Think About It Podcast

Matthew 6:33 | Promises of God Explored

In this conversation, David Doty and Michael Mishkin explore the promises of God as outlined in Matthew 6:33, discussing the importance of seeking God's kingdom and righteousness. They delve into the reconciliation of Old and New Testament teachings, emphasizing the role of suffering in spiritual growth and character development. The discussion highlights the significance of a personal relationship with God and the transformative power of faith and obedience, while also addressing the misconceptions surrounding church leadership and the true essence of spiritual teachings. In this conversation, Michael Mishkin and David Doty explore the themes of spiritual deception, the importance of personal connection with God, and the role of discipleship in spiritual maturity. They emphasize the need for individuals to seek a genuine relationship with God, discern truth from false teachings, and engage in meaningful questions to foster spiritual growth. The discussion also highlights the significance of understanding scripture accurately and the dangers of misinterpretation. Ultimately, the conversation encourages listeners to cultivate a humble heart and seek God's guidance in their spiritual journey. takeaways * Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. * Trusting God is essential for provision and peace. * Obedience to God leads to blessings, but struggles may arise. * Suffering can lead to character development and hope. * A true relationship with God requires personal engagement. * Spiritual growth is a continuous process for believers. * Understanding the law's spiritual meanings is crucial. * Church leaders should serve rather than exalt themselves. * Faith and perseverance are key to spiritual success. * Self-examination is necessary to ensure alignment with God. Spiritual leaders may not always serve you truthfully. * Personal connection with God is essential for spiritual growth. * Discipleship is akin to parenting in spiritual contexts. * Understanding scripture requires careful interpretation of language. * Misinterpretation of scripture can lead to false teachings. * Questions are vital for deepening one's relationship with God. * Asking God questions opens the door for understanding. * A humble heart is necessary to receive God's wisdom. * All sin can be traced back to selfishness. * True spiritual growth comes from seeking God's will. David Doty (00:06.69) Here we are gonna go live. Gonna start with some prayer here. trying to make sure that I've got this. David Doty (00:19.79) set up correctly. Mike, you want to start in prayer? Michael Mishkin (00:24.315) Father in heaven, we come to you now. We put aside all distractions. We ask forgiveness of our sins as we forgive others. We lift up the name that's above every name, that's Yeshua HaMashiach, the King of Kings, the Lord of Glory, the Word who became flesh, the Son of God who has brought us by His death and resurrection into restoration, connection, relationship back with the Father by the Father's Holy Spirit. We thank you, Lord, for that. Thank you for the potential for redemption if we seek first your kingdom and your righteousness and you change us from glory to glory, from the old man to the new man. I would pray that you would lead this conversation now, that it would not be carnality or intellectualism, but it would be by the Holy Spirit for the edification of those who hear, that they could come to you by what they hear and that you would make it part of their spirit, that you would help them to grow. and walk in faith and obedience to you. So we submit this time to you now and you will guide this conversation in Yeshua's name. Amen. David Doty (01:44.919) Amen. Amen. agree. We've, we've been talking a little bit about the promises of God in particular, Matthew 6 33, where it says seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things. Basically everything you need for this life will be added on to you. And, and what does that really mean? What does, what does that really mean? So that's what we're going to be talking about today on today's Think About It with Michael Mishkin David Doty here. And we'll see if anybody decides to tune in. Mike, what do you think? Do you want to start by reading that scripture? Do want me to read it? Michael Mishkin (02:30.779) Matthew 6, which verse you want to start at here? David Doty (02:36.875) it up. David Doty (02:41.422) I guess we should probably start at the beginning of that paragraph, which is verse 25. Michael Mishkin (02:52.699) Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what you'll eat or what you'll drink, nor for the body what you shall put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than your covering, your raiment? Behold the birds of the air, for they don't sow and they do reap. nor gather into the barns, yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more better than they? Which of you, by taking thought, add one cubit to his stature? And why do you take thought of your clothing? Consider the lilies of the field. How they grow and toil not, and neither do they spin. Yet, I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God closes, closed the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore take no thought saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink? Wherewithal we should be clothed. For all these things the Gentiles seek. For your Heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. But seek first his kingdom, the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow shall take thought for the things of itself. sufficient unto the day is the evil of today. Michael Mishkin (04:59.557) So essentially what we're seeing there is that if you're still thinking like the people of the world, the nations, the Gentiles as he puts it, Yeshua is talking to Jews now who are the people of God and trying to get them out of their mindset that I need to be burdening and worrying about what I work in order for me to survive. I have to eat, I got to slave away in order for the world to produce for me, which is the curse of Adam. David Doty (05:27.884) you Michael Mishkin (05:29.815) Adam didn't have that before he sinned. But after he sinned, it says that the ground will not produce for you except by the sweat of your brow. So he is now trying to deactivate the curse that came from Adam by having them trust God in such a way that if they focus on God with all their heart and in His purposes, God knows what you need to wear. He knows that you need to eat and He's going to provide for you. So we can say from scripture and I know from life, if you're starving and you're not able to pay your bills and you're wondering where your food is and you're struggling, there's something that you're not focusing on him, you're focusing somewhere else. You could say whatever you want, but if you wanna tell me the scripture is wrong, well, that's what Yeshua is trying to tell the people of God at the time, the Jewish people in Israel. and this is what they were doing, and he's countering that. You're not trusting God, he's saying. You're thinking that if I don't go to work and do what I gotta do, and this is not saying you don't work. This is saying where your head is. If your head is allowed to go back into the world and operate by the world's systems, you're pushing God out. If you're bringing God into everything, in prayer, connecting to him, and giving everything over to him and walking each through the day by your engagement to him, he'll work out everything you need. He knows it and he'll get you what you need. That's what I see there. I mean, what do you see there? David Doty (07:15.15) I agree, right? So one of the things we were talking about earlier is the first covenant or the promises of the Old Testament versus the New Testament or the New Covenant. And in reading Deuteronomy, as I was saying to you earlier when we were talking, God says, if you faithfully obey, if you keep all of these commands and all these statutes, You'll be blessed. You'll be blessed when you go in, when you come out, when you sit down, when you rise up, when you're eating, your children will be blessed. Your offspring will be blessed. Their offspring will be blessed. Your crops will grow. When your enemy attacks you from one direction, they'll flee in seven different directions. There's all of these. You'll be blessed. You'll be so blessed. Like you won't even be able to make a mistake almost. And then if you don't obey God, If you don't keep these commands, then you're going to bring a curse. It's going to be the exact opposite. You're going to be sick. Your children will be sick. Your enemies will prevail over you. it's just, it's very, very, very clear. And I'm, so I'm, I'm trying to reconcile, right? well, Lord, you know, I'm a believer. am do, I'm trying to do all the right things. I'm. seeking you, your word says to obey and you'll be blessed. I think I'm obeying and yet I don't feel as though I'm being blessed right now. And I think a lot of people, mean, I think Job certainly felt that way. Job was a good man. He was the most righteous human on the face of the planet at that point. And God basically starts this altercation between Job and Satan and it ends up costing Job everything short of his life and his marriage. But God ends up restoring him at the end and Job learned some very valuable tremendous lessons through all of that and I think that's the point and so trying to reconcile like Deuteronomy chapter 28 this is David Doty (09:36.66) obey and you'll be blessed. And then Matthew 6 33, says seek first his kingdom and his righteousness or the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things will be added unto you. For me, I'm like, okay, but according to the old Testament, I'm obeying or at least I think I am. I'm doing the best I can and things are hard. So what other new Testament insights do I go to? or what is God saying because things physically are hard, but then God's working on the spiritual side of things. Like He's maturing me on the inside and using these physical circumstances to bring about a spiritual result. Michael Mishkin (10:25.413) Well, what happens is, and Job, the overall story of Job is how are we engaging God? We think we're engaging God, and then we're not really as we thought we were. Job, while he's called righteous by God, he's allowed by Satan to test, and it's digging up, and he doesn't lose his obedience, or his... his connection and faith, but he really grumbles and a lot of junk. Ultimately, it's a lot of junk of why, why me? Why are you doing this? And it's an oversimplified perspective of what we go through. God allows tribulation to be in our lives to get it flesh. That's the simplicity of it. Because this whole world for what it's about is come to know God and once you come to know God in your relationship be refined by God into his image. That's it. Everything else is bupkis. Don't tell me what the churches tell you, they're lying to you. You don't have a great commission where you go out into the world and preach the gospel. The only place that says that is Mark and that says that that section is not in the latest in any of earliest manuscripts. in Matthew and in Luke where it says go out into all the world and make disciples. People don't understand what that means. You're a teacher and a student. A disciple is a student. It means you can't teach people if you don't know what the heck you're doing. And the people that were sent out when Yeshua said, go out and make disciples, they were trained. They went with the Lord for three and a half years and were trained and were trained and were fine. And they were still were stupid until the spirit came down on them. And then now they were qualified. And then you see the orchestration in Acts 2 on how things really work out. So don't think that you have, okay, I just accepted Jesus and now I'm gonna go out and tell people. No, you gotta engage God and be made into his image and it's not gonna be easy all the time. But he does have promises that he'll provide. You brought up the Torah, the Old Testament, the law, the first five books, which it's not really the first five books because Michael Mishkin (12:45.979) Genesis is not really giving you laws, you know, it's really Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy that are giving you a little bit of Exodus. But Abraham didn't have the Torah. Abraham didn't have all these laws. Abraham didn't have the Ten Commandments. But yet he was friends with God. And he said that in his faith and friend, in his connection to God, he fulfilled all of God's laws, precepts and decrees. David Doty (12:49.4) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (13:15.929) because those laws that were given to Israel as the first covenant was a symbolic lifestyle for them to live for prosperity on earth. It did not promise eternal life. They were living a symbolic life for us to understand when the new covenant would be revealed, which was there from day one. It was there way back when Adam was there. The new covenant was there. Adam was living in that and he defied it and he left it. The new covenant, which is relationship with God being in Him. That's what that's about. The first covenant is showing a symbolic lifestyle on earth of living in God and He's in your midst if you follow all His ways. And if you screw up, this is how you correct it. And He's gonna keep you in prosperity and protection because that's symbolically representing that you're covered in Him and you have nothing to worry about. That's what that's about. If you try in your flesh to fulfill every law, you won't do it because it's against flesh. So that's why Yeshua came because the law was given so that sin may abound. That's what Paul says. It wasn't there to give you a list. If you do all this stuff, God's gonna go, good job, not gonna happen. It's there to point you out that when you think you're a big shot, it's gonna find something and you break one, you break them all. That's why Yeshua nailed the guy. David Doty (14:30.732) Right. Right. Michael Mishkin (14:41.219) was rich. What commandment must I fulfill to get eternal life?" And he goes, I didn't kill anyone, I didn't steal, didn't... he says, that's great. Now go sell everything you have and come follow me. And he left depressed. So the point of the matter is, is that it's the relationship with God and you have to really get your foundation straight and know Him and He's gonna bring you through. He's refining you through whatever it is. So if you're having struggles eating, if you're having struggles making the bills, There's something he's getting at, whether it's a singular person, whether it's a married couple, he's getting at something. And that it's the duty of whoever that is singularly or with a married couple to press into God. First thing, everything else is pushed out and God orchestrate us that we can work this out in you and change us to where we can walk by the Spirit and we can see the results and that these scriptures will be fulfilled. Scriptures are not being fulfilled in people's lives because they're not true, it's that you're not lined up with them. There's a cause and effect. There's if-then, if-then. If you seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, then he will provide all these things. If he's not providing all these things, you're not seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness. It's amazing how this if-then thing works. That's what covenant is. It's an if-then. The people of Israel, you brought it up. David Doty (15:43.779) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (16:08.899) If they follow all those ways and they had their whole system and they couldn't follow them all, but they had a temple there to make reconciliation on the flesh side of things that we don't have a temple now, so you can't do it. Don't believe the lying Jews. My people who don't have Yeshua, they say, well now we have prayer. They had prayer then too. They had a temple though, and God saw it was pleasing. Now they don't have a temple. You still have prayer, and how's that working for you? David Doty (16:35.618) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (16:39.223) at history. David Doty (16:41.036) Well, it reminds me of Romans 5 because what you're talking about is when things aren't going well for you, then what is it that God's trying to bring about? And Romans 5, 3 through 5 says, only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. who has been given to us. So God's trying to bring about a something in our character. He's trying to help us and refine us and help us to become more like him. And by the way, George in Tifton, Georgia today says, Hola, mi amigos, blessings. So hello, George. Hope you're doing well. We're gonna pray for George today before we end this recording, if that's all right with you. Michael Mishkin (17:34.009) Hey, George. Michael Mishkin (17:43.235) Also scripture of like what Peter talks about, 2 Peter in his first chapter where he talks, and besides this giving all diligence to your faith virtue and add virtue knowledge and add to knowledge temperance and add to temperance patience and add to patience godliness and to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness love, agape love which is God's love. David Doty (17:48.046) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (18:10.971) For if these things be in you and are abounding, they make you neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Yeshua. But he that lacks these is blind and cannot see afar off, and has forgotten that he was purged of his old sins. So he's talking about a progression that should be happening with believers. You should be growing in these attributes if you're truly engaging God. If not, you've lost sight. David Doty (18:39.054) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (18:40.933) You're just now following a religion. The idea of being with the Lord in this realm right now is that if you're still breathing, you should be growing in the spirit man, into his image and knowing him more and understanding and hearing his voice. If you are not, you're not in him and you're in danger of the fires of hell. So you need to check yourself. Everyone needs to check that. I check myself. Paul says we all should be checking ourselves. The man who thinks he stands lest he falls. David Doty (18:43.534) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (19:11.119) you know, even checking ourselves to see that we're even in the faith, you know. He even says it, you know, I run the race to buffet myself the less I do all this work and then I could be disqualified from the prize. So none of us are guaranteed anything. It's our desire and perseverance to the end. So we have to really see if it's everything is cause and effect. God is very practical and simplistic when you really know and understand. David Doty (19:23.031) Hmm. Michael Mishkin (19:39.067) If you think he's mysterious and complicated, you don't know him. You don't understand what he's doing. David Doty (19:43.022) Mm-hmm. David Doty (19:46.83) Well, the Holy Spirit is supposed to lead us into all truth. So either we're doing something wrong, we're believing something wrong, we're on a broken, cracked foundation, which doesn't allow us to build very high. So we have to figure out a way to firm up that foundation. A lot of times it's coming out of false beliefs, coming out of false doctrines. Michael Mishkin (20:15.653) Yep, and that's where, you know, people who think they're safe going to church, you're believing a lot of lying pastors, and you gotta understand the lies are not obvious. You think you had a nice good message and they really just take you onto this side tangent of a useless aspect that could be true. It's like a spiritual motivational speaking, but it's diverting you from the core of yourself with God. You shouldn't need somebody else to be telling you about some little aspect that you should be paying attention to that week. You should be spending time every day with the Lord, that the Spirit of God gets in there and you can, I'm struggling here Lord with this issue or had this problem and you're bringing it to him, you're giving it over to him and allowing his Spirit to work in you to change you there. That is the true relationship. Anything else, you're being lied to. There's only a remnant for a reason. That means right now there's only a remnant on the planet of people who call themselves of God that are truly going with God as of right now. And most likely you're not one of them. Be careful. Seek God right now with all your heart on your face to make your selection sure. David Doty (21:34.35) I'm going to read something that George wrote and I you respond to this, Mike. The statutes help to teach us the heart of God so we can improve ourselves as we learn to fear and worship correctly. We now have salvation if then, if you accept His son, Yeshua Hamashiach. Michael Mishkin (21:53.913) Yeah, essentially that's true. And all those statutes were there to bring forth in a natural lifestyle form spiritual meaning. So that's why when Paul went around, he was a Pharisee, and when he talked to Gentiles, he didn't say, hey, are you guys making sure you're not wearing clothing of linen and wool because that's against the Torah here. He didn't say that. He said, you know, don't I have a right to reap material things from you? Doesn't it say in the law, do not muzzle an ox while it's trading out the grain. So he brings up a law about an ox and he uses it on Gentiles saying, I have a right to be taken care of, reflecting on the spiritual meaning of the law, which is somebody who does work for you spiritually has a right to be maintained physically. So the law has translative spiritual meanings that we're supposed to learn and understand and that's what we're supposed to live by. but it's not by us making us do it. The spirit works it in our heart that we automatically do it. It's being written on our heart to do that, but we're getting understanding to allow the spirit to make sure you can reflect that and put it part of our spirit. It shouldn't be something that you cognitively have to work out and you're, this law says this, so I should do this. No, that's your flesh. If you're truly abiding in the spirit, you transform that your walk and your way of being and your thought process automatically conform to that way. And the only time you have to observe it is to see, I'm not in that way, God we need to work on this so you can work it into my spirit because there's flesh here that needs to die. David Doty (23:37.73) So you brought up, I think it's Deuteronomy 28, 4, don't muzzle an ox while it's treading out the grain. And that's quoted twice in the New Testament by Paul both times, once in 1 Corinthians 9, I believe, and then once in 1 Timothy 5, I believe. And the meaning of the verse, as you alluded to, we should respect and take care of the people who are working, laboring for us, right? So the concept of muzzling an ox means you're not going to allow the ox to eat while it's working, which is wrong. By extension, the spiritual application of that is you should take care of those who are ministering for you, serving you, breaking down, rightly dividing the Word of God, teaching you and instructing you in the faith. What's interesting to me and the revelation that I got on this the other day, which I shouldn't even say it's revelation because it's pretty common sense. The reverse way of looking at that verse is pastors, church leaders are like farm animals, know, servants. They're valuable. They provide a service they should be taken care of. But I see a lot of church leaders who want to exalt themselves and say, you know, like basically listen to me, know, respect me because I'm the man of God or these different things. And I'm like, it just blew my mind when I saw that from the other perspective because Paul considered himself as a servant. He said he was the least of the apostles. We're in this upside down kingdom and the greatest among you, Jesus said, would be the servant. And we see so many church leaders today who lord it over the congregants and are like, hey, you should be sowing into this ministry because God's gonna bless you if you do and God has given me to you. I don't know, what are your thoughts on that, Mike? Michael Mishkin (25:51.387) This is all the more of as we get to know the Lord, we know where the real deal is and the real perspective, meaning and reflection of what we have in our realm of life versus the counterfeit, which is there to test you to see, you really understand this? Because I'm gonna dupe you on the perspective understandings if you don't have it in your spirit and really know God. And that's what you see in the churches. Yeah, they take advantage of where spiritual people who are truly trying to serve their fellow brethren for the kingdom spiritually that they should be hand taken care of in that process and they are utilizing that concept for what they're doing, which is if you really understand what they're doing, they are not serving you spiritually. In fact, they're serving you antichrist. They're serving you lies. They're serving you where they're making you pacified and you think you're good and you know give you a little subject of your you know spiritual motivational speaking which is all carnal and it's not really edifying you you're supposed to be having your relationship with the Lord and you know if it's by the spirit that somebody's being led they shouldn't even be looking or you Paul even get for for gone whatever benefits he was rightly deserving, because he said, I don't even want to burden you guys with taking care of me. I'll work with my own hands. He had the right, but even he then would forgo it. And you could see that even then he's struggling over and over again with these big, I'm an apostle coming in, other guys, and they're touting themselves or who they are. And the people would run to them and they would shun Paul. And he's like, what's going on with you people? I'm here out of love. David Doty (27:32.888) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (27:41.571) and I'm not trying to put any burdens for you to take care of me and I'm trying to help you and you're running to these guys because they say, I am the apostle, you should look to me. It's not new what you see going on in the churches is the same today. The people don't know how to see the counterfeit because the counterfeit works off of exactly what we talk about, but it makes a carnal perspective. So if you're not connected with God and learning how to discern what the real is, you're gonna get suckered. You know, there's only so much any person can tell you. David Doty (27:49.71) Right. Michael Mishkin (28:10.149) but the whole idea is not to tell you what to do. It's letting you understand a perspective of how it should be, but you've gotta go to God. You've gotta spend the time with him so that his spirit helps you to be able to see the difference. Michael can never ever explain to you everything you need to know and then you're sufficient. I'm just here shaking you saying, wake up, you're being lied to. If you really wanna go to heaven or not go to hell, Guess what? You're going to hell. Yes, you. You're going to hell. You're not with him. Everybody watching this, you're not with him no matter what you think because you're not on your face crying out to him, letting his spirit in and truly directing your life. You have idol worship in your life and you need to uproot those idols and you can only do it by the power of the Spirit of God. So I'm warning all of these church people. Most of you are not going where you think you're going. This is the way and it's through your dedication where you seek first his kingdom, his righteousness, nothing else matters and you're on your face and his spirit is building you. If you don't have that, if you're like, well, I don't know what God's saying, well, then you've got problems, Because Yeshua said, my sheep hear my voice. They know me, they follow me. David Doty (29:34.346) Amen. It's hard to add anything to that. mean, that's our goal is to inspire people to listen to the Lord. It's just listen and obey. you know, don't do what I say, don't do what Mike says. You know, if you think about the analogy of our families, and Mike and I both have a lot of kids, Michael Mishkin (29:48.347) That's it. David Doty (30:04.466) our job as parents is to train these kids to grow up and become producing adults who are self-sustaining, who make society a better place, right? We're training them to become adults and it's a spiritual concept. And when you referenced discipleship, it's the same thing. We are in need of spiritual parents. to raise up these young believers to become adults. And if you're a spiritual three-year-old who still needs to be told what to do and you need help brushing your teeth and things like that from a spiritual perspective for the sake of the analogy, you're not mature. We are not here to bottle feed anybody. People get bottle fed in their churches. David Doty (31:08.032) And the, when, when art, when Drayton, my oldest son was a baby, he was being watched, during the day by a family member. And, we noticed like in the evenings, after a few days of being watched by this family member, he wouldn't, he wouldn't drink milk from a bottle anymore. And so his mom. went to the family member and said, what are you feeding him during the day? Like, you know, he won't take milk anymore. What's going on? This woman had been giving him sweet tea in a bottle when he was a couple months old and it tasted really good, but it was so bad for him. And then he didn't want nutritious milk anymore. You know, and that's what a lot of these churches are doing. They're giving you sweet tea and it tastes really good. but it's not helping you, you're not growing. Eat your peas, eat your carrots. And eventually we get to this place that we can start feeding ourselves steak. mean, even meat, when your children are small, you cut it for them. Michael Mishkin (32:16.123) It's all pro- David Doty (32:26.786) and then they get mature enough that they can handle their own fork and knife. And God gave us all of these examples to show us things, to demonstrate spiritual truths. Michael Mishkin (32:38.007) did he give it to us? That's the reason why they happen. Why do we eat? Why do we drink? I mean, why do we breathe? Why do we have discipleship? You know, I mean, all of these things, why do we have that? Parenting was existing because of discipleship. Not the other way around. Discipleship is parenting. And that's a concept of God that the older people should be serving the new ones. to rise up so that they can walk as peers when they get to the right level and they can handle the world that they're in. That's what discipleship is supposed to be. You're a guide. Otherwise, he could have had us pop right out the side and be the same size and just another duplicate. But nobody thinks about why we do what we do. Why do we breathe? We don't have to breathe. Well, science says it. Forget science. God made science. Everything in the natural realm was made to reflect. David Doty (33:34.414) That's right. Michael Mishkin (33:37.615) who he is and what he's doing. So he could have just had energy from the sun without breathing. Breathing is a spiritual concept that man can't live without the breath of life, which is what he breathed into Adam and we live. And it's a constant reminder that you live by the breath of God and that one day that breath is gonna stop and you're done. It's right there in front of our faces, but we don't realize that eating food. We don't have to eat food, He made it that way. That what we put into us now sustains us and grows us. Well, that's what happens spiritually with the Word of God. The Word of God feeds our spirit for Him to grow. And if you're not getting the Word of God in you, you're not growing the spirit. So that's why physically we have that. It's all there around us. Paul talks about that in Romans 1. If you think I'm lying to you. But that's the thing people don't say, all these things you should be learning from the Spirit. I learned it from God. Very basic things that we do, but yet you follow the program. You know, why is it on the sixth day, God made the animals first, and then he made man in his image? Nobody thinks about that. Because when we understand that the land represents the people of God, but first on the sixth day, which is coming towards the finishing of his plan, David Doty (34:44.398) you Michael Mishkin (35:03.407) that he's gonna make the animals, which are people of God, but they still adhere to the rules and ways of the land. And then he says, let us make man in our image. We're at the finality. There's gonna be man, which are the true people of God who rise up and they totally reflect God of who he is and what he's doing. And they rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air. That's all encapsulated in pictures. And unless you learn how to encode those things, You're just like, yeah, that's what it is. I don't know. I think the dinosaurs are in there somewhere because they keep telling us about evolution and there is dinosaur bones. yeah, that's what. You don't know anything. You know nothing. David Doty (35:43.67) This is why I stopped reading commentaries because so many of the commentaries are rooted in false teachings and it's just reinforcing. That's why I stopped buying study Bibles. I don't want a Bible with footnotes. This Bible that I'm using right now, I've been using for the last couple of years on our daily Bible reading. It's the Christian Standard Bible and it's pretty good as far as a literal translation. And when they try to put stuff in terms that we would understand, as opposed to what's literally there in the Hebrew or the Greek, there will be a footnote that says what it literally was. So like when it talked about Goliath, it says he was nine feet tall or whatever, instead of six cubits or six and a half cubits or whatever. And that's just to make it relevant for us today, because we don't know what a cubit is. Right? But the footnotes that try to explain eschatology, don't read them. Only read them if you want to know what's not accurate, because I haven't found a single study Bible that's remotely close to accurate when it comes to eschatology and a lot of other things too. Michael Mishkin (37:03.289) a lot of things like that. mean even where we talked about like getting the words what they actually say in Hebrew to actually translate to what they are in English. Like we talked about what it says when we see Nephilim and they're translating it as giants. Which you can believe whatever you want, but the word has nothing to do with what we understand as the idea of giants. That's all I'm saying. You can believe whatever you want. When you say giant to a human being of David Doty (37:29.784) Hmm. Michael Mishkin (37:33.111) America, the word giant in English shows you something greater in stature, a much greater in stature size physically than the actual normal person. That word in Hebrew has nothing to do with that. And that's all I say. Don't call it that. It says nephelin, fallen ones. That's literally means and any interpretation that you're going to try to do. has to come from the wording from the Hebrew or the Greek. And that's the point that I try to tell people is that before you start making any interpretations of what you think you're reading there, especially in eschatology, make sure you have the understanding from the Hebrew or the Greek. And most of your commentaries are not doing it that way. They're doing it from someone else's translation off of that, who that person is trying to do the best they can to bring it off the page from Hebrew. in their intellectual perspective that maybe you'll understand. And then you're going and building a whole under, here's my revelation off of something that has nothing to do with. David Doty (38:42.626) Yeah, yeah. Somebody sent me a message through the Bible in Order website this morning asking for, know, like what would, this person received a word from the Lord as they were walking and praying this morning and it. She was saying like, what would you do with this? I don't remember the question, but do you have any suggestions on how to do a deeper study? And I was like, I use Bible Hub. I go here, it's got links to all of the words in the Greek and in the Hebrew. You can just click, click, click, and you have answers straight from the word of God rather than commentaries, which a lot of times, most of the time, 99 % of the time are just man's opinion, you know, and so we get way off track and I'm not saying that the Nephilim weren't 12 to 15 feet tall or not or nine feet like Goliath, maybe Goliath was a descendant, you know, whatever, you can have those conversations, but we're just saying stick to the Word of God. All of this other stuff is helpful, you know, I mean, it's interesting, it's not necessarily helpful. But when we're determining what God is saying, just focus on the word of God. You don't, we have the Holy Spirit. We don't need a commentator from 50 years ago who was deluded on some things. Not saying the guy's an unbeliever, I'm not saying he's a bad person, but he, my grandmother, God bless her, she loved the Lord Jesus. She was talking about Jesus everywhere she went to the waitress. mean, you couldn't, go anywhere. She was famous in her small town for the purple woman, she always wore purple, for the purple lady. And she was always talking about Jesus. But she also was dead wrong on some things. I'm not trying to disrespect her, but some of her theology was just off. And if we are going to mature, David Doty (40:58.826) and actually disciple people, parent them, and become mature ourselves and help other people become mature, we have to get back to the basics and have a solid foundation built on truth, a solid rock, so that we can actually build a structure that goes beyond a one-story shed. Michael Mishkin (41:21.339) And you know, when you're reading this stuff and let's say you have the interlinear, you're translating words, the biggest thing that you have for yourself with the Spirit is questions. And this is what people don't, this is why people really have struggles because they may not understand something, but they don't ask God the questions. You know, when you break down the simple wording of things, or like, you know, let's just talk about like in the garden. You know, when you get to understand God of this big beyond the beyond, knows everything before anything was created, knew every thought in your head, and you gotta really put that into perspective how that's beyond anything. This is not a guy, even though there's symbolic reflections in Daniel as if the, saw the ancient of days sitting on a throne, it's all symbolic. The actual father is not two arms, two legs and a head. He's beyond and in everything. He said, David said, if I go down to the depths of hell, you are there. So that's what the whole understanding when you understand the perspective of the Father. So now this beyond amazingly brilliant being creates everything, makes these people, sticks them in a garden and then says, hey, you can have everything here, but not this tree. Your thoughts should be like, why did you do that? If you didn't want them to touch it, why did you do that? This is where thinking comes in. That's asking questions. And you can ask questions to God. And that's how you start to glean and ask him questions. And he starts to help you to realize that what you're seeing there in that little overly simplified picture is a greater perspective that he can reveal of really the big picture of who he is and what he's doing. This wasn't about, I made everything great. This is awesome. I just had this one thing for them not to, man, they touched it. Well, let's go a different direction then. No, then you don't know God. David Doty (43:19.16) Right. Right. Well, I think a lot of us have been trained to stop asking questions. Right. And a lot of us who had children, I mean, you know, you have five boys when they were when they were little. I don't know about you and your parenting style necessarily. But when I when my kids were little, I know I was very immature myself in my 20s when I started having kids. Drayden was born when I was 22. And so when he was five or Michael Mishkin (43:25.007) Thanks, David Doty (43:48.162) Let's say when he was three and I was 25 and working 60 hours a week, coming home and tired. And he was like, why this? Why that? Why this? Why that? I was probably telling him, stop asking questions. Stop it. And that was drilled into our heads because we as, as parents are immature dealing with our own stuff. And I mean, obviously some parents are much better than others. I'm not going to say everybody and Not everybody's as immature or bad as I was at that age, 25 years ago. And I know myself now I'm much better and more patient with my kids than I was back then. I've matured a lot, thankfully, in 25 years. But the point of the matter is we've been trained, we've been conditioned to not ask questions. Like we're wearing people out, we're annoying people, it's disrespectful. In our school systems in the West, you don't interrupt the teacher to ask questions. That's disrespectful. And so we're conditioned by society to not ask, but God is like, ask, ask and you will receive when you ask, ask. Jesus was continually saying, ask and you shall receive, telling us parables in Luke 11 and other places about how to pray. And in James, it says, you have not because you ask not. We need to learn how to ask. And God is anxious. He wants to give us the manna, the fresh bread, the result of our intimacy with Him, if we're just willing to be intimate with Him. Michael Mishkin (45:38.939) All this is exactly right. Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be open. All of this is the active part of your relationship with Him. A humble heart is what receives God. That means you're open. As you're open, you want to receive. If you ask a question, you have a void. That's what a question is. It's a void. It's an emptiness. And when you're looking for the answer, it's the substance. Can you fill the substance with the lack? David Doty (45:59.47) Hmm. Michael Mishkin (46:06.021) People don't think about that. They don't realize what asking a question is. I am empty on a perspective understanding. Could you please fill that with the substance that I'm looking for? So that's what God is looking to do. So if you're humble, you're open, you ask a question and he can now download. He's infinite in all wisdom. He can't just like, all right, bang, you'll explode. So he needs you to invite each aspect of that understanding as you're going with him. David Doty (46:15.086) you Michael Mishkin (46:35.163) That's interactive. That's a father to a child. That's what he wants to do. mean, your baby's born. Do you just sit down with him and just start downloading everything that you possibly could know to him in two seconds? No. The whole idea of walking alongside as a parent is to guide, and when they do ask questions, you could properly fill the void. Now, as a parent, to truly be a parent, you gotta be founded on the right principles. Even if you're not a believer in God, People think they're a good parent just because they put food on the table. No, you're not. You're a good parent if you're guiding them in a character that is proper and cordial to their fellow man, regardless of whether you believe in God or not. You're correcting selfish attributes that the common carnal, even in children, they, I want, I want, I want, that's what kids are. I want, I want, I want, and you gotta tell them no, no, no. David Doty (47:14.69) Hmm. Right. Michael Mishkin (47:27.909) You you leave it to kids, they're gonna, want candy all the time and I just wanna watch play my video games. No, no, you can't have that. And then you're hopefully stimulating them in such a way where they could be corrected and learn what's the right way for them to build their character in a true, humble, giving character, not a parasite that takes off of others, that only thinks of himself. Because all sin is selfishness, that's it. Break all sin down, it's... David Doty (47:56.493) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (47:57.529) Me first. That's it. If you're really in God's character, it's you first. How simple can we just break everything down to? Just write, just like that. David Doty (48:04.302) Hmm. David Doty (48:08.952) That's right. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. What does that mean? It means think about what he wants and do that. Love other people. What does that mean? Think about what they want and do that. And we're training our kids to be focused and sensitive to what God wants and what other people want. Michael Mishkin (48:30.585) And it has to be done according to a basis for their actual betterment, not according to, because a drug addict will want you to give them more heroin or money for heroin. That's not how you it. Exactly, God will show you that when you're gonna help somebody, there's a way to help them for their true betterment. They don't dictate it. If they need help, you don't take their way of telling you how to help them. You take God's way on how to truly help them. David Doty (48:42.19) That's why we put God first. That's right. Michael Mishkin (49:00.089) And if they don't receive it, that's their business. But what you're gonna do is according to God's standards, which will truly help somebody in the right way according to God. So there's the difference. David Doty (49:11.394) Right. Amen. Well, let's wrap this up because we're about 49 minutes in. would you mind closing us in prayer, Mike? And would you please pray for George, however the spirit leads you? Michael Mishkin (49:31.419) Father in heaven, I thank you Lord for another opportunity to discuss different perspectives of your kingdom to show more of the true way versus the counterfeit which is so much looking like the true way but has no power. It's a form of godliness but denies the power. It's anti-Christ. The true anti-Christ is now. It's not some guy coming that's gonna build a temple in Israel. That's part of the lies that people have been taught. We have Antichrist now where carnality, our flesh is sitting in this temple that Paul says that we are, and it's saying God is doing this and we're being lied to and we're not growing according to the spirit man in true maturity and faith and connection to you. So I cut that off in the name of Yeshua and I pray that all those who are truly hungry and humble. and want to really be made into your image would seek you with all their heart and would allow your spirit in to uproot all the false things that they've been taught that are actually separating them from you. I lift up George specifically for this as he seeks and he jumps on to just hear us. May your spirit fill him to overflowing and give him the revelation of these things and work out whatever is going on in his life by your spirit. according to your spirit, that he will seek you and you'll give him revelation for him that you know and that he will abide by it, that he will get that revelation and he'll walk in it and he'll see the results which are unto life and joy and peace in the spirit. And that's how we know when things are truly of you by the fruit that comes out unto life and blessing and peace in you. So may you give that to him because he's seeking. Many are talkers. They say they are, but they want to be anchored in their idol worship that they think is what they've learned in you. We're not talking about them. Like Yeshua said, I don't pray for the world. I pray for those that you have given me in the world. So even Yeshua distinguished the true people and that was even inside of Israel. Not everybody in Israel came along because they wanted their religion. They didn't care about his way. But we want the true sons of God to be revealed. Michael Mishkin (51:57.967) and only by your spirit can that be. Bring us up, raise us up right now and bring us together in love, unity, order and balance in Yeshua's name. David Doty (52:11.575) Amen. Well, God bless y'all. Thanks for tuning in today and we'll see you soon. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thinkpodcast.substack.com [https://thinkpodcast.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Politics, Faith, and the Search for Truth

In this conversation, David Doty and Michael Mishkin explore the complexities of discernment in understanding truth, particularly in the context of faith, politics, and societal issues. They discuss the importance of a true relationship with God, the challenges posed by modern media, and the necessity of critical thinking in navigating current events. The dialogue emphasizes the need for individuals to seek God's perspective and to be aware of the deceptive nature of the world around them. In this conversation, David Doty and Michael Mishkin explore the complexities of faith, the accuracy of scripture, and the challenges posed by secular education. They emphasize the importance of seeking truth, personal transformation, and the need for humility in understanding God's word. The discussion critiques modern church practices and highlights the necessity of genuine devotion to God and community. Ultimately, they encourage listeners to hear God's voice and obey His guidance in their lives. takeaways * Discernment is crucial in understanding truth from God's perspective. * Many people follow a false gospel that does not lead to true transformation. * A true relationship with God involves hearing His voice and being led by the Spirit. * The media often presents a distorted view of reality, requiring critical thinking. * Understanding current events requires a deep relationship with God and discernment. * The concept of freedom is often an illusion in modern society. * Gender identity issues are viewed through a biblical lens as a distortion of God's design. * Many people are unaware of the true nature of their reality, living in a 'cesspool'. * The importance of questioning mainstream narratives and seeking the truth. * Good intentions do not guarantee a place in heaven; alignment with God's will is essential. The accuracy of scripture is often questioned due to various translations and interpretations. * Seeking truth requires a genuine desire to know God and His word. * Personal transformation is essential for understanding and accepting faith. * Secular education can challenge one's beliefs and understanding of scripture. * Many churches today fail to equip believers with a strong foundation in faith. * The importance of personal experience in understanding God's truth cannot be overstated. * Humility is key in recognizing one's need for God and His guidance. * Modern church practices often stray from biblical teachings and community involvement. * Understanding God's purpose requires a commitment to His ways and teachings. * Hearing God's voice is crucial for spiritual growth and obedience. Transcript: David Doty (00:01.849) Privacy was set to only me like you know And I think it's probably because I was messing around I was testing it at one point and I Set it to where I was like no wonder nobody's watching on Facebook like not a single like zero Not even my mom, which is weird. Usually at least my mom would you know see? Michael Mishkin (00:24.706) Mm-hmm. David Doty (00:29.593) Let's see, it says that we're live. We're live on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I'm gonna try to get the Facebook. Check the privacy. Got Michael Mishkin, David Doty. Michael Mishkin (00:50.626) can see if it's on my phone. David Doty (00:53.133) Yeah. Edit audience. I'm going to make it public. David Doty (01:00.963) There we go. And we're going to go live. We're to talk about some fun stuff today that's going to make some people. feel great about everything. It's gonna be fun. All right. So we'll see. We got YouTube working. And we'll see. We'll see if anybody joins and maybe if people have some questions. Michael Mishkin (01:36.334) Alright. So you wanted to discuss proper discernment. How do we know if we're really discerning? David Doty (01:48.409) How do we know if we're discerning truth, right? Because, right, from God, because you all have an opinion, I'll have an opinion, maybe you're right and I'm wrong, but if we both think we're right, we're not gonna be able to come together in unity. And Jesus prayed, we all have one, right? We all have one. So there's a gentleman, Michael Mishkin (01:51.822) from God. Michael Mishkin (02:01.762) Mm-hmm. We know the old adage about opinions, right? David Doty (02:16.3) people close down here will know who I'm talking about probably. And I don't think he'd mind me even saying his name, but I won't say his name. There's a gentleman who goes to our home church who David Doty (02:29.795) I don't mind he, I don't think he would even mind me saying that he hates President Trump. And when I first was getting to know this guy, maybe the second time I met him, he kind of went there and politically said, I just, I can't stand this man. And I was like, are you a Democrat? He said, no, like he, you he was, he was very conservative. We haven't talked in detail. I think my suspicion is he heard some of those old tapes about. things that Trump said, you know, the whole locker room talk stuff. He probably watches the news and has heard some of these quotes and how, like, you know, I I don't know. I don't know if he watches the news, but I think he's gotten some sources that would, for whatever reason, he's a very godly spirit filled man. That's my point though. He's a spirit filled man who loves the Lord. He's very wise as I've gotten to know him. He's become a very close friend. learned so much from him. And yet on this specific issue, we would disagree wildly on a lot of stuff. And so I'm going, how do I reconcile this gentleman? with my position, like, am I wrong? Is he wrong? Are we both wrong? And then, you know, we have these Facebook conversations or social media, like, you know, I'll put something out there. Different people, people I know who are even pastors will comment on some of my stuff, and I feel like they're trolling me. I mean, I get more flack from other Christians. David Doty (04:31.021) than I do from Democrats on a lot of stuff. And I'm not overly political, but I'm a seeker of truth. And so maybe it would be helpful to have a conversation with you today about like, how do we determine or discern what God's will is and what God's opinion is on stuff? What's right in God's eyes versus your eyes or mine? Michael Mishkin (04:57.272) Well, first thing we'll have to say in all of this is we're not here to defend Trump. This is not our idol. don't, you know, at any point he could become Mr. Evil and do horrible things. It still remains to be seen, you know, if all the things he said will even come about. But we're not here to say, yeah, this is the man of God, you know. But we do need to discuss discernment. How do we discern what God's perspective is? David Doty (05:03.895) Amen. Michael Mishkin (05:27.266) versus our own. And this is the whole purpose of what the true gospel message is about. Again, I have to bring out the foundation, the true foundation of Yeshua, the Messiah, HaMashiach, where that foundation is on the true gospel, which is good news. You don't have to be that old guy anymore that Adam made us all into. I can transform you into the image of God if you let me. And... Most people are not following that true gospel. Most people's foundations are sand. Most people's perspective understanding of God is the false gospel that the church peddles, which most churches are peddling that, which is teaching you to just say a prayer, you're saved, you're going to heaven. Now talk to people at work. And it does not foster you to kill that old guy, which is all the ways you think, all the ways you do things, and all the ways that you want to walk in life. Your life is over and you're now being renewed in God to be led by Him. Which means you gotta learn how to hear His voice, which is what Yeshua said, my sheep hear my voice. They know me and they follow me. And there's plenty of people that Yeshua said, you they'll come to Him in that day and say, Lord, didn't we cast out demons? Didn't we heal the sick? Didn't we, you know, raise the dead in your name? I mean, all the things that he says we're supposed to do, and he's gonna say, get away from me, I never knew you. So the whole kingdom, what's that? David Doty (07:03.499) and you do evil things. And you do evil things. You're worker of iniquity. Michael Mishkin (07:09.122) worker of iniquity. but they don't think so. But this is of God. And they may even hear a voice and it's demons. You have to make sure you're grounded on God's perspective of being transformed into his likeness and the fruit of it is his character is being grown in you. The old man is going and whatever he tells you to do is what you do. And if he doesn't tell you to do something, you sit down, shut up. and just wait for commands from the king, because it's his kingdom, not your kingdom. So in that basis, if you're getting to know God, look at Paul, for example. Paul got smacked on his tuchus by the spirit, blinded, and he's brought to, you know, to the place where he's gonna have the guy lay hands on him, the scales fall off, and right away he starts to preach and they wanna kill him. And then he goes off into Arabia for three years and then he goes to Tarsus until Barnabas eventually tries to get him. So in all that time, he's spending time with the Lord, as you could see. I mean, he's getting these revelations. This wasn't a snap of a finger. So it's over three years, over three years, he's being trained and getting to know the true Messiah, Yeshua, by the Spirit, which is a true gospel message according to what the apostles were getting when they were walking around. with Yeshua. So we have to get that. We think we get that when we get saved we go to church. You do not. You get false gospel. You get cheap milk that allows you to be a kindergartner and maybe a first grader and then you're stunted. Then you don't really get led by the Spirit. You get led by the pastor. The pastor tells you what you should be doing, what you should be wearing, how you should be behaving. All of that is false. All of that is not the design of God. Therefore, you can't truly discern. Now you imitate them. I see videos of little children and they're all, people are enamored by, wow, that's so cool. This little three-year-old is screaming in the microphone, Jesus, we're gonna do that, Jesus. And they're all happy about that. Why? He's just mimicking what he sees the adults doing. That's not knowing God. Michael Mishkin (09:31.086) But that's no different than what most people going to church do. So you've been bred in the counterfeit. Looks just like the real, but it has a form of godliness, but denies the power. Because the kingdom of God and the true gospel is about power, not about persuasive words, not about I like it this way or I like it that way. No, I'm a Baptist. No, I'm a Pentecostal. So all of this is fake. And most people believe the fake. Most people are on the wide road leading to destruction. Most people are not that remnant that will truly be brought unto God when the finality comes. David Doty (10:12.259) Well, so let's, let's look at some modern day, very specific examples. hello to George from he's in Moultrie Georgia today. He says it's important that we unite and seek truth. Amen, brother. And this dude right here, George encourages me every day. He comments on pretty much every video that I put on YouTube and is just like, Hey, I agree. Hey, great job. Hey, thank you. Like, you know, it's just so encouraging. So thank you, George. God bless you. And I pray for you every time I read one your comments and just pray that God would bless you. So I thank you. I appreciate you. so in 2025, in a very highly contested political environment where there are God fearing people on both sides of the Ukraine war, right? I mean, I've adopted two kids from Ukraine. I've spent months in that country. We have people there who we love. We know people who have been killed in the last three years. we know people whose facilities have been bombed and I mean, it's, it's very close to our hearts. What's going on over there. And I see a lot of those people who I love desperately saying I stand with Ukraine. Zelensky is a hero. You know, and all of all of that stuff. How do we know? David Doty (11:51.277) How do we know which side of this particular issue God is on? Or is it even possible for us to know? Michael Mishkin (12:02.406) it's definitely possible, that's for sure. It's a matter of you have a relationship with God, a true relationship with Him, He'll show you. You pray and you ask Him these questions. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. James talks about that if any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God and the Father of lights will bountifully bring it upon you. But you should not waver. What does he mean that you should not waver? there are plenty of people that are caught between the flesh and the spirit. So you keep going back and forth between two opinions. The carnal guy is still there. So the whole purpose of us coming into the kingdom is to die to our flesh, going through the cross. That's why Yeshua died on a cross. The cross is the death of the way we think, the way we do things, and how we walk in life. And if we're truly dying and understanding, then we will get to see behind the scenes. If you're really getting to know God and understanding what he's doing here, understand his big picture, you're really spending time to really see why he's doing what he's doing, then you start to get the sermon of this world and you start to see behind the scenes what's behind the curtain. Because here's a little news flash, your fellow man does not care about you. They're not out for your well-being, especially the leaders of these countries. It's very rare to have... Leaders of a country that really care about the people, most of them are corrupt. They are caring about the powerhouses behind the scenes that actually have the money and they have the threatening pull that if they don't follow their ways, they're gonna be taken out or their family will be taken out or something like that. But you don't really learn and understand that stuff because you don't wanna believe it. You don't wanna believe that the world that you live in is a lie. So you see it from the front face and whatever the news media propaganda pumps out, you take it in and say, yeah, yeah. And they're just lying through their teeth. The news is not news. It is straight up propaganda there to tell you lies. So how do you know, huh? David Doty (14:13.027) How do you know that? How do you know that though? Michael Mishkin (14:17.56) Well, that's through a lot of research and understanding of what's gone on in history. You have to really understand, just, know, if anybody really wants to go and do that and dive into things that have happened, look up the projects of the CIA and secret government organization projects. There's one called Project Mockingbird, where the CIA literally had a project where they were gonna take control of the media and they're gonna tell you what they want you to know. and it's gonna come through all the media. This happened, this is from years ago and they still do it today. But that's just one of many, many things. But if you don't really have the discernment, if you're not connected to the Father, if you're not really hearing, then you're gonna be going on the wrong ways of doing this. He has to guide us into all truth. He has to show us because there's a lot of false information out there. I see plenty of it. Discernment is he gives you by the truth that you're built in. There's a spiritual trigger now. It's like you walk in it. It's like a banker who's so counting money and they're so equipped with seeing the 20s and it's like, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. There's so much, they see it all the time. They're real so well. When a counterfeit comes along, boom, they catch it. This is not real. You have to be so acquainted with what's real, with what's true. You gotta be ingrained. You gotta be immersed in it. You gotta be continually. built in that by spending time with him and reading his word and renewing your mind that you start to see behind everything. You don't, the world is not the way it is. The world is a big lie. And if you think you're with God and you think the world is just, we're growing up now, I believe in Jesus, I'm saved and now my life is all, you don't know God. Your life should change. Meaning you're gonna see through everything. You're gonna see the whole operation of how mankind does things. And you're gonna see you are living in an invisible prison. That everything that we do is not meant for us to be, we're not free. We have to work to pay our bills and if we don't pay our bills they're gonna take away our stuff and then we gotta go and struggle to get an education. If we go into the wrong education they're gonna turn our kids into women and all this stuff is waiting to get you. But if you can't see that, you're still blind. Michael Mishkin (16:38.446) So you're not really learning from the truth. Yeshua is the truth. Not my truth, not someone else's truth, is the absolute truth that comes from the Father from the beginning. If you're truly aligned with the truth, it shines the light on everything else and you start to see that you're living in a cesspool. That's the truth. David Doty (16:56.451) So you bring up a great example about children being transitioned or the whole gender thing. I saw a post from somebody I'm connected with on Facebook who I have a lot of respect for as a person who is a school teacher. And with the new stuff, with the Department of Education and stuff like that, this person was upset that they, among other things, I mean, there was a litany of things listed about the whole education system and the things that they as teachers are no longer allowed to do or things that they must now do. And it had to do with DEI and a lot of other things. But included in that was now we're required to refer to the children by the gender that they were assigned at birth. I'm like, okay, so That's a huge red flag. That's to me, if you are on the side of allowing children to identify with different genders, you're against God. Cut and dried. That is a very clear litmus test for anybody, regardless of your political affiliation or anything else. If you are four little boys at the age of whatever little, little kids of changing their gender, there's that's demonic. Michael Mishkin (18:37.016) explain why. David Doty (18:38.765) Please do. Michael Mishkin (18:41.686) In this thing called the Bible, especially the first five books, we call it Torah, which is the law as Christians like to call it. It's instruction is the literal terminology. And in that instruction given to Israel, they were given all of these different laws, precepts and decrees. know, commandments are the big thing. And then there's aspects of it that all describe. really the spiritual understanding of God encapsulated in physical format. The people of Israel, their covenant with God was to live in a physical formation of the spiritual understandings that Yeshua brings later. One of those laws says, man shall not wear women's clothing and a woman should not wear man's clothing. This is a law. Now, why would he say that? Everyone just says, okay, don't wear that clothing or whatever, but it's a law, it's a sin. homosexuality of a man lies with a man as a woman it's a sin. a man has his father's wife it's a sin and all for a reason everything has spiritual meaning behind it. Behind this law is talking about if a man wears women's clothing it's symbolically representing a man should not try to take on the role as a woman and a woman should not try to take on the role as a man. Okay that's a law we shouldn't do that God's a wild Why do we care? Who cares? Because symbolically what that's representing is man is made in the image of God. Woman is made in the image of man. And that the whole design of man and woman being made was to show the illustration of God and man and how they become one. So we are living that example. We're supposed to be living that proper expression of God. Sin is where we're distorting. the expression of God. We're changing things the way he made it. Everything he made, he made a certain way to express him, who he is and what he's doing. So he wants us to, it's all his and it's all about expressing him. Everything we do expresses him. It says that we're without excuse. It doesn't matter whether you want to believe in him or not, that the very creation expresses his invisible qualities and the power of God. It's explaining who he is. David Doty (20:41.495) And it's all his, by the way, it's all his. Michael Mishkin (20:58.67) So if you wanna now distort that picture, you're sinning, you're defying God and you're out of alignment. You don't get to do whatever you want. You're supposed to, if you really want God, you gotta align with his way by his spirit. So if a man says, don't wanna be the image of God, I wanna be like the mankind. And the woman says, no, I'm God. And you have illustrations like that. Jezebel and Ahab, they weren't, you he was a man, but he subverted his role and she made her. to operate in the man role where she was the one who wore the pants and she was an atrocity to God because it's basically man telling God what to do. I'm gonna tell you what to do. And that's a no-no. I wanna see any human dare stare in the face of God and say, listen here, I'm gonna tell you. Bye-bye. Don't even think about it. Picture when Moses was on the mountain and he was shaking them out with fire and blasting and quaking. David Doty (21:43.022) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (21:58.498) these people were rattling in their boots and they were defecating in their pants. Do not mess with the all-powerful God and don't take his patience and forbearance for granted. So these are important things to understand that, you know, that's just an example of why that's wrong. You know, we're living in an age now where we call evil good and good evil. Well, they don't understand because they don't know what the difference is because they don't look to God. They don't want to know, but they want to run them up. But it is up to the people of God to know the truth and understand what's right and they're supposed to stand for it and reflect that and shine that light. So that's where things go astray. And that's just one example. David Doty (22:41.943) Yeah. Well, and to go back to Zelensky in Ukraine, you know, a lot of people who really dislike Trump want to judge Trump for things he didn't said in the past. He's also accused of a lot of things he did not do. If you really look into the court cases and the different evidences that were put out, there's a lot of things that he was that he was charged with and accused of like rape that he didn't actually do. If you, if you really dig into it and look at the evidence. and listen to the testimonies of the different people instead of just reading the headlines or believing what we're told by the news. So there's that. But there's also tons of video of Zelensky doing all kinds of nasty stuff on video. mean, it's crazy. And so, you know, it should tell us again, if we're willing to look at the facts and do some research. Michael Mishkin (23:32.75) Mm-hmm. David Doty (23:39.181) we should see a discrepancy that the mainstream news media, even if it's like Fox News is supposed to be conservative and CNN is more liberal or MSNBC or whatever, you'll see that they both report the exact same stories. So Fox might give you a more conservative or right-wing approach to those stories. But there's still a whole lot of stuff that happens in the world on a daily basis that never makes it to the news. 99 % of what takes place in the world never makes it to the mainstream news channels. And most of the people, most of the quote unquote educated people around the world get their news from the mainstream news media. That's starting to change because more and more people are starting to see how Michael Mishkin (24:20.174) Mm-hmm. David Doty (24:34.007) different it is from reality. those the mainstream news was created for two things. One is to tell us how to think. The second thing is to divide us. Michael Mishkin (24:47.214) Mm-hmm. David Doty (24:49.101) Fox and CNN, they'll spin the same story in different ways in order to divide us. It's indoctrination. And so we've been conditioned to think a certain way to have a specific response. And as a result, we're divided and we're weak. So how do we get outside of that? What are some other sources that we can go to to get these, get information like Michael Mishkin (24:56.184) Mm-hmm. David Doty (25:16.621) There, there might be somebody watching this right now, either on Facebook or YouTube or somewhere else that's saying, wait a second. How is it that you saw videos of Zelensky? I never heard of that before. Like where do you get that stuff? Michael Mishkin (25:34.456) Well, and the biggest thing about this is that the easiest thing that they work off of is a passive mind. And if anybody wants to understand what that means is that you don't actually take, stop the information, go, wait a minute, how do I know this is true? Especially from the mainstream media. I mean, if you're seeing MSNBC, they're just, you could just stop everything they're saying because it's just lie after lie after lie. mean, they just ridiculous, but all of them are. mean, like you said, Fox News, It sticks a little bit here and there and then puts a whole lot of filler in there. But the key about what we're trying to do in discernment is walking in an active mind. An active mind thinks. It doesn't just allow the information to come in. Anytime I see something, you could watch the mainstream media. As long as you have an active mind, you'd be like, wait a minute. So you're telling me he did this, that, you know, why would he do that? Explain that to me. How did that work? Put that together. Nobody asks that on a passive mind. you just told me he raped somebody. Okay, he raped somebody. No. How do I know that that's true? How do I know you didn't plant that? How do I know? Can you show me exactly where it came from? Let's see where this person came from and explaining it because you know what? There are people who don't like him and they know if they lie and they put it out on a media source here, most people will just take it in. That should be your first skepticism right there. But an active mind is one that questions everything. You you look at whatever it is you deal with and you go, okay, this is what I'm seeing here. And you know, there's the old adage and most people don't go with it. Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear. That's absolutely true, especially in this day. Now it's believe 10 % of what you see and none of what you hear. Because you're getting lies like you wouldn't believe. You have to learn how to investigate. You have to learn how to apply questions to everything coming along to you and get your emotions. out of the way. Your worst enemy is your emotions. What you have built around through years of perspective according to yourself and what's being triggered, especially by the mainstream media, is your emotions. And that blocks you from reasonably seeking out the truth. Now here's the difference with those remnant that actually do get saved and those who do get to know God. Paul speaks in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. David Doty (27:32.334) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (27:59.828) after he explains about the man of lawlessness and how Yeshua will come and destroy him with the breath of his mouth. And he says, a powerful delusion has been put upon the people, mainly the people of God, the church, to believe a lie, to believe a lie by God, it says. A powerful delusion by God was put upon the church. Read it. To believe the lie and why? the most powerful line to really explain it, because they did not receive a love for the truth to be saved. That's the difference between who's really gonna be with God and who's not. Very powerful. You have to want the truth more than everything, and that means your emotions are gonna rise up against things you do. I can't believe this or whatever. It's like Neo when he pops out of the matrix and he sees what the real world is like. and he's like, can't handle it, he's freaking out. And then he's like, you know, he says he's gonna pop and he throws up because that's what's gonna happen to you. When you really decide you wanna go for the truth, your world is gonna shake. You're gonna be like, what am I living in? And it's gonna be a time of transition and you're gonna feel sick when you realize what you've been living in. And that's what happens to most people. What's that? The Truman Show is another example of that. Yes, The Matrix is absolutely true. Just a wake up call for you. David Doty (29:10.499) Mm-hmm. David Doty (29:16.375) It's the Truman Show. It's the Truman Show. It's the Truman Show. Michael Mishkin (29:29.078) You are plugged in. You're being told a lie. And the only way out is you have to be determined to go after what is really true. But you can't go back once you take that red pill. And God is the one who has to bring you there. You have to be truly engaged with him. You can't accept him with your lucky rabbit's foot and think you're going to heaven. If that's why you chose God, bye bye. You're not going there. You're going to hell. And let me tell you, you're going to be standing in line right to next door to all those wonderful, nice people that you thought were good people. because that's most of the people going to hell. Good people in your own eyes do not go to heaven because heaven is being with God. And if you're not being with him here, which is the kingdom of God is at hand, then you ain't being with him there. You can't do things your way, the way you like it and think you're gonna be with God. That's the truth. David Doty (30:22.041) Well, you brought up something. You talked a lot about scripture. How do we know that the scripture is accurate? How do we know that the Bible is the word of God, especially when there are so many different translations of the Bible and different people, different churches would say this book should be in there and this book shouldn't be, you know, I mean, the Catholic book has, the Catholic Bible has different books in it. The Ethiopian Bible has the book of Enoch in it. The American church, you know. by and large doesn't. So you see all these different versions and translations and some of them have variations in the text of what they offer and obviously words that are translated in different ways. It's, mean, how do we know what's really true and what's of God and what's not? Michael Mishkin (31:13.07) If you're a person that's trying to debate right now, how do I know if the Bible is true? I'm not even gonna, I'm not an apologist. Go away, it's not true for you, okay? Have fun. We're not here to convince you that the Bible's true. You know why? Because before I was a believer, I thought the same way. And nobody can convince me otherwise. And I'm not here to convince you otherwise. You don't believe it's true? You don't know about who wrote it or whatever? You're not seeking the truth, that's why. David Doty (31:13.753) You Michael Mishkin (31:41.646) If you sought the truth and asked God and you really wanted to know, He'll reveal it to you. I'm not here to go and use apologetics to try and say, well, this guy said this and if you think about this and that no, no, it's a lie. Okay, go away because you're not ready. If you really have a love for the truth, then you seek God and He'll show you and you'll be, but you gotta be willing. The key about it is you're trying to put up a defense mechanism of what you already have. That's baloney built inside of you and you're trying to defend that against what is true And you want us to try and explain it so that we can give you an opportunity. Okay, maybe then I'll take a look at how we don't do You don't do any favors go away the only people that are coming into the kingdom of God is people who truly love the truth and are willing to give up the way they see things in life the way they live and Let God in and change them and transform them. That's the true gospel. I'm here to hurt feelings I will not pull punches and I'm actually looking to hit you harder if I didn't hurt you. Because the reality is the kingdom of God for almost 2,000 years has been maligned by these little fruity preachers that try and dance around things and explain things to people. Whereas like, no, the creator of the universe that made everything and put breath in your lungs does not have to explain himself to you, old man. Bow down and understand what truth really is. Humble yourself. seek God in full heart, then you'll know. Because that's what happened to me. When I was not a believer, I'd believe whatever heck I want. You ain't gonna tell me nothing. But when something started to change in my heart because I saw this world and my heart was getting grieved more and more, this hardened heart, I was a piece of garbage. This hardened heart said, you know, I don't understand this world. just, and then people just say that's life. And something in me just said, you know what? And I wasn't looking for God. I was atheist. I said, I just want to know the truth. Not my truth, not someone else's truth. What's the truth? And now my heart was ready and God was able to show me. And he did a certain event that made me realize there's no more such thing as coincidence and there's something behind the scenes. And that just clicked in me. And now I was seeking what the absolute truth was, not what I wanted, not what other guys were telling me. Michael Mishkin (34:03.564) I wanted the absolute truth from the source, the creator of all things. And he gave it to me, and he built me, and he's trained me, and it's a process. I've been growing more and more as I go. That's what it is. Same way you grow up from a little man physically into a person, an adult, is the same way it's gotta work when you're born again and you grow up spiritually. Unfortunately, most of Christianity are kindergartners. They never grow past that. They're stunted in their growth with a lot of... baloney that they've been fed by the mainstream church. David Doty (34:37.401) Well, yeah, I mean, you bring up a great point and I had a very similar experience to you. I never would have considered myself an atheist, but I believed in God and yet I lived my life how I wanted to and it brought me low. You know, my own choices brought me to a place of breaking because I was a failure, complete and total failure in every aspect. then God, when I humbled myself, When I said, I can't do this, I need. I need help, really. And at that point I was able to look to him and he was finally able to work with me because I was letting go. was letting Jesus take the wheel to use that overplayed analogy. I also began looking at some of the apologetics and I think apologetics are helpful as a sense like we... defend what we believe because it's confusing out there in this world, especially like when we send our kids off to college, which I'm not a big fan of, but I know people who grew up in church studying the Bible, who you would think has a, they would have a very firm foundation in scripture. And then they go off to four years of university where they're taking college level. Michael Mishkin (36:03.214) Mm-hmm. David Doty (36:07.769) classes on the Bible that are taught by atheists, atheist professors, and they come out atheist or they come out agnostic or they come out going like, eh, maybe the Bible is true, but it's all allegory. You know, maybe it's, it's not real history because they've been taught by people in positions of authority who claim to be experts. And, and as a result, their life, as far as a walk with God is gone. You know, and, but if you genuinely look into it, if you look into it using unbiased sources, you will find that the scripture, the Bible is the most documented book in all of antiquity. And it's not even close. It's not even close. mean, people want to say, well, did Jesus really say those things that are written on those pages? Well, you have. dozens of eyewitness writings, people who heard Jesus, you have dozens of copies, have hundreds and even thousands of fragments of manuscripts of people within one generation of Jesus writing down his words and they all match versus nobody's questioning whether Homer really wrote the Iliad or the Odyssey. We have like one or two copies that are hundreds and hundreds of years gap from the time that he actually wrote it to when you know, these early earliest manuscripts are so there's a huge double standard by academia to discredit the Bible which shows me and a lot of other people that we can't trust a lot of these secular universities are colleges and professors, I mean that Michael Mishkin (37:54.67) you David Doty (38:04.609) The Dean of the Religion Department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill is a pro. He's a hardcore atheist who's like anti-God. And he's over the religious department, department of religion at this university. And that's true at almost every major university. And we're sending our kids in there like little sheep that don't have a shepherd, they can't defend themselves, most of them, which also is, as you said, it's showing the product of the church that we've brought our kids up in. The churches are ill-equipped to train our children. And the reason we can't get past a kindergarten level is because we're believing things that are not true. And our foundation is built on shifting sands. And you can't build a skyscraper or even a two story building on the foundation that was created for like a lean to shack. Michael Mishkin (39:13.922) that's absolutely correct. And you know people who are going to universities to find out about the Bible, you know, why not go, you let's go to Satan, the father of lies, and ask him if the Bible's true. You know, he runs that stuff. People forget, you know, the book, the Bible is very simple. It's a history book of my people, the people of God, the Jewish people. I'm a Jew. It's my history, you know, from my people going back. and these people experiencing God and showing interaction with God and who he is and what he's doing. And it's been legitimate because it's a true history going down. So you want to go and say it's false. Well, I exist. I came from the lineage of those people. So I'm here and many of us are here. Went all the way down through the Maccabees and they moved mightily and beat back the Greeks and sustained the temple there. And the people should have been... totally demolished then and they were not by the power of God, it was impossible. And then Yeshua comes along, another Jew with a bunch of other Jews and it's more history book of these guys experiencing and guess what? The other Jews that don't believe in him do acknowledge that Jesus was there, Yeshua existed. They don't like him, they don't call him the Messiah, but they even acknowledge and they realize that this guy really made a stirrup of the whole world and they did everything in their power. for the people, Jewish people to not believe and created a whole system around it to say, no, no, no, it's this way. Don't even look at this guy. So a lot of stuff goes on if you're gonna look into the, if this stuff is legitimate. I exist, it's my people. All the people who wrote the Bible pretty much are Jews except for Luke who heard it from Jews, their side. You know, I'm not here to try and, you know, that's as far as I'll even go, you know, but if you're hungry for truth, it goes back to God. Go ask the Creator himself. Don't have me convince you. Why don't I got, can you convince me into your religion, buddy? No, I'm not gonna convince you into my religion. Get out of here. My religion is spend time with God. That's what I'm about. Hear his voice. David Doty (41:20.781) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (41:34.466) be led by his spirit and see the fruit that comes out. That's how you know if it's his voice or a demon that's talking to most people who think they're hearing from God. And yet I just said that. Most of you think you're hearing from God and you're hearing from demons. Why? Because you got the carnal man seated in your temple displaying himself as being God. That's what Paul's talking about in 2 Thessalonians chapter two. The carnal man is not being killed off by the cross and many people are falling away. great rebellion, the great falling away is gonna happen. And it's not our falling away where everybody at once says, hey, we're out of here. It's you're all diverted to a false gospel, false religion, and you allow your carnal man to discern God instead of truly being transformed by the power of his spirit. That's what chapter two is talking about there. So you're all filled with the carnal man displaying it as being God, hearing from demons, and you're go to destruction because you did not receive a love of the truth. so as to be saved. So you think about that now and really, hopefully you get convicted, cut to the quick and get on your knees and humble yourself and cry out to the true God and say, I'm willing to let everything go to have you, which is the true gold of the kingdom is to grow in the deep knowledge of God, of who he is and what he's doing and to become like him. That's the only way. David Doty (42:54.285) Well, you know, when we're confronted with something like this, we have a couple options, right? We could ignore it. We could just keep on scrolling. Some people are going to get mad and respond in some way. And then some people are going to pause and say, well, maybe that applies to me. And that's the sign of humility. And that's what God is looking for. If you're willing to, see, I could get mad and be like, hey, Michael Mishkin (43:18.83) That's correct. David Doty (43:22.445) How dare you say that you don't know me. Or I could say, maybe I have, maybe, maybe I'm wrong. And on the day of Pentecost and Acts two, Peter said to these people, you crucified the son of God and they were cut to the heart. Jesus, a lot of times said very mean things by today's standards. Michael Mishkin (43:25.474) Yes, I do. David Doty (43:51.661) He said some very mean things. He called Peter Satan. Michael Mishkin (43:55.182) That's right. In his good intentions. David Doty (43:59.661) because Peter was like, Jesus, we're not gonna let you be crucified, are you crazy? Jesus, we're not gonna let them hurt you. Jesus said, get away from me Satan. Michael Mishkin (44:03.981) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (44:12.686) He also said, he gave the warning in Matthew 24, he said, many people will come in my name saying I am the Messiah and deceive many. Well, that stopped happening. That means today in your churches, many people will say, yeah, Yeshua is the Messiah and he's gonna lie to you straight up from the pulpit. And you're gonna gobble it all up and go, amen, amen. You know how many times I go into churches and I'm like, flesh, flesh, flesh, flesh, and a little bit spirit, spirit, spirit, flesh, flesh, flesh. Most of these guys are speaking right out of their flesh or out of their rear end, I should say. David Doty (44:48.057) Yeah, well, well said. I think you're probably in. Michael Mishkin (44:50.988) And it sounds good. It sounds like a good message, but the problem is it's not a God message. It's spiritual motivational speaking. If you went to Tony Robbins, that'd be fine, because that's what he does. He's a motivational speaker. That'd be great. I don't need the pastor portraying it as if it's God and giving you a Tony Robbins message. Go out there and be a motivational speaker, fine, but don't be going around coddling people and, you know, giving some sort of practical thing for life. No, your practical thing for life is to die. Kill that flesh. David Doty (45:24.525) Yeah, well, the way church is done today is not scriptural. It's not biblical. The idea that we go to church on a Sunday or a Saturday and we sit in a chair and somebody else leads worship and then somebody gets up and speaks and does a sermon. None of that is in the Bible. None of that is in the Bible. Church wasn't even done that way until 300 years after Jesus was crucified. The whole church system is. worldly. And it's not to say it's all terrible. It's not to say it's all terrible, right? Some good things can do it. God can use anything that we do where a lot of us are in some way, shape or form a byproduct of what God's been doing in the church, but it's not biblical. And if you want to have a true biblical Christianity, you need to move beyond what you're going to be able to get in any Michael Mishkin (46:07.885) in the link. It's not true. David Doty (46:34.187) even a good church in any church because it's not the foundation that Jesus was building on. And I'll say this real quick, right? So in Deuteronomy, Moses is recounting for the Israelite people what they've been doing over the last 40 years. They're getting ready to go into the promised land. And there's a passage in Deuteronomy 6 that Michael Mishkin (46:53.912) Mm-hmm. David Doty (47:01.429) is quoted a lot, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength. They're commanded to love God with all of their heart, soul, mind, strength, right? In Acts two, verse 42, speaking of the church, mean, the early church was moving in power. They were united, they were filled with the Holy Spirit, they were raising the dead. They were doing amazing things. And a lot of Christians today say that they want that, but are we willing to do what they did to get that? it, they got that by being united because they all laid down their own agendas. They all said, okay, what is God doing? I want to do what God is saying, not my own will. Acts 2 42 says they were devoted to the apostles teaching. which is essentially studying the Bible. They were devoted to the apostles teaching, breaking a bread, which is having meals together, fellowship and prayer. They were devoted to it. Today, how many Christians are devoted to praying? I mean, devoted. Like, I'm not talking about checking a box because you said a prayer every day, but devoted to prayer. How many of us are devoted to studying the word of God, not just reading for 10 minutes in the morning? How many of us are devoted to fellowship and building relationally on a heart to heart level connection where if my brother's hurting, I'm hurting as well. How many of us are devoted to living a godly life in community with other people? And the reason that the church is in shambles today is because we think, you know, I'll go to Sunday school. listen to the message. I'll show up for worship. I'll say a prayer every day. I'll give financially, but people want to go off and live their own life. They don't want to involve God or get God's perspective. And yeah, I mean, it's lukewarm. Jesus said he's going to spit that stuff out of his mouth. Michael Mishkin (49:13.262) And that's what gets them killed spiritually. And the reason why they can't do that is because that false gospel won't allow them. That false gospel builds you in a simplicity rabbit's foot, God's here, I'm going to heaven and I'm supposed to just live life. No. You you see when people do pray, it's hard from the praying. When they do pray, I'll pray for, you know, Uncle Buck, you know, that his hip gets better. I pray that my kids will be saying everything according to themselves. I pray that I get that job. I pray that the Lord will build my finances. everything in a selfish manner for themselves. Well, you should be praying for God's way, but the false gospel doesn't give you any purpose in God's way. People don't have, they're just waiting for a rapture most of them, as if they're be caught up and their clothes are gonna be let on the ground, which is stupidity that has been shoveled into them because they don't know the scriptures and really understand how this stuff, what's really gonna happen, because they don't know God. What it is, is that, When you're built in the true gospel message, you understand the purposes of God. He teaches you what he's doing. I mean, there's a whole map of it by the feasts of the Lord. They're not feasts, they're appointed times, but you got already four of them that we've talked about, Passover, unleavened bread, and first fruits, and then the first fruits harvest, all that were done on their day. That's a map of what God was doing, and he completed that section of them 2,000 years ago or so. And now we're coming to the end time harvest, which is going to be a buildup. It's going to start of the blowing of the shofar's, which, you know, Jews call it Rosh Hashanah, which is a absolute farce. It's not the head of the year. It's not the beginning of the year. It's the day of blowing the shofar and it's like, get ready, get ready, get ready. And it's 10 days of all between that to tell everyone to get ready until Yom Kippur, which is the coming of the Lord, where he comes back on the Jubilee, restores everything back to the way it is. Michael Mishkin (51:15.628) And he comes to those who claim to be of God and he separates the goats. The ones that are truly of him, the sheep from the goats, he made a parable of that as the same parable off of Yom Kippur. And he's going to take those who truly were fulfilling his command of loving one another, those who truly were living by the spirit and were operating in helping their fellow brethren, he takes to himself. And the ones that are not are sinful and he casts all the sin upon them and he sets them out into the wilderness to be gone. That's why that whole thing is there. It's an explanation of when he comes, what he's going to do. And then we go into Sukkot, which is the celebration of Jews and Gentiles together for the one week period of or the Shabbat, 1000 years and celebrating how we were living in these feeble tents and just rejoicing in the Lord where he seduced the world with a rod of iron and everything is under his rule. But people won't know that they're not taught that. They don't understand that. don't, in Christianity, you're taught, okay, here's my next motivational speaking for you, and you go back to the barbecue and just go watch football games and live uselessness. And think if you do a little thing here or there, I give my tithes to church as if God's, you don't know what's going on, you're gone. Sorry, bup-bye. You're not gonna be happy. David Doty (52:24.345) Yeah. David Doty (52:34.595) Well, and then you're sowing into a ministry that's not fulfilling the kingdom of heaven, but you've been told by an individual, the pastor or whomever, if you give financially, God will bless you. But honestly, their ministry isn't doing anything to further the kingdom of heaven. Michael Mishkin (52:45.646) Nice one, Michael Mishkin (52:52.344) but they have a building fund. They're gonna build another building to house more people to make them twice as held as they are, just like the Pharisees. David Doty (52:54.361) about that. David Doty (53:00.599) George says, be devoted to God's statutes and led by his spirit. Church removes the Holy Spirit. I would love to share what he is showing me. George would love to hear your perspective for sure, man, if there's a way. Send you, we'll have you on as a, as a panelist next time. David Doty (53:22.902) Absolutely. Michael Mishkin (53:23.694) You know, in the church scenery, and here's the trick about it, it doesn't mean that there's no Holy Spirit moving in these churches. The Spirit of God moves in every establishment to the degree that He's allowed. Now, it is very little, pretty much in most of them, but some are a little more than others. So, you know, that's what makes it harder because you'll go to certain places and the Spirit will be there, especially if you're a younger believer. But the problem is, you know, it's the same exact reflection as Saul and David. Saul, he was the king of the people of God, but he was doing it his way and the way the people wanted. The spirit of God preserved them, but they were never growing to be what the kingdom was supposed to be because Saul didn't concern himself as much with God as he did with what he wanted and what the people wanted. So that's the analogy because Saul existed to show that spirit of people of God, but they're doing it their way. And David was the representation of the true people of God who wanted it God's way. It was so passionate about God's way that this little feeble kid could use a rock because the power of God was behind him and take down the big giant. All of this is symbolic analogy. It's allegory representing these types of concepts that are continuing to today. Most of the church is Saul. There's very few Davids. The Davids are the ones who are hungry for the truth. God's way. and are willing to be transformed and seek him into the image of God. That's what Yeshua died for, is that we be transformed into his image. It's a daily process. That's why Paul said, I die daily. That's why Yeshua said, take up your cross and follow me. All of these are things and many other places show us that it's a process of being changed. If you're not in a process of being changed, if you observe your walk and you're the same as you were a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, You got some big problems there. You should be growing in who God is and a lot of the ways of your carnal man should be dying off and you should be overcoming by the power of the spirit. So this is the observation you need to make for yourself to see victory. David Doty (55:37.302) Amen. Amen. So what's what's one tip you would give to somebody? I mean, we kind of went all over the place this morning, which we tend to do. I mean, But as we're talking about discerning and which side of whichever issue that's being debated on whatever news channel today, how do we determine what side we're supposed to be on? Michael Mishkin (56:11.054) If you're a person who really wants to really grow in God and you're having these struggles, shut it all off. Don't even look at any of it. Shut it all off. Don't get involved with it. That's what I even told with another person that was, you know, having struggles, a new believer. Shut it all off right now. It's only there to deter you and distract you. And put all that devoted time now that you'd be there into spending time with God and saying, Lord, I want to know you more. I've been deceived. There's stuff in my foundation I know is false, I'm blocked, I want to be released. Help me to build my foundation on the rock of Yeshua. Guide me in your truth, build me in your spirit and let the Spirit of God transform you into His image as you confess whatever sins you see, put it on the altar to die. That's what I would suggest everyone to do and if you're doing that with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, you will be changed and you will get to know God and the Spirit of God. be growing in you and he'll be guiding you and you'll be knowing the truth, the real truth. David Doty (57:15.095) Amen. So the goal is for people to learn to hear God's voice. I've been munching on cough drops this morning because I'm still have that tickle in my throat, but the goal is for us all to hear from God and to obey him. Right. We don't want anybody out there to be casting out demons in the name of that Jesus who Mike Michael Mishkin (57:36.27) That's right. David Doty (57:44.077) Michigan teaches about, and then the demons jump all over you and you run naked and bleeding from the house, right? Like the guys in Acts eight, the goal is for people to be able to hear from God for themselves. And through that, know, have an authority that they're speaking the truth, not something that another man or another person teaches. Michael Mishkin (57:45.486) Mm-hmm. David Doty (58:12.865) If you hear it from God, you know, it's true and you don't have to worry about what anybody else says or thinks because you heard from God and that's all the matters. Michael Mishkin (58:23.982) Right. And you're being trained to know how you know it's truly God and not a demon pretending to be God. And that might take some work as well because there will be times where demons and the demons use your flesh. That's how they are able to get it. They, if there's a certain area that you didn't give over and you, know, they will operate through that. You'll know by the fruit that comes out of whatever it is that you think. If there's no fruit or it's causing turmoil in whatever shape or form, David Doty (58:33.113) It's a process. Michael Mishkin (58:52.01) Any fruit that God builds is unto life and blessing and prosperity and being made into his image and it's all in the character of God. That's the key is to learn how to watch the fruit, what's coming out of it. David Doty (59:09.429) Amen. Well, another addition of the Think About It podcast is in the books. Didn't get a ton of questions. I appreciate the interaction from George. We're going to have him on after. George, send me your contact info if you can and I'll coordinate next time. If we'd see if we can get you on as a panelist and have a conversation about what God's doing in your life. Everybody else, God bless you guys. Thanks for tuning in today. Shoot us your questions. You can reach out to us, obviously through Facebook, through YouTube, through BibleInOrder.com. And we love you guys. God bless. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thinkpodcast.substack.com [https://thinkpodcast.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Restoration of Israel: Insights from Jeremiah 33

David Doty and Michael Mishkin delve into Jeremiah 33, exploring the themes of Israel's restoration, the significance of prophecy, and the historical context of Israel's exile. They discuss the allegorical nature of biblical events, the implications of Babylon in modern times, and the importance of understanding spiritual versus physical Israel. The conversation emphasizes the necessity of prayer and education in the restoration process, culminating in a discussion about the future of Israel and the second coming of the Messiah. Takeaways: * Jeremiah 33 speaks to the restoration of Israel. * The exile of Israel serves as a metaphor for God's plan. * Prophetic messages often have both literal and allegorical meanings. * Historical events in Israel's past inform our understanding of prophecy. * Babylon represents confusion and moral decay in society. * Prayer is essential for understanding God's will and restoration. * Spiritual Israel includes both Jews and Gentiles who believe in Yeshua. * The restoration of Israel is a key theme in biblical prophecy. * The second coming of the Messiah will fulfill God's promises to Israel. * Understanding scripture requires recognizing metaphorical language. Transcript: David Doty (00:01.509) Hey everyone, it is Think About It, the podcast with Michael Mishkin and David Doty. We are here today discussing Jeremiah 33, and it's about the restoration of Israel. Mike, do you want me just to start reading or do you want to read or? Michael Mishkin (00:23.502) Yeah, we'll give a little Context so we know Jeremiah prophet to Israel came in probably around 620 something BC Started with the king Josiah and he prophesied all the way to the time through Josiah's sons to the Where they were taken out of Israel into Babylon into exile for 70 years as Jeremiah prophesies in one of his passages. In the meantime, through the different sons, he is giving prophecies to Israel. A lot of times there's condemnation and judgment that's coming because they're not following. But then there is sort of prophetic views of a restoration. And I think it's important that we look at scriptures like these and many others that are in Isaiah, many more that are in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all over, including there's Psalms that do prophesy the restoration of Israel. So when we think about God and what he's doing and the whole scheme of finality of things, we have to remember. there is a restoration of Israel that has to happen. And I don't mean the establishment of the current state of Israel because that's not exactly fitting perfectly. It is a step forward because Israel has to exist, but it's not what the scripture is actually saying will actually be. So let's take a look. We'll read Jeremiah 31. David Doty (02:01.659) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (02:14.414) Maybe we'll read half, discuss, and then read the other half. What do you think? David Doty (02:18.065) Okay, sure. Yeah, Jeremiah 31, 33. All right. And can you just give us a little more context? What is Israel being restored from? Michael Mishkin (02:20.974) 33 Michael Mishkin (02:32.765) Israel was being you when Israel went off into Babylon It was metaphorical allegorical Where they live a symbolic representation of the plan of God? Many things that we see in the Old Testament are symbolic representations of the plan of God of what he's Case in point everyone knows about the an obvious one with Abraham and his son Isaac When God said take your son your only son? and sacrifice him and he takes Isaac over there, pulls up the knife and the angel of God stops him and there's in the thicket the ram caught in the thorns and we know that that's God providing, I will provide myself as people say. So there we see an obvious symbolic representation of what God is planning to do and he has Abraham testing him in faith. through the demonstration of what he will do. And Abraham obeys and God stops him. But that's just one of many kinds of allegorical pictures. Israel went through the casting out into Babylon, which is the people of God, because they will not follow God, God's way, that they went off into confusion. That's what Babylon means. And that at a certain point in time, God will stir the hearts of those that truly want him. and they will return and build his house, his temple, his dwelling place, which is basically coming back and restoring and doing God's way the right way. But only a select small section come back as what's happened in when the restoration happened with Zerubbabel and Joshua, the son of Jehoshedek. And then afterwards you had Ezra and you had Nehemiah. But all of that was only a small section of all the people that were scattered that came back to actually build it. And then in these days, it's the same thing. So we're looking at the spiritual finishing of all of these things. While Israel is established physically, is still not spiritually the spiritual holy place of God. It is a pagan place, got gay parades in Jerusalem. You know, they want to make... Michael Mishkin (04:53.71) Tel Aviv, gate capital of the world, some paganism all over the place that they really look to. I mean, they run to India the second they can when they can go on their little holidays or trips, whatever you want to call it. So Israel in the natural right now is not really serving God, especially if they don't know Yeshua, but that's going to change. David Doty (05:15.345) So, a lot of these historical things in Scripture, they're literal, accurate historical events, and they're also allegorical so that we can learn from that example. Michael Mishkin (05:30.306) Yeah, to understand the prophets, the prophets had a multifaceted job. One thing was to bring the condemnation to the physical people, but they also used the literal to project down the road into spiritual happenings and spiritual concepts. They would bring, they would start loosening up the real meaning of the Torah and... They would project towards things that were to come, but it was based off of actual happenings with Israel in there and what they were doing at that time. you know, we see in scripture, there's some things that's that prophesy about a Messiah coming and that will die for the people. You know, there's plenty of scriptures like that. And then there's plenty of scriptures that talk about a Messiah will come and will reign as King in the seat of David. And we know those are going to be true. So well. There's other scriptures there that are not talking about Messiah. They're talking about Israel. They talk about Judah and they're speaking of their iniquity and their problems and how God will punish them and God will punish them. And then it speaks about, and then I will return you, I will restore you. And it's even written in the Torah. Before they even got into the land, God said, you're going to break all these things. I'm gonna kick you out of here. When you're out in your far places, all over the place, scattered all over the world, then your heart will soften and I will draw you back to me and I will bring you back to this place. So there's so many scriptures. I have actually marked them out in my Bible and I don't think I've gotten them all, but there is so many about the restoration of Israel, which is key to the finality of all this. it's another thing that is a kicker against the Christian eschatology you know, some of it doesn't incorporate that perspective. Some tries to because they realize, oh wow, we have these scriptures and they're saying this stuff, so we have to now do a little side step in order to keep our baloney. But let's see what the scriptures tell us and people can make their own minds up by reading and asking God. So I'll read half, I guess it's 26 verses and 33, I'll read to 13 and we can look what we see and then go from there. David Doty (07:38.725) Mm-hmm. David Doty (07:45.563) Mm-hmm. David Doty (07:54.585) Okay, sounds good. Michael Mishkin (07:55.982) So the houses of this city and concerning the houses of the kings of Judah, which are thrown down by the mounts and by the sword. They come to fight with the Chaldeans, but it is to fill them with the dead bodies of men whom I have slain in my anger and in my fury and and for all whose wickedness I have hid my face from this city. Behold, I will bring it. I will bring it health and cure and I will cure them and reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth. And I will cause the captivity of Judah and the captivity of Israel to return and will build them as of the first. And I will cleanse them from their iniquity whereby they have sinned against me. And I will pardon all their iniquities whereby they have sinned and whereby they have transgressed against me. And it shall be to me a name of joy, a praise, and an honor before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all the good that I do unto them, and they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and for all the prosperity that I procure for them. Thus says the Lord, again, there shall be heard in this place which you will say, that shall be desolate without man and without beast, even in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate without man and without inhabitant and without beast. The voice of joy, the voice of gladness, the voice of bridegroom and the voice of bride, the voice of them that shall say, praise the Lord of hosts for the Lord is good for his mercy endures forever. And of them, Michael Mishkin (10:19.448) that shall bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord, for I will cause to return the captivity of the land, as at the first, says the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts again in this place which is desolate without man and without beast, and with all the cities thereof shall be a habitation of shepherds causing their flocks to lie down in the cities of the mountains, in the cities of the veil. and in the cities of the south and the land of Benjamin and the places about Jerusalem and the cities of Judah shall the flocks pass again under the hands of him that tells them says the Lord. Now we stop there. Alright, so clearly we could see in that passage that God has intended off of what he's seeing already with Israel that there's going to be... there's not going to be anybody in here. No beast, no man, no nothing. So that gives us an indicator of what that's like. Now, there was a degree of that when they were kicked out under, you know, after King Zedekiah. and when they were taken off. But that's also reflective. After 100 AD, if people don't know history, Israel was sacked by Rome and a huge amount of people were killed off and the rest were scattered and there was virtually no beast man. Well, let's just make it simple. There was no Jews living in that land for. David Doty (12:01.499) So that was, you said 150 AED? Michael Mishkin (12:04.502) One, well, it's probably by 150, yeah, they were all out. Probably around that time. David Doty (12:10.545) So there was the destruction of the temple in 70 and then. Michael Mishkin (12:15.214) Destruction of the seven in 70 but that didn't that didn't bring them the the real ultimate retribution Against Israel until some years later. I think one of the final rebellions is called the Akakba rebellion where this man named Bar Kokhba Proclaimed himself the Messiah and he was backed up by a rabbi Akiva and it was I think it was around 120 AD and I think even then you had believers, Jewish believers that said, Hey, you know, we'll fight against the Romans, but we're not calling you Messiah. And I, from what I understood, he got mad and basically went turned on them and started killing them. And then you had all your rebellions against Rome and Rome had had it. And they started going ape crazy on Israel, killing a whole bunch of people. That's where you see like a third of the stars have fallen. stars of the people of God and then the rest were scattered all this was prophesied that that was going to happen even here there's talking about things that like that but then they'll be after a time now we obviously see that's about almost 1800 years later before any real presence of Jews start to come back that's about late 1800s is when they really started to return for the most part And in the 1900s even more so, and then it builds up to a physical restoration, emergence of Israel in the natural because the place is named Israel. But that does not, it's not a spiritual re-emergence yet. You know, while this physically has literal connotations to it, you see that when you read certain aspects of it, There is a spiritual finality that it puts, that you see in certain verses here, that it can only be spiritual. So that's the key in context, is when you read the passages, what can we glean, which lines can we glean to show, well, it can't be at this time, it can't be that time because of what it's saying here. When it says that there's not gonna be any man or beast or whatever, it's, a lot of it is, obviously it's not worried about the beast. The beast is symbolically of a type. Michael Mishkin (14:40.686) of man, you know, the dumb man that just follows, you know, bottom line is no being is going to be allowed and that happened for almost 1800 years or so. And then there was a restoration, but then they're going to come back and they're going to know him and they're going to set everything straight and God's going to bring things the right way. Let's look for certain pertinent lines unless you remember anything to bring up. David Doty (15:11.889) So you're talking about like the men like beasts are it's people who act like animals. Like if you think of a dog, it only cares about getting his belly scratched and eating and finding other dogs to mess around with and people who act like that. Michael Mishkin (15:27.65) Yeah, in scripture, you're going to see things written in there that look like literal and does have a connotation of literal, but it also has a concept of understanding. Why are people like people who come to God and then leave God are referred to as dogs because a dog returns to its vomit. Are they actually dogs? No, but we're using the metaphor. in the same way and a lot of prophetic wording is metaphors. mean, if you don't believe me when you think Isaiah says that the trees will clap their hands, well, I'd say like, please show me where trees get hands and start clapping. So there is the reason why we see those things is because it means what it means literally, but it also has a metaphorical context. That's why Yeshua spoke metaphorically. My, you know, whether you want go with metaphors, similes, whatever, my people are sheep. Are you a sheep? You know, I am the bread of life. Well, Catholics think it's literal. They think it's popping, like his flesh is popping in their belly. And that's the foolishness of the carnal natural man, you know? So again, this is just one of many scriptures and we only read half of it. David Doty (16:31.781) Yeah, I am the bread of life. Michael Mishkin (16:51.66) that speak of this. So this is really elaborating on a certain point in time where there's going to be a restoration and the Jews, my people, are going to turn to Yeshua. I mean, in Zechariah it says they'll mourn for the one whom they've pierced, which is a specific scripture that shows the idea that when they do return, that they're gonna recognize, what have we done? This was the Messiah all along. So there is an aspect of that. And then to show you how much the return of the Jews are so necessary, we could actually flip to another scripture and we could look at Zechariah chapter eight and it shows that there's the restoration and then you see how it says that in the end of chapter eight, it says that 10 Gentiles will grab the garment of a Jew and says that we have heard that God is with you. We're going with you. So again, that's just, you I could touch on scripture after scripture here, but it's here to really elaborate on the understanding that if you just think that Messiah is gonna just pop up tomorrow and that's it, you're bringing us to heaven or we're all gonna go and be raptured, you really don't know what's going on and you really don't know Messiah. And I urge you to really dig into God with a humble heart and re... get re-educated by the Spirit, tear down all the false doctrines and rebuild. And that's what going into the wilderness is. You're tearing down the false ways that you've understood out of God. That's why people came out to John in the wilderness because they were believing God the wrong way and they were willing to be baptized, which symbolized let it go, make their path straight, cleanse themselves of that. David Doty (18:23.354) Right. David Doty (18:40.539) Right. David Doty (18:44.367) So in verse five there, they're coming in to fight against the Chaldeans and to fill them with the dead bodies of men whom I shall strike down in my anger and my wrath. What do the Chaldeans represent? Michael Mishkin (18:59.756) Chaldeans was a lot of times another term used for the Babylonians. It was more of like the literal name over the Babylonians. They are trying to take their stand and fight against them rather than listening to God who's telling them, hey, you guys are off and wrong. And that's why they're there in the first place. We see