April/June 20 No. 46 Nisan/Iyar//Sivan 577 - Moriel Ministries

"MORIEL"
GOD IS MY TEACHER
April/June 2011 Nisan/Iyar//Sivan 5771
No. 46
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly

Thank You from the Administrator
v
MORIEL MINISTRIES INTERNATIONAL
"MORIEL"
GOD IS MY TEACHER
From the Office of the Administrator
DDear Friends of Moriel,
Jacob’s Late Summer Tour
We are putting together Jacob’s late summer tour. As most of your know
Jacob has spent more time writing and less time on the road speaking. He
will be doing a shortened tour in the US before going on to the Philippines
for some mission work. Jacob starts in California at Steve Babkow’s church
on Saturday, August 27. He will have him come to Pittsburgh, PA, for his annual
Labor Day weekend engagement. Following that engagement, the next
weekend he will be speaking at the annual Calvary Chapel Appleton Prophecy
Conference. If you would like to have Jacob speak, contact the Moriel Pittsburgh
office as soon as possible.
New Book and some more to come!
As most of you know, Jacob has finished his newest book, Shadows of the
Beast, which was two years in the making. We want to thank you all for your
support in this work.
Jacob is now working on a two more books, one on some of the prophecies
of Daniel and the other on the Rapture. Please pray for this work also, and
especially keep Jacob in prayer as he works on these books.
Also, please pray for the distribution of the Daniel Project, and that it will
be able to be shown on some national program such as NatGO or Discovery
in the U S. Also, that it will be shown in other countries. It has been shown in
Mexico and Poland, but language translations are painfully slow.
Prayer Needs
As Jacob travels to the Philippines he will stopping for some meetings in
Hong Kong to possibly expand Moriel teaching into China and Vietnam. This
is an exciting opportunity. As many of you know, the apostasy is in full swing
as many are departing from the faith because of the use of global television networks
such as TBN. While the false teachers and their doctrines have preceded
Moriel into the Far East, there is a faithful remnant searching for truth, and it
appears that God is opening the door to Moriel. So, again, please pray that we
can expand the teaching the Lord has given Moriel. We will need translators for
the various languages and we would ask help with this in seeking the Lord’s
provision in these endeavors.
I will be traveling to South Africa to meet with Dave Royle and family. As
you all know, Dave moved to the Western Cape, and the move has opened up
some new doors and new opportunities. I will be taking Jeff and Judy Baker
with me as there are considering the mission field as something in their future.
We will all be meeting with Dave and will be discussing and praying about
what opportunities are there in South Africa for them. So, please pray for them.
I have discipled Jeff and Judy for almost five years now, and from the first day I
met them their heart was, and remains, for the mission field. Now, the question
for them is when and where. They have matured so much in their faith and will
be an asset to whoever they work with. While I think of them as my children in
the faith, and I would miss them deeply, my heart for them is to follow the Lord
wherever He leads them.
Jacob’s health has improved and his arrhythmia is under control with medication.
Jacob does seek your prayers as his father-in-law’s health remains an
issue and Pavia has had to travel to Israel. Please pray for Pavia who recently
lost her mother, and now her father’s health is failing. Please pray for his salvation,
too.
In Peace,
David
David Royle
1 Trade Street
Napier 7270
West Cape, South Africa
0823739297
JAPAN
GEOFF TOOLE
morieljapan@yahoo.co.jp
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The false Teacher Who cried wolf . . . . . . . 15
GLENN BECK’S TRUE PHILOSOPHY . . . . . . . . . . 16
IS THE RAPTURE TAKING AS MANY
PEOPLE AS YOU THINK ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
MORIEL SOUTH AFRICA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
MORIEL ISREAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
MORIEL JAPAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
AUSTRALIAN REPORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
RAMBLING ROSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Genetics Analysis of Jews Confirms
Genesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
YOUR LETTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
MORIEL PRAYER CLOSET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

Jacob Prasch
Feature Article
Introduction
I get a lot of letters, and no matter what
people think, I would say for every negative
letter I or Moriel gets, there are a dozen good
ones. But this week is not unusual in that I
got a few letters from people who really like
the fact that we do not agree with the Ecumenical
Movement or they like the fact that
we will stand against certain types of error
and deception, but then they say, “But you
don’t read the King James Bible,” or “You
don’t believe ‘once saved, always saved’,”
or “You don’t have a high view of the Reformation
or the Reformers.” This becomes a
barrier for them.
For me, and for most of us at Moriel, I do
not like to think in those terms. I have a King
James Bible and I read it. It is not the only
one, but I read it although I prefer to read the
inspired Scriptures in the original Hebrew,
Greek and Aramaic, not a translation. I always
emphasize the priority of the original
languages. But if somebody wants to read
the King James Bible, it is no problem.
If somebody sees something different than
I on certain issues, that is also no problem
for me. For me, baptizing babies is totally
unbiblical, but I know people who love Jesus
who do not think as I do on that subject.
I am Pre-Millennial. I do not understand
how anyone reading the Scriptures from a
Hebrew perspective can be anything other
than Pre-Millennial, yet I know people who
do not see it that way. Martin Lloyd Jones
did not see it that way and he was a tremendous
expository preacher.
These things are not problems for me. As
long as the essentials of the faith are in no
way impacted, I have no problem. As I have
said many times, there are four issues where
we divide with someone:
Where they have a wrong view of Jesus or
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly

Feature Article – Continued
the Tri-Unity of the Godhead.
Unrepentant immorality.
Another way of salvation other than the
Gospel (such as sacraments or the like).
Having a doctrinal authority other than
Scripture.
If it is not one of those four things, I can
fellowship with them; I cooperate with them
in the Gospel. But some people do not see it
that way.
The Christ of Arminianism
I have something here, and I almost could
not believe it was sent by one of these people
who otherwise like me: “The Christ of Arminianism.”
“Arminianism” means that you do
not believe in an unconditional “once saved,
always saved,” that you do not believe that
Jesus died for only certain people, that He is
willing to receive all. This is Arminianism in
a nutshell. I will read from what they sent me.
“The Christ of Arminianism loves every
individual person in the world and desires
their salvation.”
That is true. I believe that Christ loves
every single person in the world and sincerely
desires their salvation. The Christ of
the Bible did not desire the salvation of only
those whom God has unconditionally chosen.
Citing the verses that would back that,
but ignoring the verses that would balance it,
they continue…
“The Christ of Arminianism would offer
salvation to every sinner and does all in His
power to bring them to salvation.”
I believe that.
“His offer and works are often frustrated
because many refuse to come.”
That sounds scriptural to me.
“But the Christ of the Bible essentially
calls for Himself only the Elect and sovereignly
brings them to salvation. None of
them will be lost.”
And, again, he points to the verses which
support his point of view, but not the ones
that balance it.
“The Christ of Arminianism cannot regenerate
and save a sinner who does not
first choose Christ with his own free will by
which they can accept or reject Christ that
free will may not be violated by Christ.”
True Arminianists do not actually believe
that; we believe we can accept Christ, He
has to give us the power to do it, but so this
person thinks.
“The Christ of the Bible, however, sovereignly
regenerates the Elect apart from their
choice.”
According to this we have no choice.
“The Christ of Arminianism died on the
cross for every individual person and therefore
made it possible for everyone to be
saved. The Christ of the Bible died only for
God’s Elect people.”
In other words, the others were created to
go to hell forever by some overstated kind of
predestination. The Bible does say God created
all things for a purpose, even the wicked
for the day of judgment, but He would rather
they be saved.
“The Christ of Arminianism loses many
who He has saved.”
Jesus said many would fall away. (Mt.
24:10) Even if He does give eternal security
as some say, it is not necessarily based on His
will or His work but the choice of the sinner.
“The Christ of the Bible preserves His
chosen people.”
And he concludes by saying that people,
like most Pentecostals–people like John Wesley–do
not have the same Jesus, the same Jesus
as the Calvinists. George Whitfield was a
Calvinist, John Wesley was not, but they never
had this kind of recrimination where they
said each other had a separate Jesus–two different
Jesus Christs. Some people go so far as
to say that if someone believes that Jesus died
for everybody and that the Lord can receive
everybody, that they have a different Jesus.
This is known as “extreme Calvinism”
or “hyper-Calvinism.” Such people can go
so far with this that if someone does not go
along with it, there can be no fellowship.
Very often they are the same kind of people
given to such thinking that if someone reads
any version of the Bible other than the “Authorized
Version” there can be no fellowship.
These groups push further into error and get
into something the Bible calls “contentions”:
“We have it right and others have it wrong”
(1 Cor. 1:11-13).
I get accused of that, but in fact it is not
true. I always stand by the basic things of
the Bible. If someone departs from the basic
truths, if they go into things the Word of
God says are wrong, then I will take a stand.
But to divide over these other issues I think
is wrong. Nonetheless, let us understand the
nature of the division–not personal division,
but theological division.
Starting at One End of the Spectrum
On one extreme we have something known
as “Pelagianism.” Pelagians were mystics
who lived in Britain in the early centuries of
the Church and followed the teachings of Pelagius
who denied the idea of original sin and
the truth that man is a fallen creature. Pelagius
said we can choose God ourselves because
we do not have a fallen nature. The Bible
says that is not true, and Pelagius was opposed
by Augustine of Hippo on these issues.
The Bible says that because of the fall of
man in the sin of Adam and Eve, we have a
fallen nature. We are born with sin, therefore
we must be born again. Pelagianism is a total
heresy. We will find extreme Calvinists, many
in Scotland and Northern Ireland, saying that
Arminianism is simply another form of Pelagianism
or a diluted from of Pelagianism.
Just to the left of Pelagianism is “Finneyism,”
named after the North American Evangelist
Charles Finney.
I do not deny that many people were saved
through Charles Finney’s preaching. Things
that seemed to be supernatural manifestations
of God’s power are associated with his
ministry. However, we need to be very careful
about making those things a barometer of
truth. Charles Finney also denied that man
has a fallen nature. The Bible says because
we are born with a fallen nature we must be
born again. He denied it, however he admitted
we all have sin anyway.
In the Middle
In the middle is something known as
“Wesleyan Arminianism.” Arminius was reacting
to extreme Calvinism. His ideas were
taken up in this and other countries under the
influences of the Great Revivalists, particularly
John Wesley. This brand of Arminianism
is often called “Wesleyan Arminianism”
in countries like Great Britain, America,
Canada and others. This view holds that man
is fallen, and that all men fall short of the
glory of God (Rom. 3:23). It also holds that
we cannot save ourselves. As a matter of
fact, this view also believes we cannot even
choose Jesus of ourselves.
We cannot save ourselves and we cannot
choose Christ. He said, “I chose you” (Jn.
15:16). However, this particular view is
what I believe and which classical Pentecostalism
believes: we are dead because of sin.
We cannot choose the Lord Jesus, we cannot
choose to be born again because our spirit
cannot communicate with God’s Spirit because
we are dead in our sins; God’s Spirit
puts just enough light back in us to communicate
with Him. And He gives us just
enough of the original state before the fall to
make the choice Adam had.
The Restoration of Choice
Adam had a choice between two things: the
Tree of Life (the Lord Jesus and eternal life)
and the tree of knowledge of good and evil
(the world). He made the wrong choice. Jesus
came as the “Second Adam” (1 Co. 15:45).
Only two men had a choice: Jesus and Adam.
Adam had a choice and Jesus had a choice.
In the Temptation narrative (Mt. 4:1-11;
Mk. 1:12-13) Jesus was with the wild animals
the same as Adam in the Garden. Christ
was the Second Adam. The same things Satan
tried on Adam he tried on Jesus. Before
Jesus could have gone to the cross and died
He had to be tested the way Adam was. In a
sense, He had to earn the right to go to the
cross tested as Adam. He identified with us.
Adam had a choice, Jesus had a choice,
but we do not. What God does when He convicts
somebody of sin is to make it possible
for them to make a choice they would not
make otherwise. We cannot choose Him–He
chooses us, but He makes it possible for us to
respond through His grace. Calvinists deny
this. Calvinism (in its classical form) says
we will never choose Him in any degree.
An unsaved person has no choice in sinning;
they must sin because they are under
the law of sin and death, much like the law
of gravity. The most an unsaved person can
Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

choose about sin is when, where, and how,
but not to sin they cannot choose. As believers,
because God’s Spirit is in us, we have a
choice–we do not have to sin. God gives us
back our free will; we can choose to walk according
to the Spirit or the flesh. Calvinism,
in effect, denies the restoring work of Jesus
Christ when He died and rose from the dead
and gave us a new nature. God gives us back
free will when we are born again. We have no
free will before we are reborn and we cannot
choose to be born again until God quickens
us. That is what it means to be “Arminianist.”
Types of Calvinism
Then we have a more moderate form of
Calvinism to the left of Wesleyan Arminianism
known as “Four-Point Calvinism,” and
then beyond that is a “Five-Point Calvinism”
which, similar to Finneyism on the opposite
extreme borders on the heretical. Let me explain
what I mean about “Four-Point” and
“Five-Point.”
There is debate among church historians:
“Was Calvin a ‘Calvinist’?” “Calvinism” as
we know it was not formulated by Calvin or
from Calvin’s Institutes, but by something
known as The Remonstrance of Dort. It was
Calvin’s followers who later began to define
Calvinism in the sense we know it. In
the same way we must make something of a
distinction between Wesley’s own personal
beliefs and Wesleyan Arminianism, we have
to make something of a distinction between
Calvin’s own beliefs and what has come to be
known as “Calvinism.” Classical Calvinism,
which came out of The Remonstrance of Dort
is called “TULIP,” an acronym or an acrostic.
“T” = “Total Depravity” Calvinism and
Arminianism both believe we are totally
depraved. What does that mean? It does not
mean we are as bad as we are capable of
being; biblically we cannot get any worse.
It just means we are totally fallen in body,
mind, and spirit. Man is so fallen spiritually
even his bodily members are taken with sin.
He is totally depraved. It is like a six egg
omelet where five of the eggs are good but
one of the eggs is bad; the whole omelet is
contaminated. Calvinists and Arminianists
both believe in “Total Depravity,” that we
cannot save ourselves and we are fallen.
“U” = “Undeserved Grace” I totally
agree, Wesley would have totally agreed–we
all agree, that God’s grace is undeserved.
Christ died for the ungodly; while we were
yet sinners Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). We
cannot do anything to earn salvation and it
is a sin to even think that we can. (This is
the rudiment of Calvinistic thought which I
will explain shortly.) It was the reaction to
the heresy and corruption of medieval Roman
Catholicism.
A Reaction to Catholicism
John Calvin was a Humanist scholar. None
of his ideas were really original. He was a dynamic
personality and a capable writer, but
his ideas all came from Erasmus of Rotterdam,
Martin Luther, and others from the first
generation of Reformers and the Humanists
before them. He was a Christian Humanist,
but he was still a Humanist.
During the Renaissance of the Middle
Ages a heresy was represented by people
we know as “Thomists” (people influence
by Thomas Aquinas), which was known as
“Medieval Scholasticism.” Frances Schaffer
explained it very well. What it virtually
came to mean in the Renaissance was that
although man was fallen, his intellect was
not. (Do you see how nonsensical it gets?)
And so all this religious argument begins revolving
around man’s intellect as not having
fallen, but only his spirit. Even the Reformers
never totally rejected Philanthropism,
but the Humanist scholars who influenced
Calvin, and Calvin himself who was a Humanist
scholar, set out to correct this error in
medieval scholarship and delved into Gnostic
hermeneutics and a lot of other things. So
Calvin was reacting to Roman Catholicism
in the Renaissance of the Middle Ages which
said man was not totally depraved.
Secondly was the issue of “Undeserved
Grace.” The Roman Catholic Church’s teaching
is sacramentalism and selling indulgences.
(That is how the Vatican was built and
what triggered the Reformation.) Luther reacted
against Tetzel the Dominican: “When a
coin in the coffer rings a soul from purgatory
springs.” This trite saying expresses the belief
that somehow one can earn salvation by
buying it or by good works, and this is still
found today in places such as Italy. It is terrible
to see elderly women trying to go up the
stairs–the Scala Sancta–on their knees with
rosary beads trying to get their mothers out
of Purgatory. Calvin was very likely acting
against the depravity of Roman Catholicism.
The “T” and the “U” we both agree on,
but then Calvin gets into the “L.”
The Beginning of Digression
“L” = “Limited Atonement” or particular
redemption. “Behold, the Lamb of God who
takes away the sins of the world” (Jn. 1:29).
Jesus said, “If I am lifted up…I will draw
all men unto Myself” (Jn. 12:32). Calvinism
asserts that maybe He draws, but He is not
intending to save everyone He is drawing,
only the Elect, only the predestined, only
those He foreknew.
God is omnipotent (all powerful); He is
omniscient (all knowing). It is impossible to
describe God with human intellect. Of course
He knows the future. Of course He knows
who will be saved. Of course He knows the
one who will react to His grace. He chooses
the ones He knew would respond–that is
Arminianism. Calvinists say no, that it is
only the ones whose names were written in
the Book of Life from the foundation of the
world and that is all there is to it. Nobody
else is going to be saved as their name is not
in the Book, and there is nothing anyone can
Feature Article – Continued
do to get their name taken off the “hell book”
and into the Book of Life because that is the
way they were born.
This is quite sad, is it not? One of the
two versions of Christianity which cause
the most mental illness perhaps, although
the Jehovah’s Witnesses have a higher rate
of mental illness than the general society, is
Roman Catholicism. Take a country like Ireland
with its very high instances of alcohol
abuse, its high instances of child abuse and
homosexual pedophilia–all of that stuff is
built up in a psyche, a social psychology that
is influenced by the Roman church. The sexual
repression because of the influences of
Augustine’s Manicheanism and other such
things begin to manifest themselves in different
ways. Roman Catholic countries have
a lot of mental illness and a lot of alcoholism.
But look at the other extreme.
I was in Bible college with people who
grew up in strict Presbyterian backgrounds
in Northern Ireland and Scotland. They went
from one extreme to another. Roman Catholicism
teaches one gets saved by works
and by the sacraments, so they are always
working to get saved, driving themselves
neurotic and giving themselves a guilt trip.
Because faith without works is dead and
works are evidence of our faith (Ja. 2:17)
extreme forms of Calvinism say one has to
do these works to prove they are saved. “I
must be saved because look what I am doing.”
Neither one of them seems to give a
real assurance of salvation. Neither of the
extremes gives the people psychologically
an assurance of salvation and a real peace.
The modern forms of Calvinism do not
drive people crazy. Having a mother who was
Irish-Catholic I can tell you that Irish-Catholicism
is a form of mental illness. And so is
Hassidic Judaism. I have seen both close up.
My family is a combination of both Jewish
and Catholic and I have seen both sides of it.
“Limited Atonement” asserts that Jesus
died only for certain people, full stop. So say
the Calvinists; not so, say the Arminians.
“I” = “Irresistible Grace” This says no one
has a choice. If God put a name in the Book
of Life before the foundation of the world,
they have to be saved, they must be saved,
and they will be saved–they have no capacity
to choose or to reject Jesus; that is it. God
chose us, we have not chosen Him, therefore
we cannot even respond to Him except
that He has ordained our response to Him.
“P” = “Perseverance,” which is “once
saved (unconditionally), always saved.” Notice
I said “unconditionally.” I believe “once
saved, always saved,” but it is conditional; it
is not unconditional.
The Other End of the Spectrum
The moderate Calvinists will hold to “Total
Depravity,” “Undeserved Grace,” “Irresistible
Grace,” and “Perseverance.” Even
moderate Calvinists will not hold to “Limited
Atonement,” that Jesus died only for certain
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly

Feature Article – Continued
people and the others are created to go to hell.
Five-Point Calvinists would hold to it all.
Going even further, there is a form of Calvinism
that is as heretical on one extreme as
it is on the other: it is “hyper-Calvinism” in
the sense of not just being “Five-Point” but
by saying that because God has already foreordained
the Elect, the Church does not have
to witness or evangelize.
We laugh at it now, but that was the predominant
thinking of Baptists in Great Britain
until William Carey stood up and challenged
them at the Baptist Convention. He wanted
to send missionaries to the East to convert
the pagans and was told, “Brother Carey, sit
down and be quiet. If God wants the heathen
He will do it without your help or mine.”
Another form of heretical Calvinism is
licentiousness. Because somebody went
out and made a confession of faith at some
point (they went forward at a Billy Graham
Crusade or put their hand up in a meeting or
said a prayer at the back of the class) they
are unconditionally “once saved, always
saved” and can now go out and keep sinning.
Most Calvinists would say that if they
do that it proves they were never saved to
begin with, but there are others who would
say that even if they backslide, if they really
made the confession, it does not matter,
they are still going to be saved; it is just their
works which will be burned up (1 Co. 3:12-
15). This is heretical. This is not what “man’s
work is burned up” means at all. It refers to
the things we do in the flesh not ordained by
God, the things we do to “get” saved instead
of what we do because we have been saved.
When a Christian is saved we do not work to
“get” saved, we work because we have been
saved. Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.
do it to get saved; Evangelicals do it because
they have been saved. But a lot of the works
we do are, of course, in the flesh and a lot of
us do a lot more worldly and temporal things
than we do the things of the Lord, and those
things will be “burned up.”
The Extreme Results of “Election”
These extreme forms of Calvinism can be
quite brutal. This idea of “election” has been
taken to such extremes that it has resulted
in social injustice. Any time we have had a
hyper-Calvinistic society of that extreme we
have found its hallmark was not only terrible
social injustice, but social injustice perpetrated
in the name of Christ and the Church.
Let us look at the three big examples of a
hyper-Calvinistic church which most of us
ought to be familiar with.
One is the American South, the extreme
Southern Baptists who believed in slavery.
The Baptist Church split into two denominations,
the American and Southern Baptists,
over the issue of slavery. “God elected us;
we’re foreordained.” They said Black people
were inferior, that God “elected” them to be
that way. They took one verse in Genesis out
of context about the son of Ham and so on to
justify what happened to the Black people.
Look at Northern Ireland. No one hates
the Roman Catholic Church and its heresy
more than I do; it is from hell. I despise Roman
Catholicism, but I love Roman Catholic
people. If I did not love Roman Catholic
people so much I would not hate the church
that is leading them to hell as much as I do.
However, hatred of Catholicism is one thing;
oppression of Catholics is another. Look at
what the strict Presbyterians did to the Roman
Catholics in Ireland for centuries; it is
unspeakable. Obviously I have no love for
the IRA or anything like it–I think they are a
pack of thugs. However, there is still a whole
history in back of what is going on there that
most people in Great Britain do not even
know about, and would not want anything
to do with, perpetrated in the name of an extreme
form of Calvinism. In the aftermath of
the Plantation Period all kinds of things were
justified by Calvinism in what amounted to
social injustice against Catholic people.
The third is Apartheid that once existed in
South Africa. The Dutch Reformed Church
was hyper-Calvinist.
Whenever we find an extreme form of
Calvinism we find oppressors. Calvin had
a virtual police state which he theologically
designed in Geneva. People were burned
alive for heresy. There is a Reformed church
in Zurich founded by Zwingli who drowned
Baptists. If someone believed in being baptized
as a believer, they cut a hole in the ice
and drowned them. In Great Britain there
was a terrible war with Presbyterians, Calvinists
killing other Calvinists. In Massachusetts
they burned witches. Whenever we find
extreme Calvinism we find injustice and oppression.
I know of no exception.
The more moderate forms of Calvinism,
even the Five-Point ones such as the Puritans,
did other things which were good such
as the establishment of Parliamentary democracy
and so on based on biblical principles;
I am speaking against the extremes only. I
will speak against the extremes of Calvinism
on the one side of the equation, but I will
also co-equally speak against the extremes
of Arminianism and beyond with the ideas of
Finney and Pelagius on the other. The truth is
in the Middle and that is the basic situation.
Arguments from God’s Word
I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not
lying, my conscience testifies with me
in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow
and unceasing grief in my heart.
For I could wish that I myself were accursed,
separated from Christ for the
sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according
to the flesh…
(This introduces the sections of Romans 9-
11 dealing with the soteriological, the salvific
and prophetic purposes of God for Israel and
the Jews, God’s continuing love for Israel
despite their popular rejection of its Messiah
by what became of the majority of them.)
…who are Israelites, to whom belongs…
(“Belongs” is in the present continuous
active tense–God is not finished with the
Jews. In the Greek it is present continuous
active.)
…the adoption as sons, and the glory and
the covenants and the giving of the Law and
the temple service and the promises…
(Indicating it was written before AD 70,
of course.)
…whose are the fathers, and from whom
is the Christ according to the flesh, who is
over all, God blessed forever. Amen. But it is
not as though the word of God has failed.
(Meaning the Torah.)
For they are not all Israel who are descended
from Israel;
(In other words, being a physical Jew is
useless unless one accepts the Messiah.)
…nor are they all children because they are
Abraham’s descendants, but: “THROUGH
ISAAC YOUR DESCENDANTS WILL BE
NAMED.”
(Now he begins doing a midrashic exposition
of the Book of Genesis.)
That is, it is not the children of the flesh
who are children of God, but the children of
the promise are regarded as descendants.
For this is the word of promise: “AT THIS
TIME I WILL COME, AND SARAH SHALL
HAVE A SON.” And not only this, but there
was Rebekah also, when she had conceived
twins by one man, our father Isaac; for
though the twins were not yet born and had
not done anything good or bad, so that God’s
purpose according to His choice would
stand, not because of works but because
of Him who calls, it was said to her, “THE
OLDER WILL SERVE THE YOUNGER.”
Just as it is written, “JACOB I LOVED, BUT
ESAU I HATED.” What shall we say then?
There is no injustice with God, is there? May
it never be! For He says to Moses, “I WILL
HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MER-
CY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON
WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION.” So then it
does not depend on the man who wills or the
man who runs, but on God who has mercy.
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “FOR
THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP,
TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU,
AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PRO-
CLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE
EARTH.” So then He has mercy on whom
He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
You will say to me then, “Why does He
still find fault? For who resists His will?”
On the contrary, who are you, O man, who
answers back to God? The thing molded will
not say to the molder, “Why did you make
me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter
have a right over the clay, to make from
the same lump one vessel for honorable use
and another for common use? What if God,
although willing to demonstrate His wrath
and to make His power known, endured with
much patience vessels of wrath prepared for
Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

