Can TeShuvah Change Bad Decrees?

0:06And I don't know about you, I don't know what you guys hear, but it seems like it doesn't stop. So to give you a little bit of an understanding of what the last week, less than a week actually, five days, what the last five days looked like, as far as news, at least the things that I can remember to tell you, last night... A friend of mine from Eretz Yisrael tells me, do you know this person by the name of Michael? And I say, I don't know who he is. And he says, you didn't hear what happened in your own town, in your own city, in Miami? Not really my own city. It's about 40 minutes from my house. But I said, no, I have no idea. A young boy, 15 years old, one day before his 16th birthday, was locked out of his house. went to his friend's house that was on the top floor above him. He was on the eighth floor, I believe. He went to his friend's house on the ninth floor. And he figured that he could climb down from his friend's balcony from the ninth floor to his floor on the eighth floor. Whether he's done it before successfully or not, I have no idea. But the reality is that you only have to fail one time for it not to be a good idea.

1:32Unfortunately, this young boy failed at reaching his destination and fell from the ninth floor to his death. This young, cute, beautiful Jewish boy went to a Hebrew academy. Mamash, I look at his face and, although I never saw the kid, I started crying. He had his whole life ahead of him. Who knows what he could have done in this life? How many people he could have helped do teshuva? How many books he could have read to give nachat to Hashem Yitbarach? But of course, Hashem does what He does for a reason. Of course, He does this for the good. Of course, there has to be goodness even though it creates so much sorrow. If that wasn't enough, the night before, I get a phone call from somebody else who tells me, "I need help. Help, help, okay, May Day, May Day, May Day." Usually, when somebody says "May Day," we think, okay, we can do something about it. He tells me, "Yes, a man that lived an Orthodox, frum life. Orthodox, frum life his whole life, religious, more than you. Synagogue, tefillin..."

2:51the nice things that on the exterior, if you saw, maybe you would call him "Rabbi", decided that one day he simply wanted to have a second relationship The relationship with his wife wasn't enough, so he decided to have a second relationship with another woman. But it's not enough to have another relationship and cheat on your wife. He wanted to have a relationship with a Goyah too. It's not enough to bring Busha to the family, bring Tza'ar to Borei Yitbarach. It's not enough. He wants to go out with a Goyah. Now while he's telling me this story, I'm praying. What am I praying for? I'm praying this guy is related to the other guy that called me three days before him with the same exact story. I'm praying he's related to the other guy, he just doesn't know that his brother or cousin or somebody else told me already this story and I was already crying last week. But then he drops an atomic bomb.

4:02When I asked him, so how long has this been going on? He goes, no, it's relatively recent. I said, ooh, maybe he doesn't know. Maybe I know something he doesn't know because the other one, it's not recent. I say, oh, so how many kids does he have with the Goya? He goes, no, nothing. He's just, uh, just a... I said, Hashem Yerachem. This is the second story in one week. The other guy that came a week before him has already three kids with the Goya. He had two lives. One Jewish family, one Goy family. Orthodox more than you. Shul, Beis Midrash, everything. Living the lie, and Hashem Yerachem Aleinu, this is what's happening. If that wasn't enough bad news, Motzei Shabbat, we found out that one of the Avreichim that goes to the kollel that we know in Yerushalayim, both of his parents got murdered in cold blood. Some Arab terrorist decided that he wanted to make them victims, came to their house on the ninth floor, seventh floor, something like that, killed both of them in a vicious way, and left with no trace. Like the Mafia.

5:32One of the family members has been in the police force for almost 20 years. He says, "I've never seen anybody do such a clean murder. Usually, they leave something—a hair or this or that—nothing, much like the Shamir." I came to Abdi the movies. Two innocent Jewish people murdered in cold blood from Shamir, shteyn mitzvot. Already older, about 70 years old, maybe they figure this is the best of their years. And if that didn't make things bad enough, one of the aveilim at the funeral is crying hysterically, he and his brother, and he says something that makes everybody else cry. And... that we have a lot of Mussar to learn from. He says, you know, my ima, his ima, she hasn't left the house in years. Why? She was scared to death to leave the house because she's already dodged a bullet three times. She was part of around terror attacks three times already.

6:56Three times, those terror attacks happened right next to her. To such an extent that she got traumatized, she didn't want to leave the house. For years, she hasn't left the house. He says, "My ima hasn't left the house, but Hashem sent someone to the house." He says, "Ima, you didn't want to leave the house, but Hashem sent somebody to the house." A ben Torah can teach you mussar even during a levaya of a cold-blooded murder of his own mother. To teach you that midat ha-din of Hashem Yitbarach, the omek ha-din, the depth of the judgment, there's no escape from it. There's no escape from it for all of these fools that think that they can escape Hashem. There's a verse in the Torah, there's a verse in the prophet Jeremiah. Prophet Jeremiah tells Am Yisrael what Hashem told him. He says, is there such a person that can hide conceal himself from me when there's a judgment in shamayim. There's nothing that a person can do, and this is a very big mussar for all of those people that cry over spilled milk about the suffering they have in their life and

8:15They lost money so they think, "Oh, if I would have done this, and if I would have bought that, and if I would have gone there, then it wouldn't have happened." That's actually, at the very least, the avak (the dust) of kefirah. That's the beginning of kefirah. That's the beginning of heresy to think that you could have done something to escape the wrath of Hashem. If I had climbed here, and if I had gone over there, it wouldn't have happened. Wrong. Not only wrong, you're starting to be a kofer. Not only is it wrong, you're starting to dig yourself a hole you may not be able to get out of. Because you probably don't know you're in it. If I had called him, and he had called me, maybe we would have gotten married, maybe we would have gotten this. No. No.

9:17If Hashem wants it to happen, it's going to happen. There's no power in the world that can do something if Hashem does not allow it to happen. Of course, we have the power of our prayer, but that prayer is, in essence, supposed to be used in order to change us. When a person prays, he's not convincing God to change. God doesn't change. We learned this even from Bil'am HaRasha. Bil'am HaRasha says, what do you think, Hashem is like a man and He changes His mind? He doesn't change His mind. So this gives us a big problem. Why? So what do we pray for? Why are we praying if Hashem doesn't change His mind? Chazal teach us, We pray because through the prayer, if it's a real prayer, if it's a meaningful prayer, if it's a worthy prayer, that prayer is going to help you do teshuva. Teshuva means you become a new person. The new person doesn't deserve the negative decree that the old person had. So Hashem is not changing His mind. He's just giving the person what he deserves. This new person doesn't deserve the bad decree. That's all.

10:39Old people still deserve it.