Mishpachah Yeshua Newsletter

A Newsletter To The Family Of Jesus From Restoration Ministries

The Hebraic family is not simply an individual or private matter.
Rather, it is an institution in which the whole community has a stake.
Thus, the Hebrew word “mishpachah,” meaning family, not only refers to parents and children,
but to the whole extended family worldwide in the body of “Yeshua”—our Jesus.

[click here for a printable copy]

May 2001  Topic: Jesus versus the Queen of Heaven

Dear Men,
I’d just finished my midnight watch and was walking down the passage way to my stateroom when I was beset by stark-raving fear. Images came into my mind I could never have conceived, even in my wildest dreams. By the time I arrived in my room I was drenched with sweat. The whole thing was so bizarre I didn’t mention it to anyone.
A few weeks later while praying with some of the brothers in the ship’s library, one of the men I stood watch with came in and began to curse at us. All of a sudden his face contorted and a demon came out of him and stood between us. Having just become a follower of Jesus through reading the Bible, I ordered the demon to leave in the Name of Jesus. It moved toward the wall and just vanished. The man was changed and sat down and told us his tale: drugs, divorce, homosexuality, occult worship. But what struck me the most was when he said he had satanic power to induce thoughts into people’s minds.
He looked at me and said, “Mike, do you remember when you left the watch two weeks ago?” He then began to describe the images that had entered my mind. When I acknowledged to the others that what he described was true (and in light of the demon that had just manifested itself), we all felt we had entered a new awareness of the demonic powers at work around us.
That was in 1977. Some years later a similar thing happened in a church meeting on Cape Cod. One of the leaders exercised demonic powers to rob people of their thoughts. In this way he was able to control the direction of conversations and meetings. In my years of following Jesus, Satan has made three attempts on my life. The Lord has forewarned me, but done nothing to stop the attempts. One time I was injured in a car crash and taken to the hospital. Afterwards I recognized that Jesus wanted to see if I would absolutely trust Him even with my life. There have been times when I left my home to minister that I’d hug my family wondering if this were the last time I would see them.
I share these things not to give credit to myself but to anchor for you that we are up against demonic power. To win the battle we need POWER FROM ON HIGH! That POWER is found in Jesus Christ!
The Queen of Heaven—
Destroyer of Marriage and Family
Because there is so little of Jesus and trust-filled application of His Word within the church today, powerful principalities are now free to reign. I spoke about anti-christ in our last letter and described some of the inroads this spirit has made and how easily biblically illiterate people embrace his manifestations.
There is another principality that has done so much to destroy marriages and families—the Queen of Heaven. This demonic spirit is found in many Christian homes in which either the husband or wife do not have a viable trust in the Lord Jesus. It manifests itself through manipulation, control through mood changes, withholding affection, false accusation, and despising male authority. Its goal is to produce disloyalty in relationships and ultimately estrangement. Its highest purpose is to separate you from the Lord by subtly getting you to serve it while believing you are serving Him.
Where the Queen of Heaven operates unchallenged, marriages and families are destroyed. It is able to easily enlist the help of women whose fathers, husbands, sons, sons-in-law fail to fulfill their biblical responsibilities. Wherever you find women not submissive to God-ordained authority, or wherever that authority fails in their responsibility, the Queen of Heaven rules.

The Queen Operates Freely in the Church Today
I have watched the Queen of Heaven make attempts to recruit my wife many times over the years. Always it is through Christian women who rule their own homes and live without submission. I praise God for Sue. Often she sees the trap being set, but sometimes I see it before she does. I’m glad that when I warn her about it she willingly resists the temptation to operate independently under the guise of “greater spirituality than her husband.”
The day after the Lord gave me the topic for this newsletter I received an article that began with this question, “Is it ever right for a Christian to worship ‘Mother God?’” The writer was confronting new ‘God-as-Mother’ worship songs that had been introduced into His denominational hymnbook. One is entitled, “ Mothering God, You Gave Me Birth.” Another is, “She Comes Sailing on the Wind”, in which “she” is the Holy Spirit.
The writer cites as the beginning of the attack on Father-God a women’s conference held in 1993 that was endorsed by major denominations: “Radical feminists, who advocated worshipping ancient goddesses, dominated it. They claimed that the God of the Bible was ‘patriarchal’ and was the creation of ancient men. Liberated women needed to find their own goddess if they were to be empowered.” He went on to discuss how subtly these anti-Father feminists are operating behind the scene in many denominations. We now have God-genderless Bibles or “Mother-God” versions. This movement for the most part goes unchallenged. Without an authentic trust in Jesus, men cave in to the fear the Queen can induce.

