Dave Kistler: Well, ladies and gentlemen, a federal judge recently told school officials in San Diego, California, to reveal details of their work with an Islamic advocacy organization that has been designated as a terrorist group. Of course, by that designation it puts them in the same classification as ISIS itself. Now a legal team in that fight says it has issued investigative subpoenas to the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, otherwise known as CAIR, as part of a federal civil rights lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the San Diego United School District’s anti-Islamophobia Initiative.
The case is being handled by the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, which is working on behalf of parents in that particular school district. Now, here’s the problem: The district’s multi-year program was developed under the direction of CAIR as a holistic plan to protect Muslim students and their families from bullying and discrimination. As part of the initiative, staff and students are taught by CAIR officials to become allies to Muslim students. And CAIR is empowered to revise school curriculum to portray Islam more favorably.
You heard me correctly: CAIR is empowered to revise school curriculum in order to portray Islam in a more favorable light. Well, the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund is seeking communication between CAIR agents in the school district as well as documents tracing the Islamic organization’s strategic process for gaining inside access to impressionable school children. CAIR’s national director testified that proselytizing to school children is a “religious obligation” and that the purpose of CAIR’s educational outreach is to do precisely that, which includes passing out religious propaganda to students during class and attempting, according to CAIR itself, to create a religious educational environment.
The chief counsel for the LCDF, the group that’s fighting this, explained it this way. He said, “Through deliberate manipulation, CAIR has gained unprecedented power and influence over San Diego’s United superintendent and school board, and these subpoenas seek to answer questions about the extent of CAIR’s infiltration into the school district. And with that, I want to welcome you to Stand in the Gap Today. I am Dave Kistler. I’m your host today, and along with me to share the radio microphone is Gary Dull, the co-host today. And all this week, we’re going to be doing programs that unveil the evil that is Islamic ideology.
Many of you will remember the incredible poem the president recited during the campaign in 2016. He’s recited it at a rally or two since becoming president of the United States. That poem is called The Vicious Snake. And so our theme today is this. Exposing the Vicious Snake: An Expose of Islamic Ideology and its Grand Design for America.
To help us with our discussion today we have as our special returning guest Tom Wallace. He is the founder of Fortress of Faith. Tom is not only an Islamic scholar, he is also a theological expert and a former missionary in the United Kingdom. And so Tom, I want to welcome you to the program today. Thank you so much for being aboard.
Tom Wallace: Dave, always it’s a joy to be with you and Gary. And I appreciate you guys dealing with this topic. I came off the foreign mission field to warn my countrymen of the dangers of Islam that is not just creeping into our nation, but sweeping. I think we are … I’m amazed at how fast things are developing here. So I appreciate you guys taking the time to cover this topic.
Dave Kistler: Well, Tom, you are one of our favorite guests. We always get great feedback when we have aboard. You’re also host of your own radio program. I would like you to say a little more about that before we end the program today. But let’s go to this topic of what’s going on in the San Diego United School District. CAIR, which of course as you well know, is a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood, has gained access to and unprecedented influence over America’s school children in that one particular school district, if not other districts around the country as well.
My question to you, Tom, is this: Does this surprise you or is this the modus operandi, the MO for CAIR in how they infiltrate a community, infiltrate a school system, even infiltrate our government?
Tom Wallace: Not in the least. I’ve been warning people about this here for about 10 years now, and let me give you a quote from Omar Ahmad. He gave this down in Southern California back in 1998. He thought he was speaking to just a room of Muslims, but a reporter from the San Ramon Newspaper was there, East Bay Times. And this was July 4th. Now, Omar Ahmad, you need to understand who he is. He is the co-founder of CAIR. He and Nihad Awad founded CAIR many years ago.
And let me quote what Omar Ahmad said: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. In the Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.” Now, they have two faces. They speak one thing to their Muslim community, and another face that they speak to the American public. And they build themselves, they fashion themselves as the civil rights organization to protect civil rights. But they are a Muslim Brotherhood front group.
What’s interesting is that the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, a full-state nation has not only designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, but they’ve gone as far as identifying CAIR, the Council of American-Islamic Relations, as a terrorist organization. It’s very clear that the connections, if you follow it, you trace it, it’s not very difficult to follow this. But most of America is asleep at the wheel. We are not aware that this group is operating for the demise, the destruction of our country from within.
Gary Dull: Tom, this is very interesting that you bring this up, but my question is how are Muslim groups so effective in gaining access today when so often Christian groups are never granted that same access?
Tom Wallace: Isn’t it ironic we as a Christian nation, Christians are treated as the stepchild, the ugly stepchild here, and Islam is being embraced at every attempt. When Obama was our president, any opportunity he had to oppose or support Islam, he always went to support them. We see this happening so much, but let me give you really why all this is happening. It’s a spiritual battle we’re in.
Dave Kistler: Tom, let me hold you right there for just a second because we’ve got to go into the break. Ladies and gentlemen, about five days ago a video surfaced of Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel attending a meeting of Muslims where both Israel and one of his sheriff deputies spoke in Arabic. The meeting was held at one of the local Mosques. It was held during the month of Ramadan in 2015. So we’re talking about three years ago. The deputies said that Israel pledged to keep young people out of jail and to put “God first, your family second, and the community third.”
Now, I know what some of you are thinking: “Dave, what is wrong with that?” Sheriff Scott Israel of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department wants God first, family second, the community third, but he’s speaking in a mosque where the God of the Islamic community is Allah, and he is not the same as the God of the Bible. So there’s where the problem comes in. In that meeting, Israel speaks in Arabic to a group of Muslims. He credits his deputy Nezar Hamze as a like-minded individual who’s on the same mission as Scott Israel, the sheriff. And Israel compares himself and Hamze to lions on a mission.
Both Israel and Hamze boast that they want to keep young people out of jail rather than put them in jail. Israel says that he puts troubled young people in a program where they will get help with narcotics and other issues. This is a direct quote from Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel: “I want to put God first, my family second, community third.” And then Hamze, the deputy sheriff, who is a Muslim and a member of CAIR there in Florida quotes Israel as telling the sheriff’s office team the same thing.
Israel says, and I quote, ‘”here is only one perfect person: God. And you’re not it, and I’m not it. We make mistakes. Police make mistakes every day. And I understand that. And that’s why we have to partner with our community. Why is Nezar Hamze,” his Muslim deputy police chief, “here? Because as a man who studies Islam and as a Muslim, he’s going to find out information that we can’t. He’s going to bring information back to the community and take information from the community back to us.” And, again, this is Sheriff Scott Israel of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department speaking, and, again, Nezar Hamze, his Muslim deputy sheriff, who is also a member of CAIR.
Now, I want you just to listen to a brief clip of this 2015 meeting. The voice you’re going to hear first is … In fact, actually I think the only voice you’ll hear will be that of Nezar Hamze, the Muslim deputy sheriff in Broward County. I want you to listen to how charismatic he is. I want you to listen to him speaking in Arabic and then in English, getting ready to introduce the sheriff of Broward County to this Muslim Mosque. Russ, let’s listen to the clip.
Nezar Hamze: [Arabic 00:10:58], brothers and sisters. Allah [Arabic 00:11:01] has blessed us with another Ramadan. [Arabic 00:11:05] Allah. Allah [Arabic 00:11:06] has locked the Satan, and [Arabic 00:11:09] the sheriff continues to lock the bad people in jail. Al-ḥamdu li-llāh. Brothers and sisters, I wanted to stand here before you today. Lisa? Is Lisa here? She needs to come up. It’s important that we hear from our community, inshallah. I won’t take much time, and I’ll introduce the sheriff. But I want to testify before you, brothers and sisters, because it’s important for you to hear from us, inshallah.
Al-ḥamdu li-llāh. A couple of years ago I had an opportunity to witness our sheriff be sworn in. And he said something that resonates with me, and I want to share it with you so you know the type of individual and what he does. He said regarding our youth, our children, because we all focus on our children very much, he said he’s going to measure his success by how many kids he keeps out of jail and now how many kids he puts in jail. [Arabic 00:12:05].
Brothers and sisters, this was an indicator for me that this man is a straight man. He is a man of honor, of [huck 00:12:13], of justice. Al-ḥamdu li-llāh. I had another opportunity to hear him speak, and he was talking to his team, the employees, the deputies, the people that protect you on the street. He said, “I want you to put God first.” Listen to me. This sounds like [inaudible 00:12:31]. “I want you to put God first, your family second, and the community third.” [Arabic 00:12:40].
Audience: [crosstalk 00:12:41].
Nezar Hamze: Brothers and sisters, this is the reality. This is the man that is our sheriff.
Dave Kistler: Ladies and gentlemen, that is an amazing clip that you just heard. And, Tom, I want to go to you immediately. You heard the introduction give to Sheriff Scott Israel. He then speaks in Arabic briefly and then in English the rest of the time, during which he insinuates that God is the same for Islam as he is for Jews and Christians, and on and on I could go. This man, I’m talking about lead chief Scott Israel and his deputy chief Nezar Hamze, were the ones who presided over, ladies and gentlemen, the failed attempt at protecting the innocent school children at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Tom, to be honest with you, I’m speechless, and I would love to have your thoughts on all of this.
Tom Wallace: Now, I’ve seen that clip. Of course his deputy chief is dressed there in his deputy sheriff’s uniform, but listening to it just over the radio, the way you played that, at first I was thinking, my goodness, this man sounds like our former president Obama and when he’s addressing the Muslim community. It sounded so much like him. It brought back memories.
Yeah, one thing I think we also need to mention is that there’s a video of the sheriff dressed there and the chief deputy, they’re dressed in his Muslim garb, training this mosque, this Muslim community how they can and should protect themselves with guns. You’ve seen him with his Glock 19 there. They’re demonstrating how to protect yourself with guns, citizens or this Muslim community, and yet this very same Sheriff’s department is very much against teachers being armed and protecting our children there in the school system. I find that very ironic.
Now to address the Muslim sentiments and the Islamic sentiments that are being shared here by the Sheriff’s Department. One thing our American community needs to understand, in the eyes of Muslims, the God of Allah, the God of Islam, the God of Muhammad to them is also the same God of Moses, and of Abraham, and of Isaac and Jacob. The God who created heaven and earth, the God who created Adam and Eve, in their minds, they’re all talking of the same God. Every Muslim usually starts this conversation with me when I talk about my faith and their faith, “Oh, well, we have the same God.”
And I respond with this: “Oh, wonderful. That’s great. So then your god has a son?” Then they get this confused or mean look on their face: “No, for Allah hath no son.” Then I say, “Oh, well then we don’t have the same God because my God, Jehovah God, has a begotten son, Jesus Christ. So clearly we do not have the same God.”
But the point that they’re trying to make is that putting God first is that they’re trying to say, “We’re going to put Allah first. We’re going to keep your sons, your Muslim sons out of jail. We’re going to protect them.” And, yeah, it is kind of concerning that he’s addressing the Muslim community with this message.
Gary Dull: You know, Tom, for nine minutes, I say nine tragic minutes, we know that none of the Broward County police on the scene there at Stoneman Douglas entered the school building as kids and teachers were basically sitting ducks and being massacred. Then for 29 minutes, one of those police officers didn’t enter, but told the others to “Stay 500 feet away” from the building where the shooting was actually occurring.
And I know many people have asked this question, but I ask you what in the world is going on here? Why are Islamic police officers unable to really swear allegiance to the United States of America, to US law and really protect United States citizens?
Tom Wallace: Now, Brother Dull, you have just raised a very interesting question. I believe that’s probably the most powerful question that should be asked: Can we trust Muslims to be loyal to the laws of America and also remain loyal to the tenants of Islam? Is that possible? My answer to that question is a resounding no. Absolutely not. If they’re going to be a loyal, faithful Muslim, they cannot be loyal and faithful to the laws of America because Islam will not permit it. They have a system that is an antithesis to the system of America. We cherish freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of choice, freedom to choose who you worship, or not worship at all. Islam does not give that permission at all.
We get to choose who governs you. Islam doesn’t give that choice. Those choice and those rights, well, they’re not rights. They are things that you do not have rights to in Islamic form of a system. And so when Muslims swear allegiance to the Bible or rather to the American Constitution, to protect it, they’re either lying, or they are not a faithful Muslim, and I think that it’s that they’re lying to us. I think that’s been demonstrated time and time again.
Dave Kistler: Tom, what you’re sharing is very important information. It’s very disturbing. And ladies and gentlemen, there’s something about the Parkland shooting that makes no sense at all to me. It’s beyond odd that the heavily Islam-friendly, Islamic-infiltrated police force in Broward did nothing to stop the shooting for nine minutes or longer.
Ladies and gentlemen, this woman’s name you may or may not have heard. Her name is Barbara Sharief. In fact, her full name is Barbara Muhammad Sharief. And she is an American politician. In fact, she has been a Broward County, Florida, commissioner since 2010. And in 2016 she was reappointed as mayor of Broward County, having previously served from 2013 to 2014. And she’s the country’s first African-American female and Muslim mayor. You’re hearing me correctly.
In the same county where Stoneman Douglass high school is that has a very Islamic-friendly police department in the form of Scott Israel, the police chief and Nezar Hamze, the deputy police chief, who is a committed Muslim, member of the organization we’re talking about today called CAIR, Council on American-Islamic Relations, the mayor of Broward County is also a Muslim.
Now, why am I bringing that up? Friends, if you know anything about London, England, you know that Sadiq Khan is a Muslim mayor in that city of London, and he has clear ties to terrorists–that is a documented fact. It was him who after the killing of 22 innocents at an Ariana Grande concert said the following: “We are going to have to get used to terrorism.” In other words, terrorism in London, terrorism in England, terrorism in the United Kingdom, it’s the new normal, something with which we’re going to have to become accustomed.
So, Tom, I want to go to you. You’ve sighted this earlier in the program in segment one that you left the United Kingdom as a missionary there to come back to the United States of America to warn our nation, specifically to warn the church in America about a diabolical, sinister, demonic enemy. So my question is this: Why are Muslim mayors, Muslim law enforcement official, Muslim City Council members, why do people that are committed to Islamic ideology in those positions, why do they present to America an incredibly dangerous dilemma?
Tom Wallace: Well, can I bring your attention to a document that was found by the FBI back in 2011? It was a document that was written by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan. And it was found, the FBI found this in the home of Ismail Elbarasse back in 2011. He is a teacher or was a teacher in Virginia. The FBI became suspicious of him. I won’t get into background of this story of that, but they raided his home and found in his basement a secret room. And in that room was a cache of documents and media.
The prized piece of document that they found was a memorandum from the Muslim Brotherhood to the group in North America. Let me read to you from Page 7: “The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying Western Civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.” Now get this: “by their hands and the hands of the believers.” So what are they saying in this document from the Muslim Brotherhood? “We’re going to create a Jihad–Jihad is a holy war, a struggle against evil–“to eliminate Western Civilization.” How? “From within.” How are you going to do it? “Sabotage their house by their hands.”
We’re going to incorporate their own hands, their own system, and the hands of the believers. And on the back page it lists about 14 different groups that were complicit, that were working with the Muslim Brotherhood as front groups here. Now, the FBI has used this document as a court piece of evidence in the trial, what we call the Holy Land Fund Trial, in Dallas, Texas. During the Bush administration they were starting to put these people away in jail.
When Obama became president and Eric Holder became the new attorney general, he stopped that, and CAIR and ISNA and a number of these other groups there were designated as unindicted co-conspirators. They were getting around to prosecute these people, but they never got to it because of Eric Holder. And we need to press our current attorney general Sessions to reopen that case. All that there is waiting to be done, but that’s another issue.
Now let me return to this judge. They are putting key people in government, judges, mayors, police chiefs. They are jockeying for these positions. They’re training for these positions. And in England, in the United Kingdom, there are four hijab centers. I lived just two to three miles from one, and they are organized to train bankers, politicians, teachers, and they’re working to develop these people to get into government positions. This has been going on in the United Kingdom for since the time I’ve been exposing this and talking about this. And this is also operating here in America. I don’t know where they’re located. They’re a little bit more careful in hiding these locations of where they’re training these people.
Actually, I think they’re training them right underneath our nose in our institutions and setting them up because they’re being funded by CAIR, by Muslim Brotherhood, and they’re wealthy because we keep buying Saudi oil. So we’re funding our own demise. I know I sound like a conspirator, or talking about conspiracies and stuff there, but, folks, this is happening, and we’d better wake up to it.
Gary Dull: You know, I think this is a thing that we need to wake up to, Tom. It almost appears to me is that the average American is either blind about what Islam is doing or doesn’t want to understand what Islam is doing. And I wonder what the thought is among those who are leaders in our nation. You mentioned the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, that he needed to look into this again. Will he? Does he understand what is going on within Islam?
And as we understand it, Tom, it appears as though for years Islam has been working on infiltrating into government here in the United States of America on every level. So this isn’t anything new, as I understand it. It is something that’s been going on for a long, long time. And then to hear that statement that you rendered here a moment ago where they’ve written regarding us that they will sabotage their house by their own hands, that is critical.
And so my question to you is this: What about those who say we, those of us who are concerned about Islam, are overeating, or are just Islamophobic, or are crying wolf? How do you answer those critics who refuse to see what really is going on in front of our own faces?
Tom Wallace: I remind them of how people reacted to Winston Churchill when he was trying to warn Britain about the bully, the tyrant of Hitler, that they ought to pay attention to him, that appeasement is the wrong move. It’s only going to give him time to get stronger, and they need to deal with him. They need to put that down. But they didn’t listen. They thought he was a crazed man, a crazed [inaudible 00:26:52] go away and just let’s just create an environment of peace as much as we can. And it doesn’t work. Appeasing a bully never works. It never has worked. Historically we can see that it’s dangerous. And many people died as a result because they didn’t listen to Winston Churchill earlier. And there were other people that tried to warn, but they didn’t listen to him.
And we have a new bully on the block. Back in the ’40s it was Nazism, it was Hitler. Today it is Islam, and they are infiltrating here. The thing that’s an advantage for Islam is that it’s fashioned, it’s designed under the face of a religion. So therefore it has rights to be practices here, and they can send their apostles around our country to spread their poison and to work their destruction from within. And the Muslim Brotherhood realized that. That’s why they, I believe, I’ve been saying the Muslim Brotherhood is the most dangerous terrorist organization on the face of the earth because they have identified our weakness, and they’re exploiting it. And we’re asleep at the wheel.
So far our government has not called the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. There’s a bill H.R.377, House Resolution 377, that the 115th Congress has put out there. It has a lot of co-sponsors there to get this bill out of committee and get it on the floor to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Can you believe it, that our own country will not designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization when other countries have? That blows my mind.
Dave Kistler: Tom, let me jump in. We have about 45 seconds until we’re going to have to go to the break. I want to ask you this and ask you to respond very quickly. Obviously the Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim entities are strong opponents of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. They are fighting to get guns out of the hands of the general American populous. Talk about that for just a second, why it’s so important that we stand up and defend the Second Amendment because of the threat Islam poses.
Tom Wallace: Every tyrannical government knows you cannot operate if the citizens are armed. You have to disarm the citizens if you’re going to control them with a dictatorship type of government, and that’s the Islamic way. The Islamic government is a dictatorship. It always has been. That’s what Muhammad gave them, and that’s why they practice the very same thing in their governments. You cannot have that if the citizens are armed, if they can fight back. And so naturally, yeah, it’s in their interest to see us disarmed, so they’re going to oppose the Second Amendment because the Second Amendment keeps us safe.
Dave Kistler: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Stand in the Gap Today. I want to say this at the outset of this critically important final segment of our program today, in fact, it’s a segment we commonly call our solution segment, and I want to say this: Our discussion today is not meant to foster hatred for anyone. Our topic today is not directed primarily at people. We are addressing an ideology today that is beyond dangerous. Yes, adherents to that ideology have done, and are doing, and will continue to do very evil things, but we are to love those who are enslaved in any false ideology, including and I would say even especially the false ideology of Islam. These folks that are adherents to it have been enslaved by a deception. They have been lied to, and the only way they’re every going to be delivered from that deception is if we love them enough to tell them to truth and declare to them the glorious, life-changing, eternity-altering gospel of Jesus Christ.
But the ideology that they’re espousing itself is evil. I think Dr. Franklin Graham said it as well as it could be said when he called many years ago Islam an evil religion, and it is precisely that. It is an evil religion. I am not the least bit reticent to say that. Gary is not the least bit reticent to acknowledge that. Tom as an Islamic scholar is not the least bit hesitant to call Islam from an ideological standpoint precisely what it is: a deception, a lie, an evil ideology.
And so, Tom, I want to go to you. Obviously America has to deal with this evil ideology. It’s anti-God. When I say “anti-God,” I’m talking about the true God. It’s certainly anti-American. It’s anti-constitutional. And so in very practical terms, Tom, what can be done? What must be done in the United States of America to deal with this vicious snake that is making its inroads in rapid fashion across the United States of America?
Tom Wallace: First of all, let me say, Dave, thank you for making that point that this is not to bash Muslims. America needs to understand they need to separate Islam from the Muslim. Please do not blame the Muslim for Islam. The Muslim is a victim of Islam. I have been saying this for years, and I’m just as passionate about us resisting Islam as I am about rescuing Muslims.
Muslims are victims. It’s an ideology that’s going to send these people to hell. They need the truth, and praise God we as Christians, we have the answer: It’s the word of God. And if we can only a Muslim into the Bible, and I’ve seen it happen so many times, that if we get them reading the scriptures with us, and they realize that they’ve been lied to, and they see the light of the scriptures, and they come to Christ. And so I’m also the founder of Missions to Muslims. I am as actively about trying to evangelize Muslims as I am actively trying to resist the ideology of Islam and warn people of it. What’s the real solution? A Holy Ghost revival in our country.
Gary Dull: Amen.
Tom Wallace: I have been trying to tell Americans that God is raising up Islam as an instrument of judgment upon us because of our sin. We have sinned against God. He have angered God. We’re foolish to think that we can continue in our wicked living here and expect God to wink at it and look the other way, and continue to sing God Bless America in spite of our wicked sin.
Folks, God is angered and God is raising up our destruction if we do not repent. I believe that Islam is the very element that will bring us to our knees and destroy us, and bring us to humble ourselves and repent if we … But we can volunteer to do that. We can admit, “God we were wrong. We have foolishly thought that we could run our own ship without you. And we need to fall on our knees and repent.” And I believe God is bringing us and showing us destruction is coming our way if we continue, but we refuse to see it.
Dave Kistler: Gary, let me do this, because that is a take on this entire topic that you very seldom, in fact I don’t know if I’ve ever really heard it worded quite like Tom worded it, but with his statement, I completely concur, and I could tell you did as well because you uttered an Amen. The answer to this entire dilemma is nothing less than revival in the United States of America. And I believe Tom is 100% correct. I think Islam is part of God’s judgment on America, is God allowing us to have what we have desired to have independent of him. And that is we’ve tried to live our lives arrogantly, very superficially, to be sure, in violent disregard of him, and so this is the consequence.
