Once again, it's the genocide charge against Israel. What is really happening in Gaza? It's time for the Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on the Line of Fire.
And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. You've got basically a million and a half refugees in a difficult situation already. Then Israel says, okay, Hamas is still not turning over the hostages. Hamas is still not surrendering. We have to go in and take them out now.
They remain there. And it's amazing that the international pressure is constantly on Israel to stop what they're doing in their war against Hamas, as opposed to the international pressure on Hamas to release all the hostages. Under every law, under every custom, under every ethical tradition, what Hamas did is completely illegal and completely outrageous. Not just the attack on civilians and the rape and the murder and all of that, but the taking of hostages. But no, Israel is wrong, wrong, wrong, uproar. Okay, so the United States puts pressure on Israel to delay what they're doing or lessen the intensity of it. Israel is able to help relocate about one million refugees to what they say is a safe zone, so they can go into Rafah and take out these last Hamas strongholds and do their best to get the hostages free. And on a certain level, the only real way to get the hostage is free.
God knows the condition of them and who's died, et cetera. Just such a tragic, horrific situation. But the only way to secure their freedom is by crushing Hamas. Hamas is not going to give in for any other reason. They capitulated very quickly at the beginning because they suffered such devastating losses. And this was their way of just trying to buy little time. So in any case, Israel now operating in Rafah, it is estimated, according to what I've heard, that about 20% of Israeli casualties are due to friendly fire.
Twenty percent. Think of that. So this is how difficult the warfare is. This is how enmeshed it is in kind of guerrilla warfare in different settings. And you think it's the enemy you're shooting at. It turns out it's your own people. Turns out it's your own people. So these are tragic realities, but this is how difficult it is to conduct the war. And often that's the case. I was watching a YouTube channel with an Israeli commentator who's a tour guide. It's just very reasonable is what he's saying.
He goes, look, war is hell. You just have to understand this happens in wars and civilians get killed. You do best to avoid it, but it absolutely happens.
I'm going to share some things Dennis Prager said about that that I think are relevant. But what happened a few days back was that Israel drops a bomb. Next thing in the safe zone, a terrible fire breaks out. Dozens of people burned alive. Dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, burned alive, died in horrific fire. And God knows the condition of those who survived. I've heard numbers in the 40s in terms of those killed.
I don't know what the final numbers were. Absolutely horrific. And I'm looking on X, on what was Twitter. I'm looking at feeds there and they're showing pictures and saying, this is what Israel did. This is your genocidal nation that you support.
Look at how evil they are. So did they do this intentionally? Did they evacuate people there and now bomb them and tragic? Well, Prime Minister Netanyahu within a day or so says a tragic mistake. We did everything.
We investigated. We did everything we did to make sure that we were only bombing the Hamas terrorists and that they were at a distance from the tents and that there's no connection between them, where the civilians were. But it's a tragic mistake.
This is what happened. Well, as so I made a statement because I want to be very clear on this because I've said it endlessly, that the death of a Palestinian child is just as grievous as the death of an Israeli child. And that the suffering of innocent civilians on either side is horrific and painful. And right out of the gate, once the atrocities happened and we got news of the extent of the horror of what Hamas did, that right out of the gate I said, we need to be praying for Palestinians in Gaza because Israel is going to respond strongly.
They have to. And this is another outrage. This is equivalent population Israel compared to America. This would be the equivalent of a 9-11 happening multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple times in a day. And then thousands and thousands of Americans taken hostage in a place like Afghanistan or something. It's just it's outrageous.
It's extraordinary what happened, the scope of it. So, you know, Israel is going to strike back forcefully and Hamas is embedded within civilian populations. Yes, they do use people as human shields. Yes, it is true.
They're embedded there. And many Palestinians are going to die. This is grievous, too, no matter what Israel does. Well, what actually happened here, though?
What actually happened in this case? Well, the IDF immediately began to say, no, no, no, look, this is, this is the reality. Reality is Hamas terrorists were over here. They were, they were hundreds of feet or hundreds of yards from, from the civilians.
We bombed them. It looks like there was a secondary explosion that was caused because Hamas had munitions. Hamas was storing their munitions right next to them. Next to the civilian tents, which is again, outrageous.
