In this sermon, the speaker begins by expressing a sense of dissatisfaction with life and a desire for something more. He confesses to making poor choices, including leaving his family and job, in search of this elusive fulfillment. The speaker then leads the audience in a prayer of repentance and acceptance of Jesus as their Lord and Savior. He offers his book, titled "There Must Be Something More," as a gift to those who have prayed with him. The sermon also briefly touches on the historicity of the Gospel story.

Hello, my name is Sid Roth, inviting you to witness a public debate between an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and a Messianic Jewish Ph.D. at issue, who is the Jewish Messiah? This debate has raged within the Jewish and Christian communities for almost 2,000 years. Traditional Judaism says you can't be a true Jew and believe in Jesus as Messiah. Messianic Judaism says you can't be a true Jew unless you believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Emotions, as you can understand, run deep. The stakes are high. Both communities say the choice will affect your eternal destiny. We urge you to think for yourself. It's your life that hangs in the balance. Taking the traditional Jewish position is Orthodox rabbi Dr. David Blumhoff. Rabbi Blumhoff holds a doctorate in Hebrew literature from the Hebrew Theological College in the Jewish University of America in Skokie, Illinois. His doctoral thesis entitled, The Gospel Truth, gives more than 200 reasons why he believes Jesus is not the Jewish Messiah. Defending the belief that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah will be Messianic Jewish author Dr. Michael Brown. Dr. Brown has a doctorate in Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University. The debate is being held at Adelaide Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Dr. Michael Brown will begin with his opening statements. I'm so glad that you're here tonight. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to share with you the wonderful news of Jesus the Messiah. In my absence since stepping out of the room for a couple of minutes, all my notes disappeared, but because this is a deep theme in my heart, I'm happy to speak without them. 23 years ago, I had no interest in God, let alone in believing in Jesus. I was shooting heroin, playing drums in a rock band. After my bar mitzvah, I went straight down and really it was only against my will, against my desires, against my pride, against my stubbornness, that I had an encounter with the love of God that I found out that Jesus, Yeshua, was in fact the Jewish Messiah. Had a wonderful life transforming experience, was turned away from all the things I was doing that I wanted to keep doing, but I knew they were sin in God's sight. I was wonderfully changed and delivered. My parents were thrilled to see the change, but they had one problem. Well, you don't follow our traditions now. We want you to meet with the local rabbi. So in 1972, I met with the local rabbi. January 24th was our first meeting. He and I became fast friends. He encouraged me to study Hebrew. He said, look, I need to bring you to other Jews who are equally zealous, but they're right. So I began to dialogue with the Lubavitch Hasidim in Brooklyn, New York, ultra Orthodox Jews. But the problem was the whole plan to get me to learn Hebrew and to study so as to convince me that what I believed was wrong, the whole plan backfired because the more I studied, the more I learned, the more I sought God, the more convinced I became. And if you're open, open to God, open to the scriptures, open to the truth, I believe you'll hear clear evidence that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. In fact, the reason that we have had so many problems through the centuries as Jews, the reasons that we have been exiled from our land and our temple has not been rebuilt is because when the Messiah came, we missed him. You say that's a bold claim. Let me back it up. I do have some notes I just found here. What I want to say first is this. If you've ever read the Hebrew Bible, and that's really our source tonight, the Hebrew scriptures, you know that it doesn't just stop in the middle and say, stop, this is a messianic prophecy. There's some literature that's being given out saying 20 telltale signs of the Messiah. But if you read the scriptures, you will see in no place does it say the Messiah will come and do this and this and this. In other words, you must interpret that these passages are messianic. Well, what is the word Messiah actually mean? It comes from the Hebrew Messiah, and it is parallel to the Greek word Christos, which we translate as Christ. Messiah and Christ mean the same thing. They mean the anointed one. When you read the Hebrew Bible, who was it that was a Messiah? Who was it that was anointed in Israel? You say, well, the king, the Messiah is to be a king. Yes, but that is only part of the story. The priest, the high priest was also a Messiah and anointed one. Not only that, not only the king and the priest, but also the prophet was called anointed of the Lord. And when we go through the Hebrew Bible, we will see very clearly that Jesus came as a priest and he will come again as a king and he came as a prophet and he fulfills the relevant prophecies of the Hebrew Bible that first had to be fulfilled. Let me say this. He was born where the prophets said he would be born. He was born when the prophets said he would be born. Do you know that the Hebrew Bible teaches that the Messiah had to come before the second temple was destroyed over 1900 years ago? Do you know that Jewish tradition points to the fact that the Jews were waiting for the Messiah to come at that time? He came where he was supposed to come. He came when he was supposed to come. Not only that, he lived the life he was supposed to live. He healed the sick and opened the blind eyes and reached out to the oppressed and the hurting. Not only that, he died the way the prophets said he would die. Not only that, he rose from the dead the way the prophets said he would. Not only that, he was rejected by his people, Israel, just as the prophets said. Not only that, he has been a light to the nation so that hundreds of millions of people around the world worship the God of Israel because of him. Not only that, he is gathering back his Jewish people to himself so that now around the world there are many tens of thousands of Jews just like me, some former rabbis, some ultra-Orthodox Jews that have come to find the Messiah, Jesus, Yeshua. I want to open these things up to you point by point. Micah, the fifth chapter, tells us that he who will be ruler in Israel will come forth from Bethlehem. Is this a messianic prophecy? The ancient Jewish tradition, the ancient translation of the Hebrew Bible into the language of the people, which was then Aramaic, says this is a prophecy of King Messiah. The major medieval rabbis said this is a prophecy of King Messiah. I will gladly give more documentation on any of these points from the Hebrew or from the rabbinic commentaries if there's any question on anything I'm saying. Not only that, the prophet Malachi, writing about 400 years before the time of Jesus, said that the Lord would send his messenger to the temple. The one that they were seeking would come to that temple that was destroyed over 1900 years ago. The prophet Haggai, writing about 500 years before Jesus came into the world, said this, that God would make the glory of that temple greater than the glory of Solomon's temple. That first temple had the presence of God dwelling there. The second temple didn't. And God said the glory of the second temple would be greater than the glory of the first. And God would establish his peace there. Not only that, the prophet Daniel said that before the second temple was destroyed that everlasting righteousness would be established and final atonement would be made and an anointed one, a Mashiach, would be cut off. Isn't it amazing? The Talmud also says that there were to be 2,000 years of desolation, namely from Adam to Abraham, and 2,000 years of Torah of law, namely from Abraham to the Messiah, and then 2,000 years of the Messiah, which would have been beginning 2,000 years ago. The Talmud says, but because of our sins, these years have passed and we've missed out. Friends, it's not that the Messiah did not come when the prophet said he would come, rather he came and because he was missed and rejected by his people, all these tragic things have taken place. Not only that, the prophets told us that when the kingdom of God came, when this anointed one came, that the eyes of the blind would be opened, that the lame would walk and leap and jump, and we read the accounts of the New Testament, how the crowds came. You say, do we know that these things happened? Let me say out of all ancient books written, that which is the best attested historically, that which has the most evidence backing it up historically, is not the Hebrew Bible, and it's not the great writings of the Greek and Latin authors, it is the New Testament. The crowds came because of the healings, the miracles, the wonderful things that he did, the wonderful things that he's still doing around the world today. But the Bible also had some very serious news. I have been asked, where does the Bible say that the Messiah will come twice? Where does the Bible say that there will be two comings? Well, it says in the prophet Isaiah in the end of the 52nd chapter, Behold, my servant will act wisely. He will be exalted, lifted up, and very high. The ancient rabbis said that this is a prophecy of the Messiah, who will be more exalted than Abraham, higher than Moses, and more lifted up than the ministering angels. Yes, he will be highly exalted, but not only that, it then says, that just as many as were astonished as you, yes, his very appearance would be marred and destroyed, the unhuman semblance. He will be exalted, but first he will suffer. And the prophet went on to say this, Surely he's carried our pains, he's borne our griefs. But it says, We esteemed him stricken, smitten with God, and afflicted. There's an interesting passage in the Zohar, the major book of Jewish mysticism, in the section called Pinchas, where it says, Why is it that sometimes a righteous man suffers, and it seems he is innocently suffering? And the answer given is this. Sometimes when God wants to bring healing to the world, he smites one just man, one righteous man, and through that healing comes to the world. And it says, How do we know that? From the very passage that I just read, it says, He was wounded for our transgressions. The idea of the Messiah's suffering is a Jewish concept. It is a biblical concept. He must first suffer before he is exalted. In a moment, I'll explain why. Not only though did the prophet say that he would suffer and be rejected by his own people, but remarkably, in one of the most incredible messianic prophecies in all of the Bible, the prophet Isaiah said in the 42nd chapter that God's servant would actually bring the light and word of God to the Gentiles, to the nations. I've been in India, I've been in Korea, I've been in Finland, I've been in Mexico, I've been in these countries from one end of the globe to the other, and met people, former Hindus, former atheists, former Muslims, former terrorists, former gross sinners, former murderers, you name it. They have wonderfully come to love the God of Israel and pray for the people of Israel and had a miraculous conversion through Jesus the Messiah. What an awesome thing. If he's not the Messiah, someone's going to have to do better than that. If he's not the Messiah, someone's going to have to do better than bringing hundreds of millions of people into the knowledge of the God of Israel, turning from sin, turning from idols to worship the one true God. You're going to have to do better than that. It says there in a prophecy that the ancient Aramaic Jewish translation said was a messianic prophecy. My servant, the Messiah, would be a light to the nation. And then when you get to Isaiah 49, remarkable. The servant of the Lord is identified as Israel. And then he is called to regather Israel back to God. You say, is the servant of the Lord Israel or not? He is ideal Israel. Let me explain. When you have the Olympics and a man from America wins the medal, you're reading the newspaper, America won a medal and he stands on the podium to receive his medal and they play the American national anthem. The Messiah fulfills what God gave Israel to do. The Messiah is the ideal Israelite. And it says in Isaiah 49 that the servant of the Lord, the Messiah says, I've spent my strength for naught. In other words, Israel won't turn. Israel won't listen to me. And God says, no, I have more than that. It's not just that you are going to restore Israel, but you are going to be a light to all the nations. And it says in Isaiah 52, he will be highly exalted, but first he will suffer. And the nations of the world will listen to his voice. Not only that, the scripture declared after in the Exarme Erez Chaim, after he was cut off from the land of the living, that he would see the light of life. He'd be raised from the dead. It's an amazing thing that his followers in the first century, all were willing to lay down their lives for him. Not because he died and was buried in some hopeless tomb, but because he rose from the dead. And it says in the Psalms that he will be exalted to the right hand of God and all the nations will be his inheritance. It has happened. The most awesome, impossible fulfillment to take place has happened and is happening in front of our eyes as around the globe. People in China, people in Africa, by the hundreds of thousands come to love and worship the God of Israel through Jesus. Now, why did the Messiah have to die? Please understand this. If you can grasp this, a light will go on. The Messiah was not just to be a king. If he was just to be a king, he'd come and set up his kingdom and we'd still be lost in our sins. We'd still be hopeless because the problem is on the inside of us. The problem is we have been alienated from God. We have broken his commandments. Every single one that's ever lived has broken the commandments of God outside of the Messiah. What happened was the Messiah was not just to be a king, but he was to be a priest. David was an example of a royal priest. He was king, but he also performed priestly functions. And the Bible says his sons were kohanim. His sons were priests. An amazing thing. Why is this important? Because the priest's role was to make atonement for the sins of the people. And the Messiah came as the ideal high priest and laid his life down as a ransom for the sins of mankind. He had to do that. If he was not a priest, he could not bring salvation. He could not bring reconciliation. He could not bring us a new heart. He could not bring us cleanness of mind and soul. You say, well, the idea of the Messiah dying for our sins, isn't that wrong? No, do you know that the Talmud teaches the death of the righteous makes atonement? Do you know that the Talmud even teaches that when the high priest would die, that his death served as an atonement for the murderer who was in exile and he would then be free from exile? These are things that are inherent in Jewish tradition. And in a wonderful prophecy in the book of Zechariah, there's a man named Yehoshua, who was also called Yeshua over 25 times in the Hebrew Bible. Yeshua, Jesus, in the Hebrew Bible. And you know what it says about him? This man, Yehoshua, who was a priest, is a symbol of the Messiah, a symbol of the one who is called the branch, which is universally recognized by the rabbis as a messianic title. And you know what it says about him? That he will sit as a priest ruling on his throne, the not just a king, but the priest offering himself for our sins, the ideal righteous one saying, God, may the sins of the world fall on me. May I be the ideal sacrifice that the law and the prophets point to. And it says in the prophet Isaiah, and by his wounds, we are healed. I experienced it personally. Jews around the world, the chief rabbi of Bulgaria in the last generation, rabbi Daniel Tsion, he experienced the love of God and Jesus, the Messiah, and was wonderfully transformed and won many other Jews to the truth. And I'd encourage you to do what the psalmist said, taste and see that the Lord is good. The Messiah came to the place he was supposed to come. He came before the second temple was destroyed. And friends, if he's not the Messiah, we have no Messiah, because he had to come and fulfill his mission before the second temple was destroyed. And Jewish tradition preserved in the Talmud tells us that for the last 40 years before the temple was destroyed, God no longer accepted the Jewish sacrifices on the day of atonement. Why? Because the ideal sacrifice had been made. Since that time, there have been no sacrifices that can be offered at the temple. Since that time, the temple has still not been rebuilt. If Jesus is not the Messiah, then we will never have a Messiah, because he had to come before the destruction of the second temple. He had to die. He had to rise from the dead. He had to be rejected by his people. And the knowledge of Messiah has to go around the world. And then the wonderful day will come when the Jewish people, according to the prophet Zechariah, will look back to him. It says, They will look to me, God says, whom they have pierced. The Jewish people will recognize, my God, the one that we thought was the cause of all of our suffering, the one that we so rejected and misunderstood, he was actually our Messiah and King. And when they welcome him back with the words, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. At that point, he will return and establish his kingdom. And all the other prophecies that you read about in this literature, that's when they'll be fulfilled. We have the definite proof that he has done everything he had to do up to now. Therefore, I'm confident he'll do the rest. Those who reject him are still waiting, still hoping, still wondering. The Talmud says that if we are worthy, the Messiah will come on the clouds of heaven. If we're not worthy, he'll come meek and lowly riding on a donkey. They missed it, friends. It's not either or. The prophet said he will come riding meek and lowly on a donkey, and he did. And the prophet said he will come on the clouds of heaven, and he will. He did the first, he will do the rest. I am sure if you open your hearts, I believe the word of God will become clear to you. And Jesus said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Thank you. Nachmanides, who was forced to debate this issue during the Inquisition time, made a remarkable statement. He said, woe to such a world if the Messiah has already come. What is the Jewish Messiah? The Jewish Messiah is well-defined in the Old Testament. The Jewish Messiah we find in Isaiah 2-3, where it says, Behol chur amim rabim, imit tzion t'etzei torah, lo yisah goyol goyicherev. Many nations will stream into Jerusalem to recognize our God in the temple. No nation will take war, will learn war anymore. And of course, the plowshare was turned from the sword. The animals will lie down together, the wolf and the sheep. All of these were beautiful concepts of what the Jewish Messiah was. I don't argue about the definition of a Messiah. We, I think, agree in most cases what the Messiah should bring because we both look at Isaiah and we both look at all the other prophets who have prophesied and given us a definition of what to look for in the coming of a Messiah. But we have to understand one thing. At the time, 2,000 years ago, the Jews were not the only people looking for a Messiah. Many of the world religions, the pagans of the time, also had their concept of a Messiah, diametrically opposed to the Messiah of the Jews. What was some of theirs? Let us think about it for a moment. We had the Egyptians. The Egyptians had their trinity religion of Isis, Osiris, and Horus, where Isis is the mother of God and she gives birth to the savior of the world, son of God, and the eating of the host, and a cross which was like an ankh. Everything that seems to be today Christianity. In fact, the truth of the matter is that the forerunner of Christianity was not Judaism but was Mithraism. Mithraism was another famous religion, very popular in the Roman Empire, also a trinity religion. And Mithra Day was December 25th, of course, when the church took over. They changed the name and it became Christmas. Nothing else was changed. In fact, we find many sayings of Mithra that are the exact word-by-word sayings of Jesus. The only difference is they took out one name and replaced it with another. So we had two concepts of a religion. And then came along Matthew. And Matthew wanted to convince the Jewish people that Jesus was the Messiah. So he developed a genealogy from King David because anywhere you look in the in the Tanakh, in the Bible, you will find that the Messiah has to be directly descendant of King David. Zerah, it has to be the seed. So he developed this genealogy, you see. And I will accept it at face value, suppose it is true. But then comes along Luke and has a completely different genealogy. Now, one of them is telling the gospel truth and the other cannot be, because they are telling two different things. And this goes on throughout all the gospels, by the way. You have contradictions galore. That will come next. He tried to gap, Matthew, you see, tried to gap the two thinking so they can convince the Jews and convince the pagan Mithra religion and the Christians. Christians were the believers in the Trinity religion of Egypt, Isis, Osiris, and Horus. But he couldn't do it because he had the seed of David coming down all the way to Joseph. And Joseph doesn't do anything to impregnate Mary. And so the baby that is born is not the descendant of King David. Now, all these things that we were expecting for a Messiah, those who believe that Jesus was the Messiah, say, well, there's going to be a second coming. All right, let's talk about the second coming. Firstly, the Jews never had a tradition of a second coming. They always said there will come a time, this will happen, no more wars, then we'll know what happened, and that's the Messiah. Nowhere in the prophets did it say so. And then let's look at the New Testament, Matthew 16, 28. There will be some of those who are standing here, this is Jesus saying this, who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. In other words, they will not die until they see him coming again, but it's been 2,000 years and he hasn't come and I'm sure they're dead by now. Matthew 34, verily I say to you, he's talking to the 12 disciples alone, that this generation shall not pass until these things be fulfilled. And the generation certainly passed after 2,000 years. Mark 14, 62, Jesus is speaking to the priest, he shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven, yet these priests were dead for at least 1,900 years. From Corinthians 25, and we have a lot more, I'm not going to go through them all, we see that Paul also believed that Jesus would return in Paul's lifetime, but he says, every man shall praise God. But in Hebrews 9, 25 and 26, but he says, but now is the end of the world, but it's been 2,000 years later and the world hasn't ended. And according to John in Revelations 1.7, Jesus will be seen by everyone, yet in Hebrews 9.28, only those looking for him. So again, we have some contradictions, but there are many of those. Matthew develops a genealogy without the seed of David. Luke, as I mentioned, has another genealogy, but Luke has his descendant from Jehoiachin, the king who was cursed by God, and God said his descendants will not be on the throne, so his descendants will not be the Messiah. So Luke, therefore, cannot be relied upon. And now, I'm glad that my opponent mentioned Isaiah 52 and 53. Certainly, one can think that