Apologetics and Witnessing to Black Hebrew Israelites | A Bee Interview With Vocab Malone
On The Babylon Bee Interview Show, Kyle and Ethan talk about apologetics and witnessing to Black Hebrew Israelites with Vocab Malone. Vocab Malone gained prominence for street rapping the gospel and witnessing to Black Hebrew Israelites. He shows why Black Hebrew Israelites are a movement we need to take seriously. He has a YouTube Channel, where he shares his street evangelization. Kyle and Ethan find out the history of Black Hebrew Israelites. They find out why Vocab has become an expert on the topic and why everyone should be aware of the rising popularity of the group. Vocab explains why diversity doesn't bring Orthodoxy and why he disagrees with the Black Hebrew Israelites so strongly. Kyle and Ethan find out how good Vocab is at defining new words. Ethan freestyles with Vocab while Kyle tries to moderate. In the Subscriber Portion, Kyle and Ethan find out about Vocab's past satire videos and web series. Vocab shares stories of helping convert Black Hebrew Israelites. Vocab ends the interview with the ever great 10 questions.
I just have to say that I object strenuously to your use of the word hilarious.
Hard-hitting questions.
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Taking you to the cutting edge of truth.
Yeah, well, Last Jedi is one of the worst movies ever made, and it was very clear that Ryan Johnson doesn't like Star Wars.
Kyle pulls no punches.
I want to ask how you're able to sleep at night.
Ethan brings bone-shattering common sense from the top rope.
If I may, how double dare you?
This is the Babylon B interview show.
Who's in the house?
Vocab is in the house.
Vocab coming on you like a meat slab, coming out of rehab.
He's about to grab your mind.
Find the time to find some rhymes because I'm sublime.
Let's interview this bro.
Because he's a slam poet and I slam poeted for you.
That was the connection of what just happened.
And he, very specifically, he street not evangelizes apologetic sizes with what is it?
Black Hebrew Israelite something?
These guys?
Yes.
We're talking to Vocab Malone, who evangelizes to black Hebrew Israelites.
Is that the right Hebrew Israelites?
Hebrew Israelite.
Well, some of them, yeah, they use quote black.
There's some that are like, you're only Israelite if you're black or something.
There's all these different kinds.
So he goes around.
He talks about it.
He goes around like downtown Phoenix and argues with them.
Yeah, he's got all these videos.
Yeah.
They're debating them and it shows like Street Fighter and it's like defeated.
And if you've seen this podcast before where we had Jeff Durbin on, he works with him.
Yeah.
So they'll go tag team and beat up and rap street battle some atheists.
And we did a little slam poetry together.
And then since his name is Vocab, we actually threw some brand new words at him and made him come up with definitions.
And that was blast.
This is kind of a really interesting topic.
I hadn't really heard anything about these guys before.
Have you seen the Covington kids that had that Native American guy that was banging the drum?
He's one of these guys that thinks that he's the guys that are the Native American one of them.
Well, I think like Native Americans can be Hebrew Israelites because all those like militaristic looking guys around for them.
Yeah.
So anyway.
Sunglasses, berets, and stuff.
It's kind of an interesting topic and it's a really, I guess it's a lot more widespread than I had realized.
So if you want some good information on Hebrew Israelites and you want to hear some crazy rap battles and slam poetry battles and learn some new words, this is your show.
This is the show for you.
If you're in that cross-section of the three people who are interested in all of those things, have you found your video?
Oh, have you?
Oh, have you?
Here we go.
All right.
Mr. Malone, can I do you go Mr. Malone or is that you have to say it all one like is a rapper named Vocab Malone?
I'm okay either way.
Either way.
Okay.
So Mr. Malone, this guy rap battles black Hebrew Israelites.
Is that correct?
I don't think I apologize.
Rap battles, but apologetic battles on the streets.
Yes.
Although a friend of mine who is a Christian rapper did do a response track to a diss track they did to us once.
Okay.
A response track to a diss track.
Okay, I got it.
Yeah, they're back inception.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, they did this diss track, which is slanderous, and then we did a response.
One of our guys did a response.
It was actually factual-based.
They never responded.
Wait, so they actually did a rap diss track against you guys.
The Black Hebrew Israelites did this?
Yeah, yeah.
They called me Malibu's Most Wanted in It.
You like that?
A good nickname.
I mean, if you get dissed by someone and they have a really good diss, you kind of got to respect that, right?
Yeah, I guess it's like that current TikTok meme.
It's like, listen, it's a good joke.
It's a great joke, even, but I need you to stop.
Sadly, I know what he's talking about.
You do?
Yeah.
It's like you're crying and saying it's a good joke.
Yeah, some lady would.
That's a thing.
That's good.
It seems like maybe the youth are starting to realize that there is a level of respect in joking with each other or even like a good diss a little less sensitive.
Is that good?
Is that a good direction or no?
So a lot of Hebrew Israelites are definitely of the dish it out, can't take it type.
Okay.
So a diss where they, you know, they accuse one of my buddies of picking up prostitutes during his work, you know, which he doesn't.
Just to say, because he's a truck driver.
It's just something to say, right?
Oh, so he's not that.
But then we'll respond back about factual things that they actually have said or done.
And oh, it's off limits.
That was offensive and all that.
So it'd be great if it was a two-way street, but with most of these guys, it's not a two-way street.
So you have like a serious, like it's like a half-field McCoy thing going on with these black Israelites.
Well, they actually would say that theologically.
Okay.
They would say this is Jacob versus Esau being played out in the 21st century.
