In the comments to this post, a Jewish man points me to 2 videos of Rabbi Mizrachi debating at his synagogue with a gentile Christian.
I applaud the Rabbi for allowing a member of a foreign religion into his synagogue to debate in front of his own congregants. I can't say I know of too many churches that would do the same!
I love debates because they sharpen your knowledge and quickly break down shaky theologies or simply show you where your knowledge is lacking.
In this case, the rabbi comes hard against the anti-Torah, anti-Jewish nature of the modern Christian religion, in addition to questioning the authentic nature of the New Testament, pointing out flaws and inconsistencies contained within, such as the different genealogies of Yeshua in Matthew 1 and Luke 3.
The rabbi comes out swinging hard against Christianity. His first major point?
Matthew 5.
The rabbi says of Matthew 5, paraphrasing,
"Here Jesus tells his students to keep the Torah and all the commandments until heaven and earth pass away, saying he has not come to abolish them but rather to fulfill them.
Now tell me, why is it that there are no Christians who keep the Torah? Maybe there are some, somewhere, but I don't personally know of a single Christian who honors God's sabbath. How can Jews take Christianity seriously when Christians do not follow succinct commandments of their own Christ?"
The Christian gentile responded by simply saying, "Jesus fulfilled the Torah." The rabbi gets back up and says, "You didn't answer my question; Jesus said he fulfilled Torah and in the same breath, told his students to keep it. Why aren't Christians keeping a succinct commandment of their Christ?"
The gentile Christian didn't have a satisfactory response.
The rabbi was hinting that Jesus' own words tell us that we ought to keep the Torah. So what's this nonsense about converting to this other religion called Christianity?
Serious Questions for Christians
The rabbi raises a point we ought to consider: an intellectually honest person must question how a Jew could ever accept a Messiah who is preached to have done away with and for all intents and purposes put an end to the Torah.
How can a Jew take seriously someone who is purported to have ended something God said would be eternal? I think to anti-Judaic translations in the New Testament like "Christ is the end of the law..." or "Christ abolished in himself the enmity [some translations say 'law'] which was against us, nailing it to the cross."
And I think to the anti-Judaic preaching of those Pauline quips which are made in the name of grace, but made in ignorance of the larger context of Scripture. They are used as a sword against God's righteous commandments in Torah and against Messiah's own words and actions.
You'll rarely hear these folks quoting Messiah in support of their anti-Judaic doctrines, which pit grace and Law as opposites, contrary to each other. Instead, they only quote Paul -- and even then, only select quotes, lest they stumble upon Paul's doctrine of upholding Torah, such as 1 Corinthians 5.
The rabbi poses some provocative questions. They expose some chinks in the armor of modern Christian doctrines.
Personally, I would answer him by saying, the religion of Christianity officially departed from the Hebrew faith during the time of Constantine in 325 CE, at which point it became illegal to keep God's commandments -- Sabbath, the Feasts of the Lord, kashrut, etc.
Thus, to this day, the modern religion is a departure from the Hebrew faith and its adherents do not keep Messiah's succinct commandment regarding the Torah in Matthew 5, nor do they keep the apostles' ruling regarding the Torah in Acts 15.
I would further point out that there exists some Messiah-followers (I am hesitant to call them Christians) who do keep God's commandments, including some Messianics Jews, Messianic Israelites, as well as most of Nazarene Judaism.
A Nazarene follower of Messiah recently related,
Many have asked "Why have the Jews rejected Jesus?"… well let me make
this clear, the only "Jesus" that most Jewish people have ever been
exposed to is the "Jesus" that supposedly came to "free them from the
bondage of the Law". Yes, they have rejected this Torah-less Jesus,
and rightly so. But most of them have never been exposed to the real
Yeshua.
In coming years you will see many Jewish people embracing Yeshua as
the Messiah. But the Yeshua that they accept will be the real Yeshua
and not the Torah-less "Jesus" that Christendom has adopted from pagan
sources. The Jewish people know that an anti-Torah Messiah is no
Messiah at all, they know better than to accept the rank paganism
attached to Gentile Christianity.
The truth is that a great number of Orthodox Jews (even Rabbis)
already know that Yeshua is the true and only Messiah, some of them
have even confided this to me. At present they have no intention of
disclosing this fact because they believe it would unite them with an
anti-Torah Christianity which is overflowing with pagan customs and
practices, and a disdain for the Torah which is seen as "bondage".
The point I would wish to show the rabbi is that modern Christianity has a flawed doctrine that abolishes the Jewishness of the faith, severing it from its Hebraic foundation; the rabbi need not judge Messiah by the actions of Christianity which has persecuted Jews for over a thousand years.
I would suggest that believing in Messiah does not mean converting to a new religion, nor should it, for Messiah did not come to start a new religion.
How would you answer the rabbi, dear blog reader?