A Messianic Jewish Rabbi Talks Apologetics

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today I have a very special guest with me.

If you guys take a look in the description to this video there is a link to Radar Apologetics, the

YouTube channel, and so before I even introduce my guest I highly recommend you go over there even if it means you're clicking away here opening up another window or something like that.

If you can go over to the Radar Apologetics YouTube channel and subscribe. I've been following this channel for quite a bit and I really like what they're doing there.

Radar does great interviews and teachings and things like that and so really I want people who follow my channel to go over there and support

Radar Apologetics and check out their videos. They got some good good stuff going on there. So but real quick before I formally introduce my guest just to give a heads up this is my first interview in a while.

I've been pretty busy. As people know I'm a full -time teacher and I have been preparing also

I'm a traveling speaker so I've been preparing for a talk a conference that I'll be speaking in up in Kansas at the beginning of November.

I'll be talking about atheism, Roman Catholicism, and how to share the gospel in both those contexts and all that stuff.

So I've been trying to focus on that but I'm gonna I promise I'll try to get more interviews.

I know folks like the interviews with interesting guests and so I'm gonna try my best to to get more of those going.

So a prayer for that would be greatly appreciated. All right well let's jump right in. I have with me

I'm his name is Eduardo. Look at that I'm put I just learned that he's Puerto Rican. Look at that and I'm Puerto Rican.

Do you speak Spanish? Do you speak Spanish? Yeah I speak enough Spanish to find the bathroom or food.

Same I tell people all the time I'm a poor excuse for a Puerto Rican. I know when someone's yelling at me what they're saying but I have to respond in English.

So sure man for sure if you knew if you knew more Spanish I might think you're not Puerto Rican. There's been there's been a massive move you know with less of the second and third generation you know really knowing the language but um you know it could be difficult you know you don't use it you lose it like everything else right?

That's right that's right yeah that's a good point. So but we're gonna we're gonna address you as Radar again

I have here the host of Radar Apologetics so again we're kind of waiting for people to kind of flow in here if you guys can take a few moments to go over to Radar Apologetics YouTube channel and subscribe give this brother some love he's doing some some great work.

So let's jump right in Radar when I saw your

YouTube channel and I saw you kind of identify as a Messianic Jew Jewish rabbi right?

That caught my interest and I always thought that it was it was really cool reminded I'm kind of in this world of like interacting with atheists and Roman Catholics and things like that and I don't have a lot of opportunities to do apologetics with with Jewish folks and so when

I saw that you were a Messianic Jewish rabbi I was like you know what let's get this guy on and perhaps he can share with us you know what are some good pointers in interacting with with Jews because a lot of people find it intimidating right it's like man they know the

Old Testament and and most Christians don't know the Old Testament and so you know how what's the best way to kind of approach these folks and so I want to ask you my first question but before I do that I want to read a scripture okay and folks who are listening in I'm gonna be reading from Acts chapter 17 verse 2 from really the only inspired

English version the ESV I'm just kidding Lord have mercy there's no

Puerto Rican translations just okay all right so here's what

Acts chapter 17 verse 2 says and Paul went in as was his custom and on three

Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures explaining and proving that the

Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead and of course this was the custom of the

Apostle Paul and so this kind of gives me an interesting kind of foundation to ask my question when we are sharing the faith with Jewish folks

Jewish friends okay would you advise us to use kind of this approach not so much to enter into a synagogue but to explain from the

Scriptures kind of going straight to the Old Testament how would we approach a Jewish person and really start off you know the best way that we can with them

I think you know one of the first things we have to say is that every Jew is different right when we talk about if we're saying someone's orthodox someone's conservative someone's reformed they're gonna have different backgrounds of knowledge different reservations to Yeshua to Jesus being the

Messiah so it just depends who you're talking to right but I can't help but preface that we need the Holy Spirit to lead us in all of these engagements and discussions you can have the best argumentation you could be the most articulate without the moving of the

Spirit they're not gonna come to the Lord right so I think our goal as apologists are to put pebbles in the shoes of those who may not hold to the complete biblical worldview of Yeshua Jesus being the

Messiah if we put a pebble in their shoe then they would turn around and say Lord or perhaps seek the

Lord and then get to get to see him but here goes a huge thing right here's even when Paul is doing this right he is reasoning them for them with the

Scriptures so I agree that this is what we should be doing right reasoning from the Scriptures the problem is that our 21st century

Judaism is not the same Judaism that Paul was dealing with we have a transformed Judaism of rabbinic

Judaism that is in many ways is not even the same thing as biblical Judaism or the first century

Jewish system that Paul would have been a part of I heard dr. James Weiss say which I'm sure you've heard him say before that it's gotten to the point where you have to convert a

Mormon to Mormonism before you can take them out of Mormonism that's right a lot of times and I was just we just had a discord

Bible study just a little while ago we were saying how a lot of times a 21st century

Jewish soundbites don't match with the historical sources of rabbinic Judaism that they will have these soundbites that Judaism does not believe

XYZ but yet when you go to the rabbinic sources there are things that are said that they say is not there or not part of the system like the two comings of the

Messiah like the idea of the Messiah being divine these sorts of things you can find notions towards this in rabbinic literature the complexity of God's unity is deeply embedded with rabbinic understanding and teaching so I think it depending upon the synagogue

Paul went to that I think it depended upon his approach right if you're talking to a Jew who's a cat right who doesn't believe in rabbinic tradition well then you don't even got to go to rabbinic literature because it's not an authority for them anyway so I think the best thing to do is let the

Holy Spirit lead you and may the Lord give you the answers for it you know I also believe in a time and place for everything see

Paul had that flow he was a Jew he can go into a synagogue like nothing and blend in right and do what he needed to do and share the truth of the gospel and I'm not saying we always have to be able to blend in but the

Holy Spirit has to lead us right if you're gonna be outside of a synagogue preaching open -air preaching then let the Holy Spirit lead you in that and in everything because if we approach without the

Holy Spirit we're gonna fail right mm -hmm so I think it's really important that as you're going through that you be like Paul right you be in the

Spirit seeking to give an answer for the faith right and to reason from the Scriptures but many times you have to get traditional

Jews to believe that the scripture is their final authority actually because we have this principle within traditional

Judaism that you can't even read the Tanakh and interpret it on your own you need what's referred to as the mafarshim the commentaries come from peru shake the commentaries of the rabbis on the

Torah on the Old Testament on the Hebrew Bible ash you can't even really go to it understand it yourself so what we have to do is show that these interpretations are inconsistent and then they're stuck with appealing to what the

Bible plainly says to prove their point because now we've showed that the rabbis can't be an authority hmm that's great so this looks very similar again

I just mentioned at the beginning I'll be giving a talk on Roman Catholicism that sounds very Roman Catholic to suggest that a person cannot understand the scriptures in and of themselves apart from sacred tradition is it is there is there a one -to -one correspondence there what's the difference if you know the

Roman Catholic understanding of the necessity of tradition and kind of this Jewish tradition that needs to be the interpretive lens of Scripture yeah what

I think we have with rabbinic Judaism is that their ideas and notions of this is much older right so Christianity you know the

Church of Rome comes out of that early matrix of historical you know Christianity and so there's going to be the ideas and notions that Passover you know for you know as far as what

Catholicism does you know I don't know about the development of Catholicism and the church being that final story I know the talking points in the discussion and the argumentation but for me

I don't know as much about that thread and that thought but if the

Catholic Church believes that you can't understand the Bible contrary to what the Catholic Church and is interpreting it as and there's contradictions between what the

Catholic Church is saying if there are and what the Bible teaches then you in fact you have a Gentile version of rabbinic

Judaism hmm interesting so it's kind of like it's kind of like when a when a

Protestant is interacting with a Roman Catholic one of the the main sticking point I tell people this all the time so a lot of people as I'm a teacher people ask the question all the time what's the difference between Roman Catholicism and Protestant Christianity and you could say for example the

Catholics pray to Mary Protestants don't Catholics pray to the Saints Protestants don't Catholics believe in purgatory

Protestants don't but really the issue is and I think it's kind of a common thread what you're talking about now like in terms of talking with Jewish folks the common thread is is the principle of Sola Scriptura it's trying to talk to the

Roman Catholic about the importance of the fact that the scripture is really the ultimate authority and so I what

I hear you saying is that when we're talking with Jewish folks we need to kind of keep that focus on the authority of scripture because that that provides that standard and context in which we can then begin to kind of present our perspective and have a standard by which to judge who's in more in line with the

Word of God have I got it right yeah for sure and I think that what we're what this is the thing that's really interesting about rabbinic

Judaism though right is that they are looking at the Tanakh the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament and without a

New Testament coming to the same conclusions that the disciples of Jesus came to about the

Messiah his coming the things that he's gonna do you find these notions within there that line up completely with the

New Testament and don't mistake what I'm saying as some people might that rabbinic literature gets it all right no it doesn't if when the rabbis are right the rabbis are right when the

Rabbis are wrong the rabbis are wrong right they're not the standard to determine what's right and wrong they just at points correlate the truth or there are odds with the truth the position that most people hold these are two positions people usually have the rabbis are always right if the rabbis are always right just because there's rabbis they're rabbis that's idolatry if the rabbis are always wrong just because the rabbis that's anti -Semitic, right?

