In my freshman year of high school my friend Karen, who wasn’t Jewish, watched her parents go through a bitter divorce. She was devastated at first. But I began to notice some differences in Karen. She seemed peaceful—even joyful. I saw that she was carrying a Bible with her schoolbooks and reading it between classes. I asked her what was going on. “Well, now I am a Christian!” I didn’t get it.
Read MoreI wasn’t looking for Jesus or God or anything ontological. I kept my nose to the grindstone. My goal in life was nothing big: I wanted to earn a good living and be able to afford a middle-class lifestyle. But even if I wasn’t looking for Jesus, He was looking for me.
Read MoreWhen I started college and was among people of other cultures, races and religions for the first time, I realized that I was really not so different from them. At age twenty, I married an Orthodox Jewish man. As time went on, I realized that even though I believed in God, I felt very distant from my Creator. Deep down, I knew there was something missing in my life.
Read MoreOne day I told my wife it was ridiculous to believe that God would actually judge people, or that we needed a savior. That night, I dreamed that my favorite radio talk show host—whom I greatly respected—told me, “Oded, read the story of Lot’s wife in the Bible.” When I awoke, I had no idea what it meant, but when I read the passage, it made perfect sense. I saw that God is serious about sin, and about faith and obedience. To this day, my wife and I remember how God loves me so much, He was willing to come to me in a dream disguised as a talk show host to get me to listen!
Read MoreThe most perfect demonstration of God’s love throughout all of history is the offering of the Messiah. So my father read the story, and for the most part he accepted that Jesus was a Jew and that there was good reason for me to be drawn to him. Then he got to the place where it says, “…forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us.” He closed the book and said, “I can’t do this, I can’t.” He looked at me and said, “I would rather go to hell, knowing I could take the Nazis with me, than forgive them.” I said, “Dad, they still win that way.” He said, “I can’t.”
Read MoreI was attending high school at the School of Performing Arts at the time I made the trip to see him. It was very intense work, and I was looking forward to spring break. Since Steve wasn’t coming home for Passover, I would go to him. And now that I knew he was having Passover with Jesus-believing friends, so would I. I kept reminding myself that Jesus is simply not for the Jews!
Read MoreWhen I was 14 my parents split up, and my life began to go “downhill.” To make a long story short, when I was in my 20s I spent a year in prison, and afterward began attending 12-step programs to break the bad behaviors that had landed me there. The 12-step programs talked about a “higher power” which I recognized as a candy-coated way for saying God, or for the Christians, Jesus. As a Jew, I never gave much thought to Jesus. Yet I had a strong urge to live a spiritual life. Many people recognized that and gave me books to read and study. Unknown to me, one such friend passed my name along to Jews for Jesus.
Read MoreI started the conversation with my friend by saying that Christians are so stupid that they could not come up with their own god, so they decided to borrow our Jewish God. I expected some reaction, but all I got was, “We love Jewish people and pray for them”. It was something so new and unexpected. As a result of that encounter, I accepted the invitation to come to their church the following Sunday.
Read MoreFrom early childhood I wanted to know two things: 1) Why do people treat Jewish people differently from Russians and Ukrainians, why nobody loves them and why are they scattered around the world? 2) Why does man die? Does everything end with the coming of death? I asked my parents about it but they said, “This is our Jewish luck, son”. It was not a satisfying answer. A person goes to school, gets education and profession, gets married and buys things, gives birth to children and then dies. This is absurd; it makes no sense. I found no answers to my questions.
Read MoreI grew up in a normal Soviet Jewish family. My parents were atheists and assimilated Jews. They taught me to be a “good person”, to believe in good and justice. And I truly loved all the “high” ideals of humanity. But beginning with the age of 18, when I first faced anti-Semitism in my attempts at entering a university, and then due to some problems in my parents’ family and later in my own family, and finally due to the developments in our country in the 1980-s, my ideals were totally ruined.
Read MoreOn Sunday mornings I went to religious school. My classmates came from various schools in San Jose, so it was fun getting to know kids outside of my immediate social circle. In public school we were always the outsiders—the ones who didn’t celebrate Christmas or Easter. But at Hebrew School my friends and I were a community.
Read MoreI guess that’s why I had little patience for the Christians I was about to meet. Mostly out of curiosity and through the invitation of a new friend, I went to a Christian meeting. I remember being amused that everyone there seemed to project that same euphoric glow. “Didn’t they know what the real world was like? Didn’t they know that there were kids up in Harlem that were being bitten by rats? Didn’t they know that it was people, not prayers, that made a difference?”
Read MoreIn my first semester at the University of Illinois I wound up writing a research paper on why the Jews at the time of Jesus did not believe he was the messiah (and this was for a Jewish professor). I had to examine those passages of the Bible that our rabbis had said spoke of the Messiah. As I read books by Jewish, Christian, and secular authors — all who attempted to explain these passages — my questions seemed to multiply; and so I met with two rabbis and two Christian ministers in town to hear both sides. They each tried to be helpful in their own way.
Read MoreAs a young boy I did not really understand the Holocaust. I just knew Hitler killed my grandparents. I knew that we were Jewish, and that my father had been beaten up when he was my age just because he was Jewish, even by some of his teachers. I used to dream of being an underground hero who would rescue everyone should the Holocaust happen again.
Read More“I took the Bible that they gave me, and that night I plowed through the record of Saint Mark, Saint Mathew, Saint John. I had thought they were all Catholic. I had no idea how Jewish they were!”
Read MoreI was always looking for answers and the question “why” would frequently form on my lips. When I started to study medicine, the question was, “Why all the hurt and the suffering?” In my second year of Medical School, my mother died. This left me with more “why” questions but no answers.
Read MoreFor one and a half years, Yoel and Adel attempted to live a “religious” life. Despite their best efforts, they were disappointed. “I felt I hadn’t found what I was looking for,” says Adel. “Something was wrong. I thought that if I could find a combination of New Age and Judaism, my search would be over.
Read More“Why do you think Yeshua died on the cross at Calvary? And what do you think about the fact that He rose from the dead?” As I struggled to answer these questions, I had a moment of spiritual insight, one of those special times that are outside your own control. I was looking back 2,000 years in history and I saw an empty tomb! I realized that indeed Jesus had risen from the dead!
Read MoreMessage: “Finding Messiah by Delysia McNair”
Read MoreDuring my last year in university, I came across a TV program that focused on prophecy and Jesus’ return, and urged listeners to receive Jesus as their Saviour. My friends and I discussed these shows and as a result, one friend invited me to church. I went with some hesitation. Then I heard the music! It spoke of hope and assurance from God–things I didn’t have. Moreover, the way the congregation sang surprised me–they sang as though they had this hope and assurance.
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