We are so glad to have Stephen Atkinson with us. It's been a joy to hear about his work cultivating a theological understanding and an emphasis and conviction in sharing our faith with our Jewish friends. Stephen was with us at the men's luncheon on Friday as well as throughout the weekend. And Stephen, come teach us now and tell us a little bit about Christian Witness to Israel. Again, it really is a pleasure to be with you. I feel a great affinity. with the Lord's people here, and thank you for the opportunity and that invitation. In addition to preaching the word, I want to obviously share with you in a visual manner something of what we do, where we have come from effectively in Christian Witness to Israel, and what we do today. We are 175 years young in our ministry. And so it's good to know our history, it's good to know where we have come from, but we don't rest on the laurels of our historic past, but rather we need to be engaging today in the mission field, and the particular mission field that we are engaged in is the Jewish people. So I wanted to begin really just with that purpose statement so that you are aware of what we are about legally. We are a 501c3. And that is really the statement that summarizes what our work is. So we are proclaiming this good news of Jesus the Messiah to the Jewish people throughout the world, wherever the Jewish people are. And we are challenging, as I do, as I preach and teach, and assisting as I come alongside churches in Jewish areas and help do seminars on reaching our Jewish friends, how to be sensitive and how to approach our Jewish friends, so to assist the church. So we are, in that sense, we are church-based. Although we are a missionary organization, the church is the missionary organization, and we will get alongside churches in various ways, whether it is to assist in actual outreach or to assist in challenging and raising that awareness and burden and support for those who are doing frontline mission. I think what I want to begin with is that I feel as I come to the U.S., I come to very favorable ground for the subject of Israel, but I also come to very confused ground with regard to the whole subject of Israel. So when I talk to people about Israel, the first comment that usually comes back, oh, do you often visit Israel, or do you live in Israel? And I say, I haven't been to Israel in over 30 years. And they look at me rather confused. And I said, well, Israel's not just a land. We have workers in the land. And I see our workers in the land, and I am in steady contact with our workers in the land. And I meet one of them, particularly at least once a year, he comes here. And he and I will often share a booth at the General Assembly. So if you're attending GA, look out for us at our booth at the General Assembly. But there is a confusion in the mind of most people. They immediately think of a land. And that quote is particularly helpful. Israel is not primarily a land to be adored, but a people to be one for Christ. And as I've repeatedly said throughout this weekend, and I say it again today, we in the United States have 42% of that people group. And yet it seems to me that we're so fascinated by a ton of silly things that we miss the one thing that is needful, and that is bringing the gospel to the Jewish people. So I want stargazing and geopolitical obsessions to be left behind, and the pun is intended. Let's get rid of such silly thoughts and get to the one thing that is needed. And I make no apology, and I suppose I'm in good company laying a Scottish burden, but I make no apology for that. It's really a biblical burden, but it was the Scots Presbyterians, like Robert Murray McShane and the Bonners, who were very instrumental in bringing their burden to birth a mission, our mission in 1842. And what I would love to see in the US is a similar burden because this is favorable territory, but we have our energies and our interests in all silly directions when it should be in this one direction. What an amazing opportunity, what potential if all the interest and focus on Israel was centered on reaching Jewish people with the gospel, which is what our mission really is. And it was this that the Scots forefathers believed in. And so they were instrumental in beginning our work. Indeed, they gave a sum of money, a substantial sum of money from the Church of Scotland to begin our work in 1842, in November 1842, and McShane prayed the opening prayer at our first ever meeting in November 1842. Oh, to see that burden again, theological burden, biblical burden, Westminster burden, I might even say, as I shared in the early service. So that's one of the things that I'm doing as I travel around churches. I get the privilege of traveling 40,000 miles a year by car. I listen to a lot of sermons and podcasts and I meet a lot of people. And that is a privilege for me to see the church at large, warts and all, but to meet the Lord's people and I trust lay something. I wish I could split myself a hundred ways, but to lay this theological burden. I think I maybe mentioned earlier in the weekend that I had the privilege a couple