You bring the people there to get away, to be safe. And then if these reports are true, Hamas is storing its weapons right there, right there. So Israel bombs correctly where they should be, where the terrorists were, separate location, not knowing that they're munitions, that there's all kinds of volatile ammunition from Hamas right next to the civilians. That's the secondary blast. In other words, if this is true, it was Hamas weapons, Hamas weaponry placed next to civilian tents that caused these horrific deaths. Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The word is out.
The account is out. The world perception is Israel bombed innocent Palestinian civilians because that's what Israel does. Interestingly, interestingly, the American response was Israel did not cross a red line.
Israel is conducting its operations in Rafah in accordance with our guidelines. They did not cross a red line, which would indicate, number one, they know that under no circumstances would Israel do this intentionally. If they wanted to do it intentionally, they would have wiped out everyone in Gaza in a matter of days. If they wanted to commit genocide, they would have done it and they could have done it. It remains the objective.
It remains the objective not to do this. It remains the objective not to kill civilians, which is why Prime Minister Netanyahu says a tragic mistake. But now looking into it more, apparently not even a tragic mistake, more of Hamas evil that Israel was unaware of. In any case, before the reports came out that these may have been, the deaths may have been caused, the tragic horrific deaths may have been caused by Hamas weapons being there, I posted and I said I mourn the deaths of all those who were killed. And as careful as Israel is trying to be, it's an absolute tragedy this has happened. There are some right wing extremists in Israel who made light of this and laughed. And it's a time of what's called the counting of the Omer, which is the time in between Passover and Pentecost, Passover and Shavuot on the biblical calendar.
And there's a certain day where you have these bonfires and they're like, yeah, that's their bonfire. So I denounced. This is not the population. This is not the majority of the population. This is a very, very small, radical minority of the population represented in these comments. But I denounced those comments.
It turns out though, I did that because I want people to understand that these are my sentiments. This is where I stand. But it turns out that it could well be that these deaths were again, the direct result of Hamas weaponry. Just like when Israel got accused early on, they bombed the hospital and 500 people were killed. No such thing happened.
It was a failed Palestinian rocket and it landed in a parking lot next to the hospital. And there were scores of casualties, but it was their own friendly fire. Yet the word is out and it says out, Israel bombed the hospital and now Israel bombed innocent civilians in tents.
That word is out. And as best as we can tell, it is completely false. Let me read to you what Dennis Prager said. He's talking about the blood libel in the past where Jews were accused of killing a child or a priest, a Christian child or priest, and then taking their blood and using it to make unleavened bread. So Prager says that the current blood libel, the new blood libel is that Israel's committing genocide.
So he goes through some of the stats as I have as well. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, this Dennis Prager, in 1948, there were 1,380,000 Palestinians in Israel and the greater Palestinian area or Palestine area. As of 2022, there were 7,000,000. In other words, there were now five times as many Palestinians in their Palestinian territories and in Israel as there were in 1948. So how is that genocide when the people group has grown by five times, by 500%?
You say, but they have high birth rates. Yeah, but it's not that Israel's slaughtering them so rapidly and the high birth rates are the only thing to explain. Israel's not slaughtering them.
This is not what's been happening. People say it's been happening since 1948, genocide. Well, how does it go from a million, say roughly 1.4 million Palestinians in 48 to 7 million?
It's more than that now in 2024. If it's genocide, how does the population multiply by five times? The genocide of Jews in Europe meant for every three Jews that was there before, there was one afterwards that the population went from 9 million to 3 million. Or the population of Poland went from 3.3 million Jews to 0.3 million. That's genocide. When a population grows by 500% friends, that is not genocide. Prager goes through a few things that he thinks are helpful to understand. First, as Israeli officials have repeatedly stated, if Hamas released the hostages and surrendered, Israel would have ceased its bombing of Gaza.
And second, World War II brings us to more proof that the charge of Israeli genocide is a lie. How? We'll tell you on the other side of the break. We'll take your calls to 866-348-7884. Thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His mercy endures forever. 866-344-TRUTH.
Go to your calls shortly. But remember the explanation of Natan Sharansky, famous Russian Jewish dissident, now political leader in Israel. Sharansky said that anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitism in three ways. When it demonizes Israel, when it presents a false picture of the nation as a whole, when it delegitimizes Israel, Israel has no right to exist. And when it uses double standards against Israel, then anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitism. So Dennis Prager is pointing out, in terms of this last point, double standards, he says this, World War II brings us to more proof that the charge of Israeli genocide is a lie. No one ever accused America or Britain of committing genocide against Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Even those who now maintain that the Allied bombing of Dresden and other German cities was morally wrong do not accuse the United States or Britain of having committed genocide.
