Are we going to bet our own eternal future
on a false prophet?
The silence spoke volumes to me
I knew I was into something really deep.
I grew up in Morocco
I come from a religious family
my grandfather was a rabbi
so was his father and grandfather.
It was less and less comfortable for Jews
to live in Muslim countries.
Going to school and coming out,
there were some young Muslims
waiting for us with stakes,
and we had to fight our way home.
I remember my father used to say
if you forget you're a Jew,
they will remind you.
I was 13 yrs old when we moved to
Montreal, and it was when I was
in college that my friends had
a special interest in Eastern religion
I remember, and also in prophecies,
and I remember one of my friends was
going into Nostradamus prophecies
and I said, "Don't do that! Why would you"
"go to eastern religion?"
"We have Daniel, Ezekiel..."
"Why should we go to see other prophets?"
And they said, "Okay fine,"
"So what did they say?"
and I said, "Well I don't know, I'll find out."
For the sake of my friends
I went to inquire, I went to see
my father and I said,
"Do you know about the prophets?"
"Did they say anything about our times?"
my father said "No, I don't know"
I said, "Did your father leave anything?"
"Did he ever tell you something?"
"Did he leave any books?"
And my father said yes
and so he brought me 3 beautiful books
Great! But there were sidurs
(prayerbooks)
you know there's nothing there.
About a week later there were people
who came to the college
and they set up a book table.
I picked up the first book and
I turned it around, and it said:
'What the Hebrew prophets say'
'about the end-time prophecies'!
I looked at the table
and it was a Christian table,
they were evangelists
I saw the name of Christ, I saw crosses...
If I had seen this before
maybe I wouldn't have gone there.
How can they know about my own book
better than me - better than my father?!
So I took the book
If I would see from the corner of my eyes
the name of Jesus, I will skip over it.
I associated the name of Jesus
with antisemitism
and I was dumbfounded about the
about the preciseness and the importance
of prophecies in the scriptures;
We have the prophecy of Moses in the Torah
who have the prophecies of David
in the Katuvim (writings). This is when
the writer spoke about the Messiah.
He mentioned Isaiah 53.
That did it.
I was so touched by the clearness
of the words in there - I couldn't believe it.
It is so concise, so descriptive.
The hero dies! And not only that,
the hero was led as a lamb to the
slaughter and he didn't open his mouth.
That was him! One who comes,
perfect, with no sins
to come and die for us.
And this is what Isaiah 53 says.
I recognized him. This is when I accepted
the Lord Yeshua as my personal Savior.
I saw him there, I met my God.
I've never felt as Jewish as I did then.
My brother brought me to see
one of the chief rabbis in Montreal.
And right away says to me,
"You know, the messiah doesn't die."
I said to him, "But you know, I just read"
"in the Talmud that, you know,"
the messiah dies, in Sanhedrin 98b."
He went and he opened up his book
and he saw it
and he went around the table once,
and he came back
and he said to me, he says,
"This is one opinion"
"but we go, as Sephardics, we go with"
"what Maimonides, the Rambam says,"
"and the Rambam says very clearly"
"that Jesus is not the messiah"
"and that the messiah doesn't die."
So I said to him, I said,
"Do you consider the Rambam a prophet?"
And he says, "Yes! From Moses to Moses!"
"Moses Maimonides and Moses from the Scriptures."
And I said, "But you know Maimonides"
"gave a prophecy that didn't come about"
"are we going to bet our own eternal future"
"on a false prophet?"
It didn't go well.
He got very angry of course,
he bangs on the table and he said,
"You're lying!" he says, "He never said that!"
I've found a book in French where
Maimonides writes to Rabbi al-Fayumi
in Yemen, and where he gives that
that prophecy, and I brought it to him.
And he said to me, "There are"
"mysteries that I don't understand."
And he gave me back the book.
I knew I was into something
really deep, really great.
You know in rabbinical Judaism,
the idea of messiah is so broad
you know, depending who you ask
you'll get a different answer.
You know that when you take two Jews,
you get three opinions
when it comes to the messiah
you get maybe ten opinions.
The reason why they came up with
two messiahs: Messiah ben David
and Messiah ben Yosef is because
they couldn't put the two
comings of the Messiah together
They do not go by what the scripture says.
When you go to the Torah,
when you go to the Tanach (OT)
the idea the concept of the messiah is clear.
You know Yeshua said it
in John 5:46 he says,
"If they knew Moses, they would know me."
If you stay within the Scriptures
and if you stay within the Torah
within the prophets and the writings
you will find Yeshua - he is right there!
He's waiting for you in the Scriptures.