Robbing Jacob

One of the pillars of morality for the human race is found in Leviticus 19:11-12: “You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. You shall not swear falsely by My name, so as to profane the name of your God; I am YHVH” (Leviticus 19:11-12). God connects robbery to dealing falsely and to lying to one another.

Robbing Jacob in Genesis

Most Christian sermons castigate Jacob as a thief and robber. But the biblical text teaches the exact opposite. Rebekah inquired of the Lord, who gave her a prophetic promise regarding her two yet-to-be born children: “Two nations are in your womb and two peoples will be separated from your body. One people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger” (Genesis 25:22-23). The birthright of the first-born was prophesied over Jacob even before he came into the world (Romans 9:10-13). In later years Esau fulfilled the prophetic word by selling his birthright to Jacob his brother (Genesis 25:31-34), despising spiritual benefit and choosing the comfort of fast food instead.

In Genesis 27 Isaac disobeyed the prophetic word and ignored the oath sworn between his two sons. Instead Isaac tried to bless the son he preferred – Esau – but it was the wrong son. Esau had willingly gone along with the subterfuge, happy to rob his brother of that which rightly belonged to Jacob twice over.  But God overruled Isaac and made sure that the patriarchal blessing rested on Jacob (Hebrews 11:20). After the fact both Isaac and Esau papered over their attempt to rob Jacob of what was rightfully his (Genesis 27:35-36).

Robbing Jacob in our day

The same spiritual dynamic which was operative in Esau’s life often flexes its spiritual muscles among modern believers. These attempts to rob Jacob’s divine blessing from the Jewish people start by twisting  (allegorizing) the original meaning of the Scriptures and then by transferring Jacob’s promises wholesale to Gentile believers in Messiah Yeshua. This is also the foundational premise of Replacement theology.

Sometimes these attempts are carried out in ignorance, even by those who love Israel. Let’s look at some examples and draw some conclusions.

“I want to bless my congregation”

Some pastors and preachers get very uncomfortable when they have to preach from biblical texts which stress the priority, blessing and restoration of Israel. Verses which talk about God’s strategic favor on the Jewish people are treated like hair-trigger explosive devices.  Often biblical truth is sidestepped and justification sounds like this: “If I teach what is written to my people – that God loves Israel and has a priority strategy for her – my congregation will feel robbed. They will feel left out as second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God. Since I don’t want that, I will tweak the scriptures in question, ignoring the Jewish context and promises, and instead ‘spiritualize’ (allegorize) the promises as applying exclusively to Gentiles who believe in Jesus Christ.”

The majority of Christians witness this expositional robbery on a weekly basis. The Bible (written over 95% by Jews and over 90% about the Jews and their destiny) becomes a nose of wax shaped into devotional sermons about how much God loves the nations of the world.

The result of this methodology does not bring blessing for one’s congregation. Instead it leads to a weakening of spiritual discernment and acumen, and it results in spiritual narcissism and ill health. The preferred antidote is to accurately teach the scriptures about Israel and to show how God still plans for life from the dead to flow to the nations through Israel’s embrace of her prophesied calling (Romans 11:12,15).

“Applying Jewish prophecies to Gentile Christians is the most spiritual way of interpreting the Bible”

One of the first Fathers of the Church was the Samaritan Justin Martyr. In his Dialogue with Trypho (chapters 29, 123, 135) he stated that the true Israelite race is Gentile believers, that the Scriptures no longer belong to the Jewish people but to the Gentiles, and that God prefers Gentile worship to Jewish worship. These themes have wrapped themselves around the roots of Christian theology, and can even be found among charismatics and intercessors.

Justin’s perspective says that the disobedience of some Jews has obliterated God’s calling on Israel and that it has been transferred to the Gentiles. Yet the Apostle Paul strongly asserts the opposite – that the gifts and calling given to the Jewish people are irrevocable (Romans 11:28-29).

Teaching Justin Martyr’s perspectives runs roughshod over apostolic teaching. Paul exhorts the church in Rome at all costs to avoid heart attitudes regarding the Jewish people which border on conceit, arrogance, boasting and ignorance (Romans 11:18, 20, 25).

“Jewish kingdoms are carnal, but Gentile Christian kingdoms are spiritual”

Within three hundred years of the crucifixion, the Roman Caesars had established a Gentile expression of Christianity as the glue which would hold a tottering empire together. This superpower would become known as the Holy Roman Empire – the best and brightest hope for Christian theologians in its day. Yet these same theologians refused to countenance the restoration of the exiled Jewish people to their Promised Land, saying that such a hope was carnal and un-Christian. From this perspective, a Gentile empire is godly and spiritual, but a Jewish kingdom is ungodly and carnal.

Little by little, anti-Semitic opposition to Jewish restoration became a touchstone of orthodox Christian theology. Today many Bible teachers have great difficulty in allowing the biblical texts to breath normally– especially when these texts talk about Jewish restoration to the Land of Israel, Jewish Jerusalem as the world’s capitol city, and Israel as the axial platform for international worship and blessing.

One of the next prophetic paradigm shifts for the church will be the embracing of Israel the people and Israel the land as the strategic center of God’s kingdom on earth, with all that entails.

“Israel, Jerusalem and Zion are best understood as heavenly realities”

For 1,900 years Gentile theologians have by and large taken the words ‘Israel,’ ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Zion’ and robbed them of their biblical and exegetical meaning. Justin Martyr was one of the first to do so, saying that Gentile believers are the true Jacob and the real Israel. Augustine used the words Jerusalem and Zion as metaphors for the Church among the Gentiles. As Thomas Renna says in his article “Zion and Jerusalem in the Psalms” (in Augustine: Biblical Exegete; Frederick Van Fleteren, Joseph C. Schnaubelt, pp. 279-280), “Augustine had no interest in the historical or literal sense of the place Zion. The material site represented the church that was to come … Augustine often uses Zion to reflect both the individual Christian and the church at large.”

But the biblical record brings a different witness. God makes clear promises that He will restore the Jewish people to physical Zion and Jerusalem, that it will be the capitol city of the world, that Yeshua will physically reign from that city, and that God’s heart is close to that people at that city (Psalms 148:14; 149; 87). Therefore it is necessary for Bible teachers who love honesty and eschew robbery to hold to what is written and to let the Bible speak clearly and plainly on these issues.

It is actually quite spiritual to believe that God has a special place in His heart for Zion and Jerusalem (Psalm 48) and that He will actually establish world government over all the nations of the world (Amos 9:11) from Jerusalem, David’s City.

Prophetic sanity in a crazy world

How can we keep sane in an insane world? One of the most important biblical touchstones involves keeping on track with what the Bible teaches about Israel (which is actually over 90% of the Scriptures).

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

The Isaiah 19 highway – prophecies amidst the potholes

Isaiah 19:23 spotlights a gripping prophetic vision about a future Middle Eastern highway of blessing. Though recent events might seem to be moving the region away from a fulfillment of this dream, Isaiah 19 announces that peace, worship and good fellowship will eventually break out along a superhighway linking Egypt, Israel and northern Iraq. This is heady stuff, and in some circles trumpeting calls are sounding that these Messianic days are at the doorstep.

So what does this passage speak of? What are the countries involved here? What are the penultimate events surrounding the fulfillment of this vision? Do other Scriptures grant us greater context and insight about this prophesied highway?

 Superpower scenario

For thousands of years the Fertile Crescent was wracked by shuddering wars between superpowers. In the western corner of the ring stood Egypt, land of the Pharaohs. In the east towered Assyria (and then eventually Babylon, Persia and Media). An ancient highway connected these empires, called the Via Maris (or derech hayam – the way of the sea). As dictators conquered and reconquered the Middle East, the victor’s trophy ping-ponged between West and East while invaders streamed across this superhighway in pursuit of gold, grain and glory.

It was divine strategy that moved the God of Abraham to beam His Jewish people down, smack dab into the middle of this battlefield. YHVH chose to settle His chosen people right on the midpoint of this highway – into the Promised Land of Israel. Whatever lessons God taught His own people would be carried along this highway and would penetrate the consciousness of the Middle East’s major powers. What was whispered in Bethlehem would be broadcast into Babylon!

Highway to slavery

When Abraham was faced with a drought in the Promised Land, he departed from the parched fields of Beersheva and headed down the highway toward the granaries of Goshen. There he met Egypt’s pharaoh, who temporarily kidnapped Abraham’s beautiful wife Sarah. By the time Abraham exited from Egypt and returned along the highway to the mountains of Israel, he was considered a wealthy man, with a rich retinue of camels, livestock – and a female slave for Sarah named Hagar (Genesis 12:10-13:2; 16:1-4).

Another drought forced the Jewish patriarchs to flee as refugees into Egypt. But God had already prepositioned Joseph as Egypt’s Grand Vizier – sending him on ahead down the highway – in order to save many lives (Genesis 41:38-45; 50:19-20). The highway was now leading the Jewish people out of the Promised Land and into a long sojourn as slaves in Egypt.

After four hundred years of anguish, the Hebrew slaves were led like a flock out of Egypt by the hand of Moses and Aaron along the highway (Psalm 77:19-20). Isaiah saw this highway as prophetically pointing forward down the corridors of time – to the last great ingathering of the Jewish people – when God will complete the Ingathering of the Exiles to the Jewish homeland. “And there will be a highway … for the remnant of His people who will be left, just as there was for Israel in the day that they came up out of the land of Egypt” (Isaiah 11:16).

Keys to the highway

Around 720 BC Assyria invaded the Jewish homeland and carried ten of the twelve tribes away into the exile of northern Iraq (modern Kirkuk, Mosul and Kurdistan). The prophesied highway had now become a superhighway of banishment, and Jewish refugees streamed east to Assyria instead of west to Egypt.

It is helpful to remember that in those days neither Assyria or Egypt were Arab countries. Egypt was populated by non-Semitic peoples. The Bible calls it ‘the Land of Ham’ (Psalm 105:23; 78:51; Genesis 10:6). Assyria was founded by Ham’s grandson Nimrod (Genesis 10:11-12). The capital city of Assyria did have a connection to Shem, but it was through Shem’s other son Ashur and not through Abraham’s forefather Arpachshad (1 Chronicles 1:17).

Jewish restoration on the superhighway

The Hebrew prophets spoke of a Last Days restoration of the Jewish people back to their homeland. This flowing of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel would head toward home along the highway, from both West and East. The whole nation is called upon to remember the highway upon which they set out into Exile, because it will one day become a Highway of Restoration! “Set up for yourself road marks, place for yourself guideposts. Direct your mind to the highway, the way by which you went. Return, O virgin of Israel, Return to these your cities” (Jeremiah 31:21).

“Then it will happen on that day that YHVH will again recover the second time with His hand the remnant of His people, who will remain – from Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath and from the islands of the sea. And He will lift up a standard for the nations and assemble the banished ones of Israel, and will gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth…And YHVH will utterly destroy the tongue of the Sea of Egypt. And He will wave His hand over the (Euphrates) River with His scorching wind, and He will strike it into seven streams and make men walk over dry-shod. And there will be a highway from Assyria for the remnant of His people who will be left, just as there was for Israel in the day that they came up out of the land of Egypt” (Isaiah 11:11-16).

