Posted on 11/25/2006 7:17:24 PM PST by Alex Murphy
As Christian evangelicals in the United States grow their support for Israel, conversion of Jews to Christianity continues to be a thorny issue for both Christians and Jews.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, has made the conversion of Jews official policy, while the San Francisco-based "Jews for Jesus" exists solely to convert Jews to Christianity. Bill McCartney, a former University of Colorado football coach who co-founded the evangelical Promise Keepers movement for men, now runs The Road to Jerusalem, an organization whose mission is to convert Jews to Christianity.
While many U.S. Jews still consider conversion a huge problem and an impediment to interfaith relations, these days some Jewish leaders, not wanting to jeopardize Christian support for Israel, maintain that conversion isn't a major issue for Christian Zionists.
David Brog, a well-connected Washington insider, was recently tapped by Texas evangelist Rev. John C. Hagee, pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, to be the executive director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a high-profile pro-Israel lobbying effort that Hagee founded a few months back.
In a recent interview, Brog, who is Jewish, pointed out that, "All activities of CUFI are strictly non-conversionary. Christians who work with Jews in supporting Israel realize how sensitive we are in talking about conversion and talking about Jesus."
"So those who work with us tend not to talk about Jesus more, but talk about Jesus less. They realize it will interfere with what they are trying to do -- building a bridge to the Jewish community to insure the survival of Judeo-Christian civilization."
In the preface to his new book, "Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State," Brog gives Christian Zionists his stamp of approval, writing that he was "convinced that the evangelical Christians who support Israel today are nothing less than the theological heirs of the righteous Gentiles who sought to save Jews from the Holocaust."
Regardless of Brog's assertion, the question of whether Christian evangelicals should continue to try and convert Jews is still unsettled, and one that makes many Jews wary of the motives of Christian evangelicals.
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein is the head of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, made up of a core group of 450,000 Christians, in addition to 6,000 Jews. Last year, Eckstein's organization received nearly 70 million dollars -- mostly from U.S. Christians -- to help poor Israeli Jews with their basic needs, and to help Jews immigrate to Israel.
In a recent interview with the South Bend Tribune, Eckstein acknowledged that the question of conversion is "a big issue," but he insisted that "it's just not true" that evangelicals are interested in converting Jews.
"We did a study, a formal study, that found that the primary reason for (evangelicals') support is the shared values of freedom and democracy that Israel has," he said.
J. Lee Grady, the editor of Charisma, a prominent evangelical magazine, is also a strong supporter of Israel. He, however, has a different take on the conversion question. In a recent commentary for Charisma Online, Grady wrote that while it was good that Christian evangelicals were "expressing solidarity with the nation of Israel like never before... our coziness with Israel has created an awkward theological dilemma."
"Although we feel a biblical obligation to protect Jews from ethnic hatred (and we should), we also have been given a mandate to share the gospel with Jew and gentile alike. After all, the apostle Paul himself -- the most celebrated Jewish convert to Christianity ever -- told us that the message of Christ was sent 'to the Jew first'."
"To complicate things," Grady added, "some Jews believe that Christian evangelism is a form of anti-Semitism -- as if converting a person to faith in Jesus strips them of their Jewishness. For that reason, some Christians who have become involved in pro-Israel activism actually have stopped sharing the gospel with Jews altogether. Some have even developed strange doctrines that suggest that Jews, because of God's Old Covenant promises, are granted special tickets to heaven as if they don't need Jesus to save them from their sins."
Grady recognizes that he's treading on dangerous ground by raising the conversion question, and he insists on using "logic" to resolve the issue: "Do we believe the Bible or not? If the Christians in the book of Acts -- most of whom were Jews who converted to Christ -- aggressively shared Jesus throughout Israel and beyond, why should we back off from that assignment?"
He cites the recent conversion campaign in New York City conducted by the San Francisco-based Jews for Jesus (JFJ), one of the major organizations working to convert Jews to Christianity. Its July action in New York City, Long Island and northern New Jersey resulted in the distribution of "1.8 million gospel pamphlets on the streets, sen[ding] 450,000 brochures through the mail and show[ing] a movie about Jesus to 80,000 Yiddish-speaking Chasidic Jews."
According to JFJ, 241 Jewish people "prayed to receive Christ as their Messiah during their Behold Your God campaign." In addition the campaign garnered reports on 13 television stations and articles in "every major newspaper ... including the Jewish press."
While vigorously supporting Israel's right to exist and its need to combat terrorism, Grady is also mindful about "car[ing] about our Arab neighbors -- and to share Christ with them as well. Arab Christians living in places such as Bethlehem, Beirut and Baghdad often are sidelined and forgotten in the midst of Middle East violence. They know, perhaps better than anyone, that Jesus is the only hope for reconciliation in that war-torn region."
Ultimately, Grady concludes that "Any pro-Israel work we do cannot be truly biblical if we compromise our mandate to share the love of Christ with those He first came to save."
