Israel at 75

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...away from the Sea of Galilee, live in Israel. All right, yeah, we got, it's actually only like 14 people in the room. It's only around 4,000. And I realize we're right next to somebody else's room. But anyway, we've got folks from the States.

We've got folks from Australia and Ukraine living in the States having a... So first day of the tour, how did it go? Yeah, so it's pretty amazing. I mean, you step back in history thousands of years and you're walking in places where, you know, there was new excavation just in the last few weeks where they excavated a prison in Caesarea.

They're fairly confident it's where Paul was in prison while he was there. But it was just in the last few weeks that was excavated. So it is pretty wild. I mean, you step back in history. In America, if something is old, it's like 200 years old, like, wow, it's 200 years old.

It's amazing. And you're going back to antiquity. But here you're going back thousands of years. You're even going back to, like we're at Megiddo today, telling Megiddo, we're going back to places that were predated, the Israelites being here.

It was 4,000 years back. So it really is extraordinary. And just there's something about the reality of it. And so we know what happened in the past. And then when we're standing out and looking at Armageddon, Har Megiddo, we're looking out and you think that's where things end. There's just a deeper reality to it. At least that's how it impacts so many of us. All right, if you've got a Jewish-related question, we have a bunch in the room here with me.

Number to call 866-342-866-348-7884. Israel just celebrated its 75th anniversary. And for most people who were prophecy teachers, Bible teachers that were very much into end-time prophecy, I never heard any of them decades back talking about Israel being here 75 years and Jesus has still not returned. You know, when Hal Lindsey wrote Late Great Planet Earth, which came out in the late 1960s and was a big best-selling book when I first came to faith, and people did come to the Lord through it.

There was an aspect where he showed the reality of Scripture and how it applied to our day. But reading that book, you thought, this is it. It's over. Jerusalem back in Jewish hands, the Six-Day War in 1967. In the midst of the counterculture revolution, this is the final apostasy.

And the countdown is here. Israel's been a nation since 1948. And obviously Jesus is coming any minute. And then there were people that actively taught. I mean, they figured out it's going to be 1981, right?

Because Israel, you know, a nation, it's one generation. So 1948 to 1988, 40 years as a generation. And now with this preacher of rapture, so Jesus has to come seven years before that, so it's going to be 1981. And all these dates figured out. And then, of course, there was a book, I don't know how many in this room know about it or how many listening know about it, 88 Reasons Why Jesus is Coming in 1988, written by a minister in Arkansas.

And they gave away thousands, tens of thousands of copies and then sold, I mean, there's hundreds of thousands of copies either sold or given away. And he had the date, not just the year, but the date. Jesus is coming back September 12th of 1988. And I remember a friend of mine asked me, Mike, you're going to read the book? I said, on September 13th.

That was my way of saying it's not going to happen. And I used to joke in the 70s that someone's going to write a book, Jesus Coming in the 1970s, and then a few years later put out the second revised edition, Jesus is Coming in the 1980s, and then the third revised edition after that. Well, sadly, this fellow put out a new edition the next year, 89 Reasons Why Jesus is Coming in 1989. And he realized that he miscalculated by one year, so that was the different thing. You know, when you go from B.C.

to A.D., you don't have a zero year, right? So he realized he miscalculated that. And then that's all I knew about it.

When I researched it, got online and just checked a few years back, I found out that he put out yet another edition. And seriously, there were Christians who spent money completely frivolously because they knew that Jesus was coming at any moment. And it was the joke, we're going to leave our debts to the Antichrist. And then instead they leave their debts to the tax collector, you know, Antichrist tax collection calling.

You know, that's what ended up happening tragically. So it is striking that as there were so many anticipating the return of the Jewish people back to the land, and it's not just people who believe in a pre-trib rapture. It's not just called dispensationalist. But you have the Puritans in the 1600s talking about the restoration of the Jewish people. You have Charles Spurgeon saying that we don't talk about it enough, and if there's anything clearly written in scripture, it's that, that the Jewish people are going to be brought back to the land.

This is in the 1800s. Incredible sermon that Spurgeon delivers when he's in his late 20s on this. And it gets into the dry bones of Ezekiel's vision, and he said it doesn't talk about the church being restored here because, you know, it's preached and spiritualized that that's about the church and so on.

And you can make spiritual applications, but no, that's about Israel. And there is going to be a regathering. They'll be back in the land. And then J.C. Ryle, a contemporary of Spurgeon who was an Anglican bishop, J.C. Ryle said that from his understanding of scripture, there will first be a natural restoration of Jewish people back to the land who are still not believers. And then a spiritual restoration will follow. Just the way it's happened. But I say all that to say we need to be really cautious in a lot of our assumptions about the end.

To me, what matters is the broad strokes and the clear picture. And what's clear to me and undeniable to me is that God brought the Jewish people back to the land. That I see no other scenario based on scripture by which Israel exists today except God brought the Jewish people back to the land. And then when you look out of the ashes of the Holocaust, Israel reborn.

When any hope of nationhood seemed to have completely perished and when Jewish existence was being completely threatened, that even just historically looking at it, you think something had to have happened here of exceptional nature. And then scripturally, as I've often emphasized, the only explanation that works is that God brought the Jewish people back because if he scatters, no one can gather. If he smites, no one can heal. If he heals, no one can smite. If he opens the door, no one can close it. If he closes the door, no one can open it. If he blesses, no one can curse. If he curses, no one can bless. So if he scattered the Jewish people in his anger, then the only way we're back in the land is not because the UN decided it or because Satan decided to bring it about or people agreed to do it.

You can't. Only God could do it because he scattered us. So our very existence, I know 75 years is really quite miraculous, when we were looking out at the valley from Tel Megiddo and I asked our translator, because I wanted him to talk about this, what did the land look like? Because you look out, it's unbelievably fertile and unbelievably lush.

And we were standing on top of Mount Carmel looking out. It's striking how incredibly fertile it is. But these were largely swamplands. Mark Twain famously commented on Palestine just being desolate. So people lived there, but it was not a thriving place, pilgrims going to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem and things like that. But otherwise, it was not a thriving place.

And many of the first settlers, going back 150 years ago, 100 years ago, many of the first settlers died in the process from malaria because of mosquito bites draining the swamps. So to go from that to Israel being one of the most robust economies worldwide to Israel having more startup companies and more Nobel Prize winners and all of the developments on and on and on, it's really remarkable. And on the one hand, there are some evangelical Christians who so appreciate what God has done on the Jewish people that they idolize Israel and they idolize the Jewish people as if there's no fault and there's no error and everything is perfect. And then there are those who so hate the Jewish people that they demonize the Jewish state as if everything it does is wrong and ugly.

As I've said many times, Jews are like everybody else except more so. By which I mean that our characteristics to do good seem to be extreme. Our abilities to do good seem to be extreme. And our characteristics and our ability to do bad seem to be extreme. That everything seems exaggerated in what we do. So there are many things, Israel, after 75 years that are quite remarkable and impressive in terms of a national development and an ascendancy to be where the nation is and things developed and what the scientists have learned, the agriculturists have learned. And then even ways that Israel has sought to live peacefully with neighbors and do various things in a positive way.

There are many, many exceptional things. When you join the IDF, one of the first things they go over is ethics. And you cannot leave base without your ethics card. This is just something you carry with you.

And these things are taught and emphasized. And we will get prayer requests from parents of soldiers at different times because everyone's got to serve, male and female, got to serve in the army. There are exemptions. Arabs wouldn't have to.

Ultra-orthodox Jews can be exempt, etc. But otherwise everybody serves. It's a rite of passage.

And many times we'll get requests sometimes from the young people themselves. Pray for us. We're going into Gaza to try to take out some terrorist banks.

But it's really, really difficult because we have to operate by various ethical principles. And you have to know that we're about to bomb your house. They'll notify people. Get out. You're not the ones we're after.

Get out. Or they'll fly over with announcements. So of course Israel's not perfect in this. But there are standards that are unique and that are different. And yet Israelis are like everybody else. Human beings who need the Lord. When I was delayed seven hours getting into the country, sitting there, I was not overwhelmed with a feeling of love for Israel at that moment and love for the way the system ran. And we always joke as Jewish believers when people say, I love the Jews, we say, do you know any? I'll have a burden for Israel. Go live in Tel Aviv for a year and see what happens to your burden.

Go live in Brooklyn for a year and see what happens to your burden. My driver bringing me to the hotel after the airport when I finally got through and got my luggage, we were chatting and he just started telling me freely. We started chatting in Hebrew, even though my mind in Hebrew is much weaker than my biblical Hebrew. If it's subject matter that's more in keeping with what I'm used to, I better understand it. But he was just explaining why he believes in Torah but doesn't believe in the rabbis, doesn't believe in rabbinic authority. And so we were talking about one thing being from above, another thing just being human and his perspective on it. And he was quoting scripture. I said, you raise tradition?

He goes, no, no, I've got a good memory. So we're quoting it together in Hebrew, just having fun talking. And he's just telling me the religious leaders are so corrupted and naming names of different ones and they're thieves. I said, all of them?

He doesn't know a lot of them. So, part of the fact, we're fallen human beings. Tel Aviv voted the most gay-friendly city in the world. You know, strengths and weaknesses, that's the reality.

And Israel at a real critical point 75 years in, internal crisis, what God is going to do, it's going to be a great thing to watch and witness. All right, we will be right back. Vitamin B12 is one of the eight B vitamins and is an essential nutrient, meaning the body cannot make B12 on its own. You see, unlike other oral B12 supplements, Alfred Libby's slow dissolve super B12 is fast acting because the formula is scientifically developed to dissolve under the tongue, bypassing the digestive process, making it immediately available for use in the body. Alfred Libby's slow dissolve super B12 is also formulated with other natural energy supporting ingredients, such as folate, ginseng root, and other natural ingredients.

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Sacred words of the Shema, which means in Hebrew, hear. Shema Yisrael, hear, O Israel, the profession of one God and one God only, that Israel serves. I don't want to make you envious, but we are sitting here in this upgraded hotel room that I guess I got as the tour leader here. Absolutely luxurious looking out, right out the window at the Sea of Galilee here. Yes, eat your heart out. It's an unbelievable view, isn't it? You get in at the end of the day a little bit worn out and think, I can handle this.

I can handle this. 866-348-7884. Friends, I really encourage you now to be joining millions of believers around the world praying for Israel because it is a critical time in the nation and there are different visions of what Israel should be. As we explained a couple weeks back, there's some who want Israel to be a Jewish state, meaning that it is a state that operates based on biblical Torah principles and therefore should emphasize those things. And there are those who want to be a state for Jews, meaning that whoever you are, whatever your background, as secular as you may be, this is just a place where Jews are welcome and in many ways would resemble one of the most liberal democracies in Europe in terms of its operation and have very little Jewish character beyond that.

How does it work out? There's been a coexistence through the years, through these 75 years, and Israel was supposed to draft a constitution immediately after its independence, but that just never happened. And what has happened is that there's been kind of an agreement. The religious Jews, their big thing was we want to be able to live the way we live. And we want to have some authority in the country in terms of religious standards, but that's the key thing, that we can live the way we want to live and train our children the way we want, have our communities the way we want, and then have some oversight in terms of things on a national level. So religious Jews have oversight of marriage. You cannot have a legally recognized ceremony in Israel that's not conducted by an Orthodox rabbi.

So I was just chatting with the group before. Some Israelis not wanting to do that because they're not religious at all. They don't even want to tolerate it for the wedding. They'll fly an hour over to Cyprus and have a secular ceremony there and come back legally married or get married in another country and come back legally married. There are dietary laws. You can eat non-kosher fruit in Israel, but if you were going to be, say, a major hotel that you hold events, you hold weddings and things like that, that if you want to be able to do it, you need rabbinic approval, and it has to be kosher in that regard. And when you get into Jerusalem, things are even more religious, and everything shuts down for Sabbath. So there is that influence, but otherwise Israelis can live however they want to live. And there are totally secular Israelis. I'm quite confident a higher percentage of Israelis in America, in Israel, than in America. So you've got the full gamut of things.

You've got the worldliness, the sensuality, like you would anywhere else. I remember we had a major tour here in 1988, or a major event, May of 1988, so the 40th anniversary of Israel, and it was during the time of Shavuot, the Pentecost. And we had this massive gathering, the largest gathering of Messianic Jews in Israel that we knew of in almost 2,000 years in Jerusalem. It turns out the building where we prayed and cried out in worship is now the building where the American Embassy is held in Jerusalem. Yeah, remarkable.

All these years later for that to happen. But I remember we get into the first hotel. We had about 500 people came over from the States, and I was part of that entourage who was going to be speaking in one of the meetings. And some of the families went up. There was a pool. I forget if it was the top floor outdoor pool, but whatever, there was a pool. And some of the families went up with their kids, only to be shocked that there were women bathing topless. This is 1988. And so they went down and complained to the hotel.

We had a big tour group there, so they wanted to accommodate. And the ladies were not happy. It's just normal life. So again, there's part of Israel that's very secular. You serve as a woman in the army. You get free abortions virtually.

