Thank you friends for your reasoned objection to the Commentary. I knew when I wrote it that it would be controversial and I doubted that it would even be published. I left it to the Editor to include it or not. I commend her action, but I hope that it will not injure community relations. Someday I would like to talk to you privately and learn about your beliefs. I don’t claim to be anything other than a humble servant, trying to take a message that I believe in with all my heart to others who may or may not feel similarly. Personally I lacked any real religious beliefs until 2004 when I had a shocking revelation.
Sid, until 2004 I did not discuss religion with anyone, so I do not know what most of our neighbors actually believe. Also I have avoided casting anyone into a mold, so my approach is probably naïve. From your reaction I could assume that you do not believe there is a God, or I could assume that you are Jewish. What I want to say further is based on the latter assumption. I have had many friends whom are Jewish over the years. Anita and I have been quite close to several couples. Since I came to have a strong belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, I have spent thousands of hours studying religious writings and even attended an eight-week session on the Islamic religion. None of this made me an expert on anything. However, I have experienced such a strong and personal relationship with Jesus Christ that I am driven to try to share this wonderful experience with others. I apologize if I sound pompous, holier-than-though or anything other than a humble person who realizes that he is far from perfect, and no one special.
Our church holds monthly breakfast meetings where we invite an interesting speaker to make a presentation after the meal. We have had some great presentation on a wide variety of subjects, many non-religious. On November 13th, 2004 Stan Telchin gave us a stirring talk on how he tried to disprove that Jesus was the Messiah. Stan and his family lived near Washington D.C. where Stan was a highly paid insurance executive and a member of the Million Dollar Round Table. The family was close-knit and their heritage was 100% Jewish, or so they thought. One day a call came from their daughter Judy who was a junior at Boston University. As gently as she could Judy informed her Dad that she had accepted Jesus Christ as the Messiah. If you had exploded a bomb outside their home it couldn’t have been more of a shock. The family was devastated, and Judy’s younger sister Ann said she did not want to ever see Judy again.
Stan knew that Judy was wrong so he set out on a year-long search to prove just that. His interesting book, “Betrayed!” details the many persons he consulted and some of the books he read including the Bible which was new to him. The end result was that he himself was convinced about Jesus, and at almost the same time the rest of his immediate family came to that conclusion partly on their own. Stan took a year off from his business and became the spiritual leader of the Living Word Fellowship in Bethesda, MD, an inter-denominational fellowship made up of Jewish and Gentile believers. His first book Betrayed! is available in 35 nations with 12 million copies printed, chronicles his fight against Judy’s beliefs and how he eventually changed his mind. Stan and his wife now live in Sarasota, FL. Stan is devoted to spreading the message of Christ through his “Jews for Jesus” organization. He told us that there are only about a hundred thousand USA Jews who now believe in Jesus, a small percentage of the total. Personally I have spent no time in even attempting to spread the message to individual Jewish people except for one man who invited me to do just this. I correspond with him frequently but as far as I know he has not changed his religious views.
The last thing I want to do is offend anyone and simply offer to discuss the subject with anyone who shows an interest. I learn from them as well. George