 The assertion of Christianity is that God's revelation to the Jewish people, and to others, did not end with the canonization of the Jewish scriptures, the Tanach, in approximately 450 BCE. Our Bible, our Jewish Bible, which we call the Tanach, basically was canonized, was put together in its final form approximately 450 BCE. That was the Jewish Bible. We still have it today. And Christians insist that God's revelation did not end at that time. And they maintain that the Christian scriptures, which were written approximately between the years 55 of the common era to approximately 150. We don't know exactly what the dates are, but approximately 50 to 150 of the common era, they claim that those scriptures were also revealed by God and that they have an important message for the Jewish people. Now we all know, if you've ever seen a Jewish Bible, that our Bible does not end. Our Bible does not end by saying to be continued. Our Bible does not end by saying, but wait, there's going to be more. That's important to realize. Our Bible never says that. Now what the church did was to strike a very strong blow for the credibility of their scriptures by simply gluing it on to the back of a Jewish Bible. That was a master stroke. Rather than having a separate Bible, we have the Jewish scriptures, the Tanach, and then they would have their own New Testament and have it as a separate book. What they did was to put it into one big book. They glued their scriptures onto the back of our scriptures and they called it the Bible. The word Bible means book, and it seems like one big book now. I'm reading an amazing book now called Slites of Mind. You know that magicians use something called Slite of Hand. This is a wonderful book called Slites of Mind. It's written by two scientists, neuroscientists, who make a study of the practice of magic. They're trying to understand how magic works from a scientific perspective. They really go into the way our minds can be shaped, manipulated, fooled, and they speak about these Slites of Mind. I think that what happened when Christianity composed their Bible by taking the Jewish scriptures, the Tanach, and essentially glomming onto it, attaching, gluing their Bible to the back of our Bible, was to create a strong visual illusion. It's a visual illusion. You now hold up Bible. It's one book. It includes everything. And it was able to create the impression throughout the world that what's the Bible? The Bible is everything from Genesis to Revelation. It's the whole kit and caboodle. Now ironically, you may have been thinking ahead of me now, ironically, this tactic leaves them wide open to the exact same thing. Now I'm kicking myself because I did bring an audio visual aid tonight to show you, and I don't know what happened to it. It ended up somewhere else. But I really, I had my heart on this. I have, well, I'll make believe it. You'll excuse me, art scroll sitter, but I'm going to use you as a prop. So I have a Mormon Bible in my study. It's even thicker than this. And what did the Mormons do? Brilliant! The Mormons took a Christian Bible, the Christian Bible which contains the Old Testament and the New Testament. And what did the Mormons do? They glued onto the back of the Christian Bible, the Book of Mormon, doctrines and covenants, Pearl of Great Price, the Mormon scriptures. And they have what they refer to as a triple Bible. That's what they call it, a triple Bible. It's really big by the way. I have no idea how I lost it tonight. But I hope no one finds it with my name in it. That's going to be embarrassing. So the Christian tactic of basically just gluing their Bible onto the back of a Jewish Bible, that can repeat itself. You know when you throw a stone, you try and skip a stone on the water, it can bounce more than once. It usually does if you did it well. And so when the Christians try this to us, Mormons did it to them. And I wouldn't be surprised in another 500 years, some other new religion comes up and they come up with a 24 inch wide Bible one day. What we're going to try to do tonight is understand why we as Jews do not accept this amalgamation of Christianity claiming that their books really should be part of our Bible. We're going to begin, if you hopefully have these source sheets on page one. I'm not going to skip around. We're going to go straight through, but I will call the page occasionally. So we're going to begin tonight by asking a very important question. When a person claims that God spoke to them. Because again, when we are reading the Bible, we're not reading a reader's digest. We're not reading a book off of the New York Times bestseller novel list. We're not reading some statement made by the mayor of Mississauga. The Bible are books that are written by people claiming they didn't make this up. They're claiming that these words, these ideas were revealed to them by God. That's a very, very big claim. And so the question is, how do you know? That's going to be a very important question. How do you know if someone really is a true prophet of God? How do you know? And we know one thing, that it doesn't happen simply because they make the claim. Meaning that you don't become a prophet just by claiming you're a prophet because truth be told, every false prophet claims to be a prophet. So the claim itself is useless. So our question, our problem is going to be at the very outset tonight, how do we know if someone really is a prophet speaking in the name of God? So we're going to begin with the beginning of Judaism. We'll begin with Moses because Judaism begins with the Revelation at Mount Sinai. So the question is, how do we know that Moses is a true prophet? How do we know that Moses really heard from God? So what's important to understand is what didn't happen. What didn't happen was that Moses comes down from the top of the mountain and says, guess what? The Lord spoke unto me, and this is what he told me. That's not what happened. Because if that's what happened, then how would we know? How would we know? Because his face is glowing. Maybe he put on some amazing cosmetics that can make your face glow. So how do we know that Moses actually heard from God? So this question is from a Jewish point of view the most basic foundation. The Torah says in Exodus chapter 19 verse 9, God said to Moses, behold, I will come to you in a thick cloud, and the people will hear as I speak to you. And they will then believe in you forever. So why is it that we as a Jewish people believe that Moses actually heard from God? The reason is because all of us heard the same thing. Every person who stood at Mount Sinai heard God speak to Moses. Now, it was really too much for us. I mean, we were freaking out. Imagine, it's interesting, there are universities now that have super powerful telescopes and listening equipment. And they are listening to try and pick up any sound in outer space. Do you know what's going on now? They're spending millions and millions of dollars a year with these people, these scientists at these very sophisticated machines listening into outer space. They want to pick up something, a sound, maybe some guy on Mars burping. But that's what they're waiting for. And imagine, imagine. I mean, so far they've heard nothing, not even a burp. But imagine if tomorrow or the next week, scientists at some university in California hear two people speaking on Venus to each other. They're sharing a recipe for potato kogel, whatever it is. That would be probably the biggest news story in the past thousand years. That there's life on Venus. So for the Jewish people who stood at Mount Sinai to actually hear the voice of God speaking to Moses, it was too much. They told Moses after the second of the Ten Commandments, Moses, we're going to die from this. It's too much. You just do it by yourself. You'll tell us what God told you. But the first two of the Ten Commandments, everybody heard. So then when Moses says to them, you know, God told me stuff, they believed Moses. So that's critical to understand. That the prophecy of Moses is for us as Jewish people rock solid. There's no question about the fact that he was a real prophet. It's because every Jew heard God speak to Moses. It's not just they were taking Moses' word for it. But the $64,000 question is, but what about all the other prophets? What about Samuel? What about Amos? What about Nahum? What about Isaiah? What about Jeremiah? What about Ezekiel? What about Jonah? What about all the prophets we had? How do we know that they're real prophets? How do we know? How do I know that God spoke to Jeremiah? I mean, the prophets would say, thus says the Lord. That's what the prophet would say. Thus says the Lord. But we have a right to say, how do I know? How do I know that God spoke to you? And that's an important question. It's a legitimate question. And we know if you look at Deuteronomy 13, the next passage, we know that if a person was a false prophet, that's not good for their life insurance policy. We know that the Bible basically gives a death sentence. It's a death penalty for a false prophet. So here's the question. How do we know if someone is a true prophet or a false prophet? How do we know? And more importantly, who makes the determination? For example, let's say a person is walking down Bathurst Street and they're prophesying. They're saying God spoke to me and God wants everyone to know. Now, am I able to ad hoc? Would I be able to ad hoc say, you, sir, are a false prophet? And then, well, I'm not in America, I can't do this, but pull out my pistol and shoot the guy dead. Could I do that? I mean, I'm supposed to kill a false prophet, the Bible says. So is that the system that we have where people prophesy and then anybody that wants to can make a decision, well, I think this guy is a false prophet. So what is the mechanism that God gave us? Now listen very carefully. In Deuteronomy chapter 17, the third passage here, this is God speaking through Moses. God says if a matter is difficult for you, it's hidden from you. If there's some issue which you don't quite have clarity on, whether it's a case involving capital punishment or litigation, a civil situation, civil law, or leprous marks, that's ritual law, whether someone is really a leper or not a leper. The Torah here is giving you three main categories of law, capital law, civil law, ritual law. So the Torah is saying what happens if it's not clear? What happens if you don't know what to do? Matters of dispute in your cities. There is a dispute. We're not clear about what to do. Then you shall rise up and go to the place that Hashem, your God, shall choose. You shall come to the priests, the Levites, and to the judge that exist at that time and you will inquire and they will tell you their legal decision. You shall do according to the word that they will tell you from the place that Hashem will choose and you shall be careful to do according to everything that they shall teach you. According to the teaching that they shall teach you and according to the judgment that they will tell you, do not stray to the right or to the left. So let's think