Jewish and Muslim women just told two Christians that Jesus is not God. And the woman leading the charge came prepared.
She read every gospel. Her husband’s a rabbi. Her father’s a rabbi. And for a moment, her case sounds strong.
But watch what the Christians do. >> Jesus never deifies himself ever. Not once. I’ve read the entire thing.
He does not say, “I am God.” That is complete heresy. The man that Christians worship, Jesus, he was an Orthodox Jew just like me.
He was a rabbi. He kept chabas. He kept kosher. And he did not believe that human beings should ever be worshiped.
>> Are you familiar with the story of Mary Magdalene? >> Somewhat. >> Okay. So, there’s a scene in the Bible where Mary Magdalene is bowing down and taking her hair, crying and washing his feet.
And um the Pharisees get offended by that because they say the same thing that you just said that that’s worship.
And Jesus doesn’t rebuke her. He affirms her. But Jesus receives worship many times throughout the gospels >> as God or as Messiah.
>> As who else should we follow? Like I’m not following you. I’m not following.
>> It’s different if it’s God or Messiah. In the first three gospels, Jesus never deifies himself.
It’s only the last one. >> That’s not true. He deifies himself in Mark 14 when the Pharisees ask when the Pharisees ask him if he’s the son of man and he says, “Yes.”
>> What? I’m a son of man? >> No. No. Let me finish, please. He calls himself the son of man.
And the Pharisees take offense at that because if he just meant that he was a human being, they would not have taken offense at it.
And he references the Daniel 7 passage when he says this, who is coming on the clouds, who ascends to the right hand of the father specifically.
So he is deifying himself and saying, I am that I am. We also see this angel of the Lord typology in the Old Testament.
Jesus echoes a lot of that language, the I am that I am in Exodus 3:20 when we’re talking about the burning bush scene.
But to say that Jesus doesn’t deify himself in the New Testament, that’s that’s not true.
>> It was mostly Paul who who deified him. And the first >> three gospels deify him.
>> The first three gospels, Jesus never deifies himself ever. Not once. I’ve read the entire thing.
He does not say, “I am God.” Son of man basically means anyone can be a son of the one.
Also, son of man, maybe he was referring to himself as the Messiah. And other Jews said, “You’re not.”
But Jesus never said, “I am God.” He never said it because he was an Orthodox Jew.
That is complete heresy. >> He wouldn’t have been crucified if he didn’t call himself God.
>> Notice what the Christian just did. She didn’t fight over the exact words Jesus said.
She focused on the reaction of the people around them because the religious leaders, they heard him and said he was blaspheing enough to have him killed for it.
So the question isn’t what did Jesus say? It’s what did the people around him understand him to mean.
But now the Jewish woman makes this argument harder. She leaves the gospels and goes straight to the Old Testament itself.
Let’s see it. I will say that reading Jesus into the Jewish scriptures is isog Jesus is reading backwards.
And I don’t know how Christians account for the fact that multiple times in the Torah 24 books of Tanakh consistently says that God is not man.
Samuel says to King Saul literally when Saul was too cowardly to kill you know the story to kill the king of Amalech Amalik.
He says, Samuel literally says this, “For God is not a man that he will change his mind.”
What were you thinking? God told you what to do and you didn’t do it.
God is not a man that he should he should change his mind. Again, Deuteronomy, Moses about to die.
He says, “Beware. You will become corrupt and you will worship something in the likeness of a man or a woman.”
You cannot read Jesus into the Torah because it is explicit multiple times. Multiple times, God is not a man.
Numbers 23, Moses says it again. Is God a man? God, sorry, God is not a man that he shall relent.
>> So that is not a weak objection. She’s not attacking the Bible from the outside.
She’s using it. Samuel, Numbers, Deuteronomy, all these places saying that God is not a man.
So if the Torah rules this out, that’s a big problem for Christianity. And they have to answer it from the scriptures, too.
And that’s exactly what the Christian does next. But her answer is not what you’d expect.
>> Yes and amen to everything you said about the Torah. We believe that the Torah is true and it is the revelation of God.
Um we just believe that Jesus is the fulfillment of everything that was said in the Torah.
>> What does that mean? >> Okay, so when Jesus is asked what what the greatest command is, he says to love God, the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
And the second is like it to love others as yourself. The law and the prophets hinge on these two commandments.
