Christianity simply doesn’t work . It doesn’t produce what it promises . Deep down, you know what I’m saying is true.
Actually, the reverse is true. To speak personally, I have been overflowing with almost indescribable blessing since I found new life through Jesus, and I can give you innumerable proofs that he is the true Messiah, that he is alive today, and that he is at work in the earth and in my life. Could it be your tradition that cannot produce intimacy with God and the assurance that your sins are forgiven? Could it be that deep down you know what I’m saying is true? In fact, I would like to ask you a question: What is the clear evidence of the presence of the living God in your life?
Through the years, I have had the privilege of speaking with Jewish believers in Jesus who were raised Orthodox or Hasidic or had even been ordained as rabbis. They testified to the great joy they now have in serving God and his Messiah, and they spoke of the wonderful changes that have taken place in their lives since they put their faith in Yeshua.
They strongly contrasted their past experience as traditional Jews with their present experience as Jewish believers in Jesus. The differences were pronounced! They went from being loyal, devoted, diligent Jews who had no sense of real intimacy with God and no definite assurance of forgiveness of sins to being Jews who now serve God out of love, enjoying a close, personal relationship with him. (I should point out that in most cases the process of change in their lives generally began with honest, intellectual study of the Scriptures, leading them to definite faith in Yeshua. In other words, this was not just a matter of feelings.)
While they sometimes spoke of the fine, sincere Jewish friends and colleagues they had had in the traditional world (in other words, they didn’t demonize religious Jews and Judaism), they were quick to point out that in spite of all their study and effort as traditional Jews, they always fell short. Things changed dramatically once they were “born again,” and rather than becoming lazy, careless believers, they were all the more zealous to please the Lord.
Now, let me contrast this with four representative examples taken from my years of interaction with traditional Jews. (By the way, I speak here of my interaction with traditional Jews simply because they take their Judaism more seriously than most other Jews.) 56
First, there was Aaron the yeshiva student. Thinking that I had dialed the number of a different Jewish school, I found myself talking with a congenial man in his twenties. He was a baʿal teshuvah—i.e., a Jew who became religious later in life. He became observant for two reasons: (1) He wanted to be assured of his place in the world to come, and (2) he wanted to have a relationship with God in which he could pray to his heavenly Father and have his prayers answered.
Years had gone by, he explained, and he had become a devoted student of Talmud, living a very traditional lifestyle, but there were two problems he found along the way:
(1) According to his studies, only the super-righteous, like Moses, could be assured of their place in the world to come. For the rest, it was a matter of hoping in the mercy of God. Why then, he wondered, should he bother keeping all the commandments if he was just as dependent on the mercy of God now as he was when he was not religious?
(2) According to his observations, answers to prayer are apparently random, coming to the observant and nonobservant just the same. Again, he thought to himself, what’s the use of all my praying and studying and keeping the laws?
Yes, his candid confession was amazing—and tragic. But even more amazing and tragic was this: Where was his sense of fellowship with God? Where was his sense of walking with him, loving him, worshiping him, and enjoying him? (Yes, according to our Scriptures, we are to enjoy God!) How could he know that his beliefs were right? Obviously, he couldn’t.
In 1975, I spent a couple of days with a Lubavitch family in Brooklyn, attending Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) services with them. When the father and I talked, he could hardly relate to any questions I asked him in terms of his personal relationship with God. Finally, when I asked him why he lived the way he did, he replied (to my shock): “It’s pretty d—n good.
My grandfather lived like this, my father lived like this, and my children will live like this.” That was it! Of course, he could offer me all kinds of intellectual and mystical reasons for his practices, but our orientations to God were worlds apart. As incredibly devoted as he was, he hardly seemed to have the love relationship of a bride with her groom, even though this is how the ancient rabbis described Israel’s relationship with her God. 57
Again, to my amazement, I found similar attitudes among the other Lubavitchers with whom I spoke during my stay there (including many hours of talks before and after 1975). They tried so hard, they strove with all their might, and they were so sincere—but they did not know the Lord. I have never forgotten those conversations. What a contrast their experience was to the words of the Lord in Jeremiah 9:23–24, where we are called to an intimate knowledge of God:
This is what the Lord says: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord.
