Members of the Jewish community are being urged to be vigilant following the launch of a new missionary campaign specifically designed to target Jews, using a highly recognizable internet domain and billboards placed throughout the New York metropolitan area.
The campaign is being promoted through “Jews.com,” a website operated as part of an effort by Kirt Schneider and his Christian missionary organization, Discovering the Jewish J—-, to persuade Jews to accept Christian beliefs.
According to promotional material released by the organization, billboards advertising the campaign have been placed throughout Brooklyn, Manhattan and northern New Jersey, including a prominent location outside Barclays Center in Brooklyn and additional locations on Manhattan’s East Side. Organizers say they intend to expand the effort to other major metropolitan areas across the United States.
The campaign is particularly concerning because of the way it has been packaged. Rather than presenting itself simply as conventional Christian evangelism, the initiative employs Jewish terminology and imagery and directs unsuspecting visitors to the domain Jews.com — a name that, on its face, gives no indication that the website is devoted to missionary activity.
Schneider, who refers to himself as a “rabbi” and uses Hebrew and Jewish terminology in promoting Christian theology, made clear that Jews themselves are the specific focus of the new effort.
“Acquiring Jews.com, to me is equivalent personally to when the Lord parted the Red Sea for Israel. The chance of me ever acquiring the domain name Jews.com was impossible, yet the Lord himself literally gave it to me. Why? Because he knew that we’d be faithful by his grace to proclaiming Y—- as the Messiah to the Jewish people.”
Schneider said that after years of directing much of his preaching toward Christian and non-Jewish audiences, he is now “laser-focused on reaching Jewish people.”
The website has accordingly been constructed specifically with Jewish visitors in mind. According to the organization, it offers videos, personal accounts, religious teachings and written materials seeking to convince Jews of Christian claims by presenting them through what it describes as a Jewish framework and by attempting to reinterpret passages from Tanach as references to Christian theology.
Schneider described the project as arising from what he considers a religious calling to intensify missionary activity among Jews.
“I knew right then and there, in an instant, that God was calling me and Discovering the Jewish J—- to challenge Jewish people in a whole new way, at a whole new level, with the good news of Messiah,” Schneider said.
The campaign is also attempting to recruit Christians themselves to participate in the effort. Its organizers openly describe Jews.com as a tool that Christians can send to Jewish friends, relatives, coworkers and neighbors, allowing the website to do the missionary work even when the person sharing it has little knowledge of the theological arguments involved.
“This is the most powerful tool on earth we have right now to share the love of Messiah with Jewish people,” Schneider said.
Promotional material for the campaign explicitly encourages Christians to circulate the site among Jews and “let Jews.com do the rest.”
{Matzav.com}