So we need to have the word of God as our authority, and then whenever the rabbis correlate, it correlates just like when

Paul goes up to that town and he quotes the pagan poets and philosophers to them because there was a truth embedded in it.

Doesn't mean that the prophets or the poets within philosophy are right, what he said before or after, but in that moment, you were able to say, look, even your own prophets say we all got children, right?

So if we can do that with rabbinic literature, we'd be right on point with expressing the very things that I believe the early disciples did, right, they showed the truth in some of the traditions and belief they had, corrected when it was wrong, still engaged with tradition, tradition is not bad as long as it doesn't override the word of God, and if we're doing that, then we're in the right point.

The problem is, and this is, the problem is very germane to what rabbinic Judaism is.

Rabbinic Judaism, because when we are thinking about the destruction of the temple in the year 70, it was a problem that both communities had to answer.

The growing Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus group and the growing

Jewish, what would become the rabbinic group, the non -believing, you have these two groups, and both groups had to answer the same question in the year 70.

How do we continue a system based on a temple with no temple, right? For the believers in Jesus, it was very easy.

We preached the gospel, the death, birth, and resurrection of the Messiah, he's coming soon, we're writing the words of the new covenant, we're gonna continue with the truth of what

God has revealed we're gonna preach the resurrection of the Messiah, we're gonna go to the ends of the earth, we're gonna proclaim it, very easy to do what we gotta do.

For rabbinic Judaism, it was more complex because they didn't have the revelation of the new covenant come into existence. So what they had to do was create a system by which

Judaism can maintain its religious integrity. And this is the Mishnah, which is the core rabbinic literature that dictates the life of the

Jewish believer, the Jewish person, from beginning to end. And this grows to become a system that's initiated that the reality is if a person wants to do

Jewish apologetics, apologetics against the rabbinic Jewish system, it's very hard to get initiated into the text because the language of the

Mishnah is different from the language of the Hebrew Bible. And then when you talk about Palestinian or Babylonian Jewish Aramaic, we think that we invented acronyms,

T -T -Y -L, talk to you later, B -R -B, be right back. The rabbis were doing that way back in the days, right?

And they themselves had shorthands and it's in another language, it's old. So you need to be initiated into this text.

This is a way of being gatekeepers to what God has. Do I think the rabbis were malicious in this?

No, I believe that they were attempting to salvage what was left of their biblical system that could no longer operate because of the destruction of the temple and understanding that the wrath of God has been poured out.

Because the only time Israel is ransacked by their enemies or destroyed or being pushed out to the ends or being in exile is because of them being in disobedience to the

God of Israel. So why was the temple destroyed? Something has happened within the relationship between God and the

Jewish people that forced the temple to be destroyed. So when the creation of the Mishnah, if you wanna answer how rabbis think or you want to talk to Jewish people, you gotta understand that text, but it's very much an initiated text.

So it takes a long time to get into that. So it could be really difficult. You just can't go say, Isaiah 53 says this. You can't just say

Jeremiah this, right? And you can't just do that because they have a lens by which they are reading the scriptures.

And if you don't understand the lens by which they're reading, you're gonna be talking two different languages. And I think the principle of Paul to speak a language that someone understands is really important here, right?

That we understand the, not just the words and letters of rabbinic Judaism, but the worldview. Because it's not the traditions or practices of Judaism that's against Jesus or Yeshua.

It's the worldview. It's the way they view the Bible. It's the way they view truth. It's the way they view their tradition as being supreme.

And so that's what puts them at odds with Yeshua, not that they pray with a prayer shawl, not that they wear a yarmulke, not that he would kosher or keep the

Sabbath. What is the problem with the rabbinic Judaism is its worldview, that its tradition is divine and comes from God given to Moses on Mount Sinai.

And I very much resonate with what you're saying because on this channel, we focus a lot on apologetic methodology.

And so we focus on what's called presuppositional apologetics. We don't have to get into that, but there's a great emphasis upon the importance of worldviews and identifying presuppositions or interpretive lenses.

So that's super, super important. Now, before we kind of move into like, how do we interact? How do we kind of break through that barrier?

Maybe you could, for my audience, define some categories here. So I heard you mentioned the

Talmud. You mentioned the Mishnah. And I think there's the

Gemara. Can you define those things for us so that people can differentiate between them and understand what those things are all about?

Yeah, absolutely. So the Mishnah, it becomes this codification of Jewish law, really this tradition that claims to be gathered by someone called

Judah the Prince, Yehudah HaNasi. And he gathers these oral traditions, claiming oral tradition, around the year 200 and 200, 250, depends on where you date it.

This is the core of the oral law. It's broken down in different six orders based upon seeds and women and all these things.

It's basically the rules of life. To keep it simple. So that works for, and basically was an interpretation of the laws in the

Torah, how to live and how to apply them. So that's good for 200, 250, maybe even 300, maybe 350.

Now what do you do in 400 when you're in a different scenario and a different situation?

This is where the additions to the Mishnah come in, which are called the Gemara. And the Gemara answers the questions of how to apply the

Mishnah, which is talking about the Torah for today. How do we go back and figure out how to do it?

This is what the Gemara of the Jerusalem Talmud does. So real quick. So you have the scripture, you have like the tradition of the rabbis.

The Mishnah. The Mishnah. The Mishnah, and then you got this other thing over here that helps you how to apply it. The Gemara. The Gemara. So you got multiple lenses.

You have multiple layers. And this is why apologetics. This, exactly. This is why apologetics towards rabbinic

Judaism is very difficult. And you don't see as many people fighting about it on TikTok, because most people don't know how to engage with it, right? So not only do you have the

Gemara, so the Mishnah and the Gemara make the Talmud. And there's one set of that in Jerusalem. Now, what about 200 years later when the people are in Babylon and they have another set of understanding of how to apply the

Mishnah that's trying to apply the Torah? Now you have the Babylonian Talmud that develops over in Babylon, okay?

In the seventh century. But then you get to the point of the 1000s. This is when you get to the place of the legal law codes.

This is Rambam, Maimonides, where they are. And if you don't know all these terms, okay, just the main thought is that we're consistently dealing throughout generations of people attempting to apply the

Torah in their life in a legal manner, which is really kind of a moot point because the temple is desecrated, destroyed.

The people are not in the land. We're talking about year 70, 80, while they're writing these documents. So there has to be something that fundamentally changed in the relationship between God and his people due to them being in judgment.

The very existence of this sort of exiled Judaism, the Torah does not have a way to be governed in exile.

The Torah knows and anticipates the people being exiled, but doesn't give you a manner of continuing in exile.

It doesn't have a judicial system to rule you. The point is repent and come back to the land so that you could function the way

God would design. But even in that, we're looking and seeing, okay, there has to be something greater because if our whole existence is exiled and being returned, there has to be something more, which must be the

Messiah. So I think this is why I think every single page of the Torah, the law, the first five books and all the

Old Testament drip with our Messiah. So understanding the way rabbis think is really important, and that's not easy.

It's very difficult to get into that. Yeah, so I guess I have a two -step question. First question, we'll get to that second part.

So how do we kind of cross that line and get into some meaningful dialogue with the

Jews? But I guess from a non -Jewish perspective, what do you think is some common misconceptions that people have of Jews?

So I don't engage a lot of Jewish people, but there are preconceptions that I have.

Like what are some things to avoid if you can speak to people who are not interacting with a lot of Jews, but perhaps have a heart to share the gospel with them?

What are some common misconceptions to avoid, and how can we use kind of points of clarity to make a point of contact and enter into a meaningful discussion?

Yeah, I think one of the things that's really important is that Jews don't convert, right? People are saying Jews are converting.

There's no converting from being a Jew because being a Jew is not a sin, right? The conversions that Jews have are conversions of heart, right, from being distant from the

God of Israel, and then coming to Messiah Yeshua and being reconciled to him, right? Being regrafted onto the tree that they've been cut off from, which is a cultivated tree.

