A POET ARISES IN ISRAEL

A POET ARISES IN ISRAEL an in-house affair Steve Rafalsky [Excerpted from the larger 732-page book, A Great and Terrible love: A Visionary Journey from Woodstock’s Sorceries to God’s Paradise, https://amzn.com/0983519498] 1 A POET ARISES IN ISRAEL an in-house affair Contents Preface Part I A POET ARISES IN ISRAEL ON WAKING UP IN HELL AFTER A SUICIDE BOMBING An Alien Regime SPIRITUAL IDENTITY THEFT: Stealing God’s Gift The Illegitimate Regime To The Kindly And Gentle THE GOD OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE: For my family and friends Of thy sons A HORROR SPIRITUAL WARFARE WHAT JERUSALEM? WHAT TEMPLE? ‫ ن‬Mark Of The Christian The Intransigence of the Rabbis SATAN’S “ISRAEL” SOVEREIGNITIS The Evil Shepherds YOU POETS OF THE JEWISH STATE TRIBAL MYTHS THERE’S A TIME THE FIRST “REPLACEMENT THEOLOGIAN” Israel Has Not Been Replaced By The Church Taliban Poets A “One-Bomb Country” IT IS GOING DOWN Our Courage is different than David’s I say the rabbis have led my people Part II Are the Covenant Curses of Moses truly on us now? Holocausts Watchman, what of the night? A great promise, and a great hope therefrom 2 ___________________ Preface I have held this book back many years. It is now time for it to see the light of day (being part of the larger work, A Great And Terrible Love: A Visionary Journey from Woodstock’s Sorceries to God’s Paradise). With the gained perspective of years it needed some adding to. Of course for a Poet to stand among the people of Israel—that Israel which cleaves to its King, Messiah, as well the children of that apostate Jewry who spurned Him—and speak truly to both camps without fear of man, this must needs be—simultaneously—an act of war and of love. The prophetic office in Israel closed when the last prophet, John son of Zebedee (Matthew 10:2), finished writing the apocalyptic vision and prophecy given him around 95 CE—the culmination of all Old and New Covenant prophecy—so what I write is not “immediate” prophecy given me, yet as a student of prophecies the prophetic word of those who came before us is in my mouth. Paul the apostle of Messiah put it like this, “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), and John was instructed by the angel, “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10). The word of our prophets is precious to us who heed them. I say this is war because of the tearing down of spiritual/intellectual strong holds many have invested their lives building and defending. To err in this area of theology and vision allows actual blood to be spilled, much blood, precious blood. We Jews know this first hand, the Arabs also. But the Christian—and some of the Jewish— West do not; it mostly just sits in its easy chairs in front of the TV and drinks in the fruit of its unseeing. A storm coming will turn these chairs over. I do not know how many of my own family have perished because of the blind and blinding rabbinate, and when I say “perished” I mean in the prophesied Gehenna of eternal Hell, so this is no idle theology with me, and I mean it to be war, that the falsity plaguing my people may be challenged on the world stage, what I call, “Apocalypse Field, global arena of consciousness”. Will my opponents resort to the old tricks of murder, slander, and lies? What do I care, for I am given a heart and tongue to speak by Him who is Lord of poets, and there could be no power against me were it not given from above, so I will bear this testimony and love not my life even if it be unto the death. I mean to cut down the lies and hatred that have cost the eternal lives of so many Jews I cannot count them. What I say is in accord with both the Old Covenant (Tanakh) and the New Covenant Scripture (B’rit Chadashah), despite the opposition of some, both Christians and Jews. These things impact the wider world also, as Gentile believers in Yeshua (Jesus) our Messiah are grafted into the spiritual faith of Israel, from which flows the river of eternal life to all nations—the ancient promise to Abraham fulfilled. Mark you, the poet’s pen is not filled with lifeless ink. It is a sword of the Spirit of YHWH, and His vessel. It is among the foremost weapons of the Apocalypse—if so be it have the wind of Heaven filling its sails, and speeding its missiles, even as Heaven’s power sped David’s stone into the brain of the giant. _____ Part I 3 A POET ARISES IN ISRAEL But who art thou, and where art thou to be found, you named “a prince of God,” having power and favor with the Most High and with men? Art thou to be found in the state that has named itself Israel while yet being under the covenant curses Moses uttered in his third and fifth books? For what happened in Europe, and now happens in the land you call Israel do not show to the world (or to ourselves) a people blessed, but cursed a people and a nation besieged by the enemy of humankind, the prince of demons – and those humans under his sway – who loathe the blood of Abraham, and his seed. Alas, the truth must be told, the nation that calls itself by the name of Abraham’s grandson, the wrestler with God, was by Moses, and his later Prophet, bereft of the name for it is written (and not in the Talmud nor yet by any rabbi nor by the wisest of the Jews) but by Moses, at command of YHWH, in the Fifth book, eighteenth chapter, verses fifteen through nineteen concerning the Prophet who would arise acknowledged by the sages as Messiah, that whoever would not listen to the words YHWH gave this one to speak would be cut off from God and the nation and would receive the curses spoken ten chapters later, they and their seed after them, which curses we received through Rome and then in Europe, and even now in the land. We have listened to rabbis who led us into the jaws of death, over and over and over again, for twenty centuries in the School of Divine Chastening. 4 To whom shall I assign responsibility for the death-camps? And for our body-parts scattered across the land in these days – by crazed bombers? Shall I assign it to YHWH? For many of us have done so as we saw the Nazis destroy our loves and the faith we held in vain. I, poet of Israel, say no, not to Him who is holy and righteous in all His ways, but to them He warned us of by Isaiah, His prophet, who declared, “…the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.” [9:16] I say the rabbis have led my people into the curses of Moses these past twenty centuries, for if we had pleased God and were under His sure covenant blessings and protection, how is it possible we had been spewed from the land to be slaughtered and despised among the goyim two thousand years and to end in the ovens of Hitler? The truth is – and only can be! – we have followed treasonous leaders in betrayal of our King, and have reaped their destruction. O nation of fools, we, to be blinded so long! As the prophets foretold, the Gentiles came to His light, and we followed our teachers into darkness even unto this blood-filled day! Cast off the pretenders who have slain our millions and return to the one Book we are the people of! 5 I tell you Israel exists but no longer tied to the land, neither to the Jewish nation, for the great net of the Almighty has been cast over all the nations to draw forth His elect from the ends of the earth, so Daniel’s vision may be realized, “that all people, nations, and languages should serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away “and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” [7:14] Israel is now the international community which bows the knee to Messiah, David’s Son, and which holy nation gleaned from the nations shall be the Israel which fills the entire world and inherits all the land-promises, an everlasting Kingdom of Glory such as legend or dream never imagined, with a Temple in it built of living stones which are the people in whom YHWH dwells and lives as we worship and rejoice in the glory of His majesty and love forever; which true Temple exists in these very days in rudiment form as people from among Jewry and all the nations bow the knee to Messiah High Priest of Melchizedek’s order, King seated on David’s throne, mighty Prophet foretold by Moses having ordered the Kingdom of God at His good pleasure cutting off the rebels who love their own hearts above His. At this time, Israel is not grounded 6 in this world, but in the hearts and lives of those blessed who are in this world but not of it until the great Day of Judgment and the Resurrection of the Dead. Then the vast Israel of God alone shall inhabit the earth while His enemies inhabit the Gehenna of souls in the darkness of hellish light for the wickedness they have done and for refusing Messiah who brought cleansing and forgiveness of sins to Israel first, and then to the Gentiles, which priceless mercy ought not be spurned! Thus says the poet of Israel to whomever has ears to hear, as a call to join the people forever blessed, whom God calls, Israel My Glory ____ ON WAKING UP IN HELL AFTER A SUICIDE BOMBING From among the Jews goes up this cry: “Our rabbis lied to us! There is no God in our midst. We are far from Him, and under His wrath. The rabbis concealed our prophets’ teachings!” From among the Muslims: “Mohammed lied to us! There is no Paradise, no girls, no smile of Allah! Our religion is a lie, a demon’s fiction; we die for nothing!” From the seed of Abraham, through Isaac, through Jacob, through David, comes Messiah the King, the first time as suffering servant bearing the sins of His people, the Lamb of God, 7 raised from the dead by the power of the Father. The second time He will return as Champion of His people and avenging King over His enemies, over those who deceived the multitudes of all the nations and tribes, suppressing the knowledge of His glory and truth, so that they awake in Hell. 4/9/02 ____ For Messianic Jews An Alien Regime There is a phenomenon in the Jewish State that is matched only in nations where entrenched demonic strongholds control much of the religious and/or political life of those nations – such as those under fundamentalist Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, or communist rule – and that is the legal persecution of believers in Yeshua (Jesus) with government sanction, and violent persecution without government interference. If it is indeed the case that an alien regime, whose capital is in Gehenna, wields the spiritual scepter in Jerusalem – with considerable political influence – then our strategy of appeasement by avoidance of the prophetic stance will be as effective as British appeasement prior to the Second World War. Gehennian regimes eat appeasers for breakfast. If it is said, “But they have been the standard-bearers of Judaism for centuries, and through awful persecutions have preserved Torah for our people,” it must be noted that that which they have preserved is not authentic Judaism, and all who hold to this spurious version of it shall perish, for it is the devil's snare – this version of Judaism – concocted for the purpose of destroying the nation by sealing it against Messiah’s Spirit. The “Torah” they have preserved is not the Torah of Moses at all, for the instruction of Moses pointed to Messiah, and so it was with all the prophets. The “Torah” they preserved is a counterfeit, and all who stake their souls on this teaching will lose them eternally. To put it plainly, the rabbis have destroyed more souls than ever did Hitler or Hamas. They have destroyed more Jews than all the evil Gentiles and so-called “Christians” up through the ages, by leading us into the dread curses of Moses (the Fifth Book, chapter 28; Isaiah 9:16). The true story of these things is being suppressed in unrighteousness, and a fresh retelling of it – in the vigor of the LORD’s Spirit – will provide an exposure of the evil, and a vision of God’s love for those His ancient people, and it will happen, for a poet arises in Israel. 5/1/2000 ____ 8 SPIRITUAL IDENTITY THEFT: Stealing God’s Gift The identity under consideration is the name “Israel,” and as its origin and usage come from the Bible, we will first look there. When this name was bestowed upon Jacob by God at Peniel, after he had wrestled with Him through the night (see the account in Genesis 32:24-32), it was given to designate the patriarch’s new spiritual status: in the LORD’s own words, “Thy name shall be no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” This name is utterly unique! The LORD, set to purify and equip His patriarch of the covenant people, Himself wrestles with Jacob (as with us in all our adversities – truly it is Him in like graciousness behind the scenes) granting him strength to continue – and even prevail – in his desire for the blessing. Jacob’s own strength unequal to the task, and crippled in the struggle, he received strength from God: “with the name He gives the thing itself which the name implies.” 1 The name was conceived and bestowed by God to designate a blessed state of being; it was passed on to his descendants as well, and the name was also removed from some of them by the same Bestower, for serious violations of the covenant, as seen in Exodus 12:15, 19; 30:33, 38, and Isaiah 9:13-17; 48:16-19,2 and shown in the expressions, “that soul shall be cut off from Israel,” “…shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel,” “…shall even be cut off from his people,” “…destroyed from among you,” and “…destroyed from before Me.” It should be clear that this is not a name to be bestowed by men,3 as God has created and reserved it for His own special use. It should also be clear He retains the right to strip the name from whom He will, and specifies when this is to be done. To use this name when it has not been given, or after it has been removed, is to steal a prerogative reserved by God to Himself. It is stealing the right to confer an identity from the Almighty God! We will look at a modern instance of this in a moment, but let us first look at a warning to the people of Israel given by God through Moses in his Fifth Book, which bears directly on this: I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put My words in His mouth; and He shall speak unto them all that I shall command Him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto My words which He shall speak in My name, I will require it of him. (Deut. 18:18, 19) This is a warning to heed the words of those appointed to the prophetic office, and in particular Him who is the culmination and fulfillment of that office, the Messiah, whom New Covenant believers know as Jesus of Nazareth. The phrase, “I will require it of him,” means in this instance, “I will require his place among My people and his life.” Consider the destruction to be visited on those who with wicked hearts refused to “hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all His commandments…” (Deut 28:15), which promised destruction is shown in the verses following, so you may comprehend the dread import of the words “I will require it…” 4 to the Jewish nation after Messiah appeared among them. Messiah’s apostle, Peter, in quoting from this passage5 as he spoke to the people of Israel, rendered it, “And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that Prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.” (Acts 3:22, 23) We have looked at the pertinent Biblical data, and have seen the name Israel given by God and taken away by Him (from those who did not warrant it). We have seen it specifically taken away from those in the Jewish nation who, in the time of Christ and the apostles, refused to “hear that Prophet,” who would not “hearken unto My words which He shall speak in My name.” Simply put, God openly cleft all those who refused His word 9 through Messiah from the people of Israel, like a butcher cuts away gristle. As with a great cleaver He divided the nation, those who were His, and those who were not, even as aged Simeon prophesied over the infant Jesus in the temple, “Behold, this child is set for the falling and rising again of many in Israel…” (Luke 2:34; Cf. Isaiah 8:14, 15) From this point on, the people of Israel gathered around their King, Messiah Jesus. Those who did not were “cut off” from the people by the judicial decree of God. Jesus Himself foretold this event when He announced to the chief priests and elders of Israel, “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” (Matthew 21:43) Immediately prior to that statement He told them the same thing in the parable of the vineyard, there holding up a mirror to their motives and actions (verses 33-41). Many of the priests, and some Pharisees, did turn to Him. We look now at the “identity theft” spoken of earlier, which, amazingly, is abetted by some in the Community of Messiah, God’s authentic “holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9). On May 14, 1948, descendants of those Jews who were declared no longer people of Israel by Messiah (and by the word of Moses) declared themselves a sovereign nation in the land of Palestine, to be called the State of Israel. Those Jews who denominated themselves thus, had for 2,000 years maintained their identity as Jews through subjection to rabbinic teaching devolved from the first century Pharisees, who were, in the main, the leaders of the apostasy from – and rebellion against – the God of Israel, and His appointed King. This stealing the name only God may give is an act of unbridled defiance. I hear many Christians declaiming from various prophetic Scriptures and schemas that the Jewish state is still God’s Israel, and they go quite on about it, overlooking – or avoiding – the foundational decree on the matter. But God’s decree stands eternal: A Prophet shall the LORD your God raise up…Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever He shall say unto you. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name. [Jesus said,]…I have not spoken of Myself, but the Father which sent Me, He gave Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that His commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto Me, so I speak. (John 1:10-12; 12:49, 50) And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto My [the Father’s] words which He shall speak in My name, I will require it of him. Whoever abides in the word and Spirit of the King of Israel partakes of His identity and Kingdom, be they Jew or Gentile. Any others who call themselves Israelites, on any other basis, will answer for this identity theft – this stealing of that which belongs to God – on the Day that is coming quickly. Do not support them in their grievous delusion and sin! ____ 1 Commentary Upon The Book Of Genesis, by John Calvin, on 32:28 Further references on this wise: Deut. 4:2, 3; Lev. 7:21, 25, 27; 18:29; 19:8; 20:6; 23:29, 30; Num. 9:13; 15:30, 31; 19:13; Psalm 94:23; 101:8; etc. 3 This is not referring to parents who name their children after Biblical characters, even such as Israel, Jesus, Moses, etc., which may be a way of honoring heroes of the Faith, and seeking the blessing of their children. 4 It is the same usage as in Genesis 9:5; 42:22; and 2 Chron. 24:22. 5 Deuteronomy 18:15, 19. 10 2 ____ The Illegitimate Regime The Orthodox rabbinate issues pronouncements as though it were the ruling authority of a legitimate spiritual regime, as though it were the arbiter of authentic Judaism. It presumes to render judgment on the validity of Reformed conversions, the Jewishness of Jews who hold Yeshua (Jesus) to be the Messiah, and on the Jewishness of children born of marriages where only the father is a Jew (see the piece below, “Of thy sons”), while it itself is manifestly an illegitimate regime whose authority and rule have been a cancer on the Jewish people. To illustrate: The Lawgiver of Judaism pronounced an ironclad guarantee of protection and domestic tranquility on the Jewish nation if they but pleased the God of Israel, keeping His commandments and loving Him, yet we have been spewed from the Land to be slaughtered and despised among the nations for 20 centuries, to end in the ditches of Europe and the ovens of Hitler. There can be no doubt at all our rabbis have led us into the curses of Moses, for it is impossible that the covenant promises of the 28th chapter of the fifth Book could have failed. But this does not mean there is no true spiritual government in Israel. The true kingdom of Israel is – and always has been – a spiritual kingdom under the direction and illumination of its prophets and faithful priesthood. In rebellion the rabbinic school set up a counterfeit government, establishing it through intimidation, deception and murder. The record of this war between the prophetic and rabbinic schools is the subject of much of the Scriptures. It is written in blood, as it was the hunted prophets who wrote most of them. Isaiah warned, “The leaders of this people err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.” (9:16) The truth is we have followed treasonous leaders in betrayal of our King, and we have reaped their destruction. The true spiritual government of Israel has not perished, but has thrived – albeit apart from the Land. And while the royal scepter has lit up the nations, the rabbis still gnash their teeth and seek to outlaw word of their King. Now the King of Israel (“who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle!” –Psalm 24:8) has established His outposts back in the ancient nation, and once again they are under fire from the heavy guns of the Orthodox. Lift up your heads, O you outposts, for His glory fills your house, and He is mighty to save! A poet arises in Israel, and he tells a story. _____ To The Kindly And Gentle To the kindly and gentle among Jews, rabbi or not, you have an offer of redemption if your heart yearns for the true God more than the honor of men for the day of His vengeance nears in its fulness (we have known this vengeance two millennia 11 in part) but now is the time to avail ourselves of mercy from the Son of David High Priest after the order of Melchizedek and the blood of sprinkling He offers will avail to the cleansing of your souls for His sacrifice is a sweet savor to the Almighty —run to Him! He is mighty to save and you know His voice when you hear it and He knows yours who are loved by Him. The time is now short for the end is near seek Him! ____ THE GOD OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE: For my family and friends Some of us don’t believe in God, and some may but think He is far off and not involved in our lives, while yet others do believe He is involved and are very religious, yet they follow the teachings of men and not the teachings God Himself gave, or they discard His continuing revelation through His prophets. The stakes are high in this matter, for it is the testimony of Moses and the prophets that there is an afterlife and the failure to be accepted by God in covenant friendship will bode ill for one’s place in that life to come. We who are Jews – by blood or by faith – have a heritage and an honor granted to no other ethnic group, that being, God the Creator spoke through prophets to a people He loved, and these prophets were Jews, and the people He spoke to were Jews. This is the prime distinctive of the Jewish people, that God favored them by speaking to them, and made a covenant with them to be their God in this life and in the life after this, not just in the immaterial heavens, but after the Great Cleansing, on the new earth, where He will dwell with them – as a father with His children – in what has aptly been called the Kingdom of Glory. This is the glory of the Jews – also called the Hebrews – that God is their God, and they are His people. There is a story of a servant who, given envelopes with some papers in them by her employers every birthday, thought them of little worth, and just kept them tied in a bundle, a little disappointed her employers gave her such useless gifts, but faithfully served them until her death. When her relatives opened the bundle they found stocks from the employers’ company worth multiple millions. She died not knowing it. So it is with many of us, we have been given an inheritance of untold wealth – not mere material wealth as in the story – but wealth of Shalom, a treasure of eternal well-being far surpassing anything we can conceive. The very heart of this Shalom is fellowship – actual friendship – with the God of Heaven and earth, not only in 12 this life, but beyond the grave and after the resurrection of our bodies, into the eternity that is our proper home, in the kingdom where we will be creatures possessed of an inner peace and glory of being that is our proper state. Moses told the truth when he related how, although created innocent beings who walked with our Creator, we fell from this first estate into inner ruin, alienation from Him so profound that many of us no longer even think He exists, physical decay now the way of our lives, and moral failure – this latter seen especially in how we fail to keep God’s commandments of love and life, even to the point of not acknowledging them as from Him. Some of us don’t think much of Moses, or of the prophets who came after him. In this we are like the servant who was ignorant of her wealth. The prophets unanimously predicted a great Prophet (capital P!) who was to come and end the sufferings, the oppression, and especially the controversy – the aforementioned alienation – between us and our God. The rabbis called him the Messiah, the anointed of God. The prophets said Messiah would not only come to save the Jews, but would take some of the Gentiles under his wing: he would rule the entire world, and those who loved him would inherit all that God – whom he called his Father – gave him to bless his people with. He – the Messiah – has come and gone (and will come again, as it is written of him). Come from the Father’s side, and gone back, from where he rules the heaven and earth as appointed by the Father. His is a unique status. The prophets speak of him often: Micah says of him he is from eternity (5:2); Isaiah speaks of him in such terms that it sounds like God Himself is among us (9:6); Daniel says of him that he approached the throne of the Almighty and was given an everlasting kingdom which shall never be destroyed or end (7:13, 14). Moses himself said that whoever did not listen to this prophet’s words which the LORD (YHWH) gave him would no longer be included in the people of Israel (Deuteronomy 18:15, 18, 19). Micah, again, said that this Ruler of the nation would be born in Bethlehem. Messiah came according to the prophecies concerning him, fulfilling numerous predictions to the minute letter. He came mighty yet lowly, he was born of a woman, yet God was his Father (Isaiah 7:14), as was also prophesied. He came, first of all, to reconcile God’s people back to Him, by being the sin-bearer for them – the Lamb of God he was called – so that God would no longer count their sins against them. Levitical sacrifices all symbolically pointed to this substituting of the innocent for the guilty, as object lessons preparing them for the true sacrifice Messiah would offer: he would be their Passover, so that all who were sprinkled by his blood (even as Moses later sprinkled the people and the tabernacle) were purified in God’s eyes, and the Angel of death passed over them, as in the Exodus. That the Passover blood sprinkled on the lintel and two side posts of the door makes the sign of the cross – in blood! – is no accident. One of the great errors we make – a fatal error! – is to think if we are good enough – generous, kind, honest, and so on – God will accept us. This error is called “self-righteousness, counting on our own goodness to qualify us for acceptance in His sight, and entrance into Heaven (if we even believe His saying that it’s real). This is not the righteousness God accepts. It is mere human goodness, and not that absolute moral perfection He requires for intimate fellowship with Himself, and entrance into His eternal kingdom. So He gave us another treasure; not only the forgiveness of our sins, but He imputed the moral perfection of Messiah onto us: Messiah took our place bearing our sins, and gave us his place of perfect standing in the presence of God. This amounts to a legal gift: the removing the guilt of our sins, and the giving the righteous standing – the moral merit – of another, God’s Messiah. Isaiah talks of this in the 53rd chapter of his prophecy. Not that this was an utterly new thing, for God gave this gift to Abraham, counting him righteous simply on the basis of his faith in God’s promises (Genesis 15:6); and King David found this same forgiveness and righteousness, as he was a member of that same covenant God made with Abraham and all his (genuinely believing) seed. He believed, and it was counted as righteousness to him. He did not trust in his own righteousness! He would not have found favor had he done so. 13 Now Messiah has come to offer this gift of forgiveness and righteousness in its final and full manifestation, of which all the other types shown in the Law and the prophets were shadows compared to the realization, the fulfillment. He is the treasure God has bestowed upon His people. In the B’rit Chadashah – the New Covenant or Testament – prophesied by Jeremiah (31:31 ff.), this treasure is revealed. Here are some of these priceless words: He said he was sent “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (a), with the warning, “If you do not believe that I am he [of whom Moses spoke], you shall die in your sins” (b). To the people he gave this invitation, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest….learn of me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls” (c). And he gave this promise, “This is the will of Him that sent me, that every one who sees the Son, and believes in him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day” (d). History tells us that many – but certainly not all – in the Jewish nation rejected him. They were looking for a different kind of Messiah, a military commander and prince who would free them from the occupation and oppression of the Roman Empire, and all Gentile domination. They were not looking for a Savior from their sins, a restorer of them to the heart of God, the true return from exile (which was from the garden of Paradise, and God’s love)! Even today in this 21st century the priceless treasure of God to the Jewish people – and He has invited Gentiles too! – remains available, though often ignored. “The gift of God is eternal life through Messiah Yeshua our Lord” (e). All over the world both Jews and Gentiles call out to him whom God made ruler of Heaven and earth, asking him for forgiveness of all sin, and casting their souls upon his mercy, that he may deliver them from Gehenna, and to eternal life in his kingdom. From the throne of power in the heavens he yet speaks; as it is written, “All that the Father gives me shall come to me, and him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out” (f). This is the treasure and glory of the Jews: such a Savior! Even at death’s door he stands ready to receive all who look to him. Well it is written of him, he is “A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel” (g). ____ (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) Matthew 15:24 John 8:24 Matthew 11:28, 29 John 6:40 Romans 6:23 John 6:37 Luke 2:32 ____ 14 Of thy sons If, as maintained by some, Ezra declared that children of Gentile mothers and Jewish fathers were not Jews, how passed the royal seed through the Moabitish womb of Ruth eight centuries before? Ezra did not in fact say this, but, reiterating Moses (Deut 7:1-4), said, “Do not give your daughters to their sons, nor take their daughters to your sons...” (Ezra 9:12). The issue was polluting themselves with the demonic worship and filthy practices of pagan mothers or fathers – particularly of the seven forbidden nations – though in this instance the trespass involved only pagan women and their offspring. One could sooner wring milk from a stone than a doctrine of matrilineal descent out of this account! Did not the sons of Moses have a Gentile mother? Yet