So if revival, Gary, is the answer, and I’m firmly convinced it is, you are a pastor. What must take place inside the church? What must take place from the pulpits of America to facilitate, or if I could use this phrase, “fan the flame” of a revival in America? What must they place inside the church and especially from the pulpit?
Gary Dull: Dave, there’s no doubt that we need revival in America today, and I know that it disgusts you as well as it does me, and I’m sure Tom also when you hear some Evangelicals saying, “There will never be another revival in this nation.” I don’t like that. I think there could be another revival in America, and I think we need to pray for that.
But revival is simply defined as when God’s people get right with God. Think about that, ladies and gentlemen. It’s when God’s people get right with God. There are so many things going on in the lives of born-again believers that are godless, that are secular, that are worldly. We talk often on this program about the authority of the scripture.
So often the word of God is not the authority in the lives of individual Christians. We need to get back to the word of God. Now, what is that going to take? It’s going to take, #1, preachers making sure that their pulpits are on fire with the truth of the word of God. Secondly, it’s going to take making certain that every one of us allow the word of God to work effectively in our lives.
Thirdly, it’s going to mean we must be willing to repent of those things that have taken us away from biblical truth and get back to understanding who God is, what God expects, and how God operates. And I know that may seem like a simple formula, but that will be a formula that will bring us back to revival where God’s people get right with God.
It could very well be that God is judging America through Islam. We’ve often said too that he’s judging America through the rise of homosexuality. He could be judging America through abortion. Listen, it’s all around us. God’s judgment is there. It’s time for the Church of Jesus Christ to wake up.
Dave Kistler: Tom, before we exit the program, and we have just about a minute before we’re going to have to leave the air, but I want you to just give our listeners the information they need as to where they can go to find out more about Fortress of Faith as well as this new venture in which you are involved, and that’s called Missions to Muslims. Talk about that, if you would, very quickly.
Tom Wallace: Our radio broadcast site is fortressoffaith.com. We just launched an app just for Android phones. Just right now we are trying to get into the iPhone market, and so people can listen to our daily 15-minute program. I cover the issues that’s going on. And basically what I’m trying to do alert people and show you why God is raising up Islam as an instrument of judgment and how we need to repent, and how we need to resist Islam. Yeah, there’s a political side. Don’t just stand there and weep over it. Do your bid to try to fight it. But the biggest thing we need to do is fall to our knees, folks. We need to repent. Then we need to rescue Muslims, and that’s missionstomuslims.com.
Are Today’s Churches “Of the Culture” or “In the Culture”?
/0 Comments/in Blog, Release /by Churchill MediaMuch has been made recently about America’s mainline church denominations—the changes, division and uncertainty within.
But the American Pastors Network’s says the focus should be on something else—getting back on the basics of Christianity.
“Christians must unite around the core of the gospel, not divide because of man-made denominations,” said APN President Sam Rohrer. “Above all, the focus must be on how to communicate the Gospel. Churches can change their music, change the way the pastor dresses, or change the public statements, but many of today’s churches are walking away from the authority of Scripture and the necessity of protecting the authority of God’s Word. That never grows old, and no one can change that without directly attacking the Word of God. Bit by bit, we are collectively retreating from a hard, fast, and firm commitment to Scripture, and searching for ways to make it more palatable to the next generation—whatever that might look like.”
Another damaging matter, Rohrer added, is churches desiring to or giving into the allure of being of the culture rather than in the culture, ultimately straying from the Gospel to meet cultural needs.
“Many churches are trying to change to become like the culture, but the long-term effects of leaving the Gospel will be damaging beyond belief,” he said. “Many elements have pervaded our country’s denominations, such as transgenderism, same-sex marriage, sexual assault, and social justice, just to name a few. The Left loves to see the divide of some of the largest of these denominations, which are doing much self-promotion, inviting media to be part of the ‘experience’ and by moving away from traditional church business and opening the doors of today’s critiques of Christianity, either through the mainstream media or social media. And all the discord is playing out in public, which is not helping the spread of the Gospel one bit.”
APN recently debuted its new television program, “Stand in the Gap,” which considers transcending cultural issues, seemingly difficult to navigate, from a biblical worldview perspective. “Stand in the Gap” TV also seeks to bring clarity to cultural confusion and makes sense of the nonsense around us, focusing on the root problems of our nation and applies biblical principles so God’s people can know the truth.
“Stand in the Gap” TV airs weekly on WBPH-TV60, a station in the Philadelphia market that reaches a potential of 7 million viewers by cable, DirecTV, Dish Network, off-air antenna, and online. Programs air at 3pm ET Sundays and will be rebroadcast Tuesdays at 8pm and Thursdays at 7:30pm Check the WBPH listings for more information on how to watch. here or view a promo for the show Learn more about the program.
Photo by Nina Strehl on Unsplash
Sharing Faith Increasingly “Optional” for Christians
/0 Comments/in Blog, Release /by Churchill MediaWhat is “optional” for Christians? Church attendance, going to Bible studies, tithing, giving to charity? As it turns out, many Christians say it’s becoming increasingly “optional” to share their faith in Christ with others.
This is the finding of a new survey from social science researcher George Barna, who is a friend of the American Pastors Network, and frequent guest on its popular daily radio program “Stand in the Gap Today.”
“Our world has changed,” said APN President and “Stand in the Gap” radio and TV host Sam Rohrer. “Decades ago, sitting with our friends, family members, neighbors, and fellow believers, often talking about our faith in God, was commonplace. Today, with how technology has drastically changed the way we interact, those conversations don’t happen nearly as much. How does this impact our faith—and the potential saving faith for others? Our good friend George Barna explores this question and gives insight on Christians feels about sharing our belief in and reliance upon Jesus.”
In 1993, Barna partnered with Lutheran Hour Ministries to research reasons why people did and did not engage in intentional outreach. Much has changed since that initial study, so 25 years later researchers asked follow-up questions to see if talk of faith has become labored in a culture that is more digital, secular, and contested than ever. The results are contained in Barna’s new report Spiritual Conversations in the Digital Age.
“When was the last time you had a conversation about God?” Barna wrote to introduce the follow-up study. “For most people, the unfortunate and surprising answer to that question is not very often. Spiritual conversations are exceedingly rare for most Americans, and even for Christians, who are at best reluctant to have them.”
Barna’s research found that a growing number of Christians don’t see sharing the Good News as a personal responsibility. Just 10 percent of Christians in 1993 agreed with the statement “converting people to Christianity is the job of the local church”—as opposed to the job of an individual. Today, nearly three in 10 Christians (29 percent) say evangelism is the local church’s responsibility—a threefold increase. This jump could be the result of many factors, Barna reported, including poor ecclesiology (believing “the local church” is somehow separate from the people who are a part of it) or personal and cultural barriers to sharing faith.
An even more dramatic divergence occurred on this statement: “Every Christian has a responsibility to share their faith.” In 1993, nine out of 10 Christians (89 percent) agreed, but today, just two-thirds say the same (64 percent)—a 25-point drop.
Barna will be the featured guest again on “Stand in the Gap Today” on June 7, when he will discuss the newest research.
APN’s Voting Checklist Helps Equip Christians Before Heading to Polls
/0 Comments/in Blog, Release /by Churchill MediaAs 20 States Hold Primaries Over Next Six Weeks, APN President Sam Rohrer Offers Five Questions to Guide Voters at the Ballot Box
Millions of registered voters will head to the polls over the next six weeks, with 25 states planning primaries from May 15 to June 26.
Among them is Pennsylvania, the headquarters of the American Pastors Network. APN President Sam Rohrer has been involved in politics in the Keystone State for more than 20 years and has used his own “Voting Integrity Checklist” for decades as a legislator. Now he is offering some of the same ideals from the list to voters around the country in advance of these important upcoming primaries.
Decades ago, Rohrer created his “Voting Integrity Checklist,” a series of questions he developed for himself to use during his nearly 20 years in office as a legislator. It helped him ensure votes of integrity, but also to permit his fellow legislators and candidates to have a measuring stick on how to conduct themselves while in office. Ultimately, a number of Rohrer’s fellow lawmakers adopted his simple checklist.
This list, says Rohrer, is easily adaptable for voters as they head to the polls, whether in primaries or general elections:
APN is also partnering with iVoter Guide, a comprehensive, data-driven voter guide that is “grounded in God” and “rooted in research.” The guide provides voters with side-by-side comparisons of candidates for the primary elections, allowing them to identify who most closely shares their values and who has the record to back up campaign promises.
APN Conference Call for Pastors Highlights APN Benefits on June 5
/0 Comments/in Blog /by Churchill MediaWe hope you’ll join us for a valuable Pastors Conference Call on June 5 to learn more about the new APN Benefits program!
The guest speaker will be Peter Persuitti, Managing Director of Arthur J. Gallagher Co., a non-profit risk management, insurance, and consulting agency. This organization is partnering with APN to present benefits to pastors and churches.
Who: American Pastors Network
What: Conference Call: “7 Reasons Why APN Benefits Membership Assists Pastors and Churches”
Where: Call in to (515) 739-1030, access code: 466203852 #
When: 9:00-10:30am EST Tuesday, June 5
How: Register for the call. There will be a time for Q&A at the end of the call. Learn more about APN Benefits, such as Compliance and Crisis Management Resources, Church Governance and Human Resources Services, Accident Insurance and Ministry Protection, Travel, Health, Life and Long-Term Insurance Coverage, and much more. To find out more, visit the APN Benefits Membership website.
Photo by Rayi Christian Wicaksono on Unsplash
What Is God’s Plan for Israel on Its 70th Anniversary?
/0 Comments/in Release /by Churchill MediaAmerican Pastors Network Explores News Surrounding Israel, Iran, and More on “Stand in the Gap Today” Radio Program
It’s been a busy few days for headlines surrounding Israel—from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exposing Iran’s lies to the U.S. withdrawal of the Iran nuclear deal to the impending 70th anniversary of Israel becoming a nation on May 14, 1948.
The American Pastors Network has been following all this news on its popular radio program, “Stand in the Gap Today,” heard on 425 stations around the country.
Nearly once a week, “Stand in the Gap Today” host and APN President Sam Rohrer focuses on issues surrounding Israel by welcoming expert guests on the topic, as well as addressing news coming out of the Middle East from a biblical and constitutional perspective.
“Stand in the Gap Today” will address Israel and Iran again today on the program. The show can be heard live online from noon to 1pm EST at American Pastors Network.com, or find a station.
Listen to clips from a recent “Stand in the Gap Today” program on these topics
Christian Persecution: A Reality Too Close to Ignore
/0 Comments/in Release /by News RoomPHILADELPHIA—The subject of Christian persecution has taken on a renewed focus for the American Pastors Network in 2018, as APN leaders regularly address this global problem through its radio ministry “Stand in the Gap Today.”
APN President and “Stand in the Gap Today” host Sam Rohrer has written a new commentary for The Christian Post titled, “Christian Persecution: A Reality Too Close to Ignore.”
“Violent persecution of Christians around the world has risen to all-time highs,” Rohrer writes. “Murders, beheadings, rapes, imprisonments and evil of all types are increasingly befalling Christians. This ugly reality demands a response. While Christian persecution is nothing new, today it comes in various forms and for various reasons.
“How shall American Christians respond when their spiritual brethren are suffering persecution?” he continues. “The choices are only two: ignore it or responsibly respond to it. Ignoring anti-Christian violence is convenient and painless, but it is also anti-biblical. Turning from it may temporarily relieve our uneasiness and numb our sense of moral obligation, but we only fool ourselves. Willful ignorance of evil is fatal because it provides an illusory sense of peace. Ignoring evil cannot stop it, especially when it is aggressively on the march like it is today.”
