Between Judaism & Christianity: A Messianic Story

David (00:00):
Well, welcome back everybody. We have an amazing show for you. This is the Covenant and Conflict Podcast where we take ancient truths, modern issues, and we see where they connect together. And today we have a very special guest, Joshua Aaron. Shalom David. We’re so excited you’re here. Love the trumpet. That was the shofar. The shofar, yeah. Sounds nothing like a shofar. Thank you for being here.

Joshua (00:24):
Yeah. Well, I’m trying to decide what to call you David. David or in Hebrew, we have a nickname Dudu. Dude, really? Hebrew.

David (00:32):
I love it. I have a friend in Israel who calls me DVD.

Joshua (00:38):
That’s great.

David (00:39):
Because the. Yeah, there’s no vowels really. Yeah. It’s an interesting spelling in Hebrew. I got two nicknames. This is fun. You’re with us today, tomorrow for our Shabbat service. Yeah. You are a worship leader. If anyone doesn’t know, you’re a worship leader. You live in Israel and United States over the course of your life. I’d love to just start with your story. So one of the places we start, you’re a Messianic Jewish believer. Were you always Messianic? How’d you grow up?

Joshua (01:12):
Sure.

David (01:12):
Even if you grew up in a Messianic family, when did Jesus become real? When did Yeshua become the person you were really giving your life for? And really just whatever you feel the Holy Spirit land in your hurt.

Joshua (01:23):
Well, thanks. Yeah. I’m blessed to have grown up in a believing family. I’m the baby of five kids.

(01:29):
Wow.

Joshua (01:29):
My older siblings weren’t. Yeah, there’s five of us, my brother Jason and I, he’s three years older. We’re the ones that kind of grew up after my parents got saved. My dad is not Jewish. My dad was raised Catholic. His grandparents are … All four of his grandparents are from Poland.

(01:48):
Wow.

Joshua (01:49):
And my mom was Israeli, Jewish, Orthodox, raised Orthodox from Israel.

David (01:54):
Wow.

Joshua (01:55):
So I grew up with an interesting family dynamic. I had a Polish, Catholic, charismatic grandmother on one side.

David (02:03):
As we all do.

Joshua (02:05):
She’d be the one going to the basement charismatic meetings once a week.

(02:09):
Wow.

Joshua (02:10):
The few in the Catholic church. And then my other side, I had an Orthodox Jewish grandmother who would spit on the ground if I said the name of Jesus in her house. So it was an interesting growing up in that.

David (02:21):
Those are big ends of the spectrum.

Joshua (02:23):
Yeah. Wow. And I used to feel like, “What the heck am I, Lord?” But my mom got saved the year before I was born in 1977. So my dad would call himself this before me. He was a heathen. Yes, he was raised traditionally Christian and Catholic church, but he was a heathen when he met my mom. My mom came up from Israel to move to the other promised land of the Jewish people, New York City back in 1959. She was about 11 years old. And she got her citizenship at 17, right about this time she met my dad.

David (03:01):
US citizenship?

Joshua (03:02):
US citizenship. Yeah. And the Poconos just a couple hours from New York City. That’s like the vacation area of New Yorkers in Pennsylvania, Northeast Pennsylvania. And my mom went there for a Jewish summer camp and she was a chaperone to a wealthy Orthodox couple’s kids. And my mom had been going through her mother. Man, I don’t know how … There’s angles on my mom’s story that’s just because of the war, because of the residual of the Holocaust, it kind of affected my mom’s story. Maybe I could tell all of it, but I had to go quick. But I’ll tell the best part first. So my mom ended up, and this is almost the best part, but not the best part. My mom ended up at this Jewish summer camp, kind of disenfranchised with Orthodox Judaism, even though she was Orthodox Jew, went to a girl’s yeshiva.

(03:49):
Her mother was trying to marry her off to this rich older doctor. But here she is at this Jewish summer camp and she meets this witty, hilarious goofball, Gentile at an Orthodox Jewish summer camp. My dad had a summer job there.

David (04:07):
Wow.

Joshua (04:07):
And they fell in love.

David (04:09):
Was he just like working the camp like

Joshua (04:10):
Volunteering? Yeah, his uncle, Uncle Bear, they called him. He was the groundskeeper of this Jewish summer camp.

David (04:15):
Wow.

Joshua (04:16):
And he got a job for his uncle and fell in love with this Jewish girl at a camp in Pennsylvania. It’s called Camp David.

David (04:27):
As it should be.

Joshua (04:28):
Yeah. Camp Doodoo.

David (04:29):
Yeah. And later with Bill Clinton, David became a big deal. Different campaign. Different Camp

Joshua (04:35):
David. But yeah, she ended up falling in love with my dad and she didn’t want anything to do with Christianity. She just loved, because my dad was a heathen. He wasn’t trying to make her become a Christian. He didn’t care. But my dad would take trips to, late teens, 17 years old. He drive to New York City to go see her and then drive right back. But she ended up marrying my dad and had five kids, back to the five kids part of the story. But after she married my dad, my grandmother was furious because Jews don’t marry Christians. They don’t marry non-Jews, especially religious Jews. So not so long after that, my mom found out she was adopted. My mother never knew she was adopted. Wow. She only has memories of this mother and her father, Perez Milev, but what she didn’t know was my mom was adopted as an infant in Israel, in Haifa, Israel.

(05:37):
She remembers being in an orphanage for almost five years because at about six years old, my mom’s adopted father died, who she thought was a real father. In Haifa, Israel, he owned a marble factory in the Cryotus just north of Haifa.

(05:52):
And when he died, my grandmother, the grandmother I’m referring to right now, put my mom in the orphanage and left her for five years. So my mom lived in this orphanage thinking her real mother put her in the orphanage. She didn’t know this was round two. Oh goodness. So hopefully it’s making sense because all these stories after the Holocaust, just there’s so many stories of finding family or-

David (06:15):
So that was her biological grandmother.