They would actually say that, except they would say it's the Edomites versus the Semites.
So can you Edomites versus Israelites?
Let's just go like people that have no idea, which was mostly me until I started looking into your stuff.
You don't know a lot about the black Israelites or all the different Israelites.
There's all these people that are identifying as Israelites.
Is that the basic idea?
Yeah.
But they're not from Israel, right?
Well, some of them moved to Israel.
Some of them moved to Israel, but it's different than, of course, being from Israel.
But when they moved to Israel, are you an Israelite at that moment?
Well, you're in America.
You're an Israeli.
There's a group called the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem.
And they came out of the south side of Chicago in the 60s.
And first they went to West Africa.
It didn't work out, even though the guy had a vision kind of saying that's where they're supposed to go.
Ended up going to Israel during this rite of return craze or phase when it was kind of hotter.
And Israel kind of didn't know what to do with them because they're like, well, you haven't really officially converted, but you're saying you are Israelis, but you want to live here, but we don't want to appear racist.
It was a whole thing.
And eventually they settled and became really productive members of society.
Started joining IDF and, you know, opening restaurants and contributing culturally and artistically and all this stuff.
Recently, there's been a flare-up.
This is in the news right now, where there's about 50, the numbers change depending on the story.
Folks that Israel's trying to deport out of the community.
And it has to do with them having a current lack of papers.
It's not like they're deporting all 5,000 of the African Hebrewsites of Jerusalem out of Demona, but they are deporting some of them.
And it's kind of a messy story.
Doesn't really make anyone look good.
But, you know, that's what's going on in that story.
So it's actually current.
But my point is some do move, but that's a minority.
In fact, I'm going to tell you this and you're going to think, well, we shouldn't take this serious, but you should take it serious because even bad ideas can grow.
But listen, some Hebrew Israelites claim Jerusalem is in Africa.
And so they would never move back to that land because they didn't believe not only has an identity switch happened, but actually a geographical location has switched.
And people are mistaken to think that it's where it is now.
It's actually on the probably the west coast of Africa is the usual theory.
There's videos about this.
Some prominent Hebrew Israelites, like the group called the End of the World Ministries, T-E-O-T-W, they're one of the big proponents about it.
The end of the world ministries.
Yeah, I think they're twin.
I think they're twin brothers, but they know that never show their face, but it appears they're twins.
Kind of like which is which.
Yeah.
So, okay.
So, how did you get into this street apologetics with these guys?
This is what made you target.
It feels like an incredibly specific area of interest.
It is.
I believe in specialization.
I think specialization can breed expertise.
And I think we need that.
It's kind of like if you look at the history of baseball, you know, pitch that complete game.
Now it's, hey, come in for one and a half inning in the middle to face a couple of lefties and then you get your million bucks, meaning an increase in specialization, right?
My point is in urban apologetics, sometimes people think, oh, urban apologetics, that's a specialization within apologetics proper.
It's culturally contextual.
But within urban apologetics, there's all kinds of things that need to be dealt with.
One of them, Hebrew Israelites.
The way I got into it was from street evangelism.
I started running into them and I started looking into it more and more and realized there wasn't a lot of resources.
Next thing I know, I was down the rabbit hole.
So you sound like Ray Comfort and you're like, gosh, we need to jazz this up a little bit, go a little more street.
It wasn't like that.
I mean, so I was in Bible college and we had to do internship hours, but that's why I went to the Bible college.
So it's not a complaint.
It's part of why I went to the school.
And one of the guys was leading the ministry, going out to Arizona State, right?
And so I went out with him and I had done a little bit, but not quite like he was doing it.
And when I was out there, I realized I liked what they were doing, but I wanted to do more.
I want to have longer conversations.
I wanted to utilize a little bit of hip-hop in my discussions with people.
These were, you know, college students.
So one guy, you know, he's a Taoist for a week.
You know, the neo-atheists were out there, right?
All of that kind of stuff going on.
Occasionally, there's a mosque down the street.
Sometimes the Muslims would even come out and walk around and talk.
Anyways, it's Mill Avenue.
People in Arizona know what I'm talking about.
Well, that's how it began.
And I eventually started doing kind of my own street evangelism where I would take mainly people from a Christian hip-hop background out into the street, do a lot more specialized aiming at people in hip-hop culture.
And it just happened to be around the time when 8-Mile came out.
So when people saw ciphering, they're like, oh, look, it's guys rapping in the circle, just like.
And so they would come over and check us out.
And we're spitting the gospel like we always had, but actually gave it a massive increase to what we were doing.
Can you do that voice?
Can you do that voice one more time for us?
That's kind of my because I think of like a young Becky, as they might say, doing that.
And, you know, she has her like her pumpkin spice.
And she's like, oh, look at the guys who are rapping, like me rapping or whatever.
So they come over and we're spitting the gospel.
So our crowds grew, da-da-da-da.
But over time, I switched places and started doing stuff at First Friday, big art walk type thing here in Phoenix.
And they're running all kinds of things.
And eventually, the Hebrew Israelites started showing up on my neighborhood.
And so I started engaging them.
And I didn't know people were going to be so interested in it.
I didn't know people were going to have so many questions, but they did.
And if you go to my YouTube channel, you'll see a lot of videos of like vocab versus Hebrew Israelites and it'll be street videos.
When I first approached them, I try to have it be friendly if possible.
And that's my favorite kind where we can have a jovial exchange of ideas.
But a lot of times that's difficult to accomplish with some of the groups.
All right.
