Israel, Jesus, & Unrest w/ Dr. Mitch Glaser

The Middle East. Israel. Unrest. A nation looking for a Messiah. How should an ambassador for Christ feel? How should we respond? 

Our conversation with Dr. Mitch Glaser, president and CEO of Chosen People Ministries, traces a 132‑year arc of faith and compassion that still meets the moment—on New York streets, in Israeli bomb shelters, and across the feeds shaping Gen Z.

If you want to be an effective ambassador for Christ to people coming from a different faith background…or if you would just love to hear an incredible story with lots of laughs and wisdom…you will find a lot to love in this episode!

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Thank you for listening and Go M.A.D. today!

Transcript

On The Road And Introductions

SPEAKER_04 0:06

Welcome everyone to go mad on the road. Now you're gonna notice that the set looks a little different. We look different. Uh we're definitely, I don't know the last time I wore a sport coat, but uh the place we're at It was 1994, Evan and my calendar calendar.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Yeah, it was a big thing.

Meet Dr. Mitch Glaser

SPEAKER_04 0:24

If you happen to hear background noise, we have no idea when a song might burst out around us. Uh, but we are excited because by being on the road here at a convention here this week, we are able to have a special guest with us, Dr. Mitch Glazer, the president and CEO of Chosen People Ministries. Thank you so much for being with us today, Mitch. We've been looking forward to uh to being able to have a conversation with this. I've been looking forward to it too.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Brad and I both, um our dad and Lon are um just love chosen people, the ministry, um, on a personal level, tell our kids about it. Um it's an honor to be here with you today.

SPEAKER_04 1:03

Yeah, we're we're excited because uh this program, as our listeners know, is all about trying to help people be effective ambassadors for Christ and to make a difference. And you are doing that in a key way. Could you uh share with us, first of all, Chosen People Ministries? We're familiar with it, but for any of our uh listeners that may not be chosen people ministries, what's the heart of it?

Origins Of Chosen People Ministries

SPEAKER_02 1:24

So we're 132 years old, and I'm not the founder. I was gonna say you look really I'm the well-preserved founder of Chosen People. There we go. I'm actually the seventh president of Chosen People Ministries in 132 years. So, you know, pretty good job security. There we go. I like that. And so Chosen People Ministries uh began in 1894 when a Hungarian rabbi came over from uh Hungary, obviously, and he came for a lot of reasons. Uh he according to his autobiography, he was looking for the Messiah, but was in a very very uh sort of an oppressive uh atmosphere in Hungary, and he really couldn't think it through. And so one of the reasons he came was spiritually motivated. Uh he was part of a Hasidic group. Uh that's you know, Reform, conservative, Orthodox, Chasidic. So he was part of a much more mystical group. And uh he actually was reading Daniel chapter 9, you know, that great prophecy of of the actually of the death of Yeshua, of Jesus, and uh and the 70 weeks of Daniel, and and he was looking for answers. And so one day he was walking uh on the Lower East Side of Manhattan because he wanted to go visit his Hasidic rabbi. He was on his way, he's only like 22, 23 years old, and he passed a Dutch Reformed church.

