Pints With Aquinas - From Judaism to Christ: A Convert’s Quest for the True Israel (Daniel Suazo) | Ep. 562

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

Daniel Suazo @thejewishcatholic, joins Pints With Aquinas host, Matt Fradd, to share his extraordinary journey from Judaism to the Catholic Church. Daniel, who lives in Tokyo, Japan, discusses his Jewish heritage, his deep dive into Judaism, and the theological discoveries that ultimately led him to Christ. This episode explores the connections between ancient Judaism and Catholicism, common misconceptions about the Talmud, Christian Zionism and dispensationalism, and how Catholics can better evangelize their Jewish friends.  Ep. 562 - - - 📱Follow Daniel:  YouTube: Youtube.com/@TheJewishCatholic Instagram: Instagram.com/thejewishcatholic/ 📖 Books mentioned: Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist by Brant Pitre: https://a.co/d/fDh8EVY Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary by Brant Pitre: https://a.co/d/4ofPIBs - - - Today's Sponsors: St. Paul Center: Join the Bible Study movement alongside a global community. Sign up today at https://stpaulcenter.com/pints PreBorn: Make a difference for generations to come. Donate securely online at https://preborn.com/PINTS or dial #250 keyword 'BABY' Charity Mobile: Visit https://charitymobile.com/MATTFRADD to get started. Catholic Match: Download the app or head to https://CatholicMatch.com and find your forever. - - - Become a Daily Wire Member and watch all of our content ad-free: https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe 🍿 The Pendragon Cycle: Episodes 1 & 2 start streaming Jan. 22nd exclusively on DailyWire+ - - - 📕 Get my newest book, Jesus Our Refuge, here: https://a.co/d/bDU0xLb 🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early and join exclusive live streams with me! Become an annual supporter at 👉 ⁠⁠https://mattfradd.locals.com/support⁠⁠ - - - 💻 Follow Me on Social Media: 📌 Facebook: https://facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/mattfradd 𝕏 Twitter/X: ⁠https://twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas⁠ 🎵 TikTok: ⁠https://tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas⁠ 📚 PWA Merch – ⁠https://dwplus.watch/MattFraddMerch⁠ 👕 Grab your favorite PWA gear here: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com - - - Privacy Policy: ⁠⁠https://www.dailywire.com/privacy⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Who is Israel? Israel are whoever is in a proper covenant relationship with God. The people of God, Israel, is the church. Suppose I'm an Orthodox Jew. Where do you begin and how would you try to convert me? Well, the curious ones I present the answer, the ones that are coming in more hostile, I will present a question. Whenever you're presenting these things, try to remember that what you're trying to do is bring a soul to Christ. You're trying to save a soul. Let's talk about anti-Semitism. What are you seeing and how should we as Catholics think of it?

What is Christian Zionism and why is it false? Why is it bad theology? Daniel, thank you very much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. I'm sure there was a Jew who converted to Catholicism in America we could have had, but they weren't as cool as you. So we flew you from Japan to be here. Well, I'm glad that I was the one that I was able to come

because this is that conversation I'm definitely looking forward to. Good, yeah. Now, I'm sure the sake we have got for you is nothing like the sake you have in Japan. Well, you don't have sake glasses, but I was thinking maybe we could begin by having a little drink. I agree. Let's do that. Let's crack it open. So are you a sake connoisseur?

I wouldn't say a connoisseur, but I have had my fair share. I know my so. I mean, here and there. And am I even, am I saying it correctly? Sake. Sake. Yeah. All right.

So as you say it that way, you're fine. That reminds me of Ross in friends who would call it karate, karate. Yes. Yeah, that's how a lot of people I feel pronounce. Saki. Saki is how I hear a lot of people pronounce. Saki, that's what I probably say. Yes.

Cheers, mate. No, Japanese. Oh, yeah. Kampai. Kampai. There we go. All right. It's good.

Now, this is clearly an unimportant question. Or maybe it isn't, but what is the sushi difference? Like, I got a feeling. I'm just going out on the limb. Go ahead. The sake you're used to in Tokyo. I mean, is it better than the sushi in Nashville? Well, I'm going to be honest with you.

No place has sushi like Japan. Even its neighboring kind of good. California, sushi is pretty good. It doesn't compare. And what is it? It's just the freshness of the fish. It's the type non-Americanized sushi. I think we loaded up with, with things.

Cream cheese and everything and whatever else we can. Yeah. So there's too many things and I think one thing that you'll notice about Japanese cuisine is the whole notion of umami, which is those flavors you almost have to hunt for. Wow. But when you get them, you recognize them and they stand out beautifully. I think that's the biggest difference.

Not so much salt, not so much sugar, and not so much fat, not a lot of fried things. And I gotta be honest, I don't think I've ever had real wasabi. Oh. Is that, do you have fake wasabi in Japan? It's less spicy. Oh, is it? It's like the horse radish. Isn't that what we have?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's still good. I love both. I love it so much. Over there too. What they have too is the spicy mustard kharashi. Okay.

That stuff is good. I'm gonna come. You have to. You have to come. It's really beautiful. What's the Catholic scene like where you live? Okay. So, blessed by God for this opportunity, because

because where I moved, there happens to be a nice Catholic church close by and a random bookshop slash antique shop that is Catholic. Come on. Very rare to find anything like that in Japan, but that exists and it's amazing. That's about it. When you start to expand and you move throughout Japan, there's not so much. There are Catholic churches around. And I sense that Japan is very fertile and it's ready. It's ready for a blossoming of the faith to happen.

I really believe it. But as of now, it's not a huge presence. What influence did St. Maximilian Colby and the Franciscans leave? Well, the churches that remain are really largely due to them. Wow. St. Francis of Assisi also plays a big role over there. But a lot of the churches will be named either by or after St. Maximilian Colby or St. Francis.

So you're going to have those two. And that Catholic presence still exists. And for a lot of people, especially foreigners that come in, they want to know more about that. And of course, the samurai that become Catholics. That's always cool. Maybe we can get to that. Well, I can share only a little bit because I'm actually learning that myself. Wow.

Yeah. Beautiful. Right. So you are ethnically Jewish. Correct. Your mother was a Jew. Mm-hmm. You weren't raised Jewish, though.

That is correct, too. Okay, so lead us, because it was really important to me to have a Jew on who wasn't like a bagel and cream cheese, Larry David, Jew. And I know you were very serious in your practicing of Judaism at some point. Absolutely, yes. Maybe tell us a bit about your story and how you got to that. Sure. So my journey, as you mentioned, is beginning with a heritage that is Jewish. My ancestors are coming in from Spain, from Northern Africa.

I still have family there. They move to Central America. that's where the faith starts to disappear. It's a huge Catholic presence, a huge Christian presence in the middle of Central America. So a lot of people lost their faith, and a lot of people were secretive about their faith too. So my family ends up getting rid of all their faith.

They believe that God exists, but they don't necessarily practice anything. My dad ends up moving to New York. My mom later follows, and that's where I was born. When my dad had moved to New York, he ended up meeting someone that employed him who happened to be a Pentecostal Christian.

Now, his boss is the one that influenced my dad's faith. From there, my dad became a Protestant Christian under the Pentecostal branch. And I grew up like that for a large part of my life. It wasn't until my college years where I started to question everything. And that's when the Judaism starts coming back into the... into myself, into my life.

Oh, explain to me and slow, feel free to be slow because I'm so excited to learn every detail here. So, okay, you started question everything in the sense that maybe atheism was a possibility, or what do you mean? Yeah, well, when you get to college, you know, everybody starts questioning everything. And one of the big things for me is hearing the atheists

or the agnostics talk about religion as something for the less intelligent, right? And that affected me. Why do I believe what I believe? Is it simply like they say because that's how I was raised or is there more to it? So that caused me to really go in this journey of diving into what I believed and why I believed it. So I started taking a more philosophical view of my life. I wanted to know, is there a need even for a God?

Slowly but surely, I ended up understanding that there must be a creator. there has to be some source of existence. That led me to explore the explanations that humans have given, what gods, what religions. And as I studied this, it made it simple for me to discard religions that have multiple gods, Hinduism, for example. And as I started doing that, I ended up with the religions that claim to believe in one God. So monotheism became the one that I started looking into the most. Because it was the one that made the most logical sense to me. If everything came from one source, this one God has to be almighty, all powerful, all-knowing,

capable of interacting with his creation. He has to be able to act upon his will, to be able to decide to create. All of these things were answered by philosophy. Then I start looking into the different religions, looking at their texts, start looking at the arguments for and against these faiths. And as I scrapped them all, I was basically left with Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Islam, I was able to scratch off because of the Quran and its inconsistencies, the issues that I found with that. Indeed.

Then what ended up standing out was Judaism and Christianity. Now, at this point, do you have some desire for Judaism to be true, given your heritage? Um, part of me knew that understanding this heritage that I come from, that there would be some effect in my emotions. But once I knew that God was real, once I knew that God had to be personal, I started asking, God, I know you exist, but I don't know how I'm supposed to live. Whatever you want me to do, whatever you need me to change or give up, I will do it. But you need to lead me. And I'm willing to give up whatever I need to give up. Whatever I need to change, I'll do it.

but you need to lead me. So I was open to whatever. I would have been open to Islam if it would have been coherent for what I was looking at. But it didn't make sense. I was left with Judaism and Christianity. And that's when I start looking into

the sacred text, the Bible, the how useful is it, how true is it? Is there any evidence for it? is can it practically be lived out? And as I started looking into these different aspects of both of them, I concluded, okay, I know that God, this random source, has to be this God because there was more proof for what this book the Bible claims in regards to this God. For example, the archaeological evidence that points to the reality of this God. all the archaeological evidences that correlate with the stories of the Bible essentially. Yeah.

Then I start looking at history where different peoples mentioned the people of the Bible. Like there is an Egyptian tablet, for example, that talks about these people of Yah, the people of God. When I started seeing that, I knew that this God was not just a random source, a random energy. It was a personal God, and it's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then I start going down the line. Okay. Now I know that this God is real. I know that the scriptures are reliable because I'm looking at the different arguments for

and against the preservation of the scripture, the translations that have happened over the ages, the variations that might be there or might not be there, the supposed contradictions. I had to look into everything to make sure that I wasn't just throwing my life. life away. And then when I get to this understanding that the scriptures are true, it just, it became a matter of comparing what I saw in scripture to how I was living my life. As I mentioned before, I was raised in that first part of my life as a Protestant Christian. So I started comparing my life then towards the scripture. That's when things started to change. Because the first issue that I noticed was the whole notion of Solafide, that faith alone was the mode in which we're

supposed to live out the faith in this relationship with our Creator. I noticed it was wrong because the scriptures themselves are always emphasizing this need for our contribution in this relationship with God, right? It's not just us believing, believing that the demons believe and tremble. There was more to it and it was more real. And this is where Judaism really started to call my attention. Because again, I knew the heritage. And at the same time as I was doing this, studying the faith, I was learning more about my own heritage, asking my dad, like, okay, you didn't believe in this, but this is our heritage. He told me that when he was a kid, he used to play by the Jewish cemetery. And they come from this area in Central America where it was the highest.

concentration of Jewish people there. So all of these things started coming in at the same time. And as I'm studying Judaism, I start seeing this correlation with the reality of having to do something in your relationship with God. So how do I do it? What does that mean? What does it mean to do something? Okay, there's the commandments, the Torah. And as I start looking at the Torah, the commandments, I see that there is a demand for me to do something, and I want to figure out how I'm supposed to live it. The conflict was Jesus. I had studied, at least to my ability.

I'm no scholar, right? I'm just a guy who, I'll give you a little bit of background so you understand the difficulty that I was facing at this point. I'm in college away from my parents. They were living in Maine. I was in New Jersey. I was broke, as most college students are, And I was living inside in the back room of the place where I used to work.

Ironically, as a Jewish person, it was one of those gold shops. So like the we buy gold. So I lived in the back room where you could hear like mice crawling up on the ceiling, boxes stocked everywhere. That's where I lived. At the same time, I'm going to college. I had no car. I had no TV.

So I had a lot of time to read and to study these things. That's where I got this opportunity to really dive into my heritage and into faith. While I'm in this mode of researching, I found myself realizing that everything that I believed was off, right? It was that notion of grace alone or faith alone or scripture alone, all of these things. I had to look into them because there were pillars. in the faith that I was living. The Protestant faith? The Protestant faith that I was living in.

But now I was looking into my Jewish roots, so I started looking at the Jewish aspect of the faith. And what called me was that real sense of acting on the faith. And then what stopped me in my tracks was Jesus. The reason why this was the case is because throughout my time researching all of these different things, I was also looking into Jesus himself. Was he real?

A lot of people say that Jesus is a mythical creature from the past, something that people made up. A lot of people who don't know anything. Yeah. No serious scholars, right? Exactly. And that's the thing that I ended up finding out, that serious scholarship backs it up to the point that if we can't believe in Jesus being a real character, person of the ancient times, we can't really believe in anybody else because we have more evidence for him, as is attested by. different sources than we would have for pretty much anybody else of ancient history. So that caught my attention and I knew that he was real.

Now, was he the Messiah? Was he the one that the prophets spoke about? I didn't know exactly yet, but I had this connection because I could feel, maybe it's because I was raised in a Protestant sense, but I could feel that it was too difficult to separate from Christ when he was so real in my life. even in the midst of me questioning everything. Because even as I asked for guidance, there was nothing that ended up contradicting him.

I did find contradictions, like I said before, for Solafide. I found contradictions for the beliefs in multiple gods. There had to be one. I found contradictions for arguments against the Trinity. You know, people claim that the Trinity is a pagan idea. But when I studied that, and I have the, the Jesus factor, it all made sense to me. I know that for a lot of people,

the Trinity doesn't even make sense. And we can't really fully grasp, but it caught my attention. So when I start looking into the faith, into the Jewish faith, I have Jesus, I have the Jewish heritage. What am I to do with these two things? Because I can't go straight into the Jewish world

where they're denying Christ, but I can't go into any of the Christian realms that I know of, because they, deny the observance of commandments. This is where I discovered messianic Judaism. Messianic Judaism, as some folks may be familiar, is a branch of Christianity and Judaism where the adherents of this faith believe that we as the people of God or as Christians or however they want to label themselves because even within that group, they have different labels, messianics. Some people refuse to be called Christian because they believe that has some pagan connotation to it.

