Doctrine of Darkness

"The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons." (1 Timothy 4.1)

"It is precisely because change is so swift that we need history." (Inga Clendinnen, Australian historian)

As I have already said elsewhere, I continue to be flummoxed by the quite violent reaction against my preaching about Israel in these Last Days...especially from leaders of the Pentecostal Movement. It strikes me as being somehow or other different to the predictable opposition of Evangelicals. Their antagonism is a dry, intellectual assertion of historical and denominational Replacement Theology...that ancient and all too current belief, that when God's People Israel rejected Jesus, He rejected them in exclusive favour of the Church.

Pentecostal opposition has an added dimension of virulence and rancour which is more spiritual than rational. I now believe that this hostility is in fact demonic, and has its roots in something "taught by demons"...British Israelism or Anglo-Israelism. I do not intend getting bogged down in the varying, minute details of this belief, but in the crudest terms, BI asserts that when the Assyrians conquered the 10 Tribes of the northern Kingdom of Israel (circa 700BC), these people fled to Europe, coming to rest finally in (what we now call) England, and transmogrified into the Anglo-Saxon Race.

Hence a committed BI exponent (and founder of the modern-day faith-healing movement) John Alexander Dowie, at the dawn of the 20th C could vigorously and unapologetically preach, "I gladly record my profound conviction that every prophesy God said would be fulfilled in the national Israel is being fulfilled in the Anglo-Saxon Race today."

This belief conveniently and entirely overlooks the Bible's testimony contained in both Ezra and Nehemiah, that when God's Old Testament People were released by their Persian overlords to restore their Temple in Jerusalem (circa 536-432BC) they were Israel.

"Now these are the people of the province who came up from the captivity of the exiles, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken captive to Babylon...The list of the men of the people of Israel." (Ezra 2.2)

In fact, at that time some were excluded from the restored priesthood in Jerusalem because "they could not show that their families were descended from Israel." (Ezra 2.59-63)

(In all, "Israel" is employed and linked to God and His People at least 61 times in Ezra and Nehemiah, at the very time when Israel - according to BI proponents - was en masse on its way to become Anglo-Saxony living in England.)

The plain testimony of Scripture and history is that at the time of their absorption into the Assyrian Empire, the 10 "lost" Tribes did not in fact get lost. Many were deported north into the Assyrian heartland...but some fled south to the Kingdom of Judah, while others kept on "running" to Egypt. By the 1st C, Egypt had a total population of 1 million Israelites. The Old Testament was translated into Greek in Alexandria, because of the size of its Greek-speaking Jewish Community. (It is reckoned that when the Lord Jesus was born, there were more Hebrews living in Alexandria, than in Jerusalem!)

To these plain facts must also be added the "apostolic" verdict. For the Apostles Peter and Paul the terms "Israel" and "Jew" were not exclusive, but actually inter-changeable...covering all of the descendants of all of the 12 Tribes. In other words, the terms "Jew" and "Israel" then covered all and any of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, irrespective of their tribe.

"Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd. 'Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem...Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles...' " (Acts 2.14 and 22)

"Paul answered, 'I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia...' " (Acts 21.39)

"Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham's descendants? So am I." (2 Corinthians 11.22)

British Israelism is not just one of those quaint, human myths which has England being visited by the Lord and certain of His Apostles. Such exist and have given rise to the likes of William Blake's famous poem and hymn, "Jerusalem", with its beautiful (but brain-fevered) lines,

"And did those feet in ancient times
walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?"

It is impossible from a human point of view to get to the root of BI. It can be glimpsed momentarily here and there since Reformation times, but finally bursts out full-blown during the zenith of the British Empire and Queen Victoria's reign. It is a theory which is denied by biblical and historical evidence. And yet during the early years of the 20th C it shaped or shaded the prophetical teaching and eschatology of almost an entire generation who were the founders of modern Pentecostalism. E.g. John Alexander Dowie, Charles Fox Parham, George Jeffreys, FF Bosworth, John G Lake, Arthur Dallimore.

(One notable exception was Smith Wigglesworth, who wrote a letter to church leaders in New Zealand advising them to steer clear of this teaching!)