This return to Israel from Egypt and Assyria on the highway is emphasized again in another place in Isaiah:

“In that day YHVH will start His threshing from the flowing stream of the Euphrates to the brook of Egypt, and you will be gathered up one by one, O sons of Israel. It will come about also in that day that a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were perishing in the land of Assyria and who were scattered in the land of Egypt will come and worship YHVH in the holy mountain at Jerusalem” (Isaiah 27:12-13).

The above scriptures sculpt our understanding of the prophetic meaning of the highway and its specific Jewish connection:

Egypt’s missing link

Isaiah 19 describes astounding future events which will take place between Egypt and the Jewish state. Though verses 1-15 may speak of a future day, it is clear that verses 16-25 are prophetically spoken about days to come. The prophecy stresses six times that these events will come to pass “in that day” (verses 16, 18, 19, 21, 23-24).

Prophecy #1 – The nation of Egypt will tremble in terror because of how God will strategically use the Jewish state to judge the Egyptians (vv. 16-17)

Prophecy #2 – Five Egyptians cities will speak fluent Hebrew, and will unashamedly declare their fealty to the God of the armies of Israel (see 1 Samuel 17:26, 45). It seems that one city of Egypt will have been totally destroyed in war and then will later be rebuilt (verse 18)

Prophecy #3 – Two outstanding monuments will be dedicated to YHVH, the God of the armies of Israel. One will be in the center of the country, one at the border between Egypt and Israel. These will be signs of Egypt’s respect for and faith in the God of Israel, and of His deliverance and rescue of the Egyptians (verses 19-20)

Prophecy #4 – The God of Israel will reveal Himself to the Egyptians, and they will know the Lord, worshiping Him and taking vows in YHVH’s name. Though the God of Israel will need to strike Egypt, the purpose behind that bruising is so that Egypt would turn to Him. Upon that turning, YHVH will heal Egypt (verses 21-22)

Prophecy #5 – After Egypt’s repentance and turning to the God of Israel, the prophesied highway will come into its own. Both Egypt and Assyria (northern Iraq) will worship YHVH the God of Israel at an acceptable time and in an acceptable way (see also Psalm 69:13). Peace will come to this region after Assyria and Egypt turn to the Lord, accept His sovereign rule and align themselves wholeheartedly with YHVH’s sovereign choice of Israel (verse 23)

Prophecy #6 – Now comes a prophecy of a divinely blessed cooperation between three countries – Israel, Egypt and Assyria (northern Iraq). Whereas Egypt and Assyria were once mortal enemies – always at each other’s throats – now they will find peace with each other by first finding peace with God. And this highway which will join former superpower enemies to each other runs through the land and the people of Israel. Israel is described here as a blessing in the midst of these two earthly superpowers, the ‘golden clasp’ that brings harmony to the Middle East and to the world (verses 24-25; see also Romans 11:12,15)

These six prophecies conclude with a divine blessing spoken over the three nations. Egypt is called “My people” – brought into a national relationship with the God of Israel through the New Covenant. Assyria (northern Iraq) is described as “the work of My hands” – fashioned by God for His purposes, which ultimately include salvation and worship. Israel is uniquely called “My inheritance” – Abraham’s first-born son by covenant, the nation to whom belong the irrevocable gifts and calling (see Romans 11:28-29). While God rejoices when His Middle-Eastern children live together in peace, He always remembers His promise never to desert Israel or abandon the Jewish people, His prioritized inheritance (Psalm 94:14).

“And Abraham said to God, ‘Oh that Ishmael might live before You!’ But God said, ‘No, but Sarah your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I will bless him, and will make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall become the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this season next year’ ” (Genesis 17:18-21).

Giving honor and taking honor

In the Middle East the issue of honor and shame is still a powerful and decisive dynamic. David Pryce-Jones’ penetrating book ‘The Closed Circle’ (1989, Harper & Row) sheds helpful light on this and other subjects. Many Westerners do not fully grasp how central honor and dishonor are to positive political and business developments. The slightest perceived dishonor can become the kiss of death within Arab culture.

Perhaps Yeshua was speaking to this heart attitude in the following parable:

And He began speaking a parable to the invited guests when He noticed how they had been picking out the places of honor at the table, saying to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then in disgrace you proceed to occupy the last place” (Luke 14:7-9).

A similar dynamic is addressed when the mother of James and John (Ya’akov and Yohanan) comes to Yeshua asking for her two sons to be seated next to the Messiah as a threesome at the Messianic Banquet.

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee (Zabdai) came to Yeshua with her sons, bowing down and making a request of Him. And He said to her, “What do you wish” She said to Him, “Command that in Your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit one on Your right and one on Your left.” But Yeshua answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They said to Him, “We are able.” He said to them, “My cup you shall drink; but to sit on My right and on My left, this is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by My Father.” And hearing this, the ten became indignant with the two brothers. But Yeshua called them to Himself and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:20-28).

Some Arab brothers and sisters in the faith find the issue of Israel’s irrevocable calling and gifts to be unsettling. This biblical teaching runs against the grain in an Islamic milieu which champions Palestinian statehood and sees the Jewish nation as cursed and second-class (or dhimmi).

In an effort to make the gospel more ‘user-friendly’ for the Arab/Islamic world, some may have perhaps inadvertently downplayed God’s calling on the Jewish people, suggesting that Isaiah 19 has set aside (or at least weakened the force of) God’s firstborn status granted by covenant to Israel. Since Assyria and Egypt are now two-thirds of the equation (it is suggested), could it be that YHVH has granted an ‘affirmative action’ status to the Arab world. Based on this reading of Isaiah 19, Arabs no longer have to wrestle with the biblical teaching on Israel’s priority. There is an intimation that Egypt/Assyria (which is then interpreted as the Arab world which is then interpreted as Ishmael) has received the same first-born status and blessings promised to Isaac and Jacob by the God of Israel.

This above methodology takes one scriptural passage (Isaiah 19:23-25), incorrectly interprets it from both a historical and exegetical perspective, and then de-emphasizes an immense body of covenental teaching found in nearly every book of the Bible. In some cases, some use Isaiah 19 to replace Israel’s axial importance in God’s heart and her priority in Last Days events – and then replace that biblical focus with a new and present tripartite focus on Ishmael, the Islamic world and then Israel. Neither Islam nor Ishmael is (of course) mentioned in Isaiah 19.

The concerns expressed here are real. It has come to our attention that various leaders have expressed the conviction that, in light of Isaiah 19, and in light of the fact that there are so many more Arabs than there are Jews, the divine priority emphasis needs to be placed on the Arab world.

Getting the highway back on course

Isaiah’s vision in chapter 19 reveals how, through severe discipline and painful paths, Egypt will turn her heart in repentance to the God of Israel and as a bonus will have a transformed heart for the Jewish people. Superpower enemies who have been at each other’s throats for thousands of years will suddenly be transfixed by a divine glance, and will be healed of their hatred and wrath for each other, their enmity toward the God of Abraham and their animosity toward His people Israel.

The physical highway that runs through the land of Israel is also a natural reflection of a spiritual truth – that the spiritual highway which leads to the healing both of the Middle East and of all nations – is a highway that runs right through the heartland of the Jewish people (their physical homeland and their spiritual calling).

Isaiah’s vision is not meant to be used as a destructive bulldozer, leveling the priority calling of the Jewish people. Isaiah 19 properly interpreted will not weaken the gifts and calling given to the Jewish people (see Romans 11:28-29). Isaiah 19 sees a prophesied peace in the Middle East coming to pass after the Arab nations turn to God. Isaiah 19 foresees a future where the Arab nations will live peacefully in their own lands – as Abraham had originally wanted (see Genesis 25:5-6) – and not when those nations attempt to establish violent rule over the Land promised to Jacob (see Ezekiel 35:10-15; 36:1-5), as the Palestinian nationalist movement is attempting to do. Isaiah 19 also sees the Jewish people living at peace and unassaulted in their own homeland.

God’s prioritizing of the Jewish people in Isaiah 19 and throughout the Scriptures does not mean that Isaac is superior to Ishmael or to any other nation (including Assyria and Egypt). But it does mean that YHVH loves Israel and has ordained that the Jewish people’s gifts and calling continue into the future (see Revelation 21:12, 14; Isaiah 66:22-23). This issue is an essential part of God’s planet-wide Last Days strategy.

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablment of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

Shattering the tidal wave of anti-Semitism

World anti-Semitism is on the increase in numerous areas –

Within this swirling matrix there are religiously sponsored anti-Semitic moves as well –

A new hateful upsurge spearheaded by the anti-Semitic BDS movement (advocating Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel) is sweeping university campuses under the guise of ‘justice’ and ‘progressive opposition to oppression.’ The BDS movement has no problem cooperating both with extreme rightist neo-Nazis as well as with Salafi Islamists (who despise both Western democratic values and secularized perspectives on gender issues). They are pickling a whole university generation with anti-Jewish attitudes and social activism directed against the Jewish state.

The pervasive spread of anti-Semitic attitudes and speech in public forums is another warning light of dark days to come. Whether it be an Islamist at Harvard accusing an Israeli politician of being a smelly Jew, a British-Pakistani Member of Parliament advocating forced transfer of Jews from Israel to the USA, the increase of swastikas spray-painted or carved on Jewish synagogues, cemeteries, community centers or even on college campuses – all these signs are flashing out a warning that the satanic scourge of anti-Semitism is spreading like a plague throughout the Western world.

How are followers of Yeshua who love God, His word and His chosen people Israel to respond to this tidal wave of spiritual filth directed against the sons and daughters of Jacob?

Hating the people God loves

What God chooses to love, Satan chooses to hate. The God of Israel has spoken on the record about His deep and unchanging love for the Jewish people (Deuteronomy 7:7-8), His passionate heart for them (Hosea 11:1, 3, 8-9), and His unchanging priority strategy for them (Deuteronomy 32:8-10; Romans 1:16; 2:5-11; 11:28-29). Satan’s response is opposition to God’s heart and opposition to His chosen people (Revelation 12:3, 9, 13). As one activist put it years ago, “Anti-Jew is anti-Christ!”.

Dragon’s eggs hatching across the planet

In one of the recent Godzilla movies, thousands of malevolent dinosaur eggs began to crack open, each one hatching a monster of world-destroying ferocity. In a similar way the resurgence of worldwide anti-Semitic movements is a harbinger of evil days coming upon the earth and the Jewish people. Rabbinic teachings mention ‘the birth pangs of the Messiah’ (Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 98b; Mark 13:3-8) and ‘the footprints of the Messiah’ (Mishnah Sotah 9:15, referencing Micah 7:6 ) – days of great wickedness immediately preceding the return of Messiah (see Daniel 12:1, 7; Jeremiah 30:4-11).

