Over the next few weeks, we will be re-publishing a series from the original Prophecy Today magazine, looking at the Old Testament prophets and the relevance of their message today.

Prophecy Then and Now

Before we seek to learn from the examples of the prophets, it must be understood that there are significant differences between the prophetic ministry in the Old Testament and the prophetic ministry today.

For one thing, the biblical prophets (speaking and writing under the influence of the Holy Spirit) were used by God to create part of the canon of Scripture. Today the canon is complete. Modern prophetic speech and writing should be assessed by it and subject to its authority – it should not add to it.

Secondly, the Old Testament prophets were often lone voices, whereas today prophecy has been shared out among believers as a whole-Body ministry. Whilst individuals are still called and gifted prophetically, they now function within the Body of Messiah and are accountable to it. 'Lone voice' prophets are raised up only when the leadership structures within the Body have gone so badly astray that true accountability is no longer possible.

With this context established, we turn first to the ministry and message of Amos, who in the eighth century BC was the earliest of the writing prophets in the Bible.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE, WHO NEEDS ENEMIES?

John Fieldsend looks at the Prophet Amos.

Owing to the way in which our Bibles are laid out we could easily miss the impact that Amos must have had on his listeners and readers, because he was almost certainly the first of a new line of prophets who were now to confront Israel and Judah with their sins for several centuries to come.

Not only did he represent the appearance of a new type of ministry, but he arrived out of the blue, uninvited, unauthorised and without any credentials - in his own words, "neither a prophet nor a prophet's son, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees" (Amos 7:14).

A Southerner from the tribe of Judah, Amos crossed the border into Israel to preach a dynamic, immediately challenging and socially and politically uncompromising message. But it was more than a just a challenge to social and moral corruption and the need for reformation. The prophet was captivated by his vision of the holiness of God - a holiness which demanded judgment upon all the nations of the world - but particularly one that would befall the people whom God had called into a special covenant relationship with him. Because his message was immediately relevant it remains permanently so, for men's hearts have not changed, and similar situations recur in different guises in every generation.

A New Style of Ministry

We cannot be sure of the exact date when Amos began his ministry but most biblical scholars think that Amos preceded Hosea by about 15 years and Isaiah by about 20 years. It could be that there was a period of overlap between these three men's ministries (for Hosea and Isaiah there clearly was an overlap).

As we begin to look at Amos, we need to understand that God was here bringing a new style of ministry into the life of Israel and Judah. It is not that prophets were unknown before; from Samuel onwards the prophetic ministry was part of Israel's heritage. But from the time of Amos we have prophets who not only spoke to particular situations, but who also wrote prophetically to the wider social order in which they lived.

From Amos onwards, we see prophets emerging who not only spoke into specific situations, but also wrote prophetically about the wider social order.

Implicit in Israel's mono-theism was the belief that God was Lord of all the nations of the world, but Amos brought out the fuller implications of that truth. His opening words were thundering denunciations of the injustice and conduct of the nations surrounding Israel. Through these he must have received the applause of those in Israel who heard him preach: one nation after another was denounced in God's name for the cruelty of their campaigns of military expansion under which Israel, as well as other nations, had suffered so much.

Now, however, Israel was experiencing something of a political and economic revival. Its people felt that the Lord was once again smiling upon them, and they were savouring the promise of divine retribution on their enemies.

But even as they applauded these sentiments, Amos thrust home not only the logic of God's total sovereignty and unquestionable justice, but also the full implications of what it meant for Israel to be the covenant people of the living God, "You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins" (Amos 3:2).

Not only did these threats strike at the root of what they understood as being the 'chosen' people; they hit especially hard because they were spoken at a time when - as we have just seen - Israel's political and economic fortunes were on the up and up. In one sentence Amos demolished two of the people's false foundations: a wrong understanding of what it meant to be 'chosen', and the view that prosperity was in itself a sign of God's favour.

Amos demolished the people's false assumptions about what it meant to be God's 'chosen' nation.

Amos did not, of course, deny the fact of God's covenant and of Israel's unique relationship with the Lord. Rather, he highlighted its significance, "Do two walk together unless they have agreed?...Does a lion roar...when he has no prey?...Does a bird fall into a trap where no snare has been set?" (Amos 3:3-5).

With a series of rhetorical questions Amos presses home his authority, "Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets. The lion has roared - who will not fear? The Sovereign Lord has spoken - who can but prophesy?" (Amos 3:7-8).

Learning to Sift 'Prophecy'

There is so much that is socially, morally and politically relevant to the situation in which we ourselves live. It stares us in the face if we read the book of Amos with honest and open hearts. But it is the element of prophecy that I want to concentrate on, because there are so many voices that would speak to us in the Lord's name, and so much that is offered to us as being his word. How can we test such voices? By what principles can we sift that which is pressed upon us? How do we discern the wheat from the chaff?

Factual Fulfilment is Not Enough

The test of a prophet (according to Deuteronomy 18:22) is whether the things he/she prophesies actually come to pass. That test surely demands that prophecies are of a clear and distinct nature.

The test of a prophet is whether the things he or she prophesies actually come to pass.

Important though this is, however, it is not enough for 'prophecies' (and, in a similar vein, 'words of knowledge') to be factual in content. They can be factual and still not of the Lord. An obvious example is the girl possessed of a demonic spirit in Acts 16:16-18. Deuteronomy 13:1-5 gives us other vital principles regarding the testing of prophecy:

• Is it scriptural?
• Is it honouring to God?
• Does it draw the recipients of the prophecy nearer to God, or does it lead them away from him into error?
• Is the person giving the prophecy seeking God's honour or promoting his or her own status?

The same principles apply to other spiritual gifts, for example Acts 8:18-19; 19:13-16.

Spiritual Power is Dynamite

It is an awesome thought that in this matter of prophecy, indeed in the whole area of life in the Spirit, we are handling dynamite (literally, 'dunamis'). It would be convenient if, when its power was abused, God saw to it that the fuse somehow did not ignite.

However, that would be too artificial, and would negate our real humanity. Yet this has all too frequently been the teaching of the church, and in so doing it has trivialised the reality and objectivity of the life of God's Spirit in his church.

When the gifts of God are deliberately prostituted or just carelessly trivialised, they are not merely nullified - that would be too easy and convenient. They become the vehicle of God's judgment and - more distressingly - can become the vehicle of Satan's deception. It is therefore incumbent upon the Church, and especially its leadership, to discern where this is happening and to exercise its discipline with love, and yet with firmness. That is why, especially in the area of spiritual gifts, we need structures in which there is real accountability.

