Israel: Who is Behind The Violence & Mayhem in SA? (Part 2)

No Tears for Israel?

In conclusion to part 1 of this series, I made the following statement,

The assumption that the new breed of Christians in mostly the Pentecostal, Charismatic, Mystical, Hebrew Roots, and New Apostolic Reformation spiritualities is God’s chosen people and God’s new Israel, is primarily responsible for God’s righteous judgments on South Africa.

Why? Well, in a nutshell, because it maligns, disparages, and vilifies God’s character which is to be true to Himself in doing what He says He will do.

God is not a man, that He should tell or act a lie, neither the son of man, that He should feel repentance or compunction [for what He has promised]. Has He said and shall He not do it? Or has He spoken and shall He not make it good? (Numbers 23: 1-9; AMPC).

How can we trust God to fulfill all his promises to the church (Ecclesia) if He has revoked all his promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?

One of the most terrible scourges to hit the church in these last days is anti-Semitism, bringing about a babel of confusion as to what will transpire in the end-times. Amillennialism and Dominion-Now doctrines, make a mockery of the Pre-tribulation Rapture and Christ’s Millennial reign of peace on earth. Anti-Semitism is extremely dangerous. I have the authority to make such a statement based on what God Himself says in Genesis 12: 1-3,

Now [in Haran] the Lord said to Abram, Go for yourself [for your own advantage] away from your country, from your relatives and your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you [with abundant increase of favors] and make your name famous and distinguished, and you will be a blessing [dispensing good to others]. And I will bless those who bless you [who confer prosperity or happiness upon you] and curse him who curses or uses insolent language toward you; in you will all the families and kindred of the earth be blessed [and by you they will bless themselves]. (AMPC)

Having read this passage many times in awe of God’s great mercies and loving-kindness, I was deeply shocked when I heard Riekert Botha say that the nation that is not on God’s side, has no part in God’s blessings and his promises.

None of the nations in existence then were on God’s side, and Israel as a nation was yet a seed in Abraham’s bowels. You can only conjure up something so silly when you believe that God has cast away his people (Israel) and replaced her with all the believers (those who bow the knee to God and are on his side) – dubbed the new spiritual Israel. 

Anti-Semitism is packaged in a wide array of assaults on Israel.

You can be assured that the killing of Jews by Jihadist terrorists is not the worst kind of anti-Semitism. The worst is to proliferate the worldwide lie that God is finished with Israel.

Of course, the blessing extended to all the families of the earth (nations) came through Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham. However, Jesus Himself said that salvation is of the Jews (the nation of Israel). It follows that anyone who curses Israel (despite their ongoing rebellion, disobedience, and hard-heartedness), is cursing Christ Jesus, a Jew.

Moreover, the notion that “seed” (singular) refers to Jesus in Genesis 12: 1-3 and not the entire nation of Israel can be refuted very easily. In Romans Paul says,

 I ask then: Has God totally rejected and disowned His people? Of course not! Why, I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin! No, God has not rejected and disowned His people [whose destiny] He had marked out and appointed and foreknown from the beginning. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? Lord, they have killed Your prophets; they have demolished Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life. But what is God’s reply to him? I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal! So too at the present time there is a remnant (a small believing minority), selected (chosen) by grace (by God’s unmerited favor and graciousness). (Romans 11: 1-5; AMPC).

May we isolate the singular noun “seed” in this instance as a referral to Paul only, or is he referring to, as in the case of Jesus being the seed of Abraham, to the entire nation of which Benjamin was a tribe? Absolutely not.

The word “seed” undoubtedly includes the entire nation. The emphasis on seed (Genesis 12: 7; 13: 15; 24: 7) and not seeds, simply reminds the readers that the remnant of Israel according to the election of grace, had always recognized that blessing would ultimately come through a single individual, namely Jesus Christ.

And this blessing was extended to all the families (nations) of the earth (Genesis 3: 12). The blessing bestowed on all families of the earth had no preconditions attached to it because Christ died for the sins of every single human being from every single nation on the earth (Romans 5: 6-8).

Yet, Rierkert Botha asserts,

It matters very little what name the nation calls itself; if that nation is not on God’s side it has no part in God’s promises, and he has no part in God’s glory, protection and life.

He may as well have said, The promise that Abraham’s seed (Jesus Christ) would be a blessing unto all the nations of the earth, really means that only those who are on God’s side (i.e. the elect) are part of his promises, glory, protection, and life.

At any rate, Jesus Christ could never have become fully man whilst remaining fully God, if He had no ancestry, a nation (a seed of Abraham) as his brethren after the flesh. Hence his declaration in John 4: 22 that “salvation is of the Jews.” He did not say salvation was of the remnant of the Jews, but the entire Jewish nation.

Even Riekert Botha cannot claim to be an Afrikaner with an ancestry who had always been on God’s side. In fact, he is part of the whole Afrikaner nation, of whom the most had never been on God’s side throughout its history.

Botha is part of the entire Afrikaner nation and not only those within the nation who are on God’s side, and, therefore, he cannot claim that he is part of a nation within a nation who is part of God’s promises, glory, protection, and life. 

Surely, he cannot refer to those within the realm of the Afrikaner nation who is on God’s side as only his people, because he was born into the Afrikaner nation as an interconnected ethnic group. Wikipedia defines a nation as follows:

“A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a common language, history, ethnicity, or a common culture, and, in many cases, a shared territory. A nation is more overtly political than an ethnic group; it has been described as “a fully mobilized or institutionalized ethnic group”. 

