul was trying to say, â€œWait a minute—it is the spiritual and moral state that matters most.” Once the spiritual and moral state begins to disintegrate, it is easy to understand why there is the kind of mess that people with secular philosophies are trying to correct. Through their writings, Seneca and Cicero could not correct what happened to that society.Today it is the same. There is no political solution no matter who wins an election. Unless there is a moral repentance and a spiritual regeneration, it does not matter who wins the election; society is not going to get any better. Irrespective of what politician wins, it is not going to matter.I was just in California where most of its citizens voted for Proposition 8 to outlaw homosexual adoption and things like that. A Republican judge who was nominated by Ronald Reagan and appointed by George Bush struck down Proposition 8 even though most people voted for it. Yet there are Christians who naively think one political party is going to be better than the other, when in fact both are co-equally godless. Nations get the leaders they deserve. Unless there is moral repentance and a return to the things of God, it does not matter what political philosophy or ideology people follow. This is what Paul is addressing in terms of the situation in which people found themselves.Gentile God-fearers separated from the Pagans. They believed in the Jewish God, but of course they were converting to Christianity. There was also a Jewish community, a number of whose members had also become Christians and believers in Jesus. Paul begins to write about this situation saying, â€œLook at the idolatry of this society.” When a society is idolatrous it is naturally going to be morally debauched.

Sexual Immorality Always Follows Idolatry

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity [akatharsias] so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 1:24-25)

So first in verse 23 we see there is idolatry and the worshiping of the creation instead of the Creator, but then together with that we find that â€œGod gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity.” Akatharsias does not mean completely vulgar, it means â€œmixed” there is a mixture of what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, what is pure and what is impure. David prayed, â€œCreate in me a clean heart, O God,” in Psalm 51:10. Akatharsias means it is not purified; it is a mixture that contains contamination. It does not mean it is all as completely wrong as it could be; it simply means it is not pure. There is enough contamination in it that no matter how much good is in it, it is still fundamentally something we would not want to drink or eat if it were a digestible substance.Society is the same today. People can point to virtues, or things like homosexuals are overachievers in the arts and humanities or certainly in theater or fashion. Such things are true, but it is a misuse of talent that is all ultimately associated with idolatry. Whenever we find idolatry we are going to find sexual immorality. Sexual immorality will always follow religious idolatry in some way. This has happened to every society during every time of history.What is important to note is that it says, â€œGod gave them over” to it. It says this three times—God gives them over to it (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28). Paul continues and says it for a second time.

They Become Fools

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. (Romans 1:26-27)

God gives them over to it. When a society becomes sexually perverse heterosexually, eventually it will become sexually perverse homosexually; it will become debased. Secular historians like Toynbee have pointed this out multiple times. He said this is a hallmark of any civilization that is in decline when these things become socially and culturally acceptable in the popular culture of any civilization. God gives them over to it.

â€œProfessing to be wise, they become fools” (Rom. 1:22).It says they are â€œreceiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error” (Rom. 1:27). If we were to look at the biostatics of the homosexual lifestyle we would see certain things that are undeniable, such as a reduced longevity of 20-30 years on the average—a seriously reduced longevity.Pittsburgh is the home to many fine medical institutions, any one of which will tell us columnar epithelium is a single strata and it lines intestinal tissue. It tears very easily. Intestinal tissue is absorptive anyway. It is easy to contract infection through intestinal tissue because the epithelium is a single layer. Once it becomes lacerated, now it is hyper-absorptive. Homosexuals, just biostatically—just statistically, are six times more likely to suffer cardiovascular disease than heterosexuals; they are eight times more likely to be a cigarette smoker or substance abuser; they are four times more likely to cause a serious automobile collision; they are hundreds of times—hundreds of times—more likely to develop certain cancers, particularly things like Kaposi”s sarcoma; they are, in the developed world, thousands of times more prone to HIV infection. It is a sentence to reduced longevity. Any medical faculty in the world will tell us this, yet we are supposed to believe, even according to intelligent people, that it is â€œnormative.” â€œProfessing to be wise, they become fools.” We supposedly live in a scientific society.Interestingly, with these same people we have usually got illogical contradictions in their worldview. The same people who are out to ban deer hunting are pro-abortion. They are quite happy to kill a human baby, but just do not shoot Bambi”s mom. Non-therapeutic abortion is fine; just do not kill a deer because that is an atrocity. These same people usually claim to be Darwinists or to believe in evolution. I do not believe in evolution or Darwinism, but if I did, according to its tenets, homosexuals have a birth defect if they were born that way because it is non-reproductive. By virtue of the fact it is non-reproductive, Darwinism therefore says â€œsurvival of the fittest” dictates it must be a birth defect.

I was once asked, â€œDo you want to save the whale?” I replied, â€œOf course.” But the whale is not supposed to survive if one is a Darwinist. There is always an illogical contradiction in their worldview and the way they argue, even â€œscientifically.”

â€œProfessing to be wise, they become fools.”Once people begin worshiping the creation instead of the Creator, they become fools. Their worldview, their perspective, their philosophy of life becomes super-saturated with illogical contradictions, things that can make no sense. But why will intelligent, educated people believe this? God gives them over to it. It specifies homosexuality particularly. That is a moral low of any society and we will see why, but we will also see what comes into play eschatologically for the return of Jesus.

They Do Not Want To Hear It

There are people who want to ban the public reading of Romans 1 and certain portions of Deuteronomy as â€œhate literature.” There was a pastor in the western provinces of Canada who was fined $15,000 for hate speech for preaching from Romans. About five months ago there was a preacher in Manchester, England, arrested on the street by a homosexual policeman for reading Romans 1. There was a pastor arrested for street preaching who was reading from Romans 1 in Stockholm, Sweden. He was sent to prison and after about a month he got out on appeal. They are calling the Book of Romans â€œhate literature.”What else do they want to ban? The New England Journal of Medicine? The Lancet? The British Medical Journal? Do they want to ban biomedical textbooks which say that intestinal epithelium is a single strata—that it is not like vaginal tissue, that it is not designed for penetration? Do they want to ban that as well? Do they want to ban science books?

â€œProfessing to be wise, they become fools.”

God gives them over to believe the ridiculous. He gives them over to believing the logically contradictory.Understand why the text relates homosexuality to idolatry.

It Is An Issue of God’s Image & Likeness

We are Imago Dei beings—we are made in God’s image and likeness. He gives certain aspects of His divine nature to males, certain ones to females, but between the two we have X and Y chromosomes—we reproduce His image and likeness. This is what He wants, for us to reflect—to reproduce—His image and likeness.

God told Adam and Eve, â€œYou shall become achad,” drawing on the Hebrew concept of plural oneness—achdut. â€œYou shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). When they asked Jesus which was the greatest commandment, He said, â€œHear, O Israel, the Lord our God is oneness” (Mk. 12:29; Dt. 6:4). The oneness that takes place in holy matrimony is to reflect and testify to the oneness of the Godhead.The Scriptures tell us certain things: God hates divorce (Mal. 2:16). Why? The permanence of a Christian marriage is to testify to the eternal oneness of God Himself. There are a number of reasons why God hates divorce, but the first is that it reminds Him of His most painful memory. What is God’s most painful memory? When the achdut—the oneness—was interrupted and Jesus took our sin. When Jesus died on the cross, God took our sin and put it on His Son in order to put His righteousness on us. The Father turned His back on the Son. The oneness of the tri-unity of the Godhead was interrupted when Jesus gave up the ghost and took upon Himself our sin. When God sees a divorce, the oneness is interrupted. The permanency of a Christian marriage is to testify to the eternal oneness of God; it reminds Him of His most painful memory.We do not like being reminded of our most painful memories because we are Imago Dei beings—we are made in God’s image and likeness. The reason we do not want to be reminded of our most painful memories is because God made us in His image and likeness and God does not like to be reminded of His most painful memory.

Why the Growth of Homosexuality in Western Societies?

In tribal Africa, homosexuality is unknown. If it were natural, it would be culturally uniform and anthropological, but it is not culturally uniform anthropologically. Because it is unknown in tribal

cultures, that should prove it is not natural.There are organizations comprised of former homosexuals and lesbians who have been saved by Jesus. They are born again and delivered from that lifestyle.Now understand that when I was a teenager I was strung out on cocaine. My drug addiction would have put me in the same hell that homosexual perversion would. I do not think I was any better than they were. Apart from the grace of Jesus in my life I think I would have gone to the same Lake of Fire. I am not condemning homosexuals, I am condemning homosexuality. What I am trying to say today, some would cry against, â€œYou don”t love! You don”t love!” How can someone expect me to practice Christian love if I condone a lifestyle that is going to kill people?Do I love people with cancer? Yes! Therefore I hate cigarette smoking. I do not hate cigarette smokers, but I hate cigarette smoking. How can I love people with cancer if I do not hate what is killing them? How can I love alcoholics if I do not hate alcoholism? How can I love drug addicts if I do not hate the illicit use of narcotics? How can I love homosexuals and lesbians if I do not hate what is killing them—a perverse lifestyle?

â€œProfessing to be wise, they become fools.”

The love of Christ in me compels me to hate homosexuality. Because I love homosexuals, I have to desire their salvation. My love for homosexuals and lesbians compels me to hate what is going to kill them.When we hear testimonies from these organizations of homosexuals and lesbians who have been saved, it is always the same. Unless they adopted that orientation in a penal institution—heterosexuals who become that way in a penal institution tend to revert back to heterosexuality once they get out—it is very hard to find a male homosexual who did not have an absent or missing father figure or was not seduced through pedophilia when they were a kid, or something like that. Likewise, one would be very hard pressed to find a lesbian who did not have an absent or missing mother figure or was not molested somehow as a kid. These people, at least initially, are victims. They are looking for love and identity in the wrong way.So because they have this gender identity crisis in early youth, by the time they reach adolescence these three substances begin to bubble over: progesterone, testosterone and estrogen. They begin to come into awareness of sexuality against the backdrop of a gender identity crisis. They wonder why they feel this way and whether it is right, and society tells them it is right. It is one thing for society to tell them it is alright, but now we have churches telling them it is alright.

From Society to the Church

In Great Britain the five biggest Protestant denominations—the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church, the United Reformed Church and the Presbyterian Church—all five are ordaining homosexuals and lesbians! The Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) is the most recent in the USA to do so. Now it is not just society saying it is alright; it is the World Council of Churches (WCC). But it is no longer just the WCC saying it alright, now we have supposed Evangelical churches saying it is alright.Brian McLaren, the Emergent Church guru, says we should declare a moratorium on even debating the issue for five years, and if we do not have a consensus in five years, to have another moratorium for another five years, then let the church decide it. What is he saying? McLaren is saying that the church wrote the Bible so the church can rewrite it. He does not believe it is the Word of God but the word of the church.Another one on Satan”s payroll is Tony Campolo. He says we have to interpret the black letters in light of the red letters, that it is the words of Jesus that matter, and Jesus never condemned homosexuality, so therefore neither should we.First of all, I suppose the Book of Revelation is not in his New Testament. Jesus did condemn those who are effeminate in Revelation, but Campolo does not know what he is talking about anyway. But secondly, look at John 14.

â€œBut the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. (John 14:26)

The Epistles are inspired commentary. We read the rest of Scripture through the prism of the apostles” writings. The Epistles explain the rest of Scripture through the most basic, practical level—they are inspired commentary. The Holy Spirit would come and directly inspire the apostles to explain to us what Jesus meant. Jesus taught them personally; then the Holy Spirit inspired them to write the New Testament to explain what He meant. If we want to know what the Gospel is, we read Romans; if we want to know what the Gospel is not we read Galatians; if we want to know what the Olivet Discourse means, we read Thessalonians; if we want to know how Jesus fulfills the Old Testament sacrificial system, we read Hebrews. The Epistles explain the rest of Scripture. Therefore we interpret the red letters in light of the black ones; we do not interpret the black letters in light of the red ones. Tony Campolo teaches the diametric opposite of what Christ said.Campolo”s son Bart says he does not agree with condemning homosexuality even if there are passages in Scripture which do so, and says he will either ignore them or spiritualize them away. These are people who claim to be â€œborn again,” who claim to be Evangelical, who say they are saved.So why is there an increase in the number of homosexuals? Because of the divorce rate. Children have no male model or mother figure, no patriarch or matriarch. They grow screwed up in their head, reach adolescence in a sexually hyper-charged society, and lo and behold. What did Jesus say? It is better to tie a millstone around your neck than to hurt one of these little ones (Mt. 18:6; Mk. 9:42; Lk. 17:2).There are a number of reasons why God hates divorce. Yes, it reminds Him of His most painful memory—that is first and foremost—but it hurts children. I am not saying there are not circumstances where it has to happen such as when an unbeliever leaves or something like that, and I would never condemn a believer who was divorced and remarried before they got saved, but it is not a good thing. â€œProfessing to be wise, they become fools.”

Cause & Effect

But then something else happens. The text talks about receiving in their own persons the due penalty of error—a cause and effect relationship physiologically.

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper. (Romans 1:28)

Once more, there is a hypostatic relationship between idolatry and sexual immorality. Anywhere we have idolatry there is going to be sexual immorality.Look at Islam and the worship of Allah. They can have four wives as a harem. They are sexually wrong.Look at Roman Catholicism and the widespread pedophilia among the clergy. They are idolaters. They have a Eucharistic Christ and they bow down to graven images.Look at cults. Is there sexual immorality among Mormons? Of course there is. They have another Jesus. Anywhere we find idolatry we find sexual immorality.In Thailand we see them selling their own children into prostitution.Once the immorality becomes normative in a society it is going to result in a debauchery that will express itself through homosexuality. Why? Satan

does not want the image and likeness of God being recapitulated on the earth. God said it is Adam and Eve, therefore Satan has to get an Adam and Steve. Adam and Steve cannot have a baby, therefore they want ours—they want the right to adopt or artificially inseminate. Satan does not want the image and likeness of God being recapitulated in the creation. It is not just an attack on the family, it is not just an attack on society, it is not just an attack on the health and longevity of homosexuals, it is not just an attack on children—it is all of these things but it is not exclusively about these things, it is an attack on the image and likeness of God Himself. But He gives them over to it.

A Foreshadow of Things to Come

Next Paul goes into a rendition very similar to what he expresses in Timothy as to what the Last Days are going to be like.

â€¦being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:29-32)

We are told in 2 Timothy what the same litany of characteristics in the Last Days is going to be like (2 Ti. 3:1-5). Then we are told it is not just them, but those who â€œgive hearty approval” to it—the people who are prepared to sanction it, to condone it.We have politicians who want to allow same-sex marriage and things like this even if they are not like that themselves. The fact that they condone it makes them equally guilty of it. And, as it is reiterated three times, God gives them over to it (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28).The reason we see homosexuals and lesbians—so-called gay activists—becoming more militant, more assertive, more confident, more boastful, more self-righteous, more outspoken, more articulate in their agenda—well, they have no idea why—is because God has given them over to it. They are under the judgment of God already. This relates to what the Scriptures call â€œa spirit of error” which relates to John 12: they would not believe (Jn. 12:37), should not believe (Jn. 12:38), and ultimately could not believe (Jn. 12:39). In other words, now they cannot believe. God gives them over to it in judgment so that now they cannot repent; now they cannot believe.Who are the most radical elements when it comes to abortion? Lesbians. Why? Because every time they see a pregnant young mother, or every time they see a young mother pushing a baby in a carriage, that is an indictment of them. It reminds them of their own failures as women. In no way am I knocking those who are single for the Lord or those who have fertility and misconception problems; they have my sympathy by all means. But a baby is an emblem to lesbians of their perversion. That is why they want to kill the kids in the name of â€œrights.” What right does the baby have?It gets to the point with the abortus provocatus. We have babies surviving as young as seventeen fetal weeks” gestation. We are arbitrarily aborting babies at an age they can survive in incubators. There is no medical definition, no medical criteria whatsoever anymore. Incubational technology has gotten so much better, prenatal medicine has gotten so much better, amniocentesis has gotten so much better—everything is better. These babies are living younger and younger and younger.

â€œProfessing to be wise, they become fools.”Ask for a medical definition as to what point it is infanticide and what point is it simply aborting a cluster of cells, and they cannot answer that question. It does not matter if they went to Harvard medical school or St. John”s at Oxford, they cannot answer the question.

â€œProfessing to be wise, they become fools.”But it is not only them; it is those who give approval. God gives them over to it. Let us understand what this means. This means that almost inevitably they are going to hell. It does not matter if they do not agree with hell, if they say they cannot believe in a God who would send someone to hell, it does not matter what they believe—they will believe it when they get there! They have already been given over in judgment to it. They do not realize what they have done. The reason they are becoming more assertive, more arrogant, more convinced, is because they have been given over to it by God.

An Eschatological Framework

The Scriptures speak about the rescue of righteous Lot. Whenever we see a rescue narrative in Scripture—the rescue of Noah and his family, the rescue of Rahab and her family, the rescue of Lot and his family, the rescue of the believers in AD 70, etc.—each rescue narrative in Scripture prefigures (foreshadows) the Rapture of the Church. God’s people get surrounded, there is no way out and the Lord intervenes and rescues them. The first rescue narrative we have a record of, and what Peter mentions in an eschatological framework, is what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. With these things in view, let us understand, â€œNot even a minyan.”A minyan is the minimum amount of circumcised Jewish males needed to take the Torah scroll out of the cabinet. There cannot be a Jewish liturgical service without a minyan. Ten is the least number which God accepted in ancient Israel. That is the concept of a minyan. The rabbis get it straight from Genesis 18-19. Let us understand what is going to happen in the Last Days: there will not even be a minyan.

And the LORD said, â€œThe outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave. (Genesis 18:20)

(Notice that kind of sin is not just â€œgrave,” it is â€œexceedingly grave.” It is messing with the divine image and likeness, doing something that will hurt children.)

â€œI will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, while Abraham was still standing before the LORD. (Genesis 18:21-22)

When the three men appeared outside Abraham”s tent and he bowed down to them, that was not the Trinity; it was Jesus with two angels. Whenever God appears in a human form in the Old Testament it is a Christophany—it is always Jesus. It is never the Holy Spirit, it is never the Father. â€œThe angel of the Lord” the Metatrone, is Jesus, and here it is Jesus.Abraham is called in Hebrew Yadiydayah—â€œJedidiah,” â€œthe friend of Yahweh.” He had a face-to-face relationship with Jesus (James 2:23).

That is why we are told in Hebrews that he had the Gospel explained to him. How was this possible? He kn

ew Jesus face-to-face. â€œNo man can see God and live” (Ex. 33:20), therefore Jesus must have appeared in a human form. Even pre-incarnationally, these are enfleshments of Jesus. This is one of them when Abraham saw Jesus face-to-face, as did Moses.

The Disintegration of the Moral Preservative

Abraham came near and said, â€œWill You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? â€œSuppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” So the LORD said, â€œIf I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare the whole place on their account.”And Abraham replied, â€œNow behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am but dust and ashes. â€œSuppose the fifty righteous are lacking five, will You destroy the whole city because of five?” And He said, â€œI will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” (Genesis 18:23-28)

We are called to be salt and light (Mt. 5:13-14), the moral preservatives of society. Once the salt loses its taste it is good for nothing but to be trampled underfoot. When the true Church—when the true believers—are no longer the moral fiber of society, the society will disintegrate—God will judge it; He will destroy it.We currently have mainstream Protestant denominations ordaining homosexuals. The PCA did two terrible things this year: (1) they condemned Israel; and (2) they decided to allow homosexuality. The Protestant denominations who go against Israel are the first ones who go into moral reprobation. There are fewer and fewer true believers to stop the judgment of God.

He spoke to Him yet again and said, â€œSuppose forty are found there?” And He said, â€œI will not do it on account of the forty.” Then he said, â€œOh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak; suppose thirty are found there?” And He said, â€œI will not do it if I find thirty there.” (Genesis 18:29-30)

Abraham was the first Jew. We can tell this by the way he is renegotiating. He is trying to get them down. Notice he is making intercession; he is trying to stop the judgment of God. We can intercede for America and for the Western world, but eventually there are not going to be enough true believers left to prevent the judgment of God any longer.

And he said, â€œNow behold, I have ventured to speak to the LORD; suppose twenty are found there?” And He said, â€œI will not destroy it on account of the twenty.” Then he said, â€œOh may the LORD not be angry, and I shall speak only this once; suppose ten are found there?”

(This is where they get the doctrine of the minyan in Judaism.)

And He said, â€œI will not destroy it on account of the ten.” As soon as He had finished speaking to Abraham the LORD departed, and Abraham returned to his place. (Genesis 18:31â€“33)(Remember, there are no chapter divisions in the original Hebrew or Greek. The story continues in a single, unified narrative.)

Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. (Genesis 19:1)

He knew they were the angelic beings who had been with Jesus.

The Two Witnesses

There are a number of things we have to take note of. By the time we get to Revelation 11 and the two witnesses, people are always asking if it is Moses and Elijah or Moses and Enoch. In the Middle East there are believers who believe one of these two witnesses is the Apostle John. Many people foreshadow those two witnesses: the two spies who rescued Rahab, the two olive branches of the olive trees of Zechariah 4, and these two angels.We always see Jesus in the company of two angels. In the garden after the resurrection, there they are (Lk. 24:4). At the Ascension, there they are (Acts 1:9-10). On the Ark of the Covenant were two cherubs (Ex. 25:18). We always have these two. But what is going to happen? We have to understand a number of cultural nuances about the ancient Near East, and we have to understand the eschatological nuances of the rescue narratives.

The Cultural Nuances

I will begin with the cultural nuances of the ancient Near East. One is â€œsitting at the gates.” This was an indication Lot was among the town elders or leaders. He was a member of the city council. As seen in Deuteronomy 5 with the Levirate marriage, it had to go through the elders at the gate. Those who stood at the gate were the leaders of the town and community. So Lot was in a position of some civil authority within the community.Secondly, biblical anthropologists to this day will study Bedouin culture because it has changed so little even since patriarchal times. There are anthropologists who will study Bedouin music in order to understand what the original Psalms sounded like as they were played with harps and cymbals and things like this. In such cultures they are responsible for up to three days for the welfare of a sojourner who comes into their house or tent. It was unthinkable to let anything happen to them because one”s own survival might depend on their reciprocal hospitality. It had to be a sacrosanct code that no one could violate.Thirdly, as with the betrothal of Mary and Joseph, the engagement phase was legally binding. One was always contractually obligated even before the marriage nuptial. Once a daughter was engaged, her betrothed was legally considered a son-in-law even though the actual marriage had not yet taken place.Those are the cultural nuances, but now let us look at the eschatological nuances.

Eschatological Nuances

It becomes evening. The Scriptures repeatedly speak of the night as a metaphor of what will happen at the end of the age. It becomes dark.He is coming like a thief in the night (1 Th. 5:2).Is he coming in the second watch or the third (Lk. 12:38)? In Matthew 25 the bridegroom comes for the bride in the night (Mt. 25:1-13).Work while you have the light for night will come when no man can work (Jn. 9:4).It gets dark.When we see homosexuality becoming not only rampant but prolific, normative, aggressive, it is getting very dark. The sun is setting on that civilization and God gives them over to it. We are going to see a tremendous increase in homosexual activity in the Last Days.There are some who speculatively link this to where it says the Antichrist will have no regard for women (Dan. 11:37). Some speculate he may be a homosexual on this basis, perhaps with good reason. I do not say they are wrong.

And he said, â€œNow behold, my lords, please turn aside into your servant”s house, and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.” They said however, â€œNo, but we shall spend the night in the square.” Yet he urged them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he prepared a feast for them

, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. (Genesis 19:2-3)

â€œUnleavened bread” matzah. This is an eschatological nuance. In what other rescue narratives do we see unleavened bread? The Exodus. What does Paul say in Corinthians? To proclaim the Lord”s death until He comes (1 Co. 11:26). The good and faithful servant gives the proper food at the proper time (Mt. 24:45-46).

Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter; and they called to Lot and said to him, â€œWhere are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.” (Genesis 19:4-5)

We need to understand we are dealing with people with an agenda. Political correctness has redefined the meaning of â€œtolerance.” â€œTolerance” no longer means that you tolerate someone”s right to be a homosexual between consenting adults—that is what it meant twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five years ago â€œtolerance” meant, â€œI may not agree with homosexuality between mutually consenting adults, but as long as you don”t try to force it on anyone else, you may go do that.” Now â€œtolerance” means they must be able to teach it in schools to our children, and anyone who opposes it is guilty of a hate crime. It is not â€œtolerance” we must subscribe to their agenda, which becomes more vociferous, more assertive, more radical.It is just the same as Islam. They talk about tolerance to get their foot in the door. They cannot show anyone an Islamic society in the entire world that is tolerant—not even one. But they come talking about tolerance and get liars and politicians who will tell the same lies, knowing they are lying. It is not about tolerance. The ones who talk the most about tolerance are the most intolerant.

But Lot went out to them at the doorway, and shut the door behind himâ€¦ (Genesis 19:6)

This is an eschatological nuance. In the rescue of Noah God shut the door (Gen. 7:16). In Revelation, what Jesus shuts no one can open (Rev. 3:7). When we see these same phrases, words, or terms occurring in successive rescue narratives in Scripture, there is a reason they are there. They all typify—foreshadow—what is going to happen at the end.But notice it is Lot who tries to shut the door. It does not work.