Spiritual power is dynamite - when the gifts of God are deliberately prostituted they become vehicles of his judgment.

We are not to create witch-hunts or seek to create the 'perfect church', but where we see people in positions of leadership and influence abusing spiritual power, we must not remain silent.

Speaking the Truth in Love

The parable of the wheat and tares recounted in Matthew 13:24-30 is sometimes wrongly put forward as an excuse to eschew this difficult task. The true interpretation of this parable is given an eschatological context by Jesus himself in verses 36-43. The teaching does not absolve the church from the responsibility of discerning the origin and nature of its spiritual life, nor its leadership from taking appropriate action.

Where error is seen to persist outside the area of our own leadership responsibility, and where such error is causing havoc among God's people, we cannot simply ignore it by remaining silent.

The pronouncement of God's judgment by Amos was specific, although having worldwide relevance. As a citizen of the Southern Kingdom he did not hesitate to speak against the specific sin of its Northern neighbour (Amos 7:10-17). Apparent interference in the life of a community other than our own is, of course, a serious matter, but we have to speak the truth to one another in love.

When error persists and causes havoc among God's people, we cannot simply ignore it by remaining silent.

Christians are all members of One Body, and we are responsible for one another and to one another, even across the divisions in the Church. We need one another. We need to encourage one another. We need to give and receive from one another all the riches of God's bounty. But, where necessary, we need to speak words of warning and godly discipline, even where we may be accused of it being 'none of our business'. That was part of the prophetic ministry of Amos that is still relevant for us today.

Originally published in Prophecy Today, Vol 11 No 4, July/Aug 1995.

For other articles in this series, click here.

The subject of God's judgment is a tricky one for Christians and as such it is often avoided - but what does Scripture teach us?

The subject of judgment is a tricky one for Christians and as such it is often avoided, lest we put people off God by positioning him as vindictive, just waiting for an opportunity to trap us in our errors and pour out his wrath.

The Bible teaches us that God is pure and holy and unable to compromise - yet also full of compassion and love. He will shake the nations if necessary - or leave us to our own devices, like the father in the parable of the prodigal son. Yet, also like this father, he mourns for his child and desires redemption and restored relationship.

Through a full and balanced reading of Scripture we come to know the emotions of our God that bring mercy balanced with justice in the context of judgments that can shock, punish, bless or restore individuals and nations.

Judgment in Hebrew: mishpat

When we talk of 'judgment', what do we actually mean? The Hebrew word for judgment is mishpat. It is a word with legal connotations, meaning a verdict (either favourable or unfavourable). Judgment of God is not only associated with woe and punishment – it can also be to do with blessing. Simply put, biblical 'judgment' refers to the judicial decisions God makes as he interacts with mankind. Our closest analogy is a court of law where a judge sums up the evidence and makes a decision concerning right and wrong, justice and mercy.

This, however, is an insufficient picture, because it sets God into a framework of constantly presiding over a law court. His relationship with mankind is deeper than that, being founded on pure love and desire for fellowship with the people he created. God as judge is active in his responses to the world situation - not passively judging from afar.

The Hebrew language is more verb-orientated than noun-orientated - the Hebrew words for judging and judgments imply action. Unlike human judges, who endeavour to stand back from the circumstances presented to them in order to make an impartial decision, God interacts with his creation with his own righteous agenda, working to bring about his own purposes.

Nevertheless, it is important for us to know that judgments of God can be favourable or unfavourable, depending on the circumstances of our walk with him.

God is active and involved in the world situation, not passively judging from afar.

Judges Appointed by Moses

God also gives his people some responsibility to make judgments themselves. For instance, Moses appointed judges. The Hebrew word for these judges is shophatim, derived from the same root word as mishpat. Exodus 18 contains the account of the appointment of these first judges from the elders of Israel.

Moses was to "teach them the statutes and laws, and show them the way in which they must walk and the work they must do" (18:20) and the elders were to "judge the people at all times ...every small matter they shall judge...the hard cases they brought to Moses" (18:22, 26) who stood before God for the people (18:19).

Some disputes were to be settled as in a court of law, but this was just a part of the picture. The main purpose of the judges was to help the people of God to understand how to walk with him, according to his teaching (Torah). The picture is of people desiring to have a close walk with God and wanting to get it right. The elders settled the simpler interpretations of Torah and Moses, who was the intercessor for the people, took the hardest cases to God.

In Moses' time, judges were appointed to help the people understand how to walk closely with God. They wanted to get it right.

With this picture in the background, we can begin a balanced study of what else the Bible says about the judgments of God. We can also form an idea of God's vision for justice and mercy for all nations.

The Big Picture

God's first decision (judgment) regarding the world was to create it! Into the world he placed people with free wills. How he weighed up the risks and the consequences is not in our ability to understand, but his decision was made with the logic of Heaven.

The first consequential judgment came at the Fall, when God judged to send mankind forth from Eden into this imperfect world environment. Our need to struggle against sin and to experience sickness and all other evils is a consequence of God's judgment on Adam's and Eve's sin. Additionally, that same satan that tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden and Jesus in the wilderness (Matt 4) is allowed by God to tempt us too (James 1:13-15, 4:7-10, Luke 22:3, 22:31).

God has decided that this will remain the condition of the world until the time he returns and brings in a new heaven and a new earth, as described in the Book of Revelation. We may not understand this fully, but we must accept the nature of this world's imperfections, both physical and spiritual, and – crucially - discover God's purposes in them. Indeed, how mankind responds to these circumstances gives rise to further judgments from God.

The Great Flood

The Great Flood at the time of Noah indicates the seriousness of our need to seek God and follow his ways. The consequences of mankind using their free will to walk away from God brought the judgment of the Flood.

Yet what was in God's heart when he "was sorry that he had made man on the earth" (Gen 6:6)? Scripture says that "he was grieved" (Gen 6:6). This is the same God who looked on his creation and judged "that it was very good" (Gen 1:31). The judgments of God well up out of the emotions of his pure heart. The results can be catastrophic - but God suffers too.

God's judgments well up out of the emotions of his pure heart. The result might be catastrophic for humans – but God suffers too.

Covenants and Conditions

When God made covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David, and through Jeremiah, he established parameters for his judgments.

