Transcript
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Well, as we began to wrap up our series on Jews and Christians learning to relate, we
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wanted to have a discussion today about some of the most common misunderstandings between
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the two communities.
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So stay with us.
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We'll be right back.
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Welcome to the Israel Answers series, Connecting Israel, the Bible, and You.
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Join Susan Michael as she explores timely issues and current events from a scriptural
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perspective to equip the Christian world with a balanced and biblical response.
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Be sure to subscribe for future episodes, which will ignite your faith and bring the
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Bible to life in your everyday world.
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Now, let's join Susan with your Israel Answers.
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Well I hope you've been enjoying our series on Jews and Christians learning to relate.
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And as we have interviewed a number of pioneers, and one of those pioneers was Jonathan Feldstein,
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who is the founder and president of the Genesis 1-2-3 Foundation.
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We had a really interesting conversation as he shared his story, decades of Jewish-Christian
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relations coming from the perspective of an Orthodox Jew who lives in Israel.
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And if you did not get to hear that interview, we're going to link to it in today's show
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notes so that you can get to know more about him and his story.
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But as I began to plan for the wrap-up of this series, I thought I want to have Jonathan
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back so that we can just have an informal conversation talking about some of the common
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misunderstandings that we've all alluded to in our stories.
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The various pioneers have alluded to these things.
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But I thought it might be helpful for us to talk about them a little bit more in depth.
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And we have some misunderstandings on the Jewish side, and we have some misunderstandings on
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the Jewish side, the Christian side and the Jewish side.
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So Jonathan, I want to welcome you back to the Out of Zion podcast.
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And thank you for taking time out of your day to have this conversation with us.
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Always a pleasure, A, to have conversations like this and B, even more so to do it with
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you, Susan.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Thank you so much.
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So I'm going to start with a common misunderstanding that we encounter.
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And then I'll let you bring up one, Jonathan.
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I won't just go back and forth and see where we go with this.
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So I know that one of the common misunderstandings that I had when I first went to Israel many,
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many, many years ago as a young woman was not understanding that Judaism is a vibrant,
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faith.
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And in a lot of our preaching and teaching in churches, we sort of like to just oppose
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Christianity to Judaism and the Old Testament to the new.
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And we bring up these comparisons, and it's sort of like, well, Judaism is about legalism
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and the law.
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And so it's a dead religion.
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Because Christianity is more about grace and forgiveness and it's more alive.
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And when I went to Israel, I realized how that Judaism is very much an alive faith.
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And there are really very sincere believers with a very, very sincere and active relationship
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with the God of the Jewish people.
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And so I see that as something I'm often addressing and teaching that no Judaism and what we see
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in the Old Testament is just as much about love and forgiveness and mercy and grace.
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It's built into the law.
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It's built into everything that God established in the Old Testament.
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And we do see it also in the New Testament, but it's in both.
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It's the same God, the same character.
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And so what would you like to add to that, Jonathan?
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Well, first of all, you're right.
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And people who do, who don't, it's perfect that we're speaking about misunderstandings
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because misunderstandings can be interpreted as a difference or just a lack of understanding.
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And there is a lack of understanding because why would you know when you are growing up
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unless you're completely engrossed with Jews and Judaism or myself?
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I grow up in New Jersey.
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Why would I know much about Christians and Christianity unless I'm having conversations
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like we are having now and that you and I have been blessed throughout the last decades
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to be able to have?
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So sure, it's very easy to look at from a Christian perspective and think that Jews
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and Judaism is very legalistic.
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Well, it is, but what a lot of Christians don't understand is that it's through that,
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first of all, that's preserved us as a people.
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But second of all, all of these legalisms, at least how I look at it, how I experience
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it in my life, connect me deeper with God.
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So when we speak about Shabbat, a lot of Christians will understand that Shabbat is
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the day that we don't work.
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But what does that mean?
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And I'm not going to go into that right now.
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We can have that conversation another time.
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But every little time, oh, here's a great story.
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I don't know if I ever shared it with you.
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When I had a fire in my house a few years ago on a Friday night, it was going through
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my mind about how to deal with the fire on Shabbat.
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And of course, at the moment, I was concerned about protecting my family, but I was doing
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so through my relationship with God, through how God, how we interpret that.
