“It is strange to be jealous over a God that you refuse to acknowledge exists.”
I was born in Israel and grew up in Kibbutz Adamit, a small commune-type village in the Galilee. While I was born a Jew, I never thought much of the God of Israel. I was raised with many socialistic ideas, which included the Marxist view that “religion is the opium of the masses.” That is, the rich invented God and religion to keep the poor happy being poor, while the rich took advantage of them.
I managed to keep that view through my life’s many changes, including moving to the US and becoming a student at UC Berkeley. It was there that I met a Christian girl named Sharyn, who would eventually become my wife. As I tried to deepen the relationship, I became aware that Sharyn had a very different way of life. I decided that it would be prudent to find out more about this life and visit her church.
Provoked by jealousy
What I did not expect was the jealousy that hit me as I saw these Gentiles studying the book that God gave to my people. I knew about the Bible, or at least the Old Testament. We used it as one of our history textbooks in my school in Israel. Yet it was just a textbook to us—dry and uninteresting. These Christians somehow were getting something else from it. They saw God in every page and applied His words to their everyday lives. They had a relationship with Him.
It is strange to be jealous over a God that you refuse to acknowledge exists. Yet, somehow, that jealousy drove me to seek after Him. I was like a child that is interested in an unused toy only when someone else picks it up. Was I missing out on something that should be mine? While part of me wanted what these people had, the other part kept insisting that God could not possibly exist. Yet, as I began considering my objections more seriously, I started realizing that they didn’t hold water.
I remember when my last two arguments finally fell apart in the face of a single verse from the Bible. It was as if a barrier were removed from blocking my view of the real world. Suddenly, I could somehow sense the reality of God.
Challenged by desire
It was then that I started seeking God in earnest. I could sense that He was there, but I did not yet know Him. I started praying that He would reveal Himself and His will to me. It was then that Rick, an elder from Sharyn’s church, offered to meet with me and share with me from the Scriptures. He mainly used the Old Testament, a book that, with my Jewish background and newly found faith in the existence of God, I was now willing to accept as being the Word of God.
He first asked me to read Isaiah 53. He asked me who it sounded like. I had to admit that the description fit what I had heard of Jesus. Yet, since my youth, I had heard the name Jesus associated with anti-Semitism and the persecution of my people. I also knew that accepting Jesus as the Messiah would be betraying the position my people had held to for centuries. I would be considered a traitor.
Rick then asked me to turn to Daniel Chapter 9. He showed me how the math of the seventy weeks prophecy pointed to the time when Jesus was born. While the timeline was important, my attention was arrested by something else. I was looking at the Hebrew text itself: “the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing.” (v.?26, NASB)
To this day, the Jewish concept of the Messiah is that he will be someone who will bring peace and prosperity. He is supposed to be a triumphant figure—certainly not someone who would be nailed to a cross. To me, this was the strongest argument against Jesus as Messiah. Why would God let His champion be killed? It made no sense. Yet here it was black on white in my Hebrew Bible: God said the Messiah would die. At this point, I realized that I was losing the battle. Jesus would turn out to be the Messiah. God would require me to believe in Him. I would become a traitor.
As my conviction that Jesus was the Messiah grew, I accepted an invitation by David, a Jews for Jesus missionary, to a Bible study. We were studying the third chapter of Romans and I was grappling with the meaning of verse 25: “whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God.” I couldn’t make heads or tails of this verse. I thought that I was so smart that, given enough time, I could figure anything out. Yet all I was getting out of this verse was a headache. I remember leaning back in my chair in resignation.
Conquered by love
I believe God was waiting for me to do exactly that—give up on thinking I could do it by myself—before He gave me an understanding of the gospel. It was as if I were in a courtroom. I was the accused and God was the judge. Before Him lay a book of my life. I knew at that moment, perhaps for the first time in my life, that I was guilty, and my heart sank within me. But then someone from the back of the courtroom said, “I am willing to accept the penalty for this man’s sin.” I was amazed at the offer and looked at the judge to see if it would be accepted, but he just looked back at me, waiting to see my reaction.
Then, it hit me: Jesus was not forcing Himself upon me. He was offering to forgive my sins. Was I willing to accept what He did on my behalf? With that understanding, peace, joy, and love flooded my soul: peace and joy in knowing that God had saved me, and love for Jesus for what He had done for me.
How my life changed! I remember making fun of Christians in my fraternity house for their belief that God created life. After being saved for a year, I started a Bible study in that same fraternity house. Several people were saved as a result of the study, and it wasn’t long before I started experiencing the same type of persecution I once inflicted on others.
People often ask me how my family reacted to the news of my becoming a Christian. I was perhaps blessed by being raised in a very secular family. As a result, they didn’t disown me for becoming a Christian, as often happens in orthodox Jewish families. My family was hoping that this was a phase that I would eventually grow out of. I guess the phase lasted a bit longer than they expected—I have been a believer for 12 years now.
About a year after I was saved, I went on a short term mission with Jews for Jesus to New York. Jews for Jesus believes in making the Messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue for the Jews. Our literature and other evangelistic strategies target mainly the large Jewish community in New York. However, typically we have found that ten Gentiles are reached for every Jew that responds to the gospel invitation.
This showed me the truth of the Bible verse: “blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in” (Rom. 11:25). I rejoice that God is faithful in preserving a remnant of Israel, as He did in the days of Elijah. Yet I see that God is still bringing in the fullness of the Gentiles. They need to be saved no less than the Jews. I want to go or stay wherever God desires.
Presently, I am serving as a deacon in Calvary Bible Chapel, Fremont, California. I seek to use the gifts God has given me in preaching, teaching, and reaching out to my neighbors and the local community. God has given Sharyn and me three wonderful children: Ellianna, Nessya, and Joseph. Our hearts’ desire is to be used by God for His glory.