The Destruction of an Idolater
Martin’s paradise is revealed to be hell when his idol turns on him. This is the fate of all wicked idolaters who love themselves while insisting they love and serve God, caught in their own trap of pride and seeking the praise of men.
In our 2011 update, we said that Martin’s marriage to a “goddess” was ungodly and wouldn’t go well. It didn’t take long for this reality to manifest (as Martin ). Not only has Martin’s goddess ditched him a little after a year of matrimony, but he has been totally devastated once again, vainly trying to hang on to some hope of value in this fiasco while painting himself as a righteous martyr of Christ. It’s so greatly vexing to see and write about these things, but we must report them so others may know the truth and learn to fear God.
The Light of all men comes to reprove the works of darkness. If we don’t speak up, the stones themselves will cry out at the evil being perpetrated in the Name of Christ by such as Martin Zender. The time has come and even Martin, in all his vile pretentiousness, will be corrected by the Truth we preach.
According to the Lord’s victory over death and hell, Martin will also be humbled and brought to the place of confessing his sin. Who can resist God when He wills that all come to repentance? Yes, the victory is assured – the Lord our God is the Savior of all men.
What follows is Martin’s folly and blasphemy in his own words with our commentary.
Martin writes: “There was nothing I could do to stop [the divorce]. If I could have, I would have. Divorce is spiritually and morally repulsive to me. It always has been, and always will be. To me, it is a sentence worse than death, and I am living that death every day.”
Where have we heard that before? Martin said the same thing when his first wife left him:
“Divorce is spiritually repulsive to me, especially between members of Christ’s body. I tried everything, for a year, to conciliate her to me, but she was not interested…. She divorced me; I did not divorce her. I would never have done that, ever. I resisted it until I no longer could. So it ended.”
If divorce was so repugnant to him, what was Martin doing, as a divorced man, marrying a divorced woman?
“Everyone putting away his wife and marrying another commits adultery; and everyone marrying her who is put away from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18 MKJV).
But once again all we hear from Martin is theory and that about his own goodness and righteousness, a righteousness God says is the same as offering Him used menstrual pads (Isaiah 64:6).
“I marry for life, and love for life. This destruction is not of my doing. Far from it.”
Martin sanctimoniously declares he marries for life – so why did he marry again? And are all marriages sanctified by God? Didn’t we just quote the Lord’s words declaring otherwise – that those who are brought together by God commit adultery if they divorce and remarry?
Who says slapping a government certified marriage license on top of a relationship makes it a sanctified marriage in God’s sight? What does the Lord say about marriages of fornication?
“And I say to you, Whoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication [unlawfully joined together], and shall marry another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is put away commits adultery” (Matthew 19:9 MKJV).
As we said before, Martin’s marriage to Rebecca Tonn wasn’t of God. It was conceived in lust and delusion. Yet God is over all, and He did bring Martin together with Rebecca for judgment, just as He delivers insincere professors of Christ over to the strong delusion of false teachers. God is judging Martin for his wicked ways, which he has never acknowledged or repented of. On the contrary, he continuously vaunts himself as at least innocent, if not pure and holy, while God’s wrath pours down on him.
“This brings up the question of why God would go to all the trouble to unite us—especially under the banner of Paul’s evangel—only to destroy us. I have two theories, but will not state them. Time will have to pass. Needless to say, I have had my ‘moments’ with God over this. It has been the trial of my life.”
Martin doesn’t stop to consider that the things he has been told about his wicked ways are true, and that as he’s sown, so he reaps. He’s been stubbornly resisting the truth from the outset of our correspondence seven years ago, and he’s still at it now during this second “trial of his life.”
“…2009 was the worst year of my life. God dropped me, His earthen vessel, onto a spinning wheel that, in my worst nightmares, I could never have anticipated… my wife of 26 years left me.”
