Sid Roth

Sid: We want everyone everywhere to be so filled with the supernatural love of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that it will literally radiate out of every pore of your body and just reach out and touch that person that’s so broken and so hurting, and so thirsty for that love. I’ve got on the telephone Kevin Howard, Kevin is a Hebraic scholar and a Bible teacher. He’s written a book which I find fascinating. It’s called “The Feasts of the Lord” it’s hardback book with a 150 full color photographs and paintings and charts so you can visualize what each of these Biblical festivals are. As a matter of fact something else that I find very interesting, there are other festivals besides the 7 that are commanded in the scriptures and many of them Yeshua celebrated. But one in particular is a Jewish festival with a very sad day, it commemorates the destruction of the temple, but isn’t it amazing that on that precise date many events have happened in Jewish history. I have on the telephone Kevin Howard, I’m speaking to him at his home in Cincinnati. Kevin would you talk a bit about Tish b’Av?

Kevin: Sure I’d be glad to Sid. Tish b’Av is a holiday I’m sure most believers have never even heard of unless they have a Jewish background, or live in a Jewish community. But Tish b’Av is a holiday that occurs in the late summer usually in the summer heat months, late July or in August. Tish b’Av actually as you mentioned is mentioned in the Bible in the book of Zechariah it’s called the “Fast of the 5^th month.” It is a fast very somber holiday which commemorates or observes, bemoans the fact of the 1^st and 2^nd temples being destroyed. 586 BC the Babylonians came in and destroyed the great Solomonic 1^st temple, and then in 70 AD the Romans destroyed the 2^nd temple, the mighty magnificent beautiful temple that Herod had remodeled and was there in the time of Christ. The temples, both temples were destroyed on the same day so it was… it marks the ultimate tragedy of the nation of Israel, the temples being destroyed. But as you mentioned many other things, tragedies, have happened on that date throughout history. For example several years later in AD 135 Bar Kokhba who was trying to lead a rebellion to throw off Roman rule he was… his rebellion was crushed on that day and any hope of Jewish independence was snuffed out for another 1800 years. It was the last attempt to gain independence to rebuild the temple but it was not to be and snuffed out on the same day the temples were destroyed. As well as in 1290 AD one of the greatest tragedies of all times for the modern Jewish community was that’s when the Inquisition started. That marked the end of Jews… I’m sorry of Jews in England being kicked out as well as a few hundred years later in 1492 the Spanish Inquisition started and Jews were pushed out of Spain.  They either had to convert forcibly to Catholicism, or were pushed out of the country…

Sid: Isn’t it amazing all these tragic events in Jewish history occurred on the same date. By the way, isn’t it an interesting year in Spain 1492, does it remind you of a poem about Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492? Many people believe especially from his diaries are pretty much convinced that Christopher Columbus was Jewish and that’s why he left, that was the date the Jews had to leave Spain.

Kevin: That’s very interesting isn’t it? We remember the great events of 1492 but oft time we negate the tragedies of the great inquisition. That marked the end really of the golden age of the Jewish community in Spain, really the renaissance of that community was gone with the inquisition. But as you mentioned Tish b’Av was a day of great tragedy throughout history.

Sid: It’s a… understand the great day of persecution of Jewish merchants in Germany under Hitler, Kristallnacht.

Kevin: Right.

Sid: That was the same day too.

Kevin: That was in what 1938 a tremendously you know a day in infamy. We think of Japan but it was a great day of violence against Jewish people here just in our own country.

Sid: Well we were talking earlier this week about the 3 major festivals that are coming, actually the first one begins this Friday evening that’s why I’m featuring this book and interviewing you, and that is Rosh Hashanah. Would you tell me a bit about that as you do in your book from a Biblical and historical viewpoint, then how it’s done modern, and the prophetic significance?

