How did an agnostic man become a Messianic Rabbi?

Biblically Speaking

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Okay, we should be good to go. Yeah, we can just kind of start wherever.

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Sure. Well, welcome to Biblically Speaking, Rabbi Michael. Well, thank you, it's good to be here.

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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.

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We could spend the whole time just talking about that. How does one grow up as a young boy and then decide one day,

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I'm gonna become a messianic rabbi? I didn't decide that, the Lord did, basically. I come from a

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Jewish family, a Jewish background. And as a boy, I went to an Orthodox yeshiva.

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A yeshiva is a school where you speak Hebrew for sort of half the day, you speak

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English half the day. I went to the yeshiva in kindergarten until the sixth grade so I could speak

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Hebrew from the time I was four as well as I could speak English. My family was a conservative

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Jewish family. Again, that's the whole discussion, conservative, Orthodox, Reform Jews. But basically, by the time

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I was a teenager, I didn't have any faith in God at all. I mean, I knew that I'm a

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Jew but I have no faith in God, that he exists, that he's real. And so,

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I don't know, this is sort of going into a whole long discussion but I figured when

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I was about like 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

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Bible and the 10 commandments were not actually from God, they were written by a man.

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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

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Orthodox Jew but you didn't believe in God, what were you believing for those 10 years? Well, first,

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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.

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In other words, you're in a family and this is who we are, this is what we do, so that here is

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God. Now, the thing is, for me, I've always had, you know, all of my life, even now, it's the beach impediment.

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So as a child with a beach impediment, I would pray to God for help because, you know,

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I would be sort of, you know, I'd be teased by kids in school and all that and there was never any answer.

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So as I grew up and was able to think for myself, I just basically said, you know what?

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I don't really believe in God even though this is what we've been taught. In other words, I went to synagogue every

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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.

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But aside from that, when I would call out to God, there was nothing there.

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I would never get an answer. I'd never see anything happen. And the thing is, for me, from the time

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I was very, very young, I always knew that there was a supernatural realm that existed. In other words,

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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.

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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.

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I did what's called astral projection for a while and I was a

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Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist for 16 years. And I actually came to faith in Christ from that.

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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.

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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

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God. Well, not specifically through the occult, but you see, my whole life basically was a search for a truth.

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In other words, from the time I was young and little, I just always had a knowing in my heart.

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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?

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Which is a huge undertaking. So one of the reasons why I became involved in the occult and Eastern mysticism,

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Eastern religions, basically I was seeking answers.

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It's like, I'll look anywhere. I mean, I'll try anything. I also, by the way, and this is in the seventies,

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I graduated high school in 73, was in college in the mid seventies.

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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.

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And the thing that was interesting is that I was doing all those things not to escape from reality.

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In other words, I wasn't doing drugs as an escape. I wanted to find answers.

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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

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God in a bigger way. Although the thing that's interesting is that even as a

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Buddhist, I was always what, I sort of considered myself a Jew -boo. In other words, even though I was a

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Buddhist, I'm Jewish. In other words, I don't believe in God, but I am

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Jewish. I'm a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If there's another Holocaust, whether I'm a

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Buddhist or not, I get put onto the train. In other words, so I kind of considered myself for years a

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Jew -boo. You know, it's like I was a Jew who was like practicing Buddhism. Wow, that was an amazing story.

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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

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God. But could you, I mean, I wanna get into some of the questions, but what was that bridge from the occult, which,

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I mean, what level of the occult are we talking? Like medium, talking to the dead, very demonic rituals, like how deep was it?

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And then from there you jumped over to Orthodox Jew. What was that bridge? Well, first of all, as far as the

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Orthodox Jew thing, again, that was when I was a kid. I grew up in that.

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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.

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In other words, for example, as a child, I would go to school, which was an Orthodox yeshiva.

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And we're 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.

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You're not supposed to ride in the car. Well, just in other words, you're not supposed to like work on Shabbat. You're not supposed to do any kind of work.

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So the thing is though, is my family was not Orthodox. They were conservative, which is like not quite

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Orthodox, almost Orthodox, but not quite. So the kind of things that would happen as I was growing up and why

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I ended up getting into these different places is that we kept kosher at home.

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In other words, in our home, we could only eat sort of kosher food. We had separate plates for like 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 like breadcrumbs or whatever, but what happened, so we kept absolutely kosher at home.

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But if we'd go out for dinner, like mom would order a bacon cheeseburger. And I'm like, well, wait a minute.

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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.

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You're not supposed to eat pork. So it's like, how can, why do we do this in the house?

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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.

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But I'm like, well, wait a minute, if you're eating the food, isn't the bacon cheeseburger going in your stomach, whether you're doing it in the house.

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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.

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And then the way that we bend those rules, you see that in the church as well in so many ways.

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So as far as though the occultic stuff, I went to a college prep school in a

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New York City area. There was a very academically advanced school.

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Like everybody who went there, except for me, actually, I'm not, I wasn't the only one, but everybody goes to Harvard, Yale, or to Princeton.

