Rebecca Weiss: Hey, guys, welcome back
to the "Rebecca Weiss Podcast."
I'm really excited today because I am joined with my family.
We have my husband, Jonathan Weiss who is--
Jonathan Weiss: I can't believe I'm on the podcast.
Rebecca: Look at you, already just chiming in.
Jonathan: I'm so excited to be here.
Rebecca: I have to give you your intro.
Jonathan: I don't need an intro. Everyone knows who I am.
Rebecca: Well, okay, well, we need to give background
as to why I have you all on 'cause
it's not just because you're my family.
Jonathan: Yeah, please set the stage.
Rebecca: So you are actually Daystar's Israel liaison.
Jonathan: Correct.
Rebecca: So you've been working with Israel for years
and you've been to Israel.
Give, you know, give your background.
Jonathan: Well, first of all, I'm Jewish.
I was born into a family, a Messianic family,
so I grew up in a home that was not only serving Jesus
but also celebrating the Jewish traditions.
So we had Shabbat at home, we celebrated Passover and Hanukkah
and all these different things.
So I grew up with a Jewish identity and, later in life,
I guess I was how old, 14, when I went to Israel
for the first time?
Myles Weiss: Yeah, exactly.
Jonathan: So when I was 14 and I was in Israel for the
first time, I remember seeing the IDF soldiers and being,
like, "I need to be in the IDF.
That must be my calling," you know?
Any young boy is gonna see the soldiers with the M16s
and wanna go and be a part of that and serve in that.
So, I've had identity and been tied to Israel my whole life.
Fast forward to now, yes, I've been at Daystar for about
5 years and been in the role of Israel liaison here, which has
been incredible as far as just helping strengthen
the relationship between Daystar, the church, and Israel.
Rebecca: And we are joined here with the person who was
foundational in your life and mine as well, our father, my
father-in-love, Pastor, founder of House of Peace, Myles Weiss.
Myles: Hi, it's great to be here.
Rebecca: Okay, give us your background.
Myles: Okay, so I was born in the old country, New York City,
and was raised in Hebrew school, 3 days a week,
bar mitzvahed at 13.
Grew up--'cause I'm a child of the '50s, I grew up with, right
after World War II when people still had the tattoos on their
arms from the death camps.
So awareness of the Holocaust, awareness of Jewish persecution,
was kind of natural to us.
We have a lot of dark gallows humor jokes about it, but the
reality is that we understood that that was a thing.
So at about 33 years old, I had my magical misery tour
from my bar mitzvah to 33.
I met this woman, this beautiful, young, woman
and she told me at our first cup of coffee that she had recently
given her life to Jesus.
And I thought, "I don't even know what that means."
And she said--by then I was a Hindu Buddhist,
Bu-Jew we call ourselves.
I was a Buddhist Jew.
And she said, "If you were a real seeker you would
at least look in your own book."
And that started a series of incredible studies in the Word
and supernatural intervention by God to get me to realize
that Yeshua, in fact, is the Jewish Messiah.
You guys
I feel like, are great to speak into this and there are so many
narratives out there, there's so much information,
and I wanna give believers an opportunity to ask questions,
so people have written in.
Jonathan: Yeah, let's do those.
Rebecca: They've asked questions and we're gonna
talk about this from a biblical perspective 'cause
you can't just look at this through the physical.
You have to look into the spiritual and you have to look
into what the Word of God says, because we, as believers,
we can't allow the world to dictate our beliefs.
We have to allow what God and his Word says
to dictate our beliefs.
Myles: That's really good.
If we see the news, we will not understand what we're seeing
unless we can interpret through the lens of Scripture.
It's the only way to know what's going on.
Jonathan: It's cool, as we'll talk about the biblical
perspective today but it's also important to realize
that there's a historical and political perspective as well
that is very legitimate for the nation of Israel, their right to
exist, the Jewish people that have a homeland,
and we can get into all that as well, but--
Rebecca: And it's so important because we,
as believers, we have a role to play in this.
So let's start there.
What is the believer's role in relation to Israel?
Jonathan: I love that. Rabbi?
Rebecca: That's a big question but it's what people
are asking now because of what's going on.
Myles: It is a big question and it's shocking and
disheartening for those of us who have been tracking this
forever, for our lives, that there's so much residue of
Christian antisemitism.
It's just--it's terrifying to see churches that don't
understand what they're--they live out of what's called
replacement theology, meaning that when Jesus went to the
cross, the Jews were displaced and anything going forward
from there is the new Israel which is the church.
Well, that's just not what the Bible says.
If you read the Bible together, I mean, Jesus said--
Jonathan: There you go.
Myles: --that a disciple of the Word that is schooled
by heaven brings--is like a householder
who brings forth treasures old and new.
In other words, we need to recognize that these two
Testaments are one long love story, and it doesn't begin
at the cross; it begins before eternity, you know, begins
in eternity, but that it's a long love story that's centered
around his chosen people and, through the chosen people,
the Messiah came, hallelujah.
And then this long love story.
Now, he never turns away from the Jewish people.
We have rebelled, we've lost our way, we come back.
We go--you know, we've just been like children
who have gone astray.
But he has never stopped loving, he's never stopped--he's never
went--gone back on his promises to the Jewish people, to Israel.
So if you start there, then you start to understand
all this conflict because the God of this world, Satan,
hates what God loves.
God loves the Jewish people, God has promised the Jewish people
all these things, a land and a people.
He promised to Abraham so, of course, Satan hates that.
That's why we see Pharaoh killing the young ones, we see
Herod killing the young ones, trying to prevent the coming of
Messiah, but also, going forward, we see the other
villains of history, like Hitler, trying to kill the
Jewish people to prevent the return of the Lord, because
Jesus is coming back not to Davos, not to D.C.,
not even to Dallas.
He's coming back to Jerusalem.
And so the attack against the Jewish people
is always below the surface.
If you grow up with these things and you grow up in proximity
to the Nazi Holocaust, you understand that.
But now it's shocking to see so much happening, right?
The--you sent me a video where this replacement theology
is being pitched in a very seductive way to Christians.
Rebecca: A more covert way.
Myles: Much more covert.
But using those same verses, but using them in a way to say
there was never a promise of land.
It's always been about a heavenly kingdom only.
Therefore, life begins only at the cross and has nothing to do
with the promises to Abraham.
But that's not the whole counsel of God.
Rebecca: And it's so important that we address this
because it is confusing for believers who might not
understand the history and the backstory.
Can you speak to some of the specific misconceptions
that replacement theology tells believers and the Scriptures
they use, so believers can understand how to debunk that?
Myles: Well, it's really--it's really quite sad,
but even the church fathers who were revered and taught in every
Bible college, they had within them a virulent antisemitism,
so this notion of--and you could go back to Constantine becoming
a Christian in 325 AD and the divorcing at that time
from the Jewish feasts and the Jewish customs
and officially making it a new thing.
That's not what Paul taught.
That's not what was going on in the early church.
The early church, of course, was all Jewish
and we let the guys in.
Myles: But the idea is this that, you know, if--in all of
the Messianic things, if we don't keep Yeshua central,
we've missed the point.
Because the most Jewish thing we can do is follow Jesus.
Rebecca: And what's so important is God does not go
back on his promises and if we believe that as believers,
how can we believe that our salvation is secure, that he
keeps his promises with us.
So that's a very important thing that we challenge this teaching
because God did make a covenant with Israel, with the people,
with the land.
Can you speak to the different covenants
that God made with Israel?
Myles: Absolutely.
What, you know, what I say is that if this book is the story
of God's promise-keeping to the children of Abraham, and if he
can gather us again, after 2000 years of disbursement,
since disbursing, since 70 AD, if he can regather us
into the land which he has done.
It's not a political thing, it's not a colonization thing.
It's God's promise to Abraham.
Jonathan: And he talked about it through Isaiah:
"Can a nation be born in a day?"
So he told us about it way before he did it.
Rebecca: It was God's prophetic working.
Myles: Yeah, Isaiah 66:8, which we preach at Qumran all
the time because that's where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found,
proving that the same Isaiah we have in this book is
the one that was found, that was written 800 years before Jesus.
Same Bible, same book, same story.
So if he can bring a nation to be born in a day, May 14, 1948,
that's a fulfillment of the Word.
That means that his promises to you and to you and to me
and to the entire church, are valid.
And we need to see that.
We need to see that this is a promise over the land
and a people.
You know, in Jeremiah 31, he talks about how "if the stars
and the moon go away, when the sky goes away, when
there's no longer that which I have set in the firmament,
that's when my Jewish people will end."
In other words, "I will always have my natural seed with me.
I will always have the Jewish people."
And then he says in Amos 9:15 that
"I will plant you in the land.
I will gather you from all the nations," not just Babylon,
not just Persia, but from all the nations,
which should only be the 20th century."
I will gather you from all the nations and I will plant you
in the land never to be uprooted again."
And that's where we are in time.
That's why this little nation has been on the headlines
for 75 years because it's God's land
Jonathan: And the verse that, "sprinkling with new water,"
you've gotta say that one because that's a great story."
Myles: What's important, because there are groups of
people, even some ultra-orthodox Jews who believe they're camping
in Israel because Mashiach hasn't come 'cause they don't
know it's Jesus, right?
So they think, "Well, it's an ungodly nation."
Hello, yes, you know, it's mostly a secular nation and
most--many of the people that came through the Holocaust
came through as atheists because where was God?
So there's a lot of drama and a lot of trauma involved
in the rebirth of the land.
But what he says is, "First, I'll bring you to the land, and
then I'll sprinkle clear--clean water on you," which is why
what you guys are doing here is so important because you're
supporting the Messianic body, and they're the front lines
of the spiritual war.
Jonathan: And I remember when I quoted that verse to my dad
when I convinced him that I was gonna move to Israel to join
the army, and he said, "Well, there you go,
my little watering hose off to Israel."
Myles: I don't remember that, but I believe you.
Rebecca: I love that. Jonathan: Yeah.
Rebecca: The other thing that's talked about in Scripture
is in Ezekiel where it says: "Can these dry bones live?"
And first, he gathers the dry bones together,
then he breathes life.
And that's another picture of Israel.
First he gathers them together but they're not alive yet
and he says, "Can these dry bones live?"
And he says, "Yes," and he breathes his life.
And that's also a prophetic picture.
Myles: Absolutely.
Rebecca: And so this is why we need to talk about
this because God has a plan and a purpose.
He did thousands of years ago and he still has a purpose now,
and we can't count Israel out and so when we understand God's
prophetic plan and his heart and his covenant and his promises,
everything recorded in Scripture, we as believers
can be supportive of what God is doing.
Myles: Exactly.
Jonathan: Not only can we not count Israel out,
but it's central to the plan, and so it's--without Israel,
there is no plan.
It's crazy, but it's true.
Rebecca: It all hinges on Israel.
It's that important.
Jonathan: It's his story.
He had to choose a people, he had to cut covenant with
the people because he couldn't send his Son just willy-nilly.
It had to come through--lineage had to come through a people.
So Jesus himself said, "I have not come
but for the people of Israel."
Even when he was--you just shared this story with me
on the couch.
Rebecca: The Phoenician woman came 'cause her daughter was
demon-possessed, a--from reading the Gospels,
and he said, "Woman, I've come for the House of Israel."
Myles: "The lost sheep of the House of Israel."
Jonathan: Yeah, he was very clear.
Rebecca: He had been sent by the Father directly to Israel.
We get grafted in later.
Now, it's not that God doesn't love us,
but he had a specific plan and purpose.
Myles: And that's an important part of the story
is that there's no caste system here.
It's not like, Big Jew, Little Gentile.
That's not how this works.
In my case, you know, I understand.
Jonathan: You're different. You have your stature.
Myles: But the idea is that he makes us--he makes the two one.
That's what happens and what he revels in, what he loves,
what he's celebrating over us, is the worshiping
of the true God by Jew and Gentile together.
You know, that's his heart because he loves all nations.
He's not willing that any should perish,
but all come to everlasting life.
Older brother Peter said that in his letters, you know,
that God is not slack concerning his promise.
He's not slow in what he's doing.
He's doing it on purpose so as many as possible have time
to say--to repent is the word used.
To turn to him, to, you know, to come to the--to the Romans 9
passage he was speaking of, say, "God has not--he's not rescinded
his promises to Israel."
And if you go through that, you come to Romans 11:25-26,
which says that "the Gentiles are to provoke us to jealousy.
When the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, when
the right number of people and the right awareness,
the right illumination, the right reflection, the right
understanding of God's way, when that comes to fullness,
then we will come to know and then all Israel will be saved.
So it's very important for us that you--
let me give you an example.
This is important.
We used to--we've been taking trips to Israel forever.
We've led about 40 tours.
And used to be that the shopkeepers, when they'd see me,
the Jew with all these Christians, they would say--
they can read me like a book.
When they see me with them, they'd say--they'd look at my
groups and they'd say, "Agh, the Notzrim are here."
Notzrim is the plural for Notzri.
Notzri is the shoot.
It's where we get the shoot out of a dry ground in Isaiah 53,
it's where we get Nazarite, where we get Nazareth.
All of those things having to do with the Nazarene,
is the shoots.
So you guys are the shoots.
We're the roots, you're the shoots, right?
And so they used to say--'cause the modern word
for a Christian is the Notzrim, the shoots.
You're the shoots.
Rebecca: I like that.
Myles: So they would look at the--"Agh, the Notzrim are
here," but now, because of what's happening in the world,
and because of the progression of evil, and because of the
heartache and the pressure that's on the Jewish people, now
when they see you, when they see the Christians coming, they say,
"Ah, the Notzrim are here," because they recognize that
Bible-believing Christians are our only friends in the world.
Rebecca: That's so powerful.
And see, we are modeling God's love to them,
by showing support and being there.
And going back to this history of persecution of the Jewish
people, antisemitism, you know, when God chose a people,
he chose a nation, he chose a land, you know, to bring forth
the Messiah and this entire plan and destiny and purpose,
that put a target on Israel's back.
And so when we look at the intense persecution and
execution, you know, trying to wipe the Jewish people out,
multiple times, not, you know, the Holocaust is the most recent
one, you know, we can think of, but if you study--if anyone
studied the history, there's been multiple things.
It's really a miracle that the Jewish people are still here.
Jonathan: For sure.
Rebecca: And so what--so what I'm trying to say is,
is that when Christians study this history and they see this
intense persecution, they can look at it through a
supernatural lens and understand that this is an attack of the
enemy, trying to wipe them out and understanding would you say
that antisemitism and antichrist spirit are similar veins?
Myles: Absolutely the same thing, because it's ultimately,
I mean, I love that we're at the forefront, but you know what?
It's not about the Jewish people.
It's about the God of the Jewish people.
Jonathan: Correct.
