By Reese Currie, Compass Distributors

The Jewish people present a real conundrum for many Christians, in that they do not know how to evangelize them, or even whether it is right to do so. Many people believe in theology with a dual covenant, one for Jews, and a different one for Christians. This is a fault in both covenantal and dispensational theologies, the two of which cover most of the theological stances in the modern age.

There is a terrible evil in this toward the Jews. If God gifted Christians with propitiation through Christ, why would we contend that God has a different plan for Jews? Why would Jews, whom God loved as His "firstborn" people, have to work for salvation when we can have it by faith? The condemnation of many branches of Christianity will be in the fact that they contended for man-made theology rather than Biblical truth.

For the sake of this writing, I have used the New Revised Standard Version for all quotations, since it is accepted in its Old Testament portion by Jews, and accepted overall by the Catholics and liberal Protestants alike who refuse to evangelize them.

Matthew 28:19-20 says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Many liberal Christians and Jews contend that the phrase, "all nations," is a reference only to the goyim, or the Gentile nations. The point is moot, however, when one looks at the parallel passage in Luke 24:47, "and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." So the very first nation, where the work was to begin, was Judea. Paul’s testimony in Acts 26:19-20 reads, "After that, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the countryside of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance."

While it is fine for Jews to contend that "all nations" does not apply to them, it is evil for Christians to agree. Both are denying their Lord in reality, but it is only the Christians who contend this who are being truly hypocritical, for only they actually believe the New Testament record is true. The Jews do not accept the truth of the New Testament.

This presents a special problem in dealing with Jews. It is really not possible to witness to a Jew using the New Testament because they do not believe it is true. Jews believe that the New Testament was a complete fabrication, in which remarkably crafty writers tied prophecy to Christ after the fact.

There are some incredible flights of fancy among Jewish teachers with regard to Scripture, and their immense arrogance in the matter leaves many unwilling to question their frankly ludicrous conclusions.

One such conclusion is that the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament in use in Jesus’ time, did not exist at that time. It is concluded by Jews that the Septuagint was only a translation of the Law, not the whole Old Testament. They claim that the remainder of the Old Testament in the Septuagint was a fabrication by ancient Catholic scholar Origen.

While it is true that Ptolemy Philadelphus, the king of Egypt who commissioned the Septuagint, commissioned only the production of the Law, it is a matter of historical record that in timeframe of 280BC to 200BC-150BC, the entire Old Testament was translated into Greek. The name "Septuagint" comes from the notion that 72 Jewish scholars, 6 from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, worked on the translation simultaneously.

This Old Testament Greek version differs somewhat from today’s Hebrew Masoretic Text, and the interesting part is that the New Testament quotations of the Old Testament for the most part go with the Septuagint translation where the text differs. This is perhaps what leads many Jews to conclude the New Testament must not have been written until the 300’s, because it contains quotations from Origen’s supposed translation.

In reality, Origen was a collector of translations, who published the Hexapla, a Bible with the Hebrew text in parallel with translations in five other languages, including the Septuagint. Origen only really had about a twelve-year period in which he wrote profusely, during which time the Hexapla was part of his work.

The interesting thing to note here is that, according to the Jews, Origen was about 7850 times faster in translation than the average Septuagint scholar. They claim that within a twelve-year period, he translated the remaining 75% approximately of the Old Testament, alone, into Greek and the other four different languages in the Hexapla. If the Jewish scholars actually translated only the Law, 80 to 140 years is an awfully long time to do it.

The most conservative estimate I have encountered is that the Septuagint actually took 25 years to complete. By comparison, the King James Version, which is 30% larger in size than the Septuagint alone, was translated in only 7 years with only 53 scholars. At the same work rate, 14 scholars could have translated the Septuagint in only 20 years, including the whole Old Testament. The notion that it took 72 Jewish scholars 25 years to translate only the five books of the Law is so ridiculous as to be an ethnic slur against them. It must be recognized that the "apocrypha" was added to the Septuagint at a later time (the events hadn’t taken place yet!) but still during times BC, perhaps as early as 150BC or as late as 130BC.

The church fathers were arguing from the Septuagint and the New Testament a hundred years before Origen's work. Therefore, historically, the Jewish view of New Testament Scripture does not have a leg to stand on even apart from the vast internal evidence that the New Testament was written in the first century.

What about the points of difference between the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text? Do they not prove that the Septuagint is inferior? This may have been a valid argument at one time, but the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947, showed us that many of the differing Septuagint readings were in the Hebrew during the first century AD. So, not only have the Jews a misguided idea about Christian Scriptures, but in reaction against Christianity they modified their own Scriptures.

Most of the Messianic Jewish outreach to fellow Jews is charismatic in nature, without any great interest in or regard to theological differences between Christians and Jews. Nevertheless, there are a number of big hurdles for a thinking Jew to get over to come to a Christian point of view that simply cannot be addressed with such "signs and wonders" theology.

The number one thing that Jews reject is that Christ’s death could possibly atone for sin, because human sacrifice was abhorrent to God. What they do not pause to consider is, why human sacrifice was abhorrent to God.

Why did God accept blood sacrifices at all? Leviticus 17:11-12 says, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement. Therefore I have said to the people of Israel: No person among you shall eat blood, nor shall any alien who resides among you eat blood."

The sacrifice of a human being would be worthless for two reasons. The first reason is that God gave the people what He wanted them to sacrifice back to Him, and He had not as of yet given a human for this purpose. The second reason is that all humans had sin, and therefore sinful blood would have been offered for sin. The blood that covers for sin has to itself be free of sin, such as the blood of animals.

Christ is different from a normal human being, in that God did offer Him as payment for sin, and Christ’s blood itself was without sin. There is no lack of consistency therefore between the sacrifices of the Old Covenant and the single sacrifice of the New Covenant.

Jews also contend that God handed Abraham a works-salvation system. I can’t really understand why they would contend such a thing. Abraham’s covenant with God predated the Mosaic Law. In fact, if we look at Scripture, we find that God rewarded Abraham with a covenant for only one reason. "The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, ‘By myself I have sworn, says the Lord: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice" (Genesis 22:15-18).

God had already told Abraham that He would make his son Isaac into a great nation. Then, He told Abraham to go and sacrifice his son. Frankly, the modern Jew would find that logically inconsistent and would probably refuse. However, Abraham operated out of faith that somehow, God would fulfill His promise, even if the sacrifice was made. Either God would raise Isaac from the dead, or God would somehow provide some other sacrifice. All Abraham knew was that he was to obey this seemingly senseless request.

I find it interesting and telling that modern Jews will not believe in Christ because it is not logical to them. This is not at all the kind of faith their father Abraham held, not at all. There are New Testament explanations for this; Galatians 3:6-7 offers, "Just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham."

While Jews contend that they are the physical children of Abraham, Christians must understand that they are the spiritual children of Abraham, for they are the ones who have responded to God’s offer of salvation through His Son in faith. It is true that God made a covenant with Abraham and his seed, and it is true that God’s covenant is irrevocable; but God’s covenant is only with those who respond in faith, not via the birthright.

Do you want proof from the Old Testament? Did God not promise to bring the children of Israel out of Egypt and into the Promised Land? Nevertheless, only two of the Israelites who lived in Egypt as slaves ever made it to the Promised Land, because they responded in faith to God. Did God break His promise to Abraham’s seed? No, because Abraham’s seed have always been only the ones who responded to Him in faith.

Jews further object theologically to the notion that God could come to earth in any human form. This is totally without grounding in Hebrew Scripture. Three men came to Abraham in Genesis 18, one of whom was the LORD. Jacob wrestled with a man that was later identified as God in Genesis 32. The notion that God cannot come to earth in human form is alien to original Hebrew theology. This Jewish line of argumentation actually casts a lot of doubt on their heritage as true Hebrews; I believe that the Jewish religion of today is light-years apart from the religion of Abraham.

A Jewish rabbi speaking against the evangelism of Jews commented, "I have a faith which is full and complete, and it is in no need of any cure or any outside savior." How far that is from the religion of Job, who said, "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth" (Job 19:25). Job, the most righteous man on earth at the time, knew that he needed a redeemer who would be a person who would stand upon the earth. Why does this rabbi not know the same thing if he is in fact of the same religion?

King David filled in another blank in saying that this redeemer, who would stand upon the earth according to Job, was in fact the LORD. He wrote, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer" (Psalm 19:14). This is reiterated in Psalm 78:35, "They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God their redeemer."

God Himself said that He would not only be coming in human form, but would in fact be pierced in this prophecy of Pentecost in Zechariah 12:10. Now this is a very interesting quotation, because in the NRSV, it is inaccurate at the insistence of Jews. I will show you the quotation and then explain how it differs from the actual Hebrew Scripture. "And I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that, when they look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn." The phrase, "they shall look on the one whom they have pierced," is not true to the Hebrew. A footnote in the NRSV states that the text should say, "they shall look on Me whom they have pierced."

Liberal Christians, many of whom are not sold on the Trinity anyway, allowed the compromise of this verse to continue the ecumenicity of their translation by virtue of the Jewish support. But looking at the way the text reads without the Jewish lie, Zechariah 12:10 is a certain proof text that the LORD (Hebrew YHWH, English Jehovah, the Father) came to earth manifest in His Son, and was personally pierced for our sins. The fact that the Hebrews insist on adjusting Scripture shows that they have no argument against this verse. It is a condemnation that both Roman Catholics and liberal Christians went along with it, and it is both a condemnation and sure evidence that Jews would change their own Scriptures to keep people from the gospel.

Finally, Jews raise strong objections against the notion that the life and death of Christ would make their laws and observances functionally useless. The news flash here is that they were useless before Christ came on the scene; justification has always been available only through faith in God to save.

Isaiah 64:6 tells us, "We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away." Our own righteous deeds, our good works, have never been of much value to God.

It is really only the righteousness that God gives to us that is of value to Him. Just as He provided the sacrifices, He provided the righteousness. Hosea 10:12 says, "Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you."

The notion of imputed righteousness through faith alone is far from unknown in the original Hebrew religion, so it is very strange to be considered false today, if today’s Judaism truly bears resemblance to the original Hebrew religion. Genesis 15:6 says of Abraham, "And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness." Habbakuk 2:4 says, "Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith."

Truly, there is no theological inconsistency at all between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The inconsistency with the Old Testament is only with the Jewish religion that has departed from it.

Jewish teachers claim that Jesus Christ cannot be the Jewish Messiah because the expectation of the Messiah was fourfold and Christ fulfilled none of those expectations. First, the Messiah was expected to end the Roman oppression of the Jews. Second, he would restore a descendant of King David over a reunited Land of Israel. Third, He was to bring about the miraculous return of the scattered exiles to the Land of Israel. Finally He was to inaugurate an endless era of peace and harmony in the world.

Some have attempted to explain away these problems by stating that all of the prophecies toward the Land of Israel will be accomplished during a millennial reign of Christ upon earth described in Revelation. Others have claimed that the promises toward the people of Israel are actually toward the people of faith in Christ.

Regardless of these explanations, I think there is probably a future fulfillment of these prophecies, though I (like Abraham) am not sure how God will provide fulfillment. The fact that Jesus fulfilled so much Old Testament prophecy should give the Jew some faith that as a living Redeemer, Jesus can still fulfill the remainder of the prophecies at a future time. After all, having fulfilled so many already, what is there really in Scripture that says the fulfillment would be all at once and in only one visitation by the Messiah?

Jewish rabbis love to say that the New Testament was constructed to fulfill prophecies based on pure fabrication, but the fact remains that people who lived at the time of Christ also lived when the gospels were published. They heard the oral histories of preachers. Given, many Jews did not believe when they heard these histories, but a significant proportion did believe.

Part of the reason for this belief was that approximately 500 people were willing to testify having seen Jesus Christ alive following the crucifixion (see 1 Corinthians 15). How could anyone believe such an outlandish claim as Paul made to the Corinthians? The simple truth is they believed the witnesses. They had seen the prophecies fulfilled. They had seen the supernatural happenings following the crucifixion.

Isn’t it interesting how the New Testament names the places and events in detail, and was available within the lifetimes of people who had seen Jesus perform miracles? A fabrication like the Book of Mormon never names places for fear of being found out as a lie. But the New Testament names the places that miracles occurred. If these stories had no grain of truth, why did so many people accept them as truth? Because many of them had seen what was recorded in these Scriptures and knew it to be true.

As Gamaliel, a great Jewish teacher, said, "Fellow Israelites, consider carefully what you propose to do to these men. For some time ago Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him; but he was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and disappeared. After him Judas the Galilean rose up at the time of the census and got people to follow him; he also perished, and all who followed him were scattered. So in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them—in that case you may even be found fighting against God!" (Acts 5:35b-49a).

Well, the undertaking has not failed. Now there are a number of religions based on false prophets that have come and have stayed as well, like Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Islam. However, no religion based on a person claiming to be the Messiah ever held up except this one. Why? Because it is true.

The Jewish people have some interesting wisdom that is put forward in parables, the same practice Jesus used. One story is told of a Hasidic disciple who went to his master and said, "Master, I love you!" The Master replied, "Do you know what hurts me?" The disciple was puzzled, and replied, "No, Master, how could I know what hurts you?" The Master answered, "If you do not know what hurts me, you cannot love me." The point of the story is, if you do not know what hurts someone and desist from doing it, you cannot be the person’s friend.

What the Jews fear more than anything else is that the goals of the Holocaust will come to fruition, and there will no longer be Jews. And a Jew who becomes a Christian is no longer considered to be a Jew. So the logic follows that if Christians love Jews, they would stop evangelizing them, because evangelizing Jews reduces the numbers of Jews in the world.

This may sound too ludicrous to be believed as really being the position of the Jews, so I will quote the Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim, "The Holocaust was the culmination of a 2,000-year campaign by the Christian world against the Jews. It began early on with them telling us, ‘You cannot live here as Jews.’ And in country after country, they forced us to convert. Later the message became, ‘You cannot live here.’ And in country after country, they forced us to leave. Hitler's message was, ‘You cannot live.’ And they exterminated one-third of our people."

How incredibly insulting it must be to Christians who lost loved ones in World War II when such people say Christians want to finish the work of the Nazis by destroying the Jews. Anyone with even a faint sense of history can see the falsity of such a statement. Yet, it has become a common prejudice among the Jews. They believe that ministry toward Jews is based on hatred of Jews rather than love of Jews.

The truth for the Christian is if we do love the Jews, we must try to evangelize them so that they will live eternally. We must believe that John 5:23b means what it says, "Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him." God has provided a means of salvation but only to those who will receive it by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately the modern method of evangelism is to sugar coat the message with deception, so if people do not wish to make a real commitment to Christ, they can make a semi-commitment based on ignorance and hopefully improve in the faith later and actually be saved. Groups like Jews for Jesus make statements such as those reported in Charisma magazine, "Do be a friend. Create a sincere friendship first. Don't just try to convert the Jewish people. Do say ‘Messiah.’ Don't say ‘Christ.’ Do say ‘believer.’ Don't say ‘Christian.’ Do say ‘New Covenant’ or ‘Old Covenant.’ Don't say ‘New Testament’ or ‘Old Testament.’ Do say ‘congregation.’ Don't say ‘church.’ Do say ‘completed’ or ‘fulfilled.’ Don't say ‘saved’ or ‘born again.’ Do say ‘Messianic Jew.’ Don't say ‘Christian.’"

I myself have no use whatsoever for such a strategy, and I don’t care if people think it works. Many evangelicals think, "Don’t say ‘repent’; do say ‘accept Christ’." To them, this seems to work because easy-believism wins a lot of rootless semi-converts who do not remain in the faith. Thousands who come forward to "accept Christ" at evangelistic rallies never really become Christians because they never repent. It does no good for anyone.

I contend that you cannot lead anyone to the truth with a lie. There is no point telling people that Christianity is the same thing as Judaism. We should always be honest in our efforts to convey the gospel, otherwise our effort will run counter to the work of God. The truth is, a Christian is different than a Jew. Messianic Judaism allows all sorts of things that are prohibited by New Testament Scripture. For instance, many Messianic Jews continue to work their way to salvation by observance of the Law. This is not Christian worship, it is precisely the sort of thing Paul wrote against in great detail throughout the New Testament.

I realize I have rained on everyone’s parade with this writing but there are few simple truths that must be understood about liberal Christians, evangelical Christians, and Jews that are running contrary to God’s intended work in this world.

First, Christians who refuse to preach the gospel are simply disobedient, they are not operating out of some higher understanding of Scripture as their pomposity suggests, but rather a lack of obedience to perform the one of the most important jobs they have been given to do. I’ve heard more fake Christians use universalist doctrine as an excuse for their disobedience to Christ than I care to count.

Second, the faith of modern Jews is completely unlike the faith of the Hebrews in the Bible and cannot be construed as being the same thing. The same thing is true of many supposedly Christian denominations as we have covered on this site before. It seems that most of organized religion falls all over itself to depart from its earliest tenets. But if we cleave to both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and do not depart from the word given, we are hopeless but to repent and believe in Jesus Christ unto salvation.

Third, the neo-evangelical approach of compromising the requirements of the word of God to evangelize is not acceptable. One reason many Jews reject the gospel is they never actually hear it. The Jews for Jesus organization by their own profession is ashamed of the word "Christ," the term "born again," and the word "saved." Doesn’t that rather rot out the gospel message until there is nothing left? The same is true of those who translate the difficult "repent and believe" to the easy "accept Christ." The words "accept Christ" are nowhere to be found in the Bible. What authorizes us to preach a different gospel? I realize the Roman Catholic Church changed the terminology to "accept Christ" even before Eusebius’ very early work, Ecclesiastical History. But if we are "reformers," we will hopefully reform back past the point that the gospel message was perverted in such a way. If we are "restorers," hopefully we can restore a New Testament model rather than a "not quite New Testament" model. Surely all who wish to return to the real gospel can at least return to the words "repent and believe" and expound upon their meaning, rather than trying to prompt people to a blind acceptance that no one can really accomplish.

And fourth, if you want to preach to anyone who believes in the Father but not in the Son, learn the Old Testament! The Old Testament is the tutor that leads us to Christ. If someone has not been led to Christ reading the Old Testament, it is only because they are listening to tradition instead of to God’s Word. This is a fault not only in Judaism but in false Christianity as well. I converted to Christ from Jehovah’s Witness beliefs and it was the Old Testament that did it for me. For all who believe in the Father but not the Son, the New Testament is suspect, but the Old Testament is unquestionable. Stop judging the Old Testament because God chose to show His wrath in it. Learn it because it is the tutor for God’s revelation of love. Jesus Christ is not saving us from the devil. Jesus Christ is saving us from the wrath of the Father. The Old Testament teaches the wrath, and the New Testament teaches the escape, the salvation from the wrath, and the only one available.

Thoughts on the Evangelism of Jews is Copyright © 2000 by Compass Distributors.

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition copyright © 1993 and 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.