The Belief that Sikhism is Based on True Prophecy is Contrary to Judaism

I will attempt to rebuttal my opponent"s rebuttal-- in essence, a counter-rebuttal. I will begin with my opponent"s four contentions against my quotation of Zechariah: "First of all, this verse is referring to false prophets, probably prophets of Baal seeing as though it refers to Idol Worship also, this is made very clear by the fact that it puts prophets next to unclean spirits, and speaks specifically of those who deceive. " This is a logical statement based on what I quoted (13:1-2). However, verse three of the chapter states: "And it shall come to pass that, when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begot him shall say unto him: "Thou shalt not live, for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD"; and his father and his mother that begot him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth. " Note that "the LORD" is the JPS translation of the tetragrammaton, the unique name of the Jewish G-d. The above-mentioned prophets were prophesying in the name of the true G-d. And as for the mention of deception and lying, how do we know they are lying? We know because, at this point, there was no more prophecy, and so they had to be lying. Additionally, the verse gives no mention of seeing whether the prophecy came true; immediately when one prophecies, he can be declared a liar. "Secondly, this verse is referring to Jerusalem; Guru Nanak did not live in Jerusalem. " The discussion of prophecy outside of the Land of Israel is under the "Sages" category of this debate, and will be discussed further down. "Thirdly, this time period when this happens is not said to be after Malachi, based on many scriptural clues such as Zechariah 13:8 which says; "In time, throughout that land," says ADONAI, "two-thirds of those in it will be destroyed " they will die, but one-third will remain. " Have 2/3rds of the people in Jerusalem died after Malachi? Last I checked nothing happened to Jerusalem until 100 AD, and it wasn"t 2/3rds the Jewish population, based on this, we can conclude that this verse is referring to the end days. " There are different ways of breaking up the Biblical text into sections. Far pre-dating the chapter breakup, which was invented by the early Christian Fathers, was the "Parsha" (paragraph) system (not to be confused with Sedrah, the weekly Torah section, colloquially called "Parsha"). These paragraph breaks come in two forms: Petucha (open)-- open space until the end of the line, akin to the "enter" key. Setuma (closed)-- nine letters" worth of open space, followed by writing on the other side of the break, akin to the "tab" key. Both are used to signify a new topic. In Zechariah 13, there is a Setuma break after verse 6, thus disconnecting the above-referenced verse 8 from the verses which I used, 1-2. The topic also changes. Thus, although the early Christian Fathers may not have separated the two sections, they are different portions altogether, and one"s conditions cannot be applied to the other. "Fourthly, this verse says that Idol Worship will crease from Israel perminately, another clue that it is not referring to after Malachi, because we know that Idol worship is still going on in Israel, the Christian Churches, the Christian Idols, the Christians, it"s Idol Worship. Thus, this prophecy does not apply yet. " An important distinction must be made between Israel, the land, and Israel, the people. Let us re-examine the text in question: "And it shall come to pass in that day, Saith the LORD of hosts, That I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, And they shall no more be remembered; And also I will cause the prophets And the unclean spirit to pass out of the land. " G-d promises to wipe out the idols from the Land of Israel. This is not a permanent purge of all idolatry; this is rather a statement that, "All the idolatry currently in the Land of Israel will be wiped out and forgotten. " The verse, however, does not speak of future idolatry. However, the second, separate half of the verse talks of the "spirit of uncleanliness"-- the pervasive lust for idolatry. After this point, all the widespread idolatry in the Land of Israel-- the Hellenization, the possible idolatry of Catholicism, and the idolatry of Greek Orthodoxy-- were all due to peer pressure, government pressure, or indoctrination. The desire for idolatry "just because" had been eradicated-- and with it, the prophecy. I will now turn to critiquing my opponent"s critique of the statements of the sages. "First of all, the sages were at the time of Moshe. " There were sages throughout the generations. I was referring to "Chazal" (our sages of blessed memory), who lived c. 300 BCE to c. 500 CE. "Secondly, the credibility of these sages is in question; see this debate for the specifics: . http://www.debate.org...; I have read the above debate; if I had a mobile phone, with which to "verify my identity", I would have voted in favor of Rabbinical Judaism when it came to arguments. Ketuvim harbored the simply false idea that none of the Torah is ambiguous; Talmid called him out on it and proved otherwise. One following a truly intellectually honest doctrine based on the face value of the text of Tanach would eat no animal fat whatsoever, and build an altar in his backyard to offer sacrifices frequently. This is not the Karaite lifestyle; they themselves give subjective interpretations to Tanach (for my examples, see Leviticus 1-7, and 7:23). This may devolve into a debate on Karaism. If my opponent uses Karaism as his main weapon, I cannot avoid it. I will say, however, that I expected a debate based on mainstream Rabbinic Judaism; that my profile informs one that I am "Jewish-Orthodox", meaning following Torah and Rabbinic law; and that my opponent and I have teamed up in Judaism debates before, in which Judaism was always defined as Rabbinic. Thus, I believe my expectation was fair-- although, perhaps, incorrect. The above section also serves as a rebuttal to the rest of my opponent"s argument, which is merely based on doubting the authority of the sages. As for the side question of who wrote the Gemara, it was compiled from the statements of Rabbis from 300 CE to 500 BCE, and made into a book by Rav Ashi and Ravina. I look forward to hearing from Con.