Join us on Family Talk as Joel Rosenberg, a best-selling author and journalist, continues a riveting conversation with Gary Bauer about Israel’s critical role in scripture and current global events. They delve into the spiritual awakening happening among Jewish communities worldwide and examine why now is a pivotal moment for Christians to support Israel. Discover insights on faith, politics, and the necessity of a strong stance against anti-Semitism as they unpack these pressing issues.
Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It’s a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute supported by listeners just like you. I’m Dr. James Dobson and I’m thrilled that you’ve joined us.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, welcome back to another edition of Family Talk. I’m Roger Marsh. On our last broadcast, we began an important conversation featuring best-selling author and journalist Joel Rosenberg about Israel, the Jewish people, and God’s biblical plan for both. Joel shared powerful insights about why understanding Israel’s role in Scripture matters for Christians today, especially as anti-Semitism is on the rise all across our culture. Today, we’re continuing the discussion featuring Joel Rosenberg and Gary Bauer, our Senior Vice President of Public Policy here at the JDFI. Gary is also the host of the Defending Faith, Family, and Freedom podcast. During the next half hour, you’re going to hear Joel Rosenberg share remarkable news about the spiritual awakening happening among Jewish people worldwide and why he believes that now is a critical moment for Christians to stand strong in support of Israel. So now let’s rejoin Gary Bauer and Joel Rosenberg for part two of their conversation about fighting for Israel on today’s edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, we’re back on Family Talk today. We got a great guest. Joel was here with us yesterday to talk about the Middle East, about his books, about theology, which a lot of people seem to be confused about. Joel, welcome back to Family Talk, and let’s get right into it. Thank you, Gary. Happy to be here, and let’s go. We had a very prominent megachurch pastor yesterday. I started to say famously said, but infamously said a number of years ago, he didn’t really see any useful purpose for the Old Testament because some of the things in it were a stumbling block. Well, if you don’t have the Old Testament, then Christ did not fulfill any prophecies. The whole, you can’t have Christ without the Old Testament, but it shows you the weak and flaccid thinking that has afflicted even the church.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. And so it means that young people are not, In a world of such controversy of vaccinations, maybe this is the wrong analogy. I was going to say not inoculated from – in other words, they don’t have built into the software of their daily lives a piece why is Israel important. It doesn’t have to be their day-to-day what they think about. But when an attack comes against the only Jewish state in the world and people are accusing Israel of genocide when we’re defending ourselves from people who are – like Hamas and Iran or Hezbollah are – not only openly, but explicitly in all their documents, genocidal against Israel. And they’re trying to wipe us off the planet. They say that openly. But if young people don’t know that, they don’t understand that, they don’t have defenses. And what they’re watching is Israel fighting a very hard, tough war that goes on and on and on. And they don’t remember and they don’t seem to care about the fact that this all got started on October 7th, 2023, when Hamas Invaded Israel and murdered, butchered, raped, beheaded, and burned alive 1,200 Jews. The worst day of death for Jews, the murder of Jews since the Holocaust.
SPEAKER 02 :
And used rape as an instrument of war. They did. I keep waiting for the resolutions from American feminist groups. They are silent. Silence. They are silent.
SPEAKER 03 :
Silence. I, as an Israeli who, you know, we lived through it, I covered it for All Israel News, for the Rosenberg Report. I’ve been into Gaza with the IDF as a journalist. Our ministry, as you mentioned, the Joshua Fund, we are funding churches on the front lines, not just humanitarian relief, but humanitarian. Strengthening them on many fronts and including Palestinian Christians and so forth. So we have been living through it, but we understand that there’s an avalanche of lies coming against Israel. And something has been uncorked, unleashed. This volcano of hot lava against Israel and the Jewish people have come out. And what we’re finding is, oh my goodness, our young people overall – They don’t understand that God didn’t just say, I will bless those who bless you, Israel, and curse those who curse. God also said throughout the scriptures, Israel is the apple of his eye. What does that mean? Well, it’s the pupil. It’s just an old Hebrew idiom for the pupil of your eye, meaning, number one, this is the most sensitive part of God’s eyes. Don’t mess with it. Right. Secondly, Israel is the lens to which he sees the rest of the world. He started with Israel to reveal to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and eventually through Jesus, the Jewish Israelite Messiah, who he didn’t live in the United States. He didn’t live in China. He didn’t live in Europe. He lived in Israel. He came to Israel. And so God sees the rest of the world through the lens of Israel. Right. So both from the blessing side, but also God’s angle, his perspective. And Romans 9, 10, 11, God uses the apostle Paul to warn the Gentile church, don’t get arrogant. I know that most Jews don’t believe in Jesus today, Paul was saying, but God loves them and they’re going to come to faith. In fact, all Israel will eventually come to faith.
