Immanuel.at Forum for Discussion Discourse 102: Evangelization tourism to Israel.

(We prayed and blessed the people / Report from Mea Shearim – Israel, on "Trumpet of Salvation", Matthias 00, 2010-08-20)

It was all quite wonderful to begin with. We had time for ourselves, the whole group got out of the bus in Mea Shearim and we went for a walk around this Orthodox quarter of Jerusalem. After a short time a car stopped by us, and the driver beckoned me over. He asked me the meaning of the words written on our T-shirts. It was a text from the Book of Ruth (1,16), "Your people shall be my people, and your God my God". As it was written in Hebrew, I replied that he must be able to read it himself. He agreed in a friendly way, but said he just wanted to know whether I knew what it meant. I assured him that I was aware of what was written there, and that I loved Israel, God’s chosen people, with all my heart. I explained to him what we understand by this verse. He was very pleased, said goodbye to us in a very friendly way and drove on.

Then we went on for a good hour through the quarter and just looked around, prayed and blessed the people we came across. We hardly spoke to anybody. When our free time was coming to an end, we gradually set off on the way back. In a side street a young Orthodox Jew spoke to us ‒ his unfriendly manner and gestures made it plain to us how very much he wanted us to leave that place. We wanted to get back to the bus. After we had taken a couple of turnings, more and more young religious Jews suddenly started coming up to us and demanded emphatically that we should disappear. The crowd we were faced with grew rapidly. We went on ‒ still without speaking to them ‒ in the direction of the agreed meeting point.

The crowd was completely stirred up, and became more and more aggressive. As well as yelling at us, they now started throwing things. First a glass of water hit my back, then an egg flew past me and hit one of the brethren walking in front of me on the back of the head. The attack had begun. Now somebody hit me with a stick on the legs and the hips from behind, and soon after that what seemed to be a pretty big stone hit me from behind on the head. Finally somebody, again coming from behind, tore my T-shirt. After that we crossed the road at a big crossing, and then finally two soldiers turned up and escorted us safely to the bus.

In my inner being I was, astonishingly, quite peaceful and composed. The peace of God really rested within me. I had always had a very great love for these people, and in our prayer group for Israel we pray every week for them and for the whole of Israel. But now this love suddenly seemed to leave me and to be replaced by something new. In place of this former love, God gave me a new and still more intense love. In the bus I could only weep about these aggressive and fanatical religious believers. Once they clamored for the life of Jesus, their Messiah, and now they wanted to give me and all of us a good thrashing. At this moment the wonderful words of Jesus, when he hung on the cross, came to my mind: "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing". (…)

(https://www.trumpetofsalvation.org/fileadmin/testimonies/de_In_Mea_Shearim_Matthias.pdf)

These young people "hardly spoke to anybody", "just looked around, prayed and blessed the people we came across". And then they were suddenly encircled by a crowd of religious Jews who abused them and threw things at them. If they had just taken the trouble to glance at Wikipedia and look up "Mea Shearim", they would have been forewarned that their visit was likely to be disastrous:

Me’a She’arim is situated today in the western part of Jerusalem. Its inhabitants are interested in the most literal interpretation possible of the Torah and the Talmud, and are divided into a number of different faith communities. They are to a large extent united in the strict observance of the rule of no work on the Sabbath, in keeping the rites of the Jewish festivals and rejecting the secular state of Israel.

On the access roads leading to the quarter there are signs in several languages warning tourists of the mandatory requirements for dress and behavior. Women, for example, must not enter the quarter in pants. And tourist groups are regarded as undesirable. Individual visitors are tolerated, if they pass through the quarter with an appropriately respectful attitude. On the Sabbath all electrical appliances are switched off that a person might need to use at this time, even the cash dispensers. You mustn’t use a camera or a mobile phone either. Ultra-Orthodox Jews in districts like Me’a She’arim speak Yiddish as their language of everyday discourse.

