The International Jewish Evangelical Fellowship (IJEF) is a body of Jewish Christians who meet periodically, communicate with each other through their Journal (the IJEF CHAVURAH) and work together to promote the unity of the Body of Christ and the good of our nation, Israel."There is a need today to promote a clear presentation of the Gospel to our people, unencumbered with rabbinic religious authority, and in terms our people can understand. We want to encourage and assist Jewish Christians to play an active part within local Christian churches, rather than ethnically and culturally focused congregations. ...We want to encourage Jewish Christians to have an affection and a respect for the work of God in and through the Church throughout the ages. We see this as the Biblical alternative to Messianic Judaism ... (IJEF Chavurah magazine, Vol. 1 No. 1)    

IJEF's Goals
1. to equip the church to invite, edify, and encourage Jewish Christians in their midst

2. to encourage Jewish Christians to be members invested in a local Bible-believing evangelical church

3. to encourage Jewish Christians to give Christ alone the preeminence in their worship, witness, & walk

4. to encourage biblically sound evangelism to and among the Jewish people

5. to equip the church to invite, edify, and encourage Jewish Christians in their midst

Why we are gathered
But how shall this be done?
How to be a Jew in the Church
Jewish-Christian or Messianic Jew?
Why IJEF?


Why we are gathered
As Jews who believe in Jesus, what is our relationship to our people Israel, and to the church worldwide? These are interesting and timely questions, and it is high time for a sensitive, biblical discussion of the right way ahead.

Over the past few decades a movement has emerged, which declares that, in order to maintain our identity as Jews, Jewish believers need to establish separate congregations and maintain a Jewish lifestyle. Some insist upon observance of rabbinic form. Some insist that they are not “Christians”. Some want nothing to do with other Jewish believers who attend churches.

Confusing modern Rabbinic Judaism with ‘Jewishness’, and national customs with religious authority has all too often compelled Jewish believers to embrace Rabbinic traditions as the necessary and biblically legitimate expression of their faith. Those who do not follow this course are often charged with abandoning their heritage.

These views have not only distanced Jewish believers from one another, but they have also distanced numerous Jewish believers from the wealth of accumulated Christian wisdom, experience and tradition. This dooms us to relive many of the mistakes of the early church and to the erosion of biblical convictions.

Because of the way the Church has treated Jewish people, we can understand the impetus for this Movement. Indeed, the Church worldwide must be reminded of the existence of Jews among its members, and be challenged to understand and accommodate them without compulsion to abandon their heritage. Our Saviour came to call all His children, Jewish and Gentile, to himself and to make them one in Him.

But how shall this be done?
These and related issues are discussed withing IJEF activities and forums. IJEF aspires to promote biblical convictions and practical spirituality among Jewish Christians; to encourage them in their obedience to God and His word; to address the Jewish people with the Gospel; to encourage and equip Jewish Christians to find their national and cultural identity as Jews within the body of Christ; to encourage and equip the church at large to assist Jewish believers in Jesus to find within it’s framework a true spiritual home;
 

Subjects addressed include:

• Torah and Jesus

• Jewish tradition as a light on the Gospel

• Early Jewish Christian Movements — what we should learn form them?

• The authority and place of Jewish and Gentile traditions in the Church

• Prominent Jewish Christians in the history of the church

• Anti-Semitism in the church; eschatology, and it’s place in evangelism

• The glory of Messiah

   

It is our hope that IJEF would be used to raise and maintain a truly biblical spirituality among the Jewish people, creating an audible, biblically motivated and theologically conscious voice for the Gospel among Jews who profess faith in Jesus, among interested Gentiles, and among the Jewish people throughout the world. Our foundation is the doctrines of the Word of God as summarized in the historical evangelical confessions of Faith.

If you would like to participate in this exciting endeavor, please contact us at info@IJEF.co.il

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How to be a Jew in the Church
There is no room to draw national or cultural distinctions in the church. The church should express its unity in all aspects of its life and witness, regardless of the national backgrounds, social status or genders of its members. Legitimate differences between Christians should not form the basis for church fellowship.

Jewish or gentile Christians may choose to form fellowships apart their respective congregations, where they celebrate their feasts, give expression to their shared Jewishness and reach out to their own people. Such fellowships should never be allowed to supplant the role of the church. Further, we are forbidden to introduce into the worship of God any cultural forms that are to be considered binding or spiritually advantageous to worshippers.
A church among the Jews should partake of all of these traits. It should "be among the Jews" in the sense that it addresses Jewish issues in terms Jews can understand. The cultural language used will naturally be Jewish, and the church will consciously engage the Jewish people with the Gospel. But such a church ought not to prefer Jews, buy into Jewish self-interest or submit to Jewish religious tradition. It should exercise a truly prophetic role by calling the nation to repentance, daring to challenge sinful ways adopted in pursuit of national interests. A church should at all times reflect the Gospel, be a voice of righteousness to all nations, an example of what God in Christ does in the life of a community, calling all men to the obedience of faith.

The Body of Christ is one single body, in which Jews and gentiles are united and in which the distinctions between them are merely cultural. They do not and must not be allowed to spell over into issues of spirituality or duty before God. Local congregations should give expression to that universal oneness and to the breaking down of the barriers, religious and other, that normally divide people by emphasizing the distinctions between them and making those distinctions the basis of their preferred fellowship.

We should consciously labor for multi-ethnic congregations that proclaim in both word and deed that Christ is pre-eminent. Such a church will naturally partake of the majority culture but constantly subject it to careful scrutiny in accordance with the spirit of the Gospel.

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Jewish-Christian or Messianic Jew?
The term "Messianic Jew" was framed primarily as a means of disassociation. There is a tendency in the Messianic Jewish Movement to insist on a new, supposedly Jewish, terminology. Jesus is to be called Yeshua, the Old and New Testaments are to be described respectively as the Tanach and the Brit Chadasha, while the words "Christ", "Christian" and "church" are substituted with Hebrew terminology. It is amusing to witness the convoluted efforts which result. Messianic literature will carry reports such as: "On Sabbath (Saturday) our Kehila (congregation) met in order to worship Yeshua (Jesus)". What's the point?

There is more to the change in terminology than meets the eye. Messianic terminology is semantics of disassociation: Christians are "converted" but Messianic Jews are "completed". Gentile evangelicals are "Christians", while Jews who believe in Jesus are "Messianic". When Messianic Jews say "I am not a Christian", they are reconstructing the middle wall of partition, destroyed when Messiah died for Jew and gentile. If we are fellow believers, then we are all either Christian or Messianic. The only difference between us is our respective nationalities. We share the same Faith and should have the courage to admit it openly.

Moishe Rosen tells the story of a Jewish lady who heard about Yeshua and was fascinated with the beauty of his personality, the perfection of his teaching and the wonder of his sacrificial death. "Of course I believe in him", she declared. So she became an attendee of a Messianic congregation -- until she discovered that Yeshua is Jesus and was seen no more. We must sound the Gospel loud and clear, at any cost. We must insist on the essential ingredients of our Faith, such as the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Messiah, the corruption of human nature, the sinfulness of mankind, the lordship of God, man's inability to please God and the humanity and virgin birth, work and teachings of Messiah. Less than that is less than honest, less than biblical.

The Hebrew term "Meshichi" indicates all who, in English, would be described as evangelical Christians, including Plymouth Brethren, Lutherans, Baptists, Anglicans, Pentecostals, Charismatics and others, Jewish or gentile. Messianic Jews mistakenly insist that the Hebrew term should be translated "Messianist", or something of the kind. In terms of the semantic meaning of the Hebrew, they are right but in terms of the word's common meaning, they are mistaken. Meshichi means, pure and simple, evangelical Christian. Notsri, on the other hand, means simply Christian -- of any stripe. 

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Why IJEF?
The Opening address of the Jewish Christian Conference, 2003
by Baruch Maoz

Why? Why are we gathered here and what do we hope to achieve by such a gathering? Are there not more than enough conferences, that we should call this one? These are legitimate questions, and they deserve a reply. There are a number of reasons why we have gathered.