of years ago, a few years ago, of preaching in Inverness in Scotland. And there was a gentleman in the congregation had something to show me after the meeting, and it was this. It was Robert Murray McShane's Bible, dated 1843. In fact, it was the Bible that he gave the lady that cared for him on his deathbed. He died at 29, some of you will know. As he was dying, he passed the Bible to this lady. And there's a fantastic story of how that Bible was preserved, divinely preserved. And now it belongs to this gentleman in Inverness. And he kindly let me flick through what I had deemed was a reformed relic, if we're allowed relics. But there are little notes in the Bible, fascinating. But of course, I would flip over to Romans 11. And there I saw his heart. Robert Mary McShane writing in 1842 or scribbling in 1842 of his heart, God is able to graft them in again. And so it was that he stirred churches and peoples in Scotland. In fact, when he was on a mission trip to the land of Israel to inquire, the Church of Scotland sent him on a mission trip to inquire. into the situation of the Jewish people. He came back. He preached this sermon. He preached it in Scotland. He preached it in Belfast, I'm told, as well, because he believed this principle, this biblical principle, that God is able to graft them in again. And so what I want to do also in my stirring the burden and stirring the forces and stirring an awareness is to develop this aspiration. God is able. to graft them in again. The Jews are not a lost cause. They're a difficult mission field, but they're not a lost cause. In fact, they may be the cause if we read Romans 9 through 11 and see God having that purpose to graft them in again. The Puritans believed, hopefully, had an aspiration that God was yet going to do this. on a massive scale. And so it was, as I said, the mission of discovery from, or mission of inquiry it was called, from the Church of Scotland. And that really was the beginnings. But of course I have a picture of the Westminster Chamber there, or Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster, where the Westminster documents were formulated as well because they believed strongly in Jewish mission. So this is not something new. This is something historic. This is a historic biblical burden that in some ways, I hold present company excluded, but perhaps Israel has been forgotten in this way. But Rutherford, I'm tempted to say, okay, name these guys, put you to the test. Maybe I should put your pastors to the test. But Rutherford, Matthew Henry, Jonathan Edwards, Spurgeon, Horatius Bonner, John Murray, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, what do they have in common? They believed in this. They believed that God was not done with Israel. And if these are our heroes, if we can put it in that way, let's hear what they said about Israel, the people, and our responsibility and even the hopefulness and the aspiration to bring the gospel and the fruit of that in God's purpose and plan. So I come here and what do I see? I see confusion, which I hope by Biblical and substantial preaching we can clarify. I think we're presenting love in all the wrong directions. There is a pro-Israel mindset. Let's stand with Israel. We must stand with Israel. And that is true, and I'm okay with that. But not totally standing with Israel that they do nothing wrong. They are a lost, darkened, pagan nation. They may have an ethnic people that is still loved on account of the patriarchs, says Romans 11, 28. They should be loved by us, but we should not excuse everything and not stand with them without exception. But it seems to me that there is a desire simply we stand with Israel or we visit the land and we visit the dirt. Can I make an announcement? God doesn't save a piece of dirt. He saves people. And it's the people of the land and the people who are here that should be our interest. Visiting the stones, the dusty, dry stones, is not as important as the living stones. I hear that this particular gentleman was often seen at the Holy Land Experience, leave the Jewish people alone. And there are tele-evangelists that are saying that as well. They don't need Jesus. There is a backdoor into heaven for them, according to some. They're all going to heaven. We don't need, in fact, some particularly well-known tele-evangelists that have a Jewish or Israel mission that we should not support. 