An Account of My 2015 Email Debate with Two Jewish Apologists, Jared and May – Part 5 on Responding to May’s Email

Randall Johnson April 21, to May, Jared
Okay, guys, here is my reply to May’s email at last. I decided, May, that I couldn’t deal with all your arguments in the email itself, so I put them in a document and gave my responses in red (I hope that doesn’t mess with your eyes).

Old Testament Witness to Messiah

Dear Pastor Johnson,

When you expressed your hesitancy and discomfort with a debate forum, that is something I can totally relate to. My only personal involvement with actually being in a debate was a decade ago when I was working toward an associate’s degree in theology. At the time, I’d never even seen a debate before, let alone a theological one, and even if I had, it wouldn’t have previously been something that would’ve captured my interest. It’s funny how people change over the years: when you’re in your 20s, you’re hanging out with Marilyn Manson before they were signed, and 20 years later, you’re on a plane to go see a theology debate. Total divergence.

I digress.

THE IMPACT OF DEBATE CLASS
The debate class in school was probably the first time since I’d become a Christian that my faith was shaken. Prior to that, I was just full of sheer unadulterated joy, secure in my new life of having been forgiven and confident in the promise of my destiny. I had gotten saved less than a year prior to the class, and dove right in reading the Bible 8 hours per day, making it my full-time job and wanting all of Jesus I could get.

Then there was that debate class.

We were to argue the diametrically opposed points of the Calvinist and Arminian positions. Prior to this class, I was not aware that there WERE two such conflicting doctrines, but then again, it was my first time reading through it, and just like a lot can be missed the first time watching a movie like Cloud Atlas, more is gained upon multiple viewings. One also then has the chance to apply more critical thinking and appreciate nuances in the text that were previously overlooked for unfamiliarity.

We were asked which position we held and then asked to argue the opposite point of view. Wow! What an assignment! That changed a lot, since both could be validly argued doctrinally from the New Testament writings.

The same could be said of Old Testament writings. Aspects of both views are present in the Old Testament as well. This is really an issue that has been around since the beginning of philosophical debate and I would suggest that only an infinite mind can resolve the issue and He, the infinite Mind, has given us parameters within which to keep ourselves straight.

After that, I was not sure of what the real message was, because there didn’t seem to be any consistency or stability in it, but there also didn’t seem to be any other option aside from Christianity being the truth (I hadn’t even considered Judaism at the time), yet despite all this, I held fast to my faith in Jesus as both God and savior (messiah) for dear life. It wasn’t until this past year (almost a decade after all this) that I learned that messiah and savior aren’t the same thing, and, in fact, have different words in the Hebrew, different definitions (although they sound very similar), and one-messiah- applies only to offices that men (not God) can hold, whereas the other (savior) applies only to God.

Well, I think that is begging the question, that is, that is the issue at debate. That the two words “savior” and “messiah” have different meanings does not mean they cannot both be accurate descriptions of the same person. Yet, with certainty, it seems, the expectation of Israel for her Messiah has been that he will be a “savior” of some sort. But if you mean by savior one who becomes a vicarious sacrifice for human sin, that is what we need to establish with Old and New Testament data.

So anyway, I get the out-of-the-comfort zone with the debate thing. For the record, I also feel much more able to articulate my thoughts via writing, even though speaking is much more time-efficient. What a paradox. I’m torn. It IS a beautiful thing, however, on the rare occasion when I can verbally articulate as well as in my writing. Would that this were always the case.

TOVIA’S FORMER DEBATES
The debate with Jhan was decades ago. If memory serves, Jhan passed away about 6 months after that debate was recorded. Such a tragedy. He was so young. My favorite debates are Rabbi Singer’s debates with Pastor Paul Humber and Reverend Jim Cantelon… oh- and the recent one in Houston, which I had the pleasure of personally attending.

The debate with Pastor Humber was very well structured and moderated with adequate opening argument and rebuttal times and more than one rebuttal session. It was point-by-point, quite comprehensive, and covered a number of key scriptural and doctrinal points. This would be one that I think you would enjoy. Rabbi Singer’s presentation style is full of the kind of soul-consuming passion and urgency that could be likened to the 8drive of a Christian evangelist. You can see his passion (just like an evangelist has) for winning souls back into a right relationship with God. This passionate urgency can come across to some as inflammatory, especially if the doctrines being conveyed conflict with the doctrines one believes in. That, however, is beside the point. Tovia’s faith is based on fact and an encyclopedic mastery of the Hebrew scriptures, not to mention his deep, intimate relationship with God.

HOUSTON Debate
This debate was not set up like normal debate; there was only one very long opening statement and only one opportunity for rebuttal for both of the interlocuters.

Tovia’s personal information in debate actually WAS relevant to the debate. If one really listened, Rabbi Singer painted a very clear picture of the spiritual and emotional chasm he crossed, having gone from one who was at first traumatized by Christians and therefore wanted to HIDE the truth about the knowledge of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to one who reached out to those same people to SHARE with them about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. From a Christian perspective, perhaps you would be able to appreciate the same dynamic in the work of Corrie Ten Boom, who, after being stripped of her family, dignity, and health by the people of Germany, then went to live amongst them and minister a message of love and forgiveness.

Likewise, Rabbi Singer’s passionate driven urgency for souls to be restored to God is driven by the overcoming of this pain and his stepping into the true mandate of the Jewish people as a kingdom of priests sent to disseminate the truth of Torah from Jerusalem into all the world. In other words, Tovia is a Jewish apologist, and possesses all the passion, urgency, and conviction of what you typically see in Christian evangelists… and with no shortage of knowledge upon which he can factually stay strong. That is what I see whereas other people see “abrasiveness” or an “inflammatory” affect, but I believe that viewpoint comes because he is teaching something opposed to the Christian message, and he is so staunchly firm about it. If he wasn’t passionate about rescuing souls and delivering them into a right relationship with God, perhaps he would not be so driven.

