Jewish Pentecostal Reaches Jews with the Gospel

Two thousand years of history have shown the Jewish people that Christians are their worst enemies, a Messianic rabbi pointed out.

“Jews were told you must convert or be killed. If we ignore the history, we’ll never really understand why it’s so difficult to reach the Jewish people with the Gospel,” Jeff Friedman emphasized.

Friedman himself grew up hating Christians. While attending an Orthodox Jewish synagogue regularly in Brooklyn, N.Y., he said he had some brief encounters with Christians and found them offensive, according to Pentecostal Evangel, a publication of the Assemblies of God.

It wasn’t until he was in his late 20s that he began to understand Yeshua, or Jesus. And it was at the most unlikely of places – his hair salon.

After moving to Miami as part of his job as a government pharmacist, Friedman went to get a haircut one day in 1980 where he met Mitzi, his hairstylist. She was a Jewish woman who attended an Assemblies of God church.

“She saw an emptiness in me, and understood that,” Friedman recalled. “I didn’t understand it, so I tried to fill up the empty places with everything that the world had; all that did was leave me more hungry.”

Mitzi was able to tap into that, he explained to The Christian Post. She challenged me to read from the Scriptures – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Psalms – and she showed me the Messiah. For the first time in my life, I was challenged with this question, ‘Who is this Messiah?’”

A week later, Friedman came to faith in Yeshua after accepting an invitation to a Christmas party at the church.

“When I started to read the prophecies of God, it was inescapable. I discovered in the older covenant scriptures that this man that the gentiles call Jesus must be the Messiah,” Friedman said.

Now a founder of Jacob’s Hope, an outreach ministry for the Assemblies of God, and a licensed AG minister and Messianic rabbi, Friedman aims to bring this same hope to Jewish people around the world by providing humanitarian and medical aid, and sharing the Good News of the Messiah.

Friedman noted that although many people are supporting Jewish ministries that provide humanitarian aid – the Gospel is not shared, so people aren’t being evangelized. Jacob’s Hope is working to change this.

Jacob’s Hope currently serves in Belarus, Germany, Ukraine, Ethiopia, and Israel, providing humanitarian aid, food, and medical care; training and equipping local pastors and Messianic rabbis to minister more effectively to their communities; distributing Bibles, books, and equipment; building worship and job training centers; and lastly sharing the Gospel of the Jewish Messiah Yeshua to the Jewish people.

“Gentile Christians live in poverty all over the world, but at least they have faith – something to cling on to. But most Jewish people scattered all over the world have nothing and no one. They are spiritually and physically in poverty,” Friedman said.

Hundreds of Jews enter the centers of Jacob’s Hope every month, and a percentage of those people ask questions about why the missionaries are here and why they’re doing what they’re doing. The volunteers and workers have a simple response.

Friedman also explained, “We tell them and have a sign that says that all the material they receive comes from Christians from America who love the people of Israel, the Jewish people.”

Over ninety percent of Jews have not heard a culturally relevant presentation of the Gospel. The hopeful Friedman, joining a growing number of modern Messianic Jews today, is seeking to help the Jewish people understand that the terrible things done to them “in the name of Jesus” were not done by true believers and the Messiah who loved them.

“It’s important that we put the Gospel back into its original Jewish context. This Jewish man Jesus, the greatest Jew who ever lived, who kept the law of Moses perfectly, who said 'I come to seek and save the lost sheep of Israel;' he loved the Jewish people.”

He shared his personal convictions from Romans 10 – “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.”

Friedman works alongside his wife, Vixie, as well as three other AG missionary couples including Chris and Shawna, Jeff and Tammy, and Michael and Judith.

The enthusiastic rabbi soon plans to take 20 health care professionals with him into Ethiopia for eight days in order to minister to thousands of lost Jews with hope for salvation.

You wrote:

“Oh, please. Are you seriously going to compare a couple of centuries of Jews persecuting other Jews through mostly legal and social sanctions with two millennia of Christians repeatedly robbing, torturing, and murdering Jews?”

Yes, because the latter really didn’t happen. The idea that Jews were repeatedly robbed, tortured and murdered for two millenia is an assertion without any proof. Was there oppression of Jews? Yes. Was it constant? No. If it happened as you say it, then there would be no Jews in any Christian country today.

