An Orthodox Jewish, Israeli Perspective on the National Divide

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. We're going to hear a viewpoint from on the ground in Israel from an Orthodox Jew.

What in the world is happening in the land? 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. It is 30 Jewish Thursday.

This is Michael Brown. Delighted to be with you. In the second half of the broadcast, I will be taking your Jewish related calls and questions so you can call in now and get in The Line 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884 with any Jewish related question of any kind. But first, I want to go to the land of Israel with my friend and colleague, Jonathan Feldstein. He is currently the president and CEO of the Genesis 12-3 Foundation, calling Jews and Christians together in support of Israel. He's run many, many other organizations. We first connected when he was purchasing ambulances for use in Israel and Christians were helping contribute to that.

He's got a really neat project we're going to talk about as well in a little while. But without further ado, Jonathan, thanks for joining us over in Israel. Well, it's a delight as always. I'm so glad to be with you. Where are you exactly right now? I'm sitting in my house in a front overlooking the Judean Mountains. Wonderful.

Amazing. All right, so there is a project I want to tell everybody about in a little while and let folks know about other initiatives that you're involved in. But first, on the ground in Israel, there have been large, large protest rallies throughout the country. Recently, one supporting the right, others have been supporting the left, both very patriotic, both with lots of Israeli flags. And some have said it's an ideological battle between what they're calling First Israel and Second Israel. The First Israel being more kind of like will just be a state for the Jews, but in the best of the democratic traditions of the West and kind of big tent. And the Second Israel is like, no, this has to be a Jewish state. That's our identity and purpose. You may not divide it like that, but without a constitution, with the calling for judicial reforms, folks on all sides really passionate.

What's it look like and feel like within the in the land itself? What's your take? It's a good question.

It's an important question. That is very much the pulse of what's going on here. In 20 years, I've not felt this level of divisiveness. And I think the only time we got closer was when we had the withdrawal from Gaza and uprooting thousands of Israeli Jews from the communities in Gaza, including dead ones, including reburying people who had been interred in cemeteries there, it's very divisive. And to my special regret, it seems like the people on both sides, the left and the right that are pushing each of the agendas are really are really doubling down and creating divisiveness rather than addressing the actual issues that are that are going on. I'm hoping that the issue of judicial reform, which I think most Israelis agree that we need and was at least the catalyst for the protests that began back in January, I'm hoping that we'll have some kind of resolution on that. But what I'm seeing is that there's such a level of divisiveness.

And I don't know how everyone's anyone's going to climb down from the tree if and when that comes about. Right. So just give us a little more background on why the judicial reform is so needed in Israel. Yeah, so as you noted, we don't have a constitution. We have something that's in place of it called a series of basic laws. But we don't we didn't have the same kind of founding fathers, although one of the as the United States, although our founding document is the Torah, the Bible. And so that's part of the reason that we don't have a constitution, because from day one, the Orthodox parties in the Knesset and the government didn't want to have a set of laws that would supersede or challenge biblical law.

So that's number one. And what we've seen in the last since the 80s, we've seen the Supreme Court become much more powerful because we don't have the same separation of powers and checks and balances that are in the US. And and while you did refer to for first class and second class or what people are saying, calling themselves the second class citizens, you've seen that grow on the left. There was one particular chief justice of the Supreme Court who really led a drive to make to give the Supreme Court much, much more power. And and it goes into a lot of different minutia. But there's a very strong feeling that that needs to be undone. And it's been that way for years. And there have been steps made that one of the issues is that until now, by and large, the Supreme Court justices appoint their successors. So if you already have a bunch of people who historically have been more to the left and been more activist, you're going to end up having that propagated on an ongoing basis.

That's one of the issues as to how it goes. And most Israelis do believe that we need to fix it. But unfortunately, what happened in January when the new government got started, you saw the minister of justice come out of the gate like a bull in a china shop, not caring for for building consensus, which if you're talking about constitutional type issues as in America, there does need to be a consensus. There needs to be a super majority.

