In the early nineteenth century, meetings were held in London and Scotland to discuss what should be done to reach the Jewish people with the gospel. As those assembled took the Word of God seriously, they acknowledged that Jewish people needed to hear the gospel and be saved.

As a result, a meeting was held in the National Scotch Church, Regent Square, London on 7th November 1842 to form the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews. Those present included the famous Scottish preacher Robert Murray M'Cheyne and co-operation with the Church of Scotland's Mission to the Jews was agreed. The society later became the International Society for the Evangelisation of the Jews.

In 1879 an agency for gospel work among the Jews conducted by Hebrew Christians’ began work in the Barbican district of London which, in 1891, became the Barbican Mission to the Jews.

Both societies expanded rapidly on the European continent, particularly in Eastern Poland where many Jewish people responded to the gospel.

Work was also pioneered in the Middle East, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Within fifty years William Wingate, a pioneer missionary to the Jewish people of Budapest, could say,:

‘Hebrew Christians are everywhere. Every class of Jewish society contributes ... professors in universities, lawyers, medical men, literary men, musicians, artists, merchants, mechanics, poor and rich are quickened by the Spirit of all grace, convinced of their sin and guilt. They are at the feet of Jesus, and enabled to say with every believer, “We have redemption through the atoning blood of Jesus, even the forgiveness of our sins”.’

World War II with its horrific extermination of six million Jews under the Nazi regime, brought the work in Europe to a standstill. However, through the efforts of Rev. I.E. Davidson, many Jewish children were rescued from certain death to be brought up, with parental permission, in England (pictured above). Many came to know the Saviour and some went on to serve him as ministers and full-time mission workers. Jewish mission work, closed in Europe by the war, now began to be developed in other countries.

Despite massive Jewish displacement and the murder of millions of Jewish people in the Holocaust, the work of the two societies continued post-war. The conviction that Jewish people need to hear the Good News of Jesus was the driving force behind the onging work and it is the same thing which motivates us to this very day.