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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.

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So in class, we studied Hinduism and we studied Taoism, we studied Buddhism. So that's how

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I first got exposed to this. I was also a member of a metaphysical society at school, which is how

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I got exposed to the seances and so on. Now, I was never a

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Satan worshiper. In other words, I wasn't like, I didn't sacrifice animals or nothing.

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I was always seeking, I want, as a matter of fact, the thing that's interesting, like Buddhism or everything, it wasn't evil.

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It's like, we want like peace and love and happiness and everybody to be happy together.

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But as the thing that happens though is that Satan, and actually just interestingly, as you say that the word or the name

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Satan, in Hebrew, the word is Satan. Satan is what we call

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Satan. The word Satan means the accuser. That's basically what that name means.

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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.

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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

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Eastern mysticism and so on is. When you say light, I immediately think of like,

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I don't know, I don't want to get any hate for this, but like I think of like yoga and like that feel good, higher self, like that's what

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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.

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What Satan wants to do is to keep people from finding a relationship with God.

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Or if you find a relationship with God, he wants to keep you from being victorious in it.

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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.

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That must be sort of God who's doing it. So what happened is as a Buddhist, for example,

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I used to have an altar in my house, this great big wooden altar with a great big box and a

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Sanskrit scroll inside the box. And I used to sit for hours and I would like chant

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Sanskrit prayers to a Sanskrit scroll in this box, hitting a gong and burning incense.

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And the thing is, is that doing that, I had quite a lot of supernatural experiences that for me were exciting or were good.

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I mean, I found myself one time being in a place or where I was like sitting on top of a mountain in a white robe, seeing just like oceans and mountains.

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And the thing is though, is that when I say that Satan masquerades as an angel of light, the best way

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I, when I was a Buddhist, we used to chant and people, what you would chant for things and you would, you know,

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I'd get them. For example, I know it's gonna sound silly, but I lived in the New York City area.

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It's really hard to get a parking space on the street. So I'd be like, you know, driving my car and I need to park my car.

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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.

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That's what I believe. Would this be manifestation? Well, manifestation is anything.

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I mean like the way that it's used today where people like, I don't wanna, like,

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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

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I'm speaking about here. That could be something different. Thing is, is what happened, my experience in Buddhism.

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Now, again, we were, I was involved in Broadway theater.

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I was working in Broadway theater and the show, A Chorus Line. I don't know if you're familiar with that show.

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A Chorus Line back in the seventies at the time was the most famous Broadway show that had ever happened.

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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 thing songy.

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It was about, you know, our lives and introspection. And what happened was A Chorus Line actually was our

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Buddhist group. It was all out of work actors and actresses and people in theater and people who were waiters and waitresses.

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And we were all in the same Buddhist group. And, you know, we would sit around in our

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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

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Buddhist group who also were very, well, they were all actors and actresses.

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We ended up, you know, doing a workshop off of Broadway and the show become one of the most famous shows ever.

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And it was basically like Buddhism on Broadway, even though people weren't aware of it.

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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,

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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.

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So they get the million dollars, but it's like, that wasn't what they didn't want, their friend to die.

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Well, the thing about like Buddhism and chanting was that in fact, it's very, very powerful, but it's not of God.

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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,

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I'd chant and I'd get it, but nothing was ever blessed. Everything was always cursed.

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In other words, one of the things is in Christ, in God, what happens is when he blesses you with something, it's blessed.

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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

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I worked with on Broadway were the first group of people to die from AIDS.

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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,

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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.

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So it's kind of like, you pray to have a big, broad family, and then you're on a

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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.

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So now that in things that God, so the reason why

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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.

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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.

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And it's all people who end up in sort of a train wreck. So anyway, as we'd sort of went off in a -

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No, that was a beautiful story. Thank you for telling me that. I mean, I, okay, so that's an amazing story, but still,

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I mean, we know each other because you are the messianic rabbi for Zion City in Arizona, which

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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?

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Because I think that's a pretty monumental moment in someone's life, especially with you trying to find answers and looking everywhere else.

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

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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.

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Okay, well, actually, I won't go to the way that I came to faith because that again, it's a very involved story.

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It's a pretty amazing supernatural story. But what happened is both my wife and I came to faith in Christ.

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We had an encounter with Jesus on April 24th, 1991.

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And I was 35 years old at the time.

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I was working in video.

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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 video onto a computer,

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I was involved in the integration of the video and computers.

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And I worked a lot as a consultant to Apple and Sony and Pioneer. And in fact, that's how

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I came, when I said that's how I came to faith, it was through that, that some people led us to the Lord.

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So what happens is we have this radical encounter with God, both my wife and I at the same time.

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Well, if I tell that story, I won't answer your question about how

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I got to Arizona. I can explain that to you. I can answer that for you. I think it's important to know what pulled you out and like pulled you fully into Christ.

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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

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I say back it up, because now I know now, you know, you can see things later that you don't see when they were happening.

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But what happened was, and I know from the Lord that this had everything to do with everything.

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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 that's it.

