JOHN HAGEE: FALSE PROPHET
By Harmony Grant
2 Apr 08
Rev. John Hagee stood nervously before the 19,000 members of
his Texas mega-church. He adjusted the lapel of his expensive suit
and took a deep breath.
“Brothers and sisters, I have been wrong,” Hagee said.
Not even a cough was heard from the audience. “I have been wrong
about Israel . The state I have spent so much of my life defending
is actually indefensible. It persecutes Christians. It violates God’s
covenant demands for obedience. It was created in sinful brutality.
I led you astray into supporting an evil system that continues to crucify
Christ in this world. I repent.”
Yes, this is an imagined day. It’s a confession of which we
can only dream. San Antonio pastor and televangelist John Hagee speaks
worldwide into 99 million homes. He forged an unprecedented alliance
between Israel-loving Christians and Zionist Jews. His organization,
Christians United for Israel , lobbies for the Jewish state and opposes
any land concessions for peace. Hagee earns
$1.25 million per year from speaking non-Biblical platitudes, urging
aggressive foreign policy, and mis-teaching history.
He is an evangelical with clout. He was on Bush’s “values
team” during the presidential race in 2000. In 2002, one of his “Night
to Honor Israel ” events featured Republican majority leader
Tom DeLay. In 2006, Hagee met with Elliot Abrams, America ’s
hotly Zionist deputy national security adviser—a neocon who helped
push us to war. Hagee has
boasted that his powerful organization has more influence than
the famous Jewish lobbying group AIPAC.
“When a congressman sees someone from Aipac coming through
the door, he knows he represents six million people. We represent 40
million people," the televangelist said. Christian groups like
CUFI were defined by Walt and Mearsheimer as part of the “ Israel
lobby” in their infamous book. Without evangelical support (and
money), the state of Israel would not exist in its present form.
Because of the power and effects of Christian Zionism, Hagee’s
teachings matter to us all. But they especially matter to Christians.
As the race to the White House picks up, the pastors of the candidates
have come under scrutiny. Obama has faced questions about his America-critical
pastor. Some wonder if McCain should distance himself from his “spiritual
guides,” Hagee and Rod Parsley. All have made their share of
inflammatory statements.
A bigger question brews here. Should average Christians disavow Hagee
or Parsley? Should these men rake in millions as purveyors of our faith?
Hagee Gags the Gospel
John Hagee’s 2007 book, In Defense of
Israel, is an easy-to-read
and passionate guide to his convictions about the Jewish state. Hagee
shares heartwarming moments as a child identifying with the birth of
Israel . He recounts facing down opposition from both Jews and evangelicals
to found Christians United for Israel and their “Night to Honor
Israel .”
From the beginning, Hagee said, “I set forth an unbendable
ground rule: members had to agree to set aside
both theological and political agendas and focus on a single issue—support for Israel
. We agreed that all Night to Honor Israel events would be nonconversionary.” (p46)
(emphasis mine)
So…set aside all political agendas except undiluted support
for a foreign nation. Set aside all theological agendas except one
mandating Christians to silence the possible voice of the Holy Spirit
or conscience (which might prompt them to share the gospel of hope).
Bible-believing Christians should already be concerned. Silencing the
gospel is the act of persecutors, not Christians.
The Book of Acts describes many times Jewish leaders commanded early
Christians not to preach. Once Peter and John were ordered by powerful
Jews to stop speaking about Jesus. They replied, “Judge for yourselves
whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For
we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." (Acts
4:19 , 20) Early believers chose imprisonment and even death over silence.
John Hagee has forsaken a prime duty of Christians—to speak
truth at God's leading—and shelved the gospel in pursuit of political
and social goals. He believes supporting the Zionist nation of Israel
is more important than seeking to save Jews' eternal souls.
There’s a theological reason for this. Hagee isn’t deeply
concerned about Jewish repentance or obedience. He holds a strongly
Calvinist theology 1 that teaches humanity’s inescapable sinfulness
and God’s unconditional mercy. He writes of the Hebrew covenant
with God—“These covenants are not based on man’s
faithfulness to God; they are based on God’s faithfulness to
man.” (p54)
How does he back up this statement? With a relatively personal rationale: “If
God broke covenant with the Jewish people, what scriptural justification
do Christians have that he will not break covenant with us?” (p54)
He inadvertently makes a good point. There isn’t any scriptural
justification for believing God won’t break covenant with us
if we rebel! Many Israel-first evangelicals are passionate about God’s “faithfulness” to
unrepentant Israel because it supports their belief that He will be “faithful” to
them whether or not they sin. This is blasphemy. The Scripture is interwoven
and held together by God’s insistence on human cooperation with
His grace. Our Holy God honors His covenant when He withholds blessing
from those who willfully and persistently rebel.
Did John Hagee miss Deuteronomy -- which threatens Israel that God
will perpetually curse them in all aspects of their lives if they disobey
Him? In my Bible, that’s a pretty big section. 2
But Hagee has every material incentive not to convert Jews. (I’m
guessing the threat of eternal hell doesn’t loom very big in
his mind.) His fat paycheck and cushy ministry would be cut off quickly
if he criticized or sought to convert the “chosen people.”
The New York Times recently ran a full-page ad from the Worldwide
Evangelical Alliance, signed by 44 Christian leaders. The ad defends
evangelism of Jews and the ministries of Jews for Jesus and other messianic
organizations seeking to “introduce individuals to the Messiah.”
The ad was promptly denounced and vilified by the powerful Anti-Defamation
League of B’nai B’rith. Its head, Abe Foxman, didn’t
use merely political language to attack the ad. He used Christian
Zionist arguments, claiming
the ad is “offensive and insulting to the Jewish people and
brazenly dismisses Jewish self-definition.” Why? Because it doesn’t
validate “God's irrevocable covenant with the Jewish people,
and ongoing Jewish covenantal life, themes also found in their Scripture…” This
language comes straight from John Hagee and his ilk. His ideas are
being used by Jewish antagonists to silence Christian evangelists.
John Hagee will have a lot for which to answer, that’s sure.
Stoning Stephen: Adding to Jewish Anti-Christianity
Hagee has made himself popular with some Jews by blaming Christians.
This interview
from the evangelical-leery website Jews on First is mostly hostile
to Hagee—but appreciates that he at least accepts blame for anti-Semitism.
Jews on First writer Robin Podolsky also appreciates Hagee’s
definition of Jesus as a “Reform rabbi.” This is a frequent
refrain. In his Easter
sermon, while wearing a blue and white prayer shawl, Hagee boomed
about Jesus, “You saw him leave personally as a Jewish rabbi.
He’s coming back as a Jewish rabbi.”
Hagee says Christianity could not exist without Judaism, yet Jews
have had to suffer the intolerance of Christians for millennia. Flatly,
he states, “anti-Semitism has its origin and its complete root
structure in Christianity, dating from the early days of the Christian
church. Until we come to terms with the true origins of anti-Semitism,
we will not be able to correctly address this most
egregious of sins.” (17)
(emphasis added) Here, Hagee goes even farther than many Jews, who
similarly deny any fault in Jewish actions but usually at least blame
Gentiles in general for their irrational hatred. Not Hagee. He blames
Christianity for creating anti-Semitism in the beginning.
He also blames the church for Nazism. He attributes Hitler’s
ideas to Catholicism, writing that “Hitler, the most notable
example of anti-Semitism in the twentieth century, simply enforced
policies that had been approved by the church over the course of history
and that remained the official policy of the church when the Nazi party
came to power.” (25)
Hagee’s beliefs about earlier history are similarly unsympathetic
to the faith he claims to hold. He says the physical separation of
Jews and Christians—when Christian Gentiles fled from Rome —formed
the basis of antipathy. “The physical separation of the two groups
would prove to be permanent and would form the basis of the strained
relationship between them.” (19) He says the Gentiles fled because
Jesus had warned them to flee to the mountains when they heard “wars
and rumors of wars,” and the Jews felt betrayed. That created
animosity. But hang on, Hagee attributes all the millennia of animosity
to Christians and as coming from the Christians’ side. It’s
hard to see how Jews’ hurt feelings could have created a strain,
since Jews share no blame for the “strained relationship.”
Modern anti-Semitism is, of course, a huge concern for the Texas
pastor. He has publicly called for war with Iran and also raises Cain
about “Christian anti-Semites”—meaning, believers
who take seriously Christ's warnings to beware of the "synagogue
of Satan."
