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This Ancient Promise Is Coming Alive Right Now | David Kiern | The Week in Bible Prophecy
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- [00:02]
A
The Week in Bible Prophecy, a Prophecy Watchers podcast. Hello everyone. Welcome to the program today. Mondo Gonzalez here in studio. And we have David Kern all the way from Tennessee, going to discuss with us some films that he's produced from the land of Israel, just phenomenal films that we want to share with you that tell an amazing story. And before we go to David, I'll remind everybody a couple of things that are happening. We are going to be in Colorado Springs June 4th through 7th for a prophecy conference. It's going to be a great time and we just invite you to join us there. We're going to have 18 speakers, hopefully eight or 900 people showing up. It's always a great time of fellowship and, and hanging out and a good time just waiting for again, the Lord's return. And so you can get information about that@procywatchers.com also want to remind you if you have ever wanted to go, we are going to be doing a prophecy conference to Alaska on Alaska cruise, going out of Seattle. That's always fun to see God's creation as well as hanging out with people and having some time of prophetic teaching on the ship and different things. And Billy Crone will be joining us, Ellie Marzulli, Matt Freeman, Larry Ollison, myself. And so again, if you go to prophecywatchers.com, you can see information about that. It's going to be a good time. That's going to be in August of this year. So we certainly invite you to join us. So, David, welcome. Here we are.
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B
Thank you, Mondo, It's a privilege to be with you. The prophecy coverage that you guys have been doing for so many years is awesome and it's needed and it's cool to be on and talk about Israel with you today.
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A
Absolutely. And you have, you have a couple films and you know, before we get into those, which again, we'll talk about it, maybe give a little background for our audience who might not know who you are and, and how you came to even do all of this.
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B
Thank you. Well, so I live in Nashville with my wife and three little boys. I've sort of always been an artist. Growing up as a child, I was very, very interested in storytelling and animation and drawing. When I was 13 years old, I started to go from drawing and visual storytelling on a page to filmmaking as a 13 year old. And actually the guys that I started doing that with, you may have heard of in the entertainment world. Joel Smallbone, Luke Smallbone, Ben Smallbone for King and Country. We all sort of started our film careers at the same time. And we were running around in the mid-90s making adventure movies, action movies, but we were also learning. We were trying to figure out, okay, it's a lot of fun to do this. And in a sense, it was a form of playing. But we were also learning about cinematography, and then we were learning about editing. And we did that for years and years and years together. So that's sort of how I got started. Started doing, really, really wanted to focus what I was doing in storytelling on what God is doing in the earth right now, to tell stories of his people all throughout different countries, to have this adventure and exotic element to it, but really show these powerful men and women of God throughout the world on camera. And so people, especially that live in the United States can see these. These almost heroic figures that are alive and really. And doing ministry around the world. So that was. That was sort of what led me into the I Am Israel movies.
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A
I want to get into a little bit of detail, for sure, about the two different films. So without going into super detail about those just yet, what, what. What kind of led to the whole idea of having the series and the development and basically maybe give us an overview of what these two films are.
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B
Well, I had made a few films in different places, in Mount Everest and in India and in South Africa and in Cuba and some other places. And they were all documentary films where the story sort of is real and it unfolds before your eyes. And I just finished a film in South Africa, and a friend of mine who's now an executive with Walmart, he really enjoyed what I was doing, and he saw my South Africa film, and I guess he woke up the next morning after he saw that, and God had spoken to him and he said, lance, I want you to go to Israel, and I want you to take David Kern with you. And so he called me, he told me that, and I was like, listen, that's fantastic. I would, you know, he's going to pay for me to go. He's a good buddy of mine. And so we decided I'd always loved. So Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite movie. I'd. All I. Lawrence of Arabia, I would watch, and I still watch about once a year, once every two years, sit down and watch the entire Lawrence of Arabia. So I love that. I love that classic filmmaking. And that was. I was excited to go to Israel because I was like, maybe there's some sort of adventure thing or maybe there's some sort of. What happened was, though, once we got There, which I can, I can tell that story if you'd like. It was so much bigger than just a great story about God's people in an exotic location. It was so much bigger than that. What we ended up coming up with, I guess.
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A
Yeah, I mean, yeah, tell the story. Let's hear it.