Yeshua the Messiah rebuked the men of His generation who (for the most part) were able to observe prophetic events but were not able to understand their meaning: “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?” (Matthew 16:2-3).

Daniel’s prophetic army

The Hebrew prophet Daniel was given insight into the future, and gave a prophetic oracle concerning how the faithful remnant among the Jewish people would rise up in military combat to defeat the Gentile occupiers of the Promised Land. These Maccabean warriors are described in Daniel 11:32: “But the people who know their God will display strength and take action.”

Proverbs 8:13 says that “the fear of YHVH is to hate evil. I hate pride, arrogance, the evil way and the perverted mouth.” Passivity in the face of evil is not a viable option for believers. The display of strength and the taking of action call for individual courage, personal backbone and our pro-active response.

Spiritual passivity is not the same as prophetic courage

There is a spiritual myopia at play in some circles today regarding suitable responses to anti-Semitism. Some think that since anti-Semitism is a prophesied Last Days manifestation, no real response on our parts is required except duly noting evil’s occurrence and its radical cresting.

Yeshua decried this spiritual blindness, “Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!” (Matthew 18:7).

Some believers during World War II stood against the anti-Semitic Nazi machine. The ‘White Rose’ movement of Berlin German students was an outstanding example of such activism against crushing anti-Semitic evil:

Corrie ten Boom and her watchmaking family in the Netherlands had been humble hosts of a hundred-year-long prayer movement for Israel’s safety and salvation. Eventually they became actively actively involved in an underground railroad movement to smuggle Jewish people out of the clutches of the Nazi beast:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran theologian who opposed Hitler, helped to rescue Jewish people, and participated in a plot to assassinate the Nazi leader:

In each of these cases, believers did not follow Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of ahimsa (non-violent passive lifestyle). In a letter written on November 26, 1938, Gandhi summed up his philosophy: “Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth” (www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/JewsGandhi.html). Though there is a good case to be made that Gandhi’s statement reflected certain strains of Hindu philosophy (though not the philosophy of the original Hindu conquerors of the Indian sub-continent), his spiritual paradigm is markedly different from that of the Maccabees and King David himself (see Psalm 144:1).

Watchmen of the walls

1. One of the ways believers can pro-actively stand against anti-Semitism is to expose it when it rears its head

In the words of the Apostle Paul, “Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light” (Ephesians 5:11-13).

2. A second way to counter-act anti-Semitism is to find practical ways to stand with and protect the Jewish people in their hour of need (see Matthew 25:31-46)

The Matthew passage referring to “the brothers of Yeshua” is actually a New Covenant term for the Jewish people (see Hebrews 2:10-16).

3. A third way to neutralize the scourge of anti-Semitism is to intercede for the protection and salvation of the Jewish people, and to ask God to grant revelation and strategies regarding how to prepare for the coming challenges (see Isaiah 62:1, 6-8; Jeremiah 31:7, 10-11)

Takin’ care of business

Psalm 121:4 declares that the One who guards and protects Israel is always on guard duty, and never slumbers or sleeps. That spiritual fact gives us great confidence as we stand in the truth and pro-actively take our place on the barricades in defense of the Jewish people.

A well-known Hasidic song proclaims the ultimate triumph of the God of Jacob against the Jewish people’s enemies: “Utzu eitza v’tufar, dabru davar v’lo yakum ki immanu El” (Isaiah 8:10; “They take counsel together but it is overthrown; they strategize but it will never happen, because God is with us!”).

God’s protection of His chosen people will last forever, and His defensive shield will preserve them “until her righteousness goes forth like brightness and her salvation like a burning torch” (Isaiah 62:1).

Ultimately Messiah Yeshua will return to Planet Earth on a white horse (Revelation 19:11-16), shattering the power of anti-Semitism and the international consortium of nations gathered to destroy both the Land and the People of Israel (Psalm 2:1-12; Zechariah 14:3-5). Until that day we stand in the gap (Philippians 2:12-13) !

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

The prophet and the proud ruler

The Hebrew prophets described the times preceding the return of Messiah as a time of great shaking. Many foundations will be shaken, and many ‘givens’ in normal society will experience tremors. “And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, ‘Yet once more and I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.’ This expression, ‘Yet once more,’ denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain” (Hebrews 12:26-27). These shakings are happening in our day.

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews is quoting from Haggai, who prophesied that these shakings will eventually result in great blessing and prosperity for God’s chosen people Israel. “For this is what YHVH of armies says, ‘Once more in a little while, I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also and the dry land. I will shake all the nations; and they will come with the wealth of all nations, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says YHVH of armies” (Haggai 2:6-7).

As one of the most unusual political campaigns takes place in America, it is clear to all that major political shakings are underway. Character issues and the boundaries of accepted behavior are being stretched and pushed way beyond the norm.

The American thinker and poet George Santayana wrote (in The Life of Reason, 1905), “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  With that in mind, it would be instructive to consider the interesting parallels between what Daniel the prophet experienced in his day, and what we are experiencing today. There may be some helpful lessons for us as well.

Democracies and dictatorships

For most of world history, societies have lived under monarchies and dictatorships, and not under democracies. Even the Golden Age of Greek democracy accepted slavery as a normal aspect of democratic life. Only in the past few centuries have some countries experienced the popular election of rulers. Certain political systems like Communism allowed for elections provided there was a one-party system, while Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party came to power through democratic elections.

As the Western world experiences political tremors, it is worth remembering that the Bible was written down at a time when superpowers were led by tyrants, dictators and kings. The average Assyrian, Babylonian or Persian would not have been able to identify with ballot boxes or election booths. The prophet Daniel was called to minister in a Middle Eastern maelstrom where Nebuchadnezzar was absolute ruler of much of the known world, and it was into that dynamic that he prophesied. 

Daniel and his dream gift

Daniel and his three Jewish friends were hand-picked from among the exiles of Judah to undergo a three year ‘State Department grooming’ for Babylon’s diplomatic corps. Their test-scores, abilities, good looks and social skills needed to be of the highest order before they were sent to Babylon’s political finishing schools (Daniel 1:3-7).

Daniel’s giftings also extended to the prophetic. Rising to meet the challenges of his job, he began to gain a stellar reputation as having an unusual accuracy in the prophetic interpretation of dreams. Nevertheless, he was realistically humble about the source of his gifting: “But as for me, this mystery has not been revealed to me for any wisdom residing in me more than in any other living man, but for the purpose of making the interpretation known to the king, and that you may understand the thoughts of your mind” (Daniel 2:30).

Daniel knew about the limitations of human power, even when it came to superpower tyrants or rulers.

Signs, wonders and hitting the reset button

The God of the Jewish people confronted mighty King Nebuchadnezzar with amazing miracles. These wonders revealed the king’s short temper, his burning anger and his imperial hubris or hutzpah. Each time the king witnessed a mighty sign, he declared YHVH’s power and sovereign authority:

Yet after nearly every power encounter, Nebuchadnezzar reverted to his prideful and unbelieving ways. Even though a beloved Hebrew prophet ministered to him in excellence and accuracy, confronting him directly about his pride and arrogance, the King of Babylon found it hard to “change his way of thinking,” as Bob Dylan notes in the song of that name.

“Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exalt and honor the King of heaven, for all His works are true and His ways just, and He is able to humble those who walk in pride” (Daniel 4:37).

The pay’s the same

Daniel the prophet carried out his prophetic duties honorably, and received divine commendation for that: “But as for you, go your way to the end; then you will enter into rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age” (Daniel 12:13).

The word of the Lord had come to Nebuchadnezzar and for the most part had been greeted by feigned obedience (see Psalm 66:3 - “How awesome are Your works! Because of the greatness of Your power Your enemies will give feigned obedience to You”). Yet regardless of how the proud ruler responded, a prophet had spoken to him the heart and mind of YHVH.

My mother the history teacher

I was blessed to have a mother who was a teacher and student of history. She helped me to think about and analyze historical developments, always adding her own take on some of history’s great struggles and events.

One of the things I remember her teaching me, was how Adolf Hitler was allowed by the Western world to rise to power. Though the Versailles Treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles) established Germany’s disarmament, Western fears of Communist revolution led to a loosing of Hitler’s muzzle, a quiet wink to the dictator and a free hand in building the Nazi juggernaut – as long as the Führer took out the enemy to the East, as long as he could be the Rottweiler who would deal harshly with those opposed to a Greater Germany.

Hitler came to power as a leader who would get tough with the enemies of German greatness. Any character weaknesses, any pride, would be tolerated, overlooked or ignored as long as he got the job done. My mother told me to learn from history, and not to ignore the hidden character and motives of leaders, even when they seem to be giving the people what they want. Bob Dylan’s sobering song “Man of Peace” speaks prophetically to these challenges:

               (“Man of Peace”, words and music by Bob Dylan, © Special Rider Music 1983)

How should we then pray?

“He has done mighty deeds with His arm. He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their heart. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, and has exalted those who were humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent away the rich empty-handed. He has given help to Israel His servant, in remembrance of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his descendants forever” (Luke 1:51-55)

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

Jewish suffering and anti-Semitism – A hot-button issue in the U.S. elections?

Over the past few weeks Israeli newspapers have been focusing on Mike Bickle’s endorsement of Ted Cruz in his campaign to become U.S. President. Bickle is the Founder and Director of the Kansas City based International House of Prayer. The Times of Israel, YNET, the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz all referred to sermons from 2005 and 2011 where Bickle referenced Adolf Hitler as being a hunter of the Jewish people raised up by God according to Jeremiah 16:16, as well as other statements he made in sermons that the day is coming where Jews will be put in work camps, prison camps and death camps, and that another future Holocaust of the Jews will transpire.

Inasmuch as some of these articles post links to International House of Prayer’s website link and to their Israel Mandate link (where our names as well as those of Dan Juster, Asher Intrater, etc. are mentioned), we have received various friendly requests asking us to bring  greater context, balance and clarification here – hence this newsletter.

U.S. political context

As the dog-eat-dog media shark-fest heats up for the November 2016 U.S. elections, spin doctors on each political side are searching through opponents’ statements with a fine-tooth comb, looking for loopholes and back doors which could serve to implode their competitors’ campaigns. Mike Bickle’s public endorsement of Ted Cruz was made within that context.

Almost immediately political opponents of Cruz and media critics began to search for mud to sling, hoping that some of the mud thrown would also stick to Cruz’ campaign. Within a few days, some of Bickle’s teaching was found on-line referring to Hitler as a divinely raised up hunter sent to a Jewish generation that refused to accept Jesus (his own words), as well as other references to a future Jewish Holocaust and to future concentration camps for Jewish people etc.

Most of these media critics are secular and don’t accept the Bible’s teaching as true or accurate. They would probably describe Joshua’s attack on Jericho as being immoral and not historically precise. So their scorn and supposed shock regarding Bickle’s comments need firstly to be understood in context – a secular media’s dissing of an evangelical preacher’s teaching which was based on his own perspectives regarding biblical texts (some of which might refer to Jewish suffering). Also see www.timesofisrael.com/cruz-backer-bickle-pledges-commitment-to-israel-jews-explains-his-hitler-comments/.

