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First, depression is no laughing matter.
Second, failure is depressing, and if you are an Anti-Moshiach activist, you are fighting the Ruach Hakodesh, and you are certain to fail.
So no wonder you are depressed.


Let me start with a story about the Ruach Hakodesh.

It's also a story about a Jewish man--we'll call him Ralph.


I hadn't seen Ralph for over six months.
I was sitting in my office one day in New York City.
I had piles of books all around me and a mountain of work in which I was all set to plunge.
Then, without any warning, the Ruach Hakodesh suddenly shut me down.

Like turning off a switch.
Like pulling the plug on a machine.
The Holy Spirit just shut me down.
I just sat there.


Ralph.


I just sat there.


Ralph.


I was unplugged.
All shut down.


Ralph.


I had all these other plans for the day.
I was itching to start working.


Ralph.


Ralph.


It was no use.
I had no choice.


All right.
What about Ralph?


Call him.


Call him?
I have nothing to say to him.


Call him.


I had all this other stuff to do and that was the last thing I wanted to do when I came into the office.
It was not on my mind at all.
And now I saw I had no choice, because the Ruach Hakodesh was shutting me down.


Do I have to call Ralph?


Call him.


I dug around and found Ralph's phone number, wondering what in the world I was going to say to him, since it was not MY idea at ALL to call him and he was a very busy and important man, not to be casually interrupted with a gratuitous phone call.


I found the phone number and began dialing long distance.
I could hear Ralph's phone ringing on the other end of the line.


When he answered, what in the world was I supposed to say?


The phone was still ringing.


Then Ralph was on the line. I remember he muttered something.


Then the Holy Spirit gave me the words. It was a question.


Ralph was still on the line.


I remember exactly how the question was worded.


Ralph, "which is better:
to work through this [depression]...I mean pray and fast and meditate on the Scriptures and go over to [I mentioned a messianic synagogue I had helped to plant] and seek the L-rd [I could have mentioned Isaiah 55:6 but I didn't].....OR...[I remember I said this very gently and softly, and he knew that I loved him, I had flown on a plane more than once just to see him]...OR...take a gun and blow your brains out and go to hell?
Which is better?" ...[the L-rd wants to know, Ralph...which is better?]


Actually it was the L-rd Who wanted to know. That morning, workaholic that I am, all I wanted to know up to that point was, to be truthful, When do I get to stop all this and go to work, L-rd? But, now, right at this moment, I was in the Spirit and really it was the L-rd actually asking Ralph the question. And then Ralph muttered something again and wanted to get off the phone.


A couple of days later a messianic Jewish lady, calling from her home after she stopped by the funeral home, left a message on my answering machine saying something like..."I know you were a good friend of his and thought you would want to know that [Ralph] took his life and we are all very sad here."


You say, "Phil, if you knew he had already acquired a gun and had been planning this suicide for sometime, why didn't you contact his family or the police or do something to save his life?"


You do not understand the Holy Spirit (see commentary on Ro 1:1).


I didn't know anything of the sort. You have to understand that I am a Pentecostal and the word of knowledge is not a parlor trick but a "ministry emergency" tool and that tool the L-rd throws me sometimes in a crisis, and you also have to understand that this kind of thing had never happened before in all my years of ministry. Know also that I am something of a workaholic and the L-rd only three times in my life has literally shut me down, unplugging me in a kind of spiritual suspended animation, wherein He tells me things I otherwise could not know, and on this particular day I had a mountain of work I desperately wanted to jump into doing, and the L-rd hung me out there in my spirit and would not let me do anything until I picked up that phone and got the call over with that He insisted that I make. So the Ruach Hakodesh suddenly pulled my plug and would not let me proceed with any of my workaholic plans for the day until I made a phone call which I didn't plan to make and which I had no idea what I was supposed to say (I had no prior knowledge that he was depressed or suicidal and he had never indicated that to me at any time since I had known him) and I did not know what I was going to say on the phone until the unpremeditated words came out of my mouth. (Mk 13:11)


But let's forget about me. Let's talk about the L-rd. Answer me this one question. What more could the L-rd do for Ralph?
The L-rd had helped us start a messianic synagogue near his office.
Ralph had seen me do a
complete performance of THE RABBI FROM TARSUS.
I had personally taken Ralph to a Bible Bookstore to buy him a Bible (I couldn't get him a copy of THE ORTHODOX JEWISH BIBLE because it wasn't finished yet).
And now moments before he committed suicide, the Ruach Hakodesh had supernaturally warned him.


What more could the L-rd do for Ralph?

Instead of judging just ME, why don't you also stand in judgment of the Anti-Moshiach activists that have nothing better to do with their time than to discourage these "Ralph's" from salvation?


They can't wait until they've found them and "de-programmed" them and discouraged them from their faith.
I was trying to build up Ralph's faith.
They want to tear it down.


When will these Anti-Moshiach activists realize that they are fighting the Ruach Hakodesh?


One day in the spring of 1994 I was working upstairs in the back of Beth Shalom.
During a period of stalking, intimidation, harassment, and other types of religious persecution, the Anti-Moshiach activists had damaged my van (one Beth Shalom van was fire-bombed years before) and stolen my car and I had a rental car replacement parked on Coney Island Ave across the street from Beth Shalom.


It was Sunday, (April 10th, 1994, around 8 o'clock in the morning.)
Suddenly the Holy Spirit shut me down.
He pulled my plug. I was like a machine switched off. It was exactly as I described above with Ralph. The same suspended animation. Precisely the same phenomenon. This has only happened three or four times in thirty years of ministry. This was just like with Ralph. I was working, working working. A workaholic knows what I am talking about. And then, without warning, the L-rd just shut me down. Just shut me down. Completely shut down. The Biblical language to describe this phenomenon is called "being in the Spirit."


The front door.


The front door?


The front door.


What about the front door?


Go right now and stand at the front door. (I got up and ran down the stairs and stood inside Beth Shalom at the front door, looking out the windowed front door of this messianic synagogue. In those two minutes I was actually engaged in a conversation with the Holy Spirit and getting instructions, like you would be if you were talking to another person. See Acts 8:29. Believe me, this kind of thing is a miracle and miracles don't happen every day, even at Beth Shalom. But I believe the L-rd was having mercy on me because I was suffering from post-traumatic stress from all the many weeks of persecution, and the L-rd was throwing me a tool for this ministry crisis, because these are His people and He loves them, blind though they are [Isaiah 56:10] as I was, as we all were, before we were born again and given spiritual eyes to see.)


So I said to the Holy Spirit these words in my mind: "Okay, I'm at the front door. Now what?"


Do not take your eyes off your rental car, even for a second.


Okay, I'm looking at it.
What about it?


Then I noticed that someone had parked his red car so that his rear bumper was actually lightly touching the front bumper of my rental car.


While I was wondering about this, staring intently, a black car suddenly pulled in very slowly behind my rental car and this black car put his front bumper lightly against my back bumper, making my rental car totally penned in between the black car and the red car.
My car having been stolen two weeks
before (actually the car wasn't really my car-- it belonged to a man named Yosie, who didn't need it anymore because he was in heaven), and my rental car now penned in, these Anti-Moshiach activists thought, "This one ain't going anywhere!")


Then this Anti-Moshiach activist got out of his black car and tried to slip away, not knowing of course that the Ruach Hakodesh was way ahead of him, and that he had been caught (Bamidbar 32:23).
He should have realized he was not dealing with just a shleper like me; he was dealing with the Ruach Hakodesh.
Give it up, boys!


However, early one day about 6 o'clock in the morning, this one Anti-Moshiach activist was parked in his car in front of Beth Shalom "casing the joint" for a break-in.
He was parked across the street from our building at 1410 Coney Island Ave.
It was so early the street was practically empty and he was alone in his car.
We'll call him "Mark Gabinowitz."


I was sound asleep upstairs in the back.


Suddenly the Ruach Hakodesh woke me up,
"Mark Gabinowitz!"


I tried to roll over and go back to sleep.


"Mark Gabinowitz!"
(this is not his real name)


I sat up in bed.


"Mark Gabinowitz!"


I got up and went into the bathroom and got into the shower.


"Mark Gabinowitz!"


I turned on the shower.


"Mark Gabinowitz!"


I got out of the shower and started drying off.


"Mark Gabinowitz!"


I started putting on my clothes.


"Mark Gabinowitz!"


All of a sudden a spirit of fury came on me.
I was practically knocking the door down to get to the upstairs staircase.
I was furious.
I had never been that angry in my life.
It was not me, I was angry in the Ruach Hakodesh.
I went tearing down the stairs absolutely furious in the Ruach Hakodesh.
I tore open the door and went crashing furiously out onto the Coney Island Avenue sidewalk.


Standing there was a neighbor, a very polite Orthodox Jew.
I nearly screamed at him, "Have you seen Mark Gabinowitz?"


Startled, my neighbor stepped back from me, "Yeah, I saw him last week. He was in my store for his organization, raising funds."


"Well, I have something I want you to tell him."


And just at that exact moment, we both turned our heads and looked... and there was Mark Gabinowitz, appearing very scared, as if he had been caught red-handed doing something wrong. He was starting up his ignition, and driving his car quickly down the street.


