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Most Charisma House Book Group products are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. For details, call us at (407) 333-0600 or visit our website at www.charismahouse .com. RESUrrECTION by Michael L. Brown, PhD Published by Charisma House Charisma Media/Charisma House Book Group 600 Rinehart Road, Lake Mary, Florida 32746 This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked as JPS TANAKH are reproduced from the Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. Copyright 1985 by The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan .com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.® Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NLT are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked TLV are taken from the Tree of Life Translation of the Bible. Copyright © 2015 by The Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society. Copyright © 2020 by Michael L. Brown, PhD All rights reserved Visit the author’s website at https://askdrbrown.org/, BooksbyDrBrown .com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: An application to register this book for cataloging has been submitted to the Library of Congress. International Standard Book Number: 978-1-62999-692-9 E-book ISBN: 978-1-62999-693-6 This publication is translated in Spanish under the title Resurrección, copyright © 2020 by Michael L. Brown, PhD, published by Casa Creación, a Charisma Media company. All rights reserved. While the author has made every effort to provide accurate internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. 20 21 22 23 24 — 987654321 Printed in the United States of America TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ix Introduction: From Galilee to Brooklyn: In Search of the Real Messiah xi 1 | Could a Rabbi From Brooklyn Be the Messiah? 1 2 | The Messiah Concealed and Then Revealed 15 3 | The Gilgul, Reincarnation, and a Potential Messiah in Each Generation 29 4 | The Mystical Messiah Who Converted to Islam 45 5 | The Rebbe Didn’t Rise 61 6 | The Rabbi Who Really Rose 73 7 | Rediscovering Israel’s Suffering and Rising Messiah 91 8 | The Mystery of the Divine Angel and the Messiah 107 9 | Was the Resurrection a Test? 125 10 | Why Not Judaism for Jews and Christianity for Gentiles? 139 11 | The Event That Changed the World 157 Notes 169 vii PREFACE HEN I LIVED in Maryland from 1987 to 1996, I had a friend who was Wworking toward a master’s degree in Semitic languages, and I helped tutor him in biblical Hebrew during his studies. Although we shared the same faith as Jewish believers in Jesus, we had some doctrinal disagree- ments, and we would often have lively debates about our differences. One day, before he came to my house to study with me, I prayed a very unusual prayer. I said to the Lord, “Father, if my friend is right about this one particular doctrinal point, have him ask me if we could study Palestinian Hebrew texts without vowels today.” Yes, it was an unusual prayer! Of course there is no way he would ever make this request. After all, we studied biblical texts when we got together, not texts written hundreds of years after the Hebrew Scriptures were completed. And we studied texts with vowels, not without vowels. Why in the world would he ask to study Palestinian Hebrew texts without vowels? Well, you can guess what happened next. He came over that day and asked me, quite out of the blue, if we could study those very texts. I was silently shocked. And, as you would expect, I decided to look once again at that area of disagreement between us. Fast-forward to August 2018. While deep in prayer one morning, I became gripped with the theme of this book, sensing God wanted to use it to reach many Jewish people with the gospel—especially religious Jews—and to open the eyes of many Christians. My heart burned with these themes, and the more I prayed, the more I felt a mandate from heaven to write. That afternoon, I went to our studio to do my daily, live radio broad- cast, and when the show was over, I saw there was a voice mail from my old friend from Maryland. We had talked perhaps three times in the last twenty-plus years, so I was surprised to see that he had called. But the surprise quickly turned to stunned amazement. He was asking me to rec- ommend books to read on the exact subject of this book, saying he was thinking of writing a little book on it. How absolutely unreal and what an amazing confirmation. The Lord ix RESUrrECTION certainly knows how to get a point across! With that I knew God was calling me to do the research and write the pages that follow. And now it is my joy to present this book to you, whether you are a fellow believer in Yeshua, whether you believe the Lubavitcher Rebbe is Moshiach, or whether you are an interested seeker. Whoever you are, I pray you will be enriched and blessed as you read the pages that follow. My appreciation again to the great team at Charisma Media, especially to my editor Adrienne Gaines and to Christianne Squires, who worked closely on the project, carefully reviewing every word and checking every endnote. I’m also grateful to Mike Licona for sharing some of his valu- able research on the resurrection of Jesus, and to Jonathan Mann and Erik Mattson, younger Messianic Jewish colleagues whose chat with me about the resurrection helped plant some seeds that led to writing this book. I would also like to thank the ultra-Orthodox rabbis who have dialogued with me over the years, challenging me at every point and forcing me to fine- tune my arguments. I pray that the Lord would reveal the real Messiah to them, just as they pray for me. May the risen Messiah shine His light on you as you read! And if the book blesses you, especially if you are a Jewish person discovering the truth about Yeshua, please contact us at AskDrBrown.org. —MICHAEL L. BROWN, PHD NOVEmbER 2019 x INTRODUCTION From Galilee to Brooklyn: In Search of the Real Messiah CCORDING TO THE first followers of Jesus, all of them Jews, after their Aleader died a horrible death on the cross, He rose from the dead, never to die again. According to the followers of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, all of them Jews, after dying at the age of ninety-two in 1994, he continues to live among them, guiding them with his presence. The followers of Jesus claim it was He who was the promised Messiah. Many of Rabbi Schneerson’s followers make the same claim: “Our Rebbe1 is Moshiach (Messiah)!” Other Jews say, “Neither one can be the Messiah, since the real Messiah will not die before completing his mission.” But what if that Messianic candidate died and rose from the dead? Would that change things? What if there was powerful evidence that one of these revered Jewish leaders rose from the grave and continues to live to this day? Would that reinforce his Messianic credentials? Unfortunately, there were no video cameras back in the year AD 30,2 when Jesus, whose Hebrew name was Yeshua, reportedly rose from the dead. Of course, if you are a follower of Jesus, as I am, there is nothing simply “reported” about His resurrection. We know that He rose from the dead as surely as we know our own names. But others do not have that certainty—especially the vast majority of Jews, who do not believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Thankfully, we now have a unique opportunity to revisit the question of Jesus’ resurrection in light of the claims made about Rabbi Schneerson, otherwise known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Perhaps by comparing what xi RESUrrECTION happened to these two movements—the movement that proclaimed Yeshua as Messiah and the movement that proclaims the Rebbe as Messiah—after the deaths of their leaders, we can shed light on what really happened two thousand years ago. Both of these Jewish leaders had and have devoted Jewish adherents. Both of these Jewish leaders were reportedly miracle workers and prophets. And both are allegedly alive today, in some kind of real, tangible sense. And for the Christian reader, the story of the Rebbe is a fascinating one, as he lived and died recently, in the twentieth century, and he was one of the leading religious figures of his generation.