Category: Opinion

If you thought taking prayer requests via e-mail made things easy for your congregation, you’ve got nothing on Alon Nil. The 25-year-old from Tel Aviv, Israel, recently launched a non-profit service that allows people around the world to place their prayers in Jerusalem’s Western Wall-via Twitter.

Nil created the service, which is available to people of all faiths, as a way to connect people with the Jewish culture. Using the Twitter account @thekotel, individuals can tweet a prayer (no more than 140 characters, of course), which Nil will print out on a small piece of paper and stuff in the cracks of the prayer site-also known as the Kotel and believed to be the place closest to the Holy of Holies in the second temple.

We gentile Christians enjoy the blessing of knowing Jesus as Savior. We were grafted into the fold through the work of Christ on the cross, with a command to tell the world about Him. But the message of Yeshua is “to the Jew first.” And today, many Jews are accepting the Messiah into their lives and introducing Him to others. Here’s why. Click below to watch the video.

It has been over 2,000 years since the death and resurrection of Jesus. Since that time Christianity has grown and changed to reflect different eras, cultures, and different beliefs. The expression of our faith has taken on various forms and faces. It is ever growing and transforming—sometimes with choices that are for the better and some for the worse.

Since the 1970s more and more Christians are finding themselves returning to the Jewish roots of their faith. And with this outpouring has come many questions regarding the importance of our roots and in what form they should and can be expressed. In other words, “how deep do I really want to go?”

When we went to Russia to be intercessors for a music festival in St. Petersburg, we heard many testimonies from Jewish people. As they shared how their lives had been changed when they received Yeshua (Jesus), these testimonies all had a common theme. I do not recall hearing one testimony that did not include some type of sign that God used to reveal His Son Jesus to them as their Messiah.

In 1 Cor. 1:22-24, we see Paul’s insight into those with whom he was sharing the good news. He says, “For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Though Jesus was born in Bethlehem, taught in Jewish synagogues, and spread His message “to the Jew first,” the majority of people in His homeland do not recognize Him as the Messiah. But thanks to what they say is a spiritual awakening unfolding in the Holy Land, many Jewish believers are sharing the gospel and leading their brothers and sisters to Christ. Click below to watch the video.

Are you aware that your Christian faith was built on a Jewish foundation? Think about it: Jews wrote the entire revelation of Scripture—both Old and New Testaments—except perhaps for the books of Luke and Acts. The Old Testament prophets all were Jewish. The apostles all were Jewish. And Jesus was not born a Christian—nor did He later convert. He was born a Jew and grew up to become a Jewish rabbi.

On Pentecost, it was Jewish men and women who first received Jesus as their long-awaited Messiah and who were endued with the power of the Holy Spirit. They went out to tell the things they had seen and heard, and when they were dispersed through persecution, they became witnesses to the gentiles.

A veteran high school coach in Michigan has filed a federal lawsuit claiming he was fired by a Muslim principal because of his Christian faith and his association with a Pentecostal minister who helped lead a Muslim student to Christ.

In a lawsuit filed Monday, Gerald Marszalek, a wrestling coach for 35 years at Fordson High School in Dearborn, accused Dearborn schools and Fordson Principal Imad Fadlallah of violating his constitutional rights to free speech and exercise of religion, as well as Michigan laws against religious discrimination.

In the hills outside of Jerusalem, the Israelis have built a memorial to the greatest tragedy in Jewish history, the Holocaust. This memorial, called Yad Vashem, houses a large and graphic exhibition detailing the murder of 6 million Jews. This display achieves its intended effect: it is impossible to walk through it and not be burdened by the enormity of the crime that the Nazis and their henchmen committed against the Jewish people. Visitors exit the hall carrying a heavy weight.

Outside the museum, nestled in a wooded campus, Yad Vashem hosts a more uplifting memorial: the Garden of the Righteous Among Nations. Here, scattered among the trees, are plaques in honor of the thousands of non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. This part of Yad Vashem also impacts the visitor’s state of mind. A detailed display of the depths of human cruelty ends, in this garden, on a note of hope.

During my trip to Israel several months ago, I ran into a group of Jewish kids on a field trip in the Old City. They reminded me of my nieces and nephews, running around playing and giggling nonstop.

But not far from Jerusalem are children whose faces have been draped with anger and rage. Radical Islamists who seek only death and destruction have seared their minds with lessons of hate. But these children need our prayers too. Click below to watch the video, then ask God to turn their hearts toward Him.

Pro-lsrael Christians from across the U.S. gathered in the nation’s capital this week to participate in the fourth annual Christians United for Israel (CUFI) Washington Summit. The event gave some 4,000 participants the opportunity to demonstrate their support for the Holy Land by lobbying U.S. lawmakers to back the Jewish nation.

“America really shouldn’t be pressuring Israel to make concessions Israelis don’t want to make,” said CUFI executive director David Brog. “Israel has been devoted to the peace process.”

Tisha B’Av is a day of mourning when the Jewish people remember the destruction of both the first and second temples. Tradition holds that the temples were destroyed some 656 years apart but on the same date. This year, Tisha B’Av begins on the eve of July 29 and ends at nightfall on July 30.

Traditionally, it is also believed that many other tragic events occurred on the 9th of Av (Tisha B’Av):

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