Defense of the Faith - Western Religions & Worldviews Part II

Last week we introduced Western religions as basically Christendom and Judaism and Islam. Now let's ask this question. Is Christendom monolithic? That is, is it all uniform throughout Christendom? It is not, is it? How about Judaism? Judaism isn't uniform either. And how about Islam? No, not at all. And some of the questions that came up last week had to do with Islam. We didn't even get to the slides last week, and I included a map here. In one sense, I wish they'd have picked different colors of green, but it at least shows it. The lighter colors, and you see is far more widespread geographically, is Sunni Islam. Now, let's ask this question, is Sunni Islam uniform? No. Not uniform. A great deal of variety within Sunni Islam. Nonetheless, geographically, with all its variety, it is spread the greatest.

When I went to Uganda each time, most of the Christians that I encountered were former Muslims. Uganda has about 11% of the population is Muslim, and many of the Christians are former Muslims. Real interesting. So that's down here. But you find that through much of North Africa and on into Eastern Africa, a lot of Muslim influence. Interestingly, Zahra, who is not here at the moment, but is often with us here in this elective. Zahra is from Chad. which is a place that's dominantly Muslim. So lots of Muslim influence.

One of the things to look at is in Christianity, from the time of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, probably his death looks more and more like to have occurred April 3rd, 33 AD, For the next century after that, we have no record of any Christian bringing the sword into play as a matter of spreading Christianity or as a significant factor in anything that has to do with Christianity. For Islam, quite the opposite. Muhammad died in 632 AD. The last several decades of his life involved, again the sword, a great deal of his life. Once he died, he did not leave a clear means of how do we continue on from here.

Who's in leadership? So with Islam, That battle over leadership ended up being a big factor. The Sunnis look at the follow-on in leadership is, let's get someone qualified to lead. For the Shia, the leadership is, let's have it according to the family succession. Keep it in the family. That is the major difference between Sunni and Shia.

Each group considers the other not to be Muslim. I mean, it's so far off, they just say, well, you're not even Muslim. Hence, they have no hesitation in even going to battle and killing those of the other group. even within those groups, you will have divisions that are so intense that they'll have no hesitation in killing those of the same group.

Yes? What's the qualification for a leader? I mean, we would definitely not agree with their delineation of what a leader is. Oh, yeah, we would definitely not agree. In qualifications for leaders, let's take it for instance, in the church we would say, alright, we've got qualifications in places like 1 Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1 that gives the qualifications for elders. 1 Timothy 3 gives qualifications for deacons, and those are character qualifications, right?

So they have similar, in a broad sense, similar kinds of qualifications, only it's all within Islam, and a very different set of principles. One of the qualifications for an elder is he's not a pugilist, that is, he's not someone who goes around starting fights. In Islam, do they have a problem with people starting fights? Not at all. So the character qualifications are quite different. You have the Quran and the Hadith, and those are the two documents. Mostly people forget the Hadith, but you've got additional documents on top of that. So, documents and traditions on top of that.

Think about in our own, in Christianity, there is apostolic succession. The idea of you've got apostolic succession, and that carried on in the Catholic Church, and in a great part the Orthodox Churches. By that I mean Russian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox. So you've got the idea of apostolic succession with them, and that's somewhat like the family succession. that is true of the Shia. Shia Ali is the more full name. Ali was Muhammad's father-in-law.

Succession through the family then is what's critical. In Christianity, the apostolic succession is the closest thing where they have this one appoints that one and this one appoints that one, supposedly from the apostles. I think that's false. but nonetheless some idea of succession, whereas what the Bible actually describes is here's the character qualifications of elders and deacons, and that's what you have in Christianity, and you have doctrinal succession. Paul writes to Timothy and he says to him, you teach others also who will be faithful. just as you have been taught among many witnesses. Doctrinal succession is what the Bible teaches.

But there are those who follow apostolic succession, at least supposedly, apostolic succession, and so through the centuries, this one appoints that one, this one appoints that one, etc. In Islam, part of the argument here is, do I follow the family succession, that's Shia, or do I follow, you know, this one's qualified and that one's qualified according to the Muslim measures of qualification.

