Messianic Viewpoint

Guest (Male): Welcome to Shalom Ariel and welcome to our study in the book of Revelation with Messianic leader Jacques Isaac Gabizon. For many of us, Yeshua was not our first love, meaning our first love in time. Many of us grew up in homes where parents faithfully loved us and we in return developed an unwavering loyalty and affection for them. Our parents could have been our first love. Perhaps for others, it was a boyfriend or a girlfriend who first stole our hearts or soon after that, our spouse. Perhaps for others, it was as David described it, having a love for a friend like Jonathan that was even greater than that of a wife.

But the fact is once we meet our true and ever faithful friend Yeshua, our true first love, once we are engaged to the ever benevolent bridegroom, that zealous love must never lose its number one place. Otherwise, it might soon die out. Not only is he to be the first love, but he is to be the last one as well. His will is the beginning and the end in all things that concern us. Leaving our first love, drawing away from his presence, his power and his persuasion will leave us hopeless to continue the work that's been given to us.

When he is not in our lives, the lights go out because our menorah, our lamp stand will be taken away. So let's hasten towards perseverance and prayer in humility and deep regard for his word, which reinforces our eternal bonds of love. As Paul said, in him that is in our first love, we live, we move, and we have our being. He is everything for us and we are everything we can be when we love him first. So be blessed as you listen into today's message with Messianic leader Jacques Isaac Gabizon and Shalom Shalom.

Jacques Isaac Gabizon: For now, as we're looking at the words false prophets and consider how much Yeshua commands the believers in Ephesus to test and not tolerate these individuals, we too must do the same to test false claims that are coming from everywhere, particularly on YouTube. YouTube. Let me give you three important things to look for in order to recognize a false prophet or two false teacher from a genuine one. Three important marks. The first one is so simple by the way, but it's rarely followed. We all know it, but we don't follow it. This one comes from Moses in Deuteronomy 18 22 to 22.

It simply says that if someone gives a prophecy and doesn't come to pass, this one is a false prophet. That's it. That's all. A false prophet is one who gives a false prophecy. But this is not what is happening today. Many false prophets are not challenged at all by their denominations or even by their loyal disciples. And so they come back and prophesy again and again. A false prophecy is that one element that God tells us to look and consider so that to spot these false apostles. For instance, I don't know if you heard the last prophecy given by a prominent and well respected TV teacher.

He predicted that Trump will win the election and that right after that the war of Gog and Magog will begin. This is the war when Russia and Iran and Turkey and other countries will attack Israel and he adds that China is going to attack the United States and there will be riots and civil war in the country. I want to tell you this is such a bold and major prophecy and if true, we are to know and follow this man. Maybe he's one of the two witnesses. Maybe he's coming in the spirit of Elijah and has an important message from God and we have to take heed of.

His name by the way is Pat Robertson. I received email about this prophecy from people who began to panic and maybe we should panic. The good news is that we're going to wait not to wait a long time. For in about 10 days from now, we will see if he's a true or false prophet. But let's see if anyone, if anyone will say anything to this person or about him if the prophecy doesn't come about. They will say that perhaps God changed his mind or that we need to forgive. Yes, forgive, but the word of God says that if a prophecy is false, the individual who uttered it is a false prophet.

And the best advice is at the same time you are forgiving you better run away from him just like Moses says at the end of his prophecies in Deuteronomy 18. The second mark is recognizing a false prophet. This is based on Isaiah 8 20. You know, at that time, you know, the Jewish people were surrounded with so many different religions and Isaiah said to them, he says, to the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak according to the word of God, it's because there's no light in them. And by the way, chapter 8 of Isaiah, there are so many verses that are cited and quoted in the New Testament.

This is by the way what we call Isaiah's gauge making sure that everything that is said is in accordance to the word of God. And if not, he says there's no light, right? You will notice that these prophets will not place their prophecies in accordance to the scriptures prophetic plan. They speak vaguely of world wars. But what happens to the specific periods? They often omit that seven year period, three and a half years, 42 months, 1260 days are repeated in the book of Revelation. What happened to these things? The problem is that these false prophets are competing with the prophets of God and the scriptures themselves.

And it could be as simple as just checking the prophecies if they're come about or not. And the third mark is also very crucial. This is what Jesus says in Matthew 7 18 to 20. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them. Look at their lives. Are they living a good and holy life? Are they stealing money? What are they doing? Do you remember the requirement of just a leader in a church that we find in 1 Timothy chapter 3?

His life must become public because they're the door of his home are opened for everyone to see. This also is very easy to find out. So these are the three easy steps to test teachers, false prophets, check if their prophecies are accurate or validated by facts, check if their teaching is in accordance with the word of God, check their lives. As for Ephesus, while it started very well, we know that the next generation of believers did not follow the footsteps from their fathers and from there it just goes downwards, right, to Laodicea. Beginning in verse 4, you can follow me in your Bible or you can follow me in the screen.

