Why Christians Should Support Israel

You know, we often hear about Christian Zionism, but why should the Church support and stand with Israel? Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, this is Michael Brown, delighted to be with me, to be with me, to be with you!

Gosh, after how many years on radio? Delighted to be with each of you. What I was ahead of myself, I was about to say, if this is your first time tuning in and joining me on a Thursday, and I jumped ahead and instead said, I'm delighted to be here with me. No, I'm delighted to be here with each of you. And if you are new to our Thoroughly Jewish Thursday broadcast, on this day we focus on issues relating to Israel, the Jewish people, relating to the Hebrew Bible, relating to Messianic prophecy, those kinds of things, and we only take Jewish-related calls.

So, that's what we do on Thursdays, 866-348-7884. I am going to share one important announcement with you, and I normally on a Thursday really strictly stay with specific Jewish-related news. Actually, this is Jewish-related, in that it is from a missionary in Nigeria who herself is Jewish, a Jewish follower of Jesus, with an amazing story of how she came to the Lord. But, I want to share what she had to say, an urgent announcement. She sent it to me last night, she said, Mike, I don't think I've ever done anything like this before. She was serving the poorest of the poor in Nigeria, working in Muslim communities, serving the children there, teaching, helping to instruct. And I want you to see what she had to say.

I posted this on social media as well. She said this, so I'm deviating from the norm because this is so urgent and it's one of our missionaries on the front lines. She said, I don't recall ever making such a request, but please let your listening audience know what is going on with these kids and 15 staff members of the boarding school. These were kids who were kidnapped, boys who were kidnapped. The kidnappings and killings are occurring on a daily basis, and it no longer appears to be news. Boko Haram now has engaged in a rocket attack and mighty guri. These boys have been held captive for almost two weeks now.

Seventeen women were kidnapped on their way to a wedding. Villages are being terrorized and burned to the ground by herdsmen, Muslim herdsmen. She said, when interviewing a new teacher and asked her why she came to Jeba, where our missionary is, an impoverished town with little opportunity for employment, her answer is, there is peace in Jeba.

She moved from the north with practically nothing to live in, a tiny room with no toileting facilities nearby and a sale of less than $15 per month just to live without fear. I pray that Jeba remains peaceful. Many herdsmen driven out of neighboring states are settling here, lots of new faces, only Jesus, meaning only Jesus can help, and the kidnappers are threatening to starve the boys to death. So on our Facebook page this morning, I put it up with a link to an article, a related article as well, that tells the story about the kidnapping of the boys, but so many things are happening. It's not even news in Nigeria, and many of the people being attacked, being kidnapped, even being killed are Christians.

So if you just lift up a prayer for God to have mercy and intervene in Nigeria, it would be really greatly appreciated. 866-34-TRUTH Earlier in the week, I got a call from a Christian man in North Carolina who was challenging me about supporting Trump, and when he said he voted for Biden, I in turn challenged him about voting for Biden. And we had a bad connection. I was unable to dialogue with him about that further, and he called back a couple days later.

Normally we don't let someone call back within a few weeks so there's room for other callers. But when it was him, I wanted to talk. I didn't want a monologue.

I wanted a dialogue. So with the time that we had, we had a very mutually respectful dialogue, and this was his challenge to me. Because I said, look, I had real issues with Donald Trump in terms of his character and behavior, the way he trashed people and so on, but I voted for him for XYZ policies that to me are real moral issues and humanitarian issues and issues of importance for America, Israel and the nations. And when I challenged him about voting for Biden, since he was challenging me about voting for Trump, I said, how could you vote for Joe Biden when he is pro-abortion, and I went through my list. So this gentleman asked me, very respectfully, do I support Israel today?

Am I a Christian Zionist? I said, if you mean, if you mean, do I believe that the Jewish people should have a homeland and that it is Israel and that God brought the Jewish people back, yes, I absolutely stand with that and support that. And he said, well, doesn't Israel have abortion laws and isn't abortion legal in Israel? And asked me very respectfully how I could then support Israel if Israel supports abortion in the same way I could ask him how could he vote for Biden if Biden supports abortion? So that was the nature of our dialogue. And I had limited time to answer him about the question on Israel. I thought, you know, I haven't talked about that in quite a while. And I didn't have other major things on my agenda for today for Thirdly Jewish Thursday.

