Dealing With Issues

by:  Lonnie Lane

It’s time to share some emails with you again. In my
continued concern that we remain the bearers of Yeshua’s love and forgiveness,
perhaps one of our greatest challenges will be to remain in His love and
forgiveness in the face of evil, especially deliberate evil. In this first
email, if this woman’s feelings represent those of any of our readers, it is
worth addressing. Following this one are three other emails with questions,
much easier ones to deal with, but which seem to be part of a theme of related
issues that keep presenting themselves in the emails I receive.

Anger at Evil: This
writer was pretty upset about the firemen who were so brave on 9/11, and are
now sick as are our soldiers overseas because of toxins spread by our enemies.
I’m not sure why she wrote to me, especially since she was already pretty sure
when she wrote that I wouldn’t share her opinion, but I’m glad to know she felt
that she could. She responded to my answer by telling me that I misunderstood
her and that she has Muslim friends though she didn’t retract her anger toward
our enemies. I don’t mean to expose our sister, but this issue of what to do
with justifiable anger against injustice and evil is, I believe, one which we
each need to settle for ourselves should any “enemies” bring a crisis upon us,
whether it’s personal or national. She wrote in part, “….You may or may not agree
with me – I asked Abba to confuse and fill with sickness and excruciating pain
all the secret and known enemies of the US soldiers where ever they are
assigned around the world. May the Blood of Yeshua protect each US soldiers
even their very shadow. May the ammunition of wicked ones explode on
themselves.”  As you can see, she’s pretty angry. Here is
my answer to her plus some further thoughts: 

Yeshua said to pray FOR our
enemies, not AGAINST them. I certainly understand your anger at the injustice
of the 9/11 bombing and the suffering of our firemen and soldiers. But to speak
curses against our enemies means we are of the same spirit as the ones we see
as being evil, cursing and hating them and desiring their destruction, while thinking
we are right in wanting it. That’s not what Yeshua died for. He died that we
would forgive. Forgiveness is the most powerful thing we can do against our
enemies. When we forgive, we turn them over to God for Him to deal with them.
And then we’re free of bitterness that will bring harm to our own spirits, our emotions
and our bodies, all of which are adversely affected by anger. Yeshua said not
to let the sun go down on our anger for He knew what anger could do to us. We
might interpret His statement about not letting the sun go down on your anger
as having to do with personal issues. Issues of national injustice may seem to
be of a different magnitude and in many ways they are, but anger is anger. We
are still required to forgive. Forgiveness does not make what we are forgiving
right. It does mean that we relinquish our demand for justice and leave it to
God for Him to bring justice, for only He is a just judge. Only He knows the
hearts involved.

If we remain angry and embittered against what we see as injustice, there
will be no solution to it, and we will find ourselves further enraged at the
impotency of our anger because we cannot bring it to justice or bring any
resolution to it.  Only God can.  And our only way out is to surrender it to
God. The moral rules of the universe are His anyway. They are for Him to
correct.

If we insist on demanding harsh retribution, such as what our sister wants
to happen, we empower demons to bring more destruction! But they will not just
bring destruction to our enemies because when we wish to bring a curse upon
someone we consider our enemy, we open the door to demons to bring a curse upon
ourselves. Demons don’t care who they are cursing; they just see an open door
and leap through it. We open the door to harm to ourselves through our own
unforgiveness of others. We want justice but we reap harm to ourselves if we
wish harm to others. It’s that plain and simple. We will reap what we sow. When
we pray, speak or wish curses over anyone, we are taking a stand against the
Lord. He is not going to answer that prayer because it’s against His nature. Do
you not remember when the disciples wanted to call down fire upon people who
were not accepting of Jesus? Here’s what they asked Him: “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and
consume them?’ But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what
kind of spirit you are of”” (Luke 9:54, 54). In other words, you’re of a
demonic spirit of hatred yourself and that is not ever going to accomplish
God’s purposes.

Though there are people who are planning
evil against us, we must be careful not to demonize all Muslims as our enemies.
 There are many – millions – of Muslims who are attempting to follow what
they believe is God’s will, bowing down to allah five times a day and who are
not thinking evil thoughts. But, to say it again, to want the curses of
sicknesses to come upon, even your enemies, makes you like the men who hated
enough to want to destroy us. You, too, want to destroy them. “An eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth” would leave us all blind and toothless. I would
urge you to rethink your position and to pray FOR our enemies, or you may find
yourself standing against God and you don’t want to reap the fruits of that.