So beliefs-wise, what is the main difference between BHI and like they don't like to turn black in front of their religion?
Okay.
And they would say, it's not even a religion.
It's a culture.
Right.
But of course, it's a religion.
It's a relationship.
It's a relationship.
It's a relationship with their imagination.
Sorry.
That was a good rap line you could use.
Oh, you've got a relationship with your imagination.
Yeah, yeah, relation, imagination.
That's pretty good.
See, we could go somewhere with that.
Well, um, they're gonna get mad at that.
So, here's what it is: um, by the way, our rap names are uh vanilla soft serve and heavy E. Heavy E, yeah.
I noticed yours is just like a blank, his is like that.
Yeah, his name's like kind of a diss in the name.
Why not call him Iron Man?
Wait, how's in my name?
You could be Iron Fat.
Yeah, yeah, I'm Vanilla Softserve.
You could be the mighty Thor.
Yeah, there's no diss there.
It's uh, it's all instead of the mighty Thor, the whitey Thor.
Yeah, but he's Tony Stark.
Tony's stark white.
If he lost some weight, he could be bony stark.
I don't know whatever.
Okay, now he has been insulted.
No, I'm not saying because I'm saying he's not bony.
That's not bony.
I'm Italian.
I eat a lot of pasta.
I got my own issues.
But you just call me fat.
No, I'm just saying you don't qualify quite to be bony.
You're not bony.
True.
You got to do some work to be like, you know, machinist type of level.
Okay, so what are we talking about?
Yeah, where are we?
What are they?
What are they?
I like to use the phrase Hebrew Israelism.
Okay.
Secular scholars use the phrase black Israelism, like Jacob S. Dorman.
He wrote a really good book on this topic.
Covers some different ground than I cover.
But I use Hebrew Israelism because a lot of them just don't like, they don't like to be called black Hebrewsites.
They say it's redundant, stuff like that.
I usually put it in quotation marks to denote that it's a contended, a contentious phrase, meaning I don't agree they're Hebrew or Israelites usually.
But I say Hebrew Israelism is an idea.
But here's the main tenets.
Maybe we'll say it's five things and I'll make them super simple.
We're the Israelites.
The Jews are fakes.
You got to keep the law.
The Christian church gets it wrong.
We're going to be on top at the end.
That's the essence of Hebrew Israelism.
Okay.
So they believe that we still need to follow the Mosaic law?
To greater and lesser degrees.
Yes.
Every now and then you'll get one who wants to sound Christian and will start talking about grace, but it's very similar to when Mormons or Jehovah's Witness start talking about grace.
And so their main visible signs of keeping the law are where's your fringes at?
So fringes on the edge of your shirt.
And do you keep the Sabbath?
Although, very interesting.
It almost seems like by keeping the Sabbath, they just mean don't go to church on Sunday.
Because a lot of the groups, if you live in a major metropolitan area, you know what I'm talking about.
When do you see them most of the time on the street corners?
When are they at 19th Avenue in Campbellback?
When are they at 27th Avenue in Indian School?
When are they at Dunlap and 19th?
Saturday.
They're out there on Saturdays.
So imagine your rest being putting your fringes on, carrying a bunch of sandwich boards and PAs, setting up on a corner in a hundred degree weather or whatever, grabbing a mic and yelling at people.
That's their Sabbath rest.
My point is they're not really keeping the Sabbath.
Their law keeping is barely lawkeeping.
And when you push them on it, it becomes to the best of our ability, to the best of our ability.
You get a lot of that.
Well, Yahweh knows we're not in power.
But they don't usually call him Yahweh.
They prefer other terms usually.
So fringes like that jacket that Jim Carrey is wearing in Dumb and Dumber.
Is that in that?
When he gets rich, is it like those kind of things?
Oh, yeah, he's got the yeah, except on the on the bottom of your shirt, okay, bottom of the shirt.
And that's considering putting on the garments.
Okay.
And that's a sign that they're keeping a law that was given to Israel at a later time.
And it's interesting that law shows alterations in the law because the law is given at Mount Sinai and Israel messed up.
And later on, Yahweh said, okay, now rock these fringes on the bottom with the blue border on the bottom of your garments to remember the law.
So it was a later thing to help them remember, kind of like tying a bow around your finger back in the day, right?
And that's one of the key things they point to.
My point by saying that is the law keeping is decidedly superficial and shallow.
Feast of booths just happened.
You're supposed to be outside a full seven days living in a tent that you made with your hands.
The guys go to Walmart, spend two hours out in the tent with a Bible study, say we covered it.
Or they say, well, backyard's not big enough.
I can't do it.
So their leaders say, as long as you put bed sheets over your windows, it's like you're in the tent.
So you'll see them do live shows during the Festival of Tabernacles, Feast of Tabernacles, with bed sheets over their windows because they're keeping, that's how they, that's them keeping the law.
Rare is it a group that actually says, let's go out seven days, keep it for real.
And here's what's fascinating.
It's one of the pilgrimage feasts.
You're supposed to go to Jerusalem or Israel to do it.
That's what they would do back in the day.
But of course, they don't book, you know, you don't see these guys booking tickets.
So it's kind of more like Jewish cosplay.
Some people accuse them of LARPing.
Yeah, LARPing.
That's better.
Some people accuse them of LARPing.
And I think it's evident to most people that, you know, I don't think the priests dress like that.
You know, they'll have like massive gold menorah chains on, like House of Israel likes to wear those.
Big stars of David with like a Miami dolphins hat.
And then, you know, they'll be rocking some Nikes underneath.
