See all the latest videos and articles patriots need to watch and read at Discern.tv.
FIRST, THE BACKGROUND
In the fall semester of 1962, I became virtually the only white Gentile student at Palms Junior High School in West Los Angeles. About 98% of the student body were Jews.
To digress just a bit, it used to be common usage to say Jewish. But in recent years, I have become sensitive to the fact that some folks consider the suffix “ish” as meaning “sort of”. If I say I’ll meet you at 11ish, I’ll be there a few minutes before or after 11 o’clock. In that sense, I respectfully observe the word Jew as proper terminology.
I finished 8th grade and did 9th grade at Palms. Then I attended Alexander Hamilton High School and graduated in 1967. Over 90% of the students at Hami Hi were Jews. There were a small number of black students, a few Hispanics, a couple of Asians … and me!
I was the token goy.
In many ways, it was an educational experience for me. I still have a good friend from Palms whom I used to visit regularly at his house right next to the school. His parents always called him by his middle name because his first name was that of his late uncle who perished in the Holocaust. His parents couldn’t bring themselves to speak that name out of respect.
Many of my classmates had lost grandparents as well as aunts and uncles during the Nazi Genocide of Jews in Europe. Since we are all baby boomers born several years after World War II, all their parents had survived the Holocaust. But many loved ones had died in the concentration camps.
I learned something about the High Holy Days. Not all the celebrations on the Hebrew calendar, but especially Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur along with Hanukkah and Passover. In high school, observant Jews were given a religious holiday. But, others were expected to be at school those days. Almost all of the students and the majority of the teachers would not be there on those occasions. Those of us who were had a study hall.
I used to volunteer to read the school’s Daily Bulletin aloud in class. One year, I came to the words “Shalom Aleichem” and used the classic English pronunciation of the “ch” sound. Today, I can say it with a proper guttural enunciation. But, I had never seen the word before that day in High School. The teacher was embarrassed. Whoever composed the Daily Bulletin never imagined that a student reading it would not be familiar with the proper Hebrew pronunciation.
That wasn’t the only awkward occasion in my adolescent school years. Part of the friction was really due to economics more than religious differences. Most of my classmates were from upper-middle-class families in an area not far from Hollywood and Beverly Hills. But my neighborhood was not in those affluent locales. I was just on the boundary of the district between Los Angeles and Culver City. I lived half a block from MGM Studios.
What I knew about Judaism at that point was that there were Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed and Reconstructionist rabbis and synagogues. But most of my fellow students were extremely secular and non-observant in their everyday lives. Most were basically self-indulgent hedonists from affluent families who were spoiled with a sports car on their 16th birthday and family vacations in Europe every summer. My parents were from a working-class family that experienced the Great Depression in Oklahoma in the 1930s.
My point in going into these details is that I don’t really believe my classmates realized how exclusivistic and non-welcoming they really were. Some, of course, were that way intentionally. The whole West L.A. experience is one that I seldom talk about and, in fact, seldom even think about anymore.
MILITARY SERVICE
I just wanted to finish those teenage years and get the heck out of there ASAP. The opportunity presented itself when I went into the U.S. Air Force two days before my 20th birthday at the height of the Vietnam Era.
While on active duty in the USAF, my job title was first Chaplain Services Specialist and then Chapel Manager. As such, part of my job was to set up for Chapel services for all faiths. Though my Air Force Specialty Code had a P suffix for Protestant, I laid out the proper color of vestments and filled the chalice with wine for the Catholic priests before they said Mass.
I also prepared the sanctuary for Friday night Shabbat services which included the proper placement of the ark with the Torah at the altar. Some of them were actually pretty heavy. In the prayer Chapel, I had to ensure that either the Cross or the Star of David was displayed at appropriate times.
The Rabbi/Chaplain at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa in 1971 had me transcribe an audio cassette recording by a member of his congregation about their experiences as Jews in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, China during World War II. We had no computers in those days, so this was done on an electric typewriter.
That was just barely two decades and a half after World War II. Nearly 50 years since that time at the Base Chapel on Okinawa, I still remember one significant event that was described. When an occupying Japanese soldier asked the Rabbi why his Axis partners in Nazi Germany hated Jews so much, he simply said “Because we are Asians!” Wow!!!
That was the perfect answer! In reality, however, Jews are not a racial group. There are Jews in northern Europe with blonde hair and blue eyes. Jews in the Middle East and Palestinian Arabs have been known to pose as one another undercover.
All stereotypes should be avoided. At Clark Air Base, Philippines, I worked with a Chaplain who was from Huntsville, Alabama with a true southern drawl. I was with him one day when someone asked him if he was a Southern Baptist. They were stunned to learn that he was a Jew.
HIGHER EDUCATION
Fast forward a few years to my time as a student at Southern California College [now Vanguard University] which is a liberal arts institution of the Assemblies of God denomination. I was using my V.A. benefits to prepare to return to the Philippines as a Christian missionary.
Taking a Biblical language was a prerequisite for the Bachelor of Arts Degree in Religion. I had a choice of either Hebrew or Greek. One of my hopes was to become a Bible translator to take the original Greek texts and put them into indigenous languages which were getting the scripture for the first time. So I took Greek. The New Testament was written in the marketplace Greek known as Koine, which is far different from modern Greek.
To this day, as one who has always loved studying languages, I have two regrets. In Junior High and High School, Spanish would have been much more forward-looking than French. As a kid, I watched the TV show Combat and wanted to study German to understand what they were saying. It wasn’t offered, so I took French. Oh, well.
God did not open up the door for me to go back to the Philippines as a missionary. Today as I closely follow what is happening in Israel and the Middle East, and as I consider Christian eschatology, I sincerely wish I could read and understand Hebrew.
In my Old Testament Survey course at SCC, it just seemed there were too many begats and too much of this good king did one thing and then that evil king did something else. The class really did not go into the prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures regarding the first and second coming of the Messiah.
TODAY & TOMORROW
In this age of social media, I am able to follow and connect directly with fellow travelers who are located in modern day Israel. I try to keep up with both what the Israeli political leadership and Americans in the region are saying and doing.
The Parliamentary form of government is not second nature to me and the recent election in Israel on April 9th would have been totally bewildering if it had not been for those on the scene to sort it out and explain it. I have great respect for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is one of America’s best friends in the world. He is also the right man in the right place at the right time to face the existential threat posed by Iran.
Not being involved in the internal politics of Israel, my concern was not to change horses in midstream. Just as America elected FDR for four terms during the World War II era.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians live according to their faith freely. However, frankly, there are concerns about respect being shown for Jews who recognize and accept Yeshua HaMashiach. While there are Messianic Jews in the Israeli Defense Force and the Administration of PM Netanyahu, there are reportedly severe restrictions on Jews who follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior who seek to make Aliyah to reside in Israel.
It has been explained that one of the conservative parties with whom Bibi’s Likud Party must make a governing coalition to maintain power controls the immigration apparatus in Israel and wants to keep Messianic Jews to an absolute minimum in the country. I hope and pray this injustice will be rectified soon.
I sit here half a world away from Israel on the island of Oahu in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Jerusalem is 8,664 miles from Honolulu as the crow flies, if the crow can actually fly that far westward across Asia. There is also a 13-hour time difference. When I’m looking at Twitter late at night it’s midday the next day in Israel.
As goes Israel, so goes America. In fact, as goes Israel, so goes the world. Jerusalem is the fulcrum on which all things balance.
In Operation Juniper Falcon earlier in 2019, Americans and Israelis joined together to focus on the threat from Iran and other hostile players. One of the locations I read about for exercises was the Jezreel Valley in the vicinity of Tel Megiddo. This sends shivers up my spine as it’s where Earth’s final Battle of Armageddon will someday be waged. See Revelation 16:16.
President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s Eternal capital and the Golan Heights as part of the sovereign Nation of Israel are both significant. The Six-Day War in which Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria occurred just about a week before I graduated from Hamilton High School in West Los Angeles in June 1967.
Just this week I learned that two red heifers have been born in the Golan Heights during the last few weeks. That makes it even more significant that the Golan Heights be recognized as part of Israel. Without digressing too much, this relates to the building of the Third Temple in Jerusalem.
For Christians, it has to do with the rapture of the church, the great tribulation, the anti-christ blaspheming the temple, the second advent of Christ and the millennial reign. Interpretations of the timing of those events differ and it is not my purpose to drive a wedge here by exploring them.
Suffice it to say, that things are happening in Israel that we need to pay very close attention to. Right now the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock sit atop Temple Mount where the temple must yet be rebuilt.
Will it be an earthquake? Perhaps an errant and misguided Iranian drone or UAV? Only God knows, but the way will be cleared spiritually and physically for the rebuilding of the temple. Even those of my age may still be living to see the fulfillment of God’s perfect plan of the ages.
God willing, I hope someday to set foot in Israel and see where Jesus walked during His Earthly incarnation. But I’m thankful for this electronic age in which I can watch sermons on YouTube preached in Jerusalem in Hebrew and interpreted into English which lay out the Hebrew scriptures that prophesied things that have already occurred and those which are yet to come.
I was born in 1948, the year the modern state of Israel was re-established. As a Gentile kid born in Oklahoma now living in Hawaii, having not yet seen Israel in the flesh, it amazes me how my life has been intertwined with God’s working amongst his chosen people, the Jews.
THE PROMISE
But, following the worst of times, The Best is yet to come. I will meet you in the morning, just inside the Eastern Gate!
Covid variant BA.5 is spreading. It appears milder but much more contagious and evades natural immunity. Best to boost your immune system with new Z-Dtox and Z-Stack nutraceuticals from our dear friend, the late Dr. Vladimir Zelenko.