Welcome to Truth Talk Live. All right, let's talk. A daily program powered by the Truth Network.
This is kind of a great thing, and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together. Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. Welcome to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Glad that you are with us.
We have a lot to go through today, and I want to let you also chime in on some things that you have on your heart. The number is 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Many, many years ago, several decades ago, I was in Chapel at Columbia Bible College in South Carolina. Now it's called Columbia International University. And we had this wonderful group that came and sang and performed there in Chapel. And at the time, the Bible College was a bit uptight.
I'm being generous with that term. They were very uptight. And to have a bunch of Messianic Jewish people coming in and playing some great music caused a few people to get a little bit nervous.
And I am so thrilled that I have Joel Chernoff. Now, I didn't get to meet him. I mean, they were a big deal.
I was just a lowly sophomore. But they were wonderful, and I enjoyed it. And Joel is a founding member there, and a lead singer. And he's here today with me.
And I'm so thrilled. And I know he's got a long list of things that he's involved with. He is the General Secretary and CEO of the Messianic Jewish Alliance, International Director. And then, he's the President of the Messianic Jewish Alliance. And he's with the Joseph Project. He founded this ministry. And they are the largest institution representing the Messianic Jewish community worldwide. And just extraordinary work that he's done. And he just got back from Israel. So, Joel, welcome to the program. And I wanted to get your thoughts, and I've got a lightning round of questions. But I haven't seen you in 47 years.
God bless you all there. And yes, it has been a few decades. And back in those days, of course, Lamb was a part of the early contemporary Christian movement in music. And some of those schools like Moody Bible, and the Columbia Bible College, and some of the other ones were very conservative. But there were so many young, on fire, some of them hippie-ish type of people in those schools that we would get invited there.
And we would come in and ruffle a few feathers. Not only because of the style of music, which was folk rock. That was the big thing at that time. But it was also Jewish. It was Jewish sounding.
There were some ancient minor feels woven into the contemporary rock folk rock feel. And we also sang a little bit in Hebrew, which was also a little bit different. So, yeah, we did ruffle a few feathers there. But it was all good. It was all a spirit of revival spreading over the country.
And it was a blessing to be there at that time. Let me just correct you that, just gently, that I'm the CEO of the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, which is the largest organization with the authority to speak for the Messianic Jewish community. And then also as a part of that, Minister Yev is the founder and executive board chairman for the Joseph Project International, which is the largest importer of humanitarian aid in the state of Israel today, having done over $170 million worth of aid.
And since October the 7th, last year have distributed $23 million worth of aid to the IDF, to the displaced Israelis, the refugees internally, and to the terrorist victims. So we've been very, very busy since October the 7th. Well, thank you for correcting me on that. I'm old, Joel, and I had to use my glasses as I was looking down. That's okay, brother. And I was reading this wrong, because I just remember you being with Lamb, and I remember I enjoyed the concert. I had a good time. And because it was Messianic Jewish, everybody was very excited. And they all looked at me with a last name like Rosenberger, and they thought, hey, you too? And I was like, well, not quite.
But my dad's a press-tiered minister, so I don't know that I really fit that model quite. Well, actually, Peter, if it was Rosenberg, that could be Jewish. If it is Rosenberger, that would be German. Well, it is German, and we trace it all the way back into way, way back.
My brother did a deep dive on this, and I tell people that it's Irish, that I'm Irish on my mother's side. The old Rosenberger. Well, listen, you've just got back from Israel. How are you doing, by the way? Yes, I am. Listen, we were there for about ten days, the wife and I, and we were there filming. We were down on the Gaza border, down at the Nova Festival site, which is kind of a memorial, and we were shooting film there. We were also delivering aid to various ministries down there. Of course, the Joseph Project International is kind of the United Way in terms of humanitarian aid in Israel, and we support many of the Messianic and Christian ministries, and also work very, very closely with the government of Israel. How's that going, by the way? It's great. I mean, we have been doing this for 24 years, so the Joseph Project International has a very high standing with the government of Israel, and we oftentimes work with the government of Israel, not only internally in Israel, and do them favors, and our fleet of trucks move some goods around for them, but also, we also work with them with their foreign policy, especially in Africa, and we will palletize humanitarian aid for them and get it ready to ship on cargo planes.