And that's the big divide between Sunni and Shia. So each nation, each country probably has several different What you find is that some of the major divisions within a country can have huge impact. Let's take a look at that. Here you see most of Iran is Shia.

That is, it follows the family succession from Muhammad's father-in-law. And so therefore, what do they look at? They follow, you know, here's the genealogy. And I've got these Muslim genealogies, you know, where they go through and I'm descended from this one and that one. So this is a family succession tradition.

So you'll have those areas that are dark. Iran is one of the major ones. You also have in the middle of Afghanistan, another cluster It's not the whole country. Another cluster where the Muslims in North Central Afghanistan follow the Shia tradition. Then the rest of the country then follows the Sunni tradition. So they will fight amongst themselves as well as fight with us, right?

And then you have over in Iraq, currently having a real disintegration in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was of the Shia tribe and suppressed the Sunnis with intense military force and even gassing people who tried to uprise and suppress it. And no qualms at all about doing that. No qualms at all about doing that. There are clusters elsewhere going into, for example, parts of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula have clusters of the Shia sect. Pretty much all of North Africa, with very rare exception, is Sunni. Now how about ISIS? That's a name that's come up regularly. Where's ISIS in the picture? ISIS is Sunni. However, do they have a problem carrying out military actions against other Sunnis?

Not a problem at all. The area where they've prominently gone in is here in Syria and Iraq, and largely Sunni, but they have no problem going and just slaughtering other Sunnis. So Islam is not monolithic, that is, it's not all uniform, even among the Shia and the Sunni, there is not uniformity. Because you have Shia and Sunni who will battle each other to the death and have no qualms about killing the other of the group. Within both of those groups you have different degrees of militarism. Yeah. Well you said Saddam Hussein was Shia and Iran is also Shia, right? Iran is predominantly Shia, yes. Yet there was this constant Several decades back they were at odds with each other. Yes. Yep. Yep. So if you have a group that's Sunni, or if you have a group that's Shia, there is not necessarily any guarantee that you won't have a conflict within those groups.

And the conflict was set up by the way that Muhammad established things. because Muhammad was very militaristic in his way of going about things. He made a ten-year treaty with the leaders of Mecca. He gained enough power in three years after making that treaty that he broke the treaty and went in and did an attack. So military attack in Islam is an established tradition. When Muhammad died 632 AD, Islam went with the sword in Europe, in North Africa, and into Asia. So battling with the sword in Islam is the tradition.

It is not characteristic of biblical Christianity. There is no record within the first century, even the second century, of Christians going out and battling with the sword to convert people. Islam is the other way around. For Islam not to be militaristic is contrary to its founding.

Yes, however, we say Christians, you know the soldiers were told that you will be assured of your salvation if you go to battle in these crusades. Does salvation in basic Christianity, does salvation have anything to do with going to war? No, it does not. You believe that Christ died for your sins, was buried and rose again, that's the gospel. It has nothing to do with slaughtering people. But those Christians who were sent to the Middle East to go into the crusades were told, you go into this crusade and that will assure your salvation. Well, it has nothing to do with it. So we have people who in the name of Christianity went and took up the sword who may be spending eternity in hell. And yet that gets called Christian. Yes?

Were they Catholic or Protestant? It was largely Catholic, and the reason it happened is this. The Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches had a split in the 6th century. And believe it or not, the split was over this doctrinal issue. Did the Father send the Holy Spirit, or did the Father and Son send the Holy Spirit? That was the doctrinal issue that split them. The Catholic Church said it was the Father and the Son. The Orthodox Church said it was just the Father. Guess which one is biblically correct? The Father and the Son.

The Catholic Church, in that split, was actually more biblically correct. Nonetheless, that was the split. the split got worse and worse over time, and then shortly after, one of the Orthodox bishops and the Pope each mutually excommunicated the other. Within decades, the Muslims began attacking, and the Orthodox churches said, help us! And the Catholic Church then started the Crusades, helping to battle the overtake of the Muslims.

