Out of Zion

Guest (Male): Welcome to the Israel Answers series, connecting Israel, the Bible, and you. Join Susan Michael as she explores timely issues and current events from a scriptural perspective to equip the Christian world with a balanced and biblical response. Be sure to subscribe for future episodes, which will ignite your faith and bring the Bible to life in your everyday world. Now, let's join Susan with your Israel Answers.

Dr. Susan Michael: Welcome to the Out of Zion podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Susan Michael, and I am just so thrilled to have with me today a dear friend and colleague, Joel Rosenberg. Joel, I have to list all of your titles and accomplishments. You're amazing.

Joel Rosenberg: Failed political consultant. I think you just lead with that one, and it pretty much solves everything. Everyone I ever worked for in Washington didn't go anywhere, or at least not with me.

Dr. Susan Michael: Failed there, but you are a New York Times bestselling author. You blow me away how you're able to do these books and do all of this writing. It's phenomenal and has really opened a lot of doors for you. Secondly, you are President of the Joshua Fund, which is doing amazing things. And then thirdly, you are the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of All Israel News and All Arab News. I don't know how you do it.

Joel Rosenberg: I have great teams. When you have a vision of what God tells you to do, you have to build out teams. I can't run these things by myself and I don't want to. I have things that I'm good at, and then there are people it's fun for me to prayerfully recruit and then deploy who are just passionate.

It's the same thing with you. You've got so much going on with the embassy and American Christian Leaders for Israel. If you didn't have a good team, then it all rests on you and your energy, your bandwidth, and your vision. I don't do that, and you don't do that.

Dr. Susan Michael: Well, we've interviewed you before and you talked about your family, your growing up, and your background. It was great. I want to encourage our listeners to find that previous interview and we'll link to it in today's show notes. Today, I'd like to talk about All Israel News. You are providing such a service to the body of Christ worldwide by covering the news of what's going on in Israel and the Middle East.

We have such a crisis in the world today. We can't trust media. We can't trust even videos. You can't trust what you read or what you see because you don't know what's AI-generated, what's been doctored, or what's just a blatant lie that's been circulating online. So we're all looking for those trusted sources, especially our young people. They are looking for those that they can trust, and you are that. You are there headquartered in Jerusalem. Tell us how you started this and the service that you've seen it provide.

Joel Rosenberg: A wonderful Israeli Jewish believing brother came to me with an idea that I didn't have. He said, "I think we should create a daily digital news site run by Israeli followers of Jesus for evangelicals worldwide in English, at least at the beginning, to cover what isn't getting covered or covered well."

At first, I was like, "That's a great idea. Somebody should do that. But I don't have the bandwidth to do this. I just don't have the time or energy. But God bless you." But I couldn't sleep. I kept praying about it, and I thought maybe he's right. Why? Because I could either have an aneurysm every day at my fury at CNN, the New York Times, BBC, certainly Al Jazeera, but so many others.

The Washington Post just had to lay off a third of their entire news department and all of their Middle East journalists because they're horrible. They're also losing $100 million a year, and you're like, that's crazy. So the idea was you could either have an aneurysm and get angry all the time, or think, "Big media is Goliath." But we know how that story works. You don't have to be Goliath to win. You can be David with five stones and you only use one. Maybe we should channel our energies into doing something different.

I tell the staff that we've built over the last five years or so to follow the George Costanza doctrine of journalism. For those of your audience that are Seinfeld fans, George Costanza is the idiot friend of Jerry Seinfeld in the famous show. George one day slumps down in the booth at the coffee shop where they meet and he goes, "Every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong." That's why he's a loser.

Jerry says, "Well, George, if every decision you've ever made is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right." That's kind of fortune cookie wisdom, but in that particular show, he makes every decision opposite of his instincts. He gets the girl, and he gets a job with the New York Yankees, and everything works out well. I tell them I don't want you as young and emerging journalists to focus on traffic. I beg you, do not think about your impact. I want you thinking about credibility, credibility, credibility. Those are the three things you think about every day. And everything that you hate about the media, do the opposite.

We started on September 1, 2020. This is COVID. This is churches being shut down. This is race riots. No Christian was focusing on Israel. And the good news was the Abraham Accords had just happened. That was the first story we covered. Mike Pence is a friend of mine, and he invited me to cover it at the White House and do an exclusive interview. No Christians, as you remember, who love Israel were focused on any of these things. Peace was breaking out because America was on the edge of blowing up. So that's when we started. It was a good time to raise money, but a bad time to focus on Israel. But we did it because God told us to do it.

