Israel's Divine Angel

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Is it true that the Old Testament speaks of a divine angel? It's time for The Line of Fire, with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Michael Brown is the director of the Coalition of Conscience and president of Fire School of Ministry. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. What a delight to be with you today on the broadcast. It is Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. The number to call with your Jewish-related questions is 866-348-7884.

That is 866-348-7884. Any Jewish-related questions of any kind, anything you want to probe about having to do with Hebrew Scriptures, Hebrew language, Jewish tradition, beliefs, Messianic prophecy, Jewish background to the New Testament, that all qualifies for Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. Israel, today in the news, by all means, give us a call, 866-348-7884. If you're a Jewish person and you differ with my beliefs and you want to probe them or tell me why you think I'm wrong, phone lines are open for you as well. In a moment we're going to dig into the Scriptures together, but first something else about the Scriptures. I've been reading through the Bible in one of these Bible in 90 Days programs. I've done it every few years when I just feel I need a fresh immersion just going through the Holy Scripture. Also on the Bible app it's just a plan that comes up and this way you make sure you're reading enough each day. Sometimes I listen to it in audio as well, the app with certain versions you can listen. When I listen to the Bible on audio there's a unique experience in one particular way, which is that there are many passages in the Bible, especially in the Hebrew Scriptures, that I would speed read when I'm reading them.

And I imagine you probably do as well. For example, if you're reading the Table of the Nations in Genesis 10, unless you're really trying to intimately understand the historic origins of different nations or meaning of certain names, you're probably going to read that through more quickly than say Genesis 1, the creation account. Or if you're reading through a passage, oh, let's say the building of the tabernacle starting in Exodus 35 up to the 40th chapter, you may read that a little bit differently. Or you may read a little differently the laws concerning leprosy or severe skin disease and mildew, Leviticus 13, 14, chapters like that. Or somewhere it's just more detailed genealogies one after another after another, like 1 Chronicles, especially the first five chapters and then even so after that.

But when you're listening, you're listening to the app and it's reading everything at the same speed. Or many of the details about the sacrificial offerings in Leviticus 1 through 7 in particular. So you're hearing how much content is actually there and it's making you wonder, why?

Why is this there? Why did God put so much attention on certain aspects of being clean or unclean? Why did this matter so much?

What was God preparing Israel for? And a lot of it had to do with being clean in terms of being able to approach the tabernacle and the presence of God. In other words, you weren't in a sinful state, but in an unclean state. Now, you could be in a sinful state, which is also unclean because of sin, but it's not like you had sinned. It's just you had accidentally touched, you know, you're sitting down and your foot touches something.

What's that? Oh, you realize there's a dead carcass. Oh, well, okay. You're unclean.

You have to believe in it and you have to bathe, et cetera. But a lot of these laws apply while you had a tabernacle-slash-temple standing. And then without them, the application becomes much more ambiguous. Why are they even there? What's the purpose of them, et cetera?

So you wonder, okay, why are these there? The genealogies, that's a whole other issue. It does tell us that every life matters. It does tell us that records are being kept. And it does bring us a certain continuity from one place to another place in history. And there are other things to learn from the genealogies. But these laws about clean and unclean, I would normally go through them more quickly, just even unconsciously, because it doesn't seem to be as much substance to meditate on or to dig into, et cetera.

So why are they there? And you realize there are lessons God's teaching us through this. There are things he was teaching Israel, you know, the requirements for priests where they couldn't be blemished, they couldn't have bodily defects. You think, well, how is that fair?

Well, there was a certain thing God was communicating to Israel that was bigger than fairness towards an individual. And if you think of a sacrificial animal, it had to be without blemish. You got to examine that thing. You're going to offer up that sheep. You got to examine that sheep.

Make sure that ox, okay, this is without blemish. There were lessons God was teaching. And when we take them spiritually, one of the clearest passages we have in the New Testament is in 2 Corinthians 6, beginning in verse 14, where it tells us not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. But it goes from there to talk about how God lives among us and dwells in us, that we have become his temple corporately and individually, and that he is our father and we are his sons and daughters. Therefore, touch no unclean thing. Some of the same imagery from the Hebrew Bible where it quotes itself, where one part of the Hebrew Bible is going back to another part. Now, the New Testament in turn quotes that, and then it leads up to 2 Corinthians 7, verse 1, having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that defiles flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. So these are just some lessons learned, some things of importance, some things to consider, and meditate on.

