 Here was his man, Mr. Goldstein. Mr. Goldstein was an elderly man. He lived a full life, a rich life. He was happy, but a little poor. Needless to say, he took his meager life savings, and at the age of 85, the chutzpah of the man decided to go on a skiing vacation in Switzerland. So he goes to Switzerland, a nice Kosher resort in St. Moritz, and has a wonderful week shushing down the moguls, learning how to ski. Had a great time, just 85 years old. But unfortunately, thank you. But unfortunately on the very last day of his wonderful ski vacation, he had a little accident on the hill and he broke his leg. So he was admitted to the only hospital in the vicinity of the Catholic hospital, in which all the nurses who were running the hospital were nuns. And when the day came for him to be released from the hospital, the chief nurse, Sister Frances, approaches Mr. Goldstein and says, Mr. Goldstein, you know, it was a pleasure having you here. I was a patient, but now we must clear up the problem of the accounting. We must pay you a bit. Mr. Goldstein looks at her, wide-eyed, innocently saying, you know, I'm terribly sorry, but you know, I haven't got any money. I spent all the laced money I had to come on this wonderful holiday. I'm sorry, I'm broke. Sister Frances says, well, surely you must have a relative or somebody who can make the bill. Well, you see, I have one relative, it's my sister. But she's an old maid who converted to Catholicism and became a nun. At this, Sister Frances gets very upset. She says, I have you know, Mr. Goldstein, that we nuns are not old maids. We are married to Jesus Christ. At this, Mr. Goldstein says, if that's the case, send the bill to my brother-in-law. Let's start off with that joke for a particular reason. It puts into perspective the way that Jewish people traditionally have looked at the issue of the reality of who the person Jesus Christ is. And we have never accepted him in the same way as Christians do. If in fact somebody would have approached me 15 years ago, 16 years ago, before I embarked on my journey into Christianity and said to me, hey Julius, how would you like to become a Christian? I would honestly have said, even though I was not a practicing Jew, I would have said, before I was born a Jew, I'll die a Jew. If that same person came up to me and said, Julius, have I got a girl for you? She's beautiful. She's tall. She's effervescent. She's intelligent. She's talented. But she happens to be a fanatical, born-again Christian. You want to go over there? I'd say forget. I don't want to get involved in this. I'm a Jew. I want to marry a Jew. Yet, the whole point of trying to say, I never had an intention of wanting to become a Christian. I don't think any Jew who becomes a Jew for Jesus ever intends on becoming a Christian. In my particular case, I was born to some lovely parents who are unfortunately Holocaust survivors. And between my parents, only one relative survived the Holocaust in Europe. My father lost his entire family, my mother lost her entire family, except for one sister. My parents aren't scholarly in Judaism. They were both brought up in simple towns in Eastern Europe. And when they were fortunate enough to survive the inferno of the Holocaust and make it to Canada, with their three sons, they tried their best to raise them into Judaism so that they knew sent us to Haider and bring us up in the best way as they knew that Jewish people should be brought up. And so I went to Haider for six years. Unfortunately, because my parents were limited in their understanding of Judaism, there was limited Judaism in our house. There were Shabbos candles, face of satyrs, but never any depth or significance to spirituality or the essence of who Hashem our God is. Unfortunately, I went to Haider with so many other peers of my day went to where the emphasis was on trying to get your name on the priority list to see who can go to the washroom first. You go to the washroom instead as long as possible so you wouldn't have to come back to the class. We didn't learn anything about prayer. We didn't learn anything about dovening, about spirituality, about God. Things in regards to spiritual issues were never emphasized in the upbringing that I had in my Haider. When the opportunity came to complete my bar mitzvah, needless to say, I took that opportunity to end my religious studies thinking that I'd made it and embarked on a pilgrimage of assimilation and to dating, going out with people, going out with women who weren't Jewish, not feeling guilty about it at all, even though my father would say that, you know, you shouldn't go out with these Jewish girls, or these Gentiles who should only go out with a Jewish girl. Still, I made up my own mind to do what I wanted to do. I was liberal. And it was in this context as a student at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto that I met a very interesting girl. The girl was a smart, intelligent, fun, never-vescent type of individual. Initially, when I met her, I thought, this is true today. Trying to become friends with her. I was able to approach her to ask her out for a date. It was wonderful. We went out for another date. It was almost wonderful because she concluded the date with her opportunity to tell me about Jesus. Now, by date two already, I was one over. And I thought, so she believes in Jesus. On the other hand, she got all these wonderful qualities. Okay, she's entitled to believe what she believes. But this relationship quickly developed into that of missionary and missionary victim in a way that if you understand the way that the heart can pull at your intellectual strings, I was beginning to fall victim for this gospel message through my relationship with this girl. She took me to her church. She took me to some of her Christian friends, Bible studies. And through it all, in the heart of hearts, in the gut of my guts, I said to myself, Julie, if you were born a Jew, you were going to die a Jew. This isn't for you. But still, I pursued it a little bit. And I remember once the experience of entertaining her brand of Christianity ended when she took me to her church. And a very wonderful experience in that I met some very nice people. I can't remember the content of the spiritual message that night, but it was very uplifting. Needless to say, I walked out of that experience, very upset that I allowed myself to get into this corner. And I said to her, I was born a Jew. I'm going to die a Jew. Please, lead me along with this. This is not Jewish. She was compelled because of my rejection of her attempt at convincing me of the truth of Christianity, combined with her attraction to me as a man to try and find a way of getting me to hear the gospel message in a way that I would understand. And as a result, she sent me or recommended that I go to a new and innovative congregation of Christians in Toronto, a congregation that called itself Congregation Mele Israel. A congregation