Could Pastor John Hagee’s embrace be a Trojan horse?

By Ted Belman

We have been discussing whether the love of evangelicals is a Trojan horse enabling them to proselytize. I asked Rabbi Skobac who leads Jews for Jews in our fight against Jews for Jesus. He says most definitely and promised to send me articles he has written.

This morning I got this email from Ellen Horowitz who is writing a book on the subject.

Here is the cover this month’s issue of Charisma Magazine - The cover story hails missionaries and messianics as heroes “for sharing the love of Jesus in Israel”. This specific issue celebrates Israel’s 60th anniversary.

The publisher of Charisma is Stephen Strang of Strang Communications

Strang is one of the Directors of CUFI (Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United For Israel)

He is the publisher of John Hagee’s book, In Defense of Israel, and David Brog’s book, Standing with Israel

He was recognized in Time Magazine as one of “The 25 Most Most Influential Evangelicals in America”

Stephen Strang is a signatory of the recent widely publicized World Evangelical Alliance statement endorsing efforts to evangelize the Jews (that means they want to convert us)

The Biggest irony is that while the current online edition of Charisma Magazine sports a “Come Celebrate Israel’s 60th” banner across the top of their website, the story below reeks of classical antisemitism (and I don’t use that word lightly).

Excerpt from an article written by the editor of Charisma:

In the days of Jesus, rabbis observed a myriad of extra rules that were not in Scripture. Their legalistic code focused on what they could and could not touch. These guys invented the original version of the holier-than-thou religion. They stayed away from women, children, dead bodies, lepers, beggars, sinners, blood, shellfish, pigs and ‘especially’ people of other ethnic backgrounds. They didn’t want ‘unclean’ gentiles to corrupt them.

The Pharisees, especially, were obsessed with hygiene. They had a rule for everything from how to wash dishes to how to stay ceremonially clean after walking in the streets. That’s why they got upset when they saw that Jesus’ disciples didn’t follow the standard Jewish hand-washing ritual.

They asked Jesus: “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with impure hands??? You can almost hear their smug, nasal tone. Jesus? reply was blunt. He called His inquisitors hypocrites; then He chastised them for “teaching as doctrines the precepts of men” (Mark 7:5-7, NASB)…

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma.