 OK, good evening, and welcome to the second session of the Jews for Judaism Counter-Missionary Survival Seminar. Tonight's topic is the real Messiah, part one. Stay tuned for next week, part two. So tonight's class is going to be a very critical class because we're going to discuss the central claim of Christianity. The word Messiah in Greek is Christos. And when people refer to Jesus as Jesus Christ, Christ is not his last name, like Jesus Goldberg or Jesus Cohen. But Christ means Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Messiah. That's the claim they're making. They're making the claim that Jesus was the Christ, meaning Jesus was the Messiah. Our question tonight is going to be, how do we evaluate that claim? How do we know whether or not someone was the Messiah or whether someone is the Messiah? Obviously, to answer this question, we have to have a clear and accurate definition of what is the Messiah. Without a clear definition, there's no way of evaluating whether or not someone is or isn't. Let me give you an example. This morning, I was listening to the radio, and they asked the question of their listeners, how many of them thought that the terrible bombing in Boston was an act of terror? How many people thought the terrible bombing in Boston was an act of terror? And it was reported that 82% of the people listening to this radio station thought that the act that the bombing in Boston was an act of terror. I thought this was very strange. To me, it was 100% clear that the bombing in Boston was an act of terror. 100% clear. I was wondering, why did only 82% of the people think that it was an act of terror? What did they think it was? So it was clear to me that the problem here was what is the definition of terror? Obviously, not all of the people answering this question had the exact same definition of what is terrorism. So our question tonight, the issue tonight is going to be, what is the definition of the Messiah? What is the meaning of the Messiah? Who is the Messiah? What is the Messiah? And once we have a very clear definition, if we have a clear template, then we can evaluate anyone, whether they are or they aren't. That's the job for tonight. That's our assignment for tonight. So let's begin with trying to understand at the beginning tonight simply the meaning of the word. The word Messiah in Hebrew is masiach. Masiach. Masiach basically means to anoint. To anoint in the Bible was the act of usually pouring oil on someone or something in order to dedicate that person or that thing into the service of God. So for example, when you go through, when you read through the Bible, you'll see that when the Jewish people built the Mishkan, the tabernacle in the desert after they came out of Egypt, they anointed the vessels of the Mishkan. They anointed the menorah and the altar, et cetera. They took oil and they poured it over the parts of the Mishkan. We go through the Bible, we see that there were special people who were anointed, who had oil put on their head. For example, Aaron, the first high priest, was anointed with oil. So the high priest, the Koen Gadol, was anointed, was someone who was anointed. And that person would be called an anointed one. The person would be called a Mashiach, a Mashiach, a Messiah. We see in the Bible that the kings, the Jewish kings, like Sha'ul, Saul, the first king, was anointed with oil. He had oil put on his head. So Sha'ul would be called a Mashiach, a Messiah. David, David, the second king, is anointed with oil. And so he is called an anointed one, a Messiah, a Mashiach. There are times in the Bible where we see that prophets, a Navi, a prophet could be anointed with oil. So the important thing to understand is that in our Bible, in our Tanakh, in the Jewish Bible, there are many messiahs. That's an important thing to understand. There are many people who could be called a Messiah. It's not just one Messiah. There are many people. If you were living at the times of the Bible and you asked someone, where is the Messiah, they would say, which one? Are you referring to the high priest? Are you referring to the king? Are you referring to the prophet? Question tonight that we're going to try to analyze though is, does the Bible teach us anything about a special Messiah who would come in the future? And that Messiah we call the Messiah, the Messiah. In Hebrew, we would say ha Mashiach, ha Mashiach. Not just any Messiah, but the Messiah. So again, we start off tonight understanding that in the Bible, there are many messiahs. But where does the Bible speak about the Messiah? And the important thing to understand is the Bible never speaks about someone that the Bible calls the Messiah. Now that would have made the class tonight much shorter. It would have been a very easy class if you could go to the Bible, open up the index. The index of a Bible is called a concordancia of concordance. And look up the word ha Mashiach, the Messiah. And let's say you would find 25 places where the Bible, the Torah, speaks about the Messiah. And you would know exactly what the Bible teaches us about the Messiah. The problem for us tonight is that word never appears in the Bible to describe someone who is going to come in the future. How do we discover? How do we know that there is such a concept in the Bible? How do we know that the Bible has such a concept of a special anointed person who will come in the future that we call the Messiah? So let's try to understand how this concept developed. Number one, first part. The first thing to understand is that if you read through the entire Bible, you read through our entire Bible, you'll find there is one primary theme. When the Bible speaks about the future. One primary theme. Now there are times occasionally, there are times occasionally when a prophet speaks about the future when he's warning the Jewish people to improve. Sometimes the prophet might say to the Jewish people, if you don't improve, God will punish you. That's a prediction. So for example, when Jonah, the prophet, comes to Nineveh. So Jonah says that in 40 days, Nineveh will be overturned unless the people there improve. So there the prophet is making a prediction. And occasionally, you will find in the Bible times when the prophet makes a prediction, warning the people about what is going to happen if they don't improve. However, most of the predictions in the Bible, most of the we call prophecies in the Bible that speak about the future, are describing a special world, a new kind of world that will exist, meaning this. For most of human history, for most of human history and for most of Jewish history, the world has been a broken place. The world has been a place of war. The world has been a place of suffering. The world has been a place of unhappiness. The Jewish people have suffered throughout our history. The world is not the way it is supposed to be. The prophets all spoke about a time in the future when the world will be improved. The prophets all described a world where the world is going to be what we call a utopia, a paradise. That's the major theme in the Bible when the prophets spoke about the future. Let's try to understand what picture they painted. What kind of picture do they paint? The first theme that we'll discuss, if you want to follow in these sheets, it starts on page four. But the first theme that the prophets described was that the Jewish people would return to live in their homeland in Eretz Yisrael, in the land of Israel. Meaning from much of Jewish history, from much of Jewish history, we have been in Galut, we have been in exile. The prophets tell us that in the future, in the future, all the Jewish people will return to their homeland. All the Jewish people will return to live in the land of Israel. That includes, by the way, not just the Jewish people who are living in the world today, but we know that over 2,000 years ago, we had 10 of our tribes were taken into exile and basically disappeared. We call them the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel. And so the prophets here predict, they tell us that in the future, all those people, they were called the tribes of Israel, the ones that remained, we are from what's called the tribes of Judah, the kingdom of Judah. But the 10 Northern tribes from the kingdom of Israel that went into exile, they will be reunited with us. So not only will all the Jewish people that we know, all the Jewish people that we know today, come back to live in the land of Israel. But we're told that the lost tribes, those 10 lost tribes from the kingdom of Israel, they will also reunite with us. That's an amazing prophecy that the Jewish people will be reunited in our homeland. The second theme that I want to point out is on page 5. And this theme tells us that when the Jewish people, when the Jewish people return to our land, we will rebuild the Beit HaNiktash. We will have the holy temple restored in Jerusalem. Today, we do not have a holy temple. So the prophets tell us we will have a third temple in Jerusalem that I want to describe, is that the prophets teach us on the top of page 6. The prophets teach us on the top of page 6 that not only will the Jewish people return to the land of Israel, but the Jewish people will return to the observance of the Torah. So the prophets teach us that it's not only going to be a physical return of the Jewish people, it will be a spiritual return where all the Jewish people will now observe the Torah. Today, in the world today, maybe 15%, 20%, I'm not sure the exact numbers. But it's not a majority of the Jewish people today who observe the Torah. It's a small percentage. The prophets teach us that in the future, when we come back to our land, all the Jewish people will observe the Torah. On the bottom of page 6, the next theme that I want to point out is the theme that this will begin a reign of peace throughout the entire world. This is probably one of the major themes that the prophets speak about. Again, we are living today, right now, in a world where there are many wars going on, many people being killed every day. The Jewish people still live in our land today under attack. There are terrorist attacks. There are rockets and missiles being fired at Israel. Today, as we sit here in Toronto, our brothers and sisters living in Israel are in fear of the Iranians building a nuclear bomb and threatening the land of Israel. So the prophets tell us that in the future, there will be universal peace. Peace for the Jewish people living in the land of Israel and peace throughout the entire world. As a matter of fact, the prophets tell us that all of the weapons of war will be destroyed. All the weapons of war will be destroyed. On page 7, we find an amazing additional element of what this paradise will look like. When we study the Bible, we are taught that one of the major purposes of the Jewish people, one of the major reasons why God shows us to be His special people, is so that we should be an or lagoyim, a light to the nations. So in the beginning of Buresheet, in the beginning of Genesis, God says to Abraham, through your people, all