Shalom, y'all.
So, first of all, I would like to say thank you.
Thank you, Becky and Rob and David, for your invitation and hospitality and
generosity.
My plan for the rest of you guys today is to get you excited about the fact that
after 2,000 years of silence, the Gospel is now finally being shared again in the
land of Israel.
And I would also share with you the three main reasons why Jewish people do not
follow Jesus.
As some of you already know, our ministry, One for Israel, became the leading
evangelistic initiative in Israel, sharing the Gospel with millions of Jews
all over Israel.
But before I dive into that, I would like to apologize to you all in advance.
As an Israeli Jew, English is my second language, which, by the way, I've learned
mainly by watching Seinfeld.
True story.
So, you know, if here and there I get stuck, show me some grace.
Up until a few years ago, Jewish Israelis coming to know Jesus as their Messiah used
to be an extremely rare happening.
In fact, 70 years ago, with the reestablishment of the State of Israel,
there were only 30 Jewish believers in Jesus all over Israel.
Just 30.
But in the last four or five years, we see a dramatic change.
And that is what I will be talking to you about today.
First, I'm going to show you on the screens a short three-minute video that
explains kind of everything that One for Israel is because I'm only going to be
concentrating on one thing.
Enjoy.
Over the last 70 years, Israelis have been at the center of the struggle,
hungry for meaning, asking questions and searching for answers.
Many find joy in the comfort of the world, while others drown in the sorrow of
disappointment.
But some have found the answer in one name, Jesus, or as we call him in Hebrew,
Yeshua.
One for Israel is an initiative of native-born Israelis who are on the
forefront of high-tech evangelism, bringing salvation to Israel, raising up
leaders and equipping them with the tools they need to transform their communities.
And with an emphasis on winning souls, building disciples and sending leaders,
we promote the kingdom of God to both Jews and Arabs throughout the land of Israel.
Our Bible college has now grown into a certified educational institution,
offering bachelor's and master's degree programs, bringing Jews and Arabs together
in the classroom and experiencing peace and unity in the name of Yeshua.
From our campus, located in central Israel, we work together to proclaim the
gospel of the Messiah through websites, a radio station, a television studio,
classroom instruction, and our largest Christian library in Israel.
Training, equipping, and providing a platform for the gospel to go forth.
Also, in partnership with local authorities, we provide humanitarian aid
to Holocaust survivors, caring for each and every generation with the love of
Yeshua.
Israel has always been on the cutting edge of internet technology, and with more
Israelis online per capita than even the United States, Israel continues to be ripe
for evangelism on the digital frontier.
iGod, Messiah, Isaiah 53, Ex-Rabbi, and I Met Messiah, among others,
are all tools and outlets provided by One for Israel, so that Jewish people can
hear, receive, and grow in their knowledge of the Messiah.
We want to promote the message of the gospel in the land of Israel, through the
cooperation of Christians worldwide.
Together, we can care for, educate, and reach out to both Jews and Arabs in
the land of Israel.
As a native-born Israeli who has experienced firsthand the transforming
power of the gospel of the Messiah, I would like to invite you personally to
extend a helping hand and become One for Israel.
Okay, on the screen you saw the president of One for Israel, my boss, Dr. El Soref.
This is my other boss.
And you can pray for us, and later on you will learn why and how.
I myself came to know the Lord about 20 years ago.
Some of you are now looking at me and asking yourself, were you even alive 20
years ago?
I'm actually 35, I just look young.
And I came to know the Lord because I was challenged and provoked to jealousy by
Gentile Christian believers, while I visited Canada for a few weeks.
And God really blessed me in the ability to combine two of my greatest passions in
life.
One of them is my professional background, which is media and advertisements.
And the other one is the world of the Bible, theology, the gospel.
And I'm actually about to just now complete my doctorate with Dallas
Theological Seminary.
Don't worry, I'm not... thank you.
I'm not pre... I'm not anything.
Today my role with One for Israel is the director of evangelism and apologetics.
And let's talk about that.
Let's talk about evangelism and Israel today.
Now, in Israel today we have 9 million people.
And only 0.3% of them are born again Jewish believers in Jesus.
How come?
You would expect the numbers in Israel to be the other way around.
Israel, after all, is where the gospel came from.
Jesus was an Israeli Jew.
The disciples were Israeli Jews.
You know, just like me.
So, how come?