I have no problem with passion and urgency, even if directed against the Christian message. In fact, I applaud it, because that means you really believe what you are saying. That is not what I was referring to in his debate with Jhan. But that is beside the point.

You wrote:
~~Maybe you could clarify for me what you think Rabbi Singer was saying when he argued that true believers in God would be preserved by God. I understand he is saying that Jewish followers of Jesus were not preserved since 70 BCE (that seems obviously wrong to me) but that Pharisaic Jews were preserved, but I’m wondering how or if he applies that to the victims of the Holocaust. Would he say that because they were killed and not preserved by God they were not genuine believers in the one true God? ~~

I believe here, the rabbi is referring to the Jewish people as an entity and as a recognizable entity, not to individuals. After all, every human being dies. There are, in fact, survivors of the Holocaust, and despite Hitler’s massive efforts, Jewish life and faith were not wiped out. On the contrary, Israel rose from those ashes and were planted back in their own promised land, fulfilling prophecy. Even today we can see prophecy fulfilled in that Jewish children are playing and laughing in the streets of Jerusalem and Israel. Those, on the other hand, who fell away from the faith as a result of the trauma of the Holocaust either were wiped out of their progeny or joined other religions. In either case, there would be no one from either of those categories to identify today as Jewish, yet as it stands, Israel did not perish as a nation in the Holocaust.

I’m not sure what apologetic value this argument has but I definitely wonder about what evidence you have for those who gave up their faith being wiped out of their progeny or joining other religions and therefore not having anyone to identify as Jewish today. I see a national Israel as a fulfillment of prophecy also, by the way, or at least the beginning of a fulfillment.

You wrote:
~~I’m a bit bothered that Jews For Jesus can’t use symbols that are important to them and be accepted as Jews because they believe Jesus is the Messiah. All the first followers of Jesus were Jewish. Why now is it wrong to claim you are a Jew if you follow Jesus? And if you believe your message is important for all to hear, why can you not preach it? I also don’t see that as a valid excuse for Rabbi Singer to respond the way he did.~~~

THE LINE
Just like there are fundamental doctrines in Christianity that define its parameters, and outside of that, one cannot say this or that is Christian if it conflicts with it, the same is true for Judaism; there are specific tenets and parameters of the faith based on the plain and graphic texts. This is why Christianity and Judaism are incompatible. The doctrines of each faith are diametrically opposed to one another, totally conflict, and are mutually exclusive.

Of course, it is the texts that are at question and what is “plain” to one may not be to another. There must be evidence to support the view one takes as to whether it accurately reflects the author’s intended meaning or not. It is true that the current view you have of Judaism is incompatible with Christianity, but I am arguing that the Old Testament teaching is entirely compatible with Christianity.

One cannot mix the holy and the profane. Christian doctrine and Jewish doctrine are mutually exclusive. According to Jewish understanding of the scriptures, Christian doctrine is idolatry. One cannot be a Jew worshiping one unseen God and also bring Jesus in as God. This is why the Jews for Jesus thing is so destructive. It coats Christianity with a manufactured veneer of a Jewish demigod in order to lure Jews into idolatry. It is basically modern-day Balaam tactic.

Well, this is where we disagree and such a labeling as “Balaam tactic” and “manufactured veneer” that “lures” is what I would call inflammatory because it impugns the motives rather than the arguments. We do assert the worship of one true God who is made up of three personalities who share the same, undivided essence of deity and are, quite the opposite of demi-gods, fully God in every respect, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in their being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. We are not making images of the invisible God that we bow down to for worship though we do believe the second person of the Godhead, the Son, took on an additional nature, human nature, so that He is both God and man and as such is capable of living like us on this earth and becoming subject to suffering and death as God’s perfect sacrifice for sin. I’ll seek to provide evidence of that from the Old Testament below.

Now, of course they CAN preach it, and they do, which is why there are Jewish apologists out there adamantly defending the Torah (since they are experts in their own Hebrew language, culture, and sacred literature, unlike the Christians and other people of the nations). You would know these Jewish apologists as “counter missionaries”. Some people call them “anti-missionaries”, which is a misnomer, as not all counter missionaries are not preaching that missionaries should NOT teach their message. A person could be both a counter missionary (Jewish apologist) and an anti-missionary, or one could be one of either (or neither- just a Jew who stands for what he knows the Torah says and will not be moved).

GENESIS 18
I’m curious how you can propose that God is a man when he says 5 times that He is NOT a man. It is, however, known about Him that He sends messengers, and those messengers (angels) who represent Him take the form of men, yet all of a sudden, Christian doctrine wants to say then that those messengers are God Himself as pre-incarnate Christ.. theophanies, if you will. All of a sudden, even though the ambassadors and emissaries He sends in his name are called by his name and take the form of men, it is easy for Christians to superimpose God as a man on that DESPITE God’s express instructions that He is not a man. I will quote those verses again (unless you believe that God is lying and decided at some point to flip the script on the people He chose to reveal Himself to):

DEUTERONOMY 4
12 YEHOVAH spoke to you out of the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of the words, but saw no image, just a voice…

DEUTERONOMY 4
15-16 And you shall watch yourselves very well, for you did not see any image on the day that YEHOVAH spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire… Lest you become corrupt and make for yourselves a graven image, the representation of any form, the likeness of male or female…

HOSEA 11:09
I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again. For I am God, and not a man– the Holy One among you. I will not come against their cities.

NUMBERS 23:19
“God is not a human who lies or a mortal who changes his mind. When he says something, he will do it; when he makes a promise, he will fulfill it

1 SAMUEL 15:29
He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a human being, that he should change his mind.”

Well, I don’t know how “suddenly” we are making the conclusion that the angel or messenger of Yahweh in some cases is identified with Yahweh Himself. But here are the relevant Scriptures I quoted to Jared:

The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.
9 Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.”10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”
11 The angel of the LORD also said to her:
“You are now pregnant
and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,
for the LORD has heard of your misery.
12 He will be a wild donkey of a man;
his hand will be against everyone
and everyone’s hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
toward all his brothers.”
13 She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” (Genesis 16:7-13)

You could, of course, argue that the angel or messenger spoke for Yahweh and so it is as if Yahweh Himself was telling Hagar these things and that though she believes she saw Yahweh she did not really, but saw only His messenger and was confused. However, the next passages don’t seem to allow so easily for that explanation.

But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”
15 The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” (Genesis 22:11-18)

Again, you could argue that because the angel of Yahweh speaks for Yahweh it is as if Yahweh is speaking and saying, “You did not withhold from me your son,” but that is not what the text says. The “plain” reading seems to identify the angel of Yahweh and Yahweh. And in Christianity’s understanding of the Godhead as triune this can still make literal sense to us and we can read the text quite as it is with that theological perspective.

But there is a problem with arguing that the angel of Yahweh is merely speaking for Yahweh and is not himself Yahweh in this next text:
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. (Exodus 3:1-6)

Moses should not be bowing down to or taking off his sandals in the presence of the angel of Yahweh because no messenger, no matter how great, deserves this response worthy only of Yahweh Himself, unless He is Yahweh’s equal. The “plain” reading of this text equates Yahweh with the Messenger of Yahweh. That works for the Christian perspective but not for your perspective of Judaism, which must explain the text in other terms than its plain expression.

The same problem exists for this passage:

When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the LORD. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?” And the commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so. (Joshua 5:13-15)

Now when it says a man was standing before him I too must take the “plain” text and interpret it to mean not what it plainly says, for I do not believe the angel of Yahweh was a man, nor do I think you do. But He appeared in the form of a man. So the author is speaking descriptively of what seemed to be the presentation of this figure, but then Joshua learns it is the angel of Yahweh. But the angel of Yahweh, if he is not Yahweh, must rebuke Joshua at the point where Joshua worships him. The messenger certainly must not accept for himself the identity of the One Moses met in the bush, unless of course He is Yahweh. Since none of that clarification comes I can quite readily take the plain meaning of the text and fit it into my theology. Did the author have any clue as to what the significance of this seeming identification was? Or was he simply reporting faithfully what happened or what God told him happened? I would suspect the latter. It required the coming of Messiah to help us understand this as a possibility. I am interested to see how you reinterpret the “plain” meaning of this text to fit your theological framework.

I will admit that I must wrestle a little more with the “plain” meaning of the texts you offered about God not being a man, because, of course, I am advocating that one member of the Godhead, the Son, did become a man (though he did not cease, therefore, to be God, and that perhaps is my explanation for this seeming discrepancy). Since the eternal Son of God, Yahweh the Son, has not ceased being God it is still true of him that he does not lie like a man, or change his mind, or do something erratic out of anger like humans do. All humans are subject to sinful thinking and behavior, but God is not, and the testimony of the New Testament is that Jesus was not subject to sinful thinking or behavior but was sinless {I’ll talk about that more when dealing with your view of his temptation.] So though Jesus is a man he is not just a man. He is the only being in the universe with a dual nature, divine and human.

Jews understand that someone who is fulfilling the will of God or reflecting the glory of God is called God, but that doesn’t mean he is God, because God has no image of any created thing, male or female, whereas emissaries who He sends as angels in the form of men do have an image. Jesus, being a man, also bears an image of a created thing- a human male, and therefore, by definition cannot be God. To ascribe divinity to any created thing that bears an image is idolatry.

I think you are making several mistakes here. First of all you are interpreting the texts where humans are called God other than the so-called “plain” meaning and I agree with you concerning that. I know Israel did not ascribe deity to human kings for example (Psalm 45:6), but I’m urging you to get over your pretension that somehow you only follow the “plain” meaning of the text. We are all and must all come to the text with an intent to understand the author’s intended meaning, whether the “plain” meaning conflicts with that or not, and we use the context of the entire Old Testament and its theological consistency as a basis for making clear the author’s intended meaning in certain passages. Second, I think the Old Testament is fairly clear that angels are spirits and do not have a physical image any more than Yahweh does, as spirits by definition are not corporeal. So there is a physical image that objects can have but there is also a “spiritual image” that Yahweh has that is not physical (we would agree, would we not, that the “plain” meaning of “image” when used of Yahweh does not mean physical image) but signifies His personality attributes such as intellect, feeling and will that He shares with us His creatures. Third, we are not ascribing divinity to Jesus’ human nature. It is human nature, not divine nature. His divine nature has been his since eternity. Only when he chose to take on the role of our redeemer from sin did he take on this additional nature.

What we have in the New Testament is not only a breach of Deuteronomy 4:2 (to not add to nor subtract from the words that God gave to Moshe that day on Mount Sinai, because the NT is an entire volume added to it, contradicting it), but also of Deuteronomy 4:15-16. In the case of New Testament theology, we can clearly see that man has made God into his (man’s) image by declaring Jesus to be God.