Yet beyond this point, are there any real issues being brought up by this controversy that can help us deepen our understanding of Jewish suffering past, present and future, and can a consideration of this subject improve our ability to communicate God’s heart and truth regarding these matters?

The anguish of the Jews

The Jewish people have suffered more persecution and prejudice throughout recorded history than any other people. Is there any meaning in this suffering – something which can help us to understand the past, the present and the future?

These questions have been addressed in the Hebrew Scriptures, in Rabbinic writings, in the Jewish-written New Testament as well as by what are known as the Church Fathers (early Christian teachers and theologians). Islamic theologians and historians have added their own voices to this discussion. Modern Israeli and Diaspora Jewish secular perspectives also bring their own unique take on these issues.

A Catholic theologian has written an extremely helpful reference book on Jewish suffering from a historical perspective, “The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Anti-Semitism” (1965/2004, Paulist Press, Rev. Edward H. Flannery). In this work Flannery documents Jewish history and does not avert his eyes or mince words even when the perpetrators are Christians. A more popular recent and helpful work is “Our Hands are Stained with Blood” (1992, Destiny Image, Dr. Michael L. Brown).

Jewish suffering in the Hebrew Scriptures

The worldview of the writers of the Tenach (the Hebrew Scriptures) is based on the foundation that predictive future prophecy is a reality. Supernatural declarations of future activities were part and parcel of the biblical prophets’ portfolios.

Two examples of many: Isaiah son of Amoz spoke of future judgment regarding the Jewish people, speech that made him quite unpopular among some (Isaiah 1). Jeremiah was accused of sedition and threatened with imprisonment and death when he prophesied Jerusalem’s upcoming destruction (Jeremiah 1:7-10. 16-19) and advocated surrender to the Babylonians (Jeremiah 26 and 38).

There are clear passages in the Hebrew Scriptures that speak of future judgment on the nations and on Israel. There are also passages which are far less clear, and other passages which have nothing to do with future prophecy. Great care needs to be used in weighing these passages, and a basic knowledge of Hebrew and exegetical rules should be foundational for all Bible teachers.

The teaching on future concentration camps (mentioned above) is one example where greater care could be of benefit. The Scriptures presented as strong proof by some who hold this position, do not actually teach about future camps. It is wiser to let clear and strong passages describing future blessing or judgment for Israel stand in all their power, and to move slowly, cautiously and tentatively where the Scripture is far less dogmatic.

It is often a professional temptation for pastors, teachers and educators in general to communicate matters more dogmatically than the evidence permits. That is why the Roman proverb cautions – “Caveat lector!” (Let the reader beware).

Jewish suffering in Rabbinic writings

One anti-Messianic Orthodox rabbi commented on Bickle’s teaching. Though he disagrees with Bickle’s interpretations, he does not dispute that the Tenach contains predictive prophecies of Jewish suffering. The difference is that this rabbi applies the interpretations of such passages to other historical events (www.breakingisraelnews.com/61407/rabbi-cruz-backer-bickles-heart-right-place-but-interpretations-messianic-prophecies-not-jewish-world/#wKHbm4Fz3eErWTkD.97).

Revered rabbinic authorities such as Sa’adya Gaon, Rashi, Maimonides and the Gaon of Vilna also see Jewish suffering prophesied at the End of Days. Though such themes are not stressed by many in Judaism today, they are very much a part of the rabbinic corpus.

One of the outstanding aspects of rabbinic consideration (which is often ignored or not stressed by some evangelicals) is the strong focus on the nature and priority of Jerusalem and the Jewish people at the End of Days – and not only regarding cataclysms, but also regarding amazing End Times blessings.

Jewish suffering in the Jewish New Testament

Messiah Yeshua prophesied about Jerusalem’s suffering and destruction in Matthew 23:37-39, but linked it as well to His Second Messianic Coming when the Jewish people will call out to Him en masse.  The Mount of Olives derasha (discourse) in Luke 21 refers to great suffering for the Jewish people, but then refers to great judgment on the nations at the End of Days. Jewish sufferings are understood as part of the biblical picture, as are Gentile sufferings.  At the same time Yeshua stresses Jewish priority in the coming kingdom (Luke 22:29-30) and Jewish honor in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:12, 14).

Jewish suffering in modern Israeli and Jewish thought

Most Israelis and Jewish people worldwide have been strongly influenced by the demonic Nazi mass murder of six million Jewish men, women and children during WWII. Theodicy – the theological question of how an all-powerful God can allow His Chosen People to be cruelly slaughtered – is far from a dead issue in Israeli discussions. The restoration of the Jewish people to their homeland entails a modern Jewish army that can defend Jewish lives – especially when jihadi Islam joins with European anti-Semitism in threatening the very existence of the Jewish people and their state.

Israelis take any threat to their existence quite seriously – whether it is prophesied by the Islamic Republic of Iran, by Lebanese Hezbollah, by Iraqi ISIS/ISIL/Da’esh etc. Any blithe or cavalier reference to potential genocide of the Jews presses many red buttons for Israelis, and when Christian preachers refer to a future Jewish holocaust without sufficient human sensitivity and tears, an accident is waiting to happen. I and other Messianic leaders have raised these important issues in the relevant forums for years with little result.

Jewish suffering in Church history

The multitudes who were baptized into the Roman Empire when it abruptly became Christian, were not washed of their pagan anti-Semitism. Indeed, these hateful prejudices became part of Christian theology for millennia, taking their place as an official Theology of Contempt (see the book of that name by French Jewish philosopher Jules Isaac). The theologies of Samaritan Justin Martyr, Origen, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Augustine and Chrysostom all contained strong anti-Semitic elements. From describing the Jews as chosen by their God for persecution, to negating a positive prophetic future for Israel, to proclaiming that the ‘anti-Christ Jews’ will give birth to a ‘Jewish anti-Christ” – these bottles of poisonous and anti-Semitic sour milk nursed the young baby called Christianity during its decisive first four centuries. The fruit sadly continues to this day in many churches.

In the eyes of most of these theologians, Jewish suffering was deserved and would continue to the end of time. No reversal of this was possible, and certainly no joyous restoration of Israel to her original calling and position was to be expected. These teachings have wormed their way into some modern evangelical Last Days’ theologies, and I believe that God wants to make use of the present focus on these subjects to alert and purify believers in Yeshua to avoid such satanically concocted pitfalls.

Three central issues: 1 - Negative paradigms

The negative and anti-Semitic teachings found in pagan writers and then later in the Church Fathers, has resurfaced in our day. Replacement Theology, which teaches that God has abandoned the Jewish people and that their chosenness has been taken over by the Gentile church, still leads the crowd in most Christian churches. When Bible teachers focus on scriptural passages of judgment on the Jewish people while nimbly sidestepping the powerful passages of future Jewish restoration and priority – this reveals that the writers in question have a ungodly (and perhaps unconscious) prejudice against the Jewish people.

When the focus of teaching about Israel centers around upcoming judgments while describing the future Land of Israel and the New Jerusalem as practically Jew-free, then it is fair to say that a negative and unbalanced paradigm concerning the Jewish people is at work seasoning the stew.

In this regard, the teachings of Arthur Pink on a Jewish anti-Christ, and the teachings of Art Katz and others regarding the nearly total destruction of the Jewish state and the Jewish people, all are running dangerously close to falling under the same categorization here.

Though these above facts may come as a surprise to some evangelicals, the Jewish community has been tracking such teachings quite well for some time, and these issues are clearly and for the most part accurately identified by them. It is not enough to avow one’s commitment to the Jewish people and their restoration. Faith without works in these areas is less than sufficient.

Three central issues: 2 – Clinical perspective

Theologians tend to be cold fish. They often see their work as akin to lab analysis and antiseptic study. There is minimal heart interaction, little passion and less tears. Israel is often seen as a prophetic chess piece, as one cog in an intricate prophetic wheel. The fact that real Jewish people are being discussed, and that real Jewish suffering is being considered – these thoughts are barely considered.

In the Bible, believers are called upon to speak “to the heart” (Isaiah 40:1-2 in Hebrew) of Jerusalem, to talk comforting and tender words (see Zechariah 1:12-13) to the Jewish people. When Israel’s future sufferings are described without tears or with clinical coldness, this is less than God’s heart and less than His word. Coldness is no substitute for warm friendship. This impersonal approach is actually lacking the bare minimum of cultural and theological sensitivity. Indeed, it is lacking in the necessary prerequisite of humility and foundational concern for Jewish sensitivities. It borders on a spiritually abusive approach.

Three central issues: 3 – The way of the heart

What is needed in greater measure is actually quite simple, but the task is difficult if not impossible if one is limited to drawing spiritual water from one’s own wells alone. One needs to find living waters from the very heart of the God of Israel, as described in Isaiah 12:4-6, in order to do this. It involves a warm and open heart, a set of eyes that are quick to cry (Jeremiah 9:1, 17-21), and knees that know how to bow and wash the Jewish people’s feet without using boiling water (Isaiah 60:4-12; 61:4-6; Micah 7:14-17).

In 1 Corinthians 9:20 the Apostle Paul calls on Gentiles to reach out to Jewish people by becoming like them. That involves humbling ones’ self and learning another culture, another way of speaking, and a whole other family of sensitivities.

How should we then respond?

Here are some action points about these matters:

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

Jezebel and Jezreel

“For your merchants were the great men of the earth, for by your sorcery all the nations were deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who were slain on the earth” (Revelation 18:23-24).

God’s ultimate judgment on Babylon details how the powers behind this present darkness have poured out the blood of the prophets onto the dust of Planet Earth.  “For all the nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her fornication, the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the wealth of her sensual luxury” (Revelation 18:3).

These three activities lie at the heart of modern culture, politics and business. They lurk under the surface of the seemingly quiet lake of world civilization like a demonic Loch Ness monster.  This is the world system or organism which in Greek is called kosmos (κόσμος). 1 John 5:19 uses this word in such a context – “καὶ ὁ κόσμος ὅλος ἐν τῷ πονηρῷ κεῖται” (“The whole world lies in the power of the evil one”).

A few years ago Frank Peretti authored two books “This Present Darkness” and “Piercing the Darkness,” a science-fiction-like description of  spiritual warfare from the perspective of a seer. His working title was based on Paul’s words in Ephesians 6:12, where the phrase “world forces of this darkness” (kosmos authority or kosmos enforcer - κοσμοκράτορας) is used: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

The upcoming clash on our planet will pull back the curtain on hidden evil, and reveal the flowers of evil in full bloom. The “refuge of lies” that Satan uses to mask his deceptions (see Isaiah 28:15-17) – the refuge of falsehood and deceptive concealment – will be swept away by Israel’s Messiah, described in the passage as Zion’s cornerstone (see also Romans 9:33; 1 Peter 2:6-7).

