The Pulling the Thread Podcast

Join us for a captivating journey into the complex world of religious beliefs and historical interpretations.

Our upcoming episode of the Pulling The Threads Podcast delves into the experiences of Jeramiah Giehl, David LeBlanc, and Richard Cortes, individuals who have transitioned from the Messianic movement to explore different branches of Judaism engage in a thought-provoking discussion about their religious beliefs and transitions. This episode promises a riveting exploration of Messianic Judaism, its interpretations, and the challenges of reconciling Christian doctrines with foundational Jewish principles.

Tune in to the Pulling The Threads Podcast and join the conversation as we unravel the complexities of Messianic Judaism, religious transitions, and the intricate relationships between Christianity and Judaism.

This episode is not just about religious debate; it’s about seeking truth and understanding through open dialogue. Prepare to have your preconceptions challenged and your knowledge expanded as we embark on this intellectual adventure.

Prepare to be challenged as we dissect:

• Misconceptions of Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots: Unravel the truth behind these often misunderstood practices and their connection to authentic Judaism.
• The Role of Mashiach and the Ebionites: Discover the historical perspectives on the Messiah and delve into the beliefs of the earliest Jewish Christians.
• Torah and the Jewish Messiah: Explore the foundation of Jewish faith and its distinct view of the Messiah compared to Messianic Christianity.
• Development of Christianity: Journey through the historical evolution of Christianity and its divergence from Judaism.
• Understanding Jesus’ Observance of Torah: Decipher conflicting portrayals of Jesus’ adherence to Jewish law in the Christian Bible.
• Misinterpretations of Jewish Texts: Expose the inaccuracies in how certain groups interpret and apply Jewish festivals and biblical passages.
• Messianic Beliefs and Practices: Analyze the dangers of reducing Judaism to a personal relationship with Jesus and the importance of repentance and change within true Judaism.
• Christian and Messianic Perspectives on Temple Sacrifices: Challenge the assumption that Jesus fulfilled the Jewish sacrificial system and explore its true purpose.
• Bible Inconsistencies and Messianic Jewish Movement: Question the validity of Messianic Judaism’s claims by examining inconsistencies within the Christian Bible and its historical basis.
• Understanding Jewish Philosophy and Spirituality: Discard preconceived notions to gain a deeper understanding of Jewish traditions and beliefs.
• Contradictions and Inconsistencies in the Christian Bible: Examine the credibility of the Christian Bible by dissecting its internal contradictions and historical controversies.

Messianic Judaism and Jesus Interpretation Debate: Jeramiah Giehl leads a robust discussion on Messianic Judaism, highlighting its misinterpretation of Jesus’s historical context and relationship with Judaism. Richard Cortes contributes insights into the concept of Mashiach in Judaism, touching on the Messianic movement’s efforts to restore these beliefs.

Jewish-Christian Narrative Misappropriation Discussed: The trio dissects the misappropriation of Jewish stories, emphasizing the importance of understanding authentic Judaism and rejecting the distortion of Christian doctrines. Richard and David share their concerns about the Messianic movement’s approach to these beliefs.

Jewish Text Misinterpretation Discussion: Richard, David, and Jeramiah critique the misinterpretation of Jewish texts, emphasizing the need to read them in their entirety. The discussion explores inaccuracies in how Messianics interpret festivals and biblical passages, exposing problems with the Christian understanding of Jewish texts.

Messianic Beliefs and Practices Discussion: A deep conversation between David and Jeramiah unfolds, focusing on their beliefs within the Messianic community. They discuss the dangers of reducing Judaism to a personal relationship with Jesus and question the Christian interpretation of the tabernacle and its sacrifices.

Christian, Messianic Perspectives on Temple Sacrifices: David and Richard challenge assumptions about Jesus fulfilling the temple sacrificial system and highlight the misunderstood concept of atonement in Christianity. They question the claim that Jesus was a human sacrifice for personal salvation.

Bible Inconsistencies and Messianic Jewish Movement: A discussion ensues about inconsistencies within the Christian Bible and the Messianic Jewish movement. Richard emphasizes the importance of Tanakh in Judaism, and Jeramiah underlines the problematic foundation of Christianity. The participants agree on the need for enlightenment and a better understanding of history.

The episode concludes with a summary of the in-depth discussion, covering topics such as the influence of the Christian mindset on Jewish philosophy, the misinterpretation of Jesus fulfilling tabernacle teachings, and the contradictions within the Christian Bible.

Chapters & Topics: The episode is organized into chapters, addressing topics like Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots, historical Jesus, authentic Judaism, Mashiach and the Ebionites, Torah and the Jewish Messiah, development of Christianity, and more.

Chapters & Topics – Chapter descriptions:

• Discussion on Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots5:45
• Historical Jesus and Messianic Judaism
• Authentic Judaism and Messianic Christianity
• Discussion on the Role of Mashiach and the Ebionites
• Torah and the Jewish Messiah
• Development of Christianity
• Deciphering Jesus’ Observance of Torah
• Discussion on the Historical Jesus and Christian Tradition
• Evaluating the Issue of Prophets and Leaders
• Discussion on Messianic Judaism and Christianity
• Understanding Jewish Philosophy and Spirituality
• Passover and its Misinterpretation
• Misinterpretation of Jesus’ Fulfillment of the Tabernacle
• Salvation in Judaism vs. Christianity
• Discussion on Yom Kippur and the concept of forgiveness
• Contradictions and Inconsistencies in the Christian Bible
• Closing Remarks and Departure
• Closing Thoughts and Future Plan
• Messianic Congregations and their Deception

Key Questions & Action Items: The hosts pose key questions like how to decipher which Jesus to subscribe to, the possibility of divorcing Messianic Christianity from core Christian doctrines, the significance of Passover, and the impact of contradictions in the Christian Bible. Action items include encouraging authentic learning and challenging oneself with hard questions.

Key Questions:

• How do we decipher which “Jesus” to believe in?
• Can Messianic Christianity exist without core Christian doctrines of salvation?
• What is the true meaning of Passover, and how is it misinterpreted in Christianity?
• How do contradictions in the Christian Bible impact its credibility?

Action Items:

• Seek authentic sources of learning and challenge yourself to ask hard questions.
• Explore educational resources provided by Richard Cortes to gain a deeper understanding of Judaism.

Next Steps: Richard Cortes plans to organize an educational apparatus for people in Messianic congregations to learn authentic sources of Judaism, promising a proactive approach to promote understanding and enlightenment.

Join us for this thought-provoking episode and embark on a journey of discovery!

#PullingTheThreads #ReligiousTransitions #Judaism #Christianity #MessianicMovement #TruthSeeking #Faith #OpenDialogue

Further Reading:

• Jeramiah Giehl – Pulling The Thread Podcast
• Richard Cortes – The FOTW – A Torah Judaism Learning Center
• David LeBlanc – There’s No Such Things As Magic Blood

Please share this blog post with anyone interested in religious dialogue, historical exploration, and the pursuit of truth.

Keywords: Altar, Atonement, Bible inconsistencies, Challenges, Christianity, Christian Bible, Christian doctrines, Christian perspectives on temple sacrifices, Christians, Church, Complexities, Contradictions, Development of Christianity, Ebionites, Educational apparatus, Faith, First Century, Foundational Jewish principles, Hebrew Roots, Historical exploration, Historical Jesus, Human Sacrifice, Intellectual adventure, Interpretations, Jesus, Jesus’ observance of Torah, Jonah, Josephus, Judaism, Key Questions, Knowledge expanded, Mashiach, Messianic beliefs, practices, Messianic congregations, Messianic Judaism, Messianic Jewish movement, Misconceptions, Misinterpretations, Open Dialogue, Passages, Passover, Preconceptions challenged, Rabbi, Reconciliation, Religious beliefs, Religious debate, Religious Transitions, Salvation, Seeking truth, Seek authentic sources, spirituality, Talmud, Tanakh, Temple, Thought-provoking discussion, Time Period, Torah, Tradition, Transitions, Truth Seeking, Understanding, Understanding Jewish philosophy, Yom Kippur.

