Would you expect a Christian ministry to include a story in one of their publications about the purity and righteousness of Joseph Smith? How about one that speaks of the actions of Charles Russell (founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses) as an illustration of what the Apostle John was trying to teach about the love of God? If that sort of veneration of false teachers was found in any publication of any reputable Christian ministry or denomination, the uproar would be loud, widespread, and entirely justified. I could have chosen Buddha or Confucius to make this point, Gandhi or the Dalai Lama, or any number of people that are admired by many, even millions of people, but who did not have a relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We can admire someone, we can be fascinated by their life story or what they accomplished, but only God sets the standard for who is righteous in his sight, and that status is only possible through his Son. To venerate anyone as a righteous person who pleased God WIHTOUT Jesus is an anathema to the Gospel, it is blasphemy.
That's exactly what First Fruits of Zion has done in Lesson 46 of the Beginning of Wisdom, they just did so by using 18th century European mystics that are not as familiar as my examples are to an American. To be clear, this objection is not an indictment of the life of either of the two Jewish leaders that FFOZ chose to venerate, nor is it an indictment of Judaism, or even Hasidic Judaism, the branch of Judaism the two of them were instrumental in founding / shaping, in particular. They may have been good men, they may have been wise in their area of study, they may have been loving and kind, even exceptionally so. They may be worthy of veneration within the religious movement they helped give direction to. What they are not, what they cannot be, no matter what, is an example of someone whose righteousness pleased God.
To a universalist, that's an absurd statement. If we set aside the bedrock truth of God's Word that, "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" because, "There is no one righteous, not even one." (Isaiah 64:6, Romans 3:10 & 3:23), and we set aside the bedrock truth spoken by Jesus, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," (John 14:6), we would find ourselves in a world where people who are decent, good, even righteous in human eyes who should be lauded and praised for rising above the evil in this world. BUT, we don't live in that world. The reality is that there are none who are righteous in God's sight, all have sinned, and "the wages of sin is death." (Romans 6:23). Without Jesus Christ, without faith in him to save us from our sins, we are entirely and irrevocably lost, period. Whether this Truth is palatable or not, it is the Gospel given to us by God. There is no other path, no Plan B or consolation prize, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is not other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12).
Unless you are a universalist of some kind, someone who doesn't believe that Jesus is necessary for salvation, at least for some people...
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| Lesson 46, page 15 "A similar story is told about the Baal Shem Tov. It happened once that the Ball Shem Tov realized a heavenly decree had been issued against the Jewish community. He determined to persuade God to reverse the decree. Like Moses praying to enter the promised land, he threw himself into prayer and fasting, wrestling with God, so to speak. He refused to relent until hie managed to reverse the decree and save the Jewish community. However, the victory came at a great personal price. A heavenly voice informed him that he had forfeited his own place in the World to Come. Rather than grow despondent over the prospect, the Baal Shem Tov rejoiced. He said, 'At last, I will know that my service of God is born purely out of a heart of love for Him and devotion to Him and not out of any hope for reward or fear of punishment.'" |
Before we look at what FFOZ said about him, the Reader's Digest version of who Baal Shem Tov was: Baal Shem Tov, or "Master of the Good Name," is how Israel ben Eliezer (1700-1760) is known. Israel was a Polish Jewish mystic who is regarded as the founder of Hasidic Judaism (a segment of ultra-Orthodox Judaism originating in Eastern Europe, most followers of it today live in the USA or Israel). Today his life is surrounded by legends of miracles, so much so that the apostate Bart Ehrman has used him as an example to discredit the eyewitness account in the Gospels of the miracles of Jesus Christ by saying that eyewitnesses believed Baal Shem Tov to be a miracle worker too.
From the Jewish Encyclopedia article on his life: {Besht is an abbreviation of Baal Shem Tov}
"The foundation-stone of Ḥasidism as laid by Besht is a strongly marked pantheistic conception of God. He declared the whole universe, mind and matter, to be a manifestation of the Divine Being; that this manifestation is not an emanation from God, as is the conception of the Cabala, for nothing can be separated from God: all things are rather forms in which He reveals Himself. When man speaks, said Besht, he should remember that his speech is an element of life, and that life itself is a manifestation of God. Even evil exists in God. This seeming contradiction is explained on the ground that evil is not bad in itself, but only in its relation to man."
With that brief consideration of the life of Baal Shem Tov (Israel ben Eliezer) in mind, how does FFOZ choose to connect this mystic to its lesson? By praising a bold assertion of heresy. In the story related to the Torah Club members by Lancaster and FFOZ, God rewards Baal Shem Tov by answering his prayer, but at the cost of condemning his soul. This supposed "bargain" with God not only elevates Baal Shem Tov to a messianic level (he supposedly saved his entire people from destruction by sacrificing himself), it also portrays God in a blasphemous way as a God who would trade the soul of one he loves simply to change his own mind. God has never condemned a soul unjustly as he is portrayed as doing in the story FFOZ cites. Such a God is unworthy of worship and praise, that's who God would be if he let Abraham go through with sacrificing Isaac, such a God is NOT the God of the Bible.