about this for a minute. What God is saying is, if you don't know if someone's a true prophet or not and you don't know if there's a false prophet, who makes the decision, who makes the determination? The leading sages of any generation. The leading sages of that generation. Now wait a second. We're all grown up here. They're human beings, these judges. They're fallible. Are they perfect? Could they make a mistake? Not theoretically, but we see something important. God certainly knows that these people are fallible human beings. If you suspect that wait, they're just human beings, they may be wrong, God certainly knows that. But what do we see here? We see that God chose not to take another approach. What could God have said in Deuteronomy 17? If you get stuck in the future. I'm giving you all these laws through Moses. And God says, look, I know something might be confusing in the future. You may not understand. So look, if that happens, God could have said, just pray to me and I'll come down again and I'll reveal the answer to you. Like I spoke to Moses in front of the whole nation and I'll make it very clear, goof proof, no problems. God could have said that. God obviously didn't say that. God chose another system for us to be able to resolve questions of Jewish law. And the way God set it up, and you see it black on white, is that God is telling us the determination of who is a true prophet and who is a false prophet is not going to come down from lightning bolts from heaven. It is given over, God is delegating the responsibility into the hands of not just any Tom Dick or Harry. You can't be someone who just went to five years of Hebrew school and you're going to, well, I'm a great judge. It's talking about the leading sages of each generation. Now how do you know who the leading sages are? I'll tell you one thing. It's not because someone with a big beard says, I'm the leading judge. That's not how it works. If you wanted to determine today who is the top pianist in the world? If you wanted to know who is the top pianist in the world today, how would you figure it out? So you're probably not going to ask a hundred kids that are taking their first year of piano lessons. Probably what you would do is you go to the top conservatories in the world, you go to the top piano teachers, you go to the top concert pianists, you go to the leading pianists in the world. Let's say you go to a thousand of them and you ask these leading pianists, tell me, who are the top pianists in the world today? And probably when you ask all these teachers and great maestros, probably what will happen is the same three, four, five names will keep on coming up. So when people who are deeply involved in any subject, if you want to find out who's the greatest chef in the world, don't ask me, ask people who are chefs. And probably again, the same four, five, six, whatever names will come up, these are acknowledged. Not because they say so, it's because the people who are the experts in their field, they acknowledge them as being the greatest experts. So what God is saying is that we go to the leading sages of the generation, they will make the decision. So what's the problem with the New Testament? The problem is very simply stated that the mechanism that God set up did not let them pass through, meaning the people who wrote the New Testament, whoever they were, were not acknowledged by our sages as legitimate prophets. As a matter of fact, prophecy ended. Prophecy ended in Israel about 450 BCE. So by the first century of the common era, if someone tells you, God spoke to me, I'm a prophet, well, you'd probably say, I don't think so, buddy. We don't have any more prophets. And if we were going to have prophets, it would only be because the leading sages of any generation would say, yes, we think that you are really a prophet. So this really could have been the end of the lecture tonight. Thank you very much. Have a nice evening. Because that really is checkmate. It's checkmate. Because again, the system that God set up tells us that the gatekeepers, the gatekeepers, the people that make the determination are not the people who write the books. You can't just come to the Jewish people and say, hey, I wrote the book of Matthew. This comes from God. You've got to put it in your Bible. Really. It doesn't work like that. It never worked like that. It didn't work with Jeremiah. It didn't work with Isaiah. That they just claimed to be prophets and then everyone said, fine, you must be a prophet. The system that God set up requires that the leading sages acknowledge you as a prophet and then more than that, we had as a Jewish people over a million prophets. Did you know that? We had over a million prophets. I think the rabbis say a million, 200,000 prophets. We only have a few dozen books in our Bible. Imagine if we had a million books in our Bible. You couldn't even put it on a thousand computers. So we don't only determine if someone is a true prophet through our sages, but we also determine which true prophets become part of the Bible. How do we know if your prophetic utterances should be put into the Bible? That's also only determined by our great sages. Now what is the credibility of the New Testament? First of all, we know one thing that if God really wanted to make it clear to us that there was a new ball game and a New Testament, God could have very easily spoken publicly to the Jewish people because a lot of Jewish people were living in the land of Israel. They were going to the temple. God could have showed up at the temple and said, look, Jews. I know it's been 450 years since the last prophet. I got a big one for you, a New Testament, the whole new ball of wax, and it could have been a public revelation. We know that that didn't happen. So all we have with the Christian Bible are the authors of these books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, Titus. And they're claiming, what are they claiming? They're claiming not that we made up these books on our own. I just wrote this wonderful book of fiction. They're claiming that this is revelation. They're claiming that this came through prophecy, through God. Now we know that they didn't get the revelation publicly. We know they didn't even present their writings in Hebrew. Hebrew is our holy language. They're presenting these writings in Greek. Why all of a sudden is God speaking to the Jewish people in Greek? That's Greek to me. And we don't even know who these writers really are. If you study Christian scholars, Christian scholars will point out that the fact that Matthew wrote the book of Matthew is not really clear. The book of Matthew, if you read it, it doesn't say, at the end, by Matthew. The authorship of these books is part of church tradition. So we don't even know who these men are, except possibly for Paul. We know that Paul wrote possibly 13 of the 27 books of the Christian Bible. Some of the books by Paul are disputed. But we certainly know that the most important books we'll see tonight were written by Paul, and we know something about him. But Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, we really don't know much about these people. We don't even know if necessarily they're Jewish. So we don't come to these books with a lot of expectations. But the question is, how can we really evaluate them? What I want to share with you is an approach that I didn't have to use this source, but I was very curious. What do Christians do with the book of Mormon? What do Christians do with the book of Mormon? Because the same claim that Christians are making to us, Mormons are making to Christians. Everyone understand that? So again, the Christian comes to us and says, look, Rabbi Scoback, your Bible is going to get a little bit bigger because it's not just from Genesis until Chronicles. It really includes all these books from Matthew to Revelation. That's the claim the Christian makes to us. And the Mormon says to the Christian, look, I'm sorry, Pastor So-and-so, the Bible now includes the book of Mormon, the pearl of great price, and doctrines and covenants. So I have in my library about a dozen books written by Christian theologians and they try to explain why they don't accept the book of Mormon. So I said, you know what? That sounds like good approach to me. Not that we would need those books because it just simply makes sense anyway. The basic criteria that they used was, do the book of Mormons and the Mormon Scriptures are they consistent with what the Christian Bible teaches? Meaning from a Christian point of view, if they have their Bible and their Bible teaches certain principles of faith, and then the book of Mormon comes along and contradicts those principles of faith, the Christian says, I don't accept it. How could I possibly accept it? It contradicts what I already know to be true. We have a principle in not just Judaism, every legal system has this principle. In Judaism it's called like this, ha-mo-tsi-mi-chavero-ol-ov-harayah. If you want to take something out of someone else's possession, the burden of proof is on you. So if I own this book, I actually bought this from a store, I put my own paper in it, but this cover cost me two or three dollars, and it's mine. And if you tell me, if you say, excuse me, you've got my book, that's mine, you're going to have to prove it, because I have it in my possession. I paid for it. And I'm not just going to give it to you because you're saying it's yours, and no court in Canada is going to say, go back, give up your book. That would apply to your car, it would apply to your winter coat, it would apply to your winter boots, if you own, if you are possessing it, if you're holding it, if you're using it, if you have a, the status quo is with you. So anyone that wants to take it away from you, Allah of Harayah, they have to prove it. So the Christian says to the Mormon, look, this is our Bible. This is what we know to be true. And since what you're showing us contradicts this, we can't accept what you're showing us. So Judaism would basically take the same approach that the Christian uses for the Mormon, and we say this to the Christian. We say to the Christian, you know what, Mr. Christian, there are many new and wonderful things in the New Testament. The only problem is that whatever is new is not wonderful, and whatever is wonderful is not new. Think about that for a minute. So we're going to engage in an exercise for the next little while. Going through not all the topics that we could, that would take us several days, but we're going to go through several important topics. Now if you go back for a moment to Deuteronomy 13, I promised previously I wouldn't skip around, I'm breaking the promise right now. But if you go back to the second passage here, Deuteronomy 13, let's read it together. When a prophet or a person who has visions and a dream arises among you and produces a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder comes about of which he spoke. So here's someone that is making a prediction and the prediction comes true. And they say, let us follow other gods that you did not