What Do Trump, Brexit and Christian Zionism Have in Common? - Brian Hennessy ISRAEL TODAY

What Do Trump, Brexit and Christian Zionism Have in Common?

Monday, August 01, 2016 |  

Brian Hennessy  ISRAEL TODAY

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Throughout history we have seen how a nation oppressed by an autocratic government, whether foreign or its own, must eventually revolt or submit to humiliating slavery. We saw it in the American Revolution in 1776, and certainly in Israel’s Exodus from Egypt under Moses.It is in this context I believe we should view today’s Trump / Brexit / Christian Zionism (CZ) movements.  

As I see it, all three are powerful reactions to the same left-wing elitist bureaucracy that’s been  trying to impose its multi-cultural, no-borders, one-world vision on the nations.  This utopian vision is essentially the one immortalized by John Lennon in his iconic song, “Imagine.” So intoxicating was the vision that the elite imagined it could accommodate the ruthless reality of fundamentalist Islam, expecting it to quietly take its seat at the table. When Jihadists began murdering and raping everyone in sight they tried to ignore it, telling everyone, including themselves, that Islam was a religion of peace.  

They got away with it for awhile, especially in Israel where they were able to justify the Muslim Palestinian mayhem as a legitimate grievance against Jewish colonialism. Only those Evangelicals who knew the truth rose up to stand with Israel and denounced the world’s hypocrisy, giving birth to today’s Christian Zionist movement. Yet in spite of their outcry, world leaders continued to ignore Israel’s plight. Even 9/11 failed to throw enough cold water on them.

It wasn’t until it began happening in the cities of Europe, and again in America, that the West started to wake up and realize Islam would never willing submit to anyone else’s vision. It had its own vision of bringing the world into submission to Allah under Sharia Law! The elitist dream had become a nightmare. The result was a right-wing blowback in the form of Donald Trump, and the Brexit vote in England. 

Yet, there’s a fundamental difference between Trump/Brexit and CZ, God’s counter movement to what He is doing among the nations. (Yes, Virginia, nothing happens in this world apart from God’s will.) While Trump/Brexit is clear evidence the people no longer subscribe to John Lennon’s utopia and want out, CZ is not a political movement. But simply support for Israel against the nightmare.

Historically, CZ had its beginnings in groups like the French Huguenots and Puritans who saw the Biblical prophecies of a restored Jewish homeland when there was no natural hope it could happen. And they loudly proclaimed it in spite of strong opposition from the established church, which still embraced Replacement Theology. When God was true to His word and brought Israel into being in 1948, CZ then became a stalwart ally of the Jewish nation.

But I believe the role of CZ is changing once again. In the process of standing with Israel, many awakened to the Hebraic roots of our faith and we saw that we too were included in the promises to Israel through Messiah Yeshua. “For as many as are the promises of God, in Messiah they are yes” (2 Cor. 1:20).

What’s more, this awakening brought with it another eye-opening realization - that for centuries we Christians also have been dominated by an oppressive elitist autocracy that we need to be free of. Namely, the Hellenized institutional religious system that imprisoned us when the Church merged with pagan Rome under Constantine. We learned that’s when our Hebraic roots were stripped from us.  Not only did we lose the biblical context of Yeshua’s Jewish identity, but also all understanding that we could share in the kingdom promises to Israel. In their place we were presented with a Christian Christ, fed religious placebos and led away captive into centuries of ecclesiastical tyranny.

We soon lost all sense of our true identity. We are not, and never were, “Christians.” A religion is not a peoplehood. We have always been the grafted-in seed of Abraham. “For if you belong to Messiah, you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:29).

So where are all these movements headed? Who knows where Trump will take America if he wins, which I expect. Or if the rest of Europe will follow Britain and exit the EU in time to roll back the Muslim invasion. Also a possibility.

But there are two things we can be certain of. First, only the Zionist movement will result in the people coming into true freedom. Not only Jews and Israel, but all the followers of Yeshua who see and understand they are included in God’s restoration of Israel and get on board in time. 

And two, no matter how the Western nations reconfigure themselves to restore law and order, perhaps in a new Pax Romana, they will eventually coalesce around one world leader who will try and destroy Israel and the knowledge of Yahweh, who alone is God. 

The earth is now being shaken. Can the heavens be far behind?

Brian Hennessy is author of Valley of the Steeples

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Do We Have the Faith of Our Fathers? - Brian Hennessy ISRAEL TODAY

Do We Have the Faith of Our Fathers?

Tuesday, July 26, 2016 |  Brian Hennessy  

ISRAEL TODAY

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Or do we just have a religion?

For most people, the word “faith” is but a synonym for “religion.” People ask, “What faith are you?” Meaning, are you Christian? Jewish? Hindu?

But in the Bible, “faith” is not presented as a religion in the traditional sense. Rather it is revealed as the unshakeable conviction that the words we heard God speak to our heart are absolutely true. “Faith comes from hearing” (Rom. 10:17). And our faith is revealed when we act upon those words as father Abraham did. 

That means, no religion should be termed a “faith,” because no faith is needed to practice a religion. “Religion,” from the Latin word religari, means “to bind.” It simply binds its adherents to a written set of doctrines and practices that only require intellectual assent and will power. It is something any devout follower can subscribe to without exercising a shred of faith.

In short, religion is law. And law and faith, like oil and water, don’t mix. It matters not if it is the very Law of God handed to Moses on Mount Sinai (Gal. 3:12). Or the man-made rules imposed on Christians from church councils. Or Sharia as quoted from the Koran to Moslem. It’s all an attempt to gain the approval of Deity by obedient performance – not by faith. 

The truth is God could care less about all our religious attempts to gain favor with Him, “For without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to Him must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Heb. 11:6). 

Now I raise this issue because I see how a fundamental misunderstanding about “faith” could become a hindrance to building a deeper relationship between Christians and Jews who love Israel. For it is written, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3) And how can we “be agreed” if our core beliefs are tied to incompatible, and at times hostile, religious systems? 

Worse, the two religions of Christianity and Judaism today have so many variations it’s hard to say which one truly represents our respective beliefs. For a Roman Catholic is as different from a Quaker in his theology and practices, as a Lubavitcher from a Reconstructionist.

Yet, in spite of all the obstacles, a new warmth has blossomed between us, knitting the faith-filled members of our two communities together in a way not seen since the first century. It‘s a warmth that can only be understood as divine intervention. The question is, how do we keep our religious differences from smothering what God has started?  For there are certainly many on each side who would see us retreat again behind doctrinal walls.  It is a pressure we must resist at all costs! 

I believe the way forward is to realize that we who love Israel represent the only two communities on earth actually founded on faith. And we each need to grab hold of that understanding with both hands. Because even though no religion can be considered true faith, faith could be described as God’s one true “religion.” As both God’s prophet and apostle have declared, “The righteous man will live by faith” (Hab. 3:4; Gal. 3:11).

It was this foundational principle that gained Abraham the most ringing endorsement found anywhere in Scripture: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6). That’s why Isaiah points to him as our model: “Listen to me you who pursue righteousness, who seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father…when he was but one I called him, then I blessed him and multiplied him” (Isaiah 51: 1,2).

The first thing we should learn from Abraham is that righteousness is a reward for faith, not for obedience. Otherwise it would have been written, “Abraham _obeyed _God, and it was reckoned to him as righteous.” Obedience must follow belief, but it is no substitute. 

Unfortunately, both Christians and Jews have historically put obedience to religious precepts first. It certainly tripped up many Jews when Messiah came in the first century. “For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own [through obedience to the Law] they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God” (Rom. 10:3). And it will also trip up many Christians who are not walking in faith at his second coming. 

Obviously, Christians and Jews are not on the same page yet about Yeshua being the means to obtaining God’s righteousness. Nevertheless, many in both camps do believe God is restoring Israel today.

 We just need to nourish that faith and let the love of God heal the wounds we‘ve inflicted upon each other over the centuries. 

Brian Hennessy is author of Valley of the Steeples

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Does the Church Need a Hanukkah? - Brian Hennessy ISRAEL TODAY

Does the Church Need a Hanukkah?

Tuesday, July 12, 2016 |  

Brian Hennessy  ISRAEL TODAY

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This is not a campaign to add one more feast day to the Christian calendar. It’s about the church’s pressing need to celebrate a victory over a tyrannical ruling power as the Jews did over Greece in first century BC. Especially since the tyrannical power that has imprisoned and defiled the body of Messiah for centuries is the same Greek culture of corruption. 