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B
We went over there, you know, the world's changed so much in the last few years, but we went over there during a time when you could go easily and you could get around easily. And we, we were hosted by this group of followers of Jesus that live in the middle of the country in Samaria. And they work, volunteering, helping the, the Jewish people, specifically the Jewish farmers in Judea and Samaria. And so that, that was who was hosting us. And instead of a tour, we. The trip that we made was really about the people. It was really about the Jewish people. And they, my friends at Hayevel, Tommy Waller, his children, all the other people that work with them, they were taking us around for breakfast, lunch and dinner, meeting Jewish people, men and women of various ages, all throughout the entire country. So we would go to the north and we'd be able to see the Sea of Galilee. But at the same time, we would always meet with people. Same thing with Jerusalem. We go all around Jerusalem. But we were meeting with these people with no expectations other, other than, let's listen to some stories, let's listen to their stories. And they all wanted to tell. First of all, it was, it was. There's an element of Israel today that seems to be similar to like old time America or, or the, the, the, the pioneers of America. There's like this spirit that they have, like this pioneering spirit. And so they wanted to tell stories about how they came to Israel or how their parents came to Israel, or how their grandparents came to Israel from all over the world, not just America, you know, from, from Morocco and from Eastern Europe. They wanted to tell all the stories about how they came. And it was this. After this happened over and over and over and over and over, the same stories that they were telling us. I realized, and then Lance realized they were telling us. It was almost like this prophetic thing. There's, there's a, there are stories in Jeremiah that Jeremiah repeats that no longer will the Jewish people talk about coming out of how God rescued them out of Egypt, but they're going to talk about how God rescued them from the north and the south and east and the west, and they brought them in back home to the land of Israel. That was the stories that we kept hearing and so this idea of I am Israel sort of materialized during some of these, all these conversations because we realized that a lot of the places where the Jewish people live in Israel, the world, not us, not us, but the world says they have absolutely no business living there. And for one crazy reason, all of a sudden now a lot of people are saying those aren't even real Jews, those are fake Jews. Which, that's, I'd love to go into that. That's never been a thing up until recently. But so they're saying those aren't real Jews and they have no business living in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria or the Golan Heights. They have no business. And so the idea of this I am Israel idea was what if we told all of these stories and made it a lot of fun and emotional and exciting and gorgeous. But at, but we're basically at the end of each sequence, these Jewish men, Jewish women, Jewish families look at the camera and they say their name and then they say, I am Israel. So you have a vineyard owner, Yaakov Berg, out after we go through this whole prophetic sequence of the land being restored and the vineyards coming back to life after 2000 years. He looks at the camera and he says, I'm Yaakov Berg and I am Israel. And the reason that that is super sweet but also controversial is because the world says the opposite. The world says they have no business and they don't belong there and they're not even who they say they are. So these movies are really sweet and they're fun for the entire family. But if somebody knows what's going on, it's actually kind of a controversial thing,
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A
you know, which I, I find as you mentioned, several things like that as it relates to what was spoken before. I mean, here I've had to deal with that often. And so I, I created a, at our, at our website, you know, prophecywatchers.com Jews I made it real easy and I, I have, I deal with all of that stuff is I have five or six different genetic studies, like peer reviewed articles on there that show these are the people. There's, you know, and even biblically, you know, is there a difference between Hebrew and Jew and Israel? And I show, you know, what does the Bible say? So I have an article on that. So to me it's like, wow. But I find that there's so much ignorance out there and that it does, it becomes controversial when in reality you look at even the history of modern Israel and the legality of what international law going back to the Balfour Declaration all the way along anyway. And it doesn't need to be controversial. But why would we be surprised that here, this is something God had predicted in his word, Ezekiel 36 and 37 and other Isaiah 11, a lot of passages that he would be bringing his people back after a long time of hiatus as we approach the end of the age. They're here for a reason. But yet I would not be surprised then the world would come against those facts, those claims. And we also see as well like the United nations, man, they love condemning Israel and passing resolutions like, man, you know, you guys are. The bias is. That's what I'm ultimately saying. The bias is so stunning. But yet I appreciate. This is why I appreciate two things of what you've done in the films. Number one is to talk about just the people because as we know, oftentimes there's a lot of anti Semitism right now and the Jewish people not only everywhere, but especially in Israel, being vilified. And so here you get to come in and just share. Hey, these aren't the villains that you think that they are. Let's just talk about this. But then secondly, one of the stats that you mentioned was that only 2% of Christians will ever actually take the time to go to the land of Israel. And so as a Christian, you read the Bible and you're like. But for them to see again, the cinematography that you guys have done is just outstanding. They might not ever see it. So I appreciate both of those angles that you guys are, that you guys done here.