In the end, it was all a big military and political thing, not something that was really biblical. And the motivation given to the Catholic Church, by the Catholic Church, was that if you go in here and fight, that will earn you assurance of your salvation. Completely unbiblical. No basis for it whatsoever. In truth, it has nothing to do with biblical Christianity, although it gets pegged as a Christian action. And it was because the Muslims were attacking that you end up having these crusades. In Church History, we went through the details on these crusades, but that's the quick introduction.

When you say Orthodox, what does that mean? Orthodox gets used different ways. When I say Orthodox in this context, versus Roman Catholicism, I'm talking about Greek Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and Tayikene Orthodox, those various groups. There are about two dozen different Orthodox groups. And so that's what I'm referring to. It's different from talking about Orthodoxy or something of that sort.

Yeah, they will actually use the word Pope for the one who is head of their particular group. And that extends from Southern Europe into Russia, into North Africa, and into the Middle East. And they'll have different groups, about two dozen of them. Yes, yeah, they're probably their doctrine is about 75% in common with the Roman Catholic Church And and they have the Roman Catholic Church Focuses on the Bishop of Rome, of course, right? and each of these other Orthodox churches will have someone who is the head of their group and Have other bishops And like I say, that extends into North Africa, into the Middle East, and into Southern Europe, and on into Russia.

That profession increased, pretty much? Yeah, very similar. I mean, they're not identical, but very similar in general. You know, where the Roman Catholic Church will have priests that are not supposed to be married, and you know, they'll have nuns that are not supposed to be married. The Orthodox churches will have something similar at the higher levels, and then not at the lower levels, so they're hierarchy. And that's a generalization, because there are differences from one group to the next.

Alright, so when we talk about Islam, a very diverse group, obviously what's happening now, we're wrestling with what's going on in the Middle East, we're wrestling with what's going on in Europe. Probably because of demographics, within a generation Europe will be Muslim, Muslim controlled. And the reason I say that is because the native Europeans from generations past are barely replacing their population. The Muslims, however, have largely overtaken, in terms of reproduction, overtaken the Europeans. And you see it in the schools, you'll see it elsewhere. In another generation, Europe will be Muslim. And it's just simply demographics. And that doesn't mean that Europe is Christian now. But Europe will be Muslim probably in another generation.

Yes. Yes, it's happening. It's a little slower behind the curve, but it's happening in the United States. You know, one of the concerns is that, you know, heavens are we regarding Sharia law. Well, good luck with that. One of the problems is, remember we said Islam is not uniform? Within the Shia, there are four different strains of Sharia law. So what does that mean? It means even if the Muslims become dominant, it doesn't mean you've got everything monolithic and all the same and uniform, because there'll be battles between one group and the next as to which Sharia law prevails. Now, here's something to think about.

One of the things the Bible talks about is when the Antichrist takes power, where geographically will the Antichrist take power? He will have an influence over Israel, but what will be the center of the Antichrist power? Essentially looking at Europe, okay? Europe will be the center, okay? I said in one generation, Europe will be Muslim, right? The Muslims will be will be population-wise dominant. Yes? I'm saying in the last part of Zachariah that the Antichrist is going to be an Assyrian, which would make them out of Iran, right?

Yeah, that part of it is something we won't get into today, because that's another study in itself. But if you think about it, okay, if Muslim control in Europe is only a generation away, And some of the things we find are, one, Antichrist makes and breaks a treaty.

Muhammad already set that tradition. He did it with the leaders of Mecca, where he made a ten year treaty and broke it in three years. So that tradition of breaking a treaty is already set in place in Islam. Second part, what is the favorite means in Islam of capital punishment? And what does the Antichrist do?

Beheading. So you have two particular identifiers there and it says that everything in terms of religion and background is set in place pretty quick. So that's one thing. The other thing is whereas Christianity deals by persuasion one person at a time.

In other words, in Christianity, if I've got someone who lives as a Christian, and then what if they leave the Christian faith? Have you ever known anybody to do that? In Islam, the belief is that if someone leaves Islam, they ought to be killed. Christianity gives individual choice and will.

So once Islam takes over, then the belief, the understanding that if you leave Islam, you need to die, will then predominate politically. Is that Sharia? This is Sharia law. 82% of the population of Egypt, for example, believes that if you leave Islam, you ought to be slaughtered. That's far and away the majority believes that if you leave Islam, you ought to be slaughtered.

Yes. And that's based on fear. And if you look at just about every cult and religion that's out there today, they deal with fear and it's very similar practice. If you leave, something humongous is going to happen to you. Or it is morally and spiritually justified to slaughter that person. Right? Or to criticize them or to abuse them? Yeah, well even criticizing and abuse and limiting it to that is actually failing to carry out Muhammad's dictates. Right? So it is a softening or a corruption to just simply criticize them. When Muhammad dictates, no, they must be killed. So is it within their religious belief that the more children they have, the more glory they gain in their religion?

In general, yes. And that's one of the reasons why Islam will take over Europe within a generation. In some particular local areas, it's already taken place. But as a generalization, Europe will be overtaken by Muslims in one generation, because the native Europeans from generations past are not reproducing themselves hardly at all. Marriage is not looked upon as significant. Having children within marriage is not looked upon as significant, except in the Muslim population.

So the schools are filled with Muslims. Lots of little minarets are showing up on the skyline in much of Europe. Okay, so when we look at this, it's important to realize we've got different major groups within Islam. You also have lots of variation within those groups.

One of the things that happened, let's see, Courtney and Ingrid's son-in-law was sent over to Iraq and one of the places he was sent was Mosul. Mosul is the modern name for Nineveh. Mosul is the modern name for Nineveh. It's where the Assyrians were dominant there.

And do you know that in Nineveh they had the tomb of Jonah. The tomb of Jonah, Nebuchadnezzar. Isis went in there because the local Muslims regarded Jonah as a significant prophet. Isis does not, so they went in and smashed the tomb of Jonah, just tore it up. The Taliban, when they went in, went in and tore up a large statue of Buddha.

So there is zero regard for anything but what is their immediate belief and everything else must be trashed. Everything else must be trashed. See, in Christianity we would say, okay, we appeal to the will of certain people In Islam, it's Allah's will that matters. Whatever Allah wills and empowers, that's what matters. And not your own personal will. And not the will of even local people. Okay, so let's take a look at some of the other things here. Among major world religions, we have Judaism, and Christianity and Islam that are in some way or another following Abraham. Following after Abraham.

What was interesting when we went over to Israel was that the Muslims had a different tradition about the same place for just about everything. They had a different tradition for what's the significance of this rock at the top of the Temple Mount. They had a different tradition, even when we went over to Joppa, and here's the home of Simon the Tanner. They had a different tradition for where that was located.

So Islam has a lot of different traditions. The place where Abraham offered up Isaac in Judaism, in Christianity, is there at that rock, at the Temple Mount. In Islam, that's where Abraham offered up Ishmael. Same rock. Do they have different tour guides? Yes. Yes, they do. Yes, they do.

And it was amazing to be, you know, here we are at the Western Wall, and you got the Jews up there against the wall. At the same time, you got this ramp going up that goes up to the Dome of the Rock. And we could walk all around the temple mount at the top, and that was fine. But, you know, because we weren't Muslim, we couldn't go into the Dome of the Rock and see the actual rock.

So that's been changed. So, yeah, that's one thing, is there are different traditions in Islam about just about everything. They have different traditions about Jesus. And they even mention Mary. Isa is the name for Jesus. Different traditions about Jesus. It wasn't Jesus, Isa, who died on the cross. It was somebody else. And by the way, Jesus will have a second coming, only to bow to Mohammed.

What do they think of the Bible? Oh, the Bible. Both the Christians and the Jews are called people of the book. And they believe that the Bible has some true history in a kernel, but is corrupted. And so that gives them the avenue for having different traditions about everything in the Bible. So they look upon the Bible as a corrupted book. A lot of true things in there, but ultimately corrupted. And what they have as their traditions through Muhammad are the true ones.

And they're always a conflict. Always a conflict with what's in the Bible. One of the things I would suggest to you is that Muhammad, who got his revelations over a half a millennia, several centuries later, would not be the one with the greatest deal of accuracy about things that happened earlier. An earlier record would be more likely to be correct.

Nonetheless, they believe the Bible is corrupt and what the angel Gabriel revealed to Muhammad is what is correct. And so, yeah, when you answer your question about the Bible, it's a good question. They look at it as containing some points of truth, but in great part corrupt, and they look at the Koran and the Hadith as being the sacred documents. Now, among all of them, do they all believe the same thing about the Quran and the Hadith?

No. Not uniform. Pardon? Yes, that's correct. So you have Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and by the way that 1.3 billion number is needs to be increased, so the chart is a little antiquated. Yes? So, was Muhammad kind of like a miniature Alexander the Great, that he just kind of appeared on the scene and then just started to take territory and just became, you know, this great military leader? Up until the time of Muhammad, the Arab world, if you will, had about 300 So what happened is Muhammad consolidated all those tribal religions and established it with its military character as fundamental to Islam. And so he consolidated all those beliefs. But you'll see the crescent moon, right? That is essentially one of those tribal religions that he ended up making his superior. But consolidating a bunch of individual, split up tribal religions into one.

And focusing on the lunar god as Allah. Allah is unknowable. Allah is undefined. What we know is what he wants us to do, they would say. Whereas we would say of Christianity that God is a God of character, He's a God of grace, He's a God of mercy, He's a God of justice, He's a God of holiness. All those things that we would say are characteristic of God and we know from the Bible are not things you can carry over to Allah. We don't worship the same God because Allah is unknowable and what Allah has revealed is what we must do, and he's revealed power and will. But things like being merciful, being gracious, being holy, being just, all those characteristics that we see are, that's who God is.

Those are not a part of Islam. Those are not a part of Islam because Allah in Islam is unknowable and not definable. He has not revealed himself. As we see in the Bible, both in the Bible and in the person of Christ, God has revealed himself. Allah does not do that.

But if you look at the Old Testament, God was pretty dramatic as well and did many things that we look at today and say it wasn't very merciful. So Islam just really hasn't got out of the Old Testament era yet. Well, that's one thing. I think also When you look at the God of the Old Testament and start comparing it, because I've heard this before, when you look at the God of the Old Testament and you look at the God of the New Testament, God's wrath is something that comes out even in, like, look at the book of Revelation, right? And so you find God's wrath is real and expressed. And God's wrath, for example, coming out in the Lake of Fire, which is talked about in the New Testament, but not the Old. So the reality is you can look at some pretty intense things in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. But at the same time, as you read all of the Bible, you get the full picture of God's character and who He is. And the Bible talks, both the Old Testament and the New, about knowing Him. and He knowing us, whereas in Islam that just is not the case. We cannot know Him in Islam. We cannot know Allah. Allah does not reveal Himself.

And Allah, rather than having a number of characteristics as we see in the Bible, Allah is one of will and power. And you don't find personal characteristics as fitting. Where God expresses himself in wrath, where God expresses himself in judgment, it's based upon people's rejection of his grace and mercy. With Allah, he will call for destruction and that's just his power and will. That's it. There's nothing revealed about his character. Is there an afterlife in Islam? Yes, there is.

You know, funny, we had this TV show called Seventh Heaven and it was supposed to be a Christian pastor. Well, Seventh Heaven is from Islam. In the Bible, it talks about three levels of heaven. There's atmospheric heaven, stellar heaven, above the atmosphere, and then celestial heaven, that's where God dwells. So the Bible talks about three levels of heaven, both in Christianity and in Islam, but especially in Christianity, that's clear. In Islam, there are seven levels of heaven.

And so seventh heaven is actually Islamic, not Christian. Do they have hell? Yes, they have that too. And see, in Christianity we have hardline Calvinists who believe God chooses some to go to heaven and some to go to hell. So hardline Calvinism has that double predestination. God chooses some to go to heaven and some to go to hell. In Judaism, the ones who believed in double predestination were the Essenes.

They're a group not mentioned by name in the New Testament. The only thing is there's an indication of them in Matthew chapter 5. Remember, hate your enemy? That was only taught by the Essenes. Not even the Sadducees or the Pharisees taught hate your enemy. But the Essenes taught that. So in Judaism, that was the group that taught double predestination.