if you read this, it might mean a Messiah. Okay, let's accept that it might mean that. But it says there that he shut up the mouth of king. What king did Jesus shut up? And then let's look at some more of that particular segment of Isaiah. Surely our sickness did he bear. Now, Matthew translates it the way the Hebrews supposed to be sickness. He translates it correctly. Some of the others do not. Smitten of God. Not the Jews, not the Romans, but smitten of God. He did open his mouth to part. Now, it says there that the man opened not his mouth. This Messiah will come and open not his mouth, if he is to be the Messiah that we're talking about here. But he did open his mouth. He talked back to Pilate, he talked back to the high priest, and he said to the daughters of Israel, weep not for me. You'll find this in Luke 23 and John 19. And he made his grave with the wicked. Now, he was supposed to have been crucified with two thieves, but didn't say he made his grave with them. In fact, he was supposed to have his own grave alone by himself, Matthew 27, 60. Although, it continues in Isaiah, he had done no violence. He drove out the moneylenders with a whip. That's violent. Neither was he deceitful in his mouth. He said, I come not to change the letter of the law, and then he proceeds to do just that. He tells the Jews, well, there's cripples you can carry on the Sabbath, that's all right. Tells the Jews that they can eat whatever they want, and so they can give up their kashrut. And all these things are things that are very deceitful. And then finally it says, yet it pleased the Lord to see him crushed by disease, to see if his soul will offer restitution, that he might see his seed and prolong his days, that he might see his zera, his seed, and prolong his days. Not his disciples, but his zera, his own seed. Now, we know that Jesus in the story did not have any children. And prolong his days, he died at 31 years old, or 33 by some report. And so we have to assume, therefore, that this Isaiah was not, in fact, talking about Jesus. And then in Daniel 9, this is another chapter that the people who believe in Jesus say this was prophesied by Daniel. Now, we know that Daniel did talk about the coming of the Messiah. He says in Aramaic, I will bring it in its eras and a half an era, and nobody knows when it begins, and nobody knows what the length of an era is. So it's open to interpretation to whoever wants it. But in Daniel 9, 24, it says, 70 weeks shall be decreed upon your people and your holy city to end all sin and to bring everlasting righteousness, to seal vision and prophets. Now, certainly, sin has not been ended when he came, and certainly vision and prophets did not stop, and to anoint his holy of holies. The temple was not rebuilt as yet. So it just didn't happen. And if it didn't happen the first time, and we know that there's no second time, it will not happen that way. Now, let's talk about how the, my time is running, talk about the historicity of the gospel story. My opponent mentioned the fact that it's the best historical work. In fact, it's just the opposite. The four gospels, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, together with all the apocryphal gospels, tell different stories, contradictions to mores, traditions, laws, jurisprudence that took place in the land of Israel. It's like somebody making up a story. Let me tell you, for example, suppose I were to make up a story of a man, let's call him John Christie, who lived in Washington, D.C. And in telling the story, he said, we drive on the left side of the street, on July 4th, we have Christmas trees, and on December 25th, we have firecrackers. And he talks about, for example, that George Washington said to Hamilton, take it easy, man. These are things that you know could have happened in the story. And then they go on to say that he walks into the Senate. I know there's sometimes only four or five senators. But he walks into the Senate and drives out all the senators without the use of a gun, and nobody says anything. Is that possible? And then all the Senate and all the Supreme Court and the President take him in the middle of the night, say you're guilty, give him to the Russians to be killed. Now, would you believe that story? I would. And this is exactly what they're trying to tell you happened. Israel was no vacuum. They had law. They had a way of life. They had a jurisprudence. They had mores. They had customs. And the people who wrote these did not live in the land. That can be very easily proven by their language. They didn't know Hebrew. They didn't even know Aramaic. Many things of this nature. Let us go through some of them. Everyone who studies the Old Testament knows that you have to have some witnesses. And they, the Jews, then developed an entire jurisprudence that did this way. A man did not, a man was not asked if you're guilty or innocent. He had no say in the matter. If a set of witnesses would come and they would testify as to the man's guilt, and then they would wait 40 days in order that the people should investigate these witnesses and see if other people would come. Hatra'ah, they had to give warning. This didn't happen here. And no case was allowed to be tried in the middle of the night. And it happened here in the middle of the night. And they hated Pilate. Pilate who hated Jews. And Jews had mutual feelings with Pilate, towards Pilate. And yet they give him over to Pilate to be killed. And Pilate, by the way, violated the biggest Roman law in the, find in the Codex of the Roman laws. Where it says, if the crowd says, save this person and do that, don't listen to the crowd. You're not allowed to. And if someone is guilty of sedition, you execute him. And if you don't, we're going to take you and change and send you back to Rome to be killed. And that was Roman law. Therefore, Pilate will never ever give a gift. And to allow a man who says, give unto Caesar, in other words, a friend of Caesar, to be killed, while this Barnabas should be saved, who was guilty, according to John, of sedition against the government. There are a lot more. I have hundreds of them. But it only leads, I am down to two minutes, so I can't go through them all. Let me then tell you about another, one second please. Okay. In, my notes are not, there were many, as I mentioned before, there were many Trinity religions. And in fact, there were 16 of them who were crucified before the coming of Jesus. So definitely, there's no question in people's mind who study this, that the entire episode was not based upon the Jewish, quote, Jewish concept of Messiah, but upon the world concept of Messiah. Now in Jeremiah 16, 20, 19, Jeremiah 16, 19 to 20, it says, to you shall nations come from all parts of the world, and will say, our fathers, these are non-Jews, who will come when the Messiah comes, and will say, our fathers led us with falsehood, and now they're coming to become Jewish, to follow the Jewish religion. And if that were the case, what was the falsehood that their fathers were teaching them? In Zechariah 8, 23, ten men will come from each nation to take hold of a Jew, to go worship God. And so, it was stated, it so was stated that our Messiah has not come, certainly it has not. The beginnings of it are here today, by the way, because from all parts of the world, the Jews have come back to Israel. And unless the Philistines give it back, we will definitely continue with the ongoing messianic era that we are in now, without Jesus. Thank you. I say that I'm surprised as well as disappointed by the misrepresentation of the Bible, as well as Jewish tradition, as well as facts of Hebrew and Aramaic language that just took place. I'm sorry that I have to address things like this, but some things strike me as so blatant. The idea that the writers of the Gospels were outside of the land and didn't know Hebrew, and didn't know Aramaic, and allegedly misquoted the Aramaic. The fact is the rabbi misquoted the Aramaic. He's ignorant of the Palestinian dialect of it. They asked any Aramaic scholar in the world what the colloquial was. It was as the New Testament has, Talitha Qum, not Talitha Qum. I'm surprised that the rabbi could say they didn't know Hebrew, whereas the foremost Jewish professors at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem say the only way that you can understand the Gospels is to go back to the original Hebrew sources or Aramaic sources that everyone knows was the common language of the Jews. And that the only way to understand the Greek of the New Testament is to know that it was being written by Jews whose first language was Aramaic or Hebrew. The rabbi himself told us that Matthew accurately translated the Hebrew of Isaiah 53. How, if he didn't know the Hebrew? I'm disappointed in that Isaiah 2 was quoted as a messianic prophecy without admitting that it doesn't say a word about the Messiah. My whole point is that the traditional Jew comes back and says, this is what the Messiah will do, x, y, z. Jesus didn't do it, therefore he's not the Messiah. Show me in the Bible where it says the Messiah will do that and that he will not also suffer and that he will not also die. I'm disappointed in the fact that it was said that Jewish tradition has one teaching about the Messiah. In fact, once the rabbis rejected the messiahship of Jesus, they had lots of questions about the Messiah. Do you know you can read the most famous passage in the Talmud about the Messiah, Sanhedrin, beginning in 96B, and you'll find dozens of different opinions, even that there will be two messiahs. Do you know that 800 years after the New Testament, Jews in Babylon were so confused about what would happen in the messianic era that they had to have it explained to them by the leading rabbi, Sa'aja Gaon, and other leading sages of the day to tell them, and they even talked about two messiahs? Where do you find that in the Bible? No, it's not two messiahs. It's one messiah. He will come once to do what was prophesied as priest, and then he will return to reign as king. I think of the words of Nahmanides, woe to the world if Messiah has already come. I say, oh my god, woe if he has not come, because the prophet said he had to come. We heard Daniel 9 attack. Did this happen? Has sin been atoned for? Has the vision and prophecy be fulfilled? If it hasn't, it never will, because Daniel said it had to happen before the second temple was destroyed. Read it clearly in Daniel 9. There can be no question the shiach will be cut off, and all these things will happen before the second temple was destroyed. It was so decisive that the leading scholar in Lithuania in the 18th century, the Vilna Gaon, actually said the messianic era began over 1500 years prior to that, and that we were in a transition period. He couldn't get away from the fact that the Talmud and the Hebrew Bible said it had to start way back then. If it didn't take place, if sin was not atoned for, if prophecy and vision was not fulfilled, if the holy place was not truly anointed by the once and for all sacrifice being offered, then it'll never happen. A key point has not been addressed, has not been rebutted, has not been answered. The allegations about the New Testament copying from myth through religion, I hesitate to even answer those because I'm disappointed that they're raised. Do you know that every major miracle and every major event in the Hebrew Bible has a pagan parallel? Do you know that there are pagan parallels from Babylon about the flood? Do you know there are pagan parallels that talk about the creation account? Do you know there are pagan parallels to the birth of Moses? Do you know that liberal scholars reject that there was a real Abraham, that there was a real Moses, that there was a real Exodus? In other words, and I've dealt with this very clearly in a paper that's available called Unequal Weights and Measures. Are you aware of the fact that for every one contradiction the rabbi can show us in the New Testament, I can show you five in the Hebrew Bible