Myles: And the assault, think about the assault against
the Jewish people, I mean, you have the Inquisition,
the Crusades, the Pogroms in Europe, and then the Holocaust.
Not to mention all the minor skirmishes around the world.
There's nothing minor in death but you understand.
It's been ongoing. Why?
Because Satan is behind it.
And Satan hates what God loves.
So because God loves the Jewish people and the Christian people,
this assault comes upon us and it's absolutely vital that we
stand together at this time.
Rebecca: And you referenced something earlier and I want you
to speak to this, which is the one new man.
How God is going to bring and Yeshua, Gentiles and Jewish
people together and make them one new man.
Speak to that. Jonathan: He is doing.
He has done it. Myles: Say it.
Jonathan: You say it.
Why do you think we brought you here?
Myles: Well, it's a signature passage
for Katharine and myself.
It has been since-- Jonathan: I like that, "Say it."
Myles: So I'd just found out that my wife was a Gentile.
Jonathan: What!
Myles: I'm joking. Jonathan: All this time.
Myles: So Jew and Gentile together is something
that we see pictured in the book of Ruth.
We see the Moabitess who was outside of the covenants,
the people were cursed by God, all this negativity,
and what does God do?
He brings the Gentile girl into the lineage of Jesus himself.
Because God loves all people equally, right?
But he has a priority to the Jewish people because of his
prophetic working out of history which is his story.
And so, we see that, that the one new man, so called, some--
I have an attorney friend in Israel and she's post-feminist,
she's a great gal.
She calls it one new humanity.
It's okay with me.
What, you know, this idea that although the Word was given
to us and that's why--and my wife's, okay, your mom's
evangelization program.
Here's how she goes.
She meets Jewish people, she says: "I just wanna thank you."
And they go, "What?"
"I just wanna thank you."
"Okay, what for?"
"Well, I wanna thank you for the Bible,
I wanna thank you for the patriarchs.
I wanna thank you for the prophets.
I wanna thank you for the Psalms and the Proverbs and the wisdom
books and, most of all, I wanna thank you for the Jewish Messiah
who I call Jesus."
And by then, the person's crying.
They don't know why, but they just had an encounter
with the love story that is fulfilled in Jesus, in Yeshua.
It comes through this, you know,
beautiful person who's just loving them.
So the one new man, one new humanity, is the heart of God
that the nations of the world, together with the Israelis, with
the Jewish people, would worship him and Yeshua, forego
worshiping everything else, which is what we tend to do.
Jonathan: And that's a good answer to the question that you
asked earlier: what--how can people combat antisemitism
or stand with Israel that are Christians?
The Katharine Weiss Evangelistic Plan is the answer,
is you just do it in love.
You understand that-- Rebecca: An honor.
Jonathan: You don't--you may not understand everything about
Scripture, you may not understand everything about
God's plan, but you trust him, you believe him, and you live
out what he's called us to do,
which is for us to be one new man.
Rebecca: And to bless the nation of Israel and pray
for the peace of Jerusalem.
Prayer is another big one that we can do if we
might not be over there, but we can pray here.
Jonathan: Even if you don't understand, to start praying
for Jerusalem, start praying for the nation of Israel, start
praying that God's people would have their veil come down
and they would understand who their Messiah is.
You can pray for these things.
May not fully understand them or fully comprehend them,
but still pray 'em because they're in Scripture.
You can't go wrong.
Rebecca: And you just ask God to share his heart with you
for Israel, for his people, and he will download that to you and
connect those Scriptures and open your eyes and it--I mean,
I went through that journey.
Jonathan: Even you, I was gonna say, even you, when I met
you, you were pro-Israel and you, you know, but I've seen you
go from pro-Israel but just intertwine your identity and who
you are prophetically and who you are as an anointed speaker
and leader to understanding that a lot of that comes out
of the Jewish roots and a lot of that is tied to it.
How many times do I find you on your phone researching out a
word or a Scripture or a passage and you're going back to
the Torah portion or you're going back to what rabbis have
commented because it just starts to unravel naturally and
organically and, of course, you've seen hundreds of cases of
that over the years where people begin to start coming to your
messages or when you have a Shabbat service
and they get a glimpse or a taste of what it is
to be aligned prophetically with God's time.
Myles: Yeah, I was just thinking, last Sunday ago or so
I preached two services, and the first service--after the second
service, this man came to me and he said, "My son,"
who's a computer genius, who's now employed after college,
"has been getting his news from TikTok and Instagram,
and so he's on the wrong side of history here," meaning, you
know, pro-Hamas or just open to Hamas maybe being something
that it isn't which is a demonic organization.
And when I showed the map of how small Israel is and how big the
Muslim world surrounding it is, and I said, "This is not about
land; this is about the hatred of ancient--ancient hatreds."
His son told him, between the services, "When I saw that map,
the scales came off my eyes."
In other words, he understood that this love story is not
either/or, but it's both/and.
It's like God is doing something that only God can do,
which is make the two one,
which is the rest of that passage in Ephesians.
Rebecca: In conjecture to what you're saying, the Bible
made so much more sense to me when I understood Israel's role
and purpose and I mean, I feel like the Word of God opened up
to me and came alive, and it just made so much more sense.
When I went from this kind of more narrow, evangelical, and
Old--evangelical raising Old Testament didn't really make
sense, even the Gospels didn't make sense, but once
I understood Israel and how Jesus was Jewish and all these
different aspects, everything, like, God's big plan came before
me and now it makes so much more sense and you go closer to God.
Jonathan: Yeah, and it's so much more exciting, because--
Rebecca: It's so much more, 'cause we have a purpose.
Jonathan: You do, and you're looking at it and you're living
in it and you're saying, "Oh, my gosh,
I'm living in prophecy fulfilled.
I'm living in a time where what was written about by the
prophets is actually happening right before our eyes."
Rebecca: We're in exciting times.
Even though it's hard, we're in exciting times as believers
because we know that we don't have exact dates but we know
that Yeshua's return is at hand.
Jonathan: Not too close.
Myles: I just wanna say that when we take people to Israel
and they have a Messianic host and the Messianic guide,
they understand what you're talking about.
I had--one of the earliest trips we did, I had a pastor from
a large church with me and he pulled me aside and he--with
a tear in his eyes.
He said, "Myles, why wasn't this 35 years ago in seminary?
Why did I wait my whole Christian life to see this,
to find this out," because you've heard it said before,
it's like the Bible goes from low-def to high-def.
It goes from black and white to color.
It just becomes alive 'cause you realize, "This is not some
Sunday School program.
This is the history of the world, and God's writing it.
He's written it.
You know, it's like my spiritual father in Israel, David Davis,
used to say: "God says it, he does it.
We need to believe it," you know?
And it seems so simplistic but it's true.
If you take everything he says at face value and you realize
he means what he says, then this kind of opening happens.
It's revelatory. Rebecca: It's life-changing.
What happened in Israel, and you might be able to say this better
than me, but this attack from Hamas, who is a terrorist
organization, we need to clarify that, 'cause people are kind of
trying to say otherwise.
So when Israel was attacked by Hamas on October 7, the last day
of Feast of Tabernacles, on Shabbat, they attacked
and more Jewish people were killed on that day
for the first time since the Holocaust.
So this was a very big deal.
So let's talk about what's going on, who is Hamas,
who is Palestine, Israel, let's just dive into it.
Myles: So, Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The radical jihadists that really got their traction,
they've been around for a long, long time,
but in 1964, Yasser Arafat,
who was trained--who was an Egyptian, not a Palestinian.
