More Jewish Arguments Against Christianity

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This is Apologetics Live, to answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

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We are live, Apologetics Live here. Well, I am not in my normal location, but we're still here to answer your most challenging questions you have about God and the

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Bible. As I say each week, I can answer any question that you have about God and the

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Bible. If you doubt that, come on in, join us, and give me your hardest question.

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And if I say, I don't know, just remember, that's a perfectly good answer.

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Drew, welcome. Nice to have you with us again. I do apologize right up front.

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I am back up in Boston, and I'm in the church, so this is designed for great acoustics, so my voice is kind of echoing.

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I can't help that, but this is the best place to get Wi -Fi. I bet even you would sound good singing right now.

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No, no, I never sound good singing. So I will apologize that they've changed the way they do the light, so there's only light on the left side of my face and nothing on the right.

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But the cross behind me looks cool lit up. I figured out how to turn that up, so I left that one on. So we are here.

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Apologetics Live is a show to not only do apologetics, but to teach apologetics, to show you how to do apologetics.

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So we answer any questions you have. You just go to apologeticslive .com,

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and if you scroll down, you will see a little duck icon for StreamYard, and just click on that to join, give you your browser.

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You don't need to download anything. You just let your browser give permission to use your microphone and camera, and so that will be all you need, and you can join us and ask any question.

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And I will say that it is just with the lighting and whatnot here, it will be harder for me to see some of the chat, so I'm going to rely more on you tonight,

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Drew, for that. Oh, well, here's a good one. Pastor Darren Stid says, please don't sing, Andrew.

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Yeah, I agree with Pastor Darren. Not a problem. I have no intention of doing that.

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I care about my audience. The Lord says, make a joyful noise. You just try to make noise and do it joyfully.

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Until glorification, that's all it is. It's joyful for me, and it's a noise to everybody else.

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So now we got some feedback. We did get a comment or a review.

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Someone was upset a few weeks ago because they said we didn't get right to the topic right away.

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So let me just clarify for folks, I'm going to have to do this every week probably, is to let you know how this show is structured.

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Just because we put a topic, if we do a topic like tonight, our topic is more

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Jewish arguments against Christianity, just because we do that doesn't mean it is the very first thing and the only thing that we're going to discuss.

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This is a live show where anybody can come in asking anything, which means it may be a bit before we're going to get to topics.

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For example, tonight, our guest, who we had talked about last time,

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Bent Zion, I think is how to pronounce it, but he won't be coming in until the second hour, so we may go a little bit longer and we may not get to those arguments until later.

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So Facebook user, and by the way, if you want to have your name shown, go to ApologeticsLive .com,

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and we have instructions of how to share with Facebook. But he says, is that from Israel? I'm assuming he means this, and yes,

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I got this in Israel. It's not a prayer cloth, but it's a scarf that I enjoy.

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Because Facebook user here, maybe the same, I don't know. I want to know what you're wearing around your neck.

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So basically, it says in English, Israel, and then in Hebrew, Israel.

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And on the other side, it just is the same thing with reversed colors. And it has the shield of David.

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Did I say something wrong? No, actually, I said it right. For folks that don't realize, this six -pointed star is called the shield of David, because that is actually what would have been on his shield, which is different than what was on Solomon's shield, by the way.

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I think Solomon's was a five -pointed star. So, but it's just, it refers to as the star of David, but it actually was on his shield.

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So Matt Yester, we got to get Matt Yester to actually come in here, man. That guy has got lots of good apologetics, but he says, looking sharp,

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Andrew. I think he's talking about you, Drew. He's got to be. That's what's Andrew on here.

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Yeah. So what we're going to do is, what I want to do, and if you guys have questions, just throw them in the chat and we'll deal with them.

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What I wanted to do until our guest comes in and we can actually engage with him, he basically had emailed, said that we totally missed the point last week of all of his arguments.

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It's weird because I thought we read his argument. Yeah, we actually did. We read exactly what he typed and responded to it.

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So it's kind of hard when you do that. But hey, so what I want to do is read some of the email that he sent.

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And the purpose of doing this is I want you guys to notice some things in some of the email to see how do you deal with people online?

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I mean, this is, for me, a frustrating thing when we have people, you see this on social media, the first thing they want to do is attack.

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The very first thing is like, if you disagree with what

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I believe, I'm going to jump all over that and attack you, call you all kinds of names and whatnot.

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I think this program and my rap report podcast has demonstrated that here what we try to do is give people a voice to voice what they believe and interact with it.

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I just recorded a podcast with someone on his book, you know, well,

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I guess I could say it. So it's it's Pat Ebendroth and his book is Covenant Theology.

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Now, for those who are regulars, you know that I don't hold to covenant theology. Why would

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I have someone on my program talking about a theological system I disagree with? Because he had a lot of good points.

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He had a lot that people can learn from. And I thought the book was was really well written and really helpful for folks.

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And I not only did I have him on, but I didn't disagree with him. It's my show.

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I can do a whole show next week disagreeing with him. But that's it's a it's a lost art to be able to talk to someone, have a conversation and differ, but still remain brothers and in fellowship.

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Right. Because just because we disagree on certain points doesn't mean that we can no longer associate with one another.

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Right. You have your camp. You stay in your camp. I'll stay in my camp. Well, no, we're all the body of Christ.

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And we don't need to do that. Yeah. You know, it reminds me of a podcast episode that came out from Voice of Reason about how do we debate and disagree with one another?

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You talking about the recent one? Because I think I've done that topic a couple of times. Yeah, the recent one.

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Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, listening to it, it's absolutely right. And and I think especially when we get on social media.

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Oh, my goodness. When we get on social media, look, if you're if you claim to be a

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Christian and you utilize platforms like Twitter, I would advise you spend more time in prayer than you do on Twitter and then pray before you get on Twitter.

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Yeah. Yeah. I used to really upset a guy. So what I used to do every morning is

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I would post things like and I did this every day. First thing in the morning, I'd post something like on Facebook.

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And I would say, if you have not been in if you haven't been on your face before God or in God's book, get off of Facebook.

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You know, if you haven't shared the good news, stop watching Fox News today.

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Right. I would do things like that every day. This guy would get so annoyed. And like the only reason you're upset with it would be because you're spending more time on Fox News and Facebook than you are in God's word.

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And that irritates you. You know, he's like, oh, no, I've been a Christian for twenty seven years.

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OK, well, then it shouldn't bother you. Right. But this is a problem.

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Social media can be very good, but it can be a problem. So let me deal with some of his his email.

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And when I do this, Drew, I'm not going to be able to see the chat. So you just let me know if there's something we should deal with.

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I see this from Jason real quick. He says civil discourse is an amazing thing when it happens with mutual respect.

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And that's what we want to always try to do as Christians. Right. So OK, so so here's from Ben Zion, he says, hey, thanks, because I sent him the link after the show.

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He says, thanks for sending me the link and discussing some of my questions. To be honest, I'm very disappointed with how you dealt with my questions.

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I understand that you didn't have time to go through everything I sent. The problem is you misunderstood both my both my questions.

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Maybe I should have been more clear. I think the document I sent you spelled everything out more.

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So I went through the six page document and have a response to each one of them.

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I don't know that we're going to get through all of that, but he then tries to give some more argument.

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He says it seems like you have the wrong perspective on the whole discussion. The New Testament and Christians are trying to invent something new and you need to prove you need proof for that.

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You have the burden of proof, not me. Now, I read this to point this out. This is something you'll commonly see.

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We read exactly from his emails. This is what we read from his email.

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And then we interacted with it. And the response you often get is people go, no, you you're you misunderstood.

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No, you got it wrong. And when, as we did in the show last week, we pointed out where he has proof.

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He has to prove that things like the word Alma, because he says that this is a proof that the

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New Testament is is false because Alma is not translated virgin. And we said he has to prove that Alma cannot mean virgin.

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Then he would have an argument. Yeah, but if it ever means a virgin and we looked at some passages where it does, then it's perfectly within the realm of of doing that.

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Well, when we said he had proof, what does he want to do? And this is something when you are doing apologetics, you're going to see people do.

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When they want the burden of proof on you, not on them. And this is why one of the things

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I teach people is to learn how to ask good questions. If they make a claim, you ask a question. Once you ask a question, the burden of proof is now on them to answer.

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Now, can you say that we did not answer the question of Isaiah's use of the

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Hebrew word Alma and the Greek word for virgin? No, we answered that right now.

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He pointed out something that I guess I said, and I'd have to go back and re listen. He he said that I said there is no word for virgin in Hebrew and there is.

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So, you know, I do know that I tried to. I don't remember you saying that.

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I might have because I do remember explaining. I mean, he Hebrew has I forget how many words I Hebrew has a far less vocabulary than Greek.

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And that's why a lot of the words have multiple meanings. Yeah, that would that that makes sense as to why there's such a wide semantic domain for for words like Alma.

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You know, if there's less words, then you have to utilize those words to mean certain things, depending on the context you're using it, because you only have so many words to work with.

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Mm hmm. And so if you have a more specific, let's give it, for instance, if, you know, down south by you,

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Drew, you may just have a word for snow. We covers everything because you don't see much of it where up here we have a word for snow that is going to refer to flurries, which is a lighter snow.

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We're going to talk about maybe hail or something like that. And then we have blizzard.

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Now, in Alaska, where there's lots of snow, they have way more words, from my understanding, they have words for whether it's a wet snow or a dry snow.

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They a lot more description. Why? Because they deal with it more. Yeah. And the more descriptive, the more words you have for language, the more helpful it's going to be.

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So what I'm trying to do is point out, though, is that you have to be aware when you're doing apologetics of who has the burden of proof.

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Remember that the person who makes a claim has the burden of proof. In this case, it was

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Ben Zion who made the claim that the word

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Alma does not mean virgin. That is a claim. I don't have to prove that it can mean virgin because I didn't make the claim.

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And what you see right in this email, he's immediately jumping to trying to push the burden of proof off of him onto me so that he doesn't have to answer.

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This is what people do all the time. They throw challenges at you as a Christian. They want you to answer them.

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It's their gotcha. You're like, here, look at these questions. Answer these questions. You can't. Oh, gotcha. Then you're false.

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Correct. And so, you know, basically, and I'm not going to get into that whole email, that first one, because he tried to answer some of the things.

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And for this discussion, I want to just point out how to identify what someone does when they're talking.

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And so my response to him is because he claimed that we totally missed the point. I said, then you really should come on and explain to us because there was no other way to interpret your email.

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And you have the burden of proof for your claims you made.

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You you just prove you just prove the word Alma only means a young woman and never means a virgin, which is as your claim.

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So what did I do in there? Exactly what I just said. I reversed the burden of proof to where it belongs. He made the claim.

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He's got the burden. And so what am I doing? I'm pointing that out to him. He's saying, hey, I don't have any burden.

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You have it. I'm saying, no, no, no. You made a claim. You have the burden. And so his response is.

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And this is where you end up seeing. And I sent this these to Drew so he could see it. But this is where you start to see.

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He goes, do you not read my email? I explained clearly in great detail my argument and how obvious that Matthew deliberately misquotes the verse.

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So far, you haven't responded to anything I said. If you truly are striving for eternity, engage in the argument.

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Your religion and eternity depend on you being able to answer these questions.

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If you can't, you already agree that Christianity is false.

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No, no. Well, the fact that he says Matthew deliberately misquotes is an assertion that requires a burden of proof.

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And our friend Darren Stitt here pointed out the very premise of the statement. Christians are the ones who are starting something new is itself an assertion which he bears the burden of proof.

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Correct. His entire what I'm noticing, his entire email is filled with nothing but assertions that he must prove every single one of them.

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Correct. And I don't. This is the thing you have to realize, folks, when you're doing apologetics. You have to recognize sometimes the person you're speaking to, in this case, a

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Jewish person. He's going to come on and you'll see the same things. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do.

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I'm going to point I'm going to answer his things and I'm going to point out that he's got the burden of proof for his own claims.

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I'm going to point out that he's making assertions. I'm going to point out his logical fallacies. But what you'll have to recognize is that there are times that you deal with people and they do not even see what they are doing.

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What they do is they sit there and accuse you of doing what they actually are doing. Now, you see that he gets a little snarky, right?

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I mean, he's like he's you didn't even read my email. I was very clear. You didn't respond to anything.

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I didn't respond to anything. Drew, you and I did a two hour show, two hours plus. Not to mention

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Homeboy here writes dissertations for emails. I mean, these things are long.

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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these are not a short sort of thing, which is fine.

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But we spent two hours answering and to say we didn't answer anything.

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Right. So so now there is a thing where when someone gets snarky, you know, there is a point where you can you can kind of get snarky back to show what they're doing.

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It's it's it's healthy to kind of point that out. And I ended up doing that in this email exchange. But when he's claiming that, you know, we've we've totally missed the point that we didn't respond to anything he said.

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You end up realizing that there are times when because he's claiming that we didn't read it.

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He's claiming he knows Matthew's heart, which scripture kind of says that judging motives is wrong.

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You're going to see a lot of that throughout. And he's got to have this because his whole argument is based on this.

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Right. And, you know, so and before he does come in,

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I'm going to I'll say early in the show, I'm going to predict I'm going to ask him if he follows after a man named

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Rabbi Tovia Singer. And my guess is he's going to say yes. You sent me that. You told me that.

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And I wanted to ask you how how you assume that how you arrive at that conclusion because he's making the same arguments that that Tovia makes.

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See, he he he displays in this that he doesn't have a good handle of the New Testament.

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And most Jewish people think that Tovia knows the New Testament. In fact, the rabbi who first told me about Tovia said that Tovia knows the

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New Testament better than he knows the Tanakh. But in listening to hours and hours and hours of Tovia, I could tell you that Tovia mixes up Roman Catholicism and Mormonism.

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But to a Jewish audience that knows nothing of the New Testament, he sounds brilliant because he speaks with such authority as he sits there and represents what

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Christianity actually believes. And this is why I've said and I'll say it later when he's in. I have said that I will debate

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Tovia anywhere, anytime without any prep, without any prep. I said that on a program,

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Tovia. Someone sent it to Tovia. He has he took that. He actually created the banner that we were going to be debating.

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And then some gentleman called me claiming that he used to be a pastor. I found out later he is a follower of Tovia and he converted to Orthodox Judaism.

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And I think he was a plant. He contacted me because he wanted to help me with with debate prep.

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And he was asking what my arguments were going to be. I never gave him actually my full argument. Not going to do that because I didn't know who he was.

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But I guess I gave enough of it that Tovia has been running scared ever since.

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He's done plenty of debates, but he refuses to debate me. He says that the debates have to be in have to be in person and they have to be structured.

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And it's like, OK, you know, I made the mistake. I found out afterwards that he that he moved to Israel. I should have.

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And if I return to Israel, I think I'll contact him and publicly make it very public that I that I will be in Israel.

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That would be cool. Yeah. I'll come to his his turf because he doesn't know

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Christianity. You know, he's gotten better with it. It's a criticism I made with him many years ago.

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This is going over 20 years ago. He's gotten better with his understanding of Christianity, I think, because he's been probably shamed in the past, is my guess.

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But the reality is, is that he you know, when you're speaking to an audience that knows nothing, you can sound very knowledgeable.

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OK, so let's get back to my response then to Ben Zion, because I want you to see what

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I end up doing. I said I ended up saying to him, you know, I'm very sorry that that you did not have an argument.

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You have an assumption with arrogance. There is a difference.

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What we did was read and interact with your words. It is not our fault that you cannot make logical arguments.

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Please, if you want to communicate clearly, then join the discussion. That way, we cannot misread you now by by saying that, you know, this is exactly what you had said,

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Drew, that he just is making assumptions. But they're not just assumptions. They're assumptions with arrogance.

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There are assumptions that are I'm right. You're wrong. And there's no other way to look at it.

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And you just have to accept my position. That's not an honest way to have a discussion.

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Right. OK, now you're going to come across people that are going to do this, folks. When you are practicing and doing the projects, you're going to come across people that they have an assumption.

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They don't even want to engage with what you're saying. They just want you to agree with them.

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We see this all the time. And so what did I do? I point that out because let's get it out in the open.

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Let's have that discussion. And what ends up happening is, you know, he he ends up responding.

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And, you know, his response was, how old are you? I feel like I'm speaking to a child.

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I I reject in great detail every single thing you said on your two hour program when

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I emailed you on Friday. Now, let's just stop there and think about this. In the first email response, we didn't deal with a single thing he said.

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Right. And now he rejects it. Now he rejects it. So did we did we respond to it or did we not respond to it?

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Here's the thing. Your agreement with something does not make it an argument.

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In other words, if I disagree with Drew. That doesn't mean

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I didn't give an argument. It means I give an argument that Drew didn't agree with. There is a difference.

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Right. And so you want to be able to recognize that difference when you talk with people. Because you want to be able to point that out to folks.

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And one of the things that I said when I after reading this one that I told you is he's a guy that he's either not researching as you know, when you look at some of these questions, it's like a quick Google search will give you all the research you want on some of these answers.

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Or he's just a guy that he's set in what he believes and he doesn't he doesn't really want to hear.

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He just wants to argue. Yeah, he does. You're right. And this this is very, very common when you're sharing the gospel with people.

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You're going to come across as people. Well, it's kind of like Isaiah six, right?

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Isaiah six. Oh, that's the passage everyone preaches at missions conferences. You know where the

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Lord says, you know, you have this. Isaiah has his vision. He says he's a sinful person of sinful people.

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And the question comes in, you know, where the Lord says, you know, who can we send?

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And Isaiah says, here I am. Send me. Oh, that preaches so well. Yeah. Right.

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But no one continues reading. So if you continue on with that, what do you have as you continue on?

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It says, well, how long do I preach this, God? And Isaiah is told, keep doing it till people basically stick their fingers in their ears, cover their eyes and go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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Right. I mean, just keep preaching until they don't want to hear. That is the reaction you will get when you're doing apologetics.

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So when that happens, know that that's a common reaction. Don't get upset by it.

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In fact, what you could do is rest in that fact that you're you're there being upset, not at what you're saying so much or how you're saying it so much as the fact that they don't want to think about it.

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It could be because it's convicting them and they know it's true. That's possible. But really just know that it's not unless you're being a jerk.

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It's not you. Right. Right. Which we should never be, because in doing apologetics, we are to do it with gentleness and kindness and respect and being a good ambassador for Christ.

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Yes. So he goes on saying this. He says, instead of discussing it like a mature adult, you claim

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I'm being arrogant for asking for a response. I can see that your lack of knowledge of the

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Torah and its original language and your inability to defer these claims is making you frustrated.

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It's laughable. If I don't if if if I would show this this string of what should be of emails to anyone, they would say the same thing.

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And they says, what time is the show? If you're if you commit to being intellectually honest,

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I will do my best to come on if the time works for me. So here's the thing. As we look at this, he's upset because I pointed out that he has assumptions with arrogance.

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But then he goes on to display arrogance as he insults me, calling me a child, saying that I'm, you know, that that I'm immature.

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I'm not I'm not discussing this like a mature adult. Well, we spent over two hours discussing this like mature people.

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An immature reaction, a child's like reaction would be to be like, you didn't answer anything

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I said, which actually was his exact response. And so pointing it out is doing nothing more than showing that this is his response.

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Yeah. You know, it's. This this string of emails is a good lesson is a good apologetic lesson.

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That's why I said I wanted to do this with you until he came in, because you did, you know, just reading this going, oh, well, you're not acting like a mature adult.

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You know, you didn't interact with with what I said. You show your lack of the

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Torah. Right. Who's who's the one getting frustrated?

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Right. I think frustrated in the email. Let's be fair and say that it is we sometimes read emotion into written text messages right here.

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You can hear my voice. You're not hearing frustration. You had two hours of it.

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You didn't hear frustration. At least I hope not. I didn't feel like I was frustrated. But he's reading that in.

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Right. I'm reading in things with him. And so my response was, well, your rejection of facts does not constitute a lack of response.

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This is what I just said earlier. Right. The fact that he rejects what I say doesn't mean that I didn't respond.

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So I said, however, you have resorted to ad hominem attacks. Therefore, I must ask you, how old are you?

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Right. Now, what did I do there? I'm taking his exact argument. I'm showing it.

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And, you know, I at one point I told him that if he's if he won't show up here, you know, if he refuses to show up, because he was he was saying he would only communicate via typing.

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And we've seen these keyboard warriors plenty of times. Yeah. And I call them cowards.

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You always invite them into the show and then they never show up. Yeah. How many people have challenged me to debates that never show up here?

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And so what you end up seeing. OK, so so here's a

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Facebook user saying, I'm coming in late. What are we talking about? So I don't know who this is because you didn't go to Apologetics Live to follow the instructions.

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Go to ApologeticsLive .com so we can get your name. But what we're doing is we're waiting. We do have a Jewish gentleman who's hopefully going to come in top of the hour.

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We're engaging with the email that he sent, the exchange we had back and forth, because I think it does have something that we can learn about apologetics.

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And then we're going to deal with his six page arguments in one hour, I hope. But we'll see. And so because I think we can learn something even in the email exchanges.

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And this this could be helpful. So he says, you called me a coward and said you'll expose my foolishness.

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Yeah. I mean, I would be. You know, that is what I said, because if he said he wasn't going to come in, which is just to say, hey,

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I'm going to shoot these these messages. And this is what someone that's is a prideful person ends up doing.

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I'm going to say what I say. I'm not going to allow for you to say anything back to me. Right. And if you do say anything back,

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I'm just going to ignore it. Well, you know, I deal with this at some point last year.

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I think it was maybe September, October. I had posted something on Facebook and it was it was something from the

32:13

Ligonier State of Theology. It was one of their questions. And then the statistic, the result that was kind of shocking.

32:20

And so I posted it and then I posted the Bible verses that kind of went along with it. And then

32:26

I had someone who is a COC pastor, Church of Christ, for those of you who don't know.

32:33

He private messaged me and he told me how he disagreed with my post.

32:39

And then he listed off all of these Bible verses. And I was like, OK, so when

32:45

I responded and I looked, I went through each one of those Bible verses. None of them had anything to do with with the statement, the state of theology question or any of the verses that I had posted that were in context of that question.

33:01

And so I wrote them back and I was very gracious. I said, hey, man, you know, thank you for for writing me.

33:06

Thank you for reaching out. You know, I read what you had to say, but this is and then

33:12

I kind of gave my defense. This is why I say this, you know, walking, walking through scripture and showing him through scripture.

33:18

This, that and the other thing that that supports my claim. And then I told him,

33:24

I said, but I don't get your text that you that you cited here because none of these have anything to do with what

33:29

I was saying. But I know you have Zoom. I have Zoom. If you want to if you want if we want to get together and we can talk about it face to face or something like that, you know,

33:40

I would enjoy that. He never replied. And then he unfriended me, which is which is this is the behavior we see that.

