 our nation and our world and we're so glad that you're joining us on this Tuesday for Hope Today. Hope you enjoyed your Memorial Day. I'm here with Tom and Anna and Tom. We are really going to dive in today about what God is doing, how He's moving across the earth and the things that He's doing. I'm really excited. Oh, I am too. You know, all my adult Christian life, I've heard this that Jesus fulfilled these Old Testament prophecies, like 300 of them. And it always sounds kind of like a math problem. Like, here's the prophecies and Jesus fulfilled them, so He's the Messiah. But there's much more to it than that. And Rabbi Kurt Schneider will be with us to take us through the Word of God, showing how the entire Old Testament paints a rich and colorful picture of Jesus, and it proves that He's the Messiah. You're not going to want to miss this conversation because it'll show you why the followers of Jesus, we can have absolute confidence that Jesus is who He claimed to be. This book is great. And the whole subject is great. Yeah, absolutely. It is a fascinating study for sure. I mean, I've had the privilege to sit under a teacher that has shared just some of the basic surface things, but to be able to sit with somebody who has spent years diving into those prophecies to understand how the Old Testament speaks of Jesus from the very beginning, it can truly be a life-changing conversation. It truly is. And you know, one thing I love just diving into is like the Hebrew and the Jewish roots of things, because there's so many things in Scripture because of the Hebrew words and because of the English language. Not everything gets translated, but the moment you really begin to dive in into the Old Testament, I love, like I feel like I live in the Old Testament. I'll be honest more than the New Testament, but there's just so many things that are revealed when you study that it truly points to Jesus. And so I love these conversations and just to hear how God is moving and what He's doing. And so I'm really excited to have Rabbi Schneider do that. You're like our onset Hebrew scholar. You're always bringing out the Hebrew words. I really want to take a Hebrew class because there's just so much. Like I've just been in Genesis and just like simple little words that we miss or we overlook. And I'm like, oh my goodness, it's just so rich with stuff. It changes your whole life. I love it so much. So I'm like, I'm so grateful that for the translations, I'm so thankful for the Strong's Concordance. I'm so thankful for all of it to learn and dive in. Keep studying your Bible. That's right. That's right. And we just want to remind you that we always have prayer partners standing by. If you need prayer, if there's something in your heart in your life, I mean, we're so glad that you tuned in. We're so glad that you're watching, but we want to be there for you. So if you have a need, you have something happening, you want someone to agree with you in prayer, you can get hold of our prayer partners. Well, our next guest, he's a great friend of Cornerstones. You can see him regularly on our channel hosting his program, Discovering the Jewish Jesus. Rabbi Kerch Schneider has authored several books and in his most recent one, Messianic Prophecy Revealed, he sets out to prove that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. Rabbi Schneider, it's great to have you with us on Hope Today. God bless you, my brother. God bless you, my friends, Ann and Sidney. Good to be with you today. Well, it's great to have you and I love the subject matter we're going to be talking about. So tell me, maybe just for everyone out there, what is Messianic Prophecy? Why do we need to study it in the church today? Well, the New Testament writers referred to prophecies from the Hebrew Bible, explaining how Yeshua, how Jesus fulfilled them. And it's extremely important for God's people, now more than ever, perhaps, to be drilled down into understanding how Jesus, how Yeshua, fulfilled the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible. You alluded a moment ago, Tom, that there is a lot of misunderstanding in terms of what Messianic Prophecy is. And as you had indicated, many pastors have made statements from the pulpit. Jesus fulfilled more than 300 prophecies from the Old Testament and the chance of somebody doing that was mathematically impossible as if all the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled were predictions that can be scientifically measured. But the way that the writers of the New Testament that we call in Hebrew, the Brighadoshah, the New Covenant, the way that they use the Hebrew Bible, explaining how Yeshua fulfilled that, was not always connecting Yeshua to a prediction that can be scientifically measured. So for example, you read, I'm just quoting Nostradamus as an example, I don't believe in Nostradamus. You know, Nostradamus, let's say, made specific predictions. I'm taking something out of nowhere. Let's say that he said there was going to be an earthquake in this part of the world in this year. Well, you could see whether it happened or not, and it's scientifically measured. But a lot of the way the New Testament writers use the Hebrew Bible saying that Jesus, in effect, fulfilled it, was more music than math, more art than science. So for example, we find in the book of Matthew that when the angel appeared to Joseph saying to him, take the child into Egypt, because Herod's killing the Hebrew children, Joseph took Jesus into Egypt. Then when Herod died, the angel came back to Joseph and said, take the child back into Israel now. And then Matthew quoted from the Hebrew Bible. He said that the scripture might be fulfilled. So he's speaking of messianic prophecy here, that the scripture might be fulfilled. And then he gave us this scripture that was fulfilled. Out of Egypt, did I call my son? So when you find out where in the Hebrew Bible that scripture is out of Egypt, did I call my son, that Matthew said, Jesus fulfilled, you find that scripture in only one place, that is, Hosea chapter 11 verse one. But when you read Hosea 11 verse one, Hosea is not using it there as a predictive prophecy. In fact, all he's doing is recounting Israel's past before even his lifetime, recounting how the Lord delivered Israel out of Egypt during the Exodus. But now Matthew says that Jesus fulfilled it. And you kind of wonder, well, how did Jesus fulfill it? Because it wasn't even a prophecy. But what we have to understand is the New Testament writers oftentimes use prophecy by showing that Jesus repeated Israel's history in his own life, thereby filling Israel's history up with meaning and by being Israel's divine representative and divine head. So that what Israel went through, Jesus went through, filling the scriptures up with meaning. But to your point, my friend, it's important now more than ever to understand messianic prophecy. Much of it is predictive, even though I just gave an example of when it's not. Much of it is predictive. And the reason it's so important for believers to understand this is because of the pressure that's being put upon God's people to compromise, even the fundamental doctrine that Jesus is the only way. When you're grounded in the Hebrew scriptures and when you're grounded in messianic prophecy, you will be absolutely 100% convinced that Jesus is the only way and his shed blood alone is the only means of forgiveness in being able to stand before the Lord, holy and blameless. You know, I love that again in the book you mentioned about how something, just like the example you gave, could be fulfilled at the time it was spoken or there or close to that, but also be a messianic prophecy. And you even use the example of where Isaiah says the virgin shall be with child. And that's another one. But I wanted to ask you also, the lives of some of the characters in the Old Testament, specifically, I'm thinking of Joseph as a type of the life of Christ. Could you explain how you use that as predicting the Messiah? I love the way Yeshua fulfilled the lives of some of the patriarchs, Abraham and Isaac, but to Joseph, another great example. Here's Joseph, right? He's rejected by his own people. He's rejected by his own brothers, even as Yeshua was rejected by his own brothers. As a result of being rejected by his brothers, Joseph is sent in to Egypt. He's sent to the Gentiles. And what happens when he's sent into Egypt? He becomes the savior of the Egyptians. He becomes the savior of the Gentiles. He tells them how to prepare for the famine. He's exalted, and so all of Egypt has embraced him. Then later, his brothers come to Egypt looking for grain and they realize who he is. So it's similar because Jesus originally rejected by his own family, his own brothers. As a result of that, the message goes to the Gentiles, right? Paul brings the message to the Gentiles because the Jewish people would not receive it. Now what has happened is the Gentile world has received Jesus by and large. We're not talking about every single person, but I'm just talking about in general terms, the Gentile world has received him. And now what we're looking for is the second half of the story for the Jewish people to recognize who he is. And in fact, Jesus will not return until the Jewish people are saying, Baruch Hababah Shem Adonai, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. So Joseph is a great example rejected by his own brothers, sent to the Gentiles. The Gentiles believe that later his own brother's eyes are open when Joseph takes off the Egyptian clothing and they see it's their brother Joseph. And by the way, Tom, to your question, it's interesting that one of the reasons that the the the Joseph's brothers did not immediately recognize him, Joseph, when they came to Egypt to buy grain is because Joseph looked like an Egyptian, right? He had been raised there wearing Egyptian makeup, Egyptian clothes. And today, so oftentimes Jewish people don't recognize that Yeshua is the Jewish Messiah because the way the church is painting them up, he looks like a Gentile, like Leonardo da Vinci's picture of the Last Supper. Jesus has got, you know, blonde hair, blue eyes and some type of, you know, blouse. He didn't look like that. He had olive skin, probably dark hair, brown eyes, you know, a tough looking guy, not a guy dressed in a feminine orange blouse. Well, and he was a carpenter besides, right? So I'm sure he didn't look like a lot of the pictures that we see. I mean, this is such a rich conversation. I love this. And there's so much in the book. One of the things, and there's there's so many things we can get to, but some of the things that stuck out to me, Jesus fulfills the necessity of a mediator. You talk about that. And could you just share a little bit about that, how in the Old Testament it was, and how Jesus fulfills that role? Well, that's really interesting because, you know, one of the things that Jewish people