A Rabbi Looks at the Supernatural: A Revealing Look at Angels, Demons, Miracles, Heaven and Hell

Nations."

1

Dust in the Wind?

Why is there something, anything, rather than nothing? In our fascination with life’s origin and evolution, we bypass this most basic of conundrums. The very fact and nature of existence . . . force upon us the unsettling reality that at some level there is the metaphysical.

Gerald L. Schroeder1

Why are we here?

Are we simply a random collection of atoms that have come together for a brief time—atoms that will soon disappear like a puff of smoke, leaving nothing at all behind? Are we, as the seventies rock band Kansas declared, merely dust in the wind? Sound and fury signifying nothing?

Or is there more to our existence? A purpose and a plan behind our very brief appearance in history?

And how about this—is there more to this world than we can comprehend with our physical senses? Is anything out there beyond what we can see, hear, taste, touch and smell?

In other words, is there a supernatural realm of angels, demons, seers, prophets, spirits and the like? Or is the supernatural merely an invention of charlatans like palm readers and spirit mediums to take advantage of the gullible?

People have been asking such questions since the first people stared in amazement and awe at the brilliance of the nighttime sky. They have been debated by philosophers, scientists, members of the clergy, educators and ordinary people from all walks of life. Some have invested years of wisdom, energy and hard work into proving that life is merely a matter of chance. Others have worked just as hard and long proving the existence of what might be called a divine purpose.

Obviously, these are not questions that I will resolve to everyone’s satisfaction in the few pages of this book. But I will come as close as I can. My intention is to investigate the matter as thoroughly and fairly as possible and present my honest conclusions—conclusions based on more than three decades of study and experience as a Messianic rabbi.

We will start off with a close-up look at the universe we live in. Can it be explained as a random act of nature, or is something more behind it all? Is the Bible true when it says, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth? Or is that merely a parable to explain scientific concepts that ancient human beings could never hope to comprehend?

Once we have taken a look at the physical universe, we will move on to the invisible, spiritual side of creation. We will talk about the existence of God and the problem of evil—if a good God exists, why does He allow bad things to happen to good people? We will also discuss topics like these:

• The nature and reality of sin

• Miracles

• The existence of heaven and hell

• The meaning of life

As you can see, it will get pretty deep before we are through.

About the Author

Now, you may be wondering what it means when I call myself a Messianic rabbi. It means, first of all, that I believe that Jesus (I like to call Him by His Hebrew given name, Yeshua) is the Messiah. I also believe, like the early followers of Yeshua, that I am still very much Jewish.

Most Jews of my generation will not refer to me as a rabbi, because rabbi, in the Jewish world, means someone who has studied at a recognized Jewish institution and has been ordained by a mainstream, recognized Jewish body. Though I do not meet these criteria, I am ordained and have served in full-time ministry for more than thirty years.

One other very important thing that qualifies me to write this book is that I am a naturally curious person. I am not content with pat answers to tough questions. I want to find the right answers for myself, and I am willing to work hard to find them. If I do not know enough about a subject to answer it on my own, I find experts who know the subject well and see what they have to say about it.

Not long ago at a dinner, I found myself seated next to a distinguished-looking, well-spoken gentleman. I could tell that he had a good grasp on current events and seemed to know what was going on in the world.

During the course of our conversation, he asked if I knew that the pyramids were built by ancient aliens. I have no idea how he steered the conversation to that subject, but he did. He did not look like he was joking, but I kept expecting a punch line. Instead, he started telling me how aliens from outer space were responsible for all sorts of accomplishments in the ancient world. He was convinced this was true; after all, he had learned about it on the History Channel.

This incident helped to heighten my awareness of all types of information and misinformation that are floating around. Sometimes it is hard to find truth in the midst of all the confusion. And, apparently, even intelligent, aware people are being fooled.

Are you ready to join me on this journey for truth? I believe we will have a fun and interesting time together as we explore the physical and supernatural worlds.

Who knows? You may never look at life the same way again.

2

Not Quite, Mr. Darwin

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Psalm 19:1 NIV

Let’s begin our quest for answers by taking a look at the universe we live in. Perhaps this is putting the cart before the horse, but I want to start with Charles Darwin’s brainchild, the theory of evolution.

Charles Darwin originally intended to become an Anglican priest, but he changed direction after developing a strong interest in the natural world. Five years traveling through South America and the Galápagos Islands allowed him to record observations about the development of life forms in isolated environments. These observations became the basis for his best-known work, On the Origin of Species.

Darwin proposed that all living creatures are descended from a small set of common ancestors. The survival of an organism, he believed, depends on its ability to adapt to its environment, a process he called natural selection. Recognizing, in the words of author Francis Collins, the potentially explosive nature of the argument,1 Darwin took the concept of natural selection to its logical conclusion, arguing in The Descent of Man that human beings themselves evolved through the same process.

When Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, he tried hard not to offend people who believed in God:

I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of anyone. . . . A celebrated author and divine has written to me that he has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the deity to believe that he created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that he required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of his laws.2

Mere pages later, Darwin concludes On the Origin of Species with these words:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been and are being evolved.3

Clearly Charles Darwin did not intend to start a war between science and religion. He did not feel that the Bible’s account of creation was incompatible with what he had written in On the Origin of Species.

But most people did not see it that way. Although Darwin apparently did not mean for it to happen, most people seemed to think that the theory of evolution took God out of the equation. Darwin’s disciples no longer had any need for an intelligent designer behind the creation and development of our universe. They believed all that was needed to create life was an accidental combination of just the right chemicals, favorable conditions and plenty of time.

Over the next 150 years, Darwin’s theory became accepted as gospel. Those who questioned it were dismissed as kooks and dullards. A belief in evolution was an article of faith for anyone who wanted to teach science, from grade school all the way through graduate school.

Nearly a hundred years after publication of On the Origin of Species, two distinguished scientists named Stanley Miller and Harold Urey conducted an experiment that seemed to support the idea that life evolved or materialized or originated on its own. They tried to reconstruct—on a very small scale—the conditions that existed on earth when the first life appeared here by mixing water and several atmospheric gases to develop a primordial soup. They then sent an electric current coursing through the mixture. As a result, a number of important biological building blocks were formed, such as amino acids.

This experiment lent credence to the theory that, given enough time and the right conditions, life could spontaneously originate and later develop into the complexity of life we see today. Perhaps you have heard the analogy that if you put a bunch of monkeys in a cage with computers, given enough time, they would eventually turn out the entire works of Shakespeare. I have heard that type of thing said over and over to support the validity of evolution, and it is always presented not as a theory but as a solid fact—and most people seem to believe it. But is it true?

Shakespeare and the Monkeys

Philosopher Antony Flew was once one of the world’s bestknown atheists. In his last years, his continued study—especially of recent scientific discoveries—brought him to faith in God. He wrote of one experiment in which six monkeys in a cage were given a computer and allowed to have at it. After one month, the monkeys had produced fifty typed pages. How many complete English words (with a space on either side) had they produced?

Not one—not even a or I.4

Flew realized from this experiment that a divine design to the universe was more likely than he had thought. He was further persuaded by Gerald L. Schroeder, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology–trained scientist who has worked in both physics and biology. Schroeder noted that Shakespeare’s famous sonnet Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day? is 488 letters long. Calculating the odds that random typing would produce the 488 letters of that sonnet in sequence is mathematically straightforward: You multiply 26 (the number of letters in the alphabet) times itself 488 times. This is on the order of 10 to the 690th power—meaning that you would have to try this random sequencing of letters 10-followed-by-690-zeros times to hit upon the correct combination.

This number is so astronomically high as to be impossible. There simply has not been enough time or matter in the universe (if matter represented individual letters) to produce just one of Shakespeare’s sonnets by chance, much less the complexity of life. Schroeder concluded that you will never get a sonnet by chance. . . . Yet the world just thinks the monkeys can do it every time.5

The moral of the story is simple: Do not believe everything you hear. Speaking of which, you may have heard that Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of modern times, was an atheist. But Einstein himself denied this:

I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand those laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.6

Einstein also said,

I have never found a better expression than religious for this trust in the rational nature of reality and of its peculiar accessibility to the human mind. Where this trust is lacking, science degenerates into an uninspired procedure. . . . Everyone who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.7

Believing that life on earth came together by chance is like believing that a strong wind blowing through a junkyard would eventually put together a top-of-the-line Mercedes. Does that not sound ridiculous? Remember that our universe, and the human body in particular, is much more complex than the latest breakthrough in automobile engineering.

On Behalf of Darwin

To be sure, there have been hundreds, even thousands, of discoveries that support many of Darwin’s ideas.

Francis S. Collins, whom I quoted earlier, is a respected scientist and devout Christian. He led one of the greatest scientific endeavors of the 21st century—the Human Genome Project. Collins sees no reason why anyone should have to choose between the theory of evolution and the Bible’s account of creation.

Dr. Collins does not see the theory of evolution as an enemy of faith, but rather as an ally, revealing God’s power and creativity:

For me, there is not a shred of disappointment or disillusionment in these discoveries about the nature of life—quite the contrary! How marvelous and intricate life turns out to be! . . . Evolution, as a mechanism, can be and must be true. But that says nothing about the nature of its author. For those who believe in God, there are reasons now to be more in awe, not less.8

Collins points out that the book of Genesis lists an order of creation that agrees with what Darwin believed. First came vegetation of all kinds. Then fish and birds. These were followed