On today's episode, Joel Rosenberg joins Pastor Ed to discuss recent events with Israel from an evangelical perspective. It's a power discussion.
[00:00:04] Here's Ed Taylor with today's episode of Lead2Serve, a leadership podcast.
[00:00:09] Hey, welcome again to another edition of the Lead2Serve podcast.
[00:00:15] My name is Ed Taylor and I am the pastor here at Calvary Church in Aurora, Colorado.
[00:00:21] We're so grateful to provide for you this podcast, just really open discussions about
[00:00:27] life and ministry, knowing that the better that we learn how to serve, the better leaders
[00:00:33] will become.
[00:00:35] Today's a special edition of Lead2Serve because I had the privilege recently on our live radio
[00:00:42] program here in Denver to interview Joel Rosenberg.
[00:00:47] And many of you know, Joel Rosenberg, he is a prolific author, a prophecy expert, Bible
[00:00:54] teacher.
[00:00:55] He's got like over 5 million books in print.
[00:00:58] He just started a brand new news agency in Israel to give us true, accurate reports of
[00:01:04] what's going on in Israel from an evangelical perspective.
[00:01:08] It's called allisrael.com.
[00:01:11] And he also for 18 years is providing humanitarian relief to Israel and surrounding areas, not
[00:01:18] only Israel, but through the Joshua Fund.
[00:01:21] At any rate, I want to share with you on the podcast because of what happened in Israel
[00:01:25] on October 7th, just to hear his perspective.
[00:01:28] We had a fine conversation.
[00:01:30] I love Joel, he's a good friend of the ministry here and all that the Rosenbergs have brought
[00:01:35] into our lives.
[00:01:36] So enjoy this episode.
[00:01:38] I know it will bless you.
[00:01:40] October 7th changed the world.
[00:01:42] Let's start there.
[00:01:43] Well, it certainly changed Israel and it is changing the Middle East, and it has changed
[00:01:49] the world.
[00:01:52] At the moment, what we're seeing is mostly negative effects.
[00:01:57] When more than 3,000 Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on October 7th, it was a Saturday morning,
[00:02:05] it was a Shabbat for us in Israel.
[00:02:09] The whole country slows down and does almost nothing, even for people who are not religious,
[00:02:15] it's a quiet day in Israel.
[00:02:17] And we only get one, you don't get a whole full weekend like in America.
[00:02:21] It was also a religious holiday, Simchat Torah, which is a Jewish holiday that celebrates,
[00:02:26] it's called the Joy of the Torah really, and it celebrates and commemorates when God gave
[00:02:33] Moses the Ten Commandments and the first five books of the Bible.
[00:02:37] So it should have been a joyful day, and people were sleeping in and just enjoying a quiet
[00:02:43] morning and then sirens, rocket sirens indicating that inbound missiles are coming.
[00:02:52] And then we started hearing, and eight rounds of missiles at Jerusalem where I live, my
[00:02:59] wife and I and our sons, we almost never have rockets or missiles fired at Jerusalem.
[00:03:06] And so that was a bizarre experience.
[00:03:09] That's what we woke up to, and it just kept happening and happening.
[00:03:12] You're sitting in your bomb shelter and you're turning on the news, and then you're seeing
[00:03:16] this crazy, like we'd never, we've been through a lot of rocket wars over there, Ed, but I've
[00:03:21] been traveling to Israel for 35 years.
[00:03:25] And I, you know, we've been citizens there and living there for 10.
[00:03:29] We'd never seen anything like this.
[00:03:31] This was an invasion.
[00:03:33] There were people being butchered in their own bedrooms, in their own homes, Jews burned
[00:03:39] alive in their houses, mothers shot to death in front of their children, children beheaded
[00:03:46] and brutally, you know, just tortured in front of their parents.
[00:03:51] Holocaust survivors riddled with machine guns, people killed with axes.
[00:03:56] I don't even want to tell you, but so that's what Israel was, it was a sneak attack.
[00:04:04] And it happened to be on the 50th anniversary of the biggest sneak attack in Israel's modern
[00:04:08] history, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Syria and Egypt invaded on our highest holy
[00:04:16] day of our calendar, where literally nobody does anything.
[00:04:19] There's not even a car on the road.
[00:04:22] Nobody watches television because there's nothing on.
[00:04:24] It's just totally dead silent, and it's a day of prayer.