today will say is we don't need a mediator. We don't need Jesus. We don't need a mediator. But as you pointed out, Tom, Israel's history in terms of their relationship with God, there was always a media mediator, right? The Levitical priesthood was a mediator. There was always a mediator. Somebody, the high priest was Israel's mediator. Israel couldn't just offer their own sacrifices in their own home. They had to bring their sacrifice to the temple. The priest offered it up on their behalf and ultimately on Yom Kippur, the most holy day on the Jewish calendar, the Day of Atonement. Only the high priest could bring in the blood of the bull and the blood of the goat into the Holy of Holies and pour that blood upon the altar. And so, similarly today, Christ Jesus, the God-man, Christ Jesus, is the mediator between God and man, fulfilling the Levitical priesthood in his own body. And so, the concept of a mediator has always been part of biblical Judaism. Even though today, the average Jewish mind says, we don't need Jesus, we don't need somebody in the middle force. We go directly to God. But, Biblically, it's never been that way. Well, let me ask you, we've got a lot more we can talk about here, and I would recommend the book, Messianic Prophecy Revealed. I would highly recommend this for everyone to get it because there's so much here. But let me ask you, Rabbi, about your story. How is it that a Jewish young man comes to Jesus? Well, the Lord appeared to me supernaturally in 1978. I knew nothing about Jesus at the time. Jesus was as far away to me as the man on the moon. I never thought of him seriously, Tom Anderson. He never entered my mind. But I was going through a difficult time in life. I wrestled all through school. I was a very committed athlete. I trained like a professional. And when I walked off the wrestling mat after wrestling my last match in high school, I realized I was going into a world and wrestling didn't mean anything anymore. Like in high school, that's all I saw. I had one goal, to be state champ in my weight class. And I didn't think beyond that. And my whole world was in my weight class. But after I walked off that wrestling mat after wrestling the last match in high school, it was like, okay, what's next? And I was completely unprepared. So I went out to school, University of Tampa on a small wrestling scholarship. I never did become state champ, but I got to the place where I felt there wasn't anybody I couldn't beat. So in my own mind, I was kind of living, you know, with that type of victory in my mind. But again, when I when I walked off the wrestling mat, went off to college, it was like, I was dealing with a huge world now, not a world of 119 pounders. But I was dealing with a world that was bigger than I was. I wasn't in control. And I just went into a tailspin. I lost my identity. I was overtaken by fear. I spent as much time as possible just sleeping to escape the mental torment I was in, because I didn't know how to get that sense of security and peace of mind back that I had when I was wrestling. Eventually I dropped out of college. I thought maybe if I made a lot of money, it would help to ease some of the pain. And it was in the time period where I was doing a business, I was working on a business that I went to sleep one night. And in the middle of the night, I was awoken from my sleep. Again, no one had ever witnessed to me. I never read the New Testament. But in 1978, at 20 years old, I was awoken from my sleep in Cleveland, Ohio. And Jesus appeared to me in a vision. All of a sudden I was aware that I wasn't sleeping. I was aware that something was going on. It was like a heightened sense of awareness. And then in color, Jesus appeared on the cross and I could see the people around him in the distance and then a ray of red light from straight to the sky, from straight above, even above the blue, beamed down on his head. When I saw that ray of red light beamed down on his head, I understood that the light was coming from God and that the Lord was showing me that Jesus was the way to him. So that's how I came to faith all those years ago. I actually tell my whole testimony in a book that I wrote called to breakthrough. My parents actually hired kidnappers. They were deep programs that they were, my parents flew them in from California to Cleveland. They basically abducted me and took me to San Diego where they tried to rehabilitate me to get me out of believing in Jesus. My parents were so panicked by it. And then when that didn't work, my parents hired a Jewish psychiatrist to get me probated to a psychiatric ward of a hospital in Cleveland, Mount Sinai Hospital. So as a Jewish person believing in Jesus, it's a very shameful thing in the Jewish community. And my parents did everything they could to try to stop it. But here I am, you know, 40 years later, been married for over 40 years. And you know, the Lord's opened up a, you know, a large ministry for me. Rabbi Schneider, just hearing your God stories truly inspiring and just really feeling our spirit. You know, we have a very large Jewish community here in Pittsburgh in Squirrel Hill. And we have people watching from all over. And we even know that people of different faiths. So you could just take a moment and speak to that person that may have stumbled across us on TV or maybe even on YouTube or whatever way they found to just take that moment and speak to the one person that is looking for the way and the truth of