Three years after his first trial, Martin is wailing again in the self-pity of unbelief, after his new “wife” of one year left him:
“How could this possibly have happened? Everyone thought we were the perfect couple.”
Did they? Even if so, is Martin justified by the carnal judgment of men, no matter how many agree? Is the Catholic Church right? Is Muhammad right? Doesn’t it only matter what the Lord says about the marriage? “Let God be true, but every man a liar.”
These thoughts don’t enter into Martin’s thinking because he doesn’t know or follow Christ as Lord. He does his own thing using Jesus Christ’s Name and seeks the esteem or approval of men. He is in all darkness, deceived.
“The main issue in all of this is that a believing member of the body of Christ has divorced another believing member, with no grounds.”
There are no believers here. God used one tare to judge another, and both are judged for taking His Name in vain.
It’s also not true that everyone thought they were the perfect couple, unless one takes “perfect” to mean “perfectly set up by God for judgment.” We spoke in the Lord’s Name against the idolatrous farce of this marriage:
“Will his present marriage work? We now declare that unless things change, it won’t work at all, not if God has anything to say about it.”
The truth is always present for those with ears to hear. No one can say they weren’t warned or that God is unrighteous when He judges.
But the wicked will never accept responsibility for the evil they suffer, not being willing or able to admit their own culpability. That’s why Martin finds others to blame for the judgment he brought on himself:
“It is the long string of evil men—and others—who are responsible for the disintegration of our marriage. Because of them, my wife is emotionally incapable of providing those things necessary to a healthy marital union: love, commitment, forgiveness, compassion.”
Where is the Lord in all of this? What happened to His teaching that promises forgiveness that brings healing and deliverance to those who forgive?
“And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:12-15 EMTV).
As a presumed believer, where was Rebecca’s forgiveness of those who hurt her? Where was Martin’s and his associates’ discernment as supposed Christians and ministers of God? How could they approve and celebrate the marriage of a woman clearly in unforgiveness, who wasn’t capable of undertaking matrimony’s weighty responsibilities and trials, according to her own words:
“Our heavenly Father knew that with my background I could not be with a man who so much as raised his voice. Martin never does. I would crumple inside. I would have flashbacks and such fright that I would shut down to him. Emotional walls grow thick and stubborn after years of anxiety and fear.”
Martin isn’t just a false teacher who has led captive silly women laden with sins, but has himself been led captive by such a woman. Listen to him pleading with his goddess to whom he entrusted his life:
“I gave my heart to her, and she served it back. I gave her my life, which she promised to keep until the return of Jesus, and she discarded it. ‘Take care of yourself,’ she said. But, Rebecca! You promised before God to love and take care of me. And now, because of two months of struggle, you live and act and breathe as though this vow and this commitment never occurred, and was never voiced. Disbelief still washes over me.”
Poor jilted Martin! He would have you commiserate with him while simultaneously being awed by his moral fortitude and rectitude. But he certainly didn’t have any compassion on the man whose wife left him after reading Martin’s book. When that man brought up his pain and suffering in a much milder manner than these hysterics, Martin mocked him in an article posted on his site – Dear Oh Me, Oh My.
Who says there isn’t a God Who sees to it that a man reaps according to what he has sown?
Martin willingly made himself the supplicant to an idealized sex goddess who, after mating with him, consumed him like a black widow.
Here is a paean Rebecca composed to her sexual divinity and veneration by Martin Zender:
“My precious husband,
I am so grateful to God for graciously granting me a
husband who understands and lives Ephesians, chapter 5.
When you look deep into my
eyes, while you are deep inside Me,
this eon is more glorious than I ever imagined.
Your arms around Me,
Your lips on Mine,
Your body entwined with Mine,
Your love surrounding Me—
You—have bathed Me in glory.
I treasure your worship
your love
your heart.