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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,

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God, are you even there? Do you even exist? And then

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I said, you know, Jesus, I don't even know who you are. You know, you're those other people's

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God. Are you there? Do you exist? And I know now when you're here at the circus,

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I was 35 when we actually came to faith. But when

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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, you know, sort of culminated when

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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.

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It may take a week. It may take months. It may take years, but God answers those prayers.

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And so when I was eight, I said, hey, Jesus, I don't even know who you are, you know, but if you're out there, will you show me?

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So in any event, I'm going through, you sort of heard

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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

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Buddhist thing. And I always thought that if I could be in show business, if I could, you know,

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I want to be a film director, I want to be in show business, that's going to make me happy. And the thing is, is the years

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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

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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.

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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, you know, his name was

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Michael Bennett. Michael Bennett won, I don't know, you know, like sort of 20

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Tony awards. In other words, he's a big, famous film director who, not film director, theater director, choreographer, producer, who actually ended up, you know, dying from AIDS, you know, not very long after.

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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.

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And that way at the time, it's like, you know, Michael Bennett says I'm like him. By the time

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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.

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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,

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I always wanted to have a wife and, you know, a family.

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I just wanted a normal life. So I haven't figured out how to do that one, but I wanted a normal life.

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And so I left theater and I went into business with my dad because I basically,

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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.

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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,

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S &P and to, you know, like W .R. Grace and American Express. Made a ton of money and bought a 40 foot yacht.

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You know, we would sort of go on, you know, like trips up to, you know, up to Cape Cod every summer with my wife.

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And, you know, like I drove expensive cars, you know, like BMWs. I had every new gadget.

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I had the first big screen television that had ever been invented in Advent. I had, you know, like laser discs.

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I had every new thing because I just kept thinking, okay, if I can like buy stuff, that's going to make me happy.

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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

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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

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I going to do next? Well, you know, I need to get this. And I was buying stuff. And I waited until I was, you know, like 29 years old.

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I married my wife,

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Nancy. And what happened though was even there after six years of our marriage, the marriage was basically falling apart.

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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.

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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.

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But for then it was just kind of like, you know, I'd ask her, has the dog been walked?

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You know, have you emptied out our garbage? That kind of thing. And what happened though was I became so despondent because I waited for the right person to marry and that was

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Nancy. And yet if it's not going to work with her, it's not working with her, it won't work with anybody.

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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.

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I got out of that. And even like marriage, I married the right person.

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And even that doesn't work. So I would just like lay in bed and stare at the ceiling and just think,

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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.

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There's no meaning in life. Now I would never kill myself because as a

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Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist, I believe in reincarnation. So I thought, in other words, basically if I shot myself,

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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.

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In other words, our karma is all the stuff that builds up. So I wanted to die, but I couldn't kill myself.

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And now right about this point in time, I get a telephone call on a

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Saturday. Now this all takes place in a week. I get a telephone call on a Saturday from these two people from Sweden.

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I'm out East in Jersey. These people are from Sweden. They're in Vegas at the

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NAB show, National Association of Broadcasters.

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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

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NAB show. They go to Apple and they go to Sony and they go to Pioneer and Panasonic.

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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.

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So they call me up and they say, we're in Vegas. Can we fly out tonight? That was on a Saturday.

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Can we fly out? We want to buy all this stuff. And I said, that's a lot of money.

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You're talking about, we have the funds. We can get the money wired to you. Okay, come on out.

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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.

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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 like dub, dub, dub, dub, dub, dub, dub, dub, what if Christ is going to set me free?

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And they start talking to me about like, Jesus. I just go, oh no, they're born again

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Christians. And I mean, they're telling me, it's like, they're saying to me, 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

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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

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God the very best. 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

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God, we're going to give him the best. So they kept talking about Jesus.

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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

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Messiah. You know, like Jesus is Jewish and yet Jesus is alive and he wants to know you.

32:41

And I said to them, you know, Jesus was a Jew, he was a teacher, but you know,

32:49

Jesus is not alive, he's dead. If Jesus is alive, where is he?

32:55

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, just beginning to work out this plan for what they want to buy.

33:09

And I got to bring them back to the hotel and there's nowhere for them to eat there. I mean, they're in the middle of like, on a highway in the middle of nowhere.

33:16

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, one, one, one, one, one, one miracle after another.

33:35

You know, we would pray to God, you know, that we wanted to share Christ with the sort of King of Saudi Arabia.

33:41

And we got on a plane and then we met the King and I'd say, well, I chanted and I wanted to work for Stanley Kubrick.

33:52

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.

33:59

Well, I have a miracle as a Buddhist. Well, I have a miracle. We have a miracle as a Buddhist. But they just kept talking about Jesus and they kept saying, he's alive and he wants to know you and he's the

34:09

Jewish Messiah. He's your Messiah. Well, we have dinner with them and we take them back to their hotel.

34:17

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.

34:29

I mean, I've never met anyone like that before. And I turned to her in our car, this is on Sunday evening.