of predominantly Jewish people who had accepted Jesus as their Messiah and were congregating as a group of Jewish believers. I thought, I'll give this a chance. What have I got to lose? And I decided to go to their Arab Shabbat service. Now what's interesting is when I got involved in this group, I'm going to just stop for just a second and mention to you that I had a particular idea of what Christianity was and what a church would be like. When I walked into Congregation Mele Israel for the first time, I was blown away by something that was totally unexpected. This looked Jewish. Something seemed to be very Jewish about it. And I wasn't so sure what I was getting involved in here. And what's interesting is this group of Messianic Jews, as they call themselves, were claiming to be Jews who have accepted Yeshua as the Messiah, yet were maintaining their Jewish identity. And I found that the experience of being in this lively group of people worshipping God in their own particular way to be extremely stimulating. Raleigh Kravitz in his eight-week program, whatever you should know about missionaries, teaches one basic principle that I found was illustrated in my experience as a Messianic Jew. And his principle is that for 2,000 years almost Jewish people, by and large, resisted the gospel message. And missionaries, by and large, found that they ran up against three obstacles of resistance. One was Jewish identity. This Jewish, this feeling of being born Jewish, you're going to die Jewish, you don't want to be a Christian. This second obstacle they always ran up against was the issue of Jewish people always knew the Tanakh. They always knew the Jewish Bible. For a missionary to come and try to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. On our Bibles, base would never get too far. And lastly, they always understood the spiritual principles of what it is that Judaism had to offer. These three obstacles have never been able to be overcome in any large extreme by the missionaries over the last 2,000 years, up until the last few decades. And what's happened is they've changed their techniques. And I'm going to outline my experience as being a victim of these techniques. The first technique that they've used today, many Christian missionaries are doing this. And I'm not going to say it's an exclusive tactic because many Jewish people unfortunately are converting to Christianity through the efforts of mainline born-again Christians without any influence of Jewish missionaries. But in my particular experience, I fell victim to this incredible program of deception. And I use the word with the most clear understanding of what the word means. I was deceived into thinking that what I was about to accept as religion was Jewish. And this deception was brought about through a variety of different techniques, which I'm going to go into. And this is the obstacle. And what I'm trying to do is to show how they have overcome the first obstacle of resistance by Jewish people to the miscellaneous missionary message over the last 2,000 years. That is the obstacle of Jewish identity, of the sense of Jewish society, of the purpose of the Jewish people. What they did is they changed the variety of different things in their fundamentalist Christianity. And I guess before I go into this example, I would have to ask you. If a Nazi for whatever reason wanted to lure a Jew into some kind of death camp or some kind of a trap, and the Nazi showed up in his SS guard uniform and it's World War II and asked the Jew to come, he has a meeting for you to come to, would the Jew be so willing to run to this meeting that this SS guard wanted him to go to? No. If the SS guard decided to wear a mug in David on his neck, would that make any difference in regards to the response that the Jewish victim would have to the reality of the danger that was in front of him in regards to this SS guard? No. But if that SS guard disguised himself enough, grew beard, grew peyote, wore a cape and a strung, and sits and started speaking Yiddish, even developed a nice Yiddish accent, and did everything that could be possible to be Jewish, and said, come, I want you to come to a meeting. Would the Jewish victim have any resistance? He'd say no reason. Why not? He'd honestly think that the Jewish man asking me to come to a meeting must be Jewish. So it is, the missionaries have done something very similar. Missionaries preach Christianity. Judaism has never accepted Christianity for a variety of reasons. The issue is, how is it they go about deceiving a nice Jewish boy like me into believing that what they're offering is Judaism, is Jewish, is Jewishly acceptable, and they do it to a variety of different things. One was the terminology. When I walked into this group, I heard words that I never heard before in the context of a church or in the context of my Christian girlfriend. They referred to the New Testament as the Briech Hadasha. They referred to Jesus Christ as Yeshua HaMashiach. Today it's not unlikely to hear many of these messianic pastors refer to as rabbis. The cross is called a tree. The church is called a congregation of believers. They've gone so far as to call these congregations messianic synagogues. The Christian is no longer a Christian. I was told that these Christians were fulfilled Jews, completed Jews, messianic Jews. It seems so Jewish. Baptism, when the opportunity came, was the one thing that I resisted, and even that they colored by calling it mikvah bris. The names of the individuals are changed. We have individuals, one of the people in regards to some of us who know the missionary problem, his name was formerly Lloyd Carson. He changed his name to Tugizaretsky. We have names like Brian, Dubaroff, Martin, Timoish. And the only reason they're changing their names is not because they're so Jewish, because they have a deceptive technique that they're trying to exercise in order to convince a Jew to believe in Jesus. My experience in Jewish symbols was phenomenal. Almost exclusively, all literature incorporated symbols that incorporated the stars of David, Torah scrolls, hebraic type, and their advertisements, you would see Shabbat candles against stars of David, come to our Shabbat service, come to our Passover Seder, come to our High Holiday service. They're rituals. You walk into one of the groups, and in my experience when I walked into this group, the men will reign kippot, skull caps. And many of them will reign talitot, prayer shawls. There was a portion of the ceremony where one of the women got up and let the Shabbat candles, three of them to symbolize the father, the son, and the holy ghost. I honestly didn't know that it was wrong. They recite Kiddish, they actually recite Kaddish, Shema, the Aaronic menic diction was so Jewish in its liturgy. The actual physical house of worship where I was involved in wasn't as elaborate as some that I've seen. Many have the star of David. The one that I was involved in had some tablets from an Aaron of Kiddish that had the Ten Commandments outlined on it. You'll see an Israeli flag. You'll see an Aaron of Kiddish that many times contains an actual Torah scroll, if not many Torah scrolls. And they're advertising. They appear very Jewish, as I mentioned. They employ Jewish images. They advertise Jewish events. That's just high holidays. In Toronto, one of the groups advertised an opportunity for Jewish intermarried couples to resolve their spiritual conflict. Distortion of the Jewish holidays. Their holidays all seem to take on a new significance. Passover is no longer the holiday of the redemption of the Jewish people from Egypt, but a holiday in which to celebrate Jesus. Three Mutsot in our Passover Seder now take on wonderfully new significance. Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The middle Muts is broken, and we're told that this represents the body of Jesus Christ that was broken for our sins. The stripes that are in the Mutsot are supposed to be a reflection on the stripes that Jesus suffered in his trial before execution. Which always makes me wonder, what did the Mutsa look like before they invented machine-made Mutsa? Jewish music and Jewish dance. The music was phenomenal. I walked into that place and heard songs that unfortunately, due to my lack of Jewish upbringing, was never exposed to. Wonderful, enthusiastic songs. Odisha Ma, Hine Ma Tov, Oseh Shalom, Hatikva. They would sing songs from filler on the roof. Not only would they sing it, but they'd sing it well. Not only would they sing it well, but they did it with musical accompaniment. Almost every second person in these groups had instruments. The music alone swayed you away in the spirit. And finally, the clincher, the one thing that you just couldn't resist, Jewish food. I didn't have to suffer the worries of bacon, shellfish. But needless to say, it wasn't kosher. It was only biblically kosher. They wouldn't buy kosher food. So long as they didn't have pork in it, they justified it was kosher. And what was the incentive of all these deceptive techniques that they were doing? And you're listening to somebody who is at the grassroots level of the foundation of this Messianic Jewish movement back in 1976. I was there when the Big Shots were laying down their plans for worldwide evangelism. What was their big shtick into doing this? And primarily, the root of their incentive was basically twofold. One, it was an opportunity for them to exercise a deceptive ploy to make Jewish people think that Christianity is Jewish, thus enticing them to hear the gospel message in a way that they may not have ordinarily. For instance, how many of you, when given a pamphlet in the streets that had a cross on it with a figure on it bleeding to death, would be excited to take a look at it? Conversely, if the same person gave you a pamphlet that said kosher for Passover, what resistance would you have to such a pamphlet? Needless to say, they are trying to persuade the Jewish person to think that this is Jewish. Secondly, I really believe with all my heart that a lot of the people who are involved in this movement are employing these Jewish tactics to cover up the guilt. I know this was my own case. I examined my subconscious into what made me feel attractive to this. I was able to convert to Christianity and not feel guilty, because look how Jewish I am. I'm not Jewish anymore. Before I didn't keep Shabbat, so now I keep Shabbat. Before I didn't keep kosher, so now I keep kosher. Before I didn't care about Israel. Now I care about Israel. Before I didn't read the Bible. Now I read the Bible. I didn't pray before, and I prayed. I didn't believe in God before, and I believe in God. I'm interested in the Jewish holidays now. I didn't do that before. See? Okay, so I believe Jesus is a messiah. Isn't she just like a pharaoh? Obstacle number one is this Jewish identity, and you can understand how through this camouflage you're able to depict a Jewish environment. Some of these congregations, I went to one in LA a few years ago, it was so Jewish that there was absolutely no mention of Jesus Christ, or Yeshua Mashiach, and I came up to the pastor afterwards and I said to him, how come is it that at this time I was involved in the movement? I said, why is it that you didn't pray to Jesus? Why do you talk to Yeshua? He says, we don't want to offend the Jewish people who are coming in, we want them to think how Jewish this is. Let them come Sunday morning. Then we'll talk about it. The Jewish Bible, obstacle number two, Jews have always understood what the Bible was all about. We were the people of the book. Why did they call us that? Because in our hearts and minds we knew Torah, we knew Tanach by heart. We didn't need any way to interpret for us what it is. We learned it from childhood. Unfortunately, as a product of the assimilation syndrome that's happened over the last 150 years, many of us have been weaned from Torah, weaned from scholarship in regards to Torah study, and we are Jewishly ignorant. The missionaries, and a lot of their handbooks to their missionaries, tell their missionaries, please don't be afraid of these Jews. They don't know anything about Judaism. They don't know anything about the Bible. And often one of the resistances that one of the things that missionary, Gentile missionaries find difficult for themselves when they approach a Jewish person for the first time is they're so sure that the Jews are going to know the quote, unquote, all Testament better than them. And the leaders in these missionary movements encourage them to say don't worry, these people know nothing. The only thing you have to be careful of is never approach a person that's wearing a skull cap. Obviously a person wearing a skull cap knows about Judaism. Somebody who doesn't, who's Jewish, doesn't know as much possibly. Through the Jewish Bible, I myself became very much involved in Christianity. The missionaries make it their case. If they cannot prove that Jesus is the Messiah with the Tanakh, or the Old Testament as they call it, then they fail as missionaries to the Jews. And that's what they do. They use our Tanakh, our Bible, to make their case that Jesus is the Messiah. And due to my lack of Jewish education, due to my lack of an experience in the family where the Torah and the Tanakh were uplifted on a daily or weekly basis in the home, I grew up with this void and not understanding that. When I heard this prophecy of a virgin birth, I was blown away. Along with other prophecies, they have a prophecy that's again taken out of context and twisted and mistranslated. It makes you believe it's speaking about Jesus. I'll give you an example. One of the prophecies refers to King David fleeing his enemies. And in it, King David refers to his enemies as having surrounded his hands and feet like a lion. That's in the Jewish scriptures. The Christians have twisted it. And