2 John, as I said to the men on Friday lunchtime, do not welcome him into your home. that says, no, Jesus was for Gentiles. The Jews need the Torah. And a quote from that same televangelist, Torah observant Jews are already in covenant with God and do not need to come to Jesus. That is a so-called Christian televangelist. No, that is heresy. The leave the Jewish people alone mindset needs to be smashed, needs to be challenged and changed Please do not have that mindset. We present love in all the wrong directions if we don't bring the gospel. Now, the text is rather small. You don't need to read it all. Simply, this was part of our work way back in the 20s in the land, before the land became the reborn modern nation of Israel. And it's interesting, if you can read even down the last two or three sentences, James Churcher was field director of our work in the land And he was so valued his witness his christian witness was so Valued he was granted the keys of the city. What a wonderful testimony to christ As he ministered in christ's name in that land So we've been there since 1922 But we're there today as well as my colleague David Zadok, who studied at Westminster Seminary Escondido in 2003 to 2006. He's now been with us for 10 or 11 years. And he's a Jewish believer. When he came to faith, his family disowned him. In fact, when he got married, none of his family attended the wedding. He was disowned by his own people. But he's a solid, solid Jewish believer, reformed theologically, and is the pastor of a Reformed Baptist church, Grace and Truth Congregation, just outside Tel Aviv. And as we were engaged in Mercy Ministries in the 20s, so also we still have Mercy Ministries to share the gospel ultimately. So we had this meeting earlier in the year, earlier last year, around Passover time. We had a Passover Thanksgiving meal. for Holocaust survivors in Israel, and they were each given a Bible, they were each given a gospel tract. What a witness to Jewish non-believers. Try to think of Jewish believers in Israel like the little remnant that we spoke of on Friday night, the little remnant of Jews for Jesus in Acts 2. The rest of the Jewish people did not believe in Jesus, but there was a small little remnant. So it is today. In the land of Israel, there are like six or seven million Jewish people. 20,000 of them are Jewish believers in Jesus. So there's a small remnant that are our brothers and sisters in Christ that are ethnic Jews, 20,000. Well, of course, in 1948, there were only 12. And then in 1968, there were 50. And in 1998, there were 5,000. And today, there's 20,000 ethnic Jews, Israelis, who believe in Jesus. What a wonderful aspiration we would have to see that blossom as well. So we are there in Israel today. We have street evangelism as well as church-based evangelism. Egal is one of our new missionaries. Spent half his life in an Israeli prison on drug offenses, heroin addict. The Lord graciously saved him. And now he's out on the streets as passionate as ever. On his day off, he goes to the underpasses, to those that are shooting up, and he shares the gospel with them. I was once there. Such were some of you. What a testimony he has and what a passionate evangelist we have in Igal. We're on the streets of other major cities in Europe. In Budapest, we had a very specific outreach, street outreach, for about 12 days. with street preaching and tracting in Budapest. Susanna is a Holocaust survivor that professed faith, and she's being followed up also by our workers. Bogie is one of our workers in Hungary. The New Age outreach is interesting. We've been doing that year on year in London. There is a massive New Age festival in London, and there are 200,000 Jews in London, outside of the US and Israel, Next on the pecking order is France with 500,000 and the United Kingdom with 300,000 Jewish people. 300,000 Jewish people in the UK, 200,000 of them are in London. Now, put that in context, there are 600,000 Jews in Miami. 600,000. There's a Kosher Dunkin' Donuts in Miami. That tells you a lot. There are 2 million Jews in New York City. We have 6 million. 150,000 in Atlanta, 50,000 in Houston, 40,000 in Dallas, 20,000 in Kansas City, 80,000 in Cleveland, 120,000 in Chicago. So I could continue. All our major cities have major Jewish populations. In London, New Age Outreach, there's a large festival and we are there in the midst of this. And some crazy stuff goes on at this. There is a guy with a large gong that these folks will come to him, they'll pay their dollar, he'll bang the gong and supposedly it gets rid of all the demons. Pay their dollar for that. We're there. with a witness to Jesus at this New Age outreach. One of the ones who heads that up is a colleague of mine. In fact, she came into the ministry through my contacting her in Cork, Ireland. Her folks live in Cork, Ireland. And she's a Jewish believer from Romania. In fact, she likes to say she's from Transylvania. And you can tell that if you look at her teeth. I don't think so, but she's one of our London missionaries, and indeed she is a wonderful one-on-one person and is very much active in that New Age outreach. I've mentioned occasionally in the past about Richard and Rita, my colleagues in England, in Leeds. Rita is a Jewish believer from Uzbekistan. Her folks live in Israel. Richard speaks fluent. English because he's an Englishman, but also he speaks fluent modern Hebrew, ancient Hebrew, and Russian, obviously learning those things as he needed to speak with his wife and ultimately speak with his in-laws. And some folks are very naughty and they say, well, Richard, why did you bother? Do you really need to speak to your wife? Well, yes, he does need to speak to his wife. He needed to learn modern Hebrew. And so he did. I think they met. I'm not 100% sure. I think they met. on a kibbutz as young people, and