One of the first questions many Orthodox Jews demand to know whenever I start talking about Yeshua, is whether or not I'm Jewish - because if I'm not, they don't want to "waste their time" arguing the issues with me. To those who deem it important, let me say, "Yes, I am Jewish." In fact, I was originally a German Jew, born and raised just five miles from the Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp.

I was only a couple months old when my father divorced my Jewish mother and gave me away to live with an atheistic foster family in post-war Germany, 1951. My foster parents, although poverty-stricken and on welfare, gave me the only stable, loving home I would ever know - and it was actually there that I first learned about God at age five when my wizened old foster grandmother came for a visit from southern Germany. One evening, she held me on her lap and told me about the all-seeing, all-knowing Entity who watches over each and every one of us. Overwhelmed by this revelation, I accepted it without question. However, God was never really a part of my life because no one ever told me that I was supposed to have a relationship with Him.

When I was nine, my life fell apart at the seams when my natural mother was forced to take me back in order to be able to leave Germany with her new American husband, Austin. (Although her own mother - my maternal grandmother - had died in her early forties, my mother often talked about their strained relationship in angered tones. My mother told me that my grandmother was a mean-spirited Jewish woman who always tried to hide her Jewishness from the world and, consequently, my mother never knew much about her Jewish heritage...and consequently, neither did I.)

By age ten, while living at Fort Carson, Colorado, I was hiding in the closets from my adoptive father, a well-respected Army first sergeant, who also happened to be a pedophile who raped me almost every night. I prayed that God would stop him somehow, but He never did, and I found myself wondering if there really was a God. When I was eleven, Austin retired from the Army and moved us to Springfield, Missouri, where he continued to abuse me sexually for several more years. At age 14, when I threatened to tell the police, he beat me until I literally wet the floor. I had no one to turn to because, back in those days, no one ever talked about sexual abuse; no one discussed "good touches" and "bad touches."

To add to the insanity, I had no real rapport with my mother, an alcoholic who was married a total of eight times. She had five kids (that I know of), all by different men, all living in various parts of the world. I managed to find all of them eventually, after years of searching.

Needless to say, when I became an adult I deliberately never had children because I feared they might suffer a similar fate as my mother's children had. I simply couldn't bring myself to impose this horrible world on innocent babies....

Anyway, by the time I graduated high school in 1969, I had attended 14 different schools and seen my mother through dozens of broken relationships and several marriages. (In the meantime, lest I forget, there were two more grown-ups who had tried to abuse me sexually: my adoptive father's 72 year-old father, who came to live with us for a few months when I was 12; and also my mother's fourth husband, when I was 15.)

There was a little hole in my soul that nothing seemed to fill, including the God that my foster grandmother had told me about. (Yes, I believed He was "out there" somewhere, but He didn't seem to care about me and my problems, and so what good was He?) I basically shunned religion because Austin, my mother's husband, the pedophile, had been a "Christian", and so Christianity turned me off completely, as I viewed all Christians as hypocrites. And the rest of the world's religions sounded and "felt" too "fluffy" for me; they seemed fake and made-up. At one point, before I graduated from high school, I became fascinated by the history of Jews and Judaism. Hitler's Holocaust had me mesmerized, because I couldn't believe that someone could actually hate a race of people enough to try to exterminate them all!

Trying to find myself

To get away from home after high school graduation, I joined the Army. It was the best decision I could have made, one that ultimately culminated in a successful career in which I rose to the top of my profession as an Army journalist. My personal life, however, never got off the ground. Year after year, my life remained empty, and I kept thinking things would be all right if only I could find the right man - which I mistakenly thought would remedy all my problems. I had three nose jobs and a chin implant hoping to improve my looks so that the "right" man would be attracted to me! Of all the wrong thinking I've done in my life, at least I can pride myself on the fact that I never truly turned to drugs or alcohol - thanks to some powerful guardian angels. (Actually, I tried my best to drown my sorrows in via Valium and alcohol, but they both made me extremely sick, and it just wasn't worth it.)

At age 21, I went into a three-week coma from a misdiagnosis of a ruptured appendix. Before waking, I had an experience in which I saw Jesus who seemed to be beckoning to me, and trying to tell me something in a language I couldn't understand. (I didn't see Buddah or Krishna or Allah, or anyone else - and so I figured that, since I saw JESUS, then He truly was real because, not only was He the Son of Yahweh who was the God of my ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - but He was the only one who cared enough to reach out to me! Looking back, I now also realize that, because I wasn't "saved" I couldn't possibly have understood what He was trying to tell me! 1 Corinthians 2:14 - "Now the natural man does not receive the things from the Spirit of God - to him they are nonsense! Moreover, he is unable to grasp them, because they are evaluated through the Spirit.)

Throughout my life, I went from one relationship to the next, always searching for the right man, never finding him. Like my mother, I married more than once - and everyone of them had affairs with other women at some point in our marriage. Shortly after my retirement from the Army, and right after my last divorce in 1992, I moved back to Missouri where I had some lifelong friends - even though Missouri also happened to be the home of most of my unhappy childhood memories. (Looking back, I now see that God was leading me exactly where He wanted me to be!)

