Well, part of the American dream

is the confidence that our children

will live better than we do.

But fewer and fewer parents believe

that's possible anymore.

And for many, a loss of hope has come

to saturate a world that's increasingly chaotic.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Current headlines like the constant threat

of terrorism, an unstable economy,

and recent racial tensions can leave

us feeling like the world is out of control.

But even in the midst of this uncertainty,

messianic rabbi Jonathan Bernis says there is hope.

He's working all things together for good.

I want you to be filled with His hope, to fulfill His plans,

and experience His peace knowing that your future is

safe in His hands.

NARRATOR: In his latest book, "A Hope and a Future,"

Jonathan challenges you to see yourself and your future

through God's eyes.

Well, please welcome to the 700 Club my dear friend,

Jonathan Bernis.

And it's great to have you here, Jonathan.

It's great to be with you, thanks.

Yeah.

It's an honor to have you on the show.

You had your whole life mapped out.

You were-- you were saying, I was

going to be-- I'm going to be a millionaire by 30.

I'm going to-- the world is my oyster.

And what happened to you?

I had one ambition from the time

that I had my bar mitzvah when I was

13-- to be a multimillionaire successful businessman

and just travel the world.

And that was my goal.

And so I did all kinds of business activities

in high school.

I had a car dealership and then a travel agency.

In high school, you had a car dealership?

In my last couple of years of school, buying performance cars

and reselling-- fixing them up, reselling.

GORDON ROBERTSON: Wow.

And yeah, socking away all the money.

That was my goal.

That was my plan.

I went to school for business administration.

And everything was going on track.

And then a friend of mine got saved and made me her project.

So that's when everything changed.

You had an encounter with her.

There was a meeting.

And you felt the physical separation between you

and a living God-- the presence of God and heaven.

I did.

I didn't see any vision.

I didn't hear any voice.

But I was at a Bible-- I went to a Bible study with her just

to appease her.

I didn't really want to go, but she kept bugging.

And I finally said yes.

And at that study-- the leader, after the study group,

put a Bible in my hand, took me upstairs,

and began to go over scriptures about sin and separation

from God.

And Gordon, I had this incredible--

I started to sweat.

I started to-- the lights got brighter.

And I-- looking back, I realize the presence of God

came into that room-- the living God.

I had never experienced that before.

And I grew up in a Jewish home believing in God,

believing in the Bible or the people of the book,

but never an encounter with a living God.

God was a distant God, a holy God.

But in that room, I felt the presence of God.

And I prayed a prayer just because I

wanted this unpleasant experience to end.

But that prayer changed my life.

That experience changed my life.

And I woke up and immediately had a desire

to read the scriptures, which I had never read before.

I had never read my own Bible.

The New Testament, I was taught, was

the book for the Christians.

And it took me a while to find a Bible, believe it or not.

I didn't know where to find a Bible.

And I wanted to read the New Testament,

so I knew I couldn't go to the synagogue.

But somebody had given me a Bible years earlier

in high school.

And I got on my motorcycle and drove 60 miles

to my home to find that Bible.

The word of God never returns void.

And when I read the New Testament

and saw Jesus was Jewish-- I didn't

know that Jesus was Jewish, that all of the first disciples

were Jews.

It just-- it just transformed my life.

And I knew very early on after that

that God was calling me into full-time ministry.

For you, that's-- this has got to be a huge break.

It's like you're-- you know, from a family's perspective,

you're now saying, I'm different from you.

And what-- what was that like going through?

It was a very, very difficult experience

to tell you the truth.

I finally told my parents.

And I had been-- I had been experimenting with drugs

and Eastern religions.

And all that seemed to be fine.

But when I told my parents I believe

that Jesus is our Messiah, my mother began to cry.

My father was very upset.

They sent me to the rabbi.

The rabbi listened to me very patiently

and then began to tell me that I was hurting the Jewish people--

that what Adolf Hitler began, I was

continuing with the spiritual destruction of our people.

There was a lot of rejection.

And many Jewish believers experience great rejection

because of a 2000 year history of anti-semitism

in the name of Christ and Christianity.

So I became one of them.

It's very much an us and them mentality.

But I just became absolutely rooted in the reality

that I am still a Jew.

This is my Messiah.

And a lot of the people that rejected me in the beginning

have now come to know the Lord.

I'm still praying for my mother and my sister.

But my brother's come to faith.

And God is working among the Jewish people.

Why is it so hard?

I mean, within the Jewish community,

if you start saying you're messianic,

there is an automatic rejection.

If you say, I'm now a completed Jew, there's a rejection.

There's even a-- an abhorrence, to even use the term.

JONATHAN BERNIS: There is.

If you want to be a Christian, that's OK.

Yes.

But it means separation from our community.

Why-- why is that?

Why isn't there an acknowledgment that--

JONATHAN BERNIS: Well, that's a great question.

---the New Testament is entirely written by Jews.

And Christianity, is in its essence-- basic essence,

a Jewish religion.

Well, you and I know that.

But there's a 2000 year history that

separates church and synagogue as two

distinct religious entities-- institutions--

and a desire on both sides not to blur the lines.

And so for us to come along and say,

we're-- we not only believe in Jesus and Yeshua,

but we are still Jews.

And He is our promised Messiah.

It goes against a 2000 year history

of the Jewish community, that rabbinic Judaism at its root

rejects Jesus, the Messiahship of Yeshua.

But that's changing.

Hundreds-- tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands

of Jewish people, have come to know their Messiah

in the last 30 years.

Right.

And it seems to be accelerating.

It seems to be--

It's accel-- ever since the restoration

of Jerusalem in 1967.

Gordon, there's some connection between the restoration

of Jerusalem and the blindness coming off

of the eyes of the Jewish people.

GORDON ROBERTSON: And that was the prayer of Paul.

That was the prayer of Paul.

Yeah.

He wanted to count himself accursed so

that they could come to faith.

I would give up my very salvation,

he said, for the salvation of my own people.

I can't even comprehend that.

Giving up our life, yes-- but someone that knew the depths of

and joy of heaven and the realities of hell, and he says,

I'd give it all up for my own people, the people of Israel.

It's remarkable.

How do you tie what is currently happening in Israel

and what is currently happening to the Jewish people worldwide?

How do you tie that to Jeremiah 29:11?

Well, this promise-- which I believe

is for every believer-- it's this incredible promise

in the midst of a very bad chapter of Israel's history.

The 10 northern tribes are gone.

The two tribes in the south are now captives in Babylon.

In the midst of that promise-- or in the midst

of that exile-- God says, I have a plan for you.

I know the situation you're in.

But I have a plan for you.

And it's a good plan to give you peace,

to give you hope and a future-- not to harm you.

That's a national promise for Israel.

And then it goes on and talks about, I'll bring you back.

You've rejected me.

I've scattered you.

But I'm going to bring you back from captivity.

Gordon, look at Israel today.

You were just there.

God has fulfilled His word.

He is faithful.

And that--

Yeah, the desert has bloomed.

That same God who's been faithful to Israel

is faithful to us and will-- and has a plan for our life

and promises to fulfill that plan.

Why is it so important to hold on to that hope?

And I'm hearing it-- a pretty steady

drumbeat in America today, that judgment

is coming, that there's really going to be bad things.

Our best days are behind us, they're not ahead of us.

And we seem, as a culture, to be losing hope.

We are.

I'm not sure if I completely believe that.

But financially, things are a mess.

Iran is racing towards nuclear capability.

The world is a dangerous place.

And I think there is a shortage of hope right now.

Hope is confident expectation in a-- in what

God promises for the future, in a good future.

And I just think there's a deficit of hope right now.

And people are looking for something to hang on to.

We have the answer.

How do you find it because I know the drum beat is steady,

and I hear it-- I hear it even in the vocal inflection

of Christians today?

It's almost like, we have to get into the bunker now.

And how-- how do you find hope in the middle

of what we're going through?

I think that there is a deficit of hope even among Christians,

even within the church.

And it's-- it's going back to really trusting in God,

getting back into His word.

If you seek me with all your heart, you will find me.

That's what it says in the next verse.

If you seek me, you'll find me.

But it's first believing that God really cares about us,

that He loves us.

And we've got to get over the insecurity that He can--

He can use us.

We're on TV.

He can use us.

But He can't-- what about me?

Yes, God has a plan for us, the church.

But what about me individually?

It's harder to trust God for our own needs, our own healing,

than for others.

We've got to get over the unbelief,

God didn't come through in times past.

I have trouble believing Him for my future-- or unforgiveness,

condemnation.

Yes, God has a plan for me.

But I'm not worthy of that plan.

Well, you're not.

That's the reality.

But He who knew no sin became sin for us

that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

I think we've got to get back into the word.

We've got to get in back to the essentials of prayer

and really believe.

We've got to get this-- I'd say in Yiddish-- the schmutz out

of our life.

[LAUGHTER]

And get back to believing in God.

Go back to the-- to the very beginning,

the way they lived in the very beginning.

These people experienced a transformation.

And they changed the world.

We can change the world.

What do you see next for the church in the world?

Well, I think we have the only answer, the only peace plan.

We-- we're called to pray for the peace of Jerusalem,

the Shalom of Jerusalem.

The only peace plan that will work is the Prince of Peace.

He's the only one that can touch a mili-- a jihadist--

and actually caused them to become

a lover of the Jewish people and Israel

through a relationship with God.

The gospel in prayer-- the proclamation

of the gospel in prayer-- is God's plan to change mankind.

And I think we have to be about the Father's business.

We have to work while it's day, for night

will come when no man can work.

And I think there's a separation going on.

But God is calling a people to get-- grow closer to Him

and be vessels for Him.

And I believe that the Church is going

to get brighter and brighter.

The light's going to get brighter and brighter

as the darkness gets darker and darker.

Yeah.

I couldn't agree more.

Now's the time for us to really redouble our efforts

to preach the gospel.

JONATHAN BERNIS: Now's the time.

I really believe we're in the last days.

If--

And when you hear of terrorism or you hear of ISIS or you

hear of turmoil, that's exactly the time to go in

and preach the gospel.

And we have the only message that can transform lives.

"A Hope and a Future," and that's Jonathan's book.

It's called "A Hope and a Future."

I encourage you to get it if you want an in-depth study

of Jeremiah 20:11-- 29:11.

What it means for you individually-- not just

for a people, not just for Israel,

not just for the church in a general sense,

but for you individually.

I encourage you to get it.

It's available wherever books are sold.

Jonathan, thanks for being with us.

Great to be with you.

All right.