that in other passages of Jeremiah and Jeremiah warns them and says, don't fight. You you did this. You didn't listen. This is your judgment. I have brought these people upon you. I did this. And they're going to try to fight. And well, a big section did try to fight against these guys. And they did rot in the streets. They died. were first they were trapped in Jerusalem. They couldn't get out because they were surrounded and they were starving and disease was taken in and they were eating their kids. And then Babylon finally came in and then. It was a bloodbath all throughout. David Doty (19:58.723) Mm-hmm. So Babylon is referenced throughout scripture, I mean, all the way into Revelation. And at the end of time, Babylon falls and people are rejoicing Babylon, Babylon has fallen, Babylon has fallen. Michael Mishkin (20:06.478) Mm-hmm. David Doty (20:20.657) Are we witnessing Babylon falling in 2025 with a lot of the political changes and a lot of how people are becoming aware of the way our government has been spending our tax dollars and funding different things all around the world? Is this a fall of Babylon? And even from a church perspective, I mean, we're seeing like all of these different ministries that are being exposed for sin and different things that were going on behind the scenes. Is this the fall of Babylon or even the beginning of it? Michael Mishkin (21:02.862) Well, that's why you bring up a good point. That's why we need to really understand why did God have Babylon exist back then for Israel in the first place? know, then Persia comes in, then Greece comes in, then Rome comes in. And Daniel in his prophesying speaks of each of those in a prophetic way as well. So the key is it's the nation is gone as far as the culture and perspective way back when, but the concept is not gone. You know, when Peter speaks about the woman in Babylon and when it talks about it even in certain places, you know, we're not even talking about Revelation. Babylon was virtually gone, so he's speaking in the figurative sense as well. So, but these people literally existed like they were called the Chaldeans. They were a people that allowed all different types of gods to operate. We could see a lot of the functionality of it in Daniel. We could see how Nebuchadnezzar was. fact he speaks a lot in chapter 4 of Daniel but again they were also a metaphor they were an allegory and understanding concept that lives on and that is what is so important to learn what did they mean what did they represent and then how does the concept still exist because yes we live in Babylon today we live in a whole land of confusion Everything is twisted. Yeah, well every religion under the Sun Every lies a swirling in every sphere of our lives from what the scientists tell us the medical field tells us our government tells us Everything is lies lies lies in order for the people to just shut up and do your job work and then You know Don't don't try to think You know Babylon was meant to make it difficult for you to think And God requires you to think in him. So, Babylon existed in concept back then. Revelation speaks about the woman of Babylon, and it's reflecting on how it is the confused state of the world. Now, Yeshua, when he came, you know, and then he was caught up to the right hand of the Father, and the Spirit gets poured out on his disciples, you know, and then you see that metaphorical aspect of what happened when the disciples were going forth. David Doty (23:13.617) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (23:28.896) It says in Revelation 12, the second half of the chapter that a war broke out in heaven, you know, and all the angels fighting and Satan is thrown down. So you could see symbolically what that represents. Nobody at the time, you didn't see Peter saying, hey, check it out guys, look up, there's a war going on. Hey, look at that angel, he just swung at a demon. Whoa, look, he just came shooting down. Nobody saw that. He was getting a revelation, a revelation with symbolism of what was going on at the times. So, Yeshua bringing the truth and they started to bring the truth, they started to unravel that for people and they started to align with God and move with God. But then Babylon was gonna come back in, you know, it even speaks about how there was that beast that came up out of the water and had one had a wound, a mortal wound. David Doty (24:23.153) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (24:26.51) that then healed. Well, that's like an oxymoron. If it's mortal, you die. It's not healing. Well, what happened was Yeshua, for a short period of time, mortally wounded the confusion aspect of that beast. And people were growing to know the truth of God. But then, Antichrist comes along and shuts it down, twists the true way of God, and now people move on and start believing the lies again, and then darkness sets in again. And we had many years of the Dark Ages after that. So yes, metaphorically, we have had the Dark Ages, which breeded, we could see a spiritual Babylon that went on through the times. We did have a little bit of a pushback again when the Protestant Reformation happened. And it brought in the Renaissance. And from there, you know, we're now coming up to a time period where people are waking up. David Doty (24:54.086) Right. Michael Mishkin (25:24.664) People are seeing in every sphere. And that's what's key. Babylon gets killed when people start getting it right in their understanding. So yes, I do believe we are in a Babylon, but it's starting to get taken down. David Doty (25:40.165) Mm-hmm. It's very interesting. Yeah, I've been praying, and I know you have, like we've been praying for years for Babylon to fall and for the darkness to be exposed and for the truth to come forth, for people to recognize it. And I think it's important for Christians everywhere to be praying that prayer. Michael Mishkin (26:05.474) You know, that's why it's so important. One of the reasons for us to get educated on the right way so you could effectively pray. Do you realize how many Christians are praying prayers against God's They're coming again, just like Satan did when Satan said, we will not let you go get crucified. Why? That's great intention, Peter. Well, get behind me, Satan. When you don't know God and understand what he's doing, a lot of what you're doing is contrary to God. So you're working for Satan in your prayers. This is why it's so important for us to really understand what he's doing. We're supposed to be growing and maturing. So this is why we bring up these things here. You know, we're bringing up now Jeremiah, just to sort of glance a little bit at what this prophet that most people don't want to, they find them too confusing. They can't understand it. Well, here's a little passage. We only read half. We got to read the other half. That obviously shows a people that are going to be downtrodden. But then God says, I'm going to bring it back and restore. That's pretty straightforward. David Doty (27:09.115) Well, what does it mean? I'm going to restore the fortunes of Judah in Jeremiah 33 verse seven and the fortunes of Israel and rebuild them as they were at first. What does it mean as they were at first? I mean, is he talking about the physical nation there? Is he talking about the people? At what point? Because as far as I, when I'm reading the scripture, it's like, it's very rare that all of the people are aligned and worshiping God and living. in a manner that's pleasing to him. Michael Mishkin (27:40.046) And now you bring up another good point. There's a spiritual allusion to what the people of God are. You know, there's a physical Israel and there's a spiritual Israel. I don't know how much we've ever talked about that. I think we did early on. spiritual Israel, which Gentiles are grafted into, are reflective of physical Israel. 12 tribes, one tribe. was commanded not to have land, but they had to minister unto the people and unto God. And the others supported them and together they had a cooperative relationship that prospered as long as they worked together and followed God's ways. Well, the same way in spiritual Israel that there's Jews and Gentiles in the natural, God sees Jew and Gentile in the spirit where one new man, but we have Physical roles just like man and woman, you know, do do they cease to exist in the natural? No a woman has her job so You know, we're seeing Reflections here is Israel and Judah. I see Judah and I could be wrong where people could look into this I've done a lot of study and it seems to reflect this each name has a perspective view You can look at Israel as inclusive But you can't look at Israel as replacing the church. Replacement theology is wrong, it's a lie. It's the church today as Gentiles does not replace Israel. It's a part of Israel. That's the right way of understanding it. You're grafted. David Doty (29:16.131) so am I as a a as a Gentile believer who has accepted Messiah am I spiritually a Jew a son of Abraham Michael Mishkin (29:26.954) not spiritually a Jew, because when you say Jew you're reflecting to the physical role person. You're spiritually Israel in the sense that the spiritual Israel is inclusive of everybody, Jew and Gentile. So in the spirit you are included in Israel, but that's what Paul was talking about in Romans where he says that the Gentiles have Abraham as their father through Isaac, through faith, he was the son of promise. So that's what he's alluding to when he says that. So this is scripturally back that I'm what I'm talking about. I'm not coming up with something from left field. And when Paul also says in Romans 11 about how you Gentiles are grafted into the Jewish olive tree. He's not saying that the olive tree, the Jews go into yours. He says you were in a wild olive tree. You were in something separate. You have been grafted in and unbelieving Jews were cut off because of unbelief. So through faith, David Doty (30:01.061) Mm-hmm. David Doty (30:20.145) Right. Michael Mishkin (30:26.414) truly knowing faith means you truly believe God his way in Yeshua and you're following him his way Now many are not they think they are and they're not so they're not grafted in But there are many who really truly have a connection with God. They hear his voice They're led by his spirit. So you're grafted into the Jewish olive tree. So you're being nurtured by the Jewish root That even though a lot of Jews are unbelievers right now. It's still based in the Jews that was given to them like the Levites. know, the tribe of Asher tried to touch the stuff of the Levites, all the articles, they would die. It's theirs. Paul says that when it comes to the people of Israel, that theirs are the fathers, theirs are the promises, theirs are the word of God, theirs are... So he's driving it home that you need these guys and there's a restoration that must happen and you are a part of making sure that that happens. So don't get arrogant against them because if you do, God could cut you off again. David Doty (31:24.271) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (31:24.66) So yes, so you're, know, physically we have Jews and Gentiles. So the reason why you can't say, you know, am I spiritually a Jew? Well, now it sort of confuses the role that you would have. You know, maybe you're, you know, a lot of what the reflective terminology that we see in other prophets could be like your there's Judah and Ephraim, you know, some places say Israel and some places say Ephraim. Ephraim represents Israel, the northern kingdom. But there's also an Israel aspect where it encompasses everybody. So you know how when Israel and Judah split, there was a differentiation there. So it can seem complicated at first, but after a little bit of looking over scripture, you could understand that. David Doty (32:12.753) All right. Well, definitely with you that the Gentiles are not replacing the Hebrew people. for sure on that. Michael Mishkin (32:25.07) Do want to read the last verses? David Doty (32:27.001) Yeah, so I'll begin in verse 14. Behold the days are coming declares Yahweh when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous branch to spring up for David and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days, Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called. Yahweh is our righteousness. Michael Mishkin (32:29.998) Mm-hmm. David Doty (32:57.435) for thus says Yahweh, David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel. And the Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to make sacrifices forever. The word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah thus says Yahweh, if you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night so that day and night will not come at their appointed time, Then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne and my covenant with the Levitical priests my ministers as the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured. So I will multiply the offspring of David my servant and the Levitical priests who minister to me. The word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah. Have you not observed that these people are saying Yahweh has rejected the two clans that he chose. Thus they have despised my people so that they are no longer a nation in their sight. Thus says Yahweh, I have not established my covenant with day and night and the fixed order of heaven and earth. If I have not established my covenant with day or night in the fixed order of heaven and earth, then I will reject the offspring of Jacob and David my servant and will not choose one of his offspring to rule over the offspring of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for I will restore their fortunes and will have mercy on them. Michael Mishkin (34:35.926) says captivity I will restore their captivity their exile But you could see there very clearly, we got a lot of understanding here even alluding to the Messiah, you know, in verse 15. In those days and at that time, there will be a branch of righteousness to grow unto David and he will execute judgment and righteousness in the land. Well, Messiah came and he didn't actually do that. in taking over the land. So we could see that this is alluding to the second coming of Messiah when he returns. In those days, Jerusalem will be saved. So you could see, how do you know it's that end time factor? Jerusalem will be saved and shall dwell in safe safety and will be called the Lord our righteousness. Well, that's not even today. Jerusalem's not saved. It's not called the Lord our righteousness. They're not knowing him. David Doty (35:15.237) Okay. David Doty (35:31.067) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (35:36.302) So you can see all of this is forecasting towards a future event and it's not the first coming of Messiah. And says, David will never lack a man on the throne of the house of Israel. So he's going to lead Israel from a natural perspective through the lineage of David. And remember, David is not just for the Messiah. David is symbolically representing that through Yeshua, who is the son of David, we are all the Davids as opposed to the souls, the people with the heart after God. So, and the priests. David Doty (36:02.993) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (36:13.068) Neither shall the priests, the Levites, want a man before me to burnt offerings." So here, it looks like a literal aspect, but in that aspect sphere, it's basically talking about same kind of metaphorical aspects. There's going to be, we don't give literal worship, you know, giving offerings of blood and goats, but the people of God are going to be worshiping God in spirit and truth. And we give those offerings when we pray. When we spend time with Him, we're introspecting. We see when we're sinning, Lord, forgive me. Here's what I was doing to my flesh. Or we want to get connected with Him, spend time with Him. That's the continual offering, which they call the burnt offering. There's the peace offering. All these offerings actually symbolize a lot of aspects of our connecting with God when we get alone with Him. And that's why it's very good to study these different offerings. we have to understand it's not gonna be a literal resurgence of a physical temple and they're be bringing animals for that because that's why Hebrews says that God never, there was no way for the blood of bulls and goats to ever redeem us of sin. it's not, that was just a picture and shadow of before. And God's basically doubling down saying it's gonna happen unless they break the covenant with day and night, this stuff is gonna happen. David Doty (37:36.934) Right. Michael Mishkin (37:36.992) I will have my Messiah, my son will return and rule and I will bring this restoration." So it's basically letting them know that if you think it's gone so long nothing's happened, well it will and he's not slow in carrying out what he plans to do, he's doing it in his timing. I mean, a lot there. I I don't know you have any questions there to bring up. mean. David Doty (37:58.385) David Doty (38:03.237) What would you say to the post-millennial people who believe that Jesus is reigning from heaven, ruling from afar, he's getting us ready, there's gonna be this mass buildup until Christianity overtakes the entire earth and then he's returning. Michael Mishkin (38:21.838) doesn't seem to be the way Scripture talks about this. He's the King of kings and he's the rules over everything no matter what. It says all authorities are under his feet and he's the high priest and he's there at the right hand of God offering sacrifices, not sacrifice, but mean intercession before the Father for us continually it talks about. But Scripture talks about him doing his reigning as a physical return. If he's reigning now, look at this world, he's not bringing forth his way very well if he's reigning right now from heaven. So when he does come, he's gonna subdue the earth and he's gonna bring everybody into submission with a rod of iron as it says, and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Yeshua is Lord. So this is not that. I don't see that. David Doty (39:17.317) Yeah, I'm with you. I got accused of being post-millennialist the other day. I'm like... don't like labels number one, but number two, I disagree. David Doty (39:37.883) trying to think of another question. mean, it seems pretty straightforward. Michael Mishkin (39:45.582) Yeah, that was a very powerful chapter that we read that really does drive a lot of it home. mean, again, you can read Isaiah 60, 61, 62. mean, a lot of it talks about the restoration of Israel. It even says about how the Gentiles will carry the Jews back. They'll carry my people back to Jerusalem on their shoulders and they will feed them and support them. Zachariah speaks, I believe it's in chapter two. I will possess Judah as my portion. Jerusalem and all the nations will stream to this mountain and worship me It's just Ezekiel the restoration of the dry bones and the building up to the son of David sitting on the throne chapters 36 37 38 stuff around those areas. I Mean is just I could go on and on Isaiah is loaded with them So it's just a matter of people having the eye to look and see David Doty (40:15.473) Hmm. Michael Mishkin (40:42.674) Let's look and see where God speaks about Israel and their finality. And there are differentiations of why at times he says Israel, why he says Judah. Sometimes he'll say Ephraim. You'll see that a lot in Hosea. Because he's talking from the distinguishing factor of the Northern Kingdom versus the Southern Kingdom, which I believe had a metaphorical perspective just like Saul and David. Same way Saul was doing it their way and not following God and God wasn't happy. They were still called the people of God and he illustrated what he did to them. Same thing with the Northern Kingdom. They were doing it all their way. So that's how they distinguish against Judah who was essentially early on trying to do it God's way the right way. And then after Israel was taken out, Judah went bad as well, especially with Menashe the king. So these metaphorical pictures is the point. We have to be able to see things where they translate to the spirit. Don't take literal to literal. A tree here is not a tree there. A tree here is an understanding there of a tree. It's metaphorical. If you learn how to do those translations, you're gonna open up scripture a lot more. So it's good stuff. David Doty (41:55.877) Yeah. Yep. It is good. It is good. It's always a blessing, man. Always enjoy our time together. Learned so much from you. I appreciate it. Michael Mishkin (42:07.13) It's always great to be on together. mean you we work together iron sharpening iron You know can't do this alone. We need everybody in this together rising up as that army of like an Ezekiel of dry bones shoulder to shoulder To take on this army of darkness David Doty (42:25.051) Yeah, amen. Amen. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thinkpodcast.substack.com [https://thinkpodcast.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The great awakening of the church

In this episode of the Think About It podcast, hosts Michael Mishkin and David Doty discuss the recent shifts in the spiritual and political realms, emphasizing the importance of returning to early church practices and fostering a personal relationship with God. They explore the concept of lifestyle Christianity, the significance of hearing God's voice, and the role of church authority. The conversation also addresses the growing hunger for truth among believers, the challenges of navigating success and spirituality, and the disillusionment with organized religion. Ultimately, they advocate for unity in faith and a personal approach to engaging with scripture. In this conversation, Michael Mishkin and David Doty explore the themes of repentance, spiritual growth, and the true nature of the church. They discuss the importance of self-examination, the dangers of false doctrines, and the need for a genuine relationship with God. The conversation emphasizes the shift in spiritual awareness and the restoration of Israel, while also redefining the concept of church as a community rather than a building. They highlight the significance of determination in one's faith journey and address the misconceptions surrounding the pre-trib rapture doctrine. Transcript: David Doty (00:01.514) It's the Think About It podcast here with Mike and David, Michael and David. And we're going live on YouTube and on Facebook. We know that YouTube loves it when we do this, and that's why they always seem to suppress our numbers. Thank you, YouTube. Thank you for your support and for showing us that we're doing some good work by artificially deflating our numbers, but we're going to keep going anyway. because it seems like there's been a huge shift in the spirit realm over the last few weeks. Obviously, there's been a huge shift politically in the United States as well as many other countries. Things are happening. I notice it even in my conversations on Facebook how the people on the other side of the political aisle or on the other side of the religious mindset belief Christianity, et cetera, whatever. It just seems like there's more people in support of the truth these days. More people are willing to come out and boldly share and make a stand. And Mike, what do you attribute that to? Michael Mishkin (01:18.337) I attribute it to the times, the signs of the times. When we talk about the great awakening, it's not just on a political or a world perspective way, it's in all ways. It's a revelatory time where everything behind the curtain is being unveiled and that includes spiritually. It's not just realizing that... you know, our lifestyle in the world was the matrix and that we were operating under systems where we thought we were free and we actually had these people of small oligarchy having these institutions tell us the way we should do our lives and, and live and raise our kids and shaping us in that way. But we also, the church, the church, the fruit of the church has just been waning. There's really been going down. And it's really hasn't been productive for the longest time anyway, because the revelation in the church is that it's following man, not God. It's anti-Christ. It's man-made systems that are against what God has intended. And the simple way of knowing that is that if you match up what we do today with what they did in Acts right after the spirit came down and how they were operating, David Doty (02:12.014) you Michael Mishkin (02:39.192) two totally different ways of thinking and operating. And they had fruit, they had power, they had authority. We have three songs, a five point message, give you ties and go to the barbecue. And people are dying left and right. People are sick. People are having... David Doty (02:54.253) Yeah. Michael Mishkin (02:59.906) Grumbling against each other people are getting divorced. It's just it's a big mess and you know We want to keep bringing people into this come on Let's go out and tell people about Jesus so they can come into the big mess that we are in you know David Doty (03:11.906) So, yeah, so shifting away from that and moving toward lifestyle Christianity, which, mean, I don't, excuse me, I'm not one to throw out like phrases and vernacular and be like, hey, let's try this new fad, but getting back to what the early church did and anybody who talks with me on a regular basis is going to hear Acts 2 42 thrown out at least once in a conversation. They were, the early church, believers were devoted to the apostles teaching, breaking bread, fellowship and prayer. They were devoted to it. And that tells me that they were doing it every day and it consumed their free time, not taking kids to sports or I mean, sports aren't bad, but what if we were praying as a family in the car on the way to the soccer game? What if we were jumping on a zoom call to pray with other people or on a phone conference call to talk and pray with other believers? Michael Mishkin (03:47.767) Mm-hmm. David Doty (04:10.292) on our way to work or on our way home from work, on our lunch break, what if we were devoted to studying the Word of God? And it's not just a box that we checked, hey, I went to a meeting once or twice a week, but what if we lived the way the early church did, utilizing all of these tools that we have, social media, conference calls, Zoom calls, what if we made the most of what God has given us and instead of doing using all of this technology just to educate ourselves or just to entertain ourselves, what if we were devoted to studying the Word of God together, praying together, fellowshipping together, and making time to have meals together? How would that change the landscape? Michael Mishkin (04:57.634) especially in even the most simplest one of those things that you're talking about, what if we actually put aside at least an hour a day to just spend time with the creator of the universe as what Yeshua made for us to be able to do and actually talk to him and hear his voice and learn from him and let him build us into his image, which is not happening. People who even claim to know the Lord, I could tell you that out of all of those, David Doty (05:08.718) Hmm. Michael Mishkin (05:24.939) they are not getting that kind of quality time that's being transformative. The big test is to examine yourself and see a year ago, were you the same exact way and how you know God two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago? That's the big test. know, Paul said to examine yourself to see if you're even in the faith. We operate on an autopilot. of the way we believe that God is and even when we talk to him, when we do try to spend time with him, it's chanting. Thank you Father, I thank you, Lord bless this, bless that, thank you. I could tell you where a person's at by how they pray. I listen. When people hear me pray, they'll see a difference and it's not trying to like, hey listen to how I pray. I talk to God like he's right there in front of me and like he's the person like you, if I talk to you. Hey David, if you could do this and David, would you do this and David, can you go get that for me? David, I went to get it. Hey David, okay, see you later, David. Does that feel like I have a real connection to you? David Doty (06:25.923) Yeah. David Doty (06:29.25) Yeah. Or at risk of stepping on toes. Hey, Michael, could you just give us enough money for Jimmy's soccer camp and Michael, could you just, you know, help us to get through this day? And could you just give us a good night's sleep tonight? And could you just keep us safe on the way to work? And could you just, just, just, you know, and it's, it's not like we're not trying to make fun of people. The goal is to say, okay, we have room to grow and It's not as if you and I have it all figured out, right? We're not yet where we're ultimately want to be or where God wants us to be, but we're growing and life, our lives are changing. We're seeing it in our kids, we're seeing it in our marriages, and we're seeing it in our personal relationship with God. I don't struggle with the same temptations that I used to struggle with. because God is changing me. His kingdom is advancing. Jesus told the parable of the mustard seed, it starts off small. It's this little, it's the smallest of all the seeds. But when this bush, it almost becomes a tree. takes up, it becomes the largest part of the garden, such as it is with the kingdom of God. It starts off small, but as we progress in the kingdom, It begins to affect every area of our life and pretty soon it crowds out all that other stuff that doesn't belong. If, if we pursue, if we let it. Michael Mishkin (07:59.928) Now you see from your growth in understanding by spending time with him, more and more scriptures you're able to understand in the proper perspective that he intended it. There's so many things that people read those parables and they still really don't have any clue what he's talking about. Yeah, okay, as small as I must say is big, okay. And they pass by, they don't even take a second thought. But you understand he's trying to explain a process of growth that he expects for a person. that you start off small and that you're gonna grow up to be and it's gonna become everything in your life and that all everything is gonna be about that. But when it starts off, it's not because you're totally contrary when you first accept the Lord. And what happens is it takes time of dedication, spending time with him, getting the milk of the word, being in his spirit. And that grows you from the smallest thing of your life to becoming everything in your life. And now the spirit man is what you live in, operate in, in that flesh man has been dying because you've been giving that over to become more of that guy. But people don't understand that process. They see I'm saved because I said a prayer and I go to church