The Truth about “Missionaries Targeting” Ultra-Orthodox Jews

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866-348-7884. Any Jewish-related question of any kind. You may be a Jewish listener and you differ with me about Jesus being the Messiah of Israel. You may be a Christian with questions about Judaism or Jewish teaching. You may be wondering about modern Israel today. 866-344-TRUTH. As long as it's Jewish-related, you can have a Hebrew question for me. It works on Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. I've got a few news items I want to cover with you, but the main focus and where I want to really start and the things I want to address today have to do with a big controversy.

There's been a lot of news about this in recent weeks, and I actually know a lot of the details of what's going on. Jewish Jews are the most religious, and their communities are the most closed. It's for a couple of reasons. One is because they live among themselves. They have their schools, they have their places of business, and they're very, very deeply communal, so it's very natural for their communities to be insular. Also, they want to keep out the pollution of the outside world.

They want to keep away those values that they differ with. So your average ultra-orthodox home would not have a television, for example. The most ultra-orthodox, the strictest of the communities, what you'll see with them is that they won't have internet access. They may have cell phones, but not smartphones. And the most, most religious among them, in order to keep out the influences they don't want, will on their cell phones only have certain area codes that they will respond to, or certain numbers that they will respond to.

In other words, if it's a number we're not used to, it could be from outside our community. And look, Jacob James tells us in the first chapter that true religion—this for us is followers of Yeshua—that true religion is to visit the fatherless and widow in the Reflection and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. So traditional Jews are doing that in a way that may seem extreme to others, but seems very much a way of life for them. So how do you reach them with the good news of the Messiah? Many of them, all they know about Jesus was that he was a bad guy. He was a Jew who went apostate. He was an idol worshiper, and he led many in Israel astray.

And he's the God of the Catholic Church, and he's the one responsible for so much Jewish suffering from church age, from the fourth century on, right to the Holocaust. So how can you reach these very devoted, very sincere people and people who are fallen like everyone else and need the Lord? How can you reach them with the good news of the Messiah? What if you are a religious Jew, you're part of that community, and somehow your eyes are open. You're reading the Scripture. You're a chance encounter with a Christian. Something happens. Your eyes are open.

You now believe. Well, if you just come out publicly and declare it, you're out of the community. There might even be physical violence, but you're out of the community. If they're unable to persuade you back, then you're ostracized. You've basically lost everything. You've lost family, friends, livelihood. You're out. You're marked, okay? And your family would say you're dead.

You don't even exist. So that's one very great difficulty. What if you leave the community and now you're outside the community, but you still want to reach back in? What do you do? How do you do it? So these are honest questions to ask. There are godly ways to do it.

There are ungodly ways to do it. There are ways that we would say are kosher and ways that we would say are not kosher. So there is the first language of ultra-orthodox Jews is Yiddish. They may speak Russian. They may speak Ukrainian. They may speak something else.

They may speak English. They may speak Hebrew. But the home language that they grow up with is Yiddish. It's similar to German, but has a massive Jewish vocabulary, Hebrew vocabulary, other things in it, modifications. But it's most similar to German.

So they grow up with that. So many years ago, the New Testament was translated into Yiddish, about 80 years ago, for religious Jews. Now my dad, Yiddish was his first language, even though he grew up in a secular Jewish home, and he wasn't even bar mitzvahed. He grew up speaking Yiddish. I don't think he spoke English until he was like five years old or something. So Yiddish was his first language. When I took it for a little while in college, he'd speak to me in Yiddish all the time.

I just had so little, I wasn't getting it. So even for Jews that just come from a certain European or Eastern European background, Yiddish may have been their native language even if they weren't religious. So this was translated many, many years ago for Jews, religious Jews, Jews for whom Yiddish was their first language.

They were coming to faith, and these translations were made for them or for outreach to them. So someone today, Yiddish is his first language. He's also translated. I'm not saying whether he's a religious Jew or not. I'm not saying where he lives, what country he lives in, not divulging that. He felt he needed to update and improve the translation and began doing it and then wanted to get the message out to ultra-orthodox Jews.

