Episode Details

Greg Laurie sits down with New York Times bestselling author Joel Rosenberg to discuss the war in Israel, Hamas, and Bible prophecy. 

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Transcript of Full Interview:

Greg Laurie: Hey everybody, Greg Laurie here with an exclusive interview with my friend Joel Rosenberg who is an absolute expert on what is going on in the Middle East. Joel was born in the United States but has actually moved to Israel and is in Jerusalem right now and has dual citizenship as both an American and Israeli citizen.

So I think he's uniquely qualified to talk about what's happening there. And also Joel has written many best selling books that deal with issues in the Middle East as well. So, Joel, thank you so much for taking the time to talk just a little bit about what is happening. I think what is unique about this attack, Joel, as you know well, is it isn't against soldiers.

It's against women and children. And even babies have been killed and decapitated, and even survivors of the Holocaust have been taken away, some murdered, some now hostages. Why is this happening at this moment in time? And the bigger question: how is it that Israel with its state-of-the-art intelligence and technology and everything else at her disposal did not detect this was coming?

Joel Rosenberg: Well very hard questions, but important ones, but you're asking two questions. So the first is why why is it happening? Well, There are several answers to that question. The first answer is, is that you have to look not at Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization. They're horrible. They're basically like ISIS.

But they're—they don't control themselves. They're funded by somebody. The terrorist regime in Iran. They 're armed by somebody. That's the terrorist regime in Iran. They are directed by somebody, and that's the leaders of Iran. So, it's not a Hamas operation. It is, tactically.

But this is coming from the leaders, the supreme leader of Iran, and what does the Supreme Leader of Iran want? He wants several things. Ultimately, he wants to commit genocide. He's been very open. He wants to wipe Israel off the map and kill every Jew that lives here. So that's the first, his first objective.

But, but he has sub-objectives. To get there, to his genocidal, apocalyptic, end of the world—usher in the coming of their Messiah known as the Mahdi, if you annihilate every Jew and every Christian, to get there, what are they trying to do? Well, they're trying to lure Israel into a ground war in the Gaza Strip, which we're going to have to do now. But, but they want to lure us in. Why? We're the biggest, most powerful military in the entire Middle East. We're the superpower here. Why would a terrorist organization, small, be directed by a big country like Iran to go after the biggest military in the region, us, Israel?

And the reason is not because the Supreme Leader right now doesn't just want to see dead Jews. He wants to see dead Palestinians. Why would he want to see dead Palestinians? Because every dead Palestinian will be a television image that will be on MSNBC, CNN, CBS Evening News, the front page of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, to turn the script from Israel is, oh, Israel's the high-tech innovator and they're making peace with all these Arab countries—maybe Saudi Arabia next?

No, the, the Iranians wanna flip that script to make us look like the monsters of the region when they're the monsters. Right? So that's the objective right now. Blow up the peace process and make the whole world think that we're monsters for doing what? Defending ourselves.

Greg Laurie: Yeah.

Joel Rosenberg: But you're right. You just described it,