How come the numbers are so, so few?
There are three main reasons to that.
To the reason why Israel is an anti-Jesus nation today.
Reason number one is replacement theology and anti-Semitism.
For 2,000 years now, many in the church did not really know what to do with this
concept of Israel.
After all, a nation with no language, a nation with no land up until 70 years
ago, is basically a nation without hope.
You know that history teaches us that most nations disappear within three to five
generations in that situation that we've been in for 2,000 years.
So, when many of the church fathers realized that most Israel rejected the
gospel, they thought God probably replaced Israel.
Teaching that God changed His mind about the promises He gave Israel in the Old
Testament.
But in Romans chapter 11, Paul is arguing against it.
Teaching about the remnant.
He himself being one of the remnant.
So am I.
And he says, I ask then, did God reject His people?
By no means.
I am an Israelite myself.
A descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin.
God did not reject His people whom He foreknew.
So, the problem is that replacement theology oftentimes leads to
anti-Semitism.
And if we look at the church history, that's exactly what we see.
You know, a few examples.
The Crusades.
The Inquisition.
In Inquisition, if you don't know, it's when Jews would be forced to convert
to Christianity against their will.
And they had to choose that or dying.
Pogroms.
Pogroms mainly happened in the 19th and 20th century in East Europe.
Where mainly Catholics would come in the middle of the night into Jewish villages.
Put the village on fire and massacre the people.
Including some of my own family.
Blood labels.
Blood labels is when Christians used to tell one another, also Eastern Europe
mainly, that during Passover, we Jews kidnap Christian kids.
We kill them and we turn them into matzo balls for our Passover meal.
Now, this is obviously a big, fat lie.
We never did that.
We turned them into gefilte fish.
Another example is the Holocaust.
My grandmother was able to escape the Holocaust not before she was tortured by
the Nazis.
Who did things to her such as pull the nails out of her fingers.
Telling her that that's because she rejected Christ.
If you go to the Holocaust Museum in Israel, you'll see a big picture of the
Pope and Adolf Hitler together shaking hands with one another.
My point is not to criticize the Catholic Church.
My point is to show you how we Jews automatically associate you all,
Gentile Christians, with this horrible history.
We Jews think that all Christians are under the Pope.
And we Jews think that, to some degree, all Christians dislike us.
And that is why it's very easy for us Jews to put you all in a box and ignore your
Gentile message and ignore your Gentile God.
But, you know, we cannot really escape... I cannot escape my Jewishness,
even as a follower of Jesus.
I mean, you only have to look at my big Jewish nose to realize that.
And we and our team, we are not something foreign, something different, who speaks
this other language and looks different.
We are one of them.
You know, we are Jews ourselves.
We are Israelis.
We speak Hebrew.
By the way, my French accent is not French.
It's Israeli accent.
And that all leads me to reason number two.
Reason number two, I call it blind love to Israel, sometimes.
And it's sometimes also known as dual covenant theology.
Which basically means that we Jews are saved just because we are Jews,
having nothing to do to our faith or unfaith in Jesus.
So if we are saved without Jesus, nobody needs to tell us.
There is no reason to tell us about Jesus.
So that's reason number two.
And this one is pretty much the other extreme of the first reason.
It's the kind of people who love to quote to me Psalm 122, pray for the peace of
Jerusalem.
But they never ever quote Paul's prayer in Romans chapter 10.
My heart's desire and my prayer to God for Israel is for their salvation.
So I believe that the peace King David was praying for, that we all love to quote,
will only happen when Paul's prayer will become true.
And I know most of you probably know by heart Genesis 12.3, I will bless those who
bless you.
But my question is, what does it mean to bless Israel?
How do you bless Israel?
If your love for Israel is only expressed as a political love and support,
then that is not really blessing Israel.
I want to share with you the top causes evangelical Christians in the world give
money to in Israel the most, thinking they are blessing Israel.
And this is mainly for building Israel physically.
Building religious schools, building synagogues, building settlements,
etc.
And I'll show you one example.
A well-known guy from here in Texas, Pastor Hagi.
And a couple of years ago he put together a large event where he gave over $3
million to 23 Israeli organizations.
By the way, that's public knowledge.
Now, that is very generous of him.
But guess how many of these organizations in Israel that the Christian money came
from were of believers in Jesus?
None.
Absolutely none.