When Men Don’t Trust Jesus and Our Father
“For loving God means obeying His commands. Moreover, his commands are not burdensome, because everything which has God as its Father overcomes the world. And this is what victoriously overcomes the world: our trust” (1 John 5:3,4).

When men fail to live in a trusting relationship with Jesus and our Father, they habitually fail to fulfill their biblical responsibilities. As a result they give their wives over to the Queen of Heaven. Suppose a man who wanted to seduce your wife came into your home. Would you let this happen while you watched? Of course not! But this is exactly what you are doing when you duck and let the Queen of Heaven have her. Your home comes under siege and your children have a difficult time smiling. Even worse, God turns His back on your home and leaves you and your family to the oppression that this spirit produces until you humble yourself, repent, and walk in the authority He’s meant for you to exercise.
As the demonized man on the ship did to me, the Queen of Heaven takes control over your wife’s mind influencing her to make wrong conclusions about matters around her—none of which have any input from you. Later, when you even question her decisions, you get the cold shoulder and the cold bed.
Do you remember Ahab? There he was, the King of Israel, but he had abdicated authority in his own home. Why? Because he had no trust in God. His wife took over the rule of not only their home but of the whole kingdom. The first thing she did was attempt to destroy the true prophets of God so that no warning could be sounded.
This is what has happened throughout Christiandom in the US today. God uses prophets to stand by and encourage those who are carrying out His commands (see Ezra 5: 1,2). Grievously, so many voices of God are now stilled. Ahab’s wife Jezebel had such power from the Queen of Heaven that she was able to induce flee-for-your-life fear in the prophet Elijah, even after he had defeated 800 prophets of Baal and Asherah at Mount Carmel. If the Queen of Heaven already has a foot-hold in your home, she will induce fear in you to keep you from confronting your wife. Other men who follow Jesus will be driven away from you by your wife’s attitude and derision. To them she appears like a biting dog.
Our Father affirms the men who would follow His Son Jesus: “Elijah was a man just like you. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops” (James 5:17,18). Our trust not only produces answered prayer, but gives us the loving-courage to confront sin, independence, and disharmony in our wives and children when necessary.

Making Godly, Wise Decisions
God not only made the genders different but also differentiated our roles in a “sequential” manner to help us make wise decisions. I asked our Father for some way to convey this idea to you and He gave me the diagram below. The insights I share are not just mine but are supported by gender studies and the Bible.
Making wise decisions and acting upon them is often a several-step process that requires discussion and confirmation. Usually situations  come up that need to be considered. If they are received favorably, someone makes a proposal to do something. Then planning occurs and finally the execution of the event takes place. Quite often this happens so naturally that we don’t think of it as a sequence. But one aspect that has been confirmed is that women spend little or no time over the “why” of a decision. They see a desired outcome and go for it. Without male guidance they are vulnerable to the Queen of Heaven.
Women influenced by the Queen often get upset with responsible men who take the time to consider the “why” because the “why” interferes with the female outcome-based mindset. To the degree that men remain quiet or uninvolved, a women will begin with step 3 on the diagram—the “Who, What, Where, and When” and progress rapidly and efficiently to complete the task. This often leads to the “perfectly placed ladder against the wrong house.” It is crucial that a man not remain passive when important decisions need to be made.
When the “why” is answered, God’s blessing goes with it. If the “why” is missing, you’ll find fear, anxiety, discord, manipulation, and control.
As we have written in previous letters, the “why” is a crucial part of the Hebraic Restoration. It reveals the motives of people’s actions. Motive is more crucial in God’s sight than who, what, where, or when. In our own marriage, the proper working of the above sequence has enabled us to fulfill God’s will with minimal stress. I appreciate Sue asking for my input before she acts on major things she is considering. Once the initial steps are covered, everything else seems to fit into place nicely.
At every marriage conference we’ve attended, the number one need of wives has been for “direction” from their husbands. If you know Sue I’m sure you’d agree that she is a wise woman. I thank the Lord for that, because the alternative is spelled out in Proverbs: “The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down” (14:1) The foolish woman treats step 3 as if it were step 1. If she is in your family, you need to confront her.