34:35

And I said to her, Nancy, don't you dare become a born again Christian or our marriage is over.

34:42

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, you know, put together this equipment.

34:51

They're buying about 40, $50 ,000 worth of stuff. And they keep talking about, you know, like Jesus.

34:57

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.

35:06

And I tried to talk to them about homosexuality and I'd talk about homosexuality and they would talk about Jesus.

35:13

And no matter what I said, they just say, you know, like Jesus is alive. You know, Jesus wants to know you.

35:19

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.

35:31

We're in my car and they say to us, would it be okay for us to pray for you?

35:38

Well, you know, you're spending $50 ,000. If you want to pray, go right ahead and pray.

35:45

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.

35:51

They lay their hands on me and start to pray in tongues. Now, just for whatever it's worth,

35:57

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.

36:03

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

36:09

I was doing for the last however long. But while they were praying for me, a fire started, like ignited in my heart.

36:20

It felt as if somebody had like sort of had a torch and, you know, turned it on.

36:27

And my heart just started burning and burning and burning and burning inside of me.

36:34

And when they got done praying, I said something about, you know, the sort of heat or the fire, they didn't know what

36:40

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,

36:50

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.

37:05

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.

37:14

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.

37:23

We were all done. We had the whole thing together. And I was at home Thursday evening alone. And I was in our bedroom.

37:32

I knelt down at the side of the bed. And I just said, you know, Jesus, if you are the

37:38

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.

37:49

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.

37:55

It's all over. You know, that's the end of it. I got up and I walked over to a mirror in our room.

38:02

Now, what I'm gonna describe or explain here is what I saw. It wasn't actually on me.

38:10

It's what I saw with my eyes. I stood there looking at myself in the mirror.

38:15

And first I had a scar that went down the right side of my cheek.

38:21

And the scar opened and like blood and almost like pus started coming out of it.

38:27

My skin began to turn black. My eyes turned black.

38:36

Then it was like my skin became as if it had scales and it grew cold and dark and empty.

38:48

And it was horrifying. And I stood there going, this is not

38:53

Jesus. This is not Jesus. This is not Jesus. And it kept getting blacker and worse and more horrifying.

39:03

Now, the thing, it was so dark.

39:09

And when you see a horror movie, in a horror movie, even though the evil creature is like really ugly, but it's alive.

39:19

This was ugly, but it was like empty, cold.

39:25

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.

39:33

The telephone rang and I went and answered the phone and it was Annette from the couple from Sweden.

39:40

And I said to her, I said, Annette, I don't understand what's going on. Here's what happened.

39:45

And I said, this is what I'm seeing. And this is not Jesus. And at the same moment, she spoke on the telephone, but I heard a voice right inside here say, no, it's not

39:59

Jesus, it's you. I had spent 35 years of my life believing that there was no such thing as God and believing

40:10

I could do whatever I wanted to do and I would never be held accountable for it.

40:16

And when you stand before a holy, holy, holy God, you are guilty.

40:25

His purity and his love and his light and his truth, you can't stand in his presence in our filth.

40:36

And I had demanded of Jesus that he show himself to me and he showed me who

40:43

I was without him. And I stood there and I had my hands up and I just said, oh my

40:55

God, I am in big, big trouble. I was so far separated from God.

41:05

I had opened my life up to so much spiritual garbage and stuff is very, very real.

41:14

And I had opened my life up and my life was full of it. And God opened my eyes to see who

41:22

I was without him. And I stood there and I also knew at that time that this was my last chance.

41:32

In other words, it was my free choice, but if I said no to God, that would be it.

41:43

And I knew I was gonna lose my family. I knew I was gonna, all these other things were gonna happen, but I stood there and I just,

41:52

I didn't say a sinner's prayer, I don't know, whatever. I just stood there and I knew that in fact

41:58

Jesus is alive and he is the son of God.

42:04

He is the Messiah. And I just stood there and I went, okay, yes.

42:11

Didn't say at the center, actually I did the next day, but that's when I was born again. So I'm up that whole night.

42:21

Wife comes home from her meeting and we barely talk. She goes to bed and I'm sitting out in the living room and my house is like spiritual

42:32

Grand Central Station. It's like I'm sitting there and I've got a Sony Walkman.

42:37

You remember Sony Walkmans, like little cassette players? I was listening to her tape. The blood of Jesus Christ will set me free.

42:45

The blood of Jesus Christ will set me free. And I'm listening to it all night. And in the room, you could just feel and sense the spiritual, like all this garbage and stuff in me.

42:58

So what happens is the morning's coming along and the light comes up and the daylight comes up.

43:04

And I say to Jesus, I go, Lord, I'm yours.

43:10

Send me wherever you wanna send me. I'll go wherever you want me to go. I will do whatever you want me to do.