One of the 'biggest' words in the Bible is if. God's covenants with Noah and Abraham placed responsibility upon God himself. There were no ifs. God's decision (judgment) was to ensure seedtime and harvest for all generations so that he could draw a covenant family to himself, whatever it would take for him and for us to accomplish this.

Yet conditions for human beings were also made clear within this overall plan - especially in the covenant made with Moses – conditions not for ensuring its ultimate fulfilment (God's responsibility), but laying out the consequences for their obedience and disobedience within it. So, up until the coming of Messiah, Deuteronomy 27 and 28 were the conditions for God's covenant with Israel. These passages are full of ifs: blessings for obedience and consequences for disobedience.

Studied carefully, we can discern that God will bring about growing hardship for his people if they disobey the terms of the covenant, bringing initial signs in the physical environment and eventually, if necessary, even removing them for a time from their Promised Land. Later, the Prophets were sent to remind Israel of the covenant and interpret the signs of judgment around them (eg see Amos 4, which can be read alongside Deuteronomy 27 and 28).

In the Mosaic covenant God laid out conditions for his people – blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience.

Yet, always remember the heart of God for his people. It was not with a vindictive attitude that God sent his people to exile in Babylon. The tears of Jeremiah over fallen Jerusalem (read the Book of Lamentations!) are a prophetic insight into the sadness of God. This sadness can be contrasted with the joy of God over his people when his judgments have brought blessing (reflected wonderfully in many Psalms and in the Song of Songs).

Removing Protection

When God sent Israel into captivity, he took away the nation's protection and allowed their enemies to prevail. He always takes responsibility (read Habakkuk, for example); he ensured that those who were used to sift Israel were themselves to be judged (see, for example, Ezekiel 35). But this principle of taking away protection is a key to understanding many of God's corrective judgments in the world today, as well as in the history of Israel (eg Num 14:9; Ezra 9:9; Ps 64; Isa 25:1-4, 30:13).

If we reject the protection of God, or if he himself removes it, we are vulnerable to the dangers of the world and of our unseen spiritual enemies, and also the consequences of our own sin and foolishness.

The judgment of God, therefore, is often outworked when he takes his protection away, so that we discover our need of him. We are in a fallen world, subject to temptation and the results of evil all around – but remember that this is the world where God sent Adam and Eve because of their own rebellion against him. In a way, then, we can bring judgment on ourselves by rejecting the protection of God. This applies to belief in Jesus too, and the invitation to eternal life through faith in him (John 3:18).

Conditions for Israel

There is always a way back - even for a nation. It is not God's desire to punish, but to redeem. Solomon prayed to God when the Temple was consecrated; God answered and gave conditions for the restoration of Israel, even if they were scattered across the earth. The prayer and God's response (2 Chron 6-7) should be read in full - carefully.

There is always a way back – even for a nation. God's desire is not to punish, but to redeem.

The verse that is well-known is 2 Chronicles 7:14, "If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins and heal their land." The history of Israel (whether within God's blessings or curses) depends on their living by faith and obedience according to the Torah given through Moses. Yet, even at the extremity of God's judgments, God has covenant promises which means he will never abandon them completely.

Though the above show God's character, compassion and forgiveness and therefore give hope to any nation, the context of the passage is a promise directly for Israel as God's chosen nation. Sometimes we of another nation would like to read it as directly to us, but that would mean that we have a covenant with God like Israel has. We must not take this lightly or become fanciful and confused. The principles for any nation are found in Jeremiah 18.

Conditions for Any Nation

Jeremiah was shown at the potter's house that, like a potter re-modelling clay, God could re-model even a Gentile nation. The promise was similar to 2 Chronicles 7:14 but subtly different. We might think that we could read 2 Chronicles 7:14 as being that if Christians pray earnestly then God would heal their land. However, Jeremiah 18:7-10 requires that the nation as a whole repents and seeks God. Of course Christians can intercede, but ultimately the nation must come to God as a whole.

Rather than 2 Chronicles 7:14, it would be more realistic for Christians to place their hope in and quote "If that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring on it" (Jer 18:8).

Nevertheless, the God of judgment is also a God of redemption and signs of his judgment always come with hope. Indeed, we can see God's judgments as having the purpose of redemption, being designed to turn hearts back to him.

God's word contains promises of hope to both Israel and to Gentile nations – his judgments always have the purpose of redemption.

Favour Before Woe

This is "the year of the Lord's favour" (Isa 61:2; Luke 4:18-19) and not yet "the day of vengeance of our God" (Isa 61:2b). This is the period of God's covenant purposes when he is holding out a hand of mercy to all that will turn to him from any nation.

When this phase of God's purposes for redemption is over, his promised judgments will be termed woes because they will have the purpose of punishment rather than refinement. This is what we find in Revelation 18. Though this day will come we are not there yet! This is important to remember because the way we understand the judgments of God influences the way we understand his character.

Justice and Mercy

The weeping of Jeremiah over Jerusalem, recorded in the Book of Lamentations, is echoed in the weeping of Jesus over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44) and is to be borne in mind as we read Luke 21 and Matthew 24. The judgments of God, first on Jerusalem in 70 AD, and on Israel in exile since then, and the mighty signs and judgments in the world and on all nations are necessary. They are in the context of a gathering from all nations of God's covenant people as the Gospel goes out. James understood the balance in God's heart when he wrote "mercy triumphs over judgment" (James 2:13).

This points us to the Cross of Jesus Christ where, in the judgment of the Father, the Lord took all the pain of the sin of the world upon himself. (Selah – pause and reflect)

Furthermore, the immense happenings in this world described by Jesus in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21 are not so much judgments, but signs of the Lord's return (Matt 24:3). We draw near to the momentous climax of this world's existence – no wonder there is such a shaking! Such is needed to draw mankind's attention to God and his covenant purposes.

The immense shakings going on in the world are not so much judgments as signs of the Lord's return.

Without compromise God is moving through history, gathering his community who will experience the reverse of the Fall, whilst the wider consequences of human sin bring us to the climax of history - Jesus' return and God's final judgment of all people.

The Prophetic Task

So what is God doing and why? Well, we need only glance at current world affairs to know that God is not careless about our world and is working out his own purposes – including his chief goal of preparing a people of his own for the time of Jesus' return.

Though his ways are beyond our full understanding, we can gain insights that are sufficient for our day-to-day lives. Let us as a prophetic people be sure to understand the heart of our God so that we can truly understand the times and know what must be done.

We have not learnt the lessons of the Holocaust: the Jewish community in the UK is more vulnerable than at any time since the Second World War.

