hey, sorry i bailed on you guys last week, had a baby bla bla bla 🙂
BUT I’M BACK!
A dude walks up to you and tells you that at 3 o’clock this afternoon the sun will quickly set and then rise again 10 minutes later, you obviously pay no attention to him, and most probably try to cross the street or make believe you have a phone call, you continue on your liesurly walk wondering why hashem created such weirdos when suddenly everything around you seems to be getting darker, you pick your shades up but to no avail the sun is actually setting at 3 o’clock in the afternoon! it’s the weirdest scariest most amazing thing that you have ever experienced, everyone just stops in the street staring, bewildered, and then the weird dude shows up again and says that he is a prophet, the messenger of g-d and that all jews must from now on start keeping shabbat on tuesday, wear only pink socks, and call themselves a name which rhymes with Bob, as he says this the sun begins to rise again (exactly like he said it would) and as everyone turns their attention from the “prophet” to the sky, he quickly disappears as if into thin air.
What would your reaction be? as a straight thinking intelligent human being? you would as quickly as you can try to get some contact in china to ship 10 million pairs of pink socks so youcan make the deal of your life when everyone starts buying em. would you believe the guy? possibly not, but how bout if he does the same thing 3 days straight and lets u pick when the sun should set and rise? you would be left with “no choice” but to believe him! end of story. well let’s see what g-d has to say bout our “prophet”.
The torah tells us straight out that if a person shows up and starts doing tricks, no matter how supernatural they r, if the dude tells you to do something against the torah we MUST NOT believe him. ok fine, no prob, i just won’t believe him! BUT HE MADE THE SUN SET IN MIDDAY FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!!! how can hashem expect us to not listen to this guy? if he catches me without pink socks he will probably turn me into a frog or something!!!! seriously, where r we supposed to get the “power” to not listen to such a person? HOW???? i’ll show you!
HISTORY (huh??????)
Think back to the future, if someone from nowadays would go back in time and whip out an i-pod ppl would most probably consider him a g-d, they would worship him kiss the ground (and pink socks) which he walks upon and do as he says. We have the “experience” of seeing that things change so much with time, many scientific “facts” from the past have now been proven to be no more than…WRONG (don’t ask me which ones cuz i have not the slightest clue, but a smart person told me that once so i believe him!), things which ppl would have been willing to swear by! things which today are common were considered totally impossible just 50 years ago.
And so, no matter how good the tricks look, it very well might be that in 50 years ppl will be able to make the sun set with a snap of the fingers, as hard as it is to believe now…just try to think of ppl that lived without electricity, Internet……. what goes on in our world is as unbelievable to them as the sun setting is to us.
I think i got lost here a bit………
In summary- it is true that many ppl will come and be very very convincing, they will have proofs, “natural” (how can u make money if u sit and learn? where will the money come from? who will support you? g-d? come on he doesn’t do that!) or even supernatural (they will repeatedly get 21 in black jack), to what they say, they might even threaten us if we don’t listen to them, and we will sit there with an honest dilemma, maybe these ppl really r right, maybe they really have a point, how can we measure if they r the real thing? very simple. if they tell u to do different to what the torah says……… don’t even give them a second thought. no matter how hard, how tempting, how “real” they may seem. And just remember the whole history example which we gave and it really will put things into proportion.
There is only one truth in the world. g-d, and he gave us just one manual……….use it!