 Unanswered questions that Dr. Brown has failed to address. Who is Dr. Brown? Which questions has he failed to address? And why is this important? Why am I taking your time to tell you about this? Dr. Brown is a Christian missionary. He has authored a five-volume series entitled Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, in which he tries to persuade a Jewish audience to bend their hearts, to give their hearts to Jesus. You see, Dr. Brown understands that if he's going to tell a Jew that millions and millions of people believe in Jesus, that's not going to sway the Jew. If he's going to tell the Jew that many miracles are performed in Jesus' name, that also will not sway the Jew. And if he tells the Jew that many Christians feel in their hearts and know in their hearts that Jesus is really the Messiah, that will also not convince the Jew. Because as long as the Jew reads the Jewish Bible, when I say the Jewish Bible, I mean what the Christians refer to as the Old Testament. If the Jew reads that Bible and understands that God is talking to him through that book and directing him to reject the claims of the church, to reject Jesus, then all the miracles, all the numbers, and all the knowledge in your heart is meaningless. False prophets can perform miracles, frauds can get many millions of people to follow them. So all of these are meaningless in the face of the Word of God. As Isaiah the prophet said, the Word of our God stands forever. So Dr. Brown authored his massive five-volume series Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus. In this series, he tries to make a case on the basis of the Jewish Bible that Jesus is indeed the Messiah and what the church claims him to be. This is not just Dr. Brown. You have to realize that for 2,000 years the theologians of the church were working on this. They were preparing a case and presenting various arguments on the basis of the Jewish Scripture, trying to present that the Jewish Scriptures lead you, point you to Jesus. So I see Dr. Brown's 1,500 pages as a culmination of a 2,000-year effort. And I have read Dr. Brown's five-volume series and I have found it to be incredibly empty, incredibly inadequate. He doesn't address some of the foundational Jewish objections, some of his central arguments contradict each other, and his reasoning is generally flawed. I don't expect you to take my word for this. I laid out my arguments. I laid out my reasoning in writing. In a series of articles you can find my articles on my blog. My blog is entitled 1,000 Verses and you can read about it over there. I'm not here to convince you. I'm not here to persuade you. I'm here to empower you. I encourage you, study, read. Don't try to expect, don't expect to find the Jewish position presented by someone like Dr. Brown, a Christian missionary. He's good for presenting the Christian position. I attempt to present the Jewish position. I ask you to please read it and see if Dr. Brown's arguments add up. I will point out that it has been several years since I published my articles and since then Dr. Brown has not responded to my questions, to my arguments. You see, Dr. Brown is highly motivated. He wrote all this literature. He wrote so many pages to try to convince the Jew that Jesus is the Messiah. So the motivation is there. I did him the service of showing him why a Jew who's educated in the Bible, in the Jewish tradition sees right through his arguments. So if you could have answers to my questions, I think he would share them with the public. The fact that he has not responded to my questions tells me that he does not have any answers to my questions. Now again, I told you I don't expect you to take me on my word, read and study. But perhaps 1,500 pages sounds like a lot to you and my articles may be too lengthy for you and that is why I'm talking to you today. What I'm going to do here today is I'm going to present three questions, only three questions and there's only a fraction of what I've written about and the questions that I've asked Dr. Brown which he has failed to respond to. But I think that these three questions will give you a taste, will give you a feeling and will wet your appetite. It will encourage you to study the issue in greater depth and educate yourself with a deeper education. In my own life, when I study the Bible, the more I study the Bible, the more clearly and the more concisely I am able to articulate the Jewish position, why it is that the Jewish people reject Jesus, reject the claims of the church. Dr. Brown points to this very same book, the same book which I draw strength from, I draw clarity from and I draw articulation from. He points to this very same book and he makes the case that this book leads you in the opposite direction. It points to Jesus and it validates the claims of the church. How does he do this? Well, he doesn't address some of the foundational passages that God uses to present his case. He misinterprets some passages in the Bible but that's not his main tactic, that's not the main tool he uses. The main tool he uses is that he invents, he presents his own reader's guide to the Bible. What do I mean when I say a reader's guide to the Bible? Look, the Jewish Bible is a big book. It's about 30,000 verses. It's very easy to get lost out there. Thankfully, the author of the book provided us with a reader's guide to his book. He points to various passages and he tells you this passage is a teaching on a given subject. The passage is introduced as a teaching on idolatry perhaps, on the power of repentance, etc. God repeats certain teachings