Kevin: Sure Sid. The Feast of Trumpets is known today as Rosh Hashanah. So sometimes people are confused they hear Rosh Hashanah they don’t connect that it’s Biblically what was known as the Feast of Trumpets. But Rosh Hashanah is a Hebrew word for Head of the Year. Today that marks really the celebration of the Jewish New Year, the new civil year, but Biblically it was known as Trumpets. Actually in the Bible it was never called the Feast of Trumpets and it was never called Rosh Hashanah, but it was simply called… the 5^th holiday was simply called A Memorial or a Day of Blowing as in blowing the trumpet. So popularly today we speak of it as the Feast of Trumpets or as Rosh Hashanah the beginning of the new civil year. I find the Feast of Trumpets very fascinating because it celebrates only one thing the blowing of the trumpets as far as Biblically.

Sid: It is kind of… the more modern approach when it was changed to the Head of the Year etcetera, but that Biblical thing is all God’s concerned about.

Kevin: Yes that’s correct. The list of, you know Biblical record for observances wasn’t lengthy and it wasn’t complicated, the day was simply to be celebrated blowing the trumpet and a day of no work, it was Sabbath of rest.

Sid: You know something I’m suggesting when I speak many times, and I really believe God would be pleased, that is for Christians to understand our Jewish roots, and understand the Biblical precedence for the festivals, understand the way they used to be observed, understand the way they are observed today, understand the prophetic significance, and then look at the scriptures for yourself and say “Holy Spirit how would You like this festival which is a shadow of a great event of what has happened or will happen in the future life of the Messiah. How would it be pleasing for us to worship You this year?” You see one of the things coming from a traditional Jewish background that I used to get bored with really is same old same old, have it the same way every year not one change. I mean God is bigger, God is fresher and there’s revelations the Spirit of God will give you on these festivals and they are meant for families. If we know one thing in our society both political parties are even talking about this is we need family values we need families to come together. I personally believe that’s why God designed these Biblical festivals for families.

Kevin :I agree with you Sid. God as we mentioned on an earlier broadcast God appointed them and they were to bring the nation together, they were to gather families together, and they were appointments with God Himself. So these are not just dry observances or…

Sid: But they’ve become that in traditional Judaism by doing the same ol’ same ol’ without the Ruach haKodesh, the Spirit of God, over almost over 2000 years but God wants to revitalize them. You know what I’m thinking of Romans 11:11 it says “Salvation has come to the Gentile to provoke the Jew to jealousy.” Now what’s going to provoke a Jew to Jealousy? Having a family Passover meal and inviting some of your Jewish friends, or having Easter bunnies and an Easter egg from pagan vestiges? I mean give me a break (laughing)!

Kevin: (Laughing)

Sid: So tell me a bit more about what’s coming up this Friday night, Rosh Hashanah.

Kevin: Well as far as a modern observance of Rosh Hashanah it’s a, it’s sort of a bitter-sweet, it’s a very somber time because it begins the high holy days. In the synagogue it’s a beginning of times of concentrating on repentance and past years sins, and just repenting and it’s very somber in that sense. Along with that a tradition has risen in the past 2000 years that in rabbinic tradition it’s taught that on Rosh Hashanah, on this Friday night, that God opens 3 books in heaven, 3 great books. One is a book for the righteous, one is book for the wicked, and one is the book of life for those in between.  According to rabbinic tradition during the high holy days that is from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, those 10 days people’s welfare or their destiny for the year hangs in the balances. Those who are righteous God immediately writes them in the book of life for the righteous. Those who are wicked they are written in the book of the wicked and they will not continue to live for the next year. Those who are in the book of the in between have 10 days, according to Jewish tradition, from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur to repent. If they truly repent and turn to God on Yom Kippur God gives them graciously another year to live.

Sid: I remember from the traditional synagogue those were serious times those 10 days because it was a question of whether you were going to live or die and by repenting of our sins we would live.

Kevin: Yeah.

Sid: So these were very… that’s why they’re called the high holidays.

