The First Jehovah’s Witness Soul the Lord Has Given Us
This day is eventful to me. Knowing my own feeble state as a believer, it amazes me that our gracious and sovereign God uses even the pathetic likes of my reprehensible self despite my shortcomings too numerous to count and too disgraceful to mention. I know it is Him and nothing to do with me. It must be Him. Anything I do in my own strength I usually mess up, particularly in ministry.
Recently I returned from Israel. While there I spoke with Yossi Ovadia, a Jewish believer who attended small Bible lessons with me as a new believer. Despite myself, he testifies that I was used of the Lord to teach him the Word of God as a young believer. Today he pastors a very sizeable and growing congregation in Galilee that even plants other congregations. Although he drives me frantic with his abhorent Calvinism and other things, I just taught a bible study in Jerusalem to a radical evangelistic team led by a Jewish believer who is easily Israel’s most radical Jewish evangelist. He prayed with me to receive Yeshua in Israel in 1982. Not long ago I was invited to preach at a church in England. Upon arrival I discovered that the pastor was a young Jewish man which I did not know. Neither did I know until he told me that it was through the ministry the Lord gave me that he was influenced through me to obtain a degree in theology and enter the ministry as a young believer. A few weeks ago I spoke with a young Gypsy man whom I knew since he was a little boy when he regularly attended my Bible studies 15-20 years ago. He just opened a church in the Gypsy community in Essex, UK which he pastors and told me that the bible teaching he got from me (from Jesus through me) obviously had an impact which is why he has ended up a pastor.
Far from being trophies to me however, knowing that Jesus has been gracious enough to use me to raise up others into His service as pastors and evangelists is frankly a source of deep humility. Why should He use a recovering refugee from a freak show who still carries a lot of bad baggage like me?
More humbling still are the souls I have led to Christ or who have come to faith through the ministry of Moriel. This is indeed God’s grace. Many are Jewish, others were Catholics, some were nominal Protestants, and others still sceptics with no faith at all . Moriel has also seen Mormons saved through the ministry of David Lister, and what is truly an amazing expression of God’s goodness I recently learned of another Muslim saved listening to my recording 5 Questions for Our Moslem Friends.
Once when I speaking at a Messianic Fellowship in South Africa, a young Jewish guy came up to me and thanked me for leading his father to Yeshua before his father died. I told him that I did not recall meeting his father. He informed me that I indeed hadn’t but his father came to know his Messiah listening to one of my recordings. As Scripture says : “Cast much bread upon the water and we shall reap in a due season” (Ecc. 11:1); other times it is a case of, “One man sows and another man reaps, but the Lord gives forth the increase”. (1 Co. 3:6) Neither I nor Moriel assume an ounce of credit for any of these precious souls for whom Christ died and arose; He saved them””not us. But it is an encouragement to see someone come from death to new and eternal life in Jesus (Jn. 5:24).
The Moriel ministry has multiple facets. There is church planting and missions; there is biblical exposition looking at the Judeo-Christian origins of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures employing the hermeneutics of the early church; there is discernment ministry alerting God’s people to the things Jesus warned us would come in the last days; there is support for Israel, Christian rights against militant Islamic, homosexual, Darwinist, and abortion activism , and campaigning for the persecuted church; there is Ebyown in Africa for HIV babies and small orphan children and feeding the rubbish dump children in the Philippines. A search on the Internet will reveal that different people (both those who like us and those who do not) know Moriel for different things. Some know Moriel for BeAlert, others for Ebyown, others for discernment, others for emphasizing the need to exegete scripture as the early Jewish church did, others still identify us as a discernment ministry. While all of these things are by the calling of God true, the first and foremost focus of Moriel must be evangelism; specifically evangelizing people of other faiths begining with the Jews. Our 5 Questions For You series has in the grace of Jesus born fruit even among Muslims. But until now, I must confess a major disappoiintment. I have by God’s mercy led Jews to Christ as well as Muslims, and Roman Catholics, and Protestants. David Lister has reaped harvests from among the Mormons and Dave Royle among Africans. But never””not even once, have I led a single Jehovah’s Witness to Christ and the Lord knows it was not for a lack of trying.
I actually came close twice (once with one of their elders), but it never happened. I found this frustrating. Again, not that I collect souls like trophies for myself or for Moriel, but I desire them to be trophies for Jesus who died for them.
I have witnessed, prayed, contended, and won arguments, but never a single soul. The spiritual and psychological grip of Satan that keeps people in bondage to that wicked cult is almost unbelievable. We have seen Muslims and Orthodox Jews saved, but not Jehovah’s Witnesses. The late Moriel administrator John Zari had been a Jehovah’s Wintess for over 20 years and got saved, and I have met other former Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to know Jesus. I know it happens, but it never happened for me””not until now.
After 39 years I received a text today from a pastor in Kent, UK informing me that a sister in his church gave a copy of my recording 5 Questions for Jehovah’s Witnesses to someone who had been in that cult 11 years. Over the last year this former Jehovah’s Witness secretly listened to it four times and just received Jesus by Second Birth a few days ago. I have waited 39 years for this to happen. I hope not for reasons of religious pride, but I was almost discouraged about it. Not any more. It may be only one Jehovah’s Witness, but that is 100% more than last week. Indeed””To God Be The Glory!
May this ex-Jehovah’s Witness grow in their faith in the true Jesus.
J. Jacob Prasch
