Is Jesus the Jewish Messiah? A Messianic Jew Debates an Orthodox Rabbi

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The following is a pre-recorded program. Is Jesus, Yeshua, really the Jewish Messiah? We take you into a debate with an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi. 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. Hey friends, welcome to the special debate week. We've done excerpts, played excerpts from debates each day of the week so far.

This is one from March 23rd, 2017. I was supposed to debate Asher Norman who had written a well-known counter missionary book. He came down sick as much as he wanted to be there.

His doctor wouldn't let him. Rabbi Freitag filled in on short notice, an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi who's been involved in these issues, these subjects in dealing with Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah, but I so appreciated him jumping in on short notice. This took place at a university in Georgia.

The place was packed out. It was a great environment, a great night. And what we're going to do is this. We're going to take as much as we can of my opening statements, uninterrupted, for the rest of this segment. We're going to come back and give Rabbi Freitag the exact same amount of time from his opening statements. After that, the next segment, we will get into our back and forth interaction, Q&A, audience Q&A, whatever we can get in that is best for you to listen to. And then we're going to come back the final segment and give you our closing statements.

All that coming your way starting now. When we talk about Jesus, is Jesus the Jewish Messiah? It's important to know who we're talking about. And to do so, we have to unpeel a lot of the layers of church tradition. I have Jewish friends who grew up thinking that Jesus was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Christ.

So we want to dispel some rumors and misunderstandings. We're talking about Yeshua, who was called Christ because Christ is the Greek way of saying Messiah. His mother's name was Miriam. His followers were all Jews.

Men like Yohanan, names like that. And Yaakov, better known as James, and Yehuda, better known as Jude. You've heard of St. John the Baptist.

He was actually Rabbi Yohanan the Immerser. So we're talking about a fellow Jew, the most influential Jew who ever lived, and asking the question, is he indeed the Messiah of Israel? Now, according to the Scriptures, he came first for his own people.

And we must look at what the Scriptures say about that. But he also came for the nations. What's the role of the Messiah?

What's he going to do? According to Moses Maimonides, the Rambam, writing in the 12th century, he laid out some of the key things that the Messiah, son of David, would do. He would turn the hearts of the Jewish people towards the Torah. He would regather the exiles. He would rebuild the temple. He would fight the wars of the Lord. He would ultimately establish God's kingdom on the earth. Now, I agree that the Messiah will do those things. The question is, is that all that the Messiah will do? What I'm going to present to you tonight is that Maimonides saw the second half of the mission, but missed the first half of the mission. The only way a president can serve the second term of his presidency is if he first serves the first term.

The only way a team can play the second half of a game is if they first play the first half. I will show you that Jesus Yeshua must be our Messiah. He's the only one who can do the second part because He alone did the first part. What we need to do now is go on a journey through our Bible, through the Hebrew Scriptures, remembering that the Bible doesn't say the Messiah, son of David, will do this and do this. We have to look to see who the Messiah is, how He's described, and what He will do. So we start in Genesis, the 12th chapter, when God calls Abraham, He's going to bless him, bless his seed, and then through him, all the nations of the world will be blessed through Abraham's seed. And then, of course, God chooses Isaac, then Jacob, then out of the 12 tribes of Jacob, Judah. And in Genesis 49, 10, it tells us that the rulership will come through Judah, this is ultimately now through David, and then it says the obedience of the nations, the obedience of the peoples will be his. So the Messiah is not just about Israel, but through Israel will bring light to the nations of the world. And in fact, we see in Isaiah 2, in the kingdom of God on the earth, that the peoples of the world will come streaming to Jerusalem. And we see in Isaiah 11, speaking about this son of David, who will rule over an earth without war, that the nations will come to him.

So let's keep this focus on the nations as we go into the book of Isaiah. And we see in Isaiah 42, it speaks of the servant of the Lord. Now, traditional Judaism will also say, that servant is always Israel. Actually, there are Jewish traditions that recognize the servant in Isaiah 42, as referring not just to Israel, but as referring to the Messiah. In other words, there is a servant of the Lord within the nation, who fulfills the mission of the nation. And if you'll study it carefully, don't just go by what you've heard, do a careful study of Isaiah 40 to 55, you'll see when the servant is Israel as a nation, it's often joined together with Jacob, Jacob and Israel. And this servant is often deaf and unresponsive, and languishing in exile because of its sins.

The universal testimony of the Hebrew Scriptures, is that we were suffering in Babylonian exile because of our sins. Yet there's a servant within the nation who is righteous. And this servant, according to Isaiah 42, will be a light to the nations. Then when we get to Isaiah 49, the servant of the Lord speaks. Some Jewish tradition says, this is the prophet speaking, it's clearly an individual.