Long story short, I'll give you an example during October 7th. The New York Times published a story. The headline was all eight columns, top of the fold, blasting: "Israel Bombs Palestinian Hospital." It's the New York Times, right? So they have all this brand equity and trust, and every media outlet on the planet goes with the story. I said, "Guys, hold. Do not go." They said, "But this is the lead of every..." I said, "There's something wrong about this story." If Israel did it, we will report it. This is not propaganda. This is journalism. But we don't start from the position that Israel is evil.

Let's just give the IDF a little time. Let's talk to them. Let's see what they have. Did they do it? Within an hour or two, there was already video of a failed Palestinian missile that went up, failed, and landed on a hospital. You can see it. Then they started sending us intercepts of Palestinian Hamas terrorists going, "Did we do that? Did Israel do that? Oh no, that was us. Oh my gosh, we got to tell them it was them." Pretty soon we had all this data.

So this is what we ran. By the time it was 4:00 PM in Israel and 9:00 AM on the East Coast in the United States, most people were waking up to the truth. But they weren't getting it from the mainstream media; they were getting it from All Israel News. That's just one example of just doing it by not running with it. The New York Times has a brand of trust, but I don't trust them anymore. These guys are taking death tolls and saying "Palestinian health officials in Gaza." This is like getting death toll numbers from the Nazis in the middle of World War II. You're the ones killing them. What are you talking about?

So many Christians are so angry. We saw our traffic go from basically zero on day one to 35 million last year. At the peak of the war, we had 69 million. We are not where we should be, but people are finding us.

Dr. Susan Michael: Well, I hope that all of our listening audience will find you now if they hadn't already. You're so privileged to be there where you're getting those original sources of information and analysis. You know how Israelis are seeing things. Where do you think Israel's going from here? What kind of future? I had a Jewish person this week ask me, "You've been at this a long time. Where do you see it going? Are you at all optimistic?" They're looking for a ray of hope. Where do you see that Israel is going?

Joel Rosenberg: It's a great question, and let me break it into a couple of pieces. Everybody that works on our team is either an evangelical Christian or a Messianic believer. Most are Israelis. We have some Arabs that work with us either directly or as a stringer. We are also trying to cover the church. The reason this is important is ultimately, spiritually, we know we're heading towards Romans 11:26: "All Israel gets saved."

We're nowhere near that. There are maybe 20,000 to 30,000 Jewish followers of Jesus in all of Israel. That's not that many. Well, it's better than 23 in 1948. We are moving, but in a nation of 10 million people, seven million Jews, that's not nearly enough. So we are covering what God is doing in the country as well as the region, not just geopolitically.

I would say there's "hard bias," where the editor hates you, the producer hates you, and they are not trying to tell the truth. There's Al Jazeera, Iranian television, Turkish television. But there's also "soft bias" in the media where they don't know what they're looking for. They don't know how to cover the church. And if it's the church to them, that's the Roman Catholic Church, which most evangelicals are like, "That's interesting, but that's not what we want to know. What's God doing in this land?"

So covering that side is a big part because that's where we're heading. We're heading towards a nation that's been traumatized over two and a half years of hellish war, but our people are curious. They are open to the Bible. More people in the IDF are reading the Bible. They're singing songs of the Psalms before they go into Gaza. That's a spiritual element of where we're going that is also not getting covered by almost anybody in the media in Israel, even the good media.

The other thing is when there are challenges inside the church. God is building His church. Jesus said, "I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." Nobody's covering it, but He's still doing it. I'll give you one example. We broke the story a couple of years ago that two ultra-Orthodox legislators decided to put in a bill that said you can't tell people about Jesus or you'll go to prison in Israel.

We broke that story, and I've never seen a story go viral that fast. It just went global. We weren't being hostile; we were just reporting this. We hadn't even gotten into analysis; we just broke the story. Within 72 hours, Netanyahu had put out a statement: "I will never let that pass." And it was over. That's not us; that's God. But He uses people.

There was a Palestinian pastor who got thrown into prison because he welcomed in an Israeli and some evangelicals just to visit him. And that got him in prison, not in Israel, but in the Palestinian Authority. Then we were told by some Palestinian Christians, "Don't report that. Please, we're going to work on it behind the scenes. If you're an Israeli, it's not helpful if you report it." So we're believers first, so we didn't report it.

But after 40 days, this guy was not getting out. Everything they tried behind the scenes wouldn't work. Finally, several Palestinian Christian leaders said, "On your All Arab News site, would you cover what's happening?" So we did, and what we did was an open letter to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. We said, "I don't even know if you know this, Mr. President, but this is what's happening. It's not right."

It turned out that a Palestinian businessman, a very successful Palestinian businessman, was following me on X, saw that article, read the whole thing, was moved by it, and unbeknownst to us, printed it out and went to the palace in Ramallah. He said, "President Abbas, this is not good. And if Joel and his team are reporting it today, others are going to be reporting it tomorrow. We have enough problems; we don't need this one too. You should let this guy out. He didn't do anything wrong." And within 48 hours, he was released. That's God, but God uses flawed people.

So that's the geopolitical side too. But just in terms of covering what's happening and how do we pray for our brothers and sisters in all of the region, I still can't tell you many news sources that exist that would report this type of information.

Dr. Susan Michael: Well, you and I were just chatting earlier about the geopolitical world. After Israel has gone through this two and a half years of really tough fire, you're optimistic about the future.

Joel Rosenberg: Which is ironic because I'm a Russian Jew on my father's side. So that means I'm a pessimist. Bad things happen to the Russian Jews. We're all like the glass is not just half empty, it is cracked and leaking. That's how we see the world naturally. Now in the spirit, with a good Gentile spirit-filled wife, that helps.

But yes, I actually am quite bullish on where we are. It's been a horrible two and a half years and our teams have lived through it. We've seen missiles launching while we're either delivering humanitarian relief for the Joshua Fund or going to cover something for All Israel News. This is the world that I write about in my political thrillers. I make it up, but the last three years have been beyond fiction.

But I am optimistic. I am bullish about where Israel's going. Israel has, by the grace of God and the hard work and courage of our soldiers and intelligence services, decimated the Iranian regime's capacity to destroy us, Hezbollah's capacity to destroy us, and Hamas. There's a little bit more to be done on all fronts, but we are not living in the same world that we were two and a half years ago.

I believe that in six months to a year, everybody in the world is going to see Israel as the superpower, bar none, of any country in the Middle East. Security, I think prosperity, I think money is going to flow into Israel. Venture capital and others. I think Christian tourists are going to flow. I think ministries are going to come and say, "Wow, what's happening? How do we help?" I think the world is going to come into Israel.

Yes, I believe there are other horrible prophetic things that are coming. But I think we're going to be going into a stretch of years, possibly of decades, where people are not thinking of the Middle East as, "Why would you take people there? Israel? I'm not going there. There are missiles flying and terrorists and suicide bombers." That is not the world we're about to head into.

So rethinking every ministry, we will still have antisemitism to deal with and anti-Israelism. As Israel gets more successful, the anti-Israelism is going to get worse in certain quarters. But Christians who know where God is taking Israel will be part of the reason it's going well, because we're praying and we're helping. God is blessing Israel and He's blessing us as we bless Israel, as He promised.

Dr. Susan Michael: After October 7th, there was a Christian minister in America, a big name, and he made the comment that the reason Hamas attacked Israel, or was allowed to attack Israel by God, is because the Jews had rejected Jesus. It's so painful. But what a lot of us lose because you're in the news cycle and you just see one bad thing after the other, we need your help to connect the dots and put it into perspective.

Only recently did I come to the realization that it was actually the Hamas attack on October 7th that saved Israel from destruction because they were supposed to have done a coordinated attack with Hezbollah and Iran. So their ground incursion was to be met with missiles from Lebanon and from Iran. And a ground invasion from the north which had been planned actually for 10 years publicly. It would have destroyed Israel in a day. But because Hamas goes out on their own and attacks, the other two kind of got mad and didn't really come to the rescue, and the coordinated plan didn't happen. This saved Israel from destruction and instead, they have had victory over every one of those enemies on seven fronts. Now the enemy still exists; that's the danger. They will try to rearm, they will try to do it again one day. But Israel has so pushed that scenario far away. And now with a political realignment in the Middle East, when they see Israel's strength, they're drawn to that strength.

This is another misunderstanding in America. We sit here, we live in peace in America. We don't have an enemy on our border. We certainly don't have an enemy within 40 miles.

Joel Rosenberg: Well, thank God President Trump sealed that border. But we had tens of millions of people that we don't even know who they are. But yes, in terms of another army on our border or having Russia on our border or North Korea, yes. And even if we did, they're not 40 miles from our home.

And we don't understand that in the Middle East, there's a whole different language that is spoken and it's the language of strength. You must be strong, or else they'll see you as weak and then they'll pounce on you. It's a mentality we just don't understand in America, but Israel does. So when they are attacked, they come against it and they try to defeat their enemy.

In today's Christianity, there's a lot of pacifism, a lot of "well, we need to be weak, humble, and loving." Yes, we should in our everyday lives. But the New Testament also says that our government has the responsibility of taking up the sword against evil. Israel is doing that; they're taking up the sword against the evil against their people. I do believe what you just said, that we're headed into a season where Israel's going to be strong and that's going to realign politically in the Middle East. There's the potential for a season of peace and prosperity in the Middle East.

We just so appreciate All Israel News and your being our partner.

