Sid: I’ll tell you what, I have a dream and my dream is that Jewish people will think for themselves, not think what I say, not think what their Rabbis’ says, but get a hold of the only book that Muslims, Jews and Christians all are in 100% agreement come from God, at least that’s the way it use to be with Jewish people and that’s the Torah. And there are many Jewish people that don’t know that the Torah comes from God, but you get a hold of that one book and think for yourself! And that’s my dream, you don’t have to believe, but you must think for yourself on the most important question of your eternity. Now we had a debate with the foremost Messianic Jewish scholar in America, and probably the best known Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in America, Dr. Michael Brown, the Messianic Jew, and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach the Orthodox Rabbi. The subject “Who is the Real Jesus?” And I put the question to Rabbi Boteach and I said, “Rabbi we don’t have a temple today therefore according to Torah you can’t have a blood sacrifice unless it’s done in the temple; what do we Jews do about the blood today.” And this was His answer:
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach recorded answer. The Messiah in Judaism is someone who must fulfill the Messianic prophecies, and the idea that the Messiah comes along to absolve us of sin. As Mike was saying before that we need blood because the temple is no longer in existence. Mike is well aware of the fact that the most famous story of repentance in the entire Bible is a story of Jonah where not one drop of blood is even spilt. Jonah sends God, God sends Jonah to the city of Nineveh and Nineveh says, “You guy are all toast unless you repent and there’s not a single blood sacrifice, there is not a single animal brought, they repented of their ways. You don’t have to have blood sacrifices and the suffering servant. The idea of a suffering servant which you are quoting from Isaiah 53 clearly if you want to just get literal it can’t be Jesus because Jesus says on the cross, My God, My God why have you forsaken me both in Mark and in Matthew where it says there. “Whoever it speaking of goes silently to His death and doesn’t complain at all.”
Sid: All right we’re back in the studio now that was an excerpt from the debate. The most amazing, amazing…tension. We had unsaved Jewish people in the audience; we had Christians in the audience. I mean the video footage of the reactions and the tension that was going on it’s just like reading the New Testament. So Mike “How do you handle Jonah, no blood?”
Michael: God never commanded the Gentile nations to build the temple and to offer blood sacrifices that was the role of Israel as a priestly nation. The Gentile nations needed to repent and turn to God it was up to the Jews to be the priestly nation to offer sacrifices not only on their own behalf, but on the behalf of the sins of the world. There is even a Rabbinic Tradition that when the temple was being destroyed the second temple was being destroyed in the year 70 of this era, that one of the Rabbis said, “Foolish Romans, foolish gentiles who’s going to intercede for you now, whose going to do this for you if you are destroying the temple?” So Israel as the priestly nation offered the sacrifices, interceded between human beings and God, and the Gentiles, people of Nineveh and Syrians they just had to repent and return to God. God never gave them blood sacrifices. But here’s the thing, blood sacrifices are the heart and soul of the atonement system in the Torah. Read through the entire…
Sid: But wait a second Mike, there is mention of other sacrifices, other offerings besides blood sacrifices in Torah.
Michael: The fact of the matter is there’s one mention of flour offerings if someone was too poor to even bring an animal of a bird, but the point of fact the flour offering was still offered on the altar was added in, was thrown on top of the fire offerings, the blood sacrifices that were already there. And no Jew….
Sid: And so the foundation was always an animal sacrifice.
Michael: Yeah, what Jew in the world ever say “I have flour, I can make atonement I have flour?” It’s folly, the fact is the heart and soul, the foundation of the entire atonement system was blood sacrifices. Repentance is important, but go through the entire Torah and see how many times repentance or confession of sin is mentioned just a few. Blood sacrifices over and over. Go to the day of Atonement, the central day of atonement in the Biblical calendar for the Jewish people worldwide, to this day it’s centered on blood sacrifices to purge the tabernacle to cleans the people to atone for their sins; a sacrifice to carry the sins that went into the wilderness.
Sid: But what about Leviticus 17:11?
Michael: Leviticus 17:11 says plainly that God has given the blood on the altar because it’s the blood that makes atonement for our souls by reason of the life. In other words when the blood is drained out the life force is gone. So it is life for life as some rabbinic commentators understood. It is substitutionary I’m guilty, instead of me dying the blood sacrifice dies instead. So here’s the whole thing you take that away yeah repentance is still important, yes prayer is still important, yes the other things are important but you’ve taken away the heart and soul of the entire atonement system. And once those are taken away Sid there is no atonement either as the Jewish people, as the nation for 1,900+ years we have had no national atonement and God has no to us every Yom Kippur, every day of atonement for almost 2,000 years where God provided a better way. Isn’t it fascinating that the same one that said He would fulfill the law and the prophets, He would bring to fullness the things that they were speaking of and pointing to. Was also prophesied the destruction of the temple, so Jesus, Yeshua, the last and greatest prophet the Messiah and the one to whom the sacrificial system was pointing said “Take My life, I will be the ransom.” And point in fact as He was going to death when He was being tried He didn’t resist, when the scriptures say in Isaiah 53 “He went as a lamb to the slaughter.” He did, it was striking to everyone that He didn’t defend Himself that He didn’t try to fight, why? Because He came as a lamb, Sid there is atonement for our people; there is forgiveness for our people, and it is found in the perfectly righteous One. It says in Isaiah 53 “He would be an ah-shom, a guilt offering a reparation offering that He would take the place of the sins of the people. Isaiah 53:6 lays it out so plainly. The Hebrew begins with kulonu and it ends with kulonu, “All of us like sheep have gone astray each one has turned his own way and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of all of us.” He takes our sin when we turn to God in repentance God, wash me, God cleans me, give me a brand new heart, give me a brand new start that’s what happens through the power of Messiah’s blood.
Sid: Now the Rabbi raised the apologetic of Jesus when He was dying on the cross, he said, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”
Michael: Yeah, He’s pointing to Psalm 22, in saying those words He’s pointing us to Psalm 22 one of the most amazing Psalms written by David according to Psalm 22, but speaking of something more than David’s suffering. Some Rabbis’ say that it’s the parable of the suffering of the people of Israel through the centuries. Yeshua is saying “Look at this it’s a Psalm of an ideal righteous sufferer, it’s a Psalm of someone who comes to the jaws of death, the description there, it looks like a description of a crucified person. You read it and say, “Awe that sounds like a crucified person being described there and crucifixion it was devised hundreds of years later by the Persians.
Sid: So he was looking into the future when David wrote that.
Michael: Yeah, he’s speaking beyond, he’s speaking prophetically, he’s speaking poetically of his own suffering, but prophetically speaking beyond them. And here’s what’s amazing he get’s delivered from death and the deliverance is so great that he calls for all the ends of the earth to praise God, it even say that the ends of the earth will turn to God. Who died, what righteous one died, was delivered from the jaws of death and His deliverance from death is so profound that the ends of the earth turn to God, who else is that Sid? So Jesus hanging on the cross draws our attention to that Psalm, and the idea that He wouldn’t lift his voice to cry out. It’s talking about resisting arrest, it’s talking about resisting death clearly there in Isaiah 53. Like a Lamb going to slaughter, like a sheep before his shearers is dumb.
Sid: But why, what was the real reason at that moment that Jesus cried out that prophetic Psalm 22 by King David, “My God my God why have you rejected me?”
Michael: It gets us looking at the Psalm, number one, and number two it gets us to understand that at that moment He’s barring the guilt and the sin of the world. At that moment He is taking the punishment and the wrath that you and I deserve.
Sid: How could anyone bare the sins of the world? I mean that is beyond my comprehension.
Michael: Think of this, He and His Father enjoyed perfect fellowship from before the creation of the world.
Sid: He said that He didn’t do anything unless He saw His Father doing it.
Michael: He said, “The Fathers always with me because I only do what pleases Him. That’s how He lived, and now he is the one in the public way taking on our punishment, taking on our guilt, He did not become a sinful person; he took the penalty of our sin. Who can imagine what was happening in the heart of God towards His Son at that moment? Who can imagine it was not just crucifixion; who can imagine what Yeshua bore for us? And this is what I want our Jewish people to understand, we need a Messiah like Him; we need a Messiah who can identify within the midst of our suffering. We need a Messiah that’s not just high and lofty and going to come riding on a white horse one day. We suffered in Auschwitz people; we suffered in the crusades and the inquisitions of the pogroms, we’ve suffered through all of our history. We need to look at a Messiah that suffered like we did and more and yet was perfectly innocent; One that could say, I understand your suffering and I have the remedy for suffering because all suffering is ultimately do to us being estranged from God and in a fallen broken world and Messiah brings us back. Sid it’s the Messiah we need, it’s the Messiah of the scriptures.
Sid: He was sin-less, He was the only person that ever walked as a man sin-less. It says your sins have separated you from God. Therefore one sin would have separated Jesus from God, but the sins of the whole world, no wonder God couldn’t look at Him
Michael: Yeah, yeah and at that moment at that moment the feeling was of one being forsaken and abandoned by God. But that’s not the end of the Psalm it’s the beginning of the Psalm. And I wish that every Jewish person would read this. And in my book “The Real Kosher Jesus” I have a chapter on the secret of the suffering Messiah; and not just how Biblical this concept is, how Jewish this concept is.
Sid: Christians have never realized, read the New Testament through the eyes of the Jewish Paul, through the eyes of the Jewish Jesus. What an eye opener…