“Besides, the persecution of Jews against “Christians” (and I put that in quotes because they mostly ignored the Gentile portion of the Ekklesia) was dwarfed by the Gentile-dominated official Church’s persecution of its own Jewish members.”

What? Jewish members? Okay, I’ll bite: Where did the Church have Jewish members in say the 10th century?

“For between sixteen and eighteen centuries, Christianity made it impossible for a Jew to come to faith in a Jewish Messiah without giving up being Jewish.”

When Jewishness is automatically associated with the denial of Christianity you can see why that would be a problem. Even today Jewish converts to orthodox Christianity routinely - and oif their own accord - give up most Jewish practices for they see them as largely a foreshadowing of Christian ones. Besides, most Jews today barely practice Judaism. Many are really agnostic Jews who only discover faith in God through Christianity.

“Whole inquisitions (including one rather famous one in Spain) were targeted specifically at Jewish believers in Yeshua to make them stop being Jewish.”

False. The Spanish Inquisition was actually formed - if you actually read the primary documents (which I bet you never have) - for the prortection of New Christians (those of Jewish ancestory) from attacks by Old Christians and to protect the Old Christians from deceptions practiced by New Christians (e.g. such as a priest of New Christian extraction never giving absolution to penitents and rebellions by New Christians as well).

“Perhaps you should stop nursing a grudge over the relatively mild and short persecution of Jews against Christians and focus your wrath on the horrible and extended persecution of Christians against Christians—specifically, against what we today would call Messianic Jews.”

1) Murder of believers in Christ can never be called mild except by someone who is an apologist for Satan.

2) No Christians today are persecuting “Messianic Christians” - but Jews in Israel are persecuting both “Messianic Christians” and those who come from centuries old Christian families. And it is getting worse.

Was there oppression of Jews? Yes. Was it constant? No.

That would be why I said "repeatedly," not "constantly." Jews might be allowed in to live in a country for a time, but always, after a couple of centuries (and usually coinciding with not wanting to pay them back the money owed to them) the Christian king would kick the Jews out and they would have to resettle elsewhere, their property having been seized. And of course, it wasn't this nice, neat, peaceful theft, but more often involved pogroms, murders, synagogue burnings, false charges, etc.

Where did the Church have Jewish members in say the 10th century?

Shlomo Pines has found documents indicating that Messianic Jews had their own communities as late as the 11th century (see The Jewish Christians of the Early Centuries of Christianity According to a New Source, if you can find a copy). You can also see the various bulls and confessions designed to stop Jewish believers from continuing to live as Jews in an article here.

Obviously, such confessions and bulls would not be necessary if there weren't Jews who were trying to follow Yeshua but who were trying to continue in Jewish practices. While I don't have one specifically from the 11th Century, given the well-established precedents of the Church in the previous centuries, I don't think it too much to speculate that they were a) hiding in Muslim countries, as Pines has discovered; b) keeping their heads down in Europe; c) staying quietly in the synagogues, as many Jewish believers in Yeshua do today; or D) living among the Coptic Christians, who were far less antagonistic to them.

But let us suppose, ignoring the evidence, that we had absolutely no evidence of such Jewish believers. That would simply prove the efficiency of the genocide. Think about it: We have Latin Christians, Greek Christians, Germans, Irish, Egyptian, Arab, Assyrian, Persian, etc. all within the Church, all with their own cultural distinctives, even some that are acknowledged holdovers from paganism (e.g., Halloween). Why don't we see Jewish Christians with distinctly Jewish cultural distinctives as a notable body during the Middle Ages?

Answer: Because they were forced to adopt the Gentile Christian culture under penalty of law. European Christianity basically declared that one could be a Christian from any culture at all--as long as it wasn't Jewish.

When Jewishness is automatically associated with the denial of Christianity you can see why that would be a problem.

Telling Jews that they had to become as Gentiles in order to be saved--and I've provided the documentation that this is exactly what happened--is every bit as much of a false "gospel" as telling Gentiles that they must Judaize, and as such is deserving of the exact same penalty.

Let's turn this around for a moment. Would a Jewish believer in the 1st Century saying, "When Gentileness is automatically associated with idolatry, you can see the problem" somehow annul the Acts 15 council or the book of Galatians and make it right to force Gentile converts to become fully Jewish in order to "prove" their faith? No. As a matter of fact, that's the very argument that Paul shredded in Galatians and Ephesians.

