The Demographic Challenge Facing Israel Today

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There is a fascinating situation developing in Israel right now. We're going to take a close look at it, and it's thoroughly yours Thursday. It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on The Line of Fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Welcome, friends, to The Line of Fire broadcast, Michael Brown. Delighted to be with you on this thoroughly Jewish Thursday. That means any Jewish related question of any kind, Hebrew language, modern Israel, ancient Israel, Hebrew Bible, Messianic prophecy, Jewish background to the New Testament. Any Jewish related question of any kind, you get to call in 866-34-TRUTH, 866-34-8, 7884. That is the number to call. I'll be going to your call shortly. Want to talk to you about the interesting demographic development within modern Israel today.

Get to that momentarily. First, a shout out. If you're listening, Adam and Randy, my one and only nephew. Yeah, no nieces, one and only nephew, Adam and his wonderful wife, Randy. We just had the joy of seeing them, and I haven't seen them in years and hopefully you're in the car listening now.

So shout out to Hope Brings a Smile to Your Face. I did a debate years ago in Florida, finished debating a rabbi. And after the debate, the couple came up to introduce themselves and it was Randy's parents. So my nephew's wife's parents.

So great to meet them along the way as well. OK, did that. I'm reading some comments on our YouTube channel. I don't get to see everything on social media that's posted. Obviously, people responding and commenting on our various platforms. But I was looking at some comments to the call with the Hebrew Israelite caller last last week with his completely made up Hebrew pronunciations and misuse of scripture, et cetera, and people overwhelmingly thanking us for the video, many African-Americans thanking us for the video. And so in the record straight, et cetera, every so often I'm noticing these Hebrew Israelite comments.

I'm thinking, where do people get that from? And just to let you know, you're free to come on our platforms and differ. But if you lie about people, like if you post a blatant lie about me, that that gets deleted, if you lie about other people, that gets deleted.

If you attack people, that gets deleted. So just to let you know, feel free to differ. But if you're going to post blatant falsehoods, we don't want to be a platform for that. We don't want our platform, which by God's grace reaches lots of people every single week, we don't want that to be something that is used by others to spread falsehoods. So you can differ.

You can have your different positions and they can be bogus positions. That's OK. You're welcome to it. But just don't lie about people. Just don't attack people.

Profanity automatically gets screened. So just a heads up letting you know. OK, so we've talked about the the situation in Israel in terms of birth rates, that secular Israeli women have a couple of babies per woman over the course of a lifetime, maybe a little bit under that. But in order for a society to sustain itself, you've heard us reference this. On average, a woman needs to have two point one children. So if you average it out, if over a society over the course of decades that women over the course of their lives are having two babies, someone having three, four, others, none of this one, as long as it balances out to about two point one, then you are able to sustain the society.

Why? Because as you get older, you need the younger generation to sustain. So let's just say you don't have enough people paying Social Security, putting in Social Security as the next generation ages. Where is that money coming from or who's caring for the elderly parents?

And it goes on like this. So this is a situation that's becoming a crisis because around the world, many nations have had very, very low birth rates. When I first heard this, I thought, ah, it's just Internet myth until I looked into it for years now in Japan. They have been making more adult diapers, selling more adult diapers than children's diapers. You'll have a home for the elderly in Japan and each person may have like a little robot dog to keep them company or something.

In other words, there's not enough physical support and not enough family support, family structure. I mean, it's happening around the world. It's happening in Russia. It's happening in Spain. It's happening in Italy. It's happening in country after country. China's disastrous one child policy.

Now they're paying for that. They're in a difficult situation now because of that. In any case, what keeps us above the level in America is actually immigration and immigrants having more kids.

Aside from that, we are under the healthy, sustaining level. So within Israel, secular Israeli women would be probably slightly under the sustaining level. But Orthodox Jewish women would be having babies about six per woman and ultra Orthodox even higher could be eight.

It could be 10 per woman. Now, also in the Arab society in Israel. So we're not talking about so called territories, Judea, Samaria or Gaza Strip. We're just talking about what everyone recognizes as Israel today. So there was about seven and a half million Jews and maybe about two and a half million Arabs.

The vast majority of those may be slightly off my fingers, but just rough numbers. The vast majority of the Arabs are Muslim and they also have a higher birth rate. Now, the Muslim Arab population is not as heavily involved in the workforce as the Jewish Israeli population. The ultra Orthodox population is largely subsidized by the government. It's subsidized by the government so that the men can study and learn all day.

So some have jobs, but it's much less than would be normal. Also, they don't fight in the military with the rarest of exceptions. In their mind, the best thing they could do to sustain Israel to keep Israel healthy is to be praying and studying all day. That's their mindset.

That's the hard work. Plus, the Israeli army would be a very secular environment and therefore spiritually unhealthy for them. So what you have is an ever increasing demographic, which is more and more right leaning, hence the current government in Israel.

Obviously, the Arab part of the government and part of the population would be more left leaning in terms of policies and things like that. But the numbers overall skewing in terms of Israelis are skewing more and more to the right because it's more religious families having more kids. OK, so there's some who even estimate that by around 2050 that there could be as many as as 20 million people living in Israel, which is overcrowded.

There is some say the only species of animal you have there is humans. And it would be congested. Now, if you go into ultra orthodox areas, it's already very congested. And of course, if you go into the Gaza Strip, it's already very congested. There's much of Israel.

It's still not developed, but it's not all as livable. All right. So these are some of the issues. But here's where it gets really interesting.

We've talked about this before, but I want to press it a little bit more. The ultra orthodox, the fastest growing part of the population by childbirth. Right. So how can they be subsidized by the secular population if the secular population is getting smaller and the ultra orthodox population is getting larger? I talked to one Orthodox Jewish rabbi years ago, an economist and one who's spoken in many church groups over the years. And he was telling me that the modern ultra orthodox mentality of you study full time and don't work is contrary to what Judaism has taught over the centuries.

So that some of the most famous rabbis of all time were physicians or wine sellers or different things like that, that they had a job as well as studying, as well as being rabbis by trade, et cetera, or by by calling. So the situation now long term is unsustainable. So what will happen?

Where will that go? Okay, that's problem one. Problem two is if you have a diminishing population that is more secular, less religious, if you have the very, very religious as the fastest growing sector of the population, not willing to serve in the military, what happens to Israel's security? This is another major question that will come up.

Obviously, the immediate one, the issue of the rightness or wrongness of these men not serving in the military. That's hotly debated. And that's why many Israelis have a certain amount of resentment for the ultra orthodox. Of course, the ultra orthodox can look at them and say, look at how worldly you are. Look at how secular you are. You're violating the Torah and we were a Torah people.

And what are you doing? So the the acrimony can go both ways. And then the question of why should I be subsidizing you so you can study all day, how is that right? So you've got acrimony on that level. But another question to throw out there is the support that Israel has on an international level, the relationships that Israel has developed that are fruitful, the peace treaties that have been signed, the economic agreements that have been signed with different nations, why Israel is so strongly supported by America and by other allies as the one true democracy in the Middle East and the place where Christians, Muslims, Jews can worship together freely. What happens if Israel continues to go further and further to the right? What happens if Israel continues to get more and more religious?

If there is more and more religious leadership, will they build those same bridges? Will they be as tolerant? Will will they be as open to free worship of Christians and Muslims?

How about messianic Jews? How will they be treated? What will America's relationship with Israel be like when the vast majority of American Jews are left leaning and more secular? And now it will be that at a certain point that a substantial minority and then perhaps even the majority will be religious and very religious. What's that going to look like? How is that going to play out?

And with all the population and growth issues, what will the viewpoint of the very religious be in terms of the Palestinians and in terms of a harmonious relationship and and what will be best in terms of living side by side so that all can flourish? Just questions to put on the table. You say, right, Dr. Brown, you're taking all these minutes asking questions. What are the answers? I don't know.