Let me read from verse 4. It says, nevertheless, I have this against you, Ephesus, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the first works or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lamp stands from its place unless you repent. But this you have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He was an ear. Let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

God is love. And we must be living our first love. That is our love and devotion to him all the time. What will happen if we push God away from our lives? The lamp stands are removed. Jesus is making allusion to the temple and the menorah in the holy place. What does it mean to remove a lamp stand in today's language? We can say that it means to fire someone from his job because of grave action they committed. At the temple, the light of the lamp stand was fed by oil, which is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

Removing the lamp stand is a major accusation and judgment from Jesus to deem a congregation or a person unfit to carry the gospel to others, enabled to bear the light of the world. If the lamp stand will remember that the center light is eternal, okay, never to go out and every day the priest will take from its light and feed the others. Jesus says, I am the light of the world and you are the light of the world. The rabbis in the Talmud understood the message of the menorah. They speak of the center light as a testimony to mankind that the divine presence rests in Israel.

To remove it is to remove the divine presence from the congregation. That is a major that is. It intake that much time for it to become a reality for many. And once you remove God from the congregation, who takes over? Man. Have you noticed the mention of Nicolaitans in verse 6? Why are they not mentioned along with the false apostles? They're giving a special mention for a very good reason. Who are these people? Just want to tell you no one could find such a group in history, but their name gives them away. Nicolaitans is from the two Greek words, nikao meaning to conquer and laos meaning the people.

Put together, it means conquering the people. This is what happens when the word and the spirit of God is removed from a congregation, the spirit is grieved and there is this people come and conquer the rest. This is what happened in the history of Israel, by the way. By Jesus' time, the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes took over the religion and very few recognize the word made flesh. That's why they didn't recognize them. This is precisely how false religion grow. It silences the people and forces them to blindly follow men made decreased dogma and traditions.

The Nicolaitans are the church's version of the Pharisees. By the way, they never disappeared. And this is exactly what the false apostles, false teachers and false brethren want to achieve. They want to be at the top ruling everyone else. We will see that these false apostles succeeded in being on the top as they desired to see the progress of the Nicolaitans inside the seven churches. While Ephesus refused them, Pergamum adopted them. To them, Yeshua said this, you also have those who hold the doctrine of Nicolaitans, which I hate. They are they were in their congregation.

But the devolution or descent does not stop with Pergamum. I don't know if you ever realized this, but they have basically the same name as Laodicea. Both Nicolaitans and Laodicea mean basically the same thing, meaning they have the same intention but with a satanic, I believe, objective and state. Both of these words, Nicolaitans, Laodicea have contained the words laos, which means people, and nikao means to conquer. The other word in Laodicea, di ario, means to divide and to seize together. It means to seize the people. This is what Laodicea means. From conquering them, they then own them.

And this is what the false religion will do at the end times as prescribed, as prophesied in the in Revelation 17. This is then the development in the churches of the tears through times. This description fits very well the church of the end times. You know, concerning the Nicolaitans, it's interesting. You know, the Jews at that time, the Jewish believers who were for the most part already expelled from the church and who spoke Aramaic saw a digression in these congregation and must have smiled at the sound of the name Nicolaitans. Why? Because there's a word in Aramaic which means let us eat flesh.

It sounds like Nicolaitans. In the translation of Isaiah 22 13 in the Targum, the Bible they use then in Israel, they write in Aramaic amarini calls visar. Okay, let us eat flesh. And surely some of them as I have remembered the warnings of Paul in Romans 16 18 where he says, for those who are such do not serve the Lord Jesus, but what? Their own belly. Their own belly by smooth words and flattering speech that is. And Philippians 3 19 where Paul says, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly and whose glory is in their names.

To serve one belly is to serve one's own desires as opposed to serving God and his flock. For these Jews being out of the church in the sense of not having to be influenced by these Nicolaitans brought them some relief somehow. And it is in the conclusion of today's study where we can see that Yeshua takes all these things so much at heart because of all the temptation and luring away the church will face. See what Yeshua promises to those who overcome. This is like this should read every day really. Verse 7. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

To him who overcomes, I will give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God. See how much he's willing to give us. We're going to eat of the tree of life. What he's offering here is immortality. This is I believe we're going to literally eat of the tree of life. This is something Adam and Eve could not have at first because they were falling into sin. The last time we read of the tree of life is in Genesis. You know, in the book of Proverbs, it is used as symbolically as the rabbis have concluded that today the tree of life is the word of God.