Increasingly Callous in a Secular World

â€¦and said, â€œPlease, my brothers, do not act wickedly. (Genesis 19:7)

â€œMy brothers“? What does this teach about the state in which believers will find themselves in the Last Days? We will become so acclimated to the wickedness that surrounds us in popular culture, we become callous to it. This does not mean we like it, sanction it, agree with it, or practice it, but it does mean we accept it as a reality, and we go on so we can function in that society.As Lot found out, the fact that he had a position of political authority merited him nothing when the heat was on; he simply did not get anywhere. A time is going to come when it is just not going to work. It does not matter how much money, position, education, or personal status that someone has; what matters is that a time is going to come when, irrespective of somebody”s status, they are going to find themselves at odds with the popular culture. Christians who have positions in the professional or business communities, positions of affluence, political positions—it will not matter anymore.We try to get by, thinking we will be able to manage in the secular world, but we will not be able to. Over a number of issues—homosexuality being one of them—it is becoming increasingly difficult for Christians in education, the legal profession, the medical profession, certainly the arts and media, government, and the military. It is becoming more and more difficult for Christians in these fields because of this and other issues.Whatever status and position Lot had, it no longer did him any good. The same thing is going to happen in the end. Ultimately it is going to be us and them, and they are going to let us know it. We become so callous, so accepting of the realities of moral debauchery, giving up thinking we cannot do anything about it anyway, that it is going to take a persecution to jolt us into gear in preparation to be rescued. Persecution becomes a necessary evil because of the state of the Church which has become complacent. Such persecution becomes necessary to prepare us for rescue.I was in Vietnam with the Hmong people who were persecuted by the Communists. They are poor—really poor and impoverished, they are persecuted, and in most cases they do not have any Bibles. They are poor, persecuted, without Bibles, but their churches are growing rapidly.

What is their hope? We have one hope: Jesus” coming. This is the only thing they have left to hope in!I received a letter today from the â€œSon of Sam.” He pastors a church loosely affiliated with Moriel at a maximum security prison in New York with criminally insane killers who have gotten saved. He knows he is never getting out of there. Either the Lord is going to come or the Lord is going to come for him. He has no other hope except Jesus” coming. I once told him, â€œBrother David, I am sorry about this. This is hellish by anybody”s imagination. But spiritually and doctrinally you are safer in here than you are out there.” He replied, â€œYou”re not the first one who”s told me that.”It gets to the point we become so callous, so caught up in our own situation and circumstance, that we think we can accommodate life in an increasingly morally abject world, and persecution becomes necessary to jolt us into gear to want to get rescued, to want to get out of here. â€œWill the Son of Man find faith on earth” (Lk. 18:8)?

Not Really One of Them

â€œNow behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like; only do nothing to these men, inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my roof.”

(Lot, of course, knew that they did not desire girls.)

But they said, â€œStand aside.” Furthermore, they said, â€œThis one came in as an alien, and already he is acting like a judge; now we will treat you worse than them.” So they pressed hard against Lot and came near to break the door. (Genesis 19:8-9)

â€œYou came in as an alien!” â€œYou”re not one of us!”

We may have a position in the community, in a profession, in a corporation, on the school board, we may be a member of the Bar, whatever—they are going to remind us that we are not one of them. But look what else: â€œWe will treat you worse than them.”

These people hate those who oppose their agenda.Notice how they are not trying to get us to â€œtolerate” the homosexual agenda; they are trying to force it on other people. When we oppose their agenda to force it on other people, they will treat us worse than them. They will hate people who oppose the compulsory forcing of their agenda on society. They have forced it into the school system; they have forced it into the courts; they have forced it into the military. Now they have forced it into the churches, and if you oppose it they will treat you worse than them. But it is going to get even worse.I was just at the Jericho Ranch in California with an ex-nun, one of several personal friends who are former Roman Catholic priests and ex-nuns. They have all told me their personal testimony and talk about what it was like, but they all make it very clear that homosexuality and lesbianism is quite common among the Roman Catholic clergy. Yet officially the Roman Catholic church says it is wrong.

What they do practically is something else, but at least officially they say it is unnatural and wrong—it takes a Protestant to go that wrong. Protestantism has become more morally bankrupt than Roman Catholicism. It has become more spiritually abject than what it set out to reform. Protestantism is more theologically, spiritually and morally worthless than Roman Catholicism. Even the Church of Rome would not officially sanction this, even though practically they do. The World Council of Churches will; the Presbyterians will; Tony Campolo will; Brian McLaren will. God says it is wrong.

The Power of Addiction

But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door.

(Now the angelic beings shut the door. It is not Lot shutting the door.)

They struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves trying to find the doorway. (Genesis 19:10-11)

This is unbelievable. Anyone who has seen a heroin addict going cold turkey through heroin withdrawal, or seen an alcoholic with delirium tremors, has witnessed that an organic addiction can so consume, possess and animate someone that they will behave this way. Can you imagine losing your eyesight—being struck blind, and yet being so driven by an unnatural lust—an unnatural passion that you are still trying to satiate the unnatural lust? I have seen how chemical addiction propels people to do this— alcoholics who, all they care about is getting a drink even if they had lost their eyesight. All a junkie wants is another dose of smack; that is all he cares about. I have seen how organic addiction can propel people to that extreme. But imagine when it becomes possible to be driven to that extreme by an unnatural sexual passion, not even a natural one!A heterosexual would not do that. I would not care if it is Marilyn Monroe. I would not care if it is Brad Pitt. It does not matter who it is. If a heterosexual lost their eyesight they would be saying, â€œGet me an ophthalmologist! Get me to a hospital! Get me to an emergency room!”

The only things I have seen which would drive somebody who would lose their sight to still try to gratify their compulsion is somebody with a chemical addiction. There is something that so consumes people given over to this orientation that they behave the way a junkie or alcoholic would. These people are controlled by something. â€œ[T]hey wearied themselves trying to find the doorway.”

Those â€œIn” and â€œOut”

Then the two men said to Lot, â€œWhom else have you here? A son-in-law, and your sons, and your daughters, and whomever you have in the city, bring them out of the placeâ€¦ (Genesis 19:12)

As in the Exodus, God is in the business of saving not just people but families; as in Jericho with Rahab and her family; as in the case of Noah and his family. God does not want to rescue just us; He wants to rescue our family. But we see in the story of Lot what Jesus said, that parents will turn against children, children against parents (Mt. 10:21)—not everyone in our family is going to want to be saved. He could not even get a minyan.

â€¦for we are about to destroy this place, because their outcry has become so great before the LORD that the LORD has sent us to destroy it.” Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, and said, â€œUp, get out of this place, for the LORD will destroy the city.” But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting. (Genesis 19:13-14)

The homosexuals could not get in, but Lot had to go out. Why? There are people who in theory should be raptured who will not be; they should be in, but they are out. They have one foot in the Church, one foot in the world.

â€¦not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:25)

They are out there and comfortable in the world. He tells them that judgment is coming and they can be rescued, but they think it is a joke! â€œ[H]e appearedâ€¦to be jesting.” Well, what do we have now? Let us just go through the list.In the United States Rick Joyner says the Rapture is a lie of the devil. It is a joke. Some of these people make fun of it and compare it to Star Trek: â€œBeam me up, Scotty.”In Great Britain, Gerald Coates, the false prophet who has a lying spirit, says the Rapture is a fantasy and a myth.Mike Bickel teaches the rapture of Elijah was God’s judgment on Elijah.Rick Warren teaches to avoid end-times prophecy—that it is a diversion. Jesus said be alert and to watch out, but forget what Jesus says; Rick Warren says to keep away from it.It appears to be a joke to them. If someone does not believe there is going to be a rescue, how are they going to get rescued? The foolish virgins are going no place (Mt. 25:1-13). The idea that everyone who says they are a Christian or born again are going to get raptured? The foolish virgins are going no place. A time will come when they will know they are wrong, but it will be too late. The rescue will have happened.Notice that Lot”s sons-in-law are out! They are out there when they should be in here. Paul could be in the world but not of it. But they are more comfortable out in the world than they are in here.

He who separates himself seeks his own desire,He quarrels against all sound wisdom. (Proverbs 18:1)

The same thing is happening in the Church; they do not believe in a rescue so they are making it into a joke.

The Rescue

When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, â€œUp, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.” But he hesitated. So the men seized his hand and the hand of his wife and the hands of his two daughters, for the compassion of the LORD was upon him; and they brought him out, and put him outside the city. (Genesis 19:15-16)

Even Lot hesitated. It says in Peter, the righteous are scarcely saved (1 Pe. 4:18). It is only the grace of Jesus that is going to get us out of here. We are only going to get out of here by the skin of our teeth, and that by God’s grace! The sad fact of the matter is that the old creation wants to stay here. The old creation wants to imagine that somehow this place is going to get better when the most that can happen is interim periods of respite. Only the new creation really wants to get out of here. Lot hesitated. Only God’s grace got him out.Geologists who have been to this area at the southern tip of the Dead Sea say that some kind of seismic event did happen of a volcanic nature or something like that, but they are not sure where Sodom or Gomorrah would have been. Some say it was on the Jordanian side, others that it is under the Dead Sea, which is evaporating quickly at the moment. Others say they do not know, or that the two cities may have been in other places. We do not know; nobody knows for sure. But archeologists do know where Lot escaped to. We know where Zoar is.I have been to Zoar many times. It is no more than two miles from an Israeli health resort on the Dead Sea, today called Ein Bokek. There is a Hilton and Holiday Inn there and they all have clinics people go to for medical treatment for psoriasis and things like that from the minerals in the Dead Sea and the sun. Lot escaped there, so Sodom and Gomorrah had to be somewhere close to Ein Bokek. There are also many pillars of salt in the area.

When they had brought them outside, one said, â€œEscape for your life! Do not look behind you, and do not stay anywhere in the valley; escape to the mountains, or you will be swept away.” (Genesis 19:17)

What did Jesus say for AD 70? â€œ[F]lee to the mountains” (Mt. 24:16). Where did Noah go? Mt. Ararat (Gen. 8:47).

The Believers Must Come Out

But Lot said to them, â€œOh no, my lords! â€œNow behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have magnified your lovingkindness, which you have shown me by saving my life; but I cannot escape to the mountains, for the disaster will overtake me and I will die; now behold, this town is near enough to flee to, and it is small. Please, let me escape there (is it not small?) that my life may be saved.” He said to him, â€œBehold, I grant you this request also, not to overthrow the town of which you have spoken. Hurry, escape there, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there.” Therefore the name of the town was called Zoar.The sun had risen over the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven, and He overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. (Genesis 19:18-25)

It says, â€œDo not look back! Do not take anything! I cannot do anything until you arrive!” The Lord cannot do anything until He gets us out of here. He has given a promise. We are not appointed to wrath, Paul says (1 Th. 5:9). Will we experience the Tribulation? Notice that they are in tribulation.

Virtually everything we see prefiguring the Rapture in Scripture and in every rescue narrative shows God’s people in the Tribulation, being preserved in it and rescued out of it before the wrath comes. The Exodus is the same; Noah”s the same; Sodom and Gomorrah is the same: God’s people are in the Tribulation; they are preserved in it, and rescued out of it before the wrath comes. We are not appointed to wrath. â€œI can”t do anything until you get out of there.”The sun rises as in the resurrection—arise and shine for your light is come (Is. 60:12), and then the judgment comes. But then it says, â€œDo not look back; flee!”

But his wife, from behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. (Genesis 19:26)

Again, there are many pillars of salt at the southern end of the Dead Sea. I do not know which one she is, but I assume she is one of them. In any event, she looked back. What did Jesus say? Let he who is in the field not go back to get his cloak, let he who is in the house not go back to get his furnishings (Mt. 24:17-18). Materialism becomes a big problem in the Last Days, when the things we own, own us.

The End Result

Now Abraham arose early in the morning and went to the place where he had stood before the LORD; and he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the valley, and he saw, and behold, the smoke of the land ascended like the smoke of a furnace. Thus it came about, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot lived. (Genesis 19:27-29)

When we see this increasing radicalism of rampant homosexuality and lesbianism becoming more militant, more demanding, more assertive, more uncompromising, and we see Christians trying to accommodate it, be comfortable with it, co-exist with it, we are getting close to the end. God had given these people over to believe it is normal; they have been given over to destruction. There is not even a minyan; there are not even enough faithful Christians left to stop this from happening.Right now the British government—a conservative government—is pressuring countries in Africa to legalize homosexuality. The British government is pressuring countries with high Christian populations in Africa to allow it in the name of human rights. This is how evil the British government has become. The fact is that most people in the American military did not want the end of Don”t Ask; Don”t Tell, but Obama forced it on them.It is getting worse, but they do not know the reason it is getting worse: â€œTherefore the Lord gave them over.” He did not just give the homosexuals over or the lesbians over, but those who condone it are given over to it. That includes much of the so-called Church. I do not mean the World Council of Churches—Satan always had them in his pocket anyway. I mean the so-called Evangelical church, certainly the Emergent Church, certainly the Purpose Driven church, and it is getting worse. How much worse can it get before God intervenes? Not much. We have once again reached the point where there is not even a minyan.Now, that is not a happy note to end on, but what is a happy note to end on is this: Jesus said when we see these things happening we should lift our heads and rejoice because our redemption draws near (Lk. 21:28). We are not appointed to wrath; it is not us whom God is angry with. But we need to learn the lessons of Lot.We are becoming callous to the moral debauchery of society at large and our frustration to do anything about it. The Church is no longer salt and light; there is no stopping it. There may be no stopping it, but what these people do not know is that neither is there stopping the return of Jesus! That is, indeed, our blessed hope. There will be a rescue.This homosexual thing—this fiasco, this social cancer that has even infected the Church, once it gets into the Church, not that it just becomes socially normative, but once it gets into the Evangelical Church, that shows it cannot be much longer before Jesus comes. It cannot be much longer. He is going to pour out His judgment, but before He does that He says, â€œI can do nothing until I get you guys out of here.” This is our blessed hope.God bless.

Rein of King Asa

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:13:13 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

Turn with me please to 2 Chronicles chapter 13, the end of 2 Chronicles 13. We are looking at the subject tonight, €œGod’s warning to good men” in the reign of King Asa. The reign of King Asa, God’s warning to good men. God’s warning to good women. God’s warning to all of us, but especially God’s warning to good leaders and to good pastors. Remember the kings of Israel were called shepherds by the prophets. God told the prophets of Israel to call their kings shepherds and the Hebrew word for shepherd and the Hebrew word for pastor is the same word. Roeh, roeh, and theres much to be learnt in pastoral ministry in studying the kings of Israel. There”s good shepherds and bad shepherds, there”s good pastors and bad pastors and the typology of the kings of Israel teach us about good and bad pastors but it applies to all of us. God’s warning to good men as we see in the reign of King Asa.

What we see here in verse 20 of chapter 13, €œand Jereboam a bad king of the north did not again recover strength in his days of Abijah, now Aviyah, Abijah means my Father is Yahweh, and the Lord struck him and he died but Aviyah, Abijah became powerful and took 14 wives to himself and became the father of 22 sons and 16 daughters. Now the rest of the acts of Abijah and his ways and his words are written in the treaties of the prophet Ego. Now that word treaties, we translate treaties, what does yours say, mine says treaties, what does the King James say? Stories! The Hebrew word is Midrash, enquiring into. Some people try to say €œwell midrash is not in the Bible” its because they dont read Hebrew. Midrash certainly is in the Bible and that”s exactly what the word is. The Midrash!

Asa in chapter 14 succeeds Abijah in Judah. Asa was a good king, his father was not a bad king and his son was a pretty good king but Asa begins as a good king. So Aviyah, Abijah, slept with his fathers. Now the idea of being gathered to the fathers is what we call in Hebrew €œthe Avot” Avot is the plural of Ava, father. We have to understand this.

We have the Hebrew world Sheol, meaning the netherworld, the place where the spirits of the souls and the dead went. Sheol, Sheol! Sheol had two halves, two sections. One section was Geheno, Gehena. Now Gehenna was the area, was named after the area outside of the refuse gate of Jerusalem where they burned the rubbish. It was the tip that burned day and night but it was the place of abomination where Molech worship was practiced. It was where the Kidron Valley and the Tyropean Valley came together and they sacrificed human babies to demons, Molech worship and it was a symbol of hell. Jesus said to the Pharisees €œHow will you escape the judgement of Gehenna?” So Sheol had two halves. One half was the place of Gehenna for those who were wicked and then there was the big chasm between the two that you couldn”t cross and then the other side was the place of the Avot, normally referred to as the €œbosom of Abraham”. In Luke 16, you see Lazarus and the rich man. Lazarus was in the bosom of Abraham, he”s in the place of the Avot, he”s gathered to the fathers, the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the other was in the place of the damned, Genhenna with the chasm in between. Now notice hell is eternal, it”s conscious. Lazarus was able to answer the man being tormented and the rich man was able to see the blessings of Lazarus and the Avot. Of course, we have people today, like Roger Forster teaching that there is no such place as hell, that hell is just a place of annihilation. If you don”t repent of your sins, when you die you won”t exist anymore. That”s what the €œMarch for Jesus” people teach, it”s what Roger Forster teaches. If you don”t repent when you die you won”t exist anymore. This is of course what unsaved people believe anyway. What”s the point of giving them the gospel if they”re going to be annihilated. But that”s not what the Bible teaches.

Lazarus was conscious and the rich man was conscious and they saw what each other were doing.

Now the problem we have is when the New Testament translates this concept, it translates this place Sheol into Hades. Hades, it took the Greek equivalent and just called Sheol – Hades. So far that”s not too bad except that when the King James Bible was translated it mistranslated Hades – Hell. So when it says when Jesus went to hell, they think he went down to hell. This is where Copeland and Hagan get their crazy doctrine. He didn’t go to hell, he went to the Avot. He went to Sheol, to Hades, he went to the Old Testament saints who died faithful under the law. Those who were in the bosom of Abraham, waiting for the Messiah to come. Once the Messiah came and died for sin, then they could enter eternal Heaven. But of course all the money preachers, the Copeland, Hagin people and all these crazy people, they twist this idea of the Avot.

€œHe was gathered to his fathers and they buried him and his son Asa became king in his place. The land was undisturbed for ten years during his days and Asa did good and right in the sight of the Lord his God for he removed the foreign altars and high places tore down. The sacred pillars he cut down, the Asherin and commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers and to observe the law and the commandment, and he also removed the high places and the incense altars from all the cities of Judah and the kingdom was undisturbed under him and he built fortified cities in Judah since the land was undisturbed and there was no-one at war with him during those years because the Lord had given him rest for he said to Judah, Let us build these cities and surround them walls and towers, gates and bars, the land is still ours because we have sought the Lord, we have sought him and he has given us rest on every side. So they built and prospered.

Now notice he directly relates the rest that he had and the prosperity he was getting to the fact that the people were faithful to God. €œNow Asa had an army of three hundred thousand from Judah bearing large shields and spears and two hundred and eighty thousand from Benjamin.

(Judah and Benjamin were the two southern tribes together with some of the Levites, the other ten tribes were the northern ones) And they were bearing shields and wielding bows, all of them were valiant warriors.

All of them were valiant warriors! Pay attention! The people in the north were imitating the way of the pagan gentiles, they were taking on the religious beliefs of the pagans. The people in the south stayed faithful. The people in the south did not have the same wealth or numbers as the people in the north. They had ten tribes, the south only had two plus the Levites. They didn’t have the wealth but the Lord was with them, that”s where the temple was and they had the throne of David. David is the Old Testament shadow of Christ, as good shepherd and as king. So they had the Lord. They had the inheritance, the heritage of David. They didn’t have the money or the numbers. Now the north also had a big army, much bigger than theirs but they were not all valiant warriors. Only people who are really faithful to God will be valiant in spiritual warfare. OK. To God quality is always more important than quantity. 15 SAS are better than 15,000 girl scouts.

To God quality is always more important than quantity. They may have the numbers, they may have the money. They may have most of the real estate but they are not going to be valiant in war. Let”s look at them. Do you see them leading Muslims to Christ? No, of course not, they are compromising with them. In fact they are imitating them.

Let”s understand what”s happening. Remember the oldest enemy of the gospel in these islands were the druids. The first opponents of the gospel on these islands were the druids. The ancient celtic religion, Stonehenge crowd. Now just the week before last, you had them all going to Stonehenge didnt you, for the solstice, the rebirth of paganism in Britain . Post-Christian neo-pagan Britain are returning to paganism.

You go to Belfast, I”ve got to go to Belfast in a few days, you see the murals on the walls in Belfast, both the Catholic ones and the Protestant ones, the ancient celtic war gods and mythical heroes. Cohowin and Arene. Arene was the old hag who demanded the blood of the youth so she could keep her beauty. These are the images used by the para-military and terrorist organisations when they are killing kids.

The same demonic powers. Some people call them territorial spirits, a better translation is principalities. The rebirth of paganism in Britain. So the oldest enemy of the gospel and in Ireland of course it was Patrick, St. Patrick who confronted the druids. Now the oldest enemy of the gospel in these islands are the druids, but the leader of the Church of England is one. And, he”s a druid who ordains homosexuals and who appoints homosexual bishops. You understand, this is just like Israel .

When you read the Torah, what it emphasizes and they had to keep all the law, they kept the Torah, they kept the commandments. Among those commandments, if you look at Leviticus, there was a lot of the commandments dedicated to avoiding unnatural sexual practice including bestiality, including incest and certainly including homosexual and lesbian relationships, that they”re unnatural and perverted. Now we”re making laws in this country where if you say that, you”re guilty of a hate crime. What an insult to minorities. They”re saying that”s the same as making an ethnically derogatory remark. They”re saying that”s the same as calling a Jew a kyte, a black a nigger or an Asian a Paki. You”re telling me that Jews, that blacks and Asians are the same as homosexuals? Nobody ever went to hell because of the color of their skin, or because of their race. Nobody ever went to hell for being an Asian, or a black or a Jew. There”s nothing wrong with being an Asian, being a black or a Jew. That”s not perverted or unnatural but that”s what they”re trying to tell us. And they”re going to make a law that if we say this, they can arrest us. That if a church teaches this, you”ve just lost your registered charity status. Now you”re taxable. And they will get these laws and if they don”t get these laws, Europe will impose it.

That”s how its going to work. But even more sick, is that the established churches will support it. The Methodists will support it, the Presbyterians will support it, the United Reformed Church will support it, the Church of England will support it. Give it a few years, you”re going to see Pentacostals support it.

It”s the end times. Absolutely right!

So Israel became just like the pagan nations around it. I was speaking at a church at Somerset before I went to New Zealand. I had to take a long way around to get to this church in Somerset, (I had to go like this) to avoid all the new-agers going down to Stonehenge. I had to go 40, 50 miles out of my way to avoid the traffic jams, they were coming from all over the place. But now the leader of the church of the country is one. He”s appointing homosexual bishops. Sad, that”s exactly what happened here. They became pagan and immoral just like the nations that surrounded them. Yet, they tried to keep the name of being Jews. Just like today, they”re trying to keep the name of being Christian. But Jesus said if you love me, keep my commandments.

Notice what the text says, they did not keep his statutes. Now God told them in Deuteronomy €œkeep my statutes that it may be well with you”. God does not tell us to keep his statutes for his sake. God is God. He doesn”t need anybody to do anything. He says keep my statutes for your sake. If people kept his statutes, there would be no crime, there would be no social injustice, there would be no HIV infection. If people kept his statutes, it would be well with us. People wouldn”t be dying of aids, if we kept his statutes. But they become like the pagan nations and this is global. You know I go to Africa a lot. Unlike in England , most of the black African Anglicans are born again. In Uganda, in Kenya , most of them are really saved. It”s only Desmond Tutu”s crowd in South Africa , that aren”t and he wants to ordain lesbian priestesses and he hangs out with the witch doctors. Almost every black african anglican is born again, except for his crowd. He”s like here, he”s like the ones you have here. Terrible, terrible, terrible. What do you have, Israel and Judah. To a Kenyan, homosexuality is perverted. Its amazing, when you see people removed from the decadence of the affluent western world, when you see people in the third world who live in a simple culture how come they don”t have any endemic homosexuality? You don”t find it among rural black africans or asians, they don”t have it.

The only place that I”ve ever seen homosexuality in the third world is in asia, where they were turning little kids into homosexual prostitutes to cater for westerners in Thailand, that I saw. The Buddhists were selling little boys and little girls…. It was the only time I ever saw homosexuality in Asia. I”ve never seen it in Africa. Never. It”s only when they get influenced by the corrupt western world. In their own culture, to an African, its perverted. Giraffes wouldn”t do that, what human beings are going to do it! It”s sick to them. They wouldn”t even think of it. They wouldn”t even think of it. Israel and Judah!

That Tutu”s crowd, oh they”re influenced by the west, international, same here, there”s Israel and you have Judah. Let”s look!

He begins getting rid of all this stuff and God blesses him. Verse 9 €œNow Zerah the Ethiopian came out against them with an army of one million men and three hundred chariots and he came to Mareshah.”

Now he”s outnumbered Asa a little less than 2:1.

€œSo Asa went out to meet him and they drew up in battle formation in the Valley of Zephathah at Mareshah. Then Asa called to the Lord his God and said Lord there”s no one besides thee to help in the battle”

Notice, €œno-one other than you God” These guys they had more chariots, a bigger army, they”re tougher than we are. €œNobody but you” to help in the battle between the powerful and those that have no strength, so…. €œhelp us O Lord our God for we trust in thee and in thy name have come against this multitude O Lord, thou art our God, let not man prevail against thee“

Notice €œlet not man prevail against us?” – no – €œlet not man prevail against you.” When you see these people pushing immoral agendas like homosexuality or paganism and faithful Christians and faithful churches are trying to stand against it – they”re not coming against us. they”re coming against the Lord Himself. They make themselves the enemy of God.

