December 11, 2023 Show with David Zadok on “An Israeli Reformed Baptist Pastor’s Report on the Current Conflict Between Israel & Hamas”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 11th day of December 2023.

And I owe an extra measure of thanks and gratitude to my guest today, because he is conducting this interview live from Israel, and right now it's just a little after 11 p .m.,

and this interview is going to be continuing through 1 a .m. his time, so I do thank him for so desiring to be on this broadcast that he was willing to put up with the time difference.

And the man that I am speaking of is David Zadok, pastor of Grace and Truth Congregation in Kenot, Israel, and director of Hagefen Publishing.

And he was born in Israel, lived in Iran, and studied in the United States of America.

And today we're going to be addressing an Israeli Reformed Baptist pastor's report on the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor David Zadok.

Good afternoon. It's a privilege for me to be on your show for the first time as well.

And I hope I did not butcher the pronunciation of your last name. That's okay.

Having lived in different places, certainly in the States, I'm used to butchering my name, but it doesn't matter.

It's okay. It's fine. Well, first of all, let our listeners know about the

Grace and Truth Congregation in Kenot, Israel. And did I pronounce that right?

The city in Israel, is it Kenot? Yes, it's Kenot, but yeah, it's near, not very far from Ashdod and Gedera.

That's the city that we live in. It's in the kind of central south of Israel, about half an hour south of Tel Aviv and about 35 minutes west of Jerusalem.

And that congregation used to be located somewhere else in Israel, correct? Yes, it used to be located in Rishon LeZion, in the facility of Hagefen Publishing.

And now the church is actually hosting our publishing in the basement.

Okay. I might want to direct our listeners, after this live show, you may have interest in hearing an interview

I recently did on November 1st with the former pastor of that church, Baruch Moes.

And we unfortunately, because I don't know if it had anything to do with the fact that we could hear jets flying over where he was staying, and there were audible bombs and so forth exploding.

But the audio to that is not pristine, it is a little choppy on that recording, we apologize for that.

That was beyond my control, so I just wanted to give you the heads up when you listen to that program,

God willing, later on. But give us more detail about Grace and Truth Congregation.

Yeah, well, you mentioned Baruch Moes, that he was the founding pastor of Grace and Truth, the church was established in 1976.

It was one of the first congregations, and it's not the first one, but one of the first ones.

And the congregation was established based somewhat on the

Westminster Confession as well as the London Baptist Confession. That was when the church started, at first it was in Rehovot and in homes, in a rented home, and eventually we moved into the facility that Agafon Publishing provided for the congregation after having a lot of issues with the anti -missionary,

Orthodox, Jewish, and others. Now is the congregation still the only

Reformed Baptist church in Israel, or have you been successful in planting any other congregations?

No, thankfully there are more congregations, there are more Reformed congregations in Israel at the moment.

There is about nine, and our congregation is probably the largest of the nine, and there is a fellowship of the

Israeli Reformed pastors that I have the privilege of chairing it.

And we are actually working on an updated

Confession, a Reformed Confession that is based on all of the historical

Reformed Confessions, including Westminster, Heidelberg, as well as London Baptist Confession.

Oh wow, great. Well, if anybody wants more information on this congregation, you can go to graceandtruth .org

.il for Israel, Grace and, and it's the full word and, not the symbol, graceandtruth .org

.il for Israel. And we will, God willing, be repeating that later on in the program.

And tell us about Hagefen Publishing. Well, Hagefen Publishing, actually in Israel, was established in 1974.

Its founding thought actually goes back to Robert Murray MacChain, the famous Scottish pastor, who at some point, he felt that the church has a responsibility in bringing the gospel to the

Jewish people that for almost 2 ,000 years has failed to do so.

As a result, he asked his denomination, the Church of Scotland, Presbyterian Church of Scotland, to do a kind of a mission of inquiry.

He came with Andrew Bonner and another, the three of them were here.

They were about, they went to various parts of the Middle East.

They were in Egypt. Later on, they came to what was Palestine, because the state of Israel was not established yet in 1948.

And when he went back, he gave the report, and as a result of the report, they set up a society, which was called the

Society for Progression of the Christian Faith Among the Jewish People. Interestingly enough, when he went back to Scotland, he realized that his congregation in Dundee, during the time that he was finding, trying to find ways to bring the gospel to the

Jewish people, his congregation grew almost twice in size. And he attributed it to the promise of God that,

I would bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. So the beginning of Hagafen Publishing goes back to Robert McChain, and we are very proud and thankful for that heritage.

Some years ago, I had the honor and the privilege of preaching in that same church of McChain in Scotland.

Wow. And that was a great honor. Yes, I always feel guilt about my own life when

I hear the name Robert Murray McChain, because I'm 61 years old, and he accomplished more in his 29 years on this life than I will ever accomplish while I am alive.

The Lord took him when he was very young. Yeah. Well, it's not only you. I mean, many of us, we feel that, you know, he's done so much more in his those 29 years than we can do in five, six life spans.

That's right. Well, we have a tradition here on Iron Trap and Zion Radio, whenever we have a first time guest on the program, we always have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they may have been raised and the providential circumstances that our sovereign

Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. And I'd love to hear a summary of your story.

Okay. Well, it can be the summary can be a bit longer, but I will try to do a short version.

