Bartholomew's Notes

This one’s a couple of weeks old, but worth a mention. From WND:

Two thousand years ago, Jesus of Nazareth was first proclaimed by Jews in Israel to be God’s “Messiah,” and a flurry of miracles took place.

Now, two millennia later, the cycle is repeating itself as Orthodox Jews who once rejected that message are coming to realize the man slain at Calvary in Jerusalem is indeed God’s “Anointed One.”

“Supernatural stories and events surround this new phenomenon,” says Carl Gallups, author of the best-selling book and DVD “The Rabbi Who Found Messiah.” “This has to be the handiwork of God!”

Gallups is referring to the work of Zev Porat, an Israeli man raised as an Orthodox Jew by a rabbinical family. Working today with the Messiah of Israel Ministries, Porat is now championing Yeshua (Jesus of Nazareth) as the prophesied Messiah, and is using Gallups’ material to convince his fellow Jews to wake up to that fact.

As I’ve blogged previously, Gallups’ book discusses the case of Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri, an influential Kabbalist who died aged 108 in 2005. Shortly before his death, Kaduri claimed that Ariel Sharon would be the last Prime Minister of Israel, and that the “soul of the Mashiach has attached itself to a person in Israel.” He also allegedly wrote a note that was published posthumously,  identifying the name of this person as “Yehoshua” or “Yeshua”. This is an ordinary Hebrew name, but its Anglicised form is “Jesus”.

Gallups – a pastor and birther* who first came to wide attention with his claim that Barack Obama is named in the Bible as the anti-Christ – reworked the story for his WND-published book The Rabbi Who Found Messiah. In his version , Kaduri was a secret believer in Jesus, and he had been given a vision linking the return of Jesus to the death of Ariel Sharon – thus avoiding the problem of Israeli Prime Ministers who have come after Sharon.

Following Sharon’s death, Gallups argued that the fact that Jesus had not yet returned was a confirmation of Kaduri’s prophetic power, but it’s difficult to see how the book could remain relevant and WND is now attempting to shift copies at cut-price. However, Porat’s evangelism opens up a whole new vista: the conversion of the Jews has traditionally been seen as a sign of the “Last Days”, and WND‘s story puts Gallups and his book at the heart of an unfolding supernatural and eschatological drama. WND quotes Gallups:

“…Zev says that there are now ten of Kaduri’s students who are believers in Jesus as Messiah and many others who are openly testifying of Kaduri’s promise to leave a note. When they found out that the note was posted on Kaduri’s website and two Israeli news sources reported on it, as heavily documented in my book, they are mesmerized by the news. Some are shaken by it. Others are given their lives to Jesus as Messiah and Lord. These are exciting and prophetic times in which we live! I am honored and humbled to be a small part of it.”

Porat also has YouTube videos in which he interviews two men (here and here) who claim to have been among Kaduri’s students.

Porat’s ministry is entitled “Messiah of Israel”, and his website abounds with long-lens photos of him attempting to discuss Bible passages with ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem. Apparently he has also taken a copy of Gallups’ book into a synagogue:

“Zev sent me an email telling me that he had a ‘leading of the Lord’ to take ‘The Rabbi Who Found Messiah‘ book into an Orthodox synagogue to reveal to the rabbi and people of that synagogue what Rabbi Kaduri had said regarding the name of the Messiah. He asked me to pray for him and said that this was a ‘dangerous’ thing that he was doing. I assured him of my fervent prayers.

“I was blown away when I saw the pictures of him in the synagogue doing what he had set out to do! There he was using my book to open up the Kaduri story, which the Israeli media had shutdown and covered up.

“After showing them the Kaduri note that proclaimed Jesus (Yeshua) was Messiah, he then followed up with scriptural proof. This man is ministering as a modern day apostle Paul!”

Some copies of Gallups’ book come with a notice on the cover advertising that the book is “By the Creators of the No. 1 Faith Film The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment”; this is WND‘s official DVD tie-in with Jonathan Cahn’s book The Harbinger (published by Charisma rather than WND), which links the 9/11 attacks with God’s judgement against the USA; Cahn and WND editor Joseph Farah are planning a second tour of Israel together later this year.

Meanwhile, the same “By the Creators…” notice will be appearing on a new DVD from Joel Richardson, entitled End Times Eyewitness: Israel, Islam and the Unfolding Signs of Messiah’s Return. Richardson, who has been dubbed “Glenn Beck’s End-Times Prophet”, has written books arguing that the Bible predicts an Islamic anti-Christ, and his work has been endorsed by Robert Spencer.

Footnote

*Frank Arduini has chronicled Gallups’ birtherism in comprehensive depth – see here, here, here, and here. He also discusses the basis on which Gallups says that his book is a “bestseller” and among the top 100 on Amazon:

The only way to consider it a “best seller” is to narrow the categories significantly. For example, it is currently the number one seller in the textbooks, subcategory humanities, subcategory religious studies, subcategory Judaism. To put this into perspective, none of the other top 6 sellers in this category were published after 2011 and one was published as far back as 1992. Gallups never says how many books are actually being sold, just that it is a best seller. Keep in mind that his publisher is WND, which also published Corsi’s book “Where’s the Birth Certificate”, which was listed as a best seller despite the fact that the vast majority of its sales were from a bulk sale purchased by WND itself. Not only is Gallups’ book not a best seller, it is so bad that Gallups “bribed” people to give it a good review on Amazon.com. Specifically, on November 10, 2013, Gallups offered the people who gave the book a five star review a free copy of the DVD documentary that went with the book.

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