instead of saying that they surrounded his hands and feet like a lion, the word that's in question here is the word Kaari. They translate Kaari as pierced. When I, as a nice Jewish boy, opening up my supposedly Jewish Bible for the first time, albeit a King James version, and read they pierced my hands and my feet, I said to myself, this is Jesus. How could nobody see this? The same Bible shows me that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Emmanuel. I never had the insight to go check out Jewish sources, but in the originally Hebrew sources, the word in question, the young maiden. What do the Christians do? The distortion is a virgin. They take the definite article and drop it and change the young maiden into a virgin when there is clearly a Hebrew word for a virgin that being batula. I didn't know. What I saw in the Old Testament, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Emmanuel. They pierced my hands and my feet. Other verses like this, I said to the pastor of the congregation, and this time I've been going for several months, I said to him, how come is it that for 2,000 years the rabbis haven't seen this? How come it's right here in black and white? I can see it as clear as day and the rabbis haven't seen it. That is because he says, Julius, you are the chosen and the elect of God. God has chosen you specifically for a purpose, for a mission. And those rabbis unfortunately have veil over their eyes. They were blind to the truth. They could not see. They were taught meaningless traditions and roles. As a result, God has given you a gift today to Julius in showing you the truth. What will you do with it? In the context of this kind of teaching and upbringing in the Christian church, slowly I came to believe that, you know, there might be a case here in Jesus being the Messiah. There's a third obstacle that Jewish people have always offered the missionary, that obstacle being a spiritual understanding of what the essence of Judaism really is. We knew what our relationship with God was all about. We knew where it was taking us and we knew how to get our relationship correct with God. Yet when the Christian missionary presents its technique in overcoming that obstacle today they have an easy game of it. Why? Because Jewish people today by and large are more familiar with the Christian concepts of spirituality than they are of the Jewish concepts. Thus, when the missionary tells me that I was born a sinner and as a result of that sin I am doomed to burn for eternity in hell. And they use the Jewish Bible to substantiate this and they show me in the Jewish Bible where it says that the only way that I can be forgiven for my sins is through a sacrifice because according to their twisted understanding of our Tanach and our Torah they claim that I must have a blood sacrifice. They say to me, where's your sacrifice? And if you had your sacrifice where could you offer it? Because there's no temple today. And I would look in my Torah and my King James Version of the Torah and I would read these things all these references to sacrifices. The temple, there's that. You might have a point there. The bottom line is they told me I was a sinner. You are a sinner. There is no hope for you. Hell for eternity unless you are forgiven for those sins and you must have a sacrifice. Where is your sacrifice? Unfortunately it is not available because there's no temple. But in God's wisdom He supplied us with an eternal sacrifice that in the person of Jesus Christ Yeshua Mashiach. So they say. And you know what? It makes sense to me. Picture yourself. A nice Jewish boy like me. I'm just looking for truth. I've met all these wonderful people who seem so Jewish. The truth is the experienced Jewish is more than I've ever had in my entire life. Two. I've been exposed to the Bible for the first time in my life and I've come to appreciate the significance of its relationship to myself as a Jew. I've come to understand about God. I've come to understand about Israel. And I feel like I'm developing a relationship with God through it. And lastly I'm told that that relationship will not come to fulfillment unless I'm forgiven for my sins and accept Jesus is my ultimate sacrifice, etc. Now the truth is I didn't want to burn forever in Hell and there's great motivation after these experiences to want to check this out and maybe consider it. I decided though last minute after a year of courting this Christian hospitality, this Messianic Jewish fellowship, this Hebrew Christian teaching to check out what a rabbi would have to say. So I go through my yellow pages with these rabbis. And unfortunately I guess I didn't pick Rabbi Kravitz. I picked another rabbi in Toronto who may not have been the right person for me to speak to at that time. Made an appointment to see him and when I showed up he wasn't there. And when he showed up he didn't have much time to see me. He spent about five minutes and when she ridiculed me he told me to go to Yeshiva stop being a Nazi. Don't believe in this stuff. It's a nourish guy. He's a nice smart Jewish boy. What do you make a big mistake like this for? You should know better. After five minutes of this he walked away making me feel like an idiot. I had to ask myself like the old filler on the roof technique. On one hand I've got all these lovely Jewish people believing Jesus and they play such beautiful music and they talk about the Word of God and they talk about it in English and they pray in English and they serve such nice Biblically kosher food. On the other hand I've got this rabbi who hasn't got the time of day for him. He shows up late and just ridicules me. On the other hand these nice Jewish people claim it's the truth. They claim that they have all the time in the world for me to discover this. The rabbi on the other hand tells me I'm an idiot why am I wasting my time. When I walked away from this experience in my emotional state I had to ask myself what of these groups must be true? Which is it? And I picked the Christians. By this time it wasn't a matter of arbitrary choice. I've already been indoctrinated so far that this was almost for me a sign that it had to be true. And as a result I went ahead with my conversion and it's not like I planned it. I actually went to Yom Kippur messianic Yom Kippur service at which the messianic pastor preached again a message of me being a sinner of all people being sinners in the only way I've been for your sins on this day of forgiveness is to accept Jesus. And he did it in a very eloquent way. His oratory skills were phenomenal and I was shaking in my boots thinking I don't want to go to hell anymore. I just don't want to be saved. And as a result I decided I'm going to accept it. And after his service not when he asked for people I walked up to him and I said to him you know I do believe that Jesus is the Messiah I really believe it and I just want you to know he goes oh this is terrific Jesus why did you tell everybody right now? And of course you can realize this is the formula for Christian conversion that formula being to believe in your heart confess with your mouth before witnesses and you're born again? So what did I do? I told this crowd after having come to this conviction that Jesus was my Messiah and I was emotional about it and they were emotional about it and they were all so happy and when it was all over the pastor said to me Julius do you believe that God showed you this truth? Do you believe that God took a lot of trouble to see that you would find the spiritual truth that Jesus is the Messiah? I said yes, yes and do you believe that God wants you to be in heaven? I said oh yes and do you believe that God wants you to be forgiven for your sins? I said oh yes, yes and meanwhile it was all in front of a congregation and do you believe God does not want you to doubt his love for you? I said of course I believe that and you must know Julius he says to me this is minutes after having confessed this faith he says to me Julius you must know that you may have doubts about what you've done today and you should know that if God showed you this was the truth then those doubts are not from God those doubts are from Satan and you must know that when those doubts come you must plead the blood of Jesus Christ overcome these doubts because Satan is trying to get you to deny your faith and anytime you have a promise just remember to plead the blood because that Satan is going to be telling you that I walked away from this meeting like any nice Jewish boy would going what did I do? on one hand I walked in thinking okay Jesus is the Messiah He is the Messiah but this time I wasn't so sure I didn't realize he was God too and I walked away believing that Jesus is the Messiah and I had this relationship now with Satan as well because I'm going to tell you who in their right mind that you have average intelligence and you've made such an important life decision is not going to wonder did I make the right decision? did I not make the right decision? how many of you bought a t-shirt? wonder if you bought the right color here I'd accepted my Messiah and I was wondering I mean you did the wrong thing but also that human quality of being able to rationalize and think things through clearly was labeled as demonic as being influenced by the powers of hell and Satan and that I should not listen to this but turn over everything to Jesus so what happens in this born again experience? understand it's not just a matter of saying oh I believe and as a result I'm going to accept Jesus I analyze myself what did I go through? and I broke it down to a few issues here first of all to believe in something is putting your intellect on the line and for me I put my intellect on the line and I said hey I'm buying this hope line in the sinker my mind is telling me this is correct confession I confess before a group of people what happens? my ego it's not just a matter of my opinion anymore I am making a public statement that I believe this it's not only are my beliefs on the line but my ego is on the line that I'm saying I'm right in this I mentioned to you the issue of the devil comes into the experience after this is all over I'm urged and encouraged to attend regularly Bible studies worship meetings Sabbath services and through this regular attendance which they are very strict about I become indoctrinated into the belief I develop social times relationships on a personal basis with many of these people I have to say honestly that a lot of these people today I love genuinely I wish I could have a relationship with them but it's so impossible because the religious split is between us but the love that develops is terrific with some of these individuals I have spiritual growth and also I have a dependence that develops on that group then what happens baptism what happens in baptism is not just the issue of the ego anymore it's a physical and verbal declaration publicly in front of everybody you really believe so much in what you're doing that not only you're saying it that you are doing something about it and that doing is plunging into the mix of abrasives they call it then they tell you to read, study and pray every day we internalize a lot of the doctrine do I read Chumesh? Rashi? do I read anything from a Jewish source? no, you read their books their study notes, etc indoctrinated very quickly into Christian theology not only is that an issue but then you are urged to show fruit of your faith by witnessing for Jesus witnessing means to go out on the line and tell other people that Jesus Christ is the Messiah that if you stand to him you've got to believe in him and it's a great commission as they call it in Christianity to go forth into all the world to preach the gospel to all creation and as they say to the Jew first and then to the Gentile so this witness campaign of theirs for every believer puts the believer on the fence he can't be gray about his commitment and by standing out there and defending your faith the people that you're trying to convert it makes you a stronger believer a stronger Jew for Jesus and then lastly if you have any intellect any quality of leadership skills they grab you right away because actually you stand out like a green thumb in these groups because there's a lot of fringe type of personalities that get involved in these groups and we see when we see these missionaries on the street often we don't engage in conversations but my personal experience well I'll get into that in a minute but one of the things that happens is in my particular case I found that I was so flattered by the overall social impact of this group that I had a little Yiddish that I had some kind of traditional background that I could be funny that I had to be a famous Canadian illustrator that I could speak they soon learned that I could teach I could run things I had musical skills they put me in a leadership position very quickly the combination of assuming leadership and all these other things belief, confession, devil, regular attendance baptism, reading, studying, praying, witnessing all led me to be very firmly grounded and to say that I wasn't a Jew for Jesus I think is kind of ridiculous because I was so bent on it that I was losing friends and family over my conviction top on that Christian love bombing Christianity teaches and I think it's a wonderful characteristic of the religion that God is love and without love there is no fruit of the spirit and most true born-again Christians will exhibit this quality in an honest fashion and it is not by this point I'm saying I'm not talking about deceptive techniques I'm just talking about the Christian characteristic that issue of love was very powerful in my conversion everyone was loving me hugging me someone were even kissing me and you know when you got some cute girls in the congregation it really makes it enticing that combined Christian hospitality that issue was very powerful I found some things very peculiar in the group I was involved in they were a Pentecostal group and many of the Messianic groups today are such very much into miracles they'll have a miracle service people come up and be prayed over and falling over like flies and they have this expression called slain in the spirit I remember that I once fell over because I felt guilty that I remained standing when everybody else was falling over I didn't want them to think that I wasn't really really really a Christian you know it's interesting Baptists never fall over and Presbyterians never fall over Pentecostal always fall over they're both Christians it's interesting in their healing services somebody can come I'm sick as a dog and you go up and heal I remember watching this so many times the same people going up week after week for healing I was like what could be wrong with them every week something different the sad thing is I had a friend that I brought into Christianity a wonderful Dutch woman a gentle woman her name was Heidi I brought her into this group and unfortunately she had multiple sclerosis and we know that multiple sclerosis is a disease that clinically has no solution to it yet they said oh god we'll heal you come just believe and you'll be healed and they pushed us on her so many times and she wasn't healed but you don't just miraculously get healed from multiple sclerosis what did they say she said you haven't got enough faith just have more faith I was like how much faith can a person have how are they to judge who has the right faith not the right faith how much anyways this was my experience in Christianity the bottom line is imagine for yourselves those of us who grew up in nominal synagogues where our experience was possibly not too emotional not too motivating and compare that to the experience of one of these messianic synagogues you can see just on the emotional and sensual aspect many people can encourage to want to convert you you walk in there the music the message etc very powerful that's also with issue of mind control many of these leaders have an incredibly charismatic power over some of their individuals and I've seen many times evidence of the power that these leaders have over the free thinking capability of their adherents I experienced this once when I was speaking of Babac in Toronto a couple years ago on this topic and two of these messianic showed up one was a fairly new Christian the other one was more seasoned and the older fellow would not allow the younger Christian Jewish Christian to talk privately with any of us he made sure he was on top of him all the time not letting him have the opportunity to freely think things through so the question is in my experience if you were to ask me what kind of people get involved in this I saw first hand most people 99.99999% of the people that got involved came from backgrounds that were primarily assimilated and in situations of in order most were reformed less were conservative even less come from Orthodox backgrounds in all cases none had a solid understanding of Judaism and by the way when I said they came from reform conservative and Orthodox I used to tell them I was an Orthodox Jew and the way we thought we were affiliated was based on the shul that our parents went to when we went for high holiday services so you went to high holiday services once you're an Orthodox shul I'm an Orthodox Jew this was the way we understood and this is the way most of these people understand it generally speaking by and large the people I met were Jewishly ignorant they had no affiliation Jewishly most were already experiencing the assimilation syndrome they felt that Judaism was meaningless to them some of them came from mixed marriages in many cases Christianity through this Jewish blanket was their first encounter with spirituality that they could understand and the Jewishness of it made it tempting for them unfortunately a lot of the people that I did met had emotional problems they were you saw evidence of this in most groups that I attended while there were also always a few dominant personalities there were often a few very weak personalities and the group I was involved in one of the people as a result of their I'm assuming as a result of their attendance to the congregation which was in the midst of this act of life in the congregation took his life for myself I had experiences with many other Hebrew Christian groups and Messianic Jewish groups one of which was Jews for Jesus I'll start on Jews for Jesus tonight and as they upstage me tonight I just want to maybe talk about my experience with Jews for Jesus and I'll be honest and saying it was limited but my experience with all these groups was limited but it's odd and it's very odd that when Jews for Jesus gets into publicity it is so happy that anybody who is Jewish and believes in Jesus is willing to say they're associated with this belief of Jews for Jesus but I was offered a job with Jews for Jesus back in the late 70s my quality as a committed Christian my abilities as a spirit filled born again Christian artist had the reputation of these traits had gotten to Jews for Jesus and they wrote me a very eloquent and complimentary letter asking me to come join them in San Francisco I declined because I once lived in San Francisco and at the time I felt that it was just a little bit too much for me but I still associated in a very light manner with the Jews for Jesus representative that started up in Toronto and volunteered with him at events such as handing out pamphlets at the Hadassah Bazaar in Toronto in fact I was the first Jew for Jesus down at the Hadassah Bazaar in Toronto which is apparently the biggest bazaar of its kind and it's interesting I always target these Jewish audiences to hand out their materials in my association interesting Jews for Jesus I actually have to thank Jews for Jesus with all my heart because they were responsible for my initial slide back to reality for my initial flavor and taste of true Yiddish kite so thank you Jews for Jesus how did they do that? I was in the home of the first missionary they had in Toronto back in the late 70s and I was admiring his voluminous is that the word? he had a lot of books on his shelf I was admiring all these books and for some reason my hand went to this yellow and black book called Faith Strengthened by Isaac Trogi and I said oh what's this book? he grabbed my hand and said you don't want to look at that I said why not? he said it's a garbage book written by Jews that's trying to explain why they don't believe in Jesus went along for it and went to the negative bookstore and they bought my own copy they worked with a group called Lamb a music ministry as an illustrator for those of you who are in the audience tonight who are Messianic Jews and you have some of the Lamb covers I did Lamb Favorites and Lamb Live the covers of it I am the former Lamb illustrator and I hope you like my artwork because unfortunately I regret having done it I also worked for a music group called by the way Lamb's considered one of the top gospel groups in the world today and so I at least I knew who to work for I hope I wasn't instrumental in making them that famous I worked for Cole Simcha another group and did one of their album covers I had been on radio and TV shows one radio show I was on was the Messianic Jewish Movement International's show the Messianic Douche Hour with Manny Brotman I had been on Sid Roth's radio show called Messianic Vision I was on Lewis Kaplan's show called the Jewish Voice Broadcast some of you might get it on TV or on radio it's just interesting to note that the accusation remains to me that I wasn't a Christian I didn't believe in Jesus it's interesting that all these businesses that make it these or these ministries that make it their business to have committed Christians on their radio stations asked me to be their guests to talk about my faith in Jesus and their whole reason for doing it so that it will entice their listeners to come to believe in this the Jews for Jesus outside saying that I never believed in this it's for the Jewish Voice I did their logo I may have seen this picture of an old man with a staff and a Jewish star unfortunately that was the author of that image I did work for Rachmiel Friedland who was another missionary who had an outreach and lastly I worked for the congregation now History in Toronto as Public Relations Director and Choir Leader it was interesting in my job with the choir was to teach Christians in churches we bring our choir to church and try to teach them how important it is to share Jesus with the Jewish people and we would urge them to use some of the deceptive techniques that we spoke about tonight people ask me well how do your friends people often ask me how do your friends deal with your experience and these to say I really couldn't continue with my relationships with these friends in a meaningful way because my religion taught me that they were sinners and that what fellowship has like with darkness and as a result I cut off my ties with most of my friends and the truth is when I did get together with them I really, really had only one agenda and that was to share Jesus Christ and this was also a motivating factor in my getting together family gatherings I was always talking about Yeshua Habashiah always referring to the Messiah my parents unfortunately I spared them a lot of this misery I didn't tell them about my involvement for my first three years and when they finally found out about it I can remember my father's reaction was who loped you into this and I tried to explain it and one of the things for my parents it was very confusing again I mentioned to you they're not too well-versed in Judaism they were really confused on one hand I'm saying I believe in Jesus on the other hand I'm doing all these Jewish things they didn't know what to make of it but it came down to a point in time where my father had to tell me Julius you're not my son anymore he just could not take it any longer so the question is how did I get out I mean I talked about how I got in how did I get out of this this was a deep involvement five years well unfortunately Judaism was not on the scene there and I think Rabbi Kravitz was still an apprentice so my story is a little bit different initially what helped me get out of it was Sunday school Congregation of Israel had a program where they were trying to teach all its congregants skills at sharing Messiah with Jewish people and I was elected to be the representative teacher for the congregation and for nine months I taught a course based on John Fisher's book Sharing Israel's Messiah and I thought I did a very good job now what's interesting you've heard the old expression about teaching that one of the best ways to learn is to teach and so it is that in preparing my classes on a week to week basis I delved in deeply into a variety of different sources to help myself be better informed in presenting my class and the first time in my life I started searching out Hebrew sources for some of the claims that were being made to substantiate belief in Jesus and occasionally as I would be studying the various proof texts that Christian missionaries have traditionally used to prove their belief I would start seeing some major problems such as those that we brought up tonight i.e. the virgin birth karee meaning like a lion in Hebrew yet the Christian saying it was pierced seeing so many New Testament contradictions to what the Tanakh really teaches in regards to the translations of various words as well as meanings started to jump out at me as I studied now initially when I started seeing these problems these queries I approached my messianic leaders and discussed it with them but for two reasons I decided not to pursue it with them one, I found that their response to the questions that I would raise would be totally irrational and as a result I felt that for me to develop a better knowledge on this issue I will continue with my Sunday school teaching but I will keep my doubts to myself as a result I discovered other themes in the Bible that also were contradicted many times in discussing the issue of forgiveness of sins missionaries taught that the only way that you could be forgiven for sins was through a blood sacrifice yet in my exploration of the Tanakh even without the Jewish sources I discovered over my period of studies many references to times when the Jewish people were forgiven for their sins without a blood sacrifice now this really raised a problem for me because Christianity teaches exclusively that the Bible is the inerrant word of God that God does not contradict himself and there are no lies in the Bible so if they are saying that the only way that you could be forgiven for your sins is only with a blood sacrifice then why is it that the Bible has many examples of being forgiven without this this issue of forgiveness also rested with me the issue of sacrifices was interesting I began to note that while Christianity teaches so much the emphasis on sacrifice and blood I started seeing that there is no emphasis like that in the Tanakh that the emphasis in the Tanakh if I can quote the Jews for Jesus flyer tonight there is one scriptural reference the emphasis in the Tanakh is always on chuva, return and I will read from the Jews for Jesus flyer return to me and I will return to you says the Lord of Hosts the theme in the Bible is always return chuva, emphasis on sacrifice this issue of the doctrine of spiritual inerrancy that the Bible has no mistakes I saw countless and countless problems and the more I started reading books like Faith Strengthened on my own I started seeing that there were major flaws in this Christianity they battled with the devil which never left me and you got to understand any time I had a doubt the