33:49

And this is why we're doing this, folks. So you can spot this is not this very common behavior. And so don't get upset over it.

33:55

Don't get frustrated. This is what happens. Be prepared. And when it happens, you just go, OK, now I want to I want to point out some good things as well with with these some of the emails.

34:05

So he says he ends up saying he says, let us have a discussion based on the merit of our claims and not make fun of each other.

34:15

I apologize for what I said. I was a little frustrated because I took

34:20

I took time to think about what you said and respond to each point with specific verses and point what

34:28

I'm saying. When I emailed you on Friday and you didn't respond to those points and said that I'm manufacturing evidence.

34:40

So now, first off, I want to I want to give credit where credit is due. He's acknowledging that he was frustrated.

34:45

He's apologizing. Right. Right. That's good. But I want you to notice what he's doing here. He's upset because on Thursday night, we did not respond to the emails that he sent on Friday morning.

35:02

Anyone pick up what what? Well, I don't have a time travel device to allow me to go back in time and now respond to what you're going to say in the future.

35:14

Now, if he's going to if his argument is, which I think is what he means, I think he means that we didn't respond to the six page letter.

35:24

Well, we said at the beginning we didn't respond to that. Yeah. We said we would deal with that this week when we had more time to go through this.

35:32

I mean, the six pages takes time. I spent probably about five or six hours going through each of these questions to examine them, to look up the language, to see where I'm right.

35:44

I've there's some things that I learned. I'm going to bring that up later. But this is something that takes time if I'm going to do a fair job with it.

35:53

Yeah. And really, if you want to think about it, some of these that I'm looking at, some of these can be a whole show in themselves.

36:02

Because when you start unfolding them, when you start unfolding some of these passages, right, like Galatians 313 and then

36:09

Deuteronomy 21, you have to unpack it. You can't it's not just a just a simple sentence answer and then move on to the next one.

36:18

You can't do that. That that would be dishonoring to the text. Well, that would be what he's asking for is to have a discussion on the merits of the claims.

36:28

That's what we're trying to do. We did two hours responding to just a few of his his points.

36:35

I think we dealt with it fairly. I think we we tried to answer whether he agrees or not.

36:41

But this is the thing. He just rejects it. Right. You know, so let me let me point out, we see someone in the chat that we haven't seen for a while.

36:49

Cole, Cole is saying, good evening. It's been a while now. It has been a while. It has been. We miss him.

36:54

Some things have changed a little bit in case you haven't noticed. I got to say, you know, here then right after that, we see we see

37:01

Jason saying to Cole still enjoying that my pillow, I hope so.

37:10

But if folks don't know that, you know, you just have to go back and see, because I don't know that I have the picture here that I could put up of Cole falling asleep and the ad we have for my pillow.

37:20

But now would be a good time for us to to mention our sponsor before our guest comes in.

37:27

And that is my pillow. So if you guys want to get yourself a good night's sleep, go go to my pillow dot com and get their products at a heavily, heavily discounted price.

37:38

When you use the promo code SFE, it's a great discount. Use that code so that they know that you ordered it from with us so that or you heard about from us so that they will continue sponsoring this show.

37:52

We greatly appreciate that. So I think, though, that and let's get to some of these other questions that we have coming in, because what

38:02

I wanted to show, which is those emails, was that I wanted to show some of the the ways we have to know how to deal with people and debates, because what you end up seeing is people will will come off with a view sometimes that can frustrate you.

38:24

And if you if you enter into your apologetics, knowing the general responses that people have, then that's going to help you in your discussions.

38:39

OK, so a Facebook user here is saying, so you're dealing with someone that denies that Jesus is the

38:44

Messiah. Well, yes, that is what we're dealing with. And we'll deal with it later when he comes in at the top of the hour.

38:52

So you highlighted some of the questions here. I'm not sure John may need to clarify this.

38:59

The question is, it says, question, Andrew, are there more premillennial or postmillennial premillennialism or postmillennial?

39:06

I think he means premillennialist versus postmillennialist. I would say there's more premillennial.

39:12

I would I would think there's more premillennialists. But I'm going to qualify it this way.

39:20

I'm going to say there's probably more premillennialists that don't really understand the system.

39:27

I'm going to argue and this may sound a little different being a premillennialist and drew you being a postmillennialist.

39:35

I would argue that there's probably more postmillennialists that can argue their system than there are premillennialists that can argue their system.

39:44

So the fact that there's more premillennialists, I don't think has any bearing per se.

39:51

But I would say that I think that the that when we look at it, the people who are postmillennial, no, not all postmillennials can defend the system.

40:01

They just you know, there's a lot of people that just grow up in a system. That's all they heard. So they can repeat what they've heard.

40:08

Or you become all mill because you don't want to deal with it. Well, I think, you know, in the

40:14

Amil is is going to be a little of both as well. You know, you're going to have a lot who can support it and many who can't.

40:24

That's just all they know. Right. So but I think if we were to look at just premill to postmill,

40:31

I would say there's more premillennialists. But I would say that if it's if you're looking at those who who who really have studied the percentage wise, more postmillennialists would probably be able to defend postmillennialism than the percentage of premillennial second defend premillennialism.

40:51

Yeah, I would agree just because a lot of us, you know, I would say probably come up in a church that teaches premillennialism by default.

41:00

And then you come into the postmill understanding from studying it. You don't

41:06

I mean, I don't know how many people have actually been brought up in a postmill tradition.

41:13

Not saying they don't exist, but I would say like I like I came up in a in a dispensational premillennial

41:21

Southern Baptist Church. You know, but but see when people say, well, I grew up in whatever

41:28

I grew up. Well, Layton Flowers claims he was a Calvinist because he grew up Calvinist.

41:34

But did he understand Calvinism? The answer would have to be no, because so many Calvinists have tried to correct him on this and he doesn't.

41:41

But so growing up with a position doesn't make you an expert on that position unless you've actually studied the position.

41:48

Right. And so I guess we did a good job because John says thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Great answer. I don't know which

41:53

Andrew he's referring to. Probably you. Cole says, I'm probably more an optimistic on mill, but definitely not premill or dispensational.

42:04

Katie is saying there are pan millennials, but I'm pre. I usually joke that I'm postmillennial.

42:11

If there's a millennium, I'm all for it. So I don't want things to pan out.

42:19

I want to be for something. So, right. OK, a question that you had done.

42:27

This is from a Bible Care and Share Fellowship, which, you know,

42:32

Michael, we got to get you on here one day. So you just join in and join the conversation. He's got lots of good.

42:37

We could have a fun discussion with him, but he says, does the understanding of Matthew and other

42:45

Jews read the Spituagin? And it does mean virgin. So let me address this a bit, because this is where I did some digging this week.

42:56

In the in even in the what we dealt with last week in the emails that Ben Zion made against Christianity.

43:04

One of the things he said as we referred to Spituagin, he claims that the rabbis only wrote the first five books.

43:14

And so this is something I had to do some research on and digging into to try to see if we can get an answer.

43:20

And to an extent, he's right. All right. So let me explain how we got to Spituagin, because what we call the

43:28

Spituagin is it's it's not exactly fair because we would think of it as one book.

43:36

Now, I have to ask you, why do you why does it keep sounding like you're saying Spituagin instead of Septuagin?

43:43

Septuagin. Yeah, OK. I keep hearing it and I go, why does he keep saying that?

43:51

You know, sorry, my my pronunciation is wrong. But when we look at this now, now

43:59

I'm going to get it messed up now. Thank you. When we look at the

44:04

Septuagin, what we see is that so about 250 BC, you had rabbis who got together and translated the first five books, the books of Moses into Greek.

44:18

Now, what we would have and call a Greek Old Testament as the

44:25

Septuagin, or sometimes you'll see it referenced as LXX for 70, because they would argue there were 70 or 72 rabbis that translated it.

44:35

We would have it in one book in a codex, but that didn't come till much later.

44:40

OK. And so what you have is from 250 BC for the next two to 300 years, different books were being translated, not all at once.

44:53

So we just had the legacy standard Bible that was a bunch of men getting together for a set period of time.

44:59

And they translated the whole Bible and worked together to do that. And that is one harmonious project.

45:09

Right. So they work together and they get it done. And this is now done. And we would call it the legacy standard version.

45:16

But that's not how the Septuagin was put together. It was so the first five books were done that way.

45:22

But then over two to three hundred years, the rest of the books were translated by different people that some we might know who they are, some we don't know who they are and we have copies of them.

45:35

So as we look at this, we have to realize it was not done by the same group of people, the same scholars over a period of time.

45:44

And so the idea that we have with it is to recognize that this is something that was a continued work for 300 years of translation.

45:55

And then we put it together into one codex, one book. Now, a codex is what we would refer to as a book different than the scrolls that they would have.

46:06

And so a codex, you could put more in it. If you had the Old Testament in Greek, the

46:13

Septuagin, you couldn't put it into one scroll. You would have many scrolls, but you could put it into one book.

46:19

That's what made the codex is easier to get more in there and to transport them.

46:25

So what we have, so to an extent, Ben Zion is right now.

46:32

I want to point something out as I'm saying this, because, again, we want to point out how to do apologetics.

46:38

What am I doing? I am acknowledging where the person who

46:43

I'm having discussion with that disagrees with me is right. I'm always looking when he apologizes.

46:49

I point that out. It is not a debate where I have to always win and point out all the negative things he does and all the positive things that I that I do.

46:59

That's not the goal. The goal in a good apologetics is to be honest and to recognize when someone else makes a good point.

47:08

Drew, let me use you as an example. You had on this show a long time ago, you and Jim Osman had a discussion on your views of premillennialism and your view of postmillennialism and an argument that Jim had made in a sermon.

47:25

We discussed it. You did a response on your on your podcast. Then you guys got together and discussed it.

47:31

And there was a point in the discussion where you turned to Jim and said, you know, Jim, that's a really good point.

47:36

I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, he made this point and I went, yep.

47:44

Yeah, that's a good point. And for people that couldn't see your face, you gave an inquisitive look.

47:50

Yeah, I mean, I was kind of I was kind of because what he said, I literally had never thought about it.

47:56

And I was like, that's right. That's absolutely right. Correct. And see, this is what we must do when we are in discussions, doing apologetics, doing debates, recognize when someone makes a good argument, folks, if for no other reason, because we're looking for truth.

48:16

But one thing it does do is it shows at least to anyone that's watching, you know, if it's a debate or anyone listening that you're trying to be fair with the arguments.

48:29

You know, if you have someone who's coming in and, you know, Ben Zion does like he did in the emails and just rejects everything out of hand when we've actually dealt with it, it kind of shows who's actually dealing with issues and who's not.

48:40

Right. Right. And so there is that benefit, but we don't do it for that purpose. We do it because we want truth to be.

48:47

That's the key that you just said right there. Truth. Who is wanting the truth to come out?

48:54

And if I'm honest, right, I want the truth to come out, even if it means

49:00

I'm wrong. Yeah. And in this case, you know what, he's making a statement that is,

49:06

I would say, partially true. You know, but as Pastor Darren Steed says here,

49:13

OK, it was still overwhelmingly accepted by Jewish rabbis by the time in the

49:19

New Testament was written. And this is the point I was going to make and I'll make when Ben Zion comes in is the fact that, yes, the rabbis may have done the initial translating at 250

49:30

BC. But the majority, if not all of it, was written and translated or translated prior to the time of Christ.

49:41

So the claim that he's making is that the that it really is the Christians who finished that Greek translation and did

49:50

Isaiah to. So the argument is they did it to fit the doctrine of Christianity.

49:57

So it was done after the fact. And yet it was, you know, the he then would have the burden of proof to show who translated

50:06

Isaiah. When was Isaiah translated into the text? Because the those who have done the work on this say that it was within two to two to three hundred years of 250

50:19

BC, which means the majority of the translations were all done before the time of Christ.

50:25

That's right. And much, if not all of them before the writing of the

50:31

New Testament. So let's see some comments that we have here.

50:37

We got this one from David. David says, Hi, Andrew. My wife and I are very grateful for your ministry and have been benefited greatly.

50:47

I was wondering if you would ever consider visiting our church located in Toronto, Canada, to speak.

50:53

The answer is yes. I'd love to just invite me. I mean, people get surprised by this, but look, at Striving for Eternity, we do not have a speaker fee.

51:04

We don't do that so that we can minister to the smaller churches that everybody else ignores.

51:10

So if we have to spend our own money to get to places, we do that. That is what

51:17

I mean, that's what our monthly supporters help us do. And I'll just give a plug then. If you want to if you want to be a monthly supporter, we greatly appreciate it.

51:25

Just go to Striving for Eternity dot org slash support and support us because that allows us to go to a

51:32

Toronto, Canada, to maybe a small church and speak. And so, David, what I would say to do is if you if you want us, if you like us to come and speak, just go to our

51:42

Web site. There is a form to have us come speak or you could just email speaker at Striving for Eternity.

51:50

Sorry, speaker at Striving for Eternity dot com that will get to us and we'll be able to to respond.

51:59

But the Web site is the best way to do it because there's a form that fills out, tells us the dates and the topics that you want discussed.

52:04

And and then we would call you. So, yeah, I'd love to come to Toronto, Canada, but I would prefer

52:10

I'll say this. I'd prefer to come there. In the summer, I was there in the winter,

52:16

I think it was February, January or February. The coldest I had ever been doing open air evangelism.

52:23

We were up there. There was you know, I was the only time I can honestly say I was doing evangelism.

52:29

It was snowing and my eyes actually froze shut. It was snowing and I went like this to wipe the snow out of my eye and it froze.

52:39

I literally had to take my fingers and pry my eye open. That's when I was like, OK, I'm done. This is why

52:45

I live in the South. Yeah, yeah, it was cool. All right. So another question

52:50

I see here from Ryan Leach, he says question. Why do Jewish people become indignant when

52:55

Isaiah 53 is read? Is it because Jesus is the one who fulfilled it?

53:01

Yeah, I think one of the things I want to say this for the Christians listening and I don't want you to get upset.

53:09

You just have to understand a Jewish way of thinking. Being raised a generation after the

53:15

Holocaust, I was raised to believe that Jesus Christ is Hitler's God. Now, let me explain that.

53:22

We didn't we don't have the distinction between Roman Catholicism and Baptists and Lutherans.

53:28

We may understand it a little, but most people think that all Jewish people have a really good handle on the

53:34

Old Testament and really study the Talmud like the Orthodox do and they don't understand all the different divisions within Judaism.

53:41

Well, we don't do that within Christianity either. And so the

53:47

Catholic Church funded Adolf Hitler's Holocaust against Jewish people.

53:53

And so Jesus Christ represents that because all of Christianity we would see in that way.

54:00

So when you think of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ represents the Inquisitions, the

54:06

Crusades, the Holocaust. These things were we would see as being done in the name of Jesus.

54:11

And so, yeah, when when you try to say Jesus is the Messiah to someone who's Jewish, it is a great, actually just mentioning the name

54:19

Jesus is a great offense. Melissa says here,

54:25

Andrew, that's why I really appreciate you. You are generous. You are a generous, that generous, patient guy.

54:34

You are always willing to admit when you have made mistakes. You have a humble spirit, brother.

54:40

Well, I thank you, Melissa. And I mean, I know there's it's actually kind of funny because we have people who don't follow the ministry that say that I'm very argumentative.

54:52

I find it funny that the people who follow the ministry say the exact opposite, but people don't follow the ministry claim they know better.

55:00

I kind of go, what are you looking at now? It could be that they're reading into things, but I just find that to be an interesting thing.

55:09

But I do appreciate it, Melissa. I want to try to be fair with people. It's something we need to I mean,

55:14

I'm trying to put that on display here that for all of it, because that's what we're doing here at Apologetics Live is to show you how to do apologetics.

55:24

So let's see. Dr. Bob says the fact that Paul, Peter, James, etc.

55:32

quote the Old Testament in Greek is strong evidence that an existing corpus of Greek language,

55:40

Old Testament scripture was already in existence. And this is one of the things and this is also one of the things that we're going to get into with Ben Zion.

55:49

And so much of his arguments is not understanding that much of the New Testament, when they are quoting are quoting from a

55:57

Greek translation, not quoting from the actual

56:02

Hebrew. And so there is differences when you do translations. And so and here's Pastor Larry, the pastor of this church.

56:09

He comes in, he's always like, oh, no, no, no. You should get up here on camera and say hello to everybody.

56:15

Pastor Larry is the pastor here of the church. He just got done doing

56:21

Bible study. So you got an audience watching. So you could say I should get out of the way.

56:26

Shalom Aleichem. Where's your

56:32

Bible study on tonight? Book of Revelation, chapter six and eight.

56:39

OK. Things to come. I think you're going through that when I was here last time.

56:47

He's not in a rush to get through the Bible. I like that. He doesn't go verse by verse. He goes word by word.

56:53

Word by word is correct. Yes. And I will lock up before I go. So people are saying hello,

57:01

Pastor Larry. So, yeah, so when we look at the

57:07

Septuagint, we have to recognize that this was something that was in any translation.

57:14

OK, when we're if you're dealing with different languages, you know that sometimes there is not a literal word for how you're going to translate something.

57:24

I like to use this example. But in Cantonese, if I was going to tell

57:29

Drew here that I'm happy. I would literally in English say open heart.

57:36

That's the word for happy. It means to have an open heart.

57:41

That's the word for happy. Now, if I walked up to you, Drew, and said, I'm I'm open heart. You know, you'd be like open heart.

57:50

What surgery you're getting like, what do you mean? Right. But it is the expression that when you're happy, you have an open heart to somebody.

58:00

Your heart is, you know, overflowing with excitement. That's the idea of it.

58:06

Now, you're not going to translate that literally into English. Because that becomes a problem.

58:15

Here you go. There you go. Yeah. So here's someone that's that is says I am Cantonese. I am open heart.

58:25

So so this is the thing when you're doing translation sometimes. So if the

58:30

New Testament writers are quoting from a translation of Hebrew into Greek, which is what many see, they did.

58:39

That's what you're going to have. Oh, look, he's got he's he's got his he came better prepared than me.

58:44

He's got a scroll. Pick that up so people can see in the camera. He's got a kippah on.

58:51

And he see he actually has has what's what would be a prayer shawl. This is not this is just a scarf that I'm wearing.

58:57

He's got an actual, you know, talus is what it would be called. So did you get that in Israel?

59:05

I've been to Israel 12 times. Get ready to go back. I take tours there. So I have friends, both

59:12

Messianic and some that are just regular

59:18

Orthodox. And I have some Palestinian folks. Yes. One of my friends in Bethlehem.

59:27

His father was the one who met the shepherd boy when the

59:34

Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Wow. So I did my I'll say my thesis on the

59:41

Dead Sea Scrolls, went to Israel, met with the father. And I was there last year and he gave me a little jar from the

59:53

Iron Age. Iron Age is 1500 BC. So it's three thousand five hundred year old.

01:00:00

Wow. So oh, and he has in a little room. He has one of the original jars that the

01:00:07

Scroll of Isaiah. Because his dad was the one who got it. Got a shepherd boy.

01:00:14

So, yeah, I have a lot. Now I was in I was in cave one where they found that. Oh, yeah.

01:00:19

I climbed up there and did that. Now I see you also have this in your hands. So do you know do you know how to use this?

01:00:26

No, I'm not very good at it. No, I can blow. I'm from Hawaii. And so I can blow a...

01:00:32

Made in Israel. Yeah. And so... In this room we can maybe do it because in my house

01:00:38

I can never do this. But I got to make sure I'm not too loud and blow your ears out.

01:00:43

But the bigger ones are a lot easier.

01:00:55

Much easier. So. So, Druso, but we have we have a lot more that we're watching.

01:01:02

This is just the co -host. He's like going, where is everybody? No, that's fine. Super. Yeah. Thank you very much,

01:01:08

Pastor Larry. He lets us use this building and he is very gracious when we come up here. He actually lets us stay in his house in the parsonage here.

01:01:18

And so we really appreciate that. So, yeah, it was.

01:01:24

I see someone commenting about Dead Sea Scrolls. It was neat climbing. It wasn't easy to climb up to that.

01:01:30

Yeah, I will say this when we're that shepherd boy was, you know,

01:01:36

I'm just seeing like that is up on a mountain and there's, you know, he had, you know, he's got a flock up there.

01:01:44

I'm going like, really? This is where you're going to bring... Are they a flock of goats? Yeah. And it was like, yeah, it wasn't easy to get up there.

01:01:53

We had a couple of people we were concerned with, take a couple of spills to get up there. So you're also not allowed to go up there, by the way.

01:02:03

Oh, yeah. So we go up there and we find out they're like,

01:02:09

OK, after we're ready on our way up, we're told, OK, we got it.

01:02:14

We got to get running because if they see us, they're going to make a stop once once we're across the way, then they don't stop people.

01:02:23

But if they if they catch you like before, then they stop you from going out there. So it's kind of funny.

01:02:29

So it was like, OK, everyone run. OK, now we're safe. Now we can climb. But yeah, that's pretty funny.

01:02:36

All right. I see one more thing that you start here. This from Katie says,

01:02:41

I'm not a debater and I don't I don't know how. The only time

01:02:47

I I suggested being willing to debate was due to wanting someone to believe this the same so much.

01:02:55

I it didn't happen. I it's best

01:03:00

I avoid debating. You know, the issue is we all debate whether we know it or not.

01:03:06

Right. OK. A debate is making an argument and we all do that.

01:03:13

We all make arguments all the time. We don't think of it as a debate. It's just when you're having a discussion and someone disagrees with you and you try to make a point, that technically is a debate.

01:03:28

A debate is not a bad thing. An argument's not a bad thing. An argument's a good thing.

01:03:33

You're making a statement and supporting it. That's what an argument is. That's something that's good to do.

01:03:40

Yeah. OK. And so when you end up having people that they think of a debate or an argument as a bad thing, it's typically because what they think of as a debate or an argument is yelling at each other, name calling, things like that.

01:03:59

One of the things if you engage long enough and I would encourage people to engage because it gives you good opportunities to work on your listening skills.

01:04:11

And one of the best ways to be a good debater is to be a good listener. Yeah. And Darren says this, you can't be friends with Andrew and not debate.

01:04:22

That's true. That's probably pretty true because I like, I think iron sharpens iron. I like the discussion.

01:04:28

I like to have some of that. It's good. I see Ben Zion is trying to make his way in.

01:04:34

Once he gets, I see he's, I don't see him on camera at least, but I'll give a sec to see if he can connect because one of the things with this is we can't tell if he's actually in until, you know, like when his camera's on and you can see.

