Those educated or religious Jews in the past who did convert to Christianity did so for monetary gain or because of social pressure. It had nothing whatsoever to do with intellectual arguments or honest theological convictions.
Were the shoe on the other foot and I were making such statements about the motivations of secular Jews who became traditional, I would be labeled anti-Semitic! No doubt, Christianity, along with every other major religion (including Judaism), has had its share of “convenience conversions.” These counterfeit conversions, however, in no way diminish or negate the fact that there have been highly educated or very religious Jews who have followed Jesus unflinchingly, even though it cost them their reputations, their livelihoods, their careers, and even their inheritances. There have been many such Jews throughout history and to this very day.
To allege that Jews believe in Jesus for monetary gain is not only a ludicrous lie, it also smacks of anti-Semitism, implying that Jews will do anything for money. It is also a prideful judgment that says, “Because I don’t believe in Jesus, I’m sure no one in his right mind would ever believe in him. Therefore, any Jew who believes in Jesus must have some ulterior motive.”
In point of fact, history is filled with Jews who forsook all to follow the true Messiah. Rather than being mercenaries, these men and women were some of the noblest people our race has ever produced. Of course, it is true that some Jews through the centuries “converted” to Christianity in order to improve their social status and/or professional opportunities, but it is unfair and inaccurate to question the sincerity of those many Jews who have followed Jesus as Messiah despite enormous personal cost just because others were insincere.
I made reference earlier to Rabbi Dr. Max Wertheimer whose name was dropped from the rolls of his alma mater, the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, because of his faith in Jesus. Was Wertheimer a mercenary? Hardly! According to Nahum Brodt, as rabbi of B’Nai Yeshurun synagogue at the end of the last century, Wertheimer “received a salary of $2,000 a year, plus house, fees from weddings, bar mitzvahs, and the like. When he became a believer in the messiah-ship of Jesus he went back to school, after which he became pastor of the First Baptist Church, Ada, Ohio. What salary did he get then? The magnificent sum of $500 a year!” 45
How about Richard Wurmbrand, the Romanian Jew, who, together with his wife, Sabina, experienced almost unspeakable torture and hardship under the communists because of his faith in Jesus? Was Wurmbrand a mercenary? He had been a brilliant, secular, pleasure-loving Jew who was confronted with the truth about the Messiah and was dramatically changed, becoming the pastor of a Hebrew Christian congregation. He preached fearlessly, refusing to conform to the godless standards of the communists, and, as a result, suffered fourteen years of brutal imprisonment, including three years in solitary confinement in an underground cell. During those three dark years, the only faces he saw were the faces of his torturers, while his wife, of whose whereabouts and safety he knew nothing, languished in a slave labor camp. And there was always an easy way out: Renounce your faith in Jesus!
Such a thought was never an option for him. In fact, Wurmbrand was imprisoned three different times for his preaching. If he wanted to live a “normal” life with his family, he could have. Instead, he chose to be loyal to his Lord.
Wurmbrand endured many tortures, including being frozen to the edge of death (then revived by the doctors), burned with red-hot irons, viciously beaten all over his body, clubbed and whipped on the soles of his feet, often daily (because of the damage done to his feet he has never been able to stand for long periods of time). He was locked in a carcer (an upright, casket-sized box with razor sharp spikes protruding from every side) until he passed out from bleeding or pain, he was doused with ice water while his body burned with tubercular fever, he was made to live in his own excrement and urine—the list goes on and on. It is no exaggeration to say that he was subject to almost every imaginable indignity and abuse, never denying his Savior.
This is just a two-paragraph snapshot of some of his sufferings for the Messiah, expressed in his own words:
The tortures and brutality [while in solitary confinement] continued without interruption. When I lost consciousness or became too dazed to give the torturers any further hopes of confessions, I would be returned to my cell. There I would lie, untended and half dead, to regain a little strength so they could work on me again. Many died at this stage, but somehow my strength always managed to come back. In the ensuing years, in several different prisons, they broke four vertebrae in my back, and many other bones. They carved me in a dozen places. They burned and cut eighteen holes in my body.
Doctors in Oslo [after his release from prison], seeing all this and the scars of the lung tuberculosis which I also had [during some of the prison years], declared that my being alive today is a pure miracle! According to their medical books, I should have been dead for years. I know myself it is a miracle. God is a God of miracles. 46
When he testified before Congress about his treatment under the communists, the congressmen were shocked when he removed his shirt to reveal more than a dozen major holes on his torso. This was Wurmbrand’s reward for his faith in Jesus! To this day (at the time of this writing, Pastor Wurmbrand is ninety and Sabina eighty-eight), since his release from prison, he has served the Lord tirelessly, never taking even a single day of vacation (I mean this literally) and never owning a home of his own. 47
What makes this all the more surprising is that Wurmbrand is a prolific author—in fact, his books are the most translated religious books written this century—yet he has never taken a dime from his writings for personal profit, using all the money from the sales of these books to help the families of martyrs around the world, also reaching out to communists, Muslims, and most recently, terrorists. As a Jew, you should be honored to know that someone like Richard Wurmbrand—the most famous tortured believer of our time—is actually “one of us.”
As you listen to him share the love of God with friend and foe alike—speaking to them fluently in English or Russian or German or French or Hebrew or Romanian (to name a few)—you realize that the half has not been told about some of the wonderful, pious Jewish believers in Jesus who have kept the faith through thick and thin. What a shame it is that such saints have been reviled, ridiculed, and rejected by our people as apostates and mercenaries. Clearly, it is not the Jewish believers who were tarnished and untrustworthy; it is the people who so falsely accused them who have been stained.
I’ll close with a final example, that of Haham Ephraim. (Haham is the colloquial expression for “rabbi” in certain Oriental Jewish communities.) He was born in Tiberias in 1856, which is important when you remember that the lie that Jews believe in Jesus for the sake of monetary gain was much more prevalent last century than this century. (Of course, it is sadly true that such libelous rumors are still fairly common in Israel to this day, but this proves just one thing: Old rumors die hard!) His full name was Ephraim ben Joseph Eliakim, and he was the son of a Tiberias rabbi, eventually becoming recognized as Haham and serving as dayyan (a Rabbinic judge). What’s more, he married the chief rabbi’s daughter.
It seemed he was set for life, spiritually, socially, and even economically. Furthermore, he had a strong aversion to Christianity, and as he himself later noted, he had “never permitted his wife or children to go near the hospital department of the Church of Scotland Mission [located in their area in Tiberias], however ill they might be.” Yet, as he began to study the prophecies of our Hebrew Bible, talking honestly with the local leader of that very same Church of Scotland, he became convinced beyond a doubt that Jesus was our Messiah—but only after much soul-searching and inner turmoil, spending countless hours with his brother rabbis, none of whom could answer his questions.
What did he “gain” from his newfound faith? On the one hand, he entered into an intimate relationship with God the likes of which he had never known, enjoying abundant peace until his death at age seventy-four. On the other hand, he was seized and beaten by his own people, falsely accused of theft and confined in a filthy cell, and then flogged and starved, incurring lifelong health problems as a result. After being forcibly relocated to a Jewish colony at the Lake of Huleh—his name utterly renounced by former friends and companions—he worked long, hot hours doing manual labor in the fields. When he finally returned to Tiberias, his wife and children were taken from him.
- M. Christie, a Christian leader who knew the Haham throughout this period of time, actually heard his relatives and in-laws say, “Had he been an ordinary Jew, we could have understood it. But that a rabbi, and one of his standing, should change, why, we never heard of such a thing.” 48 Does this sound familiar?
Of course, you might be wondering, “Well, once it became known that this rabbi—the son-in-law of the chief rabbi—believed in Jesus, he must have made a fortune off his story.” Not so! For years he worked in Jerusalem as a day laborer, carrying stones and mortar. As Christie relates:
His income was that of an ordinary worker, but he never complained. He was content with the simplest of living and clothing, and anything he could spare from his meager resources he used to help the poor whom he met through his continual testimony to the Gospel… . During this time he came much in contact with the rabbis in Jerusalem, many of whom had been his pupils in Tiberias. They were troubled and vexed to find him doing such lowly work, and pled with him: “We beg you to have regard for your age and to abandon this hard and menial labor and return with us to be our father and chief as you were formerly.” 49
He remained steadfast, in spite of these overtures. Eventually, he was sponsored by a Christian group who enabled him to give all his time to sharing his faith with his people, resulting in some real fruit (even among a few fellow rabbis), along with some violent attacks, including occasional stoning by his fellow Jews. He died profoundly thankful to his Savior and Messiah, never regretting his decision for a moment, in spite of the hardships he endured.
Examples such as these could be multiplied, but enough has been said to set the record straight. It is true that, especially in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, where cultural Christianity dominated the society, a number of Jews “converted” to the faith with the sole purpose of gaining social or economic advancement.
This is similar to situations that sometimes exist today in Orthodox Jewish circles, when, for example, a secular Jewish man will become observant in order to marry a (newly observant) Jewish woman. But this, of course, does not negate the fact that many Jews become observant without mixed motives. In the same way, the fact that some Jews “converted” to Christianity with insincere motives does not negate the fact that true conversions took place as well.
And when you think in terms of a Jewish person—especially a religious Jew—becoming a Messianic Jew, what utilitarian motivation could there be for such an act? Why go against the grain and risk the loss of everything unless you are moved by sincere conviction? As one dear Orthodox man once said to me, “Why believe in Jesus? It’s hard enough just being a Jew in this world with all the problems we have. Why ask for more trouble by believing in Jesus too?” But I can do no other. I know that Yeshua is our Messiah, and I must follow him and be loyal to our God regardless of the consequences.
For your part, you are going to have to wrestle with the fact of the messiahship of Jesus for yourself—even if it costs you everything. The decision will be well worth it. Richard Wurmbrand, Haham Ephraim, and a host of other Jewish believers in Jesus who have suffered much for their faith would add a hearty “Amen.”
45 Brodt, Would I? Would You?, 10.
46 Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ (Bartlesville, Okla.: Living Sacrifice, 1967), 41. See further idem, From Torture to Triumph (Eastbourne: Monarch, 1991).
47 For his own biographical reminiscences as a Jewish Christian, see Richard Wurmbrand, Christ on the Jewish Road (Middlebury, Ind.: Living Sacrifice Books, 1970); for his wife’s remarkable story, see Sabina Wurmbrand, The Pastor’s Wife (Middlebury, Ind.: Living Sacrifice Books, 1970) (note that Sabina too is a Jewish believer). For more of the shocking details of Pastor Wurmbrand’s years in prison, see In God’s Underground (London: W. H. Allen, 1968).
48 W. M. Christie, “A Tiberias Rabbi,” in Would I? Would You?, 55; see further 50–57.
49 Ibid., 55.
Brown, M. L. (2000). Answering Jewish objections to Jesus, Volume 1: General and historical objections. (45). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.