So why is Israel so charged? No one's in the midst of war, you're bombing an enemy, there are many civilian casualties, but no one was saying genocide was being committed. Even to this day, people do not accuse the Allies of the United States of the genocide of the German people. But Israel gets accused. He said third, during World War II, it was almost universally understood that every German death by the Allies was caused by the Nazi regime, and every Japanese death was caused by the Japanese Fascist regime.
Had there been no Nazi invasions of European countries, and no Japanese bombing of the United States, and invasions of myriad Asian countries, there would have been no World War II, and therefore no bombing of German and Japanese cities. Likewise, if there is no Hamas and no October 7th, there would be no Israeli bombing of Gaza. Every dead Palestinian in Gaza is a result of Hamas's actions. Prager says fourth, Hamas is responsible for every dead Gazan for another reason. Hamas uses Gazan civilians as human shields. And fifth, despite far larger mass killings around the world, only Israel is widely charged with genocide. He goes on with the list of, for example, Boko Haram in Nigeria.
Some of our friends work right there and have lived side by side with this. They murdered more than 60,000 Christians. Where are the left-wing protests over this?
I'm talking about butchered and cold blood and horrific suffering. Where are all the protests about this? Where's the uproar about this? Where are the charges of genocide?
And on, and on it goes. Prager says the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has just revised its child fatality figure in the Gaza more sharply downward. On May 6th, it reported more than 14,500 deaths.
Two days later, it reported 7,797. They also revised downward their figure for women fatalities from 9,500 to 4,959. In other words, all the mainstream Western media have reported this truth the lies Hamas announced about the number of Gazan women and children killed by Israeli bombs. So it's a shame that these people have died.
A terrible, terrible shame. I cannot imagine the suffering of the people right now. But it remains the fault of Hamas.
It is plain and simple. And Israel continues to do what it can to conduct warfare in the most ethical way. There will be civilian casualties.
They're unavoidable. Put the vast blame at the feet of Hamas and the incredible blame for some that didn't have to happen at the feet of the IDF. But their own people, the IDF soldiers are being killed by friendly fire. It is tragic, but these things happen. All right, we'll go to the phones and then get back to more, more issues about having to do with Israel today.
Let's start in Orlando, Florida. Joshua, welcome to the line of fire. Hey, Dr. Brown, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, awesome. I love your ministry.
Thank you for taking my call. I'd like to ask a question that's based on the Jewish sacrificial system. And the reason I'm asking is a dear friend of mine is being swayed toward re-orthodoxy, but it's heavily influenced by the fact that he substitution does not is not in the Old Testament.
And he's a he's a pastor, and I don't see how he can't see that. Is there a way that you could argue from the Jewish perspective that the penal substitution is definitely in the Old Testament Levitical side because he's taking it? Yeah, so let's not use the word penal. Let's just use the word substitution.
All right, because there are in some people's minds, there's more to it when you add the word penal in. All right, so just for simplicity's sake, the substitutionary atonement taught in the Levitical system. So I would go to Leviticus 16. I would look at what happens on the Day of Atonement with the goat that is slaughtered and its blood is used to bring atonement to Israel and the goat that escapes into the wilderness. What happens? The high priest lays his hands on that animal, confesses over it the sins of Israel and sends it off. That's substitution. That animal now symbolically carries the sins away while the other dies for those sins.
Okay, so you can't have a clearer image than that. Leviticus 17 11, which lays out why you can't eat blood because the life of the flesh is in it and God's given it for atonement on the altar. What's the principle? It is life for life. So the reason the blood makes atonement is because blood represents the life.
So it's life for life. You can even read through in Leviticus 1-7 in some of the sacrificial rites, the one offering the animal would lay their hands on the animal. That is symbolizing transfer, substitution. Then just go to a verse like Isaiah 53 6, which says all of us like sheep have gone astray, we've returned our own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Is that not a clear and definite picture of substitution?
So just like the ram in Genesis 22, the ram that was stuck in the thicket took the place of Isaac. The whole idea is the Messiah takes our place. And you just feel that the word penal is too much to add to that and like maybe the reformationist did that and it's not necessarily exactly the right thing. All I'm saying is, yeah, thank you for asking. Thank you so much for asking. In some people's minds, when you say penal substitutionary atonement, you now immediately bring in the idea of the wrath of God being poured out on Jesus on the cross and various other elements, which all may be true, but are not necessarily what's being taught in the Levitical system.
So if I'm talking to a Jewish person, I want to get the maximum truth across with the minimum stumbling block, right? So substitution is something we can all understand. This one took my place. That should have been me. I was guilty. I deserve that. That one took my place. That person paid my debt. That death penalty was coming on me.
It came on them. In the minds of certain Reformed people, penal substitutionary atonement also presupposes Calvinism, presupposes five points of Calvinism. So it may mean different things to different people. So in this dialogue, in the situation you're talking about, sir, it's not necessary to bring that in. Just focus on the substitutionary issue. Is that taught in the Levitical system?
And I'm 100% sure that it is. You know, last example, it's a derived one, but in Numbers 35, bloodshed pollutes the land. And the only way to remove the pollution is the blood of the one who shed it. So you kill someone, your blood shed, now it removes the pollution. Well, what happens when it's innocent blood? When it's an accident?
You're chopping with an axe, the axe head goes flying, kills somebody. Well, you could go to the city of refuge. How long could you stay there? You had to stay there the rest of your life or until the death of the high priest.
Why? Because the high priest represented the people. Oh, I see. And the death of the high priest freeze this person.
It should have been their own blood, but the death of the high priest takes their place. All right. Hey, we're out of time. Thank you for the question. God bless.
Thank you. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.
Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back friends to the line of fire. Have you visited our website recently?
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There's a really fascinating article posted on the stream this week where I write four or five articles a week. What the Mexican War of the 1850s can teach us today about the Israel-Hamas conflict. Do you think America needs to give Texas back to Mexico? Or New Mexico back to Mexico? Or much of California back to Mexico? No?
How about Arizona? Well, I'll tell you about that article in a minute. Let's go.
All right, tell you what, I was going to go back to the phones, but I'm just going to hold off on that for one minute while we're getting a couple of people organized there. So the article is written by William Kilpatrick. And he says, no one denies the legitimacy of Pakistan, which was created at the same time as the modern state of Israel, but with far more bloodshed.
Why? And Dennis Prager pointed this out as well. Well, it happened. There was a war of independence, and that's what happened. Or how about the United States? So it's one thing to argue about our stealing of land from Native Americans, all that, that whole history.
It's a whole separate thing. But there was a war 1846, 1858. During this time, the United States stole a vast stretch of its present territory from the Mexicans. So the present-day states, ready, of Texas, California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma owe their existence to a war we fought with Mexico. So this is what happens, culminating in 1850, that we went to war with them, and then ultimately, ultimately worked out an arrangement with the Mexican government where we paid them roughly 5 cents an acre for everything that we had acquired in war. And we had the superior army. We had the superior equipment, superior rifles, and things like that. That's, it was a war.
That's what we ended up with. So Israel, in a war, ends up with certain territory. That's what, that's how borders are formed.
That's what happens. Why is it okay for everybody else? It's not for Israel. Interestingly, Kilpatrick says in this article that the only superiority that Mexico had was the moral higher ground, because Mexico outlawed slavery in 1829, and it took Americans another 35 years to do it. And the Mexicans didn't want their territory to be slave territory.
Yeah, who teaches that in history? 866-3-4 truth. Let's go over to Paul in Colorado Springs. Welcome to the line of fire.
Thank you so much, and I appreciate the work you're doing. Just have a quick question. Are there any Jewish teachings suggesting or refuting that God was married, or did the Jewish scholars ever discuss the idea of a heavenly mother? I come from a Mormon background, and so I'm not coming at it from that angle, because Mormonism does teach of such a thing. But I was approached last night by a different religious organization trying to recruit to their church that is taking the term Elohim and trying to apply it as a plural Godhead, not the Trinity, but God the Father and God the Mother.
And I was able to discuss it. Zero in Judaism. That's as crazy as Mormonism. The images you have, for example, Israel is called God's son, right? Not in a physical, literal, begetting way, but Exodus 4, the message to Pharaoh, B'ni b'chorri Israel, Israel is my son, my firstborn. Then Israel is likened as a wife in Jeremiah 2 or Ezekiel 16 or other passages. So Israel is a wife that goes astray, and when she worships other idols, it's like sleeping with other men. But these are all metaphors.
