The Must-See Jewish Outreach Website

The following program is recorded content created by Truth Network. Thank you for joining us on Thoroughly Jewish Thursday here on the Line of Fire. Remember to call with any questions you might have 866-348-7884, any Jewish-related question of any kind. If you're a Jewish person who doesn't believe that Yeshua Jesus is the Messiah, I'd love to hear from you.

You can tell me why you believe as you do. But again, if it's Jewish-related, Israel today, Jewish literature, rabbinic Judaism, background to the New Testament, Messianic prophecy, Hebrew issues, phone lines are open 866-348-7884. I am really excited about the new completely revamped, updated, and fully available real Messiah website. I want to explore what's there for you and give you some background.

I want this to be very interesting. We're not just going to be talking about a website for the next hour. But I want to tell you some really interesting background and open things up to you that I think will really bless you. But if you've not yet been to Real Messiah, it is realmessiah.com, realmessiah.com.

If you've not yet been there, check it out today. Share it with all your Christian friends, all your believing friends who love Messianic prophecy, who love to understand the Scriptures more deeply, who want to be able to answer Jewish friends and share more about Jesus. If you are a Jewish believer in Jesus, this is the place for you. This is the place where you'll get answers to the major objections, where you'll get very, very specific videos dealing with specific issues, where you'll get things that will really open up principles of interpreting the Scripture. And if you know a Jewish person that has questions, send them there.

Or even someone that's antagonistic, if at least they're willing to study, send them there, realmessiah.com. And before we get there, I want to open the Scriptures with you and talk about the place of dialogue and debate. Now, we know when Paul went to Corinth, a city that was so famous for people with rhetorical skills, great oratory skills and great philosophical arguments, even though Paul could engage, he may not have been like a powerful preacher based on what's written in 2 Corinthians, the 10th chapter, where some of the critical Corinthians said, yeah, well, you know, his letters are strong, but his bodily presence is weak and there's nothing special about his preaching. I think the Living Bible paraphrased that you've never heard a worse preacher. But he was obviously absolutely brilliant and could get into complex dialectics with anyone and knew the Scriptures inside and out and could quote Greek poets. But when he got to Corinth, he said, I determined that my message would be Jesus, the Messiah crucified.

That was it. And my speech and preaching were not in wise and persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and power so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. No one could say, well, Paul was amazing. Paul won the arguments, but it would be Jesus was exalted. This Yeshua died for our sins and rose from the dead.

At the same time, there was a time for dialogue and debate. And at the same time, even 1 Corinthians 2, a little bit later in the chapter, Paul says, oh, there's deeper wisdom. We keep going deeper. This is the foundation.

We keep opening things up to those who are deeper themselves. But let me take you through a few scriptures. I'm going to start just read these quickly. Beginning in Acts Chapter nine. This is after Saul. Paul has his life changing encounter with the Messiah on the road to Damascus.

So he's still in that city of Damascus. They've known him as a Jewish leader, rabidly persecuting Jews who believe in Jesus. And it says this, Acts nine, twenty two. But Paul kept excuse me, but Saul kept increasing in strength and confounding the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that this Jesus is the Messiah. So this is what he's doing, opening up the scriptures and saying, look, this Jesus, this one who died, rose from the dead. He is the Messiah. Then Acts 17, first three verses. Now, when they travel through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And according to Paul's custom, he went to them and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining, giving evidence that the Messiah had to suffer and rise again from the dead and saying, this Jesus who I'm proclaiming to you is the Messiah. Here's another. This is from Acts 17, 16 and 17.

Says this. Now, while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God framed Gentiles in the marketplace every day with those who happen to be present. So, again, reasoning. OK, let's look at it. Let's talk about it.

Let's think it through. We seek to do that here on the line of fire on a daily basis, as people will call in and engage in dialogue. And then Acts 18, four. And he was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath and trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. So he kept doing it because it was a right way to to witness, to minister, just like there's the relational evangelism.

Right. You spend time with people. You build relationship with them. You pray for them in secret. Little by little, you share the gospel with them. There's the street preaching evangelism. Right.

There's the power of Angeles. And with the sick, you're healed. And Jesus is exalted through that. And the message comes.

And there's the debate, dialogue, reasoning, back and forth. Let's take a look at Acts chapter 18. And for those watching, I'm going to put this up on the accordance, accordance Bible software. Wonderful software to use if you really want to dig into the scriptures, dig into the original languages, dig into background.

Very, very easy to use and continues to grow with resources. So Acts 18 versus twenty seven and twenty eight and middle of verse twenty seven. It says about Apollos and we may not be able to put it on the screen. That's OK.

It says this. He greatly helped those who had believed through grace. So there are other Jewish believers in particular in the city and current.

And he greatly helped those who had believed through grace, for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public himself as a Jew, demonstrating by the scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah. You say my translation say Jesus was the Christ. Yet really, English translations in any of these verses that I just read should say the Messiah, because that's that's what we're dealing with. That's what the focus is on. Jesus being the Messiah and the Greek Christus, the Christ would rightly translate into English here as the Messiah. So many English translations do render it like that.

You may not be used to seeing it that way. But notice this, that Apollos was not just reaching out to the Jews who did not believe as he did, but as he did debate and dialogue, it had a positive effect on the believers. I've often said that my first reason for doing debates with rabbis and putting together materials that ultimately came a five volume set on answering Jewish objections to Jesus, that my first reason for doing that was not outreach.

That was the very, very, very, very close second. The first reason was to strengthen fellow Jews who also believed, because I had seen for so many years as the objections came from the rabbis, as the objections came from counter missionaries, that many Jewish believers wouldn't have answers. It would hurt their faith. It would confuse them.

Some actually fell away. And I was confronted by the same objections from early on, from just being a few weeks old in the Lord, a few months old in the Lord. And in the years that followed, I'm getting confronted and challenged by rabbis who cared about me and who thought, here I am a zealous young Jewish man who loves to pray and loves to read the Bible, but I'm very much misled. And they want to get me back on the track and keep me in the traditions of our people that in their minds they've been keeping since Moses on Mount Sinai. So it was out of love that they reached out to me. But some used different tactics, some very kind.

We'd sit for hours and open the scriptures, some more trying to intimidate, some with more emotional appeal, some with more intellectual appeal. But we met. I met with rabbi after rabbi here.

I could barely even read Hebrew. And the objections were strong and the objections were cogent. I remember sitting with a law professor who also did apologetics.

Oh, this would have been maybe late 90s, early 2000s, something like that. And he was saying, well, what objections to the rabbis have there? It's so clear that Jesus is the Messiah who could argue against it.

So when I finished my introductory comments, he said, boy, I'm glad God called you to do this, not me. I mean, he was a law professor who did apologetics, but this whole realm was completely new and different for him. So so my point is that I've seen people picked off. I've seen people hurt. I've seen people discourage apologetics in general.

One of its major roles is to strengthen believers. We're seeing people fall away today and say, hey, I'm not getting answers. And in many cases, hey, we've had the answers for decades. Somehow we didn't get them to you or you didn't find us. But in many, many different areas, be it the authority of scripture, be it science in the Bible, be it philosophical issues, be it Jewish objections, Islamic objections, etc. So the answers have been there.

We provided them. So as Apollos debated and reasoned and dialogued with his fellow Jews about Jesus being the Messiah based on the Bible that they had, the Hebrew scriptures. OK, that was the common Bible that the New Testament had not yet been written. Some some letters here and there in the gospels maybe passed on an oral tradition and not yet written at this point. But in any case, using the same Bible that they agreed on was God's word. He was he was demonstrating that Jesus was the Messiah and it strengthened the Jews who believed it strengthened their faith. And that's the first thing that I've seen as I've done debates over the years. And even the first reason that we have the real Messiah website up, it is to strengthen you as a Jewish believer, to strengthen you as a gentile follower of Jesus that's been hit with questions and Jewish objections. And then immediately right after that immediate close second to reach Jewish people who do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

But here's the other thing I know. If you are strengthened your faith, you'll be a more bold witness. If you are strengthened in your faith, you'll be encouraged that you're on the side of truth. Have you ever gone through a season of doubt? Maybe you're in one right now. Maybe you're struggling right now.

Maybe that's the reality in which you find yourself. How zealous can you be? How much can you step out in confidence? How excited are you to go on that mission trip? How excited are you to get with those young adults and open the Bible with them? How excited are you to preach from the pulpit?

How excited are you to sit down with your children and homeschool them and go through the Bible lessons? If you're going through a season of real doubt, you're struggling. That's painful. It's almost like an athlete with an injury trying to compete at the normal level.

You can't do it. But when that confidence is restored, the boldness is restored, the zeal is restored, the passion is restored. So we do these debates, we put out these materials, first to strengthen you as believers, in particular Jewish believers, with our Jewish objections material. Strengthen the whole body, build up our witness, and then also reach out to the last sheep in the House of Israel. We come back. I'm going to take you in an exploration of you on the Messiah website. But behind the scenes, I think you're going to be blessed by what we shoot. We'll be right back.

Dr. Michael Brown. Friday is almost always hard to get through. We get to as many calls as we can.

Today we've got some open lines, so I want to encourage you, great time to call now, and we'll be able to get to your calls during the course of the show. So we're going to go over to Real Messiah in a moment. But as I'm looking at my accordance software, and I'm looking at Acts chapter 18, we often get asked, people want to know, okay, which software is good to use?

There's a lot of really good software out there, and each one has a different feature. Accordance in many ways is the best if you just want to dig into the biblical text and languages. Now, it keeps getting more and more resources, extra books, commentaries. Logos has a massive amount of those, and of course, you can dig into the biblical text with that. When I'm just doing scripture study and getting into the languages, accordance will often be my first choice. So as I'm looking there, you'll have different windows that you can open. And here in Acts 18, 27, and 28, so I'm looking on the English side, but when I just hover over one of the words in English, then that will immediately light up or highlight, I should say, the word in Greek, and then just clicking on that will take me to all the dictionary. So there are other softwares have that function as well, but accordance, you just keep making different workspaces, windows.

So I've got multiple different ones, depending on what I'm studying. Okay, over to Real Messiah. We've had this website up for many years, but unfortunately, it got stalled many years back. We were developing it, it got stalled, and then something happened with a YouTube channel that was storing the links, and somehow we got locked out of it. We cannot figure out how to get into it. No one else is using it, but we can't figure out how to get back into it, so we discovered that many of the links were not working. So you click on it, and the link wasn't working. So our team has completely redesigned the website, been working on it for months, and made everything incredibly accessible for you.

So again, I'm not spending all of our time on the radio just talking about a website, but I want to take you behind the scenes. So when you look at it, you see on the top left, find answers, ask a question, then on the right, study, and then prayer of redemption. So when you click on find answers, or you hover over it, you see that there are six different categories, and these represent the six categories of major Jewish objections. This is how I broke them down, and this will be helpful for you to understand when you say, well, why don't Jews believe in Jesus? So general, historical, theological, prophetic meaning, messianic prophecy, New Testament, and traditional. So when we break these down, again, these are the categories that I made. In my series, five-volume series answering Jewish objections to Jesus, I broke them down.

The first book, General, so when I say general, what do I mean? Well, Jews don't believe in Jesus. I'm Jewish.

I don't believe in Jesus. I was born a Jew. I'm going to die a Jew.

I'm not going to forsake my people or abandon our traditions. I'm a Jew. And many Jews feel this very, very deeply in their gut, especially the more religious there are.

But even a secular Jew feels like, hey, I'm a Jew, and we don't believe this or we don't believe that. Here, if you ask a Christian, why don't you believe in Mohammed? Well, most have never studied the Quran. If you ask a Christian, why don't you follow the teachings of Buddha?

Most have never studied them. Why? Well, we're Christians. Same way, that's how a Jew feels. I'm a Jew.

I don't I don't believe in Jesus. So our goal here, then, is to open up the truths that Jesus is Jewish. His name is Yeshua. Christ means Messiah. His mother's name was Miriam.

His father, Joseph, he had this. There are others being slaughtered during the Holocaust or for men in the murderous days of Pol Pot in Cambodia to say, we're going to rise up and we're going to pass laws to stop this, to stop the slaughter of the innocent. Men, along with women, should always be involved in passing laws to protect the innocent. And that's what it's about. It's not the woman's body.

It's the baby's body inside the woman. That's all we're seeking to protect. And a good man, a godly man, a compassionate man should do that very thing. Hey, thank you, sir, for the call. Eight, six, six, three, four, truth. Let's go to Renee in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Welcome to the line of fire. Are you there? Can you hear me? Are you talking straight in your phone? Yes, I am.