A clarion call rings out just as “Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know
what they are doing’ ” (Luke 23:34). That He “was saying” sounds not like a once said and no more. It sounds like
He “was saying” it repeatedly.
Imagine that Yeshua is in such agony on the cross, trying to endure the pain
and trying to breathe and even then He was interceding in prayer for those who
tortured Him and for His murderers. Should we who call ourselves His be of any
different spirit?  God, in His mercy is coming
to the very people we consider our enemies in dreams and visions and through
Christian cable TV, and saving thousands and thousands of Muslims presently. The
reports are astounding. Obviously God loves them and is reaching out to them,
yes, and even those who have been terrorists. When they come to Him, they are
transformed the love of Yeshua changes them. Thank God they weren’t destroyed before
they became our brothers and sisters with whom we will spend eternity. If God
can forgive them, certainly we must. Shouldn’t we be of a spirit of love as
Jesus was, not of hatred.

Jesus is the God of forgiveness, no
matter what the crime. Hatred is ungodly, regardless of who it’s directed
toward or for what reason it seeks justification. We can hate the sin and the
evil ideology that fosters violence, but we must have compassion upon those who
are so deceived that they will spend eternity in hell if they don’t find
forgiveness through Jesus. I am acquainted just enough with hell to not want
even my worst enemy there. In the mean time, we must heed the words of Yeshua:
“But I say to you, love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you,” (Matthew 5:44). We were all His enemies
before we came to Him. Thank God He forgave each one of us.  We must forsake unforgiveness and bitterness
if we are to be one with the One who came to bring forgiveness to all. 
Each one of us has that same choice. Which will you choose?  Let’s expand the Lord’s kingdom, not the
devil’s domain.

Okay, that was a bit on the heavy side. Maybe you want to go
make a cup of tea before reading the next one. It’ll be easier, I promise. This
question arises periodically in different forms, but it evidently continues to
be a matter of weeding out the truth of the word from the traditions of man.
Here’s the question.

Cooking
with Mother’s Milk: “There is a question on my mind and if you
have time, I would really appreciate your thoughts on it.  For three years
now I’ve been keeping Biblically kosher or so I thought, until recently when I
saw mention of this in an article regarding the command, “Do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk” (Exodus
23:19). To me the commandment seems to mean literally what it
says. I thought that all this meat & dairy stuff was just a part of the
rabbinical fence built around the Torah; so there was no need for different
sets of meat and dairy dishes, utensils, etc. as practiced by those in
traditional Judaism.  I’m not at all into legalism but I would like to be
accurate in my thinking.  What is the truth about this matter?”

All the rules of Kashrut
(kahsh-root; keeping kosher) regarding meat and milk come from that
one verse, as obscure as it seems. The idea behind it was this: God forbid that
we should eat from a dish that had a spec of meat left on it when we’re dishing
up something that has milk in it, like a cheese blintze, even a few hours later
or we would be in violation of Torah. An orthodox member of my family was in
from Israel
and staying at my home. We had a birthday party for another Israeli in which we
served meat for dinner. We waited to eat dessert till other guests arrived, and
then two hours after dinner, we had something with whipped cream on it. When
the orthodox gentleman realized he had eaten the whipped cream without waiting
the designated eight hour time period after he ate meat, he was terrified that
something horrible would happen to him. He really was! When he realized that
nothing happened, he began to see things differently and after a while
exclaimed as he watched us enjoy our dessert while talking about the Lord, “You
people are so free!”  Before he boarded
the plane back to Israel,
he had accepted Yeshua as Lord and was speaking in tongues.

See how far from God’s original intent this
tradition is? For it is a tradition of the rabbis, not of written Torah. God is
not THAT into the details. His reason, one would assume, was to keep Israel from the
pagan practice of killing a lamb and boiling it in its mother’s milk. That just
seems cruel and wrong, doesn’t it? It was about not carrying out pagan
practices, God never mentioned two sets of dishes, silverware, pots or towels (all
of which my grandmother had, by the way, plus a third set for Passover). Can
you imagine them having to come up with all that paraphernalia, once God gave
them the commandments, while they were wandering around the Sinai desert, and then shlepping all that every time the cloud moved? I don’t think so.