destruction? And He did so to make known
the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy,
which He prepared beforehand for glory,
(Rom 9:1–23)
Based on this Calvinists will say, “God is
the Potter, we are the clay, who are we to
argue with God? He chooses who goes to
heaven, He chooses the Elect; the others are
going to go to hell.” And of course they even
take “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” in
some cases and say, “White people I loved,
Black people I hated” or “Protestant people I
loved, Catholic people I hated,” etc.
Remember that John Wesley’s revivals
were an Arminian reaction to the social injustices
bred by a dead church that was permeated
with Calvinistic thought. That is when the
people began coming out of the coal mines
and the sweat shops and began giving their
lives to the Lord in the tens of thousands.
The Text in Context
So Calvinists say, “How can we argue with
God? He can do what He wants, He is sovereign;
He makes one son this way and one son
that way.” The first mistake these people are
making is a text out of its context becomes a
pretext. The context of Romans 9-11 is predominantly
dealing with nations, not individuals.
It is dealing with the Jews and the Gentiles.
Paul quotes about the two twins. Let us
read what he is commenting on in Genesis.
The LORD said to her, “Two nations are
in your womb; And two peoples will be separated
from your body; And one people shall
be stronger than the other; And the older
shall serve the younger.” (Gen. 25:23)
What these people do is take something
that is talking about nations and apply it to
people. There is a principle in midrash called
“kal v’homer”–“light to heavy.” It says that
what applies in a specific situation should
also apply in a heavy one. But before we use
that principle, we must first look at the context.
It is not talking about God creating some
people for this purpose and that purpose; it is
talking about His election of nations.
Moreover, we have something called “corporate
solidarity” in Scripture. Corporate solidarity
is where a person represents a nation
or a larger group of people. Esau and Jacob
respectively represent what becomes the Israelite
and Arab nations. As time goes on, Esau
is reconciled to Jacob. In Genesis God has
prophetic purposes for the Arab people the
same as He does the Jews. His election here
has to do with His calling for service; it has
nothing to do with salvation in the primary
sense that these people are trying to make it.
This is the same in the Book of Obadiah.
The name of the patriarch becomes a metaphor,
or a general term, for the nations descended
from him. So before going any further
we have to realize that these people are
taking something talking about nations and
applying it to individuals when that is mainly
not even what the text is talking about. It
can apply to individuals in some degree, as
the text goes on to describe about Pharaoh,
but when the New Testament interprets the
Old Testament, we have to go back to read
the Old Testament’s context.
The Example of Hardening a Heart
Pharaoh hardened his own heart. He repeatedly
hardened his own heart. Only after
he repeatedly hardened his own heart did
God harden his heart. God raised him up and
used him. He let the guy get away with murder.
He let the guy get away with this, that,
and the other thing while thinking he was
the big cheese. He was deified by Egyptians,
of course, and worshiped as a god, and God
used him for His purpose, only to bring him
down. But it does not say God hardened his
heart until he repeatedly hardened his own.
But though He had performed so many
signs before them, yet they were not believing
in Him. This was to fulfill the word of
Isaiah the prophet which he spoke: “LORD,
WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT?
AND TO WHOM HAS THE ARM OF THE
LORD BEEN REVEALED?” For this reason
they could not believe, for Isaiah said again,
“HE HAS BLINDED THEIR EYES AND
HE HARDENED THEIR HEART, SO THAT
THEY WOULD NOT SEE WITH THEIR
EYES AND PERCEIVE WITH THEIR
HEART, AND BE CONVERTED AND I
HEAL THEM.” (Jn. 12:37–40)
Could not, would not, should not. God’s
hardening of a heart is always in response to
its own hardening. It was not a case where
God just hardened their hearts. Even Calvin
admitted that it worked that particular way
and according to that kind of dynamic.
This does not quote from the Hebrew text;
it quotes from the Septuagint, the Greek Old
Testament where the mood is subjunctive.
The subjunctive mood in Greek allows for
the possibility, “Lest they see with their eyes
and hear with their ears and turn to Me and
be converted.” The possibility of their repentance
still exists in the Greek subjunctive.
More than that, along this vein is the idea
of “be converted.” The Septuagint takes Hebrew
and translates it into Greek. “Converted”
in Hebrew is “teshuva.” The Hebrew word
for “repent” and “convert” is the same thing;
it means to turn away from sin toward God.
This idea that He arbitrarily, or by His own
sovereign will, just decides who will do this
or that is the result of only giving one side of
the story. But the Bible speaks of something
very different. When He hardens hearts it is
because they have repeatedly hardened their
own. How many times did He send Moses
back to Pharaoh? But let us look even further.
The Potter in Jeremiah
“God is the Potter, we are the clay.” This
comes from the Book of Jeremiah 18-19. Let
us read the Old Testament text in its context
to see what Paul is talking about.
The word which came to Jeremiah from
the LORD saying,
Feature Article – Continued
When we see the “word” of the Lord, it
is “d’var” in Hebrew, and the Greek would
be “logos.” It is Jesus. This is Jesus Himself
coming to Jeremiah in some kind of revelation.
It is not like a message came, it is like a
person came. It had to do with a personal encounter
with what the rabbis call the “d’var”
or the “mamre” (Aramaic), or what the New
Testament calls the “Logos,” a personal encounter
with Christ. When we read the Bible
in the Spirit, it is not simply an encounter
with the text; it is an encounter with the Person.
What we get from the text derives from
the encounter with the Person. If you are just
getting information today you are not hearing
from Jesus, you are just hearing from me.
The question today is, are you encountering
Jesus? Are you encountering the Word or
just words? If you have the Word, the Word
will be crystal clear.
The word which came to Jeremiah from
the LORD saying, “Arise and go down to the
potter’s house, and there I will announce My
words to you.”
He had to go somewhere. God was going
to show him from the illustration of a potter
how to understand something. God did
not say, “I am going to show you something
now,” but “I am going to show you something
that will explain it as an object lesson.”
Then I went down to the potter’s house,
and there he was, making something on the
wheel. But the vessel that he was making of
clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter;
so he remade it into another vessel, as it
pleased the potter to make. Then the word of
the LORD came to me saying…
(We can almost say, “Jesus said to him”)
“Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with
you as this potter does?” declares the LORD.
“Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so
are you in My hand, O house of Israel. (Jer.
18:1-6)
“Can I not…deal with you as the potter
does?” Once again, who is He saying this to:
a person or a nation? They are taking something
that predominantly applies to a corporate
group of people–a nation, and over-applying
it to individuals. Their second mistake is
that they do not look at how the potter works.
How a Potter Works
When we take our study tours to Israel,
we frequently show people in a Talmudic
village in Galilee how the potter made earthenware
vessels from clay. If it does not turn
out right, the potter smashes it into mortar,
lubricates it, and begins over. If he is not
happy with that one he re-smashes it, but it is
the same material. A potter in biblical times
would normally not give up until he remade
the thing at least a dozen times.
Jesus does not save people to lose them.
When we drop our cross z pick it up. Although
we goof our lives up, He does not
give up. He may have to break us and remake
us time and time again, but it takes a
long time for the Potter to give up on the ma-
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly

Feature Article – Continued
terial. So it is with us.
People are always worrying about their
salvation, thinking they may be lost, but the
teaching of the potter is not like that; that is
not how the potter works. However, there is a
time, of course, when the potter does give up.
Not Individuals But Nations
“At one moment I might speak concerning…
…an individual? No…
…a nation…
The text of Romans 9-11 is nations, not
primarily people.
… or concerning a kingdom to uproot,
to pull down, or to destroy it; if that nation
against which I have spoken turns from its
evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I
planned to bring on it.
(Like the story of Jonah and Nineveh.)
“Or at another moment I might speak
concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom
to build up or to plant it; if it does evil
in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I
will think better of the good with which I had
promised to bless it. So now then, speak to
the men of Judah and against the inhabitants
of Jerusalem saying, ‘Thus says the LORD,
“Behold, I am fashioning calamity against
you and devising a plan against you. Oh turn
back, each of you from his evil way, and reform
your ways and your deeds.”’ But they
will say, ‘It’s hopeless! For we are going to
follow our own plans, and each of us will
act according to the stubbornness of his evil
heart.’ (Jer. 18:7-12)
God will raise up another nation, but if
they repent He will take them back. That is
what Scripture here says, and that is exactly
what Paul is talking about in Romans 9-11.
Behold then the kindness and severity of
God; to those who fell…
(That is, to the mainly Gentile Church.)
…severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if
you continue in His kindness; otherwise you
also will be cut off. (Rom. 11:22)
What does Jeremiah say? If this other pot
that the Potter makes does not work out well,
He will get rid of that one! But what does
Paul then say?
And they also, if they do not continue in
their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is
able to graft them in again. (Rom. 11:23)
What does Jeremiah 18 say? The same
thing. “If it repents then I will think better
of the good.”
This is not the meaning of the “potter/
clay” teaching in the way they are saying. I
wish they would read the text in its context,
but they do not.
It Is Not What They Cite, But What They
Do Not Cite
You will notice that extreme Calvinists
will always use only the verses that support
their point of view. (I suppose Jehovah’s
Witnesses do the same thing, and if we are
not careful we can do the same thing. So we
have to be careful.)
“The Christ of Arminianism loves every
person in the world and sincerely desires
their salvation.”
And he goes on to say that the Christ of
the Bible is not like this; it is only the Elect
He has unconditionally chosen. Let us look
at some of the verses he does not cite.
The Lord is not slow about His promise,
as some count slowness, but is patient toward
you, not wishing for any to perish but
for all to come to repentance. (2 Pe. 3:9)
I have had Calvinists try to suggest to me,
“That only means Christians.” First of all,
even if they are right, even if it means “only
Christians,” how can Christians “perish”
under “once saved, always saved”? (I have
not received an answer to that yet.) But then
it says…
But the day of the Lord will come like a
thief, in which the heavens will pass away
with a roar and the elements will be destroyed
with intense heat, and the earth and
its works will be burned up. (2 Pe. 3:10)
The context is talking about the end of the
world for everybody. He is “not wishing for
any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”
Jesus does not want to lose anybody.
Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of
the eternal life to which you were called, and
you made the good confession in the presence
of many witnesses. (1 Tim. 6:12)
It is something that must be apprehended.
It is not just something that is “there,” it is
something that must be apprehended.
And he says something even further in Timothy:
the Lord says He does not want anyone
to go to hell. He takes no joy in people going
to hell; He takes joy in people being saved.
But when Paul writes about this he is proceeding
from a number of Old Testament contexts,
one of which is in the Book of Ezekiel.
He Does Not Want to Lose Any
Ezekiel is prophesying at a very bad time,
when judgment is well under way, and God
tells Ezekiel…
“When I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely
die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out
to warn the wicked from his wicked way that
he may live, that wicked man shall die in his
iniquity, but his blood I will require at your
hand. Yet if you have warned the wicked and
he does not turn from his wickedness or from
his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity;
but you have delivered yourself. Again, when
a righteous man turns away from his righteousness
and commits iniquity, and I place
an obstacle before him, he will die; since you
have not warned him, he shall die in his sin,
and his righteous deeds which he has done
shall not be remembered; but his blood I will
require at your hand.” (Eze. 3:18-20)
God is telling Ezekiel here and in Ezekiel
33 directly (Eze. 33:11) that He takes no
pleasure when the wicked perish; He would
rather they repent. “Warn them so they will
not perish.” He wants everyone to repent!
Our Calvinistic friends will say that only
means “the Old Covenant,” but now we are
under a new Law of grace. That is some idea
of grace they have.
This is good and acceptable in the sight
of God our Savior, who desires all men to be
saved and to come to the knowledge of the
truth. (1 Tim. 2:3–4)
God “desires all men to be saved!” He
knows not all men are going to be saved.
He knows those who will reject His offer
of salvation through His Son Jesus, and He
knows the one who will accept; He foreknew
it–He knows how it is going to turn out, but
He wants everyone to be saved. Ideally, He
wants them all to be saved.
We have to look at everything the Bible
says on a subject for the full weight of Scripture.
There is a balance. A major part of the
problem comes from the fact that we are
looking back to the 16 th century and the Reformers
instead of to the 1 st century and the
early Christians. We have to put ourselves
in a situation that the 1 st century Christians
were in to understand what the Apostles are
writing and how it applies to us. But that
principle is no less true when we look at
Reformed (or Calvinistic) Theology. What
was Calvin up against? Why is he writing
the way he does? Obviously he was trying to
free people from bondage, not put them in it.
The Roman Catholic Church was keeping
people riddled with grief, guilt, and fear.
Calvin was trying to tell them “once saved,
always saved,” to keep them free from this
oppression. On the other hand, there was another
oppression that came as a result—this
idea of only the Elect. It is a truth, but a misunderstood
truth. He does not want to lose any.
There are so many verses.
“And I, if I am lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men to Myself.” (Jn. 12:32)
The Lord is not slow about His promise,
as some count slowness, but is patient toward
you, not wishing for any to perish but
for all to come to repentance. (2 Pe. 3:9)
This is good and acceptable in the sight
of God our Savior, who desires all men to be
saved and to come to the knowledge of the
truth. (1 Tim. 2:3–4)
And in Ezekiel 3, “Warn them so they will
not perish.”
Such it is, but let us go further and understand
why.
The Roots of Calvinism
Calvin came out of Humanism. It was
something that later emerged into what we
know as “The Enlightenment,” and was
worse than Rationalism. Whenever there
is a change in scientific thought it changes
technology. And when technology changes,
it changes the economy. And when the economy
changes, it changes the culture and the
political situation. then people’s worldview
begins to change.
Out of the Renaissance, Greek and Ro-
Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

man learning was rediscovered and ideas
came from the East. Under medieval Roman
Catholicism, Western Europe went into the
Dark Ages. If you want to know what a Roman
Catholic world would look like, look at
what a Roman Catholic world was like; look
at the Dark Ages. If you want to know what
the popes would do if they had their way in
the world, look at what they did do; they had
their way for twelve centuries. Look at the
inquisitions. That is Roman Catholicism.
At one time, for instance, physics was
based on Isaac Newton. It was a Newtonian
worldview. But since the advent of Einstein
and his Theory of Relativity we do not view
physics that way. In the old physics matter
was matter and energy was energy; the
two were mutually exclusive. But there was
a born-again Christian called Rutherford
who moved to England who began to do
experiments with photons (light particles)
and found out they have mass–“matter.” A
light particle is a “wave”; it is energy. But it
also has mass? In the old physics matter and
energy were mutually exclusive; in the new
physics things we used to think were mutually
exclusive are held in some kind of tension.
The worldview of Calvin could not grasp
things not being mutually exclusive, that they
could be held in a tension with each other.
In the new physics, particle physicists
today talk about a universe which is neither
finite nor infinite but is “critical.” What
is emerging in the world of physics is in
many ways closer to the worldview of the
Bible than that which was the worldview of
Calvin. Calvin was black-and-white: “once
saved, always saved.” For those not conforming
to this the explanation was that they
were not saved to begin with. The view was
that either someone was part of the Elect or
they were not part of the Elect. He could not
keep things in tension.
Holding Things in Tension
This does not begin with Calvin. Calvin
simply amplified it for his time and we have
been stuck with it ever since. It does not just
go back to Augustine and Pelagius; it goes
back to the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The
Sadducees were “determinists”–they were
“fatalists”; the Pharisees were not. Jesus usually
agreed with the Pharisees. Only on the
issue of divorce did He seem to digress from
their point of view. He had a more conservative
view than they did, but the Pharisees were
much closer to the truth than the Sadducees.
Jesus said, “The Son of Man must be betrayed
for it is written, but woe to him by
whom He must be betrayed” (Mt. 26:24).
The Pharisees said that all is foreseen, all is
ordained, but choice is given. They agreed
with Jesus. (Or Jesus agreed with them.) It
was the Sadducees who were determinists.
Calvinism is closer to the Sadducees than
the Pharisees with whom Jesus agreed. Jesus
held the two in tension. The way a physicist
today can allow that light particles have
mass, a physicist from a hundred years ago
could not. Calvin could not accept it because
of his worldview, but we have to accept it
because it is the worldview of the Bible and
it is the worldview today.
Think about human emotion. Because of
the fall of man there is a curse on human
relationships, including the relationships between
men and women. A marriage is a lovehate
relationship, isn’t it? “I can’t live with
him, I can’t live without him.” The human
brain is the only computer in the world which
can hold two mutually exclusive points of
view at the same time so they can be valid.
I am from New York City. New York is
like London. If you talk to people who are
big city people they will tell you, “I love
it and I hate it at the same time.” Talk to a
Londoner. “Oh, yeah, the West End with the
theaters and museums with the cosmopolitan
atmosphere and the energy–I love it. But the
congestion on the Tube and the crime–I hate
it.” There is a tension because we are emotional
beings. We are made in God’s image
and likeness–“Imagio Dei”–and there is a
tension in God. We can accommodate things
psychologically and emotionally which are
mutually exclusive that a computer cannot.
We are not computers because we are
made in God’s image and likeness. We have
to begin to think more like humans made in
God’s image and likeness than like computers.
Things are held in tension.
If God gives us a backslidden son or
daughter, do we love them any less? There
will be times, maybe, where they drive
us up the wall, when we want to get rid of
them, but we cannot. That is the way it is.
An unsaved wife, an unsaved husband–it is
a tension to deal with. God holds things in
tension as well. The difference, of course,
is that because He is God He knows what
will happen. Calvin could not accept that
with his worldview; with our worldview it
is more easy.
Scripture They Omit
For every verse someone can show election
in the sense that Calvinists interpret it, I
can produce another verse showing He wants
us all to be saved. Let us take this a bit further.
In the Book of Acts it says they “might”
be saved (Acts 4:12). So the possibility of
being saved is there and the possibility of
not being saved is there. But where do we
go from here? What is the next basis of argumentation?
On the Calvinists’ list it is not
“Limited Atonement,” it becomes “Perseverance,”
that once someone is saved they
are always saved, full stop.
It is wrong to say that Wesleyan Arminianism
cannot give people the assurance of salvation;
it can. We can be sure of our salvation
right this minute. I can show extreme Calvinists
who cannot be sure of their salvation.
We can be sure of our salvation and we can
be sure of it tomorrow if we continue in His
way. There is an example that I always use.
Feature Article – Continued
So then, my beloved, just as you have always
obeyed, not as in my presence only, but
now much more in my absence, work out your
salvation with fear and trembling; (Phil. 2:12)
He begins by talking about obedience in
connection with salvation. Why?
“He who believes in the Son has eternal
life; but he who does not obey the Son will
not see life, but the wrath of God abides on
him.” (Jn. 3:36)
If there is real belief there will be an action
upon it; we act according to it. “Work
out your salvation.” It does not say work for.
(It is “katergazomai” in Greek.)
Working It Out
Once upon a time there was a little boy
named Donnie Berkowitz and he wanted a
model airplane. This was a big model airplane
that little Donnie barely could dream
of getting the money for. It cost seventy-five
quid and he was only 10 years old. Where
was he going to get seventy-five quid? There
was no way possible little Donnie could buy
this model airplane. He wanted to get the instructions
and build this model airplane and
put it on the mantelpiece in his house so his
parents would show people when they came
to visit. But the price was just way beyond
anything he could think of.
So his father decided for his birthday as a
surprise he would buy little Donnie this airplane.
Donnie opens the gift wrapping and
inside of it is a box with a model airplane in
the box. Little Donnie was given something
he could have never possibly achieved by
his own means. There was no way he could
have gotten that airplane; it was well beyond
the bounds of his capabilities. So he had a
choice: he could open the box, build the airplane,
and put it on the mantelpiece, or he
could put the box on the mantelpiece and everybody
could come and look at the picture
on the outside of the box.
“Katergazomai” does not mean “work
for,” it means “work out.”
His father gave him something he could
not have gotten on his own, but he still had
to act on what was given to him. He had to
open the box, assemble it, and put it on the
mantelpiece. This idea that we profess faith in
Christ but take it and just place it on the mantelpiece
is crazy. Jesus said to His disciples…
“If anyone does not abide in Me, he is
thrown away as a branch and dries up; and
they gather them, and cast them into the fire
and they are burned.” (Jn. 15:6)
This is not to do with “works” being
burned up; it is talking about people who
make some profession of faith at some point
in their life but never bear the fruit of the
Spirit. It is not about what we did but how
much we became like Jesus.
Now “fruit” is the fruit of the Spirit. The
wise man delivers souls (Pr. 11:30), but we
are all witnesses. If we see a Christian who
is not actively witnessing as a part of their
Christian life, that is abnormal and as much
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly

Feature Article – Continued
a mark of unfaithfulness as not reading the
Bible, not praying, or not meeting with other
Christians. We should all be witnessing,
bearing much fruit.
Hence little Donnie takes the box and his
father says, “Donnie, I gave you that but now
you have to put it into operation.”
Swimming the Channel
Another way to look at this is someone
trying to swim from Calais in the north of
France to the White Cliffs of Dover. A gale
force wind comes and the begins to drown.
He is going under and cannot swim his way
out of it. He yells, “Save me! Save me! I’m
drowning!” He is half way across the channel.
He cannot go back to the north of France
to Calais, but neither can he continue on to
England. He is drowning and it begins to
rain, the storm is tumultuous, and the waves
begin to overtake him.
All of the sudden, a helicopter appears in
the sky with “Jesus” printed on the side of it.
The hatch on the helicopter opens and this
Jewish guy with a beard says, “You want Me
to save you?”
“Oh, yes, Jesus! Please save me! I will
never make it on my own!”
Jesus says, “You really understand? You
will really trust Me?”
The man replies, “Yes, Jesus, I trust You!
I know I will never make it without You! I
cannot save myself! Please save me! What
do You want me to do?”
So Jesus takes a lifejacket, drops it out
and says, “Put this on!”
The guy puts the lifejacket on and says,
“OK, Jesus! I got it on! What do you want
me to do now?”
“Keep swimming! The White Cliffs are
that way!”
The Lord made possible for him to do
something that he could never do on his own.
Jesus saved him. Jesus did something for him
he could not do for himself. Jesus did something
for him that was unmerited, undeserved,
but he had to put on the lifejacket and swim.
Now if somebody gets tired and stops
along the way, they can always resume. But
if they take the jacket off and try to go back
to France or swim the wrong way, what is
going to happen? They are going to drown.
Whose fault is that?
The Restoration of Choice
What Jesus does in salvation is to make
it possible for us to make a choice we could
never make otherwise. He makes it possible
for us to make a choice. He restores enough
of our free will to choose Him. Nobody can
resist God’s will ultimately, and His will is
indeed for all men to be saved. But His will
is also for us to be His children and to choose
Him of our own volition. We cannot choose
him of our own volition because of the Fall,
so He “quickens” us–He gives us enough
light. There is a balance: what Adam lost we
get back in Christ. Calvinism denies this; we
do not get back that free choice. Well, Jesus
gave me a free choice.
To say I do not have a choice about being
saved is no different than saying I do
not have a choice about sinning. Of course I
have a choice about sin–I do not have to sin.
I might do it but I do not have to. Salvation
is the same. God gave me the grace, the power,
and the means to choose Christ, which I
could never have done on my own. I still had
to act on it. Once I accepted the Lord Jesus,
although I get tired and drop my cross or get
tired swimming the Channel, I am not going
to take off the lifejacket. I am going to keep
going. As long as I keep that lifejacket on I
am secure. “Nobody can snatch them out of
My hand” (Jn. 10.28); that is true! Nobody is
taking that jacket off of me, but I can take it
off. I am not going to. I would rather drown at
sea with the jacket. At least I will float to the
surface one day, but I can take it off. As long
as I leave the jacket on I am eternally secure.
It is what Isaiah calls “the garments of salvation”
(Is. 61:10). We will be eternally secure.
The Example of Hebrews
Let us look at Hebrews, which was written
to Believers–specifically Jewish Believers,
where there is some suggestion of a falling
away from belief in Jesus as the Messiah and
trying to go back under the Law. This kind of
thing was more the feature of epistles such as
Galatians than it was Hebrews. In Galatians
they were practicing a form of Nomianism.
They were not really legalists saying we are
saved by the Law, but they were saying we
are saved by keeping the Law in addition to
Jesus. But we are saved only by Him. We
can never be saved by works. Christians do
works because they have been saved, not to
get saved. However, Hebrews was written to
Jewish believers and there was some danger
in going back to Judaism in some way, but
not in the same way as Galatians. I am going
to do this by examining the text in the original
Greek and providing the English translation.
Dio aphentes ton tes arches tom Christos
logon epi ten telioteta pherometha en palon
themelion kataballomenoi metanoias apo
nekron epyon kai pisteos epi theo. Baptismon
dedache epithesos to keiron anastasis
te nekris kai krimatos aionion.
“Therefore let us leave the elementary
doctrines of Christ and go on to maturity,
not laying again a foundation of repentance
from dead works and a faith toward God,
with instructions about absolution, laying
on hands, of the resurrection of the dead and
eternal judgment.” (Heb. 6:1-2)
So the writer of Hebrews begins. He talks
about people who have been saved and how
they need to lay this particular foundation.
But immediately after that he introduces
what must be built upon it. He begins with
the Greek word “dio,” which means “for.”
It is a way of explaining that because these
other things have happened, let us press on.
And he begins talking along the following
lines, saying…
“This we will do, if God permits, for it is
impossible to restore again to repentance
those who have once been enlightened, who
have tasted the heavenly gift and have become
partakers of the Holy Spirit. They have
tasted the goodness of the word of God and
the powers of the age to come. If they then
commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son
of God on their own account and hold Him
up to contempt.” (Heb. 6:3-6)
The word “gan” (in verse 4) means “for.”
The Greek mood is not a subjunctive or conditional
subjunctive, but it does imply the
possibility that something can go wrong. It
is not a subjunctive thing that it is doubtful
it will happen, it is conditional. But then it
goes beyond this. “It is impossible to renew
them”–“adenaton” (in verse 6). This is the
same word we have in Hebrews 6:18 saying,
“God cannot default” using “adenaton”–it is
“impossible.” It becomes so impossible for
these people to be renewed, that it means
God would be false if they could be, because
it is the same term. God cannot be false, but
neither can this kind of people be renewed.
What is this talking about?
Those Who Cannot Be Renewed
We have only one kind of sin where people
cannot be renewed: blasphemy of the
Holy Spirit. In its context, blasphemy of the
Holy Spirit had to do with the Pharisees or
the religious leaders of Jesus’ day attributing
to Satan that which they knew was of God.
They knew it was of God; they did not think
it was of God, they knew it was of God. In
the Parable of the Vineyard it says clearly in
Matthew, “for they knew that He spoke the
parable of them” (Mt. 21:45). So they knew
it was of God, but then knowing it was of
God they said it was of Satan in such a way
as to mislead others away from the way of
salvation. That is very depraved. Someone
knows something is of God but for their own
interests they say it is not in such a manner
so as to lead others away from the truth to
bring them to destruction. In its context, that
was the description of the unpardonable sin.
We do not know at what point the Holy
Spirit leaves someone. A backslider does not
know at what point that happens. When King
Saul went the way he did, he did not know
the Spirit had left him, did he? Moreover, he
continued to prophesy. Remember, the gifts
and calling of God go forth without repentance
(Rom. 11:29). The Spirit may have
been on him in terms of the pouring out of
the Spirit, but not inside him anymore. “Lord,
did we not do this and that in Your name? I
never knew you!” (Mt. 7:21-23). We do not
know at what point that happens, but there
is the possibility for someone to backslide
so irrepentantly and so far, refusing to come
back to Jesus, that they have come to a place
where they have blasphemed the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit convicts a backslider continually–continually
and continually. When
10 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

someone falls away from the Lord they have
no peace in the Lord, they have no peace in
their prayer life, they have no peace in anything.
They keep resisting and resisting and
resisting. People like that ultimately will
not be saved. They will go so far there is no
coming back. That can happen. They can actually
reach that point.
It is not easy, but there are people who
have become so backslidden that they know
the truth but they will not allow their wives to
bring their children up in the Church. There
are people who have husbands or wives who
are so backslidden that they actually lead
their own children away from the truth even
though they themselves know the truth. This
is a terrible kind of sin. There is some basis
for associating this with blaspheming the
Holy Spirit.
They Saw the Light
“For in the case of those who have once
been enlightened”–“phoristhentas” is the
Greek word. The idea is that they have “seen
the light” or “come to the light.” It is not some
abstract thing; they know exactly what it is.
“Adonaton gan tous hapax phoristhentas
genomentous te tes doreas tes epouranion
kai metoxis genethentas pneumatos hagion.”
(Heb. 6:4)
“Once being enlightened and tasting the
gift (“doreas”) and the heavenlies…”
Not really a heavenly experience but “the
heavenlies”…
“…and sharers–partakers, more sharers
they are becoming.”
It is not that they “became,” but it is something
ongoing (continuous present active). To
become like that was as a result of “the Spirit.”
There is no way that these people, who had
actually been experiencing the Holy Spirit
and in contact with their heavenly destination,
were not believers. It is about believers,
about people who have actually been saved.
They came to the light–“phoristhentas.” “I
saw the light.” (Ac. 22:9) “The true Light
that was coming into the world that enlightens
every man” (Jn. 1:9). They came to Jesus.
They Tasted
As a result of coming to Jesus something
else happened: they “tasted” of it. The Greek
is “gensomenous theon”–“they tasted the
goodness.” What this text is doing is basically
drawing on Psalm 34:8.
O taste and see that the LORD is good;
How blessed is the man who takes refuge in
Him! (Ps. 34:8)
These are people who have actually tasted it.
As we continue reading this text in Hebrews
6, for the one who tastes the Lord
we have the Greek term “theon rema”–they
tasted the “word.” But it is not the “logos,”
it is the “rema.”
There are two basic terms for the “word”
of God in the New Testament in Greek:
“rema” and “logos.” They are virtually synonymous.
We cannot make the kind of distinction
which some people do to the degree
they do. Some say the “logos” is the printed
word and “rema” is some kind of personal
revelation from the Spirit. That is not true.
What we can say is that the “logos” is objective.
The Bible is the Word of God, and
Jesus is Jesus, and it is Him in print. But the
“rema” is what it becomes in experiential reality
when it becomes truth in our life. Jesus
is Jesus; He is the “Logos.” Only when the
Logos comes to us in a personal way does
the Bible really come alive, and that is the
term that is used here. “Logos tos Theo” is
the term used in Hebrews 4:12 that the author
of Hebrews is building up to in Hebrews
6. “For the Word of God is living and active
and sharper than any two-edged sword”
(Heb. 4:12). The word here is not “logos,” it
is this personal encounter.
In other words, there can be an academic
theologian, a scholar who knows Greek and
Hebrew perfectly but he is not born-again.
He will have the “logos” in some way, but the
“logos” will not have become a personal experience
in his life; there will be no “rema,”
no real revelation. It will be purely intellectual.
The Bible in the hand of a man like that
is useless. It is always somebody with God’s
Spirit inside them who is “partaken” of the
Holy Spirit. That is what the author of Hebrews
is saying here. If someone is partaken
of the Holy Spirit, the subjective truth–the
“logos” –now becomes the “rema.”
They Were Partakers
These are people who have really come
to some kind of personal experience and
faith in Jesus: “partakers”–“metochous genethentas.”
In Luke 5:7 this word is usually
translated in English Bibles as “comrades.”
In other words, they are people who became
our comrades; they were one of us. They
were not people who were never one of us,
they were one of us. They were saved and
they partook of “the heavenly gift”–“tes
doreas tes epouranion.”
This occurs in only one place in the Bible
in this particular phrase, not using the word
“charism”–“grace,” but “doreas.” We can
say that God’s grace is in some way for everybody;
He is gracious to everyone, even
unsaved people. But this is not the word
“charism”; it is not that kind of “grace.” It
is “doreas,” the gift of salvation. It is His
great, untold saving gift of the knowledge of
the truth. It is more than the general type of
grace that God gives to all people.
The reason I point this out is that Calvinists,
arguing from Calvin’s Institutes, will try
to say that this means they did not come all
of the way but only part of the way, but the
text simply does not support that. Calvinists
do what a lot of people do: they begin with
a presupposition and then they have to begin
doing monkey tricks with the text to fit
that presupposition. But that is not what this
text in its context in any way supports. These
were people who knew the Lord.
Feature Article – Continued
They Fall Away
Then it says in verse 6 that they commit
apostasy–they go away. That word for “apostasy,”
or if they had been falling away, is not
“apostasia.” “Apostasia” is something different.
This is another word, a Greek conditional
expressed in the participle, “parapesontas.”
It goes against the following argument.
There is an argument that these people
were Jews who believed and the writer of
Hebrews was saying to them there was no
way they could go back to Judaism, that it
was impossible since there is no longer a
sacrifice outside of where they were (as explained
in Hebrews 10), and it means that
they needed to stay where they were. When
we read it in that context it has nothing whatsoever
to do with saying that someone cannot
fall away, but that is an argument some
people try to impose.
If the word was “apostasia,” that would
be one thing, but the word is not “apostasia,”
it is “parapesontas.” “Parapesontas”
goes directly against this; it means something
very different. It means “falling away
from a standard. “Apostasia” comes from
an entirely different Greek word altogether.
The Greek root of “apostasia” means “to depart.”
Someone is here and now they have
left. This word for “falling away” describes
someone who has not stopped believing it,
but has stopped living it.
Their argument is that this was written to
Jewish believers and he was telling Jewish
believers in the 1 st century that they cannot
fall away because it is hopeless to go
back to Judaism (the Temple is about to be
destroyed, etc.) and they are to stay where
they are. They argue that this was written before
the Temple was destroyed so therefore
it just applies to these believing Jews and
that the destruction of the Temple prevents
them from going back, and that this is not
talking about believers losing their salvation.
If that were the case, the word would
be “apostasia”–“depart,” but it is not that
word. This means “not living up to the same
standard.” It describes someone who used
to live a Christian life but has now departed
from their belief; they are just not living it
anymore. That fits the context exactly. Hebrews
6 opens with, “Therefore leaving the
elementary principles.”
When we find people who after 10 years,
20 years, or 50 years still eat “baby food,”
that is not normal or healthy. When we see
people who become stagnant in their Christian
life and never grow in grace, never grow
in their knowledge and understanding of the
Word, never grow by having their character
changed by the image of God into the image
and likeness of Jesus–they are really backsliders.
When I was a kid there was a Bob
Dylan song and one of the lines was, “He
who is not busy being born is busy dying.”
It is something like that. If we are not going
ahead we are going backward.
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly 11

Feature Article – Continued
The word here for “falling away” is not
“apostasia,” it is not people who have departed
from their beliefs. It is not talking
about people who say, “I don’t believe in the
Bible anymore. I don’t believe in Jesus anymore.”
“Apostasia” can mean that but this
is not “apostasia.” Again, this word means,
“I haven’t departed from the faith–I still believe
it,” but they are not living it anymore.
And so by not living it any more they go
into a form of sin that is worse than before
they were saved. We cannot meet the Lord
Jesus and be the same person; we are either
going to be better or we are going to be
worse. If someone comes to Jesus they either
are going to become better than they used to
be or they are going to become worse, but
they cannot get saved and remain the same.
They cannot come to taste of the Lord, to be
partakers of the Holy Spirit, to experience a
foretaste of the heavenly, and be the same
person. Either they go one way or they begin
going another way much worse.
The writer of Hebrews uses a word here,
“anastaurountas,” meaning “to crucify
again,” expressing contempt for what Christ
did. When we find people who adhered to
one standard, and have now left that standard
while still claiming to believe, they are
worse than before they believed. This is talking
about backsliders.
Inadvertent vs. Willful Sin
Having broken down the Greek meaning,
I am just going to read it again in English…
“For in the case of those who have once
been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly
gift, and been made partakers of the
Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word
of God and the power of the age to come…”
(Sounds like Christians, does it not?)
“…and then have fallen away not from believing
but in living what they believe, it is impossible
to renew them again to repentance.”
If any believe and fall away, they cannot
repent and come back. The Greek does not
have a present tense in the sense we do in
English. It is present continuous active. In 1
John 3:9 where it says that he who is born
of God does not sin, it does not mean that
Christians do not fall into sin; the meaning
is that they do not practice sin.
Because he is writing here to Jews he is
drawing on the Levitical mentality of the Torah.
The Torah had a provision for inadvertent
sin, but it did not have provision for continually
practiced, willful sin. The Torah in
Leviticus had provision for inadvertent sin.
There are two Hebrew words for “sin” and
two Greek words for “sin.” The two basic
Hebrew words for sin are “chet” and “tesha.”
One means “missing the mark” like shooting
an arrow at a target, literally “not going far
enough”; the other is “going too far.” We can
sin either by not living up to God’s standards
or going beyond it. The Greek equivalents
are “hamartano” and “harmatia.”
Leviticus provides for inadvertent sin to
right a sin of ignorance. We call this “barut”
in Hebrew. The High Priest on Yom Kippur
made atonement for the sins of ignorance.
But there is no provision for people who
practice willful sin even under the Torah.
“In the case of those who had once been
enlightened, they came to the light…”
(They saw Jesus.)
“…they tasted of the heavenly gift and
they have been made partakers of the Spirit
and they have tasted the good word of God
and the powers of the age to come…”
(They tasted it.)
“…and then have fallen away”
Someone cannot fall away from where
they have never been.
The other argument here comes from John
Calvin in his Institutes, book 3, chapter 2,
paragraph 11. He puts it this way: that they
saw only a glimmering of light; that they
heard the Gospel preached, understood it,
and knew it was the truth, but only tasted it
in on a surface level and did not go all the
way with a full commitment.
First of all, the text does not justify that; it
is not a “glimmering” light. That is not what
the word means. When we look at the text
in its context, these were people who knew
the truth. We cannot get “doreas” (verse 4)–
the “gift” of God of eternal life from Jesus
Christ our Lord unless we are saved. No one
gets that gift unless they are saved. Calvin
was dead wrong.
As I have said, we will find extreme Calvinists
who will go into licentiousness and
who think that because a real commitment
was made at one time they can still go on
and practice sin. This is not common, but
there are those who believe it. I have known
people who teach this.
Backsliding in the Last Days
Hebrews 10 places this in an eschatological
context and connects it with ecclesiology–with
church.
Not forsaking our own assembling together,
as is the habit of some, but encouraging
one another; and all the more as you see the
day drawing near. (Heb 10:25)
This is using “val k’homer,” the first of the
Midoth of Rabbi Hillel in Midrash. What is
true in a light situation becomes particularly
true in a heavy situation. In other words,
fellowship is always important, but in the
Last Days it becomes especially important.
If we cannot stand together, we will never
stand alone. By putting it that way we begin
to understand there is a particular danger
in backsliding in the Last Days. Jesus said
many will fall away and betray one another
(Mt. 26:31). Backsliding is always possible
but in the Last Days it becomes more and
more troubling.
One of the things essential in God’s economy
in respect to backsliding is fellowship–
Christians supporting each other, standing
cemented together. When we find people out
of fellowship with other Christians it is a direct
reflection that they are out of fellowship
with the Lord. There is something wrong. It
does not matter if it is 5 or 6 people meeting
in a house or if its 500 or 600 meeting
in a church, the question is where does God
want you to be? If it is something beyond
our control and no fault of our own (we are
the only Christian in a village out in Saudi
Arabia), that is something different. God
will see those believers through. But for us,
when we find people out of fellowship, they
are heading for trouble.
“Gnosis” vs. “Epignosis”
It is not a coincidence that this introduces
what comes next in Hebrews 10:26.
For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving
the knowledge of the truth, there no longer
remains a sacrifice for sins, (Heb. 10:26)
“Hekousios”–“willfully.” He is drawing
back to the Levitical concept that there is
only provision for inadvertent sin.
But then he says something else: “hemon”–
“if we.” He puts himself in the situation.
The writer of Hebrews was not preaching to
other people; he was also reminding himself.
But then it goes on to say something more.
…the knowledge of truth, there no longer
remains a sacrifice for sins.”
“Tes alatheias” means “the body of truth,”
and the word for “knowledge” is not the normal
word “gnosis” but “epignosis” which
does not mean that we know “a” truth about
something, but that we know the whole body
of truth about something. These were not
people who understood only one aspect of the
Christian life or salvation; these were people
who understood the whole panorama.
Somebody can be told, “Jesus died for our
sins and to give us eternal life.” Someone
can “know” that; this is “gnosis.” But when
they say, “Jesus called us to co-die with Him
and we become new creations the same as
He was when He rose from the dead,” and
when they say, “His Spirit will inhabit us
and give us the power to overcome the desires
of the flesh,” and when they say, “The
Bible is the infallible Word of God and the
Holy Spirit interprets it for us and gives us
the power to live it and we must follow its
standards”–when they begin to say salvation
means all these other things, that is not “gnosis,”
that is “epignosis.”
These were not people who just knew or
heard something about the Gospel, these
were people who understood; they really
knew. And they knew the full body of truth–
“tes alatheias.”
A Point of No Return
but a terrifying expectation of judgment
and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL
CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES. Anyone
who has set aside the Law of Moses dies
without mercy on the testimony of two or
three witnesses. How much severer punishment
do you think he will deserve who has
trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has
12 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

egarded as unclean the blood of the covenant
by which he was sanctified, and has
insulted the Spirit of grace? (Heb. 10:27–29)
Take note of the phrase, “has insulted the
Spirit of grace.” It can lead to the point where
they blaspheme the Holy Spirit. An unrepentant
backslider can reach a point where he
blasphemes the Holy Ghost. That is exactly
what it is saying. We would have to do some
monkey tricks to say this is talking about
unsaved people. “Katapateo”–“trampled
underfoot.” “Koinos hegeomenos”–literally
meaning to be treating as common the blood
of Jesus, and the word here is “enubrizo”–
“insolence,” being insolent to God’s Spirit.
Yes, there is an unpardonable sin. Hebrews
6 and 10 directly connect to an unrepentant
backslider who gets to the point
that he begins to blaspheme the Holy Ghost.
Hebrews 6 raises the possibility of an unrepentant
backslider blaspheming the Holy
Ghost. Hebrews 10 reiterates the same point
and says that is what is going to happen.
There is a point of no return. Go back to
the illustration of the potter: he broke it, remade
it, broke it, remade it, but eventually
even the potter gave up. This is not in Scripture
to get anyone discouraged, but it is there
to make sure we understand what we have
gotten ourselves into, and that we do not take
lightly what God has called us to. It is not
“departing” from the Lord–this is not “apostasia”;
this is departing from His standard.
The whole theme of Jude’s epistle is about
backsliders in the Church. There are as many
backsliders in here as there are out there.
Scripture says that a backslider in heart is
filled with his own ways (Pr. 14:14).
Hebrews 28:10 states that it takes “two or
three witnesses” in the Law of Moses to enact
capital punishment. It will be worse for
those who are Christians because Israel did
not have what we have. “Athetesas” means
“violated.” “Dokeite”–“do you think” in the
Greek–is rhetorical. To ask a rhetorical question
means to already know the answer. If
this is what happened in the Law of Moses
when they did not even have Jesus or the
blood sacrifice that we have–if that is what
happened when people did this under the Torah–what
do we think is going to happen to
us if we go this way? He is giving a warning,
but he does not leave it there; he begins
stressing the need for endurance.
Assurance in Concert with Endurance
For you have need of endurance, so that
when you have done the will of God, you may
receive what was promised. (Heb. 10:36)
How do we endure? Keep the lifejacket
on and keep swimming.
“Oh, but we’re saved by faith through grace!”
That is true, but what is faith? It continues
in Hebrews 11:1: “faith “ is the “hupostasis”–“the
assurance of things hoped for.”
In the Bible, “hope” equals “future fact.”
I guarantee you that if we keep following
Jesus that we will go to Heaven. I guarantee
that if we do not take the lifejacket off
we will not drown. It is not that I “hope”
we will not drown, I guarantee we will not
drown if we keep the lifejacket on. I guarantee
we will go to Heaven if we keep following
Jesus. This is the way by which you
can be eternally sure of your salvation. But
if it is not this way we are playing with fire,
and there are certainly people today who are
playing with fire.
There is no way we can say as Calvinists
do that this applies to people who heard the
Gospel and came to a certain point and then
withdrew. It is simply not so. They have a
“dorea.” There is no way we can say it only
meant that Jewish believers could not possibly
go back under the Law. It is talking
about people who can fall away, who can
depart from God’s standard. They have to
play games with the text instead of letting it
say what it means and mean what it says.
Imputed Righteousness
Calvinists will tell you that righteousness
is imputed. So we have to understand what
“imputation” means; it is an interesting term.
What shall we say then? Are we to continue
in sin so that grace may increase? May
it never be! How shall we who died to sin
still live in it? (Rom. 6:1–2)
Paul understands that imputed righteousness
can be misunderstood. There were actually
people in the Greek churches who believed
that only the new creation mattered,
that it did not matter what the old creation
did so they could go out and keep on sinning
in the old creation. Paul understood that imputed
righteousness could be misunderstood,
that people could think it is okay to continue
to sin and still be saved. Look at what he is
saying: he is writing to believers. So therefore
those who believe in an unconditional
“once saved, always saved” will say, “If
they go back and practice sin it means they
were never saved to begin with; they were
never truly born-again to begin with. They
made an empty or false confession or they
had some kind of experience, but they were
never really saved.” That certainly does not
mean Hebrews 6 and it certainly does not
mean Hebrews 10.
Look at the Prodigal Son (Lk. 15:11-32).
The Prodigal Son has multiple interpretations.
(The rabbis said a parable had up to seventy
different interpretations, certainly meaning
“multiple” anyway.) One of the interpretations
of the Prodigal Son is that of a backslider.
A backslider will wind up the way the
Prodigal Son did, upon faith in humiliation,
coming back to his father. When a backslider
comes back, the Father will forgive him and
take him back, but he has to come back. And
what does the father say? “This brother of
yours was dead” (Lk. 15:32). He was dead!
How then was it credited? While he was
circumcised, or uncircumcised? Not while
circumcised, but while uncircumcised.
(Rom. 4:10)
Feature Article – Continued
Getting back to this idea of imputation, in
Romans 4 Paul uses the word “elogisthe.” We
get the word “impute” from the Latin in the
Vulgate, “imputate.” The Hebrew is “chashab,”
meaning “think.” “Impute” means “to
reckon.” It is not that it is really “given” to us,
but it is “reckoned;” God takes it into account.
When Jesus died on the cross for our
sins, God took our sin and put it on Him,
and took His righteousness and put it on
us. Even though He was righteous, unrighteousness
was imputed to Him on the cross.
Even though we are unrighteous, His righteousness
is imputed to us when we come
to the cross. Yes, righteousness is imputed.
Abraham believed God and it was reckoned
to him as righteousness (Gal. 3:6; Ja. 2:23).
But then what happens? Yes, the righteousness
is imputed, but not the fruits. The fruit
of the Spirit cannot be imputed, nor can the
fruit of the Spirit be ascribed. We are called
to prove we are His disciples.
Overcomers
‘He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit
down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame
and sat down with My Father on His throne.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit says to the churches.’” (Rev. 3:21–22)
To go to Heaven one must be an “overcomer.”
We cannot overcome on our own
strength and we cannot overcome in our own
righteousness; it has to be in the righteousness
and strength of Jesus. He does it for us.
We can never swim the Channel in a storm in
our own strength; somebody has to give us a
lifejacket. But once somebody gives us the
strength we must put it into operation, just
like the example of little Donnie’s airplane.
Heaven is for overcomers. God will give us
the grace, the will, and the means to do it,
but He also gives us the free will to make a
choice. When we get saved, our free will is
given back to us.
Blessed are those who wash their robes,
so that they may have the right to the tree of
life, and may enter by the gates into the city.
Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and
the immoral persons and the murderers and
the idolaters, and everyone who loves and
practices lying. (Rev. 22:14–15)
“Blessed are those who wash their robes.”
Some people wash their robes, but the Bible
talks about those who make them dirty
again. We can always go back to the blood of
the Lamb and wash our robes, but taking the
robe off, in figure, is like the young man who
ran away naked when Jesus was arrested
(Mk. 14:51-52). When persecution came he
ran away and lost the garments of salvation.
Back to the seven churches in Revelation
2, Jesus says, “He who overcomes will not be
hurt by the second death” (Rev. 2:11). He was
writing here to born-again Christians. He was
telling Christians that if they overcame they
would not be hurt by the second death. Obviously
there is a theoretical possibility at the
very least, that these people could fall away.
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly 13

