WAKE FOREST, N.C. (BP)–Rich Freeman once despised Christianity.
Growing up Jewish in Brooklyn, he distrusted Christianity and considered the religion to be the reason why so many of his people had been slaughtered in the past 2,000 years.
That was until he found Jesus Christ as his Savior and Messiah. Now, Freeman and his companions at Chosen People Ministries are dedicated to seeing the gospel taken to the Jews.
“We hear God is finished with the Jewish people, and people ask, ‘Why are you wasting your time taking the gospel to the Jewish people?'” said Freeman, vice president of Chosen People Ministries. “Jewish people are savable. They can and do get saved.”
Chosen People Ministries came to the campus of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary for a Feb. 20-22 conference on “To the Jew First in the New Millennium.”
The conference featured speakers from Chosen People Ministries, the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board and the Wake Forest, N.C., seminary.
“This conference raises the awareness of biblical teaching about Jewish evangelism, and the concern all Christians should have for Jewish people,” said Jim Sibley, coordinator of Jewish ministries for NAMB and a former missionary to Israel.
Mitch Glaser, president of Chosen People Ministries, said the ministry has been hosting seminars at theological seminaries around the country keyed to the next generation of Christian leaders.
The goal, Glaser said, is for those leaders to take the message of Jewish evangelism — both practical truths and theological significance — to their congregations. It’s a message that Glaser called the “most unpopular subject in church history.”
Only about 1 percent of Jews worldwide are believers, and one of the goals of the conference was to erase misconceptions that the people of Israel have fallen out of favor with God and cannot accept Christ as their personal Savior.
“There is a uniqueness among Jews that makes them stand in distinction among all other people,” Sibley said, while Glaser noted, “If he’s not the Messiah for the Jewish people, then there’s a Messiah for no one.”
In 1996, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution encouraging evangelism among Jews, a controversial initiative that was decried among the secular media and some American Jewish leaders as intolerant and offensive.
But Freeman said rather than being offensive, bringing the good news of Christ to Jews is a biblical mandate for non-Jewish Christians.
Sibley said the outcry against Jewish evangelism is itself a form of intolerance. “Even in the midst of opposition and denunciation, we don’t return with the same type of attitude,” he said.
Chosen People Ministries began in 1894 and is now active in 10 countries including the United States. In addition to the conferences and evangelism, it hosts short-term training programs at its New York headquarters and organizes tours of the Holy Land.
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