As testimony to the Hellenization of the church, I could introduce a whole card catalogue of eminent historians and theologians. But I’ll let the words of one Biblical scholar, Norman H. Snaith, speak for all:  “Our position is that the re-interpretation of Biblical theology in terms of the Greek philosophers has been both widespread throughout the centuries, and everywhere destructive to the essence of the Christian faith…Neither Catholic nor Protestant theology is based on Biblical theology. In each case we have a domination of Christian theology by Greek thought” (The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament, p 187,188)

How did this happen, you ask? And why are so few Christians aware of it? More importantly, what can be done given that most are as clueless of this dreadful state of affairs as I was once. It took a class in Bible College entitled “Early Christian Thought” to open my eyes. That’s where I learned (with no help from the professor) how the early Church Fathers corrupted the church by interpreting the Bible through the philosophical “wisdom” of Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. 

Unlike the Jewish disciples who had faithfully delivered the gospel to us, these new Gentile leaders had not been raised on the Scriptures, but converted from paganism. In their zeal to define and defend the new faith, and to steer us away from Jewish hopes and promises for which they had little sympathy or understanding, they moved the church off the bedrock of revealed truth on to the shifting sands of man’s reasoning. 

Like a true Trojan Horse, Greek philosophy was ignorantly inserted into the life of the church.  But it didn’t take full control until a church council met at Nicea in 325 AD, presided over by the high priest of all Rome’s religions, the Emperor Constantine. The parallel between this man and Antiochus IV, the Greek tyrant who tried to snuff out all worship and knowledge of the one true God in Israel, is eerie. Constantine’s conquering “soldiers,” however, were Christian theologians schooled in Alexandria, Egypt, a hotbed of Greek philosophical study. Applying their scholasticism to the most dividing issues in the church, he imposed a cruel theological unity upon the church backed by the power of the state. 

In doing so, compliance to church creeds replaced love as the hallmark of the true believer. From then on, any departure from an approved creed - even when refuted by the plain text of Scripture - defined you as a heretic. Consequently, millions of both Jews and true followers of Yeshua were martyred.

It was at Nicea that the stripping of Christianity from its Hebraic roots began in earnest. The oneness of God, as capsulized in Deuteronomy 6:4, along with the Jewish humanity of Yeshua, were redefined in Greek philosophical terms. The Saturday Sabbath was changed to the Sun’s Day to become the official Christian holy day of rest. The celebration of Yeshua’s resurrection was moved to a week after the Jewish Passover (and later called “Easter”).  And to give this new Gentile religion its own worship places, Constantine soon launched a church building program to rival the synagogues. 

Through it all, Paul’s dire warning went unheeded: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Messiah” (Col. 2:8).

Well, the body of Messiah has been imprisoned in this Greco/Roman dominated church system now for almost two millennium. Will we get a Hanukkah deliverance? Yes, but only as each of us allows the “Maccabee” spirit within us to rise up and renew our mind in the Scriptures, and to cleanse our own temple. But the institutional church system, like the leavened bread of Pharaoh’s Egypt, must be left behind. 

 Isaiah cries to us from across the centuries: “Awake, awake, clothe yourself in your strength, O Zion….Shake yourself from the dust, rise up, O captive Jerusalem. Loose yourself from the chains around your neck, O captive daughter of Jerusalem” (Isa. 52:1,2).

Remember too, Antiochus IV, like Constantine, are but types and shadows of the coming Satanically-possessed “man of lawlessness” who will martial a world gone mad to try and  obliterate all worship of God from this earth. He will no doubt appear as a champion and unifier of apostate Christianity and unite it to the State, as did Constantine.  And then, as Antiochus IV did, try to crush the one nation that by its very existence testifies the Lord Almighty lives - Israel. 

What can believers do? We’ve already been told: “Return to the stronghold, O prisoners who have no hope; This very day I am declaring I will restore double to you. For I will bend Judah as My bow, I will fill the bow with Ephraim. And I will stir up your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece; And I will make you like a warrior’s sword” (Zech. 9:12,13).

Brian Hennessy is author of Valley of the Steeples

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Did Yeshua Give us a 'New' Covenant, or a 'Renewed' Covenant? - Brian Hennessy ISRAEL TODAY

Did Yeshua Give us a 'New' Covenant, or a 'Renewed' Covenant?