know. And we shall worship them. Do not listen to the words of that prophet or to that dreamer of dreams. For Hashem, your God is testing you because you could ask the question, wait a minute. If this guy is a false prophet, why would God give him the ability to do miracles? So the Bible here says, because God is going to be testing you to see if you're going to follow some guy that can do amazing magic tricks or you're going to listen to God. So God says he's testing you to know whether you love Hashem your God with all your heart and all your soul. Hashem your God you shall follow and him you shall fear. His commandments you shall observe and to his voice you shall hearken. So the two issues that are brought up here in Deuteronomy 13, the two things that the Bible focuses on that it does not want us to be misled about even if someone can perform amazing miracles is we should not worship a God that we didn't know. We should not turn to a God that we never heard about before, a new God, and we should not stop observing the Torah commandments. Now, let's start on the bottom of page one. Why was Abraham chosen as the first Jew? Now the New Testament gives its reason for why they believe that Abraham was chosen as the first Jew. This is a quote from the book of Galatians chapter 3 verses 6 through 10. Galatians was a book written by Paul and he writes the following, even so, and when I'm going to be quoting tonight from the Christian Bible whenever the Christian Bible quotes the Jewish Bible I put that in italics. So Paul says even so when now he quotes from the Jewish Bible Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him, it was considered to him as righteousness. That's a verse in Genesis chapter 15. So Paul is seizing upon this verse where the verse says that Abraham believed and that belief was considered to be righteousness. So Paul says therefore to be sure that it is to those who are of faith who are the sons of Abraham. Paul says who are the sons of Abraham? People that have faith and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham saying all the nations shall be blessed in you. So Paul now says so then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham the believer for as many are of the works of the law meaning those people who put their emphasis not on faith, I believe but people who put their emphasis on following the Torah observing the commandments what Paul calls the law. He says those people are under a curse. So here in this paragraph what you see happening is a major theme in the writings of the New Testament. They contrast the relative importance of faith which basically means for them belief in the Messiah. I believe in the Messiah because what happens in Christianity is that the observance of the Torah gets replaced by faith in the Messiah. For them it's Jesus. So here Paul is contrasting the relative importance of keeping the Torah observing the commandments versus faith. And he says you see by Abraham what did God consider to be righteousness? Abraham's faith. So Paul says that's why Abraham is really chosen because of his faith. But what does the Torah say? Our Bible say about why Abraham was chosen. Look at the bottom of page 1. God says for I have chosen him in order that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. What's essential is not only your faith faith is part of it. What's essential is what you do with that faith. That's why the Jewish Bible has a verse which says the righteous shall live by their faith. It's not just what you feel inside your heart. That internal faith has to lead to a transformed life. And God says about Abraham I know about Abraham because he has the proper faith he will teach his children to follow the way of God by doing proper actions. And then God says and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. God says why were you chosen Abraham? Not because you simply believed but because you obeyed. On the next page, page 2 God says and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and I will give your descendants all these lands and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Why? Because Abraham obeyed me and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my law. Not simply because Abraham had faith. That was the starting point. What was critical the Bible shows you is that Abraham actualized that faith by following God, obeying God, listening to God and walking in the ways of God. We see by the way that Paul just seized upon one verse which says that faith can be counted as righteousness. What Paul ignores are the next few verses I cited for you. For example, Deuteronomy 625 says and it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all these commandments before the Lord our God just as he commanded us. So what is considered to be righteousness is not simply having faith. In the Jewish Bible the emphasis is on living according to that faith. If you go through not just the question of why was Abraham chosen but think very carefully, our relationship with God as a Jewish people, what is the foundation of our relationship with God as a people? The Bible is very clear about this. Look at Exodus chapter 19 verses 5 through 6. It's the third paragraph here. God says to the Jewish people, now then if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the people for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. I mean that God is saying that the chosenness of the Jewish people is based upon our observance of the Torah and we will see this theme repeated over and over and over again. So for example, skip one paragraph and go to where it says no therefore that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God who keeps his covenant and his loving kindness to a thousand generation with those who love him and keep his commandments. God will establish his covenant not only with those people who have faith in him but who keep his commandments and obey his laws. He says you shall therefore keep the commandments and the statutes and the judgments that I command you this day to do them and it shall come to pass if you hearken to these judgments and keep them and do them then the Lord your God will keep you to the covenant and the mercy that he swore to your fathers. In the next passage, Deuteronomy 26, this day the Lord your God commanded you to do these statutes and judgments and you shall therefore keep and do them with all your heart and with all your soul. You have avouched the Lord this day to be your God and to walk in his ways and keep his statutes and his commandments and his judgments and to hearken to his voice and the Lord has avouched he's promised to you this day to be his particular peculiar people as he promised you and that you should keep all of his commandments. So you see, we can't go through all the passages, there are dozens which repeat the same idea over and over the Bible hits us over the head with it that our relationship with God is based upon the observance of the Torah. Let's turn to page 3 the book of Psalms chapter 103 but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousness to his children's children as much as keep his covenant and those that remember his commandments to do them Jeremiah chapter 7 but this is what I commanded them saying obey my voice and I will be your God and you will be my people and you will walk in all the way which I command you that it may be well with you. Again it's all based upon not simply having faith but observing God's commandments. Now this is not the most critical issue in the world why was Abraham chosen why were we chosen but if you want to know from a Jewish perspective one of our main issues with the New Testament it's what the New Testament teaches about the obligation to keep the Torah. Let's just look at a few passages again there are many many passages we just chose a few here I want you to first understand and I want you to listen carefully to me that it's quite possible it's quite possible that Jesus of history not the Jesus that Christians believe in it's quite possible that Jesus of history himself never intended to start another religion never intended to abolish the Torah and there seems to be good reason to believe that Jesus and his immediate followers were Torah deserving Jews we have many other lectures that you can listen to on this topic but it seems at least prima facia that the earliest movement of Jesus and his students did not come to negate the Torah but what happens is pretty clearly that Paul who again writes most of the New Testament Paul someone who never met Jesus never met Jesus becomes the primary teacher of what Christianity became meaning Christianity is not really based upon the teachings of Jesus there's very little in Christianity based upon the teachings of Jesus Christianity is based upon the teachings about Jesus by people who never met him like Paul so what happens is when Paul has his run-ins when Paul meets up with those original followers of Jesus who knew Jesus and walked with Jesus they're suspicious of him and one of the reasons that they were suspicious of him you'll see right here they say in Acts chapter 21 and they are informed about you Paul that you teach all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses we're hearing about you that you're teaching the Jewish people in the diaspora because Paul did not hang out in Israel Paul left Israel to go around the diaspora the Greco-Roman communities to preach his vision of who Jesus was and these followers of Jesus the ones that knew Jesus and walked with Jesus they're saying to Paul white Paul we're hearing about you that you're teaching the Jewish people who are among the Gentiles in the diaspora to forsake Moses in the diaspora anymore saying that they ought not to circumcise their children neither to walk after the customs this is a rumor they were hearing about Paul now why in the world will they hear such a rumor maybe because that's what was going on but let's let Paul now speak for himself and again I could have quoted 100 verses for you we'd be here for all week I just selected a few Paul says in Romans chapter 8 therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law I'm sorry that's Romans chapter 3 Paul says in Romans chapter 8 you are not under the law law for him means Torah in Greek the word law is nomos nomos is the Greek translation of Torah so Paul says you are not under the Torah but under grace for the law of the Spirit in the life of Messiah Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death again Paul says in Romans chapter 10 for the Messiah is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes for Paul faith in the Messiah replaces performance of the mitzvot he writes in Galatians chapter 3 wherefore the law was our school master I would translate anyone have a bike when they were kids with training wheels you had a two wheel bike but you couldn't ride a two wheel bike so you put on training wheels that's what he's saying he's saying that Torah was our school master it was a training wheels to do what to bring us to faith in the Messiah that we might be justified by