Our Passionate God
One of the things that is extremely important to
us as believers, is a right apprehension of the nature and character
of God. If our trust in God's goodness or His beneficial disposition
towards us is compromised, it leaves us vulnerable to spiritual
seduction and demonic attack. Satan is well aware of this, and in
fact God's goodness and holy character was one of the very first
things the father of lies attacked in the Garden. Quite some years
ago, I was quite affected by Calvinistic theology and I can remember
that over time it had the subtle but growing effect of undermining my
trust in God's goodness and truthfulness. I lost confidence in God's
gracious disposition toward me, and thus any confidence in praying
for the lost, or any assurance that God was truly interested in
saving them, and though I never verbalised it or thought about it in
those terms till afterward, I realise now that I had accepted an
inner portrait of God that depicted Him as even duplicitous. Praise
God, he set me free from those evil teachings, and over the following
years I began to learn about the character of God afresh. I am still
learning of course.
However, another bad thing I learned from
Calvinism was a faulty idea of how God connects with His Creation.
In the exhaustive determinism of Calvinism, everything, absolutely
everything, down to the last movement of the smallest
sub-atomic particle, is pre-scripted from Eternity and ensured to
happen. This kind of Determinism thus views the Creation rather like
a computer simulation. In the same way all human acts, events,
thoughts, motives, feelings are also preordained and ensured to
happen. Consequently, in such a scenario God's interactions with His
Creation as recorded in the Scriptures, are not real at all, but
merely pre-scripted sub-routines set to happen at a certain moment in
the "run-time" of the Creation simulation, which God
watches impassively from Eternity.
Nothing could be farther from the truth! I can not
explain how God in Eternity interacts in "real time" with
events in our temporal Universe, but the Scriptures make it
absolutely clear that the Creator of the Universe is genuinely
affected by events in His Creation and genuinely responds to them. A
totally impassive God, unmoved by anything, who on a whim calmly and
coolly decrees the life or death, destruction or damnation of
individuals and nations; is the product of Greek philosophy and
paganistic fatalism, not of biblical theology. God's essential nature
and characteristics do not change, (Mal. 3:6) but Scripture is
absolutely clear that He is deeply moved by what goes on in
His Creation. The LORD responds to faith and obedience, (Heb. 11:6)
and conversely, He is angered and grieved to the core by the depth of
human depravity. His holiness, righteousness and justice is often
outraged by Man's sin, yet at the same time God yearns over our lost
condition and so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son
to save us. In fact, if we want to understand how God feels about
what is going in His Creation, we have no better proof of God's
passionate nature than can be found than in the life and ministry of
Jesus himself, where we see this clearly displayed:
"Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?."
Whenever we think about God's nature we need to
remember how He is revealed in Christ, because Jesus is the express
image of the Father.
Implied Conditions: God reacts to our responses to His promises and warnings.
There are places in Scripture where the LORD seems
to threaten or promise something in an absolute way, but it is
readily apparent from information given elsewhere that there were
implied conditions. For example Jonah was given the message "Yet
forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown." (Jon. 3:4), there no
mention of any possibility that this frightening decree could be
ameliorated, but on seeing the people of Nineveh had taken the
message to heart and humbled themselves in repentance:
"God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not."
After the people of Israel sinned at Baal Peor,
Phineas one of the sons of Aaron, intervened to stay the wrath of the
LORD by slaying those committing blatant immorality in sight of the
door of the tabernacle. Consequently, God made him the following
promise:
Behold, I give unto him my covenant of peace: And he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel.
During the time of the judges the priesthood had
degenerated somewhat, and Eli the old priest did nothing to restrain
the immorality and corruption of his sons and the priestly ministry
was tarnished as a result. Consequently God responded and intervened.
I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the Lord saith, Be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days come, that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father's house, that there shall not be an old man in thine house. And thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation, in all the wealth which God shall give Israel: and there shall not be an old man in thine house for ever. And the man of thine, whom I shall not cut off from mine altar, shall be to consume thine eyes, and to grieve thine heart: and all the increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their age. (see 2 Sam. 2)
It is clear then, when we look at other parts of
Scripture, that what sounded like an unconditional promise to
Phinehas had implied conditions; namely that of faithfulness to the
LORD in the priestly function. We
can see then,
how human responses can nullify what seemed sure promises, or even
avert seemingly inevitable judgements, because there were implied
conditions that were met
or violated, and our
passionate God responds
to our breach or upholding of those conditions.
It is supremely important when interpreting
Scripture that we always seek to look at the parts in the light of
the whole. Many times as believers, our theology may appear to be
based on Scripture, but not be ultimately biblical. This sounds like
an oxymoron, but it's nonetheless true. A good example of this is the
OSAS (Once Saved Always Saved, also known as
Unconditional Eternal Security) doctrine so popular in
the USA particularly in Calvinistic circles. There are certain
statements made by Jesus that on the one hand appear to be
unconditional, just like the examples I gave above; but when compared
with other statements made by Jesus himself and the Apostles, it is
clear that actually such promises as "And I give unto them
eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." are conditional
in nature. In other words some scriptures may appear to
teach OSAS when taken on their own, but in the light of the whole
teaching of Jesus and the Apostles (and indeed the rest of Scripture)
we see that OSAS is not part of any real biblical theology.
There are some promises which can not be annulled
by human misdeeds and whose eventual fulfilment is unconditional and
ensured, but our participation in or enjoyment of those
promises is conditional. An example of this would be the Land promise
made to Abraham; God promised
the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants for ever, but they,
because of their sin have not truly enjoyed the benefits of that
promise. Nevertheless the promise stands,
it will never be annulled, and will be fulfilled in its
entirety, but only those who are of the faith of Abraham will enjoy
it.
God's judgements and our response to them.
Scripture
reveals to us that not only can our enjoyment of a promise be
affected by our response to it, but the severity of some inevitable
judgement can be affected by our human actions and responses as well.
This is vividly played out in Israelite history.
From the
time of Solomon's apostasy onwards, there was a gradual but definite
decline in the spiritual condition of Israel. Solomon's apostasy
brought division; the Northern Kingdom went rotten from the outset;
on the other hand, the southern kingdom of Judah embarked on a more
gradual downward trend with occasional upward "blips" when
a national revival occurred during the reign of a good king.
What
particularly tipped the kingdom of Judah over the threshold and
finally exhausted God's patience though, was the dreadful reign of
Manasseh, who not only practised idolatry but even the
child-sacrifice of Molekh worship outside the very city walls in the
Halley of Hinnom in full view of the Temple Mount.
Things were
so bad, that even during his own reign judgement fell on Manasseh, he
was carried off to Babylon by the king of Assyria. Astonishingly
enough, during his captivity there, he experienced genuine
repentance, God had mercy upon him and he was returned to Judah and
restored to his throne,--but as a vassal king to Assyria. Manasseh
promptly began a clean up, and removed the abominations he had placed
in the very Temple courts. Even though his earlier wicked deeds had
initially exhausted the LORD's forbearance, Manasseh's true
repentance caused the LORD to hold off the inevitable severe
chastening for a few more generations.
Of course it
was not just Manasseh who was at fault, Judah's sin and apostasy was
national. The heavy hand of God's chastening had to fall at some
point as he responded to the deteriorating spiritual condition of the
nation. After Manasseh there was only one more good king,--Josiah,
and after his reign was over things went from bad to worse. It was
into this situation that Jeremiah was called to speak.
Jeremiah and his unpopular message.
Jeremiah's message of submission to the yoke of
Babylon1
was particularly unwelcome, because it was directly opposed to a
number of vested interests, both political and religious.
On the whole, it seems he was mostly preaching to a hostile
audience. In fact in the pages of Scripture, Jeremiah was probably
the most hated and ill-received prophet apart from the Messiah
himself.