Can you hear me? We go through it. We recount a lot of it. We don't deny it. We don't downplay it. But then we show how this happened by these professing Christians breaking away from the teaching of the New Testament. And we show how Paul warned about this happening with Gentile believers becoming arrogant as if they had replaced Israel.

And we also show the stream of Christian love that's been there sacrificially through the centuries and even address the problem of the Holocaust. No, obviously. Obviously. With the horrific nature of the Holocaust and the level of suffering involved and the insanity of it.

I didn't think I would have some definitive answer, obviously. And those that were closest to it have the most right to speak about it. But I know that sometimes when you're talking to a Jewish person, they say, I can't even talk to you about God unless you can explain the Holocaust. Well, we can't just explain it. All right. This one rabbi friend said to me decades ago, I can't explain the Holocaust with God.

I can't explain the Holocaust without God. Right. But I saved that answer for last because I thought, what? What am I going to say? And I have no right to comment on this. And it's too sacred in terms of the deaths of so many people.

How can I say a word about it? But I knew I had to address it. So as I was writing the book, volume one dealing with general historical objections, I kept that one till the end. And then the light went on one night.

I remember writing until almost five in the morning. No, not to solve the problem of the Holocaust or to answer the issues of the suffering of the innocent, especially children and babies. But rather to say, look, our Messiah suffered innocently.

He was perfectly innocent and not like the rest of us adults. And he was rejected and put out by his own people. And if you're looking for the Messiah, rather than looking for him riding on a white stallion and destroying Israel's enemies, which will happen one day as he returns from heaven, be it on a literal horse or that's the image, the picture. He will come ultimately to destroy the wicked and set up his kingdom on the earth.

He will do that and he will fight for Jerusalem. But rather than looking for that image, what about an image we could relate to? What about an image of a suffering Messiah? What about this man hanging undeservedly on the cross and suffering the worst death that was known in the ancient world?

What about that Messiah that we can relate to in our suffering and pain? And I recount this brutal story that Elie Wiesel tells being in a concentration camp and a young boy, maybe 12 years old, but but thin. He, of course, then in the concentration camp, very little weight on him.

He is guilty of some infraction. So the Nazis are going to make an example of him. So they hang him from the gallows.

But he's so light, his neck doesn't break and he keeps twisting and kicking. And the Jews at the concentration camp have to watch this. They have to watch this. And they're watching in agony and wanting to avert their eyes. Why doesn't God just stop his suffering?

Just end it. And someone yells out, where is God? The response comes. There he is hanging from the gallows.

You say, what in the world does that mean? And how do we explain that? Well, I said, here, you want to see where God is.

He's hanging on the cross in the person of Yeshua, dying for your sins and mine. So that's what you find in general historical objections. Theological objections have to do with the nature of God, his triunity, the deity of the Messiah, the person of the Holy Spirit. And then what about blood atonement? Is that necessary?

Aren't there verses that say it's not? So these objections, you find these on the Web site, you know? Yeah, get the five volumes if you want to go deeper or get some of our series countering the counter missionaries.

But the objections and answers are there in short. And then messianic prophecy. Well, Jesus didn't fulfill the provable messianic prophecies. Or when you read them rightly, they don't refer to Jesus or the things he had to do.

He didn't do. And then New Testament objects as well. The New Testament misinterprets the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. It mistranslates. It misunderstands.

It takes things out of context. It's even anti-Semitic and and some of the anti-Semitic objections we deal with in historical. This is what we cover in New Testament objections. The genealogies are hopelessly contradictory.

Those kinds of things. And then traditional Jewish objections. We counter the idea that there is an unbroken chain of tradition going back to Moses on Mount Sinai. We counter that false notion, even though there are many beautiful traditions in Judaism, they do not go back in an authoritative way to Moses on Mount Sinai. And we counter the idea, hey, Jews have everything we need in Judaism.

We don't need your Messiah. So all that. A ton more. But all that is on the website. RealMessiah.com. And it's free.

You don't have to get through a paywall to use that material. Some in writing, some in video, some both. Okay. I'm going to talk to you about seven secrets of the real Messiah when we come back. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us on Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. If you have a Jewish related question, give me a call 866-348-7884. If you've not yet been to the completely revamped, tons of new material on it, the completely revamped and new Real Messiah website, check it out. If you enjoy this broadcast, especially Thursday, you want to visit.

