 Everyone knows that the missionaries have been endeavoring for the last 2,000 years to entice the Jewish people to leave their faith and to accept upon themselves Jesus as their personal savior. The name of our talk tonight is a common-sense response to Christian missionaries because in order to know how to respond one does not have to be a theologian or a rocket scientist but only to become a little bit informed and then to use plain common sense. Before we begin I'd like to run down the basic subjects that I'm going to cover in this evening's talk. What are the criteria by which one should decide whether to accept Christianity or not? How do you decide? Precisely what claims does this religion make? Is there any basis to their claims? Is there any reason why we should believe that? Are their claims reasonable? Are their proofs valid? Since they rely on the scriptures which they call the Old Testament, do the scriptures contradict them? Did Jesus actually perform miracles? And if he did, do they prove his claims? Are there elements of Christianity which make it undesirable for Jews? What constitutes the authority and validity of what they call the New Testament? Does it have any basis? Did Jesus fulfill the messianic prophecies and how do the claims of Christianity measure up against the claims of Judaism? And so we begin. Every religion claims that they have the truth and all the others are in error or are lying. How do we know who has the truth? How can we figure it out? Well, we have to see if the claims that the religion makes have a basis. Religion is not a matter of feeling. It's not a matter of emotion of what makes me feel good. If what they claim is true, okay. If what they claim is not true, why should we go after it? If there's no basis to their claims, so why should we pay any attention? And there's no proof from the fact that maybe they're very nice people and they're warm and welcoming because people that are in error can also be warm and welcoming. It doesn't prove that you have the truth because you're a nice guy or a nice girl, nice lady. It doesn't prove anything. The number of believers which is rather impressive proves nothing. There are two and a half billion Christians, last time I counted them, and a billion and a half Muslims on the other side of the globe. So what does that show? So these two religions, before we get to Judaism and before we talk about what we're going to talk about tonight, these two religions are mutually exclusive. These say that these will burn in hell forever and these say that these will burn in hell forever. Amongst them are educated people, doctors, lawyers, accountants, professors, right people, educated people, and yet everyone has to agree that at least a billion and a half or two and a half billion have made a mistake because the two are mutually exclusive. We say they both made a mistake. From the fact that the religion continues to spread, this also proves nothing, because when parents bring up children and they tell them this is the truth, this is what happened, this is the truth, generally children don't question, they don't think through it, and so they accept it and move along with it and they live with it. So after the religion starts, it's no surprise that it might continue on. But the main question is, how did it get started? In what manner was it accepted by the people who originally accepted it? If we had been there, would we have accepted it? Perhaps the ones that accepted it were people that were ignorant about all these matters and were merely taken in by the charisma of the speaker. They never thought through it objectively. What if we would have been there? We'll soon see about that. Precisely what do they claim? They're not unanimous. I was rather surprised when Rabbi Skobak told me that there are 30,000 different Christian sects, 30,000. But we'll speak about what is generally presented. Each one has their own little version, but we'll speak about what's generally presented. They say that God came down to this world in the body of a woman named Mary. She was a married woman and gave birth to a son, and that son's name was Jesus. And this was the fulfillment of a prophecy that is said in Isaiah, behold the virgin will be with child. Isaiah came about 700 years before Jesus, and even though if you look in the original, you will see, number one, it doesn't use the word virgin. Number two, the entire quotation is taken completely out of context because it's talking about something else, something that happened in that time, a sign that the Prophet was giving that a certain woman would be pregnant and that before the child was old enough to distinguish between good and evil, the country would be relieved of their oppressors. It has nothing to do with Jesus. At the time of these events that they claim, the custom in the Jewish world was as follows. A Jewish wedding has two parts. If you've ever been to a wedding, a religious wedding, you'll see that first the groom gives a ring or something else of value to the bride, and then they are standing under a canopy which we call the chupah, the canopy, and they complete it with some blessings. Those two parts were done separately. In our days, when people want to get married, they make an engagement party, but they're not married yet. In those days, when two people decided to get married, he immediately gave her the ring or something else of value in front of two witnesses, and technically for all practical purposes they were married, but they didn't move in together. The bride stayed in her father's home, the groom rented an apartment, maybe bought some furniture. She got her gown. They spent time in between the first step and the second, preparing for the wedding. However, she was by all virtue