But from Genesis, it was moved to the paradise of God, to the new Jerusalem. And this is where we're going. This is what Jesus says. What a reward, right? I'm really short of words to describe it. They are things in the Bible we cannot just explain and this is one of them. Let us move to Smyrna. We don't got much time, but let's move there along with Philadelphia where the only two churches to whom Yeshua had nothing bad to say and they both seem to have a similar problem. This is what we're going to look at.

Let's read four short verses, Revelation 2 8 to 11. And to the messenger of the the church in Smyrna, write the first and the last who was dead and has come to life says this, I know your tribulation and your poverty but you are rich and the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not but are synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you're about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison so that you will be tested and you will have tribulation for 10 days. Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life.

He who was an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death. Don't you feel uneasy about these words and perhaps uneasy about the Jewish people and the words like synagogue of Satan? Wait, these words are not for the Jewish people. They are for those who want to replace them. Smyrna is the persecuted church. Her name means myrrh, which is the symbol of sacrifice and death. In the Targum, the temple was called the mountain of myrrh for this is the place of sacrifices.

In the New Testament, it symbolizes the death of the Messiah. But who was persecuting this good congregation in Smyrna? These persecutors have been identified by the Messiah himself. These are the ones who say they are Jews and are not but a synagogue of Satan. Who are they? The greater majority of Gentile commentaries on this passage, those throughout the last 2,000 years including the modern ones. In fact, all of them except two of them that I know of say that those who say they are Jews and are not are the Jewish people, the secular Jewish people and their place of worship is the synagogue of Satan.

They base their conclusion on passages like the one found in Romans 9 6 where Paul says, for they are not all Israel who are of Israel. Or Romans 2 28, for he's not a Jew who is one outwardly. And so they, the Gentile, the nominal church think that they are the new Jews, the new Israel. And believing Israel became the false Jews and they worship in the synagogue of Satan. But here we encounter the great irony of the history of the church when those who are accusing others of being false Jews are the one who are being the false Jews.

Like the one who sees a little speck in the other eyes not realizing that he has a log a cedar of Lebanon coming out of his eyes. First what Paul was differentiating in both these passages of Romans was not Jews and Gentiles but Jewish believers in Yeshua and non-believing Jews. He was fighting the Judaizers who pretended to be the real Jews. He was not comparing Israel and the Gentiles. And the definition of the Jew is a people. It's not a faith. Jew is not a title or a mission. It is a people with a definite ancestry.

They could be good or they could be bad, but it's not a transferable title. If I'm a Jew, it is because I'm a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not because I chose to be Jew. And notice Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not only Abraham because another verse they quote is Galatians 3 7 which says, therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. But Paul is speaking of faith, not of becoming a Jew. The Edomites, by the way, are descendant of Abraham. If you believe you are a son of Abraham, good.

But that doesn't make you a Jew for you are not a son of Jacob nor are you a son of Isaac. The Bible will often divide humanity into two distinct people, the Jews and the Gentiles, Israel and the nations. They are different and one cannot jump from one to the other. By the way, we're one when we're in Christ. But still there's a distinction. If there's anti-Semitism, I get it. You won't get it. But listen to what Jesus says again, the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not but are a synagogue of Satan.

If then they say they are Jews and are not, then they are Gentiles who pretend to be Jews. Who today says that they are Jews when they are not? Who today says that they are Israel when they are not? But those who and since the very beginning have adopted the replacement theology and throughout 2,000 years have become the persecutors of the Jews. The church's long history of anti-Semitism stems from the fact that they think they are the new Israel. And this is growing today. And Jews, even secular Jews know about that. On the other hand, it takes a lot of guts and arrogance to say that Jesus is referring to the Jewish people here in this verse.

To believe this is to throw a blind eye to history. Who persecuted who in the last 2,000 years? Did the Jews persecute the church or was it the other way around? After the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, the Jews did not have the influence that would be expected of a group accused of disturbing the church. The Jews were merely tolerated in the Roman Empire with hardly a power behind them. Jews were seen as second class citizens in the Roman Empire and in the whole diaspora. After the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, all Jews from all over the Roman Empire were forced to pay a special tax.

The fiscal yadicus, the Jewish tax, Suetonius, the Roman historian of the first century wrote that the emperors ordered them out of the city of Rome under the penalty of being permanently enslaved if they disobeyed. So you think they had the time or the power to persecute somebody else that to protect themselves? And even before this 52 AD, we read that Claudius, the Caesar of the time, expelled the Jews from Rome. Earlier in 19 AD, Jews were expelled from Rome by Tiberius Caesar. Remember Priscillian and Aquila, both were Jewish people who actually were victims of this last expulsion.

