Is Jews for Jesus evil

I suppose nobody likes to feel "targeted". There is something sinister about that, particularly if you are part of a group for whom targeting has usually meant persecution and death. But, in my limited experience, Jews are overly-sensitive to efforts at evangelism; I once heard a rabbi insist that the students in his campus ministry were "traumatized" by the Gideons offering New Testaments to passersby!

Yes, the world is full of lapsed everythings. But it is also full of all sorts of people who do not know Christ. The writer is focusing more on "religion" than on the real aim of evangelism, which is helping people to know Him. We are not saved by being a member of some religion, but by knowing and acknowledging Christ as Lord.

 

Typical Jew.
I'll bet if all the fallen world turns anti-Semite he'll turn to Christians for support.

 

apologies, Joseph Smith. I wanted to quote the article, not your reply.
No offense intended.

 

The Jews probably are a little oversensitive

however some Jews for Jesus groups use what I would call "deceptive advertising"

Im not a Jew - but claiming to be one to reach fringe Jews is a little low - even for me - and my standards are pretty low in some cases

 

Has everybody forgotten that Jesus was a Jew?

Jews for Jesus is a group of Jews who have come to believe that Jesus IS the Messiah. Do not we Gentiles believe in the same Jesus? After all, the word "Christ" is the anglicized version of the Greek word which means the same as the Hebrew word "Messiah".

A Jew who believes that Jesus is Messiah IS NOT being deceptive; rather, he is being completed. Just like all of us Gentiles who have believed.
A Jew is a Jew because of genetic background, not because of religious belief.

Bill

 

I agree with billreber. And it seems the basic thrust of the writer's argument is they are evil because they are Christians.

Are they the same thing as Messianic Jews?
I've always wanted to go to a service because I've had friends that have gone and they said you learn a lot about Jewish customs, and what not. And also that it helps bring a deeper understanding of Scripture to those of us not from a Jewish background.

I believe one of our mission churches is Messianic.

I don't think it is deceptive at all, it is being honest Any "regular" Jew shouldn't be deceived anyway, because of "for Jesus" attached to the name. How hard is it to figure out?

In the Bible don't we see a differene between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers?
(I guess eventually they were all called the same Christians though)

The person who wrote the article just sounds like they have a vendetta against Christianity period. It reminds me of the negative reviews I read for "End of the Spear" that were critical because they saw it as the "white man" taking/forcing "religion" to the Wadoni. And they viewed this as destroying/disrupting the Wadoni culture.

I doubt the Wadoni believers see it that way, nor do I beleive that the Jewish believers see it that way either.

 

Jews for Jesus has been around for a very long time. They consider themselves to be completed Jews and their heart is for their Jewish people to also know Christ Jesus, and that He is and was the Messiah they have been waiting for. They use a variety of methods and for years we took their monthly newsletter.

I am sure the writer of the article in the opening post would have also considered Paul and Peter and the other Apostles evil, and for the same reason...

 

The last line of the OP states much truth--

We don't need them.

Jesus don't need them.

They like all other ethnic groups need Jesus! Thats the point that is missed. Every person everywhere needs Jesus whether Jew or Gentile.

Bro Tony

 

Target Jews with the Bible. Use the Old Testament for your source. Enlighten them with the New Testament showing where O.T. prophecies are fulfilled. Key is specifically the root meanings of Yom Kippur and The Day of Atonement, always pointing them to Jesus. Ask them why they have no high priest daily offering up sacrifices to God? They will reply, "The Temple is torn down" Reply with, "The high priset didn't need the Temple to do the daily ministering, all he needed was the Tabernacle and a sacrifice of a willing people."

 

I am a born again, blood washed Jewish believer in the Lord Jesus Christ--32 years old in the Lord. I came to the Lord in a Presbyterian church in 1974. I am familiar with Jews for Jesus--I know the man who started it Moishe Rosen. Jews for Jesus is a parachurch ministry--they witness mainly to Jews, but also to Gentiles.

Bro Tony, I thank God for ministries such as Jews for Jesus--God does use them--He uses everyone who is obedient to the Great Commission--the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, to everyone who believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. (Rom. 1:16) I know many who have been led to the Lord through the ministry of Jews for Jesus.

 

The rest of the article:

It's a safe bet that the Jews for Jesus who may be reading this are rolling their eyes by now, classifying me as Unbeliever Type G-639-L and writing me off.

But bear with me for one brief moment, if only to read the next sentence, which has specifically to do with you, as well as with your Jewish prey, thousands of years of Jewish history, and evil:

Proselytizing is persecution.

Granted, it's not the same as burning us at the stake for Christ's sake, firebombing our homes for Christ's sake, staging apres-church pogroms for Christ's sake, ostracizing and terrorizing and beating our children for having killed Christ, lynching Jewish adults for church-distributed blood libels, torturing Jews to force them to convert, converting entire Jewish communities on point of death, deporting entire Jewish communities on point of death for having resisted conversion, or, after eliminating the conversion option, annihilating entire Jewish communities with the complicitous blind eye of the Holy See.

But there's more than one way to wipe out a people, and poison, like gas, comes in many forms. Sometimes it looks like a leaflet. Sometimes it looks like the Internet. Sometimes it looks like a smile.