unknown 2:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Now there were a lot of Dutch Reformed churches around the New York area and northern New Jersey and places like that. And so he was walking past a Dutch Reformed church and saw a sign in Yiddish, which is the language my parents spoke when they didn't want me to know what they were saying. It's a secret Jewish one. So it's it's a lot of Ashkenazic Jews. It sounds, it sounds like German and it's written in Hebrew characters. Oh. And it's uh very it's it's made a little renaissance, but anyway. So he was preaching, uh, whoever was inside there in Yiddish, and it was a like a 20-year-old uh Polish Jewish guy who had just come over from uh uh the UK and was working with Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. It's a great story. With Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church as a missionary to the immigrant Jewish people between 1880 and World War I, about two million Jewish people came over, mostly from Eastern Europe. And so Fifth Avenue Presbyterian wanted to reach them. They found this young guy. Uh he was trained in a seminary uh in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he spoke fluent Yiddish. I don't even know if he spoke English. And so he was he was preaching a message that day. Leopold Cohen would not walk into the church, because most Jews would, especially those kinds of Jewish people, they never walk into a church. And so he was he saw the sign, was attracted, he was listening, but he had been searching. And so he heard what the message was, and he wouldn't go in but waited for the preacher to come out. And when he came out, he engaged him in Yiddish, of course, and it just so happens that this missionary had just received a hundred copies of the Yiddish New Testament from England. Oh my goodness. And he said, Well, I've got something for you to read. And so we're doing a new version of it, this Yiddish Changes. So it's one of our major projects right now. Okay. Well, obviously, we're great, grateful because there's some interest in the gospel among Ultra Orthodox Jews. So that's exciting. Anyway, so uh he read he read it, had a lot of questions. He met with this guy by the name of Hermann Weiswork, and uh they met and he accepted Jesus. And then, of course, he needed more training, had a burden to reach his own people, went back to Scotland, studied theology, came back to this little Dutch village on the other side of Manhattan called Brooklyn, and uh and set up shop in a swept-out horse stable, and began having public meetings, Sabbath dinners, and he was uh and he was taking care of the immigrants. That's what was so beautiful about it. And and that's our DNA, even to this day, uh where we do a lot of this kind of benevolence work. And uh so Rabbi Cohn started a medical dispensary. Um he had he gave gave away food and clothing, taught them English, did vocational training, and a lot of the stuff that we've been doing over the last number of years, particularly in Israel, as there's been massive immigration of Russian Jewish, Russian-speaking Jewish people from Ukraine and Russia, and many of those other FSU former Soviet Union uh regions. And we've had the most incredible ministry of doing benevolent physical help, giving material help. And uh it's been a great blessing.

Benevolence As A Bridge To Hearts

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Is that how a Christian uh reaches a Jewish person uh with the with the Messiah?

SPEAKER_02 6:30

To be blunt, in America it probably won't work that well. Uh, Jewish people are suburbanized and don't have a I mean you're not gonna you're not gonna you're gonna not gonna get a Jewish doc a doctor for a Jewish person, right? I mean so but the principle's true. And that is love always succeeds. And if you understand people's genuine needs, which means you need to listen to them, you still have people who are lonely, who are getting old, who have needs that you can discover. And if believers are sensitive to that, what no matter where they are in the world, then you can show love by doing something. And not a Jewish person understands. A lot of people who think they know something about Judaism talk about the belief system. That's not the heart of Judaism. The heart of Judaism is what you do, not what you believe. Wow. And so Jewish people, when they see what people do, evaluate this spirituality on the basis of what they do, not on the basis of what they believe. And so that's a great gateway into the heart of a Jewish person. And that works everywhere. And there are a lot of parallels today.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Faith open love, the greatest of these is love. And it turns out that's that's the language that everybody understands if you start there.

SPEAKER_04 7:51

So that's from the history of chosen people, but how did you uh encounter Jesus? How did you get connected with chosen people?

SPEAKER_02 8:00

In many ways, it was a it was a similar testimony, you know. Now, he was a Hasidic Jewish guy who really uh studied the Torah and the Talmud, was a really good Jewish boy. I was a good Jewish boy up until about my bar mitzvah at age 13. And then I became a very bad Jewish boy. And uh I was living in a very rough neighborhood called Queens, New York. Yeah. No, it wasn't rough. There were rougher neighborhoods. No, I was a spoiled brat, really, is what it was. And so my parents didn't deserve me. And so I I got involved with all sorts of things I shouldn't have got involved with. And of course, the capstone of it was was this was 1968, 69. So I got all involved with drugs. And then uh I went to uh the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, and I actually majored it in unregistered pharmacy. Really?

