Answering Hebrew Roots and Black Hebrew Israelites

This is Apologetics Live! To answer your questions, your host of Striving for Eternity, Andrew Rappaport!

Pandemic Banter and Introducing Torahism

Alright, we are live, Apologetics Live, coming to you because of the strange virus that we have, this pandemic that is going around. We're going to do this over the internet. You're thinking of a virus called stupidity.

That's right, that is the name of the virus that I'm convinced everybody is. I just don't get this whole virus thing. Sorry folks, all these schools are canceling because people are going nuts. I don't get it.

Yep, sorry, not that. Just looking at the percentages. This is the importance of getting facts. But that aside, tonight we're going to be talking with the author of this book. Oh wait, doesn't that look so much better?

It looks great covering up my face with this. Alright, so, Torahism. Are Christians required to keep the law of Moses? And so we're going to have R .L. Sahlberg. If you listen to my Rappaport podcast, you are aware of this.

We've spent an hour going through this book, getting into details. But if you have friends, wait, let me just stop, stop. You do have friends that are in Hebrew Roots Movement. All of you. I know you do.

Because basically everyone seems to. But you've got to make sure they're watching this, listening to this. And more importantly, make sure they're going out to the website Torahismbook .com. They're going to need to go there for a very simple reason.

They need this book. Robert, welcome to Apologetics Live. Hey Andrew. You never know what's going to happen with me. At some point I'm going to be able to explain in the future what's been going on this week.

What it was like. It's been a very busy week. But that aside, I'm looking in the wrong group. No wonder why I can't find it.

So your bookshelves are empty because of the coronavirus? Is that what I'm understanding?

That's right. My bookshelves are empty because of the stupidity virus. It's a pandemic of stupidity everywhere. I did like, there was a, someone had grabbed some quotes. I forget the senator from New York now.

I'm just remembering everything tonight. But they had his tweet from early May where the guy was criticizing Trump for not doing, for closing the borders to China and how we needed to replace him because he was so radical in what he was doing.

And then a month later, the same guy is saying that this president's not doing enough. And we need to remove him. Basically, we need to remove him. Robert, let's get into, for folks who didn't listen to the podcast, let's get into discussing a little bit of your background.

And then, you know, obviously you must be from like a Jewish background that you want to write about Jewish laws. And that's got to be it, right?

Well, no, not technically, but I am one to three percent East, East European Jewish, according to Ancestry .com. But yeah, I wasn't raised Jewish at all.

Yeah. Ancestry .com thinks everybody seems to be Jewish, but they're, I think they're, if I'm very quickly, they're owned by Mormons, which for Mormons, they have to be one of the 10 tribes. So like everybody in the world is, you know, is there.

No, actually, I mean, I first found out about tourism, which is a term that I had coined myself, but just by engaging with some old friends that used to be Christians. And one fall they decided to start posting anti-Christmas memes, which is pretty weird.

At first I thought, well, that's strange. These guys are old friends of ours, you know, from Minnesota where I'm from. I live in Nashville now. So I hadn't talked to them in quite a while. Was surprised to find that they were posting that.

And I thought, OK, I'll jump in. Why is Christmas a pagan holiday? And that just kind of was like Alice in the Wonderland. I stumbled into this whole other belief system that at the time I wasn't aware that it even existed.

It's kind of this weird halfway land between Judaism and Christianity. And so that's it. This whole thing started out as just me talking with friends, turned into several blog articles on my blog, which is at rlsoulberg .com.

And then over the course of a couple of months, I started having people say, well, this might make an interesting book because they aren't the people that I was speaking with, my old friends. They aren't specifically Hebrew roots, but a lot of overlap.

It's the same concept of Christians needing or they're saying Christians needing to return to Torah, needing to practice all the Old Testament laws, even though they at the same time, they believe that Jesus came and that he was the Messiah.

So it's this kind of weird, weird, weird world that I stumbled into. That was really the start of this book.

And this is the thing, you know, you and I were talking before we went live. And so I want to tell the audience the story that I was telling you before we went live, but of why I need to start traveling with copies of your book.

Now, first off, anybody, I said this on my podcast, on the Wrap Report podcast, I'll say it here. You need to go and buy several copies of this book, Torahism. I'll cover my face so that suddenly I look better.

But you can go to Torahismbook .com and pick up a copy. Why? I actually say you need to pick up multiple copies because one for you and one to give away because you will need to. I think after our podcast, someone said he bought six for members in his church.