Joshua (06:17):
That put- The one

David (06:18):
That you’re talking about, that put her in the orphanage?

Joshua (06:20):
No, this is her adoption. I hate to tell my mom’s story. I love it, but there’s so many sides to it. So

David (06:26):
Her real parents, what happened?

Joshua (06:29):
So I’m going to land on that now. So my mom’s, the mother I was telling her about was her adoptive mother this whole time, but my mom didn’t know until she married my dad because my orthodox adopted grandmother said, “Well, she was so mad that my mom married a Gentile. You’re not mine anyways,” she said. So my mom found out in a harsh way, just barely an adult now, finds out her whole childhood, these weren’t her parents. She remembered the sweetness of her adopted father who she thought was her father. When he died, that was her real father that died to her

(07:02):
Because he loved her. He’s the one who convinced my adopted grandmother to adopt her. She found out later, and then this adoptive mother left her in the orphanage for five years. So what she didn’t know was her real mother, also just like her adopted mother, fled the Holocaust, made it to Israel, survived. Her name was Ruth Epstein, my real grandmother. We’re landing on that story now, my real grandmother, my mom’s real mom. She was young. She had two children out of wedlock. The first one in Jerusalem in 1945, my uncle Micha, my mom’s real brother. And then in 1948, just January of 1948, this month, in January, she gave birth to my mother, the most beautiful baby in all of Israel, of course. My mom, she’ll be 78. And if you look at a picture, she looks like she’s 58. She’s just radiant. She’s been through so much.

(07:58):
And she’s such … I call her the Jewish Joyce Myers. She can teach you. She’s everybody’s Jewish mother, but she’s just so vibrant and full of joy. I think it’s because God brought her through so much. But her real mother gave her up for adoption because you just don’t have kids out of wedlock back then. And she wanted to have a better life from what we know, better life for her. Her daughter … And what we found later was, she had gone through so much. My real grandmother, she just fled the Holocaust.

(08:30):
She’s early 20s. Her brother, actually 19 year old boy, 1948. And the

David (08:39):
War of Independence.

Joshua (08:40):
The War of Independence. They handed him a gun. He gave his life for his country. His name was Svee Epshteyn. And so she had been through so much and she’s like, “I can’t do it. ” We found out later that she had died pretty young. She died in her early 30s. So when we found out who she was, it was too late. But how we found out who she was was pretty cool. So I’m going to try to do this fast because- No,

David (09:05):
We got time. We got time.

Joshua (09:08):
When my mother found out she was adopted, life went on. She didn’t know what to do. My adopted grandmother wouldn’t tell her anything. She didn’t want to lose my mom. After she tried to disown my mom briefly, she’s like, “My adopted grandmother also fled the Holocaust. She lost most everybody. Her parents were killed in the Holocaust.” And so my grandmother was afraid to lose my mom, so she didn’t want to tell her much. So my mom started digging through files, found some pieces of information. But along the way, the best part of the story, and then we’ll get to the slightly less best part of the story. The best part of the story was 1977. My mom was in the Pocono, Scranton, Pennsylvania, home of the office. It’s all Scranton has … And Joe Biden claims Scranton for some reason. He was there when he was a child, but a little caveat

(09:59):
There.

Joshua (10:00):
But the best part of the story was this messianic rabbi came to town in 1977, and he was at this full gospel businessmen’s meeting. My dad’s still a heathen, not for long. My dad was invited to this full gospel businessman’s meeting and they said, “Hey, Andy, why don’t you bring your Jewish wife to this business men’s meeting because there’s a Jewish rabbi coming to speak and maybe your wife would enjoy it. ” So my mom went, my dad and my mom, and my mom heard this Messianic rabbi. His name was Martin Chernoff, really a pioneer in the modern Messianic movement.

David (10:36):
Is it Joseph Chernoff’s?

Joshua (10:38):
Yeah, David Chernoff’s dad and Joel Chernoff. Joel Chernoff. Joel

David (10:43):
Chernoff.

Joshua (10:45):
Their dad who was just a pioneer. He was just speaking to Christian men and he was sharing about Jesus in a way that they had never heard before about this Jewish rabbi who was Emmanuel, God with us. And he had 12 Talamidim disciples, performed mikvot baptisms, just this Jewish context, just skipping the 1600 years of kind of removing the context of Jesus. But he also landed on the story of who killed Christ is what he said to these Christian men. And basically the end of this story, my mom tells it this way, he said, “We all did.” So it wasn’t just the Jewish people. It wasn’t just the Romans. It wasn’t just the higher religious factions that wanted to raise him up. It was all of us because he gave his life for everybody. And my mom said that day, she said, “I didn’t convert to Christianity.” She said, “But I did complete my Judaism when I accepted the greatest rabbi that ever lived as my Lord and Savior.” So that was a year before I was born and that was really transformative for my mom.

(11:47):
She was first and my dad got saved in a personal way afterwards,

(11:51):
But life went on. And then my mom really raised us in a way … It was weird. We were raised Protestant, I’d say in normal. We went to church, but then we’d go visit my grandmother who was Orthodox and then she smashed the kippah on your head. “You’re Jewish, your mother’s Jewish. Don’t you forget it. “And I’m glad she did.

David (12:11):
And this is all in America?

Joshua (12:13):
It’s all in America, in the Poconos area. And so life went on another couple decades and my mom started to pursue my brother Andy, my dad, same name as my dad, my brother found a coworker whose wife was Israeli who worked for the consulate and he said,”He can help my mom find out some information. So I’ll land here because this is such a long story. “Meanwhile, we find out my mom’s brother, Micha, he was three years old when they were separated in 1948 in the year of independence during the war.

(12:48):
They were separated. And when he was separated from his little sister, they couldn’t hide it. He remembered her. He was three. She was an infant, so it was hidden to her that she had a brother or that she was adopted until she was a young adult. So he had been looking for her his whole life. His name is Micha. And he’d say all the time to his payers, adoptive parents. Where’s my sister? Where’s my sister? And then finally, long story short, he ends up on a television show in 1998 in Tel Aviv. This was a famous talk show host in Israel. Back then they only had two or three national channels. They didn’t have much content in Israel yet. And so he was like the Phil Donahue or the Oprah of Israel. It’s celebrities on and then he’d tell touching stories. Well, he invited my uncle to come on the show, my mom’s brother, to tell his story about being separated from his sister.

(13:41):
My uncle survived so much. He was in the six days war. Halfless platoon was killed. He was a paratrooper who landed at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

David (13:48):
Wow.

Joshua (13:49):
And he was just telling some of the story. And he said, but the hardest part for me, he said, was losing my little sister taken away from me. And I’ve been looking for her. So the end of the show, the TV show host looks at my uncle and he said,” Hey, we want to help you find your sister. We’re going to put a phone number on the screen. If anybody has any information, please call. We’re going to connect to Michael. We want to help connect Michael with his family.

David (14:13):
“But they wouldn’t have a name, would they? No.

Joshua (14:15):
Well, they told the story, they described who she was, the orphanage they came from, all that. There was some good pieces of information.

David (14:24):
Would she have had the same name or did they change her name?

Joshua (14:26):
Changed the name.

David (14:26):
Wow.

Joshua (14:28):
But there was some puzzle pieces happening in the background. And at the end of the show, the talk show host looks to Micha, my mom’s brother and says,” Thank you for coming. If we find any information, we’ll let you know. But before you go, we do have something for you here today. We have a special guest in the audience. It’s your baby sister, Hannah, my mother. And my mom, they flew us out. My mother and the two of us older kids, my sister, Shashana and I, were watching my mom come out to meet her brother

David (15:00):
For

Joshua (15:00):
The first time after 50 years in the year of Jubilee, 1998. And it was just unbelievable. My uncle just squeezed her like he didn’t want to let her go ever again.

David (15:11):
Oh my gosh.

Joshua (15:12):
And we were there for a couple weeks with him. And it was just so … For me, it was unbelievable because my dad’s the oldest of nine kids, a huge Catholic family. I’ve got 30 cousins on my dad’s side. But I always felt like my mom never let us lose our Jewish heritage. We still kept at least some level of the feast. And my Orthodox Jewish grandmother beat us over the head with our Jewishness. Don’t you forget, like to this day on Shabbats, I’ll wear my Yamaka. And

(15:36):
If

Joshua (15:36):
I go to Jerusalem, I’ll wear my Yamaka. But it was this reunion and it was just kind of this beautiful picture of-

David (15:43):
Do you have that video?

Joshua (15:44):
Yeah. I can send it to you.

David (15:46):
Yeah, I got to see that.

Joshua (15:48):
Maybe

David (15:48):
We can even show it.

Joshua (15:49):
Yeah, absolutely. It’s easily findable. Oh, that’s amazing. Yeah. And so Israel is full of these kind of stories too, where post Holocaust, just it’s a mess. They all arrive to the promised land in the 40s, late 30s, early 40s, late 30s, and the promised land, and it’s just barren. It’s been not taken care of.

David (16:09):
Which people don’t … There’s a lot of Christians that I talk to, they either still believe that Israel’s this barren wasteland, or they’ve seen pictures and they don’t ever believe that it was a barren waste before the 1940s.

Joshua (16:24):
They don’t realize it’s the only country in the world that has more trees now than it did since its inception. It’s a land that’s growing and beautifying, like blossoming. The desert’s blossoming as the prophets that said.

David (16:35):
Yeah. It’s crazy.

Joshua (16:37):
So that’s really the best story because that’s the salvation story. I got saved at five years old. It was like a given. And the very next day after I accepted the Lord, my dad ended up getting saved. He put me … He was radically saved to this day. He shares the gospel everywhere. Every week, he’s like, “You know, I shared the gospel with this young man on the street the other day and I led him to the Lord.” I’m like, “Well, my dad is very much evangelist.”

David (17:00):
That’s

Joshua (17:01):
Awesome. But that very day after I got saved, I started writing songs and something happened to me where I just wanted to sing about

David (17:09):
God.

Joshua (17:09):
Nobody would want to hear those songs, but there was this welling up in the

David (17:14):
Day. Sure there’s seeds of greatness in those songs.

Joshua (17:16):
Maybe, I don’t think so. But I’ve been, the last 16, 17 years now, been singing about the salvation of our God. And I’m a radically saved Jew. No, I didn’t have the rough life and got transformed from it, but I’m very … As the New Testament says, I’m not ashamed of the gospel

(17:37):
For

Joshua (17:37):
The power of God to salvation to everyone who believes- To the Jews first. But I like most Christians who stop there. The verse isn’t over yet to the Drew first and also to the nations, the Gentile.

David (17:48):
So when did you move to Israel?

Joshua (17:53):
I moved to Israel twice. 2009, then 2015. We’ve lived in Israel as a family nine years. And now we’re based in the States. My wife and I are three kids. We have five kids, just like my mom and dad. We have three minors, 17, 12, and seven at home,

(18:10):
And

Joshua (18:11):
Then we have two adult kids now. The wild thing is that I just … I don’t hear the audible voice of God. I’ve had maybe two incredibly vivid encounters with the Lord maybe in my life. Not maybe I had. So I’m always like, God, I want to hear your voice. But all I can say is in July of 23, I told my wife, it’s time to be in the States. God has us among the nations and we started an organization called Gather the Nations where we assemble the saints. And we were here, started here in Dallas in 23, just two weeks before, October 7th.

