We have some announcements. We have the training on Saturday morning. I think Jeff Phipps is still doing that training for evangelism. And then there's the starting, I believe it is, it will be next weekend. Following two weekends after that, there's the Fort Bend County Fair where there'll be an evangelism booth and table. It's a good opportunity to learn some things about and just giving the gospel. We had some people in church last year who actually, it was the first time they'd ever given the gospel to anybody. And it was really exciting and it always is. So that's a good thing. And then next week, I was communicating some today with Scott Stripling and Scott will be here. And I hope we have a really good turnout that people give up the live stream and come down here. And it's just going to be remarkable. The things he has been involved with and the things that he's done at Shiloh, and then with Joshua's altar. I mean, all of this is just really important. And speaking of that, I've heard that the Route 60, a biblical highway film, has been extended through the weekend. I know it was extended through today, but I think it's extended through the weekend, and I haven't had time to take a look at any of the any of the local theaters to see if that's extended. But again, I just encourage you to go because you learn a lot. I don't want to spoil everything, but I think it's very important, and I'm writing a review on it. People may say, well, I'm going to wait for it to come out, but I don't know how long that will be. really good stuff and fits right in with everything else we've been going on as I talked about the other day. Then we have our all day evangelism event with Builders of Israel. And there's a new, by the way, there's an audio from the podcast, Jew and Gentile podcast. You can sign up for it on Apple, on some of the other podcast platforms. And that is done by our friends in Israel, and the pastor, the two who will be here for the evangelism training. And he interviewed me the other day. He said, well, I've got this quote from William Lane Craig, who is an extremely well-known philosopher, theologian, lives out in California, written I don't know how many books. And he critiqued and in his mind destroyed the pre-trib rapture doctrine in about three minutes, three to five minutes, about, I don't know, maybe eight, nine years ago. And so he wanted me to respond to that and I did. And that's up on the website. He just played the clip for me and 95% of it was, I'd never heard it before, was just off the top of my head, but it was, it was good. And so that's up on the website. So a lot of things to keep up with. How shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Jesus prayed to the Father, sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth. For the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Before we get started, let's have a few moments of silent prayer, and then I will open in prayer. Let's pray. Father, we're thankful for the opportunity we have to come together this evening to learn some things about evangelism, learn some things about evangelism to Jewish friends or co-workers or those that we know as part of our lives and learn some things about the culture of the Jewish culture here in the U.S. So, Father, we pray that you'd help us to understand those things, but also just to get some good understanding of ways to give the gospel. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. All right. Well, on August 24th, I flew up to Philadelphia. and to be part of what is called an encounter event put on by Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. And they have a very good relationship with the Jewish community up there, which is a very saturated Jewish community in New Jersey, Philadelphia, all the way through that corridor up into Western Connecticut. But it was So we had exposure to a lot of things. And that was the, it's sort of a beginning entry level, expose people to the Jewish culture and thinking in terms of how do you talk to somebody who's Jewish about the gospel? And one of the things is I've done a lot of related reading about this over the last couple of weeks. A lot of people point out that for some reason in churches, it's like, well, they're Jewish, let's not, oh, we'll get in an argument with them, we don't want to do that, we'll just, if they're doing door-to-door evangelism, whatever, well, let's skip the Jews. And the scripture talks about there's a reason and there's a biblical basis for taking the gospel to everyone. And it's almost anti-Semitic not to take it to, not to talk to your Jewish friends and neighbors about Yeshua HaMashiach, Jesus the Messiah. A lot of Jews don't even know Jesus is Jewish. There are a lot of misconceptions in the Jewish community about Christianity, and it's surprising, but that's one of them. So we went to this encounter, and these names up here, Greg Allen, myself, Ed Muska, Daryl Nevsker, the four of us were part of a training, a week-long education, continuing education type course in the Holocaust at the Yad Vashem Memorial back in 2016, which was tremendous. It was a Holocaust education seminar. Tommy Ice was in the group as well. And we became friends. We've been good friends ever since. And then Paul Scharf has spoken here several times. He is the area, the regional representative for Friends of Israel in sort of the southwest region. And so Paul was part of the group as well. This is the group. There were only 12 of us, like the disciples. And so it was a really solid group. And it's always good for networking. This is Paul back here in the back behind me. And then this is Bill Bjork. He's pastor of a church in Sun City, Arizona. And his wife, no, his wife didn't come. This is Jim Vogel's wife here. And Jim, he's a head of a group of, or sort of the vice, yeah, sort of a vice chairman of a group of Association of Baptist Churches in North Central New York State. Very conservative, extremely dispensational, very, very enthusiastic about that. He and I are about the same age. And then you have Greg here, and then Ed, and then Daryl, and then this couple from our Mennonites. He's a pastor. He's celebrating his 50th anniversary as a pastor next month. And they can see Canada out the back door of their house. They live in northern, extreme northern Minnesota. I wonder if they ever get get out. But that was our group. So there were 12 of us. We all got along very well, which was good because we put all of us in a 12 passenger van and we were on the road from New Jersey to over to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and then later that night back. So we had extremely close fellowship. Now, the objectives of this was to understand the biblical basis for Jewish evangelism. And I'm going to talk some about that in just a minute. give some ideas related to the need to understand the target audience. In this case, it's Jewish people. But it ought to stand to reason that you always need to know your audience. If you're speaking to anybody, you need to know your audience. If you're doing public speaking, you need to know who you're speaking to, and you need to understand various things about their background, their level of education, their interests, their inclinations, their culture, things of that nature. And as you know, I have spoken to quite a lot of different cultural groups over the years, and I had forgotten about this until not long ago I was thinking about it. I had to take a missions elective my last year in seminary. And you had one extra elective in missions to take to graduate. And the one that was offered that semester was cross-cultural ministry. I had no interest whatsoever in cross-cultural ministry. And so I went through, took that course, fine. I hardly even remember anything about it. But I have had more cross-cultural ministry than almost any three or four of my pastor friends over the last 40 years. So it's important. If you're a missionary and you're going to go to Liberia, or you're going to go to South Africa, or you're going to go to Brazil, or you're going to go to China, you need to go through some training. And every missionary who goes out with a mission organization will be taught a number of things. They'll be taught the language. They'll be taught the history. They'll be taught the culture. They'll be taught the different parts of the culture. Because many cultures have multiple layers. socioeconomic layers, as well as different political layers and other divisions. You go to Africa, you've got tribal differences. You have to understand all these things so that you don't hurt what you're trying to do instead of helping what you're trying to do. And you don't just go and you think, well, I can give them five points of the gospel and that's all that's needed. But they're going to say, well, what do you mean by God? Who's Jesus? How do you know this is true? What do you mean by sin? Where do you get your information? All kinds of questions like that are going to be raised and we have to explain that. We don't want people to think that Christianity is just something you believe and you park your brain in neutral. So we have to understand our audience. We know our audience is very important. And then also just say a couple of things about the training that Friends of Israel has. So the biblical basis for Jewish evangelism. First of all, we are commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ to take the gospel to every nation. Every nation. And when we are at the judgment seat of Christ, we're going to see people there from every nation, every tribe, every tongue, every culture, every skin color, that you can possibly imagine. And it is our responsibility to explain the gospel to people we come in contact with. We are ambassadors for Christ. That's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. We are ambassadors for Christ. And any good ambassador, and we have a lot of really bad ambassadors now, but any good ambassador is going to do the same thing a missionary would do. They're going to get a lot of training on the culture, on the language, on the history, the things you can't do, the things you shouldn't do, the things that might be taken in a wrong way. And they have to be aware of all of those things. And as an ambassador is representing another nation and the government of that nation, so we are representing the Lord Jesus Christ and the God's heavenly government. And we are his representatives to this world. We are both citizens of heaven and we're citizens of the United States or whatever nation you may be from. Matthew 28, 19, and 20, Jesus says, Go therefore and make disciples. That's a key word. He doesn't say go and just witness to them. Make disciples, make students of them. And I think that's an important concept because When Paul begins Romans, he says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel of God, for it is the power of God to salvation to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. And the way Paul uses gospel at the beginning of Romans is not just telling people how to avoid going to the lake of fire. It really relates to the whole realm of training, of discipleship. That's his understanding, and that's what Romans is all about. So it involves doing two things, baptizing them, which stands for getting them saved, phase one salvation, trusting in Christ, justification, and then teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. That's teaching them the whole realm of scripture. So that is a huge task and a huge responsibility. But it is for all of the nations. That doesn't exclude anyone. And so it doesn't exclude Jews. And so we are responsible there for taking the gospel to Jews. Second point is that God still loves Israel and God has not rejected them. There are still still is a role for Jews within the body of Christ. And a lot of people get the idea, well, God just sort of set them aside. In fact, that becomes a foundational concept in Christian anti-Semitism that because they are the ones who, quote, crucified Christ, Everybody was involved in crucifying Christ. The Romans were. The Greeks were. The Jews were. Everybody was. But you can't blame them. But there's been that trend so people don't give the gospel or witness or evangelize. They have their belief in the Old Testament. Let's not rock the boat. And there's all sorts of rationalizations. But in these two verses, Paul says, I say then, has God cast away his people? And then he says, certainly not. It's a very strong denial in the Greek. Certainly not. Absolutely not. And he says, for I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin. And what he's pointing out there is Jews get saved. And it's sort of a surprise to a lot of Jews that all of the disciples were Jews. Jesus was a Jew. Through the first 30 years of Christianity, nearly everybody was Jew, just about. By the time you get to the end of 200, excuse me, by the time you get to 200, estimates are that over 50% of those who identified, said they were Christians, were ethnic Jews. when you realize how many Jews are saved according to the gospel of Acts and the expansion of the early church, because Paul always took the gospel to the synagogue first before he went to the Gentiles, that those many, many Jews trusted in Jesus, in Yeshua as the Messiah. And so did their children, but they did not have this dichotomy in this conflict with the Jewish community. In fact, in the second century up until the early part of the third century, a lot of Christians would go to synagogue on Sunday because they had a meeting place and a lot of places really didn't have a meeting place for Christians. They met in homes. They would go to synagogue on Sunday and they would go to church on, I mean, they'd go to synagogue on Saturday and go to go to church on Sunday. Church on Sunday was usually at night. Now why would that be? Because the Roman Empire was not impacted by Christianity yet and so they didn't get Sunday off as a day off. So people worked. So they couldn't meet to worship the Lord until unless it was early in the morning, which is true in some cases, or late at night. So God still loves Israel. Paul says, God has not cast away his people whom he foreknew. Or do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah? How he pleads with God against Israel. So God has not cast him away. So why do Christians avoid Jewish missions? In fact, studies have shown that there are a lot of Protestant churches, and I'm not talking about the liberal ones, but a lot of evangelical churches don't support anybody who's doing missionary work among the Jewish people. Third, a remnant of Israel will believe during the church age. We don't know how large or small that remnant will be. There are quite a few, I'm sure. Romans 11 5 even so then at this present time meaning the church age there is a remnant according to the election of grace. A fourth reason is that the body of Christ is not complete without the believing remnant of Israel. First Corinthians 12 13 Paul defines the body of Christ as containing Jews and Greeks, Gentiles. For by one spirit we're all baptized into one body, all meaning Jew and Gentile together, whether Jew or Greek, whether slave or free, and have all been made to drink into one spirit." We've studied this in Ephesians 2 and Ephesians 4 many times on Sunday morning. So to just break down what I'm doing this evening is I want us to understand the basic divisions of Judaism. If you're going to talk to Jews, you need to understand that they are usually part of different groups, different denominations, we would say, about Protestants. Then we're going to look at the kavod. This is the ultra-Orthodox. We spent some time with them on the first day that we were in New York. Third, we're going to look at briefly at hindrances to Jewish evangelism. The Holocaust, this weighs heavy on the thinking of a lot of Jews. How could a loving God allow six million Jews to be murdered by the Germans in such a horrendous way? How can we think that God is loving? That's a major stumbling block for many Jews. Another is Another hindrance to Jewish evangelism is anti-Semitism. It's Christian anti-Semitism. There's anti-Semitism going back to Haman and the story of Esther, the episodes there. But one of the horrific blights on Christianity and the body of Christ is that starting in about the late 3rd century, 4th century, you had the beginnings of Christian anti-Semitism. and that this really expanded by the time you get to about 1000 AD 1000. Then we'll look at the mission and available study programs of Friends of Israel and then just some concluding things. And I want to go through what I will call, the one has called, not me, it's not original with me, the Jerusalem Road. Remember the Roman road? That was an evangelism tool. Some of you may have learned where you start with Romans 3.23. And then you go to Romans 6.23 and Romans 5.8 and all verses in Romans. Well, I'm going to go through an entire gospel presentation with you tonight using nothing but the Old Testament. And then we'll wrap it up. Okay. Understanding basic divisions in Judaism, what are the key terms? Well, first of all, I have a link there to the jewishvirtuallibrary.org. jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Anything and everything you want to know about Jewish history, you can find there. It is a wealth of information. I have gone there numerous times, read lengthy articles on all kinds of different subjects. And so I used their definitions for the different groups. So we have basically four different groups, the Orthodox group, the Conservative group, the Reform group, the Reconstructionist group. And then I'm going to define Kabbalah and one other term for you. OK, so we're just going to look on this first slide to Orthodox. Orthodox is basically traditional Judaism following the destruction of the temple. in A.D. 70 then Jews that survived got together at a place along the coast south of Tel Aviv called Jamnia and there they restructured Judaism. Now everybody who gathered there were Pharisees. They were the only ones who actually had a belief in the authority of the Torah and the Old Testament and they restructured it and there were some problems with what they restructured but that's they're basically they're the descendants of Pharisaism. So modern Orthodox Judaism is just the modern, they're the modern descendants of the Pharisees. And so the focus is on tradition, the focus is on following the law or the principles, the traditions of the fathers that the rabbis laid down. Now the big key word in all through Judaism is tradition. If you've never watched the musical Fiddler on the Roof, you need to watch it. Go back and watch it again if you've already seen it and it's been some years. And it's a fascinating film. I mentioned this last week with pastors online on Friday morning and I got blank stares from all the young ones. This is a really, it's a great musical. It's often reenacted as a drama on stage and it's good. But you'll learn, you'll see a picture of what Jewish life was like in Eastern Europe about 120, 130 years ago. So that's orthodoxy. So we're gonna use that as our benchmark. You have orthodoxy here. And since things are reversed, I'm gonna go this way for the left. So you have orthodoxy and it basically sees itself as the continuation of the beliefs and practices of normative Judaism as accepted by the Jewish nation at Mount Sinai. But all that is seen through the lens of of the tradition of modern Judaism, not biblical Judaism. OK, so that's orthodoxy. Well, by the time you get through into the Enlightenment period, And I'm going to go to reform next, because I should have reorganized this. Reform Judaism starts next. And that's a movement and a reaction to orthodoxy, because in orthodoxy, everything is done in Hebrew. And even though they had Hebrew classes and other things, a lot of people didn't know Hebrew and they couldn't follow the prayers and everything. They're just sitting there As I've experienced many times, going to a synagogue where they do all the prayers in Hebrew and you're just sort of listening, thinking about whatever spinning wool. And so people got tired of it. And so there was a reaction in the time period of what we usually refer to as the Enlightenment. But the Enlightenment comes late to the Jewish community. And so in Germany, as the Enlightenment takes hold in the Jewish community, Moses Mendelssohn, who is the grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn, who is a great well-known composer, was a philosopher and theologian. And he reacts to everything. He says, well, all of that is just ancient history, doesn't mean anything for us. And he basically goes full bore liberal way off to, let's go to your left, way off to the left. Well, some people over the next 30 or 40 years couldn't throw everything away. So they wanted to be a little more conservative. Notice the term conservative is in relation to the extreme liberalism of Reform Judaism. So that is what we're going to see. So Reform Judaism differs from the other major movements in that it views both the oral and written laws as a product of human hands. Specifically, it views the Torah as divinely inspired but written in the language of the time in which it was given, which means that they can do just about anything with it as they interpret it. The laws reflect their times but contain many timeless truths. The Reform Movement stresses the retention of the key principles of Judaism. As for the practice, it strongly recommends individual study of the traditional practices, however, The adherent is free to follow only those practices that increases the sanctity of their relationship to God. In other words, everybody's doing what's right in their own eyes. OK, so let's go back here to the previous slide. Now, we talked about orthodoxy and reform. Let me go back. There we go. Then the conservatives were not as liberal as reformed. Some use the term conservadox. I know people, in fact, I had lunch with one yesterday who's kind of between conservative and orthodox, but because of his profession and many other things, he can't keep kosher all the time, everything else, he's sort of in the middle, and they're called conservadox. Conservative Judaism attempts to combine a positive attitude toward modern culture, acceptance of critical secular scholarship. What is critical secular scholarship? Moses didn't live. Joshua didn't live. Moses didn't write the Pentateuch. It's the result of German higher criticism. The German higher critics were anti-Semitic. So they're trying to destroy the whole historical foundation of the Old Testament because they realize that's the foundation for Christianity