And you want to stay there for quite a while. RealMessiah.com. If you click on the top of the screen on study, you'll see debates, videos. So this is some of the classic debates I've done over many years with different rabbis. There to watch for free, debates with Rabbi Shulam Boteach, other debates.

My debate with Rabbi Tovia Singer on Sid Roth's broadcast many, many years ago. He refused to sign an agreement to let it be aired on TV, on CBN. That was what we all agreed to before, before it happened. So 700 Club, they came in with a camera crew in a little studio and they videoed the whole thing. We signed, Sid and I signed an agreement to let it be used on their TV show.

Tovia knew it was being recorded. And he said, I'll sign after. And then after the show, he said, no.

You wonder why, huh? Well, listen to the debate for yourself. He said, no, no, no. Tovia Singer, Rabbi Singer has told us, exposed what really happened, that you and Sid edited out parts of the debate. No, false. God is our witness.

False. Tovia, Sid, and I edited the debate together to get rid of some extraneous phone calls and things that didn't seem germane. Why? Because in those days you had cassette tapes and we wanted to get it on one tape and the longest cassette tape you had was, was 90 minutes. For a commercial you had 60 minutes, 90 minutes.

You could have even shorter, right? So we together listened to it and cut out different parts and agreed on it. So that's, that's the story.

That's the reality. We had done a previous debate at the home of a Russian messianic Jew that we were both brought in, not even knowing it was going to be a debate first time we met. And that was recorded. But Tovia asked me not to release those tapes. So that was recorded as people had tape recorders on the table. It was informally done, informally recorded.

All right. He asked me not to release those. He did not sign the agreement for it to air on TV, the subsequent debate.

What does that tell you? And then sadly has since cut me off because we've offered to debate him many, many times. He's called different places or someone working for him has called places and said, hey, Tovia Singer would like to debate this Christian professor or this Christian leader, et cetera. Or, you know, someone who'd be willing to debate. They said, yeah, Dr. Michael Brown said, no, we won't do the debate. So there you have it. In any case, you can listen to the debate we did on Sid Roth.

There's also a paper I wrote called Unequal Weights and Measures. You'll find it really interesting. I find this with with hyper critics in the church. I find this with some counter missionary rabbis is they use unequal standards. In other words, they will condemn you for doing something they justify in their own circles.

What do I mean? They will say, look at this contradiction in the New Testament here. And you can't reconcile.

I'd say, OK, well, how do you reconcile what appear to be worse contradictions in the Old Testament? Oh, well, we do this. What can we do the same?

Let's just apply equal weights and equal measures when the literature is comparable. Let's do that. Let's be fair.

Let's be honest. So that's a real eye opener. And then secrets of the Messiah. This condenses decades of study about how God can be infinite and yet come in our midst, how he can be transcendent and untouchable. And yet right here with us, touchable, real, even just based on the Hebrew Bible, how that happens and then it gives the background for the incarnation of Jesus. Aspects of God's oneness, how God can be one. And yet we speak of his complex unity or try unity.

So those are there. This is the shorter form of what you get in the back of the real kosher Jesus. And then keys to messianic prophecy. They may seem really basic, but there, too, that's the result of a couple of decades of reflection on messianic prophecy and how it develops. It'll when you dig in, what you'll see is that the coming of Messiah was always in the mind of God, but it was only revealed in stages to the people of Israel. And much of the way it was revealed was to to bring about the line of David and the kingship of David and Solomon with all their exaltation. And they even had many empires ruling over some surrounding nations and collecting taxes from them and the hope of an even greater David. Maybe the next guy will be that one who will be that king that we've been looking for, that righteous king.

And when he comes, there'll be peace on the earth. And now the northern kingdom of Israel is exiled and largely destroyed. And the southern kingdom of Judah goes into exile. They come back and they're under Babylonian rule, then under Persian rule, then under Greek rule, then under Roman rule. And now there's no king on the line on the throne of David for centuries. So you go back and read those promises.

Well, where is he? And this is how the people begin to long for the coming of this greater king, the Messiah. We open this up and we open up explanations as to why he had to suffer and die. So as you scroll down, you'll find secrets of the Messiah, keys to messianic prophecy, answering the rabbis. This is where we are taking some of the most popular Internet videos by counter missionaries, starting with the videos of Rabbi Tovia Singer and demolishing the errors and exposing the falsehood one after another, after another, after another, responding to any strong objections he has, exposing the fallacies. So it is a real, real eye opener. And the series is in progress. How many do we have out so far, guys?

Is it 10 or 11? Something like this takes a lot of time to prepare them, put them together and then make them really user friendly. And Tovia's got scores of videos out and in the years since our debate many, many years ago. What he's done now is not just go after Jews who believe in Jesus, but gentile Christians. So I hear from Christians on a regular basis who say their faith was getting challenged because they never got exposed to these kinds of objections. And as we're providing solid answers there, they're getting strengthened in their faith again. So check that out.

The full length debates. We even have our TV series, Think It Through. We were on the Inspiration Network for two years. And this was a lot of time and effort and energy. We had about a 10 person crew. We would broadcast or film live in different parts of America.

And then everything would be edited, put together. So we might go, I did one in search of the fountain of life. Right. And talking about people looking for ways to live forever, etc. And how Yeshua says, if you believe in me, you'll never die. And I'm the bread of life and I'm the water of life and I'm the resurrection in the life and I'm the way, the truth in the life.

Those wonderful words that Jesus spoke. So we were in California for that shoot and we where do you think we did it? Yeah, Beverly Hills, you know, next to all these Botox places and plastic surgery places, you know, the hoity toity areas and shops so that that's where we recorded that, you know, in different locations.

But we have to get permits. One person would be running ahead, make sure they get the truck park, get all the equipment out. And then, you know, start early in the morning, get makeup on because of the camera lights on you and everything.

So you look normal as you look washed out. And then it was like 22 minutes of show. And then you had other segments that were in there. We would we would do we'd send a crew out ahead and they would ask questions of people on the street, stop people, get their excuse, get their opinions.

We would merge those in as well. And then I talked to someone spontaneously on the street. We go back and forth. We we pull clips from there. But the rest of it was scripted. So I would have to write out the material and it could be a 20 second spot, a 45 second spot, a minute and a half spot. And if you've ever memorized like memorizing a minute and a half set of lines is you'd have to work at that. But each day would be a new script. In other words, we did one show per day. And we had people with us that the cameraman that with the steady cam and we recorded these.

I'm thinking back probably 10 years ago, longer. You'll see it was a bit heavier at that time. But the steady cam guy. So he's got the camera on and he's shooting as he's moving.

Right. He had been the cameraman on Dancing with the Stars and the Amazing Race. He was a thin guy, but really strong because it's a big contraption to hold. And then you can't be moving.

So you're walking backwards and shooting it. He was amazing. We had other really good guys. But I remember you were the amazing race and dance with the stars. You must be one of the top guys in the industry.

Another guy, the audio guy, also did audio for ESPN. And so we'd have to go, OK, 20 seconds. All right, redo it.

OK, sunlight, bad angle here. And I have to nail the line perfectly. And it's it's got to be the right cadence at all. OK. Now, I remember was like a minute forty five long. And and each time in my mind, like this point goes to this point, goes to this point. Because remember, as soon as I'm done with that, now we've got to do another another set. Right.

OK. This was a minute. This was 30 seconds.

And I remember we were in the streets in New York one time. And it was towards the end of the day. And we would do them based on location. So the script would be done out of order and then put in order afterwards. It's like, OK, we need the sun here and and we do the whole thing. And I'm thinking, oh, I'm tired and nailed it perfectly the first time.

No glitches, no one cutting ahead of us because you're on the streets, you know, people moving around. None of that happening. Nailed it. And they said, oh, sorry, Dr. Brown. You got to redo it because something happened with our equipment or the light changed here. You know, I think from the start, the whole the whole segment segment again. But think it through. We did two seasons. Inspiration Network produced them.

We never would have had funds at that point to do that. Great production values and really edifying shows. And I would pray because I'm used to debating rabbis and dealing with objections.

Lord, how do we how do we reach just a more secular Jew or a Jew into New Age or a Jew, a Jewish Buddhist or people just that are not that religious. And and God would drop these ideas in my head, just come out of nowhere, write them down. OK, we got all five shows for the week and then write the script and go out with the team. And it was amazing.