of the nations of the world will be blessed. Before God gives the Jewish people the Torah at Mount Sinai, God says that you will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, a Mamlechet Kohanim, the Goi Kadosch. The Jewish people are supposed to be teachers of the rest of the world. The prophet Isaiah tells us the Jewish people are supposed to be God's witnesses. God's witnesses. We are supposed to testify about God to the world. And so one of the themes in the Bible is that in the future, the world is going to turn to the Jewish people and ask us to teach them about God. It's one of the most amazing prophecies in the Bible. Again, the Bible says that we are supposed to be teachers. We're supposed to be a light. And the Bible tells us that one day, the nations will turn to our light. The prophet Zechariah, the prophet Zechariah, in chapter 8, verse 23, says that in those days, 10 people from every nation in the world will grab hold of a Jew and ask us to teach them about God. They will say, we have heard that God is with you. We want you to teach us about God. So one of the major themes in the Bible is that in the future, the entire world, every human being, will come to believe in God. Now, this that I have described to you is a pretty amazing picture. The prophets teach us something that is incredible. The prophets are telling us that in the future, the world is going to be a different place. The prophets tell us that in the future, the Jewish people are going to be living in their homeland. They're going to have a temple. They're going to all observe the Torah. We're going to be a light to the nations of the world. We're going to spread the knowledge of God to the rest of the world. And the whole world will become a world where, since everyone is a child of God, everyone in the world is a brother and a sister where all brothers and sisters were the children of one God. So there will be peace throughout the entire world. It's an amazing, amazing description of a totally transformed world, a utopia, a paradise. Now, the interesting thing is that if you were to read through all of the passages on these pages, what's interesting is that all they describe is a transformed world. They don't mention any particular person who will be playing a special role at that time. So if we are looking for information about the Messiah, it's not going to be in those passages. All of these passages in the Bible just talk about a transformed world, but they don't mention any special person. It's one of the reasons why some people, I believe, mistakenly thought that the Bible only describes a messianic age, but not a Messiah. There are people who believe that the Bible only speaks about a messianic age, but not about a person that we call the Messiah. The reason I believe they are incorrect is because if we turn to page 8, if we look at page 8, we will see that there are among these hundreds of passages. Let me make this clear to you. When it comes to this original collection of material in the Bible, we're talking about probably at least 100, if not more, at least 100 passages that speak about a transformed world. And I describe that in the circles that you see there, the big circle I call A. The A circle is the big circle because here we're talking about, let's say approximately 100 passages in the Bible, approximately 100, probably even more. But inside that big set, it's a set, again, of passages that describe a transformed utopian world, there is a smaller set that we call the B, the B circle. And those passages in the B circle, they speak about not only a transformed utopian world, they speak about a special person who will be a descendant of King David, he will be a descendant of King David, and he will be the king, he will be the king of the Jewish people at that time. It's important to remember that the Bible never calls that person the Messiah. The Bible never calls that person the Messiah. However, we know that person will be a king. As a matter of fact, one of the promises that God made to King David was that any future king has to be a descendant of him. David was told that he will be the origin, the source of all future kings. And so what we have here is a picture in the Bible of approximately 10 passages, about 10 passages, that describe this special king who will rule as the leader, as the ruler of the Jewish people, when the whole world is transformed into a paradise, when the Jews have come back to their land, when the temple's been rebuilt, when the Jews return to the Torah, when we spread the knowledge of God to the rest of the world, and when the whole world is living in peace, we're told there's going to be a special king from the line of David, and that is the Messiah. That particular Messiah, that particular anointed one, we call the Messiah. We call that anointed one the anointed one. Again, the Bible never calls this person the Messiah, but obviously he is. What the Bible is describing here, very simply, is a special Messiah, a special anointed one, a special king who will rule when the world has reached its goal, when the world has been transformed into the kind of world it is supposed to be. We're going to read some of the highlights of what the Bible describes here. And I want you to pay careful attention. In Isaiah chapter 11, the Bible tells us there will be a descendant of Jesse, Yishai. Yishai we know is the father of King David. So the Bible tells us there will be a descendant of Yishai and the spirit of God will rest upon him. He will have a spirit of wisdom and