‘Jewish Messiah’ spots on secular cable channels draw solid response, evangelist says

Television ads presenting Jesus as “the Jewish Messiah” are generating an impressive response, the Messianic Jewish broadcaster airing the spots said.

According to Sid Roth, who identified himself as a “Jewish believer in Messiah Jesus,” the ads have generated more than 60,000 visits to a website offering a free ebook in which the District of Columbia native offers what he calls “irrefutable proof” of his claim.

Of those website visitors, 10,229 had downloaded the book as of July 18, Mr. Roth said.

One advertisement opens with images of Jewish worshippers reading ancient Scriptures as Mr. Roth narrates, “When I read the 53rd Chapter of the Jewish prophet Isaiah, to my Orthodox Jewish father, he screamed, stop reading to me about Jesus. When I told him I was reading Hebrew Scriptures given to me by our rabbi, boy was he shocked. Isaiah 53 was written 800 years before Jesus was even born, yet perfectly describes him.”

The ad, which is airing on Fox News Channel and Newsmax, goes on to offer the ebook via a website, www.sidroth.org/think. Mr. Roth said the response of tens of thousands in the U.S. is “unprecedented stuff” for Jewish evangelism.

“These people have never been able to think for themselves because they’ve never had the facts expressed,” he said.

Mr. Roth, who hosts a popular television program, “It’s Supernatural” that airs on several Christian satellite and cable networks, said his ministry organization plans to air the spots on MSNBC and CNBC, as well as share the ads on social media. He said the spots on social media viewed in Israel resulted in 6,011 downloads of his book about encountering the Jewish messiah.

He said that while his ministry had done mass mailings of his book to Jewish households in the past, totaling nearly 3.9 million copies, “most books that are mailed unsolicited ended up in the trash. But if you purposely downloaded it yourself, there’s something in there you want to read.”

While the early Christian church was composed almost entirely of Jewish believers in Jesus, present day outreaches to Jews have been controversial. Persecution of Jews by Christians in the Middle Ages through World War II and beyond has soured many on the concept, while others say Jesus did not meet rabbinic criteria for the messiah, including the ushering in of an era of world peace.

In 2013, a Pew Research Center survey of American Jews found 34% saying that belief in Jesus was “not incompatible with Jewish identity,” but 60% rejected the notion that Jewish faith can include such a belief. An additional 6% said they “don’t know.” 

Boston University professor Ingrid Anderson, writing for The Conversation in 2018, cited estimates of between 175,000 to 200,000 Messianic Jewish believers in the United States who meet in 300 congregations nationally. A 2021 Pew Research Center study reported that 5.8 million U.S. adults identify as Jewish.

In 2017, a poll sponsored by the Jews for Jesus evangelistic group found one-fifth of Jewish adults born between 1984 and 1999 believe Jesus was God in human form. The numbers suggest a potential acceptance of the Christian message by some in this cohort, but there hasn’t been a mass movement in that direction yet.

Mr. Roth believes a revival is imminent, however.

“Every 100 years in America, there is a legitimate move of God’s spirit and a whole new crop of Christians come aboard,” he said. “We’re coming into what the Bible refers to as ‘the fullness of the Gentile age.’ Scripture says that when we come into the fullness of the Gentile age, the spiritual scales will come off the eyes of Jewish people.”

Representatives of the Orthodox Union, founded as the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, and Jews for Judaism, a “counter-missionary” group, did not respond to requests for comment.