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Answering Anti-Missionaries

Anti-missionaries have questions. We have answers. Judaism has objections. We have solutions. At Vine of David and First Fruits of Zion, we are going to begin utilizing our blog post space for answering Judaism's arguments against faith in Messiah.

This is not our first foray into the battle for faith. In 2007, First Fruits of Zion offered a conference dedicated to answering anti-missionary arguments. The conference was a response to an alarming trend we observed among many Messianic Gentile believers who were falling in love with Judaism and abandoning faith in Messiah. Without exception, such apostates warmly (and gullibly) accepted the arguments of anti-missionaries without question, while at the same time they treated the New Testament and anything they perceived as Christian with cold suspicion and cynical criticism.

We titled the conference To Whom Shall We Go on the basis of this text from the Gospel of John:

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, "Do you want to go away as well?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God." (John 6:66-69)

Ever since that conference, we have intended to return to the task of answering anti-missionary dogma and defending the true, Jewish Yeshua of Nazareth. Towards that end, we launched the Vine of David ministry, a venture charged with translating into English the work of early Messianic Jewish pioneers and apologists. One such writer is Rabbi Yechiel Tzvi Lichtenstein.

In the late nineteenth century, Rabbi Yechiel Tzvi Lichtenstein (Ritzl), a Chassidic disciple of Yeshua of Nazareth and a towering, luminous intellect, threw down a gauntlet challenging the anti-missionaries of his day by writing a book answering the anti-missionary literature circulating in nineteenth century Europe. The first paragraph of the introduction to his book Strengthening True Faith reads as follows:

Those who deny the Messiah of the God of Jacob, who is Yeshua the Messiah, Son of God, would use all their subversive power to mislead people with their lies, because they are of the father of the lie. Therefore they would multiply responsa and arguments to confuse their thinking and to blind the eyes of reason in order for them to fall into their destructive nets.

Lichtenstein caustically characterized anti-missionaries as sons "of the father of the lie," i.e. sons of the Devil. To modern ears with modern sensitivities, such language sounds unnecessarily harsh, but Rabbi Lichtenstein must be understood in his own nineteenth-century, Jewish context, locked into a battle for souls. The same battle rages on today within the Messianic Movement. We all know brothers and sisters who have "jumped ship," so to speak, breaking families, relationships, communities, and hearts. Today anti-missionary propaganda is more ubiquitous than ever before. More than ever, they "multiply response and arguments" and trap people in "their destructive nets."

Further on in the introduction to Strengthening True Faith, Lichtenstein writes:

Blessed be Hashem, the God of Israel, for he has stirred my spirit by his mercy, and his righteousness has sustained me to avenge his name and his Messiah and to take the offensive against the skeptics and those driving others away from the truth, as well as to demonstrate to our brethren, the children of Israel, and to all peoples, that the words of the books of the New Testament were rightly spoken in their entirety, that there is in them no perversion or distortion, and that all the words of the prophets support their truth.

By his mercy, Hashem has stirred us too. In the same spirit, Vine of David is carrying on the task of answering anti-missionary propaganda in our To Whom Shall We Go teaching series. Follow our progress at vineofdavid.org as we bring solid answers and compelling proofs defending faith in Yeshua of Nazareth. Unlike most Christian apologists, we bring answers from a pro-Torah, Messianic Jewish perspective. In addition, we will bring the words and wisdom of the great pioneers of Messianic Judaism to bear on these critical questions.

Some of the most common anti-missionary arguments typically posed to believers are answered in our Audio CD teaching series To Whom Shall We Go.

• Vol 1 : Who Do You Say That I Am? Defending a Messianic Christology.
• Vol 2 : As it is Written. How Reliable are the Apostolic Scriptures?
• Vol 3 : My Brother's Keeper. The Battle to Defend a Messianic Judaism.

Order each volume separately or as a complete set.
Click here to order the CD's.

Rabbi Lichtenstein concludes the introduction to Strengthening True Faith with the following words. We echo his sentiments:

And now esteemed reader, what do I ask of you? To read this book of mine with an upright heart seeking truth and eager to do what is right. May Hashem in his compassion and great mercy open your eyes that you may turn and seek Hashem our God and David your king. Then will Hashem also make his face to shine upon you and give you peace by the hand of the Prince of Peace, who is Yeshua the Messiah, our Master and our king forever.

About the Author: D. Thomas Lancaster is Director of Education at First Fruits of Zion, and regular contributor to Messiah Journal. He is the author of the Torah Club programs, and the books Grafted In, Restoration and King of the Jews