I wouldn't rush through it. We do have two hours. So I'm looking forward to hear this story.

I could always have you back, too, if we run out of time talking about the crisis there between Israel and Hamas.

So go for it. Well, I think you mentioned the sovereignty of God.

I definitely can relate my testimony to the sovereignty of God in relation to historical outlooks of God, how

God uses huge historical events in the lives of individuals to accomplish his task.

So my background is that my parents for many, many generations of Iraqi Jews and Iraqi Jews or Babylonian Jews, I should say, are the only

Jewish people that for two thousand five hundred years had a consistent existence outside of Jerusalem in the same place.

Of course, it goes back to the Babylonian exile. However, in the Second World War, too, something very similar to what happened in Germany, the

Kristallnacht happened in Iraq between June the night of June twenty twenty first,

I think in nineteen forty two, if I recall in that one night, about one hundred and twenty

Jews were murdered, synagogues, homes were burned and businesses were ransomed.

And that was kind of the beginning of the end of the of the existence of the

Jewish people in Iraq. Completely? Almost completely.

It took a while. Eventually, everybody came out and so part of my family escaped to to the neighboring country,

Iran, basically across the border. And other part of the family came to what to become later on the state of Israel that included both my parents, my family in Iraq.

They were very prominent family for many years and basically they left with with nothing.

So my grandmother in her lifetime twice, she became a refugee in our terms that we use today.

The first time was from Iraq and the second time actually was from Iran. And but so my parents are

Iraqi Jews, both of them. When I was three years old, my mom decided to take my sister, my brother and myself to visit our relatives that she haven't seen for ages in Iran.

It was supposed to be a two months, but he ended up being there for nine months. And we stay with my aunt and uncle.

My aunt is the sister of my father. She was married to an Iranian for some years.

They didn't have the children. At the end of the nine months, my mom decided that in order to to save the marriage and help, decided to allow me to stay after consultation, of course, with my father in Iran with my uncle and aunt.

So from age of three, I grew up with my uncle and aunt and I was basically on a student visa.

Every two, three years, I would come to Israel to visit my my parents and my sister and brother together with my my kind of adopted quote unquote parents.

And then, of course, in 1973, there was the Yom Kippur War.

Exactly 50 years ago and in that war, my uncle, he lost his nephew in the

Golan Heights. He was in a tank unit. He was killed the second day of the war. But for about almost 10 days, they did not know what happened to him at first.

He was they thought he was POW later. They thought he was missing in action. And after 10 days, the word came to us that he was he was killed.

And that impacted my uncle so much that he said he would do everything he can that I would not serve in the

Israeli army. And then and three years fast forward, 1976, the

Islamic Revolution started and as things were getting worse. I was contacted by the

Israeli consulate saying that I need to be ready with a small suitcase. And they will call me and within four hours,

I need to come to a certain place. And from there, they would airlift all

Israelis back to Israel. And of course, when that phone call came, my uncle got very nervous.

He tried to do everything he can to get me out of Iran before I would have to come to Israel.

And in God's sovereignty to some relatives, they were able to get a student application for me in San Diego, California, in a high school that had a dormitory.

I needed you know, I was 16 and a half. And so at the age of almost 17,

I flew halfway across the globe to the United States to complete my studies.

So I'm sure you've heard of the wandering Jew. So by the age of 17, I have lived already.

I've lived already in three different countries, Israel, Iran, and now in the States.

And it was there that through the Ministry of Navigators and also the

OPC church, that it's actually a PCA church now in San Diego called

New Life. And in the San Diego State University, for the first time,

I heard the gospel. I remember very clearly in that evening, the

Navigators, they had a Bible study, it was Friday night. My English was not so great, not that now it's much better.

It is much somewhat better, of course. But I remember that in one night, in those hour, hour and a half,

I heard the name Jesus more than I ever heard in my whole life.

And after the meeting, thankfully, two of the gentlemen, Tom Dawkins and Alan Priestlove together with my cousin, that about a year ago he passed away, sadly, they sat down and they shared the gospel with me.

They started with Genesis chapter three and later on verse 15 and two other prophecies.

And eventually they came to the New Testament, telling me that Jesus was actually the

Messiah, the Jewish Messiah that was promised in the Old Testament. And in my mind,

I say that can't be because I always grew up knowing that Jesus is the prophet of the

Christians. Muhammad is the prophet of the Muslims and Moses is ours.

And those three are mutually exclusive. They don't have anything in common. And but they told me, if you want to know more, read the

Gospel of John. And somehow, miraculously, when

I came to my dormitory room, I had a

Bible, both the Old and the New Testament that was given to me. And I thought of throwing it, but I left it because I didn't think it's right to throw a

Bible with the Old Testament. It would have been all right if it was just a

New Testament, I guess. Yes, definitely. So part of God's sovereignty was that how

I had that. And I started reading. That was the first time I'm opening the New Testament.

And then for about, I would say probably about it was six, seven months that I would read a passage from the

Gospel of John. And I would it would bring back some of the things that I heard during my time that I attended the synagogue and some of the stories that my grandmother from the

Old Testament used to tell me. It was like God is putting a big puzzle and each time another piece is falling into the place.

Of course, Tom Dorcus, my dear friend who is still alive, we're in contact, constant contact.

