Steve Conover: Thank you for joining us for The Friends of Israel Today. I'm Steve Conover, executive director here at The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. With me is our host and teacher, Chris Katulka. Foiradio.org is where you can connect with us. We have over a decade of content on the site featuring teaching and amazing interview guests. Again, that's foiradio.org. Chris, good to see you.

Chris Katulka: Hey Steve, today we're actually looking at our Israel My Glory In Depth episode, and I'm going to be sitting down with Dan Price. He's the director of our international ministries to talk about his latest article in Israel My Glory Magazine, “Waiting for the King,” which is our featured article here in the September/October issue, The Olivet Discourse. You're not going to want to miss this encouraging interview with Dan.

Steve Conover: Stay with us, but first in the news, Netanel Shukrun, a father of six, was killed in a shooting attack in Judea and Samaria after a Palestinian gunman opened fire on Israelis who had come to a spring, and they were there for ritual immersion ahead of Yom Kippur. Israeli security forces later apprehended the wounded suspect near a hospital in the Ramallah area. While Hamas praised the attack, they did not explicitly claim responsibility.

Chris Katulka: Steve, here's my take, and it's quite sad. It's sad that major networks like CNN, Washington Post, CBS, ABC, NPR neglected to cover the murder of Mr. Shukrun, but repeatedly post over and over again about settler violence, a problem, of course, that the Israeli police and Israel defense forces manage. Now, the lack of coverage of this horrific terrorist event on the eve of Yom Kippur is certainly deafening. 

Chris Katulka: Hi, I'm Chris Katulka with the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. I'm the host of the Friends of Israel Today Radio program and also the editorial writer for Israel My Glory Magazine. And today is our Israel My Glory In Depth episode where we look at our most recent issue of Israel My Glory and actually get a chance to talk to one of our authors. And today I'm going to be speaking with Dan Price, who's the director of international ministries here at the Friends of Israel.

And we're actually looking at our most recent issue of Israel My Glory, which is the Olivet Discourse: Jesus's Revelation of the End Times. And we're going to be talking about Dan's article in this, which is called “Waiting for the King.” Dan, great to have you.

Dan Price: It's great to be here, Chris.

Chris Katulka: Hey, I'm glad that's all out of the way now, and we can get right to the heart of your article that's in this issue, which I was rereading again this morning and just really appreciated what you were. You had a lot to talk about in a short amount of time. Let's just say that.

Dan Price: We cover a lot of ground.

Chris Katulka: We cover a lot of ground in 1200 words all about four particular parables. But before we get to the parables, let's talk about your opening story here, which is about you as a child in Michigan waiting for a school bus. How does that all apply here?

Dan Price: Yes, my stressful experiences as a child. You lined them up perfectly. I like that story because it's the idea that when you're waiting for something, there's all sorts of emotional things that happen to you. For me, this story is just about me waiting for the bus as a kid. There's always that question, especially back before we had the technology we do today, like, okay, I'm here at the time when I'm supposed to be here. Is it coming? Has it already passed? Have I missed the bus? There's just a question of how long you're going to wait. There's a lot of emotional questions around all of that. So I thought that was a great way of starting to think in the way that the disciples had to have been thinking as Jesus is laying out his prophecy about the future. And their questions all seem to have the same types of resonance with the emotional experience that I had as a kid.

Chris Katulka: And it was often around the topic of, I don't want to go outside in the cold Michigan weather and wait for the bus to come. Is that right?

Dan Price: I have to admit that's true. It was cold.

Chris Katulka: I'm sure it was in Michigan. So you got to point out that each of Jesus' parables kind of contain, like you were saying, this element of delay within it. So why do you think he emphasized this waiting so strongly when it talked about his return? It's really kind of baked into all the parables here.

Dan Price: Yeah, it really is. You're right. And I think that it's because of their expectation. Ever since, if we go back in Matthew and the flow of the book and what Jesus is doing with his disciples as well as everyone else, we go back to Matthew chapter 12 and the experience of Jesus legitimately offering, "I'm the King. I'm here. Do you want me?" And Israel's rejection of that by the religious leaders. And from that point forward in the book of Matthew, we begin to see Jesus pretty systematically begin to prepare his disciples for the fact that the kingdom is going to be delayed. It's going to be a different expectation than what they had come into this whole situation with. And so Jesus teaches them it's going to take longer than you expect. You're going to be waiting longer than you thought you were. Jesus is introducing the idea that he's going to die and the disciples rejected that idea at first as well.