And it's like, I don't think that's what the priests really wore, you know, but they're sorry, I'm not.
Some of them call themselves priests.
Some of their leaders call themselves priests in the modern era.
Same for context, some of our viewers may maybe one of the main places that you've seen these guys would be on the Covington kid video, right?
Is that them there?
The surrounding them?
Yep, that's House of Israel.
I have had some back and forth with their leader, Chief Ephraim.
Is his name Chief Ephraim?
So if you're of Ephraim, according to the 12 tribes chart of the One West type of Hebrew Israelites, because just like there's Calvinists and Arminians, and everyone knows Calvinists are right, there's One Westerns and non-One Westerns, right?
So One Westerns are a certain type of Hebrews alike.
That doesn't mean that's their name.
It means they're sort of their theological umbrella.
House of Israel is a one-west styled group.
And so they have this 12 tribes chart.
On the 12 tribes chart, it says, if you're Puerto Rican on your father's side, you're of Ephraim.
And so he's Puerto Rican on his father's side, ostensibly.
So he calls himself Chief Ephraim.
And he's the leader of that group that was kind of the spark that lit the fire with the Covington kids.
That's more complicated than Lord of the Rings.
Yes.
It becomes difficult.
And they constantly accuse me of misrepresenting them.
I take great pains to not represent them.
And so, you know, I know we talked about fringes and certain styles of dress in street corners.
And so it sounds very exotic and out there.
Let's go back and talk about a number that I think is important.
The Philosoph Project, in conjunction with something called Life Weight Research, they last, very recently, did a sample size.
I think it was 1,000, Martian of Air, less than 4%.
African American attitudes towards Israel, right?
On there, there's a question about Hebrew Israelite teaching.
Do you agree or disagree, right?
4% say they agree.
Extrapolate that out, current numbers, folks in the United States self-identified as black American, that equals 1.8 million people who self-identify as a Hebrew Israelite.
Well, there's not 1.4 million out there on a corner.
So what else is there?
More and more, we see people infiltrating churches and sometimes even churches flipping into Hebrew Israelite churches.
Prominent example of that is a group out of Straightway or out of Tennessee called Straightway under the leadership of Pastor Dow.
It used to just be a kind of a good old-fashioned Pentecostal cultic-like church, right?
I'm not saying Pentecostal groups are cultic, but this one certainly was if you study their history.
Well, they eventually turned into a Hebrew Israelite thing.
And now multiple former NFL players are in there.
Daniel Muir, Robert Mathis, Kabir from Green Bay.
The list goes on and on.
And Sports Illustrated even did a three-part article, I think, last year where they interviewed me for some of it on Kabir, Charles Dow, and all this, because it popped up in the news when Kabir, there was this kerfuffle in Wisconsin about his children being at a Christmas play and he didn't want it.
And two of the guys from Straightway got arrested because they carried guns into the church and didn't leave when they were asked to leave.
It's a whole thing.
But if you look at the two guys who got arrested, they were both white guys because this group accepts black and white.
And if you saw them, you may not know these are Hebrew Israelites.
They're diverse.
So some people are like, hey, look, they're diverse.
They can't be that bad.
I always tell them, since when does diversity equal orthodoxy?
I'm sure the early Gnostics were plenty or diverse.
Jehovah's Witnesses still are.
What are you talking about?
Problem is, people have such this kind of vision in their mind of Hebrews just being bizarre and only like racially exclusive that they see something different.
They're caught off guard.
Well, more and more, it's changing into preachers in the pulpit who wear suits and espouse Hebrew Islamism like Omar The Beau or Stephen Darby looked like traditional churches.
But next thing you know, they're talking about the 400-year prophecy, 619 to 2019, supposedly.
So it is mainstreaming more and more.
And that's why you see Bill Cosby tweeting out to Hebrew Israelite leaders.
I have this in a recent talk I did that actually just got uploaded today.
So just look up Vocab Malone workshop and you'll see what I'm talking about.
And you have Nick Cannon not saying he's a Hebrew Israelite, but espousing elements of Hebrew Israelism.
Ice Cube retweeting IUIC, which is one of the groups, Israel United in Christ.
So it's really becoming more tenable to people to believe these tenets of Hebrew Islamism than it ever was before.
So what's the big draw?
Why are people have this kind of authentic feel to it?
Or is it, I don't know.
What is it?
A few things.
You see injustice, you want justice.
So is it linked kind of to the social justice movement or is it not?
Or where does it fall into that whole movement?
You know, Black Lives Matter and all that stuff.
Most of the groups are pretty anti-Black Lives Matter because they view it as a feminist movement designed to destroy the black family.
Okay.
So both of them are against.
So they can be correct sometimes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Actually, these guys, you'd be surprised how politically conservative a lot of them are and not afraid to say it.
They're kind of used to being outcasts.
So they'll, they'll say what's what as far as that goes.
But a lot of them don't believe in voting anyway.
So here's what, here's what you got.
I vote.
You see injustice, you want justice, but a lot of these guys' desire for justice turns into just bloodthirsty revenge.
And that's why you'll sometimes go to like the ISUPK website and see pictures of people in the future holding up decapitated, you know, Edomites, which means decapitated heads of white people or something.
And you have that's out there.
That's crazy.
Well, yeah, I mean, ISUPK is one of the main groups.
So you just go to the website, look at the 12 tribes chart art, and they have plenty of that going on.
There was a blog.
He was a cartoonist, and he had all kinds of stuff with portrayals of sexual slaves in the kingdom and decapitated people and heads and eyeballs and jars.