He kept coming to the dormitory and visiting, continuing to answer the question and sharing the

Gospel. And one of the things that he did was actually he took the

Bible that I was reading, again, the Old and the New Testament, and he put it on the floor and he stepped on it.

Wow. I almost wanted to to choke him to death.

The first sign of a truly born again Christian. And he really made a point.

And the point was that it's not the book that is holy, but what's in it, the words.

And I think some weeks after that, the Lord converted me and gave me a new heart.

And later on, I was baptized in the New Life OPC Church by Pastor George Mladen, who passed away a few months ago.

Unfortunately, I couldn't attend the memorial, but I spoke by Zoom in the service.

And of course, after that, I got very excited. I wrote a very long letter in Farsi to my uncle and aunt and Hebrew to my parents, telling them that I have found the

Messiah. Praise God. And I thought that they would be happy.

I don't know, four or five pages with all the prophecies from the

Old Testament. And I never heard back. So I sent them another letter.

Back then, there wasn't emails. The second time I got an answer. So I knew they got an email.

I mean, they got my mail and my letter, but nothing about all that I've shared.

And about a month later, one of my uncles came to L .A.

We had dinner at the end of the dinner with some folks, some of the families. He told me, well,

David, you probably think you've done a great thing by becoming a Christian. Let me tell you how we feel about it.

Probably would have been less shameful for us if you have become a drug addict.

Wow. Or even a criminal prison than to become a Christian. Wow. And I didn't know what to say.

And I literally turned red. I just couldn't almost,

I don't remember what I responded. I don't remember if I responded or said anything profound.

But that was the beginning of some of the challenges. Later on, they wanted to pull me out of my studies.

I studied at San Diego State University, did a double major in computers and business administration.

But by God's grace, they allowed me to stay. And that's where Navigators, Man to Man, and Scripture, Memory, and Bible Study came in.

And so when I came back to Israel, I was well discipled.

But eventually, my uncle and aunt kicked me out of the house.

They said, we don't have a son. You're dead. When my wife and I got married, nobody came to our wedding.

But eventually, the relationship healed to some degree. And so that's really my story.

And I just want to add another sentence or two, just to talk back with what

I started about the sovereignty of God. Yes. I think we always talk about sovereignty of God.

We think about His sovereignty in our lives, in the life of our family, or even our country.

But I think when I look back on my story,

I'm amazed at how God uses various historical, worldwide events, like, you know,

Second World War II and what happened to the Iraqi Jews after 2 ,500 years, the 73

War, and the Islamic Revolution that we suffer from it so much, even in these days.

And all of this, He used it so that He brought me from Israel to Iran to the

United States to hear the gospel. Now, of course, all of these huge events with huge widespread impact didn't happen for me.

But it's amazing, or I'm amazed how He uses that in my life to bring it to the gospel.

I mean, God could have used other means, but it's, you know, amazing and awesome to think of His sovereignty, how it mingles in our individual lives.

Amen. And I want you to pick up where you left off there, because I have some other questions to ask you about your salvation.

But we have to go to our first commercial break right now. If anybody would like to join us with a question of your own, for my guest today,

David Zadok, who is pastor of Grace and Truth Congregation in Qanat, Israel.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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That's royaldiadem .com. We are now back with my guest, David Zadok, a pastor of Grace and Truth Congregation in Qanat, Israel, and we are eventually going to be focusing on the theme of his assessment, his report of the conflict going on between Israel and Hamas, but we are still in the midst of hearing about his salvation testimony.

If you have a question of your own, please send it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. David, just out of curiosity, when you came to Christ at that time, what was your

Jewish faith, if any, as far as the intensity of it?

Was it just a nominal faith like many, many people around the world who profess to be

Jewish? Their faith is nominal. They may only keep a kosher home during high holy days and so on.

They may only go to the synagogue during high holy days, and it's interesting that I know a number of people who were raised in nominal

Jewish homes who did not keep kosher homes, very rarely went to the synagogue, didn't have much time for the

Hebrew scriptures at all, but when they converted to Christianity, they were still, the family was still outraged.

And I know of one case where a mother sat Shiva for her child, her son, as if he was dead after he converted to Christianity.

And the irony is, it's when he converted to Christianity that he fell in love with the

Hebrew scriptures more than ever and delved into them more deeply than ever before. And he was even, one could say, a lot more

Jewish after becoming a Christian than he was when he was a professed Jew. But if you could tell us where you were.

Yeah, I would say that I probably was more of a nominal, even though we attended the synagogue regularly.

I actually, I attended a Jewish school in Tehran. In fact,

I remember there was always a policeman standing at the entrance of our school, and it was a school that had even had a synagogue inside.

And I think my family, you know, they would keep kosher very rigorously, even though we were in Iran, they could buy kosher meat and another dairy.

And my family here in Israel, well, certainly my dad was more religious in a sense of attending synagogue regularly.

And he was very much, I would say, not a nominal

Jew, but he wasn't an Orthodox, but more traditional Jew. And I think with me,

I really didn't have a clear understanding of the

Jewish faith. And of course, Judaism has a lot of, it's much more than the

Hebrew scriptures. It's a lot of stories and what we would call the

Torah Shabal Peh. And so that was it.