they were accounted not only Jews but Levites (1 Chr 23:14-15; 26:24), a matter strictly of their father’s blood lineage. For lineage in ancient Israel could pass directly and solely from father to son, regardless of whether or not a Gentile mother converted. Else the royal line of the seed of Judah would have been broken a number of times (we will not consider Tamar, mother of Pharez, due to its antiquity). We have already considered Ruth, mother of Obed, “the father of Jesse, the father of David, king of Judah and Israel.” And Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, who succeeded his father as king of Judah, his mother was Naamah the Ammonitess. Rehoboam could never have become king through conversion – either his or his mother’s – but only through the royal blood lineage of his father. Consider also the wicked Athaliah, daughter of Jezebel of Tyre, was not her son, Ahaziah, king over Judah and father of what Scripture calls “the seed royal”? But we know from Moses that only a true Israelite may sit as king: “From among thy brethren shalt thou set one king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother.” (Deut 17:15) Do you say men disobeyed God in having Rehoboam and Ahaziah kings over Judah? Ahijah the prophet declared the word of the LORD otherwise: “Unto [Solomon's] son [Rehoboam] will I give one tribe, that David My servant may have a light always before Me in Jerusalem...” (1 Kings 11:36) Do you say Naamah converted? It is unlikely, considering it was because of Solomon’s – and thus the people’s – worship of the Ammonite deities (1 Kings 11:4,5,7,8,33), among other false gods, that the kingdom was rent from him. Even in the dark days of Ahaziah son of Jehoram, the scepter of Judah was “a light always before [Him] in Jerusalem.” The promise of the Messiah through David's line was on this wise: “I will raise up thy seed after thee, which shall be of thy sons...” (1 Chr 17:11). When we accept the doctrine of matriarchal descent only – a teaching conceived in the perilous Galut – we defer to a renegade rabbinate over the word of our God. Yet we who know Him and His word know lineage may come through father or mother, even to understanding the unique and unparalleled birth of Messiah, our Immanuel. Lest I be directed to Lawrence Schiffman's work on the subject, Who Was A Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism (KTAV, Hoboken, NJ 1985), I would like to point out some of the flaws in the work which render it invalid from my point of view. I hold as false the presupposition that Rabbinic (aka Orthodox) Judaism is the rightful claimant to the seat of authority over Jewish spiritual life. Its history as recipient of the Mosaic woes meted upon the disobedient and disfavored ought to be clear evidence even through the deceptive spin constructed by centuries and centuries of rabbis. Its opponent, and rightful heir to the spiritual scepter, Prophetic – aka Messianic – Judaism, is alive and well, despite its being clouded over during the time of its life amidst the Gentiles. And there are now godly Gentiles reckoned among Israel’s princes. And now the true princes of the house of Israel arise and take their stand against the pretenders. This is not “missionary activity” or “conversion tactics,” it is bringing to the fore – to public awareness – the ancient warfare between the prophetic and rabbinic schools, in its modern phase. We will not be drowned out by the spin-masters who would deny us our place among the people. 15 We repudiate the foundational premises of Dr. Schiffman's book, which he states at the outset: “the research presented here will be based largely on tannaitic [i.e., Pharisaic, Rabbinic] evidence...” One of the reasons he gives to justify this goes as follows, “...by the time Judaism and Christianity made their final break, it was the tannaitic tradition which was almost completely representative of the Jewish community in Palestine and, to a great extent, of that segment of the Diaspora which remained loyal to its ancestral faith” (p. 5). He elaborates on this “ancestral faith” later, when talking of converts to Rabbinic Judaism: “[the convert], like the people of ancient Israel, must accept not only the laws of the Torah, but also the Rabbinic interpretation or oral Law which, in the view of the tannaim, was given at Sinai as well” (p. 38). Now it is this so-called “oral Law...given at Sinai” which forms the basis and foundation of the Talmud, and of the halakhah, the Jewish legal system that typifies Rabbinic Judaism. But there is no evidence in the Hebrew Scriptures to support the existence of this “oral Law...given at Sinai,” while there is ample evidence to refute it. The story of Josiah king of Judah is one such example. Having received the throne after his grandfather, Manasseh, and father, Amon (who was slain by his servants), Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and when he was sixteen he began to seek after God, and soon thereafter started to purge Judah and Jerusalem of its idol-worship, yet it was not until he was twenty-six (in approximately 621 B.C.E.) that the book of the law of the LORD given by Moses was found hidden in the temple, and evidently lost a long time. When the young king heard the words of the law he rent his clothes, saying, “...great is the wrath of the LORD that is poured out upon us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the LORD, to do all that is written in this book” (2 Chronicles 34:19,21). God was pleased with Josiah for his tender and obedient heart. It was the written Law and not any fictitious oral law which renewed the king and the people before God. Listen to the Scripture: “And the king went up into the house of the LORD, and all the men of Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests, and the Levites, and all the people, great and small: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the LORD. And the king stood in his place, and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep His commandments, and His testimonies, and His statutes, with all his heart, and with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant which are written in this book” (v. 30,31). Make no mistake, we recognize the oral tradition of commentary and exposition that began around the time of Ezra the priest and scribe, when he read from the book of the law before all the people, and those under Ezra's direction “caused the people to understand the law...” and “they read in the book of the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading” (Nehemiah 8:7,8). Down the generations this teaching was memorized in an unbroken tradition, with the rabbis of each generation adding their own interpretations. By the time of Yeshua this oral tradition was vast, and not all of it in accord with the Scripture it was supposed to illumine. When Yeshua, whose Torah was to be the fulfilling and superseding of the Mosaic Torah, saw the violence done to Moses and the prophets, He critiqued and reproved the Pharisees, which earned Him their undying hatred, save for those among them whose hearts were open to His light. The B’rit Chadashah (New Covenant) tells the story of all these things, for those of you likewise open to Him who is the glory and crown of Israel. This “oral tradition” and the Talmud of the rabbis, for all that may be meritorious in it, has been a bane to us Jews, for it keeps the people from the plain and fresh reading of the word of God. We sound more like Roman Catholics than Jews, who must get their food from their priests and their understanding from the traditions of the Church! We are called “People of the Book,” but we do not know the Book we are the people of, for a wall of rabbinic learning has been placed between us and our God, as though we were too “slow” to understand for ourselves! And how many of us know the urgent warning of Isaiah our prophet, when he said, “The leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed” (Isaiah 9:16)? Do we not think he spoke to such a time as this? (As this sort of time has been upon us often!) 16 Josiah needed no oral law, for there was nothing he needed but the law of the LORD in the Book. Schiffman is a scholar of the Rabbinic school, an enemy of the prophetic school. The fact of the matter is, the laws of the tannaim, while they kept the portion of the Jewish nation who apostatized from Messiah and believing Israel intact and self-regulating during their horrid exile, these laws violate and curse the prophetic faith of Israel, and they revile the King of the prophets, the Lord Yeshua, who was a light to the Gentiles, as Isaiah prophesied, and is now come to challenge the pretenders in Israel, seeing the time of the Gentiles nears its end, and a perhaps final gathering in of elect Israel is at hand (for the days darken greatly). The contest between our two schools enters a new phase: we declare that we have assumed the spiritual rule and care over the spiritual house of Israel in the name of Yeshua Messiah. A people will be called from the midst of the State of Israel and international Jewry to receive forgiveness of sins, eternal life, adoption into the royal line of David through cleaving to David’s greater Son, the one whom David confessed as Lord, Adoni (Psalm 110), and these people shall never die (though their bodies may till the great resurrection), greatly beloved of the Most High, willing to suffer for His name. Read the B’rit Chadashah (New Covenant) the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah foretold would be given us (Jeremiah 31:31 ff). Cleave to the prophets of God, and to God Himself; renounce the rabbis of unfaithful men. Unbelieving Israel has a sharp mind, but an empty heart void of the presence of the living God, without whom we are but zombies, the living dead, however agile of mind and glorious of skin-covering we appear. Dead meat, whitewashed over with religious – or as is the case with many, secular – paint. Read of your Messiah, O Israel, even amid the uproar and clamor of His enemies, whose hatred of Him is no less now than it was then. Just listen to them. Read of Him, and of His covenant. It is given first for the Jew, and then for the Gentile. Make up your own minds. Don’t listen only to the rabbinic school of faith (which has led us into so much bitter, abysmal grief and blood), listen as well to the prophetic; examine for yourselves the outlawed King and His words; see if He is what they say, or if they lie. See for yourself – it is your soul on the line, an eternal line! There is no Israelite finer than He! And He now King of Israel, and gatekeeper to eternal New Jerusalem which shall manifest after the Resurrection and great Day of Judgment. Have not Gentile believers in Yeshua (Jesus) our Messiah been grafted into the spiritual faith of Israel, from which flows the river of eternal life to all nations? Much folly arises from failure to distinguish between the rabbinic and the prophetic traditions of faith in Israel. I would highly recommend Michael L. Brown’s 5-volume, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus (he is a Jew), for a thorough discussion of the many issues. I won’t recommend his other works on doctrine as in those he falls far short of his excellence on matters Jewish. ____ A HORROR beyond the science fiction and fantasy tales of our time: the demon powers themselves have established a stronghold – an ancient and mightily fortified position – 17 in the Orthodox Jewish religious world, and like a cult spins spells of deception, teaching illusions are reality, but unlike a cult this demonic entrenchment almost rules a nation and is committed (and this is the horror) to the spiritual genocide of that nation far more viciously than any of its earthly enemies are to its physical destruction. The terrible irony: pretending to be holy seers (and believing it themselves) the rabbinate and company are in actuality deceived emissaries from Hell, fellow laborers with Satan for the destruction of the Jewish state and all Jewish people. This spiritual/political situation began some 2000 years ago when the priests, teachers, and rulers in Israel sided with the demonic realm and its foul prince against the God of Heaven. They were blind to the evil of their own hearts and actions – so hardened were they – but they handed the nation over to the devil nonetheless. It is now time to throw off the yoke of the imposters and their demons and give the nation back to the God of Israel. ____ SPIRITUAL WARFARE I’m glad I saw the Star Wars movies ‘cause one gets an idea of fighting against the odds in a mythic world of amazing powers and weapons 18 Afar off I see the Orthodox embattlements flying the Star of David, but how weird it is there is no light of God at all in that great and fortified death-star It purports to be holy and of God but is itself deceived, and deceiving, a horror spinning a spell blinding multitudes to the true God and killing those who oppose them The worst is they believe in themselves unaware they are tools of demons destroying faith in Him who is Champion of Israel So I ponder this dark sphere bristling with evil powers and weapons as it lays waste multitudes and gathers them in the devil’s net, mighty, but vulnerable. A wise man scales the city of the mighty and casts down the strength of the confidence thereof. Grant it to be so, Lord, show how the assault is to be made That Your light penetrate the sphere and shine glorious within exposing all dark ways and thoughts and capture with Your love all those who love Your Spirit destroying the dark star of lying Orthodoxy, bringing to the dust its false ways, leaving only the sons & daughters of God standing in the Shekinah of Yeshua’s face. ____ WHAT JERUSALEM? WHAT TEMPLE? There is an ancient plot of land in Jerusalem the Jews call the Temple Mount, while the Muslims call it (and the building on it) Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary), aka, the Dome of the Rock. A journalist recently said of this place, “That is the epicenter of Jewish-Arab tension in this land since the beginning of the national conflict.”[a] 19 The back cover of this journalist’s book on the subject reads, “Here nationalism combines with fundamentalist faith in a volatile brew. Members of the world’s three major monotheistic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—hold this spot to be the key to salvation as they await the end of the world, and struggle to fulfill conflicting religious prophecies with dangerous political consequences.”[b] The matter before us now concerns the Christians. A great block of them agree with certain fundamentalist Jews that the Temple must be rebuilt on this piece of land, and the Muslim mosque which stands there now — the third holiest shrine in Islam — must come down, one way or another. For these particular Christians, the imagined scenario is: the church will be raptured out[c], the Antichrist will be revealed, and the Tribulation period will commence; after three and a half years the Antichrist will proclaim himself God from the rebuilt Temple precincts, and in another three and a half years the Lord Jesus will return, fight Armageddon, and His Millennial (thousand year) reign over the earth from Jerusalem will commence, and after this eternity proper will ensue. Thus saith the Left Behind books and the Dispensationalist teachers! There is no room to refute these latter here (the interested reader is referred to a couple of books for this, one brief[d], one comprehensive[e]), but we will look at some vital Biblical principles involved: a) Where is the Jerusalem in which God’s Temple is located? b) Where is the Israel in which God Himself dwells, in great power? And, c) What is the Temple God is building? We know there are two Jerusalems: the apostle Paul puts it like this, “…Jerusalem which now is…is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.”[f] Elsewhere the Scripture speaks of “the heavenly Jerusalem”[g], and “the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven.”[h] Is there a Temple in the Jerusalem above? The 21st chapter in Revelation tells us “the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.”[i] Is not the Temple with which Jesus’ brothers and sisters have to do this very one? For Scripture says, “But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.”[j] Do we not now “enter into the holiest”[k], and is not our mercy seat the very “throne of grace”[l] where mercy is lavished on those sprinkled with that precious blood? If we have so great a salvation, the substance of which was only shadowed by the great types of the old covenant, why do we deceive the Jews, supporting their dreams of a paltry temple built of crumbling stones, and in which the blood of animals will be shed once again, which cannot cleanse their souls, thus ensuring their entrance into Hell? Do you think this is God’s agenda? The plumbline of discernment is this, “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”[m] Whatever prophetic or covenantal scenarios may be thought up, that standard determines the eternal destiny of men. Everyone who dies outside of Messiah, the High Priest of the everlasting Temple, perishes in the Gehenna of souls. Why are we hiding from the Jews the proclamation of the true Temple, the true blood of sprinkling? Not only are the Christian supporters of the mock temple enemies of the Jews, foisting upon these lost souls their own agenda, they are enemies of the Arabs, as they incite the Jews to war upon them, also hinting that to destroy the Dome of the Rock would not be a bad idea, and as they do these things they utterly disgrace the name of the only One who can give eternal life to the Arab world. The Jews and Arabs are thus made expendable pawns as these Christians attempt to manipulate into actuality their version of the Apocalypse! (Please note: not all followers of Christ are of this ilk!) Christians! Reason this out. Do you not know that the Temple of the living God is also here in this world now? By virtue of our union with Christ — made one body with Him[n] — His people, along with Him, are now considered the temple of God. Speaking of the Gentiles (Arabs as well!) being included into “the household of 20 God”[o] — which Paul identifies moments earlier as “the commonwealth of Israel”[p] — he says of these two peoples in Christ, they are, “an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”[q] The Jews and the Gentiles in Christ are the household of God, His Israel, and His temple. Paul says it again: “for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”[r] The apostle Peter puts it this way, “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.”[s] Why do we not proclaim that the God of Israel is building a great house — His Temple — stone by living stone? What do you think Paul meant when he spoke of provoking the Jews to jealousy, if it is not this very thing? There is a great celebration going on in the nearly completed Temple! Can we not call both Jew and Arab to come in? Can we not tell them that to build upon the tears, sweat, and blood of those in Palestine is an affront to God, for upon His own blood, His own tears and sweat, He built a Temple eternal in the Heavens, and which He shall bring to earth after the great resurrection, with abundance of shalom for all those blessed to be in that glorious Kingdom? The true Jerusalem for the Christian is the heavenly; the true temple is the Lord Jesus and those living stones built into Him; the true Israel is that Representative and King descended from the patriarch of that name — the only One now worthy of the name[t] — and that community, that nation, which cleaves to Him, even becoming part of His body. Those of Jewish blood living in the Jewish state need to hear these things! They need to hear of Israel’s true and eternal return from exile in Messiah — or they perish! Why not tell them of the joy the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has prepared for those who return to Him in these last days? What? Have we been so saturated with the “blood and guts” of Hollywood’s “modern warriors” and “heroes” that we impose this conquest-through-violence on the kingdom of Christ? Beware, for those who live by violence — and incite others to it — shall die by it. If these things be true – and a Reformed hermeneutic supports it – why do we not simply stand for the vision of Christ, holding forth the Kingdom He proclaimed, a kingdom not of this world? At least not yet of this world, as the day is coming when the new earth will contain only His kingdom, a kingdom of such glory and wonder we can barely imagine it. But instead of this, Christians, why do you persist in fomenting the bloodshed between two peoples we are called to serve in love and illumine with the light of Messiah? You do the Jewish state (it is not worthy the name Israel) the gravest injustice in failing to call it to repentance. And you do the Arab world as grave an injustice by urging the Jews on in their aggression. How many of you know of Israel Shahak’s book, Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies, where he tells how close Moshe Dayan (then Commander-inChief of the Jewish Armed Forces) came to using nuclear weapons against Syria in 1973, declaring “the Syrian cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Latakia should be obliterated.” He was only stopped by Golda Meir and Henry Kissinger (pages, 39, 48, 49). And then there is what the Jewish military calls “the last-minute option,” which could be used in the event the Jewish state is being defeated by means of conventional warfare, and consists of “a devastation by nuclear weapons of a considerable number of Arab urban centres and such crucial installations as the Aswan Dam (whose destruction was envisaged in Israel before 1973).” (page 38)[u] The “light of the world” you are urging the Jewish state to be is the light of nuclear holocaust upon its neighbors, an abomination you are supporting in the name of Christ. This “Christian” influence pushing for a conflagration of violence in the Middle East comes mostly from America. In your deceiving the world about what “being Israel” means — this very heart of the issue of salvation! — do you think you will continue in this with impunity, putting the world at such awful risk with your hardhearted delusion and blindness? You might unwittingly err in your distorting the prophecies, but your eyes are wide open to see the consequences and cost in terms of human suffering. May God silence you. 21 _____ Footnotes: a “Jerusalem Holy Site a Tense Crossroads Again,” by James Bennet, NYTimes.com article, August 29, 2003. b The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, by Gershom Gorenberg (Oxford Univ. Press, 2002). From the back cover. c Some other Dispensational views have the church raptured — taken to Heaven — during or after the Tribulation. d An Examination of Dispensationalism, by William E. Cox (Presbyterian and Reformed Publ. Co., 1963) e Wrongly Dividing The Word Of Truth: A Critique Of Dispensationalism, by John H. Gerstner (Soli Deo Gloria Pub., 2000) f Galatians 4:25, 26 g Hebrews 12:22 h Revelation 21:2 i Revelation 21:22 j Hebrews 12:22, 24 k Hebrews 10:19 l Hebrews 4:16 m 1 John 5:12 n 1 Corinthians 12:27; Ephesians 4:15, 16; 5:29, 30 o Ephesians 2:18 p Ephesians 2:12 q Ephesians 2:21, 22 r 2 Corinthians 6:16 s 1 Peter 2:5 t Genesis 32:28, “as a prince hast thou power with God and with men.” Isaiah 49:3 (cf 49:1-3, 5-10) u Another shocking and revealing book by Shahak is, Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel (Pluto Press, 1999) ____ ‫ن‬ Mark Of The Christian This is the mark Islamists use to mark where the Christians live so as to plunder and ravage them The Arabic letter is ‫ن‬, a nūn, for Nasara / Nasari, which is the Qur’an’s word for Christians: Nazarene The mark usually means the Nazarene Prophet Himself lives in that house in union with His beloved and whoever hurts them without repenting of it and seeking His forgiveness will have to endure an endless suffering 22 as you do unto others it will be done to you rape, murder, beheading, all forms of torture – an eternal torment – we do not deny Him to whom Mohammed will bow the knee and all other supposed prophets who led the multitudes astray You will surely contest our testimony today (except the Nazarene show you undeserved favor!) and we are willing to die without shedding your blood as He is the Prince of peace and true Prophet of Allah (the “Allah” of Mohammed a false one, an evil spirit) And when you see Jesus coming you shall scream and run for it will be all over with you forever in torment – but for the moment there is mercy offered to whomever desires forgiveness and eternal life it is for this, for love of you we speak true. ____ The Intransigence of the Rabbis One of you Messianic Jews has said, “I believe the intransigence of the rabbis has only been deepened by the blatant anti-Semitism and persecution of what has been called ‘the Church’ (whether such were believers or not is another issue). How the ground under them would have been cut out had the Jewish people been treated with fervent love these past 2,000 years!” And another of you has stated, “Even though they [the Orthodox Jews] may hate us as believers and tell lies about us and seek to brainwash the public about us – they are fellow Jews who are acting out a scenario which the Church has contributed to mightily.” To which I answer, do you think “the intransigence of the rabbis” could ever be deeper than it was to Yeshua Himself when He came to them in the spirit of reconciliation: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isaiah 1:18) and He showed them not merely “2,000 years....of fervent love,” but an infinite and eternally saving love, and they would not. 23 Their intransigence was utter from the beginning – it has not deepened. Nor did they just hate Yeshua – they hated God: “He that hates Me hates My Father also....now they have both seen and hated both Me and My Father.” (John 15:23,24) The attitude of the orthodox is not something “the church has contributed to mightily,” but the scenario they act out was acted out in its pure essence when they first laid eyes on Yeshua and heard His words: “But now you seek to kill Me, a man that has told you the truth, which I have heard of God....You are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth....He that is of God hears God’s words: you therefore hear them not, because you are not of God.” Summing up their attitude, He said, “They hated Me without a cause.” (John 8:40,44,47; 15:25) Please, let us not talk of any “deepening” of their hearts’ obduracy. They loathed and despised both Yeshua and His brethren because they were not of this world, but of Heaven, and the light they manifested exposed their evil deeds and hearts. (John 3:19,20) I will grant you, the Gentile sector of the Church has sinned grievously, but that was not the cause of the hatred for Messiah, and to assert so but clouds the matter. The Church had simply (and wickedly) closed the door to salvation by returning hatred for hatred. And today we have the power and the voice and the wisdom to root out and destroy this evil in the Church and to expose this venom that still lurks in some churches. If the One “who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11) and who has said, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure,” (Isaiah 46:10) had determined that the scattered nation under wrath and judgment “had...been treated with fervent love these past 2,000 years” it would surely have been done, for who can stay His hand and thwart His will? And did He not say, “When a man’s ways please the LORD, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him?” (Proverbs 16:7) But this was not God’s will for treasonous and impenitent Israel. After the offer of cleansing in Isaiah 1, He said, “But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.” (Isaiah 1:20) Jeremiah has the LORD referring back to the covenant with Moses: “....they obeyed not nor inclined their ear, but walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart: therefore I will bring upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do; but they did them not.” (11:8) And that covenant, with the blessings and curses thereof enumerated in Deuteronomy 28, depicts literally what has befallen us Jews who violated Moses by murdering the Prophet he announced and commended in 18:18 and 19 of that same book. And we know also how Peter warned the people from these very verses in his sermon in Acts 3:22, 23. (And yes, it is clear from the Scripture the Gentiles were a party to the murder of Yeshua, but I am dealing here with us Jews, not the Gentiles.) And now, after such great and terrible affliction as has culminated in the 20th and the 21st centuries, and has plowed up and broken the hearts of so many living Jews, it is no time to be faint of heart and fuzzy of mind in proclaiming to them in the prophetic spirit the Cause and Effect of their astonishing and breath-taking history. ____ 24 SATAN’S “ISRAEL” That may be too strong a saying for some of you but is it not the truth? Have not the children of the King’s murderers – those whom He called children of the devil – retained the spiritual scepter even to this day? Did we not for a price sell the crown and hope and glory of Israel into the hands of the dark lord, who murdered Him? And was not the price for which we sold the LORD from Heaven the retaining of our authority and power and employment as the religious rulers of the nation? This was our thirty pieces of silver and we are still cashing in on this blood currency. And do we not now oppress Messiah’s brethren with violence, bloodshed and censorship, even seeking to make their holy faith against the law of the land? An alien regime indeed wields such a foul scepter, whose capital is Gehenna and has the rabbinate in Satan’s pocket. It is an illegitimate spiritual regime not recognized by the ambassadors of Heaven and princes of the true Israel. ____ SOVEREIGNITIS With regard to the church’s – both Gentiles and Messianics – attitude to Orthodox Jewry, and their suppression of the saving knowledge of Messiah among their countrymen, I think we have been stricken with a theological malaise called sovereignitis, wherein we overlook and excuse the role and responsibility of men because of our knowledge of the overriding sovereignty of God. I am applying this to the present where the most horrible 25 crimes of spiritual genocide are committed against a people and we are of a mind to “respect the dignity” of the perpetrators because they are clergy or religious. And we get all theological about it and dress the horror of it with verses from Romans so that it even looks sort of Biblical, whereas in reality it far outstrips the horror of Herod’s butchering Bethlehem’s little lambs before their mothers. Those whom Messiah denounced as sealing off the door of the kingdom to others (Luke 11:52, Matt 23:13), pronouncing divine woes upon them, we want to have a more nuanced view of them, granting them a Biblical dignity, while the screams of their victims resound through the corridors of Hell, and those still in the world soak the ground with their tears and their blood. ____ The Evil Shepherds The shepherds of a flock, when called by the owner to account, slew him, and fled into the wilderness with the sheep. The owner’s kin saved a few of the sheep and raised up a new flock. The evil shepherds, after many centuries in the wilderness of blood and slaughter, came back to the spacious pasture-lands of the former owner, declaring they were now (and always) the rightful owners, and by right could live off the flock and rule the land. When the descendants of the true owner stood up in the midst of their own small flocks on their ancestor’s land, and spoke against the ancient murder and the ancient theft – with its modern continuation of the crime in the present-day land – the false owners, believing their own lies after so many centuries, denounced the true kin and owners and sought to outlaw them from the land and destroy their flocks (as their sheep would not listen to the wicked shepherds’ voices). ____ YOU POETS OF THE JEWISH STATE If you be worthy of the name you will hold truth above country and all things in the world even love (especially love!) at issue between us is the name – a priceless spiritual property – you call your state, a blood-soaked land of bloody, wicked souls, a mockery of the patriarch, and He who gave him the name, the two wrestlers at Peniel the prince that had power with God and men, and his Maker, two parties to Abraham’s covenant 26 of blood fulfilled in Messiah – who took the covenant curse himself though innocent to free you from it whose Father raised him again – who divided the children of said Israel into the true and the false – who bowed the knee, and not and took the kingdom away from both land and flesh to a realm of spirit – the name taken there too – till the whole earth be the kingdom. You poets of the Jewish state forfeit the honor of your calling as poets and seers if you know not these things if you toe the line of devil and company refusing fealty to the Heir of all Abraham’s and Judah’s riches the scepter, oracles, land, kingdom, blessing of Messiah, and yourselves cast out with the refuse of the nations to wallow in blood and ignominy en route to Gehenna, imposter Israel. ____ TRIBAL MYTHS may be a proper tag when talking of Arthur or Middle Earth, but we talk history speaking of a crown from ancient lineage and supernatural birth of course worldview may screen facts from truth, calling ancient records 27 myths, not allowing God in his universe; but it remains, the crown himself was actually seen. ____ THERE’S A TIME There’s a time to turn the other cheek and there’s a time to smite with all the power of God in the weapons of spiritual warfare words that hit like a hammer words that raze as fire and words that enter the heart and mind as a two-edged blade all of which are energized by the Spirit of the Highest to accomplish what they purpose: the casting down of strong enemy holds. When a demon takes the field – I care not if he wears the yarmulke of a rabbi, or the collar of a priest or the title of a pastor – in the global arena of consciousness where the mighty in spirit vie for the ascendancy, I fight as did David’s mighty men to the death, for honor, for love of the King, to vanquish the demonic spells without quarter: as David had his mighty men, Jesus has His. ____ THE FIRST “REPLACEMENT THEOLOGIAN” Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given unto a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.1 –Jesus, to the chief priests and the elders of Israel 2 I actually don’t like that term – “replacement theology” – as it’s a misnomer, and it’s in the title in quotes as what others say. The church hasn’t replaced Israel. Israel has never been replaced. But Messiah Yeshua did 28 reconstitute and redefine it according to His Torah [law, instruction]. Why should not the King set His nation in order, according to His good pleasure? We’ll look at that in a moment. But first let’s consider some of the things that are being said about so-called “replacement theology,” for this is what some folks presume to call what Jesus Himself did. An article in an issue of Messianic Times had the following title and statements: GERMANS TAKE LEAD TO CONFESS PAST CRIMES AGAINST JEWS “In deep shame and contrition we come before the Almighty and merciful God to confess the crimes and injustices perpetrated against the Jewish people down through the centuries, for which the Christian Church bears heavy responsibility.” The article continued, Christians officially repented for the Holocaust, the Crusader’s destruction in the Middle Ages, the accusations and persecution during the Black Death, the practice of segregating Jews, the forced baptisms, the false accusations of ritual murder and conspiracy, the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms, and replacement theology.3 Repentance is appropriate for all those things save one, the so-called “replacement theology.” What the Germans mentioned in the article, and the Messianic Jews who publish Messianic Times mean by that term is this: the doctrine that the Christian Church is now the beneficiary of all the promises and blessings given to national Israel during the Old Testament era, with national, ethnic, Israel now disowned and disinherited; and to say it that way, without any qualification, betrays Biblical precision, rendering the statement inaccurate. It sounds quite different to say, the Ekklesia4 (gathered assembly) of Messiah Yeshua is heir to the blessings promised to Old Testament Israel, and is in God’s eyes that Israel, while renegade “Israel after the flesh” – who disowned the Messiah (and expelled Him from the world), has no status before Him other than one more nation of the world. A friend sent me another article from The Spectator (UK) 16 February 2002: It was one of those sickening moments when an illusion is shattered and an ominous reality laid bare. I was among a group of Jews and Christians who met recently to discuss the Churches’ increasing public hostility to Israel. The Jews were braced for a difficult encounter. After all, many British Jews (of whom I am one) are themselves appalled by the destruction of Palestinian villages, targeted assassinations and other apparent Israeli overreactions to the Middle East conflict. But this debate never took place. For the Christians said that the Churches’ hostility had nothing to do with Israel's behaviour towards the Palestinians. This was merely an excuse. The real reason for the growing antipathy, according to the Christians at that meeting, was the ancient hatred of Jews rooted deep in Christian theology and now on widespread display once again. A doctrine going back to the early Church fathers, suppressed after the Holocaust, had been revived under the influence of the Middle East conflict. This doctrine is called replacement theology. In essence, it says that the Jews have been replaced by the Christians in God’s favour, and so all God’s promises to the Jews, including the land of Israel, have been inherited by Christianity.5 This will give the reader new to the controversy an idea of what is being said against so-called replacement theology. And be assured a lot hangs on the outcome of this controversy! As this article says, the very legitimacy of the Jewish state as a prophetic fulfillment is in the balance. For if its existence is found not to be a fulfilling of Biblical prophecy, then it is just another nation of the world, at best. 29 It needs to be said, people should not equate the Roman Catholic organization with Christians or the Christian Church. It is fair to say the Roman Catholics killed as many evangelical or Protestant Christians as they did Jews and Muslims! Jesus said, “My Kingdom is not of this world,”6 and on the face of it that disqualifies Rome – according to its own claims – from being Messiah’s community. Regarding the use of the term “replacement theology,” someone tried to define it as follows: If we count Messianic Jews as Christians, and we include Gentile Christians in “Israel” (as seems consistent with this passage [Galatians 6:16, “the Israel of God”]), then Israel means Christians rather than Jews (that don't accept Jesus) – though Paul does not say it that way. We take this to be ‘replacement theology’. And there are indeed people who think this, and use the proverb, “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...etc.” However, in this case the creature does not have the DNA of a duck, notwithstanding its appearance from a cursory glance. Precision of language is of the utmost importance here. Perhaps another way of saying it would be that what is called “the church” is not in essence a Gentile entity: the ekklesia — although it has wrongly been de-Judaized conceptually — is a Jewish entity according to the Scripture, as I will demonstrate. I have no problem with its being de-Judaized in terms of ceremonial and traditional trappings, in fact I would insist on it in locations that are not culturally Jewish. The Biblical data demands a certain understanding, and to do violence to that data constitutes – how shall I put it? – contradicting God to His face, much as impetuous Peter did when he sought to prevent the Lord Jesus from laying down His life for His sheep.7 As noted in the heading, Jesus told the chief priests and the rulers He was taking the Kingdom of God from them – national Israel – and giving it to another nation. They themselves had passed this judgment on the wicked husbandmen Jesus told them of in the parable spoken only moments earlier: those who slew the son – the heir – to gain the inheritance of the vineyard – Israel – would themselves be “miserably destroyed” and the vineyard let out to other husbandmen.8 Everything of God pertaining to the old Israel would be transferred out and into the Israel Jesus would establish: the Temple would now be His body; Torah would be His word, both directly and by His apostles; the Shekinah – the glory – would be the Holy Spirit indwelling the new Temple – His body; the Sabbath would be the rest in Him (different views exist regarding this), and the true Israel would be whatever He said it would be. Let us look at that a moment. He very clearly announced there would be a change in the status of Israel – it, as God’s kingdom, would be taken from the present nation and given to another. It would no longer be God’s kingdom, neither would it be worthy of the appellation, Israel, which means “a prince of God,” nor of the blessing given in that name: “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men…” 9 The foretold days of terrible darkness came when the rulers and chief priests allied themselves with the prince of demons, and against the God of Israel, and did as the Prophet plainly foretold in His parable mentioned above. Who will dare accuse me of being anti-Jewish for telling this truth? It was my own house – the house of Levi – that bore false witness against the King. Telling the truth ever was unpopular in ancient Israel – witness the prophets! – and is so even now in modern Jewry, admittedly the children of the Pharisees.10 Then Jesus, after He rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father, directed the apostle Peter in his sermon to the nation to speak on this wise: 30 For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever He shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that Prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.11 At that particular moment, by bringing to bear the word and warning of God through the ancient Lawgiver of Israel, restated again at the time of its fulfillment, God cleft the nation in two, those “destroyed from among the people” – cut off from the nation Israel – and those who were grafted into the new Israel being reconstituted by its King. This grafting in was according to their cleaving to Messiah in faith, trusting Him – and the Father through Him – to be their God, obeying His call to them to return from the long exile, to repent and believe in the Son of His love, and to receive forgiveness of their sins, individually and as a nation, and inherit the Kingdom prepared for them by Him, according to His covenant promise to the fathers. So many images leap out from Scripture to tell this story. John the Baptist said this: I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather the wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.12 Is not the “wheat” that of Israel which repented and cleaved to Him, and continued to bear the name Israel, and the “chaff” that of Israel which were, as He said, “not of My sheep,”13 who opposed Him, and were cut off from His nation? When the aged Simeon saw the infant Jesus in the Temple he said to Mary, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against….that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”14 This is but another way of saying the same thing: He was coming to gather His true people to Himself, and turn the others away. And this newly constituted Israel, with whom He would “confirm the covenant with many for one week”15 (of years), He then opened – giving this order to His apostles – to the Gentiles. Which Paul described to those in Ephesus as follows, Remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world…16 The apostle then tells how the Messiah of Israel made them one people with the Jews, through the blood shed for forgiveness of sins, and His having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make one new man, so making peace; and that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby…For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God…”17 Exactly how Jesus “abolished in His flesh…the law of commandments” is another study, although it is told in this and many other passages of Scripture. The point to be emphasized is Paul’s showing how the Gentiles are 31 now become “fellow-citizens with the [Hebrew] saints, and of the household of God,” still and eternally called Israel! In the Everlasting Kingdom the Lamb – and the Father – are called “the Temple”18 of it, and the Celestial City is named “new Jerusalem.”19 The Israel of God is His people. And Peter described the nation of Messiah in the very terms God described ancient Israel to Moses. First Moses: Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure to Me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.20 But Israel of old did not keep the covenant21 and forfeited the promise – according to the stipulations of the covenant itself (see Deuteronomy 28), and yet the underlying covenant of promise made to Abraham remained intact, as Paul showed, And this I say, that the covenant [with Abraham], that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.22 In other words, although the Mosaic covenant was broken – revealing the utter sinfulness of humankind, and our inability to please God in this state – the Abrahamic covenant, also known as the Covenant of Grace, remained strong, and it was fulfilled in one Israelite (who also rendered a perfect obedience to the Mosaic covenant), the long-awaited Seed spoken of to our mother Eve, and longed for by the godly since the beginning of time – Jesus, the Saviour of the world. Zacharias, father of John the Baptist, spoke thusly of this fulfillment, his son being appointed “the prophet of the Highest”23, to announce Him who Himself had come in the flesh to deliver His people: Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for He hath visited and redeemed His people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David; as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began: that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember His holy covenant; the oath which He sware to our father Abraham, that He would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our lives.24 In this prophetic utterance Zacharias foresaw a spiritual fulfillment – involving a return from exile unto their God – which many in the nation did not see or want. This prophecy was fulfilled in the Israel established by Messiah, but not in that of Israel which apostatized and was cut off (then destroyed and scattered by Rome) – the spiritual descendants of which people the modern Jewish state, and world Jewry. Now Peter, speaking of those who cleaved into Messiah: To Whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ….ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people…25 The imagery remains consistent: we of the community of Messiah, called living stones, are built up a spiritual house, called also the commonwealth of Israel (as we have seen), the very house over which Moses ruled during his time, now ruled over by Jesus,26 comprised of both Jew and Gentile, under Messianic Torah instead of 32 Mosaic Torah, which new torah has given us the wonderful liberty which characterizes New Covenant spiritual life. To repeat the central premise and conclusions put forth here: although this of which I have been speaking is spoken erroneously and disparagingly of as “replacement theology,” it is in fact a much more precise designation: the reconstituting of Israel according to Messiah’s separating the wheat from the chaff of them, and then, after a space, providing entrance to the Gentiles, according to ancient promises of God. To be sure, those Christians enamored of the modern Zionist political/spiritual agenda (and there is a great “prophecy industry” with big money at stake!) will not take kindly to the views presented herein. And some of my countrymen according to the flesh, the Jews, being spiritual heirs of the apostate Pharisees cut off in Messiah’s winnowing out the chaff, will of course rage at this disinheriting them of both lineage and promise. This was in part their rage at Messiah Jesus when He said these things to their faces. From among the children of Abraham He called out His sheep, and those not His sheep did not know His voice – hated His voice! – and later, adding to their rage against Him and His flock, He called Gentiles into God’s Israel, as He had foretold, And I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the Kingdom of Heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.27 The modern Jewish state is – in the earthly realm – a place of darkness and weeping, even to this day. The Messianic Jews in their midst – no matter they err in this business I write of – are the salt of the earth in that land (along with the Palestinian Christians), and are busy calling God’s people to their Messiah. Only as souls, great in number or small, repent and believe in Yeshua will they become God’s people, and part of Israel. Unbelieving Jews, living as a nation in Palestine, are as a nation of the world, under wrath save they repent. Even widespread repentance there will not make the Jewish state “Israel,” for God has His Israel comprised of many peoples; such repentance in the Jewish state will only transfer those individuals into Messiah’s ekklesia (also called the church), a kingdom not of the world, although many of us are still in it. And to those who object that Jesus calls His community “the Israel of God,”28 why cannot the King of Heaven and earth do according to all His good pleasure? “Is it not lawful for Me to do what I will with Mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” 29 ____ 1 Matthew 21:43 Matthew 21:23 3 The Messianic Times, Vol. 11, Number 2, Summer 2001 – Jewish Year 5761 (p. 14) 4 ekklesia, Greek, “from ekkletos, called out…It was a common term for a congregation of the ekkletoi, the called people, or those called out or assembled in the public affairs of a free state, the body of free citizens called together by a herald…which constituted the ekklesia. In the NT the word (in the Greek) is applied to the congregation of the people of Israel (Acts 7:38)…The Christian community was designated for the first time as the ekklesia to differentiate it from the Jewish community…The term ekklesia denotes the NT community of the redeemed…” From, The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament, by Spiros Zodhiates (AMG Publ. 1992) P. 541. This word is generally translated church in the NT. Ekklesia is used here as the word church is so loaded with accrued meanings. 5 By Melanie Phillips. See: https://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/16th-february-2002/14/christians-who-hatethe-jews 6 John 18:36 7 Matthew 16:21-23 33 2 8 Matthew 21:33-41 Genesis 32:28 10 Who Was A Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism, by Lawrence H. Schiffman (KATV Publishing House, NJ 1985), Pages 4, 5. 11 Acts 3:22, 23; Deuteronomy 18:15-19 12 Matthew 3:11, 12 13 John 10:26 14 Luke 2:34, 35 15 Daniel 9:27 16 Ephesians 2:11, 12 17 Ephesians 2:15, 18, 19 18 Revelation 21:22 19 Revelation 21:2 20 Exodus 19:5, 6 21 Jeremiah 31:32; cf. 31:31-34 22 Galatians 3:17 23 Luke 1:76 24 Luke 1:68-75 25 1 Peter 2:4, 5, 9 26 Hebrews 3:1-6 27 Matthew 8:11, 12 28 Galatians 6:16 29 Matthew 20:15 9 ____ ISRAEL HAS NOT BEEN REPLACED BY THE CHURCH Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance. Psalm 33:12 When Christ – the Messiah of Israel – came among His people, taught them and died for them, He came as the King anciently prophesied. Of Him Isaiah said, “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever” (9:7). Daniel saw in vision, “there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (7:14). Messiah, on the throne of David, shall rule a kingdom comprised of many nations. When the angel Gabriel foretold His birth to Mary His mother, he said, “the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father, David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; And of his kingdom there shall be no end.” (Luke 1:32, 33) We see here Messiah coming into the world to establish and order his kingdom; it is called by the angel “the house of Jacob”, and in this kingdom will be many nations, peoples, and languages; Micah said of Messiah, that He is “to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” (5:2). We also see that Messiah, Jesus the Christ, extends the boundaries of His kingdom – the kingdom of Israel – to include all the earth, and this is fitting, for “The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and all they that dwell therein.... For God is the king of all the earth.... [He] reigns over the heathen” (Ps 24:1; 47:7, 8). There is no doubt that this long-awaited kingdom – of which Daniel said the God of heaven would set it up and it would 34 never be destroyed but rather would do away with all rival kingdoms (2:44) – this very kingdom was Israel; its king, Jesus of Nazareth, seed of the royal line of David; its capital, New Jerusalem (on the renewed earth in the eternal state—Rev 21:1): “And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their honour and glory into it” (Rev 21:24). But many in ancient Israel would not hear Him, rather hated Him. Of such, God speaking through Moses declared, “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him” (Deuteronomy 18:19), meaning, God would require his place in Israel and his life! The apostle Peter reiterated these words of Moses as follows, “every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people” (Acts 3:23). In other words, the Lord – the King! – at this time ordered His kingdom by separating wheat from chaff, sheep from goats, and executed what He had earlier told the chief priests and elders of the people: “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt 21:43). The kingdom of God given to a nation other than Israel? No, rather the nation of Israel so ordered anew by its king as to remove its ties to the temple and its priesthood, and to the government – both of which were conspiring to slay Him! – and transfer it to a new government of His choosing, with twelve apostles instead of twelve tribal elders, and comprised of all true Israelites who would bow the knee to their King and God. The others – all the others – who refused to heed the word of the God of Israel through Messiah, were removed from the nation of Israel, as a butcher cleaves inedible gristle from the meat. Israel was now comprised of only those loyal to God’s Messiah. His body was now the true temple, His word the law, and His apostles the appointed rulers of the people. The land of Israel would be extended to include the entire earth, no more restricted by the geography of Palestine; the true Jerusalem would be the heavenly, the one from above, to be brought to the earth in the fullness of time. What was the status of those Jews cut off from the people of Israel? Unabashedly modern Judaism states, “...it was the tannaitic [Pharisaic-Rabbinic teaching] tradition which was almost completely representative of the Jewish community in Palestine and, to a great extent, of that segment of the Diaspora which remained loyal to its ancestral faith.... Indeed, it is the halakhah [the Jewish legal system founded by the Tannaim] which may be described as that which typifies Rabbinic Judaism.” [1] In other words, those Jews who refused to acknowledge Jesus as Messiah and were cut off by God from the nation – no more accepted as Israelites by the God of Israel, and by its messianic King – these renegades became rivals for the name and status of Israel and Jew. Though physical seed of Abraham, they were disowned by Jehovah. They murderously persecuted the true Israel when it was in their power. What says Messiah of these? When giving John the letter for the church in Smyrna, Jesus says, “...I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (2:9). When the Greek word blasphēmia is used regarding humans it means reviling slander, and these Jews slanderously accused this small company of Messiah’s followers to the Roman authorities, causing their imprisonment and execution. Again, in the letter to the church in Philadelphia Jesus has John write, “Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship [bow down in humility] before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee” (3:9). This indicates that some of the church’s fiercest enemies were converted and won to their Messiah. But it also indicates that the King of Israel declared those Jews which were against Him (“He that is not with me is against me” Matt 12:30) were, in His eyes, not any longer Jews, but apostates. The apostle Paul, by the Spirit of God, says the same: 35 “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” (Rom 2:28, 29) Jeremiah concurs, for even in the Old Covenant uncircumcision of heart incurred God’s wrath, as it indicated wickedness and rebellion (Jer 9:25, 26). And again Paul says, “For they are not all Israel which are of Israel... but the children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Rom 9:6, 8), and “...if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal 3:29). And yet again, in his letter to the church in Philippi, Paul says, “For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Jesus Christ, and have no confidence in the flesh.” (3:3) To the Galatian churches he says, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” (6:15) Little wonder many in what is called Modern Jewry loathe Christ, the New Testament, Christians, and God for this pronouncement, even though it first came by Moses (Deut 18:15, 18, 19). Paul says that in times past Gentile nations were looked upon as “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world…”, but now, in the fold of Messiah, they “are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Eph 2:12, 19). This household of God is the same spoken of in Hebrews, Moses being a faithful servant in it – the house of Israel – while Christ is no servant but the “son over his own house; whose house we are” (3:1-6). The Israel of God has not been replaced, but it has been culled, the faithful Jews gathered and the unfaithful cast off by word of the King; the promise to Abraham that “in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Gen 12:3) is now being fulfilled, as is the prophecy of Daniel that “all people, nations, and languages should serve him” (7:14). Sometimes the kingdom of Israel is called the church, but this latter is a synonym, and no replacement! Only in this kingdom is this Scripture fulfilled: “In the LORD shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory” (Isa 45:25), for justification before His presence is the gift of God through faith in Messiah; in true Israel alone are all the seed so blessed. The New Jerusalem which shall come down upon the renewed earth is its capital, and the glory of Israel is the Lamb who sits upon the throne of David, the divine Husband of that beloved Bride who shares His glory. _____ [1] Who Was A Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism, by Lawrence H. Schiffman (KATV Publishing House, NJ 1985), Pages 4, 5. _____ Taliban Poets I see the enemy writes poetry but are any humans really enemy and are we not told to love even these as the psalmist said, I am for peace but when I speak, they are for war – yet I will hold forth the flag of truce 36 Will you accept that, Taliban poets? Peace in the name of Christ? Peace in the name of the sovereign God? It is offered, do with it as you will. I speak not as a soldier with weapons that kill I speak as poet on Apocalypse Field global arena of consciousness in this realm truth is the weapon voice honed keen edged a spiritual blade death is nothing to us for we come back in resurrection; the question is: whose God is real? whose heaven and whose hell are real? May the true God show you mercy even though you have it not for others, to your open shame. Like all humans you have been held captive by the demon and those who know not mercy cannot show it but now you have no excuse. Light has been shown you embrace it – that is, Him, Messiah – or eternal darkness without mercy. ____ A “One-Bomb Country” meaning one nuke could wipe us out, speaking of the earthly State of Israel, and so to be on guard is wise 37 Wiser yet to have that life death cannot kill for resurrection overturns death and God’s Israel in Messiah thus the Immortal Nation scoffs at death and devils! ____ IT IS GOING DOWN even now they gather for the kill many not even knowing that they are about a battle all heaven and all hell eye with dread resolve the one steels the hearts of men and women with valor born of the champion of heaven united as those are with him their eyes on him and the kingdom coming the other of a different cloth infusing into men a molten hatred of that heaven and those who people it fitting them with weapons of a world gone mad laws turned evil that heaven’s Lord be bereft of kingdom on earth are you ready for these times will you stand when the waves of them crash against your life throughout all the world and all held dear be wrenched away in the whelming flood – it’s going down now in dark and hidden planners’ moves – 38 who is sufficient for these things? Heaven’s champion steels his men and women with power. ____ Our Courage is different than David’s for the stone we sling in the giant’s head is not as of old nor the giant that misshapen monster stomping in the valley of Elah but a world against us and the King of the Jews our Captain and the stone now slung the Name of unmatched power into the heart of darkness As Jesus we also fear not death but scorn it as we bear witness to God and His kingdom knowing that death is nothing in the face of resurrection and the glory of His favor ever after and the powers of this world its sorry princes and feeble weapons helpless before our might the Spirit of our God as a flame to cobwebs and we stand unscathed by death in bodies of glory while our killers melt in terror at His presence before whom earth and heaven flee away 39 and the universe dissolves and the Mighty One of Israel rewards both the wicked and the just Our courage sees this before it happens and our faith pleases Him. Our words of testimony regarding Him the sacred stone we sling. ____ To repeat, I say the rabbis have led my people into the curses of Moses these past twenty centuries, for if we had pleased God and were under the sure covenant blessings and protection of Deuteronomy 28, how could we possibly have been spewed from the land to be slaughtered and despised among the goyim two thousand years, and to end up in the ovens of Hitler? The truth is – and only can be! – we have followed treasonous leaders in betrayal of our King, and we have reaped their destruction. O nation of fools, we, to be blinded so long! As the prophets foretold, the Gentiles came to His light, and we followed our teachers into darkness. Awake, O Israel, for the days further darken, and we need our Mighty One to see our way. Seek out the Messianic Jews among us, and cast off the pretenders who have slain our millions! ____ Part II We have seen too much blood. The ancient temple was the fount of rivers of blood, innocence covering guilt. Our own blood also, rivers of that. And it is coming up again, this blood-letting. There has to be a warning, a light shined on it, as we have forgotten the rock whence we are hewn: even in 2016 many of us are aware we are an ancient and unusual people, the people of a God, or a Book, but remember little else. A God who Himself offered a sacrifice, who Himself walked between the covenant cut animals, who Himself fulfilled what we could not on eternal pain of death. A God who loved us, and we scoffed. It is our written history! The real “Never again”—for it to be any benefit to us Abraham’s seed—must be never again will we walk by the holocaust visited upon Messiah unfeeling and ungrateful, and unavailing of that blood which covers sin, shed by the Lamb God provided. Other ‘never again’s will prove empty, bloody words! To some, these words sound alien, irrelevantly ancient—and this but an indicator of a mindset heading for destruction. ____ 40 Are the Covenant Curses of Moses truly on us now? Are the curses spoken in Deuteronomy chapter 28—written around 1400 years BCE—that would fall upon the Jews of ancient Israel and their children if they disobeyed the voice of their God as written in the Law Moses gave them, are these curses active today in 2016 CE, some 3400 years later? The question then arises: Does the faith of ancient Israel have any bearing on modern Jewry, that is, does it have any relevance to us? It is written that the word of God given to Moses, and to the Biblical prophets and writers after him, will endure through all ages. King David, in Psalm 105:8-10, said this of it, He hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations. Which covenant he made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac; And confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant... Isaiah the prophet put it this way: As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever. (59:21) The word of God that goes forth from His mouth goes not in vain. It will accomplish that which He has said. Our unbelief will not annul it. Our unbelief in the God our forbears cut a blood-oath covenant with has been our undoing time and again! It is said by a Messianic teacher, “Ethnic Jewry is no longer under the covenant curses spoken by Moses, since the Old Covenant is abrogated”, it being understood the curses of the Mosaic Covenant were annulled through the blood of the New Covenant, the B’rit Chadashah (cf. Jeremiah 31:31ff.). I reply, “Abrogated for whom? And in what respect?” Are they not abrogated strictly for those who come to Messiah, the mediator of the new covenant, whose death paid the redemption price for transgressions under Moses? (cf. Hebrews 9:14,15) For these and these only they are abrogated. For the death required by the violated covenant was offered by Messiah—an infinitely precious ransom for the transgressors of it—but those apart from Him have no such redemption, and are still under the power of that covenant’s curses. Can it be thought that the wrath executed by the curses was rescinded by Messiah for those who reject His substitutionary offering for their covenant violations? The continuing power of those curses levied against transgressing Jews who also refuse the redemption of Messiah, this was not and is not rescinded. The Levitical system of law, sacrifice, and worship—all that ceremonial typology—was abrogated by the “better covenant” and its infinitely more precious blood, but those of us who spurned both the words of the Prophet who brought redemption (Deut 18:18, 19; Acts 3:22, 23) and the precious blood which covered the sins under that old covenant, we have no relief from the penalties pronounced against us. The final metings of the Deuteronomic curses were the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and accompanying slaughter of a great multitude of us Jews in CE 70 and the CE 135 spewing of the people entirely out of the land and scattering us into the nations of the world. The covenant with Israel was annulled, and as a geo-political nation and people there is no longer a ‘covenant’ entity called Israel. The present State of Israel is not the covenant nation, which should be obvious to those who behold it. 41 We Jews, to whom pertained the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, had received greater light than the nations prior to Messiah’s coming, and that law and that covenant mediated by Moses, although annulled by Messiah’s covenant, the already executed penalties declared by Moses are still upon us. Hence the unspeakable value of the death of Messiah for us, whose blood covers those covenant-breakers who come to Him for mercy and cleansing, but those who spurn Him are still liable for that broken law and covenant. It makes no difference whether to say we are under the Deuteronomic curses or the continuing wrath that sent them forth. The curses once executed upon the expiry of the covenant nation and the covenant are still upon us, whether one refers to the curses themselves or the power of them. Like a stone thrown it is out of the hand and in the air headed where it was aimed. Indeed, all humankind stands indicted and guilty in their sin before the holy God, as all have transgressed His law—whether that written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, or that of His word written in the Law, writings, and prophets, “the Old Testament in its entirety [being] permeated with the requirements and judgments which are summed up in the ten commandments” (John Murray, Romans, p 106). All humankind are under the curse of God for the moral law broken, but we Jews are—in addition—liable to the penalties the more specific law pronounced against us and sealed in the covenant blood oath by Moses. Those of us who apostatize from this prophetic faith of Israel either delusionally cling to Moses (for the Torah of Moses is annulled and superseded), thinking we have remission of sin without blood shed for it, or simply live in willful ignorance, both views fatal to our souls. These realities must be brought out in the open so that we understand our status vis-à-vis God, which is different than the status of Gentiles. We Jews have a different history due to the curses of Moses we have lived and suffered under many, many centuries—though we all will perish along with unbelieving Gentiles—and we need to understand from whence, and into what, we have fallen in order to return. Now that return—since the age of Moses has passed (after all, the temple and its accoutrements, the Aaronic and Levitical genealogical records, etc., all long gone)—needs to be made precisely clear and perfectly laid out so that Yeshua Ha’Mashiach, Jesus of Nazareth, is seen to be the new and eternal High Priest after the order of Melchisedek (Psalm 110:4), the Prophet, and the Everlasting King: in these three offices the Saviour of us Jews in this time when the breath of the dragon draws near, bloodlust in its eyes, and his chant the same as Islam’s, “First Saturday, then Sunday!” (The meaning of this is, for those who have not heard it before: first the Jews must be destroyed, then the Christians.) A crucial thing to learn more of and to remember, is that resurrection changes everything—meaning death is not the final word—and there is life after death, whether it be blessed or cursed. In Messiah we are delivered from the fear of death. The illusion of what we call Aliyah: As the era of Moses is over, and the theocratic, covenant nation of Israel dissolved, even in the modern political entity called The State of Israel those Jews therein remain in diaspora (for joining the Jewish state is but an illusion of Return from the exile), the true Return being only in Messiah, and His then placing them into His corporate body by the Spirit of God, which community is the true Israel, He being the only true Israelite—one who has never sinned and thus not liable to the curses upon lawbreakers. Those joined to Messiah become part of His mystical Body, the new humanity to people the new creation after the Resurrection and the Judgment. This needs to be understood: the Divine nature of the new and eternal temple God is building, under the care of our High Priest—the spiritual, yet still physical, temple built of living stones—consisting of us who are joined to and built upon the sure foundation Cornerstone (Isaiah 28:16; Psalm 118:22; Matthew 21:42). Messiah is this Cornerstone, and we those living stones built upon Him. The living God dwells within this living temple, even here in its first stages in this world, though we await to see its glory as it manifests solid and complete in the world to come on New Earth Paradise. Its jeweled stones are us! (1 Peter 2:5) Perhaps I will hear the old cavil of “Replacement theology”, but that has been put to rest above, for the Israel God honors is simply that which honors His Messiah; after all, did He not promise our father Abraham, “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen 12:3)? And this is that blessing, that we should be one people 42 gathered around the God of Abraham, all those of the nations that cleave to His holy law as spoken through Messiah, along with us Jews—all the families of the earth. All those who come to God through Messiah are now His chosen people. The floodgates of mercy are open to whosoever will come! This is that blessing and promise given father Abraham. To not believe is to fall away from His precious salvation, and perish in eternal Gehenna. ____ Holocausts The fierce wrath behind the final cursings of that now expired covenant was so hot it will remain unextinguished on this people till the threshing floor of the world gives up its chaff to the furnace of judgment and fiery indignation, the elect among us—the remnant—having first been culled out by God’s effectual calling of His people to Himself. The linear—i.e., one-dimensional—thinking which views the Deuteronomic revelation of fierce wrath as expended and finished when the force of the curse was fully executed at the end of the Old Covenant era misses the nature and continuing power of that anger on the continuing sin that drew it forth in the first place. Deut 28:45, 46 …all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee: And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever. One of the most important of His commandments came ten chapters earlier, in Deut 18:18, 19: I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. Not only did we not hearken unto Him, but when, centuries later, He manifested in the flesh according to promise—our Messiah—we conspired to have Him put to death at the hands of Rome, and as He was a-dying— Himself the atoning sacrifice unto God for our sins—we walked by and mocked this Lamb God provided, not seeing the infinite heart of love burning immeasurably more bright than the bush Moses walked up to and took his shoes off to draw near. But it is not too late for us to draw near the burning we once passed by. Not a bush, but a greater and more profound sight: a unique heart, and the divine presence aflame within it. A great hope, a great love therein. For we yet stagger under the wrath lying heavy upon us. We must not revolt at the monstrosity of evil which befell us under Hitler, cursing our God, for that monstrosity is a reflection of our own hearts’ murderous hatred of Him, the God of Jacob! And this judgment our hatred provoked is less than the offense that occasioned it. It is a warning for those with ears to hear: a time of threshing is to come upon us again, greater by far than what has already come. We should be ware. The execution by crucifixion of Jesus the Messiah of Israel and Saviour of the world, for the sins of that of humankind which shall cleave to the true God, was the most horrendous judgment that can be conceived by man, even though its depths cannot be plumbed by us. Involved in this must be the understanding of His nature, true deity and true human—two natures, though not confused or mingled—yet one Person. His divine nature upheld His human nature while receiving the wrath of God as He punished the sin-bearer bearing our sin. The 43 infinite dignity of His Person gave infinite worth to His priestly sacrifice. This was the true passover lamb, no type or symbol as were those sacrifices of old. Within the soul and body of Jesus the eternal wrath due untold millions of us was exhausted; the sin imputed to that infinitely holy soul (2 Cor 5:21) as much a torment as the wrath meted upon it—one cannot compare even the nuclear devastation of entire vast lands with hundreds of millions destroyed to such destruction and suffering as the Saviour endured for humankind. We underestimate the expanse of His being, and the wrath due us. The Great Flood of Noah and its destruction was miniscule in comparison. It is hard for us to think on such vast scales. But let us try, briefly. What happened to us under Hitler and his followers—all of it, all the worst—I want to tell you that even these depths of evil are light—small—compared to what we shall know in Hell. For there actual demons, and the devil, will be the company we’re in, and that forever—without end, ever. What liberty they will have to torment us I do not know. But what Messiah calls “the lake of fire” bespeaks something unfathomably terrible. The holocaust should not even be compared to this unending—eternal—torment, bad as that was. What is coming is infinitely worse. So when I say God shouts to us that it is not well with us—and we heard that shout then in the camps of death—rational people should take note. When the sun shines there is warmth; when it recedes there is darkness and cold. The sun does not cause the darkness, its absence does. When God takes His covenant protection from us—when He withdraws from us because of the vileness of our hearts, and our disdain for His covenant—who causes Him to distance from the moral repulsiveness of our ways? And when He is gone, and darkness is in our house, then devils come to wreak havoc in those once called the people of God. He said through the prophet Hosea, “yea, woe also to them when I depart from them!” (9:12) And through Moses He said—with respect to the breaking of the covenant, Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us? (Deuteronomy 31:17) There was light when Messiah made His offering for sin—our sin. We walked by this epochal event—and in spirit many continue doing so—as though it were nothing, worse than nothing, an affront to us, despite our being carefully instructed by our spiritual teachers—Moses and the prophets—and then no less a person than Messiah Himself, whom we despised, following renegade rabbis. The Holocaust, after the diaspora persecutions of twenty centuries, was a major judgment (though not of the order of things that are to come), to the end of alerting the nation—that is, world Jewry, particularly those of us within the newly-formed State of Israel, as well in America: it is time to wake up to the realities of our situation: time to revisit and reassess our history as the “people of the book” we purportedly are. Our forebears walking by the crucifixion—our ancient rabbis and priests—mocking the One who hung there making atonement for the people according to the will of our God and Creator, set us on a path we have followed since, a path of blood, gore, and ignominy. It will not do to just leave it at that. If we are not utterly deadened at heart, and dull of mind, we may want to reassess those we blindly follow—or reject, and go secular—and what they have done, for we have partaken of their “reward”. Our ancient prophet, Isaiah, put it like this, “the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed” (9:16). To some it may seem outrageous even to suggest the Holocaust was a judgment from the God of Israel. We have become very distant from any true knowledge of Him, and His holiness. But consider, even the pagan emperor was compelled to confess regarding our God, “all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can 44 stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” (Daniel 4:35) The God of Israel is the absolute sovereign over all the universe. Our prophet Isaiah (in 45:6,7) was given the words, I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil [disaster, calamity]: I the LORD do