He's identified with Israel, but his mission is to Israel. And when you read Isaiah 49, this is what the servant says. Basically, I failed in my mission. I was called to regather the tribes of Israel, but I failed in my mission. And God says to him, no, no, no, this is a small thing for you. I have not only appointed you to restore Israel, but to be a light to the nations. So this servant of the Lord, who fulfills Israel's mission, whose role is to regather the people of Israel, it seems as if he fails in his mission to Israel.

But God says, no problem, you will be a light to the nations. And as we continue on, reading about this servant, we see contrary to the servant Israel, which is suffering for its own sins, Isaiah 50 says you were sold because of your sins and iniquity. The whole testimony of the prophets is Israel is in exile because of his sins. The whole Torah law of blessing and cursing tells us that if our people were obedient, we'd be established in the land.

If we were disobedient, we'd be scattered in exile. In contrast with the servant which suffers for its own sins, the Messiah, the servant within Israel, the one who seems to fail in his mission to Israel and becomes a light to the nations, he is not suffering for his sins, but for the sins of his own people. So when we get to Isaiah chapter 52, beginning in verse 13, what does it say according to the Targum, the ancient Jewish paraphrase, it recognizes that this speaks of the Messiah. And there's an ancient Jewish Midrash, a Midrash Tanchuma, so a homiletical interpretation that was widely regarded in the ancient Jewish world. And to this day, the Messiah will be high and lifted up and lofty exceedingly.

What does it mean? He will be higher than Abraham, he will be more exalted than Moses, and he will be loftier than the angels. That's verse 13. But 52, 14 says, first he's going to suffer terrible disfigurement. I mean, we're just painting a picture.

I'm just looking at what the testimony of Scripture says. So this one who will be highly exalted, this one who will be rejected by his people yet welcomed by the nations, before he's highly exalted, he will suffer terrible disfigurement and pain. And then as we get into Isaiah, the 53rd chapter, an amazing picture unfolds. That we, the Jewish people, thought he was suffering for his sins.

What does it say? Ochein cholayenu hunasam makho venus v'alam. Surely he's borne our griefs, carried our sars.

But what happens? V'anachnu chashavnu anagua mukeolu himu mneh. We thought he was being smitten and suffering for his own sins.

And then what's the revelation that the nation gets? V'hu micholam yipshayenu. He was pierced for our transgressions. Mitu kameh havanotenu, crushed for our iniquities. Musar shalom einu olamu. The punishment that brings us peace is upon him.

U'vachav ratu, near Palano. And at the cost of his wounds, there is healing for us. Again, who is the prophet speaking of? And as we go on in Isaiah 53, we see that this one servant will die. He'll be cut off from the land of the living. It speaks of his burial, his death.

He will die and yet he will live on. Who is the prophet describing? Now, we're often told that this passage speaks of the nation of Israel. Of course, it cannot be because Israel in exile was suffering for its own sins. Again, the universal testimony of the Hebrew Scriptures to this effect, which we can demonstrate very easily with quote after quote after quote, including right in the surrounding section in Isaiah as well.

But not only so. We are told that Isaiah 52, 13, here's what's going to happen, that the nations of the world will see Israel exalted at the end of the age and will be astonished. Because they'll think Israel was suffering for its sins. Now we realize Israel was suffering for our sins. No, that's not the revelation.

Ezekiel 39, this is it. And the nations shall know that the house of Israel were exiled only for their iniquity. This is what our prophets say.

Because they trespassed against me so that I hid my face from them. The nations are not going to suddenly realize that the prophets were all wrong. The words of the prophets will prove true. And when Israel was in exile and the nations of the world would overdo their punishment, what did the prophets say? There are numerous verses that attest to this. The prophets of Jeremiah 50, Jeremiah 30, that God would judge the nations where Israel was scattered. He would discipline Israel, but then he would destroy those nations. Israel's suffering in the nations didn't bring healing to ancient Babylon or healing to ancient Assyria.

No, it brought the end of those empires. God judged them. Whereas the Messiah's suffering brings healing to those that smote him.

Something radically and totally different. There's only one possible candidate. This one who seemed to fail in his mission to his own people, who was accepted as a light to the nations, who died for the sins of the nation where the nation thought he was dying for his own sins, and through his suffering has brought healing to multitudes, this one who died and yet lives on, it can only speak of one. What does it say in Psalm 118?

The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. That's the story of Yeshua, our Messiah. Evangelical Christians have become the greatest friends Israel has in the world because they read these words, they realize the Jewish roots of the faith, they realize their indebtedness to the Messiah of Israel and the people of Israel, and they have love.

And it exposes the horror of anti-Semitism in church history as a complete and utter aberration. So I ask you tonight, who is the scripture speaking of? Yes, we agree he'll come at the end and set up his kingdom here on the earth in a world of perfect peace and rule out of Jerusalem. But I can tell you there's only one possible candidate, the one who came before the second temple was destroyed, just as the prophet said. The one who came and was rejected and misunderstood by his own people and yet died for the sins of Israel and the nations and rose from the dead and has become a light to the nations of the world.

That's why hundreds of millions of people today worship and love the God of Israel because of the work of Jesus, the Messiah. Some years ago, a rabbi friend was talking to some students in my ministry school, and one of them said, Rabbi, you're supposed to be a light to the nations. He said, it wasn't a rabbi that came and brought the knowledge of God to my nation and turned us away from idolatry, it was a Christian missionary with this message of Jesus, remember, he comes for his own first, the Jewish people, he becomes a light to the nations, at the end of the age, he will return and establish his kingdom. I encourage every Jewish and Gentile person here, turn your heart to the one and only Messiah of Israel, Jesus.

Thank you so much. All right, there you have the best part we could play from my opening statements in the debate with Rabbi Freitag. You get to hear from the rabbi himself on the other side of the break. 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. Hey friends, welcome to our special debate week, we take you back to March 23rd, 2017. My debate with Rabbi Daniel Freitag, these are his opening comments, we give him as much time as we gave me in the last segment, playing as much as we can to give you the best understanding of our positions.

Here we go. I'm here to speak to the Jews. I'm here because somebody reached out to my people to try to tear them away from their father and I apologize to you who are righteous people, spiritual people, Bible believers for my strong talk tonight to explain to you why Jews were willing to give themselves up to be burnt by the stake, to not accept this idea and let me explain it very clearly. As Dr. Brown pointed out, we're not debating who the Messiah is, we're debating what a Messiah is because we all agree that at the end times the Messiah does a number of things. So he believes it's Jesus, I believe, I don't know, maybe it's someone on the Yankees, who knows, right?

You never know. The issue is what is a Messiah? If you come to me and say why isn't Jesus the Messiah, I'd say what's a Messiah? So a Messiah is a guy who takes a ball, throws it downfield through a receiver. Well, Jesus doesn't do that, that's a quarterback. What about a guy who deflates a ball and throws it downfield through a receiver?

That's Tom Brady, different guy. So what's a Messiah? In fact, that's not even the question. The real question we're asking is what does God want you to do to be righteous? Does he want you to say I accept the death of the Messiah as an atonement for my sins? The Christian view is, if I'm correct, that is what God wants you to do. It's the most important thing a person can do. It's the most important piece of information that God could give the people as it is the entire point of all of creation according to the Christian view. A Jew hears that and just shakes their head and walks away and they say I have a God, a father, he spoke to me personally, he told me how to be righteous.

You're telling me that the way to be righteous is to accept the death of someone in place of my righteous works, my commandments, my obedience to the commandments of God? I'm going to bore you now. I stopped after three pages. I'm going to read you some things that God says. First person, unambiguous, no interpretation needed, no connections between Zachariah and Haggai.

We're going to read. God talked to the Jews. Deuteronomy 5.

The Lord heard your voice when you spoke to me and the Lord said to me, I have heard the words of this people which they have spoken to you, they are right in all they have spoken. If only they had such a mind as this to fear me and to keep all my commandments always so that it might go well with them and their children forever. Deuteronomy 7. You shall therefore keep the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances which I command you this day to do them. It shall happen because you listen to these ordinances and keep them, do them, that the Lord your God will keep you with you the covenant, et cetera.

I'm going to skip. Leviticus 26. If you will not obey me and do not observe these commandments, if you spurn my statutes and abhor my ordinances so that you will not observe all my commandments, you break my covenant, I will bring terror on you. Deuteronomy 4. Acknowledge today, take heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath, there is no other, keep his statutes and his commandments which I am commanding you today for your own well-being. Deuteronomy 6.

I know we're just getting repetitive. I stopped after three pages, there's just too much of this. If you had to do a book report on Tanakh which were the only books published by the time Jesus was alive and you say, what are these books saying to the Jews? They repeatedly say one thing unambiguously, keep my commandments and that is the only path to righteousness.

Oh, keep reading. Deuteronomy 6. You must diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees. Deuteronomy 10. So now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you?

Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today. Deuteronomy 11. Deuteronomy 11.

It goes on. Deuteronomy 13. But I want to skip ahead because you might say to me, Rabbi, maybe that was in the past.

Maybe that's not in 2017. If only there was a place in the Bible, in the Torah, where God looks at you in 2017 and says, I want to talk to you, Jew, in 2017, not in the past, and I want to tell you clearly what I need you to do. Deuteronomy chapter 30. It will be when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse that I have presented before you. Now, if you look at the chapter prior, it's God saying, you keep my commandments, great, you don't need to keep my commandments, I'm going to punish you, I'm going to spread you throughout the nations.