1. To our utter amazement, contrary to all reasonable expectation, we have discovered ourselves to be loved of God. In spite of our sins, God has drawn us to himself, forgiven and cleansed us at the cost of his son’s shame, sorrow and death, and by the power of his resurrection. He has made us his own, sent his Spirit to dwell in us and given us a sure hope of eternal life. He has given his precious word and taught us by it what to believe and how to live. He has granted us his presence, listens to our prayers and cares about us. In response, we are here to worship God and learn how to be better Christians through hearing and heeding His holy word. We are here because he first loved us, and because we want to thank him for his mercy in saving us.

2. Most of us are Jewish. As such, we love our people. We are witnesses of their moral and spiritual plight, share their pain, and long to see it relieved. We know what the majority of our people do not know: that Israel can find salvation only through the promised saviour. We also know that saviour to be Jesus, son of David, son of Man; born in Nazareth, crucified and resurrected in Jerusalem and now sitting at the right hand of God, sharing his rule and his glory. We seek to preach the Gospel to our people as clearly and as faithfully as possible.

Because we love our people, we wish to remain visibly and discernibly Jewish. We have not and will not turn our backs to our people’s rich history and culture. As Paul put it in I Corinthians 7:18: was a man already circumcised when he was called? He should not become uncircumcised. Was a man uncircumcised when he was called? He should not be circumcised”. We firmly believe that our insistence on the right to remain what God has made us in no way conflicts with the Gospel. We love our culture and our history. We share the burdens, sorrows, joys and triumphs of our people and do not wish to divorce ourselves from them. But we want to do so in a brave and distinctly Christian manner because we desire to be no less visibly and discernibly faithful to the Gospel as we are to our people. Our prior loyalty is to God as revealed in Messiah and to his Gospel.

Being Jewish, we tend to read the Bible with a different kind of insight than do many of our gentile brethren. They can teach us their insights, and we can teach them ours. In this way we can enrich each other. We do not claim to have a greater ability to discern the meaning of scripture because we are Jewish, only a tendency to read the Bible is a way that can be as advantageous to the church as is the way the Bible is read by our gentile brethren. We tend to approach the New Testament from the point of view of the Torah, the Prophets and the Psalms, through which we have been persuaded to worship Jesus. Our gentile brethren tend to read the Hebrew Bible from the point of view of the Gospels, by which they are persuaded to read Moses and the prophets. Both approaches are essential for the wellbeing of the church. We are here to learn to think more clearly and more affectionately as Jews and as Christians, and to do so together, so we can serve God and our people better.

3. We love Jesus, David’s greater son, the very brightness of the Father’s glory and the exact image of his essence, light of light, very God of very God, eternal, equal as to his deity with the Father and the Spirit, born of a virgin, the saviour of Israel and of the world, who is and was and is to come. We love him for the glorious beauty of his deity, for the wonder of his person, for the surprising kindness of his grace, for his self-sacrifice in bearing our sins on the cross, and dying for us and in our place. We love him for the surpassing glory of his sovereignty, the loving way he exercises it and for the hope that he has sealed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.

We desire to give Jesus preeminence in all things. We believe that he should be the focal point of individual and congregational life. Both Christians and Churches should be Christocentric rather than ethnocentric. Our primary concern should always be to know him and the power of his resurrection, to be true to him and be found in him, whatever our beloved but unbelieving Jewish brethren may say. Jesus is our all-in-all, and, in comparison with him, everything is but dung. For his sake, his glory, his Gospel and his crown we are prepared to suffer the loss of all things. If need be, we will go outside of the camp of national recognition, but we will not deny or make light of an inkling of Messiah’s true glory.

Jesus saves, that is the essence of our message. He saves fully, utterly, effectively, to the utmost extent. There is no need to add anything to his magnificent achievements on our behalf. They alone are sufficient to bring us into the presence of God with exceeding joy. They alone can satisfy the holiness and justice of God. They alone can please him for whom all things exist. The covenant God made with our fathers at Sinai has found its complete fulfillment in the sacrificial life and death of Jesus, in his enthronement and in his kingship.

Rabbinical Judaism has made an unquestionable contribution to the culture of our people, but it has made a highly questionable contribution to our people’s commonly accepted religion. By so doing, they have transformed Jewish nationality and the commonly accepted Jewish faith into something it should never have become. Influences from Babylon, Persia and Greece have played a larger role in the evolution of Judaism than is generally acknowledged. As part of our obedience to God in Messiah, we call our people to turn from rabbinicism and return to the pure word of God, to the prophecies of Amos and Isaiah, to the words of Moses and of David. It is there that they shall find, as we did, him of whom the prophets speak.