Contact Us

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:10:56 GMT

Any questions or comments can be sent to morielcarol@yahoo.com . We do not give out Jacob’s email address but you can reach Jacob by emailing Carol.

Allah

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:07:34 GMT

The first question I have is the person and character of Mohammed. According to the Quran and according to the Hadith, Mohammed grew up next to the well of Zumzum. Now today the Zumzum is considered holy water by the Wahab in Saudi Arabia. And in his youth he saw the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to worship at the Ka”bah. His father’s name was Abdullah, the servant of Allah. So the Hajj already existed, the Ka”bah already existed, the well of Zumzum already existed, and even the worship of Allah existed in ancient pre-Islamic Arabia. There were multiple stones ” some would say 360, one for each day of the lunar year in the Ka”bah. Mohammed began his reforms and crusades; he removed all of the stones except one. He said there was one God.

“Allah” is a generic term in Arabic for “god”, but it”s also the specific name; it was the specific name of a moon-god. And of course we see the moon crescent on mosques to this day. That brings the question, was Allah, or is Allah, the same God as Christians and Jews because it is the Arabic word for “God”? It is an Arabic word for “god” ” that is without dispute, but there is another word called “El” that we hear little about. Now in the Katub, in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, God is called ” Allah is called ” by a name. His name is not called “Allah”, His name is called “Yahweh“. Yes, the Hebrew “Elohim” ” “God” can be translated into “Allah”, but “Yahweh” cannot be translated into “Allah”.

If the worship of Allah, the well of Zuzum, the Ka”bah and the Hajj all existed before Muhammad began Islam, how can we say Muhammad began Islam? If Islam itself acknowledges these things existed, was it not something that came from the pagan religions of ancient Arabia? For Mohammed was told of monotheism.

He met some Christians who were black Africans from Ethiopia who used the term in Arabic of puppy dogs opening their eyes. You see a little bit that there”s one God. Mohammed ventured with his uncle and he learned certain things from the Zoroastrians of Persia, but he saw in those days Jews and Christians did not fight each other because they had one religion. He lived at a time of tremendous social injustice and he believed if the Arabic nations out-monotheised, they would have the same kind of peace and tranquility that seemed to happen between Jews and Christians, that Christians and Jews had within their own community. That is what, broadly speaking, the Quran and the Hadith say about Mohammed.

But my first question would be if all these things existed, if Allah was first worshiped as a moon-god, if there was a Hajj ” the pilgrimage was already there, if the well of Zumzum was there, if the Ka”bah was there, how is Islam the same religion historically in its origins as Judaism and Christianity? How is it?

I can prove the relationship between Christianity and Judaism ” even the Quran acknowledges that. But the Quran is claimed to be a “third testament” correcting the errors in the other two. Even though the last thing it says in the Christian Bible is don”t add to the Word of God, (Rev. 22:18-19) the Quran comes along and has added another book saying it”s a third testament. My first question to you, my Muslim friends, is this: On what basis can you say that Allah is the same God as Christians and Jews, on what basis can you say it is another manifestation of the same Judeo-Christian, monotheistic belief? On what basis can you say Mohammed began this religion when its institutions, its fundamental tenets and practices ” the Hajj, the well of Zumzum, the Ka”bah, the worship of Allah ” already existed? I know you believe it does, but examining it historically and examining it in light of the Jewish-Christian scriptures I cannot see how it does. Can you please explain to me how it does? That is my first question, and I say it not to insult you; I say it to ask.

Mormon

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:06:16 GMT

Hello, friends, my name is Jacob Prasch and I have met a number of Mormons. I have attended the “Miracle of Mormonism” pageant in Manti, Utah where I met mainstream Mormons and I met fundamentalism Mormons ” polygamists, bigamists. I’ve met Mormons in Great Britain, I”ve met Mormons in Italy, I”ve met Mormons in Israel, an extension of Brigham Young University. I have talked to Mormon clergy. And I know how anxious Mormons are to see people convert to Mormonism, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as they call it. They”re anxious in their missionary zeal to establish new “stakes”, as you call them, new stakes and to see the beliefs of Mormonism extend and perpetuate.

When anyone comes to me trying to persuade me to believe in a religion, I always examine it carefully and prayerfully, and I look at it and I consider their claims with a fair and open mind. And Mormonism is no different. I considered your religion with a fair and open mind and I have actually investigated it. I have read, I”ve talked to Mormons, I”ve read what the Mormons have told me in light of the Judeo-Christian Bible, and in my interest to pursue the truth and to find out if the Church of Latter-day Saints is true, I”ve made some discoveries from a variety of sources including your own literature ” especially your own literature ” and as a result of this I have some serious questions.

I hope in listening to this you’ll be able to help me answer these questions. Just e-mail me at our ministry, my office, and I would love to hear from you. Or you can write me at either the American or British or Australian office, and I”ll be more than happy to get back to you. In fact I”ll be delighted to talk to you. Come on our website, send me an e-mail, answer these questions.

The person who directed you here is also interested in having these questions answered. We felt it”s right to give you as a Mormon the opportunity to answer for yourself.

Moriel Ministries Australia

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:06:09 GMT

HARPAZO: The Intra-Seal Rapture of the Church

by James Jacob Prasch

Copy-Edited by D. E. Isom

Reiew

Electronic version is now available as an Ebook and is available at Amazon for $9.99.

Australia’s books are still in printing but you can pre-order by calling Marg at Tel: 61 (03) 5633 2300

The New Galatians

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:04:19 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

Jeremiah 31:31 & the Epistle to the Galatians – You Foolish Galatians, Who Betwitched You? A Crisis in Messianic Judaism?

A Time Will Come When I Will Make A New Covenant With The House Of Israel And The House Of Judah, Not Like The Covenant I Made With Their Fathers (Jeremiah 31:31).

We see the stage being set with current Middle East events for the prophetic fulfilment of Zecheriah 12 & 13 , for the Great Tribulation (“The Time of Jacob’s Trouble” in Jeremiah 30), the dawn of The Anti Christ, and the Return of Jesus. At the same time we see the fulfilment of the prophetic predictions of Paul in Romans 11, with the increases in Jews being saved and a rediscovery by many Evangelicals of the Hebrew origins of The Christian Faith.

Concerning this rediscovery, Non Jewish Christians are warned by God’s Word in Romans 11 not to boast against Israel, the natural branches, just as Jewish believers are warned not to berate non Jews who believe (Ruth 2: 15, Acts 15:13-19). In The Messiah we are ‘One New Man’ where cultural differences between the natural Jewish and in-grafted non-Jewish branches, like the socio-economic differences between bond servant and free, or the biological and emotional differences between male and female, constitute no spiritual difference; we all have one salvation, One Saviour, one promise, one bible, One Spirit, and one eternal destiny (Galatians 3:28). So now bond servants are free in The Lord and the free are now The Lord’s bond servants. The wife in Christ is now co-heir with the husband (1 Peter 3:7), and believing Gentiles are co heirs with Israel (Ephesians 2:11-14).

As we always note, according to Jeremiah 31:31 , The New Covenant was made with Israel and The Jews, not the church. The church is the spiritual continuation of Israel of the faithful remnant of Israel into which believing non Jews are in-grafted , but not the replacement of literal Israel. Believing non Jews are grafted in while unbelieving Jews rejecting Yeshua as their Messiah have been cut off from their own Olive Tree, but are grafted in again by receiving Him (Romans 11: 17-24). Our readers know these things.

But as we see the prophecies of Zecheriah, Jeremiah, The Olivet Discourse, Daniel and Revelation and the eschatological (end times) prophetic material in the Epistles , coming into fulfilment, we see a confusion and a deception of which God is not author.

In The past we have published article warning against the errors of replacement theology, and of Calvinistic covenant theology (which denigrates The New Covenant by falsely teaching that God only made one covenant with Adam and one with Abraham, and further states that Israel is now the church). We have warned about Post Millenialism (if Satan is bound, when did the 1,000 years begin and more importantly who keeps letting him go?) which when mixed with the charismania of latter day reign/Joel’s Army- Manifest Sons hyper Pentecostalism yields the deceptions of The Vinyard Movement and the over realised eschatology of Kingdom Now Theology. Coming from this we have warned of the Christian anti Semitism of The Identity Movement , and the Christian anti Zionism of Rick Godwin, Bryn Joners, and the pro Arafat Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem who preached against Israel recently in the late David Watson’s St. Michael Le Belfry in York (now predictably a swamp of Alpha course ecumenical deception, Toronto lunacy etc.). We have warned against the de-Jewishisation of Jesus by the Elim Movement in its ‘Jesus Christ had no Jewish blood’ article by George Canty published in Elim’s tabloid (like St. Michael Bat in Le Belfry, Elim from bogus gold teeth to promotions of apostate money preachers remains a quagmire of deception, still trying to revive the failed Toronto Experience at its conference featuring John Arnott). Again our readers, and other biblically knowledgeable and discerning Christians know these things.

On the other extreme, we have joined David Brickner, Tuvya Zaretsky & Jews For Jesus, and John Ross &Christian Witness to Israel, and Dr Arnold Fruchtenbaum and Ariel, and others involved in seeing Jewish souls saved in warning agauinst ministries to the Jews that with hold Christ. We appreciate Arnold Fruchtembaum’s recent letter stating that the actions of Ebenezer Fund are not biblical or of God, and as scandal yet again haunts The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, its new leader, Malcom Hedding produced a tape teaching that Jesus never came to die but that Israel would simply be Born Again without Him going to the cross. Jesus on the contrary Himself said concerning His death and resurrection “For This Purpose I Have Come” (in order to fulfil Isaiah 53, Daniel 9 etc. to make salvation possible), and Romans 6 makes it clear that regeneration unto salvation is impossible without His death. Malcom Hedding , (like the ICEJ founder Jan Willem Van der Hoven) is a complete and unmitigated heretic. As Jeremiah 31:31 states, The New Covenant was made with Israel, and dual covenant beliefs claiming Jews can be saved apart from The New Covenant are a lie of Satan. Those not bringing Israel The New Covenant have a mere social and political gospel which from the view point of scripture is no gospel at all.

The New Dilemma

Now however, we have a new threat to the purposes of God for Israel and The Jews. Replacementists, anti zionists, and anti semites and the Identity Movement inspired Ruckmanites (Aho , Dillen, Howard & Buester) have a new weapon against Jewish believers retaining their God given identity as Jews – and ironically, that weapon is provided by a combination certain Jewish believers and judaised Gentiles from the extreme axis of the messianic movement.

The nomianism (soft legalism) of hyper messianic extremists we have warned against in articles such as ‘Satan’s Seduction Of The Hebrew Roots Movement”, and “Why I Do Not Accept The Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research”. The latter was written as a compliment to Andrew Gould’s article addressing the precarious and unsubstantiated claims of Messrs Bivin and Blizzard of the gospels bering originally in Hebrew, which were supported by the late Rabbinic scholar David Flusser and Roman Catholic writer Joseph Francovic) . No manuscript evidence exists for these speculations, the linguistic arguments are convoluted and faulty, and the one historic reference from the time of Hegisippus in the post apostolic/early patristic era of Matthew’s gospel being originally in Hebrew, if true, could simply have been the Hebrew dialect of Aramaic.

There is a misguided element in the Gentile church , who understandably disgusted with what they see as the distorted Christianity of the contemporary church in the age of ecumenism, Toronto, money preachers and higher criticism – in reaction desire to return to the source of the Christian faith, which is biblically and historically a primordial Jewish faith. Unfortunately, they arrive at the abrupt conclusion that anything Messianic must be right, when in fact there is as much lunacy of every description in the various strands of the Messianic Movement as there a

re in any other component of The Body of Christ.

One popular expression we have witnessed of this is the use of David Stern’s ‘Jewish New Testament’ and his ‘Complete Jewish Bible’ (as if there were any other kind). While at one time we did recommend Mr Stern’s book “Restoring The Jewishness of The Gospel”, Mr Stern’s book ‘Messianic Manifesto’ calling for a “Messianic Sanhedrin to issue chalakik (legal rabinic Jewish)decisions for Jewish believers is too ludicrous a proposition to deserve serious comment. While fine as a reference book , Mr Stern’s Jewish New Testament is one of the worst paraphrases from the original Greek I have ever seen. His mistranslation of Ephesians 5 is so absurd that the Jehovahas Witnesses wouldn’t go that far in their highly distorted so called ‘New World Translation’. Yet too many sincere, yet na ¯ve Christians assume “Oh , if it is the Jewish New Testament it must be the uncorrupted original one”, not knowing the translation is badly corrupted.

There are similar reactions among many Southern Baptist and other groups, who in reaction to the avalanche of error in the church revert to Reformed theology, complete with its errors of cessationism and hyper Calvinism, (and sometimes replacementism) because they see it as the diametric opposite of ecumenism and charismania. Thus instead of correcting an error with truth, one error is redressed by another one of the opposite extreme. This same warped and unbiblical reasoning happens when people react against the errors of supercessionism (Replacement theology) with hyper Messianic extremism.

In the last few years, hyper Messianic extremism has reached new heights of erroneous belief with the deity of Yeshua even being rejected in some cases. From crazy conferences lifting up ‘Jewishness’ instead of ‘Jesus-ness’ is misplaced and displaces the proper emphasis scripture says we are to have. Jewish believers do not conferences , (usually run by biblically ignorant kooks), telling them how to be Jewish. Jews know how to be Jewish just as Mexicans know how to be Mexican or Koreans know how to be Korean. They need discipleship and biblical exposition telling them how to be followers of their Messiah Yeshua, the same as any other believer.

No one argues with voluntary Jewish observances. They are optional as a matter of personal choice and culture (Roman 14: 4-5, Colossians 2:16-18). Their can be an advantage in observance of Jewish customs a an evangelistic strategy in reaching Jews (1 Corinthians 9: 20) and no place are people called to abandon their culture upon becoming believers in Jesus, but on the contrary are told not to forfeit their identity (1 Corinthians 7:18). Moreover, Jewish ritual fulfilled in Christ is used repeatedly in The New Testament as an illustration of doctrine (1 Corinthians 5:7-8, Hebrews 9: 1-22) and in accordance with biblical and apostolic tradition these observances remain a biblical way to re-enforce and illustrate our understanding of New Testament doctrine. It was the post apostolic and post biblical patristic tradition of the Church Fathers such as the anti semitic John Chrysostom who first opposed such things. The New Testament however never does.

Indeed, as Paul wrote, “all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful”. A Jewish berliever eating pork, while lawful, may not be helpful to his or her testimony in reaching Jews being told by rabbis that believing Jews have abandoned being Jewish. Pork or shellfish are now ‘kosher’ but may hinder to one’s testimony, just as taking The Lord’s Supper with wine could damage one’s testimony in a for instance a Celtic culture where alcohol abuse is so prolific a problem. But when these observances become compulsory (eg. for membership in a Messianic Congregation), or are seen as a means of sanctification in and of themselves one goes back under the law Christ came to free us from. Those finding something inherently wrong in non kosher foods the bible tells us are “weak in faith”.

If it is folly to hold conferences telling Jews how to be Jews, it is more ridiculous telling non Jews how to be Jews. Yet, now we see gentiles being brought under the law. There is a messianic group in South Africa urging gentile adult males to undergo ritual Jewish circumcision. Some judaised gentiles such as Israel Hawkes dress like ultra orthodox rabbis , and have begun a highly schismatic belief of cultic proportions believing that it is wrong to call Yeshua Jesus or God anything other than YHWH.

Indeed, what our translations usually call LORD is actually YHWH in the original Hebrew Text, but The New Testament manuscripts translating the spoken Aramaic term Mar, which would have been used by Jesus) employ the term kurios (Lord) repeatedly. If the New Testament has no problem calling YHWH Lord, why should we?

Satan’s first efforts to seduce the church were not to paganise it, (that came later with some of the Church Fathers and after Constantine with the papacy), as we see in The New Testament , his first efforts to seduce the Church were to Judaise it.

The Roman Catholic priesthood, Calvinistic Covenant theology, Amillenial Calvinistic Reconstructionism , the Roman Catholic Mass, and The Seventh Day adventists are all examples of a Judaised Christendom. So now are the hyper Messianic Extremists.

This error, a virtual throw back to the Book of Galatians, is being used to fuel the anti messianic rhetoric of the replacementist we have warned against in our article “Watchmen Who Are Not Watchmen” (still available on our web site).

In the past it has been easy to refute replacementists, especially the Ruckmanites. Ruckmanites are people who follow the beliefs of Peter Ruckman, combining debunked Gail Riplinger in support of the extreme KJV Only position with White Supremacist Identity Movement beliefs). Some of these are often willing to lie to achieve their ends in spreading anti Jewish neo nazi propaganda within the church (things about “Jews having different DNA than other people”, and ‘Jewish conspiracies to take over the Christian church’ , and outlandishly “Jews believing only they can interpret the bible, because of having different DNA).

As Rick Godwin and Bryn Jones (both advocates of the Toronto deception) launched a tide of Christian anti zionism among Restorationists extreme charismatics, Ruckmanites like Aho , Buester, Howard and Dillen influenced by the racist and anti Semitic ‘Balaam’s Ass’ web site, where Identity Movement beliefs are repackaged as supposedly “Christian discernment” wage a relentless tirade against Messianic Jews, but the bigoted source of their propaganda and their general biblical ignorance means that they have never been a very serious challenge to God’s purposes for the Church in relation to Israel. When biblically and logically refuted , they take bible passages out of context (as Satan did in Matthew 4) and turn them into clich ©s to hide under. When anyone points to New Testament teachings about believing Jews as the natural branches and the practical advantages of being the people of the covenants and having the oracles of God (Romans 3:1), they respond against the existence of Messianic Jews in the same way as Christian feminists arguing for the ordination of women pastors twisting the same verse out of context. That verse is inevitable Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, neither male nor f

emale”.

Do men have babies? Did the institution of slavery not exist in the age of the first century church? The temporal differences all remain, the text in its context is talking about spiritual differences disappearing in Christ. To say Jews no longer exist within the Body of Christ is to say that women don’t either, or that Paul was wrong in giving instructions to Christian slaves (1 Corinthians 7:21-22) because there weren’t any!

The new tide of heresy among hyper messianic extremists encompassing everything from denial of the deity of Yeshua to financial scandal is providing the Israeli Press and anti Messianic Orthodox Jewish Activists in the Jewish community, and radical replacementists and Christian anti semites , (if that is not a contradiction in terms) in the Christian community with new ammunition that is easy to exploit in the discrediting of the doctrinally sound mainstream of Jewish belief, Jewish evangelism, and a biblical understanding of the prophetic purposes of God concerning Israel and the Jews.

A recent article in the November issue of ISRAEL TODAY featured an article about Messianic Jews debating the deity of Yeshua. It is unfortunate this reached the secular media, but it has. A subsequent article in KIVUN, a Hebrew language messianic periodical carried an article by Udi Tzofef quoting various Israeli messianic leaders saying they do not view Yeshua as God in the the same way as traditional Christian theology but as ‘The Son of God’ and as the Messianic Redeemer. Some espoused what amounts to the ancient heresy of ‘Ebionism’ held by the Ebionites – calling Jesus a uniquely inspired man but not God Himself. This caused a backlash with ‘ISRAEL TODAY’ carrying a follow up piece suggesting that those messianic leaders now backtracking are doing so because they are threatened economically with withdrawal of financial support from abroad.

For some time one congregation in Jerusalem has tolerated Ebionites as members and while its leader in Israel uses abusive language such as “the small of the gentiles”(an odour he cannot find awfully fowl given that the wife and mother of his children is one of them) and has made statements about “the whole gentile church going to hell”. It is for sure he does not speak that way ion his fundraising trips to churches in the USA. This congregation combines the influences of the late Moishe Ben Meir, (a graduate of Moody Bible Institute who effectively rejected some of the writings of Paul), and influences from the Church of Christ, a sect holding to baptismal regeneration in a form of sacramentalism usually known as “Campbellite”.

Among those quoted as rejecting the deity of Yeshua are Uri Markus of the Nehemiah Trust, which helps needy Israeli believers. While the aim of Nehemiah Fund is itself noble, Moriel sadly and regrettably cannot any longer sanction the support of any ministry under the direction of one no longer upholding the fundamental biblical truth of the deity of Yeshua.

Others quoted as rejecting the deity of Yeshua are Joseph Shulam , Hannah Weiss and Dodo Tel Tsur (Mr Shulam was quoted as saying “those believing Jesus is God have lost their search for faith”). Hanna Weiss and Joseph Shulam claim that their views were misconstrued and misreported out of context and that they do not reject the deity of The Lord, but merely do not express it in accordance with the terminology of the Councils or Creeds of The Gentile Church. There is nothing in scripture mandating that one must accept the creeds of the church or define biblical truths in language and terms alien to the New Testament itself and to the original First Century Jewish Church. If Mr Shulam and Hanna Weiss do indeed uphold the deity of Yeshua, but simply reject helenistic explanations of it, Mr Shulam and Hanna Weiss stand vindicated and publications misrepresenting their beliefs should apologetically retract these damaging misquotations and contextual distortions. Others such as Mr Markus unfortunately defended and reiterate their rejection of The Lord’s deity. It is clear however that while most Israeli Messianic Jews believe in the deity of Yeshua , there does exist a neo-Ebionite minority who do not.

Even more bizarre has been judaised gentiles such as Joseph B. Good rejecting the trinity. Peter Michas (whose nonsense was dismissed by eminent apologeticist Dr Ron Rhodes ) not only denies the eternal person-hood of Jesus within the Triune Godhead, but has concocted outlandish teachings such as Jesus and the two thieves being nailed to a tree growing out of the ground, and the Garden of Eden not being in Mesopotamia as Genesis says, but in Jerusalem apparently borrowed from a weird caballistic oddity in mystical Judaism.

Predictably, the most extreme elements of the Messianic Movement have been among my fellow Charismatics & Pentecostals. Dan Juster, leader of The Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC) sadly endorsed the ecumenical Promise Keepers fad and has himself become the victim of hyper charismatic chicanery of the most cruel kind following the tragic death of his son in a terrible fire. The young boy’s remains were kept on artificial life support as Mr Juster was receiving phone calls on his mobile telephone telling him that God was going to raise the boy from the dead. After the life support was shut don he was urged not to bury the corpse. Indeed God will raise his son on the last day and indeed God could have raised him at this death if God so willed, but it was not God’s purpose. What Brother Juster mistook to be prophetic words from The Lord was the mere clairvoyance of hyper charismatic false prophets and deceivers who played on the emotional vulnerability of a bereaved family. Once leaders of a movement have no discernment, there is little prospect for the movement attaining the better purposes of God. We have been warning for some time that if Cardinal Jean Marie Lustigere of Paris (an ethnic Jew) becomes a future pope, hyper messianic extremists will rejoice that the individual in that anti christ papal office is “a Jewish believer”.

Conclusion

It is absolutely amazing to see the same Ebionite heresy with which Satan attempted to destroy the first Messianic Movement in the early centuries of the church making a come back today as God once again turns His grace back towards His ancient people Israel.

It is also amazing to see the same nomianism and legalism with which Satan tried to use hyper messianic extremists in Galatia to subvert the gospel in the First Century Church now resurfacing to subvert it in the Twenty First Century Church. Once the domain of Seventh Day Adventists, this unworkable striving to live under two covenants has now permeated most of the charismatic branch of the Messianic Movement. While representing only a minority of Jewish believers, these highly vocal neo Galatians have appointed themselves spokesmen for all Jewish believers and in peddling their nonsense have forgotten the message of Romans 3: 17-23.

It is furthermore amazing to see Satan raising up the same anti messianic arrogance warned against in Romans 11:18 in the early church appearing again today.

It is additionally amazing to see the vitriolic anti Semitic rhetoric masquerading as Christian doctrine which abounded in the early church in the malicious pulpit propaganda of John Chrysostom (and reiterated through the centuries by popes and Luther alike) now coming from the mouths of Satan’s latter day messengers the Ruckmanites.

Last of all, just as Jewish believers like Paul withstood this confusion of the deception of messianic extremism on one hand and Christian anti Semitism and Replacementism on the other in the Early Church, The Lord has once more raised up Jewish believers from Arnold Fruchtenbaum to Sta

n Telchin to Louis Goldberg – providing a scriptural and balanced response to these twin errors Satan has retrieved from early church history and stirred up again. Of One Thing We May Rest Assure – God Did Not Allow Satan To Succeed Back Then In Ancient Galatia And The Same God Will Not Allow Him To Succeed Now!

Moriel UK

Fri, 15 May 2015 13:02:36 GMT

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Egypt, Babylon and the Palm of God

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:55:51 GMT

By James Jacob Prasch

Introduction

We have spoken a number of times concerning things that teach about the Last Days. There are a number of time periods in Israel’s history, outlined in the Bible, that prefigure what will happen in the Last Days.

In watching news reports about the riots on the Temple Mount recently, I was reminded of one of the things that convinces me that we are in the Last Days. Specifically, there is much arguing over the propriety of custody of the Temple Mount.

I learned yesterday that a major American university in Massachusetts has banned their evangelical students’ fellowship. It has been banned from the campus as a hate group because of their belief that homosexuality is wrong. Although this is under appeal, it sets a national precedent. If you believe what the Bible says about unnatural sex, the Bible becomes hate literature and you become a hate group, and the First Amendment does not protect inciting hatred. This also convinces me that it is the Last Days.

When I look at the apostasy in the church €“ the people on their way to ecumenical unity, Pensacola and other similar demonic deceptions €“ all of these things point to the Last Days.

I, of course, live in England, and I see what’s happening: how people are having a single currency shoved down their throats even when they don’t want it, how they’re going into a federal, non-democratic Europe €“ entailing not just the loss of national sovereignty but also the loss of democracy €“ the decisions made by bureaucrats behind closed doors whom you did not vote for and cannot believe in. These things are being forced on people, yet they are sitting back and taking it. Of course, parliamentary democracy in its modern sense was born out of the influences of biblical Christianity, and now that Christianity has been abandoned in Europe, all the democracies that Christianity helped give rise to will likewise be abandoned.

Persecution of the church is already looming in America; if you don’t agree with homosexuality, you are a bigot, and it becomes the equivalent of a hate crime to speak against such things.

Other Examples of “Last Days”

The last days of the 1st Century, before the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, is one of the things that teaches about the end. The last days of Samaria in 720 BC is another thing that teaches about the End. However, we are now looking at about 585 BC, the last days of Judah before the Babylonian Captivity. Above all else in the Old Testament this teaches about the end. It is evident in the New Testament where it talks about eschatology €“ especially in the teaching of Jesus about the Last Days €“ that the themes from the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel about the Babylonian Captivity are being recycled. The destruction of the Temple talked about by Jesus in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 comes straight out of Jeremiah. Jesus warns repeatedly about false prophets and this theme is also prominent in the Major Prophets. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon” in the book of Revelation (Rev 14:8; 18:2) (comes straight out of Isaiah and Jeremiah. (Isa 21:9; Jer 51:8)

The same things that happened in the last days of Judah, when Jeremiah’s message was rejected, will happen in the Last Days full-stop, both to the Jews and to the church; it will be repeated. Remember that a Judeo-Christian perspective of prophecy regards it as cyclical.

Let us begin to understand this: What will happen to faithful churches and the faithful remnant in the Last Days? What should we expect? There are various teachings that could explain some of this; for example, the Maccabees. However, we’re looking at it now from the point of view of the Babylonian Captivity. In Jeremiah chapter 40, the Captivity is underway. Nebuchadnezzar invades Jerusalem four times. What you see happening right now, with the interfaith movement, the ecumenical movement, and the New Agemovement, is about the Babylonian Captivity.

During the Middle Ages, Martin Luther came to realize there had been a Babylonian Captivity of the church under the medieval papacy. He understood the spiritual character of Babylon, this marriage of the political system of the world to a corrupt religious system : this was the “Holy Roman Empire”, which was neither holy nor Roman. This will happen again; we can see the Captivity coming. There are people everywhere who believe in having one “apostle” over a city, which is an ancient error begun by Ignatius of Antioch that is called “monoepiscopacy”. That is how the papacy began to evolve; it is an ancient deception that is making its comeback. The problem, of course, is that most of my fellow Pentecostals and Charismatics are too ignorant to realize that these are things that have happened in the past which will result in the same thing that happened in the past: a Babylonian Captivity of the church.

The Babylonian Captivity

Let us begin in chapter 40 of Jeremiah:

“Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah from the LORD, after Nebuzaradan, captain of the bodyguard, had released him from Ramah, when he had taken him bound in chains from among the exiles of Jerusalem and Judah who were exiled to Babylon. Now the captain of the guard had taken Jeremiah and said to him, ‘The LORD your God promised this calamity against this place, and the LORD has brought it on it and done just as He promised, because you people sinned against the LORD and did not listen to His voice. Therefore this thing has happened to you. But now, behold, I am freeing you today from the chains which are on your hands. If you would prefer to come with me to Babylon, come along, and I will look after you. But if you would prefer not to come to Babylon, never mind – look, the whole land is before you. Go wherever it seems good and right for you to go.’ As Jeremiah was still not going back, he said, ‘Go on back, then, to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, whom the king of Babylon has appointed over the cities of Judah, and stay with him among the people. Or else go anywhere it seems right for you to go.’ And the captain of the guard gave him a ration and let him go.

“Then Jeremiah went to Mizpah, to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, and stayed with him among the people who were left in the land. Now all the commanders of the forces that were in the field, they and their men, heard that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah the son of Ahikam over the land, and that he had put him in charge of the men, women and children, those of the poorest of the land who had not been exiled to Babylon.

“‘Now as for me, behold, I am going to stay at Mizpah to stand for you before the Chaldeans who come to us. But as for you, gather in wine and summer fruit and oil, and put them in your storage vessels, and live in your cities that you have taken over. Likewise also, all the Jews who are in Moab and among the sons of Amon and in Edom, who were in the other countries, heard that the king of Babylon had left a remnant for Judah, and that he had appointed over them Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan. And all the Jews returned from all the places to which they had been driven away, and came to the land of Judah, to Gedaliah at Mizpah, and gathered their wine and summer fruit in great abundance.

“Now, Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces that were in the field came to Gedaliah at Mizpah, and said to him, ‘Are you well aware that Baalis the king of the sons of Amo

n has sent Ishmael the son of Nethaniah to take your life?’ But Gedaliah the son of Ahikam did not believe them.

“Then Johanan the son of Kareah spoke secretly to Gedaliah at Mizpah, saying, ‘Let me go and kill Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and not a man will know. Why should he take your life so that all of the Jews who are gathered to you would be scattered, and the remnant of Judah perish?’ But Gedaliah the son of Ahikam said to Johanan the son of Kareah, ‘Do not do this thing, for you are telling a lie about Ishmael.

“Now it came about in the seventh month that Ishmael the son of Nethaniah the son of Elishama of the royal family and one of the chief officials of the king, along with ten men, came to Mizpah to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam. While they were eating bread together they were in Mizpah. Ishmael the son of Nethaniah and the ten men who were with him arose and struck down Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan with the sword, and put to death the one the king of Babylon had appointed over the land.

“Ishmael also struck down all of the Jews that were with him, that is, with Gedaliah at Mizpah, and the Chaldeans who were found there, the men of war. Now it happened on the next day of the killing of Gedaliah, when no one knew about it, that eighty men came from Shechem of Shiloh where the ark had formerly been, and from Samaria with their beards shaved, their clothes torn, and their bodies gashed, having grain offerings and incense in their hands to bring to the house of the LORD. Then Ishmael the son of Nethaniah went out from Mizpah to meet them, weeping as he went. And it came about as he came that he said to them, ‘Come to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam!’

“Yet it happened that as soon as they entered the city, Ishmael the son of Nethaniah and the men that were with him slaughtered them and cast them into the cistern.”

The faithful remnant of the last days of Judah faced what the faithful remnant of the Last Days of the church will face. They had three choices: Egypt, a figure of the world; Babylon, a figure of false religion; or the palm of God.

Trying to Get Along

Yet for the sake of trying to keep peace, Gedaliah tries to tell people to honor the king of Babylon. “Look, we have to go along with the system; we don’t want to be deported too. We don’t want to find ourselves re-scattered. We don’t want to be taken away; we want to keep what we have, so we have to agree to pay homage; go along with the system.” This is very much what happened in the 1st Century. The reason the early Christians got themselves into trouble was not what they believed, but their refusal to pay homage to the Emperor, who at that time had become the equivalent of the king of Babylon. The mystery religions of pagan Babylon were now in Rome, in the pantheon, and the Emperor as the pontiff was the head of it. What the king of Babylon was in Jeremiah’s day, the Emperor was in the 1st Century. It was not what they believed, but what they did not believe that got them into trouble. “You can believe what you want, as long as you go along with the program.” We will find this mindset increasing in the Last Days, even among the faithful remnant. We will have visible leaders who will try to compromise with Babylon, and they will give you what seem to be pastoral reasons: “I’m trying to protect you.” “I’m trying to secure what we have, to preserve what remains.” Even among the faithful remnant, expect a concerted effort to bring you into line with the status quo. They will come with very persuasive and very logical arguments along that line.

God will judge such people and their motives; they won’t survive either. Gedaliah was even warned to stop what he was doing, that he was going to get himself killed; but he refused to listen. Do not think for one moment that you can make some kind of peace with the king of Babylon. Do not think that there can be any accommodation or cessation of hostilities. We cannot “get along” with the king of Babylon.

They were invited to come to Babylon; that was their first choice. Is your church going to join the ecumenical movement? Is your denomination going to join the World Council of Churches? The False Prophet will eventually gain control over this and use it to support the Antichrist. That’s the first choice; expect it to happen in the Last Days. You will find people who will try to rationalize and gloss over the issues €“ “Well, maybe I don’t agree with them, and I understand that we’re the faithful remnant, but we have to try to get along with them.” We will find this being said; but ultimately, there is nothing in that but death. Notice that not only did Gedaliah die, but those of the poor and simple who followed him died with him. Down that road lies death; there is no peace with Babylon.

More than that, Babylon cannot be changed. Let’s look at Jeremiah 51:49 Babylon is under judgment in verse 49; Babylon is to fall for the slain of Israel. In verse 60 Jeremiah writes on a scroll of the calamities that will come on Babylon. In verse 24, it says that God will repay Babylon for what Babylon has done. But in verse 6 Jeremiah is saying, “Flee from the midst of Babylon; each of you save his life.” In other words, ‘Get out of there!’ Get out of ecumenical denominations; God’s purpose is to destroy them.

In verse 9, we find that there was attempted healing applied to Babylon, but she was not healed.

We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed;

Forsake her and let us each go to his own country,

For her judgment has reached to heaven

And towers up to the very skies.

Babylon cannot be healed. It has not changed from the time of the Tower of Babel to the Babylonian Empire to what you see in the book of Revelation; it cannot change. One of today’s myths is this: The Roman Catholic Church has changed since the second Vatican Council. Well, the second Vatican Council documents all affirm the Council of Trent. You have two kinds of doctrine in the Roman Catholic church: proxima fadi and di fadi. A proxima fadi doctrine can be changed; the pagan mass can be changed from Latin to English. A di fadidoctrine cannot be changed; the mass itself cannot be changed, nor can purgatory or any doctrine like it. The Roman Catholic church admits this.

Jer 5:19 says that all of mankind is stupid, devoid of knowledge. People are stupid; Jeremiah uses very strong terms. Throughout his book, he says things that would sound crude if we were to say them. He uses two different words for human stupidity, and neither one of them is pleasant. Look at Jeremiah chapter 10:8:

“But they are altogether stupid and foolish in their discipline of delusion.”

One of the words he uses for “stupid” means a perversion of logic to justify what is known to be wrong. People know that certain things are wrong, but they pervert their logic in order to ease their conscience. When Jeremiah says they are stupid, he doesn’t mean they are congenitally stupid, that they are slow learners or have a birth defect, he means that they willfully pervert their logic. This is exactly what we see happening today; people who should know better, even theologians like J. I. Packer, are perverting their logic. And what is the purpose of it? To make a deal with Babylon. But those who follow Gedaliah will wind up like Gedaliah.

The first offer to be made, then, is an invitation to go to Babylon. But let us continue

Going to the World

Jeremiah 41:16

“Then Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces that were with him took from Mizpah all the remnant of the people who had recovered from Ishmael the son of Nethaniah after he had struck down Gedaliah the son of Ahikam; that is, the men who were soldiers, the women, the children, and the eunuchs whom he had brought back to Gibeon.”

Johanan did not hate Gedaliah; he simply tried to warn him to stop being so na ¯ve, or he would go to destruction and bring the people with him. Expect the Johanans who say that to be ignored, just as they ignore the Jeremiahs until it is too late. Just as they found out that Jeremiah was right, so they also found out that Johanan was right. Ultimately, however, what is left is what’s pure. There is a sifting process in motion here; the deception comes, but even the deception that comes from Babylon is part of the sifting process. The Lord only wants those who are really, really right.

Let us look at what happens: Johanan gathers them, and in verse 17 he brings them back from Gibeon.

“And they went and stayed in Geruth Kimham, which is next to Bethlehem, in order to proceed into Egypt because of the Chaldeans, for they were afraid of them since Ishmael the son of Nethaniah had struck down Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, whom the king of Babylon had appointed over the land.”

They go to Geruth Kimham, which is next to Bethlehem. We must understand why they did that. By this time the throne of David had been lost. There was no longer a living descendant of David on the throne. Their longing was for the house of David to be restored, which they began to see in Messianic terms. The whole concept of the Messiah, while it was always there, really begins to develop and evolve after the Captivity. They knew about the Messiah, but it really began to crystallize and clarify after the Captivity, that He would restore this lineage of David. God had promised the Jews that there would always be a descendant of David on the throne of David. Now either Jesus is spiritually on the throne of David, and will one day rule from Jerusalem on the throne of David, or God has broken His promise, which Scripture tells us He cannot do.

Geruth Kimham means “the lodge of pining”. It was situated next to Bethlehem, which was the city of David, where the house of David had originated. So they are pining the loss of the lineage of David, and longing for it to be restored. That is why they go to Geruth Kimham. What you will find in the Last Days among the remnant is this: they will go to Geruth Kimham. They will reach such a state of despair that their only aspiration is the return of Jesus. They realize that nothing will ever make it the way it used to be; nothing will restore Christianity to what it had historically been. Nothing except the return of Christ. The church becomes a lodge of pining, where the only hope we have to hold onto is the promise of Jesus’ coming. We will see this desperation.

However, in the midst of that desperation, the pressures of practical reality begin to set in. So, not wanting to go to Babylon €“ that didn’t work, and the ones who tried it are dead €“ the next temptation is to go to Egypt, which, as we know from Jeremiah 30:31 and many other places in Scripture, is really going to the world for help. In the beginning, Egypt is Egypt and Babylon is Babylon. Nobody at this point expected that Babylon would also conquer Egypt. Ultimately, the Antichrist gets practically all of it. There were some Jews who found refuge in Edom, and it’s interesting to see in Daniel that that area seems to escape some of what the Antichrist will be able to do. The area of Petra, it would appear from Daniel, provides some refuge. For some reason, it will not be under Antichrist’s domain to the same degree. This is very mysterious and I don’t fully understand it. However, there were Jews going there; that is where some of the faithful remnant went when Jerusalem was under siege. It would appear from Isaiah chapter 16 and others that there is some future eschatological significance to this area around Petra in Edom.

Let’s look more closely at Geruth Kimham: Under this pressure, there comes a pressure to go to the world for help. The same thing happens with Hezekiah in Isaiah 30 and 31; it becomes an issue again. They fear the Babylonians, so they go to the world. The world, its governments, its legal systems, etc. €“ it will not protect us in the Last Days. The only reason that any government has at any time protected the rights of Christians is because of Christian influence in that government. Paul instructed the churches to pray for those in authority, even the pagan Emperor, that they might lead peaceable lives. Paul himself appealed to Caesar €“ we can do that, but ultimately Caesar too, who is another figure of Antichrist, turned against the Early Church. The world offers nothing, but things become so desperate that many people will want to go to the world.

Seeking Counsel

Let’s continue in chapter 42 verse 1:

“Then all the commanders of the forces, Johanan son of Kareah, Jezaniah son of Hoshaiah, and all the people, both small and great, approached and said to Jeremiah the prophet, ‘Please let our petition come before you, and pray for us to the LORD your God – that is for all this remnant, because we are left but a few out of many, as your own eyes now see us – that the LORD your God would tell us the way in which we should walk and the thing that we should do.’ Then Jeremiah the prophet said to them, ‘I have heard you. Behold, I am going to pray to the LORD your God in accordance with your words. And it will come about that the whole message which the LORD will answer you, I will tell you. I will not keep back a word from you.’ Then they said to Jeremiah, ‘May the LORD be a true and faithful Witness against us if we do not act in accordance with the whole message which the LORD your God will send you to us. Whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, we will listen to the voice of the LORD our God, to Whom we are sending you, that it may go well with us when we listen to the voice of the LORD our God.'”

The faithful remnant knows that Jeremiah is a true prophet and that all the other guys to whom the kings were listening were liars and deceivers who are now either dead or in Babylon. The faithful church will ask, “What should we do, Lord? We’re in this situation in Geruth Kimham, we’re longing for Jesus to come back, for His kingdom €“ it’s the only hope we have. But on one hand, we can’t go to Babylon €“ look what happened to those who tried it €“ and on the other hand, the only alternative seems to be Egypt. What should we do? We’ll listen to You; we’ll do whatever the Lord says.” Well, unfortunately, during times of pressure there are Christians who will say, “We will do whatever the Lord says, as long as it’s in agreement with what we want.”

Jeremiah 42:7 €¦

“Now it came about at the end of ten days that the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah.”

Notice that; Jeremiah went and sought the Lord, and the Lord answered ten days later. Be careful of people who think they can go around prophesying and giving words and hearing from the Lord this, this, this and that; that is clairvoyance and soothsaying, not prophecy. True prophets don’t go around claiming that kind of revelation all the time. What they do is point people to the Scripture, and if they do get a revelation, it’s always based on Scripture. Jeremiah seeks God. Now, ten days is a significant figure in the Bible. Forty and ten are the two numbers most associated in Scripture with testing. If you recall, in Revelation 2:10 Jesus says that the church of Smyrna will be persecuted and put in prison for ten days, and this seems to correspond to the ten major periods of persecution under the emperors.

Jeremiah 42:8 €¦

“Then he called for Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces that were with him, and for all the people, both small and great, and said, ‘Thus says the LORD God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your petition before Him: “If you will indeed stay in this land, then I will build you up and not tear you down; I will plant you and not uproot you, for I will relent concerning the calamity I have inflicted on you. Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you are now fearing. Do not be afraid of him,’ declares the LORD, ‘for I am with you to save you and deliver you from his hand. I will also show you compassion, so that he will have compassion on you and restore you to your own soil. But if you are going to say, “We will not stay in this land,” so as not to listen to the voice of the LORD your God, saying, “No, but we will go to the land of Egypt, where we shall not see war or hear the sound of a trumpet or hunger for bread, and we will stay there,” in that case, listen to the word of the LORD, O remnant of Judah: Thus says the LORD God of hosts, the God of Israel: if you really set your mind to go into Egypt and reside there, it will come about that the sword which you are afraid of will overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine about which you are anxious will follow closely after you there in Egypt, and you will die there. So all the men who set their minds to go to Egypt and reside there will die of the sword, of famine, and of pestilence, and they will have no survivors or refugees from the calamity that I am going to bring on them.

“For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, as My anger and wrath have been poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so My anger and wrath will be poured out on you when you enter Egypt, and you will become a curse, an object of horror, an imprecation and a reproach, and you will see this place no more.’ The LORD has spoken to you, O remnant of Judah: Do not go into Egypt. You should clearly understand that this day I have testified against you, for you have only deceived yourselves. For it is you who sent me to the LORD your God, saying, ‘Pray for us to the LORD our God, and whatever the LORD our God says, tell us so we will do it.’ So I have told you today, but you have not obeyed the LORD your God, even in whatever He has sent me to tell you. Therefore you should now clearly understand that you will die by the sword, by famine and by pestilence in the place where you wish to go to reside.”‘

Where Should We Go?

Well, they went to Egypt, they went to the world. Let’s understand this: they did not go to the world because they were seeking the carnal pleasures of Egypt. They went to the world in a time of great duress €“ fear of the king of Babylon. When the Antichrist comes, he is going to invoke a tremendous fear. Those dwelling at Geruth Kimham will have that choice: Do we go into Babylon? Do we go into Egypt? Do we go into the interfaith movement, or do we simply go to the world? Or do we place ourselves in the hand of God, remain where we are, and trust Him?

That was the choice they had, and that will be the choice faced by the faithful remnant in the Last Days: Egypt, Babylon, or the palm of God. Those who went to Babylon found death. Those who went to Egypt were pursued by the sword and by famine in the world. There is no safety in Egypt. But God says, “Don’t be afraid of the king of Babylon. If you will stay in this land I will build you up and not tear you down. I will plant you and not uproot you.” God’s promise is always good, though it is very difficult to see and believe that when all around you is calamity: the sword, the famine, the king of Babylon whose power seems invincible. Yet that will be the choice and there were, and will again be, people even in the good churches who make the wrong choice. However, once more, they will have been warned.

Let’s go a bit further: in chapter 43:1-3 it says this:

“But it came about that as soon as Jeremiah, whom the LORD their God had sent, had finished telling all the people the words of the LORD their God..

€“ that is, all the words €“

€¦that Azariah the son of Hoshaiah and Johanan the son of Kareah and all the arrogant men said to Jeremiah, “You are telling a lie. The LORD our God has not sent you to say, ‘You are not to enter Egypt to reside there’. But Baruch the son of Neriah is inciting you against us to give us over into the hand of the Chaldeans so they may put us to death or exile in Babylon.”‘

First the backslidden nation and its leaders and false prophets rejected Jeremiah. But the heat gets so intense in the last days of Judah that even in the faithful remnant there is a rejection of Jeremiah, orchestrated by the arrogant among them. It would almost seem to be a contradiction in terms; how could there be people in the faithful remnant who are arrogant?

You know what? If you want to see a big mess today, look at discernment ministries. The very ones who realize the nature of deception, the ones who realize what Pensacola andToronto are, and what the ecumenical movement is, the very ones who know that these things are wrong €“ the very ones who understand the demonic nature of faith-prosperitypreaching, the ones who understand what’s wrong €“ within the ranks of those organizations you will find good and bad; and yes, you will find people who are downright arrogant.

Jewel van der Merwe is under tremendous attack at the moment; Bill Randles and myself were attacked in England by someone else in a discernment ministry, simply because we are not Cessationists. Yes, arrogant men. There are some people who were very strongly influenced by Neo-Nazis in Australia; they are vehemently anti-Semitic and are constantly worsening. They are attacking Arnold Fruchtenbaum and myself, to name a few.

Even among the remnant, look out. The fact that someone realizes the nature of deception does not necessarily mean they are one of us. They may be in our circle, but there are people in our circle who have their own agenda. Remember: Satan wants to infiltrate the remnant. The mainstream Judah was gone; he already had them. It was only the remnant who presented a problem for the king of Babylon. The same is true today; Satan isn’t worried about what is going on inside First Assemblies of God €“ he has those people deceived already. Now he wants to get people into your church. And he’ll do it.

Just because someone realizes what’s wrong, they are not automatically right. There are good people in the discernment movement and there are also bad ones. In fact, I would say that there are as many bad ones as there are good ones. This is the world; they will attack anyone who truly tries to protect the sheep. They will attack the Jeremiahs, and they will attack the Baruchs. I’ve seen Dave Hunt attacked by people in discernment ministries; in fact, Dave Hunt is under attack rig

ht now by them. I have seen Bill Randles attacked, Philip Powell attacked, Jewel van der Merwe attacked, yours truly attacked, and by whom? By people outside of discernment circles? No €“ by people who are supposedly in discernment ministry. These people are quite arrogant.

Realize something: a good, faithful church will attract refugees from all the bad churches around it. Some of those people who come to your church will be utterly sincere; however, there are other people who, again, have an agenda. They are against any kind of authority unless it’s their own, against any kind of commitment unless it’s on their terms, and they will latch onto a good church simply because it becomes a platform for them from which they wish to exercise their own interests. Once these good churches no longer accommodate what they want, they will turn against those churches. This happens everywhere; simply because someone is against what you are against does not guarantee that they are for what you are for. Real deception will increase in the Last Days. Just as they attacked Jeremiah and Baruch in the last days of Judah, so they are attacking Dave Hunt and Jewel van der Merwe today. It happened then, and it’s happening now.

Babylon Overthrows Egypt

But let’s look further, at Jeremiah 43:5-7:

“But Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces took the entire remnant of Judah which had returned from the nations to which they had been driven away in order to reside in the land of Judah. The men, the women, the children, the king’s daughters – every person whom Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the grandson of Shaphan, together with Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch the son of Neriah, and entered the land of Egypt. For they did not obey the voice of the LORD, and went as far as Tahpanhes.”

Johanan seemed to be a good guy earlier. The deception in the Last Days becomes like intrigue. Early on, one of George Washington’s best generals in fighting the American Revolutionary War against the British was Benedict Arnold, who later became one of the British Army’s best generals against George Washington.

Jeremiah 43:8-10:

“In Tahpanhes of Egypt, the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah: “Take large stones in your hands and hide them in the mortar of the brick terrace which is at the entrance of Pharaoh’s palace at Tahpanhes in the sight of some of the Jews, and say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD God of Israel: “Behold, I am going to send Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, My servant, and I am going to set his throne right over these stones that I have hidden, and he will spread his canopy over them.”‘

Even Egypt came under the dominion of the king of Babylon. Look at Revelation18:3, which says:

“For the nations have drunk of the wine of the passion of her immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed acts of immorality with her.”

The kings of the earth; the merchants of the earth have become rich by the wealth of her sensuality. In the Last Days, the prosperity of the nations will depend on their relationship to Babylon. Revelation 13:11:

“The beast came up out of the earth and spoke, and he had two horns like a ram and like a dragon.”

The earth is Israel; the other beast comes up out of the sea, which is the nations. Jeremiah 44:30:

“Thus says the LORD: “Behold, I am going to give over Pharaoh Hophrah, king of Egypt, into the hand of his enemies, into the hand of those who seek his life, just as I gave over Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, who was his enemy and seeking his life.””

If God gave the Hebrew king over to the king of Babylon, how much more quickly will He give the pagan king over? If the king of Babylon can get control of so much of the church, what is there to stop him from gaining control of the world? Nothing. It is a false security; a deadly false security.

Going to Egypt

But let us continue: Jeremiah 44:12-14:

“I will take away the remnant of Judah that have set their minds on entering the land of Egypt to reside there, and they will all meet their end in the land of Egypt. They will fall by the sword and meet their end by famine; both small and great will die by the sword and famine, and become a curse, an object of horror, an imprecation and a reproach. And I will punish those who live in the land of Egypt just as I did those in Jerusalem, with the sword and with famine. So there will be no refugees or survivors for the remnant of Judah who have entered the land of Egypt to reside there, and then to return to the land of Judah to which they are longing to return to live. For none will return except a few refugees.”

In the Bible going to Egypt is always a picture of backsliding. When somebody backslides and goes into the world, the Holy Spirit convicts them and tries to bring them back. In the Last Days, however, it’s different; very few of those who go into the world in the Last Days will make it back out. Going back to Egypt is dangerous at any time, but in the Last Days your chances of getting back to the Lord once you leave Him are very slim. How many people, for instance, are cured of AIDS? The odds are similar; very few will make it.

They had a choice: Babylon was death and Egypt was death; the only right choice was to stay in the palm of God.

The Queen of Heaven

In Jeremiah 44:19, this is going to be a big issue in the Last Days. I will tell you what the penultimate deception is going to be, the ultimate being the Antichrist. Do you notice in the book of Revelation that when the Antichrist is spoken of, there is always the figure of a woman in the background? She is the penultimate; he is the ultimate. And here is what it will be €¦

“And,” said the women, “when we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and were pouring out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands that we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?”

Verse 24 €¦

“Then Jeremiah said to all the people, including all the women, “Hear the word of the LORD, all Judah who are in the land of Egypt: thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel – ‘As for you and your wives, you have spoken with your mouths and fulfilled it with your hands, saying, “We will certainly perform our vows that we have vowed to burn sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven, and pour out libations to her.” Go ahead and confirm your vows, and certainly perform your vows. Nevertheless hear the word of the LORD: All Judah who are living in the land of Egypt, behold, I have sworn by My great Name,’ says the LORD, ‘Never again shall My name be invoked by the mouth of any man of Judah in the land of Egypt, saying, “As the LORD lives”. Behold, I am watching over them for harm, not for good, and all the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt will meet their end by the sword and by famine until they are completely gone. And those who escape the sword will return out of the land of Egypt unto the land of Judah, once more few in number. Then all the remnant of Judah who have gone to the land of Egypt to reside there will know whose word will stand; theirs or Mine. And this will be

the sign to you,’ declares the LORD: ‘I am going to punish you in this place so that you will know that My words will surely stand against you for harm.””

The Queen of Heaven. The title of Pope John Paul II’s book is Totos Tuam Maria, “All To You, Mary“. He prays to Mary. The veneration of Mary is Biblically a form of worship. The Catholic Church doesn’t call it worship, but something next to worship called “hyperdulia”. What they don’t know is this: the Hebrew word for idolatry is “avodah zarah” €“ “to serve”. By using the terms they use they essentially admit that they are practicing idolatry, though they don’t see it that way. However, if they knew what they were doing it would be if a person bows down, that is an act of worship. They take it further, showering her with flowers and fancy garments, bowing down to her and singing Ave Maria. Mary worship will grow; she is the pseudo-Christianization expressed culturally in many other cult deities. “Great is Diana of Ephesus” – remember what happened at Ephesus in the book of Acts? (Acts 19) Paul spoke against the worship of Diana and it caused a riot. When you warn against the veneration of Mary you will get an angry and violent response. She is the current expression of the Queen of Heaven to whom they will be sacrificing cakes. What began with Fatima and Lourdes, Medjugorje, Guadalupe €“ all over the world €“ will continue to grow. Mount Carmel, in Israel, has been the site of many supposed apparitions of Mary. It also happens to be the very same place where Ashtaroth, a female goddess, was worshiped in the Bible. Catholics are going to get more and more into it and you will find Protestants going along with it. Already we have Evangelical bishops marching in Walsingham, England, in a procession to Mary. This will continue to grow worse.

God says, “I will not give My glory to another.”(Isa 42:8) God says, “There is one intercessor between God and man, Jesus the Righteous.” (1 John 2:1) Their worship of Mary contradicts these things, among others. Understand that the thing they call “Mary” is not truly Mary; they only think it is she. Similarly, the Mormons call themselves the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints €“ but their Jesus Christ is not the one of the Bible. Their Jesus is the half-brother of Satan. The Mary of the Catholic Church is not the Mary of Scripture. I’m not speaking against the real Mary €“ she was the greatest woman who ever lived. She was the mother of the Messiah but she herself proclaimed her own need of a Savior in the Magnificat, in Luke 2:47: “My. . . spirit rejoices in God my Savior“. Just as in denouncing the Mormon “Jesus” I am not denouncing the real Jesus, so in denouncing the Catholic Mary I am not denouncing the real Mary. What they have comes straight from Babylon €“ the pagan Queen of Heaven. As the Mary-worship grows, you will find Evangelical Protestants going along with it in increasing numbers. That will be the next trend.

What is the Bottom Line?

How does this end? You have Egypt, you have Babylon, or you have the palm of God. The obvious is, don’t go to Babylon and don’t think you can make peace with it. Don’t go to Egypt, because if you do your chances of getting back are very slim. Don’t think you can preserve your faith in the world; it won’t work, just as the men from Judah who resided in Egypt could no longer call on the name of the Lord. Both ways end in death.

Expect people in discernment ministries to display arrogance; they will attack their own brethren in those circles in the way that Baruch and Jeremiah were attacked in their time. You will find people who had been leaders against the deception, just as Johanan was, turning against others in the circle. Why? Because they are going into the world. Expect it to happen.

Expect the veneration of Mary to begin growing very much larger; not only among the Catholics and the Greek Orthodox, but even among so-called Protestants, even Evangelical Protestants. Already we have Charismatic Catholics who pray in tongues to Mary. Expect this to happen.

But what’s the bottom line in all of this? What about those of us who want to stay in Geruth Kimham, who are longing for Jesus to come back? What does God say to those who will not go to Egypt, who will not go to Babylon, and who will not burn incense to the Queen of Heaven?

“If you will indeed stay in this land, I will build you up and not tear you down. I will plant you and not uproot you.”

Finally, God tells Jeremiah this in chapter 45:5 €¦

“”But you, are you seeking great things for yourself? Do not seek them, for behold, I am going to bring disaster on all flesh,” declares the LORD. “But I will give your life to you as booty in all the places where you may go.””

Don’t expect much out of this place. I’ve always tried to raise my children with the following philosophy: Plan for the future, but don’t plan on it.

Don’t seek great things for yourself. If God gives you a great ministry, praise the Lord! But don’t seek that €“ seek to survive. If God gives you some material success, don’t let it go to your head €“ use it for God’s glory, but don’t seek it and don’t pursue it. Pursue survival. How quickly can a stock market crash? How quickly can the Middle East explode into a thermonuclear holocaust? How quickly can a handful of Islamic terrorists with biological weapons wipe out half of Sydney or New York, thinking of it as jihad?

No, my friends; we will have our lives as our booty. “If you will indeed stay in this land, then I will build you up,” says God. “Don’t be afraid of the king of Babylon, for I am with you to save you and to deliver you from his hand.” That is His promise.

Moriel Recommended

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:54:24 GMT

Moriel Ministries United Kingdom

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:51:07 GMT

HARPAZO: The Intra-Seal Rapture of the Church

by James Jacob Prasch

Copy-Edited by D. E. Isom

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Moriel Ministries Quarterly Newsletter

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:48:41 GMT

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Chink in the Armor

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:47:35 GMT

Introduction

Greetings dear friends in the wonderful name of Jesus.

When the Holy Spirit gives us more than one account of something in the Bible it’s important and, just as you have four gospel accounts of the same story, in the Old Testament you have Kings and Chronicles, two aspects of the same thing, plus whatever prophet or prophets prophesied during that time. You will find three and four aspects of the same episodes in the Old Testament just as you have in the Gospels. When the Holy Spirit gives us more than one record of something, it’s important. Turn with me please to 2 Chronicles 18 . This is the parallel account to what we find in 1 Kings 22 , but we’re reading now from 2 Chronicles 18:1-19:3 . Starting in verse 1 €¦

Now Jehoshaphat had great riches and honor and allied himself by marriage with Ahab.

The Danger of Nepotism

Look out for nepotism. Point 1: It is a point of vulnerability. Family loyalties get in the way of doctrinal loyalties. When you see people allied by marriage, or this pastor is that pastor’s cousin, or his sister is married to the pastor — when you see family connections, look out. Anything God intends for good the devil will use for evil. God created families, He created the family structure. But you know what? Jesus said He who loves family more than Me is not worthy of Me. (Math 10:37).

My wife’s family are Holocaust survivors, Jews from Eastern Europe who survived the Holocaust. When my wife came to believe that Jesus, Yeshua, was the Jewish Messiah, she was told, “Now you’re one of them. They killed us, now you’ve become one of them.” Family loyalties. The devil will use something God intends for good for evil if he can.

Nepotism is the first thing that can predispose a good Christian to compromise with things that he knows are wrong. But let’s continue reading this sorry episode about Jehoshaphat. His name in Hebrew is Yahowshaphat (yeh-ho-shaw-fawt) €“ “Jehovah shall be judge” or “shall judge”.

Jehoshaphat & Ahab

And in 2 Chronicles 18:2-7 €¦

Some years later he went down to visit Ahab at Samaria. And Ahab slaughtered many sheep and oxen for him and the people who were with him, and induced him to go up against Ramoth-gilead. Ahab king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat king of Judah, “Will you go with me against Ramoth-gilead?” And he said to him, “I am as you are, and my people as your people, and we will be with you in the battle.”

Moreover, Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, “Please inquire first for the word of the Lord.” Then the king of Israel assembled the prophets, four hundred men, and said to them, “Shall we go against Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall I refrain?” And they said, “Go up, for God will give it into the hand of the king.” But Jehoshaphat said, “Is there not yet a prophet of the Lord here that we may inquire of him?” The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me but always evil. He is Micaiah, son of Imla.” But Jehoshaphat said, “Let not the king say so.”

I hate him, he never prophesies good. False prophets will always tell people what they want to hear. True prophets will only tell people what they need to hear.

2 Chronicles 18:8-19:3 €¦

Then the king of Israel called an officer and said, “Bring quickly Micaiah, Imla”s son.” Now the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah were sitting each on his throne, arrayed in their robes, and they were sitting at the threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria; and all the prophets were prophesying before them. Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah made horns of iron for himself and said, “Thus says the Lord, “With these you shall gore the Arameans until they are consumed.”” All the prophets were prophesying thus, saying, “Go up to Ramoth-gilead and succeed, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.”

Then the messenger who went to summon Micaiah spoke to him saying, “Behold, the words of the prophets are uniformly favorable to the king. So please let your word be like one of them and speak favorably.” But Micaiah said, “As the Lord lives, what my God says, that I will speak.”

When he came to the king, the king said to him, “Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall I refrain?” He said, “Go up and succeed, for they will be given into your hand.” Then the king said to him, “How many times must I adjure you to speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?” So he said,

“I saw all Israel

Scattered on the mountains,

Like sheep which have no shepherd;

And the Lord said,

“These have no master.

Let each of them return to his house in peace.””

Then the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?”

Micaiah said, “Therefore, hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing on His right and on His left. The Lord said, “Who will entice Ahab king of Israel to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?” And one said this while another said that. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord and said, “I will entice him.” And the Lord said to him, “How?” He said, “I will go and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” Then He said, “You are to entice him and prevail also. Go and do so.” Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of these your prophets, for the Lord has proclaimed disaster against you.”

Then Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah came near and struck Micaiah on the cheek and said, “How did the Spirit of the Lord pass from me to speak to you?” Micaiah said, “Behold, you will see on that day when you enter an inner room to hide yourself.” Then the king of Israel said, “Take Micaiah and return him to Amon the governor of the city and to Joash the king”s son; and say, “Thus says the king, “Put this man in prison and feed him sparingly with bread and water until I return safely.””” Micaiah said, “If you indeed return safely, the Lord has not spoken by me.” And he said, “Listen, all you people.” So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah went up against Ramoth-gilead. The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “I will disguise myself and go into battle, but you put on your robes.”

So the king of Israel disguised himself, and they went into battle. Now the king of Aram had commanded the captains of his chariots, saying, “Do not fight with small or great, but with the king of Israel alone.” So when the captains of the chariots saw Jehoshaphat, they said, “It is the king of Israel,” and they turned aside to fight against him. But Jehoshaphat cried out, and the Lord helped him, and God diverted them from him. When the captains of the chariots saw that it was not the king of Israel, they turned back from pursuing him. A certain man drew his bow at random and struck the king of Israel in a joint of the armor. So he said to the driver of the chariot, “Turn around and take me out of the fight, for I am severely wounded.” The battle raged that day, and the king of Israel propped himself up in his chariot in front of the Arameans until the evening; and at sunset he died.

Then Jehoshaphat the king of Judah returned in safety to his house in Jerusalem. Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him and said to King Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord and so bring wrath on yourself from the Lord? But there is some good in you, for you have removed the Asheroth from the land and you have set your heart to seek God.”

When Good Leaders Become Involved with Bad Ones

King Jehoshaphat was a good man, a righteous man. Every king of Israel was a backslider. Most of the kings of Judah were backslidden, but Jehoshaphat was a good king, in fact a very good king. What happens when good leaders become involved with bad ones? I do not believe in guilt by association. The Bible says nothing about guilt by association. But guilt by cooperation? Guilt by participation? Guilt by identification? When a good man will get on a platform or on a television program with somebody who is heretical, with someone who is apostate or immoral, you are implicitly endorsing that person’s ministry and allowing yourself to be identified with him.

I was watching some TBN just yesterday. I couldn’t believe how horrific some of it was. When an unsaved person watches that, they think that being born again is a con job. They’ve made “born again” a household joke all over the world, at least for people all over the developed world. It’s getting more and more difficult to share Jesus, to preach the Gospel, to give the message of salvation to the lost because of what Satan has done with “Christian” TV, so-called. We’d be better off with no Christian TV than 99% of what we have today and I’m convinced of that fact. Anything that powerful Satan had to corrupt, and he’s done it. Unsaved people see the idiot box and they think we’re all idiots. They think we’re all con artists. If good men go on there they become identified with the bad men. When Jehoshaphat rode in the chariot of Ahab, he became confused with Ahab.

But let’s look at the passage from the beginning. Again the Holy Spirit has given us more than one account. In the I Kings version at the end of chapter 21 Ahab repented. (1King 21:27-29). Bad kings are great for repenting, but every time they repent they come back twice as notorious as they had been. If Benny Hinn repents again I’m going to duck for cover. Every time that man repents he comes back worse. What does this mean? Why? He is married to Jezebel. Jezebel is a biblical metaphor for the spirit of false religion. What does the Lord Jesus say of Jezebel? Revelation 2:20 …

“But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.

It is a Satanic seduction by false religion of which the woman Jezebel is typologically the personification. In other words, she represents spiritual seduction; that’s what Jesus said. You become like the people you’re married to.

I’m married to a Jewish neurotic. I think it’s the family history of escaping Pogroms. My wife checks the gas jets three times before we go to sleep, and she checks every window in the house at least twice. We live in England. Here it is, late at night, she put the lights out and she’ll say to me in Hebrew “Yacov, did you check the window in the kitchen?” “Yes, Pavia I checked the window in the kitchen, good night.” Did I check that window in the kitchen? Now, she’s making me nuts. I take a flashlight down three flights of stairs, the kids sleep on the second floor €“ we sleep on the top and the kitchen is on the ground floor €“ so there I go late at night.

You become like the people you’re married to. Well, Ahab is married to Jezebel, the seductress who beguiled Israel into pagan demonic belief. What happens next? Jehoshaphat is a good king but there’s a family connection: Nepotism.

I know two Jewish mission boards that were undermined, basically destroyed by nepotism — two mission boards to the Jews became family enterprises. I’ve known churches where family loyalties destroyed the fellowship. If somebody disagreed it was like going against the family. Dangerous thing. Anything God intends for good the devil will use for evil and nepotism predisposes us to certain things.

The Enemy Within

But going back to 2 Chronicles 18 here is the line you’ll always get €“ this is what Ahab will say. “We have a common enemy. My people are as your people, my God is as your God, we’re brothers. We have to have unity; we have to be united to overcome the opposition. Can’t you see, the abortion rate is going through the roof? Can’t you see homosexuality is influencing the schools and the media? Can’t you see Eastern religion and the cults are growing? We can’t afford to be divided. We have to stand together to save God’s land. We have to be united. We can’t go on bickering against each other. Oh, I know we’ve had our differences but we can’t afford that anymore. There’s a common enemy. My people are as your people; my God is as your God. After all we’re all born again Christians.” Sounds very convincing, sounds very logical. To a degree it even sounds initially biblical.

As I pointed out yesterday, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth and He is the Spirit of Holiness. There cannot be a unity of the Spirit where there is here

sy and immorality. Oh, we have a common enemy! An external enemy is easy to deal with; an internal enemy is something else. When Jesus warned about false prophets of the Last Days He was not primarily warning about the Moonies or the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons. I have no doubt that the proliferation of the cults is in itself of some prophetic significance, but those are not the false prophets He was mainly warning us about. He’s warning about those who would come into evangelical churches and try to seduce us. It is the internal enemies that are the most dangerous. Until we deal with the enemy in here we are not going to be in a position to deal with the one out there.

But you’ll always get the same story “Don’t be negative. Don’t be too critical. We have to unite. We have to stand together in face of the common threat.” And then as the family element comes in, look out.

Look how the king ingratiates himself. Ahab puts on a big party, a big splurge. He slaughters all these animals and he throws a big, big banquet. That’s what he does. These people know how to ingratiate themselves. People with an agenda know how to con and manipulate. They learn it from their wife, Jezebel.

Look at how many people have met John Paul II. The Vatican a few months ago issued a statement saying it was the one true Church. In Mexico in 1999 John Paul II told the Catholics to “rise up against the Protestants”, quote unquote. He makes no secret of his agenda. A man who says Mary co-redeemed us? A man who prays to the dead? Makes no secret of his agenda. Yet one evangelical after another will call him the “holy father” despite the fact that Jesus said, “call no man your father.” And they say, “Oh, the pope was so wonderful, so gracious. He’s such a kind man. How can you speak against him? I met him, he was so this, he was so that …” They know how to ingratiate themselves. What does Paul say about Lucifer? He comes as an angel of light. And so will his servants. They know how to ingratiate themselves, just like Merodach-Baladan came to seduce Hezekiah. (Isaiah 38:1-8) He brought him some presents. “I heard you were ill.” Oh, what a caring person. He was the king of Babylon, he had an agenda, but he was a manipulating con artist.

Well, king Jehoshaphat gets sucked in. There’s a family connection but then there are other connections, “Yeah, we have a common enemy. We can’t be negative. We shouldn’t be critical. We don’t want to be divisive.” The word “divisive” in Romans 16:17 is dichostasia (dee-khos-tas-ee) where you get the English word “dichotomy”. It says divisive people are the ones who leave the teaching of the New Testament, who depart from the doctrine of the Apostles.

I’m not divisive by warning about Benny Hinn or Kenneth Copeland. If the Benny Hinns and Kenneth Copelands have gone away from the teachings of the New Testament, they are the divisive ones by biblical definition. I haven’t departed from New Testament doctrine. If I did, please show me where, I want to repent of it. But these days it’s the one who upholds New Testament doctrine who becomes divisive. They make an idol out of this unity but it’s not the unity of the Spirit. Paul tells us in 1 Cor 11:19 there must be factions among you to prove which is true. That word for factions in Greek is hairesis (hah’-ee-res-is) where we get the word “heresy”. Heresy is meant to bring division. And so much of what’s being propagated in the Church today is purely heretical.

But let’s go further. Jehoshaphat gets sucked in but he has his doubts. He’s a good king and he is, to some degree, hearing from the Lord. Notice what they do at the banquet. One false prophet after another, 400 of them, come and put on a show and give positive words. False prophets will always tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear. They’ll always tickle your ears and be well paid for the privilege. They are con men. A true prophet was outnumbered 400 to 1.

Well, I’ll tell you what, for everybody telling the truth today in the prophetic there are “400 false prophets” in the body of Christ. What Jesus said would happen in the Last Days is happening. Very few are telling the truth, many are compromising with what they know is false, but very, very, very many are giving you a lot of hype and false doctrine.

Only one man stood up, Micaiah, but at the end of the day it was only his prophesy that mattered. You see in the days of Jeremiah and Baruch there were thousands of false prophets €“ thousands €“ but nobody has ever heard of them. At the end of the day everybody heard of Jeremiah. It is only Jeremiah who really speaks God’s word and who is going to matter. That’s the bottom line, the one prophet who tells the truth. So Jehoshaphat says, “Let me hear him.”

Now you have to understand the Hebrew language. There’s a connection between the name “Micaiah” €“ “he who is like unto Yahweh”, and “Jehoshaphat” €“ “Jehovah/Yahweh” In Hebrew there’s a root that shows etymological similitude. If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about it. It’s one of those things they teach you in theological cemetery, I mean seminary. There’s a kindred spirit of some sort here. Micaiah comes. Now notice what Micaiah says when they ask him. At first Micaiah says “Yeah, go ahead, God will give them into your hand.” He says the same things the false prophets say. God’s judgment comes in three phases on a backslidden people.

God First Stops Correcting

The first phase is “Yeah, go ahead.” He stops correcting. It is the son whom He loves that he corrects. (Heb 12:6) Why is it that faithful Christians have the most of what we call in Yiddish “suris” problems, trials, and difficulties? It’s because God has given the carnal Christian over to their own fleshly desires. He’s only trying to correct the faithful ones. That’s why faithful Christians have more problems than unfaithful ones. It’s only the son He loves whom He corrects. The others are backslidden, if they were ever saved to begin with. God stops correcting! Watch out when God stops correcting, when He gives them over. In Romans He gives people over to unnatural depravity, (Rom 1:24-25) then that happens to those who claim to be His people. It’s like the prophet Amos’ son Loammi–“they’re not my people anymore”. (Hosea 1:9) God gives them over. “Go ahead, do it” says Micaiah.

Now King Ahab knows this is not what God is saying. You see these wicked men, wicked leaders, know they’re crooked. It says in Timothy that they are both deceiving and being deceived. For they are deceived themselves but they also know their deceivers. (2 Titus 3:13) “Go ahead, do it”. Ahab knows it and says “That can’t be right”. Ahab knew it. So tell me, says Ahab, and Micaiah says, “I’ll tell you: I saw Israel scattered on the mountains like sheep which have no shepherd.”

Next God Removes Leadership

Now you have to understand the role of the kings of Israel as a shepherd. King David is the Old Testament shadow of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Jesus is the Good Shepherd in John 10. In Psalm 23 Yehovah ra’ah €“ “The Lord is my shepherd”. David is the Old Testament type or shadow of Jesus as King. How good a pastor (the word for “pastor” and “shepherd” is the same word in Hebrew and Greek), how good a pastor/shepherd somebody is in the Church is how much like Jesus they are. Peter tells us that in his epistle. 1 Peter 5;1-4)

How good a shepherd a pastor is depends on how much like Jesus he is. The Old Testament shadow of this is seen in how good a king was, and that was measured by how much like King David he was. That’s why you see kings in the book of Proverbs or kings in Chronicles compared to David. “He went after Me like his father David” or “You have not sought Me as your father David did”. David becomes the barometer of faithfulness because he’s the shadow of Christ as Shepherd. Here Micaiah says “These people, they don’t have any shepherd.” He’s telling the king, as far as God’s concerned, you’re not a real leader.

That is the second stage of God’s judgment on a backslidden people. He removes leadership and replaces them with pulpit politicians. He removes leaders, He replaces them with hirelings. He removes leaders, He lets them have theocrats — not shepherds. First phase of God’s judgment, He stops correcting — treats people just like the world, gives them over. Second stage of his judgment, he removes real leadership. People wind up with the leaders they deserve. That’s true of nations in the book of Daniel. He establishes kings and removes kings (Dn 2;21). It’s true in the political realm and it’s true in the Church. He removes leadership.

Finally God Sends Deception

But then comes the third phase of God’s judgment and that’s the frightening one. He sends a deception. Remember in Kings and Chronicles and in Samuel, one time David numbered the people €“ the Lord motivated him to do it €“ and another time it was the devil. Was it the Lord or was it the devil that motivated David to number the people? Well, it was actually God using the devil.

Turn with me please to 2 Thessalonians 2 where it speaks of the antichrist, the man of perdition. It’s speaking of the Last Days. It’s speaking in verse 3 of the apostasia, in Greek, the “falling away” that will come with the manifestation of the antichrist. But look what it says in verse 11 €¦

For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.