- [12:22]
B
Thank you. That that came as we. Some of the motivations and some of the realizations of like, wow, God's allowing us to do this as we're doing it. It wasn't like a big master plan. After we'd released the first movie, I realized and I did some research on this, it's true less than 2% of any follower of Jesus on the earth today is ever going to go to Israel. Now a lot of that is because it's not so accessible and it's expensive and things like that. But Israel is, for a Christian, Israel is so integral to our faith. It's the land, the people, the book. So we have this, I feel like, mission that God's given us which is to tell these stories about the land and then to spread that story out into the entire earth because there's so many people that are disconnected and not, as you know, not every church even acknowledges modern day Israel or the Jewish people. And so in some ways we have to get to all the individuals and all the families. And then once, once they fall in love with Israel and the Jewish people, then maybe they're. Maybe it goes up. And then their pastor says, oh, maybe this is something we should. We should talk about. I happen to go to a fantastic church here in, In Nashville where, which is World Outreach Church with Pastor Alan Jackson. And that's a shining example of a church that Israel and the Jewish people and the promises of God are interwoven into like every single service. And it's amazing, but not everybody has a church like that that they can go to. And we're also talking about getting these stories out all over Europe and all over Africa, all just everywhere. So that's one of the missions that God's given us. Going back to what we were saying about. All of a sudden there's this trend of people accusing the Jewish people of not actually being the real Jewish people or the chosen people or children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That's a new thing. Unless I'm wrong, that's a brand new thing. And I think everything that's happening is all spiritual. And I feel like, because Israel. And if you think about it, during the Holocaust, nobody on planet Earth said, oh, all the people that are being executed, those are fake Jews. Those aren't actually. Like, no one ever even thought of that. No one said that. But now that Israel is strong and they have a very powerful air force and they have an army and they're secure in the land, all these things that haven't been an issue, all of a sudden they're coming up. And I think it's because the enemy is essentially working overtime because he's losing so badly right now.
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A
Yeah, that is a perfect way to say it. And you see as well, some of the churches will. That are very, you know, anti Israel, modern Israel, and they forget that and they'll minimize the land. I mean, this is in the Bible. This is God's land. It's like it's his land. He owns it. And he has given us. Given the. The rights to the people of Israel, to Abraham, Isaac and J. Going back Genesis 12, 13, 15, 17. And people could look this up and he gave it to this, this guy and Isaac and Jacob, the covenant forever. And so, yes, we understand that. You read the Old Testament, even though they were chosen. I say this often, chosen doesn't always mean saved. I mean, it means set apart. There's no doubt. Read the Book of Judges, they didn't. They. These weren't godly people. All the time. God called Them stiff necked, right? But so I think people, they get stuck in these, these modern things, you go, look again, God is, God loves them, he's working with them. But yes, he kicked him out of the land twice for his own reasons, but he never, he never revoked the covenants that he made and the promises. And that's what I appreciate so much is what, what you've shown here is ultimately this is about the promises and the faithfulness of God to not only this land, but this people. And they have a future. And obviously he's brought him back after 1878 years for his own reasons. And of course, prophecy is being fulfilled in what they've done to the land, how much they love the land. And this is of course, as we know, this is the root of salvation history. You know, there was a guy, it wasn't Jesus of Brooklyn or Jesus of Paris, it was Jesus of Nazareth. So salvation history is making itself known not only in ancient times and in the time of Jesus, but in the future. Here we are, like, this is all, it's just phenomenal. So let's, for the sake of the first film, I want to talk about some of the details of that. But for those I want to show you, I want to let the people see the trailer. And so this is going to go on some of our podcasts that are audio only, so you'll hear this. But if you want to see it, I'm going to encourage you to go to David's YouTube channel where you can see the trailers there. So where would they find you on YouTube?
