Easter, Passover, they're quickly coming, and our opportunity to share the gospel with others, to tell them the good news that a Savior has come. I'm joined today by Paul Scharf, who is with Friends of Israel. We're going to be talking about the ministry and actually some of the opportunities that you have to learn more about the various feasts of Israel, including Passover. And Paul, we want to welcome you back to KHCB. Thank you, Bonnie. What a delight to be here. Well, the Friends of Israel has been in ministry for many years, 1938 when you began. But you're working with Jewish people, but you're also helping Christians to understand more about the Jewish feasts and about our Jewish heritage. Doing that through these presentations, tell us a little bit about the Passover presentation. Well, thank you, Bonnie. I'm honored to be in my fourth year with the Friends of Israel as a Church Ministries representative here in the United States. Specifically, the Midwest is my home base. And I'm in my second year of doing Passover presentations. I'm always very careful to add a word like demonstration or presentation. Because I don't want to mislead anyone. I don't have, by virtue of my background or family heritage or anything like that, I don't have all the first-hand knowledge that some Jewish believers have about Passover. But what I am is a Bible teacher. And my role with the Friends of Israel is to go out and represent the ministry in churches, telling them about things that are sadly waning many times today, especially that God has a future for Israel. And as you just said, the fact that everything about our faith comes from the Jewish people. Everything in the Bible really comes from the Jewish people. And I've just been overwhelmed with the amount of information and the importance of Passover, as you've said. It is astounding how vital it is that we understand something more about Passover if we're going to really understand the Bible. And it storylines certainly the ministry of our Lord Jesus and His very final days, going to the cross and then rising again in our place, dying in our place for our sins. So this Passover presentation, what is it all about? What will people learn? What will they see? Well, we actually, when I do these presentations, I can simply preach or teach and talk about the Passover, often using PowerPoint slides, if I possibly can. I do the same thing, by the way, when I'm using, doing an actual Passover Seder, again, demonstration. I'll typically stand behind, often, the communion table, and have it set up just with the basic items of Passover. And then I'll also have lots more information and lots more things pictured on the screen so we can sort of correlate those together and go through the flow and follow the order of the Passover Seder, which the word Seder simply means order. So it's the order of service, if you will, the liturgy of the Passover. And we're only, you know, we're hitting the highlights because we understand Passover has taken place all around the world over the last 3,500 years in every different culture in the world. And even just sticking with the biblical and the basic facts of Passover, there's so much to learn. So in a, say, a 45-minute sermon-type presentation, We're simply going over the most vital parts of the Passover and showing, I believe, not only what the Lord Jesus was doing at the Last Supper with his disciples when they, I'm convinced, they were experiencing the Passover together, but we also see how I think that the Jewish people, even though in unbelief, many times because they've been saturated for all these centuries with biblical truth, and I think that perhaps even subconsciously, they have placed things in the Passover Seder that point to Christ himself, and perhaps they don't even fully realize that. So these are presentations that you're doing at churches throughout the area, and if someone was interested in wanting to have some type of presentation, what would they need to do? Well, they certainly can contact me, and they could also contact the Friends of Israel, and they could find all the contact information for the Friends of Israel at our main webpage at foi.org, or they could find all of my information and contact me That's my initial P for Paul and my last name S-C-H-A-R-F. And we'd be glad to talk to them about any of that, and no church is certainly too large or too small for any of that. And that's just the Passover presentation. You do other presentations as well. So what else is being offered? R. Well, in terms of something like the feasts, and I think, Bonnie, that many times we think of the feasts of Israel as sort of this overwhelming topic. And maybe we've heard teachers or preachers talk about these feasts and find allusions to Christ in them or to some type of prophetic truth, and we read about them in our own Bible, and we didn't see all of that, and we thought this is sort of a daunting topic, it's really not that difficult. But it is wonderful to learn about them, and it's just tremendous when we begin to grasp their true significance biblically and understand how we can get hold of that. And so, in the last year, since I was here last time, I've actually, for the first time, done also Hanukkah presentations. Now, these aren't quite like the Passover Seder where we have lots of things to look at and potentially even taste or try. It's just more of a sermon, but I again have just, as I've studied these things, I've just been overwhelmed at the, not only the amount of information, but the importance, the importance of them. And so I've been doing these Hanukkah and Passover presentations, like I said, now in many different churches, and would be very glad to talk to anyone who is interested. So if you would like information about bringing a presentation, you can