And here what they're trying to propose today, a basic majority of 60, excuse me, 50 plus one percent would allow someone to make changes in the court and combat the court. And so it's become very, very controversial. Some of it's directly tied to the prime minister, who has not just been indicted, but is on trial. And so from a legal basis, people are not sure that he's not trying to manipulate this from behind the scenes in order to get off the very serious charges that have been implied to him and as strong a prime minister and leader he's been for Israel. He's also equally divisive. All right, so we are in a unique situation in the history of Israel.

It's a time when Christians around the world are especially going to be praying for God's best for Israel, especially from May 7th to 28th, 21 days praying, fasting, knowing the divisions that could come. Now, when people talk about the potential of a civil war, how real is that or what would that look like? Is it just ideological or could it go deeper? I have a very hard time seeing it as deeper as in the U.S. civil war with Americans fighting Americans on battlefields.

I don't see it. I did a podcast for my inspiration from the Zion podcast a few weeks ago and had journalists come on board. And one of them said, look, we always live on the edge here and things are always much more tense here in Israel, and so eventually we'll wall back down from this. But the concern I have is that the right and the left have pushed one another into their respective corners. And we're finding there's a tone in the in the demonstrations that are more right and left for the government and for the opposition as compared to on the substance of the issue, and I think if we can step back from that and deal with the issues, we can find consensus, we can find reform that's necessary and most people will agree with, but it's again, that level of divisiveness that's really that it's not literally, but you kind of feel like you can cut it with a knife. Right.

All right. So last question on this, and I want to talk about some of the things that you're involved with and others can get involved with as well. If you could be the mediator and of course you have your own perspective, but if you could say, all right, can we agree that ultimately this is in the best interest of the nation? Because you still have these these different views within Israel and you've got the secular versus the religious. So on the one hand, all patriotic, believing the importance of Israel. On the other hand, very different divisions for what the nation is supposed to look like.

If you could be the mediator and suggest a course that would be a right course, what to you would be a path forward? First of all, the simple majority is that is not realistic. And I don't know how anyone who's a lawyer could even have suggested a simple majority to a rule of the Supreme Court. But there needs to be a reshaping of how the court is picked.

And there needs to be more balances. There's a clause relating to the court can decide something that is reasonable. And if it's reasonable, reasonableness now becomes something that's codified, but that's not something that's in law. So I think the whole reasonableness idea needs to be reconsidered.

The judges need to be selected from in a way that that is more democratic and not self-selective. And we all need to we need to agree on things and have dialogue rather than constant fighting. Again, I think that one of the reasons I like the previous government is that it represented parties from the right to the left, including an Arab party. And therefore they had to agree on things that they were going to work on, and they had to agree to disagree on the things that were going to divide them. I'd like to find I would encourage if it was up to me, let's find the 60, 70, 80 percent of things that we're going to agree upon and disagree and then have conversation and begin and move it into a more long term conversation.

But but we need to back down from all of the trees and we need to get back on stable footing. And obviously, if Netanyahu himself with all the good he does, then there's the downside. If he was not so controversial in Israel, it would have been easier to form a unity government. But there are people that just wouldn't work with him. And of course, I tell folks in America that he is far more popular with Christian evangelicals in America, you know, he's he's the king. He's the man to them than he is with your average Israeli.

You know, so much more of a divisive figure there. All right. When we come back, I want to dive into this important new project you're involved in.

But just really quickly, is there a website we can point people to before we take the break? Yeah, always people can go to the Genesis one, two, three dot C.O. All right. Genesis one, two, three dot C.O. Was I wrong in saying twelve, three in terms of the one, two, three or is it is a Genesis twelve, three, uh, that's where it comes from? It comes from Genesis twelve, three, but it's very hard to punctuate that in a website that became the Genesis one, two, three foundation.

Yeah. And I've always read it as Genesis one, two, three. But I was about to announce that. Wait a second. Goes back to twelve, three. The promise that through Abraham's seed, the whole world will be blessed.

And the calling to bless Abraham seed as well. OK, an important initiative. When we come back, you want to find out about this. But first, a word from our co-sponsor Trivita. This is Michael Ellis and founder and CEO of Trivita Wellness. I'm thrilled to join with you as listeners and donors in supporting Dr. Brown and the Line of Fire broadcast. Truly a voice of moral sanity and spiritual clarity. I believe this voice must be heard across America.