Henceforth, the whole of the Afrikaner nation is Riekert Botha’s people, even though most of them are not on God’s side and thus void of God’s promises, glory, protection, and life, according to Botha. In the very same way, the entire Jewish nation after the flesh is Christ’s people because God chose them as his vessel from whom his Son was born, even though God knew before the foundation of the world that the “children of the kingdom (most Jews) shall be cast into outer darkness” (Matthew 8: 11-12).

Mixing Literalism and Symbolism

Consistency is the golden hallmark of biblical truth. The slightest inconsistency turns literal verifiably facts into lies. In short, you cannot and may not interpret literal verifiable facts in one section of the Bible non-figuratively, and then willy-nilly change the very same literalness into symbolism.

I dare say that Gielie Jordaan of the Shofar Church in Potchefstroom, Riekert Botha of the Vita Dei Word School, and Stephan Joubert of Ekerk who all have made YouTube videos on the Book of Revelation, consistently and dismally fail to stick to their own rules.

As an example, I would like to point our readers to Gielie Jordaan’s contention in part 6 of his series on the book of Revelation where he discusses chapter 7 concerning the 144,000 sealed Jews, 12,000 from the twelve tribes of Israel. With reference to the mark of the beast, he, in agreement with Stephan Joubert’s view of the mark, contends that both God and Satan are presently marking their respective followers – believers and non-believers. Watch the video here.

Consequently, the mark of Satan’s Antichrist must, in compliance with the spiritual mark of God, also be a spiritual and not a literal mark. He correctly confirms that you cannot mix the two, one being spiritual and the other literal, lest you fall into a ditch of inconsistencies. It is either one or the other and never both at the same time.

Ironically, Gielie Jordaan does not stick to his own rules. Besides the erroneous notion that Satan is already (presently) marking his followers in the same way God is marking his followers, Gielie Jordaan’s concept that the twelve tribes in Revelation 7 are not the literal nation of Israel but spiritual Israel (the church consisting of all true believers, Jews, and Gentiles) is equally fallacious.

If it were true that Satan’s Antichrist is already marking his followers as God is marking his followers, we could argue that none of those who are already marked by Satan can possibly be saved, according to Revelation 14: 9-10. As you can see it twists the doctrine of salvation, making a mockery of the truth that God wants all people to be saved. (1 Timothy 2: 4).

The Twelve Tribes

The “twelve tribes of Israel are mentioned 34 times in 14 verses, and always in the literal sense of the word. James wrote to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad (James 1: 1).

It cannot possibly be a reference to the church. The church has never been scattered or dispersed abroad and throughout the world. The word “diaspora” is always used exclusively for Israel and refers to her dispersion throughout the world since the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70AD by the Roman army under the then future Emperor, Titus. Wikipedia reports:

The Romans finally captured the Antonia Fortress and began a frontal assault on the gates of the Second Temple. As they breached the gate, the Romans set the upper and lower city aflame, culminating with the destruction of the Temple. When the fires subsided, Titus gave the order to destroy the remainder of the city, allegedly intending that no one would remember the name Jerusalem. The Temple was demolished, Titus’s soldiers proclaimed him imperator in honour of the victory.

Jerusalem was sacked and much of the population killed or dispersed. Josephus claims that 1,100,000 people were killed during the siege, most of whom were Jewish. Josephus’s death toll assumptions are rejected as impossible by modern scholarship since about a million people then lived in the Land of Israel, half of them Jewish, and sizable Jewish populations remained in the area after the war was over, even in the hard-hit region of Judea. However, 97,000 were captured and enslaved, including Simon Bar-Giora and John of Gischala. Many fled to areas around the Mediterranean Sea.

Titus reportedly refused to accept a wreath of victory, as he claimed that he had not won the victory on his own but had been the vehicle through which their God had manifested his wrath against his people. The Jewish diaspora during the Temple’s destruction, according to Josephus, was in Parthia (Persia), Babylonia (Iraq), and Arabia, and some were beyond the Euphrates and in Adiabene (Kurdistan).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus

Was this the end of the Twelve Tribes of Israel to the extent that today’s Anti-Semites globally have allegorized the 144,000, 12,000 from each tribe of Israel, into a spiritual Israel in Revelation 7, consisting of all those who bow the knee to God and are on his side? Perish the thought!

In another video posted on Riekert Botha’s Vita Dei Word School channel (21^st February 2018), “How do we hear the voice of Jesus?” he says the safest and best way to discern Christ’s voice is to ask yourself whether his voice is in harmony with his character.

Touché, well-said, spot on! Nonetheless, Botha is again playing the game of deceit to enhance his own agenda of anti-Semitism, anti- Rapture Pretribulationism, and anti-Millennialism.

The essence of Jesus Christ’s character is summarized in his words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. “(John 14: 6). He said, “I am the Truth” and not just “I am Truth.” There is no other truth besides the truth embodied in the character of Jesus Christ.

As he said Himself, “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he has spoken, and shall he not make it good?” (Numbers 23: 19).

Yet, Riekert Botha who claims to know and hear the voice of Christ, denies that all God’s promises are yea and amen in his Son in whom He is well-pleased, including the many promises he made to his people, Israel, concerning their Promised Land and their superlative status in Jerusalem during Christ’s coming Millennial reign of peace and righteousness on earth. (Jeremiah 31: 35; Isaiah 66: 22-23).

Travesty

It is a great travesty to use the one side of your forked-tongue to say that Christ’s voice must be in harmony with his character, and with the other side of your forked-tongue to malign his character by suggesting that He cannot keep his promises and, therefore, implies that He is a liar and cannot be trusted.

Please read Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6