And I think that really, as you mentioned about your friend, it definitely was the case with me that only after, you know, coming to faith in Christ that the

Lord really put the desire and the love for the scriptures and certainly for the

Old Testament. And all of a sudden, the Old Testament that quite few of the passages,

I remember citing them and reading them in synagogue or in various festivals,

I mean, like Passover and others, all of a sudden, not only they had a fuller meaning, but as Paul says, you know, in Colossians about, you know, the shadow and the substance in Christ, I saw the fulfillment.

And that, I think, was part of the process that God worked in my life during those six, seven months.

I mentioned about the puzzle, each time another piece would fall in place and those scriptures would make sense, kind of, in the true meaning in Christ.

So I would say that I probably kind of escaped one stage in a sense of, because, you know, in a normal case, you know, you would have

Jewish people that, you know, very well versed in the Hebrew scriptures.

And then when they come to faith, a lot of that makes sense to them, which me, you know, again,

I was only about 17 years, I mean, I was a teenage. And so I didn't have much understanding, or I should say, any deep understanding of the

Old Testament. And I kind of jumped over that right into the fulfillment in Christ and the

New Testament and how Christ fulfilled that. And it was only much later in my

Christian life that I saw the full picture of God's redemptive plan of salvation, beginning in Genesis 3 all the way to Revelation.

Now, the anti -Semitism that is professed by some who call themselves

Christian, like even many in the Nazi Party in World War II, even neo -Nazis, they may use the term

Christian, although Hitler hated Christianity, just viewed it as a weak, pathetic, and impotent branch of Judaism, really.

And many of the hierarchy in the Nazi Party were involved in the occult and so on, pagan ideology and idolatry.

But is that the reason why there is such a visceral revulsion over someone from a

Jewish background becoming a Christian? It is odd, because you regularly hear about nominal

Jewish people being atheists or agnostic, you hear about some of them dabbling in some form of Buddhism or other false religions, and there isn't the uproar over that, like when you hear about people coming to Christ from the

Jewish background. And I'm wondering if that, in your opinion, is the reason for the shock and horror.

But it also still puzzles me, because it would seem that would require a complete lack of ignorance about the many, many, many compassionate, kind -hearted, true, regenerate

Christians throughout history who have sought to rescue and protect the Jews from harm, even some that lost their lives in the

Netherlands and so on. Corey Ten Boom's family is just a notable example.

But if you could, tell us about what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, I think that probably there are two or three issues here.

The first thing is that, you know, we have to realize that from a

Jewish perspective, everybody who is not

Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist is a Christian. So to them, for example, you know, you think of the

Crusaders, you think of the Inquisition time, you think of the pogroms in Russia, and of course, you mentioned much of the

Nazis. To them, all of these were Christians. And so you can see that one aspect of that, that's horrible things that have been done to us by Christians.

You know, I think I might have mentioned that, you know, my family kept reminding me that more Jewish people and more

Jews were killed by Christians than by Muslims, which is true.

You just add six million just in Germany in the Second World War, too.

That's far, far more than any Jews being killed by others, by Muslims or any other.

I think that's one part of it. The second part of that, related to that, is

I think most Jewish people don't really know anything about Jesus, except that he's the prophet of Christians.

He stole the Old Testament from us. And many think that, sadly, that, you know, he was, obviously they don't believe in him as the virgin birth or as the son of God, but they think that he was a bastard.

So that's two parts of that. They don't know that he was born as a

Jew, lived, died, and raised as a Jew. In fact, many people here say that the best kept secret in Israel is that Jesus was a

Jew. And then the third part, I think that we can see that throughout,

I think anti -Semitism, anti -Israeli that we are seeing nowadays as well, whether it's by cold -cold

Christians or others, is really part of a spiritual war, a spiritual war that we know started in Genesis chapter 3, and it would continue until Christ returned.

And we see that battle that started in Genesis chapter 3, we see already in Genesis 4, the first murder, throughout the

Old Testament history, we see how Satan used people to try to destroy the seed of the woman.

It was in Egypt, later on to the various nations, the

Edomites and the Philistines, and then later on with Haman in the book of Esther, and that story continues.

And so we have to realize that it is a spiritual battle against the people of God and against the seed of the woman.

And Satan is trying, as he tried in so many ways, to destroy

Christ. He's also trying to destroy his people and his witness, and often attacks the

Church. Yes, he does. Now, what makes the story even more complicated is that,

I don't know if you experience it in Israel, but here in the United States, we who are

Reformed, who are not dispensationalists, who see much more of a continuity between Israel and the

Church than non -Reformed Christians do. Most of us who are

Reformed believe that Israel is fulfilled in the

Church or extended with the Church, whereas dispensationalists and others who are not

Reformed tend to think of them as completely separate entities, and have very often labeled us who are

Reformed anti -Semitic, ironically, just because we have a different view of eschatology and the actual role of the physical nation in the

Middle East in biblical prophecy. So I was just wondering what your thoughts and experiences were and are on that.

Yeah, I think first of all, I think to me, the worst kind of anti -Semitism is those people who are not willing to share the

Gospel with the Jewish people. In fact, in a wider point, I think any people who are trying to guard, quote -unquote, the

Gospel from any group of people are committing the worst crime. That's right.

Like John Hagee, for instance. Exactly, and a few others.

