Jan. 24, 2019 - Brother Nathanael
08:28
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| It's impossible for God to lie. | |
| All rabbis would agree. | |
| Yet when God promised a son to Abraham from Sarah's barren womb, he said, is anything too hard for the Lord? | |
| But this rabbi needs some hardball replies. | |
| People who are Christian are asking, why for Jews is Jesus not the Messiah? | |
| Yeah, again, excellent question. | |
| The question can logically be asked. | |
| In fact, I'm sure you know this. | |
| The very early Christians did regard themselves as Jews. | |
| Jesus himself, of course, regarded himself as Jews, and many of the apostles, in fact, were Jews. | |
| And they considered themselves Jewish. | |
| I'm also a Jew, racially, sired by two Jewish parents and raised in the synagogue. | |
| So why would I, being Jewish, believe in Jesus? | |
| Why the Jewish apostles, witnesses of his coming, who also convinced thousands of other Jews, including the Mosaic priests, to believe. | |
| Were they deluded? | |
| Excellent question. | |
| The question is, why can't I be a religious Jew, believe in the Torah? | |
| And still say that Jesus is the Messiah. | |
| The apostles not only believed in the Torah, the Mosaic Law, but practiced it and still said Jesus was the Messiah. | |
| I also was raised on the Mosaic Law, but could not fully practice it. | |
| No Jew can today, since the Torah's temple was destroyed 2,000 years ago. | |
| Easy answers beg a long, slender probe. | |
| I would say that Judaism has three fundamental issues with Christian theology. | |
| Issue number one, which does not go to the Messianic aspect of Jesus, but to the Divinity and the Trinity and the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. | |
| Our problem would be that we believe that God has never and will never assume a human form. | |
| Rabbis like to tell God what he can and cannot do. | |
| In rabbinic lore he wears a yamaki and a pair of shawl just like them. | |
| For God did appear in human form to Adam as walking in the cold of the garden, to Abraham as eating and talking, to Moses as having feet planted on a pavement, to Joshua as captain of the Lord's host holding a drawn sword, and to Ezekiel and Daniel as one like a son of man. | |
| These are theophanies, appearances of God in human form in the Old Testament, interacting with people who gradually realize that the form is really God. | |
| For instance, when Hagar flees from Sarah's mistreatment, the text depicts a messenger that is an angel of the Lord speaking with her. | |
| Hagar responds by giving the name Eloroi, the God who sees, to the Lord who spoke to her. | |
| The Orthodox Church teaches that these appearances are of the pre-incarnate Christ, that is, of Jesus in the human form that he would take on when he assumed human flesh by being born to a human mother. | |
| But it's all Greek to the rabbi who, by espousing Platonic philosophy that denies that deity can participate with humanity, negates the Hebraic worldview. | |
| The rabbi breaks with foundational Messianic Vision 2. | |
| In terms of the Messianic Vision, because let's say I say, well, I don't believe that Jesus is God or Son of God, but let him be the Messiah, which we do believe in. | |
| So I would say there are two points. | |
| Point number one is, That classical Jewish literature does not accept the notion of a second coming, and that is once the Messiah reveals himself, he will accomplish a designated mission of getting the Jews back to Israel, rebuilding the temple, and hopefully establishing world's peace. | |
| The rabbi's Messiah is missing in action. | |
| The bedrock messianic vision is that the true Messiah would crush the head of the serpent who brought in sin and death. | |
| You can't have peace without purging the other. | |
| Point number two, which is actually a more important point, is, and again, I'm not going to get into the debate whether Jesus said it or the apostles or later people said it, But the notion of the New Testament, the notion that God has abrogated his covenant with Israel, and that God has replaced the Sinaitic revelation with justification by faith, which is really Paul's innovation. | |
| Paul created the idea that one gets redemption not by works, but by faith. | |
| Nah, Moses created justification by faith. | |
| When affirming, Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. | |
| And when David wrote, Blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven, he attached no works necessary for this blessedness. | |
| Paul corrected the innovative, pharisaic tradition of the elders, which had dismembered from Scripture God's covenant of faith with Abraham, by which his seed, the coming Messiah, would bless the nations with forgiveness of sins. | |
| For according to Jeremiah, a new covenant would supersede the old. | |
| Once the Messiah reveals himself, He will accomplish a designated mission of getting the Jews back to Israel, rebuilding the temple, and hopefully establishing world's peace. | |
| Now Jesus, of course, was crucified. | |
| Jesus was murdered before he completed any of those things. | |
| And because of that, Christianity developed the idea of a second coming, that Jesus will come back and complete the mission. | |
| As they say, as far as normative Jewish theology is concerned, When the Messiah comes, he's going to get the junk done and he's not going to die and then come back. | |
| The Messiah had the first die to conquer death as promised by God in Genesis 3 and end Adam's separation from the divine life in God. | |
| 2. Daniel foretold that the temple would be destroyed by the Romans and would occur right after the Messiah's first coming. | |
| 3. Without a Levitical priesthood, a rebuilt temple is a sham. | |
| No Jew can prove he's from the tribe of Levi, the ancient priestly order. | |
| Will it be next year in Jerusalem? | |
| Where's your pedigree? | |
| King Solomon built our temple which stood for many centuries. | |
| In Jerusalem, Jewish exiles from Babylon rebuilt the temple which stood for many more centuries. | |
| In Jerusalem, the Maccabees rededicated that temple and restored Jewish sovereignty in this land. | |
| And it was here in Jerusalem, some 2,000 years later, that the soldiers of Israel spoke three immortal words. | |
| The Temple Mount is in our hands. | |
| Words that lifted the spirit of the entire nation. | |
| We are in Jerusalem and we are here to stay. | |
| Maybe. But for sure, proof of a spotless pedigree is vital for admission to priestly service in the temple, as stressed by Maimonides' Jewish sage of the Middle Ages. | |
| But whereas Maimonides says when his Messiah comes, he'll... | |
| To clarify the priestly lineages, he has to first prove that he, the supposed messiah, is born of the royal clan of David from which the messiah must stem before he can sort out any other family trees. | |
| Please, after 2,000 years of Jewish diaspora with no pedigree's extent, tribal identities remain intact. | |
| Give me a break. But what is possible, founded on prophecy and numerous eyewitnesses, is that through Christ's death and resurrection, amnesty is granted to all before his dread second coming. | |
| Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked, said Moses to the defiant Hebrews. |
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