Top Scientist on God and the Origin of Life | Dr. James Tour

 

Intro

all of a sudden off to my right was this presence not something that i could see with my

eyes but a presence just two feet away from me and just it was the presence of jesus

just filled that room and i just burst into tears and and there was no clear view that i

could see but the presence was so strong [Music]

hello friends and welcome to today's video from jews for jesus i'm jeff morgan and we have a fascinating video

for you today dr james tor one of the world's top scientists is joining us and today he'll be sharing his story about

how a jewish kid and leading scientist from new york city became a believer follower and lover of jesus today we

Introducing Dr James Torre

have a very special guest dr james torres with us today and wow this is a treat uh we're gonna be talking about

science and faith which many people today don't think go together but oh contraire we will get into that for sure

but before we start i have to introduce this man dr torre has a phd in organic chemistry

tt and w f chao professor of chemistry at rice university he's a fellow of royal society of chemistry fellow of the

national academy of inventors he has over 650 research publications probably

more by now he's been r d magazine scientist of the year part of the national academy of

inventors member of the american association for the advancement of science he has over 120 patents he

started multiple companies he works in fields ranging from medicine to material science computer memory medical devices

and more he's received numerous honors and awards named in the top 50 of the

most influential scientific minds in the world and is a passionate jewish follower of

jesus or how we call him here in israel yeshua dr tor what a pleasure it is to

have you here on the channel thank you so much for joining us thank you jeff glad to be here

yeah this is so exciting because both of us are jewish both of us love jesus

and we're going to be talking about how that works in a logical manner and within a world that demands

scientific proof that god even exists so let's start off with this how does a jewish guy like yourself

raise just outside of new york city come to know jesus as messiah son of god

and savior of the world well sometimes these things are a little bit

of a process i was working actually on the hutchison river parkway

um and and uh in a gas station when i was younger and i started working when i was

14 and sometimes i'd work the night shift and people would sometimes come in and

hand me a tract and on the night shifts we had a lot of time to to sit around and and read and and i

would read these tracks and and they just kind of struck me but i wasn't really confronted with the gospel until

i went to college at the age of 18 and a young man shared with me the bridge illustration

of the gospel where there's man on one side and god on the other and i was i was

uh really shaken by it i was shaken by it because i had become addicted to

pornography at the age of 14. working in the gas station i found magazines in the

trash and uh and so by the time i was 18 i was i was a pornography addict there was no

internet in those days it was all by magazines and i went to college and and he shared with

me a verse that says for all of sin and falls short of the glory of god and i looked at him i said i'm not a sinner

because in my secular jewish context he had to really hurt somebody to be a sinner you had to

rob a bank or kill somebody and i told him i never robbed a bank i never killed anyone how how could i be a sinner

and he then he had me read a verse from matthew 5 28 that says i say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust

for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart and at that moment i was deeply

convicted and it's interesting why why should i be convicted why should i care

what somebody said two thousand years ago what does that have to do with me yeah but there's something about the

words of yeshua that just shake a person and and it said

you've committed adultery in your heart i knew adultery was wrong i even though

i was a secular jew i knew adultery was wrong and how how could i commit it in my heart i mean i haven't done it with

my hands how could i do it with my heart and uh um and then and then

it said to look at a woman with lust for her i didn't know how to look at a woman any other way that's the only way i knew

how to look at a woman and so i was deeply convicted and he he shared the gospel with me and

but what struck me the most was what happened that semester i didn't receive the lord right there he could have

probably closed the deal if he had been better at it but um i was impressed by people that said that

they were born again christians now i i had known that jimmy carter at the time had said that he was a

born-again christian so i'd heard that term which sounded sounded odd to me yeah but

one of the things that struck me for example i would go to the the cafeteria and there was a group of christians that

had a which was sitting at this table and when you when you're young and you go into a cafeteria you never want to have to sit alone and they'd say hey jim

come and sit with us so i sit with them and what struck me more than anything was their laughter

when they were laughing they were never laughing at somebody and all of us have been on the receiving

end of that sort of laughter and it and it hurts but they were never their laughter was never never taking a toll

on anybody and these were good people and they were non-threatening and so it opened my heart more and then

i started attending a little bible study on my floor but but then in november 7th 1977 so so he

shared with me in the end of august here it is november 7th i just got on my knees in my room and i

I got on my knees

don't know why i got on my knees i i most jews i knew stood when they prayed

and most christians sat when they prayed and i got on my knees and i said lord forgive me because i'm a

sinner and come into my life and i felt this amazing peace of god drop on me

and this burden of sin that i had been carrying since august about this this accusation that i was an adulterer

uh just started to lift from me and then all of a sudden off to my right was this presence

not something that i could see with my eyes but a presence just two feet away from me

and just it was the presence of jesus just filled that room and i just burst into tears

and and there was no clear view that i could see but the presence was so strong

and uh um i didn't feel afraid at all i just felt love and

acceptance and kindness and forgiveness packaged up and poured out upon me and i

don't even know how long i was there i don't know how long i was there i i just was burst into tears and it's an unusual

thing for me because i i can have a good friend even to this day a good friend can die and i won't

cry for more than 30 seconds and i'm done but i just couldn't stop weeping and then the next thing i know i was

