Steve Conover: Welcome to the Friends of Israel Today. I'm Steve Conover. With me is our host and teacher, Chris Katulka. We want to invite you to join us for our online conference, Awaken, March 4th and 5th. It's not too late to register. Awaken will open your eyes to God's Word and equip you for the coming day of the Lord, the rapture of the church, and the restoration of God's kingdom. Visit foiconferences.org to register or to learn more. That's foiconferences.org.

Chris Katulka: Steve, I always love our online conferences. This Awaken one's going to be an awesome prophecy conference. I'll be emceeing it, and I'm looking forward to doing a message called Tossing and Turning. It's all about the second coming of the Lord Jesus, and what that means for us as Christians. So, again, please register for that. It's going to be a great opportunity to dive into God's Word. But today we're actually going to be continuing our conversation about the history, the origins of the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, and also where we are today.

What is the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry doing around the world to reach out to our Jewish friends, to show them that we care about them and to provide spiritual and physical comfort to them even today? We have a great panel. We have Dr. Jim Showers, the executive director of the Friends of Israel; Dr. Mike Stallard, who's the director of international outreach; and Steve Herzig, director of North American outreach, joining us back again for our round table. I'm really looking forward to it.

Steve Conover: Good news for those of you wishing to travel to Israel. As of January 9th, 2022, vaccinated and recovered non-Israeli tourists from all countries will be granted entrance. All former red list countries will move to the orange list and travelers from those countries will be permitted to enter Israel as well. Additionally, Israeli citizens may travel to other countries.

Chris Katulka: Steve, I know this is very good news. I know here at Friends of Israel, we have been hankering to get back to Israel. We've all been waiting anxiously for things to open back up again. So, this is all very good news. Now, just a reminder though. Israel still requires vaccinations and a mandatory PCR COVID test at the airport. I'm very happy to see that the borders are opening again, but the Israeli government needs to act quickly to resurrect this lifeless tourism industry that they have, an industry that beat records in 2019 only to be shattered by COVID in 2020 and 2021. Let's pray 2022 is a year of reopening to those who want to make a pilgrimage to the holy land.

Chris Katulka: Well, we are back for round two of our discussion on the history of the Friends of Israel. If you were with us last week, we talked about the origins, the birth of the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, the important work that God has called us to do as Bible-believing Christians from the Philadelphia area. Got together in 1938 because God called them to help the Jewish people in their darkest time, in their darkest suffering, in their darkest moments. And so the thing is, is that we could have easily, after World War II, closed our shop and said, "Well, we did our duty. The Holocaust is over." But we didn't because we saw a need. The need was that Christians are called to minister to Jewish people, to show the love of the Messiah to the Jewish people. And that is an ongoing work that we see happening.

And it's been going on for 83 years at Friends of Israel. And Jim, our executive director, I'm glad that you're with us, Jim. FOI has developed over the years and matured into the organization that you're leading today. In 83 years, we could say that we've seen a lot of change. We've seen a lot of change in our culture. We've seen a lot of change in our churches. We've even seen a lot of change in technology. But the one thing that hasn't changed at the Friends of Israel is our doctrinal integrity. Why is that important, especially for Friends of Israel, Jim?

Dr. Jim Showers: Well, I think doctrinal integrity is important for any Christian organization, whether it's the church or parachurch organizations like the Friends of Israel. And quite often we've seen, and we've all seen this, where ministries have gone astray from what they believed and what they were founded for. It's usually the beginning of the end for those ministries. For us as an organization, we have such a narrow niche.

We're about Israel. If we change our theology, if we change our convictions of what the Word of God teaches, we really have no more purpose to exist. And so we have held true to what we believe and why we believe it from the days when we were founded in 1938. Now, I find this interesting, Chris. One of the major denominations that was involved in founding this organization no longer stands with us because they have changed. We haven't. So, sticking to your beliefs is vitally important. It's important to us personally in our faith. It's important to the churches we attend. It's important to parachurch organizations like the Friends of Israel mission organizations that we support. And recently I was in a discussion with an individual who's been studying our organization and they went back and read back to the days of Victor and Israel My Glory, and looked at other documents.

And their conclusion was this. Every one of the executive directors, their language is consistent. What we're saying today isn't any different than what Victor was saying in the '40s and '50s and '60s, what Marv Rosenthal said in the '70s and '80s, what Elwood McQuaid said in the '90s, and what Bill Sutter said in the 2000s, or what I'm saying today. It's just a measure of the consistency of our conviction. If you hold steady to the Word of God, then you should be talking the same way. Even though we change up the methodology of our ministry to change with the times and culture. For example, one of the fastest growing areas of our ministry today is our media ministries, because people are so connected digitally and everybody carries around, or most people carry around a smart device and that's how they connect. That's how they get their news.

That's how they get information. And so you have to go there if you want to minister to them, otherwise you miss that whole segment of the world today. And God is leading us today into expanding our teaching ministry through digital media. An exciting development here that God's really put upon our hearts, and we see God totally behind that. So, just an example of how we can change our methodology or the way we minister, but we will never change what we're committed to and what we believe the word of God teaches. Because our belief in a Word of God is based on a literal grammatical hermeneutic set in the cultural context that defines what the Word of God says. We take it for what it says.

Chris Katulka: Yeah. And we left last week, you ended the program by reading an excerpt from our very first Israel My Glory publication. And I, I was saying to you, "Jim, that sounds like something that we would write today in Israel My Glory, because of the continuity there." That was a periodical back then. It had no pictures. It had nothing. It was just very straightforward text. But that doesn't mean just because we've added pictures to Israel My Glory, and now we're on the radio and now we have a podcast and now we're moving more into digital teaching as well, like you said, the message of what we're preaching and teaching stays the same about Israel because the scriptures stay the same. We've not moved from what the scriptures teach about Israel and the Jewish people. And Steve, if there's anybody sitting at this table that has seen change at Friends of Israel, it's been you. Because you are the, of all the people sitting here at this table, you've been with Friends of Israel the longest.

Steve Herzig: I'm old, Chris. I'm old.

Chris Katulka: I can say... No, you're not old. How long have you been? 40 years with Friends of Israel?

Steve Herzig: 40+ years. Yes.

Chris Katulka: 40 years of the 83 years of Friends of Israel. We're not going to date you at all. But you came after a transition in leadership from Victor Buksbazen to Marv Rosenthal. And during that time, there was an expansion of Jewish ministry throughout the United States, which is what you're leading now, North American Ministries. In fact, it was through the Friends of Israel that you came to faith in the Lord Jesus, which I think is just awesome and amazing.

Steve Herzig: That's right, Chris. In fact, in 1975 I went to California on a vacation and was invited to a Bible study. And I went because they were serving free bagels, lox and cream cheese, all you could eat. And I went with the idea that I didn't have to talk to anybody. All I wanted to do was eat, and that was fulfilled. But ultimately I took the literature from that Bible study, interacted with the representative of Friends of Israel, and not only came to faith, but a year later moved back to California to be discipled by that representative of Friends of Israel. And later, about a year later, met Marv Rosenthal, who was the director at that time, who spoke at a men's meeting in Huntington Beach. I was there and the representative told Marvin about me. He had to. Marvin invited me to Atlantic City for a new program that they had, and to be there for the summer.

All that to say, my relationship with Friends of Israel began in '75 through that Bible study, and then just grew to ultimately, met my wife through the summer program, went on to Bible college and worked part-time with Friends of Israel, and then served in Chicago under David Levy. And then 25 years ago came to the home office here at Friends of Israel. So, yes. And during those years of change. And Jim has already discussed the different executive directors, and for me, except for Victor, I worked under all of them. And I have to say, although I'd do it in a different way, and probably each decade could tell you the different ways I did it, the message has always been the same. We've done Bible studies, men's meetings, campus ministry, all these different things that we do, and we preach the same message. We do the same thing because our burden, our desire is exactly the same.

Chris Katulka: We're talking about the fact that you were ministered to by a Friends of Israel outreach representative, somebody who was reaching out, teaching the truth of who Jesus the Messiah is, and that impacted your life. And we have representatives all around the country that are doing that right now.

Steve Herzig: It's amazing, Chris, how God calls people. It's a call. I realize the inspired Word says Abraham was called, but Chris, a calling, whether it's approved by the inherent text or in the reality of a person's life, is still the same. People are called to minister. It's an amazing thing.

Chris Katulka: That's one of the best things that I love, Jim, especially with our staff conferences that we have when we all get together and we have a chance to fellowship with one another, all of our workers from all around the world gathered together. And the one thing I always go home with is it's always nice to be with people who have the same passion I have, and that's what it's like. We have the same calling.

Dr. Jim Showers: Yes. In fact, we experienced that now since COVID. We've been able to do chapel using the new virtual technology, and we get to hear ministry stories from different staff members from week to week. And to me, it's just a blessing to see how God is working individually in the lives of all of our staff, and they're all having an impact. And as you say, we're all on the same page. We all have the same passion. We all have the same burden and love for the Jewish people. And we all are just servants of the Lord seeking to do His will.

Chris Katulka: We're continuing to minister here at Friends of Israel. We have one more segment and we're going to come back and we're going to talk about the work that we are doing all around the world. And really, I want to take a moment too, with Jim, to talk about his vision for the Friends of Israel. What's the future of Friends of Israel as we look down the future to see what God has in store? Where's He taking us? I'm excited to see how God's going to continue using this ministry. You're going to want to be sure to stick around.

Steve Conover: We learn in 1 Timothy 4:13 to “take heed to doctrine.” Doctrine is vitally important to the Christian life. And yet today, even Christians take un-biblical stances merely because they're popular. Yet God's Word is true and unchanging. We're thankful to the Lord that the leaders of the Friends of Israel have never wavered on doctrine. That's since our founding in 1938.

Chris Katulka: That's right, Steve. The Friends of Israel has held true to our doctrine. And we actually even produced a booklet called Here We Stand, which captures 19 key Christian beliefs that we value here at our ministry. As you read through it, you're going to see that we hold true to the gospel of Jesus Christ as paramount and essential to teaching. You'll also see that Jesus's first coming was an important part of God's greater and glorious plan to redeem all of creation at a second coming. And we hold true to the fact that God has a plan and future for Israel and the Jewish people.

Steve Conover: You can purchase your copy of Here We Stand: 19 Key Christian Beliefs by going to FOIradio.org. Again, that's FOIradio.org.

Chris Katulka: Welcome back everybody. Mike, I know that you did not get a chance to say much during the first segment, but that's why I wanted you to start this off. You direct, you oversee our international outreach here at Friends of Israel, and we've come a long way since Victor Buksbazen's first push into Warsaw after World War II. Can you give us a glimpse of what international ministries look like now?

Dr. Mike Stallard: Well, it's like Jim was saying. In general, it's amazing how God calls and places people throughout the entire planet. FOI, Friends of Israel, now has field representatives in nine different countries. We're in Israel, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Argentina, New Zealand and Australia.

Chris Katulka: Wow.

Dr. Mike Stallard: And Chris, our workers in those countries actually go into other countries where we don't have field representatives, like Belarus and Russia and those kinds of places. And so I counted, last time I checked it, around 16 countries that we actually have an impact. And let me just share a few places where things are happening. Poland, we probably have five workers plus three interns. It's probably our greatest number of workers in terms of countries that we have. They're getting into videos hot and heavy because of COVID also, just like Jim was talking about here. We do that. But Victor went after her back to Poland. [inadubile] She a 19-year-old soldier in the Polish underground in the Warsaw ghetto as a Gentile. She went to Argentina. He got her to come back to Poland and she has just opened up that country. And for decades, they've had Christian camps or camps run by Christians for Jewish children.