Again, whether he himself comes from that background or it was just his first language or just something he was fluent in over the years or where he lives outside of the United States or wherever, not disclosing any of that. But he talked to some of us involved in Jewish ministry, knew about me answering Jewish objections to Jesus, knew about others as chosen people and Jews for Jesus, different ones, and said, hey, I'm going to send these out to the religious Jewish community, and I want to have numbers that people can call if they have questions. Great, count me in. That's what our ministry does. We're happy to answer Jewish questions about Yeshua. And chosen people, Jews for Jesus, they said, sure, put our numbers in.

And they were sent out. Now listen, I get every single day at my home junk mail and at my office junk mail. Do you get junk mail? What do you do with it? You toss it. Sometimes I've gotten little books or booklets or coupons or other things. They're more substantial. Sometimes I get catalogs. Maybe we ordered from a place once or Nancy ordered from a place.

There's several hundred pages, beautiful color catalogs. Got no interest in it? Toss it. If it's of interest, read it.

So that happens, right? If it's an address that's—addresses are out there, send them to addresses. So that's what this individual did. The other thing I'm telling you is it's a mail. Okay, so that's cut us down to what, about three and a half billion people to choose from?

And anyway, a little bit smaller pool, I'm sure. So this has sparked tremendous controversy. But it's just a mailing. It's just a way to reach people.

You say, wait, wait, wait. The problem is that this guy put return addresses of synagogues to make the people think that they were coming from synagogues. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. He didn't want to put his own address, obvious reasons. He knew the addresses of some synagogues, but he didn't write down. So he changed that. Anyway, he changed that because he realized it could seem deceitful. But he didn't put synagogue such and such and then the address, which would give you the impression it came from the synagogue. He just says, Susan, you're not necessarily going to recognize an address, but he just needed a return address. That's what he did.

And then if we shipped back, here it went. But I believe he's remedied that with another address. But the point of the matter is he wasn't trying to be deceitful as if he came from the synagogue.

If that was the case, then he would have put it there. But in point of fact, yeah, it could look deceitful. So that's not his intent.

But this has created a firestorm of controversy. My question, and if you're a Jewish person listening, my question is, what's wrong with doing that? Right, the address thing I can understand, but that was not his intent. Anyway, he's fixed that, and he did not write the synagogue name. He was not trying to be deceitful with it. But what's wrong with freely mailing something out?

There's nothing deceitful about it. It's the New Testament in Yiddish. You know that the second you open it. In other words, it's not that it's got pages of Talmud study in it, or pages of study of one of the law codes, the Mishneh Torah or Shulchan Aruch, or esoteric writings from the Kabbalah, or Tanya, which is Lubavitch Hasidism. It's not that, and then in the middle of it, a few pages of the New Testament mixed in.

It's not that. You open it. I was sent a copy, too.

You open it. And by the way, I did not actively participate in the mailings. I did not fund this. My role was, yeah, put our ministry number in if someone wants to call that. That's fine.

But here's the point. And I'm going to read you some of the response in this long article in Times of Israel, seeking converts, Christian missionaries pitched Yiddish Bibles to New York ultra-orthodox missionary group. What's this group? Is it a group?

Maybe, maybe not. Missionary group is revamping New Testament in Yiddish for the first time in 80 years, part of a broader outreach effort aimed at the most insular Jewish communities in the US. And it's a fair article. It's a fair article, and it presents both sides and lets each side speak. The Messianic Jews, the so-called missionaries, the counter-missionaries, the rabbis, lets each side speak. But my question for you is what's wrong with doing this?

What's unethical? You say, well, it's very upsetting. Hey, a Muslim could say, I want every American to get a Qur'an, and wherever I have an address, I'm going to send out a Qur'an. I'm going to send out a copy of the Qur'an, and we've got funding to do it, you know, and it's very inexpensive paperback. Well, I'm offended by getting a Qur'an in the mail. Let's throw it out. I may be offended by just getting junk mail. I don't like it. I don't like every day opening the mailbox and there's junk mail, but I don't know how to not get junk mail. If you have an address, you get junk mail, generally speaking.

Please someone tell me what is ethically wrong with doing this, and isn't it a loving expression to reach people who might otherwise never hear the good news of the Messiah? We'll talk more. I'll share more of this article. We come back and move straight to your calls. 866-34-TRUTH. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I keep smiling ear to ear each Thursday. You guys got this down perfectly. I'm from New York.