[00:04:27] And you know, for Jews who don't know that Jesus is the Messiah who's already come to
[00:04:32] give the only sacrifice that we need, this is a day of asking God to...pleading with,
[00:04:40] begging with God to give atonement for our sins.
[00:04:43] It just...my team doesn't know that the Messiah has already done this.
[00:04:48] So we were actually marking the 50th anniversary of the worst attack ever, and then this happened.
[00:04:54] But it has smoked out, Ed, in the world anti-Semitism like we haven't seen since the 1930s, 40s.
[00:05:02] We've seen world governments turn against Israel and condemn us in the United Nations
[00:05:08] every chance they get.
[00:05:10] We've seen college campuses all across the United States, thousands of students turning
[00:05:15] out on the side of Hamas and against Israel.
[00:05:20] The World Court has us on trial.
[00:05:23] The South African government put Israel on trial claiming that we're committing genocide
[00:05:28] in a war of self-defense.
[00:05:30] So the world has gone...you know, to cite Superman, we're in the bizarro world, Ed,
[00:05:36] where night is dark, day is night, up is down, black is white, everything is on its head.
[00:05:43] And we can talk in a moment, and I'll certainly talk this weekend about sort of the prophetic
[00:05:48] implications of all this, but we're in a moment where I think God is really...he's watching
[00:05:56] to see which side people are on.
[00:05:59] This comes right out of Matthew chapter 25, and we're seeing which countries are sheep
[00:06:06] countries and which countries are goat countries.
[00:06:08] So we can get into that a little bit.
[00:06:10] I'm a bit of a monologue here, so I'll slow down.
[00:06:12] That's okay, we want to hear it.
[00:06:13] I mean, here at Calvary, our commitment to the Word is a commitment to the God of the
[00:06:19] Word, which is a commitment to the people of the God of the Word, our Jewish friends
[00:06:23] in Israel.
[00:06:25] For years now, coming up on 25 years, I've taught our church to look to Israel like you've
[00:06:30] taught us.
[00:06:31] Look to the epicenter, Jerusalem, eyes on Israel at the epicenter, the unfolding of
[00:06:38] God's prophetic events.
[00:06:40] I love taking groups there, I love visiting there, I love serving there.
[00:06:45] We've got quite a big relationship with Israel, and we're grateful for that.
[00:06:51] And now this wave of anti-Semitism, I mean, right when it happened, you remember way
[00:06:57] back toward the beginning, there was that large gathering in London, 300,000 people
[00:07:05] gathered in London declaring the disease of Zionism needs to be eradicated.
[00:07:12] And we know racism is evil at its core, but man's hatred toward Israel has a demonic root
[00:07:19] to it, this anti-Semitism.
[00:07:22] It certainly does, and I think, you know, anti-Semitism is the right technical word,
[00:07:30] but I'm starting to use just the word Jew-hatred, because it really cuts through to what it
[00:07:35] really is.
[00:07:36] But where does that come from?
[00:07:37] And you know, the verse that I find the most helpful for people is a verse that you might
[00:07:44] not expect, I mean, you might, but most people wouldn't think of it in this context.
[00:07:48] John 10.10.
[00:07:50] Now in John 10.10, so now we're talking the New Testament, the Gospel of John, and Jesus
[00:07:56] is speaking about Satan, and he describes Satan as a thief, right?
[00:08:01] And he says the thief comes to rob, kill, and destroy.
[00:08:07] But then he speaks about himself, Jesus does, he says, but I can that they may have life
[00:08:12] and have it abundantly.
[00:08:13] Now in that one verse, you get so much rich theology.
[00:08:17] What you learn is that Satan is the exact polar opposite of Jesus.
[00:08:22] They're not equals, but they are opposites.
[00:08:25] And so everything that God wants, everything that God loves, everything that God says,
[00:08:31] that Jesus says, Jesus is God, Satan is 180 degrees against.
[00:08:38] It's like a photographic negative, Satan's against everything that Jesus is for.
[00:08:43] So when you apply that to what God has said about Jewish people in the Old Testament,
[00:08:53] right, starting from Genesis 12 and going forward, what we realize is if God has said,
[00:08:58] and he has, that he has chosen the Jewish people to bless us, now we understand that
[00:09:04] Satan has chosen the Jewish people to curse us.
