[Elizabeth Krantz]

Hi Walton,

I’ve been reading other participants’ responses to this question, and yours reminded me of a man I met in Israel. He lies in the Golan Heights, and he is a Jew who believes in Jesus-just not the way we would interpret believing in Jesus. For this man, he believes that while on earth, Jesus was a great prophet and the Son of God; however, he doesn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah when He died. He believes Jesus becomes the Messiah during the second coming. As he was sharing his belief system with me, I could understand how he could believe that. This man understood that Jesus is the connection between Christians and Judaism, and that Jesus did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. You mentioned in your discussion that we should evangelize the Jewish people. I’m not sure if you’ve spent much time surrounded by a Jewish community, but evangelism doesn’t work, and in fact, for many Jewish people, evangelism continues to drive the divide between our communities deeper. While we need to strive for peace, we also need to strive for a deeper cultural and religious understanding so that peace can be made a possibility not on our terms, in our understanding, but in theirs.