2,000 years of Jewish evangelism

After the Ascension of Jesus, the witness of the apostles to the Jewish community was marked with outstanding success.

In only one day, the Jewish feast of Shavuot (Pentecost), 3,000 were baptised, and each day following 'the Lord added to their number' until over 5,000 men believed, not counting women and children. No section of the Jewish community lay outside the reach of the good news, even '. . . many of the priests were obedient to the faith' and with the transformation of the Sanhedrin's leading hit-man, Saul of Tarsus, first-century Judaism was shaken to its core.

It was a miracle that Jews who believed in Jesus and Jews who did not could co-exist in the synagogue throughout the terrible years of Titus' vengeance, in which the Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem razed to the ground. That there were serious tensions is evident from the New Testament epistles, but they did not become terminal until around 132-135 AD when Jewish Christians refused to support the attempt by Bar Kochba, the false messiah, to overthrow Roman power. From then on, witness could only be conducted from outside of the community, for no believer in Jesus could attend a synagogue where maledictions against the Messiah and his people were part of the liturgy.

As throughout the wider Roman empire the good news was welcomed by more and more Gentiles, so the demographic and cultural balance shifted. The Hebrew Scriptures were demoted as the Greek language and its seductive philosophies became the accepted framework for Christian reflection.

Dialogue with the Jewish people was often carried on in a bitter spirit. From the second to the sixth century, there emerged a whole body of writings entitled 'Adversos Judaeos' (Against the Jews). Justin Martyr's 'Dialogue With Trypho The Jew' (c.160 AD) was a little softer than most. Others, like Chrysostom, sought, often with deplorable arguments, to justify the suffering that had befallen the Jewish nation. It became increasingly difficult to find an authentic and gracious presentation of the gospel to Jewish people. Augustine of Hippo was almost a lone voice when he called the Church to preach '. . .with great love for the Jews. Let us not proudly glory against the broken branches.'

The Middle Ages

As people like Isodore of Seville wrote his book 'Against the Jews', and Raymond of Martini contributed his 'Muzzle for the Jews' there were few attempts to respect the integrity of the Jewish people. On the contrary, the Middle Ages were a time when Jews found their lives held in disregard and many perished in the Crusades. Under duress, large numbers of Jews became nominal Christians. However, coercion cannot account for all who turned to Jesus. In 12th-century England, so many Jews professed Christianity that William II, probably for economic reasons, endeavoured, unsuccessfully to turn them back to Judaism. Under Henry II, centres were opened to care for those who had been ejected from their ghettos because they had embraced Christianity. In 1290, through a cynical measure calculated to raise the standing of the king, the Jews were expelled from England and all debts owed to them were cancelled.

Reformation & Puritans

During the early part of the Reformation, Martin Luther entertained the hope that the Jews, who had endured mistreatment at the hands of the medieval papacy, would join him in working for religious reform. To win them for the Reformation, he wrote a tract entitled 'That Christ was born a Jew'. When the Jews rebuffed his overtures, Luther adopted an embittered attitude towards them, thus preparing the way for future anti-Semitism. However, preaching within a few hours of his death, Luther more or less returned to his former compassion, telling his congregation: 'We have to . . . bring them to the Christian faith that they may receive the true Messiah.'

John Calvin generally had a more benevolent view of the Jews; although at times his remarks could be acerbic, he nevertheless taught that the Bible indicated a time when Israel would be restored by coming to faith in their Messiah.

Among Jews who came to believe in Jesus during the second wave of the Reformation was John Immanuel Tremellius (1510-1580), who became professor of Old Testament in Heidelberg and one of the compilers of the Heidelberg Catechism. Following Calvin, many, such as the Dutch theologian Voetius (1588-1676) and the English Puritans, emphasised the biblical prophesies and encouraged prayer for the conversion of the Jews. Such a climate made it possible for Oliver Cromwell to open the doors in 1655 for Jewish resettlement in England.

18th & 19th centuries

During the 18th century, the first steps were taken to establish organised witness. Bizarre though it may seem to us today, David Brainerd was originally employed by a Scottish society to evangelise native Americans, who were, it was then believed, descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Brainerd's mentor, Jonathan Edwards, and a Scottish minister from Cambuslang called M'Culloch entered into a transatlantic prayer pact for world mission, including the conversion of the Jews.