of the law a married woman, and what happened was that she became pregnant. So when she became pregnant, her husband disclaimed paternity. He said, it's not from me. I never had relations with her. We weren't living together yet, and he was taking her to the court to do whatever had to be done legally, and they claimed that a heavenly voice came out from heaven and said, stop. This is from me. This is from me. So before you go any further, it's very strange that the God of the universe, if he wants to come down to this earth in a human form, should choose to come down in the belly of a married woman. That is very strange, but okay. So when he grew up, he claimed that he was the promised Messiah who would redeem the Jewish people who were suffering from their enemies, and according to their version of the story, the Jews tattled on him to the Romans, and the Romans killed him by crucifixion. And at the end, after his death, he rose up again. He was resurrected, and later he was taken up to heaven, and what they call the trinity is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And even though the scriptures say that God is one, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is only one, but somehow three equals one, one equals three. Jesus never preached to the Gentiles, and he didn't want to. He said clearly that he has not come to alter any of the laws of the Torah. He was a Jew, and he said clearly that he has not come to nullify or to change any of the laws of the Torah. These are some of their claims, and now they have doctrines, things that we should believe in, and this is a sampling of some of their doctrines. Every human being is cursed since the time that the first man and woman ate from the tree of knowledge, as is written in Genesis that they were told not to, and they did. So they are cursed, and all human beings are cursed. They are all born into sin. We are all sinners, and only he can redeem us from the curse of the original sin. Without him, it is impossible to shake off that curse. Another belief is, no one can turn to the Father without going through the Son. The New Testament, which is the part of what they call the Bible that's added on to the original, is full of threats of hell for someone that doesn't believe in him, and promises of paradise to those that do believe in him. Whoever believes in him will enter paradise immediately upon death, and many of them say that means even without good deeds, even the worst person will yet talk about that, even the worst person, but if he accepts Jesus, can be accepted into paradise upon death immediately, because Jesus will get him in. So that is already, some say yes, some say no, if you're really bad, maybe you have to do some good deeds too, you've got to be a pretty good fellow, but all agree, remember this, all agree that someone that does not accept Jesus for his personal God is destined to hell forever. Jesus was clear that, quotation marks from John in the New Testament, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. Born again means to accept Jesus. He was also clear that hell is an eternal punishment for those who do not obey him, that's from Matthew. Another section in the New Testament says that in the end God will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. John the Baptist said about Jesus, his winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his weed into the barn and burning up the chaff, the chaff with unquenchable fire. That's what is destined for those who do not believe in Jesus. Another quotation from John, John explains in the simplest terms, who will go to heaven and who will go to hell. Quotation, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only son. End quote. So those who go to hell are specifically those who do not believe in Jesus' name. To believe goes beyond the mental recognition of the truth. To believe in Christ for salvation requires a transfer of allegiance. We stop worshiping ourselves, we forsake our sin and we begin to worship God with our heart, soul, mind and strength. Matthew. Everyone agrees that the sages of the time who were very numerous, whose names are on the lips of all Jews who study the works that were written in that period, the sages of what we call the mission, that the sages were not on his side. They did not subscribe to him. And the Jewish people in general did not. He had a small following. And his following was from amongst those who were from the lowest element of the people, the most ignorant. But the reason that the Jewish people did not accept them, they say, is because they were all smitten with blindness. And amongst the Christians there are many who say that the Jewish people are cursed forever for they did not accept them. Christians say clearly that they subscribe to the writings of the scriptures. In other words, they believe in the scriptures. They believe in the revelation. They believe that the Jewish people were once chosen. They believe that they were once given a Torah. And he himself said that he didn't come to change the law. But the Christians say that later on God sort of changed his mind and chose others. They have varying versions of this. And Paul said, Paul never saw Jesus alive. He said that when he was on his way to Damascus, Jesus came to him in a revelation. And he said that he should now begin to spread the faith in Jesus to the nations of the world, to the Gentiles. And that now it is no longer necessary to keep the Torah to find favor in God's eyes. It's no longer necessary to circumcise. God has redeemed the people from the curse of the Lord. The law is a curse. It's terrible. It's cruel. It's hard. It's a curse. It's a curse. Even till today there are many ways of understanding Paul's words. There's no unanimous understanding. But that's basically what he said. They bring many proofs to their doctrines from the Scriptures. They say that these verses speak about him and about their doctrines. We'll soon see a little bit later about that. They also say that Jesus made miracles. And if you make miracles, so we have to believe in him. He made miracles. And according to them, there's also a war going on between Satan and God. Satan rebelled against God. And God is not in full control of the world. So now is there any basis to their claims? So imagine to yourself, you're standing 2,000 years ago. You're being presented with the Christian doctrines. Doctrines that were never heard in the world before. A belief that was never heard in the world before. With a new interpretation of what the Messiah is supposed to do. We'll soon see that his job is not to redeem the Jewish people from their oppression, but to atone for the original sin that all people are destined for hell without him and only through him can be saved. Exactly the opposite of what the Jewish tradition teaches us that everybody has a share in the afterlife. And you stand there and you say, excuse me, sir. Excuse me, Jesus. Or excuse me, Paul. How do I know that you're telling me the truth? Who says? How do I know? Was there ever an answer to that question of how do I know? Was there any way in the world at the time to know if these claims are actually true? So why would you believe in such claims which had never been heard before? Claims which are somewhat outlandish without some kind of proof? And certainly you shouldn't believe in these claims 2,000 years later without any proof. The punishment of hell for the sin of eating from the tree of knowledge, the original sin, is not mentioned in the scriptures. What is mentioned is that mankind was cursed with the need to earn a living, with the sweat of your brow you will eat bread. Womankind was cursed with the pains of pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing, and that all human beings would have to die, whereas beforehand they could have lived eternally. So from what the Torah did not say, from what the scriptures did not predict that there's a punishment of hell for every person from the original sin without Jesus, this he did redeem us supposedly. But from the things that the Torah did say, that the scriptures did say, from this he wasn't able to redeem us. Why couldn't he redeem us from the need to make, if he redeemed us from the original sin, why couldn't he redeem us from the need to earn a living or from child labor? Jesus predicted that the redemption of with the Messiah would come in his lifetime immediately. Not one drop of what is to come about when the Messiah comes happened in his lifetime. And then he died. That was 2,000 years ago. So his followers say that of course he's going to be a second coming. He never said he won't be able to bring the redemption now. Well, you don't have to wait a little while like 2,000 years. It says in the New Testament that Jesus prayed. To whom did he pray? To himself? He's God. He's a God. To whom did he pray? Oh, to his other half? It's a little strange. Since they rely on the scriptures, do the scriptures contradict them? They believe supposedly in everything that it says in the scriptures. And they say that he's hinted to there from various verses that they quote, but that afterwards God changed the plan. He said to go to the nations of the world, the Messiah is going to come to the nations. How could it possibly be that the scriptures should not mention a second coming? Does that make any sense? The scriptures for those who are familiar with the words of the Torah and the prophets and even the holy writings are full of predictions about the Messiah, but there isn't one word about coming, going away, and a second coming. One of the themes of the entire scriptures is that the election of the Jewish people as the chosen nation was forever. Forever. The name, the God of Israel, appears 165 times in the scriptures. And not only that he was the God of Israel, but that they were chosen forever like it says by many of the commandments, a law forever. It says in another verse, we're not responsible for the evil thoughts that people have, but for the revealed things that people do wrong, we're responsible to deal with it. The revealed things are for us and our children forever to do all the words of this Torah. In the end of the section in Deuteronomy, which talks about the consequences that the Jewish people will have to undergo if they turn away from the Torah, they are warned that they will be scattered from one end of the earth to the other. And then the Redeemer will come. And even if they will sin exceedingly and be punished terribly with afflictions and a long exile, but nevertheless we are told as follows, with all this, with all this that I've told you was going to happen to you, when they're in the land of their enemies, when we're in this long and bitter exile, which we've been for 2,000 years, I will not reject them or repel them to destroy them, to break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. In Isaiah it says as follows, this is to me like the waters of Noah, the flood, the great flood, the global flood that is described in the Scriptures. This to me is like the waters of Noah, that I swore that the waters of Noah will never again cover the earth, so I have sworn not to be angry at you and rebuke you exceedingly, for the mountains will go away, and the hills will depart, and my kindness will never be turned away from you, and the covenant of my peace will not be removed, says the one who has mercy on you God, so the mountains will disappear before God nullifies his covenant and his election of the Jewish people. In Jeremiah 31 