The people were bent on their backsliding and
enjoying their sin, so to hear messages of Divine displeasure,
reproof and approaching chastening was not something that appealed to
them, they actually preferred the messages of the false
prophets (Jer. 5:31).
Jeremiah's message was not well received
politically. For quite some time Judah had been a tributary to the
Assyrians, but now the Assyrian empire had almost completely
collapsed following internal struggles and the encroachments of a
rising Babylonian-led coalition which included the Medes and some
northern barbarians. The Judaean national leadership were hoping this
would be the opportunity to finally shake off hated foreign shackles
by playing off Assyria's former ally Egypt against a Babylon which
was now dominating Judah as it filled the vacuum left by a receding
Assyria. Jeremiah's message that the LORD required the nation to
submit to the yoke of the king of Babylon, was not only a slap in the
face to national pride and the currently rising expectations of
liberation from foreign oppressors, but it was also diametrically
opposed to the national leadership's foreign policy initiatives.
The Temple priesthood, ministering in the name of
the LORD, where one would have thought Jeremiah would have found
ready allies, and the national religious leadership, were even more
antipathetic towards Jeremiah than the politicians and common people,
because they were corrupt, spiritually compromised and had mingled
the worship of Yahweh with paganism.
Moreover all the chief of the priests, and the people, transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen; and polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem. (2 Chr. 36:14)
It was the
voices of the prophets and priests that clamoured loudest against
Jeremiah, (see Jer. 26) and cried out to have him done away with;
because they, using the false prophets as their mouthpiece, were
ringleaders in the apostasy of the people. They hated
Jeremiah's message of judgement and chastening, partly because it
affected their position, prestige and (probably) personal incomes.
Hananiah and his very popular message.
And it came to pass the same year, in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fourth year, and in the fifth month, that Hananiah the son of Azur the prophet, which was of Gibeon, spake unto me in the house of the Lord, in the presence of the priests and of all the people, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, saying, I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two full years will I bring again into this place all the vessels of the Lord's house, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place, and carried them to Babylon:2 And I will bring again to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, with all the captives of Judah, that went into Babylon, saith the Lord: for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.
Hananiah is listed as the son of Azur the
prophet. Prophets, whether of the LORD or otherwise, were
often court appointees in ancient Israel. David had a true prophet of
the LORD, Nathan, and Ahab and Jezebel had their appointed (false)
prophets. There is an Azur listed in Eze. 11: 1-13. Interestingly
enough Azur is described as a "prince of the people" so he
had political connections, but he is also described as one of those
who "devise iniquity" and give "wicked counsel in the
city", which the LORD specifically spells out as their saying,
"it [judgement] is not near". Though it can
not be established with absolute certainty, the son of a court
hanger-on with powerful and crooked connections would definitely
characterise Hananiah.
What was wrong with Hananiah's message?
Though Hananiah uttered his prophecy in the name
of the LORD, that of course did not guarantee it was of the LORD. At
that time the worship of Yahweh had become corrupted by syncretism
and idolatry, even within the Temple courts. Hananiah's message
certainly appeared on the surface to be pro-Israel, that
would have sounded appealing today to many within the Christian
Zionist community. However the LORD did not view it with approval.
Then the word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah the prophet, after that Hananiah the prophet had broken the yoke from off the neck of the prophet Jeremiah, saying, Go and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus saith the Lord; Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt make for them yokes of iron. For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; I have put a yoke of iron upon the neck of all these nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and they shall serve him: and I have given him the beasts of the field also.
It was inconsistent with the tenor of prophetic revelation.
God had been consistently warning concerning the
national situation for a long time. Isaiah, ministering during the
reigns of previous kings had clearly foreseen the exile to Babylon
and their regathering (Isa. Chas.14, 39, 48). Hananiah's message also
explicitly contradicted what the LORD had been saying through
Jeremiah for most of his ministry.
It mingled truth with error in order to gain an audience.