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So yeah, unless you have an opportunity to come to Israel, to really experience Israel,
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Israeli life, or do Shabbat in a community overseas and get to know, which is something
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we spoke about last time, get to know Jews and the Jewish culture.
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It's legitimate to think that we're only legalistic.
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But then, of course, I know some Christians, many Christians, in fact, will say, well,
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they're not under the law.
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Okay, great.
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Well, are they going around committing adultery?
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Are they going around murdering people, not honoring their parents and taking God's name
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in vain?
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Also, no.
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And these are things that we have to kind of square the circle as far as how we understand
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what that legalism is about.
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But no, Judaism is much, much more.
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And it's so wonderful you understand that and so wonderful that you help other people
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understand that.
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Well, I know one of the things that I realized was the role of the law.
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So in a lot of Christian teaching, the laws look down upon as legalistic, and we're not
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under that.
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And yet the law, the Jewish people see it as a gift that was given to them and that
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they take their responsibility very seriously to obey the law.
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And therefore, the whole idea of building a fence around the law, so if it says don't
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work on the Sabbath, fine and good, but what does that mean?
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And that's where the rabbis began to interpret, well, what does it mean?
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What can you do?
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What can you not do?
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Because they don't want to violate what God told them to do.
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Correct.
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They feel a special responsibility almost, almost on behalf of the world, but for sure
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on behalf of the Jewish people that they have a responsibility to be faithful to God and
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obey what He told them to do.
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And it's a little bit of a different take on the law than what we get a lot of times
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in our churches.
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And even through something as remote as I do every Friday, late afternoon or evening,
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depending on when Shabbat begins.
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I guess it's easy to fall back on the law and relate to Shabbat because there are so
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many laws that are connected to Shabbat, but there are many, many laws that we follow on
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a regular basis.
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But when I flip a switch and all of the lights in my house go on a timer, it's not just a
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mechanical thing legalistic because I don't, I choose, according to my understanding of
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Judaism, not to turn lights on and off on Saturday on the Sabbath.
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But when I'm doing that, I, through that little action, am honoring God.
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I'm honoring the way we interpret it.
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Of course, 2,000 years ago when Jesus observed Shabbat and talked about all the legalisms
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of Shabbat and had rabbinic debates with people here in the first century Israel, the legalisms
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were different because they didn't have electricity, because they didn't have elevators and lights
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and how to, and abilities to keep food hot for 24 hours or anything of that nature.
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So we have modern interpretations.
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But for me, every time I do a little action, I try to make sure to remind myself that it's
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not a mechanical thing, but it's really my connection with God.
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Yes, beautiful.
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Well, Johnson, do you want to share a misunderstanding for us to discuss?
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There are just a few.
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You know, a lot of Jews really don't understand.
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One of the things that actually, it just came up again this week.
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I shared an article with a friend, an article that I had written, a Jewish woman who's super
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smart and grew up in the South around Christians.
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She's not ignorant either.
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And she wrote back to me that she understands Christians because Christians only want Jews
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to come back to Israel in order that Jesus will return through whether it's Armageddon,
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we can talk about end times, but that the motivation of Christian support of Israel
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and our returning like I did 18 years ago is simply to expedite Hason Jesus's return.
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And that's a tremendous misunderstanding, not exclusive, but maybe you can address that.
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Yes, because actually the Bible doesn't say that.
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And I've heard it many, many times over the years that it's required that all the Jews
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return to Israel so Jesus can come back.
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And I've been told that actually there is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that believes
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that, but it's not taught in Christian churches.
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There's great debate as to whether anything is required to happen before Jesus returns.
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And there is a school of thought in Christianity that says he could return at any moment.
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So there is nothing that is required to take place.
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There's others that quote a verse that says that the gospel will go out into all the nations
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and then the end will come.
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So maybe we have to be reaching all the unreached people groups in the world with the gospel
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before Jesus will return.
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Finally when you begin to delve in and deal with the prophecies towards the Jewish people
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and about Israel, do you begin to see that well maybe the Jews do need to be back in
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the land because Jesus isn't going to return to a Gentile Jerusalem.
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I mean he's going to return to a Jewish Jerusalem.
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So maybe there is some requirement, but I will say it's hardly ever discussed in churches.
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It's never talked about in that way.
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And so this really is a very big misunderstanding that this is like a big requirement and we
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all know it and we're all teaching it and that's what this is all about.
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It comes across even more as a requirement.
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It comes across as a nefarious ulterior motive.
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And by the way, I mean first of all, of course we disagree on Jesus and that's fine and that's
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a much bigger conversation, but we all want Messiah.
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And there's nothing wrong with all of the Jewish people being here in the land, but
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Jews look at that as Christian support of it as somehow being one upsmanship as a victory
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over the Jewish people.
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And we interpret it differently, but we're really looking ultimately for the same thing.
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That's right.
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So I'll bring up another misunderstanding that I find that goes along with this and that
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is that when I speak to Jewish audiences, I find that they're always concerned about
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these end time prophecies and that that's really why we're doing this.
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And some of the end time prophecies are hard and it may be about war.
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It may be about an Armageddon.
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It may be, you know, and they're like, this is why you really support us is because you
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want two thirds of us wiped out in a war or this kind of thing.
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And what I find is that actually they're totally ignorant to the fact that most of those scriptures
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are from the Jewish Bible.
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They're from the Hebrew scriptures, the Hebrew prophets.
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In that if somebody is talking about a war, they're usually going to be quoting out of
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Zechariah or one of the Hebrew prophets.
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And then it's confirmed in the New Testament in the book of Revelation, which is full of
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visual.
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It's not concrete.
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It's like there's a lot of interpretation that you have to bring into the book of Revelation
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to understand what it's really conveying.
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It's in visions and this kind of thing.
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But the more concrete verses are found in the Hebrew prophets.
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And another one is that, well, you believe that we're all going to become Christian.
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Well, your Bible says that we're all going to be worshiping the God of Israel.
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And it just so happens we believe that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.
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But yeah, but it's your scriptures that are saying that.
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And I remember one time I spoke to a Jewish group and afterwards an elderly man came up
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to me and he was completely blown away. He had no idea that most of the Christian Bible
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was actually the Hebrew Bible.
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He didn't even know it.
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And therefore a lot of secular Jews don't even know what their own Bible says, so they
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don't know that we're actually quoting their Bible.
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100 percent.
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You really nailed it on the head and you used the word ignorant.
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And I know you didn't use it. Ignorant can become a pejorative word.
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It's not.
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But people who are not aware of what the Hebrew Bible, the Torah says, really don't know.
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And I think that we overall don't dwell on end times theology or what's going to happen.
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And there aren't a lot of Jews who run around.
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I think much more a Christian phenomena run around saying, well, we're in the end times.
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It's the beginning of the end times and we have to prepare.
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And there are some people who are brazen enough to say that they know when that's happening.
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And that's, I'm sure that there are Jews who do that, but it's not something that's
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very common.
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So when you have Jews who are secular, predominantly, who don't know their Bible, our Bible,
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and you're confronted with Christians who understand it and understand where it comes
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from and it connects directly to us and Israel.
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And by the way, it's not real comfortable to talk about what's happening.
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The war from the north and we're seeing Russia threatening everybody right now.
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None of that's comfortable.
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But clearly there's a great misunderstanding from a Jewish perspective about what Christians
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believe and where they're getting that from, which again, it's probably a matter of interpretation,
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but we're not that far off in terms of really what we're understanding.
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No, I remember watching a video one time of a Hasidic rabbi teaching.
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And he had a whole auditorium full of young men listening to him and they played this
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eerie music.
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And he's referring to some of these scriptures out of Zachariah and end time and things that
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are going to happen.
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And of course it was with his interpretation, which was really quite drastic, I have to say.
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And it's no different than what a lot of our Christian preachers preach based on those
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same scriptures.
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The thing that we might disagree on is just the identity of that messianic one, but the
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scriptures are in the same Bible that we both have.
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And you're right, I don't hear a lot of rabbis teaching on those end time prophecies.
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No, I don't.
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Maybe they should start.
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Maybe they should start.
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Well, at least though we should know.
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But the challenge, we do know, but the challenge of course is that the people who are less
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knowledgeable of their own Bible, of their own scripture, of what that means are not
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getting those biblical teachings anyway.
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So I'm praying that people will come back to the root of what we need to do.
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Because ultimately I do believe that we, through our personal action, this is a digression,
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but through our personal actions, we have the ability to hasten the Messiah's arrival.
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And that's what we all want.
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And that's our responsibility individually and as a Jewish people.