Wednesday, July 06, 2016 |  Brian Hennessy  ISRAEL TODAY

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When God announced the New Covenant through Jeremiah, He said "I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it" (Jer. 31:33). Well, it seems some Christians take those words to mean God puts His Holy Spirit within us so we can now keep all 613 commands of the Old Covenant.

In short, they see the New Covenant as simply a renewal of the Mt. Sinai contract. Although they acknowledge that a few commandments, those pertaining to animal sacrifice, stoning, banishment, circumcision etc., are outdated and should be understood spiritually now. They accept all this even though God specifically said the New Covenant is "NOT LIKE THE COVENANT which I made with the fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke" (Jer. 31:31).

So is the New Covenant just a renewal of the Old Covenant? Or is this movement just a renewal of the legalism that Paul continually waged war against in his epistles? Surely it’s the latter. For the writer of Hebrews couldn’t have made God’s intentions any clearer concerning the passing away of the Old Covenant: "When He said a new covenant, He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old, is ready to disappear" (Heb. 8:13).

For centuries the issue of the Law lay dormant following the expulsion of the Jews by Rome. The entire temple complex had been destroyed and the Levitical priesthood ceased to function. What’s more, the center of Christianity had shifted from Jerusalem to Rome, so there was no longer a Pharisaic authority to try and impose the Mosaic Law upon "Gentile" believers. Or intimidate Jewish believers into going back to their divinely-given religion of types and shadows.

But with Israel’s rebirth the whole confusion has come roaring back to life. Many believers, in their excitement upon discovering the Hebraic roots of their faith, have started to live what they call a "Torah-observant lifestyle." Some see it as a way to more fully embrace their heritage and draw closer to the Jewish people. Others embrace it as a fitting religious replacement for a Christianity they now see as a corruption of the faith preached by the apostles.

The result is a rapidly growing hybrid religion that could be termed 'New Covenant Judaism' (as distinct from Rabbinic Judaism, the other hybrid version of the Mosaic Law that the Jewish community has practiced since the destruction of the temple).

Of course, this blending of covenant practices is no less devastating to our life in Messiah now then in the First Century when Paul warned: "Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?...If righteousness comes through [practicing] the Law, then Messiah died needlessly" (Gal. 3:3; 2:21).

The New Covenant cannot be a renewal of the Mosaic religion because it’s not a religion. Instead it provides a new relationship with God based on our faith. And we know "the Law is not of faith" (Gal 3:12). And that’s just for openers. The New Covenant gives us eternal life. The Old Covenant was "a ministry of death" (2 Cor. 3:7). The New Covenant responds in love. The Old Covenant demanded an eye for an eye. The New Covenant gives us power over sin. The Old Covenant gave sin power over us (Rom. 5:20). The New Covenant makes us saints. The Old Covenant made us sinners. The New Covenant declares us righteous. The Old Covenant brought us into judgment. The New Covenant makes us sons of God and heirs. The Old Covenant left us slaves and outcasts from the promises (Galatians 4:21-31).

What many believers fail to grasp is that the Mosaic Law was never God’s main covenant with Israel. God’s main covenant was the one He made with Abraham based on a promise.

In Galatians, Paul gives a short lesson on covenant contracts, reminding us that when one is ratified "no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it." Therefore, the Law which came 430 years later did not replace, set aside or modify that original covenant promise to Abraham. If it had, the inheritance would now be based on Israel’s obedience to the Law – not on God’s promise. "But God gave it to Abraham by means of a promise" (Gal 4:15-18).

"Why the Law then?" Paul asks. "It was added because of transgressions, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made" (Gal. 3:18,19). "It was "added…until" Messiah because Israel had an underlying sin problem that needed to be revealed. The Law was in essence a temporary measure to show we had a congenital obedience problem and needed a savior.

With Yeshua’s death, Israel received a new covenant in his blood. The Old Covenant, having served its purpose, was retired. Yeshua had fulfilled all the types and shadows that had pointed to him. He had redeemed God’s people from the curse we’d incurred for failure to keep the Law. And he’d put a new spirit within us so we could love God and our neighbor from the heart - which was the whole intent of the Law.