Feature Article – Continued
‘He who overcomes will thus be clothed
in white garments; and I will not erase his
name from the book of life, and I will confess
his name before My Father and before His
angels. (Rev. 3:5)
Jesus actually says He will blot out names
from the Book of Life. I would like for anybody
to explain to me logically how one’s
name can be erased from the Book of Life
if it was never in there to begin with. They
have to come with their presuppositions and
do monkey tricks.
The Call to Work It Out
“Throw out the worthless slave into the
outer darkness; in that place there will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Mt 25:30)
We are all given a certain amount of talents,
and our talents are always in proportion
to our abilities (Mt. 25:15). When Jesus
comes back He will not settle for people
who bury their talents. The people with the
highest rewards will be investors, but He
will not settle for anything less than an interest
bearer. Those who bury their talents
are people who are really backslidden; they
have religion rather than authentic Christianity.
If you or I have a living relationship with
Jesus, He is going to employ our talents.
For many years I led a congregation in Israel
and was very active in evangelism. But I
also had a day job. Israel has a six-day week.
It was not easy having a day job and a family
and being in ministry. I know how difficult
it is, but I did it because God gave me the
grace and will to do it, and I made the choice
to cooperate with that grace.
A lot of ministers will stand up at a pulpit
and tell us what we should be doing, as if we
are supposed to ignore the fact that they get
paid for doing it. They do not know what
it is like to go to the office, or to get up in
the middle of the night to go to the factory.
I thank God for those years and years and
years when I was a tent maker. If I did not
have to travel so much I would still be a tent
maker. I prefer to have a secular job. What
it all comes down to is bearing fruit. Even
when Paul was in prison, he was bearing fruit.
For I do not want you to be unaware,
brethren, that our fathers were all under the
cloud and all passed through the sea; and
all were baptized into Moses in the cloud
and in the sea; (1 Co. 10:1–2)
Learn the Lesson
What Paul does here is use the Exodus experience
as a type to explain our salvation.
Coming out of Egypt is coming out of the
world; going through the water is baptism,
etc. The Exodus is a picture of our salvation.
…and all ate the same spiritual food; and
all drank the same spiritual drink, for they
were drinking from a spiritual rock which
followed them; and the rock was Christ.
Nevertheless, with most of them God was not
well-pleased; for they were laid low in the
wilderness. Now these things happened as
examples for us, so that we would not crave
evil things as they also craved. Do not be
idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written,
“THE PEOPLE SAT DOWN TO EAT
AND DRINK, AND STOOD UP TO PLAY.”
Nor let us act immorally, as some of them
did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one
day… Now these things happened to them as
an example, and they were written for our
instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages
have come. (1 Co. 10:3–8, 11)
These things happened to the ancient Hebrews
and were written down in the Bible
so we would not make the same mistakes.
What did they do? They drank from the rock
which was Christ, yet they were idolaters
and they were immoral. Why are we warned
not to be like them? Again, what does it say
in Revelation 22:14-15? It says that outside
are those who are immoral and those who
are idolatrous. They go to hell. That is exactly
what the New Testament says.
From One Oppression to Another
How they get this unconditional “once
saved, always saved” from the Bible I do not
know. I know how they seem to see a need
to repudiate the lies of Roman Catholicism,
which says someone can work for their salvation
and keep people in bondage always thinking
they can lose it merely by committing a
so-called “mortal sin.” I can understand why
they were trying to free people from that kind
of oppression. But when they go to the opposite
extreme and say that there is no choice
as to whether we can be saved or not, that is
just putting people under more oppression.
When people are told they have no free
will, that Jesus did not give them back their
free will when they were born-again, that this
cannot be accepted when He empowers them
to make a choice–if you are not one of the
Elect you are not going to choose Him–the
result is putting people under more oppression.
More than that, they are leading people
under the oppression of sin by denying that
as regenerate believers we have a free will
that unsaved people do not have to resist sin.
Jesus does not save us in our sins, He saves
us from our sins. He never came to save us in
our sins; He came to save us from our sins.
When we see people persisting in sin who
admit they do it and that it is wrong, things
like “I’m going to keep living with this unsaved
woman,” “I’m going to continue with
this alcohol abuse,” “I’m going to keep living
this way but I’ll keep going to church
on Sunday”–those people are not saved from
their sins, they have been deluded into thinking
they have been saved in them. Without
holiness, no man shall see God (Eph. 1:4,
5:27; 1 Pe. 1:15).
But are you willing to recognize, you foolish
fellow, that faith without works is useless?
(Ja. 2:20)
In Conclusion
Little Donnie’s model airplane remains
useless unless he works it out. The life preserver
is useless if you do not put it on and
swim. Yes, it is a gift. Yes, it is free. Yes, you
cannot earn it. Yes, the Lord does something
for us we could never do for ourselves. Yes,
He chose us. Yes, He showed us His undeserved
grace. But He also gave us back the potential
to make a choice that we did not have.
We were dead, unable to communicate with
God, and He quickened us. He put enough
light in us, enough of what we lost in the Fall
to see Him as the Truth and the Salvation. It is
up to us to respond to it. That is the balance.
The idea that we are not born with sin as
Pelagius said, that is heresy. Charles Finney
even bordered on it, although he admitted we
have sin. No, we all have sin and we cannot
even choose God because of our sin, but He
intervenes in the Person of Jesus and gives
us the possibility of making a choice that we
never could have made. We have to choose.
Once we make the choice He also then gives
us the ability to live it out, but we have to
make that choice.
We lost our free will because of the Fall
of man. Everybody since Adam has lost their
free will. Jesus comes to give it back. Calvinism
denies this.
With all due respect to my Calvinistic
brethren, with all due respect to the Reformed
churches and the many wonderful
things that Reformed Christians have done
and still do, with all due respect to the Pilgrim
fathers and the Puritan fathers whom
I love, when it comes to eternal security I
agree that we are eternally secure in Christ.
Just make sure you stay in it.
God bless. †††
Jacob Prasch
14 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

Danny Isom
Will The World End?
Thus says the LORD, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might,
let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me,
that I am the LORD who exercises loving kindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these
things,” declares the LORD. ( Jeremiah 9:23–24) giving no cause for offense in anything, so that the ministry
will not be discredited, but in everything commending ourselves as servants of God… (2 Corinthians 6:3–4a)
I am not a prophet, but as a Bible-based believer I make the 100% safe prediction that nothing predicted by
Harold Camping and company will come true for any date they set. But what we will experience, and have
already experienced, is incredible damage to the Body of Christ where its credibility and witness is concerned.
If there is a more suitable poster child for giving offense and discrediting the ministry rather than being commended
as a servant of God than Camping and company, I don’t know who to nominate. And even worse is the
effect that this “crying wolf” is having on the unsaved who, when they need it most, are being desensitized to the Gospel in general and the
true specific signs pointing to the return of Christ.
It was not just a colossal waste of time and money that the deceived squandered; it is not just their personal reputations and witness that
are called into question, but every true believer and maintainer of biblical truth has to live with the consequences. If you’re a Christian, don’t
laugh at what was so obviously a folly of the flesh; weep at what has been done to the name and message of Christ.
Will those subscribing to and following Camping’s nonsense repent of their error and forsake the deception they have so fervently proclaimed?
Let’s look at history.
Even Camping’s own website admits that in 1992 he published a book titled 1994? pointing to that being the final date. What happened
when that prediction failed? He simply set another date! (This is what date-setters always do.) His website explains, “Important subsequent
biblical information was not yet known, so this book was incomplete. Mr. Camping warned there may be something he overlooked, therefore
the question mark was prominently placed on the title.”
(I guess that’s what you call a “safety net”.) It goes on to state, “In the nineteen years since 1994? was written, the biblical evidence for
2011 has greatly solidified. Today there is no longer any question”. (So much for a “safety net” this time.)
His website also categorically answers the self-posed question, “What if May 21 ends and nothing occurs?” with, “The Biblical evidence
is too overwhelming and specific to be wrong.” How much do you want to bet that we will once again be told that “Important subsequent
biblical information” is to blame just as it was in 1994 when they adjust for the new “final” date?
My point is that there will be no repentance, no admission of error, no change in direction—they will simply set another date without
regard for the continued and multiplied damage to the name of Christ and the witness of the faithful who never subscribed to Camping’s
poison in the first place.
The saddest fact of all is that Camping and his ministry would disappear almost overnight if people stopped sending the donations that
keep this madness fueled. How I weep for the waste of dollars contributed by so-called Christians which have done nothing but harm and
discredit the Gospel. This is not being accomplished through outside enemies of Christianity such as Muslims or atheists, but within the
walls of the church!
I wish I could be angry enough to overcome my grief—not grief over Camping being wrong, but my grief over the tens of thousands of believers
he has deceived, and the hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of non-believers he has desensitized to, or outright driven from, the Gospel.
That Sunday, the day after Camping’s prediction failed, the world was laughing; true followers of Christ everywhere should be in mourning.
In Him,
Danny Isom
The False Teacher Who Cried Wolf
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly 15

Guest Author
James Albert Dager
G L E N N
B E C K’ S
TRUE PHILOSOPHY
NEW-AGE MORMONISM
A Review of his book
THE 7: SEVEN WONDERS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE
By Albert James Dager
Radio host and conservative political
commentator Glenn Beck
reveals how he has overcome a
life lived in the fast lane of fame and fortune
that was unsatisfying at best, and destructive
of himself and those around him.
A toxic childhood, in which he experienced
the pain of his mother’s suicide and a father
ill-equipped to handle the responsibilities
of single parenthood, led Beck down
a path of what he describes as self-loathing—a
path in which he hurt many people
who didn’t deserve to be hurt.
In The 7: Seven Wonders That Will
Change Your Life, co-authored with Keith
Ablow, M.D., Beck reveals the journey
that took him from a life of self-destruction
to a new life based on seven principles
that he promises will guarantee happiness
and fulfillment if applied diligently, looking
to God for strength.
Because Glenn Beck has been endorsed
and even lauded by Christian leaders who
agree with his conservative political philosophy,
we felt it important to address his
spiritual philosophy which is clearly revealed
in The 7.
This is not a book detailing Beck’s conservative
political philosophy, although it
does touch lightly upon some of the destructive
aspects of liberalism. It is Beck’s
attempt to share his religious philosophy
which he hopes will help others overcome
lives of despair, addiction, and self-hatred,
as well as hatred and mistreatment of others.
Contrary to the picture of a “mean, hateful,
racist, crazy” person portrayed in the
leftist media, we find a man filled with
compassion for others, and an employer
who looks out for the best interests of his
employees at Mercury Radio Arts, paying
them top wages and providing complete
medical and dental coverage without
charge or co-pay requirements.
But Beck wasn’t always so altruistic.
He reveals how he once fired a producer
who gave him a ballpoint pen instead of
the Sharpie he requested when autographing
books. It was the producer’s second offense,
and Beck wasn’t going to stand for
it. Now, he sees how at one time his detractors
may have been justified in portraying
him as a lowlife.
To what does he attribute his remarkable
reformation? Keith Ablow puts it this way
in describing a taping session for Beck’s
television show:
We talked about the fact that Glenn’s
willingness, after a long struggle, to
admit his shortcomings and face the
sources of them had been essential
to his triumphs and to his pursuit of
genuine happiness. We agreed that
tapping into a higher power was
the single most important ingredient
in his rebirth and that it was
the essential and ultimate key to
personal transformation for every
single human being on the planet. 1
If you recognize the importance of tapping
into a “higher power” as an aspect of
Alcoholics Anonymous, you are correct.
A.A. played a major role in Beck’s transformation,
as did other spiritual disciplines
which we will address in time.
The 7 takes the format of alternating
Beck’s life experiences in his own words
with Ablow’s explanation of how Beck’s
overcoming his deficiencies and traumatic
experiences coincide with seven principles
that Ablow says can unlock human potential
and result in “immeasurable, lifealtering
power.” These seven principles
or “Wonders” are Courage; Faith; Truth;
Compassion; Friendship; Family; and
Common Sense. The book also offers advice
on “Helping Others to Heal.”
If The 7 is true in what it says about
Glenn Beck’s life (and we have no reason
to doubt) it is clear that Beck has gone
through a transformation of character. The
question arises, then, is that transformation
the result of God’s Holy Spirit working in
Glenn Beck? Or are the forces that have
shaped his new life of some other nature—
benevolent and helpful within themselves?
Beck and Ablow consistently invoke
God as the ultimate source of all the good
experienced by Beck and others whom they
cite as having overcome difficult, even ungodly
lives. According to Beck and Ablow,
the negative influences in people’s lives
are what cause them to act in ways that
are destructive to themselves and others.
They believe that people are intrinsically
good; it is one’s environment—particularly
in one’s childhood years—that shape
their patterns of behavior for either good
or evil. If we understand that, then we can
help others search out their past and work
at bettering themselves. Of course, professional
psychiatric help is desirable, especially
for harder cases.
The authors cite numerous sources for
truths that can transform lives. They offer a
caveat that they do not necessarily endorse
or agree with all that those sources teach:
In the pages that follow, Glenn and
I quote leaders and thinkers of virtually
every faith and movement,
from ancient times to modern
times. Some of these people we’d
likely vehemently disagree with on
political or religious issues—but
healing is not about politics, it’s
about under- standing our place,
our path, and our potential.
Our goal has been to search out the
timeless, ultimate wonders of truth that
can change lives. In looking for them, we
searched where lines of truth emanating
from many different directions intersect.
We tried to show no favoritism and no fear
16 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

of its source, for it is at those intersections
where the ultimate light may be found.
(Ibid., p. 16)
As believers in Jesus Christ as the only way
to God, and in the power of the Holy Spirit to
transform our lives and to conform us to the image
of Christ, we rely on Scripture alone to provide
truth in matters dealing with spiritual issues
in our lives. We do not look to the wisdom
of men, but to the wisdom of the one true God.
Although other sources may have some wisdom
that coincides with that found in God’s Word,
it is only God’s Word that is infallible in these
matters; to search out truth from other sources
incurs the danger that we may be influenced by
the errors of those sources as well. Thus, any
basis upon which a teaching is not exclusively
tied to God’s Word can mislead people into following
false religion or philosophy.
If, for example, one cites someone who
is solidly grounded in Scripture, or at
least is not an adherent to a false religious
or philosophical discipline, that citation
may be valid, provided it is confirmed by
Scripture. To cite sources that may contain
truth, but that are from adherents to false
religious or philosophical disciplines gives
credibility to those disciplines.
Regardless of Beck’s and Ablow’s caveat,
we can be sure that they do endorse and
agree with the portions of those sources
that they cite. This must be kept in mind as
we review some of those sources.
As to Glenn Beck’s religious philosophy
it can be summed up as this: a blend
of New Age philosophy and Mormonism,
with an emphasis on spiritual renewal
through mind control.
Glenn Beck’s god
The god with whom Glenn Beck identifies
is not the God of the Bible. It is a New
Age god of self:
Denial of reality—past and present—is
a special kind of hell. It
separates you from your best self,
which is the same as separating you
from God. (Beck, p. 19)
James Albert Dager
Beck equates checking his gut with
“checking in with God, which amounts to
the same thing.” (Ibid., p. 249)
Keith Ablow quotes The Tibetan book
of Living and Dying to suggest that “God”
is “the mind,” or “self,” as well as being
equated with other religious concepts:
Saints and mystics throughout history
have adorned their realizations
with different names and given them
different faces and interpretations,
but what they are all fundamentally
experiencing is the essential
nature of the mind. Christians and
Jews call it “God”; Hindus call it
“the Self,” “Shiva,” “Brahman,”
and Vishnu”; Sufi mystics name it
“the Hidden Essence”; and Buddhists
call it “Buddha nature.” At
the heart of all religions is the certainty
that there is a fundamental
truth, and that this life is a sacred
opportunity to evolve and realize it.
(Ablow, p. 124)
This statement alludes to the New Age
belief in evolution to higher consciousness
and godhood. Yet Beck and Ablow speak
of God in a more transcendent manner,
saying that God indwells us:
You were born knowing that the
truth always wins and that You are
the temple of God. (Ibid., p. 280
[emphasis in original])
There is no explanation of how we are,
or become, the temple of God. It is merely
an opportunity to connect their philosophy
to the Bible:
You are the temple of God, we read
in the Bible. And so is your brother,
and your sister, and your father,
and your mother, and your friend,
and your adversary, and your employee,
and your employer, and
that woman selling you a suit of
clothes, and that man asking you
for a handout on the street. Every
single one of us has magic inside us
that can transform our lives and the
lives of others. (Ibid., p. 283 [emphasis
in original])
This is not the Holy Spirit who indwells
believers in Jesus Christ; Ablow’s “god”
indwells everyone without qualification.
This god is the impersonal Force of New
Age mysticism:
You have a polestar inside you. It is
connected with all the energy in the
universe. When you begin to follow
that star you align yourself with
immeasurable, inexplicable forces
that will actually help you manifest
your best intentions. (Ibid., p. 79)
…You can put yourself at one with
immeasurable and extraordinary
forces by removing the “viruses”
corrupting the software of your
soul. (Ibid., p. 105)
The current of energy that flows in
your favor when you stop denying
what you have lived through and
how it has shaped you and how
you must change is the immeasurable
force that you can tap into to
dramatically improve your existence.
It is, ultimately, a force that
was inside your soul from before
your birth and is inside your soul
at this very moment. It will never
leave you. You can rely on it. It is
nothing less than your connection
to God. (Ibid., p. 113)
Guest Author
This “Force” is the same as that within
the philosophy of the Star Wars saga—the
Force which we traced to eastern mysticism
and Nazism (see our special report,
The Force Behind the Force: Star Wars
Theology Examined).
This all-encompassing Force to which
the majority of the world’s religions look
for guidance has both a dark side and a
light side. Its worst expression was in Nazi
philosophy which was predicated upon
Nordic mysticism. Martin Bormann, head
of the Nazi Party Organization was quoted
in the February 21, 1942, edition of The
London Daily Telegraph:
If we National Socialists speak
about “faith in God” we do not
mean the same God as the naïve
Christians.… The natural Force
which maintains these innumerable
planets in the universe we call the
Almighty or God.
The true God as revealed in the Bible is
Light; He has no dark side:
This then is the message that we
have heard about Him, and declare
to you, that God is light, and there
is no darkness at all in Him.
If we say that we have fellowship with
Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do
not practice the truth. But if we walk in the
light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship
with one another, and the blood of Jesus
Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.
(1 John 1:5-7)
Ablow further equates God with “Fate
or Love or whatever force in the universe
that speaks to you and gives your existence
meaning.” (Ibid., p. 45)
Neither Ablow nor Beck knows how
prayer works, but they believe it does
work. But their prayers need not be to the
God of the Bible:
Praying that God or Nature or the
Cosmos or your own internal, immeasurable
reservoir of spirit allows
you the courage and faith to
find and then face the truth about
your life broadcasts your intention
to your own mind, heart, and soul
and—in ways that are miraculous
and beyond complete human comprehension—to
the minds, hearts,
and souls of others. (Ibid., p. 132)
To Beck and Ablow any source of positive
energy can work for us. It is a pragmatic
application of therapy in one form or
another that sets us free:
…If you’re depressed and have
avoided talking about your fears
and feelings, contact a minister or
therapist and schedule one visit.
Just be sure you visit with a minister
or therapist from a religion
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly 17