in the New Testament. They all hated God. So they have accepted those presuppositions. And there are a lot of problems with that. But that's the conservative view. Okay? And then we have a really, really ultra-liberal group called Reconstructionists. And I'm not sure when they developed, but there's not that many of them. A lot of people don't even list them in their list of Jewish groups. But they are, you know, anything goes. You can be a Buddhist and a Reconstructionist or a Hindu and a Reconstructionist, whatever. Kabbalah is just Jewish mysticism. It refers to the whole range of Jewish mysticism and focuses on one of the most famous works of Kabbalah is the Zohar. So this is it. But the big thing we're getting to is Tikkun Olam, which means world repair. We are going to repair the world. And that has come to be almost identical with social justice. So now you understand why a lot of Jews have such an affinity for liberalism and Marxism. And they did, coming out of the Haskalah, which is the term for the Jewish Enlightenment, and they were in Eastern Europe in the late 1800s, And they absorbed a lot of Marxist ideas. And then because of the anti-Semitism of Russia and the persecution, they left and brought all those ideas to America and to Israel. And a lot of those men that came here, if you study the founders of the major unions, they were Jewish. And they came right there. Either they or their parents came directly from Eastern Europe, bringing their Marxist baggage with them. But this is the key idea. We need to repair the world. Why do we need to repair the world? We need to repair the world because it's broken. Now, that takes us to understanding Kabbad. So we took off on the second morning. We went on the first morning rather, and we drove over to Crown Heights in Brooklyn, which is the promised land for the Jews. And we went to the main headquarters of Kavad, which is an ultra-Orthodox group. When I was in Ukraine, and when I was also in Russia earlier before, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Kavad went in and bought up all the old Jewish synagogues. And so all the synagogues in Ukraine, in Eastern Europe, and in Russia are all run by Kavad, which is an ultra-Orthodox group. You know them because they have long beards, they wear the hats, the dark suits, everything. So we went to one of their libraries, and this is all of us sitting here at the table. And we are listening to this rabbi at the other end, who's one of their top spokespeople. And here's Paul Scharf shaking his hand. Later, we went into their main synagogue, which is usually just referred to as 770, which is the number of its address on the street there in Crown Heights. And so here we all are sitting there listening to him. Here are just a couple of other pictures. This is the yeshiva that's right next door to the kavod seminary. And I'll show you a couple of other pictures there. Here we are sitting at the table, listening to him talk. It was really interesting. It was a couple of guys asked questions that presupposed a biblical knowledge, and he was stumped. One of the misconceptions of a lot of Christians is that Jews know the Bible. No, they don't. The rabbis don't know the Bible. They don't study the Bible. They study Talmud or Mishnah. Mishnah was the codification of the so-called oral law by Judah the Prince about 200 A.D. And then the rabbis debated and wrote commentaries and things about the Mishnah. So the Talmud was put together. The Talmud is a commentary basically on the Mishnah. And that's the foundation for modern Judaism. It's all about what do the rabbis teach us about our tradition and how we are to live our lives. So this is it. Now I'm going to play a video here for you and you're going to have a little fun with this. See what. The only way Earth can become godly is if earthy beings by their free choice choose to be godly. To be godly means to serve his need. Any of this making sense? So I have to ask the big question then. This was an encounter group back in June. How does that thinking justify the Holocaust? How does what happened historically to the Jewish nation, the Jewish people, She's asking a question about the Holocaust. Don't worry about not understanding her. I've listened to her many times. I don't have a clue. Just listen to his answer. It's a very good question. It's the elephant in the room. How you can reconcile that. Yeah. OK, so let's think of it post-World War II, looking back at it. That's the most dangerous part. While you're in it, you're busy. But when you look back at a tragedy, that's when depression sets in. So how do we look back at it? It sounds something like this. Somebody hires you and says, I need you to clean up my kitchen. So I need you to clean up my kitchen. You say, oh, sure. They take you into the kitchen and you take one look and you say, oh, my God. This is impossible. This is such a mess. You can't clean this thing up. It's beyond help. But then you calm down, you check it out a little bit, and you say, OK, you know, you start a little here, do a little of this, and eventually, yeah, we'll get it cleaned up. We were put into a world that needs fixing. It's a world that is mortal. It's a world where there is evil, the wicked prosper, the righteous suffer. It's a messed up world. That's what we're here to fix. So in ordinary circumstances, people don't get along so well. You try to make peace between them. You fix. Every now and then, we run into a darkness or an evil in this world that's, oh, no. This is beyond repair. Chuck it and start all over again. The Holocaust is one of those events. The world goes evil on you because it's still not fixed. So for a generation, we were like, OK, we quit. Can't do this. You cannot make a world that includes a Holocaust into a godly place. It's too far gone. You can't make such evil become good. So this world is too messed up. We can't fix it. When the temple was destroyed by the Babylonians, the first temple, we had the same feeling. Hopeless. Hopeless. We're already in the promised land. We already have peace. We already have a temple. And that gets destroyed? This is a hopeless world. We can't fix it. So we turn to God and you say, we quit. You fix it for a generation. Eventually, we heal. And we say, all right, let's fix it. The amazing thing is the Holocaust was not that long ago, relatively speaking, right? And everyone's excited about fixing the world. You think you can fix a world that has a Holocaust? That has a Hitler and a Stalin? Well, yeah. If that's the job, let's do it. We've recovered. We're going back to work. So that is the thinking. The thinking is not, God hates us. He's punishing us. This job is a little harder than we thought it was going to be. It's not an easy job. Things happen that are very discouraging. And you've got to be strong, get over the shock, and go back to fixing the world. Because the worse it is tells you how good it can be. Can you imagine if you turn all that evil into goodness? Like terrorists. who blow themselves up. Can you imagine if you took that devotion and turned it positive? Awesome. That kind of dedication to goodness? Oh, that would be something. So if that's part, yeah. So we didn't think it was possible for a generation. Now we're thinking. If you enjoyed this conversation or this topic and you're looking for more information or you want to hear it again from another angle, there is a way to do it. All right. How'd you like that? What'd you learn? Now, this guy is extremely popular. He's got millions of followers on YouTube. Okay. So, and he's reaching