It's Supernatural

Sid:  My guest is red hot for the Messiah another Jewish man that’s red hot for the Messiah. The Executive Director of Jezreel International, Barry Feinman and we found out yesterday that Barry a good mutual friend Jonathan Bernis who had just received a call from God to go to the former Soviet Union.  And he did a major outreach to Moscow and no one thought he could fill the auditorium but he did.  Barry how many people were in the auditorium would you say?

Barry:  There were at least 50,000 people, over half of them Jewish.

Sid:  And what percentage would you say of them that came forward to make profession to make faith?

Barry:  I would guess at least 90% of them.

Sid:  Well, when I was there in St. Petersburg it was close to 100%, they didn’t come walking down the aisle they came running down the aisle the way anyone in their right mind would do, but we have this American version of Christianity.  But these were Jewish people that had never heard the good news, and they had had seventies years of atheism and communism. All of a sudden they found out you can know God.  And the natural reaction is to run to know God!

Barry:  That’s right.

Sid:  So any way you witnessed this with your very eyes and God used this to have you start your humanitarian organization that sends humanitarian goods to all over the world, but with an emphasis to Israel; Jezreel International.  Tell me about how that came about. Sid Roth supernatural 2012

Barry:  Well Sid, I was so moved I had an absolute life change there, but while we were in Moscow and I was in the streets of Moscow and we saw the people and how they lived it was heart breaking, I mean I could not believe people were living like this in the city like this.  Jewish or non-Jewish it made no difference, just the lifestyle was terrible.  And flying back another mutual friend of ours David Levine asked me on the airplane, he said, “So Barry what role do you think you’re going to playing in this whole prophetic time of reaching the Jewish people in the former Soviet Union?  And I said “David I don’t know, but I know that I’m going to something but I just don’t know.”  And I prayed and really I didn’t hear much of anything that whole year Sid until the following summer and Jonathan had another outreach, this time to Odessa and this time he had the chutzpah to rent a outdoor football stadium, soccer stadium that seats, I think it seats 35,000 people.  And he got the same deal from the manager in that place, but Jonathan went ahead and did it anyway and it was all done as you remember they were done so well, so professional. This time there was my guest it had to be at least 70 – 75,000 people that showed up over three nights in Odessa.

Sid:  And by the way that don’t know it every other person in Odessa has Jewish blood, I mean its amazing city but go ahead.

Barry:  Yeah, and so you know both of these outreaches Sid I felt like I was living in such a prophetic moment in time. It was just, I felt like I was almost reliving the book of Acts, I don’t think that since the books of Acts have so many Jewish people come to Lord in one setting.  Anyway by looking at the people in the streets and how they’re living in Odessa just broke my heart and I said, “You know I have to do something.”  I got to do something about it, “I don’t know what God, but you’re going to have to use me to do something.”  And I know Sid I think you know this but my background I had 25 years in the shoe business, I use to own some shoe stores.

Sid:  I do remember this I interviewed you many years ago.

Barry:  Many years ago and I tell people you know I’ve gone from soles to souls you know and heals too.  [Laughing] So I got a lot of business background and just trying to figure out how can I, how can we do this and so my mind is spinning and going.  And to make kind of a long story short, when I got back from that trip there was another mutual friend, Stuart Winograd that just got a call from God to go the former Soviet Union to lead a congregation because of one of these outreaches, so many people came to the Lord he birthed a congregation there.  And he was asking for people to help with humanitarian aid and so he had a secretary who was calling all the churches and all the Messianic congregations in upstate New York to see if they could start gathering some supplies, and he gave us a list of things they need.  So that in my spirit just leapt over this idea so I told my congregation this is what we’re going to do and I laid it out to them.

Sid:  At that time you were a Rabbi of Seed of Abraham Messianic Jewish Congregation in Albany, New York.

Barry:  Yeah, I told my congregation about it and over about a four week period we gathered about 20 – 25 cases of stuff. Anyway we sent it up to Syracuse and they were going to send out a container from there.  So a month or so later I called the gal on the phone and I asked her how the outreach was going.  And she said, “Barry, I am overwhelmed, my livingroom is full, my dinning room is full, my garage is full, I can’t move in my house, this is much bigger then I ever thought it was going to be. I should have gotten some kind of warehouse for this instead.”  And I said to her, her name was Rebecca, “Shouldn’t something like this be going on all the time?” She said, “Yes.”  And I said, “You know I’ve been praying about that,” and she said, “You have, you know I’ll pray with you to do it.”  And I said, “Okay.”  And so anyway the bottom line was is that at that time Sid we had outgrown our congregation and we were looking for a new facility. So in my mind, now this is a Barry idea, in my mind I said, “I got an idea, what I’ll do is I will look for a congregation, maybe get an extra couple of thousand square feet in the back of it. We’ll start gathering some stuff from people and once and while we ourselves will ship a container.”  Now that was easy for me, I could handle that, it was my size, it was a Barry size idea.  But God made it very clear that this was not a Barry idea, this is Mine, and this is much bigger than you are.  And so the thing began mushrooming and before you know it we ended up getting a warehouse. We ended up just in faith, the whole thing was in faith. I had a crisis of faith Sid in my life.  And those that are listening today, God’s given you something to do and you’re going through a crisis of faith, I had such a crisis of faith and I’ll tell you what happened, I stepped out in faith and got this warehouse.  And in our first year Sid after paying rent from asking people for money and help and everything else we shipped nothing to no one. Our first year and at the end of the year I looked back at what it cost us for the rent, overhead and everything else and I said, “God I obviously completely totally missed You.”

Sid:  You must have felt awful!

Barry:  Awe, my God, I can’t even begin to tell you because my nature is I’m a doer kind of guy and a results kind of guy. So I realized in the second year, but I didn’t feel an unction to close it, so the second year I just decided to just keep pressing into it and going for it and about ¾ of the way into the second year we finally shipped our very first shipment.  Almost two years go by, and I mean financially it was absurd because if I had all that money we could have bought the supplies that were in the shipment. I realized as we got through the second year that again I’m still in that crisis of faith, I’m in and out, in and out of it wondering if I’m doing right and if I missed God on this. I realized looking back that what God was doing in me was killing me.  He was killing me in respect to show me that this was not mine, this was His.  And I’m not going to get an ounce of glory for it and He had to take me through, he had to literally take me through this desert time in my life to understand my total faith in Him, my trust in Him that He has called me to this, and no matter what it looks like I’ve got to persevere in it.  And when I got to that place year three came about and we shipped four, year four came about and we shipped eight, year five we shipped ten, and this last year was the single largest year we ever had in shipping, we shipped fifteen overseas containers plus we helped a lot of local help in our area. Sid Roth wiki

Sid:  Barry I want to deal tomorrow with what you’re doing in Israel and the needs of Israel.

Barry:  Yes.

Sid:  So we’ll pick up right there on tomorrows broadcast.