SPEAKER_04 8:51

That was a major refrain. Registered pharmacy. You don't say Is that what they called it? I gotta look that up.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Well, I'm I'm guessing that's off the books. Uh it was good, it was it there weren't many taxes that I had to pay. Oh my goodness. And then I uh minored in marketing. So when I turned 19, because I left Bridgeport, Connecticut, University of Birchworth, went out to San Francisco where everybody was going. And uh me and a bunch of Jewish guys built a houseboat in Sasolito, California.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

The best I could say is that it did float. It was horrible. It's like we established our own like ghetto. It was just terrible.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Were you an official hippie?

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Well, I didn't have a flower in my hair, but you didn't like the flowers in the hair. Gotcha. Yes, I was absolutely a hippie. And and so, but what happened was is my two best friends became believers in Jesus. Uh, they were witness to by a couple of Gentile Christians who picked her up hitchhiking. Oh wow. And they ended up leading her to the Lord and taking her to the to the uh such a typical story, but it's so real to me. And and took her up to a commune in southern Oregon.

SPEAKER_04 10:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

And uh, and there were like 50, 60 people, all ex-hippies, you know, praising Jesus. You know, I'd say a third of them were Jewish, and most of the Jews were from New York. And so she got discipled there, if you want to call it that, and then then came back down to share the gospel with me and with my other friends. And of course, I thought she was nuts because my Hebrew school was more Orthodox, so I knew more than all of them. Didn't believe a word, but I knew more. And so it broke through. And so I went up to Oregon. Now, this is where parallels Leopold Come. So when I got there, I found out that in Cous Bay, Oregon, this little commune was out on a peninsula, and the peninsula was owned by Warehauser. Now, Warehauser cut trees and made paper and other things. Okay. Turn out that Warehauser actually, I didn't know it or could care less at that time, and I wouldn't know what it was, but it was a it was a Christian business. Where the Warehouses were very godly family. And so maybe they prayed for their properties. I don't know. But this was filled with hippies, and I got up there and I was ready to argue with the old guy who was in his 50s, the old guy who was running the place, had a long beard, no mustache. Kind of looked like a cross between an Amish person and a Hasidic rabbi, you know. And but I was really angry at him for converting my my friends, and I I I I was assumed he had drugged them, you know. And so I was very upset with the guy, and he just smiled, looked at me, said, Those are good questions, Mitch, which they were terrible questions. You know, he says, those are very good questions. It was my first experience with Christian love. Wow. And patience. And and honestly, I don't want to over-dramatize it, but I saw Jesus in his face. Oh wow. I just didn't know it was Jesus at first. So kind, so wonderful, so loving.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

Wow.

The Bible, Love, And A Phone Booth

SPEAKER_02 12:06

And he kept handing me a Bible. He said, Look, if you you've got good questions, but here are better answers. Just read the book. I said, uh, what's the new part there, you know? He says, start with yours. I said, start with yours. I love it. I said, so you know it's ours, huh? Pretty savvy for a for an Oregonian, you know? And uh who didn't know many Jewish people. So I began reading the Bible and I loved it. Went back down to Cal Northern California, and I pray, God, if you're you're there, show me how to get to you. Wow. And I had just been so love-bombed by these people, and they fed me and they took us on hikes, and I kept saying, Why do you do all this? And they said, No reason. We just we just love you guys. I thought that drove me crazy. And so it provoked me to jealousy, Romans 11, 11. Wow, right? Wow. And and so uh I prayed, and that night, well, it probably happens to a lot of people. I found the New Testament in a phone booth in the middle of the Redwood Forest.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Oh, of course. I've heard by many, like so many. Uh oh.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

And the good and and the best part was it was a good news for modern man, which I would not have selected that translation, but I only had half a brain because of the drugs I had used. So they it had dripped, you know. And so I began reading Good News for Modern Man, who was in my it was in regular English. I mean, if God had left me with a King James, I don't know what I don't know what I would have done. Yeah. I would have, I could barely handle a new American standard, you know. And so I began reading it, and I I just couldn't believe that I prayed and God left a New Testament in a the one phone booth in the middle of a camp. My goodness. Now it was a campground, but I didn't know this at the time. It was actually a Christian retreat center. Oh really? So there were Bibles everywhere. Oh my God. But I never noticed them. Never noticed them.

SPEAKER_04 14:03

I have to ask, when you say good news for modern men, is that the one that said good news on the cover? Yeah. Oh man, I saw that growing up a lot. That uh in the ministry.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

You know, with the spin figures. Yeah. Yeah, but I felt comfortable because, you know, because Jesus had long hair like me. You know, and so I read it from cover to cover, like within within two nights. I didn't even sleep. My kids were, I was a camp counselor from Marin County Board of Education, fifth, six, fifth and sixth graders. And uh teaching them about the Redwood Forest, which I knew nothing about, but I knew more than them. And and so I I read the New Testament, and all I could think about was Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And then one day I just said, Yes. Now, I had become heavier and heavier with my own sense of shame and guilt and all these terrible things. I I actually felt fine till I started reading the New Testament. But then I began, and and I I knew very little about my own sin, even reading through the New Testament. And so I just I was really driven to Jesus. And when I was forgiven, I would it was the most amazing experience. And I was transformed.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

And uh, and then God led me through to other believers and then eventually back to New Jersey to Northeastern Bible College where I met your mother. Eventually, not that I don't think they would have put me on the board. The first thing I did when I got to Bible college was the dean of students put his arm around me and said, Hey Mitch, did you read the rule book? I said, No, you know, as raised in an Orthodox Jewish unbelieving home. I said, What we're used to rules. Where are they? He says, He says, Ah, no hair below the ear. Oh, yeah, goodness. And no beards. I said, No beards. Well. And uh just said, okay. I just cut everything. Well, I told Jesus I would do anything, you know. Now I want the hair back.

unknown 16:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

So I got that cut off and graduated Northeastern in the middle of a chapel in my second year. The president of the uh Bible college, Charlie Anderson, was preaching. And I was, I just knew God's calling. Uh, I I should have known it maybe, but I didn't know it was for me to go back and reach my own people.

SPEAKER_04 16:20

Wow.

Calling To Reach The Jewish People

SPEAKER_02 16:20

And so I began serving the Lord with a little Jewish mission uh in New Jersey, and eventually God led me to various Jewish missions, actually, Chosen People Ministries, which was called the American Board of Missions to the Jews at the time. Okay. And then ABMJ. And then we broke off from the ABMJ, became Jews for Jesus. I stayed with the breakoff, then 25 years later, I went back to the mothership.

unknown 16:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Mitch, it's it's it's almost impossible to talk about uh Israel without thinking about it in the context of October 7th. Um even though I I one of the most heartbreaking news days personally I've ever experienced, I remember my wife and I just crying through the how can this be happening? Um, for that response. Oh my goodness. Um still feel that way. It but almost as heartbreaking to us, we start to notice that somehow the younger generation, um Gen X, millennials, having a different, very different response than folks in my generation were having, because I for lots of reasons, where you get your news and all that, but all of a sudden, you know, words like uh, you know, colonialism and occupiers coming out and and going, how could you possibly be responding this way? Listen, I I'm I'm Jewish. I never thought of myself as a white colonialist. But I would yeah. I'm colonized usually, you know. I guess my question is, I mean, is there a big I mean it's it's it's all s it's social media, it's there's there's a lot of reasons for it, but is there a way to back for the other thing?

Israel After October 7

SPEAKER_02 18:17

I think I can help you with with that. It's a great question, and I'm glad that you guys care so much. Um As I became president of Chosen People Ministries, uh Israel was, of course, outside of being a New Yorker, you know, but Israel was definitely sometimes number one, sometimes number two, but always uh foremost, so to speak. And uh when we came, we had a few missionaries to Israel. Now we have about 25 staff in Israel. And so, with families, with lots of kids, and so we were deeply, deeply impacted. I was preaching that morning at a messianic congregation in Houston, Texas, when everybody began looking at their phones because you know we were a bit behind, and it was a Saturday. And uh and when it came out, I mean, the whole congregation just wept together. And uh we began realizing it wasn't just the slaughter, it was the kidnappings, it was the rapes, it was, I mean, we heard about a lot really fast. And uh I brought in our leader at that time on Zoom on Zoom and uh or Skype, whatever it was at that moment, and and yeah, it was Zoom. And um, it was just a heartbreaking time. Um, I think one of the most important things that we need to do when we're talking about uh this issue of the changing attitudes of of young people. And that is you have to differentiate between the younger evangelicals, born-again believers, and the not yet born-again believers. I think that's critical.

SPEAKER_03 19:58

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Okay, because they have different uh inputs.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

True. There's a parents. Parents are are helping Islam, I guess.

Why Younger Audiences See Israel Differently

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Right. Which is not always the case. Okay. And so uh the the we measured the uh these the evangelicals to see because their numbers are going down too. The not yet believing kids at NYU and UCLA and UT and University of Chicago and outside of university, because it wasn't just university kids, you know, it was there were some older ones. Uh they're under they're they're in an echo chamber in social media where uh they we all admit as Jewish people, as and and my Israeli friends will admit it too, is that the Palestinian uh leadership, uh particularly uh Hamas and uh um and to some degree the Gazans, they just did a much better job of giving input through social media. Interesting. And than the Israelis did. Now we're catching up a little bit. So that's with the unbelieving people. But for us and for most of the people listening to the part podcast, you know, you're you're probably believers, you probably have believing children, or you might be those believing children. And so what what's the input uh there? What's happening there? Well, quite frankly, uh in the survey that we're about to r release uh that by the time you see this, we probably would have released. Uh they we we do age cohorts and we trace it all the way through from probably 18 to 65 plus, and we break it up into reasonable cohorts of ages. There is no doubt that the older cohort Even after all the anti-Semitism and all of the problems we've had with the way Israel is perceived and so on, the older evangelicals, I'm talking about maybe 50 and up. You don't even have to go 65 and up. They have held steady in almost 70 percent supportiveness of Israel and the Jewish people. It's between 60 and 70 percent. And I think it's unbelievable, really. Now, when you go down the cohorts and you get below 30 and to the 18-year-old, when you get to Generation Z, that goes lower and lower. And that could go into the 20s of percentages. And so it gets considerably lower. However, one of the things that we've begun to notice because our wonderful demographers, brilliant demographers, good-looking demographers, one of them sitting right here. Good looking those those demographers uh started track because we've done so many surveys for eight, nine, ten years, they begun tracing the cohorts to see if there's if age is the number one factor, or is that or do the when you change cohort or the when you change ages, when you get above 30, do you change your attitudes towards Israel, towards the media you consume, sure, towards the influence your pastor has on you, which is sometimes not as much as we ministers think it is. And it's m mostly the peers that have the influence, you know. That's right. Peers are over social media, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

That's so true.

Cohorts, Inputs, And Changing Attitudes

SPEAKER_02 23:39

And and so what we've begun to notice, and we give us another few years, we'll know more, but what we've begun to notice is that people's attitude changed. So in other words, and this is you're gonna think it's silly, but but it's really true. Sometimes we think the problem is age. Right? You know, youth is wasted on the young, right? So we think the problem is age, right? I mean, I'm not a hippie anymore. I would I would grow the hair if I could, but I'm not a hippie anymore. And and so uh a lot of things have changed for me with my work life, with my relationships, with my family, with children, grandchildren, and you know, people change through the stimulus and input that they have. So the only reason I'm mentioning this is I want to counter the feeling of hopelessness that has entered into the church.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

Where we believe that our younger people are going to drift from the gospel and from the Bible simply because of their age. And as some of us as parents, we feel like we failed. You know, and and is there a perfect parent? There's only one I know that's a perfect parent, you know. And so, no, we're not perfect parents, but you know, some of those rotten kids behave so terribly. I couldn't be blamed for that, you know. But but they are, they do change. And so age is not the most important factor, it's the input and the influences on these kids that change as they go through the age cohorts. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