So that's an important thing, right? We shouldn't have the expectation that if Jewish people come to Jesus, Yeshua, that they're gonna join your church, right?

They might, they might not, right? So I think we need to realize that expectation that when

Jewish people come to Yeshua and come to Jesus, they might still worship as Jews, right?

They might still wear fringes. They might still keep kosher. They might still be keeping the Sabbath. They might still be keeping the

Holy Days. I think there's this expectation that the salvation of the Jewish people looks like my brand of Christianity, right?

Yeah, okay. And so I think it's important to understand that you witnessing, and look, it very well might be that most

Jews in history have come to the Lord and a lot of them have joined churches. We're in a different age now where we have the overabundance of Messianic congregations and they're still growing, right?

But in history, most Jews came to the Lord through Gentiles preaching and them joining their churches and worshiping with them and maintaining the things that have been part of normative

Christianity. But we're in a space and a place in a time now that I think is very prophetic where Jewish people are worshiping the

Jewish Messiah Jesus as Jews and participating in those Jewish identity markers. And so I think for me, that's one of the biggest things that can be a problem, right?

Where if we try to superimpose what are our own non -Jewish

Christian traditions or interpretations or understanding of expression of worship to God, that could be that we can feel is totally fine and okay and have zero convictions about, but for the

Jewish person, it might not be the same, right? So I think that could be one of the biggest hurdles.

I'd be interested to hear what you think about that. Well, I guess now that I'm thinking, that's a great point, by the way, because we do tend to think like, well,

I share the gospel of the Jew, and so he's gonna become a Baptist and come to our barbecue next week.

You know, we tend to think in those categories that the people who are Christian have to look like us. We might even tip our hat to the fact like, well, they don't have to look like us, but we tend to see things through those lens.

How do we, so for example, if we share the gospel with a Jew and they are embracing

Yeshua, how do we explain that fine line and relationship between what we have in Christ, right?

A righteousness from Christ and a fulfillment of the law and the way in which

Jews worship in accordance with the law? I mean, do Jewish people who become believers tend to be legalistic, overemphasize the law, even though they kind of embrace

Christ? I mean, at least that's one of the misconceptions that I see is that, yeah, Messianic Jews, it's great they worship

Jesus, but sometimes you gotta be really careful. They tend to overemphasize the law and Christ has set us free from the law.

What's a proper way to understand that fine balance? Let me ask you a question. On December 25th, when you go see people in your family and you go into the door, what are they gonna tell you when you see them on December 25th?

Merry Christmas. What if they told you happy holidays back? Smack them across the face. Why are you being so legalistic, bro?

I know, yeah, I'm just kidding. I know what you're talking about, though. You feel me? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that we have expressions that are convictions as the

Holy Spirit leads that can be different convictions. It doesn't mean we can't hold them, right? Being passionate about traditions and things that are brought down to us and that we're receiving.

Remember, because even Paul gives the Thessalonians traditions that he doesn't really give to anyone else, right?

He says, hold on to your traditions as you receive them. We don't hear about these for anybody else. So I think we receive traditions, we receive interpretations, understanding of passages that there can be malleability in, right?

And I think we can be very strict and passionate about these things. I think where we get into the realm of legalism is how

Jesus Yeshua defines legalism, right? A legalism that chokes the word of God where we can't operate on what

God is calling us to. God is a very legalistic God in the sense that he commands holiness from his people.

Jesus, Yeshua, takes the law to a greater point than even Moses did, because he says, if you even look at a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery against her.

So in many sense, Jesus is more, quote, legalistic than Moses, but is Jesus wrong? I think he's elevating the understanding for his disciples to operate in and the real standard of holiness.

And while I'm not comparing looking at someone with lust as to wearing fringes or keeping kosher, they're not the same thing. One's moral, one's an identity marker.

But I think that we can be very legalistic in the new covenant as well, if we desire to be.

I've met many legalistic people from various denominations. I think what we have to worry about is not so much legalism, but do our interpretations and understandings nullify what the word of God is telling us to do?

And I think one of the biggest mistakes and hurdles for people, especially those coming from the Messianic movement, is that they approach the law as this static thing, this static document.

When it really is dynamic and malleable, it's a document that allows the spirit of its interpretation to produce things that are pleasing to God that you wouldn't think were okay.

I'll give you an example about this, right? Where are sacrifices supposed to be given? Where were sacrifices?

Where does God command sacrifices to be given? In Jerusalem, in the temple?

Yeah, where does Elijah offer sacrifices? Ooh, I don't remember. On Mount Carmel.

Mount Carmel, okay. So you're saying that there's a flexibility there, so he didn't do it exactly. Yeah, so did

Elijah break the law? Well, I mean, it depends. Now that you're saying that it's malleable, I'm interested in...

Right. Because my instinct is to say that not one jot or tittle, right?

Okay, it's like, that's the law. It can't be broken. But then to say malleability, that's not necessarily breaking it, but there's a flexibility there, right?

So I'm looking forward for you to explain what you mean by that. Yeah, so even in Judges, right?

Judges 6, Gideon is told to offer sacrifice outside of the chosen place, right?

That was given where God had put his name. And so what we have here is a breaking of the black and white of the commandment, yet a pleasingness of God to the black and white of the commandment that allows for the person to still be pleasing to God because they kept with the spirit of the law that I believe is directly part of the law itself.

You know about the daughters of Zalophat. I always forget the name in English, but it's Zalophat, it's in numbers.

And the law says that only sons can inherit the land when you enter the land.

Now there was the daughters of Zalophat. Okay, we got a problem, only daughters. They said, look, we can't inherit land because we only have daughters.

They go up to Moses. Does Moses say we have an oral tradition going back there that God gave us and we know every interpretation and the right way to do that.

I have the answer for the situation. Remember, this is the situation. The law says only sons can inherit.

This is the problem. Our father only has daughters. Moses doesn't say, I know what to do because God gave me on Mount Sinai the exact interpretation of everything because this is what we've been

Jews and teachers. Moses knew everything that was going to occur. God revealed it to him. But hold on,

Moses has to go back up to God to ask him about this new situation and condition that presented itself that allowed a malleability in the law that was already there that God gave.

He allows the daughters to inherit the land. When you get to Hezekiah and they're celebrating

Passover, the first Passover had passed. I don't know if you're familiar, but there are two Passovers. Some people missed that.

There's two Passovers. There's one on the 14th of Nisan and there's one on the 14th of the month, one month later.

So the celebration of a second Passover was if the people were impure so they could participate in the consuming of the korban pesah, the sacrifice, and celebrate.

So it came to the second Passover in the days of King Hezekiah and some of the people were still impure.

You know what King Hezekiah does? He kills all the people because they're impure and he doesn't let them say, no, no, no. He goes up to God.

This is what happened. He goes up to God and says, God, if you would please accept your people, even though they are not ritually pure or in accordance with the law, will you accept your people and provide, he doesn't use these words, but provide some malleability and grace over what you've given in the black and white so that spirit can be kept.

And God allows them to participate in Passover. Even though God is a worthy. I apologize.

So would this be kind of similar to Jesus' disciples picking the grain on the

Sabbath? A little different, right? A little different because it's different because the picking the grain on the

Sabbath is actually a tradition within rabbinic Judaism that goes back to the Pharisee period. On the other side, this is breaking a direct commandment that if you're impure and clean, you can't partake of the

Passover. I see. This is breaking the black and white. One thing is breaking the tradition of understanding or interpretation of a verse.

The other thing that we're talking about, which is in the Bible, is a breaking on the surface level of the black and white and what a commandment says that came from the mouth of God.

So what are we having in this scenario? We're showing a malleability in the law that allows God to still maintain his holy standard, but maintain his holy standard while still be sovereign, just, and graceful, right?

With his people and full of mercy and his chochesed and rakamim and kindness to his people where there's this malleability.

And so many people in my camp and many people on the other camp of the church side, the traditional church side, and I don't say like my camp, your camp, just saying those that would be messianic and those that would not.

We're still one body. Many times we find legalism on both sides because we develop these golden calves, not knowing that there is a malleability in the law and within the

Hebrew Bible itself that is pretty, pretty, pretty interesting. Like I'll get people who are messianic who tell me, look,

I'm walking, I'm doing Torah. I'm doing Torah, right? I'm doing Torah. They never stone the witch.

They never bring their rebellious kid out to the field. They not sleeping separate from their wife when she's on her time during the month.

So what I'm saying is, and that's not throwing shade on anybody. I'm just saying that the law was never designed to be a system participated in in exile, right?

It was always meant to be a judicial system for the land. And even though it's a judicial system for the land, doesn't mean we still can't operate in some of those identity markers.