I've got my New York shirt on, so guys is generic, guys is male and female in the plural. But yeah, in any case, just that we come right to that, call me a fanatic, boom, stop, and straight into this early Jewish Thursday music. Nicely done. 866-348-7884.

Going straight to the phones, and we start with Brian in Leandra, Texas. Welcome to the line of fire. Thank you very much, Dr. Brown.

You're welcome. My question is—can you hear me, sir? Yeah, if you could speak up a little bit that'd be great.

Okay, yes sir. My question is, Paul says in Galatians 3, 7, this is the NIV, understand then that those who have faith are children of Abraham. So does the prosperity and curses that were given by Moses in Deuteronomy 27 and 28 apply to us? I know that we're under a better covenant now, but I hear some preachers, you know, going to that and really pulling like the prosperity message out of that, and I was just wondering, does it apply to us and us Gentiles? I'm a Gentile before I converted to Christ, and if not, does it apply to the people who are Jews, who are Messianic Jews? I hope I made my question clear.

Very clear. Number one, you are a spiritual child of Abraham as a Gentile follower of Jesus. I am a natural and spiritual child of Abraham as a Jew and as a follower of Jesus, but we are equal heirs, equal in the Messiah. Now, probably by blood, there's obviously intermarriage at some point for me to be a white Jew, right, as Jews would have been Middle Eastern people, but that's the first thing. So we are all children of Abraham by faith, but then the Jewish people, the people of Israel are also natural children. Some of them are not spiritual children because they're not believers.

That's the first thing. Second thing, no, you cannot take the blessings and the curses and now just apply them to us today as children of Abraham by faith because that is the later Sinai covenant, and the purpose of the Sinai covenant was to bring us to the Messiah. And that's why Paul says later in the chapter that the law, which comes 430 years after the promise, cannot annul the promise. So no, you cannot say because we're children of Abraham, therefore we are entitled to the same riches he had or to the national promise of prosperity that was given to Israel unless you want to be under the curses also.

Whereas Galatians tells us in this very same chapter that Messiah became a curse for us, he took the curses of the law on himself so that we could be freed. This is one of the errors of the modern prosperity gospel. This is the right argument that a prosperity preacher might have. This is the right argument that if we sow generously, we reap generously. That's a biblical principle that if we honor the Lord with the first fruits of our lives, of our increase, that God blesses that.

The blessing could come in many different ways or that if we are diligent and work hard, we will do better than someone who is lazy and negligent. These are all biblical principles and many of them are reiterated in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. But the idea that Jesus died to make us rich or that the new covenant blessing is more money than the people of Israel had, that is a carnal destructive message that I wholeheartedly oppose. So there are many truths about provision and blessing and abundance so that we can be a blessing to others in the Old and New Testament. We may often have to go without and sacrifice and suffer for the sake of the gospel. So be it. We have treasure in heaven.

But the idea that we can just apply because we're children of Abraham, the blessings of the curses is wrong because again, that's specifically the Sinai covenant, specific period of time, specific purposes. Hey, thank you for the question. Much appreciate it. Let's go to Alex in Greenville, South Carolina. Welcome to the Line of Fire.

Hey, Dr. Brown, thank you so much for taking my call, and thank you for everything that you do. So my question is, so Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. So I was wondering how he healed, touched the leper, but he—like, how was he allowed to touch the leper? And he skipped the first two steps of the law and just told the leper to go, you know, and show himself to the priest.

So I was wondering about that, if that makes sense. Yeah, the fact is that we can absolutely say that while Jesus may have broken some of the developing Jewish traditions and violated some of the Jewish customs, that he never violated God's written word, his written Torah. If he had been a law-breaker, then he couldn't be the Messiah.

So it's a great question. The fact is that as the Messiah and Son of God, he had power to do what ordinary human beings didn't do. There was no provision in the law for the miraculous healing of leprosy. The Hebrew Sarahat does not refer to leprosy as we know it today, which is Hansen's disease, but to some other severe skin disorder. And it was disfiguring, and it did render the person unclean. So the Torah law had to do with ordinary circumstances with a human being touching a leper and becoming unclean through it, and then the procedure of getting cleansed and what the leper would go through, etc. In this case, as the Son of God, he's not breaking that law. He's just doing something that the law didn't specifically talk about, seemingly bringing supernatural healing instantaneous to someone who's a leper. In that case, the law did not specifically apply, except because you once were a leper and you no longer are going to show yourself to the priest, because there's a ceremony to go through. So that's the answer to it, and that's why, generally speaking, this is not a major objection that Jews would raise.