Jesus—A Son of the Father
When I first put my trust in Jesus in 1977 I asked for one thing: that the Lord would bring alongside me only those men who would follow Him no matter what the cost. I first read the Bible in 1976 and these words of Jesus anchored my motive, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his crucifixion stake daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23,24). The fellowship I  have with men courageous enough to be sold out for Jesus is very precious. We know the cost we have paid, especially to protect our families from the Queen and anti-Christ spirits.
I meet too many Christian men who serve the anti-Christ by allowing their families to be biblically ignorant. They leave their wives and widowed mothers open to the Queen of Heaven by not protecting them under proper authority. A woman who is not submissive to God-ordained authority is already owned by the Queen. The question is: Is there a male who cares enough to help her find freedom in the way Jesus has ordained?
Every man who would be a true son of the Father ultimately must stop being a “momma’s boy.” Momma’s boys marry wives who also mother them. Their marriages are an endless competition between the mother and wife over who rules. When the mother wins, the wife leaves. I’ve counseled single men, “Don’t ever marry a woman who already shows signs of mothering you. You’ll never be happy.”
When you think of your mother or wife, do you have trepidation about bringing up certain topics?
A follower of Jesus who truly loves his mother must, like Christ, set aside the fear of failing her expectations and pursue the will of our Father no matter what the cost. As a follower of Jesus this can only be gained through close relationship with other men who diligently seek our Father’s will. You won’t find these men just sitting in Bible studies or Sunday school classes. As broadly used as these are in the church, the Queen uses these content dissemination systems to train men to “be ever hearing but never understanding...be ever seeing but never perceiving.” This spirit doesn’t mind men knowing, but will hinder them from finding role-models who will help them be “doers of the Word.”
A man who follows Jesus lives for Jesus. To learn from him you must join him where he is serving. As Paul exclaims, “Follow my example as I follow Jesus” (1Cor.11: 1).
At the wedding feast at Cana Jesus showed us whose will is foremost. His mother, disregarding all protocol, got involved with the lack of wine. Yes, Jesus changed the water into wine, but not because of His mother. He fulfilled Torah: to do good if it is within your ability. This miracle began the process of glorifying His Father: “This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him” (John 2:11). From then on you see His acknowledgement of our Father as the One Whose will He fulfilled. Think about this.
Remember it is the KING, not a queen, we serve.

Your brother,
Mike

A Christian man is a man who does what the Father desires regardless of the cost or consequences.

Dear Sisters,
I’m certain that this newsletter is something our Father wants you to ponder in your heart since it has faced such opposition in getting written! I was just about done when the computer quit and even the part that had been saved disappeared! So with much sighing and greater determination, here we go again!
I’m grieved over the number of men I encounter who have absolved themselves of their family responsibilities, and so many women who are frustrated enough to have found alternatives to God’s design for marriage. We know from 2 Tim. 3:16,17 that all Scripture (and at the time of Paul’s letter, that meant the Hebrew Bible) is God-breathed and profitable for us for teaching the truth, convicting of sin, correcting faults and training in right living, so we’re going to check out a warning from Jeremiah that needs to be in neon lights against a spirit of error that stands before followers of Jesus today. The name of that deceiving spirit is the Queen of Heaven.

The Whole Family Under Attack
If men fail to stand as gatekeepers in front of the door of their families and of those for whom they are spiritually responsible, religious wolves are going to sneak in to seduce one and all. Because the men of Israel had slacked off in their obedience and love for their God, a counterfeit crept in: the Queen of Heaven. Can you feel the passion with which our Father exhorted Jeremiah against His adulterous wife Israel? “So do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them; do not plead with me, for I will not listen to you. Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger. But am I the one they are provoking? declares the Lord. Are they not rather harming themselves, to their own shame?” (Jer. 7:16-19).
Just as God had reached the point at which He would refuse to hear petitions on behalf of His people Israel, so today an insidious turning away from Him and His ways is occurring among those who think they are His people. Choosing to worship a demonic entity was not happening just in some ignorant backwater. It was happening right under the noses of the religious establishment in Jerusalem! And they were encouraging their children to join them in their slide of rebellion by including them in their idolatrous practices.
The Queen of Heaven operates when there is no God-given authority to uphold His Sovereignty and standards. Because of the proliferation of absentee fathers and of children being raised by single mothers, relatively few boys are learning what it means to walk responsibly as men yielded wholly to Jesus. The responsibility to which I’m referring means willingness to provide for and protect their families, and to confront ungodliness in their own lives as well as that in the lives of those for whom they are responsible. It means reliability and integrity on the job, and loyalty to those in authority over them.
Greater numbers of children are spending hours locked away with computer screens or captivated by inappropriate TV shows, devoid of relational interaction or adult guidance. The role once played by dads, coaches, grandfathers and Scout leaders has been displaced by computer games, the Internet, and unsupervised TV viewing. None of these activities are relational, nor do they allow for adult interaction or input.