43:17

There's just one thing I wanna ask of you, which is very funny because almost every single day

43:23

I have to go, you know, Lord, there's just one more thing. But at least for that day,

43:29

I said, Lord, can I have a woman in my life as a companion, whether it's my wife,

43:38

Nancy, or somebody else? Because I didn't know what was gonna happen. One of the last conversations

43:44

I had with Nancy was Sunday night before when I said to her, don't you dare become a born again

43:50

Christian or our marriage is over. So what am I supposed to do now? So she's sound asleep in the bedroom and I go in and kind of shake her arm a little bit.

43:59

And I say, hey, Nancy, can I talk to you? I need to talk to you.

44:04

And she's like, no, I'm sleeping. Go home, leave me alone, I'm tired. I said,

44:10

Nancy, I'm going to make Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior. And I want you there along with me.

44:16

And she just got like, what? I mean, so she gets out of bed and we get in the car and we went down to what

44:26

I now like to call the First Church of Equality Inn, the hotel where Scott and Nanette were staying.

44:33

And we go to the hotel to pick them up, to bring them to the airport, to go back to Sweden. And I go back to the room where Scott is and I say,

44:43

Scott, I want to make Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior. And Scott says to me, no, I'm not going to do it.

44:51

And I had the same reaction as you. I'm like, what? I mean, I thought, you know, it's like, hey, sign the card, come forward, raise your hands.

44:59

And Scott's like, no, he said, he said, you are entering into a covenant relationship with our

45:07

God who is alive, who shed his blood for your sins, who sacrificed himself.

45:12

And he's giving you free atonement. He's giving you the free gift of salvation, but you are offering him your whole life in return.

45:21

And if this isn't something that you understand or that, you know, you believe that I don't want to take you through some sort of an exercise.

45:30

So I just said, Scott, let's just get on with this. So he says to me,

45:36

I want you to renounce everything you can think of. So I start saying,

45:42

I renounce Buddhism. I renounce astral projection. I renounce cocaine.

45:47

I renounce marijuana. I renounce Edgar Cayce. And as I'm saying these things, stuff is just like leaving me and leaving me.

45:57

What do you mean by stuff? Like spirits or pain? How tangible is this? Well, no, like, in other words, you could just,

46:05

I could feel like, I guess you could say spirit, whatever, just basically, as I was renouncing these things,

46:16

I renounce, but it's like, it was just like stuff.

46:22

You got to experience it, I guess. It's like, it's, but so, and the thing is, by the way, I wasn't rolling on the floor or convulsing or whatever, but by the way, there was a lot more.

46:36

I mean, I renounce everything I could think of for that day, but over the years, you know, sort of God showed me.

46:43

The thing that's interesting, this is a whole other discussion, but most Christians, most people, when they come to Christ, just go, oh, you know,

46:49

I believe, you know, Jesus, I received salvation, but they never cleansed out all the like junk that they had.

46:56

And you're saved, but the junk's still there. You got to start a clean house, and that's a process.

47:04

Anyway, that's a whole different discussion. But so the thing is, is when I get all done for that day with everything

47:11

I could think of, Scott has me, you know, I kneel down by the edge of the bed. I say this sinner's prayer with him.

47:17

He leads me through the sinner's prayer. Then he says to me, would you like to receive the baptism and the

47:24

Holy Spirit? And I, I mean, I have no, what's the Bible? I don't, what's that?

47:30

I said, I want the whole package. Yeah, I mean, I don't know whatever there is. I want, I want it all.

47:36

I want everything. I want all of it. So he said, ask Jesus to receive the baptism of the

47:41

Holy Spirit and then just, you know, begin to give him thanks. So I asked

47:47

Jesus for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And for me, by the way, everybody's experience is completely different.

47:53

But for me, all of a sudden I felt a waterfall just begin to fall upon me.

48:02

And it started, it went into my head and just started washing and washing and washing and washing.

48:11

And it went all the way down from my head, through my torso, through my body. Now here where you say what, all of the pain, the rejection, the hurt, the anger, the, just the unforgiveness, the bitterness, the, all of the junk was just getting washed away.

48:38

And when this experience had come to an end, and of course I'm there thanking the Lord, you know, begin to speak in tongues.

48:45

You know, it wasn't until I got into the church and I found out that we're not supposed to speak in tongues anymore. I was just in a hotel room, you know,

48:53

I didn't know that back then. So anyway, but what happened was - Just pause for a second. So that is like a pretty specific gift of the

49:00

Spirit to speak in tongues. You just started, or were you like trying to do it? And that's just what happened.

49:06

I was just praising God and not thinking about anything.

49:13

And it was just like, sort of like babble, you know, just. But, so the thing is though, for me, when this experience had ended, of this like waterfall and getting washed,

49:27

I could actually perceive I had been born again.

49:33

I had new eyes. I had a new heart.

49:39

I had, it was like everything was brand new. All of the 35 years of life,

49:51

God just sort of gave me a clean start, a fresh start.

49:57

So this all going on and my wife, Nancy, is sitting in the room in the corner and Annette, you know, it's

50:03

Scott's wife, says to her, okay, Nancy, you know, what about you? And Nancy goes, well, you know,

50:10

I was in bed about an hour ago and I don't really, I don't understand what's going on here.

