THE World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) has reaffirmed its long-held belief that offering friendship and love to Jewish people is not enough: they must also be converted to Christianity. In a statement issued last week, the Alliance defended specialist ministries that were aimed specifically at the conversion of Jewish people.
The statement, signed by US and UK theologians, ministers, evangelists, and writers, said that the most loving and scriptural expression of friendship towards the Jewish people was “forthrightly to share the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ. . .
“We believe that it is only through Jesus that all people can receive eternal life. If Jesus is not the Messiah of the Jewish people, he cannot be the Saviour of the World,” says the statement. Among the 45 signatories are Dr Lon Allison, Billy Graham Center; Chuck Colson, Prison Fellowship; the Rt Revd David Evans, former Bishop of Peru; Mark Greene, London Institute of Contemporary Christianity; Dr R. T. Kendall, an evangelist; the Revd Hugh Palmer, All Souls’, Langham Place; and Gordon Showell-Rogers, European Evangelical Alliance.
I did my doctoral dissertation on the famous Story of the Conversion of Cornelius in Acts 10-11. Basic to that story and the related story of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 is the principle that Gentiles need not become Jews in the process of becoming followers of Jesus, the Christ. Ironically, today, we face the opposite challenge. It seems almost as if in many circles, Jews who become convinced that Yeshua is indeed the Messiah, are expected to become Gentiles in the process of becoming followers of Jesus.
Moishe Rosen, founder of Jews for Jesus, and similar figures still fight a battle on two fronts in their effort to persuade people that Jews can accept Christ as their Savior and Lord and STILL be authentic Jews. Indeed, better Jews than ever. That is, Messianic Jews must fight for their legitimacy on both the Jewish and the “mainline” Christian fronts.
To this day, it’s extremely difficult for Jewish believers to claim the right of “Aliyah” or immigration in Israel. You can be an atheistic Jew or a Marxist or a totally secularized “cultural Jew” and be granted the right to become an Israeli citizen. You just can’t be a Messianic Jew (i.e., a Christian Jew). Sad, but true.
But then again, memories of the Nazi Holocaust, or Good Friday pogroms, or the forced conversions of Jews in medieval Spain etc. aren’t soon forgotten. So it’s a challenge to strike the right balance between proper humility in light of our horrendous record of mistreating Jews in the past, and proper confidence in sharing the gospel with our Jewish friends and neighbors. This statement seems to get it about right. Evangelizing Jews is indeed the most loving thing we can do for them, as long as it’s done sensitively.
David Handy+
David+: From a Jewish believer, thank you especially for your last sentence, and your recognition of the history that makes evangelism of Jews such a difficult matter.
Let me point out, since David Fischler (#2) did not. Not only is he a Jewish believer, he is a minister of the Gospel planting a church in Northern Virginia. So, a “thank you” from him is particularly complementary to you David Handy+
David Fischler,
You’re welcome. I’ll bet you have an interesting story to share.
FWIW, when I was in college, I sometimes attended a Friday night Shabbat service that was mainly for Messianic believers. It was in the Chicago area and led by a group then known as the Watchman Association (I think it faded out). In Richmond, we have a fine Messianic congregation called Tikvat Israel, led by rabbi/pastor Jamie Cohen.
And one of my favorite saints in the TEC calendar is Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereshevsky (whose name I’ve probably misspelled; those Lithuanian and Polish names are so confusing when Anglicized). If you’re not familiar with him, it’s a unique and fascinating story. He came from a long line of rabbis in his family and was himself in rabbinical school in Germany when an Anglican missionary to the Jews handed him a New Testament and challenged him to read it and check out Christianity’s claims. He was converted and ended up coming to America, graduating from General Theological Seminary in the 1850s, and then volunteering to go to China as a missionary himself. To make a long story short, he was a whiz with languages and started translating the OT into Wenli, or colloquial Chinese (similar to Mandarin). He also founded and led the first English language university in China (in Shanghai), and was eventually elected Bishop of Shanghai as well.
Then tragedy struck in the form of a devastating heat stroke that left him almost completely paralyzed. He retained the use of only two fingers. Of course, he had to resign his bishopric and his position as head of St. John’s University. But he kept plugging away at his translation of the OT into the most widely spoken language on earth. It took him 25 long, difficult years but he finished it shortly before he died.
His perspective on it all? Just before he died, this most unlikely of missionaries said something like this: “For 25 years I have sat in this chair and pecked away slowly on this (specially designed) typewriter. At first it seemed very hard. But God knew best, and kept me for the work for which I was best suited.”
Wow! Incredible.
Now, if you were a mission agnecy leader, who would you pick to translate the majority of the Bible into the largest language on earth? I’ll bet it wouldn’t be a Lithuanian rabbinical student! But such are the mysterious ways of our awesome God.
