 This presentation is a continuation of the exchange that Dr. Brown and myself were having over here. It is a response to Dr. Brown's two-part video entitled Dr. Brown Responds Again to Rabbi Blumenthal Part 1 and Part 2. I would like to begin by thanking Dr. Brown for taking the time and the effort, investing time and effort in this exchange. Now Dr. Brown has complained in these videos that it's getting tedious. It's going round and round. He seems to be bothered by the fact that I use words like obfuscation, rhetoric, smoke screens to describe his arguments. So I would like to take a minute to explain why I believe this exchange of ideas, these presentations, these video presentations that we are making is beneficial and a blessing and why I sincerely thank Dr. Brown for taking part in this exchange. You see, we have two communities over here. We have a Jewish community and a Christian community. I'm talking about those Jews and Christians that are loyal to God, loyal to the Jewish scriptures. Both of these communities' communities respect the Jewish scriptures. They revert them. They study them prayerfully, humbly before God, and sincerely. And each of these communities sees a completely different message emerging from the pages of the same scriptures. And each of these communities sees this message as harmonizing with every verse resonating from every page, but only one of us can be right. We cannot both be right. One of us is reading the correct message of scripture and one of us is reading an incorrect message of scripture. Now, there are a few ways we can go about to determine which one of us is right. We can trace the conflict, the friction to its original source. Go back in time. Go back before Jesus appeared on the scene, before the church presented any of its claims to the Jewish people. And ask yourself, put yourself in the shoes of a Jew back then 2,500 years ago. How would a Jew have read these scriptures? How would he feel about the scriptures? How would he see in what context would he read these scriptures? How would he seem self-standing in a covenantal relationship with the God of these scriptures? And try to read the scriptures in that light and develop a world view on that basis and then hear the claims of the church and examine them in light of the Jewish scripture from the standpoint of a Jew who lived before Jesus. That's one way of trying to figure out which one of us, which one of the communities is reading scripture correctly. Another way of doing this is listening to the rendition of scripture presented by the Jew, the rendition of scripture presented by the Christian. And try to find the fault lines, try to find the weak spots in whichever rendition has those weak spots. Try to figure out which rendition is actually loyal. Try to trace each argument back to its scriptural source and see which one of them is actually loyal to scripture. Let me just say, it's only very simple, is that one of us has to be obfuscating. One of us has to be engaged in rhetoric. One of us has to be engaged in smokescreen. That's just a mathematical fact. It's either the Jewish community or the Christian community because scripture is not giving us two different messages. Scripture is in fact only giving us one message and only one message could be true. There's a third way and that's where these video presentations come in. The third way is listen to the proponents of either side. And here I'm trying to present the Jewish position, Dr. Brown is trying to present the Christian position and watch how each of us reacts, responds when the fault lines in our respective positions are exposed, are brought to light, listen and try to digest the arguments of each side as they react to the arguments of the other side. So yes, we're human beings, there's going to be misunderstandings, there's going to be human error, it's going to be tedious, it's going to be frustrating and it is going to go round and round to some degree. But it's a search for truth and there is no more rewarding activity in life than searching for truth. I spoke in the past about Zechariah chapter 6 verses 9 through 15. I'm going to be going back to that because you see when the Christian wants to get the Christian message to emerge from the Jewish scriptures, the Christian rendition of that message, he's going to have to do two things. He's going to have to marginalize concepts that the author emphasized such as observance of the law of Moses, the eternal choice of Israel as a covenant nation and as a witness nation before God. So that's one thing he's going to have to do, he's going to have to marginalize what the author emphasizes and highlights and then he's going to have to highlight concepts that the author never said. For example, there is no remission for sin without the shedding of blood. A concept appears nowhere in scripture. According to the Christian, it's a central pillar of the Jewish scripture, the theology of Jewish scripture. So the reason I'm focusing on Zechariah chapter 6 verses 9 through 15 is because in this short paragraph, in his interpretation of this short paragraph, Dr. Brown actually does both of these at the same time. He takes the primary message of this passage, the Messiah as a temple builder and he relegates that to the background. He uses the words hardly significant to describe the Messiah's role as a temple builder and a concept which appears nowhere in the text and Dr. Brown admits that it appears nowhere in the text. The Messiah as a vicarious atonement suddenly becomes the primary message of this short paragraph. Now Dr. Brown in his most recent video said again