all these things. The Psalmist, in 127:1b, said, “except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” Whether we see our suffering at the hands of the wicked as our simply having the covenant protection removed by God and thus vulnerable to demonic men, or His designing our punishment as just retribution, it amounts to the same thing: our Safety has departed from us, and we are desolate. And exposed without protection. We have no fear of God any longer, as some of our fathers had. But we desperately need this. He is just, and without any flaw in His infinite moral perfection—if we will not take that by faith in the word He has spoken— and proceed from there, we shall perish, as so many of us already have. For He has said, …to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word. (Isa 66:2) and, The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. (Psalm 34:18) There is coming another great holocaust that will usher us into the eternal—and deserved—holocaust, what Messiah calls “the second death”. Yet the floodgates of mercy are still flung wide. Of our age it is written, In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. (Zechariah 13:1) Do you know that fountain? It was opened for us outside of Jerusalem as the Lord of Glory bled paying for our sins. He was raised from the dead, and sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high, gladly receiving all who come to Him, contrite, in faith. ____ Watchman, what of the night? We have been privileged to see great light, gleams of the dawning new age of humankind after the resurrection, but those who shut their eyes to it will see what, for them, must follow: an endless and agonizing night. Some of us are entirely ignorant of the Book we are the people of, having opted instead for the “secular” view of things, seeing the “religious” among us not any thing we would desire to emulate! And so we shrug off all things religious, and become emancipated and enlightened according to the zeitgeist, the spirit of the foul age. 45 Others of us are indoctrinated by those we have loved into the Rabbinic faith, and more or less keep it, yet the discrepancy between what the one foundational book—Tanakh—says, and what the multitude of supposed sages in their Talmudic “wisdom” say, disturbs us and we, some of us, simply suspend our judgment and get by as best we can. But the Holocaust still shouts out to us that God’s righteous wrath yet rests upon us for the treacherous betrayal—our ongoing treacherous betrayal—of the covenant He made with us in time past. It may be that among us there no faith in Him left after the meat and soul grinder of centuries, but this then is only a repeat of our sad and woeful history. After Hitler no one can ignore the shout of God—the anger, and the love. Please listen: it is true Messiah said, as He was dying, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). He remitted the sin of deicide we all—Gentile and Jew—had committed. Yet we continue to laugh and mock at His dying, His infinite propitiation for our sins. To revile this costly mercy is to invite the wrath it intercepted. We should not want to invite this upon ourselves! Not again! This “infinite propitiation” is the perfect antidote—and God’s loving answer—to the “eternal torment” of Hell we are rushing toward. Our Father God accepted His beloved Son’s offering—the atonement—for our sin at the cross. Jesus’ holocaust in our place—bearing the holocaust of our eternal Hell—satisfies God’s demand for full justice, and we, sins forgiven for Christ’s sake, may enter into life on paradise New Earth, in the New Jerusalem that shall come down from Heaven (Revelation 21). The Gentile nations will have their own major judgment for their rejection of the New Covenant that God so graciously offered them, the Messiah’s wondrous salvation set before them as well. If they see us come to Him, doubtless many of them will follow us. Not all of us will heed and escape, but some will—perhaps more of those who are secular, and open sinners by the Biblical standard, than the so-called religious. As for both the blessings and the curses He gave Moses to declare, our disbelief does not annul the power of them; He says, from elsewhere in the Book, I the LORD have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent; according to thy ways, and according to thy doings, shall they judge thee, saith the Lord GOD. (Ezek 24:14) The eyes of the LORD preserve knowledge, and he overthroweth the words of the transgressor. (Prov 22:12) There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the LORD. The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD. (Prov 21:30, 31) There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless the counsel of the LORD, that shall stand. (Prov 19:21) Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil [calamity] and good? Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins? Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD. (Lam 3:37-40) We Jews are a chosen people, for good when we walk at peace with and in obedience to our God, but for ill when we walk contrary. In an extraordinary move the LORD our God brought our people back to the land, and at this time (2016) the population of the State of Israel is around 8.5 million (around 6.3 million Jews), and the number of world Jewry stands at around 15 million, give or take 1.5 million, depending on how the count is 46 taken. When we figure that during the Holocaust 6 million of us were killed, the percentage vis-à-vis our total population now is shocking. A little less than half of all of us were wiped off the earth. What is God doing bringing us back to the ancient land? I see two possibilities: first, giving us a place as a people again, not a Biblical people for we (even the various Orthodox groups) are averse to the prophetic faith of our fathers (that faith of Moses and the prophets, not the rabbis); and second, to a threshing floor, where the wheat will be separated from the chaff. Let me talk of that a little. For those who have ears to hear, I repeat: about half way through the curses of Deuteronomy 28, in verse 45 Moses says, Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkened not unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee… Severe as it is, this is a promise—and we should not discount it, for this is the lesson learned from the Holocaust to us who survive to this day. Some will not take this lesson to heart, but some will. And the Holocaust, you will recall my saying, horrendous as it was, was small compared to the holocaust that ravaged the being of Messiah, Son of God—also known as “God manifest in the flesh” (more on that in a moment). And small compared to our Hell. Looking at our situation, I will go a little further in Moses; in verses 64 through 66 of Deut 28 he says, And the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone. And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life… This is upon us now in many nations, and even in the State of Israel we live in fear, if not of the knives, then of Iran’s nuclear bomb(s) many chaff at the bit to develop and lob into Tel Aviv or Jerusalem obliterating us all— grandchildren and great grandchildren—all. The last great dispersion. Dispersing us out of the world and into eternal regions. Horrible, you say? We are all going to die some day anyway (except the LORD returns for His people and for judgment before that). Whether you quietly die of heart failure in your sleep, or eaten by a lion, while the latter is a more painful death, the end result is identical. We shall all die. If it is earlier or later it boils down to the same. What Messiah warned us of is the second death. It is also termed eternal death. Going into eternal realms apart from the love and care of God in Messiah, but instead under His wrath, and in the company of all the world’s wicked, its sociopaths and psychopaths, along with the hosts of demons and their foul prince, Satan—this is what awaits us if we are bereft of Messiah’s covenant and saving friendship. We generally protest and say, “But surely I’m not to be reckoned among these misbegotten grotesqueries—I’m a good person, or at least I have tried to be good.” And this is our problem—we trust our own evaluation of our selves, and of the essential human condition, rather than God’s: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) King David, our poet and psalmist, by the Spirit of God said, God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God. Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. (Psalm 53:2, 3) 47 If we discount the word of God in this, we will discount His views on everything. We, the people to whom He has spoken by Moses, the prophets, and Messiah, to whom He gave the gracious covenants (which first covenant He gave to no others), and to whom He has revealed His plan for this age of earth’s history, and for the age to come where His paradise on the new earth will surpass all the finest dreams and visions of this age— we would do well to take the Scripture to heart. And this Messiah, Micah said of Him, But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. (Micah 5:2) The attribute of eternality may be posited only of deity. And this One was to come from Bethlehem. And again, in Isaiah 9:6, Messiah is called, Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. In Isaiah 53 it is written how He suffered for our sins, making atonement for us. Who could offer an acceptable atoning sacrifice but One possessing absolute moral perfection, and that could be no mere man (nor our corporate nation!) : But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all . . . Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. (Isaiah 53:5, 6, 10, 11) What our Messiah endured to end our exile from the heart of the living God, in taking our sins upon Himself and paying the penalty we should have paid . . . well, the depth of suffering cannot be fathomed by the human mind. We walked by that event once, but let us not do it again. The Promised Land of the Israel in spirit has but one gateway, and Messiah the Gate-keeper. In Him is the essential return from exile; when this age is over and the flood of fire cleanses the earth, God will not only make our bodies new and glorified, but the earth as well, and the Land of Promise will be all the earth, and the unclean shall not dwell thereon forever. The great city of the new earth is called New Jerusalem, and there our God will dwell among us. Lest any think to avoid the upheavals of the days to come by fleeing to the United States (where almost 6 million of us Jews live), think again, for this land (from which I write at the moment) is also in the sights of the wrath of the Almighty for its own egregious wickedness. Please see the chapter, “The Fate of Babylon, a study 48 in determining the identity and demise of Babylon in John’s Apocalypse”, for more on this, which pertains to the end of this age. Even for those who carefully study the prophecies of the end of the age, we tend to minimize the pounding calamities that shall rack the earth, we tend to “think small” about these things. When it is said by the last prophet—John of the Apocalypse—that one third of humanity shall be killed during the period of the “sixth trumpet” judgments, to me this portends major wars and the use of nuclear weapons. I take this to possibly be the destruction of the large entity known as “harlot Babylon”, and possibly other nations. We know that there are those who have this passionately in mind for the small State of Israel. Jesus said in His Lucan Olivet Discourse that men’s hearts will be failing them for fear of the things they see coming upon the earth (21:26). Things ordinarily unthinkable will actually happen in our sight. It will be realized that the end of the world—of this age—is upon us, for such things can be nothing else but. It would be wise to learn the second part of the Hebrew Bible, those of us who want to enter eternity in the care and love of God. It is the mark of a fool, in these days where even the “wise” are twisted in delusions, to remain in traditions that have betrayed us for millennia, and not think and investigate for ourselves. Even in the land, we are not a blessed people; we may be proud, and tough, but a curse dogs us—and it’s time to heed the writing on the wall, and not the books of effete religious characters whose views are worthless to cease the madness of these days. The anti-missionaries will rage and roar at what I say. I think my arguments, and vision into our actual condition, speak for themselves. Whatever the spinmeisters conjure up, our history—and present—speak for themselves. We need, God’s Book, Old and New. When I have spoken of the holocaust visited upon Messiah that was rightly meant for us—He bearing it as our substitute, just as the old animal sacrifices typified—this manifested the love of our God for us. We need to apprehend the truth, the reality, of that love, so as to cleave to Him with all the trust of our hearts and minds. The apostle Paul has a saying in his epistle to the Ephesian congregation, “To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved” (1:6); grace is undeserved favor, and this particular grace pertains to the cleansing that makes us acceptable to our God, and it is written of by the prophet Zechariah in 13:1, In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. The fountain was His veins opened—and emptied unto death—for the love of us who would come to Him for mercy. But He did not remain dead, as it is written in David, For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption (Psalm 16:10). He was raised from the dead according to the Scripture, and receives all who come to Him for grace in their desperate time of need. That Jehovah the eternal Son would so suffer in order to dispense such grace to the undeserving, there is an unspeakable glory manifested thereby, and for which He is praised continually in the new temple over which He is tender and kind and mighty high priest, the temple that is New Jerusalem in the heavens, and will comprise all of New Earth after the resurrection and judgment. Eternally blessed is the one whose feet tread that land! May that be you, dear reader. ____ 49 A great promise, and a great hope given us This is the promise, given through Moses: And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath driven thee, And shalt return unto the LORD thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul; That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee. If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee: And the LORD thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers. And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. (Deuteronomy 30:1-6) The Mosaic era being over, and his covenant annulled—the Law having been fulfilled by and in Messiah—the land we are to be brought into is not the land of old we once were of, for it is at present in spirit and truth that our Return From Exile must take place: the Return is to the favor—to the very heart and love—of our God and Saviour, through Jesus the Messiah, in whom we have access, being washed clean by His blood, the perfect and acceptable sacrifice. Wherever we are, in whatever land, in whatever circumstance, however defiled and laden with sins, these words from a hymn say it well, Just as I am, and waiting not, to rid my soul of one dark blot, to Thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot, O Lamb of God, I come. or another, Come, ye weary, heavy-laden, Lost and ruined by the fall; If you tarry till you’re better, You will never come at all. Let not conscience make you linger, Nor of fitness fondly dream; All the fitness He requireth Is to feel your need of Him. 50 The Messiah came, first of all, for the lost sheep of the House of Israel. You are still the blood children of Jacob, and the promise is unto you, as written above by Moses, speaking by the Spirit of the Almighty, the Redeemer of Israel—to whom you now may come in the name of Yeshua of Nazareth. Shalom shalom 51