SPEAKER 02 :
And the Gentiles are drafted onto them.
SPEAKER 03 :
Exactly. So God has been gracious to you as a Gentile. But don’t forget, you’re the branch being brought into the tree. The Jews are not only the tree, but the root system. And yet much of the church doesn’t either read, study, or teach Romans 9, 10, or 11. So, Look, somebody asked me at lunch today, am I worried about that? Well, I’m concerned about it, but I’m not worried because in 1948, when Jim Dobson’s mother was sharing with her son a moment of great biblical and global import – Did most of the church understand God’s love and plan for Israel and the Jewish people? No. The Catholic Church mostly doesn’t understand it. Much of the Reformed Church, while having a heart of compassion for anybody for the gospel, but is Israel special? Is Israel biblical? Most don’t believe it. John MacArthur was a very famous Calvinist who said, I absolutely believe it and I’m teaching it, but… Most just don’t care about it. They’re not hostile to Israel. And then there’s – one challenge also is what I love is Christian Zionism. I am concerned there are some voices out there that I would say are hyper-Christian Zionists who will say, we absolutely love Israel. We’re going to provide financial, political, whatever kind of support. But don’t worry. We won’t talk about Jesus. Ultimately, our team is rattled enough in this time of history to think – We need God and we need to get back to God. And is it possible, is it even possible that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah? More Jews are coming to faith in Jesus over the last six decades and particularly over the last two decades than at any other time in history. That’s wonderful. We did a huge study that the Joshua Fund helped fund with several others. And it was done, the study was done by the Southern Baptist Research Arm known as Lifeway Research. Very long story short, Just to keep it simple, right now – well, in 1967 when I was born, Gary, there were fewer than 2,000 Jewish people on planet Earth who believed that Jesus is the Messiah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Wait a minute. Are you serious? I mean I knew it was not common, but I had no idea.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, the numbers were climbing in the early part of the 20th century because there was so much global disruption, mainly in Europe.
SPEAKER 02 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 03 :
And church ministries were saying, well, we need to show humanitarian relief, compassion to the Jewish people being under threat in Europe, mostly out of Russia and so forth. And so there was a lot of loving, kind, unconditional love being shown and the gospel was being shared. And Jews were coming to faith. In fact, the number of Jewish believers in Jesus rose to just about 250,000 just prior to the Holocaust. It was the greatest spiritual awakening of the Jews in human history. And then almost all of them were murdered. With the rest of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. So now by the time of 1967, there’s maybe 2,000 Jews on planet Earth who believed that Jesus is the Messiah. Now, from 1967, as you go into the Jesus revolution, 1970, 71, 72, your listeners have seen Greg Laurie’s movie, so they know a little bit. Or some of us got saved during the Jesus movement. Right. Not just Greg Laurie and his wife. But we are now at about a million Jews. worldwide, but mostly in the United States, who’ve come to faith.
SPEAKER 02 :
And that’s out of, like, what, six, seven million?
