Earlier today, someone forwarded me a link to Joel Richardson’s latest video – the one where he defends the Noahide Laws and casually brushes off anyone sounding the alarm about them as an antisemite.
Noahide Laws: Beast System or Fear Mongering? ( click the underlined to watch and listen)
I decided to put it on the car audio and listen while I was making a quick run to the grocery store.
Honestly, I was stunned.
I actually found myself gripping the steering wheel, completely in disbelief at the sheer ignorance and the string of outright lies being presented as objective truth. It was just one mischaracterization after another, dismissing deeply documented theological realities as if they were nothing more than baseless internet conspiracy theories.
I couldn’t just let that slide. As soon as I got home, I knew I had to sit down and tackle this head on.
In this article, I am going to break down the specific points he made in that video and refute them step-by-step with pure facts. This will be done in several parts, as I intend to dissect everything he said. I won’t be finishing it all tonight, though, as it is already very late.
Joel starts off with framing serious critique of Noahide laws as “panic” or “fear-mongering” so he can position himself as the only “level headed” expert in the room.
But his assumptions fall apart under actual Rabbinic law and Scripture.
Joel correctly lists the prohibition of idolatry as Noahide law number one. He looks into the camera and says, “Now, as Christians, we would agree with these things. We go, ‘Yeah, we don’t believe anyone should be engaged in idolatry.’”
This, my friends is deliberate misdirection.
What he conveniently fails to define is how Rabbinic Judaism actually defines “idolatry” (Avodah Zarah). He leaves the viewer thinking, “Oh, idolatry just means bowing down to wooden statues or pagan gods.”
No, it doesn’t. Not in rabbinic law.
In Rabbinic law, codified by Maimonides (the Rambam) in the Mishneh Torah (Hilchot Avodah Zarah and Hilchot Melachim) – the core confession of the Christian faith, namely that Jesus Christ is the Son of God incarnate and the second person of the Trinity, is explicitly categorized as Avodah Zarah (idolatry) for non-Jews.
To Rabbinic authorities, worshiping a man as God or worshiping a Triune God is a direct violation of pure monotheism. Therefore, when a Orthodox Rabbinic system talks about enforcing the prohibition against idolatry on Gentiles, they are talking about outlawing the worship of Jesus Christ.
Hilchot Avoda Zara ( idolatry) masked on Chabad websites
Joel doesn’t explain this fact, and falsely claims that Christians “agree” with this law. However, no Christian agrees that worshiping Jesus Christ is idolatry.
He tricks his followers into nodding along with a Judaic system designed to outlaw their own Savior.
For example it is important to mention here that the Noahide Academy of Israel focuses heavily on people leaving Christianity in USA and especially folks from the Bible Belt.
The rabbis work overtime actively trying to show that Christian beliefs don’t hold up, using arguments from rabbis like Tovia Singer to make people doubt the New Testament.
They challenge core ideas like needing Jesus for salvation or believing in his blood sacrifice.
Through classes like Rabbi Oved Abraham’s “From Christianity to Judaism,” they teach that Christian theology is wrong and that the only way to have a real relationship with God is to give up worshipping Jesus and follow the Seven Noahide Laws instead.
Why Did G-d Choose Noah to be the Messiah? ( click)
Joel Richardson either seems completely unaware of this organized push or actively minimizes it, showing little genuine concern over the rabbinic movement promoting Noahidism to Christians.
You would think that anyone claiming to represent Christ and defend Christian faith would be deeply alarmed by an active, structured campaign explicitly designed to strip people of their faith in Jesus.
Joel Richardson does the exact opposite of what many Christians expect from a biblical teacher.
Instead of addressing the concerns of believers who warn about the growing push for Noahide laws, he dismisses them as “antisemites.”
By that standard, would Jesus also be labeled an antisemite? Jesus openly confronted the Pharisees, exposed their hypocrisy, and called them out as vipers.
Name calling is often a psychological tactic used to shut down discussion when someone cannot or will not engage the actual arguments. Once a person is branded with a loaded label, others become afraid to speak up for fear of receiving the same label.
It shifts the focus away from the issues and onto attacking the person’s character.
What makes this especially troubling is that it is coming from someone who claims to be a fellow brother in Christ.