[00:09:08] When we see the scriptures that tell us that God has said, I'm going to give the Jewish
[00:09:12] people a land, the land of Israel, the promised land, we can now understand that Satan says,
[00:09:18] yeah, I'm going to come and take it away.
[00:09:20] When God says, I'm going to make Jerusalem a city of peace, we understand now that Satan
[00:09:27] comes to say, yeah, fine, I'll make it a city of bloodshed.
[00:09:31] When God says, I'm going to take the Temple Mount, the Mount Zion, right in the absolute
[00:09:37] center of the world, right in the middle of Jerusalem, when God says, I'm going to make
[00:09:41] that spot holy to my name, and that's where I'm going to put the Temple, the first and
[00:09:46] the second and the third and the fourth, Satan says, fine, that's the place that I'll desecrate.
[00:09:53] Because everything that God says I'm going to do, I'm going to bless, I'm going to give,
[00:09:57] Satan says I'm going to rob and kill and destroy.
[00:10:00] And so Satan has hated Jews uniquely because God loves us.
[00:10:06] What in the world is happening?
[00:10:07] Why is Israel at war again?
[00:10:11] And how can Christians not only stand with Israel, absolutely, that's critical, but how
[00:10:16] do we show compassion for our Palestinian neighbors who are suffering?
[00:10:22] It's really critical to me, biblically, that we bless Israel and her neighbors.
[00:10:26] That we not just say, just because God loves Israel doesn't mean He only loves Israel.
[00:10:33] And yes, God makes it very clear that He has a very special and unique love for Israel
[00:10:38] and the Jewish people.
[00:10:40] But John 3, 16 still rules, for God so loved the world, all people, and that He gave His
[00:10:46] only Son, Jesus, that whoever would believe in Him, in Jesus as our Messiah, as our only
[00:10:52] way of salvation, His death on the cross, His resurrection from the dead, shall not
[00:10:58] perish, die and go to hell forever and ever and ever with no way of escape, but shall
[00:11:03] have eternal life.
[00:11:05] And you know, Jesus commands us to love our neighbors, and you say, well, Joel, the Palestinians
[00:11:10] of Gaza, they're not your neighbors, they're your enemy.
[00:11:12] Well, okay, so many of them are, but Jesus commands us to love our enemies.
[00:11:17] People are like, oh, come on, that covers everybody.
[00:11:20] Yes, it covers everybody.
[00:11:22] And unless you're filled with the Holy Spirit and really trying to follow the Word of God
[00:11:26] by His Spirit's help, there's no way to love your neighbor, much less your enemy.
[00:11:31] Most people have trouble loving their own families.
[00:11:34] So how do you love Palestinians?
[00:11:36] How do you love...it's very important, and maybe we can talk about it a little bit today,
[00:11:42] but it's important for Christians to hear the whole Gospel, right?
[00:11:47] And it's very important to me to, even though I am an Israeli, but because I'm an Israeli
[00:11:53] I'm a follower of Jesus and Jewish, to be biblically whole on this, biblically fair and
[00:12:00] accurate.
[00:12:01] And that means that I have to lean in and ask the Lord, show me how to love my Palestinian
[00:12:07] neighbors, especially in wartime.
[00:12:10] You went into Gaza recently.
[00:12:12] I did.
[00:12:14] So that sounds about like the craziest, most insane thing a person could do, and yes, it
[00:12:20] probably is, but I was invited after asking for two months.
[00:12:25] I was like a widow knocking on the door, please let me in.
[00:12:28] I asked the IDF chief spokesman's office, look, you're taking Fox News in, you're taking
[00:12:33] some other reporters in.
[00:12:36] You know, I run a news site, All Israel News, one of the leading emerging sites for Even
[00:12:41] Juggles about Israel because it's run by Israeli believers in Jesus from Israel.
[00:12:47] But I also had this Thursday night, 9 p.m. Eastern, Eastern to 9 p.m., I guess it's delayed,
[00:12:55] no, here it's I think 7 p.m. here in Denver, program on TBN called the Rosenberg Report.
[00:13:03] And it's the only, literally after 75 years of Israel in the modern era, it's just the
[00:13:09] only primetime television news show made in Israel about Israel and the region.
[00:13:15] How is that possible that there's no other shows like that on all American television?
[00:13:19] But because I do those two things, I asked the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, listen,
[00:13:26] I want to go in and I want to report.
[00:13:28] I want to bring a film crew.