Effectively, Hananiah's message was an attempt by
the false prophet to neutralise the message coming through Jeremiah
by taking part of what was true and then mixing it with a lie. Thus
Hananiah was saying "Yes, God was angry like Jeremiah said, he
was going to judge, but he has done that now, and it's all over. It's
all smooth sailing from now on." This was actually a form of
what today we would call preterism. Unfortunately this was
not true, God had barely even begun to enter into judgment
with his sinning people.
It by-passed the Divine call for repentance.
It was a message of national restoration,
salvation and victory without the much needed repentance and faith
that the true prophets had been calling for. This kind of false
teaching was particularly dangerous, because it had the ear of the
people, who were already predisposed to hearing messages that did not
bring conviction to the sin in their lives or any requirement to
forsake it. It was a cheap grace message.
It appeared to be a calming and comforting message but it presented the people with a false hope that would make matters far, far worse for them in the long run.
"Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt make for them yokes of iron."
The LORD actually lays the responsibility for the
heavier judgement that would ensue, directly at the door of the false
prophet. He says that ultimately it was their false teaching that
made the yoke heavier and stronger.
Modern Day Hananiah's.
"That's All Folks!" a deadly deceit.
Jacob's preaching and Moriel generally, have a
specific focus on presenting the prophetic testimony of the
Scriptures, both to the Church to prepare her for what is to come,
and to the unsaved to exhort them to flee from the wrath that is to
come, and in this context Jacob often refers to "et tsara
l'yakov", the time of Jacob's trouble.
Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.
What may come as a surprise to some, is that just
as in Jeremiah's day, there are certain high-profile groups in Israel
that are teaching that Jacob's Trouble is already past or
doesn't really apply to eschatological events within Israel. The
quote below is from Chuck Cohen of Intercessors for Israel:
"According to those verses in Jeremiah, Jacob's trouble occurs before Israel comes back to the land and before Israel becomes an independent nation again. Israel became a nation again in 1948. Did anything occur to Jacob's descendants before 1948 that could qualify as Jacob's trouble? While some believe that the whole 1,900 year exile can be seen as Jacob's trouble - and there can be a good argument made for this - still the event that seems to be the climactic fulfilment was the demonically inspired Nazi Holocaust. Jacob's trouble has been fulfilled."
"As noted briefly before, there can also be a future fulfilment, based on a spiritual principle of 'now-and-not-yet' that applies to some prophetic passages.3 That principle, if we are being honest with the text, would indicate that if there was another wave of anti-Semitic hatred leading to the deaths of many Jews, it would happen in exile. Jews who refuse to return to Zion are - and will continue to be - in much more danger than those Jews who have come home."
The Cohen's article goes appallingly wrong on a
number of levels, one of which is on the timing. While they are
correct in establishing that the fulfilment of this passage is in the
Last Days, (which biblically can mean any time from the Cross onward)
what they fail to give adequate weight to is the phrase:
"Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it"
Jer. 30:7 stresses the historical uniqueness
of this period of trouble. This kind of phraseology also occurs in
Matt. 24:21-22, Mk 13:19-20, which clearly draw on Dan.12:1-24.
All three of these passages, clearly place this unique and
unparalleled time of tribulation of Israel's history in the
period after the setting up of the Abomination of
Desolation, that is, the latter half of the Seventieth Week of
Daniel. A period called in Daniel the "Et-haQetz", the
"time of the end". Both Daniel and Jesus state emphatically
that this time will eclipse all other periods of
national and international distress which then means it will be worse
than the Holocaust. It is also starkly explicit that the epicentre of
the tribulation is within the Land of Israel itself.
Zechariah chapter 13 speaks clearly of a
horrifying time when two-thirds of the nation shall be cut off (Zec.
13:8) and this is clearly linked to prophecies connected with the
Day of the LORD, however Cohen attempts to evacuate this prophecy of
its force:
I.F.I.'s annual Intercessors Prayer Conference in January 2015 included a message5 on Zechariah 12-14 that explained why its middle chapter refers to the period around the Lord's first coming and not to the one for which we are all still waiting. In short, Zechariah 12 ends with all Israel being saved, as they look upon the One whom they have pierced and mourn for Him as if He were their precious only child (12:10). In the Hebrew, the word in the KJV translated upon, should be to/toward as with spiritual sight.
While
grammatically and syntactically it is possible to understand the
meaning of the Hebrew word "אלי"
as looking to in a non-physical way. There are extremely serious
problems with I.F.I.'s handling of the text from Zec. 12:10. Let us
compare their interpretation with the Holy Spirit inspired
handling of this verse in the New Testament:
But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe. For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced. Jn 19:37
Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. Apoc. 1:7
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Matt. 24:30
The following points are abundantly clear from the
texts where Zec. 12:10 is quoted or alluded to:
-
It refers to literal seeing of the One who we pierced, with our physical eyes. It does not in any wise refer to a figurative turning toward Him "as with spiritual sight".
-
It is clear from the eschatological contexts in which this verse is used in the NT, that this verse refers to Yeshua's coming in power with His angels in the glory of the Father, which Matt. 24 places explicitly after the Tribulation.
What Chuck and Karen Cohen are claiming about this
verse is simply patently untrue, it is false teaching of a very
dangerous kind.6
It is the deadly preterism of Hananiah.
There is much more in the Cohen's article that
raises concerns; like Hananiah it does not take into account the the
depth of our national sin and apostasy, and its inevitable
consequences. To be quite honest, in modern Israel, we have exceeded
by more than a thousandfold anything that Manasseh ever did.
Notwithstanding anything else, we have the blood of more than 2
million unborn on our hands. Severe chastisement will eventually be
coming our way because of our multiplied national transgression and
our lack of national repentance.
Don't Worry! It Will Never Happen To Us.
Once again just as in the time of Jeremiah, in
addition to the "It's already happened" school of false
prophecy, there is the "It will never happen to us" school
of false teachings as well.
. . . Hearken not ye to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreamers, nor to your enchanters, nor to your sorcerers, which speak unto you, saying, Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon: For they prophesy a lie unto you, to remove you far from your land; and that I should drive you out, and ye should perish. But the nations that bring their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him, those will I let remain still in their own land, saith the Lord; and they shall till it, and dwell therein.
This school of false-teaching is exemplified by
such statements as this, which Dr Paul Wilkinson gave at Berean Call:
" . .the Post-Tribulation belief . . . the Pre-Wrath view, these are heretical views. To teach that the Church is going to go through any part of the Tribulation period is an abominable thing to teach. because it robs believers of the blessedness of the Blessed Hope. It doesn't fill believers with joy and expectancy and longing, it fills them with fear, it fills them with a kind of militancy that they have to stand against the Antichrist, they have to face the Mark of the Beast. I have spoken at Churches in England where people have been in fear how they are going to get through the Tribulation, how their children are going to get through the Tribulation. Will they be strong enough to resist the Mark of the Beast when it comes. Praise God the Lord uses many of us to bring freedom and release from that kind of teaching.."
In Jeremiah's time, the weight of national
transgression had become so great that judgement was inevitable, and
the LORD specifically wanted to prepare His people with the mindset
that they would have to endure a yoke of suffering. By presenting the
people with a false hope, the lying prophets were dissuading the
people from resigning themselves to the Divine chastening and thus
teaching them rebellion against the LORD. This in the end would only
make their suffering worse and even result in the needless deaths of
many.
For they prophesy a lie unto you, to remove you far from your land; and that I should drive you out, and ye should perish.
The Hebrew is very strong, the word l'ma'an
translated as "to" in the A.V. has the force of in
order that or to the intent that: thus the LORD
explicitly says that there is a causative link between the
teachings of the false prophets and the Exile and perishing of many.
Events that cannot be avoided and how they affect us.