David (18:44):
Really? Oh, man. And

Joshua (18:46):
Then the next year we were in Orlando and we had 1300 in Orlando for our second annual Gather Nations worship conference. And then we fly people from all over the world, from South Africa or Nigeria. And it’s a worship conference that’s messianic, but we use Christian phrases. We don’t want people to feel like they have to pretend like they’re Jewish to be a part of the family of God. But it’s always in the feast of trumpets. And then we just met a couple months ago in September in Zurich, Switzerland, which we thought would be pretty easy because it’s the neutral country, but we had a lot of backlash, but we did it. It was about 1,100 people worshiping from all across as far as Zimbabwe came to worship with us. And that was really one of the main reasons why I felt like God has us in the States, but ironically it was just before the war.

(19:34):
But we left our daughter, we had to sit down with her like, “Hey, we feel like we’re supposed to be in the States now. Are you okay with being a lone soldier?” And she’s like, “I think that would be awesome. I can be independent.” She’s very independent. I can do this, but little did we know months after we left, it would be the war. The worst time to have a child in the Israeli army, because everybody has children-

David (19:56):
Especially alone. Yeah.

Joshua (19:57):
Yeah. And she did amazingly, but it was hard on us. I could tell a story after story. I remember dropping her off during her first year to her base in the Jude and Samaria in Bethel was her base. And I remember getting a call on the way back, “Aba, my commander told me to call you to let you know I’m okay.” I’m like, “What happened?” This is before the war, about a year before. Well, they shot up a whole bus of soldiers going down the same road. I just drove her to go to her base and I think all of them survived, but it was very just bloody. And there was this buildup, you could feel this buildup of tension.

(20:40):
They were targeting our souls. So even though my daughter was combat support, everywhere you go with the green uniform, you’re a target. So it started to really weigh on me as a dad. My only daughter, I’ve got four boys after her. So we get through that. And then other stories, October 7th happens. My daughter’s in the idea of she’s actually in commander school to become a commander. And then one of her fellow soldiers just left the Gaza base to become a commander. If that girl didn’t leave, she probably would have been killed because many were killed in that base in her specific regiment, because they’re called the Taspitania. They’re literally watchmen on the wall. Their job is border intelligence and border security, but they weren’t weaponized. They had one commander that had a gun. The rest of them just were in the base. So Hamas came in and killed all of them.

(21:30):
So this one girl that she was there to thank God to console her who lost all of her troop mates, just that first wave. And then my son, his best friend, Matan, his parents were killed by a Hezbollah rocket. They’d come drop him off all the time. The sweetest guy, still is the sweetest guy. When they were killed, my son’s like, “I’m going to combat.” Like my son shows, I was so angry at my son Shuki, like, “You can’t do this to me and your mom. You cannot do this. ”

(22:00):
So he chose combat. They gave him an Air Force job. He was going to be in the Air Force, not flying. He didn’t want to fly, although he was already in process to get his private pilot’s license. He didn’t want to be in the Air Force because it wasn’t combat that they put him in. So he chose combat and it was just terrible for me and me and my wife, Jeanie. And every time he went into Gaza on a mission or a rescue mission or something, and just the phone goes silent that whole time. And I’m waiting for that second check on WhatsApp, because the second check means he got the message. But thank God the war is over, at least as we saw it. And now he’s in commander school to become a sergeant in the IDF. Woo. Moving back as a Jewish believer, I just felt like I was supposed to live in the galley, raise my kids where my rabbi raised his 12 disciples.

(22:52):
And I wrote a song years ago called You Are Holy, from Joshua 24:15. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Choose this day whom you will serve.

(23:04):
And we’ve been living it out literally. We will not bow the gods of man. We worship the God of Israel. And to have your kids take up arms and defend that is, it’s a literal … The verse and they’re lifting holy hands and worship. And when I wrote that verse, it wasn’t about lifting your hands. It’s about using your hands as an act of worship. And to see my kids do it, it brings a lot of joy and also a lot of relief to be on the other side of the war right now. And as Jewish believers, there’s not many Jewish believers in the war right now, just to see them be strong in the faith throughout all of it. Yeah. I’d love to

David (23:43):
Hear how you wrestle with the tension. I mean, the name of the podcast is Covenant and Conflict, and that comes from God makes a covenant. Usually what comes next is conflict. Lord, I don’t want the conflict.

Joshua (23:59):
I don’t want to walk through the valley of the shadow of death to have to fear no evil, but that’s what it says.

David (24:04):
And I feel like you have such a unique position in that you’re Israeli, but American, Jewish, but Messianic, spending a lot of time now with churches and more and more churches, as I know we both know, are becoming more and more anti-Semitic or have anti-Jewish theology or replacement theology or just anti-Israel sentiment. And that has to be so at times debilitating, sometimes frustrating.

Joshua (24:43):
Frustrating. I want to say furiating, infuriating.

David (24:45):
Especially as someone who has kids in the IDF. And I think from the conversations I have with people that maybe have never been to Israel or don’t know any Jews or … We have this idea of like the imaginary Jew that runs the world and is Bibi Netanyahu and are going into Gaza and just ruthlessly killing everything that moves is kind of the narrative. As someone who has kids in the IDF. And

Joshua (25:10):
I know so many soldiers in the IDF. I’d never heard a single story of that. And if somebody did, and it’s, I don’t even know this firsthand, where they accidentally killed a civilian, it ruins their lives forever. They can’t believe it. And Israeli is really … The IDF, I’ve never heard of a story where they just can’t wait to just slaughter people. And I’d never heard of that happening either. I’m sure a lot of collateral stuff has happened and I can’t imagine. Thank God my son didn’t have to be involved in any of that. But he was in harm’s way way too much. And tanks he was supposed to be in were blown up that he, thank God my son wasn’t in that tank

(25:48):
Or

Joshua (25:48):
A house that he was holding out in. He moves to another one, that one got blown up and for

