206. Is Israel Safe?

For freedom, he set me free, not for chains, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace, cigars and victory justified, released. Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. I ain't saved by dress codes, not by what I eat. I'm covered in the righteousness, washed from head to feet. No tally of tradition, no man-made code. Blood bought my freedom, now I ride that road. They clutch pearls when they see smoke rings rise. But my praise still ascends past the legalist cries. Christ plus nothing, that's the real math. So miss me with your fence laws and your extra path. He sat with sinners, I'm sitting with saints. Sipping grace from the bottle, no room for fakes. I light one for liberty, toast to the king. Every ash a sermon, death has lost its sting. For freedom, he set me free. Not for chains, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace, cigars and victory justified, released. For freedom, he set me free. Not for chains, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace, cigars and victory justified, released. Let grace begin. For freedom, you've got me free Not for change, not for guilt, not for Pharisee Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing Now here are your hosts, James Seyfried and Brett Martin Bokertov, Bokertov, this is from Israel And this is the For Freedom Podcast And we are, man, we just came back from Israel, man We had a great time And man, it was great And I'm glad to be back in the studio Recording For Freedom Podcast With James James, how have things been since you've been back? Brett, I just have one question for you Do you want the scarf for $20? Just the best scarf in town Three for $20, two for $10 Two for $10, three for $20 Great time, man, we landed in Jerusalem And a guy hit us up And every time we have gotten off or on our bus He has found us He comes to our hotel He saw us at the Mount of Valos Two or three times We saw him everywhere And he, one time Or almost every time He has gotten onto the bus Walking up and down the aisles Trying to sell us these scarves He was selling them $20 the first day And this last day He got on and he was selling us Four for $20 So we went from one for $20 To four for $20 Yeah, it was the four people that bought Them for $20 Like, well, what happened to me? How come I had to pay $20? It's like, oh, those are embroidered Those are more expensive They're embroidered Yeah, yeah, so it was great But we're here We're going to get to the end of the episode And talk about, is Israel safe? But we want to just sort of walk through our journey That we've gotten to so far We landed We went to the Sea of Galilee And we went to Most sites that we've been before Expanded to each other We've got a different guide this year Which, man, my mind has been blown With the different amount of information That he's given us But we went to Magdala Which, if you remember When we talked about Israel before Magdala was one of those great sites First century synagogue The scripture scroll Was found there intact And had a lot of great things We were about to leave Brett And tell us about the guy Who we're going to have on the podcast Rabbi Kelly He's a Catholic priest Tell us about Kelly Father Kelly Father Kelly Yeah, Father Kelly So, this is our little bit of experience From the last time we were at Magdala We got off the bus We walked around We saw the synagogue Which was great And we saw a couple little things We saw some mikvahs And things like that And it was great and awesome This is a synagogue floor That Jesus walked on He stood on He taught in this synagogue Wonderful And then we left Not so this time This time we saw the synagogue We're getting ready to leave And then here comes this Catholic priest He's Irish His name is Father Kelly And, you know, he got on to my wife for talking That was funny And then we He took us on a journey And he told us about The, you know, our guy He said our guy gave us the Jewish perspective And now he's going to give the Christian perspective And this guy He's used to dealing with inner faith So he didn't, like, harp on Catholic stuff You know And, man, we learned so much He brought us in a center Behind the hotel And he taught us so much About the site He showed us the other synagogue That's right across the street Behind a bus stop Which means that Magnala was bigger than we thought We thought it was just some tiny little podunk town But, you know, when you have two synagogues Within throwing distance of each other What does that tell you about the size of the city? That maybe it was It was a first synagogue And they had a split And went across the street And became second synagogue Whatever you want But, man, he did a great job Very