50:17

And they said to her, now, by the way, she was an Episcopalian by her youth and her growing up.

50:24

She sort of believed, sort of, that God kind of maybe exists out there somewhere, but has nothing to do with us in any way, shape or form.

50:32

So they said, you know, and Annette says to Nancy, she goes, you know, when she goes,

50:39

I don't know what's going on here. She says, our Lord Jesus Christ is in this room right now.

50:46

And he's asking you a question. Do you want him to be your Lord and Savior? Excuse me,

50:52

I just took a drink of water. And Nancy said,

50:59

I don't know. I mean, I haven't thought about it. I don't know. And Annette said, well, you know, that's good.

51:07

You know, you shouldn't if you're not sure, but our Lord Jesus Christ is in this room right now, and he's asking you a question.

51:15

Do you want him to be your Lord and Savior? And there were only two answers to the question.

51:21

Excuse me. I'm sorry. There are only two answers to the question.

51:28

One is yes, I do. The other is no, I don't. She said, if you answer, well, you know, like maybe if I think about it, or maybe when something changes, or you're answering the question right now, no,

51:43

I don't want you to be my Lord and Savior. Well, Nancy just said, I don't wanna say no to God.

51:50

So she prayed the sinner's prayer, received the Lord, and she received the baptism of the

51:56

Holy Spirit at the same time too. So that's how we got there.

52:04

Now, if you wanna know how we got to Arizona, oh my gosh.

52:09

I was entranced. I was entranced. I was joyous. I was crying. It's not my story.

52:15

It's God's. I was just there. He's the one who did everything. Yeah. Yeah.

52:22

I like don't have words at this point. I mean, that was just an amazing story. And I, we're gonna have to just have another call.

52:29

I'm sorry, but maybe after Hanukkah. But that is incredible.

52:36

I mean, I think it's just, you were so, I don't even wanna say you were open to the Spirit. You weren't even in tune with the

52:42

Spirit. You weren't even actively seeking it. And yet it grabbed ahold of you and grabbed ahold of your life. That's amazing.

52:49

Well, the other thing that is incredible, and I know that we're gonna see this happen to other

52:55

Jewish people in the coming days. I have this from the Lord in my spirit. What happens is that my story is a 35 year story.

53:05

In other words, it took 35 years for me to get to that week. But just so you kind of get a picture of this,

53:15

Saturday before, I hated Christians. I hated

53:20

Jesus. I wasn't interested in God. I wasn't searching for religion.

53:26

It wasn't on my radar. I wasn't speaking. I wasn't anything. That's on Saturday. And by Friday, my wife and I are born again and baptized in the

53:38

Holy Spirit, one week. Now, again, it's really like 35 years and a week.

53:46

But the reason I'm saying that is that there are people out there who are like, I'm not interested and I hate

53:52

God and this and that. It's like, when God decides, it's time.

53:58

It's like in one week and completely, our lives completely changed 180 degrees from that moment on.

54:12

Yeah. So how does it land right now? Because you're

54:17

Jewish, but you're a Christian. Well, yes, yeah. Well, a couple of things, again, we'll get it.

54:26

The words that we use, that people use, people don't have a common definition and language of what words mean.

54:36

Now, the thing that's kind of interesting is that the word Christian is, in Greek, the anointed one is the word

54:50

Christos. So a Christian is a Christ -ian.

54:56

In other words, it's a Christ follower. It's someone who follows the anointed one, Christ. Now, the anointed one in Hebrew is the word

55:06

Mashiach, or we would say in English, Messiah. So for whatever it's worth, the word

55:12

Messiah and the word Christos is the exact same word. One is in Greek, one is in Hebrew, but it's the same thing.

55:19

So as far as I'm concerned, a Messiah -ic and a

55:25

Christ -ian is the same exact thing. It's a follower of Christ.

55:31

But what happens is in America and in American church, when people say a

55:38

Christian, they usually think about being a Protestant. In other words, I'm not a

55:44

Catholic. You're either a Catholic or you're a Christian. A Catholic is a Roman Catholic who sort of has all that.

55:52

And then a Christian is a Protestant. In other words, like a Baptist is a Christian, a Methodist is a

55:58

Christian, you know. Well, a Christian and Protestant are not synonymous.

56:04

In other words, I am not a Protestant. I'm not, I'm actually ordained in the assemblies of God, but, or actually

56:12

I was, I'm no longer in the assemblies, but I was ordained in the assemblies for over 20 something years.

56:18

But the thing is, is I'm not a Protestant. I'm a Jew who believes in our

56:23

Messiah. So it's like when you say the word, you know, a Messianic Jew, I'm a Jew who believes in Messiah.

56:29

But to me, the word Christian and Messianic is exactly the same word. One is in Greek and one is in, you know,

56:36

Hebrew. I'm not a Protestant. Now, I mean, this can get into a very long discussion, but in other words, well, this can get in a really long discussion.

56:52

I don't know that we wanna - I do have so many questions, you know, like for their next call and just kind of leapfrogging off of this, you know, as a

57:00

Christian, what should my relationship be to my Jewish friends? And as a, you know, what, how do we care about, you know, somebody of a different faith that is actually very similar?

