The "Fluff" Of False Prophets

There were prophets running around in the days of the prophet Jeremiah preaching a false message of peace and prosperity. Sound familiar? Is that not the message being heralded from so many pulpits, churches and ministries across America today? We hear so much nonsense from people claiming to have all kinds of visions and dreams from the Lord, and believers are looking to these so-called "prophets" instead of the searching and discipline of the Scriptures.

False hope, false proclamations of peace, false dreams and visions are worthless fluff. There is no substance in them! God says through Jeremiah in Jer. 23:28 - "The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; And he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? says the Lord." Here God Himself compares the worthless chaff of the wheat to the dreams of the prophet, and the nourishing grain of the wheat itself to His word.

Why do I bring this up? Am I against peace in the lives of people? Of course not! But there can be no peace in the lives of people who want to be comfortable in their sin. There can be no peace in the absence of true repentance from sin. There can be no peace where God Himself has not declared peace. There can be no peace where God has declared war and pronounced judgement. The good intentions of well-meaning, but misguided, false prophets and prophetesses are much more damaging to the souls of their hearers than is confronting those hearers with their sins to get them to repent.

First of all listen to what God says about these "prophets": Jer. 23:16,17,21,22 - "Thus says the Lord of hosts: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make you worthless; They speak a vision of their own heart, Not from the mouth of the Lord. They continually say to those who despise Me, 'The Lord has said, You shall have peace'; And to everyone who walks according to the dictates of his own heart, they say, 'No evil shall come upon you.'...I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran. I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in My counsel, And had caused My people to hear My words, Then they would have turned them from their evil way And from the evil of their doings."

In these words are revealed the dangers of proclaiming nice things, comfortable things to the flesh, when God is not in it. For according to Jer. 23:14, false prophets who speak lies, "strengthen the hands of evildoers," i.e., they prevent repentance by not declaring God's truth, they prevent people from truly coming to life by making them comfortable in their sin. God makes the same accusation against false prophets through the prophet Ezekiel. Ezek. 13:22 - "Because with lies you have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and you have strengthened the hands of the wicked, so that he does not turn from his wicked way to save his life." Lying prophets keep people from turning to the Lord in repentance so they can live. Their words of peace, comfort and prosperity are false. Non-confrontational, man and flesh pleasing preaching is destructive, not kind. Telling people what they want to hear does nothing to profit them or turn them toward God. It only profits the false teacher lining their pockets with money from sales of their nonsensical, false-hope producing books and seminars.

Beware of the fluff - you don't need it!

Broken or Crushed? It's Your Choice!

In Matthew's gospel Yeshua applies the statement of Isaiah 8:14,15 to Himself (see Matt. 21:42-44): "The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, And it is marvelous in our eyes." He then states in v. 44 - "And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder." What could possibly have evoked such a stern and strong message and warning from Yeshua? The answer, having His authority questioned by the chief priests and religious leaders of the day in Matt. 21:23-27. His response to their arrogance was the delivery of the two parables (the parable of the two sons and the parable of the landowner) in verses 28-41, and then with His follow up concerning the chief cornerstone.

Also, in John 5:22-47, we are given a statement and evidences from Yeshua Himself concerning His authority. The statement is found in vv. 22-30 and is summarized in vv. 26,27: "For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to executre judgement also, because He is the Son of Man." The evidences are found in the four-fold witness to Yeshua's Person and authority in vv. 31-47, i.e., the witness of John the Immerser (vv. 31-35), the witness of Yeshua's works (v. 36), the witness of His Father (vv. 37,38), and the witness of the Scriptures (vv. 39-47).

So in responding to him as the "chief cornerstone" we can respond in one of two ways. First, to humble ourselves before Him, the Lord of the universe, and allow ourselves to be broken upon Him so that we can be remolded into His image. Over and over again, every day, we need to take His yoke upon us, accept His authority over us (in the form of other people He places over us) and be broken to be conformed to what He wants us to be. Or, secondly, we can refuse to accept His authority, in arrogance reject it (and those He puts over us) and in the end, if we will not fall on the stone to be broken, the stone will fall on us, crush us to powder, only to be blown away by the wind. There are no other alternatives in life. We either accept the Lord's authority and lordship over our lives and allow Him to break us - this leads to life. Or we arrogantly challenge and refuse it (like the people in the gospel account did) and end up being crushed by Him in the end - this leading to death.