And I can clarify what I mean by identity markers in a little bit, but it doesn't mean we still can't operate in these identity markers, but just know that like Hebrews 7, 12 tells us, if there's a change of the priesthood, there's a change of the law.

And because there's been a change of the priesthood, there's a change of the law. And the law is not just what was given on Mount Sinai, but it is

God's teaching from Genesis to Revelation over all generations. And it contains within itself this malleability.

And I think the problem is with Greek and Hebrew and English, right? Because if the Bible was in Spanish, bro, we'd be good.

You know what I'm saying? I'm just like. So the word Torah has a meaning of teaching and law.

It has a double meaning. But in Greek, we're used to translating law, nomos as law.

Nomos is for the Torah. Which only really means law, but really you miss that essence of didache, teaching.

So I think if you went back to your New Testament, you put Torah everywhere it talks about teaching, you'd be pleasantly surprised to see that God's teaching, his

Torah, is even in the New Testament, God giving you his ways, following the commandments of Jesus, loving your neighbor as yourself.

That comes from Leviticus, right? The royal law, right? The Torah, the law of the

Messiah. Paul says, I'm never without the law of God, the Torah of God, right? So I think the way we apply it can be very congregational and ecclesial, but we all have to recognize there's a malleability, and also in our own denominations we have, we're legalistic.

So can you make a clear distinction between malleability and just changing the law?

The law doesn't change. So can you differentiate between someone changing the law or breaking the law versus flexibly applying the spirit of the law?

Yeah, I can give you this example, right? So if I told my, if, so think about the fringes, right?

If I told my wife, hey, look, baby, for three days I didn't wear tzitzitz, she'd be like, hey, baby, you should put on your tzitzitz, your fringes, the fringes.

You should wear your fringes, you know what I'm saying? We're Jewish, wear your fringes. But if I told my wife, hey,

I just murdered somebody today, God forbid, right? You think she's gonna treat me the same way?

No. No, it's a different, so this is why identity markers are very important. And even that which is ritual is very important to think of, right?

Because these things can have malleability because God is really concerned with the heart.

Not that he's not concerned with what we do, but he's concerned with the heart where morality was never flexible. You know, a group of rabbis, a group of elders, a group of presbyters or pastors or deacons or bishops can't come along and say, you know what?

On Thursday we decree because God has given us the authority to bind and loosen Matthew 18, that murder is permissible on Thursday from 8 a .m.

to 5 p .m., right? The general revelation of God from Romans 1 would tell us that that's utterly ridiculous, right?

Right. But these identity markers, which these are the things that Assyria, Babylon, and all these other nations were never punished for.

See, because God doesn't make covenant with Jamaica, China, Puerto Rico, Cuba, or any other nation. God only made covenant with Israel.

Israel was always Jews and Gentiles. It says a mixed multitude left Egypt. So you have two groups of people together that are creating this cultivated tree that individuals from the nations join.

God doesn't go to Jamaica and give promises to Jamaica. God doesn't give promises to China. God loves all of China, God loves all of Jamaica, but he makes covenant with individuals in these foreign nations and they join the cultivated tree, right?

So in the new covenant though, see, if, Eli, if you, Eli, right, is the right way to say it? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Eli. So if you wanted to join the people of God in the days of King David, and you live in, you know what

I'm saying, Iraq or Iran or wherever, and you wanna join the people of the God of Israel, what would you have to do?

Wouldn't you have to get circumcised? Get circumcised and do what else? I mean, at some point you'd have to submit to the laws that were given to Israel.

Yeah, and you'd have to live amongst them. And you'd have to live amongst them. And I'm sure there's still differentiation though. Right, in the eyes of the

Jew, there would be some differentiation whether or not. Yeah, I think it's very good to put aside what

Judaism would think or what the Jew would think versus, you know, because you're asking me about the law in our local communities and some of the distinction.

I think we gotta put aside sometimes what traditional Judaism thinks versus what the Bible says because they're not always the same thing, right?

Okay, okay. You know, if when Ruth wanted to join the people of God, she said, your

God will be my God, your people will be my people, and she lived amongst them. When Abraham, even before the law comes in, gathered souls to his house, they all get circumcised.

They do what they did, they live in that land. Access to the family of God, true status within God's family, not just being a worshiper of God from afar, but status was with living and doing the things that they did.

The difference in the gospel is that the doors have been flung wide open to have full access to the family of God without being circumcised and without having to live amongst the natural branches.

That's why we go to the end of the world and preach the gospel. This is the difference, the sheer access of the kingdom of God to the whole entire world.

So this is the difference with the gospel. So when we talk about the new covenant, we tend to have four different types of people.

We always say Jew and Gentile, right? But we have Jews that are gonna be in Messianic congregations, we're gonna have

Jews that are in churches, we're gonna have Gentiles in Messianic congregations, and we're gonna have Gentiles in churches. And I believe whatever that combination is gonna look like,

I think those people, as the Holy Spirit leads them, would take them to a community to walk in the expression that they have. And so that's what we have.

So when we talk about the laws and what's malleable and these sorts of things, that which is ritualistic or what

I prefer to call identity markers are more malleable based upon the leaders of the community where no pastor, preacher, rabbi, priest, or anyone has the authority to say it is okay to do that, which was always immoral.

So when Israel receives the law, remember it wasn't just Israelites there, there was a mixed multitude that left from Egypt.

When Israel says yes to the law, to the Torah of God, were they just saying yes to murder and all that?

No, they were saying yes to what everyone else in the world got by general revelation based on Romans one. And they also received on top of that the identity markers.

This is why when Assyria and Babylon are the hammer of God, to judge the people of God, they're never judged for kosher fringes, a

Sabbath, holy days feast. They're only judged for that, which was given in the general revelation, which is morality.

So that's the difference for it. I hope that makes sense. I guess you said you kind of broke up the four categories.

Would it be appropriate for a Chinese believer to say, hey, I wanna have my expression of following Christ as living amongst the

Messianic Jews and follow the, like to follow those practices that Messianic Jews practice, is that open to anyone?

Or is that more of like a cultural or ethical kind of, not ethical, but an ethnic sort of thing?

Yeah, let me say it like this, right? I went to this, it was like a Christian brunch thing on a

Sunday afternoon, 11 o 'clock, late morning, 12 o 'clock, and there was a woman there, she was very zealous.

She said, Rabbi A, she goes, if you could do anything for the Lord, what would you do? I said, you know, honestly,

I just wanna do whatever the Lord tells me to do, right? She goes, no, no, no, no. But listen, what do you wanna do for God, right?

I'm like, I wanna do whatever the Lord tells me to do. She goes, no, no, no, no, no. I said, lady, that's my answer, all right?

Leave it alone, all right? I wanna do whatever God wants me to do. So to answer your question, I don't think we should ever be approaching the

Lord as like, what do I want my expression to be, right? Yeah, sure. I think we should be approaching the Lord saying, hey,

Lord, where would you have me, right? Because what we have in scripture is that God is very interested in giving our gifts, abilities, talents, and calling, and certain things for mission and vision.

And God knows he has a purpose and a plan for us. And without vision, my people die. And all these great passages that talk about understanding what

God is desiring to show his people, I think the first mistake would be saying, do I wanna be messianic? Do I wanna go to a church?

Do I wanna be baptized? I would say, we need to start with, where's the Lord bringing me, and follow that, right? And even the identity markers aside, you know,

Eli, if the Lord told you to, you know, let's say you work as a lawyer, and then he told you to become a doctor, and you say, no,

Lord, I don't wanna be a doctor. I wanna be a lawyer. Would that be in sin? Would you be in sin? Oh, yeah.

For rejecting what God is telling you? Of course, 100%, right? This isn't about, this isn't about like, black and white of what everybody needs to do.

This is, where's the Holy Spirit leading as the one who would teach us and guide us, and where God is directing us, you know?

And understanding that the Bible, in the Bible, there's no state police, okay?

Everybody's county, all right? Everybody's got their own jurisdiction for their own congregation. I have no jurisdiction over a

Presbyterian church, a Baptist church. That which is immoral, I have the obligation as an elder to speak out against it, because I am an elder.

I do serve in a congregation as an associate rabbi. I have an obligation to speak against morality, not against that which is identity markers and vision for a local community, you know, so.

All right, good stuff, man. This made me laugh. You said, you were gonna say lawyer, but you said liar, and someone was like, they're the same.

J -boy bullish, man. J -boy bullish, that's good, that's good. I mean, you ain't wrong.

I mean, all right. Well, anyway, let's not get down on lawyers. I don't wanna speak about another man's servant.