Oh, well, he did this. They'll normally say, well, he violated the Sabbath, or his followers didn't keep the law, or Christians don't keep the law, things like that. Try to raise those arguments. But this one is a great question, but the answer is that what he did, the law did not specifically address. So basically, if someone were to ask me that, I would say, well, the law did not address it, and he was the Messiah, so he was almost above that.

Right, right. In other words, it's not like he stole or committed idolatry or committed adultery or bore false witness or went out and built a little hut on the Sabbath. He didn't do any such thing. He was Torah-observant.

But where the law does not specifically apply, just say, okay, well, just please show me in the law where it says if you can make the person whole, if you can turn them from unclean to clean, if you can do that, please show me where the Torah touches on that. Also, there's a very interesting verse. It's in Haggai, the second chapter.

And I just want to go over there. It's very interesting, and it's a principle that you could potentially apply here. And it has to do with a holy thing, making something that's unholy, holy. Haggai 2.11 thus said the Lord of hosts, seeker reeling from the priest as follows, if a man is carrying sacrificial flesh in a fold of his garment, and with that fold touches bread, stew, wine, oil, or any other food, will the latter become holy? And in reply the priest said no.

Haggai went on as someone defiled from a corpse touches any of these, will it be defiled? And the priest responded yes. So this is kind of a reverse thing, but it's saying, okay, that uncleanness can be transferred, but holiness does not make something else holy. Well, what if you have the power to make something else holy?

In other words, this is something that transcends it. What if by touching the unclean, you make the unclean clean? What's the law about that? The law doesn't address it.

Yeah, so in short, yeah, the law did not specifically address it. And what he was doing was a work of the Messiah bringing supernatural healing. 866-34-TRUTH. We go to Brian in Louisville, Kentucky. Thanks for calling the line of fire.

Thanks, Dr. Brown. I'm a longtime fan, been listening about 15 years, and I've kind of gone back and forth in the faith, but I always turn back to you, whether I'm in the faith or not, as far as research and looking into it, because I'm of Jewish heritage myself. And my question is, were the ramifications of not following Yahweh during Tanakh times still eternity in hell, even if hell hadn't been fully revealed yet, other than a few verses, when all the goyim had to go by were the very harsh words of an ethnic religion slash theocracy? Compared to the warm words of Christ, the Hebrew Bible is very harsh, and seemed to be quite unlikely to bring about converts. Were goyim, most of the world's population, going to hell for eternity for 4,000 years between Adam and Yeshua for rejecting the harsh words of the Torah?

It just seems harsh, you know, now we have Christ to bring about converts, but were people going to hell for not believing in the Torah? All the world's goyim for those 4,000 years. So that's kind of my question.

Another one quick one, if I could flip in. Listen to a clip of John MacArthur when Billy Graham died, he said, Billy Graham created confusing alliances with liberal pastors, voiced down John MacArthur to be really strict and kind of extreme. What are your thoughts on John MacArthur? Those are my two questions, and thank you. Yes, and stay here, Brian. I'm going to have a break coming up in a moment. The John MacArthur question is not thoroughly Jewish Thursday related, so I'll just say super quickly, I have tremendous respect and appreciation for Pastor MacArthur and the good that he's done, and have taken strong exception to some of the things he's said and taught over the years, especially about Charismatics and some of his words towards others. That being said, I do have a question that I want to ask, but we're going to get cut off.

So on the other side of the break, we come back. I just want you to tell me in brief how you're doing now, if you're in the faith or not, and then I'll answer your question head on, because it's an important one. Thanks. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on The Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome friends to 30 Jewish Thursday. Michael Brown, delighted to be with you, 866-34-TRUTH. So I want to go back to Brian in Louisville. So right now, Brian, are you strong in your faith in Yeshua, or consider yourself outside right now?

I'm outside right now. My quick history is basically 0 to 13, raised in Reform Judaism. 13, my parents divorced and we moved to my mom's hometown. My maternal grandma, who's Gentile, very close to her, got me into a church. Ages 14 through 16, I had some real experiences with Christ.

