I don’t understand the technology of the YouTube conundrum, I am social, I’m very social media not ‘advanced’. Just so you know, I run a big social media department at Chosen People Ministries in the U.S. We have lots of staff doing social media. I’ve never been on Facebook for the most part, for my entire life.
So, by faith, I provide them with budgets to do something and edit content, that’s my closest relationship to it. Of course, it’s a very active world out there, so I understand that people can get censored, and blackballed, and everything else.
In fact, some of our pro-Israel YouTube and Facebook ads were kicked off the channels. The most fun about it was, in Israel, where we were doing Isaiah 53 Facebook ads and sending (I wrote this book on Isaiah 53) –
It’s not as good as The Messiah Factor
But I wrote this book on Isaiah 53 and it’s in a lot of languages. It’s in Hebrew and Russian, and so on. So, we would put out ads and then people would answer the ads, we’d send them a book, and then, of course, we’d call them up: “How did you like the book?” We try and follow them up, lead them to the Lord, disciple them, put them in a congregation. Well, it happens sometimes.
That was the strategy. It was a decent strategy. We would have the ads out and then, after about six weeks, the ads would stop even though we were still paying the bill! So, we would always get someone say, “Your ad is not up there anymore.”
All that’s happening in Hebrew. Our Israeli staff is handling it. We never could find out why the ads stopped. We could surmise, maybe, why the ads stopped, but we never really knew why they stopped. We would always come in with an application for a new ad to Facebook, wait two weeks, and then, the ad was back. Then, six weeks later, the ad was down. This was a game we’ve been playing for about six years and the only thing we can imagine is: there’s some Hasidic guy who’s working for Facebook who says: “Chosen People’s back!”
So, you never know what’s happening behind the scenes because people are making arbitrary decisions. Nonetheless, we’ll keep fighting it and we’ll keep putting stuff out there and, if they keep saying “no”, then you know it’s just another way that the world is not in agreement with our positions.
People need faith to stand for Yeshua in a dark and broken world.
In case you haven’t noticed, on many different issues, the world we live in is probably not sharing the same set of values that you and I share. And those values grow out of this book, right? And some believers have paid the ultimate price.
I mean, getting persecuted on YouTube or Facebook, okay, I’ll live through it. I’ll find something else to do. But there are people who have given their lives for Yeshua because they’ve made a stand for Him.
I think about martyrdom. I live in Brooklyn; I live among people that are not happy I’m there sometimes. And so, I think about martyrdom, and I guess the only thing I could say is my prayer is: “Lord, make it fast.”
In my opinion however, you must be really skinny to be a martyr; so, Chris, watch out!
I’ve been in situations where I’ve almost been martyred. I don’t want to bore you with the stories of getting beaten up and my head slammed to the ground, and the Jewish Defence League punching me to the ground and kicking me and all these other kinds of things (by the way, those guys ended up in jail).
We all go through stuff, and we all get a little persecuted at times, right? Sometimes, at work, we won’t do that one little unethical thing that somebody / everybody else says is okay, but we say, “Ah! You know, I don’t want to be a stick in them”, we justify why we don’t do it, but we know why we won’t do it, because Jesus.
Jesus is looking. We can’t do it. We’re not going to do it. How much money is it worth displeasing Jesus?
Certainly not paper clips! So, we’re very careful.
When standing for the Lord in this world you’ve got to make sure you’re standing for the right thing. You’ve got to make sure it’s biblical, not cultural.
That takes a lot of prayer and work, to make sure that what you’re standing for is worth dying for.
In America, right now, some Christians are standing for things that are political. I’m going to get to heaven, and I’m going to say, “Well Jesus, I defended a certain political party and I’m here early.”
He’s going to say, “Well, you should have thought about that one.”
When it comes to martyrdom, you almost get… maybe when I was younger…
People talk about it and say, “Well, if you’re going to die for your faith, you know what it’s going to be like…”
And, of course, the Russians always got the blame for this one. And today, I mean, the Russians should get the blame for everything; they deserve a lot of it, obviously, right now?
Let’s say the communists come in and said, “if you want to stand for Jesus, we’re going to kill you. But if you turn and embrace this Communist Party, then you’ll live.”
This is old material, okay?
There’s always this idea that you have a choice. But, you know, sometimes, you don’t have a choice. You made the choice when you accepted Yeshua and you decided to stand for Him and to stand for the Word of God.
Some of us will suffer the consequences of our choices to follow Jesus and there can be some severe consequences. We’ll suffer the consequences. It’s not like you have a chance to backtrack.
So, make your decision now, because you probably won’t… and certainly, that’s what we’ve read in the Bible that people don’t …