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This article was written by a Messianic Jew The man has a mastery
of Talmudic literature and he has some rather amazing things
to say in this article about Christ and His coming according
to bible prophecy while using the Talmud, the Mishnah, and other
ancient Jewish writings.
While there is an undeniable value to this mans knowledge of the
Talmud to be able to preach to and convert Talmudized Jews,
--- There are serious flaws in what this brother in the Lord
is conveying concerning these corrupt writings.
He comes close and beats around the bush, but never comes
out and says so.
Recently the Lord spoke in a most profound way in The Talmudization of Israel and the Church that
the Mishnah and the Talmud are the bane and curse of all of
Israel, the Church, and the world.
May God help us, and may God deliver Israel and the Church
from their blindness.
JESUS IN THE TALMUD
By Jacob Prasch
Moriel
ministries
What The Rabbinic Literature
States Regarding Yeshua
There is a place in the Rabbinic writings
(The Talmud) called Yoma 39 b, where the rabbis taught that in the
forty years prior to the destruction of the Temple, the following
happened: on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, they would hang
a scarlet cord probably associated in some way with Isaiah
1:18 before the Holy of Holies when the High Priest entered
to make the sacrifice. They believed that this scarlet
cord would turn white if the sin of the people was forgiven;
if they were not forgiven, the cord would remain red.
Daniel chapter nine, as we will see, said that the Messiah had
to come and die before the second Temple was destroyed; Jesus
echoed this in the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24, Luke 21).
The Rabbis taught, "During the last forty years before
the destruction of the Temple which happened circa 70 A.D.,
the scarlet thread did not become white, nor did the Western
lamp in the Temple shine; and the doors of the Holy of Holies
would fling themselves open of their own accord. For the
forty years before the destruction of the Temple, the scarlet
thread never turned white, but remained red." The
second Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D.; forty years before 70
A.D. would have been circa 30 A.D./ C.E. In other
words, from the time of Jesus until the destruction of the Temple,
according to Judaism, the people's sin was never forgiven.
They are trying to justify themselves by works, but Isaiah 64:6
tells us that our righteous deeds are as filthy rags the literal
Hebrew term for 'filthy rags' in this passage is actually a
comparison to a blood soiled menstrual cloth Scripture uses
very coarse language to describe human righteousness and religion.
Messiahs righteousness is not human, it is a divine righteousness
imputed through faith in The Jewish Messiah Yeshua.
"During the last forty years before the destruction of
the Temple, the lot for the Lord did not come up in the right
hand, nor did the crimson-colored strap become white; nor did
the Western-most light shine, and the doors to the Hekal, the
Temple, would open by themselves, until Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai rebuked them, saying, 'Hekal, Hekal, why wilt thou be the alarmer
thyself? I know about thee, that thou wilt be destroyed,
for Zachariah Ben Ido has already prophesied concerning thee,
"Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour the
cedars."'" What this is saying is that Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai is supposed to have asked the doors why they were predicting their
own destruction.
In the Menahot, it says: "By the morning,
the oil in the lamps had burnt out. The priests came in
and cleaned out the lamps, removing the old wicks and putting
in new wicks, and pouring oil into them, ready for the kindling
in the evening. The Western lamp, however, although it
had no more oil than the other lamps, miraculously continued
to burn the entire day long, so that when the lamps were to
be kindled in the evening, they were kindled from this one.
The western lamp itself was then extinguished, cleaned out,
a fresh wick put in, oil poured in, and then relit. Thus
the lamp provided the fire for lighting the other lamps, and
yet was the last to be cleaned out. This miracle has testified
to the Divine Presence in Israel."
According to these entries, during
the forty years prior to the destruction of the second Temple
in 70 A.D., the Western lamp which was the lamp that lit the
other lamps in other words, Jesus, the true Light of the world
went out, which is an indication that the shekinah cloud had
left. Also, the doors to the Holy of Holies would fling
themselves open; furthermore, the scarlet thread that was tied
to the door of the Temple never became white, indicating that
the sins of Israel were not forgiven. This took place
from the time of the crucifixion of Jesus to the time of the
destruction of the Temple; Yoma
39 b.
In order to help facilitate understanding
of what happened in the Jewish religion, I'm going to tell you
a Tale of Two Rabbis: Once upon a time, there was a very
famous rabbi whose name was Rabbi Hillel. There were two
main kinds of Pharisee: one was the School of Hillel this
rabbi and the other was the School of Shammai; academies where
rabbis were educated. They had certain differences in
their emphasis, but they were the two main schools of Pharisaic
thought. The School of Hillel had a number of very famous
graduates Hillel was the grandfather of another very famous
rabbi who was his successor, Rabbi Gamaliel. Rabbi Gamaliel
is mentioned in the Talmud, which says of him that when he died
righteousness perished from the earth. The New Testament
tells us in Acts 5 that Gamaliel said that if Jesus was not
the Messiah, Christianity would disappear; and if it did not
disappear, the Jews who opposed it would be working against
God. Rabbi Gamaliel from the School of Hillel was associated
with something called the Midot of Hillel, which St. Paul
used in his teaching methods. Gamaliel had a number of
famous students, one of whom was Onkleos, who did a famous translation
of the Targum into Aramaic. He also had two other very
famous students, one or the other of whom every Jew who came
after them would follow, causing the Jewish religion to have
a schism. The first of these students was Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, whom I quoted earlier. When the Temple was destroyed, Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai said (in
paraphrase), "We have a big problem: we cannot practice
the Jewish faith that Moses gave any more." To this day,
on every Orthodox Jewish synagogue you will find the term Ichabod;
'the glory has departed, the Shekinah has gone'. They know very well that without a Temple they cannot practice
the faith of their fathers. On the Passover, the Pesach,
instead of taking the Passover seder with lamb, they take it
with chicken because they have no priesthood and no Temple.
Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai had a council at Javneh, near modern Tel Aviv, (Rabbi Johanan Bio and background of his Tamludic school at Javneh:
Rabbi Johanan lived during the destruction of Jerusalem and
when he knew the city was to be destroyed He with his disciples
from his Rabbinical School faked his own death (The article
Implied after his escape he would see the emperor and obtain
their pardon / rescue) So, after lying that he was gravely sick,
lying about his death, holding a fake funeral and several days
of fake mourning he was carried out of the city by 12 of his
most trusted disciples in a locked coffin to be buried. He then
let all of his most loyal disciples return to Jerusalem to be
slaughtered. -- His supposed claim to fame is he appeared before
Vespasian before Jerusalem was destroyed, and preformed a minor
miracle of announcing Vespasian was the Emperor of Rome. (Supposedly)
minutes later a messenger arrived from Rome to tell Vespasian
Caesar was dead and he was the new Emperor. So This perverse
Rabbi was granted a single wish -- Rabbi Johanan did not plead
for the Jews in Jerusalem lives -- as Moses did, nor Rabbi Johanan
ask for his disciples lpardon that had carried him in a coffin
out of the city so he supposedly would plead for their salvation.
Instead this corrupt and self-seeking Rabbi asked for the new
emperor to build for him a Talmudic School in Javneh. a little
town not far from Jerusalem. This school with this betrayer
of Israel, Jerusalem, and all his disciples as its head master
is joyously credited by modern Talmudic Jews as the place Talmudic
Judaism was saved.) at this council meeting Rabbi Johanan
and other leading rabbis decided the following: instead of the Levites and priests, the rabbis would be the new spiritual
authorities, ergo the new leaders of Israel. (These Rabbis were the Pharisees of whom Christ declared they
had usurped the seat of Moses in Josephus writings we find that
this usurping occurred after Alexander The Greats death when
the Pharisees successfully interceded to Alexanders wife who
granted their order of Rabbis spiritual authority over Judaism.
So in the vacuum of Levites without an alter and Priests without
a temple in an act of utter arrogance Rabbi Johanan overthrew
the entire priesthood and the Levites. And these have not relinquished
their grip over Judaism for the last 1900+ years. And they rewrote
the Mishnah into what was later called the Babylonian Talmud
in order to codify their hold over all of Israel. Rabbi Johanan is credited as the father of the Talmud, and the father of Talmudic
schools.) Also, instead of the Temple being central,
the synagogues would become central (synagogues
having begun developing after the Babylonian Captivity).
Thus another religion began to evolve from that point, based
in (the new) tradition(s of the Talmud in place of the perversion and corruption of the
Mishnah that Christ and the Apostles had battled so hard against.).
There was a classmate of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, whose name
was Rabbi Shaul of Tarsus (This makes my hair stand on end.) better known to some as St. Paul the Apostle. (The title
of Saint also makes my hair stand on end this man seems to
know no Greek nor of the Greek Septuagint.) He was likewise a disciple of Gamaliel; but he said that the Law
was fulfilled by the Messiah. Jesus paid the price for
our sins, and thus the curse of the Law and the consequences
for breaking it were laid on Him. Every Jew is under one
law or another; think of an unsaved Jewish person as a kind
of backslider he is in a covenant relationship with God.
He may not keep that covenant, he may be an atheist but he
is still under the curse of the Law. (We might
add here that for disobedience the whole of the Church is also
under the curse of the Law also and as discussed elsewhere
this is why judgment is coming upon the whole of Isal and the
Church in the rise of Islam and the person of the Antichrist.) If you want to know what happened
to the Jews, read Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 their entire
history is therein foretold. The Jews are under a national
curse because they reject Jesus; they are under the curse of
the Law. (And we can find the whole of Church history in these same passages.)
By the time the Temple was destroyed,
Daniel's prediction that the Messiah would come and die beforehand
was fulfilled. Every Jew then had one of two choices:
he either accepted Jesus as Messiah, or he began to practice
a Judaism that was not Scriptural. The entire future of the Jewish
faith to this day is based on these two classmates: Rabbi Johanan
ben Zakkai and Rabbi Shaul of Tarsus. (While it
is true that Rabbi Johanan is the founder of modern Judaism
Paul the Apostle declares repeatedly that he is not the founder
or foundation of the Modern Church but Christ and his teachings
are And Paul declares that he speaks is founded on Scripture
-- not the Mishnah or the Talmud that was written later.
At the end of his life, the Talmud
tells us, Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai was weeping. His disciples
came to him and said, "O Mighty Hammer, why are you weeping?
