Sid: Hello Sid Roth with something more and Jonathan you have such a… and by the way my guest is Jonathan Bernis the head of Jewish Voice. You’ve probably seen him on television but Jonathan and I friends and we’re going to let you eaves drop on our conversation. You have had a passion for years for confessing God’s word, why?
Jonathan: Well very simply two words: It works.
Sid: I like that.
Jonathan: It does (laughing) it absolutely works and I’ll tell you very the story how I came into this. I was counseling a woman, and one of the things that I least enjoy to be, between us just the 2 of us (sound of microphone being rubbed)…
Sid: You just hit your mike again (laughing).
Jonathan: I know, I know.
Sid: (Laughing) Okay.
Jonathan: I was going to hit my forehead and I missed. Oi Vey! But one of things I least enjoyed when I was leading a congregation, pastoral minister was counseling. I was counseling a woman week after week, after week that had severe depression.
Sid: By the way, Jonathan was single for many years and women would come to him for counseling (laughing). God told them they were supposed to get married.
Jonathan: (Laughing) Yeah I’d find out later. I did this for 9 years I pastored for 9 years and there was a woman severely depressed, clinically depressed. She had been like the woman with the issue of blood to every psychologist, every psychiatrist, they had spent a great deal of money on counseling and she was… she just exuded depression. Everywhere she went it was just like a cloud over her then it his other people. I just spent hours of really wasted time trying to help here without any results whatsoever. Then I was praying her before a counseling meeting and the Lord told me just give her some scriptures of liberty, that confess liberty “Whoever the Son sets free is free indeed. Where the Spirit of God is there is liberty. Greater is He that is us than he that is in the world.” I gave here this assignment and I didn’t know what to expect I actually probably didn’t expect much of anything. Sid she came back the next week and she was a different person. The cloud was gone, she was smiling, it was the first I had ever seen her smile and she obeyed the homework assignment, she did it.
Sid: Hmm.
Jonathan: She became a doer of the word and not a hearer only and she stood in front of the mirror like I recommended she do. She began to confess these scriptures and in about 3 days the depression lifted because the word of God works and confession is a Biblical principle. If you look at the word meditate in the Hebrew it’s hagah. That should remind you of you something of the hagadah…
Sid: Right.
Jonathan: …Which means to tell the Passover story, hagadah, but that word hagah…
Sid: Excuse me the little booklet that has the format for Passover is called the Hagadah.
Jonathan: Why? Because we’re retelling the story of Passover, the exodus out of Egypt. Thanks for clarifying. The word in Hebrew hagah means to mutter, to utter, to speak, and when God told Joshua to meditate on the word and he would be successful in everything that he did and he’d be able to take the land and lead the children of Israel into the promise land, the word is hagah. So Christian meditation is to think to contemplate, but Jewish meditation is to confess. To use that little member of our body, the tongue, which we’re told has the power of life and death in it. To speak the word of God and by speaking the word of God something happens Sid that’s supernatural. I know you like that word supernatural.
Sid: I do.
Jonathan: What happens is “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” The spoken tongue, the language, speaking forth words has creative force for good and bad. What happens supernaturally is when we confess the word of God we hear it, when we hear it over and over again it becomes faith it drops into our spirit. Then when we confess it from our spirit it has creative force it has life and it brings change. It’s miraculous it’s supernatural.
Sid: What I find is so amazing, if you could see in the invisible realm when you speak… (Sound of microphone being rubbed) I just did the same thing…
Jonathan: I just wanted to point it out (laughing).
Sid: Yeah I wasn’t going to let you point it out. When you speak the word of God it literally is called a sword. It literally does what a sword does it just totally… the enemy stands no chance. In fact…
Jonathan: You feel the anointing growing right now as you’re talking? The anointing is… I’m getting excited.
Sid: Joshua 1:8 you teach about, explain.
Jonathan: That is the scripture… God is encouraging Joshua. He’s preparing Joshua to take over for Moses. Can you imagine how daunting this is? The great Moses has now departed and you have to lead somewhere around 3 million Jewish people, everyone is a president unto themselves and you have to lead them…
Sid: If you have 10 Jewish people you have 11 opinions.