For believers seeking to keep Yahweh’s Torah commandment today, here it is: "It was for freedom that Messiah set us free [from the Mosaic Law]; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery" (Gal. 5:1).

Brian Hennessy is author of Valley of the Steeples

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Is the Gospel Age Ending? - Brian Hennessy ISRAEL TODAY

Is the Gospel Age Ending?

Friday, June 24, 2016 |  Brian Hennessy  ISRAEL TODAY

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We know that God has set times to accomplish His purposes, for the Bible tells us “there is an appointed time for everything” (Eccl. 3:1). We saw it with Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness, in their 70-year incarceration in Babylon and more recently her return to the land after a 2000-year Roman exile. Once His purposes are accomplished, and the lessons learned, He moves on to the next phase of His plan to redeem, not only Israel, but the whole world.

So what is “the Gospel Age,” and what happens when it ends? By “the Gospel Age” I mean that time period Yeshua spoke of when, following his resurrection, his Jewish disciples asked if he was now restoring the kingdom to Israel? He said only the Father knew for sure when it would come. In the meantime they had work to do. But it couldn’t begin until they’d received the power of the Holy Spirit. Then they were to go forth and “be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth"(Acts 1:8).

In other words, the rest of the world still had to hear the good news that God had given His son as a sacrifice to atone for our sins, and that now all was forgiven. At this point, of course, the disciples were clueless that the goyiim were going to be the main target in this Gospel outreach. Or that many generations would have to come and go before the job was done and God’s kingdom (the Messianic kingdom of Israel) could appear. 

Well, that was then and this is now. And my Spirit alarm clock is blaring, telling me to wake up and get ready – it’s God’s “set time to favor Zion” (Ps. 102:13). 

To begin, notice the path the Gospel would travel according to Yeshua. It was to start in Jerusalem. And indeed it did when three thousand Jews were saved following Peter’s first sermon on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:41). But that revival would be short lived. The majority of Jewish Israel, led initially by an irate, unsaved Saul, would reject it vehemently, forcing the disciples to take the message northward. To Samaria (Acts 8:5), Damascus (Acts 9:19,20), Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch (Acts 11:19), and finally to Greece and Rome and eventually every nation on earth.  And to make certain there would be no going back to Jerusalem God sent in Rome to slam the door behind them. 

But now it has been reopened in our day look - and look what is happening in the world. The Western nations of Europe and America, where the Gospel prospered most and was then sent out to other nations, have largely abandoned their “Christian” world view.  Indeed, they are embracing the tenets of atheistic humanism more and more each day. Consequently, all manner of evil has broken out in our societies. Christians (and Jews) are beginning to feel like outsiders in their own nations. Our churches have also succumbed to worldly values and largely abandoned the teachings of the Bible. No wonder so many have become mausoleums. Or rock concert halls. Or feel-good coffee houses. Or even mosques. Places where God’s biblical truths are no longer heard.

At the same time, look at where the Gospel is flourishing. Among the Muslim nations that surround Israel. Tens of thousands are being motivated to find this Jesus they are meeting supernaturally in dreams and visions. They are then being led to believers to hear the Gospel for the first time, and getting saved.  In other words, the Gospel that went out like a tsunami to crash upon distant shores is receding back from whence it came. It is headed back to Jerusalem. 

Isn’t that what Paul prophesied would happen in the last days? After describing how the wild, uncultivated Gentile olive branches were being grafted into the cultivated olive tree of Israel through the Gospel, he said this: “I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel, UNTIL the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so [in this way] all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:25,26).

Paul’s “until” is a timing word. It implies the beginning of something. And also the end of something. It means the Jews who had been deliberately hardened by God to the Gospel for centuries will finally be given ears to hear it. And that all the Gentiles who had been harvested by the Gospel would “come in” to the land to join their Jewish brethren as the Israel of God. Then all Israel would be saved! Both Isaiah and Jeremiah clearly prophesied about this coming second exodus of God’s people out of all the nations (Isaiah 11:1-16 and Jer. 23:5-8).

Understood, of course, is that when all those who had received the Gospel exit their former homelands the Gospel door will slam shut behind them. And the light will go out from those countries. “And darkness will cover the earth, and deep darkness the peoples” (Isa. 60:2).

It appears time is running out for the nations. 

Brian Hennessy is author of Valley of the Steeples

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