life. But Yeshua is the way. Can you just take a moment and speak to that person? Thank you, Sydney. Well, it's all about the blood. If you look in the Hebrew Bible, the only way that God's people ever had forgiveness with him and the only way they were ever able to enter into a relationship with them was through a blood atonement. It began at Passover when the Jewish people applied the blood to the doorpost and judgment passed them over on Yom Kippur. They brought the blood into the temple, into the Holy of Holies and God overlooked the sin of the people. The Torah says the life of the flesh is in the blood and I've given it to you on the altar to make an atonement for your soul. And there's much more to it. But I would say to somebody that's listening right now that has never committed themselves to Jesus, to Yeshua, I would encourage you to research what I'm saying. The blood is the only means. The life of the flesh, the scripture says in the Torah, is in the blood, Leviticus 1711. And I've given it to you on the altar to make an atonement for your soul for it's the blood by reason of its life that makes atonement. The only way a just God can forgive sin is when an innocent one's life has been given in place of the guilty. That's why there was all the sacrifices in the Hebrew Bible. The innocent animal died and shed its blood on behalf of the guilty. So right now you're hearing my voice and you're just hearing it. It's true. It's just fact. It's truth. And you're saying you're feeling your spirit. This is true. Just open up your heart right now and say, God, I don't know and understand all this, but I just sense that what Rabbi Schneider is telling me right now is real and it's true. I'm asking you to come into my life or give me my sins. Draw me to yourself and save me. Such a powerful word. Thank you for bringing that truth and wanted to just shift gears to an initiative that you are launching that is just really revolutionary of this taking the rainbow back. The boldness of the true promises of the rainbow, what the Scripture speaks of. Can you share a little bit about that initiative? Absolutely. So let me say that back in 1978 when I had my original salvation experience when Jesus appeared to me in the vision of the night, about three years after that in 1981, the Lord started showing me some things in my life that I needed to turn away from, that I needed to repent of. And one of the things he showed me was cigarettes. And so he was showing me, you know, every time you get anxious, every time you're looking to be satisfied, you reach for a cigarette. He said to me, I want you to give up those cigarettes. I want you to turn to me rather than those cigarettes for life. Those cigarettes are taking life from you. They're not giving you life. So I was going through this season of repentance, sitting in a chair one morning and I was drinking a cup of tea, Sydney. I'm sorry, Anna, because the tea had replaced the cigarettes. You know, I was a little jittery giving up the cigarettes. I'm drinking a cup of tea. And while I'm sitting in this chair in 1981, not expecting anything to happen, suddenly the spirit of God, sovereignly appeared above my head. It was, it was, I couldn't have helped it. I couldn't have stopped it. It wasn't a thought. It wasn't a mental impression. It was literal life. The spirit of the living God, the Ruhakodesh, appeared above my head in all the colors of a rainbow. He was just twirling, emotion, living life. And then he came through my head and took possession of my inner man and spoke these words to me, I am a servant. And then it was over just like that. Just like Acts 2. And Acts 2 was a literal spiritual manifestation when the tongues of fire appeared above the disciples head, or when the dove appeared above Jesus head at his baptism. But my experience was the spirit of the Lord appeared above him. I had all the colors of a rainbow, just twirling life, then came into my inner man and smoked into me. A few years after that, actually it was one year after that in 1982, right before I got married, I had a vision of the night and I'm going quickly here due to our time constraints. But in a nutshell, in this vision of the night, I received that spirit of life that appeared above my head. I said, come and live inside me. And then the second, the third face of the dream, I'm really condensing this here, after I had asked to receive the spirit of life, the rainbow spirit of life, to come and live inside me, the dream shifted and I was walking down the street and there was an African man who had been badly burned on his body due to a car accident that he was in. And with no effort or no ego, I stuck up my hand towards him and out of my fingertips flowed the color, the rainbow colors and healed the African man of his burns. So again, this was 1982. Here I am all these years later, we're getting ready to go back to Uganda. I don't know how many times I've been to Africa, ministering to hundreds of thousands of people in Africa, seeing blind eyes open, incredible miracles taking place, people running to the altar to get saved. And so the rainbow has always been very important to me because the Lord has communicated to me in that symbolism. So in early March of this year, I was driving with my wife to another city and something just rose up in me to bring the rainbow back to its proper place, taking the rainbow back, the last word back, taking the rainbowback.com, to reclaim it for what it is. It's