The God of the Impossible

As I wept in the rear alley, behind the apartment building in which I lived, a spotlight suddenly shined in my face. A police officer in a patrol car asked me what I was doing in the alley at such a late hour. When I explained why I was so distraught, the officer asked me if he could take me any place in particular. I replied, “Take me to the synagogue on Blaine Street, east of Twelfth.” It was the same synagogue where I had my Bar Mitzvah. A new rabbi, a young man, greeted me. I said to him, “My father is going to die and I don’t know what to do!” The rabbi gave me a Siddur, a Hebrew prayer book, indicating which prayer I was to read in the morning, which prayer I was to read in the evening, and requesting that I would return the Siddur to him when I had finished using it. When I went out into the night, I gazed into the clear sky and viewed a myriad of stars casting their light like millions of diamonds against a black velvet background. “If God created the glory of the heavens,” I mused, “then certainly he can have more contact with us than our merely reading a prayer in the Siddur.”

The following summer, my brother and I received a visit from Dorothy Wilson, a close friend of my Aunt Ann. A Jewish young woman, Eva Kranhouse, accompanied her. At the time they visited us, my father and mother were on vacation at South Haven, Michigan. It was to be my father’s last vacation. Eight and one half years prior to this visit, Mrs. Wilson had visited my mother and had proclaimed that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Jewish Messiah. Learning about this proclamation, my dad had requested that my mother inform Dorothy Wilson not to visit us if she wanted to talk about Jesus. Mrs. Wilson had been praying for our family for eight and one half years.

At this time, both women explained to us how Yeshua (Jesus) had fulfilled the prophecies in Tenach (The Old Testament) concerning the Messiah. Eva Kranhouse was the first Jewish person with whom I had come into contact who proclaimed Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. Prior to this experience, I viewed the New Testament as a Gentile Bible and Jesus as the god of the Gentiles. I suddenly obtained a voracious appetite for the Scriptures. I diligently compared the prophecies of the Tenach with their fulfillment in B’rit Chadasha (The New Testament). The evidence seemed to point overwhelmingly to the fact that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Jewish Messiah. Because I wanted to worship the true God, and not a false god, the following was the first prayer I uttered that was composed by me alone and came from my own heart:

“God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, show me whether or not Yeshua (Jesus) is really the Jewish Messiah.”

The LORD started speaking to me powerfully through his Word and through his Spirit. I also had dreams in which Yeshua (Jesus) was being confirmed to me as the Messiah. Two sections of Tenach which proved to be most convincing in establishing Yeshua (Jesus) as the promised Messiah were Isaiah 52:13-53:12 and Micah 5:2 (5:1 in the Hebrew Scriptures). In the former section of Scripture, Isaiah pictures Messiah as the Suffering Servant of Adonai, making atonement for the sins of mankind:

“We all, like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Isaiah 53:6

Later, I learned that the Babylonian Talmud interprets Isaiah, chapter 53 to be referring to the Messiah (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin, Perek Chelek, Folio 98). The latter verse, Micah 5:2 (5:1 in the Hebrew Scriptures) states:

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from days of eternity.”

Messiah would come from Bethlehem. He would be king over the Jewish People. Messiah’s origins would be “from days of eternity” (Hebrew: “me-may o-lahm”). Only God, himself, would be “from days of eternity” - - ETERNAL! Messiah would, himself, be God!

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