Happy New Year to all of you.  I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that I am working on a couple of podcasts that will cover in depth God, Science, Morality and YOU!  The first show is in editing and we will have at least one per week.  One show is called the "Jew and Gentile" podcast.  It will be hosted by myself David HaLevy and Aaron Marshall.  Aaron is an attorney, seminary graduate and chapter director of Ratio Christi at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.  If you would like to send in topics or questions please feel free to post them on the Apologetics Workbench Facebook page or email them to us at apologeticsworkbench@gmail.com.  
 
Additionally, I will be hosting a podcast titled "Strange Bible-Weird World".  In this podcast we will discuss all of those really hard to understand passages in the Bible that make you go "HUH??!!??".   We will also discuss topics that one never hears from the pulpit, or even in most conversations, yet are vital to understanding the world around us.  Topics like the reality of heaven, hell and the after life.  Prophecy.  Who are principalities and powers of the air?  Why is Israel seeming to be always at the center of what is going on in the world?  Does God have a future for the Nation of Israel?  And many many more.  
 
We look forward to many great conversations and answering your questions.  May God bless and keep you!

My father became a believer in Yeshua as the Messiah while attending Brigham Young University in Hawaii.  Thats right, a Jew, attending a Mormon University.  He loved to surf and sail and the North Shore of Oahu ain’t bad! 

A Christian pastor who wasn’t Jewish began to share with him a few versus here and there about the Jewish Messiah from the Old Testament or as we would call it the Tenach “TNK”.  From here my father began to ask questions and before long was convinced that the Bible was the truth, and that Jesus/Yeshua was the promised Messiah that the Jewish people have so awaited.  

This pastor was doing something which is central to sharing the Gospel.  He was provoking a Jew to jealousy.  My father became jealous of this man’s love, his heart, his truth.  So what about the title of this article?  What is this so called missing link?  

The fact is that the First Apologists were all Jews.  Shaul was schooled in Philosophy, Pharisaic Law, and undoubtedly had the Torah memorized with most likely other books in the hebrew scriptures as well.  The topic of discussion was not if God existed, but what the qualifications for the Messiah were, when he had to come, and if Yeshua was in fact the right guy.  

Additionally Paul lays out an example of order to which the gospel is to be taken to the world.  He first verbally writes this order down, and then provides a physical example by living out exactly what he teaches.  Lets take a walk in his footsteps for a moment.  

In Romans the 1st chapter verse 16 Paul writes.  “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes; to the Jew first and also the Greek.”  This is a powerful statement which many argue was only meant for the first century.  After all, one couldn’t be expected to take the Gospel to the Jewish people first and foremost in this day and age, that would be discriminatory!
Let us take a closer look at this verse.  The two clauses in this passage are linked in the prophetic perfect tense.  Which means the following.  If the Gospel is REMAINS the power of God unto Salvation, than the Gospel REMAINS to the Jew first.  Think about that for a moment.  If your salvation is still bound in the power of the Gospel, than you should also be taking the Gospel to the Jewish people in what ever manner you are able.

Let us further examine the word  for “first” in the Greek.  It is the word Proton, which means first in order and first in importance.  But why would this be?  We must look at the origins of the promised New Covenant and the Messiah himself.  You see in Jeremiah 31:31 a new everlasting covenant was promised.  Promised to the nation of Israel, the Jewish people.  The Messiah who is the physical embodiment of the Shekinah Glory of God, was promised to the Nation of Israel, a Son of David to reign on David’s throne forever and be the righteous remnant of ONE who would put an end to transgression.  This is why the Gospel, the good news that the Jewish Messiah has come must go to the Jewish people first.  Because HE is the Jewish messiah promised to the Jewish Nation of Israel.

When one reads through the book of Acts.  At every single stop Paul makes, he first goes to the Jewish population.  Even when he returns to a city such as Ephesus, he again goes first to reason with the Jews in the Synagogue, even though it was a place he had already been.  All of this while Paul is an “Apostle to the Gentiles” (Romans 11).  