So it’s not an undoing of the commandments. It’s saying that the commandments are fulfilled through the person of Christ because Christ is the sacrificial lamb.
When we understand the word Elohim and when we understand the Trinity, we’re not understanding the Trinity as three different people.
And so, I see how that’s confusing when we say, “Oh, there are three different people that are God.”
That’s not what we’re saying. God is spirit. Jesus is the person of God. He’s the incarnation of God on earth and then there’s God the Father and the three of them make up the Godhead.
They’re not like three individuals in the same way that we’re all sitting here. And then I would say in Daniel 7:13:14, Daniel is talking about the ancient of days giving dominion and keys over to the son of man.
It says that this son of man will have glory, have sovereign power, and that the nations will bow down to him.
So then even if you deny that Jesus is the Messiah, you have to deal with the fact that there is a son of man or a Messiah, there is some concept of a pluralistic God in the Old Testament.
And then Proverbs 34 says, “Who is this God who’s gathered the ends of the earth, who’s cloaked the waters?”
And then it says, “What is his name? And what is his son’s name?” So, I think we have to deal with that question.
>> Notice she didn’t fight the Torah. She said yes and amen and is using it.
Because the argument is not that Christianity threw away the Old Testament. It’s that Jesus is the fulfillment of what it’s already pointing toward.
But now the debate’s going to shift because it’s no longer just did Jesus claim to be God.
It’s was the Torah pointing to him all along. But now that shift is going to lead to one of the biggest divides in the room.
Not just what the Bible says, but what’s actually wrong with humanity. >> I have a question for you ladies.
Christians believe that Jesus is God. Can people who reject Jesus as divine still worship the same God?
>> No, they cannot because the Christian believes that Jesus Christ is a part of the Godhead.
>> You believe Jesus saves you? >> Yes. >> Yes. That is probably the biggest difference between Judaism and Christianity.
We believe that we are our own saviors. We have to become good people, save ourselves to be close to God.
God gave us moral law. You become like God by becoming a moral human being.
You’re a partner in creation with God. We don’t believe that we’re fallen and someone needs to save us.
You and I and all of us in this room have the potential to uplift and elevate ourselves to be godlike.
To be like God, moral good. We don’t need someone to save us. That is like the tenant of Judaism.
So yes, the Jews broke the law. I break the law sometimes and I feel what is wrong with me?
We continue. It’s like a marriage, right? You continue. No one is coming to save us.
We save ourselves. We have to earn Msiah. >> That’s the real divide underneath this whole conversation.
One side is saying that we can become good. We can repair ourselves. We have what it takes.
We just need to keep going. Christianity is saying that the problem runs deeper than our own human effort.
Not that people can’t do good things, but good works are ultimately not what make us clean and unblenmished before God.
And if we can save ourselves, then Jesus is unnecessary. The cross doesn’t matter. But if we can’t, then Jesus isn’t optional.
Now, watch because for the first time, the Muslim woman’s going to step in and she’s going to attack the hardest part of the Christian claim.
>> I just wanted to ask a question. You said that the Torah affirms the trinity.
>> Yes, absolutely. >> How so? So the very first book it says in the beginning God and it uses the word Elohim >> which we know is a word to use to describe God or to call God.
But the interesting thing about it is it’s a plural word. And in the same chapter you see God speaking and he says let us go down and make man in our image.
Even when it says about the Holy Spirit, it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
And it says and then the Holy Spirit was hovering over the deep. It’s it’s showing a spirit that has some independent agency apart from God who we just saw in the very first verse.
>> Right. Right. I I heard of this in like the Arabic where it’s like the the royal eye.
>> Look how she’s staying in the Torah. The claim isn’t that Christianity adds something new.
It’s that something deeper was already there. The Elohim, let us make man in our image.
Multiple some sort of pluralistic thing. The spirit hovering over the deep. These are different than angels.
We see multiple entities here. And notice the Muslim woman has heard this argument before.
But now instead of only defending the Trinity, the Christian turns back to challenge Islam.
>> Christians, can people who reject Jesus as divine still worship the same God? >> No.
>> No, they cannot. And I did I did want to speak briefly to the to the prompt um because just in research I find that um I’ve heard that the Trinity is quote unquote polytheistic whereas we believe it’s one God expressed in three persons.
And I do find it interesting that when you say like for example like I know in Islam you have the shahada strict monotheism and you have that on paper but in practice what I see is you see there are sects of Islam that say that the Quran is eternal.