To recap the dangerous errors of using this example of Baal Shem Tov in the lesson: (1) It venerates a false Messiah-figure, (2) it treats the actions of a non-believer as righteous before God without reference to faith in Christ, (3) and by extension it puts an implicit stamp of approval on Baal Shem Tov's heretical pantheism.
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| Lesson 46, page 15 "Once, it happened that the disciples of Schneur Zalman (1745-1812), the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, overheard their rabbi in ecstatic prayer, crying out, 'I don't want your Paradise, I don't want your World to Come, I want only You.' These stories illustrate the Apostle John's words, 'There is not fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us.'"(1 John 4:18-19)." |
Before we look at what FFOZ said about him, the Reader's Digest version of who Schneur Zalman was: Schneur was a Russian Jewish rabbi commonly known as the Alter Rebbe who was the founder and first Rebbe (spiritual leader) of Chabad (a dynasty with chosen successors), which is a branch of Hasidic Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. The 7th Rebbe Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (d. 1994) taught that Baal Shem Tov was a divine manifestation (known as Sephirot) of infinite faith, and that Schneur Zalman was a divine manifestation of infinite wisdom. By many of his followers in the movement, Schneerson is believed to have been the Messiah; that's the movement that Zalman founded, and the one that FFOZ is linking its teaching to.
In case you are wondering, linking to the Lubavitch Movement and its messianic claims is the kind of thing that would shock both liberal and conservative rabbis within Messianic Judaism. FFOZ isn't building bridges here, they're lighting them on fire.
With that brief introduction into Schneur Zalman in mind, how does FFOZ choose to connect this mystical rabbi to the lesson? By making him an example of what the Apostle John was teaching about perfect love. This use is beyond the ordinary false teaching of FFOZ into the realm of outright blasphemy as it is telling Torah Club followers that the Apostle John, the very disciple whom Jesus loved, was talking about someone like Schneur Zalman in 1 John. What's the problem with this connection? The answer is simple, and it doesn't have anything to do with Zalman's life except one fact about it. John's entire contextual (the part FFOZ likes to ignore) thesis in 1 John is that any true and genuine believer must have 3 things to prove they have the genuine faith that pleases God: (1) walking in the light / obeying God's commands, (2) love for our fellow brothers and sisters in the faith, and (3) affirmation that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Take away one of them and the whole thing falls apart.
1 John repeats these 3 factors over and over, fifty-two times to be exact {I know because I wrote a book on the subject: Christianity's Big Tent: The Ecumenism of 1 John}, with thirty-one positive statements on how to demonstrate you are part of God's family, and twenty-one negative statements that show who is not. Of these, seventeen are about what we believe, eleven times John says we must affirm Jesus (as the Christ, the Son of God, who came in the flesh) and six times we are told we cannot deny Jesus and be in God's family. In case you're curious now, there are fourteen statements in John about our need to love each other, which leaves twelve about our need to follow God's commands. That is what John is actually teaching, in context.
HOW could Zalman know the "perfect love" that "casts out fear" if he didn't know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? If he had confidence before God, it was a false confidence because it was based upon his own work not that of Jesus Christ. If he did not feel fear when contemplating standing before Almighty God in judgment, he should have, because all who will stand before God without the being clothed in the righteousness of Christ will be condemned. Being good, kind, loving, smart, zealous, none of it matters. Our faith is in Christ, and Christ alone. Faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone. As a reminder, FFOZ utterly rejects the Five Solae of the Reformation: Rethinking the Five Solae
The stories of Baal Shem Tov and Schneur Zalman are NOT stories that illustrate what the Apostle John was teaching in 1 John. To claim this, as FFOZ has done, is to deny the necessity of the saving Blood of Jesus Christ because John's entire point is that our connection to the love of God must be through Jesus. We already know from Aaron Eby's, "What Replaces Replacement Theology?" that FFOZ is willing to hint that the Jewish people don't need Jesus to be saved. This lesson is a much bolder assertion, it proclaims that men who have been elevated to the status of prophets, or even that of a Messiah, by their followers, who have thus led many astray away from God's salvation, should be venerated as wise and righteous despite having no connection to Jesus Christ.
The average American sitting in a Torah Club hearing this lesson won't know who either of the Jewish mystics are that FFOZ chooses to proclaim as heroes of the faith. Most will assume that both were Messianic Jews, that they shared with them a belief in Jesus. Ignorance is not bliss. What FFOZ is doing in this lesson is heretical (an implicit statement that Jews don't need Jesus since these men who rejected him are elevated to saint-like status), blasphemous (ascribing "perfect love" to someone who doesn't know Jesus, thus equating human effort with divine grace), and grossly cynical as it depends upon their followers being unwilling to examine what they're being taught.
For the sake of those who are being led astray by FFOZ, I wish I was only able to find small errors or follies, but the opposite is true. The dangers of FFOZ are very, very real.
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