Why is your soul in distress?" And Rabbi Jochanan
ben Zakkai said, "I am about to meet Ha Shem God blessed
be His name, and before me are two roads: one leading to Paradise
(Heaven) and the other leading to Gehenna (Hell); and I do not
know to which road He will sentence me." The founder
of Rabbinic Judaism admitted that he had absolutely no assurance
of salvation. He said that he did not know whether God
would sentence him to Hell for what he did; at the end of his
life he was terrified to die. It is the same for all the
Jews who follow him.
(Full version) Talmud Berakoth
Folio 28a When Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai fell ill, his disciples
went in to visit him. When he saw them he began to weep. His
disciples said to him: Lamp of Israel, pillar of the right hand,
mighty hammer! Wherefore weepest thou? He replied: If I were
being taken today before a human king who is here today and
tomorrow in the grave, whose anger if he is angry with me does
not last forever, who if he imprisons me does not imprison me
forever and who if he puts me to death does not put me to everlasting
death, and whom I can persuade with words and bribe with money,
(Here we have
one of the "greatest" of rabbi's and on his death
bed he is faced with his perverseness, the blood on his hands
of the Inhabitants of Jerusalem and his former disciples, his
arrogance, and his lies. -- He fears he will go to hell, He
fears God's eternal wrath, he fears he will be bound in eternal
chains, and he fears he will eternally burn in the fires of
hell. He knows he can not lie and persuade God to alter his
judgment, and he knows he can not bribe God with his material
wealth for his soul. And so he cried like Esau - who found no
place of repentance --only the fierce indignation and judgment
of God.) Even so I would weep. Now that I am being taken
before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He,
who lives and endures for ever and ever, whose anger, if He
is angry with me, is an everlasting anger, who if He imprisons
me imprisons me for ever, who if He puts me to death puts me
to death for ever, and whom I cannot persuade with words or
bribe with money nay more, when there are two ways before
me, one leading to Paradise and the other to Gehinnom, (Hell)
and I do not know by which I shall be taken, shall I not
weep? (In death he lies to his disciples so that his school
and his memory may live on.) They said to him: Master, bless
us. He said to them: May it be [God's] will that the fear of
heaven shall be upon you like the fear of flesh and blood (Fellow
disciples and Rabbi's). (The following has been modified
from several translations) His disciples were astonished,
He said to them: He who would commit a transgression, first
looks round to discover whether any man sees him, hoping no
man will see him. So take ye heed, (Fear God) for God's
all-seeing eye sees what you would hide for the fear of men,
He sees even the sinful thoughts in your heart.'
However, then there is Rabbi Shaul
of Tarsus, who said at the end of his life, "Trouble me
no further, for on my body I bear the marks of Christ, and I
know there is laid up for me a crown of glory and of righteousness."
(This is a
real loose constructed quote mismatching several passage Paul
actually feared the Lord and talked about the possibility
he could have run and then been disqualified.) He had the assurance of his
salvation, and so does every Jew who follows him. (Note** Another website reported that this man believers in eternal
security.)
That is what happened in the Jewish
faith, and what is going on to this very day.
As early as the Talmudic era, the sages
knew that the Messiah should have come already. They cried,
"All the predestined dates for the Redemption have passed,
and the matter now depends only on repentance and good deeds."
Sanhedrin 97b. They were faced with
major prophecies that were well past their dates for fulfillment;
Jesus was the only person who claimed to be the Messiah who
could actually in His time prove Davidic descent. This
is not only recorded in the New Testament, but also in Sanhedrin 43a: "With Yeshua (Jesus), it was different: He was connected with
the government. This is an ambiguous phrase, which has
actually misled some people to believe that it actually refers
to royal lineage." God spent 1000 years promising
Abraham and David that the Messiah would descend from them;
therefore, when He allowed all of the genealogies to be destroyed
with the second Temple, it was obvious that the Messiah had
to have come. So we read, "And the Sanhedrin wept:
'Oy vevoy, woe to us! For the Temple is destroyed, and
the Messiah has not come.'" We will come back to
this one.
Genesis 49:10: "The scepter shall
not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his
feet until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of
the people." Shiloh is one of the places in which
the Ark of the Covenant dwelt, but it became an appellative
for the Messiah in Judaism. Every tribe of Israel had
its own tribal staff, a scepter, with the tribe's name inscribed
upon it. This represented judicial power. The removal
of the scepter, therefore, occurred when Herod the Great
a non-Jew became king and the Sanhedrin had its power limited;
(Historically this occurred hundreds
of years earlier when Alexander the Great came into Jerusalem
and the Priests and Levites and the Sanhedrin came out and prostrated
themselves before Alexander and gave him the rulership over
Jerusalem This event is recorded by Josephus, Later when the
Romans came they had a series of rulers that they set over Jerusalem
all recorded by Josephus. And at the trial of Christ the Pharisees,
Priests and Sanhedrin all confessed that they had no king except
the Emperor.) These things both happened during Jesus' lifetime. The name
'Shiloh' is the name of the Messiah, according to the Talmud,
Sanhedrin 98b.
According to the prophecy of Genesis
49:10, the Messiah had to have come prior to the removal of
the scepter from Judah. Therefore, either the Messiah
has already been and gone or God lied. God cannot lie;
so whoever the Messiah was, according to the Talmud He had to
have already come at that point. Again, the Talmud mentions
how 40 years before the destruction of the Temple the Sanhedrin
was moved from the Hall of the hewn stones to a place outside;
you may read this in Sanhedrin 41a and in the Avodat Zerah 8b. Whoever
The Messiah is, He had to come and die prior to 70AD/CE.
