Reaching Israelis with Yeshua
Reported by an Israeli outreach worker (A Messianic Bible Worker)
“Only one person was interested in hearing about Yeshua today, his name was Yossi (Joseph). We started to talk and he said he doesn’t even believe in God.
“I asked him why he didn’t believe in God” – and he said, “my mother died when I she was only 37 years old, and if there was God, I don’t think that God would take her away… if there was a God.”
I asked Yossi, if he would be willing to take a Hebrew Tanakh and read it, and call me if he had any questions.
I told him, “God loves you Yossi, and God wants you to have eternal life, and forgiveness of your sins. And if you will read the Tanakh (Old Testament) and ask God to reveal Himself to you then He will, but you have to seek Him.
And he said, ya, ok, I don’t think I’m going to call you, but I will read the Bible and what you underlined.
I replied, “God doesn’t want our works, He wants our heart – and if you ask Him to be in your heart, He will be there, and you will understand.”
That was 6 months ago!
Six months later, he called me and says in Hebrew:
“I read the Bible and what you underlined, and Isaiah 53 when I read it seems very Christian to me.” I told him that it’s more Jewish than Jewish… and I told him that I’d like to meet him to discuss it in person. I told him to go to a synagogue and compare Bibles so that he could see that the Bible given to him was indeed a Jewish Bible.
He then called me again and I asked him a simple question.
“Why did you ask me if it is a Christian prophecy when you know that it is a Jewish Bible, and how many Jewish people look at that prophecy and never say that it is a Christian prophecy? Don’t you think Yossi that the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) is starting to work in you?
We then spent the next 6 hours together, which included me sharing the truth of who God really is through His Son Yeshua.
We then discussed the Messianic prophecies that he already read from the Bible that I left with him, and he said: “Even if I know the truth, what would I do with my family, my friends, and my life?” I said, that you are going to have to pray to God and He will reveal it to you, and I can only assure that the Lord will never forsake.
Please pray for Yossi that he would let go of fear of rejection from friends, family, and basically everyone in Israel.
Who do you listen to,
an assembly of religion
or the Lord?!
By CHRISTOPHER WEBER and RACHEL ZOLL, Associated Press Writers Christopher Weber And Rachel Zoll, Associated Press Writers – Sat Dec 5, 7:58 pm ET
LOS ANGELES – The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles elected a lesbian as assistant bishop Saturday, the second openly gay bishop in the global Anglican fellowship, which is already deeply fractured over the first.
The Rev. Mary Glasspool of Baltimore needs approval from a majority of dioceses across the church before she can be consecrated as assistant bishop in the Los Angeles diocese.
Still, her victory underscored a continued Episcopal commitment to accepting same-sex relationships despite enormous pressure from other Anglicans to change their stand.
The head of the Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, is scheduled to consecrate Glasspool on May 15 in Los Angeles, if the church accepts the vote.
"Any group of people who have been oppressed because of any one, isolated aspect of their persons yearns for justice and equal rights," Glasspool said in a statement, thanking the diocese for choosing her.
Glasspool was elected on a seventh ballot that included two other candidates. She won 153 clergy votes and 203 lay votes, giving her just enough to emerge as the winner.
The election began Friday with six candidates vying for two vacancies for assistant bishops.
The winner for the first vacancy was the Rev. Diane M. Jardine Bruce, rector of St. Clement's-By-The-Sea Episcopal Church in San Clemente. As the balloting progressed for the second vacancy, two other candidates eventually withdrew.
The Episcopal Church, which is the Anglican body in the United States, caused an uproar in 2003 by consecrating the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
Breakaway Episcopal conservatives have formed a rival church, the Anglican Church in North America. Several overseas Anglicans have been pressuring the Anglican spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, to officially recognize the new conservative entity.
The Rev. Kendall Harmon of the traditional Diocese of South Carolina, which recently voted to distance itself from the national church, said Saturday's vote would further damage relations among Episcopalians, their fellow Anglicans and other Christians.
"This decision represents an intransigent embrace of a pattern of life Christians throughout history and the world have rejected as against biblical teaching," said Harmon, an adviser to the diocesan bishop.
The 77-million-member Anglican Communion is a family of churches that trace their roots to the missionary work of the Church of England. Most overseas Anglicans are Bible conservatives.
In 2004, Anglican leaders had asked the Episcopal Church for a moratorium on electing another gay bishop while they tried to prevent a permanent break in the fellowship.
Since the request was made, some Episcopal gay priests were nominated for bishop, but none was elected before Glasspool. Last July, the Episcopal General Convention, the U.S. church's top policy making body, affirmed that gay and lesbian priests were eligible to become bishops.
Jim Naughton of The Chicago Consultation, a group of Episcopal and Anglican clergy and lay people who advocate on behalf of gays and lesbians, called Glasspool's election "a liberation."
"We've been around this issue for 30 years," said Naughton, an adviser to the bishop of Washington. "It's unreasonable to expect us to refrain from acting on the very prayerful conclusions that we've reached, especially when we think there are issues of justice involved."
Robinson said he told Glasspool before the election that he was grateful she was willing to put herself in the stressful position of running for bishop.
"One of the reasons she is so the right person for this is that she knows who she is and she knows she belongs to God and she knows everything else falls in place when you keep that central," Robinson said in a phone interview. "She's no stranger to people who think she shouldn't be a priest because she's a woman, or think she shouldn't be a priest because she's a lesbian."
Glasspool, 55, an adviser, or canon, for eight years to the Diocese of Maryland's bishop, said in an essay on the Los Angeles diocese Web site that she had an "intense struggle" while in college with her sexuality and the call to become a priest.
"Did God hate me (since I was a homosexual), or did God love me?" she wrote. "Did I hate (or love) myself?"
She said she met her partner, Becki Sander, while working in Massachusetts, and the two have been together since 1988. When a colleague recently asked for permission to submit Glasspool's name as a candidate in Los Angeles, she agreed because she believed it was time "for our wonderful church to move on and be the inclusive church we say we are."
A graduate of Dickinson College and Episcopal Divinity School, Glasspool was ordained in 1981, and has led parishes in Annapolis, Md., Boston and Philadelphia.
Los Angeles Bishop Jon Bruno, who leads the diocese, urged Episcopal dioceses to approve Glasspool's election and not base their decision on fear of how other Anglicans will react.
The Los Angeles diocese has 70,000 members and covers six Southern California counties. Jardine and Glasspool, whose titles will be suffragan bishops, are the first women bishops in the Los Angeles diocese.
WASHINGTON - After angering gay rights supporters with the choice of evangelist Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama has chosen the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal church to pray at the kickoff event for the inaugural festivities this Sunday.
By Christi Parsons and Manya A. Brachear Washington Bureau 01/12/2009
V. Gene Robinson[1] (born May 29, 1947 in Fayette County, Kentucky) is the ninth bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America.[2][3] Robinson was elected bishop in 2003 and entered office in March 2004. Before becoming bishop, he served as assistant to the retiring New Hampshire bishop.
Robinson is widely known for being the first openly gay, non-celibate priest to be ordained a bishop in a major Christian denomination believing in the historic episcopate.[note 1] His sexual orientation was privately acknowledged in the 1970s, when he studied in seminary, was ordained, married, and started a family. He went public with his sexual identity and divorced in the 1980s. When delegates to the Episcopal convention were voting on the ratification of his election, it became an issue of controversy. His election was ratified 62 to 45. After his election, some theologically conservative parishes have aligned themselves with bishops outside the Episcopal Church in the United States, a process called the Anglican realignment. His story has appeared in print and film.