The Israel Factor

The following program is recorded content created by Truth Network. 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

I'm here with you some really ugly news. The latest bashing of Israel by an alleged human rights organization. Some Jewish responses to that. As well as take your Jewish-related calls. 866-34-TRUTH. 866-34-87884. I'm reading reports as to Israel bracing itself for its changes in relationship with the United States or Iran because of potential Biden policies.

But we'll get into that more as it develops. 866-34-TRUTH. Before we go to the phones, there are major organizations. They can be associated with the UN. They can be known for human rights. And what many of them commonly do is attack Israel, bash Israel, treat Israel with very, very unequal weights and measures, and will single Israel out for unfair attack. And there is a brand new report from Human Rights Watch that does this very thing. You say, oh, well, isn't that an organization dedicated to human rights?

Well, let me give you a little background and show you how biased this is. And within Israel, you have the left-wing media is constantly bashing the nation. The left-wing media bashing Zionists and the left-wing media claiming that Israel is mistreating the Palestinians and whatever it's bashing Israel over. When you see left-wing media within Israel pushing back against the report, you know that thing goes too far.

In other words, Israel is very self-critical and very divided, united in a certain way, but then very divided ideologically. And a newspaper like Haaretz, which is one of the oldest major publications of Israel, is notoriously left-wing and challenging the government and challenging Israeli dominance and things like that. And even there, there are op-eds published that were bashing this latest Human Rights Watch report.

So let's take a look. I want to go over to the Jerusalem Post, and there's an editorial, Human Rights Watch Demonizes Israel via Propaganda of Apartheid. And if you go down to the article by Gerald Steinberg, he gives a little background to the report. It says this, the effort to demonize Israel through comparison to the heinous legacy of the South African apartheid regime has deep roots going back to the Soviet and Arab campaigns of the 1970s, including the infamous UN resolution declaring that Zionism is a form of racism. Although Human Rights Watch claims that its latest contribution, a threshold crossed, Israeli authorities and the crimes of apartheid and persecution, is based on new material, a quick read reveals the same mix of similar propaganda, of shrill propaganda, false allegations, and legal distortions marketed by the NGO network for decades.

Now check this out. Omar Shakir, HRW's Israel and Palestine director, is listed as the main author of the 217-page publication, which included high-quality graphics and layout with its $90 million budget, Money is No Object. Shakir was hired in 2016 after a number of years as a campus activist under headings like Apartheid Israel. He led HRW's failed effort to press AirBnB and the FIFA Soccer Association to join the anti-Israel boycott and repeatedly invokes, quote, apartheid and, quote, racism when discussing Israel. For Shakir, who left Israel after his work visa was not renewed in a lengthy court battle, this is revenge propaganda.

Okay, so just step back from that. This is the guy primarily behind this report. What kind of report would you expect from someone with those points of view?

What about the charges? Okay, within an editorial I read on Haaretz, again, left-leaning, very happy to criticize Israeli policy, they were pushing back against the libelous HRW report. Within the editorial was a link to another editorial on the Forward. Forward is published in the States. It's been published in English and Yiddish for many decades. It's a historic Jewish publication within America, but also strongly left-leaning.

And yet here in op-ed piece, they take strong exception as well to this. So here's an article by Hirsch Goodman, I Left Apartheid, South Africa. Applying the term to Israel is disingenuous.

So Goodman says this, Human Rights Watch could do with a new pair of glasses. The organization's new report, A Threshold Cross, Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, is blind to fact and reality. Every paragraph in the 223-page diatribe serves one goal, brand Israel as an apartheid state.

Goodman says, I left South Africa as a teenager in 1965 because of its policy of apartheid. I have openly and consistently criticized Israel's settlement policies, and I am on the left of the Israeli political spectrum. To me, this document cheapens and derides both the word apartheid and its legacy.

