EDUCATION & AWARENESS
The increasing efforts of evangelical Christians to convert Jewish people are causing great concern among Jewish communities worldwide. The most effective way to counter this serious issue is through Jewish education. For this reason, we plan to organize informative programs and create educational materials to help address the persistent problem of Jewish evangelism.
The world of Christianity is complex, with Roman Catholics and liberal Protestants generally not seeking to evangelize Jews.
Although the Roman Catholic Church has had a tumultuous history with the Jewish people, today it is largely uninterested in converting Jews. This is also true for mainline and liberal Protestant denominations such as the Methodist, Episcopalian, and Unitarian churches.
The groups in Israel that actively seek to convert Jews to Christianity are primarily fundamentalist evangelical Christians who support and partner with the Hebrew-roots and Messianic movements. Christian Zionists are almost exclusively the missionaries who engage in Jewish evangelism.
Messianic churches are intentionally designed to appear Jewish, often appropriating Jewish symbols and traditions to attract vulnerable Jews to their congregations.
The Christian Bible prioritizes the Jewish people.
To begin with, the New Testament specifically prioritizes Jews for conversion. In the book of Matthew, when Jesus is instructing his apostles, he warns them: "Go not into the way of the gentiles… but only go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (Matthew 10:5)
The Apostle Paul echoes an identical sentiment in the first chapter of the Book of Romans, when he declares: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek [gentile]." (Romans 1:16)
We find a unique emphasis on reaching the Jews in the New Testament, especially in the Gospels, almost to the exclusion of the gentiles.
A second reason for this obsession relates to the Church's fascination with eschatology, the study of the End of Times. Fundamentalist Christians are consumed by the prophecies surrounding the End of Days. Christian bookstores typically set aside an entire section dedicated to eschatological inquiry.
Evangelical Christians widely believe that the mass conversion of the Jews will bring about Jesus' "second coming." "I will not return until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" Matthew (23:39) Because Jesus was addressing a Jewish audience at the time he made this statement, Christians have often understood this proclamation to have one meaning: Jesus will not make his second coming until large numbers of Jews embrace the Church. The Jewish people, in a sense, are holding up the show.
Finally, the most significant reason for the Church's preoccupation with the Jewish people stems from the unique credibility problem that only Judaism presents to Christendom. Jesus was Jewish, and Christians claim that he is the promised Messiah about whom all the prophets spoke.
The idea of the Messiah – a man who will come at the End of Days to usher in a utopian society of love, peace, and the universal knowledge of God – is an exclusively Jewish idea. Fundamentalist Christians insist that if the Jews would only look in their own Hebrew Scriptures, they would discover that Jesus is bouncing off every page.
It stands to reason, therefore, that if in fact Jesus had been the prophesied Messiah, the Jewish people should have been the first to follow him and his teachings. They should have overwhelmingly embraced the claims of the Church.
Instead, the very people who brought the idea of the Messiah to the world, and the only people who can read their Scriptures in their original language, are the very people who rejected the claims of the Church. This has always been a troubling reality to Christendom since its inception. It is for this reason that only the conversion of a Jewish person to Christianity can lend credibility to the Church – never the conversion of the gentile.
At every age and every turn, Missionary initiatives are ready to use any opportunity to infiltrate Jewish society in Israel.
PUBLIC EDUCATION - In recent years there has been significant impact on Israeli education in the form of introducing copious amounts of Christian teachings in public school curriculum. There have also been communities that have outsourced their summer camp programs to Evangelicals. Programs claiming to teach Israel advocacy and leadership skills are discovered to be missionary-run campuses.
TARGETING CHILDREN - While it is illegal to proselytize to minors in the state of Israel, cable networks are pumping missionary cartoons into Jewish homes, targeting children. Messianic churches are teaching ‘discipleship’ curriculum to their own children in an effort to bypass the current laws and use minors to proselytise to Jewish children.
MEDIA - Israel has only 2 cable TV networks. HOT & YES are regulated by the government and reach the homes of millions of Israelis. Yet, in 2020, while no government regulators were paying attention, Beyneynu exposed that HOT had signed contracts with evangelical organizations to broadcast openly missionary content into Israeli homes. They were already streaming the gospel into Jewish homes throughout the holy land on Israel’s largest cable network. Yes network has contracts with Day Star, also boasting to bring the gospel of Jesus into Israeli homes.
ETHIOPIANS - At the height of the 2020 COVID lockdowns, Bishop Glenn Plummer arrived in Israel to establish the country as an official jurisdiction for the evangelical denomination Church of God in Christ. In a short time, more than 5 COGIC churches targeting the vulnerable Ethiopian community had been established. This missionary effort turned out to be the most prolific that Israel has ever seen. We were able to expose the agenda behind this mission, alert rabbinic leaders, and protect our Ethiopian brothers and sisters.
HUMANITARIAN AID - We also exposed humanitarian organizations operated by missionaries openly boast about taking advantage of our most vulnerable moments to bring Jews to the church. Many of these organizations have partnered with government institutions who unknowingly gave access to our most vulnerable.
COVERT MISSIONARIES - In 2021 Beyneynu unmasked case after case of covert missionaries in both Israel and the United States, each of which wreaked havoc on the Jewish world with tremendous halachic ramifications on the Jewish status of individuals and Jewish families. Immigration fraud was exposed, as well as connections to major evangelical organizations who were funding these covert operations.
IDF - Gifts and gestures of appreciation are being used as an opportunity to reach young soldiers who are away from home, and often in situations where the connections they make to people giving those gifts open the door to persuasive arguments about their faith.
To the shock of the Jewish communities worldwide, the missionaries' marketing ploys are proving to be successful.
In 2015, there were 15,000 Jews belonging to Messianic congregations here in Israel – as of 2020, there were more than 30,000 reported.
We have watched this community grow from 120 Messianic congregations and outreach programs to over 300, and there are currently over 200 websites dedicated to converting Jewish people to Christianity, mostly through media in English, Hebrew, Russian, and Arabic.
GIVING OUR YOUTH THE TOOLS THEY NEED TO RESPOND TO THESE AGGRESSIVE EFFORTS IS THE KEY TO JEWISH CONITNUITY.
JEWISH EDUCATION MUST BE RESTORED AMONG OUR PEOPLE.
We believe it is important to be pro-active in confronting missionary influence and movements in the Jewish homeland, while striving to maintain an atmosphere of mutual respect and cooperation with Christian friends of the State of Israel.
Israel is fast reaching the tipping point, where Christian missionary organizations become an accepted part of the Israeli mainstream. For 72 years Israeli society – religious and secular, right wing and left, have argued about the meaning of Jewish identity, but we always drew the line when it came to accepting Christianity.
Partnering with Christian leaders and organizations offers Israel many benefits if it does not cross the line and enable missionary activity.
We have been monitoring the situation and have brought awareness through reports, meetings, conferences and consultations with Knesset and municipal representatives, rabbinic leadership throughout Israel, and Israeli-Diaspora organizations such as the Jewish Agency, B'nai B'rith, and the Orthodox Union. Our mission is to expose the missionary agenda, and encourage safe and consistent boundaries in interfaith relationships.