After five centuries of accumulated
oral teaching was passed down, Rabbi Yehudah ha Nassi meaning
'Judah the President' and his disciples wrote down selected
material from the oral law, calling it the 'Mishnah';
this was not done until 230 A.D. (A version of the Mishnah was in existence 100-200 years before Christ
was born and this version is what Christ railed against in the
Gospels) The Talmud (written after the Mishnah and containing the Mishnah in it was begun
by Rabbi Johanan in his Jayneh school around 70AD and completed
around 500 AD), in other words, was not even written
down at all until 230 A.D. What the rabbis teach is this:
the Talmud (The so called oral traditions of the Torah this
is something wholly different that the five books of Moses which
is called the Torah.) what they call the Torah b'pei was given to Moses on
Mount Sinai, although he did not write it down. However,
in Joshua 8:35, among other places, we read this: "There was not
a word of all that the Lord had commanded Moses which Joshua
did not read before the people of Israel."
So the Torah says that Moses wrote it all down. (On this point the author seems
to argue that the Oral traditions were completely made up but
he does not ever come out and say that. And in other places
he speaks of it with great glowing terms as if it is a true
authority.)
Where the writer should be arguing steadfastly that the Talmud
is utterly false and the fruit of the knowledge of Good and
evil and those who partake and teach from this pollute themselves
and their hearers he does not.
The so-called Oral Traditions,
the Mishnah, the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud
are all addressed by the Apostles in the passages below as Fables,
profane fables, old wives fables, Jewish fables, and cunningly
devised fables.
1
Timothy 1:4 Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister
questions, rather than godly edifying which is in
faith: so do.
1
Timothy 4:7 But refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise
thyself rather unto godliness.
2
Timothy 4:4 And
they shall turn away their ears from
the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
Titus
1:14 Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that
turn from the truth.
2
Peter 1:16 For we have not followed
cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,
but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
But the rabbis deny this (and instead claim that they received from Moses secret ) oral law(s or traditions that were) given without (ever) being written down (and for
over 1000 years these oral traditions somehow remained uncorrupted
and the sages and rabbis further claim these oral traditions
remained purer than the written Law of Moses and the Prophets.). They
go so far as to say that the opinion of one rabbi is more important
than the opinions of a thousand prophets, (The Talmud
declares the words of the Rabbis over scripture and even has
a Rabbi arguing with God over the Talmud and God admitting defeat.)
because the prophets were only messengers and secretaries, while
the rabbis had (the power) to interpret the messages and divulge their meaning. (This same authority to corrupt the word of God and subvert through
interpretation has been routinely done by Church Scholars, pastors,
teachers and evangelists. Both Catholicism and Protestantism
have drawn much of their teaching and doctrine from the Talmud.
As has feminism, Victorianism, secular humanism, western Judeo-Christian
society and Islam. These are all children of the Talmud.)
Each generation continued to raise new questions, so there were experts,
one of whom was Rabbi Yohochanan, of the same college as Tiberias.
He compiled these new rabbinic decisions in about 330 A.D.
When this was done, he called it the Gemmarra, taken from the
Hebrew word that means 'to finish', or 'completion'. (With every scripture that is altered the warp that is created by
these supposed scholars created at least a half a dozen new
ripples that need to be defined and quantified The growth of
error and deception is exponential in nature. This explains
the Mishnah a single book (Im just making up numbers) to the
Jerusalem Talmud a twelve volume set, to the Babylonian Talmud
a one-hundred and thirty book set)
(We skipped a few paragraphs
here tracing more modern Talmudic and Jewish occult writings)
In any event, what does God say about
all this? Let us look: "Because this people draws
near to Me with their words and honors Me with lip service,
but they remove their hearts far from Me, and their reverence
for Me consists of tradition learned by rote." Isaiah
29:13. All of the prophets prophecied only about the Messiah;
the entire Old Testament is about the Messiah, according to
the Talmud in Sanhedrin 99a, "The world was not created but only for the Messiah"
Sanhedrin 98b.
In John chapter one, it says that the world was created through
Jesus and by Him. (By this association the author is now
implying that the Apostle John is quoting from the Talmud) Rabbi Yosef said that the Messiah would come when this gate (Rome)
shall fall and be built again, and the land Israel would be
overrun by enemies, in Sanhedrin 96-99. The stone cut
without hands in Daniel 2:44-45 is the Messiah, according to
the Pirque Eliezar chapter 11.
There was a famous rabbi named Rabbi
Leopold Cohen, who was greatly troubled by Daniel 9, which said
that the Messiah had to come and die before the destruction
of the second Temple. He wanted to find out what this
meant; so he read in the Talmud that the world would last for
6,000 years, 'for a thousand years is like yesterday in Your
sight when it passes by'; they link this, according to Rabbi
Katina , with Psalm 90:4. From this they derive that the
world would be 2000 years in a state of chaos, 2000 years under
the Law of Moses, and 2000 years under the Messiah, when the
Shabbat the Millennium will be 1000 years of peace.
Then will come the war of Gog and Magog, and the Messiah will
renew the world after 7000 years, according to Sanhedrin
96b and 99a, and Yalkut volume II p. 129d.
this is exactly what the book of Revelation teaches. (Again while perhaps unintentional this almost sounds like the author
is suggesting the book of Revelation is derived in part from
the Talmud) The Messiah will arrive to destroy the nations and to rule
the earth for a thousand years of peace when people are conducting
themselves in the following manner: Those who fear sin will
be abhorred, truth shall fail, children will rebel against their
parents, general lawlessness will abound, Sadducaicism would
universally prevail (the Sadducees denied the Resurrection,
like the Bishop of Durham) in other words, when people who
claim to be believers in God deny the Resurrection on a popular
level: When Anglican Arch Bishop of York David Jenkins denied
the Resurrection of Jesus, two thirds of the Anglican bishops
defended him; but the ancient Rabbis long before David Jenkins
said that Sadducaicism would prevail universally the study
of God's Law would decrease, there would be a general increase
in universal poverty and despair, apostasy would increase, and
there would be a growing disregard for Scripture. This
comes from Sanhedrin
96b, 99a or, if you wish, read Paul's epistle
to Timothy. (And this as well.)
Rabbi Cohen had a big problem when
he went to the Talmud and saw this. He realized that the
Messiah had to have come around 32 or 33 A.D. The Talmud
said two things in this regard: one was as stated above, and
the other was that there is a curse on anybody who reads Daniel
9. He asked his instructors why, and looked into the Talmud,
and found that it said the reason for the curse was that the
time of the Messiah's coming was foretold in Daniel 9.
He could not believe that God would put something in His Word
and not want people to understand what it meant; therefore,
Rabbi Leopold Cohen became a Baptist minister.
I mention this in passing, though it
is a subject that could be treated at much greater depth: in
the Talmud it is noted that the word dor in Hebrew, meaning 'generations', is spelled correctly before Adam
fell in Genesis 2:4, but afterward the Hebrew letter vov which
is also a '6', since in Hebrew the letters also stand for numbers
is missing, because Adam lost six things. (This is teaching fables) The letter vov is then replaced in Ruth 4:18, (This is teaching fables) because
she was the grandmother of King David, whose son would
be the Messiah. The Messiah would restore the six things
lost by Adam. (This is teaching fables) Bresheit Rabbah 12, p. 24b (of the Warsaw Edition).
To this day, the Rabbis read the Book
of Ruth at Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. Ruth
is the story of a Jewish man who takes a Gentile bride, and
from their union the lineage of David begins from which the
Messiah would ultimately come. Do you see how they knew?
They knew that somehow the Messiah would, through this Gentile
woman, restore what Adam had lost.
Jews will go to all kinds of lengths
to tell you that Zechariah 12:10-12 does not necessarily refer
to the Messiah. Zechariah 12:10-12 says "And they
will look upon Him whom they have pierced, and mourn for Him
as one mourns for an only son"; they will try to deny that
this must mean they will look on the Messiah whom they had pierced.
However, in Sukkah 52a it says directly: "They will look upon Me the Messiah whom
they have pierced". The Talmud confirms rather than
denies that this is speaking about the Messiah whom they had
pierced.
The Messiah will arrive with the clouds
of Heaven, according to Daniel 7:13, but humble and mounted
on a donkey according to Zechariah 9:9. One Talmudist
proposes that if Israel deserves it, the Messiah will come with
the clouds of Heaven, but if Israel is not deserving, He will
come poor and riding on an ass. (Sanhedrin 96b 99a.) To
this day, this is how the Rabbis will get around it: they will
claim that the Messiah did come in the days of Jesus, but Israel
was not worthy and therefore he did not reveal himself.
Thus this becomes the big catch-all, by which they are able
to explain anything away.
In Deuteronomy 18 Scripture says that
if you predict something that fails to happen in the name of
the Lord, you are a false prophet. I show that to the
Jehovah's Witnesses right before showing them false prophecies
made in their own literature. The same with the Vineyard
people and John Wimber's false prophecies; it cannot be denied,
so they find they cannot handle it. Rabbi Menahem Schnerson
, the last Lubavitch rebbe, said that Messiah was going to come
at Rosh ha Shanah (September) of 1991. The day after
this deadline, I called up the Chabad Center in London and asked
to speak to someone who spoke Hebrew. When he came on
the line, I asked in Hebrew, "Well?" he knew what
I meant. Then I went down to Stamford Hill with some of
my friends from CMJ who have a Messianic testimony, bringing
our tracts. We confronted the Jews there with the fact
that Moshe Rabbenu says that if people predict things in
the name of Ha Shem that don't happen, they are false prophets
who must be taken out and stoned; we then asked them if they
keep the Torah. The point of this was to show them that
if they remain under the Law, they must take their Rabbi Schnerson
out and stone him as a false prophet; their only other choice
is to accept Yeshua as their Messiah who fulfilled the Law.
They didn't like that much.
I love the Talmud it illustrates so clearly the old joke, "If you have two Jews,
you have three opinions". Forget three opinions
if you have two Jews, you have thirty-three opinions!
Israel would have no more Messiah because he had come in the
days of King Hezekiah, according to Rabbi Hillel not
the original Hillel, but another one. (Sanhedrin 96b, 99a.) In
the same passage, Sanhedrin 96b 99a, his grandson, Rabbi Yosef, said "May God forgive my grandfather,
Rabbi Hillel."