We did this in Turkey after that terrible earthquake there, and we palletized a lot of goods and really partnered with the government and moved millions of dollars worth of goods into Turkey on behalf of the government of Israel. Well, we're going to come back and talk some more about this. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Truth Talk Live. We're talking with Joel Chernoff. Don't go away.
We've got more to go. 866-34-TRUTH. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live.
This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad that you are with us. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-70 and beyond, and all of his work that he's doing with the Messianic Jewish Alliance and the Joseph Project. Just got back from Israel. I want to ask you, Joel, what are your thoughts about — let's just go into current events for a second here — what are your thoughts about the ceasefire and the hostages right now? Unfortunately, the Biden administration wants to feather its cap on its way out, and they gave Israel two choices. They gave Bibi, really, the prime minister, two choices. Either you agree to a 60-day ceasefire and then I'm out of office, I am gone, Trump will be in, you can do what you want, or the UN Security Council is going to pass a worldwide weapons embargo against the state of Israel, and we will abstain.
We will not stop it. So he chose the lesser of two evils. Now, he would have never agreed to the ceasefire. Israel needs to destroy the terrorists, both in the south and in the north. So they're just biding their time. Now, do I believe the ceasefire is going to hold?
No. I do not believe that they can control themselves. Iran is humiliated, this is their top proxy army, and they are continuing to try to feed them weapons and to build up during the ceasefire. And of course, Israel is trying to stop that, and so they just continue fighting. What about the hostages? Trump laid down a pretty strong ultimatum and said, hey, look, you better let these people go. It almost feels like we're back in 1980 again with Reagan getting ready to take over. Does that feel that way to you?
I don't want to say you're old as I am, Joel, but you are. No, no, it's true. The world knows, and I tell you, for four years, I have been praying for President Trump, who is the greatest presidential friend of the Jewish people and of Israel ever. And yet the Lord allowed the leftists to, in my opinion, defraud the elections and to take over and to harass and persecute him, which is terrible. But the promises of God are that if you bless Israel, you will be blessed. And for four years, I've been crying out to God, vindicate this man. It's not right that he should suffer this kind of persecution.
But the Lord allowed it and brought him back. Now, the thing about President Trump is that President Trump promises to do things during the campaign. He's the only president I have ever known in my lifetime that tries to keep every promise that he makes, and he's very successful with it. So the enemies of Israel know when he says he's going to do something that he's going to do it.
He is going to do it, or he's going to try hard to do it. So as soon as he won, the terrorists in the south, Hamas, I don't know if you saw that, but they immediately said, we want a ceasefire of some sort. And then the terrorists in the north knew that they were in trouble because they were going to take the U.S. president, the new one is going to take the handcuffs off of Israel and support them to finish the war quickly. And that means Iran also. So they know that they're in trouble now. And so now, hostage? I don't know, Peter, if they can control that, or even President Trump, because they're underground, above ground, and they just shoot and kill them as soon as they feel threatened.
So that's going to take a miracle of God to get those out of there. Were you in Israel during the time when the pager attack went on? Or were you stateside?
No, we were stateside. But actually, the wife and I were there October the 6th. We had just gotten into Israel, and it just had a wonderful Shabbat dinner, and then the next day, we were supposed to start this big international Messianic Jewish Alliance conference. So we went to bed on the 6th, everything was beautiful, and then woke up with bombs exploding over the top of us near Jerusalem. We didn't know what was going on, ran outside, looked, everybody was streaming into the bomb shelters, and we quickly went in with them. And then gradually, it became clear what was going on. Once that they said 50 dead, I went, uh-oh, this is really big, because this is not going to be over soon.
And sure enough, it was a full-blown massacre, and then it was a declaration of war, really, on the state of Israel. So we were there October the 6th, and we were there recently. The interesting thing, Peter, is that it's very quiet in the middle of the country. You wouldn't know, except for the occasional siren, we did not hear any sirens over the area we were in.
The sirens meaning bombs are coming over, and the Iron Dome is going up. What area was that? That was the area near Jerusalem, in between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. And it's closer, it's kind of a suburb of Jerusalem, but it's still up in the foothills of the mountains, it's a beautiful view. You can see all the way down, way out there in Tel Aviv, on a clear day. Is that northeast of Jerusalem? It is north and east, yeah.
Slightly north and then east, yes. Well, that must have been an incredibly, well, unsettling is not a good enough word to have that experience. As you've watched the response from the Israelis, and certainly the pager event was one that just stunned the world of their reach and what they were able to accomplish. Well, I'm going to be up against the clock here, so I want to give you time on this on the next segment here.
That was, to me, just one of those moments of God, clearly, the brilliance it took for something like that, and that they were able to pull it off with such amazing precision, was extraordinary. We're talking with Joel Chernoff, we're talking about things that are going on right now, every day in the headlines, and we need to pay attention. We've got more to go, we'll be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com Welcome back to Truth Talk Live.
This is Peter Rosenberger, glad to have you with us. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884, this segment brought to you by Standing with Hope. Standing with Hope is the prosthetic limb ministry that my wife envisioned after giving up both of her legs, and we've been putting legs on folks now for almost 20 years.
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Thank you so much. We're talking with Joel Chernoff here, and Joel is sharing his insights. He spends a great deal of time in Israel, and also he is so heavily involved globally on some things. I wanted to ask you very quickly, Joel, your thoughts on Mike Huckabee. I've had the privilege of being on his program before, and he's been on mine, and when Trump picked him as the ambassador to Israel, I think it shocked a lot of people, but I personally thought it was a great pick. The guy loves Israel, and I wanted to hear your thoughts on this. Because this is an Evangelical Christian Zionist, and he's a prominent one, and he's an outspoken Zionist. So you see almost immediately that he was questioned about the settlers in Judea and Samaria, and he says, If I was younger, I would be a settler.
I would be there in Judea and Samaria, and he's constantly emphasizing Israel for the Jews and so forth. It's just such a total reversal. It is amazing. So I think it's a very interesting and a very good choice for President Trump to pick a prominent Christian Zionist for that position is amazing.
I think that is just the most amazing. It would be very interesting to watch and see how that plays out in the geopolitical world. What are your thoughts on some things that Christians might want to pay attention to over the next four to six months, and then what are your concerns as we're moving into – I mean, every day there's something. What are your concerns? Well, the 54th chapter of the book of Isaiah is really an important chapter for all believers to be cued in on.
Really. Go to that chapter and read it. Because there, the Lord says that after he gathers – I mean, it really describes the Lord's feelings about regathered Israel and just how loving and compassionate he is. But also in that chapter, he gives Israel promises that he's careful to keep concerning Israel in the last days after the regathering.
And of course, Israel's been back since 48. And he gives them three promises. One, anybody fiercely attacking you is not from me. It is not in judgment, and they will fall because of you. They will fall. That's a promise. Number two, no weapon formed against you, Israel, after you've been gathered, no weapon formed against you will succeed, will prosper. Yes, they will be formed. Yes, they will be deployed, but they will fail.
They will not succeed. Number three, you will condemn every accusation leveled against you. God says, I will vindicate you in the eyes of the nations. Now, those are three very powerful, very powerful promises. And we see them working out even today. I don't know if you saw this, Peter, but here, President Macron of France, who has been beating up on Israel and saying that you're breaking the ceasefire, this and that, we're going to withhold arms from you.
You can't come and show arms at our fairs. And he's just been beating up on the state of Israel. Guess what? Today his government fell. I'm telling you, watch the enemies of Israel, not only the military enemies of Israel, the terrorists, but the political enemies of Israel.
You are seeing it. Biden, Harris, gone, gone. Watch Trudeau in France. Wouldn't be surprised if he's gone soon. Well, I mean, he was making a beat.
He made a beeline down to Mar-a-Lago for job security on his part. I mean, these guys watched. All you got to do is watch because God is going to keep his promises. And believers need to know how God feels about Israel in the latter days. This is the time of the restoration of Israel, not only physically, but spiritually. And then, too, you know how God is going to treat the nations. He's warning the nations. No, no weapon formed against Israel is going to succeed. And if you attack Israel, you will fall because of Israel.
So whether it's a political attack by a nation, a leader, whatever, God is keeping very careful score on this because this is his agenda running up to the second coming of the Messiah. Just beware. Know and make sure you stay on the right side of God's plan in these days.
You know, that is a good word on that, and I want to unpack this a little bit more with you. We could start it here, but we're going to hit the clock here in just a minute. But I wanted to ask if you think that Trump returning to power, you know, over the last two years, I was watching end-time scenarios thinking, okay, are we there? Are we there? Are we getting there?