SPEAKER 03 :
16 or 17 million Jews worldwide. So, numerically, one million Jews who believe in Jesus That’s the sheer largest number of Jews in human history that have believed in Jesus as Messiah. And it’s also the highest percentage of Jews in human history. You’d have to go back to the first century under the ministry of Jesus and the apostles when many Jews were coming to faith, not most, but many. Mm-hmm. So my point is, we’re in a moment where Jews are listening. They are hungry. So in 1948, when Israel was being reborn, who was rebuilding the Jewish country from the scratch? Atheists, agnostics. These were Jews who came out of the Holocaust, came out of the Soviet Union, came out of communism, Marxism, socialism, and thought those are all good ideas. They’re just being done wrong. But we don’t need God. God has abandoned us. Let’s go build our own country. But Ultimately, a Jewish person needs what everybody needs. They need to know that there’s a God who created them, loves them, has a plan for their lives, and that Jesus is that son, that Messiah whom God sent. And all the Bible prophecies, the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament tell us this. This is something that Jim Dobson said. was passionate about. It wasn’t the center of his ministry, but he didn’t keep that light under a bushel, right? Because how a person thinks about Israel will help you understand where they are theologically on a number of other issues. If they’re confused on Israel, they might be confused on some other issues. And we’re finding that to be true more than ever.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, some of our friends in Israel over the years have contacted me when some – quote-unquote mainline denominations have passed resolutions against Israel. And they’ll say, Gary, we thought the Christians were on our side. And I point out, look, these are denominations that are confused about the definition of marriage. You shouldn’t be surprised or confused about the role of Israel in God’s plan. Look, I don’t want our time together to end without talking about your incredible history of writing these novels. And, you know, People learn from textbooks and they learn from seminars, but a lot of people learn because they read fiction. And there’s a lot of bad fiction out there. You’ve written what many people believe, including me, is God-inspired fiction that has incredible messages to it. The first one was the novel that came out before 9-11.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, it came out actually in November of 2002, but I wrote it all, except for the last couple of chapters, before September 11th. And actually the first pages put you inside the cockpit of a jet plane that’s been hijacked by radical Islamist terrorists. You wrote this before the event. I wrote that in January, February, March of 2001, six, seven, eight months before 9-11. And those radical terrorists, radical Islamist terrorists fly a commercial plane into an American city as a kamikaze fight. And – The book begins this way and leads to the fictional American president deciding to declare war on Saddam Hussein to remove him from power in Iraq. Now, regardless of what your politics were about any of that, forget all that. Pretend you’re a novelist in January of 1941 and you’re thinking – I don’t know. I want to write a novel. It’s my first novel. Let’s just imagine, I don’t know, the imperial Japanese and they decide they’re going to take on America and they’re going to take over the Pacific. So they decide to bomb, I don’t know, Guam. No, I don’t know. How about Hawaii? How about Pearl Harbor? And that leads to an American president to drop two nuclear bombs on them. Now, you’d think, okay, first of all, that’s a crazy story, but it might be an interesting novel if you wrote it well. Yeah, you might do well with sales, but nobody would actually believe it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Exactly.
SPEAKER 03 :
Then December 7th, 1941 happened, and you’re like, whoa, I was not – I’m not a prophet. I’m not a fortune teller. I’m not calling Miss Cleo in the middle of the night on a 900 number.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s good because we do not have people on the show that call Miss Cleo at midnight.
SPEAKER 03 :
That actually predates – I mean that’s probably dating myself. That’s one of the California seers. I was just writing a political thriller based on my understanding of what radical Islam says it wants to do. And I thought let’s play out a war game in the form of a novel. And what if they tried to pull it off? These are the things that Prime Minister Netanyahu used to warn about. I was a junior member of that staff when I was trying to help him come back in 2000. It took him nine years to come back. But my point is it became a monster New York Times bestseller. And I had the gospel woven in it because after 10 years of being a failed political consultant, I thought, what a waste of 10 years. And so maybe I ought to do something more youthful, kingdom-focused. And since I am one of the few Jews in America that didn’t get the financial gene, and I’m not a doctor, I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t run a movie studio, I thought, well, I guess I can make things up for a living. And that sends emotion a career. What I didn’t imagine was that people on radio shows, TV shows, and just inviting me to speak would say, okay, what do you really think? What does the Bible really teach? How do we as Christians pray for, much less help, the people of the Middle East, particularly stand with Israel? And that led me to think, I mean, not that I didn’t have answers. I didn’t have a compact answer. that I could share on a radio show or in a church service at the end. So after much prayer, my wife and I got some good counsel from other Christians and we decided to start this ministry called the Joshua Fund. Very simply, the Joshua Fund’s idea was Let’s create a mutual fund. If we raise money from evangelicals who say, I want to bless Israel. I want to help. I want to help the church advance the gospel and make disciples and plant other churches and care for the poor and needy and widows and orphans. And I want to care for the Palestinians and others. I wouldn’t even know the first thing. I wouldn’t know how to do that. Okay, well, why don’t you give $25 a month or $50 a month or whatever to the Joshua Fund and we’ll – Raise up a team, train them, and figure out who’s the right people to invest in. One of the first people to have me on the show early on was Dr. Jim Dobson. Because not for the reason to raise money, but because that was his question. All right, Joe, I’m reading your books. I’m fascinated. What do we do? How do we help? And so that was really interesting to me that this would attract his attention and that finally I had an answer, not just for him, but for others. From a leadership side, we would describe ourselves more as venture capitalists, spiritually speaking. Like we’re looking to say, if we were to invest, maybe it’s, you know, you don’t want to give too much money to any small ministry. It might cut off their oxygen hose to the Lord, right? You don’t want Peter to call you and say, hey, I need to feed 5,000 people. Jesus told me to do it. Can you guys wire money? Because I would do it, and then I’d get a call from Jesus and have him say, did you just send some money to Peter? Yeah, that’s so exciting. He goes, did I ask you to do that? Well, no, but Peter did. But he said, well… Did you call me to double check that I was really, I know, but Peter, yeah, well, Peter says stuff and he’s not always right. And so when it comes to vetting at the Joshua Fund, we don’t just check to make sure that somebody’s a heretic or they’re not using the money properly or they’re painting a picture of what they’re doing and they’re not really doing it. We’re also asking, Lord, is this one of the good works that you prepared beforehand for us to walk in? Maybe you’ve got somebody else you want to help that ministry. It’s great. You’re in it. You’re doing something, but you’re not asking us to help. Okay. We’re trying to learn how to do that well. So that’s the venture capital side. What an exciting thing.
SPEAKER 02 :
I would like you to say a word about your new novel because you have had this ability to take events that are in the news and sort of extrapolate them in a way that people go, oh, yeah, that – He saw this a few years before it happened. And the new novel you have out is actually very timely if I understand it correctly. I have not read it yet about events unfolding in the Pacific with communist China and Taiwan and so forth.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. So the most recent political thriller is called The Beijing Betrayal, and it’s about communist China plotting to attack, invade, and take over the democratic island in the Pacific known as Taiwan. And they’re not going to do this in years or in months. This is going to happen in days, in hours. And my hero, a CIA operative named Marcus Riker, we meet in the first novel – I’ll get to that in a moment – grows up on the front range of Colorado in Monument, Colorado, which is like 15 minutes from here where we’re recording this. But he uncovers this plot, and now he’s got to figure out how to – Verify it and persuade the president to do something to defend Taiwan before China actually pulls the trigger. But it’s not that just the communist China wants to invade Taiwan. They’re simultaneously plotting to unleash a new and unknown and highly deadly biotoxin in the United States to kill millions of people, to paralyze the United States. So we don’t defend Taiwan or South Korea or Japan or any other of our allies, and suddenly the communist Beijing plot is to take over the entire Pacific while the United States is imploding internally. So we pray that never happens, but I believe it’s something that very well could happen. Look, when you write novels, yes, do I want to educate? Of course. Do I want to weave the gospel in through some of the characters? I do. Do I want to raise alarms for things I’m worried about? Yes. But if I don’t entertain, it’s all for naught. Like if people don’t like the cover, if they don’t like the title, if they don’t like the first sentence, if they don’t like the first page, they’re not going to read it. They’d rather watch Netflix than read, right? So I have to earn it and own it. And the assassinations, explosions, all kinds of stuff happening every page to pull people in. I have multiple objectives. Spiritual, educational, other – but I have to own it. But one, we didn’t expect these novels to take off. Second, we didn’t think it would lead to being able to write nonfiction. And third, we didn’t think a ministry or actually several ministries would emerge, the Joshua Fund, but also All Israel News, All Arab News. We started this at allisrael.com, for example. Why? Because I was going to either have an aneurysm by how – horribly, the media handles all coverage of all things I care about, but particularly Israel and Christians and the church in the Middle East. I was either going to have my head explode every day by looking at the avalanche of lies and bias, or I was going to do something about it. Recruit and train a team of young journalists. Let’s get this thing right. And I told them, don’t worry about traffic. It’s credibility. It’s credibility, credibility, credibility. That’s the only thing that matters. And over time, yeah, we’ve gotten to sit down with Prime Minister Netanyahu. And I was just in – I was just in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, doing an exclusive and rather rare interview with President Volodymyr Zelensky, the most consequential but also the most controversial Jew in the world right now, certainly in Europe. But maybe Netanyahu is maybe the most controversial Jewish person in the world right now. But doors are opening to meet with Arab leaders, to meet with President Trump, to meet with other leaders. Because they all have goals too. They want to be communicating what they are doing and they want to communicate it fairly. Now, I may agree or disagree with any one of those at any given moment, but the point is give them an opportunity like an old-fashioned journalist would to let them make their case. We can do commentaries and agree and disagree with them. But so anyway, so all Israel news, all Arab news, those are two websites that emerged out of the Joshua Fund, which we realized, okay, we’re educating the church, but there is tactical daily information and the media is doing it horribly. So that’s what the church is getting. That’s their lens of perspective, their frame of reference. So we’ve got to do something different. So we started that. Then Matt Crouch, the president of TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network, as you mentioned, the most watched Christian television network in the United States. He said, I love all Israel news. We didn’t have much traffic then, but he was a reader. And he goes, that should be a TV show. I said, Matt, have you ever met me before? I have a face and a look for radio, my friend. And so… But he put me on in prime time on Thursday nights, 9 p.m. Eastern. And so television now is opening up all kinds of doors that all Israel News and Joshua and it’s an ecosystem. It’s all designed to help equip the church to understand better what’s really happening and not just in Israel or the Arab Muslim world, but also what’s happening with Russia and China, what’s happening with the countries they threaten, Ukraine and Taiwan and so forth. So It’s exciting.
SPEAKER 02 :
The success could not happen to a better person. Joel, this has been a great couple of days to have this conversation with you. You’ve got an insightful ability to analyze the events of the Middle East. You’ve got a rare theological understanding of how Jews and Christians are joined at the hip and joined at the heart, and our fate is tied together because God decided it would be tied together. And you’re an accomplished author. So we’d like you to come back again. We’ve enjoyed it. We know our audience has enjoyed these last couple of days. And we appreciate your longtime friendship with our leader, Dr. Dobson, and his family.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, thank you, Gary. It means a lot to me. You and I have known each other, I think, even longer than Annette, Jim, and Shirley, just from our time in Washington. Of course, you were working at a much higher level for Dr. Bill Bennett when he was Secretary of Education. I came into work from later. But thank you. I appreciate it. I love Jim and Shirley Dobson. I look forward to the day of spending time with Dr. Dobson. He is at the feet of Jesus worshiping. And I couldn’t be more jealous of him. But we’re praying for Shirley and we’re just, you know, for the whole team because this legacy, this ministry was given to Dr. Dobson and his lovely wife because God decided sovereignly they were the right vessels. But the message predates them and it goes on beyond them. And it’s so, so important on life, on family, on marriage, on the culture. And I’m so grateful for you and for the entire team at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute and Family Talk. I’m just grateful for you guys. And I say may your tribe increase. I hope people will be more involved now. Because it is with Dr. Dobson, you had an anointed figure who everybody knew. Now we have to take the legacy and the message and the teaching and have the resources to be able to go and share that with a generation that desperately, desperately needs it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you. We’re committed to doing that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Amen. Amen.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, thank you, Joel, for those kind words about our founder, Dr. James Dobson. And this conversation was recorded shortly after Dr. Dobson went home to be with the Lord. And we are so grateful for friends like Joel Rosenberg who understand the importance of what Dr. Dobson began and who continue to support the legacy that we carry on through the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. On today’s edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, we featured part two of Gary Bauer’s compelling conversation with Joel Rosenberg. And if you missed yesterday’s program, or if you’d like to share part one and part two of these broadcasts with someone who really wants to better understand what’s really happening in Israel and why it’s so important for us as Christians to support this nation, Go to drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. And when you’re there, you’ll also find information about Joel Rosenberg’s latest political thriller. It’s called The Beijing Betrayal. You know, continuing Dr. Dobson’s ministry means standing firm on the biblical principles that he championed for nearly five decades. Principles about marriage, family, and the sanctity of life, along with religious freedom. Through these daily broadcasts and also the resources that we have on our website and our advocacy work, we are reaching millions who are searching for truth in an increasingly confused culture, but we can’t do this work alone. Your partnership today helps us ensure that Dr. James Dobson’s legacy of biblical wisdom We’ll continue reaching families who need it the most. When you support the JDFI, you’re investing in the next generation’s understanding of God’s design for life and family. So if you’d like to make a secure donation online, go to drjamesdobson.org. If you’d prefer to make your contribution over the phone, A member of our constituent care team will be happy to help you when you call 877-732-6825. Or if you prefer to send your donation through the mail, our ministry mailing address is Well, I’m Roger Marsh, and on behalf of all of us here at the JDFI, thanks so much for listening today. Be sure to join us again next time right here for another edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, the voice you can still trust for the family you love. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