So if the Quran is eternal then that poses a problem for strict monotheism because you have two essences or beings that are eternal.
Allah is eternal and the Quran is eternal. And then you look at how some Muslims interact with the Quran.
Some believe that if you put the Quran on the floor, that is a sin.
And then you have the Cabba. Um there are some that visit visit the the Cabba and they say, you know, we’re going to kiss this black stone because it can forgive our sins and all these things.
And so you have that and then you also have uh some sects of Islam that um believe that Muhammad is an intermediary.
So you have the on paper you have strict monotheism, but in practice you have something different.
Yeah. >> So I just wanted to say that I feel that um one thing that makes >> um Islam distinct.
There is no partners. God has no partners. Like you cannot have two all powerful things, right?
>> That if you had two all powerful things and they were to go against each other and then one of them >> um you know didn’t win then we would be worshiping that that creator of all things that most all powerful beginning the end alpha omega all of those kind of things.
It’s interesting. She’s not saying that Muslims worship three gods. She’s saying that the standard being used to reject the Trinity is a little bit inconsistent.
But the Muslims answer makes sense. You know, if there’s two all powerful beings that existed, only one could win.
Only thing is though is that the Christian isn’t arguing for two gods. She was arguing that the same God could just be more complex than the simple definition allows.
But now the debate goes back to the Torah. And this next segment really caused me to pause.
Let’s see it. Do you believe that God continues to reveal himself beyond the Hebrew scriptures?
>> No, I don’t believe that God reveals himself beyond the Torah. Moses continuously, constantly says the Torah doesn’t change.
I think the Torah is so perfect. And Moses in him saying he said do not change it because God revealed himself to the world through the Jewish people, not meaning only to the Jewish people.
We’re like a conduit for the world. Um, and that revelation was perfect and I don’t think we need to add or change it at all.
>> I agree with you that it’s perfect, but the problem is that we are imperfect.
Which is why in Jeremiah 31:31, he says, “I’m going to make a new covenant because the previous one y’all broke.”
Then he uses other language, Jeremiah 32:40, he said, “I’m going to now give you all a one heart and one way to worship me, and I’m going to give you an everlasting covenant.”
Why all of a sudden in Jeremiah halfway through history is God now talking about an everlasting covenant?
>> Jeremiah 31 when he said, “I will make a second covenant,” he uses the word Israel and Judah.
He actually says, “I’m creating a second covenant with Israel and Judah.” Meaning he’s talking to the Jewish people.
That’s number one. By the way, it is literally impossible, at least for us Jews, that Jeremiah would ever imply uh for anyone to worship Jesus because most of the book of Jeremiah is him going crazy about idol worship.
And the definition of idolatry in Judaism, again, Christianity didn’t ex exist yet. So Jeremiah was a Jew.
Uh is like the second uh commandment of the ten commandments. The likeness of anything above or below.
Moses said this in Deuteronomy 4. Uh the likeness of a man or a woman.
So to me at least it is impossible that Jeremiah would be talking about a human being because the entire book of Jeremiah as I’m saying if you guys don’t stop idolatry the base of the holy temple is going to be destroyed.
>> This is a pressure point. The Jewish woman is using Jeremiah against the Christian saying his entire book is full of idolatry and in Judaism worshiping a man is one of the highest forms of it.
That’s a serious argument but notice what it rests on because the assumption is that Jesus is just a man.
And that’s not a settled fact. That’s what the whole question and debate we’ve been watching is building towards.
And she hasn’t really closed that case. What she’s really doing is restating the question essentially her position.
But now she’s going to try and undermine the historical evidence for Jesus. Watch how the Christian responds.
>> Everyone knows it was written after Jesus was killed. >> Dating for the Gospels.
Do you know how dating for the Gospels is done? >> Probably not as well as you do, but yeah.
Dating for the Gospels is not some robust system. We have no original manuscripts. We only have copies.
So what they do is they look at the eternal facts. If I wrote you a letter and I started talking about B2K and I’m like I’m going to the concert, you would know that I’m probably writing this letter from 2005.
They do the same thing when they’re reading it. So when you look at the internal evidence, you find that the book John 5:2, I encourage you to go back and look at it.
And in that same chapter, it discusses a practice that only Jews would know in that time, the stirring of the water to go down in the pool of Siloam.
It doesn’t talk of it as a >> relic alive. >> Jews were still alive, but >> they would have known that at the time, >> right?
But it talks about it in a present tense. That’s the key difference. It’s not talking about there’s other parts of the of the gospel that talks about things in a past tense solidifying the fact that the temple was destroyed.
But that one particular passage makes it seem like the temple is still there. The temple was destroyed in 70 AD.
So this couldn’t be something long 50. That’s just something that people say online. >> This matters because if you want to dismiss Jesus, one of the easiest moves is to say that the gospels were written way later and are unreliable.
But if the gospels are a lot closer to the events than people assume, then the claims about Jesus get a lot harder to brush off, especially the resurrection.
But even if you grant all of that, there’s still one massive objection left. Really, did Jesus actually fulfill the Messiah roles that he was supposed to?
And honestly, this is one of the objections that hit me the hardest. Let’s see it.
>> In Judaism, how is Jesus viewed in relation to God’s plan or story for humanity?
Um, in Judaism, like Raa explained before, he’s viewed as a orthodox Jewish human being.
He’s not, we don’t view Jesus as a uh as anything godly or like a deity.
>> Messiah, what about Messiah? >> Messiah is that’s different. Um, he’s not Can you maybe you can explain that a little bit more?
>> He’s neither a god nor a messiah. Uh, because he did not fulfill the messianic.
>> Oh, meaning you’re asking Jesus. Jesus is a messiah. >> If you got neither god, neither um Jesus not a messiah either.
And I will say also 10 seconds I promise. Um in terms of Jewish of the world, we actually believe that Jesus fulfilled some kind of godly mission by bringing billions of people to the Bible and spreading this knowledge of Messiah.
But and this is important in the Jewish history. It has brought us and and we have a beautiful relationship now, but it was 2,000 years really of persecution where Jews shared the Torah with the world and the well with Christians and the Christians kind of took the Torah and used it against Jews and said you must worship this man when we had been learning for you know more than a thousand years that you can’t.
So it did cause us a lot of heartbreak and at the same time Jesus brought you know billions of people to the Bible.
I have a question like so even with all of the miracles that Jesus peace be upon him did, why wouldn’t he be able to have the title as Messiah within the Jewish tradition?
>> Um, uh, death will be swallowed up forever. It didn’t happen. Uh, world peace didn’t happen.
The Jews are not collected back to Israel. Didn’t happen. Um, >> right. There are so many knowledge of God need that that Jews believe that we need in order for Messiah to come.
>> So, what do you do with the miracles? >> They happen and the resurrection.
We don’t believe in the Old Testament. Yeah, we don’t believe in that. >> You just don’t believe in that.
>> That is really the strongest Jewish objection in this whole conversation that the Messiah is supposed to bring peace, restore everything, swallow up death.
And what she’s saying is like, look around, that hasn’t happened. So Jesus isn’t the Messiah.
And honestly, it’s a serious objection. But this is where Christianity changes the timeline because the claim isn’t that those promises have failed.
It’s that the Messiah came first to deal with sin and then later he comes again to restore everything and fulfill all those messianic promises.
So, it’s not so much that Jesus didn’t fulfill those things. It’s just that the Jewish people see their timeline is like they’re in the first chapter and we Christians think that they just don’t have the ending yet.
They haven’t seen the rest of the book. And that matters because the conversation stops being just about prophecy and it becomes about salvation.
Let’s see it. The next prompt is people of other faiths can still be saved.
Three, two, one. >> No, you can’t you can’t be saved if you don’t acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
Because he does deify himself. The last supper, he deifies himself. When he says, “Take of this bread.
My body will be broken for you. Drink of this blood. My blood is what atones you call himself the savior essentially through through the process of communion.”
Um, and so if you don’t have a sacrifice and an atoner for your sin, you will constantly be in this workbased cycle.
And so as believers, we don’t believe our own works get us to heaven, but we believe that Jesus did the final work on the cross.
If you stay in your position, then you are denying God’s revelation about the way to be saved.
I believe that um the Passover lamb was a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ. The Passover lamb is described in Exodus 12.
It says, “Get a lamb. Don’t break any of his bones. He has to be male.
He has to be without blemish. Then you fast forward to the New Testament. Jesus Christ calls himself the lamb of God.
Not just because it’s a cute name because he’s telling you who he is. He was never he was without sin.
He didn’t and no bones were broken. He was the the ultimate sacrifice for our sins.
