Israel School

Continuing on with my search into the Israel Institute of Biblical Studies I had a call from one of their academic advisers over in Israel today.  He had a very thick Israeli accent and gave me lots of valuable information regarding the course.   So it's a 9 month course, 2 hours per week (1 hour of class and 1 hour of practice (at least)).  It's all online.   The course will start out learning the Biblical Hebrew language, starting with the alphabet, then nouns, verbs and so forth.  Then it will start in Genesis and go from there, along with learning Jewish holidays, ceremonies, and festivals.  The desire in this is to know and understand a bit more of the original texts of the bible.

Now here was the thing.   As we were doing it they guy told me it was going to be $1,199 USD for the course and if I paid it all up front they will give me a $200 discount.    I told them that I don't have the money right now, so the guy told me that I could just pay $100 or $200 right now and when I get the money pay all the rest of it and still get the discount, as he said he didn't wan't me to lose my spot in the class.   I wanted to wait, but in the moment I didn't know what to say, so I said sure, I'll pay the $100.   Instead he wanted to charge me $200.   I had given him all my debit card info and address and all that and he had put me on hold while they charged my account.   I didn't know what I was getting into, and I was getting a bit anxious about it.  He came back and said that the card declined and he reconfirmed all my info and put me on hold again so he could try again.    All this time I was becoming even more anxious, and it worried me a bit.   When he came back again he told me what happened.   Praise God, as my bank declines all international payments without my informing them!     He told me how to contact my bank and said he would call back in 10 minutes.   I didn't call the bank however.   I called a trusted friend instead (his name quickly came to mind as the guy hung up on me).   My friend talked me through what he thought about it and he said he didn't think this was God leading me to sign up now.  As he was talking I gained a lot of peace and a lot of my anxiousness left.    I then decided and I felt peace about it, that I would wait.  The guy had called back twice while I was talking to my friend.  So afterwards I emailed him, as I found they don't answer when I call.    I told him I am interested, but I am going to wait for now and think and pray about it some more.

I also then did a bit of research on them and it looked like the institute had a lot of good reviews.  Now, just right before typing this up, I am at school and did a bit more thorough search into it.  I found that the main site for reviews on the institute does have 443 reviews with 83% 5-star feedback.   However, in those reviews there are 6 1-star reviews, all in English (many reviews were in other languages - the institute offers a handful of languages for this course) and all in 2017.   They all, along with some 2, 3 and 4-star reviews told of how awful costumer service is and that they try to charge you without you knowing $100-200 right off the bat.   They don't pick up and they will hold my credit card info for years in case I come back - then they will charge me then.  The reviews also told how the refund policy isn't true and stuff like that.  I was pretty sketched out about it.  Yes these reviews were only a small percentage of all the reviews, but I was surprised about something else as well. I was surprised that I couldn't find more reviews on the institute.  Why, well because I had also read a number of articles about when they started back in the early 2000's and had over 5,000 students then, and now in 2017 they have nearly 116,000 students, so it surprises me and makes me question when I can only find 443 reviews on the school.

Anyways with all that said, I and going to take some time to pray about this more and seek God's direction in this.  I would love to do a study like this, however I do not want to be a fool in it.   Prayer is the best aid.