Well...so what? Do we really need to go on some kind of "witch-hunt" and exhume the corpse of this discredited doctrine? Unless we do return to the "scene of the crime", we will never identify, bind and cast out the power of that spirit which is behind this and is still working towards it original, vile goal...the destruction of the Jews and the obliteration of Israel. (The devil's insane equation is ever the annihilation in toto of the Jews, to prevent Christ's return to a spiritually and physically restored Israel.)

This demon manifests itself in history as anti-Semitism, but its real name is "antichrist", for its whole aim is to oppose and overthrow the Lord Jesus as our world's rightful King of kings and Lord of lords.

"Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour...Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ (Heaven's anointed King of this world). Such a man is the antichrist - he denies the Father and the Son...Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist...Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist." (1 John 2.18,22; 4.2-3; 2 John 7)

antichrist lurks with malevolent and putrescent influence behind:

* All teaching which in any way, shape or form down-plays, down-grades, mocks or negates/opposes the non-negotiable centrality of the promised, consummatory 2nd Coming of Jesus Christ.

* All teaching that excludes national Israel from the blessings of the yet to be completely fulfilled Covenant promises of the whole Bible.

I am particularly concerned to target with gusto British or Anglo-Israelism on this occasion, because of the timing of the waxing of its influence over a nascent Pentecostalism. It is a sad phenomenon to consider. At the very time when satan was winding up to employ Hitler and his degenerate and villainous disciples to seek to murder to their complete destruction God's Blessed Israel...white, Anglo-Saxon Pentecostals were off looking at themselves in the mirror. Some were in fact preaching expectation that King Edward VIII of England would declare himself the last of David's Line, establish the Kingdom of God on earth via the British Empire, so that Jesus would be able then to return. In fact Edward VIII scorned the Crown. He apparently preferred the pleasures of an American socialite, to the perfection of the Parousia.

This crazy nonsense is utterly risible...but it was swallowed hook, line and sinker or flirted with by uncomfortably large numbers of our Pentecostal forbears. And in their error and blindness they failed to identify, cry out over and struggle against an assignment of satan which very nearly succeeded...the destruction of Israel in the Holocaust. This raises contemporary issues which are of extraordinary importance and concern:

1) Being Pentecostal, Charismatic, "Spirit-filled", etc etc does not automatically ring-fence us against deception...no matter how "spiritual" we might be; no matter how blatantly bizarre a given idea.

"They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful (fatal) delusion so that they will believe the lie..." (2 Thessalonians 2.10-11)

I think that there is a peculiar and dangerous kind of smugness which falls on us when we judge ourselves to be spiritually enlightened and "advanced". Not only is there the ever-present risk of sinning by looking down on those we deem not of the "cognoscente", and hence not "one of us"! But there is the hazard that our very eagerness (and competitiveness?) for "more light", actually makes us vulnerable to the machinations of cranks and charlatans, as well as deceiving spiritual powers.

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." (Ephesians 6.12)

2) Before Jesus Christ returns to a spiritually and physically restored Israel, satan will launch one final, demented onslaught unto annihilation against the Patriarchs' beloved Children. he will fail utterly; rather the tables of destruction will be turned against him. (Revelation 20.1-3, 7-10) And God help those who align themselves with his pestilential campaign and not against it...especially Christians. Believers are going to be vulnerable to pressure in the Last Days to step back from Israel, as its position (from a humanistic and socio-political point-of-view) becomes increasingly unpopular and marginalised. This will not therefore require us to claim black is white. But we will be constrained to stand with and for Israel (People and State) come what may, and defend their right to exist, provide human aid and succour, and most importantly, unrelentingly pray for their salvation, preservation and the complete fulfillment of their divine destiny.

Any residual anti-Semitism (no matter how vague or dilute) which might be lurking in or around us, will prove to be deadly dangerous when this happens, because even the flimsiest fragment of this pernicious dogma will be sought out for use as a platform and plinth by and for antichrist's final, frenzied stand and onslaught.

"Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully." (2 John 7-8)

"For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death." (Romans 7.5)

"Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit will reap eternal life." (Galatians 6.7-8)

"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them...Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit...Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." (Matthew 7.15-20)

British Israelism is not just some eccentric and antiquated teaching still being clung to and pushed by a few eccentric fuddy-duddies. It's something "taught by demons". It's bent, and it's bent upon destruction. It richly deserves therefore to be "cut down and thrown into the fire"...today.