Now can you imagine on one hand I'm reading the New Testament
in the Kibbutz. On the other hand I'm studying two days a
week in a Yeshiva, and then it's like the penny dropped. So I
was born and raised in the Kibbutz in a very secular
communist environment. Almost didn't own anything. You didn't
see any money in the Kibbutz. I never carried a wallet. They're
sharing everything and nobody say this is mine or that is
mine because everything was in common. The only problem was
the Kibbutz didn't have God. Never heard anything about God.
But even as a child I remember talking in my heart to God. As
if I felt there's something out there that was looking for
really going along with me you know living in the Kibbutz
sharing with God my problems, my thoughts as if I really
believed he existed. In the Kibbutz there was an is where
new immigrants come and study Hebrew. What God did is that one
day he sent an angel from Korea. As a volunteer to study
Hebrew in the Ulpan you know. Praise the Lord for this for
this but I could see something in this Korean's eyes that I
thought what what is it? So finally I got the courage to to
ask what is it? What do you have? So the Korean volunteer
told me you know just read the read the New Testament and
you'll find out. So the New Testament. What is it? What are
you talking about? And I picked it up and you know I opened the
the last page of the of the Old Testament and then I see the
Gospel according to Matthew of course in Hebrew and I thought
this maybe that's the New Testament it it must be. And I
was a little hesitatant to open it. All I knew about the New
Testament that it probably had some recipes of how to kill a
Jew and stay alive or something like that. I wasn't too smart
but I knew that the pope wrote the New Testament. That I knew.
I wasn't so stupid. You know at least I knew that. It was
written by the pope. So I opened the New Testament and to
my surprise Matthew starts with the the genealogy of of a guy
named Yeshua. And he's a descendant of Abraham and
David. Is that what the Korean volunteer told me? That's the
New Testament? That sounds really Israeli really Jewish so
I kept on reading I I cannot explain it other than to say
that it was I thought I was reading truth I just believed it
There was certain naivety in the way they told the story on
the other hand there was an authority as if they did
honestly believe in what they wrote about Yeshua about him
rising from the dead they really believed it and I
believed them and I knew I was maybe for the first time in my
life I knew that I was reading the truth. But on the other hand
I knew what my mother would say. You you're a Meshuga (crazy). You
lost it. A lady in the dining room when she heard what I what
I believed one day she stood up in the dining room. "We failed in
in in our education with you Golan. We failed." But I
honestly believed it and couldn't deny that it was the
truth. And and by the grace of God I accepted it and after
that I got married to that Korean angel. But I found
myself going to a Yeshiva because my wife wanted to stay
in Israel. She loved Israel because of Yeshua and she
wanted to stay and I had to go twice a week to study in the
Yeshiva. Now can you imagine on one hand I'm reading the New
Testament in the Kibbutz. On the other hand I'm studying in
a Yeshiva and then it's like the penny dropped. Wait a
minute. I'm reading about a New Testament a Jewish New Testament in
the Kibbutz and here in the Yeshiva I'm studying something
completely different competing each other. And only one of
them only one type of this Judaism is the real Judaism
that continues the hope that was left in the Old Testament.
Both are building on the Old Testament. Claiming that they
continue where the Old Testament stopped. And I was
starting to compare between them. The Rabbinic New
Testament, the and the Messianic New Testament about Yeshua the
Messiah. After spending one year in the Yeshiva made it
even clearer to me and there was no doubt in my mind that
there could be only one way, only one truth, only one true
New Testament and it was fulfilled by Yeshua. Yeshua was
the fulfillment of the Old Testament. And I always
remember that the gift that I have the eternal life. Where you
don't own anything in the kibbutz you know according to the New Testament
you do own something thanks to Yeshua you own salvation and
nobody ever could take it away from me.