These are all figures of speech. God is eternal and solely God. Only He existed in eternity, and He is complex in His unity as Father, Son, Spirit. But it is exclusively God. There is no heavenly mother. There is no divine consort. That is pure idolatry. That is paganism. That's what the ancients believed, that you had these different deities, the male and female deities, etc.
Absolutely not. That was 100% contrary to Israelite religion on every score. And the idea that Elohim is plural with the mother and the father is utter nonsense. Thank you so much. Yeah, you are very well.
I could not underscore the level of nonsense it is, except to tell you it is 100% false on every level. All right, thank you, sir, for the call. Appreciate it. You know, coming out of Mormonism, you hopefully have a nose for other heresies, and you kind of learn to steer in the middle of the stream.
Let's go over to Jonathan in Michigan. Welcome to the Line of Fire. How are you doing, Dr. Brown? Doing well, thank you.
Good, good. I actually want to just ask you a quick question in regards to the Jewish people. I know in 1948, I believe, you know, a lot of people see that as a return of the people coming back to the land. In Deuteronomy 30, it talks about how the Jewish people needed to keep the law and everything, and once God sees them do that, He'll bring them back. Now, would you say that they actually have to uphold, like, everything in the law, like the Sabbath days, the feast days, you know, things of that nature, because it seems like they're so adamant in keeping these particular things.
They're very, very, like, matter of fact about it. Would you say Deuteronomy 30 is the reason behind that for the Jews that are in the diaspora, and that they actually do need to keep the Sabbath and everything? Like, is that what Deuteronomy 30 is pointing to? Right, so first thing is, Deuteronomy 30 is in conjunction with the Sinai Covenant, which God gave to Israel then, and tells the Jewish people when we're scattered around the world in sin and disobedience, if we will repent and do what's in the Sinai Covenant, so observing the Sabbath and worshipping one God only, not stealing, not committing adultery, etc., if we will turn to God and repentance, He will bring us back to the land.
Is that what happened now? No, He brought us back to the land without our repentance. It's Ezekiel 36, where God says, I'm going to bring you back because my name is being blasphemed.
I'm going to bring you back for my purposes and my sake, even though you haven't repented, and then once you're in the land, I'll pour clean water on you. So we have not seen Deuteronomy 30 actually happen. Now, that being said, yeah, in other words, the vast majority of the people of Israel are not living as traditional Jews. Those that are zealously keeping the Sabbath and zealously following the commandments as best as they understand, that's the minority of the people.
A city like Tel Aviv, you know, big city in Israel, is anything but religious, right? So we have not witnessed the return based on Deuteronomy 30. We've witnessed the return based on the mercy of God and the purposes of God. That being said, what would repentance look like in the Jewish world? Well, in the consciousness of rabbis and Jewish people around the world right now, since they don't understand who Jesus is, they don't understand the fullness of the gospel, in their mind, repentance would mean going back and doing what's written in the law and following the traditions that have been passed on. Full and full and true repentance would mean recognizing Jesus as the Messiah. That would be the ultimate repentance. But under Deuteronomy 30, which is in the context of the Sinai Covenant, what's written there, what's written in the five books of Moses, how those been understood in Jewish tradition, that's what would be expected of Jewish people today in the Jewish world. So if you're a religious Jew and you're praying for the repentance of the people as a whole, you're praying that they'll observe the law of Moses and follow the traditions and believing that God would have mercy and bring the people back. So Sabbath observance and the feasts and holy days and the dietary laws and the daily prayers and things like that, that that would constitute repentance.
What I'm saying is the fullest repentance would be then the revelation of who Jesus Yeshua actually is. Wow, that would an answer. Thank you so much for that, Dr. Brown. I really appreciate that.
Well, thanks for your enthusiasm and hearing it, man. God bless. Yes, sir. Bless you.
866-3-4, truth. You know what it reminds me of? I'm looking at my son-in-law and just through a screen here, his son, our grandson, Andrew, you answer his question, what a great thanks.
That's exactly what I needed. So I love hearing the enthusiasm and hearing the answer there. So I have a question.
I have a question. Getting back to Israel here, getting back to Israel. Why is it that Israel has no right to land acquired in war? When a two-state solution was offered to Arabs and Jews in 1937, it was adamantly refused by Arabs, even though it was the vast bulk of the land would be theirs, adamantly refused by them, grudgingly accepted by Jewish leadership.
