Question: Are you aware of Pastor Hagee's new book, In Defense of Israel? I have heard that he believes the Jewish people will be saved another way than for Gentiles. | thebereancall.org

Question: Are you aware of Pastor Hagee's new book, In Defense of Israel? I have heard that he believes the Jewish people will be saved another way than for Gentiles.

TBC Staff

Question: Are you aware of Pastor Hagee's new book, In Defense of Israel? He says that Jesus did not present Himself to the Jewish people as the Messiah at His first coming, an unbiblical statement. I have also heard that he believes the Jewish people will be saved another way than for Gentiles. Please comment.

Response: I have not read this book so can only comment on what you have said about it, which, by the way, agrees with the criticisms I have read on the internet by those who have read the book and are concerned with its many errors. Nor is this the first time this issue has surfaced.

Even the secular press has reported his heresy. The Houston Chronicle (4/30/88, sec. 6, pg 1) quoted Hagee, "I'm not trying to convert the Jewish people to the Christian faith...trying to convert Jews is a waste of time....I believe that every Jewish person who lives in the light of the Torah, which is the word of God, has a relationship with God and will come to redemption....Everyone else needs to believe in Jesus...but not Jews. Jews already have a covenant with God that has never been replaced by Christianity...." This secular newspaper added this comment, "John Hagee, fundamentalist pastor from San Antonio and friend of Israel, is truly a strange fish....The man has a mission. He's out to attack anti-Semitism. He also believes that Jews can come to God without going through Jesus Christ."

To whom did Peter preach the gospel on the day of Pentecost, if not to Jews? The early Christians and apostles thought the gospel was only for Jews, and preached "the word...unto the Jews only" (Acts:11:19). God had to give Peter a vision to get him to preach to Gentiles (Acts:10:9-16). All through Acts, in every town he entered, Paul first went into the synagogue, where he preached to the Jews, and only when they rejected the gospel did he turn to the Gentiles (Acts:9:20; 13:5,14-46; 14:1; 17:2, etc.). Why did he always offer salvation to the Jews first? Because, as we are clearly told, "the gospel of Christ...is the power of God unto salvation...to the Jew first..." (Rom:1:16). It's Paul or Hagee.

Hagee must know that Paul kept the Torah perfectly, yet he counted that effort as self-righteousness, no better than dung (Phil:3:4-9). Hagee probably makes statements like this to keep on the good side of the Israeli government, to whom he is somewhat of a hero for the many large tours he leads to Israel and the financial support he gives. Can his Christian supporters be blind to the truth-or doesn't it matter to them that Hagee is withholding the gospel of salvation from Jews, robbing them of heaven?!

I was present at a meeting in December 2006 when Hagee publicly denied not only that he presently believes in a special way of salvation for Jews but that he had ever taught a "dual covenant." Yet this teaching is in his published writings and has never been renounced.