We have not made God into our image by ascribing a human nature to Jesus as an additional nature. The deity of Jesus is separate from his human nature, yet he is one person. We do not worship the human nature of Jesus, we worship Jesus. We have not, in our opinion, therefore, added to nor subtracted from the teaching of Deuteronomy. We are not saying that God is a man but that Jesus, the Son, is both God and Man, while the Father and the Holy Spirit share only the divine nature.

MAN BECOMING LIKE GOD RATHER THAN GOD BECOMING LIKE MAN
We are made in God’s image, yet Christianity wants to make God into man’s image.
The account of Adam and Eve shows that God made man in His image.
That also does not mean that God is a corporeal human being floating off out of sight in the heavens somewhere. Human being was created as a singular entity. He is one, and he made one human (both male and female were in the same ONE being). In order for the entity to multiply, Eve was extracted. Doe God multiply? No. But man strives to be like God. How does he do this? God made man one and then separated him into male and female. Then they are to BECOME ONE. God, therefore, does not multiply like a human and become a plural entity (father, son, holy spirit), but rather, man (male and female) in marriage seek to become one-echad in both mind and body- in purpose and in function. This is how the natural is lifted up to the spiritual… how man becomes godly- by seeking echad with one another, starting in the home- in the very HEART of the home- in the marriage- the relationship between husband and wife, and God willing, all other echad emanates from there. God does not become fractured and have to reunite with Himself.

You are, as I see it, making a philosophical statement about humanity and our oneness as a singular entity and taking that from the statement of Scripture that God created man in his image, how male and female He created them. And I am agreeing with that part of it, but not with where you take it next. Humanity is exactly what you said, a plural entity and yet one, and that is exactly a copy of what God is, a plural entity and yet one. Philosophically speaking, a triune personal God is exactly what explains who we are. We are inherently relational and inherently individual. A singular personality God does not model that. A triune personality God does.

When I am around others I long to be in community with them, to be accepted by them, and to make a difference in their lives. I want some kind of unity with them, but at the same time I want to be recognized as a unique individual who is his own personality. This is a tension to be sure because the one often fights against the other. If I conform too much to the group I fear losing my individual identity. If I am too much of a maverick I lose connection. Our whole life is a search for the right formula in that regard. Whole cultures reflect this tension as some value more highly the community above the individual and vice versa in others. The triune God resolves that tension perfectly, living in complete unity and yet not extinguishing individual personality.

And three is exactly the necessary and right number. True love cannot be demonstrated perfectly with just two persons. It is only when a third person is introduced to the relationship that true love is tested and proven to be true love. When there is no jealousy there is perfect love. Each is completely for the other and for their closeness with the third member of the relationship. We compete in that kind of a threesome relationship, but God does not. The Father loves the Son and the Spirit equally, the Son loves the Father and the Spirit equally, the Spirit loves the Father and the Son equally, and each is safe to do so without fear of jealousy. God demonstrates perfect love from all eternity and is the model of how we are to function in society. He demonstrates echad and teaches us to pursue and achieve echad. God is not fractured like we are. He is perfect echad.

As for “let US make man in OUR image”, this passage is also misunderstood and misappropriated to justify Christian teachings. What we have here is a literary device called “majestic plural”. When the Queen of England uses the term “we” to refer to herself, she is using majestic plural. We can also see angels described in the prophets as having the face of a man. Unlike earthly beings God communicated with angelic beings prior to the creation of mankind. How do you know that the image of man did not come from the prior physical template of that of angelic beings, since they are said to have the look of men, since God sends them as messengers in the form of men, and since God also said of Himself that He has no image (but they do)? So, in using majestic plural, God can also be including the angels in the creation process. After all, “man was created a little lower than the angels”. Perhaps their part in the creation process was God’s use of their image, but the unseen nature of man is after some of God’s attributes. This has more theological clout than to say that God said repeatedly that He wasn’t a man and then lied, changed both His mind and nature and became a man.

I don’t agree with you that angels have a physical image. But even if they did, it seems odd to assert that their physical appearance is the basis for our appearance physically since we see numerous depictions of angels with very unhuman-like attributes. And in Genesis 1:27 it very clearly says that God created man in His own image. There is no need to explain our physical appearance as in any way related to the image of God, except in so far as our physical bodies are equipped to communicate verbally and physically with one another, as well as reproduce with one another, a function of physical intimacy that replicates God’s creative and generative power.

I am aware of the concept of plural of majesty and do not directly contradict that as the usage in Genesis 1, but raise the question of why the plural marks majesty. And I would suggest that it is the very triune nature of God’s personality that marks plurality as majesty. Though the idea of God as a plural entity who is nonetheless one is somewhat obscure in the Old Testament, there are limited hints and expressions of plurality as I have begun to argue with the passages describing the angel of Yahweh. And all this makes more sense with the coming of Messiah and the recognition that He is both God and man with two natures that do not form a third kind of nature and that do not mix in any way but subsist in one undivided personality, that of the Son.

Also, since God is one, and His very name is a reflection on His being the same yesterday, today, and forever, then logically, if He says He is NOT a man, then this not a man also applies to both past and future tenses. Therefore, He never was a man (contrary to the NT teaching that Jesus was God from the foundations of the world), nor will He ever become a man (contrary to the NT teaching that God became a man in the form of Jesus in John 1 and also will return in the clouds as God). The “not being a man” applies to past, present, and future, because God is the SAME yesterday, today, and forever.