That didn't happen. 1947 UN partition plan refused by Arab leadership. They weren't called Palestinian then. Refused by Arab leadership, accepted by Jewish leadership.
Now, they're still getting the majority of the land, but less than they would have under the Peel Commission proposal. What do they do? They immediately attack. They immediately attack. That is the very first thing that happens. They attack the people of Israel physically. They shoot up a bus, killing a number of people. This is the very first thing that happens. When Israel declares its independence in 1948, the five surrounding Arab nations attack Israel in a fight for its survival, just a few years after the Holocaust, remember.
It's not for sympathy. I'm just saying, this is the reality. This is what happens. Israel fights back. Israel now expands its territory a little bit as a result. That's what happens in war. And that's what happens when you attack.
If you get pushed back, there may be a buffer now. There may be land now where you are going to be safer. And the same thing happened in 1967 with the borders there, with the expansion of borders. This is what happens during war.
It's how nations are formed and grow. Why does it not work for Israel? Shalom. Shalom.
It is Thoroughly Jewish, Thursday 866-348-7884. Can I tell you something remarkable, friend? For 52 plus years, I have been telling my Jewish people, you need Jesus to be saved, forgiven, cleansed. I have been well-known in certain places, the best-known voice, speaking to rabbis, as an apologist, saying that without Jesus, Yeshua, we have no salvation, that forgiveness only comes through the blood of Messiah. I've said that over and over, published thousands of pages saying that very thing, preached endless messages saying that very thing, had countless debates saying that very thing. And yet, the moment I say that Israel is not guilty of genocide, you're just a Jew pleasing, you don't even believe in Jesus, you'd be amazed at the level of response. Or, for example, when I call out the anti-Semitism of Martin Luther, I'm seeing posts from professing Christians. You're a wishy washy Christian. When are you going to call out your own people the way you call out Luther? You're not even saved. Seriously.
Seriously. Now, I fully believe that there are critical issues that must be addressed in the here and now with the people of Israel. I believe my people need to repent on many, many different fronts. In the land of Israel itself, 70% of the population is not religious. There is a lot of gay activism in Israel. There is a lot of radical feminism in Israel. There is loose ideas of abortion.
And then the very, very religious would despise the message that I bring. Israel needs to repent. Israel is not this, oh, the holy land and the holy people and it's just so perfect. No, it's a nation like others.
In many ways, it's a highly moral nation and it conducts itself in ways that are much better than surrounding nations. But, yeah, Israel needs to be saved, like America needs to be saved, and Russia needs to be saved, Japan needs to be saved, and Saudi Arabia needs to be saved. Yes.
Yes. Can you not say that, calling your people to repent and yet speaking the truth about other things? Can you not call that and yet call out anti-Semitism? Can you not call out your own people's sins as well as the sins of others? Why are we so touchy in the church that the moment we call out anti-Semitism in the church or Israel bashing in the church that we're no longer safe? Does salvation require that you are an anti-Semite? Does salvation require that you are some kind of militant anti-Zionist?
Does salvation require that you defend the vile, ugly remarks of Martin Luther at the end of his life? Come on, friends. What?
What is that? The reason is the anti-Semitic spirit is rising again in the church and we are going to call it out. Let me just tell you something. When we do, all hell breaks loose.
It breaks loose. 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go back to the phones, Sean and Raleigh.
Glad you called. What's on your mind? I mean, I see the topic has to do with Israel, but I'm just wondering, like, and I hear a lot of callers calling in and stuff, like, what is the sole focus on concentrating on Israel when there's, like, critical, critical issues that really, really, honestly, before now had nothing to do with Israel? But it's, like, so much focus on this one area, like, if we focus on this one area for so long, it's going to save everybody's soul. Or Jesus is going to come out of the clouds from over there. Jesus is going to come out of the clouds from over there or something. Yeah, so do you listen to the show every day?
I get it every now and again. Yeah, got it. Okay, you're busy like anybody else. So this is Thoroughly Jewish Thursday where we focus on Israel. So one day a week we focus on Israel or reaching Jewish people with the Gospel or things like that. But when you read the Bible, Israel's all over the Bible. Israel's in the Bible at the beginning to end. The whole backdrop of the Bible is Israel, and Jesus is Jewish, and the apostles are Jewish, and the prophets are Jewish.