That's good. Go do that. Because the reality is there is someone you're going to know who is at least, if they're not engaged in this, there's so many people that are just playing with it. And we're going to talk about why that is a little bit dangerous maybe in a bit.

But this weekend, this last weekend, I was out in Huntington Beach, California. And I was, you know, basically I was going out with a friend of mine who does open air evangelism there every week. And he's out there and he's, basically what happens is every week he is up there.

And when he is preaching the gospel, there is a guy with a shofar. Now, for folks that don't know what a shofar is, just look over my shoulder. Oh, wait, no, wait. Sorry. It's packed. I don't have it.

Okay. But it looks, it's a horn, like a ram's horn. And, you know, it basically, if you know how to blow it right, can get a very, very loud sound. And this guy tries to drown out Ray every time he's preaching every week.

And so, I figured I'd go over and have a chat with him. And he had this whole chart up there. Basically, what he was trying to do was to show everybody that we need to be realizing that we need to get back to our Jewish roots.

It was interesting, you know, Robert, because he said, everyone's Jewish. I was like, okay. That's an interesting one. But he couldn't tell me which tribe he was from. And then he proceeded to tell me that I can't know which tribe I'm from.

But he had this thing up there. It had the prophecy of Daniel and the 77s. And as we're looking at that, I could see he's got it laid out. The first set, the 77s is 49 years and the beginning of the completion of the building of the wall in the temple to the, you know, for that.

And then he's got the 62 times 7. So, he's got the dates as years. And he's going through this whole thing explaining how no Jewish person would expect the Messiah to be on earth for more than a year.

And so, the proof that this is something supernatural is the fact that the Holy Spirit was on earth for 490 days. And I went, wait, wait, where did the days come from? He's like, well, that's a riddle.

Like, what makes this a riddle? And he basically just says, because we know it is. No, you have to follow rules of interpretation, which he didn't want to do. He ended up getting frustrated with me. So, he turned to Dr. Silvestro, who had an open Bible for a while.

And he was upset. And I let him go for about 10, well, at least 15 minutes, maybe even 20 before I said anything. I just let him do his thing. And then I started to interrupt him. And he did not want that.

He didn't want any interruption. But then, as he's getting frustrated not being able to answer my questions, he turns to Dr. Silvestro and he's like, well, what is it? You have something you want to say.

So, Anthony starts to read from Hebrews 8 and 9 because this guy was making a big thing about the tabernacle has been discovered under a, you know, on a mountain. The convenient thing about it being discovered, though, you'll love this, Robert.

It's always good to have a system that when you come up with a theory, there's no way to prove it. We know that this was found because this rabbi found it. And seven people tried to move it. And they all died.

And they're gone. They vanished. So, how do you know that it's actually there? Like you're saying, the only eyewitnesses are gone.

When did that happen? Is he saying that was a recent thing? Yeah. Yeah.

He was saying this. Now, the irony is in this big chart that he had, he had Christ return in like 2017. And it was crossed out. And he wrote in 2023. Convenient. Beautiful chart. Yeah. All because we found the tabernacle.

So, Anthony's reading about Hebrews and that we don't look to the tabernacle, we look to Christ. And he looks at Anthony and goes, I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't have two of you at once. Only one of you at a time.

I said, well, you're talking to me. He goes, but he keeps interrupting. And I literally was like, dude, you just invited him into the conversation. He's been silent until you asked him to speak. He didn't interrupt.

At which point he started blowing his shofar to avoid talking to me. I wanted to have a copy of your book to hand it to him. I told him the website. But here was the interesting thing. God's providence, there was a couple that was, you know, wearing clothing that would be identified as Jewish people.

We were able to see the, you know, the taluses, you know, draping out. And so, we see this couple. The guy is really, really steeped in this Hebrew roots. The wife is steeped in it, but not as much. She's just kind of, I think, following her husband.

So, this guy that we were talking to really wanted to talk to her, right, to talk to this couple. But instead, since I was talking to him, Anthony took the two of them aside and then started straightening her out on a whole lot of things.

So, hopefully, they, you know, they'll hear that. We gave them also, told them to go find your book and gave them the website. So, I think I need to have a couple copies of your book when I travel.

Yeah, yeah. So, let me ask you, this Shofar dude, was he a Jew or was he a Christian? He thinks he is.

Okay, all right. Maybe he's a tourist. Well, you've got to remember, he thinks everyone's Jewish. Right. So, you know, when you become a Christian, you suddenly get Jewish heritage somehow, I guess.