It is logically inconsistent to argue that because God says He is not a man that He can therefore not allow one aspect of his triune personhood to adopt human nature in addition to His deity. It still does not make Him a man in the sense that we are men. Jesus is a unique dual-natured being who doesn’t stop being God, and this doesn’t mean he has changed because He has planned all that He planned for our rescue from eternity past. In fact, this is entirely consistent with who we know God to be, lowering and humbling Himself to be our God, make us His people, and dwell among us. In Jesus God has taken the “dwelling among us” part to its ultimate degree. He has humbled Himself to the fullest extent. Yet ironically, by so doing, He has shown Himself to be the exalted and most majestic ruler of the universe.

Another thing to consider is if God was able to “send his son” in the form of one of these man-shaped angels (as you claim He had, saying, “So when the Lord who appears to Abraham goes down to the plains of Sodom to determine the extent of their depravity, this is likely the Son, who then rains down fire from the Lord, the Father, from heaven. “), then why would it be necessary for God to violate his own mandate in Leviticus 18:20 (“‘Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor’s wife and defile yourself with her. “) and impregnate a betrothed woman- an act which He Himself deems an abomination? Mary, when betrothed, was considered already married to Joseph! It would be redundant to violate His own Torah if He could already have created a “son” without having to come through a virgin. Also, there is no way to tell if a woman ever was a virgin prior to giving birth. The very act of giving birth breaks and destroys the woman’s hymen, and the child comes forth in a veritable river of blood, obliterating any evidence that she ever was a virgin.

Come on, May, you know better than this! The Father did not have sex with Mary. He is the sovereign Lord who was able, in the person of the Holy Spirit, to cause her egg to be fertilized and produce a human child. He has, in a way, done similar things for those patriarchs of old who were otherwise not able to have children. He worked some miracle in their reproductive systems to overcome their inability to have children.

Besides, Genesis 3:15 said it would be the seed of the woman (not of the man) who would bruise the head of the serpent, and the unfolding of God’s promise throughout the Old Testament makes it clear that this seed of the woman would be from the tribe of Judah and a descendent of David. To simply create a son out of nothing would not fulfill His plan as delineated in Genesis 3:15. The Messiah would not then have been related to us as human beings. He would not have been able then to be the last Adam and the second man. I guess you are arguing in the last part that there is no way to prove Mary was a virgin. Granted. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t.

As to Yahweh’s meeting with Abraham and subsequent judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, In Genesis 18 it says the Lord appeared to Abraham while he was sitting at his tent. It says Abraham saw three men (and here I would say we don’t just need to quote the Torah because then God is a man according to Torah here, but we know He merely appeared as a man) and offered them hospitality. One of the three men tells Abraham that his wife Sarah will have a child a year from then. When they get up to leave one of them, the Lord, says to the other two, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” and proceeds to tell Abraham that He is going down to see if what Sodom and Gomorrah have done is as bad as He has heard (and here, I don’t think simply quoting Torah is sufficient or else we must believe that God needs to investigate in order to know something for sure, rather than that He is omniscient). The two men with the Lord leave for Sodom but the Lord stays to interact with Abraham as he seeks to find out how many righteous people need to be in those cities to prevent their destruction from the hand of God. When Abraham determines that it is 10 righteous people that can prevent destruction, the Lord leaves and Abraham returns to his tent.

We learn that the two men who were with the Lord are angels who go to rescue Lot and his family from Sodom because there are not 10 righteous people there and the city is going to be destroyed. When the family is safely away the Lord, who had spoken with Abraham and had come down to see if things were as bad as He had heard, rains down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of the heavens. Yahweh on the plains of Sodom and Gomorrah calls down fire from Yahweh in heaven. In other words, the plain reading of the text says there are two Yahwehs, one calling on the other to bring destruction on the cities. My theology has room for this plain reading.

You also said, “hierarchy within the Godhead, the Father being the supreme authority, the Son and the Spirit obey Him, praise Him and pray to Him.” Why does God have to pray to Himself? If He is one, and He is Omniscient, which means all-knowing, then God doesn’t need to pray to God.

You assume praying means only a way of getting knowledge. Praying is rather communication of an intimate kind with our God. Jesus was living this life as we would have to live it, not depending on his deity but rather submitting to the Father and depending on the Holy Spirit for everything. He was purposely not accessing His omniscience. And of course he would talk intimately to His Father. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have been in intimate conversation for all eternity before we existed. We are social beings because we are made in the image of the social Being.

In addition to this, the New Testament clearly indicates that the Son is subject to the Father and the Spirit to both the Son and the Father. Authority over another does not of necessity indicate superiority. One can actually be superior to one in authority over him. In the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are absolutely equal in nature, but there is still a chain of command.

CLARITY IN IDENTIFICATION
God also clearly identified Israel as His son, firstborn among many nations, etc (this is what Pesach is all about- not a sin sacrifice, but the birth of His firstborn- a kingdom of priests) in Hosea 11:1 and Exodus 4:22-23. One could almost say that every human, because he is made in God’s image, is God’s son. Why does the Christian mindset reject these two clear verses- these two witnesses, if you will, and only ascribe sonship to one man… sorry- one demigod (god-man)?

I’ll admit you surprised me with this one. If an Israelite had not killed a lamb and put its blood on the lintels of his door, the death angel would have taken his firstborn son that night. Death is the penalty of sin, and only exists as such because of Adam and Eve’s disobedience. This firstborn son had to be redeemed from death and God uses Pesach as a testimony to that reality. Israel does not become God’s firstborn because she is so good, in fact just the opposite. She is a stiff-necked people who gave Moses grief from the get go. She must be redeemed by blood, the blood of the sacrifice, in order to become a kingdom of priests.