emotional And then he agreed to be on the podcast And I am really looking forward to him coming on But it was just a great experience all around I know you mentioned the boat ride It was really cool that we got on the boat At the Sea of Galilee Took us around way longer than last time But he actually took us to Tiberias And took us to our hotel Dropped us off at a port Right outside our hotel in Tiberias We stayed in a different hotel from last time And our bus met us there with our stuff And so, listen, it was a Galilee was great It was wonderful Yeah, it was a great time I really just, again, I loved the teaching of Father Kelly Even though he's Catholic He does a devotion every morning on the Sea of Galilee Like five to seven minutes He's got an intern that's from Winston Who's been, he's living there for three months And we're going to coordinate a time for him to come on the podcast Share some of the They're still doing digs constantly And one of my favorite things As we're talking about Magdala Was the chapel that we went to And the importance that it put on women in ministry And women's role in Jesus' ministry He asked the question How many of us in our room And maybe you're listening And you can ask yourself this How many of the people in our room Were won or influenced by their mother In their life And every single one of us My mother led me to the Lord Mothers are massive influences in our life And this whole church was dedicated to Mary Magdalene A couple of the ladies there mentioned in Scripture They helped fundraise for Jesus And fund his ministry And there were columns that had their names on it And there was one empty column And he said, does anyone know What name is on this column? And he pointed to each of our ladies And he said, it's your name It's your name It's your name You are the one that's on this column That's to reach the next people that are around us And oftentimes in ministry Women can be feeling like a second-rate citizen But it shows the importance Of what women have in their life And we were talking to Johnny Nix Who's here with us And may have him on the podcast here soon But he was We were talking just about the Lack of male leadership In our Christian church these days And it's sad that even 2,000 years ago Right, Timothy? He had his grandmother Lois And his mother Eunice Who raised him and loved him And cared for him And there was no father or grandfather in the picture And how would that have been even different If a male influence other than Paul Would have been there And it just changed my perspective a little bit As we were there As we were hanging out One of the things, Brett That I loved As we went to the different sites All tourism has come back All the flights are opened up But people are still scared to come Right? Yayo is begging us Please bring more people Please bring more people I'll give you a quick fact In the year 2019 to 2020 From the month of November To February Before the pandemic happened in 2020 Pari told me They had 195 tours In a 4 month period And she said We're lucky to get 3 or 4 a month right now And so the amount of tourism is down And we saw this in the Sea of Galilee We'd pull up to a stop And I was like Man, I remember pulling up to Capernaum And there were like 14 buses in a row And we had an exact time frame We walked in We had 3 minutes at the synagogue And 2 minutes in Peter's house And we saw a couple of the things While we were doing some teaching And then we had to Hurry up and rush out Brett, we got there And there's not a bus in sight We walked the entire Capernaum No one was there The entire time we were there We had the entire place ourselves We're taking pictures We're loving it We're having a great time We didn't feel rushed So that's part of the great thing right now But the economy And the people are just starving Without tourism And so it has been safe And we'll give some more illustrations About that But Brett, let's transition to A couple of new places that we went We went to Shiloh Shiloh The place of the tabernacle Last time we went Pouring down rain Completely covered in mud We're trying to find shelter Everywhere we can This time it was clear And we got to go down To the tabernacle site We got to see Where the tabernacle stood For 369 years The permanent tabernacle Where king Not king Where Eli was killed Where Hophni and Phinehas were killed Where Samuel was dedicated To the Lord Hannah's prayer We got to stand In that temple ground And that was Our tabernacle ground And that was a wonderful time Something we didn't get to do The first time But then now As we are in Jerusalem We're staying right here In the old city Right outside the walls We got to go to a couple Of new places Let's start with