So what on earth were the people responsible for organizing this "evangelization tourism" thinking of? To enter a district of Jerusalem that is almost exclusively inhabited and run by Orthodox Jews, where tourist groups are not wanted and Christian evangelization is forbidden altogether, with a group of 50 Christians all wearing orange T-shirts with the wheedling Hebrew text, "Your people shall be my people" – ?!

Let us just imagine Muslims in German cities doing the same thing. 50 Turkish Muslims, let us say, not speaking a word of German but with German transparencies bearing the text "Your country shall be my country", just stroll through Munich or Cologne and pray to Allah for the people they come across and bless them in the name of Islam. That presents a rather different kind of picture, doesn’t it. People might even be inclined to see it as being a dangerous threat.

And here we are faced with the fundamental question why this group should have to travel to Israel at all in order to convert non-believers to Christianity. In German-speaking countries we have nearly four million Muslims in need of being evangelized. Do they see this as being too inferior? In this case they probably wouldn’t be at risk of physical assault either ‒ or if they were, the German police would be there in a minute to assist them.

What in the world motivated these people ‒ who do not even speak Hebrew ‒ to attempt evangelization in Israel? As we know, the Jewish immigration authority (the Jewish Agency) exacts from anyone who wishes to immigrate to Israel a contractual commitment not to preach or undertake Christian evangelization there ‒ indeed, they must promise not even to speak of Jesus Christ. Tourists are not (as yet) subject to this requirement, as they are only in the country for a short time.

But now these Christians claim to love the Jews. Is this really the case? When it is a matter of loving their wives, do these men behave in such a way that they provoke them till their blood boils, so that they become aggressive and start throwing things? Is this love? Or is it rather misguided ambition and the satisfaction of false objectives?

Is it love ‒ and what is more, love of one’s enemy, as these people assert ‒ when a person, an Israeli, whom they have never seen before suddenly becomes, as a result of their provocation, their enemy, and not only reacts aggressively but actually boils with rage, so that a whole mob was practically on the point of killing these Christians? The Lord does say in Lk 6,27 "But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you" ‒ but he does not say, "Provoke uninvolved parties and make enemies of them, so that you will then be able to ‘love’ them". This would be not love but hypocrisy.

By contrast with this, the author quoted above seems to have suffered no ill consequences subsequently, as he writes, "In my inner being I was, astonishingly, quite peaceful and composed. The peace of God really rested within me." Does this fellow really think that the peace of God can be with him, when just a moment before he has brought a whole mob to white heat and only just escaped from a bloody massacre?

Or does it not rather show that what we have here is not love of one’s enemy, but self-love, or egoism ‒ and the attraction of an interesting adventure which can be claimed to one’s credit on returning home? Even if we allow that the man is honest, surely it must have been clear to these people that their actions could also, or were likely to be seen in a different light, and so, in the very name of their professed Christian love, they should have avoided behaving in such a fashion!

What actually motivates these people to evangelize abroad? Are all members of their family already correctly believing Christians? Have they already converted all their neighbors to Christianity? Or do they find that this kind of evangelization work offers too little glory? Do they really love all their enemies at home, in their families, in the workplace, at the office, so that they are now compelled to go abroad and there, as a result of their behavior, make enemies of people who didn’t want anything at all to do with them ‒ so that they would then be in a position to "love" these enemies?

This cannot but remind us of the well known story of the fire department trainee who was peeved that there had never been a fire in his own district ‒ so he started a fire right next door, with the idea of being the first on the scene and becoming a celebrity. So he wasn’t concerned to save the houses of his district from fire, but was not above being a fire raiser himself ‒ with the difference, it must be said, that here our missionaries shouldn’t have had any shortage of unbelievers to approach among the 350 million inhabitants of Europe, so there was no reason for them to go evangelizing in the Near East.

Besides, the Jewish people may be stubborn, stiff-necked and unenlightened, but they are much too intelligent to be impressed by someone who goes peddling the Christian religion to them from door to door, rather than giving them watertight and convincing arguments. But since many Christian preachers offer their faith as the chance of guaranteed salvation on a plate, completely free of charge, Jews are going to see it as bull. With the Jews, if it doesn’t cost something, it must be worthless.

With religious Jews what is needed is plain speaking ‒ if possible in a one to one situation. They must be shown, without any mincing of words, that they do not have any temple or sacrificial altar in Jerusalem and therefore cannot make any sacrifice for the forgiveness of their sins in accordance with the Law of Moses. And because they also refuse to accept the vicarious sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross for their sins, they will die in their sins without forgiveness, and (also in accordance with the Mosaic faith) go to hell. So the Christian faith is the most precious thing that has ever been offered to human beings. The fact that it does not cost us anything is based on the fact that the horrific price required has already been paid by the Son of God on our behalf.

The argument frequently advanced by the Jews that their confession of faith "Shema Yisrael" in Deut 6,4 ("Hear, O Israel! The LORD (YHWH) is our God, the LORD is one!") only speaks of one God and does not say anything about a "Son", is purely and simply untrue. In this text the Hebrew word for God is "elohim", which is a plural noun ‒ similar to cherub/cherubim, seraf/serafim, tefil/tefilim, pur/purim, ulpan/ulpanim, sofer/sofrim, oleh/olim and so on and so forth. So the correct literal translation is "YHWH, our gods".

The following report from another member of the group, too, testifies to the hazardousness of their enterprise.

(Texts in a black frame are quotations from visitors to this site or from other authors.)

(The murderous hatred in a sea of faces / Report from Mea Shearim, Israel, on "Trumpet of Salvation", Greg 00, 2010-08-20)

(…) Our group of 50 people had divided up into smaller groups of two to six persons. We were spread out all round the quarter. The anti-missionaries ran after everyone wearing an orange T-shirt and started to attack us. They yelled at us in total rage that we should disappear from their locality. They pushed and hit us, they threw stones at men and women and struck both men and women with sticks which must certainly have been 2.5 centimeters thick. Three of our women were actually thrown down to the ground. Two women were struck with these 2.5 centimeter thick sticks, and another was hit in the back of the neck by a stone the size of a man’s fist. Marlies suffered a leg injury, but coped in splendid style. I can’t believe it, that they really hit the women. They wouldn’t touch a woman for fear of ritual impurity, but they don’t kind hitting them with a stick – ?!

A man who had been one of those in my small group was suddenly surrounded by 20 Haridim (ultra-Orthodox Jews / FH). They pressed him against a wall and swarmed around him like bees, as if they were going to sting him. They punched and hit him. They struck him with sticks on the back and on the legs. They almost tore his T-shirt right off. They really tried to kill him! One of them threw a stone that hit him on the head, right behind a synagogue. He had to stay in bed for three days as a result. When I think about it now, it is clear to me that somebody who throws a big stone at a person’s head sees him as an alien and wants to kill him. It is quite astonishing that Matthias, who was hit by the stone, says that he actually loves these ultra-Orthodox Jews even more than he did before the attack.

I was pushed, and once a man hit me with full force in the back with a stick. A second later I noticed that my back was feeling better. It was like a free massage. Before the blow my back had been causing real problems, but right after he had hit me, it felt really good again.

My abiding recollection of this incident will probably be the murderous hatred that confronted us from a sea of faces. They kept on following us, pushed us and yelled at us.

(https://www.trumpetofsalvation.org/fileadmin/testimonies/de_In_Mea_Shearim_Greg.pdf)

Probably the Jews in Mea Shearim will not be in a hurry to forget the provocation of these tourists either. With a tour group of 50 persons, they invaded what is probably the most strictly religious Orthodox Jewish part of Jerusalem, even though tourist groups are the last thing wanted there. They thronged the main street, already rather narrow, wearing their anything but restrained orange T-shirts emblazoned with pseudo-Christian advertising slogans ‒ and that amid a population where for religious reasons dark clothing is generally worn, and where women wearing pants constitute a serious breach of religious requirements.

