here's what you need to do you've got to
first shave your head you dress fallen
black you've got to wear a white robe
eat only kosher foods you've got to
become a vegetarian you face Jerusalem
you've got to face India when you pray
you pray only in Hebrew and you grow a
nice green beer and if you do all of
those outward cultural things you'll
discover the God of the universe
I'm thinking this is crazy that someone
thinks that they can force their culture
on God and that God's going to be
impressed by what you wear what
direction your face when you pray what
you eat all these sorts of things it
seemed to me that if there was a God out
there who could be known he should be
able to be recognized no matter where I
face no matter how I'm dressed because
he's God growing up we always understood
that we had our Bible and the Gentiles
had their Bible in the New Testament and
that they were two completely separate
books because the only people I knew who
were believers in Jesus were all people
in our public school or Italian Catholic
I imagined that Jesus was Italian and so
the understanding that he's actually
Jewish was was a shock and then to hear
that the New Testament was written by
Jews I couldn't believe it my
expectation was that the New Testament
was like my grandparents had told me it
was a a book on how to persecute the
Jews and it's something you should stay
away from of course when you're told you
should stay away from something
curiosity gets the best of you and
you've got to see it when I opened the
New Testament I was expecting to find a
handbook on how to persecute the Jews my
grandparents had warned me that it was
written by people who killed the Jews
that's what I was expecting to see
and yet when I'm opening it I'm reading
a story written by Jews about Jewish
people
the New Testament was a fascinating and
so as I open this book in the library I
kind of looked her found made sure that
none of my friends had seen me up taking
a Christian Bible off the shelf
I open it here's the first sentence it
says this is the genealogy of Jesus the
Messiah the son of David the son of
Abraham so three people are mentioned
and they're all Jewish I was very
shocked and as I continued to read I'm
reading the story of the Jewish man who
was born in the Jewish village in a
Jewish country and one day walks into a
synagogue and announces that he is the
Messiah the more I read the words of
Jesus the more I became attracted to him
it was as beautiful as anything I had
ever read in any other part of the Bible
as I came to faith that Yeshua that
Jesus was the Messiah it was clear that
that was the most Jewish thing I could
do this is not the person is a renegade
to our people this is the one who was
promised in our Bible the fifty-third
chapter of Isaiah it is astonishing if
you would just read that chapter just
without the Bible being around that you
would say oh this is some Christian
Bible this is Jesus when he realized
though that it's in the middle of our
Bible our Jewish Bible when I first came
to faith I dared not tell my father
because this is a time period in the
1970s when there were lots of gurus and
cults and he was very concerned about me
getting involved in some crazy sect and
going off someplace so I waited for
months and when I finally told him he
was very skeptical on his own then he
started to read about Jesus as well
about a year and a half later I told him
that the fellow who wrote one of the
books that he had read that this felt
was giving a lecture in the city of New
York and he agreed to come out to hear
that person and one of the most amazing
moments of my life was the speaker said
would everyone here who is a Jewish
believer in Jesus would you raise your
hand and I raised my hand my father also
raised his hand and I said I looked over
I said pop he didn't say what all the
Jews raised their hand and he said with
all the Jewish believers and Jesus
raised their hand and my father looked
over and he said yes I heard what he
said
the decision to come to faith in Jesus
as the Messiah was not something that
was a momentary lark it wasn't something
that was a passing fad and I could see
changes in myself
but I knew were not from within myself I
had kind of tapped in to a truth for our
Jewish people that was very powerful
[Music]