866-34-TRUTH. Before we go to the phones, let's dig into the Scriptures from another angle and ask the question, was there a divine angel in the Old Testament? This is something you've probably heard about, the angel of the Lord, in Hebrew, Malach Adonai, or Malach Yahweh. Is that a distinct being where it speaks of God revealing himself?

I would say the Son of God revealing himself in a physical form. Is it speaking of that, or is it simply that the Malach, the messenger, carries the authority of the one who sent him? So for example, if I come with an announcement, let's say I'm sent by the local police chief into a community and says, police chief so-and-so says everyone has to evacuate, hurricane coming.

I'm not speaking with my authority, but with the police chief's authority. We certainly have that where the messenger carries the authority of the one sent in. The prophets do it all the time, right? Koamah Adonai, this is what the Lord has said, or Ne'um Adonai, utterance of the Lord, or P Adonai, the mouth of the Lord has spoken. These are some of the most common terms that are used. They spoke with divine authority, but could you have a conversation with them where they would continue to speak with divine authority as if they were God, where they would go from he says to I say?

How would that work? So there are some who say, no, it's just the representative, and others say no. In certain cases, it's clear that this is God himself manifesting himself in the angel. Now, we're going to look at a few texts in a moment, but as I was going through the scriptures a few days ago in Exodus, it struck me, I'm sure I've seen this many times, but I was just struck by it again, that in Exodus the 14th chapter, the pillar of cloud separating the Israelites from the Egyptians, that it says God looked from the pillar of cloud. In other words, he was actually present in the cloud and in the fire. Even though he's transcendent, invisible to our senses, right? No one has ever seen God that's stated several times, Old Testament, New Testament, in fact, states it several times. Jesus says, no one's seen God, never seen God.

So even though that's the case, he did manifest himself in physical ways and at times even in a human body or a human form or an angelic form that looked to be human. So let's take a look at a few of these passages. We start in Genesis chapter 16. Genesis chapter 16, Hagar is fleeing from Sarah, Sarai as she's called then, Abraham's wife. She suggested Abraham takes Hagar as a wife because Sarah can't have kids. When Hagar conceives as Ishmael, Sarah's upset, jealous, wants to get rid of him.

Okay. So it says, the new JPS translation says, an angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness. Others would translate the angel of the Lord.

And that's a totally legitimate translation for various grammatical reasons. So the angel, the Malach, the messenger says, Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? She said, I'm running away from my mistress, Sarai. And then as we scroll down, and the angel of the Lord, now notice this time it says, the angel of the Lord, right? And the angel of the Lord said to her, go back to your mistress and submit to her a harsh treatment. And the angel of the Lord said to her, I will greatly increase. So Vayomelah, Malach, Adonai, Harba, Arbe, Edzarecha, V'lo Yisafeh, Merov, the angel of the Lord said to her, I will greatly increase your offspring and they shall be too many to count. Now, it's God speaking through the angel, does it mean God is in the angel or just the angel speaking with divine authority? It's debatable. The angel of the Lord said to her, further, behold your with child shall bear a son. Okay.

It goes on from there. Is that evidence that God was in this Malach, God was in this messenger? Is the Son of God appearing, making God known, making the Father known? Is that what was happening? Or was the angel simply speaking for the Lord, like a prophet saying, I the Lord say to you, or if you've been at a charismatic Pentecostal church for the first time and you hear a prophecy, I the Lord say, that person thinks they're God?

No, no, no. They're just speaking a message for the Lord. Okay, let's go to Exodus chapter three. Exodus chapter three.

And that's, that's a little clearer there. Now Moses tended the flock of his father, the Lord Jethro, the priest of Midian, drove the flock into the wilderness, came to Choreb, the mountain of God, and it says an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. So once again it says an angel, you could translate the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. So he sees the fire and the angel appears out of the fire. He gazed and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed. So he sees fire and this is how the Malach, the angel, is appearing. Moses said, I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight.

Why doesn't the bush burn up? All right, we continue verse four. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called him out of the bush. Moses, Moses.

He answered, here I am. And he said, do not come closer. Remove your sandals from your feet for the place on which you stand this holy ground.

I am, he said, the God of your father, the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. Moses hid his face. He was afraid to look at God. He was afraid to look at God. Let's step back and think about that. We'll continue on the other side of the break.