faith but after faith has come we are no longer under the school master we are under the training wheels we don't need them anymore Paul writes in Galatians chapter 5 stand fast therefore in the liberty with which Messiah has made us free and not to be entangled again with the yoke of bondage behold I Paul say to you if you be circumcised Messiah shall benefit you nothing in the book of Ephesians chapter 2 for he referring to Jesus is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility by the way that's the wall between Jews and Gentiles is teaching here that Jesus broke down the wall between Jews and Gentiles by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances and finally the book of Hebrews chapter 8 quoting a passage in the book of Jeremiah which speaks about God writing a new covenant so the author of Hebrews says when he said a new covenant he made the first one old now that which decays and waxes old is ready to vanish away so you see that if the people in Jerusalem were suspicious of Paul who did not seem to be a big Torah observant dude you see that Paul basically was teaching this very openly from a Jewish point of view listen carefully this would be just about the greatest indictment of the New Testament why? because we heard with our own ears basically Moses telling us look God is commanding you to keep the dietary laws to observe Shabbat to check your clothing for shotness all the laws of the Jewish scriptures God commanded us and now Paul is coming along and Paul is saying but I say to you you don't have to do it anymore so we would very justifiably say to Paul why on God's wonderful earth should I believe a word that you're saying if God spoke to the entire Jewish nation publicly and told us on Monday that we have to make sure we don't eat shrimp and you Paul are telling us on Thursday guess what God told me to tell all of you you can eat shrimp now so why should we believe Paul? the truth is that we know the one thing that would clearly tell you that someone is not a true prophet one of the things that would make us clearest that they're not a true prophet is if they contradict previous revelation which you know to be true so if we know that God commanded us to observe the Sabbath forever and Paul says well you don't got to do it anymore we say okay end of the story what does the Tanakh the Jewish Bible say about our obligation to keep the commandments were on the bottom of page 3 so you shall keep his statutes and his commandments which I am giving you today that it may go well with you and with your children after you that you may live long on the land which the Lord your God is giving you for all time and you have to keep God's commandments saying here basically forever Deuteronomy chapter 11 you shall therefore love the Lord your God and always keep his charge his statutes, his ordinances and his commandments Deuteronomy 12 1 these are the statutes and the judgments which you shall carefully observe in the land which the Lord the God of your fathers has given you to possess as long as you live on the earth the Bible is going to be emphasizing we had time we could go through dozens of passages where the Bible basically says that we have to keep the commandments forever eternally throughout your generations unto a thousand generations as long as you're living on the earth the Bible is making it painfully clear what God meant I once had a Christian say to me but Rabbi Scoback it doesn't mean you got to keep it forever I know that it says forever okay so I said fine okay if you were God and you wanted to make it clear that we had to keep the commandments forever how would you have said it to me it seems that God is being pretty clear here he says about 65 times you've got to keep the commandments forever he says eternally throughout your generations unto a thousand generations as long as you're living on the earth what should he have said to make it clearer and I'm not kidding God had to say that to make you realize that it means forever top of page 4 Deuteronomy 12 be careful to listen to all these words which I command you in order that may be well with you and your sons after you forever Deuteronomy 29 the secret things belong to the Lord our God but the things revealed belong to us and our sons forever that we may observe all the words of this Torah in 1817 and the statutes and the ordinances and the law and the commandment which he wrote for you you shall observe to do forever we would say to Paul read my lips what word don't you understand and this by the way is a smattering of sample there's many many many more passages that's problem number one problem number one is that Paul seems to negate the eternal blinding nature of the commandments but wait there's more Paul often speaks about his evaluation of the Torah and the commandments what does Paul feel about the Torah and the commandments let's get a few sample verses Galatians chapter 3 we're in the middle of page 4 the Messiah redeemed us from the curse of the law the law is a curse Colossians 2 14 blotting out the handwriting ordinances that were against us that were contrary to us and took it out of the way nailing into a cross the Torah to the writer of Colossians is a handwriting of ordinances that are against us contrary to us Galatians 4 9 how turn you again one of the things that happens in the book of Galatians is Paul is upset that some of the followers of Jesus are going back to keeping the Torah they're going back to keeping the Torah and Paul says to them how turn you again how do you turn again to the weak and worthless elements to which you desire to be enslaved to all over again he calls the Torah weak and useless weak and worthless 2nd Corinthians chapter 3 who also made us able ministers of the New Testament not of the letter but of the spirit for the letter kills but the spirit gives life as a ministry of death written and engraved on stone he refers here to the Torah as a ministry of death engraved on stone in Hebrews chapter 7 for there is an annuling of the commandments going before because of their weakness and uselessness for the Torah made nothing perfect and finally 1 Peter 1 you know that you were ransomed from the futile ways from your ancestors when you go through the writings of Paul and most of the New Testament authors they have only negative things to say about the Torah basically what does the Tanakh itself say about the Torah and the commandments Deuteronomy 10 and now Israel what does the Lord your God require from you but to fear your Lord God to walk in His ways love Him serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and to keep the Lord's commandments and the statutes which I am commanding today for your good the Torah is not a curse it's not against us the Torah was commanded to us by God because He loves us it's for our benefit page 5 Joshua is told let's skip Joshua let's go to 1 Kings and keep the charge of the Lord your God to walk in His ways to keep the statutes and His commandments and His judgments and His testimonies that you may prosper in all that you do if you keep the Torah you're going to prosper it's going to be good for you Nechemia chapter 9 then you did come down on Mount Sinai and did speak with them from heaven you gave them just ordinances and laws good statutes and commandments these things are good they're just they're wonderful the book of Psalms chapter 1 begins how blessed is the man who does not walk in the council of the wicked nor stand in the path of sinners nor sit in the seat of scoffers but His delight is in the Torah of God and in His Torah He meditates day and night look at Psalm 19 so beautiful in the middle of the page the Torah of the Lord is perfect it's perfect you don't get better than perfect it restores the soul the testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple the precepts of the Lord are right the commandment of the Lord is pure enlightening the eyes the fear of the Lord is clean enduring forever the judgments of the Lord are true they are righteous all together they are more desirable than gold yay more than fine gold sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb moreover by your servant is warned in keeping them there is great reward when you read what our Torah says about the Mitzvot they are described as the most beautiful wonderful thing in the planet if you go to Psalm 119 which is the I'll tell you a story a number of years ago some of you heard the story it's an amazing story I get a phone call from a priest here in Toronto not any priest he's a priest on a cloistered monastery which means that these guys don't go into the community to serve the community they sit on this monastery all day and all night and they pray and they meditate calls me up he wants to convert to Judaism I say why he says I can't tell you over the phone you have to come here so I drove it's right by Shepard and the 401 it's in the woods there so I go to the monastery I'm sitting down with this guy he says Rabbi one of the things that we do in this monastery is we recite the entire book of Psalms every day meaning we recite 150 chapters of the book of Psalms every day I mean if all you're doing is praying and meditating you got time to do the whole book of Psalms it's great he says to me Rabbi do you know the longest chapter in this book I said yeah it's chapter 119 he says you're right Rabbi do you know how many verses are in that chapter I said 176 verses he said you're right he says Rabbi do you know what that Psalm is talking about I said it's talking about the Torah and the commandments and the Mitzvot he says you're right he says Rabbi you know what it says about those commandments he says it says in this Psalm the whole Psalm over and over and over and over again 176 verses the longest chapter in the Bible how beautiful the Torah is how sweet the commandments are the more precious than gold sweeter than honey he says I'm saying this chapter every day for the past 15 years I finally said to myself if this stuff is so good how come I'm not doing it but I urge you to read chapter 119 I have a few selected verses on the bottom of page 5 top of page 6 now if you remember from Deuteronomy chapter 13 the primary concern about the false prophet was that he was going to teach you to follow a God you did not know so this is one of the most important questions who is God the truth is that if you read the New Testament you'll be very confused people who've studied the New Testament for the past 2000 years are still killing each other what it teaches about God about Jesus about a Trinity there is one with God there are so many different Christian views of who is God and who is Jesus and how do they relate and what's going on it's not totally clear it's not totally clear the teachings in the Christian Bible are very jumbled and unclear about God and about Jesus however one thing for sure we know the New Testament had a very exalted view of who Jesus was and either the New Testament does believe that he is God or it gets close enough so that 99.9% of Christians for the past 2000 years based upon the New Testament