A LAST WORD:

MESSIANIC PASSIONISM AND

THE INTERCESSORY COMMUNITY

Gentile-origined intercessors who bear the Lord’s emotion for Israel or for anyone are extremely susceptible to Passionism. The more emotionally invested we become in the Lord’s burden, the more we lose His transcendent objectivity on that burden. In fact, we come to own the burden. It is no longer the Lord’s. This is true no matter for whom we are praying.

The Lord’s burden for the nation of Israel is great. He has great emotion for Israel as seen in the words of the prophets. But God is not governed by His feelings for anyone, but tempers them by His impartial Spirit of holiness. His feelings for Israel do not rule Him, but are ruled by His transcendent objectivity—an attribute He will never sacrifice to His emotions.

Thus, it is not those who merely bear God’s emotions for the Jews that “have His heart,” but those who do so under authority of His dispassionate purposes centered on His Son from before earth’s foundation. The difficulty and challenge for the intercessory community is to enter into and maintain this governmental charge over the divine emotion they steward.

Because the intercessory community by and large does not perceive this, it unwittingly takes on Messianism’s inherent Passionist spirit that in turn feeds the ever-debilitating Jewish self-consciousness. As a result, sincere Gentile-origined intercessors become converts to and spokesmen for the “Messianic spirit” with its blindness and errors. They come to wear all the offenses Messianics intrinsically wear due to their self-absorbed view of God’s purposes concerning them.

Depending on how emotionally blinded intercessors become, it can become a vain exercise to even discuss these things. Nevertheless, not all are so far gone. For these, it remains worth it to lay out as carefully and dispassionately as possible the governing apostolic truth we have received from the New Covenant fathers.

That is the aim of this ministry. 

Reframing the True Intercessory Burden

As we concluded in the first treatise, the Repentance Imperative—with its call to carry the cross of national heritage denial—remains the only legitimate rule for interpreting God’s hand toward the Jewish people and laying the framework for how we should pray for Israel.

Whether by goodness or severity, repentance before the truth and unconditional surrender to Yeshua’s New Covenant of transcendent nationhood is what God is lovingly after. This alone will set Israel free from its inherited Deuteronomic curse of self-awareness and oppression under the nations. This therefore must remain the unsullied reference point of all prayer for Israel.

By contrast, everything ministered toward Israel on a partisan reconstructionist view of God’s support is working against His purpose. Every intercession built on affirming Israel’s ”natural rights” and aligning with the pride of Jewish patriotism (viz., Christian Zionism)—and every interpretation of the Presence of the Holy Spirit in support of that end—is as contrary to God’s heart as it was when Yeshua first came, and now even more so.

In sharing the Father’s burden, intercessors must refuse to become emotionally bought by the spirit of Messianic Passionism with its Mosaic affinity, its curse-derived attitudes, and its romanticized nationalist affections. These spirits which pose as Israel’s “friends” are actually leading Israel, the Messianics and the Intercessors together to a place of slaughter at Armageddon—one which will not earn the Father’s pleasure, but His disappointment.

Satan’s design is to use both dimensions of the Mosaic curse to destroy Israel and all men—not just the outside dimension of hatred, but the inside dimension of self-obsession. He knows that whether one sides for or against Israel on a platform of human heritage, he cannot win. And if satan can use the misguided prayer energy of deceived intercessors to accelerate this, so much the better!

Most intercessors are unalert to this. But intercessors are as prone to deception as anyone—even more so because of their sensitivity to divine passion (the “woman” was first deceived). If they do not allow the sword to pierce their own soul, the cross to sever them from their own human heritage, and the Spirit of truth to rein in their passion, they indeed will pray under deception and the power of the curse.

“But must we not help Israel?” The answer is, “Yes. Absolutely we must.” But how we define the word “help” and the energy upon which we draw to empower that help makes all the difference between promoting Israel’s real deliverance and compounding Israel’s state under the curse.

Overcoming the Joint Passionist Blindness of Gentile & Messianic Christianity

Throughout this age, neither Jews nor Gentiles have ever fully understood the cost of becoming a disciple of Christ—the cost of losing all our earthly identifications and our love for those identities, including those of race and nation—or the meaning of becoming a transnational people.

After 2000 years, the cross remains stripped from both Messianic and Gentile (viz., “American”) Passionist gospels. The Passionist gospel aligns itself with all spirits of human generation. It does not contest them, nor suffers by offending them. As Paul said, “If I still preach circumcision, why am I persecuted? Then is the offense of the cross ceased.” (Gal. 5:11.)

It costs Messianism nothing to support Zionism and wave the Star of David. It costs American Christians nothing to “support our troops,” to sing “God Bless America,” and wave the Stars and Stripes. There is no offense in these. Rather, the Christianesque and Messianic support of their respective nationhoods makes for what Paul called “a fair show in the flesh.” (Gal. 6:12).

Because the cross has not touched these hereditary affections, there remains no manifest unity in the one body between Gentile- and Jewish-origined believers. True, many do promote “unity” by trying to sanctify and amalgamate Gentile / Messianic heritages. But they are building on that which true discipleship rejects, and preserving that to which the cross lays the kiss of death.

Meanwhile, Israel continues lacking witness of a truly nationless body to which they are being called. (Are there any “Pauls” taking heat in the synagogues or on the street corners of Israel calling men to a transcendent eternal heritage? Perhaps one or two…?)

Ultimately, it is only through the threshing of world tribulation that the Lord will achieve His desire of a truly sanctified people known only by the name of His Son—bringing both Messianics and Christianesque Gentiles to repentant nationless union. Sadly but surely, this is what it will take to rectify the Messianic / New Testament divide remaining since Paul’s incarceration and death at the hand of his friends.

Ironically, the tribulation that purifies the one church is the same tribulation to bring the remnant surviving Jews into the church. One tribulation will both purify as well as complete the Lord’s body. The great tribulation will be the greatest purifier from human heritage that the world has ever known.

Nevertheless, the present failure need not stop us from pressing toward that goal. I personally have accepted Paul’s challenge to lay down my natural heritage for Christ’s sake. And I rejoice with all others who are able to do the same. Knowing the importance of the Lord’s plan to bring the Jews back into His body, I especially delight in finding relationship with Jewish-origined believers who also have accepted Paul’s gospel and emulate his example.

Together with believers of every origin, my only desire is to know Him more, and in the process, transcend my own earthbound roots to enter His glory. My hope is that, in exposing the weaknesses and errors of both Christianesque and Messianic nationalists, I may win some to the true call that is on all Yeshua’s true followers.

May we willingly judge ourselves now to find this purity, that we may be counted worthy to escape the judgment that will otherwise forcibly bring it forth in us all.

Selah.