Tired, depressed and desperately wanting to recover from a life of failed relationships, I floundered about aimlessly in Springfield for a couple of months before eventually deciding to begin a brand new life by joining a singles group that met on Sunday mornings at a Methodist church. It was the closest I ever got to any kind of real church attendance, and the most healing thing I could have done for myself, because it was there that I "re-discovered" God.

God "touched" me

He suddenly "touched" me in November of 1993, on the last day of a three-day Singles Adjustment Seminar I was helping to facilitate at that particular Methodist Church. (I had no church or religious background, and the only reason I was in this church is because that’s where the seminar was being held.) Anyway, as part of a closing ceremony, the 70 participants and facilitators stood in a circle holding hands in the sanctuary, and everybody had to take turns verbalizing "why I’m glad to be me". At one point my mind naturally began to wander and I remember looking up at the cross, wondering who Jesus really was and why he had been nailed to the cross - and then my gaze went out the window into the night sky where I suddenly had a flashback to age 5:

When He left me a couple minutes later, I felt so empty! I wanted to tell someone that I had just been touched by God and that He loved me and all of us in that room more than we could ever imagine. But instead, I kept silent because I was afraid I would be viewed as a lunatic. I felt "high" when I left the church; a feeling that continued for another two days, but still, I could not bring myself to tell anyone.

The "incident" had happened on a Sunday evening. By Wednesday, I had begun to doubt the validity of it (which was Satan's doing, of course; his whole goal in life is to draw people away from God). Well, God apparently wasn't going to let the enemy get the upper hand in this case and so, in order to assure me that He really HAD "touched" me, He performed a follow-up miracle: That Wednesday afternoon when I went for another of many check-ups and follow-up mammograms for a huge lump I had had for two years, the nurse told me it was completely gone! Needless to say, I was floored! And I simply knew that this was no "coincidence"....

And, now since I had figured out that God really HAD "touched" me, what was I supposed to do about it?

Being led to the Lord

Well, God knew that in order to make me "see the light" He would have to do it through a man (since I always thought that "the right" man would be the secret to my happiness). So, about a year after that "incident", I ended up dating my first Christian man - Ellis, a "good ol' boy" farmer and high school drop-out, from a small town in Missouri - whom I had turned down a couple months before because he was a Bible-thumper who talked incessantly about God....

Long story short, my life changed completely because of Ellis. It all started on New Year's Eve of 1994/95 as I lay in bed, miserable after another of an endless series of break-ups that had become a routine part of my life. Peering into the darkness, I said, "God, if you're as tired of my lifestyle as I am, why don't You give me a good man for a change?" Then, on the spur of the moment I decided to add: "And for once, make me wise enough to know it."

Well, the very next afternoon, Ellis called! "I have to be honest," he said, "I don't know why I'm calling you because I never call anybody back after they've turned me down - but for some reason I felt compelled to call and give you another chance." (God truly DOES work in mysterious ways!) I remember glancing toward the ceiling and thinking, "God, you're KIDDING, right?" But, the next thing I knew, I had agreed to meet Ellis for coffee at a Village Inn. Turned out, the more I got to know him, the more I liked him, even though most of the conversation was about God and the Bible. I figured I would eventually "get him over it"....

Anyway, I don't know how, but Ellis talked me into accompanying him to his Baptist church that following Sunday. I went, mainly out of curiosity, figuring I would go maybe once or twice, just to appease him.

Turned out that, on that particular day, that particular pastor was preaching about the Plan of Salvation and the exchanged life through Jesus Christ - and I "got" it! He started his sermon by asking: "If you were to stand before God today, and He were to ask you 'Why should I let you into My Heaven?' what would you say?" I sat there, smirking, and thinking: "You should let me into Your Heaven because I'm a good person. After all, I never killed anybody, abused children, committed any crimes, did drugs, or whatever." Well, as if the pastor had read my mind, he said, "Would you tell God He should let you into Heaven because you're a good person, or because you go to church, or because you do volunteer activities? Well, if so, you'd be WRONG because NONE of those things will get you into Heaven!"

I sat up, wide-eyed and dumbfounded! If being "good" didn't get you there, then what on earth would? The sobering response was: "The only thing that will get you into Heaven is your belief on the shed blood of Christ." And then the pastor went on to explain that, because Man, since the fall of Adam and Eve, could never "get right" with God, and because God didn't want to destroy the few who were actually living a Godly life, He decided to send an ASPECT of Himself down in the form of a Man called Jesus - so Man could properly understand the things of God, and how to live, be and do exactly what God wanted. Because Yahweh had always required animal sacrifices of His Chosen People (the Jews!) and whoever attached themselves to the Jews, He eventually relieved them of their responsibility to provide sin sacrifices by sending us a FINAL SIN SACRIFICE through the atoning blood of a DIVINE Sacrifice - Jesus - who taught man how to live for God and how to live with each other, and then died willingly on the cross for Mankind so that we might be able to gain eternal life....

I was floored! Of all the "religious" stuff I had ever heard in my life, this "felt" right. Deep in my gut, I KNEW it was right! Suddenly, I wanted to shout, "I believe!" but was too timid, and didn't want people thinking me crazy. As was typical of me, I just sat there and kept my mouth shut. But, my insides were all aquiver. Something had clicked inside me; it was as if a light bulb had been turned on and I could "see" what God had been trying to tell me all my life. I finally had an answer as to what I was supposed to DO about God: I was supposed to get into His Word - the Bible - and study all I could. (At first I was disappointed that "just believing" in the shed blood of Jesus was all I had to do to be "saved", but the pastor had made it abundantly clear that Man simply could not do it on his own. None, he had told the congregation, were sin-free, as we had inherited sin from Adam and Eve who had purposely disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. Only God's Final Sacrifice would suffice - and I had to concede that, since Jesus had already died some 2,000 years ago, it meant I should stop agonizing and analyzing, and just accept the fact that God loved me enough to forgive me, my lifestyle, and everything I had done that He had not agreed with, and just concentrate on starting my life all over again. I had been born again!)

A new "babe in Christ"

When the pastor discovered he had a new "babe in Christ", he immediately took me under his wing and throughout the course of about a year, introduced me to several study books that helped me to understand the Bible and what being "born again" was all about. Immediately, I learned how to read the Bible by asking the Holy Spirit to help me understand - and it worked! (I couldn't believe it!) Until then, the Bible had sounded like a bunch of fairy tales to me. If only I had known!

After that, I began to study everything I could get my hands on - and I found out that more than 300 Bible prophecies had already come true, and there were only a few more to go. (Note from The Refiner's Fire: Please see our article about the 300 fulfilled prophecies.) I wanted to know which ones were yet to be fulfilled, and eventually discovered that the secret lay in the Biblical Feasts! (Note from The Refiner's Fire: Please see our article about the Significance of the Biblical Feasts.)

Around that same timeframe, I realized that the entire Bible was about the Jews (the people of my own heritage!) and I became worried that they would all go to hell because they didn't believe that Jesus was God. I spoke to the pastor about that, and I begged God for enlightenment, because I couldn't get over the fact that He would allow His own "Chosen People" to end up in hell, simply because they didn't "believe in Jesus"? I also questioned why the church felt that Jesus had "done away with the Law" because Scripture specifically states that He did not: Matthew 5:17 says Jesus said: "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill." To me that meant, while we could not keep all those traditional "613 Commandments" (many of which were for the priests of that day, some were for men, and others for women), God still expected us to keep His Feasts and His seventh-day Sabbath, to be "kosher" and to learn His Torah (which, by the way, does not mean "Law" as many teach, but rather, God's "Teaching and Instruction")....

Millions of questions whirled in my mind! I felt as if "something" wasn't "right" in the Church. Despite the fact that I was now "saved" and in church, I STILL felt unfulfilled somehow, yet could not figure out why. I kept feeling the need to DO something for God. But WHAT? What could one possibly DO for Him besides believe and to keep studying His word?

Little did I know that these "driving" feelings were God's way of getting me to His ultimate destination: My Hebraic Faith roots.

I finally got the answers to all my questions in November 1997, when I discovered "Messianic Judaism" - a belief based on the fact that the Bible is one, continuous, "God-breathed" entity as opposed to two, separate "testaments" wherein one superseded the other. Through some miraculous circumstances, I ended up in a Torah class in Colorado and was suddenly learning things I could have never learned in a regular church setting: things that included the fact that much of God’s teaching and instruction has been mistranslated because of the intricacies of the Hebrew language, and that Jesus' given Hebrew Name was actually YaHashua (shortened to Y'Shua, or Yeshua), which means "God is Salvation")! I quickly learned the difference between the "Hebrew" mindset and the "Greek" (Gentile) mindset - which is a world of difference!

After that, it didn't take me long to realize the answer as to my question about what I could DO for God: I could learn to "walk in Torah", keep His feasts, and spread the Word to my Jewish brethren that our Messiah has already come. And it also dawned on me that Christianity - like Judaism - has only half the Bible....

Eventually, I came to realize that the Books of Daniel and Revelation were unfolding before my eyes! Events in the world, both natural and man-made, were happening EXACTLY as outlined in the Bible. It became clear to me that events in the Middle East (Israel and the Arab countries - specifically, the war between the Jews and the Muslims) were not a battle of flesh and blood, but of principalities that began with the jealousy between the Biblical brothers, Isaac and Ishmael!

And the rest is history. I never did marry Ellis, but God used him to lead me the Lord and so he will always hold a special place in my heart. Ultimately, He did send me a wonderful husband who supports me in my zeal to spread God's Word. I am now an ordained Messianic Rabbi with a mission to lead traditional Jews to Yeshua, the Christians to Torah, and the rest of the world to Bilical Truth! For the first time in my life, I know I am on God’s path, and am spiritually fulfilled. That little "hole in my soul" that only God can fill, is finally filled! (If that's never happened to you, I highly recommend it! God WILL change your life - GUARANTEED!)