contact Paul. Go to sermonaudio.com slash p-sharf. That's S-C-H-A-R-F. If you don't get that information, call us. We'll be happy to pass that along to you to find out more about those presentations. And then the Seven Feasts of Israel, that's part of a national conference that you do. Yes, this summer the Friends of Israel National Conferences will be back in person, and that's after two years without events like that, obviously because of COVID restrictions and so forth. But they'll be back, and the focus this year is on the seven feasts. So you can go to the Friends of Israel website for that information, foi.org slash conferences, to find out more about attending those or to find out more about the ministry. It began in 1938. And what was the purpose of this ministry? Well, the ministry literally began out of an absolutely overwhelming need to rescue, literally rescue, the Jewish people from the throes of Nazism. And as we discussed earlier, Bonnie, much like what's happening today in the Ukraine and Eastern Europe and what our workers are doing there at this very moment, And I really have never heard of any other ministry that has a story like the Friends of Israel. People can find more about that on the Friends of Israel website, and I've actually written a blog which goes into a little bit of it that they can find on our blog there at foi.org. And it's really amazing, and it's just a real joy and privilege to represent this historic ministry which continues today. I became familiar with the ministry as my parents received the magazine that you send out twice every other month, I guess it is. But that's a free subscription that people can receive. People can get a free subscription on the website again. Every church we go into, we put out a sign-up sheet where they can get a free subscription. We want everyone in the world to start reading Israel My Glory. And you can find out information about Israel, current events, but also prophecy, and the feasts, and Bible studies, various things inside that magazine. But of course, you can also find out more about the ministry online at foi.org if you would like information about the presentations for the Passover, Hanukkah, or the national conferences. They also did an online conference, and that is still available to view online at foi.org, or go to sermonaudio.com slash psharf, and Paul has a wide variety of things there. Just very quickly, what is on that website? All of my resources that I offer in my ministry with the Friends of Israel for my personal outreach, and people can find there, they can contact me, they can sign up for a free weekly email that we offer to anyone who'd like to subscribe. They can find all of my resources, which I'm adding on a regular basis. They can also see some things that I've done about Passover, and they can watch the Friends of Israel's Passover from the last two years, when there was no live, in-person demonstration of Passover by the Friends of Israel nationally, but it was online. Steve Herzig and Chris Katulka Putting that together, they can watch those last two years of Passover and get a real feel for Passover and for what we might do in their church if we were to come and do a presentation. Well, pray for the Friends of Israel. I say that everywhere I go. I'm sure we have an enemy who, of all of his concerns, he would love to stop the work of the Friends of Israel. He hates what God loves, and he hates the people God has chosen, and he hates us as believers. And so pray for the Friends of Israel, because it's very unusual that a ministry would survive and remain faithful for more than 83 years. And so we want to keep the Friends of Israel high on your prayer list. You could pray for us and for our outreach. I come from Wisconsin, serving mostly throughout the Midwest. but we've been given the wonderful task of coming to Texas. As an extension of that, there's no one working permanently here in Texas in church ministries right now, and I have some contacts here in the Houston area, so I've been coming to this location, and so glad I did because, among other things, I've made contact with you friends here at KHCB. and ask people just to pray for us and for our ministry and for efforts to extend and expand that and for certainly our workers that we talked about previously in Ukraine and Eastern Europe and that goes all the way back to our headquarters in New Jersey and everyone needed to support all of those things. Bonnie, I'd like to share a verse as we close and that is Mark 10 verse 45. And I find myself sharing this verse many, many times, not every single time that I teach or preach, but it usually is so relevant to almost any topic that I present, and it has been recently. And it really is what I hope drives our ministry with the Friends of Israel. Mark 10, verse 45, Jesus said something very familiar, but let us never make it so familiar that it loses its impact. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. And Jesus is our model. He came to serve. And as I even literally, I want to keep that in mind as I come to Texas, as I go back home to Wisconsin, as I go into churches. And sometimes we have to take that more literally than others. You know, there are occasions where it becomes necessary to mindfully remember. We haven't come to be served. We've come to serve. And that is at the heart of the gospel. And it's at the heart of the reason that the Friends of Israel exists. And I hope, Bonnie, that when people see me, they go away thinking it's at the heart of what I'm trying to do. And sharing that message that Christ came to be our Savior. That's right. Thank you for sharing with us about the Friends of Israel and for the ministry that you are doing as your ministry continues to serve. Paul Scharff, our special guest today, keeping him close by.