Our  guest is Avi Snyder, he has the privilege of directing the work of Jews For Jesus in Europe and in the former USSR
  
Dear Avi, please tell us about an aim, structure of Jews For Jesus ministry. Who is a president of your organization at present?
- On the one hand, the ministry of Jews for Jesus is only about 30 years old. The Executive Director of our ministry is a man named David Brickner, who is a fifth generation Jewish believer in Y'shua. On the other hand, you could say that Jews For Jesus is very old - nearly 2,000 years!  After all, all of the first followers of Y'shua were Jewish. Like those first-century messianic Jews, we have a passion and burden to let our people know that Jesus, Y'shua, is the promised Messiah who died for our sins and rose from the dead. We're very passionate about that good news. In fact, we like to say that we Jews For Jesus exist in order to make the Messiah-ship of Jesus and unavoidable issue to our Jewish people worldwide. One of the ways we do that is through large-scale distribution of our messianic literature out on the streets. As we hand out the literature, we chat with people and take down the names and addresses of those who would like to receive more information in the mail. Then we visit individually with those people who are serious about learning more about the Lord. As people become believers in Y'shua, we help them become grounded in their new faith, and we help them become established in messianic congregations and in more traditional evangelistic churches that love our Jewish people. We also use messianic music, drama, and websites in English, Russian and Hebrew to let people know the Good News that the Messiah has come.  Right now, we're in the midst of a global five-year evangelistic program called "Operation Behold Your God." Our hope and plan is to conduct large-scale evangelistic street outreaches in every city outside of Israel that has a Jewish population of 25,000 Jewish people or more. That includes about 60 cities around the world. In the past 2 and a half years, we've covered about half of them by conducting outreaches in cities like London, Buenos Aires, Moscow, Johannesburg, San Francisco, and Sydney Australia (to name just a few), and we're eager to find believers in Jesus who would like to participate with us in the outreaches in the remaining cities. You can learn more about Behold Your God by looking at our website at www.jewsforjesus.org

In what countries have you your offices now?
- We started in San Francisco, California, in the United States. But today, by God's grace, we have missionaries and offices in eleven countries around the world, including Canada, the US, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Australia, South Africa, and of course Israel.
  
What Messianic and Christian ministries and communities do you contact with?
 - We're blessed by the love and fellowship that we have with Messianic and Christian ministries all over the world. In addition to having close relationships with individuals, Messianic congregations and churches that love our Jewish people and want to see them come to faith in the Messiah, we also belong to a number of international evangelical organizations such as the Evangelical Alliance in England, France, Germany, South Africa, Canada and the United States.  We're also members of the Lausanne Consulation on Jewish Evangelism, which is an international committee of over a hundred ministries and individuals who are dedicated to bringing the Gospel to our Jewish people.

Apostle James said:
15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,
16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled;
notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body;
what doth it profit?  James: 2:15-16
 
Apostle John said too:
17 But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and
shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God
in him?  1 John: 3:17
 
All world knows at present many Jewish people and non-Jewish people in the  countries of former USSR live in poverty. What charity do Jews For Jesus do to needy people as well as to orphans, widows here?
- The staff workers in Jews For Jesus are encouraged to assist the needy on a private and INDIVIDUAL basis. As a collective evangelistic ministry, we feel that God has called our ministry to focus very specifically on the issue of bringing the Gospel to our people in a direct and open way. 

 

It is indeed the responsibility of every believer in Y'shua not just to care for the underprivileged, but to fellowship with other believers, to witness for the Lord to lives that reflect the holiness of God, and  to pray fervently for the peace of Jerusalem and for the salvation of our Jewish people.  Like Paul, our hearts' desire and prayer for our Jewish people is that they will be saved(Romans 10:1). To be honest, it saddens me and my colleagues to think that there are some Christians who love our Jewish people but who are not sharing the Gospel with their Jewish friends. We need to love our Jewish people enough to tell them a difficult and unpopular truth - that the only way that anyone can have a correct relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is by believing in Jesus. Remember, it was Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, who said to a Jewish audience, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by Me." 
 

Avi, what one thing do you Jews For Jesus want to say to other believers in Jesus, and what one thing do you Jews For Jesus want to say to those who do not yet believe?
- To our fellow believers in Y'shua, I would like to say thank you to those who pray for us and who pray for the salvation of God's beloved Chosen people, the lost sheep of the house of Israel. May God raise up more and more Christians who love our people enough to share the Good News with them. May Christians have the same love and burden for the salvation of our Jewish people that Moses and the Apostle Paul had for the salvation of our people(Exodus 32:32 and Romans 9:3-4). To those of our Jewish people who don't yet believe, I would like to implore you to put aside any fears or concerns you might have that are stopping you from looking with an open mind at the most important question of all: Is Y'shua the Messiah who was promised to us through Moses and the prophets? Did He really die for our sins and rise from the dead, as prophesied in such passages of the Hebrew Scriptures as Isaiah 53? If Y'shua is indeed the the promised Messiah of our people and the Savior of all nations, then as Jews, we must believe in the One whom the God of Israel commanded us to believe in and follow for as God said to Moses, "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, [that] whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require [it] of him." Deu 18:18,19

Please tell us about yourself and your family a little.
 - Well, thank you for asking. My wife and I have served with Jews For Jesus since 1978. In fact, I became a believer in Jesus partly because of an evangelistic tract that I received from Jews For Jesus in New York in 1975. I kept that tract for two years, and in 1977, I finally gave my life to the Lord. My wife Ruth and I had the privilege of starting the work of Jews For Jesus in the former USSR in 1991, along with a colleague of ours named Elizabeth Terini. Today, Ruth and I live in Germany. We have three wonderful children who are believers in Y'shua. Our younger daughter goes to school in Germany. Our older daughter lives in the city of Atlanta. Our son studies at university, and he also serves part-time as a youth minister with Jews For Jesus in New York.