people across the spectrum, not just Jews, because in Kabbad, they're, they're evangelistic in their view. It doesn't, you don't have to leave whatever religion, as long as we all have unity and we all come together and we can repair the world. Now, who do you think will have a message like that? Yeah, that's what I thought. I said, man, I'm listening to the Antichrist here. That's exactly, he's going to be winsome. He's going to be nice. This guy's extremely popular. And that's why I don't want to use his name, because I don't want that to be part of a Google search on him. But that's what it is, and it all works. We can repair the world. What did he say? He said it more clearly for our group. He said, why did God put us in this broken world? Well, wait a minute. God didn't put us in a broken world. Later on, he actually made the statement that in the Garden of Eden, that's when Cain and Abel were born. What? So they don't really know the Bible. And in all the realms of Judaism, there's no such thing as Adam's original sin or total depravity. And so this is a real problem. They don't really understand the sinfulness of sin. And if you don't believe the man is basically bad, then he can be improved. and made righteous by his own works. And if one can, then a collective group such as a nation or country can, and we can repair the world and we can bring in a state. And he told us, he said, now God needs us because God needs us to repair the world so that he can feel comfortable coming back and the Messiah won't come until we've repaired the world enough so that they're comfortable for the Messiah to come back. Now, this relates to ultra-Orthodox, but some of these ideas find their way through the thinking of a lot of Jews. So as I said, you have to know your audience. Now, I'm fortunate. A lot of the Jewish people that I spend a lot of time with are politically conservative, and they don't go along with where some of this language takes you. So anyway, so we wanted to look at that, and it gives us a good understanding. We spent some time there. Then after that, we went over to We went over to Lower East Side. We went to Katz's Deli, which isn't what it used to be. And then we went to another synagogue that is the Bialystok Synagogue, which was from the village of Bialystok in Poland, originally got it. The building was originally a Methodist church, and they bought it in the late 1700s. It's one of the oldest congregations, Jewish congregations, in New York. We had a wonderful lecture on all of that. But when we look at the problem with Jewish evangelism, he's talking about the Holocaust, calls it the white elephant in the room. How do we address that? And so we have to understand something about the Holocaust and how severe it was. Now, we went to a small museum, the Esther Robb Museum, R-A-A-B, that is part of the Jewish Community Center in a town in New Jersey. And it was smaller than half of this section of the auditorium, okay? But I mean, it was packed with stuff. And I don't know how well you can see this from there, but there's little red dots all over this map. This is Germany. This area over here, this is Switzerland. This is Austria. This area over here is kind of Poland, and then gets over into what is now Belarus. and this is Ukraine off to the right more. And so all through this area, which is called the Pale of Settlement, this is where most of the Jews lived, all the way up to the Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, there were a tremendous number of Jews. And all of these circles with the black square, those were death camps. And then all of the other places were concentration camps or where they were tortured. You had six Nazi death camps. Treblinka, over 925,000 were murdered. And they just brought them in and took them straight to the gas chambers. At Majdanek, over 95,000, somewhere between 95,000 and 130,000 were murdered. Death camps were, Auschwitz was a death camp. Its purpose existed to just systematically murder as many Jews as you possibly could. Now, not all concentration camps were death camps. All concentration camps also had gas chambers and other things, but their purpose of existence was not to just slaughter as many Jews as possible. Belzec, where 434,500 were murdered, Chelmno, where 172,000 were murdered, Sobibor, where 167,000 were murdered, and Auschwitz-Birkenau, which over one million were murdered. And you had this kind of propaganda, and here's a list that they had of all the different assaults against the Jews between 1933 and 1945. This is an example of the anti-Semitic publications that the Nazis turned out. A lot of them were published by Julius Streicher, some by others. And when you look at this, it's just raising questions about you know these were books written for children and they're painting the evil Jew and how can a good God or a loving God allow this to happen that's the question that they have how can a loving God and you look at older generations and Mitch Glaser will be here and he had most of his family was still in Eastern Europe and they were all killed in the Holocaust all murdered in the Holocaust and a guy that we use in Israel that his mother got out of Germany after she finished her doctoral work, and he has her medical PhD, and it has the big Nazi eagle with the swastika on it. And she got out. His father had gotten out just a couple of years before that, but everybody else in the family was murdered. And he said, No one that he grew up with had a grandfather or grandmother or an aunt or an uncle or cousins, unless they happened to be a second or third generation in Israel. So everybody that was older became everybody else's grandfather, things like that. It was absolutely horrendous. And so here we have a picture of, you know, the Jew with the hooked nose and with the big fat lips. And he's giving candy to the kids. And he's saying, you can go with me and we'll have a lot of fun. But you can't tell everybody. That's what the caption is. And so, of course, it's accusing the Jews. These are child abusers. And on the right, you have this doctor looking quite evil with his eyes the way they are. And she's coming to see the doctor and He's going to do all kinds of unmentionable things to her. So this is the kind of propaganda that was out there painting all of these evil pictures about the Jews. Here is another shoe display. I've seen this in a number of Holocaust museums. All of these shoes belong to people who were alive who were murdered in the Holocaust. And this is just a small, small portion. Just at the Washington, D.C. National Holocaust Museum, it's just an unbelievably huge pile. And all of them died. And that's not, you got six million, you got 12 million Jews, six million Jews. Pastor Martin Niemoller in Germany said, very famous quote, first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me." Think about that. We're not far from that in the way we're going in this country. During COVID, there were, in some states, there were, kids were encouraged to rat out their parents if they weren't wearing a mask or if they didn't get vaccinated, things like that. We're just around the corner from this kind of thing taking place in this country. So the Holocaust is a major problem. And the issue in the Holocaust, how can a good God do this? And you have to understand the biblical doctrine of suffering. Why does God allow unjustified, horrible suffering to take place? And that's the book of Job. How do you answer that question? Simply, easily, because you're talking to somebody who's not a believer, explaining the doctrine of evil in the Bible. A couple of books. escaped from Sobibor fairly recent which is Sobibor was one of the death camps in Poland and then Michael Brown is a messianic Jew and he's written this book Our Hands Are Stained With Blood came out I think in the early nineties but I just recently read it and it is a good treatment of Christian anti-semitism through the ages. So how did this Christian anti-Semitism gets started. Well, this wasn't really the first part. It starts getting ramped up in the 12th century, in 1144, what is called the blood libel. It takes place in Norwich, England, where some little boy disappeared, and they accused the Jewish community of taking him and killing him to use his blood to make matzah for Passover. That's called the blood libel. And this surfaces again and again and again and again. through the centuries, this idea of blood libel. In 1290, so 150 years later, King Edward I of England expelled all of the Jews from England. So there's no Jews in England until Cromwell in about 1550 to 1560. 