Was Jesus the messiah of the Hebrew bible?

[Nickman]

Cholland said he would like to debate this point so here it is.

Was Jesus the the messiah as prescribed by the Hebrew bible?

What prophecies does he fulfill and why?

Can he be shown to not fulfill the Hebrew text?

Cholland your up.....

[otseng]

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[cnorman18]

...Heschel IN NO WAY agreed with your view that Christianity is just another form of Judaism or some kind of "fulfillment" of it...

I never claimed anything about Hechel's beliefs, other than to quote his own words which demonstrate that his understanding of the essence of the Messianic role was very compatible with that of the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus the Jew.

Fair enough. Seems an odd tactic, though.

...When you claim that accepting Jesus as the Risen Christ and Divine Savior is the same as accepting him as the Messiah, you are talking about precisely [conversion]...

Non-sequitur. If Jesus the Jew believed that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the one true God, and if Jesus the Jew faithfully carried out the will of the God of the Patriarchs, and if Jesus' life and example and teaching were vindicated by God in raising Jesus from the dead, then Jesus is the Jewish Messiah and in that case no conversion would be necessary to believe that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

You keep deleting and dodging the point about Jesus being God Incarnate. Why is that?

Are you saying that Christians may believe that Jesus was just an ordinary man, and not God in any sense?

...That Heschel expressed a few concepts that you can claim are simliar to Christian ones does NOT prove that the two concepts, of Christ and Messiah, are the same...

Can we agree that it hardly supports the converse view which you have proposed?

You keep deleting and dodging the point about Jesus being God Incarnate. Why is that?

Are you saying that Christians may believe that Jesus was just an ordinary man, and not God in any sense?

...Shall we start with "God Incarnate"? That idea is repugnant to Jews and will NEVER be accepted by us...

What you personally are willing to believe, and what any sub-section of Jewry chooses to deem repugnant--all of that is irrelevant. Please remember the distinction between ontology and epistemology.

Don't presume to lecture me on philosophy. I can tell when big words are being used properly, and when they are being used merely to obfuscate and blow smoke. Here, you are using them to essentially deny that there IS any meaningful Jewish tradition or teaching, attempting to show that any Jewish teaching that DOES exist is irrelevant and not to be taken seriously, and may be discarded and replaced in favor of Christian beliefs, standards, and claims.

And again: You keep deleting and dodging the point about Jesus being God Incarnate. Why is that?

Are you saying that Christians may believe that Jesus was just an ordinary man, and not God in any sense?

...There are more such differences, whether you choose to ignore or suppress them or not. We are not concerned with individual "salvation"; we believe that NO ONE can take the punishment or responsibility for our sins but ourselves; we do NOT believe that "the Law" is a burden, brings death and not life, etc., as Paul taught; and so on and so on...

All of that is irrelevant on multiple grounds (see ontology and epistemology, above).

Don't keep posturing as a scholar and throwing your smoke-blowing words at me. EXPLICATE and PROVE that, point by point; show exactly what you're saying, IN SPECIFIC DETAIL, taking each difference between Christian and Jewish beliefs in turn, and PROVE that it's all "irrelevant."

As far as I can see, your remarks here amount to no more than "I can refute anything you say by saying "You're wrong on [insert big word here} grounds," which is just a high-rent way of saying "Because I say so."

PROVE IT.

Moreover, Christians are not committed to any of the beliefs which you try to impose on them as if such beliefs were necessary to the Christian tradition.

Oh? Christians are free to deny the importance of SALVATION, of Jesus's substitutionary sacrifice, and -- one more time -- Jesus's divinity?

Can you document and reference that, please?

...if you are going to pontificate on what Jews believe...

It seems to me that you are pontificating on what Christians must believe, even though it seems that you have forgotten more than you ever knew about Christianity.

I am only pointing out the historic teachings that define Christianity. Once again, if you can prove that they DON'T, let's see it; that Christians may deny the divinity of Christ, deny that his sacrifice was salvific, deny that belief in his saving blood is what brings one to salvation, and so on. I can't wait to see your references.

...it would behoove you to study a bit and FIND OUT, as opposed to assuming that you KNOW...

Hence my reading of Heschel and Sarna and Alter and numerous other Jewish scholars.

In order to cherrypick quotes that you think support the Messiahship of Jesus, at which you have been notably unsuccessful? That is not study. That is quote-mining.

...why can't we just leave it at that and work together for the values that we share?...

Because you keep trying to impose the red herring that the beliefs of some sub-section of historic Jewry...

"Some subset of historic Jewry"? What, exactly, do you mean by that? Please explain that assertion and document it with references from JEWISH sources.

So far, whenever we have discussed this matter, you have dismissed the teachings of Judaism as a whole, excepting only the first-century Christians, as having no relevance or authority whatever. That kind of self-serving redefinition of the beliefs of an ancient religion, well-attested in multiple documents for thousands of years, is pretty hard to take seriously, no matter what "ontological" claims you throw out.

has anything to do with the ontological status of Jesus the Jew.

All that seems to mean, "If God/I/Christians decide that Jesus was the Messiah, then it doesn't matter what Jews think."

Let's put it this way: if Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah (annointed), then Jesus is not the Christian Christ (annointed).

That's nonsense. By the standard definitions and understandings of BOTH of those terms in their respective religions, not only are they not the same, they are mutually exclusive.

Therefore, when you make the (completely unsubstantiated) ontological claim that Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah...

"Completely unsubstantiated" by anything other than two thousand years of consistent teachings...

...you are in fact claiming that Christianity is a false religion.

You've made this argument before, and I'll say again; that makes no sense. If you're going to make the validity of your religion dependent on Jews accepting it, that is YOUR problem, not ours. But since we've already been there and done that, let me try another answer:

So what?

I DON'T claim that Christianity is a false religion; I say that I don't know whether or not it is a true religion, and that that is between you and God. But if YOU insist on claiming that by sticking to my OWN beliefs, I am "claiming that Christianity is a false religion" -- is there a reason I should care? It's still not MY problem.

All you have to do is say that per longstanding tradition, Jews are excommunicated from Judaism if they accept Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.

One more time; Show me a Jew after the first century who has EVER accepted Jesus as the Messiah, as opposed to accepting him as the Christian Christ.

There haven't been any. No need to excommunicate Jews who don't exist; and no need to excommunicate Jews who no longer practice Judaism, whatever they may choose to call themselves.

...Claiming that "Jews have accepted Jesus as the Jewish Messiah," when none HAVE since the first century, is merely denying that the issue exists. Many Jews have accepted Jesus as the risen Christ, the Divine Son of God and Savior, and become Christians; but that is NOT THE SAME as "accepting Jesus as the Messiah," no matter how much you wish it were...

Nonsense. You are making an idol out of your religious tradition here.

Sorry, but FOLLOWING a religious tradition is hardly "making an idol" out of it. That's ridiculous, and only ducks the issue at hand; if you're prepared to reconcile the Jewish teachings about the Messiah with the Christian teachings of the Christ -- as opposed to merely DISMISSING Jewish teachings, as you have been doing -- let me know.

If the One True God says that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, then Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

Okay. When He tells me that directly, I'll believe it. For the moment, I don't think you have the authority to speak for Him.

...if he recognizes a human being as God in the Flesh, coequal with God the Father, he would have abandoned Judaism and would no longer be practicing the Jewish religion. That's not debatable...

Certainly he would be excommunicated from modern Judaism, but that is hardly equivalent to have fallen away from historic Judaism altogether.

Find me a time, in all our long history back to Abraham, when any Jew has ever asserted that God could be a human being. "God is One" is the oldest tenet of the Jewish religion, and the next oldest is that God has no physical form; the idea that a man could be God violates both of those.

...Since the characteristics and identification of the Jewish Messiah are determined by Jews, the matter has long since been settled...

If the Jewish prophets can be trusted, it is a defining mark of Jews that the majority of them will be wrong about numerous matters which God alone can decide.

More self-serving nonsense. What were the Jewish prophets "wrong" about -- other than the identity of the Messiah, according to you?

Further: If the Jewish prophets are wrong, who gets to be right? Who gets to decide WHO is right?

You?

...Those who dispute that are patently attempting to revise some of the most basic tenets of the Jewish faith...

There is no basic tenet of Judaism that says Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

That's patently ridiculous. There ARE tenets of Judaism that specify how the Messiah is to be identified, and Jesus did not meet those expectations. Period, full stop. Only by dismissing or denying those teachings can you overcome them, and claiming that they don't exist is beyond ludicrous.

Such stipulations were ad hoc and johnny-come-lately.

You've made that claim before, and I demanded that you prove it. You couldn't. I make that demand again; if you can't prove that the considerations that disqualified Jesus as the Messiah came AFTER THE FACT and were NOT supported by the Jewish scriptures and traditions that LONG PREDATED Jesus -- which is the only possible meaning of "ad hoc and johnny-come-lately" -- then that claim is FALSE.

Prove it, or retract it.

...don't tell Jews that there is even any reason to debate whether Jesus was our Messiah. He wasn't...

God is the only one who can say whether or not Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. Only God has a vote on this matter.

Not according to Jewish teachings. "The Torah is not in Heaven."

Also -- I haven't seen God's ballot. Once again -- you don't get to speak for God. And try to remember that the New Testament has no more authority for Jews than The Book of Mormon. That is to say, none.

...You're not Jewish; you don't get a vote, any more than I get a vote on the attributes of the Christ...

Christians believe that Jesus the Jew is the Jewish Messiah.

And those who do don't understand what "the Jewish Messiah" means.

And here's a question which you deleted and ducked: "[Your redefining the Messiah) is no more acceptable than if Jews were to dictate to Christians that they should not worship Jesus as God Incarnate, but must acknowledge that he was only an ordinary mortal man. Would that sit well with you?"

Well? Will you answer that question now?

When you claim otherwise, you are attempting to dictate to Christians what they can (or cannot) believe.

That's nonsense. I am doing nothing other than, and no more than, affirming what JEWS believe without regard to Christians and their beliefs. If you wish to INSIST that we are saying something we patently aren't, that is not OUR problem, but YOURS.

...As has been asked, where in Jewish tradition is it taught that the Messiah would be identified by being raised from the dead?...

Where is it taught that the Messiah would be identified by his NOT being raised from the dead?

Answering a perfectly reasonable and on-point question (you, after all, made the claim that Jesus's messiahship was "vindicated" by "God raising him from the dead") with a nonsensical and fatuous question is probably the worst possible way to try to dodge it.

Again; where in Jewish tradition is it taught that the Messiah would be identified by being raised from the dead?

The correct answer, of course, is "nowhere, not ever." Once again, you are imposing Christian teachings on Jews and claiming that there is no conflict where there obviously is.

...as far as Jewish tradition and teachings are concerned, you are unequivocally wrong...

In Jewish tradition, that bit is ad hoc and johnny-come-lately.

Once again: PROVE THAT CLAIM or RETRACT IT. I have explained how to go about proving it above. Your mere CLAIM is not sufficient.

...Why it's not good enough for you to simply accept me and my fellow Jews as partners in service to God who take a different path is beyond me...

I am perfectly willing to accept you and other Jews, so long as you do not make absurd ontological claims about Jesus which entail that Christianity is a false religion.

Please show me where I have ever said, in more than 7,000 posts over the course of five years, that "Christianity is a false religion." Show me where I have ever even IMPLIED it -- as opposed to your READING INTO my statements things that you CLAIM are there.

You don't get to hold Jewish beliefs hostage to validate your own. You don't get to put words in my mouth; and you don't get to make false claims without backing them up.

...you are making no Jewish friends for Christianity here...

I feel a great kinship with Heschel and Sarna and Alter and numerous other Jewish scholars.