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Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back, friends, to Thirdly Jewish Thursday with my friend, Orthodox Jewish friend Jonathan Feldstein in the Land of Israel in Ephrath right now. I managed to pronounce your name twice differently in the same broadcast.

How's that for inconsistency? All right. So you're often letting me know about some really neat initiatives you're involved in, one for Zion, different things.

But there's one you mentioned recently. We said we've got to talk about this on the air. So tell our listeners about this. Yeah, it excites me. It's one of the coolest things that I've ever done. We established an art contest for Christian children all around the world called What Israel Means to Me.

The website is whatisraelmeanstome.com. And really simply, in celebration of Israel's 75th anniversary, we want Christian children to be able to depict artistically, whether it's by crayon or finger painting or pen and paper or charcoal. However they want to do it.

I guess they probably don't want to graffiti their parents' walls. But in some artistic way, what Israel means to them. And you and I go back a while and you know that I'm a little bit out of the box. Some of my Orthodox Jewish friends are troubled by levels of my engagement with Christians. And when we were putting together panels of judges, some didn't want to be involved because it was a Christian-themed project. And I said, well, who are we as Jews to tell Christians what they can or can't do or think about Israel and the Bible and if they want to draw a picture of Jesus performing a miracle in Galilee or Jesus on the cross or a soldier with a falafel or anything else that's biblical, all of that is good. And I think it's so important because, as you know, two years ago we came out with the studies showing a 50% drop in support among young Christians for Israel. And I'm concerned for Israel, but I'm also concerned for the well-being of the church.

Someone who's a Christian and doesn't understand the significance of Israel in his or her own faith is missing a lot of depth, to put it mildly. And so this is a great way to engage children from 5 to 17 that they can depict Israel however they want. We did, you'll appreciate this, we did have to put up a paywall partly to cover expenses and partly because we're putting proceeds to help children who are orphans and at risk kids here in Israel and are always traumatized by the terror and threats of terror and the rockets we had two nights ago and all things like that.

But we're doing it also because if I had it available for free, then we'd be having anti-Semites posting horrible images that I just didn't feel I wanted to deal with. But it's exciting to see kids and the saying out of the mouth of babes, so today we're going to have out of the pens and crayons and watercolor boxes of babes, and it's going to be so refreshing to be able to have that kind of experience. So if kids want to participate in this or parents listening, sit down with your kids, tell them about it and have them go ahead and draw.

Where do they go? How do they participate? Sure, they just need to register at whatisraelmeanstome.com, and we have a family package, so parents don't have to feel burdened by spending 10 bucks on each child.

I think it's $25 for an entire family. So, yeah, it's just an amazing opportunity. And we're inspired by the entries that we've got. We've got a wide panel, a diverse panel of Jews and Christians, people with biblical backgrounds, people with artistic backgrounds. And I'm acquiring some fabulous prizes so that when we announce the winners, the kids will feel like they're really connected. Wow, and how much time do they have to submit their drawing? Ah, that's a great question.

So May 14th, it's a little under two weeks now. All right. So, friends, get involved. And again, the money that you do pay for this, very small amount, but will go directly to help kids in need in Israel. And there are more of them in need than we realize. And then you mentioned kids traumatized by rockets and things. You have kids living in Sderot near Gaza Strip that are actually, they suffer from PTSD, even though they're the little children, because of the constant bombing and having to be just 15 seconds away from a bomb shelter.

So these are realities. And there's actually a lot of poverty. Israel has been an amazing startup nation, but a lot of poverty as well. So it goes to a good cause. And we've just got a couple of minutes. I've analyzed this, of course, but from your perspective, what are the biggest causes of the drop of support for Israel among younger Christians in America, as opposed to their parents?

Wow. So I'm not experienced in the Church, but what my Christian friends tell me is that there's been a lot of straying over the decades from biblical teaching, and churches tend to feel good. And I don't know enough. I've been in a lot of churches. It's not for me to draw that judgment, but I think that there's certainly an element of truth in there.