It’s time for Christians, churches and pastors to wake up, Rohrer added. While persecution of Christians spreads like a virulent global cancer, fellow believers must ask: How far has it metastasized? Where is it happening, and what drives it?
According to trustworthy organizations like Open Doors USA and The Voice of the Martyrs, there is more persecution of Christians today than at any other time in history. On average, 255 Christians are murdered, 104 are abducted, 180 Christian women are raped, sexually harassed or forced into marriage, 66 churches are attacked, and 160 Christians are detained or imprisoned each month without trial because of their faith. These numbers represent only what is known. And according to the U. S. State Department, Christians in more than 60 countries face persecution from their governments or their neighbors because of their personal faith in Jesus Christ.
4-6-18: What Every Christian Must Know About Islam
/2 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Shane LehmanDave Kistler: Well, ladies and gentlemen, a federal judge recently told school officials in San Diego, California, to reveal details of their work with an Islamic advocacy organization that has been designated as a terrorist group. Of course, by that designation it puts them in the same classification as ISIS itself. Now a legal team in that fight says it has issued investigative subpoenas to the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, otherwise known as CAIR, as part of a federal civil rights lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the San Diego United School District’s anti-Islamophobia Initiative.
The case is being handled by the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, which is working on behalf of parents in that particular school district. Now, here’s the problem: The district’s multi-year program was developed under the direction of CAIR as a holistic plan to protect Muslim students and their families from bullying and discrimination. As part of the initiative, staff and students are taught by CAIR officials to become allies to Muslim students. And CAIR is empowered to revise school curriculum to portray Islam more favorably.
You heard me correctly: CAIR is empowered to revise school curriculum in order to portray Islam in a more favorable light. Well, the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund is seeking communication between CAIR agents in the school district as well as documents tracing the Islamic organization’s strategic process for gaining inside access to impressionable school children. CAIR’s national director testified that proselytizing to school children is a “religious obligation” and that the purpose of CAIR’s educational outreach is to do precisely that, which includes passing out religious propaganda to students during class and attempting, according to CAIR itself, to create a religious educational environment.
The chief counsel for the LCDF, the group that’s fighting this, explained it this way. He said, “Through deliberate manipulation, CAIR has gained unprecedented power and influence over San Diego’s United superintendent and school board, and these subpoenas seek to answer questions about the extent of CAIR’s infiltration into the school district. And with that, I want to welcome you to Stand in the Gap Today. I am Dave Kistler. I’m your host today, and along with me to share the radio microphone is Gary Dull, the co-host today. And all this week, we’re going to be doing programs that unveil the evil that is Islamic ideology.
Many of you will remember the incredible poem the president recited during the campaign in 2016. He’s recited it at a rally or two since becoming president of the United States. That poem is called The Vicious Snake. And so our theme today is this. Exposing the Vicious Snake: An Expose of Islamic Ideology and its Grand Design for America.
To help us with our discussion today we have as our special returning guest Tom Wallace. He is the founder of Fortress of Faith. Tom is not only an Islamic scholar, he is also a theological expert and a former missionary in the United Kingdom. And so Tom, I want to welcome you to the program today. Thank you so much for being aboard.
Tom Wallace: Dave, always it’s a joy to be with you and Gary. And I appreciate you guys dealing with this topic. I came off the foreign mission field to warn my countrymen of the dangers of Islam that is not just creeping into our nation, but sweeping. I think we are … I’m amazed at how fast things are developing here. So I appreciate you guys taking the time to cover this topic.
Dave Kistler: Well, Tom, you are one of our favorite guests. We always get great feedback when we have aboard. You’re also host of your own radio program. I would like you to say a little more about that before we end the program today. But let’s go to this topic of what’s going on in the San Diego United School District. CAIR, which of course as you well know, is a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood, has gained access to and unprecedented influence over America’s school children in that one particular school district, if not other districts around the country as well.
My question to you, Tom, is this: Does this surprise you or is this the modus operandi, the MO for CAIR in how they infiltrate a community, infiltrate a school system, even infiltrate our government?
Tom Wallace: Not in the least. I’ve been warning people about this here for about 10 years now, and let me give you a quote from Omar Ahmad. He gave this down in Southern California back in 1998. He thought he was speaking to just a room of Muslims, but a reporter from the San Ramon Newspaper was there, East Bay Times. And this was July 4th. Now, Omar Ahmad, you need to understand who he is. He is the co-founder of CAIR. He and Nihad Awad founded CAIR many years ago.
And let me quote what Omar Ahmad said: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. In the Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.” Now, they have two faces. They speak one thing to their Muslim community, and another face that they speak to the American public. And they build themselves, they fashion themselves as the civil rights organization to protect civil rights. But they are a Muslim Brotherhood front group.
What’s interesting is that the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, a full-state nation has not only designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, but they’ve gone as far as identifying CAIR, the Council of American-Islamic Relations, as a terrorist organization. It’s very clear that the connections, if you follow it, you trace it, it’s not very difficult to follow this. But most of America is asleep at the wheel. We are not aware that this group is operating for the demise, the destruction of our country from within.
Gary Dull: Tom, this is very interesting that you bring this up, but my question is how are Muslim groups so effective in gaining access today when so often Christian groups are never granted that same access?
Tom Wallace: Isn’t it ironic we as a Christian nation, Christians are treated as the stepchild, the ugly stepchild here, and Islam is being embraced at every attempt. When Obama was our president, any opportunity he had to oppose or support Islam, he always went to support them. We see this happening so much, but let me give you really why all this is happening. It’s a spiritual battle we’re in.
Dave Kistler: Tom, let me hold you right there for just a second because we’ve got to go into the break. Ladies and gentlemen, about five days ago a video surfaced of Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel attending a meeting of Muslims where both Israel and one of his sheriff deputies spoke in Arabic. The meeting was held at one of the local Mosques. It was held during the month of Ramadan in 2015. So we’re talking about three years ago. The deputies said that Israel pledged to keep young people out of jail and to put “God first, your family second, and the community third.”
Now, I know what some of you are thinking: “Dave, what is wrong with that?” Sheriff Scott Israel of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department wants God first, family second, the community third, but he’s speaking in a mosque where the God of the Islamic community is Allah, and he is not the same as the God of the Bible. So there’s where the problem comes in. In that meeting, Israel speaks in Arabic to a group of Muslims. He credits his deputy Nezar Hamze as a like-minded individual who’s on the same mission as Scott Israel, the sheriff. And Israel compares himself and Hamze to lions on a mission.
Both Israel and Hamze boast that they want to keep young people out of jail rather than put them in jail. Israel says that he puts troubled young people in a program where they will get help with narcotics and other issues. This is a direct quote from Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel: “I want to put God first, my family second, community third.” And then Hamze, the deputy sheriff, who is a Muslim and a member of CAIR there in Florida quotes Israel as telling the sheriff’s office team the same thing.
Israel says, and I quote, ‘”here is only one perfect person: God. And you’re not it, and I’m not it. We make mistakes. Police make mistakes every day. And I understand that. And that’s why we have to partner with our community. Why is Nezar Hamze,” his Muslim deputy police chief, “here? Because as a man who studies Islam and as a Muslim, he’s going to find out information that we can’t. He’s going to bring information back to the community and take information from the community back to us.” And, again, this is Sheriff Scott Israel of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department speaking, and, again, Nezar Hamze, his Muslim deputy sheriff, who is also a member of CAIR.
Now, I want you just to listen to a brief clip of this 2015 meeting. The voice you’re going to hear first is … In fact, actually I think the only voice you’ll hear will be that of Nezar Hamze, the Muslim deputy sheriff in Broward County. I want you to listen to how charismatic he is. I want you to listen to him speaking in Arabic and then in English, getting ready to introduce the sheriff of Broward County to this Muslim Mosque. Russ, let’s listen to the clip.
Nezar Hamze: [Arabic 00:10:58], brothers and sisters. Allah [Arabic 00:11:01] has blessed us with another Ramadan. [Arabic 00:11:05] Allah. Allah [Arabic 00:11:06] has locked the Satan, and [Arabic 00:11:09] the sheriff continues to lock the bad people in jail. Al-ḥamdu li-llāh. Brothers and sisters, I wanted to stand here before you today. Lisa? Is Lisa here? She needs to come up. It’s important that we hear from our community, inshallah. I won’t take much time, and I’ll introduce the sheriff. But I want to testify before you, brothers and sisters, because it’s important for you to hear from us, inshallah.
Al-ḥamdu li-llāh. A couple of years ago I had an opportunity to witness our sheriff be sworn in. And he said something that resonates with me, and I want to share it with you so you know the type of individual and what he does. He said regarding our youth, our children, because we all focus on our children very much, he said he’s going to measure his success by how many kids he keeps out of jail and now how many kids he puts in jail. [Arabic 00:12:05].
Brothers and sisters, this was an indicator for me that this man is a straight man. He is a man of honor, of [huck 00:12:13], of justice. Al-ḥamdu li-llāh. I had another opportunity to hear him speak, and he was talking to his team, the employees, the deputies, the people that protect you on the street. He said, “I want you to put God first.” Listen to me. This sounds like [inaudible 00:12:31]. “I want you to put God first, your family second, and the community third.” [Arabic 00:12:40].
Audience: [crosstalk 00:12:41].
Nezar Hamze: Brothers and sisters, this is the reality. This is the man that is our sheriff.
Dave Kistler: Ladies and gentlemen, that is an amazing clip that you just heard. And, Tom, I want to go to you immediately. You heard the introduction give to Sheriff Scott Israel. He then speaks in Arabic briefly and then in English the rest of the time, during which he insinuates that God is the same for Islam as he is for Jews and Christians, and on and on I could go. This man, I’m talking about lead chief Scott Israel and his deputy chief Nezar Hamze, were the ones who presided over, ladies and gentlemen, the failed attempt at protecting the innocent school children at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Tom, to be honest with you, I’m speechless, and I would love to have your thoughts on all of this.
Tom Wallace: Now, I’ve seen that clip. Of course his deputy chief is dressed there in his deputy sheriff’s uniform, but listening to it just over the radio, the way you played that, at first I was thinking, my goodness, this man sounds like our former president Obama and when he’s addressing the Muslim community. It sounded so much like him. It brought back memories.
Yeah, one thing I think we also need to mention is that there’s a video of the sheriff dressed there and the chief deputy, they’re dressed in his Muslim garb, training this mosque, this Muslim community how they can and should protect themselves with guns. You’ve seen him with his Glock 19 there. They’re demonstrating how to protect yourself with guns, citizens or this Muslim community, and yet this very same Sheriff’s department is very much against teachers being armed and protecting our children there in the school system. I find that very ironic.
Now to address the Muslim sentiments and the Islamic sentiments that are being shared here by the Sheriff’s Department. One thing our American community needs to understand, in the eyes of Muslims, the God of Allah, the God of Islam, the God of Muhammad to them is also the same God of Moses, and of Abraham, and of Isaac and Jacob. The God who created heaven and earth, the God who created Adam and Eve, in their minds, they’re all talking of the same God. Every Muslim usually starts this conversation with me when I talk about my faith and their faith, “Oh, well, we have the same God.”
And I respond with this: “Oh, wonderful. That’s great. So then your god has a son?” Then they get this confused or mean look on their face: “No, for Allah hath no son.” Then I say, “Oh, well then we don’t have the same God because my God, Jehovah God, has a begotten son, Jesus Christ. So clearly we do not have the same God.”
But the point that they’re trying to make is that putting God first is that they’re trying to say, “We’re going to put Allah first. We’re going to keep your sons, your Muslim sons out of jail. We’re going to protect them.” And, yeah, it is kind of concerning that he’s addressing the Muslim community with this message.