I'm just playing. All right, so towards the beginning, you made mention that there is a lens that the

Jews view the scriptures. How would you suggest that we make progress in meaningful discussion and evangelism in such a way that we can break through those lens and get a person to see the authority of scripture so as to set that as a foundation or a marker in the discussion by which to judge the validity and truthfulness of each respective position?

Yeah, what's interesting is that if you wanted to try to go master rabbinic literature, that would take your whole life, right?

So, but there have been so many resources written to be able to understand key rabbinic interpretations and misinterpretations of main passages of scripture.

So, Dr. Brown's five volumes of Jewish Objections to Jesus, vital, you gotta have it, right?

This book, which is phenomenal, what the rabbis, what the rabbunim say about Moshiach, all full of sources based upon what the

Bible, what the rabbis believed about the Messiah and quotations about key passages.

You know, if a Jewish person told you Judaism doesn't teach Isaiah 53 is about the Messiah, have you heard that before,

Eli? Yes. People say, I feel like, no, well, I can give you sources upon sources, you know, Ramban, Maimonides, many others who agree that Isaiah 53 is about the

Messiah. Right? So, we're gonna get that all the time, right? And so, you'll be able to answer and say, hey, look, you're telling me

Judaism doesn't believe Isaiah 53 is about, look, look at what Ramban says. He says, look, this passage is about the Messiah.

He's a very famous rabbi, very authoritative. He's the lens by which you need to understand this. No, no. Is that Maimonides you're talking about?

Ramban is Rabbi Moshiach. Yeah, it's not, the other one. Not Ramban, Ramban with an

N. Ramban says it too, but he says it in a letter that he wrote to Yemenite community. So, if you say, look, these two believe

Isaiah 53 is about the Messiah, they're gonna bring up three rabbis that say it's not about the Messiah. Now we have a problem.

Now we have a problem. Your tradition is contradicting itself. Since your interpretations are contradicting itself,

I think we should just stick with the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible to see what it says, right? Yeah. And then from there, you put a pebble in a shoe.

I see a very interesting similarity when talking to Roman Catholics. I have a friend, I don't know if you know who

Matt Slick is of CARM .org, Christian Apologetic Research Ministry. Well, he has a section on his website, and there's an article entitled,

My Church Father Can Beat Up Your Church Father. And it highlights really what you're saying, but in the context of Judaism, that once you start quoting the traditions and the rabbis and the early church fathers, you see very quickly that they're going to be in conflict, which again, just reinforces the importance of going to the scripture, which both parties agree cannot be broken.

So I think that's a great insight there that you provided. Yeah, for sure. But just know that that's not gonna happen in just one quotation, right?

I mean, we should expect that people are gonna go to the Lord, and that the Lord is gonna reveal it to them, right?

Not that you're gonna have any one of us, even myself or anyone, be articulate enough to convince someone into the kingdom, right?

Right. You know, it should be a person looking to the Lord, you're just being the Lord's mouthpiece, putting a pebble in the shoe, making their walk a little more difficult, that they could turn and see the

Lord, right? Yeah, that's so important. Yeah, that's so important because I think, you know,

I hear this all the time, because I teach apologetics, and I teach theology, and people will say, hey,

I said this in a discussion, and the person didn't agree, and so it didn't work. And we think like, well, what do you think?

It's like, you give an apologetics argument or some theological truth, and it works? We kind of think of theology and apologetics as kind of like this pragmatic, you know, thing.

Yeah, sure. One of my favorite Christian philosophers, Dr. Greg Monson, he says that when you shoot a bear, and the bear keeps running at you, that doesn't mean you throw your gun on the floor.

The gun still works, but some bears require more than one shot. I think what you're touching on is an important concept that when we are sharing the faith with not just a

Jew, but with anyone, we're dealing with real people that have baggage, assumptions, traditions, and so we need to learn to have a patient, long game, knowing that the spirit often allows the words that we speak to be seeds that may sprout during times that maybe we might not ever see the fruit of that, but we need to have that big picture mentality, knowing that it's not just this quick, you know, quick and done sort of thing.

So I think that's so important, because it's very easy to lose patience and really lose hope when we're continually talking and bringing up points that we think are really cool.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. All right, so now, I like what you're saying here.

So we bring the person to the scriptures, we can highlight, you know, in theory, we can highlight kind of some conflict within the tradition and veer the discussion into the scriptures.

So from that foundation, what are, or where are some scriptures that you can equip people with, and scriptures and arguments, scriptural arguments,

I suppose, that we could use to engage someone who says, fine, let's stick with the scriptures. Where do we go from there?

What are some of the passages that we can go to that will really highlight the truth of Jesus the

Messiah? Yeah, what's been one of my most, one of the most interesting discussions I've had, which

I've been working and refining this argumentation, which is really important, we have to notice what Rabbinic Judaism misses when they talk about the

Messiah. We all agree, we all agree that the Messiah will be a king and that he'll reign and all those things.

And the Hebrew word for Messiah is Mashiach, and I've shared about this before, but I think it's so vital to the believer's expression and understanding of God and understanding of the

Messiah that we often miss it, right? Why doesn't Rabbinic Judaism realize that the

Messiah must be a priest? I think as believers in the New Testament, we've taken for granted that the Messiah's a priest.

But yet, Rabbinic Judaism doesn't have this notion or idea within its sources. Why is that? It's pretty fascinating.

Given the fact that when you go to Leviticus 4 .3, this is the first time the word

Mashiach, Messiah, appears in the Hebrew Bible. Mashiach, in that form. Now, Mashiach, the verb of anointing, but Mashiach, the idea that someone is a

Messiah, right? And look what it says. It says, if the anointed priest sins, and it talks about the anointed priest sinning, talking about Aaron and his sons, okay?

But what's interesting is that if you were reading this with Mashiach and anointed in Leviticus 4 .3, it would say, if the

Messiah priest sins, so as to bring guilt on the people, right? So understand that when we see the first time

Messiah appears in the Bible, it appears right next to the idea of a priest.

Yet, Rabbinic Judaism does not have this notion. So this is one of the things that you can really push on a Rabbinic person, because the idea of a priest is pivotal for Israel to be in a right relationship with God, and now that we're in post -temple period, there is no priest to atone, and we have the prophecy in Amos that there will be no priest, that there'll be a drought for the word of God amongst

God's people, that now you're in a drought because you don't have the anointed priest, the Mashiach, the right Messiah. And they would say, no, no, no,

Mashiach's supposed to be a king, and the Messiah's supposed to be a king. And you would say, well, where are you getting that from? Because of King David, God gave

King David throne. I said, who said Israel's supposed to have a king? Who says that?

Did God ever say, you will make me a king, you will make a king for yourself to reign over your people? No, even the idea of having a king rule over them like the nations was a sin before the

God of Israel, because he said, when you chose and called for a king, what does he tell Samuel? They've rejected me as their king.

They have not rejected you, that this is a sin that they've done, and there's even punishments attached to it because of the severity by which the king is gonna treat them.

The law allows for a king and has rules for the king to govern it, but it never prescribes a king.

It only tells them how to live if there is a king. So even the choice of a king and God allowing a king is a concession to sin.

But what's ordained by God automatically as not a concession to sin is the idea of a

Messiah being a priest. So I'll ask this question, which I think I should ask more often is. Yeah, please.

And I like what you're saying, that makes a lot of sense. And it shows really that God is, even with like the thing with the divorce, like Moses wrote this because of your hardness of heart.

So like even in the law, there is a flexibility or a fluidity, as you said there.

But with respect to the king, yes, I do think that it was sinful to request a king.

But would we say that it's God who chose Saul in spite of the sinfulness of the request of a king?

So we would say that God established a king even though it is as a result of the sinful request?

Yeah, for sure. God is still merciful, working all things together for good for those who are called, right? The gift and calling

God are irrevocable even for the natural branches until the day when they don't have breath or the

Messiah returns. But here goes the question, right? Even though he's always choosing a king, then he makes covenant with David. But so here goes the question, right?

Here goes the question that I would press the rabbinic person on. So we see in Daniel that there are two thrones.

Why are there two thrones? They would say it's for the two different manifestations of God, these sort of things.

We have two thrones in the book of Revelation. Why are there two thrones? See, I argue that David, and as Scripture says, even

Solomon, sits on the throne of God over Israel as a temporary state. But God never really vacates the throne.

This is what creates a second throne. The idea that they wanted a human man to rule over them is what creates this second throne that's borrowed from God.

Let me ask you a question, Eli. You do apologize. Is God gonna share his glory with another? Well, not with another human being.

Like another being, right? Yeah, he wouldn't share it with that. And there's a different sense.

So for example, there's a sense in which we are glorified and we will sit in heavenly places, that kind of thing. But it's not the same in terms of God's glory.