and probably 50 in the Talmud? When you want to read it unsympathetically, critically, to tear it apart, you can do it. When you read it with an open heart, it marvelously comes together. I'm talking about the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The idea that the roots of Christianity are pagan is basically not accepted by leading scholars, Jewish and Christian around the world. They recognize that in its earliest form it was thoroughly Jewish. The disciples were Jewish. Pick up a copy of David Stern's Jewish New Testament and see how Jewish it was as the so-called church departed from its Jewish roots. It brought in all kinds of pagan customs. Absolutely. So did Judaism. Hanukkah is not too far away from Christmas. Same pagan background, same pagan customs. In other words, the historical origins of so-called Christmas are the same historical origins of so-called Hanukkah. These holy days falling at times when pagans had holy days also. If you want to throw one out, throw both out, please. But that's from the liberal scholarly approach. Let me say this. I don't really care about what other religions were waiting for. I care about what the Jews were waiting for. We found the Dead Sea Scrolls, the teachings that are hundreds of years before the Talmud. We found those. They have been uncovered. And do you know that they were waiting for a priestly Messiah as well as a royal Messiah? Jews had an expectation, not just of a king who would rule, but also of a priestly Messiah, the one that Jesus actually was. The contradictions in Matthew's genealogy and Luke's genealogy can easily be resolved if you study 1 Chronicles 2 and 3. There are insights there. If we have time and a further rebuttal, I will give that. One apparently records the genealogy through a stepfather or foster father as passed down. It's a little technical, but there are simple explanations. However, it was said that Jesus was not actually the seed of David. Well, he was and he wasn't. Do you know why? Because the Messiah is greater than David. David himself in Psalm 110 calls the Messiah Lord. So he couldn't just be a physical descendant. Yes, he was a physical descendant of David through his mother, Miriam, Mary. But he was greater than David in that he had supernatural divine qualities. And the scripture said he would. The scripture said one of the titles of Messiah would be El Gibor, mighty God, he would bear the image of God. Not only that, it was said that Jesus in Matthew's genealogy is traced through Jehoiachin, who was cursed. Apparently the rabbi is not aware of Haggai 2, where the grandson of Jehoiachin, named Zerubbabel, received the renewed messianic prophecies. And the medieval rabbinic commentator, David Kimchi, says that Jehoiachin apparently repented and God reversed the curse, as we see in Haggai 2, where God says the messianic prophecies will now be continued through Zerubbabel, the grandson of Jehoiachin. Of course it was right that he descended from Jehoiachin. The idea that there's no tradition of a second coming, I said there's no tradition of two messiahs, and yet unfortunately the Talmud teaches that, rabbinic tradition teaches that. But it does say clearly that the Messiah will come meek and lowly, that he will suffer, that he will also come from the clouds. What does that mean? Two comings. First, he comes meek and lowly, according to Zechariah 9, and he comes in the clouds of heaven, according to Daniel, the seventh chapter. There were some citations of the New Testament that don't exist, for example, 1 Corinthians 25 and Matthew 34, but those were slips we can all make, I forgive those. But there were some blatant misinterpretations. Matthew 16, 28, there's some standing here that will not see death until they see the Son of Man coming in power. And then you read the next verse, and when he took them up on a mountain, they saw him glorify, they saw him coming in power, they saw the revelation of who he is and what he would do. All three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke that speak of it, tell you the very same thing to explain what it means. Matthew 24 that speaks of this generation will not pass until these things will come to pass. Jesus was also speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem, and in fact Jerusalem was destroyed in that generation, just as he said it was. We heard about Isaiah 53, he bore our sicknesses. Yes, he carried them by bringing healing, just as Matthew said. The rabbi says, but it says he was smitten by God. No, that's not what Isaiah 53 says. Isaiah 53 says, that's what we thought, exactly as the rabbi said, that's what we thought. That's what the rabbi was thinking, that's why he got it wrong. That's what the Jewish people thought, that he was being smitten by God. It goes on to say, we didn't realize it was for our sins he was being smitten. The rabbi should also know that where it speaks in Hebrew of Hechli, made him sick, the Hebrew Rukhalah, to make sick, can also broadly mean to afflict, to bring down. The Bible speaks of that many times, poetically. The Messiah was brought down and afflicted. It says he will see seed. On the one hand he has seen the continued seed of the children of Israel, his physical brothers and sisters following Messiah, walking with God. But the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Isaiah uses the word Zerah, seed, metaphorically also. It says about the people of Israel, right in the next chapters, that they are a seed of vipers. Did Isaiah actually think they were born from snakes? No, the whole point is that the word seed can be used just of disciples, descendants, followers, in a general sense, and that's how Isaiah used it. Did Jesus change the law, or did he fulfill it? All right, thank you. I'm glad Isaiah 53 was brought up again, because I missed some parts from before. It doesn't say that Jesus, or the Messiah that was to come, was sacrificed. He wasn't Asham, he was a korban, the sacrifice for the sins of the world. It says Asham, he was guilty. Because Asham in Hebrew, as he should know, means guilty. Asham was an offering in the temple, because of a guilt offering. And so this man that he was talking about, Isaiah, was guilty. And there are two people that brought an Asham korban, either a leper or one who was guilty. And since Jesus was not a leper, and according to the story, therefore he had to be guilty. And a guilty person cannot atone for the sins of the world. And also, Bethlehem. It doesn't say that someone's going to be born in Bethlehem. It says there, that which would come out from Bethlehem, and David came out from Bethlehem, and his seed came out from Bethlehem, and all the way down to the Messiah will be directly descendant of King David. That's what the Bethlehem in Micah was talking about. Now, we were not dispersed, the Jews were not dispersed to the world because of any one person. The Jews were dispersed in the world well before the stage was set for Jesus. They were living all over the place. They were living in Egypt, in Rome, in Persia, Babylonia, when this happened. All over. So they were dispersed well before this. You cannot therefore blame the crucifixion, the alleged crucifixion, because I doubt it. I still do, and I always shall. And you cannot blame the dispersion and the exile upon that, because they were already in exile. And our rabbis tell us that they were exiled because of violence. And they were exiled because of their falsehood, of the sins that they did. Entirely the people, not one, not for one sin that a few people might have done, which they did not. Okay. Now, the law says in the Bible, in Deuteronomy, in Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28, that if a false prophet comes and tells you something that does not come, then that person has to be executed. He is guilty. And Jesus in many places is cited, and I cited him some before, comes along and says, this is going to happen and it didn't happen, and that's going to happen and didn't happen, and therefore comes under the law of a false prophet. And now, what of the ignorance of Hebrew and of Jewish law and custom by the Gospel writers? There's no question, if I had a couple hours here and go through the 200 places in the Gospels to show you that that's the case, I'll just bring out some more. Luke 4, he's preaching in the synagogue in Greek, not in Aramaic, not in Hebrew, but in Greek. And the people were surprised when Paul spoke Greek. Why was he speaking Greek? And the scepter again, that is, they had to use a translation of the scepter again. Why did they have to do that? A rabbi, people who knew the language, could have gone directly from the Hebrew and would not have mistranslated much of Isaiah. And speaking of the Isaiah, by the way, the oldest scroll that we have is in the Dead Sea Scrolls. We have an entire copy of Isaiah. It is exactly the same as what we've always had, and that is the original source, not translations and mistranslations. I brought up the pagan parallels, and certainly there are parallels to everything in life, but I brought up the pagan parallels to show you the real definition of the people at the time of their expected messiahs. I don't say that Jesus was not a messiah. I never said that. I am saying that he was not the Jewish messiah, and this was the debate today. He was not the Jewish messiah. He was not what the Jews were expecting for a messiah. Also, where does it say that the curse was released? So you bring down one person who, David Kincaid, who may or may not have said it, I haven't seen that one, but no one else has brought that down. And if it were so, the Talmud certainly would have said something about it, or if it were done afterwards, then the period of the Sabiroim would have had it down, or the Gaonim period. All these great scholars would have mentioned it in many places, and nobody says anything about it, except that one source that may or may not be true. I don't know. I'll have to look it up. Now, Jesus said, I'm going to tell you that there's not going to be one stone left upon another for this destruction, but there was one stone left upon each other. The wall is still standing and was not thrown down, and this is a proof beyond the shadow of a doubt of the false messiah, because a person that comes along and claims to be a prophet and tells you something, and it does not happen, is obviously not a true messiah. And through all these taken together, I have to say that I still stay with my gun, and I still have to believe that Jesus is definitely not the expected messiah of the Jewish people. I will finish with this. I wish I had hours and hours and hours to go through fact after fact after fact. I can't mask my surprise. We were told the crowds were surprised because Paul spoke in Greek. No, the crowds were surprised when they heard him speak in Hebrew, Aramaic, their own language. Read it. That Jesus taught in Greek in the synagogue? Of course not. Luke wrote in Greek, and he translated what was taught. But every custom there, everything, the way it was done, the way Luke explains it, the way he lays it out, exactly according to Jewish tradition as we know it. The translation of Isaiah 53 about Asham? Again, I'm surprised. We were told Asham meant guilty. No, Asham is a guilt offering. Asham means guilty. And every Jewish translation I have ever seen says that he would make himself an Asham. I read to you from the new Jewish version. The Lord chose to crush him by disease, that if he made himself an offering for guilt, it was understood that the servant of the Lord was not guilty. God calls him my tzaddik, my righteous one. Rather, he gave himself as a guilt offering on our behalf. The Bible says the Messiah would be an offering for the sins of the guilty of the world. We're told in the Talmud, as was mentioned, the reason for Jewish dispersion, the destruction of the second temple in particular was because of baseless hatred. What better baseless hatred than the baseless hatred of the Messiah? What sin could