it says as follows, so said God who gives the light of the sun for the light of day, and the movements of the moon and the stars for the light of night, who stirs up the sea and the waves roar, the Lord of hosts is his name, if these things shall cease to be before me, says God, only then will also the Jewish people cease to be a nation before me all the days, only then when there's no more sun and there's no more moon and the sea doesn't roar, so said Hashem, next verse, if the heavens can be measured, you know we once thought we could measure the heavens with a ruler but today we know the heavens are a little bit bigger than we ever ever imagined, if the heavens can be measured above and the earth can be checked out down below, if you could go down to the center of the earth which we cannot do, then I will also reject all the children of Israel for all they have done says God, so even after whatever sins we have but the deal is the deal the Jewish people were chosen forever, it's as clear as could be, the very last of the prophets was Malachi who was at the very beginning of the second temple, that's about 2400 years ago about and his last words to the Jewish people were as follows, remember the Torah of Moses my servant that I commanded him over all Israel in in in Horeb in Horeb which is another name for Sinai, statutes and judgments and then he says I'm going to send to you Elijah the prophet before the great day of God comes and then the Messiah will come so the Torah is down to the minute that the Messiah comes and will that's not for our subject but even after, the scriptures do not agree with Paul that the Torah is a curse, the scriptures declare openly that the words of Torah are very sweet, King David says they're more precious than gold and sweeter than honey and honeycombs, he said in another verse how much I love your Torah, I love your teaching all day it is my talk, I talk about it all the time, I love it so much, the Torah is not a curse that we should need not Jesus and not Paul to redeem us from it, the Sabbath is an everlasting covenant with all its laws, the Bible says the Jewish people shall keep the Sabbath to do the Sabbath for all their generations an everlasting covenant, when was the Sabbath when Christianity started on Saturday? The original Christians kept whatever they did for the Sabbath on Saturday, a few hundred years later they decided that was too Jewish and they changed it to Sunday, how can you change God's Sabbath from one day to another, how can you do that? The claim of paradise, I want to tell you anybody can claim anything they want about paradise, someone can promise you that if you hold your nose and pull your ear you're going to get into paradise, you can't prove it and you can't disprove it, you can't prove such promises and you can't disprove them, some of them say that the paradise of Christianity requires no good deeds as we mentioned before, not between people, kindness, not between man and God, not good character traits, not repentance for what one did wrong and even if a person was the wickedest of all, all his life, arrogant, a thief, a murderer and an adulterer, when he dies Jesus will get him into paradise if he only accepts Jesus for his personal God, but listen carefully, all sects believe and agree that without accepting Jesus one is cursed and destined to hell forever because he's a heretic, everyone knows that in the 1960s the Israelis kidnapped Adolf Eichmann, may his name be blotted out, and brought him to Jerusalem and tried him, it was a year long trial and finally they condemned him to be hung and as is the custom in such situations they gave him a religious functionary, actually a Canadian, was actually a Canadian, to deal with his religious needs and this Reverend, Protestant Reverend was very disappointed that he didn't budge Eichmann and Eichmann did not accept Jesus for his personal Savior, so they asked him and what difference would it have made if Eichmann had accepted Jesus, he would have entered paradise immediately and what will be with the million victims whose death he caused and whom he caused to suffer and to be tortured, they will all burn in hell because they didn't accept Jesus, that he said is the miracle of salvation, quote unquote, so they say that God sort of changed his mind and made a new covenant, the new covenant is you don't have to keep the Torah anymore, no no you just have to have it in your heart, it has to be in your heart and they base it on various verses, I'm going to read to you some verses, in Jeremiah it says, behold days are coming says the Lord, I will make a covenant with Israel and the house of Judah a new covenant, not like the covenant that I made with your forefathers on the day that I held their hands to take them out of the land of Egypt which they broke my covenant and I punished them but this covenant that I will make with the Jewish people after these days says that God I will put my Torah in their hearts, I'll put my law in their hearts and I'll write it out, I'll strive inside them and I'll inscribe it on their hearts and I'll be to them for a God and they'll be to me for a people, so it's a new covenant they say, it's only in the heart, I mean the simple meaning of this verses, they didn't take it to heart, they didn't keep it seriously, they broke it, now I'll make and we'll start over again, we'll refresh our relationship and this time they'll take it seriously, I'll write it in their hearts and they'll keep everything as they're supposed to, so from this on this basis you start a world religion on a verse that the simple meaning of the verse does not mean what you say, you have to understand how silly it is to claim that God changed his mind, first of all common sense does not allow us to say that God changes his mind, he knows the future, he knows everything that's going to be, he doesn't have to change his mind, the verse says the eternal one of Israel does not lie and does not regret, another verse, I God never changed my mind, another verse, God is not a man to lie, so God doesn't have to change his mind, if he said that we're his people forever, so we're his people forever, a second question, if God is not happy for the Jews because they broke his myths, his commandments, so choose someone else who'll keep them, don't say you don't have to keep them anymore, I'll just just do it in your heart, he could have done that for the Jews too, didn't have to choose anybody else and third of all and perhaps most astounding, the Christians agree that God gave the Torah in front of the entire Jewish people that were assembled at Mount Sinai, there were approximately two and a half to three million people, this was after they had witnessed the 10 plagues, miraculous plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea, the falling of the manna from heaven, a well that traveled along with them, that they drew water from a rock that traveled along with them, the clouds of glory that protected them, they saw it all, then they came to Mount Sinai and they heard a public revelation, God spoke to them besides the fact that the mountain was burning and so on and so forth, so God when he wanted to give us the Torah he gave it to us publicly in the most open inescapable way possible, so Paul says no I was told that he retracted it, does that make sense, if God wants to retract it, he's almighty, can't he call another meeting and say listen guys I changed my mind, imagine if you will that the president of the United States declares over all the media, Twitter, the internet, television, radio, we are at war with country, Iran, North Korea, whoever it is, we're at war, they've done something that's just unforgivable, we're at war, the next day his press secretary comes out and says the president told me that he changed his mind, no he's got to get back on all the media and tell everybody, I have a friend who goes around lecturing about the Jewish faith and he says as follows, I he says I am an Orthodox Jew, I keep to the best of my ability what it says in the Torah, I keep Shabbos, the Sabbath, the holidays, I eat kosher, I wear the fringes that seats it, I put on phylacteries, I give charity, I try to do it all, the Christians are telling me when I get upstairs, God is going to say to me no no no, you don't enter paradise, no no no, you didn't accept Jesus and I'm going to say but God, you never told us, I did what you told us and he's going to say oh you're right I forgot, I forgot, does it make any sense, did Jesus actually perform miracles and if he did did they prove his claims, so first of all it's important for you to know that there is nothing written about Jesus from the time that he lived in no historical report anywhere in the globe about Jesus from the time that he lived, so if he did miracles they were not recorded, the people that tell us about the miracles are not the children of the children of the children who were there and witnessed them, they were people who were convinced later, so how do we know if they are true or not, we don't really, maybe they're not, but even if we agree that they are true and Jesus made various miracles he didn't make world-class miracles, he didn't split a red sea but he made some miracles, maybe he produced some bread or walked on water, whatever he did, if he did it, it proves nothing, we have an entire chapter, a paragraph in Artura that says don't be fooled by miracles and I'm going to read it to you, everything that I command you today you should guard to keep, do not add to it and do not subtract, when a prophet will arise amongst you or a dreamer of dreams and give you a sign or a wonder, a sign means a prediction of future events, a wonder is a miracle and the sign and the wonder come true that he spoke to you and he says now let's go and worship other gods that you didn't know, let's worship them, so he's standing there he says gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, do you see that moon in the sky, I'm going to bring it down and hold it in my hand and lo and behold the moon comes down, shrinks and he's holding it in his hand, quite impressive, not bad, better than I could do for sure, do not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams for Lord your God is testing you to see if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and that prophet shall be put to death because he lied about God, he lied, he spoke falsely against God who took you out from the land of Egypt, redeemed you from the house of slavery to push you off the road which the Lord your God commanded you to go in, so the Torah says if somebody makes a miracle and tells you to change your religion, it proves nothing, nothing at all, messianic fulfillment, what does this, what do the scriptures say is supposed to happen when the Messiah comes, no more wars, no more wars, one nation will not lift up a sword against another nation, there'll be peace in the whole world, universal peace, the Messiah will be like a king over the whole world, he's going to be a king, this is repeated numerous times, all the nations will believe in the God of Israel and give glory and honor to the Jewish people whom they had previously persecuted, the wicked will be cleaned out of the world, not like today that for whatever reason God is allowing wicked and righteous to live together, no in those days when the Messiah comes the wicked will be cleaned out of the world, the holy temple will be rebuilt on Mount Mariah, the temple mount will become the religious center of the world and all