These circumstances suffice to indicate to what extent these Christians "love" the Jews there. If they had not previously informed themselves of the manners and customs of their host country, neither did they make any kind of attempt, having arrived there, to adapt to the inhabitants’ sense of dignity and decency. In fact they behaved like the proverbial bull in a china shop. And that applies now not just in relation to the special Mosaic regulations, but to perfectly normal consideration, on the part of a halfways educated Central European, towards the culture and religion of his host country!

So it is definitely not love of the Jews which brought these people to Israel. It is rather the need to put on a production, and to be provocative. Christian love shows itself in advance, in my taking thought about people, so as to avoid giving offence myself in worldly things. And not after the event, when I have made enemies of them, so that I can profess "love" to them because they have abused me, spat at me and thrown things at me.

But then people argue that of course we have been given the task by our Lord of preaching the gospel to the whole world.

Mk 16,15 And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16,16 "He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned. Mk 16,15-16;

This is completely correct, but we can’t help wondering what kind of idea of our Lord these Christians have. If this commandment were to be sending us to certain death ‒ as might be the case in Islamic countries ‒ we soon wouldn’t have any preachers of the gospel left. Our Lord cannot want that, nor is it what he meant.

Even the dust of your city which clings to our feet we wipe off in protest against you

Lk 10,10 "But whatever city you enter and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, 10,11 ‘Even the dust of your city which clings to our feet we wipe off in protest against you; yet be sure of this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ 10,12 "I say to you, it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. Lk 10,10-12;

So if we come to a city where we are not welcome, we shouldn’t go on bothering the inhabitants ‒ we should just turn around and leave the city, and even wipe the dust of its streets from our feet. But many Catholic foreign missionaries, and some Christian ones as well, turn a blind eye to this commandment of the Lord’s because they imagine that they are able to purchase the kingdom of heaven by their own performance or sufferings or even by a "martyr’s death".

So for example the two German Evangelical female Bible students who were murdered in June of this year (2010) in the Yemen are regarded as showcase martyrs, of whom their friends write that they "envy the dead, because they worked for the Kingdom of God, fell honorably and are now privileged to live with Jesus."

And among Catholics, too, we have heard repeated reports recently of missionaries working abroad being abducted and killed. Monsignore Leo Maasburg ‒ the head of Missio, the Pope’s missionary organization in Austria ‒ then confirms our impression: "Some sisters pray for the death of a martyr. This is the supreme witness for them." And in his opinion, the martyr’s death is "the giving of one’s own life for humanity. In a non-violent way, without blowing oneself or anyone else up." Admittedly he then emphasizes, "I mustn’t make anybody feel they have an obligation to be heroic or to be a martyr," differentiating himself here, finally, from the Islamist teachers of the Koran who send out their students all over the world as suicide terrorists.

This idea of "salvation through suffering", however, is a fatal (and Catholic) error. This attitude of mind will result in their being unmasked at the Last Judgment, after the Resurrection ‒ being shown to be not martyrs but suicides, who courted suffering and even death for the sake of their personal glory in the eyes of the world (not in God’s eyes). This means they have robbed God of their lives ‒ in the course of which they might have been able to convert lots of people in their homeland without any risk of a violent death.

And then "Christians" like this also always quote the saying of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross ‒ "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing" (Lk 23,34) ‒ as the wife of the missionary Tillmann Geske, murdered in Turkey, actually did on Turkish television. Here we can again see that many Christians have little knowledge of the Bible. Perhaps they have just breezed through it once, and noted a few of the more impressive verses. There are very few who have really thought about and understood it.