So I thought, well, let's do that. Let's spend a few minutes explaining why I believe Christians should stand with Israel and support Israel. It does not mean stand against the Palestinians or ignore the needs of the Palestinians. It does not mean putting a stamp of approval on everything Israel does. But it does mean fundamentally recognizing God brought the Jewish people back to the land and that we should therefore stand with that. So why do I believe the church should support Israel, stand with Israel, especially since Israel as a whole is not a believing nation in terms of believing in Jesus, Yeshua. Maybe in terms of the Jewish population, the six million plus Jews living in Israel, maybe one half of one percent are believers in Yeshua, as far as we know. Then you have maybe 15 percent ultra-orthodox that militantly oppose our faith and maybe 70 percent of the population fairly secular. You have gay pride marches, not just in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem.

Tel Aviv has been rated the most gay friendly city in the world by far in a major poll a few years ago. So why should Christians stand with Israel when Israel is not a Messiah affirming nation in terms of believing in Jesus, the Messiah? Fair question.

Very fair question. Number one, we are standing with God. We are recognizing that God brought the Jewish people back to the land and we are therefore standing with him. We'll open up the scriptures about that in a moment.

So that's number one. In other words, we recognize the hand of God involved to regather the Jewish people from around the world back to the land. As I've said many, many times, we agree and understand that the Jewish people were scattered for disobedience, scattered for rejecting Moses, the prophets, the Messiah, so judged by God and scattered around the nations. And we understand that when God blesses, no one can curse. When he curses, no one can bless. When he opens the door, no one can shut it.

When he shuts the door, no one can open it. When he smites, no one can heal. When he heals, no one can smite. When he scatters, no one can regather.

When he regathers, no one can scatter. If God himself scattered the Jewish people in his anger and wrath, scattered them in judgment, then Satan can't regather them. The United Nations can't regather them. America can't regather them. The Jewish people can't regather themselves. They are only back in the land because God regathered them. So first thing, we are standing with God, the God who kept his word, giving promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And as Paul says in Galatians 3, the law which comes 430 years after the promise, in other words, Sinai law coming 430 years after the promise to Abraham, cannot nullify the promise. God is free to give the Jewish people the land, to scatter them in disobedience, and then to say, purely by my mercy I bring you back. And that's why the State of Israel has been re-established, and that's why there are now more than 6 million Jews living in Israel. So number one, we stand with God.

Number two, we stand against the devil. We recognize that Satan has been seeking to wipe the Jewish people out. We know in Jeremiah 31 verses 35 to 37 that God said no matter what, even sin committed, no matter what, he would preserve Israel as a people, as a nation. Speaking of the Jewish people and the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So Satan has been seeking to wipe the Jewish people out because God chose the Jewish people to bring redemption through them to the world, from Moses, the prophets, the apostles, to the Messiah himself. And then Israel has a unique role, the Jewish people and the Jewish Jerusalem, of welcoming the Messiah back, according to New Testament texts. So the Jewish people still have a role. If Satan can wipe them out and destroy them, not only is that a direct attack on God, but it also nullifies the word. It nullifies the word because God promised the Jewish people would remain until the end.

And therefore, we are standing against Satan by standing with a secure State of Israel today so the Jewish people have a homeland. Number three, it is an ongoing way of repenting of anti-Semitism in church history. For centuries, Jews have associated Christianity with hatred, with persecution, with hypocrisy, even with violence. Many a traditional Jew thinks there's a straight line from the New Testament to the Holocaust based on the horrors of church history. Catholic scholar Edward Flannery stated that the pages of history Jews have memorized, Christians have torn from their history books. That's why I wrote the book Our Hands Are Staying with Blood for a Christian audience to understand what happened in history. And the only way the Holocaust happened was because there were centuries of Christian anti-Semitism leading up to it that enabled this Jew hatred to spread through Europe the way it did.