understanding, and he will be filled with a spirit of the fear of God. He will be a very special person, wise and righteous, and we're told he will judge with righteousness and we're told that he will be a righteous person and a wise person. And we're told that when he is here, we're told that the wolf will be able to live with the sheep and the prophet Isaiah here describes all the animals that would never get along living together in peace. And then finally, Isaiah says here in chapter 11, verse nine, they will neither hurt nor destroy in all of my holy mountain for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. Again, these are the two themes. It says, why will there be no more destruction and no more people hurting each other? Why? Because the knowledge of God will be spread across the world like the waters that cover the sea. The prophet Yermiyahu, Jeremiah in his 23rd chapter tells us again, the days are coming, he says. It's going to happen in the future where God says, I will raise up for David a righteous descendant, a righteous branch, and he will reign as king and deal wisely. So again, a wise and righteous king from the line of David. And Jeremiah says that when he is ruling, Israel, Judah will be safe. We're not going to be in safety. We're not going to have to worry about any more war and terrorism. The prophet Ezekiel, Yecheskel in his 37th chapter. I want to share this with you because it's probably the most compact passage that tells us exactly what this Messiah will be. Ezekiel, Yecheskel says, my servant David, God says his servant David will be a king over the Jewish people. And God says they will follow my ordinances and keep my decrees and fulfill them. The Bible says we're going to follow God's Torah. And then it says they will live in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, in which your ancestors lived. They and their children and their children's children will live there forever. My servant David will be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It will be an everlasting covenant. And I will bless them and I will multiply them. And I will set my sanctuary among them forever more. They're going to have their holy temple. My dwelling place will be with them. I will be their God and they will be my people. Then the nations of the world will know that I am God who sanctifies Israel when my sanctuary is among them forever more. When will the world finally realize that God means business? It's when they see the Jewish people back in their land with their temple rebuilt. Now, what I would like to review now with you, what I think is very important is to understand three things about this definition. Again, what I tried to show you very simply tonight is that there are two sets in the Bible. Set A is a big collection, a large collection of let's say approximately 100 or more passages in the Bible which speak about simply a transformed world, a utopian world. And then a smaller collection that describes the same transformed world but also tell us there'll be a special king that will reign as the ruler of the Jewish people when all of that happens. So the bottom line here is that what we know, what we see from the Bible is that the Messiah will be the wise and righteous descendant of King David who will rule Israel as their king when the world has been transformed into a utopia. The important thing to understand, this is a fine point, but an important point is that the Bible does not spend a lot of time describing this person. There are only let's say 10 passages that speak about him. And all we know is that he will descend from David, he will be wise, he'll be righteous. But the Bible spends most of its time describing not the Messiah, but the Bible spends most of its time describing what the world will look like when the Messiah is here. That's the important thing to understand that the emphasis in the Bible is describing what the world will look like when he, the Messiah, is here. So there are three parts to this chart that I want to go over with you now. Part number one is that this description I've just painted for you is exhaustive. By exhaustive I mean that it uses up, it uses up all the material in the Bible that describes a descendant of David who will come in the future. In other words, there is nothing else in the Bible. There is not one other description in the Bible of a descendant of David who will come in the future and do anything else. Now why is this important? Because it's very obvious that Jesus, not just Jesus, no one has accomplished this, right? I mean that we Christians often ask me, they'll say, if you don't believe in Jesus, they say, how will you know when, who the Messiah is? How will you know who the Messiah is? And I say, how will I know? It's very simple. I'll look out the window, I'll read the newspaper, and I'll see, have all these things happened. Again, what the Bible is telling us is we will know who the Messiah is based upon whether or not the world has been transformed. So if I see the Jewish people have returned to their land, they've built the temple, the whole world is chasing after the Jewish people, teach us please about God. All the Jewish people are observing the Torah. The whole world becomes believers in God, and all the weapons of war are destroyed in this peace throughout the world. That's pretty obvious. I'll see that the Messiah has come. Tell you a story. Many years ago, I went to a meeting of Christians. Most of them are very nice to me. One of them said to me, Rabbi Skobak, you Jews are very stupid. I