Is this what's going on? Do you think we've gotten a reprieve? Is this a – I mean, God doesn't do anything by chance.
I understand that. But do you sense that this is going to be a bit of a stay on these things, or do you think that the escalation we've been seeing the last two years is going to just keep ramping up, even under a Trump presidency? Well, it certainly appears that God is giving the United States a temporary or a reprieve, as you put it, because the globalists and the immorality that actually accompanies them, they reject the Bible entirely.
They actually reject the biblical standard of morality and so forth. These globus, they thought it was all wrapped up, but apparently it is not, because President Trump, if he gets his four years, will dismantle much of what they have done. So I believe that the Lord is giving the United States a reprieve or a season where the gospel, where the good news is the Messiah, where the growth of the Messianic Jewish community in fulfillment of prophecy as God redeems us as a people running up to the second coming. I believe that this is probably, it's likely a season where light is going to prevail for four years, for eight years. Maybe there's another person coming in, like J.D. Vance or somebody comes in and follows on. Listen, all we have to do is clean up the election process, and it's about halfway clean.
They still need to clean out the algorithms and all this other stuff. If it's an honest election, Judeo-Christian followers of the Messiah will prevail for a season, a long season even. We're talking with Joel Turnoff. We're going to wrap this up in our next block here, and I want to go deeper into that thread that he's pulling on. If you'll stay with us, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Truth Talk Live. We'll be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com.
Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberger, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-34-TRUTH. You can go to PeterRosenberger.com. By the way, this is a tough time of year for a lot of folks who are caregivers. I do a radio program each week for family caregivers on this network and others, and I am all things related to the family caregiver.
I've been doing it for four decades. Going into the holiday season is always difficult. If you're in bad shape with it, if you feel like you're just at the end of your rope, go out to PeterRosenberger.com, click on Caregiver 911.
Start there. We're not going to fix it. You didn't get here overnight. We're not going to get out of it overnight, but I'm going to back you away from that cliff a little bit so you can catch your breath. I've got a book out that's called A Minute for Caregivers, when every day feels like Monday. They're one-minute chapters. It's so easy. You can read it literally in one minute.
I timed them all. Don't go through the holidays without it. If you've got a friend who's a caregiver, give it to your friend.
Friends don't let friends care give alone. It is a brutal journey. 65 million Americans are doing it. Please don't try to do this by yourself. Go out and look at my picture.
You'll see what happens when you try to do it by yourself. Don't let what happened to me happen to you. I'm thrilled to have Joel Chernoff with us here today. Joel, I want to take this last block here and let you just share a little bit of your heart.
You're doing amazing work with the relief organizations. I want to harken back to a quote and I want to appropriate it to what you're talking about and where your world is. Rush Limbaugh said many, many years ago that the lack of education in our country is our most expensive commodity. Ignorance is our most expensive commodity.
And he was referring to it in the political sense and so forth. But our lack of biblical education as Christians, as people who bear the name of Christ, our lack of biblical education is horrific at times. We have people who just don't know and they're not being taught.
What are some things that are hard to reach this and to be able to educate people to understand? We almost just dismiss the Old Testament and it's the whole counsel of God. We dismiss the Jewishness of Jesus and I've been very moved by what they've done with the chosen to be able to bring that into play to show that he was very Jewish. He was Jewish. He was not a Gentile. He is a savior to the Gentiles, but he is not a Gentile. He was Jew. And all that that means, what are your thoughts on this?
I know you've stayed awake late at night having conversations with a ceiling fan about this sort of thing. What are you doing and what are your hopes and prayers as we go into this new year that people will adopt Sunday school classes, pastors, pulpits, we'll start to embrace? Well, I think it's very, very important, I'm just going to be brief on this, that the believer, whether you're Jewish or non-Jewish, you need to know the Word of God. You need to spend time in all of the Word of God. I like to think of it as the Old Testament or the Tanakh as we call it, Hebrew, is two-thirds of the Bible. And in fact, it was the apostles and the disciples of Yeshua, Jesus, they did not have the New Covenant yet. They only had the Tanakh and the prophets and psalms and all of the books of the Old Testament canon. And they preached the good news of the Messiah effectively all around the Mediterranean and the world using only the Old Testament.