So I think that's one aspect of it. I think the other thing is that, you know,

God has made a covenant with us. You know,

I certainly believe in the covenant. And as it says in Romans 19 and 11, it really brings us to the point that while in the year,

I mean, the time when Jesus came, we as Jewish people, for the most part, we rejected our

Messiah. And yet God did not reject us, you know, because the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

And I think that if we read truly Romans 9, 10 and 11, especially

Apostle Paul, or I should say Rabbi Shaul, in a sense, he really builds in those three chapters his logic in a very great, inspired words.

After all, he was a rabbi, and he wrote with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Because it starts with telling about his desire for the

Jewish people to come to faith. And then he talks about the sovereignty of God in salvation.

He talks about the clay and the potter. And it talks about, you know,

God saying, you know, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. And then from there, he comes to speaking about that there would be time that all

Israel would be saved. And I think that really, when we look deeply,

I think that Paul was trying to answer a question to some of his audience, quote, unquote, asking the question, well, if God is sovereign, how is it that the

Jewish people, of all the people, they rejected the Messiah? I mean,

Jesus said he has come to the last sheep of the house of Israel, and yet we rejected him.

And so he says that God is not done. But I think that amazing thing happens if we think for a second, hypothetically, what would have happened if at the time of Christ, we as Jewish people would have embraced him as our

Messiah? Of course, this is a hypothetical question.

I think that most likely what would have happened is that faith in Christ would have remained within the geographical and ethnical boundaries of the

Jewish people and the land of Israel as it was in the time of Christ. But actually, because of the coming of Christ and the rejection of the

Jewish people, the gospel went out to the whole world. Amen. So in a sense, and again, this whole program, we're talking about sovereignty of God.

In his sovereignty, he allowed the Jewish people to reject

Christ so that the gospel would go from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and the remotest part of the world.

In fact, tomorrow night in our midweek Bible study, I will be finishing going to the

Book of Acts in the chapter 28. In fact, could you pick right up where you left off in the

Book of Acts chapter 28? We have to go to our midweek break. Sure. Please be patient with us, folks.

The midweek break is longer than the other breaks, and please use this time to respond to our advertisers, keeping in mind that they are absolutely essential to the survival of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

We'll be right back. Have you noticed the gap that exists between the Sunday morning sermon and the

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us a first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Right before the break,

David, you may remember you were just mentioning that you are in the midst of a

Bible study on Acts 28, and if you want to pick up where you left off there. Yeah, I mean,

Acts chapter one starts, you know, when Christ is commissioning the disciples, saying they shall wait for the

Holy Spirit to come and they should, they should, and then they shall be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, the remotest parts of the world.

We can obviously divide the book of Acts into those parts.

You know, the first seven chapters is Jerusalem, and later on goes to Judea, and then

Samaria and Judea, and later on to the remotest parts. And we get to the last chapter, book of Acts, Paul sitting in Rome, even though he said that he has washed his hands, he would go now to Gentiles.

He's sitting with the Jewish people in Rome, arguing with them, showing them from the scriptures, the

Hebrew scriptures, that Christ is the Messiah. So I think that when we look at that, that Paul is really showing that there was a purpose in the

Jewish people rejecting the Messiah so that the gospel can go to the

Gentiles. And it's no wonder that, again, Paul, Rabbi Shaul as we may call him, the

Jewish rabbi that studied under the Gamaliel, he was the one who brought the gospel to the

Gentiles. And it was also Peter who shared the gospel with the first Gentile, Cornelius, that was converted.

And God has to appear to him three times in a vision in order to convince him that the gospel is also for the

Gentiles. So God is not done, you know, in a sense, you know,

Christ has fulfilled the promises. But in one sense, the church hasn't replaced

Israel in a sense that still there is time for Israel, the

Jewish people, to come to faith to the Messiah. Amen. And God has his elect, and always has had his elect, from out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, including

Jews. Yes, especially the Jews. After all, the gospel is first to the

Jews and then to the Gentiles or to the

Greek, as it says in Romans. Yes. And in regard to your eschatological understanding of the state of Israel today, do you believe that even though it is a secular state, it is neither religiously

Jewish or Christian or otherwise officially, that it is still a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, or do you believe it is a valuable thing to pray for the state in which you live?

Because we want to see the conversion of the lost wherever they live in the world, and perhaps as far as a sign goes, what greater sign of God's power and grace and mercy than to, in mass, save Jews and Israel, which is something that, as far as I know, most

Reformed people, regardless of their eschatology, are praying and hoping for and would delight in seeing.

But tell us about your own understanding of the state of Israel in biblical prophecy.

Yeah, I do believe that the coming of 1948 of Israel as a state, it is a fulfillment of the prophecies.

I can't necessarily point you to one passage and say, here, this is the fulfillment that God says in the 20th century or in such a time

Israel would become a state. However, there are two things that I think is important.

Sometimes, again, I'm talking in a wider perspective.

In God's economy, the land is not important, even though land has a lot of importance.

Christ didn't die for the land, even though he died in the land.

God is concerned about people and about bringing them to the saving knowledge of his son.

And so the land and the state of Israel are definitely being used in fulfilling that calling.

And I often talk about how God has restored the

Hebrew language and the land of Israel in order to pave the way for the restoration of the people.

