How did an agnostic man become a Messianic Rabbi?

Okay, we should be good to go.

Yeah, we can just kind of start wherever.

Sure.

Well, welcome to Biblically Speaking, Rabbi Michael.

Well, thank you. It's good to be here.

Yeah, I'm so excited to chat with you today. I have so many questions, and just in our pre-conversations, it's very clear that we could talk for hours, so hopefully we can be very efficient in the next 60 minutes, but I'd like to start off these types of podcasts just with allowing you to introduce yourself, give a little bit about your background in the 27 years of ministry, and how you kind of found yourself becoming a messianic rabbi, and just kind of your life story.

We could spend the whole time just talking about that.

How does one grow up as a young boy and then decide one day,.

I'm gonna become a messianic rabbi?

I didn't decide that, the Lord did. Basically, I come from a Jewish family, a Jewish background. And as a boy, I went to an Orthodox yeshiva. A yeshiva's a school where you speak Hebrew for sort of half the day.

You speak English half the day. I went to the yeshiva in kindergarten until the sixth grade, so I could speak Hebrew from the time I was four, as well as I could speak English. My family was a conservative Jewish family.

Again, that's the whole discussion, conservative, Orthodox, Reform Jews. But basically, by the time I was a teenager, I didn't have any faith in God at all. I mean, I knew that I'm a Jew, but I have no faith in God, that he exists, that he's real.

And so, I don't know, this is sort of going into a whole long discussion, but I figured when I was about 12 or 13, that if there is no God, because I didn't believe that God was actually a real thing, then that means that the Bible and the 10 commandments were not actually from God.

They were written by a man. And so, I figured, well, if it's just written by a man, then that means that we have to decide for ourselves what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad. And the only way I can ever know that is I have to try everything for myself.

I have to experience it, and I'll try it. And if it seems good, then it's good. And if it seems bad, then it's bad. You know, maybe something's good for me, but it's not good for you, and so on. So anyway, I could go on and on with that, but ultimately, I became involved

I'm just curious, I'm sorry for interrupting. What did you, if you grew up for 10 years, let's say, and you were a Orthodox Jew, but you didn't believe in God, what were you believing for those 10 years?

Well, first, I think that for anyone, when you're a child, up until you're maybe like 13 or 14 years old, you're not really thinking for yourself when it comes to faith. In other words, you're in a family, and this is who we are, this is what we do.

So that here is God. Now, the thing is, for me, I've always had, you know, all of my life, even now, it's the beach impediment. So as a child with a beach impediment, I would pray to God for help, because, you know, I would be sort of, you know, I'd be teased by kids in school and all that, and there was never any answer.

So as I grew up and was able to think for myself, I just basically said, you know what? I don't really believe in God, even though this is what we've been taught. In other words, I went to synagogue every Saturday, at least once on Saturday, and, you know, I wore a kippah like I'm wearing now, and sit-sits, the little fringes we have, and I went through all the rituals and all the motions.

But aside from that, when I would call out to God, there was nothing there. I would never get an answer. I'd never see anything happen. And the thing is, for me, from the time I was very, very young, I always knew that there was a supernatural realm that existed.

In other words, I didn't really believe in God, but I knew that there's a lot more that exists than what we physically see with our eyes and what we can touch. So basically, I became involved in the occult.

I was following after Edgar Cayce, who was a medium who would have seances and so on. I did what's called astral projection for a while, and I was a Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist for 16 years. And I actually came to faith in Christ from that.

That's how I came to faith in Christ, was out of Buddhism.

I see what you meant now, that this could be a whole hour.

This is a long discussion. At least.

Oh my gosh. So you grew up Orthodox Jew, didn't feel a thing, decided to find out for yourself what you wanted to believe, and tried everything, found yourself in the occult, and through that found God.

Well, not specifically through the occult, but you see, my whole life basically was a search for a truth. In other words, from the time I was young and little, I just always had a knowing in my heart.

It's like, why do we exist? Why are we here? What's the meaning of life? Is there any purpose to this, or is it all just some big accident?

Which is a huge undertaking.

So one of the reasons why I became involved in the occult and Eastern mysticism, Eastern religions, basically I was seeking answers. It's like, I'll look anywhere. I mean, I'll try anything. I also, by the way, and this is in the 70s, I graduated high school in 73, was in college in the mid 70s.