Moreover, the Apostles themselves expected that Jewish Nazarenes would continue to keep Jewish practices--in fact, to become more zealous for the Torah, not less, as I document in this article. As a matter of fact, they were still offering sacrifices thirty years after the Cross.

Even today Jewish converts to orthodox Christianity routinely - and oif their own accord - give up most Jewish practices for they see them as largely a foreshadowing of Christian ones.

Others refuse to be associated with Christianity and practice their faith in the traditional synagogues. More still are finding their way into Messianic synagogues and are discovering the joy of a Yeshua-centered Judaism, like my in-laws. The fact is that this is the first time in nearly two millennia that this was even an option.

And here's the surprising thing: There are so many Gentile Christians who wish to immerse themselves in the Jewish roots of their faith and to understand exactly what it means that the Messiah was prefigured by the whole of Torah that in most Messianic congregations they completely outnumber the born Jews. How to handle that without sacrificing the necessary Jewishness of a Messianic synagogue is actually the biggest question that the movement as a whole is wrestling with right now.

Besides, most Jews today barely practice Judaism. Many are really agnostic Jews who only discover faith in God through Christianity.

That's true. But it also serves to bolster the anti-missionary argument that Christianty only preys on the spiritually weak and ignorant and has nothing to offer the spiritually mature and culturally educated Jew. Moreover, when you assimilate a spiritually weak Jew into Christianity and remove him from the Jewish world, you effectively take a lamp and hide it under a basket. You remove a potential witness. And you harden the rest of the community against the true Gospel by offering it the false dichotomy of choosing between being a Christian or being a Jew.

The Spanish Inquisition was actually formed . . .

The rest of your paragraph made zero sense. The Inquisition was formed to root out of Spain any remaining influence or agents of the departed Muslims. Since the Jews of Andalusia had actually done pretty well under Islam (though there were sporatic persecutions there too), the Jews who refused to convert to Christianity were forced to leave. Those who did were under constant suspicion, and the Inquisition made it its job to root out those who continued to keep Jewish practices in secret.

My rabbi's surname is Moreno-Bryars. "Moreno" was a term that meant, basically, "pig" and which was applied to the Jewish conversos by the Spanish. He has ancestors that fled to the New World to escape the persecutions. We have other members of our synagogue with similar family backgrounds. They mostly kept Catholic practices, but for centuries passed down Jewish traditions as well, such as lighting Sabbath candles on Friday night in secret in the basement to escape the attention of the men with the not-so-comfy chairs.

1) Murder of believers in Christ can never be called mild except by someone who is an apologist for Satan.

Nor can murder of Messiah's people, which you have done, both those who believed in Yeshua and were persecuted by official Christendom, and those who did not. In fact, you have today demonstrated the truth of Jeremiah 50:7: "All that found them have devoured them: and their adversaries said, We offend not, because they have sinned against the LORD, the habitation of justice, even the LORD, the hope of their fathers."

In any case, I referred to it as "mild" only in comparison, as you know. Which it was, as you know though won't admit.

2) No Christians today are persecuting “Messianic Christians”

I didn't say they were. I was pointing out the truth of the historical treatment of what we would today term Messianic Jews. ("Messianic Christians" is a repetative, nonsense term.)

but Jews in Israel are persecuting both “Messianic Christians” and those who come from centuries old Christian families. And it is getting worse.

Worse in some quarters, better in others. There are rabbis on the Sanhedrin who are favorable towards accepting Messianic Jews who live as Jews as being within the bounds of traditional Judaism. They're holding off on that decision until we get our act together enough to give them a unified body to talk to. One poll I saw indicates that 70% of Israelis consider Messianic Jews (again, those living as Jews) to be Jews first rather than Christians. The courts have ruled that Messianic Jews cannot be discriminated against when it comes to declaring their stores kosher or not. There have been quite a few sympathetic news stories regarding Messianics in the Israeli press.

Is it all a rosy picture? Of course not. I'd be worried if it were, since that would indicate that the Adversary didn't see us as a threat. And it will get worse before it gets better. There have been shunnings, synagogue trashings, protests, assaults, and one nutcase with a bomb. But unlike in most places where we see persecution against Christians, there have not been mass murders, no mass arrests by the state, no burnings of houses of worship, or the like. Nor have the country's Gentile Christians been under assault.

Quite simply, the situation on the ground does not justify your attempt at moral equivalence, nor do the annals of history.

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