16 through 20, as far as age, maybe 20% with Christ, but the other 80% more. My faith evolved into just a love of history and politics. My faith evolved into something where I wasn't believing, but the faith had turned into just a love of history and politics. And then since 20, it's pretty much just been a love of history and politics. Hey, I'm a Jewish millennial, more left-wing politics.

More of a disciple, probably, of Noam Chomsky than Yeshua. But at the same time, there is that little thing inside of me that keeps me listening to you, calling into your show. So maybe there's still some sort of root inside of me that wants to grow again. I don't know. All right. Hey, Brian, that was an amazingly concise and clear and honest summary. I really appreciate it.

And everybody, everybody pray for Brian to really come to know the truth about God and Messiah. That's what you want, is the truth, correct? Yes, sir, that's true. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Got it. Have you read my book, The Real Kosher Jesus? You know, you may have sent me that. I called into your show back in 2010. It was your 55th birthday, and you had the trivia of, why is the number 55 important today?

It was in June of 10, I think. And I called in and said, it's your 55th birthday, and you sent me a book. And it may have been that one, may have been another one, but you sent me books before when I called it. Well, if I sent you that, it was a few years before I wrote it, which would have been really a miracle. Okay.

Yeah, that was a different one. If you will read it, I'm going to send you another book. Is that okay? Be glad to, Dr. Brian.

Yeah, you'll find it interesting. All right, so Morgan, when I'm done speaking with Brian, then get his address, and we're going to send him The Real Kosher Jesus. Okay, first thing is, the God that has revealed Himself in Scripture is compassionate, kind, loving, long-suffering, fully revealed in sending His Son into the world to die for our sins. So that's His nature. He's not going to be inconsistent by showing that much love and then just indiscriminately damning hundreds of millions of people to eternity in hell when they really didn't even know any better.

That's the first thing. And the goal in Old Testament times was not primarily to convert the nations. In fact, Paul says that as they worshiped idols in Acts 17, God basically overlooked that. Now he's calling all people everywhere to repent. So we understand that God will judge us by the light that we have.

All right? I would also say that the major emphasis of the Bible is not on eternal, conscious torturing being flipped from side to side in a lake burning with fire, but being utterly destroyed, perishing. And that is ultimately, we can debate the nature of eternal punishment. In other words, if someone is cut off and destroyed, that is a punishment that lasts forever, just as being consciously tormented is a punishment that lasts forever. But when God is revealed as kind and just and compassionate and merciful and constantly rebukes those that are unjust and unfair and condemning in the Bible and that don't care for the needy, we have to understand that God will do what is perfectly right.

And the issue is, what am I doing with the light that I have? So for example, if you were starving, you were caught in some famine somewhere and you're starving, and I come to you and say, all right, here's food. I don't think your first question would be, but what about the starving babies in Uganda? You haven't come to them with food. Your first thing would be, thank you, I'm dying. Thank you for the food. And then maybe you think, wow, now that I know what starvation is like, I'm going to reach out to help others that are starving.

So it's a good, fair question. But when we look at the nature of God, we have to say, okay, he's going to deal with everyone fairly. And based on the light that we have, based on the knowledge that we have, too much is given, much is required. Brian, stay right there. Morgan is going to get your contact information and we'll send you the real kosher Jesus.

I think you'll find it to be a really eye-opening read with a lot of good history information in there as well. Let's go to Anna in Charlotte, North Carolina. Welcome to the line of fire. Thank you, Dr. Brown. Thank you for taking my call. You're welcome. I have a question, please.

Thank you. About how the genealogy sometimes run. And I'm thinking especially of the, maybe the Levite marriage. And you have in the case of Obed, right, who when he does the kinsman redeemer, he says to raise up the name of the dead. And yet when we reckon the genealogy, it doesn't go to the dead.

And I'm not sure if it was Chilian or Melon, which was Naomi's husband, or is it the dead of, or maybe it was the dead of Ruth's husband. But anyway. Right. So this would have been, it would have been if a brother of Mahlon or Chilion remarried Ruth's mother-in-law Ophrah.

Okay. That, that's where Levite marriage would have come in. Boaz, Boaz himself had, had rights to the property. This was a property issue. This was not to raise up a name for the dead. It was just, there was a widow associated with it.