So, broken or crushed? It's your choice. Think about it.

Spirit Of Antichrist At Work Today

In my first posting I alluded to a statement John makes in 1 John 2:18, when he states: "It is the last hour." Two thousand years later we must be in the last moments, even the last seconds, of time. I also mentioned John's statement in v.20 that everyone who denies that Yeshua is the Messiah is antichrist, i.e., is operating under the spirit of the antichrist. BTW - antichrist doesn't simply mean against Christ, or against Messiah - it means Messiah imitator.

There is, according to the Scriptures, e.g. 2 Thess. 2:1-3, a person who will one day be upon the earth known as the Antichrist. In the Thessalonian passage he is referred to as "the man of sin," and, "the son of perdition." However, what John is letting us know is that while we may be waiting for the manifestation of this particular person, the satanic spirit that will motivate this person is already operating among believers and indeed has been since these Scriptures were written.

We need to be like the men of Issachar were in the days when God was getting ready to finally put David on the throne of Israel. 1 Chronicles 12:32 - "Of the sons of Issachar who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their brethren were at their command."
So, do you and I understand that in our day God is getting ready to put David's son, Yeshua haMashiach on the throne of His father David? Do we understand from the times we're living in that God is getting ready to restore the fallen tabernacle of David and that Yeshua is about to come back and reign on the earth?

So if that's true, then as Paul said in Romans 13:11, it is "it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed." It is the last hour! What is the evidence of that? The rest of v. 18 in 1 John 2 - "...even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour." Many antichrists, many preachers and false prophets (operating under this deceptive spirit) are on the loose, moving freely around in the body of Messiah, and are even revered by many in the body. What marks them? How can we know who they are? Verse 19 - "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us."

Who are they? They're the ones who have splintered themselves away from the body. They're the ones who don't want to come under authority of truly God-ordained leadership, who in their rebellious hearts won't make themselves accountable to God's leaderhip in local bodies. So they pull out to do their own thing under the guise of "The Lord told me to do what I'm doing." They try to put a spiritual veneer on their rebellious, unaccountable attitudes.

You need to know that you have every right to question people who say things like that and to ask them who sent them (besides the Lord); what local, reputable body has recognized and endorsed their call and commended them to the work they're doing for the Lord. You have every right to hold them accountable if you've attached yourself to their ministry. When they're guilty of what John talks about in v.19 of splintering off the body, their teaching will also be skewed - it will be a product of their warped minds and hearts, and their jaded thinking."
"They went out from us, but they were not of us; for it they had been of us, they would have continued with us..."

Yeshua Is, And Came To Be, The Messiah!

Let's begin rebutting Mr. Hagee's "Jesus was not the Messiah" nonsense here by looking at one of the first arguments he makes, namely, "And if Jesus refused by his words or actions to claim to be the Messiah to the Jews, then how can the Jews be blamed for rejecting what was never offered?" (page 136 of "In Defense Of Israel").

Mr. Hagee goes on to try to prove the point that Yeshua refused by his words or actions to claim to be the Messiah to the Jews. What an insult to the intelligence of any believer when this statement contradicts so many plain statements in the Scriptures. Also you should be award that the word Christ from the Greek New Testament means "Anointed One", as does Moshiach (Messiah) in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Tanach, as Hagee himself points out on p. 94 of his book: "Christ is the term that identifies him [i.e. Yeshua, brackets mine] as the 'Anointed One'." Which really makes one's head spin when you consider that Hagee refers to Yeshua as "Jesus Christ" and "Christ" and then makes the stupid statements he does about Yeshua's Messiahship. How self-contradictory can you get!?! Let me offer you the following passages as proof that Yeshua did indeed claim by His words and actions to be the Messiah to the Jews:

1. At His encounter with the Samaritan woman of questionable character at Jacob's well in Sychar, listen to the exchange between the woman and Yeshua at the end of their conversation as recorded in John 4:25,26 (NKJV)-
"The woman said to Him, 'I know that Messiah is coming' (who is called Christ). 'When He comes, He will tell us all things.' Jesus said to her, 'I who speak to you am He'." Does this sound like someone refusing to identify Himself as the Messiah?