was shocked. I said, why do you say that we are all very stupid? So he asked me a question. He said, who was the greatest rabbi that ever lived? So I said, I don't know, you tell me. He says, well, I'll tell you. The Jews are very stupid because they listen to what the rabbis teach. That's what he told me. He said, the Jews are very stupid because we listen to what the rabbis teach. I said, what's wrong with listening to the rabbis? So he said, well, wasn't Rabbi Akiva the greatest rabbi that ever lived? He wanted to know why I thought the greatest rabbi was. I don't know. He said, Rabbi Akiva wasn't Rabbi Akiva the greatest rabbi that ever lived. And I said, Rabbi Akiva is probably in the top 10. So he said to me, well, Rabbi, let's go back. Didn't Rabbi Akiva make a very, very serious mistake when he assumed that Bar Kokhba was the Messiah? Now, in case you had not heard of Bar Kokhba, he was a Jewish general. He led a rebellion against the Romans. About a hundred years after Jesus and Rabbi Akiva pointed to him and said, he is going to be the Messiah. So this Christian said to me, look, if your greatest rabbi, Rabbi Akiva, was wrong about the Messiah, then maybe all the other rabbis are wrong for not believing in Jesus. And if all the rabbis are wrong for not believing in Jesus, he said you Jews are very stupid for listening to the rabbis. That was his whole argument. So I smiled inside because this is a very famous story that happened to one of our great rabbis over a hundred years ago, Rabbi Chaim of Brisk. It happened to him on a train. He heard a missionary talking to some Jews. I just said the same thing now. Rabbi Chaim of Brisk said, I asked this Christian the following question. I said, you're putting down all the Jews for listening to the rabbis because you assume that our greatest rabbi was wrong. I said to this Christian, how do you know Rabbi Akiva was wrong? I asked this Christian, what makes you so sure that Rabbi Akiva was wrong? I said, how do you know that Bar Kokhba wasn't the Messiah? How do you know Bar Kokhba was not the Messiah? And the Christian looked at me and said, what are you talking about? Bar Kokhba, he was killed by the Romans and did not bring peace to the world. I said, if it was so obvious that Bar Kokhba wasn't the Messiah because he was killed by the Romans and didn't bring peace to the world, that's the same exact thing that happened to Jesus. He was killed by the Romans and didn't bring peace to the world. So the problem basically at this point for Christianity is that we have in the Bible a very clear description of what the Messiah will be. And the primary thing to understand is that the Bible describes what the world will look like when the Messiah is here. 2,000 years ago when Jesus came, the world did not look like this. The world did not meet any of these requirements. The world was still a broken world. The Jews were still suffering. There was war throughout the world. Not everybody believed in God. Most of the world were pagans. So it's very clear that the Bible has a job description. Jesus did not fulfill the job description. Why is it so important to say that this diagram is exhaustive? Meaning there's nothing else in the Bible about a descendant of David who will come in the future. Because what I've done now in number one over here is to eliminate, we've eliminated any alternative job description. Meaning what the Christian cannot come to me now and say is, look, you have made a very pretty diagram here but there are many, many other passages in the Bible that talk about this descendant of David and he will do other things, right? And maybe Jesus did those things. The problem is there isn't anything else in the Bible about a descendant of David who will come in the future. So this description I've given you is exhaustive. There's not anything else in the Bible about a descendant of David who will come in the future. Number two, this description that we've studied tonight is clear and consistent. Now this is very important to understand not just for tonight, but for the rest of the class, for the rest of the next weeks. Because the question is, how do you know whether anything that you're studying, whether you're right, whether you really understand something properly? So I believe that in order to know that you understand the Bible properly, you can test that if your understanding is clear and consistent. Let me explain what this means. By clear, what I mean is that we are looking at passages where everyone agrees to what it means. There are sometimes when you read the Bible, and that's just the Bible. Sometimes you could read any text and not everybody agrees. Once everyone doesn't agree, right, then you could have your opinion, you could have your opinion. But here we're dealing with passages which are clear. Now how do we know when something is clear? We know something is clear when everyone agrees. When everyone agrees, it's clear. So the interesting thing is that when it comes to these passages, it's not just the Jewish people who say they are describing the Messiah. All the Christians agree with us. Everyone agrees. Yes, these passages are speaking about the Messiah. That's how I know we can be comfortable in the way we're understanding this material because there's no dispute. Everyone agrees. Secondly, not only is the material clear, meaning the passages that this is based upon are clear, but they're consistent. By that I mean, this whole picture I've developed is not only based upon one isolated passage in one book of the