01:04:49

But let me say this while we're waiting for him to connect fully or at least hopefully, is

01:04:56

I want to give a shout out to another podcast to listen to. If you listen to this podcast,

01:05:03

Apologetics Live, or my rap report podcast, you know, or Matter of Theology, which is

01:05:10

Drew's podcast, those three that I mentioned are part of the Christian podcast community. We're glad to be part of that, but I want to give a shout out to one that's not.

01:05:18

If you guys like some of what we're discussing about having good discussions, even where you disagree,

01:05:26

I want to give you a consideration to think about listening to Conversations That Matter with John Harris.

01:05:33

I started listening to them. Yeah, that's what he does. He likes to research before he speaks, but he has guys on to learn from them.

01:05:42

He may not agree with them, but he does that so he can learn and so that he can have them explain their own view.

01:05:50

Crazy idea. Let people explain their own view. So I encourage you guys to check out

01:05:56

Conversations That Matter with John Harris. So, all right, so let me bring him on.

01:06:03

So Ben Zion, I see in the back, he says, I'm here. I'm just not on camera. So first off, am

01:06:09

I pronouncing your name properly? Hi, can you guys hear me?

01:06:16

Yes, we hear you. Sorry, because my phone keeps on like stopping. So if I get disconnected, maybe

01:06:22

I'll switch to my iPad. But for now, let me know if there's any issues. Sure. And so help me out, because I've been pronouncing your name, hopefully correctly, but I'm not 100 % sure.

01:06:33

How do you pronounce your name? Okay, so first of all, I want to say hi. I'm sorry, I didn't really introduce, I didn't say hi at all.

01:06:39

My name is Ben Zion Eisenberg. So like Zion meaning like son of Zion, basically would be the translation.

01:06:46

So the TZ is pronounced together, Ben Zion. And then

01:06:52

Eisenberg is my last name. Ben Zion, okay. So I've been mispronouncing it for three hours, two hours last week and one hour today.

01:07:02

Forgive me. So, okay, so if we could. Hopefully that's the least of your mistakes today.

01:07:11

Oh no, I'm sure I'll have more. I have no fear. So let's jump into this. I know you didn't listen to the first part, but I mean, it's six pages.

01:07:21

We have an hour left. We don't need to go through all the stuff.

01:07:27

I actually thought we were just going to review the two issues that you spoke about last week, because I wanted a chance to respond to some things you said.

01:07:35

Yeah, go for it. And let me just say, folks, if people are listening to this and don't know what we're responding to,

01:07:43

I encourage them to go back to last week's episode and listen to that so that they have more context, because we're not going to be able to give all the context of a two hour show.

01:07:52

Again, so go ahead. No, so I'll just kind of make my short pitch for why

01:07:59

I think, I mean, the two issues that you spoke about last week were basically Matthew, Matthew's, in Matthew 1 .23,

01:08:10

his virgin birth narrative, and the fact that he says

01:08:15

Isaiah 7 .14 is a prophecy alluding to the virgin birth. I was contending that that is completely misquoted and taken out of context and mistranslated.

01:08:29

And because that's true, the entire New Testament is completely untrustworthy, because if I could demonstrate that he purposely misled people in order to believe in his religion, you simply can't trust anything he said.

01:08:43

Plus, it's certainly not divine in any way, if there are mistakes or there's misleadings in any way.

01:08:52

So that's the one issue you spoke about and I emailed you about. And the other thing you brought up was my question

01:08:57

I had about the ability for Jesus to be the Messiah if he doesn't have a biological father.

01:09:03

So maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later. So let's get right into Matthew 1 .23,

01:09:10

if you don't mind. Yeah, so your argument, I'm going to restate it so we make sure that we're clear, and,

01:09:17

Drew, I'm going to ask you to just star any questions that you may see that come up just so we can get to them.

01:09:24

So you're saying that, first off, you're claiming that Matthew did this deliberately, correct?

01:09:30

Yes. Okay. You're claiming that the word Alma cannot mean virgin, correct?

01:09:39

It does not mean virgin, yes. No, no, I'm being very specific. Can it mean virgin?

01:09:46

It's hard to know when you say can, what can means. Theoretically, it's possible, it just doesn't.

01:09:52

In the Hebrew language, it does not mean virgin. So no one would ever translate the word

01:09:59

Alma as a virgin? Correct. No one who is familiar with the

01:10:04

Old Testament. Okay. Okay, so we have a Greek translation of the

01:10:11

Old Testament done before the time of Christ, where they did do that.

01:10:17

Okay, so you alluded to the fact that I pointed out in my email to you that no

01:10:25

Jew believes that the Septuagint was translated by the rabbis 200 years before Christianity, aside for the first five books of the

01:10:38

Torah. The first five books of the Torah, we agree, were translated by the rabbis 200 years approximately before Christianity.

01:10:46

But we deny completely that it was anything more than those first five books. And it's not just Jews that make that claim.

01:10:55

Any biblical scholar will agree with me. If any of your viewers want to Google it, you can go on Wikipedia.

01:11:02

I have a list of Christian scholars who all agree that that's true.

01:11:09

If you want, I can… No, no, no, we don't need to waste time. I actually already covered this bit. So when was the books, the book of Isaiah translated into Greek?

01:11:25

I do not have an exact person or time. I know that Origen and Lucian were the ones that shaped the

01:11:35

Septuagint, the entire one. And the Septuagint has been… we don't have manuscripts of the original

01:11:41

Septuagint, obviously. The Septuagint that we have has been handled by the Christians for the last 1 ,800 years.

01:11:49

And therefore, nothing in it is at all a proof to what the original

01:11:55

Greek translation was. And again, it doesn't matter because the first five books were the only things anyway translated by the rabbis.

01:12:02

Everyone agrees to that. I'm sorry. It's not really up for debate. So you know for a fact that no rabbis translated anything other than the first five books, right?

01:12:14

You're talking about into Greek 200 years BCE? Any time before the time of Christ, you're saying that no rabbi could have.

01:12:23

I didn't say they couldn't. I didn't say they couldn't have. They didn't. And you know that for a fact?

01:12:29

There's no evidence that they did. Well, actually, no. The evidence we have is that the first five books were translated by rabbis.

01:12:38

And after that, we don't know who did some of that translation. Oh, so you agree that there's no evidence that a rabbi translated

01:12:45

Isaiah. You just admitted that. Now, here's the thing. First off, I want folks to see what you're doing because you're saying that anyone who knows

01:12:55

Hebrew, when you get to the Septuagint, you say it has to only be rabbis. Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, please let me.

01:13:03

I don't want to get confrontational with you. I want to be very clear. I want to be very clear when

01:13:09

I'm saying I didn't think we were going to go straight to the Septuagint. To me, that's a little bit of a side point. We're talking about the translation instead of the original language, which

01:13:17

I understand Christians want to do because with all due respect, I don't know about you, but 99 .9

01:13:24

percent of them don't know the original language. But if you want to talk about the Septuagint, you just agreed that there's no evidence that the rabbis translated anything more than the five books.

01:13:35

Josephus says it was only the five books. I didn't agree to that. What I agreed to is seeing what you just did was flip what

01:13:43

I said to say the exact opposite. OK, what did you say? What I said is that what we know is that the first five books were written by my rabbis.

01:13:51

I said nothing about who wrote the rest of them. In fact, I said we don't know. It could have been rabbis.

01:13:57

Your claim is it wasn't rabbis. You would have the burden of proof to prove.

01:14:04

Andrew, Andrew, with all due respect, that is an absolutely ridiculous claim. You're trying to prove that the

01:14:11

Jewish people translated Isaiah 714 as virgin because Jewish rabbis translated it before Christianity.

01:14:19

And you're telling me I have to prove that the rabbis didn't translate it. Well, I'm sorry. This is this is pretty basic.

01:14:25

OK, yeah, it is. You made a claim and I'm asking you to support your claim. You have the burden of proof.

01:14:32

You are telling me that the Jews translated it. I didn't make the claim, you did. No, no, no.

01:14:38

You claimed that no rabbi translated anything other than the first five books.

01:14:44

Andrew, let's let's start from the beginning. You tried to tell me that to support

01:14:49

Matthew's mistranslation that rabbis. Hold it, stop right there. You haven't proven it's a mistranslation.

01:14:55

Because you didn't want to talk about it. You just jumped straight to the Septuagint. I'm happy. I have pages and pages of notes here that I want to discuss about the word

01:15:03

Alma in the Hebrew. But you jumped straight to the Septuagint. So if you want to speak about the Septuagint, be honest.

01:15:10

You're the one. The point that you bring with Septuagint is that you're trying to defend Christianity by saying that rabbis translated the same as Matthew.

01:15:18

But you have no proof that rabbis translated it. But I never said rabbis, did I? You did. Okay, Andrew.

01:15:25

So you have to be honest with what I'm saying. So please tell me what you're saying. I'm saying it was translated from Hebrew into Greek.

01:15:35

Is that so hard to understand? But that's irrelevant if it wasn't done by Jews. Ah, so who did it?

01:15:46

I just told you there is no proof or no indication that any Jew ever translated anything besides the first five books.

01:15:54

So what we do know is it was the translation started in 250

01:16:00

BC. And over the next two to three hundred years, it was we have the translations that occur.

01:16:07

So are you telling me I'm just curious, you know, maybe this is possible. Are you saying that Christians got into a time machine, went back in time and translated

01:16:18

Hebrew into Greek before there was a Christianity? When you have proof, you're asking that question, assuming that it was translated 200 years

01:16:30

B .C. Who said it was when you have the manuscript from two from 200 B .C. of the Septuagint on Isaiah.

01:16:37

I have no idea. I have no idea when it was. You have no idea when it was when it was translated into Greek.

01:16:43

The only thing we know based on Jewish tradition, we have no idea. The only thing we know, if there is a first century copy of the

01:16:53

Greek translation, wouldn't that be a proof?

01:16:59

Proof to what? That it was translated before there was a Christianity. If you have a translation of the books of the

01:17:08

Old Testament in Greek before Christ. Then wouldn't that itself be proof that it was translated before and not after Christianity?

01:17:20

Obviously, if you found if you had evidence that it was translated before Christianity, it would be proof that it was translated before Christianity.

01:17:26

But A, you don't have that. And B, that doesn't mean that anyone with any knowledge of Hebrew translated it. So it's irrelevant.

01:17:32

OK, so OK, you're trying to say people who don't know

01:17:38

Hebrew. Translated it and they did it, according to you. For the purpose of promoting a

01:17:45

Christianity that didn't exist at the time it was translated. Andrew, do you have evidence that it was that it was that that the

01:17:54

Septuagint was translated? Isaiah was translating to Greek before Christianity started. Well, actually,

01:18:00

I did. I did do some research on this. And it's every single scholar that I see says that it was started in 250

01:18:08

B .C. It was started by the Jews. The first five books. Nothing else. Josephus, do you agree that Josephus was the greatest historian of the time?

01:18:18

He says it was only the first five books. That's it. Jerome agrees. Can I ask you a question?

01:18:25

Is there a reason that you keep cutting me off and not letting me finish sentences? I apologize.

01:18:31

There is no reason. I'm just I'm a little bit frustrated because it doesn't seem like you're understanding what

01:18:36

I'm saying. Well, what it may be is you're frustrated because you're not. It seems that you're not even attempting to listen to what

01:18:44

I'm saying or to engage with it. So you're jumping to try to prove something that you claim you have no burden of proof on, but you keep making claims that that you can't support.

01:18:58

So let's get to the other thing. Can you prove your claim that Matthew deliberately mistranslate or use the word for virgin to to deceive people?

01:19:14

I forget how you exactly worded. I think you said that he did it deliberately, I think, in here to lie to people.

01:19:24

Yeah, Matt, you said Matthew knew that he he wanted to deceive people.

01:19:31

So can you can you support the claim that we're where do you how do you know Matthew did this deliberately to deceive people?

01:19:38

OK, I just want to I'm very happy to discuss that. I just want to make one more point about the subdued and just to clarify.

01:19:43

Even if you would even if you would be able to prove that the that the

01:19:49

Septuagint was started by was started to be translated into Greek, aside from the original five books by non -Jews before Christianity started, that that wouldn't prove that the translation that that we have now for for Isaiah 714 is the same translation that it was done originally, because it's been in the hands of Christians the entire time for the last 1 ,800 years.

01:20:13

And they've made switches all over to support the New Testament. So, again, it's OK. I'll accept that.

01:20:20

Now, I want to I want to use what you said and see if if this applies. Can we then throw out the entire Talmud since that was in the hands of Jewish people the entire course?

01:20:29

No Jew would ever use the Talmud to prove to prove Judaism. Of course not. I'm not.

01:20:36

That's a complete misconception. We could throw out the Tanakh. If you believe in Andrew, the

01:20:43

Tanakh, you and every Christian believes is the word of God. Judaism could be true and Christianity could be false.

01:20:49

But Christianity cannot be true if if Judaism is not true. But your argument, the argument you're making is if Christians had control of it, we can't trust it.

01:21:02

Because it proves Christianity. Therefore, we can't take anything that proves anything that would prove

01:21:09

Judaism. We can't accept because that if it's in the hands of Jewish people. Right, Andrew. Andrew, I agree that the

01:21:16

Talmud, I would never in a million years use the Talmud to prove Judaism. Of course not.

01:21:21

But we both agree. That's the whole point of this conversation. We both agree that the Old Testament is the word of God.

01:21:27

Every single word of it. You agree. Andy agrees. And everyone else that's watching agrees.

01:21:34

So it's silly to have this conversation. Well, no, it isn't. It actually isn't silly. What I'm what I'm trying to do is see a consistency in your argument.

01:21:41

I am 100 percent consistent. I'm talking. I will. I will. I think I could pretty pretty easily prove you inconsistent in in the document you sent.

01:21:51

But here's the thing. So so your your argument is that non -Jewish people translated the word

01:22:04

Alma as virgin, correct? Well, I don't know.

01:22:09

I don't know how to pronounce the Greek translation. It was the word with the P at the beginning of it. That has a whole different conversation about whether or not that actually means virgin.

01:22:18

But they translated the Greeks of Tzuyin definitely does at this point have that word, which implies either virgin or sometimes virgin.

01:22:26

I'm not an expert. But my point is that that was never, ever done by a Jew. OK, and you can support that claim.

01:22:34

How? That what? Well, you just said that was that never, ever could have been done by a

01:22:40

Jewish person. Because the word doesn't mean the word does not mean virgin.

01:22:45

So no Jew in a million years would translate as virgin. It cannot mean virgin. No, it cannot.

01:22:52

Andrew, do you speak Hebrew? I'm not I'm not I have no idea. And it's a fair question. No, no.

01:22:57

I learned Hebrew as a child and I gave it up at 14. And so, no, I don't speak it in here.

01:23:03

OK, I'm being completely sincere. I'm not trying to make fun of you or any of your your viewers.

01:23:10

You're striving for eternity. And that's very noble of you. Don't you think it's a little bit odd that your attorneys on the line and it's based on and your attorneys based on a document written by God that you can't read in the original language?

01:23:27

Don't you think that's a little bit strange? So the issue there are several things.

01:23:34

Your attorneys on the line as well. And the knowledge of the original language is is extremely helpful, but not required.

01:23:41

It's not helpful. It is 100 percent required. We're trying to figure out if Matthew deliberately lied or not.

01:23:48

And Matthew has besides this one, I forgot, nine or 10 or 11 other prophecies that were supposedly fulfilled by Jesus from the

01:23:57

Old Testament. If you can't analyze them in the original language, then you're kind of stuck. No, actually, we're not stuck at all because we can we can look at the word usage in many other many documents.

01:24:08

But you're right. I take that back. I take that back. You're not stuck.

01:24:14

There is. But it makes it much harder. Let me try. I agree with you. It makes it harder. But here's the thing. Let me let me try to explain to you where I'm coming from, because we're just we're not we're not getting to the point.

01:24:23

Well, I just want you made a claim. I just want to see. Is Matthew Jewish? I believe so.

01:24:30

OK, so I want to point out just just you remind me with that question. I am not a scholar at all.

01:24:36

I don't know a lot. Anytime I make a mistake, it's it should not in any way shed any light on Judaism as a whole.

01:24:44

I'm just someone who was interested in your show. And I had some questions. So I'm certainly not a scholar.

01:24:49

As far as I know, Matthew is Jewish, though. Yeah. And look, I'm not holding you things. I want to me.

01:24:56

The most important thing is that, you know, you hear the the the gospel message because it's going to be essential to you because you are right.

01:25:04

Your eternal soul is on the line. You would say mine is. And we both are going to see that with each other.

01:25:12

And out of a care for one another, we should want the each other to know the truth.

01:25:17

Right. And so so here's the thing. You said that nobody would translate. No one that's that knows no

01:25:23

Jewish person knowing Hebrew would translate Alma as virgin. And yet,

01:25:29

Matthew, someone who's Jewish and knew Hebrew, according to you, did that.

01:25:35

Andrew, are you serious? Well, you said you you're the one that used in the emphatic.

01:25:41

I didn't. Andrew, you're just playing games. Can we go can we get to real to real points? No, I want folks to see what it is.

01:25:48

It's kind of like Andrew. Andrew, everyone knows what you're doing here. It's just wasting time. What I'm doing is I'm pointing out errors.

01:25:54

When I said every Jew, I mean, every Jew besides the person who's trying to create a new religion and fake things.

01:26:02

I'm sorry when I said everyone, I there was one exception proof that he was deliberate with this.

01:26:07

And he OK, so let's so let's get so let's get that. Let's get to that. OK, so Alma for any any

01:26:15

Jew. I'm sorry, not any. Ninety nine point nine nine nine nine percent of Jews know that Alma does not mean virgin.

01:26:23

Alma is given in Tanakh in the Old Testament, I think nine, 10 or 11 times. It's never referring to a virgin.

01:26:30

It's never referring to the person's sexuality. It's always referring to a the age of a young woman.

01:26:37

That's all it is. Every single time it has nothing to do with virginity. You made a statement last week.

01:26:44

Unless I misheard, if your attorney wasn't on the line, it would be funny. But it's shocking. You said that there's no

01:26:51

Hebrew word for virgin. And I dealt with that earlier and said and I corrected that if I said that it was an error.

01:26:58

OK, I respect that. I respect the fact that there is differences in languages, being that Hebrew Hebrew just doesn't have as many words as as Greek does.

01:27:09

Just pure. OK, I respect that. It's on like eight thousand, ten thousand Hebrew words.

01:27:15

I think like I think it's like thirty thousand Greek words. I'm off. I'm sure. But there's more.

01:27:22

I appreciate the fact that you you acknowledge that. It's very, very important because if there was no word in Hebrew for virgin, then this would be a little bit more complicated.

01:27:31

But the word for the word for virgin all over the Old Testament is one word and one word only.

01:27:36

And that's the Sula. It's an it's all over the place. It's literally in the Old Testament over a hundred times in Isaiah itself.

01:27:44

It's there five times. But I want to ask you a question. You your argument is that in Isaiah seven, it was it speaks about a specific maiden at the time.

01:27:59

Correct. Yes or no. I mean, I can

01:28:05

I can I can read where you. If you wouldn't mind, could I just could I just like go for one or two minutes just explaining my point of view and I'll get to the actual verse.

01:28:16

I definitely want to talk about the specific verse. But I just want to give your your your viewers some sort of understanding of where Jews coming from when they when they when they see

01:28:26

Matthew. Because the word Alma in the Old Testament is never, ever used to anything to do with virginity.

01:28:33

It's talking about a young woman every single time. But I got to stop you there because that's not the argument being made.

01:28:42

So if you're going to want to deal honestly, you have to be honestly. Nobody is saying that Alma means is talking about virginity.

01:28:54

No one. So what are you claiming Alma means Alma Alma in Hebrew is referring to a young maiden.

01:29:01

Typically, someone who's a young maiden would be a virgin. Correct. OK, so that's not what the word means.

01:29:10

OK. It's like, Andrew, it's like, let me give you an example. If I tell if I point to some some some boy across the street and I say, look at that boy and the boy happens to be short and have blue eyes.

01:29:23

That doesn't mean the word boy means kids that are short with blue eyes. It just means that that happens to be the type of boy

01:29:29

I'm talking about. It doesn't change the meaning of the word boy. Alma refers to oftentimes people that happen to be virgins.

01:29:36

But that's not what the word means. The word for virginity and for virgin is clear. It's all over the

01:29:42

Old Testament. It's Bisola. Unless unless, of course, God had a dual meaning for it.

01:29:47

Correct. No, no. It doesn't change the word. If the word doesn't mean virgin, he could have as many dual meanings as he wants.

01:29:54

It doesn't mean virgin. So when Matthew comes to the and it can't possibly mean a woman who isn't, it can't mean a young woman who hasn't had sex.

01:30:04

It can't mean that. Right. It doesn't mean that it could refer to someone who who is who is a virgin.

01:30:09

But it doesn't mean virgin. This is an extremely important point. No. And you made you just made my point.

01:30:16

And what's the point? What's the point that it could mean that? No, no, no, no, no.

01:30:21

You're misinterpreting what I said. I did not say it could mean virgin. I said it could. It always means young woman.

01:30:28

Young women sometimes are virgins and sometimes they're not. So it could be referring to someone who happens to be a virgin.

01:30:35

Okay. Also happens to have it. Who also happens to have one woman who is a virgin. Correct. Who also happens to have blonde hair and blue eyes and is tall and skinny.

01:30:44

But that doesn't mean that the word means all those things. Those are characteristics of a particular person, not the meaning of the word.

01:30:51

But your argument that you're making is that he deliberately translated this in a way that is in opposition to the way the word could be used.

01:31:03

And yet you're saying it could be used this way. You don't see a contradiction in what you're saying. It seems like you're not you're not understanding me.

01:31:11

Oh, no, I am. I'm understanding you. But what I want you to do is understand yourself. Look, here's the thing.

01:31:18

It's OK. Whatever. You could just say Ben. Well, OK, here's the thing.

01:31:26

And you could go back and listen to the beginning of show later in here. But, you know, one of the things that people have a tendency to do is we don't question our own presuppositions.

01:31:36

We don't we tend to think we're right and we don't hear out what someone's saying. And so when you make claims that Matthew was deliberately doing this, you're judging his motives, first off, which you can't possibly know.

01:31:52

I could I could demonstrate it for you. OK, go ahead. OK, so now that we've established that Alma does not mean virgin, it means that you assume that,

01:32:02

Andrew, we're never going to be able to accomplish anything if we can't get this get this point. I thought you agreed to me.

01:32:09

Can Alma refer to a young maiden who is a virgin? Yes or no. When you say refer, what do you mean?

01:32:17

Well, it means the word does does if you would read in a scripture the word Alma, does that mean that God is saying that she's that it means a virgin?

01:32:29

Or depending on the context, it happens maybe to be speaking about someone who also is a virgin.