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of Spain, who sent Columbus to go find India in 1492. That same year they expelled all of the Jews out of Spain. They were Sephardic Jews. Ashkenazi are more German Jews, that's Eastern Jews, but a lot of these Sephardic Jews went north into France and into Germany and into Holland. Others converted under threat of death. They became known as conversos or new Christians. And as persecution of even the conversos took place, they hired out to go with the explorers, to go with Magellan, and to go with Columbus, and to go with Cabasa de Vega, what's his name, Cabasa de Vega, and many others, Pizarro. And in fact, but there was reality that set in. And in 1535, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, attacked moslems in tunisia because they were having naval victories in the mediterranean and taking more territory and they took more territory in northern africa so charles the fifth took an army from uh... from europe down there defeated the moslems in tunisia but after the defeat it's just that that the troops just go wild killing every moslem and jew they can find uh... in the city where where they go they're just slaughtered In the early 1500s, despite the ban of Jews in Spain, Charles V realized they can count. They can take care of, they can administer. They are able to, he's losing money. They've had all this exploration in Mexico under Cortes and many others. But they're losing money. because the administrators are corrupt. They don't know how to do bookkeeping or accounting or anything. So he takes these Jews, knowing full well they're secretly practicing Judaism, and he sends about 50 or 60 of them to Jamaica and turns Jamaica into a Jewish colony. And he's going to run his empire in the New World from that base. And there was another place like that down in Brazil. So they couldn't make it without the Jews. In the 1500s, New Amsterdam is founded, which is now New York. And the head of the government there was Peter Stuyvesant, who was a rabid anti-Semitic. And so some of these Jews that escaped from Brazil came up there. He didn't want to let him in. And he went back to the Dutch East India Company and asked what he should do with them. And they said, keep them. They're good. But most of them left and except for two, which really established the base for the economy and business in the colony before the Dutch turned it over to the British. But that established Jewish presence in North America. In the 1800s there was an increase of pogroms against the Jews. In every decade, especially in Russia, in Eastern Europe, hundreds of thousands killed, slaughtered, tortured, raped, just horrific. And they began to leave and go either into Western Europe or to the United States or to Israel. At the end of the 19th century, a French artillery officer Alfred Dreyfuss is accused of selling secrets to the Russians. He doesn't even think of himself as a Jew, totally assimilated, and thinks of himself as a Frenchman first and a Jew second. And there is a trial and the latent anti-Semitism of the French just comes out so heavily that Theodor Herzl, who's a reporter for a newspaper from Vienna, realizes the Jews aren't safe. They're not safe here. No matter how they assimilate, no matter how they compromise, they're not safe in anywhere. There needs to be a Jewish national homeland. So he goes home and he writes a book called Altanoyaland, calling for the Jews to return to their national homeland. There is an organization called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Era. And they have a definition of anti-Semitism that is one that is used around the world today. And it's still a working definition. Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews which may be expressed as a hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and or their property. toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. Non-Jews would be those who support Israel and support the Jews, in other words, most of y'all. So that's called anti-Semitism. And they go on to say manifestations might include the targeting of the State of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collective. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic. What they're saying is it's not anti-Semitic to critique the government or criticize the government of Israel to a certain extent. But if you're singling Israel out and that's the only country that you ever criticize, then you're moving towards anti-Semitism. I've heard a lot of Christians ask that question. Well, I'm supposed to love the Jews and be pro-Israel, but I don't agree with what they're doing. Neither do most of them. You always have to remember that wherever there are two Jews, there's three opinions, and they will argue about all of them. I mean, that's a Jewish proverb. That's not a racist statement. So I'm not even about to try to understand Jewish politics. And this website is holocaustremembrance.com, one word, holocaustremembrance.com, under resources, and you can read various things there. about their working definition of anti-Semitism. Now, you can't read this. I know that. But I just wanted to go through this and just list. These are all the different things that they identify. And this isn't all of what's on their website. They just have a huge list of different things that would qualify for anti-Semitism. But there's, of course, the liberals come back with their definition. And this is what the Biden administration wants to use. And it has no teeth in it. Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility, or violence against Jews as Jews. And this is what he includes in his definition, and it says too little and ignores anti-Zionism and actions against the Jewish state because it's Jewish. People hate the Jewish state because it's the Jewish state. But Biden's definition is so shallow and superficial that it doesn't follow that. So that's the Jerusalem definition. How did I shift way over? I don't know. I didn't realize I'd gone that far. And then there's critical race theory. Now this is really, really important. Critical race theory also targets Jews. And under critical race theory, Jews are white. Nobody's ever put them in the classification of white, but under critical race theory, Jews are white and privileged. And so therefore, They are just as guilty as white people. And universities in Southern California, universities in the Northeast, Chicago, where you have a lot of observant Jews who will wear their prayer shawl, the men will wear their prayer shawl, wear hats, wear their kippah, they are afraid to do that now because of the atmosphere on the campuses of New York University, other universities in New York and other places. And so they're excluded from, if it's known that they're Jewish, they can't get into clubs, they can't get scholarships, they can't get special academic assignments. And so that is taking place today. And so the progressive left, which is dominated by a lot of Jews, demonizes Israel and will demonize Jews. Accepting anti-Semitism then, which a lot of people will do, they'll give it sort of a wink, wink, nod, nod, And it trickles down into local governments. It trickles down into school boards and curriculum. And then last of all, we have to realize that anti-Zionism, if you're against the state of Israel, then you're anti-Semitic. I don't get into that argument anymore. It is so obvious that if you want to argue about it, I don't want to lower myself to a 20 level IQ. Anti-Zionism says the Jewish people do not have a right to their historic homeland. They cannot have a right to a home base and a home nation where they can be free from persecution. And that is anti-Semitic. So there's a lot of websites that you can go to. APAC, Stand With Us. You can go to standwithus.tv. We'll get a copy of this and put it in the blurb on the note for the message so people can get here. You can go to JNS.org. The president and CEO of JNS.org, Jewish News Service, spoke to us when we were in Israel this last year. I heard him speak here in Houston last spring. And one of their top editorialists is Jonathan Tobin, someone to read. Another is Honest Reporting. And Gil Hoffman is the founder and CEO there. and he came and spoke to us and we exchange emails fairly frequently and that is a tremendous source. Anytime anybody publishes something that is wrong about Israel, they're after them tooth and nail. And they have forced almost all the major newspapers to recant. Of course, they put their recantation on the back page somewhere where nobody can read it, but at least they get something done. Defining critical race theory, there's the There's the link there to go read about that. Now I'm going to get out of this for just a minute because I wanted to go to that, that thing. And this is an excerpt from that article. In the critical social justice paradigm, Jews have never been seen as white by those for whom being white is a moral good. In other words, a lot of white people are just racist against Jews and they don't consider them white. But they are now seen as white by those for whom whiteness is an unmitigated evil." And you'll read the rest of this article and just be floored at what's happening in the universities around this country in relation to critical race theory. So I recommend that you read that, not before you go to sleep at night. All right. So these are the links. Friends of Israel. Friends of Israel Equip is a free resource for learning and engaging the scriptures. They have these online courses now. In fact, I've talked to a number of different people who are missionaries of one type or another who have gone through this training online or they went to New Jersey and went through the training with FOI. They also have Bridges, which is to teach people how to build bridges those in the Jewish community. The trouble with a lot of Jewish evangelism is it builds the bridges but it never gets the cars driven across. You've got to know how to present the gospel. And then the encounter program that I was on, our group was mostly pastors, except for a couple of wives, but they do this about three or four times a year for just anybody that wants to know how to be able to have more of an involvement. And Daryl's, here's a picture, Daryl's sitting over here. And Daryl's in north central Montana. It's 250 miles from his house to the nearest synagogue. And there's more cattle than Jews in Montana. But he loves the Jewish people just tremendously. And he's gone through all these courses. He pastors a church. He gets up every Sunday morning, drives 200 miles to preach, and then drives home. That's dedication. How do you go about, I'm going to take 10 minutes, we're going to run through this gospel down the Jerusalem road. So how do you lay this out biblically? First of all, establish the fact that God created us. It's the creator-creature distinction that is fundamental. God is the creator, Isaiah 43.15 and Isaiah 45.12. Isaiah 43.15 says, I am the Lord your God, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Who is God? He is the King of Israel. He is the Creator of Israel. He is the Holy One. He is the Creator, Isaiah 45, 12, I have made the earth and created man on it. I, my hands, stretched out the heavens and all their hosts I have commanded. So we start with the Creator. God wants us to know him personally. Jeremiah 24 7. Some of this is just good to use with anybody you're sharing the gospel with. God wants us to know him personally. Jeremiah 24 7. Then I will give them a heart to know me that I am the Lord and they shall be my people and I will be their God for they shall return to me with their whole heart. God is not an impersonal force. He wants a close relationship with the Jewish people. They are his people. Second, God cannot have a personal relationship with us because we are sinful and separated from him. These passages are very important to understand. First of all, the Old Testament clearly teaches that we are all sinful and separated from God. This is Ecclesiastes 7.20. For there is not a just man. Now that's the New King James translation. But the Hebrew word is tzaddik, and you need to learn that word. In the Jewish culture, doing good deeds, giving to charity, is all called tzedakah. We think of that word as righteousness or justice, but they think of that as doing righteous deeds, okay? That is an important thing to bring out when you're, I call it taking them down the righteousness road. Ecclesiastes 7.20, for there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin. Psalm 14.2, the Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there are any who understand who seek God. They have all turned aside. They have together become corrupt. There is none who does good. No, not one. That's quoted in Romans chapter two. Isaiah 64, 6, so important, most of you know the first part of this. But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses, our tzedakah, all of our charitable deeds, all of our good deeds are what? Like filthy rags. Well, if all of our good deeds are like filthy rags, how do we get righteousness? That's the question to ask, to have them think about how do we get righteousness? Second aspect of this question or this statement is the consequences of our sin is death, which is separation from God. We go to Genesis 2, 22, 17. In the day that you eat of the fruit, you will surely die. And after they did, God drove them out of the garden and placed the cherubs at the east end of the Garden of Eden and a flaming sword, which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life were separated from God. Ezekiel 18, 20 says, the soul that sins shall die. That's the death penalty, spiritual death. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. But what about our righteousness? It's filthy rags. How do you get righteous? Isaiah 59 1 behold the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from God. Isaiah talking to the Jewish nation and your sins have hidden his face from you. Third point God does not accept our own efforts to remove our own sin. We see that in Isaiah 64, 6, I talked about a minute ago. If all of our righteous deeds are filthy rags, we can't do anything to clean ourselves up. Even our best deeds are filthy. Jeremiah 2, 22, for though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before me, says the Lord God. Fourth, because God loves us, he himself provided the way for our sins to be removed. God loves us, according to Jeremiah 31 3. The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love. It's not over with. Therefore, with loving kindness, I have drawn you. Second, God himself provided the way for our sins to be removed. Isaiah 43, 25. I, even I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. Fifth, God's provision required a blood sacrifice. Leviticus 17, 11. For the life of the flesh is in the blood. And I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. But that wasn't sufficient. Animal sacrifices provided only a temporary atonement or covering for our sin. Leviticus 16, 34, it had to be done once a year on the day of atonement, which is next Monday. Yom Kippur. And on Yom Kippur, That's when they pray that they have enough good points to overcome their bad points so they can be blessed by God in the coming year. Seventh, God provided a permanent removal of our sin through the promised Messiah. How does He do that? The Messiah died in our place. This is taught in Isaiah 53, 4-6 and 11-12. Isaiah 53, 4, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. That's how the Jews looked at Jesus. God rejected him. But they were wrong. Verse 5, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes, that is, from the whipping, we are healed. Isaiah 53.6, the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Seventh point, God provided a permanent removal of our sin. because the Messiah rose from the dead. This was what we see in Isaiah 53, 10 and 12. It pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days, that is God will prolong his days. God is going to bring him back from the dead. And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Verse 12, therefore I will divide him a portion with the great and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul unto death and he was numbered with the transgressors and he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. Psalm 1610, for you will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will you allow your Holy One to seek corruption. Now, Peter quotes that on the day of Pentecost, and we need to use it in that way. So you need to read Acts 2 where it's quoted. Seventh, Isaiah 5310, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. I already covered that. Next slide. So this is Acts 2.29 here. I'm going to skip that. You can go read it. Point eight, if all our righteousnesses are filthy rags, Isaiah 64.6, and we are all sinners separated from God because of our sins, how does anyone obtain righteousness that God will accept? First of all, Abraham declared righteous by God. Like Abraham, we can be declared righteous by God if we believe his promise of salvation. Genesis 15, 6, Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him or imputed to him for righteousness. Not because of what he did, because the law wasn't even given yet, but because he believed God. Habakkuk 2, 4, behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him, but the just shall live by faith. That doesn't mean they live every day by faith. He's talking about getting life. It's by faith. That's what Abraham did. Isaiah 53 10. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see a seed. He shall prolong his days and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He that is the Lord shall see the labor of his that is the servant's soul. the Lord looks at the labor of the servant on the cross and be satisfied by his knowledge that is the knowledge of the servant by his knowledge my righteous servant shall make righteous the many so how do you get righteousness by faith in the promise of salvation on what basis on the death of the servant who paid, who made the many righteous." Same word, tzaddik. You've got to walk the righteousness road. For he, the righteous servant, shall bear their iniquities. Further, as with Moses and David, God wants us to believe in the Messiah. Deuteronomy 18, 15, Moses said, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren, him you shall hear. Psalm 2, 7, I will declare the decree. The Lord said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. The father has a son. He's eternal. He's fully God. And he came to earth. Psalm 2, 12, kiss the son. lest he be angry and you perish in the way. When his wrath is kindled but a little, blessed are all those who put their trust in him." And Psalm 110.1 is messianic. And the Lord says to my Lord, both are divine. Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people shall be volunteers in the days of your power, in the beauties of holiness. From the womb of the dawn, I have begotten you." That's the best translation. It's in the Septuagint. The Masoretic text was corrupted by the Masoretes to take away the Messianic implication. Point nine, the Messiah is Yeshua of Nazareth. And then you can go through some prophecies. You can go through, he's from the tribe of Judah. He's a descendant of David. He was born in the city of David in Bethlehem. He would be born of a virgin. Just go through, learn about five or six prophecies and take them through that. And then last, is there anything, ask them, is there anything that would keep you from entering into a personal relationship with God right now by trusting in the finished work of Yeshua HaMashiach. That's it. I base that on what Bruce Scott, who is our director of our group, has written up. I added a few things. I like the Righteousness Road. I developed that a number of years ago. And I like some of the other things that he had, so I just kind of blended those those things together but it's important that we understand that that this is just something we have to have in our tool belt a way that we have been equipped by our pastor to be able to present the gospel and to look for those opportunities to talk to them and you know because of this film that came out this this last week I've had some opportunities to do some amazing things because some of my Jewish friends are beginning to think that maybe the Bible is true, something they never considered before. So I'm hoping that we can develop that. It's going to take time. You can't be in a hurry. You lay down one thing, then another. And it takes time, it takes prayer, and it takes doing a little homework. You can't just pull out your gospel gun and say, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. They probably heard that a hundred times. They don't know what it means. You have to explain these things to people. There are a lot of Christians who don't know what it means. There are PhDs, I can cite you a whole list of PhDs who aren't sure what it means from good evangelical conservative schools. So we have to learn this stuff. Okay, let's pray. Father, thank you for this time we have tonight. Encourage us. Help us to understand, believe, memorize these scriptures because they're good for us to have in our tool belt. And we need to understand how to give the gospel not just to Jews but to anyone. And all of these verses work with anyone. It doesn't matter their background. So Father, help us to grow strong in our faith, grow strong in our skills in the spiritual life, and continue to walk in a way that glorifies and honors you. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.