Rabbi Reuven Kigel - G-d's Existence in 5 Minutes

hi ruen kigle from EMT College Outreach and what I want to talk to you about today is something that I think about a lot because being a college campus Rabbi students constantly ask me say Rabbi can you prove to me that God exists how do I know the God exists how do I know the tour is real how do I know that I should be following this now this obviously is something that is a very long discussion but if I say to the student hey this is a very long discussion I may never have a chance to have this discussion with them so I need to tell them something and frankly not just tell them but tell myself something that is going to make a lot of sense and is only going to take a few minutes now you have to remember Judaism is extremely different than the other religions in Judaism we have a specific commandment to know that God exists actually we say it every day in alenu we should say we say uh in the alenu prayer that we say three times a day we should saying you should know on that day you should know on this day that Hashem is won and now so no is not Blind Faith No is not I think no is not my great-grandmother's grandmother I think told me no is to know KN n o w to really know that God exists in a way that you can explain it to someone and more importantly in a way that you can explain it to yourself so I'm going to share with you what I tell students and usually when I meet students they between classes they're running here they're running there their cell phone is calling them they're getting 5 million text messages so have about one or two minutes to tell them exactly how I'm so sure they got exist so I want to share it with you and let's see if it could make a difference in our lives so now the first thing I say you if I'm going to be asked how do I know God exist the first thing I say is because the world is here right the world the universe the fact that we have such an amazing huge universe that's comprised of somewhere between 100 to 500 billion galaxies the size of our Milky Way I mean that's enormous and everything is functioning so well and all the Spheres and everything are staying the way they should be and nothing's colliding into each other now that requires for sure that there's a Creator right it cannot be you would not even believe me that if I told you a pen just came into its own without any creator after millions of years you wouldn't believe me so certainly our universe could not have come into existence on its own it's finite and anything finite requires a Creator that's infinite and as far as a human being goes you should know that all the DNA within us is as complex each person himself is as complex as the entire universe so now we're finite and everything finite has to come from somewhere and where does it come from from an infinite being and that infinite being is what we call AEM so that's the first thing I tell students that I know that there's a God because the world exists and if the world exists since it's finite it had to get here somehow I.E an infinite being that we call Hashem now the second thing I say is how do I know that God exists because the Jews are still here we are the only nation that have been around for 3,400 years that other nations are constantly trying to kill that have been kicked off our land not once but twice just to get it back and all of this at the same time is all predicted in the Torah right so how can the Jews be here without Miracles impossible without God's Assurance there would be here the promise he made to Abraham we would never be here in a million years we would get assimilated like everyone else or we would get killed off like anyone who doesn't get assimilated but we're still here and not only we're still here but wherever we go we are thriving we're not always thriving when we get there but eventually we wind up thriving we wind up being at the top of society and politics money everything why it's impossible for a nation just to do that but the Jewish people can and the only way we were able to do that is because we have God on our side and God promised Abraham Isaac and Jacob that their descendants will always be here and you should know that uh the Jewish people are so unique that they don't even study our Wars at West Point because all the wars that Israel have won in the last 50 years are miraculous so there's no need to study them at West Point because it doesn't help you with war Theory now the third thing I tell people is that I know that God exists in the Torah Shu because the Torah is actually here right and the Torah is a document that's at least 2,000 years old actually according to our tradition is 3,400 years old and now if the Torah did not get there the way it's says in the Torah which means that all the Jews stood at Mount Si around 3,300 years ago and heard uh God speak and then we asked Moses to go up and receive the rest of the Torah which is documented in the Torah itself if it did not get here that way that means someone made it up and that someone then went and told the Jewish people like hey you guys don't remember but this is how we received the Torah and now let's follow it now besides the fact that the Commandments in there probably would not be followed by anyone unless we were sure it was from God the real thing is the real problem with that scenario is that we have no absolutely no record of anyone coming to the Jewish people and saying hey you guys forgot the Torah and here it is here's here's the five books of Moses and this huge oral tradition that goes with it we have no record of this person and we have complete records of everyone that does everything in Judaism and moreover we do have a lot of Records you can trace yourself through your Rabbi even through some of your friends all the way back to Moses in an unbroken chain so if you think about those three things the fact that the world is here the fact that the Jews are here and the fact that the Torah is here it's a pretty good case that God exists and God is the one that gave it all to us thank you