It seems to have happened. That you will take it to your heart among all the nations where Hashem your God has dispersed you. So you want to know, you, God, in a Jew, 2017, the Jew who's dispersed among all the nations, to whom this has happened to. You're going to take it to heart. Yeah, God, I want to know.

I want to know, what do I do? You will return unto Hashem your God, listen to His voice according to everything that I command you today, you and your children with all your heart and all your soul. When Hashem your God will bring back your captivity, have mercy upon you, He will gather you in, if you're dispersed at the ends of the heaven, He will gather you in from there, He will do good to you. Verse 7, God will place all these implications of these curses upon your enemies and those who hate you who pursue you. You shall return and listen to the voice of God and perform all His commandments that I command you today. Wait a minute, wasn't that line supposed to say you shall accept the Messiah as your atonement? No, it says, Jew, 2017, what are you supposed to do to be righteous? Keep my commandments. God will make you abundant in all your handiwork, in the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your animals when you listen to the voice of God to observe His commandments and His decrees that are written in this book of the Torah.

But you'll say, but wait a minute, maybe it's not possible to do the law. Maybe I need some heavenly guidance. God is really smart. That's the next verse. Verse 11, for this commandment that I command you today, it is not hidden from you, it is not distant, it is not in heaven for you to say who can ascend to heaven for us and take it for us so that we can listen to it and perform it. Don't listen to someone who says you need someone to come down from heaven to help you do it.

You can do it. You want to know why Jews have never entertained this possibility? Because every single time we are told in the Bible, in the Torah, what we need to do to be righteous, in clear, first person, unambiguous terms, it is always the same thing. Keep my commandments. Now, if we were to believe that Jesus was the Messiah to the extent that He has changed that, changed that, that mandate, that really what I need to do, meet Daniel Freitag, what I need to do is to cut it out with the commandments. Stop keeping Shabbat. Stop keeping kosher. What I really need to do is figure out a way to accept somebody who died for my sins that all I need is for there to be one place in this book, one, just once, anywhere, first person statement to me from God that says, Dear Jew, I changed my mind.

No longer shall you keep the commandments for the Messiah will come and through His death you will no longer need to keep the commandments, once. I know you all have your laptops here. It's not here, anywhere, not once. Now, are there ambiguous things?

Sure. You want me to take you down to my basement where I have a big cork board and yarn and pins and clippings and a big old sign on top that says, Jet fuel can't melt steel beams and Haggai is here and Zechariah is here and Isaiah is here and if you just pay attention and ignore the fact that I'm mistranslating, taking things out of context, quoting you things that have nothing to do with the Messiah, I guess you can get convinced. I guess you shouldn't vaccinate your kids as well, right? But is there a single time that God has ever said clearly in this book, I changed my mind? Remember, we're debating the most important critical piece of information that God could give humans in all of creation and history.

Am I not right? To a Christian, the most important piece of information in all of existence is the idea that someone will come as the Jewish Messiah and alter the covenant so that it no longer is that the Jews have to obey the law and get righteous by keeping the law, but because someone is going to die, release them from the law so they no longer have to keep it. That's the most important piece of information and God never says it once before the coming of Jesus to the Jews. You wonder why Jews didn't buy it?

It's not there. Sure, you got your yarn and your clippings and you got your out of context mistranslated. I'm not making this up, we just don't have enough time to go through the various mistranslations and out of context things that were said here tonight and are continuously said. But that's my answer and that's every Jew's answer. So if you want to know why we don't accept it is because every single verse in our Torah tells us what we need to do. And if you're a Jew, because that's primarily who I'm here for, you need to pay attention. Your God is talking to you.

Deuteronomy 30, he's saying you want to get right? Who are you going to listen to, me or the guy with the yarn and the clippings? I'm unambiguous. This guy's going to pull out ambiguous things, things that you didn't realize he's mistranslated, things you didn't realize he's taken out of context.

This is the key here. Listen, the main issue in all of this is this. When you open up this book, are you buying or are you selling? Do I have an idea that I have to squeeze in here?

Hey man, if you believe that 9-11 was an inside job, you're going to spend hours on the internet finding all those little proofs. And if you want to believe that vaccines cause autism, you're going to quote this and quote that and you're going to make all that yarn connect. Are you buying or are you selling? Because if you're buying and you just want to read this book and ask it, what is it saying in fact? What do the Jews need to do?

The answer is obvious. If you're selling, on the other hand, and you've come in with a preconceived notion of what needs to happen, sure, you can get an extra large ball of yarn and weave that web with all the ambiguous statements. Some which don't talk about a messiah, some which don't talk about atonement, some which don't talk about... But then you're never going to find that place where it says, first person, hey, Jews, I chose my mind.

You don't need to keep your commandments in mind, you just need to accept someone who died for yourself. All right, got to jump in out of time. We'll tell you how you can watch the complete debate for yourself as soon as we come back right here on the Line of Fire. 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. And friends, to our special debate week, because it is thoroughly Jewish Thursday, this day we take you into a debate I have with Rabbi Daniel Freitag.

This is March 23rd, 2017. We've played extended excerpts of our opening comments during the live debate. This was followed by rebuttal back and forth.

Now we get you into some of the Q&A exchange, some of the back and forth exchange that we can play as much as we can in the time that we have. If you want to watch the full debate, just go to my website, askdrbrown.org, type in Freitag, F-E-R-I-T-A-G, or on Facebook or YouTube for today's show, you'll see a description with a link to the full debate. And if you're listening, watching as a Jewish person, hey, watch the whole debate, hear from both of us, and then make informed and wise decisions. All right, Rabbi, I appreciate that passionate presentation.

Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with the subject whatsoever, as you'll see momentarily. But we'll address every question you raise. Also, very importantly, I look forward to giving me one example in your rebuttal time, one example of one verse taken out of context or mistranslated, just one. All right, let me set the record straight on a number of things. And by the way, when I heard Mr. Norman couldn't be here, I said I'll give a lecture with open mic Q&A, but I really want to do a debate.

I want it to be fair so the other side can be presented. And then when I heard Rabbi Freitag agreed, I actually changed my notes on short notice so I could have less preparation time as well. But these are things we've lived with for decades, and it's not like we need to prepare to talk about them. Let me set the record straight about debates. The earliest debates took place because many, many, many Jews followed Jesus as Messiah, and many didn't. So there were debates in the synagogue as recorded in the New Testament writings.

So those are the earliest debates. But what bothers me is this, to be honest. So many of us who were Jewish believers in Yeshua, as soon as we came to faith, we were brought, you have to talk to the rabbi. We were intimidated. We didn't know much Hebrew.

We didn't have background. I have friends of mine who were kidnapped. I have another colleague who was beaten.

Okay? Horrific things happened, and I was always challenged to debate. We weren't allowed to bring other people with us that knew more. As I learned more, I said, can we discuss these things in public?

No. Isn't that odd? That the moment we come to faith, someone wants to take us. I mean, if you're a Jewish believer in Jesus, almost all of us have had the same thing. You need to go talk to the rabbi.

And then we say, can we bring someone who knows the Lord? No, no. Don't talk to you. Well, can we discuss the things in public?

No. Does anyone have anything to hide? Why not put everything on the table so we can get the facts clear instead of intimidating people in private? To me, that's bothersome. That's disingenuous. And also, I appreciate Rabbi Freitag's love for the Christian church. You have to understand, if what he's saying is true, throw out the Bible, throw out the New Testament, throw out your faith in Jesus. If the idea that Jesus is the Messiah is laughable, then unless the Gentiles get the dregs, the Jews know it's deception, the Jews know it's not true, the Jews know it's a myth, the Jews know that what's written in the New Testament isn't real. But it's fine for you goyim, for you Gentiles. That to me is not anti-Semitic.

That's anti-Gentile. And let's face the facts. If Jesus is not the Messiah of Israel, he's not the Savior of the world. Two billion plus Christians are believing nonsense. There is no other alternative.

Let's face the facts. Now, the question is what does God want us to do to be righteous? To believe in him and to obey him. Who said that changed? This whole polemic that Jesus tells you to stop keeping the commandments, the law was never given to the Gentiles. The law of Mount Sinai was never given to the whole Gentile world.

That was never required. The first followers of Jesus, Yeshua, lived as Jews. Yeshua said it. Matthew 5, 17, don't think I came to abolish the law of the prophets, I didn't come to abolish but to fulfill. So all of his first followers were Jews who kept the commandments. And this again strikes me as utterly disingenuous. There are many people here I'm sure who are part of Messianic Jewish congregations.

Why? Because as Jews they say we're still Jews. We still observe the Sabbath. We don't keep a lot of the rabbinic traditions because we see those as adding to the Torah and God was very explicit.

Don't add. When you light the Sabbath candles and say as God commanded us, he never commanded. Show me in the Torah where he commanded.

He never commanded that. So many of the practices are not kept or they're kept differently just as within different branches of Judaism or different expressions, but many Messianic Jews, that's how they live. They live as Jews. Many of them live in Israel. They're Sabbath observant. They serve the country.

They observe the calendar of Israel. And here's what bothers me. When Messianic Jews seek to live as Jews, the Orthodox community and the rest of the Jewish community persecutes them and says you're being deceptive. You have no business doing this. First we're told we're supposed to keep the commandment as Jews and then when Jews try to keep the commandment as followers of Jesus, we're called deceptive. How is that? It can't be both ways.