You know. Grafted in, I could maybe go with that.

Yeah, okay. I could go with that, but that's not what he was saying. And that's what, like, he was calling the Jewish people, the nation of Israel, his descendants. Yeah, that's a little troublesome. Or his ancestors saying, you know, I'm like, dude, it doesn't work that way.

Like, you know, but this is, I'm saying all this to say this is not an uncommon thing. This is something we're seeing in a lot of places, more than just the, you know, arguments that Christmas and Easter are, you know, pagan holidays or Roman holidays and made up.

I mean, there are some that deny the deity of Christ as well. You addressed this. Right, yeah. You know, one of the things. That's freaking scary. Very scary. Yeah. Here's the thing that I loved about your book and why it was so helpful, and we're going to get into it in a bit, but as I sat there on the streets this past weekend, there is not a single argument that any of these three people gave to me that wasn't addressed in your book.

Oh, okay. That's good. Every single one. I mean, I was like wishing I had the copy because I could have just gone, oh, page 75, that covers it. That's the thing that was amazing to me about the way your book was laid out was I literally had this conversation with three different people and not one argument, except for his charts and that craziness, but the arguments for us returning to the Law of Moses, not one of them asked me anything that wasn't already in your book.

And so, we'll probably get into some of those. I should mention, if anyone wants to join and ask any questions, you can go to ApologeticsLive .com. There is a link to participate there. I see Nicholas and Mr. Batman is here.

I don't know who Mr. Batman is. Maybe it's Calvinist Batman. The thing is, if you want to join, come on in. We're going to be opening it up in a bit. First, I want to give Robert a chance to talk about the book, to explain what you're going to find when you get a copy of this book, and then you and I will discuss why we think there's such an intrigue for people about this.

So, give a layout of the book, why you wrote it the way you did, and what people can expect from it.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, what you just brought up, I think, is an important reason or an important byproduct of how the book came to be. So, you said that when I engaged with my friends, we went deep on a lot of stuff.

They were actually very gracious, and in their minds, they're really trying to pursue God. So, I want to give them credit for that. But, as we dove in, all kinds of people—so, this was, I think I mentioned to you on your podcast, this was probably the rarest literary form ever, which was a productive Facebook argument.

They only come around once every so often, but this ended up being—I think maybe because I knew them, there was a lot of respect, but because it went on for so long, it went on over a month, a lot of people had jumped in.

So, I ended up having a chance. It had all these offshoots, and I ended up spending a lot of time, three or four months, just engaging with people, understanding what their arguments were. And, after a little while, you start to see a pattern.

It's kind of like apologetics in the larger sense, but there's certain pillars of argumentation that they use. And so, as I started collecting and looking at all that, I started to notice those patterns, and I decided to try to adopt those patterns in how I laid out the book.

So, basically, the book is laid out—first of all, Part 1 is kind of setting the table for the conversation, because there's confusion even among Jews and Christians and scholars about what does the Torah mean.

So, it can mean different things, and I tried to adopt a more academic understanding of what actually the Torah is. So, I explained, first of all, what is the Torah, so we can all get our terms straight, and then I talked about what is Torahism, because that's a term that I coined to address a wide, varying group of sects that all believe similar things, but not exactly the same thing.

So, that was a little bit of a challenge for me, in that there was not one big standard, one doctrine that I could go to that says, this is what these people believe, you know? So, in the book, I try to—in two different areas, I try to lay out an aggregate sort of statement of beliefs.

And with the folks that I was engaging with at the time, I ran it by them, and I said, is this right? I don't want to misquote you. Tell me, does this represent what you're talking about? And, you know, I got agreement that, yeah, okay, yeah, you got that right.

That's exactly right. So, those are the belief statements or the creeds that I put in the book, and against which I then, in the second half of the book, start examining those claims from those creeds.

So, they have all kinds of claims, and I kind of broke it down into a few different sections. There's claims about the Torah. So, we talk about, is the Torah eternal? And was it meant for all nations?

And, you know, the big one, was it abolished? So, that's Matthew 5, 17. It's a big one that they bring up. And then we talk about claims about the commandments. So, we look at specific things. Keeping the feasts, keeping the Sabbath, you know, the kosher food dietary restrictions, spend a lot of time going into the temple and what that all meant, the priests and the sacrifice and the worship and all that stuff.

There's a lot of historical claims. I think the core of Torahism comes from a historical claim about the corruption of Christianity by, well, by several folks, but they often point to Constantine in 325 as the source of all this corruption that went down through history.

