The Video That Opened My Eyes

Soon after I retired, I began looking at my faith differently. I had attended three churches and came away from those experiences disappointed. Two were Baptist churches, including one connected to the church family I had grown up around, and the third described itself as Spirit-filled. Those experiences did not destroy my faith, but they did cause me to begin looking in another direction.

My attention began turning eastward toward Israel, the Jewish people, the Hebrew language, Judaism, and most importantly, the Messiah in the world He actually came from. I wanted to understand Scripture from its Hebrew foundation instead of only through the American religious tradition I had inherited. That search eventually brought me to Rabbi Steve Berkson and a teaching titled Beware False Prophets (Identifying the Anti-Messiah). I did not know when I started watching it how important that video would become to me.

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Who Is Rabbi Steve Berkson?

Rabbi Steve Berkson was born and raised in New York City in a Jewish home. He attended Hebrew school and became Bar Mitzvah at age 13. According to his official biography, he came to know Messiah Yeshua in 1986 and later became part of the Messianic/Hebrew Roots movement. He was ordained by the Messianic Israel Alliance in 2000 and eventually established congregations in Tennessee.

In 2013, he launched Messianic Torah Observant Israel, commonly known as MTOI. His Jewish background and his approach to Scripture from a Hebraic and Torah-centered perspective immediately interested me because I was already trying to understand the Messiah within His own historical, cultural, and biblical setting.

You can read Rabbi Steve Berkson’s complete biography at:

About Rabbi Steve Berkson

Watch the Teaching

Before going any further, I strongly encourage you to watch the teaching for yourself. Do not take my word for what Rabbi Steve says, and do not accept his conclusions simply because he is a rabbi. Keep your Bible beside you, listen carefully, look up the Scriptures he uses, and be willing to investigate anything that catches your attention.

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I Heard Something I Had Never Heard Before

There was a point in the teaching when I heard something I had never heard anyone say before. As I understood Rabbi Steve’s argument, the religious figure Christianity commonly calls “Jesus” should not simply be assumed to be identical in name, identity, and teaching to the historical Jewish Messiah found in Scripture.

That got my attention, but it did not really challenge me. I had heard the name Jesus my entire life, yet the strange truth is that I had never really recognized that name as His name. I did not fight against it, criticize people for using it, or spend my life arguing about it. It simply never connected with me in a natural way.

Even in prayer, I normally referred to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I never really understood why I avoided using the name Jesus. Then I heard Rabbi Steve’s teaching, and for the first time I heard someone raise questions that seemed to explain something I had quietly felt for years.

So I Started Checking

I did not watch the video one time and immediately decide Rabbi Steve was right. I watched it several times. I paused it, went back over certain portions, opened my Bible, and looked up the Scriptures for myself. I also began researching some of the historical and linguistic questions that came from the teaching.

I looked into the history of the name, the development of the English letter J, the Hebrew language, and the Jewish world in which the Messiah actually lived. I wanted to know whether what I had heard could stand up to examination. The more I checked, the more seriously I began taking the questions Rabbi Steve had raised.

I have an open mind, but to me an open mind does not mean believing everything somebody tells me. It means being willing to examine something before rejecting it simply because it is different from what I have always believed. When it comes to Scripture, I believe we should be willing to test everything, including some of the things we may have been taught never to question.

Do Not Be Deceived

There was another reason this teaching affected me so strongly. I had been aware of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 since I was a teenager, and the biblical warnings about deception were already deeply familiar to me. I had also spent years paying attention to what I believed were signs pointing toward the end times.

One warning from the Messiah had always stood out to me: do not be deceived. When His disciples asked about the signs connected with the end of the age, deception was one of the first dangers He warned them about. That warning began taking on even greater importance as I listened to Rabbi Steve and then checked the Scriptures for myself.

Deception does not work very well when it is obvious. A counterfeit must resemble the real thing closely enough for people to accept it. That caused me to begin asking a disturbing question: could the deceiver be hiding in plain sight? Could something appear so familiar, so religious, and so accepted that generations of people would never think to examine it?

I began wondering whether a counterfeit could copy enough of the Messiah’s story to be accepted while gradually separating people from His true Hebrew identity. I am not asking the reader to accept that conclusion simply because I reached it. I am asking the reader to consider the question and then investigate it.

My Anger Came Later

I was not angry while I was watching Rabbi Steve’s video. At first, I was interested and curious. The anger came later, after I began checking what I had heard and became convinced that some of the questions being raised were legitimate.

That was when I began feeling betrayed. I thought about the many years I had spent around Southern Baptist Christianity, hearing sermons about the Messiah while never being encouraged to investigate something as fundamental as His original name and Hebrew identity. I wondered how I could have spent so much of my life around Bible teaching without ever seriously considering those questions.

That feeling of betrayal was real, and for a while it made me angry. Yet something else began happening at almost the same time, and eventually that other feeling became much more important than the anger.

Gratitude Replaced the Anger

I began looking at the situation differently. Instead of concentrating entirely on what I believed I had not been taught, another thought became stronger: I am being allowed to know now. I began to believe that the Creator was exposing truth to me through this teaching and through the investigation that followed.

Once I began seeing it that way, gratitude started replacing the anger. I became thankful that I had been given the opportunity to investigate the Messiah’s righteous name and identity for myself. Something that had quietly bothered me throughout much of my life was finally beginning to make sense.

The video itself was not the end of the process. Rabbi Steve’s teaching opened the door, but I still had to study, search, and compare what I was hearing with Scripture. Through that process, I came to believe that the Creator was using the teaching to reveal something important to me.

A New Mission

With that gratitude came a sense of responsibility. If I believed the Creator had allowed me to see something important, then I had to ask what I was supposed to do with it. I did not feel that I was supposed to keep it to myself.

That became a new mission for me: tell the world. I do not mean forcing people to believe what I believe or demanding that they accept my conclusions. I mean encouraging people to investigate for themselves and not be afraid of asking questions simply because those questions make religious traditions uncomfortable.

That is the reason I am sharing this video. I am not asking you to believe Rabbi Steve Berkson because he is a rabbi, and I am not asking you to believe me because I wrote this article. Watch the teaching, open your Bible, look up the Scriptures, research the questions it raises, and ask the Creator for understanding.

I watched this teaching several times because I wanted to understand what was being said and whether it was true. For me, it became more than an interesting video. It became part of an awakening that changed the direction of my spiritual life and left me with gratitude and a new mission.

That mission is simple: tell the world, and encourage people to investigate the truth for themselves.

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