Hebrew Gospel Pearls #19 – Blessed are the Peacemakers

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Nehemia: The answer sometimes is no. I’ve seen this in all kinds of things in my life. I’ve seen this with governments, with geo-political situations. I’ve seen this with friendships, and I’ve seen this… and it’s painful. And I’ve seen this with relationships. Sometimes, the answer is no.

Keith: Welcome to Hebrew Gospel Pearls, episode number 19. We are in a wonderful studio doing a buffet of Biblical Beatitudes, the Biblical Beatitudes. We’re actually up to Matthew chapter 5 verse 9. Nehemia, I’m going to start out reading something, before we even go too far. People love the King James. People love the King James. I think King Jimmy got nervous with this verse, and let me just read it.

Nehemia: Sure.

Keith: It says this, the King James Version reads our verse like this, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the ‘Children of God.’” It seems that the translators of King Jimmy’s Bible got a little nervous with the last phrase, just like I did. Just like I did? Why did I get nervous?

Nehemia: Who said that?

Keith: This is me.

Nehemia: Oh, this is you speaking.

Keith: I’m actually speaking. And what am I speaking? So, I did something some years ago. We did what we called the Red Letter Series, and what it was, it was based on Howard’s Hebrew Matthew. What we attempted to do was go through the parts where Yeshua actually spoke, and we got to the Beatitudes. What this series is doing, Nehemia, and those that are listening, is we’re going to a completely different level, because Nehemia’s brought all of these manuscripts together. We’ve got a chance to compare and to contrast. I don’t even think we need a whole lot of other Hebrew manuscripts just to focus on the controversy of Matthew chapter 5 verse 9.

And why do I say that? Why did the King James get nervous? I guess it’s depending on what it means by “becoming Children of God,” and also what it means to be peacemakers. So, let’s get started. Right into 5 verse 9, why don’t you read it for us, based on what you have in the Hebrew?

Nehemia: So, Hebrew Matthew has, “Ashrei rodfei shalom, shebnei Elohim nikareihu.” “Blessed are the pursuers of peace, for they will be called bnei Elohim, the sons of God.”

Keith: My goodness. That sounds like a little bit of a difference.

Nehemia: No. I don’t know that it’s that big of a difference. In other words, in Greek you say, “to make peace”. In Hebrew, you say, “to pursue peace”. Delitzsch, who we know translated from the Greek into the Hebrew, he translates “ashrei rodfei shalom” verbatim, the same, so far. “Blessed are those who pursue peace, ki bnei Elohim yikarei lakhem,’” “For it shall be called to them, ‘the sons of Elohim.’” So he has the tenses a little bit different, or the passive and the active voice. But basically, it’s almost identical.

Let’s say, if Matthew represents accurately what Yeshua said, then he got that phrase from Psalm 34:15, which says, “bakesh shalom ve’rodfehu,” “Seek peace and pursue it.”

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: And Delitzsch definitely got that phrase from Psalm 34:15. In other words, he saw the phrase, “Ereino poio,” “those who make peace,” and he said, “Oh, ereino poieo is, in Hebrew, ‘to pursue peace.’” In other words, it’s a Hebrew idiom that he’s translating back out of the Greek. And if we look, let’s see, it’s Psalm 34:15. We see, “bakesh shalom ve’rodfehu,” “Seek peace and chase after it.”

And let’s see what we have in the Greek. I didn’t even look this up beforehand. Yeah, so it doesn’t have that exactly. It’s interesting, it doesn’t have, “and make peace.”

So, we have to ask, how did he end up with this phrase? He didn’t end up with it based on the Greek. He said, “What is a Hebrew idiom for ‘making peace?’” Now, is there a difference between ‘pursuing peace’ and ‘making peace?’

Keith: I believe there is. And I’ll tell you something. For me, this is a change, because when I saw “to pursue peace”, the pressure kind of went down a little bit. I’ll be completely honest, Nehemia. I don’t always feel like being a peacemaker. Pursuing peace seems to be something that I’m pointing towards, I’m trying to do, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it lies with me. “Peacemaker” feels like it’s just you. That’s how it feels, to me.

Nehemia: And you could interpret it as that. In other words, someone who pursues peace, if the other side doesn’t reciprocate – “Okay, I tried.”

Keith: Exactly.

