Proselytizing Broadcasting in Israel?

|This is an expanded version of this JNS column|

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There are Christians who still seek to convert Jews despite knowing well that most Jews view this activity as disrespectful and some term it as soul-snatching. 

A recent effort to reach out to Jews in Israel is that of 
Here is the story in Haaretz; and in the Jewish Press; and in the Jerusalem Post.
Vic has responded.

This group has attempted this before as attested to a 2006 Hebrew item I found and here is one from the Los Angeles Times in 2012:

The dueling studios are part of an aggressive push by U.S. evangelical broadcasters seeking to gain a stronger foothold in the holy city. Their presence not only offers boasting rights with American viewers and contributors, but also — and more controversially — a platform for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to Jews in Israel.

And today we read

God TV Responds to Critics: ‘We’re Not Trying to Convert Jews; We Just Want Them to Accept Jesus as the Messiah’

That is a bit of sleight-of-rhetoric. It is the Jews for Jews line, that you can be Jewish and still accept Jesus which we cannot.

God TV CEO Ward Simpson admitted he knew he was in the wrong, saying

he regretted that “some of the language I used was offensive to some folks and maybe not in keeping with what we can and cannot say on the network.”...At the same time, he refused to rule out missionizing. “The subject of preaching about Jesus is a touchy one, and we do understand that, and we have to be sensitive to it,” he said. “But that’s what we do, and that’s who we are. We’re Christians, and we’re called to go into the world and preach the gospel. That’s what we’re trained to do, and that’s what we’re doing.”

I will soon deal with that supposed obligation but first, we need know that not all pro-Israel or Christian Zionists accept that duty.

A formulation that is more considerate of the reality of the circumstances in 2020 is this of Zac Waller of HaYovel in his introduction to Christians Meet Israel:-

The words of God spoken by prophets three thousand years ago were being fulfilled in perfect detail! This reality has pushed theologians back to the drawing board, pastors to the Bible, and all Christians to fear the God of Heaven who is faithful to His promises.Why did God choose a land and people?God created the entire world. Does He show favoritism to Israel?How does Yeshua (Jesus) fit into this narrative?Was Yeshua a Zionist?God has resurrected the literal nation of Israel. How should we, as Christians, relate to it? 

And there is this from Christians for Israel International which posits that the planned broadcasts reveal:-

a certain insensitivity we Christians often have for the history of Christian persecution of the Jews, and lack of empathy for feelings of the Jewish people today.  
At Christians for Israel, we believe it is not our task as Christians at this time to tell the Jews what to do or think. Our job is to get our own house in order. We have been arrogant, we have become lukewarm, we have failed to look earnestly for Jesus’ return, and the coming of His Kingdom. And in all of that, we have for two millennia looked down upon the Jewish people and despised them.  
Of course we must witness our hope – even to Jewish people. But the best way we can do this is by repenting for 2000 years of Christian anti-Semitism, and showing mercy and love towards the Jewish people – not with words, but with our actions.  
God has never abandoned the Jewish people. The restoration of Israel shows His eternal love for the Jewish people. Let’s trust Him to bring them home – in His way and His time – as He promised. And He is doing just that. 

I will not argue the matter of Daystar but I do wish to add a bit of a theological argumentation on whether there is a need for Christians to missionize among the Jews today at all.

There is the Great Commission (itself a 17th century Lutheran term). Many Christians consider the act of spreading the Gospel and attempting to cause Jews to become Christians as, well, a...Mitzva.

Let me approach this textually in an effort to have Christians first see the othr side, that is, how we Jews see and feel.  Reading Matthew 12:41, a case could be constructed that perhaps Jews should, as Jonah did, begin preaching to non-Jews. That just like the men of Nineveh who repented at the preaching of Jonah,  "now something greater than Jonah is here". The principle is set: just like a Jew, Jonah, preached in Niveh, why not have Jews preach in Rome, or Paris or New York?

Would Christians appreciate that? Accept it? Feel comfortable?  Could it be that the instruction to missionize did not have to be applied to Jews, even though that usually is taken to simply mean non-believers, but used by Jews to proselytize among Christians?

However, let us return to the central source which, of course, is from Matthew 28:19 

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" 

However, the term the "nations" in the Bible does not include the Jews - for the "nations" Biblically were understood to be the alien, non-Jewish nations (and in Mark 16: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature”) . 

Jews are of the Abrahamic Covenant already and we are not the nations. The Covenant never had been abrogated as is obvious from Israel's flowering today, our increased religiosity and the work in Judea and Samaria.

My approach can be understood, perhaps, also from Luke 24:47 who predicates repentence as being required to: “...be preached in his name to all nations”.  Do Jews need to repent? And athough added there is “beginning at Jerusalem”, Jerusalem could mean various peoples in the city and not necessarily Jews . 

We Jews could have been excluded as 'targets'.

In Matthew 21:43 we read: 

"the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits"

That could be an explicit reference to Jews and is, in facr, the basis for replacement theology and the concept of the New Israel.

But looking around at the past 80 years of recent history and more, Jews have been quite successfully at keeping their religion flourishing and relevant to todays world and we have been successful; at returning to the Land of Israel.  Obviously,  to be generous to Christian belief, the reality is the opposite at what that preaching was intended to do,

It is wrong to missionize. I would suggest  missionizing to Jews should not apply to today (or ever) and should be halted.  Especially in a reality of a major rebuilt Jerusalem, admittedly, not yet with a Temple, and a reestablished state of the Jews and control over Judea and Samaria, this broadcast channel is not needed and the decision to grant it a license should be reversed.

There are two other sources that need be referenced as they explicitly refer to Jews.

In Romans 1:16, we read

“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew" 

And after first turning to the Jew, what happened? Was there success?

At Acts 13:46 we see that the Apostles admitted 

“We had to speak the word of God to you [the Jews] first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles"?

and even then, 2000 years ago, realized it was not going to a successful project and they moved on. 

Why should Christians continue what the Church originally accepted as a doomed mission?

This was not an imperative from Jesus* but a secondary interpretation. Even then, in the 1st century, the priority or even something to be pursued was not to missionize amongst the Jews. Why centuries later missionaries attempted again, and basically failed - except to stir up bad inter-faith relations - is beyond me.

And to my Christian friends, if this reads as a bit uncomfortable to you, theologically, remember that I am not asking you to convert to Judaism. I do rigorously reject that Messianic Jews represent the genuine Judaism and these broadcasts are to encourgae that. Now, imagine how Jews feel when Chritians actually do try to subvert Jews from their Judaism.

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There is a petition now.
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*  I received a heads-up that Jesus did imply, according to Luke 15, that he sought that Jews - or perhaps only the Pharasees, - should repent as per the parable of the Lost Sheep.  But the Matthew 18 version has no identity attached to possible interpretation of the sheep.

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