and I'm saved and that is a false gospel. And they've lied to you and you're not really truly getting the treasures of what the true gospel message is and what the cross is about, which is being transformed back into the likeness of God. where Adam lost it for us, and you have to spend the time with him. You've got to ask him the question. You've got to pour out your heart to him. You've got to be quiet in his presence and allow him to speak to you and learn how to hear his voice. If you say, don't know, I don't know how to hear it, well, then you've got a problem. You need to seek that because my sheep hear my voice. They know me, they follow me. So if you're not hearing his voice, stop the presses. Square one is what you must learn how to do and you must learn how to know it's his voice and not a demon faking it. David Doty (10:03.33) There are a lot of Christians who don't hear God's voice because we as a body of people have elevated other people into positions of authority in our lives. Now, there's always going to be a place as long as we're on this earth before Jesus returns, there's always going to be a place for teachers, for Bible teachers, for pastors, for apostolic leaders and evangelists and different things. However, we submit to one another, the scripture says. Like we don't put somebody in position of authority over us where we're subjected to them and we expect them to tell us what to do. We listen to other people and when somebody suggests something, we take it to the Lord and we test it and say, that really you? I know from myself, when I first became a believer in 2001 after 9-11, I heard God's voice plain as day. And sometimes, you know, I had to, I went through this process of learning and many times I was wrong about hearing God's voice. But again, like I was learning, I was going through this process. He put me in a pulpit, I was pastoring this little church. I didn't do it perfectly at all. I was very immature, but my heart was in the right place. Eventually I left there and I went to another church who I really had made an idol of that. And I subjected myself under this, the pastoral leadership of this other church. And I noticed over time, I stopped hearing God's voice and maybe he was still speaking and I was just incapable of hearing, or maybe I wasn't, you know, taking time to listen. But I noticed like, I'm not here. I don't talk with the Lord like I used to. I'll still pray, but I don't hear his response. and it was because I had elevated other people. I eventually realized I had elevated other people to the place that God was supposed to have solely. Michael Mishkin (12:09.175) And this is where people have to understand that there are apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, but they're all for serving the body, not to lord over and override God in each individual person's life. If they're truly doing their job, then they are doing it unto assisting you to grow in God. A pastor David Doty (12:34.764) Mm-mm. Michael Mishkin (12:36.714) If you're having an issue, we'll come alongside you and pray with you to get clarity from God. A teacher will go over things to help open up perspectives you don't see, to help you go with God now and let the Lord clarify. And evangelists, well, evangelists has a role of bringing the message out, the clarity of the message, but that's for a different aspect. But apostles, David Doty (12:43.054) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (13:05.473) There are people who are overseers. They're designed as a service role, but they're overseeing. They do have authority, but they're not in the sense of like the world says that, you know, the greatest amongst you, you know, your leaders are not to be as like the Gentiles where they Lord over you. So we have to carefully observe how we're speaking to everybody around. If we think we're a leader or an overseer, you know, we're out, Hey, you do this. Why? Cause I'm the leader here. That's a Gentile mentality. David Doty (13:20.238) Mm-hmm. David Doty (13:30.103) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (13:35.096) The kingdom of God is to lead by serving. And the service is to bring understanding of why. Here's what we're doing, this is what I see. And a lot of leadership in their service is to say, okay, we have an issue, let us go to God and ask him. It's not, oh, this is what we do in the situation. No, you don't know what to do. Any situation, could look like the same exact situation 10 times. And 10 times you gotta go to God and ask him, what do you want us to do? David Doty (13:52.29) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (14:04.287) If you go nine times and the 10th time you say, we did it nine times this way, the 10th time we'll just do it this way, then you're wrong. David Doty (14:11.744) Right, right. Well said. So let's get back to this, this shift that we're experiencing over the last few weeks. what's, what do you attribute that to? Michael Mishkin (14:30.231) I mean, over the last few weeks is probably, you know, we're seeing manifestations from the political storm, but it's breakthroughs on that in the spiritual, which probably is reflected on the grand scheme with everybody, you know, because a lot of things you might see in one avenue manifesting, but in the spirit realm, it's covering all bases. I mean, we've seen for quite a few years now, many people... for the kingdom are hungry because they're seeing what the church has to offer is extremely limiting and not assisting them and they're very immature, don't know really what's going on. They're very confused about what the church does teach. But then if you speak things that the Lord has shown us and bring those perspectives and shows the same scriptures that they supposedly have read a hundred times already, but all of sudden it opens up a different way and things start to click. people who really love the truth. That's the difference. In your core, you have a love for the truth to be saved. Those people, they will not be satisfied with church at large. And when you start to speak things that God has shown us that we know is true, it's like a starving person, you're throwing them some bread. And they're like, give me more, give me more. Where do I get it? And now the goal is to now show them David Doty (15:43.063) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (15:58.048) Okay, let me show you where I got it from and we're bringing it to God. So I think in these times it's stepping up. More and more people are hungry. That's why we talk about like, you know, we talk about a lot of these different things, a lot of things in scripture, a lot of perspectives that were wrong, that everyone believed and scriptural basis and by the spirit. But we see the hindrances in a lot of the things that we talk about where they won't get out on YouTube. They won't get out on these different other platforms. And the reason why is the enemy doesn't want the truth to get out. You know, it's not a golden rule, but it's generally acceptable to say if it's true, you're only going to have a few people there because it's only a remnant. If it's not true, you're going to have crowds going to it. Anywhere the crowd is going is most likely wrong. David Doty (16:31.223) Mm-hmm. David Doty (16:50.589) Well, why do you say that though? Cause I mean, Jesus had crowds following him. Michael Mishkin (16:54.816) And then they left. Many left. They deserted him. Even his disciples at certain points deserted him. You know, when it came down to it, there was only a small amount that had the spirit poured out upon them. And then when the crowd built up and said, Hey, what is this about? Peter didn't give a happy message. He said, you better repent. You killed the Messiah and they were cut to the quick. And then when they were humbled and ready to receive truth, that's when they started to come in droves. So the truth is not something that is a fun way to come. It's not pleasing to you. If you're getting joy from it, where the truth comes along, because the truth hurts. Initially, the truth is going to expose you. So chances are you're not going to be jumping for joy when you hear it. It's going to be challenging. It's going to be confrontation. But if it's true, it'll pan out in explaining itself and showing you why and showing you how it goes back to God. and what it's really doing in you because we're contrary to God. Our very nature that we're born with is contrary to God. So if you're thinking you're going good and the way I'm handling things with God and I'm prosperous and I'm getting all these planes and money and this and that and this is what God wants and everything's hunky-dory, well you're probably not killing the flesh. Now don't get me wrong, there is another side to this. God does have provision. For those that are growing in him and getting to know him, then he'll set things up and you don't have to strive for that. You just stay focused on the kingdom and his provision as he sees fit, he will lay out and he'll show you what to do. David Doty (18:38.718) But then, but then why are there some people who are definitely not walking with the Lord so successful? Michael Mishkin (18:46.328) Satan gives. Satan did it. We know what Satan's power is. We see with Yeshua, he says, all this is mine and I could give it to whoever I want. And that's all you have to do. don't, Satan won't appear in front of the person and say, hey, it's me, Satan, bow down to me and I'm gonna give you all this. I mean, some of the higher up people that we can, the deep oligarchy echelons, there's an aspect of that because they're doing their satanic rituals. But in the kingdom of God, Usually that's not the case. Usually they sell out for false teachings little by little and it becomes part of them and they attribute it to God because those things build up in your foundation and you think you're walking that way but your core doesn't really value the truth so it won't convict you. That's the hardening of the heart that Paul talks about, how you're hardening your heart. There are certain people who just cannot do that. They might be in it, they might be operating, but there's something just off. It's not right, but they don't know any other alternative that this is is this it? Me, for me, the reason why I've grown in such a more rapid way is I'm a lot more quicker in response to that. I don't sit there and just go with the flow and wait it out. If it's getting dry, I see a problem, something's gotta give you a Lord, what do we do? And things for me would move a lot quicker. can, I can uproot and move. David Doty (19:51.598) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (20:11.637) at the snap of a finger. I've done it in my life many times. I uprooted my country and I went to Israel. I uprooted Israel, went back. You know, I left a great job. When I see the writing on the wall, I can move where a lot of other people, we're gonna just weigh this out because it's too hard to just uproot, but that's a requirement from God. It does. The people of Israel, when they were in the wilderness, God was constantly requiring them, okay, uproot. David Doty (20:15.022) Mm-hmm. David Doty (20:32.329) It comes at a cost. It comes at a cost, you know. Michael Mishkin (20:41.616) Let's go. And they were like, no, we're good here. We can take this. You know, we're, no, it's a journey. And that was the whole understanding of the wilderness of the people of Israel. It's the people of God being transformed by moving and going on the journey of their life, how it's shaping them. But they want to settle. I like it this way. This is good. Like, no, this is just a part. This is for this time. Now you've got to grow up to now fifth grade. Now you got to grow up to now sixth grade. David Doty (20:58.158) Mm-hmm. David Doty (21:10.786) Yeah. Michael Mishkin (21:10.997) And we all just want to stay in first grade or kindergarten because we're comfortable. And God says, that's why only a remnant will make it. How many people actually went through the process and made it into the promised land? you know, only the kids younger than 20 made it into the promised land. And it's all examples for us. It's told us that whole understanding is told as an example for us in Hebrews and by Paul in Corinthians chapter 10 as a warning to Christians, to Gentile believers. Well, we don't believe in the Old Testament, the Old Testament's that's gone. Then why are these these apostles telling you about Old Testament stuff and saying that's you? David Doty (21:27.384) Yeah, right. David Doty (21:55.694) The foundation in Acts, we look at Peter's sermon that you referenced in chapter two, I think Stephen's was in chapter seven, and they started with Abraham. You know, that's the foundation of the church, don't get me started on that word, but the foundation of Christianity is Abraham. Even that the founding fathers of the New Testament church, quote unquote, Michael Mishkin (21:55.723) Why? Michael Mishkin (22:05.815) Mm-hmm. David Doty (22:25.216) Start with Abraham. It's there for a reason. Paul said all scripture is God-wreathed and profitable for teaching, rebuking, instruction. All scripture, starting with Genesis chapter 1. Michael Mishkin (22:43.008) most of it's not understood. And the reason why it's not understood is that we're settled on false idle perspectives and we that those false idle perspectives require you to cast out sections of Scripture because you don't understand it. And if you did understand it, it would count counter the way you believe in God at the time. David Doty (23:07.374) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (23:08.449) But then that's the challenge, you know, if people really took the time and studied the Torah, the first five books of Moses, studied the laws and understand what those laws are. That's not about, yeah, a people had a covenant with God to live by those laws and that was righteousness to them. That was what the first covenant was. But they lived the spiritual meanings. Those laws were spiritual meanings of the new covenant. They were wrapped up in those laws, but they don't sit there to think about that. You know, they'd be more willing to follow unbelieving Jews on their perspectives of it and say, yeah, yeah, that's what they did. You know, I won't eat a cheeseburger now, which has nothing to do with any law whatsoever in there. It's bubcus baloney made up by men and that's what they're following. So you're going to follow those guys where they go. You've been, you know, like it says, you know, let the blind lead the blind and they're both going to fall in a pit. David Doty (24:02.712) Yeah, yeah, it has happened. There are a lot of Christians today falling into pits. There are lot of mainstream, very popular ministries that are being exposed for having... covered up a lot of sins and a lot of people now are very disenchanted with organized religion, with Christianity and with the church. And where do we go from here or what do you say to those people who have been affected as they see another headline in the news now? think the latest thing is Daystar being You know, having stuff going on behind the scenes that maybe have been tried. I haven't looked into any of that. just, I just saw some headlines and, what do you, what do you say to those people? Michael Mishkin (24:58.498) Well, this is the tip of the iceberg. mean, again, all these operational organizations that you're familiar with, most of it is carnal filth that you're gonna find coming out. People that you really pride it in are gonna be exposed and you're gonna be like, what happened? And it's gonna rock your world. And if you're the type of person that really didn't value the truth, you just like the charismatic, well, you're gonna go down, see ya. But if you really love the truth, you're gonna be shaken. but you're gonna go to God and you're gonna start crying out to him. You're gonna push everything else out of the way and make that time with him and say, how did this happen, Lord? I thought I was following you and you're gonna talk to him and you're gonna not set time limits. You're not gonna have priorities where I have the soccer game to go to. Soccer game's on hold. my job, don't worry about my job. I'll take care of the job and it's time. I gotta get this time with the Lord, Lord, I'm not leaving here until you help me through. I know this. Because I went through it. I've had shaking times in my, and I could have made a choice and gone this way or that way. And I did exactly what I'm telling you and this is how I've grown. That's how come I know him and most of you out there don't. All you gotta do is spend the time with him. You're not doing it. You think you are. But you'll know it by your transformation, the fruit that comes out. I'm not the same guy I was a year ago. I'm not the same guy I was three, five, seven, 10 years ago. I came to the Lord almost 30 years ago. And the guy I was then, I am not today. I am way more closer in understanding and seeing the big picture and spending time in his wonderful greatness and really being able to walk in a comfortable piece and not treating him like he's just some sort of poster on a wall that I chant to. David Doty (26:55.118) Yeah, yeah. It's really not about religion. It's really not. It's not about a set calendar of events, of going here, of reciting this prayer, of, you know, anything. Somebody was, I was talking with somebody recently and they were like, I just, need to start studying the Bible. I need to start spending time in the Bible. How do I do it? And I was like, man, just, you know, If it's only 15 minutes a day, just start with that and don't try to say, I'm gonna read three to five chapters or don't try to get through a certain amount. Ask the Lord, what does He want you to read? And then spend as much time as you can with Him and read until the Holy Spirit stops you. Like don't read to get through the book. Don't read to get done, to be able to check it off, say, okay, I accomplished this or that, I'm on schedule to do the Bible in a year or whatever it is. Read until the Holy Spirit stops you. Because we're all, we need to engage. The Bible is not a book that we pick up and read like any of these books on a shelf behind me. It's alive, it's living and it's active. It exposes the thoughts and the intentions of our hearts. God moves and as we open ourselves up to the Bible and to God as we say, okay, Lord, what do you want to show me today? As I read this today, what do you want me to know? I'm reading the Old Testament law right now. I'm going through Exodus and I'm like, okay, Holy Spirit, reveal this to me because I don't understand this stuff. I don't have the Jewish upbringing, the Hebrew traditions. I don't understand a lot of this stuff. So I'm depending upon the Lord. And it might be that he speaks to me directly. It might be that he says, hey, look up the etymology of that word. What's the root word? What's that mean? It might be that he says grab a concordance and look up where else in scripture is that word used. It might be connected to this verse or that verse and a picture arises. And it might be that he says, call Michael Mishkin and ask him or Google it. I mean, I've literally, David Doty (29:17.12) There have been times in my life when I was praying and begging God, like, where do want me to go next? Because I'm in the season of transition. I know that I'm not supposed to be where I was and I don't know where I'm going now. Like, where do I go? And the Lord would speak to me, Google this. And he gave me like three specific words to Google. I search it and pops up and it's like, man, that's exactly what I was looking for. I didn't know that existed. I mean, he can speak to us and lead us through any kind of ways, but we have to be open to that. We have to engage him in that. Michael Mishkin (29:53.506) And you know, I think that's part of the process of helping new people and even older people, whatever, it's teaching them how to think. You think with questions. Quite, you know, the way the mind works is how do we think it starts? Well, who, what, when, where, why, and how everything is all those questions are an emptiness. It's when you say, what is it? You're empty on that knowledge. So you're calling out. to be filled with the substance of the emptiness, which is the answer. Humans don't know how to do that. They just read through and they're like, okay, okay, okay. And that's what's gotta change. You don't have to read a lot to really start engaging God. For me, I'll give you an example. I start reading in multiple letters that Paul writes and even some of Peter or whatever. I thank my God and Father and the Lord, Yeshua, the Messiah. and he starts to go on and for you and this and that and the other, wait a minute, I thought there's three guys up there, why is he only thanking two? Lord, why are you only thanking two? Why would he thank two? I mean, he's leaving one guy out, isn't there three guys sitting up there on a couch as the way Christianity presents it? And that's a thought process. Now you've got to be willing to accept the answer that's going to be contrary to what you've understood. I'm not here to try to tell you answers, but that should make you, well, why does he say that? And he goes, I thank my God and Father. And then he changes to Lord, Yeshua the Messiah. Well, we know Jesus is God, Jesus is God, Jesus is God. This is what we talk, this is what we're taught in church. Jesus is God, Jesus is God. Jesus did not walk around saying, I am God, I am God, I am God. He said, I'm the son of God, I'm the son of God, I'm the son of God. He never tried to go and push himself as I am God, which is a discrepancy between him and the Father. So are you the Father? Well, yes, but no, but yes, no. Some believe yes, some believe that. You guys don't know what the heck you're talking about. Why? Because you keep asking this guy and then this guy and then this guy. He says this, that guy says this, he believes this. You're all wrong because you don't know God. You've got a question. Why does it say it that way? Ask God. David Doty (32:14.509) Yeah. Michael Mishkin (32:14.679) Work it through with him. Don't just stop. I didn't get an answer. Well, you got to work it through You got to start thinking Lord show me and then other scriptures now have the opportunity Things that you didn't understand before can now show you something and then you go. I was thinking it this way That's why I never saw this that blocked me. So you gotta be willing to let the stuff go So this was just a practical version of simple processing in the Lord and allow his spirit into show David Doty (32:43.95) Yeah. Well, doctrine divides. Love unites. And so many of us have grown up in a culture that we have to pull out into bullet points, everything that we believe and don't believe. And what we've done is divide ourselves unintentionally, but we've divided ourselves. Jesus prayed for unity. In John 17, he prayed for that His disciples and those who would believe after them, that they would be one as He and the Father are one. It's time for us to come out of the religious mindset of having a doctrine, a statement of faith, and all of these other things that divide us. Jesus never gave us a statement of faith. He never said, these are the pillars that your church is to be built on. He never did any of that. He never said that your church should have membership and a new members class, right? The biblical model of a spiritual move of God was all related to family. Jesus talked about the Father. He gave examples about a loving Father or even like a shepherd who would leave the 99 to go after the one. What if we... as Christians stopped trying to define ourselves and define our beliefs into bullet points and doctrinal statements. And we started just living the life as much as we could, listening to the Father and trying to be like Jesus. Michael Mishkin (34:33.94) that's the struggle. Because most Christians don't know how to do that. We even tell them this right now, there's still going to be, does not compute. Because it's a requirement for them to relook at everything that they were taught and realize a lot of it is wrong. That's what it is and that's where it gets hard. That's part of what the cross is about. You know, it's all the ways you think about God, you have to realize you're wrong. That's why they came out to John in the wilderness. People don't understand that. Why is there some nutcase wearing this hairy garment saying, repent, repent. And all these people decide to come out to them. Nobody thinks about this stuff. Why would the people of God, that's who Israel was, is the people of God, why do they need to come out to some nutcase in the wilderness who's saying, repent, repent, and be dunked in water? Why would they need that? Nobody's thinking about that. But he was... precursor to the Lord's way coming, but if you believed all these twisted ways from the rabbis that they told you about God and then you see him come, you're gonna say, no, no, you're wrong. This is how we believe. But they come out saying, hey, you know what? I'm willing to realize the ways that I've learned and thought about God were wrong and I'm proving it by repenting and being dunked. That's what they were giving up. Those religious ideas about God. That's what making your path straight meant. That was the prophecy of John was making the path straight. Why would you make a path straight? Because your path is curved. What's the curved path? The false things that you believed about God and it's making you go this way and that way and you don't know what you're doing. So I wanna make it straight again and now that I did that, hey, there's the Messiah. That's, yeah, he fits the bill. I understand. David Doty (36:25.55) So the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right? And so if you're not making progress in your journey toward becoming like God, then you might be on a winding road that's causing you a lot of heartache and delaying your progress instead of putting you in a situation where you're able to progress more quickly. And as you said, we're, we're, need to come out of this mindset of our slow growth of comparing ourselves to other Christians and saying, well, at least I'm not like, I don't have a drinking problem. Like, like Jimmy over here, or at least I'm not so in love with the things of this world that I have to drive fancy cars and be in debt. Like Susie over here, stop comparing yourself to other people. Start. getting yourself into the Word of God and let God as the mirror of His Word, let God expose the things that are in your heart and draw you closer to Him. And it's not about, like we don't say these things to condemn anybody. We're just like raising a flag of awareness so that people can get to a place of understanding that the foundation of their faith is built on shifting sand because a lot of the things that we've all been taught in the church, a lot of the things that we have all been taught are not true, they're not scriptural, and they're holding us back from becoming the people of God that God is calling us to be. And it requires humility to admit that we were wrong. Michael Mishkin (38:29.109) And like I said, I mean, it's gonna take, it's the hard struggle because you have to examine yourself. This is what the cross is always about. You the easier sins are the, whatever the addiction to alcohol, sexual stuff, all that stuff, obviously. That stuff is expected. It's the ones that really are getting people are the religiosity. You know, this is where you have a form of godliness and deny the power. This is where the abomination that causes desolation, which is the carnal man sitting in where the temple should be, where it should be the God dwelling and saying it's God. David Doty (39:06.828) No, no, no, no, that's the Antichrist. Michael Mishkin (39:09.109) Yeah, Antichrist, which is totally wrong context, you know, a term, Antichrist against the anointing that's written in first and second letter of John talking about infiltrators that are twisting the gospel and they attribute it to second Thessalonians where it says a totally different term, man of lawlessness, and they just connect it and that's some guy who's going to come and appear in a temple that doesn't exist. and he's gonna take a seat where they don't ever take a seat in a temple ever. There's no seats in there, there's no thrones, you don't sit in a temple. So, you know, nobody thinks again about this stuff. You look at the Greek, you see that it's not a man, it's anthropos, which means mankind, the nature of man. You know, like Adam, it could be male or female, and it's the nature that he has versus God, which is a different species. That's the whole perspective. And... You know, great falling away is gonna happen. They think a falling away is like everybody at the same time is gonna say, hey everyone, we're outta here. No, the falling away is by twisting the truth. They're all gonna still be in churches, but they don't know God. You're falling away. You don't know him. Now you have churchianity. The falling away has happened a long time ago. David Doty (40:23.778) Wait, wait, wait, wait. So when Jesus says in Revelation, when he's talking to the church and saying, like, here I stand at the door and knock. If anyone will open the door, I'll come up. Wait, he's talking to believers? Michael Mishkin (40:44.767) Gee, it's a church that he's talking to. David Doty (40:47.352) He's talking to believers. He's talking. Michael Mishkin (40:49.132) Somehow they don't see that. And then he says, I'll take away your lamp stand if you don't get it right. But no, no, no, well, somehow we don't lose anything. How can that be? You know, nobody wants to pay attention. It's all written there in front of everybody. David Doty (41:06.038) It is. So I am encouraged though, because like we referenced earlier, it seems as though a shift has taken place in my own life, in my own family, in other people that I'm talking with. just, seems like the truth is going forth in new ways. Not that everybody's going to accept it, but I'm seeing more people. open to having these kinds of conversations. And I feel like we're at the precipice of a really great opportunity to advance the kingdom of heaven, not that we do it in our own flesh or by our own might at all. I just, I see God moving right now. Michael Mishkin (41:58.294) He's definitely moving. mean when darkness is moving the light is ready to come in a drastic way So there's no doubt about that it's who's gonna be willing to really embrace it and You know, we're here trying to help like you said We're not trying to say that we know everything and you know, you're all just you're wrong We're trying to help people to come into a deeper real relationship of what the whole purpose of this existence is about David Doty (42:27.15) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (42:27.371) This world was not about your job that God made. It's not about how much money you could make. God has already almost 7,000 years of operation of his plan and he did things in different phases. And now you're at this point in time where now we have electricity and we have technologies that they didn't have 150 years ago and all that time before they didn't have. Now we're coming to a climactic time where Israel has been restored as a land. spiritually it's going to be restored again. The Jewish people, there's more Jews that believe in Yeshua from 1970 until now from what I've heard than in all those years before put together. I could believe that's true. mean, I've heard things in the past that maybe there's like 300,000 out of the 14 to 17 million that exist. Some people say that the number might even be higher, maybe closer to a million. I don't know, it's possible, but the fact that there is that many in these times show that we're coming to some type of finality. You know, a lot of people like to say, hey, the Lord gave me a revelation. He's saying he's coming soon. He's coming soon. Well, they've been saying that for years. So soon is relative. But we are seeing the signs of the times and people are going to make a choice. Do you want to keep holding on to that? fruitless religion that you you pride yourself in that you think you're of God but you really don't know him or do you really want to get to know him and what that means is do you want the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth if you do well we'll be happy to talk with whomever wants to talk with us and I'll answer whatever questions I know I'm not here to back up any doctrines that I believe over yours I'm gonna ask you questions and I'm gonna show you scriptures that I see and I'm gonna ask you to Tell me what that means. And then we can go and pray to God together and look at things with, you know, and ask God what he thinks. And that's the simplicity of the way the kingdom should be. David Doty (44:23.928) Mm-hmm. David Doty (44:30.478) Mm-hmm. David Doty (44:34.156) Yeah. What if we redefined the American or the Western culture version of church and took out the word church because it's not in the original text anyway. What if we started viewing David Doty (44:54.85) church as a spiritual family and people instead of going to a place which was you like a school or like a club or like you know some sort of an organization with a with a great intention like the mission statement is great right the vision of the local churches is a great thing. but it's been ineffective. We're looking at the results and it's been ineffective largely over the last 50 years. So what if we stopped looking at it as a place we go to and started thinking of it as something that we're a part of, that we live out day to day. There's an organization called Church Without Walls International and I love the name of it. I have no affiliation whatsoever. I listen to the guys podcast. Think of being a church without walls. And what would happen if we connected ourselves with other people in a relational way and we started gathering together, and this is why I'm doing the morning prayer calls like five days a week, because it's prayer and fellowship. It's like a daily touch point. Let's talk and pray together. And it sets up your day for success. what if we started viewing each other like Michael Michigan is a spiritual father, he's an older brother. What if you had a spiritual father, an older brother? What if you had a spiritual mother, an older sister, somebody to go to when you had a problem? And in the same way that our families in the natural were given to us as a picture of what it's supposed to be like in the spirit, What if we started seeking out relationships in such a way that we realize like, I need help. I need help. And I also, I have something to give. I need to help other people. And we started living a lifestyle of Jesus followers rather than just trying to, you know, whatever, go to a club, whatever, once a day, once a week, check a box. Michael Mishkin (47:17.441) Well, mean, everything that you're describing is going to require that reeducation. I mean, you talk about the church. Well, people have to understand what you mean by that. The English word church that we see in our Bibles is written over a Greek terminology, which actually has a different perspective meaning. Ekklesia, that is used where now we use church. When we say the word church, the trigger understanding in most people's minds is a building. that you go to, a pastor stands in the front, gives his message, and we're in the audience, and that's what church is, all the... Catholicism have their churches and all of that, but that's not what the word Ecclesia, that the English word is over the Greek, actually means. It means the called out ones. And what are they called out of? Yeshua came to the people of God for the Ecclesia, the ones called out. It wasn't the world. David Doty (48:02.487) Amen. Michael Mishkin (48:13.431) It was called out of the people of God. There's the overall people that claim to be of God and then the true people of God. This is a concept that is not new. It goes all the way back to Israel and you see where Moses comes down and people are willing to follow and then there's a rebellious crew that stand up. Korah and Dathan, they were rebellious. The ground opened up and swallowed them. Then next thing goes on, another rebellious crew. Fireballs came out. incinerated them. This is all within the people of God. Then you go on to Saul and David. Saul's kingdom was the general at large people of God, but doing it Saul's way or the way the people wanted. And the people who had the heart after God followed David. All of that is concepts of the same thing. And in the time when Yeshua came, he was exposing again the same thing. The Pharisees were lying to the people and giving them burdens. David Doty (48:45.262) You Michael Mishkin (49:09.811) and most of Israel followed the Pharisees. A small remnant came out and followed Yeshua and moved in power. So we have to learn what the real difference is. You don't have to have church by going to a building on Sunday. It should be where every time you're getting together with fellow true believers who love the truth and are truly seeking God together. That is your ecclesia. You're the called out ones wanting to know and learn from God. To have people, like you said, we could be there as, like you said, spiritual fathers or, and that's biblical where Paul says that, you know, not many of you are fathers, you know, and you should be, and he was insane. But if people are gonna come to me, the Lord, you know, when the Lord said to Peter and James and all them, he didn't say, hey, where you guys going? I'm gonna go with you guys and I'm gonna keep teaching you. He said, you. Follow me. So if people are really hungry for the truth, there are people and I don't, you know, I don't need to look at the term father because oh, who do you think? And Yeshua says don't call anybody father, but there is, then Paul's talking about you should be fathers. There's the dichotomy, the split on what Yeshua means versus what Paul means. know, there's, Yeshua says don't call anyone teacher or rabbi, and then Paul says as apostle prophets, teachers. So is he countering Yeshua? David Doty (50:05.87) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (50:34.665) No, what Yeshua is countering is the institutional way where you follow somebody and whatever they say is law. Paul is talking about people that are advisors to you, but they generally point you to God. They're not there to give you what you to believe, but they're to help you guide. So is it right to have people that are older in the faith that can help others? And that's what discipleship actually is. Yes, but you have to make the requirement in yourself that As I'm growing and I need this guidance, I go and seek them out and ask them and be with them. You don't say, hey, why didn't they call me today? It's not our job to go after you. If you want it, like I know with me when I was a young believer and I was fired up and hungry, I was starving for people who I looked more mature in the Lord and I was over their house. My friend's mother every night, he's sitting there at work or he's at school and I'm sitting in his. David Doty (51:13.58) Right. Right. Michael Mishkin (51:32.297) in his kitchen with his mother for three hours a day, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. You know, because she was very spiritual. Same thing with this other woman that I knew. Anytime we could get together with her because I wanted to really help and understand how do we really understand God the right way. People don't have that hunger anymore because they don't value God. They don't value the truth. They just want a little lucky rabbit's foot. They want their idol and that's what's going to kill you. David Doty (51:48.29) Yeah. David Doty (51:54.328) Well. David Doty (51:58.83) But a lot of people want it and don't know where to get it. I I was in that place. I was going from church to church when I met you. I'd been going from church to church and just trying to figure out like, man, you know, I'll go here and it feels great for a couple of months. I learned a couple of things and then it's just dry and the Lord's moving us on. And so we go to another church and then we just gave up on church. Cause it's like, where do I get this? And you helped me realize and the Lord definitely as well. helped me realize that I had so many false doctrines. I had so many false beliefs that it was like a cracked and crumbling foundation built on shifting sand and it prevented me from going any higher. And I wanted to go higher. I wanted to grow deeper in my relationship with the Lord and achieve more. And yet I'm still like just in this desert place. And I think there are a lot of people like that. It's like, we want to go further, we want to do more, we feel even called to ministry and all these different things, and yet I'm just stuck. And the reason for that is that you've believed false doctrines, you've been taught wrong. You've been taught wrong. Start over, forget everything you know, everything that you've learned from the church, from reading books, from this pastor, that pastor. It's not to put any of them down, but a lot of the things that we believe are just wrong and it inhibits our growth. And as a result, we don't know what we believe is true and what it's not. So we have to just start over and go back if it's Genesis one or if it's John one or wherever the Lord tells you to read in scripture, just go back and be like, okay, Lord, I'm going to humble myself. I'm going to. admit that I might not have it all figured out, let's go back to basics. And like you were saying, Mike, while I'm reading in the scripture and it says, I thank my God and Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Wait a second. David Doty (54:12.376) Why doesn't he mention the Holy Spirit? Pray about that, ask the Lord to show you. Go from this verse to that verse and He's going to fill in the gaps. You don't have to take my word for it. Mike's not saying, hey, we're starting Michiganism over here, right? Mike's gonna be the one to tell you and he's done it. He did it maybe on our last recording or the one before. Don't believe a word I say. Don't believe anything I've said. Go and study it out for yourself. Michael Mishkin (54:43.895) That's it. Go and ask God. You know, like you said, I mean, that is why John existed. John existed to represent those who are in the people of God, but are frustrated and really want to know more, so they're willing to come out. That's why John existed and it says, and will come again. They asked Yeshua about Elijah that was to come and he referred to John and that he will come again. It speaks that, I think in Luke, if I'm not mistaken. David Doty (55:13.998) you Michael Mishkin (55:15.711) Why? Because for the first fruits, is what Yeshua coming the first time was, the first fruit harvest, which all the disciples coming in, all the believers that came in at that time, were the first fruit harvest, Shavuot, Pentecost, all a part of the first fruit harvest. John came for that time. Now we're coming to the end time harvest, so it's gonna happen again. That's why there's a duality. That's why there's the two. We see the two that goes on there. It shows the first one and then the second one. the first coming of the Lord and then the coming of the Lord as the King. You know, he's going to return one more time, not two more times. So rapture. Bye bye. So that's another challenging one that people are to have to understand. David Doty (55:59.552) I see more and more people coming out of that mindset. I see more and more people that are rejecting the pre-trib rapture false doctrine. I'm grateful. I'm grateful for that. Like it gives me hope. But I think that's one of the easiest ones. I think that's one of the easiest ones to recognize because it's so clear in Scripture that that's not stated anywhere. Michael Mishkin (56:05.601) Okay. Michael Mishkin (56:25.803) The only way you can believe that is if you're selfish and foolish. You know, you have no understanding of Scripture. All throughout Scripture, the people of God went through turmoil and tribulation, especially the holiest ones. They were beaten, killed, and all these horrible things happened. And they said, God would never let that happen to us. You're not reading the book. That's what happens to the people of God. They are, this world is not for us. David Doty (56:46.638) Yeah. David Doty (56:52.172) Right. Michael Mishkin (56:52.479) We are we are opposing this world. This world is evil. So yes, turmoil comes to us. So don't think you're leaving. If you think you're leaving, yeah, you're gonna leave and go someplace that you think you're not, you weren't gonna go. David Doty (57:05.154) The damage of that doctrine, and then we can close in the next two minutes, but the damage of the pre-trib rapture is, just like you said, it's an escapist mentality that I don't have to go through hard times. Scripture says throughout, God uses the hard times to refine us, to make us more into His image. We are to rejoice in our trials. Michael Mishkin (57:19.009) Mm-hmm. David Doty (57:32.524) because it's through that process that God refines us and makes us holy like he is holy. And he allows us through the fellowship of suffering to be joined to Christ. When Ananias was called to go and lay hands on Paul, and because Paul had been blinded by the Damascus Road experience meeting with Jesus, Ananias is like, don't wanna go. Michael Mishkin (57:39.063) That's correct. David Doty (58:01.482) lay hands on that guy. I mean, we all know what he's doing. He's been locking us up and have, you know, and Jesus said to Ananias, go, he's my chosen instrument. I'm going to show him how much he needs to suffer for my name. We talk about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and this, you know, that movie came out. I haven't seen it yet. I want to see it. But Bonhoeffer was this great man of faith in the, in the midst of tremendous trial and one of the quotes that is attributed to him is when Christ calls a man he bids him to come and die. Death is painful and it's a necessary means by which we are transformed into the image of the one who's calling us from glory to glory. Michael Mishkin (58:52.887) You see how, you know, because of your, enlightenment that you've gotten from the Lord and getting to understand him better, how when you're bringing up all those scriptures, it just flows and it's like, yes and amen. I mean, it's like, yeah, there you go. There you, that is how you know. Cause it just flows out of you. mean, you're not sitting there thinking, let me say this scripture next. Let me say this way, but it all just connects to the concept. And that comes through that time you spent with the Lord and really how this picture has been. put together by him. So now you see why this scripture says this and this and this and this, where most other people are just chanting off, you know, spiritual, you know, scriptural spells for people and they don't even know what they're talking about and it doesn't really line up. But that's what we're talking about here is an expression of true growth in the spirit and the word of God backs it up. And that's what we're trying to offer to people and explain, but they've got to be willing to give up the junk. falsity, all the baloney that they've been taught by the all mankind. David Doty (59:56.78) Well, I spent enough years as a religious. David Doty (01:00:02.912) evangelical guy, but the Lord. David Doty (01:00:10.018) By having me teach the Bible every day, I've, you for the last couple years, I've been studying the Bible every single day and spending time with Him. And it has changed me. It has changed me. And so, you know, if the Lord could do it with me, He could do it with anyone because I was very much a religious hypocrite for a lot of years. And, you know, that didn't necessarily bring a lot of glory to Him. And I probably did more harm than good in a lot of places. But if we will give up ourselves and give up our own mindsets, know, a lot of Christians want to be used by God. David Doty (01:00:57.166) But are you willing to get in and study the word? You I mean, you might want to go off to Bible college or whatever, but are you willing to study the Bible on your own? I tell you what, you don't have to go to Bible college, you don't have to go to ministry school, you don't have to go to seminary. Just get into the Word of God and let it change the way you think and God can use you. One of my favorite verses now is Ezra 7-10. Why did God choose Ezra? There were lots of other priests, there were lots of other scribes, there were lots of other people in this post-exilic period. God could have chosen to use anybody. Why did he choose Ezra? And I think it's because Ezra 7 10 says he devoted himself. to study the law of God, to obey it and to teach it. He was just a normal guy like you or me, but he determined in his heart to study the word, the law of Moses, to teach it or to obey it and to teach it. Study it, obey it, teach it. Michael Mishkin (01:01:49.335) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (01:02:07.605) And you use the word there that is actually a very powerful word that is very, has very little people operating in. And I think most of humanity, they can't do it. They just, it's a word that there's just not capable for most of humanity. It's called determination. Determination is where you set your mind to it and nothing will shift you either way. You're like, I'm going to do this. And those people, They are the ones who will achieve the prize because then Satan has nothing on you the whole goal when you say that you're gonna do something Well, you got Satan in your way says we'll see about that and he's got all the arsenal because he knows your life and he's gonna throw everything at you and the only way the only way you will overcome is if you are determined to get the truth to get to God and it doesn't matter if he rips your arms off your skin off and you know things David Doty (01:03:05.656) takes your kids, takes your wife. Michael Mishkin (01:03:07.151) everything. That's the whole, that's a big part of why Job, the book of Job exists, is explaining that kind of perseverance and determination. You know, he grumbled and complained through, but he never shifted from God. And that's a big aspect of understanding, and most of humanity just can't do it. It's unfortunate. That's why there's only a remnant. But we don't say who they are. They find out who they are. That's the whole purpose. David Doty (01:03:28.322) Yeah. Yeah. Michael Mishkin (01:03:34.84) If you keep going, then you're that person. You can do it. And you know what the truth of the matter is? It's not in your strength to do it. All of these is for you to make yourself determined to open and be willing. And then the rest is on God's power. That's really what you're tapping into. You just got to keep yourself open and keep going forward. Just keep going. Just keep going. That's been my mantra from day one. And that's what kept me going in this whole kingdom. David Doty (01:03:52.578) Yeah. David Doty (01:03:58.606) Amen. Amen. Michael Mishkin (01:04:04.481) Just keep going. David Doty (01:04:06.2) Yep. Even when YouTube suppresses my numbers. Thank you, YouTube. God bless you as well. Even when, you know, Apple won't allow my podcast to stream on half of the mobile devices of people. We're going to go to stream catcher and other let's go to rumble where there's no restrictions and you know, whatever, it doesn't matter. I'm to keep on going. It doesn't matter if there's two listeners or Michael Mishkin (01:04:10.017) Yeah. David Doty (01:04:37.568) any number larger than that. amen brother. Do you wanna close this out in prayer? Pray for the people who might have had some part of this be a prick in their heart today. Michael Mishkin (01:04:53.995) Father in heaven, I thank you, Lord, for another wonderful podcast of just talking about you and acknowledging all the things that you've shown us. And I pray that it could be fruitful for people who are hungry for the truth, that are determined to have you, to really know you, and not just religiosity, and not what some other pastor or some other Christian book told them. I pray for those hearts, the sons of God, the true ones that you've known from the beginning. Lord, I pray that you would stir their hearts to hunger for truth and righteousness and push everything else out of the way in their lives and make that the priority to go after you, to seek you and to ask you and to look at your word and question about all the things that you've said and things that are written in scripture that are controversial to things that they've believed. and let your spirit in to guide them because the true worshipers will worship in spirit and truth. They need your word and they need your spirit. And that's what we are calling for is that the true hungry ones will come out and we can come together and be united by your spirit and love one another as you've loved us, which is the royal command. That's what you've commanded us. That was our mission is to love one another. Yeshua said it and it's repeated by James and many others. that we love one another and you would build us Lord in love, unity, order and balance. Call out your remnant Lord, those who want you and bring us together Lord that we could build your house because unless the Lord builds the house, the laborers labor in vain and it's not by might nor power but by your spirit says the Lord when you spoke to Zerubbabel about building his house. So we submit this to you for all those that are yours to come out and let us come together and shine your light as though dry bones coming to life standing shoulder to shoulder as a vast army. And we can express your light and your love in Yeshua's name. Amen. David Doty (01:07:03.68) Amen. God bless you, brother. God bless you guys out there. Let us know if we can help you on your journey. We're not building a ministry. We're not asking for money. We're not doing anything other than trying to advance the kingdom of God and connect with other people who want to do the same. God bless you guys. Michael Mishkin (01:07:07.607) Yes, you do. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thinkpodcast.substack.com [https://thinkpodcast.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Understanding Shabbat - Entering God's Rest

Takeaways * The commandment is to remember Shabbat and keep it holy. * Entering God's rest is a present reality, not just a future promise. * Unbelief and disobedience can lead to spiritual death. * The Israelites had the gospel preached to them, yet many did not believe. * Engaging with God requires a willingness to die to the flesh. * The pre-trib rapture doctrine is a false doctrine. * The opportunity to engage with God was presented to the Israelites, but they rejected it. * True faith involves a daily commitment to follow Christ. * The new covenant was part of God's plan from the beginning. * Religion can often distract from a genuine relationship with God. We often operate in manmade works instead of resting in God. * The journey of Israel serves as an allegory for our spiritual journey. * Transformation requires dying to the flesh and trusting God. * Listening to God's voice is essential for spiritual growth. * Tradition can hinder our relationship with God. * The world today is akin to Egypt, a place of bondage. * The process of spiritual growth involves reprogramming and trust. * Our spirit man does not sin; it's our flesh that does. * Many Christians are on the wide road to destruction. * We need to rebuild our foundation on the truth of God's word. Transcript: David Doty (00:02.272) It is the Think About It podcast. Michael Mishkin, David Doty here today talking about Hebrews chapter four, entering into God's rest. And we're talking a little bit offline about how it seems like the Lord has us in the season. He's been speaking to you about Shabbat, remembering Shabbat, did you say? Is that the command? Michael Mishkin (00:22.944) Thank Michael Mishkin (00:26.888) Yeah, the commandment at least says to Zahar in Hebrew, which means to mark or remember. It's not the word honor. Some people say honor the Shabbat, but it means to remember the Shabbat and keep it holy is what the actual commandment is describing. So it's a matter of really understanding because here we got in chapter four of Hebrews, whoever wrote Hebrews is really digging into concept of entering into his rest as in today but he relates it to Shabbat. So we know that the whoever wrote Hebrews has a deeper understanding from sounds like a Levitical you know pharisaic or some type of pharisaical depth and is describing you know a spiritual meaning behind that concept which he does with a lot of things and that's what the Jews do. The Jews are there. He's talking to fellow Jews in Hebrews. That's who he's talking to. Trying to remind them of certain things. In certain ways, he actually says, you guys are becoming lazy and I have to remind you a lot of these things. You're not catching and remembering certain things, so he's going over them. And he brings us to chapter four, where he talks about. Those who are truly of God will strive to enter into his rest, which is today. If it is still called today, you shall strive to enter into his rest. And the rest, which is to cease, is actually what Shabbat means, to cease, to stop. And then six days, God created the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day, he rested. And he's reflecting that to us, but he's calling it today. And then he's reflecting in chapter four. I mean, we could read this so people could see. context, which is the most important thing. But we could see he's talking about how those who were hearers, but didn't believe, a lot of people of God he's reflecting at, because he's talking about those who died in the wilderness, and then he's reflecting it to them, how this was an example for us that if we don't, we could easily be, in some ways, they even says rejected, and which is, I know, counter to Michael Mishkin (02:53.408) Christianity and their belief system. But this is an important factor to understand how to walk in a way of entering into his rest, you know. David Doty (02:57.528) some. David Doty (03:07.35) Right. So you want me to start reading in verse one? Michael Mishkin (03:11.517) Yeah, let's read in verse one and we can stop and examine. David Doty (03:13.166) you Okay. Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. Which is what you're referencing. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened. So who was he? Who's the them? Michael Mishkin (03:28.713) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (03:41.738) That's exactly. So we notice he's coming off in chapter four from chapter three. So maybe we should go back into chapter three into the last couple of verses to bring it down. So maybe we should read from like verse 14 and three and go through to the 14. David Doty (04:07.918) Okay. Yeah, I mean, chapter three verse once is, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus the apostle and high priest of our confession. So he's saying brothers, fellow believers. Michael Mishkin (04:23.167) So he's talking to fellow brethren, brothers, and in certain ways you could see it's actually Jewish brethren. David Doty (04:31.713) Mm-hmm. Verse 12 again, take care, chapter three, verse 12, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God. So again, Michael Mishkin (04:43.997) That can't happen. That can't happen. What are you talking about? David Doty (04:48.76) Some people believe that's impossible, but there's a very clear warning again and again, take care, brothers, believers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. So, encourage one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Michael Mishkin (04:51.037) Yes. David Doty (05:14.252) So when we let sin creep in and fail to repent of that, it hardens our hearts, we become deceived and the result is if we don't repent of falling away. Verse 14, we can fall away if we allow sin into our lives and do not repent. Right? Verse 14, for we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold on, again, Michael Mishkin (05:27.495) We fall away. Michael Mishkin (05:33.951) There you David Doty (05:41.804) we share in Christ if we hold on our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said, Michael Mishkin (05:48.767) Amazing that that word if Christianity doesn't believe in the word if David Doty (05:52.067) Yes. Well, not all Christians. Let's not overgeneralize. Today, if you hear his voice, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? So we're going back to Exodus. And with whom was he provoked for 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? Michael Mishkin (06:16.745) Mm-hmm. David Doty (06:25.47) And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient. So disobedience is sin. So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. So Michael Mishkin (06:41.93) and he's talking to his fellow brethren who are supposed to be believers, and he's relating it to his forefathers, all their forefathers that died in the wilderness. And he says to them, he says, for some having heard, rebelled. He says, in fact, he said it just before that, day we hear heart and whom. Where do you say it's, or maybe it says it a little bit further, but he's basically saying they heard, but they rebelled. So he's saying what they did is relative to us. It's not they're separate. It's not Old Testament, New Testament. He's using them as an example on purpose that you could be exactly like them. If you've heard and you are not following and obeying, you could be just like them. David Doty (07:34.321) So verse chapter 3 verse 16 of Hebrews who were the For who were those who heard and yet rebelled was it not all of those who left Egypt led by Moses? So God was provoked to anger because of their hardness of heart because of their lack of belief which resulted in their sin and These were the same people who got protected through the ten plagues who was They walked across the Red Sea on dry ground, but they were lost in the wilderness. Their lives were lost in the wilderness for during that 40 years, because even though God had taken them out of Egypt, they had not allowed God to take Egypt out of them. Michael Mishkin (08:05.096) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (08:21.055) Shouldn't we tell this guy that God wouldn't do that with us? That God's gonna take us away and everybody else is gonna go in tribulation? Doesn't this guy know this? I don't understand. Why doesn't he know this? Why is he telling us this? David Doty (08:35.254) Surprise surprise the pre-trib rapture is a false doctrine. I'm sorry. It's just it's just wrong So back to chapter 4 Therefore while the promise of entering his rest still stands let us fear Lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it for good news came to us Just as it just as to them, but the message they heard Michael Mishkin (08:37.567) Okay. You Michael Mishkin (08:52.201) Fear. David Doty (09:03.394) did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened. Michael Mishkin (09:08.543) So they heard the good news, he just said. Wait a minute, I thought the gospel only came in the New Testament. He just said they heard the good news, did he not? David Doty (09:11.31) They heard it. Michael Mishkin (09:20.319) for even we are being announced good news just as those also. Does yours say the same thing? For we are being announced, yeah. What does yours say verse two again? David Doty (09:20.504) Bye. David Doty (09:30.254) You're talking about verse two? Yep, yeah, it says verse two. So I'm reading from the ESV, for good news came to us just as to them. So apparently, I'm gonna look at, I'm gonna go in the interlinear over here in chapter two. Michael Mishkin (09:40.028) Ooh, they got good news? Whoa, that's interesting. I got mine open. Here's my interlinear. David Doty (09:52.18) Okay, so in the interlinear and in verse chapter four verse two of Hebrews, and four, we are those having had the gospel preached. Michael Mishkin (10:04.649) Mm-hmm. David Doty (10:06.486) just as they did, but not did profit the message of their hearing them, not having been united with the faith of those having heard. The gospel preached is, looks like it's the word that we get evangelized from, to proclaim good news. Michael Mishkin (10:16.711) so they had an opportunity. Michael Mishkin (10:32.017) Interesting stuff. David Doty (10:38.146) the message. So it is a different word in the Greek than David Doty (10:47.092) Michael Mishkin (10:47.731) which were the hearing. David Doty (10:50.976) It's the message, agolos, it's a compound word, you and agolos. Agolos is the same word that we get messenger or angel from in the New Testament. Michael Mishkin (11:01.951) The angles. David Doty (11:03.951) and the word you which is well, good, rightly. Michael Mishkin (11:09.661) Mm-hmm. Your angle leads, though, to bring good news, to announce. You know, and you know, I've understood this. The thing is, it's like you're seeing from Hebrews where he's illustrating that the people of Israel had an opportunity. I always said this. think we've even talked about this before that they had an opportunity because if you read Deuteronomy in chapter five, few verses down, I if you want to go to it, I could show you where that is. And you could see where they had the opportunity because this is what he's talking. He says they had an opportunity and they rejected. I could read to you. Deuteronomy chapter 5 and I think it was like verse 16 or something but Let me see David Doty (12:19.576) So Deuteronomy 5 in the giving of the Ten Commandments. Michael Mishkin (12:24.255) It gets afterwards. Michael Mishkin (12:28.763) Alright, think it's at verse 24. Alright, verse, I'll read from 23. David Doty (12:36.192) And as soon as you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders. And you said, Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. This day we have seen God speak with man and man still live. Now, therefore, why should we die? for this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the Lord our God anymore, we shall die." So, well, mean, this is their fear, right? So this is why they wanted Moses to intercede for them to be a priest, really. Michael Mishkin (13:08.639) You Michael Mishkin (13:20.061) Read the next verse. David Doty (13:22.146) Verse 26, Deuteronomy 5 26, for who is there of all flesh that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have and has still lived? Well, we know Moses did. Michael Mishkin (13:32.127) There you go. Michael Mishkin (13:36.106) Well, but the whole point is that it's illustrating the cross. The good news of what Yeshua did, he's saying, hey, I'm bringing you back to the Father that you can have relationship, you could talk with him. but you gotta kill your flesh. They're seeing that back then. Hey, we could talk with God, but it means my flesh has to die. We don't wanna do that. We don't wanna go through that suffering. Moses, can you go up there, please? Find out what he wants and bring it down in a law. that we could follow by rules and regulations. That's what they're talking about here. Does that not make sense? David Doty (14:11.97) Yeah, it does. It does. That's the thing where I think most Christians don't make that connection because it's not been taught. When it's talking about dying, a lot of times it's talking about the flesh. We have to be willing to put to death our own desires, pick up our cross daily and follow after him. We don't get to just do what we want to do all the time. Michael Mishkin (14:19.219) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (14:37.076) We and humanity especially like especially unlearned Christians are still in a compounded simplistic mindset. That's I guess they called the linear mindset. look, they're saying that we we die means if we talk to God, we're going to physically drop dead. No, he's illustrating exactly the same concept. That Yeshua is telling you if you want to go and grab ahold of this that I have you have to take up your cross and follow me. What does that mean to take up your cross? It means. Your flesh has got to die, means your carnal way, your way of thinking, your way of walking, your way of doing things has got to go. And that's the relationship we have to understand. We gotta understand that it's not a actual finite physical death of an instant that we're used to, people dropping dead and not operating anymore. It's a death of your way. That's the whole purpose of the good news is if you kill your way, you can have access back to God. But the whole point that Hebrews is saying, David Doty (15:24.483) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (15:36.648) is that they had that opportunity back with Israel when they were in front of the mountain and they didn't want to take it. They preferred religion. They preferred a man to give them rules and regulations instead of engaging God. And it comes through, if you want to engage God, it goes through fire. means I'm going to burn up your old guy and I'm going to build you in a new guy. That's what they don't get. That's why the altar of God existed in the temple. It was all symbolic of burning up the old flesh in order to be able to engage God. Interesting. David Doty (16:13.518) It's very interesting. Emily, can you hear me a little bit better now? Hello. Glad you're here. we were, she said Emily's on the, YouTube helping us out. So I appreciate it. Emily. So good to see you and hear from you. David Doty (16:36.396) Where were we? Thank you, I turned up my mic. Michael Mishkin (16:38.752) So we were making the comparison starting from Hebrews, where he's talking to his fellow brethren and using the example of the forefathers of their fellow brethren, Jews, and how they had the opportunity and they all died in the wilderness because they did not want to walk by faith, which is the death of the flesh and really being led by the spirit. then we just went to Deuteronomy chapter five and started reading those verses from chapter from verse 23, that shows the actual illustrated time where they had the opportunity to exactly what we have now, it was offered to them. That we see today that it's possible for man to speak with God and live, but why should we die? Because who of all flesh can speak with man and live? Flesh cannot engage God, but God can incinerate the flesh man and give you the spirit man. If you're willing to go through the fire and though they did not, they were not willing. They chose religion through Moses. That's why he came back down with a veil over his face, covering the glory of which was the new covenant, the true covenant under Yeshua, because the new covenant was always in existence from the foundation of the world says he was the lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world. But we didn't have access. People of Israel sort of had an access, but they refused. David Doty (17:40.302) If. Michael Mishkin (18:06.205) And now that we have the access through what Yeshua did, He's warning that we don't go backwards like they did and start operating in a religious manner and not with faith and resting in God. Because the rest in God is what? Sit down, relax, and if I need you to do something, I'll let you know. If not, sit down, shut up, and just study or spend time with me. David Doty (18:18.114) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (18:32.872) And that's the peace and the freedom and the joy of the Lord. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. But most of our operation in Christianity is manmade works because we want to do for God. And they don't realize a lot of our doing for God is like Peter trying to do for Yeshua when he said, I will never let you go to Jerusalem, be executed. And then he gets called Satan because his good intentions for God is actually opposition to the way of God. David Doty (18:55.148) Hmm. Hmm. David Doty (19:03.309) Mm-hmm. David Doty (19:07.628) Yeah. So we, are in that battle of trying to enter into his rest on a daily basis. And we were talking about Shabbat and the importance of remembering Shabbat and not Michael Mishkin (19:17.161) Mm-hmm. David Doty (19:29.514) not, we're not trying to force our way into the kingdom of heaven. We're not trying to earn our way. We know this, right? Academically, we know this and yet we feel like, I've got to go to church. I've got to share the gospel. I've got to, I've got to not do certain things. I have to not cuss and not, you know, whatever, fill in, fill in those blanks, right? And then I'm a good person. Therefore, God's going to be pleased with me and spend time with me and Let me go to heaven someday. David Doty (20:03.63) Alright, let's go back to where we were in Hebrews 4. David Doty (20:13.39) He has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way and God rested on the seventh day from all his works. And again, in this passage, he said, they shall not enter my rest. And so this is the people of God. These are descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who were slaves for 400 years who Michael Mishkin (20:29.278) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (20:32.861) Mm-hmm. David Doty (20:39.734) were delivered, they made it through the Passover. They were in the land of Goshen. They went through all of the 10 plagues, including obviously the Passover. They were delivered at the 11th hour, walking through the Red Sea on dry ground. And then they died in the wilderness. They failed to enter God's rest. Then if we come to the end of this 40 years, we have the 12th spies who are sent into the promised land. Michael Mishkin (20:44.052) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (20:59.017) Mm-hmm. David Doty (21:08.456) And only two of the 12 say, this land is beautiful. We're going to take it. We're going to do it. And the other 10, instead of looking by a lens of faith, said, there's no way we can do this because they were viewing it through the lens of the flesh. There's, we're like grasshoppers next to these people. And so they didn't enter. Michael Mishkin (21:45.162) So again, a lot of Christians are gonna look at, well, that was them, we don't do that, but yet the Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews is going out of his way to say, that is us. You can easily fall into exactly what that whole concept was that they fell into because again, what is not understood is that these aren't just stories, these are allegories. These are figures and people and storylines that actually represented a greater concept of understanding that does reflect to us today. And that's why it's legitimate. And the writer of Hebrews understood that and was able to bring this scenario as a warning to fellow brethren here today in their time that you could fall away just the same way as they did because you're in a process. That's what it is. When you accept the Lord, David Doty (22:34.37) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (22:43.178) Churchianity at large teaches you you've received the prize you got it you won. That's a false gospel. They lied to you. The true gospel is Yeshua made the way for you that now if you continue to walk it out to the end as Hebrews 3 early on speaks of then you are a part of his house those who hold their faith to the end and many other places affirm that. Paul is talking about the same exact event that happened to the forefathers in 1st Corinthians chapter 10 and he gives the same exact warning to Gentiles that you could fall away just like them. So this was a very important happening in process and both guys are relating it to us believers back then and today that we could easily fall away. Why? Because Christians don't understand David Doty (23:17.858) Mm-hmm. Michael Mishkin (23:38.996) that the process of Israel coming out of Egypt and going through the waters, baptized into Moses, and then being in the wilderness before entering the promised land is exactly what you are going through, which is called the cross. It's a process of leaving the world, being immersed into a new teaching, and being brought into a place where you can't sustain yourself on your own. You have to trust God. And if you keep bucking and kicking and trying to do it yourself, you will die in your own way. And you will not enter in what God has actually planned for you. The cross is about dying to the flesh and learning how to be one with the Father, become like Him, being built in His character by His Holy Spirit. And if you are doing that, then you are truly achieving what the good news is. Good news. You don't have to be that old flesh guy anymore that is cursed through Adam. You can be transformed into the new man, which is in the image of Yeshua. He is the first amongst many brethren. So he is our model of what God can make us into and like if we let his spirit do it. Now the problem is when you're arguing and complaining and bucking and doing things your way, you are not letting him do it. And if you're not letting him do it, You're still the flesh guy. And if you're still the flesh guy, you're not going to be with God forever and eternity because he does not unite with flesh. David Doty (25:13.272) Right. So one of the things you said was that these are allegories. These Old Testament stories are literal historical fact. They actually did happen in the way that they're described in the Bible and they apply to us today. And if you take into account 2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 16 that says all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching for reproof. Michael Mishkin (25:29.513) Yes. David Doty (25:42.072) for correction and for training in righteousness, then that makes sense. Think about the Israelites going into Egypt, being enslaved, coming out of it. Why do those stories matter? Because they're allegories, because those stories are useful for teaching. They're profitable for teaching. for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Michael Mishkin (26:17.469) And what does that mean? You know, the people of Israel were in Egypt. So who is that today? Us. We're in Egypt. The world today is Egypt. It's the same exact reflection. Egypt back then was the world system and it was governed by Pharaoh, who is Satan, and his task masters, which are the demons. And they make you work and they burden you with work. And if you start thinking about God, they make it harder on you, make bricks without straw. David Doty (26:23.244) It's us in the world. Michael Mishkin (26:47.816) and they will challenge you. It's a fight. They will not just let you leave. You're gonna have to fight with determination in God, crying out to God for God to deliver you from that. And then once God does deliver you from that, you're not done. Now, this person who is made, built, and designed all from Egypt, which has the programming and operational code of Egypt, has to be deprogrammed. reprogrammed and that is done in a wilderness zone. A wilderness is a symbolic understanding concept of a place where you have no power under your own to sustain yourself. You must trust God. So you have a choice either you trust God or you die in the wilderness because he's not gonna let you in your own strength sustain yourself. So if you do trust God, he will bring you through, reprogram you, David Doty (27:35.566) Mm-hmm. David Doty (27:40.258) Right. Michael Mishkin (27:45.716) rebuild you in his image, which is his design, which is his character, his fruits, his, you know, all the aspects of his spirit, you will be aligned with automatically. And that's what it means to have the law written on your heart. It's automatically you operate by that in the spirit. Your spirit man does not sin. Only your flesh does. It's you choosing the flesh that allows sin to propagate again. If you stay in the spirit man, stay focused on him and allow his spirit in, you won't sin. You'll walk by the spirit because the law is written on your spirit man and you're being built in his image. And therefore you can now walk in that and then we can now bring him into the world because then he comes in us and through us to then shine in the world. And that's where Yeshua said, let your light shine before men that they may see your good work. and praise your Father in heaven. So this is all done by the Holy Spirit. The only thing He's looking for you to do is to be open and let Him be willing and don't shut down. Oops, sorry. I gotta put, you know, effects behind what I'm saying. David Doty (29:00.0) Getting a little animated over there, Mr. New York. David Doty (29:07.822) Yeah, for all the world to hear. Amen. Well, you're absolutely right. I completely agree with you. It's all scripture. And if we continue reading in chapter four of Hebrews, verse six says, since therefore it remains for some to enter it, talking about the rest, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience. Michael Mishkin (29:37.311) David Doty (29:37.876) Again, he appoints a certain day, today, meaning now, saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. David Doty (30:00.034) Fine, verse six there, that word translated in good news. Michael Mishkin (30:04.831) That's pretty much what I was just saying is exactly what was just said there in the scripture. Harden your hearts means don't say I'm gonna do it my way, know. The hardening of the hearts is a subtle thing. We don't think we are. We're hardening our hearts by I have set up this way that I'm going to do God and we're not letting His Spirit lead, because God will be like, no, no, I don't want you to do it, like I want you to do this. And I know God, this is how I do. David Doty (30:32.078) Hmm. Michael Mishkin (30:34.601) do God. This is what I do. That's called idol worship. That's what he's trying to get us to stop doing. David Doty (30:42.05) Think about the way we do church. we were talking about you've been attending a new home church up there, and it's giving life, right? John White, one of the founders of Luke 10 Ministries, teaches people how to do home church. One expression of that, he says, like, when you get together to do church, don't even pray. unless the Lord tells you to. Don't sing any songs unless the Lord tells you to. Don't stand up and preach. Don't even open your Bibles unless the Lord tells you to. We do so many things out of habit. We go to church, we sing our three songs, there's a sermon with three bullet points and a nice story and an altar call. Why do we do all of that stuff? It's all tradition. It's not necessarily wrong, but is the Lord directing all of those steps or are we doing it out of tradition? Why do we go to this church or that church? Michael Mishkin (31:54.675) I think you just. you're hitting the nail on the head there. It's like just in those examples, it's fundamental in our carnal being that we have to have some sort of formality. We have to like, well, we're here, we gotta now do some sort of thing. No, we don't know how to just release unto God and trust him to lead. All you gotta do is be open and he'll lead you. He's not gonna just, sorry guys, you're on your own there, you know, he's. You know, like when we sat down last Saturday, we just sat down and we just start talking. yeah, I'm from here, I'm from there. All of a sudden it just starts to flow into scripture and then we start talking about this and that. And that's all by design, by the Spirit. You know, again, that's the thing. We don't have to prefigure out. You know, you come together and you sit down. If you're just standing there staring at each other, it's like, all right, well, let's ask the Lord what He wants to do. That's the basics that you could even just say, well, all right, let's ask the Lord, Lord, come show us what you want. And that's how simple it should be. That's what my yoke is easy and my burden is light and means. David Doty (32:55.214) in. David Doty (32:59.949) Amen. Michael Mishkin (33:08.691) But just as simple as, all right everyone, before we get started, we should do this, we should do that. You actually could be contrary to what you should be doing in the spirit if you get that kind of a mindset. We have to learn this. David Doty (33:22.702) This is why, this is the way we do home church is exactly this. David Doty (33:31.896) How are you doing? So we'll go around, everybody shares two minutes. How am I doing? Somebody might be really upset and then, know, struggling with something hard. Okay, how can we best support you in this? Do you want us to pray for you? I think it's so important that people are given agency. But before we even do that, it's like, okay, let's listen to the Lord. Let's listen to the Lord. What does the Lord want us to do? And We will break up into, you know, we'll sit, we usually gather around the dining room table. It's getting harder because it's just growing. Like new people are coming every week, which is really cool. But, and our goal is to train those new people up. So the first thing we do is, okay, let's listen to the Lord. What's the Lord saying? What should we do? Let's start with the check-in round. Okay, let's go around. Mike, how are you doing? You know, we go around the circle. Everybody shares how they're doing. If somebody shares something really heavy, loss of a loved one, struggling, whatever it is, sadness, anything really negative and heavy, stop, okay? How can we best support you? Would you like us to pray for you now, later? Would you like us to lay hands on you? Would you like us to share? Would you like us to listen to Jesus together to see what He might say? Would you like to hear stories of what it was like when I went through this? Sorry, I'm going down this dogleg. But it's all relational. It's relational with God. We're listening to Him and doing what He wants us to do. We don't sing songs. We don't begin with announcements or anything else. It's all just relational with Him and then with each other. Michael Mishkin (35:20.403) And we have scripture that backs that. When you gather, some will come with a word, some will come with a song, some will have a psalm. Again, what that means is that God puts something on each person's heart, which is the leading of the spirit, and it's legitimate. I feel that the Lord has a word I want to say to everybody that the Lord put on, okay, speak brother, go ahead. there you go. David Doty (35:44.974) 1 Corinthians 14 26. Michael Mishkin (35:47.9) And that's really the simple formality of gathering church formality today as great and as nice some of it may be and how wonderful your pastor may be. The system is anti-Christ. It is. It is against the anointing. If you've gone through the Bible school system, if you've established a 501 C three, if you're having the formalities coming in, There could be great things and the Spirit of God does move on a low level, but it's not the fullness you're missing out. There's so much more if you truly all learn how to let the Holy Spirit lead. And that's what the key of the gospel is. If you're getting to know the Father through Yeshua, then you have His Spirit to guide you. You don't have to come up with stuff. David Doty (36:43.406) Right. Yeah. If, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. And it's all, it all comes down to that. Are you listening for his voice? So often I'm finding that people are not listening. We, because I'm like on this thing all day long, I am checking messages. I'm scrolling Instagram, whatever, whatever it is that I'm doing. And so God's speaking. And so what we've done over the last few months as we've been practicing listening to the Lord together, it's amazing how the things that's three or four months ago when I would have this like inkling in my heart. Yeah, don't do that. You know, don't eat that cookie, right? They turn off the TV. I'd be like, that's just my subconscious. I'll dismiss it. But as I've practiced listening to the Lord, that voice isn't getting any louder or stronger, but I'm starting to recognize more and more that it's Him. And so what's happening is I am changing and able to deal with situations in a different way. I am being transformed from glory to glory, right? That's what the scripture says. As we... Behold his glory, we are transformed from glory to glory. We behold his glory by stopping and listening and looking to him. That's what Christians are supposed to do. Nothing else matters. It doesn't matter if you go to church or you, ultimately it doesn't even matter if you read your Bible or if you pray. If you're not listening to him, if you're not doing it for the sake of getting to know him, none of it matters. Michael Mishkin (38:44.298) very is very foundational and powerful. If people will break down and go back to the foundations and reconstruct by the spirit in this kind of understanding, their walk could potentially skyrocket like they've never thought before. They don't realize that why don't I really get out of it what I should be? It's because you're being bogged down with so many foundational doctrinal things that are a lie. and they're actually cutting you off from the Spirit because it's not actively allowing you to engage the Holy Spirit to knowing God the Father by His Spirit. Instead, you're doing, you know, pre-determined understandings. We should do this. We should do that. This is how we do this. No, that's called idol worship. That's what Israel was doing and God was not having it. God has ways that he wants you to follow and it's by his direction. When it's not his direction, you're hardening your heart and you're going to die in the wilderness. David Doty (39:51.778) And nobody wants that. Michael Mishkin (39:53.404) No. But that's why it's spoken of that, you know, wide is the road to destruction and many are on it. Narrow is the road to life and few are on it. He's not talking about the lost outside. He's talking about all those who claim to be of God. Wide is the road to destruction and narrow is the road to life. That's why he says there's only a remnant, not a remnant of the whole world, a remnant of those who call themselves of God that are going to be saved. because they're the ones who hold their faith by spending time with God and being with him to the end. David Doty (40:32.439) Amen. Michael, can you close this in prayer? Michael Mishkin (40:40.288) Father in heaven, I thank you for another opportunity for us to come together, fellow brethren who love you and truly want to grow in you. And we know we are flawed. We are still, regardless of what we talk about, we still fall short. Our flesh still pops up and distracts us, but we're able to see and we can turn to you and submit that to you. And we ask that your Holy Spirit will kill that flesh. all distractions, all ways that we are misaligning you, misinterpreting you, all ways that we have preconceived of you. We want to submit to you and die to all the inclinations, not just the obvious things of being a sinner in the world, but the religious things is what gets most of us, where we have all of our formulated ideas around you that are dead. that are not truly allowing us to follow you by faith, by hearing your voice, being led by your spirit, and truly growing up into your nature as we die to the flesh man. We need your help. The church body, those who call themselves by your name, we need help because we've been fed lies. And we need to break down to the foundation and rebuild the foundation solid on the rock of Messiah Yeshua. so that we could grow up mighty and strong as you design us in the relationship with you and being transformed into your likeness by your spirit. we are asking that you move now upon the whole world for those that you've known from the beginning, the sons of God, call them out of Babylon, the confusion of the world, the confusion of the false prophet of the church, which has the horns of the lamb but speaks like the dragon. that has lied to us and instead of directing us to you, it directs us to the first beast, which is the carnality of mankind. We cut that off in the name of Yeshua. We cut off Antichrist, which is the dominating spirit over the church at large. And we pray for us to be set free. I command like Moses, let my people go. In the name of Yeshua, amen. David Doty (42:58.24) Amen. Amen. Hello to George in Columbus, Georgia and Emily. So great to see you as always. God bless you guys. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thinkpodcast.substack.com [https://thinkpodcast.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]