a symbol of the glory of God. You know, not only in Genesis, when God gave the symbol of the rainbow to Noah, but in Ezekiel 128, when Ezekiel saw the Son of God, he said he appeared as a man and there was fire in the center of his being that went up and down and all around him was a rainbow radiance. And the same thing with John in Revelation 4-3, John saw the Lord on the throne in heaven and around the throne was a rainbow. We as God's people need to not surrender it to the LGBTQ community. We need to take it back, taking the rainbowback.com. I'm urging everyone that's listening, go to the website, taking the rainbow back, last word being back.com. I explained the agenda of the movement, the action steps we're taking. Listen, the LGBTQ community, they're not afraid to wear the rainbow. Why are God's people afraid to wear the rainbow? It's a symbol of God. It doesn't belong to the LGBTQ community. It belongs to us and to his people and to God Almighty. Absolutely, 100%. In fact, could you show us what you're wearing right now? You've got to show us. There it is. One of the things on the website that you'll see are these t-shirts that we've God made. And it's got the domain name on there, taking the rainbowback.com. And what we're encouraging God's people to do is to be bold about their faith and to wear these shirts out in public. And then on the weekend of July 28th through the 30th, a month after Gay Pride month and their special day, I'm encouraging small groups, Bible study groups, churches, groups of friends to all go together with their shirts on as a group in public places. We also have tracks online at taking the rainbowback.com, handing out the tracks, what the rainbow is really about. We're not in any way bringing a spirit of hatred. We're bringing a spirit of truth and love and grace to people. And you and I as God's people, we need to take a stand. Because if we're not brave and courageous during these troubled times that we're living, we're going to get washed away by the flood of darkness. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Rabbi Kirchneider, for everything that you shared with us today. Just again, any last closing thoughts? I want to just first say I recommend this book highly to anyone who is watching, Messianic Prophecy Revealed by Rabbi Kirchneider. Rabbi Kirch, just we have about a minute here. Final thoughts. What I'm really, I've never got behind a cause like this in my life. To me, this is just, it was a God thing, taking the rainbowback.com. What the purpose is, is to unite the church to stand together in righteousness. We as the church need to come together and take a stand. We need to come together and give each other courage to be bold. Jesus said, if we're ashamed of him and his words in this wicked and adulterous generation, he's going to be ashamed again when he comes again in the glory of his Father and the heavenly angels. We need, beloved, to be bold. Jesus said, everybody that desires to live godly in Christ Jesus, he said that through the Apostles, we need, beloved, to be willing to take a couple hits. We need to take a stand because all the desire to live godly in Christ will be persecuted. Church, we need to come together and be bold for righteousness. Amen to that. Rabbi Kirchneider, thank you so much for being with us today. What a wonderful conversation. We appreciate you being here today. I love you guys. I feel the spirit. I wish I could spend more time with you guys. I love being with you in person sometime. Thank you for having me on Tom and Cindy. I appreciate it. Fantastic. Guys, I mean, this is, Sidney, this is the thing. We've got to be bold. We have to stand for the righteousness of God, stand for the truth, stand for knowing Jesus. You surely do. And I just feel like listening to Rabbi Schneider's just what he shared. There is so much. I think I'm just taking a moment to process everything that he shared that the revelations and the manifestations and just even taking a stand and to be bold. And I think now more than ever it is so important for us to have that one-on-one relationship with God that we receive that revelation so that we know what we're speaking and what we're saying comes right from the words of our Father that it really pierces and penetrates the hearts of people because we do see gross darkness is all over our world and the shakings and the rumblings continue to happen. But we know that through Jesus, that through Yeshua, that when we stand with him, we're going to see just amazing things occur like never before. Anna, what are your thoughts? Yeah, the Bible speaks that in the end times, God is going to pour out his spirit on his people and have these vast revelations of who Jesus Christ is. And so friends, sisters and brothers, this is our time to stand up, to be bold, to share the truth of who Jesus is because people are hungry. They are looking for that truth, the way, the truth, the life. And we know that Jesus is the only way. So we pray that God will open his word to you, to reveal his truth to you, to empower you today. On Tomorrow's Hope Today, learn how you can flourish even amongst the worst of circumstances. Author and pastor Benjamin Wendell offers a fresh perspective on hope and hardship that will encourage you to view the challenges of life as an opportunity for personal growth. Don't miss Tomorrow's Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers, whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.