For the eon and beyond,
Your loving wife, Rebecca”
What a perverse interpretation of Ephesians 5, which talks about the husband loving, not worshipping, the wife, with a small, not a capital, “w.” The chapter ends by saying the wife should reverence her husband, but that certainly wasn’t the scene at the Zender-Tonn household. Martin describes it as follows:
“For a year, I never showed even a hint of irritation, let alone raised my voice, to my wife. I literally knelt before her daily in adoration, kissed and washed her feet, served her coffee and breakfast in bed nearly every morning, stood whenever she entered the room, never ate a bite of food before she did, gave her every cent of my money, every cent of my care and attention, every cent of my heart. According to her own testimony in this newsletter, written just six months ago:
‘Tears flowed [today] because of the tender, loving ministrations of my husband, Martin Zender. Each day, every day, many times a day, I thank God for Martin. My heart fills with gratitude and joy. Can you say, “Principle of contrast”? Martin treats me as the apostle Paul told men to treat their wives: “As Christ also loves the ecclesia, and gives Himself up for it” (Ephesians 5:25). Martin walks, lives, and breathes that verse, pondering what he can do to make my life better or easier, including doing dishes every day, leaving hidden love notes around our apartment, or waiting patiently while I try to do one last thing before we go somewhere. Martin never yells, never belittles or criticizes me, never gets angry with me.‘”
While the Lord is our Provider and takes good care of those He loves, His betrothed, He also doesn’t cater to His wife’s every fleshly whim. He didn’t make Himself our slave for our carnal satisfaction, which would leave us in our selfishness and sickness, but laid down His life in order that we would do the same and be healed and saved by following Him. Zender and Tonn’s relationship had nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus Christ or the way He teaches us to care for one another.
Martin writes: “By agreement, our marriage was set up with her as the dominant partner, and me the submissive one. These were more sexual than lifestyle roles (they answered to our respective bents), but we both agreed to try the lifestyle. I soon realized how untenable and unscriptural it was. It dawned on me that my wife’s need to dominate men stemmed from the damage wreaked upon her by them. My need to be dominated, on the other hand, was a classic blurring of fantasy and reality. We thus became a perfect storm. Thankfully, my motion toward health and balance—though it rocked her at first—became agreeable to my wife. A counselor suggested we re-write our wedding vows, and a section of hers read: ‘It will be healthier for BOTH of us to have an equal balance of power in our relationship. I look forward to both of us making these changes.‘”
Is the wife equal to the husband in authority? That’s the same as saying the man is equal to Christ in authority in his relationship with God. Which really means man continues to follow Satan the usurper, demanding equality with God while making it appear he is lovingly submitted. That’s the way of the liar and murderer. (Read The Vashti-Esther Transmutation.)
As has been said, the Zender-Tonn marriage wasn’t a holy union ordained by God. It was a marriage coveted and pursued by an arrogant man in the thrall of sin. And Martin continually justifies himself in his sin rather than repenting of it. He presents his destruction under the wrath of God as an attack of the Devil on his presumed sanctified marriage and ministry.
“Are you recognizing the source of these attacks? Are you seeing our Adversary’s purpose in them?”
Yes, Martin Zender, we see God as your Adversary because you have been His unrepentant enemy:
“With the pure You reveal Yourself as pure; and with the perverting ones You appear perverse” (Psalms 18:26 LITV).
You’re the one troubling your house on account of hanging on to your sins for dear life. Your vehement protests against your just punishment call for more strokes as you vaunt yourself, proclaiming your innocence, great love, and understanding – all disgusting delusions of a self-righteous fool. You continually blaspheme the Name of God in all you say and do.
Martin continues to try to win back Rebecca with cloying flattery and self-pity thinly disguised as compassion:
“I do not condemn my wife. I feel compassion for her; I love her. She has been through hell in her life. I realize that it is not the real her who is doing these things. This is why I despise the men—and others—who so damaged her over the years….”
“Beneath her pain, she is such a loving woman. She is a kind, merciful, and caring person. It is this thing inside her—this body of pain— that makes her something completely different. She is presently an unwitting and unconscious accomplice to evil. Do not hold it against her.”