I think the fact that children who are growing up today and the students who were surveyed now two years ago from the previous ten years are also much more attuned to their electronic device, and they're getting their information from that. And that's dumbed down, and it's not biblical. And I think the people who don't have a biblical understanding of Israel aren't going to have a biblical understanding of very much. And then the other piece is certainly a factor, which is a challenge for all of us, is the narrative with our Palestinian Arab neighbors.

Me personally, I aspire to really live in fruitful peace and prosperity together. But the image is, and that's, by the way, why we picked May 14th. It's the 75th anniversary of the declaration of the state of Israel.

But May 15th is when our neighbors declare their commemoration of what they call the Nakba, the catastrophe of Israel's existence. And so we want to change the dialogue. And I think that all of these pieces are significant. So just through drawing a picture, I'm hoping that we will begin to change that with thousands or tens of thousands of Christian kids all over the world, and that will be a beginning. Excellent.

Yeah. And just affirming what you said, there has been a general lack of biblical literacy in much of the contemporary church, which of course trickled down to the younger generation. They don't remember the horrors of the Holocaust and what it seemed to all of us, the miracle of the modern state of Israel out of the ashes of the Holocaust, even the Six-Day War in 1967.

This is ancient history to them and many, especially Gen Z, they really want to side with the marginalized, with the outsider, with the underdog, and in their mind that's the Palestinians and Israel's become the evil entity in the land. So those things have factored in. But this is a great initiative. And by the way, folks, Jonathan and I differ on essentials like who Jesus is. I sent a real coast to Jesus. He wrote back with differences so we can have these friendly dialogues and yet have in common these deep, deep commitments and work side by side as Jewish brothers.

So one last time, where do folks go to participate? The website is what Israel means to me dot com. And I just want to reiterate my affection and respect for you. And I always tell people that I'm so honored that you and I have written articles together and that you host me and I've hosted you on my podcast. And I'm blessed and I'm grateful.

Same here. I'm also blessed and grateful. Hopefully we can set an example for this. And I love your heart, which you conveyed about Israelis and your Palestinian Arab neighbors and your heart, your desire. May it may it be so. And may God hear the prayers of people around the world for Israel right now. God bless Jonathan.

Can't wait to see the winners of this contest. Thank you. God bless you. All right. What a joy to talk to Jonathan Feldstein, Feldstein.

I got to get the right pronunciation of the last name. OK, here's the call. Eight six six three four truth.

Eight six six three four eight seven eight eight four. We come back. Let's see. I'm going to start with Aaron then Kenneth. So we've got a couple of phone lines open. It's a great time to call with your Jewish related question for us today on Thoroughly Jewish Thursday.

And boy, I can hardly believe it. Everyone that's going on the tour with us to Israel. We we are about to be there. When will everybody be arriving?

I guess it's May 16th, right in the midst of the 75th anniversary celebration. We didn't even plan it like that. This worked out perfectly. All right, we'll be right back. Hey, friends, this is Dr. Michael Brown, I want to invite you to join our support team, make an investment of one dollar a day that will absolutely last forever. You know, the Lord has given us a holy mandate to blanket America with the line of fire broadcast. And on a regular basis, we hear from folks writing in, Dr. Brown, I used to be a practicing homosexual. I listened to I heard grace and truth together.

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Here again, it's Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back, friends, to the line of fire broadcast. Hey, we plan to be doing live broadcast from Israel when I'm there. We may sit down with some of the folks on the tour and and have some live interaction there. Other nights taking your calls. I say nights because it'll be nighttime in Israel, but normal time that you're listening now and then we got travel days. So unfortunately, even though I can multitask, I can't fly and do a radio broadcast in flight at the same time, maybe one day we'll have the technology to do it and noise cancellation to bled out the other sounds right now.

That's one thing we can't do. So we've got some special broadcast, prerecorded, some interviews that will also be playing for you when I have travel days going to and from Israel, things like that. All right. I've got a couple of neat stories to share with you. Jewish related that will encourage and edify you. But first, let's go to the phones.

Eight six six three four truth. We start with Aaron and St. Mark, St. Marcos, Texas. Hey, where is St. Marcos in relationship, say, to Dallas? It's about four hours from Dallas, but it's pretty close to Austin. All right.

