SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

welcome to the good news with angie austin now with the good news

SPEAKER 04 : 0:09

Hey there, it’s The Good News with Angie Austin. Welcome. I’m very happy to introduce David Brickner. He is with Jews for Jesus. Speaking about his new book, Does the Jewish Bible Point to Jesus? Twelve Key Prophecies that Unfold God’s Plan. Again, Does the Jewish Bible Point to Jesus? Welcome, David.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:27

Well, thank you, Angie, and shalom to all of you and the sound of my voice. It’s great to be with you. All right, so tell us first a little bit about Jews for Jesus.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:38

Well, Angie, we have a little plaque on the cornerstone of our headquarters building here in San Francisco. It says, Jews for Jesus, established 32 AD, give or take a year.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:48

I like that.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:52

So, of course, you know, the history of Jewish people being for Jesus goes all the way back to Peter, James, and John. But the organization Jews for Jesus really grew out of the Jesus Revolution. Some have seen that movie a few years ago that came out. And there was a lot of God at work, the Holy Spirit moving in the hearts of young people. It was the height of the countercultural revolution. The Vietnam War protests were going on. And in the middle of all that was the Jesus Revolution. And many of those young people… who were turned on by the power of the Holy Spirit were Jewish. And God used a man who was not a young person. He was in his 50s, but he basically, Moish Rosen, our founder, was the person that God used to pull together all this group of young Jewish believers, new believers in Jesus, and we all wanted to kind of make the message known. We had come to believe in Jesus, we knew that God had a plan for the Jewish people, and so Jews for Jesus really began as a movement, and ultimately incorporated in September of 1973, And since then, we’ve grown to be the largest evangelistic outreach to Jewish people in the world. We’re in 12 countries, and our largest work is in Israel. Of course, that makes sense, because it’s the largest Jewish population in the world. We have about 65 full-time staff members in Israel, all of them Israeli Jews for Jesus. And So we’re actively engaging, relentlessly pursuing God’s plan for the salvation of the Jewish people everywhere around the globe. And I’m very excited to be a part of and leading that ministry for almost three decades. God is really moving in the hearts of Jewish people today, especially.

SPEAKER 04 : 2:47

All right, David Brichter, tell me a little about your background and how you became a leader in the Jews for Jesus movement for the last 30 years.

SPEAKER 03 : 2:55

Well, unlike many of my fellow colleagues in Jews for Jesus had Jewish believers in my background, my great-great-grandfather was the chief Haredi rabbi or ultra-Orthodox rabbi in Zhytomyr in Ukraine back in the 1850s, and his wife became a follower of Jesus. Wow. So I had a familiarity with Messianic faith, even as a young person, but I turned my back on all of that and was into the world and going to pursue a career in music at Boston University. And in 1976, I met some folks from Juice for Jesus. Early days of our ministry, they invited me to a Bible study, and that was a key turning point in my life. And I became a volunteer with Juice for Jesus. I finished up my college degree, ultimately with the Jewish Studies program at Moody Bible Institute, and then continued to serve the Lord in multiple different places until 1996 when I became the executive director following in the footsteps of our founder, Moish Rosen.

SPEAKER 04 : 4:07

You know, I can’t imagine in 1850 if you’re… Great-great-great-great-grandfather, however many greats, and your grandmother, however many greats. I can’t imagine that that was an easy thing to do if he was an Orthodox rabbi and she decided to be a follower of Jesus.

SPEAKER 03 : 4:23

Oh, boy. You know, you think Jews for Jesus raises eyebrows and questions in the Jewish community today. Imagine what it was like for the rabbi’s wife. I mean, there’s a book written about her life. It’s out of print now, but you can find it on our website, in electronic form. It was called The Romantic Career of a Twice-Born Jewess. They called the Jewish women Jewesses back in those days, and a very gripping account of the miracles that God did and the amazing sacrifices that were made and the opposition. And, you know, today we face opposition, certainly, but back in that time, it meant oftentimes taking your life in your hands. And so today, you know, Jewish people face opposition from family members, sometimes to the point of being disowned, you know, or not being allowed to ultimately be buried in a Jewish cemetery if you’re a believer in Jesus, not being allowed to emigrate to Israel as a Jew. Oftentimes, these are the prices that people pay. But way back in the 19th and you know, century, there was an even steeper price.

