Recently, I had an interesting conversation with a prominent messianic/Hebrew roots man (not of Jewish birth) who was attempting to show me that my (and that of Jewish people in general) rejection of Jesus as G-d’s prophet, as Israel’s “true messiah” and as god-incarnate is blasphemy against the G-d of Israel. In keeping with my long-standing practice of not embarrassing even those I disagree with on my blog, I will keep his identity anonymous.
Messianic: Gene [you are being] blasphemous [for rejecting Jesus].
Me: How am I being blasphemous?
Messianic: For the same reason those who rejected God’s prophets in the Tenakh were in rebellion to God.
Me: Messianic, but that still wouldn’t make even those people “blasphemous”. At best they are rebels. But you are assuming that Jews have been rebels against a true prophet of G-d. Such is patently NOT the case with Jesus.
In case of myself and all other Jews, besides numerous other more relatively lesser reasons, I reject Jesus because he failed to pass the true prophet test outlined in Deuteronomy 13. The multiple prophecies about his return in the lifetime of his followers have failed (and we read in the NT that they believed his words and fully expected it to come to pass) and what’s even worse, he himself became object of worship, an detestable idol, something that no true prophet of G-d would dream of doing.
Let me repeat: NO TRUE PROPHET OF G-D WILL ALLOW HIMSELF TO BECOME AN OBJECT OF WORSHIP AND NO TRUE PROPHET WILL PROPHESY FALSELY.
This is why I reject Jesus and all other false prophets and idols. I do this because I do not wish to violate the clear commands of my G-d, I do not want to betray my Maker and I don’t want to rebel against Him and His will. Only to the G-d of Israel I will bow my knee in worship and only His true prophets I believe and will believe. And ironically, to refer to an idol as the “G-d of Israel” as Christians talk of Jesus is indeed the blasphemy against Hashem, the true G-d.
Messianic: Rebellion against God, I think, is indeed a form of blasphemy. David rebelled against God’s commandments by murdering Uriah and committing adultery with his wife. Nathan the prophet tells David that this was blapheming God.
If rejecting God’s commandments was blaspheming, how much more for rejecting God’s prophets? How much more for rejecting God’s Messiah?
Yeshua is Israel’s Messiah, an unexpected and exalted Messiah who brought the Tenakh to all nations. Israel rejected God’s Messiah, and is in rebellion for doing so.
Me: Messianic, I think you missed something:
Let me repeat once again: NO TRUE PROPHET OF G-D WILL ALLOW HIMSELF TO BECOME AN OBJECT OF WORSHIP AND NO TRUE PROPHET WILL PROPHESY FALSELY THE WAY JESUS DID, OVER AND OVER AND OVER.
“Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then He will send forth the angels, and will gather together His elect from the four winds, from the farthest end of the earth to the farthest end of heaven. Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. Even so, you too, when you see these things happening, recognize that He is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place…“ (Mark 13:26-30)
Throughout the last two thousands years, many thousands of Jews bravely went to painful deaths at the hands of Christians or took their own lives and lives of their families because they refused to commit the greatest sin of all: a betrayal of their G-d by worshiping a false god. They refused to follow a false prophet who failed the test that G-d Himself instituted.
Messianic: I’m willing to talk to you about Messiah’s prophecies.
Me: Messianic, but are you willing to look at them honestly, the way I had to after believing the lies for almost 20 years? At least some Christians were honest with themselves when they recognized the true implications of what Jesus did, even if ultimately not willing to give up their faith in the god-man despite of the facts apparent to them and making excuse why they would continue to have faith in lies. Like perhaps that greatest Christian author C.S. Lewis, who wrote:
“It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.”
“It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible. Yet how teasing, also, that within fourteen words of it should come the statement “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” The one exhibition of error and the one confession of ignorance grow side by side. … The evangelists have the first great characteristic of honest witnesses: they mention facts which are, at first sight, damaging to their main contention.”