So you can't pick up our Dallas station there. Just checking. All right, great.

I wasn't familiar with the with the city. Go ahead, sir. Yeah, first, thanks for being so faithful. Your work is really helpful.

Well, you're very welcome, sir. So I'm a Jewish guy and I started following Jesus in twenty eighteen. So just for clarity, I know that the oral law doesn't date back to Moses, so that's not where I'm going with the question. But a lot of people have noticed that it seems like the laws of Torah has been selected maybe from like a larger body of laws because of things like depending on how you count, there's six hundred eleven laws and six eleven numerical value of the Torah of Torah. And some of the laws maybe don't seem to have enough information to keep based on the Torah alone. So my question is, do you think that the Torah was the only law code for the people of Israel or and like that this view is mistaken or do you think that the Torah wasn't supposed to function as a law code in that way? No, it certainly was the law code. And if you look at other ancient Near Eastern law codes, most famously Hammurabi or some others, they they are law codes, but they don't cover every possibility of every situation with every person throughout their societies.

They are their representative laws, their key laws, their fundamental. So when when scripture talks about the law of Moses or the law or specifically makes reference to the statutes and judgments, it's definitely talking about what's written in the Torah. And I did a comprehensive study in my five volume series on answering Jewish objections to Jesus in the last volume. I looked at every single time there was a reference to Torah to Moshe, the teaching or law of Moses or Torah to deny the law of the Lord or a safer Torah, the Book of the Torah. I looked at every single reference and every time it was referring to something written in the five books of Moses, which then you have in Joshua one, eight, this book of the Lord, Lo Yamush, Safar, Taraz, and Mipichah, this book of the law, book of teaching shall not depart from your lips. So there is something clearly known, understood as the law of Moses. Now, certainly other traditions developed over the years and certainly Deuteronomy 17, the judges or the Levitical priests would make certain rulings. And then the people were bound to keep those. And this obviously it was contrary to God's word.

So there's no question that traditions developed, but it's also clear that in the ancient world that many things were self-evident that might not be self-evident to us. For example, let's say you had never seen a traffic light and you had no concept of what a traffic light was. And you're reading about whether or not to go through a yellow light. You have no idea what that means. But to someone living in that day, you don't need much explanation.

Everybody knows what a yellow light is. Right. So many of the laws, even the Sabbath laws, there's the argument based on that traditional rabbis will give that there must have been more information about what it meant to keep the Sabbath, hence the thirty nine subdivisions of the law that develop in rabbinic Judaism, because there was a death penalty for working on the Sabbath, but the Sabbath doesn't define work specifically. So my answer to that is and then the Mishnah, which is a couple of years after Jesus, when it's put in writing, the Mishnah says that you have like detailed laws about sacrifices. But the laws for the Sabbath just hang on threads because there's so much that the rabbis teach, but almost none of it is found in scripture. It has to be deduced and expanded, et cetera. So my answer is, well, in a largely agrarian society, it was pretty much understood what is work and what isn't work. It wasn't as mysterious as the rabbis would make it or as detailed. And no one was asking, well, if I write two letters down, is that work?

But if it's four letters, is it now is at work? Rather, when cases did come up and you have certain situations where cases did come up, then they would go to Moses and if Moses didn't know, he would go to God. And if he had all the tradition revealed to him, he wouldn't have needed to go to God again on four different occasions.

He has to do that. So we see that pattern that when they couldn't figure it out, they go to the next level up when no one can figure out to go to Moses. When he couldn't figure out, he'd go to God. And that's over time. Then more traditions were developed and things worked out. So certainly by the time of Jesus, many of these traditions had developed.

But as we say, they didn't go back to Moses. So certainly that was the law code. Anything else that was binding could have only been with a prophet bringing a word. Otherwise, it was binding because it was written or it was binding because later communities now made certain decisions. The rabbis called those takkanot and geseroth. So so enactments and prohibitions that they would now say, OK, here's a new situation, this is our ruling, and now that would become part of the law.

But as given originally, that was definitely the whole body of law. OK, thank you. You are very welcome, sir. Thanks for the question. Eight, six, six, three, four, truth. Let's go to Kenneth in Massachusetts.