Guest Author – Continued
or healing discipline you actually
have affinity for, or suspect you
might. (Ibid., p. 74)
Where Does Jesus Fit In?
Because God’s Word tells us that Jesus is
the only Way to the Father, it is imperative
that people be led to Christ in order to have
any relationship with God. Yet in spite of
Beck’s and Ablow’s references to “God”
in his myriad forms, there is hardly any
mention of Jesus in their book. When He
is mentioned it is in the context of equality
with other revered “holy men” such as
Gandhi, Buddha, or Martin Luther King, Jr.
Coincidence & Circumstance = God at Work
The way Beck’s and Ablow’s god communicates
with us is through coincidence
and circumstances. We are told to follow
through on these indicators of their god’s
will for us. This is how Beck describes
meeting his present wife, Tania. It was
through “chance” meetings on three occasions
that he worked up the courage to
ask her on a date. Circumstances and coincidence
were also responsible for him becoming
a Mormon. It was through meeting
and working with Mormons that he came
to believe that “god,” or his gut feeling, or
whatever one wants to call it, was directing
him to Mormonism which would become
his “truth.”
On a personal note, I might interject
here that I have also had similar “coincidences”
that led me to date certain women,
but those circumstances led nowhere.
Still, it cannot be denied that God does
sometimes bring us into situations where
we sense His leading. But not all coincidences
or circumstances in which we find
ourselves are God’s leading. To blindly accept
Beck’s philosophy in this area could
lead people into disaster. Yet Beck’s and
Ablow’s philosophy seems to be, “Let circumstances
guide your life.” Particularly
if you find yourself reading their book:
You are ready to vanquish the demons
you have been fleeing. How
do I know? Because you wouldn’t
be reading this book if you weren’t.
You wouldn’t have picked it up, or
you would have put it down quickly.
It is in your hands this very moment
for a very good reason. This
is a bread crumb on your path. Do
not ignore it! (Ibid., p. 112 [emphasis
in original])
If this is true, then could it be that the
book found its way into my hands so that
I could warn people about its false teachings?
If we followed this line of reasoning
then whatever reason we find to apply to a
given circumstance or coincidence would
be from “god,” regardless of contradictions.
This makes “god” double minded. In
which case, can it be God?
But such is the New Age god—double
minded and subjective when it comes to
truth. Throughout this book truth is spoken
of as personal: “my truth”; “your truth.”
Beck states that “you need truth to find
your way into the light.”
This is true if one is speaking of truth
in the light of God’s Word. However, Beck
follows immediately with these words: “I
was on the run from my truth. I was in denial
of my truth.”
Self-Love
Beck ties personal truth with self-love
while advising that sometimes a person has
to leave their marriage in order to be true
to themselves—in order to hang on to their
own dream:
Then, my friend, you may have to
leave. If you were to do so, you
would have to do it responsibly
and with as much love for all concerned—including
your wife—as
humanly possible. But your love
for self would have to be served.
Are you surprised to hear me say
that? Does that sound like violating
a covenant? It isn’t. Covenants are,
by their nature, sacred agreements
between two or more parties. If you
promised to stay married to someone
who would love you forever,
then realize you are not loved at all
by that person, and that there is no
reasonable hope that you ever will
be, and that the example of your
broken relationship is a burden to
your children, then you must accept
this reality: There is no covenant.
There is only your truth. And
in the end, the truth always wins.
(Beck, Ibid., p. 219-220)
When one says, “as humanly possible,”
one is dismissing the power of God (the
true God; not the god of Mormonism or
New Age philosophy). It is surrender of
self to the will of God that causes true believers
to overcome the trials and tribulations
in this world, including marriages
gone awry. To abandon one’s marriage in
pursuit of one’s “dream” is selfishness at
its peak. Yet in the convoluted philosophy
of psychiatry and human “wisdom,” it is
selfish not to pursue one’s dreams even at
the expense of others. This is because selflove
is the basis of all worldly philosophy.
Keith Ablow quotes one of his favorite
writers, Harry Crews, whose acceptance of
his own truth led to a self-love that, well,
I’ll let him describe it:
Since that time I have found myself
perpetually fascinating. It wasn’t
many weeks before I loved myself
endlessly and profoundly. I have
found no other such love anywhere
in the world, nor do I expect to.
(Harry Crews, quoted by Keith
Ablow, Ibid., p. 116)
Excuse me while I gag.
Of course no one who loves himself
with such fervor will find as great a love
anywhere. Especially if everyone else is
out there loving themselves with the same
fervor. In view of how selfish people have
become over the past five decades, we can
see how the philosophy of self-love has
contributed not to a better world, but to a
world of people with attitudes of entitlement.
“The world owes me everything because
I’m worth it.”
You were born knowing that you
deserve to be loved unconditionally,
no matter what you have since
learned to the contrary. (Ablow,
Ibid., p. 279)
What we have learned to the contrary is
God’s Word. Self-love is diametrically counter
to the love commanded by God for those
who are truly His (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
Love does not seek its own benefit, but
the benefit of others (Phil. 2:3-4).
Nowhere in Scripture are we commanded
or even advised to love ourselves, simply
because we already love ourselves. No
one truly hates himself; even suicide is an
attempt to escape the pain of life’s assault
upon oneself. It is love of self that is at the
root of most of man’s psychological, emotional,
and spiritual problems. Yet psychology
and psychiatry further impress upon
miserable men the one thing that is guaranteed
to make them more miserable. Or
at least intolerable, like certain celebrities!
But is not Glenn Beck an example of
how self-love can help a person achieve
success and happiness?
As long as success remains, and enough
others esteem him highly, yes, it may provide
an illusion of success and happiness.
But ultimately, if something serious challenges
that self-love, then in order for the
self-lover to sustain himself he must cut
himself off from those he perceives as impediments
to his happiness. This, in fact, is
Beck’s advice. He states that he can’t stand
being around people whom he perceives as
being “fake.”
I now strive to include in my life
only those ideas and people and
plans that resonate deeply with me
and seem consistent with what God
wants for me and from me. (Beck,
Ibid., p. 209)
Well, excuuuuuuuuse me! But what it
comes down to is that everyone else must acquiesce
to my desires; my goals; my dream.
18 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

Otherwise I’ll have nothing to do with them.
It’s all about “Me”!
“But I’m generous with my employees.
See how good I am?”
Yes, as long as the employees continue to
support your dream, as admittedly, all good
employees should do, provided your dream
does not compromise their convictions.
But what if your dream does compromise
another’s con- science? Then to be
true to yourself you’ll have to make that
other person suffer for your benefit.
You can see where this can lead.
It’s fine to have a dream, but our dream
should be submitted to the will of our heavenly
Father. Otherwise we will assume that
our dream is de facto the will of God, as
does Beck:
Dreams are important. They’re
messages from God. When you ignore
them or resist them or are kept
from pursuing them, you are cut to
the core of your being. Inevitably
you then inflict injuries on others,
too. (Ibid., p. 93)
Well, Hitler had a dream. Was that a
message from God? How about Stalin’s
dream? Or Attila the Hun? Or Beck’s nemesis
Barack Obama’s?
Are we to assume that all these dreams
were messages from God?
How easy it is to go astray when we assume
that we are God, or that God is leading
us through our own whims of what
constitutes “good” in life.
Mormonism
Glenn Beck’s conversion to Mormonism
is no secret. He has mentioned it numerous
times on his broadcasts, and alluded
to Mormon doctrine during his Restoring
Honor Rally in Washington D.C. in 2010.
Now he reveals how he was led to Mormonism
through coincidences in his life.
His best friend, Pat Gray, is a Mormon;
Beck’s first job in radio was at a station in
Seattle, owned by Mormons; his next job
was at a station owned by the same company
in Provo, Utah; his next job was at
a station in Washington, D.C., where the
news guy was a Mormon.
After Beck and his new wife Tania
decided they needed to have a common
faith, they searched out several different
religions including Episcopalian, Presbyterian,
Uniterian, Unity, etc. Then one day
his Mormon friend Pat Gray invited him
to the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter-day
Saints. He was surprised that in a class
called “Gospel Principles” he could ask
questions. Add to this that his daughters
felt “so warm inside” by the friendliness
they experienced at the Mormon stake and
he was hooked. Now he teaches us his
Mormon gospel, which includes baptism
for the dead to give them another chance:
…Latter-day Saints do not believe
that your chances ever cease, even
with death. They end only with full
under- standing and denial of truth
by your own exercise of real free
will. And even then there is no “lake
of fire.” There is just the Hell that is
realizing you could have been with
your loved ones and your Heavenly
Father and His son, but you’re not.
That is far worse than any “lake of
fire.” (Beck, Ibid., p. 148)
Really? Then why did Jesus speak of the
lake of fire and judgment so often? Why
does God’s Word tell us that after death
comes judgment (Hebrews 9:27)?
Conclusion
Glenn Beck is a very likeable guy, as
I’m sure is Keith Ablow. I don’t think either
is a conscientious deceiver. They have
been deceived by the philosophies of the
world that impressed them above God’s
Word. Unfortunately, their deception is
contagious, particularly because of Beck’s
fame, and particularly among Christians
who hold patriotism almost as high as they
do their faith in Jesus. These are willing to
overlook the deception and join Beck in a
common cause of patriotism in the face of
a leftist, internationalist agenda that has infected
the governments of the United States
at every level. By doing so, such Christians
spread the deception deeper into the Body
of Christ in America.
When we are cowed into ignoring or
dismissing—even accepting—spiritual deception
in the interest of worldly affairs we
have denied the faith.
God’s Word is the only criterion of truth
to which we can adhere without fear. It
is filled with examples of godly men and
women who risked their own well-being
for the sake of God’s truth—men and
women who should be examples of how
we must live our lives.
It’s my hope that this exposé of Glenn
Beck’s philosophy will help some of our
more wise and discerning brethren resist
the temptation to overlook his deceptions
and stand for God’s truth.
Reprinted from Media Spotlight, Spring,
2011 Edition
Guest Author – Continued
bituary
for
Dr. William Alnor
When a brother or sister in Christ is suffering
from a terminal illness and it is
not the purpose of God to heal them but to call
them home to Himself, it is always with a combination
of sadness of joy that we learn of the
temporary loss. So it is as we learned of the temporary
loss of Christian academic journalist Dr.
William Alnor, beloved husband of Christian
apologetics researcher Jackie Alnor.
Bill taught journalism at university level
in California and finally succumbed to a long
battle with cancer. Having began in ministry in
the original CRI ministry with the legendary Dr.
Walter Martin, Bill went on to become author
of several books and pioneered such areas of
Christian apologetics and discernment as examining
the occult and demonic nature of UFO
cults. He was also the first figure who exposed
the deranged antics of cult leader Stewart Traill
of the Forever Family and later “Church of Bible
Understanding” in the Pennsylvania press.
Bill was also among the first to blow the whistle
on the antics of Robert Morey.
Bill did much to protect the church from
wolves in sheep’s clothing, but his ministry and
interest was never limited to discernment issues
alone. Bill had also pastored a Calvary Chapel
in Eastern Pennsylvania and wrote extensively
providing a wide documented body of material
of value in witnessing and evangelism to
the growing number of adherents to the various
New Age beliefs that have emerged in Western
society since the 1960’s. Bill was also always
careful to distance his ministry from conspiracy
theorists, relying rather on both a biblical sense
of discernment and professionally solid corroborative
journalistic techniques and standards.
Bill was a noteworthy asset to the cause of
Christ in refuting error in these Last Days through
the able use of his professional skills as a journalist.
Unfortunately, the prolonged physical
anguish of his final months left him debilitated
and strongly medicated. While our condolences
and prayers indeed go out to Bill’s wife and
children in the bereavement of this temporary
separation we also rejoice in the God of our salvation
whom Bill knew and in whose presence
Bill now dwells until we see him again, reunited
when Jesus returns.
Moriel & Jacob Prasch request prayer for
Brother Dave Hunt and his wife Ruth as their
daughter Janna has lost her ongoing and difficult
battle with brain cancer. Janna is now with Jesus
and her suffering ended. It is our prayer that
Dave & Ruth will know the peace and encouragement
of Jesus during this time of bereavement
and temporary separation.
On behalf of all at Moriel we of course extend
them our most sincere and sympathetic
condolences in Jesus.
–– “Oh death where is thy sting? Oh grave where
is thy victory”? Christ who conquered death has
indeed risen and He is indeed coming. ––
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly 19

Guest Author
Danny Isom
Is the
Rapture
Really Taking As Many As You Think . . . ?
“Then there will be two men in the field;
one will be taken and one will be left.
Two women will be grinding at the mill;
one will be taken and one will be left.”
— Matthew 24:40–41 (NASB)
There is a YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmLhyPjHVes&feature=r
elated) that depicts what is probably the most
mainstream concept of how the Rapture is envisioned
to work. It shows a Sunday morning
church service where the pastor is preaching
about the Rapture to a congregation of a couple
hundred, when the dramatic sound of thunder
takes all but a handful “in the twinkling of
an eye” (1 Co. 15:52). The miserable few who
are left behind are dazed and shocked in a now
almost empty church as more than 95% of the
congregation were instantly translated in the
Rapture.
At the risk of filling up my email beyond its
theoretical capacity, I am going to ask you to
consider whether it is really going to happen
like that. Do you think nearly everyone currently
attending church is going to be snatched
up as portrayed in the video? I think it is completely
opposite of that. If I were making the
video, 190 people would be sitting there wondering
what happened to the 10 or so whose disappearance
was so unobtrusive to that Sunday
morning service that they begin with a search
to see if they are in the bathroom or parking lot.
I am not going to address the issue of
“when” the Rapture takes place. For some
time I’ve been successfully bugging Jacob Prasch
to author a definitive booklet on Moriel’s
“Intra-Tribulational” position and I hope that
it will provide a definitive, biblical answer to
that question. (Hint, hint, Jacob.) No, I am assuming
that like the vast majority of Bible-believing
Christians you are at least in agreement
that there IS a Rapture, or as I prefer, the “Harpazo,”
which is the actual Greek term used in
Scripture. It appears to me that partly due to
theological teachings of eschatology on one
hand, and a wildly popular Christian fiction
market where the End Times are concerned on
the other, the mainstream belief where the Harpazo
is concerned is that basically everyone
in church is guaranteed a ticket out of here. I
have come to believe that in these Last Days
in which we are seeing Scripture so accurately
fulfilled in its characterization of these times as
rife with spiritual deception, this popular notion
of the Harpazo is itself no small deception.
I first and foremost want you to consider
who is “qualified” to participate in the Harpazo?
There has to be some kind of “minimum
requirement” since not everyone is being taken.
Scripture provides a lot of clues when it
comes to figuring out who is going to be taken
and who is going to be left behind. Consider
those people we know of who were snatched
away and saved in the same manner as the ultimate
Harpazo to come. A quick list is Enoch,
Noah, Lot and Elijah. Do you notice something
these men all had in common? They were all
extraordinarily faithful and spiritually obedient
people. They were not people who merely
believed God existed, or someone who acknowledged
God; they were people who lived
exclusively and wholly devoted lives to Him
alone. Do you think participants in the Harpazo
will be any less qualified? I am not saying
only “perfect” people will go, I am suggesting
that only the scripturally defined “faithful” are
the qualified candidates.
We live in an age when it is statistically impossible
to distinguish the difference between
someone who goes to church from someone
who does not. (Notice I am not narrowing the
field to “Bible-believing Christians” because
the video, like the general notion of the Harpazo,
is that basically everyone at church is
going to be snatched.)
Pick any moral issue which is supposed to
differentiate the saved from the unsaved and,
in America at least, there is no statistical difference.
They both have the same divorce rate,
the same attitudes toward sex and relationships,
the same opinions on homosexuality,
and in spite of their public stance to the contrary,
the same percentage of abortions. In the
face of these facts, do you really believe that
everyone at church today is a member of the
“faithful remnant”? Do you believe that even
half of the average congregation qualifies? Or
is every congregation deceived into thinking
that it is the one exception to all the others in
order for the statistics to make sense?
For a long time many of us have followed
the work of George Barna (http://www.barna.
org/), the Christian researcher who knew that
there was something wrong when most Americans
identified themselves as “Christian.” Common
sense tells us something is wrong with that
kind of response because if the majority were
truly “Christian” then how could we be experiencing
so many moral and spiritual problems
today? Why wouldn’t every law passed in
America conform to scriptural standards? How
could America not obviously be anything other
than “Christian” if such a majority claimed
to be so? Why would we ban prayer in school,
the Ten Commandments from courtrooms,
or promote Islamic practices in our schools?
Barna realized that he had to narrow the requirements
in order to uncover the truth. He
chose to determine who exactly was an “Evangelical”
rather than simply a “Christian” because
Evangelicals were supposed to be closer
to the definition of someone who practiced
what they preached rather than merely being
a cultural Christian in name only or someone
who just “goes to church.” Barna developed a
set of criteria he calls “the 9-point evangelical.”
Such people are defined according to the
following rules:
• They say they have made a personal commit
ment to Jesus Christ that is still important in
their life today.
• They believe when they die they will go to
Heaven because they have confessed their
sins and accepted Christ as Savior.
• They say their faith is very important in their
life today.
• They believe they have a personal responsibility
to share their beliefs with non-Christians.
• They believe Satan exists.
• They believe eternal salvation is possible
only through grace, not works.
• They believe Jesus Christ lived a sinless life
on earth.
• They assert that the Bible is accurate in all
it teaches.
• They describe God as the all-knowing, allpowerful,
perfect deity who created the uni
verse and still rules it today.
In other words, if you ask everyone in a
given room if they consider themselves to be
a “Christian,” practically all the hands will in-
20 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

stinctively go up. If you then ask, “How many
of you are ‘Evangelical’ Christians?” the majority
drop their arms and only 38% of hands
are still in the air. But if you ask everyone to
keep their hand in the air to affirm they believe
in each of the above nine points as they are
read one by one, the end result will be that only
about 8% of the room will still be holding up
a hand to affirm all nine of the basic criteria.
By what standard do you determine whether
or not someone or something is “Christian”? If
Barna hasn’t provided the minimum requirements
for the members of the faithful remnant,
what would you add or change? I think these
are minimally basic.
I am saying that from a common sense,
scriptural evaluation, we are living at a time
when the number of the truly faithful are dwindling
rather than ascending in numbers. Do
you really think there is some kind of “exception”
which will make the Harpazo as radically
big as the mainstream appear to believe? Is it
likely that the Harpazo is much bigger than we
think to include so many “cultural” Christians,
or is it more realistically to be smaller based
on the spiritual condition of all the potential
candidates?
But there is one other trend I implore you to
consider. As Jacob Prasch has taught in a great
many of his sermons concerning the Last Days,
if you want to attain to the best understanding
of what it is going to be like leading up to
Christ’s Second Coming, learn everything you
can about His First Coming. Nearly everything
in His First Coming foreshadows a greater,
ultimate fulfillment in His Second Coming.
At His First Coming there was a one-world
government with a self-deified ruler from Rome
which foreshadows the ultimate fulfillment of
the working of the Antichrist at His Second
Coming. At His First Coming everyone was
marked for economic control just as at His Second
Coming no one can buy or sell without the
mark of the Beast. At His First Coming Herod
foreshadows the dragon of Revelation in the
persecution of God’s people. On and on it goes
throughout the Gospels. Through the events
and patterns of His First Coming the Holy Spirit
is trying to teach us something about their
ultimate fulfillment at His Second Coming.
What has this to do with how many are going
to actually participate in the Harpazo? Look at
how few recognized and followed Christ at His
First Coming! More importantly, make a very
careful study of the statistically very few who
recognized and believed to the degree that they
were true followers by scriptural standards.
The odds are very good if you are 30-35
years of age or younger that you do not know
that the definition of “Christian” has changed
dramatically in just the span of a single generation.
It is the same with the term “Evangelical.”
Things which in the first half of my life
were identified as “heresy,” “false teaching,”
and out-and-out “lies” are today, quite shockingly,
accepted as being “Christian” and/or
“Evangelical” in my waning years. That the
world redefines terms according to its own
notions is to be expected, but how does this
happen within the walls of the Church? It has
happened the same way it always has, going
Danny Isom
back to the earliest days recorded in Scripture:
by neglecting the Word. And this is exactly the
most oft-addressed issue in the Gospels, how
so few clung to the Word and so many misapplied
it, misused it, or rejected it outright.
Do you see how closely the present situation
mirrors that of Christ’s First Coming?
Jesus faced priests and Levites who treated
their office as nothing more than a vocation.
He faced Sadducees who were liberal religious
scholars who did not believe in any kind of literal
interpretation of Scripture but treated it as
allegory and mythology. He faced Pharisees
and scribes who elevated their own interpretations
and works above the authority of the
original Scriptures. In other words, at every
turn He faced people who on nearly every
level conceivable turned away from the plain
and simple application of God’s Word in favor
of something else. We have that in multiplied
volume and effect at this present hour.
This battle over God’s Word began with Satan
himself trying to twist Scripture during the
temptation in the wilderness. It was evident at
the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in
the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus repeatedly
states, “You have heard it said…but I say
to you,” in order to rectify their treatment of
Scripture. It is seen time and again in dust-ups
with the various authorities over the Sabbath
and the washing of hands and what Jesus calls
their “traditions.” It characterizes Christ’s last
days on earth in the Temple when various factions
tried to question Him where God’s Word
is concerned. They even mock His Words while
He is on the cross! One of the most prolific
characteristics of the people during the time
of Christ’s First Coming is that the majority
had found various ways to ignore, mangle, or
misinterpret God’s Word to such a degree that
they missed out on their expected Messiah, Jesus.
At His First Coming, to those who were
supposed to know the Word, Christ said…
“For if you believed Moses, you would
believe Me, for he wrote about Me. —
John 5:46 (NASB)
Because they wanted Scripture to be fulfilled
according to their own expectations,
their own desires, their own chosen lifestyles,
they disqualified themselves at Christ’s First
Coming. I see the same thing happening again,
only on an even larger scale.
When I see the growing impact of the Purpose
Driven agenda, I don’t merely see people
being deceived, I see a reduction in the candidates
for the Harpazo. When I see the growing
influence of the Emergent Church, what I see
is a reduction in the candidates for the Harpazo.
When I see the wholesale embrace of New
Age practices inside the walls of the Church,
I see a reduction in the candidates for the Harpazo.
When I see the crowds flocking to the
likes of Benny Hinn, Todd Bentley, or any of
the other so-called “signs and wonders” freak
shows, I see a reduction in the candidates for
the Harpazo. When I see the de-emphasis if not
outright silence when it comes to the teaching
of the cross and a commitment to exclusively
live according to God’s Word alone, I see a reduction
in the candidates for the Harpazo.
Enoch, Noah, Lot and Elijah all lived in an
age of apostasy where the truly scripturally
faithful were but the tiniest minority. But when
it comes to the final and last age of apostasy
which they foreshadow, Jesus says it leads into
“a great tribulation, such as has not occurred
since the beginning of the world until now,
nor ever will” (Mt. 24:21). In other words, it
is greatly magnified and more pervasive than
during any other time in history!
Are you genuinely consumed with being
one of those who is eligible for the Harpazo?
Then carefully study those who were qualified
at His First Coming.
When Jesus had a question of His own for
the religious of His day, why did He ask them,
“The baptism of John was from what source?”
(Mt. 21:25). It goes hand-in-hand with Jesus’
earlier observation: “But the Pharisees and the
lawyers rejected God’s purpose for themselves,
not having been baptized by John” (Lk. 7:30).
The only ones “qualified” to understand and
accept Christ’s Word at His First Coming were
those who first and foremost genuinely repented
of sin. Those who don’t truly commit to the
work of the cross cannot properly put His Word
into practice so as to attain to the scriptural
definition of someone who is “faithful,” someone
held to be a right and proper “candidate”
for the Harpazo. I believe this is one of the
reasons that when it comes to the End Times,
the chief activity Christ Himself encourages us
to engage in is the preaching of the Gospel.
I know that there are still a great many
people who have never heard the Gospel and
desperately need the chance. But like it was
at Christ’s First Coming, I also believe there
is a very big “mission field” right inside the
institution we call “church.” There is every bit
the need to bring the work of the cross and the
Word to those today following in name only in
the shadow of Christ’s Second Coming as it was
during His First Coming. It is the only possible
way to boost the membership of those who will
actually participate in the Harpazo to come.
At His First Coming Christ called out and
sent new messengers to preach the simple truth
of the Word, those who would lead in preaching
the cross and obedience to His Word. In
the shadow of His Second Coming the need is
even greater.
Seeing the people, He felt compassion for
them, because they were distressed and
dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.
— Matthew 9:36 (NASB)
This is what I see the famous false teachers
of the famous false spiritual movements doing
to the institution of the church today, a place
populated with “sheep without a shepherd.” Or
in context with what we’ve been discussing,
“Passengers who don’t actually have a ticket.”
As at His First Coming, the institution is again
miserably failing. Like the authorities to whom
the Magi first went, such can quote Scripture,
but they were not the ones to respond to God’s
Word; it was the shepherds who were actually
out with the flock. The same work and calling
is required again.
In Him,
Danny Isom
Guest Author
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly 21

