Sid: Well my guest is red hot for the Messiah I’m speaking to Barry Segal and all this week we’ve been speaking to his wife Batya. The two of them are Recording Artists from Jerusalem. I’m actually speaking to them at his home in Jerusalem right now and his latest CD which he puts it has a Levitical anointing it’s called “God Through the Gates.” Now what I’d like to know Barry how you and Batya got together. I know that she had this long extended court case, a custody for her daughter because she became a believer in Messiah. And her former husband was using it against her and you were praying with her a lot. You had music in common but how did you eventually determine that the two of you were to get married?
Barry: Well it’s a real invitation of the Holy Spirit I think when two people are joined together in matrimony and covenant. And I think we were the classic picture of east meets west in the Middle East. And really when I came to Israel I came with an opportunity to live with very well-known Bible teacher who since went to go home with the Lord Dr. Derrick Prince and his wife Ruth. And as a single guy coming over from the US and they saw my love and passion for Israel; they asked me to come on over and to assist them the first year and finish out their home as they were settling in Jerusalem. And here it was Jew and Gentile kind of settling together in Jerusalem and in that first year in that incubation period as I had entered Jerusalem and Israel to make it my home; I used to actually go down to the bus stops along the center of the neighborhood called the German Colony of Jerusalem and at times I would run into Batya at the bus stop because she was born and grew up on the other side of that road by her parent’s house. And so just over the divide was where Batya and somehow we would run into each other. But the actual place that we first met I remember was at a Bible study in a home in Jerusalem for Messianic Jewish Song Writers and Singers and there were about a dozen people there. When I walked in that first night, which was somewhere around the winter of 1982, they were all praying in a circle I had come in a bit late and when she opened her eyes I was standing right in front of her. That was actually the first time she saw me; I was the second angel she would say.
Sid: (Laughing) Tell me about that what happens when an American Jew immigrants to Israel and falls in love and marries a Yemenite Jew and they have a Yemenite wedding, what is that like?
Barry: Well it was really unusual it was like a movie being filmed because after Batya’s court trial was finished in the Supreme Court for custody of her daughter Meital. And after several years of having prayed together to get with Derrick and Ruth Prince in their home on behalf of Batya’s court trial and for her daughter and other things going on in our lives. It was almost as if the Lord had yoked us together. He was calling us to be yoked together to carry on a great burden and work which would start in Jerusalem and do to Judea, Sumeria and the ends of the earth. So several years later of course we would be engaged right after the court trial was finished and then married in 1987. I’ll never forget the time that my parents from America came over to meet Batya’s parents it was so funny because we were the only 2 in the middle that could translate between the Hebrew and the English between my parents and her parents. Of course that was kind of classic it was like the ancient meeting the modern.
Sid: Hm.
Barry: And finally we both being Levites by birth both Batya and I. Batya from a Yemenite Jewish Levites and myself from an Ashkenazi European Levitical background the rabbi’s wanted to be sure that we were Levites so our parents had to prove this in some rabbinical court. And upon that we were approved to be married and we had an Orthodox Jewish ceremony in Jerusalem with a few hundred guests. And it was quite exciting actually at the time because when we came we did not know that Batya’s older brother had arranged for a Yemenite dance troupe to come in dressed like probably they were dressed 100’s of years ago with flower baskets on their heads and all sorts of ornaments. They came and they put us in chairs and they picked us up in the chairs and they danced us all the way to the chupa. I just kind of waved goodbye to my parents and they just had tears in their eyes; it was just so classical it was so joyous. In its own way it had a Levitical anointing that feel into that place and people just don’t forget the wedding that came to it even to this day, it was spectacular event.
Sid: Barry you mentioned that you were really discipled by a great great Bible teacher Dr. Derrick Prince. He went on recently to be promoted to heaven. If he was around today and he was giving advice to our listeners about what’s going on prophetically in the world what do you think he would be telling them?
Barry: Well there’s no doubt even to the very end of Derrick’s life he believed that the Lord’s return is much more imminent than we all can fathom or understand in the natural mind. That in fact the prophetic word of God; what was spoken in centuries of old by the prophets of old is so real; so in affect today and so centers around the re-gathering of Israel physically and as well as re-gathering of Israel spiritually. And that we see also a parallel restoration within the Jewish people and nation and also the church. So that what we are experiencing and the tremendous upheaval which includes the words that Jesus spoke about towards the end time. That there would be violence in the days we live in is so picturesque of the time that we really should have a heart for the lost and we really should be earnestly looking to His coming. And working for the night is coming when no man can work. I think these would be some areas that Derrick would have reflected on and summed up; I think he saw the evil of the world and the curtains being pulled in this age coming to a close. And I think he saw his own passing on just a thin veil away from all eternity.
Sid: I’m speaking to Barry and his wife Batya Segal and we’re featuring this week his latest CD called “Go Through the Gates.” And as Batya explains the gates are Yeshua and it’s a call for Jewish people to find the true peace. “Go Through the Gates” it’s got a Levitical, I mean it’s Levitical as you can get, they both have a Levitical heritage. And what do you want to accomplish with this CD Barry?
Barry: Well I think that that’s a very very good question. I think you know my heart always in worship and in music is that there will be a restoration of fellowship with God through what we do. I think scripture that sums up so much to me about music and worship is in 2nd Chronicles 5 where it says in verse 11 “And it came to pass that when the priests came out of the most holy place having had sanctified themselves without keeping to their divisions. And the Levites were the singers” and on and on it goes about those with cymbals and stringed instruments. But summing it up it says “In deed it came to pass when the trumpeters and singers were as one to make one sound to be heard in thanking and praising the Lord and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music and praise the Lord in saying ‘For He is good for His mercy endures forever’ that the house of the Lord was filled with the cloud so that the priests could not continue ministering because of the cloud for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.” It’s for His glory.