[00:13:31] And it took them two months to say yes, but I guess they thought I was crazy enough to
[00:13:35] say to really do it.
[00:13:37] And so they called me up around 9 p.m. on a Saturday and said, we're going in.
[00:13:41] If you can go in at 6 a.m. tomorrow, you have to bring your own bulletproof vest and your
[00:13:45] own helmet.
[00:13:46] But we'll take you in to the hottest war zone in the region.
[00:13:52] And that's what we did.
[00:13:53] Not just me, but Chris Mitchell, the CBN News Bureau chief in Jerusalem.
[00:13:59] And wow, I've been to Afghanistan, Ed, I've been to Iraq four times during the war, but
[00:14:04] I've never been into anything like this.
[00:14:08] What was your first initial reaction?
[00:14:11] How did you handle what you were seeing?
[00:14:14] Well, we get into an armored personnel carrier and we were in a convoy with generals in
[00:14:21] charge of fighting and winning in this section, which has a city called Khan Yunis, which
[00:14:29] for the last two and a half months has been the site of the most intense fighting.
[00:14:33] So they take us right to the center of the city.
[00:14:36] And when you get out, you can hear machine gunfire everywhere.
[00:14:39] Now we were in a little cul-de-sac.
[00:14:41] We were very well protected by, you know, very heavily armed soldiers and we're with
[00:14:46] the general who runs the 98th Division.
[00:14:49] But you know, you can hear machine gunfire everywhere and you can hear bombs exploding
[00:14:56] all around you.
[00:14:58] And then he starts giving you a briefing and nobody's ducking down, nobody's hiding behind
[00:15:02] anything.
[00:15:04] Well, he thinks it's safe.
[00:15:06] So, you know, the camera is rolling and so we...
[00:15:10] But that alone would have been like chilling to just experience that, him briefing us right
[00:15:17] in the middle of that firefight, which must have been just a couple blocks away.
[00:15:20] I mean, we weren't in it, but it felt like we were in it.
[00:15:25] But what was crazy, Ed, was they decided they were taking us into a newly discovered maze
[00:15:32] of terror tunnels underneath the city.
[00:15:37] And no one had...
[00:15:38] No reporters had ever been in there.
[00:15:39] They had just found these and killed or, you know, drove out all the Hamas terrorists inside
[00:15:45] there and it was safe, so they said.
[00:15:48] And so they're like, we're going in and we're gonna show you what this thing is like.
[00:15:53] 75 feet you go down underneath the center of the city and it's hot and it's humid and it's
[00:16:00] dark and it's very narrow.
[00:16:02] And even though I'm short, I'm still ducking down and you're just going and you're going
[00:16:09] and you're going.
[00:16:10] And there was only like six or seven other reporters and then they had a few, you know,
[00:16:13] camera crews with them.
[00:16:15] But what we discovered, what they showed us was we're taking you into the newest tunnels
[00:16:20] we found.
[00:16:21] And the reason these are significant is because we've discovered cages, cages where Israeli
[00:16:29] hostages have been held.
[00:16:31] And we have DNA, we have other evidence that they were in these cages.
[00:16:34] And then if that weren't creepy enough, we're going to take you into the actual lair, the
[00:16:41] headquarters of the top senior Hamas terrorist leadership because we know that they were
[00:16:49] in there and we're going to show you why we know and we're going to show you how they
[00:16:52] lived.
[00:16:54] And it was astonishing.
[00:16:59] To be in a place that was sheer evil, right?
[00:17:03] Where such wickedness was done, it's hard to describe.
[00:17:09] And we did a whole hour-long special on the Rosenberg Report, which people can find at
[00:17:14] RosenbergReport.tv, RosenbergReport.tv.
[00:17:18] And you go and you do need to put your email in to sign up for it, but it's free.
[00:17:23] And then you can go back and see the different shows that we've been doing, including that
[00:17:28] one.
[00:17:29] But the thing that was most powerful, even though that was so evil, it was so powerful
[00:17:34] was Chris and I decided, let's pray in these tunnels.
[00:17:38] Let's pray inside the cages.
[00:17:41] Yeah, we were respectful.
[00:17:42] We listened to the briefings.
[00:17:44] We asked a lot of questions.
[00:17:46] Our fellow reporters from NBC News and in other networks, you know, were asking lots of great
[00:17:53] questions also.