That's not his glory, right? Exactly, that's not his glory. Yeah, but that's not his glory. Right, God's glory is unique. So why in the restoration of all things would

God still have another person sit on a throne if he's not God himself? I don't know, that's a good question.

Right, because the point is that the Messiah is God, right? Oh, well, right. Yeah, he's not sharing his glory.

That's why there's not three thrones, one for the Holy Spirit. The second throne was created when the throne was given to Saul to reign over his people as a concession for sin.

But God in the restoration of all things takes everything back to himself. This is why there's two thrones in the book of Revelation.

Because the Messiah's God himself and God's not gonna share his glory with another. That's right. So this is the train of thought to take them to say, hey, the

Messiah must be divine because he sits on the very throne of God permanently. His dominion's gonna be everlasting.

His rule's gonna be everlasting, right? So part of the idea of thinking about these things is really working through these passages of scripture and looking at scripture for what it plainly says.

If you want to be able to combat rabbinic Judaism, it's really about knowing your Bible. If you know your Bible really well and how these things play out on how they work, then you would understand how to answer some of rabbinic

Judaism's claims, right? Because when they present you with something, you're gonna know what the Bible teaches about it. And if it contradicts, then you could tell them they're wrong.

Okay, that's interesting. I've never thought of the two -throne idea.

That's interesting. And you're right. So when the father glorifies the son, the father's not glorifying another being.

He's really glorifying himself, not that the son is the father, but that the father and the son share the same nature.

There's one Yahweh that is the three persons. Oh, it's cool, man. I never thought of it that way.

Yeah, pretty cool. But I think we have to, and this is the issue with people who are Unitarians, people who, even rabbinic

Jews who wanna believe in a human Messiah, right? So let's say the Messiah comes, the Messiah established peace. What happens when the Messiah's 70 years old?

Does he just die and the world continues? Right? The Messiah has to be eternal, right?

There's no way for him to accomplish what he needs to do over the whole world unless he's eternal. So I think when we're dealing with rabbinic

Judaism, the best thing to do is to begin to untangle some of these wrong interpretations and taking it to what the scripture says and some of these ideas and notions.

And the best thing you can do is if they tell you these prophecies are not about the Messiah, is to quote rabbis that do say it's about the

Messiah. That's the number one thing. Because all you're doing is proving that your interpretation is Jewish. It's true because that's what the

Bible teaches. It's not true because the rabbis believe it, right? Right. But what you're doing is, you're showing them that your interpretation that is lining up with the rabbis, which is lining up with the

New Testament, has to at least be weighed because their own sources believe it. So, okay, so when you say, hey, the rabbis say this, yes,

Isaiah 53 is pertaining to the Messiah. And they say, well, no. You're gonna have rabbis that disagree.

Are certain Jewish sects faithful to specific traditional lines so that they can say, well,

I reject that tradition. I follow this tradition. What do we do then when they make a differentiation between what they consider faithful traditions of the preservation of a true interpretation versus kind of this other camp where you had the whole

Shemai and Hillel concept back in the first century and all that. How would we navigate that when someone says, well,

I don't hold to that guy over there that you're talking about. Yeah, what's interesting is that they're not allowed to do that because their own tradition tells them that even the contradicting opinions are the words of the living

God. They can't. Hold on. Let me check my headphones to make sure I heard you correctly.

Hold on. Yeah. These are heresy headphones. What's going on over here?

Can you repeat that again? Yeah, they say that both the opposing opinions are the words of the elu ve elu devrei elohim hayim.

These and these are the words of the living God, even the contradiction. There's this understanding of 70 faces of the

Torah, which are 70 interpretations or facets of the Torah as it's been revealed. I even had someone tell me once that 600 ,000

Torahs were given to Israel at Mount Sinai because of all the different people that were there that could have possible different interpretation.

And I would say, you really believe there's 600 ,000 different Torah? She'd go, well, no, one Torah, but they all can be understood in 600 different words.

I was like, this is absolute trash, right? We're not talking about tradition or how you tie your fringes or which way to hold up your mezuzah, which goes on the door of your house.

We're not talking about these things. How do you celebrate Passover? We're not talking about these sorts of things.

We're talking about things that are given that are black and white in the scripture that we're saying, oh, we don't have to do them, we have to do them this way, you do them this way.

Even metaphysical ideas about the Messiah, what he's gonna be like, what the prophecy means. These are things that we can't really, we're not talking about Genesis six, whether you believe that angels had offspring with women or whether you believe, we're not talking about things that we could disagree about, right?

These are things that are things about the Messiah, what he's supposed to do, his mission, the very point of redemption, the restoration, the undoing of exile, the coming in of the new heaven, new earth, new

Jerusalem that are actually being flipped on their head based upon these interpretations. We're talking about something totally different.

Very interesting stuff, man. I'm learning a lot. I tend to be on the

New Testament side. I obviously know my Old Testament, but there's some places that I'm foggy. So this is, you're making me want to dig deeper into my

Old Testament because there's so much there and it's so important. It's rich, brother. Yeah, so thank you so much for that.

Now, we are at the top of the hour and there's two more points, two more things I want to ask you and then we'll wrap things up so that we don't go too long because I'd like people to actually watch the whole discussion because this has been very useful.

Number one, what is your view? And I know this is a controversial question because it deals with eschatological positions and things like that.

What is your view concerning God's plan for Israel? That's a very, that's a loaded question.

The people in the comments, the post -millennials, the post -millennialists, the replacement theologians and the pre -millennial dispensate.

I always say, if you want to start a ballroom brawl with Christians, you talk about eschatology, Calvinism, like reformed theology and creation.

Like the old earth, younger, that starts a ballroom brawl. What do you think is the role of Israel in the modern times?

Do you think there's still biblical prophecy pertaining to them? What's your view there? And I promise

I won't, if I disagree with you, I won't give you any pushback. I'm just interested in hearing. No, you could give me a pushback if you want to, brother.

I mean, you can give me a pushback for sure if you want to. I'll welcome it. But I believe that definitely our promises for the natural branches that remain in the land and outside the land 100%, right?

And because I'll echo the words of Paul, right? Romans 9 .1, he says, I'm telling the truth in Messiah Christ, I'm not lying.

My conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed, separated from Messiah Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

Paul is speaking about non -believers in Romans 9 .1. And what does he say about them in 9 .4? They are the

Israelites, to them belongs the adoption of sons, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple service, and the promises.

They're currently, while they are unbelievers, to them still belong these things. Don't misunderstand and think that I'm saying that Jews who don't believe in Jesus can have access to the

Father. They don't. Only through coming to the Messiah can they have eternal life, right? But we live in a period that is a transitional age where we have these branches being cut off, disconnected from the tree, meaning that they don't get the nourishment from the root.

And people make mistakes. They say the root is Jesus, the root is the new covenant. No, the root is the Abrahamic covenant because in the

Abrahamic covenant, we have the promise of the gospel, the good news of the Messiah, that Abraham will become the father of many nations, that a seed will come, and that he'll give his people the land.

So when Jewish people who are the natural branches don't believe in Jesus, they are disconnected from that tree, they don't get the nourishment, which is the new covenant, the feeding of the

Holy Spirit, the regeneration, the born -again experience. But they're still part of that tree, just disconnected.

They don't get the nourishment. They're not fed from it. And Paul's gonna go on to say in 11 and other places that they can be grafted back on if they repent and if they believe, right?

And that those from the nations can be disconnected from the tree as well. So I believe that those who are

Jews who don't believe in Jesus are still in covenant with the God of Israel, yet not receiving any of the nourishment from that covenant.

And if they do not repent and believe in Jesus, they would be just like Korah, and the earth will open up and swallow them up, and they will be eternally separated from God at the return of the

Messiah or when they breathe their last. But they still remain, they still have within themselves and for them the promises, the adoption, all those things currently, presently, because this is the position of Paul.

And that if they do not repent, they will remain disconnected and never get that nourishment, which is the eternal life leading up to the new covenant from what

Messiah does, which is what Abraham longed forward to. So you would say that like ethnic

Israel, for example, people who don't believe, you would say that an unbelieving Jew is a chosen person of God?

Yes, 100%. Okay, so can we maybe help you out? For now, for now, right?

Because we live in that period where God has been faithful to the natural branches until the return of the

Messiah or they breathe their last. Because to them, because the gift and calling of God is irrevocable, the offspring of Abraham is still called.

And right now on this day, while we live in this age, the calling is still irrevocable. The day will come with that window will close, whether they breathe their last or the

Messiah returns, and then judgment will be given for those who have in the Messiah, because only in the Messiah, you have eternal life.