Welcome to the line of fire. Well, Dr. Brown, I'm a big fan. Well, thank you. I'm very, very honored to speak with you. I wanted to talk about the prophetic significance of the Moedin, which I believe are the framework for the end times. OK, so the Moedin, the appointed times.

The Moedin, which are... Yeah. I'm sorry, what's the Moedin, which are the Jewish days for the listeners who are not familiar. Yeah, the appointed times. Yeah, the Moed is an appointed time. So the Moedim are the holy days, the appointed times on Israel's calendar. Just saying that so everyone knows what you're referring to.

Right. And the way Jesus fulfilled some of them and the way he's supposed to fulfill the rest of them. Now, the spring Moedim, the spring Moedim have been fulfilled with Jesus first coming by his death at the Passover, unleavened bread and the burial, the resurrection, the feast of fruits and the pouring of the Holy Spirit and the Feast of Weeks. Now, according to that, we are in a dry season waiting for Jesus to return on the Feast of Trumpets. All this I've heard you talk about at one point or another and confirm this, but what I have, what I haven't been able to consolidate are the remaining feasts and how they are to unfold. I heard one teaching saying that we, the bride, are raptured at the end of the trip. We are in heaven celebrating the marriage supper of the lamb for the ten days of awe while God is pouring out the seven bowls of wrath, giving people time to repent.

We then return with Christ on the Day of Atonement and ultimately the Feast of Tabernacles as the believers enjoy the new heaven and the work with God. What are your thoughts, Dr. Brown, on how the four bowl of deans play out, keeping in mind that the spring Moedim were all fulfilled within the same season of the same year? Right. And when it was 50 days, it was literally 50 days. In other words, 10 days, it was not seven years. Right. So I understand it very, very differently.

Although I appreciate people reading it like that. We know that when Yeshua returns, he's coming with the sound of the trumpet. We know it in Matthew 24. We know it in 1 Corinthians 15. We know it in 1 Thessalonians 4. And significantly, the seventh of seven trumpets is in Revelation 11, where the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and our Messiah. He'll reign forever and ever.

Now, here's what's also significant. 1 Corinthians 15 says that it will be at the last trumpet. When He returns. And yet, Matthew 24 says after the tribulation of those days, people see the sign of the Son of Man coming in the clouds and they'll hear the trumpet blast. So I see this all as one event.

It is post-trib at the end of this age. Messiah appears in glory. We are caught up to meet Him. Those who are believers are caught up to meet Him. Everyone hears the trumpet blast, sees us go out and we escort Him.

We go out to meet Him as He returns. There's only one second coming, not a second and a third. We escort Him to the earth. And it is this period of time now of deep, massive repentance in Israel described in Zechariah 12. They look to Him and they pierced and they mourned for Him at V'Safdullah. So there's the mourning of repentance that scripture sometimes speaks of.

The mourning and agonizing. So that's what's happening now as the Messiah returns this deep, massive repentance in Israel, leading to 13-1. On that day, a fountain will be opened for cleansing. It doesn't have the word atonement, but this is the cleansing of the nation after the deep repentance of the Days of Awe. This is Messiah returns. There's deep repentance among the people. The cleansing comes. And now five days after that, Zechariah 14, the survivors of the nations that attacked Jerusalem will come up to worship at, what, the Feast of Tabernacles. When does the marriage supper take place?

Probably in this context. In other words, the marriage supper is something here on this earth. And the Bible doesn't talk a lot about it. But Isaiah 25 seems to speak of it when Messiah returns to the earth and sets up his kingdom here. So the wicked judged deep repentance in Israel. And now the marriage supper, a celebration.

That's how I understand it to unfold, according to especially Zechariah 12, his return with the sound of the trumpet leading into deep Jewish repentance, Zechariah 13, Day of Atonement, National Cleansing, then Zechariah 14, the nations coming in to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, all in that same season. OK, thank you, Dr. Brown. You are, you are very welcome. You are very welcome. You can also check out our book, Not Afraid of the Antichrist, for a few more details there. Let's go to Alberto in Georgia. You are on the line of fire.

