Transcription
I had a lot of questions, you know, um, about who we are, the meaning of life, existence, you know, what it means to be human. I got to understand them inside a supernatural revelation, supernatural process that I've been in this 10 minutes. Got out a believer.
So, you went to Colombia and you met a woman. She introduced you to church life. Yeah, we went to church. We, I, I got to know the people I loved so much, the people. I, I love the pastor. They're hugging. They're so beautiful. Their smiles and everything. They were believers, but it didn't enter. I didn't, I didn't understand, you know, it entered, I always say, entered my heart, but not to my mind.
So, you're living in Colombia, hanging out with a group of people that you really like. But they're talking to you about God. So, how do you feel about that? Yeah, I, I listen. Interesting, you know, intellectually interesting, but not more than that. And I was 22, 23, 24. You're young, you know, all the, you don't care about those things in that, in that age.
What happened that made you start to care about those things? What changed? Circumstances in my life went down economically, emotionally. I got depressed. I was five days depressed without eating in bed. In that time that happened, I went to the shower, to this famous shower. Yeah. Um, got up, got out after 10 minutes a believer. Called my wife, said, "I believe in Christ." What I mean, she must have dropped to the floor. She did. She prayed for that 19 years, 19 years, 19 years. Not only her, you know, friends and and family. Like to say, and boom, miracle, a revelation, a revelation in, you know, 100% first meeting with Christ or with the, with in the church. In the beginning, when I was younger, things entered my heart, but not to my mind. The second time, entered my mind, but not to my heart. The second time we went to Colombia was I was like 40 years old and in this revelation experience in the shower, God put the mind and the heart together. That this is the only way you can really, really get to know God and get to know Christ and get to know the truth and power and will. And I love that. It's a, it's a, it's an anthem for the Jewish people. And you shall love God with all your heart and your mind. Mind. It doesn't go only the heart or only the mind. Or you're a professor or you're a, you know, both.
And so you got dressed, or you came out in your towel, whatever. Yeah, honey dripping. I'm honey. I, I believe in Jesus. And what happened from that point? From that point, things went downhill, you know, and, yeah, economically mostly. Okay. And that was my struggle. I'm kind of, I'm kind of glad that you said that because usually what, what you think is, I'm going to go for Jesus. I'm going to try Jesus to make my life better. Yeah. But that's not the reason that you go for Jesus.
Why do you, why does someone need Jesus? Tell me, why does someone need Jesus? Because Jesus is the way. Yeah. The truth and the life. He's your creator. He's your God. And we need it. We don't know sometimes because, you know, we need this revelation. But without Christ, what happens to us? You die. First, you die. You go to hell. It's very sad. And Jesus said, you know, "I came for the lost sheep of Israel." That's right. So, we look around here, people, they don't seem lost. Everybody goes to direction, you know, but they're lost inside. They're lost.
Let's touch on that. Yes, because if you were to ask somebody, where do you come from? How, where were you? How were you made? I don't know. I was man, parents, whatever. Where are you going? I don't really know. Well, that's the definition of being lost. Yeah. You might know where you are, but if you don't know where you came up from and where you're going, my analogy is this. You see, um, like a fridge or an oven or a microwave, you know, what, what are they? You know who produced them. You know how they work. You know why they work, the meaning of why, why there. You you're not going to cook lunch on your TV, right? You're not going to put something in the. There's a purpose for everything. What about us, right? All these questions, we don't know who we are, what we're made for, who made us, where's the factory, what is the phone number to call them if something wrong?
In Jeremiah 50:6, it says, "The children of Israel are lost sheep because their leaders have led them astray. They've become lost, disconnected from the creator, which is the cause of all of our problems, really." Yeah. So, you, you become connected to the creator. Suddenly things in your life start to wind down and, and you start to lose the things you thought were right and good. Money, finances changed.
And what does this take you? What happened that I start believing and then I said, "Okay, I'll go to Israel and I'll come to my, you know, my family, and they will start asking me because I won't stay, I won't shut up. I will say I believe in Jesus." You know, I won't be a 007 believer. And then, then they'll say, "You're crazy. You're." They mock me because my father is cynical, is a, you know, he thinks it's a long story because my, the ant life and human life for him was the same. And he was think, "Wow, you're stupid. You're crazy. Something or you took something." So I start interested. What, what am I going to do? How can I react? Because nobody explained those things to me when I was an idiot. Okay. So I start interested in apologetics, oh, reading and videos and whatever. And then I heard Dennis Prager, a video, "Ask, if you are in the in the lake or in the sea, you have a your beloved, beloved has a dog drowning and a total stranger drowning beside him. In that moment, you know that you can save only one. Who would you save?" And, uh, he said that 30% went to for the dog, 30% for the man, for the stranger, and 30% said, "We don't know." This question stuck with me, uh, for few years because this is the question. Who are we? What it means to be human rather than a dog or a cow or whatever? Why? Why you go for the dog? Why you go for the men? And, and God put in my heart to write a book about it. Really? Yeah. And, uh, I wrote a book. It's called The Third Way.