But they're all there for free on the Web site. Thank you. So check it out. Share it with your friends. Real Messiah.

Dot com. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866 three for truth.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. That he was singing tells us that it is thoroughly Jewish Thursday, 866-348-7884. I have talked to many Jewish believers in the Messiah and they came to faith through the messianic prophecies. Someone opened the scriptures. They saw the prophecies. They said this this must be Jesus. And they became believers.

My friend and colleague, Dr. Michael Adelnik, longtime professor at Moody Bible Institute and one of our top messianic Jewish scholars. Michael had an interesting experience. He has parents who were Holocaust survivors. His mother became interested in Jesus. He'd known as a boy going to Hebrew school, getting spat on as a Christ killer.

You know, what in the world does that mean? So now his mother is believing or thinking about your shoe or wash. How could this be? So he's an older teenager. He's going to open the scriptures and he's going to prove that he's not the Messiah. And as he got into the Hebrew scriptures and as he read the arguments for Jesus being the Messiah, he himself became a believer. So I've heard that with many and it was certainly a New Testament method. And and my friend, Mitch Glaser, Dr. Mitch Glaser, who leads chosen people ministries in New York with branches around the world.

Many years ago, he invested thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. This is where what the ministry does is Jewish outreach. This is where where funds go to take out a full page ad in The New York Times, just with the text of Isaiah 53 from a traditional Jewish translation or from a modern Jewish translation. I believe it was either way. It was a Jewish translation, not a Christian translation. There it was. And it may have just had a question.

Who is this or their website or contact information? But in other words, it didn't have all the explanations of why this is Jesus. Just that text. Read it and let it speak to you. Now, counter missionaries would say, yeah, you have to read it in context. OK, reading in context.

I'm all for reading in context. Read the chapter before. Read the chapter after.

Read several chapters before. Start in Isaiah 40 and read right through to Isaiah 66. Go ahead and read it in context.

Start in Isaiah 1. Read it in context. Greater the context, the greater points to the Messiah. I'm convinced of that.

So in any case, just think of that. You're that confident in the power of the word and have got to open up Jewish hearts and minds. And of course, Mitch subsequently wrote a book in Isaiah 53 for those that wanted to go deeper. And that may have been in conjunction with with that ad campaign. He also was able to get a really good deal to put up these big signs, these billboards coming in and out of the Lincoln Tunnel. So depending on which way you're going from New York to New Jersey, leaving New York, going into New Jersey or vice versa. So you'd see it one way or the other as you drove in and giant billboard. He got really good deal in doing this.

It's always been very frugal. And it was just a quote from Isaiah 53. Who is this man? Just is that just that or who is this?

Who does this describe? And again, the concept is that God's word bears fruit, that these messianic prophecies are tools that God has given to point us to the Messiah. So, you know, what a great, great witnessing strategy for sure. So many Jews have come to faith in this way.

The scriptures have opened up and now they know he's the Messiah and they put their trust in him and ask for forgiveness of sins and new life in him. For me, it was totally different. For me, you could have shown it to me in the Bible, but that would not necessarily have changed my viewpoint.

Why? Because I loved sin. Because I had no interest in God, didn't believe in Jesus. Jesus, that was just Christianity, church, Catholicism.

I mean, that's all synonymous to me then. I thought basically Catholic, Gentile, Christian, they're all synonyms. I remember asking my friends when we were in Hebrew school before getting bar mitzvah. I remember asking them a joke because I'd heard some inkling, some rumor that Jesus was Jewish, like what? And that'd be like saying Muhammad was Jewish or Buddha was Jewish or what?

It seems so foreign. I said, no, I heard it. And some of the guys said, yeah, I heard it too. And one said, no, I wasn't Jewish. So I came up with my big joke. So when did he become Catholic after he rose from the dead? Because he was Catholic as the head of the Catholic Church. I mean, that's what I knew.

Right. So I didn't really care if you had some prophecy in the Bible. I wanted to sin. I wanted to get high. I wanted to live the way I was living.

I want to play drums in a rock band. And trust me, there was no Christian rock I knew about right then. So it's just I wanted to be a sinful rock rebel. And it was the Holy Spirit making me aware of my sin. The Holy Spirit making me to understand that Jesus died for my sins before I knew the prophecies that came after. And it was it was then that God saved me and forgave me and set me free from drugs.

And sometime after that, as my friends were reading the Bible more, because the bass player and guitar player band got saved before I did a few months before I did. So they're reading the Bible more. And one of them said, yeah, I hear there's like this ancient prophecy somewhere in the Old Testament. And it describes Jesus suffering and all that. And I thought, well, really, if you said Isaiah 53, it wouldn't have had any meaning. I would have had to look up, OK, where is Isaiah in the Bible? And what's the fifty third chapter? Just didn't even know it had my King James Bible. It didn't have sections marked off, you know, study sections or tabs or anything. So I was just find my way around it. Right.

And no study notes, nothing. So I'm sitting at the dinner table one day with my father, who was the senior law assistant in the New York Supreme Court. So he was a brilliant man and a great legal debater and could just lovingly pick apart my arguments. Or I said, well, you know, they said, who's they?

If it's just little things, challenges challenge me. And we're sitting at the dinner table one night and he was objecting to my belief for having a discussion. And I don't know if he said, you know, where is it in the Bible or if he's the Messiah, where is it? And I said to him, I said, well, I hear there's there's this prophecy, this ancient prophecy about suffering Messiah. And he goes, well, where is it? Find it. Now, you got to understand, this was a needle in a haystack for me.

Right. I did not have familiarity with the scriptures at this early point. It's before I had read the Bible cover to cover in those next two years. It was before I was memorizing 20 verses a day for six months. It was it was it was before that. So all I know is, OK, if it's old, it's probably in the back.

The bigger back part than the front part. So I get my Bible and I come downstairs and happen to open to it. Literally happened to open to it. And when my father read it, he literally got red in the face and angry. It's totally unlike him. He was a very even keel guy, took on all these pressure cases in the court. And he would he would tell me we'd be watching the news. He said, yeah, this is how I ruled on this one. What do you mean how you ruled on? Well, he was so trusted, been in the court so many years. He was the senior law assistant that the judges all had their their their law assistants, their clerks, et cetera. So he would he would write out the ruling, OK, this is how it goes.

And this is the you know, the result of it. And most of the time the judges would read it, just sign off because they liked it so much. And he could write in their particular style. The most famous one of the most famous decisions that court made. And that day he wrote it.

The judges signed his name to it. Yeah. So anyway, he was sharp and he's reading this literally got red in the face, red in the face.

And. Yeah, ironically. That in Jewish homes, Jesus Christ is profanity. You know, if you're angry, you'll say his name in many Jewish homes. That's why many Jewish believers, it takes them a while before they can say Jesus Christ. And it doesn't sound bad in their ears. And, you know, just saying Yeshua the Messiah, not only does it sound more accurate and more Jewish and more biblical, but it doesn't have that negative sting of Jesus Christ.

But that's what he said. And I thought, how ironic that it is. It is Jesus Christ. It is Jesus the Messiah. But that's how the words just jumped off the page.

And of course, we had lots of wonderful dialog in the days and years after then until he left us suddenly of a heart attack in 1977. But the the point is this. The scriptures are there either before you come to faith that you understand the messianic prophecies or after you come to faith as a Jewish believer. You'll understand the messianic prophecies and they play a key role.

They play a key role. They deeply strengthen my faith over the years and they will be attacked. They will be attacked by the rabbis. They will be attacked by counter missionaries. They will be attacked by atheists or mockers or skeptics.

They will be attacked by people who sincerely believe the Bible is wrong and the New Testament misinterprets the old, etc. Fear not. We have the answers. The prophecies are solid when rightly understood.

They are unshakable. So check out the resources at RealMessiah.com. Check them out. You will be richly blessed.

Share them with your friends. And yes, we have more resources you can purchase to listen to, to read, to study. But everything you'll find there, there's not a paywall to get through.

And it's there through your generosity, through your through your donations and our desire to make this freely available to everyone. Tell your Jewish friends about it. Explore it together.

You've got apologetics groups. Watch some of the debates. Watch the videos.

Read the material. RealMessiah.com. There for you. Calling you by name. Back with you tomorrow. All your questions coming our way. We've got questions. We've got answers.