The Truth is the Word of God. Jesus is the Truth; He’s the Word, the Logos. If somebody doesn’t love the Truth of Scripture, they don’t love Jesus Christ. They can say all they want, have all the hallelujahs they want — if they don’t love the Truth of the Word of God they don’t love the Word of God Who is Jesus, the Incarnate Logos. If you don’t love the Bible you don’t love Jesus Christ as far as God’s concerned, that’s it. “If you love Me keep My commandments.” 9John 14:15) You don’t love Him if you don’t love His Word. And if people don’t love the Truth, they don’t love Jesus. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. (John 14:6) And if they don’t love Him it tells us why. It’s because, in some way, they are taking pleasure in wickedness. When you find so called Christians who don’t love the truth it’s because they are taking pleasure in wickedness. Therefore the Lord will send upon them a deluding influence that they may believe what is false.

How will the antichrist con people? He’s the ultimate judgment. God gives them over to his influence. If people can’t see through an obvious false prophet and false teacher like Benny Hinn €“ if you can’t see through Benny Hinn or Kenneth Copeland €“ what is going to happen when this stuff comes down? Therefore the Lord will send a deluding influence. In the book of Zechariah typologically the antichrist is called the “agent of God.” It’s a frightening prospect. It is a judgment.

Several years ago, in England where I live, I was frantically trying to stop the explosion of the things like the laughing and drunken revival from Toronto and Pensacola. I was trying to stop it but the Lord said “No, don’t. You’re not going to stop this.” You can only warn the elect. You can rescue those who are honestly deceived but you can’t stop it. Why? What you see today with the money preachers €“ the faith prosperity heretics, what you see with Toronto; what you see with the ecumenical movement €“ these things are not simply deceptions; they are judgments from God on a backslidden Church. It is God’s judgment on Laodicea. (Rev 3:14-22) The Lord will send a delusion that they may believe what is false. Remember that Laodicea is blind and it’s first problem is that it doesn’t know it’s Laodicea. The Lord will send a delusion. Judgment begins in the house of God. It will not begin on Freemasons it will not begin on false religions; it will not begin on corrupt businessmen on Wall Street or corrupt politicians €“ it begins in the house of God. Judgment will come on the Church before it comes on this nation, and it’s coming on this nation. For abortion alone it must come, but it will come on the Church first.

The Working of God’s Judgment

Phase 1, God stops correcting. If you can’t see through this, all the scandals with PTL and the rest of it–if you can’t see through it God will give you over to it. He’ll stop correcting.

Phase 2, He’ll remove real leadership. And he’s already done that in Great Britain. America is going the same way.

Phase 3, then He’ll send a delusion.

Notice what God tells these lying spirits “Go and prevail.” Go and succeed. Now when God sends a delusion look out. However He does nothing without revealing it to His servants, the prophets. (Amos 3:7) Micaiah knew it. Those who really love Jesus and read His Word will understand by the Spirit of God what is going on. When the Lord sends this kind of a judgment, those who are truly His will know it. Three stages of judgment and, my friends, my great fear €“ and in fact it’s no longer a fear it is past that €“ we’ve come into that third phase. God is certainly, certainly not correcting these people anymore. He’s given them over, treating them like the unsaved, and many of them are unsaved. He’s removing leadership, and thirdly He’s going to give them over.

Riding in Ahab’s Chariot

So there they go to battle now. Look at Jehoshaphat, a righteous king who should have known better. He was suspicious to begin with, he had a true word from a true prophet, and yet there he goes riding in Ahab’s chariot. Why did Ahab want him in the chariot? Why does TBN want to get people like Chuck Missler, Josh McDowell Greg Laurie on it? Why do they want to get good men, godly men on it? There are three reasons.

First, they’re trying to give themselves a credibility they can’t get otherwise. People then think, “Well, if so-and-so is on there and he’s a man of God it must be all right.” They’re trying to get an endorsement. They’re trying to give themselves a credibility that they couldn’t get on their own. “I know I’m no good but if I align myself with somebody who is good God will bless me.” That’s how they think. “If he’s in on it then God will have to bless us “cause he’s a good guy.”

Secondly, they’re looking for a fall guy. They’re looking for somebody to be left holding the bag when the ship sinks. “It”s his fault.” Ahab always has an agenda. But there goes Jehoshaphat! Even though the Lord warned him, he gets in that chariot. And what happens when he gets in that chariot?

Three, he becomes confused with Ahab. They think its Ahab. When you ride in Ahab’s chariot you become confused with Ahab, people confuse you with him. When people see good preachers on platforms at conferences and on television with heretics, you become confused with them.

I know very, very well that Chuck Missler, Greg Laurie, and Ray Comfort are men of God. I know that Josh McDowell s a man of God. I know what they believe. They believe largely what I believe. These are not bad men; these are good men like Jehoshaphat. But when they get on a platform or on the TV screen with bad men, people put them in the same category and my fear is they make themselves a target. Some people will tar them all with the same brush. Yet men like Chuck Missler, Ray Comfort, and Josh McDowell will have no part in heresy and hype-artistry. It is a disgrace how apostate money preachers misuse the names of godly men to give themselves credibility, even though the honest preachers do not share the mammon worship which the Word-Faith Prosperity disguise with Christian jargon. “Oh, he’s one of them.” And a young believer will see this. It gives heretics credibility, even though the good men know personally it’s wrong.

Now Jehoshaphat has made himself a target. He’s allowed himself to be confused with Ahab and now he’s a target and the arrows are flying. Ahab wants somebody to hold the bag, and I’m telling you that TBN and Hinnand that crowd €“ they are going to go the same way as the PTL club. And I tremble for the good brethren who have allowed themselves to be identified with that wickedness, but they’re going to be caught in the crossfire when it happens.

But let’s go further. Jehoshaphat calls out to the Lord. God intervenes. The Lord steps in and saves his neck. God will stand by right men. Right men can make bad mistakes. Godly men can make serious errors. Some of the greatest men in the Bible did some of the most foolish things. In my own life as a Christian I have done things that have been so, not just wrong, but stupid, I don’t know how I could have done it. I take no pleasure in admitting this, nonetheless it is true. But God is gracious. God saved Jehoshaphat’s neck the first time.

The Chink in the Armor

Let’s see what happens next. So they go after Ahab. Ahab is trying to be slick, trying to find the fall guy, but he didn’t take account of something. There was a chink in his armor. In Ephesians 6:13 we see what that armor is. The chink here is where the breastplate met the shoulder. The breastplate of “righteousness”. Sin finds people out €“ finds the chink in the armor.

I once saw a Roman legionnaire’s armor on display in Rome. It’s very big and the biggest is the breastplate. The breastplate of righteousness. When Paul spoke about the armor he used something that Jews would have understood because the armor is also in Isaiah, but it”s also something the Greeks and Romans would have understood well. The armor was there, the breastplate of righteousness. Ephesians 6:13 tells us we are to put it on so that you may stand firm. Ahab put on his armor but there was a chink in it and that arrow found it. He came into judgment and was destroyed. They didn’t get the victory over the Arameans. They didn’t get it. Look at what he says in 1 Kings 22:3 €¦

Now the king of Israel said to his servants, “Do you know that Ramoth-gilead belongs to us, and we are still doing nothing to take it out of the hand of the king of Aram?”

“We’ve got to get the victory over these unbelievers, over these pagans, over the homosexual lobby, over the pro abortion lobby, over the Moslems, over the Freemasons, over the Mormons, the Jehovah Witnesses. We’ve got to get the victory. We have to claim the land back for Christ. We’ve got to stand together.” That’s what they say. They will never get the victory over the enemy. Never! A false brother is not your ally. He is your liability. He’ll never win. God won’t use people like that. There’s a chink in their armor.

So what happens next? They lose the battle but a gracious and merciful God intervenes on Jehoshaphat’s behalf. Then in 2 Chronicles 19:2 €¦

Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him and said to King Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord and so bring wrath on yourself from the Lord?

Should you help the wicked? They hate the Lord. These money preachers hate the real Jesus Christ. They worship mammon. They may call their god “Jesus”, but their god is mammon. They call the sin of covetousness “faith”. They have a different god, a different “Jesus”. They hate the real Jesus. They don’t want a Jesus who says, “Pick up your cross and follow me” they want a “Jesus” who is going to give you another Mercedes. And they admit it. They’re false brethren. And when you ride in his chariot €“ you ride in his Mercedes, you get on his TV show €“ you’re going to get confused with him and make yourself a target, and nothing other than the intervention of the merciful God will save your neck. Why do you get involved with those who hate the Lord? Why are you on that idiot TV show? Why are you on that platform with these heretics? Can’

t you see you’ll be confused with them? Can’t you see that you’re going to give the impression, to the unbelievers that you agree with them?

The Danger of Not Listening

I only wish that Jehoshaphat, a good king, had listened. But we find out 2 Chronicles 20 that he didn’t. Verse 35 €¦

After this Jehoshaphat king of Judah allied himself with Ahaziah king of Israel.

He does it again €¦

He acted wickedly in so doing. So he allied himself with him to make ships to go to Tarshish, and they made the ships in Ezion-geber. Then Eliezer the son of Dodavahu of Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat saying, “Because you have allied yourself with Ahaziah, the Lord has destroyed your works.” So the ships were broken and could not go to Tarshish.

The second time, God’s judgment comes. The first time God rescues him and rebukes him. The second time, “Are you going to do it again?” And they do it again. They lose all they’ve built.

You see men of God, who built what God has blessed and used, put those things at risk for the folly of riding in Ahab’s chariot, for going on idiot TV. Why? Chuck Missler is a man of God. Greg Laurie is a man of God. Josh McDowell’s a man of God. Ray Comfort is a man of God. There are enough churches, enough people, and enough money in Calvary Chapels to make their own Christian TV channels. They don’t need to get involved with those people, and I say that in love. But it’s not just them. How can good men get involved with the Ecumenical Movement? How can you get involved with these people?

This is Hawaii €“ you see more of it on the mainland, but on the mainland in most Calvary Chapels nearly three out of four people are ex-Roman Catholics. How many people here are ex-Roman Catholics? Put your hands up. See these people? The Roman Catholic Church says, “You are going to hell because you left the one true church; because you no longer believe that salivation is by sacraments; because you no longer believe that you have to atone for your own sin in purgatory.” Yet major evangelical leaders €“ Chuck Colson, Pat Robertson, J. I. Packer, one after another €“ are lining up with the very “church” who”s cursing them, that is sending their families to hell? I’ve got a Catholic mother who trusts in a statue of Mary for her salvation instead of Jesus Christ. How can good men get involved with that? But then again, once God corrects them, how can they be involved? But they’re doing it.

The Overall Working of Judgment

Nepotism, family loyalty, friendship €“ “I’ve known him 20 years. My brother’s married to his sister” €“ all this predisposes you to it. Then they give you the line, “We have to be united. We have to stand together. We have a common enemy. There’s a common threat. We’re all brothers. We’re all born again, one Faith one Baptism. Let’s stand together. We can’t be negative, we can’t be critical, and we have to accept each other.” Why do you love those who hate the Lord? God warned Jehoshaphat. See, he knew those 400 false prophets were false. All these guys €“ the Kansas City Prophets and all these hype-artists €“ Rick Joyner, one after another €“ are proven false prophets by biblical definition. They are proven false prophets. They’re as false as the false prophets of any other cult. Jehoshaphat knew it. They give a big banquet, a big show, a big celebration praise, a big Pensacola Pepsi Cola Seven-Up, whatever it is this week. One after another, prophesying victory, but there is no victory. Now God’s judgment comes. He stops correcting, He removes real leadership, and He gives them over to it.

And they get angry with Micaiah they smack him. They say, “You’re the false prophet.” Bang. “Lock him up till I get back.” And Micaiah says, “No you’re not coming back, otherwise I’m a false prophet.”

Notice only a true prophet will prophesy something in the name of the Lord and say “hold me to it.” A Rick Joyner or a Gerald Coates will never do that. A Kim Clement will never do that. They hate the true prophet even though he’s right.

Then Jehoshaphat goes right out and steps into Ahab’s chariot. He becomes confused with Ahab and they begin shooting him. God is merciful, but then God rebukes. God corrects but he still doesn’t listen, he does it again. Then his ships are broken up and he never makes it to Tarshish.

Conclusion

What a tragedy when God has blessed and raised people up and given them something to do, then all they’ve built crumbles. They never reach the goal. They never make their appointed destiny. They never get to where God meant for them to go and do what He has for them to do. They lose it. When you ride in Ahab’s chariot, you become identified with Ahab. You’re in bed with him; he’s in bed with Jezebel. You’re in bed with the pope, the pope’s in bed with the Dali Lama. That’s what it comes to.

That’s the way it was, that’s the way it is, that’s the way it’s going to be.

The prayer of my heart is that the Jehoshaphats of our day, the godly men, men I know are good men, will get out of that chariot before they get shot. Get off that idiot TV box, get off that platform, don’t give Ahab a place in your church, don’t distribute that literature, don’t sell those books in your bookshop, do not love those who hate the Lord your God.

Jehoshaphat was a good man, a good man who made bad errors. And right before our eyes there are good men today making that same bad errors. May God in His mercy correct them and protect us. God bless you and thank you.

Moriel Ministries New Zealand

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:44:37 GMT

HARPAZO: The Intra-Seal Rapture of the Church

by James Jacob Prasch

Copy-Edited by D. E. Isom

Reiew

Electronic version is now available as an Ebook and is available at Amazon for $9.99.

Australia’s books are still in printing but you can pre-order by calling Marg at Tel: 61 (03) 5633 2300

Moriel Ministries Canada

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:40:32 GMT

Moriel Canada Urgent Ministry News & Information

Hi, welcome to Moriel Canada,

We are in the process of setting up the Canadian branch of the Ministry, so please be patient as this develops. We have at present an post office box, office and bank account if you were wanting to write to us (or support us) as we grow in our profile. Our email address is canadamoriel@gmail.com

There is also a temporary webpage where you can also leave a message or comments. Be sure to to “like” us if you have a Facebook profile
https://www.facebook.com/MorielCanada
Moriel Canada
4909 49 street
PO Box 1122
Athabasca
Alberta T9S 1A0
Canada

Tel 780 675 2333

Blessings in Yeshua

Steven Boot (Ztiv)
Administrator Moriel Canada

NEWS: Jacob Prasch is coming to Canada ! August 15th -17th Abbotsford, BC. Learn to Discern Conference. See http://www.ltdmin.com/ or contact ourselves for details.

Aug 18th – Riverside Calvary Chapel at Langley Meadows Community School (2244 Willoughby Way) Langley, BC

Moriel Canada Newsletter Sept 2013

Steve and Inger”s Biography

Was born in Portsmouth England, but having a Naval Father meant being raised across the U.K. and the world in various ports and bases including Singapore. The Lord , saved , me at age 16 by the witness of Jewish believers whilst working in a restaurant (The first time on hearing the gospel). Then through God’s supernatural intervention I ended up going to seminary at London Bible College, earning a degree in Theology where I co-led the campus Prayer for Israel group with Jacob Prasch. Ministered then in a number of short term projects, including Iceland and various other Scandinavian countries.

Met Inger, my wife, at a missions base in Norway 1992. Two weeks after our marriage we were pastoring amongst the Inuit (Eskimo) people”s in the Canadian Arctic. I Spent the next nine years at various mission posting across the Northwest Territories, ending up in the high Arctic close to the Alaskan Border near the North Pole. Then after a spell in the Canadian military post 9/11, returned to the pastoral ministry. I left the Anglican ministry due to a series of serious doctrinal and moral differences on a range of issues from not accepting infant baptism to my objecting to homosexual ordination. Inger, my wife, was raised in a Christian Home in Kristiansand, Norway. She follows in her father”s footsteps of ministering through music and Christian song.

Prayer Requests

Repeated Debate Challenge

Jacob Prasch wishes to repeat his challenge to publicly debate Anglican Stephen Sizer on Sizer’s contentions that Zionism is apartheid and that the modern state of Israel does not fulfill biblical prophecy. As an Anglican in a church ordaining homosexual clergy and with a Druid Arch Bishop of Canterbury now calling for Britain to integrate elements of Islamic Sharia, anti Zionists like Sizer in a church with a pro Islamic hierarchical agenda must be challenged.

We are compelled by the evidence to regard Sizer as hypocritical and biblically ignorant and would relish the opportunity to demonstrate this in public debate before a video camera in a properly moderated format.

It is also difficult for us not to additionally suspect Sizer of being a pseudo-academic fraud, but he at least deserves the opportunity to demonstrate otherwise in a public forum.

In view of the widespread persecution of Arab, Persian, Asian, and African Christians throughout the Moslem world it is nothing short of ludicrous that Sizer continually targets Israel as the perpetrator of injustice when Israel is the solitary country in The Middle East assuring the rights and security of its Christian population.

Our expectation is that Sizer will continue to run as usual. This however simply serves to underscore the indefensible implausibility of his pseudo-scholarly and pseudo-biblical antics.

Not Just a Children’s Story

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:40:01 GMT

Unfortunately this is such a wonderful story for little children, we relegate it to that. When my children were little in Israel I used to tell them this bedtime story at least once a week. They”d want to hear it again and again and they used to sing in Galilee, “David melech Yisra”el, chai chai v”kayam David melech Yisra”el, chai chai v”kayam“. They loved hearing it again and again. Yes, it is a wonderful bedtime story for little children.

I do not understand why there are even Christians who”ll read Harry Potter, story of the devil, instead of David and Goliath. There”s no such thing as Harry Potter and they try to defend Harry Potter by saying it teaches little children about things like coverage and integrity. Harry never existed, and if he did he”d never have any courage or integrity. But King David really did exist. I don”t need a fantasy or a fairy tale to teach little children about courage and integrity and faith, I”ve got a real story.

And so we teach it in Sunday School, the story of David and Goliath, to engender faith and courage. That is all true. Unfortunately that”s what we”ve made of it, a Sunday School story for little kids. It is that and it”s good for that, but there’s much more to it than that. Somehow most of the mainstream leaders of the church in evangelical Britain and elsewhere do not.

“How are we going to stop Goliath? He”s so aggressive, so powerful, so big, so well-armed, so malicious, so vicious, so hostile, how can we stop him? How can we stand the onslaught of homosexuality and lesbianism? It”s taking over the schools, we have to let them teach it to our children! How can we stop it? How can we withstand Islam? What can we do? Just look at them! Nobody will dare speak against them! Everyone”s afraid! The church is afraid! What can we do? What? Darwinism ” all biomedical information is predicated on it from the time you”re a little kid to the time you”re a Ph.D.! What can we do about it? What? How can we stop the invasion? What can we do? What? What?”

The question is not “what”, the question has never been “what”. “Here” is “what”. Find the soft spot, find the stone, learn how to shoot, and pick up his own sword. “What” to do is not the question ” we know what to do. The Word of God tells us want to do. “What to do” is not the question, the question, my dear brethren in Jesus, is not “what”, the question is “who”.

God bless.

Moriel Links to Resources

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:37:28 GMT

It’s very important that you clearly understand tha the inclusion of any link from anywhere within the Moriel Ministries web site does not necessarily imply our endorsement of that ministry, resource, or organization featured regarding anything that it does or teaches. The only endorsement that is worthwhile is that which is in alignment with biblical truth. It’s our position that we can agree or disagree with you, you can agree or disagree with us, but only so far as it agrees or disagrees with God’s Word.

Whilst recognizing the good fruit from these linked sites, we cannot vouch for their every belief. As with all things in this world, the onus is upon you to check out each site and to exercise spiritual discretion, testing everything (even us) against the Word of God.

Please don’t hesitate to direct all inquiries or reports of broken links to morielcarol@yahoo.com.

Moriel Japan

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:36:08 GMT

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categoriesæœªåˆ†é¡ | MorielDaisuke | datetime November 9, 2014 2:28 pm | |

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categoriesæœªåˆ†é¡ | MorielDaisuke | datetime August 31, 2014 1:59 pm | |

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Olongapo kids welcome us

JeanRose has a whole in her heart, identified in last year's medical mission. She is receiving treatment now, but her growth is clearly stunted.

JeanRose has a hole in her heart, identified in last year”s medical mission. She is receiving treatment now, but her growth is clearly stunted.

This year's dental check. Most of the kids have severe tooth decay.

This year”s dental check. Most of the kids have severe tooth decay. Moriel intends to arrange treatment for them.

Stuck for a night in Typhoon Glenda

65 Olongapo Kids at Jolly Bee!

65 Olongapo Kids have lunch at Jolly Bee!

categoriesæœªåˆ†é¡ | MorielGeoff | datetime July 19, 2014 2:58 am | |

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categoriesæœªåˆ†é¡ | MorielGeoff | datetime June 30, 2014 9:27 am | |

Be Alert Past Issues

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:32:22 GMT

The Commanders of Saul

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:30:58 GMT

They told us there was a revival and they told us to laugh. While the armies of the Philistines assembled to march against this nation they were laughing. I watched it on television news when in Southwark Cathedral, a place where Christians were martyred in aftermath of the Reformation by Queen Mary, lesbians and homosexuals had a televised gay and lesbian service for homosexual and lesbian clergy. And right across the river at Holy Trinity Brompton Nicki Gumbel and Sandy Millar had people on the floor laughing, rolling saying there was a revival going on. I watched it.

Defeated armies and a defeated church and aggressive Philistines and there”s nobody going to stop it. Not Purpose Driven , not Alpha , not Toronto , Pensacola , not Kansas City , none of them can stop if. They can do nothing ” they”re all proven losers led by proven hypocrites and cowards. They do not even have the Christian integrity to repent and admit they were wrong, that no revival cane and we’re in serious trouble. Instead they say the Muslims can be saved without Christ. Just ask Colin Chapman or Steve Chalke . And these men are respected and welcomed? The commanders of the army of Saul.

What can happen? What can anybody do? Notice King David came out of nowhere. He was not someone anyone ever expected. If this invasion can be stopped, those who God raises up to stop it will not be visible on the horizon.

Holy Spirit

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:28:13 GMT

But I have a second question. When I talk to my Jehovah’s Witness acquaintances who come to my door and who I”ve met over the years, that question is about the Holy Spirit. My Jehovah’s Witness friends tell me that the Holy Spirit is only a force or a power ” it”s God’s guiding force or power. Now in some way by analogy I can understand some of what they say.

The Bible attributes some things to the Holy Spirit which in biblical times can only have to do with personality. He sees, He feels, He hears. We can have a parabolic microphone that in some sense ” it’s inanimate, it”s not a person ” but it can hear. We can have sensory detectors. Although they”re creatures and have no personality, they can in some sense feel, picking up pulsations. And a camera, although it has no personality and it is not a person can in some sense see. And, I am told by my Jehovah’s Witness friends, that must be something like that; I expect that’s what they think. My question is this: Can you blaspheme a camera? Can you grieve a sensory detector? How can a machine, how can an inanimate force or power, how can something that is not a person with no personality, how can a non-person be blasphemed or grieved?

A sensory detector can detect pulsations, motion. You have ones that can detect heat using infrared technology, even subtle changes in heat. You have ones that can detect motion, you have ones that can detect changes in light patterns, changes in light refraction, you have machines that can do all those things. There are forces that can do things and pick things up. When you’re driving on the motorway they send out a microwave beam. Go through the speed trap, there”s a change in frequency. Yeah, it can pick things up; it”s a force that has the power to detect and communicate something. Now, a speeding motorist might curse at the speed trap, he might curse at a speed camera, he might denounce it, but the camera is not going to get offended. How can someone who can get offended, that can be grieved, that can be cursed against and blasphemed not be a person? And how can a person who can be blasphemed be anyone other than God?

The Greek word is “blasphemeo“; there”s other words for “curse”, but “blasphemeo“? Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is the one sin somebody can”t be forgiven of Jesus said. (Mt. 12:31) They”re telling me that it’s okay to commit murder and be forgiven, you can commit adultery and be forgiven, you can commit unspeakable things and be forgiven, but if you blaspheme a force or power that is not even a force or a person, which can’t be blasphemed anyway because it”s not a person, you can”t be forgiven. How can you blaspheme and grieve a non-person to the point you can”t even be forgiven for it? Can you please answer me that? You can only blaspheme God. If the Holy Spirit is not a person and He”s not God, how can you blaspheme Him?

I think it is a reasonable and a fair question. I’m only looking for a reasonable and a fair answer. Please tell me the answer. I”m not trying to attack you or mock you or belittle you, I’m trying to find the truth. Please explain to me how you can blaspheme somebody who”s other than God, how you can grieve someone who”s not a person or something that”s not a person. That is my second question.

Moriel de Latino America

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:26:27 GMT

Haga clic de arriba para leer los sermones.

– para los Cat ³licos Romanos

– para los testigos de Jehov ¡

– para los Mormones

– para los Hind ºes

– para los Judios

“De modo que si alguno est ¡ en Cristo, nueva criatura es: las cosas viejas pasaron; todas son hechas nuevas.” – 2 Corintios 5:17

Moriel Affiliates

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:25:13 GMT

Moriel Ministries is an international multi-faceted ministry of Jewish and non-Jewish regenerate believers one in Jesus the Messiah.

Check out the table below and see where there is an affiliate close to you in the world.

Genesis 4:5

More on the Horizon

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:22:34 GMT

Stephen Sizer , the little devil, justifies apartheid in the name of God. I refused to speak in South Africa when they had apartheid. You know our ministry runs orphanages in South Africa, yes? I know people who suffered under apartheid. What an insult to people who really suffered under apartheid.

When I went to Hebrew University we had plenty of Arab students. My wife went to Technion in Haifa where there were plenty of Arab student ” about 20%, 15% at least. Some universities ” Israeli universities ” had at least 20%. Non-Muslim students from Malaysia, people who are non-ethnic Malays, have to go to university in Australia or Indonesia; you can”t even go to school in a Muslim country. That”s real apartheid. Nobody’s calling for an academic boycott of Malaysia. You want to find apartheid? How about a country where a woman can”t drive a car? That”s Saudi Arabia. Yet this is the Christian church calling for it.

Free speech in Europe, how long will it last? The Lords have been overruled. The definition of the new offense of judicious libel in EC law as conduct seriously prejudices a community’s interests and damages the institutions and image and reputation. The rights that can be restricted include not only free speech and the right to life but also the right not to be punished in retroactive legislation, the right of a fair trial, the assumption of innocence, and the absence of double jeopardy, a provision which Jack Straw (British Secretary of State for Justice) wants to take advantage of already. In other words, if you”re acquitted of crime you can be tried twice. In other words, if you”re found guilty of something and they pass a law against something they can say retroactively after you”ve already been sentenced, “No, you were sentenced to 10 years, we”re going to make it 20″. In other words ” this is unbelievable ” because of retroactive legislation, speaking against Europe can be criminalized. They want to criminalize it. Now, I”m not kidding.

“Euro Court Outlaws Criticism of the EU”. (I”ll show anyone these documents who wants to see them.) The ruling states that the Commission could restrict dissent in order to protect the rights of others and punish individuals who damage the institution”s image and reputation. If you talk about the corruption of the common agricultural policy, you”re damaging the reputation of Europe. “The court called the economy book aggressively derogatory, insulting, and taking particular umbrage at the author”s suggestion that the economic and monetary union was a threat to democracy”. You think it”s a threat to democracy? You”re under arrest. “To imply Mr. Conde”s criticism of the EU is akin to extreme blasphemy.” I thought you could only blaspheme God, contrasting Rosenthal”s column here. Beware foreign policeman at your door. If you do something that is not even a crime in Britain but a crime in another country, a policeman from Poland or another country will have the right to come and arrest you in Britain, deport you to a country, and you would be put on trial for something that”s not even against the law in Britain, including countries where there’s no presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Of course, the British government wants this. This is from the Telegraph, Thursday, July 9th. Unbelievable.

The Daily Telegraph: “The Criminal Justice System Will Limit Trial by Jury. The extradition bail will bring into UK law one of the EU commission’s most cherished symbols of political and legal integration, the EU arrest warrant. The government appears unmoved by opposition to this measure which has united pressure groups. The bill will allow British citizens to be extradited for a wide range of offenses, many of them relatively minor and ill-defined which are not crimes in the UK. British defendants will be tried under judicial systems where there is a presumption of guilt.”

“Freedom of speech is under assault from an initiative of the EU Social Affairs Directorate. The “racism and xenophobia directive”, which is soon to be enshrined into British law. Under the law racism itself, as opposed to inciting racial hatred, becomes an offense. Under the astounding, broad definition the public condoning of war crimes and the public dissemination, including by the Internet, which attracts pictures or other material containing expressions of racism or xenophobia becomes an offense. But so does trivialization of what Slobodan Milosevic (former President of Yugoslavia) did and things of that nature.” The problem is who is going to define what”s racism?

There are black intellectuals in Zimbabwe who said Mugabe (President of Zimbabwe) has destroyed the country, he”s driving that nation into poverty. White people were able to leave, the black intellectuals were arrested and charged with making racist comments. These are black people themselves. Because you denounced Mugabe, that becomes the definition of a racist. They want to bring that here.

“Slow march of the compulsory identity card which is currently packaged in a cuddly new labor language as the “Universal Entitlement Card””. I mean it goes on and on. How do you preach the Gospel in such an environment?

Mohammed

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:21:12 GMT

My second question is: Mohammed was the greatest prophet ” greater than Jesus, greater than Moses ” al-asam so teaches: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet”. And Allah claimed, according to Mohammed, that Mohammed was the one who would bring this message that there’s no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet through the angel Gabriel who appeared in a cave and gave the Quran to Mohammed ” “angels” being one of the five pillars of Islam.

So I look at Mohammed and I compare him with the character of Christ. The Quran speaks more of Jesus than it does Mohammed. And although the other things it says about Jesus are usually in disagreement with what the New Testament says about Jesus ” “Isa“, “Yeshua“, the Quran never once faults His moral character. The Quran never once faults the moral character of Jesus. Never once. Never once. It says things about Him that disagree with the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, but it never faults His moral character. The Quran never faults the moral character of Jesus.

In the Hadith, however, we read something that corresponds to Quran Sorah 33:52, where something happened in the life of Muhammad where he was told by Allah, supposedly, it is no longer lawful for you to marry after this unless it is someone you already own like a handmaiden. What was this to which I refer in the Hadith?

“Fe”el hadith Mohammed, fell hadith Musa, ben tur abo baqir mah allude setah. Fe”el hadith ai-eesha ben tur abu baqir mah allude setah. Fe”el hadith Mohammed ho mubaraq oh fe”el hadith Mohammed orva mutah.”

I don’t ask that question to offend you. According to the Hadith, Ayesha the daughter of a Abu Bakr, was six years old when Mohammed married her. He took her virginity at the age of nine according to the teachings of Islam. You had a man, perhaps in his fifties ” probably around 54, scholars are not exactly sure ” who had sex with a nine year-old girl whom he married at the age of six. And the Quran tells him that Allah was somehow displeased, apparently, and said you couldn”t marry any more after this unless it was a slave or something you already owned. Even if you found a woman attractive you couldn’t have any more of them. In fact, I’ve had Muslim scholars admit that Mohammed had one of his stepson’s divorce his wife so he could take her. The question I asked in Arabic, and I”m only asking the question, is the Hadith right? Was Mohammed blessed of God or was Muhammad a pedophile? I’m only asking was your religion right in what it teaches? I’m only asking the question; I’m not trying to incite religious hatred, I’m not trying to offend you, I”m only asking the question, “Is the Hadith right?” Did Mohammed marry a six year-old little girl and have sex with a little child? Did he do that? Is your religion right? Is this what he did?

Now if you believe what your religion teaches, if you believe in the historicity of the Quran and of the Hadith, if you believe it is true, then of course you believe Muhammad had sex with a little girl. My question is if it is what you believe, please tell me how you expect me or any other Westerner, any Christian, any Jew, anyone else to believe such a man was God’s greatest prophet? Even in many Islamic countries today, if someone did that with a girl that young, he would be arrested and criminally prosecuted, conceivably executed in some of them.

Now a few years ago in the United States, it showed some very wealthy Saudi members of the House of Saud sheiks who were oil-rich arriving in India on private jets. They did not call it “slavery” and they don”t call it “slavery” in Africa, but essentially for as little as $200 they were giving to families of very poor people and taking little girls, some of them quite young like 14, back to Saudi Arabia. When questioned they said, “What”s wrong with it? Our prophet did it.” These are Wahabbist Saudi Arabians. “Wahab” ” fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist Sunnis who don’t accept any later interpretation of Islam after 950. These are ultra-conservative Wahabbists, they are rigid, rigid Quranists. Yet they found it acceptable to go and do this ” and it was on television ” because Muhammad did it.

Now I hope you appreciate as a Westerner, although this goes on in Christendom, although there have been a number of Roman Catholic priests who have done it, when they get caught they get arrested. When there”s a conspiracy to sweep it under the rug they get sued. Why is this tolerated in the Islamic world? In Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam, why was this institutional pedophilia in a form of slavery tolerated in the modern world today? And they say, “Because Mohammed did it.” That’s what they said on television.

That is my second question: “How can you expect me or any Christian or any Westerner to believe that a man who engaged in something acknowledged by the Hadith to be pedophilia is the prophet we should listen to and follow?” I’m asking you a sincere question.

Missions Actiivties in Israel

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:20:11 GMT

Jerusalem Evangelism Fund

Missionary supported by Jerusalem Fund is for missionary groups working within Israel. If you would like to make a contribution to this ministry, please designate a donation through your local branch of Moriel Ministries.

As the New Testament predicts, Jewish souls are returning to their Messiah, Yeshua (Jesus), in these Last Days. In Israel the numbers of young people and immigrants from the former Soviet Union are in a spiritual vacuum, hungry for the meaning and spiritual truth which the misguided and unbiblical Judaism of the rabbis who reject their Messiah can never deliver, but only the Messiah can deliver Himself.

MORIEL never engages in fund raising for its own operations, but we will help raise funds for others in the cause of the Gospel. The believers in Jesus in Israel face opposition, rejection, hardship, and not infrequently, persecution. They need our prayers and our help.

MORIEL’s Jerusalem Evangelism Fund is designed to send funds to Israel to help finance evangelism, support local congregations, and to assist needy believers.

All contributions are transferred directly to Israel. The Lord who cannot lie has promised He will bless those who bless Israel, and the best way to bless Israel is to give them the same Gospel they gave to the world.

“For if their rejection be the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?” (Romans 11:15)

In Yeshua’s Service,

James Jacob Prasch & MORIEL

Midrash: Jesus in the Garden

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:18:06 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

Some of you may not be familiar with Moriel Ministries, so I will take a few minutes to explain one of the things that we do. We try to help Christians to understand the Bible in its original context of the first-century Church, which was established by the Lord through Jewish Christians. We try to read the Bible the same way the early Jewish church would have read it. There have been others who have tried to do that through the centuries, with varying degrees of success – most notably the Plymouth Brethren. We believe it to be important in the Last Days to understand how to interpret the Bible in the way the first-century Church did.

(For those who already know this, I apologize. However, there may be readers who are new to our teaching or who are new in the faith, and for their sakes all of this bears repeating.)

When a Jewish Christian in the first century read the first four chapters of John’s Gospel, he would have said that it parallels the Book of Genesis. He would have said that the story of the New Creation in John’s Gospel is a midrash on, or an inquiry into, the Creation. The New Creation in John corresponds to the Creation in Genesis; Genesis tells us that God walked the earth, and Adam heard Him in the Garden of Eden. This speaks of Jesus: it is a Christophany, which is the theological term for an Old Testament manifestation of Jesus. John tells us in his first chapter that His Word became flesh, and once again God walked the earth.

The Creation account in Genesis speaks of the Small Light and the Great Light, referring to the moon and the sun. In John, we again find the Small Light – John the Baptist, whose Hebrew name is Yochanon Ha Matbil – and the Great Light – Jesus the Messiah, whose Hebrew name is Yeshua Ha Mochiach.

In Genesis, God’s Spirit moved on the water and brought forth the Creation. In John chapter four we hear of those who are born of water and of the Spirit; again, the Spirit moved on the water, this time to bring forth the New Creation. On the third day of Creation in Genesis, God does a miracle with water. In John 2:1, we read that the wedding at Cana is on the third day, and once more God does a miracle on the third day with water, this time in the New Creation. God began His first plan for man with the marital union of Adam and Eve; Jesus began His public ministry at a wedding in Cana, and God’s second plan for man also commences with a marital union. The New Creation in John is full of parallels with the Creation in Genesis; one is a midrash of the other.

There are many things in Scripture that are like this. The Tree of Life in Judaism, which in Hebrew is called the es hayyim, is represented by a fig tree. We see it in Ezekiel 47 and in the Book of Revelation, but we see it first in the Creation in Genesis. In John chapter one, when Nathaniel asks Jesus how He knows so much about him, Jesus answers, “Because I saw you under the fig tree.” What Jesus was saying to Nathaniel with these words was not simply that he saw him under a literal fig tree, although that was a part of it. What He was really saying in midrash, or Jewish metaphor, is this: “I saw you from the garden, from the Creation, from the foundation of the world.”

Genesis and John, Creation and New Creation. Compare the Bible to a loaf of bread straight out of the baker’s oven: before it has been sliced, it looks the same on both ends. In the same way, Scripture tells us that the Lord declares the end from the beginning. If we cut this loaf open, we arrive at John’s Gospel. Most conservative Evangelicals believe that the same John who wrote the Gospel also wrote the Book of Revelation. In light of this, we see that we have first the Creation, next the New Creation, but then also the Re-Creation. If you look at Genesis in comparison with Revelation, you will see this kind of parallel. Once more in Revelation we see the Tree of Life that we first saw in Genesis. In Genesis 49 we find Jacob’s prophecy to the twelve tribes of Israel; lo and behold, in Revelation seven and fourteen we find the twelve tribes once more.

Revelation tells us that “The dragon and the serpent are cast down to you”. I don’t believe that the dinosaurs are billions of years old, as stated in that interpretation of gap theory. The serpent was once quadrupedal or bipedal; in other words, it walked.

It is interesting to note that every civilization from Mexico to China has stories of dragons. I’ve been a number of times to the Turanga Zoo in Sydney, Australia, and what a fantastic zoo it is! What would you call a lizard that measures nine or ten feet long by three feet high by two to three feet wide, and that could eat you? We call it a Komodo dragon. The word ‘dinosaur’ means simply ‘great and terrible lizard’; I have seen them alive in our time.

To return to our point, the dragon spoken of in Revelation is Satan the Persecutor; the serpent is Satan the Deceiver. Jesus said in Matthew 23 that Abel was the first martyr: “Your brother’s blood cries out”, God tells Cain in Genesis. What do we see in Revelation? That the blood of the martyrs under the altar is crying out.

Then in Genesis we are told of Joseph’s vision of the woman with the stars. In Revelation, there again: the woman with the stars, in chapter 12. The parallels go on and on and on like that. Again, it is like a loaf of bread; it looks the same from both ends before you cut it. When you do cut it, you see the pattern: Creation, New Creation, and Re-Creation.

With this background in view, turn with me, please, to the Book of Genesis chapter three. In Hebrew we call Genesis Bereshit, meaning ‘In the Beginning’. Verse five: “‘For God knows,’ said the serpent, ‘that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was a delight to the eyes, and the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate, and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” We see here the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the boastful pride of life of which we are warned in John’s epistle. John, author of Revelation and of the Gospel of John, is also the author of three epistles. We find midrashes on Genesis throughout his work; the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life is yet another example.

Generically, in God’s economy there are only two men: the first Adam and the last Adam. When you were physically born, you were born of Adam. When you are born again, you are born of the last Adam, who is Jesus.

The second Adam, Jesus, had to be like Adam in certain aspects. Adam and Jesus were both created directly by God without procreative agency, and they were both created without sin. The first Adam, however, fell into sin. Before Jesus could go to the cross and take our sin upon Himself, He had to reverse what the first Adam had done. That is why in Mark chapter one, when it describes the temptation of Jesus, the text says that He was with the wild animals the same way Adam was. The picture of Jesus in the character of Adam is here being painted. Satan then comes to Jesus holding out the same three temptations into which Adam and Eve fell: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. What the first Adam fell into, the second Adam did not. Before Jesus could go to the cross, He had to overcome what the first Adam was overcome by. Then and only then could He go to the cross. That is why the text states, “And Satan departed from Him until the appropriate time.” At their first encounter, Satan had to try to make Jesus fall into the same sin the first Adam did. At their second, He could and did take our sin. Jesus could not go to the cross on our behalf until He had reversed what the first Adam did; until He overcame where the first Adam failed.

At this point we will take a closer look at the phra

se ‘to know’: the Hebrew word ‘to know’ is la daot, and the Greek term is gnosco. The serpent was already in the garden when Adam and Eve were told to subdue the Earth; they were always meant to know that evil existed, and to know objectively what it was; but they were not to know it within themselves. They were not to know it experientially, although they were to know it existed. We already know that the Tree of Life was present in the Garden of Eden; the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was also there. Adam and Eve had a choice between those trees: the Tree of Life or the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They chose to try to be their own gods, to gain knowledge they were not meant to have. They were to know that evil existed, but they were not to know it within themselves. To understand this, we must grasp the different kinds of knowledge, of which we have two Biblical examples.

The first example is found in the high priest on the Day of Atonement: only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies, and even he only once a year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Any Hebrew, however, could read the Book of Leviticus and know what was inside the Holy of Holies. He could read descriptions of the furniture, the showbread, the Ark of the Covenant, etc., and in that sense he could know what was in there. Only the high priest, however, could know what it was like to go in there, because he was designated for it. He was sanctified, or set apart, for that purpose: in Hebrew, me kudesh. The Hebrew terms ‘to know’ and ‘to sanctify’, as in ‘to set apart’ – La daot and Le Heet kodesh – frequently go together in the Bible. Anybody could know what was inside the Holy of Holies, but only the person who was sanctified for the purpose was to know what it was like to go into the holy of holies.

The other time that these two terms are used in connection with each other is in holy matrimony. Anybody can get a copy of Gray’s Anatomy and look at the female body: one can look at diagrams, charts, and pictures of ovarian tissue, Fallopian tubes, uterine tissue, or any other aspect of female anatomy; it is all in the textbooks. Anybody may know what comprises a woman’s body. The Hebrew term, however, for “to wed” means ‘to make holy, to sanctify’. During a Jewish wedding you say Me kudesh, or “with this ring, I wed thee”, literally “sanctify”; set apart according to the laws of Moses and Israel. The word for ‘to marry’ and the word for ‘to sanctify’ is the same. The Hebrew word for ‘to consummate a marriage’ is ‘to know’.

Anybody can know what is inside a woman’s body; but only the man sanctified for the purpose is to know what it is like to go in. In the same way, anybody could know what was inside the Holy of Holies, but no one except the high priest could know what it was like to go in there. It is the same with gonosko, the Greek term. Adam and Eve were always meant to know that there was evil, and that there was a devil. They were intended to know that things had to be subdued on the earth, though it was not yet fallen. They were meant to know objectively, but they were not meant to know experientially. They were to know, but they were not to know.

“Then the eyes of both of them opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.” Nakedness in the Bible does not simply mean the nudity on beaches in places such as Maui, Hawaii, or Elat, Israel. The new-agers in such places swim naked and have tattoos of dragons, of flowers, or of any number of other things in places you would not think that people would or should have tattoos; they run around on the beach naked, like the heathens they are. That, however, is not what this is primarily talking about. Adam and Eve were literally naked, yes, but it meant something more than that. Remember the church of Laodicea in Revelation: “You do not know that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked”. As Isaiah said, nakedness symbolizes not having the garments of salvation.

Adam and Eve knew that now they needed to be saved, for they had sinned.

In their guilt, therefore, they sewed fig leaves together. Remember what we see in Genesis and in Revelation: a fig tree. In Revelation, the text states that the fig leaves are for the healing of the nations; biblically, therefore, fig leaves are figures or symbols of good works. Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together, and in the same way, fallen man will always try to justify himself before a sinless God with good works.

Every religion on earth is the diametric opposite of the Gospel. When God – that is, Jesus – found Adam and Eve in the Garden wearing their fig leaves, He rejected the fig leaves and said that there must be blood atonement in order to remove sin. Religion is man trying to reach God with good works; the Gospel is God trying to reach man with blood atonement. Religion is man trying to reach God; the Gospel is God trying to reach man. Again, religion is the diametric opposite to the Gospel, no matter what form it takes. It makes no difference whether it is the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons knocking on doors, an Orthodox Jew trying to keep the mitzvot, a Catholic at the Novena, or a Muslim at the haij. Every religion is based on sewing fig leaves together in a futile attempt to be justified before God. There is, however, absolutely no assurance of salvation in that. On the contrary, the Scriptures tell us directly that “all of our righteous deeds are as filthy rags”. Am I saying that Mother Theresa’s righteous deeds are filthy rags? No, I am not saying that; God is.

Christians do not do good works in order to get saved; real Christians do good works rather because we have been saved. It is not our righteousness, but the righteousness of Christ in and through us. That is totally different from man-made religion. We do good works because we’ve been saved, not in an attempt to attain salvation for ourselves. This leads to why Jesus cursed the fig tree: it had leaves, but no fruit; in the same way, Israel had a works righteousness based on legalism, but it did not have the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

We should understand that the leaves are certainly important; in the Middle East, the sun is so hot that without leaves the fruit would be destroyed. On a fig tree in particular, the fruit grows underneath the leaves. When Jesus cursed this tree, however, the text states that it was not yet the season for figs. The warning we must glean from this is that the “Son of Man comes at an hour you do not expect”; we must live in readiness at all times. Again, without leaves the fruit would be destroyed; as James tells us, “Faith without works is dead.” There’s nothing wrong with the leaves, but the fact is that you cannot eat them. Even the best leaves do not make up for a lack of fruit, although you need the leaves. We are not told that we will know people by their works, but that we will know them by their fruit. It should be noted that works can be evidence of fruit, because the leaves normally appear at about the same time as the fruit; but an abundance of leaves is not a guarantee that you will find fruit.

Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together, just as today every religion still does. There are many non-evangelical ‘churches’ that think they are Christian. If you ask them, “How do you get to heaven?”, they will tell you that it is accomplished by having enough good deeds to outweigh your bad deeds, or something similar. What do they do to hide their nakedness? They sew fig leaves together. What do they do at the Mass? They sew fig leaves together. What do they do down at the Mosque? They sew fig leaves together. Every religion sews fig leaves together, even though it is useless in gaining salvation. For that, there must be a blood atonement.

So the story continues: “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day.” The Hebrew word for ‘cool’ is also the Hebrew word for ‘breeze’ or ‘wind’, ruach. The Hebrew word for ‘breeze’, by turn, is also the Hebrew word for ‘spirit

‘: Pneuma in Greek, ruach in Hebrew. So you have here the presence of the Holy Spirit implied in the Hebrew text. “And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. And the Lord called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?'” We notice here that it speaks of the ‘trees of the garden’; concerning the Last Days, Jesus never said we must learn the parable of the fig tree. When you read it in Luke, He actually said, “Learn the parable of the fig tree and the other trees,” or, “and all the trees”. This is not our subject today, I merely point it out in passing to say that there is much more to the parable of the fig tree than most Christians have a clue about. In fact, the parable of the fig tree and the other trees is found in the Book of Judges chapter nine. But let us continue:

We see now the cast of characters introduced in the Garden; first and foremost, we have God in the person of Jesus, a Christophany. We have Satan in his mode as a deceiver. Then we have naked man. So far, we have three characters: God, Satan, and a naked man. Let us continue with the text: ‘And he said, “I heard the sound of the thee in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.” And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the Tree of which I commanded you not to eat?'” This sounds perhaps as if God didn’t know; God knew, of course, but He was challenging Adam. “And the man said, ‘The woman whom Thou gavest to me, she gave me from the Tree and I ate.'” Notice that although God in His omniscience already knew who ate first, He doesn’t go to Eve but to Adam. If something, God forbid, goes wrong in my marriage or my family, or in your marriage or your family, gentlemen, it might not be our fault, but as far as God’s concerned, it is our problem; the male is God’s authority in that relationship.

In the Bible, every time a man lets a woman take spiritual headship, you have a disaster. Abraham and Sarah or Ahab and Jezebel are two examples of this. This goes right back to the Garden of Eden, and as such is one of Satan’s oldest tricks. Why is leadership into this error now? We will see that in a moment, but let’s continue.

And the man said in verse 12, “‘The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me from the Tree and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ And the woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me and I ate.’ And the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all the cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel'” – because of the resurrection. “To the woman, He said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. You shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.’ Then God said to Adam, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the Tree about which I commanded you . . .'” Notice the curse is on Satan first, women second, and men third. Satan first, women second, and men third; the judgment was given in the order of the sin.

Because of the Fall, men have become insensitive. Also because of the Fall, women have become hypersensitive. When a husband and wife get saved, most of the time it is the wife who gets saved first. This is not always the case, but probably at least 75 percent of the time the wife gets saved first. If the husband does get saved first, 75 percent of the time the wife eventually gets saved also; water takes the shape of its container. If the wife gets saved first, however, it is usually a much harder situation. Christian women often grieve for years over their unbelieving husbands. Why is it easier for women to get saved? It is because they are more sensitive. When a husband and wife pray together for direction, it is usually the wife who hears from the Lord first and clearest; men are reliant on female sensitivity because of the Fall. On the other hand, while it is usually easier for women to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, it is also easier for women to hear the voice of a counterfeit spirit and thus fall into deception, to be taken in by spiritual seduction. Women are much more vulnerable to spiritual seduction than are men. Therefore, just as men are reliant on female sensitivity, so women are reliant on male protection. The submission in a Christian marriage is to be mutual, but in different ways; it is an equality with different functions, but the buck stops with the man. Women are more vulnerable to spiritual seduction, while men are more vulnerable to not hearing at all. That’s just the way it is in our fallen world. There may have been a propensity towards that before man fell, but the Fall brought it to be what it is now.

It happens in a garden. Next, God dispatches an angel and says, “Get out of here. You cannot come in anymore.” Here we are introduced to the fourth character, the angel who says ‘get out’. In this garden, man falls. In this garden, God pronounces a curse on men and on women. In this garden, the angel says ‘do not come in here.’ In this garden man is naked before his God.

Yet in this garden, there is also a promise of salvation: “‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed.'” As most of you know, Eve represents Israel and by extension the church. The church is the bride of Christ, and Israel is God’s woman.

Anti-Semitism and persecution of the believing church are heads and tails; two sides of the same coin. We can distinguish between the two, but we cannot separate them. God’s plan for the salvation of the world depends on his prophetic agenda for Israel and the Jews and for the believing church. The two kinds of people whom the Bible calls Abraham’s children are the Jews and the believing church. The return of Jesus Christ depends on the prophetic plan of God for Israel and the Jews, and for the believing church.