I don't know what the answers are. I don't know where this will go and how it will unfold. It's certainly something to look at. And it's certainly something to pray for, for God to open hearts and minds to reveal his mercy and goodness so that more and more Israelis, especially among the religious, will come to know Yeshua as the Messiah. But along with that, that God would give wisdom to the leader of Israel, that God would give wisdom to allies of Israel, that God would give wisdom to Palestinian leaders, that there would be desires to work harmoniously, saying, hey, we really have no choice but to find ways to work more harmoniously. But where are things going? I don't know. It is a potentially very explosive situation.

I've only touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of all the ramifications of Israel going further to the right and what that will mean. OK, eight, six, six, three, four, eight, seven, eight, eight, four. That is the number to call.

We'll be right back. Get your calls right after the break, after this important word from our co-sponsor, Trivita. Chronic inflammation is the greatest health threat to humanity. Infections, injuries, toxins, poor diet and chronic stress can attack your immune system and lead to chronic inflammation.

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We start with Greg in Hickory, North Carolina. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Thanks, Dr. Brown.

I appreciate you taking my call. Sure. I was always raised to believe that man was created tripartite, you know, body, soul, and spirit, but I read an abstract from Dr. Grudem who says that most theologians believe that it's just two parts, and that scripturally, soul, and spirit are basically identical.

Where do you stand on this, and what do you think of that? Right. So and since it's Thirdly Jewish Thursday, I'll bring in Jewish aspects to it. First Thessalonians 523 is a classic proof text for tripartite human beings. Right.

Where Paul prays for the Thessalonians to be fully sanctified spirit, soul, and body. Then Hebrews 4-12 tells us how the Word of God divides even soul and spirit. So it's clear on the one hand that the bipartite division, the basic body and soul or inner person, outer person, that's a generalization. Right. Peter can write in 1 Peter 3 about the inner man or the inner woman, the inner person inside of us.

Right. So there's the unseen part of us and the seeing part of us. In that sense, soul slash spirit overlap. But I believe that if we were doing kind of a spiritual dissection, that we can make a distinction between soul and spirit. Now, the Hebrew word nefesh is roughly equivalent to the Greek word sukay.

But there are nuances and differences. The same way ruach, which is, so the first one would be soul. The second one ruach can be breath, wind, spirit. In Hebrew, Greek nouma, very similar meanings. But the breakdown in anthropology, the breakdown scripturally in terms of whether how we define soul, how we define spirit, how we define flesh, is a little bit different, the Hebrew mentality versus the Greek mentality. And then into English, for example, if we say, Oh, my heart is broken. Or you wouldn't say that in Hebrew. You talk about my kidneys are grieved.

You could talk about that more. So parts of the body can have different meaning. But my understanding is that there is a difference between soul and spirit. That in our ultimate essence, we are spiritual beings with souls living in bodies, and that our inner being is spirit and soul. So when we die, it's our spirit soul that leave this body and go to be with the Lord. And we're rating a resurrected body. So I actually do believe that at least to better understand how we work as human beings and as spiritual beings, that it's useful to understand spirit, soul, body.

Others would just say that's Paul's way of praying comprehensively, just like all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength. You could add all the different words of qualification. But I personally do believe there are distinctions. I am more tripartite in that regard. On the other hand, the Hebrew mentality is very much holistic. In other words, you are not trying to separate and dissect as much as look at a human being in a whole way. And that, of course, is ultimately how we live and function.

It is me, a full human being talking to you. If I sin, it's me sinning. Whether it's with my mind or with my fist, it's me sinning. So it's not like, well, my body sinned, I didn't sin. And of course, you wouldn't be saying that either. You have other words like Hebrew nishama, which is related to soul.

And in rabbinic Judaism, you can have different breakdowns of what these even mean, but ultimately there's kind of a holistic way of looking at the human being. Thank you, sir, for the call. Let us go over to Lucas in Ontario, Canada. Welcome to the line of fire. Hi, Dr. Brown. How are you? Doing very well.