insist that Jesus was God let's look at a few passages the Gospel of John chapter 1 in the beginning the word and the word was with God and the word was God and the word became flesh and dwelled among us many Christians say that what you see from this is that the word of God dwelling among us taking on flesh is Jesus who became incarnate God incarnate Colossians chapter 1 verses 15 to 17 is the image of the invisible God for by him all things were created I mean that is big that through Jesus the whole world was created ain't clinic I could say in Yiddish that's not something small he Jesus is the image of the invisible God for by him all things were created both in the heavens and on the earth visible and invisible whether thrones or dominions or authorities all things have been created by him and for him and he is before all things and in him all things hold together that's pretty elevated Colossians chapter 2 for in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form it sounds pretty much like it's saying that Jesus is God walking on the earth in Titus chapter 2 verse 13 looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus the Messiah finally first Timothy 3 16 and by common confession great is the mystery of godliness he who was revealed in the flesh basically what they're saying in the Christian Bible and certainly Christianity that Jesus was God now how does that stem with our Bible how does that square up with the Jewish scriptures in the Jewish Bible is God physical can God be physical can God be seen is God a human being will the Messiah be divine these are all questions we're going to look at now Exodus 33 verse 20 God says to Moses for no human can see me and live you can't see God if God came to the world flesh and blood you and me you can see God in Numbers chapter 23 and 1 Samuel 15 we're told God is not a man that he should be deceitful nor a son of man that he should change his mind now if God was going to come to the earth in the form of a man why would the Jewish Bible tell us at least twice God is not a man why would God do that if God's intention was to come to the earth as a man why say straight out twice God is not a man listen very carefully to the next paragraph Hashem spoke to you from the midst of the fire you were hearing the sounds of words but you were not seeing any likeness any form you only heard a sound but you shall greatly beware for your souls for you did not see any likeness on the day that Hashem spoke to you at Choreb at Sinai from the midst of the fire lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image a likeness of any shape a form of a male or a female and then the Bible says an important verse has been shown in order to know that Hashem he is God there is none beside him but the Bible here is telling us is something fascinating the Bible is saying that our knowledge of who God is is not simply based upon reading words in a book our knowledge of who we're supposed to believe in and who we're not supposed to believe in was not conveyed to us by God simply with words in a book God says here he demonstrated to us he showed us who he is and that's why throughout the Bible especially in Deuteronomy 13 the Bible when it speaks about idolatry always speaks about a God that you and your fathers did not know now one thing we know at Mount Sinai where every Jew stood and God revealed himself to us at Sinai and he emphasizes here twice don't forget you didn't see anything nothing to be seen not one Jew not one Jew told their children you know what God was revealed to us as a trinity at Mount Sinai not one Jew told their children God was revealed to us at Mount Sinai but God is saying here that this is the definition of monotheism any God that was not shown to us at Mount Sinai any concept of God that was not made clear to us that is idolatry that's a God that we did not know Isaiah chapter 42 he says to whom can you like in God you want to have some look let's be honest it's not so easy to have a relationship with a God that you can't see all of us are very visual people if you were sitting here tonight and there was a huge columns right in front of you and you couldn't see me you might feel uncomfortable some people would be tortured by that because we're very visual people we like to see what's going on it's difficult to have a relationship with a God that you can't see and that's why idolatry is so tempting because idolatry presents you with the ability remember there was a song by Joan Osborne a few years ago what if God was one of us just like that slob on the bus well having a God that you can see and you can put a picture of him on your nightstand and he looks gorgeous with long flowing hair and bedroom eyes and cheeks and a dinosaur someone that you can fantasize about the perfect man I don't know by the way if Christianity would have 2 billion followers today if Jesus was a short fat bald Jewish man I'm not sure it would sell so well but a little bit of a makeover can help so what do they imagine you see it's interesting in the Bible God creates us in his image idolatry we make God in our image we try and imagine what would God look like if I can make a God he would be really good looking so that's what happens Isaiah says you cannot compare me to anything don't think you're going to be able to think of me and think of something else and have an idea of what I am Isaiah says to what can you like in God and what likeness can you attribute to him he says I am Hashem that is my name I shall not give my glory to another nor my praise to graven idols page 7 Isaiah 45 I am Hashem there is no other other than me there is no God know that there is nothing beside me I am Hashem there is no other in Isaiah chapter 11 for I am God and not a man Isaiah chapter 11 listen carefully every person on the planet every Jew and every Christian this chapter in Isaiah 11 describes the Messiah listen to what it says a shoot will come out from the stem of Jesse and a branch from his roots will bear fruit and the spirit of God will rest upon him a spirit of counsel and strength a spirit of knowledge and the fear of God and he will be imbued with a spirit of fear for God Isaiah here is telling us the Messiah will be someone who fears God if the Messiah was supposed to be God what Isaiah should have said and he will be God and you will fear him Isaiah says twice the Messiah will be someone who fears God what do you see from that he is not God the fear is God and in the Jewish Bible you always see God distinguished from the Messiah for example Hosea chapter 3 afterward the children of Israel will return and seek out Hashem their God and David their king that's the Messiah so it's not the same being it's God and the Messiah they're separate they're not the same being but they will serve Hashem their God and David their king who will raise up for them God says I am going to raise up David the Messiah me God will raise up the Messiah he's not saying the Messiah is God God is going to raise up the Messiah and we see this in Ezekiel chapter 37 by the way probably the clearest passage in the Bible about the Messiah Ezekiel says my servant David will be king over them who's speaking by the way in this passage God is speaking God is saying my servant David will be king over them and they shall have one shepherd they will follow my commandments and be careful to observe my laws they shall live in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob in which your fathers dwelled they and their children and their children's children will dwell on it forever and my servant David will be a leader for them forever I will seal a covenant of peace with them an eternal covenant with them and I will emplace them and multiply them and I will set my sanctuary among them forever my dwelling place will be among them and I will be a God to them and they will be a people to me then the nations will know that I am Hashem who sanctifies Israel when my sanctuary will be among them forevermore here in this paragraph the clearest paragraph in the Bible about the Messiah we see that God is spoken very separately than this servant of David it's not the same being now on the topic of the Messiah one of the major problems that we would have with the Christian Bible is the whole Christian Bible is one long assertion that Jesus was the Messiah so if they're wrong about that that's a very good reason for rejecting the New Testament in the Tanach in the Jewish Bible what do we see about the Messiah follow carefully we see that there are hundreds of passages that describe a future utopian world there are hundreds of passages in our Bible that describe a future utopian world where one, the Jewish people return to God in national repentance and embrace the Torah one thing the Bible tells us is that today in the world maybe 20% of Jews really are following the Torah the Bible is telling us one day all the Jewish people will embrace God and embrace the Torah number two the Jewish people will be regathered and reunited in their ancestral homeland the Jewish people are not going to be living on Bathurst Street anymore believe it or not Jewish people are going to be living in Erich Israel at least almost all of us and not just the people of Judah the 10 lost tribes there are only maybe 13 million Jews in the world today we're talking about another who knows 89 to 120 million people coming it's going to be tight in Tel Aviv three we're going to live there in peace the Bible says when we come back to our land it's going to be not in warfare it's going to be in peace number four the Holy Temple will be rebuilt and put into full use number five the nations of the world are going to turn to Israel for spiritual guidance the Bible says the whole purpose for God choosing the Jewish people is that we should be a light unto the nations the book of Isaiah says one day the world is going to turn to our light we're told the nations of the world will all come then to a knowledge of God every person on the planet is going to come to worship God and finally peace will spread throughout the planet what I just described I need all your marbles now what I just described didn't say one word about a Messiah all it spoke about was a transformed world none of these passages I just described speak about any special guy however there are about ten passages in the Bible that describe a righteous descendant of King David who will be wise and he will rule as the king of Israel during this utopian age so if you want to know what does the Bible speak about the Messiah he is the special Davidic king who will be wise and righteous and rule Israel when these messianic prophecies take place when the world has been transformed that person is the Messiah and one thing is very very clear now there is no transformed world ipso facto there's no Messiah we're still awaiting this person who can say yes all this has happened you'll get some weird Christians that will say there is world peace I have peace in my heart that's very sweet but you know what the Bible is not talking about you feeling nice the Bible speaks about literal universal