We are launching Prophecy Today UK online on the first day of Passover, 4 April 2015. This date was chosen because Passover is foundational to biblical faith and prophetic understanding, and is an “appointed time” (in Hebrew, moed) in Scripture when God meets with his people.

Passover in 1945

Having chosen this date, we then realised its significance in European history. Seventy years ago on 4 April 1945, which also fell during ‘the Season of our Freedom’ (another name for Passover), the US Army liberated the Nazi death camp at Ohrdruf, Germany, part of the Buchenwald camp network.

Ohrdruf was the first concentration camp to be liberated by the US Army (Auschwitz in Poland having been liberated by the Russians on 27 January 1945). Among the American soldiers was 20-year-old Charlie Payne from Kansas, who later became the great uncle of President Barack Obama. Obama said that when his uncle returned home, "he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months”.¹

Also overwhelmed was General Eisenhower, who wrote:

The things I saw beggar description…The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick…I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda.'²

The Allies realised the importance of documenting the German atrocities in film because they thought they would not be believed. As Churchill said, “no words can express the horror…of these frightful crimes”.³ Instead, the images captured by the Allied armies’ film units speak more loudly than words ever could.

In the 1945 film German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, produced by Sidney Bernstein (assisted by Alfred Hitchcock) for the British Ministry for Information, Richard Crossman’s elegiac script commented: “Unless the world learns the lessons these pictures teach, night will fall. But by God’s grace, we who live will learn.”

“Unless the world learns the lessons these pictures teach, night will fall. But by God’s grace, we who live will learn.” - German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, 1945

After the War, many Jews left the graveyard of Europe for the Promised Land. Shamefully, thousands were turned back by the British and were placed in camps in Cyprus and elsewhere. Others were returned to Germany to their horror.

There is speculation that the British government shelved Bernstein’s film so that pity for the Holocaust refugees would not fuel demand for a Jewish homeland in British-controlled territory.⁴ It took until January this year for Bernstein’s film to be shown in its entirety for the first time on British television.⁵ How different would government policy have been, had it been shown to a horrified public in 1945?

Have we learned the lessons of the Holocaust? Or, to echo Crossman’s haunting warning, is night falling? Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme last year, Sir Nicholas Winton, the “British Schindler” who organised the Czech Kinderstransport, said "I don't think we've learned anything...the world today is in a more dangerous situation than it has ever been."⁶

The rise of anti-Semitism in the UK and Europe

Anti-Semitic incidents in the UK reached an all-time high and escalated around Europe during the Gaza conflict in July-August 2014.

In Germany, molotov cocktails were lobbed into the Bergische synagogue in Wuppertal, which was previously destroyed on Kristallnacht. A Berlin imam, Abu Bilal Ismail, called on Allah to "destroy the Zionist Jews…Count them and kill them, to the very last one."⁷ In France, eight synagogues were attacked and one, in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, was firebombed by a 400-strong mob.⁸

In the UK, the Jewish community’s watchdog for anti-Semitism, the Community Security Trust, recorded 1,168 anti-Semitic incidents in 2014, more than twice as many as 2013.⁹

In London, October 2014, “Five girls from a Jewish secondary school were approached by a man at a London underground station who said: ‘Being Jewish is wrong. You are going to die if you carry on being Jewish’ and ‘I will kill you all after school.’ He grabbed one of the girls by the wrist and said: ‘Come with me and be a Christian’. She kicked him and ran away.”¹⁰

In Norfolk, July 2014, “A leaflet found among Israeli produce in a supermarket featured an image of the Israeli flag with the title ‘The flag of Zionist racist scum’. It read: ‘Deny the Holocaust? Of course there was a holocaust. What a pity Adolf and Co didn’t manage to finish the job properly!’”¹¹

Prejudice in the UK public

We cannot dismiss these incidents as the actions of extremists because prejudice against Jews is alive and well among the general public. The government’s Campaign Against Antisemitism found that nearly half of Britons thought at least one anti‑Semitic view presented to them was ‘definitely or probably true’.¹²

In its Annual Antisemitism Barometer 2015, published a week after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, it concludes:

Britain is at a tipping point: unless antisemitism is met with zero tolerance, it will continue to grow and British Jews may increasingly question their place in their own country.¹³

It also reported that:

Well over half of British Jews (58%) believe Jews may have no long-term future in Europe and "The Mayor of London’s office revealed that in July 2014, when fighting between Israel and Hamas peaked, the Metropolitan Police Service recorded its worst ever month for hate crime in London, 95% of which was antisemitic hate crime directly related to fighting between Israel and Hamas."¹⁴

In the media, Jews in Europe are consistently identified with and blamed for Israel’s actions. Reports describing Palestinians and “Jews” rather than Palestinians and “Israelis” in coverage of events in Israel have reinforced this perception. The Jewish people’s unique dual religious and ethnic identity crosses national boundaries and so anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are inextricably linked.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressing the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament) commented on how anti-Semitism has been dressed in new clothes:

...in much of the western world, the old hatred has been translated into more sophisticated language for use in polite society. People who would never say they hate and blame the Jews for their own failings or the problems of the world instead declare their hatred of Israel and blame the only Jewish state for the problems of the Middle East.

He also said that while criticism of Israeli government policy is not anti-Semitic, criticism that targets only Israel while ignoring violence and oppression in its neighbours is unacceptable.¹⁵

This 'New Anti-semitism', as it is called, based on hatred of Israel’s nationhood (rather than religion or race), has been identified by a number of commentators from the 1960s onwards, including historian Leon Poliakov, who published From Anti-Zionism to Anti-Semitism (1969), and Holocaust survivor Jacques Givet, who used the term 'neo-antisemitism' about the Left’s anti-Zionism. Much has been written since about this phenomenon.^{16, 17}

The Church has fallen broadly into two camps: Christian Zionists (and supporters of Israel of various hues who dislike the term 'Christian Zionist'), and those who question Israel’s right to exist and are sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians.

Paul Charles Merkley in Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel¹⁸ says that Christian anti Zionism is in part due to the history of missions to the Middle East:

Beginning in the nineteenth century, Christian missionaries from the West – Protestant, Catholic and evangelical – sought the conversion of the Jews of Palestine for about a century, with only the most modest results. On the other hand, missionary efforts among the Arabs did win substantial conversions in the latter half of the nineteenth century and a modest number since. Not unreasonably, Church organizations have been much more open to the political aspirations of their clients than to those of their clients’ adversaries.

