Home » December 1998

Mark Levitt

“What you see is what you get.” This expression is appropriate for this ministry because our supporters see, touch, read, and listen to what is accomplished with their contributions.

Our weekly television programs, filled with footage from Israel, reach over a million viewers each week. Tens of thousands of people read our newsletters and order our books, music tapes, videocassettes, and other teaching materials. Our Institute of Jewish-Christian Studies, a correspondence course, has thousands of students and graduates. Our home page on the Internet, www.levitt.com, now gets roughly 30,000 hits per month. Our supporters have planted upwards of 100,000 trees in Israel. More than 5,000 of our people have made their Holy Land pilgrimage with Zola. Many of our viewers support other ministries they learned about from Zola.

Question: How is Zola’s ministry doing? Short answer: Awesome, but we are challenged.

Question: What lies ahead for Zola Levitt Ministries? Short answer: Important teaching with an emphasis on prophecy.

Question: How is this ministry’s stewardship? Short answer: Our financial statements, audited by an independent CPA, are free for the asking and show that 70% of our expenses go to our TV programs and 13% to personnel. The rest is for printing, postage, video duplication, and office overhead.

The gist of this article is that we are stable but the tide is changing. We are not experiencing a crisis and never have since day one, but we are being slowly and increasingly constricted in two areas — airtime and overhead. If you wish to skip a couple of paragraphs, I’m simply expressing our need for an increased commitment, throughout the new year, from a significant portion of our readership. Before you go anywhere, however, that increase can be achieved by your simply getting more people interested in our teaching. That means real people watching our program every week and reading our monthly newsletters.

The FOX network now owns FAM, also known as the Family Channel, which used to be called CBN. Instead of buying this major chunk of airtime from Christians employed by Pat Robertson, as we used to, we are now dealing with secular broadcasters whose agenda seems to be to compete with Nickelodeon. Our time slot with them is a little insecure, and the prices we pay are skyrocketing — we had a 21% increase in 1996, a 22% increase in 1997, and a 15% increase in 1998.

If we don’t relocate our office, our office rent will rise dramatically. Even by downgrading our location, our rent increase will be sizeable. Our health insurance will probably go up 20% in January, but we intend to keep our good personnel.

This is my direct way of saying the squeeze is on, and I want to ask calmly for help now, plainly and clearly, so that we can maintain the productive pace that we believe represents God’s will. Please bear in mind that for each three people we hear from, there are ninety-seven others that watch our television programs and visit our web site without ever contributing. You who are reading this are very graciously bearing the burden for a vast majority who are hungry for, and need, what we deliver. Thanks for doing what the Lord directs you.

I will close with some comments that accompanied my responses to a church questionnaire:

1. We are unique in our outspoken support of Israel. We routinely battle Replacement Theology, anti-Semitism, and propaganda about Israel. We boldly defend the Bible and proclaim its credibility.
2. We teach from the whole Bible. We explain that Christianity’s roots lie in the Old Testament, and that much of the Old Testament’s prophecy is fulfilled in the New.
3. We bring location footage from Israel to American living rooms, as opposed to the less captivating “talking head” programs.
4. Our fund-raising comprises only a minority of our efforts, resulting in a high percentage of teaching, and the sense of dignity that teaching God’s Word deserves.
5. We are efficient with people’s tithes and offerings. It is difficult, if not impossible, to surpass the souls reached per dollar that God enables us to achieve through television. We are tight-fisted but not penny-wise and pound-foolish.
6. We have many means of ministry, including our Institute of Jewish-Christian Studies, two free monthly newsletters with meaty teaching, a large web site, a significant variety of teaching materials (would you like our 32-page catalog?), and responsive correspondence by several consulting theologians. We answer Bible questions and pray over prayer requests.
7. We have terrific plans for the year ahead. Please see A Note from Zola.

You know that we don’t cry wolf or use gimmicks. With our increasing expenses and the ever-present, lucrative infomercials competing against us for airtime, we can very legitimately say we need your assistance.

In 1998, we produced a new book, Genesis One, and two top-drawer television series, The Covenants of God and Love Stories of the Bible, each with its own music cassette. We created more than a dozen stand-alone programs, instituted closed-captioning for the hearing impaired, and expanded our web site to rival those of some Fortune 500 companies. We have worked hard all year and loved it!

But watch out for next year, Devil, because you haven’t seen anything yet!

Hi Zola,

What’s the point of your opposition to those, who feel by the same Scriptures that you read, that the Jews have been rejected during the times when God has been a light to the Gentiles? I mean, Israel has been cut off, right? And the Gentiles, an unnatural branch, have been grafted in, right? And one day, God will graft Israel back in again, right? So in a very real Scriptural sense, the Israelites are our enemies for the gospel’s sake, yet because of God’s determination to set them right again at the latter days, they are beloved for father Abraham’s sake. But make no mistake, the Jews who deny Jesus is the Christ, are our enemies for the gospel’s sake. And during the time of this diaspora, the believing Gentiles are the people of God, and unbelieving Israel is not!