again and again and this gives you to understand that these teachings are central and foundational to the narrative of Scripture. Sometimes God has the narrative built to a climax and a certain concept is highlighted and again, this will tell you that this concept is important and foundational and sometimes God uses strong and commanding language to tell you that a given concept is central and sets the tone and provides the context for the rest of the narrative of Scripture. If you follow God's cues, you will realize that the prohibition against idolatry is foundational to the narrative of Scripture. Observance of the law of Moses is important. The election of the people of Israel, the covenantal relationship that they share with God is important. The temple in Jerusalem is important and the power of repentance is foundational and central to the narrative of Scripture. If you follow God's cues, the theology of Judaism will jump out at you. You will clearly see the Jewish position and I challenge you and I encourage you to try to read Scripture following God's cues. Let God tell you which passages are teaching on which subject, which teaching, which concept is the trunk and which concepts are the branches. But if you look in Dr. Brown's book, you will see that he ignores God's reader's guide to the Bible and he provides his own reader's guide to the Bible. He emphasizes different points. For example, he has a lengthy discussion on the subject of idolatry. Now God points Deuteronomy 4 as the definitive teaching on idolatry. But Deuteronomy 4 doesn't even appear in Dr. Brown's lengthy discussion on the subject of idolatry. Instead, Dr. Brown puts Genesis 18 at the center of the discussion. Genesis 18 is not presented by the author of the Bible as a teaching on the subject of idolatry. But for Dr. Brown, that is the centerpiece in this area and this issue. When it comes to the question of guilt, sin, and dealing with the burden of sin. So the author of the Bible points to Deuteronomy 30. He introduces that passage as a teaching about how the nation as a whole, as a collective unit can deal with the burden of sin and guilt and repair their relationship with God. God points to Ezekiel 33. It's presented as a teaching about how an individual can repair his relationship with God. But Dr. Brown, in his lengthy discussion about the subject of sin, atonement, the burden of guilt. Deuteronomy 30 doesn't merit a mention. Ezekiel 33 gets mentioned in a backhanded way at the end of the discussion. And Dr. Brown puts Leviticus 1711 at the center of the discussion. Leviticus 1711 is presented by the author of Scripture as a teaching about the prohibition for drinking blood. Don't drink blood. That's what God is saying over there in a backhanded way. The concept of atonement comes in there. But that's not how the passage is presented. So here we have Dr. Brown presenting his own reader's guide to the Bible about which passages are central, which passages are teachings on which subject. And he's completely ignoring God's reader's guide to the Bible. Is this something that the Jewish people are expected to overlook? Are we expected to take this seriously? That God has one reader's guide to the Bible and Dr. Brown has another. Are we expected to take Dr. Brown's reader's guide to the Bible seriously? Well, in case that's what you thought, I'll point out to you that Dr. Brown doesn't take his own reader's guide to the Bible seriously. You see, in an interview with Lee Strobel, Dr. Brown points to Zachariah 6 as the most overt passage in the Bible where a human being is identified with a messianic figure. He highlights this passage because he reads something in between the lines. He doesn't even explicitly say which leads him in the direction that he's trying to go. So when it fits his purposes, this passage is a very important messianic passage. But when it comes to volume 3 of answering Jewish objections on page 172, Dr. Brown notices that the prophet explicitly says that this messianic figure is supposed to build a temple. And in volume 3, Dr. Brown is in the process of downplaying the importance of the temple. And he tells us this prophecy only appears once in the Bible in one book in the Bible and therefore it cannot be considered a significant prophecy and it could be interpreted on a symbolic level. So here Dr. Brown is not taking his own reader's guide to the Bible seriously. So are we expected to take Dr. Brown's reader's guide to the Bible more seriously than he takes it himself? So that was my first question. My first question is, here we have God's reader's guide to the Bible. Why should we ignore that and overlook God's reader's guide to the Bible and accept Dr. Brown's reader's guide to the Bible when he himself is not consistent with his reader's guide? Let's move on to the second question. From a Jewish standpoint, this is the most serious question because why is it that for 2,000 years Jews refused to accept Jesus? They said no to Jesus. And I don't want you to take this question lightly. You have to realize that for centuries upon centuries Jews were willing to be locked into ghettos. They opened themselves to persecution, to ridicule. They gave up civil liberties and sometimes they were even given the choice to die or to accept Jesus. And they generally chose to die. It didn't come easy to take this decision, to maintain this position of no, we don't want to have anything to do with Jesus. So why were the Jews so adamant about this? And the answer is very simple because the Jews understand that the devotion, that the church