Nehemia: Whereas if based on the Greek you could say – and I don’t know that it has to be read this way, but it sounds, I guess, in the Greek, that you only get credit if you actually make the peace. Boy, how can we talk about this without talking about the peace process in Israel?

Keith: Oh, my goodness.

Nehemia: Can we talk about that?

Keith: You know, listen. If we’re going to talk about…

Nehemia: Is that too controversial?

Keith: No, absolutely we have to talk about it. But we have to take our time and talk about it. So, before we talk about that, can we just check the sources?

Nehemia: Absolutely.

Keith: The sources regarding this, can I go to Howard’s Hebrew first, verse 9? “Blessed are those who pursue peace.” And again, I love the fact that he’s using the word, “to pursue”. “For those who pursue peace, for they shall be called.” And why did I say “controversy”? King James maybe got a little bit nervous, versus the NASB. The NASB says, “sons of God”. In Hebrew, I think we’d say, “sons of God”.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: But what King James says is, “children of God”, kind of to take the pressure off.

Nehemia: How does it take the pressure off?

Keith: It takes the pressure off, because when you say… here, you have to understand. When someone says, “son of God” or “sons of God”, and I might be jumping ahead, I might be really jumping head…

Nehemia: I think you’re in the Plus area, but go on.

Keith: You say, “sons of God,” there are issues there.

Nehemia: What’s the issue?

Keith: There are issues there. “Sons of God”, if you look at it from some perspective, you say, “son of God,” that means one person in one situation only. It would not take into account anything else other than the Son of God. That’s the controversy. So, I think King James…

Nehemia: Okay. So that’s an alien concept to a Jewish perspective, and I do want to save this for the Plus section, I think, or maybe for later even in this section. But okay, I hear what you’re saying. In other words, “Son of God” is capital S, and it has a theological connotation.

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: The question is – and I don’t even think it’s a question – when Yeshua said this in Matthew 5:9, did he intend to have a theological connotation to it?

Keith: No, he’s giving a family upgrade.

Nehemia: What now?

Keith: He’s giving everybody a family upgrade. You can become a part of the family.

Nehemia: You’re joking.

Keith: No, but I’m telling you…

Nehemia: You joking, but there’s a denomination I once encountered, I won’t say which it is. But they have a doctrine – and they’re Christian – they say that when you die, if you’re a believer, you become part of the Godhead, and that you become literally a brother of Jesus, and Yahweh is your father – this is using their terminology – and your name is Bill, now your name is Bill Elohim, because Elohim is a family name, and you’ve become part of the family of God. This is their doctrine. Now, imagine trying to have a biblical conversation…

Keith: You met somebody like this for real?

Nehemia: Oh, absolutely, more than one person, a denomination. Now, imagine trying to have any kind of conversation with someone who believes that when he dies, they’ll become part of the Godhead. Can you imagine the arrogance of such a person? And some of those people might be very humble. The ones I met were not. It actually shows that you can have such a concept. It exists today in the 21st century in the United States. And some people would say, “Well, they’re not Christians, because if you have anything more than the Trinity, then you’re not a Christian.” Lots of theology. They call themselves Christians, look to the New Testament, look to Jesus, and they say when they die they’ll become part of the Godhead. They’ll become part of the family of Elohim.

There’s Yahweh Elohim, there’s Yashua or Jesus Elohim. Some of them use the Hebrew, some don’t. And then, when you die, you’ll become Keith Elohim if you’re part of the right doctrine and give your tithes to the right church, of course.

Keith: Whatever I can do to get rid of the first name, I’m good. Now, can you do me a favor? With a little structure, just throw a little structure. This is the BFA’s one, so a little structure. So, we’re going to actually talk about a few things. You brought up three questions. Before we get to three questions on the issues of sons of God, can we just talk about this?

I want to go back to what you said about Israel, because this is huge. Being a peacemaker versus being a pursuer of peace – what does that mean for you? Now, I want to put it in present-day context. Being a peacemaker, as some people say, Israel should be a peacemaker, okay? But maybe they’re pursuing peace, and that looks different. What’s your thought?

Nehemia: I lived through a very tragic period of Israel’s history. And it was a period of… I would say there was a certain segment of the Israeli population that was… what’s the word I’m looking for? It was euphoria, that’s the best way to describe it. They had a euphoria that we’ve lived in this reality for over 100 years – long before the State of Israel – where the Arabs in Israel, the Muslims wanted to kill us. And now, all of a sudden in 1993, we’ve made the peace process at Oslo, and there’s this euphoria. We’re finally going to make peace, and it will be an end of the period of the wars. Look, Israel had this…

Keith: You’re telling me people believed that.