That's all. So this, this was, this was not an exact parallel. Otherwise the name could have come either of two ways. It could have come in the name of Boaz or it could have come in the name of the brother, the deceased brother. In this case, Boaz did not have a deceased brother and the first child that he had for the deceased brother would now be in the brother's name. So it's not an exact parallel.

It's a great question. It's just not an exact parallel when you look. So this, this was, this was land owned by someone else. It was not a matter of raising up the, the name. Rather, it was carrying on the legacy and the history, but it was, it was not the same situation. So it's a close parallel, but not an exact parallel. If you, if you just go back and read the account carefully.

All right. So when he says to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, he just means the property in this case to keep his property in the family? It's keeping the history going. It's keeping the history and lineage going in this way. But again, if it had been an exact parallel, then the first child born, well, let me, let me just say this.

You could press that case. So it's not just the property. It is the legacy of this person, but it does not specifically say that they never had children, right?

In the account, unless I'm forgetting something in those four short chapters in Ruth. But you do have, right. So again, you could press that question and say, right, it seems self-evident. But here's the thing. You have genealogies in the Hebrew Bible.

And for example, you have it with Zerubbabel. He's listed with two different fathers in the Bible. And that's clear he was the child of a levirate marriage. So one genealogy lists the father of what would have been his deceased uncle and the other genealogy lists his father, his, his, his physical father. So either one could be recorded in the genealogy.

So if you're right, in other words, if there, if this was a levirate marriage and if there had been no child before and Boaz was, was raising up the memory of the dead and continuing it, right, the genealogy could still have two choices, put it through Boaz, who's better known here, or put it through the deceased relative potentially. And that's, yeah, sure thing. Yeah.

So just, just study, look up Zerubbabel. All right. And is he Ben Padia or is he someone else? Or is he Ben Shaltiel?

I believe Padia is the right name there. All right. Let's just see. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Plenty of time for another call here. Let's go to Matthew in Phoenix, Arizona. Welcome to the line of fire.

Hey Dr. Brown. I was, I had a question about Jewish prophecy, you know, I'm so, I, I was raised AG, never really got into prophecy, things like that, kind of just basic, you know, AG, nothing hardcore Pentecostal. But I have a question, now that I'm getting into that, I'm learning more about prophecy. I have a question, I had a conversation with somebody that said, you know, Jeremiah, you know, prophesied things that didn't come to pass. And so when we look at modern prophecy today, somebody could be considered a prophet and prophesy things that don't come to pass, and I'm kind of trying to suck that out, and trying to, you know, get a clear indication and answer as far as, can somebody claim to be a prophet, get something wrong, or have something not come to pass but still hear from God? Is it just conditional?

How does that work? All right, so three answers. Number one, there's a lot of flaky, unaccountable prophecy today in the modern Pentecostal charismatic movement, and it needs to be addressed. In my book Playing with Holy Fire, I have a whole chapter on unaccountable prophecy. I was one of the people who helped author the prophetic standards after the failed Trump prophecy, so that is an ongoing issue and problem, that words are just spoken into the air without accountability, and we need to really fix that. And the critics of the charismatic movement do well to call us out. All the failed COVID prophecies, all the failed Trump prophecies, they do well to call us out. If we were doing a better job of calling ourselves out, then the critics wouldn't have to do some of this work.

That's the first thing. The second thing is, there definitely are conditional prophecies, and the principle is laid out in Jeremiah 18, that there are times when God says, I'm going to bless a nation, and that nation turns to sin. God, instead of blessing, brings judgment. If he says, I'm going to judge a nation, and they repent, like Jonah telling the city of Nineveh, in 40 days Nineveh will be destroyed.

They repent, and instead of destroying, God withholds the punishment and instead brings blessing. So conditional prophecies are just that. And many prophecies are conditional, that you are going to experience XYZ blessing in the future, God's calling you into this new endeavor, and then you turn away from it and fall into sin.

It's not going to happen. But here's the third point. We believe Jeremiah to be a true prophet because he prophesied massive things that did happen. It's just the rest of it didn't, so we know it still will. For example, he said that his people would go into exile for 70 years. That happened. He said Jerusalem would be destroyed, and the temple burned. That happened. He said after 70 years, you'll return. That happened. He said you'll rebuild the temple. That happened. He said there'll be joy and gladness in the streets. All that happened. And then he said that the presence of God will be so wonderful that the nations will come flocking. That didn't happen, but it will.

But it will. So if someone is a proven prophet with ABCD and EFG have not yet come to pass, perhaps those things will also come to pass. We'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. You shall draw water with joy in the wells of salvation. Hebrew from Isaiah 12. Welcome to the line of fire, 866-34-TRUTH. By the way, if you're unable to get through on a Thursday or call in on a Thursday or we can't get to your call, you can always write to our ministry. Go to AskDrBrown.org.

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Okay. I want to go back for a moment to these believers. Everyone I know involved with this is Jewish believer. Maybe there's some Gentile believers involved as well. But the main folks I know involved with trying to reach the ultra-Orthodox in Israel, in America, are Jewish believers in Yeshua. So I'm just going to read from this article, Seeking Converts on Times of Israel. It says that some Christian missionary groups in the United States train their sights on ultra-Orthodox Jews. So I said it's a good article, but it gives a little different impression as Christian missionary groups, as if all these Christian missionaries around the world or Christian groups are targeting ultra-Orthodox.

That's not the case. I wish many more were praying for ultra-Orthodox. So this is pretty much an unreached and hidden people group. So the ones I know involved and that really care are Jewish believers in Yeshua. So some Christian missionary groups in the United States train their sights on ultra-Orthodox Jews.

One has sent out Yiddish-language Bibles, including the New Testament, to Jewish communities in New York in an effort to convince them to convert to Christianity. That part's misleading. The article seeks to be fair.

This is probably the author's perspective. No one's trying to convert them to Christianity. No one's trying to get the men to shave their beards and put on a cross and—let's get extreme—get a Christmas tree. We want them to remain Jews. We want them to remain God-fearing Jews, but Jews who embraced Yeshua as the Messiah and now see Torah in light of the New Covenant and live it out by the Spirit as opposed to primarily Jewish tradition. But we're not—when I say we, I've been reaching out to ultra-Orthodox Jews in many many ways for years.

I mean, just dialogue. We get to know each other—rabbis, counter-missionaries—and we interact and go back and forth through email. Almost all of them, I think, you have all of them rabbis that I've had regular contact with and a number of them counter-missionaries, so they're quite ready to deal with these issues.

And some have pursued me, and that's how we've gotten to interact. But in any case, the goal is not to convert them to Christianity. The goal is to get them to be Messianic Jews, Jewish followers of Yeshua, and whether they lead very traditional lives after that or less traditional, that's not the issue.

The issue is that they're living as God-fearing Jews in obedience to him. Opponents of the missionary work called it deceptive and invasive, while the man who holds the rights to his translation of the New Testament said he was not directly involved but deemed the effort sincere and well-intentioned. Now, it did say the return address on the posted Bibles belonged to a local synagogue. To my knowledge, it was only the Gospel of Matthew that was sent out.

At least, that's what I've been aware of. Maybe there are others sending out others. But that's the one I was aware of, and that's where our ministry phone number was put for people with questions. And again, the return address, it didn't say synagogue so-and-so with the address. It was just an address. Many people didn't even recognize an address, but it wasn't there to be deceptive.

I understand it's been discontinued in terms of doing that, but it was just a return address was needed, and that was one that was known. In any case, there was no intent to deceive with it. And it says the use of Yiddish Bibles for outreach appeared to be a revival of a tactic.

So notice a tactic the movement had abandoned decades ago. The New Testament was translated into Yiddish in the 1940s to proselytize Jews, and obviously for Jews for whom Yiddish was their first language. And maybe they were believers at this point. Who wasn't that translator but a Jewish believer, right? That's how these things happened. Chosen People Ministries began with a rabbi coming over to the States, a Jewish rabbi, and coming to know Yeshua as Messiah. And he would preach on the streets of Brooklyn, preach on the streets at Leopold Cone, and preach in Yiddish to his fellow Jews.

Nowadays, you really couldn't do that without a tremendous amount of disruption. And this was all pre-Holocaust, of course, many, many years before that. When you read the article—so it's Times of Israel. It's a free, open article.

You don't have to subscribe. Seeking converts, Christian missionaries pitch Yiddish Bibles to New York Culture Orthodox. When you read it, you'll see a testimony from a Jewish believer, Barry Rubin, and they interview him fairly and let him speak.

And then you'll see countermissionaries. Of course, they're always going to say, they're going for the elderly, the Holocaust victims of the elderly. It's to create this picture that the missionaries are preying on the elderly. That is so terribly misleading.

And let me ask you a question. Don't religious Jewish organizations reach out to elderly Jews and try to help them in humanitarian ways, which many ministries that I know do just try to help in humanitarian ways. But don't they also try to get them to be more Jewish? So what would be wrong with a Jewish person? Maybe they've got a grandmother in a nursing home and they go and talk to other Jewish people that want to talk to them. Would that be wrong?

But they're targeting the elderly. No, it doesn't happen. It's one of these things to create a false picture.

Okay. There's a headline announcing that a Christian Bible teacher in Tennessee said, here's how you torture a Jew. And he wrote on the board, God's name in full, not transliterated.

Yahweh, Jehovah, as others would write it. And so this is how you torture a Jew by making them say that because Jews are forbidden to pronounce the name of God. It's considered too sacred. It is an idiotic, stupid, ugly thing. This is as reported by a Jewish kid in the class that was offended. If that's how it went down, that's despicable, that's inexcusable, that's horrible. I would just encourage you not to make more out of it than someone being idiotic.

Someone may be thinking it was funny and being a jerk. I don't think the person was saying this is... It would be like saying, hey, you want to really torture a black person in America? Use the N-word.

Tell them I'm just going to say the N-word. That's going to get them upset. That's idiotic. That's stupid. That's ugly. But I don't believe it points to this massive anti-Semitic thing going on.

It's ugly and inexcusable. But to me, not knowing anything except that report, it seems more stupid and idiotic than malicious. Maybe the person was malicious. Maybe the person's a blatant anti-Semite.

To me, it seemed more stupid, idiotic. And so it's not what's taught in Christian Bible classes. That being said, headline on the Daily Wire announces February 8th, anti-Semitic crimes spiked nearly 300% in New York City last month since last year. Yeah, so this is an issue.

Anti-Semitism continues to rise in many parts of America and the world. That is an issue. All right, we've got time for another call or two. Let's go over to Michael in Missouri. Welcome to the line of fire. Shalom, Dr. Brown, how are you?

Doing very well, thank you. So there's this interesting event in the book of Acts, where Philip is... I guess he's going from Jerusalem to Gaza, or... Yeah, I'm just going to jump in Acts 8, where he shares the Gospel with an Ethiopian reading Isaiah 53. Yes, this Ethiopian's reading Isaiah 53. What it says here in the Bible right here, it says he's in Jerusalem to worship.

So I've kind of put the connections together. He's reading from the book of Isaiah, or the scroll of Isaiah, that could only mean that it's either in Greek or in Hebrew, which he understood those languages, and the only people to have those scrolls are Jews. So I'm thinking that this man, this Ethiopian man, is a Jewish man. So it's possible that he was a Jewish convert. That's possible. It's possible that this man had come to worship the God of Israel. And by the way, I'm only jumping in to make sure I can address your question before we're out of time.

So forgive me for doing this, because I know you wanted to lay it out. Many think that he was just a God-fearing Gentile and be common to know Greek at that time, and you could have access to scrolls. I mean, the Septuagint was out, and you could have access to scrolls, especially if you're from wealthy family or part of serving the royalty or something like that. So many believe that he was just a God-fearing Gentile who would come to worship. That's what they would do, but they weren't full converts.

He wouldn't have been circumcised. Others say, no, no, he was circumcised for the very reasons that you're giving. There is debate about that. Does that connect to Jews today? Because I see the question, are Ethiopians Jews or non-Jews? So Ethiopian Jews living in Israel today and other parts of the world are legitimately Jewish. It is not simply something that, well, they heard about Judaism at some point. They even remember back traditions over many, many centuries. When they came to Israel, because they did not follow rabbinic Judaism, the men were required to just have the drawing of blood, not actual circumcision, but a symbolic thing, because they weren't following rabbinic traditions because they never heard of them, and because rabbinic traditions came later. But it seems that they go back thousands of years, or over 2,000 years in terms of their lineage and history.

So yes, they make a legitimate claim to being legitimate Jews, legitimate Israelites, and many of them have come to faith. And if you remember, go to the website AskDirectorBrown.org. Sign up for our emails. Back with you tomorrow.