Yes, it’s a rabbinic fence, designed to keep Israel from
violating the commandments, which didn’t come about until years after Moses,
when Judah was in Babylon. They realized the leaders had to do something to get
people to take the Torah seriously, hoping that God would then allow them to
return to their land. So no, there is nothing Biblical that rules against eating
milk and meat together.  In fact, Abraham
fed the three men, presumably Yeshua and two angels, milk and meat:  “He
took curds and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and placed it before them; and he was standing
by them under the tree as they ate.” (Gen. 18:8). Surely if God hadn’t
wanted Israel
to eat milk and meat together they wouldn’t have eaten Abraham’s offering.
Consider that as shepherds, a good bit of Israel’s diet would have been milk
and meat. You can see from this how far we can stray from the true meanings in
the word of God, into the rules of man, without the Holy Spirit’s guidance. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17). When
the Lord reigns, there is freedom. Whenever you find fear of violating the
rules, that’s man’s ways and not the Spirit’s ways, take it as a sign to go and
find where the freedom of the Spirit of God is Lord. 

Can Women Preach? This
next question came from a man from the Navajo nation in Utah who told me they
watch Sid’s shows and wish they could have someone who can preach come speak
there. Anyone? Here’s his brief email: “Got
a question: Can a woman preach?” to which I answered…

I think you mean is it Biblically acceptable for a woman to
preach. I teach or preach on a fairly regular basis. Yes, it is Biblically
acceptable for women to preach. Be assured that the New Testament makes it
clear that women can preach and that some were even apostles, Junia for one.
Paul wrote, “Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners,
who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me” (Romans
16:7). Some translations made it a masculine noun (Junius) rather than the
feminine (Junia). The Greek makes it clear this was a women. There were also female
prophets and it’s hard to prophesy without speaking, which one could see as
mini-preaching. At least they were informing others of what God was saying which
requires speaking. There were female prophetesses in the Old Testament also on
occasion.

Paul gave restrictions for women but they were situational
or specific to locations, not to be taken as universal, or meant for all. He
couldn’t tell women to be quiet in one place and mention they were apostles or
prophets in another place, unless the restrictions were only for certain church
locations. Corinth, for instance, had its own problems socially and may have
made for wives being more vocal and demanding which would have been disruptive.
The Temple Diana
in the city of Ephesus
provided for female dominance as part of their culture. Paul was not saying all
women should never speak for the Lord. Rather that the Ephesian women, who had
held dominant positions, perhaps in the temple, should not be controversial in
the church meetings or controlling of their husbands, which is why he told the
women to be respectful of their husbands.

In the Spirit, we are all open to receiving revelation from
the Holy Spirit, whether we’re male or female. When the body of Messiah only
hears from men, there is an imbalance in the doctrines of the body, just as if
a family were to be raised by men only, without the feminine counterpart. We
are both created in God’s image so we need both to properly represent God to
one another and to the world. In Yeshua, we are now all free to receive gifts
and revelations from the Lord. And He would not give them to us if He did not
intend for us to use them to speak what He reveals to us. If I as a woman were
not to be preaching, would it seem logical that God would allow me to type a
message but not speak that same message? Am I not preaching through my articles?
Am I not giving revelation and doctrine and an occasional word of prophecy through
them?  I know these articles come from
God. So it would seem irrational that it would be okay for me to “preach” by writing
things but not be permitted the same messages if I were speaking or preaching them
aloud. So yes, women can preach! To which I say, HalleluYah! 

I Need A Word: This
last email wasn’t a question but a request. And though I have dealt with this
to a greater degree, the fact that I received at least two emails asking the
same thing in a week, I thought it needed to be said again. So here goes. This
was the request: “I would like to receive
a prophetic word about my friend (and she mentioned a name). Thank you.”

I answered: I’m sorry. I don’t give prophetic words to
people I don’t know and even then only if the Lord gives them to me. I’m a firm
believer that asking someone / anyone for a prophetic word is to invite
problems. A prophetic word should confirm something you already have a sense of
from the Lord. You don’t know me really, and you have no idea whether I would
hear correctly from the Lord or not for your friend. People sometimes put their
whole hope on a word from someone that didn’t come from the Lord. I’ve seen
shipwrecked lives because of that. You must know the character and integrity
and proven prophetic record from someone if you’re going to receive a word from
them. My suggestion to anyone who asks for a prophetic word (as I periodically
get emails like yours) is to open your Bible and ask the Lord to speak to you
and stay in it until He does. He will if you ask Him and believe He wants you
to draw close enough to Him. Don’t think you need to hear from someone else
when God would like to speak to you directly about your life, or in the case of
a friend, how you can help them. Please do not take this as rejection. It’s in
fact an encouragement that God would love to bring you closer to Himself and
give you a heart to hear Him for yourself. I send you (and all who are reading
this) blessings on your relationship with God at a deeper level.

Reprint of this article is permitted as long as you use the following; Use by permission by Messianic Vision, www.sidroth.org, 2011. 

Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible Copyright ©1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif.  All rights reserved. Used by permission.