57:10

And I think that that is in a later conversation, but I think

57:15

I just wanna kind of tie this up with one of the verses that you sent me and it was the Romans 1 16.

57:21

And I just think that this like almost brought me to tears when you sent it to me with, for I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the

57:32

Jew, then to the Gentile. Amen. And I'm the Gentile, right?

57:38

Yes. See, the thing that's really interesting, again, we get off into a whole thing here, but in the book of Ephesians 2,

57:49

Ephesians is the epistle that Paul wrote that talks about the church or the body of Christ.

57:58

And Ephesians 2, Paul explains that in Christ that there was one like new man created that was

58:08

Jew and Gentile, one new man. So it's not a Jew. You should,

58:15

I can read it to you. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa. Here, Ephesians 2.

58:24

Yes, 2, 11 through 22. Well, it's everywhere. And I mean, it's the whole book, but therefore keep in mind that once you

58:31

Gentiles in the flesh, we're called answer. Here, let me read in a version that you're more. Yeah, let's do

58:37

NIV. I like NIV. Okay. I'm gonna go

58:45

NIV 1984 though. I don't like the newer ones. I can,

58:50

I have it up if you wanna read it. Yeah, no, I've got it right here. Okay. So it says, therefore, remember that formerly you who are

59:01

Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision without being done in the body of man's men.

59:10

Remember that at that time, you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel.

59:18

And foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope and without God. But now in Christ Jesus, you who are once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.

59:30

For he himself, speaking about Jesus, Jesus is our peace who has made the two

59:36

Jew and Gentile one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.

59:48

His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, out of the

59:55

Jew and the Gentile, a new man thus making peace. And in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which he put to death their hostility.

01:00:09

He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near, to the

01:00:15

Gentile and to the Jew. For through him, we both have access to the father by one spirit.

01:00:23

So the thing is, is that the church or those words, even the church,

01:00:29

I'd rather call it the dub bride, because it's his bride, but it's meant to be

01:00:38

Jew and Gentile. In the book of, you know, some of those, some of the other verses I sent you in Romans, you know,

01:00:44

Jew and Gentile, one in Messiah. What happens is that the body of Christ, the bride, the church was never intent.

01:00:57

By the way, there's a lot more in Ephesians that can go into this. The church was never meant to be a Gentile church.

01:01:03

It's meant to be a Jew and Gentile church. The Jew and now, it says in scripture in Galatians, it says that in Christ, there is no

01:01:13

Jew. There is no Gentile. There is no male. There is no female. There is no bond slave. There is no free.

01:01:19

And what Paul's explaining there basically is that as far as God is concerned, it doesn't matter if you're a

01:01:24

Jew or a Gentile. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, if you're a free person or a slave, God loves us all the same and equally, and none is better and none is more important.

01:01:35

But in the flesh, in the physical, there are still men and women. There are still slaves and free people, and there are still

01:01:44

Jews and still Gentiles. Now, the thing is is that there are eight billion people approximately on earth, and there are 16 and a half million

01:01:54

Jewish people on earth, which accounts to for like two -tenths of 1 % of the world is like Jewish.

01:02:04

Like 99 .8 % of the world are Gentile. 0 .2 % are

01:02:12

Jewish. And yet God says that the body of Christ, so there's always going to be more

01:02:20

Gentiles in the church or in the bride and the body of Christ than there will be Jews. But the thing is is just like a family,

01:02:31

God intended a family to be a husband and a wife, a father and a mother, not just a single mom.

01:02:38

Even though single moms sometimes have to do that, but that's not God's plan. That's not the best he has.

01:02:45

Well, the thing is is the body of Christ is meant to be Jew and Gentile together.

01:02:51

And again, we'll get into this maybe some other time, but the return of Yeshua, the return of Christ is dependent on the

01:02:59

Jewish people coming to faith in him, because that's, we can go through all those scriptures.

01:03:07

It's all there. But the thing is, is that, so I mean, even here when you say like, I mean, you had asked one question and I can give you a hundred answers for that.

01:03:16

But one of the questions you said was like, why should sort of Gentiles or the church like even sort of care about the

01:03:25

Jews? Well, your savior's Jewish. Your king and your

01:03:32

Lord is Jewish. So simple. Yeah, I wanna end there just because that's such a good closing and an introduction to our next conversation in which that call,

01:03:48

I want to lean into, why should we care about Jews in this Christian world, in my Christian world, let's be selfish about it.

01:03:55

In my own Christian world, why should I care about somebody in a different religion if we wanna characterize it that way?

01:04:00

And how can I? Because it feels very selfish and siloed. And then I really wanna jump into a couple of the questions that I sent before, just understanding that transition between Jewish to Christian just in biblical times.

01:04:16

But I just wanna thank you for sharing your testimony. This was such a good understanding. And I think a lot of people who are searching for answers right now, and they are searching everywhere but Christ, they're going to find themselves at Christ's feet because they still want to find the answer.