This saying of the Lord’s in Lk 23,34 is addressed to the Romans who crucified him. For as every Christian familiar with the Bible is aware, the Romans certainly were in no way to blame. They did not know that Jesus was the Son of God. They only brought about what the Jewish Sanhedrin and its high priest Caiaphas had resolved ‒ the death of the Son of God, their Messiah. If they had acknowledged him, of course, it would have meant the end of their power. They would have had to subordinate themselves to the Messiah, and would have lost all their influence and their reputation in Israel. That is also why the Lord said to them that they were the sons of the devil.

You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.

Jn 8,44 "You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Jn 8,44;

Mt 23,32 "Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. 23,33 "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? Mt 23,32-33;

And here we now come to that event which our missionaries to Israel are seemingly unaware of: Israel does not need any Christian missionary activity, in view of the fact that it has already been missionized by the best missionary of all time ‒ our Lord Jesus Christ! But Israel at that juncture not only rejected the mission, it did not hesitate to have the missionary murdered on the spot.

And because they abused his Son as a blasphemer and fraud and killed him on that account, God as a result rejected the Jews. This was spelt out for them by our Lord in quite clear and unmistakable terms:

Jn 8,22 So the Jews were saying, "Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?" 8,23 And He was saying to them, "You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. 8,24 "Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins." Jn 8,22-24;

Jn 5,22 "For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son,
5,23 so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. Jn 5,22-23;

Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also.

1Jn 2,22 Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.
2,23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also. 1Jn 2,22-23;

He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

1Jn 5,10 The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son. 5,11 And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 5,12 He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. 1Jn 5,10-12;

Along with many other scriptural indications, these prophecies ‒ especially the statement by the Son of God that "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father" ‒ are sufficient proof that today’s Israel, which right up to the present day refuses to believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and their Messiah, has no connection with its God and so is God-less in a double sense of the word. Unless they have converted to Jesus Christ (which then makes them Christians), they have all been dying for almost two thousand years in their sins and without forgiveness, and so without being saved. And the "battle cry" of the Israelites against the Christians ‒ "Hear, O Israel: the Eternal has no Son!" ‒ must in all consistency be countered by us, as rightly believing Christians, with the assertion, "Wake up, Israel! Your God has abandoned you!"

All Israel is spiritually desolate and left without God, until they say to the Son of God on his Second Coming, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!"

Behold, your house is being left to you desolate until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’

Mt 23,32 "Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. 23,33 "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? 23,34 "Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, 23,35 so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

23,36 "Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. 23,37 "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. 23,38 "Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! 23,39 "For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’" Mt 23,32-39;

Here above, in Mt 23,38, the Lord says to the Israelites: "Behold, your house is being left to you desolate". This is originally a saying of David (Psalm 69,25: «May their camp be desolate; May none dwell in their tents.»), which Peter also quotes in Acts 1,20, in his address on the election of a new twelfth apostle instead of the traitor Judas Iscariot, together with another saying of David, from Ps 109,8: «… Let another take his office.»

It is significant that these two sayings of Daniel apply not only to the traitor Judas Iscariot, but also to the betrayal of the people of Israel against their Messiah. Their house will be left desolate – God has dissolved the covenant with Israel – and their office – the government in the Kingdom of God on earth, the Millennium – will be given to to a people, producing the fruit of it (Mt 21,43).

Only when the Lord comes to initiate his rule in the Millennial Kingdom of Peace, when he will gather the remnants of Israel from all parts of the world (Jer 31:6-8; Mic 2:12-13; Zeph 3:19-20; Isa 11:11-13) and when they look on him and weep bitterly over him whom they have pierced on the cross, will Israel again be reconciled with its God and, under its resurrected King David (Isa 30:8-9; Eze 34:23; Hos 3:4-5), become the "chief of the nations" (Jer 31:7; 2Sam 22:44; Ps 18:44), that is to say a global power on earth.

So in view of the fact that Israel, based on the testimony of the Bible, has been a godless people for the past two thousand years, anyone in Israel today who wears a T-shirt with the inscription "Your God shall be my God" is just advertising their own godlessness And those who invite these people to do such a thing are leading them into apostasy from the Christian faith.