Good for you. Robert Alter's email is altosberkeley.edu. Jonathan Sarna's is saranbrandeis.edu. Why don't you email them the URL of this debate, and the others we have had, and see what they have to say?

[arian]

....
The second coming of Christ could not have been known either in the Old Testament, Jesus explained this to us when He was here. it was hidden from them in the Old Testament, ... the whole thing was done in a humble, beyond human imagination setting to keep the proud Satan unaware, being fulfilled as it happened. He was expecting the Christ to appear in all His Glory, with power and might he himself would have come with and not the way Jesus appeared, not to royalty, but to a simple girl betrothed to a simple carpenter. This was all because as the NT explains, ... "would they have known, they would not have crucified Him."....

The NT goes to great length to take prophesies from the Jewish Bible and weave them into a Midrash that tries to persuade that Jesus was the Messiah, but they just couldn't come up something to suggest a 2d coming. So THAT prophesy, which they would have loved to have added to the mix, had to be excused by the feeble, 'well, uh... gee... uh ... see, they would not have crucified him had they really known.' That is a fatally weak argument. All thru the Bible and NT we are told of God's mighty power and how he can mold Kings to his will, but suddenly The Almighty cannot bring about the crucifiction if there was prophesy about a 2d coming? Suddenly your god is too weak. That's your argument?

God too weak? Take a good look around you, this world and the universe. Just look at our own little sun (little compared to the others out there) and the energy it puts out? Look how much energy there is in hydrogen, and our earth is swimming in water? So we know that God is anything but weak, ... right?

The trials in our lives mold us, and those same trials, and maybe even more of them mold kings. God can do anything, but He didn't create us to exercise that power over us. We are here to come to the knowledge of God, just as He came to the knowledge of 'I Am What I Am'.

Now this is much, much easier for us to come to the realization of our Creator God, than it must have been for God to come to the realization that He IS.
Then He had to define Himself, perfect Himself (or create order and separate what is good and what is bad for Himself, another words came to 'knowing good and evil') all while Being All There Is, or One, having no one besides Him.

God wants those that can distinguish between good and evil, between truth and lies. But if you believe that all this here awesome creation just happened out of nothing for no reason, then God has no use for you.

This is NOT about God, ... God is already perfect. This is about us, and how pliable we are to the Creators hand. If we become stubborn like some bad clay, all lumpy and resist being molded, God will destroy us and work with those more workable.

If you can ignore all this here creation, from a rose to the universe, then you'll never see the possibilities we have IN God. If Jesus said that a lily in the field has more glory than all the things Solomon made, all the things he said, then just imagine the things we will be able to create with our Creator? We have a Master Builder Jesus Christ who will show us all things the Father taught Him, ... I mean the head-start we have is already beyond imagination my friend?

Satan represents kayos and disorder. He is the first created that tried to deny the Creator and claim that he can become in place of God simply by denying God, ... just like the theory of Big Bang Evolution does. This is why the BB theory and ToE is the pure manifestation of Satan himself... it is revealed by men claiming that everything that he makes comes from design and hard work, ... but everything that he didn't make comes from nothing, ... it just appeared out of nowhere like magic. LOL

Jesus in he Bible explains this in great historical detail, where we can grow in wisdom as we were created for. But Satan wants us to believe we are nothing but animals who live by instinct, forgetting that we were created in our Creators image.

God is very careful not to interfere with our spiritual evolution, but Satan has convinced man into a deep sleep with his lies. Not only a deep sleep, but a coma, and even spiritual death. God knew Satan would interfere with Him sending His Son to earth to save mankind, so He hid this info until the time came for Jesus to reveal Gods plan. Satan jumped at the opportunity to kill Jesus, but would he have known that it was His death that saves mankind, he would never have killed him.

Take care my friend,

Odon (arian)

[ThatGirlAgain]

But it still amounts to there being no prophecy about what did happen and the prophecy about what was supposed to happen unfulfilled. I do not see how this supports the notion that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, which is what this thread is all about. In fact I do not see how it amounts to anything more than a less than credible excuse for the wrong thing happening. It seems that it would give Satan the idea that this Jesus guy was a fake and that God is powerless, thereby encouraging Satan to really go to town on world domination.

That is exactly what is going on, a senseless all out world domination where every nation is deceived equally and has accepted a lie of promises that they will never collect on. God is powerless to help those that refuse His help.

Satan knows that Jesus is coming back, and even the demons said when they seen Jesus the first time; "Have you come to judge us before it's time?"
Satan has to fool people so they would not notice the times. I mean people are worshiping some devine beings instead of the One True God.

So the point of making prophecies and then not fulfilling them was to encourage Satan to go to town on world domination? God was intentionally helping Satan by lying to people? How can you trust a God like that?

Of course that is assuming that the Satan character is really as portrayed in the NT. The OT Satan is much different, more of a devils advocate ( 0) than the personification of evil. Any recourse to the reconstructed Satan as an element in demonstrating Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah is not going to work.

In the OT Satan was still allowed to reside in Heaven, remember Job? He was roaming the earth and then came before the Lord along with the Angels in Heaven when God asked him where has he been, and if he took note of righteous Job? But after he was cast out of Heaven, he knew it was all over for him, so here he is trying his damnedest to destroy as many of us as he can, as Jesus said; "Satan roams around like a roaring lion to devour whom he may, because he knows his time is short"

In Job, Satan is part of the heavenly throng who present himself before God along with the other angels. According to Revelation 12, Satan is not cast out of heaven until the Apocalypse is well under way, even after the seventh trumpet (Revelation 11), which is supposedly sometime in the future. Show me where Satan becomes the bad guy between Job and Revelation. Answer: Satan is not the ultimate evil bad guy until the NT. As I said, any recourse to Satan cannot be used to demonstrate that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

This invisible Spiritual Kingdom is not at all what was prophesized. Again it sounds like something made up to cover up the fact that the actual prophecies did not come true.

Can you 'see' my thoughts ThatGirlAgain? How long have we been debating and I have never seen you yet. Was or is our debates real? Look how much work we put into them, all done with the body, yet it is all commanded by our spirit, our minds. The body is just a Temple, a house, a robot to do the biding of our mind. NOT the brain, ... the brain is controlled by the mind.

How can we see the Kingdom of God? It is when we start to discern between good and evil, when we recognize the evil in this world and wonder, imagine that New Eternal Kingdom where no evil will be able to ruin our plans.

The Kingdom of God as predicted in the OT was not to be invisible but to be very physically real and obvious to everyone. Talking about invisible kingdoms instead of what was prophesized does not support Jesus being the Jewish Messiah. Rather it argues against it.

If you want to discuss the Big Bang or Evolution, go to the appropriate forum. I will only discuss it here to the extent that the alternative to the Big Bang is that the universe always existed and there is no creator. Never quite grasped why theists might be opposed to the Big Bang.

Have you grasped the difference between the gods in theism and the One True God of the Hebrews yet? I believe my toy box full of plastic toy soldiers analogy is pretty clear don't you think?

Also, once you can imagine the mind apart from the body (remember the the brain is part of the body), you will start to understand (see) this New Kingdom. We are mostly using and communicating with each other right now using our mind, the rest is physical tools we use from the house (brain, hands etc), or outside the house like the computer and so on.

The Big Bang Evolution theory is like a used-car salesman telling you a long story about the history of the car he is selling you, trying to distract you from the actual car your looking at. And we both know it works, unless that 'old grandma' that drove that car to church and back on Sunday only for the past six years was a heavy pot smoker and beer drinker and hid her beer cans under the seat along with the marijuana buts?

I repeat my comments from above. The Kingdom of God was supposed to be visible and physical and obvious to everyone. That it is not only demonstrates that Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

The destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem happened. But they were supposed to be followed very quickly by the Second Coming. Did not happen. By the time that John and Acts were written this had become painfully obvious and other excuses were needed. John has it become a misunderstanding that it would happen quickly despite the very explicit language of the Synoptic Gospels and the clear expectation of Paul. Acts changes it from Jesus returning to the Holy Spirit, again despite explicit language in the Synoptics and Paul about an imminent return of Jesus and a universal judgment.

Not only do the OT prophecies fall flat. So do the NT ones.

No, not only the Holy Spirit that entered the believers, but the Spiritual Kingdom that was revealed to their minds. I know it IS hard, but we have to at least start to imagine the 'mind/spirit/soul' of man separate from the body. I had a hard time separating it too because we think that the brain creates the mind, ... that somehow those electrical impulses make up the 'mind', but it's not. The mind is our spirit that resides in this temple, or body and even though it is invisible, it is very real, ... without it we could not reason, walk, talk, create, OR live. We would be no different than a clay sculpture.

The New Kingdom is a Spiritual Kingdom that for now only our 'mind' can enter in and out from. And as Jesus said; "where two or three are gathered in my name, there I will be in the midst of you" It is NOT by sight...

Once more: This spiritual kingdom is not what was prophesized. Something entirely different was prophesized. It did not happen. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

The Synoptic Gospels clearly reference the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and state that these will happen in the current generation before all those who heard the words of Jesus were dead.

Again, the Spiritual Kingdom came at Pentecost and is here, only this physical body cannot see it, nor enter it.

Just as we are promised a new body for our spirit/soul to live in, there will be a new Earth and a new Heaven for our new bodies to live in. It is no use for this physical brain to demand something it cannot understand, the mind ... that spirit within us must come alive first (born again), but the flesh is against that, it wants to see it for itself, because it wants to live not die. Look how many are dead in Christ, don't believe in God, make up fairytale theories as their creator and then demand to see the Spiritual Kingdom. Then we say: "If I cannot see it, it didn't happen and it doesn't exist. God doesn't exist either because I cant see Him."

This is why religions like the Jehovah Witnesses changed that coming New Spiritual Kingdom into just a renewed physical kingdom, because this physical body demands to stay alive and live forever on this physical earth. The Mormons do the same thing, they imagine a physical god residing on a physical planet... even if they both have to re-write the whole Bible to fit their demands.

Sorry physical body, but you will NOT 'live forever on this planet earth', or any other planet in this universe.

Yet again: This spiritual kingdom is not what was prophesized. Something entirely different was prophesized. It did not happen. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

Then immediately after Jesus was supposed to return in the sky with angels and judge everyone. Did not happen. Pushing it into the future is a clear contradiction of this prophecy. Revelation even starts off saying that the time is near for the end of the world and it must soon take place. Did not happen.

"When you see all these things happen, then the end will come..." "The Lord is not slack in His coming, ... only He would that everyone would be saved..."

I understand what you mean though, ... 2,000 years seems a lot for us, but in reality none of us had to live/wait 2,000 years, only around seventy, eighty years and as soon as we close our eyes in death, we are awakened in a blink of an eye, .. right?

It was supposed to happen immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Some people who heard the words of Jesus were supposed to be still alive when Jesus returned. It did not happen. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

The Pentecost story is at variance not only with the clear expectations set forth in the OT prophecies, it even is at variance with the explicit NT prophecies. This invisible Kingdom sounds a whole lot like another cover story for prophecies not happening.

Cover story? Our Jewish ancestors were waiting for the Messiah at the time, and He came, and they killed Him. They seen Him with their own eyes, seen what he did and said, so how are they going to accept a Spiritual Kingdom? If they refused to accept and 'believe' what they seen with their eyes and heard with their ears, how will they accept and believe what they cannot see?
Faith is to be sure of what we hope for and certain of things we cannot see, ... yet they believe in a 13.75 billion year old BB story???