Let's go a little further though. If all there is is keeping the commandments, why did you need a sacrificial system? Why is there a need for Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement? And how is it working out for us? The temple's been destroyed almost 2,000 years.

How is it working out? If you, sir, want to be righteous enough and stand before God and say I stand before you by my righteousness by keeping the commandments, go ahead. I'm going to plead for mercy.

I'm going to do the very best I know how and I'm going to plead for mercy. The good news is that God gave us atonement. This is in the Torah. If you believe the law, then you've got to believe all of it. And the atonement system is central.

What happened to the blood sacrifices? That's why rabbinic Judaism developed this idea. And show me where I've quoted one rabbinic concept or one rabbinic text out of context or mistranslated.

Please. That's a strong claim. I stand behind every syllable of every text I quoted. And it's not just pieced together, this mystical thing. I give verse after verse after verse after verse that I show you contextually has to do with the Messiah. And we're told what does that have to do with the Messiah? But when we get back to embracing all of God's Torah, there must be atonement. And that's why rabbinic Judaism came up with the idea of the atoning power of the death of the righteous. Hence some of these quotes that said since the temple was destroyed, what God gave for atonement was the death of the righteous.

Now, here's something else to understand. That's a fundamental message of Yeshua and his first Jewish followers. Do teshuvah, repent.

You can find it. I mean, I could do a survey of the New Testament. I could start in Matthew 3 and then go to Matthew 4 and then go to Mark 1 and then go to Mark 6, then go to Luke 5 and to Luke 13 and to Luke 15. I could show you that Yeshua sends his disciples out in Luke 24 with the message that repentance and forgiveness of sins must begin in Jerusalem. That's the message of the whole Hebrew Bible. Repent, turn back to God in obedience, and he will forgive you through the atonement that he's made. I'm glad that Dr. Brown took me up on my challenge to find one, even one.

Didn't happen, but he tried. One verse, first person that speaks to the Jews and says, you no longer need to keep the commandments. Someone died and freed you from that once. The most important piece of information of the Christian idea not found once. But he did tell you that it's in Jeremiah, and I'll read that to you. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

That's pretty clear. Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declared the Lord. Wow, a new covenant, not like that covenant. Let me ask you, what is that covenant? What is it? What's that new covenant?

What is it? Is it that someone dies and you no longer have to keep the commandments? Has that covenant happened? I mean, the claim of the Christian is that covenant began with Jesus, right?

That's when it changed. Well, we have the advantage of having the next line, for this is the covenant, that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. Ready? Because we're about to find out what that new covenant is. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people, and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. Has this covenant happened?

Are we here tonight? Are we talking about knowing the Lord tonight? Has this covenant happened? The covenant that we're told, the new covenant, which, by the way, says nothing about a person dying and no longer being responsible for commandments, the one thing I asked for is not here.

In fact, if you want to know, what is this talking about? It's in Jeremiah, it's saying there's a new covenant and therefore this is the covenant. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts. Beautiful.

You know where else you're going to find that? Ezekiel chapter 11. I will give them one heart. I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the stony heart out of your flesh and will give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes, keep my ordinances and do them and they shall be my people and I shall be their God.

Wow, it's the exact opposite. How about Ezekiel 36? A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you shall keep my ordinances and do them. So we were just told that God did in fact say first person, this is the only one there is, something that there's a new covenant but then he says anticipating something for this is the covenant that I will make in those days. He's not waiting for you to figure out what the covenant is, he tells you right there in that verse and what does he say? Something's going to happen to the spirit of the people and no longer will one teach another about to know the Lord for they shall all know me from the greatest to the least.

You may live in Kennesaw and think everyone's religious, it ain't true. Has this happened yet? This new covenant, is this new covenant that someone will die and release you from the commandments?

No. Where is that statement? God says 50 times, I don't know maybe more. Jews, in the future, after the destruction of the temple, wait, rabbi, God's talking, well let's look at our scripture. We have the famous quote, the story when Solomon dedicates the temple and he has a long prayer in 1 Kings which I thought I had marked over here, 1 Kings chapter 8. And verse 33, it's a long prayer standing before the newly built temple. If your people are defeated by an enemy because they sinned against you and they return to you and praise your name and pray and supplicate to you in this temple, actually that's not the one I'm looking for, all right, 46. When they sin against you, for there is no man who never sins and you become angry with them and you deliver them to an enemy and their captors take them captive to an enemy land far away or nearby, I guess we don't have a temple if God took us out of the land and we're really far away, I don't know, Kennesaw, Georgia and they take it to heart in the land where they were taken captive and they repent and supplicate to you in the land of their captors saying we have sinned, we have been iniquitous, we have been wicked and they return to you with all their hearts and with all their soul in the land of their enemies who had captured them and to pray to you by the way of the land that you gave to their forefathers. And by the way of the city you've chosen through the temple I built for your name, may you hear their prayer and their supplication from heaven. He's saying you know God, please, when they lose this temple, they no longer have this system of sacrifice and they're far away, well you know what the next verse is, right?