It seems as if God's presence, God himself was actually there in the fire, hence don't come any closer, hence first person speech, hence I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, hence Moses being afraid to look at God. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Yes, there is victory among God's people. There is. In the midst of pain, persecution, difficulty in Jesus, in Yeshua, we are overcomers. Friends, we live these lives in this world. We are human beings, subject to pressure, temptation, frailty like everyone else, but in Jesus, in Yeshua, our Messiah and King, we are overcomers.

He living inside of us is more than enough, and if we will learn to find God's strength out of our weakness, nothing can stop us. All right, it is thoroughly Jewish Thursday. You listen to The Line of Fire broadcast and the number to call with any Jewish related question of any kind 866-344-866-348-7884 is the number to call.

One is stay in the Word a little longer and then we'll start going to your calls. So in Exodus 3, we saw that it says the Malach Adonai, the angel of the Lord, appears to Moses out of the burning bush and he sees a fire so he doesn't see a form of a face or of a being or anything like that. So it looks like one of the cherubim or seraphim described elsewhere in the Bible, or a human form, a body, and no, he just sees the fire.

So God is appearing out of the fire, and as you read it, it seems to me more than just an angel speaking with divine authority, it seems that the very presence of God is in that Malach, that the very presence of God is there in him to the point that Moses is afraid to look at him. Some ancient Jewish traditions say he was afraid to look at the glory of the Lord or towards the glory of the Lord, but the Hebrew simply says he was afraid to look at God. So in his mind, he understood that God was there speaking out of the burning bush.

And why not? What would have told him that couldn't be? What in the ancient religious world would have taught him that couldn't be? What in the nature of God would have taught him that that couldn't be? That God could not literally come down and manifest himself in that way and speak directly to him?

Moses certainly thought he was being spoken to directly by God. You say, well then why doesn't it just say God came in the bush? Why does it say the messenger of the Lord? Well, this is how God discloses himself. This is how God reveals himself. This is the reminder that he is not contained in that fire, that he is the infinite and eternal God, and yet he reveals himself in the midst of it.

Now a passage that Dr. Michael Heiser has often drawn attention to is quite remarkable. So we go to Genesis chapter 48. Genesis 48, and here Jacob is going to bless the sons of Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim, but he's going to bless them in the reverse order, Ephraim and Manasseh. So it says, and he, this is Jacob and he blessed Joseph saying, it starts with Hebrew, Ha'elohim, the God in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, all right? And then again, Ha'elohim, the God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day.

Then Hamalach, Ha'go'elothim, Echogah, Yivarech, Etanarim. So the God in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all harm, bless the lads. And then may my name be recalled and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac and may they be teeming multitudes upon the earth.

Now let's leave the text up and think about this for a moment. The clear parallelism is undeniable, the God, the God, the angel. He's speaking of one and the same being, that's first thing. Second thing is that even the new JPS translation, which does not believe things that we believe about Jesus and divine Messiah and things like that, it translates with the angel with a capital A.

The same if you look, for example, Ephraim Spicer and the Anchor Bible commentary on Genesis, he was a great Semitic scholar, not a religious Jew, but Jewish scholar. He also translates with a capital A, the angel, so capital A in English to convey this. In other words, the angel is the way that God is spoken of here. There's no denying it in terms of the syntax.

And when you read commentaries trying to explain it the way, it's really an uphill battle. If I say, let's say I'm introducing Nancy. I want to talk to you about my best friend in this world. I want to talk to you about the woman that I have been married to since 1976. I want to talk to you about the mother of our children and the grandmother of our grandchildren.

I want to talk to you about this amazing woman. Well, that's the same person, the God, the God, the angel, it's the same being described. So there is no question that this verse confirms the existence of a divine angel or God working so much through the angel that that angel bears his very identity.

There's really no denying it grammatically, syntactically, and it is then singular, may he bless them, right? So it's this God, this God, this angel, may he bless them, not may they, or now separated from God, just the angel does it. It's really fascinating.

It's really quite undeniable. Now, in my book, Resurrection, investigating a rabbi from Brooklyn, a preacher from Galilee, and an event that changed the world, I deal with this question of a divine angel. I want to take down the scriptural text and I want to go over to my Resurrection book.

It's a really fascinating read. It'll take you through Jewish tradition, history, different beliefs about messiahs, contemporary beliefs about rabbinic leaders being messiah, and then compare that to the claims of Jesus, the messiah, and claims of resurrection from the dead. So there is a commentary on the Torah, Bacha ben Asher, known as Rabbeinu Bacha, and he's around the 13th century, and he's commenting on the angel of the Lord in Genesis 22, okay?

Genesis 22, so specifically 1255 to 1340. This is when the angel of the Lord tells Abraham, don't sacrifice Isaac on the mount, right? God's told him to do it. Now, the angel says, don't do it, and he's commenting on the words, you did not withhold your son. It doesn't say you did not withhold your son from him, but rather you did not withhold your son from me. So listen to what Rabbi Bacha wrote. Now, remember, he doesn't believe in Jesus. He doesn't believe the same things we believe, all right? I'm not hinting that he did.

Now I'm not suggesting that he did, in any way. I'm just saying it's fascinating to see his commentary here in Genesis 22. He said, you also need to know that the apparently strange phenomenon in this paragraph, that is that God is the one who subjects Abraham to the trial, whereas the angel prevented him from going through with it, needs to be understood. The angel mentioned in our paragraph is not of the category of the nifradim, disembodied spiritual creatures, but belong to what are known as the nityot, the emanations of God. Had the angel who called out to Avraham and instructed him to desist belong to the category known as nifradim, disembodied spiritual creatures, Abraham would have ignored him, would have not allowed himself to be countermanded by a subordinate of the one who had instructed him in the first place. Moreover, it is quite unthinkable that an angel of the lower category, nifradim, disembodied spiritual creatures, would have been allowed to say to Avraham, v'lo chasachta et b'nacham imeni, and you did not withhold your son from me.

He would have had to say, you have not withheld your son from him. So he says, all of this proves that the voice which the Torah describes as emanating from an angel of God was of a superior divine level. This angel is also known as the great angel who manifested himself in Exodus 14, 19, when the Torah describes him as traveling in front of the encampment of the Jewish people, performing all kinds of miracles.

When the Torah describes the divine emanation as malach, angel, the meaning is that God is contained present within this divine emanation. Okay, if you have my resurrection book, it should be around pages 112, 113. If not, it's a fascinating read. I commend it to you for many different reasons.

That's why I wrote it. Also fascinating read to give to Jewish friends, especially religious Jewish friends in particular. But what he's saying is fascinating, that if the angel said, stop, stop, don't sacrifice him, Abraham would have ignored him because God himself said do it so you don't listen to a subordinate who says don't do it. Now obviously you could say with a subordinate came with a message from God, that'd be the logical answer. But Bacchus says, actually, no, this is not just a messenger from God. This was God present. This is an emanation from God of some kind. This is God present in that malach, which is why when he speaks, Abraham listens. And then the language, you did not withhold your son from me, as opposed to from him, from God.

And then he speaks, now I know that you fear me. So it's just very interesting to see these observations. Again, their beliefs would be different, but here's an understanding that the malach and Rabbi Bacchus' commentary contain mystical elements, Kabbalistic elements in it. That's part of what he did, philosophical elements, Kabbalistic elements, and then just trying to understand the plain sense of the text as well as his homiletical sense. So he is looking at things through these mystical eyes, but it's striking that even coming from a very different point of view, that of traditional Judaism, there are observations about this divine angel, about this angel who uniquely carried the presence of God.

And I say yes and amen to that. Let's just understand, this is how God has revealed himself through his son. John 14, Jesus says, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. In John 1 18, no one has ever seen God, but the one and only God in the bosom of the father, he has made him known. And you first start learning Greek and you get to that passage and you see that it's literally, if we translate it a hyper literal way into English, that the son has exegeted God. It's a great way to translate it because it's going to have a little bit different meaning, but he's the one who has made him known, opened up to us, his actual being.

Wow. That's what the son does. And he does it throughout the Hebrew Bible in various ways, manifesting himself.

That's how the hidden invisible God reveals himself in manifest, physical, earthly, visible ways in the Bible. We'll be right back with your Jewish related calls 866-34-TRUTH. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome friends to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, Michael Brown, delighted as always to be with you 866-34-TRUTH is the number to call with any Jewish related question.