and again, no, he never said that the text says that the Messiah is a vicarious atonement. Yes, and I know that. That's exactly my point. The text doesn't say that. The author never said that. What Dr. Brown does is he takes one detail of the text. The high priest sitting on a throne and he tells us that that is the most significant feature of this little passage. If you will note, the author didn't tell us what the meaning of that. Why is it that the high priest is sitting on a throne and what lesson we're supposed to learn from that? But Dr. Brown tells us that the lesson that we're supposed to learn from that is if the high priest is sitting on a throne, that means that the Messiah is invested with a priestly role and therefore he's going to die as a vicarious atonement. That's only one interpretation. The author didn't say that that is the interpretation of the high priest sitting on the throne. I actually offered two other interpretations. I said perhaps the high priest is sitting on a throne in order to not to invest the Messiah with a priestly role, but rather to invest the priest with a messianic role. This particular priest was a temple builder. So maybe the prophet is putting him on a throne, giving him a crown in order to show that this particular priest is acting as a messianic figure or another interpretation. Perhaps, yes, the high priest is sitting on a throne wearing a crown to show that the Messiah has a priestly role. But the priests had many functions. The priests were judges and teachers. Perhaps the prophet is telling us that the Messiah will be a judge and a teacher like the priests were. So the idea of the priest sitting on a throne doesn't tell us vicarious atonement, but that's the only interpret that Dr. Brown says my two interpretations don't explain why the high priest is sitting on a throne. He doesn't tell us why not. Why doesn't it explain it? All of Dr. Brown's protests, notwithstanding, Dr. Brown is saying indirectly that this passage is saying vicarious atonement. He's saying that the passage is speaking about the high priest sitting on a throne, and the only interpretation he's allowing for is vicarious atonement. But the author left that on said. The concept, which in this short paragraph, in these few short verses, the author repeated three times, temple building, that is to Dr. Brown, hardly significant. And I think this is a serious fault line in the Christian rendition of the message. If you have to take something which the author says three times in a short paragraph and say that's hardly significant, and then take one concept and invest it with meaning and project a whole idea into which the author completely did not say, and make that the significant and the most important teaching of this passage, that should tell you something about the Christian's rendition of scripture. And before I leave that vicarious six, let me just ask you a question. If indeed, as Dr. Brown claims that this is the only place in all of scripture where the Messiah is portrayed as a temple builder, then why is this not the most striking feature of the passage? Why is it the high priest sitting on a throne that Dr. Brown says is the most striking feature of the passage? Let's move on to the subject of idolatry. See, in this particular stage of the discussion, we actually made some progress because Dr. Brown in his most recent video acknowledged, finally acknowledged, that my position is not that the Christian only worships Jesus and doesn't worship God. Dr. Brown is finally recognizing that my position is that the Christian worships both God and Jesus. So we've made progress with this discussion as tedious as it is and as round about as it goes, but we got somewhere. Okay, now we can move forward. Dr. Brown defends Christianity against this charge and says, no, these two loves are not two different loves. It's the same love. It's only love for God. And this is how he explains it. He provides an analogy and illustration to explain his position. He says, imagine if the Messiah is not divine, which is actually the Jewish position. It's also actually the position of Unitarian Christians. And the Messiah is not divine and God sends this non-divine messenger of his to accomplish his purpose on earth. Wouldn't we love God all the more now that God sent this glorious messenger and did such great things for us? And therefore, Dr. Brown is applying that to Jesus and saying, yes, now that Jesus came, we love God all the more. I'm going to use Dr. Brown's analogy to illustrate my position. Let's talk about a Unitarian Christian who actually fits Dr. Brown's analogy. The Unitarian Christian believes the same thing that many that Trinitarian Christians believe, that Jesus is the Messiah, that his main function of the Messiah is to die for the sins of the world, and that Jesus fulfilled that function, that there is no salvation without faith in this ultimate sacrifice of Jesus. The Unitarians believe all of those. The only difference is a slight difference between the Unitarians and the Trinitarians that the Unitarian believes that Jesus is not divine. He was a human being, an exalted human being, but a human being. Now let's look into the heart of the Unitarian. I'm not trying to judge anybody. This is theoretical. In the mind of the Unitarian, there are two entities. There's God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the one who sustains every facet of existence every second of the day. That's God. Then the Unitarian sees Jesus. A human being, a great human being, and I would imagine that the Unitarian has feelings in his heart towards God, the Creator