He also points out that anti-Zionism “provides respectable camouflage for hostility towards Jews and Judaism that cannot be admitted to oneself or others.” It allows Christians a platform among liberal and fashionable thinkers who condemn Israel as 'apartheid' and 'racist'. It also looks good for the Church to be seen as a champion of 'the oppressed'.¹⁹

Attacks on the increase since Paris and Copenhagen murders

The recent spike in anti-Semitic attacks has continued in the wake of the Paris and Copenhagen attacks, which have spawned a rash of UK incidents.

In Radio 4’s programme Anti-Semitism in the UK: Is it Growing?,²⁰ Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan, the national lead on Jewish communities for the Association of Chief Police officers, said that in January 2014 there were 28 anti-Semitic crimes, but this January there were 100. The increase was due to events in Paris inspiring copycat behaviour but also a greater desire to report such incidents.

Also interviewed on the programme was Mehmood Naqshbandi, who visits mosques around the country and advises government and police on Muslim matters. Asked how common Muslim animosity is towards Jewish communities, he said:

It’s a problem which is endemic in the Muslim community. It’s widespread; it covers generations. It is taken for granted when Muslims are talking to other Muslims, people don’t feel any obligation to hold back from expressing the kind of casual racist views about Jews and about the Jewish community that fits the nasty stereotypes of caricatures of Jewish behaviour, expectations of Jewish conduct and so on. It’s a deep-rooted problem, a problem which is not challenged.²¹

Conflicting analysis of Charlie Hebdo attack and other Islamist terror attacks

The Charlie Hebdo massacre in January 2015, including the related attack on a Jewish supermarket, has been blamed on the disaffection of French Muslim youth. If they were more integrated, better off, less marginalised in French society, these things would not happen.

Similarly, after an Islamist terror plot to kill Belgian police was foiled, Professor Peter Neumann of Kings College London (interviewed on Channel 4 news) said the cause was socio-economic. Disenfranchised young men on the margins of society were the problem with Belgium having the highest number of European fighters going to Syria and Iraq. Channel Four News anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy responded that this was a naive view and that there were also men involved in terror from well-off backgrounds.²²

The debate in the European Parliament on security in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shooting was no more illuminating. More heat than light was shed, with opinions sharply dividing over Muslim immigration.²³

The roots of anti-Semitism

Pundits and politicians do not know how to tackle Islamist terror because they do not fully understand its roots.

As well as the fierce jealousy for Muhammad which motivated the Charlie Hebdo massacre, anti-Zionism is a key reason for Islamist terror. Beneath that (often ill-concealed) is anti-Semitism. Journalists and politicians insist that you can be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic, but the line is frequently crossed. What is certain is that Jews around the world are being identified with Israel and are consequently suffering prejudice and violence, in other words anti-Semitism.

Academics have debated the roots and causes of anti-Semitism to find a unifying factor: is it economic, social, religious, political? Today, Israel’s political actions are blamed. However, that cannot be the cause of anti-Semitism pre-1948 (the year the modern state of Israel was formed).

Anti-Semitism has morphed into different expressions through the ages, but always with one aim: the destruction of the Jewish people. Edward Flannery, in his classic study of anti-Semitism, The Anguish of the Jews,²⁴ concludes that the only unifying aspect of anti-Semitism is its spiritual nature.

Both the religious anti-Judaism of the Christian Church and modern racial anti-Semitism, epitomised by the Nazis, share a spiritual root: an unacknowledged hatred of Christ.

Flannery comments that scholars “have varyingly perceived in the hatred of the Jew an unconscious hatred of Christ, a rebellion against the Christian ‘yoke’ no longer found sweet (Matt 11:30); in a word, a Christophobia.”²⁵ Freud recognised it and said: “In its depths anti-Judaism is anti-Christianity.”²⁶

A number of prominent Nazis were brought up as Catholics: Himmler, Goebbels, Hoess and Hitler. In order to pursue their dream of unfettered German power, they had to throw off moral restraint and embrace a pagan view of man as master of his destiny. Christ and Christianity could serve the Reich but they had to be purged of their Jewish root: the Nazis sought to throw off the shackles of Judeo-Christian morality and return to a mythically powerful Aryan pagan past.

Flannery writes:

His [Hitler’s] genocidal decision against the Jewish people represented, again symbolically, the annihilation of his moral (Jewish-Christian) conscience, which stood in the way of his grandiose dream of a Thousand Year Reich founded on an apotheosis of the German Volk and of himself as its Fuehrer and Saviour.²⁷

In other words, the Nazis did not want simply to destroy the Jews; they wanted to be the Jews. They wanted to be the chosen people, to usurp their place. This usurping spirit is found in scripture. God’s Adversary is described in Isaiah 14:14 as one whose declared aim is, “I will make myself like the Most High.” This is the spirit of Anti-Christ:

He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God. (2 Thess 2:4)

"The Nazis did not want simply to destroy the Jews; they wanted to be the Jews."

Flannery asserts that “anti-Semitism is at its deepest root a unified phenomenon and from all angles an anti-religious one”²⁸ which resides “in the deepest chambers of the spirit.”²⁹

The rebellion behind anti-Semitism

Nazism was a perfect storm combination of the legacy of Christian anti-Semitism and modern racial anti-Semitism.

It highlighted that not only Christophobia but nomophobia (from nomos, Greek for law), or fear of law (specifically God’s moral law epitomised in the Torah), are hallmarks of anti-Semitism. It was a revolt against the word and the Word made flesh (John 1:14).

In pre-war Germany, Nazi-sympathising theologians were keen to reposition the Bible and theology to accommodate National Socialist ideology, specifically by undermining the place of the Old Testament. In 1939, a group of German theologians established The Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, aiming to de-Judaize the New Testament and present an Aryan Jesus.³⁰

This ultimate expression of replacement theology was fuelled by anti-Semitism, but rooted in the rebellion of men’s souls against their Creator and his established order. It was satanically inspired: the one who wishes to overthrow and usurp God’s throne is the one who wishes to destroy the Jewish people because by doing so, he will destroy the hope of the world, the Redeemer, who comes from Israel and to Israel.

"When we reject God’s people, we are rejecting God himself."

Rejection of God’s light and truth

A political satire from the 1960s has been revived in the West End. In The Ruling Class³¹ Jack, a fictional earl and paranoid schizophrenic, firstly imagines he is Christ and then Jack the Ripper. As Jesus, his message of peace and love is rejected as insanity. As Jack the Ripper, he takes his seat in the House of Lords with a fiery speech in favour of capital and corporal punishment. His colleagues applaud wildly (completely unaware the speech is the ranting of a lunatic), in contrast to society's reaction when he believed he was Christ.

The play was intended as an indictment of the establishment, but it also testifies that people are more comfortable with the darkness of sin, condemnation and punishment than with the light of Christ’s love, peace and grace. Man’s rebellious nature is so corrupt that it sees evil in good and good in evil.

The temptation for Adam and Eve was to become the arbiters of good and evil, to dethrone God’s judgement and become their own judges. The Torah, as God’s wisdom, is a “tree of life” to man (Prov 3:18), but it also is the means of our judgement and the harbinger of death to those who reject it (Rom 3:20 and 7:7-9).

We seek to destroy that which exposes and accuses us; Israel as the bearer and enacter of God's Law has paid the price for exposing it to the world and, by its light, exposing the world’s darkness.

The Torah was also the means of keeping Israel separate from other nations: a holy people (Ex 19:6). It prevented them from being assimilated. They had to remain separate in order to be worshippers of God, not idol-worshippers like every other nation, so they could be prepared to receive God himself.

This is why in Israel’s history the Adversary (in Hebrew, Satan) sought alternately either to undermine the Torah by enticing Israel away from God and his Word to make them like all the other nations, or to destroy Israel in order to prevent the coming of the Messiah. If your enemies cannot be assimilated, they must be annihilated and from the Amalekites to Haman, from Herod to Hitler, this murderous desire persists.

The Adversary did not succeed in destroying the Jewish people before the first advent of the Messiah – but he persists because that is only part one of the salvation story.
We await the second coming: Jesus’ promised return in power and glory to reign from Jerusalem over all the earth: “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

Jerusalem is fought over because it is the City to which Messiah will return. He will not find it empty or still being “trampled down by the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24). Instead, he will return to re-gathered Israel:

In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people. (Isa 11:10-11a)

He will redeem Israel and all who have joined with them by faith from among the Gentiles (Eph 2:11-22).

Anti-Semitism and the anti-Christ spirit

The world continually rejects Israel and the Jewish people because they reject God’s call to be joined with them through the Messiah. Through Israel’s particularity, the ‘narrow way’ of the kingdom (Matt 7:14), we are called to become “one new humanity” (Eph 2:15) in spiritual unity (not uniformity) which is the only true peace available to mankind.

However, by placing the Church centre stage in salvation history and declaring that she has superseded Israel in God’s plans and purposes, the majority of believers have failed to understand that the Church is not the main player on the stage of history.

Israel, both people and land, is still the subject of the salvation story because all God’s salvation promises were made to Israel and to those Gentiles who join with her, through her Messiah by faith.

Sadly, before Christian theology was re-assessed in the light of the Holocaust, the Church was the main instrument of Jewish persecution. However, Christians still remain largely unaware of the bleak history of Christian anti-Semitism and how the teaching that the Church has replaced Israel has contributed to it.

Inspiring 'Replacement theology' or supersessionism, the teaching that the Church has replaced Israel in God’s plans and purposes, is the same jealous, usurping spirit, the spirit of Anti-Christ, which aims to overthrow God's end-time plans (for a more in-depth analysis of Replacement theology, click here).

The same spirit is at work in Islamic teaching, which claims that Mohammed’s teachings supersede Judaism and Christianity. Rejected Ishmael jealously insists he was chosen, not his half-brother Isaac: my promises, my land!³² It is a triumphalist theology, unwilling to tolerate difference unless in submission to its rule.

Wherever the Holy Spirit is at work, the anti-Christ spirit, hallmarked by jealousy in man, is also at work. People of all faiths and all religious backgrounds have expressed it. Peace and harmony for mankind, but intolerance and jealousy of the Jewish people are hallmarks of religion of all kinds, including New Age spirituality (one of the main protagonists of the New Age movement, Alice Bailey (a former evangelical Christian³³), equated Judaism with “an evil cosmic energy called ‘The Jewish Force’, which must be eliminated in order for the Age of Aquarius to arrive fully”³⁴).

"Wherever the Holy Spirit is at work, the anti-Christ spirit, hallmarked by jealousy in man, is also at work."

The Jewish leaders who opposed Jesus were said to be jealous of him and that is why they handed him over to Pilate (Mark 15:10). This jealousy continued to be vented against his Jewish followers. In Acts 5:17-18:

Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail.

In militant Islam, this jealous, usurping spirit finds violent, implacable expression. It is fuelled by an irrational spiritual jealousy that cannot be appeased (Prov 27:4). Only the Holy Spirit can withstand and conquer the spirit of anti-Christ and in turn counter it with a godly jealousy that cannot be withstood: “I am very jealous for Jerusalem and Zion” (Zech 1:14).

It is the God of Israel’s land, his city, the place where he has set his name:

In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my Name forever. (2 Chron 33:7)

I will put them on trial for what they did to my inheritance, my people Israel, because they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land. (Joel 3:2)

The Church’s response

After 9/11, there was much talk of the ‘clash of civilizations’ between Islam and western secularism. This is not a battle of civilizations; it is a spiritual war. It must be fought with spiritual weapons.³⁵

Ordinary Muslims are shocked and outraged by extremists and many will be seeking answers; the Church must be prepared to explain, challenge and comfort. We must demonstrate that Christianity is an Eastern religion, which speaks to all peoples, and forms the lost and dwindling heritage of the peoples of the Middle East. We also need to show that Christianity is not a religion for the individual but for the community. Western enlightenment thinking is unappealing to Muslims with its focus on individual rights, because Middle Eastern cultures focus on community cohesion.

However, the Church has its own challenge: anti-Semitism is infecting the Church in the form of Christian anti-Zionism and it must also be addressed. In pre-war Germany, theologians were ready to distance themselves from the Old Testament and from a Jewish Jesus so that they could comfortably reject and persecute the Jewish people.

"Today's Church has appropriated God's promises to Israel and denied its role and place in God's end-time plan."

Today’s Church is dangerously misaligned too. We have appropriated God’s promises to Israel and denied the people and land of Israel their role and place in God’s end-time plan. This means we can comfortably distance ourselves from anti-Semitism because we can claim it is bound up with anti-Zionism. Jews have always been blamed for their own misfortunes and the fight for survival in their own nation is cited as the legitimate cause for Islamic violence.

However, land and people are inextricably linked in God’s schema: “I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth…say to Zion, 'You are my people.'" (Isa 51:16). Zion- land and people -are conflated in this verse illustrating that their destinies are linked: salvation for the Jewish people is connected to the land of promise. It is this very link between land and people that is expressed in the final form of anti-Semitism that is increasing and intensifying today: anti-Zionism.

If we say that Israel has no right to the land God promised them, that those rights were superseded, we are setting ourselves against God’s end time plans. It is his land and by his sovereign choice he has restored his people to it.

We are also denying God’s covenant faithfulness if we say that he has finished with Israel as a nation:

'Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,’ declares the Lord, ‘will Israel ever cease being a nation before me. Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel’ declares the LORD. (Jer 31:36-37)

In that same chapter, Jeremiah 31, God promises the New Covenant to Israel, including a Jerusalem that will never be uprooted or demolished (Jer 31:40). This is not a promise to the Church but to Israel. We are the adopted children, the invited guests, but we have arrogantly overrun the party.

Many are sleep-walking in the end times, accepting unquestioningly the world's political narrative that the conflict between Israel and Palestinians concerns a land which is no longer spiritually significant. This is not to say that Christians should uncritically support the Israeli state’s government and policies, but we must view them through the lens of Scripture, not the other way around. We must also still unstintingly love those who persecute us and God’s people Israel: “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44).

"We must also still unstintingly love those who persecute us and God’s people Israel: “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44)."

We must, though, reject the subtle Christian anti-Semitism which seeks to sever the link between the biblical land of Israel and its current prophetic significance.
Giulio Meotti writes:

The Presbyterian Church USA is considering banning the word “Israel” from its prayers. That anti-Semitic resolution was meant to ‘distinguish between the biblical terms that refer to the ancient land of Israel and the modern political State of Israel’.³⁶

It is imperative that Bible-believing Christians reject this replacement narrative and align with Israel and the Jewish community because the spiritual battle lines are already drawn.

The need for solidarity

A friend doing door-to-door outreach met a Jewish lady who thanked her for calling and commented that the time is coming when Jews and Christians will need to stand together.

That time is now.

The Jewish Chronicle launched a campaign for the government to pay for synagogue security.³⁷ Why should Christian volunteers not show their solidarity with the Jewish community by volunteering to guard synagogues during Saturday services?

After the shooting of a synagogue guard in Denmark, around 1,000 Muslims (5% of the Muslim population) in Norway formed a 'ring of peace' around a synagogue in Oslo.³⁸

Where are the Christian demonstrations of solidarity? We cannot retreat into our safe churches and relax because it is not us at risk. Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous words, written after being imprisoned by the Nazis, still resonate:

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews, I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

Dan Hodges in The Telegraph: “…as the Paris attacks proved, they are still coming for the Jews. In reality, they have never stopped coming for the Jews.”³⁹

The lesson from the Middle Eastern nations under Islamic State control is that since the Jews had already left, the Christians are next in their sights. If we withdraw from the Jewish community when they need our support, how can we dare pray for our own protection?

After the Paris terror attacks, some London schools cancelled Holocaust education trips to synagogues. Two rabbis from a Kingston synagogue commented that although the schools felt they were acting in the children’s interests:

...it marginalises the Jewish community to be the pariah within our society, not through active discrimination but through neglect…For us this marks a tipping point, not when Jews are concerned for their own safety but when others are scared of mere connection to our community.⁴⁰

It is time for the Church to stand unequivocally with the Jewish people in the name of their Messiah. The battle surrounding Israel is going to intensify and we cannot again stand by watching from a distance while the Jewish people are persecuted.

We cannot be people who, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, withdraw to a "the sanctuary of private virtuousness. Such people neither steal, nor murder, nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. But in voluntarily renouncing public life, these people know exactly how to observe the permitted boundaries that shield them from conflict. They must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them.”⁴¹

The rise of anti-Semitism in Europe indicates that we have not learned from history and the rise of Islamist terror as the frontline jihad of raging anti-Semitism masked as anti-Zionism suggests that night is falling.

As the day darkens, as night falls, we must shine ever more brightly with the light of Christ until the daystar dawns (2 Pet 1:19).

References

1 Medoff, R. Death camp liberated Pesach 1945, Israel National News, 31 March 2010

2 Ohrdruf Concentration Camp, Wikipedia.

3 Speech in the House of Commons, 17 April 1945. Churchill, W (grandson), 2003. Never Give In!: Winston Churchill’s Speeches, London: Bloomsbury.

4 Lynette Singer (writer) on ‘Holocaust: Night Will Fall’, documentary broadcast on Channel 4, 29 January 2015.

5 Ibid.

6 Sir Nicholas Winton: I've made a difference. BBC Radio 4, broadcast 28 October 2014.

7 Henley, J. Antisemitism on rise across Europe 'in worst times since the Nazis’, The Guardian, 7 August 2014.

8 Ibid.

9 Booth, R. Antisemitic attacks in UK at highest level ever recorded, The Guardian, 15 February 2015.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Annual Antisemitism Barometer 2015

13 Ibid, p2.

14 Ibid, p5.

15 Goodman, L, PM Harper warns of new age of anti-Semitism in speech to Knesset, The Record, 20 January 2014.

16 Eg Wistrich, R, 2010. A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, Random House, New York.

17 Kahn-Harris, K, Gidley, B, 2010. Turbulent Times: The British Jewish Community Today, Bloomsbury Publishing, p139.

18 Merkley, P C, 2001. Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal & Kinston, p215-216.

19 Ibid.

20 Anti-Semitism in the UK: is it growing?, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 5 March 2015.

21 Ibid.

22 Channel 4 News, 16 January 2015.

23 European Parliament debate, 11 February 2015.

24 Flannery, EH, 1985. The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism, New Jersey: Paulist Press, revised 2004.

25 Ibid, p292.

26 Ibid, p292, quoting S. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, New York: Vantage Books, 1955, pp116-117.

27 Ibid, p292.

28 Ibid, p293-4.

29 Ibid, p295.

30 Heschel, S, 2010. The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, Princeton University Press.

31 By Peter Barnes.

32 See Genesis 16-18, 21.

33  Joseph E, 2004. Krotona of Old Hollywood, Vol. II, El Montecito Oaks Press, p. 340. See also Wikipedia on Alice Bailey-Ross.

34 Harradine, K. New Agers fall for Anti-Semitism, The Jewish Chronicle, 17 September 2013. Also Newman, H, 2005. 'Aquarius, Age of', entry in Levy et al (eds) Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, Vol 1, p30.