So while these are not bad causes that the money goes to, we believe that if you
don't bless Israel by building us spiritually, meaning if you're not sharing
with us about our Jesus, our Messiah, then are you really blessing us?
Or are you just sending us to hell on a full stomach?
I believe that your calling as Christian Gentiles is not to buy us more tanks or
build more religious schools.
Your calling as Christian Gentiles is first and foremost to provoke us to
jealousy.
And we need to be jealous of your relationship with our God, which is only
available and only possible through Jesus Christ.
Okay, this leads me to reason number three.
And that is what the rabbis, what our rabbis teach us about Jesus in those
synagogues and religious schools that some of you maybe helped build.
Okay, let's talk about the word Jesus, about the name Jesus.
The connotation of Jesus in the West, you know, like Europe and here in the
States, is usually pretty positive.
You know, people might not like Christianity, they might not like
Christians, but they're usually okay and maybe even positive with Jesus himself.
If you take Jesus to Islam, he's a great prophet.
It's also, it's positive, they don't see him as the son of God, but he's a prophet,
it's positive.
If you take Jesus to Asia, I mean, they already believe in what, 300 million
gods?
What's one more, you know?
Only in Judaism is where Jesus has this extremely, extremely negative connotation.
We already saw why, but there is more to it.
I'm going to share with you a history lesson, a short history lesson.
Okay, almost 2,000 years ago, back in 132 AD, a guy called Simon Bar Kokhba led the
third Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire.
When halfway through the revolt, Rabbi Akiva declared Simon Bar Kokhba,
who by the way was a soldier famous of his barbaric cruelty, to be the Messiah.
In the beginning of the revolt, the Jewish followers of Jesus agreed to
help in what seemed at the beginning to be a campaign to fight for and protect the
land of Israel and especially Jerusalem.
However, after Rabbi Akiva's declaration that Bar Kokhba is the Messiah,
the Jewish believers in Jesus had to withdraw from the revolt because
obviously, this dude is not the Messiah.
We are not going to follow him.
Rabbi Akiva and the Sanhedrin took it really, really bad, and they considered us
to be traitors of Judaism from that point on.
Leading them to create rules against followers, Jewish followers of Jesus,
in order to basically kick us out of the synagogues, kick us out of Judaism.
These laws forbidden other Jews to even associate with followers of Jesus.
Until today, three times a day in every synagogue, they repeat the Birkat Haminim,
which is benediction concerning the heretics.
Guess who are the heretics?
A prayer that is basically cursing Jesus and his followers.
And we, as followers of Jesus, we cannot pray that prayer.
Therefore, we cannot be in the synagogue.
Therefore, we cannot be inside the heart of Judaism.
Later on, in the Talmud, the Talmud is the Jewish holy scriptures, the rabbis added
awful, false stories about who Jesus was.
One example, it says that his mother, Mary, committed adultery with a Roman
soldier, and that's how Jesus came about.
Another story says that Jesus was an idol worshipper, who got his powers from Satan.
Sounds familiar?
Another story is of a guy named Unculus, who was a Tanah.
A Tanah is a great rabbinic sage.
And in his case, he was an expert in mediumship.
Mediumship is the ability to communicate with the dead.
Or maybe I should be pointing down.
According to that story in the Talmud, they asked Unculus to communicate with
Jesus from the dead, and so he did.
And he asked Jesus, again, that's according to the story in the Talmud,
not my opinion.
He asked Jesus, where are you, and what is going on with you?
And Jesus replied, I am in hell, and my punishment is to be boiled in feces
forever and ever, because I was a false messiah and a false prophet.
There are more awful stories about Jesus in the Talmud, and about us, the Jewish
believers, but I think you've got the idea.
In Judaism, Jesus is considered to be the worst enemy of all times.
Jewish people look at Jesus as the blame for antisemitism in the world.
Now remember, in Jewish history, any kind of a spiritual message that
somebody wanted to bring in must be first approved by the gatekeepers, who are the
orthodox rabbis, who used to be the Pharisees.
We see that in the New Testament, and they rejected Jesus and his message.
And Jesus himself accused them in Matthew chapter 23, verse 13.
Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in
people's faces.
And for 2,000 years now, Jesus is kept out of Judaism.
And for these three reasons, you now understand why Jesus is the best kept
secret in Judaism.