As events barrel down the corridor of time, it is not surprising to see the wildcat growth of lies and deception regarding all of God’s foundational principles and strategies in these areas –

Jezebel and Jezreel

Much digital ink has been spilled on discussions about the Jezebel spirit – witchcraft and politicized manipulation of leadership coming through women. But not a lot of time has been given to discuss the Ahab spirit – indecisive and spineless male leadership and its contributions to this dynamic.

The original Jezebel was a Phoenician (the Canaanite area in modern coastal south Lebanon) who influenced and manipulated Jewish leaders into rejecting and eventually murdering the prophets of God (1 Kings 16:31; 18:4, 13, 19; 21:25; 2 Kings 9:7, 22, 36-37). Her example became a paradigm for similar witchcraft in Revelation 2:20.

Today a similar dynamic exists in the international courts of power, where manipulators, power brokers and politicians, world leaders and terrorists come together in a demonized attempt to weaken, divide and destroy the Jewish people and their state. Bob Dylan referred to these people as “masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition” in his award-winning song “Slow Train Coming.” He added that these Jezebel-like leaders are all “non-believers and man-stealers talkin’ in the name of religion,” the exact terminology in Revelation 18:13.

As politicians make electoral promises concerning Israel, as world councils issue resolutions condemning Israel, as political activists attempt to increase BDS attacks (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel, the spirit of Jezebel is at work regarding Israel – just as it originally was active in shedding Jewish blood and the blood of Jewish prophets over 2,800 years ago. Jezebel met her destruction in Jezreel (2 Kings 9:30-36) at the hand of the warrior-king Jehu, freshly anointed by Elisha with a commission to take out Jezebel: “You shall strike the house of Ahab your master, that I may avenge the blood of My servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of YHVH, at the hand of Jezebel” (2 Kings 9:7).

The Jezebel network

There is a spiritual power shadowing present-day networks of political, military and religious forces standing against Israel. Whereas, just after the Holocaust, it was considered bad form to be blatantly anti-Semitic (though of course no brakes were applied to Jew-hatred in the Islamist Middle East), today the current metastasizing of anti-Semitism in Western Europe shows that post-WWII secular inoculations against anti-Semitism have lost their potency.

International anti-Jewish efforts are currently being prosecuted through the UN, by way of “peace talks,” and through BDS.  All accept certain Jezebellan lies and presuppositions:

In the past few days the world media have spotlighted one of former NSA employee Edward Snowden’s sizzling revelations – that the American spy agency NSA (National Security Agency) in cooperation with Britain’s GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) have used spying bases on Mount Troodos (Cyprus) and Menwith Hill (Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England) to spy on signals intelligence of the Israeli Air Force and Israel’s top political and military leaders. Their penetration of IAF, IDF and Israeli government top-secret communications has been overwhelmingly comprehensive and deep. This specific project (code-named ANARCHIST) has been ongoing at least since 1998 (https://theintercept.com/2016/01/28/israeli-drone-feeds-hacked-by-british-and-american-intelligence/).

The hypocrisy of the Western world’s intelligence agencies regarding Israel is not new, and has been painstakingly laid out by former US Department of Justice Investigator John Loftus and Mark Aarons in their book “The Secret War Against the Jew: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People” (St. Martin’s Press, 1994).

God’s secret weapon

Even as the nations conspire together against Israel (Isaiah 8:10), God “has plans of His own to set up His throne,” as Bob Dylan sings in “When He Returns.”

YHVH swears on the truth of His own name and character that He will do the following in response to BDS, the UN, Islamist terror and Western intelligence agencies:

Regarding Jewish settling in the West Bank and the boycott of Jewish produce from that area:

YHVH appeared to him from afar, saying, “I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore I have drawn you with covenant love. Again I will build you and you will be rebuilt, O virgin of Israel! Again you will take up your tambourines, and go forth to the dances of the merrymakers. Again you will plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria. The planters will plant and will enjoy them” (Jeremiah 31:3-5)

Regarding international pressure and censure:

“For YHVH has ransomed Jacob and redeemed him from the hand of him who was stronger than he” (Jeremiah 31:11)

“It shall come about on that day, declares YHVH of armies, that I will break his yoke from off their neck and will tear off their bonds; and strangers will no longer make them their slaves. But they shall serve YHVH their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them” (Jeremiah 30:8-9)

Regarding threats of war from Israel’s neighbors and occupation of territories:

“Then it will happen on that day that YHVH will again recover the second time with His hand the remnant of His people who will remain from Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And He will lift up a standard for the nations and assemble the banished ones of Israel, and will gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. Then the jealousy of Ephraim will depart, and those who harass Judah will be cut off. Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah, and Judah will not harass Ephraim. They will swoop down on the slopes of the Philistines on the west. Together they will plunder the sons of the east. They will possess Edom and Moab, and the sons of Ammon will be subject to them” (Isaiah 1:11-14)

The God of Israel describes His Jewish people as a secret weapon of war, a super-weapon that will decisively defeat on the field of battle all nations who oppose God by opposing Israel:

“YHVH says, You are My war-club, My weapon of war, and with you I shatter nations, and with you I destroy kingdoms” (Jeremiah 51:20)

“You will seek those who quarrel with you, but will not find them. Those who war with you will be as nothing and non-existent. For I am YHVH your God, who upholds your right hand, who says to you, ‘Do not fear, I will help you.’ Do not fear, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel. I will help you, declares YHVH and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. Behold, I have made you a new, sharp threshing sledge with double edges. You will thresh the mountains and pulverize them, and will make the hills like chaff. You will winnow them, and the wind will carry them away, and the storm will scatter them. But you will rejoice in YHVH. You will glory in the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 41:12-16)

God’s perspective on the nations’ enmity to Israel

“Who hasdirected the Spirit of YHVH, or as Hiscounselor has informed Him? With whom did He consult and who gave Him understanding? And who taught Him in the path of justice and taught Him knowledge and informed Him of the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales. Behold, He lifts up the islands like fine dust. Even Lebanon is not enough to burn, nor its beasts enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before Him. They are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless” (Isaiah 40:13-17)

How should we then pray?

A voice is calling, “Clear the way for YHVH in the wilderness! Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God” (Isaiah 40:3).

Here are some prayer points about these matters:

We ask you also to please remember to pray for us (Avner and Rachel) as we minister in India February 2-14.

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

Chanukah and Santa Claus – restoring truth to the Festival of Lights

Holiday preparations are in full swing. Christmas lights are strung up and blinking, sleighs and reindeer magically appear on suburban lawns; even the occasional Chanukah menorah (or chanukiya in Hebrew) glows brightly in Jewish homes for eight nights.

Today very few adults believe in Santa Claus, though a significant amount do believe in the virgin birth of Israel’s Messiah Yeshua. At this holiday season childhood legends of men in red suits and white beards come face to face with the miraculous Jewish Babe of Bethlehem.

The Jewish Feast of Dedication (known as Chanukah or the Festival of Lights) also has significant legends twined around its holiday menorah – legends that might obscure the spiritual and historical roots of the holiday, and distract from its powerful message, This newsletter focuses on the real meaning of Chanukah.

Superpower pressures on tiny Israel

Between 604 BC and 553 BC the prophet Daniel received the interpretation of a number of apocalyptic visions concerning the rise and fall of major Middle Eastern empires. Communicating in fluent Aramaic, the God of the Hebrews revealed to Daniel that a future kingdom (called ‘the third kingdom’ - Daniel 2:39) would arise and rule over the whole earth. In Daniel 7:2, 6, 16-17 this beast is pictured as a leopard with four wings and four heads, while in Daniel 8:5-25 the empire is alternately depicted as a horned and shaggy goat. Verse 21 states, “the shaggy goat is the king of Greece.” Daniel’s description of the military and  political intrigue of the Greek empire is so accurate, that secular historians (who do not accept that prophecy exists) assume that the Book of Daniel must have been written five hundred years after the fact!

Alexander the Great was a world conqueror with a vision – he wanted to create one unified world government under Greek control, with all the world accepting the Greek language, Hellenistic culture and the deities of Mount Olympus. Any God or people (including YHVH and the Hebrews) who refused to bow down before the might of Greece would be crushed.

The divine vision in Daniel 8 describes how Greek forces would desecrate the Jerusalem Temple after 330 BC, cause the sacrifices to cease, persecute the Jewish people and murder many of them. This detailed and gory vision left Daniel exhausted, appalled and physically sick (8:27).

Daniel 11:21-35 zooms in on the Greek king of that campaign, giving specific details of these Chanukah-related events. Stymied by the rise of Rome (the new up-and-coming Mediterranean superpower), the Greek King of Seleucid Syria Antiochus IV would return from Egypt to Syria in a rage, passing through Jerusalem and wreaking havoc on the Temple. He would profane YHVH’s altar, dedicating it to Zeus of Olympus and sacrificing a pig on it (which act the prophet calls ‘the abomination of desolation’ in 11:31).

Ezekiel’s army in the Days of the Maccabees

The believing remnant of Jewish people in those days rose up against the Seleucid Greek occupiers from Syria, and began a guerrilla war against the Hellenists between 168 and 164 BC. Starting near Modi’in (not far from today’s Ben-Gurion Airport) this revolt was led by descendants of Aaron the High Priest. Matisyahu and his five sons (the most famous being Judah the Maccabee) waged an extensive campaign against superior forces, finally defeating them and rededicating the Jerusalem Temple in December 165, on the 25th day of the month now called Kislev.

These Maccabean fighters are prophesied in Daniel 11:32-35: “The people who know their God will firmly resist him. Those who are wise will instruct many, though for a time they will fall by the sword or be burned or captured or plundered. When they fall, they will receive a little help… Some of the wise will stumble, so that they may be refined, purified and made spotless…”  These men and women were true heroes of the faith.

The Maccabees – Hebrew heroes in Hebrews

A Jewish court history was written between 80-70 BC, today called The Second Book of Maccabees. Describing the battles before the Dedication of the Temple, the writer remembers how “a short time before … they… were like wild beasts, in the mountains and in the caves” (2 Maccabees 10:6-7; see also chapters 5-7). The Messianic Jewish writer of the Book of Hebrews adds his Amen to these words, quoting from that book in the New Covenant Letter to the Hebrews 11:32-39:

“And what more can I say? I do not have time to tell about … those whose weakness was turned to strength and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawn in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute persecuted and mistreated – the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground. They were all commended for their faith.”

The first Messianic Chanukah celebration

The first historical descriptions of Jewish holiday celebrations during the Second Temple period are found in the New Covenant. These feasts were Passover (what is today called the Last Supper – Matthew 26:17-30) and Chanukah (the Feast of Dedication mentioned in John 10:22-24). Yeshua celebrated these feasts in a Jewish way, in a Jewish city and according to the biblical Jewish calendar.

Why eight days of Chanukah?

Many children know the song about the Twelve Days of Christmas, though few would understand why there are twelve holy days. In the same way, most Jewish children know that there are eight days of Chanukah and eight candles lit, but do not know why – they do not grasp the origin of that tradition.

