I know a lot of Christians who have a heart for the Jewish people. They pray and long to see them come to know Jesus as Messiah. Recently, with the direction of teaching the Lord has been taking me on, I often wonder two things:
- They know Jesus as Lord, but do they know him as the Jewish Messiah?
- Do they want the Jewish people to accept him as Savior? Or to convert to Christianity?
The more I read books and articles by Messianic Jews, the more I study the history between the Jews and the church, the more I realize we Gentiles have a lot to learn about who Jesus really is, and how to convey the message of salvation to His chosen people.
What do you think?
I have found, through experience, that we must first know Jesus as the Jewish Messiah in order to reach the Jewish people because they have been taught for so long, by the church, that Jesus “did away with Torah” and other such nonsense.
We have to be able to show them in the New Testament that those teachings are false in order to get them to even begin to hear the idea of Yeshua as Messiah.
I like your thinking, Andre. Most of the time we go to the Tanakh to show them Messiah. I like the idea of correcting the false teaching first.