Being in that sphere of not knowing where to go created a lot of conflict for me. Bible across America, an inspiring initiative from the St. Paul Center represents an unprecedented opportunity to unite the entire church through the world's largest Bible study. This transformative program invites believers to embark on a spiritual journey alongside thousands of fellow individuals and groups from across the globe, creating a powerful sense of communion that transcends geographical boundaries. As participants delve deeply into scripture together, they will discover new dimensions of knowledge and cultivate a more profound love for Jesus Christ. The experience goes beyond mere academic study, offering participants the chance to encounter Christ in a personal and meaningful way through both

the sacred scripture and the vibrant community of fellow seekers. Through this dual approach of scripture engagement and communal learning, participants will find themselves increasingly equipped and empowered to share their faith with confidence and authenticity, becoming effective witnesses to others in their own lives and community. I've known the guys at St. Paul's Center and gals for a long time and they are doing amazing work. So transform your journey this year. Join the movement alongside a global community starting February 18th. Don't miss out. Sign up today at St. Paul Center.com slash pints. In addition to reading the Torah, are you visiting synagogue, are you speaking to Jewish people, not just reading, but maybe watching videos? Well, that's the thing

that during this time that I was living in that place, I was basically locked out from the world. I had no idea of where I should go. I was attending a Protestant Christian church at the time. And I was even part of the youth ministry, and I was part of the music ministry. But as I started learning all these things, and I started questioning these things, I started having conversations with people in the church. And it started to get controversial.

The pastors got upset. What were you asking that upset them? Can you explain to me why we are living by faith alone? If the scriptures clearly tell us literally that we do not live by faith alone, If throughout the history of the people of God from the times of Moses, and you see the apostles as well, there's something that you have to do. Why are we not doing these things? Those type of questions.

And just diving into the other aspects like So La Scriptura as well, the scripture alone, they became so bothersome to the church that they ended up stripping me of all of these ministries that I was. part of. I was told you're not part of the music ministry anymore. You cannot be a leader for the youth. And if anybody asks you questions, do not talk about it. And that really bothered me because I was not just a member of this church. These people were my friends. And to be fair to, this isn't a Protestant issue per se. I mean, there would be a lot of, you know, critically thinking Protestants who would welcome questions and interact with you in a philosophical, scriptural way. They wouldn't be afraid of that. I just want to throw that out there for our dear Protestant listening. Yeah, yeah. That's not at all like my church, you know.

Yeah, yeah. But this one was. That are open. This, I think, another obstacle that I forgot to mention, when I was born, I was born in New York. And that guy that was my dad's pastor and boss is the same guy. We moved to Puerto Rico. You and your dad? Yeah, my whole family, which was at that time it was my father, a brother of mine, my mom, we moved. We moved and also the same pastor, the same boss, also moved to Puerto Rico because he's from there. So I'm still with the same pastor and my dad still has the same boss.

Then we ended up moving back to the state. In the state, that same man became my pastor because when I moved to New Jersey, where I went to university, He was the pastor of that church where I moved. So he was in my life throughout all of this time. So I think that one of the things that really bothered him was that I had been basically under his covering, if you will, all my life, essentially. And then I get to this point where I'm just trying to put myself in his shoes and think, man, I took Daniel and I gave him all of these things. I've been with his family and now he's trying to bring this corruption into my fold.

That's what I imagine he probably felt. So I'm not accusing him of shutting me off. I understand that if I was bringing what he would think is heresy, that he should try to stop me. But it would have been nice if I was given the time of day to actually ask questions. I did have one meeting with him where he said, okay, what do you need to say?

10 minutes into the conversation I was shut off. I know what you're going to say. Don't say it. This is what our church believes. church believes he brings out the pamphlet and all that at this point does he think you're making the case for catholicism or orthodoxy no no no or does he think you're actually making the case for judaism yeah for this yeah for judaism really okay uh but more than just judaism it was for messianic judaism because i was not saying that i rejected christ because i didn't uh it was more of the

responsibility our part yeah of keeping the commandments eventually i ended up moving out of there, I ended up going to Texas. That's where my road to Judaism really opened up. While I was there, I ended up moving back with my family. And it was a tough time because my dad, even though my family had come through heritage from the Jewish heritage, as I explained before, he was also now affected by Protestantism under the same man that I just left, right? That same church. It's all connected. Now I come back home and he's what are you doing? We've discovered Christ. Are you denying him? What is happening? And I made it clear. I'm not rejecting Christ. But there's things we have to do. We have commandments to keep. This basically ruined our relationship for years. And there's also and this actually really started in my time in New Jersey. But when I moved to Texas, it intensified because I was there with him. And being under the same roof, it's his house. He changed your diapers once upon a time, presumably.

It's difficult to take advice? Yeah, exactly. So it became really a rocky relationship for a long, long time. It was so bad that even before moving to Texas to be with him, we would have conversations on the phone and I was explaining to him my journey. And he would get so irritated with me and we would fight and it was back and forth all the time. It was so bad that I remember one time and several times after that that my phone would ring, I would look and I would see my dad's name and I would get nauseous, like physically nauseous.

I did not want to answer the phone because I knew it was going to be another fight. These were the conversations for a long time and it really bothered me. Eventually, when I ended up moving to Texas and we had the conversation face to face, we just agreed to not talk about faith anymore. because it was always leading to trouble. And the beautiful thing about my father is that even though he's very passionate, excuse me, about what he believes, he's also a kind man and he understands that it's more important for him to have a good relationship than to try to debate with me.

Now moving into Texas, this is where I started looking for a synagogue, a home, really, a place where I knew that I could embrace, what I was learning about the Jewish heritage, and also embracing Christ. I started looking for different synagogues, and I found one that really stood out, and I visited a couple first, and then I ended up finding one that really stood out to me because it was a nice community. People were generally nice people, but it was really devoted. I saw that people there were taking their faith seriously. They believed in Christ, 100%. But they also believed in keeping the mosaic law.

And this is one of those things when it comes to Judaism that you're going to have your different flavors. You will have people. And maybe it's a little bit different now, I will say that. It's a little bit different now

than it was maybe 10 years ago in where if you said that you were a messianic Jew, people will say you're not even Jewish. If you believe in Christ, you're not even Jewish. What actually is Judaism then? It's the observance of Torah.

The Torah, the commandments, the Mitzvoth. If you are doing that, you are in what is called Judaism. People will try to debate this, but this is the reality, and this is why you have even within the normative, quote-unquote, Jewish world, you're going to have things like the Orthodox, the Conservative, and the Reformed. Those are the three major branches of Judaism. The Orthodox are the ones that you would associate with the people that have the peyote, the wear the hats, dressed all in black. You see them in Brooklyn, you see them in Israel, you see them all over the place. These are the most easy ones to recognize because of the fact that physically you can identify.

Then you have the conservative Jews. Where they're going to differ theology is that the conservative Jews see the Torah as something crucial, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we can't modernize our lifestyle. So, for example, some of them might drive on the Sabbath. on Shabbat. The Orthodox will not. They will not necessarily always adhere to kosher laws, where if you say that to an Orthodox too, they'll scream at you for suggesting that you can break the laws of Kashrut of being kosher. Then you have the most liberal of those groups, which is the reformed. That's where you have the women rabbis, where you have conflicts. For example, I'll give you one example that happened not too long ago.

Well, now maybe it's a couple like 10 years ago. You had a group of women that were wearing Kippa, which is supposed to be a garment only for men, and Talit, which is also supposed to be a garment for men. That's a prayer show. They went to Jerusalem, a group of these women, and they were trying to seek recognition. And basically a brawl broke out between these women and the Orthodox

because they're completely opposed in the... ideology. So it's just a bunch of Orthodox fellows against these screaming shearless? Yeah. That would have been fun to watch. Can you watch it? Well, I didn't see it in person, but there are videos of this. If I was going to go Jewish, I would absolutely go for this thing and the hanging that all of it is so cool. I mean, it's cool. Like, cool in the sense that it's all in. That's what I like about. Was there part of you that

wanted to go all in in that respect? Well, yes. And this is, this is part of why I ended up going with the synagogue that I went with because in there, even though they believe that Christ is the Messiah, they're still living their Jewish lifestyle as orthodox, essentially. So were you excited to learn what it was you would now have to start doing? Absolutely. I bet. And how do you even begin to learn what it is you're supposed to do?

Because I don't know what it's like with Messianic Jews, but I was speaking to Shapiro and he's like, yeah, we don't want you. We don't even want to convert you. just kind of made me want him more. No, that's true. But it's like this is hard to get strategy. I'm like, why? What's wrong with me?

Yeah. Was it like that when you were talking to folks? In this specific synagogue, because they have the Christ background, or not background, but centered. Yeah. It's a different mentality, where, as you said, for the Orthodox Jews, they don't think of Gentiles, the Goim, as people that need to be part of the faith.

It's okay if you follow the Noah Haid laws where you're going to observe these seven laws which are really more like 30-something if you break them down. That's what they'll suggest. When it comes to the reformed and the conservative, it's the same thing. They don't want the foreigners, essentially.

You don't need to be Jewish. You can be saved by believing your Christian faith or whatever. Yeah, they're going to, they basically believe their own heaven and for you guys, if you're a righteous Gentile, quote, unquote, you're also going to have some good things. It's just not as good as us. Yeah.

Right. So who really wants that? It's like, okay, yeah, that's great. So I'm just stuck living and gaining a mediocre. Yeah, in a economy. I want to be up in first class. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So when I'm in the synagogue,

I'm super excited to learn all of these new things, like the laws of the Sabbath, the laws of Kashrut or kosher laws, the Moedim, which are the feasts, love those, learning about the views of the sages, learning about how we can talk about the Mishnah, which is the oral tradition of the Jewish people, the basis of the Talmud. How do you use this as somebody who believes in Christ? How can it help you in the walk? So I think that for me, that was a really solid base. that we'll get to later on to help me to even become Catholic.

So now, in that point, you might look at me and consider the Jewish heritage of my family and think, okay, he's Jewish that way. What about his mother? Was she Jewish? Yes, she was. So halakhically, or according to Jewish law, I would be Jewish. People would see me live as a Christian through the earlier years and say, okay, maybe he's not actually a Jew. Some is that debate, but what happens?

When I join the synagogue, I start learning about the real laws according to Jewish law of what makes you a Jew. What does it mean to be part of this faith? And like I said, it's keeping the Torah, keeping the commandments. I start diving into it. I start learning a little bit about Jewish mysticism or like studying the Zohar, Kabbalah. Yeah. And there's so much to learn. I'm so excited to learn about this, right?

Because if somebody becomes Catholic or somebody's looking into the Catholic Church, you know, they might be encouraged to come to Holy Mass on Sunday to not receive Eucharist to avoid sin to, right. But there's so much to keep as an Orthodox Jew, where do you start? Do they sort of say, well, we don't expect you to do all of it at once, but here's a list you should start trying to do, at least start keeping Shabbat. What was that? Well, Shabbat is the main thing. Especially nowadays, you're going to see that a lot of Jews are always going to point out, are you Shomer Shabbas? What does that mean? It means, are you keeping the Shabbat? Okay.

To be that, it's kind of like the initiation, really, of your walk. Even before people convert, because there are people that convert into Judaism, even before converting, some people want to practice keeping the Shabbat, what does it mean? That means you're not turning lights on and off. You're not driving. You're not cooking. You're not going to be on your phone. You're just completely closed off from the world. You're going to go to synagogue. Right. It's that full. immersion. So were you living with your family while you were going to synagogue? Yes. Can you, I don't mean to jump ahead, but if you don't mind me asking, how did you begin keeping the Sabbath in a house with other people who aren't keeping the Sabbath? What did that look like? That's actually not too

different from what Orthodox Jews might do. If you're a I don't know how to put this in a different way, but if you're like an upscale Orthodox Jew, you're going to have like maids and things like that. Okay. Which are typically going in They're non-Jews. In my interview with Dennis Prager, he talked about how he couldn't, you can't make some, you can't light a lighter to light your cigar. Yep. But if someone else offered, you could receive that.

So I could imagine just walking around the house with my cigar, not asking, but. Yeah, but if you just have a lighter and use this light my cigar, then it's okay. It's kind of like that in the sense that I could live in, I could live in, and go to synagogue without my parents opposing me too much anymore because of that conversation that I had with my dad where we just agreed, okay, we're not talking about faith anymore, just live your life. Basically his condition was don't deny Christ.

But everything else, I could live according to Judaism. So they knew, they knew that I was gonna keep the kosher laws. So you had separate food in the fridge, presumably? Well, now this is where things get interesting. Because in the world of Messianic Judaism, Just like in Orthodox Judaism and then conservative Judaism and then reform Judaism, they have different levels of observance. Let me first dive into the normative Jewish world where you have the Orthodox that are the most strict, the full immersion.

The Torah is divine. And it's not just the written Torah is the oral Torah. It goes about the five books of the Bible. And not just that, I've known it to the oral Torah, but I'm saying the written Torah. This is what we mean, right? Yeah, well. Those at home and we've been to keep talking about the Torah. Oh, yes.

So the Torah, in the Jewish world, they don't make the distinction really. Okay. When they talk about the Torah, they're talking about both of them together, the oral and the written. Okay. Most of the time, they're talking about the oral law. And most of the time in the Jewish world, in the Orthodox world, it will take presidents over the written. Interesting. Because this is what they will say.

If you have the written Torah, you cannot keep the written Torah. You cannot keep Torah because it's not fully explained. When it talks about circumcision, you don't know what it actually is. When you're keeping the Shabbas or Shabbat, what is it really? We don't know. But the explanation of how you keep the Torah is the oral law. So they say... It's like scripture and tradition at the church.

Exactly. Exactly. They say if you keep just, if you have only the oral Torah, then you're set. You're good. That's the Talmud. And the, the, the, writings that basically explain that too because there's explanations upon explanations and explanations. So if you have just that, you're good. That's the orthodox. The conservative, even though they still see the Torah as something really important, they might not necessarily claim that it's divine. They will say that it's our inheritance, that God gifted it to us, but it's written by man.

you know so that's why they can take the freedom of modernizing driving the shabbat having lights things like that when you get to the reformed they basically don't care about any of those things you know we're just jewish it's very much cultural not not as bad as just a random hollywood jew which only goes to to the synagogue like on yon kippur and pesah doing the passover meal in the house um But still, there's that range. Now, when you go to the Messianic Jewish world, there's also these different varieties. You have the more rabbinic type, and you have that non-rabinic type. What does that mean? The rabbinic side of Messianic Judaism very much cares about the opinion of the sages, the opinions of the rabbis, and what it means to keep the Torah. A big issue within this world of messianic Judaism that is more rabbinic are the kosher laws. This may seem ridiculous to people looking from the outside in, but it becomes a heated debate.