I read the Bible everyday

standing up wiping my face and uh something happened to me that day

something happened to me and then the young man that it shared with me

back in august he lived on my floor he saw me a few weeks later he said jim have you received jesus in your heart

i said i think i have why do you ask he said you haven't stopped smiling for weeks

something happened to me on that day and it changed what i wanted to do in life how i wanted

to the kind of person that i wanted to marry the kind of career that i wanted to have

and i just started reading the bible every day every day because this young man shared with me i said how can i stay

close to god how can i do this he said if you read your bible every day you'll stay close to god if you don't you won't

and i started reading the bible every day and i've been doing this for more than 43 years and now i start in genesis

chapter 1 verse 1 and i'm in no hurry i just read pensively and carefully and

and then i read pick up where i left off the day before and then when i'm done in revelation chapter 22 i start again

and i just do this over and over i'm in no hurry i don't try to get done with the bible in a year if god wanted me done with it in a year did he just said

get done with this book in a year i mean i just i just go slowly and and i just read it over and over so

that was a long answer to a short question no i love your answers um i want to talk for a second about that

weeping um you and i have similar stories when i came to faith i wept for a year james i went i i

literally every day tears of joy i was the one

going to church with my hands up in the front row just jumping up and down for a year and crying

at every worship song i was so floored and so convicted all at the same time

and these changes that you're talking about happened to us

through us in us it's not like self-help where you go and you go through some steps and you try to

cha exchange bad behaviors for good i mean i'm talking behaviors that are wiped out habits that are erased

and things that are changed i can so relate to that um but being a jewish follower of jesus

these days is much more common than in the last 50 years especially in the last decade you know jewish people all over

the world are seeking they're thinking for themselves many have become disillusioned by eastern mysticism new

age practices and are exercising the courage to read the new testament and discover

for themselves the jewishness of this book and who they believe jesus is instead of having that decision made for

them 2 000 years ago so another story i found really touching and inspiring was your

jewish mother's journey to faith in yeshua can you tell us a bit about that

well um my i shortly after that my conversion i

i came out with it i mean i told my my family i told my cousins and

and my mom and dad didn't say much but i know that it hurt them because they told me afterward that it hurt them but

my sister had been into things my brother had been into things and i thought that this was a fad that was just going to pass away sure and a

couple of years later i moved into a a house full of christian

guys that that was that was owned by the pastor of the church and it was sort of a discipleship

My conversion

program there were two two men's houses and there was one woman's house and

and uh my mom came to visit and and uh um

uh she was she was really struck by all of this she she really wondered what is this that i am into and as a parent now

i can understand her concern right and i said well why don't you read the new testament and and uh and and see

see see what what what you think and um in fact i took her to church one day

and uh in this particular church we would get down on our knees and just worship and she sat there and she

you know she was in tears the whole time and when i got done i said i said you know you must have been really touched

in the service she said touched why do you think that she i said you were weeping she says i'm weeping for you i'm

waiting for you did you be in a place like this i said well where should i be on a sunday

afternoon she said well how about on the beach like any other normal human being and uh so you can actually hear the

jewish nation in that sort of response and uh yeah so she read the entire new

testament and very carefully my mother was a huge reader so she really had a tremendous

comprehension and and i said what did you think she said i don't blame them for killing jesus for

the things that he said i mean who is he to stand up and say to say to the rabbis what he said that your white-washed

tombs i mean these men are just trying to help people's lives and this young guy comes up and starts criticizing them

like that it's no wonder he got killed and then i said uh um why don't you read

the old testament read the whole thing and so she did something that most jews certainly secular jews have never done

and she took it up in the book of genesis and she read the whole thing and i asked her so what did you think of

that and and she had some very strong things to say and she said

god has obviously warned us over and over again he warned us and uh then it was several years later

after my oldest daughter was 15. and she came to visit us with my father and she went

up i remember she went up in my daughter's bedroom and the two of them were in there for a couple of hours and my daughter was quite evangelistic at

that age she came out she said that's quite some daughter you have and she started reading

the new testament again she was reading that along with the case for christ along with a that i had given

her and then along with a an intervarsity intervarsity devotional which i don't

even know where she got and then one day she called me we used to speak every sunday so i called her i

would call her every sunday and she got on the phone she says jimmy you won't believe this but but uh i

believe jesus christ is the son of god and i was floored i said

she said i was i was reading the bible and i was reading the case for christ and i was reading about how he was

crucified and it hit me it hit me he is the son of god now i've seen this jeff

where people are reading the new testament and i tell people you read the new testament twice you become a

believer in yeshua you become a believer in jesus you can't get through that document twice

sometime during that sequence and i've seen it with professors here on campus i mean it hits them that document can

speak for itself and it hit her wow

she was 72 at the time actually hallelujah well um talking about evangelistic kids just

evangelistic kids

today my son calls me he's he's called he's at school he calls me from school and they study the tanakh

here they study the the hebrew bible in hebrew you know and he brings his own it's in hebrew but it's the the old testament

the new testament the tanakh and the new testament together in one book and so his teacher looks at his book and says

it looks a little bit uh different than what we use can i see it so she looks through it she sees a new testament in there and she says

wow this is really cool i've always wanted to read the new testament can you bring me one

so my son's going to bring her another we have the same version at home he's going to bring her that tomorrow so

speaking about kids when i was younger i went to jewish summer camp where we wrapped fill in we went to hebrew

schools eight latkes matzah scramble bagels and locks i had baimar bitsa at age 13 i never thought of opening the

new testament and to be fair even the hebrew scriptures as well but in high school whenever we got uh to the

christmas songs because i was in the high school choir and there were songs that had the name of jesus in them and whenever the name

jesus came i was taught never to say his name so naturally i never gave the new testament a thought you know and this is

really common you know in jewish secular families today what do you say

to those uh that won't even open the new testament that it's a christian book it's anti-semitic

jewish people should stay away from it well what i had going for me in a sense

jeff and some people would say what i had going against me is i had spent so little time in the

synagogue and i didn't have any you know i i had no real relationship

with a rabbi they seemed like strange men to me walking around mumbling uh you know they

were saying their prayers i didn't know what they were doing i mean these men walking around mumbling and and uh um

so what happens is as you know in the synagogues you're taught against

jesus i was never taught against jesus because i didn't spend much time in the synagogues so i didn't know to be wary

of of somebody coming up and saying i'd like to give you an illustration of the gospel i just told this young man sure

when somebody handed me a tract i didn't just immediately throw it out i read it so so in a sense i had that going for me

that i i wasn't i wasn't uh taught against jesus so generally when you go through the synagogue yes they say they

say negative things about jesus there's not a lot written about jesus in the in the in the the jewish writings there is

some and generally what's written is not very flattering right uh so

so uh um if you read what what jesus said jesus was very much like a prophet i mean

prophets didn't come in and just stroke the leadership and tell them how wonderful they were they confronted them

and jesus very much like an old testament prophet he is confronting the the jewish

leadership of his day and he's talking about their hypocrisy no different than

than than what isaiah did i say no different than what jeremiah did no different way than what the minor

prophets were doing so so uh uh you can read about this and that is a very jewish document if you

read the new testament i mean some sometimes people ask me how can you be being a jew i mean how can you believe

this i'm like how can you being a gentile believe this this argument is so jewish it's so jewish i mean it just it

it it's all around the jewish customs all around the jewish holidays all around the things that are happening in in

judaism in the first century and then as you study the jewish practices of the first century it just nails it at every

point i mean what what people are referring to as gentiles and and what they refer to them as the prostitutes

and the tax collectors i mean this this was this was so jewish what was

happening so right i would encourage you to read it because jesus came and he had

a message for us and he had a message for the jewish people this message is for us and it's no different than the

message that came through our old testament prophets and if you critically read the tanakh if you

carefully read that you will see that the prophets were slamming our people all the time for our waywardness they

were slamming our leadership and our people and warning us and that's what my mother came out with she said he warned

us over and over again she was frustrated by how much we had been warned and we did not comply

yep and the prophets were rejected the prophets were rejected and in the

science and faith

first century the question wasn't how can you be jewish and believe in jesus the question was how can you be

gentile and believe in jesus just like you said um let's let's move on to some science

um being so rooted in science as you are has science ever shaken your

faith science has never shaken my faith never ever ever when when i had that

experience with jesus in my room i've i there's no doubt in my mind

and and i love the word of god every word in the bible is true every word

right down to every jot and tittle it is true everything is true and and uh sometimes my interpretation

might be wrong uh but but every word that is written there is true and the way that i view this is that science

chases the universe trying to explain it god's word defines the universe it

defines it the universe has to conform to what god's word has

said when i study science it never has shaken my faith i build molecules i

build molecular systems and then when i look at biological systems and i see what chemicals coming

together can do in a biological system i'm just struck with this amazing

amazing structure and it makes me behold god and it makes me love him all the

more i'm like lord look at what you have done this is amazing this is utterly

amazing so it's never ever shaken my faith i think maybe to the rookie it

shakes their faith but not to me not it doesn't shake my faith at all i see the limitations of what humans can do i see

what what what there is in in in nature in this ubiquitous natural system around

us and uh sure there's there's there's ways that you can explain it but but you you

want to try to put molecules together to replicate this it's crazy hard so it's

never shaken my faith and i take absolutely every word of the scriptures as absolutely true

the origin of life

well you call the origin of life purely synthetic organic chemistry

what do you think of how the origin of life has been explained in public schools university and books

scientists are clueless on life's origin we just don't know

rookies think that they know but as soon as you start getting into the details on this you're lost

and and uh scientists make some money by working in these

research areas and they'll make very bold claims even in their papers they make very bold claims

and those claims are way extrapolations from what they've done they've done some little thing and they say this explains

the origin of life and i will just go at that i said no it doesn't it just doesn't i mean when i walk into a room

of somebody giving a presentation their whole tenor changes because they know they can't slosh around with these sorts

of bold claims based on the work that they've done and so what's happened is those bold

claims get translated into press announcements people then write textbooks with those bold claims so the

the poor lay public has been thoroughly confused and it's not just the lay public there is confusion right up into the

academy right up into the universities where scientists think that that the origin of life has been explained

biologists certainly think so and then as soon as you start showing them it's that it's not been explained they they