Messianic: Gene, are you willing to view the Tenakh with the same skepticism? In Deuteronomy, Moses says that Israelites will eat their own children if they turn from God and the Torah. Let’s talk about that prophecy. Did it really happen? (Emphasis mine)
I believe both are to be interpreted, and both can be explained if one is willing to not be so rigid.
But this is a problem with the anti-missionary positions: great skepticism when it comes to the New Testament, but blind faith when it comes to the Tenakh. The Tenakh contains all kinds of difficulties, far more than the New Testament! If we accept them at face value without engaging with the biblical scholarship and sages and learned men who explain them, we’d end up all foolish atheists.
Me: Messianic, yours is a “suicide bomb” argument – trying to defend your faith by questioning the very foundation on which you claim it rests. Why not deal with it instead of trying to say “you did it first”, especially when you are wrong, as I will demonstrate:
You said: “In Deuteronomy, Moses says that Israelites will eat their own children if they turn from God and the Torah. Let’s talk about that prophecy. Did it really happen?”
As a matter of fact it certainly did. It was fulfilled exactly:
2 Kings 6:26-29
“As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, “Help me, my lord the king!” The king replied, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?” Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?”
She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”
What do you say, Messianic?
The above is also reflected in G-d’s own warning: Jeremiah 19:9 (also Ezekiel 5:10)
“I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh during the stress of the siege imposed on them by the enemies who seek their lives.”
Since you are wrong about your claim above, as I showed you, perhaps there are many other things that you are wrong about, Messianic? Perhaps you will be willing to listen?
Messianic: “yours is a suicide bomb argument”
No, I am asking you to use equal weights and measures, something the Torah that you and I share commands us to do.
You’re willing to explain away difficulties in the Tenakh, but unwilling to do the same for the New Testament.
Moses claims one animal chews the cud, while modern science clearly shows otherwise. Thus, if I don’t explain this, I am forced to say Moses was ignorant of science, and furthermore, that God didn’t command Moses to say something false. Chronicles is inconsistent about who inspired an Israelite king, one saying it was the Adversary, another saying it was God himself. The Torah says no one can see God, and yet, right there in the Torah, the people see God and dine with Him.
For every difficulty in the New Testament, I can give you 10 in the Tenakh.
We, as people who love God, must be willing to engage with Biblical scholarship on these issues, working through them, rather than discarding it upon mere sight of a difficult reading.
Me: Messianic, are you just going to ignore your accusation against the biblical prophecy that you said was never fulfilled when I showed you that it was exactly? Like you never even make the claim just now, you will just brush it off, right?
And I am not asking you to show me “difficulties” in the Bible. G-d gave us a very specific test how to test a false prophet. This means that it’s VERY important for us to be able to apply this test and apply it properly, especially since so much is at stake. If we get this wrong, we are going to follow a false prophet. And when it comes to false prophets which we accept at their word, we are going to worship an idol too – in this case, a deified man.
It’s not some minor issue of a possible discrepancy, e.g. how many people went into Egypt (e.g. as you see in Acts) or some other omission in order of events, etc. We are not talking above grammatical errors either. We are talking about a person who claimed to be a prophet making a blatant false prophecy that didn’t materialize. And we are talking not about just some mere human being, but a person that you believe to be G-d Himself who said those words. The standard that we should apply to such a prophet should be exceedingly high. But you are not willing to test Jesus the way Torah demands of Israel. You want to make excuses for him so that you can continue worshiping him instead of rejecting this idol of the nations and worshiping G-d alone.
Messianic: You’re missing the point, Gene. You can explain difficulties in the Tenakh. Great.
I can explain difficulties in the New Testament.
You are willing to explain difficulties in the Tenakh, but unwilling to do the same for the New Testament.
This is unequal weights and measures. And this problem is endemic to the anti-missionary crowd.
Here’s a real-life example: Have you engaged with Christian scholarship about Messiah’s prophecy? Did you read how it likely spoke of the Temple’s destruction, which did indeed occur in that generation? Did you conflate the prophecy of the return of Messiah with the Temple’s coming destruction? Did you engage with Josephus, who writes of an appearance of heavenly hosts over Jerusalem before the Temple’s destruction? Did you discover that some believed this was the sign of heaven spoken of by Jesus? Did you engage with scholars who suggest “this generation” he was speaking of the generation in the last days? Did you come upon the number of interpretations by biblical scholars and learned mean who interpreted the text harmoniously?
No, you didn’t do any of those things. It is because you are not using equal weights and measures.
Me: “No, you didn’t do any of those things. It is because you are not using equal weights and measures.”
Of course I have, Messianic. I was a Jesus-worshiper for almost 20 years, did you forget? How do you think I dealt with the cognitive dissonance for all those years? By reading extensively the books and other materials by Christian authors and scholars and all their rationalizations of Jesus’ false prophecies and the idolatry of worshiping a man as G-d! I think I’ve heard just about all of the excuses and even used them myself to defend Jesus and my worship of him.
But it’s time to confront the reality. Don’t keep asking me the question: “who are you going to believe, your own lying eyes or me”? When a false prophecy and idolatry is so blatant, no amount of scholarship will make the obvious lies and sin against G-d go away.
Messianic: Yes, and you do not apply that same skepticism to the difficulties in the Tenakh.
I have the benefit of having seen all sides of this: my family are believers in the God of Israel and Israel’s Messiah. My younger brother rejected Israel’s Messiah for OJ. And my cousin rejected first Messiah, then the Tenakh, and is now in atheism.
The logical end to the reasoning, “Throw out the whole thing because of difficulties in the text” is dead atheism.
The way forward for God’s people is to work with the text, not treat it rigidly, engage with scholarship, ask God for wisdom, and acknowledge humans do not understand the mind of God. That is our path forward. It is one of humility and spirituality, not of an intellectual arrogance that says any difficulty in the text invalidates it as a whole.
Me: “Difficulties” are not near on the same level as false prophecies, Messianic. I can live with difficulties, but when my very relationship with G-d is at stake because I have believed and followed a person who had made numerous false prophecies, and what’s even worse, who himself had become a deity receiving worship due to G-d alone, that is something far more serious that a “difficulty”. That’s idolatry and betrayal of G-d. If I have willfully refused, even when someone challenged me to do so, to apply G-d’s own test for that prophet, there will be little room for professing ignorance.
Messianic: Gene,
Let’s see if we can apply that same logic to the Tenakh.
“My very relationship with G-d is at stake because I have believed and followed a person who claimed to speak on behalf of God, when it’s clear he was ignorant about nature and made false statements about it, rendering his claim of divine inspiration false, making him out to be a false prophet.”
You have a problem interpreting one of Messiah’s prophecy. (Even though you admin he did, in fact, prophesy the destruction of the Temple!) You are snagging Messiah on whether “this generation” would see “the coming of the Son of Man”. Meanwhile, you’re either unaware of or unwilling to engage with biblical scholars who interpret this harmoniously.
This is the unequal weights and measures on display.
Me: “You have a problem interpreting Messiah’s prophecy. (Even though you admit he did, in fact, prophesy the destruction of the Temple!)”
I admitted what, Messianic? I think you got something I said “crossed” in your mind. All of the gospels, even the earliest Mark, were written long after Jesus died. Unlike the prophets of old, Jesus himself wrote down nothing. What’s even more telling, Paul, the earliest NT writer, doesn’t even seem to know about the coming “destruction of the Temple” – he mentions nothing of it in his letters (which is strange for such an important prophecy). What’s even more funny, is that we have a clear case of Church scribes adding a statement (1 Thessalonians 2:16) that the wrath already came on Jews “at last”, some 30 or 40 years prior to any “wrath”.