SPEAKER 04 : 5:43

I can’t even imagine. I mean, just when you said the dates, I was like, whoa. Okay, so that’s fascinating. I’ll go to the website and look at that on Jews for Jesus. Okay, so we’re also, you know, talking to you about your book. So let’s talk a little bit about, you know, where this came from. Does the Bible point to Jesus? Twelve key prophecies that unfold God’s plan. Tell us a little about the book.

SPEAKER 03 : 6:08

I’m so excited about this, and I appreciate the opportunity to tell people about it because it just came out, Moody Publishing. I graduated from Moody, and so I’ve been publishing all of my books with Moody Publishing, and this one is particularly exciting to me because I’m dealing with the Messianic prophecies from the Tanakh, from the Jewish Bible, and answering that question, does the Jewish Bible point to Jesus? And the answer, of course, is yes, but to be able to hear and overhear a conversation among Jewish people, that’s really what it is. Me talking to my Jewish people, especially seekers, and showing very clearly how Jesus is all over the pages of of the Older Testament, about the Jewish Bible. And so I weave in stories over the years of how I’ve had the opportunity to share these prophecies with different Jewish people, how they’ve responded. And it’s just full of those kinds of little gems of, you know, the rabbis and their commentary. And, you know, from the very beginning, the first prophecy concerning the Messiah is in Genesis chapter 3. And it’s like a golden thread that weaves its way through all the pages of the Jewish Bible. Jesus is there. And, you know, in Luke 24, verses 44 and 45, Jesus, after his death, burial, and resurrection, shows up among his disciples. And in that interaction, he says, these are the words that I spoke to you. concerning everything that was written about me in Moses and the prophets and the Psalms, and he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And so I would have loved to have been in that little discipleship session that Jesus taught his disciples, but the point is that Jesus was clearly demonstrating to them that their faith needed to be grounded not just in the experience of seeing Jesus after his resurrection, but in the knowledge that the Bible clearly points to him. And that really is what sustains faith. And so my hope and prayer is that this book will be used of God to lead many people to Jesus. It’s translating now into Hebrew. and French, and Russian, and Ukrainian, and German, and whoever we are working among Jewish communities, this book is now being made available, and I absolutely am praying that God will use it. But I think that for Christians, it’s really impactful as well, because a lot of Christians don’t have a lot of familiarity with the Older Testament. They tend to camp in the New Testament. Yes, set up camp. You know what I mean? And so Jesus actually, his Bible was the Old Testament. Peter, James, and John, their Bible was the Jewish Bible. And so we really want Christians to have a familiarity not only to encourage their faith. not only to bolster their confidence in the gospel and in who jesus is but so that they might with confidence share that faith with their jewish friends and neighbors and this book you know coming out now in the christmas season is a wonderful whether it be a stocking stuffer or some a gift but especially if you have a jewish friend that you want to see come to know Jesus, this book is a perfect book to give to them or loan to them if you want, and a way to open up conversation about Jesus in your own personal witness.

SPEAKER 04 : 10:01

You know, I think about, you know, my Jewish relatives. And if I if I instead of putting, you know, the normal the lip gloss and, you know, maybe a hairbrush and, you know, some chocolate in their stocking. And I put in this book, sometimes I believe that maybe you aren’t met with all smiles.