Like God's judgement on the kingdom of Judah, the
Tribulation, the Return of Jesus and the Day of the LORD are settled
inevitabilities. God, who in Eternity sees all choices, events and
possibilities in ways beyond our comprehension, knows exactly when
they will happen. There may, from a temporal perspective, be events
and choices made that can delay or even accelerate the arrival of
these events, but they can not be avoided altogether, at some point
they will inevitably occur. The fact is however, that responding in
faith and obedience to God's message makes a massive difference as to
how those coming events will affect us. A
correct understanding of God's goodness and holy character will help
us in this, we must understand that we are not dealing with a
duplicitous and sadistic deity as
portrayed by Calvinism,
but an
infinitely loving and gracious God, who will (if we are that
generation) permit His Body to endure the Tribulation only
for their ultimate good
and for a the good of a lost world in
which God will use them to bear
witness, so
that He may
bring in the final harvest.
In both Joel and Malachi, we have terrifying
predictions of the oncoming eschatological Day of the LORD, as the
enemies of Israel approach to consume her at the end of the
Seventieth Week of Daniel. At the very end of Malachi we read the
following:
Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
The word translated "curse" here, is
kherem. In the OT it is the word used when something is
devoted totally to destruction. The word "lest" tells us
that this judgement is conditional. If it were not for the prophetic
ministry of Elijah and a positive response from the people the Land
would be completely destroyed.
We see also the same pattern in the second chapter
of Joel. Where in light of the terrifying events approaching, the
people are summoned to seek the LORD in prayer and repentance, and it
is the change of heart in the people that prompts a response from the
LORD to destroy the invading hosts, because "he is gracious
and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and
repenteth him of the evil."
The birth pangs of end-time events may well come
upon our generation, just as judgement came upon Judah. But also like
them we have an option. We can either close our ears and live in a
state of denial, following the modern-day Hananiah's who without any
biblical grounds are telling us it's either already
happened, or at least won't happen to us, thus leaving us
unprepared and easy prey to coming events and effectively
predisposing ourselves to spiritual deception and apostasy. Or, we
can seek the LORD with ever increasing vigour, that He might arm us
with the mindset that is prepared to forsake all, even our own lives
for Him in order to be His witnesses. Jesus has a solution for our
fears about the future and our worries about our families and
children, if the Tribulation does indeed come upon our generation,
and it is this:
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. . . . So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.
All that we have, including our families and
children are a gift of God and do not truly belong to us, we are
merely custodians. The God whose very nature is love, who is utterly
good, utterly holy and in whom is no darkness at all, must be our
highest treasure, and greatest love, and we must trust His character.
This is the only solution to fears about the future and the
judgements, even the possibility of the Tribulation itself, coming
upon us.
We noted above the causative link between false
teaching and increased apostasy. We actually see a similar situation
in Matt. 24 where contextually the teachings of false prophets and
false christs, lawlessness (anomia which in context means
divine law) and apostasy are linked. What is particularly
interesting though is that the false doctrine that Jesus specifically
links to these false christs (and the consequent anomia and
apostasy) is the teaching of a coming other
than the globally visible, glorious and unmistakeable one He Himself
describes and which is preceded by certain signs. This is
particularly pertinent, because some pretrib ministers are linking
the Gospel proclamation with the Pretrib Rapture Theory in a "believe
in Jesus so you won't have to go through the Tribulation"
message.
I often wonder how Dr Wilkinson's statement quoted
above would be received in places like the Sudan, Nigeria, Vietnam
and ISIS controlled territories in Iraq and Syria. Would Christians
there, some of whom watch their families butchered before their eyes
before they themselves are slaughtered, feel freed and
released by pretribulational rapturism; would a message
of "you don't have to endure", "you don't have to
stand", "don't worry you'll be taken out before the
Tribulation hits town," help them? Or would they be
better served by "and they overcame by the blood of the
Lamb and by the word of their testimony and they loved not their
lives unto the death?"
The severity and mercy of God's response to Hananiah.
One of the specific charges God brought against
the false prophets of Jeremiah's time, was that they did nothing to
prepare the people for what was coming:
O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the deserts. Ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord.
The Hebrew word translated "stand" also
means to abide or endure. The problem with
Hananiah, was not just that his message was false, it was effective
at garnering adherents and was popular. It brought "freedom"
and "release" from thoughts of divine displeasure,
judgement or chastening. It made no demands for amendment of life,
repentance and trust in God, and of course this is always an
appealing message! However in actual fact, Hananiah and the false
prophets were presenting the people with a satanically engineered
counterfeit specifically designed to inoculate them against the true
message of God's Word, and one which would leave them unprepared for
what was coming, and unable to endure it. The LORD's response to this
had to be radical:
Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet, Hear now, Hananiah; The Lord hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie. Therefore thus saith the Lord; Behold, I will cast thee from off the face of the earth: this year thou shalt die, because thou hast taught rebellion against the Lord. So Hananiah the prophet died the same year in the seventh month.
Hananiah died three months later. Why did God not
simply strike Hananiah dead right then and there? I really believe
that the LORD was giving Hananiah time to repent. Hananiah
knew in his own heart that the message he gave was false. I do
actually believe that if he had confessed his false teaching and
repented, God would have have responded by sparing his life, because
Had already had spared the life of Manasseh who did things far worse.
Sadly repentance was not forthcoming.
False teaching is a serious matter, and those who
profess to teach the Word are held to a higher standard of
accountability (Jas. 3:1). Based on God's past dealings with the
false prophets in Jeremiah's day, I can not believe that our God who
does not change, will not for the sake of the Body at some point act
in response to ministries who stubbornly hold to and promote
doctrines that they actually know they have no real biblical warrant
for and have been repeatedly warned about;7
particularly false teaching that leaves the Body unprepared for very
serious future events,--and this will include certain elements even
within the premillennial pro-Israel camp, who stand against what the
Scriptures clearly teach concerning what is coming. God is giving
space to repent, and I really do think they need to reassess what
they are teaching in the light of Scripture and not repeat Hananiah's
fatal mistake.
1Jer.
27:8-12.
2There
were actually three deportations of Judeans to Babylon. The first
around 605 B.C. (which is probably when Daniel was taken there)
under Jehoiakim, the second around 598 and the third after the city
fell in 587.
3"For
example, while Peter said that the outpouring of the Spirit on
Shavuot, the Day of Pentecost, recorded in Acts 2,
was a fulfilment of Joel 2:28-29, many still
expect a final fulfilment - when all Israel gets saved, as the
context of both Joel and Acts is specifically talking about Jews. We
do not see this as applying to some still-to-come future end time
global revival that will sweep away the 'gross darkness'. Revival is
happening now!" Jacob’s Trouble - Past or Future?
Intercessors For Israel Sept. 2015.
4"And
at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth
for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of
trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that
same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one
that shall be found written in the book." See also Matt.
24:15-21 "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of
desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy
place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them
which be in Judaea flee into the mountains: Let him which
is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his
house: Neither let him which is in the field return back
to take his clothes. And woe unto them that are with
child, and to them that give suck in those days! But pray
ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath
day: For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not
since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall
be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no
flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be
shortened."
5 "Zechariah
12-14 Today", Chuck Cohen. Intercessors for Israel.
6When
they are promoting an error of such magnitude, the reader will not
then be surprised to find that the Cohen's are long standing members
of Wayne Hilsden's King of Kings Community Jerusalem,
which is linked with and thoroughly saturated with the
doctrines and practices of the New Apostolic Reformation.
7This
is clearly evidenced by the open admission of Pretrib Scholars that
they have no scripture that clearly teaches what they claim; the
recent withdrawal by major pretrib figures Dr Thomas Ice, Mark
Hitchcock and Dr Paul Wilkinson from debating the scriptural basis
of their Pretribulational Rapture Theory and their promotion of such
things as their "The Apostasy Is The Rapture" teaching.
All these things taken together are a more than tacit indicator that
they themselves are full aware that their Secret Pretrib Rapture
Theory is manifestly unscriptural.