In the early 1990s, I spent an afternoon with another Hasidic Jew in Brooklyn. He was a distant relative of Yoel Teitelbaum, the late Satmar Rebbe (the Satmar are another Hasidic group, even more observant than Lubavitch). Our talk was cordial and honest, and I found him to be most pleasant as well as learned. We began to discuss the issue of atonement:
After Yom Kippur each year, was he sure his sins had been forgiven? After his hours of fasting and his countless prayers of repentance, did he know he had been cleansed? Not quite! Instead, he explained that it was hard for him to be sure if he had fully repented, if his sincerity had been total, if his turning from sin had been complete, if he was sincere about not wanting to commit the same sins again.
Of course, this kind of honest introspection was commendable, but his lack of assurance of forgiveness was pitiful. This dear man did not know the blessedness of which the psalmist spoke: “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit” (Ps. 32:1–2). Nor were the promises in the Torah relating to the Day of Atonement (promises that were predicated on the proper blood sacrifices being offered in conjunction with repentance) real to him:
This is to be a lasting ordinance for you: On the tenth day of the seventh month you must deny yourselves and not do any work—whether native-born or an alien living among you—because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins.
Leviticus 16:29–30
Do your own random survey of ten or twenty Jewish believers in Jesus and ask them what their experience has been in terms of assurance of forgiveness, removal of guilt, and a new ability to break away from sinful habits. You’ll have trouble restraining their enthusiasm! Ask them if they know they have been cleansed and if they know they are clean.
“But,” you say, “I don’t know if I can believe them. Maybe they’re making it up!”
Actually, that would be hard to believe. Why in the world would they knowingly make up a story on which they’ve based their very lives? Why would they give themselves to something they know is not true? Why would many of them make difficult personal choices (often at great personal sacrifice; see above, 1.12–1.14) to follow a system that really didn’t deliver the goods—and then lie to you to try to recruit you too?
Honestly and truly, I tell you that we who have put our faith in Yeshua—both Jews and Gentiles—have been gloriously transformed, and we walk in wonderful fellowship with our God and Father, “having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:22). It is for this reason that we can “draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith” (Heb. 10:22). Does such a relationship with the Lord appeal to you? It is available through the Messiah!
This leads me to my last illustration. In September of 1995, I received a highly unusual sixteen-page letter. It was from an ultra-Orthodox Jew who had been raised as a Gentile in an Episcopal home before converting to Judaism. He had listened to a tape of my 1991 radio debate with Rabbi Tovia Singer, and, while volunteering the fact that Rabbi Singer shot himself in the foot with some of his poor arguments (in particular, when he misstated the traditional Jewish position regarding the Davidic Messiah and Isaiah 53), he wanted to challenge me on my views concerning Jesus. 58 I called him, and we spoke for some time.
While he admitted that he had never been “born again” in his prior church experience, he had been serious about his Episcopal faith as a teenager, leading him to research the Jewish roots of Christianity. As a result, he became convinced that Judaism was the true religion, and he converted, spending many years in yeshiva study. Was his experience in Judaism what he expected? Not quite. In fact, he confessed to me that he often went through times of deep spiritual darkness.
Then he began to tell me about his wife, with whom I soon spoke. She was a Jewess but had been raised in a family of committed Jewish Christians. Through her own study, coupled with a feeling of unusual peace she experienced when staying with a traditional Jewish family one Sabbath, she became traditional, ultimately meeting and marrying her now very observant husband. She zealously worked to bring Jewish believers in Jesus into traditional Judaism and was quite firm in her convictions as we talked.
Still, since she had made such an issue of her initial Sabbath experience, I had to ask her about her ongoing walk with the Lord. Her response? She had to admit that her experience with God as a Christian had often been brighter and more vibrant than her experience with him as a traditional Jew. (This reminds me of the candid confessions of two Jewish women who had once been believers in Jesus, then became very observant Jews, only to return in the end to their faith in Yeshua.
Both of them told me of the inner agony they felt—and from which they could never fully escape—when they denied Jesus during their years in Orthodox Judaism. Something was always gnawing at them.) What would a Sabbath-observing, Torah-keeping Messianic Jew say to this dear, misguided woman? You can have Yeshua, who is Lord of the Sabbath, and the Sabbath too! You can walk in real light, truth, and fulfillment. It’s not either/or. Unfortunately, for the present, she could not see this.
Of course, you may read these accounts and think to yourself, “I’m sure I can find a religious Jew who will claim to have a wonderful relationship with God, along with a Messianic Jew who will admit to his deep spiritual frustrations.” I agree! There are exceptions to every rule, and there is some subjectivity to people’s individual experiences. Also, you never know exactly what happened in the life of any given person.
