Album art for Here Comes the Son, my Messianic music creation with the help of AI. A '60s British invasion pop song about the coming of Messiah. 😅
Messianic music is a big part of my life:
I run Chavah Messianic Radio, the single largest repository of Messianic Jewish music on the web, spanning music from the last 6 decades.
I created MessianicChords: lyrics, guitar chords, and piano sheet music for thousands of Messianic songs, helping musicians and worship teams learn and play Messianic music at their congregations.
I led worship at a Messianic congregation for over a decade, played with other Messianic music groups at conferences, feasts, even state fairs.
One of my relaxing and joyful past-times is playing on my guitar and singing to the Lord, using our great legacy of Messianic, Christian, and Jewish music. I think it's great we can sing "How Great Thou Art" and "Mi Kamocha" in the same service. 🙂
I'm also involved in the tech world and I'm employed at Microsoft.
So this week when the AI music creation tool Udio went viral, I just had to try generating Messianic music with it. 😎 I thought I'd do something fun with it: a 1960s psychedelic British invasion tune singing about the coming of Messiah. Here's what I came up with:
This melody was inspired by the Beatles of the late 1960s, specifically their song Sun King. The lyrics are inspired by Isaiah 25:9, where it describes the Lord arriving and the people rejoicing.
After a few hours of fiddling with Udio generating several dozen samples through a variety of prompts, I pieced this one together. I'm pretty happy with it! The build up to crescendo at 1:40 is :chef's kiss:
It's definitely not typical Messianic music, true, but hey, it's something fun and unique.
First Fruits of Zion contributor Aaron Eby tried his hand at this as well for a kids' class. He generated Inside Out, a pop song from Yeshua's words from Matthew 15 about what makes a person unclean:
Fun stuff! OK, so it's not gonna replace Paul Wilbur or Lamb. And it's not as valuable as real, human-created music. But I think these tools have the potential to help musicians create music. Much potential here! And a lot of fun.
The subject of embassies has been in the news a lot lately following an Israeli air strike on a building adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus which killed a bunch of senior Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps generals and some of their terrorist lackeys. The meeting that was going on in this "diplomatic" building was surely military in nature, and meant to advance plans for terrorist attacks against Israelis, but the fact that it was technically part of Iran's diplomatic mission in Damascus led some of the usual suspects to accuse Israel of violating the norms of international law, etc.
Iran has threatened to respond by attacking an Israeli embassy somewhere, and that has prompted security alerts at Israeli embassies worldwide.
Iran, for it's part, has violated international norms regarding diplomatic missions so often it's almost a joke for them to bring it up. Foreign embassies in Teheran have been attacked several times over the years, starting with the US embassy in 1979 and also including the British embassy in 2011 and the Saudi Arabian embassy just a few years ago in 2016.
As anyone who pays attention to Israel knows, the capital of this country is Jerusalem, but most of the world's governments don't keep their embassies to Israel in this city. Most of the embassies in Israel are located in Tel Aviv. Israel is unique for many reasons, including the fact that it is the only sovereign country in the world that declares it's capital to be one city while most of the rest of the governments of the world don't think that's where the capital should be, so they put their embassy somewhere else.
It's a very strange situation, and there's all kinds of reasons for it, most of them really messed up. But I'm going to put a pin in that thought for a moment and get back to it later in the blog.
For now it's enough to say that embassies feature in many other news stories here in the Middle East and around the world. They are, apparently, a very important part of our world.
But just what IS an "embassy"?
The dictionary tells us that an embassy is;
1) a body of people entrusted with a mission to a sovereign or government, especially an ambassador and their staff.
2) the official headquarters of an ambassador.
If a country is geographically large enough, and if a foreign country has interests in different parts of such a geographically large country, there might be additional diplomatic facilities called "consulates".
The grounds of an embassy or consulate of a foreign government in a host country are considered the sovereign territory of that country. In other words, if I take a walk here in Jerusalem to the front gate of the US Embassy, the moment I step through that front gate I leave the sovereign territory of Israel and enter the sovereign territory of the United States, just as if I'd taken a step across the border between Canada and the US.
That's why the Israeli attack on the building which was part of the diplomatic grounds of the Iranian embassy in Damascus is a bit more serious than the many Israeli strikes on, for instance, Iranian trucks carrying weapons through Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Although that building was physically in Syria, in terms of international law, it was in Iran.