Joel Rosenberg: I'm glad you're writing for us. May your tribe increase. We want to see more from you and more from your team. You guys are already doing such a great job educating Christians worldwide in a way we've never really had. Here you and I are sitting at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville and it's interesting. After almost eight decades of Israel, modern prophetic biblical wonderful growing thriving but under challenge Israel, how is it possible there's never been an actually Israeli media organization run by believers to help believers around the world know? Yes, I'm praying for the peace of Jerusalem, but today what's going on today that I ought to be praying about?

You guys do that, but there's never been a news organization that would specifically cover it. CBN News runs one of the best, but they're doing broadcast. They're not trying to do daily digital a little bit more than they used to, but they're doing television. Chris Mitchell is by far the best journalist that there is there. But you, even the ICEJ events, the Feast and everything else, it's amazing how hard it is to get Israeli coverage of those things, much less American or European. So you have to be your own media arm.

And you guys do a good job of it. What's interesting is I just feel like this has been a gap somehow God never created until now, an actual Israeli media arm that would cover the ministries as well as cover the region.

Dr. Susan Michael: Well, we appreciate it and we appreciate our partnership. So before we close, let's talk about our upcoming partnership. You're doing a big event in Jerusalem called the Epicenter. Please tell us about it and where it will be.

Joel Rosenberg: April 17, 2027. So from the time you and I are recording this, maybe about 14 months from now. We're going to host what's called an Epicenter Summit. I use the term Epicenter because Israel is at the epicenter of the world, Jerusalem's at the epicenter of Israel, and the Temple Mount is at the epicenter of Jerusalem. This is where God's plan and purpose, the gospel, goes out from there.

So we're going to do 3,000 Christians from all over the world, Lord willing, including wonderful people from ICEJ from countries all over the world that you guys work in. Now the summit is only one day. President Herzog will be a keynote speaker. Ambassador Mike Huckabee will be a keynote speaker. And then other wonderful, trusted, godly Bible teachers who love and get Israel and the neighbors. We have our love and a compassion for the neighbors. Anne Graham Lotz, Greg Laurie, Skip Heitzig, Jack Graham, the former president of Southern Baptists and who's a mega-church pastor in Dallas. These are the main keynotes. There will be some other speakers.

The goal is a one-day catalytic event. Christian tourism is pretty much dead. There's been solidarity missions; you've led some of them. There are delegations; Christians and Jews are doing it. But in the grand scheme, we're at almost nothing in terms of Christians coming. So we're trying to use this as a catalyst. Joshua Fund, our ministry, will definitely and All Israel News will definitely do a tour. But we're encouraging you and we're encouraging all kinds of other ministries, design your own tour. Maybe it's just one bus. Maybe it's just a pastor and a few members of his team, donors, Sunday school teachers, whatever.

Plan your trip that's going to accomplish your ministry's objectives and then buy tickets to just come to the one-day of the conference. I think it'll be an amazing conference that will help educate and mobilize Christians to go back all over the world to understand the dynamic then. Where are we then? What are the issues that we need to help people be better educated on then? You can barely plan them now, but you can see with Tucker and Candace and everybody attacking, we're going to have to do stuff next year that we hadn't even thought of a year ago.

So all that to say, we're not trying to run a tour for 3,000 Christians in All Israel News and the Joshua Fund. We're going to do our role. We'll host the conference, and then we're trying to encourage pastors and ministry leaders to plan now and start planning to bring people. Let people start saving so they have a year or so. That's the trip of a lifetime. That's where I want to be. We're not doing a conference for more than the summit for more than a day because when you get to Israel, you mostly want to go see Israel. But I think it is important sometimes to do an event like this.

Dr. Susan Michael: Well, we look forward to being there for the Epicenter and to our listening audience. If you mark your calendars now, be in touch with the ICEJ USA office and we'll keep you informed on travel opportunities and details on the upcoming Epicenter Summit in April of 2027. Joel, thank you so much for being with us today. It was a joy, and we so appreciate you. I thank you all for listening in and please visit the show notes where we'll link to Joel's All Israel News and his ministry. God bless.

Hey, just give me one more minute. I want to offer you one of our free resources. We have wonderful resources in our show notes and if you go to our website at icejusa.org/shownotes you'll find links for a number of our free offers. We have downloadables to help root you in scripture, help you to understand the issues surrounding Israel, and the importance of Christian support for Israel. And don't forget, please follow us on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn and stay connected. Thank you and God bless.

Guest (Male): We hope you have enjoyed this episode of Out of Zion with Susan Michael. Be sure to subscribe to Out of Zion now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, pray.com, Salem1Note, Salem Life Audio, and icejusa.org. Out of Zion with Susan Michael is a production of ICEJ USA. All rights reserved.