The question is, do we keep the kosher laws according to what the rabbis tells us, or according to what the scripture tells us in Leviticus 11? In Leviticus 11 is where it tells you that you can't eat certain animals and that you can't eat certain animals. it tells you nothing about separating milk and meat. It tells you nothing about the type of slaughter that must be done or the prayers that must be done for the animals. It tells you none of that. So then you have this debate within the messianic Jewish world. It's like, who do we follow?

Now, in the non-rabinic side, they don't worry about the sages. They care about keeping their commandments to the best of their ability, which means, Like, for example, they will read the scripture. And in the book of numbers, it talks about these things called Cizziot. Cizziot are the tassels that you see Jewish people for the men that are hanging off their clothes.

If you go just by the Bible alone, you will know that you just need four of them that go around your garments. So what a lot of people do in that world is they'll tie it on their belt loops. I know I'm saying a lot of things right now, but for the folks at home, try to follow this. in that non-rabinic side, they'll just tie these tassels on the loops of their, like the belt loops of their pants. If you go to the Jewish world, the Orthodox, the conservative, and even the rabbinic messianic Jews, they know that you're supposed to put these tassels, the tzizziot, on a four-cornered garment. So I'm pretty sure that Ben, as an Orthodox Jew, he's probably where, a small Talit Katang is called.

Talit Katang is like the prayer shawl, but a smaller version. It's like a poncho with four corners and you tie those tassels on the ends. So the Orthodox would look at the ones that are not Orthodox and say, you're doing this completely wrong, because the sages tell us how we're supposed to do it.

Same thing in the messianic world. The ones that adhere to what the rabbi say will say to the non-rabinic ones, you're doing it wrong. You're just going by the scriptures, yes, but you're not getting the full explanation. So this becomes a battle of who do we listen to? Who's the authority? That's why I like the synagogue that I went to

because under the rabbis, at least there was more clarity. And I understood that, that even though I'm believing in Christ, when it comes to observing the commandments, how do you do it? What does it mean to work in the Shabbat? Does it mean only your job? Or is there something to the whole lighting of fire thing?

Is there something to not driving on the Shabbat? As time progressed, I became more and more Orthodox in my observance of Judaism. So much so that I was living basically, in essence, just like a regular Orthodox Jew, but believing in Christ as Messiah. Now, a couple of years back, people would look at that and say, you're crazy, there's no such thing you believe in Christ, you're not a Jew anymore. Nowadays, things have progressed, things have changed, that even in the Orthodox world, you have Jews that will defend Messianic Jews because now they recognize that if you believe that Jesus is the Messiah,

it doesn't strip you from being a Torah observant Jew because really what matters again, in Judaism is observing the Torah, the commandments. So if you're a messianic believer, you believe Christ, Jesus is the Lord, he is the Messiah, okay, you believe he's a Messiah. But they will ask, are you keeping kosher laws?

Are you keeping the Moedim, the feasts? Are you wearing the Tziyos? Are you wearing your kipa? Are you respecting all of these different commandments, like for the women, the laws of nida, of purification, where they would have to go after their period of menstruation, that they would have to go through this cleaning process

where they go to mikva. It's kind of like baptism, baptismo, where they would have to be. to dunk themselves in water and they would be pronounced clean, things like that. All of these different things is what they would ask. And if you're doing these things, even if you believe in Jesus, they will say, yep, this guy is observing Torah. Even though we don't agree with you about Jesus, this is still a Jew, this guy is still

observing. So for me, I was doing all of these things that a regular rabbinic Jew would be doing in the Orthodox world. a little bit ago and when I say a little bit I'm talking about five years ago I had a video that I had created in my channel in which I spoke about

the fact that I I'm a Jew and I was defending it because a lot of people were calling me a fake Jew in that video I explained what it means to be an Orthodox Jew an Orthodox Jew an Orthodox Jew is one who believes in the oral, in the written as divine, and seeks to practice it.

So after that, the conversations calm down. Not so many attacks were coming in because there was no way for people to disprove my claim as a Jew. What year are we talking? We're talking about 2017. Okay. Did you have your YouTube channel then? Yes. Okay.

Yeah, I started it a long time ago as a messianic believer. I see. Just so everybody can look you up and we'll put a link below, but it's Jewish. Catholic? Yeah, the Jewish Catholic. The Jewish Catholic. But back then, it used to be called Messianic Me TV. Terrible name. But back in those days, I was basically sharing my faith as somebody who believes in Jesus and keeping the commandments. And it caught on for certain communities because they were able to see that you can still believe in Christ, but now you could understand that you keep the commandments. And for a lot of people, that seemed beautiful because they had also

like I had seen, discovered the reality of keeping the commandments. What, I mean, presumably you're reading the New Testament. Yes. Okay, so at the first council where it's decided that one need not receive circumcision, are you in disagreement with the apostles over this?

No, so when it comes to how you observe the commandments, this is an interesting debate. For a lot of people within the Messianic Jewish world, they're going to say that if you're not Jewish, you don't have to keep those commandments, the Mosaic law. But there are things that you can do, like you observe the Shabbat, you can observe the Sabbath, you can observe the feasts, but you don't have to.

That's what they would say in the Messianic world. There are some in the Messianic world that say everybody has to do it. Now, when it comes to things like Acts 15, where people are talking about what are Gentiles to do when they come into the faith do they need to become circumcised or God saying to Peter what I've created shall not be called unclean

Yeah The defense is going to be different from what Christians are going to be used to What would you have said? If somebody told me, look, it clearly says that you can eat whatever you want I would have said no, this is just a vision talking about Gentiles

not being unclean anymore. This has nothing to do with food. And this is the argument that I would have used. So there's new research that reveals something truly heartbreaking. More than seven million American women are dealing with severe, long-lasting, emotional pain after having an abortion. Grief, flashbacks, and a deep regret that for many never really goes away. Our sponsors at pre-born see this suffering up close every day in the thousands of clinics they support across the country. But here's the good news. There is hope. And it starts with something really powerful. When a woman sees her baby on an ultrasound, everything shifts. Suddenly, her baby's chance at life doubles. And for just $28, you can sponsor the ultrasound and potentially change a life forever. This is what genuine healthcare

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That's pound 250 baby. Or go online to preborn.com slash pints. Again, that's preborn.com slash pints. By this time that Peter receives this vision, it's at least 10 years after the resurrection of Christ. Why was he shocked about food being non-cosure or kosher anymore? Christians would have no response. Yeah, you're right. Why is he still eating kosher 10 years after Christ has risen?

Why is he shocked about food being clean or uncleaned? 10 years afterwards. So they would have no response. So that's how I would battle it. When Acts 15 was brought, and they would say, no, but look, Acts 15 just says, do not drink blood, do not strangle an animal that you're going to consume. But it soon after says that these are the requirements for a new believer, only in the beginning, because as it continues to say,

right after in Acts 15 it says because Moses will be preached in every in every synagogue essentially in other words this is a starting kit for a new believer you don't need to drink blood you don't need to involve yourself in idolatry or sexual immorality but you don't have to do everything at once because Moses will be preached in every synagogue, which means you're going to be learning about how to keep the commandments as you go on. That's the defense from the messianic perspective to say, we still need to keep things. The defense for the holidays, for example, they would read the Torah and say, it clearly says that these things are forever.

Then you go to the New Testament and you see that St. Paul says, I must keep this feast. And you're like, oh, wait a second. So Paul is keeping the feasts. Peter is eating kosher something is not lining up and this is what makes a lot of Christians specifically within the Protestant world become Messianic Jews

or part of the Messianic movement because they start seeing all these things and they don't have answers to them because they're scripture alone and with scripture alone you might be tempted to see these things and see these defenses and think

okay yeah I have no response to So, so then your opinion of the earliest Christians who stopped observing Torah or the laws is simply that they were like bad Jews. Yeah, essentially. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Very interesting.

Is there a lot of, I mean, who are you going to for advice here other than your local rabbi, presumably? Yeah. Are there well-known messianic Jews that teach other messianic Jews? Yes. Yes. First, starting with that community that I was in, the guy was super knowledgeable, the rabbi.

Along with him were two other rabbis. In the community itself, there were also very learned men. These were super educated, many of them coming from that Jewish background as well. So they knew the Torah, they knew the sacred scriptures quite well. They could go toe to toe with pretty much anybody that I had met at that time. And they could answer all these questions and give the defense for the messianic view. We have to keep the mosaic law, but we still believe in Christ. They would debate even Orthodox Jews when necessary to defend Christ's messiahship,

but they could easily also go against a Protestant and say, you need to keep the commandments. Okay, so you as a Messianic Jew, messianic Jew, you had already accepted Christ. But could you tell me, presumably you were meeting people who were converting from an Orthodox Judaism to accepting Christ as Messiah and I want to know what the argument was. What is it that's convincing Jews that Christ is the Messiah? There are some, but not so many. But the thing that convinces a lot of people is seeing the lack of the temple. And what do you do about that? Can you explain that for those who are watching? This one is the one that actually kept me believing in Christ. So when you look into scripture,

and I actually have to backtrack this a little bit, because in my search, I had the matter of Solas Scriptura that became a big deal, right? First it was faith alone, I scrapped that because I knew I had to follow commandments. Then it was Solas Scriptura, the scripture alone. But I knew that you couldn't, because you can't really understand scripture

if it's just by itself. But then came to a question of authority. This is where things changed for me and where things change for a lot of people that are coming in from the Jewish world and the messianic world. So who is the authority? Is it the rabbis? Okay, so the rabbis, you look into the Talmud, there's debates everywhere. You go to this synagogue, they have this specific observance. They might not necessarily agree with it here. I'll give you one example.

Within the Jewish Orthodox world, you have two branches of communities, which are the Ashkenazi and the Sephardarim. The Ashkenazi, it's like Ben. Safaradim would be me, the ones that come from Northern Africa and Spain. For the Pesak, the Passover, there is one thing that you're not supposed to eat according to, well, there are certain things that you're not supposed to eat during the Passover that the Safaradim would eat and the Ashkenazi would not. Now, because of this debate of who has the authority, it causes a lot of Jews to question that too. who is the authority?

And then because there is no real answer, they end up just looking into other faiths. That was not my journey specifically, but it is the journey for a lot of Jewish people. For a lot of Jewish people that end up converting is also they just look at their own faith and they just don't feel fulfilled. They end up being rejected from their communities,

from their families, and it becomes a life where they, also lose their Judaism and their Jewish heritage, right? They're no longer, they're no longer seeing themselves as Jews, even though they are from Jewish background. So you will notice that most Jews that become Christians lose that heritage. Okay. Whereas for me, it was the other way around because I was in that Christian world, I discovered Judaism. I didn't reject my Jewish heritage. I embraced it all the more. So when I was, you know, getting more familiarized with the Jewish world, I was then meeting other very serious Orthodox-like Jews that believe in Christ.

I don't know if I can get into names because they're really big in the messianic world, but There are certain rabbis that are well known throughout the messianic communities that preach messianic Judaism around the world. They go to India. They go to Europe. They go to South America. And they're teaching people that they need to give the Torah. And there's so many Protestants that are going into it. But these ministries also go towards Jews.

So they're trying to convince them, hey, see that Jesus is the Messiah. And they'll have their own apologies. for that because I didn't have that debate of Christ it was more of how do I defend the belief in Christ for against somebody who might tell me that he's not the Messiah and now this is where my arguments come for Christ when I'm speaking with a fellow Jew that doesn't believe in Christ the argument for me for Christ is there is no temple there is no priesthood there are no sacrifice anymore. What do you do? The Talmud will suggest that prayer, fasting, alms giving, and the

observance of the Torah are the replacement now for the sacrificial system. Our leadership is now the rabbis because we don't have the great court or the Sanhedron, which actually was called the Beit Dean Hagadol, which means the great court. Now there's no great court. There are little courts, you know, little courts, you know, little communities each have their own, think of their own magisterial system. But when I'm talking with other Jews, I would say, okay, so what do you do about it? And they will say, okay, these are the replacements. And then I will argue back and say, but who decided that now you can replace these things? And they will say, well, there are

examples of things like this that happened back in the day. And I'll give an example. In the book of Daniel, we read that when the temple was a story. he would pray towards Jerusalem three times a day. And they would say, see, this means that it was permissible to, instead of sacrificing at the temple, if you just pray towards Jerusalem, you're kind of fulfilling the requirement of the sacrifice. And I would argue back and say, he's just praying. He's not offering any sacrifices. And nowhere in scripture does it say that, or, yeah, nowhere in scripture does it give us that hint or suggestion.

that this was a replacement for the sacrifice. That was never the suggestion. This is just our interpretation. Amps giving is good too. Yes, it's a commandment. But where does it say that this is a sacrifice replacement? Nowhere. What about the observance of Torah?

They would say that this is also a crucial part and that it is almost like replacing that system. And I would argue again, there is nothing that tells us that these are valid replacements. All of that to say this, in the Jewish world, when I'm defending Christ, the believing Christ or his messiahship, I don't even worry, I'm sorry, I don't even worry too much about defending Christ himself as much as I am questioning why, what makes you think that Judaism is the proper continuation.

So I bring Jews back to the time of the temple, to the destruction of the temple. What is your excuse? What is your reasoning? And that's when things start to fall apart because there is nothing except for the rabbis making their own suggestion. This caused me to dive deeper into the Talmud. And as I started looking into the Talmud, I learned a lot of things that were just not coherent. And it looked like Protestantism. Whereas everybody just making their own ideas.