Here are the references of Paul going first to the Jew. 

Acts 13:4-5; 13:14; 14:1; 16:11; 17:1-4, 10-14, 16-17, 18:4, 18:19, 19:8

So the missing link in Apologetics is the ability to present the Jewish Messiah to the Jewish people.  We have an overwhelming amount of material which argues for the existence of God from the cosmos, apparent design, complexity and fine tuning of the universe.  We have amazing work done on scriptural reliability.  We have scholars dedicated to the evidence of the resurrection of Yeshua.  All great areas of study and reasons to believe, yet they over look one simple but crucial fact.  It is estimated that less than .01 percent of all missions go to the Jewish people.  Because of this very few Churches give to Jewish missions and certainly last on the list is training people to answer the objections of the Jewish people to the claims that Jesus is the Messiah. We have amazing work done by Jewish believers such as Dr. Michael Brown on the Jewish Objection to Jesus, yet few know of or care of such resources.  To be frank, who needs such a resource when there is no desire to use it.  

There is a great chasm between the world of Apologetics and the Mandate of taking the good news that the the Jewish Messiah has come to the nation of Israel, both as a people and a modern state.  One does not have to feel called to give to Jewish Missions.  One does not need to feel called go to the Jewish people.  We have a mandate to go to the Jewish people with their Messiah, and where there is a mandate, no call is necessary.  

Friends, the missing link exists, because the Gap is not recognized.  Scripture is clear that some day the fullness of the Gentiles will come in and all Israel will be saved.  You happy Goy, you gentiles who God graciously grafted into the saving work of the Jewish messiah have an incredible role to play.  You are to provoke the Jewish people to jealously.  A jealously of your love for them, for the Jewish Messiah, and the truth that He has come and will come again.  Pray for the salvation of the Jewish people.  Act on the mandate to take the good news to the Jewish people.  Return the favor to a people who gave the scriptures and Messiah to the world.  

I recently returned from Israel.  I was privileged to lead an international apologetics organization on a tour of the entire country and over 5000 years of history.  We covered many topics ranging from the Bible to modern day living.  One of the questions I get every trip is in reference to a wall which separates Jerusalem proper from a neighborhood in Judea Samaria which is politically known as the West Bank.  This wall is where foreign press camp out and wait for the big bad IDF (Israeli Army) to kill innocent Palestinians.  Ah but they are always disappointed and never report what really happens.  Such as IDF soldiers handing out free water and treats to local Arab children in the heat of the summer.  But I digress.  

Apologetics, the defense of the faith, I believe must go beyond the topics of the existence of God and the resurrection of the Messiah.  We must defend Truth both in nature and content.  Israel as a modern and historical Nation must be understood for what it is.  A legitimate sovereign Modern Nation.  A people who has not been cast off from the God who created them.  An upcoming article will defend Israel and the word of God against  "fulfillment theology" and Anti-Semitism within the "Church"; yet here I simply want to address the wall.  

The wall which is pictured above is a physical barrier to stop snipers from shooting Israelis from the Arab Muslim neighborhoods which overlook Israeli roads and towns.  Below you can see how this wall works.  It is merely a concrete section of the security fence which stretches for hundreds of miles between Judea Samaria and Israel proper.  The security fence was erected beginning in 2003 after the Second intifada where over 1,000 Israelis were murdered by Islamic terrorist suicide bombers and attackers.  After the fence was finished these attacks were drastically cut by 85%. Yet it wasn't enough.  The fence kept the suicide bombers out, but not the sniper's bullets which flew right over the 10 foot chain linked security fence.  In came the concrete panels.  In fact the concrete barriers don't even act as a physical barrier to anyone.  One could walk right around them once past the security fence.  They are simply there to stop a snipers bullet.  I have included a link below to a much more comprehensive article on this subject which I recommend reading.  