they were married. But they have two kids. They have a wonderful home of hospitality in England, in the north of England. He goes into some of the shopping malls in the north of England, and just as it would be here, there are a lot of Israelis, and they'll be in the shopping malls. They'll be selling their Dead Sea products. And he will go, and he'll knock on the shoulder of these Israelis and he'll start to speak to them in their language. And immediately you've got a contact. If someone speaks to you in your language, you've immediately got a contact. And what a ministry they have had there. And they have seen some amazing things happen. And again, I refer to one incident of a guy that, a hard nut guy that he had been speaking to for over 10 years. And eventually the guy was broken by the grace of God. Another story from Richard was he got a phone call at about, I can't remember, but very, very late at night, and it was a young Jewish guy that he had befriended, and just again, friend of friends in the Jewish community. And this young man was homosexual, and he was in some homosexual bar in the north of England, and someone had spiked his drink, and he was getting into all kinds of trouble, and he called Richard. to come, please help and get me out of this. He didn't call his rabbi. He called his missionary friend. Now that's a testimony itself. How do we do mission? We're in it for the long haul. We build up relationships, friendships, so that when the crisis comes, whether it be illness, whether it be loneliness, whether it be a homosexual situation, who do you call? You call the Christian. At least they ought to know where the answer is. And so it was, and so it continues to be with my dear friend in Leeds. We have other missionary staff, indeed, in the UK, in France, Holland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand. As I've said, we in these two countries account for almost 90% of the world's Jewish population. And one of my great desires, and I hope and trust we're making very good progress towards it, is that within the next six to 12 months, we will have a frontline missionary here in the U.S. working out of a church. We haven't decided yet who it is or where he is to be, but we're looking at certain options. There actually are three possibles. There is a Taiwanese couple that studied in Trinity Deerfield, in Don Carson's seminary. This Taiwanese couple studied there, their two kids were born during that time, and they're currently in Taiwan. They have a real burden for Jewish mission, and they're looking at possibly coming back to us and being one of our missionary families. There's another family that I'm inquiring, or I'm having some conversations with, that are former Jews for Jesus missionaries, and they're very interested in what we're doing, and they've had 10 years' experience of frontline missionary work, and their interest in us as well. And another, a third, a youth pastor is also at an early stage investigating the possibilities of possibly being a missionary with us. So we are really looking to move forward in some of these things. Of course, that takes money, it takes support, and we pray the Lord will provide in these things. But some of our mission emphasis, and I know we have this affinity with you, that theology drives missiology. And I think this is really where we've got it wrong with the whole subject of Israel. If we get the theology wrong in Israel, our mission will be wrong. So many missions are just interested, let's get them all back to the land and build the temple and start the sacrifices and find the red heifer and all. There's a ton of things that we put our effort into, even our money into. $230 million a year goes to Israel missions. ministries. Only a small percentage of that, only a small percentage of that goes to evangelism. Something is radically wrong. It's the theology of their lostness that will drive the missiology. We need to state also the land is not enough. In CWI, we don't take a position on the land. We are a reformed mission. We have some of our missionaries who are very passionate about the land. We have some of our missionaries who couldn't care less about the land. We don't take a position on the land. The land is not enough. They can have the land and be lost. And so as I've repeatedly said this weekend, the absolute necessity is Jesus, bringing Jesus to the Jewish people. I want to ask you to pray even as we consider this coming year to recruit. It's important that we get the right people with a right heart, that is a people person, that is a one-on-one. Some folks are better on the one-on-one than in a pulpit. And we need people who are, hopefully that they would be good in the pulpit as well as they go around churches and raise support. But primarily I want someone that's gonna sit down with some Jewish person. the right person, please pray for our recruitment process. One of the other things that we do is enable churches and assist churches by way of seminars, and so I've been developing workbooks and some studies on what we've called connecting with the Cohens. I think I shared this with you when I was with you last time. And it's really, it's growing, it's developing, but it's just a number of seminars on how to be sensitive in our outreach, what words to use, what way to connect, with the Kohens, and ultimately it's not just to connect with them, but to connect the Kohens with the crucified. The Kohens is just a name for Jewish people, I suppose, in that sense. If someone is called a Kohen, by the way, they look upon themselves somewhat higher than other Jewish people. They are of the priestly class. And so if they're Kohen or spelled various ways, They would see themselves as the higher class Jewish person, but that's just an aside. How do we get our income? I am assistant pastor at Covenant Church Fayetteville. I receive nothing but waste salary from Covenant Church Fayetteville. They have called me to do this. So this is what I do 100% of my time. And we get support for our whole workings, for all the ministry costs. 60% from individuals, 40% from congregations. I simply lay that out to you really by way of being transparent and being accountable to the Lord's people. But we do seek your help. We do seek your support, whether it's congregationally or individually. We have various needs. We have the general fund need, which has its own budget and just been approved. In fact, we reached our budget last year. We had three years of subsidy from the UK. That has since ceased. We're now on our own, effectively, financially, and we reached our budget, well, 98.5% of our budget, and our expenses were 95%, so we were good last year. But what we have also set up is a missionary reserve fund in which we are seeking to grow a resource that will help a new missionary come in, and while they are growing their support, we will have some subsidy and some funds available to subsidize so that we can get the missionary on the ground, feet running, on the ground running right away. So we have our missionary reserve fund. Our 2020 fund is a little bit of a pipe dream at the present, but one of the things that I really would desire would be a center for Jewish missions in the U.S., a CWI center for Jewish missions in which we could actually have a place where churches could come and have seminars and have small have weekends, we could train prospective missionaries and we could grow large. But that's a little bit on the long finger. I want us to realize that God's grace is still flowing and still flowing to the Jewish people. Sometimes we either feel they don't need Jesus or we could go the opposite extreme and say God's finished with them. And in fact, some theologians and some reformed theologians with whom I would cross swords have suggested that God is done with Israel. Some indeed of the church fathers and some quotations that I could share with you throughout history have been quite horrendous regarding the Jewish people, as if they are under an eternal curse for the crime of deicide, according to John Chrysostom. In other words, the Jews killed Jesus. I try to make it clear on Friday night that it wasn't just the Jews killed Jesus. The Romans did it too. We were all involved in it. Our sin was in it. The Lord was in it. His grace is still flowing. If his grace is not still flowing to the Jewish people, then I'm in danger. Some Years ago, well, actually on our very, very first visit to the United States in 1999, we visited Niagara Falls. Stunning, stunning scenery. And it was a phenomenal experience on our first ever visit as a family to the United States. And we saw the Niagara Falls. And I remember when we went home, sitting in our home in Northern Ireland, maybe two or three months later, my nine-year-old son, as he was then, turned to me and he said, Dad, you remember that Niagara Falls? Is the water still going? He was nine. And I said, yeah, the water's still going. It's endlessly flowing. And about a year ago, I was blessed by traveling up in that area and I was about 30 minutes away from Niagara and I thought, okay, I'm gonna turn the car off the road and I'm gonna just have a look and remind myself. We hadn't been there. I hadn't been there. I was on my own in the car. I hadn't been back there since 1999. And so this was some 15, 16 years later. And I looked, and the water was still flowing. And it reminded me of God's grace to me. In those 15 years or so, All my four kids have professed faith. My two boys are at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. His grace still flows. To me, has flown, never stops. To me, the sinner. To me, the backslider. To me, the one that needs repentance again and again. The grief, the hatred. Yeah, God's grace still flows. Does His grace still flow for the Jewish people? Is Chris Austin right? No. Because if God is done with them because of their falling, how many times have I? We believe in the perseverance of the saints. Why? We believe in God's perseverance with sinning saints. So God is yet able to graft them in again. Romans 11, 28, they are enemies of the gospel, but they are loved on account of the patriarchs. Because they are loved on account of the patriarchs, we should love them with