John the son of Zachariah and Elizabeth, the one who baptized Jesus, said of Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus, too, identified his death at Passover as a sacrifice for the sin of the world. These Israel-raised Jews, steeped in the traditions of their people, correctly understood the significance of Passover and its implications for all mankind. No one among them nor any of the teachers or scribes challenged this idea of Pesach being about sacrifice for sin.

As far as sonship goes, Christians do understand that there is sonship on various levels. Yes, in one sense every human being is a son of God and can become even more so a son or child of God when he or she believes in God and makes covenant with Him. Yes, Israel is God’s son in another sense. But sonship, the concept, has an origin and it is found in God Himself, the triune God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus is uniquely the Son of God in the sense that He is in every sense the exact representation of God, the exact DNA if you will by analogy, who is thus in every way equal to the Father from whom His subsistence is derived. And He has been in this relationship from all eternity. There never was a time he was not the Son. He has shared the divine nature from all eternity and been instrumental with the Father in generating the subsistence of the Holy Spirit from all eternity. He is a big God and outside the parameters of our being able to fully figure Him out. The secret things belong to Yahweh our God, right? But He has revealed enough for us to stay within the bounds of truth about Him, and of course, my answers are an attempt to stay within those bounds.

Isaiah 43:10 is very compelling here and also illustrates the proper use of a Hebrew literary device called the synecdoche:
“”You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me. “

Before God no God was formed nor was one formed after Him. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit have been in the relationship they are in from all eternity. If you picture three books, two on top of a third, the bottom book is the foundation and cause for the books on top being in the position they are in. If you can imagine those books in that position from all eternity you can imagine the triune God in His triune relationship from all eternity, as well. The Son is dependent on the Father for who he is, the Spirit is dependent on the Father and the Son. But each shares the same divine essence, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in their being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. These are God’s attributes, His glory, that all three possess. God does not share that glory with another.

Here we see both the singular and the plural being used of Israel. Singular to denote that the sonship- the “firstbornship”, if you will, is ascribed to one NATION, and the plural expounds on that to reveal that that singular nation is comprised of a multitude of individuals (who are also “sons of God”)… ergo “kingdom of priests”, who were chosen through the promise as those to whom and through whom the true nature of God was to be revealed so that they, in turn could reveal it to the rest of the world- the 70 nations. THAT is what Sukkot is all about. Zechariah 14 shows us that all the nations will participate in Sukkot, because that is about THEIR redemption, whereas only Jews are to celebrate Pesach, because that is about their redemption (not the redemption of the nations).

There are so many other points I could get into to demonstrate how Jesus fails as a parallel of the Pesach lamb, but this response is already long enough. But briefly, Pesach was not to cleanse sin, sin offerings are always female, and Jesus was a male, and human sacrifice is also again an abomination. Oh- also- all the plagues were judgments on the pagan Egyptian gods, all of which escalated in intensity, correlating to the strength that the Egyptians ascribed to each god. This culminated with the death of the firstborn where Israel was commanded to slaughter a lamb- the lamb-god of the Egyptians (Amun-Ra. Please look it up), and it was a demonstrations of faith in the God of Israel to be able to deliver them from the Egyptians who would otherwise be inclined to murder them for killing their top god. Moses and Aaron interface with Pharaoh on this matter in Exodus 8.

It seems your view is contradicted directly by Scripture: The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats (Exodus 12:1-5 ESV)

Do the Israelites trust God enough to be bold enough to outright and “in your face, pagan idol!” slaughter the Egyptians top god? Do they trust God enough to be obedient to Him even in the face of the harm the Egyptians could do to them? Do they trust God enough to deliver them?

The Israelites were likely not slaughtering the Egyptians top god by killing a lamb. First of all, Wikipedia acknowledges that the ancient Egyptians ate lamb. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_cuisine]

But in addition to that I think blogger Frum Heretic makes the most sense when he argues that eating a lamb was not considered eating one’s god. The animals were symbols of their god but not considered the god himself. Check out his reasoning here: http://frumheretic.blogspot.ca/2009/03/sheep-worship-in-ancient-egypt.html

THE TESTING OF ABRAHAM
God’s testing of Abraham is not what the Christians think it is: God telling Abraham to do something He regards as abominable that actually points to some future (abominable) act that he once forbade but now requires in order for men to draw near to him. Did not God call Abraham out of the Ur of Chaldees where paganism and human sacrifice were rampant? Did God not call Abraham His friend? After all that time walking with God, did Abraham not know what was required to draw near to God? Did Abraham not know what was an acceptable sacrifice and what was not? Of course he knew human sacrifice wasn’t acceptable! Even his son Isaac knew what an acceptable sacrifice was, hence his inquiry to his father asking, “Where is the sacrifice?”

Abraham absolutely knew what was and wasn’t an acceptable sacrifice, but nonetheless he was determined to sacrifice his son and only stopped when the Angel of Yahweh stopped him, hand raised to plunge the knife into Isaac. The New Testament notes that he told his servants that he and the boy would return to them shortly indicating that he believed God would raise Isaac from the dead (Hebrews 11:19).

Abraham failed the test. The test was not to see if Abraham would put Isaac on the altar. The test was to see if he would say, “no way, God! That is not like you!” Abraham failed the test. You will notice that after that episode, God never directly interacts with Abraham again, but only does so via the conveyance of angelic beings. The real issue is “Does Abraham really know and trust God’s nature as has been revealed to him for decades that was contradictory to the ideology of Ur that worshiped gods who required human sacrifice?” Any form of human sacrifice is an abomination.