Thank you. I have some questions about the Hebrew language and its relatedness to other languages, and if it's going on for too long, just cut me off because I have a whole thing typed out here and you can answer it anytime you want to. So many Christians and Jews believe that the Hebrew language was the Adamic language, the original tongue of mankind, and even the speech of the angels out of God. However, from a secular scholarly perspective, Hebrew is believed to be a member of the Semitic language family, a descendant of a reconstructed language known as the Semitic and sibling to other languages in that same place, such as Aramaic, Arabic, Akkadian, Eblite, the Kothri, the Ethiopian languages of Ge'ez and Amharic, among others. Far from being the original language of mankind, with respect to reconstructed Kodo Semitic, Hebrew is believed to be quite innovative and divergent, while Arabic is considered to be the most linguistically conservative. Do you have any thoughts on the believed relationship by linguists of the Hebrew language to other languages identified as Semitic? Do you reject the notion of a Semitic family or Kodo Semitic language? What do you think the biblical perspective or the perspective of a Bible believing Christian should be with regard to a reconstructed Kodo Semitic language or to the discipline of linguistic paleontology of Kodo Semitic people? How does this impact or interplay with the biblical narrative relating to Noah and his son, the patriarch, Moses and Aaron, the conquest of Canaan, et cetera? All right, a wonderful question and actually very much in my wheelhouse with with my own background.

So what I want to do is try to break that down so that others understand this. So the simple question was Hebrew the original language of the human race? Was Hebrew the language that was spoken in the Garden of Eden? Is Hebrew the language spoken by angels? Let's let's start by saying there is there is zero evidence in the Bible that Hebrew is the language spoken in heaven or is the tongue of angels or anything like that?

In fact, we do not have any data about what is spoken in heaven unless someone would want to argue that the tongues that believers speak by the power of the Spirit, that that's those are the tongues of angels. But there's no evidence whatsoever scripturally that would point to Hebrew or Greek, for that matter, or any particular language being the language spoken in heaven. We simply do not know as to why it would be argued that Hebrew was the original language.

It is not a historical argument that you could make. In other words, the structure of the Hebrew language, the development of the Hebrew language does point to a much later time frame. And the way it developed, et cetera, would say it is not the earliest language that was on the planet. However, you have plays on words in the Genesis account. Adam is called Adam because he's taken from the Adamah, the earth. And Eve, Hava, is called Hava because she's the mother of all living things from that root, Hava, Hawa. So you say, well, how can you have those plays on words unless it is the original language?

So I'm going to comment on that on the other side of the break. 866-348-7884. What in the world is proto-Semitic?

What's the Semitic language family? I'm going to do my best to make this understandable so that we don't lose anybody, but that I fully answer Lucas's question. So we'll be right back. Ezekiel, you're on after that.

And we may have a line or two open if you want to try to get through now. 866-348-7884 on this thoroughly Jewish Thursday. Hey, friends, this is Dr. Michael Brown, I want to invite you to join our support team, make an investment of one dollar a day that will absolutely last forever. You know, the Lord has given us a holy mandate to blanket America with the line of fire broadcast. And on a regular basis, we hear from folks writing in, Dr. Brown, I used to be a practicing homosexual. I listened to I heard grace and truth together.

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Me, His grace and His face shine upon you. Welcome, welcome to the line of fire on this thoroughly Jewish Thursday. You've got a Jewish related question.

Great time to call eight six six three four truth. So the question of what was the original language spoken on the earth? We simply don't know that. We know that there are various languages that go back very far in history. We can trace the Egyptian language very far back in history. We can trace Sumerian very far back in history. We can trace Chinese very far back in history. The question is, is how far back to the most ancient Semitic languages go attested in languages like Akkadian or Eblaite?

So how far back do those go? And what is clear is we have different language families. You say, yeah, well, Genesis 11, you have Tower of Babel and the scattering of the nations and the changing of the languages. So it's natural that you have different language families. So, for example, if you look at Italian and Spanish and Portuguese, they are very closely related, right, as opposed to, say, comparing Arabic to Chinese.

Those are very, very different. So we know we have different language families. We know we have the Semitic language family, which you have East Semitic and then Northwest Semitic and then South, Southwest Semitic, Southeast.