Why did you call it The Third Way? Because for me, it's a, you know, the secular way, right? As a Jew or the Israeli orthodox religious way or the religious way, let's say, but it's the third way, which is Jesus, right? And that's so important because most Jewish people here in Israel and in the world, they don't know that Jesus is an option. Usually, it's secularism, eastern mysticism, or religious Judaism. They don't know that option, but you're delivering that option in this book, The Third Way. Yeah. Third Way is a, is a story about a, um, Jewish secular family go through a tragedy in in their family, and the father, his wife died. And in his grief and his sadness, he invites his daughter. The things that happen that there are in the sea, you know, there's a dog involved or a stranger involved, and, and the daughter needs to decide who she drowns, you know, who she will save. And it's a seven days journey for the truth.
That's that's beautiful. I'm, I'm really moved by your story because when I was reading this morning in the Psalms about King David's lamentations and how he was in the pits of hell and he was crying out to God, "Save me from those that are persecuting me." And you see him crying out from a very deep, dark place, and then he sings God's praises. And this is what happened to you, that this process. Because some people will say, "Oh, you were depressed and you were, you had a hard time, your finances, so you chose Jesus." But it's not like that. No, it's not like that. He, He took you from from this place of boom, and he turned the lights on for you. And my sign is that if, if it was, you know, fake, yeah, things went downhill or downhill. So I said, "Okay, God, let's, let's see another option. Maybe Muhammad, right? I'll go something else. Jesus isn't working out for me." Yeah. And I stood, and and life roller coaster went down. But I stuck there, and I understood that if it's God, it will be like that because the devil sees a Jew, a secular Jew, communist Jew, whatever you, you want to call me, received Christ. Yeah. Can be more angry than that. So he's, you know, Yeah.
So I think this is a really good point to make. People are watching and they're thinking, well, I believe in Jesus, but my life isn't the way that I want it to be. It's not comfortable. It's actually gotten worse financially, uh, physically since I put my faith in Jesus. What do you want to tell that person that needs that kind of encouragement? You know, Jesus is not an option like you take in the supermarket from the shelf, or a pill, or a medicine that you drink once a day. Jesus comes to offer us not this life, eternal life. And it's doing it through regenerating us. God brings you the revelation. Yeah. Christ gives you the reconciliation, but the Holy Spirit gives you this regeneration. I love it. And you have to receive it. And when will you receive it? And you will read the Bible and understand that bad things will happen. Jesus says, "You will have tribulation." Yeah. In this, in this life. But remember, "I have overcome the world." Yeah. And so we look to him as the overcomer because when we believe in Jesus, his righteousness is placed upon us, and the only way that we can overcome is through his power in us. Second Corinthians 5:21. Yes. Exactly. Exactly.
So where can people find your books? Okay, there are in Amazon. Yeah. One book is only in English. It's for the church. It's a letter for me to the church. It's called Three in One, or or to be Israeli, um, Jewish and believer, three in one. It's a personal letter written after the war, during the war. Okay. That I sense from God again that I need to write to the church, um, about Israel. They don't know Israel. And I, I felt like in the Good Samaritan, that Israel is lying on the sidewalk. Yeah. In the road to Jerusalem, and the body of Christ at a whole walks by, walks by. Some go, some throw money at him. But right, you don't see. And it hurts when you see the hatred for Israel in the world, and you see that the church, okay, they pray, but you don't see them. I don't believe, I don't feel my brothers and sisters in the US and other places go out of their way to wound this wounded guy, right? And so they're like the Levite or the Cohen, you know, it's a very good analogy that the people of Israel are the wounded on the side because we consider the Jewish people an unreached people group. And when you think of an unreached people group, you think of somewhere out in a forest, somewhere in a jungle, an unreached tribe. Yeah. But as Jews that live dispersed among all nations, and here in Israel, we're still considered unreached. Yeah. And I think it's a very important message to get out to the church that, uh, you know, God has a very big plan for the Jewish people. And as more and more Jewish people come to faith in Jesus, and that's why these testimonies are so important, the church can, the Christian church can actually see God's plan unfolding. But without the Jews coming to faith, and God using us as his instruments, we don't have that fulfillment. And you, you won't know God the Father. You won't really, really know him without knowing Israel and the story of Israel. Yeah. Without Israel, where is God? You know, right? God is here. God is here. That's one of the thing that I understood in the, in that 10, 10 minutes in the shower. Wow. That through, through, you know, God, through Israel. Wow. Cuz this is the first act. The second act of the New Testament. Wow. Beautiful. Yeah. Beautiful. I love that.
So, if you're watching this and you haven't read the scriptures yet, read them. Our scriptures, our Old Testament. A lot of our Jewish people, they haven't read our scriptures, even. And they point to a specific person fulfilled in the New Testament, which is Yeshua HaMashiach, Jesus the Messiah. And if you like these kinds of testimonies, we have many more on the channel. You can also go to jwforjesus.org for some amazing articles on how this all really makes sense. So give the video a thumbs up, leave your comments down in the description, subscribe to the channel, and make sure you check out his book on Amazon. You can find the link down in the description. Raviv, thanks, brother. Thank you.