I don't like to make the claim of heresy, but...

it's hard to be kinder when watching this advertisement.



This is a man who pastors a church of almost 20,000 people. Thousands more watch his television programs, who knows how many people read his books. This isn't dispensationalism, this is outright denial of who Jesus is and claimed to be. Scary stuff.

He makes a couple true statements, or at least half true. I agree, it's hard to make the claim that the Jewish people "as a whole" denied Jesus as the Messiah, since the majority of the earliest Christians were Jewish. But really, that depends on how you define "as a whole" anyway.

And I agree that there was a "conspiracy" to kill Jesus, though I wouldn't include Rome within that conspiracy. The conspiracy more likely involved individuals within differing sects of Judaism (Pharisees and Sadducees) and even some of Herod's followers (Mark 3:6, 12:13). I'm not sure you can call Rome a co-conspirator, though clearly responsible for the death of Jesus (which admittedly gets underplayed in many circles).

But to claim that Jesus never claimed by word or deed to be the Messiah, well, that's outright unbiblical. In fact, I wonder if Hagee will come out with a book denying the divinity of Jesus as well, since that is even "harder" to argue from Jesus' teachings and actions (mind you, I don't think it's all that hard, but it's even less explicit than his Messiahship). I wonder what Hagee thinks the word "Christ" means. I was under the assumption that most know it is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Messiah (Anointed One). I suppose he could argue that Christ claimed to be the Anointed One, but not the awaited Messiah. However, it would be awfully hard to argue that a Jewish person in the 1st century would differentiate.

So, I leave you with the words of John (1 John 5:1):

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah is born of God...