This sermon emphasizes the significance of God's promise to Abraham to make him a great nation and bless all nations through him. It discusses the preservation and restoration of the Jewish people by God, declaring His commitment to protect them as a nation. The focus is on understanding the Jewish roots and God's eternal plan for Israel, inviting believers to experience the supernatural rebirth of Israel and the Jewish people.

ago God said to Abraham, I will make of thee a great nation, and through you all the nations will be blessed. Out of the fires of destruction, God has preserved and restored his Jewish people. The Lord declared that as long as the sun shines by day, the moon by night, he will preserve the Jewish people as a nation. Jewish Voice Broadcast, the television ministry of Jewish Voice Ministries International is dedicated to teaching believers about their Jewish roots and God's eternal plan for Israel. We invite you now to experience the supernatural rebirth of Israel and the Jewish people. Here now is Jonathan Bernis. Well shalom everyone and welcome to this edition of the Jewish Voice Broadcast. I am in such a good mood today, I am so blessed. I just came back from a cruise to Alaska. I was a speaker at the Bless the Heart of God tour to Alaska. Paul Wilber was doing the music and I was sharing different messages about Israel and the Jewish people. We had a wonderful group of people and Alaska is so beautiful. Just take a look at some of the scenery that I saw on this tour and we're going to do this ministry trip again next year. We don't have the dates picked out yet, but as soon as we do, we'll let you know and invite you to join us on this beautiful cruise to Alaska. You get to see the beautiful scenery, but there's also messages that will inspire you, that will challenge you, that will help you to understand the role of Israel and the Jewish people in the last days. So that's the trip to Alaska that I just came back from and that I hope you'll join me on next year. Well, we got a Hebrew word for you before we get into the interview. We have a Hebrew lesson every week and if you practice these different words you learn, you'll be speaking fluent Hebrew by the time you go to Israel next time. Well, maybe not fluent, but you'll sure be able to impress your pastor and your Christian friends. The Hebrew word today is shaliyach. Say it with me, shaliyach. You can see it spelled here on the screen. And shaliyach means sent one or apostle in Hebrew. And it's a very appropriate word, shaliyach, because we have a guest with us today that is a household name, someone that I heard about shortly after I became a believer. He's been ministering for decades. He's a Jewish believer, well-known author and conference speaker, traveling around the world sharing about authentic Christian faith and God's heart for Israel and the Jewish people. And he's written a book called Apostolic Foundations, The Challenge of Living in an Authentic Christian Life. And his name is Art Katz. He's a dear friend of mine and a friend of this ministry. Art, it's so good to have you here. Welcome back. My pleasure. It's been really a year since you've been on the broadcast last time. Yeah, it has been. So, well, welcome back. Thank you. Good to be here. And we haven't seen each other for a few years now. That's right. But you're still everywhere I go around the world, I hear your name. You've been traveling to just about every country that I've ever heard about. You've been there. Where have you been in the last few weeks? I've just come back from Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, Australia, New Zealand. Those countries. And not long before, eight weeks in Europe and Russia, Poland, Baltic nations, England, Scotland, Germany. I'll be going again in October to Germany and to Albania, Bulgaria. So the Lord is really intensifying the rate. And how old are you now? I'm 72. And you haven't slowed down a bit? Not a bit. In fact, I think everything has been increased and I'm feeling wonderful. Art, fantastic. You remind me of the Apostle Paul. And I want to tell you that when I was, shortly after I was saved, I read your testimony book, Ben Israel. And it really deeply impacted me. It's a great book. And you've written some very meaningful books. I want to talk about this recent one that you just published, Apostolic Foundations, the challenge of living an authentic Christian life. Just give us a synopsis about what it's about and why you wrote it. Well, I've been preoccupied with the word apostolic and prophetic. Those words are foundational to the church. And this is an attempt to enter into and burrow out the genius of that word. For unless we are that, I don't think that we will be moving Jews to jealousy. The kind of mandate that the church has toward Israel will require this apostolic reality. So it examines apostolic character, apostolic perception, the issues of eternity, apostolic proclamation. What kind of speaking is that, that in the hearing of it, faith itself is created. So I'm really blessed by this book. Someone said it's the summation of your life or the heart of God. And the response to this book exceeds anything of any of the other books we have published over the years. Is this the most important book you've ever written? I would say so, yeah. Now, would you say that the average Christian's view of the word apostolic or apostolic is shallow or misunderstood? Yeah, probably the word prophetic is more in danger presently than the word apostolic. But if that goes, then the rest will follow. So I am brooding jealously over both words, and they need to be understood