By the way, I realize that what I've just shared with you about Jesus in the Talmud
can cause your heart to react in bitterness, and hatred even, enmity,
and resentment against Jewish people, which can lead and will lead to
antisemitism.
But please choose compassion and grace like the heart of Jesus when he was on the
cross.
Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
Amen.
So now you understand why most Jews do not believe Jesus to be the Messiah.
And why Jewish evangelism is so difficult like no other.
Now, how is all of that relating to what is going on today and to the conference
today?
To make things even more difficult for you, if you take Jesus' words in Luke
13.35 as futuristic, which is, by the way, the way most scholars do,
this means that Jesus is not coming back until we, Jews, accept him.
Luke 13.35, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in
the name of the Lord.
And Jesus was talking to Israel.
So we have a problem, we all want Jesus to get back, right?
Don't we?
But the gospel is being kept a secret from us, Jews, for 2,000 years now.
So that's why we've been waiting for so long.
So I shared with you some bad news.
And I told you in the beginning I want to encourage you, not to discourage you.
So let's move to the good news.
There is a group of us now, Jewish Israelis, followers of Jesus in Israel,
who found a way around those gatekeepers, bypassing the rabbis.
We no longer need their permission.
Because we don't go into the synagogues to share the gospel.
I know some of you who have never been to Israel before.
You probably think that we still live in tents and ride donkeys.
That is true.
No.
Some statistics, 99% of all of Israel is connected to high-speed internet
connection.
Even outside of the homes, even if you go to the beach or anything like that.
We are first in the world in the amount of time we spend online surfing the web.
60% more than the average here in the United States.
Every 100 Israelis will own 122 computers, which is also first in the world.
I own three computers.
If you ask me why do I need three, I don't really know.
We are first in the world in the amount of time we spend on social media.
And specifically on YouTube watching video clips.
So, you know, when your children are taking a shower and having dinner,
we are on our laptops watching video clips on YouTube.
So, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Because that means that we can meet Israelis where they are at.
And that is not the synagogue.
That is online, on the internet.
Now let me tell you something.
We know how to relate to Jews and Arabs because we know how to share with our own
people.
It's not somebody foreign.
It's our own people.
We don't share with them the Jesus that they were taught about, which is,
you know, from the movies.
Usually a Gentile Jesus, a blonde Jesus, blue-eyed Jesus, European Jesus,
who has been hanged dead for 2,000 years now on a Roman Catholic cross.
That's not the one we are sharing.
We share with them Yeshua.
Yeshua.
The word Yeshua means salvation.
We share with them Yeshua, the Jewish Israeli Messiah, who loves them so much
that he gave his life for them.
A Messiah that was resurrected, and he is alive, and he can change their
lives as well.
Amen.
Okay, how do we do that?
How do we share with them?
Most of our work is in the Hebrew and Arabic language, but we also have some
content in English that is available for you.
I will quickly run with you over a few things that we do.
When you come to Israel, or as an Israeli, if you walk into a secular bookstore,
you can find any kind of book on spiritualism and religion besides one
book.
You will never find the New Testament in Hebrew in bookstores in Israel.
So, we make sure that it is available for them in any possible way for free.
We also operate the one and only Christian radio station in Israel.
We produce testimonies of mainly Jewish people who came to know the Lord,
but also Arabs and Muslims.
Okay?
And basically, we have three main testimony series that we do, Hebrew,
Arabic, and English.
And on the screen, you are going to watch now a two-minute short teaser of the
Hebrew ones with English subtitles.
I was very afraid of my identity.
What would happen?
Who would tell my parents?
Who would tell my brothers?
I didn't know how people would react.
The people of Israel are a people of hardship.
When you believe in Jesus, people will curse you.
I was threatened with my life.
To be shot, to be pushed, to be denied, and so on.
We are going to do everything so that you will stop believing.
Cursing, hatred, threats.
I didn't want to stop believing.
My father started beating me.
I got beaten.
Only because I believe in Jesus.
I can't talk about it.
And so, the instinct is to hide it.
No one needs to know about it.
I was embarrassed by it.
It's the truth.
How is it that an entire nation goes after a lie?
Are they trying to hide something from us?
For 2,000 years, they have been lying to my people.
Listen.
Jesus.
A complete Jew.
He lived for 2,000 years.
Jesus is the God of Shaddai.
He is ours.
He is the Jewish Messiah.
He died for all of us.
Jesus jumped into the water to save me.