[00:17:55] But when there was a moment to be alone, we just bowed our heads and started praying,
[00:17:59] praying for the hostages, for their release, for the capture or killing, if necessary,
[00:18:05] of the Hamas leadership, and for the liberation of Gaza, not from Israel, but from the reign
[00:18:14] of terror of Hamas.
[00:18:16] And when we were done, when we came out after several hours, my colleague Chris Mitchell
[00:18:24] turns to me and he said, sort of conspiratorially almost, but he's like, hey, before we have
[00:18:30] to go back to civilization, you want to take communion.
[00:18:35] I was shocked.
[00:18:36] It hadn't even occurred to me to bring elements to take the Lord's Supper, but he had thought
[00:18:41] of it.
[00:18:42] And so we took communion.
[00:18:44] He brought crackers.
[00:18:45] He brought grape juice.
[00:18:46] We bowed our heads and we prayed that the Lord would break the stronghold of Satan,
[00:18:52] who has come to rob, kill, and destroy all the Palestinian people as well as Israel.
[00:18:59] And we prayed the Lord would redeem this bloodied, desecrated strip of land and not just set
[00:19:09] the captives free, literally.
[00:19:11] I mean, we did pray that out of Psalm 61, or I'm sorry, Isaiah 61.
[00:19:16] Set the captives free, Lord, please.
[00:19:19] But also set the Palestinians and Israelis free out of their spiritual bondage to Satan,
[00:19:26] free to know Jesus is the Messiah and let them know life and know it abundantly, right
[00:19:31] out of John 10.
[00:19:32] It was one of the most powerful moments I've ever experienced spiritually in my life.
[00:19:39] So you took the time to go into harm's way, see it firsthand.
[00:19:47] I'm sure, I know I've been in a lot of places around the world where you actually feel the
[00:19:51] evil.
[00:19:52] You don't just see it.
[00:19:53] You feel the atmosphere of darkness and everything pressing in.
[00:19:57] And I know that I kind of jumped to Gaza first, but I think also what listeners would want
[00:20:04] to hear, and we've got about 15 minutes.
[00:20:06] So I want to fit a couple of things in the 15 minutes we have.
[00:20:10] You've spoken to some Israeli hostage families.
[00:20:16] How is that?
[00:20:17] How are they, how are those discussions?
[00:20:20] What is the climate right now generally of Israel, Israelis living their life every day?
[00:20:28] Walk us through for a few minutes your perspective on that.
[00:20:33] Sure.
[00:20:34] Well, as you started out the whole segment, the world has changed.
[00:20:40] Israel has changed.
[00:20:41] And so the first few months were sheer grief, shock, anger, and of course, suddenly we're
[00:20:50] at war.
[00:20:51] 400,000 Israelis called up to reserve.
[00:20:55] Israel's not a large enough country, as you know, Ed, to maintain a regular army of hundreds
[00:21:02] of thousands of people.
[00:21:05] So we only have tens of thousands of people on duty any given moment, and then everybody
[00:21:09] else is a plumber, a dentist, a fireman, an accountant, a teacher, and they get a call
[00:21:16] and they rush to their base, suit up, and suddenly they're at war.
[00:21:21] And that's what happened on October 7th.
[00:21:24] And so we were dealing with all that grief and anger and shock and dislocation.
[00:21:32] My very husband of the women in my wife's Bible study, her discipleship group, all but
[00:21:38] one of them were called up and were suddenly at war either inside Gaza or in Judea and
[00:21:44] Samaria, what the world calls the West Bank.
[00:21:46] So you're dealing not just with your own grief and shock and rockets coming in all the time.
[00:21:52] More than 13,000 rockets in the first month and a half or so was crazy.
[00:21:57] But you're also dealing with friends who are now moms who are raising children by themselves
[00:22:02] as they don't know where their husband is.
[00:22:05] They have no contact with them, and they don't know if they're coming home.
[00:22:08] And these are believers.
[00:22:09] And then you think of your unbelieving friend.
[00:22:12] And most of my crew at TVN, the TV crew, most of them don't know the Lord because there's
[00:22:19] not that many believers in the country, and they don't know television.
[00:22:23] So you got to hire good people.
[00:22:26] So half my crew was gone.
[00:22:29] My producer, actually an Israeli based in New York City, she was called up that day,
[00:22:37] was told to get on a plane, and the next day she became the spokeswoman for the Prime Minister
[00:22:42] of Israel.
