Sid: My guest is red hot for the Messiah, he’s Rabbi Jonathan Bernis. He’s the Executive Director of Jewish Voice Ministries International, and we’re talking about his brand new book it’s one that’s a must read for you it’s called “A Rabbi Looks at the Last Days.” Jonathan you have a statement that has just been resounding in my ears especially in these times of perilous times that we’re living in especially in the United States of America, and that is best is yet to come. What do you mean by that?
Jonathan: Well Sid, I mean that oh the focus has been on the doom and gloom tribulation period where everything goes to hell in a hand basket. Well, I believe that there’s times of tribulation coming, I believe that we’re about to see the greatest outpouring of the Spirit of God in the history of mankind. That’s exciting for me, for followers of the Messiah, for true Christians we’re about to see the most traumatic Biblical experiences taking place in the history of the world, that exciting. Why do I believe that? I believe it because the Bible says that when the Jewish people rejected their Messiah it brought salvation to the Gentiles, there’s a connection, a parallel between what happens in the Church and what happens with Israel. But the Bible says that “When they come back”, life from the dead. What does that mean? It means a supernatural outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the world, the Jewish people coming back to their Messiah being the key that unlocks this incredible outpouring that will be greater than the first century outpouring. Again the greatest outpouring in the history of mankind, I’m excited about that Sid, I’m excited about the promise of the supernatural realm being released. I am excited about fulfilling God’s destiny for my life; I’m excited about football stadiums being filled with people that are experiencing the transforming power of the Lord with healings, miracles, and resurrections. We’ve seen it…
Sid: Now, as you’re sharing that, you know that God is not going to be silent; He’s healing people right now! Pains of all kinds are leaving, people with pain in their neck; if you’ll move your head you’ll see that the pain is gone. People with back pains if you’ll just bed up and down, if you have a hip pain, jump; I mean jump do something faith without a corresponding action is dead and as you jump you’re going to jump right into your healing. There are people with pains in their wrists and their arms; you are healed in Jesus name. And Jonathan what’s your talking about this is my heart’s desire, it’s almost as if the Gentile Christians have a spiritual DNA, and Jewish believer in Jesus have a spiritual DNA and both are incomplete. But when the two come together it gives us what we’ve been praying for.
Jonathan: Let me go one step further Sid, it’s not only coming together as One New Man, but it’s together fulfilling mandate to provoke the Jewish people to jealousy. To seek after God in a greater dimension and to experience His presence in a greater dimension; I did not sign up and I know you did not either Sid for some vane religion to replace the Judaism that we experienced going to synagogue. I signed up to have a living encounter with the living God and to see and experience His presence. That’s what I’m expecting to happen in greater measure than I’ve ever experienced and you and I have seen some great things. I’ve seen God move powerfully in third world nations like India and Ethiopia, but the best is yet to come, we ain’t seen nothing yet Sid.
Sid: Just whet our appetite tell me one miracle you observed with your eyes in Ethiopia.
Jonathan: Goodness, there’s so many, let me just give you two, I can’t just give you one. The first was, a deaf and dumb mute that came into our, into the Healing Room, into our counseling room in this medical clinic that we put on in Northern Ethiopia in the mountains. And the elders of the community were all at the clinic, they knew this young man since childhood, they knew he couldn’t hear, that he couldn’t speak and he was supernaturally, his hearing was supernaturally restored in the prayer room enough so that I could stand behind him and whisper words and he would begin to repeat them. And just like you’ve seen on television only this time it was in front of the community leaders that had watched this young man grow up, and to look at their faces of consternation, and shock, and confusion was unlike anything that I’ve ever experienced because this is exactly what happens in the Bible where you don’t have a transit communities but people that everyone knows and there’s no explanation. So that was one that was undeniable and I then interviewed them. “What do you think about this, what does this mean?” And they were just all very confused and had to process it, another just this last year, the second one was that one of the leaders of the community that was in the clinic trying to keep people from going into the prayer room came in on the last day, ran into the prayer room prayed to receive the Lord and took a whole bunch of Bibles with him to hand out. I met with him and found out that the night before Jesus had come to him in a dream and said, “I am the Messiah and I’ve sent these people and I want you to serve them and serve me.” And he is now walking with the Lord, he’s an evangelist; I watched this man change in front of my eyes from being an adversary to the Gospel to giving his heart to the Lord and being an evangelist overnight.