(Texts in a black frame are quotations from visitors to this site or from other authors.)

(The gospel to the Jews / Trumpet of Salvation, Jacob Damkani 00, 2010-08-20)

For many years the church interpreted the gospel of Christ in a completely Christian way, thinking the revelation of God only began with Yeshua’s (Jesus'); coming. The Old Testament was not important to them, and they paid no heed to God’s plan, which stated that Jesus was to be born in Bethlehem and crucified on the Feast of the Passover. Because people simply omitted these important truths, the gospel came to seem increasingly alien to the people to whom Jesus actually came.

Now it is our task to proclaim the pure gospel of the New Testament and to understand that Jesus is a Jew, that He came first of all to the people of Israel, that the gospel applies first of all to the Jews and that all His disciples were Jews. We must see that His mission was a continuation of the mission of the prophets and His life was the fulfillment of all God’s promises to Israel. The covenant that God concluded with Israel through Jesus had been foretold many years before his coming.

Jacob Damkani / Trumpet of Salvation

https://www.trumpetofsalvation.org/

We can agree with the above statements from the website of Jacob Damkani, the leader of the "Trumpet of Salvation" Israel movement, without any reserve ‒ but for just one word, or indeed, just one single letter! In the second paragraph he writes "(...) that the gospel applies first of all to the Jews" ‒ but any correctly believing Christian who is familiar with the Bible knows that this is wrong. The word should be "applied", in the past tense.

Jesus Christ, in his lifetime, actually came first of all to the Jews and wanted to give them the "good news". But the Jews not only rejected his mission, they even condemned him to death as a fraud and blasphemer, and had him crucified by the Romans. And because the Jews rejected the Son of God, who came in the name of his Father, God as a result rejected the Jews. The destruction of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem in the year 70 are an eloquent testimony to this (Mt 24:1-2).

But when, in the not too distant future, another comes in his own name, with all power and signs and false wonders (2Thess 2:7-12), they ‒ the Jews, that is, and sad to say, many Christians as well ‒ will not reject him but receive him with enthusiastic celebration as the supposed Messiah who has at last come. ‒ What an irony on the part of history!
I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him.

Jn 5,39 "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; 40 and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. 41 "I do not receive glory from men; 42 but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves. 43 "I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him. Jn 5,39-43;

And this too was prophesied to the Jews by Moses, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, shortly before he died ‒ telling them that they would abandon their God in the Last Days and turn to evil and so provoke the Lord to anger:

Evil will befall you in the latter days, for you will do that which is evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger with the work of your hands.

Deut 31,28 "Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers, that I may speak these words in their hearing and call the heavens and the earth to witness against them.
31,29 "For I know that after my death you will act corruptly and turn from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days, for you will do that which is evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger with the work of your hands." Deut 31,28-29;

The judgment of God (Deut 31,19) on the nation of Israel was then written down by Moses in the "Song of Moses": "For they are a nation lacking in counsel, And there is no understanding in them. Would that they were wise, that they understood this, That they would discern their future!" (Deut 32,28-29).

But sad to say, they are not wise and so they do not discern their future either. For almost two thousand years the Jews have been a people without God. And as these prophecies state, in the coming Last Days they will worship the Antichrist as their "Messiah".

They sacrificed to demons who were not God, to gods whom they have not known, new gods who came lately, whom your fathers did not dread.

Deut 32,15 "But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked – You are grown fat, thick, and sleek – then he forsook God who made him, and scorned the Rock of his salvation. 32,16 "They made Him jealous with strange gods; With abominations they provoked Him to anger. 32,17 "They sacrificed to demons who were not God, To gods whom they have not known, New gods who came lately, Whom your fathers did not dread. 32,18 "You neglected the Rock who begot you, And forgot the God who gave you birth. 32,19 "The LORD saw this, and spurned them Because of the provocation of His sons and daughters. 32,20 "Then He said, ‘I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end shall be; For they are a perverse generation, sons in whom is no faithfulness. Deut 32,15-20;

Dan 11,36 "Then the king will do as he pleases, and he will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will speak monstrous things against the God of gods; and he will prosper until the indignation is finished, for that which is decreed will be done. 11,37 "He will show no regard for the gods of his fathers or for the desire of women, nor will he show regard for any other god; for he will magnify himself above them all. Dan 11,36-37;

And these circumstances, unfortunately, cannot be altered by the activities of a person like Jacob Damkani and his disciples. As our Lord prophesied, the conversion of the people of Israel will only occur on his Second Coming:

Only when our Lord comes and gathers together again the remnants of the Jews, who will then once more have been dispersed throughout the world (Jer 31:6-8; Mi 2:12-13; Zeph 3:19-20; Isa 11:11-13), and when they look upon him and weep bitterly over him whom they have pierced on the cross (Rev 1:7; Mt 24:30; Zech 12:10), will Israel again be reconciled with its God. Until that time, most Jews will continue to abuse Jesus Christ as a fraud, blasphemer and false Messiah and so God will continue to ignore them.

The only possibility of salvation for the Jews ‒ as for all other human beings ‒ is conversion to Jesus Christ and the acceptance of his vicarious sacrifice for their sins. This is an offer by God to all human beings, so meant for all Jews as well. But for this we don’t need any dramatic presentation on the streets of Jerusalem or any provocative display of unsuitable propaganda T-shirts. You won’t save a single Jew this way ‒ you will only bring the gospel into disrepute.

If the Holy Spirit has opened a person’s heart for God, then this person ‒ of his own accord and in all quietness ‒ will find the way to a correctly believing Christian who can then, in love and in truth, proclaim to him the Good News. It is these Jews who convert who are designated by Isaiah as the "remnant of Jacob".

Isa 10,21 A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. 10,22 For though your people, O Israel, may be like the sand of the sea, Only a remnant within them will return; A destruction is determined, overflowing with righteousness. Isa 10,21-22;

But this "remnant of Jacob" will not include all of the so-called "Messianic Jews" either. Messianic Jews claim the right to express themselves in their own way, the way that "includes the Jewish heritage and the original Jewish context of faith in Yeshua". They remain Jews, but they believe that Jesus was Israel’s Messiah ‒ while some of them¹⁾ reject several fundamental tenets of the Christian faith, like the Trinity for example. But as a result they deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, and degrade his sacrifice on the cross for the sins of the world to a miscarriage of justice. So in faith terms, they are not Christians but still Jews

And like the Jews, they are equally unable to have their sins forgiven in accordance with the Law of Moses on the basis of animal sacrifice (sin offering), because for almost two thousand years there has not been a Temple or a sacrificial altar in Jerusalem. But because they deny the divinity of the Son of God and so decline the sacrifice of the Lord on the cross for their sins ‒ which is adequate and pleasing in the eyes of God ‒ they cannot have their sin forgiven on the basis of the Christian faith of the New Testament either. So as the Lord once prophesied to the Jews, these Messianic Jews who observe the Torah ‒ unless they come to believe that their God, in his Son, himself died for them on the cross ‒ will die in their sins without any salvation (Jn 8:22-24).

Jn 12,44 And Jesus cried out and said, "He who believes in Me, does not believe in Me but in Him who sent Me. 12,45 "He who sees Me sees the One who sent Me. Jn 12,44-45;

Jn 10,27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; 10,28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. 10,29 "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 10,30 "I and the Father are one." Jn 10,27-30;

Col 1,15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 1,16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created through Him and for Him. 1,17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Col 1,15-17;

That very New Testament passage which is advanced as a proof of their point of view, Rom 1,16, actually contradicts the position of these Torah-observing Messianic Jews:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

Rom 1,16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Rom 1,16;

This "power of God for salvation to everyone who believes" is this very same vicarious death on the cross of the Son of God, who was also God, for the sins of the world, without which there is no salvation. And likewise the attempt to prioritize the Jews somehow in connection with the proclamation of the gospel, just because of the phrase "to the Jew first", is out of place. Because after all this refers to the same gospel of the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus Christ which was proclaimed to the Jews first of all more than two thousand years ago. But sadly they are still unwilling to accept it right up to the present day.