It may surprise some to discover that the original historical record knows of no miracles regarding a cruse of oil burning for eight days when it should have only lasted one. That legend comes 300 to 600 years after Chanukah and was created by the leaders of the fledgling Rabbinic movement in order to detract from focusing on the Maccabees. More on this soon.

In the Second Book of Maccabees (written approximately 80 BC) we are told that “on the very same date on which the Temple was profaned by foreigners, there occurred the purification of the Temple – on the 25th day of the ninth month (that is, Kislev). Joyfully they held an eight-day celebration after the pattern of Tabernacles … remembering how a short time before, they spent the Festival of Tabernacles like beasts… Therefore, holding wreathed wands and branches bearing ripe fruit, and palm fronds, they offered songs of praise to Him Who had victoriously brought about the purification of His Place. By vote of the commonwealth they decreed a rule for the entire nation of the Jews to observe these days annually” (2 Maccabees 10:5-8)

To emphasize that point, the same writer states at the opening of 2 Maccabees, “And now we ask you to celebrate the Days of Tabernacles in the Month of Kislev” (2 Maccabees 1:9).

The Feast of Tabernacles (or Sukkot) is an eight day festival (Leviticus 23:33-36). The Maccabees liberated the Temple nearly two months after the passing of the Feast of Tabernacles. They had just missed celebrating this final festival of God’s seven feasts as described in Leviticus 23. Now that the Temple was in Jewish hands again, this Feast could be celebrated – even if it was two months past due! Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures. Following King Hezekiah’s example (2 Chronicles 30:1-23), a second Tabernacles was instituted – not to replace the original feast, but to be a special memorial to the work of deliverance and military victory that YHVH had granted to His people. The eight days of Tabernacles was morphed into a new holiday of eight days – Chanukah.

King without a crown, feast without a miracle

Flavius Josephus, the most prolific Jewish historian of the First century AD, was also known by his Hebrew name Yosef ben Matisyahu. Though he had no direct connection to the father of the Maccabees, Josephus did bequeath us an excellent job of reporting on the Maccabean revolt. In his Antiquities of the Jews XII:322 Josephus says in approximately 80 AD that “the desolation of the Temple came about in accordance with the prophecy of Daniel, which had been made 408 years before, for he had revealed that the Macedonians would destroy it.” He adds that Jewish people “observe this festival, which we call the Festival of Lights, giving this name to it, so I think, from the fact that the right to worship appeared to us at a time when we hardly dared hope for it” (Antiquities XII:325-326).

The death of a revival movement

The Maccabees started out as a revival movement among the Jewish people. They were priests who stepped up to the plate and faced a pagan enemy who wanted to wipe out both the light of God’s word and the existence of God’s chosen people. They fought like lions to regain the Jewish people’s independence, and defied the world’s largest superpower to achieve that goal.

Yet what started out as a movement to safeguard the calling and gifts of the Jewish people (see Romans 11:28-29; 3:1-2; Numbers 23:7-9) against the assimilationist influence of Hellenism, morphed within thirty years into a movement advocating Hellenism, The Maccabees were priests and were forbidden by the Covenant of Moses from becoming kings. That privilege was only granted to the Dynasty of David by covenant (Psalm 89). When the Maccabees began to call themselves kings, they quickly adapted to the political swirls and eddies of Middle Eastern superpower politics, choosing Greek titles and opposing those Jews (Pharisees) who remained faithful to God’s revelation in the Bible (see Acts 23:6). The Maccabean King Alexander Jannaeus ended up murdering 6.000 Pharisees who opposed his measures and even crucified 800 of them while dining luxuriously at their execution site.

This dynamic, wherein a move of God eventually self-corrupts and becomes a persecutor of the next move of God, is well documented in later history. Catholic and Protestant movements reveal similar patterns. In the history of the Pentecostal movement one can note how Catholics persecuted the Anglican revival movement, which subsequently persecuted the Methodists, who then persecuted Nazarenes, who went on to persecute Pentecostals, who later persecuted the Latter Rain movement and the charismatics, who persecuted the Third Wave, who persecuted Toronto etc. May the Lord God of Israel grant us all humility and obedience to cleave to Him, to keep us from such behavior, and to shine His light and love to those around us!

Re-inventing Chanukah

The Pharisee movement started out as a group of Bible-believing Jews who were faithful to the word of God. Eventually they moved into a rigid institutionalism, developing a rigorous structure requiring Jewish adherence to levels of purity and outward righteousness that God had never commanded for the Jewish people. Their laws eventually grew to carry more weight that biblical laws, much in the same way that some Evangelicals put more stock in their study Bibles than in the Biblical texts themselves.

Since the Maccabees moved from being a revival movement to persecuting true believers, and since the Pharisees (who later morphed in to Rabbinic Judaism) felt uncomfortable giving credit to enemies of God’s word, it was decided to de-emphasize the historical role that the Maccabees had played, to downplay their faith and force of arms, and to focus on an esoteric miracle that actually had no historical record.

In a rabbinic document called Megilat Ta’anit (the Scroll concerning Fasting) dating from somewhere between 70-135 AD, the following legend is presented for the first time on folio 9:

“When the Greeks entered the Temple, they defiled all the oils that were there. When the House of the Hasmoneans prevailed and won a victory over them, they searched and found only one cruse of oil with the seal of the High Priest that was not defiled. It had only enough oil to burn for one day. A miracle happened, and there was light from it for eight days, In the following year they established eight festival days.”

Here is the legendary source of the modern celebration of Chanukah. The original eight day celebration memorializing Tabernacles now becomes an eight day celebration of an apocryphal miracle. The Maccabees are safely relegated to the back rows, and the Pharisaic emphasis maintains the spotlight – even at the expense of historical accuracy. A false miracle was deemed to be more worthy of focus than a revival movement of warrior-priests that went rogue.

A pro-active response

How can we as believers in the God of Israel, who identify with the godly Maccabees and who praise the God of Jacob for delivering His people from the pressure of the nations – how are we to celebrate Chanukah?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

The Hundred Years’ War

In the past few days well over two thousand Arabs (both Israeli Arab citizens and Palestinian Authority Arab residents) have been involved in riots and violent attacks against Israeli police and security forces. The actual murders of Jewish families, stabbings and shootings of Israeli civilians, attempted lynchings of Jewish motorists, and collusion between terrorists and Arab shopkeepers – these have been the order of the day for the past week.

A U.S. State Department official said, in response, that the U.S. has not yet determined whether to characterize the attacks as acts of terrorism (https://m.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/White-House-deeply-concerned-by-escalating-tensions-in-Jerusalem-official-says-421222#article=6024QkY4NDJCMzA4NjFBMjUyOTI4NzdEQzY4MzMxQTZFMjU=).

Over six hundred years ago Europe was torn asunder by what historians call ‘The Hundred Years’ War’ a clash between the English Kingdom of Plantagenet and the French Kingdom of Valois (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War). Apart from the military casualties involved, during that Hundred Years’ War the bubonic plague swept across Western Europe, killing between 20% and 50% of the population.

The present civil unrest in Israel (the Promised Land given by covenant to the sons of Jacob) is by no means as violent as that European land war, nor does it even approach the present slaughter in Syria and Iraq – the clash between dictators and jihadis. Yet because of the prophetic significance of the Jewish people and their land in the Bible, and because of God’s deep heart-covenant with Jacob’s children, it is worth taking the time to briefly understand what is happening there now, and to pray about these fast-moving events.

Replacement theology – Islamist style

Over the past five years, Islamist societies in Israel have funneled funds from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to groups of women (and some men) known as murabitat (feminine) and murabitoun (masculine)

These women’s role has been to verbally harass and even physically attack non-Islamic visitors to the Temple Mount, Two days ago I spoke with a Christian tourist who was hassled on the Temple Mount because of a necklace she wore with Hebrew lettering on it. She was then physically removed for the Mount. Other tourists (Jewish, Christian and totally secular) have been stalked, yelled at, spit upon, and summarily thrown off the Mount at the instigation of the Muslim waqf security guards. It is illegal to pray on that Mount unless one is a Muslim. Carrying a Bible or reading from it is totally banned.

The official Islamic line is that there has never been a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, and that any attempt by Jewish people to visit that area actually defiles the Islamic sanctity of what they define as exclusively a mosque. The Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared in the past few days that Jewish feet walking on the stones of the Temple Mount actually defile the sanctity of the al Aqsa compound.

Islamist Replacement theology is the theological background of these views. The belief is that the Jews have been replaced; their land has been forfeited to the forces of Mohammed; their Temple Mount never was, and now has become a mosque. In some ways this perspective is also reflected by the declaration by Amon Goeth, commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, in Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List, as his Nazi forces are about to destroy the ancient Jewish community of Cracow (Kraków):

Riot in the streets

After years of the above-described Islamist abuse of Christian and Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount, the Israeli government decided to allow freedom of access for all to the Temple Mount and to drastically curtail murabitat Islamist attacks on non-Muslim visitors. The murabitat and murabitoun are similar in their worldview to al Qaeda and ISIS. Though it was understood that limiting the murabitat’s extremist activities would be used by anti- Israel media against the State of Israel, the government decided that the time had come to exercise its sovereign right to uphold and maintain order – and that sovereignty does extend to the Temple Mount.

The explosive situation on the Temple Mount is linked to the problematic relationship between competing Palestinian groups. The majority of Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip, where they are ruled by the terrorist organization Hamas, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (which also gave birth to al Qaeda). Hamas calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, basing itself on impeccable Islamic sources in the Quran and the hadith (Muslim religious law).

The leader of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, however, is Mahmoud Abbas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Abbas). He is not a religious Muslim, and is considered secular and heretical by both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. On the West Bank Abbas finds himself outflanked by Hamas at every turn. Hamas’ jihadi popularity is growing on the West Bank, and polls show that if elections were held today, the Palestinian Authority would lose badly to jihadi forces. As a result, Abbas has postponed elections since January 2009, trying to dodge the jihadi bullet.

Abbas attempts to bolster his image by occasionally emphasizing jihad. Every so often Abbas and the Palestinian Authority turn up the flames, winking to the jihadis that a limited armed insurrection will be quietly encouraged – as long as things don’t get out of hand. For Abbas, this means occasional riots and terror attacks are kosher, but a crushing response by Israel is bad news and is to be avoided.

The Islamo-fascist connection

History shows that events similar to today’s riots happened during the time of the British Mandate, when the British Empire occupied the land of Israel (1922-1947; www.mythsandfacts.org/conflict/mandate_for_palestine/mandate_for_palestine.htm).

At the close of WWI, His Majesty George V’s government was attempting to establish Britannia as the Middle East’s superpower. Though Britain was eventually stymied by the United States and lost its pre-eminence to America, in 1917 it still saw itself as regional kingmaker. England issued the Balfour Declaration calling for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, while simultaneously linking that declaration to other statements backing Arab nationalist movements. Eventually Britain sliced off 80% of the Palestine mandate and established a colonialist puppet state known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordan. In the remaining 20% England set about preparing the ground for another Arab state, one which would arise on the ashes of the soon-to-be-destroyed Jewish Yishuv (fledgling community) – or so they thought.