have been so great that it would cause the dispersion to last for 1900 years and the temple still not be destroyed, if not for baseless hatred against the Messiah? And you know, hundreds of years before the Talmud wrote that down, the Gospel of John wrote it, that there was baseless hatred against the Messiah. Not only that, we heard mention of the Isaiah scroll and we were told that that scroll is identical to the Hebrew Bible we have today. Not so. I have copies of it in my home. It has hundreds of variant spellings to the Hebrew Bible that we have today. The fact is there were various traditions being preserved and one of those traditions was called the Septuagint. It was the Greek Bible for Greek-speaking Jews. It was the Jewish Bible most widely used by the Greeks in the ancient world because many of them could no longer read the Hebrew. And therefore, when the writers of the New Testament wanted to reach those people, they quoted from the Jewish Bible of the day, the Septuagint. In fact, the Talmud speaks highly of the translation of the five books of Moses into Greek called the Septuagint. Where does it say the curse was released? Again, I point you to Haggai, the second chapter, where there are messianic prophecies, prophecies of the shaking of all things and prophecies of the signet ring. Listen, the signet ring was taken from King Jehoiachin. God says, even if he were a signet ring on my hand, I'd cast him away. That's the curse I bring on this man. Haggai 2, God says that I will make you Zerubbabel as the signet ring, clearly reversing the curse. The end of Jeremiah 52 tells us that Jehoiachin was lifted up in exile. The rabbi said, well, the Talmud should have told us the curse was released. Why? The Talmud didn't raise the point in the first place. Nowhere in the Talmud does it say Jesus can't be the Messiah because he came from cursed Jehoiachin. They never thought of the objection. You can't find that objection for a thousand years after Jesus. It's only in recent centuries that people made it up. The fact is, the Bible clearly says that the curse was reversed through the grandson of Jehoiachin, Zerubbabel, of whom Jesus was a descendant. Jesus spoke of the temple proper, and in fact, it was destroyed. The wailing wall was an exterior, outside part. You say, oh, aren't you nitpicking? Friends, if you go back to the Hebrew Bible and you look at specific prophecies, they are fulfilled generally. If you argue about every little jot and tittle, I can show you that Haggai was a false prophet, and Jeremiah was a false prophet, and Ezekiel, they're all false prophets, unless you understand the prophetic language. Interestingly enough, the writers of the New Testament would not willfully preserve a false prophecy of Jesus. Why would they do that? They preserved his words because they were stunningly, shockingly accurate, even up until this day, as he tells us about the increase of wars and racial violence and earthquakes around the world. How did he know it? Because he was the Messiah. Some of the customs and traditions that the rabbis said the New Testament contradicted, how does he know those things existed in Jesus' day? He doesn't. The Talmud tells him. When was the Talmud actually compiled and written down? The Babylonian Talmud was written down 500 years after the time of Jesus, and it was compiled in its final form in Babylon. As much beauty as it has in it, it is filled with hundreds and thousands of contradictions and often speaks contrary to Jewish laws. We now know it from historical sources in the first century. What the rabbi does is believe whatever the later rabbis say and discounts the earlier testimony of the New Testament. As to who changed the law, I would point out that the Talmud says that the rabbis can overrule the voice of God from heaven, that the Talmud adds hundreds and thousands of laws and customs, even though the Torah said do not add and do not take away. The Talmud took away death penalties and other things that the Torah said had to be there, and the Talmud added hundreds and thousands of laws. God said, I make my covenant based on the written word. The rabbis say the covenant is based on oral tradition. It's sad fact, but true. That is what has helped to mislead our people. And so I say in closing, if we have not Jesus as the Messiah, the one who had to come 2,000 years ago, the one who had to be a priest and offer himself for our sins, and whose name has gone around the world to the nations, as the prophet said, rejected by his own people, but in the end to be received, if he is not our Messiah, we have no hope. We have no Messiah. Open your hearts. Seek God. Pray. Ask him to show you the truth, and he will reveal the Messiah Yeshua to you in wonder and in power, and one day we'll rejoice together as we see eye to eye. Thank you. Sometimes you win an argument by insult, but you're supposed to show the weakness of your argument. Luke 19.44, and when he was come near, he beheld the city and wept over it, saying, if thou hast known, even thou, at least in this thy day, things which belong unto thy peace, and now they are hid from thine eyes, for the day shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench upon thee, encompass thee around, and keep thee in every side, and to lay thee even with the ground, even with the ground, behold Jerusalem, and lay thy children within thee, and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knowest not the time of thy visitation. Now that is a prophecy. That is a prophecy where the stones cry out, false prophet, false prophet. The stones that everybody could see when they go to Jerusalem of the wall that did not fall down one on top of the other. I mean completely leveled, and we're talking about Haggai, and by the way, the scepter again was not used by anybody who knew Hebrew, and if you're going to use it as an excuse because they wanted to spread the word to people that didn't know the translation, they could have easily translated the original Hebrew had they known it. Haggai II says, certainly I will give you a signet ring. You will be the governor. Zerubbabel will not be a king. They didn't say king. He said a governor, a governor's son cannot take over from his father and become another governor. He was not. The curse was not taken off. He was not to be king, and that ends that one. Talmudic law. All these laws that I brought up which prove the kangaroo trial that I mentioned, certainly the Talmud was ended in the year 500, and I myself do not believe that any references found in the Talmud have anything to do with the Jesus story. I rely on the early Talmud, the Mishnah, and the Mishnahic times have to be divided up into the early part and the late part. Now, I'm talking about these laws were mentioned in the time of Shammai, in the time of Hillel. Now, Hillel, it says in the New Testament, by the way, we know that Hillel was the grandfather of Gamliel, and Gamliel is mentioned in the New Testament as being at the same time of Peter and therefore in the same time of Jesus, so his grandfather Hillel came way before the story that was supposed to have taken place, and it is during that time that they discussed the law. For example, a cock will not crow in Jerusalem. Now, that was said to Peter, but they didn't know that they weren't allowed to raise fowl, and that's an old Mishnah. It goes way back before this time. They were not allowed to raise fowl in Jerusalem, but the people didn't know these little laws, and so therefore the only part of the Talmud that I brought which emphasized the jurisprudence of the law, of the land at the time, were taken from the early Mishnah well before the story of Jesus. Now, one last thing about the rabbinic Jews, the Talmud did this. We changed that. That's true. We did. There were a lot of changes that were made. There's no question, because it is the rabbinic tradition that the last part of the Bible says, you shall explain this, giving the members of the major Sanhedrin, not the ones that have anything to do with capital punishment, but the 71 rabbis, giving them the major portion of the law, that is, they had the right to change things that were necessary in the times when times came up, and they had to make changes. Okay, there are a number of those, and we can cite many examples, so I agree with that. There were, but you have to understand one thing. We do not take the Bible literally. The Jews used to take the Bible literally. They were called the Sadducees, and we are descendants of the Pharisees. All Jews today are descendants of the Pharisees, and I'll tell you why. Because those who did not, later on, another group called the Karaites in about the year 900 and something, they believed in the oral, they did not believe in the oral tradition, only they took the Bible completely literally, and that was it. And Sadiagone, who was mentioned, came along, Sadiagone, who was mentioned, came along and divorced those people. They have since disappeared, almost disappeared off the face of the earth, and every Jew that's known today is descendant of the rabbinic Judaism. Therefore, we follow the Talmud, and we follow the changes, and this is what we expect, and if you're going to say that if you're going to take something literally, then we're not starting from the same basis, and that's why we find that we do not, we Jews, do not believe that this is a Jewish Messiah. And now I like to bring in Deuteronomy 8, if there arise a moment too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, and so on, arise thee up into a place where the Lord thy God shall choose, and thou shalt do according to the sentence which all the place which the Lord shall choose shall show thee, and thou shalt observe to do all the things that inform thee, according to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do." In other words, giving the rabbis the, or whoever is in charge at the time, the authority to make changes as was necessary. And so again, I'll end up with the statement, all through the New Testament, we can find one contradiction to Roman law, to Jewish law, to Jewish jurisprudence, and to history, and I do not believe it existed. Thank you. It's clear on every standard of every interpretation, both you and the rabbi have mentioned that this Messiah is going to be a descendant of David, yet you bring forth a case on how the Messiah is priestly, a person of the Kohanim, and it's clear, it's a fact that the house of David was not a Kohanim, was not among the priests. So the question is, if the Messiah is to be a son of David, how can he be a priest? The answer is, because he will be exactly like David. Number one, David himself, although he was a king, performed various priestly functions. You can find that in Second Samuel. Number two, the Bible says, at the end of Second Samuel, the eighth chapter, that David's sons were Kohanim. I didn't write that, the Hebrew Bible says that. Daniel's sons, David's sons, excuse me, were Kohanim. Not only that, it is said that the Messiah, who is a descendant of David, will be a priest after the order of Melchizedek. In other words, that he will be a king in Jerusalem who is also a priest. So the fact is that although he was not a descendant of Aaron, the Jewish tradition tells us in Jesus' day they were expecting a Messiah of David and a Messiah of Aaron. You find that in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Hebrew Bible tells us that the Messiah will be like David, who is identified as king and his sons as priests. It is said he will be like Melchizedek, who was a king in Jerusalem as well as priest. It is said that he will be like Yeshua, Jesus mentioned in Zechariah, who would be a priest ruling on his throne. So very simply, check out the sources. You don't have a chance to rebut, so let me just make this clear. Check out the sources and you'll see that the Messiah was to be a royal priest and the Messiah was not to be two people, a priest and a descendant of David, but one man, a descendant of David, yet greater