Bible, right? If I were to tell you the whole concept I have of the Messiah is based upon one passage in the book of Jeremiah, that's not so strong. But what I've shown you is it's a picture that is corroborated, meaning it, so it's a picture which is corroborated, it's substantiated, not just by one passage. It's consistently spoken about in many passages of the Bible, in many books of the Bible. Jeremiah speaks about it. Isaiah speaks about it. Ezekiel speaks about it. Hosea speaks about it. Many of our prophets speak about the exact same description of this descendant of David. So again, we can feel comfortable, not just comfortable, we can feel certain that our description is accurate because it's clear and it is consistent. Finally, the last thing I want to share with you, this is a fancy word, but this description I've shared with you is empirically verifiable, which basically means in simple English, you can see it with your own eyes. You can see it. Let me explain what this means. If you read through the entire Bible, try to find out how often does the Bible speak about believing in the Messiah, to believe in the Messiah. That expression never comes up. We live here in a wonderful country. Stephen Harper is our prime minister. Anyone tell you, I happen to personally believe that Stephen Harper is the prime minister. Or would anyone say, you know, I happen to personally believe that Barack Obama is the president of the United States. You would think someone like that was strange. What do you mean you believe it to be true? It's not anything you believe in. We know that Barack Obama is the president of the United States. He won the election. He's sitting in the White House. He's the president. So the Bible never speaks about believing in the Messiah. Why? Because as I said before, we will know who the Messiah is because we'll be able to look out the window. We'll be able to read the newspaper. The signs of when the Messiah is here are visible. You can see with your own eyes how the Jewish people return to their homeland. Has there been a temple that's been rebuilt? Have the weapons of war been destroyed and the world is now a place of peace? This is not something you have to believe in. This is something that you will know when it happens. Everybody in the world is going to know it. And so the Bible never speaks about believing in the Messiah. However, what do Christians always speak about? All Christians speak about is, do you believe in Jesus? Because they don't have a Messiah concept that you can see. Their concept of the Messiah, as we'll see in coming weeks, their concept of the Messiah is not empirically verifiable. It's not something that you can see. It's something that you have to believe on faith. So again, it's very, very important to understand these three aspects, these three aspects of the Jewish Messiah. Number one, that it's a description that is exhaustive. Number two, it is clear and consistent. Number three, it is empirically verifiable. It should be clear at this point the Messiah has not yet come. It's nothing personal against Jesus. It's nothing personal against Jesus. As a matter of fact, there have been many people in Jewish history, many people who claimed to be the Messiah. None of them has fulfilled what the Bible teaches us. The Bible gives us a description. The Bible gives us a template. The Bible gives us a job description. It has not been fulfilled by anyone. To us as Jews, it is clear, that the Messiah has not yet come. I want to share two more points before we conclude for this evening. Point number one is actually very complicated and I'm not going to deal with it in great detail, but just that you should know there is a potential problem here. One of the things that is the clearest about the Messiah is that the Messiah has to be a descendant of King David. That's one of the clearest things in the Bible because in every passage about the Messiah, it speaks about him as basically a descendant of David. So the question is, was Jesus a descendant of David? Was Jesus a descendant of David? Now the Christian Bible spends a lot of time trying to substantiate, trying to prove that Jesus was a descendant of David. And in two chapters in the Christian Bible, two different chapters, it gives the whole genealogy, gives the whole list of people going from King David all the way down to Jesus. Try to trace to give you all of the names. There are many, many problems with these lists. What problem is that one list is much bigger than the other list? And that's very strange because let's say, for example, someone wrote my biography, right? And they were going to trace me back to my great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. Let's say, I came all the way from King David. So let's say one of them had 30 generations and the other one had 40 generations. Why is that? Why is one list so much bigger than the other one? The other problem is if you compare the two chapters in the Christian Bible, all the names are basically different except for two. How is that possible? If someone wrote my biography and said, Michael, the son of William, the son of Isaac, and someone else said, no, Michael, the son of Bob, the son of Joe. Which one is it? So one of the problems is that the Christian Bible tries to prove that Jesus comes from David and yet the evidence it brings is contradictory. That's one problem. Another problem is that in the Christian Bible we're told something very strange. We're told that Jesus didn't really have a father. One of the beliefs of Christianity