Rabbi Singer Confronts Orthodox Christians: What Does Your Bible Actually Say?

We don't follow [music] the Old Testament at all. >> We would never look for the rebuilding of an earthly temple. God forbid. The Wailing Wall means [music] nothing to Christians. Nothing. We are not looking or anticipating. In fact, it is impossible that the old shadow type of Jesus' body at the church could be in fact accomplished. >> As an Orthodox Jew, I want to say this to Orthodox [music] Christians. Would you consider reading the Bible for yourself? Let the voice of the prophets be heard. As an Orthodox Jew, I I want to speak to Orthodox Christians for a moment. The Orthodox Church is the second largest Christian denomination in the world. Only the Roman Catholic Church is larger. The Orthodox Church is divided into a number of branches. The Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Church, but I want to speak to the parishioners of the Orthodox Church and specifically about 300 million members worldwide. That's quite significant. So, recently, I've received a number of letters, messages from Orthodox priests who personally wanted to convey to me that they have a deep love for Jewish people and a deep love for Israel. And they wanted to make that clear because the Orthodox Church as a whole does not like the Jewish people, does not like Israel, opposes the Jewish state completely. >> And look at Gaza. Gaza is even closer to home for Orthodox Christians in many ways because it's the Holy Land. And to see this, forgive me, showing too many of my cards about this, but to see this Zionist state irrationally in my mind allied with the United States of America. A Knesset that is full of the vast majority who think Jesus Christ was a false rabbi properly executed for his blasphemy and this is our chief ally for what? >> It's a very serious problem, but it's understandable how the Orthodox Church would find itself in such a predicament. And now Orthodox Christians worldwide would have nothing but contempt for Israel. >> If you are Muslim, don't think that we Christians actually support Israel. Even us Christian Orthodox, I mean. We pray for what? We don't pray for Israel. >> The reason why Orthodox Christians are very vulnerable here and I want to address here is that there are a number of problems that plague Orthodox Christians. First is that generally speaking, they don't read the Hebrew Bible, what they would call the Old Testament. It would be There are a few Orthodox Christians who do, but they're an outlier. Orthodox Christians who go to church uh are exposed to a highly structured liturgical mass and it is designed to where these passages are what read in Orthodox Christians are definitely not encouraged to read the Hebrew Bible on their own and they very rarely do. But to make the matters even worse, Orthodox Christians are told that they should only read the Hebrew Bible through the filter of the Church Fathers. >> We don't follow the Old Testament at all. The Old Testament is our root. [music] The Old Testament is a preparation for the New Testament, but Christians read the Old Testament through the New Testament because everything in the Old Testament [music] was about Jesus Christ. So for a Christian, we understand the Old Testament to be a for a earlier, what St. Paul would call a childish age, an age in [music] which the human being had not yet been redeemed. God had not yet become man. Sin had not yet been atoned for, and [music] the Holy Spirit had not been given to believers until the day of Pentecost. Once that happens, a much higher way of life, the Christian way of life is established [music] as normative. So it would make no sense at all for us to follow >> [music] >> the Old Testament. >> This is an absolute nightmare because all the church fathers hated the Jews and insisted the Jews would never return and destruction of Jerusalem point to God's, well, God was done with the Jews. The Orthodox Church firmly insisted that the Jews would never return here and they could never return there. It was their horrible predicament that demonstrated God was done with the Jews and the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the commonwealth that is a sign, a symbol that God had replaced them with the church. That means the entire Orthodox Church believes in replacement theology. Insists that while the Jews were at one time God's favored nation or God's chosen people, but that ended when the Jews rejected Jesus and killed him. And now the church is the new Israel. They all believe that. With very rare exceptions. You might find it's unusual. You might find Orthodox Christians that are pro-Israel because they just think that Israel's a good country that hold Western values. But it It be very unusual to find an Orthodox Christian that believes that Jewish people have returned to this land because of God's providence and plan and that he was keeping his promise. The reason that would be so unusual is because what I had mentioned, that is that priests teach Orthodox Christians that they're only to understand the Hebrew Bible, what they call the Old Testament, through the filters of the church fathers. >> We would never look for the rebuilding of an earthly temple. God forbid. The Wailing Wall means nothing to Christians. Nothing. We are not looking or anticipating. In fact, it is impossible that the old shadow type of Jesus' body of the church could be in fact accomplished. Saint Cyril of Alexandria says that the earthly temple was a foretaste of the true temple, the body of Christ, the church. We would never rebuild a type when the real thing is here. We don't live in shadows. We live in the full light of Christ. We don't look for ironic priests to return when the very possibility of such has been forever destroyed by the judgment of God upon the nation of Israel in AD 70 at the hands of the Romans as a fulfillment of Jesus' prophecies. We don't pine after Aaron and his priesthood, that earthly priesthood passed by blood, which has been obliterated. They have no records. They don't have priests anymore. That Old Testament was a type of Jesus' priesthood, which has come in fullness. >> John Chrysostom hated Jews. Basil despised Jews. Athanasius detested Jews. Augustine he hated the Jews and said the Jews would never return in his apologetic work, The City of God. It's a massive work of 22 volumes that he wrote in the early part of the 5th century. Augustine makes it clear that the reason why the Jews are still here, if they're not chosen, then why they're still around, that God has preserved them as a witness people. Their miserable plight in a degraded state would bear witness to what happens to a nation that rejects Jesus and worse, kills him. So, the Jews are destined to live in a beleaguered state as a testimony that God was done with them and this is what happens to people that reject Jesus. Now, let's be very clear. What is it that Christians is not that they just revere Chrysostom or Basil or Cyril or Augustine, they pray to these people. Literally, they pray to them. They believe that the teachings of the church fathers are holy. Like, that's the only way to understand scripture. That means that Orthodox Christians are in an unenviable predicament in that they're in a closed loop. The only way they understand the Hebrew Bible is through the teachings of the church fathers. That's the only lens they can read it in. But then there's no way to test it. There's no way to examine what the church fathers said in light of what's happening now. I mean, what they believed then is unfalsifiable. There's no way to test Augustine. There's no way to test Cyril of Alexandria. There's no way to test Ignatius, Irenaeus, any of that. And they all all all hated the Jews. All said that the Jew God was done with them. All said that the church was new Israel. They all said this. There was no nice guy among them. They all proclaimed this. And the Orthodox Church is in a really miserable predicament cuz it never evolved. Like the Catholic Church had the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Well, which did not end every problem, but it certainly had an effect in two very distinct areas. In that, number one and most striking, of course, is that the Second Vatican Council, in a very important document, stated that that anti-Semitism is rejected and that the Jewish people have a unique favor by God, older brother. It did not undo replacement theology, but went a very long way and changed the Catholic Church for the better, no question. It made it possible for Roman Catholics around the world to just reassess the Jewish people and then Israel. I don't think it'll be possible that 30 years later, the Catholic Church had diplomatic relations with Israel if there would be no Second Vatican Council. The Second Vatican Council will produce the thinking encouraging its parishioners to look at the Bible and look at it seriously. So, the Catholic Church has provided a doorway where its parishioners can in some way think independently. That said, Roman Catholics are in a very difficult predicament. We can't Roman Catholic Church pedals in replacement theology and although the Catholic Church, the Vatican, has diplomatic relations with Israel, I mean, wrap your head around this. They don't recognize Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem. I mean, the Orthodox certainly don't cuz they're more medieval. Well, Israel's sovereignty over it. This should blow your mind away because Jerusalem it's not that it looms large in Messianic prophecy. The restoration of Jerusalem and Temple Mount is front and center in Messianic prophecy. It's like how do you avoid that? Now, there are Roman Catholics today, many of them, who are Christian Zionists. Many of them are very, very well known, and they genuinely believe and figured out that the Jews have returned to Jerusalem not just cuz it's a good idea or Israel somehow compatible with Western democracy or the Jews need a state or it's a decolonization. While that may be true, but Christian Zionists believe that the Jews have returned to this land, to Jerusalem, because of God's providence. Well, that's a very important detail. That would be something very hard to find among Orthodox Christians, and I mean really hard to find. And I am grateful to the Orthodox leaders that have personally reached out to me in a personal communication saying that they've come to that conclusion. This very, very unusual. And as I said, Orthodox Christians are in an unfalsifiable closed loop, which means there's no way for them to independently examine the Hebrew Bible and test the claims of the church fathers. Why not? Because of their taught to believe that the only way to read the Old Testament is through the church fathers. You know what a staggering problem that is? That means no Orthodox Christian could examine the Hebrew Bible, could look at Zechariah chapter 12, which says explicitly the Jews will return, defeat their enemies, Jerusalem will be heavy burdens on them, so all the nations will rise against them, God will defeat all the enemies of Israel. They have no way of assessing that. They can't read that without interference. That's a monumental problem. Take Ezekiel 37. I mean, the whole valley of dry bones, that vision is all about God restoring the Jewish people. That's the point of it. You just have to read it in context. The Orthodox Christian is handcuffed. He's handcuffed by the words of Augustine. By John Chrysostom. John Chrysostom hated Jews. And tragically, he was highly prolific. He was said to be a remarkable uh speaker. And that's a huge tragedy because he wrote extensively and much of his writings are used in the Orthodox Church as part of the liturgy. What a monumental problem that is. Well, as an Orthodox Jew, I want to say this to Orthodox Christians. Would you consider going back to the Hebrew Bible? And the Orthodox Church believes that the entire corpus of the Hebrew Bible is the word of God. I want to make that very clear. I'm not encouraging you to read the Talmud, nothing like that. The Orthodox Church insists that the Hebrew Bible is the word of God, every book of it. Now, they have other books, but we're not going to talk about it. So, therefore, I want to say the following. If you're an Orthodox Christian, I'd like to ask you to go back to the Hebrew Bible and let the voice of the prophets speak for themselves rather than the filters of the church fathers that came thousands of years later. Doesn't that make sense? Isn't it reasonable to go back to Ezekiel of 2 and 1/2 thousand years ago and let his voice speak. Jeremiah he preached right here in Jerusalem. Let Jeremiah speak. Jeremiah 30:3 tells us that the Jews would return. Read it for yourself. Ezequiel 38 and 39 is the end time war of Gog. Persia, modern day Iran, goes to war with Israel right here. They'll be destroyed. I just encourage you to read it for yourself. I'm not suggesting that at this stage of your life you're going to learn Hebrew. It's not likely to happen. I get that. Pick your Christian Bible of choice. Go to Ezequiel chapter 39 as example. In chapter 39 it ends by saying the reason why this war between Iran and Israel is that the all the nations will see the glory of God. The reason why there's a war is that the whole world will know the truth. That's how Ezequiel 38 ends. 39:23, 24, 25 use your Christian Bible. Not a Jewish one cuz you need to read it for yourself in a way that's meaningful and just use whatever Christian Bible you have access to. Well, there it tells us that the children of Israel will destroy the enemies of God, the enemies of Israel. That's Ezequiel 39:17, 18, 19, 20. They'll be completely destroyed. Read it for yourself. And here's the key point where you could see that this can't be about the church which teaches that the church is the new Israel. That can't be the case. It's transparently not and the reason for that is that it says that while the Jews went into exile because of their sins, in the end, their sins will be forgotten and they will be restored. And how will their sins be forgiven? Isaiah 1:27, through justice and repentance. No Jesus, nobody dying for anybody's sins. And Jerusalem has received double for its iniquity. I don't want to deal with the Jesus part right now. I encourage you, as an Orthodox Christian, I encourage you as a Roman Catholic, to read the Hebrew Bible for yourself and let the prophets speak in their own voice, rather than allowing the church fathers tell you how to interpret these texts. I'm asking for a lot, or perhaps I'm not. It's becoming very important now. The reason as an Orthodox Jew I'm reaching out to you is it is night, isn't it? It's dark. It is. But this long night, this long exile, is coming to an end. Arise and shine, for your light has come. Kings will go by your light. Zechariah 8:23, look it up in your Christian Bible. 10 of the nations will grab the shirt of a Jew and say, "Let us go with you because we heard that God is with you." Your translation would not reveal, would not betray that it says "Nelchi Mochem Kishamano Elohim Imochem", which means "Let us go with you", plural, "because we heard that God is with you", plural. That's what it says in the original Hebrew. Would you consider reading the Bible for yourself? Let the voice of the prophets be heard. Shalom. >> If you enjoyed this program, please like and subscribe. >> [music] [music] [singing] [music] [singing]