He said it is a disgrace to the memory of the millions who suffered under that policy in South Africa, including many anti-apartheid activists in the Jewish community, some close to me, who lost their freedom and were left shattered in consequence. The argument of the Human Rights Watch report is that in the swath of land between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, quote, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity, actions so severe they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. The report accuses Israel of racial discrimination and domination over all Palestinians, including those who live within Israel proper. It does draw distinctions between the state of affairs in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza to varying degrees, reserving its clearest conclusions about the crimes of apartheid for the areas beyond Israel's 1948 borders, including East Jerusalem. But that distinction will be lost on most readers of the report or the headlines about it.

And the distinction is essential. There are huge variations in policy between sovereign Israel, where democracy reigns, the occupied West Bank, which remains under overall military rule, and Gaza, from where Israel fully withdrew its army and settlements in 2005 and where Hamas now holds power. But even with those distinctions included, the implication that Israel's, quote, racist policies against the Palestinians should be examined through the same framework across the three territories is disingenuous. As you're comparing apples with oranges, the report reads is especially surprising now as Mansour Abbas, leader of the United Arab list in the Knesset, holds Israel's political future in his hands as a result of the March election.

His voice, so this is an Arab, is key in determining who will form the next governing coalition in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu and his far right cohorts or the anti-Netanyahu camp. Both groups, according Abbas, hardly a sign of the kind of subjugation associated with apartheid. The authors tie their claim that Israeli officials have committed the crime of apartheid to two international rulings, the 1973 International Convention of the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which was written in 1998 and went into effect in 2002. Quote, some have claimed that the current reality in Israel amounts to apartheid. Few, however, have conducted a detailed legal analysis based on the international crimes of apartheid or persecution. That's the report. Editorial says that analysis is what this report claims to achieve.

Really? Justice Richard Goldstone, who was appointed to the Constitutional Court of South Africa by Nelson Mandela and played a critical role in that country's transition to democracy, also served as the chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, then led the United Nations Human Rights Council fact-finding mission to investigate human rights and humanitarian law violations in the 2009 war between Israel and Gaza militants. In Israel, there is no apartheid, Goldstone wrote in the New York Times in October 2011.

Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute. In the West Bank, he conceded, the situation is more complex, but crucially, he wrote, there is no intent to maintain an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group. The charge that Israel is an apartheid state is a false and malicious one that precludes rather than promotes peace and harmony, Goldstone concluded.

Yes, he wrote those words 10 years ago, and much has changed in the past decade, but his perspective persists. In October 2009, Robert Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch and its chairman for 20 years, slammed the door on the organization for quote, issuing reports on the Arab-Israel conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state. We always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and abuses, but we saw that they have the ability to correct them through vigorous public debate and adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.

End quote. And that's all what takes place on a regular basis within Israel. That idea of a society attempting to improve itself is uniquely app one for Israel today, as much of the country fights to rid itself of the yoke of Netanyahu and his expansionist partners, stem the drift toward the unilateral annexation of the territories, and continue to seek a solution to the conundrum posed by the Palestinian issue, albeit without a strong and unified partner present on the other side. Last summer, I wrote in The Atlantic that if the threatened annexation of the West Bank became reality, it would be hard for me to continue to make the cause that Israel's rule over the Palestinians was much different than the institutional racism I had left behind in South Africa.

But that did not happen. Ironically, much of the case Human Rights Watch lays out draws on the work of watchdog groups based in Israel, making the precise efforts towards reform that the report leaves no room to acknowledge. In other words, within Israel, they're working for the very things that this report claims don't exist. None of those groups, more than 40 at all, would have been able to function under a true apartheid regime. As I saw happen to the activists I knew in South Africa under apartheid, those group staff would instead be doing time behind bars without the benefit of a trial. Human Rights Watch has long backed a boycott of Israel and Israeli goods to no real effect. It's no surprise with that history that rather than address the facts in front of them, the group staff has chosen to produce a document that draws overly broad conclusions that match their predisposed view.

Maybe it's time for a watchdog to protect us from all the likes of Human Rights Watch. So here's someone that came from South Africa, a critic of Netanyahu, a critic of the current government. Here he is saying Israel is not apartheid in any stretch of the word.

And he's saying, hey, I was in South Africa. Those who oppose the government ended up behind bars. Those who opposed apartheid. In Israel you've got 40 different groups functioning that oppose current government policy in these different ways, and they're doing just fine and able to function freely. Let us put this lie to rest.

Israel is not and has not been an apartheid state. We come back. I'm going straight to your calls. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, welcome to the line of fire.

This is Michael Brown. It is Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. All right, phones are open now. 866-344-866-348-7884 for the next few minutes. Jewish related questions, then bottom of the hour we switch over to my guest, Sam Nadler. Let's go over to Israel. Garv, welcome to the line of fire.

Thanks for calling. You mean Gary? Ah, yeah. Here is the deal. I mean Gary. But let me explain. Let me explain how I came up with Garv. OK, number one.

No, no, no. But just for your knowledge here. Number one, it kind of sounds like an Israeli name.

I couldn't quite figure out what it meant, but it sounds like an Israeli name. The more specific reason is on my screen to get things large enough, I have to enlarge this one particular screen for calls. And it doesn't move properly for the size of the computer. So a tiny bit, the tiniest thing gets cut off.

In this case, the difference between V and Y. So this, now we've learned a lot in a few seconds. Anyway, thanks, Gary, for your patience. Go ahead. I'm Nime Zine. All right, good. Thanks. I have a question for you.

We know each other from a long, long, long time ago, so I don't know if you remember. But the question is on CTC. I tried emailing it, but they said that they didn't have a resource for it. So try calling in.

And so that's why I'm calling. What's your opinion on wearing CTC? First, it's just for our listeners to understand. So CTC, those are their ritual fringes, which in biblical times would have been part of the garments that men wore. You know, the four cornered garments.

And they they were colored tekhelet, which is like a purple blue. And then over a period of time, Jewish leadership said that they couldn't get the particular dye from the snail Hilazon to to make the the fringes. And therefore, you'll see religious Jewish men wearing them and they're white and then they're tied in certain numbers of knots to remind the Jewish man to keep the six hundred thirteen commandments and they're affixed in a garment under the clothes with the fringes worn out.

So it's developed over the years. So first thing is it's totally up to a believer, especially a Jewish believer, if they feel it's something they want to do to either join them in identification with their people or to to do this as a reminder to them of their Jewishness or anything like that. I would say that for the sake of our witness to the Jewish community, you want to have some consistency. In other words, if you're going to wear fringes and sit down and McDonald's and have a cheeseburger, then you just want to be able to explain why you're doing that. In other words, why are you wearing fringes the way the rabbis would teach you to, you know, see today as opposed to the color from the Bible and the way it was prescribed in the Bible. And yet you're not following rabbinic law with diet.

So you don't want to do something that would would bring a mockery. I don't encourage gentile Christians to do it because it sends a mixed message. But for a Jewish believer, it's totally a matter of conscience and leading of the spirit. But it's absolutely not a command for today, especially in light of the new covenant where God writes his laws in our hearts. Whereas that was to be an outward reminder of the commandments. That's a good answer. I agree with you.

I felt the same way for a long time. But the scripture in Numbers 15, 37 says to to wear them throughout your generation. What do you do with it throughout your generation?

Yes. So if you will study all of the words like that in the Torah throughout your generations, for all generations, there are a number that speak of the best way you could say forever in this world. About 75 percent of them can only be kept with a functioning temple, priesthood and Jewish sovereignty. I went through this statistically in volume four of my series answering Jewish objections to Jesus to say that the vast majority of these tied in with the Sinai covenant and the old system. So either God commanded Israel to do something many things through all generations, many of the sacrifice laws and things like that, do them for all generations and then did not give us the ability to do it through most of our history, including the last 2000 years. Or that was all part of the Sinai covenant, which with our failure to recognize Messiah and our rejection of God, God brought judgment on, but then provided a new and better way. So it's the same with all of these other things that are in the Torah. So my answer is that this is one of many things within the Torah that we cannot keep with the temple destroyed without a functioning Jewish priesthood and without complete sovereignty, et cetera. So that's through most of our history from Moses until today, the bulk of our history. We haven't been able to keep these.

Either God gave us a new and better way. Go ahead. Why is it you can you talking about? What's the reason you can't keep it other than the fact that you don't have the blue, the blue dot? Is that what you mean?

No, no, no, no. Thanks for clarifying, Gary. No, I'm saying 75 percent of the for all generations commands, not this one. This is in the 25 percent that you theoretically could keep. Seventy five percent.

You can't. So my point is, did God command us to do all these things for all generations and then doesn't even give us the ability, even if we wanted to keep 75 percent of them? Maybe we should look at all of them in the same class under the Sinai Covenant.

Simple answer. That's part of the Sinai Covenant. God brought an end to that because of our failure to keep it, as he said in Jeremiah 31 and instituted a new and better covenant in which he writes these things in our hearts. So I don't need the outward reminder to wear because it's written in my heart. The other thing is, if we're going to do it, let's do it the biblical way, which would be on our garments. And Tehillah, it's only the later rabbis that tell us that it had to be from a particular dye. OK, in other words, there are even now religious Jews.

There's been a movement for some years in Israel. And you probably see them here and there with the blue purple color on their tzitzit, because they believe that they do have something comparable in color. But I'm saying... Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

Well, my only question left then would be, I understand that the mitzvah you can't keep today, but the ones that you can keep, not according to rabbinic tradition, but according to, you know, you shall make feet on the corners of your garments throughout your generations. That's something it doesn't state anything about blue in there. And it just states it very specifically. Well, it does. If you look at Deuteronomy in Numbers, you know, it does it does describe the look.

But no, Gary, the thing is, you're free to do that. But I'm looking at this holistically. In other words, I'm looking at everything together and saying, OK, if we you know, what was more important than the daily life of Israel, the functioning of the temple, obviously the functioning of the temple and having, you know, a day of atonement with the temple and sacrifices and the functioning priesthood, a functioning high priest, that was all massively more important, massively more important than someone wearing tzitzit. And yet all of that ended. Did that end by God's design? If so, then let's look at everything through the light of the new and better covenant. In other words, if it's been instituted, which the New Testament tells us it has, Hebrews 8, Hebrews 10 tells us that we're living in this. Yeshua, before he dies, says this is now the new covenant in my blood.

So that's been instituted. So let's live by that. And therefore, we don't just go back to Sinai Covenant to find out what we do.

We look at the full revelation of scripture. I'm not trying to go back to Sinai Covenant. I think I think you're missing my question a little bit. I understand what you're saying.

I agree with it. I just, it would get back to the question of Yeshua says, if you love me, obey my commandments. Which commandments to keep, which ones not to keep? It has nothing to do with the ones that had to do with the temple.

It's talking about ones that you can keep. No, no, you're right. When he says, if you love me, keep my commandments in John's Gospel, if you look in John's Gospel, every time it says commandment, it's talking about his own words, his teachings, his New Testament teachings. No, but this is his words, too. These are his words, too. No, I understand that, but I'm answering the question for you.

I think you're missing the answer. I'm saying, I'm not just looking, why are you putting temple, if he fulfilled the Torah, right, and brought us into a new and better covenant, don't I need to look at everything through that life? I mean, do you observe the new moons, for example? I'm trying to look at how important it is to keep his commandments. So there you have these commandments are worthy to keep. Right, so that's what I've done over decades is looked at the whole thing holistically. So, for example, if you look at the laws of mildew, so you have severe skin disease, sarawat, which is normally translated leprosy, and then mildew, does it occur to you that if you have mildew in the house that you have to treat it a certain way and that you have to get a priest?

In other words, there are many, many different things. If your brother was married and dies before he's able to have a child, should you now marry the widow? That was part of the law as well. What about if you have a disobedient, rebellious child that won't be corrected? Should you stone that child to death, you know, a teenager? Should you stone that child to death? Should you burn a witch? Should you stone adulterers? Or should you stone people that don't observe the Sabbath? So I'm saying, because I'm interacting with the Jewish community for decades, Gary, and I got a break coming up, but hopefully we get some headway here. I tried to look at it holistically, and instead of just one commandment here or there, I listed a whole bunch of others that I don't think you're trying to live by.