He gave me life in his death.
How can you not give your life for someone who did such a thing for you?
I can't say no to that.
This love.
Complete love.
People need Jesus.
How can I keep such a thing a secret?
I am a Jew who believes in Jesus Christ.
I didn't look to hide.
I can't reveal myself.
And I decided to follow him.
There is nothing more real than this.
The whole country knows about this.
I feel free.
Really free and light.
We also produced 100 testimonies in English.
Of Jewish people who came to know Jesus as their Messiah.
With over 50 million views on them in the past 4 years.
Coming from a small team in Israel.
And I'm going to let you watch one.
It's about 5-6 minutes.
And it's a very famous Jewish scientist.
If you're into science, you'll know Dr. James Tur.
His story, I think, is very powerful.
Maybe if we can dim the lights this time, it would be even more awesome.
Thank you.
I got my PhD in the field of organic chemistry.
Post-doc at Stanford University.
Joined the group of a man who was going to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Voted one of the top 50 most influential minds in the world.
I was a visiting scholar at Harvard University.
I've spoken at every major university in this country.
Have over 650 research publications.
Voted the R&D Magazine Scientist of the Year.
I'm in the National Academy of Inventors.
I'm a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Over 120 patents.
Started 7 or 8 companies.
We work in areas that range from medicine, to materials science, to electronics,
computer memory, medical devices.
We work across a broad range of areas.
But more than any of that, what means the most to me is that I'm a Jew who believes
that Jesus is the Messiah.
I grew up just outside of New York City.
I thought everybody was Jewish.
I didn't even know that there was anything else.
I had no particular interest in that, other than when all my friends were
getting bar mitzvahed or bat mitzvahed.
And then I would attend a course every week.
There was never really any excitement for me.
I remember once I even tried to talk to a rabbi.
He just brushed me off.
There was very little explanation for me.
I remember when I went to college, I started meeting a number of people that
said that they were born-again Christians, which was sort of an odd term.
I was, what's born-again?
What do you mean born-again?
One person saw me in the laundry room.
He said, do you mind if I give you an illustration of the gospel?
And I remember we sat there, and he actually started to draw a picture.
A cliff with a man on one side, and he drew a little man, and then another
cliff with God on the other side.
And a big chasm in between that he labeled sin.
I looked at him, I said, I'm not a sinner.
I've never killed anyone.
I never robbed a bank.
How could I be a sinner?
And he had me read a verse from the Bible.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
In modern Judaism, we never really talked about sin.
I don't remember ever talking about sin in my home.
So he turned to another passage.
Jesus said, I say to you that everyone who looks upon a woman with lust for her has
already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Pow!
I felt just as if I had been punched right in the chest.
Here I was, new in college.
I didn't think anybody knew.
I would pick up these magazines, and I became addicted to pornography.
It was just through those magazines.
And all of a sudden, something that's written in the Bible, somebody who lived
2,000 years ago was calling me out on it.
And I felt immediately convicted.
And that now I realized I was a sinner.
When I read in the Scriptures what sin is, then I knew I was a sinner.
How am I going to get to God?
We Jews know this better than anyone else.
Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin.
This description in Isaiah 53 of how he will bear upon himself my sin,
the things that I had done.
And this was him.
This was the man that took this upon himself on the cross.
The perfect God comes and gives himself for us.
He is the one that gives himself for us.
I started to realize how Jewish the New Testament is.
This book is so Jewish.
The New Testament is so Jewish.
It's all around Jewish people.
And then on November 7, 1977, I was all alone in my room.
The realization that Yeshua is the one who died on the cross.
And I said, Lord, I am a sinner.
Please forgive me.
Come into my life.
And then all of a sudden, someone was in my room.
And I opened my eyes.
I was on my knees.
I opened my eyes.
Who was in my room?
That man, Jesus Christ, stood in my room.
This amazing sense of God, Jesus, was in my room.
And I wasn't scared.
All I started doing was just weeping.
The presence was so glorious because He was there in my room on that day.
And I didn't want to get up.
And this amazing sense of forgiveness just started to come upon me.
That was Him.
Finally, I got up.
I didn't know what to do.
I didn't know who to tell.
Here's this Jewish kid from New York City.
What am I going to say?
My cousins were shocked.
How could you do that?
You're Jewish!
Telling my mother how I had invited Jesus into my life.
She didn't say much.
