FROM THE PRESIDENT
APRIL 2018 / THE CHOSEN PEOPLE - 2
Dear friend,
Shalom in the great name of
Jesus the Messiah. I hope that you had
a wonderful Passover/Easter season!
Your Mission to the Jewish People
presented Messiah in the Passover in
nearly one thousand churches over
the last couple of months. What a
thrill it is for me to see the eyes of
my fellow believers open when I
explain the Jewish
background of the
Lord’s Supper. I
especially enjoyed
speaking to the
many Jewish seekers
invited by their
Christian friends
to attend our Messianic Passover
celebrations. I am sure our staff
spoke to multiple hundreds of Jewish
people about Jesus throughout the
Passover season. Please continue to
pray for those who heard the message
of the gospel in a Jewish way.
If you would like to have a
Messiah in the Passover presentation
in your church next year, please call
or write to us. You can contact our
Church Ministries department at
561-737-1431, or visit us online at
chosenpeople.com/churchministries.
ISRAEL’S 70TH
ANNIVERSARY
We are getting ready to celebrate
the 70th anniversary of the birth
of the modern State of Israel next
month! There is no question that
Jewish people have discovered that
evangelical Christians are the best
friends of Israel. I recognized this
soon after becoming a believer—I
was encouraged and this became an
avenue of testimony to my Jewish
family and friends.
Remember, Jewish people live
under the shadow of the Holocaust,
which unfortunately my people
believe was perpetrated by “Christians.” I cannot imagine a real
Christian persecuting a Jewish person, but this is the perception
of the Jewish community based upon events like the Crusades,
the Russian pogroms, and the Holocaust.
It is not easy to change these perceptions within the Jewish
community, but they are changing. A few years ago, a Pew
Foundation survey found that 34 percent of the Jewish people
surveyed believe you can be Jewish and believe in Jesus. That is
amazing to me as I think about how my family responded so
negatively in 1971 when I told them I had come to faith in Jesus.
In fact, the change is so significant that a
number of us wanted to tangibly measure how
evangelical Christians view the Jewish people and
the nation of Israel. Chosen People Ministries,
along with my friend Joel Rosenberg—who
has written so many wonderful fiction and
nonfiction books—asked LifeWay Research
to survey evangelical attitudes toward Israel
and the Jewish people. The survey was completed this past fall
and utilized a sampling of more than two thousand randomly
selected individuals who responded to four critical questions
describing what we understand as evangelical beliefs. In other
words, we did not simply ask, “Are you an evangelical Christian?”
We actually asked questions that demonstrated they were true
Bible-believing Christians who had a fervent desire to see Jews
and Gentiles receive Jesus as their Messiah.
We have included some charts on the next page, and I hope
that you will study these to get a better feel for how evangelical
Christians view Israel and Jewish evangelism in particular.
The results of the survey are generally favorable toward
Israel. There also seems to be a growing sympathy for
Palestinians, especially for the Arab Christians struggling in
hostile environments where they are persecuted and face regular
attempts to restrict their religious freedom.
On the other hand, along with all of the positive news
about Christians and Israel, we also discovered some critical
challenges as well.
According to the survey, evangelical millennials are not
quite as pro-Israel as their parents and grandparents. There are
many reasons for this, and I can instantly think of three. First of
all, our young people did not personally experience the devastation
of the Holocaust, which led to the foundation of the State
of Israel. As some have said, “Israel was born from the ashes of
the Holocaust.” Sympathy for the Jewish people is not part of
the millennial generation’s DNA.
Additionally, our young people are socially sensitive and
justice oriented—which is a good thing—yet, they only know
Israel as a well-formed nation with a strong economy and
professional army. They were not around for the founding of the
EVANGELICAL
ATTITUDES
TOWARD ISRAEL
AND THE JEWISH
PEOPLE
Contact our Church
Ministries department
to have Chosen People
Ministries speak
at your church or
congregation.
/churchministries