of heaven and earth, thankfulness for creating him, for giving him every breath of life, etc. And the Unitarian has feelings in his heart towards Jesus, who he sees as a human being. The sacrifice of Jesus, the self, the righteousness of Jesus, and all those things attract the heart of the Unitarian towards Jesus. In the heart of the Unitarian, these loves are two distinct loves. Yes, the Unitarian loves God all the more because God sent Jesus, but he also loves Jesus as a human being. Imagine if this Unitarian becomes a Christian, becomes a Trinitarian. He becomes a Trinitarian. What happens to these two loves? What happens is that he will fuse them together in his mind and tell himself that these two entities are some mysterious way, one, but there are still two different loves, two different attractions. There's an attraction towards the Creator of heaven and earth, and there's an attraction towards an entity that operated within God's creation. Or imagine if a Trinitarian becomes a Unitarian. He decides, no, Jesus is not divine. He was just a regular person. Does the Trinitarian have to build a whole new love in his heart that didn't exist before now that he became a Unitarian? No. All he has to do is tell himself, this that I was telling myself until now, that these two entities are in some mysterious way, one or not. It's just some theological rearrangement. But it's two different attractions that pull your heart towards one entity and towards another entity. And obviously, the attraction towards God as Creator of heaven and earth that exists in the heart of the Christian and in the heart of the Jew, that's the attraction that David sings about in his book of Psalms. That's the love that all worshipers of the Creator of heaven and earth have in their hearts. And the attraction towards the man, Jesus, whatever you believe about and whether you believe he's divine or whether you don't believe he's divine is a different attraction. Appears nowhere in the Psalms of David, appears nowhere in the Jewish Bible as an attraction that we should elevate to worship of the divine. So thank you, Dr. Brown, for providing this analogy, which helps us illustrate the Jewish position on this matter. In one of my previous videos, I asked Dr. Brown, why is it that Genesis 18, Exodus 24-10, Numbers 12-8, do not appear, are not presented by the author of the Bible as teachings on directing devotion? What was I saying? The point is, Dr. Brown uses these passages that I just mentioned, Genesis 18, about the three angels, Exodus 24, Numbers 12-8, to justify devotion to Jesus. So Dr. Brown first responded by saying that no, he's not using these passages to justify devotion. But in his most recent video, he said that Genesis 18 appears before the Sinai Revelation, which is in the book of Exodus, which is after the book of Genesis. And he seems to be saying, what if I understood him correctly, what he's saying is that by the time we get to the book of Exodus and read about the Sinai Revelation, we already met the three angels in Genesis 18, and Genesis 18 provides context for the Sinai Revelation. And he says that Exodus 24-10 is part of the Sinai Revelation, and Numbers 12-8 appears before Deuteronomy 4, and also modifies or provides context for our read on Deuteronomy 4. So basically what Dr. Brown is saying is that Genesis 18 appears before the Sinai Revelation. Really? Genesis 18 appears before the Sinai Revelation. That is if the Sinai Revelation to you is words in a book. But the Sinai Revelation is not words in a book. The Exodus and the Sinai Revelation is where God married the Jewish people. That's where the covenant was created. That's where the covenant was sealed. A marriage means that each partner opens themselves up towards the other one in a way that they open themselves up to no one else. That's what marriage is all about. The Jewish people open themselves up to God, that we surrender our hearts in complete devotion to no one but the Creator of heaven and earth. How does God open himself up to us in a way that he does to no other? That was Exodus and the Sinai Revelation. That's when God brought the truth of his absolute sovereignty to our hearts in a way that he did for no other nation. Not just as a matter of knowledge but the weight of that truth. The beauty of that truth. The attraction to the human heart that's inherent in that truth was brought to the people of Israel through the miracles of Exodus through the Sinai Revelation. And that's the basis. That's the context for everything else. That's where we stand. That's where our covenant with God started. That's where it begins. And that's where it grows forth from. We read all of the Bible in that context. Let's just consider this question. Open the Bible. It's her first verse in the Bible. In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Ask yourselves the following question. Did the author of this book expect that you should understand what the word God in Genesis 1-1? Did he expect you to know what that word means? Or are you supposed to read it like an algebra equation? You know, like an X or a Y? And only after I study the entire equation and figure everything out can I figure out what the word God means. No. It's obvious that God expected his readership to know what that word God means. Not only to know what the word God means, but to see themselves, to see the readers, because the target audience of Scripture is the Jewish people, to see the readers should see themselves as standing in a covenantal relationship with this God and have a clear understanding of who they're talking to and who the book is