[00:22:43] So everything was changing at every level.
[00:22:48] But then, so that's a little bit of the feeling of what we've been dealing with.
[00:22:55] It was another part to your question, but how are Israelis going through?
[00:22:59] I mean, the hostages.
[00:23:00] Well, the hostages are on our hearts with such grief because at the beginning there
[00:23:05] were 240.
[00:23:06] Now, there was a release of over 100 of them in November.
[00:23:12] That was a miracle by itself because Hamas had come in beheading babies, slaughtering
[00:23:20] people, the most demon possessed people.
[00:23:25] They literally, the videos of them, which some of them are public, most of it is not
[00:23:30] public.
[00:23:31] I've seen classified versions, people chopping each other's heads off.
[00:23:35] It's unbelievable.
[00:23:36] And they're all cheering and they're always saying, Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar.
[00:23:41] And they're praising their God as radical Islamists while they're doing the most horrific
[00:23:49] behaviors that I only want to describe on Christian radio.
[00:23:53] Raping people, I mean just...
[00:23:55] And so this is demon possession.
[00:23:56] So you're watching this with your real life and we're living through this.
[00:23:59] Now the hostages, we thought they would kill them all like on YouTube, on live, you know,
[00:24:05] YouTube broadcasts like ISIS did.
[00:24:08] But they didn't.
[00:24:10] You know, and not to their credit, but I mean, I think God mobilized millions, tens of millions
[00:24:15] of Christians all over the world to pray for these hostages, even if they didn't know what
[00:24:20] else to do, pray.
[00:24:22] And I really didn't think Hamas would let any of them out.
[00:24:25] So over 100 were let out in a deal struck in November, but there are still 134.
[00:24:35] There was 136 until about two weeks ago when an Israeli special forces operation identified
[00:24:42] and rescued two of them, which was pretty dramatic and gave us a lot of hope.
[00:24:47] But there are still 134.
[00:24:49] I have been interviewing, visiting with, interviewing these hostages' families.
[00:24:55] I'll give you one example.
[00:24:56] Okay.
[00:24:57] Her name is Ofri Bevis, B-I-B-A-S, Ofri Bevis.
[00:25:02] Her brother-in-law and his wife, basically her in-laws, were taken hostage.
[00:25:10] Well, the brother-in-law was killed, murdered, and then the wife and two babies were taken
[00:25:20] hostage.
[00:25:21] Babies.
[00:25:22] One of them's like three years old, so a toddler maybe.
[00:25:24] And but one was nine months old.
[00:25:28] And his name is Kfir Bevis, that little boy.
[00:25:32] He's the youngest hostage.
[00:25:33] Both of them are brothers, redheaded, just the most adorable children you can possibly
[00:25:38] imagine.
[00:25:39] And they are in these tunnels.
[00:25:42] And it's now, I think we're at 145 days.
[00:25:47] You know, I was in those tunnels.
[00:25:49] You can barely breathe.
[00:25:50] There's no fresh air.
[00:25:52] And these people are, so we don't know what happened to them, but we know that they're
[00:26:00] in terrible jeopardy.
[00:26:02] Israel is negotiating, but Hamas is demanding full surrender by Israel, full removal of
[00:26:08] all troops from Gaza, and letting Hamas come back to power.
[00:26:12] Well, that's not going to happen.
[00:26:14] So there's a real tension, just to wrap this part up.
[00:26:16] There's a real tension in the society right now.
[00:26:20] On the one hand, we've got to defeat Hamas.
[00:26:22] We have to, because otherwise this will happen again.
[00:26:25] And we can never let it happen again, which shouldn't have happened now.
[00:26:28] It was a terrible, massive systemic failure of the Israeli government, Israeli military,
[00:26:37] Israeli intelligence.
[00:26:38] Just a disaster that this could have happened and we weren't protected.
[00:26:43] So we have to win, but we want those hostages back.
[00:26:51] And Hamas is giving us the choice.
[00:26:53] You can surrender and we'll give them all back.
[00:26:57] Or they'll all die.
[00:27:00] And so that is creating tremendous tensions inside and grief upon grief, is how I would
[00:27:06] put it, inside Israel.
[00:27:08] Grief upon grief is the worst.
[00:27:11] And you have the tension and you have the uncertainty and you have the separation.