Basically I got involved in like drugs, a lot of drugs. I mean, I did a lot of cocaine and LSD, and I did some heroin. And the thing that was interesting is that I was doing all those things not to escape from reality.

In other words, I wasn't doing drugs as an escape. I wanted to find answers. In other words, like way back then, people thought that if we do LSD, that's gonna expand our mind and we're gonna understand God in a bigger way.

Although the thing that's interesting is that even as a Buddhist, I was always what I sort of considered myself a Jubu. In other words, even though I was a Buddhist, I'm Jewish. In other words, I don't believe in God, but I am Jewish.

I'm a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If there's another Holocaust, whether I'm a Buddhist or not, I get put onto the train. In other words, so I kind of considered myself for years a Jubu. You know, it's like I was a Jew who was like practicing Buddhism.

Wow, that was an amazing story. Could you kind of walk me through? Because I feel like the search for answers is an honest living. And I think that's ultimately what we're all doing throughout our life, whether it's through achievement or creating a family or through finding God.

But could you, I mean, I wanna get into some of the questions, but what was that bridge from the occult, which I mean, what level of the occult are we talking? Like medium, talking to the dead, very demonic rituals, like how deep was it?

And then from there you jumped over to Orthodox Jew. What was that bridge?

Well, first of all, as far as the Orthodox Jew thing, again, that was when I was a kid. I grew up in that. That's what I was taught. That's what I lived. But once I was old enough to really decide for myself, the thing that's interesting, like with any faith, not just in Judaism, I was constantly confronted with the hypocrisies of the faiths and the religions.

In other words, for example, as a child, I would go to school, which was an Orthodox yeshiva and were taught, you're supposed to keep kosher, you're not allowed to eat pork. The Bible says this, and you're not supposed to turn on a light on Saturday.

You're not supposed to ride in the car. Well, just in other words, you're not supposed to work on Shabbat. You're not supposed to do any kind of work. So the thing is, though, is my family was not Orthodox.

They were conservative, which is not quite Orthodox, almost Orthodox, but not quite. So the kind of things that would happen as I was growing up and why I ended up getting into these different places is that we kept kosher at home.

In other words, in our home, we could only eat kosher food. We had separate plates for meat and separate plates for dairy and separate silverware for meat and dairy and separate plates for meat and dairy only on Passover because you're not allowed to have any breadcrumbs or whatever.

But what happened, so we kept absolutely kosher at home, but if we'd go out for dinner, like mom would order a bacon cheeseburger. And I'm like, well, wait a minute. I was just a kid, but it's like, I'm being taught in school.

You're not supposed to mix like milk and meat. You're not supposed to eat pork. So it's like, how can, why do we do this in the house? But when we go out to eat, we have a bacon cheeseburger. And my mom, who is a really wonderful lady, but my mom would just basically like, oh, in the house, we don't do this in the house, but when you're outside.

But I'm like, well, wait a minute. If you're eating the food, isn't the bacon cheeseburger going in your stomach? What are you doing in the house? And so I basically, as I became older, I just kind of, I didn't really believe in any of it because I saw so much hypocrisy in the part of, all the like rules and things that you have to do and are supposed to do.

And then the way that we bend those rules, you see that in the church as well in so many ways. So as far as though the occultic stuff, I went to a college prep school in a New York City area. There was a very academically advanced school.

Like everybody who went there, except for me, actually, I'm the only one, but everybody goes to Harvard, Yale, or to Princeton. It's like, and what happens though, is being this academically forward school, one of the classes that I had at school was comparative religions.

So in class, we studied Hinduism and we studied Taoism, we studied Buddhism. So that's how I first got exposed to this. I was also a member of a metaphysical society at school, which is how I got exposed to the seances and so on.

Now, I was never a Satan worshiper. In other words, I wasn't like, I didn't sacrifice animals or nothing. I was always seeking, I want... As a matter of fact, the thing that's interesting, like Buddhism or everything, it wasn't evil.

It's like, we want like peace and love and happiness and everybody to be happy together. But as the thing that happens though, is that Satan, and actually just interestingly, as you say that, the word or the name Satan in Hebrew, the word is Satan.

Satan is what we call Satan. The word Satan means the accuser. That's basically what that name means. But he masquerades as an angel of light. So in other words, you don't have to be doing like Satan worshiping and sort of killing animals and sacrificing.

There's certainly an aspect to it of that, but even things that like masquerade as light can still be inspired by Satan as a lot of the Eastern mysticism and so on is.