Kevin: Right. In fact it’s not a joyous time at all. There’s no weddings during that time, there’s no parties, there’s no joyous activities at all during those 10 days. It really harkens back to the days of the temple where, which we’ll talk about in a later broadcast how on Yom Kippur the high priest would go into the temple and they would have a covering, or sacrifices for the sins of the people, but it would be dealt with sins of the past year. So…

Sid: Well Kevin we’re out of time.

Sid:  I have on the telephone Mrs. Ella Brunt and if anyone’s been red hot for the Messiah it’s got to be Ella. She was in just an amazing accident. She was out on a sailboat with her 2 children a little 8 year old and a 6 year old Cody. Cody gets knocked into the water, the sailboat turns over and they can’t find him he’s under the water 10 minutes go by they finally find him. He’s dead they apply CPR and the water gushes out of his and they take a helicopter in and they take him to the hospital. She goes… she drives to the hospital still in her bathing suit her husband wasn’t with them. He didn’t even know he goes home from work because she couldn’t reach him he was in between work and going home. He turns on the answering machine, which he never does, this is how he finds out what happened to his son. As he’s driving to the hospital God gives him a game plan exactly what to do. He didn’t know it at the time nor did Ella know at the time that the doctors wrote Cody off they thought there was no chance literally. They thought he had brain damage and so the game plan. Tell me what God told your husband you should do Ella.

Ella:  Okay he said that we would only speak faith filled words and we would only speak the desired end result that Cody would walk out that hospital 100% restored and that we would guard Cody from anybody that would come around that could not do that. We would guard the situation. In fact we really just wanted to create an atmosphere around Cody that would be conducive for a miracle.

Sid:  You also said your husband instructed everyone to say only what they desired not what they were seeing with their eyes.

Ella:  Right he said that he would walk out a 100% and that was the desired end result. The only thing we would speak about the situation and even though medical reports were coming that his lungs were hemorrhaging, that they couldn’t stop it, he had irreversible brain damage, he had no pain reflex at all, no deep pain reflex. Everything was negative coming from the medical standpoint but we didn’t allow that to be the final word that the word of God was what we were standing on that if Jesus performed miracles in the Bible that we could also have it and we were claiming our miracle.

Sid:  Now at the same time did Cody ever regain consciousness while this was going on?

Ella:  No in fact they had the… the only way they knew how to treat the hemorrhaging of the lungs they first of all wanted to try this before they tried the experimental drugs. That was to have the incubator, the breathing machine, up so high that the pressure would actually try to close those capillaries and things that were hemorrhaging. It was a day or before we started seeing the lung situation come around. We would speak to those lungs and literally just say that those lungs would have to stop bleeding that they would become normal and function properly. So every medical report that came to us we would speak it into a positive that his brain would be normal and there would be no damage and that he would walk and he would run. All these sort of things we would speak to our mountain…

Sid:  When you looked at your son Cody describe what you saw with your eyes the equipment around him.

Ella:  Okay he was only 6 years old and he had pretty blond hair and he was just on these white sheets in this hospital room. He was in PICU ward, actually his bed was kind of out in the open and there were other kind of compartments in there and later on I asked why he was out here kind of open and not in one of those little more private areas. The nurse “Well we really didn’t think he would make it and that whenever he’s open like that we can pull in more equipment and be able to work on him.” I thought “My goodness he’s got so many machines on him now” but I found that out just a couple of days later after he was admitted in. So he’s got all the IV’s and all the… they immediately started antibiotics to combat the infection, the pneumonia that they knew would set in after a couple of days, and it did. Then on the right side of his bed was the ventilator which actually breathed for him. There was no movement he had catheters in his veins and arteries and his legs which that was a procedure that they did in the ICU room and it took about 2 hours. It was really a surgical procedure that night, the first night. So we had… it’s set up to where a nurse friend of mine would call the nurse’s station every morning before the new morning shift would come on and find out the medical status of Cody. Then she would call me in and put it in layman’s language and I’d write it down and we would contact the church and let them know what to pray for that day. Yes these are the medical situations that he’s facing and to pray specifically for that those were prayer targets that we targeted in prayer even though they were on his body at the time those were symptoms and that they had to reverse and leave. His body… we could see probably within a week and half that things were starting to turn around. Really during the day…

Sid:  Now was he in a coma?

