Christian missionaries’ ‘Shalom New York’ trip targets Jews on their community streets
A CHRISTIAN missionary group is recruiting evangelists to target “our beloved Jewish people” in New York with the “good news” of Jesus, the JC can reveal.
Chosen People Ministries is advertising the upcoming trip for trainee missionaries as “Shalom New York”. The group says its mission is to “pray for, evangelise, disciple, and serve Jewish people everywhere”. Its promotional material says: “Believers from all over the United States will gather in New York City to proclaim the good news of Messiah Yeshua [Jesus Christ] to our beloved Jewish people. If you love to share your faith in Yeshua, care about the well-being of the Jewish people, and want to honour the Lord by making His priority your priority, we would love to team up with you this summer on the streets of New York City.”
A promotional video for the trip shows footage of Orthodox Jews in New York and an evangelist saying the trip is “an opportunity to reach the Jewish people”, explaining: “In the whole United
States, the majority of Jewish people are in Brooklyn. So what better place to come and reach them with the gospel, the good news, of Yeshua Messiah.”
In another clip, a woman with an English accent says she witnessed one woman “talk to an elderly lady on the phone… by the time she’d finished the phone call she’d prayed with that lady and that lady had come to know that Jesus is the Messiah”.
The website tells members and supporters the New York trip could be “the most significant opportunity you will ever have to realise God’s great evangelistic purpose for your life”.
Having “expanded to 17 countries” the video says Chosen People Ministries plans to open in Brazil next. Another promotional video from Chosen People Ministries explains the history of the Christian group, which traces its origins back to 1892.
It claims that a rabbi called Leopold Cohen stumbled upon a church in New York where he heard the Christian bible being read in Yiddish, after which he “gave his life to Jesus” and “began reaching out to the tens of thousands of poor, Eastern European, Jewish immigrants... sharing the gospel and the love of Jesus” .
Rabbi Tovia Singer of Outreach Judaism — an organisation that aims to bring Jews back to Judaism — described the evangelical work of messianic groups as
“relentless”. He described their method as “a blurring of distinctions between Judaism and Christianity in order to lure Jews, who would otherwise resist a straightforward Christian message.” The Chosen People Ministries website claims its current president Mitch Glaser “grew up in a religious Jewish family, but felt there was a distance between him and God,” adding that he began believing in Jesus as the Messiah when he became a drug dealer in California, following a “deal gone bad” at which he was “almost killed.” Chosen People Ministries was contacted for comment. A representative said the enquiry would be forwarded to the organisation’s president but no further reply was received by the time the JC went to press.
The evangelical work of messianic groups is relentless