and the requirement of it communicated to the church. Because you open a Christian magazine and you look at the different titles, prophet so-and-so, apostle so-and-so, just anybody that wants to call themselves an apostle does so. What I say to some of the men who cause me concern is take up what you want, take any new fad, power evangelism, megachurch, but leave these great words alone. This is not for you to play with, because if they're reduced by some cheap manipulation we've lost everything. So they're holy and sacred words, and they are a statement of ultimate reality. Jesus himself is the high priest and the apostle of our confession. So we need to know that this is not some antique word or speaks to something of the church's past, but the abiding reality to which the church has ever and always been called and must find if it is to be to Israel and to the Jew what God intends. In fact, the two things are so intrinsically joined that unless Israel is rightly understood, it doesn't call for the kind of apostolic reality that God is wanting. So there's a connection here between how we perceive Israel and what it requires of the church. Let's come back to Israel in just a moment. Can you first define, give me a definition of apostolic or apostle? Well, it took me five days at the Youth with a Mission in Lausanne about a dozen years ago to attempt to define that word. In fact, the book is the summation of those initial talks that have been edited. That's why I had to take up... it's a jewel. You have to hold it to the light and see the facets from different perspectives. What is apostolic character? What is the apostolic man is the thing in himself. So it's too simplistic just to give us one sentence of what an apostle is. If you can define it in one sentence, you don't have it and you've lost it. It needs to be apprehended rather than defined. And I think that's part of the problem. We need to do that. The book will open up a whole vista of comprehending something. It's a reality. And I don't think we understand that. But when we come back, we have to take a break. When we come back, I want to talk about the role of Israel in all this, an apostolic foundation. So you don't want to miss this. This will really deepen your understanding of apostolic, the word apostolic, apostolic foundations, and what God has called us to in these last days. So stay tuned. We'll be back with Art Katz. What does the word apostolic mean to you? Jewish author, teacher, and director of Ben Israel Fellowship, Arthur Katz, in his book Apostolic Foundations, the challenge of living an authentic Christian life, believes apostolic is a word that the church's understanding of will determine its relativism and power in today's world. Send a gift of $20 or more and request Apostolic Foundations today. Hero Israel Festivals will present a once in a lifetime opportunity to touch thousands of lives for the Lord in an outreach festival in Bijiwada, India, January 27th through February 5th, 2002. Our 2000 festival reached over 70,000 people. Blind eyes were opened, the deaf heard, the lame walked. Plan now to join us and be a part of this miraculous move of God. Your life will be transformed. Write or phone today. Could the Palestinian flag soon be flying over the old city of Jerusalem? The bi-monthly Jewish Voice Prophetic Magazine brings you perspectives on headline stories like these from a Jewish and biblical point of view. What will prevent worldwide revival from sweeping the earth? You'll find intriguing articles along with the very personal stories of Jewish people. For any gift, you will receive the next six issues of the new bi-monthly Jewish Voice Prophetic Magazine. Phone or write today. Welcome back. My guest is Art Katz, a very well-known author and conference speaker and travels all over the world, written the most important book of his ministry, Apostolic Foundations, the Challenge of Living an Authentic Christian Life. Art, of course, Jewish Voice is dedicated to helping Christians understand the role of Israel and the Jewish people. So how did the Jewish people fit into this whole apostolic foundation? Profoundly. I think that as it was for Paul, the issue of Israel and Israel's restoration is his centerpiece. There's no understanding Paul's apostolic mentality, his framework, except you understand his view of Israel. The same thing is true for the church of the last days. The issue of Israel is critical. If we see Israel only sentimentally, if we desire only to see the success of the present state, if we don't understand God's intention for Israel, the destiny of the nation in the theocratic context, the coming of the kingdom and the king, we have lost the greatest significance. So it's when we apprehend God's intention for Israel that we begin to understand the requirement of the church that Paul celebrates in Romans 11, that we would move Israel to jealousy, that by our mercy they may extend mercy, when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, so all Israel shall be saved as it is written. In every instance, the issue is not Israel itself, per se, but the church. For I believe that God is going to reduce Israel in the last days' chastening called the time of Jacob's trouble, that is yet future, where Israel will herself become inert and be incapable of affecting anything that pertains to the fulfillment of God's intention. She has to be acted upon. So these aren't separate themes, the church and the Jewish people, Israel separate? Not at all. They are intrinsically connected. You cannot separate the one from the other. If you omit Israel, then the word apostolic and all that it