Highly Recommended

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Again, as is my practice, I begin with my personal commentary as I rarely read books for purely academic reasons but usually because there is some personal concern/obsession pushing my interest. This bookis Volume Two out of a planned three. As I mentioned in my prior review to Volume One, I was becoming exposed to the arguments of Jewish anti-missionaries and wanted to get sound, reasoned answers to their very aggressive objections. Well, since that time, I have become involved in a full all-out debate with some of these persons, and in so doing, have had the opportunity to “speak” personally with Dr. Michael Brown and have found him to be very gracious and helpful, which unfortunately, is not always the case in dealing with even Christian authors. I have also had the opportunity to meet many other helpful people in this area of apologetics such as Talmid Ben of the Chazak! ministry.

In preparing for this review, I also took a look at the reviews that had been posted on Amazon.com about this and the prior book, and oddly enough, one reviewer had stated that Dr. Brown wrote in a “peculiarly combative manner.” Immediately, I wondered what that person would think about the writings of J.P. Holding!! I believe that I have come to understand what is meant by that comment by the debates that I have been having in this area. Today, many have come to believe that to be Christian or holy is be saccharine sweet and never tell anyone thatthey are wrong and never to be blunt and confident in one’s answers and beliefs. If those characteristics are “peculiarly combative” then all I can say is that we need more peculiarly combative writers in this area. I found Dr. Brown’s writing to be very clear, articulate, and direct.

Everything I mentioned in my prior review holds true here to an amplified degree. Because I am more interested in the Biblical and theological objections, I enjoyed this Volume even more. Dr. Brown deals head-on with almost every single common objection in this area and provides much documentation in the form of user-friendly endnotes, and there is a Scripture index which is always a big plus for me!! I found these books to be extremely edifying even if one is never involved in the arena of Jewish apologetics as it gives a greater perspectiveof the Jewishness of our Christian faith which is an awareness that is sorely lacking among most Christians today. Even more importantly, I have noticed in my apologetics work and research that aggressive Jewish opposition is gaining momentum and a greater audience. Ironically, the atheists and the Jewish anti-missionaries tend to “feed” off of each other in their common opposition to Christianity even though ultimately they have disparate goals, making a very strange “sleeping with the enemy” situation. And it has been commented by both Dr. Trimm and Dr. Brown that very often these anti-missionaries, when successful in causing apostasy, make a“Jew for Jesus” into a “Jew for Nothing” since many people once having stumbled into rejecting their New Testament faith devolve into atheism/agnosticism because many of the same arguments used to destroy their belief in the New Testament and Yeshua can be analogously used against Judaism.

So, I passionately believe that these sorts of works are very much needed. I honestly cannot wait for the next volume of this series and any future related work by Dr.Brown. I am most appreciative of the amount of time that he spent on articulating the position that Ezekiel's Temple vision need not be taken as predicting a literal future Temple with literal future animal sacrifices.

Like the former work, the format of this volume is to present questions as if being asked by a Jewish person with Dr. Brown providing answers in a “conversational” manner. Some of the questions posed include:

If you claim that Jesus is God then you are guilty of making God into a man. You are an idol worshipper!

We are righteous by what we do, not by what we believe. Christianity is the religion of the creed, Judaism is the religion of the deed.

Scripture clearly tells us that “to do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice” (Prov. 21:3)

The prophets indicated clearly that God did not care for blood sacrifices. In fact, they practically repudiated the entire sacrificial system, teaching that repentance and prayer were sufficient. The Talmudic rabbis simply affirmed this biblical truth.

Even if I accept your premise that blood sacrifices are of great importance in the Torah, the fact is that our Hebrew Bible – includingthe Torah itself – offers other means of atonement, not just the shedding of blood.

It’s clear that you misunderstand the entire sacrificial system. Sacrifices were for unintentional sins only. Repentance was the only remedy for intentional sins.

Jews don’t believe in a divine Messiah.

Jewish people don’t need a middleman.

And many, many others, especially dealing with the idea of blood sacrifices and atonement, which is a major argument of the anti-missionary camp The next planned volume will deal with objections to Messianic passages and objections to the New Testament.

I can’t wait!!