Jonathan: Or more. God is encouraging Joshua, this is Joshua’s pep talk Sid. He’s saying “Joshua you’re going to make but here’s how you’re going to make it. You’re going to succeed, you’re going to accomplish this. I’ve been preparing you but here’s what you have to do to be successful. You have meditate, hagah, confess My word day and night and never let it depart (He doesn’t say from your heart, or your mind, He says ‘Never let it depart…’) from your mouth.” So if you confess the scriptures by speaking them forth they’ll get into your hearing, you’ll listen to them it’ll drop into your spirit, it’ll become faith and you will succeed in everything you do.
Sid: You know I’m having an amazing thought right now. We Jewish people we go into the synagogue and we daven, that’s called pray and we usually use a prayer book, but the prayer book is loaded with the scripture. So a religious Jew is going into the synagogue and he is meditating on the word of God every day. My father used to have the prayer book memorized and there’d be a contest to see who could say the prayers the fastest in the synagogue. What he was doing was he was speaking the supernatural words of God. He was meditating, he was actually mumbling, when you said that it’s like mumbling they do it real fast…
Jonathan: Yeah mumble or mutter.
Sid: Mutter when they read it that quickly in the scriptures and maybe, just maybe that’s one of the reasons why Jewish people are such a blessed group of people. I mean more Noble prizes for Jewish people and we’re such a tiny group of people. I believe that has something to do with that Jonathan.
Jonathan: Again our spoken words have created force, our spoken words are what we hear and “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” The most powerful thing is when it gets into our heart, and don’t you notice you confess scriptures and you remember them at key times?
Sid: Yes.
Jonathan: The Lord brings them to mind at just the right time and that’s how it works. When you speak forth the word of God, when you speak healing to someone from your spirit you’re releasing the creative power of healing and I love it Sid there’s nothing more exciting.
Sid: Okay but you have incorporated Hebrew…
Jonathan: I have.
Sid: Why now? It’s interactive so you have the English, you have the Hebrew, and you have the transliteration which we’ll get to, which in a matter of seconds you can actually speak the Hebrew that you’re seeing. But why Hebrew?
Jonathan: Well there’s a couple of reasons:
First of all, Hebrew is known as the holy tongue. It’s the tongue of the prophets, it’s the language of the Old Testament and I believe it’s the language of heaven. I believe that when God created the world it was the spoken word in Hebrew. We’ll find out when we get to heaven but I believe it was Hebrew. It’s a creative… So the language itself has creative force. We were talking in a past program about the… just the different tone, tonal qualities of Hebrew they’ve determined have creative power.
Sid: You know I can’t tell you from technical viewpoint, I just can tell you to my ear I like spoken Hebrew, I like the way it sounds.
Jonathan: I do too. There’s a reason for that our spirit likes it it’s not our mind that likes it it’s our spirit that likes it. When I hear shalom I just love it and I know that it’s speaking peace, that it’s speaking life, but here’s another let’s take this one Adonai Yireh the word yireh oaky, the Lord will provide. So yireh, or Jireh, (singing) ‘Jehovah Jireh my provider’ so what’s the English word? It’s provide. Right?
Sid: Right.
Jonathan: But yireh when we confess yireh we not saying provide we’re saying we’re speaking forth prophetically abundance, blessing, multiplication, I’m reading all the words that yireh means. Lacking for nothing, prosper, success, fruitfulness, sustenance, rescue, protection, shelter, graciousness, enjoyment, carry us to old age, rain (when there’s famine), asking and receiving all connected to the word yireh.
Sid: You know what, that sure sounds a lot better to me than just money. That’s what money can’t buy…
Jonathan: (Laughing)
Sid: …you know that? Money can’t buy what yireh provides for us.
Jonathan: You know how we have super supplements and super vitamins and whatever else are super foods? Hebrew are super words it’s a language of super words. So we provide in English but then we go to the Hebrew and we release in yireh a super word that has 20 or 30 English words all contained in the one word we confess yireh.
Sid: But the problem is if you have ever looked at the Hebrew language unless you’re taught you can’t speak and you’ll have to be taught it for a number of years to understand it, to speak it, but there was a problem when Jewish people came to America. Tell me about that Jonathan.