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B
On YouTube, if, if you punch in I Am Israel, it'll absolutely come up. Not only the trailer but, but different scenes. They can also go to our website and we have the movie trailers on I Am Israel film dot com.
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A
Perfect. Perfect. Okay, so let's, let's take a little watch of trailer number one for the first film.
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For nearly two millennia, the promised land of the Bible was a barren wasteland, its archaeological ruins a reminder of its glorious history, its people scattered throughout the four corners of the world. But towards the end of the 90s century, things began to change.
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I think we have a privilege of seeing with our own eyes the words of the book materializing and becoming a reality.
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Elon 25 and director David Kern invite you on an incredible journey to discover the beauty of the land of the Bible and meet the people who call this place home.
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Everybody that will come to Israel, touch the land and touch the people, it will change his life. To me, Israel is family. It's Home. Israel is to me my dream, my hope, my future. I think I'm privileged to have grown
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A
up in a land where my grandfather, where his parents, where his forefathers only dreamed of seeing built.
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One day. I remember when we start to plant the vineyards, all the export says, it's not going to work. Nothing will go here. God says, mountain, shoot forth your branches,
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give forth your fruit.
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My children are coming home. Every fruit you see is prophecy fulfilled.
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It's something that people couldn't have imagined 50 years ago. Something is happening of historic proportions. It says, I will bring you in
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from the four corners of the earth and people will know that you are my people and that I am your God. Discover for yourself the miracle of the land and the courageous hearts of the people of Israel.
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I am Israel.
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I am Israel.
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I am Israel. I am Israel. I am Israel. To me, Israel, it's the best proof God exists and still acting in our world.
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Visit iamisraelfilm.com to begin your journey.
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A
All right, here we are. Welcome back. And I mean, really, I imagine that as people see this, they're going to go, wow. I mean, again, just the filming and everything is just. Not even just. I mean, there's a story there, too, but just simply the. The details of the land and how you've captured it here. And so for this particular film, of course, you know, people just saw the trailer, but what was your. How did this film specifically develop? And then we'll. And then we'll maybe talk about how. And maybe it led up into the second one.
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B
There's a few things that led into the creation of the story for the first I Am Israel movie. And they really stem back to that first trip to Israel. We went on that first trip to Israel, the sort of the scouting trip in the spring. And there was a moment where we went up into the Galilee region and we went past the Sea of Galilee, drove up this big, massive hill and crested over it. And as far as. Once we got to the very, very top, as far as the eye could see, it was green and lush and absolutely gorgeous. And it was sort of like that sequence in Jurassic park where they pull up and they're like, stop the car, stop the car, stop the car. So I told. We got the car to get stopped, and I grabbed my camera, jumped out, and I was just snapping, snapping, snapping pictures because it was a visceral experience for me. And just that simple little moment made me realize the world. And when I say the world, I'm including all the Christians, all the followers of Jesus all over the world, most of us really have never been exposed to the beauty of the land of Israel. There's a reason for that. 100 years ago, 150 years ago, it wasn't so beautiful. But with the return of the sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the daughters they've trans with through their hands and through the promises of God, they've really transformed the land. And so it's this lush, green thing now. And on a spiritual level, I thought, you know, the enemy wants to separate the Christians from the Jews at all costs. And I think he has a lot of tactics in order to do that. And I think one of those tactics is to. Is to. Is through the media, Israel is portrayed as a terrible place and not a beautiful place. And so one of the motivations for the very first I Am Israel movie, which is carried into the second one as well, is to shoot as many of these sequences when it. During the times of year where it's where the flowers are out and the grass is green and the leaves are out, and it's just absolutely stunning. And so we hear so many. We were even mixing, doing our audio mix on one of these things, and the. The. The mixer, we were having an aerial shot over some green mountains, and the mixer was like. And he wasn't involved with the movie, except he was mixing the audio for the movie. And so he was seeing it for the first time. And he was like, you know, I had no idea that Israel looked like this. Is this really like. He was really, really, really shocked. And so that was one of our. When you see. When Christians all over the world see a beautiful place that is the promised Land, we want them to give glory to God for that and connect with the way that God sees this land. So that was part of the. The objective of making the first movie we wanted to make also something that families could enjoy together. And there's a reason behind that. And in the last couple years, it's developed into kind of a really, really big deal. A lot of the people who are Gen X and who are baby boomers are already connected with the promises of God and already loved the land of Israel. And the Jewish people, their children may not. And I'm a millennial. I'm sort of at the upper end of the millennial generation. And so there's a lot of people my age that are sort of right on that line of we love Israel or we absolutely don't. And I don't know if you saw this poll that came out recently that it's just nuts. It was something like over 40% of young Republicans believe that Jewish people are a threat to their way of life, not Israel. They said Jewish people were a threat to their way of life. That is a huge problem. And so in the Christian art world, whether it's movies or music, a lot of the times people say, oh, well, if you make something, then you're just going to be preaching to the choir. I really don't see it that way because the people that are in the choir need to be teaching and counseling their children, if that makes sense. Because there's a lot of people like us that are totally on board, but our children or our grandchildren are not. And so we wanted to make both of these movies as a way for families, young people, teenagers, people in college could really connect maybe for the first time with Israel and the Jewish people. And it's all connected to the promises of God.