than David, yet also a priest. You'll find in the ancient Jewish sources that was the expectation. More importantly, you'll find it in the Hebrew scriptures. Rabbi Dr. Blumont. I'm just going to read before we talk about that from Hebrew 7, 6, 7, 7. He is without father or mother or genealogy and has neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he continues to priest forever. Now, I have to admit that we all, all Jews are called priests because God says so. God says, you are a nation of priests in Exodus. And so in that sense, we're all priests. There's no question. As far as the Dead Sea Scrolls and talking about what they believed or not believed, you have to understand one thing. The Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the Esonim, the Esonim. And they were less than 1% of the entire population of that area, let alone the country. They did not believe in women and therefore they had no wives. It was a communal thing. Communists, they joined together. There's a lot written about them, but they were so small. So what they wrote or what their ideas were have really absolutely nothing to do with the general opinion of the Jewish people all over. You know, for the first question for Rabbi Dr. Blumau, on your side, go ahead. Dr. Willis, you had, or Rabbi, you had mentioned that Yeshua was a false prophet because everything that he said didn't happen. Yes. You had said that Yeshua was a false prophet because I think you quoted out of Deuteronomy that if everything that he didn't say didn't happen, but then later on that you had mentioned that everything that happened in the Tanakh had not happened. So are you saying that the Tanakh is not the inherent word of God and that everything in the Tanakh is then false prophecy? Because it has not happened as yet, then there was nothing false in so far as the Tanakh is concerned. Because all the prophets of the Tanakh said, the akhirit ha-yamin, in the end of days these will happen. It's always referred to, the akhirit ha-yamin, in the end of days. Will this happen? That will happen. They didn't say it's going to happen immediately. But as I quoted from the New Testament, Jesus says, before this is over, and while you're still alive, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that and I'm going to lay down these stones so there won't be one stone upon another stone. And all these things that were said did not happen and they were supposed to have happened during that time. Once again I want to point out, unfortunately, that the rabbi is guilty of unequal weights and unequal measures. He informs us that the Jews do not take the Bible literally and then he says Jesus is not a true prophet because what he said did not literally happen. You can't have it both ways, unfortunately. The fact is, and I'll emphasize this, you can go through all of the Hebrew prophets and you will find that what they said happened often in generalities and often in specifics. And if you read them as if every word happened to happen exactly to the point of hyper-literalism, you will have to say that they are false prophets too. What Jesus said happened with remarkable accuracy, stunning accuracy, and in fact you will find nowhere in the Talmud where it says that what Jesus prophesied didn't come to pass. He was not called a false prophesier by the Talmud. And the rabbi at the end said, by the way, that he doesn't even believe Jesus existed, in closing words at the end of the speech. The Talmud makes reference to his existence, makes reference to his death. Even Maimonides talks about his death. It's not a disputed fact. Okay, now the next question for Dr. Brown. Okay, you mentioned that the sons of David were Kohanim. In two verses before that, it said who the Kohanim were. It said that Tzadok and Eviatar were Kohanim. So why should he repeat it again? Obviously it means servant. Also, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't say, quote from the Talmud, saying that Jesus came 2,000 years ago and then say that the Talmudic rabbis were confused. I appreciate those points. Thank you. Number one, I didn't write Second Samuel, the eighth chapter. I can't tell you why it mentioned Tzadok and Eviatar, and then it mentioned the others as Kohanim. But you will not find a single place in the entire Hebrew Bible where Kohanim mean servant. Therefore, we have to just take it at face value. That's number one. Number two, and by the way, anything I'm saying, I'm very happy for people to check out every word with a concordance and go back. I would really appreciate if you go back and study every word, get the tapes, listen to them, look up the verses, look up the references, and see what was actually said accurately or not accurately. But let me be honest in terms of my dealing with the Talmud. No, I do not accept the authority of the Talmud, but I recognize that the Talmud preserves many traditions. Some of those traditions point back to the fact that Messiah was expected 2,000 years ago. Some of those traditions are embarrassing in the viewpoint of the fact that they point to Jesus. If they could have cut them out, they would have cut them out, but they couldn't cut them out because they were historically accurate. Nonetheless, I base all of my understanding of truth on the Bible, on the scriptures, on the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and I don't stand or fall with the Talmud. However, there are so many traditions that, by the way, are confused about the Messiah. Read it. Check it out. Sit down and begin reading in Sanhedrin 96b. Go through it, and you'll see the great confusion there about the coming of the Messiah and all the questions that are asked and why there have to be all these hundreds of responses and explanations and commentaries on the Talmud because it doesn't tell you the right way, and it doesn't point you to God, and it doesn't lead you to eternal life. It doesn't produce forgiveness of sins, but it does preserve some interesting testimonies that point back to Jesus. And for a one-minute rebuttal. Okay. I'm glad that you said that you can't have it both ways. We admit that we use the Talmud, and we have our rabbinic tradition, but I've heard both sides of your mouth. One time you say we take it literally, and the other time you're relying on the Talmud. You can't have it both ways. But Jesus is not mentioned in the Talmud. I'll tell you right now. Hoshea Yisrael is mentioned in the Talmud, the sinner of Israel, and as our rabbis pointed out recently, if we were to assign Jesus to any one of them, that means that he would have to live over a period of 250 years by the people that he has conversations with, the Hoshea Yisrael are talking about. Therefore, we say that he could not be the Jesus, and that was a later rationalization by the other part of the Talmud. When they heard these stories, they said, well, we must have something. So they developed these stories, but it was not necessarily that person. And now, I also would like you to take an opportunity to study the New Testament and see the basic anti-Semitism that runs through, especially in the Apocrypha, where they have Jewish mothers cursing their children forever. Can you imagine one Jewish mother cursing her children? Imagine a whole crowd of them. Absolute anti-Semitism. Okay, now for question number four, directed to Rabbi Dr. Blumach. Yes, sir. I'd like to know what you think about the factual documented splitting of the parochet in Matthew 27, right after Yeshua cried out his last, and what you think of the fact that after Yeshua's death, before 70 CE, the tongue of scarlet never turned white again. And in the confines of your discussion with Dr. Brown, you said that if we start from a literal interpretation, or figurative, I don't know what to use, but the point was you said from the basis of the way he was interpreting the text, that we couldn't talk. But within the confines of how the rabbis study, I believe that there's four ways that scripture is interpreted, and they are pashat, teres, remes, and one other one that escapes my mind. So if you could explain to me how you interpret scripture on just one basis, when for centuries rabbis have been interpreting them within four... Okay, time's up. Any questions? I am not sure of the reference to the curtain, so I can't answer that part of your question. I'm sorry. The actual event that took place of the curtain was when the Roman soldiers came in and took a sword to the curtain, and that entire curtain is supposed to be in the Vatican today. I don't know. It was brought back to Rome, and I don't know the reference that you're referring to. It might be so. I cannot answer that part. As far as the other part of your question, I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Do I take the literal sense? No. All the interpretation that I did, all the translations of the Tanakh, that is the Isaiah, Jeremiah, and so on, were the interpretations of our rabbinic, of our Talmud, and our sages afterwards. There's no question that that is the case, and I think so far I've been getting insulted left and right from the other side, but I will not respond to that. I'm sorry if you feel insulted, Rabbi. I've heard my Messiah and my sacred scriptures insulted from top to bottom all night, and the faith of hundreds of people insulted that they believe in a myth, nonsense. But I do apologize if at any point I seem rude to you. I didn't mean to do that, but I was shocked by blatant inaccuracies, even the reference a moment ago to the Apocrypha. It's not the accepted New Testament, that reference. In any case, there is an interesting Talmudic tradition that parallels the splitting of the veil from top to bottom, but it talks about the temple doors bursting open and a rabbi having to rebuke them. As to the issue of interpretation, levels of interpretation, in fact, the medieval rabbis will say, this is literal or this is midrash, this is homiletical, this is literal interpretation, this is mystical interpretation, et cetera, that was well known. The writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls were part of a large Jewish community, actually. According to Jewish history, the Pharisees were only 6,000 heads of homes. They were the little minority, probably more of the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And all of these different lines of interpretation, literal, midrashic, all these things, are reflected in the New Testament because they were Jews. Interesting insights that could only come from the Hebrew, interesting interpretations where they often didn't use the Septuagint, they used the Hebrew, pointed to their actions. Okay. The next question. Go ahead. Bear with me. This is a hypothetical question. A train is rolling out of Auschwitz concentration camp. It's filled with emaciated Jewish survivors. There's a guard on the train with a machine gun ready to shoot them. And the Allied soldiers are advancing, and close to the end, they come upon the train. This Nazi beast was tortured and killed. Hundreds, thousands of Jews. Takes out his machine gun, mows down all the Jews in the train, and they die, unfortunately. He jumps off the train, starts running away. The Allied are advancing towards him. He gets down on his knees. He realizes he might get a bullet in his head, which he subsequently does. But before he goes out, he says, Jesus, my Lord, my Savior, please forgive me. The Jews, and this is hypothetical, definitely did not believe in Jesus, did not get down on their knees. Who goes to heaven? Who goes to hell? I would encourage those who are sensitive to this issue to read my book, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood, where I have also wept and agonized over the horror of the Holocaust, and known that although some of my fellow Jews don't consider me Jewish, Hitler would have, and I would have been one of the Jews in the train getting shot down. Now let me, excuse me, excuse me. It's my time. Thank you. Number one, most of those Jews in the Holocaust were