Members of Christians United for Israel and other so-called evangelical Christians "are forgetting one thing -- one very important thing," Laurence M. Vance, a freelance writer and an adjunct instructor in accounting and economics at Pensacola Junior College in Pensacola, Florida, wrote in a recent commentary posted at LewRockwell.com. "Christians in the Bible were involved in Jewish evangelism."
According to Vance, "Other evangelical Christians [in addition to Hagee]... are exchanging evangelism for dialogue."
Some Christian leaders appear to be exchanging evangelism for a place at the podium. In mid-June, Rick Warren, the author of the bestselling "The Purpose Driven Life" and a very popular and influential mega-church pastor, spoke at the Friday Night Live Shabat services at Sinai Temple. According to Rob Eshman, the editor-in-chief of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, "Warren managed to speak for the entire evening without once mentioning Jesus -- a testament to his savvy message-tailoring."
Warren told Ron Wolfson, the Rabbi that invited him to speak, that "his interest is in helping all houses of worship, not in converting Jews."
"and only had it restored (artificially) in 1948."
Please 'splain!
The Judaism that arose after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD replaced the Mosaic Covenant which was no longer possible without a Temple for sacrifices to cover their sins. Any Jew who took the words of Moses seriously knew when the Temple was destroyed and with it all sacrifices, then they had no covering for their sins. Their scholars then resorted to allegorizing away the words "sin, sacrifice, Messiah, . . . ".
But the prophets and Jesus taught that He would return one day to restore the Kingdom to Israel and He would sit on the throne of David right there in Jersualem forever.
Read the Book of Acts. For forty days after His resurrection, He spoke of "things pertaining to the kingdom of God". Then after forty days when they all came together, they all had just one question: "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" [Acts 1:7].
Did He answer them: I'm sorry but Israel has been replaced? Did He answer: "I've just been teasing you these last forty days by telling you about the Kingdom?" Did He answer: "I've changed my mind, there won't be a kingdom for Israel". Nope, Nope, Nope.
His answer was: "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His power." In other words, it is none of your business as to when it will happen because only His Father knows.
Peter then speaks of this restitution of the Kingdom to Israel in his sermon to the Jews after Pentecost: "Repent, therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and He shall send Jesus Christ . . . whom the heaven must receive until the times of the restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets since the age began."[Acts 3:19-21]
Twenty years later at the Council of Jerusalem, James affirms Peter's declaration that God would visit the Gentile nations to take out a people for His name, thne "after this I will return, and will build again the the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down, and will build again its ruins, and will set it up."[Acts 15:14-17]
And even Peter's final words to Jews and Gentiles in his 2nd Epistle were intended to stir them up to be "mindful of the words which were spoken by the holy prophets . . . ". Words like those of Isaiah 14:1: "For the Lord will yet have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land, and the sojourners shall be joined to them, and they shall cling to the House of Jacob." and Amos, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Zechariah.
The replacement theologians in the Church do not have a monopoly on replacement theology. They share it with Judaism, Islam, British Israelism, Liberalism, Unitarian-Universalism, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, . . . all who do not believe that Jesus will keep his promises and the words that were spoken by the holy prophets regarding his coming to set up the Kingdom of Israel in Jerusalem.
Many Jewish families trace their ancestry to known descendents of King David. See, for example,
http://www.davidicdynasty.org/press.php
Are such claims accepted by Christians? Hardly. But Christians don't get to decide, angry as that may make them.
Dead Idols and the Living God
1 Bel bows down, Nebo stoops; Their idols were on the beasts and on the cattle. Your carriages were heavily loaded, A burden to the weary beast.
2 They stoop, they bow down together; They could not deliver the burden, But have themselves gone into captivity.
3 “ Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, And all the remnant of the house of Israel, Who have been upheld by Me from birth, Who have been carried from the womb:
4 Even to your old age, I am He, And even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; Even I will carry, and will deliver you.
5 “ To whom will you liken Me, and make Me equal And compare Me, that we should be alike?
6 They lavish gold out of the bag, And weigh silver on the scales; They hire a goldsmith, and he makes it a god; They prostrate themselves, yes, they worship.
7 They bear it on the shoulder, they carry it And set it in its place, and it stands; From its place it shall not move. Though one cries out to it, yet it cannot answer Nor save him out of his trouble.
8 “ Remember this, and show yourselves men; Recall to mind, O you transgressors.
9 Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me,
10 Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,’
The Beginning / M’RESHIT
B'RESHIT/ GENESIS
Genesis 35
Jacob’s Return to Bethel
1 Then God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there; and make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau your brother.”
2 And Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, and change your garments. 3 Then let us arise and go up to Bethel; and I will make an altar there to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me in the way which I have gone.” 4 So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods which were in their hands, and the earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree which was by Shechem.
***
Jacob returned to the Land and they buried their idols under the tree.
So how would a Jew convert to paganism?
Reverse the process, go to the (Christmas)tree and pick up their idols.
Oy gevalt cubed!!!
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