Some might refer to this synagogue of Satan to the Judaizers but these Jews were only active at the time of Paul, James and Peter. By the time of John or by the time he wrote concerning the church of Ephesus, these Jews almost disappeared from the scene or at least there were small groups with no influence at all. Others I read, one who went to great length to find a big Jewish community in Smyrna, but you know what? He couldn't find one in Philadelphia. But Jesus said the same thing to both. And to say that the synagogue of Satan is Jewish in nature is being again blind in history.

Furthermore, let me ask you, would Paul go to a synagogue of Satan to preach? Yet every time he went to a city, he preached first at a synagogue. Even more, would Jesus preach at a synagogue of Satan? He preached in synagogues and he attended synagogue in Nazareth during his youth. How then they have the hutzpah? And you know this word now, right? The hutzpah to say that today the synagogue of Satan is the synagogue of the Jews. Even Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who lived in Rome and around the time Revelation was written and understood that those Gentiles who pretended to be Jews were no Jews at all.

This is where it wrote. He says, he's not a Jew. He's only acting the part. And remember the Didache, the oldest handbook of doctrines and biblical living written at around the same time. You know, this book was filled with advice against persecutors like false teachers, like false apostles, false prophets. Did you know that the word Jew is not mentioned once in there? Who are those who say they are Jews but are a synagogue of Satan? These are those who hate Israel and her people and think of themselves as a new Israel. And this is not you.

It's not you, by the way. It follows the biblical history. We find the same desire to usurp. There always was someone even a brother who wanted to take over the blessing of someone else like Cain who wanted to take Abel's inheritance, like Esau who wanted to take Jacob's inheritance, like Ishmael who wanted to take Isaac's inheritance, even like the 10 older brothers of Joseph who wanted to to take his inheritance, like Herod who wanted to take Jesus' place. As for today, we have the church of Laodicea ruled by the Nicolaitans who want to take Israel's inheritance.

And to all, Jesus says you are liars and you are blasphemers. More on this subject next time we meet. However, I would like to conclude on a better note. What we have learned today is that the congregation of God is made up of great individuals who are not afraid to serve the Lord. They produce deeds and labor regardless of the difficulties. They are perseverant. They are very patient regardless of the length of time it takes to do the work. But there's one more keyword, very important keyword. I didn't mention but I didn't deal with is the word love.

Love. This is one thing that we add to be dressed with, right? This is something we add to reflect like a giant projector. This is what a congregation of God should be. I read the other day a beautiful poem about the meaning of losing our first love. And I want to close with a few of its lines. This is what it says. When my delights in the Lord is no longer as great as my delight in someone else, I have lost my first love. When my soul does not long for times of rich fellowship in God's word or in prayer, I've lost my first love.

When my thoughts during leisure moments do not reflect upon the Lord, I've lost my first love. When I do not willingly and cheerfully give to God's work or to the needs of others, I've lost my first love. When I cease to treat every brother or sister in the faith as I would the Lord, I have lost my first love. When I view the commands of Yeshua as a restriction to my happiness rather than an expression of love, I again lost my first love. And when I inwardly strive for the acclaim of the world rather than the approval of the Lord, I've lost my first love.

And finally, when I'm enabled to forgive another for offending me, I've lost my first love. Let's bow our head in prayer. May our prayer today be counted as incense. May our service be like the light that is emanating from the light of the menorah. Our heavenly Father, Father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we praise you and honor you, Lord. Father, we thank you so much for your mercy and kindness towards us. We thank you for the way in which you've always demonstrated your goodness and your love. Help us to say along with King David, I will praise you with my whole heart.

I will tell of all your marvelous works. I will be glad and rejoice in you. I will sing praises to your name, oh Most High. Keep us strong to the end so that we will be blameless on the day of our Lord Yeshua Messiah is coming. Again, Lord, we are blessed to know and realize how you are so close to us, giving us the strength to fight these giants who can only scare us for you are with us. Help us to carry this great grief of of faith that you have given us. And to the congregation, the Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord makes his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen and amen. Shalom Ariel is a daily radio program emphasizing the Jewish perspective of scripture. God is not through dealing with Israel nor will he renege any of the promises he has made to her. Our teacher for this program, Jacques Isaac Gabizon, is a Messianic Jewish believer and Messianic leader at Beth Ariel congregation right here in Montreal. If you've been encouraged by the messages, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 1 888 685 5902 or you may write us at info at Beth Ariel b e t h a r i e l all one word dot ca.

You are also welcome to join us for our Saturday morning services. We are located at 6297 Monkland Boulevard, corner of Madison in NDG. The message is given in English, but we do offer simultaneous translation into French and Russian. Services begin at 11:00 a.m. We have Shabbat school for children of all ages up to and including teens. You may also download audio messages from our website at Beth Ariel dot ca and enjoy other in-depth teaching from Jacques Isaac. If you would like to sign up for informative newsletters, log on to our website and add your name to our email list.

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