Some Talmudists, however, thought that
the Messiah would come on two separate occasions, which would
account for the two conflicting descriptions of his arrival
again, Moshiach ben Yosef and Moshiach ben David. It
is stated that the two dates given in Daniel 12:11,12 were to
date the two arrivals at 45-year intervals. (The Midrash
on Ruth 2:14, p. 43b of the Warsaw Edition; also The Lost Talmud
on Daniel 9, 24-27.) The ancient Talmudists knew a lot
of things.
One thing that will inevitably happen
to you when you talk to Jewish people is, again, that they will
tell you Zechariah 12:10-12 is not about the Messiah.
An answer to give them is that Sukkah 52a says it is. They will also try to tell you that Isaiah
52 and 53 are not about the Messiah. I showed those very
passages to a Jewish girl on a kibbutz in Israel once, and she
immediately said, "This is about Jesus." No
one had to tell her anything or manipulate her thinking she
simply used common sense. Her name was Sally Brown, and
I hope she gets saved. Anyway, the Talmudists knew that
Isaiah was predicting the Messiah's appearance in Isaiah 52:14:
"His the Messiah's appearance was marred more than
that of any man, and His form more than the sons of men"
Sanhedrin 97b, Yalkut volume II p. 53c and also Shemoth R, 15-19. The Talmud repeatedly quotes Isaiah
53 as a prediction of the Messiah's appearance on earth.
There are two main Targums in Judaism:
the Targum Onkleos which I mentioned earlier, and Targum
Jonathon. After the Babylonian Captivity, most Jews knew
Aramaic rather than Hebrew, so they translated the Scriptures
into Aramaic. However, these were not simply translations,
but also interpretations. It says: "Who has believed
our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For He grew up before Him like a tender root out of dry ground;
He had no stately form or majesty that we should look on Him,
nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. The
Messiah was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows acquainted
with grief" it goes on and on and on, directly pointing
to the Messiah in these passages. "Each of us has
turned to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity
of us all to fall upon the Messiah"; "Although He
had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth, the LORD
was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief if He would render
Himself as a corban a guilt offering He would see His offspring,
He would prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD
will prosper in His hand, and as a result of the anguish of
His soul, He will see it and be satisfied. By His knowledge
the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify many and will bear
their iniquities" and so on. "He Himself bore
the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors"
Sanhedrin 98b, also the Midrash on Samuel, the Lemburg (SP?) Edition, p. 45a,
and the Targum of the Kingdom of the Messiah. They knew
very well that this was about the Messiah; the Targum Jonathon
says so specifically.
Jewish people will often accuse Christians
of twisting Scriptures to make them about Jesus when they actually
are not about Him; what most Rabbis will say is that these passages
are about Israel and the vicarious suffering of Israel.
There are a number of problems with that: one is that the same
Isaiah repeatedly castigates Israel for its sin, whereas he
describes this Suffering Servant as having no sin. Therefore
their idea is simply incompatible with the context. There
are four Servant Songs in Isaiah, and the fourth one, found
in Isaiah 52-53, is different from the others. In one
sense, the rabbis are right: much the same as the Church is
the Body of Christ, Jesus is the embodiment of Israel.
For example, when you see verses that say things like "Israel
My glory, Israel My Firstborn", they are midrashically
alluding to Jesus. But only in a very abstract sense are
these passages about Israel; their primary meaning, according
to the Rabbinic literature, is pointing to the Messiah.
When they tell you this is not about the Messiah, ask them to
explain the Targum Jonathan, or the Midrash on Samuel, which
say it is.
Jewish people will also accuse Christians
of inventing a New Covenant that does not exist, claiming that
the only covenant is the Torah. Jeremiah 31:31 says that
God will make a new covenant, but when you tell them this they
will try to tell you that you have misunderstood the text.
At this point, you can point to the Midrash on Psalm 7, p. 5a
of the Warsaw Edition: "God will speak through the Messiah
to make a new covenant."
Psalm 2 says, "Thou art My Son;
do homage to the Son, lest He become angry and you perish in
the way." The Rabbis say that God has no Son; but
they have a big problem. Here is where I tell you how
to drive an Orthodox Rabbi into early retirement in Florida:
Psalm 2 is put together with Psalm 110 and II Samuel 16:1, and
then connected with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53.
These things can be read in the Midrash on II Samuel 16:1, paragraph
19 of the Lemburg Edition, p. 45; also the Midrash on Psalm
7, p. 5a of the Warsaw Edition; and Yalkut (SP?) Volume II p.
90a. (These things can be obtained at a Yeshiva or a religious
Jewish library.)
It goes on to say, then, when it has
connected Psalm 110 with II Samuel 16:1 and Isaiah 53, "Against
God and His Messiah: "If I find the Son of the King, I
shall lay hold of Him and crucify Him with a cruel death."
The Talmud actually says that the Messiah would be crucified
'Litzlov oto' is exactly what it says, 'crucify'. This
is one thing they cannot answer; it shocks them.
