When there's nowhere left to turn. #israel

I think now that after the outbreak of the war in Israel, after the horrific Hamas attacks on October 7th, people more and more are looking to God and want to understand and try to find a little bit of comfort in him and understand who he is and what he's about. And there's an expression that there's no such thing as an atheist in a bomb shelter. And we as Jewish people, unfortunately, we find ourselves in bomb shelters right now, not only in the land of Israel, but all around the world. We find ourselves in proverbial bomb shelters from all the protests that are going on in the street from the free Palestine protests and it's a scary time quite frankly to be a Jew. But I think that it's a scary time for every anybody to be alive. I don't think that they're only coming after us. I think we're first and I think everybody else is next. And like I said, there's no such thing as an atheist in a bomb shelter. So what I want to do here today is I want to discuss who is God? what is he about? And just so you can understand, I don't even want to get any I don't want to get too religious on you. Let's just understand who's God. And then once we understand who's God and we could actually make an informed decision. Do you want a relationship with him or not? So I'm just going to start from the very basics from the very beginning. This is designed for people who don't currently have such a strong understanding of God. may maybe even don't even believe in God but want to at least have enough knowledge that they can make an informed decision. So, let's go forward. Um, please watch until the end. This is going to be extremely enlightening. I could guarantee you that by the end of this video, you're going to feel better. You're going to feel more calmness in your soul because every soul of every human being for that matter craves a connection with their creator. So, let's start exactly there. Who is God? So God existed before the world. Right? So I think that even according to popular science, everybody agrees that the universe has a starting date. Okay? Scientists say that it's billions of years ago, millions of years ago, whatever it is, but everybody agrees that there was a date in which the universe was started. God existed before anything was here in this world. So there was a unifying force. He he w he existed by himself. At a certain moment in time, according to the Jewish belief, it was 5,76 years ago, God decided that he wanted to create a world. Why? Because he had a desire to do so. He didn't want to be alone anymore. And he wanted to create the place where he would be able to dwell in the lowest places. So the Torah, the Bible, which was given by God to the Jewish people in Mount Si says, "Let there be light." And God created a world. Let's say the the scientists would call this the big bang, right? So it's not far off. By the way, science mimics what the Torah says, "Let there be light." And out of absolute nothingness, right? The dark was so dark. The nothingness was so so nothing. We can we can't understand how nothing there was before God created the world. And all of a sudden, let there be light. Boom. And God started the process of creation. From there, he started to create the universe as we know it. He first started with water and then he made land and then he made fish and then he made animals. All up until he made Adam, the first human being. And it says that man was created in God's image. Now God made himself. He doesn't want to be alone anymore. That's the reason why he created the world. God wants a relationship with each and every single person. And God is attainable. That relationship is attainable by each and every single person. And you might say, "What does God have to do with me? Isn't he busy?" Let's assume for a second, the atheist says, let's assume for a second there is a god. Does he really care about me? A lot of people make a mistake that god sort of created the world as uh like an algorithm and he put the system into place and the world kind of runs itself and from there God has nothing to do with it. Once the algorithm algorithm is in place, much like you know somebody would make a building, a builder would build a building, God has nothing to do with the world anymore. It's not true. God is intimately involved in the world at every single moment. It says that God recreates the world. He doesn't he didn't just create the world, but he recreates the world at every single moment. similar to a flashlight that shines that the light is constantly being recreated by the batteries and by the bulb at every moment. If for whatever reason you shut off the flashlight, the light would disappear. The same is true with all of creation. God is recreating it at every single moment. If he were to shut off his creative power from one moment, God forbid, the entire universe would revert back to nothingness. So then the the question begs to be asked, why did he create the whole thing? What does he want? If he's God, what does he need it all for? And the answer is is that he wants a place down here in this physical world, in the lowest world that he could call home. So in order to achieve that, we have to make this place a more godly place. How do we do that? By connecting to him. By understanding him. By pursuing him. God hid himself in this world. He hid himself because he's playing a game almost of hideand go seek with us. He wants us to search him out. Much like a father who is hiding would want his child to come and find him. And then the question begs to be asked, why would he hide himself? And the answer is is because in order for God to create the world, he had to hide himself. Let me give you an example. If you took a candle and you threw that candle into the sun, the candle would not be able to exist. The sun is so powerful that it would swallow the light of the candle hole. It would have no effect whatsoever. But if you took the sun and you were able to create a barrier around it where you were covering the light of the sun completely, that same candle on the outside of that barrier would be surrounded by darkness. And all of a sudden that candle would be able to exist. It its light would be able to be palatable. You would be able to see it. It would be able to make a difference. So too, if God did not if God did not conceal himself, the world would not be able to exist. The universe would not be able to exist because God is so bright. God is so light. God is so overpowering. His light is so brilliant that the universe would not be able to exist. So God had to contract on himself. He had to make darkness in order for the world to be able to exist. Much like the sun would have to be covered in order for the candle to exist. What God wants is for us to bring light into that darkness. So how do we do that? So