There's a lot more technical, geostrategic points I could make here, but that's not the purpose of this blog.
The purpose of this blog is to give my readers a brief introduction to the role embassies play in international relations so that you can better understand the concept as it applies to spiritual matters.
Because there are, as you're no doubt aware, two spiritual kingdoms. One is the Kingdom of Jesus Christ and His angels, and the other is the kingdom of Satan and his demons.
These spiritual kingdoms do indeed have "embassies" and "consulates" here in this physical world.
Remember the dictionary definition of an embassy.
1) a body of people entrusted with a mission to a sovereign or government, especially an ambassador and their staff.
2) the official headquarters of an ambassador.
The Jewish people fit the first description. We're performing our assigned role very poorly at the moment, as we have for most of history, but we haven't been fired from that role, nor have we been "replaced" in this role by the Church. This is a big topic, much too big for this blog, but for the moment it's enough to remember this key point.
Israel, and specifically the city of Jerusalem, fit the second description of the embassy of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ in this world.
There are three verses in the Bible where this is made clear.
2 Kings 21:7; "Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will I put My name for ever”
2 Chronicles 7:16; “For now have I chosen and hallowed this house, that My name may be there for ever”
This verse is in the context of God talking to King Solomon about the First Temple that Solomon is building in Jerusalem.
Then in 2 Chronicles 33:4, God declares “In Jerusalem shall My name be for ever”
There are probably several other passages of Scripture where this point is made but these verses say it very explicitly.
The fact that most of the really important events in the Bible, including the foundation of the original united Kingdom of Israel under David and the crucifixion, burial, resurrection and ascent into Heaven by Jesus, all happened in Jerusalem, is another hint pointing to Jerusalem being the Embassy of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ in this world.
This is why there is so much conflict and controversy over this city. This is the real reason why the status of Jerusalem as the political capital of the state of Israel is not recognized by so many of the world's governments. This is why the Palestinian insist that Jerusalem is the capital of THEIR country, and why some of the most important buildings in Islam were built on top of the Temple Mount in the heart of Jerusalem's Old City.
That is also the reason why there is so much anger and rage and hatred directed at Israel and the Jewish people. There is NO rational explanation for the persistence of anti-Semitism over the centuries. There is NO rational explanation for how anti-Semitism continues to be adapted to whatever the bogeyman of the moment is in every epoch in human history.
Currently, Israel is being castigated for being an example of "white colonialism" that oppresses "people of color" and its compared to the apartheid system which ruled in South Africa for most of the 20th century. Jews are also demonized as agents of "capitalism" which has somehow or other become very unpopular in the world today. In previous decades, when "Communism" was very unpopular, Jews were demonized as being the masterminds behind that.
And so on, and so on.
In today's context, we can see that all over the world, there is an utterly absurd level of rage and anger directed at Israel and the Jewish people. This tiny country of 10 million people, with a Jewish Diaspora of approximately 8.5 million (depending on whose numbers you look at, it could be as high as 10 million) attracts more protests, attacks, vitriol and anger than the entire rest of the human race combined.
It's not because of anything Israel and the Jewish people do or don't do, it's because of what we represent. It's because of what we remind people of, and what they know they'll have to do if they acknowledge us.
Many Christians love Israel because it confirms what the Bible says. We need to understand that many others hate Israel for that same reason.
Just as embassies are often attacked by people who hate the government those embassies represent because they lack the ability to attack the country itself, people who hate the Bible and the God it describes can't physically attack God, so they try to physically attack the things which remind them of these things, primarily Israel and the Jews, but also Bible-believing Christians, who have been "grafted in" to Israel, as Romans 11 tells us.
In fact, a Bible-believing church can be said to be a "consulate" of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ in this physical world. I hope the church you attend is doing a good job of representing that Kingdom in whatever community He's placed you.
Beyond that, gentle reader, I don't have any specific plans or actions you and I can take to address any of this except the obvious one of prayer. Pray into these issues, and do so with an awareness of the critical issues at hand.
That's what I've got for you this week brothers and sisters. I hope it blessed someone.
This week, Christian apologist Mike Winger published a meticulously detailed documentary (4+ hours long!) of televangelist Benny Hinn's fake healings, false prophecies, faux repentance. It is difficult to watch.