is demanding that people give their hearts to Jesus is identified by the Jewish Bible as idolatry. And therefore the Jew would rather die than commit the sin of idolatry. Now Dr. Brown recognizes that this is a serious charge against Christianity. And he devotes many pages in his book to discussing this. He discusses this question on a scriptural level, on a philosophical level, on a theological level. And you have to realize that these Jews who want to die rather than accept Jesus, most of them were not philosophers, theologians. These were simple people, simple laborers. Carpenters, blacksmiths, butchers, bakers, housewives, little children, teenagers, they all went to die rather than accept Jesus. It wasn't something about philosophy, it wasn't theology. It was about devotion. You see? Judaism is not about a set of rules. Yes, there are many rules in Judaism. We do this and we don't do that, but all of we do what we do as an expression of our devotion to God. It's all about a covenantal relationship that the Jewish people share with God. Our hearts belong to God. Now when we're talking about a relationship we're not talking about rules. Yes, no. We're talking about a heart that's filled with love, a heart that finds joy and satisfaction, a thirst that is quenched. A heart that finds peace and love in a relationship with God. And the satisfaction that I'm talking about is not a satisfaction. Well if you love God, you will get this benefit. It's the relationship itself that provides a satisfaction that quenches the thirst. So what is this love? What is this attraction, this magnetism that drew the heart of the Jewish people and really should draw the heart of all mankind towards God, towards the one creator of heaven and earth? And the answer is very simple. The Psalms of David. Look at David. David is our Messiah. He's our King and his heart is completely open for us. In the book of Psalms David expresses and opens his heart to all of us and he pours out his love to God and that gives expression to the Jewish heart, the Jewish magnetism, the attraction that the Jew finds in his heart towards the God of Israel. That is what our relationship to God is all about. It's about this love. It's about this relationship. But the Christian missionary is not satisfied with a heart that is devoted to God, with a heart that is flowing in the same direction that David's heart is flowing. The missionary is introducing a new magnetism, a new attraction that is not present. I never heard of a Christian missionary encouraging someone, read the Psalms of David and you will find Jesus. I never heard that. What the Christian missionary tells people is read the New Testament, read the Christian Scriptures and you'll find Jesus over there. It's a different magnetism. It's not the same magnetism. The Jew is missing nothing in his relationship with God and the Jew can be missing nothing in his relationship with God because God is everything. If you want to get the Jew to move his heart away from God and towards Jesus, you're asking him to commit spiritual adultery and in all of Dr. Brown's 1500 pages he doesn't answer this question. He doesn't tell the Jew what he is missing in his relationship with God. He doesn't explain to the Jew why it's right and proper for him to devote his heart to Jesus. From the standpoint of the Jew, if Dr. Brown didn't answer this question and he did not answer this question he did not answer the question on the devotional level. How is it that devotion to Jesus is not idolatry? Then he wrote nothing. From the standpoint of the Jew the 1500 pages are completely empty because Dr. Brown does not answer, does not explain why devotion to Jesus is not idolatry on the devotional level. That was my second question. My third question would be an important question from the Christian standpoint because when the Christian speaks about the Jewish Bible pointing to Jesus, he's thinking about messianic prophecies. He's thinking about prophecies in the Bible which describe the Jewish Messiah and he believes that Jesus fulfilled these prophecies and indeed in Dr. Brown's book in Volume 3 he has a list of prophecies which he believes that Jesus fulfilled and I encourage you to read those prophecies, to study those prophecies and to ask yourselves are those really messianic prophecies? Did Jesus really fulfill them? But that's not what I'm going to be talking about here and now. What I want to talk about now is the following question. Is that all? That list of prophecies that Dr. Brown presents is that all that the prophets had to say about the messianic era and the answer is clearly no. The prophets had so much more to speak about the messianic era. They spoke about the universal peace. They spoke about the vindication of the people of Israel. They spoke about a temple in Jerusalem. They spoke about all of mankind worshiping God together. They spoke about the restoration of Israel to their ancestral homeland and these are prophecies that Jesus did not fulfill and will not fulfill. So how does Dr. Brown tell us that the Jewish Bible is pointing to Jesus? He has to get us to look away from those prophecies which Jesus did not fulfill and focus and highlight and emphasize those prophecies which he believed that Jesus did fulfill. So how does he do this? How does Dr. Brown downplay so much of what the prophets had to teach us about the messianic era? And he employs a three-step strategy. The first step is simple. He evades. He does not discuss many of the concepts which the Jewish prophets associated with the messianic era. He does not