what does mean? What does this practically mean for every person watching this? It means that you know I once heard a nice saying even if you don't believe in God believes in you which means to say that God has been following you long before you ever turned on this YouTube video or wherever you might be watching it. God had you in mind since before he created the universe that you to come that your soul should come down at exactly the time, exactly the parents and exactly the location that you came down to because you have a special divine mission in this world. And he had you in mind long before you came into existence. and he was with you when your father and mother were intimate with each other and you were just a little a little seed in your mother's stomach in your mother's uterus all I don't know exactly how these things work but you were you were he was following you this entire time and he was there during the nine months that you were inside of your mom and he was taking care of you and nourishing you think about that you didn't have food, you didn't have water, you didn't have oxygen. God was sustaining you inside of your mother. When you were born and you were helpless, God was sustaining you. And God has been watching you like a parent watching a child the entire way through. And what God wants more than anything with each and every person is God wants a relationship. What does every parent crave? I have five kids of my own today. Thank God. What does every parent crave more than anything in this world? A parent craves a relationship with their child. God is the same exact way. God craves a relationship with each and every single one of his creations, especially the human creations because humans were created in his image. Nothing else in this world thinks or speaks like God. If you look at animals, plants, rocks, they don't think or feel or speak like a human does. A human is created in God's image. That's why humans don't get attacked by animals. It's because we are godly. And God wants a relationship with each and every single person. And if you think about it, how amazing it is. There's 8 billion people on planet Earth. And God is capable of having a relationship with each and every single one of them simultaneously at the exact same time because God is infinite. And God is powerful and God is sweet and God is kind. You might ask yourself, well, if God is so kind, then how could he allow for war? How could he allow for bad things to happen? And at the end of your life and my life, we should live to 120 in good health. But we could ask them all those questions. There's certain things in this world we cannot understand as people. Our minds are extremely limited. If you think of the size of your brain, it's 6 in by 8 in. It's a gray ball of mush. And there's only so much a person's mind could comprehend. God was there since before creation all up until this very moment. And he could see the future as well. He understands the full extent of the universe and the implications of things that we might perceive to be as bad. a famous analogy for this. Why bad things happen. If there is a god, there's a famous uh analogy that in a hospital room, if a child who doesn't have understanding walks into a operating room and he sees somebody being operated on and he sees scalpels and knives cutting up and these men in masks and suits cutting up this man and blood everywhere, the child would run away in horror and he would scream because he would think that something terrible was going on. But if the child was a little bit more mature and understood what was really going on, he would understand that really this is a lifesaving surgery that this person is getting right now. In other words, a lot of people don't believe in God because if there was a God, then bad things wouldn't happen. And what I'm trying to say is that nothing God does is bad. It might seem like it's bad because of our limit limited understanding because we are one-dimensional as people and our understanding is very very basic and very short for that matter. The world is thousands of years old and we only have a vantage point of you know a person lives 80 90 years. We have a very limited vantage point. But from God's perspective, everything is good and everything is part of his plan. So what does that mean for you watching this right now practically speaking is if you want to have I I I want to challenge you. It will cost you nothing and you have everything to gain. I want to challenge you to connect to God. And the way to do that practically speaking is to speak to him. Prayer. And I'm not talking about you don't have you don't need to use a book. You don't need to use another language. You don't need to use fancy words. I'm talking about your own personal simple words. I'll show you an example. Yeah. Let's say you need money right now and you're struggling financially. Hey God, I need some help right now. I'm struggling financially. Can you help me out? I have rent to pay. Give me a hand. I need some help, please. That's an example of a prayer. Or there's hostages right now in Israel that were taken by Hamas. I find myself regularly at night before I go to bed. Hey, Hashem, that's Hebrew for God, the name, Hashem, please bring back the hostages. Please make sure they're unharmed. And please make sure there's peace in Israel. Very, very simple. Whatever person might be going through, God wants you to ask. Just like a parent would beg and would love for their child to ask them if they ever needed anything, and they're always there for them, God also wants the same thing from you. So I challenge you to connect to him to to find comfort in him. There's nothing more comforting. By the way, I don't know how people go through life without God. Really, what a scary world. What a scary world to live in. To believe that at any moment you are susceptible to anybody at any time and you're under everybody's control. What a scary thought. But when a person believes in God and trusts in him, you're not you're not at the whims of anything or anyone except for God himself. And you could take comfort in that. You could find refuge in that, protection in that. And ultimately, God rewards the people that find protection in him because he puts his divine providence on them instead of leaving them up to the whims of the world. I hope this video finds you well. I hope you enjoyed the information here. If you did, please hit the like button. Please, please subscribe. I would love to have the honor to be part of your life every day. I'm going to start dropping these videos every day and I appreciate you making it this far and God should bless you in all your endeavors and everything that you do and we should see peace in the world and the Msiah should come and uh it's been a pleasure spending this time with you. Thank you.