For several years, my friends and I have been meeting at shopping malls at lunch time to witness. This starte while we were studying The School of Biblical Evangelism in 2006. Eventually we decided we could meet one week to study the material and then the alternate weeks to practice what we had learned by doing some witnessing.
Over the years we have been to a number of the malls in and around Dallas. We have made friendships with many of the shop and kiosk owners and employees. And I’m sure we have shared the gospel in these malls thousands of times by now. I should write another post sometime about how we do this. But the purpose of the post is to focus on witnessing to Israeli Jews.
Many of the kiosks in our malls are staffed by Jews from Israel. In Israel there is some “work in the us” program where they can come work in the US for three months. After their three months working, they are given time to vacation and tour around the US. These folks are here from Israel year round. But at Christmas time, there are many more of them here. We talk to them about spiritual things and using the Ten Commandments we can lead them through the good test. However, Jews more than any other group I’ve witnessed too will actually claim to have kept the Ten Commandments and believe they have salvation simply because of who they are.
A couple of years ago a friend of mine obtained some books that are written in Hebrew. So, recently as we were talking to an number of Israeli Jews, I thought it would be wise to try to get some more copies of this book. I tracked them down through a contact at Baruch Ha Shem, a messianic synagogue in Dallas. As it turns out, my contact there also had written a Gospel tract for Jews called “Green Card”. The tract is written in Hebrew. The rough translation that I was provided is:
Green Card
Do you have a green card to get into heaven?
- have you ever doubted god? Yes / No
- have you ever made an idol? Yes / No
- have you every worked on the sabbath? Yes / No
- have you ever committed adultery (had sex outside of marriage)? Yes / No
- have you ever stolen? Yes / No
- have you ever lied? Yes / No
- have you ever coveted? Yes / No
If you answered NO to every question, do not turn the page, you are perfect in every way and will go to heaven when you die.
If you answered YES to ANY question, then please turn the page.
When they open the page, the inside talks about the Ten Commandments, the curses of not keeping them and the sacrificial system that was necessary for the propitiation of sin. It then talks about the prophecy of the Messiah and how that prophecy points only to one person, Jesus Christ.
I received a supply of these tracts from Baruch Ha Shem. On Thursday we took them to the Galleria Mall. While we were talking at one Kiosk, Roy had the brochure under his arm. One of the Israeli women we were speaking with saw it and actually asked him for it. So we gave them each one and they read it as we stood there. We asked what they thought. They said they did not agree with everything, but that they would read the rest of it later.
I was also given about 10 copies of a book called Why Me that is written in Hebrew. Why Me is the autobiography of Jacob Damkani and tells of how he came to know Jesus Christ as the Messiah. In addition, to the 10 copies that I got, I have requested 100 more copies from the Trumpet of Salvation Ministries. Once they read the tract, we asked them if they would like a gift. They said, “yes.” So, I said, “I’ll be glad to give you this book” (as I pulled it from the bag) “provided that you agree to read it.” Each one that we talked to on Thursday agreed to read the book. In less than an hour we handed out tracts and books to five Israeli Jews. They agreed to read the book and let us know what they think about it when we come back in a few weeks.
One of the young ladies that we gave a book too, I had spoken to last week. Since I was already in the process of obtaining the books, I had asked her last week if she would read a book written in Hebrew about what we were talking about if I brought it to her. She said, “Yes,” and paused, “but, it must be written in Hebrew.” So when I returned with a Hebrew book yesterday, she was very interested in it and said she would read it.
So, “as you go” to the mall, consider engaging these Israeli’s in conversation. We found that many of them were excited to talk to us just because we were the only Americans to actually take an interest in them. Giving them the gift of a book was really meaningful to them. If you need a copy of the book to hand to one of your contacts, please let me know.