Failed Prophecies
In it, Winger shows Benny Hinn's own videos of his failed prophecies. Winger begins documenting these at 46:28 in the video.
In one instance from early 2020, Hinn prophesied in the name of God that COVID will kill no more than 5,000 people. A month later, after 10,000 had died of COVID, Hinn prophesied COVID would disappear by Easter 2020.
In reality, COVID is still a problem today, 4 years after Hinn's failed prophecy to come to pass. Over 7 million people have died of COVID. Even if you think that number is inflated, no one argues it's less than 5,000.
In another recent example, September 2023, he prophesied in the name of the Lord that Israel and Saudi Arabia will sign a peace agreement, the Middle East will experience a new regional peace between Jews and Arabs, and it will result in a wealth transfer from unbelievers to Christians by 2024.
In reality, just a month later, not only did the unprecedented peace and wealth transfer not occur, but the opposite did: Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, launching the region into war. Jewish-Arab tensions reached new heights.
It turns out Hinn prophesied the exact same thing back in the 1990s: unprecedented peace and a transfer of wealth from unbelievers to Christians as soon as Israel signed a peace agreement with Syria. Hinn's own video shows him saying the Lord has spoken it; "It's guaranteed!" This too turned out to be a false prophecy from Hinn.
False Healings
Winger documents how Hinn made false claims of healing and even resurrections. This was probably the hardest part of the video to watch.
In one case, Hinn convinced an elderly mother and adult son, both of whom had stage 4 cancer, that they had been healed. In a later interview with the mother, she believed she was healed, despite still showing symptoms. Shortly after, her son died of cancer. The mother was still convinced she was healed. But a month later, the mother too died of cancer. Heartbreaking.
In another case, Hinn claimed a man in Africa had risen from the dead at one of his meetings. When an investigation was launched, a manager of Hinn's TV program claimed Hinn was repeating something they heard, and they made a mistake in repeating it without verifying it.
But then later Hinn is shown speaking about the same resurrection, claiming it was witnessed by "200,000 to 300,000 people." Hinn even gave additional details about the supposed event, saying the man raised in front of the audience while Hinn's back was turned.
In one of many more instances, Hinn claimed in a book that he went into a Catholic hospital and anointed patients with oil. Something like an earthquake occurred, and there were many miraculous healings, Hinn's book claimed.
But after a secular investigation, the hospital confirmed that while Hinn did preach at the hospital chapel, there was no earthquake, reported healings, and they confirmed that not a single patient had left the hospital that day.
In what I can only guess to be hiding the truth, later reprints of Hinn's book removed the claim of the miracles at the hospital.
Harmful theology
In front of a crowd of 10,000 people, Hinn said that God is 9-in-1. He claimed the Father is body, soul, and spirit. As is the Son. As is the Holy Spirit. "There's 9 of them!" Hinn says to his congregation.
When confronted about this by other Christian leaders, Hinn backpedaled, saying he was repeating something he had read elsewhere, and that "When I said it to the congregation, I could sense tension in the room. So I made a joke and said there was 9 of them and people laughed."
But we have video of the preaching, and there was no joke or laughing. He lectured on for several minutes about it.
In another teaching, he claimed that human beings are "little-g gods", because just like animals reproduce after their kind, when God created humans it meant that humans are a kind of god.
Recently, Hinn claimed that the spirit of God revealed to him that women were meant to give birth out of their sides (???!).
And perhaps above all, Hinn has for decades preached the prosperity gospel: that if a person "sows a seed" into the Kingdom of God (that is, a person donates to Benny Hinn's ministry), then God will multiple and increase that person's finances.
Faux Repentance
Much of this was not news to me; I've always kept Hinn at arms' length because I am a hopeful skeptic. When I hear reports of miracles, I am hopeful but skeptical. Hopeful knowing God is able, skeptical knowing people are bad.
In 2019, Benny Hinn repented for preaching the prosperity gospel. In one clip, a remorseful Hinn in front of a live audience says,
"If I hear the phrase, 'Break the back of debt with [a donation of] $1,000', I'm gonna rebuke them. I think it's buying the gospel, it's buying the blessing, that's grieving the Holy Spirit. The Gospel is not for sale. The blessing of God is not for sale. And miracles are not for sale. And prosperity is not for sale."
