 The Jewish Messiah
Was Proclaimed To Israel
__Yeshua-Jesus Was He__
Dr. Michael Brown’s Paper on John Hagee’s
“In Defense of Israel”
By Dr. Michael L.
Brown
Pastor John
Hagee’s new book, In Defense of Israel: The Bible’s Mandate for
Supporting the Jewish State (Lake Mary, Florida: Front Line, 2007), was
publicized by announcements stating that the book would “shake
Christian theology.”
The following positions are explicitly laid out in the
book:
Ø The Jewish
people, as a whole, did not reject Jesus as Messiah.
Ø Jesus did
not come to earth to be the Messiah.
Ø Jesus
refused by word and deed to be the Messiah.
Ø The Jews
cannot be blamed for not accepting what was never offered.
Statements like this must be evaluated in light of 1 John
2:22: “Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the
Christ [i.e., Messiah]. Such a man is the antichrist—he denies the
Father and the Son.” As commentator Stephen S. Smalley explained,
“The true believer is the one who accepts the Christhood of Jesus,
whereas those who deny his messianic identity declare themselves to be on the
side of the antichrist” (Word Biblical Commentary).
What could possibly be the motivation for teaching such
error? First, In Defense of Israel desires to dispel once and for all the
notion that all Jews are Christ-killers, a terrible lie that has fueled
anti-Semitism in the Church for more than 1,500 years. Second, the book wants
to refute the false teaching of replacement theology, explaining that,
“Replacement theologians have said that ‘the covenant with Israel
was broken because she would not accept Jesus Christ whom God
sent.’” (See p. 132 of In Defense of Israel.) Tragically, in the
attempt to fight against these serious errors, a more serious error has now
been introduced. Yet some believers – and even leaders! – are buying into this error hook, line, and sinker, and
some have begun to teach and preach it as well.
Since the publication of the book, Pastor Hagee issued some clarifying remarks, but the clarifications
only complicate the issues and fail to renounce and remove the error.
Here are three fundamental statements that all
believers should be able to affirm without hesitation:
1) Jesus came to be the Messiah. This is the
fundamental message of the New Testament, which is why we call him
“Christ” (meaning, “Messiah”). And it is a
fundamental message of the Scriptures that the Messiah had to suffer and die
if he was one day to rule and reign (see, e.g., Luke 24:25-27, 44-47), a biblical
truth that most of the Jewish people of Yeshua’s
day missed, a biblical truth that most Jews through the ages have continued
to miss, and a biblical truth that In Defense of Israel has now fed into as
well.
In the clarifying statements that made since the
publication of his book, it was explained that Jesus came to be the suffering
Messiah but not the reigning Messiah – something, of course, that we
all knew, and something that would hardly “shake Christian
theology” – but these statements have simply introduced another
nuance to the error, since nowhere in the New Testament is such a distinction
made.
In other words, God did not say to Israel, “It’s fine that you rejected Jesus as Messiah because
he did not come in the political way you expected. He had to die in order to
be the Savior of the world, so you are not guilty.” There is not a hint
of such a message in the Scriptures, which simply proclaim him as the
Messiah, period.
That’s why Jesus explicitly identified himself as
the Messiah in the Gospels (see, e.g., Matt 16:16-17; Mark 14:61-62; Luke
7:20-23; John 4:25-26; 5:39, 45-47; 10:24-25) – not as the suffering
Messiah, whom his people were supposed to reject so that he could die, as
opposed to the reigning Messiah, whom they would one day receive, but simply
as the Messiah – and that’s why the Gospel authors frequently
announced him as the Messiah (in Greek, the Christ; see, e.g., Luke 2:11, 26;
John 1:41; 3:28; 11:27; 20:31). And that’s why the apostles proclaimed
him as the Messiah in Acts (see, e.g., Acts 2:31, 36; 3:18, 20; 4:26; 5:42;
8:5; 9:22; 17:2-3; 18:5, 28; 26:23).
I would encourage you to look up every reference cited
here. It is all quite simple, forthright, and easy to understand, and nowhere
is any distinction made between the suffering and reigning Messiah. To
repeat: Jesus is proclaimed as the Messiah of Israel, period, and because he
is the Messiah of Israel, he is the Savior of the world.
2) The Jewish people rejected their Messiah. Although
all Jews are not Christ-killers (God forbid!), and although the entire Jewish
nation did not play a role in the crucifixion of Jesus, God held the Jewish
people in Jesus’ day responsible for his death and, more significantly,
he held them responsible for rejecting Jesus the Messiah after his
resurrection. The New Testament witness is explicit and consistent on this.
That’s why the apostles preached to “the
people of Israel” that they were guilty of rejecting the Messiah (Acts
2:22-23, 36; 3:13-15, 17, 19; 4:10-11; 5:30; 7:52; 13:27-28; see also John
1:12), and that’s why Paul spoke of Israel’s hardening, breaking
off, stumbling, transgression, and rejection (see Rom 9:31; 10:3; 11:7,
11-12, 15, 20 – although with the full expectation of Israel’s
future redemption; see Rom 11:11-15, 25-26). Again, I encourage you to take a
moment to look up these passages. They are striking in their force and
consistency.
Because of this rejection, severe judgment came on the
Jewish people in the first century, as prophesied by Yeshua with tears (see
Luke 19:41-44; see also Matt 23:29-37) and as taught in his parables (see,
e.g., Matt 21:33-46; 22:1-14).
As painful as this witness is, it cannot be rewritten,
nor can anyone lessen Israel’s guilt because it was God’s will
that Jesus died on the cross. To the contrary, just as it was God’s
will that Joseph be sold into Egyptian slavery and yet at the same time his
brothers were guilty of sinning against him (Gen 44:16-45:5; 50:14-20), so
also it was God’s will that Yeshua die for our sins while at the same
time the Jewish people, along with Herod and Pilate and the Romans, were
guilty of having him crucified (see Acts 2:22-24; 4:27-28).
It is scripturally impossible to claim that “the
Jews cannot be blamed for not accepting what was never offered.” A
glorious offer was made and refused, and that’s why Paul’s heart
was broken (see Rom 9:1-5).
3) Jesus remains the Jewish Messiah, and there is no
salvation for the Jewish people outside of faith in him. Although Pastor Hagee has consistently stated that he does not teach
“dual covenant” theology, referring to the false concept that
Jews can be saved outside of faith in Jesus, his new teaching certainly aids
and abets that error. After all, if “The Jews Did Not Reject Jesus as
Messiah” (as stated in bold print in his book), and if “Jesus
refused by word and deed to be the Messiah” (be it the “reigning
Messiah” or not), then, not only can it be said that “the Jews
[in Jesus’ day] cannot be blamed for not accepting what was never
offered” but that the Jews in any day cannot be blamed for not
accepting Yeshua.
This again is a fundamental denial of the Word of God,
and although In Defense of Israel claims that the “message of the
gospel was from Israel, not to Israel,” Jesus, Peter, and Paul declared
that the message of the gospel was to Israel first, and then from Israel to
the nations (see Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8; 3:26; 13:32-39; Rom 1:16; in
Paul’s words to the Jewish leaders in Rome, it was “for the sake
of the hope of Israel” that he was bound in chains; Acts 28:20).
To be sure, there are a number of other errors found in
the critical section of In Defense of Israel (including the myth that there
was a so-called cup of the Messiah, the alleged fourth cup of the Passover
meal that Yeshua supposedly refused to drink), but this is not the place to
address those concerns, and to focus on the smaller problems would detract
from the larger picture.
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