At the outset of this article, let me be VERY clear: I completely disagree with John Hagee on a slew of issues, particularly in relation to the modern role of Israel. Completely disagree. Despite this, I would not hesitate to call him a Christian brother.
I am rather baffled, though, at the continual harping from CR?N’s general editor, that being the unaccountable Mr. Ken Silva (not to be confused with the completely unaccountable, unknowable “Editor”) on John Hagee, his new book, and his comments about Jesus as Messiah. All “pastor” Silva’s numerous articles on the subject have proven is that the word “research” and “Ken Silva” should not appear in the same sentence, absent the word “poor” in complement to the word “research”. The only thing truly revealed (for those of you who weren’t reading his laughable exegeses of Velvet Elvis) is his continued tin ear for nuance.
To wit:
Mr. Silva keeps trying to insist that John Hagee heretically believes that Jesus is not the Christ (the Messiah), today quoting Hagee’s book:
“[Jesus] refused to be their Messiah [the Jews], choosing instead to be the Savior of the world.”
What Silva completely and utterly misses is that Hagee is referring to the Jewish ideal of Messiah, developed in the “intertestimental period”. In this Messiah ideal, the belief was that there would be many Messiahs, stylized after Judas Maccabeus, who would serve to overthrow foreign powers oppressing Israel. This idea of “Messiah” was often combined with the identification of the Davidic “Shoot” (netzer) identified by Isaiah, as a conquering king who would come to reign in Jerusalem forever.
The Jewish vision of “Messiahship” in the first century was all about overthrowing the Roman occupation of Israel. Hagee, in his book, seeks to show that Jesus rejected this type of Messiahship (as envisioned by Jewish hope against oppression) - which was actually offered to him by Satan in the wilderness - in exchange for the actualy place of the shoot from the stump of Jesse, the Messiahship envisioned by God, which conquered through love, not coersion. Jesus gave clues througout his ministry (read all of John 6) that he was not going to be a conqueror Messiah, but the people didn’t want to believe this - not even his disciples.
In this particular matter, Hagee is completely orthodox, and his wording was chosen as one to better explain Jesus’ role to conversant Jews and Jewish Christians (an audience he frequently addresses). Silva, though, for whatever reason, has chosen to brazenly display his ignorance on such matters for the world to see, and in the end, only serves to warn those already living in fear.