[00:27:16] It's just a mixture of, I mean, really what terrorists desire.
[00:27:20] They want terror, they want fear, they want uncertainty.
[00:27:23] They want, as you were mentioning from John 10.10, they want death.
[00:27:31] Well we only have a few minutes left and I have an article in my hand that I think is
[00:27:36] pretty relevant for the rest of our time.
[00:27:39] And by the way, on the air right now, if you're just joining us, Joel Rosenberg is on with
[00:27:43] us live.
[00:27:45] We're talking about all things related to Israel, October 7th.
[00:27:49] Joel has started a brand new, very popular, very accurate website called allisrael.com.
[00:28:00] He also has on Thursday nights here in Denver, but you can look it up in your local listings
[00:28:04] or you can Google it for the Rosenberg Report.
[00:28:08] Rosenberg is R-O-S-E-N-B-E-R-G, Rosenbergereport.com.
[00:28:17] And he's on TBN every Thursday.
[00:28:19] I just got a text real quick, somebody texted in.
[00:28:22] I just want to read it to you, Joel.
[00:28:24] Let me pull it back up.
[00:28:25] She says, I follow Joel Rosenberg.
[00:28:28] He's such an important link to the truth for me, especially on Thursdays, TBN.
[00:28:34] Thank you, Joel, for coming and for everything that you do.
[00:28:38] So there you go.
[00:28:39] Well, that's very kind.
[00:28:41] I appreciate it.
[00:28:42] And we'll talk about hope on Saturday night and Sunday morning, because what we haven't
[00:28:48] gotten to is people...this is shaking Israel so badly.
[00:28:52] People are starting to ask, maybe there is a God.
[00:28:55] Is there a God?
[00:28:56] How do we know God?
[00:28:57] This is a big development going on spiritually that's very positive in Israel.
[00:29:02] So I don't want to leave everybody like, wow, I don't want to hear that.
[00:29:05] That's the most depressing hour I've ever listened on that show.
[00:29:10] You know what's valuable, Joel, though, is this...what's valuable for what you're sharing
[00:29:14] is there aren't really any sources for the type of information.
[00:29:20] Like for me, if I want to ask a question, I can text you, I can read all Israel news.
[00:29:24] I have friends that are in Israel.
[00:29:26] We have a lot of connections there that I'm able to get information and share it.
[00:29:30] But with this firsthand report, if they are watching any sort of news or even local news,
[00:29:37] I mean, even the local news is twisting everything away from the atrocity.
[00:29:45] I mean, even local governments here...and again, we only have a short amount of time,
[00:29:49] so I want to set that aside.
[00:29:50] But I appreciate the topic of hope coming.
[00:29:54] Joel will be here at Calvary this weekend, March 2nd and 3rd.
[00:29:59] Saturday night we have service 6 p.m.
[00:30:01] Sunday morning, just go to our website calvaryco.church.
[00:30:05] You wrote an article, I have it in my hand, December 31st, heading into 2024, Six Biblical
[00:30:11] Truths that Evangelicals Need to Embrace When It Comes to Israel and the Arab Muslim World.
[00:30:18] We have about five minutes, and I'm wondering if...would you like me to read them by reminder
[00:30:24] for you, Joel?
[00:30:25] Sure, yeah.
[00:30:26] Okay, so one was evangelical followers are called to love Israel and her neighbors, not
[00:30:30] just one or the other, called to be peacemakers, called to oppose injustice, care for those
[00:30:37] who are suffering, strengthen our Gentile Christian and Messianic Jewish brothers and
[00:30:42] sisters, providing financial support when the Lord directs, make sure that everyone
[00:30:48] everywhere has the opportunity to at least hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and understand
[00:30:53] it, and then finally, to never stop praying.
[00:30:57] I would ask you to speak to...let's end with strengthening our Gentile and Messianic Jewish
[00:31:03] brothers, providing financial support.
[00:31:06] People listening in right now, how can they participate in the financial support part
[00:31:12] of this, Joel?
[00:31:14] Well I appreciate that.
[00:31:15] And so 18 years ago my wife Lynn and I started a ministry.
[00:31:21] God called us to do it, and it's called the Joshua Fund.
[00:31:25] The Joshua Fund.
[00:31:26] People can learn about it at JoshuaFund.com.
[00:31:29] Again, JoshuaFund.com.