So if you stay in your position, then no, you’re rejecting the the the saving grace of God.
But if you receive Christ is what I thought the question was asking. Then you can be saved, >> right?
The prophecies about Jesus, the Passover lamb, no broken bones, male without blemish. These things written about in Exodus 12 before Jesus was ever born.
She’s not saying that they’re coincidence, that they’re a pattern that these scriptures are all pointing to Christ.
But now the conversation’s about to get to one of the most heated points in this entire thing.
>> Is Mahatma Gandhi in hell because he was a Hindu? >> If anyone is not in Christ, they rejected the way.
>> So Mahatma Gandhi who spent his whole life doing goodness is in hell. >> Good by what standard?
That’s a racist moral morality act behaving uh behaving morally with a wicked heart does not get you into heaven >> because he wasn’t a Christian.
No, because he was a racist and there are other controversial. >> So let’s find let’s find I didn’t know he was let’s find someone else.
But that’s no that’s the very point that is the very point you’re both talking as a Jew as a question about then you stop talking so she can answer your question.
Okay. But you answer you stop talking so she can answer your question. You asked a question, she’s answering it.
>> I thought you answered it. Sorry. >> So the point about Gandhi is a very good point because this is the point that somebody can appear morally and they can do good things and yet inwardly they can be far from God.
They could even be doing good things with good with bad intentions. A lot of people give to charity because it helps them clear their conscience because it makes them feel better.
And so God knowing the inward appearance of our heart, knowing that we’re wicked. Psalm says that our righteousness is like filthy rags, our good works cannot get us into heaven because a lot of the times our heart posture is not there.
>> And that’s the thing, right? It stops getting abstract. Gandhi is not just a person.
He represents people who have lived a good life but have never trusted in Christ.
I mean, maybe a neighbor, somebody in your family. The Christian answer isn’t that those people never did good things or weren’t good people in a sense.
It’s that goodness is not the same as holiness before a perfect God. And if that’s true, the problem is way deeper than our actions.
It’s really about the condition of our hearts. And now everything comes down to was Jesus really the one scripture was pointing to.
>> Yeah. So I would say that the Isaiah 53 passage is very clearly talking about a messiah.
I don’t think that Israel can atone itself. Obviously, as we’ve already discussed, Israel is a stiff necked nation.
They’ve fallen into idolatry many times. And like Majida so eloquently pointed out earlier, they murder their prophets.
And so I don’t necessarily know that you guys would recognize the Messiah even if there was a Messiah because the pattern is killing any prophet that says not to do a certain >> You killed Moses.
>> You murder your I didn’t say all of your prophets. >> You just said all of your You just said all your Let me clarify.
You murder your prophets. All of your prophets. >> Please stop cutting me off. Please communicating.
Stop. So you can respond to me, but don’t cut me off. Just said something not true.
Respond to me when I’m done. Please don’t murder all of our prophets. No, stop cutting off.
>> She can say she can rephrase it. She can say >> that’s all I asked.
I’m not fighting with her. We don’t kill all of our prophets. >> She spoke an error.
And now she’s going to rephrase it. >> You guys murder a lot of your prophets.
>> So if there were a Messiah, I’m not sure that you would necessarily have the ability to know who that Messiah is.
That is that is the that is the primary point. And I think that there are many prophecies throughout the scriptures that have been such as the virgin birth, such as Jesus um getting on a donkey and riding into Jerusalem.
Um the the destruction of the temple, his life, death, and resurrection. You guys can debate about the resurrection, but we have an empty tomb.
So it’s like where is the body? >> That got pretty passionate there. But that’s the question it ultimately points to, you know, where’s the body?
Because you can debate about which verse points where, but you still have to deal with the person of Jesus Christ, the life he lived, the death he died, and the accounts that he rose from the grave.
And it’s not an easy thing to wave away. You know, 3 years ago, I was an atheist or I just didn’t know what to believe about Jesus.
Not because I was against him. I just hadn’t seriously looked into what he actually claimed and what the evidence actually said.
And if Jesus is who he claimed to be, he can’t just be a teacher or a good prophet.
But really God in the flesh. And if that’s true, he is not an optional thing to tag on.
And so the question is whether you and I are both willing to take his claims and evidence seriously.
And if you’ve never looked at the evidence for Jesus yourself, I’ll link a book down below called The Case for Christ.
Really solid stuff. It’s a great place to start.