they really come to agreement um you know i have had many colleagues come to me and say that they've watched my

videos on origin of life and they agree with me people have watched my whole series and they say we see nothing wrong

nothing wrong but please don't use my name so there's no lack of cowardice in

the universities because people don't want to undergo the shunning that that i

have undergone the people who have who have stood up to these things but in academia it's like this academics are

known to be cowards academics went along with the nazis we would hunker down

thinking that it's not going to inflict upon us and we'll just keep our mouths shut we went along with with the soviets

we just kept our mouths shut the academics are known to be cowards there are many people

there are many people that have the the the the uh the ability the the the the

cortex of of of uh a c.s lewis and a dietrich bonhoeffer but they will never

affect their world because they're cowards because they're afraid to speak up and so they will go

along with the status quo even when they see it and it's it's such a shame because these

scientists see this origin of life isn't pure is a pure and utter mystery and

they won't speak up because they make their livings because they make their livings uh doing

research in this area and making bold claims and if they come out and say look this just doesn't work i have no idea

how this happened then things kind of go away for the research and and so it's it's a real

problem and but it's mainly due to cowardice it's because there's no courage among the academics we think

we're really tough we're not really tough uh we love our research funding we love our accolades we love our awards we

love our publications to be accepted and that's the problem and that's what's going on here and it translates then

into these books in elementary school these books in high school these books in the university and i have even

you know as i did on on on my on my uh youtube channel i've quoted

these these uh surveys that have been taken of how lost the general public is on what's been

done in this area of origin of life just utterly lost but it all starts with the

scientists not speaking up and not speaking up what they know to be true

okay the simple human cell i don't don't you love how

the simple human cell

people use the word simple in front of almost everything not so simple uh can you talk about the

complexity of a human cell i won't even address a human cell let's

go to a very simple cell let's go to the simplest cells that are known to exist

they are have the same complexity as the simplest cells that we have in the fossil record

in other words there are the the the cells that we have the oldest cells that we have in the fossil

record are analogous to our simple cells today okay we already know

how simple a cell can be you say well it's just a piece of of a ribosome

that's nonsense we already know the structure that a simple cell will have to have because this has been computed

by biophysicists we already know the structures that a simple cell will have to have you'll

need to have something like 200 205 protein coding genes

you have to have all sorts of functions you have to have dna polymerase you have to be able to make things you have to be

able to extrapolate these things you have to have a certain number of enzymes these numbers have been put into place

there is no way and no understanding how that could have happened and when i say you have about 205 protein coding genes

then you have to have all the amino acids from exogenous sources to come into this right and they all have to be

in a a chirally pure they have to have have high enantiomeric purity and you

have to have that because we know something about car carol induced spin selectivity that you could not have run

on racemic systems nothing fits together when you deal with with racemic systems

uh you you can't have diastereomeric mixtures there's so much complexity we can't even make the simplest of cells

not even the simplest of cells let alone a human cell which is extremely advanced

uh the simplest cells we have no idea how that they how they could have formed and those who think otherwise really

don't understand the chemistry i'll come right out and say you just don't understand the chemistry if you think

that that you can form a simple cell people will will send to me all the time oh here here's an article where people

have made artificial life and every time i show them it's not that they've made

it they've taken something that's already living and they've modified it that's very different if i take a car

and i put different wheels on it it doesn't mean that i made that car you know i just modified the wheels people

have gone so far as to modify the genome of a cell you can go in and this is what craig venter did he knocked out

lots of different different uh segments within that genome and then the cell didn't function very well but it still

functioned people say that's artificial life well you just you just took a hammer to your car and you pounded on it

enough but it could still start but uh you think you you made that card no you made it worse is what you did

so all of these things people already start with life origin of life means ab initio from the

beginning you've taken molecules and you put it together and even the pieces and

i'll leave it give it to them i'll even give it to them i'll say you don't even have to make all the pieces

you can i'll give you all the pieces because we can get the pieces from living cells we can extract the pieces i'll give them to you just polymerize

and make the cell oh no the polymerization is too hard okay i'll give it to you in polymerized form

and and and i'll even give you the entire dna structure that if i give you

the dna structure it's already got the code for life we have no idea where that structure came from where the code came

from i'll even give that to you now just take these pieces and put it together i have no idea we have no idea we can

take all the pieces we can't even put it together even if we had all the pieces but remember all of this has to happen

under a rock someplace or in some ocean vents someplace i mean this doesn't happen we have no idea we're utterly

clueless on the origin of life and people will say oh jim tour you're just talking god of the gaps i never invoke

god into my my teachings on origin of life i never do you do not you i mean the

people who accuse me they do and and i don't say god of the gaps i have never said that we will never know

i just say as of today we do not know and we are very far from knowing how do

i know that we're so far away from knowing how could i know that because what you do is you track

how close you are into solving a problem and what happens is the complexity of a

cell gets harder every year every year we learn more about the cell and we're

like whoa i didn't know that for example the interactives this huge non-covalent

interactions this is this is a new thing to us this is only in the last five years or so that we've heard about

interact-ons and the complexity of these things and this was not known to us before and so now the target the cell

has gotten much further away so we we were here thinking and now the cells got

much further away so the goal posts have moved further out and as a result we can track we're not getting closer we're