the love of Christ, with the love of the gospel. So let's leave behind the silly nonsense and get behind gospel mission to the Jews. The website is there. The Facebook page is there, and if you want to email me with any questions, take the difficult ones to your pastor, of course, but if you want to email me with questions, feel free. I don't know if we want to take five minutes of Q&A. We're good for time, but if that was appropriate, I'm happy to take a few minutes, just three to five minutes on any Q&A. The slide that said Savannah on it, was that the person's name or are you active in Savannah, Georgia? I'm trying to think which one it was. It was probably a name. No, it was Susanna. It was Susanna, sorry. No, I'm active in Savannah. I have preached in Savannah. I preach at Kirk of the Isles, and Neil Stewart is a dear friend from Northern Ireland. And I have done a very small mission slot at Independent. But yeah, I need to get back to Savannah sometime soon. Love Savannah. But we don't have any specific missionaries there. Really, there are a lot of mission agencies in the US, some better than others. I take part in a kind of presbytery of Jewish missions, the Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism, which has about 50 or 60 Jewish missions represented. And I go there once a year and interact with Jews for Jesus, Chosen People Ministries, Life and Messiah Ministries, a lot of other Jewish missions. So, you know, there's a lot of missionary activity taking place, and I'm thankful to God for that. I know among my folks here that we hold to maybe a different theology than some of those missions, and we would like to see ourselves established in greater measure. in various locations around. So just pray for that. I'm not sure of the size of the Jewish population in Savannah. It's big historically, I think. I'm led to believe that there certainly has been a historically large Jewish population there. But I think what I'm trying to say to you folks, every major city, think of it. Think of the mission field that is there. Think of the loss that are around us, but think again specifically of the Jewish people. in these various cities, and where are the churches that are there, and what are they doing? I preached in Chicago a few months ago, and in the Reformed Presbyterian Church, I passed by three synagogues on the way to the RP Church. So there are churches that are in specific Jewish areas, and so if they can be stimulated to be praying for the Lord to take the veil from their eyes, and stimulated to be doing something actively, it is your work. I don't know what the size of the Jewish population is in Greenville. I'm led to believe it's not very large. But strangely, it's been a strange providence. There's not very many Jewish people in Arkansas, but the Lord has brought them across our path. One of my board members is in the finance world, and he's in a study group. I can't remember whether I shared this with you last time, but he's in a study group, a finance study group, and he meets three times a year. with the other three members of his study group. The other three guys are all Jewish, and they'll meet in Dallas, or they'll meet in Miami, Florida, or they'll meet up in the Northeast. And he has had wonderful opportunities sharing the gospel. So God brings across our path, as we are burdened, as we are seeking for opportunities, you can be sure that the Lord will bring Jewish people, lost people. Be open to that, be ready to speak and to give a word in season. Unless there's anything pressing. Yes, sir. What is the most common objection a Jewish person would give to the gospel? It's hard to say they're the most often, because as I've said before, where you get two Jews together, you get three opinions. So it's hard to, they will say that themselves, it's hard to get one definite answer. And again, I treat everyone individually, but very often their complaint is the church and church history. And they are very good at quoting Martin Luther to us. And Martin Luther, in the early part of his life, was pretty good, wanted to reach the Jewish people. But he met with such a brick wall after 1,500 years of anti-Semitism, the Jewish people really were very hardened. And Martin Luther flipped. And some of his older stuff is, well, Adolf Hitler used. Luther to justify some of his things. So the Jewish people remember that. They will remember the church fathers and what they have said. They sometimes know church history better than we do. And so that is a big stumbling block. One or the other, the more thinking person might say, well, it can't be Jesus, because when the Messiah comes, there will be world peace. And Jewish people are very philanthropic in trying to promote world peace. because they're looking for a Solomonic era of world peace, and they think Messiah will bring that. And so I had an interaction with a rabbi in Arkansas, and I said, you know, I'm here, I want to be upfront and honest with you, I want Jewish people to come to know Jesus. And he said, well, you know, I'm certainly happy to meet you for coffee, but why do you always say it's Jesus? Because it can't be him, because world peace hasn't come. Now, if I can say also that within that synagogue, I was brought to that synagogue by a Jewish believer who then pointed out another lady in the synagogue congregation, and she said to me, this is so-and-so, she also thinks like us. And I'm wondering, what's going on in the synagogue? Are there believers in the synagogue? Who knows? And just pray that the word would continue to get out. But the biggest issue, I think, is church. But then that's the biggest issue for everyone. Oh, the church is full of hypocrites. I don't want to go to that church, it's full of hypocrites. So how do we deal with that? We deal with it just by showing the reality of a newborn life and showing the love of Christ to lost people. And they need it. They're lonely, they're lost. Jewish people are just like everyone else, only more so, that's what they say. They're like everyone else. They get old, they get sick, they're lonely, they need a friend. Some of our workers are meeting with elderly Jewish people, and we're seeing great fruit from elderly Jewish people. They've lived their lives. The rabbi doesn't have the answer. And now our folks are getting alongside them, and they're open to anything as they're about to cross the river. Any other questions? Alex, among the Christian witnesses' missions to Israel, To what extent is dispensational theology permeated that? I think many of our people will know that dispensational Christians believe that the church and the Jews are eternally separate. They're the ones very focused on rebuilding the temple on Mount Zion where they would presumably offend God by making animal sacrifices. Does that permeate many of the missions movements to Israel? It does, it does. And I think it just confuses things away from the one thing. And I think it has taken a lot of the energy into these other things. But what a wonderful mission to Israel. Let's get them all back to the land, build a temple, start the sacrifices, bring on Armageddon, and they'll all get slaughtered. That's a great move. Yeah. It's a great mission. Let's get them slaughtered. No. And apart from it not being biblical, I think it really has confused Jewish mission. But we're good friends with a lot of the other missions. We have good relationships with a lot of the other missions. But I think my big beef with dispensationalism is that it detracts from the gospel. It takes our attention. And there's a kind of Christian Gnosticism or a present day Gnosticism, it likes to have the secret. Oh, I've got the timeline up on my wall. I like to have the secret of what's going. Did you know that verse in Isaiah, did you know that verse in Isaiah had something to do with the two towers falling? Harbinger series, I don't know if anyone has read the book or DVD. An obscure verse in Isaiah has something to do with 9-11. Sorry, no. Get over yourselves. I'm sure somewhere in the Bible there's a D-B-O, Hebrew, that'll lead to dabbo, that can be used similarly for our more local friends. But what a blessing it is to have a solidly reformed witness. Thank you, Stephen, very much for that respect. Let me just say that as we have our missions conferences, and today we've gotten to interact with and learn about great missionary work, Be praying for Christian witness to Israel. Have it in mind as the Lord would bring Jewish people along your path. It is easier, the more religious they are, the easier we can connect with them because they have the Old Testament. But what a joy it is to do any kindness, particularly the great kindness of sharing the gospel with a Jewish person. Let me say I hope that some of you are being spurred towards full-time missions. This church has a tradition of sending full-time missionaries into the field. We have sent people to Taiwan, to Costa Rica, to Peru, to East Africa. That's all in relatively recent years. Maybe the Lord would call you to full-time missions and you'll see these people in faraway places witnessing the gospel. It would not be a strange thing. And this is what happened in Scotland in 1842 and 1850s. They started having these meetings and then people started going into full-time missions and literally it has changed the world. Also we have a mission to Greenville. and you can interact with some Jewish people, but other types of people on Main Street with our Evangelism Explosion outreach. Perhaps all of this Mission Week emphasis will communicate with you, I can do this, and you can. Well, let's pray together for Stephen and his work. Father, we thank you for Pastor Atkinson, and we thank you for his passion for Jesus the Messiah. that He would be exalted, that He would be proclaimed, and that He would have a harvest in the world. And Lord, we would pray it for His ancient ethnic people of Israel. And we pray that you would give the great thing that Christian witness to Israel needs, and that is the outpouring of your Holy Spirit upon their work. Would you bring the gospel first to the Jews, and then would you save them, would you prosper this work until Jesus comes? We pray in His name, amen. Thank you.