David (25:54):
Soldiers. And then there’s survivor’s guilt

Joshua (25:56):
That you deal with. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. My neighbor, godly man, Mordecai Wiseman and his wife Mira, they lost their son. Aviel, sweetest boy rode the bus with my son, Jewish believer in Jesus and like, God, why’d you take him? He’s the sweetest, kindest boy. We have to live with a lot of the aftermath. And on top of it, the church hates us. The world thinks our soldiers are murderers and just aiming at civilians. And my son or my daughter’s flying back and forth to Israel, sometimes we’ll fly them through France. And I’m like, especially during the world, I was so scared for their lives. Now I’m like, “I need to make sure it’s a direct flight because they’re threatening to arrest Israeli soldiers.” And it’s like people are really confused with light and darkness now. It’s something that … You see things happen, if you see it happen slowly, like the frog and the boiling water, but if you can … You and I feel like we get to zoom out, because you look at a lot of history, you look at the history of the church, scriptural basis, but how in the world do you see right wing people, their number one people they’re siding with is Islam now, like a Tucker Carlson type or a Candace.

(27:18):
Talk about a confusion between light and darkness. There’s no way getting around that this is light and darkness. It’s really hard to arrive in a logical conclusion on where they got, except that the devil is deceiving people in these last days.

David (27:35):
Yeah, very much. And no one wants to spend the time to try and understand nuance.

Joshua (27:45):
No.

David (27:46):
And what you’ll hear people say is the Jews, the Jews. Break that down for me.

Joshua (27:55):
I can’t believe it. I heard my grandmother, my adoptive grandmother who I grew up with, when she did, very little did she talk about the Holocaust or fleeing the Holocaust. I never thought I’d have a … I never thought I could relate with that because she left just before. She only survived. My adoptive grandmother, she was my grandmother until she died. Those stories I told you were the early years and then she became our grandmother, but she only survived because her mother had a dream twice and in the dream, her deceased uncle said, “Send Batia away. Send Batia away.” And the second dream she had, because nobody thought that a final solution was going to happen until it happened. And when it was happening, nobody believed it was happening.

David (28:37):
It was a frog in the boiler.

Joshua (28:38):
Yeah. But now we have history, now we have scripture. We have all these things blaring us in the face, but darkness is light now. I don’t understand how you can avoid it. These are the exact signs that we had in the 1930s.

David (28:53):
Yeah. Well, and that’s something we talk about, I think quite often in this channel is we don’t study history. And even when we do study history, we get a very macro look at history. I was in maybe eighth grade when we studied World War II and it was like two weeks, which was like a lot.That was a big chunk of the-

Joshua (29:16):
In just two weeks. …

David (29:17):
Of the section. And you’re like, “We don’t understand that Germany was a very Christian nation.”

Joshua (29:24):
So civilized, very Christian.

David (29:27):
Totally. And that the Nazis-

Joshua (29:28):
More civilized than today.

David (29:30):
In the Nazis war belts, it said God is with us and the church is grown bored with-

Joshua (29:33):
Yeah.

David (29:34):
So it’s like there’s this understanding that, well, that, now people even question the Holocaust or whether it was exaggerated, but even back in the day, it was like that was pure evil and we don’t even see them as Christians and now we see this boiling point coming again where you’re saying for the first time the conservative side, the Christian side now saying things like the Jews run the world, the Jews run the banks, the Jews run Hollywood, the Jews, and this is exactly what happened in Germany in the ’40s.

Joshua (30:03):
Yeah, it’s very scary. I don’t know how … It’s hard to explain what I am. I’m a Messianic singer, but I was a Christian songwriter with a record company for four years. I decided not to sign a record contract, not that it was anything huge or I would’ve been bigger or anything because I just didn’t know if I could fully align or … I wasn’t against anything. I just prayed about it for a long time. And I have a mentor, Don Moen is a mentor of mine and he’s like, “Yeah, this day and age, you don’t really need to sign a contract anymore.” And I mean, he’s the one who signed Hillsong and he saw all that stuff happen and he saw how the era was different than it is now. The last straw for me was, I mentioned we’re living based in the States now.

(30:56):
I don’t know if I did mention that, but we’re based in the States and I’m going to be back in Israel in two weeks now

(31:01):
From now. But I remember in June, I brought the three little ones to come back to Israel to be with our two older ones and we planned this 12 day trip. It was literally the day of the 12 day war of Iran bombing, the last bombing of Iran. And there we were sitting, thank God we still have our home. We’ve been renting for almost 11 years now. My son lives there now, my sister. And I remember thinking, I remember just looking on social media, I don’t see any of my Christian even musician colleagues or everybody’s just so scared to say anything about, again, light and darkness. They were so afraid to say anything. I was so confused. I was so hurt. How in the world could this be the most lonely time? Yeah. At least a million of us would probably would be dead if there was no Iron Dome and if there wasn’t an IDF, the Air Force and if America didn’t step in, I mean, there’s so many factors, at least a million of us would be dead.

(31:58):
And there we were in and out of our bomb shelter, just like, how did we get here? How did we get here except this frog in the pot

(32:09):
Thing? And now it’s almost a boiling point and it’s hard to go back. The church is shriveling sections of it. My thing is, the way they got there, they just kind of … It has to be some self-aware, like replacement theology at its peak, just skipping over what the Bible says and put yourself in this peak. If you look at history, the Israelites, us, the Bible’s really … We’ve got meals for this. God blessed us. We forgot about him. He saved us. Let’s eat. That’s the peak. We forgot about him because we got so blessed and the church became so high and mighty that they think that they’ve superseded everything and the church has it. And I haven’t. We haven’t. But we forget that Jesus came to this earth 2000 years ago, born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, died in Jerusalem, roamed on the earth for 40 days afterwards, but ascended into heaven in Jerusalem.

(33:20):
The angel said, “Men of Galilee, why you gazing him to heaven? The same way he went up, he shall return.” It’s all connected. And I wrote this down on my phone because there are so many prominent Christian teachers that most of these people who think they’ve replaced Israel would respect. Like one is John MacArthur. John MacArthur said this. He said, “The church has not replaced Israel. God’s promised us to Israel are irrevocable and will be fulfilled literally.” He also said this, “If you turn Israel into the church, you destroy the integrity of biblical interpretation.” He said, Romans 9:11 makes it unmistakably clear that God still has a future for national Israel. David Jeremiah, there’s several other respected prominent leaders that’s just a no brainer, but how we got to the conclusion, I just think we were confusing darkness with light.

David (34:13):
Yeah. The discernment definitely. And I have a pet peeve when people call it the spiritual gift of discerning of spirits, just discernment

(34:25):
Because

David (34:26):
It can make it feel just very logical. We need to have more discernment or I have the spiritual gift of discernment. Well, one Corinthians 14 says it’s discerning of spirits, meaning discerning the spirit behind things, not just, “I got a good feeling about you. ” Oh, I have good wisdom. There’s a spirit behind it. And that’s what I think one of the keys that we’re missing in the church today is the discerning of spirits to look at this and say, “This is spiritual.” And I think logically we can look and say replacement theology or supersession theology or fulfillment theology, however you want to phrase it, it was dominant for 1900 years of the church and Christians were very prideful against Jewish people, killed more Jewish people than probably any other people group. And it wasn’t until the Holocaust and really after the Holocaust that the church rethought it.

Joshua (35:21):
We were right.

David (35:22):
And now we’re coming up on the first generation that is disconnected from the Holocaust. Wow. The last Holocaust survivors are in their 90s. And if we’re already where you can talk to a Holocaust survivor. We have a good friend who lives in Dallas. She’s a Holocaust survivor. We love her. She’s been on the podcast, Rosie. If we’re already having a majority or a large percentage of Gen Z questioning the Holocaust and whether it really happened and whether it was exaggerated, whether it was really six million, and you can talk to people, how much worse is it going to get? Well,

Joshua (35:57):
That’s a black and white issue. They made it gray. Man, how do we get there?

David (36:01):
Yeah. And like we talked about for a moment, the nuance, the Jews. If you say the Jews, I text someone this morning. When you say the Jews, you’re looping in Jesus, the disciples, the early church, Messianic Jews today.

(36:18):
Yeah.

David (36:20):
Who are the Jews? And again, it’s the imaginary Jew, which I think there was a terminology for that. I don’t know if it was the imaginary Jew, but it was something like that of the Jewish person in my mind that’s like pulling strings. I can’t tell you who he is. I can’t tell you who they are, but it’s the Jews and the Jews pay for it. And oftentimes that is messianics, secular, traditional,

Joshua (36:41):
Children. Yeah, we did it on both sides as well. If you go to the Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem and Jerusalem, outside Jerusalem, or I’d say in Jerusalem, still proper. I’ll go back to my grandmother. I don’t know if I … My grandma used to spit if I said Jesus name. I think I said that in the beginning. And it was the connection to what Christian history did to her. Jewish people, especially religious Jews, they know the negative parts of Christian history about to crusade the cross and a sword.

David (37:13):
Better than Christians do.

Joshua (37:14):
Oh yeah. So much more. We’ve hit it. They know what Martin Luther said in his last years. Some very, very evil things. I’m sure you’ve probably taught on it or

David (37:22):
Talked

Joshua (37:22):
About it.

David (37:23):
Of the Jews in their lies,

Joshua (37:24):
Basically

David (37:25):
Just-

Joshua (37:25):
Is that the last book he wrote on the Jews in their

David (37:27):
Lives? Of the Jews in their lies. And that was what Hitler mass produced as well.

Joshua (37:31):
But if you walk into the beginning of the Holocaust Museum, they don’t go light on this. You see a Cardinal shaking hands with Hitler. You see all church leaders. The first part of Yad Vashem is the church. Wow. Saying this out loud, I’m seeing a crazy parallel right now. It was the church sympathizing with darkness as if it was some gray cloud. It was absolute darkness, but they shook hands, validated. And then where did that go? Where did that lead to? My great-grandparents were killed, the Schweitzers. Many of our people were killed.

(38:17):
Yeah.

Joshua (38:18):
And where are we at today? I think America has a beautiful redemptive story, thank God. And his history does too. We’ve had some darker times in history, World War II. And I just pray that like Nineveh, we’ll see the signs and hear the messages in turn before it’s too late.

David (38:38):
When you go to churches now, is there a feeling you have or experiences you have where people are questioning and then you’re able to talk with them, pray with them, help them see the nuance? Or are you saying it’s just getting darker and darker and harder and harder? I

Joshua (39:02):
Think it’s getting darker and harder and harder. And not because of where I go, because where I go, I’m a singer. So a lot of times it’s more of like a concert. It’s a worship night,

(39:10):
But

Joshua (39:11):
It’s more my audience. Honestly, if it’s a bigger church, a lot of times the church won’t show up. It’ll just be my YouTube fans or followers that show up. And I see that a lot where it’d be a good group of people, but the church, sometimes the pastor doesn’t come. Not that he should come because he needs to hear me, but that doesn’t give a good sign that the church is interested. But again, this is just me. They shouldn’t have to come just to see Joshua. So I’m just trying to give my own perspective. So maybe that’s not a proper perspective.

(39:44):
Yeah.

Joshua (39:44):
But there are some … I’ve talked with some really prominent pastors throughout my years and some of them want to be more involved, but there are some of us that are really weird in our movement and I love them, but I have to remind them like, “Hey, don’t you know, please, you represent all of us. Please be careful out there.” Well,

David (40:03):
You’re such a small percentage.