In 1742, under George Whitefield's ministry, there had been revival at Cambuslang, near Glasgow. One of the converts, Claudius Somers, became one of M'Culloch's elders and the maternal grandfather of a certain Claudius Buchanan. Buchanan, born in 1766, was baptised by the elderly M'Culloch, then 75 years of age. As a young man he ran away from home, was converted in London, became a brilliant student at Cambridge, a protege of Charles Simeon, and a curate to John Newton, later becoming a chaplain to the East India company and perhaps the first British missionary to the Jews. He visited the Beni Israel Jews around Bombay and the Cochin Jews of the Malabar coast, witnessing to them of their Messiah, and collecting Hebrew manuscripts. Buchanan was highly influential both in England and Scotland, contributing directly to the establishment in 1810 of the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews (now CMJ) and indirectly to what is now CWI.

Meanwhile, on the continent, Moravian missionaries made an impact on the Jews of Saxony who 'accustomed to bitter treatment, expressed their amazement at the kindness shown to them by the Moravians'. In 1728 in Halle, under Professor John Henry Callenberg, the Institutum Judaicum was established for the instruction of Jewish Christians and the training of missionaries to the Jewish community. Two of whom, Midman and Monitus, made the first recorded attempt to reach Hungarian Jews with the gospel but were rapidly forced to withdraw by the intolerant Habsburg authorities.

The first half of the 19th century saw the establishment of witness to Jewish people in Britain, Germany, Switzerland and Norway. By the end of the century, Jewish missions were the very centre of the church's missionary activity. Missionary leaders, though called to labour in other fields, still had the Jews on their heart. For example, Hudson Taylor, the founder of China Inland Mission (now OMF), sent each year his first missionary donation to the work of John Wilkinson, inscribed on the back with the words of Romans 1.16, 'to the Jew first'.

The 20th century

A great harvest resulted from the work of the 19th century, earning it the reputation 'as the most fruitful of all missionary work'. By the 1930s, in Hungary alone it was estimated that there were over 100,000 Christians of Jewish descent. Austria had 17,000 'Jesus-believing Jews', Poland 37,000, Russia 60,000, the USA 20,000.

All across Europe, throughout the 1920s and 30s, Jewish people attended church services, listened to talks and discussed the claims of Jesus the Jew with missionaries. By 1945, the Nazi's Final Solution had wiped out over 6,000,000 Jewish men, woman and children from the face of the earth. Into the death camps had streamed the transports carrying a cargo devoted to destruction, and along with Orthodox and assimilated Jews were those who believed in Jesus. Even in Auschwitz, the Lord did not leave himself without witnesses.

Since the Holocaust, leaders in the Jewish community, with a bitterness never before experienced, have misrepresented Jewish evangelism as an act of hostility aimed at destroying the very community it seeks to address. Traditional missionary societies felt intimidated by such outbursts and their approach became retiring and low-key. In the 1960s, some young American Jews rebelled against tradition. They opened their minds and hearts to someone of whom their parents disapproved, Jesus. They wanted to find ways in which they could share their new faith and this resulted in a fresh, innovative and authentically Jewish evangelistic approach. This in turn reinvigorated some of the older societies and has resulted in many Jewish people coming to faith.

So at the start of the third millennium, both in Israel and in the Diaspora, there is a vibrant and articulate community of Jewish people who find that Jesus is all that the Hebrew prophets claimed for him and more. So great is the impression made by this movement today, that the Jewish community is finding it more and more difficult to deny its claim to be both Christian and authentically Jewish. One Rabbi writing to 'The Jerusalem Report' lamented: 'We have little hope of stemming what is fast becoming a 'Jewish Christian' reality.' To use what seems to me an entirely appropriate Jewish expression - Hallelujah!

2,000 years of Jewish evangelism

John Ross of Christian Witness to Israel recounts two millennia of evangelism

The Middle Ages

Reformation & Puritans

18th & 19th centuries

The 20th century

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