I got my PhD in the field of organic chemistry
Postdoc at Stanford University
I join the group of a man who was
gonna win a Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Voted one of the top 50
most influential minds in the world
I was a visiting scholar at Harvard University
I've spoken at every major university
in this country (US)
have over 650 research publications
voted the R&D Magazine 'Scientist of the Year'
I'm in the National Academy of Inventors
I'm a member of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science
Over 120 patents started,
7 or 8 companies...
We work in areas that range from
medicine to material science
to electronics, computer memory, medical devices...
We work across a broad range of areas.
But more than any of that
what means the most to me
is that I'm a Jew, who believes
that Jesus is the Messiah!
I grew up just outside of New York City
I thought everybody was Jewish
I didn't even know there was
anything else.
I had no particular interest
in that, other than when all my friends
were getting bar mitzvahed or bat mitzvahed
and then I would attend of course every week.
There was never really any excitement for me.
I remember once I even
tried to talk to a rabbi
he just brushed me off.
There was very little explanation for me.
I remember when I went to college
I started meeting a number of people that
said they were 'Born-again Christians'
which was sort of an odd term.
What's 'Born-again'?
What do you mean, 'born again'?
One person saw me in the laundry room
and he said, "Do you mind if i give you"
"an illustration of the gospel?"
And I remember, we sat there and he
actually started to draw a picture.
A cliff with a man on one side
and he drew a little man and then
another cliff with God on the other side
and a big chasm in between
that he labelled with "sin".
I looked at him, and I said,
"I'm not a sinner!"
"I've never killed anyone,"
"I never robbed a bank..."
"How could I be a sinner?"
And he had me read a verse
from the Bible:
"For all have sinned"
"and fall short of the glory of God."
In modern Judaism we never really
talked about sin. I don't remember
ever talking about sin in my home.
So he turned to another passage:
Jesus said, "I say to you"
"that everyone who looks upon"
"a woman with lust for her has already"
"committed adultery with her in his heart."
Pow!
I felt...
just as if I'd been punched
right in the chest!
Here I was, new in college
I didn't think anybody knew!
I would pick up these magazines
and I became addicted to pornography
it was just through those magazines
and all of a sudden
something that's written in the Bible
somebody who lived 2,000 years ago
was calling me out on it!
And I felt immediately convicted
and now I realized I was a sinner.
When I read in the Scriptures what sin is
then I knew I was a sinner.
How am I gonna get to God?
We Jews know this
better than anyone else.
Without the shedding of blood
there is no forgiveness of sin.
This description in Isaiah 53
of how He will bear upon Himself
my sin...
The things that I had done...
This was Him! This was the man
that took this upon Himself on the cross.
The perfect God
comes and gives Himself for us.
He is the one that gives Himself for us.
I started to realize how Jewish
the New Testament is.
This book is so Jewish!
The New Testament is so Jewish!
It's all about Jewish people!
And then
on November 7th 1977
I was all alone in my room.
The realization
that Yeshua
is the one who died on the cross
and I said, "Lord, I am a sinner"
"please forgive me, come into my life!"
Then all of a sudden
someone was in my room.
And I opened my eyes - I was on my knees
i opened, my eyes who was in my room?
That man, Jesus Christ
stood in my room.
This amazing sense of God
Jesus was in my room!
and I wasn't scared
all I started doing was just weeping.
The presence was so glorious
because He was there in my room
on that day.
And I didn't want to get up
and this amazing sense of forgiveness
just started to come upon me.
That was Him.
Finally I got up. I didn't know what to do
I didn't know who to tell...
Here's this Jewish kid from NY city
What am I going to say?
My cousins were shocked.
"How could you do that?"
"You're Jewish!"
Telling my mother how I had
invited Jesus into my life,
she didn't say much.
She was weeping.
She told my father.
They weren't happy at all.
And she said, "I don't blame them"
"for killing Jesus after the things he said."
"Who is he to come against"
"these religious leaders that have"
"dedicated their lives to helping people"
"and to tell them that"
"they are whitewashed tombs?!"
"Who is he, this young man in his 30s"
"to say this to these scholars?"
"He got what he deserved!"
And my mother's a very deep, pensive,
careful reader.
She read
from Genesis right on through the Tanakh.
The whole thing.
When she got done, I said,
"What did you think?" She said,
"God warned us over and over again."
"He warned us!"
When my daughter was about 15,
my mother and father came to visit us.
At one point my mother went into her room
for several hours.
She came out and said,
"That's quite a young girl you have!"
"She talked to me for a long time."
She started reading the Bible again,
both the Old and the New Testament.
One day not long after that,
she called me on the phone.
At the age of 72 she said,
"Jimmy, you wouldn't believe what happened!"
I said "What happened?"
She said, "I was just reading"
"and it hit me!"
"It hit me - the way, He gave His life!"
"I believe it now."
"Jesus is the Son of God!"