Moriel South Africa
David Royle
Dear Friends & Family
Greetings in the Love, Hope and Peace of
our Lord Jesus.
We have several bits of Good News to share
with you. First of all, we have a landline, after
about 4 years waiting. You can now call us at:
+27 (0)28 423 3785
Secondly, we have added New Teaching
Material which you can order from Chris.
As many of you know I have just spent a
month in the UK speaking at various churches
and visiting family. I would like to thank everyone
who hosted me and who gave so generously
to the work. It is always a pleasure to visit my
home country and take a break from my Horse
food diet and eat some Holland’s meat pies.
Two of the subjects I spoke on this year were
The Gospel of the Kingdom, a look at the signs
of the times around us before the coming of the
Lord and very topical with the Earth quake and
Tsunami hitting Japan as well as the troubles in
Libya, Syria etc. I also looked at the first chapter
of Nehemiah, especially in the context of the
Remnant and also reflecting on Jesus words in
Luke 18vs8b However, when the Son of Man
comes, will He find faith on the earth?” As you
know that word for faith, Pistis, (πίστις) also
means faithfulness. It’s a question that often
comes to mind when I check my emails or tour.
People write or ask “where can I go to find a
biblical church?” The problem is I am often lost
for words because the modern church is so full
of compromise and ignorance that faithfulness
to the biblical message is missing from whole
towns and I struggle to recommend anywhere.
We are indeed living in an age of excitement
and opportunity. Opportunity? Indeed never before
has there been a need for church planters as
there is today. And my challenge to those in the
UK or here in South Africa is, instead of having
to compromise with a Purpose driven or Alpha
based message or any other watered down version
of the gospel, why not seek counsel and
plant a biblical church in your own home? If
help is needed then we at Moriel will only be
too pleased to lend a hand.
Jacob’s Visit to South Africa is on for
2011
He will be arriving 26th July till the 15th August
when he will be departing back to the UK.
I am in the middle of putting together his itinerary
and will send out a note in the next week or
two once I have finalized the venues.
Since our last newsletter we have had some
good responses on our call to begin new church
plants. We are really encouraged and would like
to recommend two books that may help a body
of believers take the first steps.
The House Assembly by Al Dager, http://
www.swordpublishers.com/Book-Index.htm.
Biblical Church by Beresford Job, http://
www.house-church.org/.
Also a good CD or DVD to listen too is Jacobs
“Fundamentals of Ecclesiology” which is
available from our office.
Both are informative and bring the body of
Christ back to its early beginnings where believers
would meet and break bread from house
to house.
One question I had was ‘In South Africa,
does a church have to register with the government?”
It’s a good question as I do know that
in Kenya, Tanzania and some other African
countries this is mandatory. However having
plant several churches in the UK and South Africa
there are no such rules unless a fellowship
wants to register as an NPO and take benefit
of tax exemption. My own private thoughts on
this is that I would never set up a church as an
NPO again considering that the word of God indicates
a time of persecution from even fellow
believers is an aspect of future life. Why let the
governments know where you are? Indeed is it
not best to meet in homes as an extended family
around a shared meal? That’s my two-pence
worth anyway. Again any questions concerning
church planting please feel free to give us a call.
EBYOWN
This is our third month in Napier and the children
have really settled into their new life. The
fresh air and lovely environment has meant that
lots of allergies, chest infections and rashes have
gone. The lads and lassies are in terrific health
away from the mine dumps near our old property.
They have a new friend called Amy. Amy
comes twice a week to work the horses and to
show N’tombi and Jo how to look after them.
Its amazing to see how even Champion our
most unruly animal is softening up to the kids.
Young Spud now has a gap in the front of his
mouth were his tooth used to be. Don’t ask me
why he did this but for some reason he walked
outside with a Jelly Baby up his nose. Houston,
one of the dogs, kind of though “I’ll have
that”, jumped up and accidentally head butted
the young lad. Out came the tooth and floods of
tears. The moral of the story I suppose is don’t
walk around with a Jelly Baby up your nose.
This month is going to be an important one as
far as our ministry with children is concerned.
Having put any teaching tours or deputisations
on hold for this year we are concentrating on
finding Gods will for our involvement in the
22 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

community and also we are praying about missionaries
coming out to assist us moving forward.
Finally the rest of our stuff came from
Gauteng. It only took three months but included
donated items such as children’s swings, trampoline
and the dining tables.
The children are once again in good health.
Lyn however pulled a muscle in her leg and it
was so bad she had to use a brush to help her
walk as we had no walking aid for her.
We had more visitors this month. Believers
from Hermanus and Cape town who came and
encouraged us in the work we are doing. Winney
one of them is involved in a work that takes
in abandon babies and we are hoping to visit it
in the near future.
Another little visitor was a Scorpion that
turned up in Prudence and also pray for the half
ounce mouse that is currently terrifying Lyn.
Our first live snake was caught and being
only six inches long was disposed of by Jo and
then used as an instrument of terror as he chased
the girls and younguns.
Our trip for bloods went well, actually two
trips because we still havn’t received our 4x4.
The nurses at Pathcare Hermanus where brilliant
with Spud as usually blood is difficult to
squeeze from him. June 2nd is the date we go to
Joberg to see DR Levin with six of the children.
Air fares are to be booked soon. Please pray for
this visit, we hope to do everything in one day.
CHURCH
At the moment we are meeting as a family
in our front room but feel the need for further
fellowship. The lack of a large vehicle means
that we cannot travel far at the moment so fellowshipping
with Graham and Pastor Thomas
or even Erwin and Marion as a family is out of
the question till our 4x4 is repaired and brought
down to the Cape. It would be easy to open up
a house fellowship but we don’t want to do this
until we are sure of His will. So please pray
with us on this matter.
If people are interested please let me know if
you want to attend so we can plan ahead. This is
purely experimental to see where God is leading
The first Saturday will be June 4th at 1030am.
If and only If the Lord leads will move frequency
and maybe the day in the future.
DANIEL PROJECT OUTREACH
Moriel SA has become a handling house
for the DVD version of this great secular documentary
which was made for TV and cinema . It
can only be ordered online from http://www.
thedanielproject.tv/ and the cost including P&P
is R200 for the double DVD.
However, we have obtained a license to show
the DVD free of charge in the Western Cape,
Gauteng and Eastern Cape. I will be speaking
to pastors very soon to see if churches can be
opened up for the showing. Please pray for this,
that the Lord will use this to reach a lost generation.
Pray also for Graham, Pastor Thomas
here in the Cape. Alistair Gordon and Dave
Newman in Gauteng and friend of the ministry
Alan McKenzie in the Eastern Cape as we
move forward organizing events. PS, Graham,
Chris and I had a wonderful meeting in Hermanus
over breakfast where plans were laid to take
the DVD to pastors in the Western Cape. It was
David Royle
a good time of fellowship and I was really encouraged
by the commitment and organizing
skills of these ministers of the gospel. May the
Lord have all the Glory.
MORIEL MISSIONS SCHOOL
While in the UK I picked up the study book
from the publishers and I must say that they
look great. Chris has been designing a New
case for the CD and DVD’s that come with the
modules, he’s done a great job.
My plan is still to open up a teaching day
once a month in the Cape where students can
come and take lectures and have the opportunity
to ask questions. We hope this will happen
in July. New material is also being added to the
modules as we aim to improve the way we communicate
the lecture material.
In May, a satellite Bible School will be opening
at Devore Community Church and run by
PS Marco Quintana. This is an awesome development
and has us excited by the prospect of
training a godly generation of leaders.
If you would like a prospectus please email
us at: morielmissionscollege@gmail.com
There is another two conferences been sent
to us. The first is entitled “Rescuing your loved
ones from deception”. It is an excellent DVD
looking at what to do and say to those trapped
by Mormonism, Roman Catholicism, Jehovahs
witnesses etc. Fine teachers such as Jacob Prasch,
Mike Gendron, David Lister are featured.
Price: R450.
The second is the Days of Noah prophecy
conference a 7 DVD conference for R350
which has 13 studies.
PRAYER NEEDS
• Give us this day our daily bread. Lord you
know our needs and are the sole source for all
that sustains life.
• The Daniel Project, that the Gospel of the
Kingdom will be preached.
• Pray for Graham and Pastor Thomas for
much wisdom as we move forward.
• Paulina who has had a kidney infection. Lord
please heal her.
• Pray for Anthony and Liz. Liz miscarried her
child. We pray for healing and wisdom.
• Gods will in every area of our lives as we
preach the gospel and share His love.
• Pray our 4x4 gets returned to us very soon.
We could really use it now.
• Meetings with local pastors that they will have
a love for the truth.
• Had a nice chat with a Policeman about the
work we do. Pray for another opportunity.
• That Lyn’s leg heals completely
• That our 4x4 would get fixed soon
• Pray that legal papers for Baden and Luke
would get sorted soon
• Blood tests go well for all the children
• The new Church plant
• For Erwin, Marion, Graham, Joy and PS
Thomas and Loan here in the Cape
• PTL Paulina is now well
• For the Daniel Project
• All our efforts with the Gospel
• For Leanne, Geoff and Judy who are praying
about coming here
Devore Missions School and South African
missions school opening soon.
Moriel South Africa
Genesis 27:28
28: May God give you heaven’s
dew and earth’s richness — an
abundance of grain and
new wine.
– TEACHING –
A TIME FOR EVERYTHING (Part One)
Ecclesiastes 2 vs 24–26 & 3 vs 1–8
24 There is nothing better for
a man than to eat and
drink and tell
himself that his labor is
good. This also I have seen
that it is from the
hand of God.
25 For who can eat and
who can have enjoyment
without Him?
26 For to a person who is good in
His sight He has given wisdom
and knowledge and joy,
while to the sinner He has given
the task of gathering and
collecting so that he may give to
one who is good in
God’s sight. This too is vanity
and striving after wind.
3vs1 There is an appointed
time for everything. And there
is a time for
every event under heaven—
2 A time to give birth and a time
to die; A time to plant
and a time to
uproot what is planted.
3 A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a
time to build up.
4 A time to weep and a time to
laugh; A time to mourn and
a time to dance.
5 A time to throw stones
and a time
to gather stones; A time to
embrace and a time
to shun embracing.
6 A time to search and a time to
give up as lost; A time to keep
and a time to throw away.
7 A time to tear apart and a
time to sew together; A time
to be silent and a
time to speak.
8 A time to love and a
time to hate;
A time for war and a
time for peace.
Ecclesiastes, written by King Solomon, reminds
us that there is a time for everything and
therefore a reminder that all things change. But
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly 23

Moriel South Africa – Continued
King Solomon goes further. Not only is there
a time for everything but that time is appointed.
If its appointed then there has to be an appointer.
Everything in this book points to God.
God sets the agenda, God sets the times and the
epochs, God gives and He takes away – its all
about the Father!
Yet as we examine the words of Chapter
three, the author brings to our attention all the
areas of human life, areas where we like to
think we can have control and he points us back
to the Creator. Man is an usurper. A manipulator.
A little god in his own eyes. And Solomon
in all his wisdom calls this vanity. The word has
the following meaning:
hebel (210c); a prim. root; vapor, breath:—
breath(5), delusion(2), emptily(1), emptiness(2),
fleeting(2), fraud(1), futile(1), futility(13),
idols(7), mere breath(2), nothing(1),
useless(1), vain(3), vainly(1), vanity(19), vanity
of vanities(3), vapor(1), worthless(2).
God is the appointer. Everything under heaven
has its time. Everything under heaven has its
place, even the enjoyment of life is Gods gift.
There is a nothing better for a man than to
eat and drink and 1 tell himself that his labor
is good. This also I have seen that it is
b
from the hand of God.
For who can eat and who can have enjoyment
without 1Him?
TIME. Times, Epochs, ages, what does the
word of God say about these things, how does
God relate to time? Its important to know because
our concept of time and Gods involvement
in the universe helps us shape life’s decisions. If
we have a proper concept of who is in control,
a proper appreciation of just how involved Father
is in our universe, then life becomes more
peaceable knowing there is a great and sovereign
Father in control of every aspect of our
lives and that things are appointed for a purpose.
We need to know several things about Gods
relationship to Time.
First of all, Time is a created thing. Genesis
1v1 says
1
In the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth. 2 And the earth was without
form, and void; and darkness was upon
the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters.
Hebrews 1v10
10
And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast
laid the foundation of the earth; and the
heavens are the works of thine hands:
Time is a thing, it can be physically manipulated,
scientists theoretically could travel back
through time if they harnessed the power of a
Black Hole. (or so the teorists would say) Gravity
influences time, atomic clocks have sped up
when taken away from the Earths gravitational
influence. Time is a created thing.
Secondly, God proceeds time and he is after
time. Lets look at Ps90v2
2
Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever thou hadst formed the earth and
the world, even from everlasting to everlasting,
thou art God.
And Jude 25
To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory
and majesty, dominion and power, both
now and ever.† Amen.
David Royle
The Father Proceeds Time, He is after time
when it has been wrapped up as we know it,
time is a created thing that can be manipulated
and observed and –
Third, God is above time. Isaiah 57v17
For thus saith the high and lofty One that
inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I
dwell in the high and holy place, with him
also that is of a contrite and humble spirit,
to revive the spirit of the humble, and to
revive the heart of the contrite ones.
The part that should interest us though comes
in my next two observations. Yes we can maybe
get our thinking around the abstract thoughts
concerning His creating, proceeding and existing
after time, but it goes now to a level that
affects us personally.
Fourthly, God intervenes in the Time continuum.
There are several examples of this happening.
Joshua 10v13-14
And the sun stood still, and the moon
stayed, until the people had avenged
themselves upon their enemies. Is not
this written in the book of Jasher b ? So the
sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and
hasted not to go down about a whole day.
14
And there was no day like that before it
or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto
the voice of a man: for the LORD fought
for Israel.
2Kings 20v11
And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the
LORD: and he brought the shadow ten
degrees backward, by which it had gone
down in the dialc of Ahaz.
I was sent an article describing how NASA
had found a missing day by examining the
earths rotation and the positions of the sun,
moon and stars while projecting the trajectory
of a Satellite. Now I tried to confirm this but
most web sites put this down to Christian Urban
Myth and that the establishments mentioned in
the report all denied its validity. However the
fact is this, that an all powerful and sufficient
God steps into time to intervene on behalf of
His people. We need to let this sink into the way
we think. Because practically what it implies is
that God is personally involved in our personal
lives and can intervene at any time. This brings
me to my next point.
Five, God has prepared time for his own desires
and purposes. Gal 4v4
But when the fullness of time was come,
God sent forth His son, made of a woman,
made under the law.
Then Hebrews 11v3
By faith we understand that the 1a worlds
were prepared b by the word of God, so
that what is seen c was not made out of
things which are visible.
The fullness of time, He sent His son, God
prepared the worlds by His word. That sending,
that preparing means that we are sat here today
because God intervened by His Grace and
saved us through His grace. There was a time
appointed for you in every aspect of your life
and its this that Solomon is speaking about.
There are other instances when the use of the
word time has great significance.
We have past times where we see the hand of
God in History. Romans 15v4
For whatsoever things were written aforetime
were written for our learning, that we
through patience and comfort of the scriptures
might have hope.
The prophet Daniel 8v17-19
17. So he came near where I stood: and
when he came, I was afraid, and fell upon
my face: but he said unto me, Understand,
O son of man: for at the time of the end
shall be the vision.
18. Now as he was speaking with me, I
was in a deep sleep on my face toward the
ground: but he touched me, and setf me
upright.
19. And he said, Behold, I will make thee
know what shall be in the last end of the
indignation: for at the time appointed the
end shall be
The End time has been appointed. We are
living in those times right now, time and history
are spiralling downwards faster and faster.
Jesus says in Matthew 24v22
“Unless those days had been cut short, no
1
life would have been saved; but for a the
sake of the 2 elect those days will be cut short.
We are living in the days I believe just before
the Glorious return of Christ, wars and rumors
of wars, pestilence, false Christ’s and deceivers.
There is a Time set aside for this. Solomon says
“there is an appointed time for everything, there
is a time for everything even under heaven”
Next month we will do a verse by verse
examination of Gods interventions in time,
however to close this first part of this teaching
we need to recap on some serious issues.
God is the appointer
God is beyond time
He precedes time and will exist when time
is rolled away
But more seriously He is the God who personally
intervenes in our time space continuum
and that means He intervenes in your times too.
The word talks of the last times. I suppose in
a way every individual who has lived has experienced
their own last times. Jesus is coming,
either for us individually as we go to be with
Him or on that Great and Terrible day when
He returns for His people. Question is, are you
ready for either one of these scenarios? If Yeshua
came today would it be like he says as a thief
in the night, totally unexpected? Maybe though
you are watching the signs of the times as world
history spirals to a close and you are looking up
as your redemption is nigh?
David Royle
24 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

Moriel Israel
Editorial
It’s Been Raining Here
Passover has just finished here, and we thank
God indeed for the rainfall that we have had
here. It was totally undeserved considering the
sinful state of the nation, and it was a welcome
blessing to a water starved country like Israel.
Rain here is rarely drizzle like in Europe. In fact
its a fairly violent affair with very loud thunder
and spectacular electrical storms. It is easy to
see why the Psalmist exclaimed when he saw
the glory of God in His creation: “the voice of
the LORD is upon many waters, the God of
glory thunders... the voice of the LORD is powerful,
the voice of the LORD is full of majesty”
Just recently we returned from a trip down to
Eilat. The desert is a strange place indeed, and
at times breathtakingly beautiful as the light
and shadow change the rocks in hue throughout
the day. (It’s also probably the only place in Israel
where you can get some peace and quiet.)
Being in Israel is like living in a Bible Encyclopedia.
You get to see things that enhance your
understanding of the Scriptures right in front of
your own eyes. On a little jaunt into the desert,
we visited one or two of the camping sites of
the Children of Israel before they crossed the
Jordan river. It was a very hot day, and as we
stood there in the heat our guide was explaining
to us about the species of Acacia tree that
we stood under, that in some cases its roots
could go down to 150 feet below the surface,
where it could reach the water even in the driest
summers. Israel, unlike, for example, the U.K
(where it rains nearly all the time) enjoys rain
only on a seasonal basis. This is particularly so
in the Aravah (from a Hebrew word meaning
“dry”) desert, where the rivers too are seasonal.
In the rainy season these river beds (Hebrew:
Nahal, Arabic wadi) can be raging torrents,
washing away roads, bridges and anyone foolish
or unfortunate enough to be caught in their
path. The sky may be blue and cloudless overhead,
but it may have rained in the mountains
miles away and the unsuspecting hiker will
know nothing until a raging flood some metres
deep comes racing down the wadi smashing
them against its rock walls and carrying them
off. People die every year from not taking heed
to the warnings. This has something to teach us
too. In Isaiah 59:19 in the context of the LORD
marching forth in judgement we read:
“And so shall they fear the name of the
LORD from the West and from the Rising
of the Sun (the East) His glory, for He (i.e.
the LORD, or “it” meaning His judgment
both are possible renderings from the Hebrew),
shall come like a pent up river which
the Spirit of the LORD drives along.”
This reminds how vitally important it is that
we know the times and seasons and be watchful
to avoid being swept away. That day should not
overtake us like a thief if we remain awake (see
1Thess. 5:1-6, and in Luke 21, Jesus commanded
us to watch for the signs of His coming and
when we saw certain things we would know
that the season of our redemption draws nigh.).
During the dry season the surface river water
dries up and the only water is deep underground.
Only trees that have deep roots can survive.
This illustrates for us the need to be rooted
and grounded in the LORD and His Word to
survive in a hostile enviroment.
“Blessed is the man that trusteth in the
LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For
he shall be as a tree planted by the waters,
and that spreadeth out her roots by the
river, and shall not see when heat cometh,
but her leaf shall be green; and shall not
be careful in the year of drought, neither
shall cease from yielding fruit.”
May we be deep-rooted and fruitful for Him.
Our Prayer Needs – General
It will not have escaped anyone’s notice that
the political environment around Israel is becoming
increasingly more unstable and hostile.
We may be seeing the beginnings of Islamic
radicalisation of our immediate neighbours
with whom we have enjoyed at least a cessation
of hostilities (if nothing more) for many years.
Coupled with this we have the distinct possibility
of a violent “Palestinian” state being forcibly
created by the UN (Unwanted Nuisance)
on part of our territory, leaving us with borders
that offer us no strategic depth in case of an outbreak
of hostilities, -something that is certain to
happen if such a state is created, as it will quickly
be filled with Iranian-backed terror groups,
and an unrestricted flow of munitions for them
to use against us. We also face a Europe that
grows ever more inimical as each day passes,
and an America that is a broken reed governed
by a weak and useless president who seems like
some kind of Islamic stooge, bent on destroying
the very nation he governs, so the chances
of help from over there are slim indeed. War is
not a pleasant prospect, particularly as here in
Nahariya, we are almost right next to the border
and in 2006 the town was plastered by Katyusha
rockets. Thankfully in the past we have had
very few casualties. Mostly these things have
made a lot of noise, damaged buildings and
upset the dog, but if they land near you in the
open or hit your car (or some of the older buildings
with thin walls) with you in it, they will kill
you.. The Hizbullah have spent the last 5 years
however upgrading their arsenal with new and
better toys which do far more damage, so the
next war could get very nasty indeed here on
the border. (Of course if this “Palestinian” terror
state is created EVERYONE will be near the
border.) Please pray for us, both nationally, and
locally here in Nahariya for wisdom and protection.
While we may be seeing the possible
lining up of the nations against Israel portrayed
in Ezekiel 38, 39, this is not some theoretical
debate about prophecy for us, here in the Land.
It’s very real and people will die.
Congregation
Because of some recent difficulties, we felt
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly 25

Editorial
the need to confirm that the leadership had the
full backing of the congregation for the tasks
of the days ahead. Praise the LORD, the core
leadership was indeed fully ratified by the congregation
which also gives them confidence
that they are fully endorsed and supported, particularly
at this time when things are changing
rapidly and major decisions have to be made.
We would indeed covet your prayers for the
ministry team here, that they would be given
wisdom and discernment, courage and strength
to function in a way that will bring honour to
the LORD’s name and promote the growth of
the congregation in all things, especially as they
deal with some difficult issues.
We have not yet found a suitable premises for
long-term use, that will provide us with the extra
rooms and facilities to develop, for example, the
children’s ministry and more than just be a room
to put the babies in so that they don’t disturb the
main meeting. This is an urgent priority. Summer
is nearly upon us and our present premises
are wholly unsuitable for meeting in the high
summer temperature’s plus its accompanying
tortuous humidity, as there is no air-conditioning
and it is a small low-roofed basement. We
may be able to meet outside of town outdoors
for a while, but in another 5 months the rains
will return, and when it rains here it really rains.
We thank God that one of the brothers here
who was struggling to find work to support his
family has found a job and his wife also found
suitable work. This is a great relief for them.
Thank you for all who prayed about this matter.
We also praise the LORD for the way in
which more of our men are standing up and beginning
to minister in the congregation. This is
very encouraging indeed, and is a correction of
a long-standing imbalance in the other direction,
when there were almost no men present. Please
continue to pray for the men in this matter, but
also that we would get the Scriptural balance
right, and that true Body ministry would emerge
here where both men and women can participate
fully in all ways that the Scriptures allow.
There are a number of matters that have been
long-standing issues that need fixing. The leadership
are working on it, but some things take
time. Pray that we all have patience.
For an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and
His gifts upon our congregation. While we deplore
hyper-charismatic extremism, we are very
aware that we need the gifting and empowering
of the Holy Spirit. We desire very much that
both the gifting of the Spirit and His outworked
fruit of character be a hallmark of this congregation,
that He would move supernaturally in
our midst to confirm God’s Word, and to bless
and edify. If the Early believers needed such
things, how much more we who live when the
end of all things is at hand.
We also have another couple, with a baby
on the way. The husband is obligated to finish
his army service, which will mean another
few months in which he is unable to look for
work. His wife was sacked when her employer
discovered she was pregnant and now because
of hereditary hypertension which worsened because
of the pregnancy, she cannot work until
after the baby. The army are supposed to pay
extra to take into account his wife’s inability to
work, but are dragging their feet. Please pray
Moriel Israel
that, either he can be released early from the
army, or that the bureaucratic blockages that are
so prevalent here in Israel, be cleared out of the
way, so that he can finish his army service free
from care that they will be unable to meet their
monthly bills.
Please remember Michael and Annie Nissim
in your prayers. They need to find a house very
quickly, that is suitable for their present and immediate
future needs, as a baby is on the way.
Particularly pray for encouragement for Michael
who is facing many reasons to be discouraged
from a number of quarters. Pray that the LORD
will continue to confirm him and Annie in their
calling here and growth and development in the
gifting of God upon their lives. They have both
had much trial since they arrived here, please
uphold them in prayer.
A small group of Lebanese have started a
home meeting here. (This is not linked in any
way with another group which has existed here
for several years, and with whom we have no
dealings). Pray that they will be able to get the
help and support that they need from others
around them and that the meeting will become
solid and established on good foundations.
Pray for the leader and his wife, for encouragement
and direction.
We have a number of Arab believers in our
congregation here and we are sorely aware of
the need for a mature Arab believer who also
possesses good Hebrew skills and preferably
English as well, strong in the Scriptures and
of good character to assist in ministering to,
and translating for, these individuals, some of
whom do not have good Hebrew and nearly
zero English. We know that to some extent they
are missing out on some of the blessing from
the preaching and teaching, but they still come
anyway! Please pray that the LORD will bring
someone along to help in this way with translation
and other issues for our Arab members.
Outreach
Surprisingly enough there are a number of
unbelievers who attend our congregation quite
regularly. There are also some others who have
made some kind of profession, but about whom
we are uncertain. Please pray for all these individuals
that clear and unmistakable salvation
will visit them. In particular at least 3 of them
are old and frail,, one is over 90 years old! Every
day is borrowed time for these people of
advanced years. Please beseech the LORD’s
mercy for them.
There are a number of other individuals
whom we meet or have made contact with
around town. Please pray for these contacts,
that we will have opportunities to present the
Gospel and for open hearts to receive it. We
would also ask that you pray for doors to open
with our friends, business acquaintances and
just people around town that we meet and this
not just for ourselves but for all in the congregation
here, that the Gospel may spread in this
town by active, bold and vibrant witness.
May the LORD bless you all,
Elon Moreh
SHADOWS
OF THE
BEAST
26 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