And that's why so many Christian leaders were deeply grieved after that, recognizing that their teachings and theology had played a role in paving the way to it. This is an ongoing way of saying we genuinely love the Jewish people, we repent of the evils that we have committed, and we are standing with you. Number four, we recognize the importance of Israel as a democratic state in the Middle East. We recognize Israel as unique in many ways in the Middle East in the midst of the Muslim world, and in the midst of a world that has often been tremendously hostile and even terroristic with Islamic extremism coming out of some of the surrounding countries in the Middle East. Therefore, on a purely strategic level, it is good to stand with Israel. And number five, as much as Israel has faults and blemishes, it really does seek to be an ethical nation. It really does seek to do what is right, and therefore, as friends of Israel, we stand with Israel and then we challenge Israel to do what's right when we think there are wrongs with the Palestinians or in Israel's treatment of others. As friends, we stand with them and challenge them to do what is right. So we are standing with God, standing against the devil, repenting of historic antisemitism, making good strategic choices, and, as friends, calling Israel to higher ground. We'll be right back. Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome to 30 Jewish Thursday, the beautiful singing of the psalms who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep, the voice of Hasidic Jews, ultra-Orthodox Jews, singing the psalms, always a reminder to pray for the fullness of God's love and truth to be revealed in their hearts. Before I go to the phones, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-34-87-884. Why should Christians stand with Israel for all the reasons I gave if, in fact, Israel does not believe in the Messiah? Israel supports abortion. Israel has pro-homosexual branches even in Jerusalem, in many ways is very progressive. In other words, some of the standards of Israel are such that if those candidates were running in America, I would not vote for them. Christians should stand with Israel. Isn't that being hypocritical?

Again, a very fair question and an important one to discuss. So, number one, we don't have another choice outside of Israel, meaning either the Jewish people are scattered around the world and ultimately powerless to defend themselves from something else like a Holocaust or they're back in Israel. And that is the promised land.

So it's not like there's another choice. For example, if you are rescuing slaves and breaking the power of slavery in a country, you're rescuing slaves whoever you can. You're not just rescuing the nice slaves and the kind slaves and the moral slaves.

There might be miserable, nasty people, but they're slaves and they've been taken captive against their will. And that's not right, so we stand against it. So it is a moral imperative to say, yes, Israel should have a homeland along with a spiritual imperative based on scripture and recognizing divine activity. So we make that choice because it is the only choice available and it's the one that God himself has made to bring the Jewish people back to the land. And now, as friends of Israel, if we see Israel acting wrongly, we challenge them to act rightly and then within the land we work with Jewish believers and other Christian workers for righteousness.

And we work with them for the pro-life movement and we work with them to stand for godly values. And even within Israel, the very religious Jews oppose gay activism and oppose the liberal abortion laws and things like that, so there's resistance from within Israel as well. Now, if Israel was engaging in some genocidal acts and things like that, and because of that, we had to step back.

You know, if Israel became Nazi Germany, God forbid even saying the words. But if something horrific like that happened, then we have to stand back and just stand with a rebuke. But that's not the case. That's absolutely not the case in any shape, size, or form. And here in America, we've had abortion through all of our pro-life presidents after Roe v. Wade, with Reagan, and with George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, and Donald Trump.

In fact, abortions in 2019 actually increased with Planned Parenthood under Donald Trump. So it's a long battle. It's a long battle to fight. Now, why do I challenge those who then voted for Joe Biden? And again, I'm not judging your salvation, just asking questions. Like, you can ask me questions about my vote.

Why do I do that? Very simply this. Very simply. You had choices. Now, I can understand someone saying, I couldn't vote for either guy. I was repulsed by the way Trump carries himself, and I felt his behavior was destructive in Biden's policies. I deplore. I couldn't vote for either.

Totally respect that. But the difference is here we had a pro-life choice. Whereas it's either Israel exists, or Israel scattered among the nations. Hence, in my view, the difference. 866-34-TRUTH.

And let us go to the phones, starting with Jun in Germany. Thank you for calling the line of fire. Yes. Thanks, Dr. Brown.

Thanks, Dr. Brown, so much for having me. I have a question concerning the state of Israel. Please, before I ask, I would like to say yes, I fully agree. Israel still has people. I don't believe in replacement theology. I believe God has promised them the land.

