Religious Anxiety

Question:

A few months ago, I watched a video in which a girl claimed to be a prophet and that she died temporarily and saw Jesus take her to hell and heaven, telling her that the world was ending soon and that people were going to hell forever from even doing things like writing and performing song lyrics about committing adultery or listening to Christian rap at Church. Some blogs say that wearing sneakers or athletic clothes is bad too. Christians claim that everyone needs to be Christian. Is this all true? I worried because I live in an atheist community – there are religious people but they are a minority and just talk openly amongst themselves – in which religion is mostly about what holidays you celebrate

Answer:

Thank you for your question.

According to Judaism, not one bit of it is true, and don’t concern yourself with this at all. Anyone can claim that they had a dream, because no one can refute it. In Judaism, Hashem gave the Torah to the Jews in front of more than 3 million people, a claim that is not rivaled in any religion.

Just because someone says that they are a prophet, does not mean you should believe them. Mental institutions are full of people claiming to be the Messiah, God Himself, and many fantastic things. In the times of the real prophets a person that made a claim of prophesy, had to back his claim up with a supernatural sign, or something else to show that indeed he us a person that has supernatural powers and connections. In fact, even if a person would make such a claim, it is written in the Torah (which everyone agrees was given by God) that if a prophet makes a claim and says that people should worship foreign Gods, that this is a clear sign that the “prophet” is nothing more than a charlatan, and the “prophet” should be put to death. This is because God would never tell anyone to say such things.

Best wishes