He was an Egyptian, trained by the KGB, to destabilize
the Middle East and to come against the West.
He was raised up by the Communist Party
in the Soviet Union back then.
And he, essentially invented the Palestinian people.
I used to travel with a ex-PLO terrorist and he--born again
Christians, and he said: "Mr. Myles,
the difference between your people and my people: your
people will talk my head off, my people will take your head off."
Very dark joke, but what he was saying is that the Jihadi spirit
that he was raised under was so profound that it was--he said,
"I went to sleep--in 1967 I went to sleep a Jordanian and woke up
a Palestinian," because when the British controlled the area,
after they defeated the Ottoman Turks in 1914 to '18,
after 400 years of Ottoman Turk rule, Muslim rule,
the Brits came in and took the land.
And when they did that, they divided the area
up into two sections.
One, a big chunk called Trans-Jordan at the time
and this little sliver for the Jewish people.
That Trans-Jordan was the part given to the Arab peoples
of the area.
There was no Palestine.
There's never been a Palestinian state.
There's never been a Palestinian government
a Palestinian currency, or any of that thing.
That name, "Palestine," at the end of the 19th century,
that's what the Jews of the area were called.
They were Palestinians and their passports were Palestine
because it was named in one--
Jonathan: There was the newspaper.
Myles: "The Palestine Post."
Rebecca: Wait, so who came up with it?
Myles: I will tell you.
In 135 AD, when the Bar Kokhba revolution came up to defeat
Romans, the Romans--it took them years to put this Jewish revolt
down and when they did finally squash it in 135 AD, they
renamed the area of Judea, Palestina, in order--
Jonathan: Syria-Palestina? Myles: Yes.
As a means of insulting the Jews because it was--sounded like
the Philistines, the oldest Jewish enemies in the area.
Jonathan: It's a insult.
Myles: So it was an insult based on putting down
the Jews at that time.
But what's important there is that the Jews were there.
The Jews were there going back--
Jonathan: They were living there already.
Myles: They were--you know, we'd been there forever, I mean--
Jonathan: Since it was the Promised Land.
Myles: 3000 BC--excuse me, 1000 BC, 3000 years ago,
King David unified the country and called it Israel, and it was
a nation with all of the things that go with a nation.
So the history of the Jews being there is being rewritten and
rewritten and revisionist history has become so much in
the narrative and, if our world, where no one reads and no one
studies, they get all their news from CNN--
Jonathan: TikTok.
Myles: We say, Certainly Not the News, CNN.
If you get your news from there you're not gonna know
what is going on.
That's why we need this.
And archeology and true history.
Rebecca: So the Romans named the area "Palestine."
The Jewish people never left, so this notion that these Jewish
people just started coming back there.
Myles: After World War II.
Jonathan: There was always a presence.
Rebecca: There is always a presence of Jewish people there.
And the Palestinian people, so the place was called Palestine
because of the Romans, but the concept of the Palestinian
people came from Yasser Arafat.
Myles: Much later.
Rebecca: And who was Yasser Arafat?
Myles: So he was the--we call him
the father of modern terrorism.
He was--
Jonathan: Not a good dinner guest.
Myles: He was, like I said, trained in order to destabilize
the Middle East in the favor of the USSR but also they
marshaled many of the motifs of the era,
the post Martin Luther King era.
In 1968 Martin Luther King was killed, but if you go back
and listen to him, he says with--undoubtedly, he says,
"Take--make no mistake about it, anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
He understood the Jewish people which, by the way, which one of
the heartaches of this for some of us, is that it was the Jews
who stood with the civil rights movement.
It was Jewish attorneys, Jewish students, and Jewish media
people that marched with Martin Luther King, Jr.
So we've always had this incredible connection
with each other as oppressed peoples, right?
And to see that narrative stolen and rewritten and reworked so
that now the Jews are white colonizers from Europe
instead of being indigenous people of every color.
And if you go to Israel, as you know, you've been there,
we come in every color.
I mean, we are in every nation, we come in every color except
the--some of the Muslim nations we've been kicked out of,
but in general we're everywhere in the world.
Jonathan: Black, brown, yellow, we've got all the colors.
Myles: We do. We're Benetton.
Rebecca: And so you're saying Martin Luther King, Jr.
said to be anti--
Myles: Zionist is to be antisemitic, because they--
Rebecca: Yeah, I don't think anyone's quoting that right now.
Myles: No, I do all the time, but--and here's the point.
That they--that was very intentional was to make,
"Oh, I'm not anti-Jewish, I'm just anti-Israel."
Okay, we have 0.2% of the population,
there's only 15 million Jews in the world.
We have a little sliver of land, as you've heard it said,
smaller than New Jersey.
And so, and it's surrounded by millions of square miles of
Muslim land so we are oppressing and moving out and taking over?
The Rambo, the Giant Jew?
I don't think so.
Jonathan: Well, I think it's--I just think this is
important because back in 19--so
when did Theodor Herzl start the--
Myles: The end of the 19th century.
Jonathan: The end of the 19th century is when real--the Hebrew
language starts to become rebirthed, right?
So it was dormant for how many years?
Myles: Almost 2000, so here's a cool thing about that.
Rebecca: So that's like a huge miracle.
Myles: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was a Jewish man in Europe and he
decided to reinvent and bring back together the spoken Hebrew
language and that's why we have a language today because,
at the time, we were speaking the languages of the nations
we were in and we studied Hebrew as a sacred language.
Jonathan: And there was Yiddish which was a part--
Myles: It's a combination, a combination of the German and
Hebrew but it's farmisht.
Jonathan: That's Yiddish. Myles: Yeah, it's---Hebrew.
Farmisht is Yiddish,
but the idea is that he intentionally did that.
One of the real cool things that I can speak with some audiences
is that at the same time that he was bringing the Hebrew language
back to life, the modern Pentecostal movement
with speaking in tongues began in Europe as well.
So I have this whole story that I do about concurrent blessings.
Every time God blesses the Jews, he blesses the church.
Save it for another podcast, but--
Jonathan: So, the coming back and the whole point of this, of
me bringing this up, is that the Arabs and the Jewish people
in that area are co-mingling, they're selling goods
to one another, they're working together,
they're living together.
Rebecca: Is this before Israel is a nation?
Jonathan: Correct. Rebecca: Everything is fine.
Jonathan: Yes. Myles: No, no, it's not fine.
There were Arab attacks on local Jewish people going back to 1929
in Hebron and other places.
Jonathan: No, there's Islam going on.
Myles: Correct.
So there's always been tension, but there's also been a peace.
There's also been an ability to dwell together.
But in 1967--
Jonathan: You keep skipping 1948.
You gotta explain what happens in 1948.
Rebecca: Also I think one thing that's really important to
say is to talk about that Israel was birthed after the Holocaust
and what the Holocaust was a wake-up call to Jewish people to
understand there is nowhere that they could go that was safe
and that's why they needed their own nation.
So I want one of you guys to say that.
Myles: Well, that's why Theodor Herzl wrote a book
called "Judenstaat: A Jewish State," 'cause he recognized
when he saw the--when he saw the persecution of the Jews
in Europe, especially after the Alfred Dreyfus affair, he was
a French general who was falsely accused of treason.
He was exonerated, but when Herzl saw that he said,
"We are not safe in Europe. We've gotta have a state.
We need to go somewhere."
So the local--the League of Nations which became the
United Nations, which we call the United Nothing, but, UN--
Jonathan: They had a glimpse of reality for that one moment
where they had to vote in favor of--
Rebecca: Post Holocaust because the Holocaust was so bad.
Myles: This is before. Rebecca: It was before?
Myles: Yeah, this is before.
This--I'm trying to build up to that, so the League of Nations
offered the Jews Uganda and some other places where there was--
Jonathan: I'm pretty sure they were offered Alaska
at one point.
Myles: I don't know. Rebecca: That's so weird.
Myles: Rich places, rich lands, you know, supply.
But the Jews, having read this for 3000, 4000 years,
knew where we belonged was in this desert.
Jonathan: Then we'll show a map right here of the Promised Land.
Myles: Well, you should show a map of the promise to Abraham
which was much bigger than what we're in right now.
But they knew where they belonged because every year
at Passover, at the end of the service, we say, "L'shana
haba'ah b'Yerushalayim," "Next year in Jerusalem."
Been saying that for thousands of years
'cause we knew where we belonged.
Myles: Because we knew where we belonged.
And so, there was this movement to get back to Israel and people
started going at the end of the 19th century and started
drifting in, and coming in, coming in.
But it wasn't until the Holocaust which refers back
to your Ezekiel 36 passage.
It was literally, I mean, God's the master painter, you know,
literally, the graves were opened as in Ezekiel 36
and came back and came to life, right?
That was not just a poetic picture, that was actually the
literal graves of Europe gave up their dead and the people came
back and were brought to life.
And so in--
Rebecca: So the people who lost their lives in the Holocaust--
Myles: Well, the idea of all that loss
led to the rebirth, right?
So people, survivors, came back to the land.
Rebecca: So, basically, before the Holocaust, the League
of Nations was trying to give the Jewish people a place to
live but it wasn't Israel.
After the Holocaust, because it was so devastating,
they changed their minds and they said, "You can go back
to where you were originally.
Myles: Yeah, and Jonathan's right.
There was a blink because a moment of compassion, there was
a kind of a worldwide blink and it was thank God it was the USA
and Harry Truman who said, "We'll cast the first vote
for the state of Israel in the United Nations."
And I believe that's part of why there's been such a blessing on
the United States from World War II going forward: prosperity,
peace on and off, and so many wonderful things
have come out of this country.
I believe it's because we fulfilled Genesis 12
which is to bless Abraham.
Those that bless him will be blessed.
Those who curse him will be cursed.
And you can watch--you can track the backslidings of America with
devastation in America, having to do with how much we love
and serve Israel.
Rebecca: 'Cause we've gone kind of back and forth.
Myles: Correct. Rebecca: As a nation.
I mean, you can--you're right, you can study those connections
when we were for, how we were blessed; when we were against,
how we were punished.
Jonathan: On May 14, 1948, Israel declares independence
with the right of the UN to be a nation.
And what happens when they-- Israel declares independence?
Myles: You know, five nations attack the next day.
Jonathan: Kaboom.
And so what happens is they had been feeding intel to the Arab
population in that area, letting them know, you know, Lebanon,
Jordan, Syria, Egypt, "Hey, once--if this happens, we are
going to roll in and destroy the Jewish people
because they cannot be here.
We hate the Jewish people."
We know it's spiritual, it's not physical.
They wanna eradicate it because they don't want Jesus to come
back and Jesus is coming back to a Jewish people
and the nation of Israel.
So what happens is, Israel somehow, beat up from the
Holocaust, women with guns, end up defending themselves
and pushing these Arab armies out of Israel's borders.
Myles: Yeah, it was a total miracle.
And if you talk to some of the generals that were alive,
I'm going back 20, 30, years, some of the older generals,
they will tell you, "Absolutely there's no way
we could have done this."
They said the same about '67, the same about '73.
'67, the same thing: Israel did a preemptive strike.
They'd been getting the intel about what was gonna happen.
They did a preemptive strike and wiped out the entire Egyptian
Air Force which set the stage for what was about to come.
Again, all the nations came against them
and, again, they won.
Again, by miracles.
In '73, we almost lost and it's a fascinating part of our
history in the United States is that Richard Nixon was
the president at the time.
He was well known to be an anti-Semite, but what he did
was, when Golda Meir came to him and said, "If you don't send us
weapons and equipment, we're gonna be wiped out.
This is the end of Israel."
And he was iffy about it and his Jewish State Department had
Henry Kissinger was also--he actually, literally, he said,
"Let the Israelis bleed a little bit," you know?
You can't--it's hard to make up.
But here's what happened with Nixon.
He remembered his mother who was a Quaker and a believer, he
remembered his mother telling him when he was a little boy,
"If you ever get a chance to do anything good for the Jewish
people, you do it."
And Nixon remembered his mommy and what his mommy said and he
sent arms and sent equipment, sent help, and basically helped
the '73 war.
Helped us win, helped the overcoming
of incredible devastation.
Rebecca: And that's kind of the story over and over and over
again, just great, like, intense persecution but by a miracle,
you know, and like you said, I want you to speak to
"Can a nation be born in a day?"
in that, 'cause we kind of skipped over that.
Jonathan: Yeah, I mean, it said in Isaiah,
"Can a nation be born in a day?" And we actually saw it happen.
The nation was born in a day and it's just a really cool picture
of how all the way back to the time that Isaiah was speaking
and writing these Scriptures, we actually seen the fulfillment
right in our lifetime.
I mean, you were born in 1951, so 3 years after--oh,
sorry about that.
Three years after-- Myles: Don't tell my wife.
Jonathan: So think about, like, what time we're living in.
I mean, that moment in time started a clock.
I don't know where the clock is--like, how long we're going
with any--but it's not my job to know.
But the point I was trying to make about the Arab people being
displaced so that these armies could come in, was that
eventually is what turns into this Gaza Strip.
So what Gaza Strip, which is what you're gonna see in the
headlines right now and for a long time coming, is an area
that, for a while, Jews and Arabs were co-mingled.
They were living there, there was a thriving--
it was a coastal economy.
It was a place the Jewish people would go and the Arabs
would go for vacationing.
There were beaches. It was beautiful.
And it has now become a hell hole because Hamas
has control over it and Hamas is a terrorist organization.
And so they've turned it into a literal tip of a spear for
attacking the nation of Israel and what we just saw take place
earlier this month, in the month of October, 2023,
was an unprecedented attack on civilians, women, children,
elderly, including Holocaust survivors, and what we are
living in today is a crisis where the church needs to come
together because there's 200 people that have been taken
or maybe 200--maybe more than 200 people
that have been taken hostage.
They've been kidnapped.
They're living in cages in unprecedented, like,
conditions in Gaza and it's very serious.
So I think it's important that people understand that this
area--why was this area--why did it have the opportunity
to turn into what it was turned into?
Myles: Well, it's the story of Israel trying to be loved by
the nations and trying to fit in with the nations.
Goes way back to the Israelites telling Samuel, "We want
a king," you know, because the other nations would come
and they would say, "We wanna see your king," and Samuel
and the prophets would have to say, "You can't see him."
They said, "We wanna see him." "Well, you can't.
You can't see him," you know, "he's invisible.
You can't see him."
But they said, "We want a king."
And God said--Samuel said, "Well, what am I gonna do?
They're gonna reject me," and God said,
"They're not rejecting you.
They're rejecting me," 'cause he was the King.
God was the King.
And so we started that process of having kings.
We have 44 kings, 6 of whom were reasonable and decent.
The rest of them, 38 of them, were horrifying.
As my friend Peter Tsukahira says, "They were--let me tell
you, the book of 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Chronicles,
1 and 2 Kings, in four words: 'They were a disaster.'"
And so we can't be like the other nations because God
separated us on purpose to make us unlike the other nations.
And so, that's the story there is that the Jews attempting
to forestall any kind of further terror, said,
"Well, let's give them Gaza.
They want land for peace.
We'll give them Gaza," which, as Jonathan said, was a garden.
It was exporting flowers, fruits, vegetables, to Europe,
to Canada, all over.
It had beautiful greenhouses.
I mean, it was an incredible place.
And so, some of--actually, I was with Rosemary Schindler
and Katharine.
We were in Washington, D.C., trying to talk to these
muckimuks, these important Jews and Christians about
not--getting a message to George Bush and to Ariel Sharon:
"Do not give Gaza away.
We know what's gonna happen."
And of course, obviously, the message didn't go through.
Ariel Sharon, who was a fierce general, decided that he was
gonna give it to the Arabs.
Gave it to the Arabs, forcibly pulled out almost 10,000 Jews
and within weeks they had torn down all the greenhouses, taken
the irrigation pipes and made them into rocket launchers, had
knocked over all the graves and made them into latrines,
and bulldozed the synagogues.
And it became a den of terror and it's been that way since.
And so when you see this incredible news footage of--even
recently when this hospital was allegedly bombed by Israel in
Gaza, and immediately all the world news media was in
the streets and blaming Israel and talking about how--
protests everywhere.
Just, it's going on and on about this horrible Rambo
the Giant Jew who is out there killing the innocent babies,
blah, blah, blah.
Turned out they never would actually look at the footage.
Hamas's own radio transmissions, the communication within Gaza,
and it was very clear that it was a bum rocket that went
sideways from Hamas, from Islamic Jihada, actually, that
went sideways and landed in the parking lot.
Jonathan: Parking lot. Myles: Yeah, but--
Jonathan: Not even the hospital.
Myles: Not even hit the hospital.
But they--immediately, the conflagration was on the news
about how bad Israel is.
Well, that gives you an idea, you know, why what you're doing
is so important.
Rebecca: So I wanna make some points here.
So it's--people need to understand that Israel is the
one place where it's, you know, the Jewish people's own land,
where they can be safe.
And to understand the fight and the struggle that they had
before Israel was reborn and even to keep Israel because
the day that Israel was born, all the Arab nations
of the world turned on them.
So the people need to understand the fight that the Jewish people
have had to--basically always have.
The fact that when God made them his people, put a target on
their back, how the enemy hates them, and how, basically, Israel
wanting acceptance from the world because they have faced
so much pressure from all the world,
all these different nations.
We talked about the UN.
The UN gave Israel that one thing and from that they've just
basically turned on them.
And so, because of this worldwide pressure, Israel gave
up some of their land, thinking that it would bring peace but,
instead, it was basically, has provided more conflict.
And instead of taking a place--see, people would never
think of Gaza as beautiful 'cause they would think of it
as what it is now.
But instead of trying to be--instead of the people there
being happy and just existing, and of course, there probably
are some people there that want to exist, but Hamas,
the terrorist organizations, the things operating it, like you
said, they took the whatever it was and turned it into rockets,
because we need to speak to what is the goal of Islam and why
it is to basically wipe out the Jewish people and why
they'll never stop until they have the whole piece of Israel.
Myles: Yeah, and I think that's probably for a part 2
because we really do need to talk at length about--
Islam about the--
Jonathan: I wanna say one thing, though.
Myles: Please do.
Jonathan: Just about Hamas and their charter.
Their number one, their shining star, their biggest point at
the beginning is eradication of the Jewish people and Israel.
Rebecca: People need to understand that.
Jonathan: So that's just important that you understand
that that is who we're dealing with.
We're not dealing with somebody who is,
"Well, we would like to have--" Rebecca: Wanting peace.
Jonathan: Yeah, "We would like to get--we'd like to work
this out," you know?
A marriage, you want peace.
Sometimes there's conflict, you fight over who took the last
piece of fruit or whatever it is, but you figure it out
because you both want peace.
That's not happening.
Rebecca: But when one side doesn't want peace, they want
the full thing, you're never gonna get peace.
And so it's just the world is putting pressure on Israel but
Israel can not appease Hamas until they're all gone.
Myles: Well, some pundit years ago described it as
feeding an alligator.
You feed him your hand, hoping it won't take your arm.
You know, it's just not gonna happen.
So until there is a reformation within Islam, which is a topic
for another day, 'til there's a real reformation, we have to
recognize that the book itself, the Qur'an itself, calls
for Jihad, calls for a worldwide caliphate and so that's not
something you can appease through negotiation.
Jonathan: And I wanna speak to one thing, too, just in
regards to what I'm seeing on the Internet and social media
and a lot of people are sending me right now.
And Dad, you can speak to this as well.
But a lot of people are saying that Israel knew this was
coming, they let it happen, they wanted it to happen, and I don't
know all the answers, nor do I pretend to know all the answers
or understand the political situation well enough to say
that, but here's what I do wanna say is: I don't care.
Because it doesn't matter if they knew
or if they didn't know.
It's going to happen, regardless, because this isn't
just a physical battle.
It's a spiritual battle.
And the enemy is going to do everything he can to sow
discord, divide the church, and to eradicate the Jewish people
because if he can do that, which he can't, but if he can--
he can sure try.
If he can do that, he can prevent Yeshua from returning on
the Mount of Olives and walking through the Eastern Gate.
And so, there's gonna be an onslaught of narratives about
how this was planned and coordinated and all of it is
going to try and turn the church's attention away
from the real thing, which is you need to stand with Israel.
That's in the Bible.
You need to stand in love with the Jewish people.
That's in the Bible.
And you gotta pray for the peace of that area.
That's in the Bible.
And so it's so important that we don't get caught up
in conspiracy theories or caught up in what may
or may not have happened because that doesn't matter.
Let's keep the main thing the main thing,
which is what we're called to do.
Rebecca: And understanding, because I saw some Christians
say, "Well, Jewish people don't even believe in Jesus.
Why should we be supporting Israel, it's a secular nation."
But as you were referencing earlier, that God clearly shows
that he will bring the Jewish people together first and,
as the fullness of the Gentiles, you know, hear the gospel,
then the gospel will reach the Jewish people.
And so there's a reason we can still support Israel, even
though it's a secular nation.
Myles: It's almost--if it wasn't ironic and terrifyingly
sad, reality is I didn't know Jesus and people prayed for me
and people loved me and people shared with me
and people stood with me, 'til I came to know Jesus.
It's not up to me, you know, the timetable of people's salvation.
That's up to God.
What I can do is be the best witness I can be, and for
Christians I think the witness that my people have been waiting
for is this: Is that, wow, there are people that actually don't
hate us and they're willing to stand with us, even if we don't
believe in Jesus yet, you know?
And that's kind of the message that we have to be bringing.
We're fervent about preaching the gospel to our own people.
We get that, you know, and we stand with people
that are doing that in the land.
I believe they're the tip of the spear through the gospel,
but I'm not gonna not love because they're imperfect.
Start with me.
You know, if you wanna start with imperfect,
I can start right here.
So I think that--I think we're in unity
about doing what's right.
As my grandmother would say, "Do the right thing."
Maybe that was Spike Lee.
But she said it first.
You know, do the right thing.
You know, be a person, be a mensch, you know, and what's
menschy for the Christians right now is to, first of all,
read the book.
Jonathan: Good idea.
Myles: Read the book and you can come to an undeniable
conclusion that God is in this and this is at the forefront
of his heart.
Rebecca: Okay, I think an important point for us
to make is that we love both.
We love both Israelis and Palestinians.
How can we love both but also stand with God's covenant
and God's people?
Myles: Well, I think that the education of both groups, like,
we have secular Jewish people that don't know which way
is up either, because they don't know the Bible.
And so, for both the Arab people and the Jewish people,
we need to get back to the wisdom that is here and the
promises that are there.
In terms of the feeling world which everybody's enamored of
right now, I think that we--the best thing we can do is preach
the gospel because what changes, I mean, I have many examples, as
does Jonathan, of Jews and Arabs together in the Lord and what
a beautiful thing that is when people come to faith because
I've had Muslim, former terrorists as I've said,
come to faith and love the Jewish people, love Israel,
as much as possible, and vice versa.
We work together in Israel.
One of the stories I have is bringing a sound system to
a group in Bethlehem and when the Israeli authorities stopped
me at the airport and said, "What are you doing?"
I said, "This is a sound system."
"Yes, we can see that. What are you doing?"
"I'm bringing it to the Arabs in Bethlehem."
"Why?"
I said, "Because I want them to preach love
to their Muslim friends."
And they said, "Oh, well, pass right through."
Because love, the love of God, is the answer for both, right?
So, in the meantime, yes, absolutely, we work with people
on the ground who are supporting both groups and helping both
groups but we still have to stick to what God's plan is
which ultimately is that Israel will be a Jewish people.
Jonathan: And I think it's important to understand too
that there's thousands of Arabs that are in the IDF that are
denouncing terrorism, that are denouncing Hamas,
they're against violence and what is taking place.
So there isn't--
Rebecca: That's an important point.
Jonathan: It's very important that we understand that
this is not a people group against people group.
It's life against death.
Myles: That's great.
Jonathan: And so, we can't just--
Rebecca: "Lest you believe in life."
Myles: Yeah, for example, the--20% of Israel
is Israeli-Arab citizens.
They vote, they serve, they are in positions of power, doctors,
lawyers, Indian chiefs, they are--they're doing all the work
of being a citizen and they are--there's some in the Supreme
Court, judges, and there's some serving in the Knesset,
you know, so Arab citizens in Israel have complete rights.
How many rights do the Jews in Muslim lands have.
Oh, that's right, there are no Jews in Muslim lands because
we're not allowed, because we're second-class citizens called
dhimmi in Arabic, and so we love by truth, we love by the gospel,
we love through the Word, and we love through social work.
We help, where possible, we help,
but always in the name of Yeshua.
Jonathan: And I'll say one last thing is that, you know,
Daystar has contributed millions of dollars of aid to the nation
of Israel and, when we do this, we're not doing it
"This is only for the Jews."
We are doing this for the people of Israel.
That means that this is helping Arabs, this is helping Druze,
this is helping multiple people, Ethiopian immigrants,
Russian immigrants.
And so, we as believers, we stand for life.
We don't--we're not picking and choosing who this is going to,
who this love, who this support is going to.
Rebecca: All right, I have a few questions
from people from social media.
Why are the--okay, why are the Palestinians saying Israel
lands belongs to them?
Myles: Several reasons.
One is that in 1948 and again in 1967, when the Arabs believed
they were gonna push the Jews into the sea, they told their
people who were living, some of whom were living in Israel
proper, they said, "Get out of the way.
Come back into Jordan. Get out of the area.
What we're gonna do is gonna push the Jews into the sea
and then you can have your house and theirs."
So, the Arabs were displaced.
At the same time, about the same number of Jews were displaced
from the surrounding Arab lands.
They left with the clothes on their back.
Jonathan: 'Cause they were gonna die if they didn't.
Myles: Correct.
So there's been an exchange of refugees back in 1948, there was
an exchange, about 650,000 to 850,000 on each side, being
displaced and being exchanged from their Muslim lands
to the Israel and back and forth.
So it's not a--but the bigger question, the spiritual
question, again comes back to another program
which is about the nature of Islam, orthodox Islam.
Not backslidden Islam, not this peace-loving Islam,
which is many wonderful Muslims in the world.
But the orthodoxy is about a program of conquest,
a governmental and military conquest of the entire world,
and divides the world into the house of Islam and the house of
the world, or the unbelievers.
And so, what happens there is that any place where Islam has
been in control, which is during the Ottoman Turk Empire,
19--'scuse me, from the 15th century to the 20th century,
that 400-year period, it was under Muslim rule.
So any place where they have been they believe is theirs
and therefore no one can be in charge of it.
So there's a natural sense within Islam
that we were here so it's ours.
Rebecca: "As a child of God,
I've always loved and supported Israel.
Recently, I came across a documentary that shows the harsh
conditions Palestinians, even Christian Palestinians,
have to live in Bethlehem, Hebron.
I feel terrible that they have to live that way.
I wanted to know what is your viewpoint on this?
Jonathan: I feel terrible too.
And so does the nation of Israel.
And so does America.
We don't want the Palestinian people to be suffering, to be
living like refugees, to be living in harsh conditions.
And we have done everything we can, including billions of
dollars of aid to those people, but here is the problem.
Hamas has won in an "election" and so they have control over
the government of that area.
And so this area is controlled by a terrorist organization.
So they take the funding and they use it for rockets, they
use it for guns, they use it for whatever it is that they can get
their hands on that can then turn and wreak havoc
onto the nation of Israel.
So, I feel bad.
It's actually terrible that there's people that have to live
under a regime like that and we should be praying fervently
that this regime is broken, dismantled, and crushed forever
so that these people can move on with their lives and live a life
that the nation of Israel wants them to live.
The nation of Israel wants the people of Gaza to live a
thriving life on the coast of Gaza, on the coast of Israel,
that has economy, that has the lavishes, that has the
pluralistic society that the nation of Israel has.
And so that's what we should be praying for and reaching for and
striving for, but the reality is, the nation of Israel and the
United States and many other nations have done everything
they can to make that a reality, but the control of the terror
organization over the area has stopped it.
Rebecca: Okay, this next one: "I'm struggling not to respond
to hateful comments.
How do I manage this as a Christian?"
I want one of you to speak to this but I also wanna speak
to this personally.
I've had to learn from you not to get into it with people.
And I would say from my own personal experience, not to,
you know, waste your time getting into a war, you know,
a comment war on social media, you know.
I think you need to be intentional.
I think you have to choose your battles.
I think you can speak support from your own page.
But I've just never seen a lot--any kind of good come from
a battle over social media.
Social media is not your battleground.
And I'm speaking to that to many people.
You do not need to take up arms on social media.
How you can use that as a tool is, like you just mentioned, you
can post things that are real, that are biblical truths or that
are reality, because you need to put awareness out there.
You need to be spreading truth, spreading gospel, about the
reality because there's so much of the other that's out there,
and so that's the way you do it.
I would not get into it with anybody
on a comment thread ever.
You're gonna waste your own time, your own mental energy,
you're gonna waste your own--you should focus--
Rebecca: Your peace.
Jonathan: Yeah, you should focus that on your family or
your personal development or, you know, loving your neighbor.
So that's what I would encourage you to do.
Myles: Can I just add that the apostle Paul said
that Satan is the prince of the power of the air?
And so he's the prince of the power of the airwaves as well.