The British White Papers (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brwh1939.asp; www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/whitetoc.html; www.algemeiner.com/2014/05/06/%E2%80%98a-death-sentence-for-the-jews%E2%80%99-75-years-since-the-british-white-paper/) reveal Britain’s realpolitik tilt during WWII, limiting Jewish escape from Hitler’s Holocaust while preventing Jews from immigrating to the Jewish national homeland. At the same time Britain developed undercover links with jihadi leaders (who were bona fide collaborators with Hitler and Himmler), strengthening pro-Nazi forces while winking at murderous Arab street riots and massacres against the Jewish population in the Promised Land.

Haj Amin al-Husseini, the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, was the first jihadi leader who instigated street riots and murderous attacks against the Jewish population in the Promised Land. His inflammatory charge was based on spreading lies about an attempted Jewish takeover of the Temple Mount.

The Middle Eastern wakeup call

The foundations of the present riots in Israel are simply one more flashpoint in a Hundred Years’ War between the Jewish people and the forces of Islamist jihad. They are another jihadi attempt to raise the black banner of jihad over the smoking ashes of the Jewish state.

As Europe is being flooded with Syrian and pseudo-Syrian refugees fleeing their countries due to Islamist and dictatorial massacres, as Iran (flush with terrorist petro-dollars and new European business contracts) funnels rivers of gold into terrorist coffers, as jihadi forces stream their black banners across Syria, Iraq, Chechnya, Libya, Nigeria, etc., a Middle Eastern wake-up call is clanging desperately for those whose hearing aids still have batteries.

When stars collide

Recent events in Syria include the establishment and expansion of Russian state-of-the-art military might – on land, sea and in the air. China is also positioning aircraft carriers off the coast of Syria and avowing its intentions to fly its bombers over Syria as well. The Middle East, tar pit of the superpowers, is once again exerting her seductive ways on the nations. The words of the prophet Ezekiel seem to have burning relevance at this time:

How shall we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

God’s burning heart for Israel sifts the hearts of the nation

The Bible is an unusual book. One can read a million volumes, but this is the only book that actually reads the person who peruses its pages. “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

In the same way, God’s strategic choosing of the Jewish people to be His firstborn nation (Exodus 4:22; Romans 9:4; 11:29) is meant to expose the heart of the world, to weigh the nations as to whether or not they accept God’s sovereign choice and appreciate the passions of His heart.

As humankind considers the existence, the calling and the destiny of the Jewish people, it is worth remembering that the God of Eternity is using the sons of Jacob to sift, weigh and purify the hearts of the nations of the world.

Though the peoples of this planet may feel that they are the ones who are making decisions about the role and righteousness of the Jewish people, in the final analysis it is the God of Jacob who is weighing the nations (which also includes the followers of Yeshua) in the balance (see Daniel 5:25-27; Isaiah 40:15-17, 27-31)

The Gospel according to Dylan

In his classic song ‘Gonna change my way of thinking’ Bob Dylan wryly notes, “Don’t know which is worse – doin’ your own thing or just being cool” (Copyright © 1979 Special Rider Music). For many in the Western world today, Israel is not cool, and standing with God’s heart for Israel is definitely uncool. There are some believers who insist on hyphenating or footnoting their love for Israel, insisting that it is the Jewish people they love, and not the Jewish state (which they then deprecate and delegitimize).

God’s outstanding example of a woman of faith, chosen from Israel’s adversaries, is Ruth. Her heart is the atomic core of the Book of Ruth, and it ticked in sync with the heart of Israel’s God. Even though a famine had visited Israel, Ruth made a bold and no-holds-barred confession: “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may YHVH do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me” (Ruth 1:16-17).

In the same way that James (or Jacob, as his Brother Yeshua called him) teaches us that faith without works is dead (James 2:14-26), so Ruth’s love for Israel meant that she manifested real fruit of that love. That love was so tangible that Jewish men and women in her day could concretely see and tangibly feel her love. Ruth was willing to identify totally with the Jewish people. She was willing to share their lot (the good and the bad), walk with them even when they were attacked by their enemies, embrace their culture and lifestyle, and cleave to that people more than to her own original nation.

Those who feel a mandate from God to stand with Israel need to ask themselves if their commitment measures up to the living example of Ruth the Moabitess. Words have never been enough. And today being politically correct won’t cut it. Distancing ones’ self from the regathered Jewish people and their prophetically established state in order to appeal to a PC generation will not make God’s grade. ‘Asking the hard questions’ means asking if we really see Ruth as our mother in the faith.

But perhaps it would be more honest to admit that cool-hearted reserve toward the Jewish people more suits our style. Ultimately, before the eyes of an all-seeing God, it comes down to a question of courage and backbone (“For the eyes of YHVH move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His” (2 Chronicles 16:9).

“And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me” (Matthew 11:6)

Job’s friends – from a Jewish context

The Book of Job describes the eloquent arguments of Job’s friends in his time of need. They raised questions concerning God’s sovereignty and Job’s potentially hidden sins, but they missed the point of what God was trying to get at. Ultimately God rebuked them:

“It came about after YHVH had spoken these words to Job, that YHVH said to Eliphaz the Temanite, ‘My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has. Now therefore, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to My servant Job, and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves, and My servant Job will pray for you. For I will accept him so that I may not do with you according to your folly, because you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has’ ” (Job 42:7-8).

Yeshua teaches us that our attitude as His followers need to be touched by humility and compassion. My friend John Wimber used to teach that a heart of forgiveness and compassion is a key to ministering the healing heart of God. A heart which ministers without compassion will not make the grade. “Then summoning him, his lord said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’” (Matthew 18:32-33).

So in the same way we must ask the Lord God of Israel to tune our hearts, revealing to us even hidden sins of the heart, especially in our attitudes toward the Jewish people. A heart of compassion toward the Jewish people is the sine qua non – the essential foundation stone for anyone who wants to minister God’s heart for His chosen people.

Satan in Hebrew means the accuser. One of the priority callings of the body of Messiah is to love the Jewish people with Yeshua’s love – to actually be an incarnation of the Good News. Followers of Yeshua are not called to point cold-blooded fingers, all the while insisting that they are Job’s best friends.

Isaiah wept over Assyria’s cruel violation of the daughter of Zion, while Jeremiah mourned over Babylon’s destructive acts against Israel. Obadiah pointed out that the Arabs of Edom gazed upon Israel’s ruin with voyeuristic joy, and even furthered the violence. Corrie ten Boom’s pastor refused to encourage anti-Hitler resistance, declaring that the Nazis were the established and God-approved authority.

What will believers in Yeshua do in our day when anti-Semitic clouds swirl across the capital cities and squares, streets and marketplaces of the world? What will the body of Messiah do when jihadi forces succeed in obtaining nuclear weapons and prosecute deadly jihad against the Jewish people and their state (see Psalm 83). Will we weep, intercede, actively rescue and stand with the Jewish people, or will we simply cluck our tongues like Job’s friends and damn Israel with faint praise, saying, “Nice try! Jolly good show! That was quite an effort your army and air force put up, but it was all in vain!”

One famous brother (now departed) posited in a public address that we will see “the probable extermination of the present state of Israel.” What a blithe and cold-hearted delivery irradiated his voice when he said those words. Where are the tears on the cheeks of Job’s friends?

“For wisdom is vindicated by all her children” (Luke 7:35). Let us be wise children filled to overflowing with God’s heart of compassion for the Jewish people.

Identifying with the Israel that doesn’t exist

Years ago my own brother once told me that he could have stood with Israel back in the day, in the 1950’s, when the country championed values more socialist in nature. That was the Israel worth supporting, he said. But not present Israel, which to him is anti-progressive.

In the same way, I have met some believers who say that they would support the Israel of King David’s day, when camels roamed, Jews lived in tents and the Big House of Worship stood on the Temple Mount. But not now, when Israel has to fight to survive, and the combined propaganda might of the Islamic world paints Israel as Goliath and the forces of Palestinian jihad as David. Ex-President Jimmy Carter is an outstanding example of a nominal Christian activist who labors to undermine the Jewish state while sheltering beneath pseudo-Christian camouflage netting.

In the same way as a small cadre of radical ultra-Orthodox Jews (the Neturei Karta) refuse to recognize or support the modern state of Israel because its present leaders are not radical ultra-Orthodox Jews themselves, some Evangelicals refuse to allow their hearts to warm to Israel because (they explain) most Jewish people do not yet believe in Messiah Yeshua. This is conditional love. It cannot even be properly defined as love. Rather, it is better described as a withholding of one’s affections in an attempt to manipulate a faith response on the part of Jewish people – a rather hopeless and non-biblical endeavor!

Strikingly, some politically correct people who define themselves as Christians show a greater affinity for and identification with Islamist Arab forces, even if those groups openly call for the physical Replacement or removal of the Jewish nation from their Promised Land. Often the phrase is heard “I would be more supportive of Israel if only they were more supportive of my solution to Middle East hostilities.”

The love of a colonialist is not cut from the same cloth as a love which flowers between friends or between equals. The body of Messiah is not called to foster or model such a twisted form of love. It is the opposite of God’s own burning and passionate heart:

Forgetting how to cry

Years ago  a friend of mine spend a season traveling with John Wimber, encouraging him about passion for Yeshua and the importance of intercessory prayer. At one point my friend told John that he needed to stop traveling with John and return to spending more time in the prayer room. When John ask in puzzlement why this had to be, my friend explained to John that he was no longer crying when he prayed – that the tears and passion that had been so much a part of his prayer life had subsided somewhat, and for my friend this was a litmus test that something was out of place for him. These words are powerful, and the truth behind them is rock-solid.

In the same way, when tears are not a part of our prayers for and teaching about Israel, something has gone wrong. Israel is not an eschatological chess piece, whose suffering and troubles are merely part of a huge Last Days blueprint that we sign off on.

“Because this people draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me, and their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote…” (Isaiah 29:13)

“Oh that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! … Consider and call for the mourning women, that they may come. Send for the wailing women, that they may come! Let them make haste and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may shed tears and our eyelids flow with water … Now hear the word of YHVH, O you women, and let your ear receive the word of His mouth. Teach your daughters wailing…” (Jeremiah 9:1, 17-18, 20)

Catching the seventh wave of the Spirit

Theologians and researchers refer to various waves of the Holy Spirit during the 20th century. One of the last waves yet to come is the future wave of restoration for His Jewish people, based on God’s burning and passionate heart for Israel, and His continuing priority and loving strategy for the sons and daughters of Jacob (see Zechariah 12:10).