The prophecies of Jesus returning immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple while some of the people who heard Jesus make that prophecy were still alive DID NOT HAPPEN. By contrast, the Big Bang has lots of data to support it including prophecies about exactly what the deviations from smoothness in the Cosmic Microwave Background needed to be. These prophecies were fulfilled in fine detail. If convincing contrary data were to surface and withstand pee review, scientists in general would change their minds. This has happened in the past concerning the origin of the universe. It used to be that scientists believed in an eternal universe that had always been around (just like Aristotle thought). They were criticized for being atheists. Then evidence began to mount that the universe had a beginning in time. This developed into what is called Big Bang Theory, a well detailed and very well supported theory. Now scientists who subscribe to the Big Bang (the overwhelming majority) are criticized for being atheists. Make up your mind.

This invisible kingdom is not what was promised. The OT prophecies concerning it were not fulfilled and neither were the NT ones. All of the prophecy based reasons for believing that Jesus was the Messiah do not work. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

They were promised a Kingdom that will never pass away, ... we die... so how did they understand an Everlasting Kingdom, ... a physical one? How long before they would have killed that King too? Unless they were expecting to keep ALL the laws flawlessly and make sacrifices purely from the heart as was required for an eternity? Yeah... right, as if they actually even thought of that as a possibility, not alone believed in such a thing?

Amos, the First Prophet, says:

Amos 5

10 There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court
and detest the one who tells the truth.
11 You levy a straw tax on the poor
and impose a tax on their grain.
Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,
you will not live in them;
though you have planted lush vineyards,
you will not drink their wine.
12 For I know how many are your offenses
and how great your sins.
There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
13 Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times,
for the times are evil.
14 Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.
15 Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.

21 I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
23 Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Isaiah agrees:

Isaiah 10
1 Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
2 to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.
3 What will you do on the day of reckoning,
when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your riches?
4 Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives
or fall among the slain.

Not slavish perfect obedience to the letter of the law, but genuine goodness and avoidance of evil was the key to eternal life. It is the Shammai Pharisees who insisted on literal obedience to the exclusion of the spirit of the Law, pushing aside the teachings of the Hillel Pharisees who immediately preceded them. The message of Jesus was a return to the teachings of the Prophets, to re-establish true righteousness (moral living and charitable works) among the people as justification for the Lord to rescue Israel from evil and establish an everlasting kingdom. The many prophecies about the Lord ruling over all nations makes it clear that this was to be an earthly kingdom. Did not happen. Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah.

Jesus said he would return right after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in the current generation when some of the people hearing him were still alive. Did not happen. Pentecost does not match the prophecies of either the OT or the NT. It is an excuse made up after the fact when it became obvious that Jesus was not coming.

If the Jews didn't believe it 2,000 years ago when Jesus was walking the earth, ... how could I, or anyone make you believe it now? Can you describe what kind of man or woman that you would believe to be the Jewish Messiah? Can you describe this person, what you'd expect him to do, or say that would convince you that he IS the Messiah? Can ANY Jew, or has any Jew described such a person that they's accept as their Messiah?

First of all, many Jews today don't even believe Moses existed, or any God that this Moses talked to existed, so what would some prophesy of some Messiah even matter?

But one will come in his own name, ... now that they will believe.

Fulfilling the major prophecy of establishing the kingdom of God on earth to which all nations would pay allegiance is necessary for a Messiah.

Isaiah 11
10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. 11 In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the Mediterranean.
12 He will raise a banner for the nations
and gather the exiles of Israel;
he will assemble the scattered people of Judah
from the four quarters of the earth.
13 Ephraims jealousy will vanish,
and Judahs enemies will be destroyed;
Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah,
nor Judah hostile toward Ephraim.
14 They will swoop down on the slopes of Philistia to the west;
together they will plunder the people to the east.
They will subdue Edom and Moab,
and the Ammonites will be subject to them.
15 The Lord will dry up
the gulf of the Egyptian sea;
with a scorching wind he will sweep his hand
over the Euphrates River.
He will break it up into seven streams
so that anyone can cross over in sandals.
16 There will be a highway for the remnant of his people
that is left from Assyria,
as there was for Israel
when they came up from Egypt.

1. The New Spiritual Kingdom is not what was prophesized in either the OT or the NT. If the born again can literally see it (as opposed to merely believe the story) can they describe what it looks like and have other people agree with that description in detail? If not then they are not seeing anything real.

When you hear someone talk to you and tell you something, can you see it with your eyes, or do you vision it with your mind? You 'see it' with your mind right? Well the same way we can see that Spiritual Kingdom that is here, ... it is where absolute truth reigns. Can you 'see' truth?

Where you see believers walk in the teachings of Christ, there you see people walking in that Kingdom.

The Kingdom was to be a visible physical obvious to all earthly kingdom. Did not happen. The invisible kingdom, which bears none of the prophesized attributes of the Kingdom of God, sound a lot like the Emperors New Clothes.

2. Jesus has been coming soon for a couple thousand years now. He was supposed to have come immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple while some of the people who heard his words were still alive. Did not happen.

As I said before, describe to me the person who you, or that you believe the Jews would accept as their Messiah? Give me the time, the manner, the family, the place, the character and some of his deeds that would be expected of him to reign and rule Israel forever in an Eternal Kingdom? This way I could understand why Jesus did not fit that person, and why He was so rejected by the Jews.

Isaiah (above) told us what the Messiah was to accomplish. The NT agrees with this and says this was to happen immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, while some of the people who heard Jesus speaking were still alive. Did not happen. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

3. Jesus made it very clear (Matthew 19,25, Mark 10, Luke 18 and Revelation 22 among other places) that eternal life is earned by deeds not by belief. Jesus even minimized his role in it. Or would you rather have a God who will send those who never had a chance to hear of Jesus to eternal hellfire despite the clear words of Jesus? What makes you think that you can trust a God like that?

Faith without works is dead, just as works without faith is useless. God is just and kind. God is Love so I'm sure He will judge according to His character every last person.

I don't worry about those that haven't heard of God and Christ, I worry of those who have heard and even seen the miracles and still denied Him, and continue to deny Him.

Give me scriptural references that say that works without faith is useless. Justify your interpretation of these references in light of Jesus saying how to achieve eternal life in Mark 10, Matthew 19 and Luke 18 and also with the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25. These are all about works and not a word about faith. In the Rich Man storiesJesus even downplays his own role in the matter.

4. Revelation said the end of the world must soon take place and the time is near. It also says that Jesus is coming soon. That was a couple of thousand years ago. Did not happen.

2,000 years later and just look around you and see how many truly serve the God of the Hebrews, the One True God even though He sent His own Son to die for us? Maybe God sees that 2,000 years is just not enough? Pretty much everyone heard of Christ, I mean He is preached throughout the world, but it seems to me we would still need at least another two to three hundred years to sink in, what do you think?

What are you sayingGod figured wrong? Like he did not know? No wonder all those prophesy fulfillments are so flakey.

Vast numbers of people never heard of Christ and never will because they are already dead. It does not matter how long the End of Days is pushed off, that will always be the case. And the way things are going, Christianity will be lucky to be around in two to three hundred years.

[Nickman]

God too weak? Take a good look around you, this world and the universe. Just look at our own little sun (little compared to the others out there) and the energy it puts out? Look how much energy there is in hydrogen, and our earth is swimming in water? So we know that God is anything but weak, ... right?

Those are physical and natural aspects of the universe and do not need a supernatural appeal.

The trials in our lives mold us, and those same trials, and maybe even more of them mold kings. God can do anything, but He didn't create us to exercise that power over us. We are here to come to the knowledge of God, just as He came to the knowledge of 'I Am What I Am'.

Sounds like preaching

Now this is much, much easier for us to come to the realization of our Creator God, than it must have been for God to come to the realization that He IS.
Then He had to define Himself, perfect Himself (or create order and separate what is good and what is bad for Himself, another words came to 'knowing good and evil') all while Being All There Is, or One, having no one besides Him.

God wants those that can distinguish between good and evil, between truth and lies. But if you believe that all this here awesome creation just happened out of nothing for no reason, then God has no use for you.

This is NOT about God, ... God is already perfect. This is about us, and how pliable we are to the Creators hand. If we become stubborn like some bad clay, all lumpy and resist being molded, God will destroy us and work with those more workable.

If you can ignore all this here creation, from a rose to the universe, then you'll never see the possibilities we have IN God. If Jesus said that a lily in the field has more glory than all the things Solomon made, all the things he said, then just imagine the things we will be able to create with our Creator? We have a Master Builder Jesus Christ who will show us all things the Father taught Him, ... I mean the head-start we have is already beyond imagination my friend?

Satan represents kayos and disorder. He is the first created that tried to deny the Creator and claim that he can become in place of God simply by denying God, ... just like the theory of Big Bang Evolution does. This is why the BB theory and ToE is the pure manifestation of Satan himself... it is revealed by men claiming that everything that he makes comes from design and hard work, ... but everything that he didn't make comes from nothing, ... it just appeared out of nowhere like magic. LOL

More preaching

Jesus in he Bible explains this in great historical detail, where we can grow in wisdom as we were created for. But Satan wants us to believe we are nothing but animals who live by instinct, forgetting that we were created in our Creators image.

What historical detail?

God is very careful not to interfere with our spiritual evolution, but Satan has convinced man into a deep sleep with his lies. Not only a deep sleep, but a coma, and even spiritual death. God knew Satan would interfere with Him sending His Son to earth to save mankind, so He hid this info until the time came for Jesus to reveal Gods plan. Satan jumped at the opportunity to kill Jesus, but would he have known that it was His death that saves mankind, he would never have killed him.

Take care my friend,

Odon (arian)

More preaching

Can you show Jesus to be the Messiah of the Hebew Bible? Can you provide some evidence that makes him the Messiah of the Jews? If not then there is no argument for you and the default position is that he is not the Messiah of the Jews. He can be the Christ of the Romans but not the Jewish Messiah.

[cnorman18]

Just putting in an observation, in response to no one, that might be relevant to this whole question -- inspired by a Religious School class I was teaching last Sunday.

To Christians, the entire Bible is all of a piece, all the Word of God, all equally authoritative. That partly explains why they put so much stock in the various "prophecies" they find in Isaiah, the Psalms, Daniel, and so on.

For Jews, this is not the case; there is a hierarchy of authority in the Hebrew Bible, and it is not all equal.

The most sacred and authoritative part of the Bible is the Torah, which consists of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. THAT is the Torah that we study so assiduously, that we read through in services over the course of every year, and that is the foundation of our religion -- WHATEVER its origins and provenance.

Those books are, of course, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The rest of the Bible is neither so sacred nor so authoritative. After the Torah come the Prophets -- Nevi'im in Hebrew -- which are revered, but not studied as much; they refer mostly to events in their own times. These books are not coequal with the Torah or even close to it; they might even be considered the first commentary on the Torah. The term "Prophet" to Jews does not denote one who tells the future -- that's very rare, in Jewish teaching, and generally only happens in the short term to prove a point to a specific audience. "Prophet" means "one who speaks the truth." There are, to be sure, "prophecies of the End of Days -- but those have never been considered detailed blueprints of things that are to come, but only metaphorical and poetic statements about the eventual and ultimate destiny of the world.

The Prophets include, first, the major prophetic books: These are Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel; and the minor prophets, which are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habbakuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

The rest, after the Prophets, is called the "Writings" -- in Hebrew, Khethuvi'im -- and those are even less sacred and less authoritative. Those consist of historical court records, hymns and songs, poems, "wisdom" literature (like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes), and so on. They are a vital and beloved part of our heritage, but they are not considered coequal with the Torah any more than the Prophets are -- in fact, much less.

The Writings are: First, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job; then the "five megilloth or Scrolls, which are read on certain Jewish holidays; The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther; and finally, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. These last were considered, even by the rabbis and sages of old, to be rather late books and to be taken with a few grains of salt -- and all of the Writings were definitely considered works of imagination and literary creativity. I don't think that any of them were ever read literally, even when they were newly written.

The Hebrew name for the Jewish Bible is Tanakh; this is a Hebrew acronym formed by the first letters of the three sections -- T, N, Kh; Torah, Nevi'im, Khethuvi'im. These constitute the Hebrew Bible, but it is only the Torah that is read in services from enormous handwritten scrolls that are kept covered in the Ark (a cabinet) at the front of the sanctuary, where an altar would be in Christian churches.

Perhaps all that will help. I've often said that we Jews read the Bible in a different way than Christians, and this may by the primary difference. It also explains why the order of the books in Jewish Bibles differs from that in Christian ones.

[arian]

But it still amounts to there being no prophecy about what did happen and the prophecy about what was supposed to happen unfulfilled. I do not see how this supports the notion that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, which is what this thread is all about. In fact I do not see how it amounts to anything more than a less than credible excuse for the wrong thing happening. It seems that it would give Satan the idea that this Jesus guy was a fake and that God is powerless, thereby encouraging Satan to really go to town on world domination.

That is exactly what is going on, a senseless all out world domination where every nation is deceived equally and has accepted a lie of promises that they will never collect on. God is powerless to help those that refuse His help.

Satan knows that Jesus is coming back, and even the demons said when they seen Jesus the first time; "Have you come to judge us before it's time?"
Satan has to fool people so they would not notice the times. I mean people are worshiping some devine beings instead of the One True God.

So the point of making prophecies and then not fulfilling them was to encourage Satan to go to town on world domination? God was intentionally helping Satan by lying to people? How can you trust a God like that?

I don't see how you derived that from what I said?

God revealed to His Prophets what was coming, an Eternal Kingdom ruled by God without Satans influence, or those that love a lie.

Satan is angry, so he goes after everyone to try to stop them from realizing the Spiritual Kingdom that Jesus revealed for those who love Him, and rejoiced in His arrival.
When the demons saw Jesus, they thought that judgement Day has come upon them, but also knew that many prophesies were still unfulfilled, ... so they asked...

Of course that is assuming that the Satan character is really as portrayed in the NT. The OT Satan is much different, more of a devils advocate ( 0) than the personification of evil. Any recourse to the reconstructed Satan as an element in demonstrating Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah is not going to work.

In the OT Satan was still allowed to reside in Heaven, remember Job? He was roaming the earth and then came before the Lord along with the Angels in Heaven when God asked him where has he been, and if he took note of righteous Job? But after he was cast out of Heaven, he knew it was all over for him, so here he is trying his damnedest to destroy as many of us as he can, as Jesus said; "Satan roams around like a roaring lion to devour whom he may, because he knows his time is short"

In Job, Satan is part of the heavenly throng who present himself before God along with the other angels. According to Revelation 12, Satan is not cast out of heaven until the Apocalypse is well under way, even after the seventh trumpet (Revelation 11), which is supposedly sometime in the future. Show me where Satan becomes the bad guy between Job and Revelation. Answer: Satan is not the ultimate evil bad guy until the NT. As I said, any recourse to Satan cannot be used to demonstrate that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

Revelations is a glimpse of creation from Adam and Eve, to that Day when Jesus destroys this earth, the universe and casts Satan and his angels into hell along with those humans that served him.

We first see the serpent (the word serpent represents trickery, slyness, sharpness etc..) in the Garden tricking Eve into disobeying God. Still in and out of Heaven causing trouble on earth we see him in Job.

Then he notices that the Jews are awaiting THE Messiah to appear, so he convinces one third of the Angels in heaven to come down to earth with him and try to kill the woman who is with child of the Holy One.

And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born.

The Dragon fails to find the woman with the child and:

5 She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. 6 Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.

Satans actions caused a war to break out in Heaven;

7 And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, 8 but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. 9 So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Satan now was furious, all his glory is wasted and he along with all the angels that listened to him are cursed to the supernatural realm on the earth. He no longer has the Angelic power he once had, only deceive those men who are willing to let him posses their bodies;

10 Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. 11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.

12 Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time."

This invisible Spiritual Kingdom is not at all what was prophesized. Again it sounds like something made up to cover up the fact that the actual prophecies did not come true.

Can you 'see' my thoughts ThatGirlAgain? How long have we been debating and I have never seen you yet. Was or is our debates real? Look how much work we put into them, all done with the body, yet it is all commanded by our spirit, our minds. The body is just a Temple, a house, a robot to do the biding of our mind. NOT the brain, ... the brain is controlled by the mind.

How can we see the Kingdom of God? It is when we start to discern between good and evil, when we recognize the evil in this world and wonder, imagine that New Eternal Kingdom where no evil will be able to ruin our plans.

The Kingdom of God as predicted in the OT was not to be invisible but to be very physically real and obvious to everyone. Talking about invisible kingdoms instead of what was prophesized does not support Jesus being the Jewish Messiah. Rather it argues against it.

We been over this many times before in the past where I have shown you clearly about the Spiritual Kingdom that has arrived just as it was prophesied, but you want a physical one. How long are you planing to live in that New physical kingdom ThatGirlAgain? 70, 80 or maybe 90 years, the final ones in a wheel chair? Stick to the BB theory, at least like that you'll become part of the universe, maybe a twinkling star or something and get to evolve into something else again. Oh what joy.

Jesus said that this world is not His home, if it was, He would have called legions of Angels to help Him.

If you want to discuss the Big Bang or Evolution, go to the appropriate forum. I will only discuss it here to the extent that the alternative to the Big Bang is that the universe always existed and there is no creator. Never quite grasped why theists might be opposed to the Big Bang.

Have you grasped the difference between the gods in theism and the One True God of the Hebrews yet? I believe my toy box full of plastic toy soldiers analogy is pretty clear don't you think?

Also, once you can imagine the mind apart from the body (remember the the brain is part of the body), you will start to understand (see) this New Kingdom. We are mostly using and communicating with each other right now using our mind, the rest is physical tools we use from the house (brain, hands etc), or outside the house like the computer and so on.

The Big Bang Evolution theory is like a used-car salesman telling you a long story about the history of the car he is selling you, trying to distract you from the actual car your looking at. And we both know it works, unless that 'old grandma' that drove that car to church and back on Sunday only for the past six years was a heavy pot smoker and beer drinker and hid her beer cans under the seat along with the marijuana buts?

I repeat my comments from above. The Kingdom of God was supposed to be visible and physical and obvious to everyone. That it is not only demonstrates that Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

OK, so you are waiting for a physical Eternal Kingdom ruled by, ... hmm... by, ... by, ... by someone other than the Jewish Messiah, right? Only you don't believe in God, so back to evolution again. Can't you see that Satan tricked you in believing that you can be a part of some eternal physical kingdom?

The destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem happened. But they were supposed to be followed very quickly by the Second Coming. Did not happen. By the time that John and Acts were written this had become painfully obvious and other excuses were needed. John has it become a misunderstanding that it would happen quickly despite the very explicit language of the Synoptic Gospels and the clear expectation of Paul. Acts changes it from Jesus returning to the Holy Spirit, again despite explicit language in the Synoptics and Paul about an imminent return of Jesus and a universal judgment.

Not only do the OT prophecies fall flat. So do the NT ones.

No, not only the Holy Spirit that entered the believers, but the Spiritual Kingdom that was revealed to their minds. I know it IS hard, but we have to at least start to imagine the 'mind/spirit/soul' of man separate from the body. I had a hard time separating it too because we think that the brain creates the mind, ... that somehow those electrical impulses make up the 'mind', but it's not. The mind is our spirit that resides in this temple, or body and even though it is invisible, it is very real, ... without it we could not reason, walk, talk, create, OR live. We would be no different than a clay sculpture.

The New Kingdom is a Spiritual Kingdom that for now only our 'mind' can enter in and out from. And as Jesus said; "where two or three are gathered in my name, there I will be in the midst of you" It is NOT by sight...

Once more: This spiritual kingdom is not what was prophesized. Something entirely different was prophesized. It did not happen. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

The Synoptic Gospels clearly reference the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and state that these will happen in the current generation before all those who heard the words of Jesus were dead.

Again, the Spiritual Kingdom came at Pentecost and is here, only this physical body cannot see it, nor enter it.

Just as we are promised a new body for our spirit/soul to live in, there will be a new Earth and a new Heaven for our new bodies to live in. It is no use for this physical brain to demand something it cannot understand, the mind ... that spirit within us must come alive first (born again), but the flesh is against that, it wants to see it for itself, because it wants to live not die. Look how many are dead in Christ, don't believe in God, make up fairytale theories as their creator and then demand to see the Spiritual Kingdom. Then we say: "If I cannot see it, it didn't happen and it doesn't exist. God doesn't exist either because I cant see Him."

This is why religions like the Jehovah Witnesses changed that coming New Spiritual Kingdom into just a renewed physical kingdom, because this physical body demands to stay alive and live forever on this physical earth. The Mormons do the same thing, they imagine a physical god residing on a physical planet... even if they both have to re-write the whole Bible to fit their demands.

Sorry physical body, but you will NOT 'live forever on this planet earth', or any other planet in this universe.

Yet again: This spiritual kingdom is not what was prophesized. Something entirely different was prophesized. It did not happen. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

Just because you cannot see it does not mean it is not here. ToE does not automatically replace Prophesy no matter how hard you want to believe in those fairy tale stories sold as scientific facts.. lol.

Then immediately after Jesus was supposed to return in the sky with angels and judge everyone. Did not happen. Pushing it into the future is a clear contradiction of this prophecy. Revelation even starts off saying that the time is near for the end of the world and it must soon take place. Did not happen.

"When you see all these things happen, then the end will come..." "The Lord is not slack in His coming, ... only He would that everyone would be saved..."

I understand what you mean though, ... 2,000 years seems a lot for us, but in reality none of us had to live/wait 2,000 years, only around seventy, eighty years and as soon as we close our eyes in death, we are awakened in a blink of an eye, .. right?

It was supposed to happen immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Some people who heard the words of Jesus were supposed to be still alive when Jesus returned. It did not happen. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

Its all about this, that; "Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah." isn't it? But you accept ToE to be him don't you? You accept being labeled subhuman even after what happened to us only seventy years ago? What happened to; "Never Again?"

The Pentecost story is at variance not only with the clear expectations set forth in the OT prophecies, it even is at variance with the explicit NT prophecies. This invisible Kingdom sounds a whole lot like another cover story for prophecies not happening.

Cover story? Our Jewish ancestors were waiting for the Messiah at the time, and He came, and they killed Him. They seen Him with their own eyes, seen what he did and said, so how are they going to accept a Spiritual Kingdom? If they refused to accept and 'believe' what they seen with their eyes and heard with their ears, how will they accept and believe what they cannot see?
Faith is to be sure of what we hope for and certain of things we cannot see, ... yet they believe in a 13.75 billion year old BB story???

The prophecies of Jesus returning immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple while some of the people who heard Jesus make that prophecy were still alive DID NOT HAPPEN. By contrast, the Big Bang has lots of data to support it including prophecies about exactly what the deviations from smoothness in the Cosmic Microwave Background needed to be. These prophecies were fulfilled in fine detail. If convincing contrary data were to surface and withstand pee review, scientists in general would change their minds. This has happened in the past concerning the origin of the universe. It used to be that scientists believed in an eternal universe that had always been around (just like Aristotle thought). They were criticized for being atheists. Then evidence began to mount that the universe had a beginning in time. This developed into what is called Big Bang Theory, a well detailed and very well supported theory. Now scientists who subscribe to the Big Bang (the overwhelming majority) are criticized for being atheists. Make up your mind.

I am an atheist, and will never believe in all them man-made gods you find in theism. If you wish to believe in a tiny rock that was 'in a point in space' before it created space within itself with a big bang, that is up to you. God has given you that freedom my dear friend, and also has given me the freedom to pray for that smart brain of yours so that one day the scales from your eyes would fall and se the horror set before you, ... yes, "once again" my dear friend, ... sadly 'once again'.

This invisible kingdom is not what was promised. The OT prophecies concerning it were not fulfilled and neither were the NT ones. All of the prophecy based reasons for believing that Jesus was the Messiah do not work. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

They were promised a Kingdom that will never pass away, ... we die... so how did they understand an Everlasting Kingdom, ... a physical one? How long before they would have killed that King too? Unless they were expecting to keep ALL the laws flawlessly and make sacrifices purely from the heart as was required for an eternity? Yeah... right, as if they actually even thought of that as a possibility, not alone believed in such a thing?

Amos, the First Prophet, says:

Amos 5

10 There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court
and detest the one who tells the truth.
11 You levy a straw tax on the poor
and impose a tax on their grain.
Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,
you will not live in them;
though you have planted lush vineyards,
you will not drink their wine.
12 For I know how many are your offenses
and how great your sins.
There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
13 Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times,
for the times are evil.
14 Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.
15 Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.

21 I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
23 Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Isaiah agrees:

Isaiah 10
1 Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
2 to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.
3 What will you do on the day of reckoning,
when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your riches?
4 Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives
or fall among the slain.

Not slavish perfect obedience to the letter of the law, but genuine goodness and avoidance of evil was the key to eternal life.

It doesn't matter how good you are ThatGirlAgain, you will never see eternal life by doing good deeds, for all our deeds are like filthy rags before the Lord.

It is the Shammai Pharisees who insisted on literal obedience to the exclusion of the spirit of the Law, pushing aside the teachings of the Hillel Pharisees who immediately preceded them. The message of Jesus was a return to the teachings of the Prophets, to re-establish true righteousness (moral living and charitable works) among the people as justification for the Lord to rescue Israel from evil and establish an everlasting kingdom. The many prophecies about the Lord ruling over all nations makes it clear that this was to be an earthly kingdom. Did not happen. Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah.

I have seen Jesus with my own two eyes, I have seen Angels who came to rescue me many times in my life, I have seen demons attack me, all this and more with other witnesses around me. I am a walking living proof that the Spiritual realm is here, and our war is against principalities and powers of darkness, not killing those deceived Arab brothers of ours with guns.

I am at war, only no Jew, or Christian would acknowledge this of me, yet they fight and war against me.

Come, I invite you and any Christian or Jew that wants to come to my house and will show you first hand the war that is going on. PM me for my address and phone number and I will gladly receive you so you may see that I'm for real, and what I say is not some man made billion year old theory.

Come on, what you got to loose? If you find me an impostor, you can go back and let everyone know it.

Jesus said he would return right after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in the current generation when some of the people hearing him were still alive. Did not happen. Pentecost does not match the prophecies of either the OT or the NT. It is an excuse made up after the fact when it became obvious that Jesus was not coming.

If the Jews didn't believe it 2,000 years ago when Jesus was walking the earth, ... how could I, or anyone make you believe it now? Can you describe what kind of man or woman that you would believe to be the Jewish Messiah? Can you describe this person, what you'd expect him to do, or say that would convince you that he IS the Messiah? Can ANY Jew, or has any Jew described such a person that they's accept as their Messiah?

First of all, many Jews today don't even believe Moses existed, or any God that this Moses talked to existed, so what would some prophesy of some Messiah even matter?

But one will come in his own name, ... now that they will believe.

Fulfilling the major prophecy of establishing the kingdom of God on earth to which all nations would pay allegiance is necessary for a Messiah.

Please tell me how ThatGirlAgain, ... how would this 'king' establish this kingdom? Like Constantine with a sword? Or like the Muslims who will sacrifice their lives in order to kill the infidel?

No, the Kingdom came with the power of Love, and can only be entered with love. To accept people into a Kingdom with love, they must come voluntarily.

Isaiah 11
10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. 11 In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the Mediterranean.
12 He will raise a banner for the nations
and gather the exiles of Israel;
he will assemble the scattered people of Judah
from the four quarters of the earth.
13 Ephraims jealousy will vanish,
and Judahs enemies will be destroyed;
Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah,
nor Judah hostile toward Ephraim.
14 They will swoop down on the slopes of Philistia to the west;
together they will plunder the people to the east.
They will subdue Edom and Moab,
and the Ammonites will be subject to them.
15 The Lord will dry up
the gulf of the Egyptian sea;
with a scorching wind he will sweep his hand
over the Euphrates River.
He will break it up into seven streams
so that anyone can cross over in sandals.
16 There will be a highway for the remnant of his people
that is left from Assyria,
as there was for Israel
when they came up from Egypt.

The OT is the ground the New Kingdom is built upon (sown in). It starts with the physical and ends with the Eternal. But the physical must pass away first, like a seed it dies and a New Eternal Kingdom rises. It is sown in corruption, in weakness but raised in glory, incorruptible.

1. The New Spiritual Kingdom is not what was prophesized in either the OT or the NT. If the born again can literally see it (as opposed to merely believe the story) can they describe what it looks like and have other people agree with that description in detail? If not then they are not seeing anything real.

When you hear someone talk to you and tell you something, can you see it with your eyes, or do you vision it with your mind? You 'see it' with your mind right? Well the same way we can see that Spiritual Kingdom that is here, ... it is where absolute truth reigns. Can you 'see' truth?

Where you see believers walk in the teachings of Christ, there you see people walking in that Kingdom.

The Kingdom was to be a visible physical obvious to all earthly kingdom. Did not happen. The invisible kingdom, which bears none of the prophesized attributes of the Kingdom of God, sound a lot like the Emperors New Clothes.

It IS obvious, that is why the war against it!

2. Jesus has been coming soon for a couple thousand years now. He was supposed to have come immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple while some of the people who heard his words were still alive. Did not happen.

As I said before, describe to me the person who you, or that you believe the Jews would accept as their Messiah? Give me the time, the manner, the family, the place, the character and some of his deeds that would be expected of him to reign and rule Israel forever in an Eternal Kingdom? This way I could understand why Jesus did not fit that person, and why He was so rejected by the Jews.

Isaiah (above) told us what the Messiah was to accomplish. The NT agrees with this and says this was to happen immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, while some of the people who heard Jesus speaking were still alive. Did not happen. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

So again, ... how was this to be brought about, ... war, with the sword? Where the whole world bows to the Jews and their mighty hero messiah?

If love can't rule a nation, then God will not be their ruler. Jesus was the example of this true Love, and those that wish to serve Him must serve Him in love. If love cannot win over a person, then that person cannot be a part of this Spiritual Kingdom.

3. Jesus made it very clear (Matthew 19,25, Mark 10, Luke 18 and Revelation 22 among other places) that eternal life is earned by deeds not by belief. Jesus even minimized his role in it. Or would you rather have a God who will send those who never had a chance to hear of Jesus to eternal hellfire despite the clear words of Jesus? What makes you think that you can trust a God like that?

Faith without works is dead, just as works without faith is useless. God is just and kind. God is Love so I'm sure He will judge according to His character every last person.

I don't worry about those that haven't heard of God and Christ, I worry of those who have heard and even seen the miracles and still denied Him, and continue to deny Him.

Give me scriptural references that say that works without faith is useless. Justify your interpretation of these references in light of Jesus saying how to achieve eternal life in Mark 10, Matthew 19 and Luke 18 and also with the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25. These are all about works and not a word about faith. In the Rich Man storiesJesus even downplays his own role in the matter.

In the rich man story Jesus shows that no matter how much 'works' we do, it is not enough because there is always something we will lack in. Jesus is the paid-in-full release, not our deeds.

4. Revelation said the end of the world must soon take place and the time is near. It also says that Jesus is coming soon. That was a couple of thousand years ago. Did not happen.

2,000 years later and just look around you and see how many truly serve the God of the Hebrews, the One True God even though He sent His own Son to die for us? Maybe God sees that 2,000 years is just not enough? Pretty much everyone heard of Christ, I mean He is preached throughout the world, but it seems to me we would still need at least another two to three hundred years to sink in, what do you think?

What are you sayingGod figured wrong? Like he did not know? No wonder all those prophesy fulfillments are so flakey.

God will not use force to get anyone into His Kingdom, but He can prolong the time. The war is against deception, not against flesh and blood as in the OT times. God waits, ... only I doubt for much longer... and the rest of those fulfillment's that are left are punishments after the door is closed.

Vast numbers of people never heard of Christ and never will because they are already dead. It does not matter how long the End of Days is pushed off, that will always be the case.

Our responsibilities extend to our families, what we do now, the decisions we make now could have eternal consequences on our children's children too. So those that have died, their future have been evaluated already. God would never throw a good person into hell, not even a potentially good person.

And the way things are going, Christianity will be lucky to be around in two to three hundred years.

You mean Constantine's Christian religion? I sure hope people will realize the true God of the Bible and follow Christ and acknowledge Him as the Son, not God himself. I doubt that there is much more time left, wickedness has reached an all time high, even to Heaven itself, and just like in the days of Noah, and in the days of Sodom and Gomorra, so shall the Day of the Son of man be. So it is almost 'finished'... just a few last things for fulfillment's sake.

[Nickman]

Just putting in an observation, in response to no one, that might be relevant to this whole question -- inspired by a Religious School class I was teaching last Sunday.

To Christians, the entire Bible is all of a piece, all the Word of God, all equally authoritative. That partly explains why they put so much stock in the various "prophecies" they find in Isaiah, the Psalms, Daniel, and so on.

For Jews, this is not the case; there is a hierarchy of authority in the Hebrew Bible, and it is not all equal.

The most sacred and authoritative part of the Bible is the Torah, which consists of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. THAT is the Torah that we study so assiduously, that we read through in services over the course of every year, and that is the foundation of our religion -- WHATEVER its origins and provenance.

Those books are, of course, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The rest of the Bible is neither so sacred nor so authoritative. After the Torah come the Prophets -- Nevi'im in Hebrew -- which are revered, but not studied as much; they refer mostly to events in their own times. These books are not coequal with the Torah or even close to it; they might even be considered the first commentary on the Torah. The term "Prophet" to Jews does not denote one who tells the future -- that's very rare, in Jewish teaching, and generally only happens in the short term to prove a point to a specific audience. "Prophet" means "one who speaks the truth." There are, to be sure, "prophecies of the End of Days -- but those have never been considered detailed blueprints of things that are to come, but only metaphorical and poetic statements about the eventual and ultimate destiny of the world.

The Prophets include, first, the major prophetic books: These are Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel; and the minor prophets, which are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habbakuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

The rest, after the Prophets, is called the "Writings" -- in Hebrew, Khethuvi'im -- and those are even less sacred and less authoritative. Those consist of historical court records, hymns and songs, poems, "wisdom" literature (like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes), and so on. They are a vital and beloved part of our heritage, but they are not considered coequal with the Torah any more than the Prophets are -- in fact, much less.

The Writings are: First, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job; then the "five megilloth or Scrolls, which are read on certain Jewish holidays; The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther; and finally, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. These last were considered, even by the rabbis and sages of old, to be rather late books and to be taken with a few grains of salt -- and all of the Writings were definitely considered works of imagination and literary creativity. I don't think that any of them were ever read literally, even when they were newly written.

The Hebrew name for the Jewish Bible is Tanakh; this is a Hebrew acronym formed by the first letters of the three sections -- T, N, Kh; Torah, Nevi'im, Khethuvi'im. These constitute the Hebrew Bible, but it is only the Torah that is read in services from enormous handwritten scrolls that are kept covered in the Ark (a cabinet) at the front of the sanctuary, where an altar would be in Christian churches.

Perhaps all that will help. I've often said that we Jews read the Bible in a different way than Christians, and this may by the primary difference. It also explains why the order of the books in Jewish Bibles differs from that in Christian ones.

Thank you for this input. I learned this a while back but you definitely reiterated what I had learned previously and I think you have a great point.

The Christian usually picks what they think is the most important part of the Hebrew texts. They tend to go to one of the least important parts of the Jewish scriptures and quote it as if it is the most important part.

[ThatGirlAgain]

But it still amounts to there being no prophecy about what did happen and the prophecy about what was supposed to happen unfulfilled. I do not see how this supports the notion that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, which is what this thread is all about. In fact I do not see how it amounts to anything more than a less than credible excuse for the wrong thing happening. It seems that it would give Satan the idea that this Jesus guy was a fake and that God is powerless, thereby encouraging Satan to really go to town on world domination.

That is exactly what is going on, a senseless all out world domination where every nation is deceived equally and has accepted a lie of promises that they will never collect on. God is powerless to help those that refuse His help.

Satan knows that Jesus is coming back, and even the demons said when they seen Jesus the first time; "Have you come to judge us before it's time?"
Satan has to fool people so they would not notice the times. I mean people are worshiping some devine beings instead of the One True God.

So the point of making prophecies and then not fulfilling them was to encourage Satan to go to town on world domination? God was intentionally helping Satan by lying to people? How can you trust a God like that?

I don't see how you derived that from what I said?

God revealed to His Prophets what was coming, an Eternal Kingdom ruled by God without Satans influence, or those that love a lie.

Satan is angry, so he goes after everyone to try to stop them from realizing the Spiritual Kingdom that Jesus revealed for those who love Him, and rejoiced in His arrival.
When the demons saw Jesus, they thought that judgement Day has come upon them, but also knew that many prophesies were still unfulfilled, ... so they asked...

The demons thought the end had come. It had not. From their point of view this alleged messiah, who was supposed to bring the end of days, was powerless in that regard. They no doubt told their boss about this and Satan proceeded to gear up big time for world domination. By not bringing about the end of days as had been promised, God encouraged Satan. How can you trust a bumbling God like that? What makes you think any other promises are going to be kept?

Of course that is assuming that the Satan character is really as portrayed in the NT. The OT Satan is much different, more of a devils advocate ( 0) than the personification of evil. Any recourse to the reconstructed Satan as an element in demonstrating Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah is not going to work.

In the OT Satan was still allowed to reside in Heaven, remember Job? He was roaming the earth and then came before the Lord along with the Angels in Heaven when God asked him where has he been, and if he took note of righteous Job? But after he was cast out of Heaven, he knew it was all over for him, so here he is trying his damnedest to destroy as many of us as he can, as Jesus said; "Satan roams around like a roaring lion to devour whom he may, because he knows his time is short"

In Job, Satan is part of the heavenly throng who present himself before God along with the other angels. According to Revelation 12, Satan is not cast out of heaven until the Apocalypse is well under way, even after the seventh trumpet (Revelation 11), which is supposedly sometime in the future. Show me where Satan becomes the bad guy between Job and Revelation. Answer: Satan is not the ultimate evil bad guy until the NT. As I said, any recourse to Satan cannot be used to demonstrate that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

Revelations is a glimpse of creation from Adam and Eve, to that Day when Jesus destroys this earth, the universe and casts Satan and his angels into hell along with those humans that served him.

We first see the serpent (the word serpent represents trickery, slyness, sharpness etc..) in the Garden tricking Eve into disobeying God. Still in and out of Heaven causing trouble on earth we see him in Job.

Then he notices that the Jews are awaiting THE Messiah to appear, so he convinces one third of the Angels in heaven to come down to earth with him and try to kill the woman who is with child of the Holy One.

And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born.

The Dragon fails to find the woman with the child and:

5 She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. 6 Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.

Satans actions caused a war to break out in Heaven;

7 And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, 8 but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. 9 So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Satan now was furious, all his glory is wasted and he along with all the angels that listened to him are cursed to the supernatural realm on the earth. He no longer has the Angelic power he once had, only deceive those men who are willing to let him posses their bodies;

10 Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. 11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.

12 Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time."

Wrong. The episode with the woman and the child happens after the seventh trumpet when the end of days is already well under way. It is not in the past. It is in the future. I already pointed that out and you did not address it. Having Satan be the post-rebellion incarnation of evil in the NT is inconsistent with the picture presented in the OT. Reference to that kind of Satan cannot be used to justify the idea of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.

This invisible Spiritual Kingdom is not at all what was prophesized. Again it sounds like something made up to cover up the fact that the actual prophecies did not come true.

Can you 'see' my thoughts ThatGirlAgain? How long have we been debating and I have never seen you yet. Was or is our debates real? Look how much work we put into them, all done with the body, yet it is all commanded by our spirit, our minds. The body is just a Temple, a house, a robot to do the biding of our mind. NOT the brain, ... the brain is controlled by the mind.

How can we see the Kingdom of God? It is when we start to discern between good and evil, when we recognize the evil in this world and wonder, imagine that New Eternal Kingdom where no evil will be able to ruin our plans.

The Kingdom of God as predicted in the OT was not to be invisible but to be very physically real and obvious to everyone. Talking about invisible kingdoms instead of what was prophesized does not support Jesus being the Jewish Messiah. Rather it argues against it.

We been over this many times before in the past where I have shown you clearly about the Spiritual Kingdom that has arrived just as it was prophesied, but you want a physical one. How long are you planing to live in that New physical kingdom ThatGirlAgain? 70, 80 or maybe 90 years, the final ones in a wheel chair? Stick to the BB theory, at least like that you'll become part of the universe, maybe a twinkling star or something and get to evolve into something else again. Oh what joy.

Jesus said that this world is not His home, if it was, He would have called legions of Angels to help Him.

First, that the kingdom of God will be established forcibly, by the sword to speak metaphorically.

Isaiah 1
24 Therefore the Lord, the Lord Almighty,
the Mighty One of Israel, declares:
Ah! I will vent my wrath on my foes
and avenge myself on my enemies.
25 I will turn my hand against you;
I will thoroughly purge away your dross
and remove all your impurities.
26 I will restore your leaders as in days of old,
your rulers as at the beginning.
Afterward you will be called
the City of Righteousness,
the Faithful City.
27 Zion will be delivered with justice,
her penitent ones with righteousness.
28 But rebels and sinners will both be broken,
and those who forsake the Lord will perish.

Isaiah 2
12 The Lord Almighty has a day in store
for all the proud and lofty,
for all that is exalted
(and they will be humbled),
13 for all the cedars of Lebanon, tall and lofty,
and all the oaks of Bashan,
14 for all the towering mountains
and all the high hills,
15 for every lofty tower
and every fortified wall,
16 for every trading ship
and every stately vessel.
17 The arrogance of man will be brought low
and human pride humbled;
the Lord alone will be exalted in that day,
18 and the idols will totally disappear.
19 People will flee to caves in the rocks
and to holes in the ground
from the fearful presence of the Lord
and the splendor of his majesty,
when he rises to shake the earth.
20 In that day people will throw away
to the moles and bats
their idols of silver and idols of gold,
which they made to worship.
21 They will flee to caverns in the rocks
and to the overhanging crags
from the fearful presence of the Lord
and the splendor of his majesty,
when he rises to shake the earth.

Isaiah 11
12 He will raise a banner for the nations
and gather the exiles of Israel;
he will assemble the scattered people of Judah
from the four quarters of the earth.
13 Ephraims jealousy will vanish,
and Judahs enemies will be destroyed;
Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah,
nor Judah hostile toward Ephraim.
14 They will swoop down on the slopes of Philistia to the west;
together they will plunder the people to the east.
They will subdue Edom and Moab,
and the Ammonites will be subject to them.
15 The Lord will dry up
the gulf of the Egyptian sea;
with a scorching wind he will sweep his hand
over the Euphrates River.
He will break it up into seven streams
so that anyone can cross over in sandals.
16 There will be a highway for the remnant of his people
that is left from Assyria,
as there was for Israel
when they came up from Egypt.

Isaiah 25
10 The hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain;
but Moab will be trampled in their land
as straw is trampled down in the manure.
11 They will stretch out their hands in it,
as swimmers stretch out their hands to swim.
God will bring down their pride
despite the cleverness of their hands.
12 He will bring down your high fortified walls
and lay them low;
he will bring them down to the ground,
to the very dust.

Isaiah 26
11 Lord, your hand is lifted high,
but they do not see it.
Let them see your zeal for your people and be put to shame;
let the fire reserved for your enemies consume them.

Isaiah 26
19 But your dead will live, Lord;
their bodies will rise"
let those who dwell in the dust
wake up and shout for joy"
your dew is like the dew of the morning;
the earth will give birth to her dead.
20 Go, my people, enter your rooms
and shut the doors behind you;
hide yourselves for a little while
until his wrath has passed by.
21 See, the Lord is coming out of his dwelling
to punish the people of the earth for their sins.
The earth will disclose the blood shed on it;
the earth will conceal its slain no longer.

Isaiah 59
17 He put on righteousness as his breastplate,
and the helmet of salvation on his head;
he put on the garments of vengeance
and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.
18 According to what they have done,
so will he repay
wrath to his enemies
and retribution to his foes;
he will repay the islands their due.
19 From the west, people will fear the name of the Lord,
and from the rising of the sun, they will revere his glory.
For he will come like a pent-up flood
that the breath of the Lord drives along.
20 The Redeemer will come to Zion,
to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,
declares the Lord.

The Isaiah 26 reference to the resurrection of the dead makes it clear that it is the end of days that Isaiah is talking about.

The kingdom will be a physical one.

Isaiah 60
10 Foreigners will rebuild your walls,
and their kings will serve you.
Though in anger I struck you,
in favor I will show you compassion.
11 Your gates will always stand open,
they will never be shut, day or night,
so that people may bring you the wealth of the nations"
their kings led in triumphal procession.
12 For the nation or kingdom that will not serve you will perish;
it will be utterly ruined.
13 The glory of Lebanon will come to you,
the juniper, the fir and the cypress together,
to adorn my sanctuary;
and I will glorify the place for my feet.
14 The children of your oppressors will come bowing before you;
all who despise you will bow down at your feet
and will call you the City of the Lord,
Zion of the Holy One of Israel.
15 Although you have been forsaken and hated,
with no one traveling through,
I will make you the everlasting pride
and the joy of all generations.
16 You will drink the milk of nations
and be nursed at royal breasts.
Then you will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior,
your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.
17 Instead of bronze I will bring you gold,
and silver in place of iron.
Instead of wood I will bring you bronze,
and iron in place of stones.
I will make peace your governor
and well-being your ruler.
18 No longer will violence be heard in your land,
nor ruin or destruction within your borders,
but you will call your walls Salvation
and your gates Praise.

Zechariah 8
19 This is what the Lord Almighty says: The fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months will become joyful and glad occasions and happy festivals for Judah. Therefore love truth and peace.
20 This is what the Lord Almighty says: Many peoples and the inhabitants of many cities will yet come, 21 and the inhabitants of one city will go to another and say, Let us go at once to entreat the Lord and seek the Lord Almighty. I myself am going. 22 And many peoples and powerful nations will come to Jerusalem to seek the Lord Almighty and to entreat him.
23 This is what the Lord Almighty says: In those days ten people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.