01:32:35

So if I'm referring to a young maiden. And I want to use a word that can refer to one young maiden who will later have children and she would be a virgin now and refer to another woman that is a young maiden that is a virgin when she gives birth.

01:32:54

Couldn't I use the same word and both would refer to a young maiden who would be a virgin?

01:33:03

Again, I don't we're not really getting anywhere. The word doesn't mean it doesn't mean virgin.

01:33:10

It's like saying I have a question. Andrew, let me let me give you an example. Let's say Drew wants to ask a question.

01:33:17

Okay, so in the Jewish culture, okay, would a young woman of marriageable age, would she typically be considered a virgin not having had intercourse?

01:33:29

Would she be considered a virgin? Would she be Alma? And is there a term for a woman who would not be a virgin?

01:33:41

Yes. The word for someone who's not a virgin is B 'ula. That's all over the

01:33:47

Old Testament. B 'ula means non -virgin. B'Sula means virgin.

01:33:52

Those are the only words that describe virginity in the Torah. So the non -virgin is how we would consider a woman who has had intercourse, correct?

01:34:07

Correct. Okay, so it sounds like the young maiden in the

01:34:13

Jewish culture is a virgin who has not known a man is what it sounds like.

01:34:22

No, because there could be young maidens. There could be young women who have known men. It's either way.

01:34:28

Right. That's why I asked the follow -up question of what would you call a woman who has known a man? That's if you're describing her virginity.

01:34:37

Most of the time, you don't go around the street looking at people and labeling them virgins. When you're describing a virgin because it has some legal ramifications like the

01:34:47

Old Testament does all the time or some important prophecy like Matthew wants to say, you would use the word virgin.

01:34:54

But when you're talking about people just describing their age, we don't care about – we're not talking about their virginity, so we don't talk about that.

01:35:00

What word would we use to refer to people like that then? To people like what? Well, you're saying by age, how would we refer to a young maiden?

01:35:11

I just – an alma. Oh, you mean exactly the way it was used?

01:35:17

What do you mean by a maiden? Do you mean a virgin? Well, a maiden could be a virgin.

01:35:23

Could she not? I don't want to get – argue about what the word maiden means. Let's just – let's be clear on our terms.

01:35:28

Okay. Alma means – I just want to make sure I get this. So every time

01:35:34

I point out that you're agreeing with me, you go, I don't want to discuss that. Let's just move on. I'm not – I never – please,

01:35:40

Andrew, please don't do that. That's a childish move. I'm not trying – I never say I don't want to discuss anything.

01:35:45

I never said that, and I think your viewers are smart enough to realize that. You just said let's move on when –

01:35:50

No, no. I didn't say let's move on. You're saying – you're appealing to the listeners, so here's what Dr.

01:35:55

Bob says. Ben just lost his point. So yeah, the listeners can see it because –

01:36:01

Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. Alma can mean virgin. It can refer to – Andrew, Andrew, I'm sorry. With all due respect, with all due respect,

01:36:08

Dr. Bob, I'm sure, is a brilliant guy. He doesn't know Hebrew, and he doesn't know what he's talking about. Okay, so this is the logical fallacy, folks, a fallacy of authority.

01:36:19

This is when someone claims that they have an authority. You just quoted Dr. Bob, and you're telling me about fallacy of authority.

01:36:26

No, no, no. You just quoted Dr. Bob, an anonymous guy on the internet. You appealed to the audience, and it just happened that the audience responded at the time when you said – and he responded before you got a chance to appeal to that.

01:36:38

Andrew, I feel like we're wasting valuable time. Could we talk about real issues? Let me explain to you.

01:36:43

Could you just give me a few minutes to make my argument for why I think that Matthew misconstrued stuff?

01:36:49

Okay. Okay. Let me read Matthew inside word for word, and then I'll read Isaiah word for word, and then we'll analyze them, okay?

01:36:57

Matthew says in 123, Behold, a virgin shall be with a child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name

01:37:03

Immanuel, which being interpreted as God with us. And this is, again, based on Isaiah 714.

01:37:12

Okay? So let's look at the words that Isaiah himself used. Isaiah 714, if you look at the actual

01:37:20

Hebrew words, I'm translating the Hebrew words word for word, it says, Therefore the Lord of his own shall give you a sign.

01:37:28

Behold, a young woman is with a child, and she shall bear a son, and she shall call him Immanuel. So Matthew looks at this verse, and he sees the word

01:37:37

Alma, and he says that this proves the fact that in 714,

01:37:42

Isaiah says that an Alma will give birth, proves that 700 years later,

01:37:49

Jesus will be born of a virgin. Now let's give some context because often Christians, again, with all due respect, have no idea what the context of the verse is.

01:37:59

I don't know. It might come to a surprise to people, but Isaiah 714 has six chapters before it, and they're not like empty verses.

01:38:09

They actually have words there. And same with in Chapter 17. There's 13 verses before that are like they actually have black letters and words that describe a narrative.

01:38:19

And 714— And I just want to point out, and you're not being insulting in saying that that way, right?

01:38:26

I apologize if I insulted you, Andrew. No, no. I mean, the way you're trying to demean people and be like it's written in black letters and things.

01:38:34

I mean, I'm just pointing out because you were the one who pointed out the manner in which we should be discussing.

01:38:42

So I'm just trying to point out that you keep projecting your own behavior on us.

01:38:47

Okay. I'm just pointing it out too. Can he be any more condescending? So it is coming through in tone in some of the things that he's saying.

01:38:56

Now, Ben, you may not be intending to. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt with that.

01:39:02

You may not be intending to, but it is— Okay. I apologize. I'll try to be more friendly.

01:39:09

I didn't mean to be condescending. I think, Ben, you may not even recognize the—you believe that you're right.

01:39:20

I get that. Okay? And it wasn't—you took my comment and email as insult, and it wasn't when

01:39:28

I said assumptions with arrogance. That's a thing when someone is doing something, a fallacy known as begging the question.

01:39:39

You start with your conclusion and assume it's right and then take another fallacy, a logical fallacy, where we take only information that supports our claims and ignore anything that doesn't support our claims.

01:39:50

Okay? When you do that, that is—you start with an assumption, and then it becomes an arrogant thing of—and

01:40:00

I'm not saying this to be insulting. I'm just saying it's a thing where you're not taking in anything that would disagree with your position, so you're not being honest with the information.

01:40:11

And so the way that comes across then is the way of where you say language, maybe you don't mean it to be insulting, and I would take it if you say,

01:40:25

I didn't mean it that way, I would take it that you don't mean it that way. But it comes across that way, and it's something that you have to actually engage with what people are saying.

01:40:36

That's all. So continue. Okay. I apologize again. I'm sorry. I'll try to be more—I don't know what the word is, but I apologize if I offended anyone.

01:40:49

Let me give you a little bit of a history of the context in which

01:40:54

Isaiah 714 is written. It's very important to understand a verse to know the context.

01:41:01

I only said what I said before because I believe Drew last week said he didn't see anything about Ahaz in that chapter.

01:41:12

So let me explain. Ahaz is—basically there's a civil war in Israel, and this whole story has taken place about 730 years before Jesus is born.

01:41:27

And there's two kingdoms. There's Israel in the north with about 10 tribes, and Judah in the south.

01:41:35

Judah would include the Davidic monarchy, along with Benjamin and parts of the

01:41:42

Levian and the Kohanim. And Ahaz is the king of Judah, and he's a very wicked man.

01:41:50

Although his ancestors were righteous and his son is actually one of the greatest Jews of all time,

01:41:56

Chiskiyot, he himself is a very wicked man. And it's interesting, when you read

01:42:02

Isaiah, you don't get the history of Ahaz. You have to look at other parts of the

01:42:09

Old Testament, like 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, where it discusses—it fills in the missing parts of Ahaz's life.

01:42:17

But either way, Ahaz is being threatened because the king in the north is

01:42:24

Pekah, son of Ramalia, and he teams up with Rez, the king of Aram, which is

01:42:30

Syria. And they come to attack Ahaz and Jerusalem, and they've set a siege around Jerusalem.

01:42:39

And Ahaz is trembling, and he's in incredible fear. There's no food, and they're about to get destroyed by two kingdoms.

01:42:46

And this is the context that Isaiah comes to Ahaz, and they meet by some water system or something at the beginning of the chapter.

01:42:56

And he basically tells Ahaz that you have nothing to worry about. God's going to be with you, and he says, do you want a sign?

01:43:02

And Ahaz says, faking humility, he doesn't want a sign. But then Isaiah says, this will be your sign anyway.

01:43:09

And this is the sign, and this is where Isaiah 7 .14 comes. So that's where Isaiah says that there will be a young woman in Alma who is pregnant, and she will give birth to a son, and she will call his name

01:43:26

Immanuel. And Immanuel—names are very important because the names signify the fact that God will—the meaning of the name is an indication of what

01:43:37

God is going to do. And Immanuel means Hashem is with us, God's with us, meaning Hashem will save you.

01:43:42

And if you read the ensuing verses, 15 and 16, the sign becomes clear.

01:43:50

That basically—let me get it in front of me. Let me read it inside.

01:43:56

It says, right after that, he will eat cream and honey. It's talking about the child born as soon as he knows to abort evil and choose good.

01:44:04

Meaning right before he actually is mature enough to know the difference between good and bad, he will eat milk and honey, a cream and honey.

01:44:11

For before the child will know to abort evil and choose good, the land of the two kings, who you fear—again, these two kings are the kings of the north and of Syria—will be abandoned.

01:44:20

And later on, it goes through—it basically says the same thing over in the next chapter.

01:44:25

So the context of this prophecy is the fact that a woman will give birth—the

01:44:32

Alma, this woman who we're arguing about what that means—will give birth to a child. The child will be called Immanuel.

01:44:37

And that child, before he even grows up to be a toddler, he will already be eating delicacies because the siege will be gone, the famine will be gone.

01:44:49

He'll have—and the two kingdoms that Achaz is terrified of will be vanished.

01:44:54

Now, if you look at 2 Kings, this is exactly what happened. The two kings were assassinated. And in reality, that's—for a few decades, they lived in peace.

01:45:05

Now, if you want to tell me that—if Matthew wants to tell me that Isaiah 714 is somehow alluding to Jesus' birth 730 years later, how in the world will that be of any assurance to Achaz, who has two kings and two armies about to kill him?

01:45:24

And who's the child—Jesus had two kings that were killed before he was a two - or three -year -old, and he was eating cream and honey.

01:45:35

How in the world does this have anything to do with Jesus? It has nothing to do with Jesus. Now, this is me granting you that the word means virgin.

01:45:42

Even if the word means virgin, it has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. If you read it in context, it can't be referring to Jesus.

01:45:49

Now, let me just make one more point, and then I'll let you respond. Matthew—if I haven't convinced you that Matthew was deliberately taking something that's not talking about Jesus and applying it to Jesus' life, now listen carefully, because this should do it.

01:46:07

If you look carefully, and if you know the Hebrew—I'm not saying this to be condescending—if you know the

01:46:12

Hebrew well, you'll notice three or four changes, subtle changes, that Matthew makes.

01:46:17

You have to be able to look in the Hebrew to understand this, that he deliberately changes in order to fit with Jesus, because it doesn't fit.

01:46:27

The original words do not fit if it's referring to Jesus. So what are they? Matthew says, Behold, a virgin shall be with a child.

01:46:34

Now, obviously the big one is the virgin. I claim it doesn't say virgin, it doesn't mean virgin, it means young woman.

01:46:41

He changes the—it says in Hebrew, ha 'alma, the virgin. The he, at the beginning, the prefix he, which means the virgin, means it's a—he is the definite article, meaning it's describing a noun that everyone knows.

01:46:59

Meaning Isaiah is talking to Ahaz and saying, the virgin that you know about—I'm sorry, not the virgin, I take that back.

01:47:05

I've been on your show—I've been listening to your show too long. The young woman that you know about, meaning not some random someone in the future, 700 years, the woman that you know about will give birth to a child.

01:47:20

So the first thing Matthew does is he takes out that he, he drops it. He doesn't—if you look at the translation, you can open up your

01:47:26

Bible, Matthew 1 .23. It does not say, Behold, the virgin. He changes the words. He says,

01:47:32

Behold, a virgin. That's, that's the first, the first deliberate change he makes in order to fit with Jesus.

01:47:38

The next one, again, this is besides the virgin. Let me just, I'm sorry, let me just finish and then I'll be happy to respond.

01:47:45

Then he changes it to, shall be with a child. But if you know the Hebrew, it does not say shall be with a child.

01:47:54

It says outright that she's already pregnant. It says in Hebrew, לכן ייתן אדוני הולכם אוס הנה העלמה הראה וילד הספין וקראה זה שמו אמנואל.

01:48:05

העלמה הראה, the word hara means she is pregnant already.

01:48:11

Matthew can't have that because then obviously someone who's pregnant 732 years before Jesus is born cannot be referring to Jesus' mother.

01:48:20

And therefore Matthew completely cuts out that word and instead places in shall become pregnant.

01:48:27

Shall be with a child. He just changes the word of the Bible. He changes the word of God to make it fit.

01:48:33

Next, next, next deliberate change. It says in the pasuk, it says in the verse, ויכרסו שמו אמנואל.

01:48:42

Which means she will call his name Emmanuel. Meaning Isaiah is saying that the mother who gives birth will be, what

01:48:49

God is saying that she should call his name Emmanuel. Matthew can't have that because Mary never called him

01:48:56

Emmanuel. Mary called him Yeshua. And therefore, what does he do?

01:49:02

He changes the words of God and says, and they shall call his name Emmanuel. These are not, these are not mistakes.

01:49:08

They're deliberate because the original language cannot fit with the narrative that it's referring to Jesus.

01:49:14

So he literally changes the words of the original words to make it fit. Drew, you had something you wanted to say first.

01:49:24

Yeah. So his, his point about the definite article, the, right. He's saying, Ben, you're saying that in the

01:49:32

English, it replaces the definite article the with the indefinite article a right.

01:49:38

Correct. Well, in Greek, there is no indefinite article. There is only the definite article.

01:49:44

And if you look at the Greek text of Matthew chapter one, verse 23, it actually has the definite article.

01:49:56

I'm sorry. I didn't follow that. Can you start again? In Greek, there's, there is no definite article. There is a definite article.

01:50:01

In Greek, there is no indefinite article. There is only the definite article. So if you open the

01:50:07

Greek text of Matthew, which Matthew was written in Greek, it has the definite article. It says the virgin.

01:50:14

And now in English, we translate it as a virgin because it's a direct object.

01:50:23

Okay. I got it. I honestly, I'm not familiar with the Greek. I can't argue or I can't agree or disagree.

01:50:29

I'll take your word for it. The fact that the Bible translates it now to A is a deliberate mistranslation.

01:50:37

But you're right. If what you're saying is true, I take back what I said because I honestly just don't know.

01:50:44

Yeah. Ben, let me ask you a question. Do you have evidence?

01:50:51

I'm just asking. Do you have evidence that Matthew is the first one to ever take the

01:51:00

Hebrew of Isaiah 7 and translate it into the Greek? Could we not go back to this?

01:51:08

Just because it's just going to be distracting. I want you to, could you respond to what I said now? Okay. Sure. Sure. I'll respond.

01:51:13

Because that's really like what we started with. Your whole argument assumes that there was no

01:51:20

Greek translation that Matthew would have been quoting. Your assumption is he's deliberately doing this and not quoting any

01:51:31

Greek translation that could have been there before his time. I thought

01:51:37

Matthew… I get it. I get it. You have your assumption. You have your narrative, and truth doesn't matter.

01:51:42

The narrative matters. I get it. Andrew, don't tell me I'm, with all due respect, don't tell me

01:51:48

I'm condescending and then say that. Please, be consistent. Well, that's a, this is something

01:51:54

I say all the time on this program. So if you listen to the program, you would have known that line. There is a narrative you have, and you're saying let's not go there, and you've said that several times.

01:52:05

What did I say about not going there? Okay, well, you just did it just now.

01:52:11

It was the at least second time in the program. I thought you wanted to go back to the

01:52:16

Septuagint. I wanted you to deal with my specific issues I brought up. I did, and I dealt with it.

01:52:22

So because you're saying it's deliberate on Matthew's part, but you can't prove that, you don't even want to go to the fact of, is

01:52:31

Matthew quoting a Greek translation of the Hebrew? You said don't go there.

01:52:36

But if he is, then it's not Matthew who deliberately did this, is it? Andrew, did

01:52:42

Matthew speak Hebrew? Probably. He did. And he probably spoke

01:52:48

Greek. Being in the area where he lived, it would have been a Greek -speaking area.

01:52:54

He would have been a Hellenist. Andrew, if your claim is that he was, if your claim is that he made mistakes, but they were based on the

01:53:03

Greek translation, even though he knew the Hebrew, that's not a great argument, Andrew. But what if the

01:53:08

Jews... Wasn't Matthew inspired... Wait, if Jewish people did translate it that way...

01:53:16

No, they didn't. We already... Him being deceptive... Andrew, we already spoke about this.

01:53:21

Andrew, we already spoke about this. The Jews didn't translate it that way, but we already spoke about it.

01:53:27

You didn't prove that. And see, this is... Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, please.

01:53:34

There's a difference between an assumption and proof. Andrew, I just demonstrated three or four changes in the quote of Isaiah in order to make it fit with the narrative that is referring to Jesus.

01:53:48

And your defense is that he's relying on other Greek translators. Did he know that the words of Isaiah in the original

01:53:56

Hebrew or not? Well, the actual argument, your premise that you're proving or trying to prove is that Matthew deliberately...

01:54:05

Andrew, could you answer my... With all due respect, could you answer my question? Did he know the Hebrew? Yes.

01:54:12

So why did he translate it? Why did he translate it based on a translation that was wrong?

01:54:18

Well, see, the thing is, is you assume it's wrong. So argue with me.

01:54:25

I'm telling you... But the whole thing is you're now dealing with a red herring argument.

01:54:30

The issue at hand, the argument you're trying to prove is that Matthew deliberately mistranslated it on purpose to deceive.

01:54:41

But you can't prove whether he did the translation. He wrote the book.

01:54:48

I don't care who he was... He didn't translate the Hebrew. I don't care who... Andrew, Andrew, it doesn't matter what notes he was using.

01:54:56

He knew the Hebrew, and he wrote a book that was based, quoting that Hebrew, and it has misrepresentations of the words when he knew that those were not what the words mean.

01:55:09

It doesn't matter whether there's other Greek translations. He knows that the word hara means already pregnant.

01:55:15

He knows that karas is she will call. He translated that differently.

01:55:20

And I want to make sure I understand. And God cannot have a dual meaning in his word, right?

01:55:26

No, no, you're... I'm sorry. I'm happy to go to the dual meaning, but you're avoiding the question.

01:55:32

No, see, I actually dealt with the premise of the argument, and you wanted to avoid it because you had to prove that Matthew was the one who deliberately mistranslated to deceive when you're just not wanting to go.

01:55:49

You haven't proven that Matthew actually did the translation. Andrew, you admitted to me that he knew

01:55:56

Hebrew. He spoke... That has nothing to do with the point that you're saying he is the one who mistranslated on purpose, not quoting.

01:56:06

Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, serious question. He's not quoting the text that people would have known at the time in the Greek that he was speaking.

01:56:13

Andrew, when Matthew decided to... Because part of the thing is, here's the thing.

01:56:19

When we translate, okay, words... And I dealt with this before you came in. When we translate, we translate words that don't have a one -for -one meaning.

01:56:29

Andrew, the words that I showed you have one -for -one meanings. There's no... You can ask any

01:56:35

Israeli... Andrew, you can ask any Israeli atheist in the world. Nothing to do with Judaism.

01:56:41

The words that I told you are translated the way I translated them. It has nothing to do with being Jewish. Then let me ask you a question.

01:56:48

But I still... I really want to get your answer to this question. When Matthew looked...

01:56:54

When he wrote his book and he quoted Isaiah 714, did he bother looking at the

01:56:59

Hebrew? What do you think? Well, since that...

01:57:04

My answer to that, I'll answer again. You're making a red herring argument. No, just stop talking about your...

01:57:11

Just answer my question. I just did. I answered it. That it's a red herring? Andrew, just answer my question, please.

01:57:17

Did he look at the Hebrew? Get ready. I'm going to give you the answer. Ready? Yeah. It's a red herring.

01:57:23

That's the answer. Andrew, please... Let me ask you a question. When are you going to stop beating your wife?

01:57:31

And if you say you're not beating your wife and I tell you... When she starts making me good dinner. Huh? When she starts making me better supper.

01:57:38

See, the thing is that you can keep asking a red herring argument, but it's still a red herring.

01:57:43

Why do you... Red herring is the answer. Andrew, honestly, I'm not trying to trap you.

01:57:49

I'm not trying... I just... Honestly, I want to know what you think. I want to know what you think. He quoted the

01:57:55

Greek translation that was available at the time, which then tells us that before the time...

01:58:02

Before he quoted it, people had a view that this could have had a dual meaning. Because they translated it as virgin.

01:58:10

Andrew, I'm talking about... It was not that, that this was translated or controlled by Christians after the fact and they either changed it or somehow have modified it to either fit with Matthew or maybe

01:58:25

Matthew is the one who did it. Whichever case, you never prove those arguments. Those were assumptions that are based to your arguments.

01:58:33

Let me ask you a question. Andrew, I'm sorry to keep on going to the same point. I just don't... I really honestly don't understand what you're saying.

01:58:40

I truly want to understand what you're saying. Okay? It's not a red herring.

01:58:45

I'm trying to understand what you and Christians believe. Okay? This is a very important issue.

01:58:51

It's not like... I'll just throw out a possibility. I'll put it up. I'll let someone else answer. Here's what Dr.

01:58:56

Bob is saying. Matthew literally quotes the Greek translation word for word. Ben has posited that Christians invented the

01:59:05

Septuagint. This is historically untenable. Ben's making the same point that I'm making.

01:59:12

Okay. Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. I'm not here to debate

01:59:18

Dr. Bob. I'm sure he's a great guy. But let's talk me and you. Okay? And Andrew if you're interested.

01:59:23

I'm giving it to Dr. Bob because I said the same thing like three or four times already. But Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, I'm still waiting.

01:59:30

I'm just... I'm sorry. Maybe I'm very slow. I'm trying to understand what you say.

01:59:36

And it's very important. It's not like something that like... Yeah, I'll just throw out a possibility and hope it's true.

01:59:43

Literally, your eternity is on the line. If you can't explain this... Actually, Ben, it's not my eternity. It's your eternity.

01:59:49

And we'll get to that. But Ben, the thing is... No, no, Andrew, Andrew. Let me clarify one point.

01:59:55

Hold on one second. Let me just clarify just a technical point. If everything I said is wrong tonight, we're back to square one, which is no proof for anyone.

02:00:05

If you're wrong, of course it's true. No, it's not. If I'm wrong about every single thing

02:00:10

I said, you have zero points and I have zero points. We're back to neutral. There's zero...

02:00:16

Yes. So, your eternity... So, here's the thing, Ben. What I want you to do...

02:00:23

And just take a step back. I want you to... You have to understand the difference between something that's proof and something that's assumption.

02:00:35

You're making claims based on assumption and not proof. But then you can't prove...

02:00:41

Andrew, I'm trying to be very specific with my proof, but you're avoiding the issue. I'm not avoiding the issue.

02:00:47

I keep telling you... Every time I ask you about it, you say it's a red herring. Matthew quoted the existing

02:00:55

Greek translation that would have been translated by Jewish people that was available at the time that he...

02:01:03

You just asserted that it was quoted by Jewish people. That is an assertion with zero evidence.

02:01:09

So, you... Okay. So, you believe that before there were Christians, Christians translated it, correct?

02:01:14

I didn't say that. Oh, then who did the translation of Hebrew? I already told... Is it people who know Hebrew?

02:01:20

I already told you at the beginning... I already told you when I came on that there's no evidence that there was a translation in Greek before the year 200 or so.

02:01:32

I don't know the exact date. Besides for the first five books, there is zero evidence of a translation to Greek.

02:01:39

Now, let's... Even if that's not true, let's... I'll grant you that there's a Greek translation out there.

02:01:44

That's not... It doesn't matter to me. Because I want you to answer my question. Matthew knew how to translate

02:01:50

Hebrew. And he's looking... He's literally making a claim that Isaiah 714 is talking about an event that happened 732 years after it was spoken.

02:02:03

And... And... I just lost my train of thought. What was

02:02:10

I going to say? Okay. Hold on one sec. Let me ask you a couple of questions.

02:02:16

Oh, okay. I realized... I'm sorry what I was saying. He made a claim based on...

02:02:23

He knew the verse. He read it in the Hebrew. And he translated it.

02:02:29

You could say it's based on a Greek translation. But he used that in his book. And he used the translation.

02:02:35

He signed off. He published it. This is a quote from Isaiah. And it happens to be that all the differences between the actual quote and the words he used make it fit with Jesus.

02:02:47

And if he used the original words, it wouldn't fit. You don't think that's deliberate. Okay. He knew the words in Hebrew don't mean that.

02:02:54

He knew Hebrew. Okay. So... So how is that not deliberate?

02:03:00

I'm sorry. Would his audience have known Hebrew? What? That's exactly the point.

02:03:07

So he's deceiving people. His audience would have known Hebrew because I think his audience was a Jewish audience.

02:03:13

I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. I don't know. I have a question just because would the everyday

02:03:20

Jew at that time, would they be fluent in Hebrew since Greek was majority of the language of the day?

02:03:28

Yeah. I mean, everyone... Definitely the Pharisees. Definitely what we would call modern -day

02:03:33

Orthodox Jews would be. But there was a lot going on. And I certainly don't know enough about the culture at that time.

02:03:40

There were certainly groups of Jews that were completely non -religious that probably didn't. So if Matthew is deliberately changing the text, what benefit does he have to change the text, especially when persecution comes and they're all being put to death, especially by Jews being persecuted by Jews as well?

02:04:06

I'm not... Are you asking what would be the purpose of Christianity, the New Testament authors deceiving people?

02:04:14

Yeah. What's the purpose of Matthew changing the text if they're going to be persecuted and put to death?

02:04:20

When he wrote that text, you're telling me that Matthew was persecuted because he wrote that text and changed the words?

02:04:30

Well, people were persecuted because they were followers of the way. They followed Christ. They definitely...

02:04:35

I'll grant you this. Jesus' original followers were certainly convinced of something.

02:04:44

And I don't know enough about how they got convinced of that. But one thing is clear is that he deliberately changed the words for whatever psychological reason.

02:04:53

It's not my field. I don't know. He deliberately changed the words. There's simply no two ways about it.

02:05:00

I'm sorry. Even if there's a Greek translation, it doesn't matter. He knew the Hebrew and he signed off on these words in order to make them fit.

02:05:08

So let me ask you a question. First off, is God greater than our ability to understand him?

02:05:17

I hope so. Okay. I mean... Can God lie? No. He can't lie.

02:05:24

Okay. Can God deceive? So I'm not a...

02:05:34

I'm not a philosopher. I'm not a philosopher. I don't know what you mean by can. I don't know how to answer that question.

02:05:40

He wouldn't. He wouldn't unless it was maybe for the greater good. I really don't know.

02:05:46

Okay. So when God asks Abram to go up and sacrifice his son, did he tell

02:05:57

Abram or Abraham that there would be a different sacrifice?

02:06:02

Or did he lead him to believe that he would actually have to kill his own son? You're talking about initially when he told him to sacrifice his son?

02:06:14

I believe he made it clear from the onset that it was going to be his son. Okay.

02:06:20

And yet he had a dual meaning, didn't he? He had a different plan, didn't he? It was a test.

02:06:29

Okay. But did God have a different plan for Abraham? Of course.

02:06:34

Of course. He knew the future. How is that relevant? He knew the future. He knows everything. And it's not future to him.

02:06:40

But yes, you're right. I agree. I agree. Okay. So God knew that even though he used language to Abraham that would be interpreted a very specific way, he had a different plan.

02:06:53

Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. So we now know that God can act exactly as Christians say he acted with the passage in Isaiah 7 with Matthew 1.

02:07:10

That God had a specific way of speaking to a specific people, and yet he had a specific other plan that wasn't revealed at the time.

02:07:21

Now, if you're going to say that God can't do that, that'd be one thing. But your claim is that it's not possible now.

02:07:31

No, Andrew. Andrew, what I'm claiming is that there is no indication at all from the verse that it has anything to do with Jesus.

02:07:38

And Matthew is making… But the thing is that when Abraham went up on the mountain, there was no indication there was going to be a goat.

02:07:49

I'm sorry. What does that have to do with anything? Matthew is trying to… What it has to do is it has to do with the way

02:07:56

God reveals things to his people is not all at once. And he does lead people to a conclusion that might have a secondary explanation.

02:08:08

Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, even though the dual prophecy is… there's no indication of it, you still have to fit.

02:08:17

The prophecy has to fit with the words, and it doesn't fit with any of the words. So here's the thing.

02:08:23

I just want to point out for the audience. I want you guys to notice when Ben asked for time to finish a rather lengthy explanation, you guys can be witness that we allowed that to happen.

02:08:36

But you can also witness that I can never seem to finish a single sentence without him cutting in when

02:08:43

I start making a point that disagrees with a conclusion that he wants to have. This is a logical fallacy known as confirmation bias.

02:08:51

We only accept information that confirms what you already believe. Out of curiosity…

02:08:59

Andrew, Andrew, I didn't think I cut you off. I apologize if I did, but it's really not… it's not productive to continually put me down.

02:09:08

Let's just make arguments. People in the audience saying, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew times a thousand.

02:09:14

Yeah, you are doing it every time I speak. And it's a way of filibustering to make sure that the words that you don't want coming out of my mouth will come out.

02:09:24

Do you follow by chance? Do you follow Rabbi Tovia Singer? Do I follow him?

02:09:30

No. No? I've heard of him. I don't follow him. I don't know what you mean by follow. Well, have you listened to him and listened to…

02:09:38

I've heard him speak a few times. Not live, but I've heard some of his… I've heard some of his videos.

02:09:44

Okay. All right. So, Drew, I was wrong. So there you go. Yeah. Let's get that recorded.

02:09:51

Why did you think I didn't? Because you make the same poor arguments he makes. And I do think they're poor, just like you think my arguments are poor.

02:10:00

Andrew, Andrew, I'm sorry. I don't mean to cut you off. It's just… just don't… you don't have to put me down.

02:10:07

Let's just have a conversation. You think that the arguments I make are poor. I don't take that offense.

02:10:13

I never said your arguments are poor, though. What I'm trying to do is get your argument. It's like pulling teeth.

02:10:20

Try to get to figure out what you think. It shouldn't be pulling teeth. The reason it's pulling teeth is because you have an assumption that you don't want to even consider that any other possibility could be true.

02:10:33

Like the fact that people translated the Hebrew into Greek. Matthew is quoting that Greek and seeing that the way the word was translated in the

02:10:46

Greek does support what happened. And if that is something that God has written in the

02:10:53

New Testament and God can't be wrong, then we assume, therefore, that God has put that there on purpose.

02:11:01

But I understand… Your argument would be that we can't have… Because I know you make this argument elsewhere.

02:11:09

That you can't have… I know somewhere you made an argument. I'm just trying to look for where it was.

02:11:15

Oh, here it is. Acts 7 .14 about Jacob coming down with 75 versus 70.

02:11:24

And you said that's a contradiction in the Old Testament. Correct?

02:11:31

Yeah. I still want to talk about Isaiah, but we can… What's your point with this?

02:11:38

Well, the point is that what we end up seeing in 2 Kings 8 .26 is that Isaiah was 22 years old when he became king.

02:11:47

But in 2 Chronicles 22 .2, it says he was 42 years old. You have…

02:11:53

In this one, I don't have the exact verses. And it's actually kind of interesting because an Orthodox rabbi is the one that pointed out to me that in the

02:12:00

Masoretic text, I think it was Solomon between Kings and Chronicles, you have a flipping of Solomon's horse soldiers versus chariots.

02:12:12

And so you have the same dilemma that we have.

02:12:18

Andrew, that's a good point you're making. But let me make a very important point. You agree, and every

02:12:25

Christian agrees, that the Old Testament is the Word of God. And therefore, if something seems off, there's got to be an explanation.

02:12:34

Jesus and all of his followers believed that the Old Testament was the Word of God. I want to reiterate to make sure

02:12:41

I hear it. So I'm going to rephrase it to make sure I understand you. So you're saying, if we have the

02:12:47

Word of God, you're saying we know there can't be contradictions, right? Correct.

02:12:53

Okay. So if we see something that seems like a contradiction, we trust the

02:12:59

Word of God, and we then look to explain the apparent contradiction.

02:13:07

Is that what you're saying? 100%. Okay. But when Christians do it, you say it's wrong and we need to use a different style than you use for the

02:13:16

Old Testament. So all I'm asking is consistency. I can do that consistently with both Old and New Testament, but you have a different standard for the two.

02:13:25

The difference is you're making a good point, but the answer is that there's a difference between the New Testament and the

02:13:30

Old Testament. The reason there's a difference is because you and every Christian agrees that the

02:13:36

Old Testament is the Word of God. The New Testament being the Word of God is up for debate. That's what we're discussing.

02:13:41

No, no, no. It's up for debate. Well, that's very… Because the point

02:13:47

I'm making is… That's a strange thing to say when you're debating something about it. Oh, no. I'm accepting that it is

02:13:53

God's Word. I've never disagreed with that. You might be challenged with that. I'm not. We're having a debate right now about that topic, right?

02:14:02

Okay. So then let's debate the Old Testament. No, no. You agree that it's written by God.

02:14:10

Why would we debate a topic that we both agree on? Well, I'm just saying I want you to be consistent in your argument.

02:14:18

Are you… I'm sorry. It doesn't seem like you're understanding what I'm saying. No, no, no. I understand what you're saying.

02:14:24

The Old Testament is not – we both agree on. So there's no – it would be silly to have a debate about that.

02:14:30

Okay. I want you to prove the Old Testament the same way you do the New. That's all I'm asking for.

02:14:35

Can you do that? What do you mean prove it? Well, the Old Testament has contradictions in it.

02:14:41

But we all believe that it's the Word of God. So it's not – it's pointless to have a debate. According to you, according to your whole argument, the thing you've spent an hour saying is that it can't be if it has a contradiction.

02:14:56

If there's no valid explanation. Of course, I agree that if there's… And we've given you a valid explanation over and over again, so why don't you accept the

02:15:03

New Testament as the Word of God? Are you talking about which topic? Are you talking about the 75 versus the 70?

02:15:08

Because that's where you went to. Well, I can do the 75 versus the 70. Do you have an explanation for that?

02:15:15

Do you have an explanation for that? Well, let's just talk for one second. If you have a valid explanation for the contradiction, then great.

02:15:23

Then I agree that that's not a contradiction anymore. So here's the valid – I'll give you the valid for both. And I didn't do as much study on the 70 versus 75, but that's easily explained with rounding up or down.

02:15:37

That could easily explain it. What do you mean rounding up or down? There was 70. The number 70 is exact.

02:15:44

It's listed in the Old Testament, the exact number of people. You don't round up from 70 to 75.

02:15:52

Okay. So can I finish the sentence? I thought you did, but I'm sorry. Well, you're not even waiting for me to get a breath before you jump in.

02:16:01

So I'm just asking. Can I? Yes. Feel free to breathe whenever you want. I would –

02:16:06

I mean it'd be nice if I can finish the sentence on my own show. So as far as the case with the virgin birth,

02:16:15

God had a dual meaning. God gave a explanation that was for a specific time, 750 years before the time of Christ, that he also had another meaning if – and I'm going to say this – if Matthew is actually quoting

02:16:32

Isaiah. Okay. Because the one thing, again, everyone's assuming is it's

02:16:39

Isaiah being quoted, which Matthew never said. He just said the prophet.

02:16:46

He never said which prophet. So which prophet is he talking about? Well, he doesn't clarify.

02:16:51

I think he's quoting Isaiah. You and every other human in the world.

02:16:59

And so the thing is is that we've already established that God's character allows for us to have something that he says one way for a specific time that he means another way at a later time.

02:17:16

But that again – I'm being consistent with his behavior with Abraham and his behavior with this word for Alma, referring to Jesus having been virgin born.

02:17:28

I see no difference there. A young maiden gave birth to a child, and that young maiden never knew a man.

02:17:35

So it's more significant when the young maiden who never knew a man gave birth.

02:17:41

Now, the fact that a virgin can give birth and you ignore that and say, well, we're just going to reject that, that's actually more interesting.

02:17:50

But there's some – What do you mean by that? Could you clarify? I didn't understand what you just said. Can a virgin – would you agree that a woman who's never known a man giving birth to a child is a supernatural event?

02:18:06

Yes. Okay. So the fact that a virgin gave birth should cause you to go, there's something different about Jesus, not – no, but because of this – the way the word is here in Hebrew, we're going to focus on that.

02:18:21

You're starting with the conclusion of rejecting Jesus rather than saying, is there something different about Jesus that thousands of years of people responding to Judaism – or sorry, responding to Christianity have come up with arguments against it?

02:18:37

I mean, if you read the Talmud, which I don't know if you have, but a lot of it is reactionary to Christianity.

02:18:46

There's actually not that much in the Talmud about Christianity, to be honest.

02:18:51

No, but there's a lot that is reactionary. The Talmud is a humongous set of documents.

02:18:58

Trust me, I know, I've read it. You read the entire Talmud? Yeah. The entire

02:19:03

Talmud? It was many, many years. You realize that Torah scholars spend their entire lives and don't finish the

02:19:12

Talmud? You can – so the reality is I didn't sit and spend years and years and years studying it.

02:19:20

I mean, I read through the Koran, and that being much shorter, I could read through it many times.

02:19:26

No, the Koran and the New Testament are similar to the Old Testament. The Talmud – you've mentioned this a few times.

02:19:33

I think it's a misunderstanding, unless I'm misunderstanding you. No Jew thinks the Talmud is the

02:19:38

Bible. It's a set of books that is extensive about laws.

02:19:44

That's what it is. And there's hundreds and thousands of pages, and probably if you put all the pages together about the references to Jesus, even if it's referring to the same

02:19:55

Jesus, it's like half a page. So there's very little about it in the

02:20:01

Talmud. Okay. Can I make a point about the dual prophecy?

02:20:08

Sure. You're going to have to read the words – you have to read the verse, and the words in the verse, even if you want to say there's a dual prophecy, you have to fit into the words.

02:20:21

And if there's a dual prophecy about a virgin birth, that means that if the word Alma in that context means virgin –

02:20:28

Okay. I'm going to ask this again. I'll be more specific. Was Mary a young maiden when she gave birth?

02:20:43

Again, I'm not an expert, but I'm guessing yes. Okay. And yet she was also a virgin, correct?

02:20:50

Do you honestly think that Jews believe in the virgin birth? That's our whole discussion today.

02:20:57

Okay. We don't believe in the virgin birth. Will you answer the question? Of course not. Of course she wasn't a virgin.

02:21:04

Okay. So, is she referred to as being a virgin? No, Isaiah has – oh, you're talking about in Matthew or Isaiah?

02:21:12

I'm speaking about in Matthew, because I was very specific and mentioned Mary. I understand, but I'm wondering when you say what she referred to as a virgin, if you're referring to what

02:21:22

Isaiah was saying or what Matthew was saying. Well, they're both referring to a young maiden who gives birth, correct?

02:21:31

Yes, but as I pointed out, Isaiah – And the Greek translation that someone would have done before the time of Matthew, that he's quoting, would have read that way, which is the whole argument that people are saying is that you're claiming that no

02:21:51

Jewish person would translate it this way, and the argument that Christians are making is that someone did.

02:22:00

Andrew. And so you have a young maiden who is a virgin that gives birth.

02:22:08

Again, with all due respect, you're asserting the fact that she's a virgin. That's the whole conversation.

02:22:14

I deny that she was a virgin, and I'm trying to prove it. Because if she was a virgin, if the verse in Isaiah 7 .14

02:22:22

is talking about a virgin, and you're telling me that there was a dual prophecy, that means there were two virgin births in history.

02:22:29

Okay, what I'm doing is telling you that what the Word of God says is that Matthew says that a young maiden who is a virgin gave birth.

02:22:39

That's what God's Word says. So you're saying, well, when it comes to the

02:22:44

Old Testament, we can look at this and say, well, God's Word says this, and yet we see what

02:22:51

I would say in the case of 22 verses 42, you have a textual variant.

02:22:58

I can explain that from a textual variant. I think the age was 22.

02:23:04

The point being is I can explain that in a textual variant. I don't even know what you're referring to with the 22 -42.

02:23:11

The age of Isaiah. Oh, okay.

02:23:17

Why is that? Okay, I'm not familiar with it. So the reason I'm bringing that up again is because I'm trying –

02:23:23

I'm just asking you to be consistent with God's Word. Andrew, I'm 100 % consistent.

02:23:31

It seems like you don't understand. Jews, me and all

02:23:39

Jews, do not believe that the New Testament is the Word of God. We don't believe there was a virgin birth, and that's our whole point of our discussion today is to figure out whether it's true.

02:23:47

Here's the difference. Here's the difference. You're saying that, but the difference with you and I is

02:23:55

I'm consistent and you're not, and I pointed this out. So the thing is that if your argument that you've been making for well over an hour, you need to apply the very same thing to the

02:24:10

Kings and Chronicles passage that I laid out and reject the Old Testament equally.

02:24:16

But you don't. I don't understand. There's absolutely no connection. It's a contradiction.

02:24:23

Well, so you're agreeing that – okay, so you just agree. We're breaking news here. You're agreeing that Matthew is contradicting

02:24:30

Isaiah. No, he's bringing up your standard. I'm arguing from your standard and wanting you to be consistent, which you can't be.

02:24:42

Andrew, do you think that the contradiction that you brought up with the Kings – I'm not familiar with that at all.

02:24:48

But do you believe that there's a resolution to that contradiction? It's not like there's a resolution with Matthew and Isaiah.

02:24:56

So I'm waiting for – that's the whole point of this debate. What is the resolution?

02:25:02

Okay, it's already been given to you. We've given it to you several times. Drew, can I speak to – do you mind if I could speak to you for a minute?

02:25:09

Okay, so here's what we're going to do. No, we're going to mute you for a bit so we can –

02:25:14

I can finish this. Okay, the point is, Ben, I am using your argument.

02:25:22

I'm stepping into your worldview and exposing your worldview has inconsistencies.

02:25:28

If you cannot be consistent, then your argument is logically invalid.

02:25:36

I've pointed out that much of your argumentation that you did, and we didn't even get through – I spent many hours, well over six to eight hours going through these six pages and researching it.

02:25:50

And we haven't even covered – I feel like I wasted the time. But the reality is that your argumentation is filled and relies on logical fallacies.

02:26:01

And every time I point it out, you go, oh, let's just ignore that and move on. The fact is you need to be consistent.

02:26:07

So if you're going to hold the New Testament, if you're going to say this is a contradiction, and therefore it cannot be written by God, then the

02:26:16

Old Testament cannot have a contradiction, even if there's a way of explaining it. That's the point.

02:26:23

So do you understand my point? What I want you to do, Ben, is reiterate my point so I know you understand it.

02:26:32

Okay, am I unmuted now? Mm -hmm. Okay, you could just ask me to – I'm an adult.

02:26:38

I've asked you five times throughout this program, and you keep interrupting and speaking over me.

02:26:44

So no, I had to mute you, because I can't get a word in otherwise. Okay, I'm sorry, what was your question?

02:26:53

Could I reiterate the point you just made? I want you to reiterate the point that I made. What is it that I'm trying to say?

02:27:00

Because I want to make sure you understand it. Okay, your point was that because you have found an apparent contradiction in the

02:27:07

Old Testament, and I believe and you believe that there's a resolution to that because it's the Word of God, therefore, if I find a contradiction between the

02:27:16

Old Testament and the New Testament, I have no right to be bothered by that because there's got to be a resolution.

02:27:23

The same way my standard is that there's a resolution to the Old Testament, I've got to assume that there's a resolution between the

02:27:29

Old Testament and the New Testament. That's your argument, correct? Okay, Drew, I'm going to ask you, did that sound like my argument?

02:27:35

I'm sorry, I was writing a comment into the chat. Please say it again.

02:27:43

Now that it's on me, and so I don't have to write this comment, if you're coming into the chat and you're using foul language, you're going to be blocked.

02:27:51

No questions asked. I'm not putting up with it. If I see foul language in there, you're going to be blocked.

02:27:59

I've already blocked three people. And that's not usual for our audience, but okay.

02:28:06

And I do know Ben has some followers here because I know I saw – I was going to put it up earlier, but we missed it.

02:28:13

Let me see if I can get it because I don't think it was foul language for you. Well, no, someone – I want to say someone did say – talked about my boy

02:28:21

Ben. Yeah, and someone said that he was demolishing us or something. Yeah, but no, then he ended up –

02:28:27

Are you sure that wasn't Dr. Bob? No, it wasn't. Well, Dr. Bob wouldn't argue that you're demolishing us.

02:28:33

That was a joke, Andrew. Okay, but I did want to put that up because it was positive toward you, but I –

02:28:40

No, it was because he ended up using foul language, and so I – Oh, so you blocked him, and that blocks all – oh, okay.

02:28:47

All right, that's too bad because I did want to – I do try to do that when folks are in here.

02:28:54

You wouldn't happen to be a Hebrew -Israelite, would you, Ben? No, I'm sorry.

02:29:00

I didn't give you my background. I'm an Orthodox Jew. Okay. I teach the

02:29:05

Bible and the Talmud for a living, and yeah, I don't even know what the

02:29:10

Hebrew -Israelites are. No, no, I was just – because some of the comments and stuff that were put in here,

02:29:17

I was like, well, let me just ask it. Yeah, so – It's good that you're not. Let me just let

02:29:22

Ben know because obviously – and if you don't want to answer this, I get it, but where do you live?

02:29:29

Do you live by a city? Let me ask it that way. I told you where I lived. I'm very open. I live in New York City.

02:29:36

Oh, in Queens. So you should – okay. So then you've probably come upon this, but – so what's referred to as Hebrew -Israelites, really it's – they used to be called black

02:29:46

Hebrew -Israelites, and you would see them – if you go to – in the city, you go – you'll see a bunch of blacks that stand up and claim they are the

02:29:56

Israelites spoken of in the Bible. And they can prove it because they were in – they were taken as slaves in the

02:30:04

African slave trade. That's their proof that they're the Israelites, and you and I, they would say, are fake

02:30:12

Israelites. Got it. And so – but if you haven't come across them, we've had them on this program before.

02:30:20

They get very, very aggressive, a lot of foul language. All right. So let me – my point is that I was trying to make, and you – the thing is,

02:30:33

Ben, what I wanted you to be able to do is to reiterate my argument. I can – one of the things that I think people need to learn how to do is to be able to argue someone else's argument without – like to make their case without having to vindicate themselves.

02:30:52

When you tried to reiterate, you really couldn't do it without trying to prove your argument.

02:30:59

I didn't think I did that. I thought I – I honestly thought I said over your argument. Yeah, so the argument

02:31:04

I'm making is that when we look at this, you're taking –

02:31:10

I want you to be consistent with the way you criticize the New Testament the same as the old.

02:31:17

So if you say the New Testament can't be written by God because there is contradictions in it, then we cannot accept the

02:31:29

Old Testament if it has contradictions in it. That's the point. Right. Andrew, I understand, but we both agree that some contradictions have resolutions and some don't.

02:31:41

And therefore, since everyone, every Jew and every Christian both believe that the

02:31:48

Old Testament was written by God, we – Okay, but truth does not have any basis on what we believe.

02:31:56

No, no, the point is that we know that there's a resolution. You're missing the point. I'm arguing from a logical way.

02:32:03

Logically valid arguments can be – it doesn't matter if we believe them or not.

02:32:09

They are logically valid and true, and you can substantiate whether they're valid or invalid.

02:32:15

And that's the point, okay? It doesn't matter if we have a way of explaining it because we've given you a way of explaining this issue that you say is absolute proof.

02:32:25

We've given a way of explaining it. You don't like that explanation. But if I say

02:32:30

I don't like your explanation for the different ages given for King Uzziah, the question becomes, do

02:32:39

I get to be the authority? What is the authority then? Is it God's Word, or do we get to judge

02:32:47

God's Word? I would say it's God's Word, and God's Word judges us, not us judging

02:32:52

God's Word. But I really – it's getting late. I want to get to something that you spent a lot of time discussing.

02:32:59

Can I just respond to that? Sure. So I think

02:33:06

I understand what you're saying, but I'm sorry to keep on beating this horse.

02:33:12

But since we both agree, based on tremendous amount of evidence, that the

02:33:19

Old Testament is the Word of God, the fact that there's apparent contradictions, whether – if there are or not,

02:33:26

I'm not familiar with those verses. We know that there's a resolution because we know 100 % that it was written by God.

02:33:35

The whole discussion today is whether the New Testament was written by God or whether it's man -made. And therefore, when we approach a document that seems to contradict something that we both believe is the

02:33:46

Word of God, yes, there could be resolutions. If you give a valid resolution, then that's fine.

02:33:53

But you still need to provide a valid resolution, and that's simply what

02:33:59

I would say. And we've done that. We've done that. You just don't look it. Well, my question would be to that is who determines what is the valid resolution?

02:34:09

Who's the authority that determines that once and for all? Well, we're going to find out the truth one of these days.

02:34:16

But everyone is responsible for what they believe. There's no –

02:34:22

God doesn't come down and tell us what's right and wrong. We've got to figure it out ourselves. But we've got to use our logic and try to decipher things that are not so simple to the best of our abilities.

02:34:33

And when I think if someone honestly looks at Isaiah 714 in the context that it's in and sees the differences that when

02:34:41

Matthew quotes it over that are – all happen to be differences between the original text and the new text that all support

02:34:49

Jesus and the original text does not support Jesus, that seems to indicate very strongly that it was a deliberate mistranslation.

02:34:57

Now – Even though the translation is done prior. That's the part that – now,

02:35:03

I know you're going to say, well, there's no proof of that. Andrew, even – again, I said even if –

02:35:09

I'm sorry if I cut you off. Even if there was a translation earlier, I can grant that.

02:35:15

But you told me that Matthew spoke Hebrew. He knew what Isaiah 714 said in the Hebrew.

02:35:20

He knew what God said. See, that's the whole difference. God is the one who inspired the New Testament. Andrew, we're trying to figure out whether or not

02:35:29

God wrote the New Testament. You can't use – No, no, no, no, no. We're not trying to figure that out. I'm trying to – You may be trying to figure it out, but – and my whole point is you're trying to figure it out with a manner that you don't use for the

02:35:41

Old Testament. That's my point. So it's not that it's the word of God is the standard.

02:35:47

You are the standard, and I somehow have to prove it to you. I don't have to prove it to you. You are going to be held –

02:35:52

Andrew, would you agree? In the final day of judgment, Ben, you are going to be held to account by God's word, both

02:36:01

Old and New Testament, not by what you chose to be convinced of. It doesn't matter whether you're convinced or not.

02:36:08

You are going to be judged by the God that wrote both Old and New Testament.

02:36:14

And your denial of it is going to be a judgment on you. That's the most important thing that we could discuss here all night is going to be that, okay?

02:36:26

Because you want to hold up this standard. And my point is just you got to be consistent.

02:36:32

And because you're saying, well, if we agree, it's – if I don't agree in gravity, does that mean

02:36:38

I float? No. My belief doesn't make it true. We're discussing and debating the issue of truth.

02:36:47

And you want to make it about what you believe. I'm not in that realm. I'm not debating what we believe and saying, well, if we believe – if we both believe the same thing, it doesn't matter what

02:36:59

I believe. Truth is truth whether I believe it or not. And so the

02:37:06

New Testament is the word of God whether you believe it or not. But – Andrew.

02:37:12

Okay. What? Is it okay if I say something? Yeah, no, I've just been trying to get to –

02:37:17

I mean, for the last, what, 30 minutes, I've been trying to get to something. And you keep saying you want to say something.

02:37:25

So go ahead. I apologize. I thought it's going to be a two -way conversation. Well, yeah,

02:37:30

I know. I thought so, too. But it's only been a your -way conversation. I apologize. Andrew, I would simply say that you can't possibly use the fact that Matthew is written by God to defend how it contradicts the

02:37:46

Old Testament. You first have to resolve the contradiction, and then we could say it's written by God.

02:37:52

You can't do it – you can't do it the wrong – you can't take the last step first. Okay. Let me make sure

02:37:58

I get this right. So you're saying we first have to resolve the contradiction before we can say it's the Word of God?

02:38:06

If we're debating whether it's written by God. Well, I'm not debating that. You are. But I am.

02:38:11

We're having a debate. It's a two -way conversation. So now let's debate the Old Testament. But we don't argue about the

02:38:18

Old Testament. Well, now we are. So I want you to prove the Old Testament's the

02:38:23

Word of God using your same standard. When we have contradictions of the age of a king being 22 or 42, that's a contradiction.

02:38:35

Now, according to you, we resolve it first, and if we could resolve it, then it's the

02:38:40

Word of God, right? Andrew, the difference – I'm not sure why you're not understanding this.

02:38:47

The difference is that we all agree that the Old Testament's the Word of God. The debate today is whether the

02:38:54

New Testament is true or not. We don't argue about the Old Testament. Okay. So I'm going to – the reason is because you're not being consistent.

02:39:06

How so? Okay. Because you claim the New Testament cannot be the

02:39:11

Word of God because it has contradictions. No, only if they're unresolved. But we resolved it, so now it's not a contradiction.

02:39:19

But that's what we're discussing. I'm trying to discuss whether it's – But we resolved it. So we could have ended this over an hour ago.

02:39:26

But I don't – We resolved it. We resolved it last week. Andrew, do you respect the fact that I don't understand your resolution?

02:39:33

No, you don't believe the resolution, and your belief doesn't matter. I don't know what that means.

02:39:40

I'm trying – I'm being honest with you. I don't understand how you resolved the question. So instead of insulting me, just tell me –

02:39:48

I'm saying that our belief, your belief, my belief, it doesn't matter.

02:39:54

I don't care what you believe. I don't care what I believe. It matters what's true. So the reason you're not understanding this is because I'm dealing in the area of truth, and you're dealing in the area of belief, and that's why you're having difficulty with it.

02:40:09

You're saying we have to resolve it first. Well, I've given you the resolution that God wrote that the prophet said a virgin will give birth.

02:40:20

God wrote that. Therefore, you know what God's Word says? Exactly what Matthew says it says because God wrote that.

02:40:29

So just to summarize, your resolution to the misquote and mistranslation of Isaiah 714 is because God wrote it, there's got to be an answer.

02:40:40

But that is exactly what you said when I asked you about the age of King Isaiah being 22 or 42.

02:40:46

Again, I really don't understand why you're not getting this. Because it shows an inconsistency, and there's a greater inconsistency that you have in what you sent.

02:40:57

Andrew, can I just ask you one question before you get to that? I'm happy to discuss whatever you want to talk about. Obviously not.

02:41:04

Because I don't feel like you've sufficiently answered the question.

02:41:11

I just want to know, is it theoretically possible to demonstrate just theoretically that the

02:41:18

Old Testament is inconsistent with the New Testament, and therefore the New Testament is not the

02:41:24

Word of God? Is that a possibility? Are you trying to say, is it possible that there would be inconsistencies in the

02:41:35

Word of God? Is that what you're saying? No, what I'm saying, maybe...

02:41:40

Both Old and New Testament are the Word of God, so you're saying there's inconsistencies. I'm showing inconsistencies in the

02:41:47

Old Testament. You want to ignore those and point out inconsistencies between Old and New. But the

02:41:53

Old Testament has inconsistencies. And if you're saying that an inconsistency proves it's not the

02:42:00

Word of God, then you've just proven the Old Testament is not the Word of God. So you have nothing then, using your way of arguing.

02:42:11

And here's the thing. The even greater one is you spent a lot of time trying to prove that the doctrine of sacrificial system of the

02:42:22

New Testament that Christians have cannot be from God. Now, you spent time quoting several passages.

02:42:30

I'm just trying to look for them now, where you argue that you basically were trying to make an argument.

02:42:38

Here it is, 1 Samuel 15, 22. You say repentance is better than God's offering.

02:42:44

This refutes the Christian claims that nobody can repent without blood. And so the reality is, well,

02:42:53

I think it's Leviticus. I think it's either 1711 or 1117, I forget which, says that you need a blood sacrifice.

02:43:02

You point out that a couple of times here, if I could find the other passage where you teach that or you say that God desires a contrite heart, which

02:43:15

I would agree with, and not a sacrifice. But the entire book of Leviticus is quite clear that sin offerings are required, require a sacrifice.

02:43:28

And you quoted one that referred to a meal offering rather than a sin offering.

02:43:34

But the point being is, if you're going to throw out the need for a blood sacrificial system, and argue that that's not the case, then it's inconsistent with the book of Leviticus.

02:43:53

And therefore you have a major inconsistency because you've just, without knowing it, you've just thrown out the

02:44:02

Tanakh. Could I respond to that?

02:44:08

Sure. Okay. I didn't realize we were going to speak about the other questions, but the basic answer is that sacrifices are clearly, if you look at the

02:44:18

Old Testament, an important part of our service to God. However, the claim that without sacrifices, there is no repentance is refuted by all the verses

02:44:31

I provided. That doesn't mean that sacrifices are meaningless and they're worthless. There's no contradiction at all.

02:44:38

As an aside, sacrifices are always for, or almost always for unintentional sin.

02:44:45

Okay. Okay. So the sin offerings. Yes. Are they a blood sacrifice?

02:44:54

Yeah. Okay. So when you say it's the

02:45:02

Christian doctrine is inconsistent, but you just said yes to the question.

02:45:09

Again, I don't think you heard what I just said before. Well, I asked the question for specifically with sin.

02:45:19

I mean, one of the things that I'm being aware of is that your usage of words,

02:45:24

I'm being more precise than you, I think, in some of this. Did you hear how I answered you originally, this question?

02:45:32

Yeah. You said you talked about repentance and I wasn't talking about repentance.

02:45:37

No, no, no. What I said is that sacrifices are definitely an important part of our religion.

02:45:44

However, the claim that without sacrifices, you cannot repent and get forgiven.

02:45:50

That's the part that's completely against those many scriptures that I provided for you. That's why

02:45:58

I said you talked about repentance. Right. But I just explained to you how that fits with all the sacrifices because sacrifices are an important part of our religion.

02:46:09

I'm not denying that. However, that doesn't mean that without sacrifices, there's no repentance or atonement.

02:46:19

Okay. So is there atonement for sin outside of a sacrifice?

02:46:26

Yes. Okay. How do you atone for sin? You repent. Okay. And then what's the purpose of the sin sacrifice?

02:46:37

So the way that we understand it is that sacrifices help a person reach a point where he sees a physical item that's being killed in front of him to God as kind of a replacement for what he, since he sinned, what he should really be doing and giving himself up to God.

02:46:59

But that's all a mechanism to get him to achieve true repentance.

02:47:07

That's why the verse said outright in 1 Samuel 15 -22 that repentance is better to God than offerings.

02:47:14

It's really black and white. And in Leviticus, are the sin offerings commanded?

02:47:25

Yes. I agree. I'm sorry.

02:47:31

Throughout Leviticus, do we see that it's making the point that we are not acceptable to God, that we need to not only make atonement, but that God makes the atonement?

02:47:52

I'm not sure. Of course, God makes the atonement. But that doesn't mean that you can't repent. You need him to atone you, but you repent and then he atones you.

02:48:02

So you're saying you repent and then God obeys you. He submits to your repentance.

02:48:11

Of course. He's a loving God. He's waiting for us to repent. Good. Okay. I'm glad we agree with that.

02:48:17

So your view is that when we repent,

02:48:23

God will submit to that and because we've repented, he will then make atonement.

02:48:35

Correct. Correct. Okay, good. So we're getting somewhere. So here's the point.

02:48:40

The difference between your the rabbinic Judaism that you follow and Christianity is it can be easily summed up in what we just spoke about.

02:48:50

This is why I wanted to get to this. Okay, because you have a and you're going to take this offensive.

02:48:59

I get it. But you think I have a man made religion. I'm going to show how you have a man made religion because you have a religion where man does the work to save himself.

02:49:13

We have a religion where God does the work that saves us apart from us.

02:49:19

That's the difference in a man made religion. Every man made religion. People do the very things that are necessary for them to get right with God.

02:49:30

And that's what you just agreed to, that we repent and then

02:49:36

God submits to us. My argument would be this. God does not submit to man ever.

02:49:43

God does not need human beings. God doesn't submit to me. He doesn't submit to you.

02:49:49

You and I submit to him. That's what you have to realize. Christianity, we have

02:49:57

God in the proper place. God does the work. God makes atonement.

02:50:02

God brings us to repentance. We can't even repent on our own. We can't have belief on our own.

02:50:08

God has to do that. God is the one who does it all. He works within us so that the very choices we make to believe on him are ones that God has put there.

02:50:20

And so God is lifted up on high, not man. And you have a man -made religion that lifts man up to say we can come to repentance, and God's going to honor that and submit to that.

02:50:33

Now, here's the thing, Ben. This is why this is so important. And this is one thing

02:50:39

I really want you to hear me out on this and not interrupt, okay? I want you to hear this because this is the most important thing that I'm ever going to tell you, all right?

02:50:49

All the discussion we had is meaningless other than this, okay?

02:50:54

The fact is that you and I both are going to die one day.

02:51:00

You and I both are going to face God one day. And God is not going to be impressed with what we believe.

02:51:08

He won't be. The only thing that's going to matter is what we did with him and the sacrifice he made.

02:51:17

So whether you believe that Jesus is the Messiah won't matter. He's still going to judge you.

02:51:23

You standing before God and saying, but I repented, God. Look at what I've done. And you think

02:51:29

God's got to submit to you. No, God doesn't submit to us. We submit to him.

02:51:36

That alone should be a thing that should help you to see the difference between our two religious beliefs.

02:51:43

I believe the Old Testament Judaism is not what you're following, okay?

02:51:50

You would disagree. I get that, okay? But the thing is that God has always been the one to do the work.

02:51:58

And that's the whole message of Leviticus is that we cannot save ourselves. We cannot do that.

02:52:04

God had to make the atonement. That's what Leviticus says throughout. I would say the whole sacrificial system is to prove the point.

02:52:12

The whole reason he gives us the law is to show us that we can't keep it. The whole reason for the sacrificial system is to show that God must be the one to make atonement.

02:52:21

That all of the sacrifices of sheeps and goats are not going to be able to do it. We need

02:52:27

God doing it. And if you do not turn from trusting your good works or your repentance or even your

02:52:35

Judaism, if you do not turn from that and trust what God did on that cross 2 ,000 years ago, then,

02:52:41

Ben, my fear for you is that you will be dead in your sin. And you'll spend eternity in a lake of fire.

02:52:47

And I do not want that for you, okay? Whatever you think of me,

02:52:53

Ben, this... And he's gone. He dropped. Well, I hope he would listen.

02:53:00

But the reality is this is the most important thing for him to hear.

02:53:09

And it's... But this is... I think that what you end up seeing, this is the issue. When we have a man -made system, we...

02:53:18

Okay, he's back. Good. Maybe it's just he... Good. I think it was his internet. His internet. I mentioned that when he came on.

02:53:24

I'm sorry. It wasn't my internet. I was on my phone and it died. It was dropped. It was...

02:53:29

Oh, okay. The battery was getting sapped really quickly. That's because we've been going too long. So, Ben, I want to finish this out because this is the most important thing that I can say to you, okay?

02:53:41

Look, you and I have not met in person. I'd be happy to come to New York, take you out for dinner. We can get a really...

02:53:48

Maybe you could find me a really good place for a good matzo ball soup. I haven't had anyone that makes it like my grandmother.

02:53:53

It's depressing because I really want some. But I would be happy to buy you dinner and we could sit and talk and probably have a great conversation.

02:54:01

But the thing is this. I care where you spend eternity, okay?

02:54:08

You and I... Ben, I'm going to grant for argument's sake because it's probably not a hard argument.

02:54:14

You're probably a far more moral person than I am, okay? I'm going to grant that and it's probably true.

02:54:20

But, see, it's not our morality that gets us right with God. It's not our repentance in the sense of us saying, well,

02:54:28

I'm going to do this work of repentance. It's what God did because you and I...

02:54:35

God... The view that Christians have is that God is infinitely holy, infinitely just, infinitely righteous.

02:54:43

He is so unlike us, utterly unlike us, such that when we tell even one lie, it has an eternal consequence.

02:54:55

And no lamb or sin offering of a sacrifice or even offering a repentance can make up for that.

02:55:03

It takes an eternal consequence. That's why, you know, where it says in Daniel 12, 2, you know, just like there's an eternal life, there's an eternal contempt.

02:55:15

There's going to be... It's because God is so infinitely holy. And so if you have a religion that's based on human effort, it's a man -made religion.

02:55:26

And I know you think we have a man -made religion. So I... And I'm not taking offense at you saying...

02:55:31

If you say we have a man -made religion, I know that's your view. And I don't want you to take offense when

02:55:36

I'm saying it to you, but I want to lay out why I'm saying it. I'm trying to support the case by saying every man -made religion has human effort as a way to get right with God.

02:55:48

And Christianity doesn't have that. It says that God himself paid the fine.

02:55:53

He was the sacrifice. Because he being an eternal being can pay an eternal fine.

02:55:59

Being a human being that became a man and having never sinned, never broken the law, he can be a substitute for us.

02:56:09

That's what makes Jesus unique. It's what makes Christianity unique from any other world religion. Because the only religion not based on a moral system, it's based on a person,

02:56:18

God. Where every other religion is based on a moral system because it's about us getting right with God based on what we do.

02:56:27

So Ben, I want you to hear me on this. I plead with you. The one thing

02:56:33

I plead with you is that you would consider your standing before God because you and I are both guilty.

02:56:41

But the only way to get right with God is based on his standard. And it doesn't matter if I can prove contradictions or not.

02:56:54

It matters how God is going to judge us. And he's going to judge us by his word. Whether you believe the

02:57:00

New Testament is his word or not, the fact is that it is.

02:57:05

And you're going to be judged by God on what you do with Jesus. So I plead with you,

02:57:11

Ben. I am begging of you to please heed the message because I don't want you to spend eternity in a lake of fire.

02:57:19

I don't want you being in hell. I want you to have eternal life. And so all the discussions we've had is meaningless to this point.

02:57:30

Because even if I could convince you, if I could sit there and use proofs to convince you the

02:57:37

New Testament is the word of God as the Old Testament is, it's meaningless if you're convinced that it's the word of God but you still go to hell.

02:57:46

Okay? And so my plea with you is that you do true repentance. What that means is turning from trusting self and trusting

02:57:54

God. Trusting God is the sacrifice for us and not our work of repentance but a change of our thinking into the repentance of trusting what

02:58:05

God did. I know you probably disagree with that. I get it. But that's my plea for you.

02:58:12

I appreciate that, Andrew. Do you mind if I just say a few things about this? Yeah, I was going to ask if you have anything you want to say.

02:58:17

Yeah, I don't know if you guys have a time limit or anything, but I enjoy having this discussion.

02:58:23

And if you could get closer to the microphone because when you switch to your phone to your iPad, it's harder to hear you.

02:58:28

All right, I'm sorry. I don't even know where the microphone is on this thing. Oh, it's at the bottom. All right.

02:58:37

So King Solomon actually had a whole introduction in his remarks right when the temple was built.

02:58:45

And he specifically made a speech. Hold on one second. Hold on. Hold on. I'm going to ask you to repeat that.

02:58:52

I'm turning up your mic so that we can hear you. So just say a couple words. So I make sure we.

02:58:59

King Solomon in chapter 8, verses 46 through 50.

02:59:05

His whole point in that is this is actually when they're inaugurating the first temple where the sacrifices are going to be brought.

02:59:13

And surprisingly, he makes a whole long speech there about exactly what you just spoke about.

02:59:21

Did you ever read Kings 8, 46 through 50? Yes. Okay. Do you know what he says there?

02:59:29

Not from memory, but I'm looking at it. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. No, no, no.

02:59:34

First Kings 8. And you said which word? 46 through 50.

02:59:41

46. Okay. I mean, the answer is I've read this dozens of times.

02:59:49

Whether I've studied it is a different question. But okay. So we're there. So if you read that, basically, the entire purpose of those verses is to say, don't worry,

03:00:00

Jews. Don't worry. I know that one time in the future, there's going to be no temple.

03:00:06

And you're concerned that there's going to be no way for an atonement. And it's not true. As long as you truly repent and pray, you could always atone.

03:00:16

You don't need it. That's his entire purpose of speaking at the inauguration of the temple. Now, one more point.

03:00:24

In the Book of Jonah, the entire city of Nineveh is atoned for their sins without any sacrifices.

03:00:37

There were no sacrifices. And Jonah went there and convinced everyone to repent. And God repented all of them.

03:00:45

There was absolutely no sacrifices there. So it's clear through various verses that I've quoted and others that sacrifice, although they're important, like I mentioned, they're not the key to your repentance, to your atonement.

03:01:04

We've seen all over the Old Testament that you could repent. The main thing is your desire to repent, your sincerity in repenting, and then

03:01:12

God will atone for you. If you could somehow explain how Nineveh was atoned without repentance, then

03:01:19

I take back what I say. But it seems clear. It's straight out in the

03:01:24

Book of Jonah that they were all forgiven without any sacrifices.

03:01:30

Okay. I can. So what I was talking about was getting right with God, and they got right with God in the future sacrifice that Jesus did.

03:01:43

No, it was based on their repentance. The whole point of the story is that Jonah is there to get them to repent.

03:01:52

And their repentance was for what? To get right with God?

03:01:57

Was there repentance to believe in Jesus or to admit that what they were doing was wrong and change their ways?

03:02:07

So it was to change their ways. To regret. Repentance requires regret for what you did and the sincere commitment to change.

03:02:21

Okay. And so it's not about getting right with God, which is what I was talking about. I don't know exactly what you mean by those words, but what

03:02:30

I'm trying to... Do you believe that we are in a state where when we break

03:02:36

God's law, we are criminals in his sight? We're doing something wrong.

03:02:42

I don't know if he would call us a criminal, but we're doing something wrong. What are you when you break the law? Okay. So I guess you can call us a criminal.

03:02:50

Okay. So can God just forgive criminals?

03:02:56

Of course, if they repent. Okay. So then he wouldn't be just. He's not just for forgiving someone who repents.

03:03:05

He can make the rules however he wants. He's God. Okay. But is he just? I mean, justice requires that the full weight of punishment must be paid.

03:03:14

So if he lets people off and forgives them, then... The thing is, justice and mercy are mutually exclusive.

03:03:25

So either God is merciful and forgives people that are guilty, or he's just and punishes people that are guilty.

03:03:36

Are you saying, Andrew, are you saying that God is not merciful? Oh, no, no, no.

03:03:41

See, I'm saying he is both merciful and just, but the only way you can resolve his justice and mercy is at the cross.

03:03:49

Not from things that we do. What makes more sense? What makes more sense?

03:03:56

What's more just in your mind? Okay. To have a criminal... What's just in my mind is when we...

03:04:01

Can I just give you the two options? Oh, sure. Okay. You have a guy who is a criminal.

03:04:09

He does something wrong, and he feels terrible for what he does. He admits never to do it again, and he really, really feels bad, and he repents.

03:04:19

For that guy to... For a judge to have mercy on him, as opposed to a criminal who doesn't regret what he did, he doesn't care about what he did, but he believes that...

03:04:28

But someone else will get punished for him. That's justice? That is cruelty. Oh, no, no, no, no.

03:04:35

No. See, this is the fallacy in your example. Because in your example, the judge himself comes off the judgment seat, walks down, and pays it himself.

03:04:49

He doesn't force someone else to pay. It doesn't matter. It doesn't... Why should someone else... How is that justice? The guy is a criminal.

03:04:55

He's a murderer. Because the punishment was paid. You don't pay someone else's punishment when the guy is a murderer.

03:05:01

He's a murderer. That's horrible. You're saying that that can't be? That's a horrible...

03:05:08

That's horrible. Really? So, I guess, when I had a friend who was dealing drugs before he became a

03:05:16

Christian, and he was being sentenced to prison, and because he worked with the police, the guy he set up was in prison, and he was looking not at six months...

03:05:25

He did a plea deal for six months. But that plea deal of six months would have been a death sentence if the guy got a hold of him.

03:05:32

And I offered to do his jail time. Now, had he accepted that, the full weight of his six -month sentence would have been paid, not by him, by me freely offering it.

03:05:46

You see, the problem in your analogy is you set up a false analogy because it's not what's being said.

03:05:53

The difference is, is that justice says the full weight of sin must be paid.

03:05:59

So, if God is just, he must pay the full weight of sin to everyone that breaks his law, which is all of us.

03:06:08

If he's merciful, he can let that go. But, see, if you don't have an eternal consequence paid, then he's not just.

03:06:21

This is why you had to have an eternal being, God himself, pay the fine.

03:06:26

And that's why God came down to earth as a human being and paid that fine.

03:06:31

He's the only one who could. He's the only eternal being, so only

03:06:36

God can pay that fine. That's the only way you can have a God who is just and merciful.

03:06:43

This, again, is why Judaism, modern Judaism, is a man -made religion and not divine.

03:06:51

Because it has a God who is either just or merciful, but can't be both.

03:06:57

Because, as you said, our repentance, God forgives us.

03:07:03

Then he is not punishing us to the full weight of sin. That's a mixture.

03:07:11

There's a mixture of mercy and justice. You have to show that you're committed.

03:07:17

But a mixture is neither. So you're saying that God can't combine justice and mercy and allow someone for an atonement?

03:07:26

Then it's not... Okay, if the justice is eternity, forever and ever and ever, as a punishment.

03:07:35

Eternal life, eternal contempt. If it's eternal, then you can't have 10 ,000 years and it covers it.

03:07:45

Because that's not the justice. The full weight has to be paid. So you need an eternal being to pay it.

03:07:50

It's the only way it can be paid. Or, the only other way is you pay it for eternity.

03:07:56

That is what we're facing. I'm being honest here. I don't understand the justice in a different person suffering for something that you did.

03:08:06

If Hitler, on his deathbed, believed in Jesus. So the fact that Jesus died 2 ,000 years ago and suffered is an atonement for Jesus' sins?

03:08:18

Killing 6 million of mine and your relatives? That's a just God? I'm sorry, that's disgusting.

03:08:25

That's disgusting. That is horrible. I think the thing, Ben, is the fact that you think...

03:08:32

I feel like you did that with Nineveh, though. Because Nineveh, the Assyrians were enemies of Jews. And that's why

03:08:38

Jonah didn't want to go there in the first place. Because Jonah hated the Assyrians and the Ninevites.

03:08:44

So I think Jonah would sympathize with what you're saying. And I would add to it this way,

03:08:51

Ben. And I think part of the problem is you have to have a right view of who we are.

03:08:58

If you think that you and I are any better in God's eyes than Hitler, then you're mistaken.

03:09:05

Are you serious? Oh, absolutely. You don't understand how holy God is.

03:09:11

That is a scary religion. That is scary. You think that God thinks of you like he thinks of Hitler?

03:09:17

The fact is that when you don't recognize that telling one lie is so offensive to an infinitely holy

03:09:24

God, if you don't think that the things you and I do are so wicked, the way

03:09:31

Isaiah saw it, the way when Isaiah came face to face in the presence of God, what does he do? He sees nothing but his sin.

03:09:38

He doesn't say, I'm better than the next guy. No. He says, I am wicked. I'm a sinner and I'm from a sinful people.

03:09:46

If you don't see how wicked we are in light of how holy God is, the reality is comparing ourselves to Hitler is like saying you and I and Hitler are going to swim from New York City to the

03:10:02

UK, and Hitler drowns after a mile, but I drowned after a mile and a half and you go 10 miles.

03:10:10

It doesn't matter that you went further to us, because when you compare the 10 miles to that distance between here and the

03:10:16

UK, it's a blip. It's not even noticeable. And our sin is so wicked to a holy

03:10:24

God that the wickedness that Hitler did, which is wicked, compared to what you and I, it's a blip.

03:10:33

It's inconceivable. Andrew, I hear what you're saying, but it's shocking. If you look at the

03:10:39

Old Testament, you would agree that there's different levels of punishment depending on how severe the sin is.

03:10:47

According to you, that makes no sense. We should kill everyone for anything, or we should kill no one for nothing.

03:10:53

Why do we kill someone who commits adultery, but we don't kill someone who lies? Because there's a difference in the severity of the punishment.

03:11:01

We're not perfect. What? Because we want people to like us because we're selfish.

03:11:08

I don't understand the answer. My point is I'm trying to demonstrate. Justice would say that we show no mercy.

03:11:17

I'm not following you, Andrew. My question is don't you see from the Old Testament that different levels of severity in sin respond by God responding to different levels of severity and punishment?

03:11:31

Hitler is in a worse place in hell than you are, but you're still both in hell. What good is that?

03:11:37

So you're going to sit there in hell and say, at least I'm not as bad as Hitler. You're still not right with God.

03:11:44

That's the only thing that matters. At least we're making progress that I'm not as bad as Hitler in God's eyes. I never said you were as bad as Hitler.

03:11:51

You actually did. I said compared to God. I said compared to God. Of course compared to God.

03:11:56

It's inconceivable. The difference between me and Hitler or you and Hitler are inconceivable.

03:12:02

It's so minute that it's not even noticeable compared to how holy God is. Of course, but we're not comparing that to how holy

03:12:10

God is. We're comparing it to how God is the standard. That's the whole point.

03:12:16

God is the standard that we compare to, not Hitler. If we're going to compare ourselves to Hitler, we're going to be good.

03:12:21

But as Drew said, the Ninevites could be easily compared as worse than Hitler.

03:12:28

They were torturing people no different than Hitler did. And how did they repent? How did they get atonement?

03:12:36

Through Jesus Christ. They actually got it through vicarious sacrifice.

03:12:42

That story happened hundreds of years before Christianity. Yeah, but it's through vicarious sacrifice.

03:12:50

Because in Isaiah where God sets up the temple as a place of prayer for all, the sacrifices that were made on behalf of sinners, on behalf of the people, could cover all of those who repented.

03:13:07

So that's why the Ninevites could be found righteous in their repentance before God.

03:13:14

And then it looks forward, all of the sacrifices look forward to the coming Messiah.

03:13:20

So that's how they could be forgiven. You're saying that the sacrifices that someone did at some point in history work for the people of Nineveh?

03:13:34

Okay, let me ask it this way. Is God eternal? Yeah. Okay.

03:13:42

So when God offers himself as a sacrifice, does that count for an eternity?

03:13:56

An eternal pain? Eternal what? The punishment.

03:14:01

As an eternal being, can he pay an eternal fine? I don't, as a

03:14:09

Jew, I think you would appreciate this. I'm not used to the idea of someone else suffering for another person's immorality or sins.

03:14:19

It doesn't make sense to me. Your question is, is that eternal? It should make sense to you because throughout the

03:14:27

Old Testament, you end up seeing, and I just drew a complete blank, when the ground opens up for someone who kept some money aside that he wasn't supposed to keep when they were coming into the

03:14:43

Promised Land and his whole family was punished for what he did. Akin. Akin, thank you. Yeah, but what does that show?

03:14:51

Well, it shows that what you just said, you said as someone who's Jewish that it doesn't make sense, and yet it's in the

03:14:57

Bible. What is in the Bible? What that shows is that your Judaism doesn't line up with the

03:15:02

Bible. I'm not following. I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying. What does the story of Akin have to do with our discussion?

03:15:10

Did his family members who did not steal anything, were they punished? They were punished because they didn't, honestly,

03:15:23

I don't remember all the details, but I believe they didn't. It's not funny. I'm being honest. No, I'm saying it's fair.

03:15:31

What happened was, I believe from when I learned it, they didn't help out in exposing him, and they knew that he did what he did, and they didn't say anything.

03:15:43

Now, what does that have to do? Do you think that God punished his family for no reason?

03:15:48

Oh, no, no, no. I didn't say for no reason. I would agree with the psalmist that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

03:15:56

Why did his family die? The question is, let me reverse the question.

03:16:01

I just don't understand. What were you trying to show from that story? The statement you said that someone can't be responsible because of what someone else does, and we do see

03:16:11

God himself punishing a family for what one person in the family did. You're saying his family got punished for something that he did, and they were not responsible at all?

03:16:25

Well, I think that they get punished for their own sin. Everyone is a sinner. Why did they die at that moment?

03:16:33

Because of what one family member did. What does that have to do with them?

03:16:41

Well, see, that's the whole point that you have to now try and reconcile with the fact that the Bible doesn't agree with your religion.

03:16:47

But the point is, the statement you said has no bearing. The statement I said was that a

03:16:54

Jewish person is completely unfamiliar with the concept that someone else could get punished and atone a different person's sins.

03:17:04

And that's what happened with Achan. That's why I brought it up. Because his family members suffered for what he did.

03:17:11

God decided to take their life at that time. Look, if God wanted to, he'd be absolutely just in taking their life much sooner than that for the sins that they did against him.

03:17:24

The moment we did the first act of sin, God could take our life, but yet he is long -suffering, allowing us to continue in sin.

03:17:33

But the punishment we're going to pay in the next life is because of the sins we do in this life, not because of the sins someone else does.

03:17:43

But the point is that you are going to face God for the things you've done wrong.

03:17:49

I would face God for the things I've done wrong. And here we have the dilemma, because you and I owe an eternal fine.

03:17:57

And the only way an eternal fine can be paid is by paying it for all eternity or an eternal being paying it.

03:18:04

That is what makes Christ unique. That's what makes Christianity unique.

03:18:10

It is the only religion in the world where God does the work to get right with him.

03:18:16

It's the only religion in the world based on a person, God, that does the work.

03:18:22

It's the only religion in the world that can reconcile God's mercy and his justice. Every man -made religion says,

03:18:28

I do something, whether it's I repent or I do good works, but human effort is not going to get you in a right state with God, Ben.

03:18:38

You need to do real repentance, which is to turn from trusting yourself as in any way, whether it's your works, your repentance, trust what

03:18:48

God did on the cross. That's the only way to have forgiveness. And so you asked about the

03:18:56

Ninevites. The only way they can have repentance is what Jesus Christ did. Did they have a full understanding of that at that time?

03:19:05

Of course not. They wouldn't have, but God revealed what they did know, and the sacrifice, the offering was himself, and it's the only one that could be.

03:19:20

Okay, I'm not clear how they got forgiven if the whole story took place way, way before Christianity.

03:19:28

Also, the sacrifices that you talk about in Leviticus, how are those moral? You just told me that it's impossible to atone for a sin unless an eternal being suffers and dies for those sins.

03:19:41

So how do you— I would say that— For 1 ,300 years, Jews didn't believe in that.

03:19:47

Yeah, I would say that it was a foreshadowing to the future sacrifice that would be a lamb, that would be sacrificed, that would be—

03:19:55

But did those sacrifices—I'm sorry to cut you off, but did those sacrifices provide atonement? No, I mean, not in the sense—

03:20:03

The Torah says straight out it does. It says it all over the place, that you do the sacrifices and you get atoned.

03:20:12

So I'm going to finish the sentence now. Not in the sense of being an eternal punishment to getting right with God.

03:20:23

It was something that was a type. It was something that would be something people would do looking forward to what would be done.

03:20:34

But it couldn't of itself do anything, because how does that—

03:20:42

How does taking a lamb, killing it, how does that constitute when we break the law of an eternal being?

03:20:52

It requires an eternal fine, is the point. Here I'm seeing that Nora is talking about, back to the thing,

03:21:08

I just happened to see this with Haman, that his whole family died because of something he did.

03:21:20

Now— I don't understand how that's a completely different situation. You're trying to say that someone dies as an atonement for a different person's sins.

03:21:30

The fact that Haman's sons died, you're saying that that was an atonement for Haman's sins?

03:21:37

No, no. You said that it's a foreign thing for— It would be foreign for Jewish thought that someone else would have to pay or suffer because of what another person does.

03:21:50

In order to give that person an atonement. Okay, so now it's to give a person an atonement.

03:21:58

That was the context of our discussion. Now, Haman's sons were killed because they were cruel anti -Semites who were part of Haman's team of annihilating the

03:22:09

Jews. That doesn't require much explanation. Okay, so do you feel that you—repenting, changing from your behavior, do you think

03:22:24

God is just to let you go to heaven because you changed behavior in one area?

03:22:36

In other words, let me put it this way. Would a judge be just?

03:22:43

Say someone comes in, he committed murder. Would the judge be just if the person says,

03:22:49

Judge, I know I was wrong here, I won't let it happen again, but I never raped anybody.

03:22:56

And the judge goes, you know what? You never raped anyone, that's good. You say you're not going to do this again, I'm going to let you go.

03:23:02

Would that be just? You're talking about if God would do it or if a human judge would do it?

03:23:11

Either. Well— We're not talking about—we're talking about what justice means.

03:23:19

It's not what we believe about justice, it's what it is. We're talking truth again. So again, it's hard because we're having to play with two attributes of God that seem to be—they're very hard to fuse.

03:23:34

No, they're not. They're very easy to fuse in Christianity. I agree they're hard to fuse in Judaism because it's a man -made religion, but it's not hard to fuse in Christianity because we have—

03:23:45

Andrew, with all due respect, every early Christian follower in 1 ,300 years before all followed the system that you're calling a man -made religion.

03:23:54

No, I disagree with that. I disagree with that. I think that the

03:24:00

Judaism of the Old Testament and rabbinic Judaism that we have today are two different religions. Because the

03:24:07

Old Testament Judaism believed in salvation by grace alone, by what Jesus would do in the future, by what

03:24:14

God as the only means could do. That's what Leviticus is all about. So one of the earliest books of Judaism makes it really clear that God makes the atonement, not us.

03:24:29

That's the whole point of it. But to me, it's a much more moral

03:24:34

God, a much more just God, if he's atoning someone who commits and regrets for what they did and commits to change.

03:24:43

That type of God, to forgive him for that, as opposed to someone who has no regret and doesn't commit to change but believes in something that happened 2 ,000 years ago, that somehow gives him atonement, that's a just God?

03:24:57

No, that's not the argument we're making. But I understand if you want to put up a straw man argument, you can do that.

03:25:03

It's just not the argument we're making. What's the argument you're making? Well, because we never said that.

03:25:09

See, the whole thing is, the way you put the straw man is that someone comes to God and says,

03:25:15

I'm not willing, I'm not changing, I don't recognize I'm wrong. We never said that. Why do you need to recognize?

03:25:21

Do you need to recognize you're wrong? Absolutely. Let's say you believe in Jesus. Because you're never going to come to Jesus if you don't.

03:25:28

That's the whole thing I'm saying with you, that you can compare yourself to Hitler and think you're better when the comparison needs to be made to God.

03:25:37

And when you compare to God, you realize we're no different than Hitler. The fact that you took offense of it shows that you don't have a proper view of how wicked we are.

03:25:46

Okay? Andrew. You and I are so wicked compared to God. Andrew, does

03:25:52

God think that I'm much, much, much better than Hitler?

03:25:58

God doesn't compare you to Hitler. That's right. I'm asking what he thinks. I know he's not bored.

03:26:04

He's not like just comparing everyone. But I'm asking if you would ask him, am I much, much, much better than Hitler?

03:26:11

Yes or no? He would say that you are wicked because you are nothing like him.

03:26:19

The point is the comparison is to compare yourself to the infinite perfection of God.

03:26:26

God knows that we're not God and he created us. So he doesn't hate us because he created us and he knows that we're...

03:26:34

Wait, he doesn't hate you? Of course not. Really? What is

03:26:40

Psalm 711 and Psalm 5? I think it's 5 -5. 5 -5, yeah.

03:26:46

Yeah. Psalm 5 -5 says the boastful shall not stand before your eyes.

03:26:52

You hate all who do iniquity. And 7 -11 says

03:26:59

God is a righteous judge and he has indignation with the wicked every day.

03:27:08

Of course, what those verses are saying is he hates the wicked in the acts that they do.

03:27:15

But he doesn't hate the person. No, no, no. He hates the wicked. Psalm 5 -5 is quite clear, not the acts.

03:27:23

He says you hate all who do iniquity. He doesn't say he hates all the iniquity.

03:27:31

He hates those who do the iniquity. So are you telling me that God... Andrew, Andrew, are you telling me that God hated

03:27:39

Moses? So God brought

03:27:47

Moses to repentance so he would be a child of his and therefore, because his name is now written down in the

03:27:54

Lamb's Book of Life, he's now forgiven. I have no idea what you just said. Could you just tell me if God...

03:28:01

Could you just tell me if God, before Moses died, I'm talking about in the time that he lived, did he hate him or love him?

03:28:10

So you can say that God loves all people in a sense where he has a general love for all people, the righteous and the unrighteous.

03:28:22

However, when it comes to the right standing with God, when he is at the judgment seat, he is going to judge the wicked with a righteous hatred.

03:28:35

He has a wrath. I'd say the reason he allows people to sin is so that he could put his wrath on display.

03:28:44

And the fact is, is you're going to be under that wrath. That's my concern for you,

03:28:49

Ben. That's the concern I have for you. And so we have gone very long, an hour and a half long...

03:28:58

Okay, can I just quote... I'm sorry, can I just make a few small points just quickly?

03:29:05

There's a verse in Deuteronomy. I'm sure you're familiar with it. This is

03:29:10

Deuteronomy 24. Where is this? 16. Where it says outright that no one can die for the sins of someone else.

03:29:19

I just want to make one point about something that we didn't bring up. I just wanted to just quickly put it on the table and maybe a different time we can come back and discuss it.

03:29:28

But the issue that you brought up last week about the fact that...

03:29:34

My claim was that Jesus cannot possibly be the Messiah if he has no biological father.

03:29:40

Because we all know that he has to be... The Jewish Messiah has to come from the lineage of David.

03:29:46

And lineage always follows the biological father. That's clear in Numbers 1, 2 through 18.

03:29:52

So adoption is not a possibility? There's no such thing as adoption legally in the

03:29:58

Torah. It just doesn't exist. Okay, so Abraham, when he was going to...

03:30:05

Before he had a child, when he was going to have his servant inherit for him...

03:30:13

That doesn't count, right? So legally he wouldn't have been able to do that. You can give whoever you want your possessions.

03:30:22

We're talking about a very specific thing. We're talking about tribal affiliation. When you adopt someone, they're not your son and they're not part of your tribe.

03:30:31

Andrew, I know you're familiar with Judaism. So you would know this. You would be able to answer this. You would appreciate this question.

03:30:37

If a Kohen adopts someone from the tribe of Zvulan or any tribe...

03:30:45

Would any Jew in the history of the world say that he could be a Kohen in the

03:30:52

Beis Hamikdash? And serve as a Kohen Gadol? Or serve as a Kohen with the

03:30:57

Karbanos and with the sacrifices? I don't see why not, especially if this is something

03:31:04

God... That's never happened. There is no instance in the history of the

03:31:11

Old Testament that it ever happened. Every Kohen... So you're saying that if someone can't be adopted...

03:31:20

This is the whole thing. You keep wanting to open a can of worms. But I'll just say this and leave it at this.

03:31:27

Maybe we should discuss what the kinsmen redeemer is. Because that is exactly what ends up happening.

03:31:33

Someone is raised up in someone else's name, even though they're not of that father.

03:31:44

The kinsmen redeemer... Just to clarify, is that what you refer to as...

03:31:49

That's what Yibum is? I just don't know what you're referring to. In the Torah, what's called

03:31:55

Yibum? For example, in the book of Ruth, when Boaz acts as a kinsmen redeemer, he raises up a child in someone else's name, in her previous husband's name.

03:32:11

So that's called Yibum in Hebrew. And the command is...

03:32:17

It's actually one of the 613 commandments. And it's a situation where a brother... There's a family, and one of the brothers dies without children.

03:32:27

There's a commandment for one of the other brothers to marry the widow. And the hope is that he'll have a child, and that will continue the name of the deceased brother.

03:32:40

That has absolutely nothing to do with adoption or tribal affiliation.

03:32:47

That's talking about where you marry the husband's brother, and you continue his legacy.

03:32:55

Is it the first brother's line, or is it the second brother's line?

03:33:02

What do you mean by line? You mean who gets first choice? Whose commandment is it?

03:33:08

Okay, we really have to end with this. But you have husband one, you have brother one, elder brother, younger brother.

03:33:17

Elder brother dies. Younger brother marries the wife, has children.

03:33:23

Whose line are the children? Are they in the line of the older brother? When you say line, you mean like the lineage, the tribe?

03:33:34

Okay, so something interesting is that the whole commandment of Ebum is for brothers or people related from the father.

03:33:42

So they're all going to be in the same tribe anyway. It would never change. It doesn't matter because they're all the same tribe.

03:33:47

We're talking about brothers or relatives from the father who are all the same tribe. Okay, but can you answer the question?

03:33:56

I just did. There's no tribe change anyway because they're all the same tribe. I didn't ask about tribe, did I? I asked what you meant by line, and I clarified.

03:34:05

I thought you meant like the tribe. So what did you mean by line? Are the children raised up as the older brother, as being from the older brother or the younger?

03:34:19

Do you mean like if someone would ask someone else on the street, who's that kid's father, what would they say?

03:34:27

No. What do you mean? The line from the genealogical line, would it be from the older brother?

03:34:36

I'm not trying to be annoying. I just don't know what you mean by line. The point is, the answer to the question that you raised is the kinsmen redeemer would be the answer to your question.

03:34:46

The kinsmen redeemer has nothing to do with this. It says clearly. Could you do me a favor and just respond to it?

03:34:54

It says clearly in Numbers 1, chapter 1, verse 2 through 18. The entire section there is talking about dividing up tribes, and it says numerous times that it goes by the father.

03:35:07

That's what it says every single time. Yeah. In Matthew and Luke's genealogy, do you ever notice that it's all the fathers?

03:35:19

Yeah. Why is that? Because he was adopted in through Joseph.

03:35:26

No, what I'm trying to say is that in Judaism, it's the father that determines, your biological father determines your tribe, and therefore that's all that matters.

03:35:40

That's clearly what the Old Testament says. I'm not disagreeing with that, and I've said three times now, and he was adopted in.

03:35:48

That's not what the Torah says. It says that it's your father. He's an adopted person.

03:35:54

Adopted person is not your father. With a kinsman redeemer, the older one would be adopted in, and the father would be the older brother.

03:36:02

So, yes, it works out perfectly. The father, that's not true. That's not true, and it doesn't say that anywhere.

03:36:09

You're making something up with all due respect. It does not say that the— You show me where it says that you can't be adopted in then.

03:36:18

It says outright in Numbers 1, 2 through 18, that when you count the tribes, it goes,

03:36:29

Do you know what those words mean? I would have to look at the translation.

03:36:35

I told you, I haven't spoken Hebrew since I was 14 or 15.

03:36:40

It means to their families and to their fathers. Fathers, when it says father in every place in the

03:36:47

Old Testament, means biological father. There's no time that it ever referred to an adoptive father.

03:36:53

It never once ever called a father someone who was not a biological father. So where in Numbers does it talk about God becoming a man and how that would fit in?

03:37:05

What does that have to do with what we're talking about? Oh, very good. I'm glad you asked because that's what we are talking about.

03:37:13

You see, you're arguing for something, saying God is somehow limited to how you want to interpret the

03:37:21

Bible. And you're saying, therefore, God can't do what God can do. You want to limit

03:37:26

God for your man -made religion. And the whole point is, your whole argument of how we get right with God is based on your effort.

03:37:35

And I'm telling you, that's what you're going to be judged for, for eternity. Andrew, every time

03:37:41

I ask you a question that you don't have a response to, you say, you're limiting God. No, I'm just trying to ask you questions and see if you can explain it.

03:37:48

Every time. Drew, I'll ask you. How many times have I said that in the last, what, three plus hours?

03:37:55

I think that was the first time I've heard you say you're limiting God. Yeah, first time. So every time, every time, it was the first time

03:38:03

I said it, maybe the second. Oh, okay. Ben, if you're going to want to...

03:38:09

I mean, you are the one that emailed and said you want to have honest discussion. A little honesty would be good.

03:38:16

I'm just saying. So, you know, look, I know we have...

03:38:23

Drew, I know there's a ton of questions that came in. We're not going to get to them. I'd really like to keep the show to two hours.

03:38:30

Could you just... I'm sorry, I didn't understand the answer you gave me. You told me that God could do anything, and therefore the fact that I have a question from numbers and from where the

03:38:42

Old Testament clearly shows how you calculate, how you determine... Okay, because what you haven't given, you've given me something descriptive, not prescriptive.

03:38:51

Okay, when we interpret doctrine, we don't do it based on descriptive texts.

03:38:57

You're using a descriptive as prescriptive. It's not descriptive.

03:39:04

It's not descriptive. Did you read the verses? You're saying where it says that you have these genealogies that occurred within the period of numbers?

03:39:17

And it says that every man, it's going to go through every male and head by head?

03:39:23

Yeah. Is that what actually happened in the wilderness there? Is it describing what happened in the wilderness?

03:39:32

Yes or no? Andrew, just to give you some background, if you were back in your synagogue days, this is the parasha we're reading this week on Shabbos.

03:39:43

We're reading the parasha B 'amidbar, and it's talking about a census being taken, and it's describing how you count tribes and how you determine who's in what tribe.

03:39:55

And it says clearly, this is how you determine who's in what tribe.

03:40:00

And it says you count based on each person's father. Okay, so I'm glad you said that.

03:40:08

So it's describing, as it says in verse 1. No, it's not describing. It's God telling Moshe what to do.

03:40:14

That was your word. Your word. What do you mean? And it's specific to where?

03:40:20

To Moses in the wilderness of Sinai. So is this saying this is from time and eternity?

03:40:29

This is how you determine tribes. What happened is to take a sentence of the congregation, and it's laying it out here, but this is a descriptive passage.

03:40:40

And so this is describing what was instructed to Moses at that time.

03:40:46

You're now taking that as prescriptive. And so, you know, look, the thing that should concern you,

03:40:52

Ben, is how many times I've shown you that your arguments are not valid logically. Please tell me how this is not valid.

03:41:01

I just did. Hashem is telling Moshe, this is how you count who's in what tribe.

03:41:07

Correct. It's very clear. And you have the burden of proof to show where he says this is for time and eternity.

03:41:15

He's saying this is how you determine what tribe everyone's in. Yes, as they do what? As they split up into the promised land into tribes or into the wilderness by tribes, correct?

03:41:28

This is the way it worked is they went by tribes, and they each camped in a different location, in a different direction, and they traveled in a different direction.

03:41:35

And it's describing how they divided up. Right. So here's the thing.

03:41:41

You asked me how to do it. I gave you the answer. You don't like it. I get it. But that's the answer. What's the answer?

03:41:46

The rules of interpretation are you do not take a descriptive passage and make it prescriptive.

03:41:53

That's what you're doing. And then you're saying this can't apply to God, which is just amazing.

03:42:00

But I get it. So it's prescribing to Moshe how to determine who's in what tribe.

03:42:09

What is descriptive about that? That's prescriptive. It's telling Moshe how to count tribes and how to determine who's in what tribe.

03:42:15

At that time, are you in the wilderness? Are you telling me that the tribes that Moshe split up at that time, when they got into Israel, they switched and they moved around and they reconfigured the tribes and some people went to different tribes?

03:42:31

No. What I'm saying is you're not living in the wilderness. Then where are you in numbers?

03:42:38

Chapter 1, 2 through 18. 2 through 18. Okay. But it's really –

03:42:47

Should I tell you what verse 1 says? Yeah. It says Moshe's in the wilderness. Hashem spoke to Moshe in the wilderness, and it gives you the day when it was, and then he says –

03:42:57

I'm not giving you the introduction. I'm giving you straight to the point. I'm not trying to hide the fact that God said this. Hashem said to Moshe to count all the

03:43:04

Jewish people based on their tribe according to their father's house. And that's how tribes were determined.

03:43:11

Right. So where in here does it say that you can't have an adopted son?

03:43:20

You could have an adopted son. Actually, where does it say in here that this – It's not their father. No. I'm asking you.

03:43:27

If I adopt a son, I become his father. My wife has – her father is a stepdad, but that is her father.

03:43:38

He raised her. So you also see the same thing even in farming, where the farmer is actually – calls the cows or the bulls the son.

03:43:51

So you see the same concept of adoption even in farming. But where is the text that says you cannot adopt a son and him be counted in your line?

03:44:03

Because it says that it goes by your father, and this person is just not their father. And if I adopt someone,

03:44:09

I become their father. Tell me where you cannot adopt someone. When you adopt someone, does the person have two fathers?

03:44:20

Just because they have a biological father doesn't mean that I'm not their father who raised them.

03:44:28

I know that, but would they get a double portion? They would get the portion of the biological father and the adoptive father?

03:44:36

No. Tell me where it says you can't – no. What you're trying to do, you're trying to combine two things and make them the same thing.

03:44:43

They're not the same thing. Tell me where the text that says you cannot adopt a son and that son cannot be – and you're not the father of that son.

03:44:53

Where is that text? Because that's the argument you're making. I'll do my best.

03:44:59

Every time the Old Testament says father, everywhere – let's exclude these verses.

03:45:09

It means biological father. It uses the same word here. It never used this word of father ever in the history of the

03:45:17

Old Testament to mean an adoptive father. It never did that. So you have the burden of proof to show me that you could use the word father to be talking about an adoptive father.

03:45:29

We don't have the burden of proof because we're not making the argument. You are. Yeah, you're making that argument.

03:45:34

I've shown you how you can be a father to an adopted son.

03:45:39

My question to you is since you're making the claim, you show me the text that says you cannot have an adopted son.

03:45:48

I just did. No, no. All you did was you said every time we see this, it means biological father.

03:45:56

But you're assuming it means biological father. No, no, no. No, I'm not assuming. It's a descriptive, not prescriptive.

03:46:04

Right. That's a descriptive title. Father is a descriptive title. So when you go into the

03:46:10

New Testament and you read the genealogy of Jesus, you see it go by the father, his adopted father

03:46:19

Joseph, just as it does in Numbers. You see it go the exact same way of what you're claiming by the father.

03:46:27

Drew, Drew, would you agree that if every single time, let's just say for argument's sake, it says in the

03:46:34

Old Testament 100 times the word of, which is the word we're talking about now, which means father, and every single time it's talking about a biological father, and now it uses the exact same word, would you agree that the word means biological father unless there's some indication somewhere that it –

03:46:52

So I don't have – Hold on, Hunt. Is there a different word? The dictionary, the Hebrew dictionary, whatever. Is there a different word in Hebrew for adopted father?

03:47:00

No, because it doesn't come up. There's never a situation in the – So therefore, your whole argument just blew up.

03:47:07

Was Moses adopted at all? Your whole argument is, well, this has to mean this because this is how this word is used here, and it doesn't matter if the word's used that way everywhere else.

03:47:20

Was Moses adopted? Exactly. What? Was Moses adopted?

03:47:26

No. He wasn't found in a basket and raised as someone else's child? Oh, does it say that Pharaoh was

03:47:35

Moses? That's a great question. Are you saying that Pharaoh was Moses' father? Did Moses refer to him as his mother or anything like that?

03:47:41

I mean, is there a text that says anything like that? Not that I'm aware of.

03:47:48

It definitely – But that's a great point. This is really interesting. So here's an argument that someone's making for Ben here.

03:47:56

He says, you don't speak Hebrew. We do. Don't tell us what to think about what the language means.

03:48:02

Well, actually, no. The thing, Apogamer99, the thing is is that the word that we're talking about is adoption, and Ben is making the case that it can't be, but he's doing it not based on what the word – the proof of saying this is where it says adopted, you do this, not biological, you do this.

03:48:26

That's what we're looking for. Hold on. You made a claim. An assumption is not a claim. Was lost but now am found says

03:48:33

Moses is a prince of Egypt. Can he be a legal prince if he's not in the line of Pharaoh?

03:48:41

Drew, with all due respect, are you telling me that Pharaoh was Moses' father?

03:48:50

That's what your logic is saying. No, but adopted. That's the whole point. Are you missing that word?

03:48:57

No, no. You're saying – What does adoption mean? You're saying – one second, Andrew. One second.

03:49:03

You're saying that if there was a verse out there that said that Pharaoh was father of Moses with the same words,

03:49:12

I would stop the conversation now. But no one could conceive that the

03:49:18

Torah would ever say that. Yeah, but are there any of mother and Moses?

03:49:25

Let's look at that. Let's look and see if there's one for that. Because then your argument blows up anyway because mother can only mean mother, right?

03:49:34

A biological mother. Well, it works the same way with father. Hey, Ben. Tell me the verse. Tell me the verse.

03:49:40

Well, that's what I said. Let's look for it. Ben, would you be considered Jewish if your mother was a

03:49:46

Gentile and your father was Jewish? No. Why not? That's what the

03:49:55

Torah says. Where? Honestly, I don't have the verse offhand.

03:50:03

Okay, because I don't know of a verse in the Torah that says that. You agree to that, though, don't you? Oh, I agree to that.

03:50:08

Yes. I just don't see how that could be possible with your argument that it can only be through the male headship and not through any kind of adoption or anything else.

03:50:19

This is really basic. There are two things. There's the tribe affiliation and whether or not you're

03:50:26

Jewish. Whether or not you're Jewish goes by the mother. The tribe always throughout history has gone by the father.

03:50:32

But you do bring up a good point, Andrew. Let's say your mother, let's say a person is born of a non -Jewish woman, and then a

03:50:42

Jewish woman adopts him. Is he Jewish? Well, I don't know anywhere in the

03:50:51

Old Testament and Tanakh that would speak to that. So you would say that, yeah, he might be

03:50:58

Jewish. Yeah, I would say, yeah, they're adopted, so they're brought into the family.

03:51:03

That's the whole idea of adoption is you're brought into the family as if you have all rights from that family.

03:51:09

And that's what we're trying to say to you. Andrew, what you just said is what you just said with all due respect.

03:51:16

No one in the history of Judaism or anybody who knows anything about Judaism would ever concede or agree to what you just said.

03:51:24

It's completely wrong. And there's no example in the history of the Old Testament that that ever happened.

03:51:31

There's no such thing. So you're saying nowhere in the history of Judaism has anybody ever been adopted into a

03:51:40

Jewish family and been considered Jewish and have all the rights of that family?

03:51:47

Without going through a conversion? Of course not. You're not a Jew until you convert. Andrew, hold on.

03:51:55

Exodus chapter two, verse 10. The child, speaking of Moses, the child grew and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son.

03:52:07

Pharaoh's daughter became Moses's mother. Well, it doesn't say that.

03:52:14

Can only mean son biologically. If we're using this words the same way.

03:52:21

Could you tell me again where it is? Exodus what? Exodus 2 .10. Hold on one sec.

03:52:36

And we need to end with this. I'm sorry.

03:52:50

I'm just looking it up. Hold on one second. Okay. Yeah, you're right.

03:52:56

It does say that. That does not. I agree. It's a good verse to bring into the conversation.

03:53:03

But it does not in any way affect what I'm saying. When you say that someone's a son, in that context, clearly what it means is that she's acting as a mother to him.

03:53:20

Ben, the point we're trying to make out to you is you're making an argument from silence.

03:53:27

And what I mean by that is just because we don't see any cases, and there may be and I just can't think of any.

03:53:33

Just because you don't see cases where somebody adopted someone into their family doesn't mean that it's not possible.

03:53:43

The fact that we only have one word for father that you said, there's not a different word for adopted father than someone that's adopted into a family would be treated as such.

03:53:58

I'd have to look at this and study out because I can't. I'm going from memory. But when you have, you know, if you have a slave,

03:54:07

I think that you could, I got to look at the slave laws when they, whether they can become part of the, be adopted into a family.

03:54:18

I vaguely remember something like that, but I have to double check. But the point is, is that to say that just because you don't see it, it can't mean this.

03:54:28

That's the problem. You can't say it can't mean that if there's not something in the language that prevents it.

03:54:35

If there was a word, if the instruction was that it was that this is the way all tribes are discovered, what you're using is a passage that it's explaining how they divided in the wilderness.

03:54:51

That's a descriptive thing. What it's explaining is exactly how

03:54:57

God told them to divide in the wilderness. That you're now extrapolating that and making it prescriptive.

03:55:04

And that's the issue. And then you're trying to say that there's no other way of explaining it but this.

03:55:10

And then you use, and I don't think you mean to, but it becomes a fallacy of population to just say, well, everyone agrees to this.

03:55:18

Well, everyone in Hitler's time agreed to kill Jewish people. Doesn't make it right. So the argument has to be based on it being logically valid and biblically valid.

03:55:31

And I keep pointing this out to you because what should get your attention, and we're going to close on this, what should get your attention is the fact that you have consistently made invalid arguments.

03:55:45

And to just say, well, this is God's word in your way of explaining it.

03:55:50

But then criticize the New Testament, which is also God's word, and say, well, that can't be because of the logical fallacies that I'm making.

03:55:58

That's just not the way to argue. You need to be logically valid. But the most important thing here is you need to get right with Christ.

03:56:06

You need to get right with God. No, it's no more Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, because it's midnight.

03:56:13

We are supposed to end two hours ago. So one, just one last point. We've had one last point for two hours.

03:56:22

But go ahead. Give you one last point. You're claiming that an adoptive father has the complete legal status in Judaism as a father.

03:56:36

I just want to ask two questions. If someone's father dies and then another person adopts them, which tribe are they in?

03:56:45

OK, so we gave you I told you you could ask whatever you want. We're ending.

03:56:51

So because because you're just going to keep going. You know, so I get it.

03:56:57

I plead with you that you'd repent and get right with God tonight. I really hope you do, Ben. We can continue this conversation, but we're going to limit it from from here on out because, you know, the thing is, is that you we're we're talking past each other.

03:57:15

I think that for folks that this hopefully was helpful for for people to to see.

03:57:21

I mean, at least if nothing else, people can can see what things

03:57:27

I've said. With when raised Jewish, as you know how to argue, you learn how to to just find a way to make what you want to be true, true.

03:57:37

But what needs to be is we use logic. We use if God is

03:57:43

God, he's going to be logically valid and his arguments wouldn't be illogical, nor would they rely on illogical arguments to be made.

03:57:51

And so the point is, is that what we end up seeing is that the the fact is that and I see someone claiming that I dodged a question.

03:58:02

No, I've been here for four hours. It's not dodging a question. I've I've spent now six hours of total time answering

03:58:11

Ben's responses. And Ben claims I haven't said anything. But the reality is, is that I've answered the questions multiple times.

03:58:22

It hasn't been a dodge. Not liking the answer doesn't mean I didn't answer. OK, and so the one last question

03:58:30

I didn't answer. Well, yeah, I had already answered it. So it's answered, done previously.

03:58:39

If you want, go back and relisten and you could see what I said about adoption. OK, you get the full rights.

03:58:46

So the point is, is that by continuing on and is just trying to somehow find a way to make it sound like there's a problem in Christianity.

03:58:55

There's no problem in Christianity. There's there's a problem in the fact that you don't want to face the

03:59:02

God of the Bible. You have a man -made God and a man -made religion that has changed from what the

03:59:08

Bible has. And it doesn't matter if it was originally rooted in the Bible. That doesn't matter.

03:59:14

It's not the biblical Judaism that we have in the Old Testament. It's a man -made system where you do what's right to get right with God.

03:59:22

And that's not the biblical message. And so for any any of you who are listening, my plea is that you get right with God because he will judge every one of us.

03:59:32

And every one of us in God's sight is just as guilty as Hitler, because we're all that wicked, because we all commit sins against the holy

03:59:42

God. And so I plead with you to repent. I plead with you to get right with God. And so with that, we're going to close with a short message that we end with.

03:59:54

I'm not going to ask any questions. Nope, you can't. Muted you. All other religious systems are based on a system of morality of good works.

04:00:04

What makes Christianity unique is not a system of morality. It is about Jesus Christ.

04:00:10

Buddha is dead. Muhammad is dead. Joseph Smith is dead. Mary Baker Eddy is dead. But Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

04:00:18

If Jesus Christ was not both fully man and fully God, there would be no payment of sin.

04:00:23

This was a debate in the first century. Jesus Christ was fully man. It's important to note that he did not have a human father.

04:00:31

Therefore, he did not inherit a sin nature. Jesus Christ not only had to be fully man, but he also had to be without sin, never breaking any part of God's law.

04:00:41

If Jesus was not a man, then people would have no payment of sins. But Jesus Christ is also fully

04:00:46

God. Jesus had to be God in order to pay an eternal fine. Only an eternal being can pay an eternal fine.