getting further that's how i know we're not going to solve this anytime

soon all the people who are out there saying we're just on the verge of solving the origin of life problem they

will all die read my lips they will all die without solving this and their students

will all die without solving this how do i know because we're very far away from solving this i can't say that we won't

solve it in 500 years i can't say that it's unsolvable some way we'll figure it

out and that doesn't lessen god that doesn't make god less if we figure this out we've figured out how

how the genome is constructed so in other words if you asked somebody 200 years ago why is it that when the

parents are tall their kid is tall they just say i don't know and now we know because all of this is

prescribed in the genome and then that translates through rna to enzymes which

are these little nano machines which construct us and that's why when you have two tall parents the children are generally tall

we know this from the genome that doesn't make god less we're just like wow lord this is how you did it so this

information isn't going to lessen god but as far as the origin of life we don't know we are very far away from

knowing that i can say yeah well wow 205 protein coding genes in the

most simple cell that's incredible i i dr tor i'm an athlete i've been training for 38 years

we throw words around like carbohydrates proteins enzymes fats dna branched chain amino acids fatty

acids and you know we know about them relatively superficially but how how complex are they really and and

i mean talking about making something like that which is a which is one of the essentials to life

um and when i say make it sounds kind of strange because it implies a maker but can something so complex come from

non-living mindless matter well people have tried just take carbohydrates you know the carbohydrates

are sometimes called sugars sometimes called saccharides they're it's all the same thing

these are very complex structures so you you can easily have five

stereogenic centers so you can have two to the fifth possible isomers that's a lot so you have 32 possible isomers out

of something like this and then they can fold up in different ways they can it can fold up say into a five five member

ring so you can have a glucose fold up into a five member ring fold up into a six member ring when it folds up into

the five and the six member ring one of the stereo centers can be alpha or beta and so it ha it can reside in all of

these different structures people have tried to make these using

uh um prebiotic type conditions prebiotic chemistry things that would

have been available in the prebiotic earth and it is very hard and they've never been able to make them in a

chirally pure sense meaning in the one-handed sense now once you make them you have to hook

them together and that's a whole nother problem i mean the hooking them together because because you you can have a

glucose molecule but you have to now string these things together so if you if you just take six glucose molecules

six you can hook those up over one trillion different ways this is

amazing because if you just think of dna if you just think of this the same base say you have a a a a iguani say you have

g so so so how many ways can you hook that up it's just one way

ggg that's it how many ways can you hook together glucose

over one trillion ways now a trillion is a very very big number let me give you a

sense of how big that is because because i don't think people appreciate the size of that number if if

if you say if you say uh wait a million seconds

that's going to be 11 days if you say wait a billion seconds that's 32 years

if you say wait a trillion seconds that's 32 000 years so from a million seconds 11 days to a

trillion seconds that is 32 000 years i mean there's a big difference between

a million and a trillion i'm saying 1.2 trillion ways to hook together glucose

just six units just six units which is a tiny little saccharide tiny little polysaccharide i mean there are

saccharides that are much longer if you get the structure of these wrong in a cell

every disorder in a cell this has been written it's not jim two are saying this every disorder in a cell can harken back

to a problem in the carbohydrate arrangement every disorder in yourself hearkens back

that there is a concomitant or origin of a of a carbohydrate

uh disorder you get this structure wrong you throw off the whole interaction

within a cell how do you hook these together when you have that many combinations how do you

get it right nobody knows nobody knows and so one of my my greatest uh antagonists has come

back and he says okay well these need enzymes i i these do need enzyme well if

these need enzymes why don't other things need enzymes and and i can show you the the the same problems with that

so this this is a huge problem it is a huge problem people will say well we

have an rna world just some rna formed in it and it duplicated itself rna doesn't just duplicate itself many

people have tried to get rna to duplicate itself and in the best prime systems things that have been

designed to duplicate they've only been able to duplicate about seven to ten percent of themselves that's it no more

and those that seven to seven to ten percent has not been able to duplicate itself anymore so seven

percent of something is not a duplication of it and then let's say well rna is a ribosome

it makes things yeah but rna is highly unstable rna you have hours to work with

it that's why when you look at these mrna drugs they're packaged very carefully in a liposome to try to

protect it and even then you have to keep it really cold in order to preserve these things you add exogenous ions to

this you're in deep trouble because that will catalyze the decomposition of these things so you have the whole instability

problem so you have the synthesis problem the polymerization problem the instability problem every one of these

things is a hard hard problem even the lipids which are the fats even those are hard those all have stereogenic centers

we don't know how to make those in a prebiotic sense and i've just written an article where an article came out a year

ago say saying that here's a prebiotic synthesis of a fat and i showed it wasn't prebiotic at all

and even even when he says this he's taking things from nature and making it

it's it's just uh it's just sleight of hand over and over again

one of the main arguments for atheism or against the creator of the universe is that given the right

