Sid: My guest is red hot for the Messiah his name is Dr. Michael Brown. He’s a Jewish believer in Jesus, and when I say he’s on fire for the Lord, he is on fire for the Lord. He is also president of the Fire School of Ministry in Concord, North Carolina right outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. He is a Semitic language scholar; he has PhD in near eastern languages and literatures from New York University. Recently we conducted a debate between one of the best known traditional rabbis in America, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. I have a list of his credentials and it would take the whole show just to read all of these credentials. The debate was “Who is Jesus?” It was absolutely high adventure; very few Christians have ever heard rabbinic arguments. I know that my wife watched the debate and she was so excited. Now there was one question that she didn’t quite get, and it had to do… we were discussing Mike Brown about the need for blood sacrifices. The rabbis said “No” and his example was Noah. Would you comment on that?
Michael: Well the traditional Jewish position would be that blood sacrifices have value and they’re important, but God’s primary way of dealing with the human race has been through repentance. I believe he uses an example of the people of Jonah was one example. When Jonah went to preach to the people of Nineveh that they repented and God accepted their repentance and there was no sacrifices offered etcetera. If you look at someone that would have lived before the temple was established, Shmuley’s point would have been “How are they righteous? They weren’t righteous through blood sacrifices, they were righteous through repentance.” My argument of course is “Yes repentance has always been foundational, but that God also requires a penalty for sin and that His way of pointing to the Messiah and how the innocent would suffer for the guilty was to send His Son in a prefigured way.” How so in the animal sacrifice system? So the sacrificial system of Israel, which was a massively important part of the Torah, was constantly prefiguring substitution, substitution; innocent for the guilty, the requirement of blood. Shmuley of course would argue that the blood sacrifice were for unintentional sins primarily, and most of them were, but there were specific sacrifices for guilty sins where you knew it and it was intentional. There was specific sacrifices offered on the Day of Atonement that covered the entire guilt of the entire nation. So blood sacrifices played an important role, traditional Judaism of course has emphasized with the absence of the temple, and the absence of sacrifices “No we don’t need those we have repentance, we have prayer, we have charity and that’s sufficient although one day it will be great to have the temple standing with the sacrifices offered again, but it’s not necessary in the meantime.” Of course there answers for each of these objections, but that’s a standard one “We don’t need the blood” is a big Jewish objection.
Sid: Of course that’s one of the major issues of the entire scriptures because without the shedding of blood there is NO atonement for sin. In this debate to help our listeners really understand this tell me what is traditional Judaism today? What is rabbinic Judaism today and how close is it to the scriptures?
Michael: Okay. Traditional Judaism is based on the Bible plus rabbinic traditions. The simplest way to say it, one scholar put it like this “The Catholic religion is no more the religion of the New Testament, than traditional Judaism is the religion of the Old Testament.” Meaning if you talk to a Catholic and say “Why do you do this, and this, and this…” they have some scripture support, but then they say “This is done by the authority of the church.” If you’re a Catholic you believe that has been passed on through each generation, and that the Pope carries the same authority as Peter. Well the same way if you’re a traditional Jew, you believe yes God gave us the scriptures, but the scriptures as given are unintelligible. In other words, it says “Don’t work on the Sabbath if you work on the Sabbath you’ll be put to death,” but it doesn’t explain in detail what it means to work, and so with other commandments. They believe, traditional Jews believe, on Mt. Sinai God gave Moses an oral law to explain the written law. That oral law was then passed on to Joshua, from Joshua to the eldest, the eldest to the prophets, on and on, till you get to the days of Jesus. Then like Hillel and Shammai, and even then Gamaliel under whom Paul studied, and the authors of the Mishnah and the Talmud, and the Jewish law coach through the ages. The belief is the way that you understand what is written is by going to the rabbis, and the rabbis have a chain of tradition some of which is written, some of which is passed down orally that explains what the scriptures mean. On the one hand, there is much of the Bible in traditional Judaism, for example a religious Jew is reading through the 5 Books of Moses, the Torah, every year in the synagogues. A religious Jew is praying the Psalms and other portions of scripture in daily prayer 2 or 3 times a day. But most of what a religious Jew does is not found directly in scripture in terms of what he says when he gets up in the morning, how he prays, wearing a head covering, wearing other types of garments, the extensions of the dietary laws, etcetera… Some of these traditions actually contradict the spirit or the life of the word, a traditional Jew would say “That’s not the case,” but we can see clearly in the gospels that when Jesus had conflicts with the religious leaders it was generally over the traditions; some of those traditions Jesus said “You make void the word of God with your traditions” in Mark 7 and Matthew 15. So there’s certain things traditional Jews do in terms of keeping the Sabbath, and the Biblical calendar, and they’re more zealous for that than anyone in the world. On the hand, what they have done is added so many traditions and human commands, and if you don’t do it THAT WAY you’re considered not be a true follower of scripture.
Sid: Does God accept traditional Judaism as justification to go to heaven?
Michael: Oh no! God doesn’t accept any human system as traditional justification to go to heaven.
Sid: So it’s actually diabolical in that sense because they think they’re okay.
Michael: Any support we have aside from falling into God’s hands and asking for mercy through the Messiah is a false support. No matter how beautiful, no matter how filled with wisdom, no matter how powerful the traditions, no matter how much good is there, ultimately any other system that gets us from trusting in Yeshua alone for salvation. I’m not saying we don’t need to repent, I’m not saying we don’t need to live holy lives, but I’m saying if the basis of our confidence is our religion, or our tradition, or our lifestyle, or our good works we will find ourselves terribly short on the day we stand before the Lord.
Sid: Alright, let me put the question this way, is traditional Judaism the religion of Moses and the prophets?
Michael: Absolutely not, without question, absolutely not.
Sid: Where did they deviate?
Michael: Historically the deviation seems to grow from a couple of hundred years before Yeshua, as the Pharisees began to rise up. In many ways an excellent movement striving for purity, but in other ways, once they began to develop their traditions, and once they began to say “If you do not follow our traditions you are not right with God.” That’s when the problems began to arise. Look I could tell a Jewish person, but I do keep the Sabbath, and they could say “If you don’t keep it according to our tradition you’re not keeping it.” I could “But I follow what is written literally in the Bible” and they could say “If you don’t follow our tradition you’re not right with God.” The dividing line comes when Yeshua comes into the world that’s where the decision has to go “Will we go with the fulfilling of the prophets and the miraculous, and the voice of God revealed through the Messiah the last and greatest national prophet to Israel? Or will we follow our traditions?” To the extent human traditions are followed to that extent you ultimately hit a dead end and you miss God.
Sid: Okay, if you had one shot a Jewish rabbi and could say one statement to him to get him to think what would it be?
Michael: One statement I would probably urge him to study the scriptures and to recognize the Messiah was supposed to come before the second temple was destroyed. The second temple was destroyed over 1900 years ago in the year 70 of this era. There is a clear prophetic witness pointing towards it in Haggai 2, and Malachi 3, and Daniel 9 when you weave those strands together. There’s even rabbinic tradition that indicates the Messiah was expected roughly 1800 years ago. In other words, a long time ago something should have happened and the scriptures indicating He was expected before the second temple was destroyed. What happened? The Talmudic tradition says He should have come 1800 years ago, but because of our sins we’ve missed it. I say He did come 2000 years ago as the prophets said He would, and because of our sins we missed Him. Therefore, we need to repent and turn back. God has kept His timetable faithfully without skipping a beat. God has laid out in scripture that the Messiah would first be rejected and misunderstood by the nation, and be a light to the Gentiles before He would be received by His people. Who else has done that? We began our debate with Shmuley making the point very well, he’s a tremendous speaker, and made the point very well that Jesus has brought the knowledge of God to hundreds of millions of people. [Laughing] He’s a Jew! If I said which Jew has brought knowledge of the God of Israel to hundreds of millions of people you’d say “Well it’s this Jew Jesus.” Who’s a better candidate for the Messiah than Him? Who else came and lived and died 2000 years ago, not to mention resurrection…
Sid: Listen I thought he was setting you up for both debates.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth