A Jewish Christian responds to Ben Shapiro over the issue of Jesus as the Messiah

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All right, so we are going to deal with some, well, a very, very popular person in political realms who said something about, well, why he doesn't accept

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Jesus as the Messiah. I think I'm going to disagree with him. Just a thought.

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Welcome to the Rap Report with Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

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This is the Ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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All right, so we are back with another Rap Report. Thanks for joining with us.

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We got our regular crew here. And before we get too far in, we like to try to let folks know about other podcasts, other things.

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And before we go too far, we got Vincent and John here, and I think there is some news.

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Is it true? Is it true? Is the council finally back? I can either confirm or deny that.

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I can confirm it. Although, whether Josh Smith appears or not is another thing,

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I'm just saying. You mean the Josh Smith who said this?

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It's been challenging, but it's good. I feel like it's already been forever. It's only been 16 days.

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Only 16 days of marriage, and it feels like forever. And that was the last we actually heard from him, just saying.

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Well, I actually saw Josh Smith at a Quip Jersey recently. So he is alive, he is well, and as far as I know, still married.

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But I didn't see his wife with him, I don't know. But yeah, so the council, for folks who don't know about the council, you guys do the council.

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It used to be Council of Google +, but not any longer, just the council. A fun name, real quick, give the history of why you guys came up with the council, and what is the council?

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Well, the background was we would have these online hangouts on Google.

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And basically, Google had this one social media site called Google +, still out there, but not a lot of people were out there, other than atheists,

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I guess. And so anyways, we would all get together and do these hours of discussions through Google hangouts.

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And what it was, what originally started was, it was these conversations with these

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Eastern Orthodox folks, along with occasionally

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Catholics. And whenever we would have a conversation with them and debates and all that, what it came down to was that they were always submitting to, or referring back to the early church fathers.

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They would never, obviously, acknowledge Sola Scriptura, they didn't believe in that.

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So therefore, they would always refer back to the early church councils, and the early church fathers.

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And as a result, they got to the point where it was so frustrating that I just said, you know what, forget it,

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I'm just gonna go ahead and start up my own council. And that's what it came out to be.

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So that way, whenever they have any kind of questions or refutes about what we say, we'll just say, oh no, we're a council.

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The council has spoken. So that ended it. But it became more than that.

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I mean, you guys started out, you're doing a lot of evangelism, a lot of reaching out to cults and things like that, different religions.

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But now, you guys at some point started to do podcasting and getting a bunch of guys getting together discussing topics.

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You've kind of been in hiatus for a long time. But is the council back in session?

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It is. Yeah, we had a lot of life happening with a lot of members.

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So we kind of had to back off for a while. But it looks like we're trying to, we're getting together.

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We got a lot of shows planned and hopefully we'll be able to regularly record them.

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And so right now, it's not in a podcast format, but you guys do have it in your, well, you post it on your page on Facebook.

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And we have a Facebook page. We have also a website that you can come and, because we post a lot of written articles too.

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So let's give the website. It is. As you look it up.

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spirited -tech .com slash COG.

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Council of Google is what it originally stood for. I think it's all capital C, capital

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O, capital G. We could put a link in it. Yeah, we'll put a link in the show notes. So people can just look in the show notes and have it there.

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And so the council, when it was in a podcast form, and maybe it'll get there again, was pretty informative.

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A lot of good discussion. You'd end up talking to atheists, kind of like Matt Slick and I did once when we were used to do a show together, where you get atheists that would argue like this.

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This will bring you back, John, if you remember this one. You said statements either true or false. I gave you a statement and you said it doesn't apply.

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It's not too bad. So only too bad statements would be either true or false. So is it true that I'm talking to you?

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Is it true that it's a true statement? I'm talking to you. Is that true? Yes. Okay. Is it true that babies exist?

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Well, I mean, how far are you going to go down the skeptical route? Babies exist. Babies exist. Is that true or is it not the case that it's true?

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I mean, if you want to go down the, you know, if you want to be very strict about it, I would be skeptical about it. Okay, we're done talking.

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And that was a great conversation that we had. And John, we had many of the members of the council in on that day.

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And that was when you kind of lost it when a guy couldn't even admit that babies exist. The ridiculousness, the absurdity of what some atheists will go through to deny

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God. Yeah, it's amazing what an atheist will argue because they want to suppress the truth.

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And so if folks, I would encourage you to go out. We'll have the link in the show notes for the council. A lot of good content out there.

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And so that's something we're going to recommend. You know, there's once in a while you're listening to a podcast and sometimes you hear things and you hear things from other podcasters and all of a sudden you go, wait a minute,

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I think I know what they're talking about. Well, I was listening to a podcast and well, this is what

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I heard. Okay, I am very sorry that I called you a loser. Please forgive me.

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This is Wretched Radio. I've been informed by the powers that be, meaning my conscience, that probably wasn't,

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I wasn't intending to say you're like, you know, pathetic loser, but you lost because you didn't win the

07:44

Ray Comfort book, Way of the Master, which is a student training guide for evangelism. Youth pastor might want to use it.

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Train your kids, and I suspect some of them might just get saved in the process. We could all use some training on evangelism.

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You didn't win that. But you could win these books, which I hold in my hands, forwarded by Phil Johnson.

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Don't forget, you can hear Phil Johnson on Too Wretched for Radio and you can hear him at Grace Life Pulpit. Magnificent preaching.

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Absolutely magnificent. The book is written by one Andrew R. Rappaport. I did not know this about Andrew.

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He was Jewish. I mean, he still is Jewish ethnically, but now he's a believer, pastor, and a good writer.

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The first book is called What Do We Believe? A Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith. It's just very basic stuff.

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New believers need this. Frankly, we need reminders on these things. We need to be going back and remembering the basics of the faith and not graduating from them like, yeah,

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I already got the whole omnipotence thing. No, no, keep studying it. Excellent book for that.

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Creation of Man, The Nature of God, The Nature of Human Beings, Justification, Propitiation, Grace Alone.

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It's called What Do We Believe? A Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith. I do believe you can get it at Striving for Eternity Ministries, strivingforeternity .org.

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Send me an email saying I'd like this book and I will send it to you for free and then you won't be a loser anymore.

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I'm sorry. I wasn't supposed to. That was much better. But by making the call for people to try to win the book, then you're creating more losers.

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You, then, are the source of the loser dose. Look, if you want to look at the cup as being half empty, knock yourself out.

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I prefer to say there's now going to be two winners. What Do They Believe? A Systematic Theology of Major Western Religions by Andrew Rappaport.

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This one isn't as good because, well, the forward wasn't written by Phil Johnson. Nevertheless, it covers the basics.

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The formula is really important. When you study a world religion, if you want to go way down, down, deep, deep, deep to understand that religion, you can do that.

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But if you remember some of the basics like, okay, what is their source of authority? Where do they get this stuff?

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Who wrote it? And so the first chapter in this book is about Judaism. Where do they get their authority?

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The Torah, the Midrash, the Mishnah, the Talmud, rabbinic law.

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In other words, lots of sources. What do they believe about God? What do they believe about Jesus Christ?

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What do they believe about sin? In other words, man. What do they believe about salvation?

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That's really all you need to know about every major religion. It's like, okay, I got it. And then you're reminded that Christianity just stands so alone.

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Everything else. Everything else is workspace. Everything else, including aberrant forms of Christianity, always works because that's man's, that's just our bent.

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I'll do this. I'll get the job done. Give me credit because it's me. And so every religion that isn't

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Christianity has that type of system, except for biblical Christianity, grace alone, faith alone, and Jesus Christ alone.

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If you'd like this book, What Do They Believe? A Systematic Theology of Major Western Religions.

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It would be our delight to send these books to you for free. You winner, you.

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All right. So I was surprised when all of a sudden I was listening to Retro Radio and heard that. And you can get those, both those books at strivingforeternity .org.

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And, you know, the guys that are over at the Growth Project Radio were talking about my books.

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And I think they captured it that there's a lot of people who write theology at a very high level and not too many people that are writing it the way

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I'm trying to do it for everybody so that we have people who come into church and do not want to read something as thick as John MacArthur's biblical doctrine.

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Or Wayne Grudem's systematic theology. It just, it's, it's scary. And I wanted something that could be used in a

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Sunday school class Sunday, something that could be used in, you know, in small groups to teach theology to everyone.

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And so I, well, I do use some of the big theological words, but I define them. And so glad to see that, you know, hearing that on Todd, seeing some others pick up on what we're doing.

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And we will be having some news about what do they believe soon.

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Coming soon, I'm going to have an announcement about that book that will be, oh, maybe a month away.

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Well, shall we say. So be looking for that. Be listening to the Wrap Report. By the way, are you subscribed to the

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Wrap Report? Are you like just listening to this the first time and going, well, okay, hey, this is pretty cool, but like I want to listen every week.

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You can actually subscribe to this podcast every week. You can go to whatever app you have that listens for podcasts and just search for Wrap Report.

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That's with two Ps. Wrap Report and subscribe. You could share it with your friends. We would love that.

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You can also write some reviews for us on iTunes. There is a link in the show notes to where you could do that.

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So what I'd like to do is, I'm going to count that, guys, as our commercial.

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Having Todd, instead of playing commercials about our books, like just letting Todd talk about it was good enough, right?

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I'm going to say so. I mean, you know, some people might know that, dude.

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I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Some nobody named Todd Freel. Yeah, who knows that guy?

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So we're going to do that. And so we'll go right to the next segment. And what

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I want to do with you guys is to, well, I want to play a video for us.

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And I'd like us to go through that. And, well, I have a funny feeling that we're going to have a little bit, just a little bit of discussion that is going to come out of this.

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So let me share my screen here so we can get this up and running.

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All right. Come on. The computer is not wanting to work with me. Here we go. There we go.

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So share that. All right. Now I got to make sure that I can see you guys while I share this.

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So let me just click on that there. Where's my chat? All right.

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OK, so this is a video, as you can see from the title, why

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Ben Stein, many people may know Ben Stein. He is very active in political discussions.

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What did I say? I did that again. I did that when I was talking with you guys. Ben Shapiro. I'm sorry,

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Ben Shapiro, forgive me. But this is why

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Ben Shapiro does not accept Jesus as the Messiah. And so we want to play this.

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We're going to talk through this. Obviously, just for the record, as you heard earlier that Todd had mentioned,

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I am from a Jewish background. I'm not a token Jewish person or fake

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Jewish person. I actually was bar mitzvahed. I was in Hebrew school from the age of five to the age of about 15.

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So, you know, I gave up Hebrew basically like most of my friends as soon as I could and didn't have to learn it anymore and study it anymore.

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But I'm saying that to say, you know, I'm not someone who just had a

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Jewish family but didn't actually practice. We practiced. We well, my father was raised

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Orthodox. So was my mother. We eventually became conservative, which for folks who don't know, conservative is actually liberal.

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And then, you know, we ended up going full on Reformed, which is super liberal.

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So I actually went through kind of all three stages of Judaism. But I'm saying that to say this, that I'm not trying to make a false appeal to authority as we go through this.

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I don't want it to seem like I'm saying that, and I guess, you know,

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I don't want it to seem like I'm saying that, oh, I'm Jewish. I can speak as an authority on everything on Judaism.

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I don't study Judaism as much as Ben Shapiro does, for the record.

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I did write a book, What Do They Believe?, and I did cover Judaism, but I don't study it like Ben Shapiro does.

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And quite frankly, Ben Shapiro doesn't study Christianity like I do. And so he would be a better expert in many areas when it comes to Judaism.

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However, there's some things he's going to say that we're probably going to take issue with. So let's play this and see how far we get.

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So I was curious, by the way, that, you know, the ancient Jews that they show, you don't go anywhere after your death, right? Yeah, the idea of the afterlife is a pretty modern invention in Judaism.

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OK. We only got nine seconds in. By the way, for the record, I'm playing this at 1 .25 speed just for folks to realize this is not the regular.

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They're sped up a little bit so we get through it. But he said this is a modern view in Judaism, right?

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Well, you know, there's a couple words that we have for what we would call hell in Judaism.

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And one of them that is used early on is called Sheol, the place of the dead. How early is that?

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That's as early as Genesis 37, 35. If this is a modern day thing,

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Ben, it's used pretty early, like in the very first book of the

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Bible, in the book of Genesis. So I don't think it's all that modern.

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Now, we're not going to have the time to go into a full discussion of how

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Sheol, how Hinnom or sometimes Gehenna is referring to an eternal place of torment.

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We're going to get through some of it. I can't flesh that completely out in one podcast.

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But as we look through what Sheol is, how it's described, and when you look through Gehenna, how it's described, we see that it is a place that is a place of punishment, and it is a place,

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I'm going to argue, that is eternal. Where do we see that it is eternal? Well, I am going to see that in Daniel chapter 12, verse 2.

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Daniel 12, verse 2 says, and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake some to everlasting life and some to everlasting contempt.

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So what you see in Daniel chapter 2 is two groups of people. The people who sleep, that's a reference to death.

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Those who are dead are grouped into two different groups of people, some having eternal life.

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The others that have an eternal life or an everlasting life, the others have an everlasting contempt.

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So what you have when you do interpretation, you have two things being compared to each other.

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Some are in one category, some are in the other. The everlasting is in the same context.

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So if everlasting life means that you have life, everlasting, without death, without an end, then that contempt that is referred to here is likewise everlasting.

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You can't separate those two. Ben is going to say that that is from a later prophet.

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He's going to say that in a sec. But when he says this is an early notion, well, it's as early as Moses, which is pretty much as early as the law, because that's where we got the law from Moses.

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So here you have even before Moses, because Moses is the one to write it down.

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But in Genesis 37, when it speaks of Sheol, this is before Moses' time.

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OK, so this is back in the time with, you know, with Joseph and his brothers.

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So that's the reality that you have here. OK, this is not something that's later, but let's go on.

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You guys have something you want to add to that? I don't see a hand up. So, OK, I'll wait for hands raised.

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So, Ben, please continue. Really, it really only crops up, historically speaking, a little bit in the prophets.

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And it's usually the late prophets. And it's and it's really maybe as a response to early Christianity or Greek thought.

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So, OK, so let's deal with that. There's a lot right there that he said. Now, he's just said and look, let me just put this out there for Ben Shapiro.

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If Ben Shapiro would like to come on to our program and have a discussion on this.

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Not a debate. I'm not interested in having a debate over this. But if you want to come on and discuss this, look, you study

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Judaism way more than I do. I'd value the insight you'd have. It wouldn't be a contentious thing like he has in the political realm.

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In politics, he has a lot of debates.

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And he's an excellent debater. I would I'd probably, you know, in debate tactics, he'd do well.

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But Ben, if you would want to come on and discuss it, I'd be happy to discuss these things in way more detail with you.

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I think it'd be very edifying to many people on both sides of our camp, whether Christian or non or Jewish.

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Now, here's the thing. He said that much of this was in the later in the later prophets.

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And some of it did you let me rewind this because this becomes something I don't know that he picked up on that.

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He said, let's see if I can or Greek thought. So let me back up a little bit more early

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Christianity or Greek thought. OK, so he's saying that this was a response to Christianity and Greek thought, maybe as a response to early

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Christianity or Greek thought. So, yeah, OK. So a simple thing.

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The Old Testament canon was closed about 400 years before Christ.

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There were no Christians until after Christ died, which was about 33

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A .D. or A .C .E., if you want to do a Jewish way of reckoning the time after the common error.

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And so what you'd have is at least about probably 35, maybe 40

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A .C .E. is where you first have the word Christian showing up. And so when he says this may have been a response.

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Well, if it's showing up in the prophets, it's absolutely not a response to Christianity in any way.

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It can't be because Christians didn't exist then. There were no Christians at the time of the writing of the prophets.

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And so when he says that the prophets wrote this, maybe in a response to early

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Christianity. I think what he may be doing is and I'm going to give the benefit of doubt, he might be referring to the

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Talmud. The Talmud was being written and is a response to early Christianity. And we do see,

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I think, in the Talmud some changes in the view of hell and what happens after a person dies.

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And what you end up seeing in the Talmud is some changes that could have been a response to Christianity.

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But when he says the later writings, the later prophets, well,

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Daniel would be a later prophet. I will, I'll agree with that. I quoted Daniel 12 and that's a later prophet.

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He's probably about 500 A .D., B .C., sorry, B .C .E., if you want to before the common error.

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And so I could agree with that and say that, you know, that's one of the later ones.

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Isaiah is one of the earlier ones, about 750 B .C. And this is what he says about the end time, where people go afterwards.

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And he says in Isaiah 66 verse 24, And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who rebelled against me, for their worm shall not die and their fire shall not be quenched.

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And they shall be an abomination of all flesh. So what you end up seeing there is you see that he's saying,

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Isaiah, that this is eternal. John, you had a question or was it Vincent? No, it was me.

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I just actually just want to say for listeners, what exactly is the Talmud?

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Yeah, just kind of a brief idea of what that is. Good point. Some people have not read my book,

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What Do They Believe? And they don't know what the Talmud is. Shameless plug, I admit it.

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But the Talmud is a writing that started, it's a Jewish document that is written by rabbis.

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And in Judaism, you have a couple of different authorities. OK, you have the written, the written authority.

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OK, you know, we often think of it as the Old Testament. It'd be called the Tanakh. And the

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Tanakh is basically what we would call as Christians, the Old Testament. But more than that, you also have a oral law.

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And what you end up having is in the oral law, you have, and that's called the

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Midrash. You have a lot of mysticism in there. But the belief is that there was this written law given to Moses and an oral law given to Moses and eventually got written down.

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Now, both of them have a commentary. The commentary for the oral law or Midrash is called the

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Mishnah. That's a commentary that is used to explain the oral law.

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And then you have the Talmud. And the Talmud would be this commentary that we have from the rabbis explaining what the law means.

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And it was written over a period of about 700 years by numerous scholars.

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Now, one of the things there's actually two Talmuds, in case people want to know, there's a Palestinian one and a Babylonian one.

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They were composed, you know, in about, you know, shortly before the time of Christ till about four or five hundred years after Christ.

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And one of the things that's important to know is that the Talmud is a redacted work.

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What does that mean? It means that, you know, Rabbi Ben Shapiro may come along and write.

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And he I don't think he's a rabbi, but just for the example, Rabbi Ben Shapiro comes along and he writes about 10 pages on a topic.

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I come along, you know, Rabbi Andrew and I take his 10 pages. I summarize them, you know, into maybe five pages.

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I write three more pages of my own. You know, Rabbi John over here, he comes along, he takes what

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Rabbi Ben said, condenses that down to maybe three pages, takes what I said, condenses it down to two pages.

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He writes 12 pages of his own because he thinks his words are more important. Rabbi Vincent over there comes along and does some more condensing, takes

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Rabbi Ben down to one or two pages, takes me to a paragraph, takes

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John and Rabbi John realized, well, Rabbi John really wasn't saying anything of much value anyway. So all those pages he did got into, you know, just two paragraphs.

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And then he goes off and adds another couple pages. That's what a redacted work is. So now what that means, though, is that when you do stuff like that, it's the later writings, the later editions that you're going to have in an ancient work, you lose some of those earlier ones.

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But this becomes an authority. And really, when we look at what

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Orthodox Judaism believes today, much of it is really based on the

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Talmud, which is what is sometimes referred to as rabbinic law. And so that's going to be an important thing.

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This is where most Jewish people today or Orthodox Jewish people are going to find their authority.

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And I'm saying Orthodox for a reason. People who, and I'm sure that Ben Shapiro would end up agreeing that people who are not

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Orthodox are not really, they're not seeking to follow this, the Jewish religion as much.

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Even when we were conservative, we were going to synagogue, you know, the kids at least would go weekly.

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We always went on the high holy days. But it's kind of in Christianity. Think about as the

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C &E Christians, Christmas Easter Christians, those Christians that show up twice a year for Christmas and Resurrection Sunday.

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That's the only time you see them in church. And that's about it. So that's sort of what many

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Orthodox Jewish people would think of for conservative and reformed Jewish people.

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And so, you know, and I'm saying that to understand that this is, this may be the way that, you know, a

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Ben Shapiro would look at my upbringing and not take me as serious. I fully understand.

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That's why I invite him on to come in and discuss these things so that we can, you know, if he feels that I'm wrong, hey, let's discuss that.

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I think it would be beneficial for both the Jewish and Christian communities. So when he says about the later prophets in response to Christianity, I really,

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I don't think that's a good and valid argument. One, as I said, the

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Talmud writers would be a response to early Christianity, but not the prophets. I'm going to mark that up as a misspeak.

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I think that anyone who knows Ben Shapiro knows he's a highly intelligent individual, but I don't know if this, this is a clip from an interview.

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I don't know the full interview, and I don't know what the context was. Maybe this caught him off guard and he wasn't ready for it.

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So I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt on something like that and say that he probably of the

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Talmud, but none of the, none of the prophets early or later would have been responding to Christianity in any way because the canon of the

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Old Testament was closed 400 years before there were Christians. And so, but the point

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I do want to make though, is that many of the prophets and early writers speak of both

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Sheol and Gehenna. One of the books that's thought to be the first book of the

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Bible is the book of Job, and he mentions it several times. In fact, in the Old Testament, Gehenna or Hennam and Sheol are mentioned 78 times in 74 different verses.

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And so just to keep that in mind, there is a number of passages that are referring to the, this, so I just don't want it to be a thing where, where, oh, it's just the older prophets, the later prophets.

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This was something that was spoken about early, and it takes some development to see that Sheol is a place, not just of the dead, but as Isaiah would say, that this was the dead for eternity, that this was an everlasting death.

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Now, here'd be the thing, let's work through this. If what Ben is saying, that you have a case that this is a later development, that people are responding to the

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Christian version of an eternal punishment, if he is saying that in the early writings, like in Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, 1

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Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Nehemiah, Job, throughout

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Psalms, I mean, there's a ton of passages in Psalms, Proverbs, okay?

33:53

Then you have Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, you know, we could go on. All these books are mentioning

33:59

Sheol and Gehenna. Now, if you're going to argue that it used to be that the view that this is something just in the later, then what you'd be saying is that in the early years, the prophets said that this was something that was not an eternal thing, but then by the time of Isaiah and Daniel, it's viewed as eternal.

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Well, one, I don't think that'd be a good argument against Christianity, as he's arguing that this is a later addition.

34:32

This is a later addition, Ben, in God's Word. It is

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God who wrote the book of Daniel through Daniel and says that there's eternal life and eternal contempt.

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That's God's words. That's not my words. That's not someone else's words. That's God's words.

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Isaiah, this is God saying that this will be a fire that shall not be quenched, that he's describing as shall not die.

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He's making it clear this is everlasting, as Daniel says. So to say that it's a later response, this is throughout the

35:11

Bible. So he's emphasizing that she holds the place of the dead, but this death doesn't stop.

35:18

It doesn't end. So let's continue. In the Bible itself, there's no reference in the

35:24

Torah. There's no reference to the afterlife at all. Okay. In the Torah, there is no reference to the afterlife.

35:30

I've already mentioned that Genesis 37, 35,

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Genesis 42, 38, Genesis 44, 29, Genesis 44, 31,

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Numbers 16, 30, Numbers 16, 33, Deuteronomy 32, 22.

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Those passages all refer to Sheol. And so when you say that there's no references in the

35:59

Torah, there are seven references in the

36:04

Torah. I don't want to say that he is wrong. I want to say that he's going to argue if we were to have a discussion, he would probably argue that Sheol is just a reference to a place of the dead and not a place of eternal death.

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But you can't take those passages and then ignore what the prophets say when they refer to this as this death as being an eternal place.

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So it is mentioned in the Torah. Hell is not. I'll grant you that because that's something you're going to see in a different language.

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It's not in the Hebrew. And so we wouldn't argue that way. But the term Sheol and Gehenna are terms that we would see in the

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Old Testament in the Hebrew and that are described as a place of death.

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And how is it described afterwards throughout? And I try to just focus on these two passages for a simple reason.

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Daniel 12, 2 and Isaiah 66, 24 for very simple reason.

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I don't want to give you tons of passages and confuse you. You could look just those two up because they're clear enough.

37:17

John. Yeah, he just said, though, that there is no afterlife.

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You know, I do a word search of heaven in the Old Testament, and it's all over the place.

37:34

I mean, what it's ridiculous that he's saying that there's no afterlife.

37:39

What does a Jewish believer have to look forward to then?

37:45

Well, I think and I could be wrong. I don't want to speak for Ben Shapiro, but I will take the defense for him and say that I think what he would be saying is that he's speaking of the afterlife, specifically of those that are not believers, not

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Jewish people. The I think that the common understanding in Judaism is that there is for the

38:14

Jewish person, for sure, a world to come. And that's how it's usually referred to in the Talmud is the world to come.

38:23

They do see a Gehenna that is for a punishment. There's some different discussions within the

38:28

Talmud, but there I think what he's referring to there is an eternal.

38:36

I think he may have again, I don't have the full context of this interview.

38:45

I'm sure the interview went more than five minutes, but I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he wasn't prepped for this.

38:52

And that's why I'd say, hey, come on, prep for it. Let's discuss and do this in a manner where you can better represent the position you have, because I understand that he's he's or at least

39:08

I'm assuming he's not fully ready for that.

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And maybe he was and I'm wrong, but I'm going to I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt until I hear otherwise.

39:21

So let's keep going. We're only 30 seconds in and five minutes to go. It happens after the death of your body.

39:29

So I mean, I only have suspicion because, again, unverifiable. My suspicion is that if there is who exists outside of time and space and that what animates me is that I'm made in the image of God and that what animates my capacity is that I'm in the image of God, that I reunify with God.

39:43

Basically, there is the traditional Jewish take on this has been that there's a cleansing process. Judaism doesn't believe in eternal hell. So it's instead this idea that there's a cleansing process for your soul, the part that you got from God, that spark of life you got from God, you schmutz it up while you're alive.

39:55

And now there's a cleansing process. And then and that's what hell is sort of. And then you are reunited with God and you have greater understanding.

40:01

The idea of me being a distinct percentage outside of my body, I think, is a difficult one.

40:06

That's that's my own personal. So you don't think you're physically resurrected into heaven with God? No, I think I think that it's something like a soul or energy or consciousness or something.

40:14

Yes. Yes. A form like an Aquinas form. Right. Yes. I think that those are actually two different things in Judaism as well, like the idea of Tichayat Matim, which is the idea of resurrection of the dead.

40:21

That's a different idea than what happens after you die. Right. Tichayat Matim is the idea that eventually a messiah comes that will be resurrected back in our physical bodies at a certain point, which, you know, honestly, given the nature of how science is moving and the possibilities of cloning is actually less crazy than it sounded probably a couple of thousand years ago.

40:35

Yeah, I debunked most of the modern, you know, the singularities. I mean, we're going to upload everybody. This is not going to happen.

40:40

No, definitely. I mean, that's good. That's good to know, because I just feel like the computer would be really weird. It is weird to live inside a computer. Or that we're living in a computer now, but there's no buffering or, you know, little pixels that are going off every so often when

40:50

I'm staring off into space. It's because I got you here. I want to push you on something. Can we pause that? Yes.

40:55

Let's let's deal with it. Because I want to clip that part before we get in the next section. So, first off, he's giving his own opinion.

41:04

Fine. That's good. It's good to have an opinion. But notice he didn't provide really what the scriptures say.

41:15

You know, because this is where it's important. He's stating this.

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We're going through what the scriptures are saying, and we could build the argument that there is an eternal life from scripture, that there is very clearly.

41:32

And again, stick just to Daniel 12 too, because that's the only verse you need to see that there's clearly some who are going to awake.

41:41

He was talking about the resurrection, right? Well, many of those who sleep, those are the dead, in the dust of the earth.

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Clearly, they're sleeping where? Dust of the earth. They're dead. They're in the ground. Shall awake.

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What is that? That is the resurrection. They awake some to everlasting life and some to everlasting contempt.

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So, you have both. You don't have just the everlasting life.

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You have both clearly taught in the Bible, in God's word.

42:16

So, I don't know how to say this without seeming like I'm being very critical of Mr.

42:25

Shapiro, but God disagrees with him. I will take God's word over the word of any man, any day.

42:33

Vincent. First, observation -wise, it seems like both of these guys have a very materialistic view of the body and what that means to be resurrected.

42:49

Their consciousness can be implanted into a computer, and that would be weird.

42:56

It's a weird view that they have of this whole subject from my point of view. I want to say more, but I think

43:06

I'll wait until later into the discussion. Well, on the issue, this first thing, he's going to now change into the topic that we're going to address, whether Jesus was

43:19

Messiah. But on this, just to point out, I hope that it became clear through this that the

43:24

Scriptures are clear that there is an eternal life and death. There is a life hereafter.

43:32

After we die, we will continue to be conscious, and some of that's going to be with as he said, with the knowledge of God, and we're going to be with him, but others are not.

43:45

It's going to be a contempt. It's going to be described as a fire that can't be put out. So let's continue with this interview.

43:53

And I'll have the link for this in the show notes. My Christian friends and people that I debate on the resurrection, they have a whole series of arguments.

44:02

If you just followed our reason, you would accept Jesus as your savior. My answer to this is the great Jewish rabbis who are smarter than you and I sitting here, they've gone through all these arguments.

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Why don't they accept Jesus? Why don't you accept Jesus? Okay, before you get to that.

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That kills me, because that's not how anyone's converted from our view, and that just kills me that a persuasive argument could be what converts someone.

44:27

Okay, so let's deal with that, right? So the issue is that Christianity does not believe, what we would say, biblical

44:36

Christianity would not believe that the world has an evidence problem, that someone can convince someone into the kingdom, that someone could give really good arguments, and they're going to believe it.

44:47

We would argue that somebody has a spiritual problem, that they're an enemy of God, they rebel against God.

44:58

Now, he speaks, Ben Shapiro mentioned the spark of life. And there is this view in Judaism that you have a spark of life that helps you really get salvation in a sense.

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And they're going to talk about the sin nature just as being an evil impulse. Okay, so just keep that in mind that that's the view.

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He doesn't have a view of a sin nature. In Christianity, we would view this as that we all, every single human being has a sin nature.

45:26

We're enemies of God, we rebel against God, and we're fighting with God. And as it says in Romans 1, speaking of God for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made, so that they are without excuse.

45:48

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give him thanks, but became futile in their thinking.

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And their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise. They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal

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God for images resembling immortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

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And what you see is that what Paul argues in Romans is that they suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

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That's why, that's the argument, is that this

46:38

Jewish man who's asking this question, he's suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. He knows he could see the things.

46:46

He's living in a materialistic world. He's going to say he believes in a God, a God, but not the

46:51

God of the Bible. Now he's going to say, well, the God of the Old Testament. Well, the God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament.

46:58

And there's no difference there. So the reality is that I would say that it's not an evidence problem.

47:07

It's a spiritual problem. And the reason someone doesn't believe is not because they just needed really good evidence.

47:16

It's because they needed repentance. And that comes from God.

47:22

But let's hear what Ben says. The reason that I don't accept Jesus as the Messiah is because I think that a lot of the

47:28

So Jesus as the Messiah is a different figure than anything that exists inside Judaism. So when people say that Judaism predicts the coming of Christ, the change in the nature of what

47:38

Christ is, what a Messiah would be, is different from Judaism to Christianity. So Judaism never posited that there would be God come to earth in physical form, and then acting out in the world in that way.

47:49

Okay. So let's address that. Right. Now, I would argue, and I'm sure you guys would agree with me, that we would argue as Christians that the

48:00

Bible, Old Testament, New Testament has always positioned this. And I think that in the

48:07

Talmud, reacting to Christianity, there you see the

48:13

Messiah really start to change in the view. But we do believe that the response of early

48:24

Judaism, early Second Temple Judaism, and I'm going to make a distinction between early

48:31

Biblical Judaism and Second Temple Judaism. When the Jews were in captivity, returned to Judaism, built the

48:39

Second Temple, Judaism became, I think, much more legalistic. They did cure the

48:47

Jews of ever following after idols again, which was the purpose of sending them off into being captives of the

48:56

Babylonians and all that. So that was cured. But they ended up becoming,

49:01

I think, more legalistic. And they looked at the Messiah being under occupation of Babylon, the

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Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, as a political leader who would lead them. I think that's the reason many

49:15

Jews of that day missed the Messiah, because they weren't looking for God in flesh.

49:22

But does the Bible say that? Well, Isaiah chapter 9, let me read this a little bit of a longer portion, but it is something that I think worthy to read.

49:36

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness, on them has light shown, who have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy.

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They rejoice before you as with the joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil.

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For the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulders, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.

50:17

For every boot of the trampling warrior in battle torment and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for fire.

50:29

For to us a child is born and to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders.

50:40

Now, I want to stop there and say, many are going to say, well, this is the political

50:47

Messiah, that the government will be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called

50:54

Wonderful God, sorry, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the

51:02

Prince of Peace. So if this Christ -like figure who would be a political ruler is called

51:12

Mighty God, I'm just saying that sure seems like that's

51:17

God, because that's exactly what the text says, that this is

51:23

God. And so I say that to say that we can't just skip over this and ignore it.

51:32

He is clearly saying that this is a reference to God, okay?

51:40

This would be blasphemy. Now, let me get even more specific in Jeremiah 23, verse 5.

51:49

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and execute justice and righteousness in the land.

52:05

Now, I don't have the time to go into all the Old Testament to show how this King of David would be an everlasting king, which his kingdom would begin and never have an end.

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That can only be God, who's never going to have an end in a kingdom in that sense.

52:21

But we'd have to go into the Old Testament and do a lot more. But here's the real thing with this.

52:27

This branch of David, this king that he's going to raise up for David, here's what's interesting, is verse 6.

52:38

In the days of Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely.

52:45

Now, they're going to say that is the Messiah. This is what it is, where Israel dwells securely. And if they're going to argue that this is a political leader, well, he's a political leader that rises up from the line of David.

52:58

And it says, if we continue in verse 6, and this is the name by which he will be called

53:04

Jehovah or Yahweh Sikhenu, the Lord, our righteousness.

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This is blasphemy if it's not speaking of God. So I disagree with Ben.

53:18

I think that this was something in the Old Testament, in the Tanakh, where we see there is references that this branch of David, this eternal king would be called

53:32

God. Again, I only want you to focus on two verses, Jeremiah 23, 5 and 6, and Isaiah 9, verse 6.

53:45

Just focus on those. I think those refute what he just said. And again, no offense.

53:51

He's a brilliant man, but he's nowhere near God. And I'm going to put

53:57

God's word above man's word any day, whether Christian or Jewish. John, go.

54:04

I was going to also point out that, isn't it true that most Jewish rabbis won't even speak of Isaiah 53 or any other verses?

54:15

Well, we haven't gotten there yet. Okay. Let's continue with Ben.

54:21

Judaism posits that God is beyond space and time. Occasionally, he intervenes in history, but he doesn't take physical form. It's one of the key beliefs of Judaism, actually, isn't it?

54:28

Okay. He doesn't take physical form, except for in the book of Genesis when he sees

54:35

Abraham, and he appears and eats bread.

54:40

He took some physical form. Except for the time with Jacob, and he wrestles with God, so he says, all night long.

54:51

Who walked in the garden with Adam and Eve? Correct. Who was in the fire with Daniel's three friends?

55:01

You see, we end up seeing that God does take on physical form throughout the Old Testament.

55:08

...Temporal God. So that means that the idea is actually foreign to Judaism, of a merged

55:14

God -man who is God in physical form, then dies and is resurrected and all this. It's just a different idea than exists in Judaism.

55:20

So you're not waiting for the Messiah to come. Right. So I'm waiting for the Messiah to come in the form of a political figure, right?

55:26

So the Messiah in Judaism is a guy who's going to come back and is going to establish peace in Israel and is going to assure that there's sort of a happier world with a bunch of political aspects to it.

55:36

So he's looking for Donald Trump. Okay, let's not go there. Who could this

55:41

Messiah be? Let's find out. As explained by Maimonides. But he's going to die too, right? He's not going to come back and everybody lives forever and any of that kind of stuff.

55:47

He's a corporeal agent. He's just like us. Right. In the Jewish view, any person could be the Messiah. Any Jew can be the Messiah in the Jewish view.

55:53

Right. Right. So I could be it. Who knows? Okay. Can any Jew be the Messiah? No, actually, any

55:58

Jew can't be the Messiah. He has to, there's some restrictions. Has to be of the line of David. Has to be born in Bethlehem.

56:04

There was some rules on Messiah, but I don't think,

56:09

I agree. I don't think it's Ben Shapiro. I'm not. That's a different view than the

56:15

Christian view. So the argument typically made to Jews by Christians on this is that Jews are, it's forecast by the Bible. And that's, and for Jews, we have a whole different read when you read the

56:23

Hebrew about why this may or may not be true. The Christian's saying the Old Testament predicts it's going to come. So you disagree. Okay. So let me just,

56:29

I mean, I'm going to read this and I want to see if this seems like it predicts it, but this is

56:37

Isaiah chapter 52, starting in verse 13. A little bit of a longer, we're going to go a little long on this podcast, so we could address all of this.

56:45

And I want to read these longer portions because I want the context to be given for folks who don't just hear a verse and don't go look it up.

56:55

Isaiah 52 verse 13, and I'll read all of 53. Behold, my servant shall act wisely.

57:02

He shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.

57:21

So shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him.

57:29

For that which has not been told them, they see. And that which they have not heard, they understand.

57:40

Who has believed what he has heard from us and to what has the arm of the

57:48

Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground.

57:58

He had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him.

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He was despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief and as one for whom men hid their faces.

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He was despised and we exalted him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried out our sorrows.

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Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions.

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He was crushed with our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

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And with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray.

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We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has led on him the iniquity of us all.

58:58

He was oppressed and he was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that was led to the slaughter.

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And like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

59:17

By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. And for his generation who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of many people.

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And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death.

59:40

Although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth, yet it was the will of the

59:50

Lord to crush him and he put, sorry, and has put him to grief.

59:59

When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offering. He shall prolong his days.

01:00:07

The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied by his knowledge.

01:00:17

Shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous.

01:00:24

And he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many.

01:00:32

And he shall divide the spoil with the strong. Because he poured out his soul to death.

01:00:40

And was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.

01:00:50

That, I can, I do this often. I read that on the streets and I ask people, who is that talking about?

01:00:57

Even Jewish people. They say it speaks of Christ because it is the description of what happened at his judgment, at his cross, at his resurrection, the burial.

01:01:12

You can look at Isaiah 22. I won't take the time to look at that. But that describes in detail what happened at the resurrection, sorry, at the crucifixion.

01:01:23

Now, here's the thing. At the crucifixion, Jesus Christ said these words. My God, my

01:01:30

God, why hath thou forsaken me? Now, many people go into what does he mean by that?

01:01:38

How did God forsake him? That God turned his back on him? That God, that somehow,

01:01:44

Jesus stopped being God. That's not what happened. In Judaism, before you had titles or numbers for chapters, you'd have psalms.

01:01:56

You would have references. And a psalm would be referenced by its first verse.

01:02:02

So, if you want to refer to Psalm 22, you refer to it by the first verse.

01:02:09

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? If you read through all of this, that it talks about him being poured out like water, his bones being out of joint, being pierced in his hands and his feet.

01:02:25

You read through all that and you see that he was describing exactly what was happening at the crucifixion.

01:02:34

Andrew, are you telling me chapter and verses are not inspired? That is exactly what I'm telling you.

01:02:39

In fact, in the Jewish Bible, in Psalm 22, verse one actually starts with the title where it refers to it as a psalm of David to the choir master.

01:02:48

According to Doe of the Deer, a psalm of David. That's actually verse one. Verse two is actually my

01:02:54

God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? So, no, the chapter of verses didn't come until much later, both in the

01:03:02

Christian and Jewish Bibles. And so, this is how they would refer to it. And so, when

01:03:07

Christ was on the cross, he was referring to Psalm 22. And you read through that and that is a depiction of the cross.

01:03:14

That depicts exactly what he went through. And so, that's why so many people say that it's clear that the prophecy, that the

01:03:22

Messiah would be this thing. And it's the reason, as John said, that many

01:03:27

Jewish people do not read Isaiah 53. When you go through your temple readings, you have basically throughout the year, you have set different temple readings.

01:03:37

And anyone who's bar mitzvahed on that day, you have that temple reading. Mine was lovely in the

01:03:43

Book of Leviticus on the burnt offerings. Yay! I was hoping it was the bald guy passage, but okay.

01:03:50

No, my Haftor reading was in Jeremiah. But can I say real fast that I've read a lot that prior to the

01:04:00

Dead Sea Scroll finds, a lot of people just doubted Isaiah 53 because they thought it was a later edition.

01:04:07

But Dead Sea Scrolls kind of silenced that issue. The Dead Sea Scrolls did a whole lot because Isaiah, we find word for word the same.

01:04:17

Many people thought Daniel had so much prophecy, detailed prophecy of the

01:04:24

Medo -Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire. People thought there is no way this could be.

01:04:33

And what you end up seeing is they thought there was later versions of Daniel. So there was an early

01:04:38

Daniel, a later Daniel. Then we have the Dead Sea Scrolls. Oops, nope, there was one

01:04:44

Daniel. There was one Isaiah, and they disagreed with those two. They want to say there was more

01:04:49

Isaiahs and more Daniels, later ones, later writers, because of the amount of prophecy that was in there.

01:04:58

Accurate prophecy. Accurate, detailed prophecy that liberal Christians would argue that there were later writings up until the finding of the

01:05:06

Dead Sea Scrolls. It silenced a lot of that. I just find that fascinating.

01:05:12

That is one of the great things that did come out of the Dead Sea Scrolls. People do not realize how it validated a lot of things.

01:05:21

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And it argues against the view that many had that the Bible was changed over a period of time.

01:05:29

Dead Sea Scrolls predated the earliest copies, earliest manuscripts that we had of the

01:05:36

Old Testament by a thousand years without change. That is the thing.

01:05:43

We end up seeing that the changes that have supposedly happened did not happen.

01:05:50

It is almost like the supernatural being is protecting this stuff. Oh, crazy idea.

01:05:55

Actually, a lot of what it is, and I do not want to get into this, but I mean, it is fascinating to see how the

01:06:03

Jewish scribes would copy and make the copies and the detail that they had in making sure that it was accurate.

01:06:14

So, let us see if we can finish this up with Ben. Disagree, because I mean, I think a lot of the verses that are cited are actually misreads of the

01:06:22

Hebrew, so I read Hebrew, so I think that, but again, that is not to disclaim the, even in the

01:06:29

Jewish view, the impact of Christianity on world history, right? Yeah, that is a different question. We are talking about the ontological question. Is there a

01:06:34

God out there, and is there a Jesus, a Messiah in physical form? Right, so I have actual beliefs that run counter to the idea of God taking physical form as a human being, because I think that that leads to a lot of weird side effects.

01:06:43

Okay, so I will agree with him that, you know what, there is a lot of weird things that I cannot explain in the incarnation,

01:06:52

God becoming a man, taking on a human form. There is a lot of weird things that I cannot understand in God being one being in three persons, but guess what?

01:07:04

God does not submit to me, Mr. Shapiro. This is an argument I make with Muslims all the time, because they are going to argue that Christianity is wrong, because they put it up to their ability to reason.

01:07:19

They think they have an ability to reason, and I will ask this question of Ben Shapiro.

01:07:25

Is God greater than your ability to understand him? My guess is you would say yes.

01:07:33

I can say yes. Any Muslim I ask says yes, and the reality is what you have just done is submitted a

01:07:39

God that says he must be to your ability to understand, not the God of Scripture, not the one that says that this

01:07:47

Messiah would be Almighty God, or Mighty God, I should say, that he would be

01:07:54

Yahweh Sikhenu, that he would be a God of righteousness, that he would be an eternal king.

01:08:04

When we look at this, Ben, I argue that God is greater than our ability to understand him.

01:08:09

It's one of the first things I teach when I teach theology is the attributes of God, and the first attribute I always start with is that God is incomprehensible.

01:08:18

He is greater than our ability to understand him. What he's revealed to us, that we can know, but that's the limit.

01:08:25

We cannot understand the full nature of God. We can only understand God in the limit that he has revealed himself to us and given it to us in written form.

01:08:37

We can understand some things, as Romans 1 says, as Psalm, I think it's 14 or 19, I forget which one, says that we can understand him from creation and have an understanding of him from Psalm 19, that we can understand that the heavens declare the glory of God.

01:08:54

We can understand some things about him, but he is fully known as best as we can understand him in his revealed text, the scriptures, the

01:09:05

Bible, what you'd call the Tanakh, what we'd call both Old and New Testament. Here's the thing.

01:09:11

I would never, ever, ever want to submit the nature of God to my sinful, flawed, limited human knowledge.

01:09:24

Ben, you're smarter than me. I'll grant that. I have 168 IQ. I think you're probably smarter than me.

01:09:31

I'm not even going to debate that, right? You're wickedly smart. You're great in debates, but God is so much more infinitely intelligent than you or I could ever be.

01:09:46

Someone with a 200 IQ doesn't even come close to the infinite knowledge that God has.

01:09:55

We cannot fully understand God. And to say that this can't be true because it gives a weird view of you, that you have of God, I just want you to realize that I think you limit

01:10:12

God when you do that. You say that God has to be something you can comprehend. So just some thoughts for you,

01:10:18

Mr. Shapiro. Think about that. Yeah. Like my Christian friends, when you're resurrected in heaven, well, how old am

01:10:24

I? I mean, physically resurrected. 30. Some of them say you're 30 because Jesus was 31. Never heard that argument, by the way.

01:10:32

So what happens to all the memories I have of the last 33 years? Do they go into the brain? Yeah, no, these are definitely puzzling questions, which is why

01:10:38

I don't believe in that version of heaven. But we're curious, by the way. So that is the end of that.

01:10:43

And what you end up seeing with that is, you know, at the end, I think it got a little bit,

01:10:49

I think, almost ridiculous in the argumentation given. Because he's arguing, oh, what happened?

01:10:56

I'll be at 30. And so the next 33 years are gone. No, that's not the argument anyone would make.

01:11:02

Actually, the argument that we make is that all of your memories are going to be without the influence of sin.

01:11:09

And so I think without a failed body, you're going to remember all of it. And I think that you're going to have a better understanding.

01:11:17

You know, and I really think, you know, we're going to, you know, I think that what you see here is there is really a lack of understanding on both these gentlemen parts of what

01:11:29

Christianity actually teaches. I hope that as you see throughout this podcast,

01:11:37

I try not to misrepresent someone else's position. And I hope if Ben Shapiro sees this, that he'd say, you know what, he accurately represented what

01:11:47

I believe Judaism is, even though he disagrees with it. That'd be my hope, that I would disagree.

01:11:54

I think that Second Temple Judaism disagrees with what the Bible says. Ben Shapiro would disagree with me.