When you say light, I immediately think of like, I don't know, I don't wanna get any hate for this, but like I think of like yoga and like that feel good, higher self. Like that's what I think of when you say light, but what are you referring to?

Well, Satan, I mean, this is, we're gonna go off in a whole other direction here, but Satan and demonic things are very, very real. What Satan wants to do is to keep people from finding a relationship with God.

Or if you find a relationship with God, he wants to keep you from being victorious in it. In other words, he wants to keep you like trapped. So the thing is what happens, for example, is a lot of people think that anything supernatural must be from God, or when something supernatural happens, that's not evil.

That must be sort of God who's doing it. So what happened is as a Buddhist, for example, I used to have an altar in my house, this great big wooden altar with a great big box and a Sanskrit scroll inside the box.

And I used to sit for hours and I would like chant Sanskrit prayers to a Sanskrit scroll in this box, hitting a gong and burning incense. And the thing is, is that doing that, I had quite a lot of supernatural experiences that for me were exciting or were good.

I mean, I found myself one time being in a place where I was like sitting on top of a mountain in a white robe, seeing just like oceans and mountains. And the thing is though, is that when I say that, that Satan masquerades as an angel of light, the best way I, when I was a Buddhist, we used to chant and people, what you would chant for things and you would get them.

For example, I know it's gonna sound silly, but I lived in the New York City area. It's really hard to get a parking space on the street. So I'd be like driving my car and I need to park my car and I would chant and all of a sudden the car would pull out right in front of where I was going.

See that? Cause I'm in tune with the sound and the vibration of the universe. That's what I believe.

Would this be manifestation?

Well, manifestation is anything.

I mean, like the way that it's used today where people like, I don't wanna, like I don't know how to manifest, but you know, where you like speak it into existence.

That's not, no, that's not what I'm speaking about here. That could be something different. Thing is, is what happened, my experience in Buddhism. Now, again, we were, I was involved in Broadway theater.

I was working in Broadway theater and the show, A Chorus Line, I don't know if you're familiar with that show. A Chorus Line back in the seventies at the time was the most famous Broadway show that had ever happened.

It was like the biggest Broadway hit ever. And it completely changed theater and film in terms of being, you know, introspective as opposed to being shows, you know, that were just like funny and sing-songy.

It was about, you know, our lives and introspection. And what happened was A Chorus Line actually was our Buddhist group. It was all out of work actors and actresses and people in theater and people who were waiters and waitresses.

And we were all in the same Buddhist group. And, you know, we would sit around in our Buddhist group and, you know, like talk about, you know, sort of how messed up our lives were. And then, you know, we had people in our Buddhist group who also were very, well, they were all actors and actresses.

We ended up, you know, doing a workshop off of Broadway and the show become one of the most famous shows ever. And it was basically like Buddhism on Broadway, even though people didn't, weren't aware of it.

But what happens, and the reason I'm saying all this is that the best way I can describe it for me, it was like, you know, sort of the genie in a bottle, the idea of the genie. It's like, you can have three wishes and a person says, well, I wish I could have a million dollars.

And then their, you know, like friend dies in a car accident and there's a million dollars left to the person. So they get the million dollars, but it's like, that wasn't what, they didn't want their friend to die.

Well, the thing about like Buddhism and chanting was that in fact, it's very, very powerful, but it's not of God. So it's like, whatever I would chant for, I would get. If it was success or a parking space or a girlfriend or whatever it might be, I'd chant and I'd get it, but nothing was ever blessed.

Everything was always cursed. In other words, one of the things is in Christ, in God, what happens is when he blesses you with something, it's blessed. But when I talk about like Satan being an angel of light, it's like on one hand, just for example, and going back to this, the people I worked with on Broadway were the first group of people to die from AIDS.

In other words, there was no AIDS before that. That's when AIDS happened. Now I was not homosexual, thank goodness, because if I was, I would be dead now. But all the people that I worked with in theater, that was the first group of people who ended up with AIDS and they all ended up dying.

So it's kind of like, you pray to have a big, broad family, and then you're on a Broadway show and you're the most successful Broadway show ever and you're famous and you've got money or whatever, and then everybody dies.

So now that, in things that God, so the reason why I said that it's an angel, that Satan is an angel masquerading as light, is that it seems like this is all good and beautiful and nice and wonderful, but it's actually, it's cursed, it's not blessed.