I'm absolutely decor. But I would like to ask, I've seen the Bible, as you already said, that the promise of the land was always tied to obedience. I do not mean so much like abortion or not as part of it. Basically, I would say the Messiah. God wants them to believe in the Messiah. And I read more in the Bible, that when they have accepted the Messiah, the nations will agree to bring them back to the country. While Zionism, as it has taken place 50, 60 years ago, 70 years ago, is more a secular project. I would like to ask, how can they, or we for them, rightfully claim the land? And if they are, as you already mentioned, totally disobedient, and my second question relates to it, should we as Christians more focus on, okay, let's preach a gospel to them to the Jews first, and then also the nations, who instead of doing this politics, pro-Israel or not, you know what I mean? And then wait until God restores them, and then, like the Bible says, Isaiah, so everything will fall in place. This is my question.

So let me answer the second question first. Our greatest emphasis should be on praying for the salvation of the Jewish people and sharing the good news of the Messiah with them. With sensitivity and love, recognizing how the gospel has been portrayed to many Jews through the centuries, and how there's been pressure, you know, be baptized or die or be baptized or be exiled, so we need to walk in real sensitivity and love. Yes, the greatest need is for the salvation of Jewish people, individually and then obviously the turning of the nation. So that should be our focus and prayer, but it's not either or. Just like we want to see every human being on the planet saved, but we also see if someone is hungry and thirsty, we feed them and care for them. That is, it's not either or. The same way if America was being invaded by terrorists, well, you want to see the terrorists saved, but right now they're trying to kill innocent Americans, they need to be stopped.

So it's not either or, it's both and. Spiritual emphasis first, absolutely, but then standing with Israel nationally. So the question is, how are they back in the land if they have not yet repented nationally? So let's go to Ezekiel chapter 36. And starting in verse 16, and I'm going to read it for you. The word of the Lord came to me, O mortal, when the house of Israel dwelt on their own soil, they defiled it with their ways and their deeds. Their ways were in my sight like the uncleanness of a menstruous woman. So I poured out my wrath on them for the blood which they shed upon their land and for the fetishes with which they defiled it. I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed through the countries.

I punished them in accordance with their ways and their deeds. But when they came to those nations, they caused my holy name to be profaned, and that it was said of them, these are the people of the Lord, that they had to leave his land. In other words, it makes the God of Israel look bad. Therefore, I am concerned for my holy name, which the house of Israel have caused to be profaned among the nations to which they have come. Say to the house of Israel, Thus said the Lord God, Not for your sake will I act, O house of Israel, but for my holy name, which you have caused to be profaned among the nations to which you have come. I will sanctify my great name which has been profaned among the nations, among whom you have caused it to be profaned, and the nations shall know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when I manifest my holiness before their eyes through you. I will take you from among the nations and gather you from all the countries, and I will bring you back to your own land.

So God says, I'm doing it for my sake, because my name is being blasphemed. I'm going to bring you back. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your fetishes.

So the cleansing will come once they're back in the land. And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit into you. Thus I will cause you to follow my laws and faithfully to observe my rules. Then you shall dwell in the land which I gave to your forefathers, and you shall be my people. In other words, you'll be established there, and God will be their God.

And when I have delivered you from all your uncleanness, I will summon the grain, make it abundant, and so on. So in short, and this is what Paul had said in Galatians 3, the law, which is 430 years after the promise, does not annul the promise. So based on the law, God scattered the Jewish people in disobedience, and if they repent, he will regather them.

But based on the promise, he can have mercy whenever he desires. So this is a sheer act of mercy, God regathering the people. When there is a final turning, yes, there will still be Jews in different parts of the world, and they'll be carried on the shoulders of the Gentiles. You know, those various passages that you alluded to, and Israel's salvation will be a light to the whole world, and the nations will come streaming to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel.

All of that will happen. But God has brought the Jewish people back into the land for his purpose and for his namesake, and now in the land, he's sprinkling clean water on them, and little by little, hearts are turning. So instead of maybe five or less Jewish believers in the land in 1948, it's about 30,000 now. So the remnant continues to grow, but it's sheerly God's mercy for God's purpose and for his namesake. And if you'll notice, what began in Ezekiel 36 was never completed. In other words, it spoke about happening after the Babylonian exile, but it only happened in part. So the rest of it is still to come to pass, and that's why we recognize God bringing the Jewish people back to the land even now. Yes, thanks a lot for answering.

Please, one more question in that matter. Remember to call. 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. Great is our God. Sing it out.