One statement is made by nearly every person I have the blessing of taking to Israel.  "It is nothing like I had imagined in my mind.  It is so safe here.  So beautiful.  Nothing at all like the press makes Israel out to be."  Come see Israel for your self and see the Bible and your faith come to life.  

For the Salvation of Israel
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/fence.html
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 As Jew growing up in West Texas life is a little different.  It was dry.  Not only were we short on water, but we were also short on Jews.  Not that there are ever many Jewish people just walking around, unless you happen to be on a Hollywood Set, in Brooklyn or the Other Holy Land Israel.  I have since lived all over the U.S. and other countries.  From the North East to the Deep South.  One thing has been made very clear.  There aren’t many Jews in the Bible either.  At least that is what you would think if you were to spend much time in your average protestant Church. 
 
Sure you have the Israelites.  Sure Charlton Heston lead them out of Egypt.  But then Jesus came and started the Southern Baptist Convention right?!?!  I don’t mean to pick on the Baptists.  You can plug in what ever denomination you like and the analogy still fits.  My point being that the vast majority of Churches look at the Bible with no contextual separation between their lives and the lives of the people who make an appearance in scripture.  In other words, they (ok, lets drop the act, you I’m talking to you friend) you more often than not come to the Bible with understanding, seeking faith, not faith seeking understanding. 
 
 I frequently speak in Churches on various topics ranging from the Passover to defending our faith against secular atheism.  Regardless of the topic I often tell this little analogy.  Imagine you picked up a book detailing the daily life of an Amish person in rural Pennsylvania.  Having never spent any time on a Pennsylvania Dutch farm you were unfamiliar with many of the terms being used.  Terms like yoke(horse/ox collar), Dabber Spring (run fast), Denki (thank you), Fraa (mother), Gaul(horse).   Names were also unfamiliar so you began to change the names so they were easier to remember.  The descriptions of clothing articles were also foreign so these began to change to more familiar articles in your mind.  Even the games being played didn’t make much sense, so these also found associations. 
 
Upon your finishing of the book, a friend asks what it was about.  You begin to retell the main bullet points in the book.  However, you plug in all of your replacement terms, names, and descriptions so that your friend understands just what the heck you’re talking about.  The problem being that your friend in the end has the view that the Amish are basically like him.  When the truth is that they couldn’t be more different. 
 
I hope you know where I am going with this, but just in case let me spell it out.  Jesus is a Jew.  His actual name is Yeshua.  He was not a Southern Baptist; he wasn’t a Catholic.  His last name isn’t “Christ”.  He had more in common with the Sadducees and Pharisees than he did you or I.  He was a Rabbi.  Those who followed him did not “Convert” to Christianity.  They didn’t pray a prayer to accept him into their hearts.  They looked on Him and declared “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God! 
 
Let’s talk about Yeshua’s brother Jacob.  No not James.  Jacob.  Yes, Jacob(Yacov) was his real name.  Jacob interestingly enough was Yeshua’s brother.  He didn’t believe that Yeshua was anything special while he was traveling around teaching, and performing miracles.  He in fact did not believe that Yeshua was the Messiah.  Yet something peculiar happened.  After Yeshua was crucified his disciples doubled down on the belief that Yeshua had risen from death.  This ultimately lead to their own martyrdom.  Let me ask you a question.  If you were a skeptic like Jacob before Yeshua was killed.  Why would you suddenly change your mind about him being the Messiah?  What event could declare to you beyond doubt that he in fact was who he claimed to be?  For Jacob, Yeshua’s brother, it was this.  That he had seen his brother tortured and murdered, and three days later alive again.  The resurrection turned the tide in Jacob’s heart and mind so that it was now undeniable. . . .Yeshua was and is the promised Messiah to the Jewish people. 
 
My purpose in writing this to you is to challenge you to re-think the context of what you believe.  I challenge you to stop being lazy in your reading of the Holy Scriptures.  I challenge you to read the Bible from a Jewish perspective and if you don’t know how to do that there are many great resources available to you by Jewish scholars such as Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum and Dr. Michael Brown.  My friend you are missing so much.  Stop forcing the Bible into the presupposition that its stories and characters happened in any-town USA.  Begin an incredible journey into the history of the world and its future through the eyes of God’s chosen people, Israel. 
 
Thank you for reading.  If you enjoyed this, please like and share!

Above is a picture of a guitar I built for a friend of mine.  It consists of many parts and pieces.  Some more critical to its function than others.  It is built of exotic materials which are quite costly.  I built it with care, to as high a level of precision as I could muster, though it has many flaws.  If you spend over a year crafting one thing, you tend to know every millimeter of its being.  After overcoming a few relatively drastic failures, it was final finished.  I had strung it, set the action, and intonation (height of strings, and purity of note pitch).  I set it on a stand and looked at the finished product.  I was pleased.  As a perfectionist, I wasn't entirely satisfied, but pleased none the less.  There was however one thing missing.  The guitarist.  This is true with any instrument.  It must have its musician.  With out the force to pluck the strings, work the bow, or clash the symbols, the greatest of instruments are merely bits of organized matter.  You must have the musician to begin the first note, and its successor's.  To have a song you need multiple notes.  To have even one chord, you need three notes played together.  You must have a continual exertion of energy to keep the song going.  If I pluck just one guitar string, it will quickly dissipate leaving nothing.  The instrument, the music, needs a sustainer or else it ceases to exist.   By the way the other picture above is a Jewish musician named Paul simon who you may have heard of.  He is playing a James Olson guitar, who is one of the greatest Luthiers in the world and an inspiration to my own instruments.  Do you know what happens when Paul stops playing his guitar?  You guessed it.  The Sound of Silence!

Upon an initial dive into the world of quantum physics one can get very very very overwhelmed.  I know this is how I feel when I attempt to read even the most "accessible" work by physic's most renown P.H.D holders.  However, at a broad look, physics is primarily focused on the nature of particles and how they interact with one another.  Without getting too technical, so that I don't confuse myself, lets take a brief look at one law of physics.  The Law of Causation  says that for every effect, there must be a cause.  So when we think of the music, we must work back and find a musician causing the music.  The guitar, or violin are simply avenues for the music to be played.  The universe where we find ourselves is no different.  Even the smallest particles that we know of are moving, all be it unpredictably,  still moving.  So we have a "problem".  Even the most inorganic, seemingly insignificant, beyond microscopic particles need a cause.  They need a musician to get the song going.  Beyond the fact that they first need to exist, they then have to be plucked, played, moved into action.  However we can't stop there, because the Universe continues to be plucked, played, and moved into action.  There is a sustainer, a conductor if you will, to the most beautiful of symphonies.  This conductor also holds all the particles together, the notes if you will, so they don't go flying part from one another.  So this is the unmoved mover.  God himself.  Ah but you say, "Well then who caused God?"  Very good question.  The Law of Causation applies to physical non-eternal things.  Yes everything that has a beginning demands a beginner.  However, God did not have a beginning, so He does not need a beginner.  Again you may say "How convenient!  Well, I just say that the Universe is eternal, therefore it doesn't need a cause."  True, if the Universe is eternal, it does not need a cause, and God does not need to exist.  However, it is an undisputed scientific truth held by the most respected scientists such as Stephen Hawking that the universe had a beginning.  So one can believe that" Nothing" created something out of nothing.  Or that "Something" created something out of nothing.  Which is more reasonable to you?

If you enjoyed this please like and share.  Others need to know that our faith is not based on fairy tales and wishful thinking, but on the firm foundation of evidence.  

In the world of apologetics there are many, many terms which almost seem purposefully difficult to understand the first time one hears them.  One of the these is the “Teleological Argument”.  This is the argument for the existence of God from the perspective of the apparent master design and fine tuning of the universe.  Within this argument there are many examples which over time we will cover.  However today I was thinking of my carpenters level.  It is useful in a number of ways, but is most commonly used to ensure objects are plumb and level.  “Plumb” is a term used for making sure objects are perfectly inline vertically with the force of gravity pulling down upon them.  Similarly “level” is applied the same way but to a horizontal surface.  Over time, if an object like a wall is not plumb and level, gravity will  pull it down.  The wall will lean, twist and eventually fall over.  This is caused by it being out of balance relative to the force of gravity pulling down upon it.  Generally speaking an acceptable tolerance for a framed wall is about 1/32 of an inch over 8 feet.  


On a much larger scale the entire universe is in a delicate balance with gravity.  Imagine that you are on a giant seesaw and that seesaw is a giant level that stretches the entire length of the Universe. The fulcrum on which the level balances is gravity itself.   This I admit is more or less impossible to comprehend so let me give you a glimpse into just how big the Universe is.  Place yourself into the space shuttle, which travels at a speed of 15,000 MPH. If you began to travel to the nearest star to our solar system the year Jesus was born,  today you will still have another 200,000 years to go.  The average distance between stars is 30 Trillion miles.  The number of stars estimated in the Universe is equal to all the grains of sand on all the beaches on the Earth.  To put this in to perspective one cubic yard of sand has over 42 billions grains of sand.  So to put it comedically light, that has to be one big level to stretch from one end to the other!  But now down to brass tax. (What ever that means)  If you were to move gravity one inch to the right or the left on this imaginary balancing act, everything we know would cease to exist and collapse in upon itself.  This is the level, pun intended, of precision to which the balance and roll of gravity has  upon the universe.  


One is faced with the notion that by all logical conclusions such a balance could only have been begun by the unmoved mover.  The creator of said cosmos.  God.   Of course we have the free will to choose to believe that this has happened by accident.  However if I relied upon mere chance to obtain accurate results when building someones house, I would have some very upset clients and a house that would immediately fall apart.  

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No matter the specific trade in the world of wood working, all use the square.  It is as essential and often more essential than the tape measure.  If one's square is not true, bad things happen.  Lets use the square in the picture above as an example.  This is a typical framing square and is used for a myriad of jobs.  One of these jobs is laying out stair stringers.  These are the boards that get notched out and hold your stair treads.  Yes the boards that you actually walk on to climb stairs.  At the base of this stringer where it meets the floor you have a cut called a "level cut".  This cut has to be a very specific angle which after some fairly basic math should match up with how many treads one needs, as well as meeting the next level or floor precisely.  If this cut is off by even a fraction of a degree each stair tread will begin to compound the wrong angle, until the top few stair treads are a legitimate danger to those who use them.  Lets say that the bottom angle is 1/32 of an inch out of level.  Doesn't sound like much.  This is .0312 inches.  Because one generally lays out the position and angle of the treads based on the one previous to it, this amount would compound.  The top tread on  a stair case of ten stairs would be nearly 3/8" out of level.  You would feel as if you are either leaning heavily backward, or you would trip on the front lip as you tried to climb it.  I am sure you can think of a time when you were climbing a set of stairs and there was that one stair that always made you trip.  

You see the framing square is a standard.  It must be accurate in its construction to be relied upon.  We can test it to see if it is indeed square, and then trust it by which to do true work.  We also trust our minds to do true and accurate work.  We use the laws of logic with our minds to weigh wether or not something is true or false.  Yet the Atheist has a problem.  You see the Atheist believes that  we are nothing more than molecules which over time became living breathing things, and then eventually humans.  Yes thats right, our brains  are a result of a mindless unguided physical process, yet they trust their brains to reason logically.  

Let us apply this same reasoning to our simple carpenter's square.  First we must get beyond the obvious ridiculous notion that such a tool could be obtained from a random unguided process of chemical chaos.  If you were to hand a carpenter a framing square such as the one above and tell him that it was the result of no design, no care to its precision or construction, a product of random cause and effect events, he would have no reason to trust it. He would have an impossible time building a house that wouldn't fall down.  

Such is the belief of those that proclaim "There is no God".  

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