TEL AVIV, ISRAEL, February 2020 –A young Jewish man has taken to the streets of Tel Aviv to share the message that dramatically changed his life. And it was a ‘forbidden book’ that brought the peace and happiness that had long eluded him ……..
David, from an Orthodox Jewish background, was living the high life in America after serving in a combat unit with the IDF for three years and was making good money selling Dead Sea products while at the same time indulging in “all the pleasures the world had to offer”. But it didn’t lead to real happiness. He knew there must be something deeper to life.
Then a Jewish customer asked him: “Have you ever felt God in your life?” It caused him to wonder if this was possible, so he started reading the Bible.
When he read in Psalm 22 the phrase “they pierce my hands and my feet” (verse 16), he wondered if it was referring to Jesus on the cross’ This worried him because rabbis generally use the derogatory name Yeshu the Notzri (Jesus the Nazarene) with reference to Jesus. So he did what any good Jewish boy would do. He called his mom, who scolded him, saying: “That’s a Gentile book! We are forbidden to read it.” She thought he was reading from the New Testament, but in fact it was from the Old (i.e. the Hebrew Bible).
His search continued until one day he came across a painting of Abraham offering Isaac as a sacrifice to God. Immediately above it, there was a picture of Jesus on the cross – God offering his Son as a sacrifice for us. David got the connection and decided to follow Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew) who, he soon realised, is not only Messiah but also God, a discovery triggered by the verse attributed to God in Isaiah 44.6 – “I am the first and the last” – which is repeated by Jesus in Revelation 1.17.
Unfortunately, all this coincided with tragedies in his family, and it was suggested that his new life may have contributed to their troubles. In any case, they felt he had betrayed his people.
But in time his parents noticed how much he had changed. “I was a typical Israeli ‘punk’. You name it, I smoked it,” he shared with the Maoz Israel Report1. With a warm but explosive temperament apparently common to those of Moroccan background, he was also tainted by swearing, pride and impatience, and had been addicted to smoking and drugs.
“Suddenly I wasn’t doing any of that, and it didn’t take long for my family to realise that these changes were not down to Yeshu the Notzri, but Yeshua the Jew.
“He came for all of us – first for the Jews and then for the rest of the world. It’s just that we, the Jewish nation, rejected him when he came – just as we rejected many other prophets God sent. But there was always a remnant among the Jews who believed.”
Today a part of the TiferetYeshua Congregation, David can be seen on the streets of Tel Aviv sharing the message that turned his life around. “Yeshua was what I was missing my whole life. His peace changed my heart and transformed me for good. The more I learned, the more Yeshua won my heart and I just fell in love with Him.”
“Now I feel called to bring the message of the Jewish Messiah to the people of Israel.”
1David’s story is abridged from the Maoz Israel Report February 2020, used with permission. For more details of their work, see www.maozisrael.org
We’re indebted to Charles Gardner for this article. A career journalist, Charles is a board member of UK online magazine Prophecy Today. His books include Israel the Chosen, Peace in Jerusalem, A Nation Reborn and most recently King of the Jews. Charles is a regular contributor to Heart Publications, Jerusalem-based Israel Today (www.israeltoday.co.il) and Gateway News (South Africa).
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