You have different branches of it. And Hebrew in Isaiah 19 is called Sfot Kanaan, the language of Canaan. In 2 Kings, it's referred to as Judean, separate from Aramaic, which a lot of the people would speak from nation to nation. So, no, no, talk to us in Judean because we understand that, which would be Hebrew. So as best as we understand it, Hebrew was a Canaanite dialect that then got specially developed among the people of Israel, that if you look in Genesis 31, when Jacob makes a covenant with Laban, that when they make the covenant, that Laban calls it Yegarsa Hadutha, which is Aramaic for heap of witness, and Jacob calls it Gal-aid, heap of witness in Hebrew. So originally Abraham would have spoken like the Aramaic comes into the land of Canaan. This is the dialect there spoken there. So as best as we can tell, Hebrew is not the earliest of the Semitic languages. Arabic is not the earliest either, for sure.

It just preserves certain pronunciations better than were preserved in some of the other languages. So how do you explain, then, the place on words in Genesis 2, etc.? They are just that place on words based on the Hebrew. In other words, it is simply like I can say a woman is called a woman because she's taken out of man. Well, the woman and man are separate words in English. But in Hebrew, it's the Isha taken out of the Isha.

So I can say the woman taken out of the man to convey the same point. It doesn't have to be that Hebrew was originally spoken for those place on words to work. So we don't know what the original language was. We know it certainly was in Hebrew as preserved in the Hebrew Bible, because that's already shifted morphologically in different ways.

I'll give you an example. In Arabic, if you greet someone, you say salaam alaikum, right? In Hebrew, shalom alaikum. So how is it that we have shalom in Hebrew? By the way, the Hebrew Israelites completely butchered with shalom.

You might as well say shazam. It's complete mythology. So how is it that we have shalom in Hebrew, but salaam in Arabic and shalom in Aramaic?

How do you have that? Well, we can explain all that. We can trace it back. There's something called the Canaanite shift, where a long a vowel in an accented syllable became o. So salaam or shalom became shalom. And then we know that the original proto Semitic sha in Hebrew became sa in Arabic. So we can trace all these things.

We know how these things developed and worked. But proto Semitic, in other words, what was the original Semitic language? That's reconstructed. That is theoretical. There is no such language as proto Semitic. That is simply saying as best as we can trace it back to an original language that we don't have, it would be that. Could it be that proto Semitic was spoken in the garden, which would explain some of these plays on words? Could be, certainly.

That's a possibility. But is it Hebrew as we have it in the Hebrew Bible as it developed more fully? No, those reflect later developments of the language.

How does it affect us overall in terms of our understanding of the Bible, in terms of our walks with God? It doesn't. Not in the least.

Not in the least. But they're interesting questions. They say, thank you for asking, and I hope it wasn't too boring for others. I hope I didn't lose everybody in the process.

But look, my doctorates in Near Eastern languages and literatures, we had whole courses looking at the development of languages and things like that. So in any case, hopefully, hopefully that wasn't too extended for you. OK, we go over to Ezekiel in South Carolina. Welcome to the line of fire. Hello, Dr. Brown. How are you doing? Been a long time listening.

Thank you. So my question is, it's kind of complicated. But my question is, because I debate with some Jews and stuff, it's like, so you have the tree of life, right? And you have like in the Kabbalah and you have the Sefirot and then you have like the Ein Sof, which is the unknowable God. And what would it be like, what do you think about using the tree of life as an actual argument for the incarnation that is like the memoir that comes from the Ein Sof comes down to Ma'ku, to the tree of life, to the earth and the memory, he's the one who perfectly displays all the attributes of God. He is the image of the invisible God, exact imprint of him. And once he did his work, he ascends back to where he came from, up the tree of life, to Keter, back to the Ein Sof, where the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. Is that like a weak argument or something?

Well, no. So let's try to unpack this, Ezekiel. And I appreciate your desire to interact with my Jewish people. Let's understand first that all we're trying to do is build conceptual bridges. In other words, to give someone a way to hold on to something, give someone a way to conceptualize something that seems far into them by bringing it a bit more in their world. So obviously, Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, Zohar, is very different than what we would believe as followers of Yeshua, obviously.