2. When Yeshua is standing on trial for His life before the High Priest of Israel on the night He was betrayed we read of this exchange between the two of them in Mark 14:60-62 (NKJV) - "And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, saying, 'Do You answer nothing? What is it these men testify against You?' But He kept silent and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked Him, saying to Him, "Are You the Christ [Messiah], the Son of the Blessed?' Jesus said, 'I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven." Again I ask, is this refusing to identify Himself as the Messiah? He plainly states in response to the question, "Are You the Messiah?", "I am." And He even applies a Messianic prophecy from the book of Daniel to Himself in the assertion that He would come back with the "clouds of heaven."

3. Mr. Hagee uses the encounter of Yeshua with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24 as further evidence that Yeshua refused to be the Messiah. Hagee ends at verse 21, where the disillusioned disciples make this statement to the resurrected Yeshua, "But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel." Hagee then conveniently goes to the end of the encounter when they're breaking bread together in the house and as soon as they recognize Yeshua He vanishes from their sight. Here's the conclusion Hagee comes to on this on page 143 of his book: "He instantly disappeared (Luke 24:30-35). He refused to be their Messiah, choosing instead to be the Saviour of the world."

How conveniently Hagee leaves out the following exchange between Yeshua and these two disciples in verse 24-27: "And certain of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women said; but Him they did not see." Then He [Yeshua] said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ [Messiah] to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. He not only identifies Himself as their Messiah here, He also uses their Scriptures to back up His claims about Himself! So what do you know!?! By word and deed Yeshua claims to be and is the Jewish Messiah to the Jews!

He is also recognized as such by others, as when Andrew first discovers him through John's witness, John 1:40-42 - "One of the two who heard John speak, and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, 'We have found the Messiah' (which is translated Christ). And he brought him to Jesus..."

So our conclusion is simply this: Yeshua did claim by word and action to be the Messiah and therefore Jewish people can and will be held accountable for accepting or refusing Him, just like anyone else is when confronted with the person and claims of Yeshua the Messiah.

Don't Revise It Mr. Hagee - Incinerate It!

There is much more wrong with the book "In Defense Of Israel" than the 10th chapter which Mr. Hagee, on his website, has announced he is revising due to the furor it has created in the body of Messiah. There is much more that Mr. Hagee needs to apologize for than just the superficial one he offers for "any confusion my writing may have caused the body of Christ," intended or not!

Why has Hagee snubbed, or at least ignored, the respected leadership of the Messianic Jewish movement in not including them for feedback to the revisions he plans to make? Why are respected Messianic Jewish leaders and theologians such as Russ Resnick, Dan Juster, Michael Schiffman, John Fischer (to name a few) not in Hagee's "loop" for feedback. Why is he turning predominantly to leaders of predominantly Gentile Christian and Church ministries who (with the exception of Michael L. Brown) have little sensitivity to Jewish issues, not being Jewish themselves?

If Hagee is planning to revise this horrible book, then there are plenty of other errors, besides the blatant and blasphemous statements that Yeshua did not come to be the Messiah to the Jews in chapter 10, that need to be corrected. In chapter 8, for example, on page 95, Hagee uses the Luke 2 account of Yeshua going to the Temple for the Passover at the age of 12 as proof-text that this was Yeshua's bar mitzvah. This is a complete fabrication by Hagee. There is nothing in the Luke 2 text that even remotely suggests or imples that Yeshua had His bar mitzvah there. In fact there is nothing anywhere in the New Covenant Scriptures that has anything to say about Yeshua having a bar mitzvah, let alone that He did have one and that it was at the Temple in Jerusalem during the Passover when He was 12. Yeshua was simply accompanying his parents (as they would have done every year) to Jerusalem for the Passover in obedience to the command of Deut. 16:16 to appear before the Lord for the three major Feasts "in the place which He chooses," albeit, Jerusalem.