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A
Yeah. And there's no doubt that the world and social media is played a huge role in disrupting that idea and again, villainizing with stereotypes and other things. And so to see you introduce again, the human element that these, these aren't just, you know, you know, in the sense of how Israel is personified as these colonizers. And you're like, well, let's go. Let's go talk to some of them and see what their. What their story is. Because what you see in the media is clearly not that way. I mean, you know, my. My undergrad was in Jewish studies, so I. I studied a lot of modern Israel and different things and how it came. And. And so, you know, I have that background of research, but I think, wow, you would think that these guys came in and they have no legal basis and they're occupiers, which is, of course, that's the word. Right. And you're like, wow, that is just simply untrue. And as we talk about often that, I'm so glad that Mark Twain went to Israel in the late 1800s, and he's like, man, basically modern length. This place is a dump. Who would want to live here? And that was before. Again, in one sense, the Arabs had. The Turkish empire had control over it for centuries and centuries and centuries. And it was a backwater. They didn't care about the land. There was no history for them. But when the Jewish immigrants began to come in, they had a history, they had a cultural connection, they had a historical connection. For some of them, not all. They had a theological connection, and they loved this place, and they began to work hard. And so I Find it interesting. I'll just share this, that when you look at a satellite portrait of. Let's say you go to Eilat on the southern part of Israel and you see the Israeli side, and then you just go like a mile over to the Jordanian side and you're like, green. What happened? And there's this line. And so maybe talk about that as well, that as you interviewed the people, what. What draws them to work hard and to give their lives, especially this land. And the people are connected. Talk about that.
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B
Well, everybody in our movies, all the Jewish people in our movies are what you would call religious Jews, not ultra Orthodox. Ultra Orthodox would be black hats and they would wear black everywhere. These are. The people in our movies are religious or religious Zionist type Jews. And they. And they've really come from all over the world to the land of Israel because they feel like this. That's what God told them to do. There was a moment that I think really changed the world, the Jewish world and the Christian world in a flash. And that was 1967, when the shofar was. Was blown in Jerusalem. For the first time in basically in 2000 years, the Jewish people had control again over their city, over Jerusalem. That shofar being blasted around the world did probably a lot of things at the same time, but it was like this big spiritual moment. There were so many Jewish people that were in Canada and that were in London and all these places all over the world. And. And they heard that maybe they were nine years old and they heard that and it spoke to their heart like crazy. And they said, when I am able, I'm moving to Israel and I'm gonna establish myself and my future family in Israel. So we've met people that. That happened to at the same time in the Christian world. That was essentially the beginning of the Jesus movement. The shofar was blown in Jerusalem, I think, in May or June, in 67. And like within weeks you had. This is before I was born, but I know the stories that you had hippies being baptized in the Pacific Ocean in California. The Jesus movement really, really picked up. And out of the Jesus movement, you had a lot of Jewish people that were sort of separated from God or atheists that became Jesus followers in that initial stage in the Jesus movement and basically connected with God through. Through Yeshua Jesus. And a lot of the messianic movement began after that shofar was blown. So to answer your question about the characters in both of our movies, they really feel drawn. And so many of the prophecies and the promises all through Scripture, they look at that and say, this is my life mission. And it's fun to be able to showcase those people because they really are heroes in what they've been doing, because it's. It's not necessarily. Again, they have so many similarities to the pioneers of. Of the 1800s and early 1900s in. In America. There's a lot of themes, a lot of similarities.