Abraham decidedly did not fail the test according to Tanakh:
When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”

And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”
(Genesis 22:9-18 ESV)

You can’t say that human sacrifice does not appease God’s wrath and then flip the script to say that sacrificing Jesus (who was also a human) does appease Him. To do so would be contradicting yourself. Any form of human sacrifice is an abomination. God is not appeased by sacrifice, but by repentance, and so says God throughout the entirety of TNK- even in Ezekiel 18:23. Hosea 6:6 reiterates that He prefers obedience to sacrifice “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. ‘” But then NT theology is going to turn around and say that God changed His mind and now DOES require Himself as a human to become abominably sacrificed against His own Torah in order for all mankind to be “saved” when none of the prophets even remotely alluded to it?

I am not contradicting myself when I say that the human sacrifices God prohibited were prohibited because they did not serve as acceptable sacrifices to Him. The reason they were unacceptable is they were attempts by humans to control and influence God in a way contrary to His instructions. Sacrificing fallen, sinful, finite humans to appease God’s wrath was an abomination. God prescribed animals because they symbolically were innocent, sin-free creatures, without blemish as a sacrifice, including the sacrifice to come, must be. The one sacrificed cannot be a partaker of the problem being remedied. Jesus was God’s sin-free sacrifice who could take away sin. God sacrificed Himself, if you will, in human form. He was taking His own penalty for our rebellion upon Himself. And to say that there is no allusion to this in the prophets is to neglect the testimony of Isaiah that the servant of Yahweh, who cannot be entirely identified with Israel (see Isaiah 49:3-6) is offered as just such a sacrifice:

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
(Isaiah 53:4-6 ESV)

Even if you don’t identify the Servant here with Messiah you still have the concept of someone taking a sacrificial place of another. You have the principle of God choosing someone to take the place of another, laying that other’s iniquity on him to bring the other peace and healing. But of course, again, God would not choose someone to be that sacrifice unless that one was unblemished.

Furthermore, in one verse, Proverbs 17:15 completely nullifies the entirety of New Testament theology and doctrine by saying, “15 He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous -both alike are an abomination to ADONAI. “

Justifying the wicked and condemning the innocent are central doctrines of New Testament theology regarding what Jesus is reported to have “accomplished”. Therefore, the works of Jesus according to New Testament apostolic writings, are an abomination to God. New Testament theology clearly flips God’s very words on end and calls God a liar- essentially accusing God of lying throughout His entire TNK [Old Testament].

Human beings who declare that what a wicked person is doing is justifiable and who condemn a just person as unrighteous are clearly contradicting God’s revealed will as to what is right and what is wrong. But this is not what we are saying the Father did with regard to the Son. The Father does not say that Jesus, who acted righteously and without sin, was nevertheless morally wrong. He is saying that Jesus is actually righteous and thus suitable to take the place of sinful human beings as their sacrifice. He is the umblemished lamb. And as proof that Jesus was righteous and did not deserve to die, God the Father raised him from the dead. Only someone who did not participate in our sinfulness was capable of being our sacrifice, as the Old Testament clearly explains.

SACRIFICE
If Jesus had a divine nature and therefore could NOT sin, then all his temptations were no challenge at all, and therefore, overcoming sin was also neither a challenge, nor would his sacrifice mean anything. You are not an overcomer if there is no challenge in your testing.

There is surely some mystery here as to how Jesus experienced temptation, yet being sinless. To say, however, that just because you don’t yield to the temptation it therefore was no challenge to you does not logically follow. It might in fact be more of a challenge since by not yielding he continued to feel the weight of the temptation, a weight that someone who does yield experiences with less duration. We know that by having a human nature as well as a divine nature, Jesus suffered pain and the natural recoil from pain and from dying that a human is designed to feel and thus the temptation to pull away from it even if it is commanded by God (see Matthew 26:36-46). We know that he felt tired and hungry and would have the desire simply from the body to satisfy hunger and rest from weariness even if that was contrary to God’s purpose at the moment (see Matthew 4:1-7). And it would be natural to recoil from death on a cross if there were an alternative offered (see Matthew 4:8-11). But Jesus did not yield to any of these temptations despite what internal and bodily struggle he experienced. The challenge was real and he really was an overcomer.

The problem here lies in the misunderstanding of Christians as to how sin is dealt with and what the purpose is of the sacrificial system, which will be reinstated by God’s messiah with the rebuilding of the third temple according to His will and promise. If Jesus took care of the sin problem, then why would God ordain and promise the reinstatement of the sacrificial system?

If the sacrificial system is to be reinstated, contrary to what you said about God no longer requiring sacrifice (at least in your interpretation of Hosea 6:6), that is, if Ezekiel 40 and following indicates that, I would have to suppose that the animal sacrifices are not for the purpose of taking away sin, since Jesus has accomplished that once for all, but as a memorial of sorts to what Jesus did, a reminder of what it cost Him, death, as an object lesson for us.

What God gave us to overcome out evil inclination is a tool called FREE WILL, which even Cain had, and which God, in conversation with Cain, pointed out quite clearly, reasoning with him in Genesis 4:6-7 saying, “Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” “

No mention here of blood sacrifice, no mention of faith in God eventually becoming human and sacrificing Himself for Cain: just repentance, and it will go well with you. God had the perfect opportunity here to be clear about Jesus and the Christian “plan of salvation”, yet not a word.

The problem of evil is solved by man taking responsibility to exercise his own God-given free will to do good and follow his good inclination rather than his evil inclination. By the way, that is also a little bit of how we are made in God’s image, as God creates both good and evil (Isaiah 45:7).

I believe this to be an underestimate of our ability to do good and a contradiction of the Tanakh itself about our capabilities. In Deuteronomy 30 Moses predicts the failure of Israel to keep covenant with Yahweh and the subsequent implementation of the curses of Deuteronomy 29 resulting in Israel being expelled from the land and under foreign domination. And he does say when with all your heart you return to Yahweh and obey Him he will restore your fortunes. But then he says in verse 6, “And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” There is a prior act of God on our souls, our hearts, that He must perform so that we will love him and thus obey Him. The whole new covenant is premised on this necessity:
Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

The Law did not provide with it the power to enable the sinner to keep it. With the new covenant God will provide that circumcision of the heart that He talked about through Moses in Deuteronomy 30. In Ezekiel He describes it this way:
I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant, that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations. Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations. It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord GOD; let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel. (Ezekiel 36:24-32 ESV). It is not because we are using our free will to be obedient and God is rewarding our efforts. It is Him performing an act in our souls that makes us obedient when we otherwise would not be. He will cause us to walk in His statutes. May we never suppose that was our own ability.

NEW COVENANT
Jesus didn’t fulfill any of the promises of the new covenant. Those which are outlined in Jeremiah 31 have not yet taken place yet, so we know Jesus did not accomplish any of it. Men are still teaching each other about God, and sin still proliferates around the world.

Like many or most of the prophecies of the Tanakh that relate to the coming of His kingdom to earth (Psalms 96, 98, 99 are good examples of this expectation), there are near and far fulfillments, or better, many installments along the course of history until the final fulfillment is accomplished. That is why both Joshua and Solomon declare that God has fulfilled all His good promises to Israel regarding the land and yet Jeremiah 31 and other passages declare it is yet to be fulfilled. If Jesus has indeed become the sacrifice for sin and sent the Holy Spirit to be within us and cause us to walk in covenant with Him, then we must say that the New Covenant has begun to be fulfilled. That does not mean there is nothing left to be accomplished, and I for one believe the land promises to Israel and the promise of a Davidic king remain to be fulfilled on earth with freedom for Israel from all enemies and absolute prosperity and, most importantly, universal faith in Yahweh.

But that has not happened yet. That awaits the return of the Messiah, Jesus, to establish David’s throne on the earth. Sin has not been dealt its final blow and death has not been finally banished from mankind. But it is as if I had promised to pay your tuition to university. If I bring the first semester’s fees to you it would indicate that I am making good on my promise. But until I pay the last semester the full accomplishment of my promise is yet awaiting. Jesus has begun the process of fulfilling the New Covenant and will certainly complete it.

You will note that as long as Christian doctrine and Islamic doctrine dominate the world (covering 2/3 of the planet) and the teachings of Torah are in the remnant (which is the ratio we see today), the world is in a state of chaos and destruction. This is the diametric opposite of that which is described in all the scriptures in TNK illustrating the nature of the messianic age. During that time, as is depicted in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2, the Torah, carried by the people of God (the Jews with whom He has an everlasting covenant) will proliferate into the world, destroying the statue of pagan idolatry and filling the world, itself growing into a mountain- likened to the one from which it was sent.

Christians do not claim that the final form of the Messianic kingdom has come to earth yet. Jesus instructed us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

Zechariah 8:23, in fact, tells us how this will happen incrementally- that 10 goyim (people of the nations like you and other Christians and non-Jews) will grab the hem of a Jew and admit that God is with them and ask to go up and learn with them about God. When Torah proliferates the earth and the majority follow it and forsake the idolatry of Christianity and other pagan religions, then we will see peace on earth and the messianic age.

I, of course, believe that this passage will be fulfilled with national Israel and spiritual Israel (Gentiles who have embraced the faith of Abraham and trusted in Messiah Jesus) side by side, Israel leading the way for all the nations. Rather than forsaking Christianity all Israel will embrace Jesus as Messiah, having their hearts circumcised to love Yahweh their God and His Son whom He sent to redeem them.

Did you also notice that this very verse- Zechariah 8:23 looks strikingly like what the New Testament portrays as the “great end-time falling away” or the “great end-time apostasy of 1 Thessalonians? That’s because the statue of the system of pagan idolatry, when 10 people from there, from the nations (non-Jews, remember) come out of there and grab a Jew- grab that ROCK, the statue will cry, “Apostasy!” The coming in of the kingdom and the filling of the earth with Torah looks like apostasy to the pagan system, but in reality, it is ten people from the nations “whose forefathers have inherited lies and things wherein there is no merit” that we see in Jeremiah 16:19-20 grabbing one Jew (the rock, a member of the kingdom of priests) to go and learn. The Jews do not come to Yehovah saying, “We have inherited the lies of Torah that You gave us on Mount Sinai! Let us go to the Christians of the nations to learn about You!”, but rather, the people of the nations come to God saying, “OUR forefathers have inherited lies…”

We Gentiles gratefully acknowledge that our Messiah came from you and our precious Scriptures we call the Old Testament do as well, and that we are riding on your coattails. But we also believe that Yahweh is making you jealous with a people who were not His people originally (Hosea 1:8-10; Deuteronomy 32:21). We long for you to see in Jesus the one who loves you and came to rescue you.

In Daniel 7 we see Daniel’s vision from God of a court held by the Ancient of Days with thousands upon thousands serving Him. Then one like a son of man comes to the Ancient of Days to be presented to Him. And the Ancient of Days gives this one like a son of man “dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” This is not a contradiction of the interpretation given to Daniel that “the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High.” Both are true. The Messiah Jesus will make us his co-regents to rule with him forever. We get to participate with you in that kingdom and we are grateful.