Entering into this revelation requires a circumcision of one’s eyes as one reads the Holy Scriptures. When one truly believes that the Bible was written over 90% by Jewish people, and that its prophetic declarations focus over 90% on the Jewish people, then reading the Word becomes an invigorating and eye-opening event. If God really means what He says regarding Israel’s restoration, Israel’s regathering, Israel’s repentance, Israel’s Last Days role as a mighty army, etc., then we live in days of awesome opportunity and awakening – days which will bring life from the dead to the entire world (see Romans 11:12, 15).

It has been in vogue in some circles – the fashionable approach – to focus on the future shaking of the house of Jacob as the main eschatological event coming down the pipe. It is biblically true that both Jews and Gentiles will be shaken. As C.S. Lewis once said, “God whispers in our pleasures and shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to raise a deaf world.” Yet the Scriptures have much to say (if we have eyes to read) concerning many positive Last Days events concerning the Jewish people.

Teachers and preachers in the body of Messiah need to get a spiritual checkup every so often concerning possible fixation or tunnel-vision on negative events regarding the Jewish people. The Doctor of our souls may well ask, “For every teaching given on calamity yet to befall the Jewish people, is this declaration accompanied both by authentic tears and by balanced focus on the amazing plan God has to bring light and victory – life from the dead – through the Jewish people as well”?

It is time for us all to be about our Father’s business!

How shall we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

Bringing greater balance in understanding the sabbatical year

In recent years among some Christians there has been a revived interest in the Hebrew calendar, which Moses described in his Five Books as also being God’s calendar: “YHVH spoke again to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, “YHVH’s appointed times which you shall proclaim as holy convocations/gatherings – these are My appointed times” (Leviticus 23:1-2).

As believers around the world are rediscovering the Jewish roots of the apostolic faith, there has been rejoicing and celebration over the Hebraic richness of the Scriptures and the Jewishness of the Messianic faith. But along with an unearthing of long-lost treasures, occasionally some confusing imbalances have also surfaced. Regretfully, these imbalanced perspectives have the potential to catalyze fear and fatalism among followers of Messiah Yeshua.

Date setting and false alarms

Like the case of the famous boy who cried wolf in Aesop’s Fables, if false alarms are sounded regularly, people will stop believing the boy who sounds the false alarms, and people will not prepare for the real dangers when they manifest. As Paul says, “For if the bugle produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle?” (1 Corinthians 14:8).

Many people are afraid of apocalyptic events and are stampeded and panicked at the prospects of economic and political chaos.. Hollywood has exploited these fears on many occasions to break box office receipts. In the Christian world there have been events over the past thirty years where a few have ‘prophesied’ panic and set erroneous dates for judgment. One can think of such examples as the date-setting of the Rapture in 1987-88, the Y2K panic in 1999 resulting in stockpiling of instant coffee and toilet paper, or the blood-moon controversy (see my article of April 10, 2014 - https://davidstent.com/blood-moons-and-prophetic-confusion/).

Each one of these imbalanced declarations boldly advanced into the public forum and then ashamedly slunk away. But there was unintended blowback, and ramifications included an upsurge in mocking against any prophetic declarations, as well as a herd-instinct shying away from anything connected to the prophetic. “Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation” (2 Peter 3:3-4).

Balance is so important here. Every sensationalized spin can spin off into distortion and lead people to paint the whole of prophetic ministry with a negative aura. In a similar fashion history shows how Christian anti-Semitic attacks against the Jewish people tarnished the gospel message, and tainted the testimony about Israel’s Messiah to Yeshua’s own people. Though this did not invalidate the gospel, it is created huge stumbling blocks that the enemy of Israel’s salvation continues to fan into flame even in our day.

With an appeal for biblical care and brotherly love, I would like to set out some basic principles on how to understand and use God’s biblical calendar in a kosher way. The Scriptures can help us to embrace these feasts and calendar events in the spirit that YHVH Himself intended.

God’s calendar remains a Hebrew calendar

Moses, Yeshua, Peter and Paul all used the same biblical calendar, and it was Hebrew. James the half-brother of Yeshua (his original Hebrew name was Jacob), described the gathering of Messianic Jewish believers in the 1st century as ‘believing synagogues’ (the Greek in James 2:2 “If a man comes into your assembly” actually reads ‘synagogue’ - ἐὰν γὰρ εἰσέλθῃ εἰς συναγωγὴν). The original foundations of the Messianic faith were Jewish, and the original calendar of the Apostle Paul was the Hebrew calendar.

Yet as the amount of Gentile believers in Yeshua within the Roman Empire grew significantly, Roman paganism’s influence darkened the theological schools of Christianity. A concerted effort was made by anti-Jewish Gentile theologians and preachers to anathematize the Hebrew calendar and make its use illegal.  Replacement theology came on the scene, teaching that God has rejected the Jews, their land, their customs, their gifts and calling – and their calendar.

Whereas Yeshua had celebrated the Passover seder with His disciples, earnestly desiring to eat the Exodus 12/Leviticus 23 meal with them immediately before His crucifixion at the hands of Roman soldiers (Luke 22:15), later Church Councils actually forbade followers of Messiah Yeshua from memorializing that event in connection with Passover and the 14th day of Aviv/Abib (Exodus 12; 13:4; 23:15; 34:18; Deuteronomy 16:1). Anyone who chose to remember “Messiah our Passover” (1 Corinthians 5:7) on the actual Feast of Passover would now be considered a heretic, anathema, excommunicated or even in mortal danger (https://www.earlychurchtexts.com/public/eusebius_quartodeciman_controversy.htm; https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/heresy-in-the-early-church-timeline/).

The Apostle Paul’s warning to Gentile believers not to boast against the Jewish olive tree branches and not to be arrogant toward them (Romans 11:18-19, 25) was rudely ignored by these Church Councils, as anti-Semitism established itself firmly on the earthly thrones of Church Councils. Hatred and suspicion toward anything Jewish became part of Christian theology and tradition (see James Parkes’ The Conflict of The Church and The Synagogue for the historical documents involved - https://archive.org/details/conflictofthechu012717mbp).

The Mark of Zorro

In the popular Hollywood legend, Zorro would mark his presence by slashing a “Z” at the scenes of his exploits. In a similar fashion, in Bible days the God of the Hebrews marked His exploits and His calendar with two of the three lines of a “Z” – He used the number “7” to indicate that ‘YHVH was in the House’ revealing His mighty outstretched arm. Seven is the number that the Bible repeats many times in relation to God’s works and His calendar. It is understood by most Bible students as being God’s peculiar and holy ‘identifying number,’ His divine ‘calling card.’

At the dawn of Creation, the God of Israel sanctifies the seventh day, the Sabbath, and stamps it as a memorial day – His special day. He rests on that day and in doing that, sets it apart as an exceptional and unusual day (Genesis 2:1-3). He set this day apart long before Moses was born, long before the Torah of Moses’ Covenant was ratified.

In Leviticus 23, YHVH lays out seven holy times, seven feasts, and in doing so marks the entire calendar year as belonging to Him, as set aside by Him for His purposes. His times and seasons were to seize the attention and capture the imagination of His chosen people Israel. Their daily, weekly, monthly and yearly life was to be marked by His pace, His rhythms, His approval and His feasts – His ‘sevens.’

Man does not live by bread alone

In the burning desert sands YHVH invited the Jewish people to trust in Him and to depend on Him. The God of Jacob supernaturally supplied water from a rock on a daily basis, and had manna fall from the skies six days a week. He challenged Israel not to collect manna on the Day of Rest (the Sabbath) but to trust Him to supply a double portion on Friday – a portion which would last through the Sabbath (Exodus 16). God’s provision included providing enough for His beloved people to take a day of rest, to tune their lives so as to fit in with His divine symphony. The rest of the seventh day was a gracious gift and a call to trust.

The sabbatical year

The God of Israel took the weekly Sabbath pattern, and extended it to the sabbatical year (or shnat shemittah in Hebrew). Every seventh year the entire Land of Israel would be able to rest and be restored and refreshed. The entire land would be allowed to lie fallow, when nutrients would be restored to the Israeli soil, invigorating its yield for the years to come (Leviticus 25:1-7).

Again, here was a call to faith and trust. YHVH declared that He would supply enough produce in the sixth year to serve as a bumper crop in the seventh fallow year, and even cause the overflow to extend into the eighth year (the first year of the new seven-year cycle).

This very real expression of personal faith and trust in YHVH was quite a challenge to many in Israel. Scripture says that for over four hundred years the majority of the Jewish people shied away from fully trusting God by obeying His calendar. As a result the God of Isaac exiled His people to Babylon for 70 years to give the Land of Israel its 70 years of skipped sabbatical rest (Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10; Daniel 9:2; 2 Chronicles 36:21).

The Jewish people had violated an important clause in a legal document, a legal covenant, that they had sworn to uphold before YHVH. Their external violation expressed their internal lack of trust and faith. After seventy years of Babylonian exile, God had mercy on them and restored them to their land – as He had promised.

Another further application of the Sabbath principle is found in Leviticus 25:8-16. This is a “super-seven” feast called the Jubilee. Seven years multiplied seven times (with one year added to the 49 years) brings Israel to a 50 year Jubilee celebration where all debts are forgiven, all the Hebrew slaves are set free, every man returns to his tribal inheritance and the whole country rejoices. The Jubilee year was inaugurated not on the Feast of Trumpets (what is now called the Jewish New Year or Rosh Hashana) or on the 29th of Elul (the 6th month), but on the tenth day of the seventh month – the Fast of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 25:9). Based on this passage and this context, it is likely that the sabbatical year was also inaugurated on that same Hebrew calendar day, Yom Kippur.

The future role of the Hebrew calendar

This will be a future time when there will no longer be disputation about the ‘two-state solution’ or about boycotting Israeli produce. The entire world will bow down and accept God’s sovereign wisdom and joy in choosing Israel the people and Israel the land – as well as in His choosing of the Hebrew calendar! True forerunners will rejoice in this biblical truth, and will ask God what He would have them do to incorporate these future realities into their present experience.

God still uses His Hebrew calendar in the affairs of men

God always has the prerogative, the freedom and the sovereign power to use His own biblical calendar as He works with the nations and not simply adapt to the Western secular calendar. The modern Western calendar is a solar (sun-based) calendar with pagan trimmings, using the name of Roman demons and kings for months, and the names of Norse demons and warriors for days of the week. Even the modern Jewish Rabbinic calendar has been influenced by Babylonian paganism: it uses the names of Babylonian demons for months, and has moved the original Jewish New Year from Aviv in the Springtime (Exodus 12:1-2) to Eitanim (1 Kings 8:2) in the Fall. Most Jews today use the name Tishrei (a Babylonian idol) for that month, and hold their New Year celebration at that time (at the same time as the Babylonian New Year).

Some significant events in Jewish history have transpired on important days in the Jewish calendar. Enemies of the Jews have even chosen certain significant and tragic dates to bring further calamity on the Jewish nation. But YHVH promises that He will one day turn many of those ominous days into celebrations when He returns (Zechariah 8:18-19).

Here are a few points to remember and to meditate on:

How shall we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

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