The couple The two that we did today And then we'll talk about Bethlehem at the very end Well I'll tell you One of the things That we did Two of the things we did We did several things today That we didn't do last time In fact Today was really full Of new experiences For us Not only Is our guide different But in fact Our guide is named Guy And not only Is he a different guide But he does things different Not that there was anything wrong With Amir last time Amir was great Guy's just different So we started From a different place And I enjoyed The fresh perspective One of the things That we did So we went to Mount Zion And we went to Caiaphas' house And we were crunched for time Because we had an appointment Later in the day And so we got there And we went down to The basement At the bottom Which hewn out Rock This rock room Is hewn out And we're just down there And you can just imagine This is This is Caiaphas' house This is This is where it was And This is where They Held Jesus Until they turned him over To the Romans And it just meant a lot We My wife read Psalm 88 And Which was You know Appropriate For how Jesus was feeling At that moment And then we sang Victory in Jesus And And it was just a great time We came up We came Into the outer court Where Peter Denied Christ Three times And then You have the Roman road Right there That And when I throw it Back to you I want you to give me The significance Of the Roman road You told me about that Today But man It was just great To be there We didn't get to go To Caiaphas' house Last time And then We went up To the upper room And that was A wonderful experience Because That was another thing We didn't get to do Now there There were some crowds There was probably The crowd The crowdest The crowdiest It had been The whole time We were here There was about Three different groups In the upper room With us So we were all Trying to talk At the same time And that was a good We didn't have A whole lot of that A lot of this trip We've just We've been the only tour So we went to the upper room We saw that It was great Had a great experience And Before I hand it back To you Let me just say That I have felt safe This entire time I have not felt Even when we went To Bethlehem Which we'll talk about In a minute I felt completely safe Not only Is it safe In Israel But our tour company YAL Tours YAL Tours They take care of us They watch out for us You know If there was Something dangerous They would Keep us away from that Of course There's Conflict in the area But you know If you wait Until there's no conflict To come to Israel Then You're never going to go And listen And I heard the remarks Of family members Oh you're Going to Israel You better be careful And things like that Watch out for yourself But you get here And it's totally fine It's totally safe I haven't felt Unsafe This entire time Yeah Absolutely Same way We'll start with Well before I forget Let's start with One thing that we got to do That Marcus So this is Marcus's Eighth trip To Israel One of the things That he has never Gotten to do That we got to All do together Was when we Landed in Jerusalem Driving in Yesterday We got to go Straight to the Mount of Olives Yeah We went to the Mount of Olives It starts getting dark The Dome of the rock Is lit up We take a picture In front of it The pictures Don't do justice Because If you know How iPhones work They make everything Brighter So that you can see What's going on But I don't think I'll ever forget Seeing the Temple Mount Seeing the Locations And just feeling You know Jesus would have Seen this It would have been Nighttime for him He would have He would have Of course it wouldn't Be lit up The way it was lit up But just the view That it was Lit up In the night time Was a view That I'll never forget As we went to Caiaphas' house This is a place We didn't get to go Before This is where Like you said Jesus was Put in prison He was judged He was Thrown over to Pilate To Pontius Pilate To be executed And then Pilate Sent him to Herod And Herod Sent him and said This isn't my deal Crucify him Send him back And of course Pilate Washed his hands As we're at Caiaphas' house They have uncovered The steps That lead from Caiaphas' house Down to The Kidron Valley Or the Jehoshaphat Valley That leads directly Over to The Garden of Gethsemane Which tells us That the way They would have Gotten Jesus From his arrest Of the Garden of Gethsemane To Caiaphas' house Would have been up That road You can see the stairs They are clearly stairs They have been uncovered They're laid out And Jesus Our Lord and Savior Would have walked up Those steps To be tried Never opened a word At Caiaphas' house And we got to sit And stand On those stairs That we know 100% sure That that's the only way Up to Caiaphas' house It's the shortest way From the Garden of Gethsemane To that house And so they would have Made that way And that way up So from there Of course you've got The Via Della Rosa Did Jesus go To the Via Della Rosa Or would they have Taken Jesus From Pilate's house Back up those stairs To the crucifixion site Of Golgotha Maybe Maybe that's the true Via Della Rosa We don't know But that is the idea Of back and forth Of Jesus could have Actually climbed those stairs To go to the Crucifixion site So what a great Experience that was The upper room I'm about to preach A series to the upper room And so that was A great time for me As well I'm trying to think Of something else That we did If it was anything else Other than Bethlehem Because we This was part of the We had about a third Of our group That said I just don't know Bethlehem It's unsafe If you're not familiar Bethlehem is part of Israel But Israel And the IDF The Israel Defense Force Does not have Jurisdiction To maintain order Inside of a Palestinian territory He said there's A, B, and C A is all Israel defense B is like Shiloh Or Shiloh Where you've got IDF and Palestine Sort of working together And then you've got C which would be A Bethlehem Which is all Palestine territory Still Israel Still the state of Israel But the Palestinians Handled the disagreements And the arguments And they have the Police force in there And so Bethlehem Would be It's on the West Bank Of course And it is Palestinian rule So our guide Because he is a Jew Our leader Yael Leader Orit Because she is a Jew They're not allowed To enter those Those territories And so he said If you go We can't go with you But you can go by yourself And we can have a guide On the other side So we got to the Nissan Brothers And so about a third Of our group Didn't go Because again There's safety Is everything Going to be okay And so we get there We pull up They close the gate Behind us At the Nissan Brothers Best meal of the trip Was Oh my goodness Best chicken I think In North Carolina We've got a chicken That is massive In the area Called Porter Pit Chicken And chicken You pick the bone up And the chicken Just falls off So good I think he gave it A run for his money How good that food Was there at Nissan Brothers Again they haven't had Tourism there In Bethlehem In years And we'll talk about That in a minute As well So we did all that We leave from there And we go to The shepherd's field Where the Supposed Angels came Made the witness To the shepherds And they left And went and found The baby Jesus We got to go Into a cave We got to see all that But was it safe Brett What What Did What was your Perspective Of The safetiness Of us Going into In the Bethlehem And then leaving Bethlehem What was your Experience or thought On that Well listen This This is Palestinian Palestinian Controlled land Okay This is the highest Level Palestinian Control Like James Said So You know There is Going to be Some Of the Normal Politics That you would Normally have Is it any more Heightened Now Than it was As it's always Been No I don't think So at all I think it's The same way That it's always Been Even though We're In Palestine In Bethlehem I never Felt Unsafe The only Thing Is our Tour guide Told us That Listen Don't Let these These Street vendors Try to Give you Anything Or give you A gift Because they'll Call the cops On you And cause Trouble And you Will be Delayed And if They try to Give you Something Just say No thank You They're Very Aggressive In Palestine More so Than in Jerusalem But other Than that I mean We had No issues We even Got the Customs Fat Marcus Said it Was the Fastest He'd Ever Cause you Can Drive Into Bethlehem But to Drive Out You gotta Go through Security Checkpoint Sometimes They ask To see Your Passport Well our Guide Said look Don't go That way Go this Way And man He waved Us through You know We just Drove Right on Out So you Know It's I don't Think it's Any more Now than It's always Been It's always Been that Way And I Think it Was good Now I Would like To say a Little bit About our Tour guide Our tour Guide His name Was Edmund And he's Palestinian But he's Been to the States His family Lives in The States And he Was talking About How Hard It's Been In tourism Especially There in Bethlehem He's Was talking About how His family Has moved To the States 350,000 Christians In Bethlehem Have left There's only 30,000 There now It's very Hard To be a Christian In Palestine In Bethlehem There's a Lot of Persecution On Christians And he Said From 2020 To now He's Worked 10 Months And this Is the Reason Why Is because They had The pandemic And then When the Pandemic Finally Got over They started Doing tours For 10 Months And then