For example, one Jew who once believed in Jesus may have had a personal dispute with someone in his congregation, becoming embittered. Soon enough, his bad feelings and disappointment became an unconscious indictment against Jesus. He threw out his faith in the Messiah because someone rejected him! (I know of at least one case in which a weak, Jewish believer in Jesus turned against the faith because he wasn’t given a prominent position in the congregation and his pride was injured.
I’m sure you could give me a few examples of weak baʿalei teshuvah who left Orthodoxy because the person they wanted to marry jilted them, and so on.) Other Jews may have heard about Jesus through a contemporary, made-for-TV version of Christianity that was so superficial that its results were only skin deep. It presented such a hyped-up, phony Christianity that it was bound to disappoint sooner or later. (The sooner the better, in my opinion!) Yes, you may find some disgruntled Messianic (or former Messianic) Jews out there.
Plus, many of us who have been transformed through the death and resurrection of the Messiah are hungry for even more of God—to walk even more closely with him, to worship him and adore him and know him even more. This, however, is a healthy hunger, not an admission of emptiness or failure. This is the kind of loving longing that newlyweds experience when they’re separated even for a few hours.
They can’t wait to see each other again! That’s how we feel toward our Messiah. We just can’t get enough of him. That’s how we feel toward our God. We love to spend time with him and obey his commands. In contrast to what you will normally hear from your average traditional Jew, if you probe these hungry, Jewish believers, they will tell you of their vibrant relationship with the Lord.
Of course, we have our ups and downs, our struggles and frustrations, our trials and tests, our good times and bad times. But I tell you without any exaggeration or hype, knowing Jesus the Messiah and having God as my Father is the most wonderful thing I could ever imagine—in this world or in the world to come.
Don’t just take my word for all this; do your own survey. Talk with as many traditional Jews and Messianic Jews as you possibly can. (Don’t tell them why you’re asking your questions; just probe them for honest answers. If you can talk with some born again Gentile Christians too, by all means do so.) You’ll see that what I’m saying is absolutely true. Then, just act on the truth that you find.
You’ll join multitudes of Jews and Gentiles who have been cleansed from their sins, delivered from every imaginable vice (from sinful pride to sexual perversion, from uncontrolled anger to unbridled adultery), healed of every conceivable physical and mental disorder (from blindness to bulimia, from AIDS to arthritis), and who now have peace with God through Jesus the Messiah. The door is still open for you.
56 Perhaps you would like to read about this from both sides, hearing the testimonies of Jews who have become Messianic as compared to the testimonies of Jews who have become traditional. Then read the following and compare. For the Messianic side, see any of the following collections: Ruth Rosen, ed., Jesus for Jews: If Jesus Is the Messiah at All Then He Is the Messiah for All (San Francisco: Jews for Jesus, 1987); Sid Roth, ed., They Thought for Themselves (Brunswick, Ga.: MV Press, 1996); Ben Hoekendijk, ed., Twelve Jews Discover Messiah (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1992; this book is entirely devoted to testimonies of Jews living in Israel). There are not as many “testimony” books written from the traditional side, but some representative readers include Richard H. Greenberg, ed., Pathways: Jews Who Return to God (Northvale, N.J.: Aronson, 1997); Debra Renee Kaufman, Rachel’s Daughters: Newly Orthodox Jewish Women (Rutgers, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1991). I heard a tragic confession made by Rabbi Ben-Zion Kravitz on a tape from an anti-missionary conference in the early 1990s: He claimed to have pulled about one hundred Jews away from Jesus in his years as a leader in the Jews for Judaism movement (a figure that is quite suspect, by the way). But out of that one hundred, only a handful had become observant Jews! Thus, to the extent that his claims are true, he has succeeded in making Jews for Jesus into Jews for nothing.
57 Speaking of Jewish views of the Song of Songs, the biblical and Semitic scholar Marvin H. Pope notes that, “The Jewish interpretation saw the Song as depicting the relation of Yahweh and the Chosen People, Israel, as his bride. This interpretation is reflected in the Talmud spreading over the first half of the first millennium of the common era, and was fully developed a little later in the Targum as a historical allegory covering the highlights of Israel’s experiences from the Exodus to the impending Advent of the Messiah. Essentially the same interpretation is offered by the Midrash Rabbah and by the great medieval commentators Saadia, Rashi, and Ibn Ezra.” See his Song of Songs (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977), 89.
58 A copy of the audio tape of this debate is available through ICN Ministries; see below, part 2, n. 271 for information concerning the tapes that Rabbi Singer asked me not to release to the public.
Brown, M. L. (2000). Answering Jewish objections to Jesus, Volume 1: General and historical objections. (59). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.