Gary Dull: You know, Tom, for nine minutes, I say nine tragic minutes, we know that none of the Broward County police on the scene there at Stoneman Douglas entered the school building as kids and teachers were basically sitting ducks and being massacred. Then for 29 minutes, one of those police officers didn’t enter, but told the others to “Stay 500 feet away” from the building where the shooting was actually occurring.
And I know many people have asked this question, but I ask you what in the world is going on here? Why are Islamic police officers unable to really swear allegiance to the United States of America, to US law and really protect United States citizens?
Tom Wallace: Now, Brother Dull, you have just raised a very interesting question. I believe that’s probably the most powerful question that should be asked: Can we trust Muslims to be loyal to the laws of America and also remain loyal to the tenants of Islam? Is that possible? My answer to that question is a resounding no. Absolutely not. If they’re going to be a loyal, faithful Muslim, they cannot be loyal and faithful to the laws of America because Islam will not permit it. They have a system that is an antithesis to the system of America. We cherish freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of choice, freedom to choose who you worship, or not worship at all. Islam does not give that permission at all.
We get to choose who governs you. Islam doesn’t give that choice. Those choice and those rights, well, they’re not rights. They are things that you do not have rights to in Islamic form of a system. And so when Muslims swear allegiance to the Bible or rather to the American Constitution, to protect it, they’re either lying, or they are not a faithful Muslim, and I think that it’s that they’re lying to us. I think that’s been demonstrated time and time again.
Dave Kistler: Tom, what you’re sharing is very important information. It’s very disturbing. And ladies and gentlemen, there’s something about the Parkland shooting that makes no sense at all to me. It’s beyond odd that the heavily Islam-friendly, Islamic-infiltrated police force in Broward did nothing to stop the shooting for nine minutes or longer.
Ladies and gentlemen, this woman’s name you may or may not have heard. Her name is Barbara Sharief. In fact, her full name is Barbara Muhammad Sharief. And she is an American politician. In fact, she has been a Broward County, Florida, commissioner since 2010. And in 2016 she was reappointed as mayor of Broward County, having previously served from 2013 to 2014. And she’s the country’s first African-American female and Muslim mayor. You’re hearing me correctly.
In the same county where Stoneman Douglass high school is that has a very Islamic-friendly police department in the form of Scott Israel, the police chief and Nezar Hamze, the deputy police chief, who is a committed Muslim, member of the organization we’re talking about today called CAIR, Council on American-Islamic Relations, the mayor of Broward County is also a Muslim.
Now, why am I bringing that up? Friends, if you know anything about London, England, you know that Sadiq Khan is a Muslim mayor in that city of London, and he has clear ties to terrorists–that is a documented fact. It was him who after the killing of 22 innocents at an Ariana Grande concert said the following: “We are going to have to get used to terrorism.” In other words, terrorism in London, terrorism in England, terrorism in the United Kingdom, it’s the new normal, something with which we’re going to have to become accustomed.
So, Tom, I want to go to you. You’ve sighted this earlier in the program in segment one that you left the United Kingdom as a missionary there to come back to the United States of America to warn our nation, specifically to warn the church in America about a diabolical, sinister, demonic enemy. So my question is this: Why are Muslim mayors, Muslim law enforcement official, Muslim City Council members, why do people that are committed to Islamic ideology in those positions, why do they present to America an incredibly dangerous dilemma?
Tom Wallace: Well, can I bring your attention to a document that was found by the FBI back in 2011? It was a document that was written by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan. And it was found, the FBI found this in the home of Ismail Elbarasse back in 2011. He is a teacher or was a teacher in Virginia. The FBI became suspicious of him. I won’t get into background of this story of that, but they raided his home and found in his basement a secret room. And in that room was a cache of documents and media.
The prized piece of document that they found was a memorandum from the Muslim Brotherhood to the group in North America. Let me read to you from Page 7: “The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying Western Civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.” Now get this: “by their hands and the hands of the believers.” So what are they saying in this document from the Muslim Brotherhood? “We’re going to create a Jihad–Jihad is a holy war, a struggle against evil–“to eliminate Western Civilization.” How? “From within.” How are you going to do it? “Sabotage their house by their hands.”
We’re going to incorporate their own hands, their own system, and the hands of the believers. And on the back page it lists about 14 different groups that were complicit, that were working with the Muslim Brotherhood as front groups here. Now, the FBI has used this document as a court piece of evidence in the trial, what we call the Holy Land Fund Trial, in Dallas, Texas. During the Bush administration they were starting to put these people away in jail.
When Obama became president and Eric Holder became the new attorney general, he stopped that, and CAIR and ISNA and a number of these other groups there were designated as unindicted co-conspirators. They were getting around to prosecute these people, but they never got to it because of Eric Holder. And we need to press our current attorney general Sessions to reopen that case. All that there is waiting to be done, but that’s another issue.
Now let me return to this judge. They are putting key people in government, judges, mayors, police chiefs. They are jockeying for these positions. They’re training for these positions. And in England, in the United Kingdom, there are four hijab centers. I lived just two to three miles from one, and they are organized to train bankers, politicians, teachers, and they’re working to develop these people to get into government positions. This has been going on in the United Kingdom for since the time I’ve been exposing this and talking about this. And this is also operating here in America. I don’t know where they’re located. They’re a little bit more careful in hiding these locations of where they’re training these people.
Actually, I think they’re training them right underneath our nose in our institutions and setting them up because they’re being funded by CAIR, by Muslim Brotherhood, and they’re wealthy because we keep buying Saudi oil. So we’re funding our own demise. I know I sound like a conspirator, or talking about conspiracies and stuff there, but, folks, this is happening, and we’d better wake up to it.
Gary Dull: You know, I think this is a thing that we need to wake up to, Tom. It almost appears to me is that the average American is either blind about what Islam is doing or doesn’t want to understand what Islam is doing. And I wonder what the thought is among those who are leaders in our nation. You mentioned the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, that he needed to look into this again. Will he? Does he understand what is going on within Islam?
And as we understand it, Tom, it appears as though for years Islam has been working on infiltrating into government here in the United States of America on every level. So this isn’t anything new, as I understand it. It is something that’s been going on for a long, long time. And then to hear that statement that you rendered here a moment ago where they’ve written regarding us that they will sabotage their house by their own hands, that is critical.
And so my question to you is this: What about those who say we, those of us who are concerned about Islam, are overeating, or are just Islamophobic, or are crying wolf? How do you answer those critics who refuse to see what really is going on in front of our own faces?
Tom Wallace: I remind them of how people reacted to Winston Churchill when he was trying to warn Britain about the bully, the tyrant of Hitler, that they ought to pay attention to him, that appeasement is the wrong move. It’s only going to give him time to get stronger, and they need to deal with him. They need to put that down. But they didn’t listen. They thought he was a crazed man, a crazed [inaudible 00:26:52] go away and just let’s just create an environment of peace as much as we can. And it doesn’t work. Appeasing a bully never works. It never has worked. Historically we can see that it’s dangerous. And many people died as a result because they didn’t listen to Winston Churchill earlier. And there were other people that tried to warn, but they didn’t listen to him.
And we have a new bully on the block. Back in the ’40s it was Nazism, it was Hitler. Today it is Islam, and they are infiltrating here. The thing that’s an advantage for Islam is that it’s fashioned, it’s designed under the face of a religion. So therefore it has rights to be practices here, and they can send their apostles around our country to spread their poison and to work their destruction from within. And the Muslim Brotherhood realized that. That’s why they, I believe, I’ve been saying the Muslim Brotherhood is the most dangerous terrorist organization on the face of the earth because they have identified our weakness, and they’re exploiting it. And we’re asleep at the wheel.
So far our government has not called the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. There’s a bill H.R.377, House Resolution 377, that the 115th Congress has put out there. It has a lot of co-sponsors there to get this bill out of committee and get it on the floor to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Can you believe it, that our own country will not designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization when other countries have? That blows my mind.
Dave Kistler: Tom, let me jump in. We have about 45 seconds until we’re going to have to go to the break. I want to ask you this and ask you to respond very quickly. Obviously the Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim entities are strong opponents of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. They are fighting to get guns out of the hands of the general American populous. Talk about that for just a second, why it’s so important that we stand up and defend the Second Amendment because of the threat Islam poses.
Tom Wallace: Every tyrannical government knows you cannot operate if the citizens are armed. You have to disarm the citizens if you’re going to control them with a dictatorship type of government, and that’s the Islamic way. The Islamic government is a dictatorship. It always has been. That’s what Muhammad gave them, and that’s why they practice the very same thing in their governments. You cannot have that if the citizens are armed, if they can fight back. And so naturally, yeah, it’s in their interest to see us disarmed, so they’re going to oppose the Second Amendment because the Second Amendment keeps us safe.
Dave Kistler: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Stand in the Gap Today. I want to say this at the outset of this critically important final segment of our program today, in fact, it’s a segment we commonly call our solution segment, and I want to say this: Our discussion today is not meant to foster hatred for anyone. Our topic today is not directed primarily at people. We are addressing an ideology today that is beyond dangerous. Yes, adherents to that ideology have done, and are doing, and will continue to do very evil things, but we are to love those who are enslaved in any false ideology, including and I would say even especially the false ideology of Islam. These folks that are adherents to it have been enslaved by a deception. They have been lied to, and the only way they’re every going to be delivered from that deception is if we love them enough to tell them to truth and declare to them the glorious, life-changing, eternity-altering gospel of Jesus Christ.
But the ideology that they’re espousing itself is evil. I think Dr. Franklin Graham said it as well as it could be said when he called many years ago Islam an evil religion, and it is precisely that. It is an evil religion. I am not the least bit reticent to say that. Gary is not the least bit reticent to acknowledge that. Tom as an Islamic scholar is not the least bit hesitant to call Islam from an ideological standpoint precisely what it is: a deception, a lie, an evil ideology.
And so, Tom, I want to go to you. Obviously America has to deal with this evil ideology. It’s anti-God. When I say “anti-God,” I’m talking about the true God. It’s certainly anti-American. It’s anti-constitutional. And so in very practical terms, Tom, what can be done? What must be done in the United States of America to deal with this vicious snake that is making its inroads in rapid fashion across the United States of America?
Tom Wallace: First of all, let me say, Dave, thank you for making that point that this is not to bash Muslims. America needs to understand they need to separate Islam from the Muslim. Please do not blame the Muslim for Islam. The Muslim is a victim of Islam. I have been saying this for years, and I’m just as passionate about us resisting Islam as I am about rescuing Muslims.
Muslims are victims. It’s an ideology that’s going to send these people to hell. They need the truth, and praise God we as Christians, we have the answer: It’s the word of God. And if we can only a Muslim into the Bible, and I’ve seen it happen so many times, that if we get them reading the scriptures with us, and they realize that they’ve been lied to, and they see the light of the scriptures, and they come to Christ. And so I’m also the founder of Missions to Muslims. I am as actively about trying to evangelize Muslims as I am actively trying to resist the ideology of Islam and warn people of it. What’s the real solution? A Holy Ghost revival in our country.
Gary Dull: Amen.
Tom Wallace: I have been trying to tell Americans that God is raising up Islam as an instrument of judgment upon us because of our sin. We have sinned against God. He have angered God. We’re foolish to think that we can continue in our wicked living here and expect God to wink at it and look the other way, and continue to sing God Bless America in spite of our wicked sin.
Folks, God is angered and God is raising up our destruction if we do not repent. I believe that Islam is the very element that will bring us to our knees and destroy us, and bring us to humble ourselves and repent if we … But we can volunteer to do that. We can admit, “God we were wrong. We have foolishly thought that we could run our own ship without you. And we need to fall on our knees and repent.” And I believe God is bringing us and showing us destruction is coming our way if we continue, but we refuse to see it.