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So let's talk a little bit more about motives.
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So I've read and heard accusations that our motives are really anti-Semitic, that we
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want to get all the Jews back to Israel so two-thirds of them will die.
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I mean, that's horrible.
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I've heard less vitriol accusations that we just want to get the Jews back to Israel
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for them so they're all going to become Christian.
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And then I've heard that this and that.
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And when in reality our motive, just because a person believes something is going to happen,
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doesn't mean that that is the motivation for what they're doing today.
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So I'll give an example.
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Our organization is so involved in Aliyah and helping bring the Jews back home to Israel
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to make it their homeland.
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And so we're helping today with the Jews of Ethiopia.
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We helped with the Lost Tribe of Manasseh in India.
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We're helping now with the Ukrainian refugees from the Russian Jews.
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We've been doing this for what, 25, 30 years now.
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But what is our motive?
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Is our motive because we have some bad motive or it's all about in-time events?
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And the answer is no.
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Our motive is that first of all, we see God's hand at work in this.
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And if he's busy at work bringing his people back to their land, we want to be involved.
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Basically, we just want to be involved in it.
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Secondly, there are prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures that say the Gentiles will assist
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in this return.
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So we feel we're called to do this.
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And that's a very strong motivation that we are called to assist based on the Hebrew Scriptures.
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And none of these are bad motives whatsoever.
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We see God blessing the Jewish people.
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We want to bless them.
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We also see in Genesis 1, 2, 3, as you call your foundation, or Genesis 12, 3, that God
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promises he'll bless us for blessing his people.
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And those really are the main motives that I see in Christians involved in this work.
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Well, I agree with you because I see that.
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But most Jews, when I say most Jews, I really do believe that it's most, though I might be
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statistically wrong.
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Most Jews don't understand that.
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But it's fascinating and completely appropriate that you use the example that's prophetic
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of our return.
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You didn't talk about Christians participating in the start-up nation, another tremendous
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miracle.
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And not that that's a bad thing.
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God says in many different ways and different places that when we return, or we have returned,
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the land will prosper again.
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And it's prospering in so many ways.
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And it's actually through the prophetic return that you are partnering with something that
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God has promised specifically.
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He didn't promise he was going to turn Israel into the start-up nation.
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And we're going to have the second highest number of start-ups on the stock exchange.
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Those are all amazing realizations of that.
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But yes, there's a lot of misunderstanding from a Jewish perspective.
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And from a Christian perspective, I think there's a flip side which is still that I
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can't quantify it.
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Many, maybe most Christians still believe that we do need to accept Jesus in order for
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our own individual salvation.
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And that that's therefore a motive of all relationships that Jews will look at.
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Everything that you and I are doing individually, collectively, I see EJ and many, many others
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as being the sole motivation.
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And you phrased it so well a moment ago, but I can't rephrase what you just said.
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There are people who may believe that individually.
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A matter of fact, a friend of mine who I just hosted on my podcast, Inspiration from Zion,
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was really actually striking to me.
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He said, I don't think that we need to convert the Jews, but I think the Jews are missing
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something by not having a relationship with Jesus.
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He said that very sensitively.
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And it was a neat conversation that we had.
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But maybe you can respond because I'm not in the conversations all the time among Christians
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about our salvation.
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Well, it's a really important point because the fact that we're called evangelical Christians
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for the Jewish people, they interpret that to mean that we are all evangelists.
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And even in Hebrew, the term has been translated into Hebrew as evangelist steam, which when
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an Israeli then converts that to English, they call us all evangelists.
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And I'm always like, no, that's a different word.
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An evangelist is one who does evangelism.
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An evangelical is one who believes certain things.
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And so there's four pillars of evangelicalism.
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And one is the authority of the Bible.
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That's why we're always quoting the Bible.
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Secondly is that we then hold to the key doctrines of the Bible.
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Thirdly is that we believe in salvation through Jesus alone.
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And then fourthly, that we believe in the importance of sharing the good news of Jesus
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with the world.
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So the Jewish community interprets all of that as an evangelical Christian is all about converting
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me to Christianity.
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And therefore they're seen as the enemy because of what we believe.
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And so yes, we believe in the importance of sharing this good news with everyone, but
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that doesn't mean we believe in ramming it down anybody's throat.
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It doesn't mean we believe in tricking anybody into converting.
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And it doesn't mean that that is the sole motivation for everything that we do in life.
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But yes, Jesus is a great blessing to me and I'm so grateful for what he did in my life.
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And I would want everyone to have that blessing and to have that great experience.
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But it doesn't mean that I'm going to misuse that and make it just a sole motivation for
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everything I do for Israel and the Jewish people.
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Right, I want to share something.
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You always speak so authoritatively and sensitively, but I had a friend who unfortunately died
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in the last year and every time I was with her, she would tell me right then, Jonathan,
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you need to get down on your hands and knees and accept Jesus to be saved.
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And she did it out of love.
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See that's the other thing that Jews don't understand.
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It's almost as if it's sort of like a victory.
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Christians are trying to have a victory over Jews.
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It's still uncomfortable, but I understood and I remember visiting with another friend
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who said, but of course we want all Jews to have a relationship with Jesus because that's
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how we believe that that's the path of salvation.
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Now the only path of salvation and I, we disagree on that, but when at least a Jewish person
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understands that it's coming from a position of love, to me that's disarming.
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I can have a conversation with somebody as compared to somebody who is just trying to
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convert me and take me away from the traditions that I live now that are thousands of years
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old.
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It's a terrible misunderstanding.
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It's exacerbated by there are individuals whose soul, raison d'etre, is to convert Jews.
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There are individuals who ram it down their throats, our throats everywhere.
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And there's not everyone who I think, and maybe it's not a nice word, are enlightened
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as you are in terms of the understanding of that.
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But when we have these conversations, it creates understanding, albeit a made differences.
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Well I do know that a lot of Christians, you know, they may go to Israel for their first
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trip, they're brand new to this.
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They don't realize how the Jewish people do see Christianity and see Jesus.
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And so for us, it's like this wonderful thing in our life and we're so excited about it
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and we'll share freely about it.
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We don't understand the history of Christian anti-Semitism and that the Jewish people are
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looking at us through a certain prism or through lenses of that history.
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And so we see Jesus as this wonderful thing, but they see, they interpreted history that
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Jesus brings bigotry and hatred.
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Now that's a shocking thing for a Christian to realize, and it's not because Jesus certainly
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did not bring hatred or bigotry, but his children did.
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The church brought it into their theology and taught contempt of the Jewish people.
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And only once we understand that history do we understand how there are two completely
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opposite views of who Jesus was and what Christianity is even all about.
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It's funny you say that, Susan, because it's not exclusive to non-religious or secular
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Jews, but it's ironic that among secular Jews who don't really know their Bible, they do
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know this bad history as it relates to the church and what's been done in the name of
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Jesus to us over thousands of years.
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And so we bring that baggage along with us and it's shocking.
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I truthfully love having conversations with Christians about this, not God forbid, not
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to make anyone feel bad, but understanding where we're coming from and why there's a
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view of suspicion about all these things that we're discussing.
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But specifically, I wanted to share one more thing.
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One thing that always stuck with me years ago, I was watching a video online.
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It was probably around Yom HaShawa the day we commemorate the murder of 6 million Jews
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in the Holocaust.
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And I was watching a video of an elderly Jewish woman who returned to her town in Poland to
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visit to have some sort of closure.
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I don't remember the details.
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The thing that struck me is that she was walking near the church in her town.
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She crossed the street naturally.
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She didn't even think about it.
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And then she narrated, I wish I could find this video again, she narrated how as a child
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she understood that the church was a dangerous place for Jews and they were always taught
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to cross the street and stay as far away from the church as possible.
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And of course, she met the physical church, but what was emanating from the church.
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And this is in our generation.
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We're not talking about 500 years ago or 1000 years ago.
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This is within this century.
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And it's just shocking to realize that.
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And it's something that we do need to overcome in this relationship.
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Well, John, we're running out of time.
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But do you have one last area, one last misunderstanding you'd like to discuss before we close it
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out?
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Well, actually, I think maybe if we go back to the Bible, it's a question of how we read
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it.
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Now, it's very normal, I think, for Christians to think.
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And I have conversations very organically like this with people who want to understand
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who I am and what I believe, but can't begin to unless we have these conversations.
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And so I think that there's a predominance of Christians who think that all Jews know
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and relate to the Bible as Christians do.
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And we don't.
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When you spoke of revelations a few minutes ago, I know of the book of revelations.
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I've read excerpts from it, but I'm not by any stretch an authority.
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I can go into a church and I do frequently and I hear a pastor preaching from the New
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Testament.
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And I understand where the Old Testament reference, the Jewish reference is in that, that is from
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one of the apostles or from Jesus himself.
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But I think a lot of Christians don't understand that we look at it completely differently.
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Maybe you can say something enlightening that helps both Jews and Christians.
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Well, there's one difference is we go straight to the Bible.
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And for the Jewish people, there's a lot of you first go through rabbinic interpretations
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of the scriptures.
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And you study what all these rabbis throughout the ages commented on that verse or how they
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interpreted and how they saw it.
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And that is one difference.
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And I do think that, you know, I would love to study under a rabbi to teach like the book
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of Zechariah just to go back to our earlier conversation about the end time events to
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hear how they do interpret it because it is different.
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And I'm afraid I'm not even able to articulate, but from the Christian perspective, especially
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from the evangelical Christian perspective, we go straight to the Bible and we believe
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it to say what it was written to say.
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So some people would say it's a literal interpretation.
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It's actually not, it's a what we call a contextualized interpretation.
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So if it's poetry, we interpret it as poetry.
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If it's a song, we interpret it as a song.
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We don't interpret everything literally, but we interpret it literally as it was written,
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what it was meaning to say.
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And so we study it directly.
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And to me, that's one difference.
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And by the way, that's an amazing, you know, I, when we were talking about it and I raised
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the issue, I didn't even think of rabbinic commentary as being something that's different
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because that's just innately who I am and a part of what I am and how we look at scripture
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through rabbinic interpretation.
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And yeah, you're right.
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It's not just old and new and people get offended by old, new and different names.
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I don't get bothered by that, but you're right.
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We have thousands of years of rabbinic interpretation that we consider the oral law and that's got
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equal status with the original written law that God gave Moses.
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So it's a fascinating understanding and you're right.
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Don't begin to understand it.
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The only time I actually heard a Christian speak in a church about the Talmud was in
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a pejorative way about the things that the rabbis in the Talmud would say about Jesus.
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And I don't have a source on that, but it was interesting to me and disappointing that
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that was the reference as compared to our feeling back later on the onion to understand
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and have a deeper relationship.
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But you raise a very good point about even the difference between the written law and
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the oral law.
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So we're just dealing with the written.
459
00:35:13,220 --> 00:35:21,220
And yet Judaism has this whole oral tradition of the oral law and the rabbinic commentary
460
00:35:21,220 --> 00:35:24,940
on it and the Talmud and et cetera, et cetera.
461
00:35:24,940 --> 00:35:27,860
So well, listen, Jonathan, this is fascinating.
462
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We could go on for a long time discussing all of this.
463
00:35:32,780 --> 00:35:33,780
It's great.
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00:35:33,780 --> 00:35:40,220
But we so appreciate you giving up your time today because you and I are really, we're
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on the same page here.
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00:35:41,860 --> 00:35:46,700
We've had a lot of the same experiences over the years.
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00:35:46,700 --> 00:35:52,300
And so to discuss them, but each from our own perspective, I trust that our audience
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00:35:52,300 --> 00:35:53,620
has really enjoyed it.
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00:35:53,620 --> 00:35:54,860
So I know I have.
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00:35:54,860 --> 00:35:57,780
And I thank you, Jonathan, very much for joining us today.
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00:35:57,780 --> 00:35:58,780
It's a pleasure.
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00:35:58,780 --> 00:36:03,460
I hope because we've been discussing misunderstandings that I hope this contributes a little bit
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more to understanding how profound what a perfect ending to today's conversation.
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00:36:10,740 --> 00:36:16,540
So next week, I am going to close out this series on Jews and Christians learning to
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00:36:16,540 --> 00:36:17,540
relate.
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00:36:17,540 --> 00:36:21,500
And I'm going to talk about who are evangelical Christians?
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00:36:21,500 --> 00:36:22,620
How many are there?
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00:36:22,620 --> 00:36:28,740
Why do they support Israel and elaborate a little bit more on some of what we discuss
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today about that?
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00:36:30,340 --> 00:36:33,060
So I hope everyone will come back next week.
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And until then, God bless.