Unacceptable Excuses
I grieve for the families today that are out of order. How difficult it is for men of God to walk in His loving authority in their own homes when they most likely have never been mentored nor have they even seen godly home leadership exercised! So many men in their 30’s and 40’s are experiencing frustration because they were raised in homes with absentee fathers and exhausted, fearful mothers. Since so many extended families have been fractured by divorce or distance, people of the past generation have been bereft of male role models in particular — of men who could relate stories of their military experiences or of reliance on God for hard business decisions or of standing up for righteousness in the face of overwhelming opposition. (I realize that many women have faced these same events in their lives, but the majority of single parents are mothers, and relatively few reliable, godly, trustworthy men have been key to the development of today’s maturing men.)
Because men of Jeremiah’s time refused to stand in righteous submission to God and to exercise protective spiritual covering for their families, the Queen of Heaven seduced their entire households. And when God’s prophet confronted them with their sin, their response was far from repentant: “Then all the men who knew that their wives were burning incense to other gods, along with all the women who were present—a large assembly—said to Jeremiah, ‘We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord! We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our fathers, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm. But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine’” (vv.15-18).
The parallels to our times are hair-raising and heart-wrenching. Living in the midst of prosperity and following the “politically correct” ways of their society, the rebellious Israelites attributed their pleasure-filled lives to a demonic entity. However, these were the people who, in the holy city of Jerusalem where God’s Name dwelled, had been called to worship Him alone. When He brought to them the chastisement of famine and sword to turn their hearts back to them, they alienated themselves even further by returning to the seduction of the Queen of Heaven spirit.
Those men, as do many today, feared confronting their wives. And the wives, having manipulated their husbands into following their demonic goddess, then justified their sin by casting the blame on their husbands! “The women added, ‘When we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did not our husbands know that we were making cakes like her image and pouring out drink offerings to her?’” (v.19). By following a deity of their own design, the people whom God had chosen to serve Him alone defiantly and self-righteously slid into religious perdition.

“Living in Egypt” by Our Choices
I’m pursuing this biblical lesson in such detail because I believe the Spirit is warning us of the same pitfalls that led the women of Israel into such catastrophic departure from God. It’s often said that the Older Testament offers lessons in the physical realm that the Newer Testament then expands into the spiritual. Let’s together discover what Jesus is saying to the women of His Church at this point in time. “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: You and your wives have shown by your actions what you promised when you said, 'We will certainly carry out the vows we made to burn incense and pour out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven.' Go ahead then, do what you promised! Keep your vows! But hear the word of the Lord: 'I swear by my great name,' says the Lord, 'that no one from Judah living anywhere in Egypt will ever again invoke my name or swear, "As surely as the Sovereign Lord lives” (vv. 25,26).
We know that while our Lord is full of mercy, He doesn’t wink at sin. We can speak holy words and even teach biblical principles to others, but if we walk presumptuously into sin—be it independent self-rule, lust of the eyes, pride, bitterness—we are making “Egypt-lifestyle” choices. As James warns, we are enticed by the bait of our own desire, our own propensity to want it our way rather than God’s way. If we repeatedly give way to sin, that lifestyle choice will result in death (see James 1:14,15).

A Covering of Protection
Last month we joyfully celebrated the resurrection of our Lord Jesus, Whose blood covered over our sins. He was, and is, the perfect fulfillment of all the sacrifices made for sin that we read about in the Hebrew Scriptures. Prior to His wonderful atonement, the male Passover lamb provided the covering for each household, as instituted with the Israelites in their escape from Egypt. When the people were “covered”, they could walk freely as His people to fulfill His purposes.
This matter of covering is repeated in the marriage relationship. Just as Jesus is the head of a husband, a husband is the head of his wife (see 1Cor. 11:3). Under the covering of her husband, a wife is free to walk in the dignity and purpose and responsibility our Lord has established for her. As the wise rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel relates, it means nothing to a woman if a groom tells his wife that she’s now married. The reality of relationship comes when the man says, “You are married TO ME!” That TO ME connection makes all the difference. Several times when I’ve shown tendencies toward an independent spirit, Mike has stood me in front of him facing a mirror: “When you look at you, you see me. When you look at me, you see you too. We are ONE! You belong to me!” That connectedness is what our Father sees in the marriage covenant and in the oneness of His Spirit with our spirits.
This covering of protective authority operates for all those in the household as well. When we returned from Israel, we were living with Mike’s mom as she had asked us to do. One morning she was scurrying around the kitchen, all flustered because she was short of time and about to leave on a trip with other seniors. Mike asked what she was doing and she replied, “I have to make potato salad for the family picnic.” He responded, “But you’re not going to the picnic. You’re going on a bus trip.” “I know,” she answered, “but your Aunt___ will bad-mouth me to the family if I don’t drop off my salad.” At that point Mike stopped her. “Mom, with Dad gone, I’m the head of this household. You’re getting yourself all upset over something you DON’T NEED TO DO! Now get ready for your trip. The salad stays here!” And Mom, clearly relieved that she could now be at peace, left and had a great time. BUT Mom needed someone to exercise authority and direct her in such a way that she could find protective covering and peace.