speak about the vindication of people of Israel. He does not speak about universal knowledge of God. He does not speak about the restoration of Israel to their ancestral homeland. He simply doesn't speak about those issues. He is willing to speak about three issues that Jesus did not fulfill. Three concepts that Jesus did not fulfill. He speaks about peace, the restoration of the sacrificial system and the temple in Jerusalem. And what he does now is he comes to the second step in his strategy. He separates each of these one from another. He treats them separately as if they'd be standing apart from one another, although the prophets wove them together in a panoramic whole. And then he comes to the third step in his strategy. The third step in his strategy is that he creates a false dichotomy. Dr. Brown tells us that certain prophecies are significant and important and foundational, and others are insignificant and peripheral. And the ones that are insignificant can be interpreted on a symbolic level and we do not expect that they should be fulfilled on a practical level. How does Dr. Brown divide? How does he differentiate? How does he identify? How does he identify which prophecies are significant and which prophecies are peripheral? Well, Dr. Brown tells us that if a prophecy doesn't appear in that many books in the Bible or that many times in the Bible, if it doesn't mention a messianic figure, if the timing of the prophecy doesn't seem to fit with the Jewish expectation of the messianic age, then we can relegate those prophecies to the realm of insignificant. And that leaves him with his prophecies which he considers significant and important and foundational. Now, in order to arrive at his count of prophecies, how many times do the prophets mention this concept or that concept, Dr. Brown conveniently forgot a number of prophecies. It's also interesting to note that some of the very same prophecies which Dr. Brown considers significant because one aspect of the prophecy was fulfilled allegedly by Jesus. Dr. Brown tells us it's insignificant because the other aspect of the prophecy was not fulfilled by Jesus. But let's ask a different question. What happens to Dr. Brown's own little list of prophecies when we apply his own standard, this very same standard that he created in order to downplay the Jewish messianic hope? What happens to his list of prophecies when we apply his standard to his list of prophecies? And they all fail miserably. They appear less times in the Bible and less books of the Bible. Some of them don't mention a messianic figure and some of them do not fit in with the Christian eschatology with the Christian hope for the messianic age. So according to Dr. Brown's own standard his little list of prophecies ought to be considered insignificant and we should not expect that they will be fulfilled on a literal practical level. So Dr. Brown's central argument, again from a Christian standpoint these messianic prophecies are the centerpiece of his argument. This is the case for Jesus on the basis of the Jewish Bible. It's an exercise in hypocrisy and self-contradiction. Is this something that the Jewish people are expected to ignore? You have to realize I mentioned the Jewish people suffered for many many centuries they suffered. They endured a lot. What gave them the strength and the courage and the fortitude to go through the suffering to endure the suffering? It was the messianic prophecies in the Jewish Bible. That was the rock. That was the security that the Jewish people found in the Word of God. You expect that the Jewish people just simply ignore this, throw this out on the basis of an argument that doesn't add up? So that was my third question. If Jesus is really the Messiah of the Jewish prophets then why does Dr. Brown have to tie his argument in a knot of self-contradiction when he's trying to make a case for Jesus? So let's just wrap this up. Again, let me remind you there are many more questions than the three that I presented to you today. But in short, the three questions I presented to you was A, why does Dr. Brown invent his own reader's guide to the Bible? What was wrong with God's reader's guide to the Bible? Number two is how could Dr. Brown expect that the Jew turn away from God, add a new attraction, a new magnetism into his heart? What was missing for the Jew in his devotion to God? And number three is why is Dr. Brown's presentation of the messianic prophecies tied in the knot of self-contradiction? Dr. Brown knows about these questions. These were presented to him several years ago and he has not answered them. I don't believe that if Dr. Brown has the answers to these questions, he would withhold them from the public. I believe that this tells you that Dr. Brown has no answers to these questions and it's not just Dr. Brown that has no answers to these questions. It's the church, 2,000 years of work, 2,000 years of millions of man-hours of effort did not find the answers to these questions. You see, Dr. Brown had 1,500 blank pieces of paper upon which to make his case and he couldn't answer these basic questions. I think that this tells you that Jesus is not just not the Messiah of the Jews, he's not the Messiah of anyone. But again, I'm not here to convince you, I'm not here to persuade you, I'm here to encourage you and I'm here to empower you. Study, analyze. Think about the questions, read and come to your own conclusions. It's not about me, it's not about Dr. Brown. It's about you and God's truth. Study and learn, analyze and may the God of truth be with you every step of the way.