Canadian Broadcast Council Rules Against Sid Roth Show

Sid Roth often has one of two effects on Jews who listen to him speak: They either get saved or they try to shut him up.

Muslims don’t like him much either, and even other Messianic leaders are challenging his assertion that there is a modern awakening similar to what happened in the 1990s among Jews in the former Soviet Union.

Indeed, Roth, founder of Georgia-based Messianic Vision and host of television show It’s Supernatural, is seeing spiritual warfare manifest on all sides. Some don’t want the Messianic Jew preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, nor do they like him giving airtime to people who discern radical Islam’s agenda to dominate the world.

In June, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC)released its decision concerning an episode of It’s Supernatural broadcast on Crossroads Television Ontario on Sept. 14, 2010. The broadcaster received a complaint that called the episode, which featured Joel Richardson, author of The Islamic Antichrist, “a vicious attack on a huge portion of the world’s population—namely, Islam.”

Among other statements, Richardson said, “Muslims believe it is their divine call to eliminate the Jewish people.” The episode drew the ire of Muslims in Ontario, and the CBSC concluded that some of the content breached Human Rights Clauses in the Canadian Association of Broadcaster’s Code of Ethics and Equitable Portrayal Code.

Backlash from Muslims is to be expected. But it’s more surprising when groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization that fights defamation of Jewish people, come against Roth and his book They Thought for Themselves.

The book tells the stories of 10 Jewish people who, as Roth states it, “defied the status quo and thought for themselves,” finding Jesus and “changing their lives for the better.” The ADL sees the book as an affront on the Jewish faith,  and a “religious fraud” in its attempt to persuade Jews to accept Jesus as their Messiah.

“The Anti-Defamation League doesn’t like what I am doing because they don’t want Jewish people thinking for themselves,” Roth says. “Jesus came first to the lost sheep of Israel. Paul went to the Jew first. I believe that’s God’s pattern to reach the whole world. The Bible tells us how to reach Jewish people—it says the Jew requires a sign. And in order to have a greater gentile revival, you have to go to the Jew first.”

But the fact remains that Roth’s book is making an impact on Jews with 680,000 sold so far—and the Messianic leader is believing God to reach 2 million.