The war Happened So in Six years He's worked 10 months Because of That Tourism is The only Thing he Does And he's New at It So because He's new We're only In six Years We were Only his Second group Because he Had his First I guess In the Ten months He was Doing training And so He had His first Group of Twelve People And then The war Started And now We were His second Group But he Was super Knowledgeable He took Us to The shepherd's Field And we Went into The little Chapel there We sang Silent Night Which was Awesome He told Us about The three Different Christmases Three Two Different New Years They Have Because Every Denomination Has got To get Their Christmas And New Years In And how They're Out of School From December 20th To January 20th There Because You know Everybody You've got Three Christmases And his House Was right Outside The shepherd's Field So he Talked About how You know At home Every Fifty Tours They would Sing Christmas Carols In the Chapel And he Would hear It And so he Said the Only thing That he Could Grow up And be Was a Tourist For the Shepherd's Field And man He took Us there Took us Into a Cave Gave us Some Perspectives On the Nativity That I Had never Thought Before And that Was the Reason why We came Here The reason Why we Made this Trip to Israel Was to Get these Different Perspectives And now I will Preach I will Never Preach The Nativity Story The same Again Because I Heard what He had To say Today And so Was it Safe Absolutely It was You know Those The third Of our group That didn't Go I'm just Going to Tell you I thought They missed Out of The best Part of The day It was The best Meal It was The most Informative The guy Did a Great job I think They missed Out by Now I could Have Couldn't Have Not Went Because I've Got FOMO I've Got Fear Missing Out And So I was Going to Go No matter What And I'm Glad I did It was To be Honest It was The best Part of The day I agree With you And I Think it Was a Great Time As you Said That we Got to Experience There He was A Believer And so That was Encouraging Again Our first Time We never Had anyone On our Tour That was A believer They were All Orthodox Jews And so We've Had two Believers We had A great Conversation Today With a Coptic Egypt Christian And so What a Great Perspective They have By being In the Land Where Jesus Was At And Where We Are Now At It's Been A Great Time And I Have So Enjoyed It Has There Been Bombs Dropping Everywhere No Does The Media Lie To Us Yes Have There Been Bombs In The Past Yes But Israel In Their Sense And I Told Our People This If It Were Unsafe For Us To Be Here They Would Not Allow Us To Be On The Grounds The First Thing That Stops Is The Planes Because The Planes Are Not Going Open As Long As Flags Are Open It Safe To Be In Israel And I Can Attest To That Being Here Away From Our Family It Been Safe The Time Seeing Marcus He Said Every Time He Goes To Bethlehem It Is Always Chaos It Is Crazy And He Just Simply Told Them We Not Going To Go Because Of That We Got To The Nisan Brothers He Told Them That He Said I'll Fix That He Called The Police He Told Them And There Was A Police Officer Out There Waiting For Us Escorted Us And Went Ahead Of And Got! They Want Us To Come Back They Want The Tourism Here They Want Us To See The Holy Land And They Want Us To Experience Like We Said Before The Bible Coming To Life To Full Vision Of Full Color And Man It Has Been A Great Experience We're Going To Be Able To Tomorrow Go To The Dead Sea And Qumran And Masada And Finish Our Day With All The City Flagellation The Places That Some Of The Places We Didn't Get To Go On Our Last Day And Then Before We Know it Brett We're Going To Be Getting On A Plane And Flying Home 12 Hours And Time Change And Everything Else But Man What A Great Time It Has Been The Friends We've Made The Guys On This Trip Have Been Awesome Even Sean From Your Church Man What A Great Time We've Had With Him And Johnny And Tim And Paul And I'm Missing Some Chris Lawrence Lawrence Is Like My Best Friend Now It's A Great Time And There's Two Guys That I Want To Highlight And They Will Probably Never Listen To This Episode So It's Fine One Is A Man That You Brought Wayne And Tell Little About Wayne And Then Tell About His Story And About What He Did And How He Was Able To Come To Israel And Then I Want To Share About The Other Guy Well I'll Tell You Wayne McKee Is A Preacher He's 75 Years Old He Pastors A Church Faith Baptist Church In Lena Mississippi And You Know I First Met Wayne With A Phone Call Because What Happened Is We Put Our Trip In Our Association Newsletter And He Read The Association Newsletter Heard About The Trip And He Contacted Me And Wanted To Know If He Wanted To Come To Israel One Last Time And At First He Was