Revival Moments in the Hebrew Bible

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. It is thoroughly Jewish Thursday. Welcome to the Line of Fire. This is the day of the week where we focus in particular on Jewish related issues, be it the modern state of Israel, be it the Hebrew language, be it questions about Jewish practices and beliefs or messianic prophecy. Phone lines are open.

866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884 is still the only caveat, the only qualifier for those calling. It has to be Jewish related. Friday it's any subject under the sun, but Thursday Jewish related.

If you happen to be listening or watching and you're a Jewish person and you don't agree with me, you don't believe Jesus is the Messiah and you want to take issue on that, we often hear from folks with different views and hear from folks regularly at times with different views. So feel free to call in. I'll often spot comments on YouTube in particular. We'll get a lot of folks who differ with us chiming in there. But Facebook too, Twitter, I'll see comments. I'm not able to respond to 99.9% of them.

But I'll spot them every so often from a Jewish person who is dead set against what I believe or is mocking it or is calling me out as a liar, etc. I wish I had time to interact with everyone and go back and forth point for point, but that's why we have live radio. That's why we have phone lines open.

You can call and share your differences as well as your questions. So 866-348-7884. In the King James, you will read the word quicken a lot. In Psalm 119, the psalmist prays, quicken me, Lord, quicken me. And what it is, it's translations of the Hebrew root chaya, you know, lechayim, to life, so that same root. And it is make me alive yet again.

Make me alive. And here and there it's translated with revive, as in Psalm 85, a prayer that God would renew us and revive us, or Habakkuk 3, where there's a prayer like that in verse 2. In the King James, if you're familiar with Hebrews 4-12, it says the word of God is quick and powerful.

When I first heard it, I thought it was quick, but it's not quick, it's alive. It's just old English for alive. So if you read the King James and you read quicken me, quicken me, it doesn't mean make me faster, right?

It means make me alive. Renew me once again. These are prayers for personal revival, for personal renewal, but the theme of revival, which is a critically important theme in the body today and a life theme, a great burden I've carried for many, many years, is to see the church restored to first love, passion, purity, to see true revival among God's people that will then spread to the world in conversion and transformation and discipleship. There are key texts in the Old Testament that are great revival texts, that are revival paradigms, and there is a pattern that often emerges in these texts. And the pattern is a call to turn back to God, right?

That's where all revival begins. On some level, we have walked away from God. On some level, we have been distant from God.

On some level, we've become like the world. On some level, we've compromised with sin or we've been beaten down, discouraged. We have left the early passion and devotion that was there.

We have left our first love and devotion. There is a call to return back to God. In other words, turn away from the idols, turn away from the world, turn back to God. And then with that, there's also frequently a cleansing process that takes place individually or corporately, and then restoration of the word, restoration of foundations. These are some of the key elements that we see in Old Testament revival movements.

But let's look at a revival movement with a family. Genesis chapter 35. Genesis 35. Then God said to Jacob, get up, go up to Bethel, and stay there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.

So many of you are familiar with Genesis 28. Esau is going to kill Jacob. Jacob is running for his life. He stops in Bethel while he's dreaming. He sees angels ascending and descending from heaven, and he wakes up in awe.

This is the house of God, Beit El. He calls it surely Yahweh, Yesh Yahweh. Yahweh, the Lord, is here in this place. God says, go up to Bethel where God appeared to you long ago.

This is the beginning of a revival called go back. You had a place. You had an encounter.

You had a walk. You had an experience. Go back to that God. Go back to that place.

Go back to that encounter. Now look at this, and this is what's so fascinating. This is the patriarch Jacob, right? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Look at this. So Jacob said to his household and to everyone who was with him, get rid of the foreign gods that are among you.

What? This is the children of Israel, children of the family of Jacob, right? This is the patriarch here. Get rid of the foreign gods that are among you. Why did they have foreign gods among them?

Because they had fallen away, because they had lost their early devotion, because they got like the world around them, and everybody else had gods, so they had other gods too. Go back to Bethel. Go back to that place of intimacy, that place of devotion. Go back to that place of purity. So the call to Jacob, we can't go back to Bethel, the house of God, with idols in our midst.

So the call to return to God is a call to repent of sin. Get rid of the foreign gods that are among you. Cleanse yourselves and change your clothes. Now remember, you didn't wash and change your clothes every day in the ancient world, so this is okay.

Major housecleaning here. Major prepare to meet your God. So on a personal level, we see what happens later in the Old Testament on a national level, but it's a mini picture of revival, the call to go back to where you had that early encounter with God, to turn away from other gods, and to go through cleansing and preparation to meet with God. Now, let's get up and go up to Bethel so that I can make an altar there to God who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me in the way that I have gone. So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods in their hand and the rings in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the oak tree near Shechem. We'll stop there.

Having rings in their ears in the ancient world, even in the Israelite world, was certainly not something that especially women would not do, but presumably there was something tied in with idolatry or worldliness with it, hence getting rid of them there. And if that's the role in your own life, then so be it. It applies the same way. But notice those characteristics there.

These are fundamental characteristics of revival. You're not where you used to be. Something has changed. I've often shared this story, but forget what year it was.

It was maybe about 15 years ago, and someone saw me, hadn't seen me in years. And they came up to me and said, Mike, what happened to your mustache? It's all white. And I thought to myself, what are you talking about? It's all white. Now, you would think with the big nose that I have, and like everybody, you look in the mirror every day, you're brushing your teeth, you're brushing your hair, you're shaving, right? I'm seeing this mustache every day. I did not realize it had turned white, that I had gone gray.

Why was that? Well, one reason happened gradually. So I'm seeing it every day.

I'm not noticing how dramatic it is. And the other thing is that my mustache was always a little lighter than the color of my hair. So if my hair was dark brown, which it used to be, right, thick, dark brown, my mustache was a little bit lighter, kind of reddish brown. So as my hair, little by little, was not so dark anymore, my mustache not so dark anymore, I just kind of thought it was a little lighter than everything.

I didn't realize it had gone gray. That's what happens when God just charged you. Suddenly you're looking back at an old journal entry and you think, that's not where I am anymore. And God's like putting on old clothes that don't fit. It's like, yikes, I can't believe I gained all this weight.

I had no idea. Because it happens gradually. Or you suddenly come under conviction about entertainment you watch, things you follow. It's like, how did that happen?

How did I fall in this way? And God says, come back. That's the beginning of personal revival, that conviction, that recognition that something is terribly wrong. And with that, you begin to turn back, seek Him. And then along the way, you realize all the idols you've accumulated, all the unclean things, and you turn away and you put them away. And then God's renewing grace prevails.

Let's take a look in 2 Kings chapter 18. By the way, if you want to get in on a call and talk to me about any Jewish-related subject, now is a great time to call. Because the sooner you call, the better chance that we get to answer your questions on the air. So 866-344-TRUTH, 866-348-7884, any Jewish-related question. Normally, Thursdays were flooded, but not with the total intensity that we are wall-to-wall on Fridays. But today we've got a lot of open lines, so by all means, give us a call.

It's a great time to connect. Okay, so 2 Kings chapter 18. Now it was in the third year of Hoshea, son of Elah, king of Israel, that Hezekiah, Hebrew Chizkiyahu, son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign.

He was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned for 29 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Avi, daughter of Zechariah. He did what was right in Adonai's eyes. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all his ancestor, his father, meaning ancestor, David had done. He removed the high places, smashed the pillars, and cut down the Asherah poles. He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made. For up to those days, the children of Israel were still burning incense to it.

It was called Nechushtan, which means a bronze thing or serpent. He trusted in Adonai the God of Israel. Indeed, none of all the kings of Judah after him was like him, and none before him. For he clung to Adonai. He did not turn away from following him, but kept his mitzvoth, his command, which Adonai had commanded Moses. So Adonai the Lord was with him. Wherever he went, he prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. He defeated the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territories, from watchtower to fortified city.

On the other side of the break, I want to come back and look at that. This is a national revival movement, a national reformation movement. And again, you would have it with key kings along the way, with Asa, but then Asa messes up at the end. With Hezekiah, with Josiah.

There are others lesser, but these are the principal ones where there is a national reformation movement. And always you have these elements in common. A turning back to the true worship of God. A turning away from idols.