I had heard about this back when it happened, and I thought, "Wow, great, Benny Hinn is turning a new leaf."
(In retrospect, I notice Hinn's phrasing makes it sound as if others are preaching the prosperity non-gospel, not Hinn.)
But then in October 2023, Hinn is on stage again saying,
"Tonight, you're gonna give. Prove yourself faithful to God. To God! I know you paid [for this conference]. But your payment is not a seed. What you paid to get into this conference was [for] a chair, not a harvest. God cannot trust you with the wealth of sinners and the abundance coming with your $10 donation. You insult Him! Low giving keeps you at low levels, low altitudes. You give sparingly, you won't be loosed from that sparing life of yours. Give! Give! Give! And watch what God will do with you."
It turns out, Benny Hinn had a similar faux repentance, saying essentially the same things, all the way back in 1993. Here we are some 30 years later and Hinn is doing the same thing he supposedly repented for.
Manipulation
Winger documents several ways how Hinn manipulates people.
Hinn will say things like "Why have people lost their healings? Because they didn't believe." This manipulates believers into thinking they're healed even if they aren't. (You don't want to lose your healing, do you?) And if they still have symptoms, they refuse to believe they aren't healed.
Winger showed from Hinn's own videos where, if a person doesn't fall down ("slayed in the spirit") when Hinn swings a hand or a jacket, Hinn forcibly pushes the person down. In one heartbreaking case, a frail woman in great pain due to cancer asked Hinn "please be gentle" - Hinn pushes her down repeatedly.
How is Hinn "slaying" dozens of people in the front row of his meetings? Winger shows that Hinn chooses who sits in the front row of his meetings in order to find willing participants and weed out anyone who is skeptical of Hinn's miracles. Winger showss how it's similar to fraudulent martial artists (referred to as "bullshido" artists) who claim supernatural abilities to levitate, throw invisible energy balls, or take down opponents using only their mind. These involve a deceptive or self-deluded teacher but also students who are eager and willing to believe the hypnotic master.
Winger shows evidence of this when, in one of Hinn's videos, he is facing a group of several people. They are all facing Hinn, except one woman who got turned around. When Hinn "slays" them, the people facing Hinn all fall down. But the woman who had her back turned, who didn't know she was supposed to fall down, remained standing.
Hinn uses manipulative tactics to donate to his ministry. "Give sparingly and you won't be loosed from that sparing life of yours", he says to a live audience in one of his videos after his supposed repentance from prosperity gospel preaching. On multiple occasions, he has prophesied falsely about a coming "transfer of wealth from sinners to the believers", but that one must first sow into Hinn's ministry to be a part of this transfer. He uses this sense of urgency and fear-of-missing-out to manipulate people, usually elderly Christians without much money, into giving more to his ministry.
Hinn should step down
Watching the whole 4-hour video documenting Hinn's actions - yikes! It appears to me Hinn is deliberately misleading and manipulating people.
I rarely post negative things about specific individuals in our faith. Had you asked me last week my thoughts on Benny Hinn, they'd be cautious but optimistic, and I'd have told you he recently repented for his prosperity gospel teachings. Last year my church hosted Benny Hinn at a revival service during Easter. (I didn't attend, but I neither felt the need to rebuke anyone who did.)
But after watching this video and seeing Hinn's troubling behavior, I felt it necessary to add my voice to the growing chorus calling for Hinn to step down from ministry.
In the best-case scenario, he is a genuine but misguided Christian who has falsely prophesied. The Bible tells us that we should not fear such people. That means we should not revere them or give them a platform to speak.
In the worst case, he's not a believer at all. He's a conman working a grift to steal funds from mostly elderly Christians with a fake signs and wonders, false promises of wealth, deceiving millions of people to enrich himself.
Either way, if Hinn is serious about repentance, we'll know by his actions. A false prophet should no longer prophesy; Christians should not give him a platform, nor should he seek one. He would return donations or give them to the poor. There is no question Hinn must stop prophesying; even if all the healings were true, the Bible demands he stop prophesying. The Scriptures require that we no longer give such people a platform.
Thanks to Mike Winger for putting together such detailed documentation exposing Hinn's bad behavior.