Re: Recent Wye River “peace” plans

Having read Mr. Levitt’s congratulatory letter to Benjamin Netanyahu on his election victory, I wonder how he now feels about Mr. Netanyahu’s resolve to not give up land to the so-called Palestinian people? In your opinion, how does this new peace initiative at Wye River fit into Biblical perspective? — S.B.

Dear Zola:

With the recent discussion concerning the motives and content of Robert Gundry’s book, A Survey of the New Testament, I would like to point out two more pieces of pseudo-information that oppose God’s plan that is so evident in both the Old and New Testaments, including everything that Jesus said.

The trend against dispensa-tionalism seems to be increasingly prevalent, as one can determine in the most recent edition of Christianity Today. The two articles are titled “How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend,” and “Jerusalem as Jesus Views It.”

The first article portrays dispensationalists as ill-informed, highly politicized, and overly emotional adherents waiting for predetermined history to unfold. The second article is inundated with replacement theology and forms a disjunction between the Old and New Testaments as being unrelated and disconnected. I disagree with both of these articles and find them contrary to what I have been taught and have read in the Bible for years.

I am so thankful for your ministry. It is so important, considering all of the false theology that others are currently perpetrating. Your ministry stands for the Word of God and the truth. Please keep up the excellent work!

Sincerely in Jesus (Yeshua), H.J.W.

Considering a trip to the Holy Land?

My wife and I recently returned from Zola’s Rosh Hashanah tour of the Holy Land. The tour exceeded our expectations (and we had high expectations).

From the initial contact with Zola’s travel staff (Cynthia and Diana), you feel comfortable with the knowledge these people are conscientious, Christian professionals. They challenge themselves to provide each and every participant with the best experience possible. In essence, you are in good hands with some of the Lord’s own looking out for you. On the ground in Israel this level of commitment continues with Israeli licensed tour guides. Each licensed tour guide must complete a rigorous training course that includes a history of the land and contemporary archaeology. They are extremely well-versed in the current situation in the Holy Land, and all are Christians. They bring our Holy Scriptures to life with many references to actual Scripture and the probable location of the event.

One of the participants asked Mr. Bar-Illan (close advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu) what message he would like our group to give Congress. His answer included an emphasis to maintaining Israel’s continued security.

Once we actually saw the Golan Heights (militarily speaking the “high ground”), it became more than a “name” on CNN. It is my opinion Israel is accommodating the quest for peace with precious (covenanted) land which places them in a precarious position of security. I appeal to each reader to write Congress (as I have) concerning continued support of tiny Israel. Remember, “I will bless them that bless you and curse them that curse you.”

Zola, his wife, Dr. McCall, and the tour staff are reality-based people with a love for the Lord and Israel. They are genuine and quite approachable on any topic. If you are considering a trip to the Holy Land, go with Zola. They will be good shepherds for the next flock touring the land of the Bible. Please keep Zola, his family, and staff in your prayers for His grace to sustain them as ambassadors for our Lord’s foreign mission field in Israel.

Shalom Shalom Haverim, K.L.P.

Dear Friends,

I’ve had some year! Perhaps the theme of my year has been “tangling with liberals and others doing false teaching.”

There is a difference there—false teachers are believers who got a wrong doctrine into their heads and tend to pass it on within the church. In my book with Dr. Thomas McCall, Once Though the New Testament, we referred to them as “the enemy within.”

Liberals are people who go to splendid churches with steeples and crosses and wonderful organs, but do not know Jesus Christ from Santa Claus and never, at any cost, look at the Scriptures. They have so denigrated Israel as to not speak about it at all, and they pretend that God did not fulfill prophecies of 35 centuries duration when he restored the Jews to their land in 1948.

I chanced to be called to speak at Episcopal and Lutheran churches in the same week and what a week that was! My total audience in these two very large churches was less than 100 combined since few of the thousands going to those two congregations cared to hear from me or what I might say about the Holy Land (or the family of the Lord or the place they are going to live for a thousand years in the Kingdom to come). In the Episcopal church, most of my small audience was going to go on a January tour of the Holy Land and were concerned to hear that they would be safe. I was able to tell them once again, as I have for 25 years, that they are certainly safer in any part of Israel than in Dallas and they would be particularly safe at tourist sites. But apart from those 29 souls, the church basically boycotted the meeting.

At the Lutheran church I talked to somewhat more people, but only in a small class away from the sanctuary. They wanted me to talk about the coming of Christ, meaning His first advent. They evidently do not hold to His Second Coming, but I explained that He will be returning indeed to preside over a glorious kingdom in Israel. The name of the church, by the way, was King of Glory. Both churches were taken aback when I remarked “Jesus Christ is an Israeli.”

At that service I talked to a young man who had been studying at Perkins Seminary, which is attached to Southern Methodist University. Perkins is a very liberal school which is a lost cause as far as serious Bible study goes, but my informant shared an interesting story about Messianic prophecy. I had taught Isaiah 53 in the class that Sunday, it being one of the most basic of prophecies about the suffering servant, and he shared that the seminary held to the Jewish interpretation that this chapter is talking about the land. Now that particular misconstruction of Isaiah 53 serves Jewish purposes since it avoids talking about the Messiah, and I can understand Perkins Seminary wanting to honor its ecumenical relationship with local Reform Jews by adopting their doctrines. But after all, if one purports to be a Christian of any kind and he wants to talk about Isaiah 53, that matter is covered in Acts 8 when Philip came across the Ethiopian eunuch. That open-minded person happened to be reading that very chapter, and he asked Philip, “Of whom doth the prophet speak?” When Philip answered him, he was immediately saved by the Lord Jesus, the One of whom the prophets spoke. Now, it doesn’t say Philip told him that the prophet was speaking about a land. So if you’re Jewish and you want to hold that the prophecy is about Israel and not about the Messiah, then go ahead and ignore the New Testament, but if you purport to be Christian at all, you ignore the New Testament at your peril.

As far as dealing with those teaching errors, I went no further than our textbook situation this past year to learn a lot about false doctrine and about seminary personalities. It seemed that at some evangelical colleges the staff would almost rather die than teach the Bible accurately (and so they may!). One Christian college sent out so many insults about me that I started feeling like Ken Starr. I haven’t commented at all about the situation in Washington, but I have always disliked those who attack the messenger to cover up their own shortcomings. No fib is too strong to try as an excuse for teaching that Israel is Palestine, the Lord is not honoring His “everlasting” commitment to Abraham, etc., etc.

I was discouraged to find another textbook, this one by Donald H. Guthrie, being used at Dallas Theological Seminary, which holds to doctrines like those. I imagine you thought, as I do, that when the Book of James was addressed to “the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad...,” that James was writing to his Jewish brethren. But the Guthrie textbook attempts, by an amazingly convoluted bit of reasoning, to prove that it is really the Gentile church to which James is writing!?? When you have to go that far to squeeze out a love for the Promised Land and the Chosen People, you might as well just say, “I don’t like Jews,” and leave it at that.

The upcoming year will give us a chance to correct some false teaching, at least about prophecy. After our God and Science series, which will start up shortly into the new year, we will spend a great many months on accurate verse by verse, word for word teaching of End Times prophecy so that everyone is clear on the possible coming of the Lord at any moment. While the unbeliever is considering the year 2000 we have his attention. I would really appreciate your support for that important project.

It will be a good year for touring, also. Our Caribbean Cruise is closed at this time, and we are now sending brochures for our April excursions for Greece and Israel. The Deluxe Tour, April 18-28, is specifically designed to make sure you see all the important Scriptural locations in the Holy Land. From the Sea of Galilee and the Mount of the Sermon, to the Upper Room, the Garden Tomb, and the Mount of Olives, you will forever have pictures in your mind as you study the great teachings of our Lord and His apostles. The Grand Tour, April 13-28, includes a cruise of the Greek islands and Ephesus, along with an intensive tour of the Greek mainland including Athens, the Acropolis, Mars Hill, and Corinth. We have added an extra day to this extension to accommodate this very complete itinerary. The price is the same as last year. Incidentally, this year we are offering the Greek Tour separately.

Our pilgrims returning from Israel tours often want to tell their Sunday School classes, or entire congregations, about their experiences in the Holy Land. Often they practically have to beg the pastor for permission to present what he considers a very off-beat and irrelevant subject. Sometimes it is simply not permitted. At the moment, we are hearing from folks from a previous tour who call it a miracle to have been provided a single evening on which to show some slides and discuss their tour. They comment “and everyone who attended wanted to see and hear more! Their faces were excited, their eyes alive and eager for more about their roots in Israel and the Old Testament.” Sneak away to Israel with us—we won’t tell!

It’s the year’s end, friends, and I can only say that your support is most crucial to what we can do in 1999. Obviously, the upcoming year is a very important one, and it should surprise no Bible reader if it is our final one. Please help us to not only make programs about End Times prophecy in this coming year, but to also purchase full hours of prime-time special airtimes to reach out to the whole nation with the important news that Jesus is the answer.

I can make no further appeal than that. Please do as the Lord bids you towards this ministry, and thank you again for all of your help in 1998.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Your messenger,

For this year end issue I was going to write an article about the year 1998 in Israel. Then it occurred to me that a person who spent the whole year on the ground over there would be much better equipped to write that article. Therefore, we present for your reading pleasure our chief tour guide, Zvi Rivai, a Messianic believer and a native Israeli, to review a most busy and fascinating Israeli year. We left his writing as is, in Israeli-style English.

The year 1998 was a very special year in Israel. But this can be said about every year of the previous 49 years, and it’s very right. In Israel, there is never a dull moment! However, 1998 was the year of Jubilee—modern Israel is 50 years old.

The modern state of Israel was born May 14, 1948. Almost all the experts were certain that the newborn state would be erased from the earth within a couple of days. The secret behind the miraculous survival of Israel is God. Without God, Israel can’t exist—not even a second. Many people are not aware of it, not even in Israel. 1998 was rich with events for the Jubilee celebration—concerts, festivals, conferences, exhibitions, and parades. The events took place not only in Israel, but in friendly countries (as the U.S.A.), too. Many tourists and pilgrims came to Israel in the Jubilee year, among them also Zola’s groups.

The weather was very peculiar this year. On March 15 appeared an unusually heavy sand and dust storm and a couple of days later, a very heavy snow storm came to Jerusalem and paralyzed the city for many hours. Jerusalem was covered with 18 inches of snow. Then came a very hot summer and a very dry and warm autumn.

The world economic crisis reached Israel, too, but mildly (in comparison to the Far East and Russia). The inflation and the unemployment rate reached the level of 9.3 percent.

The present government of Israel, with the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is obliged to continue Rabin’s and Peres’ very bad “Oslo Agreement,” but the difference is that Netanyahu insists that the other side (the PLO and Arafat) keep their side of the agreement, otherwise Israel will not give them anything. Also, it is very clear that as long as Israel has this government—much less will be given away than by a left-wing, atheist, New Age government.

You already know that Israel exists by God’s miracle, also Netanyahu and his government exist just because of God’s miracle.

There were some forest fires in the summer and fall, and a half of them were set by terrorists. The Jewish national fund is replanting the forests and we need a very rainy winter, also, for refilling the Sea of Galilee which is a fresh water lake and its level is 10 feet below the optimum.

Many terrorist attacks were failed because God’s hands touched the terrorists’ devices before time, and the terrorists exploded with their bombs without killing any Israelis. The last case happened in Jerusalem in the Jewish market, Mahaneh Yehuda—two terrorists were killed without causing any serious damage.

An average American who doesn’t know Israel well might think that Israel is an unsafe place to the tourist. But the truth is that Israel is much safer than an average town in America. It is just because Israel is in the center of the world and relatively there are more journalists here than any other place on the globe—so things happening here get out of proportion in the media.

Here in Israel, in God’s land, the Bible is very much alive and real. Here we can see every day the sites that are mentioned in the Bible, to walk where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and God’s son, Jesus the Messiah, walked, and from here Jesus will reign after His Second Coming. There is never a dull moment in Israel, and when Jesus will reign from Jerusalem, we’ll be very busy in His service!

God bless you in Yeshua’s name. See you soon in Israel!

Zola is available to speak in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. This would be much easier on him than “going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it” (Job 1:7). The Lord observed, “no prophet is accepted in his own country” (Luke 4:24), but he didn’t mention a teacher’s own city! Zola is available for Passover demonstrations as well as talks on prophecy, etc., at your DFW area church. Please call Leanna at (214) 696-8844.

December 12–22/27

Hanukkah/Christmas Tour
Israel — Petra/Eilat

January 15–16

Calvary Chapel of the Finger Lakes
P.O. Box 25099
Farmington, NY 14425
Rev. Bill Gallatin
716-398-3550

February 5–8

Caribbean Reunion Cruise
Nassau — Cococay — Miami

March 6–7

Hereford Church of the Nazarene
1710 La Plata Drive
Hereford, TX 79045
Pastor: Rev. Ted Taylor
(806) 364-8303

March 11–14

1999 International Prophecy Conference
Sponsored by: God’s News Behind the News
709 La Plaza Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33707
Rev. Joe Van Koevering
(727) 347-2463

April 2

Bethany First Church of the Nazarene
6789 N.W. 39th Expy.
Bethany, OK 73008
Rev. Doug Forsberg

April 4

Lakeland Baptist Church
397 S. Stemmons Fwy.
Lewisville, TX 75067
Rev. Thom Wilder
(972) 436-4561

April 7–8

Thy Kingdom Come Prophecy Conference
7301 East 14th Street
Tulsa, OK 74112-6700
Rev. Charles L. Pack
(918) 835-6978

April 14/18–28

Spring Tour
Greek Island Cruise