SID: I can see you’re looking forward to this interview with my friend Jonathan Bernis. Jonathan and I go back. I think I met you, you were barely out of your teens. We had so much in common, both Jewish, both came to the Lord supernaturally and both had a passion to tell our people about the Messiah. We used to get together and pray. But Jonathan started doing something that was out of my paradigm, out of my understanding. We would pray in tongues, that I understood, but then he went into a deep form of prayer called travail. How did this start with you, even?
JONATHAN: You know, Sid, it took me by surprise. I didn’t know this at the time, but God was preparing me for ministry in the former Soviet Union.
SID: Is the groanings and utterings that we read about in Romans’ Eighth Chapter and what you walked into, and I was privileged to walk into it with Jonathan as his guest, I believe was the most significant Jewish ministry in 2000 years, in the former Soviet Union.
JONATHAN: It was an incredible time in history and I think moving into this realm of birthing of groanings that cannot be uttered was actually bringing that to pass. I didn’t understand it with my natural mind, and good thing, Sid, right, because you don’t want the mind interfering.
SID: If you, listen, if you had known the hotels that he put me in when I went to the former Soviet Union.
JONATHAN: You know, Sid, it was worth the cost, it really was. There’s a price to pay.
SID: I want to take you back to the first meeting Jonathan and I were at. Jonathan had no idea if anyone would show up, and I of course didn’t know. The auditorium was jam packed with unsaved Jewish people. The altar call went forth and Jonathan and I saw something we had never seen before. What did we see?
JONATHAN: This particular hall sat 4000 people, over 4000, and we saw people rushing forward, packing the altar.
SID: To come to know the Messiah.
JONATHAN: Yes. It was amazing, fighting over Bibles, Sid.
SID: Yes.
JONATHAN: This fight is over Bibles.
SID: Well I’ll tell you what, that groaning that Jonathan did in the Spirit and that I did in the Spirit, that praying in tongues laid the foundation for one of the greatest moves of God among Jewish people in 2000 years. And then it kind of subsided for years, and Jonathan told me the groanings are coming back.
JONATHAN: They are indeed. And the Lord has really prompted me again to spend extended times in fasting and prayer.
SID: That tells me something is big, I believe, bigger.
JONATHAN: Bigger.
SID: Is about ready to happen. We’re about ready to see the greatest outpouring on Israel. And by the way, who is Israel? A lot of people are confused on that.
JONATHAN: Well that’s a good question and I think there’s some misunderstanding. When people, when Christians hear Israel they think of a little sliver of land in the Middle East about the size of New Jersey. But in fact, biblically, Israel is a people that God has sovereignly preserved despite all odds and efforts to destroy them. Jeremiah 31: “As long as the sun shines by day and the moon and stars by night, they declare the supernatural preservation of the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” And Sid, God scattered us to the uttermost parts of the Earth. And Sid, the reason God wants me here to talk about this today is because that every believer, every person watching that knows the Lord has been called to a supernatural destiny in supernatural times. This is the greatest time in history to be alive and I don’t want anyone to be on the sidelines. God doesn’t want anyone to be on the sidelines.
SID: Okay. But this begs the question. Everyone knows why the devil tried to kill all the Jewish babies, 2000 years ago, because it wanted to stop the Messiah from coming. But now he’s here, so why is God still concerned about the Jewish people, about the Nation of Israel? Why now? We understand why that was very important at the First Coming of the Messiah. Why now?
JONATHAN: That’s a great question and that’s really one of the themes going through my book, “Unlocking the Prophetic Mysteries of Israel” that the Jewish people are the centerpiece of God’s plan for redemption. Jesus came through the Jewish people. God’s destiny for the Jewish people was to bless every household, to bless every individual and that’s why Abraham was blessed. The greatest blessing through the Jewish people is the Messiah, but the Jewish people play a role in his return just as they played a role in his first coming. And so Satan knows something that most Christians don’t and that is the role that Israel has to play in the Messiah’s return. And the plan of the enemy is stop Israel, destroy Israel and keep the Messiah from returning and God’s plan of redemption for the whole earth from taking place, because the ultimate end of that is the destruction of Satan himself.
SID: I’m going to tell you something. I know why this travail has started because there was recently a poll which changes the whole paradigm of the Jewish people with the Gospel. A poll was done by the Barna survey team that 21 percent of North American Jewish millennials believe in the deity of Jesus, and a lot of people say, oh wonderful. Yes and no. Yes, it’s wonderful, but they don’t know Jesus. They don’t have experiential knowledge with him. This is why I’ve created a booklet and this booklet is called “There Must Be Something More.” And I am mailing this. We got a mailing list of 720,000 Jewish millennials. We are mailing this to these Jewish millennials. It’s part of our Project 77 and I’m going to tell you something. These Jewish millennials will change the world. But I am so grateful that in the United States of America, President Trump has just done something that has rocked the kingdom of Satan and darkness. I mean, that’s why there’s so much junk going on against him. He has just said we recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and in a year we are going to put our embassy there. Jonathan, why is the restoration of Jerusalem so significant to these End Days?
JONATHAN: Well that’s a good question. Jerusalem, Sid, is the centerpiece, the bull’s eye. Jesus died in Jerusalem. Jesus will return, not to New York or to Rome, he’s returning to Jerusalem and he’s returning to Jerusalem, we’re told, that’s back in the hands of the Jewish people. These are the words of Jesus, Yeshua himself: “You will not see me again,” speaking over Jerusalem, “until you say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” He also tells us, in Luke 21:24, that “Jerusalem would be trodden by the gentiles, by the nations, until the time of the gentiles be fulfilled.” That little word “until” is a very prophetic word. It’s a prophetic mystery. There’s a set time, Jesus is saying, where Jerusalem will come back into the hands of the Jewish people and it’s the prophetic time clock. When that happens, it signals a transition back to a focus on the Jewish people and his near return.
SID: It’s like the clock is speeding up when you see Jerusalem as a Jewish nation.
JONATHAN: Two minutes to 12, Sid. That happened in 1967 and that’s when Jewish people started coming to faith in great numbers. That’s when everything changed. And now, we’re aligning with that as the U.S. is recognizing, finally, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
SID: So you’re saying that this was not just a good diplomatic move by President Trump, this was literally fulfilling Bible promises.
JONATHAN: I don’t know if President Trump had any consideration of Scripture, but God used him, when he made the decision we’re no longer delaying, actually a decision that was made back in 1995 by the Congress, I’m not signing this [delay], I’m no longer going to delay this, he was aligning America with Genesis 12: “I’ll bless those that bless my people.” I’m expecting unprecedented blessing to come to America as a result of this. I’m expecting prosperity and more importantly, revival to come. That’s the first thing. The second thing is the peace process has to be built on truth, not on belief. There’s peace work outside of the Prince of Peace, but this is truth finally being, we’re aligning with truth that Jerusalem has always been and remains the capital of Israel and Jesus will rule, physically, out of Jerusalem.
SID: Because Israel is so important there is so much misunderstanding on Israel. For instance, I mean, many Christians that literally feel that we’re under the New Covenant and the Church has replaced Israel, give me one reason why that’s not true.
JONATHAN: The fact that Jewish people are coming back to faith in greater numbers, the fact that Israel has been restored as a nation, that Jerusalem is back under Jewish control. All these things were prophesied in the Jewish prophets thousands of years ago. They’re all coming to pass. And here’s another thing, Sid, if God reached a point where he said I’m done with Israel, then how can Christians trust that he doesn’t reach a point where he says I’m finished with the Church or I’m finished with you because you’ve sinned too much. No, we trust in a faithful God because he’s demonstrated his faithfulness to a people throughout history that have not been faithful. That’s the God we serve.
SID: You know, it reminds me of the story of the Prodigal Son. I see the older brother as a type, the gentile church, and the younger brother as a type, the Jewish people and the Jewish people have not deserved, for 2000 years, because they’ve been like the Prodigal Son and the older brother has been plowing in the field for 2000 years. And then there’s a big celebration because the Jewish son comes home and the older brother is sulking over this, and the father says to the older brother, “Son, everything I have is yours.” You get it? The whole thing, it’s a team. It’s called the One New Humanity, the One New Man, the two working together to expand the Father’s Kingdom. And that’s what I’m going to ask you to do right now. We have Project 77. Why? Because there’s a brand new Barna poll that reveals Jewish millennials in North America don’t have any reservations about accepting Jesus. Twenty-one percent say that they believe in the deity of Jesus, but no one is telling them how to have experiential knowledge with Jesus. I want to send a book, we have a mailing list of 720,000 millennials and I want to send this to them. I want to have a web page to answer their questions. I’ll be right back.
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth