There is growing evidence that Christian support for Israel in their hour of need is encouraging Jewish people to consider Jesus and the New Testament.
As the horror of war on seven fronts has held the nation in a constant state of tension and fear, God has been moving powerfully over this past year.
According to Jews for Jesus – and others back this up – there is a new spiritual openness among Jews because of Christians showing love and care for Israel.
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An Orthodox Jewish man, who runs a training programme to help Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men enter the job market, ordered 10 copies of the New Testament from their website, explaining that, since the war started, he has been moved by the outpouring of support from Christians.
“I would rather a Jewish person believe in Jesus than be secular,” he admitted in a later conversation with an evangelist1. He subsequently read the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, concluding that he “loves” Jesus.
In fact, several orders for New Testaments mentioned Christian support for Israel as the reason for their interest.
As a volunteer for the Church’s Ministry among Jewish people (CMJ), I also regularly communicate with Messianic Jewish friends in Jerusalem who are seeing similar results from their outreach efforts focused on generous hospitality, especially on Shabbat.
“We are seeing more and more Jews repenting and praying,” they report. Their visitors are amazed by their testimony of how they came to know Yeshua as their Messiah and can’t stop asking questions.
Like Jesus, they share His teachings around the meal table where guests note how the Jewishness of Yeshua is portrayed. Among their recent guests was a well-known politician and professor with whom they have been sharing the Gospel for 20 years.
He had always previously stopped short of opening his heart to receive Yeshua. But this time, with tears in his eyes, he was “born anew”!
Meanwhile both Christians and Messianic believers have been offering food, shelter and hope as rockets rain down on the country, leaving tens of thousands displaced from their homes.
In Jaffa, where a terrorist atrocity saw seven civilians shot dead on October 1,. a Jewish colleague of mine has been sitting shiva (mourning) with a neighbour whose young wife was among those murdered, shielding her nine-month-old baby as she was cut down. Miraculously, the infant survived.
In the UK, Christians were among thousands who joined a rally in Hyde Park, London, marking the anniversary of last year’s massacre, with many Jewish people deeply touched and tearful at their show of solidarity.
Sadly, however, some Christians believe we should not be “taking sides” in this war as innocents are killed among both Israelis and Palestinians. But this is a naïve view born of worldly influence.
The Bible calls us to “choose this day whom you will serve” – God or Satan (Joshua 24:15). Both Gazans and Lebanese have tragically chosen to allow sworn enemies of Israel to lead and influence them, with the result that the Jewish state is left defending itself from all sides in a conflict they have neither provoked nor chosen.
Yes, Palestinians need the Gospel too and, like Jesus, we should love our enemies and seek peace with all people. But this should not blind us to neglecting those who first brought us the Gospel, and who are still the apple of God’s eye, fighting for their very existence in a land God has given them as an everlasting possession.
The terrorist enemies surrounding them, on the other hand, are committed to their extinction – it’s in their charter! And I guess, from that point of view, it is a one-sided conflict. We surely didn’t expect, after such sickening butchery, that Israelis would just lie down and allow the rest of their nation to be similarly slaughtered without fighting back, as they were in no position to do during the Nazi Holocaust.
Too many Christians are in danger of failing to recognise the time of God’s coming among His chosen people, just as the Jews had failed in this respect at Yeshua’s first coming (see Luke 19:44).
This is indeed a time to love and honour God’s chosen people, just as the Christians of Lincoln did last month by repenting of historic antisemitism in the UK. For if you really love Jesus, you will love the Jews.
1Jews for Jesus newsletter, October 2024
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