And now today, this is what Torahism believes, that today when Christians sit in the pews on a Sunday morning, they're hearing lies from their pastor, and their pastor may not even know their lies, but they've just absorbed all this corruption.

So, we examine that in a lot of detail. And then this gets to the scary part for me. So, I'll just say that I'm a big fan of exploring the Jewish roots of the Christian faith. I love understanding the covenants.

I love understanding the journey, the storyline of Israel, going from a man to a family to a tribe to a nation and understanding all that. That's okay. But when you start crossing the line, and this is where Torahism crosses the line, we start getting into issues of their claims about God and their claims about salvation.

So, they're talking about things like Jesus wasn't divine. So, we look at that. There's no trinity. If Jesus wasn't divine, if he was just a man, then the trinity is a Roman corruption, they say. And then they start talking about salvation comes through obeying the Torah, which is really, this whole area is very strange to me because how can you, well, we can get into it, but it just opens up a Pandora's box when you start getting into the idea that, like they'll say, for example, Jesus was just a man, yet he was the Messiah.

But because he was a man, you should not be worshiping him. So, when Christians worship Jesus, according to Torahism, they are committing idolatry and worshiping a human. So, this is where you get into the real weird stuff.

But it's kind of like Mormonism and the Latter-day Saints, where you have to kind of dig down a few layers below the pop level to start uncovering those kind of scary roots.

Questions About the Old Testament Sacrifices and Millennial Worship

Yeah, and the thing, by the way, some folks are saying you're not as loud as me. I pumped you up here, but... Oh, I can... Yeah, I know you can... No, you can do this. Yeah, there you go. I'll put my mic closer.

You actually, for folks who don't know, you have a background that you and I obviously would share anyone who knows me. I'm very musical. I sing back up. When I sing, everyone backs up. Nice. You have a background in music.

Yeah. I should let folks know that some folks were commenting about my new intro for my Rap Report podcast. A lot of people really liked the Rap Report daily where I introduced it, and that was you who put that together.

Yeah, it's actually me playing the instruments.

Yeah. So, we'll have to apologize to Mr. John, who did the old one, who's watching. But, John, dude, you got to up your game. I mean, this guy is like a professional.

Okay? And so, what's he doing? I'm a recovering professional musician. Yeah, he's like, wait, what? Yeah, see? It shows he doesn't even want to. A little show and tell. It's my Martin D1000. You're going to have to pay me for this, though.

Okay, that's enough. I just wanted to show you this. Love it. Okay. I've always got a guitar or something, and when I'm thinking through things and working that out, I'm usually noodling around just for fun now.

And so, basically, I can't do any of that. We had a guitar in our house for 25 years. We just sold it. I think it was played by people that would come over sometimes, and they knew what they were doing.

We didn't. My wife wanted to learn how to play, but we never did.

I thought you were going to say it was played by Jimmy Page or something.

No, no. Although, hey, I'll throw this out. People who are regular listeners here know that I'm pop culture illiterate. So, I'm listening to my neighbors where I used to live, and they had a band playing.

And the next day, I was talking to my neighbor. I was like, I heard the music you guys had. It sounded pretty good. He's like, yeah, it's the E Street Band. I'm like, oh, okay. Who? He's like, oh, yeah, my brother-in-law is one of the members of the E Street Band.

I'm like, okay, who's the E Street Band?

Oh, my. Well, then I should tell you that Jimmy Page was the guitar player for a rock band called Led Zeppelin, if you weren't aware of that band. I was not. Okay. There you go.

All right. So, let's do this. Nicholas has been in for a bit, so we're going to bring him in and see what questions he may have. So, brought you in, Nicholas. You can unmute yourself. All right. Can you hear me?

We can. Gotcha. All right. Perfect. I reached out to you about, I don't know, probably a month ago, just trying to find some direction as far as links regarding just why we shouldn't use Hillsong and Bethel music in the church.

Okay. I feel like I actually, by God's grace, stumbled across some links last week just through Justin Peter's Facebook community page. So, I might actually just shift gears, if that's okay, and just ask a question that I have from the Old Testament.

Well, yeah, and I'll just say for what you were just saying, Justin has done some great work on that. He recently did a video with Todd Friel. Yeah. But for folks who, just so we don't, we'll switch topics to the Old Testament, but just so people don't wonder why we might be against that, they use their music as a way to reach into churches to pull people into some of their false teaching.

And so, the reason I'd be concerned is the fact that they are open about using their music to get into churches to try to pull people into their belief system. So, it's not just playing, playing their music is not just innocent.

It's, that's their evangelism. I'll put it that way. All right.

So, go with your question for the Old Testament. Okay. Just as I've been making my trek through the Old Testament again this last year, I know that God gave commands, right, to do sacrifices at the tabernacle in the wilderness and so forth.

But then as I get to, like, Joshua, and as they go and do conquests and things, I've noticed in a couple places that they build altars and so forth and do sacrifices there. So, I guess I'm just trying to figure out, like, how is that different from the ordinances that were given at the tabernacle as far as the duties of the priests to do?

Because as I read through it, and then I actually got back to Joshua 8, verse 30, it talks about the law as far as it being uncut stones. So, there was a law that God set up, which makes sense that they had to follow.

But I guess I'm just trying to figure out or differentiate between that and the actual practices that were at the tabernacle. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good question. Did you want me to take that answer? Yeah, of course. Yeah, I guess the thing that I think of is that, like, if you talk to the in rabbinical teaching, they believe that the law actually was given existed, I should say, before it was given on Mount Sinai.

So, even if you look at early Genesis, you have Noah building an altar, and that was a long time before the law was given. So, there's sort of an understanding or a belief that the sacrifices are kind of well, I don't want to say eternal, but that they go back much earlier than the law.

And that the law sort of codified what they were and kind of put structure around it, and it became part of the law of Moses being sort of the terms of the Mosaic covenant. And so, I can't speak to whether it started at that time or whether we realized it at that time, but when the law of Moses was given, the sacrifices they became sort of atonement sacrifices for sin.

And I think that's what we're seeing when you go through anything that you see that's pre-law of Moses. And I don't know I'm not really deep in this yet, because the writing of this book has got me really interested in digging further into the history of Israel and the history of the laws, because most many of the laws are mentioned in some form before we get to Exodus and the giving of the law.

So, I think a lot of it comes out of the nature of God and that as we as the Bible progresses, you know, this kind of progressive revelation concept, we start to understand later on what the sacrifices mean.

And then, of course, by the time we get to the New Testament, it becomes very clear what the sacrifices were intended to signify and the fact that Jesus was the one final sacrifice once for all.

Now, if you, depending on your end times view, an interesting thing that comes up with this as well, Nicholas, is the question people will see. It seems that for those who hold to a millennial kingdom that the sacrifices are re-established there, and that becomes an interesting thing.

I think the common understanding of that for those that hold to a millennial kingdom is that the sacrifices then are much like what we would do is baptism or the Lord's Supper that point back to what happened at salvation.

And so, many think that that's they'll do these sacrifices looking back at what Christ did on the cross, which was the fulfillment of those sacrifices.

Oh, that's interesting. I hadn't heard that. So, they go instead of being the foreshadowing that they are in the Old Testament, they turn into a remembrance of what Christ did?

Yeah, that is that's the most common understanding. Sure. For those that hold to a millennial kingdom. So….

Yeah, I oh, go ahead.

I was just going to say, wouldn't that, in a sense, just, I guess, my thinking in that would wouldn't that undermine just the whole sacrifice that Jesus did then, if you go back to doing something that was pointing to what he would ultimately fulfill?

Well, the thing is, what is the goal of it? So, we think about the Lord's Supper, which was actually a Passover meal. Yeah, the bread and the wine. Yeah, and Christ changed that. He changed it from a Passover looking back at God's providence through for the nation of Israel getting, you know, through the slavery and into freedom and all the trials they went through to looking at it as a look at the new covenant, right?

So, he changed that. So, the thinking is he would change that as well for the, you know, and this is for those there are many who don't believe there will be a millennial kingdom, and therefore, they wouldn't see that continuing.

I guess maybe I'm tipping my hat since Ethan is asking what's my end times view. I'm definitely pro-millennial. If there is a millennium, I am all for it. So, that would be my position. I would be pre-millennial, pre-tribulational is where I lean.

I don't make a big deal of it because I think it's not something we're going to be able to be in hindsight, we're going to see it very clearly. I mean, just like in the Old Testament, before the first coming of Christ, people didn't see all of the details between the first and the second coming clearly.

I think the same thing is going to be for us. I mean, I know there's I totally agree. I'm upsetting probably a lot of people because they think like they got it down pat.

Yeah, that's a larger reason that my eschatology is as yet unformed. I'm still open to things, I'm still interested in some possibilities, but it's so hard to know when you look, especially looking through Revelation, what's symbolic, what's allegory, you know?