It's the same to this day. We'll be right back. 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.

Oh yes. Let God arise. Let God arise and his enemies be scattered. Hey friends, welcome to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday.

On the Line of Fire, this is Michael Brown. Some Jewish world news to catch up on. And as always, phone lines open for your Jewish related questions. 866-344-TRUTH. Hey, if you believe I'm wrong in saying that Israel today is fulfillment of prophecy, or you think that what's commonly called replacement theology is an unfair way to describe those who see things differently, hey, we can talk as well. 866-344-TRUTH.

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So thank you for partnering with us. OK, before I go to the phones, let's go back to Second Kings Chapter 18. And let's notice this. We'll start again in the first verse of Second Kings 18. So Hezekiah becomes king. He's 25 years old. He reigns for 29 years. Right. So that would be until roughly the age of 54, which would mean that when Isaiah the prophet told them, you have 50, you're going to die. He was 39 years old. Right. 40 at the oldest. Probably 39 years old.

And you're going to die. So when he pleases with the Lord, God gives him 15 more years. So that's over half his reign. And as he's coming in power, there has been corruption. There has been sin.

There has been compromise. Ahaz, his father, was was an idol worshiper. And we know that he even sacrificed children in the fire. So Hezekiah now is is working against that. In other words, you can't have revival unless something has fallen back is not right in the midst of passionate Holy Spirit, devotion to the Lord and living pure purely before him and living in purity and honoring his word and being fervent to love your neighbor. You don't need revival then. But when you become worldly, when you become compromised, when you become discouraged, whatever it is, you need to be revived, brought back to life.

So that's the situation now. That there is all types of idolatry, even in the temple. So what is what a Hezekiah do? He cleans house. He removes the high places. He smashes the pillars, cuts down the Asherah poles. And notice this. I want to focus on this one point here. He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made.

All right, let's let's step back and think about this. In Numbers, the 21st chapter, the children of Israel sinned yet again. God sends these fiery snakes, these poisonous snakes, seraph snakes. So you have the seraphim in Isaiah six, these apparently fiery angels. Then you have these seraph snakes.

So these these snakes with with burning fiery bites, that's what would be understood with poisonous bites. People are dying. People cry out to Moses. Moses goes to the Lord. God says, OK, make a bronze image of one of these snakes.

Stick it on a pole. And when they look at it, they'll be healed. And of course, Jesus refers to that in John, the third chapter. And there's even the wisdom of Solomon, a reference to that, to the snake being lifted up. So this is something that's clearly in the Israelite memory and Torah and their other literature. And you she was saying, hey, that's what's going to happen to me. I'm going to die a criminal's death. And when you look to me, you'll be saved.

This explains in John three and then in John 12. So here it's just it was a bronze snake. It was it was just a thing. An image of these these reptiles that were killing the Israelites, these snakes that were killing the Israelites. Now here's the pole.

Look at it. Snake on the pole. You'll be healed. Well, what happened? They ended up worshipping the thing. They ended up making that which was meant to be a a vehicle of salvation, a vessel of salvation and healing. They turned it into an idol. And they were they were worshipping it. They even gave it a name, the Hushtan. So not cautious is a snake in Hebrew, but also it can have the the the Hushtan can have the meaning of a bronze thing.

So it's kind of a double meaning there. They're worshipping the snake. But that's what people do. God raises up a person to help and we end up worshipping the person or idolizing the person or making the person into some type of a superpower or superhero. It's human nature. And Hezekiah chops it up and says, you're not God to be worshipped. You just should have been destroyed. Obviously, back then, hindsight would say, yeah, once you're done with it, destroy it, because otherwise people will worship it.

That's why it's often believed that God buried Moses, because if the children of Israel knew where he was, they'd make a shrine to him and start praying to him. And who knows what else? So this is human nature. This is what happens.

So you'll you'll see. And then with this is the restoration of worship and the biblical calendar. There is now the keeping of the Sabbath again. There is now the the honoring of the Passover. And and, you know, you read in Josiah's day, which is a few generations after Hezekiah, that they had never kept the Passover the way they did in his day in centuries. So whatever happened in Hezekiah's day where the Passover was kept, it's kept on even a broader level with Josiah.