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A
You know, talk about the Golani cowboys.
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B
So the cowboys of the Golan Heights. We. The first character that you meet in the first movie, after the prologue and after the setup, we smash cut to this aerial helicopter shot flying over the mountains in Upper Israel in the Golan Heights, and the audience essentially joins a cattle roundup. We did that. It is funny because that the audiences love this character. The movies have been shown in over 12,000 churches, and it's been on TV a lot. And people always talk about the cowboys. And it was just a way of. We basically want to showcase these Jewish heroes, but also find people that can evoke awesome visuals or adventure or excitement. And so Jonathan Rosenberg is the first character that you'll meet up in Upper Israel. And. And again, all the. Especially the. It's really all ages, I guess, but the children love the. The cowboys of the Golan Heights.
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A
Yeah, I mean, you just think about cowboys in Israel. Yeah, it's true. Just. It is there. And before we get into the. The second film mention, just again, give us some details about the coffee book that. The coffee table book that you have.
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B
Coffee table book came out of. COVID Because we were, I was literally, I don't know, two or three weeks away from going back to Israel to go shoot the sequel. And then everything stopped. Everything stopped, really, for Israel. Everything stopped for about two years. And so in that time, my wife and I felt like a really good use of time. The best use of time, besides growing our family, was make a big, huge, gorgeous coffee table book. Growing up, I loved the Walt Disney, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, big coffee table books that would come out when they would have a major movie release where it was full color and hardcover and. And I loved those things. And so we set out to essentially expand on a lot of these stories that we tell in. In the movies. And through that through. Through that different medium, through the. Through the literature medium, we're able to connect Jesus throughout all of these locations and the feast days. We even have in each chapter. Each chapter covers a different region of the land of Israel. At the end of each chapter, we have a double spread which shows a story of Christian, Zionist. Christian Heroes from our past, which tell stories of people like Corrie 10 boom of Christians who believed in the promises of God and did something about it in terms of either helping the Jewish people or helping the land of Israel. And so those are people from like a while ago, a couple of generations ago. And on this side of the. Of the spread, we have a modern story and we tell a story about Christian Zionists or Christian heroes from. From our. From our time. And I think that's great for people of all ages, but especially for young people, because they can. They can see how maybe how the torch has been passed of people of faith and how these people were active 100 years ago, and these people are active right now. And it sort of opens up their imagination of like, what I could. What. What they could do, what they could do as a young person.
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A
Yeah, absolutely. And so, I mean, this leads us into. Again, I want to discuss the second film. And so may I want to show the trailer here, but maybe give us a quick intro into the second film and then what people will see in the trailer.
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B
Movie two is I am Israel, the mountain of the King. And it's an adventure story that follows the path of the glory of God, Ark of the Covenant. From the moment where the glory of God came down in the Sinai wilderness, we follow the path that leads us all the way to Jerusalem.
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A
Awesome. Awesome. All right, we're going to take. I want you guys to see this because again, you'll just be blown away. So take a watch.
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C
It is the mountain known throughout antiquity as the place where heaven meets. Located at the crossroads of three continents and elevated above the city of Jerusalem, it is called in the Bible the center of the world.
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B
I really want to set out to follow the footsteps of the children of Israel from the exodus out of Egypt and follow that path that they took into the land of Israel where the final resting place of God was.
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A
Looking good, John, tell us what you see.
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Sometimes you gotta get out from behind the desk to find the truth, to find the history. We need to search out where the glory of God has traveled the earth.
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A
The Israelites on their journey would have been walking right through here.
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C
This is probably the most important biblical site in Israel.
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B
And archaeological discovery, something started at Mount Sinai, but it's no longer there. It journeyed on to the ultimate place that God wanted to choose. My dream for the Temple Mount is for all the nations of the world to be able to come join together and pray to God on that mountain. My dream for the Temple Mount is to enter and to Serve God through music. I have a dream that one day I'll take my young sons and my daughter and my wife up to the Temple Mount to serve God together as a family. There's something about God's holy mountain that unites us. And that's my dream, is that we will, as a people, come together as one and serve the king. The Bible doesn't only have stories about the past. The Bible also has stories about the future.
