I came back down the hill
and I said, "You know Mike,"
"all this time the truth was"
"right in front of our noses!"
I was born into a Jewish family
both my mom and my dad
came from broken homes.
Both of them just had
miserable family life
and knew very little about parenting
they had terrible examples
from their parents.
Just shy of my 12th birthday
it was decided that they would
send me to a boarding school
that began a 6 year journey of
adapting to things that I just
was not prepared to adapt to.
No parents around,
influenced by anything, everything...
Eventually got introduced to drugs
and by the time I graduated
from prep school
became a very regular drug user.
Marijuana became LSD and LSD became
all kinds of amphetamines and pills...
Basically just was looking for the next high
the next party, the next pleasure.
Got into Syracuse University
my sophomore year, my buddy came
to visit me and he said,
"You know last summer I went to California"
"I had the greatest time!"
"Why don't we just quit school?"
We wound up settling in a small town
in Southern Oregon.
We actually acquired some property
a 20 acre piece of property that had
a log house and a cabin.
We decided let's move into the cabin
and rent out the house.
We found four other hippies
looking for a place to live.
That went on for a couple months
until one day
something pretty drastic happened.
Got a phone call:
they were on their way back,
and they had a van full of drugs,
their van went off the side of the road
stuff went flying all over the place.
The police arrived and now
all four of them were in jail.
Police cars were driving
seemed like they were all over
where our property was and so
we're introduced to a new thing
at that particular time called
paranoia.
We decided we're gonna
hitchhike to Mexico.
We went to the main crossroad of town.
The first car that picked us up was
a guy and he started telling us
about Jesus.
Talking about scripture verses
and not only was I not interested
I didn't even understand what he was saying.
We spent the night that day at this ranch
and the next morning they took us
to the coast highway
and we stuck out our thumbs
and the first car that picked us up
was a Christian family.
And they started asking us questions
about God and whether we believed in Jesus
and sharing the gospel with us.
Couple hundred miles south
we wind up in Mendocino
And we're standing on the Coast Highway.
A pickup truck pulls about 100 ft away from us.
A guy gets out of the passenger side,
comes right up to me, and he says,
"Do you know that Jesus loves you?"
We wound up who knows where
I don't remember what happened,
and I think I'm probably glad
I don't remember what happened.
There were a couple times I thought
we were gonna get killed...
It was pretty bizarre, and we were pretty lost.
About three weeks later
we made it back up to Oregon.
Something inside of me, I had this desire
I want to get a hold of this book
this Bible.
So I went into town and in a drugstore
I saw a Bible and I bought the Bible
and I took it home and
opened to the New Testament.
Now it was really important to me
that Mike not know what I was doing
because I thought
he would make fun of me
and so I would go up and
and I began to read.
I was just overwhelmed
with the gospel, the story of Jesus
I couldn't stop reading.
After I think probably 2, 2½ weeks
I began to read my journal of my trip,
and I got to the part where
that guy that came up to me
outside of Mendocino
had asked me to pray and
I remember feeling like I really
wanted to do that when he had asked me
and I never did, and so I took a walk
and I walked up behind where a house was
up this kind of hill
and I closed my eyes and I just said,
"God if you're there, if you're real,"
"I want to know."
I opened my eyes and
I just knew - I knew God was real.
I came back down the hill
Mike was there.
I said, "You know, Mike"
"all this time the truth was"
"right in front of our noses!"
And he said, "Yeah, I know."
We start talking and it turns out
the daughter of the realtor was
a Christian woman and she had
given Mike a Bible.
He was reading it and hiding it from me
at the same time that I was
reading the one I got
and hiding it from him.
So we just started all a sudden
talking about God.
And then we started getting letters from
these guys that were in jail - we hadn't
seen them in probably about a month or so
and all four of them
without speaking to each other
had met Christians in prison
and had become believers in Jesus.
We wound up getting invited to a church
people just embraced us,
and I started going to church
and hearing the gospel presented
and I remember in those early days
just every time there was an altar call
I raised my hand I just wanted God in my life
I wanted him to to forgive and
to wash the sin out of my heart
and as I would go I would actually
physically feel that God has taken
this 20 year old young man
who had no purpose, no reason
no desire to do anything...
I started to just read the Word of God
and I get to read the Old Testament
and just everything fit together
and even to the point of
my own sense of Jewishness.
Really for the first time
I really felt like I was Jewish.
I love now to be in situations
and to say what I often say to people,
"You know Jesus wasn't a Christian"
"Jesus was a Jew!"
The New Testament is Jewish.
I could just feel my life just
being totally changed and
falling in love with this Jesus who had
every answer for every question that I had.
Jesus has become
everything to me.