01:11:59

Fine. Let's discuss that. But the thing is, I hope that I accurately represented what

01:12:05

Second Temple Judaism does believe, Judaism of today does believe. And I want to give benefit of doubt where I can, but I think they misrepresent

01:12:14

Christianity. And my challenge would be this. If you, Ben, want to disagree with the

01:12:19

Christian view of Jesus as the Messiah, take the time to properly understand it and accurately explain it.

01:12:27

I think that'd be fair. And I think in any debate that you've had with Muslims or politicians, pro -life issues,

01:12:34

I, you seem to try to accurately represent other positions on other topics.

01:12:40

This is one that I think I could be wrong. It seems almost as if you're falling back on the rabbis.

01:12:47

And I'm not sure how much of the study of the Christian view you have done on your own.

01:12:54

And so I can't speak to that. I don't know. It's pure, literally, I'm saying this is pure guesswork on my part of how much you may have or may not have done.

01:13:05

But I do want to say that I don't want to take it for granted that, you know, there is something that we have to understand.

01:13:16

We both can't be right about Jesus. We could both be wrong, but only one of us could be right.

01:13:25

Let me say this. What we read, we read Isaiah 53. What you see there is that when the

01:13:32

Messiah would suffer and take the iniquity of the sin of the people.

01:13:39

Okay. It speaks in Daniel. When you look at Daniel in the 70 weeks, if you're familiar with that, there's the parable, the prophecy in Daniel chapter 9 in 24 to 27.

01:13:58

And he talks about this prince that is going to come. And what does it say about that?

01:14:04

There's 70 years. And when this Messiah comes in the final stage, that last week, it will finish the transgression.

01:14:12

It'll be an end to sin and an atonement for iniquity to bring everlasting life.

01:14:20

That's what you end up seeing. That's what we believe Jesus came. He came as an atonement for sin to be that payment.

01:14:28

And that he will return where the Jewish people will recognize him and see that he was pierced for them.

01:14:36

And then they too will believe. But we don't know when that will be. And many, many, many

01:14:41

Jewish people will die and have to give an account for violating

01:14:47

God's law. It's not just an evil impulse that they have. They have a sin nature. They are born with a nature that is a sinful nature.

01:14:59

And I want Ben and other Jewish people to hear that for this one reason.

01:15:05

I want you to know that there is a day appointed unto man once to die and then a judgment.

01:15:12

And because of that, I want you to know the good news of why the Messiah came. Why Jesus came.

01:15:19

And so I want you to hear what the Christian message is, because I don't know if you heard it before.

01:15:27

So here's what the Christian message is, Ben. The Christian message is this.

01:15:33

Every single person, as I read in Isaiah, all of us have fallen away. All of us have sinned, fall short of the glory of God.

01:15:40

Those are Old Testament passages. That we have sinned. That we have broken God's law.

01:15:46

And in doing so, God is a just judge. In Psalm 7, 11, 7, 12, maybe in the

01:15:55

Hebrew Bible, that God is a just judge and angry with the wicked every day. God is going to judge because he's infinitely holy and infinitely just.

01:16:04

There is a consequence to sin. And as we went through here, that consequence will be eternal.

01:16:11

As Isaiah 66, 24 says, and as Daniel 12, 2 says, that will be eternal.

01:16:18

But as Isaiah 53 says that Christ came to be a payment of sin and that he not only died as a payment of sin, but he died, was buried and resurrected from the dead.

01:16:30

That resurrection was a vindication that he was God. And in doing so, that he rose from the dead so that he not only could prove that he was

01:16:42

God, but he proved that he can offer the forgiveness of sin. That he has the right to offer that.

01:16:49

And that we can have forgiveness of sin in Jesus Christ. So we stop trusting doing the

01:16:55

Torah, doing good works. Stop trusting our Judaism as a birthright to get us to have a right state with God.

01:17:04

It's not by our genealogy. It's not by the works we do. It's not by wishing ourselves into heaven.

01:17:10

It is by what God did on that cross. When God himself became a man, died in our place and rose from the dead.

01:17:17

That is the gospel message. And the importance of it is this. Because many people believe in a man -made religion where human works carry the day.

01:17:27

Where human works are what we ultimately look to as getting us right with God.

01:17:34

Human works will not do that. Comparing a human work to God dying and being an eternal being and suffering an eternal consequence.

01:17:43

There is no comparison. It is disingenuous to have human works compared to God's work.

01:17:51

So my challenge to Ben Shapiro or anyone listening who does not know Jesus Christ. My challenge to you is to repent and believe and trust in Jesus Christ today.

01:18:01

Don't trust your good works. Don't trust your wishful thinking. Don't trust your genealogy. Trust in God alone.

01:18:08

Jesus Christ who died for you. That you can have eternal life. Now, John, you had more.

01:18:14

Sorry, Vincent. You had more you wanted to add. I do. And especially when it comes to, like you've been saying, intelligent people like Ben Shapiro.

01:18:26

It usually comes down to our presuppositions and all things, no doubt.

01:18:33

We can get deep on all the presuppositions and the epistemologies that we have.

01:18:40

So the big difference I see in all of this is that our presupposition is

01:18:46

Christ, Jesus is God. And we're going to start at that foundation that Christ is

01:18:55

God. And that we interpret the Old Testament in light of the New. We have further revelation.

01:19:02

It has illuminated what the Old Testament actually says. So that's going to be a big, big argument there because, you know, you come with someone like Ben Shapiro who, well, he's just going to deny our presuppositions.

01:19:16

And that's going to be probably an argument where you have to fight presuppositionally on a lot of these issues.

01:19:26

Because I just think when you have two people coming at from two different starting points, that's always going to be a starter.

01:19:34

You know, we had to get that first out of the way before you move on to other things.

01:19:42

At least from my experience dealing with a lot of people. I mean, it applies to atheists and other religions.

01:19:49

And I'm just saying that I see a lot of foundational differences.

01:19:55

Presuppositionally. Maybe too deep on this. But I just, listening to him, it's like, man, he has a whole different starting point.

01:20:04

Exactly. And as you guys said, it's a more materialistic one. I should say this.

01:20:09

I did do some checking while we're going through this. The longer interview, and I'll put a link to that maybe as well, is from Michael Shermer's Sunday special episode six.

01:20:21

It's an hour long. And the topics, it says here, the description is, does

01:20:27

God exist? Do socialites thrive under a religious influence? Ben Shapiro and noted atheist

01:20:34

Michael Shermer debate Christianity's role in cultural advancement on the episode of the

01:20:43

Sunday special. So they were talking the existence of God and things like that when this came up.

01:20:51

So just to give that, let's go to a short break and just wrap up the show with some other things.

01:21:00

I don't think we'll do the spiritual transition game or name that fallacy, because I think we saw a couple of fallacies in here.

01:21:08

We shouldn't name them. But let me just play a quick commercial. The good news is

01:21:14

Striving for Eternity would love to come to your church to spend two days with your folks, teaching them biblical hermeneutics.

01:21:23

That's right. The art and science of interpreting Scripture. The bad news is somebody attending might be really upset to discover

01:21:30

Jeremiah 29 11 should not be their life verse. To learn more, go to strivingforeternity .org

01:21:36

to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area. Striving for Eternity is a

01:21:43

Christ -centered ministry focused on equipping people for eternity, and they provide speakers and seminars that come to your church with expertise in theology, hermeneutics, world religions, creation science, evangelism, pre -supposition of apologetics, church history, and expertise in sexual abuse in the church.

01:22:02

For details on their seminars and to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:22:08

Striving to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. All right. So that is some of what we do at Striving for Eternity.

01:22:16

I think that my class, my seminar on biblical hermeneutics called Bible Interpretation Made Easy might benefit

01:22:24

Ben Shapiro, just things like reading in context. You know, that's a thing.

01:22:31

I mean, look, I realize this was a five -minute clip. Maybe he wasn't prepared to give

01:22:36

Scripture and arguments with that. If he was debating whether God exists with an atheist, it's going to be a little bit different of a thing than dealing with, you know, trying to give an argument for Jesus as Messiah.

01:22:58

But I tried to give some of the Scriptures in this longer response. I didn't listen to the full one hour.

01:23:05

Maybe I will and see if he gives more Scripture to support that. Do want to give some shout outs.

01:23:11

We got some reviews in iTunes. And folks, if you want to leave an iTunes review, we'd appreciate it.

01:23:17

There's a link in the show notes. Just go to iTunes, search for Wrap Report. We got a couple new ones.

01:23:24

Theology Gal said, Andrew does a great job addressing a variety of subjects from a biblical perspective.

01:23:33

That's because I'm Baptist, Theology Gal. Just saying. She's a Presbyterian.

01:23:40

So, she has a great podcast called Theology Gals. And that is, the

01:23:46

Reformed Gal is none other than the Colleen Sharp. Eric Bennett left a review, striving for returning ministries is a beacon in the dark, seeking to reach the lost.

01:24:02

Andrew is very knowledgeable and loves the Lord. I would love to go to Jersey Fire one day and do some street witnessing.

01:24:09

Check out the Wrap Report on iTunes. We just had, we've renamed actually the

01:24:15

Jersey Fire. It's called Equip Jersey. We just had it recently. Very glad to see we've changed the way we've done it.

01:24:23

It's a lot more discipleship oriented. So, we're trying to keep it a little bit smaller now so we can get, basically we're trying to get more hands -on discipling.

01:24:34

So, we're really looking forward to that. If you haven't signed up for our newsletter,

01:24:41

I encourage you to go out to strivingforreturning .org, get our newsletter because in there you find out everything that's happening.

01:24:50

And some of the things that are happening are some of the events coming up. And this last podcast, that's exactly what we dealt with.

01:24:59

We were addressing some of the events. And there's gonna be a number of events coming up next weekend.

01:25:06

Dr. Anthony Sebestro and myself will be in New York. And we will be with a ministry called

01:25:14

Christian Collegian Network. And they're gonna have what they call their Repent and Witness Evangelism Camp.

01:25:21

It is an intense camp where it is basically four full days of evangelism.

01:25:27

We will do some training in the mornings. We start at about eight in the morning, train until noon. And then from noon, we get on the subway.

01:25:34

And that's when the evangelism starts. And we actually go till two in the morning. So, it is 14 hours of evangelism.

01:25:41

Wow, that sounds like too much for many. That's okay. We allow some people to go back early. There are many who don't do the night evangelism.

01:25:49

They have dinner, return back to the place we stay and call it a night.

01:25:54

But there are many of us who go out for the full 14 hours. Coming up is gonna be the Equip NorCal Conference.

01:26:01

That's gonna be September 14th and 15th in Redwood City, California. Speakers will be myself,

01:26:07

Dr. Anthony Silvestro. Mark Spence will be joining us on Friday night. And that is going to be at, actually, if you have the newsletter, there's a link there.

01:26:20

But that's at GraceBibleChurch, gracebibleonline .org, I think is their website.

01:26:26

Then we will have another couple conferences. We got a conference coming up that following weekend.

01:26:33

I will be speaking at September 21st and 23rd in Coronation, Washington.

01:26:41

And then that's gonna be on my book, What Do They Believe? We're gonna look at the different religions there.

01:26:47

I will also be speaking in Mount Laurel, New Jersey at Mount Laurel Evangelical Free Church. The topic will be on evangelism.

01:26:54

And that is at the South Jersey Apologetics Conference. I was the keynote speaker last year. And I have the privilege of being that again this year.

01:27:03

I will also be doing the Ambassador Evangelism Seminar in Northern Idaho, October 12th to the 14th.

01:27:11

Well, 12th and 13th, I'll be speaking on the 14th. And that's in Cooney, Idaho, Cooney Community Church.

01:27:21

I'm probably butchering that. I know that's in Northern Idaho near Sandpoint. So if you are anywhere in those areas,

01:27:28

I encourage you to come out. And we will be there speaking at those different events.

01:27:34

We have more that we'll add. We will be, as we're still working on updating the website, we're gonna be adding that in.

01:27:40

Encourage you to listen to the podcasts at the Christian Podcast Community. You can actually just on your podcast catcher go to Christian Podcast Community.

01:27:49

And you will catch all of them. If you want to get everything that's on there, you can go to that one.

01:27:54

And it downloads everything. And right now we have two podcasts on.

01:28:01

This one that you're listening to now, the Wrap Report, and also Theology Answers with Pastor James Tippins.

01:28:09

But some more coming. And if you go to ChristianPodcastCommunity .org, you'll see that we have

01:28:14

Theology Gals is going to be joining us shortly. We have Justin Peters is going to be joining us shortly.

01:28:20

And a couple of others to be named in, well, closer to September.

01:28:26

Just saying. We have a lot planned in September. You're gonna start seeing some others like Colleen, or Theology Gals, and Justin starting up in September.

01:28:38

And a couple of others that will be very exciting. I know for a fact...

01:28:45

Not the guys from Theology Driven, right? No, you know, the guys from Theology...

01:28:52

Oh, wait, those are the guys that talk theology while just playing a car noise in the background, right?

01:29:00

You know, every once in a while, you know. The quality sound there. Yeah, yeah.

01:29:06

You know, you get to hear the street ambience while they're playing.

01:29:14

But no, not that we know of. If the guys from Theology Driven want to come over, we could talk.

01:29:21

They're a pretty good podcast. But no, something that I'm not going to say yet, but just sufficient to say, knowing you guys at the

01:29:30

Council, you would be very happy. That's all I'm going to say. I'm not going to say more.

01:29:37

You're going to have to wait till we can announce it. But I'm just saying, you're going to be happy.

01:29:44

Well, Justin Peters alone is worth the admission right there.

01:29:49

So I'm happy with that. Yeah, yeah. Folks who don't know

01:29:55

Justin Peters, you should. Humblest guy I've ever met. Love that brother. So...

01:30:00

What's the hashtag? You mean for the contest? The contest we're having?

01:30:08

Yeah, so here's my encouragement. Everybody, seriously, right now. If you're driving, pull over right this moment.

01:30:16

Right now. I want you to pull over. I want you to go to justinpeters .org.

01:30:22

Go there right now. Donate to him. Any amount. I don't care. A dollar. I'd prefer a hundred.

01:30:30

Really love it if you could give a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand. Do it. Give as much as you could give to this brother because he is serving

01:30:40

Christ shamelessly. I can say he is the humblest man

01:30:45

I know. There's no man I know who deserves it more to get your donation. But do me a favor.

01:30:51

Give that donation. And just in the comments section when you do it, just put hashtag Justin I win.

01:30:58

He'll know what that means. What it means is he just lost a contest. He wants to try to out bless me.

01:31:07

That's not going to happen. I want all of you to help me bless Justin Peters more than he can ever bless me by trying to give me a couple of his

01:31:15

DVDs. Okay. I want you guys to give him so much money in donations that he could never give me enough

01:31:24

DVDs to make up for it. So he just has to concede and give up. He's yet to do that publicly.

01:31:30

I'm just saying. But he wanted to give me some DVDs. I wanted to pay for it.

01:31:36

He didn't want to let me. That's how this started. He threatened to actually fight me. And for folks who don't know, he has cerebral palsy and walks with crutches or rides in a scooter.

01:31:45

It would be a bad fight. My jujitsu skills against his crutches. I think I win.

01:31:51

But he thinks otherwise. And so one day maybe we'll have that actual fight. We'll see. But so far

01:31:57

I've been winning. I gave him the money for the DVDs. He did send me the DVDs.

01:32:02

But I need your help. Go to justinpeters .org. Donate there. And just put hashtag

01:32:08

Justin I win. Now if you have some extra money after that, feel free to go to strivingforattorney .org

01:32:14

slash donate. And you can donate to Striving for Attorney as well. We could use your support too.

01:32:19

Just saying. We do have a Patreon. And the link is in the show notes if you want to donate there.

01:32:25

We're going to try to do a little bit more with that and give some more interviews and more stuff for the

01:32:32

Patreons that are there. So with that, I want to close out and just thank you all for listening.