That's how powerful it is. So we should be spending two-thirds of your time, maybe like read two chapters in the Old, one in the New, and get the whole counsel of God and understand it. Especially in these days where there's a rising up of darkness and confusion and false teaching and false morality, you need to know the Word of God and what God's agenda is in the last days and his standard of righteousness.
You must know that or you're going to be confused. And so I encourage all of your listeners to know the Word of God. Familiarize yourself with it. Spend time in it every day and spend time in prayer also. And if you spend time in the Word of God, it acts as a hedge of protection around you because you're sensitive to sin. What is sin? What isn't sin? How do I please God? How do I displease God?
That's all found. All that counsel is found in the Scripture. So I encourage your listeners to spend time in the Word of God every day. What are some things that you're doing with your organizations, with the Messianic Jewish Alliance and then also with the Joseph Project? In the last couple of months we have here, share a little bit about that and how people can get involved. This is a season of giving and share how people can get involved.
Yes, please. Now is the time to stand with Israel. The Joseph Project International has been around for 24 years, over 170 million dollars worth of aid. We are the largest importer of humanitarian aid as we partner with Christian charities around the world who will pack 40-foot containers and send them to us in Israel. And God has blessed that ministry. Hundreds of thousands of our people that are needy in poverty, suffering because of the war, are blessed through the ministry of the Joseph Project International.
I just encourage you, if you want to do something concrete, more than just pray, go to josephprojectinternational.org. That is josephprojectinternational.org and you can stand with the people of Israel. It's a partnership of Messianic Jews and Christians around the world that are blessing the nation of Israel in a huge national way. So please go there, josephprojectinternational.org and you will see what is being done right now and the way that you can partner with us.
Where did the name come from on the Joseph Project? Well, the name came from a prophetic word the Lord gave me, and this is a supernatural story, but the short story is that in 1996, when I was in my office, and we were a much smaller organization, but the Lord was prompting me that it was time for the Messianic community to reintegrate in the mainstream of our Jewish people, which was more easily said than done, and so the Lord began to impress upon me, take care of the poor and the needy in Israel, which sounded good, and as I was meditating on that very early in the morning, all of a sudden the Spirit of God fell on me. I couldn't stop sobbing, and I ran over to my desk and wrote out the vision, wrote out the words the Lord was giving me, and in that it said very simply that in a short period of time in the future, over a million more of your Jewish people are going to come suddenly out of Eastern Europe and Russia in a time of great peril, and that Israel would not be prepared for this humanitarian crisis, and that just as Joseph prepared for seven years for the famine that did come in ancient Egypt, we are to prepare, that is, Messianic Jews and Christians partnering together to prepare a blessing on the soil of Israel for that time, which is going to come. And so from that time, that was in 1996, it took three years to get it going, nothing even happened for three years, I was casting the vision, but nothing. And then suddenly in 2000, actually in 1999, it started to move, money started to come towards the vision, and then by 2000 we were shipping goods into Israel, which was another story, very difficult to do at first. But now, 24 years later, it is a tremendous blessing that is building up on the soil of Israel for the restoration of Israel, not just physically, but also spiritually, and you can partner with that by going to josephprojectinternational.org. But literally, the Joseph Project was founded or started off of a prophetic word. Talk about taking a step of faith.
That was a step of faith. Last thoughts, what specifically can we do if people want to support the organization, you've told them how to do it financially and so forth, what are some specific ways that we can pray for you and lift you up personally and your family and the organization? Yes, well of course, partnering in prayer, you can also come out to conferences of the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, if you want to taste and see, that is mjaa.org.
You can see all of the activities and conferences, national conferences, international conferences, that is a way that you can stand with us. And really, just to be outspoken, know your Bible and speak out against the forces of anti-Semitism, which have, those voices have grown loud, and they are getting louder, but as believers stand with the Jewish people, great things happen, because that is the way that God has planned it. And he blesses those that bless Israel. If you need a deliverance in your life, if you need an answer to prayer, bless the nation of Israel, and God mandates a blessing on you. Great word. Joel, thank you for taking the time today, this has been a real treat for me personally after 40 something years, so it is a real treat. This is Peter Rosenberger, PeterRosenberger.com, we'll see you next time.