disarmament they're going to beat their swords into plowshares the fact that you have peace in your heart is not doing the people in Syria today one ounce of good or Iraq or millions of places in the world or St. Louis we're still very very far away from living in a world of peace but what does the New Testament say about the role of the Messiah by the way if anyone can stay up for the whole lecture you're going to get a special thank you I'm going to try and move fast now what does the New Testament say about the role of the Messiah listen carefully it's very obvious that Jesus did not do any of this it's very obvious Jesus did not do any of this and what Christianity begins with if you want to understand the Nikudah the point at which Christianity begins as a separate religion from Judaism it begins at the moment that it redefines the entire concept of the Messiah to accommodate a dead Messiah again we know what the Jewish Messiah is the Bible is clear about it Jesus didn't do that so either you have to walk away from Jesus or you have to rehabilitate him by giving him a new job description and the new job description has to be one that a dead person does so look at what the New Testament says about the role of the Messiah Matthew chapter 1 verse 21 and she will bring forth a son and you will call his name Jesus in Hebrew Yeshua which means salvation why? because he is going to save his people from their sins from a Christian point of view the purpose of the Messiah is not to transform the world on a terrestrial level it's not all about making peace in the world it's about making peace with people's hearts and God no more sins, forgiveness it's all extraterrestrial it's up in the Himmel he didn't do anything in this world look at first Corinthians for I delivered to you first what I received how the Messiah died for our sins according to the scriptures, according to Christianity the whole purpose of the Messiah is to die as a sacrifice for sin that was the main reason Jesus came number 3 first John chapter 1 the next day he saw Jesus coming to him and he said, behold God who takes away the sin of the world that's how Christianity sees the Messiah someone who takes away our sin burden there we have a passage in 1 Peter and in Romans and he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross that's what Jesus accomplished he bore his sins in his body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness so what you see here is the redefinition of the messianic concept first John chapter 2 he himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not only for ours but for the whole world so here we see two very different two different views of what the Messiah is according to the Jewish Bible the Messiah is an earthly king who presides over a utopian world a transformed world in this world and in the Christian model the Messiah is basically a spiritual being who dies to take on the sins of the world that's the job very different job altogether how do we get forgiven for our sins in the Christian Bible it says it's straight out in Hebrews chapter 9 without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness for a Christian model for forgiveness so here you can be forgiven according to the Christian Bible and especially according to the teachers of Christianity especially Protestant teachers the only way of being forgiven is to have blood sacrificed on your behalf that's the only way we're going to see that in the Jewish Bible it's not so simple in the Jewish Bible the sacrifices in and of themselves we're not able to get you forgiven the Bible says for example that the sacrifice of a wicked person is an abomination to the Lord if a person thinks that if they did the wrong thing and the way they're going to get forgiven is by taking an animal and slaughtering it and taking it's blood and spitting it on the altar and that's it I'm forgiven the Bible says no that's an abomination that's disgusting it would be like the person who offended their spouse and they think that all they need to do to be forgiven is to show up at home with some flowers here I know how much you love flowers the spouse is going to throw the flowers back in the face because that's what the Bible's saying the sacrifice of an evil person of a wicked person is an abomination to the Lord what does God expect for us to forgive us he expects us basically to change if sinning means that we've gone away from God so to be forgiven we have to come back to God we have to change our ways we have to in the Bible's words it's called repentance to shuva repentance really means to return we're returning to God when we sin sin means we're straying the word sin means to miss the mark we're off target to get back on target is the way we get forgiven now if the spouse really wants to be forgiven they have to take responsibility they have to say you know what I'm so sorry for what I did I know it was horrible I feel terrible and they have to basically express their remorse they have to basically express their responsibility and they're taking ownership of what they did they have to beg for forgiveness please I beg you forgive me they've got to promise they've got to go through a process of transformation that's what we'll take to be forgiven and if they're smart they'll bring some flowers as well but the flowers are not the essence of the process the flowers are not the essence so if the spouse is allergic to flowers or if the person's too poor to bring flowers or if there's no store open at four in the morning when they're coming on whatever the problem is if for some reason you're prevented by flowers the real heart felt sincere apology and resolve to change that's the essence of being forgiven let's look on page eight in the book of Ezekiel now you son of man say to the house of Israel thus you have spoken you Jews have spoken you've been wondering saying since our sins and our iniquities are upon us and we are wasting away because of them how can we live the Jewish people are wondering about this question if we are have violated our relationship with God if we have been sitting and living improperly and living out of fellowship with God and we have broken our relationship how can we ever restore our relationship and live they're asking the question the ultimate question how do we overcome sin God says say to them as I live the word of the Lord I desire the death of the wicked one but rather that the wicked one turn from his way that he may live repent repent for your evil ways why should you die our house of Israel the prophet says the path to forgiveness from sin is by changing by turning by returning to God that's what it's all about and every single passage in the Bible is repeated dozens of times says the same thing humble themselves pray seek my face turn from their wicked ways then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin that's what it's all about changing you're not going to get forgiven if you're the same miserable person bottom of the page Isaiah 55 seek the Lord while he may be found call upon him while he is near let the wicked forsake their way and the unrighteous their thoughts let them return to the Lord that he may have mercy on them to our God and it's all about turning away from sin the book of Jonah we know the famous story where Jonah comes to the city of Ninveh and Jonah says God's very upset with you for your sins the book of Jonah says not that they started bringing sacrifices the book of Jonah says they turned from their evil ways and it says when God saw what they had done had they turned from their evil ways God relented concerning the evil he said he would bring upon them he didn't do it they were forgiven because they changed one very complicated topic which we're not going to go into fully just going to skirt this issue is the New Testament's take on the nature of man the Christian Bible insists that after Adam and Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden human beings became essentially full of sin and that we cannot be different the New Testament teaches that we are under the dominion and control of Satan the Bible the devil rules us we don't have the ability to really on our own live godly lives that are pleasing to God there's nothing that we could do we are so filthy the Christian Bible says so dirty that no matter what we do God will never really respect it we'll never really be in relationship with God the Christian Bible says that we're under the control of the devil we cannot be good there are no people on the planet that are righteous and that human beings do not have the ability they don't have the ability to live righteous lives we cannot that's the Christian assessment of human beings by the way it's interesting that if you ask many Christians why did God give us the commandments of the Bible why did God give the Jewish people the Bible the answer that most Protestants will give you is that God gave us the commandments that show us that we're not capable of keeping them and they say that the whole purpose of the Torah is to act like a mirror and when you look into the mirror the Torah is that mirror that you look at and you see how filthy you are because you see what a sinner you are and how you're not capable of keeping the Torah that from the Christian point of view is the purpose of the Torah and it shows us who we are we're filthy we're dirty you know most Protestants there's an analogy that's summed up by the word tulip and the letter T the first letter stands for total depravity they see human beings as totally depraved we are basically miserable sinners filthy miserable sinners by the way when you tell people that every day of their life we know what kind of an impact it's going to have on the way they live in schools where teachers are told ahead of time your class this year is a very bright class they're good kids the kids do very well in school and when a teacher is told these kids are problem kids they're not that smart the same kids will not do as well so the message that Christianity has been giving people for 2,000 years is your useless miserable filthy sinner and you cannot be good it has a devastating impact on people's lives what does the bible say the Jewish bible in the very beginning after the sin of Adam and Eve when you might have walked away from that story making the Christian mistake of thinking oh after the garden of Eden we've been infected by the sin of Adam and Eve we can't be good anymore look what God says right away to Cayenne God says to Cayenne why are you angry and why are you so despondent surely if you improve you'll be forgiven isn't God know that he can't improve isn't God aware of the fact that Cayenne is just under the control of the devil and he cannot become good why would God say if you can be good if you improve but if you do not improve yourself sin will lay at the door its desire will be toward you but you can conquer it these are the words that God says at the very beginning of our scriptures to human beings not just to Cayenne you can overcome the temptation to sin you're not powerless against it and right away