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Of course you can pray for someone who is an idolater. What I think is the more important question to be answered is what can we not do with an idolater rather than what can we do…The Torah tells us, Lifnei Iver Lo Siten Michshol, before the blind you must never place a stumbling block. And therefore, when you encounter someone who worships idols, what Hashem wants from you is to inspire them, to raise them up, and not to mislead them and let them think everything is okay. Teach them about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Do nothing to encourage or inspire them to continue on the way, just as though you met someone who was smoking cigarettes…We have a commandment that you must certainly (I only use the word rebuke, although that’s how it’s translated), but you should certainly speak up tell someone who’s worshipping idols that they should come to know about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And it is interesting that the passage ends with the statement, and the sin should not be upon you…That has two meanings to it. The first is that if you don’t, if you do not speak to that person and allow them to continue in their sin, then you are going to share in that sin because you were silent. And we are told this very clearly in the Book of Ezekiel; and in fact Ezekiel has to atone himself for the people by laying for days and days and days on the floor, rolling over on aside to atone for the people. What is he doing? Well we are told in the Book of Ezekiel that if a Prophet or someone whose enjoined by God to teach, it is in fact [if they remain] silent that they carry the sin on them as well. So therefore it’s very important to speak up. But the second thing about the sin should not be upon you which is very important is be careful in how you speak to somebody else…Don’t be angry…The folks who often will meet you are not worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob don’t mean bad, they generally don’t understand. They are perishing for a lack of knowledge, and Hashem takes that into account. So it’s very important not to speak to people with disdain, but with love. And the only way to do this is to really care about them. The only way that I can do what I do with my work is I really do care about these Christians.
Daniel told a Gentile to give charity and that’s the way to bring mercy. If you’re in a little bit of trouble right now in your life, and you want to have the Heavens open for you, go to Walmart if you’re in the United States, put food in the trunk of your car, go to the part of town…where people are hungry, and feed them… And if you do that, you are walking in the ways of God…Just as God is merciful, we are merciful.
I do so many shows that I don’t know where I said what…You notice that the kings, the Davidic kings and the Messiah are called the ‘branch’…You have to wonder, isn’t the ‘branch’ a very strange name to call a king or the Messiah? What does that mean?…When you understand what that means you will enjoy a complete paradigm shift…It is used for Zerubbabel, who is from the Davidic dynasty, although he was not a king, he was a governor, but he is given this name. So why are they called the branch? And ultimately the Messiah is called the branch…Let’s go back to Isaiah 11:1 and we are told there that Jesse is the root. Now if Jesse is the root, in Christian terms the Messiah would be the tree, in Jewish terms he would be the branch. Let me explain that. In Christian terms there is only one person who is to be the Messiah, and that someone who was the only begotten son of God, and he is actually God in the flesh, and he could do anything, and he is 6 foot 2, and he’s white. And he is really good looking, and has fabulous hair with no split ends…He is the only Messiah, there is nobody else…Think about this for a moment, if in each generation, if the generation would repent, that God would bring about the Messianic Age…if the nation would repent and fulfil the words of Isaiah 59:20, to Zion will go forth a Redeemer to those who repent in Jacob, (so these are not my words, it’s Scripture). And because the Messiah can’t be born the day that the nation repents, he has to be an adult; you can’t have a king of the Davidic dynasty who is a child, that means that in every single generation, there is some man, a direct descendant of King David who is ready and prepared to step forward and to fulfil the promise of King David. You see how delicious this is? A tree has maybe thousands of branches…that’s why the Messiah is not called a tree, he is called a branch because there are thousands of people who are branches like there are thousands of branches on a tree.
We know after all that the first words that a child should learn and the last words that a person says when he’s 120 and he is going to stand before the Lord of lords, Host of hosts, most important creed of our people: Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. There is no one else. In fact the mandate of the Jewish people is to pass on that message. After all in Isaiah 43:10, ‘you’ – in brackets referring to the Jewish people, not just all the Jews but the righteous remnant. You are my witnesses declares the Lord, my servant whom I have chosen. So that you should know and believe and understand that I am Him. Before Me there was no god formed and neither is there one after Me. I, even I am the Lord and besides Me there is no saviour…Isaiah wanted to make sure that people didn’t get in this much trouble. But it is true that for many Christians their understanding of God doesn’t come from these sacred texts; does not emerge from these numinous passages. But rather they come from statements that they heard in church, ideas that are expressed in the Christian bible itself. And more likely ideas that are spread by the church fathers.
There are hundreds of thousands of Jewish people that are in churches around the world. My life is devoted to helping them return back to the truth and beauty of the Jewish faith. I’ve been doing that for more than 40 years. So my goal is to get them out of the church, to respond to very serious challenges posed by groups like Jews for Jesus against our faith.
For many Jewish people they see the Christian world as basically monolithic, it’s a mistake. The Christian world is by far the most variegated religion in the world. So the Roman Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the world (people like Rudy Giuliani), these people are not interested in converting Jews. Liberal Protestants, your Hillary Clinton Protestant, she’s not interested in converting you either. The people we are going to be speaking about are fundamentalist Evangelical born-again Christians. These are the people who are committed to converting you and those that you love to the Christian religion.
You have Jewish people who want more God not less God. It’s the kids that have the Hebrew school education. Two hours a week of Jewish education, forty hours of secular education. So they’re curious about God but in their temple there was nothing there to satisfy that curiosity…The success of these groups [Jews for Jesus, etc] represents the unpaid bills of the Jewish people. So when kids lack a Jewish education, they are curious about God, missionaries get to them first. It becomes a very serious problem.
I understand how they got themselves into this predicament. I learnt in the Mir, these people had none of that. These people never learnt Tanakh, they never learnt a sugya, they never learnt any of these things, I feel very sorry for them and I’m also a very easy going guy, I never yelled at any of my kids in my life, never raised my voice. I’m just a very gentle person and in truth what you want to do is you want reach them in a way that’s valuable. So I never, just calm. And there is something very powerful in being calm, and it’s something very weak in being overly aggressive. When you have the truth, you don’t worry. When you go through customs…you’re not worried, why? Because it is really your passport.
What I’m always really doing is I don’t want to just take Christians and make them into atheists, that would be a nightmare. Like what’s the point? What I want to do is I want to always use Christianity as a mirror to bounce of and to look back on how true the Torah is.
The Torah spends no time talking about reincarnation. Never. What does that tell you if there is nothing, not one word about reincarnation, what does that tell you? Is that important for man or not important for you to know? It’s irrelevant. I want to explain this to you. Why would anyone reincarnate, come back again?…I will tell you why. Many people misunderstand this, so let’s make sense of this. Let’s go back to December 26, 2004. An earthquake shatters the oceans and a tsunami rushes towards Indonesia. Hundreds of thousands of people died in an instant. That tsunami continues to Thailand, wipes out islands…Many of them [who died] were children. Could children be wicked? No. Can they be righteous? No. They have no free will because the moral precepts of their mind have not yet been developed. When girls reach about 12 or boys 13, they become responsible for their actions…So when a child dies there cannot possibly be anything that that child did. Moreover, that child’s neshama [soul] is unresolved…Now why is there a tsunami? I don’t know. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, that which has been revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we may keep [the Torah]. This is beyond [our knowledge]. But we do know that all these people who died (chas v chalila, Heaven forbid) prematurely, their souls must come back. Must. But Tanakh doesn’t put it in there because it’s not your business. There is a concept out there, our Sages talk about it, but don’t even think about that anymore. And people who do just wind up in a lot of trouble. Always think about why doesn’t Tanakh ever discuss going to Hell or almost never, and it’s never a threat. And why is it always a threat in the New Testament?…If you’re not God, you’re going to say, ‘You’re going to go to hell.’ That is the red flag of a false religion.
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