About to go to the phones, just a quick note. There are folks that are watching carefully in Israel with vaccines being given to everyone in the military and because of age groups involved and things like that, there are others watching from the outside to say, well, this, this is a good place to go to see if there are these side effects. You know, Sweden has stopped one of the vaccines because of concerns about heart issues, myocarditis and things like that. Another Scandinavian nation has just stopped on the vaccines for certain ages, just trying to get more data. And Israel, which has been very heavily vaccinated, of course, struggled with the Delta variant, although some would say that those that got sick were not as sick if they were vaccinated.

Others would say, what good was all the vaccination if we're still getting hit with things. So the questions continue, but Israel is right in the midst of this, right in the thick of the discussion, and other nations are watching what's happening there. 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go to Nina in South California. Welcome to the line of fire.

Hi, Dr. Michael Brown. I have a question in Joshua 10-13. It says about the book of Yashar. In the Russian translation, it says the book of Righteous One.

I don't know. Can you explain to me what is the book of Yashar about? It says like what it says in here, like a moon and sun was stood still, something like that. Right. So we don't have the book of Yashar in English, normally spelled with a J.

We don't have it. Now the reason I mention that, Nina, is because you can get online and you could search for a book of Yashar and you can order it for yourself and read it, but it's a forgery. It's centuries and centuries later. It has nothing to do with the biblical book. It's a later forgery that was written as if, oh, we discovered this.

So everybody that has anything to do with it that's academic fully understands it's a forgery. So we don't have the original book. It has been lost to history. So apparently it contained more details about different historical events with the children of Israel. It's mentioned a couple of times in the Old Testament. But beyond that, we don't know. In other words, what you read is what we know.

Beyond that, it's lost. Now the reason that the Russian translated the way it did is because in Hebrew, the word Yashar means upright or morally straight, hence righteous. So that's just another synonym for the righteous, someone who is Yashar is morally upright, straight, and they translated it as if it was a description rather than a name.

So it should be translated as a name more likely, but that's why they did it because Yashar has that meaning in Hebrew. Oh, thank you. May I ask you another question? Sure.

Go ahead. It's about Luke 2.25, about Simeon, who doesn't say what age he was when he saw the salvation of Israel. I heard the message like he was around 200 years old. I don't know where they get that, but if God said it's 120 years old. The fact is, no, that's just myth. What we know about him is what's written in Luke.

That's all. So it's one of these things, Nina, where when we don't have information in the Bible, then someone has a tradition, someone has speculation, this gets passed on, and before you know it, it's just, wow, that really happened. It's fact. No, it's just myth.

There is zero to it. The Bible does not tell us anything more, and we don't know his age. You can be reasonably confident, though, that he was not 300. If he was 300, I would think the Bible would have drawn attention to it, because it does tell us Anna, the 80-plus years as a widow and all of her years of intercession and things like that. So you would imagine it would say something, especially when, once you get past the era of the flood, that the life spans go down, down, down, down, and as you say, 120 at the outset or even Psalm 90, 70, 80 at the outset, so living even that long was quite rare. Hey, thank you.

Thank you for calling. By the way, you know, there are Jewish traditions that Shem, one of the sons of Noah, was actually Melchizedek in Genesis 14. There's zero truth behind it. It's just one of these traditions. These things get developed and passed on. You ever have family stories that just started somewhere, and I was like, it's fact? Oh, yeah. That's what happens. It's a story.

That's all it is, is a story. All right, let's go to Wanda in Greer, South Carolina. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hello, Dr. Brown. Hey. Hey.

This is my first time hearing about you, and on the radio as I was driving. Anyway, so I have a question. I'm learning a little bit more about the Jewish way of life, and I was wondering, do women wear prayer shawls?

No. Like the men? No, not religious Jews.

You will see it in non-traditional settings. In other words, Reform Judaism, which broke away from traditional Judaism over 200 years ago, and which cast off many of the traditions that had been followed through centuries, but to this day is very liberal, and your average Reform Jew is not observing Sabbath in a strict way. Many are not observing the dietary laws in a strict way. So they modify different things. So they will have female rabbis where traditional Jews would not. They'll have gay and lesbian rabbis where obviously traditional Jews would not. They'll have women wearing a certain kind of head cover, wearing a yarmulke sometimes in ways that men would, or a prayer shawl. But no, the prayer shawl is not worn by women in traditional Judaism, and the prayer shawl goes back even earlier with the fringes and things like that to the requirements about garments and traditional Judaism developed saying that that was for men only and not for women.