we're told there was a person like Noah he was Sadik Tamim perfectly righteous and throughout the Bible we're told there are people who are perfectly righteous we're told that E of Job was a person that was perfect and upright even about someone like David interestingly the Bible says you have not been like my servant David David kept my commandments and followed after me with all of his heart not only that was right in my eyes God says because David did that which was right in the eyes of Hashem and turned not aside from anything that he commanded all the days of his life except for the matter of Uriah the Hittite this was a mistake that David had made by sending him out to Uriah to Hittite to be killed in battle and take his wife but we see that God is considering David to be a totally righteous person why is God considering David to be totally righteous because David repented and the Bible says if you look at Proverbs 24 seven times the righteous person will fall and they will rise but the wicked ones will stumble through evil one thing that you see here and this was something that you'll see throughout the Bible the Bible is constantly contrasting the righteous to the wicked especially in the books of Proverbs and Psalms throughout the rest of the Bible as well we're not told in the Bible there are no righteous people you cannot be righteous everyone is a sinner, everyone is miserable the whole theme of the Bible is to say there are righteous people in this world and there are wicked people in this world and God says I want you to be one of the righteous ones by following my commandments and if you mess up you repent and it's saying here in Proverbs and you make a mistake and you sin but you pick yourself up and you learn from your mistakes and you grow from your mistakes that's how you become righteous through that process of falling down and getting up look at the very bottom of page 9 you that love Hashem hate evil he preserves the souls of his saints he delivers them out of the hands of the wicked light is sown for the righteous and gladness for the upright in heart rejoice in Hashem you righteous thanks at the remembrance of his holiness again this contrast between the righteous and the wicked plays through the entire Bible the first part of what we did tonight was to show that in terms of major issues of theology and major issues of central biblical teaching the Christian Bible simply is not consistent with the Jewish scriptures there are other I would say more minor problems one is simply in the way the Christian Bible does not get its fact straight in terms of the way it cites the Jewish Bible you would think that if it was the word of God God would have known how to quote the Hebrew Bible properly so here we have in the book of Acts chapter 7 and Joseph sent word here in the book of Acts recounting the story of Jacob and his children and Joseph sent word and invited Jacob his father and all his relatives to come to him 75 persons in all and Jacob went down to Egypt and there he passed away he and our fathers and from there they were taken to Shchem and they were laid in the tomb that Abraham had purchased for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor in Shchem this is the presentation the narrative of the Christian Bible about a story from the Jewish Bible in modern day terms if you went to CNN they would say you got to have your fact checkers you want your fact checkers so when you check the facts here it does not look good one reason is that the Jewish Bible teaches us that it wasn't 75 people who went down to Egypt it was 70 people who went down to Egypt now let me share with you one of the major ways in which Christians will try to answer almost all of these problems the Christian response which we'll see doesn't even work but the Christian response will be look the New Testament writers were basing themselves upon the Greek translation of the Jewish Bible called the Septuagint they weren't quoting from the Hebrew Masoretic text they were quoting from the translation of the Hebrew into Greek and to this claim in a few minutes but it doesn't always work even for their explanation so for example there are three places in the Bible which teach you that 70 people went down to Egypt Genesis chapter 46 verse 27 Exodus chapter 1 verse 5 Deuteronomy verse 10 chapter 10 verse 22 and the Septuagint in the first two of those places actually does say 75 went down to Egypt but in Deuteronomy the Septuagint gets it right and says it was 70 aside from that problem the book of Acts claims that Abraham purchased this burial tomb in Shchem if you've been to the land of Israel you'll know that Shchem which is today called Nablus is not anywhere near where Abraham actually purchased this burial plot which was in a place called Hebron not anywhere near Shchem and yet the book of Acts says that the burial plot was in Shchem our Bible says in Genesis 23 19 and other places it was in Hebron and finally the Christian Bible says that Abraham purchased this plot from Hamor and our Bible says in Genesis 23 17 in chapter 50 verse 13 that Abraham purchased the burial plot from Ephron the Hittite so here they've managed to mangle a story from our Bible three places pretty quickly let's get back to the Septuagint just for a moment why in the world would a Christian feel comfortable saying to us with a straight face well the New Testament writers relied upon the Greek translation of the Hebrew in the Septuagint why would they be comfortable saying that you know one of the few times the Christian Bible got it right one of the few times is in the book of Romans chapter 3 verse 2 you don't have it on your sheets in front of you but Paul says in the book of Romans to the Jewish people were entrusted the oracles of God that's one of the few places the New Testament gets it right Paul is saying that God entrusted the transmission of the Holy Scriptures to the Jewish people the Jewish people never preserved the Bible in its Greek translation I've been to hundreds of Yeshivot and Batemindrashot in the world I've never been to a Batemindrash where they have a Septuagint I've never seen one in a Batemindrash because for us as Jews that was not in the way in which we preserved the Bible as a matter of fact for us the translation of the Bible into Greek was something we didn't want to do we were forced into doing it and the rabbis actually they pronounced that the day on which it took place should be a fast day next week was a fast day that the rabbis made to commemorate this horrible event when the Bible was translated into Greek we do not celebrate that event and so when we transmitted the Bible it was always in the Hebrew text why would we be interested in a Greek translation of the Bible when God did not speak to Moses or the prophets in Greek he spoke to them in Hebrew in La Shonha Kodesh so how could the Christians say to us with a straight face well these irregularities in the New Testament are because the New Testament writers were relying upon a Septuagint that's an answer who cares about the Septuagint why does it have any credibility more credibility than the actual Hebrew text now there's a whole story behind how the Septuagint came to be written the truth of the matter is it's a book that is a very poor quality control the truth is that the Jews that were forced into translating it only translated the five books of Moses you see this in the Gamorit and the Gila the Talmud and the Gila speaks about this story Josephus mentions this there's a letter of Arastias that mentions it meaning that we were not responsible for putting together the whole Bible the Greek translation and we never preserved this translation and one of the proofs that we never preserved it is the Talmud and the Gila gives you a number of textual emendations that the rabbis made when they translated the Bible from Hebrew into Greek if you get your hands I have one here on our present day Septuagint it doesn't have any of these textual emendations because it was the church that preserved the Septuagint and it was done very sloppily even the church fathers negated the credibility of this book so the fact that they have to run to it to solve problems in the text is not impressive and we'll see that in most cases it doesn't solve the problem anyway let's go to just a few more examples number three I'm sorry number two the New Testament says in three different places that the Torah was given to us through angels in Acts chapter 7 verse 53 you received the law as ordained by angels in Galatians 319 it said that the Torah was added because of transgressions it was ordained through angels in Hebrews chapter 2 verse 2 for the word which spoken through angels now is that how we got our Torah we don't find in our scriptures that it was coming to us through angels we're told it was revealed to us directly by God to Moses there were no angels in the process number six if you were here last December 24th or 5th we had an entire day seminar devoted to this passage in the book of Matthew quoting a verse in Isaiah the famous passage of the virgin birth we see here how Isaiah is basically mangled by the New Testament essentially the problem is a one of mistranslation Isaiah speaks about a young girl and the New Testament translates it into a virgin there are many other problems but again it's a classical problem from the Christian Bible trying to enlist the Old Testament improperly number seven the book of James chapter 4 or do you think that the scripture says in vain the spirit who dwells in us yearns jealousy there is no such verse anywhere in the Jewish Bible you'll often find the Christian Bible inventing verses that don't exist at all number eight the Christian Bible in the book of Hebrews chapter 10 therefore when he came into the world he said and don't forget when I put it into italics it's quoting from the Hebrew Bible when he came into the world he said sacrifice an offering you did not desire but a body you prepared for me in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure when you study that verse in the Hebrew Bible Psalm chapter 40 it mentions nothing in the Hebrew Bible that a body being prepared one of the reasons that we might think that we have a problem with the Christian Bible is because many people have observed it is simply filled with anti-Semitic references hatred of Jews number first verse in number 17 and so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth from the blood of the righteous able to the blood of Zachariah son of Baruch Haya whom you murdered between the temple and the altar that's from Matthew 23 by the way that verse in Matthew is actually a mistake because the passage in the Jewish Bible shows you that it was not Zichariah son of Baruch Haya it was Zichariah the son of Yaho Yadah but the important thing here is that the Jewish people as a national were being blamed for every innocent life that was ever taken going all the way back to before there were even Jews they blame Jews today for any time a kid in Gaza strip falls down and bruises their knee so it's not a new story that the Jews