866-34-TRUTH. Welcome to our Thoroughly Jewish Thursday broadcast. Hey, just a quick word. It has been a really exhausting season for so many. COVID crisis in so many ways still affecting so many lives. Things just disrupted from the norm. So much political upheaval, race tension in America, difficult things to process. It's a lot going on in America and around the world. And sometimes we get so absorbed with that, we just fail to step back and breathe deep and worship God.

Get our hearts and minds set on him and simply praise him because he's good. Period. When we do that, boy, everything changes.

The atmosphere in our own hearts and minds changes, but sometimes just feels like the atmosphere around us changes as well. All right. Let us get back to our friend. I was going to get one more question from Yun in Germany, but we won't. Let's go over from Germany to Hawaii.

Zach, welcome to The Line of Fire. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. All right. So I just have a couple of lies that I'd like for you to repudiate publicly, if you don't mind. Sure.

All right. So the first and probably the most grievous was from a so-called pastor that I used to hang out with. And he's a Gentile, mind you.

And he came over one day to where I live just to kind of have some fellowship, read the word, X, Y, Z. And we started talking about what it means to be Jewish, and then it led to matreniality and Judaism. And he claimed to know why matreniality is a thing, and his reasoning was that it's because of the alarming rates of absent Jewish fathers. And like, whoa, that's not true, right? I mean, that sounds like something like racist cousin said or something.

Yeah, if you're watching, you would have seen my eyes just about bug out. Let me be candid. I've heard all kinds of crazy lies about the Jewish people, but that is one of the craziest. I mean, it would be like saying the reason Shaquille O'Neal was such a good basketball player was because he was so short. You know what I'm saying? It'd be the opposite of reality.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, historically, the idea that there were absentee Jewish fathers or... No, I mean, there's not a hint of any such nonsense, even if you check historic divorce rates and things like that. And if you're with any religious Jewish family, the father's really the head of the home, and the kids grow up. The boys wanted to emulate the dads, and the Sabbath meal where the husband speaks scripture over the wife and prays blessing over her and the kids is a sacred, central thing. Now, you know, when you said the pastor's a Gentile, hey, some of the finest Christians on the planet for century to century are Gentiles.

So I just wanted to be sure that people didn't hear anything negative in the tone. No, but I mean, so the idea of why is it that Judaism says you're Jewish if your mother is Jewish? Where does that come from? It comes from a reading in Ezra and Nehemiah, when Ezra and Nehemiah saw that the Jewish people of their day had been intermarrying with foreign women, with non-Jewish women. And, of course, that was the sin in God's sight, and here they had just come back from exile and now they're engaging in the same sins again. So they had them divorce their wives, where they're married to non-Jewish women, and then they sent the women away with the children. So you could just say, well, that's a sociological thing that naturally the woman is going to be more apt to be able to care for a child in the society than the man because of his work and things like that. But the Jewish view was, well, it was because those were children of non-Jewish women, therefore they weren't considered Jews. So that's the textual basis for that viewpoint. But the idea that you have to trace it through the women because the men were absent is beyond bizarre.

I mean, like I said, it's like criticizing Shaquille O'Neal for being too short. I mean, it's that crazy, an exact opposite kind of thing. So, all right, next. All right, so the second question is, it's another lie that he also propagated, which I've heard before, and it was that after Bob Dylan's Christian phase, he reverted back to Judaism. Okay, well, it's not a lie. Bob Dylan was not a religious Jew when he became a born-again Christian. Then after some years, he wandered away from that and experimented with traditional Judaism, with Chabad, the Babish Jews, and then wandered away from that, and has been fairly secular, although many say that he still holds to his Christian faith. Yeah, I believe that.

Right, that's not a lie, and there's nothing... Yeah, I mean, sorry, I think I just phrased it wrong. I mean, I should probably just say, just maybe, like, reverted back to Judaism without Christ, because that's, like, what, you know, like, usually when people say that mean, you know? No, but in point of fact, there are plenty of Jews who begin following Jesus and then get influenced by the rabbis or counter-missionaries and turn away from their faith in Jesus and become religious Jews. And that's something that I've been combating for decades, you know, trying to help them come back to Jesus.

But you have other Christians that, you know, start out in faith and then go back to the world or turn away in different ways. Yeah, so was there one more, or just those two? No, that's it. Alright.

Hey, Zach, I appreciate the call very much. Yeah, hey, guys, team here, see what you find in terms of comparative Jewish divorce rates. See what we find in America? Just curious about that. But what a bizarre, bizarre statement. Yikes.

You know, this is going to sound totally, totally off the wall in terms of where that come from, but you'll get the point in a minute. There were friends of ours decades ago, and I remember the mom told us that one day her boys sat down, she had two little boys, sat down to have lunch and she gave them sandwiches, and they just immediately started to eat. And she said, boys, you didn't pray first. They said, but it's not hot. She's like, what? Somehow they had figured out that you pray over the food because it's hot, and when it's not hot, then you don't have to pray over it.

Whatever their little minds deduced, either you're waiting for it to cool down or it's too hot, you want to pray that it's not going to be too hot, whatever, that's what their little minds had figured out. So, I mean, just this crazy logic. So, you know, the reason that traditional Judaism says that Jews descend as traits through the mother is because of absentee Jewish fathers.

Oh, gosh, what bizarre here. Let's see. The Pew Research Center found Protestant individuals, anyone, yeah, just identified as non-Catholic, had a divorce rate of approximately 51%, and let's see, Jewish divorce rate said approximately 9% of those surveyed had been divorced or separated. What do you know? What do you know? According to that, Protestant divorce rate, five times higher than the Jewish divorce rate. I don't know how it breaks down overall, but thanks for the info, guys. Speaking of anti-Semitic lies, do you have my book yet, Christian Anti-Semitism, Confronting the Lies in Today's Church?

If you don't have it, if you're able to get it, go ahead and order it. You can get it from our website or any online book dealer, Christian book, Barnes & Noble, Amazon. It's an eye-opener, and it's documented. It's documented. It is point for point documented, laying out what's out there, the hateful lies about the Jewish people today. And what's remarkable is when I confront these lies, when I confront these lies, and when I put out a YouTube video saying, okay, we're going to watch clips from true news, and we're going to watch, this is blatant anti-Semitism, this is misinformation, this is demonizing Israel, and we put it out, those videos, instead of our normal videos, which get like 95% thumbs up, 5% thumbs down, those will get like 60% thumbs down and 40% thumbs up with many, many more people watching. In other words, people are confirming what I'm saying, that the anti-Semitism is out there, except they're confirming it by exercising it themselves and attacking us for exposing it.

Here, look at this. This is an NBC clip. This episode has now been pulled from nurses. I've never seen the show. But it's blatantly anti-Jewish, caricatures in a negative way, so if you're watching, you'll get to watch it, otherwise you'll listen. So just to set the scene for you, there's a Hasidic Jew, ultra-Orthodox Jewish man, he is badly injured, he needs to have a bone transplant if he's going to be able to function normally, and he's there with his father and the doctor and they're conferring about it.

Check it out. The graft, where does it come from? It's called an allobone graft.

It's harvested from a deceased donor. But you want to put a dead leg inside of me? A Goyim leg, from anyone. An Arab woman? A God-forbidden Arab woman.

Look, you can't be lugging this metal cage around. No, I don't consent. Israel, without this next step, you will never walk properly again. Which means forget about basketball. Which is obviously what he wants. It's a God who heals what he creates. Okay, on the one hand, that could be inspiring. This kid has so much faith that if God wants him to play basketball again, he can heal his leg. But otherwise, if he has to go around with a disability or handicap of some kind and never play basketball again, he'll do that rather than have a dead leg put in his body or dead bone put in his body because of his religious faith.

Okay, it could have been powerful testimony that that's his conviction. And if God doesn't want him playing basketball, so be it. Instead, what if it's a Goyim leg, a Gentile leg? What if it's a leg from an Arab or from a woman? And if God doesn't want him playing basketball, then he's going to have to go in and put that in as if that would be the determining factor and that's what the world needs to see. With all the caricaturing that's out there, with all the anti-Semitism that's out there, with all the lies that are out there. Oh, that's what you need to broadcast. And by the way, even if that would have been a religious belief that with a transplant you don't want a non-Jewish bone in your body under Jewish law, even if that was the case, then that's for something for rabbis in the Jewish community to discuss as opposed to something to err in front of an audience that may have enough prejudices already.

Anyway, it got pulled, but just imagine a whole lot of other settings that would not have made it to the light of day if it made some other group look bad. But Jews, hey, it's alright to make Jews look bad. 866-3 Fort Truth. Alright, George, I want to get to you next and I'll give you an example of some blatant contemporary anti-Semitism when we come back. Music 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 866-3 Fort Truth. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Music You know, I grew up in a Jewish home. We were familiar with that song Hava Nagila. My mom used to play it on the organ. We had a Haman organ I learned to play as a boy. My sister played, my mom played some, and she played that and it wasn't until I came to faith and then started reading Hebrew and then realized, whoa, this is beautiful words from Scripture. Come let us rejoice, let us be glad.

Yeah, so, Hava Nagila. Okay, 866-3 Fort Truth, and I just want to play this clip for you quickly and then, uh, uh, Birdie, In Christ There's No Gentile. Actually, you're wrong, sir. Completely wrong. Or is there no female? Because it says there's no male or female, right?

No Jew or Gentile. Is that what it means? So there's no female. If you have a church building, you just have gender neutral bathrooms. You don't have men's, women's, or women's meetings because there's no female or there's no male. Is that right?

Of course not. And why does Paul write Romans 11? I'm writing to you Gentiles. I'm writing to you Gentiles to provoke Israel to envy. There are still Jews and Gentiles. There's still males and females, but we are one in Jesus. There's no caste system. There's no class system. There's no class system, but of course there's Gentile.

Yikes! Just saw that comment on Facebook. It came to my attention there. Of course there are Jews and Gentiles, just like there are men and women. Of course there are, but we are one in Jesus. There's no caste system.

There's no class system. And again, Romans 11. Paul says, I'm writing to you Gentiles. Believers! Believers! All right, listen to this clip.

Professor Mark Lamont Hill, Temple University, this is I think the clubhouse app from last week. He was fired from CNN because of previous anti-Semitic comments, but listen to what he says. This is really dangerous stuff. The Biden administration last week said that they're skeptical of the ICC's finding that Israel should be accountable for, that they have the jurisdiction to investigate Israel for war crimes. We have nine-year-old children disemboweled because we've seen a civilian population wiped out through weapons at times when all the investigations demonstrate that there was no military goal or target in the areas where people were killed. We've seen so much evidence of war crimes, and yet the Biden administration is saying we're skeptical of even having investigation.

We're good for the Biden administration. That's positive because we're really waiting to see how friendly the Biden administration will be to Israel as the Trump administration was very friendly to Israel. This is some of the anti-Semitic lies, that Israel harvests organs, captures Palestinians, kills them, then harvests the organs for sale on the black market for transplants and things like that. You have to realize through the centuries Jews have been accused of these things, and that's why there's so much hatred of the Jews around the world historically. Wiping out civilian population through weapons, this does not happen. If Israel takes out civilians in a military operation, it regrets doing it. It doesn't dance in the streets like the terrorists do, where that's the intended victim. And Israel does whatever it can to not let that happen. This is well documented, and investigations have documented this. And then Israel is self-critical, and doing its own investigations, and giving account for every bullet and things like that. And where there are atrocities, and when Israel does things wrong, there's national uproar over it. There are national protests over it. This is the type of stuff, and look, people believe it.

There's a professor saying it, people believe it. Israel's guilty of these things. It's a terrible, terrible shame. 866-34-TRUTH. Let us go to George in Jacksonville, Florida. Welcome to the line of fire.

Thank you for having me, Dr. Brown. Talking about the anti-Semitism in the church, I'm reading a book now called The Aryan Jesus, and it talks about how the church in Germany, during the time of Hitler, basically perverted the Gospel and the Bible to support the Nazi regime and so on. Yeah, and by the way, in that very book, is that the Susanna Heschel book?

Or is it different? Yeah. So, she's got a chapter in there talking about the Nazi translation of the Bible. And, you know, just pulling out verses like John 4.22, salvation of the Jews, just pull them out. So, yeah, and they had to pull out other verses and then mistranslate others as well.