Time

circumstances and this relates to what you were talking about just a minute ago and enough time

life is sure to appear from non-life i've spoken to many people that are very settled and cozy in believing that given

enough time of course life can begin and evolve on its own

time is the enemy time is the enemy of organic chemistry when you make something you have to work

it up quickly and deal with it if a student goes home for the weekend and doesn't work up their reaction they see

decomposition time is the enemy and the vast majority of time like say with the carbohydrates

these are all kinetic products not thermodynamic products meaning that that they're in local minima you could you

let them go further and they go into more and more stable structures that are not what you want you have to stop these

reactions and and i have shown this on my series you know i say here's these people's reactions where they're saying

they're mimicking origin of life look they stopped it after six hours because they showed that when you go

more than six hours the yield started going down the yields started going down and it just drops

and so what happens is is you get decomposition even when people make things and store it for a couple of

weeks i mean you see the decomposition and so you see these decomposition rates

all the time these products do not stay around they decompose people will say

you know you undergo oxidation they'll say well we didn't have a an oxidizing atmosphere we had a reducing atmosphere

in early earth actually some people are saying the the atmosphere of early earth is actually very close to what it is now

but i'll give you a reducing atmosphere which means that you had a lot more ammonia ammonia is even more degrading on

organic molecules than is oxygen and so so uh you lose either way so time does not

solve it time does not solve it at all you can't just leave a bunch of chemicals over time it doesn't do

anything but get even worse so once you've made something boom you leave that thing and it's gone rna you have

ours even jack sostak the the the nobel prize winner at harvard who works with

with rna and who is an origin of life researcher he will say with rna we only

have hours we don't even have days to work with it you make it you only have hours before that thing is decomposing

that's the problem with this and uh remember hours days months years that's

a twinkling of the eye when we're talking to the the time spans that people would like to

reference on origin of life everything would decompose decompose so that is not

a valid argument all right i i want to talk about the topic of sin

Sin

because growing up in a secular jewish family there's no there's no concept or discussion of sin you know the common

jewish concept outside of religious judaism is you know just try to become a better person do something good in the

world why in your opinion don't modern secular jewish people think about sin

well i i don't know but i can tell you that is

exactly what was going on in my home i don't think we ever mentioned the word

sin in my mind either growing up i mean it was not a topic of discussion that's

why when this young man had me read this verse for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god i said i'm not a

sinner i mean i didn't even have this idea that i was a sin so sin is something that that

that again you have to do something really bad now in the orthodox homes i know it's very different but the typical

secular jewish home in the united states i think mine was pretty typical and we

never talked about it i i can't i'm not a philosopher so i don't know why they don't speak about

sin one might argue well they don't want to be confronted with their sin they don't want to be confronted with their

evil maybe that's the case i'm not a philosopher it's hard for my myself to put this in other people's minds i was

only 18. i was i was only 18 when i came to the lord so when i when i think back

it's not like i had you know trashed my life and been on drugs and and been

through multiple broken marriages with strings of broken kids sure that i look back i say wow i really blew it no i was

just 18 and i had blown enough in my life by the age of 18 that i'm so glad that i got saved the at the age that i

did i am so thankful forever i will be thankful to the lord for interceding on my life at a

very young age before i just blew it a big time because what happens is once

a student goes to college the decisions that they make affect their lives in much bigger ways and i

tell this to students all the time you make decisions and it affects your life but you're now at a stage the decisions

that you make are going to set your life on a course for the rest of your life they will affect your life much much

more at this point so but i i don't know why wow

Reading the scriptures

well as as messianic jews or jewish christians we are told to study the scriptures meditate on god's word daily

and from within the scriptures we're taught this you know so when i came to faith in yeshua through a miraculous

series of events four years ago i instantly began studying the scriptures to understand my faith

strengthen my knowledge of the word of god um you know he's left this for us he's

given this to us and i must say that the more i study and learn the stronger my faith becomes

and yet you have been reading and studying the hebrew scriptures uh the tanakh and the new testament for over 40

years correct 44 years correct uh how is your reading the scriptures

straight up i mean i'm not talking about going into the sidoo going into the rabbinic interpretations this the

scriptures straight up how has that impacted your knowledge and faith

you know um it's interesting because i speak sometimes to orthodox jewish

friends particularly in israel what i find is that uh jews in the united states

engage with me less because maybe they feel threatened uh but when they're in israel they no

longer feel threatened and even the orthodox will engage with me i will have conversations and this has

happened to me multiple times conversations with orthodox jews in israel and they break into tears

they break into tears and i say why are you crying

and they say because you know all these things

just by reading the scriptures just by reading and and i've even i even had had one say

to me you know my traditions mean that i have to do so many other things other than to just be

able to read the scriptures and enjoy it you just read it because you enjoy it i said that's actually right i read it

because i love it i love it i'm not obligated i'm not forced to i don't have to do a lot of things around it a lot of

peripheral things i don't have to i just read it because i love it and god speaks through the scriptures that's the

testimony of the scriptures of them themselves this is god's words and god is able to enlighten us he

enlightens enlightens us by the power of his spirit he enlightens us and he gives us understanding he cries he he calls

out to a boy named samuel and samuel can hear him and samuel

learns from the lord himself the lord teaches us through the scriptures the very words of god i learn from this i

love it this is why i i talk all the time the biggest message that i leave with people is

meditate on the scriptures i tell young people if you would learn to meditate on the scriptures you don't need me

god himself will teach you it says in joshua chapter 1 verse 8 and 9 this book of the law