So it's an important subject. You know, Derek Prince used to say that Israel is like the top button on a shirt, and if you get it wrong, all the other buttons are off. So I'm not, and Israel's in the news big time now because of the war in Gaza.
If not for that, I'd be talking more about what the Bible says in prophecy about Israel or how to reach Jewish people with the Gospel, and it is an important theme. And where's Jesus coming back? He's coming back to Jerusalem. Yeah, so he's coming back to Jerusalem, but just like probably a lot of other news outlets, all they're doing is talking about the Trump trial right now. I haven't seen the news today to get the updates. Well, that's in the news now.
We're going to be talking about the elections a lot. So Israel's in the news. Campus protests, that's big news. All around America cries for Israel committing genocide. UN voting against Israel.
Other countries speaking it. So it's big news, and therefore it's important that we speak about it. And as a Jewish believer in Jesus, it's something I'm in the midst of. Plus, sir, I see the rise of Jew hatred in Jesus' name. I see it rising.
It's raising its head again. And at a moment like this, I am not going to be silent. I'd also suggest this. If you, whatever station, you're listening on a Truth station in Raleigh. So Truth has a network with a number of different stations, but many, many different people on the air.
If you listen over the course of a week, you're not going to find every shows about Israel or most shows about Israel or even a significant minority of the shows are about Israel. It's just something that needs to be talked about. And especially at a time like this, I'm absolutely going to. So I appreciate the question. Fair question.
And thank you for the call. And one other thing. If you listen to Focus on the Family, they focus on the family. That's what they're talking about. That's their focus, day and night. Someone else, their whole thing is just going through the whole Bible, teaching through the Bible. And that's what they do. So each each ministry, each group organization, they have their calling. They have their gifting.
They have their anointing. Somebody's got to talk about Israel. Somebody's got to talk about these issues. They are critically, critically, critically important.
I want to say this again. This is our moment. These things are happening on our watch. So we look back at history with shock. What were what were the German Christians doing? How is it that the Holocaust happened on their watch? Why is it that voices like Dietrich Bonhoeffer were so few and far between? Why is it that countless thousands of Lutheran pastors made a confession that included the confession to Adolf Hitler, not just to Jesus, but to Hitler?
How did that happen? And how in one of the most civilized, educated societies on the planet, in the midst of civilized, educated Europe, did the Holocaust happen? How did these things take place? And the answer is because people were complacent, because people looked the other way, because people were cowardly. And again, many date the official beginning of the Holocaust to November 9th, 1938, Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when the Nazis did exactly what Luther said, set the synagogues on fire, break down and destroy the places of business and homes. They did exactly that all over Germany.
Part of it was a test. Let's see how the people respond. Was there a national outrage? Did millions of German Christians, remember it's a professing Christian nation, did millions of German Christians, tens of millions, did they stand up and say, what is this outrage? Stop.
You can't do this. If they did, things would have been stopped in their tracks or at the least greatly halted and slowed down. Instead, life went on. And hey, why stand up for the Jews if that's going to be trouble for you? This is happening on our watch now. The Hamas attack on October 7th, which has been denied and downplayed in different ways out of the gate, that happened in our day. The explosion of campus antisemitism, which has been there under the surface for years, for some decades growing, the explosion of it, that happened on our watch. The rise again of a white supremacist, radical Christian nationalist antisemitism is happening on our watch.
The minimizing of the church's bloody history, the pushing of an aggressive theology that denies that Israel has any divine right to be in the land today, all this is happening on our watch. Are you going to be one that speaks up, that speaks the truth, that gets the message out, that stands? Are you going to be one that sits on the sidelines like, well, I'm just going to follow Jesus and take care of my family? Friends, don't let history look back and judge you. Don't let history look back and say, what were you doing? Don't let your kids or your grandkids look at you and say, what were you doing when they were killing the Jews? What were you doing when Jews were afraid to be on campuses in America? What were you doing when synagogues were getting shot up?
What were you doing when that was happening? Let it be that you said, I was standing, I was speaking, and I urge every Christian, tell Jewish friends, you know, I know we disagree theologically. I know you don't believe what I believe about Jesus. With all my heart, I want you to, but I'm standing here with you. And if someone comes after you, they got to get to me first. Let them hear that. Let them know that this generation of believers, this generation of Christians is great.