In other words, people who do it for years and years and years, you don't have long-term, you don't have joy and a fulfilled life and a wonderful family, and it's all people who end up in sort of a train wreck.

So anyway, as we sort of went off in a

No, that was a beautiful story.

Thank you for telling me that.

I mean, I, okay, so that's an amazing story, but still, I mean, we know each other because you are the messianic rabbi for Zion City in Arizona, which I used to live in Arizona, my sister goes there, that's how we know each other.

How did you end up there? I mean, what was the turning point where you felt like God was calling you to do that? Because I think that's a pretty monumental moment in someone's life, especially with you trying to find answers.

And looking everywhere else.

How loud was that calling that pulled you out of that and into the, I don't wanna say priesthood, I keep wanting to, but into becoming a rabbi.

Are you thinking about from the start or just the last, this move to this church?

I would say no longer a jubu, now a rabbi.

Okay, well, actually, I won't go to the way that I came to faith because that again, it's a very involved story. It's a pretty amazing supernatural story. But what happened is both my wife and I came to faith in Christ.

We had an encounter with Jesus on April 24th, 1991. And I was 35 years old at the time. I was working in like video. I went to NYU film school and I was involved, it seems like a long time ago, but in the early 90s, when they were still trying to get like video onto a computer, I was involved in the integration of the video and computers.

And I worked a lot as a consultant to Apple and Sony and Pioneer. And in fact, that's how I came, when I said that's how I came to faith, it was through that, that some people led us to the Lord. So what happens is we have this like radical, radical encounter with God, both my wife and I at the same time.

Well, if I tell that story, I won't answer your question. If I got to Arizona, I can explain that to you.

I think it's important to know what pulled you out and like pulled you fully into Christ. I would love to hear that story.

Okay, well, a couple of things that I would say, and I'm gonna like sort of back it up a little bit when I say back it up, because now I know now, you can see things later that you don't see when they were happening.

But what happened was, and I know from the Lord that this had everything to do with everything. When I was about eight years old, little boy, eight years old, I was really miserable because of my beach impediment and kids were teasing me and I was like walking around the block where we lived in Jersey.

And I'm calling out to God and I'm just going, God, are you even there? Do you even exist? And then I said, you know, Jesus, I don't even know who you are. You're those other people's God. Are you there?

Do you exist? And I know now when you're here at the circus, I was 35 when we actually came to faith. But when I called out to God at eight years old, when I called out to Jesus at eight years old, he began the whole process that sort of culminated when I was 35.

That's why, by the way, just in general, for anyone, Jew or Gentile, if you call out to God and ask him to reveal himself to you in some way or whatever, he will. It may take a week, it may take months, it may take years, but God answers those prayers.

And so when I was eight, I said, hey, Jesus, I don't even know who you are, but if you're out there, will you show me? So in any event, I'm going through, you sort of heard I was involved in theater. Now, what happened was that I'd gone to NYU film school, wanted to work in film, ended up working at Broadway by accident because I was involved in this Buddhist thing.

And I always thought that if I could be in show business, if I could, you know, I wanna be a film director, I wanna be in show business, that's gonna make me happy. And the thing is, is the years I spent in theater, I was like miserable because everybody who I worked with, first of all, well, people were sexually all over the map and unhappy.

But everybody I met, they were either alcoholics or they were doing drugs. In other words, the more fame, the more notoriety, the more you got, the more people just went off the deep end and even got to the place where we would, you know, isolate ourselves because it seemed like somebody always wanted something from us.

And so you just sort of back up. So what happened was after a bunch of years working in theater, the guy that I worked for, his name was Michael Bennett. Michael Bennett won, I don't know, like sort of 20 Tony Awards.

In other words, he's a big, famous film director who, not film director, theater director, choreographer, producer, who actually ended up dying from AIDS not very long after. But what happened was when I was really young, he said to me, you remind me of me when I was your age, when I was like 18 or 19 first getting involved with us.

And that way at the time, it's like, well, you know, Michael Bennett says I'm like him. By the time I worked with him for a while, I'm like, oh my God, if I'm like him, I'm gonna turn out like that. So basically I got out of theater.

I left theater. I just, you know, like walked away from it because in the back of my mind, I always wanted to have a wife and, you know, a family. I just wanted a normal life. So I haven't figured out how to do that one, but I wanted a normal life.

And so I left theater and I went into business with my dad because I basically, I wasn't really interested in the business that he was doing, sort of selling hardware and this or that, but I would be an owner.