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A
There is a place where God is. He's opened his doors.
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B
He said, come meet me here over and over again. The scriptures say that God has placed his name in Jerusalem. On Zion is where his name dwells from above. If you look down at Jerusalem, God's name is imprinted, stamped into the hills. Now is the time for mankind to understand that redemption is happening. The words of the prophet are becoming a reality.
- [38:04]
C
Explore the mystery. Discover the majesty and feel the power of the very heart of Jerusalem.
- [38:16]
B
I am Israel. I am Israel.
- [38:18]
A
I am Israel.
- [38:22]
C
Begin your adventure@iamisrael film.com well, welcome back.
- [38:29]
A
And again, for. For those that maybe didn't get to see it visually, they can just search again I AM Israel at YouTube. It'll come up. And you can see later you can go watch those. Those trailers there, which, again, are phenomenal. And so the. Maybe again talk about how the. The transition then from the first movie into the second film, and then where does the second film take us fully?
- [38:54]
B
You know, Movie two is just as much or more controversial than Movie one, but again, we do it in a sweet way. So if you didn't really know what the controversy was, you would just think like, wow, this is such a. Such a powerful, fun, exciting, emotional movie. Movie two is all about the Temple Mount. And the way that we got there was, I don't want to do any of these I am miserable movies unless the story is really necessary and nobody's doing it. No one's covered this material before. It needs to be, in a sense, special. And we made Movie One, and God started drawing me into this subject matter of the Temple Mount, which I was not familiar with at all until we started researching all this stuff. But it's really sort of never been done before. There's no such thing. There was no such thing as a movie about the Temple Mount until we created I Am Israel, the Mountain of the King. After we finished Movie one, I had friends in Israel. I was also hearing other stories in the news of people in Israel, of Jewish people that were going up and trying to pray to God on the Temple Mount. And they could barely get one or two sentences of prayer out before their mouths were covered and they were taken away and arrested. They might have been arrested for a few hours. It's not like they went away for a month. But they were arrested for praying on the Temple Mount. Some of them that got banned from ever visiting the Temple Mount. And that opened up my eyes to say, why is this? Why is it such a threat for Jews or Christians to pray to God on what's biblical Mount Zion? The Temple Mount? Why is this such a thing? And as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus, what does the Temple Mount mean for me, for my family, for other followers of Jesus around the world? Is this still a thing anymore? Or is it not a thing? After the cross, did everything become the same? Or is there still, as we talked about before, holiness to certain places. And holiness, like you said, is about set apart. And so that's sort of what we explore in, in the second movie. It's, it's an adventure film where we have an expedition team that follows the path of the children of Israel from the Sinai wilderness until this, this big, these beautiful places that, that the children of Israel went through until they finally came to Jerusalem. And intercut with that adventure story, we, we allow the audience to meet Jewish men and women whose heart is really connected to the Temple Mount. And through that we're able to explore the essence of Mount Zion, which is really what we came to understand the essence of the Temple Mount is all about. It's a place of prayer, it's a place of dedication, it's a place of rededication, it's a place of family, it's a place of celebrating the biblical holidays. It's a place of music. That's why it was important for us to have unique Yair Levy in the movie. Yair is a, is of the Levite tribe and he's a musician and he's a very popular musician. But his real love and dream is to be able to worship God publicly through music on the Temple Mount. So all of these things wrapped up into one movie where we try to jam as much stuff into the story as possible. So it's pretty fast paced.
- [42:45]
A
So the, the other thing that I find fun is you mentioned, you know, your, your love of Indiana Jones and there's a connection between Indiana Jones not just with the arc of the covenant in this film being very important, but tell us about the other connection.