This is Hebrews kind of like fantasy art.
You know, this is what's going to happen in the future.
And we went after it on a live stream.
They took it down.
The Hebrew Israelites took down, I don't mean blog spot or whatever.
Took it down because they were like oh, you know, this makes us look bad, I guess, but but again, not all of them believe in that kind of revenge fantasy, but the idea that this is the way that God is going to make things arright.
People have to pay what?
For what they've done in the past.
And uh, Hebrew Israelism has an eschatology that, to a greater or lesser degree, has the people who are responsible for for great many injustices.
They end up paying in this system, but in Christianity looks like everyone just gets forgiven, but that doesn't seem fair to us.
And so Hebrew Islandism's eschatology is very attractive to people.
Also, everybody asks, who am I?
It can be more acute though, depending on what's going on in your world and and all those kinds of things, and so the more acute it is, the more pressing a question it is, who am I, where am I from?
And so uh, this says, oh, you don't, you don't know your history.
Well actually, open this book right here, and this is the history of your people.
So you're reading about your forefathers, literally.
You're reading about your four four uh foremothers, literally.
Oh, now I know who I am.
So that's great.
I'm, my people are in the center of the bible.
Uh, that's fantastic.
So that also they feel like the Christian church has failed them.
And that's confirmed.
Every time a Christian, uh comes up to them on the street and the Hebrews Lites are able to theologically slice and dice them with ease.
And it's totally confirmed.
These people know nothing.
Their pastors know nothing.
They're leaderless, they're not good for our community.
They don't know the bible.
Uh, thank god that i've joined this thing, because these people literally know nothing.
That's how they look at the Christian church.
That's why it's difficult to witness to them a lot of times, because they feel you have nothing to tell them, you have nothing to say that i'm going to learn from you, but I can teach you if you would like.
So i'm looking at a chart of the 12 tribes of Israel from one of these groups.
So Ethan, you're a native American, right?
Do you have some native American?
32nd, I think so.
You were the tribe of Gad Gad.
No, has to be on your father's side.
Oh, it is in your father's side.
Father's side, it had to be it.
Have you had to be able to trace it back to father's side all the way?
It couldn't be.
Your father's mother had to be your father's father and on back to how far you had to go back, that i'm not sure.
I think it might not sure sorry, but they would.
They would really disappointed right now.
Yeah, you're not in Gad.
Sad uh Patrick, what are Sad Patrick, what race are you?
Call down Gad, Sound and Excellent.
You have a little native American.
How far back does it go, father?
No okay, all right.
Well, none of us are in the 12 tribes.
Yeah, House OF Israel, House OF Israel actually called, UH, that was the group that debated with the Covington kids or whatever you want to say.
They did.
Oh yeah yeah uh, debate.
When some of the people came up to them who were at the Indigenous Uh Day In march, that's why there were, people were there from there's pro-life community and the Indigenous Peoples March.
So the Hebrews literally were there for the indigenous people.
They didn't even know about the pro-life thing.
That was sort of just the fates aligned and so uh, whenever someone who looked white came up to them and said well, i'm native American, that's why i'm here, they would say oh, you're a.
They would I forget what the term is a five dollar or five nickel Indian.
They use some term that basically means uh, all white people saying that they're native Americans, so that they have a term for it, and any it was.
It was interesting and incredibly racist.
Any native American dude disagreed with them.
They would say, instead of you're an uncle Tom, they would say you're an uncle Tomahawk.
Smart downwards, though.
That's fun.
It's one of those things where you respect the diss, you know.
Aren't they kind of like a $5 Israelite, though?
Because they're not really from Israel much.
Well, they would say that Esau knows the truth about us and archaeology, history, linguistics, and even genetics.
Sometimes sometimes I'll bring that into the fray, although a lot of them don't, backs up our claims in the Bible.
And if we're not the people of this book, who are the people of the book?
They'll say something like that.
So it kind of to me, the appeal sounds very much like a lot of cults where you have this secret knowledge that nobody else has ever discovered, and you guys are the ones who know it.
Like you're in this in-club of people with a secret link to the past.
Hey, like the video game, link to the past.
They would claim, they would claim that there's always been a remnant of Israelites who knew who they were, but Esau has went to great lengths.
Esau are descendants of they sometimes use Esau to basically as a nickname for all white men or something.
Esau has covered it up.
And so this is in fulfillment of a prophecy from Jeremiah that says you'll be discontinued or cut off from your heritage.
And they'll say, look, see, it says we're going to forget who we were.
Although, if you look at that passage, it's saying they're going to be cut off from their land.
That's literally what the passage means.
You can read it in context.
I think it's Jeremiah 17, 4.
And you can look and they'll sometimes use that.
And some other ones will say, this means we're going to forget who we were.
But that has to do with being cut off from the land, right?
Cut off from your inheritance, some translations will say.
And really what this is, is it's a restorationist movement.
So you have the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, and there's other groups.
Those are the most prominent.
They're both categorized by scholars of religion as restorationist movements.
The basic idea is there was a great falling away, some kind of an apostasy, which they would say is predicted in the Pauline epistles.
And during that time, people lost the essence of the gospel.
So for the Mormons, obviously that's something different.
You know, you lost a priesthood.
For Jehovah's Witnesses, that's something else.
You lost God's sacred name, his divine name.
Hebrew Israelites, it's something else.
It's you lost who the true people are.
You lost who the people are of this book.
So Hebrew Israelism is a restorationist movement.
And I don't think it's accidental that its birthday essentially comes on the tail end of when restorationism was popular.