That is a great man. That is an incredible point. It's really important.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

Now, I'm speaking about evangelical kids because you know, part of what is going to impact them is they're going to return to the Word of God. And they're going to be influenced by, if they're in an echo chamber, it might be an echo chamber where you have a lot of godly influence. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

We always talk about being an ambassador to your family. That's where your ambassador for Christ, that being an ambassador for Christ starts. And in this this type of situation, just don't I try to tell friends, don't assume that your kids are just going to always have the same, get the same information that you're getting. Help them understand the context. You know, it's never a great idea to bark beliefs at them and say, well, this family believes this way, but but assume that they're not necessarily getting all the news correctly from the sources that they're getting it from. What? And yeah, I this is we'll talk about it later. It's I know it's hard to believe. Let's talk. And and but help them understand the context. I've done that with my own kids, and I think because I was shocked that this was it, it caught me by surprise that there was that there could be those kinds of feelings. Did you not watch the news? Did you not I not with my own kids, but no, we didn't watch the news. But the assumption that they know the history, the assumption, so part of a good ambassadorship is obviously starting with God's word, which is where you can find God's heart for Israel.

Parents, Peers, And Media Echo Chambers

SPEAKER_02 26:51

I think, I think going you know, sort of leverage off of the ambassadorship idea. I think that uh Gentile Christians can be great ambassadors to the Jewish people. Uh of course, we want to see our Jewish friends come to know Jesus as Savior, but you know, there's there's more. Uh and actually our survey bore that out. Evangelicals don't simply love Jewish people because they want to see them get saved. Whoa. Evangelicals love Jewish people because they love God, they love the Bible, they read Genesis 12, 1 through 3. Wow. And they believe God's covenant with Abraham continues. And that has been borne out over and over and over again in our surveys. At first, I could I couldn't even believe it.

SPEAKER_04 27:39

You answered there, my other question for you was going to be an effective way to be ambassadors. And I hope people really heard what you had to say and let that sink in because it's not just about evangelism. Yeah, it is about love. Loving them. Yeah. It's about love.