I don't think that you would want to put to death a teenage kid that you had who was in persistent rebellion or stone your neighbors if they committed adultery. Yet that was all Sinai Covenant. So either we're under all of it, right?

It doesn't say pick or choose. We're either under all of it or we're under a new and better covenant. So Rabbinic Judaism goes the way of its traditions.

We go the way of the new and better covenant, which is now articulated through the writings of the New Testament and how they then interpret what's in the Hebrew script. Hopefully that helps, man. And if we meet face to face, I'll see if I remember you. All right, God bless. Sorry we're out of time.

Welcome, welcome to the line of fire. OK, I have been eager to connect with my good friend Sam Nadler, but somehow the phone numbers we have are not working. So our team will reach out.

Guys, you can check with Dylan to check with Sam's contact there. But right now, that means that surprisingly, I can get to the phone. So I'm going to grab another call.

And then if we can get Sam on, we will. Otherwise, I'll just open the phones and you could call to your heart's delight, content, whatever the word is, heart's content. Let's go to T in Sarasota, Florida. Welcome to the line of fire. It's always a privilege to speak with you, Doc. How are you? Doing good, man.

Thanks, buddy. It's been a long time. I've been at least over a year and a half. And we spoke the first time I spoke with you was about 10 years ago. And I was encouraging you to it. I was trying to tell you the fitness flight to get in shape.

And now I look at you on my Facebook. And here you are working out and you're celebrating an anniversary. I just want to say congratulations, Doc.

You are an incredible inspiration in so many different ways. And the reason why I'm just on the on the fitness end, you know, I had been working out back in those days, but I was terribly overweight with an unhealthy diet. So it's it's almost seven years of the diet transformation. And yeah, literally, I'm feeling younger every year. Sixty six now, but feeling way younger than I did at fifty nine. Anyway, to your question, you look you look great.

Thanks. We always talk about the relationships that we often talk about, the relationship between America and Israel, America and Israel and certain other countries. But we never speak about China. And China is to me, I mean, they are super they're going to wind up being the most dangerous country on this planet if they already are. So my question is kind of broad based. It's what is the current relationship that China and Israel have?

What do you see as the future relationship? And you might want to research. Do you see Israel as being in future peril versus communist China? Right.

Great questions. China is definitely the dangerous world power to to be concerned about. And, you know, that's that's one reason that that many folks voted for Trump versus Biden, feeling that that he would be much tougher on China than Biden would. And of course, you know, China has been so terribly oppressive to its own people for for decades, you know, since since the rise of communist China and continues to be so.

So that should be a grave concern to everyone that cares about human rights. I do not know that Israel has any type of open relationship with communist China in terms of fruitful interaction or partnerships. Israel, like every other nation, is is looking for its own welfare first.

Right. So if Israel could have a relationship with China and know that China was not going to fund, say, Iran. I'm just giving theoretical stuff or was not going to fund Hamas and that there would be mutual prosperity through trade. Then Israel would try to broker some kind of deal with with China. You know, that's just the way Israel would would operate. That that being said, I don't know of anything going on. Now, again, I've not looked at the question in depth, but it's nothing ever read about, you know, like you have the growing relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia or Israel, United Arab Emirates or some of these countries.

It seems so surprising. And, you know, Israel forging a path with different African nations that continues to grow over the years. But, yeah, I'm not aware of any type of major rapport between the countries.

Could Israel one day be threatened by communist China? Could be. Yeah. I mean, the whole world. Well, could be exactly how things unfold. We don't know. But just the mass of people and the way that the Chinese society often functions in a corporate way. You know, we are we are 100 times more individualistic in America than someone would be in China.

And conformity is so, so required that you can just push a whole nation in one direction that can be very dangerous. I don't see like if it's if it's in the Bible, I'm not aware of it. You know, something prophesied about a danger. So, hey, listen, I'm going to run as we have finally connected with our guest, Sam Nadler. So good talking to you again. And thanks for the good word, man. I appreciate it.

Eight, six, six, three, four, truth. Well, we've made this more dramatic now. Sam Nadler is a friend and one of the senior Messianic Jewish leaders in the body today. Not just a Messianic Jewish pastor and rabbi, but a real soul winner, an evangelist, a disciple maker and a gifted author and teacher. So, Sam, so glad to have you on the air. Welcome to the line of fire. I'm delighted to be here, Michael. May the Lord bless you and keep you. Well, thanks.

I appreciate it. You've written a book, The Israel Factor. I'm holding it in my hands. In fact, my words are on the front cover. Sam Nadler, a master teacher, shows us how everything falls into place when Israel is factored in. And the subtitle to your book, The Israel Factor, factoring back in what God never factored out. So first, what do you mean by the Israel factor? And then second, we'll open up how Israel was factored out by the church. So first, what do you mean by the Israel factor?

Sure. Well, the plan and program of God in the Messiah, we have to remember everything is done in Messiah. All the eternal planning, according to Ephesians 1, was done in Messiah. And so we want to be Messiah-centric. We have to be focused upon Yeshua.

We run the race at the forest looking unto Jesus, Yeshua the Messiah. But nonetheless, the point is that being Messiah-centric, we have to live our lives as Messiah lived His life, if we're followers of Him. And so He was Israel-centric, because the plan and the program of God during this age, during the time we're living in, is to the Jew first, as well as to the Gentile.

And so we want to understand that it's Israel-focused in regards to the Second Coming, in regards to the program for evangelism, and actually what needs to be done for discipleship, since this is kind of an unknown matter. The second thing regarding why we have to write a book on the subject is because, as you're well aware from your own writings, that starting early in the second century, there became, I would say, non-apostolic teachings that came into the body of Messiah, and they were anti-Jewish in their orientation. And so as it developed, and my books and materials go into what the Church Fathers said, etc. But the point is that it became a very, not just non-Jewish, it started becoming quite anti-Jewish, so that you find the Church Fathers teaching such things that Jews cannot be saved, and certainly not as Jews. And so that developed all the way through, and on the basis of that teaching, we have persecution in the Middle Ages against Jewish people, and then we end up, you know, with the Reformation was a return to natural interpretation, just taking the Bible for what it says. And when they came to, in the early 1800s, regarding the Jews, they realized what the scripture is saying, that God doesn't hate the Jews. And the first ministry to Jews began, when they just take the Bible for what it says.

Well, that has developed now to where we understand that it is to the Jew first, even as the apostle to the Gentiles taught on the matter. Yeah, and Sam, what I find unique about your book is you're not just going through church history, and we've done that, I've done that as you referenced, and you're not just talking about Israel's future salvation and prophecy, but you go down each chapter, the teaching of Scripture and Israel, the teaching of God and Israel, the teaching of Messiah and Israel, the teaching of the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit and Israel, the teaching of sin and Israel. In other words, you're going through all these different doctrinal points, points of theology, and saying you factor Israel incorrectly, you see things rightly. You know, it's like Derek Prince said that Israel is like the top button on a shirt, and if you button it wrong, all the other buttons come in wrong. So pick any one of these chapters and open this up, that when you factor Israel in rightly, you understand the Scriptures properly on these particular points. Sure. Pick any one.

Dive in. Sure, absolutely. A chapter on the least likely candidate, you know, not one of the usual suspects, on the body of Messiah, called ecclesiology, technically speaking. But on the body of Messiah, you say, well, what could that have to do? Well, quite frankly, when I was a young man, and maybe you know this for yourself, I was basically taught the Gentile church. This was the common understanding, that this is the age of the Gentiles, mistranslations, you know, that the last person to be raptured will be a Gentile, then God will start working with the Jews, and other things of that sort.

And so that kind of teaching is a residual effect of the very anti-Jewish posture that came out of the Middle Ages, and it's still kind of alive and well, unfortunately. And so what the body of Messiah is about, it's called the Commonwealth of Israel. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 12. In other words, when we look at that particular section of Scripture, it talks about Gentile believers not having a number of things, because they were separated from God and Messiah.

But when they came to faith in Messiah, they now have the promises, they now have the covenant, and they now are part of the Commonwealth of Israel. And so the Apostle Paul, in his writings, was letting us know some profound truth in Romans chapter 11. He says there that salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel jealous. Someone says, you mean make them angry?

No, that's not what he's saying, but you have, unfortunately, you've been doing a good job at doing that, but that's not the point. He says in verse 14, Romans 14, if I make them jealous, I might save some of them. So making them jealous is for the salvation of Israel. So the Gentile believer is God's secret and sacred weapon to make a difference in regards to the Jewish people hearing about and coming to faith in the Messiah. And so the enemy of our souls wants to start the plan and the program of God. I'll tell you what, I'm just going to jump in here and we'll come back and find out what the enemy of our souls is trying to do. To get Israel right, things fall into place.

The book, The Israel Factor, to get Israel wrong, a lot of our theology and even practice can go wrong. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, welcome to The Line of Fire on this thoroughly Jewish Thursday. I'm joined by my guest, Sam Nadler.

I was once supposed to meet Sam for lunch and went to the wrong location, wrong restaurant, had to turn around and get over to where he was. And not to my surprise at all, he was sharing the gospel in depth with the waitress who was all ears and opening up her heart and life. That's who he is. He's going to share the gospel with Jew and Gentile. He's a disciple maker.

And he understands the role of Jew, the role of Gentile within the body today. His new book, The Israel Factor, factoring back in but God never factored out. Sam, so you were saying right before the break that the enemy of our souls is trying to stop something from happening. What is Satan trying to stop? Listen, many people misunderstand spiritual warfare.

Many of them may think that the enemy is trying to stop their favorite TV show from being on the air or something like that. But there's a strategic plan that the enemy has in light of God's strategic plan for humanity. And so God's plan is, you know, for our Messiah to not only die for our sins, be raised bodily from the dead and sent unto heaven, but to come to earth in order to reign from his glorious throne in Jerusalem. And in so doing, he would then bind Satan for a thousand years. Well, Satan wants to stop this program because he understands from Genesis 3 15 that the ultimate end is his destruction.

How do you stop God's plan and God's program? Well, God said that the second coming is tied to the repentance of Israel. And so Yeshua said in Matthew 23 39, you shall not, talking to Jerusalem, you shall not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes to the name of the Lord. Peter proclaiming in Acts chapter 3 19 to 21 for Israel, for the Jewish people to repent, change their mind about Jesus, about Yeshua, that he might send the Messiah who's appointed unto you, whom heaven must receive unto the fulfillment of all the things in the holy prophets. And so the second coming of the Messiah is tied to the repentance of Israel. Well, that seems like a big deal.

It is. But God's way of handling it is to show his grace as sufficient. And therefore, the Gentile believers are called by God to make Israel jealous unto salvation.

And in doing so, they fulfilled their calling, the sacred calling they have. And in regards to that, the enemy wants to stop God's plan. And so starting in the second century moving forward, you have anti Jewish teaching, entering into the body to where God is through with the Jews, or ministry to Jews unimportant. Then, then now as we understand the Word of God more carefully, we see that no, God is not through with the Jews. Paul says, has God forsaken his people? In no way.

In no way. I'm an Israelite. And so the apostle to the Gentiles spent a good deal of time teaching the Gentile believers about their calling.

The body of Messiah does not understand its calling, and its calling is to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. I hope that kind of puts a fine point, or crosses the T's and dots some of the I's on the issue. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. I want to dig into the book a little bit more. Again, Sam Nadler, The Israel Factor, is the name of the book. But before I dig in a little bit more, let's say there's a church pastor that's listening to us now. Let's say that this pastor is in an area that does not really have much of a Jewish population, but is listening to you and saying, well, this thing to the Jew first, that interests me. What would you tell that local pastor? As a congregation leader yourself, what counsel would you give to that pastor?

Well, I would certainly say be careful of being too pragmatic, my brother. I mean, many people might think if it doesn't fill the pocket or the pew, what do I care? So we have to understand God's strategic plan and program that he is a part of. And he has to make disciples that will be praying for the peace of Jerusalem. He has to make disciples that will help make Israel jealous. He wants to make disciples that will understand God's calling and become missionaries to bring the good news to Jewish people. So he wants to be involved in many different ways to fulfill his calling and his congregation's calling to make Israel jealous. So it's not just we don't really have a lot of Jews in our community. You can be praying, you can be supporting Jewish outreach, you can be raising up believers that shine and they'll in the future meet other Jewish people and provoke them to spiritual jealousy and then raise up those who will be called. So everybody, wherever you are, can do something for the salvation of Israel. All right, so in your book, again, you break down when you factor Israel in, how we have a right understanding of certain doctrines and theologies, you factor Israel out, how things become defective. You know, the church got so heavenly minded, one reason was it lost sight of earthly realities with Israel. You know, that's something that's happened over the centuries. But what about either doctrine of sin or angels?

Take a couple more minutes while we have some time left and open up one of those for us. Sure, I mean, the issue of, I mean, something that seems as unimportant as the doctrine of angels is something that we need to just focus upon. If I was to talk to people who knew the Bible and I would say, well, who do you think is the most important angel of the unfallen ones, of the holy ones? Which angel, Michael, would you say, I'm sorry, I gave it away, didn't I? Well, no, no, no, we don't know. You're just talking to me. You haven't given anything away yet. You know, what angel in the Bible is considered the most important angel?

Maybe there's a title that says that. Maybe Michael. How about Michael?

Hey, there you go. Your namesake. And so archangel Michael, the chief angel, but guess what his responsibility is, which you know very well. His responsibility is over the people of Israel, Daniel 12.1. And so understand the most important angel has the responsibility of the Jewish people. So what do you think the other angels are doing? Resisting?

No. Understand the work of the angels for the work of redemption is going to always be in light of God's program to the Jew first, et cetera. Now, when we take a look at in the world of, you know, angelology, we have a subdivision, as you know, demonology, Satanology, and so the work of Satan. And so to understand Satan, the chief fallen angel as such, so let's understand him.

What do we have to know about him? Well, the work he wants to do is to stop Israel from coming to faith in the Messiah. Whether it's through demon-possessed Nazis, or whether he just influences naïve people in their anti-Semitic thoughts, or whether he is trying to get even Jewish people to think that being Jewish is unimportant and they assimilate. And so we want to understand the work of Satan, the influence. You know, if you're not influenced by the Holy Spirit, if you're not filled with the Spirit under the influence of the Holy Spirit, you're automatically under the influence of the unholy spirit. The whole world lies under the influence, under the power of the evil one, 1 John 5.19. And so people need to be filled with the Spirit, be under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and if they do that, then they'll understand their strategic calling to resist the enemy, to submit to God.

Resist the devil that he might flee from you. But if they're not filled with the Spirit, if they're not under the influence of the Holy Spirit, they'll be caught up in self-serving issues. They'll think spiritual warfare has to do with their own pleasures. They'll get caught up in all sorts of non-biblical matters. But if you understand the work of the Holy Spirit, as you're well aware, Michael, the issue of the Holy Spirit's work, that the testimony of Yeshua, the testimony of Jesus, is the spirit of prophecy. This is word that the Holy Spirit has for the world, even to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. And so understanding angelology, the work of angels as such, understand it from Michael the Archangel's point of view to the Jew first. Understand it from Satan's point of view, stopping the good news to the Jew first. And you'll understand the program regarding angels. Is that helpful, Michael?

Oh yeah, that is super helpful. And friends, as we're almost out of time, that just gives you a little sample from this rich book, which is almost 300 pages long, but it's super readable, it's super scriptural, it's super practical, which you'll find with Sam Nadeler's teaching. Hey, if folks want to visit your website, where's the best place to go? Sure, www.wordofmessiah.org. And our bookstore there makes all our materials available. We have all kinds of things, including marriages.

We have a marriage conference coming up this weekend. You name it, we got it, but we're here to the Jew first. If you call in, listen, if they call in and talk about this radio show, we'll give them a 10% discount on anything they want. Alright, well check that out. That's cool. Go to www.wordofmessiah.org, mention this radio interview, you get 10% off anything. Alright Sam, thanks for joining us today.