Is Your Friendship Real?

There are innumerous ways that Christians have been disingenuous in their treatment of Jews to try to convert Jews to Christianity. The Messianic “Jewish” movement in Christianity goes above and beyond almost all historic dishonesty. I am particularly appalled when I read the material from the Seventh-Day Adventist movement.

The Seventh-Day Adventist movement has been active in creating Messianic churches to convert Jews for quite some time, across the world. Perhaps the most dishonest way they present their activities is via the World Jewish Adventist Friendship Center. On the Friendship Center website they claim, “The World Jewish Adventist Friendship Center is a multinational organization dedicated to fostering mutual respect, dialogue, understanding, education and research between Israel and the church, especially between Jews and Adventists. The closeness and similarities between Adventism and Judaism (Style of life, Sabbath, Messiah etc...) give them the unique opportunity to generate interfaith dialogue at the highest levels, bringing together Jewish and Adventist leaders and renowned scholars.”

The truth is that the Friendship Center is not ultimately interested in dialogue or scholarship but evangelism. The Friendship Center is a proselytizing arm of the Adventist movement. It is run by Richard Elofer, an ordained Adventist minister who has been working for decades to convert Jews. He goes around the world giving lectures on how to convert Jews and plant Messianic congregations.

The Friendship Center advertises Adventist “synagogues”, which are designed to make the Adventist form of Christianity more palatable for Jews. The Friendship Center refers to the “synagogue” leaders as Pastor-Rav. Rav is a way of referring to a rabbi and none of these Adventist leaders actually have rabbinical degree, which makes the use of this title particularly bothersome. For instance, two of the Israeli “pastor-ravs”, Oleg Elkine and Valentine Novgorodsky, are graduates of Zaoksky Adventist University in Russia. Moreover, they were both ordained as Adventist ministers on June 16, 2007. Novgorodsky told the Adventist News Network that he prayed 15 years earlier to come to Israel from the Ukraine and “minister” to the Jews. There is no possible way to connect these pastors to a real rabbinic ordination.

Overall, I can list a number of great Christian church leaders who are interested in true dialogue and friendship with the Jewish people. But by lying and misrepresent their goals, the World Jewish Adventist Friendship Center cheapens the relationship between Christians and Jews across the globe.