Like I mentioned before, the Talmud is basically just arguments between rabbis. Everybody in the Christian world seems to be quite familiar with the house of Hillel and the house of Shemai, because they're mentioned in the scripture. These are two schools of thought that have their own interpretation of how you're supposed to live out the Torah. But what a lot of people don't know is that Judaism is not a monolith. it's not even this broken set of two groups. There are so many other groups. And like I mentioned before,

there are communities where one rabbi will say this, the other rabbi will say that. And even though the general laws are still kept in a sense, they don't have full defense for everything. Or they don't have the same agreement between communities. So I'll give you another example of this discrepancy in agreement. in New York where I'm from it was a common practice for the Jewish communities there

to sacrifice chickens for the day of atonement or the day of Yom Kippur that's nowhere in the Torah the written or in the oral it just became a tradition that they ended up doing later because they figured that they do need a sacrifice but there's no temple

there's no priesthood there's no altar where do we do this so then it evolved into this practice of slaughtering chickens in New York and that became something that is done

I speak to other Jews and say hey why are these Jews allowed to do this but you're looking over here at the oral Torah you're looking at the written Torah nothing says that you can do that and then those Jews

will criticize these Jews and say, well, they're wrong because they're just making stuff up. And that happens in so many communities with different commandments, where they're just blaming the other group. This one's not right. This one's not right. There's also a lot of animosity between Sephardadim and the Ashkenazi, especially in Israel, tension between the two groups. There is tension between even smaller communities, like the Orthodox.

some of them believe that the Rebbe Schneerson is the Messiah and that he's going to come back. Some Jews will say that is crazy. There's no such thing as a Messiah that's going to come back from the dead. He could have been the Messiah, but he's already dead. He didn't do, he didn't fulfill the prophecies. But those same Jews that believe that Schneerson is the Messiah will defend and say, No, but the sages say that there will be a Messiah that will come back to life. He will die and come back to life.

So they believe that this man is going to be resurrected. And a lot of their apologetics sound very much like Christian apologetics. Not in the same way because Christ came back after three days. They believe that so many years later, this guy's still going to come back. So you have all of these different groups. So I ask the Jewish people that I encounter through my channel or just regular life. It's like, how do you define what is right? There's authority doesn't exist.

And I leave them in that sense where I leave them to debate. Okay, so then really who is the authority? Who decides what is what? How am I supposed to live out the faith? Because you have the written Torah. You have the oral Torah that's meant to explain the written Torah. And then it sounds like what you're saying is you have all sorts of other things that are trying to explain the oral Torah. Yep.

But there's no living authority. Exactly. And that is the biggest issue in the Jewish world. Protestantism has scripture. But that's not enough, as we've already explained. The Jewish world has the written Torah and the oral Torah. But they don't have a living authority that can actually interpret for the Torah. modern cases or that can interpret even within the older cases like those things

that I was mentioning before about the things that you can and cannot eat in the Passover like rice and beans so that the Separatim which is where my heritage comes from they will eat those things during the Passover and the Ashkenazi will not but who's right yeah right and who has the authority to say who has the authority nobody has your authority to say yep and we can't make we can't adjudicate that and that's the place where I'm leave the Jews and I explained to them I don't have that issue anymore. Hmm.

Now I don't have that issue now, but I did have that issue and that's just an explanation of Judaism but if I bring it back to my story, this is where I think it might be most helpful for a lot of people. Okay. I was living in Japan and I've been there for a decade. This three years ago. I had already dealt with scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone. But then I started asking that authority question. Who is the authority for me to figure out how I'm supposed to keep the commandments?

This is during the pandemic. Everything is closed. I don't have access to community anymore. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. So again, just like in that period of life where I was living in the back room of where I worked, It was now a time of where I was closed off again from the world. And it gave me more time to study and ask questions. Who's the authority?

So I start looking at the rabbis. Start looking deeper into the Talmud. I'm like, man, all of these sages, it's a back and forth all the time for everything. Nobody seems to agree. And now we don't have the great court. So then now, nowadays, you have branches. of Judaism that say that you have to listen

to whatever your rabbi says, your rabbi. That you're a community rabbi. Just whatever he tells you, he's your guiding light. Wow. That's a pastor to me in the Protestant world. There's no difference between a pastor in the Protestant world. Hey, I'm just going to listen to my pastor.

He's going to help me here and he's going to guide me when I have those questions. Same thing with these rabbi and the rabbis. They're the ones that are going to give me this question. However, now you see this group, there's a group called Dordea. Dordea is a group of Jews that believe in the oral Torah, the written Torah, but they don't believe in the authority of modern rabbis because the only living authority that was supposed to exist was the Beiddin Hagadol, that great court,

but later became known as the Sanhedron. So what they would say is this. They would say, we are going to listen to the halakha or the Jewish law that came through the sages until the last member of the court. That's the Mishnah. The Mishnah is the compilation of all of these written, I mean, of the oral law. It became codified by, it was a rabbi called Yehuda the prince, Jura Hanasi. He is the guy that compiled the Mishna. He took the oral law, which was never supposed to be written down, but he said, we're under persecution, we have to write it down, or we're going to lose Judaism. He compiled the majority of what he could of those laws, and that halakha, which is basically the term that means the legal rulings of the great court.

So they have the written and the oral now codified. But still, there's no court. So what this new group Dordea does is say, we will listen to a, to that point. After that, there's nothing we can do. So what do we do about driving? We don't really know. We can just take our best guess. But if a rabbi nowadays says, well, no, this is our interpretation. This is what you do about this ruling or that ruling. Those door there people will not even listen to that because they recognize this truth that without the court, you cannot make binding rulings anymore. Forgive me, but this sounds like modern orthodoxy. Yes. orthodoxy that's willing to accept the first few councils and then has to stop because there's now

no longer a living a living authority that the other authorities have to be subject to. That's exactly, that's a really good comparison and I actually never thought of that. But that is a very good one because it's so real that it creates these debates within the Jewish community and you will have now a lot of people will look at Judaism as a monolith when you inside you see all of the squibbling the debates and the issues. that are happening. And this is one of the big ones now, which is a lot of people are waking up to see, we need the court. So they keep praying for the Messiah to come and the Messiah to bring back the court and to guide the Jewish people once again. Now, let me bring it again to my story. I'm asking

who is the authority. And I keep looking at the rabbis and I have no no idea where to go now because there's no more Mishina being created. There's no more Talmud being created. I'm stuck in time. So I start thinking, well, is it the rabbis around here now? No, because there needs to be a court. But there is no court. And I started losing my mind a little bit because I didn't know what I was supposed to do. And I genuinely, I'm just saying, God, I just want to live how you want me to live. But I don't know how I'm supposed to live anymore.

Then I paused. I said, wait a minute. Every time that I'm looking for authority, I keep going back to the Jewish sources. Now, remember, I'm a believer in Christ, but I keep going to the rabbis to know where to go next. I said, wait a second. Why don't I look at what the earliest Christians believed? Because I believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

These early Jews that gave their life to Christ, what did they do? What did they believe? So I start looking into things like the didache, which is for the folks that don't know, it's one of the earliest records outside of the scriptures for what the earliest Christians believed. I start looking into the early church fathers.

Now, as I did this, I did it very cautiously because I still had the mentality of everything that happened after Constantine is pagan. Okay. So it has to be a pre-inicine church. This is the first time you've said this in this interview, so I wasn't aware of that. Yeah, this is this sort of Protestant line, yeah.

That after Constantine, all the riffraff came in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the case also for how Jews in the messianic world would look at Christianity. They would say the earliest Christians, they kept the Torah too. They were eating kosher. They were doing these things. But then Constantine came in and paganized. And everything is corrupted. Yeah. Right. So I was very cautious and I decided to only look at what people pre-Nic Council believed. I'm looking at people like St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. I'm looking at the little scraps that we have from Pius, I believe is how you pronounce his name. And as I'm looking, I'm looking at St. Clement of Rome. I'm looking. Justin Mata?

Yes. And I'm looking at all of these things. And then I became perturbed. I was bothered because I noticed. a recurring theme. The Eucharist. They kept talking about this meeting where they're breaking bread. Always essential. But it wasn't just a thing that they did. They believed that this was Christ

and that this was really a sacrifice. That's what mattered to me the most. I started thinking, wait, in Judaism, I don't have the authorities, I don't have this and that. But I'm seeing these early Christians, they have a response for the continuation of the sacrificial system. Then they start breaking down the answer for the priesthood. You have the bishop.

You have the priests and the deacons. They're answering that question too. They're answering who is the authority now too. But this can't be. No, no, no. There's no way. This is starting to sound Catholic. And that's what bothered me.

Yeah, so you haven't told me up until now. of Catholicism while you were a Protestant and a Messianic Jew. So what was it? As a Protestant, like most Protestants, they may be changing now, but a lot of Protestants would say that Christians are not, I mean, that Catholics are not Christian. On my flight here, I actually had that experience. Somebody was asking me for my email and I told them, it's a T-H-E, uh-huh, and then they start writing the name of it, Jewish, and he's like, he looks at me.

And I'm like, the next part is Catholic. And he's like, what? He's like, oh, yeah, that's so great. So you believe in Jesus? And I'm like, yes, I believe in Jesus. He's the Messiah. He's like, you know what? I used to be Catholic too, but I'm Christian now.

And I was like, oh, wait a second. Anyway, I digress. In my opinion of the Catholic faith back then is that Catholics were pagans, idol worshippers, that they worshipped the saints, that they worshipped Mary as a goddess and that the Pope was the Antichrist. That's what I believed.

Until that point, even through the messianic world and in the world of Judaism, in the Jewish world now, they're not really concerned about Protestants. They're more concerned about Catholics. So when I was looking into this and I started noticing this very Catholic-sounding trend, I said, this cannot be.

I am going to refute the Catholic Church. I have my YouTube channel at this time. So as I'm exploring this, I'm making videos asking the questions that I was asking to the public. And see if anybody could refute me or help me, whatever. Interesting. And as I'm going, one of the first videos that I asked is the whole sense of the authority. Who's the authority and all that? And then I started noticing the thing about the Eucharist, and I remember making a video about it.

because I wanted to know what other people thought about this because I'm looking at it and I'm trying to get answers to see if somebody can explain it to me without it sounding Catholic and I really devoted myself to trying to refute the Catholic Church in every way I could. I even remember making a video against the Catholic Church making fun of the rosary, making fun of the Pope. You did a video on this? Yes. Yeah. Is it still up?

I took it down. I took it down. It exists like in the the private videos. Oh, you know what you have to do? Do a response video. Ooh, to myself. Yeah. And destroy yourself. Yeah, that's a good idea, actually. Before we continue, yeah. I think we should get some whiskey. Absolutely. Now, I apologize that we're going to be drinking Lagervolutin. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say what I'm drinking. So if I'm not supposed to say it, that was a joke. I don't know what this is. Yeah, yeah, what is that? Thank you. Yeah. No offense, Japan, but Scotland has, has your beat.

Okay, this is where things are going to get even more controversial than the Catholic thing. Yeah, just as a little... Because they have a lot of scotch, well, not scotch, but a lot of whiskeys. Do you know, the story about this? No, tell me. Okay, and super digression, but this is really good, important, too. Slancher. Hey.

I'm enjoying this. Thank you. How do you say it in Japanese again? Kampai. Kampai. Yes. All right. How bad did that sound?

How bad was my accent? My Aussie accent. Kampoi, Roy. If you said I like that, that would be... Mm-hmm. This is really good. Isn't it good? Oh, my.

Oh, it tastes like salt water and a barrel. Fire. Like it's smoky and it's the best. It's my favorite. Yep. Ooh. Okay. So the story of Japan and whiskey, go.

There was a, in almost everything in Japan now is not necessarily an invention as much as it is an adaptation. We can make it better. Yeah, come on. Always, always. So what happens is this man in Japan discovers the wonders of whiskey. and he says, I got to learn how to make this stuff. So he goes to Scotland, and he tries to learn, brings back the recipe to Japan and starts tweaking it.

And I'm sorry for the Scots, I'm sorry for the Irish, I'm sorry for the Americans, but they took the whiskey to Japan. It's not better than this. Is it? Well, it depends on your taste. All I would say is this. For the past several years

in these conventions of like wine, not wine tasting, whiskey tasting and all that. Japan has won the award for the best whiskey for several years. So I'm going to have to get you over there. I need you to, yeah, we're going to do it. I promise you, if God wills it, we're going to do it. Amen. You and me, we're going to do evangelism on the street corners. Let's hand out miraculous medals. Let's do that together. That'll be amazing. And then let's go eat sushi and drink Japanese whiskey. Deal? Okay. Deal. All right. Where were we? So now bringing it back to the story of my faith, I'm trying to debunk to church. And as

hard as I tried, it just made sense. It all started falling into place because my questions were, if there is no court and there is no authority, where do I go? And then I started seeing that these Christians had a response. They had their response through the bishops, through the priests, the deacons. And I start looking at all of these things and making my content in the hopes that somebody will say, Oh, you just missed this thing. Oh, wow.

Just hoping. You were genuinely open being wrong, hoping to be wrong. I wanted to be wrong. I didn't want to see it. When I was doing it, I didn't believe that it was Catholic. I believed that I was mistaken because I didn't want to believe that it was these pagan Catholics. Now, up until this point, because there's a lot of people whose story sounds very similar to you was right. They want to refute the Catholic Church.

They make it their priority. Yeah. And then they convert. Yeah. Were you familiar with these Protestant converts like Dr. Han who we've had on the show or Dr. Peter Crave for any of these people? Nothing. No.

Nothing. I had no idea of any people converting to Catholicism. Okay. I knew of a lot of Catholics that had become Protestant. And I even knew of many that joined the Messianic Jewish world. And I even knew people that became not just Messianic, but they abandoned Christ completely. A horrible shame. It starts with them denying Paul.

And they're like, oh, it was Paul who twisted Christ's word. Christ actually pushed for the Torah. That's why you hear a lot of Jews now saying that Jesus, okay, Jesus was a good Jew. Yes, he was a Torah observant Jew, but Paul ruined it. And then when you discard Paul, little by little, they also discard Christ. And then they become Orthodox Jews. But never had I heard of people becoming Catholic. So I start looking into these things, and the more that I searched, again, things start falling into place.

Okay, now there's an answer for the sacrificial system, for the authority. Now I know what I'm supposed to do, but I still don't want to accept that it's Catholicism. So I just keep studying, I keep reading now, really to understand the whole history behind Constantine, the history of the church. And I'm taking it slowly because I don't want to fall into the pagan Constantine,

new Christianity. But as I keep going slowly, and I'm seeing from the apostles, to their students, to their students, I'm seeing this continuation, this flow that seems so natural and that there is no change. And then I start looking at the Catholic Church

and they're still offering this same sacrifice. They still have this lineage. And it, miraculously to me, also lined up with the Jewish mindset as well. What do I mean by that? In the Jewish world, the way that rabbis pass authority from one rabbi to another,

it's called shmichah. Shmichah is the laying on of hands. And there used to be a ceremony where they would lay the hands on the person that would be a new rabbi and would breathe on them. And then the Catholics were doing this practice.

The Catholics have this practice of saying, behold, this is the body of Christ. Ancient temple-time Judaism they would occasionally bring out the bread of the presence and say, behold God's love for you. It was to show them the miracle that the bread was still good, that it didn't rot.