Jonathan: Well the Yeshiva, the idea of Yeshiva and men being brought up as from the time that they were little children in the Hebrew language; disappeared when Jews started coming to America. In fact, the Hebrew language was basically lost it was really lost in what we call the dispersion when Jews were forced to leave Israel banished from Israel in 70 AD or actually 130 after the Bar Kokhba revolt they were scattered to the nations of the world and you would think they would assimilate. Here’s a people without homeland anymore and really without a common language. Hebrew really faded way but it continued on in the European shtetl and so on, but in America particularly Hebrew literally disappeared. So the religious leaders at the turn of the 20th century were asking the question “How do we preserve Hebrew in our worship?” They came up with the idea of transliteration which is simply taking the English language and phonetically spelling out the Hebrew, and we both grew up with this to some extent. We both went to Hebrew school but we also have in most prayer books now outside of the Orthodox this thing called transliteration where we have the phonetic English that is an aid to read Hebrew, and I’ve employed that in these books.
Sid: No I see it for instance the Hebrew you’d never understand if you saw it written, but then it’s so easy. Here it is phonetically and in the book that’s what I love about this book. You see it’s a hardback…
Jonathan: It’s a workbook.
Sid: Beautiful…
Jonathan: It’s a workbook.
Sid: … and the CD is interactive. He has an Israeli reading the Hebrew but then you can read right along with that Israeli because it’s written out phonetically. It’s so easy… just that word “The Lord will provide.” All of those meanings you’re losing, you’re capturing it when you’re saying Hebrew. You know what Zephaniah says? That a pure language will be restored and many people believe that Biblical Hebrew is a pure language…
Jonathan: I’m positive that that’s the fulfillment of that scripture. I have no doubt.
Sid: I believe that too.
Jonathan: I’m sure of it.
Sid: Okay. Why… so they developed this system it’s so simple that anyone without understanding how to read the Hebraic letters sounds like an Israeli scholar, but you’ll really sound like Israeli because on the interactive CD that comes with this beautiful book you get the Hebrew from an Israeli not just Jonathan or myself that speak bar-mitzvah Hebrew.
Jonathan: And you can read with it and follow it right along. There’s a… Here’s how long it takes to learn Hebrew with these books 5 minutes, 5 minutes.
Sid: I said seconds…
Jonathan: No.
Sid: Okay I’m an evangelist you’re a teacher (laughing).
Jonathan: No you’re exaggerating is a full 5 minute process.
Sid: Okay.
Jonathan: To start I’ve got to be honest. I’ve got to be honest with you.
Sid: Can you do the 5 minutes… by the way it’s so supernatural the way Hebrew was lost when the Jews were dispersed to the 4 corners of the earth. How was Hebrew restored for Israel because see here’s the problem, Jews were coming back from the 4 corners of the earth to Israel as God promised, but they… some spoke French, some spoke Italian, some spoke what’s the Ethiopian language?
Jonathan: Amharic
Sid: Amharic
Jonathan: Yiddish there was 2…
Sid: So it was like the Tower of Babel we’ve got to have one language…
Jonathan: That’s right.
Sid: … So how did we get one language back?
Jonathan: Well Hebrew is a precursor to the restoration of Israel as a state in 1948. It began with pioneers as you said in the 19th century that began to go back to the land and God spoke to a man named Eliezer Ben Yehuda. We have Ben Yehuda Street…
Sid: Street.
Jonathan: So he’s a very prominent figure in Israel. He’s known as the father of Modern Hebrew. He, I believe, was called supernaturally by God to return to the land of Israel. He was a linguist who began to recreate to take the ancient language that had been preserved but lost at the same time and began to put together a multivolume dictionary; and all of these modern words that didn’t have a Hebrew word he created Hebrew words and he restored, he was used by God, to restore Hebrew as a modern spoken language.
Sid: How… you know he had all sorts of persecution when he did this…
Jonathan: Terrible.
Sid: How… he… it had to be God…
Jonathan: It had to be.
Sid: … because without the modern day Hebrew Israel would be a nation like the Tower of Babel.
Jonathan: Sid just to see the way God orchestrated everything. Zionism with Theodore Herzl who was a proclaimed atheist saw a trial in France called the Dreyfus Trial and said “We are never going to be safe anywhere we need our homeland,” started the modern movement of Zionism. You have Eliezer Ben Yehuda being used by God to recreate the language of Hebrew reestablished…
Sid: It’s all dovetailing.
Jonathan: All dovetails and comes together at a specific time in history a divine intersection, a kairos moment.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth