What's The Point Anyway?

What's The Point Anyway - A discussion on opposing views of the Nation of Israel with Jacob Fronczak

• Luke McInnes

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A little bit of background for listeners - I’ve had some vigorous debates on X with Jacob’s colleague Aaron Rich. We take a completely different interpretation on what the Bible says about Israel, and that has profound implications not only for doctrine but I’d also say it’s perhaps the most significant issue in the world right now with the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In this conversation, Jacob Fronczak was all too willing to join me and discuss our differences where he shares his insights on Messianic Judaism, the significance of Israel in biblical prophecy, and the hope for a better future through the resurrection and the coming of the Messiah. He discusses the concept of proleptic miracles, the differences between first-century Judaism and modern Judaism, and the implications of current events in Israel for the future of the Jewish people and the world. Jacob emphasizes the importance of understanding the Jewish roots of Christianity and the role of the Jewish people in God's plan.

Whilst his position is one that I totally disagree with, I was very fortunate to have Jacob join me in a respectful and friendly conversation which is all too rare when it comes to anything regarding Israel. I hope that listeners who might disagree with Jacob can at least gain a better insight into why he and many others hold the views that they do, because only in doing so can we have more meaningful conversations.

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have you got a hard stop or anything? No, usually I don't even really get around until... an hour and a half from now. So, but no, don't, my next meeting is in like four hours or something. it got perfect. Easy. Well, welcome back to What's the Point Anyway. My guest today, Jacob Fronczak, is a writer and presenter for First Fruits of Zion, a messianic Jewish teaching organization. He's also the host of the Messiah podcast, whose tagline is, Jesus is Jewish and that changes everything. A little bit of background for listeners. I've had some vigorous debates on Twitter with Jacob's colleague, Aaron Rich. We take a completely different interpretation on what the Bible says about Israel and that has profound implications, not only for doctrine, but I'd also say it's perhaps the most significant issue in the world right now with the Israel-Palestine conflict. But full credit to Aaron, we've had these discussions without a single ad hominem being thrown. And when I asked him to come on the show to have a proper conversation, who was all too willing to connect me with Jacob, who was also all too willing to join me. As I've developed this show, I've increased my focus on having guests who have different worldviews to mine and letting them share their perspectives in a respectful way. So this is not a debate, but rather a chance to have that same style of conversation. Jacob, I really appreciate you coming on and thanks for waking up at the crack of dawn early to do it. First question for you, what's the point anyway? wow. The point, I think the point of everything we're doing here is that we are looking forward to a much better world. We're looking forward to the resurrection from the dead. We want to participate in that. And we're looking forward to a time of plenty. We're looking forward to a time where, you know, everything, the glorious future that the prophets envisioned comes to pass in its fullness. and there's no more war. I mean, for me, that's the point. I'm sort of an idealist. to see that picture painted fosters a deep longing in me for a better world. that's something I think we're called to be working toward in probably a couple of different ways. Yeah. Interesting. So, yeah, as I said in the intro, I want to avoid, debate and disagreement. I'd rather focus a lot more on, common ground, but I think, as you know, I'm, I'm preterist. So yeah, immediately, I have a different perspective on that, but I, I won't get into mine, but I'd love to dig sort of deeper into yours. and ask the question that when, when you answer for that, so it's The point is hope, it's about a better future and something that you're looking forward to. What does that mean for today? So, you know, we have this broad outline of history that's sort of a Jewish apocalyptic timeline, right? So there's this age, and in this age, people die and you never see them again, with a couple of rare miraculous exceptions. You people go hungry, people fight over resources. for the prophets, a big problem was idolatry. I'm sure there's still idolatry happening. although it doesn't look quite the same way that it did in their time. And then there's a future era. There's the world to come or the messianic era, or maybe those are two different times, but there's this age and the way the world is structured and all the problems sort of go away. God is personally involved. You know, the, prophets say the world is full of the knowledge of God, like, like the oceans cover the earth and things like that. And what that means for today is, you know, there's a, we want to invite people into that future and where possible, where possible, we want to, we want to get that started in small ways. we, we use the word proleptic a lot. So we draw from. that future reality and we try to make it happen in this world today. Like for example, for example, this is, this is essentially what a miracle is in, in the new Testament. Right? So the future, all the, all the dead will come back to life. Jesus raised a couple of people back to life. And then he came back to life, know, quantitatively or like, or, you know, a qualitatively better type of, being he's, he's an immortal. He's incorruptible body, you know, which we he's the only one who's been able to do that. But for a for a person just to come back from life, that's like a foretaste, right? It's like a little it's a glimpse of what's going to happen and feeding the 5000. Right. So in the in the Messianic Kingdom, no one will go hungry. And so for a couple of hours in one day, 5000 people don't go hungry. It's like. It's a little foretaste. And so when he tells his disciples, look, you need to go feed the hungry, you give water, people are thirsty, clothe the naked, visit people who are sick. These are like little deposits or little clues, little like that. You pull back the curtain a little bit and say, look, this is what it's going to be like for everybody all the time in the future. You can have, can experience it a little bit today. If we could all just get over ourselves. Yeah. What, so I mean, you use a couple of those examples like the resurrection and, and the, yeah, the resurrection of Lazarus and the feeding of the 5,000. And they were, they were obviously specific to sort of Jesus three and a half year ministry on earth, which was a long time, you know, obviously clearly a long time ago. What about some of the, what was the word you use? Sorry. The, the four tastes. Yeah, yeah, proleptics. It's just something coming into being before it's time. Yeah. What would you say some examples of that like today in our current lifetime? Yeah, I think it's something that I don't think personally, I don't think that we're seeing a lot of open miracles. I think, you you hear about them, you hear stories and whispers of what things happening like in Africa or whatever. I think it's just from my experience, it seems like God is working in a way that is not obvious. He's working in ways to where you can see what happened and you could explain it through other means. call them hidden miracles, extraordinary coincidences, things like that. But I think what we see, what we can see proleptically today are things we have to sort of, God has said, look, it's sort of up to you. Your calling is to go show people what the kingdom looks like, the kingdom of heaven. Yeah. There's, I mean, there's a lot that you can draw from that. There's a deep well to draw from. Like I said, there are acts of kindness, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, things like that are definitely part of it. I think one of the drums that we beat a lot is a proleptic ecclesiology, which is I think what really breaks people's brains, which is... in the kingdom, know, like in Isaiah 2, all the nations go to Jerusalem and they all go up the mountain to have God resolve their disputes and nations won't make war against each other anymore. those concepts are connected, right? And I don't think that there's anything I can do to bring that world into existence. However, what... What we see there is they're going to Jerusalem, right? So it's Israel-centric. there's many other passages in the scripture where it talks about, hey, the nations. Right now it's just Israel that knows that God is the one true God, but later it's gonna be all the nations. All the nations will come and even Solomon says, other people from other nations will worship this temple, they'll worship the God of Israel all through the Psalms, all through the prophets. Zechariah says the nations will come to Jerusalem and celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. All these pointing to people other than the Jewish people recognizing the sovereignty of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So making disciples certainly qualifies as sort of a proleptic taste of this future where everyone will acknowledge God. person we can get to acknowledge the God of Israel today is a foretaste of a future where everyone will acknowledge the God of Israel. But the framework there is Israel-centric, right? It is the God of Israel. So there's a sense in which if that identity of God and if the identity of Israel as God's people is missing from our ecclesiology, it can cause us to depart from the apostolic vision and from the vision of the prophets. in ways that maybe could have been predictable, but I wouldn't have been able to predict. Yeah. So, I mean, when you say like the nations will worship the God of Israel, I mean, I don't, don't, it's so far as, mean, my genealogy, think like most people in the 21st century, I can't go back more than, you know, maybe five or six generations, but as far as, as far as I know, I'm, don't descend from the 12 tribes of Israel. Am I not an example of the nations worshiping the God of Israel? I think you are. mean, that's so am I. Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of us. In a certain sense, the mission to get the nations to forsake idolatry and worship the God of Israel has been a resounding success. There's lots and lots of them. So yeah. Okay. So you think, so you think that that task has commenced essentially and that we're in the process of it. I think the door is open and the e-vite has been sent out. The message is being proclaimed and people are being invited in. I think probably an area in which we differ is the degree to which we are currently enjoying all of what the prophets promised. Yeah. I'd love to maybe talk a little bit about, I mean, in the intro, I, you know, I introduced you as, someone that's a part of a messianic Jewish congregation. I actually used to attend a messianic Jewish congregation, but I remember before, you know, a week before I first heard about it, I was like, what's a messianic Jewish like, I actually had no idea what it meant. And I'm sure there. would be people listening to this that hear the intro and think they're talking to you as a Jewish guy, but then you're talking about Jesus and they're like, well, hang on. What's the go? So yeah. I, my understanding you're not actually Jewish. Is that right? Yeah. So I'd love you to talk maybe a little bit about your background and then how you've ended up where you are now. And then, and then, then we can maybe go a little bit into the sort of mess. I only Jewish congregation and what that means. We'll talk a bit more about that. Yeah, yeah. So I work for a messianic Jewish teaching organization, but I don't attend a messianic congregation. I have attended. There's some that I have attended. There's not one local. I would have to I would have to go quite a distance to find the closest. I live in a rural a rural area. So there's not there's not a lot. There's not a lot of Jews out here. Messianic or otherwise. The guy that owned the candle shop in town was Jewish, but he hates a little menorahs and stuff. he sadly he passed some time ago. So how did I get mixed up in this? grew up, my mom was, I don't know, my mom grew up Lutheran, my dad spiritual roots are Pentecostal. I was homeschooled with a fundamental Baptist curriculum, the Rebecca book curriculum. is what they called it back then. And that's a very specific set of theologies, right? It's dispensationalist. And that's probably a really relevant one for our conversation. At some point, I would say, this is when I was living in Virginia probably. So I would have been 19 or 20 years old. And I had this sola scriptura mindset and I was always, I had a great sort of overwhelming life consuming interest in the Bible and trying to understand what it was saying, what it meant and what it meant for me. Because I did, my dad being Pentecostal, I was always interested in what it meant for me, right? It was a. yeah. What's the, I'm trying to read between the lines and say, what's God's message for me personally? What's the Holy Spirit trying to draw out of the text for me? And I, you you start at the beginning of the Bible and it all makes a lot of sense until you start getting to verses that are like, these are foods you're not supposed to eat and. And then you go and ask a question to the pastor. He's like, well, you know, that was a different dispensation. That was a previous dispensation, dispensation of law. And now we're in the dispensation of grace, which is, like, that worked for me for a long time. Like all the way through high school, that worked for me. But then there's these verses that are like, this law is never going away. This is the law for all your generations in all your dwelling places until the end of time. And it's like, that doesn't work. I don't think we're living after the end of time, right? So, you know, that just sort of, I flirted for a while with the idea of like, it's not that hard to stop eating pork. I'll just stop eating, just in case, you know, just in case this is important or even just in case like it's healthy. I didn't really know what, it's like it's in the Bible, right? So. of people's theology is based on the foot in both camps methodology. I'll do this just in case. Yeah, like this is Pascal's wager, with pork. And so that sort of started me on this journey. And I think where I eventually landed several years later, probably not until I was doing my master's work at Liberty, that I finally realized that, that it's for all your generations and all your dwelling places. And he's talking to the Israelites, talking to the Jewish people. And since I'm not an Israelite, that my relationship to the Torah, to the Old Testament law, it's not the same as the relationship with someone who is under the Sinai covenant, someone whose ancestors threw the blood on the rocks and said, whatever you tell us, we will do. And so yeah, that's a Gentiles engaging with Messianic Judaism and sort of coming alongside and saying, yeah, Judaism, Jesus didn't come to get rid of Jewish identity. He didn't come to get to say, Israelites are not actually God's people. so Jewish identity, even in the context of being a disciple, maybe especially in the context of being a disciple, is significant. And for me to come along as somebody who's not Jewish and say, yes, that's correct, the Jewish people have... a relationship with God predicated on these covenants that we find in Old Testament. And I can also participate because I'm in Christ, because he opened the door and said, look, can all follow me. You can all be my followers. can be my disciples and you can be part of my kingdom. that's happening now. I'm following the Jewish Messiah alongside Jewish people, which I think is it more closely reflects the apostolic vision than perhaps other ecclesiological structures have in the past. Yeah. So how did you, when you sort of, you know, you started off thinking, maybe I don't need to eat pork. And then you maybe got your head around that theology a bit more. did you, how did you then land in the Mesa, even though you don't attend a messianic congregation, as you said, but how did you end up in this sort of broader doctrine and community? Yeah, yeah. I think when someone begins to struggle with these questions of simple questions, why don't we eat or why do we eat pork and why don't we wear it to fill in on our foreheads and tzitzit on our garments and all these old testament things that Christians generally do not do. I mean, now we have Google, but even back then, if you're out there trying to find answers, a lot of people encountered people like Zola Levitt, know, who were approaching the Bible as Jewish literature, even the New Testament as Jewish literature and saying, here's a Jewish person reading this, here's all written by Jews, a Jewish person reading this, here's what it's saying to them, here's maybe what some of the context that you wouldn't have been aware of not having ever celebrated the Passover or something like that, right? And that perspective ended up being really helpful to me and I just sort of gravitated toward it. So it's understanding the New Testament in its second temple, first century Jewish context. It's a lot easier if you just have a bunch of Jewish friends who know Judaism really well, who studied the sources and you can just point this stuff out. Like I'm never gonna be a Talmudist. There's been Christian Talmudists. not to say you can't be one, but my buddy, Jeremiah, who lives in Israel and studies the Talmud all day long, I was just gonna ask him. It's been a really fruitful exercise in relationship for me and it's really been helpful in illuminating the scriptures. I just feel like I understand the Bible a lot better looking at it from a Jewish perspective. it's almost like, I wouldn't say it's a one-way street as to where I benefit. some a lot more from messianic Judaism and that's the end of Judaism does from me. But I think that's sort of what you know, Paul talks about this. says you he says, you know, think it's to the Corinthians or Thessalonians. He says you've all benefited so much from this word that you receive from us. And if you want to if you want this relationship to be, you know, reciprocal, give us some money for poor Jews in Jerusalem. And that was sort of his argument. So I sort of understand the move because I think I went through it myself where I think you're right. I think modern Christianity does a whole lot wrong. And one of the big problems is this completely disjointed understanding of the Old and the New Testament. Even the, what's her name? Not the Gibsons or something, those guys. And they hand out the Bibles in the motel, the Gideons. Yeah. And it's the Psalms and the New Testament. Yeah, Psalms, Proverbs, and the New Testament. It's everything you need. yeah, it's great. But the New Testament is the fulfillment of what was written in the old. You you can't know the Messiah without knowing all about him from the Old Testament. So I completely sort of agree with that perspective and I understand it as well. I certainly saw the lure to a faith and a doctrine that was heavily based in understanding the old Testament. remember the first time I went to a messianic congregation too, was quite rejuvenating because you're like, this does feel different. Now where, where I started to have some, some issues, I'm really interested to get your take on this is I, I, I feel like there's a, an absolute chasm between first century Judaism, which became Christianity. think, I think a lot of people still forget that, that Jesus was a Jew. All of the apostles were Jew. All of the early church were Jews because it was, you know, to the Jew first and then to the Greek. It was, it all happened in Jerusalem until Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD. But how, what I feel there's a chasm between first century Judaism and there was two obviously two types of first century Judaism. There was the ones that became believers and the ones that, can you hear me now? frozen. I can hear you now. Yeah. I'll edit that out. Yeah, so where my question lies is there was two groups of Jews in the first century. There was the ones that became believers and there was another group of people that practiced Judaism who crucified Christ, right? So you had a difference there. How different is first century Judaism that became Christianity to what we now know as modern Judaism, which is primarily Talmudic as their source Bible. In my opinion, they're two completely different religions, somewhat sharing the same name, but I'm guessing you think otherwise. Yeah, I would say that we would approach this differently. think, so when we look at first century Judaism, there were more than two. There were actually quite a few expressions of Judaism in the first century. Yeah, yeah. So you have the Pharisees who are, as far as we can tell, the closest antecedent to what people call Orthodox Judaism today. And you have the zealots, the zealots were their own sort of thing. wanted, were, they were, their whole thing was we can just have this whole Testament promises now if we just pick up our swords and go kill all a bunch of Romans. just, you know, take, take hold of the promises, in a very literal sense. And, you know, the Sadducees who were, were in charge of, you know, they were the priestly. class and they were, they had, they got the temple tax and they were very wealthy. And then you had the, this Siyin community, you had the, the Qubran community, which might've been the same thing. And, and maybe, maybe there were some other ones, you know, and you had diaspora Judaism and you had, Judaism in the land of Israel may have looked different to some degree. Yeah. And it could have depended on where you were. there was, there was Judaism was not, as uniform. in the first century as we find it maybe three, 400 years later. So this idea that, so what I'm pushing back against a little bit is the idea that there were Jews that crucified Jesus and then there were Jews who followed Jesus. So what we have, what I would say instead is that you do have Jews pushing for the crucifixion of Jesus and these are mainly, mainly the Sadducees. and there's, there are some, there are some Pharisees involved. You have Pharisees and it, it looks to me and this now I'm getting into a little bit of speculation for a second here. looks to me like anyone who benefited from the Roman occupation. the Romans installed those Sadducees because they wanted people in charge of the temple who were comfortable under Roman rule. And there were, there were. make some money if you were comfortable being under working with the Romans. If you wanted to, you want to be a tax collector or something, you could do that. You could work for the Romans. sorry, you just dropped out for me then. Same thing. So do you want to just go again from where you said they had, the Romans had Sadducees? Yeah. Yeah, So the Sadducees that we see there, those people were in bed with the Romans. The Herodians were in bed with the Romans. Anyone who had a financial incentive for the Romans to stay in power, tax collectors, people like that, these were people who did not want to see a resistance movement. They didn't want to see a war with Rome. They didn't want to see a rebellion. And there were probably some Pharisees in that group, people who had found, however they found it, they found some degree of security and for whatever reason they didn't want to see, they didn't really want to see the Messiah. And then when you look at who did become a follower of Jesus, you find a lot of Pharisees in that camp. And the reason for this is, When you, I think when you look at the things Jesus was saying, you know, talking about, he talks about angels and demons and the resurrection from the dead and a world to come. And these are things the Sadducees didn't believe in. know, these are marked theological differences. So the things he was saying would have resonated with the Pharisees. Even when he was rebuking the Pharisees, he's rebuking them. in this for the same kind of things that the Talmud rebukes the Pharisees for. You know, it's like, you talk a big game, but you're not living up to this. Or, you know, you're doing this, you're doing it for the wrong reasons, things like that. And this message resonated with a lot of Pharisees. And to the point where by the time we get to Acts 15, you have this distinct group of Jewish people that are Pharisees that have this specific opinion on what to do with Gentiles who are coming into the movement. So we see, so how far along the road do you have? Because obviously these Pharisees that are following Jesus and the Pharisees that decided not to. how deep and wide was the chasm that separated those two groups? think probably given how soon after the resurrection these things are happening, I think the chasm was probably not that deep and probably not that wide. The main difference is gonna be whether or not they thought Jesus was the Messiah as to what their messianic expectations were and what they thought the Messiah was gonna do. The Pharisees that didn't think Jesus was the Messiah thought someone was going to come and do certain things. Restore the monarchy, rebuild the temple, things like that, after 70, 80. The Pharisees that did think Jesus was the Messiah thought he was going to come back and do all those things. Now, the further through time you go, the longer those two groups remains bifurcated, the more differences emerged as they sought to define themselves against each other. And so you have, and now you have almost 2000 years, I don't know where to put the exact date of when to start considering them to definitively separate religions or to definitively separate movements. But we have certainly well over a thousand years for them to have continued in the directions away from each other. Yeah. So what are you doing? Like, I'll just, I'll read the, it's like two, three verses. Like Matthew, like Matthew 23, where he's got like the eight woes against the Pharisees. And this is Jesus speaking. It's like the most scathing words anyone's ever heard from Jesus. And I think a lot of non-believers listen to this and they can't believe that it is him, but it's, serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you just escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some of them you shall kill and crucify, and some of them you shall scourge in your synagogues and persecute them from city to city. That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from the blood of righteous Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Baruchias, whom you slew between the temple and the altar. Verily, I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation. That seems to be a pretty big chasm for me, right? Yeah, I can see where you're coming from for sure. So there's a... You can read that through the lens of a couple thousand years of history and read it as a condemnation as from an outsider. But I think that in Jesus' time, we have to read it as condemnation is coming from an insider. He's a faithful Jewish person, observant Jewish person talking to other Jewish people who are, they're trying to be observant. mean, that was a big thing with Pharisees and they were, they were trying very hard to keep all the demands of the Old Testament law. And so he's, he's, he's re, he's rebuking them as not, not, I don't think he was a card carrying Pharisee necessarily. Cause it was a distinct move and you either were one or you weren't one. I'm not sure that he was one. he, he, he sort of fits. model of the Hasid a little better, is, those were sort of retconned in to become good Jews and you look at them, the Mishnah and the Talmud. But anyway, yeah, I think we need to see this as criticism from the inside. And I think, you know, have, maybe this isn't the perfect analogy, but you can certainly find evangelicals with scathing rebukes of the evangelical church. You know, this Catholic who absolutely despise this Pope, you know, so you have, can, you can, you can end up with scathing language like this as in, as in, as in group communication. And one of the most fascinating things that I found in the Talmud is a similar passage about the Pharisees. So I got to clear my throat. Yeah, go for it. I can only go so long before everything starts getting gunked up in there, I'm not sure why. So yeah, you're saying the Talmud verse about the Pharisees. Yeah, yeah, so let me see if I can find it. It's not the sort of thing I have at hand. I think it's in Tractate Sota. So it states in the, it states in the Talmud Tractate Sota 22b. And I'm gonna go from this William Davidson Talmud, because it's online and it's got some clarifying words in there. It's because the Hebrew in the Talmud is very terse. Mm-hmm. it says, states in the Mishnah, those who injure themselves out of false abstinence, and the words there is Prussian, and it's talking about the Pharisees, are people who erode the world. The sages taught there are seven pseudo-righteous people who erode the world. The righteous of Shechem, the self-flagellating righteous, the blood-letting righteous, the pestil-like righteous, the righteous who say, Tell me what my obligation is and I will perform it. Those who are righteous due to love and those who are righteous due to fear. And that word righteous, every time you see that word righteous in the passage is perushin or it's the Pharisees. And so the righteous of Shechem is comparable to the action of the people of Shechem who circumcised themselves for personal gain. The self-flagellating righteous is one who injures their feet. dragging their feet on the ground in an attempt to appear humble. The bloodletting righteous is the person who looks so quickly away from a woman so as not to look after her with lust that he slams his head into a wall. The pestle-like righteous is the one who walks bent over like the pestle of a mortar. And all of these, it's not clear, are derogatory. They're just... absolutely eviscerating the Pharisees. And so it goes on, it says really the, it's well, it's okay to serve God because of fear, but it's really what you want is to serve God out of love. And that's the motivation that you want. So that's another example of in-group criticism. now for Jesus, I think you're going to find it's heightened pretty severely because what's happening there is he's making an offer. He's making a pretty good offer. His message is the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel. So the end of the age can happen right now. Everyone can have everything they need. We can have peace on earth. We can have you know, again, all that the prophets promised the resurrection from the dead, you see all your dead relatives and friends again. And this is such a magnitudinous event and offer. mean, it could have, it could have been that we would have spent the last 2000 years in utter bliss. And that generation of the leaders of the Jewish people for whatever reason, they decided that this was not for them. they didn't want that, they didn't believe him or they were comfortable where they were or for whatever reason. he has just this utter, we get to Matthew 23, by Matthew 23, you've seen this sort of tonal shift. At the beginning, there is this optimism that the message could be accepted and all these things, all these good things could happen. By Matthew 23, there was optimism from J's towards the Pharisees? In the text, know, know, he's he's out there putting himself out there. He's saying repent for the kingdom of heaven as at hand. That is an optimistic message to me saying here's here's You know the king the kingdom of heaven is as his hand is a great and it's a great and fantastic offer and and potentially promise if if that generation had Responded to jesus' message and I think the door was open for quite a while. This is why he's going around telling everybody about the message and it seems like, I mean, there was tens of hundreds of thousands that did believe his message and followed him. I read the gospels and I see him as being scathing towards the Pharisees from the beginning. Do you think that grew? Because I almost never, I almost think it's... interesting in a way that The message of the gospel is always sort of repent and believe in that there's a, you know, and there's a chance to repent and believe. I always almost couldn't wrap my head around it. Like he doesn't seem to be given any chance to these Pharisee guys. Yeah, yeah, he comes down harder on the Pharisees than he does on anyone else. I think John the Baptist does the same thing. Yeah, so it's even before, even before we see the ministry of Jesus get started. Again, again, though, what I see there is, you know, when you have a sinner, right, Jesus says he came to call sinners to repentance. You have these sinners and tax collectors and things like that. Yeah. And when Pharisees come and ask him, what are you doing hanging out with all these sinners? And he says, well, healthy people don't need a doctor, sick people need a doctor. So these are people who I think we could say are, they're farther away. Maybe they've given up. Someone who's a prostitute. This is someone who's far away from the life that the Torah calls a Jewish person. Yeah. And a Pharisee is closer, right? You have Luke, have this great verse in Luke where Jesus says, look, you guys tithe mint and dill and cumin, but you neglect the weightier aspects of the law of justice and righteousness. And he says, you should have done both. You should have done one without neglecting the other. So you have these people who are trying, but in some sense they're missing the point. And... So you think the Pharisee was closer than the prostitute? So that's sort of the great subversion of what we see happening. Because it turns out the prostitute who repents, the tax collector who repents ends up being much closer than the Pharisee who doesn't. This is example of the Pharisee who goes in and says, thank God I'm not like this tax collector. Yeah, yeah, and the tax collector who, I think it's a tax collector who beats his breast and says, I'm a sinner. there's... When you have someone who, the Pharisees were correct about the resurrection of the dead. They were correct about the existence of the world to come, angels and demons. So they had this framework that should have been leading them to a different place than they were. They had the Torah. Jesus tells a story, the rich man of Lazarus. He says, The rich man says, back Lazarus to tell my family. says, they have the Torah and the prophets. Who had more Torah and prophets than the Pharisees? They took it more seriously than anyone else. And the fact that it had led them to this place where they weren't heeding the message of repentance, because everyone had things that they had to repent of. Even the Roman soldiers. Hmm. You know, think John the Baptist would tell them, don't, don't oppress people too much. mean, everyone has a step they can take. Even if, even the people who are furthest away have the steps that they can take and they can repent. And what the Pharisees have to repent of. lot of it turns out to be really specific things. Like when you go back in Matthew 23, like I'll start in verse 18. I don't even know what version I'm in. don't think it matters for this. Yeah, yeah. We started verse 16, woe to you blind guides. You say if anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing, but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath. It says you blind fools, which is greater, the gold of the temple that makes the gold sacred. So this, he's referencing this discussion that's apparently very, very much like a. sort of the straining and gnats and swallowing camels type of discussion where it's this very granular attempt to draw the line of what constitutes a false oath. Which on the one hand, if you're dealing with the national law of the people of Israel and you know, the first guy who broke the Sabbath, God killed for it, you wanna know where the line is. You have to know where the line is. And so there's The attempt itself is not a problem to figure out where the line is drawn. But they do it in the wrong place. Jesus says, if you're making a false oath, you're making a false oath. You can't get out of that on a technicality by saying, I was swearing by this instead of that, so I'm not bound by the oath. This is a fairly technical aspect of Jewish law. And he's really laying into them for this. And you do find this, you do find this in other places in Jewish literature where one rabbi will say, well, I think that the halakhic status of an oven that has been used for this purpose is that status. And another rabbi will say, you've just destroyed the entire world with what you said. And it's like, wow, you do see this hyperbolic language around this technical minutia of halakhah or of Jewish law. Yeah. And then, but then you have this generation of Pharisees who, who was so close to like, had this opportunity to bring in the kingdom. Not every generation of Jews has the, the opportunity to see the Messiah come and do miracles and, and say, here's all you have to do is repent of these things. And they didn't do it. And you know, that's sort of what he says. He says, look, Sodom and Gomorrah aren't going to be judged as harshly as you. Yeah. would have gone and done this stuff in their midst, they would have repented and you guys aren't repenting. that, and you know, that merits a level of judgment that I think is unique. I think it's unique to that generation, honestly. Yeah, yeah, so you, okay, so you would then think, you know, in verse 36 of Matthew 23, verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation. And then, I mean, even if we go to like Malachi that speaks of prophesized John the Baptist, talks about him, you know, coming to show the way and then verse five, I'll come near to you in judgment, I'll be a swift witness against sorcerers and adulterers. Hmm. you would think the passages like that are referring to the judgment that did indeed come on that generation. So it seems clear that a lot of the things, there are a lot of things Jesus said. You he talks about when you see armies surrounding Jerusalem flee to the mountains, things like that. These are relevant to his audience, because that did happen. Armies surrounded Jerusalem. Christian's about to flip to Pella. Yeah, the apostles, there's the story of the flight to Pella. find, you know, anyone who stayed in Jerusalem was, the commands to flee turned out to be very good advice because the remaining in Jerusalem would not have been a good choice at that time. Yeah, so do we find that some prophecies were fulfilled with the destruction of the temple in the year 70? Yeah, that was a big deal. That was a big deal. there were, Jesus did say things that were going to happen that were relevant to his audience. think there's, I think there is a, there is a tendency in dispensational theology specifically to see everything as being exclusively the providence of some future series of events. And My understanding of the Preterist position, well, there's partial and there's complete, but my understanding is that there's a tendency toward, well, how much of this can we say has already happened? And perhaps there's not very much that's left to happen. I mean, the Preterists that I've talked to when I've asked them, like, hey, do you think Jesus is coming back? They're like, well, yeah, we think Jesus is coming back. So that's something that hasn't happened, but a lot of it has happened. Maybe most of it has happened. And the arguments that have been put forth to me have been like, look, you don't have Jesus saying all these things to these people when secretly it's for someone 2,000 years from now. Or, you know, John writing the book of Revelation to these seven churches, but secretly it was for something 2,000 years from then. I think is a valid criticism of a dispensationalist theology that takes this extreme position that it's all futurism because it's not. It's not comforting to be told these things as someone living in Philadelphia or Smyrna necessarily. if the only good things that are ever going to happen are 2000 years in the future. Although what we have found is Jesus hasn't come back yet. So we are still waiting. anyway, my position is, and I think a good model for understanding some of this stuff is the prophecies that we find in the Old Testament about the coming of the Messiah. Cause These things didn't happen for those generations. Isaiah's generation didn't see this stuff of nations not making war against each other anymore. And even stuff that we look at, even stuff when the apostles were recording everything that had happened and these Old Testament verses are coming to mind and they're thinking, this is a prophecy of Jesus. Out of Egypt, I have called my son. in its context isn't about Jesus. It's not trying to be about Jesus. It's talking about Israel. And even the first half of the verse says it's about Israel. Even like the woman shall conceive and bear a child. That happens. That happens a few chapters later. And the guy's name is Meher Shalohashbaz or something like that. So there is a message for that generation. But also you have this extraordinary event hundreds of years later when Jesus comes. I think we see some of that. I you look at the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, the next chapter. I think you see certainly Jesus is saying, when you, my apostles, see these things happening, here's what you need to do. But then by the end of what he's saying, he's like, you'll see the Son of Man in the heavens and those loud trumpet and the, I'll gather my elect from the four winds. which I don't think that's something that generation was privileged to enjoy. Somewhere in there, the gaze changes from the immediate future to a distant future. And maybe there's overlap, maybe there's things that happen more than once, maybe more than one time a woman gives birth to a child like that prophecy. I think some of it is actually quite difficult to parse out and may not be clear until we get there. don't know. Jesus surprised a lot of people when he came. He surprised a lot of people when he died. And he surprised a lot of people when he came back from the dead. And then in retrospect, they were able to go find all these things and these prophecies. I think whatever's coming, there's gonna be some of it that we're only gonna be able to look back in retrospect and say, yeah. Yeah. what happened. Interesting. So I'd love maybe to go from that then to, and I think you've opened that by saying that you're somewhat open-minded with it and that you will understand retrospectively, but I mean, where do you, where do you then think we're at on the timeline? And let's talk a little bit more now about modern Israel and how that fits into it. Sure. So I'm not the type to construct a detailed timeline. have a broad, my broad timeline is the timeline of the Jewish apocalyptic literature, which I think the outstanding example we have is the book of Revelation, but it's, there's lots of other ones that read the same way. A bull comes out of the water and turns into a panther or whatever. Yeah. It's really just two, there's two ages. There's this age and there's the age to come. This dispensationalism gets more granular, it goes back in time to the Garden of Eden and says, that's a different age. And it was like, okay, I guess. like, our purposes, there's this age and then there's this age to come. the transition from this age to the age to come is like a woman giving birth. And it's like, It's things stay seemingly normal for a long time and then things slowly start to get worse and then things suddenly start to get a lot worse. And then just when it looks like, just as in pregnancy, just as it looks like when everyone involved is about to die, the level of pain and the extraordinary stress of the event, then a new life is brought into the world. And that's the analogy. The world enters this period of of an apocalypse. The word doesn't mean terrible things happening, it means unveiling, but it has come to mean, apocalyptic has come to mean devastating because it looks like it's gonna be devastating, these wars and famines and plagues and so forth. And then just when it looks like there's no hope, Jesus will come and bring a new age into existence and then. in that age we will find that everything's good. So where are we on the timeline? We're in the age that we're in this age. We're not in the next stage is where I would put us. But as far as the people trying to construct really detailed, it's like, we have Jewish people back in the land. So the next step is the rebuilding of the temple, things like that. It's like, well, I don't know. Yeah, okay. Like Maimonides has this statement where he's like, all these things are going to happen, but it's not clear in what order it's not clear. you know, the, how much time in between each one, he says it's what it's okay to just believe in the general, the general sense of it. Like we, to get into, to get deep into the weeds as to the exact order of things. Like I don't, if you just read Jewish literature and the new Testament and the apocalyptic literature, you try to piece it all together. you probably would not guess that the exiles would start to be un-gathered before the Messiah is on the throne. You would expect the Messiah to come, that's what Jesus says in Matthew 24. says that he's gonna personally come and collect all of his elect from the four corners of the earth and gather them together. From a Messianic Jewish perspective, the elect is Israel has been. the chosen people, right? So he's gonna gather Israel. I think we get to participate. no, it's, we don't, so that's a whole nother discussion. Let's table that for a moment, for a moment, because I just wanna finish the thoughts so we don't get lost. So to see the end gathering of the exiles now is surprising. But if you take this Maimonidean perspective where it's okay not to know exactly what order things are gonna happen in, then it's fine. It's one of the things that's gonna happen and there's other things that are gonna happen. I don't have a granular or detailed timeline or an order of events. I hold these ideas firmly in the sense that they will happen, but loosely in the sense of I don't know if any more of it's gonna happen in my lifetime. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. know whether it's possible to know. But yeah, we can get into Jewish identity if that's something that you're interested in. definitely. So there is, and I wrote about this in Israel matters and I had a rabbi check it and he said it was correct. So that was comforting to me. So Jewish identity is not the same thing as an ethnic identity or a racial identity. And it's not the same thing as a religious identity. And I don't think it's not the same thing as being an Israeli either. It's something different from all of those. And it's different in ways that are not that hard to explain. Like you can join, you can convert to Judaism very much in the same way that you can join a religious movement. You can become a Catholic or you can become Jewish. However, very few religions... take the position that if you're born into it, then you are a member and that can never be undone. You never lose that identity just by virtue of being born. That sounds more like an ethnicity. Like if your parents were German, then you're a German, right? But you can't, while you can go become a citizen of Germany, that doesn't make you a German. So there's aspects of these different kinds of identities. that we see all of them in Jewish identity. I think what I wrote is that it's, being Jewish is a national identity, but not in the modern sense of the nation state. It's a national identity in this ancient sense that it encompasses religious and ethnic and political, know, civic, whatever. It encompasses all of those. aspects of identity or all those types of identity into one label. Interesting. So do you have a feeling on what's ahead for Israel in this age? Or does that tie in with your previous answer of not being sure about the order of things? I think I have, I feel like I have to be optimistic. I think, you know, if you were, if you were just trying to put together options of what could happen next from the profits, I, I, I think it would be absolutely bizarre to see the wheels starting to turn backward and to see you know, the Jewish people dispersed again, even, even knowing that this is what happens, you know, after, after the Maccabees and after, know, they, they all came back from the exile. I'm not sure anyone was expecting another exile. so even with the awareness that they, that unexpected things like that can happen, I, my personal belief is that, is that this time is for, for real. And then what we're seeing is, a lead up to the return of the Messiah and the final ingathering of all the exiles and the rebuilding of a temple and all these types of things that we see prophesied. And is that going to be a... a difficult bloody war. is this gonna be just an absolutely terrible situation for a lot of people, including the Jewish people there. mean, you don't get the sense that Jewish people are going to be spared from this, having to go through the birth pains of the Messiah. It comes upon everyone, you know? Yeah. And not being a preacher of dispensationalists anymore, don't think Christians will be spared. think we're all gonna have to go through it and it's gonna be something terrible. And so it's probably weird that I just said I'm optimistic about it. I think... It's hard to be completely optimistic. He says in the prophets, don't look forward to the day of the Lord because it's darkness and not light. This final apocalypse and judgment and all these things is going to be very difficult to live through. When I say I'm optimistic, I mean that in the sense that I think we're coming up toward the period of time that while it's gonna be very difficult, we can look forward to Jesus coming back right afterwards, right in the midst of it. And to me, that's something that I can take hold of and hope for in the same way that the apostles thought they were living through the final times. They really thought Jesus was gonna come back at any moment. You just imagine them living through the first Jewish war and thinking, this is it. The temple's being destroyed. Jesus will come back at any moment. Imagine living through the second Jewish war, 135, and Jerusalem raised, and the Temple to Jupiter being built on the Temple Mountain. Well now, is the abomination of desolation, and Jesus is to come back at any moment. so, I, I feel like I feel the same way. see everything happening in the middle East. I think Jesus could come back at any moment. There's the war could get a lot worse. It could get really intense, but I think, I think all of this is building up to the, the second coming. And I think, because I think it would just be so weird and bizarre and anticlimactic and it would be just the most sad and disappointing and depressing ending to have as like a third exile, like, Nope, sorry. This we're just going to keep. puttering along in this age for another couple of thousand years or something. Like you can't say that it can't happen. But I don't think that that's what's gonna happen. think, you know, but this is, it's the same hope the apostles had. it more, it, do I have any more reason to be more hopeful for this generation than they were for their generation? That's a difficult question to answer. So with that answer, it then to me seems to make a lot of sense why a lot of Christians around the world who hold similar views to you will support Israel at all costs now, right? Because your whole hope is tied up in Israel. It's, would say that the ultimate hope is in what Jesus is going to accomplish when he gets back. But I think it's, I see that through the lens of his status as the King of Israel. He's gonna establish a kingdom in Israel. And like for me personally, it is because those are his people. Like the people of Israel, I mean that in the sense of saying the Jewish people are He's their king and he identifies with them. Like he says, he came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, right? he has, and were saying, Paul says to the Jew first, these are, he's like, he's gonna pull through, like ultimately they are the ones, in the first few verses of Romans nine, they are the ones to whom all these promises were given. And we can expect that God will follow through on those promises and that Jesus will come back and he will redeem his people Israel. and that we as from the nations who place ourselves under his umbrella, so to speak, to participate in all of that and reap all of the benefits. What are, I mean, what are the benefits? If you're, yeah. So, okay. So I mean, let's imagine this, let's imagine this happens. But I mean, Jesus said in the first century with he who believes in me has already been raised with, we have present tense eternal life. I mean, I think I have life, eternal life right now. It's a present reality. But to my question, so. I don't think you do. But I guess that's just maybe you mean that eternal life in a different sense than the way I understand it. Yeah. I mean, just, I mean, Jesus said it. So I just believe, I believe him on his word with that, but, what, what is this future? So imagine it does happen. This we are in this generation. There's events in Israel ahead and then we have this future second coming and then Jesus sets up a King kingdom in the land of Israel. What's that going to look like? Well, so we have, my opinion, the way I read it, and Revelation seems to lay this out kind of chronologically, there's a messianic era, and then there's something that comes after that, which is absolutely wild and very difficult to describe. And it's not, I don't think it's always 100 % clear in the prophets. And it's not even clear, like in Judaism, if you go read Jewish literature and you read these, they try to parse out all these things in the prophets, you know, how much of this can we expect? Like how much this miraculous stuff? You know, there are some things that the prophets say that you could imagine happening without too much trouble. Like every man under his own vine and fig tree, people having what they need, a period of abundance and people... here, you know, like I'm in, you're in America, I'm in Australia. We just, we're here and Jesus is in Israel. that's, yeah, I don't know where we'll be located. That's a good question. I think there's, you know, have the great banquet at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I think we'll be there for that. Jesus says we will. says people will come from all over the place to the banqueting table. I think that, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. there'll be seven like billion people there, won't there? There'll be lots of, not everyone gets to be there, but I think we'll get to be there because we're disciples. And that's gonna be in Jerusalem, right? Whether we stay there, whether that's all of the disciples of Jesus from the nations stay and live in Israel, or whether we go back to rule and reign with him or something like that, whether we be a part of the bureaucracy, I don't know, I have no idea. Yeah. And I mean, what about like a verse like John four where he's talking to the Samaritan woman and they're talking about geography really. He says, you know, the time is coming. In fact, the time is here where you won't worship in this mountain or that mountain, but the father seeking those that are worship in spirit and in truth. do think is meant by that? If it's no longer about this mountain or that mountain. Well, it came true that people weren't able to worship on the temple mat. So I think he knows that. He understands that that is coming. To see a verse like that and to say, because I think what you have to do, in order to come to the conclusion that what he's saying is that there's the era of there being a temple in Jerusalem is over permanently. And that's not the mode of worship that God desires anymore. And that we've ushered in a new era. I think there's a couple things that come to mind. So I think It's important not to draw this to draw too hard, like to make a bifurcation between worshiping in the temple and worshiping in spirit and in truth. I think you have someone like King David, know, he wasn't a temple. Maybe he's not the best example, but you certainly have Israelites. know, look, there's Jewish people in the New Testament, in the gospels, and says that these, they're These are good Jewish people. are observant and they are very happy to see Jesus and they become his followers. These are people that worship at the temple. I they are also worshiping in spirit and in truth. So I don't think it's an either or thing. But the other thing that comes to mind is like, you know, it says in Ezekiel 37, for example, it says, I'm gonna give my sanctuary in their midst forever. And the nations will know that I'm the God of Israel. and the God who sanctifies Israel, because I'm going to place my sanctuary in their midst forever. Like, and it's talking about the temple. And Ezekiel goes on to have this long, long discourse about what that temple looks like. like the temple built with hands or the tent or the, cause I mean, Jesus declared that the temple was the people of God, right? So what? using this language that we're being built up into a temple or dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. Yeah. I mean Revelation talks about it too, know, that the foundation, Jesus is the cornerstone, the foundations, the apostles. Yeah, so are you talking about like the very end of Revelation where the New Jerusalem comes down? Yeah, yeah. Well, if he's not literally as done. Yeah, so when you see Paul talking about the church as being a dwelling place, the assembly of believers being a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit of God, I think we can read that easily as. an analogy that people would be familiar with. What is a temple? A temple is a location where the deity, this is true of all the religions that have temples, these idolatrous temples. What is the temple? Well, that's where the god, or at least the statue of the god is there and some representation of the god is there. you have, you know, the... you go through the Psalms and prophets and you see a realization that the temple, a temple made with human hands can't contain God. God, God isn't as, isn't constrained to within the bounds of the Holy of Holies. And he's, you have this idea that he doesn't need your sacrifices. He doesn't, this isn't something that he requires. He's not hungry, you know? so all that to say, when you, when you have Paul saying you're being built into a temple, I think what he's saying is that you, think he's saying, think or call it correctly, he uses this language of individuals and of the corporately, of the whole assembly. He says, he's making an analogy. He's saying, you know what a temple is. A temple is a place where the deity dwells. God has put his Holy Spirit in you. Now, like, doesn't that make you a temple? So shouldn't you be careful with what you do with your body? If you're a temple, like you would, you don't, you know, there's, there's a sense of gravitas and dignity and things you have to, have to be careful what you do in and around the temple, right? Is that maybe God, the God that's in there will become angry with you if you're not respectful to the temple. Well, if the Holy spirit dwells in you, the, you should be very careful what you do in the body. And he's talking about, you know, the sexual immorality, things like that. I don't think he means that there is like a one-to-one replacement of a physical temple with a group of people. think that these are two different things with different purposes. And I don't think it was one and now it's the other. think that both, I think they can coexist because they don't serve the same purpose or function. Fair enough. I'd love to ask, Paul describes the kingdom of God as peace, joy and righteousness. It's not eating and drinking and meats. It's peace, joy and righteousness in the Holy Spirit. Do you think you have those three now or you're waiting on those? I would say that this is one of those proleptic things. could use a lot more peace. I could use a lot more joy. I could use a lot more righteousness, frankly. I'm well aware of the, you know, I have a deep ache for a world in which those things are happening and people have those things to a much greater degree than we have them now. I think that we can have a taste of them. I just think that I has not seen nor heard what God has prepared in the future. think there's gonna be, know, what we have in Christ now is better than what we would have without him now. But it's actually very far from what we are going to have in him in the age to come. It's hard to talk. It's hard to be settled and you're like maybe and I don't know I don't think it's just me and maybe this is true for you It's very difficult for me to be fully settled in my heart Anytime I read the news, you know what I mean? Like there's There's there's so much suffering and there's so many there's so many ways in which the world falls falls short in which the in which God's people fall short of the high calling and expectation that I think that he has for us and the potential that we have. And while we can experience some of that now, I think a lot of what we experience of the joy and peace now is, at least for me, because we have something to look forward to that is much better than this. mean, maybe there's people for whom that makes less sense. For me, it makes a lot of sense to think that something much, much better than this is around the corner just because of how terrible life is for so many people right now. I guess I just see it like Revelation, I think it's 22, think so, you know, the very last chapter says, you know, the tree of life's in the midst of the gardens and it sheds its leaves for the healing of the nations. And I think that's us now. I think the tree of life is in the midst of the gardens, the veil that's spread over the nations has been lifted and the gospel has the power unto salvation for all people. I think... I don't know, I think the peace, and righteousness is here and it's available by the gospel, but I do appreciate you taking the time, Jacob, and sharing your perspective, which is really different. And I appreciate the manner in which you've come on, non-adversarial, you've been really open and honest. And it's been great. It has been great chatting to you. I think... your content gives a lot of people a lot to think about and I think contrast it with some other guests that have given a very different message and a different interpretation. So, appreciate you taking the time, mate. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Perfect. All right. I'll look forward to chatting to you soon and we'll speak again. All right, thanks, Luke. Great, thanks, Jack. So I'll hit stop.