We are here, therefore, to worship Jesus and to learn more of him.

4. We love the truth of God and vow ever to seek after it. We do not claim to know all things, but neither dare we deny what we sincerely believe to be the truth. We firmly believe that faithfulness to whatever measure of light that God has granted is part of the obedience that every man owes to God. The other part is to live according to that light to the utmost of man’s God-given ability, ever yearning and seeking for grace to glorify God more by knowing him better and obeying him more consistently. Because we acknowledge the limitations of our knowledge, we are here to learn from each other, as well as from those who disagree with us.

We can forgo our reputations, our status in society, and our financial welfare. But we cannot concede an iota of essential truth because it is God’s not ours. Our duty is to be faithful to that truth at any cost, while sincerely loving and respecting those who disagree with us. This we will endeavor to do, God helping us.

5. We love our fellow-believing brothers and sisters, be they Jewish or gentile, whether they openly identify with the church or subscribe to all or many of the tenets of the Messianic Movement. We happily agree with many of the concerns expressed by that Movement, and lovingly disagree with some of the options its adherents consider legitimate. We do not intend to argue with any. We will not speak against any. Our desire is to learn and to promote the truth. We believe this can best be done in a spirit of gracious mutual respect, as we converse with each other and search the scriptures in an effort to learn more of the truth of God.

We are here to express love for our all and any who are our brethren and to invite them to enter into dialogue with us. We do not ask them to compromise their convictions. Nor will we compromise ours. We invite them to dialogue with us about the message of scripture, so that they and we can grow together into the fullest measure of the stature of Messiah and be filled with all his fullness.

6. We love the church, in spite of its faults, because it is the body of Messiah. We note with pain the truth of the church’s failure to stir our people to spiritual jealousy and we confess the church’s shortcomings. We are part of the church and, as such, we cannot shrug off the shame and guilt of the past. Our brethren – we – have persecuted and mistreated the Jewish people, turned a blind eye when they were being persecuted by others, and we did not make them welcome in our churches.

7. Many of us have experienced a sense of discomfort as we sat under preaching which castigated “the Jews” for rejecting Messiah while praising “the disciples” for believing in him and which caricatured “the Jews” as representatives of everything evil. We have chaffed as we heard sermons and read bible annotations in which all the promises of God were attributed to the church, while our beloved people were left with nothing but the curses. We have shrunk in pain while being told by those who maintained their national cultures in black, Greek, Russian or American churches that we are “no longer Jewish”.

We are here to confess these faults and to labour for their correction. We call upon the church to welcome Jewish Christians and to abstain from calling them to undo their circumcision or deny their culture.

We are also here to affirm our oneness with all who call upon the name of the Lord from a heart made pure by the blood of Messiah and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The church is one, and its unity should be demonstrated by the way we conduct our worship, our witness and our daily lives. Culture – Jewish or gentile – should not be the issue around which congregations are founded or on which they are focused. Jesus is to be the goal and centre of all we do.

The task before us is a significant one. We do not presume to be able to undertake it alone. Above all, we need grace from God, because without such grace we can never serve him acceptably. The best of our deeds are no more than filthy rags before him whom the angels cringe - although they have never sinned. Such holiness is beyond our comprehension, far beyond our reach.

We need the help of the Christian academic world. There are many areas of research that need to revisited, reviewed and – perhaps – reformulated:

1.  We need to participate in articulating a thoroughly biblical theology of Law in general and of the Law of Moses in particular, in contemporary terms and in a manner pertinent to the questions Jewish Christians to ask and tend to be asked.

2.  A new history of the church, written from a distinctly evangelical point of view, needs to be researched and written, taking into account the errors of the church, not only its achievements, including its attitude to what is commonly known as the Old Testament and its treatment of the Jewish people and other none-western nations.

3.  Biblical eschatology has been transformed into a Christian form of fortune telling and has been robbed of its moral and spiritual edge. New work on eschatology urgently needs to be done, calling the church back to the main burden of the message of the prophets. We should participate in such work.