[00:31:31] Now what does it do?
[00:31:32] Well, it's a fund, right?
[00:31:34] So think of it like a mutual fund.
[00:31:36] Rather than pick your own stocks, maybe you think, I don't know how to pick stocks, I don't
[00:31:39] know, but...or you thought, well I want to help a ministry in Israel, but I don't know
[00:31:43] any ministries in Israel.
[00:31:44] Yeah, I was on a tour once and we met some interesting people, but I don't know who they
[00:31:48] are, I don't know if their theology is healthy, I don't know if they're...if they do with
[00:31:53] their money what they say they're going to do if I gave them $25 or $100 or whatever.
[00:31:58] I don't know.
[00:31:59] Okay, then don't pick your own stocks and don't pick your own ministries.
[00:32:02] The Joshua Fund, basically you could give $25, you give $25,000, but we have a team
[00:32:09] and we've been doing it for 18 years.
[00:32:11] Who are the believers?
[00:32:12] We have a lot of coffee with them.
[00:32:15] I joke that our number one line item in our budget is coffee and baklava, right?
[00:32:20] Because you're basically building relationships with Arab, Palestinian, Jewish, Messianic,
[00:32:28] Evangelical people all over the country and getting a sense, all right Lord, what are
[00:32:33] their needs and are you asking the Joshua Fund to help?
[00:32:36] And so if so, how much?
[00:32:38] Humanitarian relief, discipleship, Bible colleges, Bible distribution, evangelism training, pastor
[00:32:45] encouragement and refreshment, expository teaching, how do you do it?
[00:32:50] All these different things and that's what the Joshua Fund funds.
[00:32:54] And humanitarian relief, of course, is a huge one, especially now.
[00:32:58] But over the last 18 years, Ed, I'm just...I'm blown away by this.
[00:33:02] God has brought in more than $100 million through the Joshua Fund, all at like $10,
[00:33:08] $15, $20, $25 usually.
[00:33:12] And we have learned to be good stewards, to invest in the local believers.
[00:33:17] Yes, to be a blessing to unbelievers, but you start by strengthening the core, right?
[00:33:22] Strengthening what remains, Jesus says in one of the letters in Revelation.
[00:33:28] And so that's what we do and there's no Joshua Fund logo on our truck that delivers
[00:33:35] food or on the bags of food.
[00:33:37] All of it is delivered through the local Messianic and Evangelical congregations.
[00:33:43] They're the local believers, they know the language, they know the culture, so they are
[00:33:47] the ones with the relationships.
[00:33:48] We don't want to be a brand in Israel.
[00:33:52] We are behind the scenes to help our brothers and sisters and that's what the Joshua Fund
[00:33:57] does as well as educate Christians all over the world.
[00:34:01] What is going on in Israel and the region and how should we be helping?
[00:34:05] That's mostly my side of it.
[00:34:07] And so I'm the one doing the educating of the church through all these different ways.
[00:34:14] And my wife and my sons and our team, thank God, a great team, they're the ones every
[00:34:19] day on the ground serving Israelis and Palestinians in the name of Jesus.
[00:34:25] Hey, thanks again for listening to today's episode.
[00:34:28] It was a special one.
[00:34:29] I hope you were encouraged.
[00:34:31] Because of the limitation of the radio program, we didn't have a lot of time.
[00:34:36] But the time that we did have was very fruitful.
[00:34:38] If you want more information on the ministry of Joel Rosenberg, you can go to his website
[00:34:43] allisrael.com, allisrael.com or joshuafund.com or email us.
[00:34:52] We can connect you with him and all that God is doing, but appreciate your feedback, your
[00:34:58] reviews, share this podcast.
[00:35:00] It helps with the algorithm and then tune in.
[00:35:04] We'll get back into other topics next time.
[00:35:07] Thank you for joining us for this episode of Lead to Serve with Pastor Ed Taylor, a
[00:35:11] leadership podcast from Calvary Church in Aurora, Colorado.
[00:35:15] If you have a leadership question you want to hear answered on a future Lead to Serve
[00:35:18] podcast, please email it to pastored at calvaryco.church.
[00:35:23] And if you like our podcast, please subscribe, rate or review us on iTunes and share us with
[00:35:28] your friends on social media.
[00:35:30] Thanks again for joining us and we'll see you next time right here on the Lead to Serve
[00:35:34] podcast.