And so I'd make a lot of money. And I started my own division of that company selling access control systems and sold them to, you know, S &P and to like W .R. Grace and American Express and made a ton of money and bought a 40 foot yacht.

You know, we would sort of go on, on, you know, like trips up to, you know, up to Cape Cod every summer with my wife. And, you know, like I drove expensive cars, you know, like BMWs. I had every new gadget.

I had the first big screen television that had ever been invented in Advent. I had, you know, like laser discs. I had every new thing. Cause I just kept thinking, okay, if I can like buy stuff, that's going to make me happy.

If I make a lot of money and can just buy everything I want, that's going to make me happy. But no matter how much stuff I bought, I was just always like miserable. It's like, you know, you would sort of buy something and then think, okay, what am I going to do next?

Well, you know, I need to get this. And I was just buying stuff. And I waited until I was, you know, like 29 years old. I married my wife, Nancy. And what happened that was even there after six years of our marriage, the marriage was basically falling apart.

We didn't really fight. We didn't argue with each other, but I was off over here, you know, working in this computer stuff and the video stuff. She's selling real estate and we didn't really argue or fight.

I think for that we had to wait until after we had gotten saved. But for then it was just kind of like, you know, I'd ask her, has the dog been walked? You know, have you emptied out our garbage?

That kind of thing.

And what happened that was I became so despondent because I waited for the right person to marry and that was Nancy. And yet if it's not going to work with her, it's not working with her, it won't work with anybody.

In other words, nothing works. I had fame in theater. I had like money in our own company, which we ended up selling because I really hated it. I got out of that. And even like marriage, I married the right person and even that doesn't work.

So I would just like lay in bed and stare at the ceiling and just think, I just want to die. I just want to die. It's like, there's no point to life. There's no purpose in life. There's no meaning in life.

Now I would never kill myself because as a Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist, I believe in reincarnation. So I thought, in other words, basically, if I shot myself, I'm just going to come back, but it's going to be worse the next time around because of what I had just done.

In other words, we have our karma is all the stuff that builds up. So I wanted to die, but I couldn't kill myself. And now right about this point in time, I get a telephone call on a Saturday. Now this all takes place in a week.

I get a telephone call on a Saturday from these two people from Sweden. I'm out East in Jersey. These people are from Sweden. They're in Vegas at the NAB show, National Association of Broadcasters. And they want to buy this very involved like video animation, audio pro tools kind of system.

And all the booths that they're going to in Las Vegas at the NAB show, they go to Apple and they go to Sony and they go to Pioneer and Panasonic. And they all say, oh, one of the only people we know who can really put this all together for you is Michael LaPoff out in New Jersey.

So they call me up and they say, we're in Vegas. Can we fly out tonight? That was on a Saturday. Can we fly out? You know, we want to buy all this stuff. And I said, you know, that's a lot of money. You're talking about, you know, we have the funds.

We can get the money like wired to you. Okay, come on out. So these people fly out from Las Vegas to New Jersey and I go to pick them up and they're staying at a hotel in the middle of nowhere. And I go to get them.

And when I first meet them, the guy hands me a book and his wife hands me a cassette tape, you know, like dub, dub, dub, dub, dub, dub, dub, what if, you know, Christ is going to set me free. And they start talking to me about like, Jesus.

I just go, oh no, they're born again Christians. And I mean, they're telling me, it's like, they're saying to me, you know, the reason we're here is that God, God told us to buy all this equipment to make videos about Jesus Christ ascended to the Soviet Union.

And I'm there listening to this and I'm going, you know what, if God sent you, then we're going to make sure to sell God a very bad, it's like, you know, we're going to, don't worry. We're going to make sure that, you know, we don't want to shortchange God.

We're going to give them the best. So they kept talking about Jesus. And I said, I'm Jewish, I'm Jewish. You know, we don't believe in Jesus. I'm Jewish. They go, no, you know, he's your Messiah. You know, like Jesus is Jewish.

And yeah, Jesus is alive and he wants to know you. And I said to them, you know, Jesus was a Jew. He was a teacher, but you know, Jesus is not alive. He's dead. If Jesus is alive, where is he? Show him to me.

Where you say he's alive, where is he? Well, they keep talking about Jesus and I take them, you know, we spend the afternoon, you know, like beginning to work out this plan for what they want to buy. And I got to bring them back to our hotel and there's nowhere for them to eat there.