Once again, in Genesis 49:10 Jacob
predicted that the scepter would not depart from Judah nor the
ruler's staff from between his feet until Shiloh comes; the
Babylonian Talmud states that when this occurred, the sages
said 'Woe to us, for the scepter has been taken from Judah,
and the Messiah has not appeared!' Rabbi Ruchman
adds that the members of the Sanhedrin covered their heads with
ashes, their bodies with sackcloth, and wept when they heard
these words. The Jerusalem Talmud dates this occasion
at a little more than forty years before the destruction of
the Temple in 70 A.D.; so they are saying that from around 30
A.D. the Messiah was pierced. The Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin
Volume 24, and the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin chapter 4 Volume
37.
"The sins of those who are hidden
with thee will cause thee to be put under an iron yoke, and
they will do with thee as with the calf. I take it upon
me that no Israeli should perish; am I not flesh and blood?"
the Midrash on Jeremiah 31:8, the same as Isaiah 53.
"All limits of time as regards the arrival of the Messiah
are past." Sanhedrin 96-99. The Talmud states clearly
that the Messiah had to have come already.
In the Talmud it is noted that God
has made various numbers significant in His plan: they noted
that there were ten names for idols and prophets, ten trials
of Abraham, ten generations from Adam to Noah, and ten generations
from Noah to Abraham the Avotah chapter 36. They developed
from this a dating system. This Mosaic dating system of
Israel is given in Leviticus 26:13-16, and they Messianically
applied it in the Talmud. Moses dated the Messiah's exit
in A.D. 33 Midrash Bresheit , Rabbah on Genesis, p.
24b of the Warsaw Edition. Their own dating system says
that the Messiah had to exit in 33 A.D.
The Talmud states that the Temple's
destruction in 70 A.D. was predicted by Daniel 9:24-27.
When you get into arguing with rabbis about the weeks of Daniel
and what they mean I have not the space to explain it now
the easiest thing to say is that Daniel 9 says that the Messiah
had to come and die before the second Temple was destroyed.
"No, it doesn't", they will tell you, but Yalkut Volume
II p. 79d says it does, and so does Nazir 32b. The
Talmud states that the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D.
was predicted by Daniel 9:24-27, when the coming of the Messiah
to be cut off was predicted to precede this destruction.
So the Messiah was predicted to arrive and to be killed before
70 A.D., according to the Talmud and the Rabbis knew this.
The Talmud confirms that the stone
cut without hands in Daniel 2:44, 45 is again the Messiah.
"A stone to strike and a rock to stumble over, and a snare
and a trap for Jerusalem". In Isaiah 8:14 God also
predicted that the leaders of Israel would reject the Messiah:
"Thou hast become my Yeshua; the stone which the builders
rejected has become the chief cornerstone." - Psalm
118:21, 22, which is the Hillel Rabbah that they sang to Jesus
on Palm Sunday.
Moses Maimonides, Rambam, the greatest
rabbi, confirmed that Yeshua the Messiah's appearance in A.D.
30 was Israel's greatest stumbling block. In Kings and
Wars chapter 11, the uncensored edition, (the rabbis have for
obvious reasons put out a censored edition) it says "There
has never been a greater stumbling block than this problem of
Yeshua (Jesus) in 30 A.D. For three and one-half years,
the Shekinah God's dwelling, His presence dwelt on the Mount
of Olives, waiting to see whether Israel would repent, and calling
on them to "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found call
on Him while He is near", but all was in vain. After
three and a half years, the Shekinah returned from the Mount
of Olives. Rabbis' Lamentation.
There is something called the Avodat
Zerah; it is one thing when Christians say they believe that
Jesus did miracles, rose from the dead, and ascended from the
Mount of Olives but what about when people who were not only
non-Christians but actually anti-Christian believe all these
things? You can read Roman historians such as Suetonius
and Tacitus, and it is fascinating to read of how Jesus was
understood by pagan Rome even they did not deny the things
that He did; it was said to be common knowledge throughout the
Roman Empire that Jesus rose from the dead. The Avodat
Zerah, however, says that Jesus did miracles as no other rabbi,
that his disciples not only healed the sick but even raised
the dead in His name, that after He was crucified He rose from
the dead, and that He ascended into heaven from the Mount of
Olives. All of that is actually in the Talmud even His
enemies acknowledged the truth of what He did. This was
written by rabbis who were trying to prevent other Jews from
believing in Him; but they had to deal with the historicity
of His miracles, of His disciples doing miracles, and not only
of His crucifixion but also of His resurrection and ascension
into heaven the Talmud admits He did it! When you confront
an Orthodox rabbi with these things, he will not want to deal
with it. However, if you press him, he will tell you that
Jesus knew Kabbalah this was invented centuries later, but
they say it anyway Jesus knew Kabbalistic, mystical secrets
and had the ineffable name of Ha Shem (the Tetragrammaton) under
His tongue and under His foot and so on, and this is how He
performed these miracles. That is what they will tell
you if pressed.