God chooses some to go to heaven and some to go to hell, and we are certain, the Essenes would say, that the Sadducees and the Pharisees are among those chosen to go to hell. In Islam, the teaching is, yes, God chooses some to go to heaven, Allah chooses some to go to heaven and some to go to hell, And if you happen to be the subject of my sword, you must be one of those going to hell. So that's the Islamic mindset. If it comes to a point where I'm killing you, well then obviously that's Allah's will and then you must be chosen to go to hell and I'm just helping Allah to send you to hell. That would be the mindset.

Then we have Hinduism and Buddhism, which we'll get to next week, as another group, and they don't have regard for Abraham. So interestingly enough, this regard for Abraham is characteristic of the major Western religions. Separate from that is Hinduism and Buddhism, the Eastern religions, which we hope to get to next week. There's also something else to look at, the views of history.

In the materialist world, this is the secularists, the atheists, the agnostics, hardline agnostics, the history is either random and meaningless or mechanical and meaningless. They will talk about the meaning of life, but it's really kind of fake. For Eastern philosophy and religion, things are cyclical. They have no problem with the earth or the universe being billions and trillions of years old because you've got to have lots and lots and lots of reincarnations. You start out as a particle of dirt and eventually get to be a slug and then you eventually reincarnate and you're a rat and then eventually you reincarnate and you're a human but you're low level So this is reincarnation and many, many, many lifetimes, no problem at all with that belief.

In Christianity, Judaism and Islam, history is linear and you get one time. You get one time through. It's an entirely different perspective from the Eastern religions, Eastern philosophy. We talk about all the differences between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, but the perspective is, in each of them, that you get one time through, that's it. One time through life, you don't have reincarnation on and on and on and on and on. So that's a significant difference between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and the Eastern philosophy and religion.

Another thing, we say the Old Testament. Do the Jews say the Old Testament? No, because they don't regard the New Testament. So to them, they call the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament, the Tanakh. The Tanakh. And that's basically an acronym from the different parts of the Hebrew Bible.

Let's talk about the Sadducees, what parts of the Old Testament did they believe in? The Sadducees only held to the first five books, and even that they didn't believe all of it. They were skeptical about angels, they were skeptical about miracles, but only the Old Testament first five books. That's what the Sadducees would hold to.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, would focus on those first five books, but then consider the rest of the books holy books. The rest of the Old Testament books, we would call them holy books. And so then, Among the Jews, you have the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, from that they have the Torah, and then you have the prophets, and you have the writings. And from the Torah, they develop the oral law.

It was highly valued to go about and memorize the law and memorize all the different additions to it, more so than writing it down. Memorizing it was considered more valuable than writing it down. That when Jesus and the disciples were on the earth, the disciples by Jewish tradition would go around memorizing what Jesus said. That's why the Gospels were written later, when there's a recognition, oh, I better write this down for subsequent people, because the whole tradition of passing it along just didn't exist, passing it orally. didn't exist once they got around to a lot of the Gentile populations.

So you had the written law and then the oral law, finally the Midrash and the Mishnah and the Talmud, those things were actually written later, after the New Testament era, among the Jews. But the tradition during New Testament times was I'm going to go about and memorize all the traditions. Memorize things out of the Old Testament. Believe it or not, the Jews would say, the rabbis would say things like, take my yoke upon you. Yeah. And what that meant is you're going to memorize all these traditions about the law.

But if they really didn't have any other way of passing along, they could have written down parchment or something, but I mean they're the most convenient way to pass. Yeah, what was interesting is that the Jews of the New Testament era were very, there was a high degree of literacy, but they highly regarded memorizing and speaking it to one another. So it was essentially a high literacy culture, but an oral culture. Isn't that interesting? So a high literacy level, but ultimately valuing what's oral, what's said orally. One of the questions here, this is from Torah.org, so this is the Jews themselves saying it.

Why didn't or don't the Jews accept Jesus as the Messiah? The Jewish view, Memoedides is one of the medieval era rabbis. The Jewish view is that the Messiah will be a descendant of David who will inspire the Jews to follow him, establish a monarchy in the land of Israel and bring back the exiled Jews and rebuild the temple.

Did Jesus do any of those? Descendant of David, and the rest of it, they would say, well, he just doesn't qualify. In our mindset, what he should have been, he just doesn't even come anywhere close. So by their traditions, Jesus just didn't qualify at all as the Messiah.