4. We need to learn to articulate an uncompromisingly biblical theology of God, including a theology of the Son and of the Spirit that will convey as clear a message to our people as possible, without raising any grounds for doubt among our fellow Christians as to our loyalty to biblical truth.

5.  We need to participate in an effort to remind the church of its Christocentric calling, and to encourage the church to engage more meaningfully in multi-cultural worship and witness. The division of the church into black and white, native and immigrant, Jewish and gentile is less than helpful in discovering the riches of the Gospel and experiencing them in reality.

6.  We need to participate in a new appraisal of Judaism, frankly recognizing its positive contributions and no less frankly indicating where it has gone astray.

7.  We need to participate in the discovery of Jewish Christian history, including its aberrations, so we can learn form the past both what to emulate and what to avoid.

We need the help of all our fellow Christians, as we fumble our way through the morass of options, all clamoring for our attention and loyalty. We all need to bear with each other patiently, to be open to differences of practice within our respective believing communities, to graciously criticize us when we are at fault and to dare to undertake a renewed concern for the evangelization of the Jewish people.

We need the help of our fellow Jews who believe in Jesus. We need to discuss together with them the issues at stake in a frank and open manner, ever examining the biblical evidence. We oppose none of our brethren in Christ. We do sincerely disagree with some on a number of important points, but we are confident that, as our discussion proceeds, we will discover that some of these disagreements are based on misunderstanding. We humbly ask all of our brethren to dare examine the grounds of their practice, as we shall do ours, and to join us in a search for ever-increasing understanding of the word of God. Forgive us when we are wrong, and bear with us, please, if we are overbearing. Let’s serve God together by submitting to his word.

Why have we gathered at this conference? We have gathered because we are deeply concerned with trends evident among some of our Jewish fellow believers in Jesus. We are persuaded that the words of the unknown apostle in his letter to the Hebrews are still pertinent, particularly to us: We must pay much more careful attention than we have done until now to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. If the Torah, delivered by angels, was binding and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation – first announced by the Lord, confirmed by those who heard him and God himself testified to its truthfulness by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit given according to his will (Heb. 2:1-4).

We are also here to encourage the greater majority of our Jewish brethren who are to be found in evangelical churches: be true to Messiah. Remain where you are. Be faithful Christians. But don’t forsake your people. Remain Jewish. Seek to reach out to your Jewish brethren who do not believe in Jesus, the members of your families, residents in your neighborhoods, your acquaintances and those whom you either serve or who serve you in the course of your everyday walk of life.

We are the light of the world. No one lights a candle to place under the table. Our light must shine so that all can see it, and in a manner that will move them to praise our Father who is in heaven. We are the salt of the earth. If the salt will have lost its saltiness, it is unfit for anything but to be thrown on the ground and trampled underfoot. Both the church and Israel needs our message – and it is a grand privilege and duty to deliver it as faithfully as God will enable us so to do.

To the extent that we are enabled by God to focus on the main issues of the Gospel, we shall best serve the interests dear to our hearts, and glorify God in the process.

Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth, sing praise to the Lord,
To him who rides the ancient skies above,
Who thunders with mighty voice.
Proclaim the power of God,
Whose majesty is over Israel, whose power is in the skies.
You are awesome, O God, in your sanctuary,
The God of Israel gives power and strength to his people.
Praise be to God!

Let us pray:
O God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
Creator and sustainer of heaven, earth and all that is in them,
We come before you by the virtues of your son and our saviour, Jesus.
We come to plead for our people, who are still in darkness,
Without God, without Messiah and without hope in the world.
We come to plead for ourselves, in need of much more enlightenment.
We come to plead for our brethren, both Jewish and gentile,
Who know your grace in Messiah:
Show us your grace, Lord.
Be with us in this conference.
Teach us your ways,
And give us the courage that comes with the riches of complete understanding.
May your Spirit guide us into all truth,
And may we have grace to live for you according to the truth.
Save our people, Lord.
Save Israel as you have promised.
May the day soon come when Israel will blossom and bud and fill the face of the earth with fruit
And the earth be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea,
Through Jesus, the Messiah and our Lord,
AMEN.

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