Then in Chapter 10, along with the heresy of stating that Yeshua did not come to be the Messiah to the Jews, Hagee also states on page 133: "The Holy Spirit of God announced through a Jewish prophet, Simeon, that the sovereign purpose (italics mine) for Jesus's life was to be a light to the Gentiles (these italics are Hagee's) (compare Isaiah 42:6)." Again, a fabrication and a lie. Part of Yeshua's purpose in coming was certainly to be a light to the Gentiles (or the nations), but to say that it was the sovereign purpose of God begs the question and is completely innacurate and inconsistent with the words of Yeshua Himself. What do you do then with Yeshua's command to His disciples in Matt. 10:5,6 - "Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."? What then do you do with His statement concerning His own mission in Matt. 15:24 - "I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."?

How in the world does Hagee justify a statement that the sovereign purpose of God for Yeshua's arrival on earth the first time was primarily for the Gentiles? This is the replacement theology that Hagee claims not to be a part of! How erroneous the idea is that Mr. Hagee puts forth in his book that Jewish people don't need to put their faith in Yeshua as the Messiah in order to be saved. What a horrible, blatant disregard of the clear statements and teachings of the Scriptures and of Yeshua Himself!

I am Jewish. I am a Jewish believer in Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah of Israel. Both my parents were Jewish. Both my parents, and my sister, were survivors of the Nazi holocaust. I hope that Mr. Hagee understands what a slap in the face his book is to all Jewish people in general and to Jewish believers in particular. Particularly Jewish believers whose loved ones went through the holocaust, believers who have paid a dear price to maintain a consistent witness of their testimony to salvation through faith in Yeshua the Jewish Messiah, when he comes along with the lies perpretated in his book. We have borne the anger, scorn, and derision of our unsaved loved ones, who themselves witnessed our grandparents (their parents), uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters go to the gas at Auschwitz, lined up, shot and dumped into mass graves. Hagee pulls the rug out from under our feet and insults and damages the witness of his Jewish brothers and sisters in the faith of Yeshua in order to placate unsaved, unregenrate Jewry who still need to come to faith in their Messiah.

Is Mr. Hagee not aware that according to the Scriptures, and according to what Yeshua Himself taught, the gospel (good news) is, always has been, and always will be an offense and stumbling block to the Jew? That doesn't mean that we water it down and even discard it so as not to offend Jewish sensibilities. It does mean we need to pray that God open their eyes and do what He said He would do, to remove the veil that covers their eyes and hearts to recognize the Jewish Messiah - Yeshua!

To tell the Jewish community that they're OK the way they are in keeping Torah to make it into heaven, when the Scripture clearly teaches that by the works of Torah no flesh is justified; to tell the Jewish community that they're not responsible for something that was never offered to them to begin with, i.e. faith in Yeshua Who, according to Hagee, didn't come to be their Messiah; is just as damaging to Jewish souls as were the pogroms, crusades, inquisitions and holocaust perpretated by those responsible in the name of Jesus. These statements made by Hagee are just as damaging as the writings of the Church Fathers and Martin Luther (whom Hagee quotes extensively in his book) for they offer the Jew a false sense of security and hope, a false sense of being right and not needing to come to faith in Yeshua. They lull the Church into a false belief that they are relieved of their responsibility to take the gospel message to the Jew. Again a contradiction of the Scriptures that tells us that the Gospel of Yeshua is for the Jew first and also for the Gentile.

Mr. Hagee, "In Defense Of Israel" doesn't need to be revised - it needs to be incinerated!

Yeshua's Bar Mitzvah? - I Don't Think So!