Speaking of "replacement theologians" (with whom I also
largely disagree), Hagee says, “Some pastors teach that
Romans 9-11 refers to the church,” Hagee writes, “that
the church has become a “spiritual Israel” and has replaced
the Jewish people. This is an anti-Semitic theology that refuses to
believe God still has a place in his heart for Israel and the Jewish
people.” (52)
“No Such Thing as a Palestinian”
If that’s anti-Semitic, what do you call Hagee’s theology—which
writes off a whole race of Semitic people? Of the Promised Land’s
indigenous people, Hagee writes: “The land of Israel never belonged
to the Palestinians…there has never been a land called Palestine
. There is no Palestinian language. Before 1948, the people now called
Palestinians lived in Egypt . They lived in Syria . They lived in Iraq
. They moved into the land of Israel when they were displaced by the
war of 1948, which the Arab nations started, but Israel is not occupying
territory these people now call home.” (58) What planet
has Hagee been living on? The existence of at least 900,000 Palestinian
Arabs in Palestine during the last century is an unquestioned fact
of Mid-East history. So is the fact that Israel 's terror began
with the Jewish massacre of 250 Arab men, women, and children at Deir
Yassin in 1948 and drove more than 800,000 Palestinians out of Israel
. This is what we call falsehood. Israel ’s “new historians”—themselves
mostly Jewish!---exploded the Zionist/Hagee lie that there were no
Palestinians before 1948.
Just this week the Jewish
Advocate online published a column by Jewish writer Hannah Mermelstein
calling for recognition of the catastrophe committed against the
Palestinians. She writes that “more than 6 million Palestinian
people remain refugees to this day… all forbidden from returning
to their homeland for one reason: they are not Jewish…In my
name, and in the name of Jewish people throughout the world, an indigenous
population was almost completely expelled. Village names have been
removed from the map, houses blown up…”
This is the truth. But—and as a Christian I find this hard
to write—there seem to be more honest Jews than honest evangelicals.
Endnotes:
1. 2 Kings 18:4 Calvinism’s false assurance was described by
Jeremiah, when he spoke with God, “Look, the prophets are telling
them, ‘You will not see the sword nor will you have famine, but
I will give you lasting peace in this place.’ Then the Lord said
to me, ‘The prophets are prophesying falsehood in My name. I
have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them; they
are prophesying to you a false vision.” Jeremiah 14:13-14 The
prophets of whom Jeremiah spoke were promising the Israelites peace
in Canaan , even though they were in disobedience. Likewise, modern
evangelists promise salvation, even without continuous trust and obedience
to God. Such assurances are groundless and grievously destructive.
“Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying
to you. They are leading you into futility; they speak a vision of
their own imagination, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying
to those who despise Me, ‘The Lord has said, ‘You will
have peace.’ And as for everyone who walks in the stubbornness
of his own heart, they say, ‘Calamity will not come upon you.’” Jeremiah
23:16-17 These words were spoken by the Lord to his prophet, Jeremiah,
thousands of years ago. Yet they apply with deadly accuracy to modern
evangelists who promise eternal security to all who once believed on
Christ, including those now disobedient.
2. Far from an example of God’s unconditional love, God’s
relationship with Israel actually proves His insistence on obedience.
The Old Testament is riddled with demands for Hebrew obedience. Without
obedience, the Jews can’t receive God’s material or spiritual
blessing. Please see Ex. 15:26, 19:5, Lev. 26, Numb. 32:15, Deut. 4:29,
6:24-25, 7:9-15, 11:13-15, 11:26-28, 13:17-18, 15:4-5, 19:8-9, 28:1-68,
30:9-20, 31:16-17, Josh. 24:19-20, 1 Sam. 2:30, 7:3, 12:14-15, 12:20-25,
1 Kings 3:14, 6:12-13, 8:46-52, 9:4-9, 11:38, 2 Kings 18:11-12, 21:8,
1 Chron. 28:9, 2 Chron. 7:17-22, 15:2, 30:9, Ezra 8:22, Neh. 1:8-9,
Is. 1:19-20, 1:28, 7:9, 58:9-14, 65:11-12, Jer. 4:1-4, 7:5-7, 12:16-17,
13:22, 15:19, 17:24-25, 18:7-10, 22:4-5, 26:3-6, 38:17-18, 42:10-16,
Ezek. 18, 33:12-19, Hos. 5:4-5, 5:14, 7:13, 9:15-17, 10:13-15, 13:2-8,
Amos 4:1-2, 5:6, 9:10, Obad. 1:10, Micah 2:2-4, 3:4, 6:9-16, Nahum
1:2-8, Zech. 3:7, 7:11-14 (This list is not exhaustive.)
Harmony Grant writes and edits for National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative
watchdog group.
Let the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith teach you how they
have saddled 45 states with hate laws capable of persecuting Christians: http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp.
Learn how ADL took away free speech in Canada and wants to steal
it now in the U.S. Congress. Watch Rev. Ted Pike's Hate
Laws: Making Criminals of Christians at video.google.com. Purchase
this gripping documentary to show at church. Order online at www.truthtellers.org for
$24.90, DVD or VHS, by calling 503-853-3688, or at the address below.
TALK SHOW HOSTS: Interview Rev. Ted Pike on this
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