Is Tonn sinless? If Rebecca offends God and man on account of her past associations, why doesn’t Martin allow that those who damaged her were acting on the same impulse, from injuries they also suffered at the hands of others? Why isn’t Martin crying and praying for their healing and restoration to God? I’ll tell you why – because Martin is a selfish, lying bastard who cares not one whit for anyone but himself. He doesn’t even care for Rebecca – she only serves as an idol whose altar he has set up to worship himself and his perverted desires.
What happened to the Scriptures Paul recites in Romans 3, which tells us the true state of every person born on earth as profligate sinners? Obviously Rebecca still occupies the position of goddess on the altar Martin made before he married her, which is his fault alone. Even Rebecca now refuses him and his idolatrous worship.
Martin continues: “Still, my love, I love you. I love you so much, and always will. I cannot explain such love, except to say that it is divine. God has given me this love for you. Its source is so pure that it will never, ever go away.”
How disgusting and utterly degrading is Zender’s display of pathetic pandering. But for him to present carnal love (lust) as the love of Christ is truly the worst of the worst. He goes on and on explaining and bemoaning his marital disappointment and the alleged unfairness of the treatment he received, elevating himself as a martyr for Christ. Since when did any saint or martyr of Christ speak or do anything remotely like this? Indeed, trying to pass off his total self-absorption as dying for Christ is the most heinous and despicable thing one might ever see.
“There are many, many reasons why I hate this divorce. Among them is the damage it does to the message we herald, and to those in the body of Christ who looked up to us as strong believers in the faith. The apostle Paul was so concerned about behavior because he knew it reflected upon the message.”
If only Martin was concerned about his ungodly behavior. He was bringing disrepute to the Name of Christ a long time before this marital debacle. We called on him to repent, but he mocked and despised the Lord. We have also called on those who follow his pernicious ways, and look up to Martin as a “strong believer in the faith,” to repent. Otherwise they perish with him.
Martin has heaped scorn on many for years before his divorces occurred. Now God heaps on him the harvest he has inflicted on others. And it isn’t finished.
No doubt God has hardened Martin Zender to destroy him, an example to all of the wages of sin and lawlessness. Those who believe will see and know it even now.
“And they will go out and see the dead bodies of the men who have sinned against Me; for their worm will not die, nor will their fire be put out; and they will be an object of disgust to all flesh” (Isaiah 66:24 MKJV).
Victor Hafichuk
August 2013
Martin Zender – The Gospel as Ridicule and Entertainment
The self-proclaimed “World’s Most Outspoken Bible Scholar” professes to have all the answers for “freedom-seekers,” but the only freedom he imparts is from God’s ways and His righteousness. He has mistaken carnal knowledge of the Scriptures for Life, feeding others the bitterness and cynicism he labels “theotainment.” While rejecting the illegitimate church systems of men, he has more importantly rejected the Lord Jesus Christ, wrongly equating being anti-church with being Christian. He ridicules the ridiculous and the holy alike, making no distinction because he cannot see any, but we have come to make them known in the Light of all men.
Return to Zender – The Fruit of His Doings
The Scriptures say to mark the perfect man and note the upright, for his end is peace (Psalm 37:37). It is safe to follow such a one. But it isn’t safe to follow a mocker and scorner like Martin Zender, who reaps bitter fruits with the promise of more to come, because he hardens himself in evil. Woe to those who follow him.
The Wicked Despise Haters of Evil
My, how the wicked come to the defense of evildoers, not because they care about anyone or anything besides themselves – they are compelled to speak up for their own justification. The advent of light threatens their darkened hiding places. Here is what God says of them: “But these, as unreasoning natural brute animals having been born for capture and corruption, speak evil of the things that they do not understand. And they will utterly perish in their own corruption” (2 Peter 2:12 MKJV).