But, but can it be that there are conceptual bridges? So, for example, the Memra, Aramaic for word, I've used that for years because of the way it's used in the Aramaic translations called the Targums. So I've used that as a bridge for many years to say, okay, let's read John 1, starting in 1, 1, in the beginning was the Logos, the Logos was with God, the Logos was God, the Logos became flesh, right? Tabernacled among us and revealed God to us, et cetera.

So what does that mean? So let's use Memra instead as we read it and understand that Memra is often the agency through which God speaks and acts in the Targums, in the Jewish paraphrases and translations to say, hey, that's what we're saying. Yeshua is the Memra of God.

I found that is a bridge that has helped people take that step to understand the Incarnation or the Spherot that you mentioned. So these are 10 emanations from God. So the Ein Sof, the infinite God, is untouchable. He is infinite.

He is transcendent. How then does he relate to human beings? So Gnostic teachers who were heretical teachers in both Judaism and Christianity almost 2,000 years ago, they said that the, for example, the Christian Gnostics, the God of the New Testament was not the God of the Old Testament. That the Father of Jesus was not the God of the Old Testament. That the God of the Old Testament was a lesser deity called the Demiurge. And that the Demiurge was an emanation from the perfect Father. So he was a lesser being. And it was the Demiurge who created the universe and human beings because otherwise God and his transcendence couldn't touch matter and those things.

So it's, of course, a very wrong view. But the Sfirot are basically emanations from God. Some would say it's a Gnostic kind of concept and the lowest being Shekhinah, which is the presence of God on the earth or the one you could say that touches us the most, the presence of God on the earth. I was sitting having lunch with a rabbi.

Oh, I'm thinking here 40 years ago. And he said to me, Mike, he said, it's like Jesus was a walking Shekhinah. I said, yes, exactly. So the presence of God, but incarnate, the presence of God on earth. So Ezekiel, as long as you recognize that the Sfirot are not God's triunity, that the nature of the Sfirot, there's that interaction between them, the way there is in the triune God, et cetera. As long as you understand that it's not exact and it's another religious system, you can absolutely use these kinds of things as conceptual bridges by which people say, oh, so you're not talking about three different gods. You don't believe in three gods.

No, no, no, not at all. And you know, when you say Jesus is God, you don't mean that God in heaven ceased being God in heaven and was only walking on the earth and no, no, don't believe that at all. He remained God in heaven while walking on the earth. So just as the Father remains God in heaven, all the Shekhinah is among the people. One last thing, Ezekiel. I get into this a lot in volume two of answering Jewish objections to Jesus and then a little bit shorter form in my book, The Real Kosher Jesus.

So both of those I unpack this about Sfirot, Memra, Shekhinah. So volume two of answering Jewish objections to Jesus and then Real Kosher Jesus. I have a couple of chapters that deal with this.

You'll find that very, very helpful, hopefully. And here's something fascinating, though. There are ultra-orthodox Jews who pray a prayer before they perform a particular commandment and they will pray for the reunification of the Holy One, blessed be He, HaKadosh Bruchu. The reunification of the Holy One blessed be He said, what are you talking about, the reunification? Well, they believe that the Shekhinah, the manifest presence of God on the earth, has gone into exile with the children of Israel. And until Israel is fully restored on the earth, there is some sense of divine disunity and therefore the praying for the reunification of God, others take strong issue with that. But it's very similar in concept to First Corinthians 15, where the son submits to the father at the time of the restoration of all things.

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Call me a fanatic. There is still time to call in if you'd like. 866-348-7884.

That is the number to call. OK, I want to talk to you for a moment about using Jewish sources with integrity. All right, this is a big subject, this is something that I've been very careful with for decades.

And I think it's important that we understand sensitivities here and then what is right, what is fair, what is good. How do you feel when some cult, some group starts quoting from the New Testament to prove their viewpoint and they pull something out of context or they try to recruit Paul to hold to their views and say, Paul, completely rejected your views, what are you talking about? Paul is your worst enemy. Why in the world are you quoting Paul?

