Apples of Gold May/Jun 2018

It is written in Isaiah 49:6, “I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles, that You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth.” People are coming to Israel from the ends of the earth, especially now in this time of high tension.

One day while I was in line at the post office, several Roman Catholic UN soldiers stood behind me. When I noticed their clothes bore the Swedish flag, I began to speak with them in their language.

They were so surprised. “Where are you from?” one asked.

“I am from Jerusalem,” I told them.

“Then how did you come to speak Swedish?”

“The Lord has blessed me with the ability to speak 10 languages,” I explained. “Since I have never studied them, my grammar is not good. But it is good enough to hold nice conversations.”

“Are you a Jew?” one asked.

“I am,” I said, “but I believe in Christ as my Savior.”

“You are starting to become interesting to us,” one replied. “We want to speak with you more. Where should we start?”

I told them, “Here we are in the land where the Word of the Lord went out and spread throughout the world. As it is written in Isaiah 2:3, ‘For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.’ So you see, it is our obligation as the Chosen People of Israel to bring His salvation to everyone from Jerusalem.”

“So what do you want to do—make us good Jews?” one asked.

“No, you have made a big mistake. I want you to believe in the Lord according to the Bible,” I said. Then I opened my small pocket Bible and read 1 Corinthians 12:12–14:

For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks [Gentiles] . . . —and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many.

This view seemed strange to them. They wondered how a Jewish person could believe in Christ. I told them to take a good look at the New Testament. “Who were all of Jesus’ apostles? Were they Christians? No! All of them were Jewish. Who took the Good News about Christ to people? Peter, Paul, and the other Jewish apostles.

“Everyone can come freely before the Lord, regardless of nationality. It is faith that matters. King David said, ‘To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in You’” (Ps. 25:1–2).
“How did you as a Jewish person come to believe in Christ?” one asked. Many people here in Jerusalem ask me the same question.

“I became a believer in the Lord after I read the Holy Bible,” I said. “I believe what is written in it, unlike you, who read the catechism and many other books written by people. It is clearly written in the Bible, ‘You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you’ [Dt. 6:14]. What are you doing when you go to St. Peter’s Square in Rome? Before whom do you bow down? Not before God, but before a man. Yet you are so confident. You should not be confident. You are making a big mistake. Many people are like you, even from among our people here.”

Then I explained why the Lord had to come to Earth and be crucified. I read John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Then I recited Isaiah 2:3 again.

“This has been the most interesting conversation we have had in Israel,” one said. Everyone agreed. We must pray for them. We have done our duty; now the Lord must do the rest through His Holy Spirit.

—The Friends of Israel Archives

Zvi Kalisher (1928–2014) was a Holocaust survivor who was known for his unswerving faithfulness to the Lord and his bold witness in Jerusalem. He was with The Friends of Israel for more than 55 years.