SPEAKER 03 : 10:18

No, Jesus has been controversial since the days he walked this earth in the Jewish community. There’s a separation. You know, Jesus even said that I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. Well, that sword is not a metal sword. It’s a sword of papyrus and vellum. It’s a sword of the Word of God that actually does divide between families. But, you know, it’s also the Word of God that is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces and is the main means by which Jewish people and many people are coming to believe. The Bible is God’s supernatural strategy. for bringing his chosen people to faith. And so this book really does serve as a companion for those who are, you know, seekers who are willing to open the pages of the Jewish Bible and, uh, regularly out on the streets of Israel or wherever our ministry is, we like to go and actually show, let’s say, a passage from Isaiah 53. And we’ll just have the passage and we’ll say, read this. And someone will read a couple of verses and we say, okay, so does this come from the Old Testament or the New Testament? And invariably, Jewish people will say, well, that sounds like it comes from the New Testament. And then we, of course, have the thrill of showing them that it comes from Isaiah, who wrote 700 years before Jesus was ever born. So the gospel is all throughout the Jewish scriptures. And when people see that, you know, the Holy Spirit does exactly what Jesus did in Luke 24. He opens their minds to understand the scriptures. It’s a supernatural work of God. But I’m praying that God will use this book to open the minds of many people to come to know the Lord.

SPEAKER 04 : 12:13

Now, David, when you are approaching people, do you often have the luxury of having Jews come to your church? Do you call it church or synagogue?

SPEAKER 03 : 12:24

Yes, many times. And there’s a whole movement throughout the world of what we would call Messianic congregations. And these are Jewish-oriented congregations. services, and we have them all over the world. We’ve planted several congregations in Israel and in New York and Los Angeles, and wherever we’re working, we will start with a Bible study, and that’s how the Lord reached my heart. You know, I went to a Bible study and met other Jewish people who had come to believe in Jesus. And so we have actually three pillars of outreach in Jews for Jesus. We call them Go and Tell, which is proclamation, Come and See, which is like a Bible study. You know, people are invited to various events. It could be even an art show or a music event. But Bible studies, we have them for Israeli soldiers and for young people and all kinds of different people, groups that we’re reaching within the Jewish community. And those are the places where they can come and see that it’s okay. In fact, it makes sense for Jewish people to believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

SPEAKER 04 : 13:39

David, let’s get the third pillar when we get back from the break, okay? We’ll be right back with the Good News.

SPEAKER 03 : 13:43

Okay, sounds good.

SPEAKER 05 : 13:49

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SPEAKER 04 : 14:52

Welcome back to The Good News with Angie Austin. Thrilled to have with us David Brickner. We are continuing our conversation with him on his book, Does the Jesus Bible Point to Jesus? Twelve Key Prophecies that Unfold God’s Plan. And he is with Jews for Jesus and has been with them for many, many years. And we’re talking about the ways that he introduces Jesus to Jews. And I was saying prior to the break that sometimes I’m sure you’re not met with all smiles and handshakes that people might not be that open to your introduction to Jews for Jesus. And you said there’s three, well, just you explain the three ways.

