For me as a Jewish believer in Jesus, one of the most encouraging occurrences in recent years is that Jewish evangelism has become an issue. While there have always been a substantial number of Christians concerned with bringing the Gospel to Jewish people, for the most part the topic was avoided. Perhaps until now many found the matter of Jews coming to Christ and the resultant opposition by the Jewish community too perplexing to discuss.
Related Elsewhere
See our related evangelism story today on ChristianityToday.com, ” Can I Get a Witness? | Southern Baptists rebuff critics of Chicago evangelism plan.”In December, we looked at targeted evangelism with articles by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein (to which this article is a response), and several articles from the Christianity Today archives. These include coverage of Billy Graham’s famous statement in a 1973 issue of CT that he “never felt called to single out the Jews” for evangelism and his reiteration of that stand in a speech before the American Jewish Committee four years later, as well as one of our earliest editorials touching on the subject: ” Christmas and the Modern Jew.”Wednesday’s Larry King Live focused on the evangelism of Jews, with guests Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center; Rabbi Schmuley Boteach, executive director of the Oxford L’Chaim Society; in Louisville, Kentucky, R. Alert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus. See a transcript here or video (for a very limited time) here.Rosen wrote an article similar to this one for the Jews for Jesus newsletter, titled ” Why Emphasize Witnessing to Jews?” It’s only one of more than 50 articles about Jewish evangelism in the Jews for Jesus special online resource area on the topic.See Christianity Today‘s other past articles on messianic Judaism and “targeted” evangelism:To the Jew First? | Southern Baptists defend new outreach effort (Nov. 15, 1999) Protecting the Right to Convert | The freedom to choose religious belief is under assault globally (Mar. 1, 1999) The Return of the Jewish Church (Sept. 7, 1998) Mapping the Messianic Jewish World (Sept. 7, 1998) Did Christianity Cause the Holocaust? | No, despite what a biased film at the tax-supported Holocaust Museum implies (Apr. 27, 1998) Is Jewish-Christian a Contradiction in Terms? (Apr. 7, 1997) Jews Oppose Baptist Outreach (Nov. 11, 1996)
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