Well, you treat it, take it here and this and that. OK, you feel like that's abusive, right? When I debate it, Muslim, Shakir Hussain about whether Mohammed is prophesied in the Bible. Obviously, it's something that he believes as a Muslim. But in my view, it's a self-defeating argument.

Of course, he's very sincere about it and works hard at what he does. But in my view, it's completely self-defeating. And you're misappropriating, you're misusing our Bible when you're trying to say, well, Mohammed is the comforter, he is the the paraclete in John 14 through 16, or he's the prophet like Moses in Deuteronomy 18. We say that's that's bogus. You're misusing the text for your purposes.

That's our deep conviction, right? So rabbis would say to us, why in the world are you quoting the Talmud? Why are you quoting Kabbalah? Why are you quoting rabbinic commentators like Rashi and Ibn Ezra and Radaq and Abravanel and Malvim and others and Mitzvot David and Mitzvot Sion and Rolbag and people you don't even believe. Why are you quoting them? They don't have any authority in your life.

I get it. That's a fair question. I believe there's much beauty in rabbinic tradition. I believe there's much beauty in many of the stories that have been preserved. I've heard what's called Midrash passed down through the centuries. I believe that the rabbinic commentators often had great insights.

Obviously, the new Hebrew very, very well and were intimately familiar with the text. So I have respect for the good. But no, I'm not a Talmudic Jew. I don't submit to rabbinic authority. As you see, I'm not wearing a kippah, a yarmulke.

I'm not wearing other things that would identify me as a traditional Jew, nor am I trying to give any impression that I that I am a traditional Jew. So well, then why use the literature? And some would say, well, that's what the New Testament does with the Hebrew Bible. The New Testament misappropriates and it's this later Gentile Christian movement trying to appropriate this for itself. No, it's an early first century Jewish movement that also goes to the Gentiles. But these are Jews taking their own scriptures and Yeshua, the Messiah, who came first and foremost for the lost sheep of the House of Israel while on the earth and then his whole death and his whole missions for the entire world equally. So no, no, we're talking about Jews using their own scriptures in the first century, living in Israel, actively involved in the community, etc. But what about what I'm doing today? What about what I and other apologists would do in terms of using these sources? Why do we do it?

And what's the right way to do it? Again, I do not submit to rabbinic authority with all respect for learned rabbis and friends who are rabbis. I do not submit to rabbinic authority. I believe that rabbinic authority goes beyond what scripture would have given Jewish leaders to do. As sincere as the rabbis are and as much as they've developed beautiful traditions that God has used to help keep our people together through the centuries. If I was a traditional Jew, I'd be a traditional Jew. I wouldn't be believing in Jesus, Yeshua, because I know that the rabbis were wrong in rejecting him or the early Jewish leaders were wrong in rejecting him, have been wrong in rejecting him through the centuries, of course, I'm not a traditional Jew. So why use the sources? OK, number one, I will cite the Jewish interpreters, especially the classical commentaries, to say I didn't make this interpretation up.

I didn't, I didn't just come up with this. In other words, if I say Isaiah 42 one and the following verses are about the Messiah, you say, no, no, no. That's just about the nation of Israel.

OK, well, look at the Targum. Look at the ancient Jewish translation slash paraphrase. It understands it to be with reference to the Messiah. Or look at the commentary for Adak, Rabbi David Kimchi, who's what from the 11th, 12th century into the early 13th century into the 13th.

So look at him. One of the one of the big three classical commentaries, he understands it to be the Messiah as well. Well, he doesn't understand it to be Jesus. Yeah, understood. Correct. He was not a Messianic Jew.

We get that. But but in point of fact, he believed the passage was referring to the Messiah, not to Israel there. Or, for example, Zechariah six, the branch, Yehoshua, the high priest, now stands as a type and symbol of the man of the branch. Zechariah three, then Zechariah six. You say, yeah, but Rashi, other interpreters, they say it's just about Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel is the branch who builds the temple.

Right. And there are other scholars, Jewish and Christian, who agree with that. But there are others who say, no, it's Messianic because the branch is a Messianic title, Semach is a Messianic title in Jeremiah 23, clearly, and in Zechariah as well. And for support, I point to the Targum, which once again, and much more ancient than Rashi, Eben Ezra, etc. The Targum understands it to be Messiah.

So that's one reason I will do this. I will do it to say, hey, this is not just some later Christian interpretation. This is something reflected in historic Jewish literature. In some case, we go to the Dead Sea Scrolls and say, hey, the Dead Sea Scrolls, I know that did not become mainstream Judaism because the sect of Quran did not prevail as the Pharisees did and were better built for life without temple and without their monastic communities. So Pharisee Judaism became rabbinical Judaism, which became the predominant Judaism on the planet over the centuries. But hey, there are parallels in the Dead Sea Scrolls that we find very interesting. This is not some later Christian Gentile concept. This was a first century Jewish concept. So that's one reason that will point to these sources. Another reason is that often they're parallel concepts.

They're ideological concepts that are parallel. So one of the most powerful teachers that I discovered as I began to study because I did not grow up in a traditional Jewish home, I was fairly nominal, Bar Mitzvah at 13, learned a little Hebrew, went to synagogue on the High Holy Days and an occasional Shabbat. Really, you know, for my Bar Mitzvah, that was the occasional Shabbat or Friends Bar Mitzvah or something like that. Otherwise, I was nominal. I was nominal, didn't keep kosher, etc. So it was only after I started studying that I learned many things that a traditional Jew would have known much earlier in life. And one of the discoveries was, wow, wow, the atoning power of the death of the righteous.

Mitzvah tachat tzaddikim t'cha per. Wow, that was a revelation to me. I didn't know that Judaism taught that. That sometimes a child, why does a child die? Why do those little children die? Why did this Jewish leader die? He seemed to be the most godly man in the community. He was only 35 years old. Why did he die suddenly or why was he killed? And the answer is that the death of the righteous atones for the sins of the generation, that sometimes an innocent children is taken or a godly Jew is taken, an innocent child or godly Jew.

Why? Because their righteousness can kind of cover the debt of sin of the rest of the generation. And if that generation will repent, then their life can be preserved. When I discovered that, it's like, wow, what an insight into the gospel message and how parallel it is to our understanding of the Messiah and his perfect righteousness takes the sins of the whole world through all time on his own shoulders and dies that now we can live and be forgiven and both are joined with repentance, of course.

So there are parallel concepts. They're even interesting questions to ask, like the rabbinic teaching that the first temple was destroyed because of idolatry and immorality and injustice. And it remained destroyed roughly 70 years before it was rebuilt. But the second temple, which did not have the same idolatry or immorality or justice, that was destroyed. And now centuries and centuries and centuries later, it's still destroyed. And the rabbis wrestled it and said, what was the reason?

And the answer is sinat chinam, baseless hatred. And maybe there's truth to that. But it was the baseless hatred against Yeshua, the Messiah, that was that great.

That was that of that much generational impact and future legacy impact. So I look at that and I say, isn't that an interesting thought? Or as we just talked about a moment ago, the complex unity of God, God's triunity. Can we help a traditional Jew understand that by talking about God in heaven and in the Shekhinah, the manifest presence of God on the earth? Can we talk about it by talking about God working through, communicating through, touching us through his memoir, his word? Can we use that as a parallel to point to the realities of the incarnation?

So that's how I use the literature, not in a hypocritical way, and not to try to steal something that belongs to someone else. To say as a Jewish person, looking at the historic literature that my people have studied, read through, prayed over over the centuries, perhaps there are some bridges of understanding. Perhaps we have what missionary Don Richardson called redemptive analogies, spiritual truths pointing to the gospel, pointing to the one true God that are implanted within other cultures, within even other religions. If that's true, how much more are they planted within Judaism itself? If you've never visited our Jewish outreach website, real Messiah dot com, real Messiah dot com, check it out, explore it. You will be enriched and blessed real Messiah dot com. May God hasten the salvation of our Jewish people. Another program powered by the Truth Network.