Ezekiel 39
7 I will make known my holy name among my people Israel. I will no longer let my holy name be profaned, and the nations will know that I the Lord am the Holy One in Israel. 8 It is coming! It will surely take place, declares the Sovereign Lord. This is the day I have spoken of.
9 Then those who live in the towns of Israel will go out and use the weapons for fuel and burn them up"the small and large shields, the bows and arrows, the war clubs and spears. For seven years they will use them for fuel. 10 They will not need to gather wood from the fields or cut it from the forests, because they will use the weapons for fuel. And they will plunder those who plundered them and loot those who looted them, declares the Sovereign Lord.

Isaiah 51
3 The Lord will surely comfort Zion
and will look with compassion on all her ruins;
he will make her deserts like Eden,
her wastelands like the garden of the Lord.
Joy and gladness will be found in her,
thanksgiving and the sound of singing.
4 Listen to me, my people;
hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations.

But there will be no more death or suffering.

Isaiah 25
6 On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine"
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
7 On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
8 he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his peoples disgrace
from all the earth.

Now, can you cite OT references that somehow negate all of the above and also predict that the kingdom will be invisible and that it will somehow arrive long before the end of days? Remember it has to be OT references to establish Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. NT references to invisible kingdoms are flimflams intended to cover up the fact that the alleged messiah failed to deliver on the promises.

If you want to discuss the Big Bang or Evolution, go to the appropriate forum. I will only discuss it here to the extent that the alternative to the Big Bang is that the universe always existed and there is no creator. Never quite grasped why theists might be opposed to the Big Bang.

Have you grasped the difference between the gods in theism and the One True God of the Hebrews yet? I believe my toy box full of plastic toy soldiers analogy is pretty clear don't you think?

Also, once you can imagine the mind apart from the body (remember the the brain is part of the body), you will start to understand (see) this New Kingdom. We are mostly using and communicating with each other right now using our mind, the rest is physical tools we use from the house (brain, hands etc), or outside the house like the computer and so on.

The Big Bang Evolution theory is like a used-car salesman telling you a long story about the history of the car he is selling you, trying to distract you from the actual car your looking at. And we both know it works, unless that 'old grandma' that drove that car to church and back on Sunday only for the past six years was a heavy pot smoker and beer drinker and hid her beer cans under the seat along with the marijuana buts?

I repeat my comments from above. The Kingdom of God was supposed to be visible and physical and obvious to everyone. That it is not only demonstrates that Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

OK, so you are waiting for a physical Eternal Kingdom ruled by, ... hmm... by, ... by, ... by someone other than the Jewish Messiah, right? Only you don't believe in God, so back to evolution again. Can't you see that Satan tricked you in believing that you can be a part of some eternal physical kingdom?

According to the OT (see all the above quotes an especially see Isaiah 11) the Kingdom of God will be ruled by the Jewish Messiah. It will be an earthly kingdom blessed by God with a human descendent of David as its earthly ruler.

Isaiah 2]
2 In the last days
the mountain of the Lords temple will be established
as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
and all nations will stream to it.
3 Many peoples will come and say,
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
5 Come, descendants of Jacob,
let us walk in the light of the Lord

The destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem happened. But they were supposed to be followed very quickly by the Second Coming. Did not happen. By the time that John and Acts were written this had become painfully obvious and other excuses were needed. John has it become a misunderstanding that it would happen quickly despite the very explicit language of the Synoptic Gospels and the clear expectation of Paul. Acts changes it from Jesus returning to the Holy Spirit, again despite explicit language in the Synoptics and Paul about an imminent return of Jesus and a universal judgment.

Not only do the OT prophecies fall flat. So do the NT ones.

No, not only the Holy Spirit that entered the believers, but the Spiritual Kingdom that was revealed to their minds. I know it IS hard, but we have to at least start to imagine the 'mind/spirit/soul' of man separate from the body. I had a hard time separating it too because we think that the brain creates the mind, ... that somehow those electrical impulses make up the 'mind', but it's not. The mind is our spirit that resides in this temple, or body and even though it is invisible, it is very real, ... without it we could not reason, walk, talk, create, OR live. We would be no different than a clay sculpture.

The New Kingdom is a Spiritual Kingdom that for now only our 'mind' can enter in and out from. And as Jesus said; "where two or three are gathered in my name, there I will be in the midst of you" It is NOT by sight...

Once more: This spiritual kingdom is not what was prophesized. Something entirely different was prophesized. It did not happen. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

The Synoptic Gospels clearly reference the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and state that these will happen in the current generation before all those who heard the words of Jesus were dead.

Again, the Spiritual Kingdom came at Pentecost and is here, only this physical body cannot see it, nor enter it.

Just as we are promised a new body for our spirit/soul to live in, there will be a new Earth and a new Heaven for our new bodies to live in. It is no use for this physical brain to demand something it cannot understand, the mind ... that spirit within us must come alive first (born again), but the flesh is against that, it wants to see it for itself, because it wants to live not die. Look how many are dead in Christ, don't believe in God, make up fairytale theories as their creator and then demand to see the Spiritual Kingdom. Then we say: "If I cannot see it, it didn't happen and it doesn't exist. God doesn't exist either because I cant see Him."

This is why religions like the Jehovah Witnesses changed that coming New Spiritual Kingdom into just a renewed physical kingdom, because this physical body demands to stay alive and live forever on this physical earth. The Mormons do the same thing, they imagine a physical god residing on a physical planet... even if they both have to re-write the whole Bible to fit their demands.

Sorry physical body, but you will NOT 'live forever on this planet earth', or any other planet in this universe.

Yet again: This spiritual kingdom is not what was prophesized. Something entirely different was prophesized. It did not happen. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

Just because you cannot see it does not mean it is not here. ToE does not automatically replace Prophesy no matter how hard you want to believe in those fairy tale stories sold as scientific facts.. lol.

Evolution and the Big Bang are irrelevant to what the OT says, which is entirely different from what the NT says. That is the subject of the debate, whether Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. And the answer is no.

Then immediately after Jesus was supposed to return in the sky with angels and judge everyone. Did not happen. Pushing it into the future is a clear contradiction of this prophecy. Revelation even starts off saying that the time is near for the end of the world and it must soon take place. Did not happen.

"When you see all these things happen, then the end will come..." "The Lord is not slack in His coming, ... only He would that everyone would be saved..."

I understand what you mean though, ... 2,000 years seems a lot for us, but in reality none of us had to live/wait 2,000 years, only around seventy, eighty years and as soon as we close our eyes in death, we are awakened in a blink of an eye, .. right?

It was supposed to happen immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Some people who heard the words of Jesus were supposed to be still alive when Jesus returned. It did not happen. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

Its all about this, that; "Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah." isn't it? But you accept ToE to be him don't you? You accept being labeled subhuman even after what happened to us only seventy years ago? What happened to; "Never Again?"

You really have no answer to all of the objections to Jesus being the Jewish Messiah, do you? Debate the topic, not fall back on some rally round the flag Us vs. Them scenario, invoking everything except the subject itself.

The Pentecost story is at variance not only with the clear expectations set forth in the OT prophecies, it even is at variance with the explicit NT prophecies. This invisible Kingdom sounds a whole lot like another cover story for prophecies not happening.

Cover story? Our Jewish ancestors were waiting for the Messiah at the time, and He came, and they killed Him. They seen Him with their own eyes, seen what he did and said, so how are they going to accept a Spiritual Kingdom? If they refused to accept and 'believe' what they seen with their eyes and heard with their ears, how will they accept and believe what they cannot see?
Faith is to be sure of what we hope for and certain of things we cannot see, ... yet they believe in a 13.75 billion year old BB story???

The prophecies of Jesus returning immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple while some of the people who heard Jesus make that prophecy were still alive DID NOT HAPPEN. By contrast, the Big Bang has lots of data to support it including prophecies about exactly what the deviations from smoothness in the Cosmic Microwave Background needed to be. These prophecies were fulfilled in fine detail. If convincing contrary data were to surface and withstand peer review, scientists in general would change their minds. This has happened in the past concerning the origin of the universe. It used to be that scientists believed in an eternal universe that had always been around (just like Aristotle thought). They were criticized for being atheists. Then evidence began to mount that the universe had a beginning in time. This developed into what is called Big Bang Theory, a well detailed and very well supported theory. Now scientists who subscribe to the Big Bang (the overwhelming majority) are criticized for being atheists. Make up your mind.

I am an atheist, and will never believe in all them man-made gods you find in theism. If you wish to believe in a tiny rock that was 'in a point in space' before it created space within itself with a big bang, that is up to you. God has given you that freedom my dear friend, and also has given me the freedom to pray for that smart brain of yours so that one day the scales from your eyes would fall and se the horror set before you, ... yes, "once again" my dear friend, ... sadly 'once again'.

And again: You really have no answer to all of the objections to Jesus being the Jewish Messiah, do you? Debate the topic, not fall back on some rally round the flag Us vs. Them scenario.

This invisible kingdom is not what was promised. The OT prophecies concerning it were not fulfilled and neither were the NT ones. All of the prophecy based reasons for believing that Jesus was the Messiah do not work. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

They were promised a Kingdom that will never pass away, ... we die... so how did they understand an Everlasting Kingdom, ... a physical one? How long before they would have killed that King too? Unless they were expecting to keep ALL the laws flawlessly and make sacrifices purely from the heart as was required for an eternity? Yeah... right, as if they actually even thought of that as a possibility, not alone believed in such a thing?

Amos, the First Prophet, says:

Amos 5

10 There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court
and detest the one who tells the truth.
11 You levy a straw tax on the poor
and impose a tax on their grain.
Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,
you will not live in them;
though you have planted lush vineyards,
you will not drink their wine.
12 For I know how many are your offenses
and how great your sins.
There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
13 Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times,
for the times are evil.
14 Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.
15 Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.

21 I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
23 Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Isaiah agrees:

Isaiah 10
1 Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
2 to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.
3 What will you do on the day of reckoning,
when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your riches?
4 Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives
or fall among the slain.

Not slavish perfect obedience to the letter of the law, but genuine goodness and avoidance of evil was the key to eternal life.

It doesn't matter how good you are ThatGirlAgain, you will never see eternal life by doing good deeds, for all our deeds are like filthy rags before the Lord.

It works a lot better if you quote scripture in context

Isaiah 64
4 Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember your ways.
But when we continued to sin against them,
you were angry.
How then can we be saved?
6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
7 No one calls on your name
or strives to lay hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and have given us over to our sins.

It is those who sin against the ones who gladly do right whose righteous acts are like filthy rags because they are hypocritical in also sinning at the same time and against exactly those that the Lord respects for being truly righteous.

The Bible is a not a collection of Confucius says one-liners. Read " and quote " in context.

It is the Shammai Pharisees who insisted on literal obedience to the exclusion of the spirit of the Law, pushing aside the teachings of the Hillel Pharisees who immediately preceded them. The message of Jesus was a return to the teachings of the Prophets, to re-establish true righteousness (moral living and charitable works) among the people as justification for the Lord to rescue Israel from evil and establish an everlasting kingdom. The many prophecies about the Lord ruling over all nations makes it clear that this was to be an earthly kingdom. Did not happen. Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah.

I have seen Jesus with my own two eyes, I have seen Angels who came to rescue me many times in my life, I have seen demons attack me, all this and more with other witnesses around me. I am a walking living proof that the Spiritual realm is here, and our war is against principalities and powers of darkness, not killing those deceived Arab brothers of ours with guns.

I am at war, only no Jew, or Christian would acknowledge this of me, yet they fight and war against me.