Before I begin presenting and rebutting the heresies concerning the Messiahship of Yeshua that John Hagee talks about in his book, "In Defense Of Israel," I want to give you a glimpse into the faulty research and biblical interpretation that are characteristically found throughout the book.

On page 95 of the book, Mr. Hagee states that the reason for Yeshua's visit to the Temple in Jerusalem with His parents (as recorded in Luke 2:41-50) was for His Bar Mitzvah. That is, that as a practicing Jew, Yeshua was entering into manhood, becoming spiritually accountable for Himself. Here is the quote directly from the book (italics mine):

"At the end of his twelfth year, which would have been his thirteenth birthday, Jesus was taken to the temple for his bar mitzvah, which was (and still is) the custom of the Jews (Luke 2:42). Jesus went into the temple a boy, but he came out of the temple a man.
"In that context, it is not hard to understand the controversial conversation between Jesus and his mother following the occasion. When Mary and Joseph left the temple and discovered after a day's journey that Jesus was not with them, they returned to the temple to find their son in a dialogue with scholars. Mary scolded Jesus, saying, 'Son, why have You done this to us? Your father and I have sought You anxiously.' Jesus answered, 'Why did you seek Me?' (Luke 2:48-49).
"Some Christians see Jesus's response as being disrespectful to his mother. But he was not being disrespectful. Jesus was now a man, and his mother was having difficulty adusting to the face. Some things never change!"

There is absolutely nothing in the narrative of Luke 2:41-49 that even remotely suggests that Yeshua was in Jerusalem for His bar mitzvah. Nothing to suggest that His mother was having difficulty adjusting to the fact that He was growing up. As a matter of fact, there is no mention or example of a young jewish man's bar mitzvah anywhere in the B'rit Hadasha (New Testament). The whole presentation as such from this text is Hagee's own invention, from beginning to end. His treatment of the Luke passage is both erroneous and irresponsible.

There is absolutely nothing in that entire passage to even remotely suggest that Yeshua was having His bar mitzvah at the Temple in Jerusalem at age 12. The clear statements and context of the passage was that Yeshua accompanied His parents to Jerusalem at age12 to observe the Passover. This is something He would have done every year at that time with them since the Passover was one of the three feasts that God in Torah commanded all Jewish males to go up to Jerusalem to observe (Deut. 16:16).

Miriam (Mary) in her "scolding" of Yeshua was expressing her anxiety over not knowing where He had gone to when she and Joseph had originally left Jerusalem to go back to Nazareth.

All of Hagee's statements and conclusions are his own invention and not based on fact. His method of hermeneutics (biblical interpretation) leaves much to be desired.

Last Hour or Last Seconds?

John writes in his first epistle, "...it is the last hour..." (1 Jn. 2:18). So I have to conclude that, if that was true 2,000 years ago when the epistle was written, then with all that's happening around us in the world today we must be living in the final seconds of human history. Particularly when he states, later in that verse, that "even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour."

What is the way in which to identify someone who is operating in the spirit of the antichrist (Messiah-imitator)? Verse 22 - "Who is a liar but he who denies that Yeshua is the Messiah? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son."

This is particularly telling in light of the nature of the heresies that are entering the arena of Messiah's body through "prominent" Christian and Church leaders. When I hear from and read the writings of such men as John Hagee, who has national visibility in the Church world, say that "Jesus did not come to be the Messiah" and that He never identified Himself as such, and that Jewish people, therefore, cannot be expected to believe in Him as the Messiah, I have to believe that Yeshua is about to come back the second time.

I purchased a copy of Hagee's book "In Defense Of Israel" today, in which he elaborates on this heresy. With even just a cursory glance in it, particuarly page 136, the blatant lies and usage of proof texts from the Bible out of context is rife. To blatantly state that the Jews do not need Yeshua to be forgiven and saved since He never claimed to be the Messiah is an outright contradiction of the Scriptures and of the statements Yeshua made about Himself. To say that Jews don't need the true Messiah of Israel is the height of anti-semitism.

These are the last seconds. Think about it!