You know, the Hebrew language for almost 2 ,000 years was not a spoken language. Only in the 19th century, a very amazing

Lithuanian Jew by the name of Eliezer ben Yehuda, he started in the kind of revolution or restoration of the modern

Hebrew. He was criticized by his countrymen. In fact, he had to leave

Jerusalem and went to Tel Aviv. And there he worked out the

Hebrew language. And all of a sudden, the Hebrew language became a spoken language and a common language, not just for reading the scripture and the other writings, but a vernacular language.

Then, of course, in 1948, when Israel became a state, God bringing us back to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And the two things, the restoration of the language and land, enabled the restoration of the people.

So because of that, very soon the church among the

Jewish people was once again reestablished. In fact, I think it's interesting to think, to look at the statistics.

Even though we need to always be careful with statistics, we can play around with them.

But in 1948, when Israel became a state in the land of Israel, there were 800 ,000

Jewish people. And at that time, there were roughly maybe about 24, 25

Jewish Christians, Jewish believers, Messianic Jews, however we may use that term.

But 75 years later, the

Jewish population of Israel today, I mean, the Israel population is a little bit less than 10 million, but only 22 % are

Arabs. But even if we take the whole population of 10 million, and today some statistics say that there's maybe about 30 ,000 believers,

Jewish believers in Israel. So when you compare those two figures, the

Jewish population in the land of Israel in 75 years has grown about roughly 12, 15 times or 15 fold.

However, the number of believers, even if we take only 24 ,000 or 25 ,000, from 24 to 25 ,000 has grown 1 ,000 fold.

So when you look at those two figures, again, they're not 100%, you know, the exact figures, but that's roughly the number.

You can see the importance, not just this of the state of Israel, but the promises that we read about in Romans, that Paul talks about in this way, all

Israel shall be saved. Israel today has the largest number of Jewish people.

In other words, the majority of Jewish people today live in a tiny piece of land called the state of Israel, the land of Israel, a piece of land that everybody wants a piece of it.

But it is this land that you have Jewish people from all over the world that are now all of a sudden speaking one language, and they are concentrated in one tiny land.

I have to tell you a short story about our older daughter.

She's actually now serving in the reserve. She's almost 26.

When she served in the military, she was in the education course, and her job was teaching

Hebrew to new immigrant soldiers. At the end of the three -month

Ulpan that they were graduating in the military, at one of those events, the base commander invited my wife and I, Etienne and I, to attend.

And in that time, there were, I think if I remember, about 140 soldiers that finished their

Hebrew course in the military as part of their first training and the boot camp.

And those 140 soldiers, I think they were from about 40 or 42 different countries.

And when you look at, and when you think of this, you know, here are Jewish people from 42 different countries.

They come learning the Hebrew language, and they would speak that language.

And when we share the gospel and through our publishing and through our evangelistic books in Hebrew, when those books come to them, no matter where they are from, from those 40 -some countries, they can hear the gospel in the language that they can read and understand.

And I think that that's the amazing thing that we need to focus on and pray for the salvation of the

Jewish people so that the time would come that we would once again become the light of the nations.

Amen. Let me ask you a couple of questions about things you already said. When you said that the efforts to restore the use of Hebrew were rejected in Jerusalem, were you speaking of the modern

Hebrew? I mean, was not Hebrew used in the worship services in the synagogue?

Yeah, it definitely was used in the synagogue. As I mentioned,

I think, maybe briefly, it was used to read the Hebrew scriptures and various prayers.

However, much of the prayers in the synagogues are actually in Aramaic.

In fact, the Babylonian Talmud, which is much higher even than the

Jerusalem Talmud, is in Aramaic. Many of the prayers, you know, when a person, when a

Jewish person dies, there is a special prayer that we offer. It's called Kaddish. The Kaddish, all of that prayer that is recited is in Aramaic.

And there are still orthodox, very orthodox religious people that they don't speak

Hebrew because they believe that this is the language, this is a holy language that God has spoken to us.

We cannot use it. That was one why they thought that he cannot revive the

Hebrew language. It cannot become a common language. Yes. In fact, the Hasidics, I think, many of the

Hasidics still believe that, don't they? Yeah, yeah, definitely. And that's why they speak

Yiddish, many of them. They don't speak Hebrew. And by the way, it's interesting that many of our curse words in Hebrew initially were taken from Arabic and English.

We use some of your curse words. Our contribution to the Jewish people.

Sadly, we have now developed also our own curse words in Hebrew, but we still use many of the of the

English terms. Now, it is fascinating that when I was interviewing your friend and former pastor,

Baruch Maoz, he said that he is, I believe, I can't remember if he said he's still in the midst of it or completed it, but translating the entire canon of the

Scripture, including the Hebrew Scriptures, into modern Hebrew. Yes, that's actually one of the black projects of Hagafen.

Okay. And that we translated first the Old Testament into modern

Hebrew. It's a five volume. For the first time ever in history, correct? Yes, yes.

It's called the Edud. And just as we are speaking, the New Testament of that same series is being printed.

So in about two weeks time before the end of the year, we would have all of the Old and the New Testament in modern

Hebrew. Of course, the New Testament has been existed in modern Hebrew by the

Bible Society. And we have the Delitzsch translation that was done by by Delitzsch, the

German. But when he translated the Old, the New Testament, the Hebrew language still was not, was not used.

There is a project now done by the Trinitarian Bible Society in England, in London, that they are updating the

Delitzsch translation. But the Old Testament has never been translated to modern

Hebrew. That was a project that Bruch initiated and worked on it and continues to just finish the

New Testament. It took us about 16 years because we wanted to make sure that everything is translated accurately and as accurate as we can.

It's mainly for teenagers, but many of the immigrants who came to Israel, they're using that even now to learn

Hebrew because they're reading the scriptures and they're learning it, reading the modern Hebrew.

In fact, we're now developing an audio Bible of that. Oh, great. Well, who knows what the

Lord may do in his sovereignty by drawing the curiosity of non -Christian

Jews to not only want to read the

Hebrew scriptures in modern Hebrew, but also perhaps the curiosity will lead them to delve into the

New Testament in modern Hebrew, and who knows what the Lord will do. That's our hope and prayer.

Yes. Amen. Okay, we have Holbrook in Peacock, Alabama, who said, having heard your belief that the modern state of Israel is a part of the unfolding of biblical prophecy today, do you believe to disagree with you on that is anti -Semitic?

That is something that a lot of people would say. A lot of Christians, especially if they're dispensationalists, would say that, and maybe a great portion, if merely the entirety of the

Messianic movement, would say that. They would accuse people of anti -Semitism, even if they have a passion and a love for the

Jewish people, they want to see them come to Christ, and so on. But if they disagree eschatologically, they disagree with the place of the state of Israel in biblical prophecy, they're anti -Semitic.

How do you respond to that? Well, you know, I would be very careful in using the term anti -Semitic.

I think that, again, to me, the most important thing—and again, many people may disagree with me—the most important thing is bringing the

Gospel to the Jewish people. Right. The land of Israel, I do believe that it's a fulfillment of God's prophecy, but more important than that,

I mean, there are many, many prophecies that have been fulfilled in Christ and are being fulfilled and have been fulfilled, but I think what has not yet been fulfilled is that all

Israel shall be saved. And I think that God can use the state of Israel and using mightily the state of Israel.

But by the way, we talked about the Jewish people in Israel, but there is a large number of Jewish people outside of Israel that are also coming to faith in Christ in other countries, particularly in the

U .S., but not only there. I think it was in one of Joel Rosenberg's reports on All Israel News that he estimated that maybe there is about close to a million

Jewish people. Today, the Jewish population is about—the worldwide

Jewish population is roughly about fourteen and a half million, and one million, that's a significant number.

So, God is using all the means to fulfill

His promises. Okay.

We have Blanche in Coconut Creek, Florida, and Blanche says,

How did you get along with your Muslim neighbors when living in Iraq and Iran, before you were forced out of Iraq and then when you wound up living in Iran?

Yeah, well, I have to say that I never actually lived in Iraq. I do like to visit there one day.

I don't know if that would be possible with the current situation. But in Iran, when

I was living there, we have a great, great relationship with our Muslim neighbors.

We have some Armenians as well in our neighborhood. We lived in Tehran, which was a large city, and we lived under the reign of the

Shah, the previous king or the last king before the

Islamic Revolution and before Khomeini came. And the relationship was great.

My uncle, he was a merchant in the famous Tehran bazaar.

He used to bring goods from communist China and sell them in the bazaar.

Most of his customers were Muslim. We didn't feel any threat.

We would go to synagogue freely. I would go to school by myself, ride the bus, and we had a great relationship.

You know, and I think that even today, if we look at the country of Iran, which, by the way, as I'm sure you know,

Iran and the Iranians is the largest growing number of the churches, the largest growing in that country and among the

Iranians. But today, I think most of the Iranians, they don't hate

Israel. In fact, I have many Iranian friends outside of Iran in Turkey and other places that often, you know, during the

Day of Independence, they send me, you know, flags of Israel and congratulations and many other things.

And even now during this horrific war, many of them are writing and telling me that they are praying for us and they are standing with us.

And well, let's get back to or should I say move forward to the primary theme of our show is your observations and assessments and updates on what is now happening in your midst during this horrific conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Tell us, starting from the beginning of what your reaction was when you first began to hear of the abominations that have been occurring, the brutal, satanic way that Hamas has kidnapped, tortured, raped, and murdered not only

Israeli men, but women and children. Tell us about this conflict from your point of view right now.

You know, actually, when it happened, I just on Saturday, October 7, our church evangelist and myself just landed in Helsinki in Finland.

And we flew Friday night, we arrived there at about 6 a .m.

We went and we said, let's sleep for two or three hours, and then we get ready for our first meeting.

And about 7 .30, I received a call from Eti, my wife, and she said,

David, have you heard? There is a war. And I just woke up after about,

I don't know, an hour, hour and a half of sleep. And I said, we're here in Finland? Because I immediately thought of Russia and Finland, you know, they have a common border and the war with Russia and Ukraine.

I said, we're here in Finland? She said, no, no, here in Gaza, in Israel. And she relayed that to me.

And then about half an hour later, one of our elders sent a message to the church, to our

WhatsApp group, that due to the situation, we have to cancel the meeting.

And it was then that I realized we are doing anything we can to come back. So we came back on Tuesday, early in the morning.

And as I was driving back, and I saw the waves of the cars of the reservists near, not very far from our home, and everything that I was hearing,

I realized that in two days, I have landed in a totally different country.