Chris Katulka: Wow.

Dr. Mike Stallard: It's one of the most amazing stories. And I've been there and witnessed the camps that they do, these summer camps, just like our camps, only they're for Jewish children.

Chris Katulka: Wow.

Dr. Mike Stallard: And the evangelization and the Bible study and the loving of Jewish people is amazing. We also have a clinic in Argentina located between two quarters of Jewish quarters in Argentina. That's probably our strongest evangelistic work. They are just so gifted. I've never seen people so gifted in turning physical maladies into an opportunity to talk about spiritual maladies and sharing the gospel of Christ.

Dr. Mike Stallard: And then in Israel, we have three church plants. We're excited about that. And even 30 years ago, they were saying they were only 2000 or so Jewish Christians in all of Israel. And now some are saying it's even as high as 30,000. I don't know. Everybody gives you a different number. But those church plants are on the cutting edge. They're doing videos. They're enduring persecution as they do their outreach. And then the last example I just want to give is Australia. We have five workers. Australia's as big as the continental USA, but we had nobody there two decades ago.

Chris Katulka: Yeah. That's amazing, the work that is done there.

Dr. Mike Stallard: And now we have five workers, Gold Coast on the east of the west coast. And it's interesting in Australia. The belief in the future of national Israel is the last option among evangelical Christians. And so we're taking a stand there and we're one of the few. We're helping support the doctrine that God loves the Jewish people and has a future for them as a nation, as well as spiritually. So, our workers around the world, and there's a whole lot more I can say, to share the gospel of eternal life through Yeshua or Jesus, the Messiah. And they teach the church what the Bible says about Israel. And they give comfort to the Jewish people, both spiritually and physically. And I'm proud of what our workers are doing around the world.

Chris Katulka: It really is amazing. And that's not only happening all around the world, Steve. It's happening right here. And you direct North American Ministries. Can you share a little bit about what we're doing to reach out to the Jewish communities here in the US?

Steve Herzig: Well, we're doing a number of different things. As I said in the previous time I was with you talking about how things don't change, I went to a Bible study. We have Bible studies all around Canada, all around the United States. We have campus ministry that we've been doing from the '60s and still are doing it today. We have a couple people. That's mostly what they do. We have a young woman in Arizona who is the only kosher restaurant, even though she doesn't charge. She's the only source of kosher food in Flagstaff. And it's amazing. And that's relatively new. Several of our people are making available the use of tech with Facebook and having a ministry that way. We have a couple of our people who are doing their own podcasts. Chris, you and I started a podcast in the midst of another ministry in North America Ministries called Equip. You should talk a little bit about that.

Chris Katulka: Yeah. Well, it's a great podcast and it's something I hope that our people listen to. But I also want to bring up the fact that we have church ministries representatives that are speaking at more than 300 churches during the year, which is just amazing. Even during COVID. We have outreach ministers that are going into churches and speaking about the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry and the outreach that we have at more than 300 churches around the US. It's just amazing.

Steve Herzig: Well, I'm glad you brought that up because we used to have what was called field evangelists back when I first started and they had a map in Israel My Glory magazine with their picture all plastered all around the United States. And the desire was for them to get biblical information, biblical messages, biblical teaching, Jim talked about doctrine, doctrine into the churches. And pastors, several of them would always feel uncomfortable talking about Israel and would bring us in. And Chris, they're still doing that. We're still called to do it. One of our number one things is Passover, Chris. People think that Christians invented Passover. Jesus celebrated the Passover. And when we go to churches in North America, that's probably the number one ask. "Would you please do a Passover for us? It changes the lives of the believer."

Chris Katulka: Yeah. We're busy all around the United States. I know that for sure. But Jim, there's a future for Friends of Israel that's a bright future. We have a lot going on. I thought maybe you'd cast a vision for our listeners about what's coming up for Friends of Israel. What's the future for our organization?