Messianic, you can continue fighting your cognitive dissonance, continue worshiping a false god and continue believing false prophecies. But there’s a way out if you are willing to admit to yourself that perhaps you are wrong.
Messianic: Gene, do you see the absurdity of what you just said? :-)
Let’s see if we can summarize:
“Yeshua is not the Messiah because he made a false prophesy, in which the destruction of the Temple and the return of Messiah are linked, and that “this generation” would not pass away until it saw these things. But, Yeshua didn’t actually make that prophesy, because the gospels were written after him, and by others and not Yeshua himself.”
See the problem? Not only is Yeshua both making the prophesy and not making the prophesy, but don’t you think that if the gospel writers who supposedly recorded “long after” Yeshua died, they would have edited the prophecy so that it would not be problematic?”
This is not sound reasoning, Gene.
More importantly, you are still using unequal weights and measures: you are willing to explain away difficulties in the Tenakh, but unwilling to extend the same charitable reading to the New Testament.
This problem is endemic to the anti-missionary crowd.
Me: “This is not sound reasoning, Gene.”
It’s actually very sound reasoning, Messianic. I judge truthfulness of person of Jesus by what Christians wrote about him in the NT. That’s the only way for me to judge him and his claims – I have no other source of his claimed words. For example, I don’t believe that he said anything that John claims he did. But I am going to rely on John to judge the claims of Christianity because that religion and you as well claim it to be “truth”
In sum, I believe that Jesus was a real person, but I don’t believe that he’s what Christianity made him into – either prophet, messiah or especially god. But since your religion wants me and other Jews to judge him and accept him based on the evidence you call “New Testament”, I will judge him by the information Christianity claims as the facts about him. And judging by that, Jesus fails on all fronts. It’s false prophecy and idolatry.
Messianic: No, it’s not. Your reasoning is self-defeating:
“Jesus is not the Messiah of Israel because how I interpret his prophecy didn’t come true. Except that he didn’t actually make that prophesy; it was written by people after him. And even though the people after him wrote the prophecy long after his death, they didn’t bother to change the false prophecy.”
There are so many things wrong with this reasoning, Gene.
I notice also there are more unequal weights on display here: the Tenakh does indeed contain words ascribed to a man written after the fact. Not the least of which is the Torah itself!
I am at least glad you do believe Jesus was a real person. That’s a start. The next step is, if Jesus was a real person, were his contemporaries, like Peter and James? And if so, why were Peter and James and his contemporaries unwilling to recant in their trusting that Yeshua was the Messiah of Israel, even to the point of their own torturous deaths?
Me: “There are so many things wrong with this reasoning, Gene.”
I think that I explained it already – I am not sure what you’re not getting. I judge Jesus by the claims made about him in your New Testament. That’s all I have to go by! Christians thought that the destruction of the Temple will be the sign of Jesus’ immanent return – they failed! They thought that Nero’s persecution was a sign of anti-Christ and Jesus’ immanent return and wrote this into book of Revelation – they again failed. Just as some of Christians thought that the year 2000 would bring back Jesus. They also failed.
And why would they bother to change false prophecies? Christian history is littered with false prophecies that were later explained away by the faithful within days of them failing to materialize – from early Christians waiting for Jesus to return, to Mormons to JWs, to recent evangelists predicting doomsday. You are still trying to explain them away right now!
“I am at least glad you do believe Jesus was a real person.”
I believe that Joseph Smith was a real person. But I don’t believe that he found the golden tablets with new revelations from G-d. I believe that Muhhamad was a real person, but I don’t believe that he was taken up to heaven on a magic horse.
Messianic: Gene, I disagree. I think we have much to judge the claims of Yeshua with, beyond the writings about him by his contemporaries. For example, the reality that families in every nation on earth know of the God of Israel and call the Tanakh their Scripture.
But this we already discussed.
Take care, Gene.
Me: Till we spar again, Messianic.
All the best.
Daily Minyan 
Leave a comment