Ella:  Right. He wasn’t talking, he wasn’t moving and at one point they actually had to give him paralyzing medication so he wouldn’t move in case he did wake up or whatever because the ventilator pressure were so high if he did move that he could even blow out a lung.

Sid:  Now what’s going on with your faith and your husband’s faith as time is going by?

Ella:  We, thank God, we were allowed to stay by his bed all hours of the morning and night. So we pretty much did that. We had a cassette running with teaching tapes or music or whatever all the time just creating an atmosphere there. Ted and I would only help build up each other. If we saw the one kind of getting down or discouraged we would just speak scriptures, find scriptures, we would whenever the nurses take a changeover we go to the hospital chapel. I’d get on the piano and play choruses and sing. I imagine that looked kind of funny in their video cameras, but anyway we went there and built ourselves up during that break of time that we had that nobody was permitted in there. We had to keep ourselves built up too by just getting into the word of God and finding scriptures to stand on…

Sid:  Now after about a week something strange happened to his legs tell me about that.

Ella:  I was in there one morning and they were cleaning him up and changing the bedding and everything and I noticed that his toes were starting… his ankles were starting to turn in, and his little hands his fingers were starting to curl. I asked the nurse “What is the meaning of this?” and she just kind of looked at me and real softly said “This is effects of the brain damage he has.” So at that…

Sid:  Now that’s not a good sign.

Ella:  No, no in fact this was just artillery for them because they have to really prove that he’s brain dead and then do several CAT scans, that’s not it it’s uh CT scans of his brain to prove that he is brain dead. Then the organ transplant team comes in and talks to us and gets our permission to donate his organs.

Sid:  What were you doing with his legs as they were turning in?

Ella:  I would get lotion on him and just rub his legs and rub his arms. He was a great little t-ball player at the time he’d just got through with his baseball season. I would rub his legs and just speak to his arms and legs and say that they were going to run and they would play baseball again, and just speak positive words over him.

Sid:  Now you put a picture over his bed, what was that picture?

Ella:  That picture was a picture of his 6 year old birthday and he’s just there full of life and it was just the epitome of what Cody was, we would use that as a focal point. We would point to it to any of nurses, doctors, or visitors that came in, we would point to that picture and say “Cody will walk out of this hospital just like that a 100% normal.”

Sid:  Now there’s an interesting story about a pair of socks.

Ella:  A particular young lady she’s a nurse and with each one of my children she came up and actually put the first pair of socks on my children right after they were born. So she had been coming up to the hospital and this on a Wednesday and so Saturday night she asked me “Ella you know in the Bible they have handkerchiefs that Paul prayed over and things like that.  Would it be okay if I got a pair of socks and allowed a pastor to wear those while he was preaching in tomorrow mornings message, tomorrow mornings service and bring those up afterwards and let’s put them on Cody?” I said well sure because the anointing prayer clothes and that sort of thing, so socks would be the same thing.”

Sid:  Ella hold that thought we’ll pick up right here on tomorrow’s broadcast.

SID: Hello. Sid Roth. Welcome to my world where it’s naturally supernatural even here on location in Houston, Texas. I have a woman that has been known as Pastor John Osteen’s wife. I have a woman who has been known as Pastor Joel Osteen’s mother, but I found out she operates in a supernatural gift that I want. I have with me Dodie Osteen. Most of you don’t know her, but I tell you this, she’s known in Heaven and you’re about ready to get to know her. It’s not an accident that you and your husband John started a tiny, tiny little church called Lakewood Church, in 1959. What was that building like?

DODIE: Oh it was terrible. It was an old feed store. It had holes in the floor.

SID: You have to help me. I’m not a country boy. What is a feed store?

DODIE: I wasn’t either. They sold feed.

SID: For animals.

DODIE: For animals, yes. And boards, the planks on the floor had big gaps in them so that anything could fall through, the hay, whatever they had in there. And it was not pretty. We didn’t even have a restroom inside. We didn’t have a water faucet, but our people got in there and cleaned up that thing, Sid, and made it into a church. And we didn’t mind what it looked like. We just did the best we could with it. Ninety people, had 90 seats in there.

SID: Now today Lakewood Church has how many people?

DODIE: Well they say 35 or 40,000 come on the weekends, but it seats 60,300.

SID: Your children say that you will pray about anything. You’ll pray about machinery, and they told me to ask you a question about the mole you prayed for.

DODIE: We didn’t know anything about heat. John was just beginning to learn that Jesus was the same yesterday, today and forever, and I thought I’ll just try it. Here I was a little girl. I didn’t know what I was doing either. We had two children and I said, “Paul, let me pray for them.” And I just prayed for those warts to leave and just in a few days they left. And he came running in from the back and he said, “Mama, mama, look, they’re gone.” I was surprised myself.

SID: You know, Joel Osteen is who is he is today because of his mother and father. Speaking of Joel, you had a dream that saved his life.

DODIE: I did. I’m so glad I had that dream. A few times I had dream when Paul, the older boy who is a doctor, was in Africa, that he was in trouble, and he was. He had malaria, even though he taken malaria injections or tablets, whatever it was. And I dreamed that he was on my shoulder like a little baby, and he was a student in ORU. He was in medical school. And it was on the very same day that he had that. And he said, “Mother, I thought I was dying, but I recovered.” And it was on the same day I had that dream. But Joel, I had the dream about, I dreamed sometime about snakes and all the demonic, and a snake was in the kitchen in the house. And out of all the children that I had, I called Joel. I said, “Joel, come help me get this snake.” I didn’t tell anybody about it because I didn’t want to frighten anybody. But I prayed that whatever harm was coming to my son, “Devil I rebuke you, I command you to take your hands off of Joel.” Just a little while later, a week or two later he was going home from the church and he hydroplaned. It had been raining in Houston, and just hydroplaned, and this truck did the same thing, great big truck, and he came within three feet of hitting that truck and stopped. And the truck driver got out and said, “Son, you sure are one lucky little boy.” And I thought he was lucky, brother. He was blessed with the Lord.

SID: Now when you were young, you were hit with a lot of adversity. At two, you had polio.

DODIE: Yes I did.

SID: And as a result there was a difference in one foot and the other. And but it didn’t stop you, did it?

DODIE: No, I just kept on going. I had been conscious all these years about not wearing pretty shoes, but you know what, thank God I can walk. I had five children without difficulty, done everything that I’ve done and God has just helped me. And the story about Dr. Osborn, he was so kind, did so much for Jesus. But he was walking with John and I was walking at the head of him and he said, “Look at Miss Dodie, she walks like a princess.” I never forgot that because I could see myself in the mirrors as I passed the windows of store buildings and all where I lived, and I was conscious of it. And I wore a brace when I was young up to the fourth grade. And when he said that, it just grieved me. And just thought, look at me, I walk like a princess. So I just walk like a princess because of the words of one man.

SID: And do you know what, that one man didn’t realize the power of that statement that he made.

DODIE: Words can make people or break people. See what an encouraging word can do for people when they’re so down? People tell me sometimes when I think I look so tacky, “Miss Dodie, you look so pretty.” That lifts me up. Let’s make our words sweet. John used to say that all the time and I remind the children of this, make your words sweet because you don’t know many that you’ll have to eat.

SID: Well when you were 48, this is so hard to say, at 48, she goes in the hospital and she gets a death sentence. She’s going to be dead in a couple of weeks. How did she handle that? You’ll find out when we come back.