SPEAKER 03 : 15:33

Yeah, thank you. There are what we call three pillars of outreach in Jews for Jesus, in which we engage people with the message of the gospel. The first is, we call it, go and tell. And that’s the proclamation ministry of Jews for Jesus, and something that we’ve probably been best known for over the years, whether it be handing out literature, having a table at a college campus, just the kind of going out into the highways and byways and looking for people in whose heart God, by His Holy Spirit, is at work. And while there is a lot of apathy and there is a lot of opposition, there’s also a lot of openness to the gospel, and we’re out there making ourselves visible and available and vulnerable in our go-and-tell ministry. Proclamation is really important. It’s like the Great Commission, go into all the world, That’s the first pillar. The second pillar we call come and see, which is what Jesus said when the disciples asked him, where are you staying? He said, come and see. So we invite people into our lives, into our communities, to come to study the Bible with us, to have a Shabbat meal on Friday night in our home, and this gives a person who’s seeking an opportunity to see that it’s a very normal and natural thing for Jewish people to, as Jews, believe in Jesus, to live their lives in a Jewish way, and their faith in him becomes not a discredit, but rather a credit and a fulfillment, if you will, of Jewish identity. And so we have all kinds of events, music events, art events, Bible studies, Shabbat meals, and we have Literally every week, hundreds if not thousands of Jewish seekers coming to our come-and-see events. Now, the third pillar is perhaps more recent and less known to the Christian community, and that’s what we call love and serve. You know, love your neighbor as yourself is the command of Scripture. Jesus repeated that as well. And as we love people through various forms of service and outreach— They see the reality of the gospel in our lives, and in Israel in particular, love and serve is a key part of our ministry outreach, because in Israel, just as in all other countries, and especially Israel, urban areas, there’s a lot of brokenness, you know, there’s homelessness, there’s addiction, there’s people, women who are sex trafficked. And these are people who are desperate, and they need to know that there can be hope. And so we offer that and we feed the homeless, we provide a safe place for women to get off of the streets. We have what we call the warm house, which in Israel is a place for sex-trafficked women to escape and hear the gospel. And every year there are dozens of baptisms of women who’ve been able to be freed from such a horrible, horrible lifestyle. And so whether it be, and especially since October 7th of last year, we’ve been engaged in feeding a lot of the people that were made homeless by the war in Israel. 5,000 hot meals a week we’ve been handing out, working in conjunction with Samaritan’s Purse to feed. You know, there’s a lot of displaced people, both from the Gaza envelope and from the north, where Hezbollah continues to rain rockets on the northern cities, and now all the way down to Haifa, that area. It’s just a constant conflict that people are facing, and we’re there to meet their needs, clothing, food, housing, and also the good news of the gospel. Now, do you go there yourself often, I’m curious? Yes. My wife is an Israeli. My parents are Israeli. I’m not, but I’ve been going. The last time I was there was just after the war broke out in February. I was there, and like I said, we have 65-plus staff members there. So just for that reason alone, I go on a very regular basis. I take groups of Christian pilgrims and tourists and things like that every year. And, of course, that has been limited by the war that’s been going on. Most Christians are not interested in going right now, although we do invite them to come, especially those who want to help and want to be boots on the ground helping Israelis. I had a group from Dallas that came with me in February, and we went down and we served a giant Texas-style barbecue there. for a whole unit of IDF soldiers coming out of Gaza. They had been there for months, and we welcomed them at the entrance to the Ramona military base in the desert with a giant barbecue. we told them texas loves them we love them and and yeshua the messiah jesus loves them and we’re able to feed them and talk to them about the lord and offer them hebrew new testaments and you know one indication of how the war has impacted my people in israel is we usually get about a hundred requests for hebrew new testaments every month yeah since the war it’s been over 300 a month So there’s an increased interest and increased opportunity to share the gospel.

SPEAKER 04 : 21:34

You know, my nephew just went for a birthright trip not very long ago to Israel, and it was complicated, obviously, because of the times. I’ve noticed just in conversations with him and his mom texting i guess we all text so much these days that there seems to be you know a rise in anti-semitism and uh that doesn’t seem to be uh you know in just one country i hear so many stories where wow i’m just surprised it seems so ancient to me archaic some of the beliefs When you hear about anti-Semitism that I can’t wrap my head around it. Am I right that there’s been a rise? And what do you attribute that to if there has been a rise?