That's why it's important that we have truth-telling airwaves
and important that we don't get sucked into trying to solve
problems on social media.
As you said, it's just a waste of everybody's time, you know.
So, people are selling, they're not buying.
You know, it's very rare that someone, "Oh,
I've just had a revelation because you yelled at me."
That's not happening.
So it's really important to recognize that this world of
social media is a dangerous sinkhole in terms of getting
sucked into arguments.
Jonathan: Protect your eye gates.
Read the Scripture, find channels, places like Daystar,
podcasts like the "Rebecca Weiss Podcast" that are gonna be
building you up in your faith, strengthening you in your faith,
and when you focus on those things, the other stuff will
just kind of trickle and fall away.
Rebecca: Do we have any testimonies/experiences from
believers living in Israel during these times?
Jonathan: Yeah, there's hundreds right now.
Because there's people that have been called up into the army
that have left their families behind.
That I'm talking to friends constantly that their--you know,
these are mothers that have children, that their husband has
now gone off to war, that are having to seek a deep peace
like never before.
And so we--there are testimonies.
Daystar is one testimony.
Daystar has provided, like I've said, incredible amounts of aid,
not just providing bulletproof vests for the soldiers
to save lives, but providing beds,
providing tactical gear for the army.
So there's testimonies every which way and they're gonna
continue to come.
I mean, God--our God is a God of miracles and so I believe that
this war is going to be won and I believe that
it's gonna be won through miracles.
So I think even more testimonies are gonna come.
Rebecca: Only a couple more.
This, I think, giving a short answer to this,
to frame this whole conversation, is important.
What is really happening right now?
Myles: We're in the battle royale.
We're not at the end battle, necessarily, but we're in the
battle between good and evil.
And we need to align ourselves with that which is good, which
again is found in the Word and in the living Word, Yeshua,
and he has an enemy and the enemy is Satan.
He's defeated but he's not going quietly into the night.
He's gonna be stirred up because he knows his time is short.
And so what we need to do is recognize that there's an
increase in spiritual warfare, the demonic is on the loose
in ways that we haven't seen before.
And so we need to be standing with the written Word,
the living Word.
Jonathan: Amen. Rebecca: That's so good.
How can we pray? How should we pray?
Myles: Shaalu shalom Yerushalayim,
pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
Which means to call to look into, to be connected to, to
inquire as to the wellbeing of the Jews and the Arabs, and to,
especially as you see the day approaching,
do good to all especially the household of faith.
Jonathan: And I would just say this, on a practical level,
if you see a Jewish person in the street, if there's
orthodoxy, they're wearing a yarmulke or a kippah, tell 'em
you love 'em and follow the Katharine Weiss evangelistic,
you know, one on one, 101, just thank 'em.
Thank 'em for the Torah, thank 'em for the Bible.
Because that alone is gonna do--it's gonna break down this
hardening of their hearts that's happened
over the years of persecution, so.
Simple, easy, but maybe hard to follow through,
but I recommend it.
Rebecca: And then how can we use this conflict
as an opportunity to share the love and peace of Christ
with those affected and bring hope in a time of despair?
Myles: I think you've just said it, that we love.
You said earlier, we honor, recognize that the Christian
faith comes from Judaism, comes from the Jewish people.
We love, we honor, we help, we provide aid, we kind of be
what Christ called us to be.
Be who the Messiah has asked us to be in this world,
and love everyone.
And also point them to heaven.
Jonathan: And stand with Israel.
On a practical note, just stand with Israel.
Stand with Israel in your prayer time,
stand with Israel with your family.
Even if you just sit down and you bless the meal,
just bless the nation of Israel.
And you wanna get aligned with God's heart and God says
that the apple of his eye is the nation of Israel,
the Jewish people.
So we wanna be aligned with who he is and who--
what he cares about.
So I would just align yourself with that,
align your church with that.
Go to your pastor, point them to resources like this podcast and
many others that we could help you find, but get them aligned
with understanding God's heart for Israel,
God's heart for the Jewish people.
Rebecca: Are we headed towards a third world war?
Myles: It's a long slow war 'cause it's been unfolding
for a long, long time, you know.
The end times began in the 1st century.
I mean, we're sort of on a slow march, but I don't know the day
or the time and I don't know-- I do know this,
that the nations are aligning, according to prophecy.
We're seeing this alignment between Iran, China,
Russia, and Turkey.
And Russia and Turkey play an important part at the end,
and I think Iran, obviously,
is already playing an important part.
So we're seeing the alignment.
World War III, you know, people throw that around in order to
scare up headlines and, you know, "If it bleeds, it leads,"
they used to say about newspapers.
You know, if it's scary, it's clickbait, et cetera, et cetera.
What we need to do is keep the main thing the main thing, which
is that we keep looking up.
Our redemption draws near.
And we love as much as we can.
Rebecca: Finally, what is some practical ways we can support?
Jonathan: Yeah, I mean, prayer is the biggest one,
'cause you could do that just, as you should, every single day.
Pray for the people of Israel, pray for the Palestinian people,
pray for everyone involved in this conflict.
Pray for wisdom for the leadership of the nation of
Israel, pray for wisdom for the leadership for the nations
around the world that they have the wherewithal to stand
with Israel during this hard time so that Israel can do
what it has to do to survive.
And then you can get involved however you feel led, 'cause in
prayer God's gonna show you, whether that's evangelizing,
whether that's giving resources, whether that is
starting a podcast, I don't know.
But God will show you.
I would just start with prayer.
Rebecca: And speaking of prayer, I feel like we should
close out with prayer, so I'm gonna say a prayer
Lord, we just thank you for the ability
to just share your heart.
God, I felt your presence in this podcast, Lord.
We just come before you, Lord, and we collectively, even
the people who are listening and watching right now,
I just invite them to join us in this prayer that we pray
for the peace of Jerusalem, God.
And I thank you, Lord,
that you are going to come back victorious.
Lord, as the Lion of the tribe of Judah,
you are gonna roar from Zion, Lord.
And God, I just thank you.
We just--I don't know, I don't even know exactly how to pray.
I just feel so strongly, God, that you are going to do
something, Father.
And so, God, we come into agreement that your kingdom
come, your will be done, God, that you are the Lion of the
tribe of Judah, and you are going to release a roar from
Zion, God, that you are coming back for your nation
and for your people, God.
And we come into agreement.
We say, "Yes, Lord, let it happen, God."
And we pray for the people in Israel right now, God.
We pray that even in this conflict, in this turmoil,
that people of all backgrounds would see you, Lord,
and would turn to you in this time, because we
always encounter you in our time of need.
And God, I thank you that you're gonna show yourself faithful.
And God, I thank you that the people who are watching, God,
that you will stir within their hearts, as you're stirred within
ours, to pick up the call, to pray for the peace of Jerusalem
and to take up the call in your army, Lord, to pray and believe
and to see your kingdom come here on earth as it is
in heaven, that your kingdom would come to Israel, Father.
And God, we pray for the believers, for the Messianic
community, and Israel as well, Father, that you would
strengthen and encourage them and all the people there, Lord.
And I thank you, Lord, that you are moving and we are
in agreement, in Jesus's name.
Jonathan: Amen. Myles: Amen.
Rebecca: All right, well, they're telling me to wrap so,
guys, thank you so much for being here.
We're honored. Please come back.
Jonathan: Toda raba.
Myles: Thank you so much for having me.
Jonathan: As we say in Hebrew, ir, see you later.
Rebecca: All right, see you next time
on the "Rebecca Weiss Podcast."