The rabbis will try to tell you that
Psalm 22 does not really say "They have pierced My hands
and My feet"; all of Psalm 22 was fulfilled in Matthew
27, but in Hebrew there is a difference in the letter aleph,
and they shorten a vov to make it a yud; in this way they will
try to change "They have pierced My hands and My feet"
into "I am like a lion's paw". This might be
legitimately true, except that someone must have changed something
at some point because the Talmud states the following: "At
the time of the Messiah's creation, the Holy One blessed be
He will tell him in detail what will befall him according
to the : 'There are souls that have been put away with thee
under My throne, and it is their sins which will bend thee down
under a yoke of iron and make thee like a calf whose eyes grow
dim with suffering.'" In other words, according to
the Talmud, the Messiah would know before He was born that He
was coming to die for His people. "And during the
seven-year period preceding the coming of the Son of David,
iron beams will be brought and loaded upon his neck until the
Messiah's body is bent low. It was of the ordeal of the
Son of David, who wept, saying 'My strength is dried up like
a potsherd', Ps. 22:16." In Yalkuth Shimoni,
they connect 'many dogs have encompassed me' (using a midrashic
principle called "binyan ab m'shna ketubim") with
the Book of Esther , commenting on which, Rabbi Nehemiah said
"They pierced my hands and feet"..Hence, the Pisgah
Rabbatai 36:1,2 states directly that Psalm 22 is about the Messiah
coming to die.
There are technical linguistic explanations
for the translation of 'like a lion' such as a textual reading
adjustment called " im crea". Then, in the Yalkut
Shimone, we find this: "'Many dogs have encompassed me'"
they connected this somehow with the book of Esther and the
king Ahasuerus "'but the assembly of the wicked have
enclosed me; ka a'ri'"; in English, 'they have pierced
my hands and my feet' Rabbi Nehemiah quotes it this way, and
the reading of 'pierced' was accepted by ancient rabbis.
In addition, the Peshitat Abitai says directly that Psalm 22
is talking about the Messiah suffering and dying.
Again, Isaiah 52 and 53 from the Targum
Jonathon: "Behold, My servant the Messiah shall prosper;
He shall be exalted, and great and very powerful" it
states directly and repeatedly that this is about the Messiah.
Daniel 9, Megillah 3 aleph of the Targum
of the Prophets, was composed by Jonathon ben Uzziel under the
guidance of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, according to tradition:
"And a voice from heaven came forth and said, 'Who is this
who has revealed My secrets?' and he further sought to reveal
by Targum the inner meaning of the Hegiographa (the portion
of Scripture which includes Daniel), but a bat kol went forth
from Heaven and said, 'Enough!' 'Why, why should we not read
Daniel 9?' 'Because the date of the Messiah is foretold in it.'"
And again, Sukkah 52 a regarding the Messiah being pierced:
"What is the cause of the mourning in Zechariah 12:12?
It is well according to him who explains that the cause is the
slaying of the Messiah, the Son of Joseph, since that well agrees
with the Scriptures: 'And they look upon Him, because they have
thrust Him through, and shall mourn for Him as one mourns for
an only son.'"
We could continue almost indefinitely
like this; there is not a single Messianic prophecy that I would
use in witnessing to Jewish people that I could not prove not
to be a Christian invention applying it to Jesus. The
Talmud agrees, for instance, that Micah 5:2 is about the Messiah,
who in some way had to be pre-existent: "O you, Bethlehem
Ephrathah, are by no means least in the clans of Judah, for
from you going forth from eternity will be one whose existence
is from eternity." From the Targum of Micah 5:1 from
Targum Jonathon says this: "And you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
you who are too small to be numbered among the thousands of
the house of Judah, from you shall come forth from Me the Messiah
to exercise dominion over Israel He whose name was mentioned
from before the days of creation." In this way when
one meets with the protest that Christians have read something
into Micah 5:2 that it does not really say, one may respond
that Christians have not read anything into it that Jews did
not read into it long before Christianity was established.
From Genesis 3:1-15: "And it shall
be that when the sons of the woman study the Torah diligently
and obey its injunctions, they will direct themselves to smite
you on the head and slay you" right from the beginning,
they believed that the Messiah had to be slain. Comments
on Genesis 23:5 from the Midrash Rabbah show that Rabbi Tanhumah
said, "In the name of Rabbi Shmuel Kozit, she hinted that
the seed would arise from another source the Messiah".
The Midrash deals with Eve's naming of Seth, which is connected
with the idea of the Messiah being bruised upon the heel and
then bruising the head of the serpent.
You will only ever do one thing with
all of this information: that is, undermine their arguments
that these things are Gentile fabrications resulting from Gentile
Christians twisting the Jewish Scriptures. One can show
very clearly that these things were understood by ancient rabbis
in the same way in which they are understood by Christians.
But there is something called 'ecclentics' or convictions.
"No one comes unless the Father draws him" if you
bring a Jehovah's Witness to my door, I can win every argument,
but it does not mean they will get saved. The same can
be said of a Mormon or again of a rabbi.
These things are very important Paul
said that we should be "instant in season and out of season,
to refute every argument". I certainly do not deny
the importance of this kind of teaching; but without prayer
and without holy lives that will provoke the Jews to jealousy,
it is useless. We have a long way to go, but God is doing
something. We will see God work among the Jewish people
in the Last Days in the same way in which He worked in the time
of the early church with not only thousands being saved, but
even tens of thousands. We will see whole synagogues split
over the issue of Yeshua being the Messiah but do you know
what? We will also see whole churches split over the same
kind of issue.
The following Link is to a website that is dedicated to putting out
the majority of the Talmud in English for all to see and read.
http://www.come-and-hear.com
No
true Jew or true Christian can abide the teachings and
traditions of the Mishnah and the Talmud, much less be the disciple
of such.