They're like, no, you can't die. All of these are changes in expectation. And as Jesus lays out in Matthew 24, the most clear teaching that he gives about what's coming in the future, when it's coming, what they should be looking for, what people of the time should be looking for, he also begins to bring his disciples along in this idea of it's going to be different than you expect.

Chris Katulka: And some of those parables include the 10 virgins, the talents. Oftentimes we read through them and you lay out in your article how you can kind of almost lose the shock value. And I liked what you said there because here we are, we're 2000 years removed from the disciples and their probably expectation that Jesus' return was at any moment. And I believe Jesus' return is at any moment, but now we're 2000 years removed. And so that shock value, as you said, can get lost when we're reading through the parables. What would've been most surprising, especially for the Jewish audience that would've been reading this, what would've been these stories that were original to the Jewish audience and been so surprising to them that we lose the shock value over it?

Dan Price: Yeah, I think some of the things that might've been most shocking to the disciples, you got to understand the Messianic hope from the Old Testament. I know you do, but our readers need to understand that for the Jewish people at the time period of Jesus, they were looking for the King to come and the kingdom to begin. Like, okay, I found the King, so obviously here we go into the kingdom. And they had expectations about what that would look like from political to military to everything else because of some of the Old Testament descriptions of what the Messianic kingdom was going to look like. And so as they expected here, we found the King, let's move on into the kingdom. I think Jesus was resetting their expectations around these things. And it would've been shocking to hear, as Jesus lays it out, not everyone's going into the kingdom.

I mean, especially for the Jewish people, that had to have been a shocking teaching, two women grinding and one's taken and one's left. The idea that one goes off into judgment, one goes into the kingdom or two men out in the field, one gets taken and one doesn't. That had to have been a shocking thing, just the idea that not everyone is going to move on into the kingdom when the Messiah sets up his kingdom. From there on into several other things that Jesus talks about in his teachings here, I think that what Jesus was describing really reset their expectations in a pretty shocking way.

Chris Katulka: And I often think too about the fact that here is Matthew writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and he's also speaking to a community of believers. And it's almost as if these parables are also speaking to a group of believers as well after the death, burial and resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Matthew develops these parables in a way to not just… Jesus is talking with the disciples because I think even in your article you said, which I really valued, you said a good rabbi usually uses two parables in his teaching to cling onto, and here Jesus is using three to go that extra mile. But even Matthew making sure that these parables are communicated for a community of believers, Jewish believers, but here we are even 2000 years later saying that there's a delay, but it doesn't mean the delay doesn't mean Jesus isn't coming back.

Dan Price: Absolutely. Yeah. I really appreciate the idea of what Jesus is doing here. Jesus is brilliant in every way, obviously, but as a teacher and as someone who also teaches, I just find particular brilliance in the way that Jesus communicates, as we should. 

Chris Katulka: Definitely.

Dan Price: But yeah, so Jesus gives these different stories, these parables, and then one analogy, because I believe the sheep and the goats is not a parable, it's a prophecy. Jesus gives these parables as ways for people to hold on to what he's teaching, and there's similar themes in each one of them all the way through. And so I think the idea of what Jesus is doing here is that he's using these stories that are meant to grip you. They're meant to get your attention, they're meant to cause an emotional reaction for you.

They're not something like an allegory where we're supposed to look for every detail and try to find its symbolic value. That's not what Jesus is doing. I believe what Jesus is doing is trying to paint a broad picture in each one of these stories that has similar themes for each one. So delay obviously is one of them and how we wait during the delay. And also the idea of judgment that when he returns, there's going to be judgment associated. There's judgment in each one of these. Reward. Jesus talks for each one of these, he talks about the rewards that he is going to lavishly dole out on his people when he returns. So there's this idea that we can get excited about and live for the expectation of that reward from Jesus for faithfulness. And then that's the last one, faithfulness, the faithfulness of the servant, the faithfulness of the virgins, the faithfulness of the servant who was waiting for his master to return.

So for each one of those, I think that's the four major themes that Jesus is trying to not only teach us, but he's illustrating his teaching, his prophecy about the future and their expectation being changed by using these stories that should move them towards their understanding, but also inspire how they wait.

Chris Katulka: Well, listen, we're going to take a quick break and I want to share something with you. We're talking all about Dan's article in Israel My Glory, and maybe you're going, "Man, I'd really like to read this article. I'd like to find out how I can get my hands on this magazine, Israel My Glory." Well, if you stick around, I want to share with you ways that not only you can get the magazine, but you can get a one-year free subscription. So be sure to stick around and we're going to continue our conversation on Waiting for the King. 

Chris Katulka: Well, welcome back everybody. We are speaking with Dan Price. He's the director of International Ministries here at the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. We're looking at his article, Waiting for the King from our most recent issue of Israel My Glory: The Olivet Discourse: Jesus's Revelation of the End of the Age.

Dan, we kind of left off with some of the themes that are pulled out of each of these parables that you picked for your article that came across here. But one, like you mentioned, in the previous segment, you mentioned it's more of a prophecy than it is a parable. I want to tap into that one. It's the sheep and goats passage. And for our audience, I think this is so important, especially today. You understand and teach that “the least of these, my brethren,” when Jesus is talking, is actually specifically the Jewish people that are suffering during the tribulation.That's not the majority view on this, and I agree with you, but walk us through why you interpret this phrase that particular way.

Dan Price: Sure, sure. Yeah, and I acknowledge the fact that for many, many years, lots of Christians have interpreted this parable to mean that Jesus is in some way talking about Christians as opposed to our understanding of the passage that he's talking about Jewish people. There's several reasons why we do, I can't go into all of the detail, but let me highlight just a couple of things. The first is at the beginning of that particular prophecy, as Jesus is telling what it's going to be like when he returns, he highlights this verse in verse 31. He says, "When the Son of man comes in all his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne and before him will be gathered all the nations," the text says. Jesus said, "The nations will be gathered before him." You have to remember that in the chronology of what Jesus has been teaching from the beginning of Matthew 24 to this part, he's talked about all the events leading up to the Son of man finally appearing in all of his glory.

And then he says, "When I sit on my throne at that point, I'm going to gather all the nations." And so the nations obviously is everybody, right? That's all of the people. And primarily speaking, as that term has been used prophetically in the Old Testament, it can often refer specifically to Gentile nations. So that's one reason, exegetically speaking, why I think he might be gathering the nations for judgment, but not necessarily the Jewish people here. He specifically identifies “these my brothers.” So he's talking about some kind of familial relationship with those that are being taken care of in this passage. So I wonder, and I think this is probably what Jesus is referring to, he's got the nations over here that are going to be standing in judgment for how they lived during what Jesus describes as the tribulation period, and they're going to be divided between sheep and goats.

But then he also identifies, I think, a third group of people as well, “these my brothers.” It would be a little bit odd if Jesus were saying to Christians, "During the tribulation period, Christians, you treated each other really well, and so therefore I'm going to reward you." That could be the case. It's not beyond the realm of possibility, but I think what he's doing is he's specifically talking to those who have placed their faith in him for salvation and how that works itself out in their lives during the tribulation period, specifically identified by how they treat this third group of people, the Jewish people. And Jesus clearly says, "These are my people." And more than that, and this is another reason why I think this is referring to the Jewish people, Jesus has this interesting identification of himself with his Jewish people that is so consistent with so many things that we see in the Old Testament.

Jesus does this all the time. He identifies himself with his people. So Jesus says, "When you took care of the sick, when you fed people who were hungry, when you gave water to people who were thirsty, you did that to me." And so Jesus has this close identification with the Jewish people. And I think that that's a big reason why we can look at this passage and say, "I think Jesus is talking about the Jewish people."

Chris Katulka: I totally agree with you, and I think it fits in perfectly with what the prophets had taught as well and Jesus fulfilling, especially during the tribulation period. So I'm thankful that you brought that into your article. In the remaining time that we have, I want to talk about how more of these parables relate to us. And whenever I teach on the 10 Virgins, I always like to update it, make it a little more 21st century because we don't carry around jugs of oil and lamps and all that. And I always say the lamps could be converted into a cell phone. Always keep your cell phone charged because you never know when you're going to need it. And usually whenever my cell phone's about to die is when I need it the most, when I need maps to get me out of some situation. So make sure your cell phone is always charged or else you're going to be without a flashlight, you're going to be without your email or whatever the case might be.

But all that said, you kind of end with this challenge that I love to really apply these to the life of a believer, which is may he find us faithful. What does that mean in the realm of being ready and faithful actually look like for a Christian that's living a normal, and you and I both know, busy life in the 21st century?

Dan Price: Yeah. So for the folks that Jesus is speaking to, he's speaking to that future generation of Jewish people, and he's saying this is what faithfulness looks like in their waiting, but we're waiting too. We're waiting for Jesus' return in the rapture. And so we're both put in the same place, and all that Jesus says about how you wait still applies to us as much as it does to that future generation of Jewish people. I feel like one of the themes that the church has let slip over the years, partly because of theology, partly because of the busyness of life, for many reasons, is the idea of that we are supposed to be the most hopeful people of all. We're supposed to be living as though we have the expectation he's coming back.

This is an event that I don't think we can talk about enough. I don't think we can raise people's level of hope too much to say, remember, live in such a way. Jesus is coming back. He's going to fix what's wrong. He's going to right all that's messed up. He's going to redeem all that's broken. Jesus is coming back. So I think living with a sense of hope and expectation and looking forward to that return is one important aspect of what it means to be faithful as a Christian. But then of course, we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean to be faithful to the master while he's away from the house? How should we be working on his behalf? And I would say first and foremost, what are we doing with the gospel? What conversations should we have today? Because tomorrow may not come, that opportunity may not come tomorrow.

Who has God placed on our heart that we need to be sharing the gospel with because of our hope that Jesus is going to return? What kind of work for the Lord should we be pursuing? I think every single one of us has that expectation set for us by Jesus that we should be making strides towards accomplishing the goals of the gospel and of the church and of what Jesus is doing in the world today. There's no Christian that should be sitting back in the pew and saying, "Well, he's coming and all this is going to burn, so what does it matter?" No, we should be at work in the Lord's fields. So what sin is there to flee? What work is there to do? What goals must we accomplish for the sake of Jesus Christ? And the best thing to remember is whatever we accomplish for Jesus, apparently he has rewards waiting for us, good rewards.

There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, just reward. And I think that's incredible and liberating and should inspire us every single day.

Chris Katulka: Well, Dan, I really appreciate your article and really I love that our listeners had a chance to hear straight from your mouth and your heart about why this was important to you. And for you out there who are saying, "I'd really like to get this particular issue of Israel My Glory or sign up for Israel My Glory," well then guess what? Now is your opportunity. We want to offer you a one-year free subscription of our award-winning Christian magazine. Look at, there's a lot of hatred toward the Jewish people that's going on right now, a lot of criticism of Israel that's happening right now. And as a Christian, maybe you're asking a lot of questions. This is the magazine that you want to get to get good biblical answers on what's going on around the world and really a great commentary on what's going on in the Scriptures as it relates to Israel and the Jewish people.

So if you would like your one-year free subscription of Israel My Glory, I encourage you to go to our website, israelmyglory.org/subscribe. There you can not only take the option of getting the print edition where we'll send you six issues of Israel My Glory, a bimonthly magazine, but you could actually choose, which I would highly recommend, our digital edition, which gives you more than 50 years of Israel My Glory content right at your fingertips on your tablet, your cell phone, your computer. Great resource for you to study the Bible. Again, you can do that at israelmyglory.org/subscribe.

Steve Conover: Thank you so much for joining us for today's episode of The Friends of Israel Today. We want to thank Dan for being with us today, and don't forget to get your free Israel My Glory trial subscription. Visit our website, foiradio.org. Again, that's foiradio.org. We'll open God's Word and the program next week. Chris, what are we learning?

Chris Katulka: Steve, actually, we're going to open up to Acts 15 where the apostles give very specific instructions about Gentiles and their relationship within the church. It's often something that we overlook, but it's fascinating, especially when we connect the language back to the book of Leviticus.

Steve Conover: Looking forward to it. As mentioned, our web address is foiradio.org. Again, that's foiradio.org. Our mailing address is FOI Radio PO Box 914, Bellmawr, New Jersey, 08099. Again, that's FOI Radio, PO Box 914, Bellmawr, New Jersey, 08099. You can call our listener line. That number is 888-343-6940. Once again, that's 888-343-6940. Today's program was engineered by Bob Beebe, edited by Jeremy Strong, who also composed and performs our theme music. Our executive producer is Lisa Small. Our associate producer is Sarah Fern. Our host and teacher is Chris Katulka, and I'm Steve Conover, executive director at The Friends of Israel. The Friends of Israel Today is a production of The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. Passion for God's Word. Compassion for God's Chosen People.