okay Alana you are live on the air go ahead with your question okay hi Rabbi I am calling from Michigan and uh I just had a question so if in fact uh Yeshua is you know a Jewish man uh hearing about mashik for his entire you know uh upbringing of course he's circumcised of course uh his mother gives the the the proper tribute for a firstborn son all that uh it's possible that he could grow up and think or develop a idea that he's Messiah so but my question is uh aside from that how do
you explain the accounts of the Miracles and the miraculous things that he did witnessed and purported by people in the area at that time well how just stay on don't don't lose me how how do you explain the Miracles that um Joseph Smith did there Witnesses where Joseph Smith received gold plates from the angel morono and that only happened in the 19th century just stay with me because I want to just like how do you explain that like why aren't you a Mormon is that a fair is that a fair question well I mean partially
uh but you know if in fact uh you know there wasn't just one or two I mean we're talking about big things like go Resurrection from the dead Satya saaba who did not die that long ago in India resurrected the dead healed the blind performed miracles in front of thousands of people he has 30 million followers right now who are alive who will swear to this why don't you believe that um I mean the Catholics uh believe that there were Miracles done in Portugal where many many people the beginning of 20th century saw the Virgin
Mary I think all these religions are claiming Miracles and the question is why do you only accept this the Miracles done in the religion that you already believe in and please don't be offended and just completely are unmoved by The Miracles claimed in another religion I mean in Islam uh muh mmed was an illiterate prophet and wrote the Quran I mean had did if you're illiterate how could he have done that but you apparently you're not persuaded by that to become a Muslim so I what's really happening is that people say okay I this is
the religion I believe in I love Jesus I'm going to believe that and I don't believe in the Church of Jesus Christ latter they saying so I'm going to ignore all those claim Miracles and as it turns out all all religions claimed that their Founders were able to perform Miracles so then how do you know what the truth is because after all then how do we believe in anything I mean doesn't the Torah claim Miracles as well like how do you pick and choose so there's something really uh very valuable here and that is that
the Torah is the original text the Torah is the text that the M vast majority of the world believes in as a holy book and it's not that the Jewish people or other most popular group on the planet we're not liked in many corners in many regions of the world we're not despite that the vast majority of the world believe that the Torah the prophets the writing the Hebrew scriptures is the word of God however other religions are adding accretions um Christianity that the Messiah to die and Rise so what we do is we have
to compare not Miracle claims I mean the Roman Catholic Church claims miracles for people who it canonizes as a saint the Orthodox Church claims Miracles that are done using its relics and icons all these religions claim Miracles rather what we're doing is we're asking what is compatible with the Hebrew Bible and if it is then we accept it and if it's in opposition to the Jewish scriptures we reject it in the ancient World especially there were a lot of things people didn't understand in the ancient world people repeated things over they heard from others and
the stories became more and more embellished I mean just even look at the Book of Mark as compared to the Book of John look how different they are I mean Mark doesn't know anything about a virgin birth right Matthew Luke apparently do why because the story grew and then you know the Book of John Jesus walking around essentially inferring that he's God well he didn't do that in the synoptic gospels so you see the story just growing and as people repeat the story I don't know as a kid when I'd go to birthday parties so
we when I was a little kid there was this game we would play that I thought was hysterical and I think it was called telephone where we'd sit in a circle maybe 10 kids would sit in a circle and I would repeat over something to one person and he'd repeat a whisper in the A and it was very funny how when it came to the other end how different it was than what I had said so in the ancient world just people thought Miracles were happening all time partially because people didn't understand they didn't know
what an earthquake was they didn't know what a tectonic plate was or that it could shift because of an earthquake that occurs under the oceans that they didn't know any of this to them lightning was the gods were angry they just didn't know so in the ancient world there was so many things that were inexplicable that they saw demons and ghosts and people who were mentally ill they just thought you know were possessed by a demon like Mary Magdalene in the Book of Luke so I would just say that it's not an accident that the
Virgin Mary appears a lot to women over pancakes for breakfast every Sunday morning in Brazil and the Philippines why cuz those are Roman Catholic countries right Brazil is the largest Catholic country in the world now why doesn't the Virgin Mary come to Saudi Arabia or Kuwait like there's apparently she she can't get a visa to get into Kuwait like why does the Virgin Mary only appear to people who are already predisposed to believing in her well we know the answer the answer is they want to believe it and I'll never forget this when I was
in Indonesia it it's all hit me like a like a bumb it was um 2016 I think it was March 2016 this the biggest Pastor in Indonesia so Indonesia is home to like 35 million Christians something like that and this this is a guy who filled stadiums he was known as Peter the Great but that was in his real name he was big big big guy and he was in his late 40s and he suddenly dropped dead but he he was a Prosperity preacher of the whole deal he was big and he had promised his
followers that he would take them to Jerusalem and he died in his late 40s I don't know what it was but the point was it within a few days of course everyone was perplex because he said he's going to lead everybody to Israel to Jerusalem and L these women now please don't be angry at me but it was all women who suddenly were claiming that this Peter the Great appeared to them in a vision well there you go that's that's the deal and people who want to believe the story becomes more and more embellished what
people do is they I think love Jesus and therefore they like the stories about Jesus and therefore believe in it I would posit to you that in fact to search T to use the Hebrew Bible as your only guide why because Christians believe in the Hebrew Bible I'm not suggesting say read the tud or I'm just saying Christians who clearly the people I've encoun for the most part are genuine sincere people you believe that the Hebrew RS the word of God read it and then ask yourself does anything in the Jewish scriptures comport with what
what you find in New Testament answer is no nothing doesn't resemble it in fact the Messiah is not a miracle worker in the in Tanakh you can look at tanak you'll never see the the messiah's running around doing Miracles he's a teacher he's a judge see Isaiah 2 I mean all you have to do is read the first five verses of Isaiah 2 all Christians agree that's about the Messiah read the first six verses of Isaiah 11 you can read the whole Isaiah 11 it's easy chapter to read there's nothing in there about the Messiah
doing Miracles nothing but these ideas say that these um these Messiah can run around do Miracles so that was very much an idea that's at home not only in Israel in the or in the Levant but well Beyond in Egypt all the gods Osirus all these guys who all doing these insane Miracles and so were Emperors of Rome but port to do them so thank you very much for your thoughtful question if you enjoyed this program please like And subscribe [Music] [Applause] [Music]