And good afternoon, Dr. Brown. My question is, why would the nation of Israel prevent Christians proclaiming Jesus Christ if the spirit of God is here on the earth? Would he convict them of the truth that Jesus Christ is the Messiah? So if they really, truly are the people of God, Israel, and they're seeking God, like they claim to be, why wouldn't God then open their eyes and allow the Christians to proclaim Jesus Christ freely in Israel all these years? And the United States has been protecting them, you know, all these years that Christianity has been, you know, protecting them. Yeah.

So, yeah, I'll answer. Just got to cut you off there. We've got a break. They haven't passed the law.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said there'll never be a law against Christianity in Israel. But why haven't more Jewish people come to faith? That's a fair question. We'll answer it on the other side of the break.

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Welcome back to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. Hey, a shout out of appreciation to our co-sponsor TriVita. The supplements really do work.

They're not substitutes for healthy eating, but boy, it can really enhance a lot of things in your life. So check it out. 800-771-5584. Reminding that Dr. Brown sent you. They love to hear from you. In fact, they said the most enthusiastic callers they've ever had were from the line of fire.

Or ask Dr. excuse me, my website there is TriVita.com, TriVita.com. Be sure to use the code Brown25. That gets you 25% discount on all products and 100% of your first order donated to our ministry. So back to Alberto. So in short, we're dealing with the same problem in the Jewish people, in the whole human race, that many do not believe and many do not want to believe that many Israelis would rather do their own thing and they resist the gospel, just like people do around the world, just like your neighbor in Georgia resists the gospel because they want to do their own thing. Others have a massive misunderstanding of who Jesus is because of church history. In other words, there has been a hijacking of a Jewish Jesus and has been made into a totally foreign figure. And this foreign figure is associated with persecution in the church, where Jews were persecuted, associated even with the Holocaust, which took place in Christian Europe, so many don't know.

And it's heartbreaking to me to pray side by side at the wall in Jerusalem with ultra-orthodox Jews pouring their hearts out to God and asking God to send the Messiah, and I'm praying right next to them that God would open their hearts and minds to reveal Messiah to them. There are religious Jews who don't want Christians preaching in Israel because they don't want their people to be exposed to what they believe is a false and dangerous message. But Israel, from its founding, has said, hey, we will protect all religions and religious rights here so Muslims can worship freely, Christians can worship freely, Jews can worship freely. And you could stand in a street corner in Tel Aviv and you're a Jewish believer, hand out gospel tracts, and it's perfectly legal. If someone tried to stop you, they would be the ones breaking the law. So every so often the religious parties will say, hey, we want a law banning the preaching of the gospel.

And it goes nowhere. The Israeli government's not going to allow that. And they recognize that Christians are their best friends.

But look, there is hardness in part over Israel. Paul writes about it in Romans 11. The history and tradition of us rejecting the Lord has brought about a situation where if you're raised in a religious home, Jesus is a non-issue to you.

If he comes up, it's negative. So what we need to do, sir, is pray for God to open the hearts and minds of Jewish people around the world and pray for the lost sheep of the House of Israel to be saved. And among the very religious, I always say, no people is so near and yet so far. It should give us a burden that God would open their hearts and minds. And we should be thankful that Israel, which could just say, no, we're a state for the Jews only, has said, no, you're free to worship here. Whether you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Baha'i, some other faith, you're free to worship and practice your faith here.

Hey, thank you for the call so I could clarify those issues. And in fact, that leads me to what I wanted to share with you. In years past, God enabled us to broadcast in cities like New York with our radio show blanketing the city, going all the way into New Jersey, all the way onto Long Island, but we didn't have the infrastructure or the funds to support that, so we had to go off that station and other stations in America that had good sized Jewish populations.

But we would get amazing calls. I remember a Hasidic rabbi calling, saying he differs with me about Jesus, but we are brothers. And he commends a lot of what I do. We would get private emails from ultra-orthodox Jews saying, I agree with you about the Messiah. I listen to you on this radio station. And we'd write back and say, can we send you materials?

Oh, no, no, you can't send me anything. It was totally secret. They lived in a very, very strict traditional community.