Send them that guy who's gonna die, no, it doesn't say that, they will turn to you in prayer and repent and you will hear their prayer, no blood, no sacrifice, every time it's clear, every time there's a clear statement of what a Jew needs to do, it's the same thing every time and there is not one, not one statement. All right, that's it, out of time we come back with the closing statements from Rabbi Freitag and from yours truly. 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. Welcome back to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, taking you into a debate from 2017 with Rabbi Freitag as we discuss the subject as Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. Now you get to hear our summations, our closing statements and we come back, some final reflection on my end as well. All right, well you know I've done lots of debates and one thing I know is if someone says they're gonna disprove a point and they don't disprove any, it's because they can't disprove the point because the point stands. So my entire opening statement from beginning to end has not been rebutted, not a syllable, not a word. And we were told there's so, so many cut and paste put together, not one was picked out, not one was refuted, not one was shown to be mistranslated and if there was a time to do it, you do it in the rebuttal, right? All the rabbinic literature I quoted out of context but never had one.

And I keep getting accused of misquoting Jeremiah when what's happening is what I say about Jeremiah is being misquoted, being misrepresented each time. And remember, when God makes a covenant, there's always blood, blood covenant. Exodus 24, this is the blood of the covenant that's being made for the house of Israel. And when people in the Old Testament and the Hebrew scriptures were called righteous, they're called righteous because they obeyed the law which included atonement for sin. And that is what God has laid out and that's what the Messiah provides, the death of the righteous providing atonement. So go ahead, turn to God, observe the Torah, no one's saying not to. But observe all of it and recognize that God promised us a prophet and He raised him up in Yeshua in Deuteronomy 18. And He promised us lasting atonement in the rest of the scriptures and He's given to us.

Don't just do it on your own, do it with the Messiah's saving, transforming help. It's interesting, the prophets, they didn't rail against blood sacrifices any more than they railed against hypocritical prayer, hypocritical Sabbath observance. The very verses that were quoted from Isaiah 1, God said, I've had it with your Sabbaths.

Why? Because of hypocrisy. The issue was not blood sacrifices, the issue was hypocrisy. And that remains the issue and that's one of the things Yeshua goes after most strongly in the New Covenant writings, hypocrisy among our people. Again, I'm going to stand before God with heart and soul seeking to obey Him with every fiber of my being, day and night.

And I'm going to rely on the mercy of God, I'm going to rely on the atonement that's been provided once and for all. You know, there's a story a few years back at Harvard University that there were two dads there, proud dads, a Catholic dad and a Jewish dad and their sons were graduating. So the Catholic dad says to the, Jewish dad says to the Catholic dad, so what's your son doing when he gets out of school here and what's next? He said, he's very religious, very serious, he's going to seminary, he's going to become a priest. The Jewish dad said, a priest, that's it? The Catholic dad said, no, no, I mean my son is a very serious young man, maybe one day he could be a bishop. And the Jewish dad said, a bishop, that's it? The Catholic dad's a little surprised, he goes, well I don't know, maybe one day my son could be a cardinal. Jewish dad said, a cardinal, that's it? Catholic dad's taken aback, he says, I don't know, I don't know, maybe one day my son will be the pope. Jewish dad said, the pope, that's it? Catholic dad's completely exasperated, he throws up his hands, he says, what do you want him to be? God?

And the Jewish dad said, one of our boys made it. Okay, there's a whole theology here, we can debate all that, but the point is, the point is this, he's one of us, he is the one that accomplished the mission, he's the one that brought the knowledge of God to the rest of the world without requiring gentile Christians ever to observe the Torah. And what he frees us from, what he frees us from is the condemnation that we all have disobeyed.

Look, I read in the Ten Commandments also, don't covet, I read in the Scriptures that we're to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, all our strength, and our neighbors, ourself. If I'm going to say, I've done it perfectly, I think when I stand before the light of God's holiness, I'll be shocked, and he'll speak about my hypocrisy as well. Thank God the Messiah died to take our place as the sacrifices foreshadowed, as the prophets explicitly declared, and as I quoted to you, without rebuttal or response. And when we turn in repentance, what does Paul say in Acts 20? His message to Jew and Gentile, repentance towards God and faith in Yeshua the Messiah. How does he describe his message? In Acts 26, 20, he said, I preach that people should repent, turn to God, and prove their repentance by their deeds. The Messiah came to transform us, and as we know him and follow him and take this message to our Jewish people and to the ends of the world, then he will return. When his Jewish people welcome him, he will return, our one and only Messiah, Jesus Yeshua.

Welcome him into your hearts. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Brown, Rabbi Freitag, your closing statements.

Yeah. So it's interesting that I was told that I didn't respond because it's hard to tell, you know, if you're talking to someone who's got a big old web of ambiguous things put together and all you ask is for one clear statement to say it, because what you're trying to refute is a clear statement. I mean, sure, we can get into trenches and deal with each individual one, but we don't have time. I'd be glad to do it. I'm available for any Jew here who would like to speak about it.

I want to make myself available. Of course, Dr. Brown mentioned that the people who were declared righteous in the Bible is because they had atonement. As I mentioned earlier, that is not true. Ezekiel 14, 14 describes Daniel as righteous.

There was no sacrifice during his time. You know, there is a story about a kid, Jewish kids going to Jewish school. Things aren't going so well, so father's like, look, you're not going to do so well in Jewish school.

Send you to Catholic school. The kid comes back from school. He is scared straight. He ain't moving.

Right? I mean, dad's like, wow. He said, what happened in school? He said, the last Jew who came here didn't behave. Look what we did to him. Listen, we Jews are a stiff-necked people. When God came to us and he asked, you want my Torah? You know what we said?

Na'aseh v'nishma. We will do and we will hear. We are buying. We're not selling. We're here to listen to what you have to tell us. Talk and we will listen.

Tell us what you want. And God says over and over and over. Do it yourself. Take a little stroll tonight through the Bible. Count how many times God says directly to the Jews clearly, unambiguously, what I want you to do is keep my commandments. Count it. I ran out. I made three pages.

I got to stop. Count how many times. Then count how many times unambiguously and clearly it says that one day it will change. A person will die and you will no longer need the law or you're not able to keep the law. Look for it.

Look for the idea that something that God took that covenant and instead of making you actually do the law, you know, keep kosher, fringes on the corner of your garments, that kind of stuff. It's this idea that no, you don't actually do it. Someone died and you don't need to do it. Like that guy on the street who told you, you don't really want to buy the milk. You want to give me the money for me to buy the milk and I'll drink it and that's as if your dad is drinking it.

My dad told me, buy him some milk. He made it blunt and clear. Don't try to reinterpret what he said because he never once said anything else. There's a young woman in Atlanta who got involved in some of our programming and she told me that when we found out that her parents were believers in Jesus, I don't call him Yeshua because that's a, you know, Judaizing of Christianity, it's Jesus. And she wanted to know, why are my grandparents so mad? What happened over there? She didn't know.

We sat down, we talked about it. Were they fools? Were Jews fools? Were they nuts?

Isn't it obvious? Why did the Jews for a thousand years walk themselves down to an auto de fa in Spain to be burnt at the stake? According to the Christian, that person died a fool and went straight to hell forever. That's what the Christian believes. Were they fools? Did they miss something?

No. It's because we're stiff-necked and because God spoke to us and said, do my commandments. And we told him, we will do and we will hear. We're going to do whatever you tell us.

We're not selling, we're buying. And if someone comes along and tells us, don't listen to your father, don't pay attention to what he said clearly and unambiguously, I've got a whole big concoction that I made. Do we have time to go through it and show you how it's silly? No. I've got time. I've got 49 seconds on the screen.

There's plenty of places that you can go online to look through it. I'll speak to you. If you're Jewish and you'd like to speak about it, I'd be glad to take you through it. But nowhere, not once, does the Bible, the Tanakh, ever state the most fundamental idea that Christianity claims, that we no longer have to keep the law and that the covenant is about someone who died and that you don't keep the law, not once, ever. And that is why, to this day, we remain dedicated Jews. Thanks for joining us, friends, on Thoroughly Jewish Thursday on the Line of Fire.

I want to encourage you to think about this subject. If Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah, he's not the savior of the world, he didn't die for our sins, he didn't rise from the dead, he's not the son of God, he's not the savior because he's not Israel's Messiah, he didn't fulfill what's written in the New Testament, the Bible. New Testament then is not true. So it's all or nothing. If he is the Jewish Messiah, he is the savior of the world.

If he's not the Jewish Messiah, he's not the savior of anybody. So these are weighty issues. I encourage you to watch the entire debate. Again, if you're looking on Facebook or YouTube, you see in the description a link to the debate. Otherwise just go to my website, AskDrBrown.org, A-S-K-D-R-Brown.org.

Type in Freitag, that's F-R-E-I-T-A-G. This way you'll get right to that debate. Watch it in full. Study the scriptures. Ask God to reveal the truth to you about Jesus, Yeshua, the Messiah. It was Jesus who said, you keep studying, you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Also, be sure when you're on my website, AskDrBrown.org, A-S-K-D-R-Brown.org. Sign up for my weekly emails. You'll be blessed as you be.