talking about. And where were they supposed to get that understanding from Exodus, Sinai, as preserved through the testimonial observance as the Jewish people passed on from generation to generation? So Sinai Revelation comes before the first word in the Bible. And it's the basis of our ongoing relationship to God. Obviously our relation to God is not limited to the Sinai Revelation. Every day we thank God for his blessings. We pray, we study his law. But the Sinai Revelation is the context and the background for everything that a Jew sees, including the Bible that God gave us after the Sinai Revelation. So for Dr. Brown to say that Genesis 18 comes before the Sinai Revelation tells me that he's looking at the covenant that God shares with the Jewish people as an outsider looking in. He's not part of that covenant because if he'd be part of the covenant he would realize clearly that the Sinai Revelation comes before Genesis 18 and before Genesis 1. The entire Bible was given to us in the context of the covenant that was sealed, the marriage between God and the Jewish people that was sealed through the Exodus and the Sinai Revelation. Let's move on to the subject of Atonement. At this point we're coming to the second part, Dr. Brown's part two video, the second part which he posted on January 10th, 2017. Now at one point in this presentation Dr. Brown complains that I'm applying a double standard. When he asks me a question and I say, well I address that question on my writings, on my blog, in the various writings that I have written. So Dr. Brown says, okay, says, and why is it that when I ask a question he can't point back to his five volumes and when he does that I say he hasn't answered the question. It seems like Dr. Brown doesn't fully grasp what we're trying to do over here, at least maybe he has a different understanding of what we're trying to do over here in this ongoing exchange of presentations. The audience wants to see in this world. I think the audience wants to see is how Dr. Brown reacts to my questions and the audience wants to see how I react to Dr. Brown's question. So if Dr. Brown presented a question and I answered it and Dr. Brown just repeats the exact same question without elaborating, without explaining why my answer doesn't satisfy him. So then I just say, please, here's my answer. Tell me why your answer doesn't satisfy you and we'll take the conversation from there. So when Dr. Brown asks the same question that he asked in the past and I gave my answer he never interacted with that answer. So I just say, please interact with my answer and then we'll take it from there. As opposed to when he points back to his five volumes, all of my writings were written after he wrote his five volumes. They present my reaction, why I'm not satisfied with his five volumes. And therefore I'm asking, don't just point back to the pages of your five volumes. Tell me why you're not satisfied with my answer, why my question is meaningless to you, et cetera. In fact, in this presentation about the subject of atonement, Dr. Brown didn't bring much that is new to the table, except for one argument. So let's focus on that argument right now. The Christian believes that there's a foundational principle in the Jewish Bible. There is no remission for sin without the shedding of blood. And my question to Dr. Brown was, why is this concept not stated anywhere explicitly in the Jewish Bible? Why is it only a deduction that emerges from between the lines? And Dr. Brown now responded by saying, well, some of my modernity's principles, which concepts theological doctrines, which my monies consider as principle to the Jewish faith, are also not explicitly stated in the Bible. That's an answer. That's something that Dr. Brown did not write in his book and is now interacting with my argument. Beautiful. This is the purpose of the exchange. It's a nice argument. Answer. Now I'm going to interact with Dr. Brown's argument. First of all, first of all, let me just, before I interact with the argument, let me just point out, we progressed. Dr. Brown is admitting that no remission for sin without the shedding of blood is only a deduction. It's not explicitly stated anywhere in the Bible. So when Christian missionaries say, Leviticus 1711 says, there is no remission for sin without the shedding of blood, it doesn't say that there. And Dr. Brown knows it doesn't say that there, as he writes in his book. It's only a deduction. So let's put that clearly on the table. But to answer the question, my monies is operating in a completely different framework and a completely different set of rules than Dr. Brown applies to himself. Dr. Brown sets the standard in the beginning of his five volumes. And he says, the only rule for Jewish belief is what it says in the Bible. My monies didn't believe that. My monies wasn't a Protestant Christian who believes in the principle of Sola Scriptura. My monies had the complete testimony of God before him, the Bible, and the testimony of the Jewish people and Jewish principles from the full body of God's complete word. So that's one difference. And the second point is that each one of my monies' principles are more clearly affirmed in the Jewish Bible and more explicitly affirmed in the Jewish Bible than any Christian doctrine, especially a doctrine of there is no remission for sin without the shedding of blood. The rest of Dr. Brown's video is basically reiterating arguments that he presented in his five volumes. So let me address two of those arguments. One of those arguments is that Dr. Brown points out that the Hebrew word kaper, or derivative of that word, that word means purging, atoning, cleansing, appears so many, so many times in the Bible and it appears almost exclusively in association with the Levitical Sacrifice, with the sacrifices, the blood sacrifices of the temple. And Dr. Brown then comes to the conclusion, well that means that the only way you're going to get atonement is through those blood sacrifices. Responds. There are many expressions that the Bible uses to describe God's forgiveness, remission for sin. I'll give an example of an expression. In the book of Ezekiel, it says, all of the sinner's sins will not be remembered against him. You know it says that in relation to repentance. It doesn't say that in relation to blood sacrifices. Or in Deuteronomy 30 where it describes God rejoicing to restore the blessings upon his people, to bring back our captivity, to accept us favorably. These terminologies are used in association with repentance and not in association with blood sacrifice. So who tells Dr. Brown which term is more important and more foundational in the atonement process, in the cleansing process, in the process of regaining God's favor after we sinned? Who said it's the expressions used in relation to Levitical Sacrifice as capoeir as opposed to the expressions used in Deuteronomy 30 or Ezekiel 33? Furthermore, every Christian would tell you that Isaiah 53 is one of foundational teachings of Scripture on the concept of atoning for sin and purging. And the word capoeir does not appear over there. So I'm not so sure what Dr. Brown is emphasizing, what he sees in the word capoeir. The Bible doesn't tell us that the word capoeir is the only word that expresses atonement for sin as Dr. Brown. It's not the Bible. I can offer an explanation why that word is used in association with the biblical sacrifices because you have to realize the point of the biblical sacrifices is that it's an outward expression, it's an expression that is out in the open here in this world and the practical world of what's going on in the person's heart. It's an expression of the repentance that's in the heart that's done on the outside. Those biblical sacrifices are relevant in a time when God's relationship with the Jewish people is expressed openly and on the outside here in this world in a way that everyone can see in the temple. So when you have a temple, you have an open relationship with God, the repentance in the heart needs to have an open expression of blood sacrifice. But when we don't have the temple, that's not what we're missing. What we're missing is the repentance as described in Ezekiel 33 and Deuteronomy 30. Another argument that I would like to address is Dr. Brown's most recent video tells us that the word Asham in Isaiah 53-10 is a reference back to the Asham sacrifice in the Book of Leviticus chapter 5. Let's put this argument into context. What happened was is that when Dr. Brown emphasizes and highlights the biblical sacrifice of the Book of Leviticus, that still did not bring him to a theological destination. That's not what he wants to get to. He doesn't want to get to animal sacrifices at a temple. He wants to get to Jesus. So that's only one stop. And he had to use the word Kaperot, one deduction to get him there that there is no atonement for sin without those sacrifices. Then he has to get from the biblical sacrifice of Leviticus and he has to get to Jesus. And my question to him was, where does the Bible say anything about the Leviticus sacrifice, the sacrifice described in the Book of Leviticus? Where does the Bible tell us that they point to anything bigger and better? So Dr. Brown's response was, well, the word Asham in Isaiah 53-10 tells us that the suffering of the servant is somehow a fulfillment of the sacrifice of the Leviticus. And my response to that was that the word Asham in Isaiah 53-10 is not a reference back to the Book of Leviticus. It simply means an offering that expresses guilt. We find that the Bible uses the same word to describe money offerings or other offerings that express guilt, not necessarily the sacrifice of the Leviticus. So there's no Dr. Brown's argument, has no basis in the Bible. And I did also point it out that the Bible does know how to tell us that the sacrifices point to something else. In Psalm 51, verse 19, it tells us the offerings of God, Zivche, the sacrifice of the Lord are a broken heart. In other words, the sacrifices point to repentance. The Bible made that clear. The Bible did not make clear anything about the sacrifices pointing to the vicarious atonement of any given individual. Let me recap. Again, let me go back to the beginning. We're talking about two renditions of Scripture. What I've done over here is exposed some of the fault lines in the Christian rendition of Scripture. I pointed out how in Zachariah chapter 6, verses 9 through 15, the Christian needs to take a concept that author repeated three times in that little passage and relegate that to the background and take a concept that appears nowhere in that text and have the text point to it in some interesting way. How the love that the Christian is encouraging and advocating is not the love that David sings about in Psalms. How the Christian rendition of Scripture sees Sinai, the Sinai revelation as words in a book and not the love expressed between God and the Jewish people that it actually is. How the Christian teaching on atonement is built on deductions that have no foundation in the Word of God. Please consider these questions, study them, feel the weight of these questions, study Dr. Brown's responses to these questions or lack thereof, and come to your own conclusions.