It should have occurred to you by now that Jews in the post-Holocaust era have a mission, no less than you. We have some saving to do of our own. In ways which are as individual as each Jew in the world, it has been left to us to save Jewry itself - its faith, its culture, its values, its memory, its history - from extinction.

Look around. There aren't that many of us left. There are 2 billion Christians in the world, and nearly a billion and a quarter Muslims.

There are barely 14 million Jews left alive on this planet. In 1933, that number was 15.3 million. Leave us alone.

The true evil of Jews for Jesus, is the movement's readiness to take advantages of the weaknesses of Judaism in our day, in order to further weaken it. Judaism's agonizing inability to reach its estranged youth is the stuff of Jew for Jesus dreams, the fantasy that, in the end, they will succeed in converting us.

Sorry, I'm not supposed to use that word. Under the Jews for Jesus creed - which appears aimed at confusing its own adherents at least as much as it seeks to "turn" us non-believers - Jews for Jesus members do not convert you, they just get you to believe that Jesus Christ is the lord, and that only through Jesus can one be saved.

The faithful may well be much too busy with salvation to concern themselves with extinction. There's clearly plenty for them to do, judging by some of their Websites, where I happened upon this useful piece of instruction from the founder of Jews for Jesus, Martin (Moishe) Rosen:

"Hey, if you don't know any Jewish people, you can look in the phone book for surnames that are always Jewish: Cohen, Katz, Levy, Rosen (and anything that begins with Rosen, like Rosenberg, Rosenbloom or Rosenfeld)."

And now, here in Israel, in a venture as predictable as it is indecent, they've set themselves a new target, Russian Jewish immigrants, descendants of the Jews Hitler didn't get the chance to kill.

May they fail.

There are those who will say, and I applaud them, that we should engage and embrace members of Jews for Jesus, showing openness to them rather than the cold shoulder that drives them further away. I applaud those who say this and act accordingly, but I don't have it in me.

It really comes down to this: It's hard enough to be Jewish as it is. It's tough to be Jewish if you're secular, and it's no less difficult if you're religious. It's tough to be Jewish in the Diaspora if you live among non-Jews. It's tough to live there if you live among lots of Jews. And it's tough as nails to be Jewish in Israel, atheist, knitted kippa, Haredi, or fusion JUBU.

If you're a Jew for Jesus and you're still reading this, you may well be thinking: This guy sounds riled. He needs a friend in Jesus.

You're thinking wrong. This guy needs you to keep your salvation to yourself.

Believe whatever you want. Practice whatever you preach.

Just stay the hell away from us.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/717574.html

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This is awful!! This was probably written by an anti-missionary or someone from Jews for Judaism. Just another method which the devil uses to keep lost souls from going to heaven. The ground is level at the foot of the cross.

 

Linda,

As you addressed me, I hope you understood my post, but I fear you didn't. I was using the anti-Jews for Jesus man's word to show that he had missed the point for why these people are sharing Jesus to the Jewish people. And that is because they understand that all people need Jesus. His statement of you dont need us and Jesus don't need us is true---they all, we all, need Jesus. Do you understand what I am saying?

Bro Tony

 

At first, it did look like you were agreeing with the article--then after looking closer, I see what you meant--sorry for the misunderstanding.

In any event, that entire article is simply aweful and I pity anybody who has that type of attitude. I praise God that the lady who led me to the Lord 32 years ago, didn't have that kind of attitude.

 

The writer's catalog of ways in history that "Christians" have persecuted Jews is legitimate. It makes Jewishness a very hard nut to crack.

A number of good books have been written to help Christians understand Jews, and I will confess that I knew almost nothing until I was scheduled to explain "the Christian Right" to a Jewish audience at a local synagogue back in the Reagan years, and was forced to take a crash course in Jewish-Christian relations in order to get ready.

Gaining understanding of this deep and complex topic can help us avoid giving unnecessary offense

 

No problem with the misunderstanding as I re-read it, I see where I could have written it better. I too think the article and the attitude toward the Jews for Jesus is awful.

One of my closest pastor friends is a missionary with the Christian Jew Foundation, and we support the work of sharing the Gospel with the Jewish people with part of our mission money. He says---"if a person really wants to prove they are anti-semite and hate the Jewish people then just believe the lie that the Jews don't need Jesus and don't share the Gospel with them".

Bro Tony

 

Thanx, Bill & Linda, for thoughtful responses. Articles such as the one in the OP often resemble "let's you and him fight" in these forums. I would love to sit down with the author of that piece in Israel, at a location of his choosing, just to watch him as I listen , should he agree. I suspect it would be a long day, but at the end of it I would be a better person, even more committed to spiritually sharing the Good News.

 

The guy is also having to write a regular article titled "A Special Place in Hell." I imagine he comes short on ideas of who to condemn to hell this week.

Most Jews do not have a very good understanding of what Christianity is all about. Orthodox Jews are more or less told that if you see a Christian coming down the street, cross and walk on the other side.

You can see this in his writing...

... he equates the Catholic church with all of Christianity. It's all a lump sum. Never forgetting the Pope's blind eye toward the holocaust.

Jews are a hard people to reach. I think his line of thinking is prevalent. They work hard to remain that "peculiar people".

 

I think it is fine as long as they are above a certain age. Can't remember if it is 13, 16, or 18. They just don't want you evangelizing their children.

It is generally not a wise idea to walk into an orthodox section and pass out tracts though.