Dave Kistler: Gary, let me do this, because that is a take on this entire topic that you very seldom, in fact I don’t know if I’ve ever really heard it worded quite like Tom worded it, but with his statement, I completely concur, and I could tell you did as well because you uttered an Amen. The answer to this entire dilemma is nothing less than revival in the United States of America. And I believe Tom is 100% correct. I think Islam is part of God’s judgment on America, is God allowing us to have what we have desired to have independent of him. And that is we’ve tried to live our lives arrogantly, very superficially, to be sure, in violent disregard of him, and so this is the consequence.
So if revival, Gary, is the answer, and I’m firmly convinced it is, you are a pastor. What must take place inside the church? What must take place from the pulpits of America to facilitate, or if I could use this phrase, “fan the flame” of a revival in America? What must they place inside the church and especially from the pulpit?
Gary Dull: Dave, there’s no doubt that we need revival in America today, and I know that it disgusts you as well as it does me, and I’m sure Tom also when you hear some Evangelicals saying, “There will never be another revival in this nation.” I don’t like that. I think there could be another revival in America, and I think we need to pray for that.
But revival is simply defined as when God’s people get right with God. Think about that, ladies and gentlemen. It’s when God’s people get right with God. There are so many things going on in the lives of born-again believers that are godless, that are secular, that are worldly. We talk often on this program about the authority of the scripture.
So often the word of God is not the authority in the lives of individual Christians. We need to get back to the word of God. Now, what is that going to take? It’s going to take, #1, preachers making sure that their pulpits are on fire with the truth of the word of God. Secondly, it’s going to take making certain that every one of us allow the word of God to work effectively in our lives.
Thirdly, it’s going to mean we must be willing to repent of those things that have taken us away from biblical truth and get back to understanding who God is, what God expects, and how God operates. And I know that may seem like a simple formula, but that will be a formula that will bring us back to revival where God’s people get right with God.
It could very well be that God is judging America through Islam. We’ve often said too that he’s judging America through the rise of homosexuality. He could be judging America through abortion. Listen, it’s all around us. God’s judgment is there. It’s time for the Church of Jesus Christ to wake up.
Dave Kistler: Tom, before we exit the program, and we have just about a minute before we’re going to have to leave the air, but I want you to just give our listeners the information they need as to where they can go to find out more about Fortress of Faith as well as this new venture in which you are involved, and that’s called Missions to Muslims. Talk about that, if you would, very quickly.
Tom Wallace: Our radio broadcast site is fortressoffaith.com. We just launched an app just for Android phones. Just right now we are trying to get into the iPhone market, and so people can listen to our daily 15-minute program. I cover the issues that’s going on. And basically what I’m trying to do alert people and show you why God is raising up Islam as an instrument of judgment and how we need to repent, and how we need to resist Islam. Yeah, there’s a political side. Don’t just stand there and weep over it. Do your bid to try to fight it. But the biggest thing we need to do is fall to our knees, folks. We need to repent. Then we need to rescue Muslims, and that’s missionstomuslims.com.
Christian Persecution: A Reality Too Close to Ignore
/0 Comments/in Blog /by News RoomNote: This article originally appeared on the Christian Post website HERE.
by Sam Rohrer, APN President
Violent persecution of Christians around the world has risen to all-time highs. Murders, beheadings, rapes, imprisonments and evil of all types are increasingly befalling Christians. This ugly reality demands a response. While Christian persecution is nothing new, today it comes in various forms and for various reasons.
How shall American Christians respond when their spiritual brethren are suffering persecution? The choices are only two: ignore it or responsibly respond to it. Ignoring anti-Christian violence is convenient and painless, but it is also lazy and irresponsible. Turning from it may temporarily relieve our unease and numb our sense of moral obligation, but we only fool ourselves. Willful ignorance of evil is fatal because it provides an illusory sense of peace. Ignoring evil cannot stop it, especially when it is aggressively on the march like it is today.
History is replete with the disastrous results of ignoring evil’s spread. The U.K.’s Neville Chamberlain gave it a try in his fateful 1938 discussions with Hitler. One day, he publicly announced, “peace for our time.” Within six months, though, Hitler began his blitzkrieg offensives, and the death of millions followed. American Christians cannot afford to be so gullible. We either respond to evil, or blithely wait for its angry fist to pound upon the front doors of ourselves, our children or grandchildren.
It’s time to wake up.
Evil in any form loves darkness. It likes to hide and creep up on its victims. Evil cannot stand the light, nor does it have an affinity for life. As former Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, triumphantly declared, “We love death like our enemies love life!”
While persecution of Christians spreads like a virulent global cancer, we ask: How far has it metastasized? Where is it happening, and what drives it?
According to trustworthy organizations like Open Doors USA and The Voice of the Martyrs, there is more persecution of Christians today than at any other time in history. On average, 255 Christians are murdered, 104 are abducted, 180 Christian women are raped, sexually harassed or forced into marriage, 66 churches are attacked, and 160 Christians are detained or imprisoned without trial each month because of their faith. These numbers represent only what is known.
According to the U. S. State Department, Christians in more than 60 countries face persecution from their governments or their neighbors because of their personal faith in Jesus Christ.
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Islamists aren’t the only threat Christians face. Despotic governments are well-known Christian persecutors. North Korea sits atop the list of nations systematically targeting Christians, followed by Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan and Sudan. Persecution is on the rise in China and India as well.
These facts should grip the heart of every American Christian. As we empathize and identify with our brothers and sisters in these lands, we must also acknowledge signs of persecution popping up within our own borders. This is not a time for ignorance.
The most common denominator driving all forms of Christian persecution is any ideology that rejects the God of the Bible and Jesus Christ, or Yeshua, as Creator, Judge and Redeemer. The Judeo-Christian worldview sees life as the sacred gift of a loving but just Creator God. Those rejecting this worldview in lieu of political power, dreams of a global caliphate or Utopia are inherently primed to persecute Christians. That has been part of the history of many civilizations.
Where America’s Declaration and Constitution honor and reflect the Judeo-Christian worldview, most governments are antithetical to it. The decline of Christianity in Western Europe is a prime example. When religion devoted to evil and an arrogant civil government combine, such as with Islam, they become the worst of Christian persecutors—aggressive, vicious and deadly.
North Korea is just the latest example of applied atheistic political thought. North Korea’s blood relatives include regimes built on Marxism, Communism, Fascism or Nazism. These systems have their intellectual roots in 19th century thought, denying, like Darwin, the reality of a Creator God as a fundamental tenet. These governments tend to favor materialism and humanism, rejecting the God of the Bible, and often not satisfied to just let Christians be.
Islamic ideology teaches Muslims to hate Christians because they’re not Muslims and won’t knuckle under to their false god. Tyrants hate Christians because they have been spiritually and mentally set free, liberated as individuals and knowing better than to recognize government as supreme authority. Those who cannot be controlled, the state eventually declares, must go. Within America, there are progressives who hate Christians because Christianity is “unfair.”
Many American progressives dismiss God as a fantasy, an unneeded crutch. You will hear them claim they cannot believe in a god who permits evil. The most enraging factor to this breed of progressive, however, is the perceived injustice of Christianity’s exclusive claim on moral truth, to the exclusion of other religions.
This is intolerable to the progressive because “equality” of outcome is more important than anything else. Though equal outcomes are both theoretically and practically impossible, this defines justice for most progressives and makes Christianity’s exclusive claim to the truth embodied in Jesus Christ abhorrent.
To the radical progressive, God is fine if He remains ethereal, ill-defined, amorphous and open to self-definition. But once you place God in traceable history, document His personal dealings with mankind, and dare claim that God came to earth and took on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ—who claims to be the only way, the only truth and the only life—you’ve got yourself a first-class scandal, the scandal of the Specific God! This makes the American radical progressive activist potentially just as dangerous to Christians as the Islamic terrorist or the tyrant of a godless regime.
The rise of anti-Christian ideologies in the 20th century resulted in more sheer death and destruction than occurred in all of history up until then. The number of those killed in world wars, purges and genocides is so large that historians can’t agree on the totals. A conservative estimate is that from 150 million to 200 million people were killed, starved or died of disease as a direct result of actions of 20th century regimes built on anti-Christian values.
Today, the most egregious and aggressive source of Christian persecution worldwide is Islam. Whether Sunni, Shiite or Sufi, this destructive ideology mandates its followers kill, rape or otherwise persecute all who will not bow to their false Prophet Muhammad. Islam spread rapidly through violence in the seventh century. Nothing has changed. Today, in addition to Jews, Christians are directly in Islam’s crosshairs.
Christians must first know about the violence befalling Christians in other nations and responsibility respond. Boldly telling the truth about such relevant issues is one of the primary objectives of the American Pastors Network. Pastors must speak to the issue. Being silent means enabling. The first step is learning. Then fervent effectual prayer must be made on behalf of suffering Christians in these places far off the radar screen of our everyday lives.
Christians can learn more from a new nationwide effort to bring public awareness of the worldwide persecution of Christians to the forefront. Visit www.SavethePersecutedChristians.org.
Christian, do not be willingly ignorant. Be intentionally informed and responsibly respond. Stand in the gap now!
Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash
3-29-18: The Hidden Meaning of the Passover: What Every Christian Should Know
/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Shane LehmanSam Rohrer: Well today is Good Friday. In just two more days we’re going to celebrate Easter Sunday. Did you know that the actual days that Jesus was crucified and rose from the grave were actually earlier this week? That’s right. According to the Jewish calendar Christ has already risen and it’s tied directly to the observance of the Jewish Passover. The question is should Christians, therefore, know about the Passover? And since the Jewish Passover historically preceded Easter, what should Christians know about Passover? What messages or pictures did God actually design into the Passover so Jews and Christians alike would look to and recognize the redeemer of the world.
We’re going to talk about this today on Stand in the Gap Today, and to help us better understand the richness, really, truly, the richness of the Passover, and what God wants us to know about Himself because of it, with purpose that we as Christians can learn from it and better help to share the gospel with not only gentiles but particularly our Jewish friends. We’re going to invite in a special guest today to Stand in the Gap Today our messianic Jewish evangelist, JB Bernstein, founder of Gates of Zion. First, let me welcome each of you to Stand in the Gap Today this Good Friday. I’m Sam Rohrer, and I’m going to be joined today by Pastor Isaac Crocket. Isaac, thank you for being on the program with me today on this Good Friday. I know that you’re busy at your church. So thanks for being on board here with me.
Isaac Crockett: Thank for having me, Sam.
Sam Rohrer: With that, Isaac, I’m going to welcome in official now, JB Bernstein. JB, good to have you with us today.
JB Bernstein: Hi Sam. Hi Isaac. Glad to be with you guys.
Sam Rohrer: I tell ya, ladies and gentlemen, you don’t know this, but JB is actually calling in from Friday and just literally, literally moments before we went on the air someone ran into the back of his vehicle. He’s in his car. He’s going to be able to talk to us, but we just prayed and thanked the Lord for protection for him. Sometimes the devil works against things, ladies and gentlemen. I want you to know that. So I think today’s going to be a special day even though the devil tried to stop this effort here. JB, I want you to start right out. Take just a couple of minutes please. Tell us about your message as a messianic Jewish evangelist. You have started an entity called the Gates of Zion, but I specifically want you just to answer here briefly whom do you primarily share the good news of Jesus Christ with? Are you an evangelist in primarily gentiles or Jewish people or both? Just tell us a little bit about your mission as a messianic evangelist.
JB Bernstein: My call from God is to bring the truth of the messiah back to the very people He first came to, and from whom salvation comes. As the Lord said, salvation is from the Jews. Many Christians don’t realize that only less than 1% of Jewish people actually know the Lord, and these were the very people who He first came to, and part of what God has called me to do is to bring this message to Jewish people so they see that the gospel is a Jewish message to the Jewish people about the Jewish messiah and also to help Christians understand that they are called by God to bring the message that came to them from the Jewish people back to the Jewish people.
One of the places where I minister in Norway, they call it Return to Sender. It’s a very crucial thing, and it’s very much part of God’s heart who to this day is broken over His own people. He prayed over only one city recorded in the scripture, Jerusalem, and I believe He continues to pray and weeps also over that city. He wept over that city back then, and I’m convinced He’s weeping over that city now and he wants to equip and release His people throughout the body to bring that message of light back to the people from whom it first came.
Sam Rohrer: JB, this is a great setup. The theme I’m entitling this program here today is The Hidden Meaning of Passover: What Every Christian Should Know. And that’s what we’re going to go into. Let’s go immediately right now to the focus of this program today, Passover week. Now today is Good Friday. Easter’s just in a couple of days. These are some of the most important days in the Christian and Jewish calendar, JB, but most people, I think anyways, don’t know the rich meaning and the connection between Passover and Easter. Since Passover was begun a long time before Easter, but it’s directly connected to it. Give us a bit of history about the Passover. When did it begin? Why is it so important to the Jewish people and the nation of Israel?
JB Bernstein: Well, understand this. When Jesus, who we call by His original Hebrew name, Yeshua, when He was here in the land of Israel in the first century during his whole life He celebrated Passover. He never heard of Easter. There was no such thing. During Passover, Passover might be the most ancient celebration perhaps in all history. Passover has been celebrated for over 3,000 years. Every single year, year after year, Jewish families have come together on the exact same time, which is on the evening of the 14th day of the first month of the year. So you see we are actually in the first month of the biblical calendar, which today is called the month of Nissan and on the 14th day, which is the middle of the month the moon is full.
So on Monday when Jews all over the world celebrated Passover, the moon was full, and that is when the Passover was celebrated. Now, the very first Passover and every subsequent Passover is all about the lamb who is slain before the foundation of the world and that is why when Yeshua, when Jesus celebrated and observed Passover He read about the hidden meaning of it to His disciples. Again, Jewish people who believe in Him we celebrate Passover, which again was on Monday on the full moon and that is the day that the Passover lamb was sacrificed and he was sacrificed.
Sam Rohrer: JB, tremendous, tremendous. Ladies and gentlemen, we are focusing today, because it’s Good Friday on the meaning of Good Friday and looking at the Passover. Our general theme, The Hidden Meaning of Passover: What Every Christian Should Know. Our special guest, JB Bernstein is a messianic Jewish evangelist and founder of The Gates of Zion. When we come back right after this break Isaac Crockett and I will continue with our special guest, JB, How the Passover Seder meal revealed the Redeemer.
Welcome back ladies and gentlemen to this Good Friday special program here on Stand in the Gap Today. With me today is Pastor Isaac Crockett and our special guest, JB Bernstein. He’s a messianic Jewish evangelist and founder of The Gates of Zion where you can go there to that website, GatesofZion.net and see what he has there. Our theme today is The Hidden Meaning of Passover: What Every Christian Should Know. We had a little bit of a history in the last segment. In this next segment here today we’re going to talk about the Seder meal. JB, you have conducted many Seder meals. I was privileged to be a part of one that you led a couple of years ago, and I can tell you I was really blessed by that as we sat there on the ground in that building and you led through that entire process.
I’d like in this segment here if we could to go about explaining to our listeners what the Seder meal is all about, why it’s conducted, what it means to the Jews and to Christians alike. So let me start right off with this very short question to you first and then Isaac will come back and for you. In brief terms, what is the Seder meal, when is it observed, and why is it before we get into the meaning of it. So what is the Seder meal, when’s it observed, and why?
JB Bernstein: The Seder meal is the first of what are called the Moadim in Hebrew, the appointed times. So the first day, the 14th of Nissan which was last Monday is the Passover and then the next day is the feast of unleavened bread. The Seder meal is a meal that we remember what happened on the last plague that God sent to compel Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go or in bondage for 400 years. He had sent 10 plagues and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened after each one. Each of the plagues are intricately also judgments against the god’s of Egypt. For example, the Egyptians worshiped the sun god and so God sent the plague of darkness as an example.
The last plague, which was the most terrible is Pharaoh was considered god and so his son was also considered god and so the last plague was the terrible plague of the death of the firstborn, but what Israel was commanded to do was take a lamb without spot or blemish, a male, and to slaughter that lamb and the blood would be put in a basin and then they would take the blood and apply it to the door post and the top of the door post called the lentil of the door and when that final plague was unleashed the blood would cause death to pass over the home that had the blood applied.
You see, the reason why Christians would be greatly enriched in this and understanding the Seder meal is because that blood is also the blood, it was the blood of the Passover lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world. So the Lord Jesus, Yeshua, He not only fulfilled the Passover, but He is the Passover, and by His blood we, death passes over us today. Actually, in John 5:24 it says, “He who hears my word and believes in Him who sent Me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment. The judgment of death does not fall upon him, but he passes over from death to life. And so understanding the Seder meal and all of the details of it is a blueprint. Hidden in it is a design in the sense just like the creation, there is an intelligent design that is shouting out that the Messiah has come, He is the Passover, He has died, He has been raised from the dead and it’s all in the Passover. I could go on and on. As you can see, I’m excited about talking about it because it is pure revelation from heaven.
Isaac Crockett: JB, this is exciting hearing about this and to see this in enrichment as we see the context unfolded for us especially a lot of us as Christians oftentimes don’t either understand or maybe don’t even study the old testament as we should. As we see this observance of the Passover, the Seder, we see the richness of this illustration that God has enriched us by giving this to us as well as other feasts in the old testament. These are pictures that show us God’s plan for Israel. It’s already, as you said, revealing His plan of redemption through Yeshua. Could you just explain, then, some of these major elements of the Seder meal then kind of walk us through how these elements point us to God’s plan of redemption.
JB Bernstein: Even before Passover we’re commanded to remove all leaven. Everything that has yeast from the house. That’s really where we get spring cleaning from. Getting rid of the leaven and the typology of leaven is leaven is figurative for sin. So we get rid of all sin, all known offenses against God. We put it away. Get rid of all malice, all anger, evil conduct, get it out of you. So we remove leaven, the physical leaven, but it speaks of removing sin out of our lives and repenting and getting rid of it. So that begins the Passover Seder and then Matzah itself unleavened bread, if you look at it closely it is striped, it is pierced, and it is reminiscent of the Messiah Himself who was pierced. “They pierced my hands and my feet.” In Zechariah it says, “When he returns,” it says, “They will look upon him who they have pierced.” So the Messiah is the pierced one. He is the unleavened bread. “Unleavened” meaning, He had no sin. So this is the feast of unleavened bread and Yeshua himself said, “I am the bread of life.”
This is the kind of bread He was talking about. He was talking about unleavened bread. When you are able to participate and experience Passover, you see this more clearly. Also an incredible thing is that Jewish people throughout the world, there is something called a Matzatash, which has three pieces of Matzah in it. Three slices of unleavened bread and it is a tradition to take the middle piece, break it in half, wrap it in a cloth and then bury it during the Seder meal. It’s amazing. Jewish people do this throughout the whole world for centuries, have no idea why they’re doing it, and so it gets buried at the end of meal. The children look for it, search for it, and it gets taken up away and then it is shared by all.
That is called the Afikoman. It’s the only Greek term in the Passover Seder and interestingly it’s meaning is it’s “what comes after” or “He who comes.” When Yeshua, when Jesus took that bread he said, “This is my body broken for you. Eat of it.” So the Afikoman, the piece of Matzah that is wrapped in a sense, in linen, in cloth, buried, it’s raised up at the end and divided among the family speaks so clearly of the body of Messiah, and that’s just one of the elements during the Seder meal.
Sam Rohrer: JB, I’m listening and I’m overwhelmed because I can see the picture. Jewish people, as you say, have been doing this for thousands of years, 3,000 years.
JB Bernstein: 3,000. Yeah. Over 3,500 years. Yes.
Sam Rohrer: What is a Jewish person looking for? The way you describe it, it is so clear of the picture of the Messiah who has come. Why isn’t that connection made in more people’s lives and their understanding?
JB Bernstein: I think it’s multi-faceted. I think one of the reasons has to do with a great need for the body of Christ to repent over the centuries, even almost 2,000 years of a really anti-Semitic spirit, attitude in the church where the Jews … You see, the gospel, this is very in for it. The gospel to Jewish people for the last 2,000 years-
Sam Rohrer: JB, JB. Hold that right now. We’re going go right into that in the next segment. Ladies and gentlemen, you’re listening to a special Good Friday emphasis here on Stand in the Gap Today, The Hidden Meaning of Passover: What Every Christian Should Know, our special guest, JB Bernstein, messianic Jewish evangelist as Isaac Crockett and I are walking through the meaning of Passover. Just as JB was heading that way, right there we’re going to come back after the break and we’re going to talk about how understanding the Passover should better motivate Christians how to witness to Jewish people.
We’re going to go forward now here. JB Bernstein, you were talking just before the break. You were talking about the meaning of the Seder and how it really should motivate us as Christians, and I want to go into this matter here now with you. Jewish families observe this wonderful tradition. They look towards the Messiah, and I was asking you the question of why is it that more don’t really understand that the Messiah has come. They’re still anticipating that Jesus, the Messiah will come. Now, I know that you have a real love for your Jewish people and so do I. I know Isaac does too and actually has some of his family in the past have had ministries to Jewish people. We know that that’s an important thing, and we rejoice in the fact that because Christ came that we, speaking of me and Isaac as well, as Gentiles have now become a part of the spiritual commonwealth of Israel.
We’re joint heirs with Jesus Christ a phenomenal, phenomenal thing. I think sometimes we too often take that for granted. Let me start out with you right now. Could you share with our Christian listeners, primarily on this program how that better understanding the Passover of the Seder meal you just walked through and this time of year in particular should help us be more effective in our witnessing to our Jewish friends. Kind of lay it down. You were going down that road of priority of the message of the gospel to Jewish people. Build that out a little bit if you could.
JB Bernstein: What I was saying, brothers, mostly the gospel to Jewish people for the last 2,000 years has tragically been, “Be baptized or we will kill you.” It’s almost like this. When Jewish people read Moses, the Word of God says that a veil lies over their minds. Well, my discovery ever since my eyes were opened about 40 years ago is that when Christians, most Christians, not all, read Paul there’s a similar veil that lies over their minds because they don’t really see that Jesus lived his entire life in the land of Israel, and all of His apostles were Jewish, and all of His disciples were Jewish, and that they celebrated Passover. They never knew about Easter. They celebrated the feast of dedication or Hanukah, not His birthday.
They celebrated all of the feasts of the Lord. They met at the temple. They went into the synagogues on Saturday, on the Sabbath. And so what was a Jewish culture has changed to what today is a foreign culture to Jewish people, and so in a sense Jesus, Yeshua, the Messiah, has become a foreigner. Even the biblical account when we read the gospel we see that the people flocked to Him. The leaders of the Pharisees were very careful what they did with Him because they feared the people. Well, it wasn’t that they feared Indians or Chinese people, they were fearing the people of Israel, because the people of Israel were thrilled. He was famous in Israel. I believe God has called me and you to make Him famous in Israel once again.