But by the time you get to Josiah, with his grandfather Manasseh being an evil idol worshiper who reigned for 55 years in Israel and filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, Josiah's got to go through the same process once again of cleansing the temple, of going back, rediscovering the word of God. These are things that happen in times of revival. Again, a turning away from idols, a call to turn back to God, a purifying, a repenting, a putting away of all the unclean things, a restoration of worship and honor, a reverence for a godly calendar or lifestyle, commemorating the things of God, and then a recovery of the word and the centrality of the word.

So the worship of one true God, repentance from sin, turning away from idolatry in our lives and from uncleanness and recovering the word of God, which then brings us into a deeper repentance. These are some of the things that happen in times of revival, the recovery of the word of God specifically in the days of Josiah, because it had been largely lost, if not entirely lost in written form from the people. So the only bits and pieces remembered and known among many, it had gotten that bad in the nation. I mean, when Josiah goes to clean house, they have shrines to homosexual prostitutes in the temple, in the temple.

That's how bad things were. So revival in the Old Testament, it's a theme that is very powerfully laid out. But the spiritual renewal is always directly tied in with social reformation.

That you have both and, now changes come to the nation and even restoration of justice and turning against the oppression of the poor with a call for justice and fairness. These are things that also flow out of revival movements in the Old Testament. It's never exclusively spiritual. It's a true revival. It'll be more than exclusively spiritual. All right, back with your call.

Stay right here. Welcome, welcome to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. We've got a great surprise for you, my dear friend Paul Wilber. If you were listening the whole hour, you heard him singing just earlier on. He's got an amazing book telling an amazing story about an amazing project, Roar from Zion. I was thrilled to be involved with that book as it was coming out and read it for myself. So I've been so blessed over the years to have Paul as a friend and super blessed to be in many, many meetings with him, countless meetings where he leads in worship. And every single one of those meetings I've encountered God in beautiful and wonderful ways and a powerful DVD project, video project they put out, Roar from Zion.

And now a book with his own story and more about that. So without further ado, Paul, welcome to the broadcast. Thanks for joining us today. Dr. Brandt, thanks so much, Mike. It's great to join.

Hey, great being with you. So reading Roar from Zion, I found out stuff about your own background and coming to faith, stuff I'd never known as long as I've known you. So it's a book that tells about you, tells about a lot of other things. Why did you write it? The whole purpose, Mike, was to tell of some heavenly experiences here in the earth that is provoking nations to faith. And that sounds maybe huge, too huge for one human being, but it just, the things that God has done, you know, maybe in spite of us, it just gives him such glory, sound, you know, the very words, the Roar from Zion started for me with just a short time of a quiet time.

I didn't have many minutes. I told the Lord, I need something in context because Dr. Brandt has always told me, don't just pull something out of context to try and make a point. All my believing life, I want to read, give me something, where's the beef? So I sat down to read the whole book of Joel, three chapters, not a big project, and I was breezing through, and the locusts are still eating everything, and chapter 2, the outpouring is still being prophesied about Acts chapter 2, and then I'm just about to finish, and I get to verse 14 of chapter 3, multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision. I have a big evangelism bone in me, especially for our Jewish people like you do, and I could just hear the questioning and the cries of Israel, who is our Messiah and what in the world are we doing here? And then there comes the Lord responds to that cry with a thunder from Jerusalem, a roar from Zion, and as I began to look a couple pages back and a couple pages forward, and then 1 Samuel chapter 7, and I'm discovering that there's a sound that we can make from the earth that provokes a roar out of heaven that may make a sound that will usher millions and multitudes into the kingdom, to the Jew first, and that's where it all began. So on the one hand, something utterly ridiculous for any one of us to consider, but something totally normal for God, and something totally in harmony with what is revealed.

Look, I live every day of my life with full confidence that there's going to be a national turning of our people, especially at the end of the age, and then I get to be part of it somehow. It's ridiculous, but we're not looking for what you do or I do. We're looking at what God does, right? That's what we're talking about. So Paul, there are a lot of things to talk about, and again friends, you'll find the book to be a really edifying faith-building read and an enjoyable read, but we had the joy in 1988, in October of 1988, you leading Israel's Hope, leading in worship, me preaching, religious Jews, rabbis sitting there in the audience among many believers, and it was a building that had a little bit of significance in your past.

Just tell us about that for a second. Well, you know, the call came, I think it was our friends Ari and Shira Socaram, there in Tel Aviv, and now we're at the 40th anniversary of the rebirth of the State of Israel, and they have this wild idea, right? Let's call Jewish believers to come to Jerusalem during the Shavuot, the Feast of Pentecost, and let's gather as one people with one voice, let's worship the Lord, and let's see if there can be this great new outpouring of His Spirit. And you and I, many times during that weekend, we joined hands, we prayed, we knelt, we sang, we worshipped, we prophesied, we cried out till two o'clock, three o'clock in the morning, and to our surprise, to our shock, the roof of the place didn't open up, we didn't see stairways with angels coming from top to bottom, and we left like, well, you know, we gave it our best shot. And as it turned out, that was the only hotel in Jerusalem that would allow messianic Jews to have a conference, all the rest of them were afraid of losing their kosher licenses and lose favor with the government, and this lone hotel going under on the far east side of Jerusalem said, what the heck, we're going to lose our building anyway, why don't you guys come? We took all the rooms and the hotel next door, and 30 years later, after nothing really big significant we thought happened, the United States, now with President Trump leading the way, is looking to fulfill the promise to move the embassy from Tel Aviv back to Jerusalem, the eternal capital of that eternal city, and where did they land? That very hotel and the one next door where we met, worshipped, cried out, prayed, asked God to do something special, and it took 30 years.

But that is now the American Embassy in Jerusalem. It's just the kind of wild thing, God knows the connection between the events and everything, but who scripts that? When you see that kind of thing, you can believe for anything. We cried, I was expecting more, and there were breakthroughs, we heard spiritual breakthroughs in many lives, but I was expecting more for sure, and people came from around the world, now you look at this, that ends up, what if someone told us then, by the way, 30 years later, thus is such a life, are you kidding me? But these are all little first words, and by the way, later that same year, October, so that was in May of 88, but in October of 88, you and I were in Cleveland doing similar meetings in a building in Cleveland that had a little significance as well.

You've got to jog my memory. How about the synagogue in Cleveland, the former synagogue? In fact, you talked about the event I was thinking about, which I'm thrilled that you did, in May in Jerusalem, but in Cleveland, in October of 88, in the synagogue, that was Marty Goetz's old home synagogue, and the famous Reform synagogue was now an empty building that could be used, and here we are doing Messianic outreach meetings with Orthodox rabbis sitting there present to criticize one of these things, who would script that, from your old community as well, so there's a little jog of your memory. Yeah, I needed that, and that should have been in the book. Well, you know, the funny thing is, though, it's good I told the story you weren't thinking about, because you told the story I wasn't thinking about.

All right, but I only mention these things to say it's kind of wild. You grow up, that's the synagogue you go to, now years later you're doing a Messianic outreach, and Orthodox Jews sitting there in the meeting to be critical, but there they are in the meeting thinking, who scripts these kind of things? But you've seen some things over the years, and a lot of it culminated in the Roar from Zion project, which in your heart is a firstfruits, it's a sound, it's a cry, a shout that's going up, but this was not a cheap project when you did Roar from Zion, you felt that God laid it on your heart to bring in top musicians and all this, and to kind of launch out on your own and do it. How did that project get funded?

How expensive was it? How did it get funded? Well, it went from $50,000 to $250,000 without me paying attention, but really, the Lord said, build me a blackbird, build me a vehicle that will carry a sound that will fly higher, that will go faster, that will be undetectable by all the processes of man, but will be kind of like the spy plane to bring in the good news. The whole thing, Mike, was the restoration of Israel and the restoration of the church, the two blades that have seemed to be opposing each other for the last 2,000 years, but I see there's a sound that unites the church and synagogue to be partners in the salvation of the earth. You can't have the kingdom of God without Israel, you can't have the kingdom of God without the nations, you can't have the return of Yeshua of Jesus without Jerusalem saying, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

You can't have the return of Jesus, Romans 11, without the fullness of the Gentiles. There's a partnership here, and that's what that sound was intended to capture and to broadcast. And that night that we held, well, it was a couple nights in Jerusalem, two different places, one of those venues had rows and rows of Holocaust survivors who sat there with tears flowing down their face and said, please come tell us more. Israelis came to the green room the first night after we had released this sound and asked for prayer and tell us more about this Messiah. God created everything with a sound, and sound carries something of the spirit. I mean, the Holy Spirit is the breath, right?

The Ruach, the breath of God. We can make a sound, I'm convinced, that not only provokes something from heaven, but also shifts atmospheres that pierces through the thickness and the hardness of men's hearts and sings something. God is a singer. Psalm 62, Zephaniah chapter 3, he sings over us. There's a sound that has been woven into our DNA as believers that provokes something in the heart of men. I believe, Mike, if I can get people to sing it, they'll believe it.

Stay right here. We'll be right back with Paul Wilbur. You've got to hear how God provided the funds.

You talk about divine backing. The new book, Roar from Zion, discovering the power of Jesus through ancient Jewish traditions. It's The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution.

Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Hey friends, less than 30 minutes from now, I'll be right back on YouTube. So ask Dr. Brown, A.S.K. D.R. Brown on YouTube for our weekly exclusive YouTube chat, so 4.15 Eastern Time, a little less than 30 minutes from now, we will be resuming and I'll be just answering any of the questions you post there.

So join me, ask Dr. Brown on YouTube, 4.15 Eastern Time. So Paul, I do want to emphasize the sound, the power, all of that. But again, to build faith, to let people understand that God himself is saying, go for it, I'm breathing on this, I'm doing this. You were independently taking on a new project as opposed to having another ministry or organization backing this, funding it, you know, paying in advance for this pre-production. It's 200,000 that you didn't have, but a sizable gift came in. How'd that happen? It actually did.

It's a story that convinced me that God was on our side and doing something supernatural. Now I've got a guy who needs to... Is there any way you can now park here? This is what happens with, hey, hey friends, we're good. Yeah, I'm on a live recording, thanks. I've been there, done that. I did an interview from a parking lot outside of a grocery store yesterday. Did you? Yeah. Well, that's what I was doing. I was on my way home from my office downtown, Jacksonville, and I-95 is notoriously terrible. So as the time was approaching, I wasn't going to get home in order to do this in a quiet place where trucks aren't coming and going, and I pulled over and sure enough, trucks are coming and going.

So this huge responsibility. We had just left Integrity Music, or I should say, Integrity Music left off. It was the third owner since Michael Coleman, a dear friend. And they had always funded all these huge, expensive projects in Israel. Shalom Jerusalem.

Are you sitting down? Cost $800,000 in 1995. Yikes. Wow. Yeah.

Hello. And they paid the bill. And Jerusalem Arise was $550,000 because we had orchestras and bands and singers and places and standards. So I thought I had that all lined up. I had partners who were saying, yes, I mean partners like people with huge ministries. They're saying, yes, we'll give you the auditorium.

Yes, we'll do this and do that. And one by one, it all began to fall apart. And I said, well, I know God's in this. He told us, build a Blackbird, go to Jerusalem, release the sound.

I was on a tour in the Netherlands. I had $35,000, we're now six months away from the date of the recording. I've already employed the Nashville Symphony Orchestra.

I've employed the best people. I mean, the bills, Mike, are mounting. But I knew God had said, do this. I was on an exhausting tour through the Netherlands the last night. I'm on my way home, no, to Jerusalem. I've got about three hours to sleep. My son, who was then living in L.A., is texting, texting, texting, calling, calling, calling.

And I'm trying to fall into the bed for three hours. It must be important. I called him and he said, Dad, this is really important. I'm holding a check that's really going to bless you. I said, well, okay, thanks, bless me. He said, well, if I told you I was holding a check for $25,000 towards the big budget, would that bless you?

I said, yes, son, thank you so much, I've got to go to sleep. He said, well, what if it were $50,000? And I said, Joel, if you're teasing me, I will personally spank you.

I don't care, you're 35 years old, I can still spank you. He said, well, Dad, it's $100,000, and guess how it showed up? He said, we sent some CDs and books to an address in the United Kingdom, somewhere around London. But it got misdirected, and that package wound up in the home of a messianic Jewish believer in Japan who didn't know who you are, read the books, listened to the music, sat down, and wrote us a check for $100,000. I said, after I picked myself up off the floor, and that put us very close, obviously, to what we needed, I was in discussions with a corporation about a partnership for another $100,000, and then we got lawyers on the phone, and they're trying to figure out how do we repay it, and how do we do this, and participate in the budget.

And after months, the man who owned the corporation said, with the lawyers on the phone, he said to me, he said, Paul, I'm sorry, I just thought this wasn't going to work, and my heart sank. And then he said, I'm going to give it to you as a gift, with no strings attached, and covered all the expenses. See, Paul, when I began to watch and listen to Roar from Zion, so the DVD that you sent me, now we're talking about the book, Roar from Zion, which is about that, and so much more. But I knew that there was divine backing.

In other words, it wasn't just, boy, this is powerful, this is well done. I also knew the Lord was saying, hey, I'm going to make this happen. So, Paul, as folks read your new book, Roar from Zion, what are you hoping will happen in their own lives as they pick up the book and read it? The main point, Mike, of all of it, with the doing of the project in Jerusalem, the Passover, the night that Jesus came to church, demonstrated before everybody who he is, turned the church upside down, that then now all these things that have been so important to Israel over all of this time, the Sabbath, the Feasts, the ways of the Lord, his precepts, his concepts, who's the Messiah, that all these things are living.

These are living words from a living God who not only declares something, but demonstrates it. Just a couple weeks ago, because of this sound, we baptized an Orthodox Jewish widow, 76 years old, who heard about a sound, heard a sound. She was a guest of one of her neighbors, came to church and heard a pastor saying, you know what, there are real blessings, there's treasures in Sabbath that we've never seen before. She heard the word Sabbath, she came back the next week. I was there doing a Passover demonstration, she's speaking the blessings over the bread and the cup and all the maror and all the rest from the free. That night she says, I believe this has got to be Jesus, and so she wants to be baptized. There's a sound, Mike, that heaven makes that's tuned specifically to every heart.

God is not willing that any should perish. And this Gospel is for the Jew first. And I believe that all of these results, that a church that is finding value in a Sabbath meal, getting your family together, sitting around a table, inviting the presence of God, celebrating communion, the body and blood of the Lord on a Friday night, inviting neighbors and friends to come in, experience the presence of God, and seeing miracles break out at their table.

I mean, it's like, come on! You know, the title of the book is The Power of Jesus in these Ancient Jewish Traditions. They are more than traditions, these are the ways of the Lord.

Jesus called himself the Lord of the Sabbath. There is so much to discover, to be a fullness, there's a fullness for the church that turns their hearts again towards Jerusalem, that makes a religion, a relationship, that pulls on the heart of the Jew, and we're seeing it week after week after week. There's a sound, there's a declaration, but then there's a demonstration that he so desperately, if I can say that about the Lord, that he's desperate to demonstrate who he is to a lost and dying world. And if we'll just listen, if we'll pay attention, he'll do crazy things to demonstrate that he is God. And Paul, we've seen God's amazing ways in the midst of the challenges and difficulties that everyone lives through in this world. We've seen the hand of God, so many of you listening, watching, you've seen it, but it seems to me, my own life history, that the confirmations that tie in with Israel's salvation are the most amazing of all, the most mind-boggling types of stories. So friends, you know Paul Wilbur, the worship leader, the songwriter, the singer. You've been blessed by his music for decades, millions and millions of you have. Now check out the new book, Roar from Zion, by Paul Wilbur, W-I-L-B-U-R. Hey buddy, can't wait to see you again in the coming days.

I'm sure we'll find a way to do it. God bless, man. Bless you too, Mike. Thanks so much. Alright, well, 15 minutes from now, we will be back on YouTube for a weekly YouTube chat. Check out the book, Roar from Zion. You'll be blessed.