are blamed for everything but the next passage is very disturbing John chapter 8 verse 44 you are of your father the devil and you want to carry out your father's desire here is a passage which basically speaks about the Jewish people as being the children of the devil in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 Paul writes you suffered from your own countrymen the same things that those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out they displease God and are hostile to all men in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so they may be saved so here we are being told that Jews are hostile to all people that's a pretty large thing to say about us act chapter 7 you stiff necked people your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised you were just like your ancestors you always resist the Holy Spirit was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute they even killed those who predicted the coming of the righteous one and now you've betrayed and murdered him and finally in Titus chapter 1 for there are many rebellious people full of meaningless talk and deception especially those of the circumcision group those of the Jews they must be silenced because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things that ought not to be taught and that for what reason for Luke's sake for the sake of dishonest gain aside from the fact that the Christian Bible is really full of these anti-Jewish anti-Semitic teachings we know that historically the Christian Bible is also quite suspect for example Matthew chapter 2 tells us that when Jesus was born Herod slaughtered every Jewish baby under the age of 2 in Bethlehem and all the surrounding cities now I would have suspected that had that happened it would have been a big news story Josephus if you read Josephus he writes a pretty detailed history of that time he'll tell you what Roman governors had for breakfast and yet here the massacre of every Jewish baby under the age of 2 not just in Bethlehem but in all the surrounding cities are massacred by Herod's army no one knows about it not in the Talmud not in Josephus, not in Philo not in any Roman documents not even in any other books in the New Testament and we don't have an oral history of this the same author Matthew says that when Jesus was crucified the graves of many righteous people in Jerusalem opened up and the righteous people came out of those graves and they walked around Jerusalem and appeared to many people now if I was Matthew I would have just told the story and I would have said when Jesus was crucified the graves opened up and the people came out and then I would have shut my mouth but he says that they didn't just come out of the graves they came out and they walked around Jerusalem and they appeared to many people again I would have thought that if that had happened that you're seeing all over Jerusalem these dead righteous people coming out of their graves say wow I haven't seen you since your funeral that would have been a big news story huge no one knows about it not even Mark not Luke not John not Paul just Matthew writes it and we're supposed to just say yeah it must be true if it's in Matthew it must be true Matthew and the other gospel writers say that Pontius Pilate who was the procurator of Judea that crucified Jesus Matthew says he didn't really want to do it he was forced into it by the Jews really Pontius Pilate was a nice sweet guy and he was prepared to let Jesus go and he wouldn't want to harm God forbid and innocent hair on Jesus' head so when you read the gospel of Matthew it sounds like Pontius Pilate was nice and sweet and a very gentle guy and he wanted to let Jesus go but what happened those ugly miserable rotten terrible Jews they forced him into it so you get the impression that he's easily cowered by the Jews and yet when you study Pontius Pilate in all the historical sources in Josephus in Philo we're told he wasn't just a brutal procurator he was the most brutal and he butchered and massacred people at the drop of a hat and he was so vicious that even the Romans removed him from his post in Judea because he had committed so much bloodshed so I'm supposed to believe Matthew's story that he was a nice sweet guy okay one last piece number 19 when it comes to the preservation of the Christian scriptures how are they preserved over the centuries so we're told in a book called evidence that the man's a verdict by Josh McDowell that there actually are hundreds of thousands of textual differences between the documents of the New Testament in this passage look at what he says of the 150,000 variant readings only 400 caused any doubt about the textual meaning I smile when I read that meaning the whole New Testament there are only 400 places where the meaning of the passage is changed by the textual differences between manuscripts and he says of those only 50 are of great significance that's quite amazing that in the Christian Bible the way it was preserved was such poorly poor quality control that they emerged with 50 places where the difference in the meaning of the text is of great significance I'm going to give you an example in a moment but let's think about the preservation of the Jewish Bible we know that our Jewish scriptures there were at least three reasons at least three reasons why it would be much harder to preserve the Jewish Bible number one the Jewish Bible is much older the Jewish Bible is composed between 3,300 years ago and about 2400 years ago the Christian Bible is composed between about 1900 years ago and 1800 years ago it's a much younger book so you don't have to preserve it as long number one number two the Jewish Bible is much longer 7000 plus verses the Jewish Bible has three times that many verses so our book is much longer it would be harder to preserve and number three the whole world wasn't trying to kill the Christians every year we did not have a moment of peace we are a people that's had to preserve our scriptures in the face of ongoing attempts to annihilate us and persecute us for most of its history was in the driver's seat no one was bothering them and yet they walk away with a much easier text to preserve and yet they have only 50 places where there's great significance in the discrepancy of the text whereas the Jewish Bible infinitely more difficult to preserve basically has a few dozen places where the spelling of a word and the spelling does not affect the meaning of even a word incredible quality control on the Jewish texts let me give you one example of one of these textual problems in the Christian Bible the earliest Gospel of the Gospel of Mark written about the year 70 Matthew was written about the year 80 Luke about the year 90 John about the year 100 Mark is the earliest account and you could suggest maybe the most accurate maybe the most accurate and yet the earliest manuscripts the earliest manuscripts of the Book of Mark are missing the last 12 verses that are found in Christian Bibles today many Christian Bibles will have those last 12 verses but they'll have a footnote saying these verses don't appear in the earliest manuscripts but these last 12 verses are very significant. They talk about the resurrection of Jesus it's the foundation of Christianity Paul says if Jesus was not resurrected your faith is in vain and yet here we see that the difference in the text of the Christian Bible where today's Christian Bibles have this story the earliest versions don't have it and scholars suggest that that omission was so embarrassing that later writers had to stick it in they had to make sure it was there let me conclude we began today by sharing that it's significant it is significant that the New Testament only succeeded by gluing itself on to the Old Testament to give it credibility. It was a mark of brilliance by the church to take their Bible and to stick it on to the back of the Jewish Bible and now they have the Bible with all the authority and history and significance of the Jewish scriptures it's funny that in his book Josh McDowell speaks about how do we know the Bible is true one of the things he does is he shows how prophecies fulfilled and where are the prophecies that he shows that were fulfilled? Prophecies from the Jewish Bible so here he has what makes the Bible true, all the prophecies are filled where do they come from? The Jewish Bible how does his Bible get in there? It sneaks it on the coattails of the Jewish Bible yet and listen to me carefully without the New Testament without the Christian Bible it's very clear that the Old Testament would not be as well known in the world today. My mononies wrote hundreds of years ago that it could be that it's part of God's inscrutable plan to bring about the ultimate redemption of the world. God allowed for the spread of Christianity and Islam which took Jewish ideas and spread them to the rest of the world basically preparing the world for when the true Messiah finally comes because had Christianity and Islam not spread Jewish ideas to the world and the Messiah would show up in a pagan world they would not even notice it, it would be irrelevant but we live in a world today where the two major religions in the world are competitive religions to Judaism they basically are in great tension with Judaism. These are two religions that are built on the claim that even though Judaism was once true it's all been changed with their religion but we have this reliance in Christianity and Islam on Judaism we're the foundation and so my monarchy suggests that when the Messiah finally comes it will be a concept that the world will understand and recognize and the world will be able to say oh oh now I get it now I understand but without the world being primed and readied for this by not what we're doing we don't run around spreading we don't distribute all testaments in Nigeria but the competitive religions to Judaism are spreading their teachings which in many ways are Jewish teachings and Jewish ideas and so one day and it's happening now the world is beginning as Isaiah said turning to our light the Bible says we're to be a light unto the nations and Isaiah promises one day the world will turn to our light and Isaiah says in his 8th chapter that one day 10 people from every nation of the world will grab hold of a Jew and they're going to say we want to follow you because we've heard God is with you and that is happening today as increasing numbers of Christians by studying their Bible and studying the Jewish Bible are coming to realize you know what it doesn't add up you can't fit this square peg into a round hole and therefore we now have hundreds and thousands of Christians every day now turning to rabbis turning to Jewish teachers and saying you know what we finally realized you guys are right all along please teach us so I'm going to give all of us in this room a blessing that we should be ready when your neighbors and friends come to you and they say you know what I have a question to ask you can you please explain this to me I want to know what you think of them thank you all so much for your patience and all the best