Who Ever Heard of a Jewish Missionary_ - Bob Mendelsohn by Bob Mendelsohn

Author:Bob Mendelsohn
Language: eng
Format: mobi

They flipped open their Bibles and began telling me about Jesus right out of the book. They answered some of my questions but were stumped by others. When I asked them about peace on the earth, they answered that they had peace. Personally! They said that when I accepted Jesus, the sky would be bluer and the grass would be greener! Their experience of Christianity was alive and they wanted me to experience it, too. This was so different from my experience in Atlanta. These enthusiastic people had something that they wanted to share with me. And since (unlike Marva), I had no particular interest in them personally, I found myself curious about what they were saying.

Still, I was Jewish and it was my duty to refute these nice people and their nice religion. It was not new for me to discuss religion in this way. Jimmy, the baal teshuva from summer camp had given me a book. The title was something like Missionaries at the Door, and it provided responses to those who might try to convert Jews to Christianity. I had read that book. These two young people were out of their league and I won the Bible battle. But they won a bigger battle, and so I continued thinking about Jesus.

They won me with their humility. They admitted they did not have all the answers. I’d never heard of religious people not having all the answers—or at least openly admitting they didn’t. Every religious person I’d ever met seemed fairly confident in his or her own ability to answer any objection and query. Here were two Christians, ministers I thought, who admitted what they didn’t know.

Nor did they seem flustered or upset to have to do so. That was very refreshing. Their confidence in the answers they did offer was not based on who they were, but in the One of whom they spoke.

They pointed me to the Source. They urged me to go talk to God and to ask him for answers that they could not provide. That was new. If you wanted to know anything in Orthodox Judaism, you would go to the Talmud or to a rabbi. You would read a book. Ask God? Not likely! He was too busy. And besides, I wasn’t altogether sure that he cared about me. Well, these people were absolutely convinced that he did, and that I should be in touch with him about Jesus.

After that encounter, I wanted to talk to Marva again. Whatever interest I may have had in her was eclipsed by the challenge I had decided to take: to find out about Jesus for myself.

It was Friday. We stayed up that entire night reading from the New Testament. We began in the first book, the Gospel of Matthew, and kept reading. We even read parts of the book of the Revelation. How exciting—and a bit scary— to read that apocalyptic book at night!

The part that spoke to me the most was in John, chapter 10.

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