Nehemia: 100 percent they believed it. Many people said, “You guys are crazy. This is never going to happen. Listen to what they say! They don’t say the same things to us in English and in Hebrew that they say in Arabic. Just listen to them. Listen to the speeches they’re giving in Arabic. They don’t want peace. This is a strategy to get more land, to use it as a launching pad to attack us deep in the heart of Israel.”

And you could look at the Qassam tracker. There’s somebody who tracks every rocket that’s fired at Israel. I don’t know that there’s been a week where rockets weren’t fired at Israel since 2005. So, in the early ‘90s there was this euphoria that we would have peace. And look, nobody wanted peace as much as anybody… I wanted peace. Everybody wants peace in Israel. All the Jews, I should say, want peace.

Netanyahu, decades ago, made a famous statement. He said, “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.” And that’s the painful reality, that we have been pursuing peace for decades, and sometimes there are people on the Arab side who want peace, but the Arab leadership, by and large, has not wanted peace. They want a perpetual state of war, because their objective is to destroy Israel.

So we started out in 1993 with the Oslo Accords, and that was a pursuit of peace by people who were euphoric, who… I think to some extent they were delusional. There was a man named Yossi Beilin, and he was this professor, a brilliant professor from a University in Israel, and he came up with the doctrine of the peace process. And he said something like this – and this ties in, it’s related. He said something like this. “We made peace with Egypt, we know what the Arabs need to make peace. Let’s cut through all the games. Let’s cut through all the negotiations, and go just to the final stage, which is what we know they’re going to eventually agree to.” And one of those things was, there has to be an Arab capital in Jerusalem. And a whole bunch of other things, I won’t go into the detail.

And people likened this to – and I’ll try to use sensitive language here, right? Imagine back in your single days, you met this woman, and you said to the woman, “Look, I know in the end we’re going to be married. So let’s cut to the chase, and we don’t need dinner, we don’t need to go on dates. Let’s just get married right now, and tonight we will consummate.” Well, she’d probably slap you, and she should slap you, because there is a process that you need to go through. You need to pursue peace in order to make peace…

Keith: That’s big.

Nehemia: And Beilinism said, this philosophy of Yossi Beilin said, “Oh, no. Let’s just make peace now. We know how this is going to end. Let’s make peace,” and it was a disaster. It brought death of tens of thousands of Jews, and tens of thousands of Arabs, especially Muslims. And why did it bring death? Because that’s not how things work. There’s a dynamic you have to work through. And part of the dynamic is, there’s a certain dynamic – especially in the Middle East, but it’s just human nature… imagine another analogy, a parable. You go in to buy a car, and you say to the people who are going to sell you the car, “This is the price we’re going to end on. There’s no negotiation, and no discussion.” Is that going to work? Probably not. It’s probably not going to work. In fact, you’ll probably get yourself kicked out of there.

And so, Beilinism said, “No, let’s go to the final… we’re just going to make peace. We know what peace is going to look like. Let’s just make peace. Let’s not pursue peace,” and it just brought so much death and destruction, because there were people on the other side who said, “Well, wait a minute. That’s your starting point? Let’s push it one step further, and one step further.” And he was saying, “No, this is my end point.” But he said that with his words, not with his actions.

Keith: They wanted a negotiation.

Nehemia: They needed a negotiation. And maybe they weren’t going to make peace anyway, and we’ll never know. Using his approach, it was impossible to make peace. I think if you listen to what they were saying, they probably didn’t want to make peace, but that route was a disaster. It was a complete disaster.

Keith: If these were people that were committed to the words that we see in the King James Bible, “Blessed are…” and they wanted to be blessed. I want to be blessed, be a peacemaker. In fact, those outside of Israel would say, “Listen. If Israel wants to be blessed, they need to be a peacemaker.” And they stayed within that frame of mind. You’re saying that that frame of mind of making peace…

Nehemia: Because what it is is peace at all cost. And peace at all cost – nobody wants that. That’s a disaster. Peace at all cost is, you kill all of us and we’re dead in the sea. That’s what the Arabs said they wanted. So for decades what they would do is point to the Mediterranean and they would say, “We’re going to drive the Jews into sea.” A little bit of metaphor there, but it actually meant literally, as well. They’ll drown all of us, kill all of us, and push us into the sea.

So, if that’s their objective, well, you can’t have peace at all costs. You also can’t assume everyone’s the same. Part of the Beilinism, the peace-making approach, was that the Arabs of Israel, what they call the “Palestinians”, are no different than the Egyptians. Well actually, they’re a lot different. They have a different culture, they have a different history, they have a different heritage. They’re not the same. They’ve been living for decades in a different reality.

Look, the Arabs of… the so-called “Palestinians” of the West Bank or the Palestinians of Gaza are two different populations. They’re not the same people. They don’t have the same objectives, they don’t even have the same language. Those of northern Israel and southern Israel have different languages. So, to treat them all as a monolith, that is a recipe for disaster.

Keith: Can you unpack for us a little bit? So, you said in ’93 it was the Oslo Accords. What was it that they put… Permission to speak about this?

Nehemia: Yeah, absolutely.

Keith: What was it that they put forward that meant that it was not going to work?

Nehemia: Well, really it was the attitude of the Israeli leadership openly saying, “We know where this is going to end. We know what the final objective is. We just need to get that final objective,” instead of actually going through the hard work of pursuing peace. So one of the things they said is, “Okay, the areas where the Palestinians live, if we gave them all immediate independence, we would have a war,” because they would all of a sudden have tanks, and bombers, and jets in Israeli territory. Israel doesn’t have a lot of depth, like most countries like the United States. You can drive across the country literally in nine kilometers, that’s like five or six miles at the shortest point.

So, what they said is, “What we’re going to do is, we’re going to give them autonomy in Jericho and in Gaza, and we’ll see that everything is fine, then we’ll give them autonomy in other areas, and eventually, independence.” And I remember, it was the slogan, “Jericho and Gaza first.” It was a way, essentially, of appeasing the people of Israel who were very nervous about this. It was a way of showing them, “Look, there’ll be peace. It’ll be no problem.”

From the very first caravan of Palestinian forces who were flown over from Tunisia, these terrorists, literal terrorists, were flown over from Tunisia to rule over Gaza and the West Bank without asking the Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank, the PLO was flown over there, and in the very first caravan, they were hiding weapons that according the agreement they weren’t allowed to have.

And what’s the significance of this? Instead of saying, “Okay, well, they didn’t keep their word. Let’s not move forward,” right? We’re pursuing peace and they rejected it through their actions. They said, “No, we’re making peace. Peace is going to happen.” And that was literally from the very first caravan.

Keith: Now, I mean, listen. This is our show, right, Hebrew Gospel Pearls? We’ve been to Israel together several times. I have a dear friend there, Rabbi Yehudah Glick, who used to serve in the government before this situation that he’s presently in. And when he served there, he said he quit the job based on what happened in Gaza. The Jewish people were in Gaza, living there, and they were forcibly removed. Do you remember what year?

Nehemia: Absolutely, 2005. 9,000 Jews were forcibly removed from their homes. There were Jews who were born there, their father was born there, and their grandfather had immigrated there in 1967. So, three generations lived there, two generations, in some cases, were buried there in cemeteries. And they dug up their graves and removed them from Gaza, destroyed homes, destroyed synagogues, because they said, “Look, the only way we’ll have peace with the Gazans is if we give every last inch of Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority to rule.” And the Palestinian Authority responded by holding elections, which elected Hamas, and they’ve been firing rockets at us ever since.

Now, I remember the election, I think it was around 2004. There was this one political party who had a graphic showing rockets being fired from Gaza, and their whole platform was, “Don’t give Gaza to the Palestinians to rule. If you pull out of Gaza, instead of attacking the Jews who live in Gaza…” there were about 9,000 Jews there, “…they’ll attack the heart of Israel.” And they were laughed at. They were called conspiracy theorists. They were ridiculed, “You guys are fanatics.” And the day we left Gaza, virtually the day, the rockets started, and they have never stopped.

Keith: So, I want you to do something. This is a biblical connection, you’re going to love this. So, Yehudah Glick, he talked about this, how he wept, and he fought, and he argued with the government saying, “You cannot do this. If you do this, we’re going to have war with Gaza,” etc. etc. etc. You just gave me another whole dimension to that. But would you open up your tap-tap for a second, Nehemia. Why are you and I not surprised about what’s happening with this group called Hamas? Can you give us the biblical definition of the group that’s called Hamas?

Nehemia: In the Tanakh, it’s under the category of “you can’t make this stuff up”.

Keith: You can’t make this stuff up, folks.

Nehemia: They chose to call themselves Hamas based on an Arabic acronym. But in Hebrew, “hamas” means “violence and corruption.” Genesis 6:11, “The earth was also corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with hamas.”

Keith: With hamas. I mean, for me…

Nehemia: You can’t make this up.

Keith: …you can’t make it up. But his whole point was – if we do this, if we give this over, then it’s going to be constant.

Nehemia: And there are probably people in Gaza, I know there are people in Gaza who want to make peace. There are people in Gaza and in the West Bank who want to make peace. There are people who want to live with us in peace, but their leaders don’t, and the people they elect don’t, and enough of the population is able to push the whole – it’s not really a country – but the whole geopolitical entity of Gaza and the West Bank, which are completely separate today, as we’re recording this. Gaza is ruled by the Hamas, and the Palestinian areas of the West Bank are ruled by the PLO.

One of the bizarre things I hear about from leftists is about how they want to end the occupation. The occupation ended in 2005 when the last Jew was forcibly removed from Gaza by Jews. There haven’t been Jewish soldiers there, except for a few wars that happened, and then we pulled out after the wars. They rule themselves in Gaza, for all intents and purposes. They have actually more sovereignty in some respects than some sovereign nations. Like if you look at Micronesia or countries like that, in some respects, they exercise more sovereignty in Gaza in particular, than many countries. The only thing they don’t have is an air force and tanks, because if they did that, Israel would end tomorrow. They would just overrun Israel and destroy it, so we prevent them from having that, out of necessity. It’s really a situation that’s hard to understand until you realize how close things are.

Keith: Here’s the controversy. Here’s the rub, before we get to the second part of the verse. So, what does pursuing peace look like for a person who wants to follow peace?

Nehemia: First of all, you have to want peace. Now, the peacemaker also wants peace, but he’s not willing to go through the hard work of making peace, and he’s not willing to accept “no”. Sometimes, the answer is, “No, I don’t want peace.” Look, this appears in the Torah.

Keith: Talk to me.

Nehemia: This appears in the Torah, it’s in Deuteronomy, and it talks about “When you go out to war against a nation.” It’s “Ki tetzei le’milkhama,” if I’m not mistaken. “And when you go out to war.” Here, it’s Deuteronomy 20 verse 10. “When you approach a city to wage war against it, and you call out to it, shalom, peace…”

Keith: Peace.

Nehemia: “It shall come to pass, if they answer you, ‘peace’ and they open up the gates to you and all the people in it shall be…” And this is when it’s in the land of Israel, “…shall be tributaries to you, and they shall serve you.” So there’s an opportunity for peace, and they can respond with peace. Now, here it’s when it’s in the land of Israel, it’s not some far-off land. It’s the land that God has given you.

“If they want to live with you in peace and be subject to your government, they can live in peace.” If they refuse to live as subjects of, in this case, the only democratic state in the Middle East and they want to destroy you, then you can’t make peace with them. The answer sometimes is no.

Look, I’ve seen this in all kinds of things in my life. I’ve seen this with governments, with geopolitical situations, I’ve seen this with friendships, and I’ve seen this… And it’s painful, I’ve seen this with relationships. Sometimes, the answer is no. And pursuing peace is a good thing. Trying to force peace when the other side doesn’t want to have peace, you can’t do it. It leads to death and destruction on both sides.

Keith: You’ve read that whole verse? Did you read that whole verse?

Nehemia: Which one?

Keith: The one on peace.

Nehemia: Yeah. I mean, we can read the whole passage, there’s more to it, but yeah.

Keith: Give us the passage. I’m just saying, what the passage is.

Nehemia: “And it shall come to pass if they don’t make peace with you and they make war with you, you shall be an enemy against them, and Yehovah will give them into your hand and you will smite all of their males with the sword,” etc. We can go into it and read about it.

Keith: But tell us where that is.

Nehemia: And it says in verse 15, “Thus shall you do with all the…” actually, “The cities are far away from you. They are not from the cities of these nations.” It’s in Deuteronomy 20 verse 10.

Keith: That’s what I mean. Excellent.

Nehemia: Okay, so if you’re dealing with a nation who doesn’t want to have peace, then you can’t make peace. Now, in this case, we weren’t trying to rule over them. We said, “You guys, look. That’s our land, the West Bank and Gaza. Hebron is the heartland of the people of Israel. It’s where Abraham lived. It’s where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried. My ancestors are buried there. You want to rule over their graves, because you guys came and took that from us. We’re willing to stipulate to that, if you make peace with us.” And they wouldn’t do it. They refused to do it.

This culminated in the year 2000 in what was called the Camp David Accords, the second Camp David Accords. Ehud Barak, who was the Israeli Prime Minister, went to this place, Camp David, in the United States, and met with Yasser Arafat. And he was willing to give them every inch of the West Bank and Gaza with the exception of certain population centers in the West Bank. He said, “We’ll give you other territory in place of that,” because there were already 50,000, 100,000 people living there. “We can’t afford to move those people.”

Keith: Are you thinking about places like Ma’ale Adumim?

Nehemia: Ma’ale Adumim.

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: Ma’ale Adumim and Ariel were the two things that held it up.

Keith: You know where I got my Torah scroll, right? Ma’ale Adumim.

Nehemia: You got it in Ma’ale Adumim. “For the Torah shall go forth out of Jerusalem,” and in this case, “via Ma’ale Adumim.”

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: So, he said, “We’ll compensate you for that four percent of the land.” Four percent of the land, kind of like we had this thing with Mexico, the Gadsden Purchase, right? We’re going to make a deal. Let’s make a deal, and we’ll give you land in the Negev in place of that. You’ll have a larger area around Gaza. The Prime Minister of Malaysia asked – it was Malaysia or Indonesia, I don’t remember – he asked Arafat later, “Why did you turn down that deal? You’ll never get such a good deal again.” He said, “It may take us 100 years, but we’re going to drive every last Jew into the sea. We’re going to wipe them off the face of the earth, and if I make peace now, later generations of Palestinians who are living in peace with the Jews will never forgive me for not wiping them out, even if it takes 100 years.”

So you can pursue peace, but if the other side doesn’t want peace, you can’t make it. I want to tell you about a video I saw recently. It was this young man, he’s 18 years old, and he’s surrounded by a group… he’s not Orthodox, he’s a secular Jew, but he loves Israel and he loves the Temple Mount. And he was trying to go to the Temple Mount with his Israeli flag to wave it, because he said, “This is the holiest place in Judaism.” He said, “Look, I’m not…”

Keith: You sent it to me.

Nehemia: I said it to you, yeah. He said, “I’m not an Orthodox Jew, but I love that this is the holiest place in Judaism, and I want to express myself as a Jew by waving the Israeli flag as having the symbol of the sovereign Jewish state in the holiest place to the Jewish people, which is the Temple Mount.” And he wasn’t allowed to do it.

Well, he came into contact with this Jewish woman who was a leftist protester, and she said to him, “Why are you trying to make this provocation? You’re just trying to upset the Arabs. You don’t really care about the Temple Mount.” He said, “No, I deeply care about it. There’s only one place in Judaism that’s holy, the holiest place in Judaism.”

I’m paraphrasing his words. I think he would maybe say there are many places that are holy in Judaism, but he was saying something to the effect of, “This is the holiest spot in Judaism, the Temple Mount, and I want to express myself as a Jew by being there with my flag.” There’s this song, Hatikva, do you know the song Hatikva? It’s the national anthem of Israel, and “hatikva” means “the hope”. And it ends with the words, “lihiyot am khofshi be’artzeinu,” “to be free in our land,” “be’eretz tzion beYerushalayim,” “in the land of Zion and Jerusalem.”

One of the most moving things I’ve ever heard, Keith, is when they liberated the Bergen-Belsen camp, the death camp, this concentration camp where thousands of Jews died, maybe tens of thousands, I don’t know the statistics, but many, many Jews died there and there were survivors. And the first Friday night, the chaplain from the British Army comes and he says, “Let’s do a prayer service.” A lot of these Jews weren’t religious Jews, who were in these camps. They were secular Jews, and they burst out singing Hatikva, the Hope. The hope of 2,000 years, to be a free people in our land, and that’s all this young man, this 18-year-old wanted to do, is express that 2,000 years’ hope of persecution, and suffering, and humiliation. He just wanted to express that we are now free in our own land. We should be able to wave our own flag in the holiest place in Judaism. And she said, “No, you don’t want peace with the Arabs, you just want a provocation. You just want war.”

Now, there was one secular Jew there, a leftist, and another secular Jew there who loved the Temple Mount, and they were surrounded by a bunch of Orthodox Jews. And he said, “You don’t know what people who love the Temple Mount believe, do you?” She said, “I know exactly what you believe. You want to destroy the Arabs and kill them, and you’re looking for an excuse for war.” And he turns to all the Orthodox Jews surrounding him and he says, “Who here, if I said ‘Death to the Arabs,’ who here would support that statement?” And they said, “None of us would support that statement.” He said, “Who here wants peace?” and every single one raised their hand and said, “We want peace.” These are people who are dedicated to the Jewish experience on the Temple Mount, and what they want is peace. They don’t point to the sea and say, “We’re going to drive the Arabs into the sea.” They say, “We want to live with you in peace.” And the other side doesn’t want to live in peace.

Now, maybe one day they will. But we have to go through the process, and that process sometimes, as Ecclesiastes said, “There’s a time for peace and a time for war.” And if they don’t want peace, it could be a time for war, but that’s part of pursuing peace. And if you go to the situation and say, “Well, peace at all costs,” well then you end up in a situation with tens of thousands of people dying, which is what happened.

Keith: So, we’re just a couple of weeks away from what happened just two weeks ago, which they say supposedly started…

Nehemia: We’re pre-recording this, so you have to tell people what you’re referring to.

Keith: I was going to explain to them about what happened, supposedly, on the Temple Mount regarding the clash at the Temple Mount. They always use this example, if something happens on the Temple Mount and it spreads, and spreads, and spreads, and spreads. And pretty soon, they have justification for shooting 4,000 rockets into Israel.

And what always surprises me, what always surprises me, is the people that have the parroting of what peace looks like. “Well, if you just do this, everything will be okay. If you just do that, everything will be okay.” And when you’re dealing with violence, which Hamas is bent on, how do you have peace with those are…

Nehemia: Hamas’ charter openly says – this is not a theory about they believe – it openly says their purpose is to wipe out the Jews in Israel and eradicate the Jewish state. They openly say that! They’re not hiding it. The PLO in the West Bank, you could say they’re hiding it. We don’t know what their intentions are. Sometimes they live in peace, sometimes they don’t. It depends who’s in charge and who has the power. Hamas is not hiding it. They are a radical Islamist – notice I didn’t say “Islamic”. They’re Islamist. They’re using Islam for their political aims, and is a radical Islamist movement that is illegal in Egypt! In Egypt it’s called the Muslim Brotherhood, and it is outlawed because they’re so violent and destructive in Egypt. They actually are the ones who killed President Anwar Sadat in the 1980s.

So, this is such an evil group that even Egypt doesn’t allow them, and a bunch of other Muslim states consider them terrorist groups, as well, the Hamas. Yet, in Israel we’re supposed to have this fantasy that somehow, they’ll make peace with us. They’re not interested in peace. It’s very sad. So, we can pursue peace but we can’t make peace, and pursuing peace is a beautiful thing.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: I would love to have peace.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: Why do I want peace? First of all, I think it’s good to live in peace with people. That is what the Torah is all about, ultimately, is “love your neighbor as you love yourself, and love the foreigner who is among you.”

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: But if the foreigner wants to wipe you out, you cannot reconcile with him in that way. Okay, fine. We can’t reconcile you under our sovereignty. Go have your own sovereignty. And they don’t want that either. They want us to cease to exist, to wipe us out.

So yeah, it’s a tragic situation, but why do I want peace? Because I have nephews who serve in the Israeli military. I know people who, if we have the next war that happens, they might die. It’s not some hypothetical thing to me and to millions of Jews. Everybody knows someone who’s going to be on the front line, and any war that happens, any military service, even if it’s not a war, there’s shooting that we don’t hear about over in the United States that goes on all the time. There’s a constant state of low-level war that’s going on, so any one of those… One of my nephews could be murdered by the Palestinians. And so, of course I want there to be peace. Who wouldn’t want there to be peace when you’ve got skin in the game?

Here’s where the tragedy comes in. The Hamas in particular, in Gaza, they have this motto they say. They say, “the reason we will win and wipe out all the Jews is because we love death more than they love life.” It’s become a cult of death, and their attitude is, “when people die, we love it.” Now, do they really love it? I don’t know. Does a mother really love it when her son dies and he goes, they believe, to heaven and gets 72 virgins? On some level maybe she loves it, but I mean, where’s the motherly love?

We used to have this song back in the ‘80s, “The only hope for me and you is that the Russians love their children too,” during the Cold War. And the Palestinians, the Hamas say, “We love our sons and daughters, and that’s why we want them to die as martyrs, killing Jews.” Wow. How do you make peace with those people? You can pursue peace, but you can’t make peace in that situation. It’s a tragic situation.

I think we should go over, now that we’ve talked about the controversial geopolitical stuff, we should go over on the Plus section and talk about… I have two questions left I want to ask. What is God, and what is the Son of God? Only the big issues.

Keith: So folks, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to invite you into the Plus section at BFA International. You become a Premium member and you have access to absolutely everything we have. And by the way, we have a whole series, Nehemia, called Temple Mount Truth, with Rabbi Yehudah Glick, where he actually goes to the Temple Mount, and there’s just a number of things that happened like that. But one of the things you’re going to get access to is to the Plus sections, for the entire Hebrew Gospel series of the odd numbers. And the even numbers, I always like to make sure everyone knows this. For the odd numbers, it’s at BFA International, and the even numbers are at Makor Hebrew Foundation, nehemiaswall.com

Nehemia: Nehemiaswall.com.

Keith: Nehemiaswall.com. But I will tell you, we’re going to go to that right now and get a chance to talk about the Sons of God issue which I started with, with the King James it said, “The children of God,” it feels a lot safer than talking about “sons of God”. So, can we say a prayer for our friends that have been listening?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: Oh, I forgot one more controversial thing.

Nehemia: Oh-oh.

Keith: What we just talked about, Nehemia, might get us kicked off of YouTube.

Nehemia: Very possible.

Keith: It might get us kicked off of Facebook.

Nehemia: Very possible.

Keith: It might get us kicked off any number of public platforms, because it’s not politically… what would be the word?

Nehemia: Political correctness. Well, and even if it is today, three minutes from now it might not be.

Keith: Yeah.

Nehemia: No, if you talk about anything controversial…

Keith: Boom! You’re done.

Nehemia: Right.

Keith: But here’s the good news.

Nehemia: It’s a constantly changing standard.

Keith: What I want to say to our friends right now, what we do need you to do, we need you to be as supportive of BFA and Nehemia’s Wall, because what we are continuing to do is, we’re committed to getting the information out.

Now, you’ve already blazed the trail – I’ve just a little commercial for you right now – where you’ve been able to get on some other platforms too, where you were able to share message. So, we have podcasts, and YouTube, and Facebook, and our websites. Hopefully, those will continue, but we know from experience there’s things that can get shut off. So, you all, we need your support.

Nehemia: We need your support to be able to continue to do this.

Keith: I want to say a prayer. Father, thank You so much for our friends that are listening. We pray that as we tackle these difficult situations, we’re reminded of the words of Yeshua to pursue peace. Help us to pursue peace, and we’ll do all that we can do on our side, and at the same time, we want to be aware of what’s happening in the world, and we want to be wise, and we don’t want to be in denial. And we are not concerned about being politically correct. We are concerned about truth, and we thank You for it, in Your name.

Nehemia: Yehovah, Avinu Shebashamayim, Yehovah, our Father in Heaven, let us all as a people, Israel, seek peace and pursue it in the words of the psalmist. And let us find a partner who we can make peace with. Father, we don’t make peace with our friends, we make peace with our enemies. These enemies who want to destroy us, Yehovah, soften their hearts and turn their hearts for a desire for peace so that we can live together. Maybe not with everything that we want, maybe there’ll be compromises, there’ll be painful compromises, but we are willing to do that in order to make peace as long as the other side will truly live in peace with us. Amen.

You have been listening to Hebrew Gospel Pearls with Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

We hope the above transcript has been a helpful resource in your study. While much effort has been taken to provide you with this transcript, it should be noted that the transcript has not been reviewed by the speakers and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. If this teaching has been a blessing to you, please consider supporting Nehemia's research and teachings, so he can continue to empower people around the world with the Hebrew sources of their faith!