Joshua (40:05):
We’re such a small percentage. And I love weird people too. I’m a weirdo in my own right. We all are. But sometimes I think we don’t realize that we represent something that is very … All of us, every aspect of the body of Messiah of Christ, we need to carry it in a holy way wherever we go and not make it about me. And my angle is I’ve got more of an epiphany than you do, but I think we need to do … That’s what I like about Judaism. They don’t have Jesus yet in religious circles, and I believe you don’t fully know the Father unless you know the son. I want to be clear about that. But you can go to an Orthodox synagogue and one can be kind of Pentecostal and the other can be like, “I don’t even believe in angels.” They go to the same synagogue.

(40:50):
I’m not saying you should believe in those things, but in that there aren’t any angels, but it’s cool that they can still go to the same synagogue. And for us, the church, I mean, how many denominations do we have now? 40,000 denominations?

David (41:03):
Yeah, we’ll click because of ice cream

Joshua (41:05):
Flavors. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve started to get … I was in JFK just weeks ago because I was going to go to Nigeria. I was just so like, “What is he doing to our precious brothers and sisters just to go and hug them?” I don’t know. I know you guys do work all around the world here at Gateway. I think Sarah and I talked about it too, about you getting over there, just the churches being just hammered all around the world. And I want to tell you something, people are listening because you’re wise behind your ears, David. I was going to say Dutu, sorry.

David (41:41):
Dude. No, you’re coming.

Joshua (41:46):
But if you meet Christians, persecuted church around the world, none of them hate Israel. It’s something that’s learned. It’s learned. I’m telling you, I travel … I’m not the most traveled person in the world, but when I travel to other countries, I’ve been several times to refugee camps on my own accord. I’m like, “God, I just want to go hug these Syrian refugees, these Iranians, refugees throughout the years.” All of them just automatically love Israel. They’re bred, they’re newly saved. I wish Israel knew their savior because that’s where my salvation is from. I’m telling you, everywhere I go where people hate Israel or the Jews, the Jews, these are self-righteous Christians who think they’ve got it all figured out. But if you meet any newly saved church people anywhere in the world that have not been indoctrinated, they all will be like, “Jesus, Jesus is from Israel.” And he said he’s going to come back to Israel and the Bible says, “And the last days all Israel will be saved.”That’s the only conclusion you come to.

(42:52):
Only is learned.

David (42:53):
Muslims that get saved and love for Israel.

Joshua (42:56):
All my Iranian, and this isn’t new information, this is throughout the years of meeting Iranians. All of them, before they have time to be indoctrinated, they all love Israel right away. Maybe they’ll be like, “Man, they need to know Jesus,” which they should. But all of them, I say all of them, the people I met, and I met a lot of people throughout the years traveling. It’s a learned thing to say the Jews and the lumped Jews in that always comes from a self-righteous Christian.

(43:26):
Yeah.

Joshua (43:26):
Not a Christian, self-righteous Christian

(43:28):
Who

Joshua (43:28):
Thinks they figured it out above everybody else and removes … Unlike John MacArthur, removed scripture. John MacArthur just looking at scripture. Jesus stood in Jerusalem and he said, “You, you, Jerusalem, you won’t see me until you.

David (43:44):
”

Joshua (43:44):
So we all need to look towards Jerusalem. We all need to pray for Jerusalem to be saved because it’s a Christian theology to say, “We want Jesus to come back.” What’s part of that? Israel is a part of Christianologies for Israel to … He said, “I won’t come back until you say. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Yes, we spoke Aramaic and that, but we also spoke Hebrew for sure. Aramaic was that mix because of forced things. We had to speak Greek, but now guess what language we speak 2,000 years later, the language that says Hebrew, all of this is like a no brainer unless you’ve been indoctrinated to think otherwise.

David (44:29):
Yeah. How do you hold the tension, whether someone asks you or is struggling with, but what about the Orthodox Jews? What about the ones that are anti-Messianic, anti … Because many people don’t realize the Messianic community is often caught in the middle because the church is persecuting them or wanting them to convert to Christianity or saying, “You’re not really a Christian, you’re still a Jew. You’re holding onto the old ways and the Old Testament. Jesus died for that and that’s law.” And so then you go to your Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel, the mass majority in Israel, and they’re like, “Oh, you’re Christian. You’re not Jewish anymore. So you’re too Jewish to be Christian, you’re too Christian to be Jewish.” So does that feel like I have more of a home with Israelis, even if they’re persecuting me or do you feel it from both sides?

(45:30):
How do you wrestle with

Joshua (45:31):
That? It’s funny. I think I feel more home with secular Israelis. I wish that weren’t so, but I was just on the phone with a large Orthodox, I want to say ministry. Some of them are getting good at reaching the church to fundraise and one of them was on the phone with me and I said, “Listen, they wanted to do some work together.” And I said, “Listen, I don’t work with anybody that’s against Messianic Jews or against the gospel for the Jewish people because Israel is a democratic country where you can share anything you want. ” And he’s like, “Listen, we used to be kind of like that. ” He said, “But we’re watching the Messianic Jews and we’re like, you guys are serving in our war.” He said, “After this war, things are changing a lot too.” Wait, these people, we lost people, like I just mentioned Aviel Wiseman, this precious 19 year old boy who gave his life for his country last year and they’re starting to recognize some of that as well with our blood, sweat and tears that we’re part of society.

(46:34):
There is a shift. It’s been slow, but sure.

(46:37):
Yeah.

Joshua (46:37):
But secular society, they’re going to. The Bible says, and the last day is. All Israel shall be saved. So I look at them as pretty believers and love them as well. And there are some extreme Christian types that just … It’s almost like they’re angry at them because they don’t believe, but we need to love them so much that we want to share about share. It needs to come from a love respect, but we need to share.

David (47:04):
Yeah. Well, that’s so good. Thank you for coming and sharing because as we had breakfast and as we talked on the podcast, you can tell that Yeshua, Jesus is the center of your life and your ministry and your word, but you’re also holding those things intention of praying for this and trying to speak truth into this. And I’m sure that that-

Joshua (47:26):
And I don’t have it figured out. I don’t ever claim to have it figured out either as far as how to live it out. I know Jesus is coming back and-

David (47:38):
You know where he’s coming back.