There's, I mean, they're in the middle of like a highway in the middle of that work. So I bring them home for dinner and I bring them home and here's my wife and they're talking about Jesus and talking about Jesus.

And they're telling me all of these, like, you know, one miracle after another, you know, we would pray to God, you know, that we wanted to share Christ with the sort of King of Saudi Arabia. And we got on a plane and then we met the kid and I'd say, well, I chanted and I wanted to work for Stanley Kubrick.

And the next day I met his sister at a supermarket.

And got in contact.

In other words, basically every miracle, you know, we had a miracle. Well, I have a miracle as Buddhists. Well, I have a miracle. We have miracles as Buddhists. But they just kept talking about Jesus and they kept saying, he's alive and he wants to know you.

And he's the Jewish Messiah. He's your Messiah. Well, we have dinner with them and we take them back to their hotel. And on the way home from the hotel, this is now Sunday night, my wife says to me, you know, something about those people was just really special or different.

I mean, I've never met anyone like that before. And I turned to her in our car, this is on Sunday evening. And I said to her, Nancy, don't you dare become a born again Christian or our marriage is over.

That's the end of it. It's finished. That was on Sunday night. So I'm with these people on Monday and we're working all day, trying to put together this equipment. They're buying about 40, $50 ,000 worth of stuff.

And they keep talking about Jesus. And I wanted to get into an argument with them about abortion. So I would start talking about abortion and they would talk about Jesus. And I tried to talk to them about homosexuality and I talk about homosexuality.

And they would talk about Jesus. And no matter what I said, they just say, you know, like Jesus is alive. You know, Jesus wants to know you. He's the Messiah. He's the Jewish Messiah. On Tuesday, I'm with them all day and I drive them back to their hotel.

We're in my car and they say to us, would it be okay for us to pray for you? Well, you know, you're spending $50 ,000. If you want to pray, go right ahead and pray. I mean, you know, you can wave banners, do whatever you want.

So we're in my car, I'm in the front seat of the driver's seat. They lay their hands on me and start to pray in tongues. Now, just for whatever it's worth, I didn't know what that was they were doing, praying in tongues.

But I have to say, I've been chanting in Sanskrit for 16 years. So it's kind of like, I didn't know what that was, but it's like, you know, it wasn't any stranger than what I was doing for the last however long.

But while they were praying for me, a fire started, like ignited in my heart. It felt as if somebody had like sort of had a torch and, you know, turned it on. And my heart just started burning and burning and burning and burning inside of me.

And when they got done praying, I said something about, you know, the necessary heat or the fire. They didn't know what I was talking about. But from that moment on, on Tuesday, whenever I was alone, when nobody was around who could hear a word that I was gonna say, I would call out and I would say, Jesus, if you're the Messiah of the Jewish people, and if you are alive, and if you want to know me, then you show yourself to me.

Because I've always sought the truth. I've always wanted to know the truth. And if you heard who they say they are, you show, they say that you're alive, show yourself to me. Well, I prayed this on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday.

I'm sort of shortening this a little bit, but they were leaving to go back to Sweden on Friday morning. We were all done. We had the whole thing together. And I was at home Thursday evening alone. And I was in our bedroom.

I knelt down at the side of the bed. And I just said, Jesus, if you are the Messiah, and if you're alive and you want to know me, then you show yourself to me now. Because these people are leaving tomorrow for Sweden.

And I've never heard anyone say the things about you that I've heard them say. And once they're gone, we're done. It's all over, that's the end of it. I got up and I walked over to a mirror in our room.

Now, what I'm going to describe or explain here is what I saw. It's not, it wasn't actually on me. It's what I saw with my eyes. I stood there looking at myself in the mirror. And first I had a scar that went down the right side of my cheek.

And the scar opened and like blood and almost like pus started coming out of it. My skin began to turn black. My eyes turned black. Then it was like my skin became as if it had scales. And it grew cold and dark and empty.

And it was horrifying. And I stood there going, this is not Jesus. This is not Jesus. This is not Jesus. And it kept getting blacker and worse and more horrifying. Now, the thing, it was so dark. And when you see a horror movie, in a horror movie, even though the evil creature is like really ugly, but it's alive.

This was ugly, but it was like empty, cold. And I stood there, I'm just going, this isn't Jesus. This is not Jesus. And after about 20 minutes, it kept getting worse and worse. The telephone rang and I went and answered the phone and it was Annette from the couple from Sweden.