Hence, the Jews and the believing church have the same enemy. Why do you think the Muslims hate Israel and hate America? Is it purely political? No. There is a spiritual reason. At this time in history America is the seat of evangelical Christianity, as Britain was a hundred, two hundred years ago, and as Germany and Switzerland were during the Reformation.

“I’ll put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed.” Look at pagan Rome: first, they turned against the church under Nero. A few years later, they turned against the Jews under Titus. A few centuries later, under the communists in the Soviet Union, who did the Soviets persecute the most? Jews and born-again Christians! Throughout the centuries of the inquisitions, the pogroms, the massacres – who did the Roman Catholic Church persecute the most? Jews and born-again Christians. What do Arafat’s followers say? What don’t they show you on CNN? They don’t show you that the Islamic Arabs whom they champion are the same people who say every day of the week, “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people. Jihad! Jihad!” In other words, first we kill the Jews, and then we kill the Christians. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed.

It all happens in a garden. With this in view, let us look at the midrash:

Turn to John chapter 18 verse one: “When Jesus had spoken these words, He went forth with His disciples over the ravine of Kidron where there was a garden into which He Himself entered and His disciples.” Of the four Gospels, the one that identifies Gethsemane as a garden is John. John, again, is always interested in doing a midrash on Genesis. The Kidron is a narrow valley between the Temple Mount on the west and the Mount of Olives or Har Zeitim on the east. Gethsemane comes from the Hebrew word Shemen, or ‘oil’. The olive oil – which we call Shemen ziot – used ritually in the Temple came from Get

hsemane. They would harvest the olives growing on the Mount of Olives, and bring them to Gethsemane to be pressed. (There are still olive orchards on the Mount of Olives to this day – in fact, the experts tell us that there are trees there that are 2,000 years old and still growing; they would have been present in the days of Jesus – olive trees live extremely long, if they are not interrupted by earthquakes or pollution or other environmental catastrophes.) It is to Gethsemane that Jesus goes, and there something begins to happen. To God, one man without sin is worth more than all the men with sin: that is how one could die for all.

In this garden, God takes our sin on Himself. He takes our sin and puts it on His son, Jesus, in order to take His righteousness and put it on us.

Jesus suffered physically; He was tortured. He suffered emotionally; the Bible speaks of this time as the ‘travail of his soul’. But something else happened on the cross: His fellowship was broken with His Father. We must note also that He said, “It is finished. Father, into Your hands I give My Spirit.” Satan’s liars in the church today deny this fundamental doctrine:

Copeland, Hagen, Joyce Meyer, all these people are teaching error. They teach that Satan got the victory on the cross, that Jesus’ Spirit was not commended to the Father, that it was not finished, and that He had to go to Hell. They teach further that He was tortured in Hell for three days and three nights, and that then He had to be born again in Hell. That is the teaching of Copeland and Hagen, which they got from E. W. Kenyon. They have another Jesus; they have another Gospel, as most of you know. Because the cross of Jesus is not central to their view of salvation, neither is the cross of Jesus central to their view of the Christian life. Instead of “pick up your cross and follow Me”, their doctrine is “you’re a King’s kid, name it and claim it, God wants you rich, believe God for another Mercedes, etc”. These men are from the devil, and are some of the false prophets that Jesus warned would come in the Last Days. Today they are doing exactly what Jesus said they would do.

Jesus takes our sin on Himself, not in Hell, but in a garden. That is where God begins to put our sin on Jesus.

The full wrath of God was poured out on Jesus while He was on the cross. “Now, Judas also, who was betraying Him, knew the place, for the disciples had often met there” – Jesus often met there with His disciples – “Judas then, having received the Roman cohort and officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Jesus, therefore, knowing all the things that were coming upon Him, went forth and said to them, “Whom do you seek?” And they answered Him, “Jesus, the Nazarene.”” Jesus’ real name was Rabbi Yeshua BarYosef vi Netzeret. They wouldn’t have known who Jesus Christ is, but they would have known who Rabbi Yeshua was; He is the One who raises the dead and heals the lepers; He is the one who could walk on water.

“When, therefore, He said to them, “I am He,” they drew back and fell to the ground.” The Greek text says that they fell back and then they slid forward. Every knee will bow, even those of His enemies.

The phenomenon of being ‘slain in the spirit’ happens at various times in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament. In Revelation chapter one, John is in the Spirit in the Lord’s day, and when the power of Jesus comes on him, he falls as if slain. He fell forward, and was so terrified that God had to send an angel to encourage him. When Jesus cast a demon out of the child whom the demons kept throwing into the fire, they thought he was dead; but when he got up he was completely different. Daniel, too, was terrified.

Notice that in the Bible whenever someone was slain in the Spirit it was a once in a lifetime life-changing event. It doesn’t matter what happens when people go down, how different is their life once they get up? But today, who is getting in line? The same ones who were in line to go down last week. They just want to go down for the thrill of it. As with anything else, a wicked and adulterous generation seeks this sign.

Again, in the Bible being slain in the Spirit was a once in a lifetime, life-changing experience. It doesn’t matter what happens when somebody goes down, but how changed their life is when they get up. In the Bible, too, whenever it was a blessing from God, the person in question went forward. The only time they ever went backwards was when it was a curse and a judgment: when they came to arrest Christ.

Today you see Rodney Howard Brown and these guys bringing official ‘catchers’ with them. But they are falling the wrong direction.

People insist that they know this experience is from God; well, it might be indeed, but if it is, He is angry with them. I personally am pretty certain that most of it is hypnotic induction combined with demonic deception. Even if it is of God, however, it is a judgment.

Whom do you seek? Jesus. I am He. In Greek, “I am He,” or, ego ami. The Greek equivalent is also found at the end of John chapter 8, where Jesus says, “before Abraham was, I am.” Ego ami. The people then tried to stone Him, because He made Himself equal with God.

Let us go back to our cast of characters: In the Garden of Eden is God in the Person of Jesus. In the garden of Gethsemane is God in the Person of Jesus. But then, in the Garden of Eden, Satan as deceiver is present. In the Gospel of John, what happens to Judas just before the disciples accompany Jesus to Gethsemane? The text plainly tells us: Satan entered him. The only two people demon-possessed by Satan personally will be the anti-Christ or false prophet and Judas, the Son of Perdition. John in his epistle describes anti-Christ in the character of Judas. “They went out from among us, but they were not really of us.” Whenever you see something about Judas in the Bible, the Holy Spirit is telling you something about the anti-Christ. Both Judas and the Antichrist will be into money; both can deceive the brethren – the disciples were asking, “Lord is it I, Lord is it I?” – they did not know the identity of the traitor until Jesus revealed him. In the same way, people will not know who the real anti-Christ is until Jesus reveals him. If you cannot see through Benny Hinn or Kenneth Copeland or Chuck Colson, what will become of you when the Antichrist comes?

How did Judas con people? He conned people with the Mother Theresa trick: fig leaves. “Could this not have been sold and given to the poor?”- he feigned compassion for the poor in order to ingratiate himself with people, to make them think he was a good guy. In reality, however, he was only using the plight of the poor to seduce, camouflage, and manipulate. Mother Theresa said before she died that she had no assurance of salvation. When she got the Nobel Prize, she made it clear that she did not convert people in India to be Christians, but to be better Hindus and better Muslims. That was her gospel. She cleaned them up, gave them a clean place to die with dignity, and sent them off to Hell in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in a laundry chute.

Mezuzot (The Doorposts) Part 1 of 2

Fri, 15 May 2015 12:15:20 GMT

by James Jacob Prasch

Reading from Judges chapter 14: “Then Samson went down to Timnah, and saw a woman in Timnah, one of the daughters of the Philistines. So he came back and told his father and mother, ‘I saw a woman in Timnah, one of the daughters of the Philistines; now, therefore, give her to me as my wife.’ Then his father and his mother said to him, ‘Is there no woman among the daughters of your relatives or among your own people, that you would go and take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?’ But Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me, for she looks good to me.'”

The sin that so easily besets: Samson had a weakness for unbelieving women. Understand that the issue here was not the woman’s race; females are not circumcised, except in certain Islamic tribes of Central Africa. However, the issue was her belief. At that time, a Jew marrying a non-Jew would have been equivalent to a believer today marrying a non-believer. The issue, in other words, was her belief.

Samson had a predisposition toward being attracted to unbelieving women. By the time we reach chapter 15, we see that it has gotten him into a real mess. Although God worked in the relationship for His purposes in terms of Providence, it got Samson into real trouble. In verse 18 of chapter 15 we read: “Then he (Samson) became very thirsty, and he called out to the LORD and said, ‘Thou hast given this great deliverance by the hand of Thy servant, and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?'” Samson’s relationship with this woman eventually landed him in trouble, first with her father and then with the Philistines; and God rescued him. That was his first recorded bout with an unbelieving woman.

We have other teachings on Samson, one of which is ‘The Vow of the Nazirite’, which deals with the midrash, including the typology of the hair. It also deals with the wicked woman of Proverbs chapter 5, which speaks of giving one’s strength to the adulteress. This was the Pesher meaning, the deeper spiritual meaning; now, however, let us look at the Peshet, the straightforward, clear meaning of the text as we read chapter 16 of the book of Judges:

“Now Samson went to Gaza, and saw a harlot there, and he went in to her.” He does it again; he finds another unbelieving woman. ‘The sin that so easily besets’ – “. . . and he went in to her” – in Hebrew, bow l’ah. As you may know from other messages, one person is inside of another person, and a third person is procreated: we are created in the image of God – Imago Dei – we are theopomorphic men and women. This aspect of God’s image in us is the main reason that adultery and fornication are so serious in His sight; these sexual sins cause us to pollute and obscure the image of God in which we were created. On the doorposts of my house in England, there is a small box called a ‘mezuzah’, which has on it the Hebrew letter ‘shem’. Shem is also the first letter of the Hebrew confession of faith. In the Gospels, when they asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is, He said, “Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai ekhad baruch Ha Shem; “Hear O Israel, the LORD your God is oneness; you shall love the LORD your God with all your soul, all your heart, and all your strength.” That word akhad means a plural oneness; the word for the oneness of God is the same word for Adam and Eve becoming one flesh – akhad. Again, this reproduces His image and His likeness.

The small box on my doorposts is called a mezuzah; but what a mezuzah actually was in ancient Hebrew culture was the doorpost itself; so the little box is named after that upon which it rests; a doorpost. In the Book of Exodus when the hyssop was taken and dipped into the blood of the Paschal lamb, they were to put it onto the mezuzot, the doorposts, in the form of a bloody cross. More about that in a moment.

The husband shall cling to his wife, and they shall be akhad. The Hebrew word translated there as ‘cling to’ is daveq. Clinging to God in Judaism is called devequt. When you see Orthodox Jews with the payoot, the ear-curls, you may observe them making a certain gesture, which to them indicates clinging to God. They are trying to capture something called zumzumim, or ‘holy sparks’. In modern Hebrew, daveq is the word for glue, and cellotape in Hebrew is nyr daveq, literally meaning ‘glue-ribbon’. In the Bible, however, the idea conveyed by that word is not glue, but rather superglue. What is the difference, then, between glue and superglue? Glue sticks, but superglue bonds. Superglue forms a polymer; you have an exchange of electrons. Once the superglue comes into contact with atmospheric pressure, the change of electrons begins and forms the bond. The polymer bonds; it is not merely sticking now, but actually bonding on a molecular level. There is a co-valency established by polymerization. In this way, Samson clings to this unbelieving woman.

Let us go on: “When it was told to the Gazaites, saying, ‘Samson has come here,’ they surrounded the place and lay all night in wait for him at the gate of the city. And they kept silent all night, saying, ‘Let us wait until the morning light, and then we will kill him.’ Now Samson lay until midnight, and at midnight he arose and took hold of the mezuzot – the doorposts – of the city gate, and the posts, and pulled them up along with the bars. Then he put them on his shoulder and carried them up to the top of the mountain which is opposite Hebron.” The bars here are made of iron – in Hebrew barzel. Samson’s burden, like the Cross, is made of wood and iron.

This is not the first time he got himself into a mess because of his weakness: Paul calls this ‘the sin that so easily besets’. Thanks to the advertising industry, which has reduced human sexuality to a means of selling anything from spring fashion to toothpaste, I do not know anybody under the age of 87 who is not vexed by sexual temptation. The world and Satan have combined in the advertising industry to make everything from MTV to magazine adverts degrade human sexuality to an animalistic level.

In Samson’s situation, however, we simply know what his weakness was. For you and me, it may or may not be something sexual, but everyone has a weak spot. Not only do you have one, and I have one, but also the enemy knows what they are. Although I knew better, when I was in University my life was based on cocaine, sex, dope, rock’n’roll, and classical music. Although I professed to be a Marxist, I realized that because cocaine costs money, I needed a good education in order to get a good job with which I could subsidize my decadence. What a hypocrite! If you had asked me as a young believer what I thought would be the weakness that would hold me back, what would be the enemy’s main weapon against me, I would have said it would be cocaine and cannabis. Yet in hindsight, I cannot think of anything that the Lord has given me a more total deliverance from than substance abuse. I cannot even stay in the same room with someone who smokes a cigarette, let alone a joint. I have been to parties at which people were taking this stuff, getting stoned, and not only have I had no temptation, I have even been able to witness to these people and tell them how God gave me power over the addictions and delivered me from them, giving me something better. Substance abuse is something over which God has given me complete victory, although that was the thing that I thought would drag me down. I have no issue with it, although other people do struggle with it. That is not my weakness; my weakness is this:

In England we have a lot of traffic. So one day I will be on my way to a church to speak to a hundred people, and there’s a lorry driver up ahead with an 18- or 22-wheeler with a European license plate, tying up traffic for miles. When I finally manage to overtake him, now that I’m forty minutes late, I see him with a mobile phone in one hand and a cigarette in another, and I want to shoot him. My indignation may itself be righteous, but wanting to put the man in his grave is certainly not.

My weakness is explosive anger: there is a big difference between holy anger and being wholly angry. When Moses took the tablets with the Decalogue – the Ten Commandments – and threw them down from the mountain because Israel had made and worshiped golden calves, he told them they had broken the Law of God; that was holy anger. When I want to shoot the lorry driver, however, that is not holy anger. Being right in what you say does not automatically translate to having a righteous indignation or holy anger. We speak of this further on the ‘Sons of Zadok’ tape. That is my personal weakness.

Let me give you an example of another weakness: I know people who are saved Christians to whom alcohol is not a beverage, but a drug. Enjoying a glass of wine with dinner or a beer with lunch is not possible for them. These believers should never go near alcohol in any form, because that is their personal weakness.

Insurance companies may not know anything about medical science, but they certainly do know about money. Therefore they know about statistics. When you fill out an insurance form, you will notice that one of the first questions they ask is whether or not you smoke. The instant a person quits smoking cigarettes, they automatically go into a lower-risk category. Conversely, the moment you pick up a cigarette and begin smoking you enter a higher-risk category statistically. It is said that for every minute someone smokes, a minute is subtracted from his lifespan. Every cigarette, in other words, is a nail in your coffin. Yet I know saved Christians for whom cigarettes are a weakness. They may go for a day – maybe two days – without one, yet they consistently return to the habit. Some Christians scoff at the idea that this should be an issue, yet when you walk outside of a church and an unsaved person happens to see you light up a cigarette, there goes your testimony. “Yeah, Jesus changed my life. Gotta match?”

“Thou shalt not covet” – How, then, can Christians gamble? I honestly do not know. There are things today that are facilitated by technology. Sin by proxy, as it were, as if that makes it less sinful. For example, there are Christians who would never actually go out and have an affair, betraying their spouses, yet I assure you that tonight there are thousands of born-again Christians in chat rooms committing adultery by cyber-proxy. They will do things over the Internet that they would never actually go out and perform, thinking that this somehow makes it better. But God has said that if you so much as lust for someone else’s wife or husband you have already done it. There are thousands of Christians involved in ungodly chat lines. I know one Christian in particular who got herself into very serious trouble in this way.

‘The sin that so easily besets’; maybe it is sexual for you, or maybe it is not. Maybe it is substance abuse, maybe not. Maybe it is violence or temperament, maybe it isn’t. Whatever it may be, however, every Christian has one thing that they continue falling into. The godliest people I have ever met had a weakness that became conspicuous. In looking to Scripture, we find that the patriarchs had basic defects in character even into their old age. We see God trying to work these defects – these ‘sins that so easily beset’, as Paul calls them – out of their lives, even until their deaths. In the Greek, when Paul spoke of this besetting sin, he did not speak in the past tense. He said, “I am the chief of all sinners” – present tense, even as a believer.

Samson’s besetting sin was his lust for unbelieving women; earlier we saw in Judges 15 that this sin lands him in trouble, but God delivers him from it. Now in chapter 16, however, we find him doing it again: the more you give in to that sin, the deeper you get caught in it, and the more dangerous it becomes. This time, he’s up to his eyeballs in quicksand; he is surrounded by his enemies who have laid a trap for him.

The devil is not interested in carnal pleasure; not even in the fleeting pleasures associated with sin. If you read ‘The Screwtape Letters’, you will find that C.S. Lewis was quite correct: he recounted an old demon’s advice to a young demon regarding how to tempt a Christian to sin, warning him to be careful of pleasure because it was something that had been created by their Enemy, God. The older demon points out that if they corrupt pleasure in order to use it in luring their victim, they should do so cautiously. You see, to the devil the fleeting pleasures of sin are only the bait he must use. Satan does not wish anyone to have any pleasure whatsoever – he only wants people to go to Hell. On this side of eternity, the human mind can comprehend neither the love of God in its totality nor the depravity of Satan in its totality.

To return once more to Samson’s plight in Judges 16, again we note that he is surrounded. What does he do? In other words, what should you and I do when we find ourselves in a mess because we have fallen into doing the same stupid thing once again? Samson’s enemies were waiting to ambush him when? Not at midnight, but at dawn. Samson was comfortably in bed; but he jumped up at midnight. If he had waited until dawn, his enemies would have had him.

To apply this to our own lives: the very instant you realize that you have fallen once again into the same mess and are in trouble, this time even worse than before, you must not wait to put it right. Put it right immediately! To hesitate is to make yourself a sitting target; your enemies are waiting to get you and to get me – demons are real. Samson immediately put his situation right, though he had to jump out of bed to do it. The moment you allow yourself to be comfortable in the sin, you have set yourself up.

So we see that Samson jumped up; however, he was still surrounded. How did he get himself out of the trap? And how do we get ourselves out when we are thick enough in the head to get ourselves into it to begin with? Samson grabbed hold of the mezuzot; the Cross of Jesus Christ, the wood and the iron. There are a million ways into that mess, but there is only one way out of it. Samson put the Cross on his shoulder and carried it with him as he went. Put it right immediately – pick up the Cross at once.

You hear a fiery preacher, but let me tell you about this fiery preacher: Once when I was a young believer – before I was married, before I entered the ministry or went to seminary, even before I was in Israel (I was still in New York) – I met a woman on the East Side of Manhattan who was a bit older than I and rather good-looking. I responded to her advances in the wrong way: instead of witnessing to her, I reacted to her flirtatious invitations. Before I knew it, I was in a taxi with her; not long after that, I found myself in a bath with her; and finally, I was in her bed with her. I was so very close to taking the situation to its natural conclusion, continuing to act in the way I had before I knew Jesus. Yet at the last minute I asked myself what on earth I was doing, and began to wonder how I would get myself out of the situation. My flesh wanted its way, but I began to pray, saying, “Lord Jesus, look what I’ve done! I am stupid, but Lord, please get me out of this somehow.” Well, I don’t know what I said, but it must have gotten right up her nose. While I don’t remember exactly what I said, I’ll never forget what she said: she began running around the room screaming at me to get out, get out, get out! My old creation wanted the sin, but my new creation only wanted to get out of there. To delay is to make yourself a target. There is only one way out: crucify the flesh.

God was gracious to me as He was to Samson: Samson lifted the mezuzot – iron and wood – and to the mountain he went. What happens next? Let us read on to find out: “After this it came about that he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah.” Sure enough, Samson does it again! He goes out and finds another one! We do not know how many times Samson actually did this, but we know it was at least as many times as

the Bible records. The first time we’re told about, he got himself in up to his neck; the second time, up to his eyeballs; what will he do this time?

Your besetting sin may or may not be sexual, as Samson’s was; but never doubt – you have one, and I have one. You know what yours is, and so does God, and not least of all, so does the enemy. That one thing, that stupid, idiotic, moronic thing you just keep going back to. What will Samson do now?

“And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, ‘Entice him, and see where his great strength lies, that we may overpower him, that we might bind him to afflict him. Then we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.'” Unsaved people care about one thing: Money. Unbelievers will do almost anything if the price is right. Here we see that Delilah is being offered money to entice Samson. Things have now changed: the enemy changes strategy. Up until now, their attempts on Samson were opportunistic; now they are seeking to set him up and trap him. As it says in Ecclesiastes, because the consequences of an iniquity are not instant, people are deceived into thinking they will get away with it. The Bible tells us something remarkable about sin: it personifies sin, saying that it can deceive us. Not only can Satan deceive us, not only can other people deceive us if we fail to be discerning, not only can we deceive ourselves, but sin itself can deceive us. That besetting sin can deceive you into thinking that you can continue pulling it off.

The strategy of Samson’s enemies changes now, because they have realized they will not get him through happenstance. When you do something wrong and get yourself into trouble by doing it, that’s good, relatively speaking. Once we begin pulling it off and not reaping the consequences of our sins, that’s when we’re in real trouble – only we don’t know it.

This can be very much likened to the first time a person picks up a cigarette and tries to smoke it: he will cough violently because his body is trying to tell him something; the repercussions of inhaling the nicotine and tar are instant. After he has become metabolically acclimated to it, the coughing stops and he is led to believe he is all right, when the diametric opposite is the actual truth. He has in reality become a statistical candidate for respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, and all kinds of cancer. Cigarettes contain carcinogens; yet it becomes easy to think there’s no problem or danger once the coughing stops. The smoker was better off coughing; at least then he knew it was no good.

Continuing with verse 6: “So Delilah said to Samson, ‘Please tell me where your great strength lies, and how you may be bound to afflict you.’ And Samson said to her, ‘If they bind me with seven fresh cords that have not been dried, then I shall become weak and be like any other man.’ Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to Delilah seven fresh cords that had not been dried, and she bound him with them. Now she had men who were lying in wait in another room, and she said, ‘The Philistines are upon you, Samson!’ But he snapped the cords as a string of yarn snaps when it is touched by fire. So his strength was not discovered. Then Delilah said to Samson, ‘Behold, you have deceived me, and told me lies! Now please tell me how you may be bound!'”

Samson is playing with fire; he’s in bed with an $1100.00/night hooker, the pimp’s in the next room with a loaded gun, and he’s playing bedroom games. In the same way we often get flirtatious with the sin we think we can keep on getting away with; it becomes a game to us. Russian Roulette is also a game: you drop the bullet into the barrel and you spin it; only the person you’re playing against knows which cylinder the bullet is in. Click, click, click – but sooner or later, probably sooner than later – bang.

Verse 11: “So he said to her, ‘If they bind me tightly with new ropes that have not been used, then I shall be weak and be like any other man.’ So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them, and said to him, ‘The Philistines are upon you, Samson!’ Men were lying in wait in the inner room, but he snapped the ropes from his arms like a thread.” Notice that the strategy only changes very slightly the second time. “So Delilah said to Samson, ‘Up to now you have deceived me and told me lies;'”- Here she is, trying to get Samson killed, yet reproaching him for his immorality. This is like the Pope saying it is immoral to bomb Iraq, while he is the head of the pedophile religion that protects its sexually perverted clergy who destroy the lives of children. He wants to tell others how to be moral, while his own church is a cesspool of depravity. “‘. . . tell me how you may be bound.’ And he said to her, ‘If you weave the seven locks of my hair in a loom and fasten it with a pin, I shall be weak and be like any other man.'” Do you notice what is happening here? Step by step Samson is getting lured into the trap; now he lets Delilah know that the secret has to do with his hair. The stakes are raised; in our lives, when we successfully get away with the sin a few times, we get confident and careless, and we raise the stakes just as he did. It’s like going to a casino or a racetrack; the house always has the odds, or they wouldn’t be in business.

Understand what is happening here: why is he beginning to tell this unbelieving woman intimate things about his relationship with God? She isn’t the girl next door, she’s a femme fatale, and a shichah to boot. Couldn’t he find a nice Jewish girl? He begins sharing with her intimate things that should not be shared outside of holy wedlock. Why? Because of deveq; bound. You cannot sleep with someone and avoid being covered with superglue.

I used to live across the street from the United Nations in New York City during my younger days as a believer. I was cohabitating there with an attractive Italian girl, who was a great cook as well as being great at a few other things. The relationship was based on two things, the first of which was Fettuccine Alfredo; the second I will leave to your imagination. When I began following Jesus, the leader of Jews for Jesus at that time told me that I either had to get married or get out; so I told her to get out. I then took the rest of my drugs, as some of you know, and threw them out the window, where they landed twenty stories down on First Avenue. As I often point out, it is a good thing the Polish Ambassador had diplomatic immunity, or he’d still be in the birdcage singin’ the blues. I led the woman to the Lord: I can now go to a church almost anywhere in the world, and the women in these churches are sisters in faith, nothing more nor less. Yet if I saw that Italian woman, there would always in this life be something there that should not be there. If you talk to people who have endured the agony of a divorce, they will tell you that it does irreparable damage.

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