is a belief in what they call the virgin birth. It means that Mary, the mother of Jesus, did not have relations with a man. She was married to a man named Joseph. She was married to Joseph, but they never had relations. And so Jesus did not have, according to the Christian Bible, a father. So what happens is in these lists that they provide, all they really do is trace his mother's husband back to King David, but then the Christian Bible says, but this man, Joseph, was not the father of Jesus. So all of their efforts to try and trace Jesus back to King David is sabotaged because they say that his mother's husband was not his father. All they really do, all the Christian Bible really does is to trace Joseph back to Jesus. Again, Joseph is the husband of Mary, but the Christian Bible says that Joseph, though, was not the father of Jesus. So here we have a problem. How does Jesus trace himself back to King David? And there are many, many other problems. We're not gonna go into all of them. Just be aware that when it comes to the genealogy, when it comes to the ability to trace Jesus all the way back to King David, there are serious problems. I wanna share one last problem with you. And that is on page 14 of your source sheets. So here we have an interesting prophecy from the Jewish Bible, which tells us that before the coming of the Messiah, before the coming of the Messiah, Elijah the prophet is going to return. Jewish people were very in tune with Elijah the prophet. It's interesting that in the Jewish Bible this prophet never died. We're told that at the end of his life he went up to heaven, never died. And the Bible tells us in the last few verses of the prophet Malachi, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord, before this incredible time, when basically it's the day, doesn't mean a 24 hour day, it means this era, this time, when it'll be the time of the Lord because it's talking about that time when the whole world will believe in God. So before that time comes, the prophet tells us that Elijah the prophet, Elijah the prophet will return. Pretty simple. All Jews basically and all Christians believe this is a messianic prophecy. If it really is a messianic prophecy, if it really is Elijah the prophet return before Jesus came. Again, if Christians are claiming that Jesus was the Messiah, then Elijah the prophet would have had to have returned before Jesus came. Did Elijah the prophet return or not? So in the Christian Bible, we're told that Elijah the prophet did return. And he came as this very famous person back then named John the baptizer. It was a famous Jew at the time of Jesus whose name was Jochenan, Jochenan John. And he would help people to repent, to do chuvah by taking them into the Jordan River and putting them in a big mikvah, it was called a mikvah, right? And he was a way of preparing them, helping them to become better people. So the Christian Bible says that this person named John the baptizer was Elijah the prophet. Again, that's the claim that is made. That's the claim that is made. And we understand why they make that claim. Because again, the Jewish Bible says that if someone is the Messiah, then Elijah the prophet had to have come back before that person. So for us, the question is, was John the baptizer, was this person Jochenan? John the baptizer, was he Elijah the prophet, Eliyahuahnavi or not? Was he or wasn't he? So it's interesting that in the Christian Bible, in one of their books, they ask him, the Jewish people ask this John the baptizer, they say, are you Elijah? They ask him, are you Elijah? And he says, no, I am not. So it's very hard to insist that no, he really is Elijah the prophet. When they ask him straight to his face, he says, no, I'm not. Another problem is that the prophet Malachi tells us that when Elijah the prophet returns, he's going to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. It's not clear what that means, but it seems to be something significant. And there's no evidence that John the baptizer accomplished that in any way. So here we have two additional problems with Jesus. Again, I just wanna sum up now. The major problem that we have as Jews in terms of Jesus being the Messiah, is that the Bible has a job description. The Bible has a template. The Bible has a clear picture of who the Messiah will be. He will be a wise and righteous descendant of King David, who's going to rule Israel when the whole world has been transformed into a paradise. The whole world has not been transformed into a paradise. It's clear to us, there's no Messiah yet. Secondly, we saw that in the Bible, the Messiah has to be a descendant of King David. It's not so clear to us that Jesus really was. And finally, the Bible teaches us that before the Messiah comes, Elijah the prophet has to return. And we have no evidence that Elijah the prophet returned before Jesus came. So that's basically the class for tonight. We call it the real Messiah part one. Next week, we're going to continue with the real Messiah part two because there are many questions that come up now. For example, what do Christians say about all of this? I mean, I think I made a pretty clear case tonight why Jesus could not have been the Messiah. And so next week, we're going to begin to study what do the Christians say in response to tonight's class. Okay, thank you all very much. And before you leave, if there are any questions, I'll be happy to try and answer any questions. Okay, yes, don't believe that they hadn't. Right, that's what they believe. They say it was a miracle.