YOUNG JEWISH MAN RECIEVES JESUS AS MESSIAH
I was raised in a fairly traditional Jewish home in the Chicago area.
I went to Hebrew school,
Shabbat school, and was active in BBYO, a Jewish youth group affiliated
with our Conservative synagogue. I had my bar mitzvah.
When I was seventeen and my grandmother died, my thoughts turned to
some of life's bigger questions:
Why are we born if life ends in death? Is there anything which gives
life a deeper meaning than just work and play; providing for family and
having a good time?
By a strange twist, in my first semester at university I wound up
writing a research paper on why the Jews at the time of Jesus did not
believe he was the messiah (and this was for a Jewish professor). I
had to examine those passages of the Bible that our rabbis had said
spoke of messiah.
As I read books by Jewish, Christian, and secular authors, all who
attempted to explain these passages, my questions seemed to multiply;
and so I met with two rabbis and two Christian ministers in town to
hear both sides.
Through all of this I began to lean in the uncomfortable direction that
perhaps Jesus just might be the messiah and that maybe I hadn't been
told the whole story as I grew up. But my Jewishness prevented me from
being completely objective, and so with a sense of relief I finished my paper
and tried to put the subject behind me.
A few months after this, a close friend of mine told me that she began
to believe in Jesus, and I quietly began to observe her life and to detect
some positive changes. Around that time I began to "pray." That is, I
began to question out loud if there was a God and whether Jesus might
be the promised messiah.
In my own way I uttered an honest prayer wanting to know the truth.
Without going into other details, let me say that God does answer
prayers like that. I came to the point where I believed that there is a God
and that Jesus is the Messiah.
Source Angel Share News Letter