Going To Come With His Wife But Then She Had Some Health Problems And Decided To Stay Back But Wayne Is Just An Old Fashioned Kind! And What I Mean! By That Just Nothing Electronic No Smartphone No Email No Internet So I Had To Help Him And Do All Of His Online Stuff For Him I Had To Sign Up For Him And Pay For Him Online And Things Like That And Apply For His Israeli Visa And Things Like That For Him Which I Didn't Mind Doing At All That's Part Of What I Do Is In Leading This Group To Israel That's Part Of My Job But Listen He Is Just That Was The First Time I Met Him I Didn't Know Him Before He Called Me And I Have Just Grown To Love Him Here Today Over Then He Did The Whole Rest Of The Trip He Seen Stuff He Didn't Even Know About The First Time He Went And He's Having A Great Time I Think Part Of That I Forgot That He Said He Had Been Here Before He's Been In Ministry For 50 Years He Drove A Truck But That Was One Of Things I Learned Today Was Every Tour Guide In Israel Has To At Least Have Their Master's Degree And They Have To Go Through Six To Eight Months Of Training To Even Be An Israeli Tour Guide Which If You Think About It 40 Years Ago In The 80s I'm Sure They Didn't Have Any Of That You Gotta Pass The Test You Gotta Be Jewish Culture Is And How It Affected And Set Up For The Christians Because We're Again There Was A Split Between The Jews And The Christians That Once They Were Together As Our Guide Said And Then When Peter Had His Vision Of Cornelius At Joppa We That Was A New Place We To I Forgot Where Joan Was At He Had The Vision At Joppa We Got To That The First Day We See We've Been Here So Much I Forgot A Brand New Place He Had This Vision And Our Guy Told Us He Said Up Until This Point He Said The Christians And The Jews Were Together They Were Okay With It But When Peter Came In And Said God Is Declaring Everything To Be Clean And Whatever He Declares To Be Clean And We're Abolishing The Rules Of Kosher And Those Laws He Said The Jewish Fraction Said We Can't Do That And The Christian Fraction Went A Different Way So They Were Together For Years There They Were Worshipping Together They Loved Each Other But That Was The Moment Where Peter Said Hey We're Going To Have Freedom In Christ And Paul Later Galatians 5 1 We're Going To Have Freedom Christ That It's Free Been Great To Be A Hold Of Wayne And Talk With Him The Other Guy That I'm Going To Highlight Is Bruce Butch Butch Or Kirby Is What His Name Tag Says But He Goes By Butch Butch Is In His 80s I Believe And He's Here With His Sister And His Niece And Nephew Or His Two Nieces And His Grand Daughter Is Two Nieces And Grand That's What It Is Yeah He's Here With Them And Sister Beth And There's Mary Beth His Niece And Then Sarah Beth Is His Grand Daughter And Then The Other One I Can't Remember Her Name Angela I Don't Know Why Angela Sarah Beth But Man He Is Hoofing It With The Rest Of Us He's Outpacing Me At Times He's He's Taking Every Step He's Loving Been Here With His Grand Daughter And His Sister And His Nieces And Man It's Just Been Encouragement To Me Because He Said He Was Here Nine Or Ten Years Ago There Was A Guy That Was That We Were On Temple Mount Today Brett There Was A Little Old Lady She Didn't Speak That That Is Heart He's Like I'm Here To Tell The Jewish People About Jesus And What An Encouragement That Is For Us That He Felt Safe Enough To Walk Over On The Temple Mount The Holiest Of Holy Place For The Muslims And To Try To Witness To Them And Not Fear Of Persecution Not Fear Of Rest And So It's Been A Great Time And We Have Enjoyed It I'm Thankful For The On This Trip That Came With Us I'm Sorry For The On That Couldn't Come Maybe Next Time In A Couple Years If We Come Back We You'll Join Us And So Brett Any Final Words Before We Cancel Before Close Down I'm Just Glad To Be Here I'm Glad To Go Home And I'm Ready To Go To Bed That's Right We're Recording This At 943 At Night After A Long Day Here In Jerusalem We Got A Long Two Days Left And So Thank You For Tuning In And Like I Said On Last Episode We're Going To Be And So Hopefully We'll Get Some Of Those Audio Things Out In The Month Of February And Look Forward To What We've Got Coming Out In March With Spiritual Manipulation And Boundaries We're Going Be Talking About Boundaries As Well And What That Looks Like Healthy Boundaries In A Couple Of Months And Looking Forward To This Season Of Podcast So Until Next Time To God Be The Glory Great Things He Has Done Thanks For Listening To The For Freedom Podcast If You Enjoyed Our Content Do Us A Favor By Liking Subscribing Or Sharing Our Podcast Or Whichever Podcast Platform You Use Be Sure To Join Us Next Time For The For Freedom Podcast

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