Hashtags: #PullingTheThreads #ReligiousTransitions #Judaism #Christianity #MessianicMovement #TruthSeeking #Faith #OpenDialogue

Full Transcript:

Interview with Richard Cortes and David LeBlanc
Tue. Feb 13, 2024

34:01 – David LeBlanc
All right. Let me go ahead and click this button.

34:04 – Jeramiah Giehl
Make sure it works this time. Yeah.

34:06 – David LeBlanc
I wanted some tea with honeys to help my throat cause I just got over a cold.

34:09 – Richard Cortes
So I’m going through one right now. Yeah. I’m on antibiotics.

34:14 – Multiple Speakers
It’s the cold weather and the rains and everything.

34:17 – David LeBlanc
So yeah, my wife has to get an antibiotics. Now she has a sinus infection.

34:21 – Jeramiah Giehl
yeah yeah all right here we go looks like we’re active all right welcome to the pulling the threads podcast and today I’m going to be doing a interview with uh author david leblanc uh former pastor calvary chapel pastor and messianic leader and Richard who is a you know former messianic pastor who converted to conservative judaism and is now uh in the process of converting to orthodox judaism we’re making that transition And as such, you know, a little bit by myself, about myself, I was also a former pastor, a leader in the messianic movement.

35:02 – Jeramiah Giehl
You know, I had a messianic seder and, you know, was a teacher and stuff like that. So we all have kind of a shared experience with that as a background. And as a preamble to that, I’m gonna do a preface to the first question. We’re gonna kind of go, I’m gonna do my preamble, then ask my question, and I want you guys to take turns answering. We started to cover a little bit of this in the last interview I did with David LeBlanc, but I do wanna get a little deeper and go into a little more detail about this stuff.

35:40 – Jeramiah Giehl
So we are gonna be dealing with Messianic Judaism, what they get wrong, Hebrew roots. And in general, this is also going to speak to like how Christians misunderstand a lot of things as well. And then I do want us to kind of talk shop about the different Messianic movements, the Hebrew roots. We’ll kind of, I’ll guide us through it. So my first question here is how do Messianic Jews get the Jewish Jesus wrong? There’s a little preamble to it. So Jesus was culturally Jewish according to You know, the historical Jesus scholarship, what we get from the New Testament.

36:15 – Jeramiah Giehl
He participated in Judaism. A lot of them like to claim that he criticized it. There are debates whether he was a Pharisee or a Zealot or an Essene or something along those lines. Did he mean to start a new religion? Would the historical Jesus support Messianic Judaism as it is today? Christianity is a product of Catholicism and not Jewish. Messianics adhere to Christian belief. And fail to understand what it means if there was a historical Jesus who was Jewish. As I’ve researched in the past, the original Jesus movement was totally Jewish, did not intend to create a new religion, and I don’t believe they’d support the idea of modern Messianic Judaism.

36:56 – Jeramiah Giehl
The term itself is disingenuous in the first century when Messianics use it to validate their modern experience. Whereas there might have been Jews who were completely Jewish and believed in a messianic figure, they would not have believed in a dying and rising Savior God or the soteriology that comes through Pauline Christianity. This would have been antithetical to the Jesus movement or at least Judaism in the first century. And as I’ve uncovered in my blog post discussed here, Ebionites and Nazarenes and other, you know, what we call Jewish Christians in the first century, like Christian isn’t the best word, but followers of a historical Jesus.

37:46 – Jeramiah Giehl
They most likely observed the festivals. Shabbat kept kosher. There’s indications they converted Gentiles through conversion, mikvah in a communal way. This no way validates Messianic Judaism, yet they try to use the historical claims to validate their branch of Christianity. What did they get wrong and the final part right here is let’s I’m going to avoid a discussion on what pauline christianity and the birth of catholicism but let’s focus on the first century what it meant to judaism not christianity is later understood and how do messianics get it wrong and now messianics are saying christians will have you know problems of christianity until they come to terms with their jewish messiah and its hebrew roots how is this all very convoluted and wrong and I’d like you guys to take turns uh…

38:37 – Jeramiah Giehl
Kinda answering this and I know I put a bunch in there so kind of talk or tackle what you can if uh… Richard answers one thing david if you cover another uh… Richard if you wanna go ahead and answer how did they get it wrong uh… When they talk about the Jewishness of Jesus in Messianic Judaism in first century as if it validates what they do. Right, right.

38:59 – Richard Cortes
Um, like you said, that’s, uh, it’s a it’s a question that it’s packed and loaded with answers. And really trying to tackle this, you have to really decipher it through pieces, like chopping a tree, essentially. One of the things that we encounter, that we understand in Judaism, is that the concept of Mashiach in Tanakh, both in Talmudic times and in Tanakh, in Second Temple period, was not foreign to the Jewish nation, number one. For instance, the role of Mashiach and what he is supposed to be, what he is supposed to do, as we read through the Navim and we read through the Torah as well, we find that This man is supposed to bring an eternal peace to the world.

39:45 – Richard Cortes
He’s supposed to judge the nations with righteousness, of course. His role, of course, is to bring the knowledge of God to the whole entire world. So it’s interesting that the view for Mashiach, and by the way, when we find the term Mashiach in the Tanakh, we find that many, many kings were considered Mashiach, for instance. So it’s very common. Barakba was a Mashiach. He was called the Mashiach. Again, Jesus being a Mashiach in second Temple period, it’s not sacrilege, is my point.

40:21 – Richard Cortes
Where it gets really, I believe, confused, and I’ll speak in terms everybody in the audience can understand, where it gets really, really confused is when we start adding to the role of this Mashiach. And the role of Mashiach in the Jewish world is never to die for the sins of people, number one. Of course doing miracles. I mean not to say that he won’t do miracles But I mean again, this is not necessarily the focus point and when we think about Jesus today What do we think the miracle worker, you know, it’s just one of those things if you don’t think Torah you don’t think you know speaking the righteousness of the nation you think The one who does healing and the one who died for my sins Those are the two main, you know themes that you can connect Jesus with today so What the messianic movement is trying, or has tried to do, is to be able to bring that back.

41:14 – Richard Cortes
So you mentioned the Ebonites, it’s very interesting. Much of the Ebonites, they have died. I mean, there’s a few of them out there that have online, you know, services and whatnot, but you don’t even hear much about them today. And then it still begs the question, you know, I’m glad that the Ebonites are, you know, the few that are left, I’m glad that they are around, because it still begs the question. I actually had an Ebonite woman came to our place. And I’m still kind of confused about how they believe that Jesus can take away your sins, or be an atonement for you, when he, you know, they don’t believe obviously in the virgin birth, at least the ones that I met, they don’t believe, they don’t subscribe to that doctrine.

41:59 – Richard Cortes
How can then he be an atonement for all mankind, for the world, and for eternity? If he is not obviously divine, he’s just another man like you and I. So these are the problems, theological problems that rise up with the Ebionites in trying to connect and bringing that restoration back to Mashiach.

42:19 – Jeramiah Giehl
I mean, that’s interesting that you bring that up. Historically, the earliest Ebionites did not believe Jesus was a Savior. That developed later and early Evianites rejected Paul and Pauline Christianity. So the later developed, because there was a splinter group between the two, where they did, you know, the ones that followed, you know, the Nazarenes and Pauline Christianity did, Eventually adapt that but originally the earliest Evianites didn’t believe that Jesus was a savior.