Yeah, so it is quite scary. And you had leading theologians, I mean, people whose works to this day are respected for their scholarship, that they were erudite scholars, and yet they said, no, Jesus was not Jewish and tried to paint him as totally Aryan, etc. So it's, yeah, it's terrible, but that was the theology, and it just went one step further than previous aspects of Replacement Theology. Yeah, it's an important book. My question for you, Dr. Brown, I've got your commentary on Job, and I've read like the first 12, 15 pages, and so before I go any further, I just want to make sure I've got the gist of it, or my question is this, essentially. Is Job really kind of a historical fiction? What I mean is, is that Job was a real person, but then some of the, as you go through and read through the rest of the book, it has kind of that feel to me of like old legends and stuff like Baal, Wolf, or what have you, from, you know, real poetic in nature, even though it's communicating a divine truth, it's kind of a, it's a fiction, in a sense. Is that accurate, or is the answer, keep reading?

No, well, that would be going a little too far. Of course, we do ask the question directly, is Job a historical figure, because there has been discussion for centuries whether Job is just a parable, just a myth, so we argue plainly that elsewhere in the Bible, in Ezekiel and in James, that he is referred to as a historical figure, and that if it's just a story, it loses its power and its meaning. Like I tell you this incredible story about a cancer survivor and how this gal overcame all these obstacles and her husband left her and she raised her kids and fought through this and somehow persevered and God healed her. Oh, it's all just a made-up story.

Well, then the inspiration is gone and the lessons are gone. So this actually happened. In other words, there was this wonderfully righteous man, Job, we would understand him as a God-fearing Gentile, you know, before the time of the law and things like that, that he did then suffer this wave of calamities. He was then judged by his friends, etc., that all this happened. However, what's clear is that the narrative has been enriched. In other words, that these men did not speak to each other in this exalted poetry and all of that.

So the overall core of the story is historical and must be that Job really existed, that Job really did suffer these things, that his friends really did misjudge him, that he did really accuse God and that in the end God turned everything for good and vindicated him while also correcting and rebuking Job that this actually happens. But it's like this. It's like putting flesh on the skeleton of the narrative.

It is now putting it, you know, did it have to be this amount of discussions back and forth? And no, it didn't have to be exactly in that way. Or did they speak in that level of poetry?

Obviously not. But you know, you'll also read a historical account and then someone will say, maybe it's an account of World War II or something like that. And then it will say, you know, some of the conversations are based on memory and then embellish. It's like, you know, it was 40 or 50 years or 60 years ago something happened. So it's that kind of thing.

It's the filling out, the embellishing. So it is putting flesh on the skeleton of the historical facts and the historical reality. And in that sense, the way you said it would be somewhat of an overstatement, but somewhere in between there and that it's all just a literal historical narration of every detail, somewhere in between those two.

Gotcha. At the end of the day, I still believe it's God's Word and He inspired it. I was just trying to figure out, kind of like Jesus used to use parables to communicate truth, the stories themselves were fictional, but the truth that He's talking about is absolutely fact.

So that's kind of like what I was trying to... Yeah, exactly. So even the Talmud asks the question, is Job just a mashal? Is Job a parable? And the Talmudic dating puts him from Abraham's day to Mordecai's day.

I mean, has it just trying to figure out where he actually lived? What seems clear is the narrative is painted in such a way that it is an ancient historical account that would have been contemporaneous with the patriarchs and before there was the nation of Israel with the laws, etc. But it's written by an author, an Israelite author, maybe close to the time of the exile, maybe when there's national question about the problem of suffering. We know certain texts are quoted in Job and in other words, within the book, it's subtly quoting different verses. For example, Psalm 8, what is man that you're mindful of him is quoted in Job 7, you know, but in a sarcastic way like, leave me alone. Just why do you even have to look at me?

Leave me alone. So you have to see, okay, what verses are being quoted? What's the latest chapter verse that's being quoted? So it has to be then written after that. In other words, Ronald Reagan can quote JFK. JFK can quote Reagan. Barack Obama can quote Reagan. Reagan can quote Obama. So you have to go to, okay, where's the latest and then look back from there. So the author of Job is marvelously, gloriously inspired to write one of the most amazing books in the history of literature and one of the most extraordinary books in the Bible. But the historical account is a true historical account and the overall message of the chapters of the book is what actually happened. Alright friends, pray for the salvation of the Jewish people, for God's grace to be poured out and pray for revival within the church. Back with you tomorrow.