And the last thing that they would want to do is let that be known that they were secretly seeking. And the most interesting story of all, when my mom passed away about five years ago, she was living near us. We brought her down from New York to be able to help out more in a hands-on way. And she passed away. So it was at a funeral parlor in North Carolina. And they said, OK, she'll be buried with your dad at Beth Israel Cemetery in New Jersey, so a Jewish cemetery, obviously. She'll be buried there with your dad. And they want to know at the graveside ceremony, do you want a rabbi there?

So I reached out to my sister and I said, I can do something. She goes, no, no, I want a rabbi there. I said, OK, fine. What kind of rabbi? She said, Reform is fine. So that's liberal.

She said, Reform is fine. And so I told the funeral organizers, OK, we need a Reform rabbi there to do the graveside ceremony. So the next day I get a call and it's from a rabbi.

He was contacted by Beth Israel Cemetery. And they said, do you have a problem doing the funeral service for Dr. Michael Brown's mother? Why would he have a problem with that? Who's Dr. Michael Brown? I said, excuse me.

We're talking about Dr. Michael Brown, his mother, who's oh, oh, no, I know that's not a problem at all. He said, I do interfaith ceremonies and things that not a problem at all. He calls me and says, I listen to you every day.

Others on the big station we run in New York City. He said, I listen to you every day. If I miss it, I get online and get the podcast. So here's a rabbi, a Reform rabbi, a liberal rabbi, absolutely not a believer in Jesus, but listen, because we were on that's how he heard me flipping on this big radio station.

We were on that every day, five days a week. And and he got to listen in. And here he is going to preside at the graveside funeral service. So we had a really good talk. And I thought, isn't that a look at how many people we get to speak to from the altar Orthodox to the to the very liberal and everything between the union of a man and woman and here you're a pioneer gay rabbi. So we've got these massive differences. We come together with common humanity at the death of a loved one. And ultimately, we live in this world as neighbors.

How can we live as neighbors in the midst of holding to our deep convictions? And he said, yeah, by all means, write it. So I did. And then we stayed in touch.

He'd reach out and send me a picture of him and his partner and a grandchild and things, but he's just say, hey, we're moving here and resign from the rabbinate in this city and moving down here, I think, to Virginia. Anyway, anyway. All that to say, this is this is what we get to do. But the cool thing is that by God's grace, after praying for this for so many years, we are expanding its city by city. We we launched many of you know, Phoenix, March 20th, the greater Dallas Fort Worth area, May 1st, May 22nd. We're scheduled to launch live in Chicago. And by God's grace is as the funds come in with our co-sponsor Trivita, we've got a plan now where we can blanket the nation. And that means getting to a lot of these Jewish audiences is someone that is just going to listen. But there are many will not even get online or look for us.

But just flipping around in these big stations, they've got big signals to reach a lot of people. So we're doing that with your help. And I really appreciate it. We're welcoming new torchbearers on a regular basis. So thank you for standing with us. And your dollar a day helps put us on the front lines all over America and continuing to get materials translated into Hebrew for distribution in Israel. So we're working on several new projects that are awesome and several ongoing that are reaching people every single day.

And you are a part of that. So to become a torchbearer, that's a monthly supporter. When you do, I send you two free books, Compassionate Father or Consummate Father Who is the God of the Old Testament, along with Revolution, eye opening books, edifying books. Then you get free access to I think it's hundreds of hours of online classes that you otherwise have to register for. Audio content every month, a new message. If you come to Israel, you get a discount on one ticket per family. Oh, 15 percent discount online bookstore.

I forgot to mention that. So all different ways we pour back into a new insider prayer letter each month. So join our support team. You go to AskDrBrown.org, click on donate monthly support on your app.

You can click on give or you can call 800-538-5275, 800-538-5275. That is how you can stand with us as we reach the lost sheep of the House of Israel and expand the line of fire as your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity across the nation. We are in this together. Good things are happening. God is at work and you are part of it with your prayers, with your giving, with your support, with your encouragement together. We're making a difference even in Israel and across America with Jewish communities worldwide as well. Another program powered by the Truth Network.