pertains to becomes a commonplace. Now why is that? Because it's the crisis that Israel presents to the church that compels it to come upon apostolic ground. It compels the church to come on resurrection ground. A wonderful instance would be Ezekiel 37, the Valley of Dry Bones. It's not God who directly speaks to Israel, reduced to that state of death that they themselves acknowledge when they say, we are cut off, we are without hope, we are as dry bones. It's another agent that God invokes, calls on a son of man to prophesy to those bones that they might live. Prophetically, I see that as a reference to the church of the last days, called to speak for God and the authority of God prophetically in order to raise Israel from the death to which she is yet to come. Well, you're going to have to get the book. I think this is going into people's hearts right now. The church is going to come to a prophetic stature where its word can raise the dead because it itself has been raised. It itself is on resurrection ground. So it's the apprehending of the destiny of Israel through the church that calls the church to a reality of a radical kind that it would not otherwise have sought nor fulfilled. So without the calling to Israel, the church can't be the church? No. If you remove Israel, the incentive to bring the church to the maturity that God is desiring is lost. It's the crisis that Israel represents that compels the church to come onto this resurrection and apostolic ground. And it cannot be obtained by individual spiritual virtuosos, but the church as the church, that is to say, the church in its corporate character, not the conglomerate of individualities that we now constitute in our congregations, but a people who have come together as a community of God's people with a conscious and willful appropriation of this mandate and of this call. But I think when Americans read the scripture because we're so independent and individuality is so significant, we look at the individual accountability to God, we don't really think of things in terms of corporate identity. You find that also? Israel's destiny cannot be fulfilled by a church that is a conglomerate of individualities but only a church that has come into the genius of its corporate character. But we are indifferent, we're lazy, we're fearful, we're selfish, we're individually motivated, and so it's the issue of Israel that makes the requirement and brings us to the place of willing sacrifice because that kind of a church as a community is a suffering and it's a suffering that most individuals would avoid even though they profess to have a concern for Israel. So long as that concern can be addressed by going to a Feast of Tabernacles conference or planting a tree, you can remain individually. I think most of the people watching the program love Israel. They love the idea of being connected to the land where Jesus lived and performed the miracles and they really have some kind of a heart for the Jewish people. They like the Jewish feasts or the Jewish dance or the music, but you're saying it's not enough. That's lovely, but it's not salvific, it's not salvational. It cannot bring about, it cannot be to Israel what it must. I think we need to factor in the time of Jacob's trouble that is future that few anticipate. There's a calamity coming for Jews worldwide. I'm expecting a dispersal of Jews throughout all nations. We ourselves are located in northern Minnesota to provide a place of refuge for Jews. So you see another holocaust coming for the Jewish people? A holocaust that will eclipse even the Nazi time according to the words of Jesus in Matthew 25, 24 and Luke 21 that if this time were not cut short, no flesh could survive, but for the elect's sake the time would be cut short. So he's talking about a time of trouble that eclipses anything that the nation has ever before known or will again know, and I believe that that is future, but imminent, near, and that the factors for it are already visible both in the land of Israel and the stirring anti-Semitism that is being quickened in the world. So part of your message is preparing Christians for that period. Exactly. And how they're going to handle this. Right, which is more than a physical preparation. It requires also a spiritual preparation because we Jews in that untaught condition in which we will be brought by the suddenness of this catastrophe is not going to make us a welcome house guest. Yeah, it's one thing to say I love my Jewish roots and Jesus made me Jewish, but it's another thing when you're facing loss of life because you're identifying with the Jewish people or harboring Jewish people. We have lots more to talk about with our cats when we come back, so don't go away. We'll be right back. For about 83 cents a day or $25 a month, you can change the life of a child like this, living off the garbage dumps and surviving in the streets of the slums of India to this, a happy, content, and loved child thriving in a nourishing, caring Christian environment. Every penny of your $25 monthly support will feed, clothe, educate, and provide medical care. You will receive a picture and a history of your child. Call or write today. Hero Israel Festivals will present a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to touch thousands of lives for the Lord in an outreach festival in Vijayawada, India, January 27th through February 5th, 2002. Our 2000 festival reached over 70,000 people. Blind eyes were opened. The deaf heard. The lame walked. Plan now to join us and be a part of this miraculous move of God. Your life will be transformed. Write or phone today. Become a Shalom Parker.