It was a miraculous bread. They had in the Catholic world incense, which I was already familiar with in a Jewish world. Now I'm starting to see all of these different things that were so similar between the ancient temple time Judaism and even some things from the modern Judaism in Catholicism. And I say, you know what? God, it seems like you're trying to tell me something.

I'm going to go to a Catholic church. Before we get to that, you're clearly not satisfied with those in the comment section who are rebuking the Catholic claim. Because presumably you have Protestants and Jews who are trying to show you why the Catholics are wrong about prayers to the saints or offering the whole. whole Eucharist. And as someone who's still trying to debunk Catholicism, were you just not satisfied with their answers? Well, at this point, it was mainly only about the Eucharist and where Protestants would say it's just a, it's just a symbol. Yeah, nothing more. Right. And there were even questions

that at the time I didn't even know myself. Like, for example, somebody says, okay, so this is really Christ. What if I take bread and I bless it and I use those words? Is it the body of Christ? And I didn't even know if it required a priest to do that for it to be really Christ or not. Like, could it be anybody? Could I grab my, because this is, again, a correlation between Judaism and the Judaism and the Catholic Church. Every Sabbath, we had this ritual and Jewish people that still practice Judaism, still hold this practice in the Shabbat of blessing bread and blessing wine. And the Catholic Church, that's what you do in every Mass. Except for us is just still bread and still wine.

But I could see that correlation. And then you could see it in the ancient scriptures too when you look at Melchizedek. Melchitzedic, yeah. So he would offer the same thing. And you could see this trend. So yeah, that was nice. But I still didn't know, really. And when people were trying to propose that perhaps it's just a symbol, I would say it makes no sense because, again, I'm not, at this point, I'm not defending the Catholic faith.

I'm just going by what I see in scripture. People would say it's just a symbol. And I would say, yeah, but why are people getting sick? Why are people dying when they take it without a proper disposition? Oh, it's because maybe God still punished them because they denied Christ, but it has nothing to do with the Eucharist itself. And not to mention John 6.53, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. But then they would respond with, oh, it's just a symbol because if you keep reading, it says that the flesh doesn't matter. Yeah, but surely,

surely he didn't mean my flesh didn't matter because it was his flesh that saved the world. And that's what I started seeing. And when I'm connecting all these dots, I'm like, yeah, you guys are saying all these responses, but it doesn't seem to add up with what I'm seeing. Right. The carnal mind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and that's why, even though they were giving me all these refutations, it didn't work. It wasn't because I was trying to defend the Catholic faith. It was quite the opposite. I was really, really... You're looking for like a nail through the heart of Catholic teaching. So you don't want something that's not going to work. You believe Catholicism is false. I just want the answer that will actually put this to bed for me. Yes. And couldn't find it.

Yes. And nobody could answer it. So I just kept looking and I at the same time when I start seeing this trend of nobody being able to satisfy my questions, I said, you know what, God, since it seems you're showing me something, I'm going to go to a Catholic church. But God, you need to lead me. the same way I was willing to give up everything before, I'm willing to do it again. And you're in Tokyo? I'm in Tokyo at this point. So I'm sure there's not a plethora of churches in Tokyo, but maybe I'm wrong, I don't know.

Well, no, you're actually correct. Okay. But it's not just that that was the issue. It was during the pandemic that all of this is happening, where I'm debating the veracity of Catholicism. Because there are almost no churches and everything was during these lockdowns, It was very difficult to find something that would be open. I ended up finding one and I decided to just check it out.

And this was one of the times where it seared into my memory so beautifully. In the past, when I was reading about the church and Judaism, I see the correlation, but now I physically saw it when I look straight down and I see where the priest is at. And I see three candles to this side. three candles to the other side and Christ in the middle and immediately I see the menorah where you have Yeah for those in the back

which is what The menorah is the candelabra that lance lamp stand that would be in the temple Yeah And this candelabra has that one main branch and then six branches

three to each side and this is exactly what I saw when I saw Christ in the middle and three to the side three to the other side Now just as a little note, that candelabra that you would see in the temple is a total of seven branches. For people that know about Hanukkah, it's different because Hanukkah has a nine branch menorah.

That middle one has a special name. It's called the shamash. It means the servant. That is the servant candle. So I have this in my mind and immediately I think, wow, the servant can't wait, servant, Christ, the Messiah is called the servant in the scriptures. And now I'm looking at it. I'm seeing a menorah and I'm seeing the servant in the middle. So all of these things start clicking. And then I see the priest in the vestments. And I'm like, wow, vestments like the priests of old.

Then I see the incense. Wow, incense like in the days of old. All of these things that are appearing, I'm making these connections. now physically. Before I could see the correlation between what I saw written, but now that I was actually physically there and I could smell frankincense for the first time in my life that I've read about, I've never smelled what it smells like,

but when I was in the church and I got a whiff of that, chills, chills. So in that experience, even though it was beautiful, what was the most beautiful was what happened the night prior. During my time of asking all these questions, I was not necessarily tackling Mary and doctrine. I was not talking about indulgences. I was not thinking about these saints. I was just thinking from a very Jewish perspective, what do I do about authority?

What do I do about the sacrifices? What do I do about the lack of the temple? Those were my real questions. I knew about Mary, and I knew certain things about theology and what the church explained. And even though I didn't understand it all, the night before I went to that church, I had a dream. And in that dream, I was at a Catholic church. And I remember in that dream, seeing families and children just running around and everybody's so happy. And all of a sudden, I feel, I don't hear, I feel the voice of who I knew was the Blessed Virgin Mary.

and I could see her dressed in this garment that was like a yellow under and blue on top. I didn't see the face and I didn't hear the voice. I felt the voice and she said, I'm happy for you. And I understood that she was saying this because I was now following the church or going into what her son established. I didn't know all the theology. I didn't know anything about typology. but I had this prior to going to that church. You know, years later, well, a year later,

I went to this little chapel that was behind that church. And what do I find? A picture of Our Lady dressed exactly like what I saw in that vision, with that blue and that yellow. It's actually a famous picture that I don't know if maybe I just saw it randomly someday and my mind concocted that image in my mind. I don't know if that was it. I don't think it was.

I think it really was Our Lady. When you woke up that next morning, did you know that that was the Blessed Virgin? Yes. I wrote it down. I took a note on my phone and I logged the whole thing down. And perhaps it's something that I'll show you later. But it was stunning to me that me, a nobody, she spoke to me in that way.

I'm happy for you. That's it. And I knew and I knew that there was something happening here that God was really calling me and leading me in this way because like I said, I prayed, God, wherever you want to take me, I'm willing to give up what needs to be given up, I'm willing to change what needs to be changed, I'm willing to live however you want,

and I promise you I will go full force if you can prove it to me. Little by little more and more things start connecting. I'm confronted with the papacy and I start trying to figure out okay how does this make sense well I'm a Jew let's look at the Jewish sources this for a lot of people is difficult like in the Protestant world to accept the papacy

for me made sense because one of the things that Jews expect is the reestablishment of the kingdom of David what does that mean in the kingdom of David you have the king and you also have the steward this al-habite this one that would be the overseer had a priestly and royal role where do you see that anywhere in Judaism you don't where do you see that anywhere in

Protestantism you don't where do you see this in orthodoxy because this was also a question I don't see it so this is why I never even ended up looking at orthodoxy because I'm looking at the pattern I'm trying to fulfill the process prophecy. What is it? What is the prophecy? It says that the kingdom of David would be reestablished. Well, the kingdom of David also included a court, which I saw the magisterium. That was answered. I have the authorities now. But there's also this steward that was part of the kingdom who had physical keys to the temple. So it's not just, and it tied in. It's not just a, not just a story. It's a reality. it's something physical and physically real,

those keys that this al-habite, the one that was the steward, he physically had those keys. And he would actually sleep on top of them. This is in the Talmud, and this is how I knew about it. It's not in scripture when it tells you about this specific keys where he slept on them.

But in Isaiah 22, that's where we're finding things that are correlating this man that was dressed in these garments that had access to these tools. So let me see. Not tools, like the flagons and all of the things that priests would use. This man had a royal role,

priestly role. And then I saw that being fulfilled in the papacy. Okay, that's answered. Then comes Mary. I had this vision before. What does it mean? I started learning about typology. And you asked me before

if I even knew about all of these different converts into Catholicism and I didn't. But then I discovered Scott Hahn and I discover this Catholic Jew who, Roy Schumann, I hear how he also in his story encountered the Blessed Virgin. I'm like, wow, that's similar to me.

Okay, and I start learning about all of these different people and trying to find out, you know, what about Mary? How do we answer this? And then I learn about typology and I start seeing these correlations that are so deliberate. I start looking at the book of Luke. Yes. And 2nd Samuel chapter 6 where it's deliberately making this connection.

And for me, this became highly important because typology, as I started to see, is not new. This is just the way that God has always worked. patterns and set shadows that have a larger reality. Moses, when he is given the instructions to build a temple, he has this vision, or he's seeing it, and God says to him to build a tabernacle and all of these different instruments, according to the pattern which you have seen, the heavenly pattern. So he saw a heavenly reality that is greater than this physical reality, but he's going to work with this physical reality. In almost everything that you see in the Torah, there is something that is a physical reality, but then it's manifested and presented to be later on in a greater reality.

It's not new in the Jewish world typology and seeing these fulfillment and patterns. because when you look at the temple, for example, there is no commandment to build the temple. The Israelites were commanded to build the tabernacle. But this reality was then magnified in the temple, right? It was continued and created as part of a foreshadowing. And I used to have this question too, how is it that we built the temple if that was never a commandment.

And the rabbis say that this is not a change of the law. It's a fulfillment of that law. I'm like, oh, fulfillment. Okay, this is an interesting word because now I'm seeing the queen mother being fulfilled in medium. I'm seeing the steward being fulfilled in the Pope. I'm seeing the high court,

the Beitin Hagadol being fulfilled in the magisterium. I'm seeing the oral Torah being fulfilled in the sacred tradition. I'm seeing all of these correlations that made Catholicism feel so real and so connected. And it was that fluid transition and fulfillment that really started calling me towards Catholicism and not towards something like orthodoxy, right?

Because those patterns only exist in Catholicism. Now that I was looking into all these things, and I learned about typology and all that, even though, and we can dive into all of the beauty of this typology about Mary. I want to point out to those who are watching, too, that we find typology from the pages of the New Testament. Paul calls Christ, oh, sorry, Adam, a type. He uses this word typos of the one to come. You have Peter in 1st Peter chapter 3 making the kind of typological correlation between Noah's Ark and baptism, which now saves us. So this isn't something invented in the Middle Ages. And as you say, I think we see it in Luke's

gospel who's clearly deliberately showing that Mary is the arc of the new covenant. Yeah, yeah. I want to dive into that because for me, this was beautiful. Look, are you tired of sending your money every month to a phone company that doesn't share your values? I want to tell you about our sponsor, Charity Mobile. They're different. They're proudly pro-life, and they're not apologizing for it. Here's what I love. Every month, they take a percentage of what you pay and send it directly to the pro-life pro-family charity that you choose. Over the last 30 years, that's actually added up to millions of dollars, making a real difference. And here's the thing, you're not sacrificing anything. What I mean is plan starts under 50 bucks

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That's Charitymobile.com slash Matt Frad and use promo code Matt Frad at checkout. After the destruction of the temple, Judaism changed completely. It's not Judaism is not temple time Judaism. And I call it temple time. Judaism just so that people can understand what I'm talking about is the ancient faith of the ancient Hebrews. That's what I'm really referring to when I say temple time Judaism. When it comes to the Blessed Virgin, when we start in 2nd Samuel chapter 6,

it talks about that there was this period in which the ark was being carried, the Ark of the Covenant and David takes it to the hills of Yehuda of Judah while he's over there something happens he gets

he basically gets scared he's in awe of the power of the ark because of what happened to Uza he's in awe of the magnificence of this

and he says how is it that the ark of our Lord should come to me and he takes an interesting approach, he leaves it in the house of Obededom. When he leaves it there, he sees that they're getting blessed, and he's like, wait a second, I want it back.

I need these blessings. How long? Three months. Gets it back, brings it to Jerusalem, and he dances before the ark. Now, we go into Luke, and it tells us that the blessed mother also goes to the hills,

of Yehuda. She also spends those three months there. When she is encountered with her relative, Elizabeth, she says, Elizabeth, hears the voice of medium. It doesn't say anything about Yeshua, Jesus. She hears the voice of the Blessed Mother and she says, how is it that the mother of our Lord should come to me? The baby leaps as if dancing. that the chronology of that story is almost the same thing exactly as what you see in second Samuel chapter six and you're seeing all of these things and one might say well maybe it was just a coincidence except when you start looking deeper into the scriptures you see that there's way more to it for example Paul tells us that in the ark you would find the bread of the presence

that you would find the budding rod of Aaron which is basically the proof of the priesthood. And then you have the tablets, which are the physical manifestation of the Word of God. And then we know that medium, Mary, our lady. The fulfillment of these things.

Yes. The bread of life himself, the true priesthood, and you're going to find this Word of God made manifest. Also letting us know. Then what is she? If she contains it,

just like the art contained it, This must mean she is the new arc of the new covenant. Interestingly, by this time during the temple time, there was no ark. The ark had gone. So everybody's asking, where is the ark? Is it going to come back? Well, the prophecies also tell us what happened, because when you go into the Psalms, there's a scripture that says, arise, oh, Lord.

So you have this risen Lord, arise you and your ark of strength. and go into your resting place. We're going to dive into that in a second. We have the ark with the Lord, the risen Lord. We go to the New Testament and we find that the risen Lord and his blessed mother, who now we can basically say, okay, she's the ark for sure, is also taken up. So that also explains a lot of the theology that we find in Catholicism, like the assumption of our lady.

Why can you claim that? Well, because even in the... Old Testament, we knew that the ark that everybody was looking for and couldn't find would at some point be taken with the risen Lord with Christ. Go to his resting place, the heavenly abode. And this is where the ark is. And we can confirm that still even more when we look into the book of Revelation in the end of chapter 11. That's right. Where it's telling us that John saw this vision and he sees the ark. But then as he starts explaining what the ark looks like, he starts explaining that there was a woman with a crown of 12 stars, the moon at her feet, and she's clothed in the sun.

And when I looked at all of these things, and I'm seeing the correlation that is undeniable, I'm like, okay, God, I see it, but there's an issue. It's not clicking in my heart. I get it. It makes sense to me. She's the Gavira, which is the queen mother. She's the Ark of the New Covenant. I get it. I have no qualms with the claim of the assumption, but it's not clicking in my heart. So I said, and I feel so glad that God has always allowed me to be bold in my requests. I said, God, if what the Catholic Church is claiming, because this was basically my last thing that I needed to confirm, if what the church is claiming in regards to medium is true, you need to make this click in my heart, because it makes

sense here, but not here. So if you really want me to believe the church, because that's what it seems that you're leading me towards, you need to make something happen. All of a sudden, I got this random urge to want to pray the rosary. I'm not Catholic yet. I buy a rosary. I start looking for videos on how to pray the rosary. I found Keith Nestor. What a man. I found you. And I found this guy, Gabriel Castillo. What a man. Changed my life. Gabby, I hope you're watching. Yeah, changed my life. I start praying the rosary. And that was the seal that I believe led me to finally accept Catholicism. Because as I'm praying, I'm finally able to see the life of Christ, not just read about it, not just intellectual. I can see it.

And I remember having this thought that when you're praying the rosary, it's like medium, the queen mother is taking you into this castle. And on the castle walls, you see these pictures. And these pictures are the life of her son and his triumph. And she's just guiding you. And she's showing you, look, he did this and this and this happened for you. She melted me. to the point where I ended up eventually doing the devotion to our lady. At the consecration.

A consecration. And being enrolled in the brown scapular, all of these things to wearing miraculous metal, praying the rosary. And all of these things started from that point. And I'm like, wow, when I had that vision at first before I even went to the first time to Mass, even though I didn't and participate, I was just watching. She was there from the very beginning. And then I think of Roy Schumann who also had that experience. And I'm like, wow, she's like, she's like the mother of the Jews. And then I found out, wow, she's the mother of the whole church. And she's my mom. So now, every time that I'm praying for my fellow Jews that I want to bring to the church, I'm always

is asking for her intercession. And I say, Our Lady, the true arc of the new and eternal covenant, please pray for my Jewish brethren that they may come to see Christ our Lord as the Messiah and as king and as God, the second person of the Most Holy Trinity. So that has led to what is now I believe my mission. Which is what? It's a trifold mission. Okay. The mission number one is to help Jews come to see Christ, to give their life to Christ. The second mission is to help those Christians that are asking the question of, you know, how do you live that real Christianity, that ancient faith, so that they don't get lost like I did in Messianic Judaism, because that didn't actually fulfill the answers, that they would see the truth of the Catholic faith as I lead them through the ancient heritage of the Hebrew faith.

And then thirdly, to help Catholics see the reality and depth and length of the Christian faith and the Catholic faith, because its roots don't begin 2,000 years ago. They begin in the beginning of creation. Where all of this, this whole story from the time of Adam till now is just one story of God wanting to make a people for himself, to bring us close to him in that relationship. That story is, and this trifold mission, that is what I hope to do. Glory to Jesus Christ. Let's ask you a question about this first of the trifold missions, namely to help bring Jews into the Catholic faith.

Suppose I'm an Orthodox Jew. Where do you begin and how would you try to convert me? For now, as is the Jewish tradition, the way you answer questions for somebody is by asking more questions. So the approach for me whenever I encounter Jews, because in my content that I produce online, I make it very clear that I'm a Jew who doesn't reject his heritage, but that shows that I am fulfilled in Christ. So when I have Jewish people messaging me, I'll get two types. One is a curious one, and one is one attacking me for my abandonment of our people. when I get the ones that are curious I would help them see that we have been basically

been duped by the rabbis and that there is a reality which we have missed we have been hoping for a temple for 2,000 years and nothing has happened the rabbis tell us that we just need to keep the Torah and we will make the Messiah come

but we can't keep the Torah not because we don't try to, but because we physically cannot. There is no temple. There is no priesthood. There is no sacrifice. Watch the answer. So when I do this, I'm basically guiding them into it.

But the way that I do it is presenting to them, presenting to them the answer that I already have. I will say, you know that in our scriptures, it talks about this bait-din-hagadol. what's the Beiddin Hagadol now? And then, you know, they would say, oh, no, in my community, there's a Beiddin, there's a court. And I would say, but that's not the Beiddin Hagadol, the great court. So where's that one? Oh, in Israel, they have one.

And I would say they don't have jurisdiction over any of the other churches, except for in Jerusalem, I mean, not churches, synagogues, except in Israel. And some other off branches that kind of adhere to whatever decrees they put out. So when I lead them with these things, I'm basically saying, I have the answer,

look at this, what do you think of it? If you have questions, ask me, and I don't push it. I don't push it. I'm very open to their questions, never afraid,

but always willing to back up what I'm saying, using the literature that they know. So I would use the Talmud to show, you know, there was this need. But then the rabbis told us that we need only to pray and to give alms and to try to keep the commandments, but we can't. So when I post this dilemma and I post also the answer, that helps those, the ones that are curious. And I had an example of this happened to me not long ago.

I had a Jewish person in Israel message me. Maybe I want to say two months, three months ago, a couple months. And at first, he was asking me, how is it that you are a Catholic? now. Like, why don't you come back? Come back to our people. And we're having this conversation and it's a back and forth. It's quite gentle, though. Nobody's being aggressive about it. But the conversation kind of dies off. A couple of weeks ago, he messages me again. Hey, you remember what you said about the Catholic Church? I'm curious. And now I want to know. He's slowly but surely going.

I'm only planting the seed and let God do what he wants to do. That's one type of confrontation that I have with Jewish people. The other one are the ones that are becoming or coming rather in a more aggressive, more hesitant manner, more on the offense, calling me either a fake Jew or one that was never a Jew to begin with or I have. a traitor. So what I would say for these situations is what I would do is try to Calm me it down first like hey man, what's up? They would continue with their arguments and I'm like you're right? Is everything okay? You sure you're okay? Okay, and then

Talk about things that they know things that they care about and I know. I know you care so much about the Shabbat This is important or the mitzvals the the laws What do you do about these things? So I will present the same thing that I proposed as an answer to the curious Jew. I will present that to the hesitant Jew, but not as I have the solution, only as a question.

What do you do now that you don't have the sacrificial system? And they would say that the rabbis proposed this, this and that. And I would say, well, there's this community in Brooklyn that is slaughtering. chickens. What do you say about that? Oh, but you know, the Torah says this, isn't that, and it doesn't say anything about chickens. And I'm like, yeah, you're right, but they believe it to be true. Why are you right? Why are they wrong? Oh, well, that's just the practice of their rabbis. And I'm like, yeah, but you know that you're not supposed to do any practices unless that they

are decreed by the court. So what do you do about that? And I just keep asking questions. Whatever answer they supply, I just ask questions. I'm not saying be Christian. I'm not saying Jesus is Lord, I'm not saying, I'm just asking you, explain yourself, why are you practicing what you're practicing? So that they will eventually start questioning like I did, why am I following what I follow? Is it just because I've been raised this way? So the curious ones, I present the answer, the ones that are coming in more hostile, I will present a question.

That's the technique that I use. In both scenarios, is important to prayerfully do it, pray for them as you do it. pray for them as you do it, to ask the intercession of Our Lady, and to, whenever you're presenting these things, try to remember that what you're trying to do is bring a soul to Christ.

It's not a debate. It's not trying to show that you know way more than them, that they're blind, that they're ignorant. You're trying to save a soul. If anybody out there has ever read Dante, I just finished reading it for the first time, not long ago. The Divine Comedy.

Yes, yes. I go through it and I'm seeing all these different souls and the suffering that you go through. It's horrible. If you have that image in your mind of a soul, it doesn't matter, unless you're twisted in the mind, it doesn't matter who you are. You wouldn't wish this upon your worst enemy. So as I speak with Christians now, because part of the, my mission is also for Christians, specifically, Catholics is to show them the beauty of our faith and also from the Jewish heritage. I hope that they will use those tools to speak, but always remembering that they're speaking

to a soul that needs saving. Unfortunately, I have had cases where it's not just attacks from the Jewish people like those hostile Jews. It's also Catholics that have gone against me in my journey. How sir? The same way that some Jews call me a fake Jew. I have Catholics calling me a fake Catholic. And why would they claim that? Because they can't believe many times that a Jew would actually follow Christ. Yeah. Because I'm the one who killed Christ. Oh dear. I also have, I don't know if it's even possible to show, but I have this tattoo. Uh-huh. Yeah. Star of David. And not too long ago, as as I begin more and more to embrace Catholicism,

I decided to get another one. And it's the Jerusalem cross. And it means a lot to me because it's a symbol that Christians were branded with in Jerusalem so that people would know, this is a Christian, they got to pay certain taxes or this and that. I got it and I shared it on Instagram.

Some people loved it. They're like, hey, welcome, brother, welcome home. This is great. And then the other ones that came through are like, what about the other one? Did you erase it? That's the star of Moloch. You need to take that off.

And in my mind, I'm like, do you, first of all, do you even know how much that cost? How about I started go fund me and you pay for the removal of this? But at the same time, I'm like, why do I have to throw away my heritage? It's good for people to know that I am a Jew who came to Christ. If I erase that fact, it erases the reality that some people out there, some Jews are actually looking to know Christ, but there are Christians who do not want to share Christ, like these folks that come to me and accuse me of being like a Mossad

agent. Has someone actually accused you of that? Yes. Yeah, actually, if you go to the comments on that specific post about this. The comments are nuts. There's absolutely no gauge to reality. No, no, it's wild. It gets really crazy. And if you go to that specific post, this guy's a a massad agent, he's a fake Catholic, he's not really Christian. Somebody asked me, who's your king? And I basically went through, you know, Christ is my king. And then I explained all of these different things. And at the end, they're like, yeah, that's great.

Okay. So some of them end up loosening. Yes, good. But I still think, why is your instinct to be so aggressive to somebody who's claiming Christ is Lord? Yeah. Let's talk about anti-Semitism. Yeah. It seems to me, is from what I'm seeing online,

And on one side, let's see, I'm sympathetic to this, right? The idea that maybe anti-Semitism is being used in a similar way to how racism was used in the BLM days, namely as a sort of bludgeon to kind of whip you into shape. In other words, if you have a problem with what Israel is doing in Gaza, you have to be an anti-Semite, right? And it's kind of, right. So that's one extreme. The other extreme that I'm seeing is people who act as if anti-Semitism is pretty much impossible. and I think both are wrong.

So what are you seeing and how should we as Catholics think of it? If I approach this specifically from the Catholic lens, I would say, know your faith better. Look at the catech, where in Nostriatate, it tells us right there that the Jewish people have been called by God and that we are not to be thrown away and discard. as rejected by God for all time. In fact, there is a call, an irrevocable call for the Jewish people. Now, our response is to answer that call. That is our job.

If we don't respond, that's our fault. But when it comes to the Catholics that are hostile against Jews, I would say hostile, because that's the sense that I'm I get a lot of times. You know, there's a lot of, especially nowadays, you're getting a lot of Christian young men who are becoming more passionate about their faith,

and rightly so it's time to stand up for the faith. I get it. But it doesn't mean look at everybody as your enemy. You should be wanting to recruit more soldiers for the Army of Christ, right? So what does that mean? It means spread the gospel to everybody, because this is what the church even promotes.

This is one thing that it is important for Catholics, Christians in general, to try to bring Jews to Christ. Some people in the opposite extreme think, they don't even need Christ. They're fine. They have their own covenant. Yeah, can we talk about dispensationalism? I want to do two things. If that's okay?

Yeah. Yeah. Tell me, what is Christian Zionism and why is it false? Why is it bad theology? I think a lot of even maybe Catholics being influenced by our Protestant brothers and sisters who hold to this bad theology. We saw Ted Cruz got taken to task by Tucker about this. So I want you to answer that.

Sure. And then maybe talk to me about the error of dispensationalism. Right. I think this goes hand in hand with what we were just talking about, that whole anti-Semitism. I feel that for a lot of Christians, because they want to avoid that label of an anti-Semite, they go to the extreme of,

that means that the Jewish people are the special people of God, that yeah, I'm a Christian, I'm also God's people, but they're also God's people, so God has these two people. This is, in essence, what this dispensationalism amounts to. It's basically the idea that there are essentially two peoples of God, the Gentile crowd and the Jewish crowd, and that God works through these different epochs or breakdowns of time where there are specific missions and things that have to happen, and there's an eschatology tied to it, which leads all of this into things such as the rapture, the millennialism, where they believe that Christians will be

raptured, and then Christ will later on reveal himself to the Jewish people, the second people of God, and then bring them also into the fold. Why this is wrong? It's because it's theological nonsense. It has never been the case that God has multiple people. It takes just a slight reading through scripture to understand that God has always had one people. Go back to the times of Moses before Israel became Israel the nation. In the times of Moses, in the Exodus, we have the Hebrew people being freed from Pharaoh. But it's not just Hebrews. There are Egyptians. There are Egyptians. coming along with the group. And you can assume also and deduct that there are people probably from other nations too because Egypt was a hub, a universal place where people would come for commerce

and different things. But a group and the scriptures tell us plainly, a mixed multitude came out. And these people were the same ones that made that covenant with God in which they declared that he will be our God and we will be his people. Not. Okay, now you have the Hebrew people that are God's people and now the Egyptians that are another separate people and those other people from another nation, they're going to be, it was a one-people thing

under a covenant. So you see the same story happened throughout time. Take, for example, the story of Ruth, where we have her and Boaz, they get married and she was a Moabite she was not of the Hebrew stock but what happens

she ends up coming into the faith and this is actually where we get King David from right so we have Boas we have Obed Jesse and then we have King David from a Moabite so what does that mean it means that it's not necessarily

about this physical lineage as much as it is a being covenant with God. It was the case then. It was also the case later on where we have the story of Mordecai and King Esther, where there were some people that when there was an edict proclaimed by the king, where the Jews could defend themselves now against those people that were trying to oppress them. And it says in the scripture that many people then declared themselves Jews. Now, there's a debate about this, whether it was a sincere conversion or if people were just political, and not aligning themselves with the Jews so that they wouldn't get killed or attacked or whatever.

That's debatable. The point, though, is that converting or joining the people of God is not a new thing. This has been the case, again, since the times of Moses, throughout time until now. There are not two people of God. There is one people of God. And that is Israel. Who is Israel? Israel are whoever is in a proper covenant relationship with God. If you get to the time of Yeshua, Jesus, what does he do? He comes to institute the new and eternal covenant. Covenants are not new to us. We have them since Adam, Noah, Abraham, David, all of these.

There's different covenants throughout time. But Christ comes to instance. the new and eternal covenant. Throughout time, it has also been the case that you have the ability of rejecting a covenant and you are cut off from the people. How do you do that? You can just plainly reject it or you could commit certain sins that would caught you off from being called the people of God, Israel. This is not new. This is in the Torah itself. It says that if you would do certain things like breaking the Shabbat and you were persistent in it, you would do. be cut off. You're no longer Israel. You could be a Benjaminite. You could be even a Levite. You could be from different tribes, but you cease to be Israel if you're not in a proper covenant relationship with God. What does that mean for us nowadays? It means that to be Israel, you need to be in the new and eternal covenant. I as a Jew could be a Jew, but I would not be Israel unless I am in that proper covenant relationship with God. And this will hurt people and this will bother people because you have the

state and you also have Jewish people that would always want to, you know, equate. I'm a Jew, I'm Israel. Unfortunately, that has never been the reality and it's not the reality now. You need to being a proper covenant relationship with God. So when we're talking about millennialism, we're talking about dispensationalism, we're talking about Christian Zionism, why it's wrong. It's because these ideas promote the concept of

there being multiple peoples of God when it's not the case because it makes claims that are not biblical, such as God is going to take one people one time and God take some other people later. Protestant invention. Yeah, it's an invention. Even the rapture

itself. It wasn't even known until the 1800s. So there are trees you have encountered that are older than that theology. Exactly. Exactly. So keeping all these things in mind, it just takes somebody looking into scripture again, not tainted by whatever their pastors put forth, and see the pattern. As I mentioned before earlier, God works in patterns. And one of the patterns has always been covenant relationship and what that means in regards to being Israel. This episode is sponsored by Catholic Match. You know, our culture tells us that dating apps are about superficial connections and endless swiping, where half the people don't even know what they truly believe or what they're even looking for. But if you're a Catholic, you understand that

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premium members, creating opportunities for Catholic singles to organically connect, grow together in faith and meet face-to-face in authentic, meaningful settings. And by the way, if you do meet your future spouse through Catholic Match because you heard of it through me, you have to name your first child Matthew. Download the Catholic Match app or head over to Catholicmatch.com today and find your forever. Again, that's Catholicmatch.com. Beautiful. So it seems like there's this confusion that tries to confuse, say, the Jewish people with the modern state of Israel. Yeah? What is the Catholic Church's view, not of the modern state of Israel, although you can talk about that if you want, but of the Jews? This has been confusing for a lot of people, especially these based Catholics nowadays, because they would say, hey, look at the church and look at the Crusades and we were against y'all. They'll say it proudly and things. like that man first of all the crusades were just to defend the church right it was being attacked

from enemies without and they sought to protect the church in the faith these ideas of basically having how would i explain this sorry these ideas of having these separate people of god and having all of Christianity be split from Judaism have always been destructive, and that's a pattern that we can see that lets us see its errors, right? But sorry, bring it back to your question again one more time just to know. Yeah, the confusion that's being made between the Jewish people and the state of Israel, as if the two are inseparable, right? So when I think of Christian Zionism, I'm thinking of the Protestant who says that,

let's say that, and this isn't all Protestants, but of course, but the modern state of Israel was prophesied in scripture and is somehow a precursor to the second coming. Right, right. And then my question is, what is the Catholic Church's position, not of Israel, the state, but of the Jewish people? Okay, okay, good question. So I'll start with that second question because it's most easy to identify. The church's stance is, again, if we, go to Nostra Atate. I recommend anybody who has any questions regarding the church's stands on the Jewish people to just go read it.

And as a matter of fact, when I was in my journey to Catholicism, I had a fellow Jew who was already a Catholic and I was asking questions. He referred me to that document. And he said, read it, read it and see how the church really feels about you. Because I felt that those things that I have. had been hearing were true that the church hated the Jews. Yeah, and if you go on Twitter, you might get that impression today. Exactly.

So this is why he said, don't listen to people. Go read it for yourself. Listen to the church. And when I did listen to the church, I see, wait, I'm not utterly rejected. Wait, the church wants me to be part of it. I'm still called. All of these things that I was told are not true. So where does the church stand?

the church understands that the Jewish people or the Hebrew people, right, had been called. We are to be part of the people of God, but it also recognizes that everybody needs Christ. It does not say that there is a separate covenant for the Jews. Or that you don't need to evangelize the Jews. Or that you don't need to. That's another issue that I've seen actually sadly pop up within even Catholic circles, saying that we don't need to address the Jews because they have. have their own covenant. We need our Messiah. He was promised to our ancestors. So wouldn't it be good

for us to embrace him? Wouldn't it be good for us to be back into the covenants of our forefathers? If we go to Romans 9, for example, and we start seeing all this things all the way to Roman 11, and it tells us about the wild olive tree and about the cultivated natural tree, it's talking about Israel, and it's talking about the relationship of the Gentiles and the Jews in this tree. It talks about how the wild branches, which would be the Gentiles, have been grafted into this tree. But the same way that these wild branches were grafted in, natural branches that were once cut off could be more easily even brought in into this tree. That is the Jews, the Jews that have not known Christ or that have not had the opportunity to be in that covenant again. And why are they caught off?

Because our people, the Jews, have not been in that covenant. that's why they're caught off. But we can be grafted back in and that's the church's stand that the Jewish people can and should be grafted back in. Moreover, Paul himself gives us a hint of how we will know

that we are actually approaching the end times is when we have this massive in-gathering of Jewish people coming into the church, coming back into covenant. This is what we read here in Romans where we see that gathering of the people coming in to the church.

Now, that's the answer for the church's stance. When it comes to Israel, the state versus the people, again, people might get offended by this, but there's two things to acknowledge, and that the church also says, the church's stand or stance on this matter is that a state or a country is allowed to defend itself, to exist, as long as, of course, it's not destroying other people just for the sake of destroying

other people. But the church also makes this distinction. That's the state of Israel, not to be confused with the people of God, Israel. Now, there's a term that a lot of people throw around in the Christian circles, which is that we are the new Israel. That's one term that I would love for us to scrap. Okay. Because this will help this conversation. Stop saying that we are the new Israel. Start saying we are the true Israel. Okay. And why? The reason why is because when we say the new Israel, it sounds very much like dispensationalism. It sounds like the Jews were, they had their time. And it also has this twist of anti-Semitism that we spoke about before, where you're saying, oh, the Jews don't need Christ. They have their own covenant. That's what it sounds like.

They don't need the one that everybody else needs, but the Jews don't. That's anti-Semitic. But when it comes to what we see in this matter of the state and the people and what the church teaches, we see that there is a desire of the church to bring Jews in. The state is separate from being Israel, the people. The people of God, Israel, is the church. the state of Israel is separate there are people within the state

that are part of the real Israel just like there are people outside of the state that are equally and truly Israel that would be us anybody who's in a proper covenant relationship with God is Israel doesn't matter what land you inhabit and this is not new and it shouldn't be a new concept especially for those that want to defend the state

as as Israel, the people of God. Because even scripture from the times of the prophets, it tells us that God and his relationship with humanity would go beyond Israel and it would go through all corners of the earth. This is why Jews from the beginning, the Hebrews were called to be alike to the nations. The whole point was to bring people into a covenant relationship with God. That was the time of Moses.

And in the time of the prophets, we get the same thing. God is going to get people that are not. not called by his name, but that they will be called by his name and that they will be his, that he will be their shepherd and that they will hear his voice. And we see this fulfilled in Christ where he is gathering Israel. Now, it's really interesting where he says that he's here to gather the lost sheep of Israel. And there's the debate. What is the lost sheep of Israel?

Is it the lost tribes? Or is it those people that are of the nations that are going to be Israel. And I believe is the latter. I believe that when he comes for the lost sheep, it's basically what the prophets we're talking about. Those people that are not called by his name, but that will be. Those people that are outside of the covenant, but will be, those people that were not Israel and will be. How can I, how can I say that with confidence? Ephesians chapter 2. It talks about the Gentiles, being people that were afar off, strangers to the covenants, but it says that in Christ they have been brought in into the Commonwealth of Israel.

What does that mean? Now the Gentiles are Israel and anybody else, Jew Gentile, whoever submits to Christ, whoever is in that proper covenant relationship, is Israel proper. Israel, the people of God. Not the state. Sure, the state can have its own ability to exist. so long as they are not existing to the detriment or the purposeful destruction of other people. That's a fine line. And that's controversial for a lot of people because, you know, are we saying that they're not allowed to exist? Nobody's saying that. The church doesn't claim that.

But the church is pro-life. So it's going to preach pro-life. And if any country, it's not just about Israel the state, any time, any country, country that seeks destruction is going to get called out by the church and the church has done this. This is why the church promotes speaking out about being, you know, being against abortion, because life is sacred, because this is the mission of the church to promote life. So when it comes to the state, we need to be very clear. The state is not Israel proper, but it is a country that has its right

so long as they don't seek the destruction of somebody else okay yeah keep going if you want to okay let's talk about the Talmud there's a passage I haven't read the Talmud full disclosure okay okay but there's a passage there that says Yeshua is basically punished in

boiling excrement and I know that there are other reference to Yeshua and I've been told that that Yeshua they're referring to is Jesus of Nazareth. Is there any reason to think that's the case or what do you think? This is a good point and the reason why this even matters. It's because it fuels the fire of that separation of let's keep the Jews out. Because a lot of people read the Talmud and they will say, look what it's saying about our Lord. They don't even deserve to be part of this because look how they treat them, how they talk about him. This is what I would say. before even diving into each and every topic

regarding the Talmud and Yeshua. Now, it doesn't even say Yeshua, so I'll get to that. What I would like to say is that, if this were a court of law, there would not be sufficient evidence to claim that Yeshua, the character, is Yeshua our Lord. And this is why I say it.

There is no one Yeshua character in the Talmud. Okay. There are several, some that existed almost 200 years before Christ, and we know this because, like, for example, one of them is Ben Peragia, that Jeshu Ben Peragia, is tied to a rabbi who was his teacher who lived way before Christ. So it could not possibly be Christ our Lord. There's another one that comes afterwards. And when you say he lived prior to the time of Christ, how are you judging that? Is it because of what is said specifically in the Talmud as to when he lived? Because we know who he is. and we know the lineage because almost every rabbi that you see in the Talmud the way that we

prove it is kind of similar to Islam when it comes to like that how do you know that this that this is a proper hadith you have to check the history of who was the narrator they came from who from who from who is the same thing with the rabbis you need to see that lineage of where they came from and because you can track that you can very almost accurately 100 percent I wouldn't say say 100%, but very accurately you could claim that this rabbi existed at least two centuries prior to Christ. When it comes to the other ones, like for example, that one that you spoke about, that's the story with Onkylos.

Yeah, that's pretty brutal. So this is a story of this guy named Onkelos. And in this interaction... Can I read the exact line? Oh, please. What is your punishment? He answered, in boiling excrement for whoever mocks the words of the sages is punished in boiling excrement. Okay. Right.

When you read it. Onkelos is having a conversation with three different people. He's not a Jew. He's not an Israelite. He's nothing. He's actually coming in from Roman stock. He is basically questioning three characters. And this is allegory.

That's another thing. This is just allegory. But he's questioning three characters to find out about the afterlife to know what thing he should follow, what religion. he should follow. And the three people that he encounters is number one, Titus, which is his uncle, basically.

Then he has Balam, which is one of the prophets from old. And then the other one is this Yeshua character. All of these, in a way, symbolize enemies of Israel, the people of God. In the story, right? So when he interacts,

with them. The first two basically say, don't be an Israelite, even though they're the most important people, you've got to reject them for this, this, and that. Like, for example, Tithus, he challenged God to a fight. And that was one of the things. Like, he just, he didn't even want to submit. He's like, it basically challenged God to fight. That's a confident man. Yes. Baalam, as we know from the scripture, he's the one that he was supposed to curse Israel. and then God used his words as a blessing. There's that story. And then there's Yeshua.

Maybe it'll be helpful. I really want to know. What is this distinction between Yeshua and Yeshua? Okay. This is why it's important. Since the time of the Torah and Moses, there was this character called Amaleh. I don't know if anybody out there is familiar with Amaleh.

But Amaleh is an enemy of Israel. So despised that when God commanded the Israelites to destroy him, he didn't just say, beat him militarily. He said, destroy him, his people, his lineage, his name, and his memory. His name is to be wiped out. As a matter of fact, most Jews don't even say the name until they're doing the reading, and they have to say the name then. But what they would say for a character like this is,

the wording for it is an acronym which is Yeshua Shima no hold on give me one second to recall this Yima Shimo Zivikro

When you take those words it means may his name be blotted out sorry that's the last one Yima Shimo Zavichro. Vesichro.

Why do I keep confusing that? One more time. Yima, shamo, and sikhro. That's the wording. What those words mean is, may his name be blotted out. When you take those words

and you make them into the acronym, it spells out Yeshua. Yeshu means, may his name be blotted out. So it was a practice from the time of Moses that those enemies of his Israel, whoever it may be, that we don't want to relate to them anymore, their names would be blotted out and they would be referred to as that.

Yeshua. So when we get to the story of Onkelos, we have a situation where there might be some similarities, especially when you hear Yeshua, oh, that sounds a lot like Yeshua, which means salvation. And Yeshua is the name of Yeshua, Jesus. but a lot of people were also named Yeshua, just like we have in the New Testament, Yeshua Barabbas,

or Jesus son of our father, or son of the father. That name was common. That's one. Number two, it might not even be a name. It might just be that acronym. And you see that being used throughout the history of the Jewish people, where they would just not say a name.

So when I would read that, And even rabbis now would read that, would say, you have these enemies of the Hebrew people. You have Titus, Balam. But then you have this guy who could represent anybody. It's just somebody that was so bad that we're blotting his name out. Why is it not Christ? Because there's nothing that actually confirms that he is all other than a similarity in name.

The second issue is that all the other things that are tied to this character don't really line up. and then remember that this is just agada, which means it's allegory. And then remember on top of that, that there is not just one Yeshu character. There are different Yeshu characters. So either you're saying that the Talmud is saying all of these people through a spans of like 400 centuries

is the same guy, or you are claiming that they just got the facts wrong. But for people that are so meticulous, like Jewish scholars that have been transmitting the Torah for ages, and this is why we can boast now as Christians, that our scriptures now are basically the same

thing that we find in Qumran. The same people were also quite good at preserving proper information. So, either, they just have no idea about Yeshua, and then they said this, Yeshua lived 200 years prior to our Lord, or almost 200 years after,

or it's just simply not Yeshua. Okay. So that's the simple thing that I would say is this. It's either a complete mix-up and nothing aligns, but we're still going to forcefully say this is Christ, or we can just say, this is not really the best argument to say that this is Christ. Now, could it be, perhaps?

Is it for a hundred percent fact? We don't know. So the reason why I think it's important for Catholics, Christians to know this is because if you're going to debate against the Jew and you want to bring this up, you might want to have better arguments at something that is actually flimsy. It's not here or no there. It's sort of like when a Protestant comes at you and says, well, you can't be the true church because you worship Mary. Right. It's like at least have some understanding of us before you come at us like that. Exactly, exactly.

And it's better to just have better ammunition. And there's definitely plenty of things that you can use to criticize the Talmud. This is not one of the ones that I would use. Okay, well, what would you criticize in the Talmud? Bavametsia. There's a section, a tractate, Bavametsiaa and I think it's a 52B. In this tractate, it talks about the fact that there's a story in which the rabbis are the one rabbi versus a group of rabbis of who has the authority to judge certain things.

And in this, there's a back and forth between the rabbis and God. And the rabbis end up in this conversation and this debate with God saying, listen, right, no, we're hearing your voice, but we don't have to follow what you say because we have the Torah here. Their argument is a snippet. You know how a lot of people nowadays in media? they take a clip, put it completely out of context. They'll do that with this one. They'll probably do that.

And maybe with this very conversation, they take a snippet and just put it completely out of context. This is exactly what this is like. They take this verse from Deuteronomy that talks about the Torah is not in heaven, and that is too difficult for you to accomplish. Even Paul quotes this. St. Paul talks about the fact that the law of God is not so far away or across the ocean where you can't do it.

The whole point of it, anybody with a normal brain that reads it, will say, oh, what it means is that the commandments of the Lord are not impossible. They might be challenging, they might be difficult, but they're not impossible to keep. The rabbis take just that part. The Torah is not in heaven.

Therefore, when they're hearing this voice in this debate with the other rabbi, they're saying, yes, we hear the voice of God, but because we already have the Torah, we don't need any further instruction. We have it here, so we're going to ignore. And supposedly in this story, the rabbi say, oh no, God says, ah, my children have defeated me.

That's what they claimed. That God claimed that he was defeated by his own children because they were able to kind of like outsmart him through using the Torah against him. That right there is one of the prime examples of the silliness of rabbinic Judaism, where it has gone so far from being this relationship with God where they would have the presence of God descend in the ark, and then Moses would come down with his face shining, and people would bow down all the way to now we're making fun of God

and say, hi, the Torah is not in heaven, it's here. Okay, but couldn't we look at Abraham bargaining with God and say the same thing? Like, wouldn't they interpret that in the way that says, okay, this is the father being playful with his children or something like that? You could try to say that, but the issue is not the debate. The issue is claiming that they have the authority now and that they don't need God. That's the issue. Because that was never the case with all of Israel. This is why they try to promote the idea of we can take the ancient Judaism and make it this new Judaism.

That has nothing to do with that old. We'll make these random new rows and new. ways of fulfilling the commandments of doing sacrifices. We don't have a priesthood, but now we have the rabbis. We're going to make our own avenue. This is why I have in the past several times said that rabbinic Judaism is an illegitimate response to Temple Time Judaism and its destruction. The true response is the continuation that happens in the new and eternal covenant through

Christ. other option is rabbinic Judaism, where they just make things up. And that is the case, for example, with the prophecies of Christ. You will have rabbis that when we Christians try to say, these scriptures tell us about Christ, like Isaiah 53. And they would say, no, no, no, that's not what it means. It means this, this and that. Like, for example, they would say that the servant or the one that gets eliminated, killed, is Israel itself. That's what it means. It's not about a man dying.

It's about Israel suffering. And that's how Israel atones for its sins because Israel, but that makes no sense. How is Israel paying for its sins by dying for itself? How does it pay for its own sins then if it continues to live? So then it didn't die. It's so many loopholes that you have to go through, so many snippets that you have to clip and take out of context to create rabbinic Judaism, such as let's take Daniel in the fact that he prayed three days to mean that now we're going to that he prayed three times a day.

Let's take that story and make it mean that now prayer is the same thing as the replacement of the sacrifices. Because in the old covenant they had the sacrifices that were offered throughout the day. So they say, see, they correlate time is the same. Yeah, yeah, morning time, the evening time prayers. Yes, that means that the prayers and the sacrifices are interchangeable. Where do you get that? You're just reading your own interpretation into it. This was never an ancient belief.

This came during the time of the Mishnah and then later... As a sort of cope? Yeah. That's all it is. And you see this being the case for most of rabbinic Judaism when it comes to their answer to our claims about Christ and the prophecies. Oh, no, you believe in the two or in the second coming of Christ. This is a big one. We don't believe in Christ because we don't believe in the second coming, but we say, well, you know, he did fulfill some prophecies.

He will fulfill more when he returns. And they would say, no, that's not in the scripture. They would say there are two messiahs, though. Wait a second. Nowhere in scripture does it say there will be two messiahs. Who says there will be two messiahs? This is the Jewish belief. Across the board?

Across the board, there's the belief of Messiah. David or Messiah son of David and Messiah ben Yosef, which is the Messiah son of Joseph. I did not know this. So they believe these two different messages. This is good then. Yeah. Because I wonder if not too many people know this, even Jews have this trouble. Many rabbis say that if we are not worthy, we're going to be given Messiah son of Joseph. If we are worthy, we're going to get Messiah son of David. What's the difference? Messiah son of Joseph is a humble one. He comes in riding a donkey. He's lowly. He's going to die. But he will be resurrected at some point. That's a belief. Messiah King David, that's the one that or Messiah's son of David is the one that we're going to get if we're worthy. He's going to come in with strength. He's the military leader. He's the one that they're hoping for now. If you hear people talk about Jesus, oh, he didn't come and conquer our enemies. He didn't unite the people. That's who they believe is.

coming, right? This military leader, grand, majestic, kingly, not lowly, like the other guy, not the guy that gets killed, this guy. So they have two messias. And they even, some believe that Messiah being Joseph, the Messiah son of Joseph, will die. But then at the plead of Messiah King David, Messiah son of King David, will plead for him and he will be resurrected. So look at this. Two messiahs, king David's lineage and from Joseph, one that dies and comes back. Wait a second. When you start taking these things. It's hard for me, right?

Because I'm listening to you and I'm thinking if I knew more, I might be able to push back to give like, you know, like, so you're telling me that across the board, Jews are believing that there will be two messias. This isn't like a Catholic straw man we're creating. No, no. So this is what they believe, that we're going to get one or the other. But some people believe, the majority believe, that if we get Messiah, son of Joseph, he will die. And that in the end, King Messiah, son of David, will come and he will resurrect that guy. And what are they looking at? Is it the Talmud or is it? Yeah, yeah. It's basically just Jewish tradition. It's just Jewish tradition. They get little things here and there from the scriptures, but nothing is direct. And this is why it's important for Catholics to be very aware of this reality, because they might hear a Jew counter our claims about Christ's prophecies and say, no, no, no, we never believe that. But the case is they have different ideas and what gives them the authority. already to say what it means when nothing is clear.

All of these things are just conjuncture. They're just reading into the text for a lot of the things. But it's still funny to me that there is this idea of these two messias. But we answer it in a different way. We say Jesus, who is the son in a way of Joseph, St. Joseph, he is also by lineage through me. medium, the king's David's lineage, right? That's why the angel calls him the one who will sit in David's throne.

We also have him as the one who dies and comes back. But I want to take this to another realm that I have never heard people say this. Remember, we've been talking about patterns and fulfillment. We see the Gavira, which is the queen mother being fulfilled in Mary. We see the arc of the old covenant, the ark of the new covenant. We see how the magisterium is the fulfillment of the Sanhedron, of the Paitin Hagadol. But let me take you to this idea of how I can show you

through the Torah, the concept of a destroyed Messiah that comes back. We're using patterns, right? We're using symbols. We're using typology. Jesus, our Lord, is the Word of God made manifest in our physical realm, right? Is the word made flesh? We know also that the tablets,

were the physical manifestation of the Word of God. That's what they were. Let's go back to the story of when they were given. When Moses is given the tablets, he receives the physical manifestation of the Word of God. He descends. And because of the sin of the people, you remember that we're worshipping the golden calf.

Because of the sins of the people, the Word of God was broken. And ascension happens as Moses goes back. Yet he returns again with the word manifest. This is a type for Christ coming down, being broken because of our sins, ascends, but will return again. Amen. This answers, this whole idea of the Jewish concept of the two messiahs is not two.

It's one that comes, is broken for us. us like the prophets proclaimed that he would be in Isaiah 53, a sense comes back and will come as that strong royal figure that they expect. The idea of, you know, how Jewish people might counter us is a weak but powerful at the same time argument. It's weak because if you know these things that we're talking about right now, you'll say, wait a second. You're just reading to the text. Nothing that you are quoting is actually set in stone. It's just interpretation. And you are no longer in covenant. So what gives you the authority? You are not debate Dean Hagadol. You don't even have the authority to declare these things. Why is it strong?

Because Christians in their ignorance would hear as you say, you don't know what these scriptures mean, you're reading into the text. This is not what it means. They're blaming us, basically, of reading into the text, but they were doing the same thing. So as Christians, who are we going to listen to? Rabbis that are out of the covenant, or our sages, which are the apostles and the disciples, the bishops, it's that question. We don't need to be fearful of hearing, oh, that's not what it means. Because we can counter back and say, but how do you know that what you're saying means what it means? I see, I see, okay.

Because there's nothing to ground it. It's just interpretation. And our interpretation at least makes sense. Because in our interpretation, we have typology to back up this reality of something that they already claim, which is Messiah ben Yosef and Messiah bin David. So all of it ties together to show what we've been saying, it makes sense.

Yeah. Very well. Okay, last question. How can Catholics do a better job loving and evangelizing their Jewish friends? So maybe what are some things you see online that you wish Catholics would stop doing as they interact with their Jewish friends? And what are you seeing, apart from the work you're doing, that is positive? I would say always remember that we're fissures of men. We're trying to bring souls into Christ into that covenant, into the church.

So when you approach a Jew or anybody, do it with that heart, that disposition of, I'm just a humble servant trying to spread these seeds of the gospel. I'm thinking of 1st Peter 5.7, right? Or 1st 8, I beg your pardon, in your heart's reverence. Christ, Lord, always be ready to give a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you. Yet, do it with gentleness and reverence. Yes, exactly. So that's number one. Number two, specifically for Jews, is do not let these two thoughts contaminate you.

One, that they don't need Christ because they have their own covenant. That's false. Don't let that contaminate your mind. Second, don't go to the other extreme and say that they don't need Christ because they are the enemies of Christ. A lot of people in the Jewish world, and I'm saying this because I lived it, don't know Christ at all.

They've heard things. Even the whole Talmud claims. And some of them believe it because even Christians promoted, some twisted rabbis also promoted and say it is Christ. So you will encounter that. But Jews don't know Christ. And if you're not sharing him, how are they going to know? So many people always message me and say,

man, I just don't understand why they don't see Christ. Did you speak to a Jew? Did you actually try? Have you ever gone other than just to say, bring on the Ninth Crusade? Christ is king? Okay, Christ is king. But what does that even mean? Have you ever tried to actually evangelize

or are you just condemning people? to eternal hellfire due to their ignorance, which you are not aiding against. So I would say, just speak and live it out. If you're not loving, what are you doing? It doesn't matter if you can speak in tongues or prophesy if you can do miracles. Because if you don't have love, clanging gong,

where can people learn more about you and the good work that you're doing? So right now I mainly stick to two things. I'm either doing Instagram or YouTube, both under the Jewish Catholic. And people can find me there. And if anybody has any friends that are Jewish and they're curious about it or want to know how to be able to minister to them and how to help them to know Christ, that's what I do. I promote content that helps you answer the questions that they may have. and also to help Catholics see the heritage of our faith

and how amazing it is because it is rich, right? It doesn't go back to 1000 years. It goes all the way back to Adam and beyond. Is there one book you might point people to who are Jewish watching this right now and saying, all right, I don't think you're insane, I'm open to it. Is this a book I can read? Well, there's two. There is.

Your testament. Yeah, well, that also. So that's three. You know Dr. Brand Petrie? He's coming in tomorrow. What? You'll be here. My goodness.

That man, I remember one time I said, if I ever become Catholic, it'll be due to his work. When do you leave? Today? No, tomorrow at the afternoon, I believe. You can come back and meet him if you want. That'll be nice. Yeah. We'll be nice.

We'll talk about it after. But okay. So which? So I would say Jesus and the Jewish roots of the Eucharist and then Jesus and the Jewish roots of Mary. He also did publish an article It's not a book called Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Papacy I hope one day he makes it into a book But also fantastic stuff right there

So I would say those because he's the reason why I suggest these Is because he's using Jewish texts As evidence for the Catholic faith And this is why I talk about the Talmud And I'm not like, rejected because it talks bad about Christ Because guess what? It serves for us. us as tools to defend our faith and to be able to do some apologetics to help Jews come in

and even non-Jews to see the reality of our faith. Daniel, I'm very grateful for your time. I'm so grateful that you flew all the way from Japan to do this. It's been a wonderful conversation. And I hope that everyone will go check out the Jewish Catholic on YouTube and Instagram. Thank you so much. It's been an honor. Thank you.

Welling, to be alone with God. Is that who you think I was alone with? I knew your father. I am yet convinced that he was not of this world. All men know of the great Taliesin. Who am I, father? That the gods should war for my soul. Princess Garris, savior of our people. I know what the bull god offered you. I was offered the same.

And? There is a new pirate work in the world. I've seen it. A god three sacrifices what he loves for us. We are each given only one life singer. No. And we're given another. I learned of Yazoo the Christ.

And I have become his follower. He's waiting on a miracle. And I think you can give him one. Trust in Yezou. He is the only hope for men like us. Faith to Britain never rests in the hands of the great light. Great light. Great darkness. Darkness. Such things mattered to me then. What matters to you now, mistress of lies?

You, nephew. The sword of the high king. How many lives must be lost before you accept the power? You were born to wield. So clinging to the promises of a God who has abandoned you. I cannot take up that sword again. You know what you must do. Great life, forgive me.

The time has come. To be reborn.