Grandmothers—The Queen’s Best Allies
Grandmothers hold within their power great potential to either bless or destroy their families. Do you wonder how that can be? Check out Athaliah, the power-mad queen mother of 2 Kings 11 who slaughtered her grandchildren so that she herself could rule. How many women today have urged their unmarried pregnant daughters to abort their babies? How many have spoken ill against their children’s spouses or tolerated negative phone calls from their children against those spouses and thus given tacit consent to yet another family-destroying divorce?
The Queen of Heaven spirit pursues the power to end life and the power to control. It has found easy recruits among grandmothers who have no fruitful purpose or meaning for their lives. The self-gratification lifestyle justified by so many seniors the past few decades flies in the face of availability for God’s purposes. With their mouths they have destroyed their own families by breeding disloyalty and estrangement. Think of the mothers who set their adult children against each other by comparing one against another. One acquaintance is at wit’s end as he tries to honor his mother by meeting her needs but finds himself angry as she criticizes him on the phone to her other children because he won’t fulfill her hunger for luxuries!
I have observed firsthand among Mike’s female relatives a tendency to agitate relationships (and he encouraged me to share this as a warning to you if you’ve encountered this same situation). This has particularly been the case among the grandmothers in the family who have little with which to occupy themselves other than gossip and self-indulgence. They live as independent operators. Agitation takes the form of suspicions dropped like acid on your heart: “How long has your husband been eyeing the woman next door?” “Your daughter is sure wearing sleazy clothes. Is she sleeping around?” “If I were you, I wouldn’t let your husband get away with treating you like that.”
Sadly, like Mike’s male relatives, so many men refuse to confront their mothers to halt this destructive, unedifying chatter. Their wives then feel trapped by the Queen of Heaven who, as did her star pupil Jezebel, intimidates their men into silence. I’m grateful that my husband stepped into the gap whenever his mom tried that tactic over the years of her long widowhood. She later admitted that while she was at first angry, she saw Mike exercising godly authority and respected him for it. She told him, “Of all my children you love me the most, because it takes that kind of love to confront me.” How very true!

Confront Bearers of Ill Reports
If you desire shalom—the fullness of harmony and peace—in your home, sisters, DO NOT LISTEN to bad reports by either your mother or your mother-in-law. And men, exercise godly leadership by confronting the agitator in firm love to speak encouragement or to stop speaking until she can!
We have a dear friend who dreaded her mother’s annual week-long visit because it always ended in frustration and agitation. Over the years her mother had made it known to the entire family that she didn’t approve of her son-in-law. Her visits were marked by barbed comments and snide asides. The young man felt like a prisoner in his own household whenever his mother-in-law was there. But this visit was different. Our friend had purposed in her heart out of love and obedience to Jesus that she would honor her husband and confront any dishonor brought by her mother. The first two days of the visit passed without incident, but agitation began to brew as in the past in the form of insinuating comments. Our friend took her mother to lunch and firmly but lovingly made clear that such behavior and attitudes were dishonoring to both her and to her husband. What developed was two hours of honest and open conversation as the mother finally recognized in her daughter a loyalty and maturity she’d never chosen to admit before.
Don’t succumb to intergenerational bondage. If you are younger, remember that when you married, you LEFT your mother and father to become part of a new household led by your husband. DO NOT fall into the Queen of Heaven’s trap of grumbling to your mother about every little misdeed of your husband (or of your children either). Grant them the loving dignity of knowing that your home and the events that occur in it are not the subject of chatter or complaint. If you’re older, don’t tolerate or encourage your daughter or daughter-in-law to complain or grumble. Be a Titus 2 woman by living out what you know is biblical and godly, teaching from your life experiences and from lessons learned from others, how to truly love their husbands and children in a way that will produce fruitful life.
Your companion in our pilgrimage to His Throne, Sue
Ask yourself: Do my thoughts and words and actions show Jesus shining through me?