spiritual teaching was that this was from the devil I had to eventually say to myself devil be damned I must listen to my God given intellect and listen to what my heart is telling me is right or wrong there was also teachings in the New Testament that if they were from God they would clearly show me that either the New Testament was a lie or God doesn't have a handle on what he is teaching us from the teaching that is in the New Testament some of the things that are taught in the New Testament is that we should sell all our possessions and just believe and follow after Jesus we are taught that we should give the shirt off our backs and everything else to anybody that asks for it one of the anti-missionaries in Jerusalem exercised this verse in the New Testament that teaches that Christians must give their shirt and anything else that is asked of you and he approached the missionary at the hotel and asked them for his watch, his shirt, his shoes his undershirt and the missionary got the message there is something stupid there in the New Testament the New Testament teaches turn your cheek if somebody hits you on the left cheek turn your cheek on the right on the left on the right on the right teaches not to resist evil but allow your sister to be raped allow somebody to be murdered teaches resist not evil these teachings didn't seem to make logical sense to me I also saw in the group that I was involved in in Messianic Judaism particularly into marriage was at about 90% amongst these Jews who claim to be Jews for Jesus they claim to be Jewish believers in Jesus yet they are married to non-Jewish spouses how do you, what's so Jewish about this the anti-Semitism I experienced in Christianity both in the context of my exposure to the New Testament and the Christians that claim to be lovers of the Lord Jesus was astounding Christian history as I came to learn it more and more was nothing but a track record of violence against the Jewish people murder, pillage, rape lastly the issue was the Holocaust one dug that never left me was if Jesus is the Messiah then the 6 million who died in the Holocaust for them to be in heaven had to believe that Jesus was the Messiah they had to believe it in their hearts confess it with their mouths and then they would be born again and conversely the one who was responsible for the Holocaust if he repented the moment before he died he'd be sitting up in heaven this is what Christianity teaches I could not rest with this and I remember I spoke to my spiritual leader and I asked him, I said to him what about the Holocaust he flipped his pages in the Bible and turned to a passage where Jesus says no one comes unto the Father but by me and I said to him, you're trying to tell me that the 6 million who died in the Holocaust are not going to be with our Father in heaven because they didn't accept Jesus and he says, Julius, I'm not saying it it's the Word of God that's saying it then he flipped one other passage and said that he that believes in his heart and confesses with his mouth shall be saved and he that doesn't is damned and I'd say to him again, hey, are you trying to tell me that they're not saved, that they're damned and he's saying, I'm not saying it it's the Word of God eventually there was one friend I had from my initial immersion into Christianity, her name was Chaya and as I embarked on my path of Christianity she embarked on a path of Judaism and throughout my years of involvement she always kept in touch with me and after I would hug her chinic and a rabbi husband about Jesus and trying to get her to convert they'd finally say, OK, she was enough with the religion how are you? come, sit, come for Shabbos they would always be there to extend their hand no questions asked no reservation about being a friend finally the day came when I'd accumulated so many doubts based on these many inconsistencies and contradictions and mistranslations and false teachings in the New Testament that I eventually said that I had too much doubt to go ahead with this I had to back away and she phoned me she was back from Israel for a trip to visit her family and she asked me so how are you? and I confided with her and she said, hi, you know I'm having a real problem with my belief in this and I really believe I want to speak to somebody she arranged for me to speak to Rabbi Emmanuel Shachet in Toronto I met with him and spoke for a very, very long evening they encouraged me to go to Ishetorah and through the teaching at Ishetorah as well as Orsamayah I was able to for the first time in my life see what true Judaism really was my experience has taught me that there are a lot of counterfeits out there but as the mamas and papas that the originals always degraded I'll never forget that one of my last functions as a messianic Jew was preaching the trinity and the shmah to a group in Hamilton, Ontario and as I stood at the lectern just as I'm standing in front of you now I was so overwhelmed with the complete ridiculousness of what I was teaching that I vowed never to take this responsibility again to put myself in front of people to talk about this and the delights were so incredible that I had to say there has to be more logic to this this is not making sense anymore and as a result this experience in Christianity led me to come back to Judaism and over the years I've spoken out about my experience time and time again and that experience of teaching other Jews why not believe in Christianity has grown to the point where today I am now the director of Jews for Judaism in Toronto and it's interesting that in Toronto we've been able to initiate a worldwide advertising campaign to offer anti or counter missionary literature and tapes some of which are on sale here tonight and I've had the opportunity to use Rabbi Kravitz's eight-week course in Toronto and wonder of wonderful miracles of miracles there is a God let me tell you what happened just very quickly I was teaching Rabbi Kravitz his eight-week course and I have to recommend it based on this story alone a Hebrew Christian came to my class I'm going to close with this story his name is Stephen he came to my class in session four of Rabbi Kravitz's course and he came with the intent of disrupting the class and proving how wrong we were and by week eight of the class he in fact was one of the former Hebrew Christians that was answering the answer and question period two months later he's learning in Yashiv and Yerushalayim and all that was used to convince this person was the quality of the course content as well as some of the tapes that Jews for Judaism has produced so I urge you tonight to not only reflect on my story not only reflect on Jews for Judaism reflect with all that is in you on what it is that you are doing about being Jewish but Jews for Judaism to be successful we can't just run around talking about why Judaism is silent we must encourage Jews to please please please be Jewish thank you very much