And that even came in Protestant circles, people saying, we're not just Baptists, we're primitive Baptists.
The idea was there, we're going all the way back to John the Baptist type of thing, you know?
And so Hebrew Israelism started the same way.
Two different men, unclear exactly who was first.
Usually it's described as William S. Crowdie, another man of F.S. Cherry, Frank S. Cherry.
Both of them, within short span of time, claimed to have visions from God revealing they and black Americans were the actual true lost Israelites.
And so you could say the birthplace of Hebrew Israelism was 129 years ago in a field in Guthrie, Oklahoma, if William S. Crowdie was the first one, which it seems he was.
They'll say, well, that's not the beginning.
But they can't point Hebrew Israelites to any other person making that explicit claim that basically if you came over here on a ship, you're an Israelite.
That's the essence of a lot of times what they say Hebrew Israelism is.
And they get that from Deuteronomy 28, 68, which if you remember the law, here's the law.
At the end, God says, now do it.
And if you do, here's some promises that are nice.
They'll happen.
But if you don't, here's some curses that are going to happen.
And Deuteronomy 28 are the curses for disobedience.
And at the end, it says, you're going to go back in Egypt to ships.
And then you're going to be sold or sell yourselves, depending on translation, as slaves.
And so they say that was fulfilled on the transatlantic slave trade, Deuteronomy 28, 68.
So it's kind of like their John 3, 16.
It's their good news verse, if you will.
Because if that applies to you, you get the golden ticket.
Okay.
I understood some of those words.
Well, ask away.
Ask away.
I want people to understand this.
Now, here's the thing.
You guys do satire, so I'm trying to have some fun, but I have to relate, in all seriousness, the seriousness of this issue.
Because it doesn't just grab people that maybe if you're here this for the first time, Not you, I know you guys are more enlightened, where you people might brush it off and say, oh, no one would take that serious.
We don't have to worry about that.
Imagine being a pastor in New York.
When you first heard about Joseph Smith, this guy says he was visited by the spirit of a lost Israelite who lived at the Americas named Moroni, and he came to the foot of his bed and told him to dig in a hill in New York to find some golden plates written in a reformed Egyptian that would be a record of the lost tribes of Israel and Jesus' visitation to the Americas.
No one's going to believe that.
And Joseph Smith, this farm boy, he's the prophet to lead to lead the church in the latter.
No one's going to believe that.
Now there's BYU.
You see what I'm saying?
So like that, it's important to take these things seriously.
Everything doesn't become Mormonism, right?
We understand that.
Hebrew Israelism is showing massive signs of growth and shows a great ability to infiltrate and that people adopt tenets just enough to distort the gospel, even if they don't become full-on out donning the fringes.
And I think that's very important for people to understand.
And again, it's not just one type of person because some of the groups say, hey, you may not be an Israelite like me, but you can be grafted in as long as you know your place.
God's a God of order, right?
And in his order, Judahites are the teachers over Israel.
You other nations can teach other nations under our authority.
You'll be grafted in through us.
It's all good.
You're my brother.
Just know your place.
My point is, there's people that are with that.
You know, they're down with that.
And other ones say, well, you might not be a physical Israelite like us, but you could kind of be like a spiritual Israelite.
So we're all good.
And so a lot of these things are attracted to people.
And guess what?
100 years before the birth of black Israelism, something called Anglo-Israelism.
Some people know about that.
And it basically had the same tenets and was extremely popular in England and eventually over to the Americas.
It's kind of died out, but the Christian identity folks and actually the KKK still embrace a version of Anglo-Israelism.
And every now and then, you'll find people like some of the followers from the Worldwide Church of God, you know, Herbert Armstrong and all those guys.
He was spitting Anglo-Israelism for years on the radio.
And so if we're like, oh, you must be, you know, something's wrong with you.
Well, there's lots of Americans who believe this.
And that's why you can find a lot of countercult books by evangelical apologists from the early 20th century against Anglo-Israelism because it was a massive problem then.
Now we're dealing with Hebrew Israelism and it's becoming a problem as well.
So interesting.
Yeah.
You guys are just.
So this role play.
Kyle is a young black man.
Use your imagination.
Or not.
Or whatever he is.
And he's thinking about joining this church.
And you guys are hanging out.
And he's like, hey, I'm thinking about joining this Israelism church.
And, you know, what do you like about it so much, Kyle?
And then you got to spit at him and convince him not to.
And then I'm the other guy that's there.
You're just watching.
I could be trying to convert him.
Yeah.
Hey, Mr. Malone, how you doing?
That's a fist bump.
Don't talk to this guy.
Actually, it would say that.
No.
We're not listening to you.
I'm going to join the Hebrew Israelites.
They're telling me that I'm the chosen people.
Why are you telling a random guy this?
Wait, I thought friends.
Oh, okay.
Sorry, we're still in character.
So you believe that you fulfill the curses laid out in Deuteronomy 28, and that's how you know you're an Israelite?
What is that?
He's trying to trick you.
No.
That's what you'd have to say.
You'd have to say yes to that.
Yes.
Don't say yes.
You can't control me, man.
You can't tell me what to say.
Well, did you know that if you're in Christ, you're free from the curse?
Let me read something to you real quick.
Galatians chapter 3.
I'm going to start in verse 11.
Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by law, by the law.
There's another conversation we probably need to have.
For the righteous shall live by faith, but the law is not of faith.
Rather, the one who does them shall live by them.
Here's the thing you really need to listen to, Kyle, or whatever your name is.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.