But the gospel is good news, after all, and not a compulsory message. People who don’t want to hear the gospel don’t have to listen to it. To confront them with it all the same, to provoke them, quarrel with them, even fall to fisticuffs ‒ as happened in Mea Shearim ‒ is entirely counterproductive and contravenes the commandment of the Lord (Mt 10:14-15). This is the wrong audience ‒ and possibly the wrong preachers as well. Here the best thing would be to leave the scene immediately ‒ and it might have been better not to go there in the first place.

Although these self-termed saviors of Israel complain that the Christian churches do not take sufficient account of the message of the Old Testament prophets, they themselves are evidently equally unaware of the prophecies of the Old Testament prophets, including even Moses. And with a certain measure of arrogance, and in hope of drawing admiring attention to themselves, they are not bothered with God’s judgment in relation to Israel ‒ they cheerfully mess around with the history of salvation and haven’t yet acquired any kind of proper grasp of the seriousness of Christian faith. They are like praying hypocrites, who put on a show in the eyes of the world so that they will be seen by men, instead of humbly going into the quietness of their inner chamber to pray to their God in the spirit.

Mt 6,5 "When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 6,6 "But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Mt 6, 5- 6;

Jn 4,23 "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 4,24 "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." Jn 4,23-24;

Gottfried Daniel Pomacher, an Awakening preacher from Wuppertal, has also condemned this kind of "publicity work" in the following words:

"Christianity does not consist in words but rather in the power of the Holy Spirit in the believer. The pillars of the temple are not those who attract the admiration of their hearers with their public utterances of ‘Lord, Lord’, but rather those who – at home, in the stillness of their own room, and without any audience – address their prayers to the Lord: these are the ones who really support the congregation."

We can only hope that the wishes of these Israel missionaries will not meet with fulfillment. For then "Your people shall be my people" would likewise make them a people of the godless, and "Your God shall be my God" would make them into a people without God.

1) MESSIANIC JEWS.
Torah-observant believers ‒ the Torah and the commandments are observed in practice, as also are the standard Jewish festivals. The Torah is not seen as having been "superseded". These are to be sharply distinguished from "non-observant" Messianic Jews, and commonly they reject a number of Christian dogmas (like the Trinity, the Christian community as the new people of God, etc.), and as a result they are not accepted by believing Jews (this applies to all shades of belief) while at the same time they are rejected by most Christians, since the acknowledgement of the Trinity is a very powerful factor for the acceptability of religious groups, being a key Christian belief. Those Messianic Jews who remain faithful to the Law very frequently refer to other Messianic Jews as "Christians of Jewish origin", laying exclusive claim to the title of "Messianic Jews" for themselves. (Wikipedia)

Discourse 102 – Evangelization tourism to Israel.

(Texts in a black frame are quotations from visitors to this site or from other authors.)

(We prayed and blessed the people / Report from Mea Shearim – Israel, on "Trumpet of Salvation", Matthias 00, 2010-08-20)

(Texts in a black frame are quotations from visitors to this site or from other authors.)

(The murderous hatred in a sea of faces / Report from Mea Shearim, Israel, on "Trumpet of Salvation", Greg 00, 2010-08-20)

Israel in the light of the Bible.

(Texts in a black frame are quotations from visitors to this site or from other authors.)

(The gospel to the Jews / Trumpet of Salvation, Jacob Damkani 00, 2010-08-20)