nations will gather to it to receive instructions and all the nations will come to celebrate the festival of Sukkot of Tabernacles which is a Jewish festival and none of this happened in his lifetime even though he promised us that it's going to happen in his lifetime, are the proofs valid? Now I'm sure that there have been many lectures here about the Bible proofs and I'm only going to mention the general concept, all of the proofs that they bring from the Bible that supposedly the Bible was talking about him are either things which have no basis in those verses which are a distortion of the verse taken out of context or a mistranslation every single one of them just like the one with the new covenant and just like the one with the virgin it will be with child which is talking about a historical story and it doesn't say anything about a virgin it says about a young woman she'll be with a child and when the child is just still young something is going to happen the scriptures were in our possession about 1300 years before he came on the scene and we never had any difficulty with any of those verses that they use they say well there he is there he is in the verses we don't see him in the verses and when you point this out to a missionary which I have done on occasion he will never admit that you are right he will say okay well what about the next one he'll just go on to the next one am I right Julius once met a gentleman at a lecture and it was a Jewish lecture and he told me that he says you know I liked the lecture but I recently Jesus has become a reality in my life I said huh aren't you at the wrong place this is not the place for you he says no no no I'm a seeker of the truth what do you say about Isaiah 53 what do you say Isaiah 53 is about the suffering servant which they read into it Jesus he doesn't fit there it doesn't it doesn't fit with him at all but they squeeze him in they squeeze him in so I said to him those verses have nothing to do with him if you want to know why come to my office and I'll explain it to you so he came to the office and I read him the verses with the correct interpretation I said what does this have to do with Jesus he says nothing I said so how do you know Jesus this is anything well I had a revelation so there you are he had his own revelation other elements of Christianity which make it undesirable for Jews the Christians have persecuted us for 2000 years yes we're living in a country where we are at the present time not persecuted it's a break in the pattern of history but the 2000 year pattern almost everywhere that we were and almost all the time was one of constant persecutions which were incited by the church first by the Catholic church and later in the after the 1500s by both the Catholic church and the Protestant churches most of today's missionaries are Protestants the founder of the movement in the 1950s in the 1500s was Martin Luther in the beginning he spoke not badly about the Jews because he hoped to convert them to his new religion but he changed his his his coat when he saw that they're not interested and this is what he wrote in a German word called Juden as in Liegen their Jews and their lies Luther's attitude toward the Jews took different forms during his lifetime in his earlier period until 1537 or not much earlier he wanted to convert Jews to Lutheranism Protestant Christianity but failed in his later period when he wrote this particular treatise he denounced them and urged their persecution this treatise had 65,000 words in it I wrote a book two and a half years ago it only had about 40 40,000 words but this has 65,000 words in the treatise he argues that Jewish synagogues and schools be set on fire their prayer books destroyed rabbis forbidden to preach homes burned and property and money confiscated they should be shown no mercy or kindness afforded no legal protection and these poisonous and venimed worms should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time he also seems to advocate their murder writing we are at fault and not slaying them in the treatise Luther describes Jews as a base warring people w-h-o-r-i-n-g like the prostitute that is that is no people of God and their boast of lineage circumcision and law must be accounted as filth Luther wrote that they are full of the devil's feces which they wallow in like swine and the synagogue is an incorrigible war a ruler and an evil slut so who did the present day missionaries receive their religion from who do they get it from the Protestant churches this is their founder the authenticity of the new testament i just read one little paragraph the Pauline epistles that's from Paul are the 13 new testament books that present Paul the apostle as their author six of the letters are disputed for our thought by most modern scholars to be pseudographic which means not actually written by paul even if attributed to him within the letters themselves that is i've been saving the dessert for last there is a wonderful book called permission to believe by a rabbi by a rabbi laurence kelemann and he asked he sent a letter to the Vatican asking them three questions on paesach we ask four questions at the satyr but he only asked three questions question number one in one version of the i'm not reading all the details because it'll take long but this is the essence of the question in one section of the new testament it says that jesus was resurrected in the galley and in another it says he was erected in Jerusalem and nowhere is there any mention that he was resurrected twice seeming contradiction in the new testament question number two jesus because of the claim that he's the messiah has to descend from king david because so the scriptures promise that the messiah will be a descendant of david so the scriptures give him a lineage they ascribe to him the new testament ascribes a lineage to him through his mother's husband joseph but in two different versions they have a different list of his ancestors leading back to king david in one book there are 28 generations with names and in another book there are 43 generations with different names question number two question number three you say that joseph was not his father so what difference does it make if joseph descended from david or not jesus is not his son so the vatican's official representative answered i'm only reading you a little bit of excerpts from here it's hard to believe they say like this they say yes it's true that the gospels do not agree where the resurrection took place and there's no room for saying it happened twice variations in place and time may stem in part from the evangelists themselves who are trying to fit the account of an appearance into a consecutive narration they're trying to make it look good then they say as far as the genealogical contradictions because the early christians confessed jesus as messiah for which the son of david was an alternative title they historicized their faith by creating for him davidic genealogies and by claiming that joseph was a david in jewish thought the messiah was pictured as having davidic denis i'm skipping as having davidic descent consequently jesus was described as son of david and eventually a davidic genealogy was fashioned for him the spokesman goes even further calling into question the reliability of large sections of the new testament the documents encourage the reader to face the possibility that portions of matthew and luke quote may represent non-historical dramatizations indeed he says the writer from the vatican indeed close analysis of the infancy narratives the native the narratives of jesus birth makes it unlikely that either account is completely historical matthew's account contains a number of extraordinary or miraculous public events that were they factual should have left some traces in jewish records or elsewhere in the new testament the virgin birth the documents caution that we should not underestimate the adverse pedagogical impact on the understanding of divine sonship if the virginal conception is denied i'm going to say that for you in english if you don't believe that jesus is the son of god and mary's husband desired the denied paternity that makes him a mom's a bastard and that would have been and that would have been had adverse pedagogical impact on the understanding of divine sonship if the virgin conception is denied and then he says the spokesman tactfully concludes that biblical evidence leaves the question of the historicity of the virginal conception unresolved the documents mentioned the possibility that early christians might have imported a mythology about virginal conception from pagan or other world religions but never intended that that mythology be taken literally this is a religion with two and a half billion followers who take all this literally and these are the best answers that the vatican can come up with now i want you to compare la havdel we say to make a division between that which is holy and that which is not the jewish people have been in business for over 3000 years the national historical history of the jewish people there never was another version is that we received the word of god publicly at mount sinai in front of millions and we gave it over who's been transmitting it the children of the children of the children of the original witnesses this is in jews that live no matter where they're scattered all over the world and at all times we are the children of the children of these people we never claimed otherwise and there's no other historical version of how the jewish people came to be a nation except those who came along much later and said you know what we're going to reinterpret history we'll tell you a different version but a historical version there is no other i've often said that my Passover satyr begins the same way i speak to my grandchildren some of whom sit around the table and i say to them children we are about to begin satyr number 33 31 the first satyr took place in the jewish homes in the land of egypt the night before we left and we've never stopped making that Passover satyr no matter where we were dispersed around the globe you are connected back to the exodus and to all those events that we've continued telling our children for the last over 3000 years with the golden chain of of historical tradition our Torah needed no threats or promises to get the people to believe when one carefully analyzes what they call the old testament the five books of moses you see that moses tells them over and over again i don't have to convince you because you saw it all you know it's all true faith and belief is taken for granted that's one of the themes of the five books of moses you saw you heard and you experienced it all the day the Torah was given and the jews said moses can we look they said you know moses it says here that we ate mana that fell from the sky for breakfast if it wasn't true would they have accepted it they know they ate mana for breakfast that fell from the sky and all christians believe in this that's part of their religion in all the books of the prophets they rebuked the jews for many many different sins but never for the sin of not believing because until recent times jews all over the world believed in the things that we are saying in the revelation at Sinai the exodus from Egypt and all the miracles miracles happen to us that were known throughout the world and the christians agree to this and such things never happened to them yes there is a paradise a garden of Eden and a hell yes there is for the good people for the good people there's paradise for the bad people hell is a cleansing process so that they can get into paradise and get the reward for the good things that they have done when the Torah says hero is real the lord our god the lord is one we don't have to corrupt it there's only one and just like we believed for the 1300 or so years before Jesus came along that there's only one we continue to believe that there's only one there aren't three and there is no trinity and for this belief we have given our lives and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of martyrs for those who are unfamiliar with jewish history you have to know that we have been attacked with pogroms banishments forced conversions and hundreds of thousands of martyrs allow themselves to be killed with the words hero israel the lord is our god the lord is one on their lips our god never changed his mind he doesn't have to he's not a person to change his mind all the promises in the Torah have been fulfilled that we are scattered around the world that we've remained small in number that we've been persecuted it's all told there all told there the only ones that have not been fulfilled are the last ones that we wait for which we're promised that we know they're coming to the fulfillment the existence of the jewish people throughout this exile which is like one lamb among 70 wolves and somehow we continue to survive that's also foretold there and it it's totally miraculous all the good concepts which the christians have incorporated into their belief like the golden rule do unto others as you would have them do unto you are not original to them the Torah says you should love your your neighbor like yourself your friend like yourself and hillel who preceded jesus said what you don't like don't do to your friend hillel was a household name he was the prince of israel Judaism brought to the world every concept of ethics and morals that they have and we've been keeping it for 3000 years and the Torah is like honey in our mouths today even after the holocaust and even after all the centers of learning Torah were destroyed there's been a tremendous revival and there are tens and tens of thousands of of Torah students boys and girls in various school systems studying Torah and loving it so in summation why should anybody believe in a virgin birth is there no other option no other possibility how a married woman can become pregnant than that god impregnated or there must be some other option why should a jew join a religion that has persecuted us for 2000 years and even if they're showing us a nicer face today that doesn't prove that anything about the truth of their words because we already quoted who they learned their religion from from those that persecuted us i personally was born to a secular family and i joined the ranks of the observant i don't want to give away my age but 60 years ago and i have met in the Torah world in the jewish world some of the most amazing wonderful honest people impeccably honest sensitive to others no one has a monopoly on nice guys it could be a nice guy even if you have the right if you have the right believe or even if you have the wrong belief that proves nothing this is a religion that christian religion is a religion that has no historical basis that there's no mention of him in any contemporary works that from the first day they could not have been brought approved if anyone would have said i don't believe you without a proof how can you prove it there was no way that their doctrines contradict the scriptures in which they supposedly believe that they make from one god three and they make up doctrines which make god into a sadist that even if you're the best person in the world but if you don't trust in jesus you're gonna burn in hell forever that god that the god their lord was born in the in the stomach of a married woman and needed to be diapered they claim it's the religion of love but there've been more wars between christian countries than anyone else in all of history so as we said when we started all you need is a little information and a little common sense in the days when i worked in outreach to secular jews so we wanted to to encourage them to investigate their heritage so we made a cartoon the cartoon was a picture of the house it said this is the ancestral home of the bergenstein family and it showed how that home had been attacked as a treasure chest up in the attic the home had been attacked to get away the contents of the treasure chest but now things are quiet nobody's trying to take away the chest anymore and the family has forgotten about it and they're doing renovations and one of the family members says you know what what do we need this whole chest for let's get rid of it the great uncle says i don't know what's in it but before we throw it out i know what we sacrifice to keep it before we throw it out let's take a good look inside we have sacrificed again and again for our belief in the Torah what sense does it make to forsake it without investigating it carefully and finding out what it's really all about so tell me my brothers and friends why should we desert an inheritance of over 3 000 years even before we investigate it to see what it is to desert and give up a belief which thousands of your own ancestors gave their lives for and which they testified that they were the descendants of those who had seen everything with their own eyes to accept the belief which even from the first day if anyone had asked who says how do i know it's true can you prove it would not have gotten an answer this is surely against all common sense and so may the good lord grant everyone the clarity to see the common sense approach to christian missionaries thank you very much