She was weeping.
She told my father.
They weren't happy at all.
And she said, I don't blame them for killing Jesus after the things that He
said.
Who is He to come against these religious leaders that have dedicated their lives to
helping people and to tell them that they are whitewashed tombs?
Who is He, this young man in his thirties, to say this to these scholars?
He got what he deserved.
And my mother's a very deep, pensive, careful reader.
She read from Genesis right on through the Tanakh.
When she got done, I said, what did you think?
She said, God warned us over and over again.
He warned us.
When my daughter was about 15, my mother and father came to visit us.
At one point, my mother went into her room for several hours.
She came out.
She said, what a young girl you have.
She talked to me for a long time.
She started reading the Bible again, both the Old and the New Testament.
One day, not long after that, she called me on the phone at the age of 72.
She said, Jimmy, you wouldn't believe what happened.
I said, what happened?
She said, I was just reading.
And it hit me.
It hit me.
The way He gave His life.
I believe it now.
Jesus is the Son of God.
You know, we love, inside the church, we love to concentrate on how Satan is
using media.
Don't we?
Now you can see how God is using the media.
Let me share with you a little bit more.
On the screen you can see some statistics.
We also do a lot of Jewish apologetics.
Which is answering rabbinic objections against Jesus.
And as you can guess, there are 2,000 years worth of objections to deal with.
And just as no Catholic person would ever speak against the Pope.
Jewish people do not speak against the rabbis.
That's the authority.
Okay?
But we do.
We came out with, so far, 150 short videos.
Quoting the main rabbinic objections against Jesus.
And answering them.
As well as teaching the messianic prophecies in the Old Testament.
And sharing the Gospel.
A lot of that I turned into a book.
Translated to English.
And you can get it.
It was released in January of this year.
And it became a best seller pretty fast after that.
You can get it later on.
You know, in those videos...
It's not videos from old religious rabbis.
But from young male and females.
Which is very refreshing in Judaism.
Especially to see a young woman.
Because a woman will not be talking about God in Judaism.
And I'll share with you now another short video.
An example of what we do when I say evangelism.
It's an evangelistic video we produced in Jerusalem.
In Hebrew.
But this time we dubbed it to English for you.
Enjoy.
We Jews hardly know of him because he's the best kept secret in Judaism.
He lived long before television or social media even existed.
And yet he's the most famous Jewish man throughout all of history.
He never wrote a word.
But his words have inspired more books than anyone else.
He wasn't a prime minister or a political leader.
But his teachings formed the foundation for the law of the Western civilization.
He wasn't raised among wealthy and famous rabbis.
But dined with the poor and rejected.
He wasn't part of the elite class.
But even today great thinkers and philosophers hold him in the highest
respect.
He wasn't a military leader and never used force.
But nonetheless he has an army of millions around the world who love him.
And are willing to give their lives for him.
He never studied in yeshiva nor asked to create a religion.
But thanks to him millions of Gentiles now believe in the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob.
He didn't attend university.
Yet almost all academic institutions were founded because of him.
And in them every day people learn of his teachings.
But here in Israel it's taboo to even talk about him.
He's erased as if he never existed.
His name has been trampled and we've long forgotten him.
While he's a star everywhere else, among us he's considered diseased,
tortured and despised.
But the prophets in the Bible who were also rejected by our religious leaders
prophesied that this would happen.
He was despised and rejected by men.
A man of sorrow, acquainted with grief.
One from whom people hide their faces.
He was despised and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our pains.
Yet we esteemed him stricken, struck by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced because of our transgressions.
Crushed because of our iniquities.
The chastisement for our shalom was upon him.
And by his stripes we are healed.
We all like sheep have gone astray.
Each of us turned to his own way.
So God has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
In the time when the political leaders were religious and the religious leaders
were the politicians, God was a hidden captive.
Anyone who wanted access to God had to swear allegiance to them, bow to them and
give financially.
Then the Messiah, with no army or weapons, fought against this twisted oppression to
make God freely available, building a bridge to God with his own body.
Not just for us Jews, but for the Gentiles as well, who are also created by God.
But our religious leaders did not give up.
And with them, all of us, in our sin, we nailed Jesus to the cross.
But the death of the tortured righteous one was considered by God to be a worthy
sacrifice, an atonement for the sin of humanity.
And thanks to the sacrifice of the crucified Savior, we can finally enjoy
forgiveness.