Geoff Toole
Moriel Japan
moriel japan
News from the Far East
Summer Report 2011
Moriel Japan Report, June 2001
Firstly, I would like to express our sincerest gratitude to all the people who lovingly and willingly gave to the Moriel Disaster relief fund
for Japan. We were able to donate $16,000 to those in need. At first in the confusion of it all I had no idea how we were going to use the
money, but it wasn’t long before the Lord opened up some direct and appropriate doors for us. Some of the money was given to a local pastor
whose church was flooded half way up the second floor. He was grateful for the assistance. Some of the money was given to the Calvary
Chapel team from Tokyo and the Tohoku area who are making regular aid and evangelism trips. They have reported a good response from the
people and many open doors to share the gospel with the wider community. Lastly some of the money was used to buy food here in Osaka
which was sent by truck to the disaster zone by a Christian aid group. We praise God for His grace through the church at this time.
Is this not a sign of what is to come? The Bible is full of prophecies regarding earthquakes and what could only reasonably be explained as
nuclear devastation. In February this year (a few weeks before the disaster) Moriel Japan conducted evangelistic meetings with Peter Danzey
in Kobe and Tokyo. The advertised topic was Bible prophecy, including prophecies regarding earthquakes and nuclear war, as well as other
prophetic signs. The day before the earthquake we published and posted the Japanese translation of ‘The Parable of the Wedding Feast’ which
urges us to use end times prophecy to show people that the Kingdom of God is at hand. It is a time of urgency.
Your lips drip nectar, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue;
the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon. Song of Solomon 4:11
Notice the bride has honey and milk under her tongue! She has a foretaste of the kingdom, the ‘promised land that flows with milk and honey’.
For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly
gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers
of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are
crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. Hebrews 6:4-6
God gives us a foretaste of heaven through the Holy Spirit, manifested through believers in fellowship. But he allows the world a foretaste
of what is coming to them, too. Earthquakes, power cuts, fuel shortages, radiation, confusion, food shortages... It is a foretaste of the day of
the Lord. Imagine that happening all over the world at once. No one need be unprepared. But many are still ignorant of the escape.
As I watched my fellow ex-pats fleeing the country on mass, I spent too much time glued to the news and had a sense of fear for a short
while. Then the scripture brought great comfort. ‘There is no discharge from war’ (Ecc 8:8). I wrote in previous reports that I felt Japan
needed a shaking up to open up to the gospel. Now they have had it. We need to witness boldly and serve faithfully, not flee! Some Christians
went home. Some fled for safety in Korea (is that any safer?) Others ran to the disaster zone and served. One thing is clear for me. Our
strength lies in a continual diet of God’s word. When we look at the news too much, it is like Peter looking at the waves and sinking. When
we look at the waves there is fear. When we look at the Lord there is strength and direction. How long will it be before the next earthquake
strikes? Who knows. But the question we ought to ask is... Will we be ready to serve Him when it does?
The teaching in the Philippines is being blessed of God. The number of pastors who are taking an interest in Midrash and discernment is
increasing each time. Total numbers have not increased, but the the uninterested are being replaced by people who are. We had a great time
this year at the summer camp of a group called Shekinah, a small denomination in the Philippines. Is was great to see the Filipino zeal of
evangelism mixed with a real desire to study the word. There are too many invitations to accept. Please pray for Moriel’s work there. There
is still opposition.
Congratulations to Daisuke and Jean who were married in Compra, Mindoro this May.
Thanks again to those who have prayed for Japan and given financially this year. It is a great blessing for the Body of Christ in Japan.
In Christ
Geoff Toole
morieljapan@yahoo.co.jp
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly 27

Moriel Australian
Margret Godwin
AUSTRALIANnews
June, 2011
Greetings in the Name of Jesus,
As I set about doing these reports, I am blown away by how quickly the time has gone by. And to think here we are half way through 2011.
It seems that it was only a few weeks ago that I was sitting down to Christmas Dinner. Maybe it is just old age.
I just re-read the March issue report, as I didn’t want to repeat myself. I note I was talking about the terrible catastrophes that had affected
Australia & New Zealand.
Now we have Japan – surely the signs!
I was talking to Nigel in New Zealand yesterday after we had received from Jacob an incredible slide report from the damage in Japan and
could not help but remark to him that we humans certainly are a strange lot – whilst Japan, Christchurch, Australian Flood victims are still
trying to overcome these tragedies we blithely go on our way almost as though it never happened. No front page reports, no upgrades, no
appeals for funds/help. I recall when my dear Ross went to be with the Lord and the funeral was over and everyone went home I was sitting
on the back step having a cup of coffee and noted that everyone was going off to work, the children off to school, the rubbish man came, the
trains were running and so on and I thought to myself “how can all this be happening – my husband has died – my world is upside down!
BUT that is human nature isn’t it? And the older I get the more we seem to have become almost shock proof. I have decided to consciously
take a little more time to reflect on these things and to keep the victims on my prayer list – hope some of you can join me.
Last Issue of the Quarterly
Our last issue of the Quarterly (March) brought an unprecedented number of calls and compliments on the quality of the articles. Praise
the Lord. Thank you to all those that took the time to let us know. Remember if you would like extra copies to give out or know of someone
that would like to receive the magazine just drop me a line or give me a call.
The Daniel Project
Of course the other great interest is the DVD – The Daniel Project. This incredible documentary is readily available here in Australia
and New Zealand. Orders can be placed on line at, www.thedanielproject.tv, and the goods are mailed out from Moriel Australia. Prices for
Australia $28 and New Zealand $30. If you do not have access to the Internet or do not have a credit card, orders can be placed with our
office. I must remind all those that purchase the DVD, it is under very strict copyright and must not under any circumstances be
duplicated.
Jacob’s latest Book
The second part of the trilogy is on its way to Australia and will be available by the time you receive this issue. Shadows of the Beast is the
second book, the first being Dilemma of Laodicea. These Books are priced at $25.00 plus P & H. You will find all the details in the new catalogue.
Special Day
Last week I was invited by a dear little friend of mine, Micah Harris to attend a V.I.P. Day at his school (Chairo Junior) at Warragul (here
in Victoria) This wonderful Christian college is situated in the most glorious hills with views that have to be seen to be believed.
Parents, Grandparents & friends were invited as a V.I.P. guest of each child.
I was so impressed with what I saw at the school. The 2 hour get together began in the assembly hall where the children sang a couple of
songs and then the compere announced that the children would be singing two hymns – these hymns were not meant as entertainment but
worship unto the Lord who was No 1 in their lives, in their school and in their homes. The children then all stood up (guests invited to do
the same) and began singing with all the actions. I was in tears - it was so beautiful! As I sat there mopping up my tears I could not help how
overjoyed the Lord must feel when He looked down on those shining little faces.
We were then taken on a tour of the school. All the rooms were beautifully turned out. There were Psalms & scriptures all over the walls
and windows, along with drawings of the Lord’s wonderful creation. Even the gardens had a plaque acknowledging our Father God. We saw
the sports area and my highlight was the “Chook House” which has a rooster and three hens. Talk about the Taj Mahal of Chook Houses! I
have been reliably informed that these hens are prolific layers but the rooster can be a bit nasty and of course very noisy.
Micah’s two brothers Noah & Josiah joined us. Their V.I.P was their mother Andrea and little brother Elijah.
What a lovely morning – I really had the loveliest time. Thank you Micah.
Pastor David Wilkerson
I was so shocked when I got a phone call asking me if I had heard about Dave Wilkerson. How tragic! There are so very few good men
of God left standing.
Jacob & Pastor Bill Randles wrote lovely eulogies. I doubt that any Christian nowadays would not in some way been affected by the stand
this man took in the things of God.
I note his last blog posted on the day he died was such an encouragement to us all. I have just copied in a small portion;
When all Means Fail, he encouraged those facing difficulty to “hold fast” and stand strong in faith.
“To those going through the valley and shadow of death, hear this word: Weeping will last through some dark awful nights, and in
that darkness you will soon hear the Father whisper, “I am with you,” Wilkerson wrote. “Beloved, God has never failed to act but in
goodness and love. When all means fail – His love prevails. Hold fast to your faith. Stand fast in His Word. There is no other hope in
this world.”
You can read the entire piece on his website.
2011/2012 Resource Catalogue
Well folks it has only taken eight years but we have done it. Yes a new catalogue! These cost quite a deal to publish so please look after them
It’s time to draw this to a close. As usual I am running late Bless you, may the Lord keep you dear family until we come together again.
In Christ,
Marg
28 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

Margret Godwin
ambling
o s e
June, 2011
Rambling Rose
Greetings Dear Family,
I will bring you up to date with a wee report on things at HQ (Australia). Firstly we have had a big and I mean
BIG clean out in the garage. Not one unopened box to be seen! Well, actually there are lots of boxes, but they have
been opened and checked.
Secondly, the office is the neatest it has been since “the day after the Lord rested!” I hope to have conducted
tours shortly!
Thirdly, after eight long years we have a new resource catalogue (well almost). What a headache! It is long
overdue – so one must persevere. Unfortunately patience is not one of my strong suits.
Pastor Bill Randles here in July
We are getting very excited at the prospect of Pastor Bill’s July visit. You will find a full itinerary on the separate
coloured flyer in your magazine. I would encourage you to get to as many meetings as you can. This man’s teaching
is straight from the heart and not the head. What he shares is so very necessary for each of us in the end times. The
overall theme for the meetings is “Back to the Cross via the Word”
Try and bring as many family & friends along as you can. Also please pray that the meetings go well and for
Bill’s family whilst he is away from them.
Help us to save more babies
Now to something more serious – last year Jacob introduced me to a ministry in Israel – Be’ad Chaim that takes in young
girls/women who are pregnant – some contemplating an abortion – some raped – some thrown out of home – some left by
their husbands and many other reasons. It is an outreach for women in crisis pregnancy and their unborn babies in Israel.
Be’ad is a non-profit association that has made it their goal to help women with unplanned pregnancies.
This wonderful organization takes these ladies in, looks after them, and shares the gospel with them. Gives them pre
and postnatal care, counselling, practical assistance, and education.
For the ones that decide to keep their babies they offer “Operation Moses” and according to financial need, an
entire baby room (bed, stroller, bath, changing table and other accessories). They also, when able, give out monthly
gift cards for nappies and baby formula throughout the babies first year.
For obvious reasons (their security) we cannot give you the name and address of the organization but we are
thrilled that through your generosity in monetary gifts and of course the profit that we make in selling our resource
material we have been able to support them, and hope to do more in the future. Also through the lovely ladies that
knit for us we have been able to send some twenty boxes of baby clothes, blankets etc.
In one of the brochures I have here in front of me – just some of the horrendous facts; In Israel today legal abortion
is available up until the 9th month of pregnancy. The Israeli Army offers female soldiers two free abortions.
Please pray for these people as they undertake this heart-rending ministry.
Gifts to the Ministry
Quite a number of people have monthly and casual contributions to:
• Pst Dave Royle and his wife Lyn • Ebyown Children’s Village
• Missions
• Moriel Administration
• Feeding Program in the Philippines • Jewish Evangelism
• Jacob personally
We Praise the Lord for those who continually support the ministry in prayer – you are so faithful. We also thank
all those that are able to help financially.
We would encourage you to hold these needs before the Lord and if you are sending financial support make your
checks payable to “Moriel Ministries” and kindly nominate if you have a particular area you would like your funds
directed. We need to be wise stewards and as such seek the Lord for where He would have funds directed. We have
a commitment to Ebyown and the work done there by Pastor Dave and Lyn Royle.
Now for something a little frivolous!
New Office Personnel
We have some new personnel in the Moriel Office – yes we have some 20 beautifully colored fish (in a tank of
course) I say twenty – they won’t stand still for me to count them.
I had the tank set up beside my desk. I find them so very elegant in their dance and so soothing and calming.
They don’t make a great deal of noise and are low maintenance.
Having said that – two bright sparks who shall remain nameless – lifted Noah and Esther up onto a chair beside
the tank. Essie doesn’t take any notice but Noah sits there absolutely drooling – thankfully he cannot get into the
tank. Nothing like dining el fresco!
Well dears “that is your lot” for this issue. Love to each and everyone of you
In Christ,
Marg
Now for some extra thrilling news!
A very dear friend of mine (my unofficially adopted daughter) Peter Leembruggen has just become engaged to a
wonderful young man named John........(surname to follow)...............................
I am so thrilled and everyone in Moriel offers them our warmest wishes for their future. The extra wonderful thing
is that they’re moving to Melbourne after their marriage.
I don’t know how Peta will cope with the change in climate – note I did not say Cold.!
Peta is the second daughter of our dear friends Clive and Donna Leembruggen of Dalby. On top of that news, their
other daughter Toni and her family are moving to Cairns. I can just see Clive and Donna constantly travelling the
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly 29

FYI
east coast of Australia.
For our non-Australian readers Cairns is right
up the top of Australia in far north Queensland
and Melbourne (the worlds greatest city) is at
the bottom of the country in Victoria.
Jacob sends the following message to the
happy couple;
Congratulations &
Blessings in Jesus
Please convey my warmest delight
in the Lord and blessings with
congratulations to Peta and her
fiance John on the very happy announcement
of their engagement.
Congratulations
Peta is a wonderful young christian
lady and without doubt will
make a godly and noble wife and
help mate to her future husband
John
In Jesus
Jacob Prasch
NEW !!
Now available in
Electronic Format!
*Shadows of the Beast ($9.99) & The Dilemma
of Laodicea ($8.29) are now available
on Amazon in electronic format for the Kindle
e-book reader. Shadows of the Beast (£6.96)
& The Dilemma of Laodicea (£6.29) are also
available in the same format in the UK.
The process for making the book suitable for
this electronic medium is quite eye-opening,
and to be perfectly honest, while this is becoming
more and more popular, it is definitely not
100% the same as a physical book. However,
many e-book readers have the advantage of being
able to read the content aloud to blind and
disabled people.
We are looking at venues in addition to Amazon,
but since they are the biggest and most
popular, we will start with Amazon first. We
would very much like to do this with all of our
books and will let you know when each book
has been completed.
In Him,
Danny Isom
PERTINENT “ ”
Genetics Analysis of Jews Confirms Genesis
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
By Brian Thomas, M.S.
Special to ASSIST News Service
DALLAS, TX– A team of geneticists recently analyzed 6,529 individual genomes, representing
107 different human populations. [1] They found genetic traces of African ancestry in
various people groups and estimated the timing of the ancient African/non-African intermarriages.
The results of their analysis of Jewish populations will come as no surprise to those who
believe in the literal history of Genesis. Despite their extensive statistical analyses of reams of
genetic data, the researchers relied on traditional historical sources to anchor their results to
actual time. And along the way, what the authors termed a “striking finding” would actually
have been anticipated by a more biblically literate investigation.
The team, led by researchers from Harvard Medical School, compared differences in DNA
sequences between the individuals and processed the data with several focused analyses. For
example, one algorithm called the 3 Population Test compared three populations at a time to
detect whether or not one of them was ancestral to the other two.
The study results published in the online journal PLoS Genetics included the virtual absence
of evidence for African genetic mixing among Northern Europeans. This makes sense, given
their geographic distance. However, Southern Europeans appeared to have experienced a measure
of mixing with Africans 55 generations ago, equivalent to approximately 1,600 years,
assuming a generation time of 29 years and a constant mutation rate. [2]
But for all their ingenuity and labor, the authors still required written historical sources
to anchor their results in real history. They even wrote that this result “needs to be placed in
historical context.”1 They then recounted a “period of Roman occupation of North Africa that
lasted until the early 5th century AD, and indeed tomb inscriptions and literary references suggest
that trade relations continued even after that time.” [3]
So-called “molecular clock” data are always calibrated with secondary historical sources
where possible, and the time-related results from this analysis are no exception. This is why
molecular clocks, which were promising when first introduced, were soon recognized for their
unreliability and are most often correlated with evolutionary “dates” given to fossils. [4]
The genetic analysis also discovered that all eight Jewish populations in the PLoS study
contained three to five percent African DNA sequence patterns. This was “striking” because
the individual Jewish populations were known, through secular historical records, to have been
separated from each other for hundreds of years. African DNA was even found in modern descendants
of Ashkenazi Jews, who have inhabited Northern Europe since the 1100s A.D.
The study authors said: “A parsimonious explanation for these observations is that they
reflect a history in which many of the Jewish groups descend from a common ancestral population
which was itself admixed with Africans, prior to the beginning of the Jewish diaspora that
occurred in 8th to 6th century BC”. [5]
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always
been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our
efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any
such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish
to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond “fair use”, you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Linknotes:
1. ”(Moorjani, P. et al. 2011. The History of African Gene Flow into Southern Europeans, Levan
tines, and Jews. PLoS Genetics. 7, 4: e1001373 ‡
2. More specifically, the team measured single nucleotide polymorphisms, which may be the result
of random mutation or non-random cellular DNA alterations. ‡
3. Moorjani, P. et al. 2011. The History of African Gene Flow into Southern Europeans, Levan
tines, and Jews. PLoS Genetics. 7, 4: e1001373 ‡
4. See, for example, Thomas, B. New Study Contradicts Flower Fossil Dates. ICR News. Posted on
icr.org April 9, 2010, accessed May 25, 2011. And Thomas, B. Frozen Penguin DNA Casts
Doubt on DNA-Based Dates. ICR News. Posted on icr.org November 25, 2009, accessed May
25, 2011. 4. Genesis 41:45. ‡
5. Moorjani, P. et al. 2011. The History of African Gene Flow into Southern Europeans,
Levantines, and Jews. PLoS Genetics. 7, 4: e1001373 ‡
30 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

Your Letters and
Comments
AMERICAN LETTERS
The following letter was sentto Al Dager at
Media Spotlight Ministries his reply follows:
Dear Mr. Dager,
You once admitted in one of your Media
Spotlight issues that you earlier worked in a
bookstore which contained some volumes on
the Illuminati, Bilderbergers, Rothschilds, New
World Order, CFR, AIPAC, ADL, Freemasonry,
etc. This was an astounding revelation, because
none of your writings ever seemed to be influenced
by the existence of such massive evil,
controlled by Zionist Jews—phony Jews (Khazars—Eastern
Europeans with no genetic link
to Abraham, but simply religious converts to
Judaism). This means that any Zionist Khazar
who had renounced his faith in Judaism, could
have no basis to call himself a Jew. In fact these
Khazars are NOT Semites, but have bamboozled
the whole world by their total control of
the mass media into believing that anyone who
criticizes them is anti-Semitic. The truth is that
the Muslim Palestinians, descendants of Abraham,
are the genuine Semites, and any non-Sephardic
Jew who opposes them is anti-Semitic.
No doubt, you understand all of this, coming
from Lebanon. Yet, in newsletter after newsletter,
you constantly rail against the Palestinian
Muslims, and keep your big mouth shut about
the Khazar phony Jews who stole their land,
and now have moved on to control the whole
world’s economy by an unconstitutional Federal
Reserve Banking Empire.
But not only the economy has been stolen,
they have infiltrated the Christian churches,
turned our morals upsidedown with their Hollywood
and TV filth, assaulted our Christian
rights to expression in schools, government
agencies, public places through unrelenting
persecution by their ADL and ACLUs.
Tell me this, Dager, when have Muslims in
America achieved 1/1000 th of this power that
these Khazars wield?
You are a very insightful person. But when
it comes to Jewish Khazar evils, you have a serious
blind spot. Then again, maybe not. You
know quite well that if you confront these monsters,
they will destroy you. The enclosed newsletter
is a small example of people who dared.
And so in your Winter 2010 newsletter you
pretend to call for “balance” in reporting the
Palestinian situation. In so doing you criticize
the video With God on Our Side, which presents
the Muslim Palestinian views. Use your
common sense, Dager. The Jewish-controlled
media in North America always presents the
Zionist view of events, and in fact censors Jewish
criminality from being exposed. Where is
the balance there?
So if once in a blue moon the Palestinians
get to present their views, why should they be
forced to be balanced?
Here’s a little tidbit that should concern you.
In July, 2006, Lebanese forces arrested two Israeli
soldiers as prisoners of war. The Jews themselves
had seized and imprisoned over 9,000
Palestinians without trial, which is legal according
to Article III of Israeli law. The enraged
Jews unleashed a blitzkrieg against Lebanon,
killing over 1,000 men, women, and children.
Now keep in mind that about 42% of Lebanese
are Christians. This means that about 450
innocent Christians were callously killed by the
Israelis.
Al, did you see any “BALANCED” reporting
of this fact in your Jewish-controlled media?
Did you dare report it?
I have in front of me a book, The Ethnic
Cleansing of Palestine by Jewish historian Ilan
Pappé. Obviously, if this author lived in Israel,
he’d be killed. He lives in England. You need
this book Al, before you go shooting off your
big mouth again.
But more than this book, you need to listen to
Jesus Christ. The Jews of today are the same as
the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. They do not venerate
the Old Testament, but the Babylon-inspired
TALMUD They are of their father, the Devil.
As you know, Al, the Devil is the god of this
world. He is the god of the Masonic Temple,
controlled by Jews and until Christ returns,
true Christians will be persecuted by these evil
monsters. It is time to stop taking cheap shots at
Palestinian Muslims and to confront the Devils’
Disciples—the Jews!
I am, A Servant of Jesus – Anonymous*
*Because I can’t trust you.
Letters & Comments
* * * * *
Dear Anonymous,
Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?
Please allow me to respond to your concerns.
I’ve never “admitted” to working in a bookstore
that contained volumes on the subjects
you mentioned. I have stated that in the late
50s and early 60s I managed a bookstore, Poor
Richards, that was the first bookstore specializing
in conservative political literature—a store
after which the American Opinion bookstores
of the John Birch society were modeled. To use
the term “admitted” makes it seem as if I was
ashamed of that past, which I am not. Nor am I
proud of it. It was merely one stopover on my
journey to understanding.
You err when you say that none of my writings
“ever seemed to be influenced by the existence
of such massive evil, controlled by Zionist
Jews, etc.”
I have often mentioned how anti-Christ the
Zionist Jews are. It’s just that I refuse to use the
vitriolic language that he whose newsletter you
included uses on a consistent basis. Nor have I
used such vitriolic language in addressing the
evils of Islam. It’s best to stick to the historical
and scriptural facts.
And that’s where I must address your accusation
of the so-called Khazars. When I was
managing Poor Richards the subject of Khazars
often came up. We carried books that accused
the Khazars of plotting to destroy America and
bring about a Jewish-controlled one-world government.
Every source on the Khazars said essentially
the same thing; it was as if each was
referencing the other. But I did not find then,
nor have I since found, any empirical evidence
to prove the Khazar conspiracy.
It’s true that some Khazars converted to Judaism
around the sixth or seventh century, but
there is no evidence that they replaced all the
Jews, thus leading to the idea that today’s Jews
are de facto Khazarian descendants.
The theory that the majority of Ashkenazic
Jews (German Jews) are the descendants of
the non-Semitic converted Khazars has been
promoted by some racial theorists and particularly
by anti-Semitic (really anti-Jewish)
proponents. Even Arthur Koestler, who wrote
The Thirteenth Tribe, which is considered by
anti-Jewish proponents as one of the basic textbooks
for their biases, admitted that the sources
for the theory are scant at best. But it, and
earlier works, have been used by the Christian
Identity Movement, Black Hebrews, and British
Israelists (aka, Anglo-Israelists) to “prove”
that white Europeans are the true descendants
of Jacob. Recent genetic evidence is contrary
to these theories (“The Matrilineal Ancestry of
Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder
Event,” The American Journal of Human Genetics,
Volume 78, March, 2006
There is no empirical evidence to support the
theory that today’s Jews are, for the most part,
anything other than descendants of Jacob, although
admittedly many Jews have intermarried
with non-Jews throughout the centuries. In truth,
there are very few “thoroughbred” people among
any ancestry today. Yet in spite of intermarriage
and proselytization, the Jews have maintained
their distinct religious and cultural identity.
Yes, they are largely given over to the apostate
rabbinical Judaism inherited from the anti-
Christ elements that have plagued them since
their sojourn in Egypt, but that doesn’t mean
they are consciously anti-Christ; they are blinded
in part until the fullness of the Gentiles has
come into the faith (Romans 11:25).
The Arab Muslims also claim to be the true
descendants of the Israelites, not just of Abraham.
However, people will believe
what they want to believe regardless of the
source of information. Those who insist on the
Khazars being this great evil go to great lengths
to “prove” their thesis. Because they can’t find
any legitimate mainstream source for their proof,
they reason that lack of proof is in itself proof that
the Khazars control all sources of information;
those Khazars won’t allow the proof to surface.
Even if that were true—which is itself unproven—the
fact remains there is no empirical
evidence to support this particular conspiracy
theory. Unless I have that empirical evidence
from reliable sources—not sources that parrot
what previous unproven sources say—I will not
try to convince others that it is true. That doesn’t
necessarily mean I don’t believe that it’s true
or possibly true; it means that rumor, no matter
now convincing it may seem, is not what I wish
to spread. Conspiracy theories abound and have
millions of adherents. Numbers don’t make
truth. Scripture and provable facts make truth.
Another error you make is that Muslim Palestinians
are the genuine Semites rather than
the Jews. Palestinians are not descendants of
Ishmael or Esau as are the Arabs. Their ancestry
traces to the early Canaanites who inhabited the
land before the Israelites conquered it. For the
most part they were the Philistines.
Ishmael was the son of Abraham, a Syrian
(Deuteronomy 26:5) through Hagar (an Egyp-
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly 31