And in traditional Judaism, women are exempted from certain commandments that men are required to keep because of the life cycle of a woman, because of her monthly cycle, because of issues that could come up with caring for children and things like that, that she was not required to do some of the things the man was required to do. That's why you'll see a traditional Jewish man to this day, he'll have these fringes coming out from the side of his pants. Well, the blue, the tekhelet, this particular color, this deep blue, the tradition was that that came from a particular snail called the hilazon, and it was very rare and hard to get. And then when they couldn't get it anymore, they said, we can't have that exact dye. So instead, we'll just leave it white until we can get it. So that's why you'll see a traditional Jewish man with the white fringes, but you won't see a woman wearing it.

But the long answer is that the short answer is no. In traditional Judaism, women do not wear prayer shawls. Okay, because sometimes I see women on TV or something wearing a prayer shawl, I thought only men wore the prayer shawl. Well, here's the deal. If it's Christians, why are they concerned about Jewish tradition?

You know what I'm saying? In other words, if it's Christians doing it, there's nowhere in the New Testament where it says Christians should pray with a prayer shawl or not or anything. So if it's Christians doing it, the Jewish tradition is immaterial at that point. They're simply doing it because they find value or meaning or beauty in doing it as followers of Jesus. The fact that if you're trying to live by Jewish tradition, then you'd be living an Orthodox Jewish life would be radically, dramatically different than the way a Christian would live in terms of daily requirements and things like that. But many Christians think when they're doing these things that it shows that they're connected to being Jewish and it's appealing to Jewish people. Your average Jew will look at that and think, why is it Christian mixing with our religion? So it doesn't impress Jews when Christians do it. But if they do it before the Lord and find beauty in it, great. And especially Messianic Jews, it may be part of their background and tradition.

Okay. So the Messianic Jews would be different than the traditional Jews. They have different ways of life? Yes. So here's the deal.

Here's where it gets a little interesting. The church has often looked at Messianic Jews in recent decades as mixing things like going backwards into Judaism. The traditional Jewish community has looked at Messianic Jews as imposters trying to cover up Christianity with Jewish traditions and images. Messianic Jew would say, we're just trying to be authentic. That just like Paul and Peter and the other apostles lived as Jews, after Jesus died and rose from the dead, they were Jews, they continued to live as Jews. They were Sabbath observant, they observed the dietary laws, et cetera. So this is just part of our heritage. And we want to reconnect the church with its Jewish roots, but then they'd also recognize they're not under rabbinic authority. So they may use certain traditions that they find beautiful. It may be that the leader of the congregation grew up a certain way, loving certain Jewish traditions.

They still have value for him. So that's how he leads his congregation. But it's not, there is no holistic formula for it. In other words, as a follower of Jesus, you are not going to be fully submitted to rabbinic tradition. If you were, you wouldn't believe in Yeshua.

You wouldn't believe in Jesus. So Messianic Jewish congregations can be beautiful places that give you a place to celebrate the feasts and holy days, or that really try to uncover the meaning of the Sabbath or remind Jewish people you can be Jewish and believe in Jesus. Many times though, they become places where people who are attracted to Judaism, they're maybe Gentile Christians, they get attracted to Judaism and it's part of their step of falling away from the Lord that they, well, go to a Messianic congregation after that, just go to a traditional synagogue and then leave the Lord entirely.

So everything has to be in its right context. In many ways, Wanda, the church has departed so far from its Jewish roots that, for example, you have a separate holiday, Passover and Easter, instead of saying we celebrate the death and resurrection of the Messiah within Passover when it actually happened. Why not? Why make a separate holiday with different dates? So there has been a separation from Jewish roots, but God has never called the Gentile church to live like traditional Jews. That's not his call or purpose. And I will take fervent issue with any Messianic Jewish leader who says that Messianic Jews are required to live by rabbinic tradition or that there is authority in rabbinic tradition that is still binding on Messianic Jews.

I will categorically absolutely dismiss that and say wrong and would argue against it. Hey, Wanda, thanks for calling in. If you go to my website, AskDrBrown.org, A-S-K-D-R Brown.org. Just search there. You'll find tons of free resources on a wide range of subjects, including Jewish related issues as well. Hey, God bless.

Appreciate the call. We'll be right back on Clearly Jewish Thursday. It's The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown.