Didn't Jesus Christ hang on a tree?
2 Corinthians 5.21 says that he took upon the sins of sinners in that exchange, and he gives us his righteousness and he takes on our sin.
So if you're in Christ, you don't want to try to find some curses that you fulfill and hang on to those.
And in fact, the curse for not doing the law is no longer on you if you're in Christ.
Now, let's look at the last verse real quick.
It's important.
So that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith.
If you go back, Kyle, I know you know your Old Testament.
Remember when God came to Abraham and he said, hey, I'm going to bless you.
Give you lots of kids and stuff.
Make you a great nation so you can bless all the families of the earth.
So Jesus came not just to bless Israel, Kyle, but to bless all the nations of the earth.
And that's literally what Paul's saying here.
So that in Christ Jesus, you got to be in Christ.
Being in Abraham is not as important as being in Christ.
The blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so we might receive the promised spirit through faith.
So whether you're a Jew or Gentile, you can get it.
And let me just share one other verse.
Should I keep listening to this guy?
Share one other verse and then I'll let you speak.
This is one other verse.
This says that if you have faith in Christ, you are to be identified as a son of Abraham.
So you don't have to look at a chart.
You don't have to look at even your genetics.
You don't have to look at curses fulfilled or not fulfilled.
You need to look at Galatians 3, 7, knowing that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
So who is a son of Abraham?
Biblically speaking, those who have faith in Christ.
That's what you need.
So Kyle, is it more important to be in Christ or to be in Abraham?
Well, these guys have cool charts.
If you're in Christ, you're in Abraham.
So with Christ, you get Abraham and the blessings of Abraham.
And he's your father because you are following the example of faith laid out.
So I'm going to pray for you and I pray that you go home and read Galatians 3 away from those other guys and that guy in the flannel next to you.
And I pray the Spirit moves on you and you can see the truth.
But these guys have cool fringes on their shirts.
You can still wear fringes if you want.
Just don't make them binding on anyone else's conscience.
All right.
I'm sold.
Me too.
I'm in.
I'm in.
As long as I can still wear the fringes.
You can.
You certainly can.
So your name is Vocab Malone, which when I first heard that, I thought that sounds like a TV show about a detective for kids that introduces new words to them that they never heard before.
I'm totally with that.
I hate it.
Someone signed me up.
It's me, Vocab Malone.
Have you ever heard the word telekinesis?
I'm with that.
So I was thinking we could play a quick game with you.
Oh, boy.
We will throw, we're going to throw brand new words at you.
Okay, I'm supposed to not be Peter Screen.
You come up with a vocabulary, a definition for this word.
So Kyle, you can read from the list that I came up with.
And I'll read from one of our friends here, a writer named Ehrlich, has a Twitter account called New Words, and he makes up new words.
And he has definitions, but I want to see how close you come.
All right, let's do it, man.
Lugas.
Spelled.
Lugas.
Lugas, yeah.
L-U-G-U-S.
That means a state of great chagrin.
Can you do an example sentence?
When he saw the planets ruined, he is filled with Lugas.
Sounds gross.
In the new words, it was accidentally stealing art from the Louvre.
Oh, okay.
So Da Vinci code stuff.
Okay.
And the example sentence is, sure, I've Lugased 16 times, but only once on purpose.
Sounds like a guy I know.
Poffician.
P-O-F-F-I-T-I-O-N.
Poffician.
Poffician means to do things in an extremely expeditious manner.
Use in a sentence, please.
He painted the house with much Poffician.
You're living up to your name, Vocab.
Malone.
Poffician is actually an invitation to mud.
What's the sentence for that one?
Clean wipe, everyday wipes, work against grease, buildup, smudges, and the puffician we all succumb to.
How about this one?
Neoschizzle.
Neoschizzle is a brand new genre of hip-hop, primarily performed by bisexual millennials.
Can you use in a sentence, please?
Yeah.
I turned on YouTube the other day and saw nothing but a bunch of neoschizzle.
So my definition I came up with for that one is very similar.
A style of slam poetry that pertains only to insects native to Russia.
I'm with that.
The coffee shop had a neo-schizzle night that was exhilarating.
I used to do slam poetry.
I was in some interesting circles.
That's why I put that in there.
It's a little slam poetry.
TV is V D in color 3D.
It's a vision disease telling lies to me.
You can ABC, NBC, and CBS, get it, C, B, S, you know, that kind of thing.
I like when they do the raise the eyebrow and they throw the little one last time in his eye and saw my hands were covered in blood.
And they started doing real good.
That wasn't my style, but that was some guy's style.
Bolteron.
B-U-L-T-E-R-O-N.
Bolteron is a proper noun, and it has now been discovered to be the 10th planet in our solar system.
Okay, using a sentence.
We lost Pluto, but we got Bolteron.
Especially if it's 10, it'd be, anyways, yeah.
The actual made-up definition is a chandelier that has killed someone.
An alternate definition is when a person thinks they've gotten away with their scheme only to be stopped by a chandelier.
That's a real thing.
That's a real trope in a lot of movies.
What's the sentence?
Why is this four-bedroom house so cheap?
Is there a bolter on or something?
One more.
Yeah.
For each claster.
Claster.
Claster is a substance made from a new organic compound out of a lab in China.
Using a sentence.
We thought it was Wuhan, but it was just claster.
My definition was a group of people who do not realize they all wore the same brand of underwear simultaneously within a five-mile radius.
Sounds like someone had a bad experience.
A lot of steps to uncover that fact.
The largest claster in the United States was in Bennett, Colorado.
