Here's what happened:
I was in my second year of Juilliard, studying to be an opera singer (which I am.. I got my bm and mm from there.) I was living with my girlfriend (now wife of 33 years). We would get into arguments about what religion my children would be raised if we got married. She wanted them "Christian" and I wanted them "Jewish". It was a sore point.
Meanwhile, going back in time, I didn't know this, but there were many people praying for me. I had won a talent competition run by a local newspaper called Newsday (Long Island, NY). People who knew me saw it an those who believed prayed. One wrote a letter to me, telling me that. My mother intercepted it when I was 14 and didn't show it to me until years later, way after I'd become a believer.
I always believed in God. I always wanted to know him and thank Him for the talent he had given me. It was funny. I had even worn tsit-tsit, for a week, when I was in sixth grade, as a way to show God that I loved Him. He was always "distant" to me, but I believed.
Skipping ahead to my second year of Juilliard, when I started my relationship with my wife... I'd go with her and her family to Christmas services at "Church" but felt very uncomfortable, like I shouldn't be there, but I went... reluctantly. Nothing there moved me.
Skipping a lot.. we were driving my in-laws back from "Jesus 78", because their Winnebago broke down. (My wife's brother and wife were into the Jesus movement and invited my mother and father in law to come with them).
On the way back my mother in law told me that she was at the Jews for Jesus booth and that they were praying for me. Huh. I thought. I never asked for prayer. How presumptuous!
On the long car ride home my mother in law asked me what I now know to be the CS Lewis question. Liar, lunatic or Lord? She asked me, if my philosophy allowed for Jesus to be a good teacher, what do I make of his resurrection. Well, I didn't know. I mumbled something and ended to conversation.
At that point, I realized I had NEVER READ THE NEW TESTAMENT! So, I sneaked a black leather bound bible downstairs where no one could see me reading it, where no one would know. I didn't want anyone to get their hopes up thinking I was becoming a gentile, because I wasn't. I just knew I wanted to educate myself so I could have an answer. I was curious to know what was in this book.
It was a translation called the Living Bible (paraphrased.. just as well, because had it used King James English, this might have been an entirely different testimony!
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I sat down and started reading. By the time I got to chapter 5-ish, The sermon on the mount, the words I was reading began to meet with agreement in the depths of my being. I was drinking it in. ... and deeply. I remember thinking that this was not an evil person, this Jesus. I remember thinking that the words I was reading were full of love and truth.
Just then (I kid you not), a presence hovered into the room and settled right above me (I was laying down on the couch reading). I couldn't see it, but boy could I feel it. I KNEW it was there. It was powerful, dangerous, and potentially threatening, yet brilliant, exciting and wonderful. That's the only way I could describe it at the time.
Just then, I had a genuine vision. Not one of those visions you get inside of your head when you're praying, this was out there. It was right in front of my eyes. It is as if someone rolled down two movie screens, one in the front of me to the right and the other in front of me to the left.
Then I saw it play out. On the left, I saw my family and friends totally rejecting me (which came to pass), and on the right I saw the Truth. (I'm still sobbing as I write this 35 years later... (Thank you, Lord for saving me. Thank you, Lord, for loving me enough to come into my darkness with eternal light and life. *sigh* Sorry... moving on.)
The Truth on the right was not just factual truth. It was true truth inside and out. It didn't have any gray area in it. It was perfect right-ness in a forever kind of way. It was truer than truth, it was THE Truth.
My response to that was.... I remember saying in my heart, "This is the truth, and if need be, I would die for it." I guess I was saying, I die to the left and live to the right? I don't know. God did/does.
Directly, at the time I uttered those words in my heart, that hovering presence entered my at my sternum in a flash. It was no longer outside of me. It was inside of me. I couldn't put the book down. I wanted more. Not just more knowledge of the book. I wanted more of that Presence. I was hungry. Very, very hungry.
I hid the book because I didn't want anyone to think I was a gentile. Honestly? I didn't know WHAT I was. I went upstairs and my girlfriend (now wife) took one look at me and said, "What have you been doing?" I said, "Nothing, why?" She said, "Your face. It's different." She said there was a calmness on it that she never saw before and there was actually a light coming off of it. (I tell you the truth. You can ask her.)
At that point, I had realized that she could see the glowing Being Who was not within me shining out, so I told her the truth. All of it. I told her I was going to live for Him and I did.
My parents rejected me, but came around to restoration of relationship later.. Many more miraculous testimonies there.
My girlfriend, who had been backslidden, rededicated her life to the Lord soon thereafter and we were married not to long after that.
That was a long time ago. Years later I'd received a miraculous calling to become a pastor. I am ordained and led a church plant for about 8 years. Lots of water under the bridge, but he we all are and He is Lord. You know what? I wish EVeryone would come to know the Living Lord in whatever way, so that they can also learn to have a relationship with the One True God.
There you go...