not religious Jews, or at least a good percentage of them. Many were traditional Jews, but many were not. For example, in Germany, they were more German than Jews. Many of them were reformed Jews. They had departed from certain Jewish traditions that were prevalent in their day. The question is, excuse me, sir. Excuse me. Security, could you please escort that man outside of the auditorium? Thank you. You just don't mind if I have a couple extra seconds so I can make myself clear. According to our Torah, according to the five books of Moses, if we were righteous in God's sight, we would not have suffered those things. If we were blessed in God's sight, we would not have been cursed and dispersed around the world. Something was horribly wrong. We were under the judgment of God, tragically. And therefore, I cannot answer where that Jewish person went, because I'm not God. However, I can say this, that it was a sign of God's judgment on us as a people and as a nation, not his blessing. And therefore, I tremble for the fate of many Jews at that time. How was it that they ended up being cremated after the tortures? How did this happen? Something was horribly wrong. Answer that question first, how the Holocaust happened. That we know. Then we'll deal with life after death. As for your alleged conversion, the New Testament is very clear. Without repentance, it is empty words. The prophet said, no matter how wicked you are, if you will truly turn from your wicked ways and repent, God will forgive. If not, he will not. In relation to the Holocaust, that's only one small part of a history which began with the Jesus concept. After the acceptance of Jesus, and when it became an official religion of Rome under Constantine, who then said, on the condition that you change Saturday to Sunday, and you do all these things because I don't like Jews, and who then said you have to persecute the Jews, more human beings were killed in this world, not only Jews, but more human beings were killed in this world in the name of this Jesus than any other person in the history of the world. Okay, now for our final question, directed toward Rabbi. Yes, I have two questions. First one, the half Torah reading in synagogues and temples all over the world is identical for the descendants of the Sabbath day, but then somehow they miss, they purposely omitting the suffering servant, the passage Isaiah 52 through 53. And the second question, you have mentioned about Jesus is not Jewish Messiah. He could be Messiah of others. Does that mean, or would you refrain that, why can't he be the Jewish Messiah? I did not make the assignment of the half Torah to each portion of the week. That was done in relationship, they would find something similar in the reading of the Torah to that portion that they found in the Tanakh, that is in the prophet, and therefore they would make these connections. I don't think they had in mind to eliminate any particular one thing, but I've already demonstrated the fact that this same Isaiah 53 does not refer to a Jesus unless he was a big sinner of Israel and he was hated by God. So therefore I have to answer in that way. And as for the other question, when you have two questions, I have to remember what the other one was. Why do I not believe that Jesus, I thought that I spent a good portion of this evening describing why I cannot in any way believe the fiction of the New Testament. Thank you. Very briefly, number one, I encourage every Jew here to go home and read Isaiah 53 and see who it speaks about. There are ancient traditions that point to the possibility that Isaiah 53 was excised by the synagogue. You can find that in the documentation of Raphael Loew and his prolegomenon for the Isaiah 53 according to the Jewish interpreters published by Kitab. Look into it, you'll find that there are traditions that point to the fact that it was pulled out because it was considered too controversial. The question was how can Jesus be the Messiah of others and not of the Jews? It's the very fact that he is the Messiah of everyone or not at all. And instead of looking at all this blood shed in his name, I looked at the hundreds of millions of lives who have been gloriously chained through the Messiah of Israel and it is only pseudo-Christians who've lied in his name that have shed any blood. The fact is he said, and it's clearly taught, if you're a murderer, you have no eternal life. So go back to the source, look at the wonderful lives that have been chained, talk to Christian friends if you're Jewish and find out what Jesus has done for them, he'll do the same for you. Wow, Rabbi Blumhoff and Dr. Brown, very impressive. You know what they reminded me of? Two heavyweight champions just slugging it out, going toe to toe. It also reminded me of an experience I had almost 22 years ago. When I first became a Messianic Jew, that's a Jewish believer in Jesus, my parents did what good Jewish parents do, they marched me to my Orthodox Jewish rabbi. I remember going into his study, it's kind of like my study today, and he was behind his desk, sort of like this, but he was in a swivel chair and he had a corncob pipe and he was smoking on the pipe and I told him what I believed and he looked very pensively at me and then he swung around in his swivel chair at all of his books and he said, Sid, you see all of these books, when you've read all of these books, then come back and tell me that you believe Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. I thought to myself, I didn't say it, Rabbi, by the time I read all of these books, I could be dead and suppose you're wrong and suppose I'm right. Then the thought crossed my mind, besides that, how do I know Orthodox Judaism is right? Conservative, Reformed, Constructionist, Reconstructionist, and all the other varieties of Judaism. Besides that, I have to tell you, it was too late. You see, the Jewish prophet Jeremiah in the 31st chapter predicted that something new would come. After our temple would be destroyed, we would need something new and God didn't leave us defenseless. He said in Jeremiah 31 that the days are coming in which we shall make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their forefathers, which they violated, and this new covenant will be marked by two things. Number one, God says he will remember our sins no more. That means that we can stand in his presence with just pure communication with him. And the second earmark of this new covenant is you will know God. And I know God. And when you know God, everything becomes so clear. Well, it wasn't always that way. I was raised, as I said, in a traditional Jewish home. My parents loved me. I remember as a young boy once, my parents used to like to play poker, and they would go out late at night, and I would be home by myself. And one night, I started thinking. I don't know why the thought crossed my mind, but it did. What happens when you die? And so in Judaism, it says that there definitely is an afterlife after you die. But as a young boy, and since Judaism is the Chaim to life, we never talked about death. So as a young boy, I just figured you cease to exist. So my logical mind said, well, if I cease to exist, that means that whatever is me will no longer be here. And I thought, what would it be like? And I tried to imagine this, and you know, it became so fearful, so objectionable, I did the only thing a young child could do. I just blocked it from my mind and didn't think about it until many years later. Well, I was bar mitzvah, and I went to college, and I had a goal in mind. My goal was to be a millionaire by the time I was age 30. I felt that if I became a millionaire, I could then be happy, and that was my goal in life. Well, I blinked my eyes. I had my college degree from American University in Washington, D.C. I blinked my eyes a few more times, and I was married. I blinked my eyes. I had a child. I blinked my eyes. I had a tremendous job as an account executive with Merrill Lynch, Pierce Fenner, and Smith. I blinked my eyes a few times, and then I was 29, and I had what the world calls an early midlife crisis. I really, I was searching for something. There must be, it reminds me of a song I wrote right after I got married. I wrote a song called There Must Be Something More. The words, pretty dumb words, but they went something like this. Because I work, eat, sleep, and that's the way it goes. Because I work, eat, sleep, and that's the way it goes. And when it was sung, it wasn't sung this way, but from my heart, this is the way it came out. There must, there must be something more. There has to be something more to life. Otherwise, what's the sense? And so I did something that I'm not proud of, but so many people do. I left my wife. I left my daughter. I left my career job, and I went searching for this something more. I got married at an early age. I thought maybe the enjoyment would be in the singles bars. So I went there. I'm personally convinced the singles bars are filled up with the loneliest people on the face of this earth. I went from job to job, situation to situation in that year. Things weren't getting better. It's the old story, the grass is always greener. You know, but when you get there, you're the same person with the same stinking thinking. And at the end of that year, by the time I almost turned 30, life wasn't better. It was worse. And then one of my salesmen said to me, Sid, a friend of mine took a meditation course, and he can do wonderful things with his mind. And he said he had no psychic or ESP type of ability beforehand, but after taking this course, he was able to know things he had no way of knowing previously. It's all like a computer without having the information programmed, but all of a sudden you know it. And I said, boy, I'll take this course because if I do it and I had no information that I wouldn't naturally know, maybe I can make a million dollars and then maybe still I can be happy and I'll find that something more. And so I took the course, and they teach you how to lower your brainwaves through a mental exercise, such as when you go to sleep, your brainwaves lower down. And at that very dull, passive stage, they tell you to invite a counselor into your head. And this counselor will answer your questions. Well, I took this course, and I can tell you, I began to know things that had never been programmed into my mind, and therefore I knew that this course worked. But I got a little bit more than I bargained for. I found that these powers started increasing. One day, for instance, a man walked to my office and he said, Sid, if you ever want to go into business for yourself, we'll give you a free office, free rent, free secretary, free telephone, we have a little extra space, we'd like you... I barely knew this man. I said, wow, his power is terrific. I am on my way. I have arrived. I went into the office and I found something strange. You see, I thought this man came to me because of my power, but this man happened to be one of these Christians that operated under Jeremiah 31, one that knew God, that heard his voice. God told him to offer this to me. One day, he marched into my office and he said, Sid, did you know that God condemns your involvement in the occult? And he pulled out his Bible. I happen to have a Tanakh right here, and this Tanakh says in Deuteronomy, the 18th chapter, that's what he read to me, the 9th verse, when you enter the land that the Lord your God has given you, you shall not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. Let no one be found among you who consigns his son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead. For anyone who does such things is abhorrent to the Lord, and it is because of these abhorrent things that the Lord your God is dispossessing them before you. Well, one that consults with familiar spirits? What he was saying to me is that my counselor that was telling me things was a familiar spirit, and God called it an abomination. Well, at that point, although I came from a good traditional