Letters & Comments – Continued
tian). The Syrians were descendants of Shem, as
were virtually all the Middle Eastern peoples, but
they were not directly descended from Abraham.
Esau was the son of Isaac, and his descendants
were the Edomites who settled in Hebron,
south of Philistia (modern Palestine). The origins
of the Philistines is lost to antiquity, but
modern archaeology has determined early cultural
links to the Mycenean world in ancient
Greece. There is no evidence of Semitic origins
(certainly not through Abraham) for the Philistines,
or modern Palestinians.
Now, to set the record straight, I did not come
from Lebanon. I was born in East L.A. (cue
Cheech Marin). Nor do I, “in newsletter after
newsletter…constantly rail against the Palestinian
Muslims.”
I challenge you to find any railing against
Palestinian Muslims in any of my writings. Not
even in my review of With God on Our Side did
I rail against the Palestinian Muslims. I called
for balanced reporting on the subject of the Israeli/Palestinian
conflict, and even laid some
blame on the Israelis. Nor did I “pretend” to call
for balance; you have judged me in an ungodly
manner; I suggest you go before the Lord on that.
As far as what you call, “the Khazar phony
Jews” controlling the whole world’s economy
by an unconstitutional Federal Reserve Banking
Empire, again you are mistaken. The Federal
Reserve is a private banking institution that
controls the printing and circulation of only
United States currency. It is, truly, unconstitutional,
and it is highly suspect as to who the top
stock holders are (a mystery). There is no evidence
that the Class A stockholders of the Fed
are all Jews, let alone Khazarian Jews, or even
mostly Jews of any sort. I will grant that the
Rothschilds have a history of subterfuge and
empire building, but so, too, have many non-
Jewish bankers and industrialists.
Yes, there are evil Jews, and many (but not
all) mass media outlets are headed by Jews.
They are prominent in education, government,
industry, the arts, and entertainment. As a result
the Jews have also been responsible for many
good things such as advances in medicine, industry,
and invention. But just as they cannot
take credit for all the good, it is remiss to debit
them for all the bad. All mankind is fallen; from
among all mankind can be found greedy, evil,
traitorous souls. To single out the Jews based
on misinformation and ancient history that is
sketchy at best and promoted by avowed racists
does not honor the Lord who bought all mankind
with His blood.
You accuse me of being afraid to confront
“these monsters.” No, I’m not afraid; I’m just
not going to put my reputation or the reputation
of this ministry at risk to please people who
don’t know of what they speak, but are so adamant
that anyone who doesn’t take their word
for things is somehow a coward or a lackey of
the great conspiracy.
Yes, there is a conspiracy; I admit it. It is a
conspiracy by Satan to cause brothers in Christ
to fight one another based on nothing more than
conjecture strongly held. It is a conspiracy to
bring the world into constant turmoil so his
anti-Christ (non-Jewish, I believe) may be the
agent of a great deception that will unite the
world against the Lord when He returns. It is a
conspiracy to use men of every nation (not just
the Jews) to deceive the masses into following
his evil plan for world conquest.
Are some men involved in conspiracies
complicit with this satanic conspiracy? Yes.
Are some of them conscious of their involvement?
Yes. Are most of them conscious of it?
No. The vast majority of mankind, including
the Jews and the Palestinians, are pawns in the
game—fodder for the enemy’s cannons.
Regarding the killing of Lebanese in a Jewish
blitzkrieg, yes, I lament the deaths of all
people on all sides of the conflict, particularly
Christians. But Israel is not engaged in a conscientious
pogrom against Christians. Their attacks
have been in response to attacks generated
from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah, and from
Gaza by Hamas, not to mention other sources.
The Muslim terrorists who have vowed to destroy
Israel hide among the civilian populations
in order to assure condemnation from the world
against Israel for “targeting” innocent women
and children.
The Muslims are decidedly persecuting and
killing Christians and Jews as a matter of policy
in many areas. Some Jews may be behind much
of the deception leading men into a one-world
government, but they are not purposely killing
Christians as are the Muslim terrorists, many of
whom, by the way, are Palestinians.
Islamic propaganda aside, Israel and the
world’s Jews are not engaged in terrorist plots
to kill us all. Rabbinical Judaism, as anti-Christ
as it is, does not foment terror, certainly not on
a worldwide scale. Yes, there are hateful Jews
who would like to see the world brought under
Jewish domination, just as there are hateful
white supremacists who would like to see Hitler
resurrected or reincarnated. There are black supremacist
groups that preach hatred of whites,
Jews, Hispanics, you name it.
But there is presently only one worldwide
threat to all mankind, and that is Islam. Everywhere
in the world, including the United States,
Islam is developing terrorist training camps,
equipping men, women and children with the
tools to kill innocent civilians going about their
everyday tasks. Although many Muslims are
benign, and willing to live and let live, the radical
element of Islam is huge, numbering in the
millions, and they are entrenched within every
nation, ready to do their thing.
Rabinnical Judaism is anti-Christ; Hinduism
is anti-Christ; Buddhism is anti-Christ; much
of Christianity is anti-Christ. The difference
between these and Islam is that Islam is the religion
of the anti-Christ, and is being used to
establish his dominion. In the meantime, some
Christian teachers are stirring up hatred against
the Jews on the basis of nothing more than unproven
theories regarding the Khazars.
The Jews whom Jesus said were of their father
the Devil were not, and are not, those who
were or are in ignorance or hold prejudices due
to their upbringing. They were conscientious
enemies of the truths He presented to them;
they purposely sought to kill Him and reject His
truth in spite of the evidence of the Scriptures
and the works He did among them. The same
could be said of any person who willfully rejects
truth, Jew or Gentile. It is the willfulness of sin
that characterizes Satan in his fall from grace.
I’m sorry you can’t trust me, but trust me.
You are in error if you continue to resist God’s
Word that purposes a plan for the Jews in the
last days, particularly in relation to the Promised
Land, and to the Millennial Kingdom.
God has established Israel as a nation, as He
has established all nations. Our responsibility is
to be a witness of His love to all men, Jew and
Gentile, and to avoid the conflicts of the world.
My writing on With God on Our Side did not
take sides; it called for truth on all sides. If you
can’t trust that, then you’ve got a problem that
only the Lord can deal with as you go to Him
in humility, willing to let Him put within you a
love for the Jews as well as the Arabs.
In Jesus’ love,
Al Dager
WITH REGARD TO AL DAGER’S REPLY
While Al Dager is responding to the anonymous
letter he received on behalf of Media
Spotlight (a ministry Moriel endorses and links
to), we are in broad agreement with his reply for
the following reasons:
1) Mitochondrial DNA was not yet discovered
when Arthur Koestler authored The Thirteenth
Tribe, concerning the Khazar hypothesis. Koestler
was a Jew and an Israeli who lived for some
time in Israel at Hadera. His aim was an exploration
of Khazar anthropology and history and
its relationship to Ashkenazi Jewry. I have read
The Thirteenth Tribe, and can say that Koestler
did not spout anti-Jewish or anti-Israel rhetoric
along the lines of those who have hijacked
and distorted his thesis, and who have held
objectives with which Koestler did not agree.
Mitochondrial DNA, however, has been instrumental
in disproving the contentions of The
Book of Mormon that native red-skinned North
Americans are Semites and the so-called “lost
tribes” who migrated from the ancient Near
East. Mitochondrial DNA also confirms that
modern Jews, both Sephardic and Ashkenazi are
indeed of Semitic origin. The individual identifying
himself as “Anonymous” confirms their
ignorance as well as bigotry.
2) Mr. Koestler was also an ardent anti-communist
who authored the brilliant book Darkness
At Noon, which had been the quintessential
polemic against Sovietism prior to Alexander
Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. The John
Birch Society (to which Al Dager makes reference)
was an anti-communist organization that
faulted international banking interests for funding
Sovietism and later attacked the American
establishment over policies such as detente
which economically assisted Sovietism. Their
ideologue was Robert Welch, and they were part
of a quasi-intellectual movement that did not in
any sense resemble or share any goals with The
KKK or racist hate groups, as they’ve been accused
by the political left.
The John Birch Society targeted non-Jewish
banking families such as the Rockefeller Dynasty
as much as they opposed Jewish banking
empires such as the European Rothchilds. In
fact, John Birch Society members were strong
supporters of the presidential bid by the Jewish
American U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater. And
many “Birchers” came to sympathize with Israel
as an outpost against Soviet expansionism in
the Middle East and were in solidarity with Soviet
Jewish refuseniks persecuted by the Soviet
32 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011

KGB. Among The John Birch Society’s membership
were a number of conservative Evangelicals
who theologically viewed modern Israel as
of prophetic importance eschatologically.
The absolute villain in the eyes of The John
Birch Society was the Council on Foreign Relations,
and not the Jews. While many would interpret
many of the positions of The John Birch
Society as conspiratorial in nature, its ethos was
simply anti-communism and not anti-anyone or
anything else. It was not a racist or an anti-Jewish
organization.
Many of the views of The John Birch Society
were historically vindicated and became mainstream
in the 1990s when the official policy of
the Reagan and Thatcher governments and the
pontificate of John Paul II was that the betrayal
of Eastern Europe by the West at Yalta needed
to be reversed. The heirs of the conservative
thinking of this era are popularly referred to
as neo-conservatives, or neo cons and include
many politically and fiscally conservative Jews
in their ranks including Richard Perle, Ben
Stein, Bernie Goldberg, and William Krystol. To
falsely ascribe positions to authors or members
of organizations which they themselves never
adhered to is pseudo-academic fraud.
3) For the record, the leadership of The
ACLU is in the hands of Anthony Romero, an
Italian American; he is not a Jew. The nemesis
and opponent of the ACLU is the ACLJ headed
by constitutional lawyer Jay Sekulow, who is
a Jew (and a believer in Jesus). Although both
Timothy Geithner and Hank Paulson (Secretary
of Treasury under George W. Bush) are not
Jews, the two most visible and high-profile outspoken
arch opponents of the Federal Reserve
and the Goldman Sachs-led banking establishment
are without doubt TV and radio commentators
Michael Savage and John Stossel, both of
whom are Jews.
4) In his anti-Jewish Hollywood tirade,
“Anonymous” overlooks the non-Jewish powers
in Hollywood such as Hollywood’s founder
Cecil B. De Mille, and its biggest producer in
financial terms, George Lukas. He overlooks
the long list of very major non-Jewish film makers
such as Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola,
Martin Scorsese and non- Jewish studio bosses
such as David Putnam, to say nothing of Hollywood’s
most successful script writers such as
Mario Puzo (The Godfather) and David Chase
(The Sopranos).
Neither does he mention the politically conservative
Jewish filmmakers in Hollywood
such as David Zucker and Jerry Bruckheimer,
nor outspoken, politically conservative Jewish
actors such as Adam Sandler, Jason Alexander
(from Seinfeld), and James Caan.
He of course ignores the fact that the moral
crusader against homosexual activism and Hollywood
pornography is the very Jewish Louis Sheldon,
founder of The Traditional Values Coalition
(and also a staunch believer in Jesus, saved from
an ultra-orthodox religious Jewish background).
5) The vitriol of “Anonymous” about Jewish
control of the media likewise overlooks the
fact that from William Randolph Hearst to Ted
Turner, to Rupert Murdoch, to the Bancroft family
(former owners of Dow Jones and The Wall
Street Journal) America’s largest news media
dynasties are not Jewish. This includes Gannett,
America’s largest newspaper chain. And let’s
not forget politically conservative journalists
and editorialists such as David Horowitz in the
USA, and Melanie Philips in the UK.
6) “Anonymous” goes on about Al Dager and
Christians in Lebanon. He is evidently unaware
that with the break up the French Empire, Lebanon
was to be the Arab Christian country apportioned
by France with a Druse and an Islamic
minority, while Moslem Arabs were to receive
Syria. The very week this is being written, however,
radical Islamic Hezbollah, backed by Syria
and Iran, wrestled power, once again pushing
Lebanese Christians into the minority position.
When the Moslems drove the Lebanese Christians
out of the Marjeyoun area of Lebanon it
was Israel who absorbed the Christian Lebanese
refugees, TV commentator Brigitte Gabriel
among them. From the Islamic assassination of
President Bachir Gemayel to the murder of presidential
hopeful Rafic Al-Hariri, to the present
moment, the Christian population of Lebanon,
like the Christian populations of Egypt, Iraq,
and Sudan, has had to struggle endlessly for
their very survival against Islamic oppression.
7) Lastly, we absolutely agree with Al Dager
that Talmudic Judaism, Islam, and nominal
Christianity are all antichrist religions. But opposing
Islam does not make Al a hater of Moslems,
nor do unscriptural expressions of Christianity
make Al an opponent of true Christianity
or of Christians. Neither does opposing Talmudic
Judaism make us or Al enemies of the Jews.
(Jacob Prasch)
Gratitude from a former anti-Semite to the
Moriel team . . . .
Dear Mr. Prasch and the team at Moriel,
Recently I read an article from Moriels “Be
alert” newsletter in which you were rejoicing for
the lives that the Lord had touched through your
ministry. I just wanted to add to them my own
deep gratitude for the impact that your ministry
has had on my life.
Not only was I an anti Semite, but a very active
anti Israel campaigner and promoter of the
interfaith agenda. Your writings and teachings
have been a powerful vehicle that helped me
shed off all the lies and twisted truths that I had
held onto and in ignorance and self promotion,
had pushed onto others but more than that, has
led me to the Lord and resulted in my being born
again and set free from great darkness.
I have attended teaching days were I have
had a chance to speak to you and tell you personally
but each time I was overwhelmed with
shame and turned away. I regret that now. Rather
than go through the whole testimony again
I am sending also a copy of an article that was
used by Paul Wilkinson and his Pastor Andrew
Robinson of Hazel Grove FULL Gospel
Church whom I believe you know. I apologize
if you have all ready seen it. Paul and his Pastor
have been a great source of strength and guidance
to me and I am very grateful to them for
their help and encouragement. They truly are
uncompromising faithful Brothers in the Lord!
I remember when the Lord began to convict
through His word as I poured over the scriptures
concerning Israel and the Jews, a lady gave me
some tapes from Moriel to listen to. Though I
was a professing Christian I still held onto replacement
theology and anti Semitic views. On
the cover was a symbol of menorah and the star
Letters & Comments – Continued
of David and I felt incensed to even look at it
and had no intention of listening to them thinking
them to be just the ranting of yet another deceived
Israel supporter feeding into the Zionist
propaganda machine. (That was how my mind
worked at the time.) They sat there for weeks
until one day I was dusting and knocked one off
the shelf and thought “maybe I will just listen to
one whilst I do the housework. That way I won’t
waste my time listening to them but rather get
stuff done at the same time.” How arrogant and
self assured I was! Well all I can say is that the
dusting did not get done and I sat there arguing
with you but but soon shut up when I checked
out the Word! Well...the hooks were in and afterwards
much time was spent listening, reading
and watching your teachings and those of
other ministries concerning Israel, the Jews, Interfaith
and replacement theology. All the while
the Lord was doing a work in my heart … and
without my knowing It, I was being drawn to the
truth and bought into the Light! Well the rest as
they say, is HIS-tory! :)
Mr. Prasch I do believe that when our works
are tested on that great and fearful day there will
be for you a great weight of glory wrought when
He tests them by fire in which our Lord will be
well pleased. I do not think you really know how
much the Lord has used you or how grateful I
and many others like me are to the Lord for doing
such a mighty work in and through you and
those in your ministry. You simply do not know
who is listening or who’s heart is being opened.
Recently, I bought a copy of “The Daniel
Project” and I wish I had seen this film long ago!
It would have saved me a lot of pain! I pray that
the Lord will use it mightily to speak to many
lost, deceived and lukewarm souls. It not only
is a powerful vehicle for bringing those who do
not know or believe but I believe it will be very
persuasive and hopefully instrumental in changing
the hearts of believers who are taken in my
replacement theology or who have anti-Semitic/
anti Zionist views. I am sure that had I seen it
long ago I might have been delivered of the lies
much earlier.
Hmmm… I wonder if Mr. Sizer would like a
copy? Just a thought!
I pray for your continued good health and
for the Lords protection over you, your ministry
and that of your family. I pray that He will lead
you, guide you, empower and equip you to bring
the Good news of Jesus Christ to all who will
hear and to use you to bring light and truth into
His Church so that when the day of His coming
is at hand many who have heard your teaching
will not be caught unawares or in deception! I
praise God for You and all those like you who
fearlessly and boldly proclaim the TRUTH!
May the Lord bless you and your loved ones
this day and always my Brothers and Sisters in
Christ Jesus. May the Lord bless, keep and make
His face shine upon al the Saints at Moriel!
With much love and gratitude in our Lord
Jesus Christ,
T G <
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not
envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed
up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own,
is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in
iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all
things. Love never fails – 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
June 2011 • Moriel Quarterly 33

Moriel Prayer Closet
moriel’s
prayer
closet
A Small corner of rest from the
chaos and tumult of the world
around us....
“But thou, when thou prayest, enter
onto thy closet, and when thou
hast shut thy door, pray to thy
Father which is in Secret;
and thy Father which
seeth in Secret will reward
thee openly.”
– Matthew 6:6 –
“If two of you shall agree in touching
anything they shall ask, it shall
be done of them by my father which
is in heaven.”
– Matthew 18:19
• Prayer - Moriel request urgent prayer
for the earthquake aftermath and rescue of
survivors in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Moriel has a number of friends among
the believers there and we are still seeking
information about the welfare and
whereabouts of some of them.
• PrayER - Moriel and Jacob Prasch request
prayer for Tony Pearce who is recovering
from major surgery in London and for
Andy Coomar, worship leader from the
same congregation who is scheduled to
undergo very serious pancreatic surgery
on Friday.
• PrayER - Moriel and Jacob Prasch
request prayer for Jacob’s mother, who
has a heart condition. Please pray for her
health and her salvation.
• PrayER - Moriel requests urgent prayer
for a very serious situation in Israel. One
believer was stabbed, another was abducted
in Israel. Emergency prayer requested,
both victims are part of Churches Ministry
To The Jews (CMJ).
• PrayER - Moriel and Jacob Prasch request
prayer for a dear supporter, Jeanne
Quirk who has severe heart problems.
Please pray for The Lord’s intervention,
wisdom for the physicians, and The Lord’s
peace & blessing for Jeanne.
• PrayER - Moriel and Jacob Prasch request
prayer for radio host Jan Markel,
an outspoken voice for discernment issues
and a Jewish believer in Jesus. Jan
is recovering from heart surgery after a
heart attack last week.
• PrayER - Moriel and Jacob Prasch request
prayer for 97 year old Messianic
Jewish Brother Earnest Lloyd, whom
most regard as the Great Grandfather
of Jewish Evangelism in Great Britain.
Brother Lloyd was moved to a geriatric
care facility in Northern Ireland following
a recent collapse.
• PrayER - Moriel and Jacob Prasch request
prayer for creation scientist John
Mackay, a friend of Jacob & Moriel who
is in ill health and temporary unable to
continue his itineraries.
• PrayER - Moriel and Jacob Prasch also
request prayer for noted Christian author
& apologist Dr. John Weldon , also
a friend of Jacob Prasch. John is battling
an inoperable cancer.
• PrayER - Moriel and Jacob Prasch request
prayer for Matthew, son-in-law of
Pastor Bill Randles who is deployed in
Afghanistan. Please pray for him and for
Bill’s daughter Anna and their three little
babies Manassah, Gabriel and Lily. May
the Lord protect Matthew and all of our
troops withstanding the Satanic forces of
radical Islam in our defense and comfort
Matt’s family. Jacob performed the nuptial
ceremony for Matthew and Anna.
• PrayER - Moriel and Jacob Prasch request
prayer for Scott Brisk’s son-in-law,
Jim Abear, who has been diagnosed with
Syringomyelia. Please pray for Jim and
his wife and 3 children during this time
of need. Please pray for the right Drs to
help Jim with the Syringomyelia and a
complete healing. We have just received
word that Scott’s daughter, Christina
Abear(25 yrs old), was just diagnosed
with stage 2 breast cancer and has just
begun chemo this past week. Please remember
this young family in prayer.
• PrayER - Danny remains on kidney dialysis
three times a week. Please pray his
condition improves.
On behalf of all at Moriel we continue to
thank our brethren for their prayers.
KING’S EVANGELICAL
DIVINITY
SCHOOL
King’s Evangelical
Divinity School
(formerly
Midlands Bible College
and Divinity School)
Tel. 08700 421 704
(Overseas +44 8700 421 704)
GodlyConferences
www.radiofreechurch.com/home
About Godly Conferences: This website
provides information about upcoming
and ongoing Christian Conferences
focused on expounding and teaching
the Word of God. For each conference
listed, we provide a schedule, information
on the speakers present at the conference,
and links to the conference’s
live internet broadcast (when available).
34 Moriel Quarterly • June 2011