So this is the way things work here. And you go to the very, very religious areas, and it is ultra, ultra religious. And if you just walk in there as a secular person, you've got to be, especially as a female, totally covered, pretty much head to toe. And they live such a life that many of them are right in poverty or on the edge of poverty, having massive families. It could be 12, 13, 14 kids, massive families. And the whole goal is just to study Torah and tradition day and night and to live it out, a totally closed society, put aside having a TV in the home.

Of course that's going to happen. You don't have a smartphone because it's too easy to access pollution. So you just have a regular phone that can just take calls like the old phones. However, even then, you have area codes that you know are good, that are kosher.

And if you see a number that's not in there, you don't even take the call. So it's totally closed in that regard. And if you're, say, 17, 18 years old, a boy, you could start your day maybe in the yeshiva, maybe at 7, 7, 7, 730 in the morning. And you finish your studies maybe at midnight. And it's just daily routine. When some of these very, very religious Jews have come to faith, and we tell them, oh, yeah, we've got a very active congregation.

You'll love it. We have what we call Shabbat school before the Shabbat service. Then we have Shabbat service. And Wednesday night, we have a small group that meets. And, oh, we have a prayer meeting once a month on Monday nights.

What do you do all the rest of the time? Because they're used to doing everything communally, praying together all day, studying together all day, or studying with a partner individually or in groups. If you go into a yeshiva, and they're, I'm not talking about a lecture, just study time. It's loud. It's noisy.

People are studying out loud. People are having arguments back and forth. That's just the environment. But it's all communal. And we've had it with people that have come to faith, very, very religious. And that's the biggest thing.

They have no community anymore. And what we think is really radical, we've got a pretty radical church here. We have two prayer meetings a week and do outreach.

And they're like, well, what about all the other time? One guy went to a ministry school. And it's pretty intensive programs. Five days a week, eight in the morning until noon. And you start with chapel every day. And people really going after the Lord in prayer and worship. And then three classes. And then you have mandatory outreach. And then you have a Tuesday night service. And he said, there's nothing happening here. Most people, that's pretty full schedule.

Work a job and do this and do my studies. It's a pretty full day. He's like, they only have stuff in the morning.

That was his feeling. So very, very different worlds, but all part of Israel. And everyone with a right to vote. And because of the growing numbers of the ultra Orthodox with their large families and the secular Israelis having lower birth rates, and then the Palestinian Muslims having higher birth rates, things really continue to shift. And where they go, it's going to be very interesting because the national economy, the Israelis in general have to support the very, very religious because they want to be able to study all day. And for them, that's the harder work. And for them, their praying is what preserves Israel. So to pull them away from that is to pull them away from that which is sacred. But many Israelis resent having to underwrite these.

And then the men don't fight, by and large, with rare exception. They don't fight the IDF because that would take them away from the Torah study and not only take them away from Torah study, it would also put them in a very secular world, the environment. So therefore, they oppose that. So other Israelis say, well, why should we support them? Well, the problem is if their numbers continue to grow, and percentage-wise, the secular Israelis get smaller, it can't sustain itself. Something has to shift.

But where it's going to go, how it's going to change, are big questions that we do not have immediate answers for. OK, 866-34-TRUTH is the number. When we come back, I'm going to answer some questions from our tour group right here in Israel. Hey friends, this is Dr. Michael Brown.

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Call me a fanatic. Welcome back to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, live from Israel, literally overlooking the Sea of Galilee with about 14 folks from our tour group of 85 or so. And it's just been, you know, you get through one day here and it's like, that was just one day. A lot gets packed in and you go through whole different worlds and each day is different.

And then when we end up in Jerusalem, it's another whole different world and experience. Hey, one thing, just want to encourage you to join our support team. By the way, I'll be passing the bucket in the room here and signing everyone up.

Join our support team. Not only are you helping us on the front lines of gospel, baseball, and cultural revolution, but you are helping us reach the lost sheep of the House of Israel. You are helping us in our ministry of answering Jewish objections to Jesus and equipping believers. Material that we've put out in English comes out on a regular basis in Hebrew, in written form, digital form, spoken form.

We're making an impact, lives are being changed. I remember one of our tours a few years ago, so we were in the old city of Jerusalem. It was the last day and an Orthodox Jewish guy comes walking up to me.