Your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Welcome, welcome to The Line of Fire on Clearly Jewish Thursday, Michael Brown here. Still time to take a call or two, 866-348-7884 is the number to call. I want to respond to a Facebook question.

I saw a post there and the gentleman said that he's just got a little phone phobia right now. So normally we're not able to respond to questions that are just posted during the show, but maybe I'll get to that in a moment. I'm intrigued by this headline in the Jerusalem Post, Biden administration ups pressure on Israel to crack down on China.

Defense officials call on Prime Minister Bennett to head new panel to screen Beijing's investments in Israel as government stalls on rail tenders. Interesting. Interesting.

Yeah. U.S. relation with China, Israel relation with China. I am absolutely not expert.

That is such an overstatement of an understated thing. I know very little, forget saying I'm not an expert. I know very little about Israel's relations with China, very, very little.

I've not tracked it in great depth and it's a newer subject, but this is going to be one to watch. What are China's motivations? You know, you watch Russia and the Middle East and Syria with this country there, Russia and Iran, and what are the motivations?

Who's trying to have more sway here? What's their purpose? And so on. And Israel generally is looking for whatever friends it can have and any nation with whom it can have good economic ties, the better and security arrangements, so on and so forth. But then this one is the friend of my friend is the enemy of your friend and how does it work? So it's very complex.

Okay. So a question was asked about the offering called the Korban, which is just the Hebrew word for offering. It's referenced in Mark 7 and Matthew 15. And there Yeshua rebukes the religious leaders for the hypocrisy saying, hey, you say honor your father and mother.

I mean, you're upset with us because my disciples don't wash their hands before they eat, which is a Pharisaic tradition, not a biblical command. And in the meantime, you're not following scripture yourself. And whereas the scripture says honor your father and mother, you've got this loophole where someone doesn't have to. So I just want to read to you Craig Keener's IVP Bible background commentary.

He says this. He says many Jewish teachers, there we go, regarded the commandment to honor father and mother is the most important in the law. Jewish interpreters included in this commandment providing for one's parents when they were old. At the same time, tradition allowed that various items could be sacrificed or dedicated to the use of God's temple. For a bond appears on sacrificial vessels and means consecrated to God. In popular usage, it could also mean forbidden to so-and-so. Dr. Keener says one school of Jewish teachers in Jesus' state declared that a vow, that something was consecrated and forbidden to others, applied even to family members, even if those to whom it was forbidden included them only accidentally. Some apparently religious people had been using this practice.

And notice that Dr. Keener says apparently, we don't have a lot of data about this. And we're trying to understand the very real issue Jesus is talking about. Obviously, nothing's being made up here because it's a real issue that's being discussed.

And these things are being published and discussed, oral traditions passed in his honor immediately after Jesus leaves this earth and then written down within a generation. So you're not going to create something. You're not going to be talking about the New York Blueberries baseball team that lost to the Boston Raspberries in a wildcard playoff game Tuesday night. You're not going to be talking about that because everyone knows it's the Yankees and the Red Sox, not the Blueberries and the Raspberries. So there's nothing real that took place.

We don't have all the data, which is very common for that period of time. Some apparently religious people had been using this practice to withhold what should have otherwise gone to the support of their parents against Pharisaic belief that one should support one's parents. Jesus here attacks not the Pharisees' religious theory, but their inconsistency with that theory and practice.

Their love for the law had led them, like some modern Christians, to such attention to its legal details that it created loopholes for them to violate the spirit of the law. And look, I've had people call in the show and want to ask a question and say, okay, my family, my parents need money. And the only way I can give them money is if I don't tithe. And I know to honor my parents, I know to honor the Lord. Is it right that I don't tithe and then that extra money?

I know it's not that much, but it's just what they need to get them through because their Social Security is not enough, et cetera. Will that, should I do that? Now, my counsel would normally be, honor the Lord, give to him first. And look at your own life, make sure you're not spending money you don't have to spend that you can help your parents with, right? But I would say, okay, honor the Lord first in faith and he knowing your situation needs will bless you with more to enable you to support them. That would be my normal counsel, but you can see though how this kind of thing could arise and this kind of thing could be an issue. You're trying to honor God, but you've got a competing claim here, which is right, which is good.

Okay. Let me mention one other thing to you as just been going through the five books of Moses again in recent days and reading today about quarantine and the laws about severe skin disease and mildew in Leviticus 13 and 14, I'm still thinking, okay, there's so much detail. And I said, why don't you put so much detail here and other things you didn't. You know, there's even a saying in the Mishnah, so this is early Jewish tradition put in writing about 220 AD or CE, common areas as Jews would say. So it says that the laws concerning offerings and things like that, you know, they're detailed, but the laws about the Sabbath, it's like mountains hanging on threads. In other words, it's clear in the Torah, don't work on the Sabbath, and it says a couple of other things, you know, don't kill the fire on the Sabbath, but there's not a lot of detail in terms of what work means. My understanding is because in that culture, an agrarian culture, that it was self-evident what was work, what wasn't work, and when a case came up, like a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath or something else, that it was reported to Moses, and then Moses went to God, okay, what do we do with this, because he wasn't sure either, and God showed him.

And so with their ambiguities, they learn pretty quickly. But in rabbinic law, you say, okay, well, God told the children of Israel, don't work on the Sabbath in the midst of their, the commands to build the tabernacle. So from that, we deduce that anything involved in building a tabernacle would be considered work. Then you come up with 39 subdivisions of labor, and developed it becomes tremendously complex, to the point that a traditional Jew on the Sabbath, so you could use a soft brush to brush there, but not a hard brush, because you don't want to pull hair out. Or if a fingernail is like partly detached, you can't break it off during the Sabbath, or say use a nail clipper to cut it off, that'd be work.

And you could study for hours and hours and hours, study toward that wouldn't be work. So it becomes very complex. And obviously, I don't accept the authority of those traditions, although for traditional Jews, they can be meaningful and beautiful, I don't accept their authority, nor do I believe for a split second that that was what was going on. In Moses day, but it's interesting to see that some of these things that required more detail God gave it.

And even the idea of quarantine and what principles were to learn from that. It's fascinating to look at and think about. It also reminds me of the importance of the physical body. Just because we are passing through this world and waiting for our resurrected body doesn't mean that the physical body is unimportant. Just because the New Testament teaches that physical work, so bodybuilding has a little profit, but building yourself up spiritually has profit for this world and the world to come.

It doesn't denigrate the importance of caring for our bodies, which are in fact the temple of the Holy Spirit. So I want to encourage you, I was part of a conference call earlier with other leaders talking about healthy nutrition. And Dr. Joel Fuhrman says that if you're eating an ideal healthy diet, which by his standards are very, very high, would be very, very high. If you're doing that and it's your ideal weight, that that's a thousand times more effective against COVID than any vaccine. And he's not saying to get vaccinated or not to. But I've seen the transformation in my own life. I've seen my immune system change totally from what it used to be, getting colds all the time and run down with different sicknesses to now hardly ever even getting a cold. I'm not posting about tomorrow, I'm not saying I'm bulletproof.

God forbid. I've had kidney stones, I've had other issues that have happened, right? But I've been thriving health-wise.

It's been utterly remarkable since God helped me to change my diet. And in addition to it, because certain things you can't necessarily get everything just alone from food or the foods that we have, the way we have them. So I do take some healthy supplements every day. Supplements for my immune system, a supplemental daily vitamin, some other supplements I take for some specific issues. And the supplements that I take are Dr. Mark Stengler's supplements, considered to be the nation's leading naturopathic doctor, meaning knows traditional medicine, but works in such a way that starts with let's see how the body heals itself and what can we work with naturally to bring about healing. So it's a different approach to medicine. It's a more holistic one, rather than just putting all kinds of prescription drugs into you that can actually hurt many other ways. So deals with nutrition, deals with other things. So we have partnered together with Dr. Stengler, I got a big announcement coming in a second, but we've partnered together with him, go to vitaminmission.com, vitaminmission.com. That's where you'll find out about a special coupon code that you can use to get a discount on every order that you place. And with every order, Dr. Stengler makes a donation to our ministry work.

So you get healthier, you get a discount, and we get blessed as well. So vitaminmission.com, the place to go. Here's the big announcement, Dr. Stengler's joining me on the air tomorrow, God willing, and it'll be asked Dr. Stengler. Tomorrow we're going to focus on all of your health questions, medical questions, nutrition questions from an amazing doctor who loves the Lord and bases everything as well on his relationship with God and scripture in terms of his life. It's going to be asked Dr. Stengler tomorrow. So get your medical health questions ready. You don't want to miss the broadcast. The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network.