Shalom in the Christ.
David Handy+
David Handy+
I love the story of Schereshevsky. What persistence! Think of what he could have done in this computer/technology age! His eye blinks would have facilitated his writing.
Thank God for the Jews whose shoulders we do indeed stand upon!
This is a nice piece and I largely agree with all of the comments. My only nagging concern: the letter and spirit of the Gospel is that things which divide people from each other become meaningless once we become believers. We all become one in the Lord. In that light, I worry when parishes identify with a specific human culture, whether it be African (in the case of Obama’s parish), the little Lutheran parish where the congregation is inbred Danish or Finnish, or in this case the parish which is Jewish. To me, the only focus should be on the Gospel. But I thank God for the bold witness of the WEA and for the work of Rev. Fischler.
There is an arrogance, a egotistic vanity in evangelizing Jews, as if Judaism is quite inadequate to care for its own. If it is Christianity a Jew desires, he is quite capable of coming to it. One comes to Christ of one’s free will; it is quite another thing to set the hounds on the traces of the unbelievers to bring them to bay -and that is what evangelising does now. Bring on the Jehovah’s Witnesses! Send them to every door!
As long as it is done sensitively? Well, I suppose this is correct, but this is an ideal that does not match my experience with those who are hot to evangelize. For a Christian, Judaism is a parent whose legacy has allowed him to live. And shall I harass my parents because they did not do the job even though I exist because of them? Evangelizing’s denotation has come to be “To badger, to harass for religious gain.” Christianity’s light is now either bright enough to draw those who hunger for the light, or it is not. If evangelizing simply set the light on a high place, so all can see it, I would not be making the objections I make now. Larry
Larry, Judaism is not the parent of Christianity. It is the prodogal brother. Christianity’s parent is the OLd Tesament religion. When Jesus came Jews made a choice to accept Him as Messiah or reject him. Judaism was born out of that rejection. Consequently, they live alientaed from their Scriptures’ purpose. Evangelizing them is calling them home from exile.
The real arrogance is to think them unneedful of truly knowing their Messiah. St. Paul did not believe this. Why should anyone calling himself Christian?
#8, that’s probably true, although I never thought about it in quite those terms. With the destruction of the Temple, Jews who did not follow Jesus had to rebuild their religion without the sacrifices required in the Torah.
Most Jews today, I think, do not know the Christian story along with its roots in their story. When the resurrected Jesus was with the Apostles, he opened the Scriptures to them, showing them fully how he was their fulfillment. I would assume this is the method of the Jewish believers today. I agree that an army of Southern Baptists knocking on doors armed with leaflets is probably not a constructive or sensitive approach.
#8: Then why did he said he came, not to destroy the lqaw, but to fulfill it. The Jews are Christianity’s parents, or to put it another way, they wrote the first long chapters in a continuing story, and we have written the next ones. For it IS all one long story, coherent, connected, articulate, organic. Judaism started with Abraham; the roots are there, and these are our roots as well. That we have followed different courses since the crucifixtion merely tells us what we already know, that the children make their own lives, but is a callous child who forgets his parents’ gifts. Larry
Larry, were the Apostles Jews? Which course did they follow and which was the authentically “Jewish” one? They are Christianity’s parents, not Rabbi Hillel or Rabbi Akiba. Have you not read that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek? This means that the distinction between Jew and Gentile has been erased from God’s point of view. It is irrelevant because the Law has been fullfilled in Christ. To live now as a Jew separate from Gentiles, trying to fulfill the Torah, which is what Judaism does, is to miss what God did in Christ. It is to live in error, futilly trying to do what only Christ could do.
How do you not get this? Maybe you just don’t believe St Paul. If you don’t believe that the Church has followed the one path that Christ has laid out for His people then you don’t believe anything remotely Christian. Scripture is clear. If you want6 to follow the Law because it pleases you, then by all means do as you please. But if you do it because you believe that you must, that somehhow it is a path to salvation then you have exchanged salvation for condemnation.
The law does not save. Only Christ does. Judaism does not preach Christ. It does not lead to salvation. A Jew must leave Judaism in order to return to truly being a Jew and find the salvation promised to the Jews.
To believe otherwise is to deny Christ.
Larry,
How successful has the type of evangelisim that you promote proven itself, in your estimation? What examples of evangelism do you find in the scriptures, was it a passive evangelism that Jesus and the Apostle preached? My readimg of the new testament and the great commission leads me to share the gospel, how do I share if I do not visti?
Evangelism benefits not only the evangelized, by sharing knowledge of their redeemer and salvation, but also the evangelist, by forcing them to study and increase their knowledge and gifts. Discipleship is the life Christians are called to, how can the fruits of the spirit be revealed if they aren’t even deemed an essential.