shall not it says shall not depart from your mouth but you shall meditate on it day and

night day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that's written in it for then you'll make your way

prosperous and then you'll have success he's told you meditate on this book day

and night then you make your way prosperous and then you you'll have success and i really believe that you

meditate on it day and night it says it's it says when you get into the land

god was was telling israel when you get into the land and you get a king you make sure your king doesn't multiply

horses for himself doesn't multiply wives for himself i mean he gives him this list of things that he should not

do and you look at every king of israel and every king of judah violated that list they all had lots of wives and he

says and here's what he is to do he is to make a copy

of this on a scroll he has to make a copy of it

Reading the scriptures every day

and and uh and so as he's making this copy and they were to view it to make sure he didn't

make any mistakes in copying it and he was to carry that scroll with him

every day of his life and he was to read from that scroll every day of his life

so that he would not be lifted up above his countrymen and so that his sons would be able to

walk in this pattern along with him this is the warning that he's given us as jews

and this is why they were to read that every day the king was to read that every single day

psalm 1 it talks about how blessed is the man who doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked nor stand in the path of sinners

nor sit in the seat of scoffers things he shouldn't do but his delight is in the law of the

lord and in his law he meditates day and night and he will be like a tree firmly

planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither and in whatever he does

he prospers the wicked are not so but they are like chaff which the wind drives away

therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the path of the righteous

for the lord knows the ways of the righteous he tells us we are to to make this law of the lord our

meditation day and night day and night the scriptures put it to two ways day and night every day and this is why i

read the scriptures every morning first thing in the morning i wake up very early i i pray and i read the scriptures

every night before bed i read the scriptures i want to do exactly what the bible says i want to be like daniel daniel prayed

three times a day i'd break in the middle of the day since i was an undergraduate and i will spend time in prayer i pray in the morning i pray in

the evening i pray at midday i want to observe the pattern that is is revealed to us from these men of god in

the scriptures we are told to meditate on the word of god day and night i'm

telling you my my fellow jews if you do not do this i urge you to do this i urge

you meditate on the word of god day night he says you will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water which

uses fruit in the season its leaf does not wither and whatever you do you prosper i'm not talking about some

american name it claim it prosperity i'm talking about the prosperity that god talks about which is the depth of

relationship with him when you really love god when you love god when you understand the messiah and you really

love him everything else fades you don't care about money this this way any mayor more you don't

care about ranches and houses and and and places to go you just love god so

much i love him so much i love the lord so much i love yeshua so much

and and forever and ever i will be grateful for what he's done to me done for me and he's revealed the father to

me and and i see the kindness of god yes i read all these things in the scriptures about you know devastation

that comes upon people about judgment that god executes i don't know god that

way i don't i know him as kind and loving and and gracious because his love

is funneled to me through yeshua it's like this prism just funnels goodness and kindness to me through yeshua

kindness that's all the only way i know him it's like a a grandchild this is

their grandfather might be some great general that devastates the enemy but they don't know him like that they just

climb up on his lap and you know climb on his shoulders and jump all over him that's the way i feel with god because

what jesus has opened up to me i only know kindness and graciousness this whole idea of meditating on the

scriptures if you will meditate on the scriptures you will be fine psalm 112

it says psalm 119 verse 97 says says oh how i

love your law it is my meditation all the day thy commandments make me wiser than my

enemies for they are ever mine i have more insight than all my teachers for your testimonies or my meditation and i

understand more than the age because i've observed your precepts it says i'm going to have more insight

than all my teachers and it doesn't just say you're bible teachers i believe every word in the bible is true he says

you'll have more insight than all your teachers if you make this word of god your meditation i have meditated on this

word of god i've meditated on this word of god every day for 43 years i've done this

every day i'm telling you every day there may have been one day when i had the flu that i slept more than 24 hours

i may have been a day but i'm just telling every day of my life i do this this to me is my life this is my life

it's moses moses after 40 years of instruction in deuteronomy 32 40 years of instruction he says he he it says

after he's finished finished speaking all these things to all israel he said to them take to your heart all

the words with which i am warning you today even all the words of this law for and

that you shall teach to your children for it is not an idol word for you

indeed it is your life it's not an idol word for you it's your life this book

this these scriptures are our life you go without this you go without your life this is our life the scriptures are

our life and and this is what he has for us this is what he has with this this word

that he has for us and if if you don't do it do it for your children it's going to bless your children it's going to

bless blessed children it says it says in psalm 112 verse one and two it talks

about how when we we delight we make this word our delight when we delight in this word it says

and his descendants shall be mighty on earth the one who delights in the lord

his descendants shall be mighty on this earth you want your children to do well i urge you meditate on the word of god

every day every day do you know what every day means every day means every day you meditate on the word of god you

make this word of god your meditation there is great blessing there is blessing upon blessing that is shared

with us by making this word of god our meditation every single day that's why i

start in genesis chapter one and i work work all the way through to revelation 22. i'm done i start again and i'm in no

hurry i just say just like like like uh eli told samuel just say

your servant listens speak lord your servant listens lord speak to me through this passage your servant listens lord

i'm listening speak to me and he speaks god speaks go figure god

answers prayer he speaks yes he does yes he does

How to contact James Tour

dr i've been i've been meeting with um three israeli men over the last few months

and we sit down and read the scriptures together and it's it's incredible when you see their eyes open and they look at

the scriptures and just like you were saying it's all there

it's all there and these people two of them came out of religious lifestyle

out of religiosity they look at the scriptures there it is it's all there now

you have made yourself available for one-on-one conversations with anyone who is is a non-believer or is seeking

that wants to hear more about jesus where can people reach you dr tour okay so for anybody who is not a

believer in yeshua for people who do not believe that he has risen physically from the dead

i will meet with you one on one by zoom you can just send an email to tour tour

at dr james tour tour at drjamestour.org

tour at drjamestour.org and i will respond back usually within a

day or two i will respond back to you and and i'll just confirm you're you're

you're not a believer in the physical resurrection of jesus christ and then i'll set up a zoom conversation with you

and i do this all the time and and uh um uh just be prepared to get saved because

more than 90 of the people that i speak with in that one meeting they get saved

they give their lives to yeshua in hallelujah very same meeting and and uh uh i urge you to do that and i just tell

you i just i'm just gonna tell you my story about why i believe this is this is to tell you about why i believe in

the physical resurrection of yeshua that he has risen from the dead and why i believe it's not to engage in scientific

conversations and also this is just for me to tell you want to hear my my story one on one my personal story about why i

believe and discuss this with you the evidence for the resurrection then i'll be glad to meet with you and i

have done this with people and i will continue to do it with people and i and i urge my my my my jewish brothers and

sisters i urge you to pick up your scriptures i want you to read from isaiah chapter 52 verse 13 all

the way through isaiah chapter 53 isaiah 52 13 all the way through keep reading and

then start in isaiah 53 and write read isaiah 53 and the reason i say that is

this i've was once with a a very gracious man in israel who was a tour

guide uh uh he gave me a free tour of uh he took me to uh uh herodian this uh this

uh area where where king herod is buried a place i had not seen and we had a discussion it was

clear because he was a tour guide he knew he knew the the christian story as well because very very often

they they have to take christians out as well and i said you know the scriptures

themselves our tanakh testifies testifies that yeshua

is the messiah he says i just have never seen that so we went over his house he had me to his home that night

we went to his home and we sat down and i said i will start reading from the new te from from the old

testament from the tanakh i will start reading in my english bible you read along in your tanakh and we'll just

start reading we started reading in isaiah 53 isaiah 52 13 into isaiah 53 we got halfway

through this chapter and do you know what he did he said enough

and he closed the book and he wouldn't discuss it any further it hit him so hard

that absolutely smacks of yeshua that's why i urge you to read it it's in your

scriptures it's already there it's a passage that's avoided by so many

don't avoid it yeah it's called the forbidden chapter in many in many places

and it just makes you want to read it even more yeah dr tour um so you said tour dr james dot

org is that right no tour at d r james tour d r jamestower.org tour

at drjamestour.org yeah and i will respond back sounds good i'll be putting a link

to that in the description and along with your uh youtube channel as well um so to those that may not contact you

after that wonderful invitation do you have anything else to say just some last words people out there that are watching this right now especially some jewish

people that might be watching this yeah look i love the jewish people i really

love the jewish people me too and i want so much for you to experience what i have experienced

if you read the scriptures you will do very well

you can you can read you start by reading in your own scriptures in the tanakh read isaiah 52 13 through

through isaiah 50 all the way through isaiah chapter 53 just read that and say lord speak to me speak to me through

this book and then pick up a new testament and start to read that when you start to

read in in the first book is is the book of matthew it's going to be like like

you'll read these genealogies you go first verse first first of matthew just

i mean it doesn't get any more jewish than that yeah it just screams out the genealogies of uh going all the way back

and you just see the jewishness of this book you pick up the gospel according to john john is just screams out it's it's

it's the book of genesis chapter one you know you're gonna see this you're gonna see the parallels in this and so i ask

you just read the new testament you don't need me if you would read the new

testament just read it and think about this person and say this lord if this is of you speak to me

speak to me and he will he will speak to you through that book if you do get through the new testament

without receiving yeshua i ask you to read it a second time you will not get through it a second time without giving

your heart to him and then you will experience exactly what i've experienced in my life and i invite you to to hear

more on my youtube channel dr james tour you go to youtube type dr james tour you

get to that youtube channel you'll hear hear more and uh i just pray i pray to god that you get

to know him like i do a god full of love and kindness and graciousness

amen amen dr thank you for that invitation to all that are watching and also at jews for jesus we'd like to

invite you to reach out to us as well you can speak with us anonymously by going to our website jewsforjesus.org

the link is also below and jumping on a live chat with us we are here to talk with you and answer your questions we

love hearing from you even if you have objections dr tor thank you so much for your time

and god bless you thank you jews for jesus is a non-profit organization that exists to support you

as you explore life with faith in jesus we facilitate jewish community all around the world as well as provide

spiritual care and local services we also raise awareness about the fact that for thousands of years there have

been jewish people like us who have embraced jesus as the jewish messiah and even though he was possibly the most

famous jewish person in all of history there are still many jewish people who have never had the chance to be exposed

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