By Christians understanding things like the Passover and being able to explain to Jewish people that, “Hey, I have become part of the covenant that God made with your people. I love and I serve your God. I worship your God. I read your book.” You see, the Jewish people have never heard that. They have been told, “You need to convert to our religion. You need to become one of us when that is not biblical. Because Christians, just like you mentioned, become part of the commonwealth of Israel. They are grafted onto the olive tree, which is their tree. The Jewish people are the natural branches. Those who were not born Jewish are wild branches grafted onto a cultivated olive tree. The Passover is such a striking example of the riches of that olive tree that are not really … Christians are not being nourished by it because they’ve bypassed it and yet, as you can see it’s so rich.
Isaac Crockett: That gives some great perspective, JB. It helps us really understanding this context around it, and you’ve really helped this emphasize this theme that Sam started out with about the hidden meaning of Passover. It’s interesting that it’s oftentimes hidden to us as Christians, but like you said, even the understanding of Paul and his explanations in the New Testament is hidden oftentimes to the Jewish people, that they don’t realize that Jesus did come and fulfill this. Of course, on your website, Gates of Zion, there’s so many good tips and helpful things, but as a gentile believer who, as you said, were part of this commonwealth through Christ, do we need to be afraid to try to witness to Jewish people? Are we less effective because we’re not Jewish when we’re witnessing to our Jewish friends?
JB Bernstein: It’s quite the opposite. Most Jewish people have come to faith through the witness of a gentile who’s made a decision to love Jewish people by blessing them and what is the greatest blessing that you can give to a Jewish person? Salvation. So, no. It’s the opposite of that. Gentiles, those who were not born Jewish need to understand and learn and the Apostle Paul said it clearly, “To the Jew I became as a Jew.” So to understand how to communicate to a Jewish person, that’s what my website is designed for. It used to be about my ministry.
Instead, now, it is an equipping portal designed to help Christians understand how to speak to Jewish people in their own language, through their own culture that it is their messiah who has come, and that it’s impossible that Jesus, that Yeshua, is not the Messiah and anyone that desires truth amongst the Jewish people can see that if they are gently drawn to consider these things and recognize that they don’t need to convert. In fact, the Jewish people are the only people group that do not need to convert to another religion. They need to get back to where they once belonged, as the Beatles once sang.
Isaac Crockett: That is so helpful. Like I said earlier, it gives a different perspective that many of us aren’t really looking for, but we see this now as you explain it, that it gives an option, an impact to have with our unsaved loved ones, maybe our Jewish and the really, like you said, they don’t have to convert because that’s what Jesus, He came as Jewish. My grandfather, he just recently moved in with my aunt and uncle, but for the last 10 years he lived in a retirement community that was run by Jewish people, it’s for Jewish people. He is a survivor of the Holocaust, was part of the Dutch underground, and he came to know the Lord, but also came to have a great respect for Jewish people during his time in the Dutch underground.
It has been neat to see what you’re talking about. I found myself talking to Jewish people that there is, I think, in me an innate fear that, “Oh no. I’m an outsider. I’m a foreigner,” but to remember that Jesus Christ came and He fulfilled the law. Are there any points that we should take? Any, maybe, scripture passages that would be good for us in remembering when we’re talking to a Jewish person?
JB Bernstein: On my website, www.GatesofZion.net I have an ebook that I wrote. It’s for free. Going on, you just need to give your email address and your name and it is sent to you by email, a link so you can have it for free. It’s called Five Steps to Provoke Jewish People to Jealousy. Yes, there is a way to really make Jewish people jealous because really as Christians have the inheritance of Israel. I teach in the little ebook I say, “When you approach a Jewish person, what you’re saying to them is, “I love, I worship, I serve your God. I am part of the covenant God made with your people.” And thanking them for the bible also speaks volumes.
Sam Rohrer: JB Bernstein, tremendous, tremendous information. I tell you, my heart is really touched. I have had a love for Jewish people for a long time, and I will tell you, understanding these things that you are saying makes it so very, very, very, very rich. I hope ladies and gentlemen that you are enjoying the program today. When we come back after the next segment we’re going to go and wrap this up and I’m going to ask the question, if there were no Jewish people, think about it, we’d have no resurrection. Think about that. We’re going to talk about what we should walk away from really understanding.
As we wrap up today’s program here on this Good Friday edition of Stand in the Gap Today, we’ve been blessed to have our special guest, JB Bernstein. He is a messianic evangelist, and also the founder of the Gates of Zion, which you can go to. A lot of good information three. GatesofZion.net is where you can find that. JB, as we wrap up the program, I have to say it again, it’s been a real blessing to have you on. The insights that I learned from Jewish people about what the bible says and particularly those who have come to faith in Yeshua is just an amazing thing. It’s rich, rich, rich.
If I could ask you, though, JB as we wrap this thing up here today, if there is one vital connection between the Passover, which the world is gonna be observing in just a day or two, what would be that one most important connection do you think that Christian people would remember about Passover as we are about now to celebrate Easter?
JB Bernstein: I just wanted to say one thing. On the Passover plate, which has the matza, one of the things is a bone. The bone reminds us of the Passover and the amazing thing is that when the Passover lamb was eaten you can read in Exodus that they were to eat it in haste. They were to eat to consume the whole and not to break a bone. How interesting was it when the Lord was crucified that the soldiers went over to the first and there were two thieves that were crucified with him, they broke the bones of the first, but when they went to the messiah, they saw he was already dead and they did not break any of his bones and this fulfilled the Word of God, “Not a bone should be broken of the Passover lamb.”
So here is death of the Messiah including the way He died and even the actual event where His bones were not broken relating right to the Passover lamb that was slaughtered right before Israel left Egypt before the plague of the death of the firstborn. That, to me, it just shows the intricate design of God in this feast to bear witness and the prophetic clarity of what it was speaking about so much so that when the Lord appeared, the prophet who ( actually there was an actual empty chair for Elijah at the Passover Seder because Elijah is tied up with the coming of the Messiah) was Elijah and Yeshua said John or Elijah who is to come and he announces him, his first words when he saw Yeshua is “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Isn’t that absolutely amazing?
Sam Rohrer: Oh it is. It is. It is. Isaac.
Isaac Crockett: Yes. It’s so amazing to hear how you describe this as Christians looking at this we see all of this coming into fruition. We see all the connections just as you’ve explained it through Passover, and it’s so wonderful to have knowledge. As we look at this Passover feast and we realize that understanding it, having the context of it makes a powerful impact on what we do as Christians on our belief and our understanding of Jesus, what He came to fulfill. We remember that the Passover is not the only feast that is celebrated. And there are many feasts on the Jewish calendar. Would you maybe take a little bit of time to tell us some of the things that are coming up next on the calendar and what we should, as believers in Jesus Christ be looking forward to with those.
JB Bernstein: Amazingly, yesterday, Wednesday was first fruits. In other words, the Lord rose on the third day, yesterday was the third day and that is the feast called first fruits, of course He is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. So He rose from the dead on first fruits and now 50 days from the Sabbath following Passover, Christians know it as Pentecost and that’s when the Holy Spirit fell. So you see everything about the light of Jesus, of the Messiah, has to do with one of the feasts of the Lord. So the Lord is crucified on Passover, He is raised from the death on the Feast of first fruits. The Holy Spirit falls on Pentecost and then the next feast prophetically that has not taken place yet is the feast of trumpets.
And we know that the Lord will descend with the blast of the trumpet. So on the prophetic calendar all of the feasts of the Lord is fulfilled in Him. And so we’re waiting now. One of these feasts of trumpets, the day of the blowing of the trumpet of, not only of the trumpets, of the shout. And it says the Lord will descend with a shout. As I talk about this, it just excites me because it is so prophetic and it’s all about Him and He said, “My words are spirit and light,” and all of these feasts are the Word of God and He is the Word of God so He is all the feasts. So you can just go deeper and deeper with these realities.
Sam Rohrer: JB, I’ll tell you, my eyes tear. I’m thrilled to my heart by this. We’re going to have to close the program now. And you’re right. We could go much further. But I would like for you to pray here in the last remaining 45 seconds or whatever. Pray for the people of Israel. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray for God’s people to have a greater burden for his people and for those who are not yet saved. Could you do that please for us?
JB Bernstein: …In the Father of the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob we ask you to open the eyes of Israel and to open the eyes of your church, of Christians, so that they begin to fulfill what you spoke about in Romans 11:11 and in fact that evangelism takes on the pattern that Paul said that, “I’m not ashamed of this gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, but to the Jew first.” Lord, restore that pattern. Fulfill Romans 11:11 and cause Christians to start making Jewish people jealous and Lord we ask you to open the eyes of Israel, Lord God. Give them dreams, visions. Bring them home. Bring them home into your arms in the mighty name of Yeshua, Jesus the Kind of Glory. Amen and Amen.
Sam Rohrer: Amen and amen. Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being with us on this special Good Friday program, the Passover and what it means. I pray that as each of you go forward now to the balance of this day and into Easter weekend remember the Passover. Yeshua has come. The next point is He’s going to come back with the shout of the trumpet. Be ready for that.
CBN Interviews APN President, Sam Rohrer on Immigration-What Does the Bible Say?
/0 Comments/in Blog /by News RoomOn March 13, CBN News interviewed Sam Rohrer on the Immigration issue. To read the article and watch the video interview, click HERE.
Immigration has been a hot-button political issue in the United States.
America, like all other countries, controls and limits who may enter its territory, for how long, and on what terms, and these restrictions are a part of the laws of the nation.
In recent decades, millions of people from Latin America have bypassed this legal process, earning them the controversial designation of “illegal aliens.”
Now refugees from Arab nations has come to the forefront due to the prolonged Syrian civil war and terror attacks by Islamic extremists in many Western nations.
Many are concerned that potential terrorists could infiltrate America or other Western nations under the guise of being refugees, while others are moved by compassion for those legitimately seeking to build a new life.
The Bible has a lot to say about immigrants and immigration.
CBN News sat down for an interview to discuss this issue with Sam Rohrer. president of American Pastors Network and Jenny Yang, the director of Advocacy and Policy for World Relief.
“It’s no secret that President Trump feels strongly about putting America first and protecting her borders,” Rohrer said. “Many have reacted to that policy, including Christians who have criticized the president and claimed that his view is unloving or ungodly. But when we look at the Bible and at biblical history, it is absolutely acceptable to favor and support one’s own country.”
Rohrer says, in his opinion, if we understand God’s view—a biblical worldview—we understand that God forms nations.
“Nations have personalities,” Rohrer continued. “Consider Israel, a very distinctive nation. God picked Israel and said, ‘I’m going to make of you, Abraham, a great nation and I am going to bless the nations of the world,’ so God clearly favors nations. With that comes the ability and the right to support nations and to pray for them. When we pray for those in authority, we don’t necessarily pray for everyone in positions of authority everywhere in the world. The idea is that we pray for those in authority over us and in our nation.”
The idea of “our nation first” is indeed biblical, Rohrer added. This concept fits the biblical precedent and the model of what God established with Israel.
World Relief’s Yang has a different perspective.
“The core responsibility of government is to protect our borders. But I think the immigration debate is bigger than that. We have spent an unprecedented amount of resources on the border so far,” she said.
“We have a pretty tight border, where the number of illegal crossings have been on the decline. So right now I think the question is not does a country have a right to protect its borders. Which I think it does. But the question is what is being done to fix our broken immigration laws and ensure the people who are living in the shadows actually come out of the shadows,” Yang continued.
Yang says there are only three commandments of love in the Old Testament.
“It’s to love God, to love your neighbor, and love the immigrant,” she told CBN News. “I think we can still be a welcoming country to immigrants, while also protecting national security and borders, and that is what our Congress is trying to do right now.”