42:52 – Jeramiah Giehl
So I just want to Say contextually they would be reinventing the past and adding their own flavor to it now, right? But anyways, I didn’t want to interrupt you too much, but you can keep going with your point I just wanted to kind of no no, it’s a it’s a good point, you know, and again, that’s yeah, and I’m glad

43:09 – Richard Cortes
you brought that up You know, I’m speaking in terms of modern-day Evianites today and um it is true that in the second temple period they didn’t subscribe to this kind of theology um and again this would have been just another mashiah again um and and that’s that who you know ultimately didn’t fulfill anything essentially uh what tanak says any more than bat hobak fulfilled anything that tanak said You know needed to be fulfilled any other machine for that matter.

43:37 – Jeramiah Giehl
Well, he may have done a little better barkoka actually started a revolt So he was on the path. Yeah a little better.

43:43 – Richard Cortes
He got further, right?

43:45 – Multiple Speakers
Right back. Eva got behind him.

43:46 – Richard Cortes
Right, right, right, right? So, I mean he got a little further than jesus. So I mean you got to give the man credit even though Right, so, you know jesus in the historic in the historical context in my opinion. It’s literally just been another you know, possibly another rabbi, you know, who this followers proclaiming to be Mashiach, and he got too loud. And he got killed by Rome, which, again, it would have been another day in Rome, is my point. This was very common, Jews being crucified, doing Second Temple period for their zealousness in the religious zeal.

44:23 – Richard Cortes
It’s not something that is unheard of we we see this the writings of Josephus we see this and in the Talmud You know many historical references for this so I believe Jesus probably was just another one Why is he you know stand out from all of them? He probably had a good following And in here’s the here’s the here’s the caveat with this too, and here’s where it’s hard to decipher So you mentioned earlier that well you know more than likely he was a Torah observant rabbi and who, if he were to look into Messianic Judaism today, he’d probably be appalled, which, you know, more than likely I agree with you on that.

44:57 – Richard Cortes
The problem is deciphering now what you actually read in the Christian Bible, what I mean. For instance, in one hand, he is saying, The the teachers and the Pharisees, you know, they see them to see the Moses whatever to tell you do that and do right? But then in the other hand, he’s literally violating Torah because he’s literally cursing the leaders and calling them sons of devils publicly Which again the Torah condemns by the way And so does the Talmud, yeah. Absolutely, you know, it’s, you know, it’s like one of, we just actually went through this parashah mishpatim, and that’s one of the, that’s one of the mishpat, I mean, that’s a positive commandment, you, actually a negative commandment, you shall not do this.

45:36 – David LeBlanc
Yeah, honor the, honor the leaders of the community, yeah.

45:39 – Unidentified Speaker
Absolutely.

45:40 – Richard Cortes
You know, so we find that, you know, many people say, well, he didn’t break the Torah.

45:44 – Multiple Speakers
Well, I’m sorry, he did break the Torah, right? Right then and there it shows that he did.

45:48 – Richard Cortes
And I can point out several places where he broke Torah. But again, the question is, how do we decipher through the Christian Bible now? Like, how do you pick and choose which one is legitimate and which one is not? Because you got an opinion of people that say, well, he was Torah observant. Well, there’s support for that in the Christian Bible, I agree. But there’s also support for that in the Christian Bible that he wasn’t.

46:13 – Unidentified Speaker
So the question, my question is, then how do you decipher?

46:15 – Richard Cortes
How do you pick and choose which Jesus you want to subscribe to? The Torah-obedient one or the one that is not Torah-obedient? And that’s really where it becomes, I believe, where it can get a little gray area at this point. It’s because, again, we don’t have any accounts. You know, like a lot of the stuff that he did, Josephus didn’t write about it. We don’t find it really in the historical accounts, so not much. What’s found about him in the Talmud, it’s in debate at this point whether it was him, because, again, now we’re talking about a name that was very common in the 2nd century.

46:46 – Richard Cortes
That’s another thing. So there is a Jesus that is talked about in the Talmud, which, by the way, is not in very good favor. For more than one. So, you know, again, this is what the problem is today. How do we subscribe? How do we how do we decipher? I mean, we got we got so many so many passages in the Christian Bible where we see that he literally violates Torah and adheres to that. And, you know, and then we got other passages where it appears that he’s not.

47:13 – Jeramiah Giehl
I mean, so there might’ve been an early historical Jesus that didn’t, and then Roman Catholicism came in and maybe they added or later redactors added the critique of the Pharisees, who knows? What’s the original core message? What was added later? What do you have to say, David, about what’s your answer to my bloviated question there?

47:38 – David LeBlanc
I really enjoyed what Richard had to say. I concur with everything he said. I think riffing a bit on some of his ideas there, I think it’s a great starting point that he brought us on with because just speaking, for instance, in Jewish tradition, as you alluded to Richard, there’s no passages in the Talmud which specifically identify the Jesus of Christian tradition. What we have is we have, if you follow the actual literal stories that you can find in the Talmud, it looks like a guy who existed a hundred years before the Jesus story.

48:20 – David LeBlanc
And we have, of course, the Toldot Jeshu, which gives a much different account of Jesus’ origins than what we find in Christian tradition as well. In fact, I’ve always found it interesting that you have that passage in the Gospels which insinuates and incriminates the Jewish leaders for making up a a story about his followers stealing the body. They blame the Jewish leaders of making up this mythology to hide the identity of the Mashiach, when in fact that actually incriminates the Christian writers in retrospect, because that’s actually a lot more plausible than what the Christian Bible says

49:04 – Multiple Speakers
happened. The Christian Bible would expect us to believe in these fantastic miracles and ascensions to heaven and all these other elements, which I would add, all share commonality with pagan myths.

49:17 – David LeBlanc
They don’t really share any commonality with Jewish tradition. And another thing that was going through my mind as Richard was speaking, um because both of you were talking well I guess uh uh Jeramiah you brought up the idea of the development of christianity uh one of the things that always ended up bothering me ultimately with the messianic perspective on jesus is there always whether it’s the hebrew roots groups or whether it’s the uh messianic Jewish groups of various strains.

49:46 – David LeBlanc
They’re always trying to engage people in this effort to get back to the original Christianity, right? It’s this impetus of Jesus was a Jew, and this is how he would have believed, and this is how he would have lived. And yet, they don’t apply the same principles when it comes to the religious traditions in question. They’re inconsistent in their arguments. So they expect us to go back to an earlier time before the establishment of Rabbinic Judaism and the establishment of the oral tradition as found in the Talmud, they expect us to ignore all that and get back to this undocumented, unknown Jesus that they can really literally, which is what everybody does, they form Jesus in the image that they want, because they don’t have any documentation of what he really was or who he really was.

50:37 – David LeBlanc
All they have is what they have, which is their scriptures and the oral traditions of the Christian church. And so it becomes a zero-sum argument to try to identify a historical Jewish Jesus, which is why I’ve always been irritated with the historicity movement, because they miss the point of the argument. So for instance, to illustrate my point, any Jew that learns Judaism knows the principles of Rambam.

51:03 – Richard Cortes
It’s core to Judaism.

51:05 – David LeBlanc
Now, when were the principles written down? Well, they weren’t written down until centuries after the Talmud was completed. And yet they are accepted as part of a orthodox belief system within Judaism. It’s not law per se, Rambam’s principles, but yet functionally, in tradition, it kind of is. And so when you have this development over a period of time, that has to be recognized because today, Judaism is not what it was in AD. It’s developed, and it has a tradition which must be acknowledged.

51:41 – David LeBlanc
And so you can’t, by Conversely, you can’t then erase Christian tradition and how it’s developed and ignore those doctrines and those teachings in your evaluation of Jesus. If we’re going to evaluate Jesus from a religious perspective as a point of belief, we have to include what the normative Christian church says about him, and then we have to evaluate those claims on those merits. We can’t just dismiss all that and say, well, that’s not relevant to us because we’re following the original Jesus, really.

52:15 – David LeBlanc
Well, where is this original Jesus? Can you show him to me in history? As Richard already said, Josephus never talks about him at all. In fact, not just Josephus—everybody focuses on Josephus—but there were many other Roman and Greek historians of that period, and Jewish historians, who wrote extensively during that time period, none of them talk about Jesus, not one. And we know, for instance, that the Testimonium Flavianum in Josephus is so widely recognized for so many centuries as an obvious forgery that no credible scholars even that believe in Christianity would even cite it as evidence because it isn’t evidence.

52:56 – David LeBlanc
So there is no physical evidence of Jesus of the Christian tradition. By converse, we know the fathers of Judaism because they were carefully documented. We have the records. We have it in the Talmud. We have it in a lot of the other writings that are extant from that period. We have it in a lot of the letters that end up becoming part of the Talmud. So we have the early Mishnaic period. Where you have a character, for instance, like Ben Zekai, who had extensive interaction with Vespasian, even with Josephus, yet there’s no mention whatsoever of this Jesus character unless you go into the passages, which again I already mentioned that they would indicate an Egyptian magician that married or was stoned to death about BC, which you can’t use that as evidence either.

53:58 – David LeBlanc
The same, you know, we’re not going to get into Paul, but Just as a point of reference, you can’t discuss Christianity today of any denomination without wrestling with the teachings of the Apostle Paul. Apostle Paul claims to have an insider’s view of the Sanhedrin. I’ve heard messianic leaders claim that Paul was in line to be the Nasi, that he was being trained. Which is so incredulous. If this gentleman came from Tarsus, there was no Jewish settlement in Tarsus, but there was a Roman legion there.

54:32 – David LeBlanc
There’s no Jewish settlement there in that time period, so who is this Paul character, and how come we don’t ever hear about him until the middle second century? He doesn’t exist. Even in early church historians, Paul is unknown until after the turn of the century. So everything that Christianity bases itself on is speculation, and none of it can be verified. I lastly would like to emphasize, re-emphasize the point that Richard made, that even if we want to contend that there was a Jesus, a Mashiach-type figure in that time period, that doesn’t really establish anything.

55:15 – David LeBlanc
So even if the Christian church could prove that there was a Jesus who lived in the first century as the New Testament claims, we still cannot take those claims at face value. Even in the Torah itself, apart from the oral tradition, if you just simply look at Deuteronomy you realize that there are already injunctions within the Torah to vet any potential prophet or leader that arises in the midst, and if they fail to produce the results that they claim, they are to be summarily dismissed.

55:48 – David LeBlanc
They’re not to be taken seriously. So, I mean, I think Richard gave us a fantastic starting point for how to evaluate this issue.

55:58 – Richard Cortes
I love you. I love you. What you just said was amazing. I mean, thank you for all that information. Thank you. Absolutely true. That’s that’s the problem that we are facing today. And this is where it becomes, I think, in my opinion, also like to add real quickly, this really it sets a platform for people, I believe, to have a voice when you don’t have clarity. And you mentioned that in Judaism we have this tradition, which, by the way, proves in itself to be true. Matter of fact, the Tanakh even establishes that your descendants will not, essentially, they will not stand.

56:32 – Richard Cortes
If they go into idolatry, they will lose their identity and will not stand. If Jesus was so true, and Christianity is so true, why is it that we don’t even have descendants today? There’s no record of anything.

56:42 – Unidentified Speaker
So what we have today is just a lot of confusion.

56:45 – Richard Cortes
So again, going back to the platform, it gives a platform for all these leaders to rise up today and be able to advance, essentially, the doctrine that they’re trying to erect in these days. Why? Because there’s no proof of it. Again, this is beautiful for rebels, by the way. As you probably know, being a messianic leader, we didn’t lack it. I won’t say we do in the past. We didn’t lack any rebels, unfortunately. And that’s what they do. They just try to take over the congregations.

57:18 – Richard Cortes
And this is what we’re finding today. That’s why the whole movement is so confusing. I don’t know if you notice, it’s just, and we, like you said, we’re not even talking about Paul here yet. You know, we haven’t even added Paul to the equation. It just, it’s a mass confusion where again, it gives room for anybody. And, you know, we find this in the book of Judges. How does the book of Judges and the very last verse of the book of Judges, Shofim says, there was no king in Israel in those days, everybody did what was right in their own eyes.

57:45 – Richard Cortes
And I really believe that this is what we’re witnessing today within the sphere of Messianic Judaism and even, uh, even some of the Christians as well. That’s an interesting point.

57:55 – Unidentified Speaker
Yeah.

57:57 – Jeramiah Giehl
So Jesus, if he existed, there’s not a lot of historical records. Maybe he was a marginal Jew because apparently he wasn’t Discussed in any verifiable clear way so and he also comes from an unfalsifiable time I can’t say that word right now an unfalsifiable time that there is no proof of so you can’t disprove it so you make up a claim it could be anything and there’s no way to disprove it you know I mentioned this in a podcast they did last week that at the destruction of the temple in they would have destroyed you know, buildings and records, and at the Barcoca Revolt they would have destroyed records.

58:38 – Jeramiah Giehl
That is why we have a record of what happens after, and that’s where the Talmud and Christianity come from You know, the reason we don’t have things before and before is because they were destroyed on purpose. Um now transitioning you know kind of to the final question of my question was messianic jews are saying that christians will have they have christianity wrong as long as they reject their jewish messiah That’s very convoluted, right? I mean, if there was a Jewish Jesus, he doesn’t validate Messianic Judaism or the later invented Roman Catholicism.

59:17 – Jeramiah Giehl
Now, Judaism has never been about a rabbi. Now, I want to go back to the point you mentioned Rambam’s principles. Now, these can be ascertained in general from a plain understanding from Torah. And this is why they’re not really rejected in the same sense where Paul’s teachings are completely rejected by Judaism because they’re not ascertained through a plain understanding of Torah. And so before we move to the next points, I kind of want to talk about this. What can be ascertained through a plain understanding of Torah should be the foundation of what a Messiah is or what a faith that is rooted in the Torah and Judaism is.

59:55 – Jeramiah Giehl
And David, why don’t you respond first to this one?

59:59 – David LeBlanc
Yeah, sure. My initial thoughts on that have always been the same. This, I’ll just give the perspective I gained as I left Christianity and left Messianic faith. There’s certain literary aspects to the New Testament that are highly suspicious, at the very least. For instance, you mentioned, what can we ascertain from Torah about Mashiach? Well, there’s very little. From the actual Torah, we have the obvious verse when Jacob is blessing his sons, and you have the whole you know, the Christians love to quote the verse about the rod of, you know, ruling will never leave Judah and all that.

1:00:41 – David LeBlanc
But those, you know, we’re not into that point right now. I don’t know if you’re going to go there where, you know, we have all these scriptures that get misapplied and misconstrued by Christian belief. But essentially, what I always found fascinating is like, for instance, you take the Gospel of Matthew, and it’s very clear if you look at it with open eyes, that they are trying to portray this Jesus character as another Moses. So the life of Moses is literally paralleled in almost every respect in the Gospel of Matthew, from the birth narrative to the whole thing, running off to Egypt, and then the whole, even the ascension of Jesus is cryptically similar to the ascension of Moshe, who never truly is seen to die.

1:01:26 – David LeBlanc
He just disappears one day, and there’s a tradition that he was taken up, or whatever. So that’s a very clear attempt to basically appropriate the Jewish story for this new story that they’re writing. And it’s very convenient. It’s almost like if I wanted to declare myself an expert marksman, and I went out and shot an arrow into a tree, and then after I shot the arrow into the tree, I painted Target around the arrow to where it was a bullseye, I look like a genius shot. And I’ve always had to laugh when people say, well, Jesus fulfills all these prophecies.

1:02:04 – David LeBlanc
Well, if you create an environment literally with your literature where you create that impression by selecting certain passages and then misapplying them for your purposes, yeah, it sure so does look like Jesus fulfilled a whole lot of things. But again, it goes back to The point that Richard was making earlier, which I think can’t be emphasized enough, and you know, Jeramiah, we talked about this somewhat in the last interview, that there’s no form of authentic Judaism that is completely centered on a single individual.

1:02:43 – Jeramiah Giehl
It just doesn’t exist.

1:02:46 – David LeBlanc
I mean, I suppose you could make the argument that Chabad is sort of like that in some ways, but without getting into that, just the whole Hasidic veneration of the Rebbe and all that, but it’s still different. Even in that context, it’s still not the same because, and this again, this goes back to my earlier point, and I don’t know if I’m bearing off your question here, but forgive me if I am, but you know, it’s easy to say, so I know certain messianics, and I know Richard probably does too, and perhaps we are both one of them, who stridently make arguments that, well, if we strip away later Christian doctrines, such as the virgin birth, such as the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity, such as certain problematic things that would be very problematic for anyone that’s monotheistic, if you strip all those away and you just proclaim that, well, he was a man, he was a prophet, and he was our Mashiach as a man, well, okay.

1:03:45 – David LeBlanc
So even if we embrace that straw man argument, it doesn’t hold up on its own, as Richard already stated. But the problem I have is you can’t strip that away, because the whole argument of Jesus as a Savior of the world is based upon those presumptive principles. So if you’re going to take away the virgin birth and the deity of Jesus, you’ve just stripped Christianity of any power or message that it has to the world. What are we doing here?

1:04:15 – Multiple Speakers
There’s no point to that.

1:04:17 – David LeBlanc
I always liked what Robert Price said. People see the story of Clark Kent and Superman, But if you take Superman’s power away from Clark Kent, who the heck’s interested in Clark Kent? Nobody wants Clark Kent, they want Superman.

1:04:31 – Multiple Speakers
So we can’t have a messianic Christianity that is divorced from Christian core doctrines of salvation.

1:04:39 – David LeBlanc
And that’s why ultimately messianic Christianity, I don’t care what arguments that these leaders want to make, and I know because I used to make them, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t have Jesus, your savior, and have Judaism. They’re not compatible to each other. They’re totally different religious systems. Judaism is not a salvation religion. It’s a community. It’s a communal faith.

0:05 – David LeBlanc
literal. And so, as Richard was saying, the whole notion gets polluted in the Christian mindset because everything is focused upon what Jesus did for me by dying. And so that it colors the lens, like I think Richard just very well said, you’re not really learning Torah if that’s your foundation of understanding. That has to get jettisoned out of your mind if you’re going to truly understand Jewish philosophy and spirituality. You just can’t do it. And as you also mentioned, like I don’t have to go into it now because you already covered it, but like Passover, this whole idea that, you know, like my wife works in a supermarket, she’s a manager.

0:50 – David LeBlanc
And last year, someone came up to her because they knew she was Jewish and said, and they presented her with red ribbons and a card saying that this, the red ribbons, you know, we wanted to, in other words, she was trying to acknowledge Passover and throwing in a little missionary dig saying, you know, the ribbon represents the blood that was put on the doors, which represents Jesus, right? Well, even if, I apologize for laughing, but even if Jesus existed and claimed to be what the Christians say he was, even he would not have associated his work on earth with what’s going on in Passover because it has nothing to do with saving souls.

1:38 – Richard Cortes
There’s no salvation that happens in Passover.

1:41 – Unidentified Speaker
Nothing.

1:44 – David LeBlanc
The blood was simply, it was a sign that you were identified and that you were gonna be spared the curse. It was a plague, the death of the firstborn. So even if you’re a Jewish family, as you just said, in that evening, what you were spared was the death of your firstborn, your animals and your children. There’s no salvation in that. The quote unquote salvation of the Jewish story is the deliverance from bondage. That’s the only salvation that exists is that I’m going to take you out as a people, not as a personal salvation God that you have to make some kind of a Gnostic ascension of belief and all of a sudden you transit from this life of death and no hope to all of a sudden now you have eternal life in Jesus because you suddenly believe something.

2:41 – David LeBlanc
I mean, it’s great to believe things, but like in Judaism, you can say, I believe I did a wrong thing. I believe I did a sin. Okay. Well, in Judaism, you don’t say, well, you know, Jesus has me covered because he died for me. No, it’s okay. So what’s your rectification? You do repentance and you change because it’s about our relationship to each other. Thank you. It’s not it’s like when like Christianity and I think messianics really struggle with this Christianity is like a bunch of marbles in a jar everybody’s got their personal relationship with Jesus and then they bring it into this community event and they and they just look for people that they agree with that share their own personal fantasy yeah and if they and if they don’t find that they’re grooving with the people they’re with they go find some other community that shares their fantasy and that’s why you have denominations of Christianity because everybody’s trying to find a fantasy Jesus that fits the model in their brain And it’s just so disturbing.

3:42 – David LeBlanc
I guess the last thing I’ll say, because I know we’re going to be a little short on time, and I’ll just reiterate the story I told in my book. I remember one of the seminal moments for me when I was a Messianic teacher and I was in a Messianic synagogue, As I remember the first time I participated in the High Holidays with that messianic congregation, it was bizarre and it was profane. And I remember standing at the back of the shul where the library was, because there was no seats, during Yom Kippur.

4:14 – David LeBlanc
And you have all these messianic Christians dressed in white and, you know, doing the Hasidic thing. And I’m thinking to myself as I’m standing back there, like, This doesn’t make logical sense. If I truly believe that Jesus is my Savior, Yom Kippur has no functional meaning for me. At all. And I think what happens to these messianics, and this was a point that was going through my head as Richard was talking, I just wanted to finish with this. I can’t speak for each of you. I know I’ll speak for myself.

4:49 – David LeBlanc
My impression of most of the people who find themselves in these messianic congregations are people who at some level either felt betrayed or hurt or disillusioned with their Christian experience. And they gravitate to a messianic expression because they’re fascinated to learn this new tradition of worship that they’ve never experienced before. And it seems so romantic, and it seems so exotic even. That they end up actually getting proud of the fact that they think that they’re doing a form of worship that their shallow brethren in the church don’t know about, and they can’t wait to express it to them.

5:32 – David LeBlanc
Like, you should come celebrate the holidays with us. Oh no, I’ll have you over for Christmas. No, I’m not talking about that. We don’t celebrate Christmas. We do Rosh Hashanah. We do Yom Kippur. And then they invite people in that have even less knowledge than they do about the structure and the function of these Jewish traditions. And they get led through them by people who are believers in Jesus. They’re not rabbis. And even if they are rabbis, you know, by ordination doesn’t mean they’re really rabbis.

6:02 – David LeBlanc
And they get enraptured with this expression without really thinking through what they’re doing. And as Richard said, it is an abomination to celebrate Yom Kippur as a Jesus worshiper. It’s not what Yom Kippur is at all. And I would really implore, I think, I don’t, you know, I’m a big believer in freedom, people, you know, having the right to do what they wanna do, and we’re never gonna stop anybody from doing these things. But it would be really nice if there was some type of an educational apparatus that people would, at least on their own, because that’s how I left it, is I was always committed to learning.

6:47 – David LeBlanc
And I think anybody who really commits themselves, so if anybody’s watching this, I guess it’s my last statement, and they’re trying to wrestle through, maybe they are in a messianic thing, and they’re starting to question things, and they just want to learn, they want to go a little bit outside the box, and they’re listening to Richard and myself and you, and I would just encourage you, don’t Don’t get mad, don’t get upset. Just keep seeking authentic sources of learning and challenge yourself to ask hard questions.

7:16 – David LeBlanc
Because one thing I love about Judaism, if you get involved in yeshiva-style learning, the excitement of Jewish learning is the dialectic, it is the questions.

7:27 – Jeramiah Giehl
It’s not the doctrine.

7:29 – David LeBlanc
You’re not going to get sat down and say, okay, here’s the things you have to believe or you can’t. What’s your question and let’s discuss it and let’s see what the sages have to say about it. It’s an open conversation and that doesn’t exist in a world in which your mindset is focused upon certain, what the church would call cardinal doctrines of faith. And I think that that is really a big a big big problem that the messianic world has is there’s a lot of intentional and unintentional deception of its members That’s why I do this podcast is an educational resource, you

8:05 – Jeramiah Giehl
know, I love the questioning within Judaism questions are encouraged I All right, so I know we’re crunched on time, so let me go ahead and I’ll do one last question. I got a little bit of a preamble on it, and then maybe we can set up time to do the rest of it. But this last one is, Jesus is the fulfillment of the tabernacle. How do they get it wrong? They claim that the tabernacle teachings about Jesus teach the message of salvation, the blood on the altar. How is this a problem when you factor in human sacrifice?

8:40 – Jeramiah Giehl
Now, Christians try to alleviate the human sacrifice, saying it’s not a human sacrifice, it’s God, you know, giving himself up, which is even more convoluted, but there’s still, I mean, he’s part man, part god by their theology which probably isn’t true and is made up I mean you know as far as our understanding is concerned he’s he was a man who died but all of that aside not arguing the points of of that uh a man can only die for his sins you know a son can’t die for his father father can’t die for his sons right?

9:13 – Jeramiah Giehl
The sacrifice system was for unintentional sin. How does one deal with intentional sin in the Torah? How does God forgive sin in the Torah? To do what’s right, you’ll be forgiven. If you make teshuvah and ask for forgiveness, you know, repent and ask for forgiveness, you’re forgiven. Now according to messianic jews he ought he fulfills the the sacrifices on the brazen altar um which I mean I’m just saying isn’t possible because human sacrifice would make would be an abomination and violate the temple um that it’s that’s just like And then somehow he fulfills the washbasin.

9:50 – Jeramiah Giehl
He washes away your sins. This is just complete allegory. Somehow he’s the lampstand providing light. I mean, loose connections, flimsy associations with no scriptural foundation. How is doctrine in the Torah made? You know, like I stated earlier, it needs to be multiple consistent clear attestation of something, right? And then the last part, somehow he fulfills showbread, the incense, the sweet smelling aroma. And now here’s the big one, the myth of the rent veil. Why? If there was a rent veil, is there no mention in the Talmud or Jewish tradition?

10:28 – Jeramiah Giehl
I mean, the veil is rent and, you know, things are shaking.

10:32 – Unidentified Speaker
Maybe because it never happened.

10:33 – Jeramiah Giehl
Why is that not even in Jewish tradition, right? And the center of the tabernacle includes the Ten Commandments. And yet Christianity doesn’t uphold the Torah. What did they get wrong about putting Jesus in the tabernacle?

10:50 – David LeBlanc
Do you want me to go first? Yeah, go ahead, yeah. So first of all, if you study Rashi regarding the brazen altar, the brazen altar is, Rashi in his linguistic, his brilliant linguistic analysis of the Pashat mentions the concept of the brazen forehead, the insolent forehead. That the brazen altar represents the pride being laid down. So something is dedicated to destruction. And in that effort to bring forth that which is dedicated to destruction, you are dealing with the insolent forehead, the thick-headedness, the stiff-neckedness.

11:32 – David LeBlanc
And in the messianic perspective, that represents sacrifice, and then the golden altar represents the blood of Jesus, because the blood that the high priest sprinkles on the golden altar is considered the atonement blood, right? When in fact, just really simply put, it begs the question, if what Christians and Messianics claim about Jesus fulfilling the temple sacrificial system is true, then how can Judaism exist today? Because there is no temple, and there is no sacrificial system.

12:12 – David LeBlanc
So this seems like a slam dunk argument to Christians who don’t understand the Jewish tradition, because well, I actually used to serve with a pastor many years ago who had a Jewish doctor, and he had the chutzpah to go to his doctor and say, how do you deal with your sin if you’re Jewish? Do you sacrifice animals in your backyard? He actually said that to the guy. I mean, this educated guy, I mean, and he thinks he was smart, like, I’m going to stand up for Jesus here, right? And it’s so laughably ridiculous, because if you understand Judaism, you understand that since the temple’s destruction, what has replaced it is the prayers.

12:51 – David LeBlanc
So the prayer services, they mimic the traditional schedule of the morning and afternoon sacrifice and evening. And that’s why the prayers happen when they do. And that’s also one of the reasons why some of the benedictions are the way they are, is they mimic the ascent up the mount to come into the presence of Hashem at the temple, and then, you know, the conclusion of the ceremony, the prayer service is very much structured that way. It’s got a cadence to it. So, that’s just one thing, is that we have to understand that if you go back to the Peshat, you go back to the text of Torah, there is no sacrifice in the worship system for intentional sin.

13:37 – David LeBlanc
It doesn’t exist. Most of the worship ceremonies at the temple cleanse the temple of the presence of the people worshiping. So if there’s no temple, thus there’s no sacrifices. You know, I mean, and there’s other ways to discuss this. I mean, Richard may have some more to say on that, but I’m just saying at a very functional level, the whole concept that the sacrificial system was in place until Jesus came is so flawed, it’s not true. If the second temple was ever built again, there would be a resumption, presumably, and there was a lot of debate about this in the Jewish world.

14:21 – David LeBlanc
I mean, this is not, I don’t wanna speak for the whole Jewish world here, but presumably, we’re going to have a renewal of the worship system. And it has nothing to do with the atonement of sin. It has to do with the rectification of people’s cleanliness. So, you know, the concepts of atonement are misunderstood. The Christian understanding of atonement is not right. The concepts of holiness is not understood by Christians or Messianics. Everything gets polluted by this Jesus perspective.

14:53 – David LeBlanc
And it’s just really disturbing because Of course, we have the book of Hebrews, which nobody knows who wrote it. It obviously wasn’t Paul. But Hebrews goes into this long diatribe of Jesus being the fulfillment of the temple and everything else. And it It’s fantasy island. It has nothing to do with anything. So if I’m a Jew, and I rap to fill in and I pray with sincerity of heart, preferably with a minion or if I’m alone, I’m participating in a communal act of faith. Reasserting and re-emphasizing my belief, not only in God, but in my community itself.

15:38 – David LeBlanc
It’s a communal act. It has nothing to do with my personal salvation. So again, it’s one of these things that, you know, like Christianity, I’ll just go back to my original point, and then I’ll shut up on this, that all these debates that messianics make about, well, Jesus is this, and Jesus does this, and he fulfills this, and he fulfills that, Before all those conversations have an opportunity to happen, we have to deal with the fact that you are coming from a place of Christian understanding on personal salvation, which is a pagan originated concept.

16:18 – David LeBlanc
It is just the same as Richard alluded to earlier. It’s just the same as the Mithra cult. It’s just the same as the ISIS cult. It’s the same as the Krishna cult. It’s the same. Any of these dying and rising savior gods, of which there were many in the ancient world, all share this in common, that it’s a human sacrifice so that I can be accepted by the gods. That is not part of Judaism at all.

16:45 – Jeramiah Giehl
Well, in the temple, sacrifices were about the kedushah, the holiness of the temple to make it holy so God’s presence could come to the temple, not necessarily the sins of the nation. Richard, do you wanna go ahead and give your take on how they get that wrong?

17:01 – Richard Cortes
Yeah, I mean, David did a fantastic job in really articulating that in a very, very thorough way. In reality, when you look at this, Even when you look at this, and again, I like to always stick to the basics. I think basics wins everything. Jesus is crucified, he dies, some say you know, year whatever you subscribe to, you’re still looking at an average of at least to years before the second temple was destroyed. Now, I believe it answers the question, in my opinion. If He is the Temple, as Christians describe, and everything that was about Him in the Temple, then why was there still a Temple service for almost a whole generation after His death?

17:58 – Richard Cortes
Like, again, this is kindergarten. Again, I like to stick to basics because I believe basic wins the war. At a very basic level, we have a contradiction, not a variance, a contradiction because we have temple service. And by the way, according to the book of Acts, We have Paul, we have all his disciples partaking in temple service. Like, what are these people doing there? You know, like the concept of him being the ultimate sacrifice, and the temple himself, and the Kohen Hagadol, then what are they doing there?

18:40 – Richard Cortes
Again, it’s one of those things. But there is a reason also, going back to Young People, There is a reason why we read the Book of Jonah during Yom Kippur. And one of the reasons why we read the Book of Jonah during Yom Kippur is because, again, it shows us how the nation truly receives forgiveness. You know, the city of Jonah, we’re not talking about one individual. We’re talking a whole entire city. It’s interesting. That you know in there in the book of Jonah, it literally tells us. I mean, there’s many other passages as foreign cannot but Specifically in here we see that and an entire nation received forgiveness Yet, there’s no hint of Moshiach.

19:28 – Richard Cortes
There’s no hint of one person having to die for the sake of the whole nation I mean, it’s interesting young Kippur. We read this and if again if the idea of one individual taking away the sense of an entire world. I think that the Book of Jonah would have been the perfect example of that, because we have a mass group of people. We have an entire nation there. We have a whole city. Yet, what is the prescription that it tells us in there, that if they were to shuva, You know, Shuvah is the answer for everything in Tanakh.

20:01 – Richard Cortes
You know, and it is to repent. It is to, you know, essentially stop what you’re doing, return back to the God of Israel, and He opened what open arms receives you. This is a nightmare for the Church. That’s the problem. It’s too simple for the church. There’s no way God can do that. There’s no way God can just receive us just because we’re Shuvah. So the church has to appropriate and obviously make this man, you know, in order to fit their theology, their theological support on how to receive atonement.

20:34 – Richard Cortes
But again, it goes back to, like David has expressed in here, and all of us, I believe, You have to be able to fill all the holes in the doctrine. And unfortunately, there’s too many of them.

20:48 – David LeBlanc
You know, the more you cover, the more uncovering we see.

20:54 – Richard Cortes
And that’s part of the problem. So, you know, Yom Kippur again, we see clearly that this is about a nation coming to repentance. We see this. I mean, I don’t have enough time to cover everything in Tanakh that covers about how people were forgiven in Tanakh. And it was simply Shuvah. And again, we still see, and the proof of that is the actual Christian Bible in itself. And again, going back to the discrepancies, well, actually not discrepancies, this is literally contradictions in this case, where we see the parable of Jesus, for instance, it’s the parable of the son, the wavered son.

21:39 – Richard Cortes
And it’s amazing. You know, just reading this now, it brings so much light. And here we see something very interesting. The parable here of the son who goes astray, the father is, of course, wanting him to come back. He has another son, right? I’m kind of just real quickly here doing a quick synopsis on it. And what happens is that the son that remained gets angry because the father received the son that went astray.

22:08 – Unidentified Speaker
He received them.

22:09 – Richard Cortes
You know, it’s like the whole parable actually encompasses Judaism. It’s the father opened the arms to the son that went astray. All he had to do was just return back. And that’s, you know, and this is what I’m saying. This is a complete, this parable right here is a nightmare for the church because it literally contradicts the whole concept of vicarious atonement, to be honest with you. And we see it right there in the parable. The parable in itself, the temple standing for at least, again, at a minimum, you know, to years, you know, after the death of Jesus.

22:47 – Richard Cortes
I mean, we would have find that if this was all true again, why did the temple didn’t get destroyed the same day? Forget about the veil being rent. I want to see the whole temple destroyed.

22:58 – David LeBlanc
Even further than that, to incriminate themselves by putting it in their own scriptures that they offered sacrifices.

23:03 – Multiple Speakers
Right, right. And that’s what I alluded to after his death.

23:07 – Jeramiah Giehl
They participated in temple sacrifice absolutely and according according to some traditions James might have been some form of Contra cohen-gadol or some kind of leader of their movement or something like they participated at a high level Allegedly, but this

23:24 – Richard Cortes
goes back to what we started with this interview.

23:26 – David LeBlanc
I Yes, it does.

23:28 – Richard Cortes
It’s very difficult because you have these contradictions in the Christian Bible, and you have to fish through them and really subscribe to what you believe with no technical historical support or theological support for any of it. So, I mean, I’m in the description, of course, I’m going to subscribe to Judaism because that’s the standing religion that’s remained. So, yes, we believe that the temple service is important, of course. We believe that the prayers are important.

23:58 – Richard Cortes
We believe that the way we get forgiven is we come to the Father and we shuvah from the pure heart. None of this is contrary to Tanakh, essentially. But the problem with the Christian Bible is that you don’t know what to subscribe. That’s the problem. You have instances where it appears that Jesus is a very Torah-observant. And he is submitted to the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Well, to the Pharisees, not the Sadducees, the Pharisees. And, you know, he’s a halach Jew. He’s Shomer Shabbat, the whole nine yards.

24:28 – Richard Cortes
But then you have other passages that he completely does a whopping and walks contrary to the Pharisees, literally calls them sons of devils in the public. You know, he claims that, you know, he is the only way to the Father. I mean, these are things that you’re going to find in the passages, in the narrative of the passages of the Gospel. So that’s the unfortunate part. You know, you’ve got passages where we see the virgin birth, you know, like in Matthew, Luke, but yet Mark, for some reason…

24:58 – Richard Cortes
Not only doesn’t have the virgin birth, doesn’t have the resurrection either.

25:01 – David LeBlanc
And you know what’s always crazy is Mark is supposedly the first gospel, right?

25:07 – Multiple Speakers
And it doesn’t have the two things that are so core to their whole belief system. Like what’s up with that?

25:11 – David LeBlanc
Like didn’t they share notes before publishing this stuff? You would think…

25:15 – Multiple Speakers
Absolutely, and I mean that’s the theory that they that they’ve used each other but may not be the case or to some degree Right.

25:22 – Richard Cortes
Well, and this is the problem really with Christianity today why it’s so divided why it really is not standing It’s falling apart and what it is all apart It’s because again, there’s no core to anything, you know Like you cannot even look to the very own book at least as as Jews we can look to the Tanakh and we have answers, you know to the four elements of our doctrine Christian Jesus has been reduced to Super Bowl commercials

25:45 – David LeBlanc
where they say Jesus gets you Absolutely, that’s where Christianity is going.

25:49 – Richard Cortes
It’s just an emotional appeal when when you don’t even have any, you know It’s one thing, you know as Jews we have the Tanakh, you know every Jew looks at the Tanakh as you know, that is the Inspired word of Hashem. We also have our oral traditions to help us understand these things but when you are subscribing to a faith that even your own book is does not give you a solid answer, that is very, very problematic and actually extremely dangerous, in my opinion. Yeah.

26:19 – Jeramiah Giehl
Well, you have to suspend logic to believe in the New Testament. It only works on faith-based and cognitive dissonance. You can’t have sound reasoning if you believe in the New Testament and Sola Scriptura because the contradictions in the New Testament. Nineveh didn’t need a Savior. They simply did Teshuvah to repent. There was no sacrifice. There’s no vicarious atonement. Now, something I’m dealing with in my history class right now…

26:43 – Multiple Speakers
Jeramiah, can I interrupt you for one second? I apologize, but I really have to fly. I have to go. I have a half hour ride. I have an appointment.

26:51 – Jeramiah Giehl
But this has been wonderful.

26:53 – David LeBlanc
I just want to thank you guys, both of you, for the opportunity. Richard, it’s wonderful to meet you and hear your perspective. I really enjoyed it. But I’ll have to duck out. So thank you. OK, hopefully we can do this again.

27:04 – Jeramiah Giehl
I had like one little last point I wanted to make there and then let you guys give a closing statement. If you gotta go, you gotta go.

27:14 – David LeBlanc
I have to go, unfortunately, I can’t.

27:16 – Jeramiah Giehl
All right, well, anything, last words for you, dip out.

27:21 – David LeBlanc
I just really appreciate this. My hope is that this will help some people because we’ve all dealt with people like ourselves who have struggled with some of this stuff. I don’t think any of us here are speaking to the church at large. We’re speaking to the people that we’ve cared about, that we’ve in some cases ministered to or tried to, and then we’ve discovered you I guess you could say the error. And we’re not trying to attack anyone. We’re simply trying to let you know that, hey, there is a path here.

27:53 – David LeBlanc
And if you’re having doubts and if you’re starting to look and things aren’t adding up, follow your instincts on that because you’re right. It’s not adding up and there is a better path for you. So whatever that path is, it’s certainly not messianic Judaism. So anyways, yeah, so we can do another one. I know there’s several topics you didn’t cover, but- Yeah, there was plenty to still cover, but- Yeah, I just, I can’t afford to be late, so.

28:14 – Multiple Speakers
No, I understand that.

28:16 – Jeramiah Giehl
We all have day jobs, so- Well, thank you guys.

28:19 – David LeBlanc
Yeah, thank you. Looking forward to reading your book. Oh, thanks. Yeah, he can hook you up with it. I appreciate it.

28:24 – Jeramiah Giehl
Yeah. Yeah. So what I was saying is that the Western world was won by Christianity. The Roman Empire took over the world. And then after the Roman Empire, Catholicism influenced through the Dark Ages. And then we have the Enlightenment, the age of reason that’s come. You know, the world order, the Western world order has been founded on Christianity. And, you know, it’s been falling apart as science and reason become more of the foundation. And that’s because I’m doing a history class right now.

28:55 – Jeramiah Giehl
It’s something I’m really kind of diving into. It’s interesting how these ideas of this religion that is a faulty foundation has been used to manipulate the whole entire Western world and how that is falling apart. But there’s a struggle. You know as we move towards science and reason and logic, the religious zealots want to rise up and we’re seeing that in our current political election cycle. I mean it’s a constant struggle and we are still in the middle of science and reason and this religious zeal and so even this stuff still has a practical application.

29:35 – Jeramiah Giehl
You know my concern is kind of as we talked about to encourage towards enlightenment of seeking things grounded in facts based in history, plain understanding of things. I know you got to get going here, so I’m not going to belabor the point. Any last response, any last words for yourself as we kind of closing out here?

29:55 – Richard Cortes
Yeah, I, again, just kind of like what David said, we We really, really, it’s been an honor to be here and to be a partaker of this. We want to be able to share this word with everybody. And again, this is not a direct attack specifically against the church or any particular denomination, per se. But I believe that we are in that season, as many of the rabbis say, we are in the era of Mashiach. He’s not here yet, but we’re in the era of Mashiach. Which means that there’s an awakening. I believe this is why you and I are here, and why so many people are all of a sudden just coming out of the church.

30:31 – Richard Cortes
People are just by flock are coming out of the churches, they’re coming out of Messianic Judaism, many of them becoming Bnei Noah, many of them converting, but The key element in here is that they’re coming out of the churches. Why? Why is this all of a sudden taking place? Because, again, I believe, as what the rabbis say, that we are in that era, and this is the time to be able to spread, really, the MS. It’s very, very important. People need to know the MS. You know, without it, we’d be doing essentially a disfavor.

31:05 – Richard Cortes
You know, we were once there. We understand how that feels like, And I know that for most, I believe a good part of the people in the messianic movement generally are there because they feel that messianic Judaism is a more authentic way. Observing God and the Messiah because Jesus was a Jew as we started this interview today. So they’re really truly seeking. I believe that through this time in the season, we are going to see more people coming out. And again, of course, we’re going to see people who don’t.

31:36 – Richard Cortes
Who just love the church at the end of the day. So the proof is going to be right now. And this time in this season, when the truth is coming out, we’re going to find out really who are the ones who truly love God with all their heart and all their soul and want to cling to Him. And I think that this is really exciting times that we live in. We live in right now.

31:55 – Jeramiah Giehl
Yeah, well, this was a really good. I’m glad to have you guys on a really good discussion Yeah, I agree that there are those that probably I mean they do come with an authentic reason of wanting to experience you know, an early form of Jewish Christianity they think existed. Unfortunately, they’re falling into an inauthentic practice that’s cultural appropriation, playing dress-up, doesn’t understand the sources of the text, isn’t teaching authentic Judaism, isn’t teaching what Jesus, if He existed, would have done.

32:28 – Jeramiah Giehl
And so it’s a misrepresentation and relying on, you know, textual criticism, historical, you know, critical scholarship, historical archaeology, trying to uncover the past is one way to bring You know the shot of history, you know to use a word, but we’re looking at the plain meaning of history look at history as it is plainly and then try to figure out what that means to us and then contextually kind of contextualize all this stuff, but I really appreciate you guys for coming on and I know everybody’s going to enjoy enjoy this discussion and everyone watching make sure you like and subscribe follow share this with your friends and family and tune in next time for more great discussions.

33:17 – Richard Cortes
Thank you. Have a good one. Thank you. Thank you.

33:19 – Multiple Speakers
Thanks for doing this. Yeah, I appreciate you. All right. You got to bounce out, too.

33:25 – Richard Cortes
Yeah, I got to get out of here, man. All right, man.

33:27 – Jeramiah Giehl
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Just keep me in touch with what the next.

33:33 – Richard Cortes
for us to finish the interview. Give me a heads up so we can do something. Like I said, my times are better like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Right around this time is good.

33:43 – Jeramiah Giehl
We can arrange something close to this.

33:45 – Richard Cortes
It’ll work. Alright, sounds good.

33:47 – Jeramiah Giehl
Um, yeah, I think we can do another one and knock out some really good points here. Yeah, you know, I still have some stuff that I wanted to cover. But um, yeah, this is really good, though. I’m gonna do this is definitely gonna be another two part part or at least, you know, so yeah, they usually are.

34:00 – Richard Cortes
It’s a good thing.

34:01 – Jeramiah Giehl
Yeah. All right, man. Have a good one. Yeah, you too.

34:05 – Unidentified Speaker
Okay.