- [43:03]
B
So my dream when we started all the I Am Israel projects was that John Rhys Davies would be our Narrator. Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite. John Rhys Davies is also one of the stars of Lord of the Rings. He plays Gimli and in the indie movies he plays Indiana Jones's sidekick. So he helps him recover the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant. John's voice is the greatest voice. It's absolutely the greatest voice. And so it sort of. His participation in these movies really elevates it to a whole nother level. And it was a joy to work with him in terms of directing. He would basically do my dialogue. He would do a paragraph at a time and he would essentially do it one way, then he would do it another way and then he would do it a different way. And then he would ask me, after a long pause he would say, do we have it? And almost every single time I'm like, absolutely, let's keep going. We got it. He's just so the talent level is just. It's just off the charts. So yeah, the. Hopefully people that enjoy those classic Hollywood movies would, would enjoy hearing his voices as he takes us through these Israel stories.
- [44:23]
A
It really does. It's again, I big fan of Lord of the Rings as well and of course all the Indiana Jones movies. But it's just a. It's one of those familiar voices that, you know, I'm 51, so. But yet it's a familiar voice. And all around you're like, and this just make. It's just nice. It's just really. It was such a good element to the films in general. Yeah.
- [44:47]
B
There's one from the new movie. I'll tell you. I was so excited to get this on film. We have a sequence of the priestly blessing in Jerusalem. And the priestly blessing is the. Is the blessing that God gave to Aaron to bless the people of Israel. And your listeners know what it is. It's may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. And so we have in the movie, the priestly blessing is given in Hebrew at the Kotel, at the Western Wall. And there's thousands and thousands of Jewish people throughout. And a lot of them have a white tallit, a white prayer shawl over. And we go into this slow motion sequence and the music picks up. So we hear it in Hebrew and you don't know what it is unless you speak Hebrew. So you hear it and it's like echoing and echoing and echoing. And then the music picks up and then John's voice comes in and he essentially delivers what the priestly blessing is in English and it just sounds so good. And I told him, if you want to just go slow, if you want to go all out, if you want to go Shakespeare on this, feel free to do that. And it's just so like. And at least in English, you probably never heard it better than this.
- [46:00]
A
The way that he does it, it's, it's just classic. You're like, man, this again, like you said, so, so, so good. And again, so, you know, for any, any, any final words for, for the audience here and again, remind people where they can go and learn more about, again, all the ministry that you have.
- [46:19]
B
We've got all kinds of great stuff@iamisraelfilm.com if you forget the website, just Google I Am Israel and it'll come up. Parting thoughts is for those of us that love God, believe in the promises of God, love the Jewish people, love the land of Israel. It can be a weird time right now because you've got Christians to your left and your right that are like, totally disagree with us right now. Totally disagree. And I don't know if that's going to last or not, but in some ways it's great because this refining is going on. God's doing all kinds of stuff all over the world, right, right now. And in our world, in the Christian world, he's doing some refining. And I believe that it gives us an opportunity to not only strengthen our faith, because we have to. If you believe this stuff, then you have to say, this is what I believe. I love the Jewish people and I believe that they are being planted again in the land of Israel. Some of the people to our left and unto our right, and some of the Christians absolutely disagree with us about that, which gives a great opportunity for us to be able to be shining lights amongst that and also to be able to teach our children and our grandchildren what the Bible says about these things. So I would say be encouraged about what God's doing right now and look for those opportunities in order to shine like Jesus tells us to.
- [47:46]
A
Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you ended it like that because at the end of the day, you know, no matter what, as Christians, this is where. This is where Jesus lived, you know, this is where he was born, this is where he died and where he was resurrected and brought us the opportunity to be saved through the good news of what. Of what he did on the cross and his resurrection. This is where it happened. This, again, as I mentioned earlier, is the historical. The salvation story is rooted certainly always in a person, the person of the Lord Jesus. But it wasn't. Again, it wasn't in Paris or anything. It was in this land. This is God's land. And again, for us, we believe strongly that Jesus is going to rule and reign in Jerusalem. You know, and Luke 132, he was promised, Mary, was promised by the angel Gabriel that he will sit on the throne of his father David, which was not in heaven. David never ruled in heaven. The throne of his father David was right there in Jerusalem. Psalm 2. And that to me, it's a fitting reminder for all of us that again, as a Christian, you Jesus is Jewish. He will always be Jewish. He didn't stop being Jewish when he was resurrected. He's got the genetics forever. And again, he's going to rule and reign from there. So as always, David, appreciate your time. And for those watching today and listening, appreciate you being with us. Thank you for us all as well for your prayers and support for what we do here. Trying to get the word and the message out as always. So thanks for watching today.