♪ When I close my eyes ♪
♪ And held my very breath ♪
♪ And let you love me to death ♪
I like that.
- [Efrem] From the recording studio.
- Yeah.- That remains to be seen.
I'm gonna sing it later in the show.
- [Efrem] To the television studio.
Kathy Lee Gifford is anall around entertainer
with unmatched passion.
- Follow your joy and it will lead
to God's purpose for your life.
And I have a mantra whichis my joy is non-negotiable.
At the same time, the fiercearmy of the Philistines
have been kept at the thevalley of Hella for 40 days.
- Gifford is a gifted performer
who is also passionate about her faith.
You can see it in the pagesof her latest best seller,
the Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi.
What inspired you to wanna tackle this?
You've written best-selling books already,
what inspired this.
- I've been going to Israel,
I've been going to the HolyLand since I was 17 years old.
I was a big Bible nerd fromthe time I became a Christian
when I was 12 years old.
And this was back in the'70s and it was the first
Jerusalem conference on biblical prophecy
and my father, as my graduationgift from high school,
got tickets for my momand me to go to Israel
and attend that, and I was thrilled.
I mean, I missed myhigh school graduation,
I could have cared less, Icould have missed high school,
I could have cared less.
I always was anxiousto get to the Holy Land
and be where everythinghappened and just soak it in.
- [Efrem] These are snapshotsfrom one of her trips
to the Holy Land with Rabbi Jason Sobel
who helped her to write the book.
- In 2012, my husbandand I went on our first,
what we call a rabbinical trip,and that's when everything
changed for me.
And when I started really studying the way
the Messianic Rabbis teach,because the word of God
was written by middle easternersfor middle easterners.
And when we try to applyour western mindset
or traditions or thoughtprocess towards that,
it never works.
We have to go back to who theywere and what was happening
at the time that it happened,and we have to understand
what the languages truly meant.
Most people think thatJesus was a carpenter,
well not according to theGreek in the New Testament.
The word for what Jesusand Joseph did was tekton,
T-E-K-T-O-N, and that means either builder
or it means architect.
Well Jesus was thearchitect of all of creation
so that would make sense.
And if I'm gonna base myentire life on something,
I have to know what it really means.
Many people call themselves Christians,
they've never even read the Bible
much less know what it says.
- [Efrem] Kathy Lee aims to make the pages
of the Bible come to life
and encourage people to read it more.
- If you know Israel, there's like
a three mile circumferencearound the temple,
everything was aboutworship at the temple,
everything was about the spilling of blood
for the atoning of sins in the temple.
Those shepherds wereLevitical priest shepherds,
and those lambs were born forthe same reason that Jesus was
in Bethlehem right there tobe sacrificed for the sins
of the people.
And what did they do, whatdid they do to the lambs
as soon as they were born?
They wrapped them in swaddling clothes
and laid them in mangers.
This is a kind of journey we go on
in The Rock the Road and the Rabbi.
And I hope it ignites peoples faith.
We are so lukewarm, solukewarm in our society today.
Our battery is like on, Ithink on like critical mass
or something and becausewe're not understanding
what the word of God really says,
therefore we're not applyingit properly in our own
daily lives, and we'reliving half of our faith out
because we're not living our Jewish part.
- Yeah, and I think yousay it really profoundly
when you're talking about how
it came alive for your husband.
- Yes.- Religion
versus relationship.
- I don't want religion in mylife, I don't want religion.
I want relationship with the living God.
- Is there a favoriteplace for you to visit
since you've been so many times?
If you were going andcould go to one place,
what would you say?
- Oh, that's impossiblequestion to answer.
I adore Ein Gedi becauseso much of our life
is in desert, so much of ourlife does involve suffering.
And David suffered so, think about it,
as a young man, probably12 to 14 years old,
he was anointed by Samuel to be king.
When did he actually become king?
When he was 30, 30 that'sa long time to wait on God.
And half the time to beseparated from his loved ones
and his family and hidingin caves from King Saul
who wanted to kill him.
- [Efrem] Here is also areminder of God's provision,
an oasis in the desertfor all who believe.
Efrem Graham, CBN News, New York.