Because like a parent who would give their life for their children, he took the
punishment that we deserved on himself.
He was punished, we were forgiven.
He suffered, we were saved.
The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ gave us peace with God.
And now, out of this peace, we can also make peace with others.
Though other nations have grasped this, it's forcibly hidden from our people.
But our nation's denial is no surprise to the prophets.
Then I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit
of grace and supplication.
When they will look toward me, whom they pierce, they will mourn for him,
as one mourns for an only son and grieves bitterly for him, as one grieves for a
firstborn.
For 2,000 years they have done everything to hide him from us in the dark.
But you know what?
It doesn't matter.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Yeshua the Messiah is no longer the best-kept secret in Judaism.
Okay, moving on.
Ever since we started doing those videos about four years ago, we see tons of
Jewish and Arabs, Israelis, coming to know Jesus as their Messiah all the time.
And we are no longer today 30 Jewish believers in Jesus in Israel.
Today, 70 years later, we are about 30,000 Jewish believers in Jesus in Israel.
And here is one short text message, one of many that we get.
Again, we've translated it from Hebrew to English.
It's from a young teenager in Tel Aviv.
Shalom.
As you can imagine, as a child, I was only taught false things about
Yeshua.
Two days ago, we've learned in history class about how 2,000 years ago a new
religion began, Christianity.
Back at home, reading on my own, I was amazed to see how much compassion
Yeshua had.
The very next day, an advertisement on YouTube for your video about Jesus popped
up.
I always ignore these ads and just click the skip button, but I decided I want to
watch the whole thing.
And so I did.
Your video really grabbed my attention, so I continued watching over 50 of your
other videos.
Long story short, I have made a decision.
The truth is on your side, and rabbinical Judaism, which I grew up in, is full of
agendas, false teachings, and is basically a man-made religion.
Look, I don't have a unique and supernatural story to share with you,
but I know that I saw the truth, and I cannot look back.
It is important for me to live in truth, and not in a lie.
I'm still in high school.
I do not know any other Jewish believers in Yeshua, and I know people will tease me
and be upset with me if they knew that I now consider myself a follower and
believer in Yeshua.
But it is important for me to connect and find out, how do I now live as a follower
of Yeshua?
Please, help me.
For the sake of time, I'll just share with you some last statistics.
Worldwide, we have between 90 and 100 million views on our videos.
A lot of them went viral on the web.
People like them, so they share them.
And just take in mind that you only have 15 million Jews in the world today.
And inside Israel, you have 6.8 million Jews.
And inside Israel, in Hebrew, our videos have been seen 27 million times.
And that is big, because after 2,000 years of nobody talking about Jesus,
all of a sudden, everybody talks about Jesus.
Okay?
Hallelujah.
So this whole situation, in the last few years, led to two things.
First, people now recognize us on the streets.
We've made it to the national news a few times.
We basically became the face of Christianity in Israel.
The second thing is that some famous rabbis are after us.
We got used to getting death threats all the time.
And I actually had to move, relocate.
So about two years ago, this kind of famous extremist guy, religious guy,
who is very involved in politics, posted my picture, my son's picture,
on his Facebook page.
And you can imagine the things that he wrote.
The very next day, in our backyard, we found this huge bag full of feces.
Which was a reminder to us that we're going to end up just like Jesus.
So we decided we're going to move to a place that it's a bit more difficult to
throw things into.
So we moved to the 18th floor, renting an apartment.
I really prayed that that guy, who is very much like when Paul was Saul,
will turn into a Paul.
It's not easy, I know.
You can see on the screen the kind of things that they say about us and their
faces.
Those are rabbis that produced videos against us.
And they usually don't take the highway, as you can see.
But we love them, and you know what?
I would give up my life to see them getting saved.
Okay, last slide.
Everyone talks about their books.
I will talk about my book.
It was released in January of this year.
It became pretty fast a bestseller.
It's got over 300 reviews already.
And I need a small favor from you.
The rabbis are sending their people to give a negative review.
If you go over them, you'll see it's pretty obvious.
Please get the book and give a positive review.
If you promise to give a positive review, I promise to sign the book.
That's a Jewish mind at work for you.
And none of the income comes to me.
Everything goes to the ministry.
So we use it for evangelism.
This is it.
Time is up.
I hope I was able to get you guys encouraged.
Thank you very much.