Joshua (47:39):
I know where he’s coming back, but I also know the Jewish people have to be back according to Jesus. They have to welcome him back and the nations, the fullness of the nations is a big part of that. And I love what Gateway is doing. I love what you’re doing as part of Gateway and your team. And I love coming to your Shabbat services and leading worship time to time. I’m looking forward to it. That’s

David (48:00):
Really

Joshua (48:00):
Exciting. And yeah, I also think that we just don’t want to fuel the people who hate the Jewish people. We don’t want to give them any more fuel. We need to love them too, but speak the truth and love, as the word says.

David (48:15):
Totally. Well, will you pray for us? Pray for those who are listening. Maybe we have some listeners who are feeling the tension already. They just watched a video about how the Jews rule everything and now they’re seeing this and it’s a different narrative or story or … I have lots of Christian friends. We talked a little bit at breakfast that they’re on the deep Google search about the conspiracies of the Jewish people and-

Joshua (48:42):
Man, you can find whatever you want to find, but if you … What does the prophets say? If you search for me with the old … You’ll find me if you search me with all your heart.

(48:51):
If

Joshua (48:52):
You’re trying to find the negative things or the things you want to find, that’s not searching with all your heart.

(48:58):
You

Joshua (48:58):
Have to search with an open heart. Let scripture tell you what is true, not find scriptures to verify what you want to believe.

David (49:05):
And allow the Holy Spirit. Absolutely. The more that I’m reading, I’m in the book of Acts right now, the more I’m reading the story of the early eclisse of the church, the gathering of the believers, which were all Jewish there for a hot minute.

Joshua (49:19):
Yeah. I mean, the first 300 years, we were sending tithes to Jerusalem,

David (49:24):
The early

Joshua (49:24):
Church, 300 years. And

David (49:26):
Jerusalem was the epicenter

Joshua (49:27):
Of

David (49:28):
Where the church

Joshua (49:29):
Was. We need to do another podcast. I’m sorry. I keep stretching this out.

David (49:32):
No, this is good. But one of the things that was clear to me this time through the Book of Acts was how the Holy Spirit was the differentiator. That was what separated what we would call today Messianic Jews or the early church. It was the Holy Spirit. That’s what was the … The evidence that he was coming to the Gentiles was the Holy Spirit. That’s what separated Steven from the ones that were trying to persecute him was the Holy Spirit and he spoke with the wisdom from the Holy Spirit. And so we’re kind of lost if we’re just trying to do it as an intellectual pursuit.

(50:02):
We’re

David (50:03):
Going down Google, we’re listening to these speakers and they’re … As the word says, one side seems right until you hear the other. And we’re only hearing one side from … And that’s what the algorithm does. The algorithm knows your side and they shoot you your side because they don’t care what side you end up on as long as you stay on their app longer.

Joshua (50:21):
So

David (50:21):
They reinforce, “Oh, you’re a mom of young kids. Here’s some more mom of young kids. Oh, you’re pro Israel. Here’s some more pro Israel. Oh, you’re anti, here’s some anti-Israel.” And we’re hearing one side and we need spiritual discernment, the discerning of spirits to look at. Maybe just turn

Joshua (50:39):
It all off, open your Bible and talk to the Lord.

David (50:42):
That’s good advice. Let’s do that. So will you pray for us?

Joshua (50:45):
Yes. Yeah. God, I thank you so much. Thank you so much for this incredible church. Thank you for my brother David. Thank you for all the work you’re doing here on this earth. Lord, in these latter days, God, I’m just grateful to be one of your children, Lord. Lord, that you said those who call in your name, you give the right to be called children of God. Lord, I just thank you for everybody who’s listening right now who’ve called on your name. You’ve given them the right to become children of God. There’s not a Jewish person here. There’s not a Gentile person here listening or … As far as salvation in your eyes, Lord, but you’ve given us each a calling. You’ve given us this beautiful love across the board for who we all are, but we all want to lay it all down and say you are the only way.

(51:32):
God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And there is only one way to you through your son. Yeshua. Lord, I just pray that in the midst of all this, we would see ultimately, most importantly, the one way, the salvation through your son, Yeshua. And God, I just pray that as we trickle down, come away from that, Lord, and talk about the plans that you have of your return. Lord would see the picture that you have. That’s really clear, Lord. And just put aside our flesh and just see your kingdom view. Lord, I just pray for peace over everyone that’s listening today. We’ve all gone through so many things. My wife and I gone through this war with our kids in war and the world kind of feel like the world hates us at times, Lord. Maybe some of your children listening right now feel like just even a smaller circle.

(52:18):
Sometimes that even feels worse. People close to them hate them or don’t understand. Let us pray that you just wrap them around with your love. They can only come through the power of your Holy Spirit, Lord. May they just get back to the roots of who they are under the foot of the tree where the lamb was slain. Lord, and build from there, but Lord, but may they just grow in the power of the Holy Spirit. Lord, to be a light and a witness, not to land on salvation, but to live in the fruit of the spirit. Lord, we just thank you, Lord, for this time together. Thank you for your plans. Lord, we just pray that we pray for the peace of Jerusalem as your word commands us in Psalm 122: six. May they prosper. Again, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May they prosper who love thee.

(53:02):
May each and everyone live in a time of prosperity, most importantly, spiritual prosperity and in their families and their marriages. Just give us all to you, Lord. Until you come, use us and you show us name. Amen. Amen.

David (53:19):
Amen. Amen. That was good.

Joshua (53:22):
Thank you, brother.

David (53:22):
Thank you for coming. Thank you for praying for us. Thank you for being a part of our Shabbat service tomorrow. That is all we have for you today at the Covenant Conflict Podcast. Please check out some more of our videos, our content, teachings, podcast episodes, and we will see you next time.