The next day was a Friday.
My friend Roger ran into me on the street on Coney Island Avenue and I told him the story.


Roger glanced at me with a kind of prophetic far-away look and said, "You will meet Mark Gabinowitz.
You will be kind to him, and you will tell him what his soul needs to hear."


That was Friday.
On Monday morning I was up at the corner in the bank line.
There were only a couple of tellers and the bank was very crowded with a long, long line.
I was standing there for quite a while, when my subconscious mind started studying the back of the head of the individual in front of me in the line.
There was something familiar about the back of his head.


Then he turned around.


MARK GABINOWITZ!


As soon as he turned, he let out a soft scared kind of yell and jumped back a step!


I remembered Roger's words, "You will meet Mark Gabinowitz, you will be kind to him, and you will tell him what his soul needs to hear."


I opened my mouth.

I started to speak, "You know, Mark, if you knew me personally you would know that I'm a nice guy..."


"DID



I



SSSSAAAAAYYYYY


YOU WERE NOT A NICE GUY?!!!"
(The word "say" lasted about 10 seconds in his mouth.)


Everybody in the bank turned around when he yelled that out.


I continued trying to witness to him in a soft voice, everybody in the bank staring at me.


Let me witness to you.
Give it up. Don't you realize it is futile to fight against the Ruach Hakodesh?

Which six words are you going to believe? Six words from the Tanakh or six words from the Talmud? Blatant disregard for the inerrant Tanakh
will cost the soul of the one making deathbed viddui
(confession of sin) of these words from the Talmud,

"May my death make kaparah for all my sins." rather than "T’hei mot haMoshiach kaparah al kol avonotai" "May the death of Moshiach make kaparah for all my sins."
If the following six words from the Talmud
תְּהֵא מִיתָתִי כַּפָּרָה עַל כָּל עֲוֹנוֹתָי. [סנהדרין פרק ו,ב]
are erroneously preferred to these six words from the Tanakh it will be to the eternal lose of the nefesh
כִּי נִגְזַר מֵאֶרֶץ חַיִּים מִפֶּשַׁע עַמִּי
Let's repeat this so that there can be no confusion or question. There are two confessions here. Each contains six little words. One Jewish confession is the holy inspired Word of G-d and one confession is not the inspired Word of G-d. Confession of the Talmud instead of the Tanakh will cost one his immortal soul. Here are the words from the Talmud:
"May my death make kaparah for all my sins." Here are the Words from the inerrant Tanakh: "Kee neegzar may-eretz chayyim mee-pay-sha amee." So from these inerrant words we confess "T’hei mot haMoshiach kaparah al kol avonotai," which translates into English: "May the death of Moshiach make kaparah for all my sins."

Now if
תְּהֵא מִיתָתִי כַּפָּרָה עַל כָּל עֲוֹנוֹתָי. [סנהדרין פרק ו,ב]
is erroneously preferred to these following six Hebrew words from the Tanakh, then that fatal choice will result in the eternal lose of the nefesh:
כִּי נִגְזַר מֵאֶרֶץ חַיִּים מִפֶּשַׁע עַמִּי






So we primordially and perennially,
with disastrous consequences for ourselves,
forsake the words of G-d and receive the contradictory words of HaSatan.

By the time we get to 2 Corinthians chp 11 we see that Satan wants to corrupt and ruin by means of Bible-opposing "knowledge," the so-called "deeper things of Satan." Instead of staying with the Word that was preached, the temptation of the Corinthians was to "go beyond what was written" and to be seduced by extra-Biblical knowledge (see Gen 3:5). Notice that Eve's "Bible" only has seven words in it.
The seven words in her "Bible" warn that death will be the result of her moral autonomy, of her getting her "knowledge" of good and evil, in other words, from a certain lethal tree rather than from the "Bible" her husband has been given wherein the meager content of seven words ("oo-meh-ETZ ha-DAH-aht tov va-rah loh toh-KHOHL mee-mehn-NOO" ...of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat from it) will nevertheless tell her how to live and not die. But in the hands of the evil Serpent this "Bible" can be twisted and used to deceive her so that she hands herself over to a rival authority, a Bible-opposing authority, with fatal results. Anything that rivals and opposes G-d is an idol, and in the Book of Revelation we see that the believers will give up their lives as martyrs rather than compromise with the idolatrous religion and way of life of the pagan society of the last days. It is fair to say that one cannot be a believer unless one repents from all idolatry. Whoever tries to keep his idolatrous life will lose it.

PRAY THIS PRAYER WITH TRUE TESHUVA (REPENTANCE) AND YOUR LIFE WILL BEGIN TO CHANGE FOR THE BETTER.

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