35 Ephesians 6:10-18

36 Meotti, G. To Anti-Semitic Christians, Israel is an Usurper, 5 January 2015.

37 Jewish Chronicle Online, Secure our shuls, 19 February 2015.

38 Stone, J. Hundreds of Norwegian Muslims form human shield to protect Jewish synagogue in Oslo, The Independent, 22 February 2015.

39 Hodges, D. They are still coming for the Jews. So why is nobody speaking out?, The Telegraph, 19 January 2015

40 Bingham, J. London schools cancel synagogue trips citing security fears after Paris terror attacks, The Telegraph, 6 February 2015.

41 Bonhoeffer, D. Ethics, DBWE 6, 80. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Research Center, University of Bamberg.

Resetting our compass from 1985...

The early issues of Prophecy Today in the mid-1980s frequently referred to a ‘move of the Holy Spirit’. They were exciting days. It was the height of the Charismatic Movement. House groups formed in the 1960s and ‘70s had spilled over into meetings in schools and community halls. Celebration events attracted large crowds with loud music and enthusiastic praise.

Party-time

I remember walking into a hall in 1987 with several hundred people singing and dancing and waving flags. The band and a group of singers were repeating a ditty to thunderous applause with increasing physical participation from the crowd, some of whom were swaying in the aisles and others falling down. I said to one of the leaders, “What’s going on here?” He responded, “Don’t worry! The Lord’s having a party!”

I remember thinking at the time, “I hope the Lord has been invited and that he hasn’t already left!” A decade before that, Monica and I were in the East End of London. The 1970s was the formative, more serious time of charismatic renewal. We had 1000 people on a Saturday evening to ‘Prayer, Praise and Healing’ meetings. At that stage we were still singing the great Bible-based hymns of Wesley and Watts, but by the mid-‘80s the musicians were driving the charisma.

Praise was the order of the day. We were marching through the land, re-claiming dominion over the nation. It was known as ‘Dominion Theology’. We bought into the popular teaching of ‘Power Evangelism’. Christians were going to seize control of the airwaves and the political and social systems of the nation in preparation for the second coming of Christ when we would present the Kingdom to him. It was all down to us!

Going Against Fashion

Right from the start of Prophecy Today we found ourselves going against the fashion. The popular teaching did not stand up to careful comparison with the Bible. We didn’t want to curb the enthusiasm of people who were genuinely caught up in the Holy Spirit, but we were aware of the dangers of deception, so we had to warn. We knew that unless the biblical teaching offered to the people was based upon the plumb line of truth in the word of God it would be deception. The devil who deals in lies is careful to present his teaching as close to the truth as possible, otherwise it would fool no one!

"Christians in churches and fellowships that had got caught up in the Renewal Movement were so enjoying their new-found spiritual liberty that they were taking their eye off the wider scene."

We could see that the Christians in churches and fellowships that had got caught up in the Renewal Movement were so enjoying their new-found spiritual liberty (which contrasted to the dead traditionalism they were offered in many churches), that they were taking their eye off the wider scene. A similar thing happened several times in the history of Israel when God sent prophets to draw the people back to the truth of the word of God, so that they could stand against enemy attacks. Isaiah had to warn against danger from the Assyrians and Jeremiah against the Babylonians.

Warnings of Danger

In the 1985 publications of Prophecy Today we warned of great danger coming from two directions – one from within the Western nations and the other from outside. The two dangers we identified were – the increasing confidence of secular humanists, and the rising power of militant fundamentalist Islam.

We saw that the secular humanists’ strategy of undermining the Judaeo-Christian heritage and biblically-based foundations of the nations could destroy the spiritual strength of the Church to stand against a religion that was teaching a very different concept of God. We believed that the peace of the world was under threat and that Christians were unaware. They were enjoying their party celebrations, saying “Peace, Peace,” when God was saying “There is no Peace”.

"Christians were enjoying their party celebrations and saying "Peace, Peace", when God was saying "There is no Peace".

In the lead article of the very first issue of Prophecy Today March/April 1985, I drew attention to the rise of fundamentalist Islam in Libya, Syria, Iran and Pakistan and I said “The threat from militant Islam may one day prove to be greater than the threat from atheist Russian Communism”. Thirty years later the truth of this can be seen on the streets of Paris!

First Issue of Prophecy Today

We rejoiced in the new life that the Renewal Movement was bringing into the Church. We said that God was re-arming his Church for spiritual battle against the onslaught of secularism and false religion. We warned against the failure to discern false biblical teaching which would have disastrous social as well as spiritual consequences.

"In the first issue of Prophecy Today, we rejoiced in the new life that the Renewal Movement was bringing into the Church. We said that God was re-arming his Church for spiritual battle against the onslaught of secularism and false religion."

Sadly, these warnings were not heeded and the Charismatic Movement became increasingly self-centred, with individuals exercising the spiritual gifts for their own self-aggrandisement and self-satisfaction, rather than recognising that the spiritual gifts were given to enable the Church to fulfil the Great Commission. That is the tragedy we have seen played out in the 1980s and ‘90s that has left the traditional churches bereft of the power that God had provided for the great battle he foresaw.

"Sadly, the Charismatic Movement became increasingly self-centred, with individuals exercising the spiritual gifts for their own self-aggrandisement and self-satisfaction, rather than recognising that the spiritual gifts were given to enable the Church to fulfil the Great Commission."

Will we Never Learn?

Today we see the spiritually bankrupt institutional churches with declining congregations selling their buildings for mosques or supermarkets, while the new churches are settling into the same patterns of institutionalisation that brought spiritual ruin to the denominations. Will we never learn? Will we never learn from the history of Israel that disaster always follows failure to heed the warnings God sends to us?

Only God can Heal

We believe God is raising up Prophecy Today at such a time as this, to bring his word to a rebellious generation through the faithful remnant of believers that still exists in the Western nations. We undertake this task, not with any confidence in our own ability, but only with a sense of obedience to God. Only God can heal the nations, and only he can protect his people in times of persecution and give them the spiritual strength to stand firm when all around them is being shaken.

Urgent

God is warning believers that we are moving into the most perilous time in the history of the world, with the nations armed with weapons of mass destruction capable of destroying all life on the planet. There is nothing more urgent than seeking the word of God for our times. That is what we are committed to doing in Prophecy Today, although we undertake this task with fear and trembling.