So that'd be a instead of a claster up.
Yeah.
But nobody ever knows they exist because nobody knows what underwear everybody else is wearing.
Well, that's what I'm saying, though.
There'd be multiple bad steps that would happen to.
You couldn't prove it.
Well, it happened at least once.
Maybe.
Perhaps Superman was involved.
That would be a fascinating experience.
Go around and just have everybody check their underwear brand and see how many clasters you can find.
Couldn't happen to me because I strictly buy Star Wars underwear.
They do make them in 2XL.
See, we probably already got a claster because I'm sure Kyle has the same pair.
I should have clicked on this Twitter account before this because I'm cracking up at every single one of these.
All right, last one: Dipterod.
D-I-P-T-E-R-O-D.
Dipterod.
That is also a proper noun.
It's from an ancient king of a people who resided in the Levant area, who we've just now discovered, although we only have one artifact from them, which is a clay pot.
And their king was Dipterod.
Note because it was dedicated to King Dikterod.
Okay.
Can we use that in a sentence?
King Dipterod was way better than King Nimrod.
Okay.
So the actual made-up definition is an executioner mask with the eye holes not yet cut out.
The sentence is using a sentence, honey.
Please don't keep the potatoes in my dipterod.
If you want more of those new words, you can go to at new words13 on Twitter.
It's a tiny Twitter account our buddy started up a while back.
He's probably going to be shocked to see followers suddenly pop up on there.
Just follow it.
This reminds me, though.
I used to work at a radio station and I did this show called Urban Theologian Radio.
And the guy after me was like this super smart guy.
And he did like political talk, you know, Seth something or other.
I can't remember his name.
And he always took somewhat of an he didn't know me, but his show was aftermine.
So he was always basically trying to kick me out of the studio.
So like, he always took mild umbrage that I was called vocab.
So every time he came, he's like, vocab, huh?
Well, let's see this.
And he would spit these words.
And I never knew what any of them meant.
And then I would look them up and find out all these words this guy was throwing at me were real words.
I was like, how does this guy know all this stuff?
I just look a total idiot from any for in front of any guest that I ever had because this guy, Seth, would come in and throw like two or three words while I was packing up.
And he would use it in a sentence and everything.
And they were real words, this guy.
One of these guys that just reads the dictionary.
I don't know.
It's a true story, though.
And I remember thinking, I never would have gathered he was this smart just from listening to his radio show.
So can we bring this home and attempt a, so I don't think we need to compete doing a slam poetry off.
I think what we can do is a collaborative slam poetry freestyle.
Okay.
Once a guy is getting a little hung up, someone else tag in.
Okay, this one's got to just get hung over, but okay.
I'll pass.
Okay.
What?
I'll be the moderator.
I'll pass.
I'll be the moderator.
Yeah, pass them.
Wait, that was the first line.
Okay.
That was the first line.
That's the microphone.
I'm the moderator.
There's nothing greater than when you're grating cheese like an alligator.
Because every time you see a blown-up woman, you deflate her.
I was looking at the moon.
It's full of craters.
Don't be a hater.
That coach just got fierce later.
Put on your seat belt.
Make.
Click, click.
He'll smile, Mr. Nader.
If you study the life of Muhammad, he was a worse father than Darth Vader.
Don't know if he breathes heavy.
The other day, I threw a Ford over the levee, not a Chevy.
My name is E, Heavy.
Every time I go to the Bevy, my flavor is help.
Help somebody.
Kyle.
Your flavor is stupendous, tremendous.
Oh, you can do something.
Incredible, edible, indelible.
Not invisible, but indivisible.
You are an individual who's a lyrical miracle, spiritual, intellectual, but very effectual.
And you have to be contextual because every time you talk to a homosexual, you should be reflexual.
Free.
Hopefully not in a sense of genuflect.
Because I'll be like, what the heck?
Check your neck like Wu-Tang.
You bang when you spit lyrics.
Kyle, you got an ill-freestyle.
So sick, it might have been from the Nile, a virus.
That's called biting when you're reciting someone else's lyrics.
I'm inviting you to a battle.
You're a baby.
So all.
Swaddles.
Scare you with a rattle.
Swaddle.
Here's your rattle.
Swaddle, you give you a rattle.
Because I think you're about to tattle.
All right.
I think we killed that.
We killed that.
Yeah, you guys definitely killed something.
We killed that like Muhammad did poets.
This is the end.
Don't you know it?
You got to have a good ending.
Nice job.
All right.
We'll add that to our album.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, we're going to move into our subscriber lounge where you get more.
I think we should get him.
We want some street apologetic stories.
Not like, I don't want him like, oh, he thought this vile verse was true.
But I add, there's got to be ones.
I want ones where you're like, oh, I forgot my pants fell down or I got punched by this hooker or something crazy.
I don't got quite that, but I got one where I punched the hooker.
Just kidding.
Okay.
Oh, I do that.
I do that one.
Make one, though.
Okay, this is my favorite.
This is my favorite one of all time.
Oh, not yet.
He's okay.
Oh, not yet.
Join us.
Click join or subscribe.
You can hear the crazy hooker punching story.
And here we go.
Coming up next for Babylon Bee subscribers.
Have you ever converted anybody out of that?
What's that like?
You can get a million voice.
I haven't, but the Holy Spirit.
Oh, good.
Just like one-up me.
I find which ninja turtle are you?
I always like to tell you you know your ninja turtles from behind you.
So you saved them.
Good job.
Yeah.
Yes, Charles Finney, I did.
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