Response to The Line of Fire 3

On the May 19 2011 segment of Dr. Brown’s radio program  http://lineoffireradio.askdrbrown.org/ , he addresses some of the arguments that I raised on the Jews for Judaism youtube channel.

The first argument he addresses is my challenge to Christian missionaries. I challenge the missionary to designate a set of criteria for determining if a given doctrine is truly Scriptural. Then I encourage the missionary to take the verses presented by the Jewish people in support of their doctrines, and the verses presented by the missionary in support of Christianity and run it through the test that they themselves have created. I am confident that there will be no contest. The verses that are  presented to support the Jewish position will pass with flying colors while the verses that are used to support the doctrines of Christianity will fail.

Dr. Brown accepted my challenge. He sets forth the criterion that the doctrine be supported by the plainest most obvious contextual sense of the verse.

Dr. Brown then presents Isaiah 53 as a support for the doctrine that the Messiah is supposed to atone for the sins of Israel and he contrasts that with the Rabbinical teaching that the Rabbis are authorized to pronounce rulings on matters of religious law on the basis of Deuteronomy 17:8-19.

Nice try.

The challenge was to take ALL of the verses that are used to support the doctrines of Christianity and contrast them with ALL of the verses that are used to support the doctrines of Judaism.  My challenge was to look at the total picture. What Dr. Brown has attempted to do was to take one of the stronger proof-texts used by the missionary and compare it to one of the weaker proof-texts presented by the counter-missionary. (When I use the terms “stronger” or “weaker” – I mean – the way they may seem at first glance. A study of Isaiah 53 in context will reveal that Jesus is NOT the Messiah. Please see my article “Isaiah 53 Teaches that Jesus is Not the Messiah” – on this blog.)

Dr. Brown presented the argument that Deuteronomy 17:8-19 only refers to civil law and does not refer to ritual law. This argument was articulated by Dr. Brown quite a while ago and I responded to this argument in the publication “You are My Witnesses” – that I actually handed to Dr. Brown over a decade ago (this publication is available on the Jews for Judaism website). I pointed out that the parallel passage in 2 Chronicles 19:10 and 11 makes it abundantly clear that the jurisdiction of the courts extended both to matters pertaining to the king (i.e. civil law) and matters pertaining to God (i.e. ritual law).

If you want to take my challenge seriously , please go through the verses that I presented on my blog in support of Judaism. There are over 1000 of them. https://yourphariseefriend.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/1000-verses/

You may also find my article: “The Totality of Scripture” helpful – it is available on the Jews for Judaism website.

If you found this article helpful please consider making a donation to Judaism Resources by clicking on the link below.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=FEAQ55Y7MR3E6

Judaism Resources is a recognized 501(c) 3 public charity and your donation is tax exempt.

Thank You

Yisroel C. Blumenthal