WOW! This Jewish Professor Saw Jesus in a Vision yet Decided to Run Away

About 20 yards away from me as big, as life. And I looked up and I saw the figure, and I said, 'Oh my God, it's Jesus Christ.'

WOW! This Jewish Professor Saw Jesus in a Vision yet Decided to Run Away. Shallom,

I remember having a conversation with my mother, and she was encouraging me to go to bed early, so I'd get a good night's sleep. And I said, 'Ma, why? Why should I go to bed and get a good night's sleep?' She says, 'So you can get up and be refreshed in the morning and do well in school.' I said, 'Why do I need to do well in school?' She says, 'So you can go to a good college.' I said, 'Why do i need to go to a good college?' She said, 'So you can get a good job.' ... 'Why do i need a good job?' ... 'So you can have a family and have a house and that have think the nice things of life.' I said, 'Well ok, if I have all those things, then what?' Then she goes, 'Then nothing. That's it.' I said, 'Is that all there is.'


Being the only son of a Jewish mother, I was made to feel like I was the center of the universe. It was all about me. And then in the world, when it wasn't about me, it was shocking to me, and I wanted it to be about me. I sought the approval and the affirmation and the confirmation of these things from other people that in fact it was about me, and that I was the center of universe.

I went to a private school, and we had to study the life of Jesus at that private school. And I didn't like Jesus, but I wanted to hear from my own rabbi why we don't believe in Jesus. And he explained to me that He couldn't be the Messiah, because when Messiah comes He'll bring peace. And since Jesus has already come and there is no peace, He could not be the Messiah. And that satisfied me for about seven years. I was totally satisfied with that answer. It made sense to me.

In college I became a theoretical Marxist. I believed that what the world needed was radical social change. That instead of people competing against each other in the marketplace, that government would come and would create an equal playing field, even more than that - create equal outcomes for everyone in the culture. If we could get rid of the competitiveness and the adversarial relationship that I saw in the the culture, and we could work towards cooperation, we could create a better world together.

I really wanted to make a better world. I saw this as a source of significance and purpose in my life that I could help bring about in better world for for mankind.

The only problem with my convictions about social change and making a better world was that was the problem of the brokenness in people. My own personal brokenness, I saw that, my own selfishness, my own pride, my own lust, my own greed, all of those things in my life, and I saw that in other people. I saw in the world around me. And if there was something wrong with us, something wrong with people, then changing social systems wouldn't make any difference. It would just be the same thing, over and over again.


So in my freshman year of college, I hear a knock on my door. I open the door and there's a young man there. He looks at me, he goes, 'Hi, my name is Paul, and I'd like to talk to you about establishing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.'

Well, that took me by surprise. I said, 'I'm sorry. I'm Jewish.' He goes, 'That's okay. So was he.' I said, 'Yeah, yeah, you're right, come on in.'

So I invited him in the room, invited some of my Jewish friends from down the hall to come join us. And then he began to explain to us why Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.

So the questions that I came to college with stayed with me and I realized that there was no God then there was no hope. That led me on a quest, on a search. And in process of that search, I came across the prophecy in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. And I remember reading it and thinking to myself, 'What's Jesus doing in my Bible?' I was surprised as I read it that this was from the prophet Isaiah, the Jewish prophet. And I said, 'What's Jesus doing in my Bible?' And I began to think, why didn't the rabbi tell me about this? Why didn't he tell me that there was a picture of Messiah other than Messiah bringing peace, but a messiah that was going to suffer and die for us.

After college, in order to make extra money, I worked nights and weekends for a kosher caterer in Boston. One night April 30th 1980, I was at Temple Sinai in Marblehead, Massachusetts. I was there for a donor dinner, serving a donor dinner. I was asked if I would pack up the truck so everybody else could go home and just I would be left. And I said fine.

So everybody else left, the ladies had their fundraiser inside the shul. And I was outside with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. And just thinking about life.

All of a sudden inside the synagogue, the women started praying. Their prayers began to remind me of my own searching, my own struggle, my own journey that I was on. And I started thinking about Jewish history, and I started thinking about David and I start thinking about Jesus. Is Jesus the Messiah? Is it really important who the Messiah is? Is Jesus the Son of God? Is he God? Did He ever say that He was God.


Couldn't He just have meant that He was close to God, and intimate with God? And I said, 'What difference does it make with the name of God as long as we live good life.'

And as I'm thinking these things I'm walking around the temple parking lot and I get to the end of the parking lot. And I look up and before me is a gathering of light and the light forms a figure of a man and the man is all in light.

And He's in front of a cross, not on the cross, but in front of a cross, and it's all brightly illuminated in front of me. About 20 yards away from me as big, as life. And I looked up and I saw the figure, and I said, 'Oh my God, it's Jesus Christ.'

And my hands are shaking, and I'm shaking my head on the way home. Did I really see this? Did I really see this? And it scared me so much. I decided to try to put it out of my mind. So I spent the next couple of weeks just partying and going out to bars, and just trying to forget about what had happened. And I did this for a couple of weeks, just getting drunk, and trying to forget.

I woke up one morning, I was living at home at the time, and I woke up in the morning and I was getting my orange juice. And in the kitchen, and my mother looks at me and says, 'Rich, what are you running from?'

So I came to realize that I wasn't the center of the universe. That God was. That it wasn't about me, it was about Him. And it was about me investing my life and His purposes that He had for me. And that gave me such a feeling of meaning and purpose in my life, that it was beyond anything that I could have ... I could have dreamt for.

I never thought I'd get the answers. I never thought that that those are the kinds of things that there were answers to. But now I realized that there's a God, and that He loves me, and that love sets me free to love and serve others, love and serve Him.


Today I am I'm married to my beautiful wife Michelle, who happens to be Italian. I thought it was more important to marry a girl that shared my faith in Jesus, than it was to marry a Jewish girl. We have three wonderful boys Joshua, 27; Micah, 26; and Zach, 23. They all have come in their place in their life, where they have asked Jesus to be their Messiah and Lord. And they are walking with Him and so we're very proud of them.

I presently, I'm teaching as a professor in a graduate school in New York City. And we really enjoyed and delight in being able to share my experience and my journey in my life with these young people in the context of a learning environment.

Source:

• Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. - (John 14:6).

Thanks You, Jesus Bless You.