01:04:30

And he is the one true answer. And he is the creator of all of the things that they're currently seeking and in the occult and in Buddhism, that was created by God, but that isn't

01:04:40

God. And slowly you'll find your way up that chain to him, the creator. Can I throw another sort of quick little story in here?

01:04:51

Of course. No, well, I mean, I know you're at the closing there. And this is something that in a certain sense,

01:04:59

I almost have like a shame or whatever to say, but I love it because of sort of God's sense of humor.

01:05:10

I mean, God is so funny and he has such a sense of humor. What happens is when

01:05:17

I got married to my wife, now I was a Jew -boo.

01:05:23

My wife was an agnostic Episcopalian. We got married by a judge at a country club.

01:05:29

And the thing is, is we talked before we got married, we talked about, you know, what are we gonna do if we have kids?

01:05:38

What are we gonna do if we have kids? And she didn't really care. And I said, well, you know, we could either raise the kids under Judaism, because even though I don't really believe in God, our

01:05:54

Jewish family structure is strong. People care for each other. There's not a lot of alcoholics like our family.

01:06:01

And forgive me, Nancy, if you watch this anyway. It's the truth.

01:06:10

Or we could raise him as a Buddhist. You know, we could raise our children as Buddhists or we don't have to raise them as anything.

01:06:20

But I said to her, I will never raise my children under Christ.

01:06:27

Now, that's what I, that was what came out of my mouth when we were getting married, before we got married in 1985.

01:06:35

Now we got, you know, we were both born again. We got saved in 1991, you know, six years after we had been married.

01:06:47

And about two years later, I'm in my car driving and the Lord speaks to me.

01:06:53

I'm singing, you know, like praise and worship to him. He speaks to me and says, you know, you will have a son.

01:07:00

I went, oh, great. And so I go home and I say to my wife, I said, are you pregnant? She goes, no.

01:07:06

I said, well, you know, the Lord told us that we're gonna have a son. And nothing ever happens, nothing ever happens.

01:07:13

We moved to Indiana, part of that, how we got to Arizona. And we go to every like doctor and every specialist and all the doctors and the specialists and everybody say, you will never have children.

01:07:29

You will never have children. And I just said, you know, if I heard God and I believe

01:07:35

I heard God, then we're gonna have a son. And if it was something that I ate the night before, then we won't, but we don't need to do in vitro.

01:07:41

We don't need to, in other words, basically 14 years after God told us we were gonna have a son, when we moved out here to Arizona, I turned 50,

01:07:55

I started having neck problems and things like that. And I'm praying, I'm going to the Lord, you know,

01:08:00

God, you're God. You know, Abraham was 100, Sarah was 90. Nothing's impossible for you.

01:08:05

But Abraham and Sarah both had servants and we don't have any servants. That's like, we're gonna have to raise this child ourselves.

01:08:13

And so if you're gonna do this, do this now. And right after that, she got pregnant after 22 years of our marriage.

01:08:20

And we have a son and our son is on fire for Jesus.

01:08:28

When he was in Israel, he got baptized in the Holy Spirit on Pentecost in Jerusalem, in Israel.

01:08:37

Yeah, well, he's right. And, but the thing that I just find that's so funny is that, you know, we like go,

01:08:45

I'll never raise my children under Christ. And God's like, oh yeah, watch this.

01:08:54

100%, 100%. I told God I'd never start a podcast. I would never put myself on the internet publicly.

01:09:01

That's like the quickest way to get to God's plan is telling him exactly what he won't do. I don't use the word never.

01:09:07

The word never is no longer in my vocabulary at all. But I stay away from that word.

01:09:15

Yeah, you're telling yourself you'll never become a Christian. You absolutely will become a Christian. I'll tell you what.

01:09:24

It's funny, when we would be out sharing Yeshua, sharing Jesus in cities with like a sort of Jewish people in parks, and I had a friend who would go with us and he'd be talking to a

01:09:40

Jewish person and the Jewish person would go, well, I will never believe in Christ, you're a Jewish. And as he's walking away, my friend would just go, you know, hey,

01:09:49

Harry, that's what we all said. Famous last words.

01:09:56

We all said that, you know. Wow, anyways, oh my gosh.

01:10:03

I'm so excited for the next conversation. This is such an exciting place to end and also begin.

01:10:08

So thank you for your time and thank you for being patient with me during all the tech issues. Satan really didn't want us to talk today, but we are here.

01:10:17

Amen. All right, well, I just want to say thank you. And is there anything you want to plug right now?

01:10:23

Do you want to plug Zion Church, just for anybody listening? I want to plug

01:10:30

Yeshua. God is on the throne and it's all about him.

01:10:36

And if you call to him, he'll answer. You'll hear from him, so I'm good.

01:10:42

Thank you so much for coming. Although Zion City Church is in Tucson and it's a wonderful place and you're welcome. We do a

01:10:48

Shabbat service once a month on the first Friday of the month. There it is. There we go. Thank you so much.