During New Testament times, the Pharisees were the group that believed in the Messiah. The Sadducees did not believe in the Messiah. The Pharisees believed in the Messiah. And they were quite certain that the Messiah would just love them and be delighted in them. And since Jesus was not, he's obviously not the Messiah, right?

So when you see that... I'm sorry, what? Yes, yes. And comparatively, how many? Yeah, a very small number. When you look at those who ended up following Him, you're talking a very small number. I think looking towards the end of the Gospels and the beginning of Acts, you're talking about initially, 120? Compared to most of the Jews and those ones who initially followed him were all in Israel, two-thirds of the Jews lived outside of Israel. Yeah, Roy? Yeah, part of what this What this tradition did is it ended up... Jesus didn't fit the picture, so people were, you're right, following Him for the wrong reasons often. We're looking for this kind of Messiah, and you don't quite fit that.

But boy, we sure like the healings. And I'm sure glad that I got the demons out of me and out of my son. And the free food is just great. I mean, you get a little tired of loaves and dried fish, but aside from that, having something like that for free is not bad. It wouldn't be my first choice, not gourmet, but not bad.

So you look at it, Jesus just didn't fit the picture. either of the Jews of the New Testament times, or of later, including this Momoedides, a medieval era rabbi, at no time did the Jews with their traditions of who the Messiah would be and what he would look like, did Jesus fit it. I sat down with a local Orthodox rabbi.

His question is, when the Messiah comes, we'll ask, is this your first or your second time? So anyway, that's from Torah.org. To rebuild the temple, they would see that's what the Messiah is going to do. The reality is the temple will begin to be used again when? During the tribulation period and so the first one who's actually going to set up the temple being used again will be the Antichrist and not Christ himself and then he will break the treaty in the middle of the tribulation period. Wasn't there basically, you know, there was probably more of it primarily. It seems there was two groups of people when Jesus was there. There was the poor, the people who were basically just trying to survive.

Yes. The ones who wanted to be healed, the ones who needed food because they couldn't buy the food. Yeah. Then you had the second group of people that he also was working with which was the Caius Matthew, who was a tax collector, all the more or less well-to-do people. Yeah. You know, and so they saw Jesus in a different way because of the culture that they were locked into. Yeah, exactly.

And you think about it, if most of the people are poor or very poor, that's most of the people, poor or very poor, and a part of that being poor might mean we're trying to take care of our brother John over here, and he's been injured in some kind of a fishing accident or farming accident, and so we've got to care for him. And by the time we care for him and pay off the Romans, we're just at our wits' end. And to have Jesus come along and say, here's some free food, and let's take care of your brother John. to have him do that, that would really get people's attention, but it doesn't guarantee that they're really spiritually minded. It doesn't guarantee that they're pursuing truth. So a lot of times it was, you know, I'm so poor and our family's got this family member who's really disabled, and we've got these Romans that keep wanting more and more tax money, And we're just harassed and barely able to survive.

Here's Herod and he says, you guys are all going to pay for upgrading the temple. When they finished upgrading the temple in the early 60s AD, they laid off 18,000 people and there was a riot. But those 18,000 people were all being supported by who? other Jews who were paying huge amounts of money to provide for the 18,000 people, plus the materials that they were developing. And there was some fancy stuff on there. The whole top of the inner temple had golden spikes on it so nasty birds wouldn't land on it. The unclean birds.

Who's going to pay for that? In the inner temple, you can't just have anybody of any tribe, especially not Gentiles, working on that inner temple. So it's a working temple, right? So they train 10,000 Levites into various crafts to finish up that work on the temple. Who's going to pay for this? Well, the Jews are, right? So the poor people were just barely surviving.

For Jesus to come along and heal those who were ill, for Jesus to come along and give them food was like, oh, this is a breath of fresh air, right? All right, we've got people pressing their nose up against the windows here, so we've got to pray, all right?

Thank you, Lord, for what you've revealed in your Word, that we have the truth. And we pray also as we look at the situation with Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, we see that so little of it actually presents the gospel, and so little of it actually presents the truth. But we thank you for the truth you've revealed in your Son and in your Word. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.