I'm in the whole garb and everything. He didn't look totally typical, Orthodox, just a facial complexion beard, but otherwise, fully Orthodox. We begin to talk and he says, he was all excited to meet me. He said, I can't believe it, Jesus, I don't watch your videos, your debates with rabbis all the time. I said, well, tell me about yourself. He said, well, he was raised a Christian, but he never believed he was nominal, converted to Judaism, and has now been ultra-Orthodox and studying in Jerusalem. He said, yeah, my friends and I, we all watch you together. I said, are they all like you?

He goes, no, no, most of them raised ultra-Orthodox and stuff. I talk to them and I said, hey, keep seeking, man. You're still on a journey, keep seeking.

God will bring you to the truth. He walked away all excited. I grabbed a few of the folks that were around me. I said, let's pray for him, that God will really open his heart, open his mind.

We finished praying. I look up and he's walking right back to me. He goes, they're not gonna believe I met you unless we get a picture together. We hear from people. I remember getting an email one time from an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jew in New York and saying, I just want you to know I agree with everything you teach about the Messiah. We wrote back and we wrote back and said, hey, could we get you some materials? Could I send you?

He goes, no, no, no, you can't send me anything because it's all completely secret. So folks are out there. The message is getting out. So you can join our support team, become a torchbearer. We will pour back into you in many, many ways every single month and give you access to hundreds of hours of free material. Go to AskDrBrownASKDRBrown.org, click on donate monthly support and those two free books we wanna send out to you immediately. Okay, we are gonna start taking questions right here in the room. So we'll start, you give your name and where you are from.

My name's Fran. I'm from Los Angeles and my question is, is it possible in Genesis to interpret the days to be literal 24 hours without the days being separated by 24 hours? So in other words, six days of work done over maybe even millions or hundreds of millions of years. All right, so it's not impossible to say that God did this one day and then paused for a billion years and did it another day, but it would not make sense out of the resting on the seventh day because there would have been all this resting in between. So it's not a logical way to read it. It would either be, the main ways you could read it are literal six 24 hour days or the quote days being just a way of speaking of periods of time or that the whole thing is just put in a seven day schema to convey a larger theological point. But it wouldn't seem to be a natural reading that you'd have this massive gap and then specifically saying that God ceased from his work on this particular day. So it's not impossible, but it would not be a logical way of reading the thing. And then scientifically, I don't think it helps because I don't know any scientist, old earth or young earth, who would say that all this happened in one day and then there's like a million years with nothing happening and then another thing happened in the 24 hour days. So I don't know if it helps, but check out John Lennox's book, L-E-N-N-O-X, Seven Days to Change the World. And what he's saying is not gonna, it's gonna be different than what you suggested, but in a similar way in terms of the length of the days and the purpose of the days, et cetera. So John Lennox, PhD in math and science as well, Cambridge, Oxford background, brilliant man, Irish believer. Okay, next.

Hey, Dr. Brown, my name is Jake Silver and my question is, oh, I'm from Florida, Florida, Tallahassee, Florida. My question is I'm a Jewish believer, Messianic Jewish believer. I keep kosher.

This often comes up with friends, you know, why do you do this? This isn't for salvific purposes, but how, what's a biblical appraisal on doing these things and maintaining my Jewish identity as a Messianic believer? Right, so if someone's asked you why you do it, I would ask them, well, where does the Lord tell me not to do it? Where does the Lord say I'm not free to do it? I'm free not to do it. I'm not free to do it.

So don't we have the freedom to do it or not do it? That's one thing. But when Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 9 and said to the Jew, I became a Jew, right, and then to those without the law, one without the law, et cetera, and he goes through all that. Well, Paul's Jewish. So what does it mean to the Jews that became a Jew? Well, it obviously meant that there were traditions that he took on and things that he worked under that he didn't have to, but in order to reach a certain sector of his people, right? So there are ultimately moral laws rendered and he spoke about being under the law of Christ, and yet there are certain things he did that he didn't have to do, right? And when he was with the Gentiles, he was still going to be under God's moral law, but he would do things differently to reach them. So it all depends on calling and covenantal solidarity. In many ways, it's a great way to say, because kosher is a big issue in so many Jewish minds, to say, yes, you can be Jewish and believe in Jesus. So our tour guide, Daron, was mentioning this morning when we were at Caesarea.

So we got two different guides and then sometimes we're all with one of them. But he happened to talk about the history again in Cornelius, so a Gentile, God-fearing person, and asked him a word to go to Cornelius. But the big shock then, the big question was, can you be Gentile and believe in Yeshua without becoming a Jew first?

That's what threw them. It's like, yeah, of course you can be accepted, but you have to become a Jew, right? So you're circumcised and men are circumcised, women just be immersed, and now you keep all the commandments, et cetera. And so you can be totally in to Judaism. So now you're going to convert through the Messiah. So they were shocked when the Holy Spirit fell as Peter's preaching.

I mean, picture you're preaching to a bunch of Muslims and their full Islamic garb, and as you're preaching, they raise their hands and start speaking in tongues. It's like, I think you skipped a few steps. How'd that happen? That's not supposed to happen.

So that was the mystery. Acts 15, when they discuss it, it's assumed and understood that Jewish believers will still live as Jews, especially before the destruction of the temple. No one's thinking differently. The Jewish Messiah has come. Why would we not live like Jews, right?

He comes to fulfill the law, not abolish this. Why would we not live like Jews? So it changed so deeply over the centuries, as our tour guide mentioned, that the question became, can you be a Jew and follow Jesus without becoming a Gentile? And I literally have Jewish friends of mine, believers, who when they got saved were given pork sandwiches to prove that they were really saved. You think of that level of ignorance, and then as I document in my book Our Hands Are Staying with Blood, following the work of the church historian James Parks, there were medieval baptismal formulas that when you were getting immersed in water as a Jewish person, you would have to renounce all Jewish customs, observance of Sabbath, Passover, dietary laws.

You really have to say, I will eat pork, even if my whole life I haven't been used to it. You had to revere Mary. You have to curse the rabbis.

You think, what, how in the world that happened? It's about the church departing from its Jewish roots. So these things are very, very major in terms of Jewish history, Jewish mindset, and whatever is natural for us to do before the Lord to identify as Jews is part of our witness to the church and is part of our testimony to our community. If God lays it on your heart, wonderful. We understand for gospel principles, we can't be rigid, right?

You're reaching someone, some unreached person. They give you some food that is not according to kosher law. It's like, hey, I'm going to eat it for the sake of the gospel. But it's part of our identity.

What does Paul write in 1 Corinthians 7? When you're circumcised when you're recalled, don't become uncircumcised. When you're uncircumcised when you're recalled, don't become circumcised. And then he says circumcision is nothing. Uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments is what counts.

In other words, as far as our salvation, it doesn't matter. But if you're saved as a Jew, don't become a Gentile. If you're saved as a Gentile, don't become a Jew. And literally, even though he means spiritually there, because the Olympic Games or the athletic games were conducted in the nude, so if you were a Jewish man and you were ashamed of being circumcised, then how are you going to compete in the nude? So there was actually, as circumcision was painful, an uncircumcision operation where they would try to undo the effects of circumcision that some Jewish men would have in their desire to assimilate. So Paul's not talking about doing that literally, but spiritually, you're saved. Jewish, don't become Gentile.

And that, to me, works out in many different ways. Like someone who is more religious in their background may continue to live like that afterwards. You know, one dear brother, ultra-orthodox, Hasidic background, and he still lives like that in many ways, but he's an absolutely on fire believer sharing the Gospel, but the Jewish calendar, Jewish lifestyle.

He doesn't accept all the traditions, but that's been his life. In the same way someone who's a Gentile, one of the worst things they can do as far as witness to Jewish people, one of the worst things they can do is try to present themselves as Jews. It would be like me, I'm going to get the ladies to really get interested in the Gospel by wearing a dress. I mean, it seems that we're in, any traditional Jew can see when someone's just putting the clothes on, and it's not real. And within 10 seconds of talking to the person, they'll immediately know that the person is not legitimately religious Jewish, not by looking at them, just by interacting.

And I know many do it sincerely. They think if we can look really Jewish and all this is going to impress people, who's it going to impress? The only one who's going to impress is a Jew with no Jewish background whatsoever, because otherwise the moment they go into your meeting, you butchered the Hebrew, you messed up the prayers, you got garments wrong on the whole, it just makes our whole faith seem like a mockery. So to my Gentile Christian friends who think the way to save Israel is that you try to be super Jews, forget about it. It's not the way it's going to work. It's not the way it's going to work. Be Gentile Christians with appreciation of Jewish roots of the faith, love Israel, and be who you are, and let the light of Yeshua shine through you. 866-34-TRUTH.

We'll be right back. We have shown multiple health benefits by supplementing with collagen. Triveda's multi-collagen formula does not have just one or two types of collagen, or even three, but five forms of collagen shown to support healthy tendons, ligaments, skin, hair, nails, bones, muscles, gut lining, and even the arteries and veins.