Okay, I guess I'm trying to understand. So like if a Jew who rejects

Jesus is unregenerate, is what the Bible would call a hater of God, you know, doesn't have the

Father, those sorts of things. And then understanding that person as still being in covenant with God, or at least can be called

God's chosen. I guess I'm having difficulty kind of reconciling that in my mind. When were they chosen?

Well, I mean, that's a good question. If we say chosen, chosen with respect to what? Are chosen to fulfill a specific task, chosen for salvation.

What is Israel? I mean, what is a Jew? Paul says, what is a Jew? Is a Jew outwardly only, or is it something within, right?

Like a circumcision of the heart. So I guess the question would be, what is a true Jew? Is a true Jew someone who's only a

Jew outwardly? It seems to be the case, at least as my understanding, that what constitutes a true

Jew is really genuinely the circumcision of the heart, which I don't see is the case with someone who is a

Jew and rejects Messiah. I would agree that circumcision, not having circumcision, without the

Messiah, no one on earth, Jew or not Jew, can be pleasing to God. That's a period of point blank. But God's faithfulness and chosenness to the descendants of Abraham is for the sake of the fathers.

It's not because of something that they're doing right now. It's not because of their ability. It's because of the sake of the fathers.

This is why when Israel's in exile, at the end of the book of Leviticus, when they're in exile and they cry out to God with no temple and the temple's destroyed, how is it possible that God can forgive them to let them go back in the land before the

Messiah, Eli? How is that possible? How can they go back into the land? Well, they can't go back to the land until God allows it to happen.

Well, how was Ezra and Nehemiah able to go back into the land and rebuild the temple when the temple was desecrated? They were permitted to go because God had made a promise and the promise had to come true.

Yeah, but you're missing a key point at the end of Leviticus, which is that God says that if they repent and churn,

I'll remember the covenant I made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Right. The book of Hebrews tells us that without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sins.

Therefore, how can the people that are in exile without a temple and no altar able to be forgiven if there's no shedding of the blood?

It's because of the covenant that God made with Abraham when his pieces were split. He made a unilateral covenant that was a promise to the descendants of Abraham that was never initially based upon what they did.

Okay. Right? So there's this calling and election for the natural branches that remains, but the day will come when punishment, when they're facing punishment even now,

I believe. Sure. The day will come where that window will be closed, will be closed. And if they are not in Messiah, they will not receive eternal life, just like Korah, right?

Okay. So they're in, they have the adoption of sons and the promises, they have them, not because of anything they do right now, but because of Abraham, God has been faithful to the thousand generation.

And for you and me as believers and those who are in the church, we should be thinking that this is good news that God is still being faithful during this time period when we haven't breathed our last or he hasn't returned, right?

So while they remain disconnected, they can be regrafted on. This is why the promises still belong to them for the sake of the fathers.

And this is what it talks about in Romans 11. This is why Daniel could pray for the people to be forgiven and confess the sins because it looked back to what

Abraham did with the shed blood initially, that looks forward to what? The seed that would be given ultimately in the new covenant, which is the

Messiah, which hearkens back to Genesis 3, 15, the proto -Evangelion, the gospel before the gospel, that the seed of the woman would destroy the work of the serpent.

God is faithful to Abraham, his descendants, because Abraham looked forward to the seed that God would give.

Not Isaac, not Jacob, but the Messiah who will rectify the world to himself. Hmm.

Oh, that's good stuff, man. There's a lot to chew on there. Now, my last question is, and thank you for sharing that.

That's very helpful. No problem, appreciate it. But my last thing I want to ask you to do, and sometimes

I don't ask all the time. It depends. When I have a guest that is, I guess they have a focus, an area where they're very particular, like if I had someone talk about Islam or someone talk about Mormonism or whatever, can you right now explain and in brief demonstrate that Jesus is the

Messiah and wrap up your demonstration with the gospel as you would present it to a

Jew? And then we'll wrap things up there. Sure. Abraham was given a call and a commission.

He was going to promise to God that he would receive a seed and the land. Abraham could not go back and operate within what

Noah was giving. Isaac, Jacob had the covenant reconfirmed. Moses received the law. When Moses received the law, he couldn't go back to what

Abraham had been promised. He couldn't bring his son, Gershom, up to the mountain or slay him, nor could he build an ark for deliverance or redemption.

When we got to the times of the prophets and we get to the time of King David, King David couldn't say, no, Lord, I'd rather build you an ark.

No, Lord, I'd rather climb the mountain and receive the 10 words from your hand. I'd rather see you face to face.

No, Lord, I'd rather go and build you an ark so that when the flood comes, I could be delivered. No, those times had passed. And we get to the time of Messiah Yeshua, based upon the words of Daniel 9 .24,

the time period of the coming of the Messiah who would be cut off day to come. We are in the time period of the new covenant, just the same way that Abraham couldn't go back and Isaac, Jacob couldn't go back to Noah in the same way

Moses couldn't go back to Abraham or Noah in the same way David couldn't go back to Moses or Abraham or Noah, is the same way that you as a

Jew cannot go back to the covenant your fathers made at Mount Sinai because the time period of the new covenant has come.

And my prayer and hope is that you would embrace the new covenant reality because it started whether you believe it or not, even according to our

Jewish tradition that says the world must exist for 6 ,000 years, telling us that there were 2 ,000 years of chaos up to Abraham and 2 ,000 years of the

Torah from Abraham to the first century, and then the last 2 ,000 years of the age of the Messiah. Even according to our sages, we're in the

Messianic era, therefore you have to operate in that new covenant that was inaugurated with the blood of the Messiah who gave himself as the perfect sacrifice and the perfect sacrificer.

And the reality is that you can know him, you can embrace him, you could have him now and see what Abraham longed to see, which was the seed of the woman that destroyed the work of the serpent that is bringing a true tzukkun, a true restoration to the world.

And there are even voices within our traditional sources that affirm these things, affirm these truths, that he wasn't a sham, he was a guilt -offering for us.

He died, he rose again, and he's coming back again for his people. As the great rabbi Sadiagon said, Zachariah 9 -9, the one who rides in a donkey and the one who rides the clouds, who approaches the

Ancient of Days, is both the same Messiah, not a suffering Messiah and a king Messiah, one or the other, but no, rather two comings of the same individual.

First to restore man's heart to God and then to ultimately restore them fully in the new heaven, new earth, new

Jerusalem. And with that being said, for all of you who don't know the Lord, come know him, he cleaned me up, he made me whole.

I was a wreck of a human being. He washed me, cleansed me, purified me, and I live every day to serve him even though I do it imperfectly.

And if you wanna receive the Holy Spirit, you can receive the seal of eternal life as well and embrace him and come to know him and your life will never be the same and you will find peace in the craziest of situations, peace in the craziest of turmoil and hurt and pain.

You will find joy. We're not talking about happiness based on circumstance, but joy which is immovable by the one who created it all out of nothing.

You can come know him today. His name is Jesus, his name is Yeshua. And he died for you, he died for me. He's coming again for his bride, which is neither

Messianic, Baptist, Protestant, Pentecostal, Catholic, or any of those things. His bride that is without blemish, spotless, and you can be a part of that today if you embrace him.

My prayer is that you would in the name of Messiah, Yeshua. All right, thank you so much for that. Folks, I'm talking to Rabbi Eduardo.

I don't mind asking Brother Sid real quick though with that Matthew 23 thing. I actually had my eye on that one.

I wanted to just remind people who I was talking to and then get that question. I appreciate that, brother. Yeah, I like to answer those.

I see that. But I'm talking to Rabbi Eduardo of Radar Apologetics. Again, if you just popped in in the middle of our discussion,

I highly recommend you go over to Radar Apologetics and subscribe to his channel. Show him some love.

He's got, I think, around 5 ,000 subscribers. That's a lot of work. And that's a lot of preparation and teaching and interviews and things like that.

I really hope that you folks who are listening appreciate a lot of the work that Christian YouTubers do and people in ministry.

And so show some support by subscribing and giving if you can. And definitely prayers as well.

So definitely check that out. All right, well, there is a question here.

I didn't see a lot of questions. There's just really nice comments and discussion. But this one here, I'd like to see if brother

Eduardo could address this. So Revealed Apologetics. Shalom, brother Eli. Why does this brother call himself

Rabbi when Matthew 23 forbids titles and Matthew 23 eight specifically forbids being called

Rabbi? That brother Sid or brother Said, you said, Sid?

Brother, I think that's Sid. I wanna say Sid. I'm not sure though. Okay, cool. Brother Sid, man, thanks for being here, brother.

Matthew 23, which says, don't allow yourself to be called Rabbi. It also says don't allow yourself to be called father or leader.

I wonder in all the times that you've been a believer, if you ever called your worship leader worship leader. I wonder if every time that you've spoken or you refer to your family, if you ever called your father, father, if you ever called any other person father, if you've ever referred to people as father or leader of a segment, like a worship leader or like a team leader.

Maybe you've done that at work at an office. So let's just be careful that we're not harping on the Rabbi title just because it says

Rabbi and it's something that's a little different than what we're used to. The whole context of Matthew 23 was about hypocrisy.

The ones who like to tie heavy loads on men and to be greeted indifferentially as Rabbi in a way of giving them honor and seeking to glorify and boast themselves.

The very interesting thing is that John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus, who was six months older than him, was called

Rabbi and allowed himself to be called Rabbi and there was no problem with it. So therefore, and then what does

Yeshua say about his older cousin? He says, no one born among woman is greater than John the

Baptist on earth. Yet in heaven, those that are heaven will be greater than him. But no person born among woman is greater than John the

Baptist. And he allowed himself to be called Rabbi. That must mean that there isn't really a problem with the title of Rabbi, but rather hypocrisy.

And I hope, brother, that if you're so literal with the text of passages, if while you've been a believer, if you ever lusted after a woman, you should be walking around with one eyeball.

Or if you've ever done something that caused you to sin with a member of your body, you should be a dismembered individual without arms and hands and eyes and ears and sorts of things.

If you listened to or looked at a woman online that you probably shouldn't have or heard a sin or a curse or a word, maybe you allowed your ear to listen to a secular song that was full of wickedness and adultery.

Do you have one ear right now? Do you have one eye? Have you cut your tongue out when you spoke slander or said a wrong thing against a person?

Possibly, because the very hypocrisy that the rabbis are talking about in Matthew 23 could beset the thing that you're saying by calling a man

Rabbi. Holding hyper -literalism in Matthew 23, you're not cutting off your arm or your eye if it causes you to sin.

So I wouldn't say you're doing that, but I said someone could possibly charge you with that, with cherry -picking where you wanna be literal and with cherry -picking when you wanna be symbolic.

So it's important that we allow the freedom of the scripture to speak in context on how it's used in other areas.

I don't think Yeshua really meant for anyone to cut off their hand, but Yeshua gives us no clue that he's being symbolic or hyperbolic or giving a parable.

He's literally saying, cut off your hand, take your eye out if it causes you sin. Better to enter into the kingdom maimed than with both eyes and both hands.

So hopefully you're willing to back off of nobody calling people Rabbi, because I believe you have sinned as we all do since we've become believers, yet we still walk around with two arms and two hands.

So may your interpretation be consistent from beginning to end. And with that being said, I will also say this.

If someone doesn't wanna call me a Rabbi due to their personal convictions, I have zero issue with that because I allow for the freedom of conscience of speech.

If someone asks me what I refer to be called, Radar or Rabbi Eduardo, Eli called me Eduardo today,

I didn't push back. He didn't hear me tell him, you need to call me Rabbi. Why? Because I don't care about titles. When Yeshua returns, he's not gonna say

Rabbi Eduardo. He's gonna say servant, and I'm gonna say, yes, Lord, here I am. And that's gonna be how it is, right?

If you come to my congregation and you say the Lord called you there, I expect you to flow with the vision of the congregation and refer to me as Rabbi because I didn't wake up on Thursday and call myself

Rabbi. I studied under another Rabbi who was brought up Orthodox, Rabbi Mark Shulman, who gave me the ordination.

Then I went through a rigorous course of study to become ordained by a board of Messianic Rabbis, and I still remain accountable to them, not in authority of myself, but in authority that I borrow from Yeshua the

Lord. And with that being said, brother, I love you. And I pray for your interpretations to be consistent from Genesis to Revelation for you and all of us.

Thank you for that. Here we go. He went in too, bro. I was like, I got the, he didn't give it like, well, you know, according to the context, he's like, listen, man, eye patch, bro.

I was like, okay, dad, bro. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I mean, you want to be - Listen, he's a Rabbi, but don't get it twisted. He's Puerto Rican too, man.

Puerto Rican Rabbis, they don't play, bro. I'll play some salsa music. That's right.

That's right. So we have here A .W. I'm confused. Did he answer the question of whether or not a non -ethnically

Jewish person can join a Messianic congregation? I guess when

I asked you that, I guess this person thinks that your answer maybe wasn't clear, and so they're wondering about that. Yeah, I'll answer it like this.

You know what I mean? I appreciate the question. We have non -Jewish elders in my congregation. So everybody gets equal status.

So whatever the privileges and responsibilities of the congregation, they are universal. Everyone has access to them through Messiah Yeshua.

Okay. All right, cool. Let's see here. I think that might be the last question, unless you saw something that I did not do apologize.

All right, well, folks. I hope the discussion in the comments, again, there's no, you know, everyone's seeming to behave in the comments.

I have good comment section for the most part. That's good, man, that's good. If you guys have discussion and disagreement, just make sure you do it in a way that honors

God. There's nothing wrong with questioning, disagreeing. Just make sure we're trying to hear the other side and being respectful.

So I appreciate that. Let's do this. So Brother Cis, has Paul ever called Apostle, if you wanna pull that up for me?

Yes, sure, absolutely. Paul ever called Apostle Paul in scripture, or rather Paul called an Apostle. Big difference between descriptive and titles.

Paul says, I consider myself an apostle to the Gentile. He's an apostle. He uses the title as one being sent, right?

Which this is all authority borrowed from the Messiah. Okay. Paul was called to this part.

I don't believe I'm in higher spiritual authority than someone who has a title, pastor or reverend or anything else. These are the only biblical titles are presbyter, they're deacons, they're elders, they're servants.

These sorts of titles are the only things we find in the Bible. These other things that we are using are cultural titles.

The difference is, is that the word rabbi was actually used of Yeshua and John the Mercer. And what's interesting, what does the

New Testament tell us rabbi means? It literally tells us this means teacher. It's interesting that all the church fathers refer to themselves as the didaskalos.

Eli, do you have an experience with Greek? No, very light. Didaskalos means teacher in Greek.

Wouldn't it be interesting that the church fathers and the disciples are referring to themselves as the teacher.

John, all these people are referring to themselves as the teacher, didaskalos in Greek, which when you go back actually means rabbi inside of Hebrew.

So the church fathers don't have a problem being called teacher, which is didaskalos, which goes back to Hebrew, which is rabbi.

So clearly, brother, your interpretation is very, very off. You know what I mean? It's interesting too, it says call no man father, but you have in the 10 commandments, like honor your father and mother.

So they're literally given those titles. So it seems to be the case that when we call no one father, there's a context in which that's to be understood.

It's not to be understood literally like in a wooden literal fashion, as you mentioned before. Yeah, brother.

So sharpen that knife next time, brother, if you have a lust after somebody. Get ready. Watch, he's gonna open up his own

YouTube channel. He's gonna, welcome to Eyepatch Apologetics. Welcome here.

Not you, I was talking about brother Sid, you know what I'm saying? I hope you're that literal, brother. That's awesome.

Well, brother, thank you so much for coming on. And I really appreciate you.

I learned a lot today. And I like, those are my favorite kind of interviews. A lot of times I will interview someone and I have a very strong background in what they're saying, but I want my audience to hear it from a different perspective.

In this particular instance, I learned a lot and it definitely makes me wanna go back and dig deeper into the

Old Testament and the connections of the old and the new and how all those things are understood. So I very much appreciate your time.

I appreciate your knowledge and I very much appreciate what you're doing on your channel. And so I really encourage folks to head over to Radar Apologetics, subscribe, support and check his stuff out.

So brother, thank you so much. Hopefully I can have you back on in the near future. Maybe we could do something together, talk about another topic.

And I hope everything is going well and you continue to grow and God blesses your ministry, brother.

Thank you, brother. Same to you, man. And blessings to you, brother. And thanks for having me on. Blessing everybody in chat. And we're around and may even the ministry we have be a resource to anyone who needs it.

I'm very responsive in comments section. So if you have questions about stuff, please feel free to reach out. I love to do that to bless the body.

Awesome. Well, that's it for this episode, folks. Thank you so much for listening in and thank you so much for the respectful interaction and even in the midst of disagreement, respectful interaction in the comments there.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Until next time, guys, I'll let you guys know when my next episode,

I'll have another guest on and my friend Jeremiah Nortier, we're gonna be interacting with some atheist objections to presuppositional apologetics.

And so I will be playing a small snippet and interacting with it. And so we'll definitely let you guys know when that is.