Ambassadors: Love Beyond Evangelism

SPEAKER_02 27:54

That's powerful. And and uh love and support. I mean, it every every Christian pastor and church and that uh you know, sometimes we're like firemen, you know. You know, firemen run into the fire. And is it was not lost on Israelis and Jewish people in general when Christians didn't cancel their tours and they came in as fast as they can. Now it wasn't easy to get an airline, but but they came in as fast as they could, you know? And even even today, uh people are are going to Israel, and uh I I'm gonna I know we're gonna run out of time, but let me just tell one quick story. Okay, that's what preachers mean when they're about to go another half an hour, but let me let me just tell what honestly, one one quick story. So uh we chosen people ministries. I told you, we have a large staff in Israel. God is really working among young adults in Israel. There are a lot of these people, these young adults who did not grow up in believing homes who are coming to faith. They're searching. Listen, when when all hell breaks loose, you look for heaven, right? And so they they are doing that. But uh we we had to we had a rented center in Tel Aviv, and it got too small, so we raised some money, we built a beautiful center across the street, and it's in a large condominium building. We have a commercial floor, and we I took about 70 people, Christians, to dedicate the center. So we got there, and of course, we got there, it was there was still, I mean, there were rockets coming in from Gaza, from the Houthis, and you know, and we did spend quite a bit of time in bomb shelters. I call it Mitch's bomb shelter tour, but it was it wasn't it wasn't that bad until we went to war with Iran. Those Iranian missiles were like, forget it. I mean, you're you're in a whole different category. You know, they hit, they rock everything. And so we spent a lot more time in bomb shelters. And then we came up for air, and it came for the day of the dedication, and Israel said no religious services today, anywhere. So I said, okay, I'm a New Yorker, right? I know how to negotiate. So I said, okay, so it's not religious service. We're gonna take them all over to the new center and do a walkthrough. It's not a religious service, and so I brought him over to do a walkthrough. What could happen? And so we did the walkthrough, then we came back to the hotel, had a little, we sang together. We didn't have a religious service, and and uh and we were right next door to the bomb shelter, which was the point, you know, for safety. Anyway, families got very upset with this Iranian war, so they said, get our people home. And so we had to figure out how to get them home. There were no flights going out of Israel, so we figured out a way to go through Amman, which was usually a three or four hour trip. This was about eight hours. So getting through Amman into Jordan and then flying out from Jordan. So I became the anti Moses. Oh wow. I brought the people I brought the people out of the promised land into Jordan. Okay? Oh my goodness. Wow. And then we had the miracle of the of renewing like 70 plane tickets, okay? And for some reason, we were able to get a lot of them. So we got almost everybody out, you know, captain goes down with the ship. So I I left one of the last people. And as my wife and I are walking through the check-in areas and putting our uh hand luggage through, we heard a siren go off in Amman. Now, it wasn't that they were afraid of a direct hit from Iran, but if there was something above and shrapnel fell down, then they wanted people inside. And so we're walking through, we heard the siren, and my Zahaba, my wife and I just felt we felt unsettled by that. Now, we remember we've been used to these bobs coming in. But this one was very unsettling, and we knew it wouldn't hit. So we stopped and prayed, and then walked through it, and that was almost the exact same time that our brand new beautiful center was hit by an Iranian missile.

unknown 32:13

Oh my goodness.

Standing With Israel Through Presence

SPEAKER_02 32:15

Yeah, but that's not the end of the story. So a 30 30-floor condominium unit with very expensive condos was like sliced. The whole end was sliced off and the it was destroyed. Our place was not too bad. It was it was we had to do a lot of work and it was a little expensive. But we we've done most of the work, but we can't get in anyway because the the rest of it's not operable. Wow. And so it should be done in two years. So we we just need a little patience, you know. But when we when we eventually uh you know, we were in touch with some of the people, and then we had a Zoom call, and to a person, every single one of these people said we counted it a privilege to suffer with our Israeli friends. Who says that? That's you know, they need they might need psychotherapy. Maybe it was too maybe the trauma was too much, you know? Oh, that was amazing. But they really meant it, and I feel it too. They get it. They get it. They get it. But sometimes you sometimes the way to stand with people is to be silent and sometimes to suffer with them. Wow. And that's the way these folks felt. And I was honored, really, to be a fellow believer with these people. And uh I and I'm moved to no end, even until today, that uh I have the the privilege of being in the same spiritual family as as these brothers and sisters. Wow. So that goes a long way. And I think one day the bombing of our center will make it into some tabletop book about what happened during the 12-day war, and there will be us, and somebody's gonna say, What building was that? Oh, let me tell you what happened there.

Dedication Trip Amid Rockets And Sirens

SPEAKER_04 34:12

And uh wish we had more time. I was gonna say we we could talk with you for hours. I I am so I'm encouraged to hear some of what God's doing. I'm uh grateful for the challenge that you pose to us as well and to God's people who need to be making a greater difference and need to have eyes wide open on these things. I'm also stunned, as I know Doug is, to just to have someone sit here who's talking about being in a bomb shelter, missiles coming in. We haven't had a guest uh that has shared. I can give you I can give you a list of things. So I I hope, I hope people, I hope our listeners get how real this is, how how important it is to be aware of these topics because it's And do something about it. Yeah, because it is real life. And I my my prayer for those that are checking out this podcast is you will go check out Chosen People Ministries. Yes, learn more because it is such an important part of the body of Christ in today's world. Um, I think we do have to wrap it up here, uh, but I will say that I we have been talking to a make a difference person with a make a difference ministry, and so do all our listeners. Until next time, go mad.