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We got that down to a science. Hey, friends, just a reminder that when you order from our friends at Triveda 100% of your first order is donated to the Line of Fire and more than a tithe of all subsequent orders. So bless yourself with wellness and bless others as you enable us to expand this broadcast around the nation. Be sure to use the code BROWN25 at triveda.com All right, we're going to take some more questions from our tour group here.

Yes, sir. I'm Tim from Washington State and if and when a third temple is built seems impossible, but God does that with the Jewish people if and when the third temple is built as a Messianic Jew, what would your relationship be to it? Okay, wonderful question.

I appreciated all the questions, of course. So we're talking about the idea of a third temple being built before Yeshua returns, right? Not a kingdom future millennial temple. And there is what's called the Temple Mount Faithful. It's a very small movement within the Orthodox world planning to rebuild the temple. They've got, actually we're in the Jewish court, I don't know if we'll go past one of their places, but they have training there for the priests and the outfits are being built. They've got basically all the items for the tabernacle ready, for the temple ready. It does seem impossible because you've got the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque and to get rid of them you're gonna start a massive world war in the Muslim world. So how it could happen, there's speculation, but you know, big question.

But let's just say it does. I do believe scripture indicates it'll happen. I don't know how, but I do believe scripture indicates it will happen. What would my relationship to the temple be? Would it be like Paul going through religious rites at the temple and offering sacrifices at certain times?

No, I could not see that at all. Number one, the destruction of the temple indicated the end of an old system. Hebrews makes that plain, that this is coming to an end.

The old system came to an end. There's been a new and better covenant and the rebuilding of the temple, to me, as much as it would be seemingly miraculous, it would also be a source of pain because it would, for the Jewish nation, the religious Jews, be an indication now of the vindication of the system in a certain way. And God has done it, and now the further evidence that they're on the right track and Messiah is about to be revealed. The reason that traditional Jews don't try to rebuild the temple is because they believe the Messiah will do it.

There's some who even believe that the modern state of Israel got in the way of Messianic redemption because people did what only the Messiah could do. But if it is built, to me it will give the impression that the message we brought for 2,000 years that the blood of bulls and goats can't take away sins, that it's only the Messiah's blood that can do it. No, no, no, see, we have the sacrifices, we have the system again, so to me it would be different than living as one of the apostles did before the second temple was destroyed. Now, I've interacted with Christians that feel the exact opposite, that they feel it will be something glorious, that just like we look at the modern state of Israel, which is still not saved and redeemed, as something glorious and miraculous that God has done and part of his process of redemption, that that's how we should look at the building of a third temple.

And if it happens, it will be glorious and we should worship there and all that. But the idea of me partaking in a blood sacrifice, for what purpose? And certainly not for ritual purity, and our sins have been dealt with once and for all at the cross, so to me it would be an indication of the nearness of the Antichrist and of mass deception, out of which Revelation would come as to who the real Messiah is.

So that's how I've always thought of it. It would not be something I would participate in, it would be something where it would be for me a matter of praying for our people, as they do, that their eyes would be opened. But also, as I would understand it, as much as I said at the beginning, who expected Israel to be here 75 years and Jesus hasn't returned yet, I can't imagine a scenario where the temple will be here many years before there's the final crisis and revealing of the Antichrist and all that, based on my understanding if it does happen. Of course, we're speaking without a temple being here and the majesty and splendor that would be associated with it, but to me, again, it would be a confirmation in the wrong direction and I'd be praying for the opening of the eyes of our people in the midst of it.

Alright, go ahead. Hi, I'm Scott from Australia and one of the things we've heard about on this trip is something called a mikvah, which involves submersion in water. I wondered if you could talk about what that is and what's going on there and if there's any connection to New Testament baptism. Right, so when we are, towards the end of the week, towards the end of the tour, when we are, at the beginning of next week, when we're in Jerusalem and go past where the temple used to stand, one of the things you'll always see in the southern steps of the temple leading up to it, one of the things you'll always see is all these places where you walk down steps, this little pool, I mean, there's no water in it now, right?

This is, we're talking about 2,000 years ago. So you walk down these steps, this little pool, little tank, whatever you want to call it, in the middle and you walk out on the other side. So you had that all over Jerusalem because people would, it was for ritual purity. So a religious Jew will go to what's called the mikvah. So a woman, after her monthly cycle, she'll go for a cleansing. So it's just like a public bathhouse kind of thing. You go there and there are prayers that are prayed, et cetera.

There are ultra-orthodox Jews that will go every morning and immerse themselves. So for the purpose of ritual cleansing based on the priests, you know, cleaning their hands and things like that, then this became something even larger or if you were unclean and you had to be immersed and then cleansed. So this became a rite of purification and then it became associated as a rite of cleansing and repentance. So it is the forerunner for, it's not the forerunner, it is what John the Immerse was preaching. When he preached repentance, that's what he was preaching, the baptism for a baptism of, referred to as a baptism of repentance. That's what it was.

So it's not, that wasn't even a precursor. It's a precursor for what becomes called Christian baptism. But it was fully understood when Peter preaches, what do we do? And so he preaches Acts 2.36, let all the house of Israel know that God has made this Yeshua whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah, and the people are cut to the heart and cry out, men and brothers, what should we do? And Peter says, repent and be immersed, every one of you in the name of Jesus the Messiah. That was not new language.

Like what? What's that? What's that new thing? This was now the immediate outward sign that there was true repentance and then the cleansing of the water. Yeah, so it's one and the same.

It just became more specified for now being, this is what you do as a new believer in Yeshua. All right, someone else, we got time for here. Come on around, come on around. We're getting multinational here. Hey, so I'm David from Jacksonville, Florida.

My parents are from Ukraine. So my question is, Jesus came to fulfill the law and from my understanding, Christians are not under the ceremonial or civil law, but they're under the moral law like the Ten Commandments and one of the Ten Commandments is to keep the Sabbath. So are Christians obliged to keep the Sabbath or not?

Okay, so again, appreciate the question. So number one, it's an artificial distinction that we always use in the church, it's very common, to divide the law into ceremonial, moral and civil. When you read the Torah, it doesn't divide like that. Like read Leviticus 19 and it goes from one thing to another back to all interwoven. To a traditional Jew, those divisions are artificial, right? They would look at Torah in just a much more holistic way that all these commandments are important, et cetera. It is useful to categorize.

I agree, it's useful to categorize, but in reality, it's not a true division, all right? What we can say is that there were some laws that were given to Israel to keep them separate from the nations, right? The dietary laws and don't sow your field with two different kinds of seeds and things like that. There are other laws that were based on universal moral principles, that God forbade these things for all people, like murder is forbidden for all people. And there are things that when you look at Yeshua saying, He fulfills the law. So think of all of the, everything to do with sacrifice, priest or temple, He fulfills by dying on the cross and being our great high priest. When it comes to the biblical calendar, He brings that to fullness through Himself in terms of His death, resurrection and future return.

When it comes to the moral commandments, He takes them to a deeper level. So the question was, with Sabbath, was that something God gave Israel to keep them separate from the nations or was that a universal moral commandment? And the answer is it was something that God gave Israel to keep them separate from the nations. However, that being said, once the church kind of assumed the role of the new Israel, it now made a shift in the fourth century to formally say that the Sabbath is now shifted to Sunday. So that you cannot say scripturally.

There's no New Testament evidence for that. You'd either have to say that God never gave the seventh-day Sabbath law to the Gentile church and therefore Gentile Christians are free to observe any day or no day, right? Or you could say there's a principle of one day and seven, which is a weak argument. It does say the seventh day, but you could say there's a principle of one day and seven we should live by. Or that seventh-day Sabbath observance is mandatory for all Christians, but you don't find a hint of that in early church.

The Gentile Christians were puzzled by Jewish believers continuing to live as Jews, let alone thinking that Paul taught that they were all supposed to live as Jews. And you do have Romans 14, which deals with a mixed congregation in Rome of Jew and Gentile, where Paul deals with not everyone's gonna celebrate the same day or look at it the same. Some say the whole emphasis is that we come to Sabbath rest in Yeshua. That's how the Sabbath commandment is fulfilled, that we find rest in Him, right? Matthew 11, 28 to 30, ending with you'll find rest for your souls. So some would say that's the emphasis we've now ceased from our own labors and have entered into His rest and whether we set aside one particular day or every day as holy, we enjoy Sabbath rest. The one thing that's not scriptural is to say the Sabbath was changed to Sunday. You could say Gentile Christians are free to do it.

Absolutely, go for it. Just don't say the Sabbath was changed. All right, friends, we'll be back live again from the Sea of Galilee tomorrow. We've got questions, we've got answers.