Come, I invite you and any Christian or Jew that wants to come to my house and will show you first hand the war that is going on. PM me for my address and phone number and I will gladly receive you so you may see that I'm for real, and what I say is not some man made billion year old theory.

Come on, what you got to loose? If you find me an impostor, you can go back and let everyone know it.

If you have indeed seen Jesus and angels and demons and that others can see this for themselves by coming to your house, I suggest that you get in touch with Randi. Convincing him will convince the world.

Jesus said he would return right after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in the current generation when some of the people hearing him were still alive. Did not happen. Pentecost does not match the prophecies of either the OT or the NT. It is an excuse made up after the fact when it became obvious that Jesus was not coming.

If the Jews didn't believe it 2,000 years ago when Jesus was walking the earth, ... how could I, or anyone make you believe it now? Can you describe what kind of man or woman that you would believe to be the Jewish Messiah? Can you describe this person, what you'd expect him to do, or say that would convince you that he IS the Messiah? Can ANY Jew, or has any Jew described such a person that they's accept as their Messiah?

First of all, many Jews today don't even believe Moses existed, or any God that this Moses talked to existed, so what would some prophesy of some Messiah even matter?

But one will come in his own name, ... now that they will believe.

Fulfilling the major prophecy of establishing the kingdom of God on earth to which all nations would pay allegiance is necessary for a Messiah.

Please tell me how ThatGirlAgain, ... how would this 'king' establish this kingdom? Like Constantine with a sword? Or like the Muslims who will sacrifice their lives in order to kill the infidel?

No, the Kingdom came with the power of Love, and can only be entered with love. To accept people into a Kingdom with love, they must come voluntarily.

I already gave extensive quotes on how the kingdom will be established by force according to the OT. If the NT says differently, then Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

Isaiah 11
10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. 11 In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the Mediterranean.
12 He will raise a banner for the nations
and gather the exiles of Israel;
he will assemble the scattered people of Judah
from the four quarters of the earth.
13 Ephraims jealousy will vanish,
and Judahs enemies will be destroyed;
Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah,
nor Judah hostile toward Ephraim.
14 They will swoop down on the slopes of Philistia to the west;
together they will plunder the people to the east.
They will subdue Edom and Moab,
and the Ammonites will be subject to them.
15 The Lord will dry up
the gulf of the Egyptian sea;
with a scorching wind he will sweep his hand
over the Euphrates River.
He will break it up into seven streams
so that anyone can cross over in sandals.
16 There will be a highway for the remnant of his people
that is left from Assyria,
as there was for Israel
when they came up from Egypt.

The OT is the ground the New Kingdom is built upon (sown in). It starts with the physical and ends with the Eternal. But the physical must pass away first, like a seed it dies and a New Eternal Kingdom rises. It is sown in corruption, in weakness but raised in glory, incorruptible.

Give me OT references to support your claim. I have already given lots of OT references that say the opposite of what you say. NT references will not work. If they contradict the OT it will only prove that Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

1. The New Spiritual Kingdom is not what was prophesized in either the OT or the NT. If the born again can literally see it (as opposed to merely believe the story) can they describe what it looks like and have other people agree with that description in detail? If not then they are not seeing anything real.

When you hear someone talk to you and tell you something, can you see it with your eyes, or do you vision it with your mind? You 'see it' with your mind right? Well the same way we can see that Spiritual Kingdom that is here, ... it is where absolute truth reigns. Can you 'see' truth?

Where you see believers walk in the teachings of Christ, there you see people walking in that Kingdom.

The Kingdom was to be a visible physical obvious to all earthly kingdom. Did not happen. The invisible kingdom, which bears none of the prophesized attributes of the Kingdom of God, sounds a lot like the Emperors New Clothes.

It IS obvious, that is why the war against it!

Totally unobvious, being both invisible and apparently having no way of verifying its actuality as well as contradicting the OT all over the place.

2. Jesus has been coming soon for a couple thousand years now. He was supposed to have come immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple while some of the people who heard his words were still alive. Did not happen.

As I said before, describe to me the person who you, or that you believe the Jews would accept as their Messiah? Give me the time, the manner, the family, the place, the character and some of his deeds that would be expected of him to reign and rule Israel forever in an Eternal Kingdom? This way I could understand why Jesus did not fit that person, and why He was so rejected by the Jews.

Isaiah (above) told us what the Messiah was to accomplish. The NT agrees with this and says this was to happen immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, while some of the people who heard Jesus speaking were still alive. Did not happen. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah.

So again, ... how was this to be brought about, ... war, with the sword? Where the whole world bows to the Jews and their mighty hero messiah?

If love can't rule a nation, then God will not be their ruler. Jesus was the example of this true Love, and those that wish to serve Him must serve Him in love. If love cannot win over a person, then that person cannot be a part of this Spiritual Kingdom.

I gave the OT quotes above. Find OT quotes that say something else. NT quotes do not count. If they contradict the OT, then Jesus is not the Jewish messiah.

3. Jesus made it very clear (Matthew 19,25, Mark 10, Luke 18 and Revelation 22 among other places) that eternal life is earned by deeds not by belief. Jesus even minimized his role in it. Or would you rather have a God who will send those who never had a chance to hear of Jesus to eternal hellfire despite the clear words of Jesus? What makes you think that you can trust a God like that?

Faith without works is dead, just as works without faith is useless. God is just and kind. God is Love so I'm sure He will judge according to His character every last person.

I don't worry about those that haven't heard of God and Christ, I worry of those who have heard and even seen the miracles and still denied Him, and continue to deny Him.

Give me scriptural references that say that works without faith is useless. Justify your interpretation of these references in light of Jesus saying how to achieve eternal life in Mark 10, Matthew 19 and Luke 18 and also with the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25. These are all about works and not a word about faith. In the Rich Man stories Jesus even downplays his own role in the matter.

In the rich man story Jesus shows that no matter how much 'works' we do, it is not enough because there is always something we will lack in. Jesus is the paid-in-full release, not our deeds.

Wrong. In Mark 10, when the man says he has always obeyed the action oriented commandments that Jesus specified, Jesus looked at him and loved him. Jesus realized that this was exactly the kind of person he wanted to help spread the word about the need for a return to righteousness. So Jesus invited him to shed all his worldly ties and follow Jesus on the road along with his other disciples. For everyone to sell their possessions and give to the poor would make the poor rich and ineligible for heaven. And who bought all those possessions anyway? They would now need to sell them to be saved. Who is going to buy them? Only the poor have any money now. But now the poor have all these possession they have to sell. And where are the poor that they are supposed to give to once they sell? And who did the buying this time?

Making the advice to the rich man a universal injunction simply does not work. Having Jesus invite him and him alone to join the itinerant band of disciples on the road works very well.

4. Revelation said the end of the world must soon take place and the time is near. It also says that Jesus is coming soon. That was a couple of thousand years ago. Did not happen.

2,000 years later and just look around you and see how many truly serve the God of the Hebrews, the One True God even though He sent His own Son to die for us? Maybe God sees that 2,000 years is just not enough? Pretty much everyone heard of Christ, I mean He is preached throughout the world, but it seems to me we would still need at least another two to three hundred years to sink in, what do you think?

What are you sayingGod figured wrong? Like he did not know? No wonder all those prophesy fulfillments are so flakey.

God will not use force to get anyone into His Kingdom, but He can prolong the time. The war is against deception, not against flesh and blood as in the OT times. God waits, ... only I doubt for much longer... and the rest of those fulfillment's that are left are punishments after the door is closed.

As quoted extensively above, the kingdom of God on earth is all that there will be. Anyone who does not come into the kingdom gets destroyed. And that is all very literally physical, not some twisted metaphor.

Vast numbers of people never heard of Christ and never will because they are already dead. It does not matter how long the End of Days is pushed off, that will always be the case.

Our responsibilities extend to our families, what we do now, the decisions we make now could have eternal consequences on our children's children too. So those that have died, their future have been evaluated already. God would never throw a good person into hell, not even a potentially good person.

So it IS deeds that gain salvation. Upstream you said it was not, that deeds were filthy rags (by quoting out of context).

And the way things are going, Christianity will be lucky to be around in two to three hundred years.

You mean Constantine's Christian religion? I sure hope people will realize the true God of the Bible and follow Christ and acknowledge Him as the Son, not God himself. I doubt that there is much more time left, wickedness has reached an all time high, even to Heaven itself, and just like in the days of Noah, and in the days of Sodom and Gomorra, so shall the Day of the Son of man be. So it is almost 'finished'... just a few last things for fulfillment's sake.

According to Mark, Matthew and Luke, the end of days was supposed to immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, while some of the people hearing the words of Jesus were still alive. Should have been finished a long time ago.


Face it. Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah. I do not see you even trying to address that point anymore.

[Danmark]

Just putting in an observation, in response to no one, that might be relevant to this whole question -- inspired by a Religious School class I was teaching last Sunday.

To Christians, the entire Bible is all of a piece, all the Word of God, all equally authoritative. That partly explains why they put so much stock in the various "prophecies" they find in Isaiah, the Psalms, Daniel, and so on.

For Jews, this is not the case; there is a hierarchy of authority in the Hebrew Bible, and it is not all equal.

The most sacred and authoritative part of the Bible is the Torah, which consists of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. THAT is the Torah that we study so assiduously, that we read through in services over the course of every year, and that is the foundation of our religion -- WHATEVER its origins and provenance.

Those books are, of course, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The rest of the Bible is neither so sacred nor so authoritative. After the Torah come the Prophets -- Nevi'im in Hebrew -- which are revered, but not studied as much; they refer mostly to events in their own times. These books are not coequal with the Torah or even close to it; they might even be considered the first commentary on the Torah. The term "Prophet" to Jews does not denote one who tells the future -- that's very rare, in Jewish teaching, and generally only happens in the short term to prove a point to a specific audience. "Prophet" means "one who speaks the truth." There are, to be sure, "prophecies of the End of Days -- but those have never been considered detailed blueprints of things that are to come, but only metaphorical and poetic statements about the eventual and ultimate destiny of the world.

The Prophets include, first, the major prophetic books: These are Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel; and the minor prophets, which are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habbakuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

The rest, after the Prophets, is called the "Writings" -- in Hebrew, Khethuvi'im -- and those are even less sacred and less authoritative. Those consist of historical court records, hymns and songs, poems, "wisdom" literature (like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes), and so on. They are a vital and beloved part of our heritage, but they are not considered coequal with the Torah any more than the Prophets are -- in fact, much less.

The Writings are: First, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job; then the "five megilloth or Scrolls, which are read on certain Jewish holidays; The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther; and finally, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. These last were considered, even by the rabbis and sages of old, to be rather late books and to be taken with a few grains of salt -- and all of the Writings were definitely considered works of imagination and literary creativity. I don't think that any of them were ever read literally, even when they were newly written.

The Hebrew name for the Jewish Bible is Tanakh; this is a Hebrew acronym formed by the first letters of the three sections -- T, N, Kh; Torah, Nevi'im, Khethuvi'im. These constitute the Hebrew Bible, but it is only the Torah that is read in services from enormous handwritten scrolls that are kept covered in the Ark (a cabinet) at the front of the sanctuary, where an altar would be in Christian churches.

Perhaps all that will help. I've often said that we Jews read the Bible in a different way than Christians, and this may by the primary difference. It also explains why the order of the books in Jewish Bibles differs from that in Christian ones.

Thanks! Very helpful. Where does the Talmud fit into this hierarchy? I understand it to be an ever growing commentary on the Tanakh. Is that correct? Does it have more or less authority than the writings, for example? Or is it more a matter of how one values individual Rabbi's and their contributions?