Jewish background, I didn't really believe that the Bible was the Word of God. I believed there was a God, I was proud of being a Jew, but on the 1% chance that this Tanakh was really the Word of God, I decided I'd go into neutral gear with these powers, and I got the shock of my life. I found out that this counselor had a mind of its own, and this began to scare me. Then a book came into my hands. I happened to go to a regular bookstore, I went to the New Age section, and there was a book there that attracted my eyes. It was called The Jew, the Bible, and the Supernatural by award-winning author McCandless Phillips, and I pulled the book out, and this book said something different than my Christian friends had told me. This book said that not only was it an abomination for anyone to be involved in these New Age practices that I was involved in, however, it was worse for a Jew to do this, because a Jew is under a covenant with God, and ignorance of the law is no excuse, and then it proceeds to list famous Jewish people that I had heard of that were doing the same types of things, going to fortune tellers, astrology, seances, Ouija boards, tea leaves, I mean, all the things that everyone I knew was doing, and every one of them lost their lives. But the one that really had an impact on me was my hero at that time was a Jewish businessman by the name of Brian Epstein. Maybe you remember him. He was the manager of the Beatles, and all of the Beatles, as well as Brian, went to the Himalayas, and they meditated with the yogis there. But at that time, only one died, my hero, who had everything that I thought was important. I mean, he had fame, he had money, he had women, he had the things that I thought were important in life, and he was dead. And this really bothered me. But then things got even worse. I broke into a realm called astral projection. This is where your spirit leaves your body and actually can go on walks. And I found out, and if you think that this is kind of like, you know, way out and just craziness, mishegas, as we say, then I'd like you to know that Duke University has a school in parapsychology. The Russians have been investigating this for years, and this has been scientifically proven. And once you break into this realm, your spirit literally, every time you go to sleep, can go for a walk. And if you've ever seen these science fiction movies on television, someone like Rod Serling, have I got a plot for him? If you ever read the book or saw the movie The Exorcist, I mean, I was convinced that something evil, that this Torah was the word of God, and something evil was inside of me. I didn't want God, I didn't want Jesus, I didn't want, all I wanted was to go back to the position that I was in. But I found out there was nowhere to turn. I mean, where could I go? Could I go to my rabbi? My rabbi wouldn't be able to help me. Could I go to my parents? They'd give their life for me, but they wouldn't be able to help me. Could I go to a psychiatrist? I mean, how could he relate? I'm just too logical. I knew that I was hearing voices. I knew there was something inside of me. I knew there was evil. I wanted out, I wanted help, and I had nowhere to go. Well, the worst night of my life, I was afraid to go to sleep for fear my spirit would leave my body and I would be buried alive or something. I mean, awful thoughts were going through. The fear, it was unimaginable, and I pretty much threw in the towel. I said, God, Jesus, I give up. Do you remember when I felt so fearful of death as a child, I blocked it from my mind and I didn't want to think about it anymore? Well, at that point in my life, death looked better than life, whatever was the real me. It was just too hard, and I threw in the towel. The next morning, I woke up, and I'd like to tell you I had a dream. I didn't. I'd like to tell you I had a vision. I didn't. I'd like to tell you I heard a voice. I didn't, but when I woke up, that pressure, that fear that was tearing me apart from the inside out, it was gone, and in its place, the only way I can describe it, it was like a joy inside of me, a peace and a knowing. Remember, Jeremiah said, one of the signs of the new covenant, you will know God. Don't ask me to prove it. I can't, but I can prove it to the person that counts, myself. I know God, and the first thing God told me to do was return to my wife and daughter, which I did, and this is my story, and it's a true story. My wife Joyce and I just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. I had the privilege of seeing my daughter marry a godly man that also knows God. She presented us with our first grandchild. Here's a picture of my family. This is a family that would not have been. It would not have been if it wasn't for the goodness of God, but then it gets even better. Not only did God restore my mind, and this, by the way, was 22 years ago, not only did God restore my family, not only did God restore my job, but God caused every member of my immediate family to come to know him personally. My mother was born in Rochester, New York. My father born in Poland. It was to him the biggest shame when his son, who he gave a good Jewish education to, boldly said Jesus was the Messiah, but over the years, my parents watched me, and they saw, as my mother used to say, this Jesus made my Sidney a mensch, that's a human, and restored his marriage, and that's good enough for me, not that I believe in him. I remember talking to my mother and going over the predictions in the scriptures. A lot of people don't know it, but the Tanakh has thousands of predictions about the entire history of the Jewish people. For instance, did you know that God said because of sin, we would lose our temple, we would be scattered to the four corners of the earth, and wherever we would go, we would be persecuted as a people, and in the last days, that Israel would become a nation in a day, the Jews would return to the land of Israel? Get this, it says in Isaiah 49, 12, that a sign of the last days is the Jews will return to the nation Israel from China. It says Sinon, that's Hebrew for China. Well, I didn't even know there were Chinese Jews. Recently, I went to China, and I talked to Chinese Jews who said, I know nothing about Judaism, I know nothing about Christianity, but this I know. I know that I am a Jew. I have told my son that I am, that he is a Jew, and that someday he will live in Israel. Jeremiah in the 16th chapter said that from the land of the north, north of Israel, is the former Soviet Union, the Jews will begin to return. Talks about thousands of predictions, every one has come true, and then there are predictions about the Messiah. It says that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem of Judea, that eliminates a whole lot of people, from the ancestry of David. It says that this Messiah, in Isaiah, the Gentiles would follow. You see, I believe there is one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I also believe that there is one Messiah, Yeshua, Jesus, the Anointed One, not a Messiah for the Christians, and a Messiah for the Jews, a Messiah for the Muslims, one God for the whole world, one Messiah, the Jew, Jesus. And as my mother heard these predictions, as my mother saw the change in my life, as the mother, she saw my marriage restored, she saw my sister, my brother-in-law, make Jesus their Messiah, the changes in their life, how wonderful our children were, and one day she said to me, I believe, Sid, but your dad, she wanted to protect me, that's a good Jewish mother, your dad, he'll never believe. And I said, mom, I know dad will believe. You have to remember, my dad, born in Poland, he would tell stories of my grandfather walking by churches and spitting because of all of the atrocities done in the name of Christianity, and I would say to my dad, but dad, those were not Christians, Jesus himself said, you'll know my disciples, my Talmudim, by their love, and anyone that kills anyone is not a true follower of Jesus, but he couldn't hear it, he didn't have ears to hear it. Jeremiah the prophet said, I have ears but do not hear, and eyes but do not see, and you follow tradition learned by man, and wrote, and that's what I was used to in traditional Judaism. But one day, not only did my mother receive the Messiah, but I had occasion to read from the holy scriptures, the prophet Isaiah, to my dad, the 53rd chapter. Let me read this, starting at the 52nd chapter, the 13th verse. Indeed, my servants shall prosper, be exalted, and raised to great heights. Just as the many were appalled at him, so marred was his appearance unlike that of man, his form beyond human semblance. Just so, he shall startle many nations. Kings shall be silenced because of him, for they shall see what has not been told them, shall behold what they never have heard. Who can believe what we have heard? Upon whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he is growing by his favor like a tree crown, like a tree trunk out of arid ground. He has no form or beauty that we should look at him, no charm that we should find him pleasing. He was despised, shunned by men, a man of suffering, familiar with disease. As one who hid his face from us, he was despised, and we held him of no account. Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing, our suffering that he endured. We have counted him plagued, spitten, and afflicted by God, but he was wounded because of our sins, crushed because of our iniquities. He bore the chastisement that made us whole, and by his bruises we were healed. We all went astray like sheep, each going his own way, and the Lord visited upon him the guilt of us all. He was maltreated, yet he was submissive. He did not open his mouth like a sheep being led to slaughter, like a ewe dumb before those who shear her. He did not open his mouth. By oppressive judgment he was taken away. Who could describe his abode? For he was cut off from the land of the living through the sin of my people, who deserved the punishment. And his grave was set among the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no injustice and had spoken no falsehood, my righteous servant makes the many righteous. This word righteousness is an interesting word, because the prophets tell us all of our righteousness is as filthy rags, and I had the privilege of seeing my Orthodox Jewish father, the day before he left this earth, come to know God personally through the Messiah of Israel, Jesus. It's like the Jewish prophet Daniel says in the 12th chapter, those that are buried in the dust, some shall rise to everlasting life, and some to everlasting condemnation. If you do not know God before you die, what makes you so sure you'll know him after you die? But if you know him before you die, he will never leave you, never ever. In this life, you'll have shalom, and when you leave, he'll grab you by the hand. I'd like you to pray a prayer and mean it to the best of your ability. This is the type of prayer that will change your life. It changed my father's life, my mother's life, my sister's life, my brother-in-law's life, my daughter's life, my son-in-law's life, my uncle's life, and your life. Repeat it and mean it from your heart. Dear God, please forgive me for every sin I've ever committed. With your help, I will turn from them, and I'm truly sorry for what I've done. I believe that the penalty for sin is eternal separation from you, and I have sinned. I believe that Jesus died in my place as my substitute, and by his stripes, I was healed. I believe I am forgiven because of Jesus. I am righteous because of Jesus. I know God because there is nothing separating me from the love of God, and I ask Jesus now to be my Lord and come and live inside of me. Amen. If you said that prayer and meant it, I want to give you a gift. I wrote my life story in a book. The book is titled, There Must Be Something More, and I want to give this in honor of my father to every person that said that prayer with me. God bless you, and thank you for being with us.