SPEAKER 03 : 22:21

Well, there absolutely has been, and it’s been horrific. You would think that in light of what happened on October 7th, you know, and the slaughter of over a thousand Jewish people in their homes and babies and women raped, and that there would be great sympathy around the world. Yeah. But the opposite has happened, and anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head even here in America. Two of our largest branches here in the U.S. are in New York, right in the heart of the New York University community there in Greenwich Village. And that’s been, you know, a lot of Jewish students there, but they’re facing anti-Semitism. In Los Angeles, our branch is right across the street from UCLA, which has the largest Jewish student population of any university. And the anti-Semitism there, I mean, all you have to do is watch the news on TV in New York and L.A. places that have traditionally been safe places for Jewish people are becoming hotbeds of anti-Semitism, especially on the college campuses where we’re working. And in fact, we just had an event recently at the branch in Los Angeles, an art event called Formless and Void, where we invited Jewish artists to interact with that phrase from Genesis chapter 1, the earth was formless and void, and that, and October 7th, and how they felt about it, and it was an amazing art show. Beautiful pieces were turned in. and are on the walls today of our branch. Well, they had an opening art show, and there was a lot of people, Jewish people, you know, seekers, and it was a beautiful show, but in the middle of it all, one of the students who had come from USC, a different university, just stood up and started accusing everybody there of, you know, committing genocide, and she went and grew feed the inside of the women’s bathroom, you know, saying, from the river to the sea, all these kinds of things. And it’s shocking for Jewish people who felt protected and relatively safe in the United States to realize it isn’t that way. It isn’t that way. And so we as believers in Jesus really need to stand up against anti-Semitism, call it out, and let the Jewish people know that they’re not alone in facing this, that their friends, their Christian friends, They love God, and because you love God, you love the people that God loves. And so that’s really an important thing that any believer in Jesus can do right now, is to stand up, have your voice be heard. We stand against anti-Semitism, and we are for God’s chosen people. They are the apple of his eye.

SPEAKER 04 : 25:15

What do you think, would you say, of all your decades of work with Jews for Jesus would be some of your more satisfying experiences? Have there been occasions where you’re thinking to yourself, oh my goodness, this is exactly why I do this work, or this is truly my calling?

SPEAKER 03 : 25:35

Yes, that happens on a regular basis, especially when I get a chance to share Jesus with Jewish people. I remember once I was standing out In New York City, right across from Macy’s department store. And it was a beautiful sunny day and I was handing out literature and this woman came up to me and she began to yell at me. You should be ashamed of yourself. She said, how can you do this? Do you know what you’re doing? Does your mother know you’re doing this? And then she said words that just cut like a knife. She said, you’re trying to complete the work that Hitler began. And she rolled up her sleeve to show me numbers on her arm. Oh, my goodness. See, Ruth is a survivor of Auschwitz, of the Holocaust. So I understood her anger. And there was very little that I could say to her that day. So imagine my surprise when several weeks later during a Friday evening service at a Jews for Jesus office there in New York, who should walk through the back door while I was giving a message, but Ruth, and I recognized her right away. And I went up to her and I introduced myself and And she I said, Ruth, you know, why are you here? She said, I have an open mind. Oh, wow. Coming back. And eventually I had the privilege of praying with her to receive Jesus as Messiah. Oh, my gosh. Kind of a thing just is so wonderful. And it demonstrates the fact that the power of the resurrection can transform the heart of even the biggest people. opposer to the gospel like the apostle paul god is saving jewish people sometimes with dreams and visions sometimes with blinding light and sometimes just with a simple word of testimony from a christian who loves their jewish friend or neighbor and loves them enough to actually risk something and to tell them about jesus

SPEAKER 04 : 27:31

Well, I admire what you do. Again, the book is Does the Jewish Bible Point to Jesus? Twelve Key Prophecies that Unfold God’s Plan. David Brickner. And I know you travel a lot, David, and you’ve got the website for Juice for Jesus. So tell people the best way to find you and to learn more about what you do.

SPEAKER 03 : 27:49

Yes, our website is juiceforjesus.org. And you can go there or if you want the book, just go on to Amazon. It’s there. to be purchased, and we really appreciate the opportunity to share on the Good News Show, and we want people to know that the God of Israel is alive, and he’s saving people each and every day around the globe. Let’s keep us in prayer, if you will. Thank you.

SPEAKER 04 : 28:16

Well, thank you, David, for all you do, because, you know, it’s easy to be a Christian when you’re surrounded by other Christians. But when you’re, you know, approaching people whose beliefs are different than your own and may even feel that you are being rude or out of, you know, stepping over the line to approach them about, you know, Jews for Jesus, I admire your courage and all that you do. So thank you so much, David. Thank you, Angie. Thank you.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:40

Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.