It's very difficult to know, and for me, it comes down to whatever I believe is going to happen in the end times will have little to no impact on how I live my life today, the decisions that I'm making as a Christian today.

I mean, it's enough for me to just try to follow Jesus and try not to sin and try to keep things in order in my life, you know what I mean, as a believer today that I just trust God at the end. Whatever happens is going to be amazing.

Now, in dealing with Robert's book, Torahism, the question you asked, Nicholas, actually is very important because the thing that we end up seeing is when Israel was taken into the Babylonian captivity, right, and God promised that this was going to be a judgment on them because of the fact that for 70 sabbatical years they were ignoring the sabbatical year, God was going to put them into 70 years of captivity.

But one of the things that he said with it is that he would basically cure them of their idolatry, that during this captivity, that was going to be resolved, and it was. I mean, we never see Israel as a nation going back into idolatry like they were before that captivity.

But when they returned to the land, and what you end up seeing is the rebuilding of the temple, well, first, during that time of captivity, you had the beginnings of the synagogues, and the changing of the system with the Pharisees rising up and the Sadducees, you don't see that in the Old Testament.

Those groups don't exist, one being more the political group, the Sadducees, the Pharisees being more the religious group. So you had your Republicans and Democrats right there. See, nothing's changed.

And so what you end up seeing though is that you had this rise. But then after 70 AD, when the temple was destroyed, just like in the time when they were in captivity, they had to come up with some way, how do we offer sacrifices?

And it was a shifting in 70 AD, you start seeing the shift to what we would refer to as rabbinical Judaism, where it's the rise of obeying Torah, and that's what they would say, obeying the law. And so now, and I've written about this in my book, What Do They Believe?, that with Judaism today, salvation is seen as obeying the law.

They've replaced the sacrifices, because they can't do that anymore, with law-keeping. And actually, the most, yeah, that's the book, hey, you got a copy. I got a, oh wait, no, I don't have a copy on my bookshelf anymore.

It's packed in one of, like, 90 boxes. Oh, you got a copy, everyone's got a copy. I got a copy.

You really should read it, Andrew, it's a fantastic book. It's a good book.

But the thing that you have to realize is that there was a shift. That shift is what's, you know, people read the Old Testament and think that's Judaism. I think that what you see with the Torah, I'm trying to remember, Robert, how you worded it in the book, tourists?

Tourists, yeah. Tourists. So, it's hard for me to say, because it's a new word for me, but the tourists, those that are Christians that want to put themselves back under the law, the thing that I always find interesting is they're not following the law of the Old Testament.

Right. Many of them are following the law of the rabbis. So, Robert, maybe you could address that issue, because I think that would be helpful for folks.

Yeah, I actually learned a lot about that. I talked with two different groups of folks that are actually based in Israel. One of them is a Jewish organization. And I asked them, what is the Jewish position on the end times and the rebuilding?

You know, ever since the Temple was destroyed in AD 70, you can't technically live a truly Torah-observant lifestyle. So, what do you do now and what's your view of the end times? And they were explaining that there's all kinds of things that they're doing now.

I didn't even know this. Like, for example, they still practice the sacrificial rituals in Jerusalem to make sure that that skill or that art isn't lost. And I think it was back in the year 2000, 2001, they had an actual Passover sacrifice made, like, within sight of the Temple Mount.

And that was kind of a big deal. So, they're holding on, and they believe that if the Temple is not rebuilt before the Messiah comes, because, again, they don't believe Jesus was the Messiah, it will be rebuilt then.

And all of the laws, all 613 mitzvot will be returned back into service, including all the sacrificial laws, which is kind of interesting, because, well, if you take the Christian position, what's the point?

And I think you kind of brought that up. The other group that I spoke to based out of Israel is a Messianic Jewish organization called One for Israel. Fantastic resource. They've got some really brilliant scholars there that have spoken about this idea that, for example, I should mention, too, that One for Israel, as Messianic Jews, they still celebrate the feasts because they see it as a great way to, in the feasts themselves, like you mentioned, Andrew, they see the foreshadowing of Christ, and they feel that it's a great way to honor the Jewish culture.

And there's no technical reason why they shouldn't honor those sorts of—a lot of those feasts celebrate what God did, obviously, you know, Passover and the escape. But they see now Christ in Passover as the modern version.

But they obviously don't do the sacrifices, and they don't think the sacrifices should return in the end times. But they did a great job of pointing out this switch to rabbinical Judaism. And I have the story in my book, too.