Sid: Now for those that are not that familiar with Ethiopian Jews, briefly explain why you went to Ethiopia.
Jonathan: Well, there’s 10’s of thousands of Jews remaining in Ethiopia Sid that the Israeli government is not allowing to come home. The reason for that is that they’re identified as Falasha Mora. Converts to Christianity sometime back in their past generations someone converted to Christianity most likely because of persecution, but they’re not real believers. Israel has said we’ll consider taking you back but you need to live a Jewish life, and so they’ve been very afraid to have any encounter with people like us that are sharing the gospel. Yet they’re starving to death, they’re dying of malnutrition and disease, and so we’ve reached out to them and they’re responding because they have no choice. They’re between a rock and a hard place. They’re persecuted as Jews in Ethiopia but rejected by the Israeli government and so we’ve been conducting these large medical clinics followed up with prayer rooms where we share the gospel and pray for their healings. And so there’s a lot of resistance of the gospel simply out of fear, but the power of God is breaking through that fear and changing lives.
Sid: Now, you have another chapter in your book talking about the Feasts of Israel and how they literally mirror the two comings of the Messiah explain.
Jonathan: There’s six Feasts plus the Shabbat in the cycle of Leviticus 23; the cycle of the year for Israel in the calendar year. The first three are connected with the first coming of the Messiah, the second three with His return. So you have the Feast of Passover which of course was fulfilled by Jesus as the Passover Lamb who dies along with the other Passover Lambs as the sacrifice who sheds His own blood so that the angel of death might pass over us. It’s followed by First Fruits which was the First Fruits of the harvest which Jesus fulfills by resurrecting from the dead as the first fruits of life from the dead just three days later. And then the third part of that in the trilogy is Pentecost, or we know as Shavuot in Hebrew, which is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Church in fulfillment of what was the first of the wheat harvest, wheat being symbolic spiritually of souls coming into the Kingdom of God. So you have the first great influx of souls on Pentecost, or Shavuot, fulfilling the first trilogy of feasts. The second three Rosh Hashanah, or the Feasts of Trumpets, or Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement, and then Succot the final harvest are fulfilled when Jesus returns at the sound of the last trump, followed by the national repentance of Israel, Yom Kippur, which is so important to understand Jewish calendar Sid. And ultimately the final gathering where He gather’s His people from the four corners of the earth fulfilling Succot or the Feast of Tabernacle.
Sid: You know the Biblical Feasts are such graphic presentations of the First Coming of Jesus and the Return of Jesus that it’s got to be one of the most diabolical things in the world that it’s been taken away from the Church!
Jonathan: Absolutely, these are prophetic signs that if you don’t understand you miss out.
Sid: Now Jonathan on tomorrows broadcast another section of your book is “How to share in the Messiah.” And there are a lot of good questions the Jewish people are asking that desire answers, and there are things that Jewish people, well for instance a lot of people don’t know this, but in several passages in the approved Jewish scriptures there is a change in the prophecy. For instance Isaiah 7:14 says “A young woman will conceive and have a child and his name will be called “Emmanuel.” Whereas in the Christian Bible it says a virgin, how come there’s a difference?
Jonathan: Well, because if you look at the evolution of Rabbinic Judaism which is not the Judaism of the scriptures. The Judaism of today is very different than the Judaism of the time of Jesus, but the Judaism that evolved over the last 2,000 years Sid has really been more reaction against Christianity than anything else. And so you have the removal of key prophecies in Jewish literature that were clearly interpreted as being connected to the Messiah by the early Rabbis in the time of Jesus and before, again a Judaism that has reacted negatively to Christianity and removed any hints of the possibility that Jesus is the Messiah.
Sid: But what would you say if someone said that’s not virgin, that says young woman in the Hebrew?
Jonathan: Yeah, the word Alma and which was interpreted as virgin in the Septuagint, the Greek interpreted in 250 BC, 250 years before Christ ever came and now you have the Rabbis that say that’s a Christian interpretation, come on!