Dr. Jim Showers: Thank you, Chris. I agree with you. The future for the Friends of Israel is very bright. We have a lot of work to do. The challenges haven't diminished just as the times have gone on. In fact, in some ways they've grown, but we're willing to accept those challenges and see them as opportunities in which God is giving us open doors for ministry. So, one of the areas is, and we've alluded to this in our discussion last week and this week, but more and more churches are not teaching about Israel and about end time events and Israel's important role in all that. And so we, as we travel, we speak. People come up to us and say, "We don't hear this anymore. We can't tell you the last time we studied prophecy. Nobody teaches about Israel anymore," things like that.

We see that as an opportunity. We want to increase the footprint of our teaching ministry. And one of the ways we'll do that is through digital media. We are in a process right now of making plans to build a studio on to the end of our headquarters here, because we have no designated space for recording video, but we want to create video and really expand our video teaching content. You were part of a very important project a couple years ago that produced the Common Thread DVD teaching series and study guide book. Well, that has been so well received. We have people who get it. They use it in their small groups, in their Bible studies, in their Sunday school. And then they call up and say, "When's the next one coming out? We want more of this."

So, we're hearing from people. They want more teaching. They want truth. In fact, I just saw a survey that was released today, a survey of the evangelical church, and they were talking about the things that people like about their churches and then the things they have against their churches. The number one thing they have against their churches is the lack of in-depth teaching. See? So, we all have a spiritual nature. We all want to feed it. And if people are not being fed, they're hungry. And we believe that God is going to use Friends of Israel to step into the void there. So, we want to create multiple channels to get our teaching out, and multiple programming, and let God use that in any way he would. So, that's a huge future, but it's more than that. It's about continuing to bring people into this ministry, and particularly younger people. It wasn't that many years ago when you were one of them and you've now got-

Chris Katulka: I'm not too young anymore.

Dr. Jim Showers: Nah, you're in the middle ages there, Chris, but we were excited when you came in. We've had a number of younger people, but I'm excited about what you're doing in North American Ministries to create opportunities to bring people into the ministry and allow them to experience the ministry and participate in the ministry, if God calls them to do that. And who knows? Eventually, maybe they'll come on staff with us. But the Equip education, the encounter to get a little experience with Friends of Israel, the internship program bridges that we're looking to expand. We want to create more opportunities to give people a chance to do ministry. And through that, God may lay upon their heart a calling to Jewish ministry. And certainly at Friends of Israel, we would like to talk to them if that's what God's doing in their heart. So, those are a couple things. I could share more, but time says I can't.

Chris Katulka: Well, Jim, I actually think you ended it the perfect way. It's a great opportunity for people to get involved. If you want to get involved with Friends of Israel, there's opportunities that are available. You just got to go to our website, foi.org, and there where you can connect with us. But gentlemen, I am so thankful for the two weeks that you've given of your time to be able to come and share about the organization, our origins, what we're doing today and where we're going in the future. Thank you, gentlemen.

Steve Conover: Thank you so much for joining us today. A special thanks to Jim Showers, Mike Stallard, and Steve Herzig for being our guests today. Chris, tell our listeners where we're headed next week.

Chris Katulka: Yeah. So, if you've been a part of this conversation as we talked about the history of Friends of Israel, you'll see a very important part of our history was Israel My Glory magazine. It's read all around the world. And so next week we're going to be doing our Israel My Glory in-depth. We're going to be looking at our most recent issue of Israel My Glory, which is titled How to Read the Bible.

Steve Conover: Our host and teacher is Chris Katulka. Today's program was produced by Tom Gallione. Our theme music was composed and performed by Jeremy Strong. I'm Steve Conover, executive producer. The Friends of Israel Today is a production of The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. We are a worldwide evangelical ministry proclaiming biblical truth about Israel and the Messiah while bringing physical and spiritual comfort to the Jewish people.