And it took us about, I would say, two, three days to realize what's going on.

We immediately set up an emergency fund in our church through the generous support of many friends.

We've been able to support various war efforts. But the horrific of this war,

I think, within a few days, our president said that since Holocaust, there has not been one day in which so many

Jewish people have been killed so brutally. And I think only within, after two, three weeks, the atrocities were coming out as videos were being found of the baby being put in the oven, and a pregnant woman that they opened her belly and took the baby out and shot her and the baby.

And just the things that you hear, you think, well, this cannot be human.

This cannot be people who've been created in the image of God.

I mean, any war is horrible. In war, there is always innocent people who die.

Most of the wars that the world has faced until,

I would say, 10, 20 years ago, has been armies against armies.

But we are facing, even since 2005, when

Israel left Gaza, both military, of course, and civilians, was one of the most painful periods in our modern history, where Israeli soldiers have to uproot

Jews from their homes, from their synagogues. And yet, very soon,

Gaza, that was ruled and given back, and very soon,

Hamas took over and they murdered the Fatah, the people by throwing them sometimes from the third floor, alive.

They've been shooting endless rockets over cities of Israel, targeting.

Those missiles have been landed, targeting, as much as they can, civilians, not just military bases, but civilians, schools, hospitals.

And again, in the goodness of God, and part of the protecting the people of Israel with the

Iron Dome, it has really saved literally tens of thousands of lives.

A few years ago, one of those missiles landed in our street, just a few homes from us.

And the sharpness from it, just were, you know, if people were in the area standing, it could kill literally hundreds of people.

And so, you know, you think that, and I think one of the struggles

I had as a

Jewish people and as a Christian, you know, and I served in the military for about 19 years as a major in the

IDF, is you see those images, you hear those stories.

And not long ago, about 10 days ago, my wife and I were invited into the foreign ministry in Jerusalem with some bishops from Africa.

And there was mother of one of the hostages that told the story of her son, Hirsch, that from one of the

GoPro cameras that fell from the helmet of one of the terrorists, it was seen that her son was injured.

His right arm was almost cut and they dragged him into Gaza.

Back then, for about almost 60 days, she has not heard one word about her son. Is he alive?

Yes. And so in one sense, as an

Israeli seeing those, I wanted to annihilate and destroy everything in Gaza.

But Jesus said, we need to love our enemies. Amen. Can you pick up right where you left off there?

Because we have to go to our final break. And don't go away, folks. We are going to be right back after these messages.

If you have any questions to send, send them immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back.

It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,

Dr. Joe Morecraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005.

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Morecraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio,

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We're now back with my guest David Zduk, and you were just talking before the break about speaking with,

I can't remember if it was one or two parents of someone who was kidnapped by the

Hamas. It was one of the mothers that she came to that meeting in the foreign ministry.

And so I think that this is really where we are. And at the end of the day, you know, again, we started the program with the sovereignty of God.

I think we should certainly end it with the sovereignty of God. And I think that our hope and prayer is that through these dark times that we are going to, both us

Israelis and the Palestinians in Gaza, that God would light the shine of Christ, the light of Christ.

And I think that that's really, we feel that this is the time for us as a church, as a congregation, and as believers in the land to call our people to repentance and to faith in the

Messiah. And our prayer is that also

God would use this to bring many of the Palestinians to Christ, because those people need

Christ as bad as we need them. One of the things I've been doing on a personal level and to some friends is providing support for some of the

Arab churches in the West Bank and to some friends, to some of the

Christians in Gaza, to provide them with food, again, showing not just the love of Christ, but the unity that we have in Christ, even though we are

Israelis and Palestinians and our two countries, or not Palestine, it's not a country, but our two nations are in a war.

But we are still brothers in Christ. And as hard as it is. Amen.

And it was very moving to hear how, you know, your guttural, instantaneous reaction might have been to annihilate those involved in the terrorist attacks against your people, but that quickly changed to, because of your new heart in Christ, to having compassion for their lost condition.

And that's something that we all should learn from. Yeah. This war has taught us a lot, no doubt.

About ourselves, about man, the gravity of man, and about the light of Christ.

And we are now celebrating Hanukkah, the Feast of Light. Christ said that he is the light of the world.

We hope that his light would shine even more brighter in these days and in our times.

It's almost like a diamond, when you put a diamond in the background of the black velvet, it shines even greater.

Well, I want to remind our listeners of your website. If anyone wants to find out more about Grace and Truth Congregation and Kenot Israel, and perhaps to find out how they could support your labors there in a very important place in the world, go to graceandtruth .org.

Grace, I'm sorry, it's graceandtruth .org .il for Israel. Graceandtruth .org

.il for Israel. It has been such an honor and a privilege to have you on the program.

I look forward to many frequent returns by you to be interviewed again, if you are willing.

And my door in this studio is always open to you, brother. So I hope to be speaking with you again very soon.

Okay, thank you so much, Grace. I appreciate that. And I'm getting familiar with your radio program.

I saw some of the folks that recommended it, many of them my dear friends, including

John McArthur. We have a great partnership in our publishing with Ligonier Ministries.

And Steve Lawson was, when I did my doctorate degree at Masters, he was the head of the program.

Praise God. Well, I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater