A lot of times over the past few years when I would sit here to write in this blog, I felt such urgency. Before I go into the topic I intend to write about, let me tell you something about myself. As many of you know, I was a nurse. The majority of my personal practice of nursing was with elderly and a good bit of it was oncology and hospice. I was often told both by the family members of patients, and outside the job when someone found out what I did for a living, “wow, it takes a special kind of person to do that job, doesn’t it!” Well, I never saw it as me being a special person to do that work, because from the time I was nine and got saved, I have been looking forward to heaven. I have never had a desire for much of anything this world has to offer. And I felt privileged to be able to comfort and pray with people and minister to them at such a time in their lives. Death is just another part of life. But looking back, I can understand that when something comes natural to you, you don’t always recognize it as a gift that God didn’t just hand out to everybody.
As I look back over my life, I enjoyed a wonderful companionship with my Lord in my youth. Adulthood came with all of the accoutrements that adulthood brings. Goodbye to the carefree ignorance and naivety of youth. Hello testing of your faith. I wouldn’t trade walking close with the Lord in the younger years for anything, but when I lost my moorings for a while, it was a miserableness beyond bearing. I loved the Lord, but there was a lot about Him I didn’t know. Now, I know a whole lot more, and it makes me love Him all the more, because I understand His holiness, His righteousness, I understand that what held Him on that cross was His desire to atone for my sins so that I could be spared eternal punishment for them. God’s “testing” of our faith is not like a test of our loyalty. Rather it is the refiner’s fire, purifying the faith. He doesn’t need to “test” it that other way. He is omniscient. He already knows how weak it is. His desire to purify our faith, is itself a testament to His concern for us, because He knows if we have doubts and fears we will suffer, and worry. Needlessly.
37And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment,38And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.39Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner.
Jesus was speaking to the Jewish un-believers when He said: Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.40 And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.
41 I receive not honour from men.
42 But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.
43 I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.
But in Zechariah 12:10 the prophet writes:
And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
And John 19:33-37 says (at the scene of the crucifixion)
33 But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs:
34 But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.
35 And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.
36 For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.
37 And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced.
Rabbi Vaknin is a mystic. Jewish mystics believe there is secret knowledge that they can attain by achieving one-ness with god. They seek “illumination” via the Kabbalah in trance-like altered states of consciousness. When a person enters an altered state, it does something to remove or open the God-given veil or shield that separates us from the supernatural realm. “But it is not angels or benevolent spirits that is given access to the person in the altered state, but rather evil ones. Meditation that seeks to empty the mind, or make contact with supposed spirit guides, is not the same kind of meditation that God mentions in His Word when He instructs us to meditate on the Word. That is conscious, engaging the mind in dwelling on the Word.
The kind of vision or trance the Rabbi experiences is forbidden in the scriptures; divination, and necromancy. It was not Elijah who appeared to him along with his former (dead) rabbi, dead father, and dead grandmother. These are familiar spirits, who on assignment from their leader Satan, are using partial truths to camouflage a lie, and taking on the human forms of people familiar to the Rabbi, setting the stage for the appearance of, and Jewish acceptance of the antichrist.
Jesus said they will accept one who comes not in the name of God the Father (John 19). However, Zechariah also tells us that in the end, the remnant of Jews left at the end of the tribulation, will look upon Him whom they have pierced and mourn Him as one mourns an only son. They will realize Jesus is the Messiah after all. Notice that when God inspired John to reference this Zechariah scripture in the book of John, he left off the part about mourning Him. That is because they did not mourn Him when He was put to death by the Romans. (The Jews did not kill Jesus, they handed Him over to the Romans to do it.). But they will when their blindness is finally removed, and they see Him return at the Mount of Olives.
The fact that this Rabbi has seen this vision and it is announced in the major Jewish newspapers, is a sign of the times not because the Rabbi has received a prophetic vision from God but because it demonstrates the readiness of the Jewish people many if not most of whom will be fooled by the Antichrist into believing for a little while, that he is their promised Messiah.
Serve Him in the Waiting 