Scripture calls believers to reason together and test all things, not silence one another with accusations.
If Jesus were walking among us today, He would not remain silent if He saw Judaic religious leaders promoting teachings that contradicted the gospel. I believe He would confront the movement behind Noahide laws just as He confronted religious authorities in His own day.
Sadly, it seems to me that Joel Richardson would be standing in opposition to Jesus Himself.
That is a deeply disappointing position for someone regarded as a Christian teacher. Christians should be free to raise biblical concerns and debate these issues without being smeared with inflammatory labels designed to end the conversation before it begins.
Throughout his video, Joel repeatedly makes statements that give the impression that the Noahide movement is not opposed to Christianity or Christians. He also claims that the Noahide movement does not require people to renounce Christ, and toward the end of the video he even says that Jews consider Christians to be “Noahides.”
That is not accurate.
For example, the Noahide Academy requires former Christians who wish to become Noahides to renounce their faith in Jesus before they can take the Noahide oath. They will not permit someone to make that oath while continuing to confess faith in Christ.
That directly contradicts the claim that belief in Jesus is compatible with formally embracing Noahide teachings.
Noahide Self Declaration ( click)
Most importantly, Joel should familiarize himself with this statement from the Noahide Academy rabbis before speaking so confidently about a subject he appears not to have fully researched:
If Joel is going to reassure Christians that the Noahide movement poses no conflict with the Christian faith, then he should also acknowledge evidence like this and explain how it fits with his argument, rather than leaving viewers with the impression that no such conflict exists.
Around the 5:30 mark, Joel tries to legitimize the Noahide laws by claiming: “Many people have compared these to the four minimal requirements that the apostles in Acts 15 gave to the Gentiles.”
This is a massive theological error.
The Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 was not establishing a Talmudic Noahide system for Gentiles to become “kosher.”
See, The Noahide system is derived from Talmud,that makes righteousness and a place in the “World to Come” dependent on keeping religious laws outside of Jesus Christ.
Acts 15 was about Gentile believers who were already saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ (Acts 15:11). The four instructions (abstaining from food polluted by idols, sexual immorality, the meat of strangled animals, and blood) were pastoral guidelines designed to facilitate fellowship between Jewish and Gentile believers in the early church and not a legalistic code for salvation by Talmudic Noahide code.
What makes Joel’s comparison even more illegitimate is that the parallels simply do not hold up.
The lists are not even the same.
One of the Noahide commandments prohibits eating a limb taken from a living animal, whereas Acts 15 prohibits eating meat from strangled animals and consuming blood. Those are not identical commands, nor do they arise from the same theological background.
Likewise, two of the four prohibitions in Acts 15 do not directly correspond to the Noahide commandments at all. The similarities are superficial at best and disappear upon closer examination.
To equate Acts 15 with the Noahide laws is intellectually dishonest.
It overlooks the entirely different purpose of the Jerusalem Council, ignores the distinct origins of the Noahide system in rabbinic literature ( Talmud specifically) and blurs the fundamental distinction between the gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Christ.
By conflating the Apostolic decree of Acts 15 with Rabbinic Noahide laws Joel Richardson obscures the Gospel and creates the false impression that apostles were endorsing Noahide system.
Paul warned repeatedly in Galatians that the moment you subject Gentiles to a yoke of legal righteousness outside of Christ, you have fallen from grace (Galatians 5:1-4).
I wrote an entire article on this subject ( Acts 15) so please re-read bellow so you can fully understand this and refute Joel’s nonsense claim!
Acts 15 and the Myth of the Noahide Code ( click)
Joel repeatedly keeps brushing off concerns of honest Christians over Noahide laws as “outright panic,” YouTube “going crazy,” and “fear-mongering.”
However, when Maimonides explicitly writes that under a fully implemented Noahide court system, the penalty for a Gentile committing idolatry (which includes worshiping Jesus) is execution by decapitation, sounding the alarm isn’t “fear-mongering.”
It’s reading the actual Jewish law books- and its called discernment.
It is midnight as I write this, but I couldn’t just go to sleep after listening to Joel’s video. I had to get this down.( At least) I dissected just the first five minutes of his presentation, and I will continue this article tomorrow ( I have to go to sleep now) – so be sure to come back for part two.
Good night.
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