A bold campaign declaring Jesus as the Jewish Messiah is taking its message straight into the heart of Jewish communities in New York and Israel.
Messianic Jewish Rabbi Kirt Schneider says the entire effort began with a supernatural vision, and he believes what is beginning now could become unstoppable.
According to the Forward, Jews.com billboards have appeared across New York City, including near Barclays Center in Brooklyn and on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Schneider told the publication his mission is simple: He wants Jewish people to examine the evidence that Jesus is their long-awaited Messiah.
And Schneider isn’t exactly tiptoeing around the subject.
“What I’m wanting to do is shed the veil and the misinformation over the Jewish people,” Schneider told the Forward, arguing that centuries of rabbinic tradition have discouraged serious consideration of Jesus.
For Schneider, this isn’t merely theology. It’s personal.
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Raised in a secular Jewish family, Schneider had his bar mitzvah at a Conservative synagogue in Ohio. But as a young man, his life took a supernatural turn. Schneider says that while sleeping, he entered what he described to the Forward as a “supernatural state of conscious awareness” and saw Jesus hanging on the cross. From that point forward, he became a follower of Jesus.
Now, decades later, Schneider says another vision led him to the billboard campaign.
Yet his message comes with plenty of controversy. Mainstream Jewish denominations reject Messianic Judaism as Judaism, and Jewish groups have long objected to Christian evangelistic efforts directed toward Jews.
But Schneider rejects the idea that believing in Jesus somehow stripped away his Jewish identity.
“The only Jews that aren’t considered Jews are the Jews who believe in Jesus,” Schneider told the Forward, calling the situation “very sad.”
He argues that Jewish identity comes through descent from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not through whether someone accepts or rejects Jesus.
And New York isn’t the only place where Schneider is taking that message.
Outside Tel Aviv, a Hebrew-language billboard campaign is posing one provocative question about Jesus: “What if he was right?” The advertisements direct Israelis to a Hebrew-language website making the case for Jesus as Messiah.
The campaign comes as Schneider increasingly focuses his ministry, Discovering the Jewish Jesus, on reaching Jewish people. His ministry says its calling includes bringing the message of Messiah Yeshua directly to Jews and seeking what it calls a “spiritual harvest among Jewish people.”
“This thing is going to blow up,” he told the Forward, “and nothing’s going to be able to stop it.”
Abby Trivett is a writer and editor for Charisma Media and has a passion for sharing the gospel through the written word. She holds two degrees from Regent University, a B.A. in Communication with a concentration in Journalism and a Master of Arts in Journalism. She is the author of the newly released book, The Power of Suddenly: Discover How God Can Change Everything in a Moment. For interviews and media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
